Wounded baby, outside Shifah Hospital in Gaza, Jan. 11, 2009
Reuters: The Palestinian death toll in the 17-day-old Israeli offensive reached 908, more than a third of them children, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said. Thirteen Israelis have been killed -- 10 soldiers, and three civilians killed by Hamas rocket fire.
AP: The army announced Sunday that it was sending reserve units into Gaza to assist thousands of ground forces already in the territory. The use of reserves is a strong signal that Israel is planning to move the offensive, which Gaza officials say has killed some 910 Palestinians, into a new, more punishing phase.
LA Times: 1 dead, dozens injured in Gaza by suspected white phosphorus munitions
By Richard Boudreaux and Yasser Ahmad
January 12, 2009
Reporting from Jerusalem and Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian villagers said the shelling came from the direction of the Israeli border, less than a mile away, scattering flaming objects in their midst and burning down 20 homes and the local United Nations-run school.
"One landed in my kitchen and caused a fire," said Zohair Mohammed abu Rejila, 35. "I went to put it out, but another one landed on Mayar, my baby daughter. It was like a block of fire, a piece of plastic on fire. When I knocked it off her, it exploded and out came this heavy white smoke with a very bad smell."
Doctors who treated Abu Rejila, his family and dozens of neighbors in southern Gaza said they were apparent victims of white phosphorus fired from Israeli artillery. One woman was killed. . . .
Yousef abu Rish, director of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, said 55 people from nearby Khoza were treated for burns, breathing difficulties, and throat and eye irritation after exposure to toxic white smoke from shells fired just after midnight Sunday.
Abu Rish said he believed the smoke was white phosphorus gas, which is released when artillery bursts send scores of phosphorus wafers into the air that burst into flames.
"We need experts to test these shells," he said, "but we see the dangerous results."
Wounded woman, outside Shifah Hospital in Gaza, Jan. 11, 2009
Der Spiegel: Amira Hass, the only Jewish Israeli journalist who lives among Palestinians in the 1967 Occupied Territories, now communicates with friends and acquaintances in Gaza by phone from her home in Ramallah.
In an article on January 4, she describes the plight of a family home in Gaza's Zeitoun neighborhood, which was struck by missile fire a day earlier wounding "two women in their eighties (his mother and aunt), his 14-year-old son, his 13-year-old niece and his 10-year-old nephew."
"Twenty hours later, the wounded were still bleeding in a shed in the courtyard of the house. There was no electricity, no heat, no water. Their relatives were with them, but every time they tried to leave the courtyard to fetch water, the army shot at them," she writes.
Hass continues to describe the phone calls of helpless injured friends and acquaintances who are left to perish, hour by hour, unreachable by ambulance despite pleas to the IDF for safe passage.
Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi: In my house we can't get basic needs. No food. No bread. No fuel. No future. Yesterday, my father went to the bakery at 5 AM. He waited 5 hours to get one loaf of bread, which is not enough for my family because there are 11 of us. So today it was my turn. I went to all the bakeries -- all were closed.
There is no safe place we can go. We cannot communicate with our relatives and friends -- networks are down as missiles rain on our homes, mosques and even hospitals.
Our life is centered around the burials of those who have died, our martyrs, At night our camp, Jabalya Refugee Camp, is a ghost town, with no sounds other than those of Israeli military aircraft.
There is a horror in every minute and it is clear especially in the lives of children. For example, there were five sisters in one family killed from the Israeli occupation while they stayed in their home. But there are 800,000 other children in Gaza, all afraid, all waiting for someone or something to help them. They are caught in a prison that is becoming a concentration camp. Every day we sleep and open our eyes to the Israeli crimes of killing children and women and destroying civilians' homes.
Mohammed Al Majdawali is a university student, member of Al-Assria Children's Library, and volunteer with Middle East Children's Alliance. He lives in Jabalya Refugee Camp with his family and aspires to be a professional filmmaker.
For those concerned by the lack of opposition to the slaughter (actually, the strong support shown for it) by Israelis or by American supporters of Israel, the (originally in) Der Spiegel article quoted below is well worth reading:
Der Spiegel: At a glance, Israeli English-language newspapers (many of which also appear in the original Hebrew) lend the impression that - apart from casualty figures, where most if not all male casualties are lumped together as Hamas fighters-human interest reporting focuses on the suffering of Israelis in the range of Qassam rocket fire.
For the most part, one gets almost no sense of conditions on the ground in Gaza. Instead, readers get sterile accounts of the IDF's successful exploits, emotive accounts of a funeral held for a Golani soldier killed in Gaza, and the tale of a former Gazan settler returning to his evacuated home to fight Hamas terrorists.
The article continues:
In a piece in Haaretz, entitled "Right and Left-Jewish diaspora more critical of Israel than ever" , Anshel Pfeffer describes the nagging doubts of diaspora Jews unsettled by Israel's wanton bombing.
"They begin asking themselves very awkward questions: Are they surrounded by latent racists, or is something wrong with them that denies the feelings of certainty of those around them? Or does everyone have similar doubts but are simply afraid to express them?"
Mainstream Jewish American bloggers such as Matthew Yglesias and Glen Greenwald have also become increasingly vocal in their opposition.
In his latest post on the Salon website, Greenwald attacks the "ingrained tribalistic blindness" of liberal American Jews who only identify with their own, and the selective label of terrorism leveled against Palestinian resistance.
Leaving Rafah refugee camp, Jan. 12, 2009
Ilan Pappe: "Today in Israel, from Left to Right, from Likud to Kadima, from the academia to the media, one can hear this righteous fury of a state that is more busy than any other state in the world in destroying and dispossessing an indigenous population."
Uri Avnery: "In Israel we can raise our voice, but we are boycotted by all the TV and radio stations and in almost all written media."
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