In a September 2006 article for the Electronic Intifada, I defined the Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as an incremental genocide.
Israel’s present assault on Gaza alas indicates that this policy continues unabated. The term is important since it appropriately locates Israel’s barbaric action ― then and now ― within a wider historical context.
Israel
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has launched an “SOS Palestine” campaign to demand an end to Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Palestine’s Gaza strip, Venezuela Analysis said on July 12.
“Enough already, I’ve joined the campaign,” he told supporters during a televised broadcast. “#SOS Palestina, let’s launch it.”
Holding up a handwritten placard, he asked fellow citizens to join the campaign, stating, “The Palestinian people have the right to live in their ancestral lands in peace.”
One petition I saw circulating recently called for both Israel and Hamas to put down their weapons. I dispute this approach that blames both sides equally. Israel is the aggressor. Not only is Israel bombing indiscriminately with a view to maximising civilian casualties, it continues to maintain its inhumane and illegal siege of Gaza.
The kidnapping and murder of the Israeli teenagers was simply a pretext. There is no evidence that it was a Palestinian or a Hamas member who killed the teenagers.
Israel has set itself as judge, jury and executioner.
With news that Israel has now escalated its bloody assault on Gaza, which has already killed at least 230 Palestinians, by starting a ground invasion, new protests are being planned in cities across Australia against Israel's slaughter.
It comes after thousands of people joined people around the world outraged by Israel's killing by taking part in rallies last weekend. The details of the actions are below.
News has broken that Israel has now followed its sustained air bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, which has already killed at least 230 people, with a ground invasion. This weekend, rallies are being held in cities across Australia to rally for Palestine int he face of Israel's carnage (details below).
Joint statement by Asia-Pacific left organisations
In the past week, Israeli military forces have escalated their offensive on the Gaza Strip. Israeli warplanes have increasingly targeted houses, civilian-populated areas and civilian facilities in the Gaza strip.
Israeli warplanes have destroyed a number of houses while their residents were inside, without any prior warnings, killing and wounding many Palestinian civilians.
Israel briefly deployed troops inside the Gaza Strip for the first time in its current offensive on July 13, as it ignored international calls for peace.
Naval commandos were sent in to destroy what Israel claimed was a rocket-launching site.
Bout 4000 people later fled from the northern part of the besieged Palestinian enclave after Israel dropped leaflets telling them to evacuate to avoid a “short and temporary” campaign.
From the moment three Israeli teens were reported missing last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s military-intelligence apparatus suppressed the flow of information to the general public.
Through a toxic blend of propaganda, subterfuge and incitement, they inflamed a precarious situation, manipulating Israelis into supporting their agenda until they made an utterly avoidable nightmare inevitable.
The world is focused on Israel's offensive against Palestinians in Gaza, with escalating air strikes and a massing of infantry units along the border for a threatened invasion in the wake of the discovery of the bodies of three teenage settlers. But Israel's use of violence and terror against Palestinians continues in the West Bank and Israel itself.
The number of victims of Israel’s merciless bombing of Gaza reached 90 fatalities as of July 10, with several members of individual families among the dead.
One such family is that of 75-year-old Muhammad Hamad of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. Six members of his family were killed when Israel bombed the home of his 30-year-old son Abd al-Hafez Hamad, a commander with the armed group Islamic Jihad, on July 8.
Days of Israeli bombings had killed more than 100 people in the Gaza Strip by July 11, ElectronicIntifada.net said that day. The dead included many children. It comes after large-scale raids and many arrests in the occupied West Bank.
In response to this drastic escalation in “collective punishment” of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) national committee issued the statement below.
Less than two weeks after concluding its largest military assault on the occupied West Bank in more than a decade, Israel has relentlessly pounded the besieged Gaza Strip since July 7.
The ongoing bombing campaign is the most severe violence inflicted by Israel on Gaza since its eight-day assault in November 2012, during which more than 150 Palestinians were killed, 33 of them children.
More than 1400 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, including 350 children, during Israel’s three consecutive weeks of attacks from air, land and sea during winter 2008-09.
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