THIS IS WHY

This is why pigs are pigs, and nothing more. These are the assholes maintaining the status quo at the expense of the rest of us. This is their "job".
 Statement from Revolutionary Communist Party, NY Branch on the Police Murder of Eric Garner:

“IT STOPS TODAY”

July 24, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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Everyone has seen the video. Everyone has seen the police come up to Eric Garner and put him in a chokehold for the “crime” of selling cigarettes. Everyone has seen Eric say over and over, as they drive him to the ground, “I can’t breathe.” Everyone has seen the big man go down, unconscious. Everyone has seen the pigs just stand over his body, doing nothing. Everyone has seen the paramedics do the same. Not even making a show of pretending to save him. That’s how they see the lives of Black people.

This is everyday life for masses of Black people in America now. Today. 2014.

Do you remember Eric Garner’s last words before they put him in a chokehold?

“It stops today.”

It stops today.

Above: Eric Garner with his children.
Below: Protest of NYPD murder of Eric Garner on Staten Island. Photos: AP

The murder of Eric Garner is a dagger right in the gut of millions of people—but it is part of, it is the spearpoint, of a whole bigger program. It is tied in with the horrific mass incarceration of African-American, and other minority, peoples. It is tied in with the fact that they have no future for ordinary Black people like Eric Garner other than one where you are constantly hounded and then murdered if you raise a question against them.

Face it. Right now this system is committing slow genocide against African Americans—and it is on track to commit fast genocide.

Eric Garner’s words should ring in our ears and in our consciences: this DOES have to stop today!

People’s anger at this is righteous. People’s anger is ESSENTIAL. Anyone who tells people to “be cool” is dead wrong. This righteous rage at what was done to Eric Garner is the fuel we need to “stop this today.”

But how?

Not by electing new mayors or presidents who are Black or who are supposedly sympathetic to or “listen” to Black people. Didn’t people just do that? And what did it get? The same harassment, the same imprisonment, the same being treated like a criminal. And the same murder. Why do we keep expecting this ILLEGITIMATE system to do right—when it has taught us over and over that it cannot and will not?!

Not by videos—because how many videos have we seen? It’s okay and it can be important to take videos, but the time for just taking videos has long since passed.

Not by putting our faith in the Justice Department—because how many other times has the Justice Department investigated, and then the same basic shit keeps going on? This is the same IN-justice Department that oversees the lockup of millions of our youth and that is part of this whole illegitimate thing—why should we expect it to do anything other than either a whitewash or a slap on the wrist?

Yes, by fighting back—by going up against these pigs and the whole murderous system whose laws and way of life they enforce, and demanding justice for Eric. FIGHTING BACK IS ESSENTIAL—but that fight has to be part of something bigger.

What we really need is a revolution. A real revolution. A total revolution. A revolution which actually defeats and dismantles this system’s tools of violent repression: the armed force that this system wields against oppressed people here and all around the world—from Staten Island to the Gaza Strip. A revolution to change EVERYTHING. Changing the economy, changing the way people are treated and treat each other, changing the ideas and values that get promoted and fought for, and yes, changing the way that security is provided to people. And as the first basic and essential step to this: a revolution which brings in a whole new system which leadsthe masses of people to exercise power and to remake the world. A revolution which must and will lead people to eliminate all the inequalities and disparities of this society—including the oppression of Black people and other oppressed nationalities by white supremacy and the oppression of women by men. A revolution which must and will lead people to struggle over and finally overcome all the rotten ideas that correspond to this system of exploitation. Acommunist revolution—against capitalism and bringing in a whole new socialist system.

This is what we need, and this is possible. Now on one level, the time to totally jump this revolution off is not today. We would lose if we tried that. And we aim to win. The lives of millions and, ultimately, billions depend on that.

But in another way, the revolution DOES have to start today—there is plenty to do right now to get ready for this revolution, to hasten and bring closer the chance to make revolution and then win when that chance comes. That is what our Party is all about. Our slogan puts it out:

Prepare the ground, prepare the people, and prepare the vanguard—get ready for the time when millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out, with a real chance to win.

Get with this Party. Come to its website, revcom.us. Check out and get into our leader, Bob Avakian (BA), who has taken communism and revolution to a new level. Get BA’s filmREVOLUTION–NOTHING LESS! and his book BAsics, the handbook of revolution. Meet BA by going online to youtube.com and searching “Yes, There Is a Conspiracy, to Get the Cops off." Get with the Revolution Club, where you can fight the power, and transform the people, forrevolution, right now.

See the call for the October Month of Resistance here.

Be in the streets with us fighting for justice for Eric Garner.And join our Party and many others in getting ready for a massive month of resistance against mass incarceration, police terror, repression and the criminalization of a generation. This has to be a massive effort, and many different people of all kinds of views are uniting to do this—but you are badly needed for it! Come to a kickoff rally and meeting to get down on planning this on August 2 (12 noon - 4 pm, at St. Paul and St. Andrew Church, 263 West 86th St., New York, NY 10024).

It is up to us to make real Eric’s words: IT STOPS TODAY!!

Contact: Revolution Books • 146 W. 26th St. • New York, NY • 212-691-3345
revbooksnyc@yahoo.com

revcom.us

MUSIC

I know that we are a hardcore band, and that I haven't been posting anything music related here for a long time. But who cares? People are dying, with the support of your fucking government. Music will come soon. But until then, listen to Deadfall and Hero Dishonest. And read this....

From A World to Win News Service:

Paris: thousands defy a ban and police violence to support Palestine

July 24, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

21 July 2014. A World to Win News Service. As the Israeli massacre in Gaza entered its third week, many cities across the globe saw marches and demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In France, too, there were protests against the Israeli attacks in about 15 cities on 19 July. But the French government banned the planned march in Paris that day, threatening arrest and up to six months in prison for anyone who showed up at the assembly point in Barbes, the main shopping area in the largely Arab and African neighbourhoods of northern Paris.

Police blockades failed to stop thousands of youth and many others from coming. The encirclement and then brutal attack on what had been a mainly non-violent demonstration only succeeded in fragmenting the crowd into the twisting side streets of a mainly supportive neighbourhood, where they were able to evade and sometimes fight off the police for several hours. Other youth came to join them.

The pretext for the ban was scuffles around two synagogues at the end of another pro-Palestinian march the week before. After failing to prevent the 19 July protest, the authorities and their media mouthpieces tried to politically encircle and isolate the youth who had defied them by labelling it an "anti-Semitic riot", in words echoed by the BBC.

This lie was not, as many people think, an attempt to appeal to Jewish voters or even just a question of French complicity with Israel. Contrary to the popular chant, French President Francois Hollande is not Israel's "accomplice". France is an imperialist power that is now highly active in seeking to consolidate and expand its historic areas of influence, including by sending troops to former colonies in Africa where Islam is widespread. Above all its recent turn toward a more openly pro-Israeli policy has to do with France's own predatory interests and aspirations in the Arab world.

Instead, this lie reflects the dilemma of a state worried about the way hatred for its own and its allies' crimes abroad is affecting those who are most oppressed and exploited in France itself, especially immigrants and their children, who, because of France's historical colonies and sphere of influence, happen to be largely from Muslim backgrounds.

This is what President Francois Hollande was referring to when he warned, in defending the ban, "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be imported". This is also the meaning behind Prime Minister Manuel Valls' statement justifying the ban as a measure against what he called anti-Semitism "spreading on the Internet, on social media, in our working class areas, among young people who are often directionless, who have no awareness of history, who hide their hatred of Jews behind a mask of anti-Zionism and behind the hatred of the Israeli state".

For a long time in France, like in many countries and including much of the Arab world, efforts to gather people in support of the Palestinians have not had much success, reflecting the decline in hopes of radical change among Palestinians and other Arabs in this country (and globally), as well as more generally in France. But over the past two weeks, night after night of television news showing Israeli explosives killing children in Gaza once again brought people into the streets in growing numbers, creating a worrisome situation for the French government.

France has a well-oiled political set-up in which reformist parties can often lead public outrage into acceptable channels. Some kinds of big demonstrations against the massacre in Gaza have been and will probably be allowed, but the plans for this protest in Barbes threatened to be what the government considered unacceptable and ended up trying to smash an uncontrollable big gathering of youth from immigrant backgrounds and public housing, some secondary and university students and young professionals, as well as low-wage workers and unemployed—and at least as many young women as men.

Some people who had rarely or never taken part in any kind of political demonstration felt that this time they had to be there because they felt a connection between their oppression and the oppression of the Palestinians. The actions of the French government itself worked to bring that out. The ban and the threat of brutality helped turn a slogan once chanted almost routinely at demonstrations into an accurate, if poetic, description of the way many people felt about their own situation and what they wanted to do about it: "We are all Palestinians", in some way fighting the same fight against the same enemies.

While there is plenty of anti-Semitism in France, including among youth of all nationalities, and Jews, Jewish-owned stores and synagogues are sometimes targeted, that was not what this demonstration was about. Its flag was the flag of Palestine, an oppressed nation, and its target Israel and the French government. It was "anti-Semitic" only to those who, like the French Prime Minister, argue that there is no legitimate reason to oppose what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. It was not like the Catholic fundamentalist, homophobic, proudly patriarchal and often anti-republic (in both the forms of fascism and monarchism)—and, by the way, anti-Semitic—massive demonstrations that the "Socialist" president of the French Republic has found much less disturbing than these youth seeking justice. 

If the majority of the participants in this banned protest were from an Islamic background, that is certainly not because others were excluded—those who came were welcomed. It was the Jewish Defence League (on their Web site) and not the pro-Palestinians who threatened violence against the small groups in this march who carried banners reading, "Jews for Justice for Palestine". The problem is not that some people feel a special connection with Palestine but that not enough other people recognize the justice of the Palestinian cause, at least not enough to risk what these youth did.

But Islam is exerting a growing attraction among them, and one factor in that is the French state's own policies and propaganda.

It is telling that some reactionary commentators are referring to France's 2005 ghetto youth rebellion as a "French Intifada" and calling for the French government to treat second and third-generation immigrant youth the way Israel treats Palestinians, as an alien element to be walled off and gotten rid of. Yet in that rebellion religion did not play the role that it does among immigrant youth today.

Despite the overwhelming secular character of the 19 July protest, when some people began to chant "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), it was taken up widely. A few people carried Turkish flags to associate support for Palestine with that country's reactionary Islamist governing party. And, like the Islamists, the shamefully few self-defined leftists who participated had nothing better to offer than tailing after Hamas, an organization that was born and still lives for the goal of religious rule and not the liberation of any people.

Some Salafist women university students proclaimed, "We're here to say to Palestine that we have awakened for you." In the face of the last few weeks' events, far too many people are still asleep. But being pulled into religion is not becoming awake.

The fact that these young women and many other youth have adopted Islamic fundamentalism means that they have rejected French oppression and some aspects of the French slave mentality only to enslave themselves to another oppressive world outlook, that of religion. Their hope that Islam offers a way out of oppression is an illusion. 

Even before Israel existed French governments tried to cast their colonial mission as a fight to civilize Islamic populations. But the vilification of Islamic populations as a weapon in the hands of the French imperialist ruling class in its moves abroad and at home is only one side of the question. The other side is what it will take for more people to awaken from feeling they have to choose between the imperialist republic and the Islamic "community of the faithful" whose promises are no less a lie.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

NO JUSTIFICATION

There are going to be many attempts at justifying the overwhelming use of force on Palestinian civilians by the israeli state, and much effort by the u.s. and their allies to support this. But it's all bullshit, and nothing short of genocide.
  Accusations of “Human Shields”:

Obscene “Rationale” for Israel’s Mass Murder of Civilians

by Alan Goodman | July 28, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

After the massacre of 16 people seeking shelter at a UN school—as well as other massacres that Israel has overtly taken credit for—Israel claimed that these were the Palestinians’ own fault because forces firing rockets at Israel use “civilians as human shields.”

The U.S. government and the media amplify that with a constant stream of statements and coverage that portrays the one-sided slaughter of Palestinians as supposedly morally complex and ultimately justifiable. Headlines, like the one in the New York Times titled “Israel Says That Hamas Uses Civilian Shields, Reviving Debate,” train Americans to turn away from the horrific crimes Israel is committing.

For humanity to advance beyond a state in which "might makes right"—and where things ultimately come down to raw power relations—will require, as a fundamental element in this advance, an approach to understanding things (an epistemology) which recognizes that reality and truth areobjective and do not vary in accordance with, nor depend on, different "narratives" and how much "authority" an idea (or "narrative") may have behind it, or how much power and force can be wielded on behalf of any particular idea or "narrative," at any given point.

Bob Avakian
BAsics 4:10

A one-sided, genocidal massacre is presented as hopelessly complicated: “Nothing is ever so clear in the complex and often brutal calculus of urban warfare.” (Headline and quote are from the New York Times July 23, 2014).

A spokesman for an imperialist “think tank” (that develops strategies and excuses for the crimes of the U.S. empire and its agents around the world) declared “Hamas knows that it works to its advantage, politically and diplomatically, as the civilian death toll mounts.”

As if the Palestinians are intentionally getting Israel to slaughter them because it makes Israel look bad.

Here’s the reality:

For eight years Israel has subjected the people of Gaza to constant brutality, drone strikes, assassinations. Israel has cut off almost all contact between Gaza and the outside world. You can’t visit there. Relief ships have been attacked by Israel in international waters and humanitarian activists on board murdered by Israeli troops. Israel has literally starved people in Gaza, restricting imports of food and cutting off people’s ability to grow food, or to fish off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast. Over 13 percent of the children in Gaza suffer from acute malnutrition. Nearly 19 percent suffer from anemia. Unemployment is over 38 percent—far higher than in the U.S. during the Great Depression. People in Gaza do not have access to drinkable water and reliable electric power. (See “Gaza by the Numbers: Who the People are, how They got There” by Juan Cole, Guardian, July 8, 2014.)

And all this is in the context of decades of driving the Palestinian people, as a whole, from their land, and trying to destroy their lives, spirit and culture.

Whenever there is resistance of any kind from any force to all this, Israel strikes at the civilian population. They call the non-combatants they murder “collateral damage” and blame—often without any basis—whatever group they want to target and isolate.

2009: Alan Goodman speaks at town hall meeting opposing Israel's 2008-2009 massacre in Gaza on parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza

It is Israel that has a policy of mass murder of civilians—often at random—in schools, hospitals, homes and on beaches.In fact, mass murder and collective punishment of civilians is Israel’s main weapon in enforcing the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Some apologists for Israel openly argue that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian!

Now, when ineffective rockets are fired towards Israel from within this densely packed prison, Israel cries that the forces firing the rockets are using civilians as “human shields.” And Israel uses that charge to justify intensifying the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestine, including repeatedly bombing UN schools where people gather to seek shelter, killing dozens.

U.S. Backing for Every Crime

The U.S. provides massive financial and technology aid to Israel’s military. Every crime Israel has ever committed has been backed by the U.S.

Over and over again, we hear from the rulers of the U.S., including Barack Obama, about the “shared ideals” of the U.S. and Israel.

That is true: they share the (immoral) ideals of exploiters and violent oppressors that sit atop a world of exploitation, injustice and oppression.

Here’s the basic truth:

All this bullshit about “human shields” from the rulers of the U.S., their mass media, and their Israeli hitmen is an obscene, immoral “rationale” for mass murder.

THIS IS NOT A WAR

This is genocide......

“Am I Going to Die, Daddy?” The Child in Gaza Asked

By Global Research News

Global Research, July 26, 2014

Channel 4

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by Jon Snow

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — It is the saltwater coming out of the hotel tap that reminds you where you are, as you wake up in Gaza. And then you imagine your room besieged by honeybees. It is the constant whine of the drones that parade up and down Gaza, selecting targets.

On the street, wearing your compulsory and heavy body armor, only children play in small bunches. There seem to be no adults about. No fishermen in the sea. No one on the beach.

If the Israelis have proved anything, it is that there is no such thing as a forensic strike.

In this besieged strip of land, close to 2 million people live so densely packed that any strike — be it from the air, from the sea or on land — will kill someone more than the intended target. And that someone too often is a child.

As of now, 166 children have been killed and 1,310 have been injured, some of them severely.

I was in the Shifa hospital on the two floors packed with child casualties. Nema, 2½ years old, was hit by an F-16 missile and terribly injured. Her eyes were closed by the enormity of the damage to her skull and her nose. Two round red-black saturating bruises hid her eyes.

 

A child injured in an Israeli assault was taken to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday.

Image: Mohammad Asad/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Two-year-old Palestinian girl Naama Abu al-Foul sleeps after undergoing treatment at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital following an Israeli bombing next to her family’s home on Wednesday.

Image: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

Seven died in that attack, eight others were injured. I don’t know how many of them were children. Seven-year-old Maha was hit by artillery fire and severely injured. In that assault, her mother told me, 45 people were injured, many of them children, and two were killed. And then there was 7-year-old Noradin, also badly injured.

Dr. Mads Gilbert from Norway, a professor of emergency medicine, says the Shiva hospital, the last one working properly in Gaza City, is suffering a chronic shortage of pain relievers. He told me the outlook for some of these children is very bleak indeed.

A Palestinian child at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital.

Image: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

Can they really be the acceptable collateral of targeting militants?

Channel 4 http://bcove.me/hy0x03nm

Can they really be the acceptable collateral of targeting militants?

Even our own translator, cut off from his family, in the south of Gaza, has to listen on the phone as his children weep and his 6-year-old asks: “Am I going to die, daddy?”

He can hear the explosions in the background. There have been two assaults on his wife’s town in the last 24 hours. Some 40 Palestinians appear to have been killed — six of them children.

But you know, despite the bangs, the booms, the screeching jets and the humming drones, you can never lose sight of the consequences of the siege that has been set against this Palestinian entity for the last seven years or more.

Electricity is intermittent, water is compromised, gas, diesel and so much is else is in constant short supply.

I was amazed to find a small sachet of shampoo as I went to a cold shower tonight — salty again. Obviously, you cannot make bombs out of shampoo and so there is no embargo on it. But clearly you can make bombs from paint because there isn’t any. This is the most wretchedly unpainted urban place I have ever been.

And beyond it all, why won’t they talk? This cannot go on. It is the children, tomorrow’s Palestinians, who are paying the price.

Editors’ Note: Getty Images and the Anadolu Agency have verified that the photograph at the top of this article was taken at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday. We had temporarily removed the photograph while we investigated complaints about its authenticity that were sent to the author of this article.

Jon Snow has been the face of Channel 4 News since 1989. He joined ITN in 1976 and became Washington Correspondent in 1984. Since then, he has travelled the world to cover the news

http://bcove.me/hy0x03nm

Copyright Channel 4, UK, 2014

INTENTIONAL KILLING OF CIVILIANS

Is this the example that fucking idiot john baird said was the israeli military's attempts to " avoid civilian targets"? Fuck him.

At least 15 killed by shelling of Gaza school; toll exceeds 760

BY NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI AND ALLYN FISHER-ILAN

GAZA/JERUSALEM Thu Jul 24, 2014 6:19pm EDT

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1 OF 17. A Palestinian mother comforts her child in a hospital a few hundred meters from where medics said Israeli shelling hit a U.N-run school sheltering Palestinian refugees, in Beit Hanoun the northern Gaza Strip July 24, 2014.

CREDIT: REUTERS/FINBARR O'REILLY

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(Reuters) - Gazan authorities said Israeli forces shelled a shelter at a U.N.-run school on Thursday, killing at least 15 people as the Palestinian death toll in the conflict climbed over 760 and attempts at a truce remained elusive.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his horror at the attack on the school at Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza strip. "Many have been killed – including women and children, as well as U.N. staff," he said in a statement. "Circumstances are still unclear. I strongly condemn this act."

Ban later arrived to Cairo where he was expected to meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been working the telephones to try to broker an elusive truce.

Kerry's spokesman said the school attack incident "underscores the need to end the violence".

But there was no sign of progress on securing a ceasefire in his four days in the region. "Gaps remain between the parties," a senior U.S. official said, adding that Kerry wouldn't stay "for an indefinite amount of time."

The Israeli military said it was investigating the incident.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said there was a chance the school had been hit by stray Hamas rockets. "It could be errant fire from the IDF or rockets landing from Gaza terrorists but we still don't know, there's still a question mark," he told Reuters TV.

A spokesman for the U.N. relief agency said it had tried in vain to arrange an evacuation of civilians from the school with the Israeli army, and noted reports of Hamas rockets falling in the area at the same time.

Pools of blood lay on the ground and on students' desks in the courtyard of the school near the apparent impact mark of the shell, according to a Reuters photographer at the scene.

Scores of crying families who had been living in the school ran with their children to a hospital where the victims were being treated a few hundred meters away. Laila Al-Shinbari, a woman who was at the school when it was shelled, told Reuters that families had gathered in the courtyard expecting to be evacuated shortly in a Red Cross convoy.

"All of us sat in one place when suddenly four shells landed on our heads ... Bodies were on the ground, (there was) blood and screams. My son is dead and all my relatives are wounded including my other kids," she wept.

Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said that as well as the 15 dead, 200 people had been wounded in the attack. The director of a local hospital said various medical centers around Beit Hanoun were receiving the wounded.

UNIMAGINABLE PRICE

More than 140,000 Palestinians have fled 17 days of fighting between Israel and Gaza militants, many of them seeking shelter in buildings run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Israeli forces are trying to stop militants from Hamas and their allies from firing rockets into its territory.

"It's clear that civilians are paying an unimaginable price caught between both sides," said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness. "We were attempting to arrange a window for evacuation for the civilians with the Israeli army that never came. The consequences were deeply tragic."

Britain called on Gaza's rulers to accept a truce unconditionally. "Hamas must agree to a humanitarian ceasefire without pre-conditions," Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told a news conference in Cairo as Egypt tries to mediate.

"Then ... the Palestine Authority (and) Israel would come together for discussions to ensure a lasting and sustainable peace in Gaza so that we do not repeat this cycle of violence."

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Wednesday his fighters had made gains against Israel and voiced support for a humanitarian truce, but only if Israel eased restrictions on Gaza's 1.8 million people. Hamas wants Egypt to open up its border with Gaza too.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza reached 762 on Thursday, officials said. Israel has lost at least 32 soldiers in clashes inside Gaza and with Hamas raiders who have slipped under the fortified frontier in tunnels.

Palestinian rockets and mortar bombs have also killed three civilians in Israel. Such attacks surged last month as Israel cracked down on Hamas in the occupied West Bank, triggering the July 8 air and sea barrage on the Gaza Strip that escalated into an invasion a week ago.

TRUCE EFFORTS

With Washington's encouragement, and the involvement of Turkey and Hamas ally Qatar, Egypt has been trying to broker a limited humanitarian ceasefire for the battered enclave.

One Cairo official said on Wednesday it could take effect by the weekend, in time for the Eid al-Fitr festival next Monday or Tuesday, Islam's biggest annual celebration at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

But a U.S. official described any truce by the weekend as unlikely, as did an Israeli security cabinet minister who said the army would need one to two weeks to complete its main mission of razing tunnels used by Hamas for cross-border raids.

"If the talk is of a humanitarian hiatus for - this is not pleasant to say - removing bodies, all kinds of things that are connected to the civilian population in the short-term, this might be weighed," the minister, Gilad Erdan, told Israel Radio.

"But I will oppose any ceasefire until it is clear both that the tunnels will be destroyed and what will happen in the post-ceasefire period - how we will guarantee that quiet for the residents of Israel will really be preserved in the long term."

Israel earlier won a partial reprieve from the economic damage of the war with the lifting of a U.S. ban on commercial flights to Tel Aviv.

Though Israel's Iron Dome rocket interceptor has shot down most of the rockets fired from Gaza, one that came close to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to bar American flights there.

An ensuing wave of cancellations by foreign airlines sharply reduced traffic at Israel's usually bustling international gateway at the height of the summer tourist season. It was hailed as a victory by Hamas and prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appeal to the Obama administration to intervene.

The FAA canceled the ban late on Wednesday after reviewing the security situation. The European Air Safety Agency (EASA) said on Thursday it was about to follow suit and lift its own recommendation to avoid flying to Tel Aviv.

US Airways, a unit of American Airlines Group Inc AAL.O, said it was resuming its non-stop Tel Aviv to Philadelphia service.(Full Story) Germany's Lufthansa LHAG.DE said its suspension of flights to Tel Aviv would continue to Friday.

Gaza militants continued to fire rockets at Israel on Thursday, sending thousands in the country's south racing to shelters or safe rooms. There were no reported casualties.

U.N. COUNCIL INQUIRY

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Wednesday that there was "a strong possibility" that Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza, where medical officials say most of those killed were civilians.

Pillay also condemned indiscriminate Islamist rocket fire out of Gaza, and the U.N. Human Rights Council said it would launch an international inquiry into alleged violations.

A furious Netanyahu denounced the inquiry as a "travesty".

"The HRC should be launching an investigation into Hamas's decision to turn hospitals into military command centers, use schools as weapons depots and place missile batteries next to playgrounds, private homes and mosques," he said.

Ban, who has also been on a truce-seeking mission, lashed out earlier at Gaza militants, expressing "outrage and regret" that rockets had been found inside a U.N. school for refugees for the second time during the conflict.

He said storing rockets there "turned schools into potentially military targets, endangering the lives of innocent children", along with U.N. employees and the tens of thousands of sheltering Palestinians. He urged an investigation.

Gaza has been rocked by regular bouts of violence since Israel unilaterally pulled out of the territory in 2005.

(Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Gaza, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations,Arshad Mohammed, Yasmine Saleh and Shadia Nasralla in Cairo, Amena Bakr in Doha,Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, and Thomas Seythal in Berlin; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Paul Taylor, David Stamp and Robin Pomeroy)