It may be a new year, but the bloodshed in Gaza this past week is a clear reminder that there's no time to wait to protect human rights in 2009.
Since December 27, these horrific attacks on Gaza have caused over 400 Palestinian deaths and 2000 injuries. Rocket fire by armed Palestinian groups, including Hamas, has taken the lives of 4 Israelis and caused several dozen injuries. Amnesty International condemns the violence on both sides and calls on both parties to abide by international law and policies.
The U.S. government cannot continue this lop-sided blame on Hamas for the crisis. Ask Secretary Rice to urgently express deep concern about Israel's disproportional response and its policies which have brought the Gaza Strip to the brink of humanitarian disaster.
Civilians in Gaza, already trapped in disgraceful humanitarian conditions, are victims of Israeli air strikes and intensified attacks. Israeli blockades of humanitarian supplies continue to deny Palestinians the food and medical supplies they desperately need.
Join Amnesty International in calling for Secretary Rice to:
- Pressure Israel and Palestinian armed groups to cease attacks on civilians
- Demand an end to Israel's disproportional response
- Urge Israel to open the crossings to let humanitarian aid in
Together we can help lift Gaza out of this crisis.
Sincerely,
Curt Goering
Senior Deputy Executive Director
Amnesty International USA
Comments
What's happening in Gaza
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 10:03amAn old fashioned ass kicking. Payback is a motherfucker.
Hello Moron! Israel is
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 10:29amHello Moron!
Israel is undoubtedly militarily superior to the people living in Gaza. Some people call the Palestinians terrorists and use childish descriptions to the ongoing massacre of the Palestians in Gaza, calling it an "ass-kicking". We've all come across morons like that before. Usually they are young stupid individuals who don't have a clue about history, geography, religion, world cultures, etc. They probably spend a lot of time watching FoxNews, drinking beer, watching football, and trying to get laid. In some occassions, they are geeks with a lot of knowledge in some narrow area and that gives them the illusion they are intelligent and entitled to make opinions on important issues. Of course, some of them are bigoted jews with the victim syndrome, thinking a Holocaust and an old promise in a 3000 year old book called the Torah gives them the right to inflict unspeakable horror on unarmed civilain Palestinians. Anyway, we all know their opions count for nothing in the minds of people who know better.
Gaza
Submitted by jon peppers (not verified) on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 4:04pmWhat a respected organization...the same group who supports a convicted affirmed murderer of another innocent human being. Shame on A.I
daniel Faulkner.com for the truth and FACTS
jon pisano
So nice to see...
Submitted by Rich Gardner on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 6:08pmbloodthirsty right-wingers who just want to see more death, bloodshed and destruction. Makes me proud to share a country with y'all.
Re: nice to see you
Submitted by jon peppers (not verified) on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 7:09pmRich, may I ask as to your comment "right wingers want to see more death, bloodshed and destruction?. Is that a response to my reply regarding A.I.?
jon pisano
johnnypeppers@hotmail.com
It was much more
Submitted by Rich Gardner on Sat, 01/03/2009 - 9:56pma response to the comment above yours, the guy who relishes giving Arabs an "ass-kicking." Your statement was much more ambiguous.
Israel's disproportional response
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 11:25amThe sentence in the appeal by Amnesty is very important and interesting. "Demand an end to Israel's disproportional response."
Let us analyse what Amnesty expects from Israel -- The rocket attack by Hamas killed only 4 civilians in Israel and so Israel should kill only 4 in the Hamas side and not more. Who will account for the Jews killed in Mumbai?
It is true that "An Eye for an Eye" policy will make the whole world blind. This must change, whether Amnesty accept it or not.
The new policy must be "100 Eyes for ONE Eye." 99 eyes can be saved after each terror attack.
THIS is the sort of comment
Submitted by Rich Gardner on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 9:23pmthat I was responding to earlier. The bloodthirsty right-winger whose response to any problem with other people in the world is "Kill! Destroy! Blood! Death! Raze their villages! Salt the land so nothing grows there!"
To anonymous: Do you believe that al Qaeda thinks any differently from the way you do? Do you think they don't just change the names and labels and then proceed to say exactly the same thing?
Reminds me of Norman Solomon's essay
Submitted by HansBennett on Mon, 01/05/2009 - 4:46amA Hundred Eyes for an Eye:
Israel gets Biblical on Gaza
by Norman Solomon
Israelis and Arabs “feel that only force can assure justice,” I. F. Stone noted soon after the Six Day War in 1967. And he wrote: “A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements. The Others are always either less than human, and thus their interests may be ignored, or more than human and therefore so dangerous that it is right to destroy them.”
The closing days of 2008 have heightened the Israeli government’s stature as a mighty practitioner of the moral imbecility that Stone described.
Israel’s airstrikes “have killed at least 270 people so far, injured more than 1,000, many of them seriously, and many remain buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise,” Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out on Sunday, two days into Israel’s attack. “This catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians.” She mentioned that “the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday after the Israeli assault began was the first such casualty in more than a year.”
Even if you set aside the magnitude of Israel’s violations of the Geneva conventions and the long terrible history of its methodical collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, consider the vastly disproportionate carnage in the conflict.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” Gandhi said.
What about a hundred eyes for an eye?
It makes some of the world ill with rage. And it turns much of the United States numb with silence. Routinely, the politicians and pundits of Washington can’t summon minimal decency in themselves or each other on the subject of Israel and Palestinians.
While officialdom inside the Beltway seems frozen in fear of risking “anti-Semitism” charges by actually standing up for the human rights of Palestinian people, some progress at the grassroots has been noticeable. It includes the growth of groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Tikkun, and The Shalom Center, where activists have worked to refute the false claims that American Jews are united behind Israeli policies.
At the epicenters of the conflict — where the belief that “only force can assure justice” seems to be even stronger than when I. F. Stone wrote about it 41 years ago — the conclusion has been drawn and redrawn so many times that deadly repetition has become paralytic. While some Palestinian “militants” have terrorized and murdered, the Israeli government has terrorized and murdered on a much bigger scale, using a vast arsenal largely financed by U.S. taxpayers.
From afar, in the United States, it’s too easy to shake our heads at the lethal loss of moral vision. Don’t they know that “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”? But the cycle of violence is extremely asymmetrical — while the U.S. government provides Israel with billions of dollars and invaluable “diplomatic” support.
What’s going on in Gaza right now is not just an eye for an eye. It’s a hundred eyes for an eye. And the current slaughter is not only an ongoing Israeli war crime. It has an accomplice named Uncle Sam.
Rich, at what point would
Submitted by GeneWW (not verified) on Tue, 01/06/2009 - 3:54pmRich, at what point would you recommend taking action against an agressor nation/people/group? If the only response allowed by AI is throwing rocks back over the fence I fail to see how that deters the original thrower. Most of the liberals only want Israel to negotiate with Hamas even though Hamas is and has been firing rockets into Israel for 8 years. Further the UN Charter allows a member nation to defend itself from attack but I have not seen any action either by the UN or AI in response to the rockets being fired into Israel.
I'd like to see
Submitted by Rich Gardner on Tue, 01/06/2009 - 4:33pmsome effort made to address the grievances of the Palestinian civilian non-combatants who comprise the network of support for Hamas. In the past several years, we've seen Israel construct a wall, okay, I can see why they'd want to build that, but the wall cuts very deeply into West Bank territory and the fact that I never saw a map of where the wall was until at least a year after it was constructed and that I've never seen it in any traditional media source suggests guilty knowledge. That suggests that the builders know that it's morally indefensible.
Last January, Hamas broke through a wall separating Egypt from Gaza. Citizens of Gaza rushed into Egypt to purchase food. According to reports from AI and others, the shortage of food and fuel continue.
I've commented on two pro-Israeli posts on this site. My main problem with them is that appear to suggest that genocide, the utter destruction of ALL of the people in Gaza, is the only possible solution.
Maybe I'm just a cock-eyed optimist, but c'mon guys! Isn't there SOME way to reach an arrangement?
I'd like to see
Submitted by jon peppers (not verified) on Tue, 01/06/2009 - 5:38pmQuote" It appears to suggest that genocide, the utter destruction of all the people " you state Gaza but what about Israel. Is NOT that the aim of Hamas etc?..Iran?
jon pisano
distracted from justice for daniel faulkner
There's an argument
Submitted by Rich Gardner on Tue, 01/06/2009 - 5:51pmthat Hamas and Iran do indeed have that as a goal. There's also the argument that Hamas would like to use anti-Israel statements in their charter and other objectionable statements as bargaining chips.
Israel of course, would like to do as G.W. Bush does, they'd like to make all of Hamas' bargaining chips into prerequisites for negotiations. "Tell ya what, give us everything that we want and THEN we'll start talking."
Of course, we can all see how successful that strategy has been!
No, I'm not making the argument that Hamas and Iran are a bunch of sweet, nice, lovable fellows that we can deal with. I think Israel can separate the militants from the civilians through the use of smart politics and leave the militants high and dry.
Why divide?
Submitted by Abhushan (not verified) on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 4:44amI am sure that with a row over petty issues and discussions posted above, we can never reach an end to this issue. I know this may sound naive and foolish but why can't we just fight against it and join an unanimous agreement. The points that are being raised here are not going heal wounds that has been shed so far. We need to find soluntions and not be distracted with our own cynical attitudes!!!!!!!We need talk seriously keeping aside our own 'clever' comments.
what's happenning in Gaza
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 10:21amIsrael is undoubtedly militarily superior to the people living in Gaza. Some people call the Palestinians terrorists and use childish descriptions to the ongoing massacre of the Palestians in Gaza, calling it an "ass-kicking". We've all come across morons like that before. Usually they are young stupid individuals who don't have a clue about history, geography, religion, world cultures, etc. They probably spend a lot of time watching FoxNews, drinking beer, watching football, and trying to get laid. In some occassions, they are geeks with a lot of knowledge in some narrow area and that gives them the illusion they are intelligent and entitled to make opinions on important issues. Of course, some of them are bigoted jews with the victim syndrome, thinking a Holocaust and an old promise in a 3000 year old book called the Torah gives them the right to inflict unspeakable horror on unarmed civilain Palestinians. Anyway, we all know their opions count for nothing in the minds of people who know better.
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