In an interview today about the cyclone in Burma, Foreign Secretary David Miliband assured viewers that British aid would be channeled through “organisations like Save the Children, who rightly have a very high reputation.”

Save the Children is indeed a reputable organisation, but Miliband’s respect for it seems to be rather selective. Earlier this year Save the Children UK co-authored a report describing a “humanitarian implosion” in the Gaza Strip. It emphasised that the “unprecedented humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, where children comprise over half the population, is “man-made, completely avoidable and, with the necessary political will, can also be reversed.” Unlike in Burma, then, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is completely manufactured. It is not a consequence of some unforeseen natural disaster; rather, it is the intended result of policies designed to force the “impoverishment of an entire population.” The report concluded that the current Israeli and international approach is “failing at all levels” and called for an end to the siege and “political dialogue with all Palestinian parties.”

So how did Miliband respond to this dire analysis from an organisation with “a very high reputation”? Did he, as with Burma, listen to the “humanitarian experts…who make all the difference on the ground” and change policy accordingly? Not quite. Instead the British government, which along with the U.S. has been unswerving in its support for the devastating collective punishment of Gaza since Hamas took office in February 2006, continues to facilitate the Israeli siege and oppose political engagement with Hamas. Where Miliband criticised the “malign neglect” of the Burmese junta in preventing aid agencies from functioning properly, he failed to condemn the Israeli government for doing - as he himself acknowledges - exactly the same thing. As a result the people of Gaza continue to suffer and die. It appears that, for David Miliband and the British government, some children are worth saving while others are perfectly expendable.

This is New Labour’s doing. On the plus side, the Left List had a few notable successes, despite the split, the last-minute name change and the total lack of press coverage - see the Tomb for a preliminary analysis.

Earlier this week Hamas, with the backing of Islamic Jihad and other militant organisations, formally offered Israel a six-month ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Today, Israel delivered its response:

‘Seven Palestinians were killed, including a mother and her four young children, and at least seven others were injured when Israeli tanks shelled a house in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday morning, witnesses and medics said.

Palestinian medics identified the mother, Khadra Abu Mu’attaq, and her children Ahmad Abu Mu’attaq, three-year-old Hana Abu Mu’attaq, four-year-old Salih Abu Mu’attaq, and six-year-old Rudayna Abu Mu’attaq, medics reported. The family was inside the house, eating breakfast at the time of the shelling.

A student, 17-year-old Ayyub Atallah, was killed on his way to school. His friend Mu’tasim Sweilim was injured.’

Dahiat al-Barid, West Bank

‘Yes - people live here.’

‘This sewage system is the only means of school children crossing from one side of their town to the other. The school is located on this side of the barrier, and most of the children live on the other side.

The water is filthy, hazardous and utterly disgusting.’

‘This Palestinian schoolboy is looking for soldiers before venturing out through the sewage system.

The day before this photo was taken a heavily pregnant woman was heard shrieking from within the tunnel.’

‘A common site - in order to avoid this kind of destruction Palestinians are forced to ‘register’ their homes with the Israeli government. A lengthy and laborious process, the average wait time to get approval to ‘keep’ your land ranges from 2 months to 8 years. At any point in the application process, the house can be removed for failure to comply with registration procedures - as was the case with the home above.’

More photos here.

U.S. Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, just days after threatening Iran with “massive retaliation” should it attack Israel, has now gone one further:

‘Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on Good Morning America Tuesday, ABC News’ Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”‘

For an interesting parallel, have a look at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent threat to “eliminate” Israel if it attacked Iran.

The State Department claimed that this outburst legitimised international sanctions against Iran, describing it as “unbelievable rhetoric…about attacking a fellow member of the United Nations. “Any civilized person finds that disturbing.”

Well, Clinton’s statement above was surely much worse than Ahmadinejad’s warning, because there was nothing conditional about her threat (”we will attack Iran”) and because as President of the global military superpower Clinton would actually have the capacity to deliver on it.

The obvious conclusion is that international sanctions should be imposed on Hillary Clinton immediately.

“So we got hold of just some [10 year-old] Palestinian kid nearby, we knew that he knew who it had been. Let’s say we beat him a little, to put it mildly, until he told us. You know, the way it goes when your mind’s already screwed up, and you have no more patience for Hebron and Arabs and Jews there.

“The kid was really scared, realising we were on to him. We had a commander with us who was a bit of a fanatic. We gave the boy over to this commander, and he really beat the shit out of him … He showed him all kinds of holes in the ground along the way, asking him: ‘Is it here you want to die? Or here?’ The kid goes, ‘No, no!’

“Anyway, the kid was stood up, and couldn’t stay standing on his own two feet. He was already crying … And the commander continues, ‘Don’t pretend’ and kicks him some more. And then [name withheld], who always had a hard time with such things, went in, caught the squad commander and said, ‘Don’t touch him any more, that’s it.’ The commander goes, ‘You’ve become a leftie, what?’ And he answers, ‘No, I just don’t want to see such things.’

“We were right next to this, but did nothing. We were indifferent, you know. OK. Only after the fact you start thinking. Not right away. We were doing such things every day … It had become a habit…

“And the parents saw it. The commander ordered [the mother], ‘Don’t get any closer.’ He cocked his weapon, already had a bullet inside. She was frightened. He put his weapon literally inside the kid’s mouth. ‘Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don’t bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.’ So the father … got hold of the mother and said, ‘Calm down, let them be, so they’ll leave him alone.’”

“We did all kinds of experiments to see who could do the best split in Abu Snena. We would put [Palestinians] against the wall, make like we were checking them, and ask them to spread their legs. Spread, spread, spread, it was a game to see who could do it best. Or we would check who can hold his breath for longest.

“How do you check that?”

“Choke them. One guy would come, make like he was checking them, and suddenly start yelling like they said something and choke them … Block their airways; you have to press the adams apple. It’s not pleasant. Look at the watch as you’re doing it, until he passes out. The one who takes longest to faint wins.”

[A soldier] stole a box of tobacco from this Arab…The Arab suddenly said, “Thieves! Thieves! I saw you!” … So that soldier said, ‘You calling me a thief?!” No one knew what happened. He said, “You calling me a thief?!” and started beating him up, really badly. The soldiers said, hey, stop, and we caught him. But they beat him to a pulp.

Who beat whom?

The soldiers beat up this Arab. And he took a wire, that soldier. He was really screwed up. He wound up this wire around and around this guy’s hand, that hand was already…

Around his hand?

Yes. I’m telling you, we tried to stop him. “No, I won’t let him go, he raised his hand at me! He will be punished!” And he wound this wire around and around, and finally cut it as close as he could to the skin. We tried to cut it off for about an hour, we couldn’t. It literally cut into him. His hand got blue in a second. And the guy cries “I can’t feel my hand any more!” I said, he’ll probably have to be amputated.”

“It’s an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It’s a crime… I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on…I think politically speaking this has worked even to strengthen the popularity of Hamas and to the detriment of the popularity of Fatah.”

Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking yesterday.

Last year B’Tselem, the Israeli centre for human rights in the Occupied Territories, distributed video cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank to enable them to document the realities of life under military occupation. The returned footage illustrates vividly the systematic humiliation, intimidation and abuse suffered by Palestinians on a daily basis. When the media report of a period of “calm”, they are referring only to a lull in overt acts of extreme violence, such as Palestinian suicide bombings or Israeli air-strikes. But even in such periods, the constant degredation and violence that is intrinsic to the occupation, as documented in the footage sampled below, grinds on.

Ruin and Humiliation – Qalqilya

‘During a search for wanted persons in Qalqilya on August 29, 2007, soldiers destroyed seven housing units and forced male residents of the neighborhood to strip in front of their families and neighbors – one of whom captured the incident on tape.’

According to B’Tselem, the conduct of the IDF soldiers constituted a “flagrant” breach of at least one article of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

One victim recalls:

“During the evacuation, one of the soldiers in the jeep called out on to me on a loudspeaker to take off all my clothes and turn around in front of the soldiers to make sure that I wasn’t carrying anything… I asked the soldiers to let me keep my underpants on, but they insisted. I had to lower my underpants in front of my daughters and women from the neighborhood. I felt deeply insulted and it offended my dignity. What they did was beastly, arbitrary, and immoral. It was also disgraceful, this by soldiers who claim they maintain law and order and are humane. After I lowered my underpants, the soldiers allowed my son and I to put them back on.”

After the soldiers emptied the houses of their residents, bulldozers began to demolish houses in the neighbourhood. In total seven houses, home to 48 people including 17 children, were destroyed. ‘None of the occupants were allowed to remove anything from the houses before they were demolished.’ In the end it was discovered that the soldiers were acting on false information - no “wanted” people were discovered.

Incidentally, the dialogue between the camera man and his child is instructive for those who are concerned about Palestinian anti-Semitism. When Jewish soldiers treat Palestinians like this in the name of the Jewish State, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how hatred for Israel can spill over into hatred of Jews. People who are serious about combating Palestinian anti-Semitism, as opposed to those who merely use it as a tool to distract from and justify Israeli crimes, will thus focus their efforts on ending the occupation.

Stoning Neighbors - Hebron

‘In March 2007, a new settlement was established in the a-Ras neighborhood of Hebron. Since its establishment, there has been a noticeable increase in harassment and attacks by settlers and Israeli security forces on the neighborhood’s Palestinian residents. The footage shown here was filed between May and August 2007.’

The establishment of a-Ras settlement has resulted in “extensive” abuse and violence “both from the settlers and from Israeli security forces who have been assigned protect the settlement”, as well as increased travel restrictions for Palestinian residents that make their lives “intolerable”. More generally, the settler and IDF violence directed towards Palestinian residents of Hebron and the extensive restrictions on movement imposed to protect the Jewish settlements there have turned Hebron into a “ghost town”, with nearly half of the Palestinian housing units in the center of Hebron now empty and over 75% of Palestinian businesses in the area closed down. This “quiet transfer”, B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel explain, is the result of “a regime intentionally and openly based on the “separation principle”" that makes the “entire Palestinian population pay the price for protecting Israeli settlement in the city.”

Finally, this short video from B’Tselem gives a glimpse into the reality of Israel’s apartheid regime in the occupied West Bank:

As Ha’aretz editorialised this week,

“Israel is not ready for such comparisons [with apartheid], even though the situation begs it. It is doubtful whether it is possible to complain when an outside observer, especially a former U.S. president who is well versed in international affairs, sees in the system of separate roads for Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel’s control over Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and signed, a matter that cannot be accepted. The interim political situation in the territories has crystallized into a kind of apartheid that has been ongoing for 40 years.”

These videos (see here for more) offer only snapshots into the daily brutalities of an occupation that Palestinians have been forced to endure for decades. Even so, they are enough to give the lie to anyone who throws up their hands in faux exasperation and exclaims, “why do the Palestinians keep doing that?”

“It was obvious to me that the Israelis did not want the elections to go forward and that Fatah did not want the elections to go forward, but that the U.S. did want the elections to go forward. Hamas’ position is that they are perfectly willing for [Palestinian President] Abu Mazen to represent them in all direct negations with the Israelis, and they also maintain that they will accept any agreement that he brokers with Israelis provided it will be submitted to the Palestinians in a referendum. Hamas is also willing to accept a mutual cease-fire with Israel.”

So explaineth President Jimmy Carter, who yesterday announced his intention to visit Hamas chief Khaled Mesha’al in Damascus. This is excellent news - as the International Crisis Group reports, avoiding the worst now “depends on Fatah and Hamas beginning reconciliation; a ceasefire agreement that lifts the siege on Gaza and allows Gazans and Israelis near the border to pursue normal lives; and the international community at last playing a constructive part in encouraging the parties to achieve these goals.”

To this end, it advises the Quartet and the wider international community to “[a]dopt unambiguously the goal of influencing Hamas’s conduct rather than defeating it”.

Of course there have been the inevitable charges that in meeting Mesha’al Carter is being somehow “anti-Israel”. The Shin Bet has even refused to provide security for Carter during his upcoming trip to Sderot, an “unprecedented” snub. The reality is that by engaging in dialogue with Hamas, Carter is acting in accordance with the stated wishes of a majority of Israelis.

Hamas political strategist Ahmed Yousef recently stated:

“You can actually deal with Hamas and work with them to moderate them…Don’t make them your enemy. We should try these things before blocking the road. Everybody tried to destroy Hamas and didn’t give us a chance. Deal with us.”

Mesha’al similarly declared:

“Now we have a vision: we accept a state on the 1967 borders.”

There are clearly opportunities to make progress with Hamas through dialogue, if that is really what we’re interested in.