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27 December: Amid thousands of images of civilian casualties of the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, the solemn stare of one child appears to have stood out more than any other. Newspapers and broadcasters across the world selected the image of a young girl looking into a camera lens outside the Shifa hospital hours after an Israeli air strike
Photograph: Abid Katib/Getty Images
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The US used this very same chemical weapon in the attack on Falluja in 2004. White phosphorous. The marines called their concoction ‘shake and bake’ as they used the chemical mixed with explosives against Iraqis in Falluja. Italian documentary filmmakers Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealtareported that the US used white phosphorous against civilians in Falluja, and showed images of incinerated bodies; the US denied the allegation. (Click here for a report comparing the injuries seen in Lebanon in 2006 with those seen in Gaza or for further evidence at Information Clearing House.)
White phosphorous is a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against humans, a chemical weapon made illegal in 1980 by the Geneva Conventions. It was widely used in the Vietnam war by the US, as pictured here used in a grenade.
White phosphorous melts flesh to the bone, causing fatal burns.
It ignites on contact with oxygen. Particles on a person can be temporarily extinguished with water, but as soon as they are dry they will recombust. Longer-term exposure causes poisoning, which leads to wounds of the mouth and eventual destruction of the whole jawbone.
Exposure to white phosphorus smoke in the air can also cause liver, kidney, heart, lung or bone damage and even death.
A former US soldier who served in Iraq says breathing in smoke close to a shell caused the throat and lungs to blister until the victim suffocated, with the phosphorus continuing to burn them from the inside.
White phosphorous is the chemical shown clearly in the many images of Gaza. It is easily recognizable by any veteran, thanks to our country’s long history of war crimes. White phosphorous was used against Lebanese civilians in 2006 in Israel’s war on Lebanon. The Israeli government maintains that it is only using white phosphorous as a smoke screen, but they refuse to release what is actually in the shells they are dropping on Gaza.
When there was a white phosphorous cloud simply hovering somewhere along a highway after an accident at a British plant, it was treated as a risk to public health and families were told to stay inside with windows and doors closed. Clearly, the lungs of Palestinian babies are not as worth protecting as the lungs of British ones.
This stuff is an illegal, incendiary poison. It’s being used right in front of our eyes in the most densely populated place on earth where greater than 50% are children. We probably manufactured it, and at the very least, we paid for it. This picture shows a white phosphorous shell exploding on the ground in Gaza.
The ADC has called for an investigation into the use of white phosphorous in Gaza by the Israeli army. According to this former Major in the British army,
If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.
The body of a child killed in Lebanon in 2006, when Israel dropped white phosphorous bombs.
WARNING: Not for the faint of heart. Then again, we should not be allowed to remain ignorant of the damage this chemical weapon causes while it is being used in Gaza.
| Israel ‘using white phosphorus’ | ||||||||
Human Rights Watch has called on Israel to stop using white phosphorus which it says has been used in military operations in the densely populated Gaza Strip. The US-based group said that its researchers observed the use of the chemical, which can burn away human flesh to the bone, over Gaza City and Jabaliya on Friday and Saturday. “We went by Israeli artillery units that had white phosphorus rounds with the fuses in them,” Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera. “Clearly it is [white phosphorus], we can tell by the explosions and the tendrils that go down [and] the fires that were burning,” he said. “Today there were massive attacks in Jabaliya when we were there. We saw that there were numerous fires once the white phosphorus had gone in.” ‘Obscurant’ International law permits the use of white phopshorus as an “obscurant” to cover troop movements and prevent enemies from using certain guided weapons, but its use is controversial as it can injure people through painful chemical burns.
“Even if they are using it as an obscurant, they are using it in a very densely populated area,” Garlasco said. “The problem is it covers such a wide area that when the white phosphorus wafers come down, over 100 in each artillery shell, they burn everything they touch and they don’t stop burning until they are done. “You are talking about skin damage, potentially homes going on fire, damage to infrastructure.” Human Rights Watch said that it believed the use of the chemical in Gaza violated the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life. The Israeli military has previously denied using white phosphorus during the 15-day offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has said that any munitions that it does use comply with international law. Israel used white phophorus during its 34-day war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement in 2006, while the United States used it during the controversial siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004. |
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29 December: A Palestinian man carries his wounded child to the treatment room of Kamal Adwan hospital following an Israeli missile strike in Beit Lahiya
Photograph: Ashraf Amra/AP
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29 December: Palestinian children walk past a destroyed mosque and houses after they were hit by an Israeli missile strike that killed Jawaher Baalusha, 4, and her four sisters in the northern Gaza Strip
Photograph: Abid Katib/Getty Images
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29 December: A Palestinian boy watches the funeral of three children in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Palestinian medics said five young sisters, died in an Israeli air strike in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza and three other young children were killed when a bomb struck a house
Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
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BRIDGEPORT — Connecticut Muslims met at an Islamic religious school Friday to protest Israeli air attacks on Gaza. The airstrikes, the Israelis say, are aimed at rooting out Hamas operatives.
“We want justice. We want peace,” Muhammed Ali intoned into a huge bullhorn to the crowd of more than 140 outside Bridgeport Islamic Community Center’s Al-Manaar School.
“We want justice. We want peace,” Ali’s audience chanted back, while many waved handmade protest posters.
Some of the signs featured photographs of the human carnage in tiny Gaza of wounded children and dead babies. The signs lambasted Israel, comparing the Jewish nation’s attacks to Nazi atrocities, called on the United States to stop defending Israeli attacks.
Motorists lumbered down Clinton Street, slowing down to check out the protesters waving Palestinian red, green and black flags and holding their posters high in the air. Midway through the demonstration, the rally ground to a hushed halt as the assembled lined up in long rows and faced east to pray.
Hassan Haid, of Trumbull, held a picture of a wounded boy with his head bloodied laying outstretched on a gurney. Haid pulled the photograph off an internet site that he says tells “the real story” of what’s happening in Gaza.
“I am sure some people want to know. I feel sorry for the USA. They are only hearing one side,” said Haid, who emigrated to the United States 30 years ago from Lebanon, where he still has
relatives. “What Israel is doing in Gaza now is the same thing it did in Lebanon [with Hezbollah]. I know from experience. My son was there.”The Israeli military launched its airstrikes on Hamas in Gaza after its six-month long truce with the militant group came to an end. The United States and a number of other western countries list Hamas as a terrorist organization. The Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs says that between 2000 and 2004, Hamas has killed about 400 Israelis and wounded more than 2,000 in 425 separate attacks.
“We understand they want to fight Hamas,” Haid said of the Israelis. “But it doesn’t make sense to kill everybody. To kill children, how can you ever ever hope to have peace?”
Suhib Abunar, a junior at Fairfield Warde High School, who was born in Jordan, but considers himself a Palestinian, said he is paying close attention to all that transpires in Gaza, especially since he has only been back in Connecticut two months after spending a year in Jordan at a private American school where courses are offered in Arabic.
“I don’t like seeing anybody killed — Muslim or not. I don’t like war,” Abunar said, adding that after school he often stops off at a home of a family friend who has satellite television to watch Arab broadcast news from Gaza.
“Sometimes the media [here] doesn’t show everything,” Abunar said. By contrast, on the Arab broadcast stations, “you actually see bombs exploding real close to them and people getting killed right on camera.”
Khaled Elleithy, a professor at the University of Bridgeport and one of the organizers of the demonstration, said many local Muslims believe Israel’s campaign on Gaza is unjust.
“Consider what their targets are,” Elleithy said. “They have bombed civilian homes, hospitals and mosques.”
The Israeli government has said Hamas has stored rockets and other weaponry in mosques and the homes of some key Hamas operatives in Gaza.
“We do not approve of this use of military might of Israel. Their [warplanes] are F-16s from the United States paid for with our tax dollars.”
A few feet away, Hana Bajes, of Milford, a demure young woman in her mid-20s dressed in a hijab, a traditional Muslim veil, waved a sign that featured a Jewish star, an equal sign, and a swastika.
“This symbol represents the star on an Israeli flag,” Bajes said, adding that it wasn’t an anti-Semitic statement.
“I have many friends who are Jewish,” said Bajes, who was born in Kuwait, moved to Jordan after the first Persian Gulf war and then emigrated to the United States. “I’ve worked with many people who are Jews. It’s not any kind of attack on them.
“What these symbols represent here is that the actions of the Israeli military in Gaza and also on the West Bank resembles what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. It’s not just Jews that are persecuted and slaughtered. It’s our people, too.”
A couple of motorists honked their horns and a few gave the protesters a thumbs-up sign.
Bajes held her sign high above her head.
“I am an American citizen. I love this country. I love what it means to live in a democracy and have the right to stand out here the way we are to make our point,” she said. “Mostly what I want to do is get people to think, to get all the information about what’s happening in Gaza and to stop the killing. I’m in a country now that cherishes freedom. So I am standing up and speaking out because that is my right.”
Thousands demonstrate across Spain against ‘genocide’ in Gaza
By h.b. – Jan 11, 2009 – 8:15 PM
The Spanish Prime Minister repeated his call for an immediate cease fire.
Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has said that it was his job to call for an immediate cease fire in Gaza, and he called on the leader of the Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy, to do the same. He said he lamented that Israel continued to bombard Gaza and that he was loyal to his Socialist ideas and in favour of peace.
Speaking at a rally in Orense, ahead of the forthcoming Galician regional elections, Zapatero centred his speech on the Middle East and the economic crisis. He did not mention the chaos on the roads and at airports over the weekend because of the snow.
Meanwhile 250,000 people, according to the organisers, took to the streets of Madrid against the ‘genocide in Palestine’. ‘Genocide is not war’ was one of the chants of the demonstrators who left the Plaza de Cibeles at noon and then held a rally in the Puerta del Sol, where there were calls for an immediate cease fire in Gaza.
On Saturday more than 30,000 people took to the streets of Barcelona also demanding an end to the bombing of Gaza and a commercial boycott of Israel. The demonstration started in the Plaza Universitat and ended in Sant Jaume. Many of the demonstrators carried photos of Palestinian children killed in the conflict.
A similar demonstration also took place despite the rain and cold on Saturday in Valencia outside the City Hall.
The Israeli embassy in a statement accused the Spanish people of having double standards, and asked why they did not demonstrate in the past against the Hamas aggression.
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Zapatero talks to Mahmud Abbas and Ehud Olmert
– Jan 9, 2009 – 7:08 AM
King Juan Carlos calls for an immediate cease fire in Gaza
– Jan 6, 2009 – 8:10 PM
Spanish Prime Minister criticises the ‘disproportionate reaction’ of Israel
– Jan 5, 2009 – 12:43 PM
M. Wekler MD.
“The best proof that your Nazi gas chambers and your Nazi gas vans did not exist any more than your Jewish soap, your lampshades of human skin and so much other nonsense of a vile war propaganda is that, more than fifty years after that war, your ‘scientific experts’ are, more than ever, unable to show them to us”.
As for the despicable mike walsh, just leave him to his inconsistent, incoherent ramblings. No-one knows what he’s talking about anyway, including him.
12-01-2009
Gaza, (PNN): Director of the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, Dr. Hussein Ashour, reports that the nature of the wounds sustained by the dead and injured reaching the hospital are unusual.
Al Shifa Hospital has reported similar findings throughout the years of occupation resulting from the Israeli use of internationally banned weapons including carcinogens. Gaza City is surrounded by the noxious smoke from phosphorous bombs on Monday afternoon with the death toll hovering at 900 Palestinians.
Yesterday Israeli forces killed 53. Dr. Hassanein of the Ministry of Health reports more cases of “bodies cut to pieces” after attacks on Gaza City’s Palestine Square, Tuffah, Zeitoun and Old City neighborhoods. A handicapped center was bombed in Sheikh Zayed and homes in Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya. Rafah in the south was hit heavily today as well with the number of injured throughout the Strip reaching 4,100.
Yesterday’s reports on the use of phosphorus bombs have been confirmed by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), the Ministry of Health, doctors, residents and Human Rights Watch.
Children with deep flesh burns have joined those of the severely dismembered and others who arrive at hospitals in unrecognizable condition. The reality is more horrifying than imaginable for most with the United Nations saying that the Gaza Strip was a “living hell.”
“The injuries here demonstrate that Israel is using prohibited weapons,” Dr. Ashour told Al Sharq Al Awsat. A Norwegian volunteer working in the hospital, who has also worked in the emergency rooms of Iraq during US invasions, reiterated that the nature of the wounds confirms the use of explosive materials containing carcinogenic substances.
Dr. Ashour and the Norwegian doctor certified that people infected by these types of explosives require treatment every six months in order to prevent the development of cancerous tumors.
Palestinian medical sources had confirmed that the nature of the burns, which afflicted the bodies of the dead and wounded Palestinians arriving at Gaza Strip hospitals, demonstrated that the Israeli army used white phosphorus bombs in the shelling of Palestinian civilian gatherings. Medical sources have reported that even the bones of some of the dead and injured were burned.
Residents of the northern Strip towns of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, Gaza City’s eastern neighborhoods and Jabaliya Refugee Camp have reported that the smoke emitted after the bombing of Israeli aircraft led to dozens of cases of suffocation and shortness of breath. Once white phosphorus is released into the air it rapidly oxidizes. The interaction creates heat and produces a yellow flame and thick white smoke.
The British Times reported that Israeli forces have been using white phosphorus during bombings, while local organizations are asking for an inquiry into the use by Israeli forces of internationally prohibited weapons.
Human Rights Watch said that Israel should desist from the use of white phosphorus in the military operations in civilian populated areas in Gaza, while its investigators confirmed the use targeting Gaza City and Jabaliya.
“In the view of Human Rights Watch the use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas in Gaza contravenes international humanitarian law.”
Attacks on the Strip are ongoing as of 4:30 pm Monday.
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