Israel's chickens coming home to roost

I'm reading the Goldstone Report (warning: relatively big PDF) a 600-page document that details the findings of a panel investigating the attack on Gaza last winter. It's an astounding document. Not only is it an interesting and immensely readable introduction to the contemporary situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the oppression of the Palestine people, it is also simply an exquisitely convincing argument. Meticulous, detailed and balanced. It is the objective document that critics on both sides have argued for. It doesn't hesitate to show the full force of Palestinian in-fighting and unlawful attacks on Israel by mortar and Qassam rockets, but it also does not hesitate to shove Israel's face in what they've done. And they have done so very, very much.

It details and substantiates the allegations of deliberate attacks on civilians. I mean, some people might have gotten the impression that those allegations came from crazy, Kalashnikov-toting jihadists. No, those allegations came from so many credible sources that they can no longer be denied. The Goldstone Report documents a pattern of systematic attack on a defenceless civilian population. The Israeli army committed crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The people responsible need to lose their jobs, then they have to be tried and convicted and spend the rest of their lives in prison.

I've read a few documents like The Goldstone report when I was a member of Amnesty and a couple of times afterwards, as well. There is always some detail that gets you. Some ridiculous little piece of information or a telling story that is the convincing detail in the argument being made. It might be the story of how a political activist was shot in front of his children in Chile or the story of how the police routinely administered beatings to 12-years in the US. In the Goldstone Report, for me, it was the chickens:

The chicken farms of Mr. Sameh Sawafeary in the Zeitoun neighbourhood south of Gaza City reportedly supplied over 10 per cent of the Gaza egg market. Armoured bulldozers of the Israeli forces systematically flattened the chicken coops, killing all 31,000 chickens inside, and destroyed the plant and material necessary for the business. The Mission concludes that this was a deliberate act of wanton destruction not justified by any military necessity and draws the same legal conclusions as in the case of [a similar destruction of a flour mill a few days before].

For some reason the image of Israeli soldiers bringing the roof down on 31.000 chickens, for no good military reason other than just to fuck with the civilian population of Gaza; for spite, out of malice, is the detail that really got me.

The Goldstone Report is, in short, mandatory reading for anyone looking for an understanding of the contemporary situation in Gaza and Israel/Palestine. It is readable, well-documented and convincing. As Klassekampen's reviewer Espen Stueland said of another recently published book on Gaza, I know of no words of greater significance that could be read right now.

(Norwegians will find that Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse's book Øyne i Gaza (Gyldendal, 2009) makes a wonderful supplement to the report.)

(Noe av) det jeg så

Her er video og beskrivelse av noe av det jeg så noe av før jeg gikk hjem. Jeg skrev det jeg så inn i en Underskogtråd. Limer det inn under. I tillegg lenker jeg til den posten jeg skrev om hvorfor jeg er imot voldelige demoer - fra for et par dager siden, fordi den har falt vekk fra forsiden.

Det var en voldelig demo etter fakkeltoget, oppe utenfor UD. Demonstrantene prøvde å komme seg opp til den amerikanske ambassaden. Politiet avanserte i full mundur, ca 50 mann sterke med syv biler. Det ble kastet noen få brostein og en del søppelspann og askebegre fra oppe i parken. Politiet ryddet parken over veien der jeg sto, og jeg måtte krysse diskret foran en linje med hestepoliti foran slottet for å komme meg hjem. Så politiet bruke pepperspray på de fremste demonstrantene. Det så ut som det hadde gjort tidligere, nemlig at det var hovedsaklig innvandrerungdom fra midtøsten som var voldelige.

Tidligere idag, derimot, så jeg en fullstendig unødvendig gassing av demonstranter utenfor ambassaden, rundt klokken 1835. Det var ingen våpen, stein eller fyrverkeri og kun en liten folkemengde på rundt de tredve, mot en 20 politifolk bak en barrikade.

SMS from Gaza

Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian doctor and solidarity worker who is one of very few foreigners providing eyewitness accounts to Norwegian media from inside the Gaza strip, where he is volunteering at a hospital.

This one was verified to me earlier today by people in the aid community in touch with Mads Gilbert as being geniune. I've snipped the translation from Shädy Äcres:

"Thanks for your support.. They bombed the central vegetable market in Gaza city two hours ago. 80 injured, 20 killed. All came here to Shifa. Hades! We wade in death. Blood and amputees. Many children. Pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything this terrible. Now hearing tanks. Tell it, pass it on, shout it. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We're living in the history books now, all of us! Mads G, 3.1.09 13:50, Gaza, Palestine.

How dare they say there is not a humanitarian disaster happening? This is a crime against humanity. The leaders of this atrocity should be tried and convicted and thrown in jail for the rest of their lives.

Livni lyger

Klassekampen har et veldig bra intervju i sin lørdagsutgave med Mads Gilbert, en norsk lege og Palestina-aktivist som driver med nødhjelp i Gaza. Det er verdt å lese, om ikke annet så for å bryte med de barbariske uttalelsene til Tzipi Livni til Haaretz:

Livni said "there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce."

In her remarks to reporters, Livni said Israel had been careful to protect the civilian population and had kept the humanitarian situation in Gaza "completely as it should be".

Kontraster denne åpenbare løgnen med Gilberts situasjonsbeskrivelse:

Gilbert er sjokkert over uttalelser fra Israels utenriksminister Tzipi Livni om at det ikke er noen humanitær krise i Gaza.

- Det er tydelig at Livni ikke har sett de som vi ser. Det som foregår i Gaza, er en menneskeskapt humanitær katastrofe. Halvannen million mennesker er sperret inne på et lite område, uten fluktmuligheter. De er nesten uten inntekter, strøm, mat og medisiner, og har ingen beskyttelse. For første gang på våre reiser i området, har Erik og jeg sett folk i matkøer. Dette er det nærmeste vi kommer Warszawa-gettoen. Når Israels regjering sier at dette ikke er en humanitær krise, er deres historiske hukommelse særdeles kort.

- Israel hevder at Hamas hindrer distribusjon av humanitære hjelpesendinger?

- Dette stemmer etter det vi får vite overhodet ikke. Israel sprer nå så mange løgner om konflikten og forholdene i Gaza at det nesten ikke er til å tro. Problemet her er ikke Hamas, men den israelske okkupasjonen og en lammende blokade, som blant annet har tvunget helsevesenet i kne også før de siste, dramatiske krigshandlingene. Blant de mindre synlige konsekvensene er at behandlingstilbudet for vanlige sykdommer og skader i en utsatt befolkning på halvannen million, praktisk talt er lik null.

100 mot en

- Jens Stoltenberg gikk i sin nyttårstale langt i å sidestille Hamas’ raketter og Israels flyangrep, og dette preger mange vestlige reaksjoner. Hvordan oppfattes dette i Gaza?

- Det er fullstendig absurd å framstille dette som en symmetrisk konflikt med delt ansvar. Det er en vanlig oppfatning blant lokalpolitikere og andre i Gaza om at disse nålestikkangrepene mot Israel bør innstilles, men det er ute av alle proporsjoner å sammenlikne dette med Israels militæraksjon. Til nå er tre israelere drept, og mer enn 400 palestinere. Det går altså mer enn 100 palestinske liv på ett israelsk. Vi vet av rik erfaring at alle palestinske ledere blir behandlet som terrorister av israelerne. Dette skjedde også da tusenvis av sivile ble drept i Israels kamp mot PLO og Yassir Arafat på åttitallet.

Also: water is wet

I'm covering an international media conference in Stockholm for my newspaper. The first presentation I went to this morning was monumentally unhelpful. I swear, this is word for word off the powerpoint slide:

Summary and conclusion

- Football is intertwined with national aspects.
- Jewish-Arab tensions are linked to the Arab-Palestinian conflict.
- Israeli national identity is never far removed from a religious Jewish identity.

As I'm typing this, a Japanese anime fantasy girl walks past. She's like something out of some twisted Japanese teenage fantasy. All got up in a pink schoolgirl uniform and pigtails with the shortest skirt in the history of skirts, cleavage down to her navel and makeup that she applied with a caulding gun, making innocent "what are you all looking at?"-eyes at the room. I feel like I just landed in a David Lynch movie.

Meanwhile, in the forgotten countries

My friend Ingeborg, a very talented reporter and photographer, is visiting Hebron and the West Bank these days. She writes stories to Norwegian newspapers, but she also blogs about it in English and Norwegian at Den dejlige tid.

photo: Ingeborg Refsnes

While the meeting in Annapolis was happening, there was street fighting and clashes in Hebron, leaving at least 24 people injured. On the same day, Israeli fighter jets killed two Hamas members and injured 10 people.