STONE COLD HAVEN

“The last time they invaded (March 2008), it was easy. They broke everything and we fixed it. But this time, they put shit everywhere: in cupboards, on beds – my bed is full of shit.”

There are reasons why 24 hour news media and citizen media through the blogosphere are the worst nemesis of any armed conflict. The fear for invading or occupying forces in any conflict is that the world now gets to see what war is really like in a matter of hours if not minutes. The recent invasion by Israeli forces in Gaza was notable for Israel’s refusal to allow the world’s media into Gaza to witness for the world what is happening.

Citizen media from voices of ordinary people will never be silenced though, as this compilation of stories from Ayesha Saldanha illustrates. They are the stories from ordinary Palestinians who are starting to count the cost of the recent Israeli invasion in Gaza.

Bloggers in Gaza are gathering information about what happened during the recent Israeli attacks. Hhear from families whose homes were looted and left covered with faeces by Israeli soldiers, learn what the effects of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME) weapons are, and are told the story of a father whose baby daughter was shot, his wife breastfeeding the girl as she bled to death.

Ayesha Saldanha is a contributing author to Global Voices Online, a citizen media portal.

I have resisted for the last month or so to comment on any aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, primarily because of my strong feelings against the sheer force and brutality of the Israeli agression and collective punishment towards the Palestinian people.

The Story of Dr. Ezzldeen Abu Al-Ashi whose house was bombed during a live broadcast to Israeli TV sums up this madness.

Dr. Al-Ashi’s 3 daughters were killed in the carnage and his grief and panic captured live and beamed to Israeli’s whose government is supposedly protecting by its agression on the people of Gaza.

Obama can clearly make his mark and step aside from the toothless intervention of the US administrations of the last 16 years by having the conviction to talk down the increasingly right wing Israeli government hell bent on becomeing a law unto themselves…but chances are that like Clinton and Bush before him, Barrack Obama will bow to the powerful Israeli lobby and their so called right to massacre Palestinians in the name of protecting themselves.