BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 12:46 PM

"There is no site that is off limits for Hamas – it is storing its weapons in family homes, launching rockets from mosques and establishing its headquarters in the basement of a Gaza hospital.

Yesterday, UNRWA admitted that it mysteriously found 20 missiles in one of its schools. I'm sure that if UNRWA takes the time to check its other facilities, it will discover that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Hamas is using UN facilities to commit a double war crime by targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians.

From the safety of their luxury hotels in Qatar, Hamas leaders like Khaled Mashaal order room service with one hand and order Hamas to use Palestinians as human shields with the other.

But you don't have to take my word for it. The Palestinian delegate to the UN Human Rights Council admitted as much, saying (and I quote): "The missiles that are now being launched against Israel, each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity, whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets."

Israel's UN Ambassador Says There Are More Hamas Missiles at UNRWA Facilities

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 12:24 PM

So, are you guys going to come to an agreement whether there is an Egyptian blockade of Gaza or not..or do we just change the subject?
...and about the 'pounding of hospitals to rubble', Shhhh!..If you tell Hamas that Israel won't do that, guess where Hamas will set up it's missiles!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 12:06 PM

Yes Jim.
We could discuss that.
So why make up the ludicrous "hospitals pounded to rubble" invention.

Why don't we all try to be rational and honest?


Musket, you are just throwing insults around.
Will you actually challenge any single thing I have actually said?
Of course not!
You can't, hence the insults.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 11:34 AM

Course they haven't Keith - if you (and Israel say so - if they aren't rubble yet, it's not for the want of trying on Israel's part.
How about your responding to Israel's deliberatly attacking a hospital by giving the staff ten minutes to evacuate the patients?
Didn't do it (again), huh?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Musket
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 11:33 AM

"We"

You know, some people should care for the company they keep.

And be prepared to have a good shower afterwards, scabbing away at the stains such associations can leave.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 11:23 AM

hospitals they are demanding be evacuated before pounding them to rubble.

None have been Jim.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 11:20 AM

So, is there an Egyptian blockade of Gaza or not?
I provided Guardian quoting both UN and Hamas saying there is.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 11:11 AM

"That is a blockade and everyone understands that except you Steve, and Jim Carroll."
Yeah - you've already told us you are infallible in these matters - perhaps you might like to get your head around 'ludicrous'
"We support Israel's right to defend itself."
Against all those threatening non-combatants it is in the process of slaughtering, no doubt - they must believe they are hiding in the hospitals they are demanding be evacuated before pounding them to rubble.
Up our side!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 10:48 AM

"That is a blockade and everyone understands that except you."
Why do you insist telling all of us that we are on our own when we disagree with you - does this not strike even you as somewhat ludicrous?

I do not Jim.
I told Steve that he alone denied the long-standing Egyptian blockade of Gaza.

If you are equally ignorant I will rephrase.

That is a blockade and everyone understands that except you Steve, and Jim Carroll.

Happy now Jim?

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 10:18 AM

We support Israel's right to defend itself....you apparently do not.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 10:13 AM

"As an Iranian-Canadian who has spent years raising awareness of human rights violations "
No-one here has supported the Hamas rockets
You people have consistently supported Israeli brutal and cynical use of them as an excuse to create an apartheid Israeli state.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 10:12 AM

A United Nations agency that last week found rockets in a Gaza school operating under its auspices has handed that weaponry over to Hamas, Israeli officials said Sunday, accusing the organization of actively helping the terrorist organization potentially attack Israeli civilians

"The rockets were passed on to the government authorities in Gaza, which is Hamas. In other words, UNRWA handed to Hamas rockets that could well be shot at Israel," a senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel.

Read more: UN agency handed rockets back to Hamas, Israel says | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-agency-handed-rockets-back-to-hamas-israel-says/#ixzz381AomQKi
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 10:05 AM

"On Sunday morning, a soldier reported that he and other IDF medical staff had saved the life of a Gaza terrorist. Soldier Daniel Albo told Yediot Aharonot, "My team and I saved the life of a terrorist who tried to kill us because we are IDF soldiers and citizens of Israel. We saved him because we are human."

IDF Creates Field Hospital for Injured Palestinians

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 09:50 AM

As an Iranian-Canadian who has spent years raising awareness of human rights violations inside Iran, it grieves me that Tehran's brutal agenda is now playing itself out in Israel and Gaza. Were it not for the Iranian regime's extensive role in laying the foundation for the current war, the past few weeks may have been very different for Israelis and Palestinians. Those of us in the West who care about peace in the Middle East should recognize that Tehran's fingerprints are all over the current round of violence.

The Star.com

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 05:13 AM

"That is a blockade and everyone understands that except you."
Why do you insist telling all of us that we are on our own when we disagree with you - does this not strike even you as somewhat ludicrous?
It probably hasn't escaped the humanitarian side of this argument that you Israeli appeasers have totally ignored the details of what is happening to the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli thugs and are choosing to point out what will happen if the Palestinians don't surrender - 'Come out with your hands up and we will spare your lives' - sounds like gloating to me and I wouldn't expect anything else from you.
This conflict is rapidly becoming an extension of the already inhuman Israeli blockade - Assad couldn't begin to compete.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 04:46 AM

Guardian November.
"Gaza becoming uninhabitable as blockade tightens, says UN.
Destruction of smuggling tunnels and renewed ban on import of construction materials have exacerbated humanitarian crisis"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/22/gaza-uninhabitable-blockade-united-nations

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 04:43 AM

Guardian Wednesday.
" angry that it did not deal with some of the group's (Hamas') major demands: a conclusive end of Israel and Egypt's blockade on Gaza,"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/16/egypt-no-negotiations-gaza-ceasefire-israel-hamas

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 04:39 AM

Celebrating?
What a sick lie.
No-one on this forum has done that, so why claim it?

Steve, Egypt has closed its border with Gaza, allowing nothing in or out.
That is a blockade and everyone understands that except you.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 06:16 PM

So,chaps, if I park my pantechnicon across the mouth of the Channel Tunnel and let the tyres down and throw the keys in La Manche, I'd be "blockading Europe", huh? Jeez, what a bunch of comedians. Israel is blockading Gaza. Egypt has shut down a tunnel or two at one point on the border. Of course, you want Egypt to be blockading Gaza because that would add grist to your pro-Israeli regime mill. Good luck. But do take a good look at the regime in Egypt before you call them your partners in crime. They're not very nice, what with proposing mass executions and all that. Still, it must feel good to have them on your side, chaps. You suit each other very nicely.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 03:25 PM

I invented nothing Musket.
Tell us specifically what you deny, and I will remind you of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Greg F.
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 02:02 PM

Makes about as much sense as your other posts, Boo.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 01:55 PM

Ohhh! And there was I, trying to analyse it as a poem! All ready to expound on the politico/poetic significance of the repeated splitting of Gaza by enjambement between its upper case initial and its lower case remainder ~~~

and you went & spoilt it!

Boohoo! Chizz!

☹☹~M~☹☹

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 01:47 PM

Oops sorry - the previous post is a non post, I was just playing around with formatting.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 01:45 PM

a)The conflict between Israel and the G
aza Strip is an "international armed
conflict" for the purposes of international law.
In this respect, the
Commission relies upon decisions of
the Supreme Court of Israel
and
statements by various United Nations
organizations and humanitarian and
human rights organizations.
(b)
Israel's effective control of the G
aza Strip ended when disengagement was
completed in 2005.
In this respect, the Comm
ission relies upon a decision
of the Supreme Court of Israel

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 01:28 PM

Woops!
Sorry.

We also see the lefties competing over who hates Israel most.
No matter that they do not know that Egypt blockades Gaza, or think that there are EU "restrictions" and UN "sanctions" against Israel.
Just so long as they REALLY hate it.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 01:25 PM

Yesterday we had the amusing spectacle of Richard and Musket arguing over who was the most leftie.
Musket claimed he was because he had voted Labour more times.
Richard said he was because he had NOT voted Labour under Blair.

We also see the lefties competing over who hates Israel most.
No matter that they do not know that Egypt blockades Israel, or think that there are EU "restrictions" and UN "sanctions" against it.
Just so long as they REALLY hate it.

That is why discussion of much worse evils, like Caliphates, Putin and Islamism get ignored or converted to more bile against Israel.

Jim, Hamas just blew up a Bedouin camp, killing one and injuring many.
Any outrage from you?
There would be if Israel did such a thing!

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 12:34 PM

Steve Pshaw: "Incidentally, you blokes talking about your dicks is more enlightening..."

You brought it up...why don't you just start your own thread about your peckers?...You and Musket should have a gay ol' time!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 09:50 AM

"Hamas are wrong about many things,"

Finally a post from Shaw that isn't his usual hateful, made up garbage.

I have to agree that Hamas is wrong about many things namely stealing money that is rightfully meant for the people of Gaza and enriching themselves with it and using it to purchase rockets and mortars to terrorize the civilians of Israel with.

They are also wrong about siting those rockets and mortars in schools, hospitals, mosques and civilian areas knowing that innocent people will die when they are attacked so they can then use those deaths as propaganda to demonize Israel.

They are also wrong to encourage Gazans to act a human shields.

Finally, they are wrong to commit themselves to the genocide of a people.

Shaw finally manages to get something right.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 09:44 AM

If there is no Egyptian blockade, what was the point of the tunnels anyway Steve?
Closing the tunnels was just reinforcing the existing blockade.

How can you have such passionate views on something you know and understand so little about?

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 09:41 AM

More from today's Irish Times
Jim Carroll

'THE ISRELIS DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYBODY'
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
In Gaza City
The longer diplomacy stalls, the higher the chances that Israel and Hamas will be drawn into a deadly drawn-our war, with civilians – and increasingly children – its greatest victims.

I n the neighbourhood, they used to call Mohammad Al-Bakr "The Prince". The scrawny 11-year-old, the only son of Ramez and Salwa, was in line to take over the fisherman's mantle that had passed down three generations and was now, due to his father's chronic back problems, soon to be his. He was good at school, and much of his free time was spent at the nearby beach, where all the Al-Bakr children swam and played football. When it was busy,
he made some pocket money by selling tea on the beach, and it was his dream one day to open a fish shop.
In a household where money was scarce, where Mohammad had just a single pair of trousers and two T-shirts, already there was talk about him becoming the breadwinner. A life at sea beckoned. "Our kids, their whole world is the water. They live their lives down there," says Samia, the boy's aunt, sitting in a spartan room in the family home. Beside her is Salwa, Mohammad's mother, who is swaying silently, her legs crossed beneath her on the bed. Around them are more than 20 women and children from the extended family, gathered in grief. "I told them not to go, but he insisted," Salwa whispers. "He just wanted to play."
On Wednesday afternoon, Mohammed was among a group of children who were playing on the Gaza city beach when a missile struck a shack on the harbour. The children ran away from the blast towards a hotel beyond some deserted beach cafes, according to witnesses, but within an instant a second missile struck, this one closer to the running children. Four cousins, all under 11, were killed on the beach that afternoon. Four more were injured.
The Al-Bakr family buried their children within hours of their deaths and returned to the family home. But their longest day wasn't over yet. At 5am, when everyone was in bed, the west-facing windows were suddenly blasted in. An Israeli "knock on the door" warning had fallen on the roof of a house across the road. People recognised it immediately, and they were fleeing. The children, screaming and crying, fell over each other in the panic to run down the street. A few minutes later, an Israeli rocket exploded on some open land across the road, leaving a 10-foot crater and causing extensive damage to adjacent homes. "We just stood there in the street," says Samia.

THE TERROR OF DAILY LIFE
Ali Abu Hasira watched it all unfold on the beach that day. He's 42, but he has been fishing here since he was 12, and he knew each of the boys and their family. He points to the spot where the first missile fell, then the second one. He describes how two of the children were flung more than 15 metres in different directions by the force of the blast. "The Israelis don't care about anybody," he says. Around us, the beach is deserted. Normally there would be up to 30 fishermen on foot and more than 100 out at sea. Today there are none." Heart-wrenching stories of the traumas are being inflicted by the latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas have abounded this week. Local health ministry figures show that, of the 260 people who were killed in Gaza, the great majority were civilians and 48 were children. Yet the killings on Gaza beach touched a nerve. Outside the enclave, they drew revulsion. Inside, they seemed somehow to multiply the terror of daily life. If four children playing on a beach could be hit, then anyone could.
Even the smallest decision was freighted with risk. Should you stay in, knowing that residential homes have taken the brunt of the bombardment (sometimes taking neighbours' houses with them) or go out and risk walking down the wrong street at the wrong time?
When 27-year-old Riwaa Bassal opened her Facebook last Saturday night, she read that her younger brother Mohammed had been killed when a bomb hit a building he was walking past in the district of Zeitoun. "My brother was walking in the street," she says, speaking in the classroom of a UN school that has been converted into a shelter for Gazans who left their homes due to heavy bombing. "He wasn't carrying a rocket. He was walking peacefully."

VAST BOMB SITES
There was terror and fear, but boredom too. When a five-hour ceasefire, agreed by Israel and Hamas at the UN's request, came into effect on Thursday morning, people spilled out onto the streets. For 10 days, Gaza had been deserted, the shops closed and cars few and far between. Most people hadn't left their homes. Suddenly the central market was bustling, the traffic jams returned and life took on its old rhythms, however briefly.
As they stocked up on food and other essentials, people admitted that after more than a week of sitting inside waiting for the bombs to fall, they were relieved to be out again; and to catch up with friends and family. "We got bored at home," said Ayman, whose men's clothes shop at the entrance to Zawiya market had opened for the first time in 10 days even though he didn't expect to do any business.
"We're not selling anything," he said, pointing to the huge stock of jeans and shirts he imported, from Turkey in the hope of a busy Eid. "People are only buying food and drink, but we opened so we could be outside and see people."
In normal times, daily life in this crowded, impoverished sliver of land is a struggle. With the bombings, the strip has been left disfigured as well. Families sift through vast bomb sites where their homes once stood. Charred rockets sit in craters at the side of the road. At the overstretched Shifa hospital, there are barely enough spaces in the ramshackle morgue to meet demand. Children in shock - inert, rigid, exuding fear- are a disturbingly common sight.
Yet the real tragedy is that these dystopian scenes, like much else about the latest conflagration, in so many ways recall the events in 2009 and 2012, when Israel and Hamas last confronted one another from either side of the buffer zone. And while both sides will claim to have made short-term gains, few expect the landscape that emerges once the smoke has cleared to be meaningfully different to that of 10 days ago.
Last Sunday night in Tel Aviv, big crowds turned out to watch the World Cup final on big screens in expensive bars and cafes around the city. With its elegant beachfront, its clean, orderly streets and its thriving social scene, Israel's commercial heart felt like a European Mediterranean city that night - and a world away from the chaos just a few hours to the south. But while only one Israeli has been killed by a militant rocket from Gaza (a 37-year-old who was delivering food to Israeli soldiers near the border with Gaza, killed by a fragment of mortar fire) and the Iron Dome missile defence system has succeeded in shielding urban areas, the psychological effect of hearing wailing sirens in public places several times a day weighs heavily on public opinion.
Up to 90 per cent of Israelis, according to opinion polls, support the government's actions in Gaza. Notwithstanding the pressure prime minister Binjamin Netanyahu faces on his right flank, the public is firmly behind him. For Hamas, the conflict brought the risk of huge losses but also some strategic opportunities. Hamas ha' been at a low point recently.
Isolated in the wake of the upheaval in Egypt and the civil war in Syria, and under financial pressure since the closure of Gaza's southern border with Egypt, which deprived it of goods and tax revenues, the organisation recently opted to transfer formal authority over the civic administration in Gaza to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. That led to a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation on terms that were seen as casting Hamas, the winner of an election in Gaza in 2006, as the weaker partner.
Now, however, it finds itself back in a central role, presenting itself in a defensive posture and enhanced in the eyes of its supporters.
As columnist Chemi Shalev wrote in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week, "The Israeli bombing raids on Gaza and the casualties inflicted on its civilian population have cast Hamas once again as the main pillar of resistance against the evil Zionists and placed them in perfect position to play hard to get in the upcoming efforts led by Secretary of State John Kerry to broker a cease fire."
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority chairman, appears sidelined. On the streets of Gaza this week it was difficult to find anyone who would criticise Hamas, at least in public. "May God protect Hamas," says Ghalia al-Sawar-ka, who left her home in the north of Gaza in the middle of the night after the Israelis dropped leaflets warning of a bombardment in the area. "Without Hamas, we'd be completely lost."
On the ground in Gaza, the situation changes by the hour. Thursday began with a ceasefire and ended with Israel mounting a ground operation that involved tanks, drones, fighter jets, Apache helicopters and naval gunships. So far that operation has been limited. Israeli government ministers have said it is focused on militant tunnels along the border, and an Israel Defence Forces spokesman said it was not aimed at "toppling Hamas".
The widespread belief is that Netanyahu does not want to re-occupy the strip, but Israel may be calculating that by tightening its grip and ensuring Hamas cannot resupply, the militants will be forced to agree to a ceasefire.
Hamas warns that Israel will "pay a heavy price" for the ground invasion and insists it will only agree to a truce if Israel agrees to lift the siege of Gaza and to release the dozens of prisoners freed in the 2011 deal for captured Israel soldier Gilad Shalit, who were rearrested recently in the wake of the killing of three kidnapped Israeli children.
Neither side has an interest in prolonging the war; in that sense, their needs are aligned. For Israel, a full invasion would risk heavy casualties and require a huge long-term investment in the security and development of the strip. Domestic public opinion might baulk at that, while removing Hamas by killing its leaders would run the risk of seeing it replaced with something even more unpalatable to Israel.
On the other side, Hamas also needs the conflict to end. Its arsenal is depleting fast, Gazans are growing impatient and there are signs of divisions between the political and military camps within the organisation.
Both sides need a way out, yet the military momentum is building all the time. The longer diplomacy stalls, the higher the chances that Israel and Hamas will be drawn into a deadly, drawn-out war that both sides have an interest in averting.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 09:22 AM

Hamas are wrong about many things, minnow. Why don't you just toddle off and see them in person. Oh, and get them to show you the bombed-out homes and the children's graves, so that you can tell them yourself that they killed them.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 08:53 AM

"It is the wrong word to use."

I'll let Hamas know that Steve Shaw says they are using the wrong word - I`m sure the`ll be grateful for learning that.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 08:47 AM

Israel's UN Ambassador Says There Are More Hamas Missiles at UNRWA Facilities
Algemeiner ^ | Friday, July 18, 2014 | Staff

Posted on 7/18/2014, 6:51:37 PM by Star Traveler

A day after UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, admitted that it had discovered 20 Hamas rockets at one of its schools, Israel's UN Ambassador said he was certain that more such facilities housed Hamas weaponry.

"Yesterday, UNRWA admitted that it mysteriously found 20 missiles in one of its schools," Ambassador Ron Prosor said on Friday in an emergency Security Council session on Gaza. "I'm sure that if UNRWA takes the time to check its other facilities, it will discover that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Hamas is using UN facilities to commit a double war crime by targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians."

His comments came the morning after Israeli forces entered Gaza in an expansion of Israel's Operation Protective Edge aimed at ending rocket fire against civilians.

In his extensive remarks, outlining Israel's position on the conflict with Hamas, Prosor also said that it was time for the international community to face the consequences of its failed policies regarding the Gaza based terror group.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 08:33 AM

Incidentally, you blokes talking about your dicks is more enlightening, more revealing and a damn sight more entertaining than your usual Islamophobic drivel. I'll work on finding some other diversions, I think. Anyone wanna talk man-boobs?

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 08:29 AM

Closing tunnels at one point on a border is not a blockade. It is the wrong word to use. A blockade means cutting Gaza off from the outside world around all its air, land and sea borders. That what Israel does. Egypt closed some tunnels. Don't believe everything you see in the media.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 08:12 AM

From the Irish Times this morning
Jim Carroll

WE ARE NOT A MILITARY BUILDING, WE ARE NOT A STRATEGIC BUILDING. WE ARE A HOSPITAL,
Some of the shells penetrated the whole hospital, from one side to another and hit the next building
Ruadhan MacCormaic
in Gaza City
Paralysed patients are carried to safety after a 1O-minute attack warning
"Evacuate," said the voice at the other end the line. It was 8.50pm, just over 90 minutes before Israel would confirm it had launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. The hospital was at risk.
Its 17 patients, all profoundly disabled and receiving therapy at this specialised institution facing Gaza's eastern border with Israel, had been kept together on the first floor wards.
Abu Medhat al-Ashi, al-Wafa hospital's executive director, says the shelling began about 10 minutes after the call. "Some of the shells penetrated the whole building, from one side to another and hit the next building. Fire broke out inside, electricity was cut, water was cut off and there was a leak," he says.
All 17 patients are paralysed, so the hospital staff faced a difficult task. They scrambled to track down ambulances from across the beleaguered city; as each vehicle arrived, one-by-one, the medics carried the patients out the door with their sheets. By 11pm the hospital was empty.
Lying in bed at the Sahaba medical complex, a private charity-run clinic that agreed to accommodate the patients, 16-year-old Aya Abdan says she is still afraid when she thinks about the previous night.
She has lost all feeling in her legs as a result of a tumour in her spinal cord. "Glass broke and the hospital was full of dust so you couldn't see anything," she recalls.
Shrapnel damage
After a previous incident in which al-Wafa was hit on Wednesday, the Israel Defence Forces said it had bombed a rocket launcher situated 300m from the hospital and the hospital was damaged by shrapnel.
It said an advance warning was given before the strike was carried out and that it had urged hospital staff to evacuate.
The hospital's director, whose efforts are focused on replenishing the stock of drugs destroyed, is reeling.
"You have seen my patients," he says insistently. "They are in no way a threat to the Israelis. How could they be? We are not a military building, we are not a strategic building. We are a hospital, improving the lives of people in Gaza."
Across town in Shifa hospital, Gaza's largest, the emergency department is calm after one of its busiest nights. All through Thursday night and early yester-day morning, the sky was alight with orange flares as Israel deployed a formidable force of fighter jets, naval ships, Apache helicopters and drones to ease the path for its troops on the ground. According to the local health ministry, more than 20 people died and 250 were injured overnight.
Burial of bodies
Outside the hospital morgue, a ramshackle building that has been in heavy use this week, a crowd has gathered to watch the bodies emerge for burial. Usually it takes four men to lift a corpse, each one covered in a white sheet, and put it into the back seat of a car. One of the bodies is that of Mohammed Ab-del Rahman, who friends say was killed repairing a mobile phone antenna on the roof of a building in Gaza City. They think he was hit by a drone.
Medic Hussein Baraqa is waiting for the next call. His shifts alternate between the ambulance and the emergency room, but admits he feels travelling at night - when roads are deserted - is too dangerous. But he still goes out?
"It's my duty," he shrugs. "I have to."
'The Israelis don't care about anybody': Weekend Review

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 07:04 AM

"Over the past week there are voices coming out of Egypt and some Arab countries"
According to - "Breaking Israeli News (Latest news -biblical perspectives, as supplied by Zionist propaganda site site Gatestone.
The Author is an ex-Muslim converted to supporting Gatestone, to which he is a distinguished fellow.
No agenda there then!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 06:47 AM

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi has thus far turned down appeals from Palestinians and other Arabs to work toward achieving a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas


    * Over the past week there are voices coming out of Egypt and some Arab countries — voices that publicly support the Israeli military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

    * They see the atrocities and massacres committed by Islamists on a daily basis in Iraq and Syria and are beginning to ask themselves if these serve the interests of the Arabs and Muslims.

    * "Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!" — Azza Sami of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.

    * Isolated and under attack, Hamas now realizes that it has lost the sympathy of many Egyptians and Arabs.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 12:47 AM

Steve Pshaw: "I've noticed recently that you haven't posted about your penis size. I wonder why not."

It's not the size, but how you use it...assuming you know how to use it at all!..However, that being said, you sound like that person I mentioned in another thread...."like trying to stuff an oyster into a slot machine!" ....and the more limp it is, the more frantically braggadocios they are about it!.....like your whole rap!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 10:46 PM

Steve Shaw--

I would have responded to you earlier, but when I went to 'submit message' I found I had lost my internet connection. Coming back, now, I see that Guest from Sanity responded much better than I would have; so all I can add is "what he said!" How-some-ever mine was pretty darn good, and I've saved it to notepad for the next time you foam at the mouth when addressing me.

I normally don't speak of my penis size in public, but since you brought it up, I'm not John Holmes size by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm guessing--based on some of your recent screeds--that I'm bigger than your IQ.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 09:37 PM

"This is the post of someone who has lost the argument!"

I would say that he's lost a lot more than the argument.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 09:31 PM

Steve Pshaw: "Get this into your super-thick, unreconstructed ultra-right backwoodsman skull, John In The Sunset Home. You are on an internet forum. You do not get to dictate, or even suggest, what other forum members choose to post about."...and so on and so forth...blah blah blah..

This is the post of someone who has lost the argument!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 09:14 PM

Hamas calls Egypt blockade a 'crime against humanity'
By REUTERS
03/18/2014 18:35

GAZA - The Palestinian militant group Hamas on Tuesday called Egypt's curbs on movement through its crossing with the Gaza Strip a "crime against humanity", in an unprecedented rebuke of its Arab neighbor that further frays their worsening ties.

The closures, that Egypt says were introduced because of security concerns, have cut off imports of medicine and aid to the impoverished coastal enclave and prevented travel by thousands of Gazans and patients seeking treatment abroad.

Usually open for four to six days per month, the Rafah crossing has now been shut to normal passenger traffic for 40 straight days - although Egyptian authorities have opened it twice in that period for pilgrims to Mecca.

"Egyptian authorities' insistence on closing the Rafah crossing and tightening the blockade of Gaza ... is a crime against humanity by every criteria and a crime against the Palestinian people," said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the Islamist movement which rules Gaza.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 08:50 PM

Gaza is not under a blockade by Egypt. And the UN has not endorsed the blockade by Israel of Gaza. If you wish to interpret this situation differently, give us your evidence. Better still, just shut your Islamophobic gob.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 08:46 PM

Gaza is under a blockade by Israel and Egypt which is deemed legal by the UN.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 08:34 PM

Nor would Israel continue to allow hundreds of trucks of food and medical aid to enter Gaza even as hundreds of rockets leave Gaza.

"Allow"? So, minnow, you accept then that Gaza is under occupation and, worse, siege? Both illegal, by the way?

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 08:30 PM

Get this into your super-thick, unreconstructed ultra-right backwoodsman skull, John In The Sunset Home. You are on an internet forum. You do not get to dictate, or even suggest, what other forum members choose to post about. I will comment on whatever I want to comment about. If you pick up that I have not commented about a particular matter, you can either keep schtum about it (recommended) or bellyache about it and make yourself look like a proper twat. I've noticed recently that you haven't posted about your penis size. I wonder why not. Actually, no I don't. Does that lean to the far right as well? Oh, Jesus. Please don't answer.

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: bobad
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 08:14 PM

It's just a hunch, but if the Israelis wanted to wipe out as many Palestinians as possible, never mind commit genocide, they probably wouldn't issue warnings to Gazans (by phone and leaflet) to get out of harm's way. Nor would Israel continue to allow hundreds of trucks of food and medical aid to enter Gaza even as hundreds of rockets leave Gaza.

And if Hamas were chiefly concerned with protecting Palestinian lives, it would not implore Gazans to stay in their homes — serving as human shields and inflating the body count as a propaganda prop to increase international pressure on Israel.

One perverse complaint, often subtly echoed in the mainstream media, is that it is somehow unfair that Israelis are not dying, so far, from Gaza rocket strikes. The Israelis have the Iron Dome defense system, which intercepts the rockets aimed at civilians. They also have bomb shelters; the Palestinians do not. They have these things because, as Netanyahu said, Israelis are interested in protecting their citizens.

As Commentary's Jonathan Tobin notes, no one is asking why the Palestinians don't have bomb shelters. The assumption seems to be that the Gazans don't have the wherewithal to build them. This is untrue because they do have bomb shelters — they just reserve them for Hamas's leaders and fighters. Indeed, Hamas has dug thousands of tunnels under Gaza, largely so it can smuggle in, and store, more rockets to fire on Israel. Better that those tunnels were used as shelters for civilians, but that would mean not letting them die for the greater "good."

The Palestinian 'Genocide' Lie

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 07:46 PM

Any road, I want to start the weekend by turning the thread title on its head, instead of SMALL HOPE for... I'd like to think about the joint Arab-Jewish classes where the kids were interviewed by someone reporting to NPR. The kids covered Arabs, Palestinians, Christians, Muslims and Jews who've been able to get along and their parents have continued to send them to learn together even through recent events.
So there is s*m*a*l*l*H*O*P*E that from a seed of humans seeing other humans AS humans in this period of Ramadan, the Sabbath, and the comparatively low casualty counts so far in Palestine/Israel (as compared to Darfur, as compared to Cairo, Sinai, Baghdad, Damascus, Afghanistan, Pakiston), that something can grow, however stunted at first, and find a trellis.

...after all, even the Federation and the Klingon Empire eventually got along...

Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 05:02 PM

Hey! I've got an idea for the 'so-calleds'...try entering a business arrangement..or even a peace negotiation...or for that matter, ANY negotiations, with someone who thinks you don't have a 'right to exist'!!....and then they want to dictate their terms!!

What a bunch of M-O-R-O-N-S!!!!

GfS