A poem in memory of Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield
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- Written by Gulzar Ahmed Gulzar Ahmed
- Published: 13 January 2009 13 January 2009
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tribute to the late Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield who tragically died a few days
ago while on vacation with his family in Mexico. May the gentle rabbi enter
God's Mercy and rest in Peace, and may his family, friends and congregation
be blessed with solace and patience.
Aseel Nasir Dyck
The poem by Gulzar Ahmed in memory of Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield:
Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield
Rabbi Aryeh, we will miss you
Your face, reflected peace
Your smile, serene and calm
Your eyes, full of wisdom
Your voice, a beautiful song
In despair, you echoed hope
In doubt, you reassured
Our faith in humankind
You refurbished, you restored
Rabbi Aryeh, we will miss you
Human rights, love, and friendship
You were teaching us to care
Honesty and peace thru justice
You were coaching to be fair
We are all divine creation
Though we are of different faith
You encouraged true acceptance
You promoted interfaith
Rabbi Aryeh, we will miss you
Now you are not among us
May your essence rest in peace
We are feeling your absence
Your happy smiling face
Tell us who will teach us patience
Who will read us lovely psalms?
Who will share your gift of kindness?
Who will sing Shalom, Salaam?
Rabbi Aryeh, we will miss you
By: Gulzar Ahmed
1/12/09
Things one sees from The Hague
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- Written by Gideon Levy Gideon Levy
- Published: 13 January 2009 13 January 2009
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The questions that will beg to be asked, as cautiously as possible, are who is guilty and who is responsible. The world's exaggerated willingness to forgive Israel is liable to crack this time. The pilots and gunners, the tank crewmen and infantry soldiers, the generals and thousands who embarked on this war with their fair share of zeal will learn the extent of the evil and indiscriminate nature of their military strikes. They perhaps will not pay any price. They went to battle, but others sent them.
The public, moral and judicial test will be applied to the three Israeli statesmen who sent the Israel Defense Forces to war against a helpless population, one that did not even have a place to take refuge, in maybe the only war in history against a strip of land enclosed by a fence. Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will stand at the forefront of the guilty. Two of them are candidates for prime minister, the third is a candidate for criminal indictment.
It is inconceivable that they not be held to account for the bloodshed. Olmert is the only Israeli prime minister who sent his army to two wars of choice, all during one of the briefest terms in office. The man who made a number of courageous statements about peace late in his tenure has orchestrated no fewer than two wars. Talking peace and making war, the "moderate" and "enlightened" prime minister has been revealed as one of our greatest fomenters of war. That is how history will remember him. The "cash envelopes" crimes and "Rishon Tours" transgressions will make him look as pure as snow by comparison.
Barak, the leader of the party of the left, will bear the cost of the IDF's misdeeds under his tutelage. His account will be burdened by the bombing and shelling of population centers, the hundreds of dead and wounded women and children, the numerous targetings of medical crews, the firing of phosphorus shells at civilian areas, the shelling of a UN-run school that served as a shelter for residents who bled to death over days as the IDF prevented their evacuation by shooting and shelling. Even our siege of Gaza for a year and a half, whose ramifications are frighteningly coming into focus in this war, will accrue to him. Blow after blow, all of these count in the world of war crimes.
Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the centrist party, will be remembered as the one who pushed for, legitimized and sat silent through all these events. The woman who promised "a different kind of politics" was a full partner. This must not be forgotten.
In contrast to the claims being made otherwise, we are permitted to believe that these three leaders did not embark on war for electoral considerations. Anytime is good for war in Israel. We set out for the previous war three months after the elections, not two months before. Will Israel judge them harshly in light of the images emanating from Gaza? Highly doubtful. Barak and Livni are actually rising in the polls instead of dipping. The test awaiting these individuals will not be a local test. It is true that some international statesmen cynically applauded the blows Israel dealt. It is true America kept silent, Europe stuttered and Egypt supported, but other voices will rise out of the crackle of combat.
The first echoes can already be heard. This past weekend, the UN and the Human Rights Commission in Geneva have demanded an investigation into war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Israel. In a world in which Bosnian leaders and their counterparts from Rwanda have already been put on trial, a similar demand is likely to arise for the fomenters of this war. Israeli basketball players will not be the only ones who have to shamefully take cover in sports arenas, and senior officers who conducted this war will not be the only ones forced to hide in El Al planes lest they be arrested. This time, our most senior statesmen, the members of the war kitchen cabinet, are liable to pay a personal and national price.
I don't write these words with joy, but with sorrow and deep shame. Despite all the slack the world has cut us since as long as we can remember, despite the leniency shown toward Israel, the world might say otherwise this time. If we continue like this, maybe one day a new, special court will be established in The Hague.
Blueprint for Gaza attack was long planned
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- Written by Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada
- Published: 13 January 2009 13 January 2009
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Having struck thousands of targets from the air in the first phase, followed by a ground invasion that saw troops push into much of Gaza, a third phase would involve a significant expansion of these operations.
It would require the deployment of thousands of reserve soldiers, who are completing their training on bases in the Negev, and the destruction and seizure of built-up areas closer to the heart of Gaza City, Hamas's key stronghold. The number of civilian casualties could be expected to rise rapidly.
A fourth phase, the overthrow of Hamas and direct reoccupation of Gaza, is apparently desired neither by the army nor Israel's political leadership, which fears the economic and military costs.
An expansion of "Operation Cast Lead" is expected in the next few days should Israel decide that negotiations at the UN and elsewhere are not to its liking. Israeli warplanes have dropped leaflets warning Gaza residents of an imminent escalation: "Stay safe by following our orders."
Last week Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, warned that the army had still not exhausted its military options.
Those options have long been in preparation, as the defense minister, Ehud Barak, admitted early on in the offensive. He said he and the army had been planning the attack for at least six months. In fact, indications are that the invasion's blueprint was drawn up much earlier, probably 18 months ago.
It was then that Hamas foiled a coup plot by its chief rival, Fatah, backed by the United States. The flight of many Gazan members of Fatah to the West Bank convinced Barak that Israel's lengthy blockade of the tiny enclave alone would not bring Hamas to heel.
Barak began expanding the blockade to include shortages of electricity and fuel. It was widely assumed that this was designed to pressure the civilian population of Gaza to rebel against Hamas. However, it may also have been a central plank of Barak's military strategy: any general knows that it is easier to fight an army -- or in this case a militia -- that is tired, cold and hungry. More so if the fighters' family and friends are starving too.
A few months later, Barak's loyal deputy, Matan Vilnai, made his now infamous comment that, should the rocket fire continue, Gazans would face a "shoah" -- the Hebrew word for holocaust.
The shoah remark was quickly disowned, but at the same time Barak and his team began proposing to the cabinet tactics that could be used in a military assault.
These aggressive measures were designed to "send Gaza decades into the past," as the head of the army command in Gaza, Yoav Galant, described Israel's attack on its opening day.
The plan, as the local media noted in March, required directing artillery fire and air strikes at civilian neighborhoods from which rockets were fired, despite being a violation of international law. Legal advisers, Barak noted, were seeking ways to avoid such prohibitions, presumably in the hope the international community would turn a blind eye.
One early success on this front were the air strikes against police stations that opened the offensive and killed dozens. In international law, policemen are regarded as non-combatants -- a fact that was almost universally overlooked.
But Israel has also struck a range of patently civilian targets, including government buildings, universities, mosques and medical clinics, as well as schools. It has tried to argue, with less success, that the connection between these public institutions and Hamas, the enclave's ruler, make them legitimate targets.
A second aspect of the military strategy was to declare areas of Gaza "combat zones" in which the army would have free rein and from which residents would be expected to flee. If they did not, they would lose their civilian status and become legitimate targets.
That policy already appears to have been implemented in the form of aerial leafleting campaigns warning residents to leave such areas as Rafah and northern Gaza. In the past few days Israeli commanders have been boasting about the extreme violence they are using in these locations.
The goal in both Rafah and northern Gaza may be to ensure that they remain largely unpopulated: in the case of Rafah, to make tunneling to Egypt harder; and in the northern Strip, from which rockets have been fired at longer ranges, to ensure they do not reach Tel Aviv.
In a third phase such tactics would probably be significantly extended as the army pushed onwards. Swathes of Gaza might be declared closed military zones, with their residents effectively herded into the main population centers.
As Barak was unveiling his strategy a year ago, the interior minister, Meir Sheetrit, suggested that the army "decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it." If a third phase begins, it remains to be seen whether Israel will pursue such measures.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
This article originally appeared in The National published in Abu Dhabi and is republished with permission.
Israel and US offer differing reports on UN resolution abstention
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- Written by Ewen MacAskill in Washington Ewen MacAskill in Washington
- Published: 13 January 2009 13 January 2009
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Israel and US offer differing reports on UN resolution abstention
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert claimed he had called George Bush to override US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice
* Ewen MacAskill in Washington
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 January 2009 17.45 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/13/israelandthepalestinians-us-olmert-bush
The US and Israel offered conflicting accounts today over alleged Israeli intervention to prevent the US voting for a United Nations ceasefire resolution last week, a move that apparently left the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, humiliated.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, speaking at a meeting in Ashkelon in southern Israel last night, claimed that he had been forced to call George Bush, the US president, to override Rice. According to Olmert, Rice had been planning to vote with the other members of the security council for the resolution.
But the resolution was passed with 14 votes for, and one abstention.
Olmert, in a speech in Hebrew, is reported to have said: "When we saw that the secretary of state, for reasons we did not really understand, wanted to vote in favour of the UN resolution ... I looked for President Bush and they told me he was in Philadelphia making a speech.
"I said, 'I don't care. I have to talk to him now'. They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him. I told him, 'You can't vote in favour of this resolution.' He said, 'Listen, I don't know about it, I didn't see it, I'm not familiar with the phrasing.'"
Olmert said: "He gave an order to the secretary of state and she did not vote in favour of it - a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a resolution she arranged."
Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said today: "I've seen these press reports. They are inaccurate."
Olmert's version coincides with the one offered up by other members of the security council the day after the vote.
It is also known that Rice had been planning a press conference before the vote but abruptly cancelled it to take a call from Bush.