Gaza

NOVANEWS     Two Israeli soldiers will face charges in a court that they used a young Palestinian boy as a human shield during the country's three-week bombardment of Gaza in 2008-2009. Majed al-Rubah, 10, says soldiers forcibly took him from his family and made him carry out life-threatening tasks during military operations. Many other Palestinians say they have gone through similiar experiences, but this is only the second time Israel has brought charges against its own soldiers. Human-rights groups have accused Israel of committing numerous war crimes against Palestinians during the war on Gaza - in which nearly 1,400 people have died and most of the enclave was left in ruins. Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Talal al Hawa, al-Rubah's neighbourhood in Gaza.

NOVANEWS "With more than 300 Palestinian children being held in Zio-Nazi  prisons, human rights groups and Palestinian officials are increasingly concerned about the actions of the Zio-Nazi military.The Israeli human right  group B'Tselem said that security forces had "severely violated" the rights of a number of children, aged between 12 and 15, who had been taken into custody in recent months." Posted by As'ad at 9:51 AM

NOVANEWS Photos and videos from an event on Thursday to commemorate 1000 days of siege, a sige longer than Leningrad's. The director of the popular committee against the siege spoke and lit the brazier. There were 1000 candles on the ground. There was also a short series of speeches, by Palestinian leaders and several members of the ISM, and a dancing and singing ceremony by some Palestinian children. Mostly, it was somber. It is not clear how to resist such a hermetic, technologically-based siege beyond simple survival, and it's survival under terms that Israel continues to control. Sometimes, it's not survival--I have learned that treatable cancers are a major source of death here. Necessarily, English-speaking attendees--and there were very few of us, the NGO-people and the journalists...

NOVANEWS "A second indictment has been filed against Zio-Nazi soldiers who fought in Gaza during  Gaza Shoah , this time accusing two Givati Brigade troops of asking a nine-year old Palestinian boy to open bags suspected to contain explosives." They probably will be honored at the US Congress.

NOVANEWS "This Time We Went Too Far"   By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN Editors' Note: This article is excerpted from Norman Finkelstein’s important new book about the Gaza conflict, “This Time We Went Too Far” published this month by OR Books. To purchase a copy of the complete book please visit OR Books. This book is not available from bookstores or other online retailers. Public outrage at the Gaza invasion did not come out of the blue but rather marked the nadir of a curve plotting a steady decline in support for Israel. As polling data of Americans and Europeans, both Gentiles and Jews, suggest, the public has become increasingly critical of Israeli policy over the past decade. The horrific images of death and destruction broadcast around the world during and after the invasion accelerated this ...

NOVANEWS IRIN, Feb 3, 2010 Mona al-Samouni, 12, is depressed and has nightmares about the day - just over a year ago - when she witnessed her parents and a number of relatives being shot by Israeli soldiers in their home in Zeitoun, southeast of Gaza City. Like a number of other children who witnessed horrific events during last year's 23-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Mona has become increasingly withdrawn and silent - common ways of coping with tragedies, doctors say. Statistics about Palestinians who lost their life during the military operation vary, but NGOs place the overall number of persons killed between 1,387 and 1,417. The Gaza authorities report 1,444 fatal casualties, whilst Israel provides a figure of 1,166, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the G...

NOVANEWS By Eman Jomaa An increase in birth defects among newborns in the Gaza Strip -- first documented in the Palestine Telegraph -- has become apparent, despite claims to the contrary by some doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital. Pregnant women say they are living in constant fear. Noha Abu Laban, 37, a resident of Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, is in her final month of pregnancy and says: “In the war, I inhaled the smoke of white phosphorus, which was fired on the roof of our house. I have been feeling sick since my pregnancy, and have had heavy bleeding.” Noha is currently being treated in the High-Risk Pregnancy Care Unit at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Alaa Al-Tunp, a 25-year-old resident in the Al-Tofah neighborhood, says: “When I heard the stories of deformed fetuses, I becam...

NOVANEWS by Philip Weiss on March 9, 2010 The IDF fundraising dinner at the Waldorf tonight and the protest called for 5 outside the hotel is a big story in Israel and Palestine, getting covered in the Jerusalem Post, in right wing Arutz Sheva, on Democracy Now, on Al Bawaba, again in the JPost, in Haaretz by Donna Nevel of Jews Say No, and in the JTA, out of Jerusalem. A protest against [Gabi] Ashkenazi sponsored by more than 25 American, Jewish and Israeli organizations is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon outside Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the site of the IDF dinner, the Jerusalem Post reported. Protest organizers have described Ashkenazi as the "butcher of Gaza." Related posts: ‘Haaretz’ covers NY protest of IDF (where are the NY papers?) ‘This is New York. This is the moment...

NOVA NEWS by Alex Kane Alex Kane at the Indypendent has a report on the silent march tonight by hundreds outside the Waldorf, where an IDF fundraiser featured the Israeli military’s chief of general staff, Gabi Ashkenazi: “Our idea is to show the totally atrocious contradiction of having a $1,000 a plate dinner for people who a year ago killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians,” said Dorothy Zellner, a founding member of Jews Say No!  “People who commit these kind of war crimes should not be celebrated and should not be welcome here in our city.” Many lamented the fact that while [dinner speaker and IDF chief of general staff Gabi] Ashkenazi may be fearful of being arrested in European countries that adhere to the principle of universal jurisdiction, he is worry free about the United State...

NOVANEWS While walking back to my apartment after leaving the coffee-house on Friday, my friends were telling me about their experiences during Nazi Cast Lead. Few supplies were passing through the tunnels. Zio-Nazi munificently opened a few "humanitarian windows" to allow a trickle of goods to pass through, baruch hashem, with the bonus of being excellent hasbara. They waited on hours-long breadlines, for the few stores that were able to stock some food, while fuel was basically unavailable. Many Gazans cooked their food for those weeks in mud-brick ovens fired by wood. Nowadays, there is some cooking fuel-enough so that people who can afford to buy it on the black-market at grossly inflated prices can use it to cook. In the camps, it's often a different story. Concrete, though, is still...