Life is grim in Gaza. According to a report (.pdf) published today by eight human rights NGOs based in the UK, including Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save The Children UK, "[t]he situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967."

In the Ohio debate, moderator Tim Russert tried to divide black and jewish interests by raising Nation of Islam boogie man Louis Farrakhan's recent endorsement of Obama.  Obama handled it deftly, pointing out that historically - and particularly in the civil rights movements - jews and people of color have always been aligned, and that he's continuing that tradition.

But this begs the question: 40 years after US jews helped win the civil rights movement, will Obama represent the AIPAC lobby's and the Israeli government's right wingers, or the mainstream jewish progressives in the US and Israel who've always fought for equal civil rights - even for Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians - and against apartheid?

More sharply: should Obama condemn collective punishment of civilians whether it's done by Al Qaeda, Hamas, or - in Gaza and Lebanon - by Israel?

Breaking: as I completed this diary, Israel's own Deputy Defense Minister began describing its attacks on Gaza as a deliberate, escalating "holocaust".

Olmert has called upon the world to impose much harsher sanctions against Iran. He has even flown to Japan where he will meet with Rice (the Condoleeza one) to discuss the issue, perhaps even how best to bomb Iran with nuclear weapons. How cosy!

Now look, I know I have on occasion been somewhat critical of Israel and its leaders but this really does take the cake. Here we have a country that has turned ignoring U.N. Resolutions and the Geneva Convention into an art form, who has, for forty plus years carried out a brutal, illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories, crying wolf. During this period collective punishment, genocide and the building of settlements has occurred on a daily basis.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have an arsenal of atomic/nuclear weapons (acquired by stealth) and it has currently got the Gaza Strip under a complete blockade which has resulted in the deaths of many Palestinians who can’t get proper medical care or fuel supplies. Yet here is Olmert, braying like a donkey caught in quicksand, because Iran might be following in Israel’s heavy, radio-active footsteps re atomic weapons.

Over half the population of the Gaza Strip has left for Egypt in the past three days, a stark illustration of the extent of the deprivation imposed on them by the Israeli government and the "international community". When Palestinians smashed through the wall separating Gaza from Egypt earlier this week, liberating themselves from Israel's brutal siege, the reactions around the world were quite interesting. Far from expressing joy and exhilaration at the sight of hundreds of thousands of starved Palestinians flooding out of the Gaza prison camp, enjoying what for many of them was the first taste of freedom in their lives, one could instead sense a tangible whiff of fear and even panic underlying much commentary on the breakout.

After being subjected to almost two years of relentless economic siege and vicious military assault, the 1.5 million residents of Gaza are on the brink of collapse. Israel is apparently determined to push them over the edge.

Suppose I were to argue that, given Israel's numerous and gross war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the international community should impose sanctions on Israel of such severity that 80% of the Israeli population would be reduced to reliance upon UN food aid for mere survival, and over 65% of Israeli households would be forced to live in 'deep poverty' (i.e. on less than $474 per month). The blockade would be so tight that only 41% of Israel's food import needs would be met, and supplies of 91 out of 416 essential drugs and about a third of essential medical supplies (including most children's antibiotics) would run out.

Last week Israel's Supreme Court gave it's approval to of cuts in Gaza's fuel supply (75% since June) in doing so it endorsed a scheeme for the collective punishment of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza for the criminal actions of militants

Gaza faces fuel shortage, heading towards crisis

JERUSALEM: Gaza Strip is heading towards a major humanitarian crisis with Palestinian fuel companies refusing to accept scaled down Israeli fuel supplies following an Israeli Supreme Court decision.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled last week that the state could limit fuel supplies to the Hamas-ruled coastal territory to pressurise Palestinian militant factions to stop firing rockets on Jewish communities, but has meanwhile blocked a similar plan to cut electricity supply asking the state to present a detailed plan.

So it seems that future electrical cuts for Gaza are still being worked out. Of course take into account that the only power plant in Gaza (that supplies 40% of Gaza’s electricity) needs fuel from Gaza’s reduced supply as well.

Israel's government has cut off much of the fuel supply that the 1.5 million residents of Gaza depend on.

An official from the European Union, which funds fuel oil to Gaza's only electricity generating plant, said that pumping of this product had stopped from the Israeli side with about a quarter of the day's planned supply undelivered.

An association for fuel merchants in Gaza said only about half the day's expected deliveries of petrol and diesel had been made and that the Israeli supply company had told customers that it was acting on orders from Israel's Defense ministry.

Palestinians say Israel cuts Gaza fuel supply

This comes on the heels of Thursday's announcement by Defense Minister Ehud Barak of a reduction of Israel's electricity supplies to Gaza.

These moves by Israel's government are meant to further punish the 1.5 million residents of Gaza for attacks made by militant groups using crude homemade rockets. The unstated goal is to destroy the ecomomy of Gaza in order to punish Gazans for voting for Hamas in a democratic election.

As such these actions constitute collective punishment of Gaza's poipulation, a WAR CRIME under international law.

"Almost God." Except that God is supposedly just. Now we have Israel cutting off electricity and food supplies to the people and families residing in Gaza in retaliation for rockets fired into Israel from the same area. The Israeli government justifies these measures as necessary security to put an end to the rockets, stating that families in Gaza "harbor" the "terrorists" who shot the rockets in the first place.

Congratulations, Israel. You have the power to confer life and death. And what better way to show off that power, and thus impress and hence deter your enemies, than by giving the civilian population under your thumb a slow "almost death", plunging them into the nether world of neither being exactly alive nor being exactly dead?

When confronted with the scale of the carnage wrought upon the civilians and civilian infrastructure of southern Lebanon last year, the Israeli government and its apologists typically resort to the following line: 'we had to do it, because Hizbullah kept hiding behind civilians' (it should be noted here that Israel is in no moral position whatsoever to complain about other people using human shields). "Hiding behind civilians" - this became the standard media narrative for explaining how the Hizbullah's tactics placed Israel in a difficult position with regards to killing civilians, which surely represents a significant success for the Israeli propaganda machine.

The EU earlier this week affirmed that it would continue to uphold its boycott of the Palestinian national unity government. EU Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana explained, "I have to say that this government does not comply fully with the [Quartet] principles". U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said,

"I’m not going to try to interpret what the right of resistance means but I’ll tell you it doesn’t sound very good to me when one talks about ‘all forms of resistance’...

So I would put the question to the Palestinian government and to its prime minister - do you mean the right of resistance by violence? And let’s get an answer."

If you missed The Washington Post's incredible expose on the horrific conditions at Walter Reed, go read it. It's a brilliant if depressing, piece of  reporting that will likely make you mad as hell, but appreciate just how valuable the MSM can be when it wants to .

For a brief moment it also looked like  one of those news stories that really made a difference for those involved.  Angry lawmakers began asking pointed questions and indignant Pentagon brass, fought for microphone space to proclaim their outrage and promise to thoroughly investigate what went wrong and  fix it immediately

Well, that was last week.   This week, out of the white hot glare of the spotlight, the Army has quietly reverted to its bad old ways and  Launched a campaign, not to address the problems but  to punish the wounded soldiers for speaking out, and cut off the media's access to them  

Operation STFU  aka Operation Shoot the Messenger is has begun:

I read this story a couple days ago. I was so upset it's taken me till today to attempt to write a diary.

"I am a Bedouin from the Negev, my family and I was expelled, and we are living in Kafer Qassim after Israel issued a military order annexing all of the agricultural lands to use them for military proposes," he added.

snip

The Israeli Interior Ministry ordered the demolition of more than 42,000 homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev desert.

YES....42,000 homes.

http://www.aljazeera.com/...

Visiting Venezuela President Hugo Chavez has denounced Israel's recent attacks on Lebanon as "genocide," likening its action to war crimes committed by Germany's Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

"Israel often criticizes Hitler ... but they have done the same thing, perhaps even worse," Chavez told reporters Friday in a briefing during his six-day visit to China.

The war has been a sobering experience for many in Washington and Tel Aviv. Let's hope it has been sobering enough to generate a better connection, at the highest levels, to the reality of the limits and price of war.

Press Coverage of Civilian Casualties:

AP/Yahoo

AP very likely is providing the Lebanese health ministry total deaths figure in its main article, "Hezbollah claims victory against Israel." Using the now four-day-old figures on civilian and overall deaths in Lebanon - and it is wrong for AP not to be providing the breakdown - the math for a best estimate looks like this: 628 x 791?/ 715 = 694.75

Lebanon said nearly 791 people were killed in the fighting. Israel said 116 soldiers and 39 civilians died in combat or from Hezbollah rockets.

http://news.yahoo.com/...

Sitting in London or New York, the news that Gaza lost 151 souls, most of them civilians, last month to Israeli bombs and bullets passes us by. It is after all just a number, even if a high one. At best, a number like that from a place we don't know, suffered by a people whose names we can't pronounce, makes us pause, even sigh with regret. ...

... This month it is Lebanon. Next month it will probably be Iran. Then maybe it will be back to Baghdad or the Palestinians. The horror stories sound so much less significant, the need for action so less pressing, when each is unrelated to the next. Were we to watch the Arab channels, where all the blood and suffering blends into a single terrible Middle Eastern epic, we might start to make connections, and maybe suspect that none of this happens by accident.

Jonathan Cook, at http://counterpunch.org/... see more in the P.S.

Press Coverage of Civilian Casualties: