Africa

"Israel’s siege of and attacks on Gaza are not without precedent. The U.S.-initiated U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iraq (1990-2003), a well-nigh comprehensive trade and financial embargo against the government of Saddam Hussein, is widely reported to have caused the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children under 5 years of age by 1996. But not since Adolph Hitler’s Nazi war machine laid siege to the Warsaw ghetto has the world witnessed such a persistent and systematic attempt by a military force to starve and punish a captive urban civilian population as in Gaza."

"Whether or not President-elect Barack Obama would bring fresh ideas that can pave the way for lasting peace between Israel and Palestine is yet to be seen. However, if his position expressed during his visit to Israel last summer is any indication, he is likely to continue business as usual with perhaps a slight difference in style."

"The shift in American policy towards India is likely to continue during the Obama presidency. It means a break in Washington’s strategic alliance with Islamabad going back to the 1950s as part of the policy of containment of the Soviet Union. One of America’s long-term aims now is to counter the growing power of China."

"In the middle stand the majority who resent the SOFA for being simply a different face of the same colonialism, a legitimization of the presence of US forces. The agreement has deprived Iraqis of the right to compensation for the destruction of their country and the killing of their compatriots. It also omitted any mention of rebuilding Iraq. It was, in short, an entirely undeserved victory for the outgoing neo-conservative US administration."

"Driven by a crazy warmongering prejudiced god, who elevates one group of people over the rest of his creation, and who orders his chosen people to perpetrate a bloody genocidal cleansing of his promised land in order to build him a mundane house to live in, Israeli politicians are ready to do anything in order to accomplish their deluded dream of a pure Jewish Greater Israel, from Nile to Euphrates, without any Christian or Muslim Goyims."

"According to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, and the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (signed by Israel) children are to be afforded special protection during international armed conflicts. Israel had, and still is violating these international laws."

"From the heights of my 85 years, I want to call all those to whom our future here is close to the heart, Jews and Arabs, and especially the young, to mobilize for a joint effort to prepare the ground for the big change, for the Other Israel, for a state where it will be fun to live, an Israel we can be proud of."

"Every time one of our bombs falls on a wedding party in Afghanistan, this incites more young men to join the ranks of the guerillas. We may eliminate one fighter but in the process we may be creating tens or hundreds more. This is an untenable process, eventually we will run out of soldiers, money and resources. But the most important point is that by acting unilaterally and displaying such disrespect for the innocent lives we are taking each and every day, we have opened the Pandora box of terrorism."