Sunday Roundup - July 27, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at Gaza, the US's Israel policy, and, in brief, Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine and Russia.

"Today's attack underscores the imperative for the killing to stop and to stop now." 

- Ban Ki Moon after the Israeli shelling of a UN refugee shelter on Thursday.  

Gaza
The Israeli assault against Gaza continued unabated until Saturday morning.  A 12-hour ceasefire went into effect July 26 after Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary pause in the fighting.  Israel had come under widespread criticism for its rejection of a seven-day humanitarian ceasefire brokered  by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Hamas' regional proxies.  The Palestinian death toll in Gaza is now over 1000, the great majority of whom are civilians.  More than 5000 have been wounded.  One can only pray that the horrific slaughter taking place in Gaza will be ended permanently, that the devastating blockade that has crippled Gaza for the past seven years will be ended, and that the world community will send the necessary humanitarian aid to the beleaguered enclave to help it rebuild from this and past Israeli attacks.

Gaza Ceasefire Reveals Full Extent of Israeli Destruction [The Guardian, July 26]

Palestinian women react to the destruction in Beit Hanuon,
northern Gaza Strip, during the ceasefire.
Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images
[Image appeared in The Guardian]

Thousands of people in Gaza have ventured out from homes and shelters during a 12-hour ceasefire to find that whole streets and neighbourhoods have been destroyed in the last week.  Shortly before the ceasefire took effect, at least 18 members of the al-Najar family, including many children, were killed in an air strike on Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. The family had recently gone there to escape fighting in a nearby village, a Palestinian health official said.  As the Palestinian death toll in the 19-day-long conflict topped 1,000, diplomatic efforts to forge a longer ceasefire continued in Paris. Foreign ministers from seven nations – the US, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Turkey and Qatar – called for an extension of the truce.

Statement of UN High Commissioner on Human Rights
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Wednesday that Israel’s military actions are responsible for the death of a child every hour in recent days and observed, “Respect for the right to life of civilians, including children, should be a foremost consideration. Not abiding by these principles may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” That is, in international law, Israel’s pretext for indiscriminate bombing– that Hamas hides out among non-combatants– is unacceptable. Israel is the occupying power in Gaza and has a duty to minimize non-combatant death, which it clearly is not doing... [Informed Comment, July 24]

Massacre at UN School/Refugee Shelter

The majority of those injured in the attack on the school
were women and children. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
Image appeared in The Guardian

As noted by Al Jazeera:  More than 140,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza by the fighting, many of them seeking shelter in buildings run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.  Juan Cole in his Informed Comment blog on July 25 wrote:   A new element entered the current Gaza war on Thursday, as Israel shelled a UN school full of displaced persons taking refuge there and  large protests broke out in the Palestinian West Bank. The shelling of the UNRWA school, which killed 15 and injured 200, was a war crime. The UN had given the school’s coordinates to the Israelis, so they knew it was a school and was holding displaced persons.  The UN, when informed it would be shelled, asked for more time to evacuate people but were denied it.  The attack occurred hours after the UN had warned that Israel's actions in the Palestinian enclave could constitute war crimes.  For more on the Israeli shelling of the refugee shelter, see The Guardian July 24 article.

Israel Rejects Seven-Day Humanitarian Ceasefire Proposal
World reaction to the humanitarian disaster is growing - especially after the Israeli shelling of the UN school serving as a center for displaced persons and after Israel rejected a seven-day humanitarian cease-fire brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Hamas' regional proxies.  Kerry is remaining in the Middle East for a few more days to attempt to narrow the differences between Hamas and the Israeli government for achieving a cease-fire.  For more see the Al Jazeera, July 25 article.

Palestinian West Bank Protests and Friday Israeli strikes in Gaza

On Friday, Israeli strikes on 30 houses [in Gaza] killed another 19 people, including the head of media operations for Hamas ally Islamic Jihad and his son.  [Al Jazeera, July 25]

Demonstrations in the West Bank against the Israeli assault has resulted in the killing of 6 Palestinians.  In the occupied West Bank, where U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas governs in uneasy coordination with Israel, some 10,000 demonstrators marched in solidarity with Gaza overnight Thursday – a scale recalling mass revolts of the past. Protesters surged against an Israeli army checkpoint, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, and Palestinian medics said one was shot dead and 200 wounded when troops opened fire.  The next day, medics said five Palestinians were killed in separate incidents near the West Bank cities of Nablus and Hebron, including one shooting that witnesses blamed on an apparent Jewish settler. [Al Jazeera, July 25]

The United States' Morally Bankrupt Israel Policy
Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, writes in a July 22 article at the Huffington Post:  Israel is [again] using weapons provided by U.S. taxpayers to bombard the captive and impoverished Palestinians in Gaza...As usual, the U.S. government is siding with Israel, even though most American leaders understand Israel instigated the latest round of violence, is not acting with restraint, and that its actions make Washington look callous and hypocritical in the eyes of most of the world...This Orwellian situation is eloquent testimony to the continued political clout of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the other hardline elements of the Israel lobby. There is no other plausible explanation for the supine behavior of the U.S. Congress...or the shallow hypocrisy of the Obama administration...The explanation for America's impotent and morally bankrupt policy is the political clout of the Israel lobby.  Barack Obama knows that if he were to side with the Palestinians in Gaza or criticize Israel's actions in any way, he would face a firestorm of criticism from the lobby and his chances of getting Congressional approval for a deal with Iran would evaporate.  

Walt notes that the Israeli hard-line lobby isn't as powerful as it once was.  Nevertheless, it is still able to keep roughly $3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel flowing each year; it can still prevent U.S. presidents from putting meaningful pressure on Israel; and it can still get the U.S. to wield its veto whenever a resolution criticizing Israel's actions is floated in the U.N. Security Council. This situation explains why the Obama administration made zero progress toward "two states for two peoples": if Israel gets generous U.S. support no matter what it does, why should its leaders pay any attention to Washington's requests? 

Iraq

Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric urged political leaders on Friday to refrain from clinging to their posts - an apparent reference to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has defied demands that he step aside...Maliki has come under mounting pressure since Sunni militants led by the hardline Islamic State swept across northern Iraq last month and seized vast swathes of territory, posing the biggest challenge to Maliki's Shi'ite-led government since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011.  Critics say Maliki is a divisive figure whose alienation of Sunnis has fueled sectarian hatred and played into the hands of the insurgents, who have reached to within 70 km of the capital Baghdad. [Reuters, July 25]

Syria
Fighters from al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State killed at least 50 Syrian army soldiers...on Friday outside the northern city of Raqqa, as the radicals escalated their attacks on government forces, a monitoring group said...Islamic State...has advanced in Syria and taken over swaths of territory in neighboring Iraq in what it has described as a bid to establish an Islamic caliphate...Since its lightning advance in Iraq last month, the group has confronted government forces in Syria more frequently whilst continuing to attack rival rebel groups fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad. [Reuters, July 25]

Ukraine and Russia
Russia reacted angrily on Saturday [July 26]to additional sanctions imposed by the European Union over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis, saying they would hamper cooperation on security issues and undermine the fight against terrorism and organized crime.  The 28-nation EU reached an outline agreement on Friday to impose economic sanctions on Russia...The EU also imposed travel bans and asset freezes on the chiefs of Russia's FSB security service and foreign intelligence service and a number of other top Russian officials.  [Reuters, July 26]