EcoRadio

Category: Freedom of speech, movement, rights

  • Concentration camps in North Korea,

    That the Senate is aware:

    a) of reports that approximately 200 000 people are held in hard labour
    concentration camps in North Korea;
    b) that prisoners allegedly include people caught listening to foreign
    radio broadcasts, families of accused persons and those who have failed
    to show ‘proper respect’ to the President; and
    c) that after 12 to 15 hours work daily, a poor diet, no medical care or
    proper sanitary conditions, thousands of prisoners have allegedly died
    or are dying.

    calls on the government to report to the Senate within one month, with a
    full account of all knowledge available on this issue.


    Greens Leader Bob Brown, who moved the motion, said that North Korea has
    an appalling array of concentration camps, with the world largely
    oblivious.

    “The suffering of so many good people who are victims of this vicious
    police state can only be helped if first their plight becomes known to
    the wider world. Australia has an embassy in Pyongyang. The Senate is
    right to want to know the full extent of the persecution of North
    Koreans who dare to look beyond their national borders.”


    Further information: Russell Kelly 0438 376 082


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  • Labor the big loser in Green chaos theory

     

    Labor has only itself to blame. Former Labor premier Alan Carpenter promised he would change WA Labor – but the fingerprints of his disgraced predecessor Brian Burke were all over the place, even on Cabinet submissions.

    When Carpenter pulled an early election, the long-suffering people of WA took the opportunity to install hastily-recalled Liberal veteran Colin Barnett and, in the aftermath of his victory, the rats are deserting the Labor ship.

    Even in Freo, Labor candidate Peter Tagliaferri, a popular former mayor who Labor cajoled into the candidacy, could not turn the anti-ALP tide which swept Green candidate Adele Carles into the seat with 54 to 45 per cent of the vote.

    Her win marks the Greens’ first ever primary-vote victory over Labor in any state or federal election. It signals mayhem for Labor.

    Carles avoided any mention of the Greens’ loopier and more dangerous policies. She worked hard to portray the nihilist party as a respectable community organisation without the ratbaggery usually associated with Green politics.

    The Greens showed themselves to be the mothers of reinvention.

    But what is good for inner-urban Freo’s fashion-friendly residents is, unfortunately, death for the rest of the nation. Green policies don’t travel well.

    The Greens, who display their environmentalist credentials by inhabiting seats most removed from the Elysian gloaming they claim to crave, would, through their anti-industrial policies, send Australia into penury at a rate that would make Pol Pot envious. We’d be at Year Zero in seconds.

    For Greens, read Reds. As in the colour of the bottom line once the debts their anti-business and whacko social policies would shackle Australians with.

    Veteran Labor strategist and parliamentary secretary Bob McMullan tried to pass off the Fremantle loss as a one-off.

    Even if this is remotely true, it is a one-off of Labor’s own making.

    MP-elect Carles credits concerns about global warming for her victory and there has been no greater promoter of hysteria over the climate change issue than the ALP, ably assisted by its media arm, the ABC.

    The Greens, like the ALP, would destroy the Australian economy in the cause of supporting bad science and constantly altering modelling even though it is acknowledged that nothing Australians do would have the slightest effect on global climate change.

    While many in the ALP find global warming a convenient prop to their stupendous moral vanity, the Greens see it as a quasi-religious cause.

    Labor is now faced with the job of defusing the time bomb it has created.

    It has to consider the very real prospect that, should it be foolish enough to push for a double dissolution of both House of Parliament, the ALP’s own frenzied propaganda on climate could hand the Greens a Senate majority.

    Delightfully, this would happen even as a number of scientists are back-peddling on their forecasts of sea level increases and rising temperatures.

    Forget polar bears. Labor’s inner-urban MPs would be endangered. Those who will drown first if the political tide rises against Labor in its city seats will be Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, who held Melbourne at the last federal election by less than 5 per cent, Sydney (held by Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek), Fremantle (held by backbencher Melissa Parke) and Grayndler (held by Transport Minister Anthony Albanese).

    They will want the ALP to start talking to the conservatives about tactics quickly before the next federal election to give them more options, but they may find the unthinkable has already happened.

    It may be that the Greens will be there first, looking for deals with the Coalition while Labor is still wondering why it was betrayed by its “bedmate”.
    (In the first edition version of this article, an error was made nominating Bob McMullan as Maxine McKew’s husband. She is Labor figure Bob Hogg’s partner.)

  • Farmers freak as rural seats disappear

    As the commission begins eyeing off the next seat to go, The Nationals are urging rural voters, regardless of their politics, to voice their concerns about any possible reduction to the number of country MPs.

    The Nationals federal director, Brad Henderson, said the party’s executive in Canberra is finalising its own submission, due next Thursday, but will be making the case to retain regional seats which already cover huge expanses.

    “We don’t want to see the abolition of another rural seat,” Mr Henderson said.

    “If a seat must go, it should be from one of the metropolitan areas of Newcastle, Sydney or Wollongong.

    “There are many seats in those areas well under their quota, and they are also areas already well represented in parliament.

    “Country people deserve to be able to access a local member with some relative ease.

    “The bigger these electorates come, the more difficult it becomes for rural MPs to service their regions and for regional people to access their MPs.”

    The Nationals have been particularly critical of the current voting formula for some time, with policy debates on this issue at most annual conferences.

    Nationals MP for the newly defined seat of Parkes, Mark Coulton, represents much of the old Gwydir electorate which he fought hard to try and retain.

    He said it sounds as though his electorate will be getting bigger under the redistribution.

    He is nervous about the prospect of one less voice in country areas – “forget about the party it belongs to” – if the commission looks to scrap another rural seat.

    “Western NSW took the pain last time,” Mr Coulton said.

    “Country MPs are prepared to cover a fair bit of territory, but I already spend 30 to 40 hours a week just travelling to and from towns in my electorate along the Newell Highway.

    “We don’t need another situation where half of NSW is lumped into one seat, as was proposed last time.”

    * Written submissions must be lodged with the redistribution committee by 6pm next Friday to be considered.

    Mail to PO Box K406, Haymarket, NSW 1240 or email nsw.redistribution@aec.gov.au

  • Raw milk second only to drugs in illegal trade

     

    It’s early Saturday morning, and the Brooklyn street is almost empty. Except at one half-open store, where about 30 people are lined up in the narrow aisle clutching empty backpacks, shopping bags and suitcases. At the door, a man checks each entrant, asking “Are you here for the…pickup?”

    Someone shouts “The van’s coming!” and the place burst into action. People run into the street and come back hauling heavy cartons and cooler chests. Then the store empties as quickly as it filled, as everyone lugs their contraband purchase home.

    And “lug” is the word. What’s being distributed at this store — and in countless offices, backyards, homes, churches and parking lots across the country — is milk. Raw milk.

    Apart from illegal drugs, raw milk — milk that’s unpasteurized and unhomogenized, just as it comes out of the cow — may be the most briskly traded underground commodity in the United States. By a conservative estimate, some 500,000 people in the U.S. drink the stuff, says Sally Fallon, president of the Weston Price Foundation, which is dedicated to spreading the word about raw milk — and making it legal. Her guess is that the true total is closer to a million. Even the Food and Drug Administration, which is doing its best to keep raw milk out of the mouths of citizens, has acknowledged that about 3 percent of U.S. milk drinkers drink it raw.

    It’s not that those Brooklyn milk-buyers were doing anything illegal — drinking raw milk is legal in every state. So is buying it. What’s not legal, except in eight states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Mexico and Washington), is selling it to the general public. The other 42 states have a variety of bans. In some, it can be sold only on the farm. In others, it can be sold only as pet food. Some outlaw its sale altogether. Federal law prohibits transporting it for sale — even from a state where it’s legally sold — across state lines.

    Skirting the law

    That hasn’t stopped ingenious raw milk drinkers from finding ways around the rules. Some buy the milk in states where it is legal and carry it across state lines themselves. (Milky Way Farm, in Starr, S.C., does a brisk business selling raw milk in parking lots right on the state line to buyers from neighboring states where it’s illegal). Others form milk-buying clubs, which purchase the milk from a farm that’s allowed to sell it and bring it back to a central distribution point. In states where selling raw milk isn’t allowed at all, clever lawyers have taken advantage of old-time laws that let a farmer board and feed a neighbor’s cow to set up cow-share programs. Members legally own the cattle the dairy farmer is raising and milking, and — as owners — get the milk.

    These arrangements may fall within the letter of the law, but they clearly skirt its intent, so raw milk drinkers keep very, very quiet about their sources. A raw milk club in New York demands a reference from a current member before it will let you join. Joining one New Jersey club takes weeks because the club checks out each potential member (to make sure they’re not a government agent in disguise) before letting them in.

    The complicated legal arrangements make buying raw milk something of an ordeal. No running down to the corner for a quick quart: in most cases, buyers must order their raw milk online, usually by the gallon, several days before the pickup. (If you miss the deadline, you have to wait for the next one.) Deliveries are rarely made more than once a week and many are two or more weeks apart. Some buyers have to drive several hours to get to the pickup site, which is often in a hard-to find spot. “I’ve gotten lost so many times,” says Valerie Scott Massimo, a New Jersey raw milk drinker. “The house is un-findable, and they have a wooden fence six feet tall.”

    There’s good reason for these clubs to be cautious. While state authorities rarely go after raw milk buyers, distributors have gotten in trouble — late last year an Ohio raw milk co-op was raided at gunpoint by sheriffs’ deputies. And state officials regularly try to shut down dairies that sell raw milk. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which defends farmers’ right to sell raw milk, has a dozen cases on its docket right now. “People have the legal right to drink it,” says Pete Kennedy, interim president. “The problem is finding ways to enable them to exercise their right.”

    If many state officials get their way, exercising that right will get harder, not easier. State officials try continually to tighten the laws governing the sale of raw milk. About a year and a half ago, agriculture authorities in Georgia, where it can only be sold as pet food, proposed requiring all raw milk to be dyed charcoal gray, to make it less attractive to drinkers. (Activists beat that one back). In California, state authorities have tightened the requirements for raw milk testing, says Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, the state’s biggest raw milk producer, demanding that the milk be free not just of harmful bacteria, but of almost any bacteria at all.

    A government conspiracy?

    Many raw milk enthusiasts see a deep conspiracy behind governmental attempts to prevent the sale of raw milk. McAfee, who’s managed to get into trouble with the law even in a state where raw milk is legal (by insisting on shipping it across state lines), blames it on the drug companies. They don’t want people discovering that food can cure what they’re selling pills for, he says. “They don’t want any encroachment.”

    But a quick look at the past makes it clear why so many governmental officials hold to the need for pasteurization. B.P. (before pasteurization), many dairies, especially in cities, fed their cattle on — to put it bluntly — garbage, and their milk was rife with dangerous bacteria. Pasteurizing it was the only way to make it safely drinkable. After many years of pasteurization, just about everyone simply assumes that raw milk is dangerous stuff. Amy Osborne, a dancer, got a panicked letter from a relative — a dietician — when she heard Osborne was feeding her baby raw milk. “It made my husband really nervous,” she says. Another mother, reluctant even to have her name used, though raw milk is legal in her state, worries about whether to let her children’s friends drink it. “God forbid they get sick and blame it on raw milk, “she says.

    When a raw milk drinker gets sick, that’s generally what happens — whatever the evidence. Years ago, Massimo got sick a few months after starting to drink raw milk from a nearby dairy. Her doctor immediately blamed the milk — even though tests showed no harmful bacteria and nobody else who had drunk the milk had gotten sick. “He was totally convinced,” she says, “and he was a doctor and I wasn’t.” So she stopped drinking it.

    She started again 20 years later when — after moving to New Jersey — she developed diverticulitis and became very weak on the liquid diet that was all she could digest. Her chiropractor, Steven Lavitan, put her on raw milk, and she says she immediately began to feel better. Lavitan, who recommends raw dairy products to many of his clients, says he has even seen cataracts improved by drinking raw milk. He and others claim that raw milk can cure a host of ailments, including asthma, allergies, lactose intolerance and other digestive problems, many of which, they argue, are caused in the first place by drinking pasteurized milk. “Anything that regular milk can cause, raw milk can cure,” Lavitan says.

    It does a body good

    Raw milk lovers advance two basic health arguments. The first (flatly denied by regulators and most nutritional scientists) is that pasteurization destroys or damages many of milk’s most valuable nutrients. The second is that while it may kill dangerous bacteria, pasteurization also kills off all the good bacteria in raw milk — some of the same ones that big dairy companies are now selling as “probiotics” in pricey new yogurt and drink concoctions.

    In fact, supporters argue, raw milk is just as safe as the dairy it comes from. If the cows are healthy and the dairy is spotless, they say, raw milk is safer by far than pasteurized milk, because the beneficial bacteria naturally found in raw milk make it harder for harmful bacteria to grow.

    It’s not just health claims that make raw milk drinkers willing to go to so much trouble to get it. Milk in its natural state simply tastes better, they say — sweeter, richer and more wholesome. Ellen Whalen, a freelance writer and home-schooling mother on Cape Cod, says raw milk even goes sour more pleasantly than pasteurized milk. “Pasteurized milk rots,” she says. “Raw milk doesn’t go bad, it just changes.”

    Help on the way

    Some help for raw milk drinkers may be at hand. In late January, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who ran for president in 2008, introduced a bill that would legalize the shipment and distribution of raw milk and milk products for human consumption across state lines. It’s an issue of constitutional rights, Paul said in a statement introducing the bill. “Americans have the right to consume these products without having the federal government second-guess their judgment about what products best promote health. “

    One raw milk defender goes even further. Max Kane, the owner of a Chicago raw milk co-op who recently finished a cross-country bicycle trip, during which he ate and drank only raw dairy products to publicize the case for raw milk, would like to see massive civil disobedience. “As long as people keep trying these little ways to circumvent the law, this bull—- is going to continue,” he says. “I think everyone should come forward and say we’re proud to drink raw milk. Otherwise it’s always going to be us running, and them chasing us.”

    If you want to try raw milk…

    Raw milk’s hard to find, Kane found out on his trip, even when, as he did, you’ve got a crew of about a dozen friends e-mailing and cold-calling farmers to hunt the stuff down. The difficulty of getting supplies extended the trip by over a week and forced Kane to cross Mississippi and Louisiana by bus, since the few dairies he could find were too far apart to sustain him. He made it across Texas thanks to a farmer who met him regularly on the road with fresh supplies.

    To find a source near you, start by asking around, especially at health-food stores and farmers’ markets. Unless you’re in one of the eight states where selling it in stores is legal, you won’t be able to buy it at either place. But you may get some leads from other shoppers.

    Keep your eyes out for fundraisers for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, or programs sponsored by the Weston Price Foundation. While neither organization actually distributes raw milk, both fight for it, and their supporters are likely to drink it.

    Another way to contact raw milk drinkers is to do a Web search for “raw milk” and your state; there may well be a local organization that fights for it. Start with a search on LocalHarvest.org. Or you can do what Kane did: hunt for local farmers. Check out the Campaign for Real Milk, which lists producers of raw milk and cheese around the country and also provides a useful summary of raw milk’s legal status in each state. (Warning: if you’re not in a state that allows farmers to sell raw milk to the public, the list will be skimpy. Advertising on a raw milk site is “one of easier ways to get in hot water,” notes Kennedy, who says they’re regularly monitored by federal and local officials.)

  • Spanish students snap spain from space

    From the Daily Mail

    Teenagers with a £56 camera and latex balloon have managed to take stunning pictures from 20 miles above Earth.

    Proving that you don’t need Google’s billions or the BBC weather centre’s resources, the four Spanish students managed to send a camera-operated weather balloon into the stratosphere.

    Taking atmospheric readings and photographs, the Meteotek team of IES La Bisbal school in Spanish Catalonia completed their incredible experiment at the end of February this year.

    Astronomic achievement: An image of the stratosphere taken by the group of four Spanish students by tying a camera to a balloon and sending it to the edge of space

    Astronomic achievement: An image of the stratosphere taken by the group of four Spanish students by tying a camera to a balloon and sending it to the edge of space

     

    Don't look down: Part of the balloon can be seen in the lower right corner of this image taken by the £56 camera 20 miles above Earth

    Don’t look down: Part of the balloon can be seen in the lower right corner of this image taken by the £56 camera 20 miles above Earth

    Building the electronic sensor components from scratch, Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vil, Martm Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort were able to send their heavy duty £43 latex balloon to the edge of space and take readings of its ascent.

    Under the guidance of teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol, the budding scientists, all aged 18 to 19, followed the progress of their balloon using hi-tech sensors communicating with Google Earth.

    ‘Meteotek was our experiment to see if we could accurately measure the Earth’s atmospheric conditions at 30,000 metres, take pictures to prove the experiment and then recover the instruments attached to the balloon after its deflation,’ said team leader Paretas, 18.

    ‘We were overwhelmed at our results, especially the photographs. To send our handmade craft to the edge of space is incredible.’

    Nasa take note: The £56 Nikon digital camera attached to the weather balloon that snapped the incredible images

    Nasa take note: The digital camera attached to the weather balloon that snapped the incredible images

    To successfully conduct the experiment, the team had to account for a wide variety of variables and rely on a lot of luck.

    ‘The balloon we chose was inflated with helium to just over two metres and weighed just 1,500g,’ said Paretas.

    ‘It was able to carry the sensor equipment and digital Nikon camera which weighed 1.5kg.

    ‘However, when we launched at 9.10am on that morning, the critical point for the experiment was to see if the balloon would make it past 10,000m, or 30,000ft, which is the altitude that commercial airliners fly at.’

    Due to the changing atmospheric pressures, the helium weather balloon carrying the meteorological equipment was expected to inflate to a maximum of nine and a half metres as it travelled upwards at 270 metres per minute.

    Innovative: The students and their teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol

    Innovative: The students and their teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol

    ‘We took readings as the balloon rose and mapped its progress using Google Earth and the onboard radio receiver,’ said Paretas.

    ‘At over 100,000ft, the balloon lost its inflation and the equipment was returned to the earth.

    ‘We travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card, which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions.’

    The pupils’ amazing school science project has already caught the attention of the University of Wyoming in the US, and the Meteotek team keep those interested updated with regular blogs and updates to their Twitter feed.

    ‘It was a great experience and a successful flight after spending a lot of time, even after-school hours, on afternoons and during my summer holidays,’ said Paretas.

    ‘We put in a lot of effort, we did a lot of tests before flights.

    ‘We also have learned that in practice, things are not so simple and in the field problems appear that a textbook can’t help you with.’

  • US media more censored than Israel’s

    Indeed, the cease-fire was part of the military plan to decimate the civilian areas of Gaza; it was a hoax, a scam, a deliberate feint to buy time for military preparations — precisely the same strategy followed by the Bush Regime (and its bipartisan Establishment supporters) in “going to the UN” to seek a “peaceful solution” to the “Iraqi crisis” — when the invasion was already in the works.

    Haaretz reports on the Israel’s deceit in the latest outrage, in the aptly titled piece, “Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about”:

    Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public – all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces “Cast Lead” operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning. he disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

    Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well..


    The story also notes that the recent racheting of tension was sparked, deliberately, by a heavy-handed Israeli incursion into Gaza:

    The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops….

    While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas. In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday – one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.

    “Hamas evacuated all its headquarter personnel after the cabinet meeting on Wednesday,” one defense official said, “but the organization sent its people back in when they heard that everything was put on hold until Sunday.”


    Not only did this deception lead Hamas to send its officials back to work — it also meant that there was no general warning to the masses of civilians packed like sardines into Gaza’s hellish confines. It meant that civilian casualties would be maximized — especially when the initial assault was launched in the middle of the day, with thousands of schoolchildren out at their lesson.

    As Glenn Greenwald notes, Israel’s massive bombing of civilian areas — even if couched in terms of “retaliation” for scattershot strikes on Israeli territory by a political faction — constitutes “a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.” Greenwald also adroitly turns Barack Obama’s campaign kowtowing to Israeli militarism on its head:

    [Obama on the campaign trail]: “The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if — I don’t even care if I was a politician — if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

    Can’t the exact same mentality be deployed to justify everything Hamas has done and is doing, to wit:  “if a foreign power were brutally occupying my country for four decades — or blockading my country and denying my children medical needs and nutrition and the ability even to exit — I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that.  And I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing”?  But the last thing that our political class ever extends is reciprocal, two-sided analysis to this dispute.


    What is the ultimate context of this carnage? The fact that the Arab inhabitants of Palestine had their land taken away from them by force — not in some ancient, historic era, but within the lifetime of many thousands of Palestinians still living. I hold no brief for Hamas; like the Angry Arab, whose coverage of the conflict has been relentless and penetrating, I don’t care for any party based on religious extremism. But as Greenwald notes, every action taken by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups could be characterized as “retaliation” for the theft of their land, not to mention the war crime of collective punishment and genocidal blockades visited upon the Occupied Territories for years.

    But there is not a single peep of this perspective from America’s ruling class and its media courtiers. Of course, it is a bit much to expect a nation which itself was built on land theft, repression and slaughter to see anything wrong or “disproportionate” in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. What else are you supposed to do when those dang heathen savages come around with their war parties and tomahawks, trying to get back the land that God Almighty has granted to good white folk?

    Meanwhile, here’s what Israel’s “Manifest Destiny” looks like on the ground in Gaza. From the Maan News Agency (via the Angry Arab, as was the photo above):

    Death shrouds the hallways of Gaza City’s Ash-Shifa medical compound Saturday, its smell creeping in from all corners. mputated bodies are strewn throughout hallways because morgues in the city can no longer accommodate the dead. In one corner a man stands with his seven year old son in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover the dead with. This is how he will carry him home and bury him. Another man stands dazed, in shock after watching his son Mohammed killed during his graduation ceremony at the de facto police headquarters. The father of one of Mohammed’s classmates stood next to his son as he was decapitated. The man is still screaming.

    In the packed hospital waiting room a mother sits silently staring into the distance; her son was pronounced dead shortly after she brought him in… Forty-year-old mother Nawal Al-Lad’a did not find the bodies of her two sons in the medical compound, so she left to look amid the rubble.

    Husam Farajallah, a university student, was at the hospital collecting the body of his relative. He called what happened in Gaza a “black day” in the lives of all Palestinians, and wondered how the world could watch and do nothing.

    Medics in Gaza confirmed that the majority of those killed in the day’s attacks were civilians, including men, women and children. Most were cut to pieces, making the job of doctors and medics difficult, and the task of giving bodies back to families painful and gruesome. The medics working in the field continue to dig up bodies from the densely populated urban areas of Gaza City.

    The scenes remind many Palestinians of the images that came out of the Sabra and Shatila massacres from Beirut in 1982, when thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Lebanese Phalangist militia.

    As the death toll climbs and no word on a halt to the attacks has come from Israel, Gazans fear for their lives and loved ones.