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The latest bulletin from the Free Gaza Movement. Among other things, it states that a new report from Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem reveals that 50% of the people killed in Gaza by Operation Cast Lead were civilian non-combatents. The B'tselem report is appended along with the figures.
No windows or pens in Gaza's classrooms
As Israel continues to commit slow-motion genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, saying they let in 150 trucks a day of food and medical aid (when they people of Gaza need 500-600 trucks a day), and B'tselem, the Israeli Human Rights group writes that more than 50% of the people of Gaza Israel killed were civilians, the world stands silent. http://www.btselem.org/English/Press_Releases/20090909.asp
No building supplies are allowed into Gaza. Not one penny of the $4.5 billion to rebuild Gaza has been spent to rebuild.
Israel continues to occupy 1.5 million people, crushing them beneath their boots and their tanks. Farmers cannot farm, fishermen cannot fish.
Israel says they have 'allowed' some humanitarian supplies into Gaza, as though they have the right to control the destinies of the population. And now children are going back to school with no crayons, no paper, no books and no windows.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10762.shtml
The Free Gaza movement is determined to deliver a cargo ship of building supplies and educational supplies this year. Israel can ram our boats, hijack them and kidnap our passengers and throw them into prison, but they cannot stop our determination to sail to Gaza. Palestinians do not need hand-outs from the world. They are perfectly capable of determining their own destinies. They need their civil rights.
Coming in by sea is the only possible way to begin to break Israel's stranglehold on this small sliver of land.
And this struggle for justice is not just in Gaza, but in all of Palestine, as children begin to go back to schools, faced with either the racist regime in Israel or the draconian Israeli rule in the occupied territories and Gaza.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/israel's--arab-citizens-call-general-strike/
Greta Berlin
B'Tselem Press Release
9 Sept. 2009: B'Tselem publishes complete fatality figures from Operation Cast Lead
Today (Wed. Sept 9th) Israeli human rights group B'Tselem published its findings on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. According to B’Tselem’s research, Israeli security forces killed 1,387 Palestinians during the course of the three-week operation. Of these, 773 did not take part in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over the age of 18. Of those killed, 330 took part in the hostilities, and 248 were Palestinian police officers, most of whom were killed in aerial bombings of police stations on the first day of the operation. For 36 people, B’Tselem could not determine whether they participated in the hostilities or not.
Palestinians killed 9 Israelis during the operation: 3 civilians and one member of the security forces by rockets fired into southern Israel, and 5 soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Another 4 soldiers were killed by friendly fire.
B'Tselem’s figures, the result of months of meticulous investigation and cross-checks with numerous sources, sharply contradict those published by the Israeli military. Israel stated that 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation and that 60% of them were members of Hamas and other armed groups. According to the military, a total of 295 Palestinians who were “not involved” in the fighting were killed. As the military refused to provide B'Tselem its list of fatalities, a comparison of names was not possible. However, the blatant discrepancy between the numbers is intolerable. For example, the military claims that altogether 89 minors under the age of 16 died in the operation. However, B'Tselem visited homes and gathered death certificates, photos, and testimonies relating to all 252 children under 16, and has the details of 111 women over 16 killed.
Behind the dry statistics lie shocking individual stories. Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighborhoods were obliterated.
The extremely heavy civilian casualties and the massive damage to civilian property require serious introspection on the part of Israeli society. B'Tselem recognizes the complexity of combat in a densely populated area against armed groups that do not hesitate to use illegal means and find refuge within the civilian population. However, illegal and immoral actions by these organizations cannot legitimize such extensive harm to civilians by a state committed to the rule of law.
The extent of civilian fatalities does not, in itself, prove that Israeli violated the laws of war. However, the figures must be considered within the context of the numerous testimonies given by soldiers and Palestinians during and after the operation, which raise grave concerns that Israel breached fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and caused excessive harm to civilians. The magnitude of this harm requires Israel to conduct an independent and credible investigation, and not make do with military debriefings. Shortly after the operation, B'Tselem published guidelines for such an investigation and sent the Judge Advocate General’s Office some twenty illustrative cases, in which a total of about 90 Palestinian civilians were killed, demanding that they be investigated.
B’Tselem’s list of fatalities in Operation Cast Lead has been sent to the IDF Spokesperson’s Office for comment.
Organizations that participated in the statement: The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom, B’Tselem, Gisha, Physicians for Human Rights, Adalah , Yesh Din, HaMoked,Center for the Defence of the Individual, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights.
Cast Lead fatalities figures (pdf)
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