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Another Israeli Spokeswoman Says 'We Control Stupid Americans' "Another Israeli spokeswoman, Tzipora Menache, stated that she was not worried about negative ramifications the Israeli onslaught on Gaza might have on the way the Obama administration would view Israel. She said 'You know very well, and the stupid Americans know equally well, that we control their government, irrespective of who sits in the White House. You see, I know it and you know it that no American president can be in a position to challenge us even if we do the unthinkable. What can they (Americans) do to us? We control congress, we control the media, we control show biz, and we control everything in America. In America you can criticize God, but you can't criticize Israel." Commenting on the latest Israeli one-directional onslaught against the Palestinians of Gaza Strip, the Israeli 10th TV channel has disclosed that the Israeli genocidal forces had used half of its air force and had ...

The Israeli army's chief rabbi has been critcised over a controversial booklet distributed to soldiers before the war on Gaza suggesting that they can ignore the rules of war concerning civilians. > Gaza villages Wiped off the map Another excellent report by Jonathan Miller. Telling the story of destruction and killing in Gaza.

"For us, being cautious means being aggressive," one IDF officer told IPS , "When we suspect that a Palestinian fighter is hiding in a house, we shoot it with a missile and then with two tank shells, and then a bulldozer hits the wall. It causes damage but it prevents the loss of life among soldiers." Due to the significant loss of military lives in the Lebanon war, Israeli military planners took into account the effect on Israeli morale and support during the war on Gaza. "From the minute we entered, we've acted like we're at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground," the officer continued. In addition to so-called military targets, the IDF has bombed clearly marked UN buildings such as hospitals and several schools which has lead to many women and children - non-combatants - being massacred for doing nothing more than trying to shelter and hide from the fighting. These buildings were shelled even though the UN had clearly given the IDF...

If any doubt remained that the United Nations is in need of drastic reform, it has to have been evaporated by the Security Council's "activities" since the beginning of Israel's brutal offensive against the Gaza Strip on December 27 . During this time, the council has failed utterly to act in a manner befitting the urgency due a civilian bloodbath, repeatedly delaying action aimed at ending the crisis and initially producing a weak "statement" when a firm resolution was obviously required . Representatives of various member states have alternately sulked and dithered, leaked nasty comments about one another to the media, threatened to walk out, and even sought additional delays. And after a decidedly watery resolution finally was arrived at late Thursday night in New York, both Israel and Gaza's Hamas leadership dismissed it within hours . For an organization whose resolutions are known to languish for decades awaiting implementation, wasting a couple of...

The current uproar in Arab streets might not be of any direct help to Gazans but it draws battle lines between the masses and their regimes, notes Sherine Bahaa "Arabs are a vocal phenomenon," said former Israeli minister of defence Moshe Dayan disdainfully shortly after the Arab defeat in 1967. Five consecutive days of round-the-clock raids on densely populated Gaza, which has been under tough sanctions for the past 18 months, pushed the number of martyrs approximately 400 and two thousand wounded. But are these figures high enough to trigger a real reaction? "How many shaheed (martyrs) are enough for Arab rulers to retaliate to the Israeli massacres," a Syrian young man was shouting during a demonstration beside Al-Yarmouk refugee camp. A Yemeni protester who rushed into one of the demonstrations that filled the streets of Sanaa less than two hours after the first raid said, "this is not just an invasion of Gaza; it is an invasion of all Arab states and a d...