On January 7, 2009, as I and a Spanish human rights advocate accompanied Palestinian medics to retrieve the body of a man shot earlier by invading Israeli forces, we were also shot at as the medics carried the body towards the ambulance. It was in Dawwar Zimmo, eastern Jabaliya, near the area which has been occupied by Israeli soldiers since the land invasion began. It’s an area where 10s are thought to have been seriously injured by bombing and shooting from the Israeli army, and where many, many more will lie dead, uncollected for days, or weeks, out of reach of the medics whose duty is to retrieve them. Hassan al-Attal and Jamal had gotten out of the ambulance, a clearly-marked 101 ambulance, and approached the corpse lying in the middle of the street. They wore their PRCS uniforms –Hassan’s was bright red with reflective tape, Jamal’s bright orange and white, also with reflective tape –and approached slowly, hands free of all but a stretched to take away the body. Arce filmed as the medics picked up the dead man, put him on the stretcher and began the retreat towards the ambulance. Arce was still filming when the shots cracked out, rapidly but evidently a targeted sniper’s shot, not a machine gun. Incredibly, Hassan and Jamal continued to try to evacuate the body, running with the dead man, before finally dropping the stretched and fleeing for their lives. It was about 1:30 pm, it was the first day of Israel’s self-declared “cease-fire” and the sniper was aiming at the medical personnel. The ambulance’s siren was still screaming, the driver had been moving quickly away from the sniper, to avoid further hits on us or himself, and we were frantically scouring to see Hassan and Jamal. In the days prior to this attack, 7 medics had been killed since the start of Israel’s air and ground assault on Gaza’s population. Tens more had been injured, and Hassan was to join their ranks. A sniper’s bullet caught his thigh, and as he scrambled into the ambulance, the blood seeping through his pants alerted us to his injury. These medics are all too aware of, many all too familiar with, the mortal risks of their job in the face of invading Israeli soldiers with, apparently, no regard for the Geneva Conventions which should allow and oblige medics to reach the injured and the dead, without fire from the invading army. It was frightening. I thought we’d lost them both, and they are both young, wonderful men doing a job worthy of medals. The 10-15 seconds it took before Hassan and Jamal could jump into the ambulance and pull down its back door were a painfully long stretch, during which I’d feared the worst. As we pulled away, a final bullet caught the back door of the ambulance. Medics worked quickly on Hassan’s thigh injury: the bullet had penetrated from the inside of his upper left thigh, digging into muscle, and exiting a couple of inches from the entry wound. He was impressively brave about it, though obviously in a great deal of pain. The other volunteer’s video footage caught the incident, and is testimony to what we’ve seen, what medics have told us they’ve long endured, and what Israeli authorities belligerently continue to deny: Israel is targeting medical personnel, as Israeli forces target journalists, civilians, and these days in Gaza anything that moves. No sanctuary, no safety, no guarantee of medical service. https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/israeli-sniper-targets-uniformed-medics-what-i-witnessed-in-gaza/ See also: https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/israeli-army-kills-palestinian-medic-with-dart-bomb/ https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/ensuring-maximum-casualties-in-gaza/ https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/rescuers-targeted-one-year-on/

During my last trip to Donetsk, over the Christmas & New Years holidays, I joined RT in some reporting. We filmed Artem Zhoga, commander of the Sparta Reconnaissance Battalion, on NY's eve: "What are we fighting against? We are fighting against injustice, against genocide—the genocide of the Russian-speaking population, the dissident population, those who do not think like the, nationalists, the Nazis—against this Russophobia that has formed in the Western world. Against the genocide of the civilian population, because there is no other way to call the enemy's firing on institutions such as the Kalinin hospital, schools, the city center, and the market district.There is no other way to call it, this is precisely the genocide of the civilian population." ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNZMjyfB3KE

On Saturday March 16, for two hours I joined a massive demonstration of Venezuelans rejecting US policies against their country and leadership. The people in this video are largely excluded by corporate media reporting on Venezuela. They include Caracas' poorest, defiant supporters of the Venezuelan government and Bolivarian project [see: https://venezuelanalysis.com/topic/bolivarian-project] Media would have you believe they are against President Maduro, and that any who show up to such rallies are *forced* to do so. You decide whether these vivacious, strong, informed people seemed *forced* to participate. Venezuela has for years been subject to an economic war led by the U.S., and continues to face sanctions after brutal sanctions by the very governments purporting to care about human rights and hunger. Kevin Zeese (https://popularresistance.org ) summarized the situation well: "The US has an ongoing regime change operation which began in 2002 with the brief Chavez coup and which continue at this moment with the farce president Guaido. Guaido has been trained by the US for more than a decade. He is inept and has little support in Venezuela. When we were there he was the butt of jokes. He comes from a small right-wing party in a small state where he won a second place seat in the National Assembly. ...The US has been unable to get support for a military attack on Venezuela. Both its right-wing allies in Latin America and the EU have opposed that approach. A military attack would be a failed venture as Venezuela is twice as large as Iraq, has a military of 200,000 and civilian militia of 2 million. ...A US military attack would be very destructive of Venezuela. The people of Venezuela will not give up their independence and be dominated by the US again. With the war-path blocked, the US has been trying another approach. It has been caught trying to smuggle weapons into Venezuela. This week the so-called 'chief of staff' for Guaido along with his bodyguard were arrested for trying to create terror cells to attack government officials and cause violent chaos in Venezuela. The example of Venezuela breaking from US domination in 1999 with the election of Hugo Chavez is not something the US can accept. They need to show other countries that those who break from US control will be punished. And, the natural riches of Venezuela are too much to ignore, e.g. the largest oil, gold and diamond reserves in the world, the fifth largest gas reserves and large reserves of minerals essential for electronics and weapons. Sadly, the US will keep seeking to put in place a puppet government unless public opinion forces change to what is a deep bipartisan policy supported by Wall Street, the military-industrial-intelligence complex and transnational cor ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaQ7SdSa9Fg

Conversation with Homs man on the great "revolution" and protesters sectarian slogans right from the beginning. June, 2014 Related posts: https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/freedom/ https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/homs-we-wanted-to-protect-our-house/ https://ingaza.wordpress.com/my-published-articles-and-other-musings-from-and-on-syria-20142015/ ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5739PhC79yE