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The Wounds of Gaza

Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang

Two Surgeons from the UK, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, managed to get into Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Here they describe their experiences,  share their views, and conclude that the people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack.

The wounds of Gaza are deep and multi-layered. Are we talking about the Khan Younis massacre of 5,000  in 1956 or the execution  of 35,000 prisoners of war by Israel in 1967? Yet more wounds of the First Intifada, when civil disobedience by an occupied people against the occupiers resulted in massive wounded and hundreds dead?  We also cannot discount the 5,420 wounded in southern Gaza alone since 2000. Hence what we are referring to below are only that of the invasion as of 27 December 2008,

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Resistance – Book Review
 

  
‘One main object of the book is to try to explain the essence of the Islamist revolution.’
 

By Ludwig Watzal – Bonn

Alastair Crooke, Resistance. The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, Pluto Press, London 2009.

With the failure of the ‘war on terror’ and the mess into which the Bush administration has led the United States, it is time for the new President Barack Hussein Obama to revise US policy from scratch. All the decisions which Obama has taken regarding Guantanamo (not to speak of Bagram), torture, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons, and random surveillance of emails and telephones, have been half-hearted. Obama does not talk constantly about the56anymore, he just keeps on waging it. The new President appears increasingly as a Bush-light version: plenty of rhetoric but hardly any change. “Looking forward” should not be Obama’s sole concern but also “looking back” to assess the damage the Bush-warriors have done to the heart and soul of the United States and to bring the instigators to justice starting from the man in charge, downward. In the ongoing debate on torture Obama has already lost out to former Vice-President Dick Cheney, the person primarily responsible for the whole malaise and the Kafkaesque situation in the country.

Just as important as restoring the rule of law to America and repairing the ruined reputation of his country, is the normalization with the Islamic world. Widespread anti-Muslim obsessions, not only among the ruling elite and the media, but also within the American population, must be repudiated and stigmatized as racist. In his Cairo speech he has pledged to do it. Muslims want to be treated on a par with everybody else. And they want the US to withdraw its occupation forces from Muslim countries, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Arab peninsula. America’s Muslims doubt about the seriousness and ability of the American political elite to understand and address the real causes of the conflict between the West and the Islamic world.

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Al-Nakbah Exhibition : press conference on Friday 16th May Read More »Al nakbah exhibition invitation to press conference

By Stuart Littlewood

(source: Palestine Chronicle)

In his recent pep-talk to the Anti-Defamation League, media magnate Rupert Murdoch complains about “an ongoing war against the Jews.” He seems desperate to divert attention from the mounting resentment around the world towards Israel. But his threadbare argument collapses straight away because no distinction is made between criminal Israelis and Jews generally. The one remains carefully hidden behind the other. And the anti-Semitism label tends to get pinned on anyone and everyone in European society, “from its most élite politicians to its largely Muslim ghettoes”, who speaks against or as much as frowns at the racist regime.

The after-dinner audience he was addressing no doubt lapped it up, but unfortunately for Mr. Murdoch people are better informed nowadays. I doubt if the wider audience buys it. What they find unacceptable is Israel’s lawlessness and unrestrained killing. The much-hyped religious dimension is only relevant insofar as the perpetrators hide behind religion’s skirts and misinterpret religious texts to whitewash their crimes. What also undermines Mr. Murdoch’s case is the fact that not all Jews support the state of Israel or approve the dispossession and removal of its indigenous (Arab) population. An increasing number, to their credit, actively campaign against it. And not all of Israel’s supporters are Jewish. They include battalions of Christian Zionists.

It is not surprising that the “Jewish state” has come under strong criticism. Any state, with or without tribal or religious underpinnings, would be roundly condemned if it misbehaved in the same way. As for the speech, Mr. Murdoch kicks off by telling the ADL: “You have championed equal treatment for all races and creeds.” If only that were true. As their website and mission statement show, the ADL are preoccupied with supporting Israel. They are not interested in combating Israeli hate groups or defending the security of (let’s say) the Palestinians.

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