War crimes
The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in article 54 of their additional protocol: “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.” It is also ‘prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.’ That means that the Israeli army’s latest offensive in the occupied territories amounts to war crimes; it includes the blockade of the civilian population and their collective punishment, the bombing of Gazaęs $150m power station, depriving 750,000 Palestinians of electricity in the intense summer heat, and the kidnapping on the West Bank of 64 members of the political wing of Hamas, including eight cabinet ministers and 22 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On 5 July the Israeli government said it would expand its military operation in Gaza.
mondediplo.com
Three people suffer from shock as second rocket hits house
A Sderot resident was moderately wounded when a Qassam rocket slammed into the western Negev city on Sunday morning. The man suffered shrapnel wounds to his chest and was rushed to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.
A second rocket hit a Sderot house, causing damage.
Magen David Adom paramedics were treating three people for shock.
On Saturday evening, a six-year-old Palestinian girl, her elder brother and her mother were killed in an explosion in a house east of Gaza City, medical sources said.
The explosion occurred in the neighborhood of Sajaiyeh, near the Karni border crossing on Gaza’s eastern border with Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces denied responsibility for the fatalities, but confirmed that it launched an air strike in the area, claiming it was aiming for a group of armed gunmen.
The Age of Irony
It is tragic to witness the transformation of a victim into the worst perpetrator of that which he suffered from in the past. But this is what is unfolding before our eyes.
This statement is evidently clear in its meaning and intent. The entire world knows that what I have in my mind is the Israelis and their loss of all sense of morality and reason. They have descended, without any inhibitions, into unprecedented savagery directed against the defenseless Palestinians.
Rarely have a people suffered under such brutality that they are denied the very essence of their humanity.
Seen through the prism of the Israelis and the Western press and the elite, the Palestinians never die or are maimed. Their homes are never destroyed nor their infrastructure is decimated. Their leaders are never assassinated or abducted. No, the Palestinians canęt suffer or feel pain or bear the weight of oppression; they simply fade away and are never heard of again.
It is truly ironic that the words of Shylock are far more apt today to describe the Arab than the Jew and it is even more ironic that the hand which kills, destroys and tortures is that of a Jew and that its victim is the Arab who has been the Jewęs cousin, friend, neighbor and colleague not for decades but centuries. Arabs are the one people who never committed pogroms at any time in history against Jews or built gas chambers to cast the Jews into or ghettos to imprison them in.