Report:
Israel Forced Civilians Into Single House, Repeatedly
Bombed It

UN Details Latest Gaza Incident as Death Toll Passes 800

Posted
January 9, 2009

Israeli
ground troops ordered around 110 Palestinian civilians into a single home in Gaza City’s
Zeitun neighborhood and ordered them to stay indoors
on Sunday. On
Monday morning, Israeli forces repeatedly shelled the building, killing at least
30 of the civilians inside. It then refused to allow ambulances to retrieve
the dead and dying people for days.

This was
the report released by the United Nations today based on eyewitness accounts
from the survivors, and just the latest in an ever growing list of Israeli
attacks on the civilian population of Gaza.
Over the first two weeks of the Israeli attack, at
least 800 people have been killed, and another 3,300 have been wounded. The
vast majority of the strip has
been without electricity since then, and a growing percentage are without
clean water and dependent on intermittent humanitarian aid shipments for other
basic necessities.

Israel
has refused to comment on the latest allegations, but the United States
defending the growing civilian toll, with Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice saying that in such a densely populated area it
is really hard for Israel to avoid what it has been doing, which is killing
scores of civilians on a near daily basis. Though Rice attributed the civilian
toll to Hamas using them as human shields, there was one again no indication
that these civilians, though directly attacked, were anywhere near any Hamas
targets.

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compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

Tight Censorship Working in Israel’s Favor

January
9th, 2009

Following
in the footsteps of the United
States’ efforts to discourage reporting in its assorted wars outside of
an embedded scenario, the Israeli government has taken the strategy to
unprecedented levels in the modern era.

While the
United States had the disadvantage of fighting its recent wars in massive
countries with porous borders, Israel has the advantage of launching its
offensive in a tiny enclave which it has had a
lot of practice in keeping people and goods from entering and leaving.

The
results are staggering: the only foreign media in the strip is a handful of
Arabic-language reporters who were there before the war started, while hundreds
of other journalists who flocked to Israel to report on the war have remained
there, complaining
more perhaps than the Israeli government would prefer, but dutifully
remaining on the Israeli side, covering the rocket fire and remaining safely
insulated from the
thousands of civilian casualties just miles away.

Even
while they are stuck in Israel, the reporters have largely obeyed the new
military censorship laws, with the only reported case of someone violating the
orders being
quietly detained for spreading “confidential information”
against the government’s will.

Israel
is quite pleased with the results, which may set a dangerous precedent for future wartime censorship
not just by their government, but for America and any other nation that
hopes to manage its image while causing enormous
civilian death tolls. Protests are omnipresent but relatively small, and
western governments remain reluctant to publicly criticize even Israel’s most
blatant violations of international law. With little public outcry, the United States
government has
felt comfortable praising and defending the war.

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]