Bolivia breaks Israel ties, claims Gaza 'genocide'
18 hours ago
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — President Evo Morales announced Wednesday he was breaking relations with Israel over its invasion of the Gaza Strip and said he will ask the International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against top Israeli officials.
Morales' ally Hugo Chavez of Venezuela broke ties with Israel last week.
Morales told the country's diplomatic corps that the Israeli attack "seriously threatened world peace" and he called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Cabinet to face criminal charges.
Morales chided the United Nations' "Insecurity Council" for its "lukewarm" response to the crisis and said the U.N. General Assembly should condemn the invasion.
He also said Israeli President Shimon Peres should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize for failing to stop the invasion.
Israel launched the onslaught in Gaza on Dec. 27, seeking to force the ruling Hamas militant group to stop rocket attacks on southern Israel. The offensive has killed more than 940 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, according to Palestinian officials.
Morales and Chavez have worked to cultivate ties to Iran, which supports Hamas. Morales met Tuesday with visiting Iranian officials, who gave him a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thanking Morales for his previously voicing supporting for the Palestinians.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label Israel Holocaust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel Holocaust. Show all posts
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
This Brutality Will Never Break our Will to be Free
For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start
FOR 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.
This river of blood is being shed under lies and false pretexts. For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start. Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies. The collective punishment did not halt, but accelerated - as did the assassinations and killings. Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not.
When this broken truce neared its end, we expressed our readiness for a new comprehensive truce in return for lifting the blockade and opening all Gaza border crossings, including Rafah. Our calls fell on deaf ears. Yet still we would be willing to begin a new truce on these terms following the complete withdrawal of the invading forces from Gaza.
No rockets have ever been fired from the West Bank. But 50 died and hundreds more were injured there last year at Israel's hands, while its expansionism proceeded relentlessly. We are meant to be content with shrinking scraps of territory, a handful of cantons at Israel's mercy, enclosed by it from all sides. The truth is that Israel seeks a one-sided ceasefire, observed by my people alone, in return for siege, starvation, bombardment, assassinations, incursions and colonial settlement. What Israel wants is a gratuitous ceasefire.
The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier - armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction - of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world. Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in silence we will not.
What is being visited on Gaza today was visited on Yasser Arafat before. When he refused to bow to Israel's dictates, he was imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters, surrounded by tanks for two years. When this failed to break his resolve, he was murdered by poisoning.
Gaza enters 2009 just as it did 2008: under Israeli fire. Between January and February of last year 140 Gazans died in air strikes. And just before it embarked on its failed military assault on Lebanon in July 2006, Israel rained thousands of shells on Gaza, killing 240. From Deir Yassin in 1948 to Gaza today, the list of Israel's crimes is long. The justifications change, but the reality is the same: colonial occupation, oppression, and never-ending injustice. If this is the "free world" whose "values" Israel is defending, as its foreign minister Tzipi Livni alleges, then we want nothing to do with it.
Israel's leaders remain in the grip of confusion, unable to set clear goals for the attacks - from ousting the legitimately elected Hamas government and destroying its infrastructure, to stopping the rockets. As they fail to break Gaza's resistance the benchmark has been lowered. Now they speak of weakening Hamas and limiting the resistance. But they will achieve neither. Gaza's people are more united than ever, determined not to be terrorised into submission. Our fighters, armed with the justice of their cause, have already caused many casualties among the occupation army and will fight on to defend their land and people. Nothing can defeat our will to be free.
Once again, Washington and Europe have opted to aid and abet the jailer, occupier and aggressor, and to condemn its victims. We hoped Barack Obama would break with George Bush's disastrous legacy but his start is not encouraging. While he swiftly moved to denounce the Mumbai attacks, he remains tongue-tied after 10 days of slaughter in Gaza. But my people are not alone. Millions of freedom-loving men and women stand by its struggle for justice and liberation - witness the daily protests against Israeli aggression, not only in the Arab and Islamic region, but worldwide.
Israel will no doubt wreak untold destruction, death and suffering in Gaza. But it will meet the same fate in Gaza as it did in Lebanon. We will not be broken by siege and bombardment, and will never surrender to occupation. (Guardian)
• Khalid Mish'al is the head of the Hamas political bureau
FOR 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.
This river of blood is being shed under lies and false pretexts. For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start. Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies. The collective punishment did not halt, but accelerated - as did the assassinations and killings. Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not.
When this broken truce neared its end, we expressed our readiness for a new comprehensive truce in return for lifting the blockade and opening all Gaza border crossings, including Rafah. Our calls fell on deaf ears. Yet still we would be willing to begin a new truce on these terms following the complete withdrawal of the invading forces from Gaza.
No rockets have ever been fired from the West Bank. But 50 died and hundreds more were injured there last year at Israel's hands, while its expansionism proceeded relentlessly. We are meant to be content with shrinking scraps of territory, a handful of cantons at Israel's mercy, enclosed by it from all sides. The truth is that Israel seeks a one-sided ceasefire, observed by my people alone, in return for siege, starvation, bombardment, assassinations, incursions and colonial settlement. What Israel wants is a gratuitous ceasefire.
The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier - armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction - of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world. Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in silence we will not.
What is being visited on Gaza today was visited on Yasser Arafat before. When he refused to bow to Israel's dictates, he was imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters, surrounded by tanks for two years. When this failed to break his resolve, he was murdered by poisoning.
Gaza enters 2009 just as it did 2008: under Israeli fire. Between January and February of last year 140 Gazans died in air strikes. And just before it embarked on its failed military assault on Lebanon in July 2006, Israel rained thousands of shells on Gaza, killing 240. From Deir Yassin in 1948 to Gaza today, the list of Israel's crimes is long. The justifications change, but the reality is the same: colonial occupation, oppression, and never-ending injustice. If this is the "free world" whose "values" Israel is defending, as its foreign minister Tzipi Livni alleges, then we want nothing to do with it.
Israel's leaders remain in the grip of confusion, unable to set clear goals for the attacks - from ousting the legitimately elected Hamas government and destroying its infrastructure, to stopping the rockets. As they fail to break Gaza's resistance the benchmark has been lowered. Now they speak of weakening Hamas and limiting the resistance. But they will achieve neither. Gaza's people are more united than ever, determined not to be terrorised into submission. Our fighters, armed with the justice of their cause, have already caused many casualties among the occupation army and will fight on to defend their land and people. Nothing can defeat our will to be free.
Once again, Washington and Europe have opted to aid and abet the jailer, occupier and aggressor, and to condemn its victims. We hoped Barack Obama would break with George Bush's disastrous legacy but his start is not encouraging. While he swiftly moved to denounce the Mumbai attacks, he remains tongue-tied after 10 days of slaughter in Gaza. But my people are not alone. Millions of freedom-loving men and women stand by its struggle for justice and liberation - witness the daily protests against Israeli aggression, not only in the Arab and Islamic region, but worldwide.
Israel will no doubt wreak untold destruction, death and suffering in Gaza. But it will meet the same fate in Gaza as it did in Lebanon. We will not be broken by siege and bombardment, and will never surrender to occupation. (Guardian)
• Khalid Mish'al is the head of the Hamas political bureau
Source: Daily Muslims
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Only Turkey's Erdogan Dares to Rap Israel For Its Gazan Holocaust?
Erdogan Raps Israel's Gaza Savagery
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
There is an atrocity in our region, and we cannot support those who are responsible for it," said Erdogan. (Reuters)
ANKARA — With more bloodshed spelt in the devastated Gaza Strip, Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan rapped Israel on Tuesday, January 6, insisting its slaughter of armless civilians, including children, is unjustifiable.
"Any reason cannot justify the fact that 550 people were killed and more than two thousand others were injured in the strikes," Erdogan told the parliament, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"What reason can justify such savagery?"
More than 40 Palestinians were killed Tuesday in an Israeli strike on a UN-run school in the northern town of Jabaliya where civilians had taken shelter.
Earlier in the day, two people were killed when an artillery shell slammed into another UN-run school in the southern town of Khan Yunis and three in a raid on a school in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.
One strike killed 13 -- including seven children -- from the same family in Gaza City.
The latest fatalities, which included 13 members of the same family, took the Palestinian death toll in 11 days of Israeli attacks to over 600.
"They should have been aware of the fact that lives of children, women and the elderly are so sacred," said Erdogan, who shuttled Arab countries to broker a truce conducive the end of Israeli onslaught.
"We are trying to do our utmost in search for a ceasefire in the region. There is an atrocity in our region, and we cannot support those who are responsible for it."
Israel has spurned all international calls, including an initiative by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for an immediate ceasefire.
Millions of Turks have taken to the streets in recent days to condemn the Israeli onslaught.
A basketball game between a Turkish and an Israeli team was suspended on Tuesday after hundreds of Turkish fans began chanting "Israel, killers!"
Political War
Erdogan, whose country has good ties with Tel Aviv, accused Israeli leaders of waging an all-out war against the coastal enclave of 1.6 million people for political gains.
"I am telling Ehud Barak and (Tzipi) Livni to forget about the elections, because history will judge them for the black stain they are leaving on humanity," he said, refereeing for the Israeli defence and foreign ministers.
Many observers believe the Gaza offensive may make or break Barak’s political future, and that of his Labor Party.
Success probably wouldn’t be enough to propel Barak to the premiership but would strengthen his position within the ruling coalition and help restore Labor’s flagging political fortunes.
"It is unforgivable that the people who suffered profound pains in their history, could do such a thing," said Erdogan.
"In fact, they should have displayed more respect to human life than anyone else in the world."
The Turkish premier noted that hundreds of Jews have protested against the Israeli aggression.
"As a matter of fact, Jewish people living in different parts of the world also express their concerns about the developments."
On Tuesday, more than 100 Australian Jews, including a former environment minister, two novelists and a politician, denounced Israel's invasion of Gaza.
"We are Australian Jews who join thousands in Israel and around the world condemning ongoing Israeli military attacks on Gaza," they said in a joint statement.
"Together with Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, we condemn the current war as 'inhuman, superfluous' and 'abominable.'"
Source: IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
Posted by Dr. A.H. Awang Mois
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