A Song For Peace

On Wednesday a group of teenagers performed for a special audience. They begin with We Sing for Peace for their elderly audience who looked on smiling.

what makes this concert special was the choir was made up of teens from the West Bank and their audience was made up of Holocaust survivors.

The enemy sang for the enemy. Only this time there were no enemies. Only songs of peace.

The thirteen children aged 11 to 18 had no idea who their audience was. They belong to Strings of Freedom. The orchestra was put together in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.

The adults in the audience also were unaware that the children that were entertaining them were Palestinian.

The choir was formed seven years ago to help the children overcome war trauma.

War trauma is something both groups understand.

The group was even late for the event because of the war. They were held up for thirty minutes at a military check point just outside the town they live in.

The event took place in the Holocaust Survivors Centre at Holon, Israel on “Good Deeds Day.” The yearly event was started by billionaire Shari Arison, Israel’s richest woman.

The New Zealand Herald reports:

“I feel sympathy for them,” said Ali Zeid, an 18-year-old keyboard player who said he was shocked by what he learned about the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in their campaign to wipe out European Jewry.

“Only people who have been through suffering understand each other,” said Zeid, who said his grandparents were Palestinian refugees forced to flee the northern city of Haifa during the war that followed Israel’s creation in 1948.

Israel Admits Use Of Phosphorus Shells

Israel is admitting that perhaps they used white phosphorous shells in areas where civilians were. That announcement comes after international rage over the use of the deadly shells.

On January 15 three white phosphorus shells hit the UN compound in Gaza City. It was later used the same day at the al-Quds hospital.

Army sources are stating that up to 20 of the shells were fired into Beit Lahiya.

The internal inquiry of the use of these shells is being conducted after human rights groups demanded answers. Israel for weeks insisted that the use of white phosphorus was within international laws. They are proving themselves that those claims were deadly wrong.

Doctors treating civilians in Gaza already know that. They have shown dozens of suspected phosphorus burns on their patients.

180 shells were fired on Hamas fighters and rocket launch crews in northern Gaza. 20 more though are being investigated by Alkalai.

The Guardian reports:

“They obviously could not have gone on denying the use of phosphorus,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty researcher for Israel and the Occupied Territories, told the Guardian yesterday. “There are still phosphorus wedges burning all over Gaza including at the UN compound and at the school.

“It is clear they are not using it as smoke screen as they claimed. They used it in areas where they had no forces, and there are much less problematic smoke screens that they could have used.”

On Monday Amnesty International warned that Israel is facing charges of war crimes from the use of the shells in civilian areas.