Resources on “Operation Cast Lead” (2008-2009)

Part A of this Resource Page contains links to materials about Operation Cast Lead that we’ve created ourselves in our recent “Ten Years After” informational campaign, and Part B contains links to other great materials on Cast Lead that we found elsewhere.

Users of this page are urged to explore whichever of the offerings they find interesting and useful and to use them in their own communities as occasion arises. Please give due credit to the creators of any particular resource (whether us, or others.) Also, do let us know how you have used any of these materials, and the kind of responses or feedback you got to them from colleagues or friends…

Part A: Our new, dedicated materials:

  1. Our podcast miniseries
  2. Our “Day-by-day” slides and their compilation
  3. Other Cast Lead materials, on our website and elsewhere.

Part B: A guide to other great materials:

  1. Background materials from the Journal of Palestine Studies, Issue #151.
  2. Gazans’ experiences of Cast Lead.
  3. Palestinian politics and Cast Lead.
  4. Israeli politics and Cast Lead.
  5. International politics and Cast Lead.
  6. Damage assessments after Cast Lead.
  7. Breaking the Silence testimonies, etc.
  8. Goldstone Report and other attempts at accountability.
  9. Flotillas and other global civil-society actions.
  10. After-effects of Cast Lead for Palestinians.
  11. Background information about Gaza, 10 years after Cast Lead.

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Part A: Our new, dedicated materials

These are the materials that we’ve developed especially for the #CastLeadPlus10 campaign.

1. Our podcast miniseries:

Between December 26, 2018 and January 17, 2019, we produced and published a mini-series of seven podcast episodes in which JWE President Helena Cobban discussed different aspects of Operation Cast Lead and its legacies with a range of experts. Each episode in this series is about 30 minutes long.

You can access all our podcasts, now and in the future, at this portal page. Or, you can subscribe to the new episodes as they come out, here.

2. Our “day-by-day slides” and their compilation:

Throughout the 22 days of the 10th anniversary of Cast Lead, we posted onto our Twitter and Facebook accounts daily slides that compiled the essential facts of what happened on that day, ten years earlier, in Gaza and Israel. These slides ran from December 27, 2008 through the day that two parallel ceasefires went into operation (January 18,2009), and then on for the remaining four days that saw the Palestinians’ first attempts to discover and tally the full extent of the casualties and damage they had suffered, and through Pres. Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, ending on January 22, 2009, the day on which he launched yet another U.S.-led “peace process” between Israelis and Palestinians.

As our information campaign reach its end, we made a slideshow of all these slides, which runs for ten minutes and can be viewed here.

3. Other materials on our website and elsewhere:

  • On January 12, 2009, we arranged a 30-minute “Facebook Live” session in which the experienced Gaza-Palestinian social-justice activist Yousef Aljamal, who had been in Gaza during Cast Lead, answered questions about Cast Lead for a global, English-speaking audience. The archived video of that session can be viewed here.
  • In conjunction with the release of Helena Cobban’s podcast interview with Laila El-Haddad (see above), we made available a PDF of the fine chapter in El-Haddad’s 2010 book Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting and Everything In Between in which she described her anguish at being outside Gaza during “Cast Lead”.  El-Haddad, then in North Carolina with her husband and children, knew that her parents and many close friends were all still trapped inside Gaza City under Israel’s ferocious and lengthy bombardment. This chapter of her book also includes accounts of several of the heart-rending exchanges she had with her parents in those weeks. (You can find more information about El-Haddad and her books in this post on our blog.)
  • The Gaza section of our blog contains several very informative posts about the situation in Gaza ten years after Cast Lead.

Part B: A guide to other great materials

Here is our collection of background materials in English on Operation Cast Lead. We still plan to update it further! If you have materials available in English on the internet, that you’d like to propose for inclusion, please let us know!

1. Background materials from the Journal of Palestine Studies, Issue #151.

  • This Winter 2009 issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies contains a very rich, well-documented special section on Cast Lead, and has a detailed day-by-day account of its events in the “Chronology” section at the back. From December 27, 2018 through the end of January 2019, the Institute for Palestine Studies is making this whole issue freely available to researchers and the public via this portal, as a way to mark the tenth anniversary of Cast Lead.

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2. Gazans’ experiences of Cast Lead.

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3. Palestinian politics and Cast Lead.

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4. Israeli politics and Cast Lead.

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5. International politics and Cast Lead.

(to come)

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6. Damage assessments after Cast Lead.

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7. Breaking the Silence testimonies, etc.

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8. “Goldstone Report” (UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict), Sept. 2009, & other attempts at accountability.

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9. Flotillas and other global civil-society actions.

(to come)

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10. After-effects of Cast Lead for Palestinians.

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11. Background information about Gaza, 10 years after Cast Lead.