BS: Israel Moves in.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 06:41 PM

Here is a YouTube clip of Gerald Kaufman's speech in the House of Commons this week about the assault on Gaza:

"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza."

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 06:16 PM

Some 700 Israelis are believed to have been detained by the Israeli state for protesting against the invasion of Gaza and the killing of Palestinians there.

Around 230 Israelis are thought to still be detained.

Thje world's media has barely mentioned the protest by both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs but there is a growing voice inside Israel which is horrified and repulsed at the slaughter in Gaza.


A reply to Teribus

The state of Israel is responsible for the ongoing conflict .....and is responsible for the slaughter,the indiscriminate slaughter and mutilation, of thousands inside one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

I am referring for example to the three sisters and their cousin who were blown up in their house today by an Israeli shell . Or the mother and child again murdered today by Israeli firepower while sheltering in a school.

Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land and has has done so, despite rulings to get out, for decades. It is am occupying , armed force, that has consistently bullied,threatened,imprisoned and killed the Palestinian people since the very beginning. The blockade of Gaza was an ongoing affront to civilised society and the latest attack on Gaza is only a more deadly escalation of that affront.Palestinians were either going to die slowly or quickly!

Corperal Shalit is a soldier in an occupying army.He is the ONLY Israeli prisoner in the hands of the Palestinian Resistance.I feel very sorry for him .I also feel sorry for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails,some of whom have been routinely tortured .I hope that no prisoner of any nationality is waterboarded or tortured like those in the hands of the US military.You say he is "kidnapped" but as a soldier in an aggressive occupying army he is clearly a prisoner of war.

The invasion of Gaza and the indiscriminate Israeli bombing has put Shalit's life at more risk.He could have been released months ago as part of a prisoner exchange.

In contrast, I praise those dozens of Israeli soldiers who have refused to serve in the IDF in Gaza claiming rightly that it is a war crime to attack innocent civilians with tanks,bombers,gunships and all the other horrrible weapons of war.

A last word about John Pilger.You are obviously past saving but Mudcat readers who are not familiar with this outstanding Australian journalist's work should seek out his books and films.They are inspirational.
I saw him speak several years ago at a literature festival about the Media and War and he received a standing ovation from the 1000 strong audience.
Speak truth to power!.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 06:12 PM

Oh by the way,

Zionist and Jewish Member of the UK parliament Gerald Kaufman has recently compared the actions of Israeli soldiers in the current conflict to Nazi soldiers in WWII.

Presumably he's an Israel hater ...


Click here and read all about it on JTA "The Global News Service of the Jewish people".

Strong words indeeed!

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:59 PM

I have a distinguished relative who shall remain unnamed, who recently made a documentary about journalists in war zones and the risks they face.

He went to Zimbabwe and Gaza amongst other places.

He said that the risk to a journlist in Gaza from the Israelis was far and away the most extreme of all the places he visited.

And it so happenned that while they were there reporting on it, two of their guys were killed, and he blamed the Israelis for their deaths.

He told me that in the documentary they had to tone down this aspect of the story or Al- Jazeera, who are afraid of being cast as anti Israeli, would refuse to show it.

We are not talking about film students looking for kudos here, but seasoned British News journalists of over 30 years experience.

Here is a link to the film overview. blue clicky

In the light of the current independant media blackout, the documentary I refer to takes on a whole new light.

We can't let the information out can we.


Teribus - can you provide us with details of the source from which you got your list of rocket attacks or did you compose it from your imagination.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:49 PM

Anyway touch wood this ceasefire is going to hold...

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: bobad
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:45 PM

"How can anyone "read the whole thing" without a link of some kind?"

It's from the Globe and Mail - you need a subscription to read it but I'm sure you can find it somewhere on the web if you really want to.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:40 PM

How can anyone "read the whole thing" without a link of some kind?

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Teribus
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:38 PM

Ah Guest ifor - John Pilger, that explains it, that's where you get all this crap from, that's why you can't answer any specific questions put to you.

I'd like to ask Mr. Pilger the following:

4.       Hamas chose to end the "cease-fire" brokered by Egypt in June 2008, Israel wanted it to continue – TRUE or FALSE ??

5.       The responsibility for the safety of the Palestinians within Gaza rests solely with their elected "Government" and that is Hamas. It is up to Hamas to protect its citizens and act in their best interests to secure their safety, in exactly the same way it is the responsibility of the elected Government of Israel to safeguard and protect Israeli citizens – TRUE or FALSE??

6.       Between 2002 and November 2008, 3943 Mortar Bombs and 3702 Rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza. During the last cease-fire, from the 19th June to 31st December, 505 Rockets plus 327 Mortar Bombs were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Now can you explain exactly why you have never mentioned those attacks, which are indiscriminately targeted at Israeli civilians in any of your posts Guest ifor??

7.       Corporal Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on July 25 by a Palestinian militant group that included members of the military wing of Hamas. The militants tunnelled inside Israeli territory and captured the soldier after a firefight that left two people dead on each side. What was the tunnel being worked on by the Hamas militants on 4th November 2008 for Guest ifor?? Why were Hamas militants digging a tunnel from Gaza into Israel during a "cease-fire" Guest ifor ??

8.       Since the end of Israeli operations in South Lebanon in 2006 Guest ifor, can you tell me how many attacks have been launched on Israel by Hezbollah from inside Lebanon??

9.       The UN partition plan of 1947, which basically details a two state solution that the "Palestinians" are supposedly fighting for now, was accepted by the Israelis and rejected by the Arabs – TRUE or FALSE??

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: bobad
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:26 PM

Palestinians Against Hamas

    Injured Fatah veterans rooting against Hamas
    PATRICK MARTIN
    January 7, 2009

    RAMALLAH, WEST BANK — When Usama Abu Nahel looks at the conflict in Gaza he feels nothing but contempt. He is one of the people who hate Hamas more than the Israelis do.

    It was 19 months ago when Mr. Abu Nahel, then 25 and a member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Gaza, was dragged from his house by a group of Hamas militants, taken to one of their warehouses and "kneecapped." He was shot 30 times in the left leg, doctors said; then in the right leg six times.

    "As I lay on the ground in agony, they ran over me in their jeep," he recalls.

    He'd like to spit as he says this, but not in the neat room he keeps in a house for victims such as him in Ramallah.

    There are 17 men, all with stories similar to Mr. Abu Nahel's, who reside in a sprawling house on a quiet street near the entrance to this West Bank city. About 35 other men reside in other locations around town. All were members of the mainstream Fatah movement, founded by the late Yasser Arafat and led now by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. Each was seriously wounded in the fighting that raged between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza in June, 2007. They were brought to Ramallah for hospital and rehabilitative care. They have not been allowed back into Gaza, and their families have not been allowed to join them.

    As a group of them gather in Mr. Abu Nahel's room to watch the television coverage of the fighting in Gaza, their emotions come to the surface.

    "Hamas works for Iran. They brought us back to the Stone Age," says Mohammed Abu Zakari, 48, who lost one of his legs after a Hamas shooting in the civil conflict. He has left his wife and 12 of his 13 children behind in Gaza. His 13th child, 19-year-old Ahmed, is with him, another Hamas victim whose ankle has been reconstructed.

    "I'm happy to see them eradicated," he said, blaming Hamas for the carnage and destruction now taking place in Gaza.

    Mahmoud as-Shatat, 23, a former student leader for Fatah, agrees. "Hamas consider us infidels," he said. "They brutalized us, their own people. I have no sympathy for them.

As they say: read the whole thing.

******************************************************************************************************

Posted as a balance to those who like to find and post articles by Israelis who are opposed to Israel's actions.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:19 PM

Does language talking about journalists as murderers step over the bounds of what is appropriatye in "a sane conversation".

Journalists don't kill people, even jouurnalists we might disagree with In fact too many of them have been killed, especially in the past year, shot down in war, or murdered for speaking out. Here is a story with a video one of those killings.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:05 PM

In defence of John Pilger!
Not that he needs any but he is a reporter ,writer and documetary film maker of the highest integrity.....and consequently is a favourite enemy of the neo cons,the warmakers and the exploiters everywhere.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: pdq
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 04:32 PM

That is asinine even for you. If you can't carry on a sane conversation, perhaps you could just "stuff a sock in it".

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: akenaton
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 04:26 PM

I take it that you, pdq, prefer the white phosforous??

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: pdq
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 04:21 PM

John Pilger considers his writings to be "journalism as an act of war". He believes he can destroy countries and people with his words. Pilger has absolutely no regard for "truth" when it gets in the way of his duties as an assassin.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: akenaton
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 04:10 PM

John Pilger has scrutinised the Israeli Palestinian conflict for over 40 years here is his view. Holocaust denied: the lying silence of those who know



8 Jan 2009

Writing in the New Statesman, John Pilger calls on 40 years of reporting the Middle East to describe the 'why' of Israel's bloody onslaught on the besieged people of Gaza - an attack that has little to do with Hamas or Israel's right to exist.

"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist". They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous de-population of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing". Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war... we are appalled."

Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system... Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government , this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

In describing a "holocaust-in-the making", Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid", give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think", her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead", which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance". The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labour Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial". This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians". What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger". A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators - was shattered by the Israeli attack and home-made rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed". The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan", named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organisation devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power". Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity".

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed... Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years... Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility". Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilised society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity", as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 02:39 PM

The Gaurdian far-left, Doug? Hardly - slightly left-of-centre in its politics, but well towards the centre. Though in a press which is generally skewed somewhat to the right you don't have to be very far toward the left of right to count as far-left in some places. As your citing of the New York Times indicates.

As for the article it could equally well have been published elsewhere - even in the Daily Telegraph, which I often use as a source here to head-off that kind of comment. Here is a recent article in the Telegraph - Gaza doctor describes horrific child injuries : A Royal Navy surgeon who has just spent two weeks performing trauma surgery inside the Gaza Strip has spoken of the horror of seeing so many children with horrific injuries.

But where a comment piece appears isn't really the point. The point is, do people agree with Simon Jenkins' view that aerial bombardment of this kind - whoever does it, Hamas or Israel or anyone else - should join "chemical munitions, white phosphorous, cluster bombs and delayed-action land mines" as weapons the use of which should now be recognised as a war crime?

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,davey
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 02:30 PM

Israeli foreign minister Livni faced a host of hostile questions and was called a war criminal at a press conference in Washington yesterday.
Outside the building the anti war group "Code Pink" " set up a chant warning "There is a war criminal in this building!".
It is something Israeli representatives are going to have to get used to in the near future.
Davey

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 02:13 PM

The Israel leadership has had a massive success in the killing and maiming of thousands of civilians and the committing of a succession of war crimes ranging from mass murder to the collective punishment of an entire civilian population and on to the destruction of an entire city.

However,this blood soaked leadership has been very much a failure in just about everything else it has done!
Hamas is still fighting and is having some success with its sniper and anti tank fire.

Israel is now embroiled in street fighting across a 40 mile long heavily populated area and although it has signalled it wants a "ceasefire" nobody in Gaza will be holding their breath.

Gilad Shalit is still a prisoner somewhere in Gaza although it is possible he is lying under a demolished building in the city.

A new president is shortly coming to office in the USA which may yet have some effect on the Israeli warpack.

And the Palestinians still seem capable of firing their homemade rockets into Israel.

Hamas still looks to have the support of the Gazans as the funeral of one of its leaders in the city a few days ago would indicate.

The image of Israel around the world is now a shameful one!

When lawyers and politicians and ordinary people talk about phospherous shells ,megabombs, cluster bombs and artillery salvoes fired into apartment buildings it is the young soldiers of the Israeli Defence Force they will have in mind.

The IDF will be in the Hall of Shame along with those Russian soldier thugs who destroyed Grozny a decade or so ago and those US soldiers who massacred the vietnamese peasants at My Lai back in 1968.

The Israeli leadership may yet find that entering Gaza is a lot easier than leaving it.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: DougR
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 01:44 PM

Teribus, you nailed it.

Kevin:It is still a puzzlement to me why you and others post articles from the Guardian to support your point of view. It is without a doubt one of the most left-wing publications (next to the New York Times)in the world! Perhaps I should expect you to accept as evidence, articles criticizing Hamas in "Human Events," a right-wing publication in the U. S.

I don't think so.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 01:37 PM

None of which makes aerial bombardment, whether by ramshackle rocket fired of irresponsibly or hi-tech weaponry targeted equally irresponsibly, something to be accepted as right and proper.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Teribus
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 01:07 PM

And Kevin, I am equally puzzled by the fact that there can be people who cannot recognise the simple fact that if Hamas, etc, ceased launching rockets into Israel, then there would be no lethal Israeli use of their air-launched bombs and shells against the people inside Gaza, the West Bank or in Southern Lebanon.

1. Recognise the right of the sovereign state of Israel to co-exist in peace.

2. Complete cessation of all attacks on Israel and the citizens of Israel.

3. Halting of all threats of violence against Israel and the citizens of Israel.

If all involved follow steps 1, 2 & 3 above and you will have peace in the middle east tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 12:40 PM

A timely article by Simon Jenkins from yesterday's Guardian Indiscriminate slaughter from the air is a barbarism that must be abolished

...The tragedy in Gaza surely marks the time when the world declares air-launched bombs and long-distance shells to be illegal under the 1983 Geneva convention. They should be on a par with chemical munitions, white phosphorous, cluster bombs and delayed-action land mines. They pose a threat to non-combatants that should be intolerable even in the miserable context of war...

I am puzzled by the fact that there can be people who recognise the criminality of Hamas use of its rockets, but don't see the far more lethal Israeli use of their air-launched bombs and shells as equally criminal.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 11:18 AM

The Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported today that a Palestinian doctor in Gaza, who was trained in Israel lost, three of his children when an Israeli shell destroyed his family home killing his 22 year , 18 year old and 14 year old daughters as well as a 14 year old niece.Two other of his children were injured in the attack.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,hugo
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 11:10 AM

Two Palestinian children [brother and sister ] aged 5 and 7 were killed by Israeli shellfire as they sheltered along with 700 other refugees from the shelling in a United Nations school in Gaza.
Hugo

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 10:46 AM

Very timely, Lizzie!

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 09:04 AM

'Jabaliya' by Ron Bankley

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 07:02 AM

If the subject of war crimes is to be raised it applies in equal measure to both sides

I don't think too many people among critics of Israel's actions would disagree with that. Both sides have been guilty of war crimes and should be held accountable.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Teribus
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 05:03 AM

Still asking questions but refusing to answer any put to you Guest ifor:

1.        What Zionist project would a one state solution signal the end of Guest ifor??

2.        Tell me exactly when it was that the Israelis rejected a single state solution??

3.        The Israeli Government stated that as part of the hand-over the settlers would be removed. Where are those settlers now Guest ifor?? Are they still in Gaza? Or did Israel keep its word??

4.        Hamas chose to end the "cease-fire" brokered by Egypt in June 2008, Israel wanted it to continue – TRUE or FALSE ??

5.        The responsibility for the safety of the Palestinians within Gaza rests solely with their elected "Government" and that is Hamas. It is up to Hamas to protect its citizens and act in their best interests to secure their safety, in exactly the same way it is the responsibility of the elected Government of Israel to safeguard and protect Israeli citizens – TRUE or FALSE??

6.        Between 2002 and November 2008, 3943 Mortar Bombs and 3702 Rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza. During the last cease-fire, from the 19th June to 31st December, 505 Rockets plus 327 Mortar Bombs were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Now can you explain exactly why you have never mentioned those attacks, which are indiscriminately targeted at Israeli civilians in any of your posts Guest ifor??

7.        Corporal Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on July 25 by a Palestinian militant group that included members of the military wing of Hamas. The militants tunnelled inside Israeli territory and captured the soldier after a firefight that left two people dead on each side. What was the tunnel being worked on by the Hamas militants on 4th November 2008 for Guest ifor?? Why were Hamas militants digging a tunnel from Gaza into Israel during a "cease-fire" Guest ifor ??

8.        Since the end of Israeli operations in South Lebanon in 2006 Guest ifor, can you tell me how many attacks have been launched on Israel by Hezbollah from inside Lebanon??

9.        The UN partition plan of 1947, which basically details a two state solution that the "Palestinians" are supposedly fighting for now, was accepted by the Israelis and rejected by the Arabs – TRUE or FALSE??

Now to answer your question Guest ifor:

"Teribus. Which part of the phrase "war crimes" don't you understand?"

•        For a start "war crimes" is a term not a phrase
•        If the subject of war crimes is to be raised it applies in equal measure to both sides

In responding to attacks upon its civilian population I believe that the Israeli Government and the IDF have acted in a measured and proportionate manner.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 04:21 AM

My implication was that neither critics of Israel's actions nor supporters of those actions have done too much posting about those rockets, because there is no one here who needs to be convinced they are a good idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 04:10 AM

To Teribus
Which part of the phrase "war crimes" don't you understand?
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 03:14 AM

Well, Kevin, I ain't one of 'em. That aside, my question still hasn't been answered.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Teribus
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 03:13 AM

Guest Lox, Guest ifor, can you please cut and paste where I have said that Hamas "broke" the six-month old cease-fire agreement? I think that you will find that I said that they "ended it".

Guest lox you seem to be "cherry-picking" with regard to the events of 4th November, as to the launching of 35 rockets in response to an Israeli strike that killed 6 Hamas militants. This you and those who wrote the article you linked to attempt to set this as some sort of start point in the break down of the Egyptian brokered cease-fire that came into effect on 17th June 2008 – If that is so can you come up with explanations for the following:

June 18, 2008 - More than 40 rockets and mortar shells were launched from Gaza in a violent finale towards Sderot. Several hit the town, causing some damage.

June 19, 2008 - Through Egyptian mediation Israel and Hamas agreed to a six month cease-fire on June 17th that went into effect on June 19, 2008 at 6:00 AM.

June 20, 2008 - Gilad Herman, an Israeli settler in the West Bank settlement of Yashif, unintentionally fires upon an Israeli when he launches a home-made rocket towards Palestinian West Bank. The rocket lands "meters away from a Breslov hassid who was praying in the area." No one is hurt.

June 23, 2008 - A single mortar shell was also fired from Gaza late Monday night and landed on the Israeli side of the border fence. No organization claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 24, 2008 - Three Qassam rockets fired from Gaza on Tuesday struck the Israeli border town of Sderot and its environs, causing no serious injuries but constituting the first serious breach of a five-day-old truce between Israel and Hamas. Islamic Jihad rocket exploding in the distance, breaking the 5-day truce, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had been a response to an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus at dawn on Tuesday, in which a senior Islamic Jihad operative Tareq Abu Ghali, 24 and another Palestinian university student Iyad Khanfar, 21 were killed. An Israeli Army spokesman said that Abu Ghali had been involved in terrorism and that he was "killed in an exchange of fire." The man killed with him was armed, the spokesman said. The rocket attack occurred hours after Olmert met President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik to discuss the next steps in the tenuous Egyptian-mediated truce and the renewal of efforts to resolve the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal held by Hamas in Gaza since June 25, 2006. Israeli Defense Ministry decided that Israel would keep the Gaza border crossings closed Thursday, except for special humanitarian cases, in response to Tuesday's Qassam rocket attacks.

June 26, 2008 - A rocket hit an open area of the industrial zone outside Sderot. There were no reports of injuries or damage, according to army sources. The Fatah-affiliated Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. In a text message sent to reporters, it said "the truce must include the West Bank and all sorts of aggression must stop."

On Thursday morning, Hamas accused Israel of violating the terms of the Gaza cease-fire a day after Israeli Defense Ministry decided that Israel would keep the Gaza border crossings closed Thursday, except for special humanitarian cases, in response to Tuesday's Qassam rocket attacks - "If the crossings remain closed, the truce will collapse", Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Thursday morning.

June 27, 2008 - Early on Friday, two mortar shells were fired at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip. One landed near Kibbutz Kfar Aza in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council, and the second one hit an open area. There were no reports of injuries or damage in the latest violation of the fragile ceasefire.

Following yesterday's rocket attack by Aksa Martyrs Brigade a spokesman for the Hamas government, Taher al-Nunu, called Fatah's actions "unpatriotic". He said Hamas was considering the possibility of taking action against those perpetrating the attacks against Israel.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called Friday on Palestinian factions to adhere to the Gaza Strip lull agreement with Israel. "The factions and the people accepted the lull in order to secure two interests – an end to aggression and the lifting of the siege. Therefore, we hope that everyone honors this national agreement", he said following Friday prayers.

June 28, 2008 - Mortar shells were fired at the Karni crossing. No one claims responsibility for the attacks. Israel blocks all shipments into Gaza except fuel, in response to the rocket and mortar attacks.

June 30, 2008 - A rocket falls near the town of Mefalsim. Nobody claims responsibility for the attack. In response Israel once again closes the crossings that had previously been reopened on June 29, 2008.

July 2, 2008 - There were no rocket or mortar attacks so Israel reopens the four Gaza crossings on Wednesday July 2. Since a truce began June 19, Israel has closed the passages a total of six days in retaliation for rocket attacks.

July 3, 2008 - A rocket lands in an open area north of Sderot. A previously unknown organization calling itself the "Badr Forces" claims responsibility for the attack. In response Israel temporarily closes the crossings on July 4, 2008.

July 7, 2008 - A mortar shell is fired at Israel from Gaza on Monday and lands near the Karni crossing.

July 8, 2008 - After two mortar attacks from Gaza at the Sufa crossing, one fell just inside Gaza and the other at the crossing. Israel closed all the crossing. After an Egyptian request they reopened the crossings. Hours after the crossings opened at noon, militants fired another shell into Israel, causing no casualties or damage, the Israeli military said. Israel kept the crossings open. No Palestinian group immediately claimed responsibility.

In all, 15 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza since the truce took effect on June 19. Israel has responded automatically by snapping shut the crossings, which have been closed about half of the time. So far the truce has not eased conditions in Gaza because of the frequent closures.

July 10, 2008 - Two Qassam rockets were fired at Israel, but caused no damage, after an unarmed Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades infiltrator was killed at the Kissufim crossing. An Israeli Army spokesman said they fired warning shots and when the man did not stop they killed him. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades vowed revenge and claimed responsibility for the rocket attack.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli troops continued for a fourth straight day a crackdown on institutions it links to the militant Hamas movement. On Wednesday July 10 they shot dead a Hamas member near the West Bank city of Jenin.

July 12, 2008 - A rocket lands in an open area in Sha'ar Hanegev regional council. Nobody claims responsibility for the attack.

July 13, 2008 - Two mortar shells are misfired and they land on the Gaza side of the border security fence in the Nahal Oz region. Nobody claims responsibility for the attack. Israel responds by only closing the Nahal Oz and Sufa crossings.

July 15, 2008 - A mortar hit is identified.

July 25, 2008 - A rocket misfires and lands in Gaza near the Kissufim crossing.

July 29, 2008 - Another rocket is launched from Gaza and mistakenly lands in Gaza.

July 31, 2008 - Again, a rocket misfires and lands in Gaza.

August 1-31st - In the month of August 7 rockets and 12 mortars were fired from Gaza into Israel.

September 1-30th - The month of September represented a considerable lull in the number of rocket and mortar attacks. In this month, 3 rockets and 2 mortars were fired from Gaza into Israel. They caused no injuries or deaths.

October 11th - A single rocket was launched from Gaza into Israel resulting in no injuries or deaths.

November- The Israel Security Agency reports a sharp increase in the number of high trajectory weapon attacks, including towards Ashkelon. According to the Israel Security Agency, "this was preceded by an ISA-IDF operation on the evening between November 4th and 5th". Between October 29th and November 6th 48 rockets and 21 mortars were fired from Gaza into Israel. The first of these were fired after the Israeli operation on the Gaza side of the border on the 4th of November to prevent an abduction for which Hamas had dug a tunnel, according to Israeli sources. During this operation, 7 Hamas militia were killed inside Gaza.

Now then can either lox or ifor tell me what the tunnel, dug by Hamas militants during the cease-fire, was for? Or does that issue have to be studiously, but conveniently ignored??

The Israeli Government has concluded two "Land-for-Peace" deals with two neighbouring Arab Governments, Jordan and Egypt, both have stood the test of time and are still in place today. The Israeli Government unilaterally initiated what was in effect a "land-for-peace" deal with the Palestinians when they pulled out of Gaza – it has got them nowhere. Attacks from inside Gaza continued as before.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 03:03 AM

I don't think there is anyone posting on the Mudcat who thinks that firing those rockets into Israel was a good idea or the right thing to do.

On the other hand there clearly are some who think that actions by Israel, which at all times, including during the period of the truce, have killed far more Palestinians, have been and are the right thing to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Teribus
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 01:51 AM

500 Up

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,Peace
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 11:47 PM

And the rockets were, uh, well--for years.

I think Israel's response is a bit much, but NONE of you were bitching when Israel was getting hit by three rockets a day for over five years. Tell me, why IS that?

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 09:40 PM

Here you are Teribus.

Some Facts clearly and thouroughly displayed and examined resulting in a well supported view that Israel broke the ceasefire.

As opposed to your opinion that Hamas did.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: bobad
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 09:38 PM

Just temporarily.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 09:30 PM

Right! So Israel really is moving in after all.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: pdq
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 07:44 PM

"Dylan sang 'a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest' "

Actually, those are (roughly) the lyrics from a Paul Simon song.

Nickhere, you seem to have the wrong Jew.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 07:43 PM

Yeah, ifor... You got the situation pegged... The only folks who support this insanity are folks with a dog in the race... No one else is suppotrtive...

This is beyond disgusting and repulsive... This is genocide... Israel is no better than Robert Mogambe...

I thinks it is time to pull the plug on this little failed experiement... Israel was proven it cannot co-exist with it's neigbors... It had one last chance when Hamas was elected in Gaza to show that it could swallow it's pride and show grace... Instead all we got was Israel trying to starve out the Palestianians in Gaza...

There was a reason that Hamas came into power... That reason is Israel...

No, given Israel's thumbing at UN resolutions and thumbing of international law, it's time for ther sane world to tell Israel to either fix itself or get the heck outta a region that it cannnot exist in...

There are really no other choices unless the Zionists can use a 60 year old rationale to convince the rest of the world that just nukin' the West Bank and Gaza is the right thing to do... Yeah, kind flies in the face considering what the Nazi's did but, hey, seems that this is about the only thing that will make Israel happy... But that happiness won't last... Lebenon will nikes next... Then Iran... Then Syria... Then, then...

Time for Jews to stand up agsinst insanity...

Time for non-Jews to quit cow-tieing to 60 years of guilt driven crap by the Zionists and stand up against insanity...

Time for a change...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Nickhere
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 07:26 PM

That's fairly true LH, as Dylan sang "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

But there's no doubt lots of people are dying there. What can be done to stop it? I don't believe that the military iron fist will do it in the long term. There must be a better way.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 07:04 PM

Reply to Teribus

It must be uncomfortable and deeply shameful to be openly supporting the murderous state of Israel and its Zionist zealots at a time when the whole world is seeing Palestinian babies,children and adolescents being butchered and dismembered by that range of US supplied weapons ranging from those monster bombs to rockets and from phospherous weapons to tank shells.

The Israeli military is even blowing up corpses in the cemetery in Gaza..truly a literal case of overkill!.How appropriate for the anti Zionist and pro peace Jewish Rabbi in New York yesterday to burn his Israeli passport in protest at the mass killing of Gazan civilians.

And, as has been pointed out to the handful of frankly unsavoury Zionist apologists on Mudcat on numerous occasions, this pattern of slaughter and massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli military is nothing new.It started in 1948 and there have been genocidal outbursts at intervals since then.

A quick glance at just about any unbiased book on the conflict will uncover details of the mass murders and destruction unleashed by Israel either in Lebanon,in Gaza or on the West Bank.

A full account of the Israeli breaking of the ceasefire in Gaza can be found by referring to google and typing in"Gaza and the breakdown of the ceasefire".

It is clear that Gaza has been throttled by Israel which refused to abide by the agreement to ease the blockade.In addition it attacked Gaza killing Palestinians .It broke the ceasefire.

Why? After the bloody nose it received in Lebanon two years ago Israel was very eager to show it had the firepower to devastate its opponents and is more than ready to kill thousands of innocent civilians in order to demonstrate its military superiority. It has done it in the past and is doing so again in Gaza.

It has only been able to do this with the consent ,quiet or otherwise, of Bush and Co in America. This is Bush's parting gift to the Middle East.. a broken city and broken children. Cheers George!

But his accomplices in this terror are those Israeli warleaders who in order to win an election are prepared to blow thousands of refugees to smithereens.

And let us remember that Israel is occupying Palestinian land in Gaza and in Jerusalem and on the West Bank in defiance of international law.

Its repeated attacks on United Nations workers and facilities shows the contempt Israel has for the UN. It is truely a murderous pariah state and its actions in the slaughterhouse that is Gaza are going to have repercussions for a very long time.

In the face of these US made bombs,tanks,warships,F16s apache gunships and phospherous shells the Palestinians have one underrated weapon...justice.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: DougR
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:20 PM

Oops. Should have read: Because, Teribus, (no pun intended) it's "An Inconvenient Truth."

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: DougR
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:18 PM

Probably, Teribus, (no pun intended) it's an "Unconvenient truth."

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Teribus
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 05:57 PM

Not very good at answering questions is Guest ifor.

"You are wrong to say that it was Hamas that ended the ceasefire.

The ceasefire held up remarkably well but was doomed once Israel continued to tighten the noose around Gaza by totally controlling and throttling Gaza's land ,sea and air borders."

Let's see then shall we Guest ifor:

Between 2002 and November 2008, 3943 Mortar Bombs were fired into Israel plus 3702 Rockets.

Now during this cease-fire that Guest ifor stated was holding up remarkably well from 19th June to 31st December 505 Rockets plus 327 Mortar Bombs were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Now can you explain exactly why those did not get a mention in your post Guest ifor??

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 05:32 PM

First of all, there is no obne here who can offer any proof, one way or another, if the bunker buster bombs that are being preduced today are nuclear or not... All you folks can is report what them lieing ass governemtn has put into yer little doughboy heads... Big whup... A friggin' monkey can be taught to pull the right lever to get food so all you weapons experts give yerselve a peanut for parroting the company fight song...

But, really... Who cares???

The real issue here is that Israel has shown repeeatedly that it does not play well with its neighbors... It has a long history of not playing nice with its neighbors so, hey, in the words of Doctor Phil...

..."How's that workin' for ya, Bubba???"

Well, it ain't and that's why I have finally figured out that Israel just might not ahve a ***right*** to exist... Rights are earned, not stolen...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: GUEST,Davey
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 05:22 PM

Of the 18 hijackers of the 9/11 atrocity none were Palestinian.I think 14 were Saudi Arabian and none were Iraqi .
Stange to say the USA did not bomb or invade Saudi Arabia ,instead it allowed the Saudi royal princes and assorted hangers on to leave the country within days of the attack on New York.
Davey

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 05:11 PM

Seems almost a shame to have David Milliband saying something intelligent.

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: Nickhere
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 04:07 PM

C.Ham you weren't the only one mentioning it

Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 03:02 PM

But that wouldn't have stopped it being murder on an enotmpous scale. In either case.