Child casualties of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during September 2006

The folllowing information was obtained from www.rememberthesechildren.org.

Palestinian children killed by the civilised, compassionate, democratic state of Israel:

10 September 2006
Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 of al-Shouka village, east of Rafah Killed by shrapnel from an Israeli shell.

11 September 2006
Ma’ath al-Shayeb, 17 of Kufor Ne’ma village, west of Ramallah, Killed by an explosion of unknown origin. (Comment from Joe - Okay, it is possible that this one was making a bomb to kill the nice cuddly Israelis, but it is possible that he was killed by unexploded ordinance from Israeli action - maybe a cluster bomb?).

12 September 2006
Mohammed ‘Omar ‘Awad Shoriya, 13 of Rakhma village, southeast of Bethlehem, Shot in the back by Israeli forces. (Comment from Joe - those brave Israeli soldiers couldn't even look this 13-year-old terrorist in the eye when they killed him).

14 September 2006
Hanan Mohammed Isma’il Abu ‘Oudeh, 16 of Beit Hanoun, Gaza, Died in an Israeli hospital from gunfire wounds sustained on Sep. 2, when she tried to rescue the bodies of her father and brother during an Israeli ground offensive. (Comment from Joe - she must have deserved it, trying to save a terrorist).

21 September 2006
Ala Saqer Dahrouj Abu Dahrouj, 15, Zeidan Rafiq Mohammad Abu Rashid, 16, Mohammad Selmi Mohammad Masalha, 17 , all of of Jabalya, Gaza Strip, Killed by an Israeli surface-to-surface missile while herding sheep. (Comment from Joe - no doubt the "Sheep" were actually rocket launchers in disguise).

Israeli children killed by the ruthless, evil Palestinian terrorists:

None.

Joe McGonagle

Israelis continue the killing following the Lebanon "withdrawal".

Towards the end of the recent conflict in Lebanon, Israel increased it's use of cluster bombs. There is no obvious military reason for doing so, other than to inflict more casualties _after_ the "end of hostilitities".

Cluster bombs are notorious for failing to detonate, and in effect become anti-personnel mines. As refugees start to return to the areas which they were forced out of by the Israelis, and relief agencies start to move in to the worst effected areas, it is inevitable that there would be more casualties. It is also inevitable that most of the casualties will be children.

In Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" an IDF commander expressed his concerns about the totally inappropriate use of these weapons:

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

According to UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs (Jan Egeland):

“These devices are going to be with us for many, many months, and possibly years”, he said. What was “shocking and completely immoral” was that 90 per cent of the cluster-bomb strikes had occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when everybody knew that there would be an end to hostilities. “It shouldn’t have happened”, he said. Every day, people were maimed and killed by those devices. Civilians were going to die, disproportionately, again -– not during the war, but after the end of the conflict.

So, why would Israel deliberately take actions which would indiscriminately continue killing Lebanese (or international relief workers) beyond the "official end to hostilities"? The only reasons that I can think of are:

1. To inhibit the deployment of relief to the effected areas, thereby increasing the risk of starvation and disease to returning refugees.

2. To increase the Lebanese casualties beyond the cease-fire agreed with the UN.

Are these the actions of a state that was genuinely defending it's citizens, or are they effectively further examples of genocidal policy in Lebanon? The answer should be clear to anyone reading this.

Joe McGonagle

More faces than a Dodecahedron...

Last week I saw both Bush and his poodle Blair giving speeches. I couldn't believe what I was watching and hearing.

Firstly, both of them expressed a willingness to assist with a resolution to the "Palestinian problem". This in spite of the fact that both withdrew funding for the Palestinian territories after HAMAS was democratically elected by the Palestinian people to represent them.

Both of them expressed a desire to encourage democracy in the Middle East. Quite aside from the fact that it isn't up to them to decide what type of government administers any foreign state, when a government which they don't approve of _is_ democratically elected, they immediately withdraw support for it! Which states in the Middle East can credit either Blair or Bush with any sincerity when they rabbit on about democracy?

Blair also whined that he wants to help the Lebanese peope recover from the Israeli attacks. All well and good Tony, but how can you reconcile this with the tacit approval given to the USA to use British soil and airspace to resupply the Israeli war machine during the Lebanese conflict?

It is up to the American people to decide the fate of their President. For myself, I will not support any party that has a multi-headed Hydra for a leader. Labour, it is definitely time for a change of leader, not when the poodle decides it is time for "walkies", but now!

With so many faces, I wonder what the costs of cosmetics are for both Blair and Bush? It cost the Lebanon 1,600 lives and a legacy of thousands of crippled, deprived, and unhappy citizens. The Palestinians are still clinging to survival, in spite of the actions of Israel and British and American support of Israeli genocidal policy.

Joe McGonagle

Israel denies humanitarian aid to Palestinians

Here is evidence of the Israeli policy in respect to the Palestinians (keep them poor, keep them sick, keep them uneducated, and keep them weak).

Source: United Nations Relief and Works Agency

UNRWA PRESS RELEASE
Press Release No. HQ/G/15/2006
24 August 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Children Pay the Price as UNRWA Operations in Gaza are Grinding to a Halt

UNRWA warned on Thursday that the Agency’s Gaza operation is grinding to a halt because of the lack of access in and out of Gaza. The principal goods terminal, Karni, remains closed for the
seventh consecutive day. As a result, shortages of food, fuel and constructions supplies are jeopardizing every element of UNRWA’s Gaza operation at the moment. John Ging, UNRWA’s
Director of Operations in Gaza said that “the food distribution to 830,000 people will not commence as planned next week, unless Karni opens and a solution is found to get the containers quickly through the port of Ashdod, where there are also massive delays because of the fallout from the conflict with Lebanon.”

The Agency has just one week’s fuel supply remaining. Since the Gaza Power Plant was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in late June, the operation of UNRWA health clinics is heavily dependant on generator power. “If we run out of fuel, this will be extremely serious in terms of the storage of medical supplies and the operation of medical equipment at UNRWA’s 18 health centers throughout the Gaza Strip,” John Ging said.

As for construction supplies, UNRWA highlighted that almost none have entered Gaza since late June, which is a particular problem as the Agency prepares for the return of its 194,000 students next week. “The work to repair the schools damaged in the military operations over the past two months is not finished as supplies have run out,” John Ging said. The long-awaited extension to the UNRWA vocational training center in Gaza City is also half-finished and with no alternative accommodation available, UNRWA has been forced to postpone commencement of the seven technical courses involved until November. “Children are once again paying the price in this conflict,” Ging stated.

Ging described the overall humanitarian living conditions in Gaza, as “miserable, frustrating and still deteriorating.” He said that “the opportunities opened up by last year’s disengagement by Israel from the settlements in Gaza are fading. The prospects are very worrying as Gaza is now cut off economically from the outside world and even keeping our humanitarian operations going is an expensive struggle”.

UNRWA is now facing a bill of some 1 million dollars from its Israeli shipping agents in demurrage charges directly arising from the closures of Karni crossing.

For more information please contact:

Jerusalem: Gaza: Gaza:
Johan Eriksson Adnan Abu-Hasna Jamal Hamad
Office: +972-2-5890249 Office: +972-8-6777531 Office: +972-8-6777488
-5890408 Mobile: +972-599428061
Mobile: +972-542402632

Lebanon conflict - casualty statistics

There is a very good article at Wikipedia which attempts to provide statistics about casualties during the conflict. It is very difficult to obtain accurate figures; For example, Israel claims it killed 500 Hezbollah fighters, Hezbollah claim that only 74 were killed. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Because of the propoganda, only an idea of the true casualties can be obtained.

Whichever way you cut the figures, at least 66% of people killed by the Israelis were civilians, whereas only 25% of those killed by Hezbollah were civilians. Importantly, Hezbollah did not have the accurate technology which was available to the Israelis, if they did, their figure would probably be even less than 25%.

Against this, it has been argued (probably correctly to some extent) that Hezbollah sited their forces close to civilians. I still don't think that this argument justifies the differential, given the better technology available to the Israelis, the sparseness of the civilian population in Southern Lebanon (many of the civilians left the area quite early in the conflict), and the fact that the Israelis had the option as to whether or not to attack a particular target.

The only conclusion that I can reach is that Israel were negligent in their targeting policy, or else they were deliberately targeting civilians. Either way, it demonstrates that they considered Lebanese civilians as expendable (in the order of 1,600 were killed outright and 3,600 wounded).

The Israelis must be disappointed that they had to stop killing civilians before they managed to finish the job completely - just as Hitler failed to eradicate the Jews in WWII. Still, they have scope for more success in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, maybe they will manage to complete the task there (the West are still turning a blind eye to the Israeli attempts of genocide against the Palestinians).

Joe McGonagle

Proportions

Since September 2000, 121 Israeli children have been killed in the course of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

In the same period, 779 Palestinian children have been killed.

So far this year, 1 Israeli child has been killed, and 73 Palestinian children.

What does this say about Israeli morality, political, and military policy? Israel is supposed to be the advanced, civilised state, and the Palestinians the nasty, murderous terrorists. This is not the situation reflected by the cold hard statistics.

www.rememberthesechildren.org is a site which tries to record the details of each child killed on either side. If you are religious, you might like to visit the site and say a prayer for the slaughtered innocents (and the potential terrorists). Whether you are religious or not, please circulate the link to raise awareness of the true situation.

Joe McGonagle

End of the war?

Hostilities appear to have ceased in Lebanon, does this mean that the war is finished?

I think it is unlikely. Israel's actions have increased support for the very groups that they have tried to eliminate. There are now many more Lebanese widows, widowers, orphans, and people crippled or impoverished by the Israeli war crimes.

The attack on Lebanon has increased global awareness of the injustices being perpetrated by Israel (although incredibly many people still don't recognise them as such).

Regardless of what transpires in Lebanon, I shall continue to highlight Israeli injustice on this blog. The fact is, I am spoilt for choice when it comes to material. Items that I intended to place on the blog weeks ago are still crowding my inbox, and I am conscious that many readers have neither the time or the patience to thoroughly read and digest all of my postings here, so I intend to trickle-feed material so as not to present too large a volume for readers to consume in one sitting.

Joe McGonagle