Palestinian injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza
Date: 10 / 07 / 2006 Time: 22:07



Salfit- Gaza- Ma'an- The Palestinian ministry of health revealed on Monday that the Israeli army has used a new type of explosive in its offensive on the Gaza Strip. These explosives contain toxics and radioactive materials which burn and tear the victim's body from the inside and leave long term deformations.

The ministry called upon the international community and the humanitarian organizations to send an international medical community to examine the victims and confirm the truth about these banned weapons that Israel appears to be using.

The ministry showed that most of the injuries which the hospitals receive result from huge explosions which cause burning and severing of limbs, including the inner parts of the body. This causes long term deformations.

It is added that doctors in Gaza have been forced to amputate limbs of at least 12 injured Palestinians as a result of injuries sustained in the current Israeli offensive on the Strip.

see photo in Gallery - Gaza Child

"Self Defense is better than no excuse at all! Or Proportionality!"
by Dr. Mary Ethridge
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"" On Saturday, the United Nations accused Israel of killing innocent Palestinian civilians and causing widespread hardship to the population of Gaza.

Yitzhak Herzog, the Israeli cabinet secretary, responded on Sunday, saying: "Anybody who calls this operation disproportionate has no clue about the facts on the ground. We have been attacked and bombarded for months and weeks.

"With all due respect to all those who criticise us, if anything of this nature would have happened in their homeland, they would have acted much worse." ""Sunday 09 July 2006, 16:48 Makka Time, 13:48 GMT Al Jazeera.net
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Well if Israel wants facts on the ground and the moral right to use heavy artillery for weeks, continual air strikes for months on ends and into years, incursions with tanks, and undercover operative assignation and kidnapping people from their homes....... Then let Palestine have an Army, Navy, and Air force with equal capabilities.

Then go at it.

Until then.... There is no proportionate response. Not either way. Gaza is a quaint but lovely mixture of cars, Internet users, TVs and donkey carts. Their most common weapon is stones but they do have rifles, RPGs, homemade rockets without any sort of guidance system so if they hurt or kill someone it is a happy accident for the one who shot it off. Something like 8 deaths by Kassams in 6 years. And of course there is the now and then suicide bomber motivated by the utter hate and despair that incursions like the current one inspire.

Proportionate? Cut Israel down to equal numbers and equal arms and see how it goes. Cut Israel's income off, food sources off, and medical supplies cut to an insufficient trickle..... Stop their sleep for weeks with constant day and night shelling, kill a handful of Israeli's per day and be sure to include some women and children in each week. Make every home a potential habitat for bulldozer activity or subject to seizure as a military command post or sniper post. Tear out walls, windows and floor, crap in the cookware, steal the money and jewelry, and destroy the rest of the possessions in the home each time one is used. Take over or destroy all income potential without concern if it is trees, vines, farms, cattle and sheep, or factory. If Israel will not come down to equal in ability to wage war them let them arm Palestine to equality.

Let Palestinians fly over Israel with drones hunting men known or unknown and shoot them down in the streets. Let them come in helicopter gun ships armed with missile’s and automatic machine guns. Allow Palestinians to pound Israel with day and night artillery fire from all directions and be sure to hit a fair ratio of private homes... take what you get for casualties. Let Palestine raid Israel for men who have killed or planned attacks on Palestinians. There is no short supply of them. Every man and woman who has born arms in the occupied territories should face imprisonment in, as good as they give, equal prison conditions. And on the subject don't forget a proportional amount should be under Administrative Detention. No charges pending or even contemplated and no excuses either. If Palestinians want to lock Jews up... do it! Just like Israel does to Palestinians. And do not forget torture! It is part and parcel of the prison experience in an Israeli prison so it must be practiced even if you have to find secular men to do. Sorry guys but Islam just won't work in proportionality. No honor allowed. Israel has none so you'll have to set yours aside.

When you can show me proportionality..... I'll say have a happy war!

I'll quite writing anti Israeli articles and poetry and blogs and let ya'll go at it.

see picture in gallery---
GAZA, July 9, 2006 (WAFA) - Five citizens, including a girl child, were wounded were wounded in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, medical sources reported Sunday.

The sources affirmed that an Israeli aircraft fired a missile on a car driving in Salah al-Deen Street in Gaza, wounding five citizens, including a girl and an old woman.

Witnesses said the raid was an assassination attempt, but, it seems, the targeted people survived.

The picture I saw over and over yestereday as I searched for news of the "incursion" in Gaza will play in my mind forever. It was in Maan News and on Al Jazeera and more. He was everywhere it seemed. I wish Israel could look into his sweet child face and see what thay have done.

In His Father's Arms
Dr. Mary

to every child martyr of the Intifada

I saw him today
in his father's arms
those arms that held him with tender love
those hands held his as he learned to walk
and sometimes those hands
played and tickled him too
those same arms held him as he sat
squirming and wiggling on his Father's knee
while they looked in love at eachother
and shared laughter and smiles

I saw him today
in his father's arms
he was so still and it broke my heart
those arms carried him away from the enemy
but it was too late
those hands will meet last needs
those arms will soon be empty
he was too still in those loving arms
his eyes were closed into forever
it was fathers eyes that were expressive

I saw him today
in his father's arms
I could not look any longer at his sweet child face
his clothing was rumpled and dirty
as any little boy by rights should be
but he was so very still
his little boy mischief was gone
his hair lay in beautiful ringlets
his little boy hands hung limp
the empty pain in his father's eyes broke my heart

I saw him today
in his father's arms
his clothing covered in blood
his father's expression far past anguish
he walked down the streets of his home town
there is just one more journey ahead
a little boy on his way to a bath
then the walk to the place where he will rest
In forever he will know joy
He'll interceed for his mother to the end of her time

I saw him today
in the arms of his father
in my mind I will never forget the pain
in the eyes of that father forever
his arms are already empty
that moment comes far too soon
when we lay to rest a child of our heart
he could not save him
he would if he could
but he hurried him away from the danger

one last time in his father's arms

This is not a test but a real declaration of support for Palestine as a free and independent nation. They haven't arrived there yet but it is the dream and desire of every Palestinian. Like air to breath they too need a homeland and a place to be and to live and to have joy and opportunities. What they have for now is a walled in, open air, prison site thanks to Israeli Illegal occupation.

America should have been helping to achieve independence but instead has been supporting Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Gaza Strip for the past 39 years.

Israel has killed, arrested, imprisoned and impoverished this predominately refugee group with impunity. They have tried valiantly to defend themselves with rifles, RPG's, home made rockets without any form of guidance system or long range, and of course the infamous rocks that women and children throw in utter frustration.

Israeli forces enter homes and destroy them making command posts with holes or missing walls for firing from. They come as undercover, disguised, agents to take men, teenagers, women and even younger children from their homes and families and imprison them. Often it is without charges so it is what seems to be unending administrative detention that can be renewed again and again without showing cause at all. Torture is a well-known component of the Israeli prison system and meals are often scanty and medical care scarce. Money for extras is essential to healthy survival.

Palestine, as an occupied land, has every legal right to defend itself BUT no one has stood by Palestine to allow a real defense. Any attempt to defend herself or her people has been condemned as terrorism while Israeli oppression, destruction, and killing has been hailed as defending herself. It is not uncommon for IOF soldiers to kill unarmed prisoners who have been stripped to their underwear. It is also not too uncommon to find that children are targets for their sharpshooters and for aggressive settlers squatting on stolen lands.

It is the children of Palestine who suffer the most. Sound bombs, sonic booms day and night destroy peace and rest. Add to that the recent weeks of artillery shelling and deaths and you have added terror day and night to their lives. Many of the dead and wounded in the shelling of the homes, have been children and their parents.

The closing of the crossings off and on for most of this year has stopped the import of food and necessities and the export of produce to bring incomes so you have the formula for starvation and malnutrition. Even the UN supplies are often stopped, so relief is impossible.

Medical supplies have been in critically short supply this year and frozen monetary transferees stopped salaries for months. Thanks Israel and USA for attempting to wipeout an ancient and determined people. They will persevere inspite of you. You will and have killed some but you have not broken their spirit and desire for 59 years. You have not stopped their attempts to defend themselves even if all they often have is rocks against tanks.

America supplies Money and armament to Israel. She is flying Apache Helicopters and F16's against people in cars and donkey carts. Unmanned drones fly overhead raining death and destruction on a civilian population with no army to defend it.

The past almost 2 weeks have brought out the tanks, again. Death and suffering increased exponentially and so does the hatred. You light a greater fire with the increase of your use of power. Palestine burns, and the hearts of many that have eyes that are being opened to what is indeed happening, burn also.

Viva Palestine!