As Israel continued its bombing of the Gaza Strip targets for a sixth day, targets included the offices of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and a Gaza City mosque where Hamas activists were reportedly hiding. Rockets had also been fired at Israel from the mosque, Israel asserted. Among those killed in the New Years Eve air-strikes were a Palestinian doctor and medic. (Ha'aretz, Jan. 1) The death toll from "Operation Cast Lead" reached 400 with nearly 2,000 wounded, the head of Gaza emergency services Moawiya Hassanein said. Some 25% of the dead are civilians, the UN says. (Middle East Online, Jan. 1)

President-elect Barack Obama's tilt to the right became obvious immediately after his historic victory, with the appointment of Rahm Israel Emanuel, a pro-Israel hardliner, as chief of staff. Our December Exit Poll was: "Barack Obama: ruling class pawn or avatar of freedom?" We received the following responses:

The Israeli cabinet rejected calls from France and other nations for an immediate 48-hour pause in the devastating air offensive against Gaza, continuing the assault into a fifth day Dec. 31 despite mounting international pressure. A foreign ministry spokesman said that Israel would only consider a "permanent" halt to its operation, and only under "certain conditions." The spokesman said "Hamas must stop its rocket fire and acquiring arms" before Israel would "consider" a truce. By a UN count, the offensive has now killed at least 390 people, including 42 children, and wounded more than 1,900 others. (Middle East Online, Dec. 31)

On Dec. 14 the Salvadoran government's National Security Council (CNS) held a press conference to present evidence that at least 40 armed groups were active in the country, with a total of 400 members. The evidence included photographs of residents of the community of Dimas Rodriguez, near El Paisnal in San Salvador department, allegedly receiving "military training." Many of the residents are former rebels who demobilized in 1992 as part of a peace deal between the government and the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), now an established political party. Residents said the photographs were from a "cultural event" they have held annually for the past 15 years to commemorate the community's rebel origins; the event includes a march of people dressed as rebels and carrying plastic rifles bought from a street vendor in downtown San Salvador.

Ten years after the fact, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CIDH) found the Colombian government guilty of the assassination of Jesús Maria Valle Jaramillo, an attorney and human rights defender of Medellín, in the northwestern department of Antioquia. The ruling—issued Nov. 25 and announced on Christmas Eve—is the first handed down by the special tribunal of the Organization of American States (OAS) against Colombia for the murder of a human rights activist. Valle was assassinated on Feb. 27, 1998, when he presided the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Antioquia, a post he assumed after the killing of his three predecessors, Héctor Gómez, Luis Vélez Vélez and Carlos Gónima.

The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced in a Dec. 21 letter to the Colombians for Peace organization that it is planning to release six hostages unilaterally in the near future: three police agents, one soldier, former Meta governor Alan Jara and former legislative deputy Sigifredo López. The FARC said it intended to release the prisoners to opposition senator Piedad Córdoba. Right-wing president Alvaro Uribe announced on Dec. 22 that he wanted to avoid a "political spectacle" and that the hostages should be turned over to the International Red Cross. (Adital, Dec. 22)

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a US-based interfaith peace organization with an affiliate in Colombia, is charging that Colombian government agencies have intercepted more than 150 e-mail accounts of nonviolent groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, along with Colombian nongovernmental organizations. FOR says Colombia's police intelligence agency was intercepting groups' e-mail from December 2006 until as recently as November 2008. In a letter to US ambassador William Brownfield, 14 US-based groups noted that in 2006 the US State Department gave the police intelligence agency a $5 million contract to provide "internet surveillance software." "As a result," the letter says, "US taxpayers were apparently paying for Colombian agencies to spy on legitimate US and Colombian humanitarian organizations."

On Dec. 20 the government of Bolivian president Evo Morales announced that a three-year literacy campaign had concluded successfully, making Bolivia the third Latin American country to end illiteracy, after Cuba (1961) and Venezuela (2005). The government said the campaign had succeeded with 819,417 (99.5%) of the 824,101 people who had been identified as illiterate. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) considers that a country has eliminated illiteracy as a social phenomenon when the illiteracy rate falls below 3.9%. However, the correspondent from the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada reported that some of the program's graduates "scarcely learned to sign their names and recognize some letters."