By Mohammed Ali
As the death toll from Israel's war on Gaza continues to climb, Mohammed Ali, an advocacy and media researcher for Oxfam who lives in Gaza City, will be keeping a diary of his feelings and experiences.
Today, I met with people outside the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. I could not believe the stories I was hearing.
An old man told me he was going blind. His diabetic condition was deteriorating and he needed to be treated quickly so as not to lose his sight. He was turned away; he was not in a severe enough state compared to the people filling the hospital corridors and there were not enough doctors to see to him.
Medical teams cannot cope; doctors are working 24 hour shifts, there are not enough beds, equipment or medicine to deal with this humanitarian crisis.
I am hearing more and more stories of people trapped under rubble - ambulance teams unable to reach them, so they wait to die.
While I was out, one man approached me and asked if I would help him to clear up dead bodies.
Another asked if I worked for a humanitarian organization but before I could answer he looked up at the sky and shouted: ""Where is humanity?""
The situation has now reached such a critical point that doctors frequently confront dilemmas such as whether to treat the child who is bleeding to death or the baby who has severe head injuries.
While doctors ask themselves these tough questions, some politicians continue to debate whether or not we are facing a humanitarian crisis.
Since the Israeli military attacks started on Gaza, no salaries have been received and hardly any one has been able to work. Many people here depend on agricultural farming to make a living, and the Gazan population relies on these farmers to be able to eat vegetables; the blockade is allowing hardly anything in.
No farmer will go to their farmland these days. Like all of us, they fear being killed if they move out of their homes or even if they stay put.
Prices of goods are increasing by the day as they become more and more scarce.
Candles are no longer available; a much-needed item these days given the prolonged power cuts we have to endure. We started to use our torches but the batteries soon ran out and there are no batteries to be found here any more.
--- Same planet, different worlds-----
Every hour, fleeting images from around the world are brought to our TV screens. When I have electricity, I watch these scenes of people enjoying themselves and ask myself, what is the difference between them and me? Why are our lives worlds apart in spite of living on the same planet?
I wonder, are these people asking themselves the same question when they watch the horror unfold in Gaza?
The occupation has put Gaza on a drip feed; we have had just enough to keep us alive but not enough to make us feel as though we are really living - and now this.
If I make it to the end of this conflict, I want to leave the minute I am able to. I do not want my children to grow up in this environment, strangled by the occupation, familiar with the sounds of F-16 fighter jets, unable to leave the country if they need life-saving treatment.
This is not a natural disaster like the Tsunami; this is a man-made disaster that deepens while the world watches.
As the death toll continues to rise, my wife and I spend our waking hours waiting for our turn to come.
Now, at night before trying to sleep I say to her: ""Goodnight my love, see you in heaven.""
(Source: Aljazeera.com
Monday, January 12, 2009
Gaza drowning in its own blood
by Linda Heard I sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
REMEMBER the endless media coverage devoted to one abducted British toddler Madeleine McCann and the outpouring public sympathy in terms of hard cash? Remember the deserved global horror when 186 schoolchildren were murdered by terrorists in the Russian town of Beslan? People everywhere generally experience deep emotion when the life of youngsters is cut short by crime or conflict because they only have to look at their own kids to relate to the tragedy.
Yet when it comes to the children of Palestine many unconsciously channel their empathy — or lack of it — through the prism of their ideological/political affinities. They hear the word “Palestinian” and harden their hearts. Blatantly one-sided resolutions recently passed by the US Congress, which prostrates itself before Israel unconditionally, are good examples. Somehow, the members of the House and Senate are able to cast aside their own humanitarian sensitivities to enhance their standing with the pro-Israel lobby.
Almost 300 of Gaza’s children have been murdered by Israeli bombs and artillery shells. Thousands have been robbed of parents, siblings or limbs. All are severely traumatized by sights and scenes no child should ever have to witness and all are terrified by the sounds of F-16s wondering if this time deadly payloads are marked with their address.
Israeli spokespeople insist they do not target civilians but tiny Gaza is not only the most densely populated area of the world, 51 percent of its population are children.
Just think what would happen were 300 Israeli children to meet a similar fate! Would the UN Security Council take weeks to come up with a mealy-mouthed resolution destined to go unheeded then? And what would be the global reaction to the ramming of an Israeli boat carrying aid, such as the Free Gaza Movement’s vessel “Dignity”, recently forced to limp in to the Lebanese port of Tyre where its contingent of 15 international passengers, including former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, received a hero’s welcome?
Would Western television networks and newspapers relegate a Jewish tragedy to sanitized snippets and back pages? Judging from the extensive coverage given to a Palestinian attack on a Jerusalem pizza parlor in 2001 that killed 15, the answer is a firm “no”.
Israel says it is carrying out surgical strikes against Hamas militants but the fire hitting Gaza’s shoreline emanating from Israeli gunboats cannot discriminate and neither can tank shells, mortars, cluster bombs and white phosphorus. If we accept that Israel’s strikes are precise, then we must also accept the Jewish state has committed serious war crimes by bombing clearly marked ambulances, hospitals, schools and UN-run civilian refuges.
No wonder Israel has barred foreign journalists, activists and medics from entering Gaza. It does not want third-party witnesses recording its crimes or negating its weasel words carefully crafted by expert propagandists, such as Israel’s ambassador to Britain Ron Prosser and spokesman to the prime minister’s office Mark Regev — both working overtime to push the same rarely-challenged lies.
There is no doubt that the so-called international community treats Palestinians as second- or even third-class citizens without the right to freedom and access to basic human needs. Western countries and others have collaborated in subjecting Gaza to an 18-month-long siege that under international law is tantamount to a declaration of war. They have also stood by silently allowing Israel to continue its settlement expansion, land grabs and construction of an apartheid wall, ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice.
Plus, the United Nations which was responsible for Israel’s birth has not been effective in protecting Palestinian rights or upholding 35 of its own resolutions against Israel.
Many nations have designated the Palestinian resistance as “terrorist” although an occupied population has the right to self-determination under the UN Charter.
It’s absolutely true that some of the methods used by Palestinian resistance groups have been unpalatable in that civilians have been deliberately targeted in the way that Israel is doing now despite its shrill cries to the contrary.
The fact that the IAF bombed a UN school after receiving the coordinates and a house filled with displaced civilians it had told to flee exposes any pretense Israel may have to morality. And to compound its ruthlessness, Israel prevented rescue workers and ambulances from reaching the scene for four days when starving toddlers still clinging to the corpses of their mothers were discovered. Deprived of sophisticated weaponry, stripped of their rights under international law and the Geneva Conventions, besieged by the international community, blamed by the US for their own victimhood and virtually abandoned by fellow-Arabs, the Palestinians are shamefully left to starve, suffer and die.
Lastly, I would send the following message to Israel with apologies to Shakespeare for mangling The Merchant of Venice: “Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that”.
REMEMBER the endless media coverage devoted to one abducted British toddler Madeleine McCann and the outpouring public sympathy in terms of hard cash? Remember the deserved global horror when 186 schoolchildren were murdered by terrorists in the Russian town of Beslan? People everywhere generally experience deep emotion when the life of youngsters is cut short by crime or conflict because they only have to look at their own kids to relate to the tragedy.
Yet when it comes to the children of Palestine many unconsciously channel their empathy — or lack of it — through the prism of their ideological/political affinities. They hear the word “Palestinian” and harden their hearts. Blatantly one-sided resolutions recently passed by the US Congress, which prostrates itself before Israel unconditionally, are good examples. Somehow, the members of the House and Senate are able to cast aside their own humanitarian sensitivities to enhance their standing with the pro-Israel lobby.
Almost 300 of Gaza’s children have been murdered by Israeli bombs and artillery shells. Thousands have been robbed of parents, siblings or limbs. All are severely traumatized by sights and scenes no child should ever have to witness and all are terrified by the sounds of F-16s wondering if this time deadly payloads are marked with their address.
Israeli spokespeople insist they do not target civilians but tiny Gaza is not only the most densely populated area of the world, 51 percent of its population are children.
Just think what would happen were 300 Israeli children to meet a similar fate! Would the UN Security Council take weeks to come up with a mealy-mouthed resolution destined to go unheeded then? And what would be the global reaction to the ramming of an Israeli boat carrying aid, such as the Free Gaza Movement’s vessel “Dignity”, recently forced to limp in to the Lebanese port of Tyre where its contingent of 15 international passengers, including former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, received a hero’s welcome?
Would Western television networks and newspapers relegate a Jewish tragedy to sanitized snippets and back pages? Judging from the extensive coverage given to a Palestinian attack on a Jerusalem pizza parlor in 2001 that killed 15, the answer is a firm “no”.
Israel says it is carrying out surgical strikes against Hamas militants but the fire hitting Gaza’s shoreline emanating from Israeli gunboats cannot discriminate and neither can tank shells, mortars, cluster bombs and white phosphorus. If we accept that Israel’s strikes are precise, then we must also accept the Jewish state has committed serious war crimes by bombing clearly marked ambulances, hospitals, schools and UN-run civilian refuges.
No wonder Israel has barred foreign journalists, activists and medics from entering Gaza. It does not want third-party witnesses recording its crimes or negating its weasel words carefully crafted by expert propagandists, such as Israel’s ambassador to Britain Ron Prosser and spokesman to the prime minister’s office Mark Regev — both working overtime to push the same rarely-challenged lies.
There is no doubt that the so-called international community treats Palestinians as second- or even third-class citizens without the right to freedom and access to basic human needs. Western countries and others have collaborated in subjecting Gaza to an 18-month-long siege that under international law is tantamount to a declaration of war. They have also stood by silently allowing Israel to continue its settlement expansion, land grabs and construction of an apartheid wall, ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice.
Plus, the United Nations which was responsible for Israel’s birth has not been effective in protecting Palestinian rights or upholding 35 of its own resolutions against Israel.
Many nations have designated the Palestinian resistance as “terrorist” although an occupied population has the right to self-determination under the UN Charter.
It’s absolutely true that some of the methods used by Palestinian resistance groups have been unpalatable in that civilians have been deliberately targeted in the way that Israel is doing now despite its shrill cries to the contrary.
The fact that the IAF bombed a UN school after receiving the coordinates and a house filled with displaced civilians it had told to flee exposes any pretense Israel may have to morality. And to compound its ruthlessness, Israel prevented rescue workers and ambulances from reaching the scene for four days when starving toddlers still clinging to the corpses of their mothers were discovered. Deprived of sophisticated weaponry, stripped of their rights under international law and the Geneva Conventions, besieged by the international community, blamed by the US for their own victimhood and virtually abandoned by fellow-Arabs, the Palestinians are shamefully left to starve, suffer and die.
Lastly, I would send the following message to Israel with apologies to Shakespeare for mangling The Merchant of Venice: “Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that”.
On Celcom broadband a 'Malaysia Boleh' let-down
from Mkini.
Well, Celcom..you gotta improve alot..
SC Chan: As an occasional Celcom wireless broadband subscriber, I agree with the writer's comments.If I could use a layman's term to describe why there are so many dissatisfied customers, it is that the Internet service that is presently available works like an overloaded 1.5 cc Proton Saga - seven or eight passengers packed into a five-seater car.It doesn't really run - it drags because of the overload.Similarly, if the Internet service providers keep on selling the products without actually improving the supporting infrastructure and the capacity at the international gateways, what you will get in terms of service is what we are experiencing now.
For my home, I subscribe to a TM Net Streamy service and although I am quite happy with the speed, my greatest disappointment is that I can never actually access YouTube or download movies.In Korea I am told, one can download a movie in 15 to 20 minutes whereas here in Malaysia it will take a few days! What kind of Internet service are we providing in this country?In Korea Internet operates at 16M, Japan 20M but in Malaysia 2M. Malaysia Boleh?
Some time ago, The Ministry (under Dr.Lim ex-Gerakan President) said it has spend certain millions to set up our own internet hub or server... what has happen?
from Mkini.
Well, Celcom..you gotta improve alot..
SC Chan: As an occasional Celcom wireless broadband subscriber, I agree with the writer's comments.If I could use a layman's term to describe why there are so many dissatisfied customers, it is that the Internet service that is presently available works like an overloaded 1.5 cc Proton Saga - seven or eight passengers packed into a five-seater car.It doesn't really run - it drags because of the overload.Similarly, if the Internet service providers keep on selling the products without actually improving the supporting infrastructure and the capacity at the international gateways, what you will get in terms of service is what we are experiencing now.
For my home, I subscribe to a TM Net Streamy service and although I am quite happy with the speed, my greatest disappointment is that I can never actually access YouTube or download movies.In Korea I am told, one can download a movie in 15 to 20 minutes whereas here in Malaysia it will take a few days! What kind of Internet service are we providing in this country?In Korea Internet operates at 16M, Japan 20M but in Malaysia 2M. Malaysia Boleh?
Some time ago, The Ministry (under Dr.Lim ex-Gerakan President) said it has spend certain millions to set up our own internet hub or server... what has happen?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Honest Vs Ugly
This post by 5xmom is a good one..
Making money honestly versus making money with bullshits
Extract :
"Some photoshopped their income. Some boasted they made 400% more with some new program but that 400% only adds up to USD14. *slaps forehead* Then, some claimed they make thousands and yet, I don’t see what workable things they are doing."...
Well this is common, sometimes we can hardly tell which people is fake...we just need to be carefull...
Making money honestly versus making money with bullshits
Extract :
"Some photoshopped their income. Some boasted they made 400% more with some new program but that 400% only adds up to USD14. *slaps forehead* Then, some claimed they make thousands and yet, I don’t see what workable things they are doing."...
Well this is common, sometimes we can hardly tell which people is fake...we just need to be carefull...
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