BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:51 AM

While Jewish refugees from Arab countries received no international assistance, Palestinians received millions of dollars through UNRWA. Initially, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel nearly $3 million. The total Arab pledges amounted to approximately $600,000. For the first 20 years, the United States provided more than two-thirds of the funds, while the Arab states continued to contribute a tiny fraction. Israel donated more funds to UNRWA than most Arab states. The Saudis did not match Israel's contribution until 1973; Kuwait and Libya, not until 1980. As recently as 1994, Israel gave more to UNRWA than all Arab countries except Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco.

In 2003, the United States pledging more than $134 million of UNRWA's $326 million budget (41%). Meanwhile, despite their rhetorical support for the Palestinians, all of the Arab countries combined pledged less than $11 million (3%) and $7.8 million of that was from Saudi Arabia, meaning the rest of the Arab world contributed less than $3 million (1%).57

After transferring responsibility for virtually the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, Israel no longer controlled any refugee camps and ceased contributing to UNRWA. Meanwhile, in addition to receiving annual funding from UNRWA for the refugees, the PA has received billions of dollars in international aid and yet has failed to build a single house to allow even one family to move out of a refugee camp into permanent housing. Given the amount of aid (approximately $5.5 billion since 1993) the PA has received, it is shocking and outrageous that more than half a million Palestinians are being forced by their own leaders to remain in squalid camps.

MYTH

"The Arab states have always welcomed the Palestinians and done their best to resettle them."

FACT

Jordan was the only Arab country to welcome the Palestinians and grant them citizenship (to this day Jordan is the only Arab country where Palestinians as a group can become citizens). King Abdullah considered the Palestinian Arabs and Jordanians one people. By 1950, he annexed the West Bank and forbade the use of the term Palestine in official documents.58

Although demographic figures indicated ample room for settlement existed in Syria, Damascus refused to consider accepting any refugees, except those who might refuse repatriation. Syria also declined to resettle 85,000 refugees in 1952-54, though it had been offered international funds to pay for the project. Iraq was also expected to accept a large number of refugees, but proved unwilling. Lebanon insisted it had no room for the Palestinians. In 1950, the UN tried to resettle 150,000 refugees from Gaza in Libya, but was rebuffed by Egypt.

After the 1948 war, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and its more than 200,000 inhabitants, but refused to allow the Palestinians into Egypt or permit them to move elsewhere. Egypt's handling of Palestinians in Gaza was so bad Saudi Arabian radio compared Nasser's regime in Gaza to Hitler's rule in occupied Europe in World War II.59

In 1952, the UNWRA set up a fund of $200 million to provide homes and jobs for the refugees, but it went untouched.



"The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."
— former director of UNRWA in Jordan Ralph Galloway, in August 195860




Little has changed in succeeding years. Arab governments have frequently offered jobs, housing, land and other benefits to Arabs and non-Arabs, excluding Palestinians. For example, Saudi Arabia chose not to use unemployed Palestinian refugees to alleviate its labor shortage in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Instead, thousands of South Koreans and other Asians were recruited to fill jobs.

The situation grew even worse in the wake of the Gulf War. Kuwait, which employed large numbers of Palestinians but denied them citizenship, expelled more than 300,000 of them. "If people pose a security threat, as a sovereign country we have the right to exclude anyone we don't want," said Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, Saud Nasir Al-Sabah (Jerusalem Report, June 27, 1991).

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:50 AM

From the site Carol linked to:

"13 June, 06: Qassam rocket-fire at the civilian population

Over the past weeks, Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip have intensified the Qassam rocket-fire at Israeli population centers.

The Palestinian organizations responsible for the rocket-fire state openly that one of their aims is to kill Israeli civilians. Deliberate attacks on civilians are both immoral and illegal. The willful killing of civilians is classified as a grave breach in the Fourth Geneva Convention and as a war crime that is unjustifiable under any circumstances. Furthermore, Qassam rockets are themselves illegal, even when aimed at military objects, because the rockets are so imprecise, and thus endanger civilians situated in the area in which the rockets are fired or where they land. Therefore, the persons involved in firing the rockets violate the requirements of distinction and proportionality, which are fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

To aggravate matters, many of the rockets are fired from, or near, areas in which civilians live. International humanitarian law prohibits attacks from inside or near the homes of civilians, and from using civilians as human shields. IHL's objective is to reduce to a minimum injury to civilians during an anticipated military response by the other side. The Palestinian organizations that carry out the attacks against Israel from within or near a populated area breach this rule; in doing so, the organizations show their indifference to the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives."

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:49 AM

As I said in a previous post, 119 Israeli children have been killed, and more than 700 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of the second intifada.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:45 AM

The Israelis are workinf on supplying themselves with water, why supply people that shoot missiles at them?

Why indeed!

Nobody's asking them to supply the Palestinians with water. They are asking them to stop stealing the Palestinians' water.

If you can't see the difference between these two things, you are either being willfully blind, or you are stunned as my arse.

And since you've gone down that line of reasoning, why the hell should the Palestinians be expected to supply water to people who are shooting at them (the Israelis)?

You support the continued ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the Israelis.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:41 AM

Dianavan, see this site. It's owned and operated by Jewish Israelis. It's a good site. In particular, see their statistics page...

http://www.btselem.org/English/index.asp

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:40 AM

The Israelis are workinf on supplying themselves with water, why supply people that shoot missiles at them? The fact is no Arab state and no UN money has been spent to alleviate this mess. Where is all the Arab Brothers money going? more missiles, where should it go?

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:40 AM

"884 people have been murdered and 5932 have been injured in Israel as a result of Palestinian violence and terror attacks between September 2000 and October 2003, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Below are the most significant of these attacks."

I have no idea how many were children.

from here.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:36 AM

So, why doesn't Hezbollah withdraw?

Why is this so difficult for people (people with a conscience) to understand?

They want their women and children to be returned to them!

If Israel can cause the kind of death and destruction they are causing just to get ONE frigging soldier back, why can't people understand why people in Lebanon would want to get their wives and children back?

Really... the inability of so many people to understand this just astonishes me.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:36 AM

"I might be persuaded to believe that Israel has the moral high ground. I'm not holding my breath."

I have never suggested that Israel has the moral high ground. They are your words and your implication, not mine. I think the war should stop this minute. I do know however that it will NOT unless Hezbollah withdraws and stops firing rockets into Israel. That is neither moral nor immoral, it is fact.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:33 AM

And if Israel WAS targeting civilians of any age, the death toll would be one helluva lot higher than it is. Your numbers game doesn't impress me. A kid is a kid. The ball has been in Hezbollah's corner for days. They know what they have to do. So, why don't they do it?

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: dianavan
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:33 AM

Here's a good source. It lists the names of the children and the extent of the injuries by year.

http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2000.html

I am waiting for a similar list of Israeli children killed by terrorists. If you can produce this evidence, I might be persuaded to believe that Israel has the moral high ground. I'm not holding my breath.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:32 AM

Israel has drawn up a secret plan for a giant desalination plant to supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory on the West Bank. It hopes the project will diminish pressure for it to grant any future Palestinian state greater access to the region's scarce supplies of fresh water.

You make me laugh, Dave.

That desalinization plant is just another of the tools Israel will be using to deprive Palestinians of the basic necessities of life. Instead of letting them use their own water, which is free, and it's THEIRS, Israel is stealing that water, and it's going to manufacture fresh water in their plants and charge the Palestinians a lot of money for it.

The Palestinians' economy is being choked to death by the Israeli checkpoints, aparthied settlements, walls, and roads, and other forms of collective punishment. The Palestinians don't have extra money to spare to buy water from the Israelis because Israel is stealing THE PALESTINIANS' WATER

You support the continued ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the Israelis.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:31 AM

"While you're looking for evidence to support Israel, I will continue to gather the facts regarding the targetting of children by Israeli soldiers."

You do that. Meanwhile answer this:

Israel continues to be hit by roocket attacks by Hezbollah. All Hezbollah has to do is withdraw from the border and stop firing rockets. The Israelis will stop attacking Lebanon. So, why doesn't Hezbollah withdraw?

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: dianavan
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:25 AM

"Since the outbreak of the Intifada, several human rights organisations have thoroughly investigated the circumstances of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths, reaching the conclusion that the Israeli army "kills civilians knowingly and deliberately".

One of these organisations is Physicians for Human Rights-USA, which investigated the number of Palestinian deaths and injuries in the fist months of the Intifada.

A total of 266 children killed
were 14 or younger

It concluded that "the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing".

I found this here: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C3994F6B-9576-4702-94E3-73EA1470182E.htm

Since the year 2000, more than 500 children have been killed and 20,000 have been injured.

Maybe you can find a source that tells me how many Israeli have died or have been wounded.

Now - Maybe you would like to compare the living conditions of Israeli children and Palestinian children or the rates of malnutrition and disease.

You may dispute my source but I doubt if you can discredit the Physicians for Human Rights-USA.

Sure - Have a go at it. I would also like to know how many Israeli soldiers have been tried for targetting children. From my understanding, anything over 14 years of age is fair game. I'd be satisfied if they investigated the murder of even one child under 14.

While you're looking for evidence to support Israel, I will continue to gather the facts regarding the targetting of children by Israeli soldiers.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:24 AM

Maybe that's what you believe, Peace. But it looks to me like there are plenty of people who don't share your view. Many of them right here in this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:23 AM

Like I said... just wait until the foreign nationals leave. And then look for the numbers to rise exponentially.

Israel killed tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians during it's other invasions and occupations there.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:23 AM

No Carol. Not more valuable. AS valuable.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:21 AM

Many Israeli children have also died at the hands of suicide bombers.

119 Israeli children. More than 700 Palestinian children.

Whenever I see someone try to justify what is being done to the Palestinian children by mentioning the Israeli children, I find myself concluding that the person in question believs that the lives of Israeli children are many times more valuable than the lives of Palestinian children.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:21 AM

Just imagine how many dead there would be if they decided to really 'target' civilians. The Israelis have about 100 Lockheed F-16I 'Fighting Falcon' aircraft. It has the ability to reach Iran, BTW. And the firepower it carries is unreal. No, I think they are targeting Hezbollah and Hamas. It's bad that the people who plot terrorist acts against Israel decide to live amongst the civilian populations of Lebanon and the Palestinians, and the people who fire rockets at Israel's civilian population do so from places that have many civilians.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:11 AM

If Israel WAS targeting civilians, I think they could do better than 183 dead in a week

Wait until the foreign nationals leave. Then watch the numbers climb exponentially.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:09 AM

You and CarolC have ignored my comments that the Israelis DO NOT TARGET civilians, and Hezbollah and Hamas DO.

You have a very short memory, beardebruce. Not only have I not ignored it, I disputed it. The Israelis most certainly do target civilians.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Teribus
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:07 AM

GUEST,dan - 19 Jul 06 - 12:49 AM

Your Example Number 5 - STATE MURDER OF CHILDREN

"Remember the poor kid and his father sheltering behing a small wall and being subject a sustained burst of machine gun fire...captured on film...he died his father survived."

Guest dan, If this is the incident I think you are referring to, I believe that it has been proved fairly conclusively that "the poor kid" was killed by Palestinian Gunmen.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:04 AM

Well, if Sybil's posts are true, then there should be no one left in the entire Middle East. So, I guess the war is over.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 01:01 AM

JOSH?

Send Walt instead. He tries to make sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 12:59 AM

Certainly claims of massacres and atrocities should not go without investigation. The problem is that, like the case of Dir Yassin, even when the claim is shown to be unfounded, the legend persists. It is convenient for the enemies of Israel to portray her armed forces as ruthless savages, but that propagandistic position cannot be supported by any facts.

For example, Tantura. A Haifa University revisionist historian, Theodor Katz, claimed in his M.A. thesis (released January 2000) that an IDF unit had massacred over 200 Arab residents of the village of Tantura in the 1948 War of Independence. He was brought to court in 2001 by surviving officers and men of the unit who presented contrary evidence including review of Katz's tape recordings showing how he had manipulated the testimony of survivors. Katz admitted finally that he had selectively used reports from Arab sources, taking only those that supported his thesis. The lawsuit was dropped after Katz signed a renunciation of his own work and Haifa University pulled the thesis from library shelves. [It was revealed in September 2002 that tormer Palestinian Authority minister Feisal Husseini paid $8,000 for the legal defense of Teddy Katz.] The University conducted its own review of the evidence. After six months of work, the committee had managed to review only a little more than one-fourth of Katz's tapes, mostly in Arabic, which bore direct relation to the question of whether any massacre took place. Yet even in that limited selection, 14 major discrepancies - in which the tapes didn't accord with the written text - came to light.

No pro-Palestinian Arab source had ever pointed to a massacre at Tantura before Katz's thesis appeared in 2000. The thesis has been completely debunked. Nonetheless, there are now hundreds of web sites that cite the "Tantura massacre" as historical fact. And while Arab sources rushed into print to trumpet the news of Katz's thesis, none has mentioned the retraction save a few who cite it as an example of a massive coverup.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: GUEST,Josh
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 12:55 AM

Israeli tanks have invaded the refugee camp of Mughazi in Gaza.Five people have bee killed and twenty wounded including five children.Palestinian Resistance fighters are fight replying with small arms fire.
Josh

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 12:54 AM

Now it's Dan?

WE WANT WALT!
WE WANT WALT!
WE WANT WALT!

I have to ask: Sybil, is that YOU?

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: GUEST,dan
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 12:49 AM

STATE MURDER OF CHILDREN
I believe that of course Israel has a policy of targetting the Palestinian children.

It is detaining hundreds illegally in Israeli jails.Mostly arrested and kidnapped from the illegally occupied West Bank.

2 Gaza is being bombed,shelled and shot up and its population is young.Children are dying in numbers there.

3 Gaza is also being starved and its children are malnourished...there is a humanitarian and health crisis there.

4 During the two intifadas when the Palestinian children took to the streets with rocks against tanks and snipers they were killed and wounded in large numbers.

4 They also had their arms and legs broken as a matter of deliberate state policy and were caught out when an israeli camera crew filmed a 10 minute brutal attack by soldiers on a teenage prisoner.

5 Remember the poor kid and his father sheltering behing a small wall and being subject a sustained burst of machine gun fire...captured on film...he died his father survived.

6 Or how about the 12 yer old girl shoy dead while she wandered too close to an Israeli army checkpoint...again captured on film and audio.The officer walked up to her as she lay dying and emptied his gun into her.
7 Take a look at yuor TV screens tonight to see how Lebanese kids are being incinerated and blown up in their homes and cars as a matter of state policy.

6 Zionism is a raw and racist ideology.Palestinian children are seen as enemies or potential enemies.It turns children into foes,it humiliates the parents,it demolishes their   houses as a matter of state policy.

7 Remember the massacres at Sabra and shatila....he victims were mainly women and children...who had been given US gurantees as to their safety.Worthless in the event.When the butchers went in to do the wet work with their knives the Israeli troops guarded the perimeter and fired up the flares so that the butchers could find their victims and finish them off.The The Israeli army of the invasion covered itself in gore that day

dan
ps
that business of the family slaughtered on the beach.if you believe the official israeli account you will believe anything.The murderers were quick to try to rewrite what happened so that their supporters could have some kind of story to present to the world.

Israel's leaders are war criminals and should be in the dock!

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 12:07 AM

Israel has drawn up a secret plan for a giant desalination plant to supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory on the West Bank. It hopes the project will diminish pressure for it to grant any future Palestinian state greater access to the region's scarce supplies of fresh water.

Under an agreement signed a decade ago as part of the Oslo accord, four-fifths of the West Bank's water is allocated to Israel, though the aquifers that supply it are largely replenished by water falling onto Palestinian territory.

The new plans call for seawater to be desalinated at Caesaria on the Mediterranean coast, and then pumped into the West Bank, where a network of pipes will deliver it to large towns and many of the 250 villages that currently rely on local springs and small wells for their water.

Israel, which wants the US to fund the project, would guarantee safe passage of the water across its territory in return for an agreement that Israel can continue to take the lion's share of the waters of the West Bank. These mainly comprise underground reserves such as the western aquifer, the region's largest, cleanest and most reliable water source.

For Israelis, agreement on the future joint management of this aquifer is a prerequisite for granting Palestine statehood.

Global funding
The first public hint of the plan emerged earlier in May in Washington DC. Uri Shamir, director of water research at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, told the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that the desalination project was "the only viable long-term solution" for supplying drinking water to the West Bank.

Shamir told New Scientist this week that the project could be complete in five to seven years. "The plant will be funded by the world for the Palestinians. Israel will not be willing to carry this burden, and the Palestinians are not able to."

But other leading hydrologists contacted by New Scientist point out that desalinating seawater and pumping it to the West Bank, parts of which lie 1000 metres above sea level, would cost around $1 per cubic metre.

"The question is whether an average Palestinian family can afford it," says Arie Issar, a water expert at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Sede Boker, Israel, who helped green the Israeli desert a generation ago by finding new water sources in the region. "It would be foolish to desalinate water on the coast and push it up the mountains when there are underground water resources up there, which cost only a third as much."

Tony Allan of King's College London, a leading authority on Middle East water, agrees: "Pumping desalinated water to the West Bank is not the best technical or economic option."

But the project is being supported by Alvin Newman, head of water resources at the Tel Aviv office of USAID, the US international development agency, which would fund the desalination project. "Ultimately it's the only solution," he said in an interview with New Scientist.

Unusual cooperation
Water supply is one of the few areas where cooperation between Israel and Palestine has survived the current intifada. Every day on the West Bank, Palestinian engineers help repair and maintain Israeli water pipes, and vice versa.

But Palestinian water negotiators are deeply uneasy about the plans being drawn up on their behalf, especially if they involve abandoning claims to the water beneath their feet. "We cannot do that. We don't have the money or the expertise for desalination," Ihab Barghothi, head of water projects for the Palestinian Water Authority, told New Scientist.

Palestinians badly need more water. Under the Oslo agreement they have access to 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all sources. Israel gets 246 cubic metres per head per year. And in the nearly 40 years that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or rehabilitating old ones.

The region's sources of water are the West Bank aquifers; the river Jordan, which rises in the Golan Heights and flows into the Sea of Galilee, where it is largely tapped by Israel; and the coastal aquifer, an increasingly polluted reserve of underground water that extends south to the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip.

Sewage effluent
Over the years, Israel has developed a good reputation for using water efficiently, and in the 1980s it began recycling sewage effluent for irrigation. In 2004, Israel signed a deal to buy water shipped by tanker from Turkey.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip depend almost exclusively on small wells tapping the coastal aquifer. As the water table falls, the aquifer is becoming increasingly polluted by salt water from the sea. UN scientists say Gaza will have no drinkable water within 15 years.

Despite earlier efforts to develop desalination, the Israel government only decided to invest heavily in the technology in the past four years. Some, including Israeli liberals and Palestinian optimists such as Barghothi, believed that once Israel began desalinating seawater for its own use it would be prepared to relax its grip on the West Bank aquifers.

But now it appears that Israeli water planners see desalination as a means of retaining control of those aquifers.

The desalination plant to supply the West Bank would parallel a similar US-funded reverse osmosis plant to fill taps on the hard-pressed Gaza Strip. The scheme has already been approved and funded, but is currently on hold because of continuing conflict in Gaza. Taken together, the two schemes would leave an independent Palestine more dependent on desalination than almost any other nation in the world.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 11:57 PM

"Yes, but the Israeli children were not intentionally targetted. The Palestinian children have been."

A Palestinian suicide bomber gets on a bus filled with kids, and the Israeli kids weren't intentionally targeted? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?



Yep to effect. Nope to affect. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: number 6
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:43 PM

"The Palestinian children have been."

That statement is pretty extreme dianavan ... do you have proof of that.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Ron Davies
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:30 PM

Israel seems to think that this campaign will degrade Hezbollah's ability to send rockets into Israel.   It may. Question is: will the hate engendered by the campaign more than outweigh any temporary advantage gained by this?

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: bobad
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:22 PM

Hmmm.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: dianavan
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:21 PM

Yes, but the Israeli children were not intentionally targetted. The Palestinian children have been.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: bobad
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:07 PM

Many Israeli children have also died at the hands of suicide bombers.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: dianavan
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 10:03 PM

beardedbruce - I did not say that Israel had a policy of intentionally targetted civilians. I do, however, reject the concept of 'collateral damage' when Palestinian children are killed by a single bullet from a sniper. It is the failure of Israel to investigate and prosecute those soldiers responsible for the indiscriminate killing of children that I object to.

Killing children is no way to gain allies. I supported Israel until I became aware of the plight of Palestinian children. Who in their right mind would support what Israel has done to them? As far as I'm concerned, Israel has given up its right to exist because of its inhumanity.

If you weren't so busy defending Israel's right to exist, you might take some time to look at the number of Palestinian children who have been killed by Israeli soldiers. The conditions of the children living in refugee camps is appalling. How can those who have lived through the holocaust (and their children), justify the terror of these children's lives?

Maybe it is the Jews who have forgotten.

Israel has no more right to exist than those Palestinian children.

btw - Carol and I are not the same person. We have never met. On occasion, we also disagree.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Ron Davies
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 09:58 PM

Hey Peace, no need to apologize--you were right the first time-- "effect" is correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 09:34 PM

Gail Winston, Director of M.E.I.R., Mid East Information Resource

Major newspapers, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, 'et al' all blamed Israel for the seven deaths on the Gaza beach Friday June 9, 2006. (1 & 2) The Israeli Government anxiously took the blame without first investigating or even questioning the facts of the accusations. The Israeli Media jumped in quickly to 'catch a scoop', never questioning the accuracy of the Arab Palestinian claim.

This isn't the first time that Israel takes the blame first, then says they are investigating. By the time they complete their investigation and determine that Israel is NOT at fault, the audience has left the theater. It is too late.

Israel had stopped her retaliatory shelling before the shell on the beach exploded.

As always expected, the Media went into a feeding frenzy, merely on the claim of the Arab Palestinians but the clincher was the pathetic stupidity of the government apologizing. Most recently (June 5th), PM Olmert apologized to Egypt's King Mubarak for the IDF's killing of 2 Egyptian terrorists dressed in Egyptian army uniforms. (3)

Why must Israel always take the blame first? Is this a Jewish tradition or is this government of Jews merely inept? Because we apologize for every possible attack, we are now accused first before we can possibly investigate to learn the truth. This happened with the Mohammed al Dura story in 2000, the so-called "massacre in Jenin" and the killing of 21 people in the Jabaliya refugee camp September 2005. These stories are not over yet. They continue as a tradition today. Newspapermen say: "If it bleeds; it leads."

Some facts of the June 9th story:


1. A shell (or something) exploded on a beach in Gaza.
2. An IDF officer said that all IDF retaliatory shelling in the Gaza area had ceased well before the dramatic explosion on the beach.

3. This is an area from which the Arab Muslim Palestinians has been launching Kassem Rockets daily.

4. Seven Arab Muslim Palestinians were killed. One dramatic picture on the cover of the NYT, page 3 of the Chicago Trib, etc. showed a beautiful young girl screaming in agony over the death of her father lying next to her. This is the lasting image and the entire story to be told. By Monday the NYT headline is: "Errant Shell Turns Girl Into Palestinian Icon". (5)

One commentator wondered how the camera got there so fast or was the scene re-enacted? The truth in the Muhammed al-Dura death was revealed much later when an Italian videographer showed that the line of fire that caught the boy could have only come from the Palestinians not the Israelis.

5. The Arabs removed all evidence of shrapnel that could prove whose shell was to blame.

6. The Arabs removed all the wounded and dead with the shrapnel in them also removed to eliminate any evidence. They refused to have the bodies examined for forensic evidence of what actually killed the seven. Two are being treated in Israeli hospitals.

If this was an Israeli shell, wouldn't the Arabs have left the 'evidence' and gathered the Media to see it, instead of raking the sand to remove any tell-tale fragments?

7. The Arab Muslim Palestinians were known to have other explosives in this area but, refused to co-operate in any way with the Israeli investigators.

8. Hamas vows 'earthquake' after 7 were killed on the Gaza beach, ending a (supposed) 16 month truce, saying it would resume attacks following the explosions (which the Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, Yediot Aharonot, Ma'ariv and others all said the explosion was 'possibly' caused by IDF artillery fire). (4)

The Hebrew and Anglo Media jumped to the conclusion, as did the government, that it must have been an Israeli shell. Only later were there speculations offered by the Media that the explosion was likely caused by an errant Kassam Rocket.

9. Defense Minister Amir Peretz (in his ignorance) urged Palestinians not to retaliate (because he expected them to.)

The New York Times on June 12th ran an article about a surviving girl. Squeezed into the article was a reluctant statement about the area of the Gaza beach being used as a staging area for crude Kassem Rocket attacks against Israel. Using civilians as human shields and cover has always been the Arab Muslim M.O. (Modus Operandi). IF it was a Kassem Rocket exploding among the civilian cover picnicking on the beach, that would explain their refusal to allow inspection of the area and their sifting of the sand for any residual shrapnel. Also, their refusal to allow forensic examination of the bodies for the manufactured source of the shrapnel further indicates that it was a Palestinian-made Kassem Rocket.

As to be expected, the NYT is following the sympathy theme of the surviving girl and Mohameed Al-Dura making their case, not on the facts but by the outpouring of sympathy and a cover-up of who killed the victims. As they made Mohammed Al-Dura a poster child for their PR war in 2000, now they are using this girl as the "orphan" poster child.

Don't wait for an apology from the sensationalistic Media who slant their reports against Israel deliberately. It rarely come.

Another question to be asked: IF that area has become a launching spot for Rockets, assuring Israel's reprisals, why would either Fatah or Hamas not keep the area clear of civilians instead of inviting them to be there.

Are the civilian Muslim Palestinians supposed to be volunteers for martyrdom and also serve as human shields for the Kassem Rocket launching teams? (5)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"Gissin: Don't blame Israel first"

by Herb Keinon JERUSALEM POST June 11,

Israelis are doing themselves a gross disservice, and playing into the hands of the Palestinians, by presuming that an Israeli shell caused the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians Friday in Gaza, Prime Minster Ehud Olmert's Foreign media advisor Ra'anan Gissin said Sunday.

"We are repeating the same mistakes of the past in taking responsibility when there are other possibilities about who is responsible," Gissin said.

He said that Friday's tragedy on the Gaza beach may indeed be similar to the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura in 2000, the "Jenin Massacre" in 2002, and the killing of 21 people at the Jabaliya refugee camp Sep. 2005. While the Palestinians originally pinned the blame for all these incidents on Israel, it has since been revealed that al-Dura may have been killed by Palestinians [according to an Italian TV video], that there was no "Jenin massacre," and that the deaths in Jabaliya were caused when Hamas activists "mishandled" explosives at a mass rally.

Gissin said that Israel should immediately have raised doubts after Friday's incident about the Palestinian version of events that placed the blame squarely on Israel.

"We jumped to conclusions before the evidence, and we immediately assumed that it was probably an Israeli shell," Gissin said. "But we don't know that for a fact. The Palestinians moved in and destroyed all the evidence. People should be asking themselves, 'why?' "

Just as Israel is conducting an investigation, Gissin said that the international community should also be demanding that the Palestinians conduct an investigation. But rather than doing that, he said, the Palestinians are removing evidence from the scene.

"We look at the area as a battle zone," Gissin said, "while the Palestinians view it as a crime scene, and are interested in making the evidence look like Israel carried out an atrocity," he said.

Gissin said that the evidence "didn't add up" in Jenin to equal a massacre because there were not enough bodies, and in Jabaliya there were too many witnesses to what happened to buy the Hamas line that the explosion in 2005 was the result of missiles fired by an IDF helicopter.

"But now we have a classic case where there is no real evidence, and all we have is a picture of a crying girl on the beach," Gissin said of Friday's incident in Gaza. "Nobody knows how the people there were killed. If it was an Israeli shell, why didn't the Palestinians invite the press to see the remnants of the shell, why have they been so quick to remove the evidence?"

Gissin bemoaned a situation where he said that instead of waiting for the investigation, the Israeli press jumped to the conclusion that it was an errant Israeli shell and reflexively began calling for an end to artillery fire on Gaza.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, meanwhile, said that considering the circumstances, Israel weathered this particular storm in the foreign media "fairly well." Regev said that none of the serious international news outlets blamed Israel for intentionally targeting the civilians, and that most mentioned that Israel expressed regret and set up an investigation of the incident. Regev said that the Foreign Ministry and IDF coordinated Israel's reaction after the incident and that there were two main messages:

1. That Israel regretted the incident and expressed sorrow for it; that it deems the loss of innocent civilian life unacceptable; but that it was not taking responsibility because an investigation into exactly what happened was continuing.

2, That the violence in Gaza is a result of Palestinian extremists continuing to launch rockets on Israel even though Israel pulled out of Gaza 10 months ago and has neither a single settler nor soldier there.

Regev said that this message did not emphasize the possibility that the Palestinians may have been responsible for the blast, because no one at this point knows exactly what happened. Israel, he said, did stress that it was investigating the incident, and that it was premature to draw conclusions.

This article can also be read at

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150035829904&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFul





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


IN CLOSING FROM GAIL WINSTON:

Anyone who tries to tie the hands of the IDF while they are combating murderous Terrorism is responsible for the Terrorists' success at murdering civilians, both Jews and Muslims. What should we do? Bombard them with flowers? What is a reasonable response when they are shelling our civilians with missiles daily?

Because of all the sympathetic articles written by the NYT, and other Media, the Arab Muslim Palestinians will continue to lob shells and plant explosive charges to detonate in civilian areas, both theirs and ours. The Media will all be culpable for the rising number of civilians hurt and killed (both Jews and Muslims) by the Arabs when they see how effective their campaign is to damage their own people.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 09:22 PM

Guest, Walt:

I take it that you support the 1967 borders defining Israel and Israel's right to defend them as stated by CarolC?

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:36 PM

affect, sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:33 PM

So, uh, Walt, Hugo, Shirley, Oswald, ifor, et.al: Have any of you written to Hezbollah (Hizbullah) and voice your concerns that their continued attacks on Israel are having a detrimentl effect on Lebanon?

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:31 PM

Here it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:28 PM

Call upon the Lebanese government to fulfill its obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and disarm Hizbullah.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:26 PM

There was a UN resolution that required Hezbollah to fuckin' well withdraw two years ago. Save it, Walt.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:19 PM

The very dangerous mission of getting people out of Lebanon is complicated by the fact irregular warfare means one side or the other could blame any deaths incurred as the work of the other side.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: GUEST,Walt
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:11 PM

I'm here !
But my response to the Israeli's Ministry of Foreign Affairs assertion that

"Israel is working as hard as it can to get the foreigners out of Lebanon "

is to suggest that the Israeli warplaneS and warships are the foreigners that the Lebanese want out.Oh,and they should also get out of the illegally occupied West Bank.It is not Israeli territory and UN Resolution 242 requires it to withdraw.
Walt

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:57 PM

I have received two e-mail from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the last two days. Nothing is new or earthshaking. However, to respect the sender I will summarize:

1) Hezbollah (which the sender spelled with a Hiz) has to pull back from the border and stop firing missiles at civilian targets in Israel. When that happens there WILL be an immediate cesae fire on the part of Israel.

2) Israel is working as hard as it can to get foreigners out of Lebanon.

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:56 PM

GUEST,Walt

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: number 6
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:54 PM

Which Walt?

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Gaza Strip 28/9 June 2006
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:47 PM

Where is Walt?