Palestinian Twins Born Under Rocket Fire from Gaza

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

You're lucky then that it's impossible to "prove" that she gloats with smugness (because it's rather

subjective),

Apparently the voices in your head really do a number on you.

but I'm sure I can dig up a couple of posts where she could hardly contain the pride

she felt over the "victory" of Hezbollah in Lebanon (or rather the failure of IDF to stop the rocket

attacks.)

Then do it. Oh wait -- will that be "subjective," too ?

Edited March 15, 2008 by wife_of_mahmoud

[mawilson 2,133]

If you're trying to prove that Zionists don't have rotted mush for brains, you're still striking out !

I am trying to prove that you are condescending, self-righteous and rude, and you're doing a great job helping me.

Oh wait. I never proudly stated that I was a Zionist. If you think I did, does it mean you have rot for brains?

[KEK 0]

If you're trying to prove that Zionists don't have rotted mush for brains, you're still striking out !

I am trying to prove that you are condescending, self-righteous and rude, and you're doing a great job helping me.

Oh wait. I never proudly stated that I was a Zionist. If you think I did, does it mean you have rot for brains?

So are you a Zionist, or are you not? So far in this thread, you have admitted to neither. I guess it doesn't really matter - I can see enough to know that you are a person who will attack others unprovoked in the current situation, and so it appears that you like to start trouble.

If you don't want someone insulting you, then you should shouldn't attack their name with no reason. At first I thought you might be joking (bec. that is the only way your post would have been appropriate in the first place). But now I see that you just wanted to pick a fight.

[simple_male 1]

I think, she posts about the sufferings of the Palestinian people because of Israeli illegal occupation. Plus, she has refuted many false claims. At what post, did she support firing rockets into Israel? If I see any post that supports firing rockets into Israel, I will immediately condemn it. On the other hands, some pro-Israeli members keep posting derogatory, racist remarks about the Palestinians and Arabs, but I don't see any comdemnation from pro-Israeli supporters here. Aren't the Palestinians and Arabs human beings?

Where is this posted?

I have said over and over... it's terrorists and terrorist supporters I have a problem with. Including supporters of Hamas. If you want to paint all arabs as terrorists that's up to you but I don't believe it.

Here. For one.

Not your quote of course - but I do find it curious that you take great pains to establish your position specifically on terrorists (Islamic terrorists to be clear), but at the same time make clear your disdain for a religion that is followed by 1 billion people worldwide - including hosting links to inflammatory websites in your profile. Some very mixed messages here - to be sure.

I want to correct that there is about 1.5 billion Muslims in the world and only about 18% Muslims are Arabs.

Luckystrike, you did not post this particular one on the link that Number 6 has provided. But there is no condemnation from the pro-Israeli supporters about the "it's in their blood" remarks.

You and I agree with this one that it's the terrorists and terrorist supporters that you have a problem with it. I have a problem with it as well.

And of course, you remember about a recent thread by you that was closed by the mod when you said of me, "It is difficult to converse with a hamas supporter." I am sure you know why that thread was closed by the mod, it is because you made a slanderous remark about me.

How about hosting those links to inflammatory websites in your profile?

If you want to have a positive discussion, let's do it. Let's work for a peaceful solution for both Jews and Arabs.

Edited March 15, 2008 by simple_male

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I think, she posts about the sufferings of the Palestinian people because of Israeli illegal occupation. Plus, she has refuted many false claims. At what post, did she support firing rockets into Israel? If I see any post that supports firing rockets into Israel, I will immediately condemn it. On the other hands, some pro-Israeli members keep posting derogatory, racist remarks about the Palestinians and Arabs, but I don't see any comdemnation from pro-Israeli supporters here. Aren't the Palestinians and Arabs human beings?

Where is this posted?

I have said over and over... it's terrorists and terrorist supporters I have a problem with. Including supporters of Hamas. If you want to paint all arabs as terrorists that's up to you but I don't believe it.

Here. For one.

Not your quote of course - but I do find it curious that you take great pains to establish your position specifically on terrorists (Islamic terrorists to be clear), but at the same time make clear your disdain for a religion that is followed by 1 billion people worldwide - including hosting links to inflammatory websites in your profile. Some very mixed messages here - to be sure.

I want to correct that there is about 1.5 billion Muslims in the world and only about 18% Muslims are Arabs.

Luckystrike, you did not post this particular one on the link that Number 6 has provided. But there is no condemnation from the pro-Israeli supporters about the "it's in their blood" remarks.

You and I agree with this one that it's the terrorists and terrorist supporters that you have a problem with it. I have a problem with it as well.

And of course, you remember about a recent thread by you that was closed by the mod when you said of me, "It is difficult to converse with a hamas supporter. I am sure you know why that thread was closed by the mod, it is because you made a slanderous remark about me.

How about hosting those links to inflammatory websites in your profile?

If you want to have a positive discussion, let's do it. Let's work for a peaceful solution for both Jews and Arabs.

good luck with that

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

It's fun to see the racist Zionist hater's true colors come out.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

A couple of comments on the OP article...

The medical communities, both Palestinian and Israeli, often work together -- saving lives is what they do, and not too many play politics with their patients. Doctors, nurses and medical techs who dedicate their lives to caring for the sick and the wounded almost always have enormous compassion for human beings, no matter what their ethnicity. Israeli hospitals are some of the best in the world, and overall, their staffs are absolutely outstanding.

Palestinian hospitals are obviously operating with far fewer resources and under much more dire conditions -- especially in Gaza -- but their staffs are no less dedicated. Many have worked without pay for months on end, due to the freezing of international aid. And many Palestinian ambulance crews and emergency technicians have been killed by Israeli fire while in the line of duty trying to evacuate or attend to wounded patients.

Anyway, it is not at all uncommon for the medical communities on both sides to do everything they can to provide medical care for those who need it. Many times they are prevented from doing so, but they certainly do their best, even in the midst of the current situation.

There are several cases of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli army and whose parents agreed to donate their organs, knowing they would be transplanted into the body of a desperately ill Israeli child. And vice versa as well -- there are cases of Israeli children who were killed and whose organs were donated to save a Palestinian child.

However, this article never even mentions why the situation is so grim in Gaza hospitals -- it hardly touches on the subject, other to say that the mother needed to go to Israel to get better care. The fact is -- the freezing of international aid and Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip has caused dire shortages of medicine, anesthetic and other vital supplies. Hospitals and medical clinics in Gaza are also having to manage with daily power cuts -- some of them have to use generators for power up to 16 hours a day, but fuel supplies are also being cut off.

Over the last 4 months, about 30% of critically ill patients in Gaza have been unable to get permission from Israel to travel across the border for medical care (this includes patients who are not even trying to go to Israeli hospitals, but are seeking care in Egypt or other Arab countries.) During the first two weeks of February, 2 female patients died after Israel refused or delayed the issue of travel permits. During the last half of 2007, 26 critically ill patients -- including 8 women and 6 children -- died because Israel refused to let them across the border.

Here is another article about Israeli doctors trying to help a Palestinian child who needs emergency care (although some may not like it because it isn't nearly as "cheerlead-y" as the other):

Mideast conflict comes to children's ward

by Isabel Kershner

February 13, 2008

TEL HASHOMER, Israel: Two small boys lay sedated in a hospital ward in this Tel Aviv suburb, unaware of each other or of the growing commotion around them.

One was Osher Twito, 8, an Israeli boy from the town of Sderot, who was seriously wounded Saturday by shrapnel from a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza. The other was Yakoub Natil, almost 7, a Palestinian who was brought here three weeks ago from Gaza City after he was badly hurt by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike on Jan. 18.

Sderot is less than three kilometers, or two miles, from the Gaza border, making it a prime target for the crude and inaccurate rockets that have killed 13 Israelis over the past seven years. Now Osher and Yakoub lie in booths across from each other a few paces apart in the pediatric intensive care department of the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.

Here, the conflict's pain has been compressed into an improbable intimacy. There is pathos. "The Palestinian boy on one side, Osher on the other - it's something that gets to your heart," said Gideon Paret, the director of the department.

But there is anger and repudiation as well, and the proximity of the two boys has not brought reconciliation. Osher's parents, Iris and Rafi Twito, are outraged at the thought of comparing the boys' cases.

They refuse to allow them to be photographed together.

"The Palestinians aim to hurt our sons and rejoice at their injuries," they said in a statement issued Tuesday, "while neither we, nor our army, intended to hurt them."

The statement, relayed through a hospital spokeswoman, continued: "The state of Israel took the decision to treat the boy," meaning Yakoub. "That is its right. We protest the fact that he is lying here by our son and his brother." Osher's older brother Rami, 19, is being treated in another wing of the same hospital.

Many major hospitals in Israel regularly treat Palestinians and are no strangers to such mixed feelings or incongruous scenes. Here at Sheba, the anomalies are cast in sharper relief.

This was a military hospital from 1948, when Israel fought its war of independence, until 1953. It has since operated as a civilian hospital that works in special cooperation with the army, treating many of its soldiers and charged with educating its medical corps.

"It's like a theater of the absurd," said Zeev Rotstein, the chief executive officer and director of the hospital.

"You have army doctors in white gowns alongside Palestinian doctors who are being trained, at the same time treating Israeli casualties of terrorist attacks and Palestinians who may have been hurt in army actions."

Yakoub was wounded when Israel bombed an empty, half-ruined Palestinian Interior Ministry building that had been used by Hamas. He was at a wedding party with his family next door. The army said that it had meant to hit the ministry building and that the raid was a response to days of increased rocket fire, mostly aimed at Sderot.

Osher and Rami were hit in the street. They had gone out to buy a birthday present for their father when the rocket crashed down.

Yakoub's grandmother, Amira Natil, 52, was at the boy's bedside on Tuesday. She and Yakoub came here with Israeli permission three days after the airstrike from the more basic hospital Al Shifa in Gaza City. "Thank Allah, the lord of the universe," Amira Natil said, kissing her hand and placing it on her brow in a gesture of religious reverence.

Amira Natil had not met Osher's parents and was speaking shortly before they issued their statement, unaware of its contents. About the Israeli boy, she said: "They are children. Haram," using an Arabic word that denotes something shameful, forbidden or taboo.

The story of the Twito brothers has particularly moved Israelis, in large part because of their youth. Osher, described by his family as a keen soccer player, has had his left leg amputated from the knee down.

The doctors are still battling to save his right leg. Rami suffered damage to his legs, too. Both boys were transferred to Sheba on Sunday from Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon, a city north of Gaza that has come under rocket fire.

Yakoub was wounded in both legs and his spine. He suffered renal failure but is said by the hospital staff to be getting better. "This is the best day he's had," his grandmother said.

t is not clear who will pay for Yakoub's treatment. "To date we are treating him without any financial commitment from the Palestinian authorities or anyone else," said Ulrike Haen, a spokeswoman for Sheba.

In similar cases, she said, money has come from the Israeli Ministry of Defense; or from the Peres Center for Peace, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 by Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel; or from the Palestinian Authority, with supplements from the hospital.

Since Hamas took control of Gaza last June after a brief but bloody factional war, the issue of Gaza residents' access to medical treatment in Israel has become increasingly charged. Israel refuses all dealings with Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, and has recently blockaded the area in response to the intensified rocket fire. In an article published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Tuesday, Ahmed Youssef, an adviser to the Hamas government in Gaza, wrote that "30 people have died in the last month for lack of medical care brought on by the embargo."

According to recent statistics from the Israeli Coordination and Liaison Administration, more than 7,000 permits were issued for Palestinian patients from Gaza in 2007, along with nearly 8,000 permits for their escorts, representing a 50 percent increase over 2006. Shadi Yassin, a spokesman for the Coordination and Liaison Administration, said Tuesday that medical patients were still leaving Gaza every day to receive treatment in Israel.

But Yakoub is the exception, not the rule. "We know of others who can't get out and die there," said Rotstein, of Sheba's pediatric intensive care department. "It is so complicated now."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/13/africa/boys.php

One more thing. The map accompanying the OP article shows the maximum ranges of various rockets, which it says represent "Palestinian rockets." But there have been no Fajr rockets fired out of Gaza, and there is no evidence that Hamas has them. So this is rather misleading.

[KEK 0]

Oh what fun. The same kinds of arguments and disagreements (which seem so petty here), kill and otherwise destroy lives constantly in the Middle East (on both sides of this line of hatred). And the continued fighting is what continues the hatred and also continues to make more terrorists (again on both sides - terrorists come in many forms in this conflict).

Yeah I guess this is a sicko's kind of fun. Too bad there are so many sickos and people enjoy the provoking and fighting, rather than working for peace. I think I'll stick to visa threads from now on, as I don't see anything productive going on here.

[KEK 0]

Ok, I take that last part back, as WoM just posted something worth reading about.

Thanks for some real information about the situation!

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Welcome to OT, KEKhan

Sometimes you need hip waders (or maybe a hazmat suit) because of all the ####### that gets flung around in here..... but there are also a lot of really intelligent people on this forum that make for some very worthwhile discussions.

-MK

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

It's fun to see the racist Zionist hater's true colors come out.

Still slandering I see.

[desert_fox 32]

Oh what fun. The same kinds of arguments and disagreements (which seem so petty here), kill and otherwise destroy lives constantly in the Middle East (on both sides of this line of hatred). And the continued fighting is what continues the hatred and also continues to make more terrorists (again on both sides - terrorists come in many forms in this conflict).

Yeah I guess this is a sicko's kind of fun. Too bad there are so many sickos and people enjoy the provoking and fighting, rather than working for peace. I think I'll stick to visa threads from now on, as I don't see anything productive going on here.

very easy solution..come to the table with a credible government on both side that can negociate an agreement and live up it.

Stating that your platform is to destroy the other will not work. Initiating terrorist attacks against the civilian population of the other will not do it, but will only invite a bigger response from the other side.

As long as the existing mentality continues, Israel will continue to defend itself.

Seems like a few of their neighbors have already come to the table with agreements and seem to have minimal problems co-exisiting with Israel.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Oh what fun. The same kinds of arguments and disagreements (which seem so petty here), kill and otherwise destroy lives constantly in the Middle East (on both sides of this line of hatred). And the continued fighting is what continues the hatred and also continues to make more terrorists (again on both sides - terrorists come in many forms in this conflict).

Yeah I guess this is a sicko's kind of fun. Too bad there are so many sickos and people enjoy the provoking and fighting, rather than working for peace. I think I'll stick to visa threads from now on, as I don't see anything productive going on here.

very easy solution..come to the table with a credible government on both side that can negociate an agreement and live up it.

Stating that your platform is to destroy the other will not work. Initiating terrorist attacks against the civilian population of the other will not do it, but will only invite a bigger response from the other side.

As long as the existing mentality continues, Israel will continue to defend itself.

Seems like a few of their neighbors have already come to the table with agreements and seem to have minimal problems co-exisiting with Israel.

I said elsewhere that I'm guessing the Israelis probably miss dealing with Arafat now that the Palestinian territories have split along sectarian lines.

The problem is that all these things are interrelated - Israel claims to defend itself against rocket attacks (though from what I understand the attacks are concentrated in a relatively small area of their territory), but historically the Israeli government's response to these things has been collective punishment of the entire region (a fact which has been remarked on by the UN and numerous human rights groups over the years). That kind of thing hardly inspires cooperation - the guy whose house gets blown up, who's wife has her legs blown off probably doesn't much care whether it was intended or not. With that being an almost daily occurrence it isn't a great leap of logic to see what that will do for the recruitment of extremist organisations (Palestinian and Jewish).

[KEK 0]

Oh what fun. The same kinds of arguments and disagreements (which seem so petty here), kill and otherwise destroy lives constantly in the Middle East (on both sides of this line of hatred). And the continued fighting is what continues the hatred and also continues to make more terrorists (again on both sides - terrorists come in many forms in this conflict).

Yeah I guess this is a sicko's kind of fun. Too bad there are so many sickos and people enjoy the provoking and fighting, rather than working for peace. I think I'll stick to visa threads from now on, as I don't see anything productive going on here.

very easy solution..come to the table with a credible government on both side that can negociate an agreement and live up it.

Stating that your platform is to destroy the other will not work. Initiating terrorist attacks against the civilian population of the other will not do it, but will only invite a bigger response from the other side.

As long as the existing mentality continues, Israel will continue to defend itself.

Seems like a few of their neighbors have already come to the table with agreements and seem to have minimal problems co-exisiting with Israel.

Hm, I think it's probably easier to co-exist peacefully with Israel if they haven't stolen most of your homeland. Going against international law and building their beautiful settlements on what used to be someone else's home (people who now live in desperation in refugee camps).

Part of your solution above seems to be to blame the Palestinians for the violence. I think a true solution will be when both sides make concessions and compromises, and both accept shares of the 'blame' in this problem. Israel does more than just defend itself. It goes above and beyond that to making the lives of ALL Palestinians difficult, and who is to say that their overly oppressive reactions aren't part of the reason that the violence of Palestinians continues, and that Palestinians would turn to groups like Hamas to lead them?

Both sides act like they want to destroy each other. And one of them still owes the other their land back according to international law. So logically, how can anyone be so simplistic as to blame only the Palestinians for what is going on?

[desert_fox 32]

Hm, I think it's probably easier to co-exist peacefully with Israel if they haven't stolen most of your homeland. Going against international law and building their beautiful settlements on what used to be someone else's home (people who now live in desperation in refugee camps).

Part of your solution above seems to be to blame the Palestinians for the violence. I think a true solution will be when both sides make concessions and compromises, and both accept shares of the 'blame' in this problem. Israel does more than just defend itself. It goes above and beyond that to making the lives of ALL Palestinians difficult, and who is to say that their overly oppressive reactions aren't part of the reason that the violence of Palestinians continues, and that Palestinians would turn to groups like Hamas to lead them?

Both sides act like they want to destroy each other. And one of them still owes the other their land back according to international law. So logically, how can anyone be so simplistic as to blame only the Palestinians for what is going on?

That would be a part of the talks...I think thats its well understood that some of those settlements that have been established wouold have to bulldozed and the land returned....but until they get real (both sides) and sit down and discuss...it will continue indefinitely.

that is negotiation...compromises and concessions....in return for safe borders that are internationally recognized.