Soca Warriors Online Discussion Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: D.H.W on December 27, 2008, 09:02:03 AM
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7801012.stm <----- video link
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A wounded man is carried away in Gaza City during Israeli missile attacks. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/REUTERS
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Bodies of Palestinians are laid out at Shifa hospital in Gaza after Israeli missile strikes. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters
Israeli F-16 bombers have launched a series of air strikes against key targets in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 155 people, medical chiefs say.
Gaza officials and the Hamas militant group said about 200 others were hurt as missiles hit security compounds and militant bases across the territory.
The strikes, the most intense Israeli attacks on Gaza for decades, come days after a truce with Hamas expired.
Israel said it was responding to an escalation in rocket attacks from Gaza.
Palestinian militants frequently fire rockets against Israeli towns from inside the Gaza Strip; large numbers of rocket and mortar shells had been fired at Israel in recent days.
In a statement, Israel's military said it targeted "Hamas terror operatives" as well as training camps and weapons storage warehouses.
A Hamas police spokesman, Islam Shahwan, said one of the raids targeted a police compound in Gaza City where a graduation ceremony for new personnel was taking place.
Several bodies of Hamas men in black uniforms were photographed by the Associated Press at one compound.
Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni defended the air raids, saying Israel had "no choice". "We're doing what we need to do to defend our citizens," she said in a television broadcast.
In the West Bank, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - whose Fatah faction was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007 - condemned the attacks and called for restraint.
But Hamas quickly vowed to carry out revenge attacks on Israel in response to the air strikes, firing Qassam rockets into Israeli territory as an immediate reply.
At least one Israeli was killed by a rocket strike in the town of Netivot, doctors said.
"Hamas will continue the resistance until the last drop of blood," spokesman Fawzi Barhoum was reported as saying.
Israel also stood firm, saying operations "will continue, will be expanded, and will deepen if necessary".
It is the worst attack in Gaza since 1967 in terms of the number of Palestinian casualties, a senior analyst told the BBC in Jerusalem.
International reaction was swift and expressed concern, with many world leaders calling for calm and an immediate ceasefire.
Rising toll
A White House spokesman said the United States "urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza".
"Hamas' continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop," the spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, added.
The UK Foreign Office said: "We urge maximum restraint to avoid further civilian casualties."
The French presidency of the EU meanwhile called for an immediate halt to the shooting by both sides.
At least 30 missiles were fired by F-16 fighter bombers.
Hamas said all of its security compounds in Gaza were destroyed by the air strikes, which Israel said hit some 40 targets across the territory.
Mosques issued urgent appeals for people to donate blood and Hamas sources told a BBC reporter in Gaza, Rushdi Abou Alouf, that hospitals were soon full.
Israel hit targets across Gaza, striking in the territory's main population centres, including Gaza City in the north and the southern towns of Khan Younis and Rafah.
Egypt opened its border crossing to the Gaza Strip at Rafah to absorb and treat some of those injured in the south of the territory.
Most of the dead and injured were said to be in Gaza City, where Hamas's main security compound was destroyed. The head of Gaza's police forces, Tawfik Jaber, was reportedly among those killed.
Images from the targeted areas showed dead and injured Palestinians, burning and destroyed buildings, and scenes of panic and chaos on Gaza's crowded streets.
Residents spoke of children heading to and from school at the time of the attacks, and there were fears of civilian casualties.
Reuters news agency said at least 20 people were thought to have died in Khan Younis.
The air strikes come amid rumours that a ground operation is imminent.
Israeli security officials have been briefing about the possibility of a new offensive into Gaza for some days now, says the BBC's Paul Wood, in Jerusalem.
But most reports centred on the possibility of a ground offensive, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was not expected to authorise any operation until Sunday at the earliest.
Although a six-month truce between Hamas and Israel was agreed earlier this year, it was regularly under strain and was allowed to lapse when it expired this month.
Hamas blamed Israel for the end of the ceasefire, saying it had not respected its terms, including the lifting of the blockade under which little more than humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza.
Israel said it initially began a staged easing of the blockade, but this was halted when Hamas failed to fulfil what Israel says were agreed conditions, including ending all rocket fire and halting weapons smuggling.
Israel says the blockade - in place since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007 - is needed to isolate Hamas and stop it and other militants from firing rockets across the border at Israeli towns.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7800985.stm
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Cease fire done
Hamas go retaliate and once again it's wash rinse repeat
too sad
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Cease fire done
Hamas go retaliate and once again it's wash rinse repeat
too sad
Just like the recycling of Israeli leadership. Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, blah blah ... very intriguing political scene ...ah doh tune into CNN too much but I did catch a 2 or 3 min snippet of Barak on there regarding this latest action ... ah lil cynical ... ah got some 'posturing' out of it and I couldn't help but wonder how much he was influenced by elections around the corner ... a politician throwing self-preservation to the wind? Hell no.
Rowley might pull up Manning, but the diverse agenda of that Israeli cabinet makes one wonder how this aggression factors into career planning ... yuh have first among equals and yuh have others equally trying to be first ... first back into that Prime Minister's seat even ... Tzipi saying when she comes in Hamas go hadda scatter ... Tzipi, doh count yuh chickens before they're hatched ... all kinda eggs laying ... Kadima, Likud, Labor ... and dahis just 3 varieties ... ah hadda say, the one local politician who operates on an Israeli playbook stylee is Ramesh ... he just cyah geh it tweaked to secure the final ball ... well, ah suppose he could geh a blind b/c in T&T nutten hatching ... on a landscape populated by egg-shell skinned political masqueraders ... I digress
Mixed up moods and attitudes won't work
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Just earlier in the week a friend and I was talking but Israel and Palestine and just so, just so....BOOM!!!...Bomb drop....steups....lord fadder them eh goh stop fighting each other....but all yuh tell mih something.....ent Israel does get away with murder when they engaging in hostilities??....dem cyar be right all de time..... :-\ :thinking:
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why Hamas take up base in de Gaza Strip, Israel jes dismantle dem settlements and pull out, is like de damn Hamas peeps want to lost Gaza again or wha?
dotish
I am no fan of Israel but geezanages, Hamas win election, dey get Back de Gaza strip, Israle pull out, and what yuh do? secretly buy arms, smuggle arms, whatever, it seems dat dem eh want no peace in truth, they are playing right into the hands of the ultra conservative Jewish peeps and dem.
Tzpsi already calling on de arab league to condemn Hamas and Israel massing troops and tanks on de border, if Hamas doh stp playing de arse, Israel will invade and dismantle den completely.
I giving it one more wek and if dey eh stop d missile attacks dey dead and gone
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Mahmoud Abbas eh winning no friends on de ground neither ... more fuel to the fire ...
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I am no fan of Israel but geezanages, Hamas win election, dey get Back de Gaza strip, Israle pull out, and what yuh do? secretly buy arms, smuggle arms, whatever, it seems dat dem eh want no peace in truth, they are playing right into the hands of the ultra conservative Jewish peeps and dem.
yeh boy, I doh understand whey dem fellahs commin from, dey done in power what is the motivation to start up dem israeli....knowing damn well de military response will be heavy handed
if I use to wear tin foil hat I would be convince that is Livni work out ah deal wit dem fellas to start drama
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I am no fan of Israel but geezanages, Hamas win election, dey get Back de Gaza strip, Israle pull out, and what yuh do? secretly buy arms, smuggle arms, whatever, it seems dat dem eh want no peace in truth, they are playing right into the hands of the ultra conservative Jewish peeps and dem.
yeh boy, I doh understand whey dem fellahs commin from, dey done in power what is the motivation to start up dem israeli....knowing damn well de military response will be heavy handed
if I use to wear tin foil hat I would be convince that is Livni work out ah deal wit dem fellas to start drama
i saying the same things to mehself
like somebody have to be profitting somehow or covering up something
btw it have anything in dem religous books bout if something go happen if them ever stop fighting?
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Meanwhile the death toll is now over 300... and counting.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel obliterated symbols of Hamas power on the third day of what the defense minister described Monday as a "war to the bitter end," striking next to the Hamas premier's home, and devastating a security compound and a university building.
The three-day death toll rose to at least 315 by Monday morning, with some 1,400 wounded. The U.N. said at least 51 of the dead were civilians, and medics said eight children under the age of 17 were killed in two separate strikes overnight. Israel launched its campaign, the deadliest against Palestinians in decades, on Saturday in retaliation for rocket fire aimed at civilians in southern Israeli towns.
Since then, the number of Israeli troops on the Gaza border has doubled and the Cabinet approved the call-up of 6,500 reserve soldiers.
The strikes have driven Hamas leaders into hiding and appear to have gravely damaged the organization's ability to launch rockets, but barrages continued. Sirens warning of incoming rockets sent Israelis scrambling for cover throughout the day.
One medium-range rocket fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon killed an Arab construction worker there Monday and wounded several others. He was the second Israeli killed since the beginning of the offensive, and the first person ever to be killed by a rocket in Ashkelon, a city of 120,000.
25 miles from Tel Aviv
On Sunday, Hamas missiles struck for the first time near the city of Ashdod, twice as far from Gaza as Ashkelon and only 25 miles from Israel's heart in Tel Aviv. Hamas leaders have also threatened to renew suicide attacks inside Israel.
At first light Monday, strong winds blew black smoke from the bombed sites over Gaza City's deserted streets. The air hummed with the buzz of drone aircraft and the roar of jets, punctuated by airstrike explosions. Palestinian health officials said one strike killed four Islamic Jihad militants and a child.
Some Palestinians ventured outside for mourning. In northern Gaza, a father lifted the body of his 4-year-old during a funeral Monday for five children from the same family killed in an Israeli missile strike.
On Monday, the White House released a statement saying "in order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable ceasefire."
Most of those killed since Saturday were members of Hamas security forces, though the precise numbers remain unclear. A Hamas police spokesman, Ehab Ghussen, said 180 members of the Hamas security forces were among the dead, and the U.N. agency in charge of Palestinian refugees said at least 51 of the dead were civilians. A rise in civilian casualties could intensify international pressure on Israel to end the offensive.
300 airstrikes since Saturday
Israel's intense bombings — more than 300 airstrikes since midday Saturday — reduced dozens of buildings to rubble. The military said naval vessels also bombarded targets from the sea.
One strike destroyed a five-story building in the women's wing at Islamic University, one of the most prominent Hamas symbols in Gaza. Other attacks ravaged a compound controlled by Preventive Security, one of the group's chief security arms, and destroyed a house next to the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister.
Late Sunday, Israeli aircraft attacked a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp next to Gaza City, killing five children and teenagers under age 17 from the same family, Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said. In the southern town of Rafah, a toddler and his two teenage brothers were killed in an airstrike aimed at a Hamas commander, Hassanain said. In Gaza City, another attack killed two women.
Some families fled their apartments next to institutions linked to Hamas.
Suad Abu Wadi, 42, kept her six children close on mattresses in her Gaza City living room. Her husband sat with them, chain-smoking. Abu Wadi said he said nothing since seeing their neighbor carrying the body of his child, killed in an airstrike Saturday.
Hospitals are overwhelmed
Gaza's nine hospitals were overwhelmed. Hassanain, who keeps a record for the Gaza Health Ministry, said that some of the over 1,400 wounded were now being taken to private clinics and even homes.
Abdel Hafez, a 55-year-old history teacher, waited outside a Gaza City bakery to buy bread. He said he was not a Hamas supporter but believed the strikes would only increase support for the group. "Each strike, each drop of blood are giving Hamas more fuel to continue," he said.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, told parliament Israel was not fighting the residents of Gaza. "But we have a war to the bitter end against Hamas and its branches," he said. Barak said the goal is to deal Hamas a "severe blow" and that the operation would be "widened and deepened as needed."
In Israel, 17 people have been killed in attacks from Gaza since the beginning of the year, including nine civilians — six of them killed by rockets — and eight soldiers, according to Israel's Foreign Ministry.
Israeli security officials have warned that the militants' range now includes Beersheba, a major city 30 miles from Gaza. Resident Mazal Ivgi, 62, said she had prepared a bomb shelter. "In the meantime we don't really believe it's going to happen, but when the first boom comes people will be worried," she said.
Israel began Saturday's assault by targeting Hamas security installations, and has broadened the attacks since then. On Sunday planes struck dozens of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, cutting off a key lifeline that had supplied Hamas with weapons and Gaza with commercial goods.
In Jerusalem, Israel's Cabinet approved a call-up of 6,500 reserve soldiers Sunday in apparent preparation for a ground offensive. The final decision to call up reserves has yet to be made by the defense minister, and the Cabinet decision could be a pressure tactic. Military experts said Israel would need at least 10,000 soldiers for a full-scale invasion.
Israel has doubled the number of troops around Gaza and also deployed an artillery battery. Several hundred reservists have already been summoned to join their units, but no full combat formations have been mobilized so far.
The assault has sparked diplomatic fallout. Syria decided to suspend indirect peace talks with Israel, and the U.N. Security Council called on both sides to halt the fighting and asked Israel to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza. Israel opened one of Gaza's border crossings Monday, and about 40 trucks had entered with food and medical supplies by midday, military spokesman Peter Lerner said.
Egypt also opened its borders to Gaza and allowed trucks loaded with humanitarian aid to enter the Rafah terminal Monday. It was also taking in wounded Palestinians from Gaza, with more than a dozen Egyptian ambulances waiting at the crossing.
Arab oThe Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who heads a moderate government in the West Bank and is holding peace talks with Israel, issued his strongest condemnation yet of the operation, calling it a "sweeping Israeli aggression against Gaza" and saying he would consult with his bitter rivals in Hamas in an effort to end it.
Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters Monday, while "Hamas is looking for children to kill."
"Hamas is targeting deliberately kindergartens and schools and citizens and civilians because this is according to their values. Our values are completely different. We are trying to target Hamas, which hides among civilians," Livni said.
The carnage inflamed Arab and Muslim public opinion, setting off street protests in Arab communities in Israel and the West Bank, across the Arab world, and in some European cities.
In Iraq, about 1,000 backers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr staged a protest Monday in Baghdad demanding Israel immediately stop its air assault. The political party of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the attacks and called on Islamic countries to cut relations with Israel.
On Monday, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded four Israelis in a West Bank settlement before he was shot and wounded. It was not immediately clear if the attack was directly connected to the events in Gaza.
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Allyuh doh take on that family quarrel nah that is how they does play rough . They does play American football and baseball with hand grenade . :busshead: :duel: :flamethrower: :challenge: :arguing:
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hamas take they jammin fuh days,now they retaliating and bush say that is act of terrorism.
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hamas take they jammin fuh days,now they retaliating and bush say that is act of terrorism.
was it not Hamas who started the missile attacks in the first place?
They have been branded a terrorist organization for as long as I can remember.
Israel is not a nice country, they doh eat nice, one Israeli civilian death often results in teh killing of hundreds of Arabs.
My biggest question is why did Hamas decide to attack Israel after they got their gaza Strip back?
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hamas seem to need the continuing violence to justify their existence...especially their militant stance. israelis doing everythign they want...and only rocket....now
hamas saying ahhhhhhhh good good...now we have a reason to send some more rockets and suicide bombers.
hamas mudda so and so oui.
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hamas take they jammin fuh days,now they retaliating and bush say that is act of terrorism.
was it not Hamas who started the missile attacks in the first place?
They have been branded a terrorist organization for as long as I can remember.
Israel is not a nice country, they doh eat nice, one Israeli civilian death often results in teh killing of hundreds of Arabs.
My biggest question is why did Hamas decide to attack Israel after they got their gaza Strip back?
these people fighting long b4 i born and it will go on long after i take meh last breath.to me it goes beyond religion and culture.that is de way life is over there.tryin to understand is impossible.
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I am no fan of Israel but geezanages, Hamas win election, dey get Back de Gaza strip, Israle pull out, and what yuh do? secretly buy arms, smuggle arms, whatever, it seems dat dem eh want no peace in truth, they are playing right into the hands of the ultra conservative Jewish peeps and dem.
yeh boy, I doh understand whey dem fellahs commin from, dey done in power what is the motivation to start up dem israeli....knowing damn well de military response will be heavy handed
if I use to wear tin foil hat I would be convince that is Livni work out ah deal wit dem fellas to start drama
i saying the same things to mehself
like somebody have to be profitting somehow or covering up something
btw it have anything in dem religous books bout if something go happen if them ever stop fighting?
hear nuh, from what I could understand from them is that "THEIR GOD" doh believe in Peace
is CENTURIES that war is Normal Normal there
and Dutty maybe is the Isrealies that trying to perfect the art of Foreign Government de-stabalisation :devil:
I watched the movie "The Syrian Bride" tonight, and them people ent play that the way they live is just CRAZY
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hamas take they jammin fuh days,now they retaliating and bush say that is act of terrorism.
was it not Hamas who started the missile attacks in the first place?
They have been branded a terrorist organization for as long as I can remember.
Israel is not a nice country, they doh eat nice, one Israeli civilian death often results in teh killing of hundreds of Arabs.
My biggest question is why did Hamas decide to attack Israel after they got their gaza Strip back?
Has something to do with conditions on the ground.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/03/israel-palestinians-gaza-attacks
Land, sea, sky: all will kill you
Mohammed is burying his family. So is Jamal. Haider doesn't feel safe in his flat so is sheltering in his car. In a series of phone calls to friends besieged in Gaza, one writer reveals the reality of life under daily attack.
Last Saturday, the first day of massive air strikes on Gaza, I finally get through to my old friend Mohammed. We speak for a few moments, he reassures me he is OK, he asks about my now-delayed trip to Gaza, and suddenly I ask: "What is that noise?" It is a sort of distant keening, like the roar of approaching traffic, or a series of waves hitting a rocky shore. "I am at the cemetery, Karma", he says, "I am burying my family." He now sounds exhausted. He repeats, over and over again in his steady, tired voice as if it were a prayer: "This is our life. This is our life. This is our life."
I had just come off the phone with Jamal, who at that moment was in another cemetery in Jabaliya camp, burying three members of his own family. They included two of his nieces, one married to a police cadet. All were at the graduating ceremony in the crowded police station when F16s targeted them that Saturday morning, massacring more than 45 citizens in an instant, mortally wounding dozens more. Police stations across Gaza were similarly struck. Under the laws of war (or international humanitarian law as it is more commonly known), policemen, traffic cops, security guards: all are non-combatants, and classified as civilians under the Geneva conventions. But more to the point, Palestinian non-combatants are not mere civilians, but possess something more real, more alive, more sovereign than a distancing legal classification: the people in Gaza are citizens. Some work in the various civic institutions across the Strip, but most simply use them on a daily basis: their schools, police stations, hospitals, their ministries.
Later on that first day I finally reach Khalil, who runs a prisoners' human rights association in Gaza. He was trying to organise a press conference. It was chaotic: he was shouting, he couldn't finish his sentences or form words. When I told him what I had just heard, he told me that he too had just come from the cemetery. His cousin, Sharif Abu Shammala, 26 years old, had recently got a job as a guard at the university. He had been asked to go in that morning to sign his worksheet at the local police station; he had felt lucky to find the work.
For the one and a half million Palestinian citizens living in Gaza, ways to absorb and describe their daily predicament - these collective and individual experiences of extreme violence - had already been used up by the two years of siege that preceded this week's carnage. Hanging out with Mohammed at his office in Gaza City six months ago, mostly just watching him smoke one cigarette after another, he abruptly leant over his desk and said to me: "Everyone is dead. There is no life in Gaza. Capital has left. Ask someone passing by: where are you going? They will answer: I don't know. What are you doing? I don't know. Gaza today is a place of aimless roaming."
On this New Year's Day at his home in Sheikh Radwan, his walls tremble from the F16 aerial bombardment under way in his neighbourhood. The intensity of it courses down the line into my ear, his voice a cloud of smoke. His house is just next to the mosque. Earlier this week, his wife's cousin in Jabaliya refugee camp lost five of her children: they lived next to a mosque the Israeli air force had bombed. "So where can I sleep, my children sleep?" he asks down the phone. "I don't know how to tell you what this is like, as I have stopped sleeping, myself. We cannot go out, we cannot stay in: nowhere is safe. But I think I would rather die at home."
I first met international law professor Richard Falk when he was a member of the Seán MacBride commission of inquiry into the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The UN rapporteur of human rights to the Palestinian territories, he has studied massive bombardment of this type many times before. Yet he too struggled to put words on to the singular horror unfolding: "It is macabre ... I don't know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times." He says he cannot think of another occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances: "The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law ... warrant the characterisation of a crime against humanity."
A friend of mine, a brilliant and experienced journalist from Gaza, has been covering these indescribable things in her job for an American newspaper. She tells me: "I don't know what to do. I feel overwhelmed by what I am seeing, and what they are doing: I simply can't understand the enormity of what I witness in the hospitals, where they keep bringing in children, or out in the streets - they are killing all of us. I don't know how to write about it." She feels utterly weighed down by the fact that the Israeli government have refused to allow international journalists into Gaza to see what she is seeing. Despite her bewilderment she, like all the other citizens of Gaza I speak with this week, seem to know exactly what to do: although filled with fear, they run to volunteer, help pull neighbours from under the rubble, offer to assist at the hospital (where more than half of the staff is now voluntary), write it all down, as best they can, for a newspaper.
Only a gifted few have found for us the words we keep seeking, and indeed Palestinian poetry of siege has a tradition going back generations. Mahmoud Darwish wrote some for an earlier Israeli siege, 26 years ago in Beirut:
The Earth is closing on us
pushing us through the last passage
and we tear off our limbs to pass through
The Earth is squeezing us
I wish we were its wheat
so we could die and live again
I wish the Earth was our mother
so she'd be kind to us
During that siege, in the daily bombardment from F16 fighter planes, entire buildings would come down around you - six, seven stories high, hundreds of neighbours, colleagues, and friends disappearing forever under a tonne of rubble and plumes of smoke. We stopped racing down to the cellar: better to sleep up on the roof. This week the citizens of Gaza find themselves seized with the same dread choices. On Wednesday night one colleague, Fawwaz, a professor of economics, was trapped under the rubble of his house near the ministry of foreign affairs. He managed to text a friend to send emergency workers to rescue him. Haider, another university colleague, tells me about it in wonder. He hasn't known where to place himself inside his flat: all parts of it have been struck with building debris and huge flying shards of glass. He is sitting outside in his car while we speak, although I can't see that this is the right move. Many now sleep on the roofs, he says, as if their visible presence may deter the Apache helicopters, earsplitting drones, and fighter planes that are demolishing everything in their path - more than 400 buildings in six days.
The recently completed building of the ministry of education (paid for by European donors) is damaged; the ministry of justice, the foreign ministry utterly destroyed: all national institutions of the Palestinian Authority, none military. On New Year's Day, Khalil tells me in a voice gone hard with a combination of anger and despair: "When we heard the news last night that the British government are giving something like €9m [£8.65m] for humanitarian assistance, all of us understood immediately that this Israeli war against our citizens will not stop but will continue, and that the donation is the invoice. We understood the Europeans will pay the price - with us". He is roaming around his office as we are chatting, assessing the damage to it: he works just across from the Palestinian Legislative Council, where the democratically elected parliament sat; now flattened by Israeli aircraft. Every neighbourhood in Gaza is a mixture of homes, shops, police stations, mosques, ministries, local associations, hospitals, and clinics. Everyone is connected and fastened down right where they are, and no citizen is safe in today's occupied Gaza from the Israeli military, whose reach is everywhere.
As a way to share time on the phone, while my friend Houda's neighbourhood was under aerial assault for more than 40 minutes, she and I discussed at length comparisons between previous Israeli military sieges we had been under. The carefully planned and premeditated strategy of terrorising an entire population by intensive and heavy bombardment of both military and civic institutions - destroying the entire civic infrastructure of a people - was identical. What is unprecedented here is that in Gaza there is nowhere to evacuate people to safety: they are imprisoned on all sides, with an acute awareness of the impossibility of escape. Land, sea, sky: all will kill you.
My friend As'ad is a professor of phonetics at one of the universities in Gaza. He had been giving the students poetry to read these last months, and this summer told me about a class where they had worked on a piece by the late Palestinian poet Abu Salma. "It spoke to our situation so powerfully that all at once they began to sing it: 'Everyone has a home, dreams, and an appearance. And I, carrying the history of my homeland, trip ... wretched and dusty in every path.'" He told me yesterday on the phone, when I finally reached him after days of trying: "They bombed the chemistry lab at the university. I have a phonetics lab. Will they bomb that too?"
Before this week's war on the citizens of Gaza, the government of Israel and its war machine had been attempting to fragment the soul and break the spirit of one and a half million Palestinians through an all-encompassing military siege of epic proportions. The theory behind besieging a population is to annihilate temporal and spatial domains, and by so doing slowly strangulate a people's will. Siege puts extreme pressure on time, both external and internal, and on space: everything halts. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out. No batteries, no writing paper, no gauze for the hospitals, no medicines, no surgical gloves even - for these things, say the Israeli military, cannot be classified as humanitarian. Under siege no one can find space to think lucidly, for the aim is to take away the very horizon where thoughts form their reasoning, a plan, a direction to move in. Things become misshapen, ill-formed, turn in on themselves. Freedom, as we know, is the space inside the person that the siege wishes to obliterate, so that it becomes hard to breathe, to organise, above all to hope. Not achieving its aim, and even now with no international action to put a stop to it, the siege this week reached its natural zenith. Western governments, having overtly supported the blockade for two years, now fasten their shocked gaze upon the tormented and devastated Gaza they have created, as if they were mere spectators.
I wish we were pictures on the rocks
for our dreams to carry as mirrors.
We saw the faces of those who will throw
our children out of the window of this last space.
Our star will hang up mirrors.
Where should we go after the last frontiers?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?
We will write our names with scarlet steam.
We will cut off the hand of the song to be finished by our flesh.
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.
(Mahmoud Darwish)
This week Palestinians have created an astonishing history with their stamina, their resilience, their unwillingness to surrender, their luminous humanity. Gaza was always a place representing cosmopolitan hybridity at its best. And the weight of its dense and beautiful history over thousands of years has, by its nature, revealed to those watching the uncivilised and cruel character of this high-tech bombardment against them. I tell each of my friends, in the hours of conversation, how the quality of their capacity as citizens inspires a response that honours this common humanity. From the start of the attack, Palestinians living in the cities and refugee camps across the West Bank and the Arab world took to the streets in their tens of thousands in a fierce demand for national unity. More than 100,000 people erupted on to the streets of Cairo; the same in Amman. Earlier this week I regaled my friend Ziad, who lives in Rafah refugee camp, with an account of how, at the demonstration in London on Sunday, a young man threw his shoe over the gates of the Israeli embassy. Rushed by police (who perhaps thought it was a bomb), the mass of British protesters poured off the pavement to envelop him. Ziad laughed for ages and then said quietly, "God only knows, he must be from Gaza."
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I am no fan of Israel but geezanages, Hamas win election, dey get Back de Gaza strip, Israle pull out, and what yuh do? secretly buy arms, smuggle arms, whatever, it seems dat dem eh want no peace in truth, they are playing right into the hands of the ultra conservative Jewish peeps and dem.
yeh boy, I doh understand whey dem fellahs commin from, dey done in power what is the motivation to start up dem israeli....knowing damn well de military response will be heavy handed
if I use to wear tin foil hat I would be convince that is Livni work out ah deal wit dem fellas to start drama
I dunno nuh...if I was held hostage on a small strip of rubble, with no jobs, no money, no way out, nothing to do and half of my loved ones killed by my captors, I might be inclined to act the same way...what have they got to lose? :-\
Iz just torture on a grand scale.
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I am no fan of Israel but geezanages, Hamas win election, dey get Back de Gaza strip, Israle pull out, and what yuh do? secretly buy arms, smuggle arms, whatever, it seems dat dem eh want no peace in truth, they are playing right into the hands of the ultra conservative Jewish peeps and dem.
yeh boy, I doh understand whey dem fellahs commin from, dey done in power what is the motivation to start up dem israeli....knowing damn well de military response will be heavy handed
if I use to wear tin foil hat I would be convince that is Livni work out ah deal wit dem fellas to start drama
I dunno nuh...if I was held hostage on a small strip of rubble, with no jobs, no money, no way out, nothing to do and half of my loved ones killed by my captors, I might be inclined to act the same way...what have they got to lose? :-\
Iz just torture on a grand scale.
yeah I understand is real oppression on a daily basis....even though they not officially recognized them fellahs coulda negotiate all kinda ting through back door channels..through abbas self
what they have to lose now ..is everydamn ting...all infrastructure and ah full scale ground invasion.
Mybe dey miscalculate and thought world opinion would favour them or they know exactly what they doin.....but is lil chirren payin dat price
Then again condi rice say dey take over de government in a coup and yankee doh lie
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I am no fan of Israel but geezanages, Hamas win election, dey get Back de Gaza strip, Israle pull out, and what yuh do? secretly buy arms, smuggle arms, whatever, it seems dat dem eh want no peace in truth, they are playing right into the hands of the ultra conservative Jewish peeps and dem.
yeh boy, I doh understand whey dem fellahs commin from, dey done in power what is the motivation to start up dem israeli....knowing damn well de military response will be heavy handed
if I use to wear tin foil hat I would be convince that is Livni work out ah deal wit dem fellas to start drama
I dunno nuh...if I was held hostage on a small strip of rubble, with no jobs, no money, no way out, nothing to do and half of my loved ones killed by my captors, I might be inclined to act the same way...what have they got to lose? :-\
Iz just torture on a grand scale.
yeah I understand is real oppression on a daily basis....even though they not officially recognized them fellahs coulda negotiate all kinda ting through back door channels..through abbas self
what they have to lose now ..is everydamn ting...all infrastructure and ah full scale ground invasion.
Mybe dey miscalculate and thought world opinion would favour them or they know exactly what they doin.....but is lil chirren payin dat price
Then again condi rice say dey take over de government in a coup and yankee doh lie
After all they've been though, them palestinians are beyond logic. they fighting to the death cuz they have nothing to live for.
And wid men like rahm israel emmanuel stepping on 2 d scene in a few weeks, i cah really see israel backing down. :-\
Hopefully one day these 2 sides will see sense.
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some people feel is Syria and Iran using Hamas to further their own agenda.
Hams is just a tool in the whole Middle East Debacle.
Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has launched in excess of 5,500 missiles into Israel. One figure I see quoted is 6,465.
So where are the missiles coming from?
There are 300 million Arabs in the middle east, why are they not openly supporting the Palestinians? (perhaps that is yet to come).
I am not a big Israel supporter becasue i feel they are made from the same cultural and values mould so is just two sides of the same coin.
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Meanwhile the death toll is now over 300... and counting.
mere symbols of hamas power my friend. when certain military clowns bias dey bias eh....jus like the ones who went to " push bombs up saddam ass" while they jus bombing and killing - hundreds of thousands of "saddams".
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Simple question; who started this war between Hamas and Israel ???
Anyone knows ???
And another thing, why would you go live in another man's country and protest about what is going on in your country ? And blue vex that your 'new' government don't want any part of the war ?
I here watching a Canadian channel with expats/Israel supporters protesting in Burlington..and dey noisy no arse. Blue vex that the Canadian government not offering any sympathies or even not rising the issues of their concerns etc. Like what dey fack!!! And is not three people eh, is thousands of them.
Harper ain't go be sending any of he canadian soldiers to fight nobody when it doesn't concerns Canada or even have any benefits for Canada. And he damn right too.
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israel on de whole does want pity from everbody.them is usa bitch.don't really know why .they have de best secret service and commandos.
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some might take dis outa context eh, but isreal should never have been allowed to happen, they played of the sympathy garnered after WWII and the holocaust, got western support for what was essentially an Illegal and unprovoked military action.
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In a nutshell-
The country israel was only formed in 1947.
That area (before 1947) has always been Palestine with Jews, Christians and muslims living there amongst each other for centuries .
----
The real turbulence started when a new country - Israel was formed within another country (palestine) with the backing of the west.
Due to Zionists belief that the borders of Israel must be extended is the cause of the constant occupations of land outside israel over the decades. Offcourse when u extend the borders, you are displacing people who were there before, just like they were displaced when the state of Israel was formed. Tell me that wont piss u off?
Now, the jews believe that their Messiah would only return to them when the temple of David is rebuilt in it original place. However, a mosque (masjid al aqsa) was rebuilt upon the old ruins of the temple of David. This mosque is a very important site to muslims.
So it is in SOME jews interest that this masjid be destroyed and their temple rebuilt.
It has been alleged that George bush (and other liek him) believes that "rapture" is imminent and that it should be helped along. Basically (as they believe it), rapture is the second coming of christ, to gather up all the christians and take them to heaven. The thing is, this cant happen unless the masjid al aqsa is destroyed and the temple of david rebuilt. Only then the antichrist will emerge and Jesus Christ will return.
( The jewish messiah would be taken to be the anti christ by non jews. Remember the jews rejected jesus as their messiah. SO if the temple is rebuilt and this causes their messiah to come, then this will also cause the return of jesus. )
That land called palestine, is very important and dear to the hearts of christians, Jews and Muslims.
This "battle" in palestine and Gaza goes very very deep.
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Here is a concise non-Partisan Analysis of the recent events. It was prepared by a group know as "Stratfor".
https://www.stratfor.com/campaign/explore_stratfor_0 (https://www.stratfor.com/campaign/explore_stratfor_0)
The following text was sent to me by a colleague. Articles from Strafor are not free. Paid subscriptiuon required.
December 29, 2008
Geopolitical Diary: The Latest Phase of Israeli-Palestinian Fighting - Dr. George Friedman
The Israeli military attacked Hamas-controlled Gaza this weekend. On Friday, Hamas had terminated its unilateral truce with the Israelis. The decision was accompanied by rockets fired into Israel and claims by Hamas that it had longer-range rockets capable of striking even deeper into the country. The Israelis responded with a massive attack that was designed to smash Hamas’ infrastructure, impose heavy penalties on Gaza for Hamas’ decision, and attempt to preempt not only rocket attacks but also a new campaign of suicide bombers. Whether the campaign will achieve Israel’s goals or trigger an escalation from the Hamas side is now the issue. What is not at issue is that a new round of fighting in Gaza had been expected for weeks. Hamas had made it clear that it was going to end the truce, and Israel had made it clear that it would consider the war resumed and respond accordingly.
The first question is why Hamas chose to end the truce, opening the door to an Israeli attack. The answer might lie in the fact that Palestinian elections are coming up. While Hamas was a pure opposition party, it was an effective critic of Fatah’s governance. But having been responsible for Gaza for a while, Hamas now bears criticism for the conditions there, and thus the party’s popularity had slipped. Having failed to make significant inroads into the West Bank — where Fatah dominated — and having drawn criticism for its administration in Gaza, Hamas saw its momentum blunted.
Hamas was much more effective as a combat party, fighting the Israelis, than as an administrative party dealing with the intractable problem of Gaza. The longer it remained passive toward the Israelis and the longer it remained responsible for Gaza, the less it was likely to appeal to Palestinian voters. Hamas made a strategic decision to re-establish its credentials as the only Palestinian force effectively fighting Israel. In doing so, it also reinforced the perception of Fatah as collaborating with the Israelis (and an Israeli attack is also a mechanism to prompt Palestinians to rally behind Hamas). From Hamas’ point of view — facing a hopeless situation governing Gaza and a showdown with Fatah — ending the truce made sense in the long term, on the premise that a conventional attack by Israel would not decisively break Hamas’ capability.
The Israeli response was also, on one level, driven by public opinion. Hamas’ ability to attack Israeli positions with rockets, or potentially to launch another round of suicide bombings in Israeli population centers, was quite real. If it happened, Israeli public opinion not only would create a crisis for any Israeli government, but also would strengthen those forces that felt that any peace process with the Palestinians was impossible.
Ehud Olmert, still prime minister pending a new government, saw the Hamas move as an opportunity. Hamas created a situation that had to be dealt with. Waiting for his successor to deal with the problem would bog that successor down in an issue with the international community that would cripple any ongoing diplomacy. Launching a security campaign as a lame-duck prime minister takes the issue off his successor’s plate. In an odd way, this increases the chance of some sort of settlement with the Palestinians, by allowing Olmert to be cast as a villain.
If this seems more complicated than it should be, that is not an incorrect impression. Underneath all of this is a core reality: A Palestinian state on the 1948 borders is an impossibility for both Palestinians and Israelis. For the Palestinians, it would mean a state divided physically between Gaza and the West Bank, without an independent economic foundation. It would be a fiasco. For the Israelis, the 1948 borders would allow the Palestinians to rocket Tel Aviv easily, with no guarantee that a Palestinian state would or could put a stop to it. The Palestinians need more than the 1948 borders, and the Israelis can’t even give that.
Therefore, the current cycle of violence is simply one of many such cycles that are hardwired into the geography of Israel and Palestine and from which there is no escape. It is almost unnecessary to go through the political reasoning that has led each side to this point, except to explain why it is happening now instead of earlier or later. The politics simply determine the time and shape of conflict. Geography determines that the conflict is intractable.
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Obama is losing a battle he doesn't know he's inThe president-elect's silence on the Gaza crisis is undermining his reputation in the Middle East (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/04/obama-gaza-israel)
Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 January 2009 15.55 GMT
Barack Obama's chances of making a fresh start in US relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, appear to diminish with each new wave of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza. That seems hardly fair, given the president-elect does not take office until January 20. But foreign wars don't wait for Washington inaugurations.
Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis. His aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time. Hillary Clinton, his designated secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect and foreign policy expert, have also been uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject.
But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama's detachment - and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush's strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush's bias or simply does not care.
The Al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its report criticising "the deafening silence from the Obama team" suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realise has even begun.
"People recall his campaign slogan of change and hoped that it would apply to the Palestinian situation," Jordanian analyst Labib Kamhawi told Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune. "So they look at his silence as a negative sign. They think he is condoning what happened in Gaza because he's not expressing any opinion."
Regional critics claim Obama is happy to break his pre-inauguration "no comment" rule on international issues when it suits him. They note his swift condemnation of November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Obama has also made frequent policy statements on mitigating the impact of the global credit crunch.
Obama's absence from the fray is also allowing hostile voices to exploit the vacuum. "It would appear that the president-elect has no intention of getting involved in the Gaza crisis," Iran's Resalat newspaper commented sourly. "His stances and viewpoints suggest he will follow the path taken by previous American presidents... Obama, too, will pursue policies that support the Zionist aggressions."
Whether Obama, when he does eventually engage, can successfully elucidate an Israel-Palestine policy that is substantively different from that of Bush-Cheney is wholly uncertain at present.
To maintain the hardline US posture of placing the blame for all current troubles squarely on Hamas, to the extent of repeatedly blocking limited UN security council ceasefire moves, would be to end all realistic hopes of winning back Arab opinion - and could have negative, knock-on consequences for US interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf.
Yet if Obama were to take a tougher (some would say more balanced) line with Israel, for example by demanding a permanent end to its blockade of Gaza, or by opening a path to talks with Hamas, he risks provoking a rightwing backlash in Israel, giving encouragement to Israel's enemies, and losing support at home for little political advantage.
A recent Pew Research Centre survey, for example, showed how different are US perspectives to those of Europe and the Middle East. Americans placed "finding a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict" at the bottom of a 12-issue list of foreign policy concerns, the poll found. And foreign policy is in any case of scant consequence to a large majority of US voters primarily worried about the economy, jobs and savings.
On the campaign trail, Obama (like Clinton) was broadly supportive of Israel and specifically condemnatory of Hamas. But at the same time, he held out the prospect of radical change in western relations with Muslims everywhere, promising to make a definitive policy speech in a "major Islamic forum" within 100 days of taking office.
"I will make clear that we are not at war with Islam, that we will stand with those who are willing to stand up for their future, and that we need their effort to defeat the prophets of hate and violence," he said.
As the Gaza casualty headcount goes up and Obama keeps his head down, those sentiments are beginning to sound a little hollow. The danger is that when he finally peers over the parapet on January 21, the battle of perceptions may already be half-lost.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
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Obama is losing a battle he doesn't know he's inThe president-elect's silence on the Gaza crisis is undermining his reputation in the Middle East (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/04/obama-gaza-israel)
This is from Indonesia from the AP: Muslim protesters wearing masks of, from left, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, take part in a rally against Israeli air strikes on Gaza, in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009.
(http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20090104/i/r2483875204.jpg?x=400&y=271&q=85&sig=YleClkTcKbc60oL6b75Bhg--)
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In a nutshell-
The country israel was only formed in 1947.
That area (before 1947) has always been Palestine with Jews, Christians and muslims living there amongst each other for centuries .
----
The real turbulence started when a new country - Israel was formed within another country (palestine) with the backing of the west.
Due to Zionists belief that the borders of Israel must be extended is the cause of the constant occupations of land outside israel over the decades. Offcourse when u extend the borders, you are displacing people who were there before, just like they were displaced when the state of Israel was formed. Tell me that wont piss u off?
Now, the jews believe that their Messiah would only return to them when the temple of David is rebuilt in it original place. However, a mosque (masjid al aqsa) was rebuilt upon the old ruins of the temple of David. This mosque is a very important site to muslims.
So it is in SOME jews interest that this masjid be destroyed and their temple rebuilt.
It has been alleged that George bush (and other liek him) believes that "rapture" is imminent and that it should be helped along. Basically (as they believe it), rapture is the second coming of christ, to gather up all the christians and take them to heaven. The thing is, this cant happen unless the masjid al aqsa is destroyed and the temple of david rebuilt. Only then the antichrist will emerge and Jesus Christ will return.
( The jewish messiah would be taken to be the anti christ by non jews. Remember the jews rejected jesus as their messiah. SO if the temple is rebuilt and this causes their messiah to come, then this will also cause the return of jesus. )
That land called palestine, is very important and dear to the hearts of christians, Jews and Muslims.
This "battle" in palestine and Gaza goes very very deep.
Check your history again fella... what you're stating is incorrect. Israel may not have existed in that place for centuries... but Israel WAS there before before the children of israel were scattered by warfare. After WWII Jews were repatriated to their historical homeland and thus began the troubles. Imagine if a band of Arawaks was to show up claiming TnT we'd all be in a tizzy... but doesn't mean that the Arawaks wouldn't have a right to lay claim to their historical land.
For this reason the land must be shared... and shared equally, Israel can't claim all the arable land and force the Palestinians onto a barren, overcrowded sliver as is the current arrangement.
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Obama is losing a battle he doesn't know he's inThe president-elect's silence on the Gaza crisis is undermining his reputation in the Middle East (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/04/obama-gaza-israel)
Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 January 2009 15.55 GMT
Barack Obama's chances of making a fresh start in US relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, appear to diminish with each new wave of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza. That seems hardly fair, given the president-elect does not take office until January 20. But foreign wars don't wait for Washington inaugurations.
Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis. His aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time. Hillary Clinton, his designated secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect and foreign policy expert, have also been uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject.
But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama's detachment - and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush's strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush's bias or simply does not care.
The Al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its report criticising "the deafening silence from the Obama team" suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realise has even begun.
"People recall his campaign slogan of change and hoped that it would apply to the Palestinian situation," Jordanian analyst Labib Kamhawi told Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune. "So they look at his silence as a negative sign. They think he is condoning what happened in Gaza because he's not expressing any opinion."
Regional critics claim Obama is happy to break his pre-inauguration "no comment" rule on international issues when it suits him. They note his swift condemnation of November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Obama has also made frequent policy statements on mitigating the impact of the global credit crunch.
Obama's absence from the fray is also allowing hostile voices to exploit the vacuum. "It would appear that the president-elect has no intention of getting involved in the Gaza crisis," Iran's Resalat newspaper commented sourly. "His stances and viewpoints suggest he will follow the path taken by previous American presidents... Obama, too, will pursue policies that support the Zionist aggressions."
Whether Obama, when he does eventually engage, can successfully elucidate an Israel-Palestine policy that is substantively different from that of Bush-Cheney is wholly uncertain at present.
To maintain the hardline US posture of placing the blame for all current troubles squarely on Hamas, to the extent of repeatedly blocking limited UN security council ceasefire moves, would be to end all realistic hopes of winning back Arab opinion - and could have negative, knock-on consequences for US interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf.
Yet if Obama were to take a tougher (some would say more balanced) line with Israel, for example by demanding a permanent end to its blockade of Gaza, or by opening a path to talks with Hamas, he risks provoking a rightwing backlash in Israel, giving encouragement to Israel's enemies, and losing support at home for little political advantage.
A recent Pew Research Centre survey, for example, showed how different are US perspectives to those of Europe and the Middle East. Americans placed "finding a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict" at the bottom of a 12-issue list of foreign policy concerns, the poll found. And foreign policy is in any case of scant consequence to a large majority of US voters primarily worried about the economy, jobs and savings.
On the campaign trail, Obama (like Clinton) was broadly supportive of Israel and specifically condemnatory of Hamas. But at the same time, he held out the prospect of radical change in western relations with Muslims everywhere, promising to make a definitive policy speech in a "major Islamic forum" within 100 days of taking office.
"I will make clear that we are not at war with Islam, that we will stand with those who are willing to stand up for their future, and that we need their effort to defeat the prophets of hate and violence," he said.
As the Gaza casualty headcount goes up and Obama keeps his head down, those sentiments are beginning to sound a little hollow. The danger is that when he finally peers over the parapet on January 21, the battle of perceptions may already be half-lost.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
Obama's Muslim critics need to get a fukkin clue.
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The secret life of Tzipi Livni
How the woman set to be Israel’s new leader earned her spurs as an agent working for a covert cell in an elite spy unit
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00402/livni1_402248a.jpg)
Tzipi Livni worked in Paris when Mossad was fighting against Palestinian groups and the nuclear ambitions of Saddam Hussein
It is an eye-catching episode on the CV of any would-be prime minister: a dangerous, youthful stint as a spy in one of the world’s most respected and feared secret services.
True to her training, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli leader-in-waiting, has maintained a Sphinx-like silence about her Mossad career in Paris in the early 1980s. Consequently, reports on her service have pegged her as anything from a frontline agent hunting down Arab terrorists across Europe to a mere house-sitter deployed to provide a respectable front for Mossad safe houses in the French capital.
Mossad does not divulge details but The Times can reveal that Ms Livni ran substantial risks as an Israeli agent operating in a covert cell in Europe.
“She was in an elite unit,” said Ephraim Halevy, the former director of Mossad, who for security reasons declined to specify which outfit Ms Livni had served in between 1980 and 1984.
“She was a very promising agent who showed all the attributes of a very promising career. She was very well thought of.”
Ms Livni, a fluent French speaker and daughter of renowned Zionist guerrillas, served her time in Paris when the city was a deadly battle-ground in Mossad’s covert war with Palestinian militant groups and Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.
One Israeli former intelligence source told The Times that the 22-year-old Ms Livni had been recruited into Mossad after her National Service by a childhood friend, Mira Gal, who herself served for two decades in the agency and who now works as her ministry bureau chief.
Like many recruits, the source said, she would have started out with so-called “student jobs”, mostly maintaining safe houses that were used by hit squads and more senior agents on assignment across Europe. Mr Halevy said that even such a rookie job was not without its risks.
“I’m not saying she was a caretaker of safe houses but people think that being a caretaker is a simple and mundane job which entails no risk,” the English-born former spymaster told The Times. “People who say that don’t know what safe houses are about. It can be very dangerous at times.”
After her apprenticeship, Ms Livni went through basic training as a field officer, learning how to recruit agents and gather information at a time of huge upheaval among Israel’s foes, as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) relocated from war-torn Beirut to the safer shores of Tunisia.
“It was a period when the Israelis were sending strong political messages with their attacks and they did not hesitate to attract attention,” Éric Denécé, a former French intelligence service agent, said.
“Since the Six-Day War [in 1967], Paris was an important intelligence base for Mossad - first, because it had excellent relations with the French services and also because so many Palestinians were based there.”
Israeli agents operating out of Paris carried out assassinations and were also widely believed to have infiltrated Palestinian factions. Among them was Ilich RamÍrez Sánchez, alias Carlos the Jackal, and the Abu Nidal splinter group. The group perpetrated the massacre of six people at Goldenberg’s restaurant in the rue des Rosiers in August 1982 and the bombing of the Paris-Toulouse express, which killed five, the same year.
There were two Mossad stations in Paris at the time, according to Roger Faligot, author of several books on the intelligence services. One covered France and the other Western Europe.
“I only heard about Tzipi Livni being an agent in Paris quite late in the day,” he told The Times. “At that period, Israel was appointing many female agents who were not just recruited from the armed forces but because of their languages and analytical skills. When you see Livni’s career, you would conclude that she was on the political and analytical side of Mossad.”
Mossad operators in Paris were also striving to thwart Saddam Hussein from developing an atomic arsenal and shipping nuclear fuels to his new processor at Osirak just outside Baghdad. In June 1980 an Egyptian-born scientist working on the Iraqi atomic programme was found murdered in his hotel room, a killing assumed to have been the handiwork of Mossad. A prostitute who heard voices coming from his room on the night of his murder was killed a month later in a mysterious hit-and-run accident. Menachem Begin, the Prime Minister at the time, said he hoped that France had “learnt its lesson” for helping Iraq. A year later Israeli bombers blew the Osirak plant to pieces.
One French report cited experts suggesting that Ms Livni was part of an elite unit that fatally poisoned the Iraqi nuclear scientist Abdul Rasul at a lunch in Paris in 1983. “The risks were tangible,” Ms Gal was to say of those days in Mossad. “If I made a mistake the result would be arrest and catastrophic political implications for Israel.”
The risks to Israelis working in Europe were brutally demonstrated in 1982 when an Abu Nidal gunman shot the Israeli Ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov, in the head, critically wounding him and triggering the full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon by the Jewish state to root out the PLO.
“It takes both courage and judgment to make the right decision at the right time,” Mr Halevy said. “You are jeopardising a whole team and can open up all sorts of other matters than go beyond the issue you are dealing with”.
Whatever the actual role Ms Livni played, Mr Halevy is convinced that her experience and training stand her in good stead for the tasks now at hand as she tries to build a consensus to govern Israel. He recalls seeing her in May 2003, when he was National Security Adviser, deploy her Mossad-honed analytical skills and tenacity in government, when, as a junior Cabinet member, she was the only minister to stand up to the Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and point out key flaws on a complex security brief that had been dispatched hours before.
“This shows she knows what she is doing and is willing to stand up for it,” Mr Halevy said.
Underground war
- June 1980 head of Iraq’s nuclear programme, Yahia El-Meshad, is murdered in his Paris hote, assumed to be a victim of a Mossad hit team. Prime Minister Menachem Begin tells a journalist that he hoped France “had learnt its lesson” for helping Iraq.
- June 1981 Israel bombs a French-built nuclear reactor in Iraq, killing a French specialist. Mossad involvement is suspected.
- April 1979 explosion at CNIM Industries plant in La Seyne-sur-Mer damages nuclear reactor destined for Iraq. Mossad is suspected.
- October 1980 car bomb explodes outside a Paris synagogue killing four people
- August 1982 six people die and 22 are wounded when five men with machine guns and grenades open fire in Paris Jewish deli
Sources: Le Figaro, BBC, Time, Reuters
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4791158.ece
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I have been listening to talk radio this morning discussing the Gaza / Israel situation.
I am trying real hard to be objective and listening to both sides of the debate. But so far, the anti-Israel proponents seem to rely on weak and emotional arguments to make their case. They seem to respond to direct challenges to their statements and positions by giving evasive answers without answering the question.
The pro-Israel arguments tend to resort to hyperbole as well, but on balance, they seem to present a more lucid argument.
I am just happy I have not grown up in that culture of hostility and hate.
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It is an insoluble problem.
All the Palestinians need to look at for justification is their dead friends, family and compatriots and the fact that they are faced with a vastly more powerful opponent and recieve little help. It spurs them to fight to the death and no half measures can be considered.
All the Isrealis need to look at for justification is dead friends, family and compatriots and the fear that they are surrounded by an entire region that would wipe them out in a second if circumstances permitted. It spurs them to fight to the death and no half measures can be considered.
Their is no hope for objectivity from either side and thinking about how it started or measuring who do more evil is pointless. All the current combatants know is the situation that they inherit. Any of the compromises that have been settled upon ultimately is unsatisfactory to both sides because they would love to see the other side gone completely.
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Israel real nasty doh. One jes has to look at the atrocities committed in Jenin.
(http://www.jenininquiry.org/photos/JRC%20pictures/Hawasheen%202%20of%203.jpg)
The US news due to the heavy Jewish lobby dummies down the news reports getting out of the middle east.
Israeli soldiers often maim young Palestinians to Prevent them from becoming suicide bombers, akin to Bush's preemptive strike rationale.
(http://www.jenininquiry.org/photos/JRC%20pictures/Air%20conditioned%20house%20JRC.jpg)
Read this report:
[urlhttp://www.canadazone.com/palestine/20020501.htm][/url]
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It is an insoluble problem.
All the Palestinians need to look at for justification is their dead friends, family and compatriots and the fact that they are faced with a vastly more powerful opponent and recieve little help. It spurs them to fight to the death and no half measures can be considered.
All the Isrealis need to look at for justification is dead friends, family and compatriots and the fear that they are surrounded by an entire region that would wipe them out in a second if circumstances permitted. It spurs them to fight to the death and no half measures can be considered.
Their is no hope for objectivity from either side and thinking about how it started or measuring who do more evil is pointless. All the current combatants know is the situation that they inherit. Any of the compromises that have been settled upon ultimately is unsatisfactory to both sides because they would love to see the other side gone completely.
yep
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Israel real nasty doh. One jes has to look at the atrocities committed in Jenin.
(http://www.jenininquiry.org/photos/JRC%20pictures/Hawasheen%202%20of%203.jpg)
The US news due to the heavy Jewish lobby dummies down the news reports getting out of the middle east.
Israeli soldiers often maim young Palestinians to Prevent them from becoming suicide bombers, akin to Bush's preemptive strike rationale.
(http://www.jenininquiry.org/photos/JRC%20pictures/Air%20conditioned%20house%20JRC.jpg)
Read this report:
[urlhttp://www.canadazone.com/palestine/20020501.htm][/url]
Both sides are not without blame. But given a choice, I would rather live under Israeli occupation than Hamas occupation. At least Israel has the trappings of a democracy and all religions appear to have a modicum of freedom in Israel unlike so many Arab states.
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Pecan, Israel is for Israelis only...take a gander at their flag!
In sweet T&T there is an area in Diego Martin called Golda Meir Gardens. That was a Jewish enclave. Many here have no idea about that. People like Hans Stecher of the Stechers jewelery fame etc. were all there.
When local Jews met the Zionist leaders from the newly founded Israel and boasted that we had such a place in Trinidad, they responded: "We want you in Israel and there you can name a p0lace in Isreal after Trinidadian heroes (paraphrasing).
Dem eh like nobody but Jews fella, their tolerance is VERY limited, they allow outsiders who can help supplement their menial labour deficiencies.
Doh get tied up.
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n e 1 here releated to
George Gershwin
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We can blame Israel all we want, we cant blame the Palestinians, the same for the USA and the Euros. But one of these days one of them (Jews or Arabs) with will drop a bomb(by a bomb, all yuh should know what I mean) and all hell will break loose(God forgive). There must be a settlement. This thing has been going on too long. Sometimes I does wonder out loud(this may sound blasphemous). Lord, what you waiting on, you ain't tired seeing people getting killed. You feel powerless to help both sides!!!!
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hugo chavez is de hardest,he order israel embassy to close and de israelis out of vene.
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They overdoing de fleckin ting now! >:(
Israeli forces shell UN headquarters in Gaza
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090115/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090115/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.
Another Israeli bombardment on Thursday killed the Hamas security chief.
U.N. workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food from the debris after the Israeli attack, which was another blow to efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Dense smoke billowed from the compound.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, demanded a "full explanation" and said the Israeli defense minister told him there had been a "grave mistake."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the military fired artillery shells at the U.N. compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location. Three people were wounded.
"It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it," he said. "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."
Interior Minister Said Siam was killed in an Israeli airstrike that flattened a home in Gaza City. Israel and Hamas both confirmed the death of Siam, who oversaw thousands of security agents and was considered to be among the militant group's top five leaders in Gaza.
Even as a top Israeli envoy went to Egypt to discuss a cease-fire proposal, the military pushed farther into Gaza in an apparent effort to step up pressure on Hamas. Ground forces thrust deep into a crowded neighborhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover. Shells also struck a hospital, five high-rise apartment buildings and a building housing media outlets in Gaza City, injuring several journalists.
Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one. The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on press buildings.
The army had collected the locations of media organizations at the outset of fighting to avoid such attacks.
In Washington, the Bush administration was racing in its final days to negotiate a last-minute deal on American support for Egyptian-led truce mediation efforts under which the U.S. would provide technical support and expertise to prevent Hamas from re-arming, said U.S. and Israeli diplomats.
It was not immediately clear if members of President-elect Barack Obama's or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton transition teams were being advised of the talks, which could lead to a prominent and ongoing U.S. role in the truce.
The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.
Israel launched its war on Dec. 27 in an effort to stop militant rocket fire from Gaza that has terrorized hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians, according to U.N. and Palestinian medical officials. Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said at least 70 people were killed or died of wounds throughout Gaza on Thursday.
Thirteen Israelis also have been killed since the campaign began. Israel says it will press ahead until Hamas halts the rocket fire and stops smuggling weapons into Gaza from neighboring Egypt.
Israeli police said 20 rockets hit southern Israel on Thursday, injuring 10 people. Five of the wounded were in a car that was struck in the city of Beersheba.
The U.N. compound struck Thursday houses the U.N. Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4 million people.
"I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defense minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation," said Ban, who arrived in Israel on Thursday morning from Egypt.
It had only that morning become a makeshift shelter for 700 Gaza City residents seeking sanctuary from relentless Israeli shelling, U.N. officials in Gaza said.
John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, said the attack at the compound caused a "massive explosion" that wounded three people.
A senior Israeli military officer said troops opened fire after militants inside the compound shot anti-tank weapons and machine guns. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal army announcement later in the day.
Ging, who was in the compound at the time, dismissed the Israeli account as "nonsense."
Israeli shells first hit the courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the U.N.'s main warehouse, sending thousands of tons of food aid up in flames, Ging said. Later, fuel supplies went up in flames, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air.
"It's a total disaster for us," Ging said, adding that the U.N. had warned the Israeli military that the compound was in peril from shelling that had begun overnight. U.N. officials say they have provided Israel with GPS coordinates of all U.N. installations in Gaza to prevent such attacks.
The refugees were moved to a school away from the immediate fighting, he said.
Separately, Israel shells landed next to a U.N. school in another Gaza City neighborhood, wounding 14 people who had sought sanctuary there, medics and firefighters said.
An Israeli attack near a U.N. school in northern Gaza earlier this month killed nearly 40 people. At the time, Israel said militants had fired on army positions from the beginning.
Barzak reported from Gaza City; Teibel from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Karin Laub and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo, and Mattew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
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In a nutshell-
The country israel was only formed in 1947.
That area (before 1947) has always been Palestine with Jews, Christians and muslims living there amongst each other for centuries .
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The real turbulence started when a new country - Israel was formed within another country (palestine) with the backing of the west.
Due to Zionists belief that the borders of Israel must be extended is the cause of the constant occupations of land outside israel over the decades. Offcourse when u extend the borders, you are displacing people who were there before, just like they were displaced when the state of Israel was formed. Tell me that wont piss u off?
Now, the jews believe that their Messiah would only return to them when the temple of David is rebuilt in it original place. However, a mosque (masjid al aqsa) was rebuilt upon the old ruins of the temple of David. This mosque is a very important site to muslims.
So it is in SOME jews interest that this masjid be destroyed and their temple rebuilt.
It has been alleged that George bush (and other liek him) believes that "rapture" is imminent and that it should be helped along. Basically (as they believe it), rapture is the second coming of christ, to gather up all the christians and take them to heaven. The thing is, this cant happen unless the masjid al aqsa is destroyed and the temple of david rebuilt. Only then the antichrist will emerge and Jesus Christ will return.
( The jewish messiah would be taken to be the anti christ by non jews. Remember the jews rejected jesus as their messiah. SO if the temple is rebuilt and this causes their messiah to come, then this will also cause the return of jesus. )
That land called palestine, is very important and dear to the hearts of christians, Jews and Muslims.
This "battle" in palestine and Gaza goes very very deep.
Check your history again fella... what you're stating is incorrect. Israel may not have existed in that place for centuries... but Israel WAS there before before the children of israel were scattered by warfare. After WWII Jews were repatriated to their historical homeland and thus began the troubles. Imagine if a band of Arawaks was to show up claiming TnT we'd all be in a tizzy... but doesn't mean that the Arawaks wouldn't have a right to lay claim to their historical land.
For this reason the land must be shared... and shared equally, Israel can't claim all the arable land and force the Palestinians onto a barren, overcrowded sliver as is the current arrangement.
clearly we on different sides and I'll try to disagree respectfully...but in the history of that land, how many years did the Jews control it (lets be real enough to realize that this isn't about any other semite, bedouin or other indigenous group controlling the land...this is about jews...and no don't pull the "antisemmitic" card on me we not in the 50's or 60's anymore )? did the jews not choose to move to yemen and iran and spain and throughout europe in search of a better life for milennia (commenting specifically about the"children" being scattered by warfare)? what was preventing them from staying in "israel"? I think a better example of "repatriation" than your Arawak example (jus based on number of years of control issue), would be if we as Black people choosing to live in the west cor a thousand years, suddenly when sh!t hit the fan over here decide we going and take over some part of Africa, in fact, why not the whole of it.
anyway, I think sammy had a very good post. and the post on obama's silence, I think that was very very good also, cuz to me Obama's silence is deafening and I feel like he is a big fraud...and I am not muslim. I am not american, my wife doesn't follow politics so she asked me who to vote for,a nd I didn't believe in obama until he gave the speech by the berlin wall, and after that I told her vote for him, but now I feel hurt, and disappointed (I'll wait a little while longer).
In context Israel is saying that this is to stop rocket firing into israel, both my wife and her brother lived in isreal for a couple years each and they go through the stories of what happens when rockets are coming into israel. in short, it is harmless. everybody is notified way in advance, and every building has a bunker or basement built to withstand the small rockets fired and even larger ones.
now how can people come here and support the slaughtering of 333 plus CHILDREN (no not the poor "children of israel"), babies...innocent ones - to prevent rocketfire into israel (I know somebody should shoot you dead next time you jaywalk )
in case you didn't know (I have a strong hunch you do) the real issue is that Christians in the US (just listen to rhetoric and you can identify who they are) have a fundamental belief (based on their reading the Bible) that the land belongs to the Jews, and forget right wrong or indifferent the US is going to support Israel. Compound that that Israel is like a huge US army base (that they don't even have to pay for or fund...LOTTO!!!) in the middle of the most hostile region in the world to americans then you have the the US is always going to support Israel no matter what.
so don't come here and try to twist all kinda fancy thing about who is right and this is why we are right, because there is a clear side that is right here...standing on moral ground. So please let the man talk about Obama's silence being deafening...I still listening.
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clearly we on different sides and I'll try to disagree respectfully...but in the history of that land, how many years did the Jews control it (lets be real enough to realize that this isn't about any other semite, bedouin or other indigenous group controlling the land...this is about jews...and no don't pull the "antisemmitic" card on me we not in the 50's or 60's anymore )? did the jews not choose to move to yemen and iran and spain and throughout europe in search of a better life for milennia (commenting specifically about the"children" being scattered by warfare)? what was preventing them from staying in "israel"? I think a better example of "repatriation" than your Arawak example (jus based on number of years of control issue), would be if we as Black people choosing to live in the west cor a thousand years, suddenly when sh!t hit the fan over here decide we going and take over some part of Africa, in fact, why not the whole of it.
anyway, I think sammy had a very good post. and the post on obama's silence, I think that was very very good also, cuz to me Obama's silence is deafening and I feel like he is a big fraud...and I am not muslim. I am not american, my wife doesn't follow politics so she asked me who to vote for,a nd I didn't believe in obama until he gave the speech by the berlin wall, and after that I told her vote for him, but now I feel hurt, and disappointed (I'll wait a little while longer).
In context Israel is saying that this is to stop rocket firing into israel, both my wife and her brother lived in isreal for a couple years each and they go through the stories of what happens when rockets are coming into israel. in short, it is harmless. everybody is notified way in advance, and every building has a bunker or basement built to withstand the small rockets fired and even larger ones.
now how can people come here and support the slaughtering of 333 plus CHILDREN (no not the poor "children of israel"), babies...innocent ones - to prevent rocketfire into israel (I know somebody should shoot you dead next time you jaywalk )
in case you didn't know (I have a strong hunch you do) the real issue is that Christians in the US (just listen to rhetoric and you can identify who they are) have a fundamental belief (based on their reading the Bible) that the land belongs to the Jews, and forget right wrong or indifferent the US is going to support Israel. Compound that that Israel is like a huge US army base (that they don't even have to pay for or fund...LOTTO!!!) in the middle of the most hostile region in the world to americans then you have the the US is always going to support Israel no matter what.
so don't come here and try to twist all kinda fancy thing about who is right and this is why we are right, because there is a clear side that is right here...standing on moral ground. So please let the man talk about Obama's silence being deafening...I still listening.
I'm really not sure how to make heads or tails of this rambling incoherent diatribe... but clearly you have some very strong anti-Jewish (anti-Israeli bias at least) resident within you.
No amount of revisionist history can cast the expulsion of the Jews from Israel/Palestine as voluntary... try as hard as you may. Jews didn't "choose to move to yemen and iran and spain and throughout europe in search of a better life for milennia" not sure where you're getting that from. In fact the Jews were first expelled from Jerusalem by the Romans in the 5th Century, and for the next 1400 years continued to be shuffled along like dust in the wind by other Roman, Muslim and Christian invaders. In fact because many Jews enjoyed relatively benign treatment under the muslims, Jews actually fought alongside their muslim rulers against Christians during the first Crusade. So not having a home in Jerusalem they took up residence wherever they could, being that they were Roman citizens, following the fall of Rome that resulted in them being scattered throughout Europe. None of it was the result of voluntary migration from Jerusalem as you insinuate. Eventually persecution in Europe had them once again on the run, as evidenced by their eviction from Andalusia when Spain finally took it back from Moorish control in 1492. The date should ring a bell.
I can go on and on documenting for you how the Jews ended up in Europe... and how they ended up back in Palestine, that is both their ancestral and historical homeland, there's no question about it. The question then becomes not whether Jews belong there, but how the land should be shared, because the present-day Palestinians have every much a right to the land as the repatriated Jews of the last 60 yrs.
I won't even bother go into detail responding to the rest of your diatribe because frankly none of it relates to anything that I said, and has only marginal relation to the actual discussion at hand.
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thanks...very strong anti jewish sentiment ...lol. didn't see that coming.
so the ever reliable wiki here show us some of the timeline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Jerusalem
you'd be hard-pressed to disprove that once under muslim rule (ie the hugest fraction of the whole time), that nothing prevented Jews from being there.
at the very least you are willing to say that the palestinians have at least the same amount of right to be there (a start) which is good. we could agree on that.
of course don't bother to comment on the proportionality of the air raids (the topic of the thread). which anti-jew started this thread anyway?!?
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thanks...very strong anti jewish sentiment ...lol. didn't see that coming.
so the ever reliable wiki here show us some of the timeline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Jerusalem
you'd be hard-pressed to disprove that once under muslim rule (ie the hugest fraction of the whole time), that nothing prevented Jews from being there.
at the very least you are willing to say that the palestinians have at least the same amount of right to be there (a start) which is good. we could agree on that.
of course don't bother to comment on the proportionality of the air raids (the topic of the thread). which anti-jew started this thread anyway?!?
Actually the "hugest fraction of the whole" there were Jews still in Jerusalem and Palestine... their numbers were great relative to the majority population (muslims) but the presence itself was never totally relinquished. What prevented the expelled Jews from returning? Well the answer to that is obvious... where were they to return to? The muslim majority may have tolerated a minority jewish presence among their midst but do you seriously think that they'd welcome a mass re-patriation without conflict? Where would the muslim residents go, in order to accommodate the returning Jews? Somebody would have to be displaced, no?
So no.. I wouldn't be hard-pressed to disprove that they were prevented from returning at all, it's actually pretty easy to prove what prevented their return.
As for your comment that "at least (I'm) willing to say that the palestinians have at least the same amount of right to be there (a start)." I've actually said that all along... or did you not properly read the post which you quoted?
For this reason the land must be shared... and shared equally, Israel can't claim all the arable land and force the Palestinians onto a barren, overcrowded sliver as is the current arrangement.
My position has always been decidedly centrist... there has to be a solution for peaceful coexistence.
As for the disproportionality of the Israeli response... I saw no need to comment on it because that has never been in dispute. That would be like me commenting on the blue color of the sky... kind redundant I think.
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cool...so we almost totally agree then. so what is the clue that Obama's muslim critics need to get? what is your take on Obamas silence and the blocking of UN resolutions by the US all these years?
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cool...so we almost totally agree then. so what is the clue that Obama's muslim critics need to get? what is your take on Obamas silence and the blocking of UN resolutions by the US all these years?
Obama has been consistent all along... there can only be one President at a time. I know it's beginning to sound like a mantra, but more than just mere protocol or adherence to tradition demands it. The US has to speak with one voice... you can't have the Bush Administration saying one thing, and Obama contradicting their policy... it's still Bush show for another couple days. Imagine if your landlord forcing you to leave yuh residence... but before yuh even move out the new replacement come in and start painting wall and telling you when tuh burn electricity and how much hot water to use. Not nice, right?
From a more practical standpoint... 4 yrs from now... or maybe 8, it will Obama sitting in Bush's position and I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate the incoming President acting boldface and speaking over his policies. What this would tell the world is "doh listen to he, he moving out juss now... just do whatever allyuh feel and when I take charge we go talk about it".
That is a dangerous precedent to set. One President at a time, one voice at a time.
...just imagine, up until 80 yrs ago the Inauguration was held on March 20th.
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Bakes, I agree with you. I could not present it any better.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28279562 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28279562)
Even though the headline seems to point to more of the same (trying to paint the conflict as though 2 sides are on equal or nearly equal footing), the video at least show some of what is going on. please speak out whenever anyone asks you.
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Shocking evil perpetrated by the Israeli government. Rag-tag Islamists shoot primitive rockets, so they jet-rocket a disabled hospitable? Disgraceful behaviour
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(http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/323/e/2/free_palestine_by_warnabiru-d5lg882.png)
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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Flag_of_Kurdistan.svg)
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Shocking evil perpetrated by the Israeli government. Rag-tag Islamists shoot primitive rockets, so they jet-rocket a disabled hospitable? Disgraceful behaviour
These people epitomizes evil . They killed the son of god and killin defenseless Palestinian women and children comes easy for dem
They are indeed from the synagogue of Satan ..
They keep on threatenin Iran but they dare not attack that country as they would be in the words of Ahmadinejad.. be wiped off from the face of the earth
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Shocking evil perpetrated by the Israeli government. Rag-tag Islamists shoot primitive rockets, so they jet-rocket a disabled hospitable? Disgraceful behaviour
These people epitomizes evil . They killed the son of god and killin defenseless Palestinian women and children comes easy for dem
They are indeed from the synagogue of Satan ..
They keep on threatenin Iran but they dare not attack that country as they would be in the words of Ahmadinejad.. be wiped off from the face of the earth
Depending on which gospel you read - was it the Romans or the Jews? Jesus himself was a Jew, so it seems a bit strange to blame them.
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Then they had others to do their murderous work but now they are doing it themselves.
I guess they were using the Roman Empire in much the same way as they are using the American Empire now
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Then they had others to do their murderous work then but now they are doing it themselves.
I guess they were using the Roman Empire in much the same way as they are using the American Empire now
Well that's just ridiculous. Whilst an Atheist myself, I suggest you read the bible - the Jews are clearly made out to be God's chosen people on numerous occasions, so you have a moral quandary for yourself, that such chosen people would act in such a way. At the end of the day though, how could the Jews force the Romans (ostensibly their oppressors) to take an action not in accordance with their own wishes?
Ramgoat you've generally shown a strongly religious side to yourself, have you read the bible extensively? It's hard to put across a point without sounding judgemental, but please take this in a better way than it can possibly sound in cold black text. I ask because a number of religious people I converse with take their pastor's word, or otherwise haven't read the bible (I had a conversation with a strongly Christian lady who didn't know there were two different orderings of creation in Genesis, for example)
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The Israel-Palestine conflict is the saddest thing of the modern era. They just want to kill them all - it's ethnic cleansing - genocide - and no-one has the will to stop it.
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This continual saga of death and destruction in the Middle East would definitely bolster an atheist's argument (and I believe in a Supreme Power).
Scriptures in the wrong hands could be a dangerous weapon.
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cool...so we almost totally agree then. so what is the clue that Obama's muslim critics need to get? what is your take on Obamas silence and the blocking of UN resolutions by the US all these years?
Obama has been consistent all along... there can only be one President at a time. I know it's beginning to sound like a mantra, but more than just mere protocol or adherence to tradition demands it. The US has to speak with one voice... you can't have the Bush Administration saying one thing, and Obama contradicting their policy... it's still Bush show for another couple days. Imagine if your landlord forcing you to leave yuh residence... but before yuh even move out the new replacement come in and start painting wall and telling you when tuh burn electricity and how much hot water to use. Not nice, right?
From a more practical standpoint... 4 yrs from now... or maybe 8, it will Obama sitting in Bush's position and I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate the incoming President acting boldface and speaking over his policies. What this would tell the world is "doh listen to he, he moving out juss now... just do whatever allyuh feel and when I take charge we go talk about it".
That is a dangerous precedent to set. One President at a time, one voice at a time.
...just imagine, up until 80 yrs ago the Inauguration was held on March 20th.
So repeat the question. Barry settle een yet?