The World We Live In !!

Dealing With The Bombs That Remain

GAZA CITY, Jul 7, 2010 (IPS) – At precisely 12 noon on a Thursday afternoon, among the rolling sandy hills in southern Gaza, a controlled explosion destroys another round of white phosphorous shells left in Gaza following the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza.

Article Written By :- Eva Bartlett | Published At : – IPS News

Explosives experts from the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and the United Nations Mine Action Team (UNMAT) are working together to eliminate the remainders of a deadly Israeli attack. The Israeli bombings from land, sea and air left behind large amounts of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in civilian areas.

In a precise, technical routine which takes into account all possible dangers to the MAG and UNMAT workers as well as Palestinian residents living in Gaza, the explosives experts are, detonation by detonation ridding Gaza of the remaining white phosphorous shells.

In order to deprive them of oxygen, shells are first sealed in plaster casts, then moved into large sand-filled containers, until their day of detonation.

Controlled detonations occur twice weekly, coordinated with the Hamas government and the Israeli army, whose war planes fly over the detonation site during the afternoon. Read more…

Delegates walk out in protest to the speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the U.N. Durban Review Conference (Reuters)

Western leaders have reacted with anger and scorn to remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations conference on racism on Monday, which were interrupted by protestors dressed as clowns and by delegates storming out in protest of his harsh criticism of Israel.

Via  | Foreign Policy Journal.

The U.N. Durban Review Conference is being held in Geneva, Switzerland, to review the implementation of the Durban Declaration of Programme of Action from the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. That conference was boycotted by the United States and other Western nations to protest the summit being used as a platform to criticize Israel. A draft text of the Declaration equated Zionism with racism, although this language was removed from the final text voted on at the conference by attending delegates.

The U.N. has been at the center of controversy about Zionism being equated with racism before. In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly voted to pass Resolution 3379 determining that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”, which was revoked in 1991 by Resolution 46/86 under pressure from Israel’s main benefactor, the U.S.

Then U.S. President George H. W. Bush addressed the Assembly, saying that the “Zionism is racism” resolution mocked the pledge of U.N. members to practice tolerance and live as peaceful neighbors, but making no mention of the plight of the people living under Israel’s discriminatory, violent, and oppressive policies in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

Bush called for the resolution’s repeal by asserting that Zionism is an idea, not a policy, “And to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of Jews in World War II and, indeed, throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations.”

In fact, Israel’s discriminatory and criminal policies have repeatedly been condemned by the United Nations in Security Council resolutions, which reflect standards of internationa law that Israel has perpetually been in violation of. Read more…

Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical “Greater Israel”.

Iraqi nationalists charge that the Israeli expansion into Iraq is supported by both major Kurdish factions, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Iraq’s nominal President Jalal Talabani.

Israel reportedly has plans to relocate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines. According to Kurdish sources, the Israelis are secretly working with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out the integration of Kurdish and other Jews into areas of Iraq under control of the KRG.

Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslims, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan, after the U.S. invasion in 2003, that is considered historical Jewish “property”.

Article Via : InfoWars          By : Wayne Madsen

Click Here to Read more…

By Patrick Sawer

Ben Bradshaw urged the BBC to “stand up” to the Israeli authorities and broadcast the appeal.

A former BBC journalist himself, Mr Bradshaw said the broadcasters’ decision not to carry the appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) was “inexplicable”.

BBC director general Mark Thompson turned down a request from International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander to reconsider his decision.

Mr Thompson said he feared that broadcasting the appeal might compromise the BBC’s impartiality.

The BBC and other broadcasters have also expressed anxiety about whether any aid raised could be delivered effectively on the ground in Gaza, where thousands of people are in desperate need of food, shelter and medicine following a three-week Israeli military offensive.

Article Via Telegraph.co.uk to continue reading click Read more…

Story Via : The Raw Story

by : David Edwards and Diane Sweet
CNN’s John Roberts talked with John Ging who is the director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza. Ging believes that Israeli shells that recently struck the U.N. complex contained white phosphorus. “It looks and smells like phosphorus and it’s burning like phosphorus. That’s all I can say. That’s why I’m calling it phosphorus,” said Ging. Read more…

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Via Raw Story

Doctor estimates 2,000 – 2,500 civilian casualties

Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, told Sky News on Monday that that he believes Israel is deliberately attacking the Palestinian population, not just targeting Hamas as Israeli authorities have said numerous times.

“Just a little bit more than an hour ago, the Israelis bombed the central food market in Gaza City and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed,” said Gilbert, on the phone with Sky News.

“At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children also. This is really like from Dante’s Inferno. It’s like hell here now and it’s been bombing all night. Up till now, close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting to 2, 2 and a half thousand, which 50 percent are children and women.” Read more…

Jonathan Cook
The Electronic Intifada,

There are two persistent myths about the aim of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza: the first that it is an entirely defensive move, a way to end the rocket fire of Hamas; and the second that it is designed to restore the army’s credibility after its failure to cow Hizballah in 2006.

No doubt the Israeli army has been itching to repair its battered image, and for sure the rocket attacks from Gaza create domestic pressures that are only too clear to an Israeli government about to face an election. Read more…

by Jeremy R. Hammond

FPJ

Lie #1) Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.

Read more…