EU-DIGEST

Chavez Expels Israeli Ambassador Over Gaza Conflict, Labeling It "Genocide"

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday expelled Israel's ambassador to the country as he accused the Jewish nation of "genocide" against the Palestinian people. He described the Israeli army as "cowards." This as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon slammed Israel's shelling of schools run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Gaza that killed 30 people and injured dozens more as he repeated his call for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the region. In a statement released by the U.N. office in Manila, Philippines, Ban said, "These attacks by Israeli military forces which endanger U.N. facilities acting as places of refuge are totally unacceptable and must not be repeated. Equally unacceptable are any actions by militants which endanger the Palestinian civilian population."

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Venezuela

Israel Gaza Invasion - Backlash felt in Europe

Concerns grew Tuesday that the conflict in Gaza would spill over in an increasingly violent way into Europe, where attacks were reported in several countries against Jews, synagogues and related targets. In southwestern France, assailants on Monday night rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, but no one was injured. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, was also attacked Monday night by someone who "broke a window and threw in something that was burning," a police spokesman said. On Sunday, slogans, including "murderers. ... You broke the cease-fire," were daubed on Israel's Embassy in Stockholm.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Basketball game between Turkey, Israel suspended after protests over Gaza

European Basketball Cup (Group D) game between Turk Telekom and Bnei Hasharon of Israel in Ankara was suspended Tuesday due to protests in the arena against the Israeli offensive on Gaza, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported. About 30 minutes before the time the game was scheduled to start, Turkish spectators in the stadium started chanting slogans against Israel, said the report, adding that some started throwing rubbish into the basketball field. The police intervened in the uproar and forced the protestors outside of the arena, it said. Because of the chaos, Hasharon players and technical squad went to the changing room and did not return. The referees finally suspended the game and it was not clear when it will be held.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Turkey

Israel has no choice but to strike Hamas - Peter Worthington

What's unfortunate about the world-wide condemnation of Israel for invading Gaza is that there was so little condemnation of Hamas during its years of firing rockets into Israel. Had international outrage been directed at Hamas provocations, it might have dissuaded Hamas from thinking it was invulnerable to Israel's displeasure. It was the thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately at civilian targets in Israel over the years -- intensified since mid-December when the Egyptian-brokered six month ceasefire was terminated by Hamas -- that led to the air attacks and now land invasion by Israel. Despite urgings by the Pope, the UN and world leaders (including America) for a ceasefire, Israel will do what it feels it must to protect the state and its citizens. Note EU-Digest: Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "If a man hasn't found something he will die for, he isn't fit to live. Over the long haul Isreal will not win its battle against terrorists by using brute force. What the Israeli's, their US backers, Hamas and many of their supporters still don't seem to understand, is that power does not come from the barrel of a gun.

Labels: EU, Gaza, Israel. Hamas, NATO. US

50K Palestinians, Jews Marched In Tel Aviv Against Gaza War

While the IDF land forces entered into the Gaza strip and killedat least 30 people, in Tel Aviv over 50 thousand Israeli Jews and Palestinians marched to protest against the war from Rabin Square to the cinemateque.

Note EU-Digest: For anyone who has the capability to watch the Al Jazeera International TV network we recommend this station for anyone who wants to view authentic reports on the shameful massacres that are taking place in Gaza. The Al Jazeera TV network is presently the only TV network presently operating directly out of Gaza.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Iran urges Arabs to act on Gaza

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, has told the Arab League it should take action "quickly" to end the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Speaking on Wednesday as Arab ministers met in Cairo, Ahmadinejad warned that setting up committees and making speeches would not be an adequate response to the offensive that has killed nearly 400 Palestinians. "If the Arab League does not want to do anything today, when does it want to act?" he told a rally in Zahedan in southeast Iran, the Reuters news agency reported.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Israel accused of downplaying food crisis - by Tim Butcher

The director of the World Food Programme operation said she was "furious'' when she learned Israel was claiming warehouses were full of supplies. Christine van Nieuwenhuyse said WPF stocks in Gaza showed a 30 per cent shortfall of dry goods such as flour and a much greater shortfall of 'ready-to-eat' goods which are in dire need in Gaza because of the acute shortage of power and gas for cooking.
Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, speaking during a visit to Paris denied the 1.5 million-strong population of Gaza was suffering a humanitarian crisis. She was responding to calls led by France but supported by the European Union for a ceasefire in Gaza to allow a surge in humanitarian supplies.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

France condemns Israel land offensive in Gaza

France condemned Israel's move to send ground forces into the Gaza Strip on Saturday as well as continued Hamas rocket attacks and urged both Israel and the Palestinian group to accept cease-fire proposals. "France condemns the Israeli ground offensive against Gaza as it condemns the continuation of rocket firing," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "This dangerous military escalation complicates efforts by the international community and in particular the European Union and France, the members of the Quartet and the states in the region to end the fighting, bring immediate aid to civilians and reach a permanent cease-fire," the statement said.

Labels: France, Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Iran's security chief meets Hamas, Jihad leaders in Damascus over Gaza

Saeed Jalily, Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, met here Saturday with exiled Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Meshaal and Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad Ramadan Abdullah Shallah over the situation in the Gaza Strip. They discussed "the serious situations in Gaza Strip due to the continuing Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people, and the Arab and Islamic movements needed to stop this aggression and liftthe siege," said Syria's official SANA news agency. According to SANA, Jalily told reporters after the meeting that his visit to Syria is for discussing the serious situations in Gaza and ways to reach an effective Arab and Islamic stance to support the Palestinian people.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Gaza: Israel launches ground assault into Gaza - by Richard Boudreaux

Israeli troops and tanks crossed into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip this evening, widening a week-old assault aimed at halting the militant Palestinian group's rocket fire into Israel.The ground offensive, launched after a week of punishing airstrikes, is designed to take control of Hamas' rocket-launching areas, the military announced. It said tank, artillery, special operations and intelligence units were taking part.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Labels: EU, Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Iranian students signing up to fight Israel

Some 7,000 Iranian students in the city of Isfahan have volunteered to fight for Palestine against Israel while more students are signing up in Tehran, the Fars news agency said on Tuesday. On Sunday, Iran's religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree calling for a jihad against Israel for its air strikes on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip that started on Saturday leaving around 360 Palestinians dead and over 1,500 wounded. "In response to the supreme leader's orders for a jihad (holy war), students from the bassij militia are going to register . . . to go to fight in the occupied Palestinian territories," Fars cited Alireza Zahedi as saying on Monday.In response to Israeli air strikes, Palestinian militants launched over 80 rockets and mortar shells on southern Israel killing three people with over 35 others injured, some of them seriously.Iran does not officially recognize the state of Israel and finances the militant political faction Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Israel

EU foreign ministers to meet on Gaza crisis

European Union foreign ministers were set to hold an urgent meeting on Tuesday in Paris on the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip, the French foreign ministry announced. "The ministers will look into how the European Union can help ease the current crisis, along with the efforts of the international community, especially the secretary general of the United Nations," the ministry's statement said. The meeting was set to take place at 1730 GMT Tuesday and be chaired by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. Javier Solana, the EU's high representative for foreign policy and members of the European Commission were also expected to attend. It was likely to be the last major ministerial meeting before France passes on the rotating six-month EU presidency to the Czech Republic on Thursday.

Labels: EU, Gaza, Hamas, Israel

Israeli Tanks ready to roll into Gaza

For the complete report from the guardian.co.uk click on this link

In the face of Israel's latest onslaught against Hamas in Gaza- Tariq Ali

The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch. Washington, as is its wont, blames the pro-Hamas Palestinians, with Obama and Bush singing from the same AIPAC hymn sheet. The EU politicians, having observed the build-up, the siege, the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza, the targeting of civilians etc (for all the gory detail, see Harvard scholar Sara Roy's chilling essay in the London Review of Books) were convinced that it was the rocket attacks that had "provoked" Israel but called on both sides to end the violence, with nil effect.

Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. The west and Israel tried everything to secure a Fatah victory: Palestinian voters rebuffed the concerted threats and bribes of the "international community" in a campaign that saw Hamas members and other oppositionists routinely detained or assaulted by the IDF, their posters confiscated or destroyed, US and EU funds channelled into the Fatah campaign, and US congressmen announcing that Hamas should not be allowed to run.

Note EU-Digest: A lot of the above might be true, but Hamas certainly is not blameless. It has never recognized Israel as a State, never respected any ceasefire and incessantly fired rockets into Israel.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel

EU Condemns 'Unacceptable' Palestinian Deaths

The European Union's top foreign-policy official on Saturday condemned as "unacceptable" the death of Palestinian civilians in Israeli air-strikes and called for an end to violence. The death toll is now over 270. "The current Israeli strikes are inflicting an unacceptable toll on Palestinian civilians and will only worsen the humanitarian crisis as well as complicate the search for a peaceful solution," EU High Representative Javier Solana said in a statement. "I call for an immediate cessation of military actions on both sides. The EU has repeatedly condemned rocket attacks against Israel," the statement said.

Labels: EU, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Middle East

Yearender: Marked changes in world's political, economic landscape - by Sun Ruijun and Bao Erwen

The world has undergone remarkable changes this year, but international security situation on the whole remained stable with "peace" and "development" prevailing as the themes of the times. In 2008, the world has continued moving toward multi-polarization, resulting in a distinctive shift of international forces. Globalization is developing in depth and regional cooperation is gathering momentum.The world has been confronted with one hotspot issue after another and non-traditional threats are increasing. The world economic growth took a turn for the worse due to the outbreak of the global financial crisis.

The United States has been acting as the world's only superpower in 2008, but the financial turmoil, which broke out in Wall Street in September, showed its vulnerability.Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) continued to enhance its independence and influence in international affairs. In March, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said their countries share a vision of a "global Europe."

Labels: EU, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Middle East

Iran, Arab world react to Gaza bombardment - by Borzou Daragahi

Iran's highest political and religious authority made a provocative religious appeal today to Muslims worldwide, saying "true believers" were "duty-bound to defend" Palestinians suffering under two days of Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's message fell short of a call to arms amid speculation about how Tehran and other allies of Hamas would respond to the ongoing attack on the militant group's facilities in the densely packed coastal enclave. It also did not meet the definition of a fatwa, a religiously binding legal ruling. "All true believers in the world of Islam and Palestinian fighters are duty-bound to defend the defenseless women and children in Gaza Strip and those giving their lives in carrying out such a divine duty are 'martyrs,' " Khamenei said in a statement, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Middle East

Anti-Israeli protests across Europe

Protesters turned out across Europe Sunday to demonstrate against Israel's air assault on the Gaza Strip, while European leaders called on Israel and Hamas to end the bloodshed. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said this was a "dangerous moment" and called for an immediate cease-fire by both Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza. About 700 protesters descended on the Israeli embassy in London's Kensington neighborhood a day after the airstrikes on Gaza began. More than 280 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain.

Labels: EU, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Middle East

Legal fight to overturn Israel's Gaza media ban - by Roy Greenslade

Rory McCarthy wrote last week about Israel's ban on journalists entering the Gaza Strip. He reported that international media companies had sent a letter of protest to Israel's prime minister. Two days ago the Foreign Press Association (FPA) took the matter a step further by appealing to Israel's supreme court to overturn the government's ban. The court petition, which names Gaza's military commander, the defense minister and the interior minister, claims the ban constitutes "a grave and mortal blow against freedom of the press and other basic rights and gives the unpleasant feeling that the state of Israel has something to hide." The Tel Aviv-based FPA represents foreign correspondents working in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and has about 460 members from 32 countries, representing print, TV and radio. "We believe the Israeli government has an obligation to keep the Gaza border open to international journalists," says Steven Gutkin, the FPA's chairman and Jerusalem bureau chief of Associated Press. "The foreign media serve as the world's window into Gaza and it's essential that we be allowed in." Israel's defence ministry says foreign journalists will not be allowed in until Gaza militants stop shooting. But a ministry spokesman, Shlomo Dror, suggested Israel was not happy with press coverage from Gaza. "Where Gaza is concerned, our image will always be bad," he said. "When journalists go in it works against us, and when they don't go in it works against us."

Note EU-Digest: Journalists can be wrong sometimes, but they can not be wrong all the time.

Labels: Freedom of the Press, Gaza, Israel, Palestine

Israeli assault worse than a holocaust: Abbas

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday denounced a deadly Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 33 people as "more than a holocaust." "It's very regrettable that what is happening is more than a holocaust. We tell the world to see with its own eyes and judge for itself what is happening and who is carrying out international terrorism," Abbas told reporters in Ramallah. He appeared to be referring to remarks made by Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, who used the Hebrew word "shoah" -- generally used only for the Nazi Holocaust -- in remarks to army radio on Friday. "By intensifying the rocket fire and extending their reach (Gaza Palestinians) are bringing onto themselves a worse catastrophe (shoah) as we will use all means to defend ourselves," Vilnai said.

"It is regrettable that Israel uses this word, banned for more than 60 years, the word 'holocaust,' and we demand that the world respond," Abbas said.

Labels: Gaza, Israel, Palestine

EU condemns Israel's attacks on Gaza

The European Union (EU) on Sunday condemned Israel's "disproportionate use of force" against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, one day after more than 60 people were killed in a land and air blitz by Israeli forces. "The Presidency condemns the recent disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against the Palestinian population in Gaza," said a statement issued by Slovenia, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency. Israel should exercise maximum restraint and refrain from all activities that endanger civilians, said the statement, adding that such activities are "contrary to international law." The EU rejects "collective punishment" of the people in Gaza, especially innocent children, it said.

Labels: EU, Gaza, Israel, Palestine