Gaza Freedom March

Marchers from different countries are trying to enter Gaza from Egypt to protest Israel's blockade and wars, to commemorate Israel's 2008 invasion of Gaza and killing of over 1000 civilians, and to deliver food to Gaza.

Website of the Gaza Freedom March

The world has failed Gaza over Israeli blockade

The aid agencies condemn not just Israel, but the world community.

In the words of Oxfam's director, Jeremy Hobbs, "world powers have failed and betrayed Gaza's ordinary citizens".

The charities call for more pressure to be exerted on Israel to end what they describe as its illegal collective punishment of Gazans.

ISRAEL ADMITS HARVESTING PALESTINIAN ORGANS

Few months ago, the story provoked Israel's outrage calling the journalist who published it 'anti-Semite' and asking Sweden, the journalist's country to apologize and retract the story with the full blown outrage reaching diplomatic relations.

Now it turns out that part of the story is at least true, by Israel's admission. Shame on the people whose parents are survivors of Nazi Germany and Nazi Medicine, they did not learn a thing from Nuremberg...

Gaza: Childhood in ruins

More than 1,400 Gazans were killed in the 23 days of the Israeli assault, including several hundred children. The actual number is in dispute. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) documented 313 deaths, almost 40% of them less than 10 years old. Other Palestinian groups say the toll was much higher. More than 1,600 children were injured.

But the 23-day war is only part of the story. The long history of Israeli assaults on Gaza, and the two-and-a-half-year-long blockade of the territory after Hamas took power, has exacted a toll on almost every aspect of children's lives: schooling, housing, leisure time, what they eat, what they wear, how they see the future.

A Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) survey earlier this year found that about 75% of children over the age of six were suffering from one or more symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Almost one in 10 ticked off every criteria.

"The majority of children suffer many psychological and social consequences," says Dr Hasan Zeyada, a psychologist with GCMHP. "Insecurity and feelings of helplessness and powerlessness are overwhelming. We observed children becoming more anxious – sleep disturbances, nightmares, night terror, regressive behaviour such as clinging to parents, bed wetting, becoming more restless and hyperactive, refusal to sleep alone, all the time wanting to be with their parents, overwhelmed by fears and worries. Some start to be more aggressive."

Dr Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet, professor of psychiatry at al-Quds university in Gaza, says the conflict has a different impact on boys and girls. "Girls have more anxiety and depression, boys are more hyperactive."

Some children no longer look on their homes as a place of safety, security and comfort. Others don't even have a home to go to. The Israeli bombardment damaged or destroyed more than 20,000 houses, forcing some families into tents and others into crowding in with relatives. Hamas distributed money to displaced families to rebuild their homes but the Israeli blockade has created a desperate shortage of materials. Almost one year later, some children still have no roof over their head.

Hanan Attar, a slight 10-year-old wearing flip-flops several sizes too big for her small feet, is wistful as she recalls the house destroyed by an Israeli tank shell. "We had land, my father is a farmer," she says. "We used to grow watermelons, but the land was too close to the border and we can't get there now."

Home is now a tent on a patch of scrubby sand, shared by 10 members of her family, including a 50-day-old baby sister with a pinched face and a tin of formula milk perched on her rusting iron crib. The baby, Haneen, is seriously underweight at only 3kg, and is not growing. Her mother, Arfa, 40, cannot breastfeed because she is taking medication for back problems; the formula costs 45 shekels (£7.50) a tin, money that the family has to borrow. The father, too, is sick as well as unemployed. He reaches on top of a tall fridge that dominates the tent to pull down a sheaf of x-rays showing how his leg, broken in the conflict, is pinned together with metal.

Click on the title to read more from The Guardian

UK labeling supermarket food from illegal west bank settlements as 'Israeli settlements produce'

Britain has acted to increase pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements by advising UK supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods...

EU law already requires a distinction to be made between goods originating in Israel and those from the occupied territories, though pro-Palestinian campaigners say this is not always observed.

Separately, Defra said that traders would be committing an offence if they did declare produce from the occupied territories as "Produce of Israel".

Foods grown in Israeli settlements include herbs sold in supermarkets, such as Waitrose, which chop, package and label them as "West Bank" produce, making no distinction between Israelis and Palestinians. A total of 27 Israeli firms operating in settlements and exporting to the UK have been identified: their produce includes fruit, vegetables, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, plastic and metal items and textiles.

To read more of the story follow the link in the title...

Israel and Human Rights

The endless discriminations written as law contradict Israel's self selling image as the only democracy in the middle east. Democracy meaning respect for Human Rights...This is being judged on Israel's treatment of its own citizens. And we are not talking yet about the disregard Israel has for international law...

The Obama Afghan surge: a decision more political than strategic

An article worth reading. And now Obama is trying to save his presidency while putting more troops in harm's way for nothing else than his political survival...