Israel at War - Day 15
Unlike the rest of the international media, The Jerusalem Post reports that the IDF has denied firing on a UN aid truck on Thursday, in an incident that made international headlines:
On Friday, the Post reported that contrary to foreign press reports, it was not certain that an IDF tank shell hit the aid truck, and that in all probability, the aid workers were hit by Hamas gunfire.
The foreign press reports were based on UN sources, who later admitted to the Post that they were not sure in which direction the truck was headed when it was hit, and could also not say with certainty that tank shells were responsible.
Foreign press reports said the dead Palestinian and two others were hit by tank shells. A MDA medic at the scene told the Post that soldiers in the field said Hamas snipers targeted the aid workers. A Post probe revealed that the two wounded Palestinians were being treated at Barzilai for gunshot wounds.
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/Israel_at_War_-_Day_15.asp
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel Maximum Palestinian Civilian Casualty at Minimum of Minimum Israeli causality
January-12 2009
Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the "reckless and indiscriminate" shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers.
With the death toll from the 17-day Israeli assault on Gaza climbing above 900, pressure is increasing for an independent inquiry into specific incidents, such as the shelling of a UN school turned refugee center where about 40 people died, as well as the question of whether the military tactics used by Israel systematically breached humanitarian law.
The UN's senior human rights body approved a resolution yesterday condemning the Israeli offensive for "massive violations of human rights". A senior UN source said the body's humanitarian agencies were compiling evidence of war crimes and passing it on to the "highest levels" to be used as seen fit.
Some human rights activists allege that the Israeli leadership gave an order to keep military casualties low no matter what cost to civilians. That strategy has directly contributed to one of the bloodiest Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territories, they say.
John Ging, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said: "It's about accountability [over] the issue of the appropriateness of the force used, the proportionality of the force used and the whole issue of duty of care of civilians.
"We don't want to join any chorus of passing judgment but there should be an investigation of any and every incident where there are concerns there might have been violations in international law."
The Israeli military are accused of:
• Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
• Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
• Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
• Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;
• Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.
Israeli military actions prompted an unusual public rebuke from the International Red Cross after the army moved a Palestinian family into a building and shelled it, killing 30. The surviving children clung to the bodies of their dead mothers for four days while the army blocked rescuers from reaching the wounded.
Human Rights Watch has called on the UN security council to set up a commission of inquiry into alleged war crimes.
Two leading Israeli human rights organizations have separately written to the country's attorney general demanding he investigate the allegations.
But critics remain skeptical that any such inquiry will take place, given that Israel has previously blocked similar attempts with the backing of the US.
Amnesty International says hitting residential streets with shells that send blast and shrapnel over a wide area constitutes "prima facie evidence of war crimes".
"There has been reckless and disproportionate and in some cases indiscriminate use of force," said Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty investigator in Israel. "There has been the use of weaponry that shouldn't be used in densely populated areas because it's known that it will cause civilian fatalities and casualties.
"They have extremely sophisticated missiles that can be guided to a moving car and they choose to use other weapons or decide to drop a bomb on a house knowing that there were women and children inside. These are very, very clear breaches of international law."
Israel's most prominent human rights organisation, B'Tselem, has written to the attorney general in Jerusalem, Meni Mazuz, asking him to investigate suspected crimes including how the military selects its targets and the killing of scores of policemen at a passing out parade.
"Many of the targets seem not to have been legitimate military targets as specified by international humanitarian law," said Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem.
Rovera has also collected evidence that the Israeli army holds Palestinian families prisoner in their own homes as human shields. "It's standard practice for Israeli soldiers to go into a house, lock up the family in a room on the ground floor and use the rest of the house as a military base, as a sniper's position. That is the absolute textbook case of human shields.
"It has been practiced by the Israeli army for many years and they are doing it again in Gaza now," she said.
While there are growing calls for an international investigation, the form it would take is less clear. The UN's human rights council has the authority to investigate allegations of war crimes but Israel has blocked its previous attempts to do so. The UN security council could order an investigation, and even set up a war crimes tribunal, but that is likely to be vetoed by the US and probably Britain.
The international criminal court has no jurisdiction because Israel is not a signatory. The UN security council could refer the matter to the court but is unlikely to.
Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said an international investigation of the army's actions was not justified. "We have international lawyers at every level of the command whose job it is to authorize targeting decisions, rules of engagement ... We don't think we have breached international law in any of these instances," he said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479164,00.html
Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the "reckless and indiscriminate" shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers.
With the death toll from the 17-day Israeli assault on Gaza climbing above 900, pressure is increasing for an independent inquiry into specific incidents, such as the shelling of a UN school turned refugee center where about 40 people died, as well as the question of whether the military tactics used by Israel systematically breached humanitarian law.
The UN's senior human rights body approved a resolution yesterday condemning the Israeli offensive for "massive violations of human rights". A senior UN source said the body's humanitarian agencies were compiling evidence of war crimes and passing it on to the "highest levels" to be used as seen fit.
Some human rights activists allege that the Israeli leadership gave an order to keep military casualties low no matter what cost to civilians. That strategy has directly contributed to one of the bloodiest Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territories, they say.
John Ging, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said: "It's about accountability [over] the issue of the appropriateness of the force used, the proportionality of the force used and the whole issue of duty of care of civilians.
"We don't want to join any chorus of passing judgment but there should be an investigation of any and every incident where there are concerns there might have been violations in international law."
The Israeli military are accused of:
• Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
• Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
• Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
• Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;
• Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.
Israeli military actions prompted an unusual public rebuke from the International Red Cross after the army moved a Palestinian family into a building and shelled it, killing 30. The surviving children clung to the bodies of their dead mothers for four days while the army blocked rescuers from reaching the wounded.
Human Rights Watch has called on the UN security council to set up a commission of inquiry into alleged war crimes.
Two leading Israeli human rights organizations have separately written to the country's attorney general demanding he investigate the allegations.
But critics remain skeptical that any such inquiry will take place, given that Israel has previously blocked similar attempts with the backing of the US.
Amnesty International says hitting residential streets with shells that send blast and shrapnel over a wide area constitutes "prima facie evidence of war crimes".
"There has been reckless and disproportionate and in some cases indiscriminate use of force," said Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty investigator in Israel. "There has been the use of weaponry that shouldn't be used in densely populated areas because it's known that it will cause civilian fatalities and casualties.
"They have extremely sophisticated missiles that can be guided to a moving car and they choose to use other weapons or decide to drop a bomb on a house knowing that there were women and children inside. These are very, very clear breaches of international law."
Israel's most prominent human rights organisation, B'Tselem, has written to the attorney general in Jerusalem, Meni Mazuz, asking him to investigate suspected crimes including how the military selects its targets and the killing of scores of policemen at a passing out parade.
"Many of the targets seem not to have been legitimate military targets as specified by international humanitarian law," said Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem.
Rovera has also collected evidence that the Israeli army holds Palestinian families prisoner in their own homes as human shields. "It's standard practice for Israeli soldiers to go into a house, lock up the family in a room on the ground floor and use the rest of the house as a military base, as a sniper's position. That is the absolute textbook case of human shields.
"It has been practiced by the Israeli army for many years and they are doing it again in Gaza now," she said.
While there are growing calls for an international investigation, the form it would take is less clear. The UN's human rights council has the authority to investigate allegations of war crimes but Israel has blocked its previous attempts to do so. The UN security council could order an investigation, and even set up a war crimes tribunal, but that is likely to be vetoed by the US and probably Britain.
The international criminal court has no jurisdiction because Israel is not a signatory. The UN security council could refer the matter to the court but is unlikely to.
Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said an international investigation of the army's actions was not justified. "We have international lawyers at every level of the command whose job it is to authorize targeting decisions, rules of engagement ... We don't think we have breached international law in any of these instances," he said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479164,00.html
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Hollywood Nazi Movies Never Ending
Nazi movies: Valkyrie (Tom Cruise tries to kill Hitler),
Defiance (Jewish brothers fight Hitler),
Miracle at St. Anna (American soldiers face Nazis in the Italian countryside),
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (kids in Nazi camps),
The Reader (Kate Winslet is a Nazi
Enough, Enough, Enough
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Murderous Nazi Cowards Israelis Massacre 40 Palestinian Children in Gaza January 2009
JERUSALEM — In the deadliest attack of its intensifying war in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military struck a United Nations-run school Tuesday where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from the fighting. As many as 40 people were killed, many of them children, and 55 were wounded, U.N. officials said.
Israel moved quickly to explain the attack, saying that its forces had been fired on first. Military officials said that fighters from the militant Islamic group Hamas had lobbed mortar rounds at Israeli forces from the school, in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, and Israeli forces returned fire outside the school moments later.
Two members of a Hamas mortar crew were among the dead, Israeli officials said.
However, John Ging, the top U.N. refugee official in Gaza, said that U.N. staff and Palestinian families in the school compound had been screened for weapons, and he disputed Israel's claim that mortars were fired from inside.
"As far as we are concerned that is not true, but if Israel has evidence of that they need to provide it to an independent inquiry," Ging said.
It was impossible to reconcile the conflicting accounts because Israel has prevented reporters from entering Gaza since its 11-day-old offensive against Hamas started, despite a court order directing the military to do so. The few television images from Jabaliya showed chaos and confusion, with some Palestinians wailing in grief and one apparently injured child, wearing striped socks, being rushed from the scene. It was impossible to get firsthand accounts
Israeli officials blamed Hamas, saying that militants have used civilians as shields and infiltrated U.N. schools in the past, an assertion that U.N. officials didn't dispute. Although Israel said its return fire landed outside the school, witnesses described a series of explosions, which Israeli officials said suggested that militants had rigged the building with explosives.
"We face a very delicate situation where the Hamas is using the citizens of Gaza as a protective vest," military spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu said.
The Jabaliya strike pushed the Palestinian death toll in the war to more than 600, with nearly 3,000 wounded, U.N. officials said.
Less than 24 hours earlier, three men were killed in an Israeli strike on a U.N. school in Gaza City where more than 400 Palestinians had gone to seek shelter.
The incidents renewed questions about Israel's ability to wage a precision war in densely populated Gaza even as its forces pushed deeper into the narrow coastal territory.
Israeli news media reported that ground forces were edging closer to the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis and continued to surround Gaza City, where they were coming under some of the toughest resistance they'd faced, including militants equipped with anti-tank rockets. Four Israeli soldiers were killed in two separate "friendly fire" incidents Monday, bringing to six the number of Israeli military fatalities in the conflict.
The onslaught hasn't stopped militants in Gaza from firing rockets into Israel, which Israeli leaders have cast as the main reason for the invasion.
Israeli police said that 35 more rockets landed in Israel on Tuesday, including in the town of Gedera, about 25 miles from the Gaza border and 20 miles from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. It was the northernmost point that a rocket had landed since the war began.
On the Gaza side of the border, humanitarian groups are warning of a worsening situation, with ambulances unable to reach sick and wounded people due to the ongoing fighting.
In one case, the bodies of 31 members of a family in southern Gaza City who were killed Saturday in a series of Israeli attacks have been trapped under the rubble of their home, according to B'Tselem, a leading Israeli human-rights group. On Tuesday in the same neighborhood, at least 13 members of another family were killed when an Israeli airstrike flattened the family's building, the group said.
Israel has said repeatedly that Hamas uses Gaza's civilian population as shields, and it's dropped fliers throughout the territory urging residents to leave. With fewer and fewer safe places to flee to, however, hundreds of Palestinian families have sought shelter in U.N.-run schools.
"I left my chickens," said 67-year-old Fakiha Sultan, who escaped days of bombardment outside her home in the Beit Lahiya neighborhood to take refuge in a U.N.-run school in Gaza City. "I left my goats without food. I left the dog tied up."
U.N. officials are struggling to provide the refugees with food, blankets and shelter. Fifty are crowded into 30-person classrooms.
"There are no blankets or mattresses," Sultan said. "We asked some friends for blankets for the kids. We sit all night in the chairs."
U.N. officials said that they'd shared with Israeli forces the exact locations and global-positioning coordinates of their installations in Gaza, including the schools.
"This is a very densely populated urban area, and there is no way you can conduct military operations of this scale and scope without large numbers of civilian casualties," Ging said.
Israel said it had killed 130 Hamas militants since the start of the campaign, and on Tuesday it attacked the Jabaliya home of Iman Siam, a senior operative and the head of the group's rocket-launching unit. A military official said Siam was thought to be home at the time, although it wasn't clear whether he had been hit.
Dozens dead after Israel bombs UN elementary school in Gaza
http://www.islandpacket.com/world/story/716687.html
http://www.azerbaijannews.net/story/450476
http://www.thestate.com/world/story/641771.html?RSS=untracked
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/06/30-dead-artillery-strike-gaza-school-un-says/?partner=RSS
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b0d_1231101531
Memorable Israeli Presidents Quotes
Ariel Sharon
Ehud Barak
Benjamin Netanyahu
Yizhak Shamir
Menachem Begin
Yitzhak Rabin
Golda Meir
David Ben Gurion
"We must expel Arabs and take their places."
-- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.
"There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"
-- Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
-- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."
-- David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
"If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel."
-- David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth's Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).
David Ben Gurion
Prime Minister of Israel
1949 - 1954,
1955 - 1963
"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."
-- Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.
"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."
-- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.
"Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen."
-- Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961
"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy."
-- Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971
Golda Meir
Prime Minister of Israel
1969 - 1974
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!"
-- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.
"[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat."
-- Yitzhak Rabin (a "Prince of Peace" by Clinton's standards), explaining his method of ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen's remarks to the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.)
Yitzhak Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel
1974 - 1977,
1992 - 1995
"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25, 1982.
"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."
-- Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.
Menachem Begin
Prime Minister of Israel
1977 - 1983
"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."
-- Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.
"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
-- Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.
"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."
-- Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
Yizhak Shamir
Prime Minister of Israel
1983 - 1984,
1986 - 1992
"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."
-- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel
1996 - 1999
"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more"....
-- Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000
"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000.
"I would have joined a terrorist organization."
-- Ehud Barak's response to Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Ha'aretz newspaper, when Barak was asked what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.
Ehud Barak
Prime Minister of Israel
1999 - 2001
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.
"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online
Ariel Sharon
Prime Minister of Israel
2001 - present
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Nothing_Short_of_a_Miracle.asp
The Massacre of Thousands of Lebanese Children By Israeli Planes Massive Bombing
http://www.naba.org.uk/CONTENT/articles/HR/Lebanon/706_Lebanon_Album.htm
The Massacre of Thousands of Lebanese Children By Israeli Planes Massive Bombing
Internet Yahoo Readers Genocidal Comments About Annihilating the Palestinians
Israel should carpet bomb the Gaza Strip to prevent rocket attacks - Right?
That would be my first response. Zero tolerance for terrorists. Any society that allows terrorists to harbor, are forfeit.
60 years ago this would have been automatic. Do you know how many civilians we killed
Sounds good to me.
If necessary.
Yes.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtAmjfMYZEUTeO8xQyNOpZ0jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20090105190153AABZTUc
That would be my first response. Zero tolerance for terrorists. Any society that allows terrorists to harbor, are forfeit.
60 years ago this would have been automatic. Do you know how many civilians we killed
Sounds good to me.
If necessary.
Yes.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtAmjfMYZEUTeO8xQyNOpZ0jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20090105190153AABZTUc
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)