umkahlil

Occupied Jerusalem: 8 November, 2006

By Khalid Amayreh

The Israeli occupation army on Wednesday killed at least 25 Palestinian, mostly women and children in northern Gaza and the West Bank , apparently taking advantage of international media preoccupation with the mid-term American elections.

Medical sources in Gaza said Israeli tanks fired artillery shells on densely populated residential neighborhoods in northern Gaza, killing and maiming “dozens” of innocent men, women and children.

Medics and rescue crews said they were still counting the number of the victims some of whose bodies were badly mutilated.

Many of the badly injured were in critical conditions and the death toll was likely to rise, witnesses said.

An eyewitness who identified himself as Abu Yousuf said he saw a decapitated child’s head.

“It was a real massacre. We are talking about heavy artillery shells weighing hundreds of pounds hitting homes packed with women and children. Even the Nazis didn’t do that.

“It was like a slaughter house, only here we have humans instead of animals.”

Another witness, Ra’ed Hasanin, accused the Israeli army of “indiscriminately, knowingly and deliberately slaughtering our children very much like the Nazis killed Jewish children at concentration camps.

“The Nazis may have used gas chambers to kill their enemies. But the Nazis of our time, the Jews, are exterminating Palestinian children, using artillery and warplanes. The result is the same, the mentality is the same.

“This is a cowardly army, when they face well-armed fighters, they cry like cowards. Here, they are targeting and killing unarmed and totally unprotected children and women and they are calling this armed clashes and war.”

Most of the deaths occurred when Israeli artillery shells fired by Israeli tanks outside the Beit Hanun neighborhood hit homes were families were asleep.

Following the massacre, the Palestinian cabinet went into session to discuss the latest killings in Beit Hanun.

No statement was issued, but one official speaking off the record intimated that that the situation in Gaza was “catastrophic.”

The cabinet was expected though to ask for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to stop the ongoing killings in northern Gaza.

The United States, far from denouncing the killings or criticizing Israel, this week blamed the Palestinians for “the latest escalation.”

It is widely believed that Jewish lobbies such as AIPAC control, nearly completely, American politics and policies with regard to the Middle East , which explains America’s reluctance to criticize Israeli policies and practices which are often starkly incompatible with international law.

A Palestinian spokesperson described the latest killings as “a real genocide.”

“They are killing and maiming dozens of civilians per day, today they killed 25, yesterday they killed 11, and tomorrow they will murder 15 or 20. You see, our children have become mere numbers, not human beings. This is a real genocide and Israel is likely to go on and on and on with the slaughter taking advantage of the Arab world’s total impotence, America’s acquiescence to the killing and Europe’s indifference,” said Nizar Agha, a government spokesman.

He said the blood of innocent Palestinian children shed by the “Israeli Nazis” will be on President Bush’s hands and (British Prime Minister’s Tony) Blair’s hands as well as on the hands of Arab and Muslim leaders who watch the killings from their palaces and do nothing.

The Israeli army, unconcerned about criticisms of the wanton killings in Gaza, said it was checking reports in this regard.

An Israeli army spokesman said rather laconically that “we don’t’ target innocent civilians,” but added that “in war mistakes happen.”

On Tuesday, the Israeli army killed 12 Palestinians, most of them innocent civilians in Biet Hanun in northern Gaza. At least four people were killed when Israeli tanks fired a shell at the home of a Palestinian lawmaker, Jamila al Shanti, who had organized a non-violent protest outside a Gaza mosque on Friday, 3 November.

All in all, the occupation army killed over 95 Palestinians, most of them women and children, since the latest “pacification foray” into northern Gaza started on 1 November.

The Israeli army said the wholesale killing of Palestinians was aimed at stopping the firing onto Israeli settlements of the innocuous homemade projectiles known as Qassam missiles.

However, human rights organizations assert that the real Israeli aim is to kill as many Palestinians (civilians and activists) as possible in order to subjugate the Palestinian people.

Israel nominally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August last year, ending 39 years of direct military occupation.

However, since then the Israeli army killed in nearly daily artillery and aerial bombardment of Palestinian population centers over 800 Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians.

According to medical sources and Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, 200 hundred children and minors were among the victims.

Israel has also been clamping a hermetic siege on Gaza’s 1.4 million Palestinians, barring them from accessing food and work.

They died standing, blazing on the road

Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life

They stood up in the face of death

Then disappeared like the sun.

Fadwa Tuqan