http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/83367ED5-5C6B-4993-A952-845C1CF9E424.htm
Israeli attacks kill teenagers
(also facts and figurs)
Sunday 12 November 2006, 15:57 Makka Time, 12:57 GMT

The Israeli army has been carrying out an offensive in Gaza

Two teenagers have died as a result of Israeli rocket attacks in Gaza.

An 18-year-old Palestinian wounded by an Israeli strike in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp last week died in a Tel Aviv hospital on Sunday.

A second teenager, Abdallah Abu Namous, 16, died as a result of fresh Israeli attacks. Three people were also wounded in the attacks.

Abu Namous entered an area in northern Gaza that has been under attack from the Israeli army countering rocket fire from Palestinian fighters.

The Israel army claims that Israeli forces were targeting a Palestinian fighter who had launched three homemade rockets into Israel earlier the same day.

According to Palestinian security officials, Abu Namous had entered the area accidentally.

Since the beginning of November, 98 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, almost all of them in northern Gaza.

The bloodiest day of fighting in northern Gaza came last Wednesday, when an Israeli artillery shell killed 18 civilians in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

The teenagers' death brings the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000 to 5,560. The majority of whom have been Palestinians

http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22598/1/

Breaking the silence: Israeli soldiers speak out
Christopher Brown, electronicintifada.net - Sunday, 12 November 2006, 12:32

Standing at 6'1, with strong build, a full beard, and long dark hair, Yehuda Shaul seems like an unassuming young man.

Wearing dark cargo pants, and a long-sleeved blue shirt, he paces back and forth taking in the whole room. It's hard to notice at first but his blue velvet kippa (skull cap) rests easily on his head.

His voice is mellow and calm. He has a disarming smile that lights up his entire face when he's happy and talking about the things he loves (one of which is football). But behind the smiles and the passion for the world's most popular sport is a young man who has seen and done things no young person should ever have to endure.

A soldier is born

He was born in Jerusalem, the son of an American born father and Canadian-born mother who immigrated to Israel in 1973, the year of the Yom Kippur War. The 24 year old, much like every other male in Israel, was drafted into the army at the age of 18. Everyone is obliged by law to serve in the military; men serve for three years and women for two.

Shaul wanted to serve in the Israel Army not because he was required, but rather that he wanted to. "I went because to me, it was obvious since I was five or six that I was going to be a soldier, that when my time comes at the age of 18, I will join the army ... The only question was, will I join the regular army or be an elite commander in the army," he says.
During a very powerful and emotional ceremony at the Western Wall, Shaul swore an loyalty oath with his fellow soldiers, promising to protect Israel.

But towards the end of his time in the army, Shaul remembers something that began to change his view about the Israeli Army and Israel's defense against terrorism.

He explains, "Somewhere around three months before the end of my time in the army, I began to think about my life as a civilian. Trying for the first time after two years and ten months of living military life ... trying for the first time to ask myself who is Yehuda? Who am I, what do I want to become? And for me that moment was a very terrifying moment. It was a moment to stop thinking about being as a professional combat soldier and start thinking like a civilian. Stop thinking from inside and start observing from outside what's going on.

"It's a very terrifying moment because, in one second the military terminology and the way of thinking doesn't apply to you anymore and in one second you lose the justification for 95 percent of actions you took part in the past two years and ten months.

"And when I felt that, I felt that something mad was going on around me. I felt I can't continue my life without doing something. I didn't really know what it meant, what I was going to do; but I started talking to some of my comrades and I discovered that we all felt the same. We all felt that something wrong was going on around us.

"We started talking about what we've done and that's how Breaking the Silence got started."

Speaking Out

Breaking the Silence (BTS) is a group of discharged soldiers who are veterans of the second Intifada, which began in September 2006. The group has tasked itself to reveal to the Israeli public the daily routine of life in the territories, a routine that gets no coverage in the media.

For Shaul and his comrades it was obvious that they were going to do something, and it was obvious that it was going to be about Hebron. Hebron is a Palestinian city in the West Bank located to the south of Jerusalem. It is considered a holy city to Jews, Muslims and Christians. This is where Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, and Jacob are buried in what is referred to by the Jews as The Tomb of The Patriarchs, and by the Muslims as al-Haram Ibrahimiyah. Furthermore, Abraham is an important figure in all three religions.

Out of the three years that he served in the occupied territories, 14 months were spent in Hebron. In March of 2004 Shaul was discharged. In June 2004 he and some comrades started BTS with a photo exhibition about Hebron.

The name Breaking the Silence was apt because what is going in the occupied territories is one of the biggest taboos in Israel. "It's like the thing you never talk about," says Shaul. "It's the dirt from the backyard that you do everything to keep in the backyard. The last thing you want is that this dirt will come to the front."

The title of the exhibit was Bringing Hebron to Tel Aviv. Shaul explains that if anything symbolizes Israel, it's Tel Aviv. In Israel, Tel Aviv is often called "The Bubble." It is a place where people would rather sit down in coffee shops and not see anything more than a few feet around them.

When the exhibition opened, it was a huge success. Over 7,000 visitors attended the exhibition. Shaul and his fellow soldiers were shocked by the attendance. For several days all the Israeli media spoke reported the soldiers' testimonies from Hebron.

The act of the exhibit was a very personal one. None of them really sure why they were doing it at the time, only that they felt they had to. But something remarkable happened during the exhibition. Out of the 7,000 that came to see the works, some had also been recently discharged from different units serving in the occupied territories. While Shaul and his comrades stood by different works, the soldiers that came to see the works walked up to many of them and said; "this picture you have on the wall, I have the same from Nablus."

Shaul realized from these soldiers who served in various parts of the West Bank and Gaza that the story of his battalion was not unique, but rather the story of all his generation. It was then that those who had put on the exhibit had to continue their work. They began to videotape and audiotape the testimonies of soldiers who served in the occupied territories. As of now, BTS has interviewed over 400 people who served as conscript soldiers.

The goal of BTS was not just to show shocking pictures. Not to tell horror stories about life in the West Bank or Gaza. The goal of BTS was to help people understand the mindset of occupation, to understand the mindset of an occupier.

Games Children Play

Shaul explains that when one is in the occupied territories, things might seem exciting at first but over time the soldiers tend to get bored; they become numb to the situation around them. "Eight hours on, eight hours off, you start to get bored so you begin to make things a game," he says. "You start to aim your rifle at kids and see them through the scope of your rifle and take a picture. Then you aim at your friends and take a picture. The rifle is no longer a killing machine; the rifle becomes a part of your game, the way to pass time."

Often, these games would extend to the Palestinians who would have to go through checkpoints.
"We use to say that there are two kinds of blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinians. The first kind is called wanted terrorists. These are the people that you get the ID numbers from the [security service], [and their] address, you come in the middle of the night into the house, catch the guy, bring him back to the barracks, blindfolded until he is taken away.

"But the other kind, what we call in Hebrew "Dry outs" or more professionally, detainees; these are the Palestinians who broke curfew ... During 2002 through 2003 there were more than 500 days of curfew in Hebron. And we would lift it every few days so people could get food for maybe two or three hours. But if someone were to leave after these hours to get food for his family, then he would be detained for five, six, or seven hours. You must educate them.

"Or if you ask the Palestinians to stand in one nice line and one guy at the end starts to scream, that could be seven hours, ten hours.

"If you call on a Palestinian to show his ID and he smiles too much, then that could be two hours or it could be eight hours. It just depends on which side of the bed you woke up on that morning."
Over time, Shaul says that the Palestinians stop being people and simply become objects.

The Wrecking Crew

Shaul explains that at the beginning of the second Intifada, when the Israeli army would occupy a Palestinian home, commanders would given explicit instructions. The only things allowed to be used from private property were things for military purposes.

If they would occupy the house for more than a few days they might throw out the family, or remand them to the first floor or a basement. If a chair or a table was needed to build a post, a soldier was allowed to use them. "Believe it or not, the first houses we entered, before we left, we washed the floors," Shaul recalls. "This is what we called an enlightened occupation."

Eventually, the units would get more and more comfortable in the houses, and over a period of time the soldiers would become bored and they would start to break things.

Once, when Shaul's battalion was doing an operation in city of Ramallah, a World Cup match was underway. "We looked around and found a house, entered it, kicked the family out, watched the game, and when it was over we left and went back to our mission," he says.

During Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 in the town of Jenin, Israeli bulldozers, made by Caterpillar, rumbled through the narrow streets, taking the walls of houses and shops along the with them.

"After a week the soldiers in Jenin ran out of water," Shaul explains, "So the commander gets on the radio and tells his men to go to a shop to get more water. We need water, this is a military need, right? So the soldiers go to the store in an armored personnel carrier (APC) and get water. Well, a week with out water is also a week without cigarettes, so they take cigarettes, and a week without cigarettes is probably a week without chocolate, so they take the chocolate as well."

The Blender

Yehuda Shaul's professional infantry training was as a grenade machinegun operator. During the second intifada, his first assignment in Hebron was to stand post at a school over looking a Palestinian neighborhood called Abu Seniehi.

Every night at approximately 6pm, Shaul says, Palestinian militants would shoot at the settlements in Hebron, and the IDF would return the fire.

Shaul's platoon sergeant informed him that every night they would hear gunfire and that he had to react and return the fire. It is important to note that a grenade machinegun is not an accurate weapon and that the targets that are firing at from within a dense urban area are almost impossible to spot.

When Shaul realized what he was going to have to do he became very nervous. He worried for hours about what would happen when 6pm rolled around. "At 6pm the shooting starts and you get your orders over the radio. You approach the machinegun. You still know that something is wrong, that something is not right. You don't believe that you're going to shoot the neighborhood ... for what are we here?

"So you pull the trigger you spray the area you pray that the less amount has been fired and then there is four or five seconds of tense quiet. You pray you haven't hit innocent people. But the next day you're less tense, the third day, and then after a week it becomes the most exciting moment of the day.

"After awhile you see that the Palestinians are not getting the message. They are continuing to shoot. So, maybe we shoot at 5:30pm to deter them. Then over a little bit more time we go out on patrols and we see a car and we decided to explode it to send out a message. Now when I talk about this I am talking about how the mission starts and where it goes. How it just becomes a part of you. The blending."

Where do we go from here?

BTS identifies two levels of silence. The first level is the silence of the combat soldier who doesn't understand what's going on. The second level of silence is that which is conveyed to the Israeli public regarding what is really happening in the occupied territories -- what is happening to their sons and daughters, husbands and wives.

Yehuda Shaul stares on intensely and leans forward. "No one wants to hear what's really going on in the occupied territories. No one wants the dirt from the backyard to get to the front. It's time to put the dirt so that everyone can see and that we can all begin to address it"



*this article was reprinted from electronicintifada.net

http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22501/1/
Israel: Recognize This!
Noura Khouri - Tuesday, 07 November 2006, 14:19

'Recognize Israel'. This term is repeated to Palestinians so often that it is taken for granted by virtually everyone who hears it - without pause, or question. Even those who agree with Hamas not recognizing their Occupiers of 58 years may not think twice about the absurdity of the phrase itself.

If recognizing Israel had a glimpse of hope in ending the ongoing land theft, killing and starvation of the entire Palestinian people, they would have undoubtedly done so. Let us forget, for a moment, what Palestinians vividly recall happened after the PLO recognized the state.

What most Palestinians recognize about Israel today, is the appointment of Lieberman – a known fascist, whose openly racist and Nazi-like ideologies can only be seen as representing Israeli public opinion. Palestinians also recognize that this trend shows the future direction of Israeli politics, which will impact Palestinians even more harshly than now.

Perhaps Palestinians recognize that the current operation in Gaza, is a result of the bruise on the commanders' pride, which was destroyed in Lebanon, and according to Haaretz are "looking for a diversion, to silence the critics by mobilizing a national consensus for a new operation?" Dr. Muawiya Abu Hassanin, director of ambulances and emergencies in the Palestinian Ministry of Health, recognizes that this "diversion" has killed over 350 Palestinians, including "137 Palestinian children and teenagers under the age of 16 since June, in addition to 29 women and 12 men above the age of 60. The army has been targeting innocent civilians deliberately and forty-two victims died while inside their homes, destroyed by aerial bombing or artillery bombardment". All the while Israeli spokesmen and politicians "continue to mislead the world by claiming that militants are being killed."

When in the history of the world's nations have such demands been made on the victims of such widespread, ongoing repression and violence? In fact, John Dugard the UN's Special Rapporteur of Human Rights has recently recognized that "the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions - the first time an occupied people have been so treated. This is difficult to understand. Israel is in violation of major Security

Council and General Assembly resolutions dealing with unlawful territorial change and the violation of human rights and has failed to implement the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, yet it escapes the imposition of sanctions. Instead the Palestinian people, rather than the Palestinian Authority, have been subjected to possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times."

So why does the one of the worlds largest and most well equipped army in the world need Palestinians, stateless, with virtually no representation or military power, to recognize it!? After all Israelis are doing a fine job in getting on with their lives and forgetting that we exist. The majority seem happy enough with us shriveling away in the confines of the oPt, behind the ever expanding wall and settlements, ongoing incursions, daily kidnapping, administrative detention and killing of whomever they like. In fact, a two year old child was just released from prison (Al-Quds newspaper on Nov 1, 2006), whose mother is still sitting like so many other women, men and children in Administrative Detention," without charge or trial. Recognized by most Palestinians as well, is a family member who has been imprisoned and tortured; at least 8,000 Palestinian political prisoners remain in Israeli jails today.

Could it be perhaps that Hamas has learned a valuable lesson from history? Perhaps Hamas also recognizes, that after 20 years of attempting to kill the PLO, in the 1990's when they finally did 'recognize' Israel, it was not enough to prevent their marginalization. Only at the pinnacle of their political weakness, were they ripe for Israel's masterful trickery. Only then did the PLO sell its soul and its people's future, to the Occupiers.

In good faith they (we all) actually believed that Palestinians would walk away with at least something resembling statehood. Has Israel honored ONE of its promises or obligations? The examples are astounding with how it continues to avoid implementing any of its obligations under Oslo, or other internationally backed agreements, and gets away with murder.

NONETHELESS, I wish that Hamas would just recognize that Israel came, and took what it wanted, occupied what wasn't theirs and claimed their divine right to do so. Recognize that by having an endless stream of money and power, it pulled off one the most brilliant and cunning PR and branding campaigns in history -- and as if magic, turned the victim into the aggressor. We must especially not forget to recognize Israel's ongoing demographic goals that, since its inception have displaced over 6.8 million people. That is 70% of the Palestinian population has been made into refugees worldwide, and within their own country, and that two out of five refugees are Palestinian - the largest refugee population in the world. I too recognize that the inherent racism and fear that Israelis have built their system on requires it to be upheld with guns, F-16's and military might - with the recognition that it is given by pillaging American tax dollars, an economy on the verge of collapse.

Most importantly and least recognized, is also that Hamas has constantly declared their intention for a ten year hudna thus "denouncing terror" and recognizing the "right of Israel to exist peacefully". Most recognize and are waiting to see who is going to intervene and demand that Israel do the same. Therein lies the inherent point of absurdity that makes up the Palestinian question, and can only be upheld in the surreal realm of political double talk. Israeli's prefer Palestinians, who have no effective government, no citizenship and no military to protect their rights and Israel, whether recognized or not, the imbalance to remain this way. If the entire state (and people) of Israel want any credibility in its growing political abyss and ever-sinking world public opinion, I suggest that Israel recognizes the following: 1) denounces all of their governmental violence 2) accepts Palestine's right to exist 3) and begins honoring past agreements and international law.

Footnotes:
1) Haaretz Editorial, What motivates the IDF: Is IDF using Gaza raid as way of silencing critics after the [Lebanon] war?
2) Article titled, 'Bellicose government' Khaled Amayreh in Cairo by AL-AHRAM, Nov. 1-7 Iss. 818.
3) Report by Mr Dugard to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva 26 September.

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=16911
Gov't spokesman Hamad: Israel should be expelled from the UN for committing war crimes against civilians
Date: 08 / 11 / 2006 Time: 14:51

Gaza - Ma'an - Palestinian government spokesman Ghazi Hamad has described Israel as "a gang of criminals and killers" who are practicing their killing and destruction without being held accountable. He called for Israel to be expelled from the UN as a lawbreaker and for committing war crimes against civilians.

The spokesman called for the formation of a committee to investigate the Israeli crimes and massacres in Beit Hanoun.

In a statement, Hamad said, "the international community should stand strongly against Israel. It is a disgrace to the international community to accept this gang of killers of children, women and old people. It is a disgrace to have this evil plant a member in the United Nations after the real image of Israel has appeared. Israel is a gang that cannot stop killing and never feels bored of causing destruction and ruins".

Hamad accused the USA of giving Israel the green light to commit this killing of Palestinians and added, "Whatever the size of this massacre, the Palestinians will never stop their struggle to build their own independent state with Jerusalem as its capital".

He also stated that the international community should impose sanctions on Israel and the Arabs should act immediately to end the siege and help the Palestinians. He also urged the Palestinians "to act united in the confrontation with the Israel enemy''. He also called for the international humanitarian organisations to offer urgent assistance to the Palestinians.

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=16939
Washington expresses regret over death tolls in Gaza
Date: 08 / 11 / 2006 Time: 19:58

Bethlehem - Ma'an - The White House has issued a press release, which Ma'an has received through the American Consulate in Jerusalem, in which they express their utmost sorrow over the death tolls and injuries in the Gaza Strip.

The statement added that "We would like to express our deep regret over the deaths and injury of people in Gaza and we record that we were informed of the Israeli apology and the decision to set up an investigation into the incident. We also call on all parties to exercise self-control, so as to prevent more casualties among innocent people."