The Times reported spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Regev, stated, “Government buildings had been targeted because Hamas ‘makes no distinction between its terrorist military machine and the government structure…We have seen Hamas consistently using so-called civilian facilities for the purposes of hiding their terrorist military machine, including weapons.”

Under this concept, it is hard to see how Israel would not be able to justify hitting any part of Gaza and killing any person inside or nearby that infrastructure. Saturday morning, according to Haaretz, Israel’s air force targeted Gaza’s police headquarters, other government buildings and a mosque in Rafah. It also is impossible to see how a cease-fire can be brokered if Israel is going to destroy the offices of political leaders elected in disputed or undisputed Palestinian elections.

Seventy-five thousand reservists in Israel have been called up for whatever Israel has planned for Gaza. It’s been bombarding it for three days and has asserted to the world that it must continue to respond to rocket attacks from Hamas because Israel cannot tolerate such terrorism. Yet, when one examines the collective punishment imposed upon the people of Gaza, it is clear that there is no equivalency between the power of Hamas to terrorize Israeli civilians and the power of Israel to terrorize Palestinian civilians.

Hamas has committed crimes and abuses. Its rocket attacks are mostly inaccurate and, because they lack precision, they are widely considered to be war crimes.

In the aftermath of the assassination of Hamas military chief Ahmad Jabiri, Israel has escalated its attacks on the Gaza Strip. At least 19 people in Gaza have been killed.

A delegation of around thirty-five people from the United States is in Pakistan for a week of action in opposition to drone strikes by the United States. The group of delegates, organized by CODEPINK, has had a positive and welcoming response so far. They met with Acting US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Hoagland and had a breakthrough by getting him to talk specifically about US policy on the record. And the group is preparing for a protest in South Waziristan on October 7.

A former Director of Public Prosecutions in the United Kingdom was recently interviewed by The Times (UK) where he called upon the British government to reveal its involvement in supporting the US drone war in Pakistan.

Triple drone attacks in Pakistan reportedly killed more than twelve people who were suspected of being “militants” or terror suspects. Nine were killed in an initial attack on a “militant compound” in Miranshah in North Waziristan. Three more were killed in a second attack while people were trying to “recover dead bodies.” A third strike killed at least one more, according to the Agence France Presse news agency.

The attacks come just as Pakistan and the US are set to meet in Tokyo

Dissenters’ Digest takes a look back at the week’s stories covering whistleblowers, watchdogs, and government accountability.

A tribunal convened in Kuala Lumpur found George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and five administration attorneys – Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Haynes – guilty of war crimes yesterday.

The government has withheld for years the actual facts surrounding the deaths of two of the six completed Guantanamo “suicides” to date. For instance, they hid the fact that one of the detainees was supposedly found hanged with his hands tied behind his back. Another detainee supposedly used an underwear elastic band (or “ligature”) to strangle himself — except the type of underwear described was not used by the detainees, and the ligature itself has gone missing. It was not provided to the autopsy examiners.

There are more stories emerging of atrocities against civilians in Libya, the last apparently involving mass graves of pro-Gaddafi loyalits.