Sunday Roundup - August 3, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US corporate mainstream media. Today we look at Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, and US gun laws. 

“Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN-designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced."

- UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Kahenbuhl, 

after the Israeli shelling of a sixth UN refugee shelter Wednesday

Gaza
After two brief lulls in the fighting in the past week, Israel's siege of Gaza continued. Palestinian civilian casualties continue to rise and the devastating destruction of Gaza by Israeli military strikes continues. As of Saturday, August 2, the Palestinian death toll now exceeds 1600; more than 8300 have been wounded. UN sources estimate 80 percent of the Palestinian dead - more than 1200 - are civilians.  300 of the dead are children.  Israeli deaths stand at 67, including 64 soldiers and 3 civilians. 

Monday - Missiles...struck several sites in Gaza, including a park inside a refugee camp and an outpatient building of the strip's largest hospital, disrupting a relative lull at the start of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday. The IDF denied responsibility.  Hamas denied it had fired any rockets in the area and said it was "categorically an airstrike by Israel". It said it had collected schrapnel from the scene that it could prove was from an Israeli munition.  Medics said that an Israeli missile also hit a building, believed to be an outpatient clinic, close to the main gate of Shifa hospital, the same hospital where the victims of the playground strike were taken.  [Al Jazeera, July 29]

Tuesday - Israel broadened its assault on Gaza on Tuesday, wrecking the region's only power plant and killing more than 125 Palestinians.  Barrages "destroyed Hamas's media offices, the home of a top leader and what Palestinians said was a devastating hit on the only electricity plant," The New York Times reports....With Tuesday's bombings, which the Guardian described as "the most relentless and widespread" of the three-week-old conflict, the Palestinian death toll has exceeded 1,200. The shelling of the power plant, which Palestinian officials described as taking a devastating hit, will bring additional hardship. The lack of electricity will make existing problems with water and sewage far worse. "We need at least one year to repair the power plant, the turbines, the fuel tanks and the control room," Fathi Sheik Khalil of the Gaza energy authority told the Guardian. "Everything was burned."  [NPR, July 29]  The lack of electricity also boosts the need for increased fuel in Gaza to power water and sewage pumps and run backup generators, the U.N. said. Hospitals are especially vulnerable to electricity and water cuts as they try to cope with the influx of the injured and dead in addition to medical supply shortages.  Ninety percent of the population is without electricity, sharply affecting water and sanitation services, with only 5 percent of Gaza’s water fit for drinking. This has raised fears of an imminent public health crisis, according to the United Nations...And without electricity, communication with the outside world for many Palestinians in Gaza has slowed to a trickle....Some 20 percent of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced by the crisis. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is housing about 220,000 of them, according to Chris McGrath, its Washington liaison. But it’s unclear how much more the agency can do. “We’re stretched thin, and our supplies are running out,” he said. “There’s very little space left in our facilities.” [Al Jazeera, August 2]

Aftermath of the strike on a UN school in Gaza City.
Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images
Image appeared in The Guardian

Wednesday - At least 19 Palestinians were killed and about 90 injured early on Wednesday when a UN school sheltering displaced people was hit by shells during a second night of relentless bombardment that followed an Israeli warning of a protracted military campaign.  Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, condemned “in in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces”.  He said in a statement: “Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN-designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced." [The Guardian, July 30]

A cease fire failed after just several hours on Friday morning.  The West blames Hamas for the collapse of the cease fire and, as usual, says little about the gross overreaction by the Israeli military.  The current cause for the intensification of the assault against Gaza is a missing Israeli soldier that Israelis believe was captured by Hamas.   Around 100 people have been killed and hundreds more injured in Rafah since fighting restarted following the collapse of an internationally brokered ceasefire Friday morning. At least a dozen have been killed elsewhere in Gaza and scores wounded. Health officials said the main hospital in Rafah had to be evacuated because of shelling on Friday afternoon....Early on Saturday, the Hamas military wing said in a statement on its website that it was "not aware until this moment of a missing soldier or his whereabouts or the circumstances of his disappearance". The group said it believed the soldier might have been killed in a clash with Hamas fighters about an hour before the start of the ceasefire...The United States and the United Nations supported Israeli accounts that Hamas had taken advantage of the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire to ambush IDF soldiers near the entrance to a tunnel outside Rafah, on the southern end of the Gaza Strip on the Egyptian border, killing two soldiers at the same time as seizing Goldin.  [The Guardian, August 2]
Update:  Israel confirmed on Saturday August 2 that the soldier presumed captured had been killed in action. 

Why the Ceasefires Aren't Working
International efforts to secure a cease fire in the current conflict have failed repeatedly.  The only way to secure a lasting cease fire is to end the blockade on Gaza and for the Israeli troops to return home.  This is something that Israel, Egypt and the West so far have refused to consider.  The world has rightly condemned the Hamas rocket attacks into Israel, which have killed 35 Israelis in the past 10 years.  However, the rocket attacks, according to Britain Eakin, a symptom of deeper issues that must be addressed as part of a comprehensive peace process. In that regard, any cease-fire that does not contain provisions to end the blockade will merely be a Band-Aid.  In an opinion piece for Al Jazeera, Eakin quotes Chris McGrath, the UNWRA liaison in Washington.  “The situation [in Gaza] was bleak before this conflict, and if something is not done to address those longer-term challenges,” McGrath cautioned, “conflict is likely to flare up again in the future...Is Gaza going to be a place where people can actually live in 2020?” McGrath asked. “The answer under current circumstances is no.”  Eakin notes, Hamas has recently signaled its willingness to consider Israel’s legitimate security concerns. It put forth conditions for a 10-year truce that would allow for international monitors in areas of concern for Israel, including at border crossings, along the borders and at Gaza’s yet-to-be developed airport and seaport. Now is the time for cooler heads to prevail. Palestinians, like Israelis, deserve to live in peace and security and must be allowed to develop their economy. Any cease-fire that does not treat the parties equally will fall far short of addressing the legitimate security needs of both people — and consequently won’t be sustainable.

Links
The Nation, "Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza - Debunked" - a good article to keep in front of you as you watch network and cable news "coverage".

Americans for Peace Now's  Alert and Petition Supporting John Kerry's Efforts to Obtain A Ceasefire

Hamas conditions for a 10-year truce with Israel


Ukraine
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko ...announced a unilateral cease-fire in a 20 km radius of the crash site of the MH17 flight in a telephone conversation with the PMs of Netherlands and Australia, according to his press-service.  Earlier in the day [July 30] US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed Kiev was ready for a cease-fire “now,” following a meeting with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in Washington. Kerry added that President Poroshenko is also ready to start talks with the militia in the southeast of the country. Russia has called on Kiev numerous times to establish a cease-fire and start talks. The local militia in the south-east offered a bilateral cease-fire last week. Kiev refused. [Russia Times, July 30]

Russia
On Tuesday, the EU and the US announced new sanctions against Russia for its support of the Ukrainian separatists.  The EU has agreed on a package of "significant" additional restrictive measures targeting Russia's finance, defense and energy sectors, said the European Council in a statement....These decisions will limit access of Russian state-owned financial institutions to EU capital markets, impose an arms embargo, establish an export ban on dual-use goods for military end users, and curtail Russian access to sensitive technologies particularly in the field of the oil sector, according to the statement....Following its European allies, Obama announced an expansion of U.S. penalties targeting key sectors of Russia's economy.  Building on measures unveiled two weeks ago, the United States expanded its sanctions to more Russian banks and defense companies, and blocked the export of specific goods and technology to Russia's energy sector. [Xinhuanet, July 30]

Guns and Domestic Violence

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding its first-ever hearing on domestic violence and guns...Several Democrat-backed bills that aim to strengthen federal law when it comes to gun ownership and domestic abuse are languishing in Congress...The gun lobby has fought back against [Sen. Klobuchar's] bill...But not all gun-owners are siding with the NRA to fight these stricter gun controls. "I am a gun owner. I was shot and left for dead by my own gun," says Christy Martin, a former championship boxer whose ex-husband was sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in prison for attempting to murder her with a firearm....Elvin Daniel is a gun-owner and self-described NRA member who is testifying at the hearing in support of efforts to curb gun ownership for stalkers and abusers. He accuses the NRA of employing "a scare tactic" to prevent Klobuchar's bill from advancing. His sister was shot and killed by her estranged husband in 2012. [Mother Jones, July 30]

Sunday Roundup - July 20, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media.  Today we look at the war against Gaza, the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, the Iran nuclear talks, the World Cup, and Nelson Mandela.

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

- Nelson Mandela

Gaza

Nelson Mandela would have been 96 on Friday.  His quote on the Palestinians came after South Africa had shaken off the shackles of apartheid.  The Palestinians remain oppressed 66 years after they were driven from their homes during the civil war for Palestine and the first Arab-Israeli War.  Their situation parallels that of black South Africans in many ways.  As was the case with South Africa, the US is late in denouncing oppression in the Occupied Territories.

Bad as the general situation of the Palestinians is, the conditions in Gaza border on the horrific.  The UN estimates that Gaza will become unlivable by 2020.  Both the EU and the US are complicit in the situation.  When Palestinian elections brought Hamas to power in the Occupied Territories in 2006, the West decided to ignore the results and isolate the elected government, Abbas took power in the West Bank, and Israel instituted a devastating blockade on Gaza that continues to this day.

The current war against Gaza marks the third time in the last 5 years that Israel has bombed and invaded Gaza.  After sabotaging the "Kerry" peace talks and after Hamas and the Palestinian Authority formed a unity government, Israel waited for an excuse to bring down the unity government and destroy Hamas.  The weakening of the unity government was aided and abetted greatly by the West's actions.  As Nathan Thrall writes in a July 17 Op-Ed for the New York Times: ...the most immediate cause of this latest war has been ignored: Israel and much of the international community placed a prohibitive set of obstacles in the way of the Palestinian “national consensus” government that was formed in early June....Israel immediately sought to undermine the reconciliation agreement by preventing Hamas leaders and Gaza residents from obtaining the two most essential benefits of the deal: the payment of salaries to 43,000 civil servants who worked for the Hamas government and continue to administer Gaza under the new one, and the easing of the suffocating border closures imposed by Israel and Egypt that bar most Gazans’ passage to the outside world.

The Israelis found their excuse for resuming hostilities against Hamas by wrongly blaming the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers on Hamas and then whipping up resentment and hatred of Palestinians to a fever pitch and assassinating seven members of Hamas.  The IDF's killing of Palestinian civilians has not yet reached the level of 2008-9 invasion ("Operation Cast Lead") but the current ground invasion was proceeded by a particularly tragic incident in which four Palestinian children were killed by Israelis warplanes.  How a nine year old playing hide and seek on a coastal road looks like a militant to one of the world's most powerful and sophisticated armed forces is incomprehensible.

And so the violence continues.  As the editors of The Nation write:  Achieving a cease-fire will be difficult, given the regional upheavals... But unless the deeper issues are addressed, the cycle [of impunity] will continue... Impunity is what happens when an aggressor fractures the norms of international law and basic human rights yet is never held to account, and so is free to commit the same crimes again and again. That is what we’re seeing now, and that is exactly what the Goldstone Report—the findings of the UN investigation of Operation Cast Lead in 2008–09—so presciently warned against. It said then that bringing to justice those who committed war crimes—Israel as well as Hamas—was perhaps the only effective way to prevent another round of violence.  It was the United States that prevented Goldstone’s recommendations from getting a fair hearing in the UN—and it’s the United States, the world’s sole superpower, the key bankroller of Israel’s military, and the unconditional defender of Israel in international forums, that bears deep responsibility for the continuation of the decades-long occupation. 

It is time for Hamas to accept the terms brokered by the international community if only to prevent additional Israeli war crimes.  Hamas' refusal to accept an unconditional cease-fire - they want the release of the 400 political prisoners recently jailed by Israel and an end to the seven-year blockade - is apparently isolating them in the eyes of the international community.  Unfortunately, much of the world is turning a blind eye to the Israeli atrocities and there is little hope that Israel will end the violence unless Hamas agrees to the unconditional cease fire.  Of course, little mention is made in the Western press of the disproportionate Israeli response to the Hamas rocket firings: As Israel pressed ahead with a ground offensive in Gaza on Saturday morning, the death toll of Palestinians rose above 300, many of them children. An early morning air strike outside a mosque in the southern city of Khan Yunis killed seven people on Saturday, including a woman, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. Other raids shortly afterwards killed another four, bringing the total death toll to 307 Palestinians and two Israelis. [The Guardian, July 19]  Most of the deaths have been civilians - estimated before the ground invasion to be on the order of 80%.

If Israelis are not held accountable for their crimes this time and if the West does not give strong support to the Palestinian unity government, there is little hope that the blockade on Gaza will ever be lifted or that Palestinians will ever have a viable homeland.  With the death tolls being what they are and with the widespread destruction of civilian facilities and homes wreaked by Israeli bombings, it seems the IDF is a more effective terror organization than Hamas.  It also seems incredible that the international community is not pressuring Israel to stop the onslaught against Gaza given that there is no effective resistance and no damage being done by Hamas rockets.  Yes, Hamas is being obstinate but all the killing is being done by Israelis.

Malaysian Airlines MH17

Tragedies continue for Malaysian Airlines.  Flight MH17 was apparently shot down by a missile in the Ukraine war zone.  Both sides in the civil war deny responsibility.  This is the kind of disaster that might have occurred over Syria had the US armed the rebels fighting the Assad regime with missile launchers as some of our stupider Congressional hawks were advising several months ago.  Deutsche Welle lists five previous incidents of civilian air craft being shot down by missiles: the 1973 downing of a Libyan passenger plane by Israeli fighter jets, the 1980 Italian airliner brought down near Sicily (no admission of responsibility), the 1983 South Korean airliner shot down by Soviet fighter jets, the 1988 Iranian Airbus shot down by missiles from a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz, and the 2003 Russian airliner shot down by an accidentally fired Ukrainian missile during a military exercise in Crimea.

Iran
Iran and six world powers have agreed to a four-month extension of negotiations on a nuclear deal with Tehran after failing to meet a July 20 deadline due to "significant gaps" between the two sides, the European Union and Iran said on Saturday....It has been clear for days that Iran and the six powers would miss the Sunday deadline to reach an accord on curbing Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for the gradual lifting of sanctions due to disagreements on a number of key issues. 

Among the issues dividing them are the permissible scope of Iran's nuclear fuel production capacity and how to address the country's suspected past atomic bomb research. [Al Jazeera, July 19]  I hope I'm wrong. but I expect the next step for Congressional hawks and AIPAC-supported Senators will be to try to sabotage the talks by passing additional sanctions against Iran.

Brazil and the World Cup
After all the talk about Neymar and Brazil and about Messi and Argentina, it was methodical, "boring" Germany that came away with the 2014 World Cup.  I watched, stunned with most of the world, as Germany dismantled Brazil in the semi-final with five goals over a span of 18 minutes in the first half. Germany went on to beat Argentina in overtime in the final and earned a #1 rating along with the World Cup. On July 14, Mother Jones ran an interview with Brazilian journalist Juliana Barbassa who discussed the soccer protests, the potential political fallout for president Dilma Roussef, and the rise of the Brazilian middle class.  Now that the World Cup is over, will the protests return?  It's very unpredictable...I do think people are more awake and aware about their rights and what's owed to them. I don't know if they're unhappy enough to change it...We haven't grown since 2010. Jobs are still plentiful. Inflation is rising, but it's not out of control. If those numbers start to change and people start to feel like they're going to the supermarket and they can't get as much as they used to—if it starts hitting people in the areas where it matters—I think that we might see more unrest.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela's 96th birthday was celebrated Friday.  The Nobel Peace Prize winner was instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa.  The Common Dreams website published a list of Mandela quotes you were not likely to see in the mainstream press remembrances of the man.  Besides the quote above on the oppression of the Palestinians, here's another one of the dozen quotes in the article: “Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”  

Links

Where is the outrage?  (July 16)

History of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict -  World War I - 1949, 1950-2000, 2000-2012