Israeli attack – deaths – home demolition: Northern Gaza – Israeli Occupation tanks destroyed a house near the Hijazi clinic in Jabalya, killing two civilians and destroying the house.

Israeli attack – child & adult deaths - injuries: Northern Gaza – 15:00, Israeli tanks shelled houses in the Jabalya districts of Al Jorn and Abu Shbak, killing a child and three adults and injuring two other people.

Israeli attack: Northern Gaza – midnight, the Israeli Army shelled the district of Al Atatrah in Beit Lahiya.

Israeli attack – child deaths – including baby: Gaza – morning, Israeli tanks shelled a house in the district of Tal Al Hawa, killing a baby and another child.

Israeli attack – deaths: Gaza – 18:00, Israeli tanks shelled houses in the Al-Shuja’iya district, killing two civilians.

Israeli attack – death – injuries – damage: Gaza – 02:00, the Israeli Army shelled the districts of At Tufah and Az Zaytoun, killing a civilian in At Tufah and injuring a number of other people in Az Zaytoun. Many houses and apartment blocks were damaged.

Israeli attack: Gaza – dawn, the Israeli Navy fired missiles at houses in the district of Ash Shaikh Ejleen.

Israeli attack – injuries: Khan Yunis – 09:20, the Israeli Army shelled houses in Al Qarara, killing two people and injuring 12 others, some critically.

Israeli attack – home invasions – vandalism: Jenin – 01:30, Israeli troops raided the town of Qabatiya and fired stun grenades while searching houses. One resident was taken prisoner.

Israeli attack – injury: Qalqilya – 17:35, troops manning Israel's annexation Wall near Jayus shot and wounded a man, Husam Mithqal Shamasneh, outside his house.

Israeli attack: Hebron – 20:30, the Israeli Army fired flares from a sniper post set up at the entrance to the town of Idhna.   

Killings & deaths: Northern Gaza – Shaibub Shammari from the town of Beit Hanun died of serious injuries.

Killings & deaths: Northern Gaza – in Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya the Israeli Army killed the following children and youngsters: 12-year-old Haytham Yaser Ma’rouf, 16-year-old Fatimah Muhammad Rushdi Ma’rouf, 16-year-old Khawlah Ahmad Ramadan Gubon and her 14-year-old sister, Sahar Ahmad Ramadan Gubon, and 16-year-old Jihan Yaser Ma’rouf.

Killings & deaths: Northern Gaza – Israeli forces killed a journalist, Jalal Shahwan.

Killings & deaths: Northern Gaza – In Jabalya the Israeli Army killed 15-year-old Amal Najib Alloush and three adults.

Killings & deaths: Gaza – the Israeli Army killed in Tal Al Hawa 18-month-old Fares Tal’at Hammoudah and Muhammad Tal’at Fares.

Curfew – home invasions & occupation: Salfit – 20:40, Occupation troops raided the village of Hares, imposed curfew, occupied the roof of one house and searched another.

Home invasion – beating: Nablus – 02:00, the Israeli Army raided the city, searched a house, beat up a resident and then took him prisoner.

Home invasion:  Salfit – 02:10, the Israeli Army raided Deir Istiya and searched a house after imprisoning the family in one room and photographing family members. One person was taken prisoner.

Resistance: Tulkarem – 11:00, a demonstration by local women took place in the city in protest at Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip.

Resistance: Qalqilya – 10:00, a children's demonstration took place in the city in protest against Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Resistance: Bethlehem – 11:00, a mass demonstration took place in the city of Beit Sahur in protest against Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Resistance: Bethlehem – 14:00, a children's demonstration took place in the city in protest against Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

The Zionist Enterprise

Leunig Cartoon

Introduction by Sonja Karkar:

    On Saturday, Australia’s most well-known cartoonist and social commentator Michael Leunig, gave his readers a disturbing account of how the time-honoured traits of decency and caring for others in what we call our civilised world, are fast giving way to the callous “me first” syndrome with dire consequences for the human condition that few realise will inevitably affect even them. He recounts a shocking incident where a women is accosted by a group of men in a suburban street and is saved by a 72-year-old man who is badly beaten, but lives with honour intact. He then reminds us about the incomprehensible atrocities taking place in Gaza against an imprisoned and defenceless people while most of the world turns away without any sense of outrage or compassion. We pick up his story from this point.

When we walk away from cruelty and rationalise it in the scheme of things, we do ourselves an invisible injury.

By Michael Leunig  The Melbourne Age January 10, 2009

    As this small unfortunate event was taking place in the suburban street, a massacre was in progress on the other side of the world. Israeli aircraft were bombing Gaza – the tormented little punishment space of one-and-a-half million desperate and helpless Palestinian refugees, half of them children. The Palestinians were being crushed yet again in the most cynical and brutal way – and as if this was not appalling enough, the government of Israel was also trying to tell the world that this chaotic mire of blood and rubble and burnt human flesh was a legitimate and necessary procedure in the making of civilisation and a better world. One cannot help but think the Israeli Government a bunch of amateurs in the business of nationhood.

    Modern military conflict should not longer be called “warfare”. It is more like mass industrial killing than combat. It is coercive homicide posing as defence, and is radically uneven – or “asymmetrical” as the militarists like to say. In the Western calculation, it means that we do the killing and they do the dying. The children, the mothers, the elderly and the poor do the dying in particular: those not-quite-white people, born in distant unfortunate lands – they do all the wailing and the suffering.

    To witness this as a moral being, albeit at a distance, is to be made sick and aghast, and driven half mad with a bewildering mix of sorrow, anger and shame. It is the strong abusing the weak. It is what conscience, justice and honour cannot abide. Yet, if there is such a distinguishing change in war, there is also a change in the overriding effect it has upon the earth and its people – regardless of so-called winners and losers. We are stupid if we do not know this, but there are reasons to believe that with the advancement of fiendish military technology, there had been an equivalent advancement of universal consciousness about the meanings of war and those who drive and control it.

    Humanity, although oppressed and tormented by militarism and its abuses, now seems to instinctively understand that something is fundamentally different about the meaning of military might, and that modern war in a modern world makes victory increasingly irrelevant and tragically absurd. It is the vary practice of military violence that is now most significant, because of the psychological cancer it creates in the world – a condition that eventually affects us all. Nobody escapes. Even those who shrug and turn away will find this complex spread of depression and chaotic perversity arriving mysteriously in their homes and among their families sooner or later. We have much to learn about the universal ecosystems of the psyche.

    War makes death, but even worse it creates living death. A complex and painful new disease, distributed slowly and evenly to the rich and the poor around the world. It poisons all and makes borders meaningless. Humanity is being united by this common heartbreaking, life-wrecking despair. No armies, no weapons can stop it.

    It’s just simply too late for the promised land – the earth is what’s urgently at stake now, and the world is sick and in revulsion. Atrocity is atrocity, injustice is injustice and enough is enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The entire column by Michael Leunig is available online at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/little-picture-big-picture/2009/01/08/1231004194072.html