Hamas: Israel Causing a Holocaust in Third Day of Attacks

Daily Kos

Al Jazeera English – “Israel Pounds Gaza for a Third Consecutive Day” – 29 Dec 08:

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak echoes Ms. Livni’s Newspeak of this “all-out war” being against Hamas. Israel’s UN Ambassador “said Israel’s main goal is to ‘destroy completely’ what she called a ‘terrorist gang.’“

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, and Iran are a handful of the many who disagree as Al Jazeera has reported 345 Gazans dead and another 1,450 wounded in three days of Israel air strikes.

Hamas spokesperson, Fawzi Barhoum:

“Today is a holocaust and a massacre day that Livni had internationally and regionally campaigned for so she can commit to this holocaust and this massacre. This is a public massacre for our Palestinian people in Gaza. All the casualties and dead are policemen, women, children, elderly and civilians.”

Al Jazeera English – “Inside Story: Israeli Violence in Gaza” – 28 Dec 08 (23:30):

Part One (13:19):

Part Two (10:11):

AntiWar.com compiled an article addressing US supplies to Israel:

When the Israeli government was bombing every police station in the densely populated strip, some of those attacks were coming by way of US-supplied GBU-39 smart bombs. It is unclear how many of the hundreds of people killed in the Gaza Strip in the past 48 hours died at the hands of American munitions, but to the extent that the carnage has gotten some television coverage in the United States, direct American involvement is likely to be unpopular with a war-weary nation.

President-elect Obama has deferred to Pres. Bush’s consent to Israel, for now. The New York Times goes on:

When President-elect Barack Obama went to Israel in July — to the very town, in fact, whose repeated shelling culminated in this weekend’s new fighting in Gaza — he all but endorsed the punishing Israeli attacks now unfolding.

“If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” he told reporters in Sderot, a small city on the edge of Gaza that has been hit repeatedly by rocket fire. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”…

Mr. Obama’s election has raised expectations, among allies and enemies alike, that new American policies are forthcoming, putting more pressure on him to signal more quickly what he intends to do. In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, Mr. Obama has not suggested he has any better ideas than President Bush had to resolve the existential conflict between the Israelis and Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza….

Mr. Obama might have little to gain from setting out an ambitious agenda for an issue as intractable as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But the conflict in Gaza, like the building tensions between India and Pakistan, suggests that he may have no choice. “You can ignore it, you can put it on the back burner, but it will always come up to bite you,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian peace negotiator.

For Mr. Obama, the conundrum is particularly intense since he won election in part on promises of restoring America’s image around the world. He will assume office with high expectations, particularly among Muslims around the world, that he will make an effort at dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Early on as a candidate, Mr. Obama suggested that he did not necessarily oppose negotiations with groups like Hamas, though he spent much of the campaign retreating from that position under fire from critics.By the time he arrived in Israel in July, he suggested he would not even consider talks without a fundamental shift in Hamas and its behavior, effectively moving his policy much closer to President Bush’s. “In terms of negotiations with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation-state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries,” he said then.

Predictably, Mr. Obama echoes the Newspeak of Hamas being too stubborn, but if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: why is Israel held to a different standard and why is this double standard accepted?

EXCERPT from syndicated columist, Joshua Frank’s 12/29/08 article, “Obama and the Attack on Gaza”:

It was the single deadliest attack on Gaza in over 20 years and Obama’s initial reaction on what could be his first real test as president was “no comment.” Meanwhile, Israel has readied itself for a land invasion, amassing tanks along the border and calling up 6,500 reserve troops.…

Reiterating the rationale that Israel’s bombing of Gaza was an act of retaliation and not of aggression, Axelrod, on behalf of the Obama administration, continued to spread the same misinformation as President Bush: that Hamas was the first to break the ceasefire agreement, which ended over a week ago, and Israel was simply responding judiciously.

Aside from the fact that Israel’s response was anything but judicious, the idea that it was Hamas who broke the six-month truce is a complete fabrication.…

Over the last seven years only 17 Israeli citizens have been killed by Palestinian rocket fire, which makes it extremely difficult for Israeli politicians, which are in the midst of an election, to argue that their response has been proportionate or defensible in any way.… [read the full article]