Israel prevents Palestinian ZOMBIE ATTACK!:

GAZA (Reuters) - Stench, debris and human remains greeted Palestinians in the city of Gaza on Wednesday after an Israeli missile strike at dawn -- but in this case no one died.

A big explosion tore through the increasingly packed Sheikh Redwan cemetery, shattering tombstones and ripping bones and recently buried flesh from the earth.

"The planes have struck even the dead. There is nothing the planes have not hit in the Gaza Strip," lamented Abu Fayez al-Shurafa, leaning on a cane. READ MORE

Gaza war rages as toll tops 1,000:

The Palestinian death toll stands at about 1,033 people and nearly 5,000 have been injured, with 40 per cent of the dead civilians and a third children, aid agencies and Palestinian medics say.

Raed, an Iraqi architect who lived through years of the US occupation of his country, reports on Israeli war crimes:

The UN human right council held a special session this week to discuss the Israeli crimes in Gaza, and they came up with the following:

1- The council "DECIDES TO DISPATCH FACT-FINDING MISSION TO INVESTIGATE VIOLATIONS AGAINST PALESTINIANS IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY"

The Council [...] decided to dispatch an urgent independent international fact-finding mission to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Council also requested the United Nations Secretary-General to investigate the latest targeting of UNRWA facilities in Gaza, including schools, that resulted in the killing of tens of Palestinian civilians, including women and children.


2- The council "adopts resolution on grave human rights violations in Gaza Strip"

In the resolution, which was adopted by a vote of 33 to 1 with 13 abstentions, the Council called for the immediate cessation of Israeli military attacks throughout the Palestinian Occupied Territory; demanded the occupying power, Israel, to immediately withdraw its military forces from the occupied Gaza Strip; called upon the occupying power to end its occupation to all Palestinian lands occupied since 1967, and to respect its commitment within the peace process towards the establishment of the independent sovereign Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital; demanded that the occupying power stop the targeting of civilians and medical facilities and staff as well as the systematic destruction of cultural heritage; demanded further that the occupying power lift the siege, open all borders.

Prof. Juan Cole on Turkish boycott of Israeli goods, an increasing trend in the region:

The Turkish Consumers Association is spearheading a Turkish consumer boycott of Israeli-made goods.Turkey is Israel's eighth largest trading partner, with trade between the two countries worth over $2.6 bn a year in 2007

Israel's economy depends heavily on foreign trade, which accounts for 80 percent of its GDP.

There is a dispute about whether this downturn in relations between Turkey and Israel is a hiccup or whether it is a negative secular trend, with Turkey looking increasingly like the rest of the Middle East, which does very little business with Israel.

Even in Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel and had in the 1990s supplied up to a third of Israeli petroleum, the Gaza War is hardening attitudes and has produced massive demonstrations little covered in the US media. In 2005, Egypt had made a deal to sell natural gas to Israel, but the supreme court struck it down last fall on the grounds that such an arrangement requires the approval of parliament. It is hard to imagine even Egypt's docile parliament, dominated by the ruling party, voting for such a thing any time soon. Israel has replaced Egyptian petroleum for the most part with oil from Russia and Kazakhstan.

I think over time there is a real danger of Israel risking boycotts and economic strangulation if it continues with Apartheid policies in the Occupied territories.

Field Up Date on Gaza from the Humanitarian Coordinator
United Nations-Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

And how about a field update on human rights in Iraq: Human Rights in Iraq "extremely poor -HRW

Israel Shuts out World Press

Gaza's Blackening Beaches

At the Bedside of a Badly Wounded Girl in Gaza

Israeli banned Arab parties: We'll establish an alternative Arab parliament

-mr