http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=49933&s2=27
http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2009/01/slaughter-of-gazan-children-in-photo.html

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2008/12/29/gaza-massacre-slideshow/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/effarania/

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ARTICLES: 1. Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will
ask
                 2. 'Concerned' Obama breaks silence on Gaza

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Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

Wednesday, 7 January 2009
AP

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians.
Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in
another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes
in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?


Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead ? almost all civilians, most of them
children and women ? in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700
Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana
massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them
children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were
ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an
Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment
and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and
prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought
the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian
casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian
casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the
Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this
mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last
night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to
demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the
old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime
be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this
atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid,
it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle
East ? by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli
troops ? I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it
is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim
they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our
security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also
complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past
for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming
hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own
refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and
planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to
blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed
Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing
Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own
commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing.
When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world
of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN
base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were
also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of
2006 ? a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on
the border ? were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the
Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second
Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie.
The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were
ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an
Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around
the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would
see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at
close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even
apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance
carrying civilians from a neighbouring village ? again after they were
ordered to leave by Israel ? and killed three children and two women.
The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It
was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all,
talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of
course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being
anti-Semitic.

And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all
these scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie
? heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this
crime ? and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll
almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will
very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff
and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the
ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its
bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November
when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around
Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a
week, thousands over the years since 1948 ? when the Israeli massacre
at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from
that part of Palestine that was to become Israel ? is on a quite
different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but
an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of
course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes
out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing
to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we
do not know the answer.



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'Concerned' Obama breaks silence on Gaza


The US President-elect Barack Obama today expressed deep concern about
the loss of civilian lives in Gaza and Israel.


Speaking after Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians at a
UN school where civilians had taken shelter, Obama told reporters "the
loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel is a source of deep concern
for me."

But Obama otherwise said he would adhere to his principle that only US
President George Bush would speak for American foreign policy at this
time, but said he would have plenty more to say after his 20 January
inauguration.


Meanwhile, in the UK, Gordon Brown warned that the Middle East was
facing its "darkest moment yet" amid more bloodshed in Gaza tonight -
but expressed hope that a deal could be struck for an immediate
ceasefire.

Speaking after Israeli airstrikes near UN schools in the territory
reportedly killed scores of people, the Prime Minister said the
situation was a "humanitarian crisis".

"This is the darkest moment yet for the Middle East and it affects the
whole of the world," he said.

"It's because of that that we must get humanitarian aid that we are
promising in."

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