Here are some newsworthy items out of Gaza that are unlikely to be making it to the Western presses. I received this information directly from one of the staff of the Mezan Center for Human Rights about twenty minutes ago.

1. Israel has begun a new policy in Gaza in the past two days called the “roof knock”. This is when a “small” rocket is fired from Israeli military aircraft that is strong enough to blast open the roof of a targeted building. It is sent as a “warning message” to the building’s inhabitants giving them between 2 and 3 minutes to evacuate before the building is completely destroyed. A number of cases of this new technique have been reported recently.
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9 January, 2009 Gaza

Take some kittens, some tender little moggies in a box”, said Jamal, a surgeon at the Al Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital, while a nurse actually placed a couple of blood-stained cardboard boxes in front of us. “Seal up the box, then jump on it with all your weight and might, until you feel their little bones crunching, and you hear the last muffled little mew.” I stared at the boxes in astonishment, and the doctor continued: “Try to imagine what would happen after such images were circulated. The righteous outrage of public opinion, the complaints of the animal rights organisations…” The doctors went on in this vein, and I was unable to take my eyes off those boxes, sitting at our feet. “Israel trapped hundreds of civilians inside a school as if in a box, including many children, and then crushed them with all the might of its bombs. What were the world’s reactions? Almost nothing. We would have been better off as animals rather than Palestinians, we would have been more protected.”
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