In pictures: Conflict in Gaza

Israel has intensified its military offensive against Hamas in Gaza, a week after launching air strikes on targets across the territory.

Israeli artillery was fired into Gaza for the first time since the offensive began, hours before ground troops moved into the

As air strikes on Gaza continued, more buildings were damaged and at least 10 people were killed when a mosque was hit, local medics said.

Here, a Palestinian photographs an unexploded Israeli bomb, which landed in a house.

The continuing violence has prompted anti-Israeli protests around the world. In central London demonstrators symbolically threw shoes at the British prime minister's residence...

... while in northern Israel, thousands of Israeli Arabs marched in protest against Israel's military action.

However, at a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israelis waved their nation's flag and chanted anti-Hamas slogans.

Israeli troops 'move into Gaza'

Israeli ground troops have started to enter the Gaza Strip, Israeli military officials have confirmed, a week after the offensive against Hamas began.

Hamas leaders have warned Israel
against launching a ground offensive

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the intention was to "take control" of areas from which Palestinian militants have been firing rockets into Israel.

A BBC reporter in Gaza says it appears to be a limited operation with 10 to 15 vehicles crossing the northern border.

Earlier, Israel intensified air and artillery attacks on the territory.

In one raid, at least 13 people were killed when a missile struck a crowded mosque in Beit Lahiya, Palestinian medics said.

Witnesses said more than 200 people had been inside the Ibrahim al-Maqadna mosque for evening prayers when it was struck.

Palestinian medics and Hamas officials said they believed dozens were injured. At least one child was among the dead, they added.

Militants in Gaza meanwhile fired more rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, one of which hit the port of Ashdod, injuring two people.

Alex Jones Tv:Bolton Says Gaza Conflict May Result in U.S. Attack on Iran?

Breaking: War Breaks Out in Middle East at least 364 dead

Protest Israeli carnage in Gaza ~ Solidarity with Palestine!

Israel Accused Of Massive War Crime Atrocities

UN Professor Falk cites targeting of civilians, disproportionate military response as Obama and Pelosi express terse approval

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 29, 2008

A new IAF cockpit video shows an air strike targeted against an alleged rocket launching site located between two civilian homes, as UN Professor Richard Falk accused Israel of massive violations of international humanitarian law.

Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, listed numerous actions by Israel that clearly break the rules of engagement codified in the Geneva Conventions.

These include; collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip for the actions of relatively few militants; the indiscriminate targeting of civilians including school children and university students during air strikes, with hundreds now dead or injured; a disproportionate military response which has destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government.

Israel has also sealed off entry and exit points to the Gaza Strip, causing severe shortages of medicine, food and fuel and hampering efforts to treat victims of the bombing raids.

“Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year,” writes Falk.

Reports of civilians being targeted on both sides continue to emerge. Hamas TV broadcast a video showing injured Israeli citizens being evacuated with the words “Let them taste violent death” superimposed over skulls dripping with blood.

But the majority of war crimes have obviously been committed by the might of the Israeli military, with one report accusing the Israelis of targeting school children who were making their way home with air strikes

Meanwhile, President elect Barack Obama’s reaction to Israel’s biggest military assault on Gaza in 20 years was a nonchalant “no comment,” while Democratic leader of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed her support for the carnage by stating “When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.”

With at least 285 dead and over 800 injured so far, Obama and Pelosi’s terse approval for the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents reminds us that 2009 is unlikely to offer “change” of any kind but is likely to guarantee more war and bloodshed.

Obama: No Comment on Gaza Slaughter

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 27, 2008

Obama no longer has to placate pro-Israel voters, including no shortage of Christian Zionists, so his lack of comment on the premeditated slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza should send us a message — an Obama administration will continue the long-standing U.S. policy of allowing Israel to wantonly kill Palestinians and pay the Israeli government handsomely to do so. In 2008, the U.S. gave $20.27 billion to Israel, more than a 12 percent increase in foreign aid from 2007.

In fact, it would seem Obama is dedicated to supporting Israel, no matter how many Palestinians it slaughters or starves. “All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this,” Obama wrote in a letter to ambassador Khalilzad. “Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.”

According to the logic of Obama — or rather his neoliberal handlers — Israel was forced to bomb the densely populated Gaza and kill so far over a 150 people. As Richard Silverstein noted on January 24th of this year, Obama’s letter to the neocon and former senior political scientist at RAND, Zalmay Khalilzad, may as well have been penned by an AIPAC staffer. “In fact, that’s a very strong possibility in this instance,” as Obama, the Democrats, and no shortage of Republicans have incessantly paid tribute to the political pressure organization.

Obama had no comment on the wounding of this Palestinian child.

On cue, Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, issued profuse excuses for the carnage. “The international community understands that Hamas is an extreme Islamist organization that spreads its hatred in the entire region, which is being supported by Iran,” she said. “And the international community needs to understand that this is the translation of the right of Israel to defend itself, that there is no other alternative and we are doing what we need to do in order to defend our citizens.”

In fact, Hamas became the “threat” it is today thanks to Israel’s Mossad. “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO),” notes Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamist movement in Palestine, was eagerly supported by Prime Minister Golda Meir and the Israeli government. Yassin, after he had served his usefulness, was blown to bits by an Israeli missile.

In 2002, Richard Sale, a UPI correspondent, filed a report detailing the Israeli connection to Hamas. “The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place,” an anonymous U.S. official told Sale. The original report has since found its way to the memory hole, although it lives on elsewhere.

Democrats who thought an Obama administration would bring some balance to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are probably saddened by Obama’s apparent lack of concern for the mass murder now taking place. But then what did they expect? Obama is nothing if not window dressing for the New World Order and obviously the NWO wants the carnage to continue in Palestine. Of course, the global elite have no special love for Israel, either, and its people will be sacrificed when the time is right. Israel’s elite will do so willingly, as they have in the past, including collaborating with the Nazis, as Lenni Brenner has documented.

White House blames Hamas for violence

Associated Press
September 29, 2008

Tsafrir Abayov / AP An Israeli child lies in her bed in a bomb shelter at the Ashkelon Barzilai hospital in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, Sunday, Dec. 28. Wary of a missile strike from nearby Gaza, the largest hospital on Israel's southern coast has moved into an underground bomb shelter. View related photos

Video Israel continues to pound Gaza Dec. 29: Israel’s air force destroys symbols of Hamas power, including part of Islamic University, on the third day of its assault on Gaza. NBC’s Tom Aspell reports. Today show

Video: White House

What is Bush’s legacy? Dec. 29: Two wars abroad, an economic meltdown, and now an “all out war” in Gaza are just some of what President Bush is leaving behind, and what Barack Obama will inherit when he takes office. A political panel discusses Bush’s legacy.

Hamas in Israel’s crosshairs Crises mount for Obama's transition team Obama mum on Israel's airstrike

Video

Looking back at the historic race Nov. 5: NBC News offers a retrospective of the historic 2008 race for the White House. Nightly News

Presidential legacies

Getty Images	Harry S. Truman From the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II to the beginning of the Cold War.
AP	John F. Kennedy The Cuban missile crisis, civil rights and Vietnam dominated his short presidency.
Getty Images	Richard Nixon Astronauts walk on the moon, shootings at Kent State, meetings with Brezhnev and the Watergate scandal.
UPI via Getty Images	Ronald Reagan Cold War, war on drugs, the Challenger disaster, Beirut and Berlin bombings, and Iran-Contra scandal.
AFP - Getty Images	Bill Clinton Welfare reform, the Brady bill, Somalia, Kosovo, budget surplus and the scandals that plagued him.
AFP/Getty Images	George W. Bush A contested election, Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and economic crisis.

updated 4:23 p.m. ET Dec. 29, 2008

CRAWFORD, Texas - The White House, calling Monday for a lasting cease-fire in the Mideast, backed Israel's deadly air attacks on the Gaza Strip and said the Islamic militant group ruling there had shown its "true colors as a terrorist organization."

After Hamas, which controls Gaza, fired mortars and rockets deep into Israeli territory, Israel retaliated Saturday with a fierce bombing campaign — the deadliest against Palestinians in decades. The airstrikes, which have killed more than 360 people and wounded some 1,400 others, have enraged the Arab world.

"Right now the people of southern Israel are not able to live in peace," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Crawford, Texas, where President George W. Bush is spending time at his ranch. "They have to live in bomb shelters a lot of the time. And that's unacceptable."

Story continues below ↓

---

advertisement | your ad here

---

In Israel, 17 people have been killed in attacks from Gaza since the beginning of the year.

A six-month truce between Hamas and Israel expired earlier this month, but Hamas refused to extend it, saying Israel had violated its terms.

The U.S. urged Israel to avoid civilian deaths, yet that is difficult because bombs are falling in a tiny, crowded coastal area that is home to 1.5 million people. Johndroe expressed U.S. concern about humanitarian needs in Gaza, and said victims must be given access to food and medical supplies.

Asked if the U.S. thinks Israel is justified in its strikes on Gaza, Johndroe replied: "The United States understands that Israel needs to take actions to defend itself."

From the ranch, Bush spoke by telephone with King Abdullah of Jordan, who donated blood Monday for Gaza victims. The president, who took a call from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Saturday, also received a daily intelligence briefing via a secure video hookup and conferred with Vice President Dick Cheney, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadle.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on the phone urging various parties to back a sustainable cease-fire.

Gordon Duguid, a spokesman for Rice, said the secretary of state had called her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, five times since Dec. 26. He said Rice also has spoken with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, both of Israel; Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. She also called Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit three times and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, Duguid said.

"We are encouraging all the nations in the region to take an active part in rebuilding the cease-fire so that we can return to the relative calm that was enjoyed in the region over the past six months," he told reporters in Washington. "We are working for a cease-fire now where Hamas must stop its rocket attacks on Israel. All sides then need to respect the cease-fire."

Aides to President-elect Barack Obama said Rice and her likely successor, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, had been in contact, and that Obama would discuss the situation with Clinton and James Jones, his incoming national security adviser.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other lawmakers also expressed support for Israel's right to defend its citizens against rocket attacks from Hamas.

"As President-elect Obama has made clear time and again, no country should be forced to tolerate attacks on its people," said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J. "Hamas is abusing the people of Gaza by using their homes as a base for terror operations. The world should no longer tolerate a terrorist government in the Gaza Strip."

Hamas can choose to be a partner in peace, recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce violence, Johndroe said.

"Last week, Hamas substantially increased its rocket and mortar attacks on the people of Israel. Hamas has once again shown its true colors as a terrorist organization that refused to even recognize Israel's right to exist," Johndroe said. "In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable cease-fire."

He would not speculate on how the U.S. would react if Israel, which has amassed tanks on the Gaza border, launched a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Johndroe repeated that Obama was getting daily intelligence briefings and would continue to be kept abreast of the situation. Bush had no immediate plans to speak publicly on the latest violence.

The president had hoped there would be a peace accord before he left office, but that is far from a reality. The White House contends, however, that Bush has laid groundwork that will lead to a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, which is ruled by the moderate, West-backed Mahmoud Abbas.

"What I think is different from eight years ago is that everyone recognizes that the two-state solution is the right way forward," Johndroe said.