Be Very Afraid, and some updates...

Firstly, thanks to OA again for striking fear into my heart when I opened my email to this excerpt from a Financial Times book review:

The most shocking tales are about Sarah Palin, who last week took up a new role as a Fox News commentator, and whose recent book, Going Rogue, is selling in the millions. So uninformed was McCain's running mate that advisors had to give her junior school tutorials on the first and second world wars, Vietnam and the cold war. Palin insisted that Saddam Hussein launched the September 11 attacks. As the depth of her ignorance sunk in, as well as her total lack of interest in rectifying it, McCain's senior staff members were “ridden with guilt over elevating Palin to within striking distance of the White House.

And a couple of updates.

First, wahey! My boiler scrappage scheme voucher has arrived, and as I type the cats are cowering in the bedroom as the rest of the house descends in to a chaotic mess of disconnected pipes, lifted floorboards and men in boiler suits wielding bits of machinery. But that doesn't mean I'm retracting any of my comments on the equally chaotic implementation of the scheme, which I put down to the EST's political masters trying to create a bit of a warm (literally) fuzzy feeling before the electioneering really gets going.

The second one is a corker. Remember Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling declaring that Moss Side was like the Wire? A couple of journalists - a freelancer from Manchester and a crime reporter from the Baltimore Sun - decided to swap cities and see if he was right. So Baltimore blokey, from a city with several hundred murders a year, gets to spend a night with GMP in sunny Moss Side. Simon Binns reported the result in Crains:

Justin Fenton, the Baltimore Sun crime reporter, spent a week on a job swap with Northern Independent hack Mark Hughes in order to see if Moss Side really was like hit TV show The Wire, a recent claim made by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling. Fenton was positively disappointed at the lack of excitement, however, after 14 hours with Greater Manchester Police. “The lack of action on my ridealongs has been quite ridiculous, especially since the press and the officers I rode around with in Manchester insist that these are tough streets,” he said. “Here's what I witnessed first-hand: a car full of teens who had just finished smoking marijuana; a kid whose furious bike riding raised suspicions but turned out to be nothing.” Furious bike riding is a suspicious activity now? Good news for Manchester's public image, though, and proof that cycling really has taken off since the Velodrome and Sir Chris Hoy's Olympic success.

Mule in Guardian plug shocker

Nice one to the Mule newspaper - not just for its shiny new website, but particularly to Andys Bowman and Lockhart for being listed on the Guardian's Liberty Central list of recommended reading on civil libs and human rights, for their article on the lack of transparency in local government.

How the hell did I get here?

I spent a very strange Monday evening this week burning up my phone bill on a call to a Syrian mobile phone number.
On the other end of the line with Khalil Maqdesi, head of the English language section of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
I was interviewing Mr Maqdesi for a number of purposes. Partly for the biography of aeroplane hijacker Leila Khaled which I'm writing for Pluto Press and which – heh heh heh – is due finished in about 8 weeks. And partly for some prospective articles for Electronic Intifada on the Palestinian Left and where exactly it's at nowadays...
Once upon a time, it wasn't Hamas that made people in the West think of Palestinian terrorism, it was the PFLP and Fatah. Israel and the USA – as with the mujahideen in Afghanistan – tolerated, even encouraged, the growth of the Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad because they thought they would break the strength of the Left, which in the Cold War days they feared immeasurably more.
The PFLP is still firmly on the EU's list of Banned Terror Organisations. But its strength in this post-Soviet era is massively diminished, and like left-wing parties and organisations the world over it's looking for ways to be seen as relevant, especially by younger generations. I'm sure there are people who will see my biog of Leila as part of that attempt. I think she's really interesting, so I'll risk it.
I have to admit, despite a lurking fear of the potential repercussions (beyond the financial) of spending an hour and a quarter chatting away to a PFLP official, to having rather enjoyed it. There's something about a voice which drops in 'yanni' when it can't find a word, and punctuates statements with the sound of a cigarette being lit and drawn heavily on, that takes me right back to the West Bank, and I love and miss it. He was a quick, knowledgeable interviewee (it's his job, after all) and he had a cracking sense of humour. The political content of the interview I'll save for the articles and book, at this point I'm just musing on it.
I recently finished re-reading for the umpteenth time one of my Sara Paretsky VI Warshawski novels. It would be wrong to call them candyfloss for the brain – more the sort of chocolate you tell yourself is Good Quality and Probably Has Antioxidants In It – detective novels with some decent feminist leftie politics to make the car chases seem less dumb.
In this one (Fire Sale, also with lots of political undercurrents about the exploitation of unauthorised immigrants in the USA) the feisty female journo, veteran of warzones, is a gorgeous Prada-wearing shagmonster who nearly gets herself killed (again) in the passionate search for The Story and the thrills.
Now I'm a female journo (of sorts) and I've done a certain amount of warzoning, but let's face it – I'd look ever so silly in Prada, am tediously monogamous, have very little in the way of physical courage and have never properly had my moral courage tested, that I can really think of. While I can muster a certain amount of enthusiasm for fine wine or good whisky I'm generally much happier with A Nice Cup of Tea. As the lovely David Mitchell said on the radio the other week, I may have been born with tweed on the inside... I went to uni to study archaeology, for heaven's sake, and for reasons more to do with labelling mediaeval potsherds and correct use of a theodolite than Indiana Jones. I suppose I have a vague attachment to the journalistic pursuit of The Truth but I think most of the time I'm just kind of curious about stuff...
Which, to bring me back to my original subject, makes me wonder how the hell I ended up happily chatting to PFLP guy, wondering what little notes might be accumulating on some governmental computer somewhere, on Monday evening?

Reporting 'reality'

I have an interesting contrast in my head at the moment, between the attitudes of two women, both brave in their own way, to what kind of information it's important to report about world events.
On the one hand, we have the Kate Adie autobiography I'm reading. I have a certain amount of respect for Adie, for some of the places she's been risks she's taken and professional strides she's made in a pretty male-dominated environment. She's got some fairly odd views, particularly on feminism, but it's an account of an incident during her time reporting for the BBC in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s that interests me right now:

“I went into the hall and looked through into the front room. A small boy, seven or eight perhaps, was standing by the fireplace. 'Me Daddy,' he said to me immediately, 'me Daddy won't get up.' Under the Christmas tree was a man's body, awkwardly splayed.
...
You wonder what good reporting does, being at these events, a spectator, unable even to extend a reassuring arm because you feel such as intruder.
You go back to the office, with some pictures of a terraced house with a tiny hole in the front-room window made by a motorbike passenger's bullet, and type out a little list of facts: the only Protestant family who'd chosen to remain, the wife out working her nurse's night-shift, the name of the dead man.
You omit the Christmas tree and the little boy's words.”
[The Kindness of Strangers, Kate Adie, Hodder Headline 2002]

In complete contrast to this, at the moment I have the privilege of helping to edit my friend Sharyn's book for Pluto press, based on her writings from Gaza during the Israeli airstrikes and invasion of December and January just past and the months afterwards.
Working on her stuff is on one level a bloody nightmare, because it's so powerfully written and so desperately upsetting and trying to edit on-screen when your eyes keep tearing up is a right pain, and on another uplifting because of the strength and uprightness of spirit that just shines through from the people she writes about.
It rather makes me feel sorry for Kate Adie; she firmly asserts a good old-fashioned solid positivist idea of journalism, that there is A Truth somewhere which just presenting The Facts will somehow reveal. And as the incident with the little boy in Belfast seems to me to show, that reduces the news she devotedly puts (put) out on the BBC to list of numbers and the doings of the People Who Matter.
Adie also, at another point in the book, debates the extent to which journalists can and should allow what they feel about a situation to come through into what they report, and claims that when a journalist - at least a TV one - allows some sentiment to show, it's because they've been specifically given 'permission' to do so, because it suits the situation. The increasing number of such moments is, you feel, not something she sees as a positive development.
Obviously, if you are reporting news then there has to be some effort at fairness - at representing different sides of a story or versions of an event. But I've given up believing that it is possible for anyone to report anything truly 'neutrally.' The moment you decide what aspects of a story are or are not worth reporting, or whose quotes are or are not more reliable, you've taken a position. I'm not taking a completely relativist position, that anyone's views carry equal weight or are equally reliable, there will always be those with more knowledge or experience of a given situation, but once you start choosing between those who have any decently reportable level of information or opinion, you've taken a stance.
And I can't help thinking that 99% of the supposedly important news from those People Who Matter actually matters rather little – that another defunct peace plan or another empty set of climate change commitments that everyone involved knows will never by implemented or acted on – is actually pretty meaningless against something which actually impacts profoundly on the lives of a group of people – not just in terms of the depth of their immediate grief, but also of the decisions they will make in the future.
Those agreements and treaties made by governments and so on may provide the framework within which other events may occur, but if it wasn't for the pain and rage, or the dignity and mercy and compassion, of the ordinary people under the boot-heels of the Matterers then those agreement and treaties would mean nothing. You can't understand the pieces of paper without the blood and shrapnel and tears, and you can't implement it, whatever it says, without fear or hate or loyalty or belief that makes people kill and be killed. In the end, a string of mouldering official documents in some archive (as reported by Kate Adie) will mean very little if someone (like Sharyn) hasn't recorded the grief and anger of the little boy – in Belfast, or in Gaza City – that will drive the next turn of the wheel.

Waiting for the results...

Well, the European election results come out this evening, which means we'll finally know if the North-West has subjected itself to the shame of electing a BNP MEP.
Whilst the Tories have been the biggest beneficiaries of disillusionment with New Labour (not sure quite why that sweep has been so comprehensive; it was Conservatives who had perpetrated some of the most laughable expenses gaffs, like duck islands and that prick Steen from Totnes chastising the proles because apparently we're all just jealous of his mansion), the BNP has picked up a few new county council seats in the likes of Lancashire and Leicestershire.
My dad, standing for the Lib Dems and subjecting himself to an even greater-then-usual kicking from the Tories in leafy Herts, also got an enhanced level of punishment from the Greens (good!) and the BNP (bad!).
My mum's comment on much of this, made while arguing with a Telegraph-reading uncle while on one her escapes from the depths of Croydon, was that anyone who is a grandparent (and I guess also a parent, aunt, uncle, brother or sister) should first and foremost be choosing their votes on the grounds of climate change policy. Which was hideously pertinent in the week that the Carteret Islands became the first to be systematically evacuated because of the effects of climate change. Something that remained barely commented on in the general media.
Meanwhile another contact, a fan of Friend Sharyn's Gaza blog, observed that she'd written to her UKIP MEP (now sacked) about the issue of Palestine/Israel/settler produce labelling and received a letter back from his assistant saying that she was clearly a terrorist sympathiser and that the correspondence was now closed. Now that's constituency relations for you!
And by way of an update to the last post I did here, the billboard agency which hosted the Israeli Tourist Agency ads which obliterate the West Bank and Gaza into a big glowing yellow Israel outline have bowed under the weight of letters to the ASA, themselves and the Underground and are taking them down. One small victory...
In the West Bank itself another young man has been shot dead in the peaceful protests against the Wall at Ni'lin, while the liberal media creams itself over Obama's Cairo speech. Here is an account of the young man's funeral, from Ma'an News Agency:

Clashes erupted as the funeral procession for the Ni’in man killed by Israeli forces Friday were prevented from reaching the burial grounds in the village on Saturday morning.
Hundreds of mourners including several Palestinian leaders, clergy and political activists, left the Ramallah hospital with Yosef A’qel Srur’s body and took to the streets to accompany the man, shot in the chest with a live bullet by Israeli soldiers, to his grave.
The procession chanted slogans affirming their belief in non-violent resistance and dedication to the struggle against the wall.
The slain man was a 37-year-old father of three young children. Three others were injured by live bullets at the event, and were taken to hospital for treatment.
When the funeral procession arrived to the entrance to the village, four Israeli military checkpoints were set up. Mourners were forced out of their vehicles and walked the rest of the way to the village, said Salah Al-Khawaja, coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Ni’lin.
According to Al-Khawaja, Srur spent four years in an Israeli prison for his participation in the non-violent protests, and had been arrested several times and charged fines totaling over 1000 Israeli shekels (250 US dollars). During one home invasion, Israeli forces broke into Srur’s apartment and shot his brother in the eye. Though he was rushed to the hospital he lost the eye and is partially blind.
Srur participated in the rallies each week for years.

Chomsky delivers a more realistic analysis of Obama's speech here, while the irascible but excellent Robert Fisk comments on what exactly the POTUS got to see of the Middle East. I wonder where Fisk will be off to if, as seems horribly likely, the Independent becomes the first national casualty of the crisis of the newspapers busy killing off our local press. Friend Ruth bumped into an old colleague from Ethical Consumer the other day who now works on a Manchester local paper. She still has her job, but other people don't and she has to do their work too - with no extra pay.
I guess that's the market for you.

Spawn of the Devil

Hahaha. Sometimes I really like the Daily Mirror, when it's not doing tabloid-celeb bollox, and the link I've just been sent sparks one of those times... with this rant against that vile travesty of the human race that is Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson's evangelical approach to macho, dangerous driving styles and general climate-change-inducing, animal-squishing, cyclist-damaging, community-dividing, health-wrecking, planet-raping behaviour is annoying enough, but when he turns himself into the wounded Messiah of a band of whinging half-wits who complain about 'attacks' on the put-upon 'British motorist' then it's hard to decide whether the correct response is to throw up or go out and strangle the first motorist who floors it to rush (dangerously through the bike lane) into the next traffic jam space.

Auntie slides a bit further down the drain...

So, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Middle East editor, has come in from some stick from the BBC Trust, the structure which took over from the Governors in the wake of various little spats with the Blair government.
Now, I'm fairly weary of saying that I don't believe that there is some global Zionist conspiracy to control the media, and that I think that Palestine solidarity activists who do subscribe to this view are generally being lazy, anti-semitic, or both. But what Zionist organisers are good at doing (and we're not, although we're probably getting better at it, and don't forget they've had more practice), is mobilising large numbers of people to contact organisations like the BBC and moan whenever Israel, its state and its activities aren't painted in the purest and most glorious of colours.
So Jeremy Bowen's reporting on Har Homa settlement (just outside Bethlehem, and a key part of Israel's expansion of what it classifies as 'Jerusalem' out into Palestinian West Bank land) and the anniversary of the 1967 war has been censured by the Trust in the wake of just such organised lobbying.
Har Homa is a particularly interesting case in the war of terminology and myth which Zionists are so good at. 'Official' accounts of the genesis of Har Homa settlement paint it as an unoccupied hill south of Jerusalem which was a logical building site for overspill Israeli population from the city. Anyone who's ever actually been there will know that it is very much part of the circle of hills within which Bethlehem and Beit Sahour sit. Jebel abu Ghnaim, the local name for the site, was, my Beit Sahour friends tell me, a favourite picnic site for Palestinian families on weekends, and a place where probably hundreds or thousands of local kids (including my friend S) have, over the centuries, roamed and explored.
And one of the reasons it was so free of habitation when that renowned peacemaker Shimon Peres signed the order to build 6,500 Israeli homes on it? It had been designated a 'green area' by the Israeli state, to be preserved for local ecological balance and biodiversity. But only, apparently, until the Israeli state wanted to move a population of 30-40,000 people onto it. And Bowen's crime in the eyes of the BBC Trust was, apparently, to point out that a number of governments and major international institutions consider such settlements to be illegal under international law.
I'm going to admit an interest here. I like Jeremy Bowen. In 2002, when we were under curfew and attack in Bethlehem during Israel's Operation Defensive Shield invasion of much of the West Bank, Bowen was one of many international journalists who rocked up a week or so in to report on the situation, particularly the siege in the Church of the Nativity. But he was also one of the most humane and inquisitive amongst them, genuinely interested in finding out what was going on around him rather than churning out the story and then heading for the bar. Most of the press were fairly sneery about the gangs of idealistic ISMers trying to do things like get food into the areas around the Church and Bethlehem city centre which were under 24/7 curfew for something like 6 weeks, without a break. But on one of the food runs we did, carrying UN food aid bags into the city from the warehouse where they'd been left, Bowen not only came with us (along with Jon Snow from Ch4 and some stray cameramen hoping to get a shot of some activist chicks getting shot at) but he even carried a big box of milk powder. We were bloody grateful, because all that food is pretty heavy and we had a longish walk through the backstreets, asking 'Jesh? Fi Jesh' of every bemused local resident who stuck their head out of a window to see what was going on. At a crossroads where we started to see the cars the Israeli army had been systematically blowing up Bowen finally handed me his case of milk powder, saying he's come far enough and apologising for not bringing it further - despite the fact that he was the only press person who brought anything at all.
So it pisses me off when the BBC Trust criticises his work, apparently for having the temerity to diverge from the BBC's usual newsgathering policy on Palestine and Israel, which is simply to interview Mark Regev, the smooth-talking and wholly evil Israeli government spokesman. Yes, there have been times when Bowen's coverage has irritated me for being a bit too 'balanced,' but largely I take this as a good sign, that he is actually being properly balanced and correcting my tendency towards a bias towards the human tragedy going on in Palestine. And these rulings from the corrupt little elitist cabal that is the BBC Trust just serve to demonstrate still further how far down the drain our national broadcaster is going.

Baby, baby it's a weird world

I'm sure there's something in Alice in Wonderland about the number of odd things that can happen in a morning. But I can't be bothered to look it up properly.
But, firstly we have an very interesting article about Somali 'pirates' from Johann Hari. Now, I have vague recollections of Mr Hari doing something helpful for me once, can't remember if it was to do with Palestine or environmental stuff, but I did for a bit have some time for him. Then he went all Cruise Missile Left, and then flip-flopped back away from Blairite spin on Iraq when it became apparent that no-one, even the Aaronovitches of this world, let alone any sane and decent human being, could carry on swallowing that line. But Hari has been asking some sensible questions about what actually goes on in Somalia - as in, dumping of nuclear waste in its waters, theft of all its fish stocks by massive Western industrial fishing boats - and points out that going in mob-handed with a bunch of UK, US etc etc etc naval vessels may not be the most useful response.
Secondly, Manchester Confidential's Property section has gone all crusading. Despite the name, Manchester Confidential is rarely confidential about anything more exciting than the menus of the latest overpriced trendy city centre restaurant. But one of its writers has clocked that some of the beautiful big old Victorian houses on Seymour Grove are being left empty - in one case boarded up but in another open to the world, no doubt in the hope that it will become derelict enough to knock down, as has happened with so many landmark Manchester buildings from the Hacienda to the old Bank building on Stretford Road in Hulme and Sunnyside House just up the road from the properties in question. And Property Confidential is proposing to Ask Some Questions about what the hell is going on here, and whether legal measures can be taken to make sure the buildings aren't left to decay and then knocked down to build yet more bloody flats. Perhaps some of Manchester's squatters should also be taking a look at the more accessible of the two houses, in a public-spirited kind of way...
And thirdly, there is a story from the International Middle East Media Centre about a toddler born in Damascus of Syrian parents who live in the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. The kid is confined to his home under total house arrest for being an enemy national and must remain so until he is at least 2 years old... but then nothing the Israeli authorities do to any Arab, Palestinian or otherwise, surprises me now.

Comment is Free

I wonder what it says about the Guardian at the moment that the best bits of political writing I've seen in it for some time haven't been in the paper itself, which is increasingly anodyne, cowardly and smugly middle-class and knowing, but in the Comment is Free section.
The articles in question are Charlie Brooker - who I associate with being the TV guy from the back of the Guide, for God's sake! - here, and Ben White on why, although the recent atrocities in Gaza deserve international attention, we must also not take our eye off Israel's activities in the West Bank.

Journalistic bollocks

All very insignificant, this, but a good illustration of how inaccurate some journalists can be, and how a couple of poorly checked facts can replicate themselves...
Several years ago I interviewed a UNISON rep and psychiatric nurse called Karen Reissman about NHS privatisation, for the TogetherWorks magazine Enterprising. The article ended up as one of the excuses Karen's former employers used to sack her, since few employers are enlightened enough to want active, politicised union reps on their staff.
Unsurprisingly, this attracted a certain amount of press coverage, including from press industry publications like the Press Gazette. So when Karen settled her claim out of court during her employment tribunal, there was a certain amount of followup. This included this article by Dominic Ponsford, written using material from the PA Mediapoint agency added to by the Press Gazette. Now, this article is peppered with inaccuracies. The ones I can comment on are that he calls the magazine 'Inside Enterprise' and states that it is no longer running - when in fact there have been a number of issues of it since the Karen Reissman affair, and I'm putting together a new one at the moment. It also claims that the article was a feature on social enterprise, which is in fact the subject of the entire magazine.
A reply from the PA's Legal Editor emphasises that it was not their agency piece which included the mistakes - so I guess they were added by Dominic Ponsford at the Press Gazette.
Now, I'm not saying that these errors are particularly significant in themselves. But I am interested in what it says about poor standards of fact checking. Especially since agencies and industry publications like the Press Gazette are generally regarded as pretty reliable, which means that if anyone, for instance, ever decided to write a history of Karen's struggle, they would probably go first to these kind of sources, and get misled and sidetracked.
I'm also curious as to why the Press Gazette has removed my completely anodyne correcting comments to their web version of the article - aren't they prepared to admit they've printed an incorrect piece?

"It's just like closing your eyes.”

Despite the alleged ceasefire in Gaza - throughout which the Israeli army has continued to kill people, including civilians - my friend Sharyn has continued to post stories of some of the many people whose injuries she's helped treat or whose tales she's listened to in Gaza over the past week.
As well as her brilliantly written accounts of the horrors of the Israeli airstrikes and invasion, I'm reposting this account of Sharyn's because it illustrates some of the issues that journalists and viewers have to consider in situations like this.
The bastard Ch4 journalist demanding to know only about children is probably no more or less ignorant than many of the other correspondents sent in at short notice to get 'the story.' But his insistence on hearing only about dead children is indicative - we demand 'really' innocent victims - the adult women and civilian men also butchered and burned are apparently judged insufficiently blameless to warrant being reported.
The most intense period of time I spent in Palestine, during the invasion of the West Bank by the Israeli army in spring 2002, was less militarily intense than the weeks that Sharyn has just experienced, but was also the subject of major press interest. I have very mixed memories of that. On one hand, I remember Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's main Middle East correspondent, being a decent and humane individual. On one expedition, to try and take food into the area around the Church of the Nativity which was held under 24/7 curfew for 6 whole weeks, he came with us carrying a big box of powdered milk packets. At the corner of a street where we found burning cars and watched bit of other vehicles flying into the air on the next street over as Israeli soldiers blew them up, he handed me the box. "I've been doing this for 20 years," he said. "This is far enough for me." It was a good move - a few minutes later the soldiers realised we were there and started shooting and the walls above our heads, and I found myself trying to figure out what exactly had happened to make blood run down from the top of my scalp.
Jon Snow of Channel 4 also came on that walk into the curfew area. Half an hour before he'd been interviewing my friend Georgie, who at that time was living in Bethlehem, and despite having the same limited access to water as the rest of us was, as usual, managing to look fabulously dapper. They started filming the interview with Georgie looking cool in a pink Jermyn St shirt and designer jeans, and Snow bundled up in a flak jacket and military helmet. After about 30 seconds he ordered the cameras to stop, and started taking off his protective gear.
"The insurance people will go mad," he said, "but I can't do this with her dressed like that and me in this lot."
Set against these two basically decent guys, however, are examples like the French photographer, a macho scumbag dressed in excessive quantities of camouflage gear, who loudly declared one afternoon in the Star hotel, surrounded by Palestinians who had friends and relatives in the besieged Church of the Nativity, that the Israelis should just 'nuke the terrorists in the Church."
What's been really frustrating about much of the coverage from Gaza is the lack of interest that the mainstream press shows in anything not generated by themselves or their friends in the 'right' publicity departments. Information about phosphorus shells and massive civilian casualties had been coming out of Gaza for days, if not weeks, before BBC and other reports managed to transcend the IDF propaganda and engage with the idea that Israel might be using illegal munitions, or that the main target of the Israeli terror was not really a few militants but to try and crush the spirit out of an entire population. It reminds me why I rarely, and only under duress, describe myself as a journalist, and why that profession tends to rank amongst politicians and estate agents as the least trustworthy.

23rd January: Amer's story - they killed me three times

Ramatan TV, nine floors up and open 24 hours, was the last bastion of internet during the strikes. We knew the place because we got asked in for interviews, and then called a few press conferences there, for example announcing that internationals would be riding with ambulances. We began to hang around in the corners at other times, hoping no-one would mind us hitching a ride on the wifi.
Instead of complaining about random internationals cluttering up the place, Ramatan journalists wholeheartedly adopted us, brought us tea, gave us blankets if we needed to stay the night. Now most nights at about 9pm, you'll find some of us there being fed a small feast in the kitchen.

I forgot that I didn't like journalists much, because these guys are firstly Palestinian, and their reporting is compassionate. Now journalists are flooding in through Rafah (though I do like some of them) I was reminded. Two days ago a recently arrived Channel 4 guy came into Yousef's office on a deadline, wanting to know how many children died in the UNWRA schools. Yousef said “Two children at one school. Forty five people at another.”
“But how many of them were children?” Channel 4 guy insisted.
“Forty five people altogether,” Yousef said, thinking he'd misunderstood.
“No,” Mr Channel 4 said irritatedly, “I want to say the number of children.”
“Oh!” I said, and stomped off, remembering my former journalist feelings.

Yousef Al Helou has the end office in Ramatan. His TV speaks English sometimes, and he's always willing to pool information and help us figure out what is going on. Today he took me and E to Zaytoun to hear the story of his cousin's family. When we arrived, I realised we were only two houses from the first house we'd evacuated people from on the Red Cross evacuation I went on. I
would have walked past Amer and Shireen Al Helou's house that day. But by then it was empty and broken, because the day Amer told us about was January 4th.

Amer is 29. 14 people from his family were in the house that night, and they were all trying to sleep under their stairs as some sort of shelter. Even though the stairs were partly open to the back yard, the F16 attacks on the house made downstairs seem the safest place. The house now has holes from shell blasts and thousands of pock-marks from the three inch nails that the shells were filled with.

“We hadn't known how bad it would get,” said Amer. “Or we would have left our house and gone somewhere else. But we thought our area was a quiet area. And then that night we thought they would go past us at the front. But they came from the back.”

Amer didn't know it yet, but his brother Mohammed had already been killed elsewhere that day, struck by drone rockets.

The Israeli soldiers came to their house at about 5.30am, after the house had been shelled for 15 hours, and immediately opened fire on the family, killing Amer's father with three shots. Then they told the family to leave. Amer had called an ambulance (which had to turn back after being shot at) and was refusing to leave his father's body but the soldiers said they would shoot him if he stayed, so they fled 300 yards up the dirt track behind their house, at which point they were shot at again by another group of soldiers.

This time Amer's brother Abdullah was shot, Amer and Shireen's 6 year old daughter Saja was shot in the arm, and their 1 year old daughter Farah was shot in the stomach. They spent the next 14 hours sheltering behind a small hill of dirt, while the wounded bled, and were not allowed to access help though the soldiers were aware of the injuries. Having no other way to comfort her small daughter, whose intestines were falling out, Shireen breastfed Farah as the little girl slowly bled to death.

After 14 hours, at about 8 in the evening, the soldiers sent dogs to chase them out of their shelter and dropped phosphorous bombs near them, but due to the wounded family members and having bare feet in an area of broken glass and rubble, escape was difficult. The army took the three wounded and put them behind the tanks, and captured Amer, but the rest of the family managed to get away and call the Red Crescent. The ambulance that eventually reached the injured people 7 hours later (driven by my medic friend S) took an hour to find them, and by this time Farah was dead. (When I heard Amer's story I realised S had already told me about collecting 'a small shaheed' from this area.)

Amer was held for 5 days in army custody (the first 3 without access to food, water, or a bathroom), beaten and tortured, and questioned about resistance activity which he knew nothing about. When he was finally released on the border, the army sent two known collaborators to escort him, so it would look to the resistance fighters like he himself was a collaborator. But the fighters knew who he was and that he was not a collaborator. He tells us:

“I had my four children young, and they gave me the most happiness in my life. I took such good care of them. I didn't let them just play on the street, we had a big living room in our house with toys for them, we would invite all the neighbours' children to come play there with ours, so that we could be sure they were all safe. I always drove them to and from school, I didn't even let them walk. Whenever I was depressed, I would gather all my kids, pile them in the car, take them somewhere nice like the park or the beach, and then to see them happy and having fun would make me happy again.
“Now my remaining children will not go to sleep without their shoes on, because they think we will have to run for our lives again.”
“We love life as the Israelis do. Are they the only people allowed life? They killed me three times that day, first when they killed my brother, then when they killed my father, then when they killed my daughter. We looked for my father's body later; they had buried him under rubble, eventually we found his foot sticking out. Sometimes now I think we have to leave Gaza, to join my brother in South Africa. Sometimes I think, no - Gaza is worth fighting for, this is our home.”

Amongst their crumpled belongings, next to the spot Amer's father died, the family gives us tea. Shireen solicitously dusts the sand off my back. We ask them how it is they have not gone crazy from the pain of these events.
“It's not us, it's God who gives us peace and strength. Without this I would be dead too. What happened to my family was like a horror film” says Amer. He shows us photos of Farah (whose name means 'joy') and Saja on his phone. “I don't think I can have any more children. I am too broken inside.”

The family is not living in the house right now, they are split between different homes, and Abdullah is in hospital in Egypt. Amer is wearing Abdullah's jacket, complete with bullet holes. “It is hard to be here again in this house after what happened. But your presence has lifted my spirits” he tells us.

Back at Ramatan, I hear one of the journalists talking. “I couldn't protect my children - this is my responsibility, and I couldn't.” He says. “My daughter asked, what is it like to die? I told her, it's just like closing your eyes.”

Israeli tanks head into Gaza

Not a fun Saturday night. Between the news that Israeli tanks are heading into Gaza, Marc getting called in to do physio-y things to a very sick teenager and the residual desire to slowly and painfully break the arm of the gobshite who killed the lovely little plum tree on my allotment, my attitudes towards life, the universe and everything are currently a tad jaundiced.
My friend Sharyn is riding with ambulances in Gaza tonight. One Red Crescent station has already been damaged so working alongside medics is no guarantee of safety. Sharyn knows what the Israeli forces are capable of - she has a nice ring of shrapnel from a splinter bullet in her stomach to show it - and one of her latest blog posts, cited below, wondered what it was the Israelis didn't want the hundreds of international they let out through Erez the other day to see. I guess this is the answer.
I remember so well what it's like being aware that an incursion is on its way, watching the sun go down and wondering what will be revealed when the darkness lifts next day. The strange sensation of compression at the base of the throat that is the tension of not knowing.
The last 36 hours have seen hundreds of thousands of people - maybe millions - demonstrating around the world. Yesterday was mainly the Muslim countries, with crowds heading out onto the streets after prayers.
Today was Europe, Australia, the USA. 20,000 in Paris. The lily-livered lying scum at the BBC, whose coverage wasn't too bad at the start but which has degenerated into whinging apologias for the Israeli military, reported 12,000 in London today but I prefer to rely on my mum's description, which suggests that it's bollocks and should be comfortably doubled. Manchester was a good couple of thousand, which given that coaches went from hear to London wasn't too bad.
There are legitimate critiques of marches and their failure to build in participation and to build on their energy to keep working in the communities from which the marchers come. But I also know that the sight of people demonstrating around the world is a terrific boost to the morale of Palestinians when they come under attack, and however dispiriting another bloody chant-chant-slogan-slogan-slogan, SWP-dominated, patriarchal march can feel, they do have their uses. As emphasised by Sharyn's words below, and in a chat I had on the subject with Kevin Brown of the FBU, who was on a solidarity delegation to the West Bank last June.
My brilliant mum was commenting on a news piece she saw which showed an Israeli policeman holding the remains of one of the Hamas rockets we keep hearing so much about in the news - a glorified firework, maybe 2 feet long. And then it cut to an unexploded Israeli missile, the size, as she put it, of a room. A pity not all the fools bleating about Hamas violence haven't been made to view that news item. As I've said publicly and repeatedly, Hamas are largely a nasty, reactionary bunch and targeting civilians is inexcusable. But to talk as if the two had some parity is also offensively stupid, as well as tediously predictable.
Also not an enhancement to my love for my fellow (hu)man has been the process of editing for length an article by Naela Khalil, a journalist from the West Bank who was threatened with suspension for carrying out a piece of investigative work into the use of torture and illegal detention by Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, against each other's supporters. Naela won the Prix Samir Kassir for her article, which is a valuable contribution to revealing the truth about political conflict within Palestine. It's hardly a shock to find that members of the Palestinian security services are learning the tricks of the Israeli torturers who abused them and are turning them on their political rivals at home, but it's not an encouraging spectacle either. The piece is supposed to be running in Red Pepper, but I suspect they're going to bottle it.

Israeli bombing in Gaza (and other Christmas happenings)

Well, Christmas is over - sort of - and the sales frenzy is busily creating a dead cat bounce in the UK economy. Harold Pinter is RIP. And the original Three Legged Cat has had a rather dramatic festive period, as a result of which he's now a three-legged, one-fanged cat.
And in Gaza, the Israeli airforce is reported on the BBC this morning to have killed 40 people and injured dozens more in bombing raids overnight. Accordingly, below is the full text of an email from an excellent Gazan reporter which I received last Friday, covering not the attacks but the general ongoing effects of the Israeli blockade.

For More Media Reportings and News Reports contact me on:
Mob: 00972599306096
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com

Hunger before the storm
By: Sameh Akram Habeeb

Israeli politicians, in the run-up to elections, are promising to deal a severe blow to Gaza as this is how Israeli policy is made. However, every household in Gaza is already under siege. In Gaza you can only find pale, angry and frustrated faces. If you visit my house you won't find power, while my neighbor is out of gas. Another neighbor seeks potable water as power outages have left him without for four days. A third neighbor desparately looks for milk for his child but does so in vain. Another friend who lives on the corner needs medicine that can't currently be found in Gaza.

There is no shortage of such stories in Gaza (though there is a shortage of nearly everything else). Perhaps broadcasting such stories would result in pressure on Israeli leaders to stop the siege. Because what is happening is that the entire Gaza population of 1.5 million -- densely packed into a small area -- is being punished for crude rockets being fired into Israel by a few.

Shaher Mazen, 25, holds a degree in political science but works as a taxi driver to put bread on the table for his family. I spoke to him while I was on my way to some of the Gaza bakeries to cover some news that was happening there. Shaher was frustrated because of siege and furious towards the two rival Palestinian governments, considering them as weak in the face of Israel.

Mazen said, "We are under an organized Israeli media campaign. We are being starved and victimized by Israel. The world think we are besieging Israel, not the other way around. Israel is playing up the issue of rocket fire to besiege us more and more."

Al-Shanty bakery in Gaza City is one of the Strip's largest, supplying tens of thousands with bread. Yesterday, hundreds of people crowded outside the bakery in a very long queue, waiting for a bag of bread. Children, women and men were awaiting the chance to buy some bread, which has become scarce as Israel has not allowed the import of adequate supplies of flour and cooking gas.

"Our bakery is out of bread for days now and what we have will only last for another 24 hours. In fact, we stopped our work yesterday as we ran out of flour. Now, we use animal feed which will finish in a matter of hours," explained 24-year-old Abed Masod while he busily worked at the bakery.

A woman's voice arose above the crowd. She started to scream and appealed to God for salvation and relief from Gaza's dire situation. Forty-five-year-old Om Ali Shoman's weary face bore the impact of Gaza's suffering. "This is our destiny," she said. "It's a conspiracy designed against us. What did my children do to stay at home with no bread? Did they fire rockets? Did they kill Israelis? Are they holding guns?"

Only about a dozen of Gaza's 47 bakeries are currently operating as of yesterday, but with rapidly diminishing supplies. The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) had to stop its food aid deliveries because Israel has not allowed it to replenish its stores. This affects 750,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip.

Gazans fear that the worst, however, is yet to come as the Israeli government renews its threats of a major offense against the Gaza Strip, irrespective of the civilian toll an invasion would inevitably incur.

Time is running out in Gaza and mass starvation looms as Gaza's skies are further darkened with threats of an Israeli military incursion. As a journalist, peace activist, and one of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans who are being collectively punished by Israel, I urge those who read this to appeal their governments to hold Israel accountable to international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, article 33 of which forbids the collective punishment of a civilian population. Though it unilaterally removed its illegal settlement population from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel has remained in control of Gaza's borders, sea and airspace, as well as its population registry, and remains the occupying power, and as such is obligated to abide by international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

I urge readers to press their governments to force Israel to respect the countless United Nations resolutions that affirm Palestinian rights, and which Palestinian leaders demand must be immediately implemented.

Please don't let Gaza's plight be forgotten, and urge those around you to act as well.

All photos in the link below by Sameh A. Habeeb:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/BakeriesOfGazaOutOfBreadPeopleAreHungry#

Sameh A. Habeeb is a photojournalist, humanitarian and peace activist based in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. He writes for several news websites on a freelance basis.

Contact me:

Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Photojournalist & Peace Activist
Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb

Language and journalistic arrests in Israel

Outgoing Israeli PM Ehud Olmert made an interesting choice of words the other day when talking about the appalling violence Hebron's community of extremist religious Jewish settlers have been inflicting on the city's Palestinian inhabitants. Speaking of footage of settlers opening fire on unarmed people, he used the word 'pogrom.'
Not a term used lightly by anyone in Israel, and certainly not by a Jewish Israeli of the oppression of a West Bank Palestinian. Certainly not a term that a goy (and yes, I have been called that in Israel, to my face, and on one occasion by a child who must have been all of seven years old) like me would be allowed to use of these settlers' action without howls of 'anti-semite!'
And another interesting event to note amidst the horror of events in Hebron and Gaza, Ha'aretz newspaper reports that the heroic Israeli journalist Amira Hass was arrested leaving Gaza via the Erez border crossing and questioned by Sderot police. Hass has spent much of the last ten years living in Gaza or Ramallah, one of the few Israelis to do so, and her writings, including the books Drinking the Sea at Gaza and Reporting from Ramallah, should be required reading (alongside Robert Fisk) for, well, pretty much anyone really.