Ken O'Keefe
The weblog of Ken O'Keefe
The Samouni Family Children – Survivors of the Israeli Massacre
January 12, 2011 is a day I will never forget, visiting the Samouni family could not possibly be anything but a life-changing event. Words simply cannot describe the devastation wrought upon this family by a marauding band of Israeli psychopaths, otherwise known as the Givati Brigade of the Israeli Defence Forces.
Today my team heard from mothers and fathers and children the story of the hell on Earth created by Operation Cast Lead. Forty-eight people were killed in this family, children shot in front of parents, parents shot in front of children, a group of 97 in one home blasted to bits by rockets and mortars. Made to live amongst the mutilated and dead for several days, ambulances were kept away and some died slowly over hours and even days.
If you knew the details of this story you would conclude as one mother did, those soldiers that committed these acts, could not be considered human. These were demons with the latest high-tech weapons, courtesy of the US tax-payer and if the good people of the US knew what was done in their name here, they would be sick to their stomachs. Shame on all of us for allowing this to happen and to go completely unpunished.
But amidst all the horrifying memories the children still have their moments of childhood, even if they quiver with terror in the night as the Israeli jets fly overhead as they do to this day nearly every night. I love these people, we are all touched beyond words by the experience of being with them, I wish we could take the whole world on a date with this most incredible family.
Little Ahmed, shot twice in the chest, died after days without medical care as the Israeli's would not allow it.
Samouni family children murdered by Israel.
But amidst all the horrifying memories the children still have their moments of childhood, even if they quiver with terror in the night as the Israeli jets fly overhead as they do to this day nearly every night. I love these people, we are all touched beyond words by the experience of being with them, I wish we could take the whole world on a date with this most incredible family.
Amal
Sazaan & Fares
Noorhan
Shaaban
Suhaib
Mushira, Noorhan, Noor & Amal.
Abd-Allah
Reem
Nisma
Hamid
Mohammed
Karima
Duaa
Nedaa
Jubril
Anas
Luaay
Saidah
The Samouni family children
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3 Responses to “The Samouni Family Children – Survivors of the Israeli Massacre”
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Circulate post graduate and training opportunities, scholarships and studentships offered by Universities and media institutes to journalists and media professionals.
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Honors & Awards
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Additional Honors & Awards
- The International conference Award of Sport Verses Crime – Dubai Police / UAE / November 2004.- The Fourth Conference of the Arab Women Media Centre (meeting the challenges during political changes) Bridging the information gap - Amman - Jordan. September 2005.
-The First Prize for ‘Khulaa law in Islam’, comparative study about divorce and separation in religions (published at Universal Academy periodical for post graduate studies and research - 2005.
- Almanal Award for (Disability related Studies in Drama ’The Negative image of people of special needs in International movie production. 2005, Sharjha City for Human Services in Association with Media and Culture Department, Sharjha TV, and Sharjha Institute of Theatre Arts.
Ken, you are an amazing human being.
Keep safe and give those children a hug from a lady in Hawaii who truly loves them.
WHAT does Western medical science tell us of the trauma on any Western family if 48 members of their close family (or even Nationals) were murdered?
The media would write a whole encyclopaedia on their atrocious sufferings and would mourn their dead day and night, but when it comes to humans targeted by the Israelis and even the Americans and their Allies, practically NOTHING is felt, said or done.
The UK Charity Commission, the Government and the Media including the British Intelligentsia would even brand Humanitarian Aid Organisations as TERRORIST and the Bank Gangsters would block their funds immediately causing more suffering and trauma for the Survivors!
A few days ago, I saw a vitriolic aricle against KEN O’KEEFE posted on “Palestinian Mothers” hosted by my LOST FRIEND Iqbal Tamimi ! I refused to read it all, but when I am in a better mood I’ll do so and then tell Miss Iqbal what I think about it!
KEN O’KEEFE HAS PROVED HIMSELF ONE OF THE MOST TRUSTWORTHY HUMAN BEING IN THE FIGHT AGAINST US AND ISRAELI CRIMINALITY!
Those acts of barbarity are not done by HUMANS but by DEHUMANISED CREATURES who are ADDICTED TO THE BLOOD AND SUFFERING OF THE INNOCENT!
Unfortunately, we are to blame ourselves FIRST for letting this happen, and if we want it stopped, WHY DON’T WE HAVE THE COURAGE OF DOING WHAT KEN HAS DONE?
The longer we wait, the worse it will become. If we want freedom, we’ll have to SNATCH it! The enemy will not give it to us without a fight! Our best weapon is DISOBEDIENCE AND TOTAL ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL BOYCOTT because we are not adequately armed to face space and other WMDs!
If there is a GOD, we’ll succeed.
In the ,mean time I wish KEN and his loved ones all the best.
We must of course WEEP because this is a sign that we are still human, BUT WE MUST ALSO ACT!
BAFS
Sovereign Freeman-onthe-land
Servant of GOD and of no man or government
From the Gulag of Greater Israel of Great B’rith’ain
Mondat 17th of January 2011
WHAT does Western medical science tell us of the trauma on any Western family if 48 members of their close family (or even Nationals) were murdered?
The media would write a whole encyclopaedia on their atrocious sufferings and would mourn their dead day and night, but when it comes to humans targeted by the Israelis and even the Americans and their Allies, practically NOTHING is felt, said or done.
The UK Charity Commission, the Government and the Media including the British Intelligentsia would even brand Humanitarian Aid Organisations as TERRORIST and the Bank Gangsters would block their funds immediately causing more suffering and trauma for the Survivors!
A few days ago, I saw a vitriolic aricle against KEN O’KEEFE posted on “Palestinian Mothers” hosted by my LOST FRIEND Iqbal Tamimi ! I refused to read it all, but when I am in a better mood I’ll do so and then tell Miss Iqbal what I think about it!
KEN O’KEEFE HAS PROVED HIMSELF ONE OF THE MOST TRUSTWORTHY HUMAN BEING IN THE FIGHT AGAINST US AND ISRAELI CRIMINALITY!
Those acts of barbarity are not done by HUMANS but by DEHUMANISED CREATURES who are ADDICTED TO THE BLOOD AND SUFFERING OF THE INNOCENT!
Unfortunately, we are to blame ourselves FIRST for letting this happen, and if we want it stopped, WHY DON’T WE HAVE THE COURAGE OF DOING WHAT KEN HAS DONE?
The longer we wait, the worse it will become. If we want freedom, we’ll have to SNATCH it! The enemy will not give it to us without a fight! Our best weapon is DISOBEDIENCE AND TOTAL ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL BOYCOTT because we are not adequately armed to face space and other WMDs!
If there is a GOD, we’ll succeed.
In the ,mean time I wish KEN and his loved ones all the best.
We must of course WEEP because this is a sign that we are still human, BUT WE MUST ALSO ACT!
BAFS
Sovereign Freeman-onthe-land
Servant of GOD and of no man or government
From the Gulag of Greater Israel of Great B’rith’ain
Monday 17th of January 2011
Ken O'Keefe
The weblog of Ken O'Keefe
The Samouni Family Children – Survivors of the Israeli Massacre
But amidst all the horrifying memories the children still have their moments of childhood, even if they quiver with terror in the night as the Israeli jets fly overhead as they do to this day nearly every night. I love these people, we are all touched beyond words by the experience of being with them, I wish we could take the whole world on a date with this most incredible family.
On the verge of Cast Lead II, a look back
As a reminder, during Cast Lead Israel killed over 1400 people who were imprisoned in a medieval siege. Hundreds of children were murdered; nine-year-old Ibrahim is just one; one child within one family, a statistic for most, and a shattered family for some.
During Cast Lead the Israeli Army invaded Thabat and the Awaja family, like just about every family, took shelter in their home. Let us not forget however there were no options, there was nowhere to run; Gaza prison was and remains sealed off by both Israel and its collaborator, the Egyptian government. Anyway, as the family hid and prayed, with no warning whatsoever, the family home caved in around all nine members of the family, courtesy of an Israeli bulldozer. Their home became a demolition site, but the family remained there, trapped and terrified for one horrible day and night. A cold, dark, terrifying January night, waiting and hoping for some form of rescue. It never came.
The next day Ibrahim (9 years old) and his father, Kamal, poked their heads out of the pile of rubble that was their home to see if escape was possible. This is where the nightmare became a living hell. Israeli soldiers shot Kamal in the chest from about a 100-metre distance; then they shot 9 year-old Ibrahim in the stomach. In a panic, with Ibrahim bleeding badly, Kamal picked up his son and the entire family fled their former home into the street. I asked this question twice, to be very clear, “was there any fighting going on around you, is there any chance at all that the Israeli’s fired at your family by mistake.” The answer came with a wry, tortured smile, “No, one million percent no.” After hearing what happened next you will know why.
With the entire family now exposed in the street, while Kamal carried his now limp son, he was shot twice more in the chest; he and Ibrahim fell to the ground, lifeless. Six children and their mum remained, and then mum was shot, twice, once in each leg. The family is now exposed in the street, father and son thought to be dead, mum now unable to walk and bleeding dangerously.
If you have a child, think of your child in this circumstance. Now think of seven of them in this circumstance. I want every parent to imagine this, think what you would feel in this scenario.
Bleeding and unable to walk, crawling with her 1 year-old baby, Wafaa and six of the children managed to reach the side of the road and find some cover behind a abandoned fridge. Ibrahim and his father remain lifeless, although shot three times father Kamal is alive, but playing dead. 20 metres away, the rest of the family hid on the side of the road. What happened next would torture anyone but a demon.
Israeli soldiers then came to “within seven metres” of Kamal and his son, Kamal shot three times in the chest, Ibrahim lifeless but possibly still alive, a gunshot to his stomach. Unimaginably, while his mother watched just 20 metres away, the soldier shot Ibrahim in the eye and his brains and head exploded. A son was lost, while a mother watched. Wafaa told me the soldiers ate Strawberry’s shortly after executing her son.
Perhaps the only luck on this day was that his headshot was not fatal.
Wafaa told me more about how she knew “one million percent” that her sons killing was no accident. Because they remained on the side of the street with no medical care for three more days, the Israeli’s walking by regularly over that time, making a point to laugh when they passed Ibrahim’s bullet ridden body.
With Ibrahim martyred and no home to live in, and no building materials to rebuild, the now 8 member Awaja family was forced to live in a tent, and they have done so for the last two years. Only this week had they managed to get a flat to live in, paid for by a charity.
As you might imagine the whole family is just a little bit traumatized. All of the children are experiencing post traumatic stress disorder. The eldest daughter, Omsiat (14 years-old) thinks of Ibrahim everyday, and she misses him the most when she is walking to school, as they used to walk this journey together every school day.
Another daughter, Hala (11 years-old), is obsessed and fearful of death. Most heartbreaking of all is little Diaa (5 years-old), he was your normal 3 year-old when all this happened. He has not spoken since and nearly the whole time we were there Diaa was sitting up on the window ledge, gazing. He did this in a way man of 50 might do it, with deep, troubled contemplation. This was not a little boy anymore, his childhood over at the age of 3.
Since I arrived in Gaza in late November 2010, nearly 30 Palestinians have been shot in the “buffer zone” near the border. These people, many children, were not involved in any threatening activity; they were collecting rocks in order to eek out a living. They were shot in a way that makes one thing clear, shooting Palestinians is nothing more than a game for many Israeli soldiers.
During Operation Cast Lead top commanders approved white phosphorus for use in densely populated civilian areas, so shooting a boy in the head from seven metres away and riddling his dead body with bullets is par for the course really.
Is Israel synonymous with Judaism? This is a serious and relevant question with serious repercussions. Do Israeli’s/Jews consider Palestinian life is equal to Israeli/Jewish life? In all honesty, those who live in Palestine know the answer, and it is an emphatic no. And so the following is a legitimate question as well, what percentage of Israeli’s even consider Palestinians to be human beings?
Based on what I have read and witnessed, on the Mavi Marmara and otherwise, what has been shared with me from first hand accounts, I believe that significant numbers of Israeli’s consider Palestinians to be sub-human.
I think it is time to compare the “decent Germans” of Hitler’s Germany to the silent Jewish and American people of today. As we sit on the verge of Cast Lead II, being Jewish and American carries a burden of massive proportions.
No sane society would argue that ignorance is a defence. It may be forgiven, if the injured party is so inclined, but it is not a defence. Americans are guilty, and if Israel is synonymous with Judaism, then the Jewish people are guilty as well. I honestly hope that more and more Americans and Jewish people speak out, indeed they have a unique ability and responsibility if you ask me.
Silence at this stage, is indeed complicity.
Regardless of all the darkness and complicity I remain of the absolute belief that we, people of conscience, can “be the change we wish to see in the world” and ultimately effect a better world. Never mind what anybody else is doing, if we get it together we will transform insanity onto justice and dare I say it, peace will break out. Even if it does not, I cannot imagine anything better to fight for, if not for ourselves, for our children, everyone’s children. TJP
Egyptian Blockade of Gaza – Blocking Ramsey Clark, Dr. Curtis Doebbler
Ramsey Clark can be reached at +20 1501093768 or +41 793044654
PRESSURE EGYPT NOW TO STOP BLOCKING HIS ENTRY & ALL OTHER HUMANITARIANS
n June, 2006, Clark wrote an article criticizing US foreign policy in general, containing a list of 17 US “major aggressions” introduced by “Both branches of our One Party system, Democrat and Republican, favor the use of force to have their way.” (the list includes the Clinton years) and followed by “The United States government may have been able to outspend the Soviet Union into economic collapse in the Cold War arms race, injuring the entire planet in the process. Now Bush has entered a new arms race and is provoking a Second Cold War…”[19]
Egypt Blocking Yet Another Humanitarian Aid Convoy to Gaza
See what the Asian Convoy leaders say;
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/2602/Egypt/Politics-/Asia-convoy-waiting-for-Egypt-visa-to-reach-Gaza–.aspx
Tags: Blockade of Gaza, Gaza Kenneth O'Keefe, Human Rights, Ken O'Keefe, Palestine, Palestinians, Siege of Gaza, TJP Liberty, world citizen
TJP Liberty Report Gaza – 2nd Anniversary Cast Lead – Ken O’Keefe Dec. 27, 2010
Tags: Blockade of Gaza, Freedom Flotilla, Gaza, Gaza blockade, Gaza Kenneth O'Keefe, Human Rights, Ken O'Keefe, Mavi Marmara, Palestine, Palestinians, Siege of Gaza, TJP, TJP Liberty, world citizen
TJP Liberty Report Gaza – Collecting Rocks & Getting Shot by the Israeli’s for Fun
The little town of Bethlehem
TJP Liberty Report from Gaza ‘Life in Jabalya’
BBC Panorama ‘Death in the Med’ is 100% Zionist Propaganda
Aloha Ted,
An absolute joy to read. I will be spreading this enthusiastically and look forward to seeing how many of the “journalists” at the BBC manage to report the truth about their disgusting propaganda piece. A better world has no room for such trash, and since those at the helm of the BBC have made it their choice to serve invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the ongoing occupation of Palestine, I look forward to their inevitable downfall… or takeover by people who actually honour the responsibilities inherent in genuine journalism. One way or the other, the truth will indeed set us free from the propaganda as only the BBC can deliver.
TJP,
Ken O’Keefe
I would refer to the ‘consolidated appeal’ procedure which Michael Fadda, Editorial Assistant to the BBC Trust, has described in his email of 3rd December. This was in response to Richard Lightbown’s complaint of 24th August that the Panorama programme, Death on the Med’, was biased and lacking in impartiality. The procedure described by Mr Fadda is Byzantine and the process so drawn out as to make any final BBC decision, apparently due in April, meaningless.
It has become increasingly clear that the programme was a whitewash of the truth and represents a nadir of the consistent bias displayed by the BBC in its reporting of the Palestine/Israel situation.
This lack of impartiality was confirmed by John Pilger who told us on the Today programme (on 10/12/10) that the BBC had failed to report the UNHRC report on the Mavi Marmara affair on its main news channels – censorship by omission.
The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was released on 27/9/10. It is revealing and damning and should have been the subject of much publicity; it shows conclusively that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered ‘execution-style by Israeli commandos’.
The report states that both activists and journalists on board the flotilla were treated in a cruel and inhuman way and confirms that cameras, laptops, mobiles, passports, credit cards and cash were stolen by the IDF. As John Pilger stated, war crimes were found to have been committed and the report recommends that there is a clear case for prosecution for wilful killing etc – *see extracts from the report shown below.
This Mission report gives unquestionable evidence that ‘Death on the Med’ was a travesty of truth. The BBC should now make an unreserved apology and offer the resignation of the Director General. Under the watch of the current DG the BBC has increasingly shown bias and lack of impartiality in their reporting of the Palestinian/Israeli situation. The BBC appears to be in thrall to Israel – as is much of the American media – it is understood that the UN Mission report did not appear in any US media whatsoever.
The Israeli military and its government have again behaved in flagrant contravention of the Geneva Conventions and should be regarded as a rogue state. For the UK to seek to protect members of the Israeli government from international law procedures – as they are attempting to do on 13th December by tampering with Universal Jurisdiction – makes them complicit in Israel’s serial wrongdoing, as does also the moral support they give in avowing that they are ‘Friends of Israel’
The UK government would be well advised to read the attached UN Mission report, and then to rethink that friendship and their whole policy towards the Middle East.
Ted from Liverpool
*The Mission considers that the same factual circumstances provide prima facie evidence that protected persons suffered violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israeli forces during the interception,
There is clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: • Wilful killing; • Torture or inhuman treatment; • Wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health
Perhaps the most shocking testimony, after that relating to the violence on the Mavi Marmara, was the consistent accounts of a number of incidents of extreme and unprovoked violence perpetrated by uniformed Israeli personnel upon certain passengers during the processing procedures inside the terminal at Ben Gurion International Airport on the day of deportation. These accounts were so consistent and vivid as to be beyond question.
Tags: Ken O'Keefe, world citizen, Freedom Flotilla, Mavi Marmara, Gaza blockade, Kenneth O'Keefe, Aloha Palestine, Hasbara, Gaza Kenneth O'Keefe, BBC, BBC Panorama, Siege of Gaza, Anthony Lawson, Panorama
TJP Liberty Report from Gaza ‘Story of Areej’
Areej is a 4 year old girl from Sabra in Gaza. She is an orphan whose father was a killed by an Israeli bomb. She has a skin condition that is undiagnosed but worsened severely during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2008-2009. Although it is inconclusive, Areej’s neighborhood was one of the worst hit by white phosphorus bombs, a blatant war crime as yet unpunished. At the end of the video there is information about how to make donations directly to her family and help her with possible medical attention in Europe or elsewhere.
go to Tuesday’s Child website at;
Grandfather of Areej; Khamees Banat
please contact Yousef Hassan at;
00972599682365 or
reem_king@hotmail.com
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