Gaza Is a Concentration Camp

By Ellen Cantarow, AlterNet
Posted on January 16, 2009, Printed on January 16, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/120197/

Gaza is an immense concentration camp -- 1.5 million people squeezed into 140 square miles hemmed in on all sides by 25-foot-high walls separated by a vast expanse of bulldozed earth. The 2005 "pull-out" left Gaza still controlled by Israel from air and sea, its entries and exits prisonlike mazes electronically controlled and under constant surveillance. Bombing it, assaulting it with tanks and Uzis, is like shooting animals in a pen. The claptrap about "pinpoint" accuracy and "avoiding civilians" is a lie so flagrant, so transparent, that any child -- certainly any Gaza child -- could grasp it.

There have been eight military assaults on Gaza since 2004; blockades started in 2005, and then a siege of medieval proportions in 2006, punishment for Gazans' having elected the wrong party for Israel and its U.S. patron. By December 2008, Richard Falk, special rapporteur on the Occupied Territories for the United Nations, reported an overall Gaza malnutrition rate of 75 percent, a childhood anemia rate of 46 percent and a devastated infrastructure. (For more, see Richard Falk's "Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe.")

This latest war -- called Operation Cast Lead -- is the "holocaust" promised by Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai last spring when he said Israel would create a shoa if Qassem rockets kept dropping on Israeli towns like Sderot. Shoa, Hebrew for holocaust, is a serious word denoting the extermination of an entire people. Vilnai embarrassed the Israeli government, and no official has used the term since.

But since Dec. 27, Israel has bombed Gaza's government buildings, universities, mosques, schools, medical clinics. It is impossible to keep pace with the death and injury toll, which rises as I write: on Jan. 13, the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem reported 900 Palestinians killed, with more than 4,200 injured. The Israeli toll: three civilians and seven soldiers killed, more than 82 civilians and 61 soldiers injured. As for Israeli civilians killed by rockets, the Israel Project lists 25 dead during the past seven years.

On the broadcast program Democracy Now, a Norwegian doctor, Mads Gilbert, who had just returned from Gaza to Denmark, told host Amy Goodman that "90 percent of those killed are civilians." Gilbert reported 971 dead, of whom 1 in 3 is a child under 18. He has worked in Gaza for years and was there for the first weeks of Israel's assault.

The Times of London, Human Rights Watch and B'tselem all report the illegal use of white phosphorous to strike civilians. When white phosphorous adheres to flesh, its flames continue to burn for five to 10 minutes, often penetrating to the bone.

Gilbert and other experts think Israel is also using a new weapon called dense inert metal explosive. It was developed by the United States to create lethal, powerful blasts within small areas. DIME inflicts wounds never before seen by surgeons in Gaza. According to Gilbert, conventional shrapnel damages limbs and other body parts as if they'd been cut by a huge knife. DIME, on the other hand, leaves "no signs of shrapnel," but rather "small pieces of some kind of substance" (DIME is made of nickel and cobalt). It crushes "the whole limb," not just part, with "multiple severe fractures, muscles split from bones." Some classify DIME weapons as nuclear because they are based on a fusion process. (Democracy Now, Jan. 14.)

*****

"Take some kittens … in a box. Seal up the box, then jump on it with all your weight and might, until you feel their little bones crunching, and you hear the last muffled little mew," a surgeon named Jamal tells Italian writer Vittorio Arigoni. Bloodstained boxes are fetched; Jamal opens one. It contains "amputated limbs, legs and arms, some from the knee down, others with the entire femur attached . . . from the injured at the Al Fakhura United Nations school in Jabalia, which resulted in more than 50 casualties."

Jamal says, "Israel trapped hundreds of civilians inside a school as if in a box, including many children, and then crushed them with all the might of its bombs. What were the world's reactions? Almost nothing. We would have been better off as animals rather than Palestinians. We would have been more protected."

Arigoni also described the account, by ophthalmologist Dr. Abdel, of strange and terrible wounds he'd never seen before: "Dr. Abdel told me that at Al Shifa hospital, they don't have the medical and military competence to say for sure whether the wounds they examined on certain corpses were indeed provoked by white phosphorous bullets. But on his word, in 20 years on the job, he had never seen casualties like those now being carried into the ward."

These included "traumas to the skull, with fractures to ... the jaw … cheekbones, tear duct, nasal and palatine bones [all showing] signs of the collision of an immense force against the victim's face. What he finds inexplicable is the total lack of eyeballs, which ought to leave a trace somewhere within the skull, even in the case of such violent impact. Instead, we see Palestinian corpses coming into the hospitals without eyes at all, as if someone had removed them surgically before handing them over to the coroner."

Since no international observers are allowed in, judgment about the weapons inflicting such trauma will depend on further reports from Gaza, and corroboration from experts like Gilbert. (Arigoni is an international who reached Gaza by boat during the siege. His report was sent to e-mail lists Jan. 9.)

***

The Israel of Operation Cast Lead is still the Israel of Plan Dalet, under which 750,000 Arabs were expelled from Palestine in 1948. It is the Israel of massacres under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir on April, 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin; of the Phalangist massacre of 1,500 Palestinians in the Beirut refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, overseen by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. Held "personally responsible" and cashiered from his post, he later rose to prime minister to resume his malignant policies in the West Bank and Gaza. The late Israeli writer Tanya Reinhardt predicted in 2002 that Israel was starting to finish what it began in 1948. This 60-year-long legacy rages on in Gaza under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to the applause of a vengeful Israeli public (see Jan. 13 story in the New York Times.)

Operation Cast Lead is one of the great war crimes of our era. It was planned six to 18 months in advance, according to journalist Jonathan Cook. The war design "required directing artillery fire and air strikes at civilian neighborhoods from which rockets were fired, despite being a violation of international law. Legal advisers, Barak noted, were seeking ways to avoid such prohibitions, presumably in the hope the international community would turn a blind eye."

Operation Cast Lead fulfills at least three of the points under Article 2 in the Convention on Genocide: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

So to President-elect Barack Obama in his silence; to our senators and representatives who obediently parrot American Israel Public Affairs Committee's lines, forgiving the occupier and blaming the occupied, I'd address European Parliament member Luisa Morgantini's closing words in her open letter to European leaders:

"Israel has a right to exist as a normal state, a state for its citizens, along the 1967 borders, much wider than those of the partition plan passed by the United Nations in 1947. But I would have liked to hear your outrage and your humanity, and to hear you shouting for the pain of so many deaths and so much destruction, for such arrogance, for so much inhumanity, for so many violations of international and humanitarian law. ...

"My God, what a terrible world we live in!"

Ellen Cantarow has reported on the Middle East since 1979.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/120197/

Canada Orders US War Resister (and New Mother) Deported

Friday 16 January 2009

by: Ann Wright, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Iraq war resister Kimberly Rivera faces a military court-martial once deported from Canada back to the US. (Photo: Courage to Resist)

The Canadian government has ordered the deportation of Kimberly Rivera, the first US woman Iraq war veteran resister to go to Canada, and four other US war resisters. Rivera, her husband and three children, including a newborn daughter, must depart Canada by January 27 or be deported. Rivera now lives in Toronto with her husband Mario, son Christian (six years), daughter Rebecca (four years), and newborn Canadian daughter Katie (six weeks).

Rivera served in the US Army in Iraq in 2006, but refused a second tour in Iraq in 2007 and instead took her family to Canada. Her first tour in Iraq convinced Rivera that the war was immoral and that she could not participate in it.

Rivera's Pre-Removal Risk assessment application and request to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds were denied by the conservative Stephen Harper government, although the Canadian government refused to join the Bush coalition of the willing and join in on the war in Iraq. The Canadian military's participation in the war in Afghanistan has been controversial as Canadian casualties rise.

The War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada believes the Canadian Immigration Minister's decision to deport Rivera and four other US war resisters is based on the need to have the deportations completed before the Canadian Parliament returns in late January. The Parliament adopted a resolution in June 2008 that recommended to the Harper government that "conscientious objectors" to wars that are not authorized by the United Nations be allowed to apply for permanent residence status in Canada.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has said that the refugee claims of war resisters are "bogus" and that he "has no sympathy for them." Kenney has made it clear that his government intends to go against the will of Parliament and the will of Canadians.

If Rivera and the other US war resisters are deported to the United States or return voluntarily, they will face a military court-martial. Robin Long, the only other US soldier to be deported from Canada, was court-martialed in 2008 at Fort Carson, Colorado, and received a 15-month prison sentence and a dishonorable discharge, the longest sentence given to a war resister during the Iraq war.

Other US war resisters in Canada face deportation even earlier than Rivera. Chris Teske has a deportation date of January 20, Patrick Hart, his wife Jill and their son on January 29 and Dean Walcott on January 30.

Several other war resisters in Canada are appealing negative decisions in Canadian Federal Court. The court has stayed the removal orders of war resisters Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman and Matt Lowell. The Hart family faces deportation January 29 and will ask the court for a similar stay.

Corey Glass has since been granted a new application to stay on Humanitarian & Compassionate grounds. Jeremy Hinzman's appeal date for his negative decision has been set for February 10 and Matt Lowell is waiting to hear whether his appeal will be heard.

There are several Canadian groups actively opposing the government's actions. For further information on those efforts, contact the War Resisters Support Campaign.

http://www.truthout.org/011609C?print

Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza

By David Walsh
15 January 2009

The death toll in the Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip reached more than 1,000 Wednesday, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Almost one third of the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza are reported to be children, and some 5,000 people have been wounded in Israeli attacks. Gazan medical officials report that some 1,600 children and 678 women are among the injured.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said more than 670 civilians were among the dead.

Nine Israeli human rights groups, in a statement issued Wednesday, charged the Israeli government and military with violations of the "laws of warfare" and raised "the suspicion...of the commission of war crimes."

Fewer Palestinians were killed yesterday, but fierce fighting reportedly continued between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters near Gaza City. Israeli troops remain poised to enter into more heavily populated areas, with incalculable consequences.

The Israeli air force carried out 60 airstrikes overnight, dropping more bombs on the border area near Egypt.

"They used bombs that went deep into the tunnels and shook the whole Rafah refugee camp. The land trembled beneath our feet," Bassam Abdallah, a local Palestinian cameraman, told a reporter. "We used to be afraid—but now we're getting used to it."

The Israelis also bombed the Sheik Radwan cemetery in Gaza City, alleging it was a rocket-launching site. A CBS/Associated Press report described the grisly scene: "One airstrike hit an overcrowded cemetery, spreading body parts and rotting flesh over a wide area."

Ironically, AP had run a story Tuesday about the graveyard, noting, "More than two weeks into the Israeli offensive...Gazans are struggling to find places to bury their dead. Cemeteries throughout Gaza City that were closed for new burials have now reopened.

" ‘Gaza is all a graveyard,' gravedigger Salman Omar said Tuesday as he shoveled earth in Gaza City's crammed Sheik Radwan cemetery."

Among the dead were "the Samouni cousins, five-month-old Mohammed, one-year-old Mutasim and two-year-old Ahmed, whose family hurriedly dug up the grave of an aunt to lay them to rest last week....

"The three boys were killed Jan. 5 in what the family and the United Nations said was an Israeli shelling attack on a house in eastern Gaza where they had evacuated on soldiers' orders to avoid nearby fighting."

Al Jazeera reporter Ayman Mohyeldin commented Wednesday that the situation for Gaza citizens remains one of "complete fear and terror." Mohyeldin explained, "For those who venture out [for food]...they know that any time they leave their house it could be the last time.

"More than 80,000 Palestinians have now fled their homes because of the fighting around them...there is a sense of overcrowding.... UN schools have taken in 35,000 refugees.... There is real desperation and fear among the people."

The chief of the Gaza Strip water authority told the media Wednesday that 800,000 Palestinians, out of a population of 1.5 million, are without water due to the Israeli ground offensive.

Monzer Shublaq told reporters, "There are two reasons that led to the water crisis. One is that the Israeli army tanks destroyed the major water pipes that supply large areas in the Gaza Strip." Shublaq said the other reason was that Israel has been closing down all its border crossings with Gaza and has not allowed fuel into the enclave for several weeks, leaving the enclave no fuel with which to operate most of its water pumps.

"Forty percent of the Gaza Strip water sources are not working," the water authority chief asserted. "We were producing on a daily basis 220,000 cubic meters of water; now we only pump 100,000 cubic meters every day."

Palestinian surveyors estimate that Israeli bombs and artillery have already destroyed at least $1.4 billion worth of buildings, roads, pipes, power lines and other infrastructure in Gaza. A Hamas official this week told the group's television station that about 1,000 residential buildings had been destroyed, and 25,000 damaged.

"The war on the Gaza Strip has left a very deteriorated humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip," observed a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, Adnan Abu Hasna, who added, "If the war keeps on, more humanitarian crises are expected to emerge."

In a statement issued January 14, UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman commented on the deaths of the 300 Palestinian children and the wounding of another 1,500, declaring: "Each day more children are being hurt, their small bodies wounded, their young lives shattered....

"Children form the majority of the population of Gaza. They are bearing the brunt of a conflict which is not theirs. As fighting reaches the heart of heavily populated urban areas, the impact of lethal weapons will carry an even heavier toll on children. Absolute priority must be given to their protection....

"Beyond the immediate needs of the children who have lost their homes, have no access to water, electricity and medicine, beyond the horrific physical scars and injuries however, are the deeper psychological wounds of these children."

In their open letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday, the Israeli human rights groups stated that "a heavy suspicion has arisen of grave violations of international humanitarian law by military forces. After the end of the hostilities, the time will come for the investigation of this matter, and accountability will be demanded of those responsible for the violations."

The groups, including B'Tselem, the Israeli section of Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights, continue: "The level of harm to the civilian population is unprecedented. According to the testimony of residents of the Gaza Strip and media reports, military forces are making wanton use of lethal force which has to date caused the deaths of hundreds of uninvolved civilians and destroyed infrastructure and property on an enormous scale. In addition, Israel is also hitting civilian objects, having defined them as ‘legitimate military targets' solely by virtue of their being ‘symbols of government.' "

The human rights organizations point out that Gaza's residents "have nowhere to flee, neither inside the Gaza Strip nor by leaving it.... They are forced to live in fear and terror. The army's demand that they evacuate their homes so as to avoid injury has no basis. Some people who did escape are living as refugees, stripped of all resources."

The statement points out that the "health system has collapsed.... This state of affairs is causing the death of injured persons who could have been saved."

It goes on: "Areas that were subject to intensive attacks are completely isolated. It is impossible to know the condition of the people who are there, whether they are injured and need treatment and whether they have food, water and medicine. The army is preventing local and international rescue teams from accessing those places and is also refraining from helping them itself, even though it is required to do so by law."

The groups assert that "This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare and raises the suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of the commission of war crimes. The responsibility of the State of Israel in this matter is clear and beyond doubt."

On January 13, B'Tselem reported the allegation by a "Palestinian who is besieged with his family in the Khuza'a area, in the south-eastern Gaza Strip...that soldiers had shot a woman waving a white flag and several civilians who were fleeing a bombed house on army orders."

According to the report, "Rawhiya a-Najar, 50, stepped out of her house waving a white flag, so that the rest of the family could leave the house and walk behind her. The witness reported that she was shot and fell. Neither family members nor rescue workers have managed to reach her to ascertain her condition, but she is still lying motionless where she fell."

And further: "This afternoon, the army announced on loudspeakers that residents are to leave their homes and walk to a school in the village center. Some 30 people left their houses carrying white flags. The witness reported that after they had walked approximately 20 meters, fire was opened at the group, killing three of his relatives: Muhammad Salman a-Najar, 54, Ahmad Jum'a a-Najar, 25, and Khalil Hamdan a-Najar, 80. Many others were injured."

The murderous Israeli onslaught continues with the open support of the White House, the tacit endorsement of the European governments and the complicity of the different Arab regimes.

Various diplomatic maneuvers are under way. Egyptian officials claimed Wednesday that Hamas representatives had responded "positively" to a cease-fire proposal after two days of negotiations. The Hamas delegation reportedly held the talks in Cairo with representatives of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service.

According to press reports, the Egyptian deal calls for a temporary cease-fire, followed by a long-term truce and the opening of Gaza's border crossings in the presence of officials from the Palestinian Authority.

A Hamas official said that the Egyptians would present its views to the Israelis. The organization is apparently insisting on a withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza and the permanent opening of all Gaza crossings.

http://www.wsws.org/tools/index.php?page=print&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsws.org%2Farticles%2F2009%2Fjan2009%2Fgaza-j15.shtml

Madoff's fund may not have made a single trade

Fri Jan 16, 2009 6:55am EST

By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - Bernie Madoff's investment fund may never have executed a single trade, industry officials say, suggesting detailed statements mailed to investors each month may have been an elaborate mirage in a $50 billion fraud.

An industry-run regulator for brokerage firms said on Thursday there was no record of Madoff's investment fund placing trades through his brokerage operation.

That means Madoff either placed trades through other brokerage firms, a move industry officials consider unlikely, or he was not executing trades at all.

"Our exams showed no evidence of trading on behalf of the investment advisor, no evidence of any customer statements being generated by the broker-dealer," said Herb Perone, spokesman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Madoff's broker-dealer operation, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, underwent routine examinations by FINRA and its predecessor, the National Association of Securities Dealers, every two years since it opened in 1960, Perone said.

Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market who was a force on Wall Street for nearly 50 years, allegedly confessed to his sons the firm's investment-advisory business was "basically a giant Ponzi scheme" and "one big lie," according to court documents.

He estimated losses of at least $50 billion from the Ponzi scheme, which uses money from new investors to pay distributions and redemptions to existing investors. Such schemes typically collapse when new funds dry up.

Each month, Madoff sent out elaborate statements of trades conducted by his broker-dealer. Last November, for example, he issued a statement to one investor showing he bought shares of Merck & Co Inc, Microsoft Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp and Amgen Inc among others.

It also showed transactions in Fidelity Investments' Spartan Fund. But Fidelity, the world's biggest mutual fund company, has no record of Madoff or his company making any investments in its funds.

DISCREPANCIES

"We are not aware of any investments by Madoff in our funds on behalf of his clients," Fidelity spokeswoman Anne Crowley said in an e-mail to Reuters.

Neither Madoff nor his firm was a client of Fidelity's Institutional Wealth Services business, their clearing firm National Financial or a financial intermediary client of its institutional services arm, she said.

"Consequently, his firm did not work with our intermediary businesses through which firms invest their clients' money in Fidelity funds," she added.

There also appear to be discrepancies between monthly statements sent to investors and the actual prices at which the stocks traded on Wall Street.

For example, his November statement showed he bought software maker Apple Inc's securities at $100.78 each on November 12, about a month before his arrest.

But Apple's stock on that day never traded above $93.24. The statement also showed he bought chip maker Intel Corp at $14.51 on November 12, but Intel's highest price on that day was $13.97.

"You could print up any statements you want on the computer and send it out to a client and the chances are the client wouldn't know, because they are getting a statement," said Neil Hackman, president and chief executive of Oak Financial Group, a Stamford, Connecticut-based investment advisory firm.

To some, the numbers did not add up.

About 10 years ago, Harry Markopolos, then chief investment officer at Rampart Investment Management Co in Boston, asked risk management consultant Daniel diBartolomeo to run Madoff's numbers after Markopolos tried to emulate Madoff's strategy.

DiBartolomeo ran regression analyses and various calculations, but failed to reconcile them. For a decade, Markopolos raised the issue with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has come under fire in Congress in recent weeks for failing to act on Markopolos's warnings.

(Additional reporting by Muralikumar Anantharaman; Editing by Andre Grenon)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50F0BY20090116