MORE than 100 Australian Jews, including two award-winning novelists and a former federal cabinet minister, have signed a statement condemning Israel's siege of Gaza, heightening tensions within the local Jewish community over the violence. -Andrew West and Jonathan Pearlman

The first attack of nuclear strike on man kind was when the US aeroplanes bombed the Japanese city of Hiroshima, in the second world war on the sixth of Aug. 1945. On the ninth of Aug. 1945 another Japanese city was hit by nuclear bomb, which led to the defeat of Japan. -Haithem Alshaibani

It's no small wonder that President Elect Barack Obama is keeping silent on the current round of wanton slaughter and destruction in Palestine. After all He had already made his position crystal clear when he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, otherwise known as "The Israeli Lobby", on June 4th of last year. There had been doubts amongst a portion of Jewish voters as to his fealty to Israel but in his opening statement he put those fears to rest. by Andrew Hughes

Once again, Israel is in the midst of murder and wanton destruction in Palestine. Gaza, after being starved of food, shelter, medical supplies and electricity, is again the stage for mass murder, the likes of which would normally elicit cries of protest the world over. However, the warped zeitgeist that currently pollutes reactions to Israeli violence has led to the usual commentaries of moral equivalency. The fact that the Palestinians had abided by the ceasefire agreement since the Fatah Hamas conflict in June 2007, but Israel broke it on November 5th this year is never mentioned in mainstream media. by Andrew Hughes

Why shouldn’t the U.S. fund the population controllers at the United Nations, as Huffington Post columnist Cristina Page proposes? (See "The Pro-Lie Movement Targets Hillary," 2 December 2008). The short answer is that the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) is implicated in some of the most coercive anti-people campaigns in the world today.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime. by Jeremy R. Hammond Foreign Policy Journal

Dear George W. Bush--- Cong. Barney Frank said recently that Barack Obama’s declaration that “there is only one president at a time” over-estimated the number. He was referring to the economic crisis. But where are you on the Gaza crisis where the civilian population of Gaza, its civil servants and public facilities are being massacred and destroyed respectively by U.S built F-16s and U.S. built helicopter gunships. By Ralph Nader

"There is a complete blackout in Gaza now. The streets are as still as death." I am speaking to my father, Moussa el-Haddad, a retired physician who lives in Gaza City, on Skype, from Durham, North Carolina in the United States, where I have been since mid 2006 – the month Gaza's borders were hermetically sealed by Israel, and the blockade of the occupied territory further enforced. -Laila El-Haddad

The genocidal Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is strikingly similar to the German blitz in the initial stage of the Second World War. The pretexts are nearly the same and the behaviors of both Nazi and Israeli political and military leadership are nearly identical. -Khaled Amayreh

Sadiya Street stretches a few feet beyond the neighborhood that bears its name. That is, on a map. But the geography of Baghdad is determined by masonry, a maze of towering concrete barriers that isolate, segregate and demarcate. -Anthony Shadid, Washington Post