Red Cross, Gaza and Israel

[littlebuddy]

More truth than most in here can stand.
Red Cross: No humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Friday, April 22, 2011 | Ryan Jones





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The International Red Cross on Wednesday acknowledged what anyone not taken in by anti-Israel propaganda has known for some time: that there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with the Israeli army spokesman, Mathilde Redmatn, deputy director of the Red Cross in Gaza, clearly declared for all those willing to listen that there "is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza."
"If you go to the supermarket, there are products. There are restaurants and a nice beach," noted Redmatn.
But Redmatn did go on to criticize Israel for maintaining a partial embargo on certain goods, such as cement, which can and has been used by terrorist forces to build bunkers.
"Israel has the legitimate right to protect the civilian population, [but] this right should be balanced with the right of 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip," said Redmatn. "...difficulties in importing building materials [has] hampered sustainable economic recovery and dashed any hope of leading a normal and dignified life."
Israelis would argue that a territory that elects terrorists as its leaders and then facilitates the launching of thousands of missiles at a neighboring territory has forfeited the right to a "normal and dignified life."
Redmatn also slammed Hamas and its terrorist allies for continuing to fire missiles and mortar shells at Israeli civilians in southern Israel.
But, despite the reality, painting Gaza as a squalor-filled prison is just too good a propaganda tool for most to give up.
A few brave journalists over the past few years have bucked the media trend of portraying Gaza as the most destitute place on earth, and have provided written and photographic evidence that Gaza is not nearly as bad off as most reports make it out to be.
Last year, National Post reporter Tom Gross lambasted his colleagues in the international media for focusing solely on those parts of Gaza that are impoverished in a deliberate attempt to suggest that the entire region lives that way, because of Israeli security measures.
"We could produce the same effect by selectively filming seedy parts of Paris and Rome and New York and Los Angeles, too," Gross wrote at the time.
Even Hamas has admitted that there is no Israeli-created starvation in Gaza.
"There is no starvation in Gaza. No one has died of hunger," Khalil Hamada, a senior official at Gaza's Ministry of Justice, told London's Daily Telegraph last year.
The claim, reiterated by Redmatn, that Israel is not allowing enough building materials into Gaza is also dubious.
In November, Gaza Housing Minister Yousef Alamanti confirmed to United Press International that construction had been started on a massive high-rise apartment project. The project includes three apartment buildings with a total of 25,000 apartments, a mosque, playground, shopping center and schools.
It is difficult to understand how such an expansive project could be built if Israel is not letting Gazans get their hands on even basic building materials.
The truth revealed by all of these acknowledgements and reports is that Gaza is not under siege. Yes, Israel is closely monitoring and restricting the entry of certain goods in order to limit the terrorists' capabilities. But the influx of goods into a territory that is actively engaged in terrorist warfare against the civilians of its neighboring territory is unprecedented in Gaza.

[Detroitnerd]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeVtXALZS_o

[Detroitnerd]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZCGCr9BHCg

[gibran]

STOP the bigotry LB if conditions are so good then you go and live there and then get back at us..

http://israelpalestinemissionnetwork.org/main/

[gibran]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNPgo...eature=related

How can you ask for justice for all when you demonize others. we cry for the children of Gaza as well as those murdered in Israel.. if you cant understand oppression and its aweful legacy you blind to justice

[gibran]

Here if you want to read the story from their neighbors :

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition...kness-1.196390

[gibran]

In Gaza, women are working to preserve and improve life in every possible way.
This afternoon, I met with the director of The Palestinian Developmental Women Studies Associations. Dr. Abu Dagga spent two years in an Israeli prison [[1968-1970) and now works with women in Gaza who are ex-prisoners -- seeking to improve their lives through counseling, education and rehabilitation. Her center conducts research on the needs of women and provides opportunities for youth to be educated to serve the people of Gaza. Seeking not to follow political rhetoric, the Center's mission is to speak for all Palestinians and serves women from all over Gaza.
Steve Gilbert's lecture this morning on toxicology raised many questions about lead and the problems caused by lead. Here, the gasoline burned in cars and generators contains lead [[no lead-free gas) and the particles released from the thousands of individual generators are likely the source of increased environmental toxicity. Simple precautions can decrease individual lead exposure: hand washing, not wearing shoes in homes and damp-dusting home surfaces, but source prevention is critical.
Steve will be meeting throughout the week with medical and environmental personnel and hopes to help build a Palestinian toxicology society. The environment of Gaza is polluted from so many sources that concentrated work will be required to create environmental safety.
Part of the discussion I had with Gaza Community Mental Health Programme personnel this morning involved strategies for removal of garbage from the streets - and how a visually cleaner environment might help to create a more hopeful sense in the community. For now, the streets and roads are covered with litter – signs of despair.
Again today, the urologic surgery teams in our group operated through the day.
The evening was highlighted by a gathering with physicians from Palestinian Medical Relief and short talks by Bob Haynes, Steve Gilbert, Don Mellman, Gerri Haynes and Ismael Zamilpa.
The medical community in Gaza is expert, but some specialties are not available here and the siege prevents access to new equipment and adequate supplies.

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[rb336]

Well, little buddy, it does not look like that info came from the ICRC - the ONLY hits i get are for the article itself and articles based on that article.

went to the ICRC web site [[www.icrc.org), searched "gaza" and got this:

RESULTS 1-25 OF 215


Sort by

• Relevance
• Date

• 2

• World Water Day - Gaza - new technology eases water shortage, reduces health hazard

Geneva/Jerusalem [[ICRC) – Large numbers of people living in the Gaza Strip remain at risk of contracting water-borne disease ...

• 
  
  • 2011-03-21
  • News Release
• Gaza: power cuts put lives at risk

A serious electricity shortage in the Gaza Strip is disrupting the lives of its people. ... 07-09-2010 Feature A serious electricity shortage in the Gaza Strip is ... in Gaza's Shifa hospital are ...

• 
  
  • 2010-09-07
  • Feature
  
  
  • Topic

Gaza: wounded people dying while waiting for ambulances

• As the number of casualties continues to rise in the Gaza Strip, the ICRC is focusing on arranging safe passage for Palestine Red ... rise in the Gaza Strip, the ICRC is focusing on arranging safe ...
  

Just a brief sampling, most recent one is March 21, 2011. Not one of them could fall into the "no humanitarian crisis" descriptor, as even the positive headline is followed by "Large numbers of people living in the Gaza Strip remain at risk of contracting water-borne disease ..."
Ya want truth? THERE'S the truth

[oldredfordette]

Not a credible source or story. Next!

[Mikeg]

Next!

Here's the conclusions of Richard Goldstone, a former South African judge and the author of the "Goldstone Report" for the UN Human Rights Council about the Dec. 2008 fighting in Gaza:

From the facts gathered, the Mission found that the following grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention were committed by Israeli forces in Gaza: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health [source, pg. 537]

Others weighed-in on the Goldstone Report's findings, saying that

“Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity" [source]

and that basically, Israel was guilty of

"a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability." [source]

Given the UN Human Rights Council's history of bias against Israel, the Israeli government declined to provide any evidence to Goldstone's fact-finding mission and instead they conducted their own investigations into the allegations of war crimes having been committed by their military forces.

More recently, Richard Goldstone has this to say about his report:

If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack.

I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.

We made our recommendations based on the record before us, which unfortunately did not include any evidence provided by the Israeli government. Indeed, our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing...... At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel........ In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise. So, too, the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

[Detroitnerd]

Ah, yes. Goldstone. Israel stonewalled him, then, aghast at his report, said he was incompetent. Then, after bombarding him with information, he revised the report. Now, the foolish king has regained his senses.

That's about as disingenuous as saying that Wikileaks shows that other Arab rulers want "regime change" in Iran, and therefore we're doing what the Middle East wants.

[gibran]

He hasnt recanted all of the report... just the one area where Israel purpose;ly targeted civilians..

I must add his recanting was after being demonized, and hounded for nearly a year. BIBI said it [[report) was a security concern.. umm code speak for calling out the hounds on Goldstone..

His co-investigators arent backing off.

http://www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_..._Statement.asp

[maxx]

"...
The announcement on the border crossing also appeared to reflect a responsiveness by Egypt's new military rulers to street sentiment hostile to Israel and to the U.S. A recent poll showed more than half of Egyptians favor an annulment of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel...."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_855508.html

[gibran]

this is a crucial time to make peace with the Palestinians... Israel will become even more isolated with the oppression, when the dictators are replaced... hopefully the linkage from Mubarak to Israel is negated with a end to oppression.. these revolutionaries are looking for a new paradigm..not war..

[Relayer76]

Littlebuddy when will you face reality. The Red Cross, World Vision, Oxfam, to name only a few have condemned Israel's blockade and bombings and gradual starvation of Gaza. Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and scores of other South African have described Israel's policies towards the Palestinians as Apartheid. Jewish Voices for Peace and similiar Jewish groups throughout the world are working tirelessly for peace and justice. The National Post cited in your post is a well known Canadian Zionist propaganda rag.You should get a hold of Israeli historian Illan Pappe's book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. .

[Relayer76]

[QUOTE=rb336;241278]Well, little buddy, it does not look like that info came from the ICRC - the ONLY hits i get are for the article itself and articles based on that article.

You got that right RB. That is how they operate. Someone writes a pack of lies and they requote each other and Zap it becomes "truth". Prime example is that Littlebuddies post, quotes the National Post, Canada's prime Zionist propaganda instrument. It has been operated at a loss by its Zionist owners for years in dedication to the cause of spreading pro-Israel propaganda. The Zio propagandists attempt to discredit all reliable and reputable sources for being anti-semitic- google NGO Monitor to see what I mean - they have World Vision and Oxfam on there as anti-Israel groups and loads and loads of Jewish and Israeli rights and humanitarian organizations as well.