GAZA: We Overcame Our Fear

GAZA: We Overcame Our Fear

Guardian: We overcame our fear
By Jameela al-Shanti in Beit Hanoun


The unarmed women of the Gaza Strip have taken the lead in resisting Israel's latest bloody assault

Yesterday at dawn, the Israeli air force bombed and destroyed my home. I was the target, but instead the attack killed my sister-in-law, Nahla, a widow with eight children in her care. In the same raid Israel's artillery shelled a residential district in the town of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, leaving 19 dead and 40 injured, many killed in their beds. One family, the Athamnas, lost 16 members in the massacre: the oldest who died, Fatima, was 70; the youngest, Dima, was one; seven were children. The death toll in Beit Hanoun has passed 90 in one week.

It is not easy as a mother, sister or wife to watch those you love disappear before your eyes. Perhaps that was what helped me, and 1,500 other women, to overcome our fear and defy the Israeli curfew last Friday - and set about freeing some of our young men who were besieged in a mosque while defending us and our city against the Israeli military machine.

We faced the most powerful army in our region unarmed. The soldiers were loaded up with the latest weaponry, and we had nothing, except each other and our yearning for freedom. As we broke through the first barrier, we grew more confident, more determined to break the suffocating siege. The soldiers of Israel's so-called defence force did not hesitate to open fire on unarmed women. The sight of my close friends Ibtissam Yusuf abu Nada and Rajaa Ouda taking their last breaths, bathed in blood, will live with me for ever.

GAZA

Guardian: A Brutal Taste of the Future

The initiation of Avigdor Lieberman - widely regarded as an outright racist - into Ehud Olmert's Israeli government seems to have already brought a taste of things to come. For the past week, the Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun has been made a ground zero by the Israeli army. By yesterday, more than 260 Palestinians lay dead and injured, with 53 fatalities - women, children and ambulance drivers among them.

The Israeli army had vowed to end the firing of home-made rockets towards southern Israel. Many Palestinians disagree with the use of these makeshift rockets, but regard Israeli offensives as flagrantly disproportionate. Beit Hanoun was left with no men between the ages of 16 and 45 in the wake of a massive forced round-up by the Israeli army last Thursday night amid helicopter gunfire, tanks and artillery shelling. Women and children in the city sent urgent calls for help through Gaza's radio stations. To these jobless women, losing their men meant breakdown in their households.

On Friday morning, scores of women marched through Beit Hanoun in a spontaneous rush to aid friends and loved ones after hearing their pleas. Unarmed, they were shot at by Israeli soldiers from their tanks; two women were left dead and others severely injured. These women were said to have been heading to a mosque to free armed men who took refuge there. Television footage and interviews with witnesses show these women posed no military threat, but they were treated as such by the Israeli army without warning.

USA

NY Times: Rumsfeld Resigns; Bush Vows ‘To Find Common Ground’; Focus Is on Virginia

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 — Faced with the collapse of his Republican majority in Congress, President Bush responded swiftly on Wednesday by announcing the departure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and vowing to work with Democrats “to find common ground” on the war in Iraq and domestic issues.

With Democrats having recaptured the House and control of the Senate depending on the outcome of a single unsettled contest in Virginia, Mr. Bush, sounding alternately testy and conciliatory at a White House news conference, said he was “obviously disappointed.” He portrayed the results as a cumulative “thumping” of Republicans and conceded that as head of the party, he bore some responsibility.

USA

NY Times: Democrats Take Control of House; Senate Hangs on Virginia and Montana

Democrats seized control of the House of Representatives and defeated at least four Republican senators yesterday, riding a wave of voter discontent with President Bush and the war in Iraq.

But the fate of the Senate remained in doubt hours after the polls closed. The Democrats were still short early this morning of the six seats they need to win the Senate, as an extraordinary drama was unfolding over control of that chamber, with the race in Virginia too close to call and the race in Montana still undecided

GAZA

Haaretz: Listen to Maj. Gen. Stern
by Gideon Levy

A bloodbath is taking place in Beit Hanun, the Israel Defense Forces runs rampant and kills at least 37 people in four days - and Israeli public opinion yawns with indifference. A brigade commander tells his soldiers, who killed 12 people in one day: "You've won 12:0," and the soldiers grin broadly. This is the moral nadir we have reached, following a long slide down a slippery slope: Human life has become cheap.

SADDAM

ICH: November 5, 2006 Judgment: Statement of Saddam Hussein's Defense Lawyers

The Presiding Judge of the First Trial Panel

11/04/06 Information Clearing House

Peace be upon you,

Sub./ Finalization of the procedures of the case No.(1st.crim.2005) – "the so-called Dujail case"

It has been reported that the Court will issue its judgment in the above-mentioned case on November 5, 2006. We want to state the following:

1- The due procedures of this case have not completed in order for a sentence to be announced according to article no. (156) of the (Iraqi) Civil Procedural Law. The Court has not yet received the final defense submissions, which have already been handed to it. Although one of our (protected) colleagues was delegated by the Defense Committee and by his other colleagues to submit our submissions to the Court, in compliance with the decision of the same court in its session no. (39) Of July 27, 2006, which provides that the Court will "admit the deposition of the defense lawyer's and their client's submissions during the adjournment period of time, which ends on the 16th of October 2006. Our delegated colleague has done the following to this end:

SADDAM

Al-Jazeera: Saddam Hussein sentenced to hang

Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, has been sentenced to death by a Baghdad court after being found guilty of crimes against humanity.

When the judge announced the sentence, Saddam appeared shaken.

However he soon recovered and shouted: "Allahu Akbar!" [God is greatest] and "Long live the nation!"

Saddam was found guilty by the Iraqi High Tribunal for ordering the killing of 148 Shia civilians in the town of Dujail in 1982.

AMERICAN GULAG

AP: U.S. says terror suspect shouldn't talk to civilian lawyer
By Associated Press

11/05/06 WASHINGTON (AP) — A suspected terrorist who spent years in a secret CIA prison should not be allowed to speak to a civilian attorney, the Bush administration argues, because he could reveal the agency's closely guarded interrogation techniques.
Human rights groups have questioned the CIA's methods for questioning suspects, especially following the passage of a bill last month that authorized the use of harsh — but undefined — interrogation tactics.

"Improper disclosure of other operational details, such as interrogation methods, could also enable terrorist organizations and operatives to adapt their training to counter such methods, thereby obstructing the CIA's ability to obtain vital intelligence that could disrupt future planned terrorist attacks," the Justice Department wrote.

"I suspect that a Terrorist training to hold his breath in adaption to their new Torture methods is not what they are fearing in first place. They try to cover up stories about Americans torturing like Saddam out of fear of a new Abu-Ghraib like PR-Armageddon"

IRAQ

The Independent: Bush & Blair: The Iraq fantasy
by Patrick Cockburn

Neither will admit that Iraq is a disaster. But while their state of denial may cost votes in Washington and London, on the frontline in the Middle East, it continues to cost lives

"When does the incompetence end and the crime begin?" asked an appalled German Chancellor in the First World War when the German army commander said he intended to resume his bloody and doomed assaults on the French fortress city of Verdun