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$21
By Rebecca Skloot
$15.21
$22
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AP photo / Sebastian Scheiner
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By Chris Hedges — The assault on Gaza exposed not only Israel’s callous disregard for international law but the gutlessness of the American press. Nearly all reporters were, as during the buildup to the Iraq war, pliant stenographers and echo chambers.
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Wikimedia Commons / Agência Brasil
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The BBC reports: “Any Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes in the Gaza Strip will be given state protection from prosecution overseas, the country’s PM has said.” At issue is Israel’s use of white phosphorous, a chemical agent that is not permitted in densely populated areas because it sticks to and severely burns human tissue.
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How did the changing of the U.S. presidential guard register throughout the Middle East? Will Barack Obama deliver on his inaugural promise to usher in a new era of respect and consideration for mutual interests of the U.S. and the Mideast? This week’s “Mosaic Intelligence Report” offers some answers.
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senate.gov
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President Obama didn’t wait long to tackle one of the most intractable items in his in box: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On a whirlwind Thursday, Obama spoke to leaders in the region (minus Hamas), called for an end to the Gaza blockade and appointed George Mitchell (above), the man who brokered a truce in Northern Ireland, as Mideast envoy.
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Maan Images / Mohamed Al-Zanon
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About 1,300 Palestinians dead, $2 billion in damage and thousands of devastated families later, Israel claims it has officially pulled its troops from the Gaza Strip after its three-week assault—with no formal deal between Israel and Hamas and thus no real change in relations between the two sides.
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guardian.co.uk
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Following accusations by human rights groups last week, Israel has finally admitted that its troops “may have used” white phosphorus shells—a chemical agent that wreaks havoc on the skin—in contravention of international law.
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AP photo / Ben Curtis
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon toured several decimated sites in Gaza on Tuesday, including the remains of the U.N. compound in Gaza City destroyed last Thursday in an attack. The Israeli shelling of the compound has drawn strong international criticism—not the least of which came from Ban himself both before and during Tuesday’s visit.
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AP photo / Hussein Malla, Pool
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By Robert Fisk — It’s a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli cease-fire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza.
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AP photo / Lefteris Pitarakis
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Now that the war in Gaza has ground to a halt, local and international groups are assessing the needs of tens of thousands of embattled and displaced Palestinians, some of whom have gone for many days without water or power, and are preparing to send aid as soon as possible.
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AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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By Chris Hedges — I do not like Hamas. I detest religious fundamentalism and the use of suicide bombers. I find the group’s anti-Semitism and ruthless silencing of internal Palestinian opponents repugnant. The rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are a war crime. But this does not negate the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance to the long Israeli siege and occupation of Gaza.
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AP photo / Eyad Baba
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Shortly after Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza, Hamas followed suit with its own separate announcement. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would withdraw troops “as soon as possible,” and Hamas said it would give Israel a week to do just that.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra)
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As Israel’s Security Cabinet prepared to vote Saturday on a possible cease-fire in Gaza, the Israeli army drew criticism for the killing of two boys who were taking cover at a United Nations school in northern Gaza, according to The New York Times.
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AP photo / Luis M. Alvarez
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Israel’s Security Cabinet will hold a vote Saturday that could halt Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, at least temporarily stopping the assault after three weeks of punishing violence.
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guardian.co.uk
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Following previous accusations by aid agencies, a video has surfaced amid Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip that shows images “consistent with the use of white phosphorus shells”—i.e. chemical weaponry. The Israeli military has denied use of the chemical agent, which can burn skin to the bone.
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By William Pfaff — The military is far too accustomed to getting its way, so it was refreshing to see Barack Obama reject the Pentagon’s sluggish withdrawal plan. But will he stand up to Israel, whose Prime Minister Olmert recently bragged about pulling the American president’s puppet strings?
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AP photo / Ashraf Amra
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Another high-ranking Hamas official, Interior Minister Said Siyam, was killed on Thursday near Gaza City, according to Israeli and Hamas sources. Israeli leaders faced international criticism after their forces also struck both the United Nations compound and a high-rise in Gaza City where several media organizations are based.
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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It is unsurprising that a group like Human Rights Watch has condemned the Bush government for jettisoning the U.S. role as a defender of global human rights: Numerous examples—Guantanamo, gay marriage, Iraq, etc.—accentuate this failure.
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Maan Images / Wissam Nassar
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As the death toll of Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip moves past 1,000, tensions between Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis are growing. Some of the country’s Arab population is increasingly vocal in denouncing the bombings, while some Israeli politicians are trying to ban the re-election of Arabs to parliament on the grounds of alleged national disloyalty.
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By William Pfaff — The people of Gaza and Israel suffer at the hands of leaders whose bewildering and savage decisions have no rationally achievable purpose.
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AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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The war in Gaza has taken on another deadly dimension, as Israeli troops have moved into several districts of Gaza City, the BBC reported Tuesday, sparking street fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants.
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AP photo / Abdel Kareem Hana
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By Chris Hedges — Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza.
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Dario Castillejos, Dario La Crisis —
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AP photo / Elizabeth Dalziel
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By Robert Fisk — It all depends where you live. That was the geography of Israel’s propaganda, designed to demonstrate that we softies—we little baby-coddling liberals living in our secure Western homes—don’t realize the horror of 12 (now 20) Israeli deaths in 10 years and thousands of rockets and the unimaginable trauma and stress of living near Gaza.
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This week’s “Mosaic Intelligence Report” takes stock of various reports about the current Gaza crisis from Middle Eastern media outlets as the conflict reached the 14-day mark. Needless to say, we’re not likely to hear all these voices on CNN.
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Theatrum Belli
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By Robert Fisk — So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
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un.org / unrwa
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The United Nations is suspending relief activity in the Gaza Strip following multiple attacks by Israeli forces. “Our installations have been hit, our workers have been killed in spite of the fact that the Israeli authorities have the co-ordinates of our facilities and that all our movements are co-ordinated with the Israeli army,” said a U.N. Relief and Works Agency spokesman quoted by the BBC.
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AP photo / Rina Castelnuovo, pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — The president-elect has struggled to stay out of the Gaza fight, but based on everything he said during the campaign, he appears determined to stand up for Israel.
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Flickr / ronnie44052
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The Paris Hilton of conservative politics is back and more preposterous than ever. Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is headed to the Middle East to report on the war in Gaza for Pajamas Media. But isn’t that dangerous? Not to worry, says Joe: “Being a Christian I’m pretty well protected by God, I believe.”
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The New York Times
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Following a three-hour pause in its aerial bombardment to allow those in the Gaza Strip to “get medical attention, get supplies ... whatever they need,” Israel has resumed its attack, although it promised additional halts amid reports that Hamas and Israel are working out details of a cease-fire. Overall, 660 Palestinians have been reported killed, including more than 200 children.
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AP photo / Khaled Omar
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By Robert Scheer — Why is it that there is such widespread acceptance, beginning with the apologetic arguments of President Bush, that whatever Israel does is always justified as necessary to the survival of the Jewish state? It is not.
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By Amy Goodman — While the Israeli government, dominated by hawks in the midst of a political campaign, has escalated its assault on Gaza, there are many Israelis who are outraged by what’s happening.
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AP photo / Mohammed Zaatari
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By Robert Fisk — Can it be that yet another Israeli failure in Gaza will change the dynamics of “peacekeeping” in the Middle East, that at last the ghost of Arafat will watch the “internationalisation” of the Israeli-Palestinian war?
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AP photo / Ashraf Amra
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak presented a cease-fire proposal Tuesday that would buy time to negotiate a long-term agreement. Israel continued its offensive in Gaza, meanwhile, shelling a United Nations school. At least 30 people, children among them, were killed by the attack, which Israel said was aimed at militants.
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Tab, The Calgary Sun —
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AP photo / Alex Brandon
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It’s hard to remember a time when so much was at stake during a presidential transition in America. Barack Obama is still two weeks shy of taking office, but even so, his silence about the current crisis in Gaza in particular has not gone unnoticed.
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Flickr / Amir Farshad Ebrahimi
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Haaretz’s Gideon Levy recalls the mathematician whose dutiful students drew up plans for a “blood pipeline” without questioning why it should be built. With Gaza, he warns, Israel faces such a test and “when the time comes for reckoning, we will need to remember the damage this war did to Israel.”
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AP photo / Sebastian Scheiner
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Israeli forces crossed into Gaza on Saturday night, launching ground attacks and seriously ratcheting up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following a week of bombardment from intensive airstrikes. The United Nations Security Council met that evening in New York about the mounting Mideast crisis.
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The challenges of this new year, or at least its initial chapter, are already quite apparent—what with the dire situation in Gaza, the sputtering global economy and a major transition under way in the United States. Barack Obama, fresh off his Hawaiian holiday, has his work cut out for him, to say the very least.
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Ma'an Images
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The United Nations marked Israel’s seventh day of aerial attacks by warning of a “critical emergency” in the Gaza Strip, as Palestinians endure food and medical supply shortages and distribution problems even as estimates of dead and wounded Palestinians continue to rise.
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AP photo / Adel Hana
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By Chris Hedges — I often visited Nizar Rayan, who was killed Thursday in a targeted assassination by Israel, at his house in the Jabaliya refugee camp when I was in Gaza. His four wives and 11 children also were killed. Rayan’s sons, according to their father, strove to be one thing: martyrs for Palestine.
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Maan Images / Hatem Omar
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After five days of almost constant aerial attacks and the deaths of nearly 400 Palestinians, the Israeli government has refused a 48-hour cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, arguing that it needs to “keep up the pressure on Hamas”—a startling euphemism for its lethal assaults—as the Israeli military ramps up for a likely ground invasion.
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AP photo / Dan Balilty
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By Robert Scheer — So, why didn’t they give peace a chance? Why did the leaders of Hamas and Israel not wait for the incoming U.S. president’s inauguration before mutually escalating hostilities?
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theatrum-belli.com
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Be it due to danger or the ever-present desire for security, the Israeli government has always found reason to forbid journalists to enter the Gaza Strip at times of “conflict.” The current brutal assault on Gaza is no different, but this time an association of journalists has filed a petition in the Israeli Supreme Court to demand access to the occupied territories.
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AP photo / Fadi Adwan
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By Chris Hedges — Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza—the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, and our callous indifference to this widespread human suffering—wonder why we are hated?
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Mike Keefe, The Denver Post —
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As the current Israeli-Palestinian clash reached the three-day mark with no sign of resolution, President Bush weighed in on the crisis via a spokesperson at “the Western White House” in Crawford, Texas.
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