[Reader-list] MORE ON GENOCIDE IN GAZA

[Asit Das]

Israeli 'Massacre' In Gaza City Kills At Least 66

*By Ma'an News Agency*

20 July, 2014
*Maannews.net* <http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=714592>

*5 girls lost their mother 28 yr old Israa, Nihad lost his wife..fainted
when he heard the news*

*GAZA CITY (Ma'an)* -- On the 13th day of the ongoing military offensive
against the Gaza Strip, residents say invading Israeli forces committed "a
new massacre" in the Shujaiyya neighborhood of Gaza City.

At least 66 people have been killed and hundreds have been injured in the
eastern neighborhood, medics said Sunday. The death toll is expected to
rise as more bodies are uncovered, while the day's total across the Gaza
Strip has surpassed 90.

Medical sources said seven Palestinians were killed in other areas across
the coastal enclave.

Spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health Ashraf al-Qidra said
rescue teams evacuated 50 dead bodies from destroyed houses including 17
children, 14 women and four elderly people. More than 200 injured people
were taken to al-Shifa Hospital.

Medical sources identified some of the victims in Shujaiyya as Ahmad Ishaq
Ramlawi, Marwah Suleiman al-Sirsawi, Raed Mansour Nayfah, Osama Ribhi Ayyad
and Ahid Mousa al-Sirsik.

Among the victims was photojournalist Khalid Hamid and paramedic Fuad Jabir.

Dozens of victims in Shujaiyya haven't been identified.

Palestinian medical sources in al-Shifa Hospital told Ma'an that the
hospital was unable to cope with the large numbers of residents who fled
their homes in Shujaiyya "under fire" to the hospital for shelter. They
highlighted that Sunday's death toll hit 20 since midnight.

Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said that among
Shujaiyya's victims were family members of senior Hamas leader Khalil
al-Hayya. He identified them as Osamah Khalil al-Hayya, his wife Halah, and
his sons Khalil and Umamah.

Al-Qidra highlighted that the last few hours were the "fiercest" against
Palestinian houses. Residents, he said, have been appealing for help since
midnight saying that large numbers of people have been killed or injured in
the houses as shells continued to hit them from all directions.

Al-Qidra highlighted that Israeli forces denied ambulances access to
attacked houses to evacuate victims despite the uninterrupted efforts to
coordinate through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"The Israeli occupation forces told the Red Cross Committee that Shujaiyya
was a closed zone because of military operations," the medical official
explained.

As a result, added al-Qidra, Palestinian ambulance teams decided to take
the risk and access victims despite the Israeli military orders.

Among the victims in Shujaiyya, according to al-Qidra, were teenage girl
14-year-old Hiba Hamid Sheikh Khalil and 38-year-old Muhammad Ali Jundiyya.

Three unidentified bodies were also received at al-Shifa Hospital Sunday
morning.

Earlier, the body of 52-year-old Tawfiq Marshoud was evacuated.

In Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, medical sources said three
Palestinians were killed Sunday morning. Al-Qidra identified them as
23-year-old Hamid Abu Fuju, 26-year-old Ahmad Zanoun and 21-year-old Suhayb
Abu Qurah.

In addition, an Israeli airstrike on house of the Muammar family killed
three brothers. Medical sources said Anas Yousif Muammar died of his wounds
shortly after his brothers Muhamamd, 30, and Hamzah, 21, were killed in
al-Juneina neighborhood of Rafah. Ten others were injured in the attack.

Also in Rafah, al-Qidra said 56-year-old Husni Mahmoud al-Absi was killed
by an Israeli raid which injured five others.

Fahmi Abdul-Aziz Abu al-Said, 29, was also killed Sunday in the central
Gaza Strip.

 GazaUnderAttack: Israel Committed A Massacre Against Innocent People

In Al-Shijaeyya In Gaza Killing At Least 60 And Wounding Hundreds

*By Shahd Abusalama*

20 July, 2014
*Palestine From My Eyes Blog*
<http://palestinefrommyeyes.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/gazaunderattack-israel-committed-a-massacre-against-innocent-people-in-al-shijaeyya-in-gaza-killing-at-least-60-and-wounding-hundreds/>

*Wounded children from Al-Shijaeyya area in Gaza stretching out in Gaza
Hospitals which cannot any more accommodate the increasing number of
injures. All of them are critical.*

Where is humanity? Where are the people of conscience around the world? Our
people in Gaza are being massacred, under genocide operation. #Israel
doesn’t differentiate between ages.

The Israeli occupation endorsed a two-hour ‘humanitarian’ truce starting
from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, and within these two hours they committed a
terribly atrocious massacre against our people in Al-Shijaeyya. The
families there refused to evacuate their houses, remain dignified in their
homes, and reject Israel’s attempt to make them homeless and humiliated
with other 60 thousands Palestinians who filled UNRWA schools. Israel’s
reaction to people’s steadfastness was randomly shelling their houses with
artillery shells and F16 missiles towards the families’ houses who held in
between its walls only children, women and elderlies.

People started running barefoot, traumatised while missiles and artillery
shells are chasing them for long distances without finding a safe shelter.
But there were none. A women with her kids stopped to rest under an olive
tree. She was holding her 13-year-old child between her arms when all of a
sudden she found her bleeding, killed. Traumatised mother started running
again with the rest of her children trying to rescue who survived from them.

At least 60 innocent children, women and elderlies were killed in a cold
blood, and Gaza hospitals received hundreds of injuries, most of them are
children and women. There is a shortage in hospitals, in medical
equipments. They cannot accommodate the increasing number of the injured
people who are all suffering a critical injuries which threatens more lives
with death. Palestinians reporters say that they witnessed huge number of
wounded people laying on the floor, because there are not enough hospital
beds.

Israel panned ambulances and media from reaching the place for hours. When
they finally got a permission, ambulances hurried to rescue the massacred
people there, but they were also attacked. At least two of the medics were
killed. Other nine were wounded. In an attempt to veil these crimes Israel
committed against the innocent inhabitants of Al-Shijaeyya, they prevented
media from being there to document the massacre and let the world be a
witness of it.

You international activist around the world, especially in #Europe and the
#USA, Israel acts with impunity because of your countries’ silence and
unconditional support in all sectors to Israel. Your bias media which
inverts between the oppressor and the victim supports Israel to continue
massacring our people! Go to streets now and call for an immediate stop to
the Palestinian bloodshed! Hold Israel accountable to its uncountable and
deadliest crimes against our isolated Palestinian people in beseiged Gaza.
Call for boycott divestment and sanctions. Call for cutting ties with
Israel. We shall not forgive nor forget. We shall keep resisting with all
legitimate means that we have as occupied people until justice is done to
every drop of blood Palestinians shed across the 66 years of this ongoing
occupation. Resistance until freedom, justice and equality. Down with
#zionism!

*Shahd Abusalama *is a Palestinian artist, a blogger and an English
literature graduate living in Gaza City, Palestine. Her blog is
http://palestinefrommyeyes.wordpress.com/ Follow her on twitter
@ShahdAbusalama




 The Boy Who Clung To The Paramedic: The Story Behind The Photo

*By Belal Dabour*

20 July, 2014
*Electronicintifada.net*
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/boy-who-clung-paramedic-story-behind-photo/13604>


*This photo of a boy injured in an Israeli strike clinging to a medic at
al-Shifa hospital went viral on the Internet. ( Ezz al-Zanoun
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/ezz-al-zanoun>/ APA images
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/apa-images>)*

Thursday night, 17 July, was the heaviest yet since Israel’s bombardment of
Gaza began almost two weeks ago.

Dozens of people arrived to Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, where I was on
shift that night. Some arrived torn to pieces, some beheaded, some
disfigured beyond recognition, although still alive and breathing.

Seemingly indiscriminate artillery fire, a new element in Israel’s assault,
had exacted a heavy toll on civilians.

The medical staff were lucky to get a break of less than half an hour. Some
spent it watching the flares and bombs Israel was raining on the eastern
neighborhoods of Gaza City, while others refueled with coffee or lay down
for a few moments.

The relative calm did not last long. At around 3am, about eight or nine
casualties arrived at the emergency room all at once. The last to come in
were four siblings — two of them little children, both about three years
old, with relatively superficial wounds. But it was clear they were pulled
from under rubble, their faces and clothes covered in dirt and dust.

Then came the older of the four siblings, a boy in his early teens. His
head and face were covered in blood and he was pressing a rag to his head
to stanch the flow. But his focus was on something else: “Save my little
brother!” he kept screaming.

The last to arrive was his brother, the child in the above photo that
circulated around the world.

*“I want my father!”*

He was carried in by a paramedic and immediately rushed to the intensive
care unit, which is right next to the ER. He clung to the paramedic,
crying, “I want my father, bring me my father!” until he had to be forced
to let go.

As I stood by, alert for orders, a group of four medical personnel
immediately started to treat the boy. But he kept kicking and screaming and
calling for his father.

His injuries were serious: a wound to the left side of his head which could
indicate a skull fracture and a large piece of shrapnel in his neck.
Another piece of shrapnel had penetrated his chest and a third had entered
his abdomen. There were many smaller wounds all over his body.

Immediate measures had to be taken to save his life; he was sedated so the
medics could get to work.

Upon carefully examining the wounds, it appeared that the explosion from
the artillery round sent flying small pieces of stone from the walls of his
house, and that some of his wounds were caused by these high-velocity
projectiles.

He was extremely lucky: his neck injury was just an inch away from a major
artery, his chest injury penetrated all the way through but failed to
puncture his lung, and his abdomen was struck by shrapnel that just missed
his bowel.

*Luck*

He had a stroke of luck denied to many that night.

The medics performed heroic measures in a remarkably short time, and the
little boy’s life was saved.

Meanwhile in the emergency room, the elder brother was stitched up and the
younger two siblings were washed and thoroughly examined for possible
hidden injuries.

Somehow, despite the horror and the pain, they were sleeping. I don’t know
how they did it, but I felt envious and grateful for the divine mercy that
found its way to them.

Their brother with the most serious wounds will almost certainly survive,
but with many scars and a difficult recovery period, both physical and
psychological.

Too many casualties came in that night, too many for me to get this boy’s
name, to know whether he was reunited with his father, or even what became
of the rest of his family.

But there’s one thing that I know for sure, which is that hundreds of
children just like him suffered similar or worse injuries, and up to the
moment of this writing, nearly eighty children just like him have been
killed as Israel’s merciless attack goes on.

*Belal Dabour* is a recently graduated doctor from Gaza, Palestine. He
blogs at *belalmd.wordpress.com* <http://belalmd.wordpress.com/>



Devastated Family Remembers Cheerful Boy Cut Down By Israeli Fire On Gaza
Beach

*By Rami Almeghari*

20 July, 2014
*Electronicintifada.net*
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/devastated-family-remembers-cheerful-boy-cut-down-israeli-fire-gaza-beach/13603>

*Muhammad Baker is comforted by his sister in Gaza's Beach Camp. ( Shadi
Alqarra  <http://electronicintifada.net/people/shadi-alqarra>)*

The day before he was killed, “Ismail came home carrying fresh fish and
began joking with his brothers and sisters. He seemed unusually cheerful
and happy,” his mother Sahar Baker told The Electronic Intifada at her home
in Gaza’s Beach Camp just twenty-four hours after her son’s brutal slaying.

“I asked him, my son, why did you go to the beach while the situation is
dangerous? He answered, we were playing as we wanted to play, why should we
be afraid?” Sahar said.

Ismail Muhammad Baker, nine years old, was killed along with his cousins
Ahed Atif Baker and Zakaria Ahed Baker, both ten years old, and
eleven-year-old Muhammad Ramiz Baker when Israeli fire targeted them on a
beach near Gaza City’s seaport on 16 July.

The massacre, witnessed by international journalists at the nearby Al-Deira
hotel, caused outrage around the world and drew attention to the horrifying
death toll among Gaza’s children.

As of Saturday, more than sixty children were among the 339 people who have
been killed since Israel began its round-the-clock bombardment of Gaza on 7
July. The death toll rose sharply since Friday, when Israeli forces began a
ground invasion in parts of Gaza.

Deeply distraught and surrounded by mourners and relatives, and joined by
Ismail’s father, Muhammad, Sahar Baker said she hoped God would punish
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for “stealing
my dear son. We raise our children and all of a sudden they steal them from
us.”

*A cheerful boy*

A mother of six other sons and three daughters, Sahar recalled that Ismail
was always helpful to her and acted more mature than his age.

Ismail had recently started selling tea at the seaport to earn a few
shekels to help the family out, his father said. “This newly-built house
will not see Ismail grow up,” Muhammad added.

Ismail’s father was also deeply distraught and emotional when he spoke to
The Electronic Intifada. He is unemployed like so many others in Gaza’s
dire economic situation, but the family home was recently rebuilt thanks to
a grant from the Qatari government.

“Hours before I heard news of his death, Ismail asked me to prepare him
some food, which I did,” Sahar recalled. “As we heard loud explosions, I
felt so worried for him. Then later I saw his body dismembered, his
abdomen, his back, his limbs …”

Samara, Ismail’s twelve-year-old sister, stood in the corner crying.
“Ismail was such a kind brother. Everyone loved him,” she said. She
remembered how he would take younger children to the store to buy them
treats.

“I used to have seven brothers, but now I only have six,” she said,
embracing her father for support.

*“What did he do?”*

“Ismail was so tender and kind,” his maternal grandmother, Um Said, told
The Electronic Intifada. “Why did they kill him? What did he do?”

“Was my son one of the targets in Israel’s target bank?” his father
Muhammad asked.

“I call on [Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan of Turkey to help bring
justice to the Turkish victims of Israel’s attack on the flotilla,”
Muhammad said, noting that there is a memorial at Gaza port to the ten
victims of Israel’s May 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara.

“And I call on Erdogan to help bring justice for my slain son,” Muhammad
added.

*Rami Almeghari *is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza
Strip.

 On 'Human Shielding' In Gaza

*By Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini*

20 July, 2014
*Countercurrents.org*

*The Israeli army has tried to justify striking civilian areas*

All fighting within cities and all bombardments of urban spaces, even the
most "precise and surgical", is a potential death trap for civilians.
Consequently, the permeation of war into cities inevitably transforms their
inhabitants into potential human shields.

For Palestinians living in Gaza today, simply spending time in their own
homes, frequenting a mosque, going to a hospital or to school has become a
dangerous enterprise since any one of these architectural edifices can
become at any moment a target. One can no longer safely assume that the
existence of masses of human bodies - even the bodies of children - in
civilian spaces can serve as defence of the weak against the lethal
capacity of the hi-tech states.

But since hi-tech states can and do kill hundreds or thousands of
civilians, they have to provide moral justification for their action in
order to preserve their standing in the international arena; they have to
demonstrate that they are protecting the principles of liberal democracy.
It is precisely within this context that we should understand the series of
posters recently disseminated by the Israeli military through its Twitter
account, Facebook and blogs.

*"Where do Gaza terrorists hide their weapons?"*

The poster "Where do Gaza Terrorists Hide Their Weapons" is a paradigmatic
example, where the subtext does the speaking: Houses, mosques, schools, and
hospitals are legitimate targets because they are presumed to be weapon
depositories.

* " When is a house a home?
<https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/489047478998540288/photo/1>"*

This is also the message in "When Is A House a Home?" which simply zooms in
on one of the images in the previous poster, showing how Palestinians
presumably hide rockets in civilian homes.

The logic is straightforward: insofar as Hamas hides weapons in houses
(illegitimate), Israel can bomb them as if they were military targets
(legitimate). Within this framework, a single function (hiding weapons) out
of many existing functions (home, shelter, intimacy, etc) determines the
status of an urban site (in our case the house), so that the edifice's form
loses its traditional signification.

*" Isreal uses weapons to protect its civilians
<https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/487985324895637504/photo/1>" *

The question "when does it become a legitimate military target?" is merely
rhetorical. Its real meaning is: "All houses in Gaza are legitimate
targets" since all houses are potentially non-homes.

Not unlike colonial as well as other vastly asymmetrical wars, Israel's
legitimisation for its indiscriminate bombing is premised upon a profound
moral disjuncture between Israelis and Palestinians. In the poster "Israel
uses weapon to protect its civilians. Hamas uses civilians to protect its
weapons", Palestinians are depicted as barbarians who ignore the elementary
grammar of international law.

*" We remember that there are civilians in Gaza
<https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/487609229721616384/photo/1>" *

Israel's warfare is, however, not only about the re-signification of
architectural structures, but also about the transformation of human beings
into collateral damage, subjects who can be killed without violating
international law. This is the subtext of the poster featuring Israel's
Chief of Staff saying: "Even as we carry out strikes, we remember that
there are civilians in Gaza. Hamas has turned them into hostages."

Again, the logic is clear. All civilians in Gaza are being held hostage by
Hamas, which is considered a war crime and a gross violation of
international law governing armed conflict. This, then, provides legal and
moral justification against the accusation that Israel is the one killing
civilians. Presumed human rights violations carried out by Palestinians
against Palestinians - taking hostages and human shielding - thus become
the legitimisation of lethal and indiscriminate violence on the part of the
occupying force.

Hence, the use of human shields is not only a violation. In contemporary
asymmetric urban wars, accusing the enemy of using human shields helps
validate the claim that the death of "untargeted civilians" is merely
collateral damage. When all civilians are potential human shields, when
each and every civilian can become a hostage of the enemy, then all enemy
civilians become killable.

*" Some bomb shelters shelter people...
<https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/487414068324483072/photo/1>*

In order for all this to be convincing, the Israeli military depicts the
asymmetric context in which it unleashes its violence against a whole
population as symmetric. This is carried out, for instance, through the
poster "Some bomb shelters shelter people, some shelter bombs". Here a
radically disproportionate situation is presented as if it were balanced.

The residents of Gaza are bombed by cutting edge F-16 fighter jets and
drones, yet they do not have bomb shelters, and they have nowhere to flee.
Israel's residents are bombed mostly by makeshift rockets, many of which
have been intercepted by Iron Dome missiles. The majority of the population
in Israel has access to shelters and can flee out of the rocket's range.

These powerful images, spread by the Israeli military through social media,
attempt to transform the very presence of civilians as suspect in the areas
it bombards, regardless of the fact that the areas it bombs are urban
centres.

The crux of the matter is that in the context of contemporary asymmetric
warfare, the weak do not have many options. When there are no bomb
shelters, people remain at home during extensive bombardment. And if, like
in the case of the Palestinians in Gaza, fleeing is not an option - because
all exits from the strip have been closed, or because the neighbour's house
is under the exact same threat as one's own, or because one is already a
refugee and does not want to become a refugee anew - staying put, which the
high-tech states term "illegal human shields," constitutes a form of
resistance.

*Neve Gordon is the author of Israel's Occupation. *

*Nicola Perugini is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies and
Middle East Studies at Brown University. His forthcoming book is entitled
The Human Right to Dominate. *

*Follow Nicola on Twitter:  @ PeruginiNic <https://twitter.com/PeruginiNic>*