The Israeli nerve centre watching Gaza's every move

[Nikita2Charles 32]

How long can you oppress another race?

It's sad after being oppressed by the Nazi, you would think some people would understand the psychic of Hatred, War, but now they are doing the same thing that happened to their ancestor. From Austrich, to Poland, and so many other concentration camps, But now we have them In Gaza, in the occupied territories, people are suffering, being killed, living without hope, some resort to Hatred and fighting back but they are label as Terrorist rather than for the world to see what's the root cause of the fighting. If someone Killed your Mom, your dad, your siblings, are you going to cross your arm, or like the bible say you get slap in one face, turn the other face, love your enemy. FOR HOW LONG?

[Scott & Lai 12]

If you see a sign that says "Trespassers will be shot" and you purposely ignore it,

you deserve what happens to you next.

I guess all those East-Berliners deserved what they got

The East Berliners were shot by East Berlin guards for trying to escape what was essentially a prison camp. They weren't trying to blow up West Berliners. Your analogy doesn't work.

[mawilson 2,133]

If you see a sign that says "Trespassers will be shot" and you purposely ignore it,

you deserve what happens to you next.

I guess all those East-Berliners deserved what they got

The East Berliners were shot by East Berlin guards for trying to escape what was essentially a prison camp. They weren't trying to blow up West Berliners. Your analogy doesn't work.

Indeed - it's not like these Palestinians are risking their lives trying to escape over the wall

to freedom in Israel and live happily in Tel-Aviv.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

If you see a sign that says "Trespassers will be shot" and you purposely ignore it,

you deserve what happens to you next.

I guess all those East-Berliners deserved what they got

The East Berliners were shot by East Berlin guards for trying to escape what was essentially a prison camp. They weren't trying to blow up West Berliners. Your analogy doesn't work.

Does that matter? The point was that people are stupid for ignoring a sign that effectively said "tresspassers will be shot".

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Day to Day: October 23, 2006

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

From NPR News, this is DAY TO DAY. It is the first day of Eid - that's a three-day festival marking the end of Ramadan and the breaking of the fast. But there are few celebrations for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Today, Israeli troops killed seven Palestinians in an operation to curb rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Ongoing violence in the region has left more than 200 Palestinian's dead since June. Meanwhile, tensions between the rival Fatah and Hamas loyalists continue to escalate.

NPR's Eric Westervelt just returned from a week in Gaza and he joins us now to talk about the situation there. Hi, Eric.

ERIC WESTERVELT: Hi, Madeleine.

BRAND: Eric, can you update us now on what Israel is doing there in Gaza? What are they trying to achieve?

WESTERVELT: In response to a June attack in which an Israeli soldier was taken captive by Gaza militants, the Israeli military has kept up air and ground attacks and naval and air activity as well. When you're in Gaza, Madeleine, looking out to sea you can see the Israeli navy vessels just off the coast patrolling the waters and enforcing a fishing ban.

When I left Gaza the other day through the Erez terminal - that's the main northern terminal connecting Israel to Gaza - there were several Israeli tanks on the Palestinian side. As we mentioned, seven Palestinians - many of them armed gunmen - were killed today in northern Gaza near Beit Lahiya.

Israeli ground forces, as well, are operating in southern Gaza near Rafah - the border crossing with Egypt. Forces there have found and destroyed more than a dozen tunnels the military says are used to smuggle weapons into Gaza. Israeli military officials say they've seen a rise in the smuggling of heavy weapons by Hamas and other militant groups.

So people in Gaza, Madeleine, are bracing for the possibility Israel could widen its ongoing military campaign there, especially if smuggling continues and if they don't get their soldier back - Corporal Gilad Shalit.

BRAND: Describe for us what's happening inside Gaza between Hamas and Fatah. What's going on with the power struggle between those two groups?

WESTERVELT: That's right. The power struggle continues. Friday afternoon in Gaza, I had an interesting sort of Gaza moment. I was interviewing a Hamas official named Kaleel Nofel(ph) - he's been involved in talks with Fatah, and he'd been up all night in talk with Fatah, mediated by Egyptian diplomats - and he was excited and told me with confidence that the two sides had come to an agreement again aimed at stopping the internal violence. I asked why would anyone in Gaza believe that this time another agreement to stop the fighting would actually work. He insisted it would, said the two sides had set up a joint command center to de-escalate the fighting among other moves.

Just then his cell phone rang and it was another Hamas member telling him that masked gunmen had attacked and shot up the convoy carrying Hamas leader and prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. So that agreement lasted about six hours and there's been more factional violence today. So clearly it's not working and this power struggle, which has been violent occasionally from the last six months, there's fear it could widen.

BRAND: And Eric, what does this mean for ordinary Palestinians who are trying to live there? Here we've got - as you say - violence among Palestinians and you've also got attacks by Israeli forces. So what's it like for the average Palestinian?

WESTERVELT: Well, there's a grim, downbeat mood there. The international sanctions against the Palestinian authority, now lead by Hamas - listed as a terrorist group - has meant government workers haven't gotten full salary since February. So those lucky enough to have a job in Gaza, have little or no money or are deeply in debt.

So you've got ongoing violence, poverty, daily power outages and lawlessness. It's certainly not a happy Eid mood, and many in Gaza are feeling despondent this holiday season.

BRAND: NPR's Eric Westervelt. Thank you, Eric.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/tr...storyId=6368061

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Israel's Large-Scale Killing of Palestinians Passes Unreported

by Patrick O'Connor, The Electronic Intifada, 4 November 2006

At least 19 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military on Friday November 3, 2006, including two women, and other civilians. No Israelis were killed. Though photos of Friday's Israeli attack on Palestinian women have been widely disseminated, the bigger story is still not being told. These killings are part of a new, longer-term pattern - a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military since the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority took office seven months ago, despite a continued low number of Israelis killed by Palestinians. Palestinians, already subjected to Israeli military occupation and overwhelming violence, have been killed at a rate of 26 Palestinians for every Israeli killed since Hamas took power on March 29, 2006, and 76 Palestinians per Israeli since July 1. Though the mainstream media still reports on a "conflict" between "two sides", over the last seven months it has simply been a slaughter.

According to casualty figures from the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem,[1] the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),[2] and press reports for November 1-3,[3] in the period since the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority took office on March 29, 2006 through November 3, 2006, 491 Palestinians were killed by Israelis while 19 Israelis killed by Palestinians, 25.8 Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Since July 1 that ratio has increased to 76.2 Palestinians killed per Israeli, with 381 Palestinians killed versus just five Israelis.

Ratio of Palestinians Killed to Israelis Killed During Current Palestinian Uprising (September 29, 2000 - November 3, 2006) Sources: B'Tselem, UN OCHA, and media reports. B'Tselem's and OCHA's descriptions of the circumstances surrounding these deaths show that approximately half the Palestinians killed during this period were clearly civilians.

The year 2006 has seen by far the most skewed ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed. While no deaths should be accepted, the figures show that the Israeli war machine has shifted into an unprecedented frenzy. Through the entire second Palestinian intifada or uprising which began September 29, 2000, approximately 3.9 Palestinians have been killed for every Israeli killed.[4] The highest previous multi-month ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed during this intifada occurred from March to December 2004 when around 9.5 Palestinians were killed for every Israeli. In the first Palestinian intifada from 1987-92, 5.2 Palestinians were killed for every Israeli.

The increase in Palestinians killed in 2006 reversed the downward trend from 2005, the year with the lowest number of both Palestinian deaths (197), and Israeli deaths (50) during this uprising. In April 2006, with Hamas taking power, Palestinian deaths climbed back to 2004 levels. From July 1 - November 3, 2006, Israel has killed an average of 93 Palestinians per month, the highest monthly average since Israel's reinvasion of the West Bank in March/April, 2002.

In 2006, unable to support the usual claim that it is responding defensively to the killing of Israelis, the Israeli government has offered various unconvincing explanations for the large numbers of Palestinians it is killing. But Israel's intensified violence seems intended to punish Palestinians for voting Hamas to office in democratic elections, and to restore Israeli self-esteem that was damaged by the failure of the war with Lebanon.

Israel's shifting justifications are repeated with little skepticism by the mainstream media. First Israel said it was acting to stop Palestinians from firing homemade Qassam rockets into Israel, rockets that have killed just eight people within Israel over five years. Then Israel said it was responding to Palestinians' capture on June 25, 2006 of a single Israeli soldier, though Israel holds 10,000 Palestinians captive. News reports currently suggest that the ongoing Israeli attacks may jeopardize the soldier's safe return. Now the Israeli government is again playing up Qassam rockets, and arms smuggling into Gaza as justifications.

Israeli reporter Amira Hass put Gaza arms smuggling in perspective, writing in the Israeli Ha'aretz on October 18 that "what exists in Israelis' consciousness is not the millions of cluster bombs ... or the tens of millions of bombs and shells and lethal bullets stored in our arms warehouses and our gun barrels and the bellies of our helicopters and planes. Although the amount of such explosives is measured in the millions of tons, it is the 20 tons of explosives and the few thousand rifles that permeate the Israeli consciousness."

Despite the fact that they have vastly inferior weapons, are killed in much greater numbers than Israelis, live under Israeli occupation and are having their land taken from them by Israelis, Palestinians are generally portrayed in the US as the aggressor.

Ironically, under the much vilified Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Palestinians have killed by far the fewest Israelis in any period during this six-year intifada -- nineteen Israelis over seven months.

Hamas has largely maintained a ceasefire since early 2005, even as Israel and western governments demand that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel, and the western media simplistically repeats that Hamas is "committed to the destruction of Israel." In the meantime, Israel is actually destroying the Palestinian people and any hopes for a Palestinian state through heightened violence and land seizure. But the world has been silent about Israeli actions.

The dominance of the Israeli narrative and of Israeli voices in the US media is one factor that allows Americans to maintain this hypocrisy. Rather than providing comparable information about both sides, Palestinian attacks and weaponry are over-emphasized, and the Israeli government line repeated. Comparative figures and analysis of the overwhelming numbers of Israeli missiles and bombs fired at Gaza and Lebanon,[6] of Israel's vast weaponry, and of the numbers of Palestinians killed, are typically harder to find.

For example, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, three of the largest and most respected US newspapers, all describe the current crisis as beginning with the capture of an Israeli soldier, erasing history prior to June 25, 2006. Israel's heightened assault on Gaza began with heavy shelling in late March, resulting in the killing of large numbers of Palestinians in Gaza before June 25, including gruesome attacks like the June 9 shelling of a Gaza beach which killed seven members of the family of 12 year-old Huda Al Ghalia.[7]

Over the last three months, those same three newspapers have failed to comment on the recent dramatic disparity between Palestinian and Israeli deaths. During that period, The New York Times is the only one of those three papers to have provided figures comparing the numbers of Palestinians and Israelis killed. The Times did so three times over three months, in just 1-2 sentences each time, with no accompanying analysis of trends.[8] Over the last three months, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post reported only the figures for Palestinian deaths, six times[9] and two times[10] respectively, again with no analysis. All three papers begin their death counts from June 25, 2006.

It is difficult to imagine that a similarly dramatic increase in the ratio of Israeli to Palestinian deaths could occur without major discussion by the media and the world, or that such lop-sided deaths in another conflict would pass without comment. Despite a Hamas ceasefire, and publicly available data showing that Israel is now carrying out a one-sided assault, Hamas violence remains the focus. Propaganda continues to trump reality, with the active collaboration of the US media. Palestinians are portrayed as terrorists, and Israelis as victims of Palestinian terrorism. There is scarcely a mention international law, or Palestinians' status as a people living under 39 years of Israeli military occupation and subjugation.

Palestinians, however, realize that they are being slaughtered despite the fact that they are not killing Israelis, just as they know that they were encouraged to hold democratic elections and then punished for doing so. Frustrated by the world's hypocrisy and lack of support, and subject to daily Israeli assaults, it is not likely that Palestinians will maintain their unilateral ceasefire forever. Yet if Palestinians do eventually strike back, it's not clear that the world will even register what they are responding to.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5951.shtml

Edited November 12, 2006 by wife_of_mahmoud

[mawilson 2,133]

All these years we were led to believe that the Palestinian struggle was all about

the return to the 1967 borders. And now we know it's a load of #######:

Israel (eCanadaNow) - Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar said

today that Hamas is against peace with Israel, will not give up the right of return

of Palestinian refugees and will not recognize Israel even if a Palestinian state

is created in the pre-1967 borders.

Al-Zahar also threatened Israel with response to the artillery shelling by the IDF

at Beit Hanoun, where 19 Palestinians were killed due to machinery fault at one

of the artillery stations.

The FM also noted that Hamas will receive most seats in the Palestinian parliament,

thus changing PA’s policy to its liking. He also revealed that Hamas turned down

PA’s Prime Minister Mahmoud Abass’s offer to release kidnapped Israeli soldier

Gilad Shalit under Egyptian custody prior to Israel’s assurance of release up to

a thousand Palestinian prisoners.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

They're both as bad as each other. Israel is particularly tragic considering their history - that large areas of their state are a police state, in many ways not too dissimilar from a Roman Protectorate.

[zzerous 0]

All these years we were led to believe that the Palestinian struggle was all about

the return to the 1967 borders. And now we know it's a load of #######:

Israel (eCanadaNow) - Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar said

today that Hamas is against peace with Israel, will not give up the right of return

of Palestinian refugees and will not recognize Israel even if a Palestinian state

is created in the pre-1967 borders.

Al-Zahar also threatened Israel with response to the artillery shelling by the IDF

at Beit Hanoun, where 19 Palestinians were killed due to machinery fault at one

of the artillery stations.

The FM also noted that Hamas will receive most seats in the Palestinian parliament,

thus changing PA’s policy to its liking. He also revealed that Hamas turned down

PA’s Prime Minister Mahmoud Abass’s offer to release kidnapped Israeli soldier

Gilad Shalit under Egyptian custody prior to Israel’s assurance of release up to

a thousand Palestinian prisoners.

your post is a load of #######....all those years did any one offer and execut on a palstinian state in the pre-1967 borders. it is simple history tells us no one can occupy and steal peoples land and their right to live on their own proprty.

[mawilson 2,133]

your post is a load of #######....

Thanks, I love you too.

all those years did any one offer and execut on a palstinian state in the pre-1967 borders.

Perhaps not, but this latest statement by Hamas is not going to make it any more likely.

history tells us no one can occupy and steal peoples land and their right to live on their own proprty.

Actually, history tells us the opposite -- that's how most countries -- including

the United States -- came to exist. Are you going to say that Iraq, Iran,

Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Arab Emirates and other countries in the Middle East

should not exist because their borders were drawn arbitrarily by Western colonial

aggression?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Actually, history tells us the opposite -- that's how most countries -- including

the United States -- came to exist. Are you going to say that Iraq, Iran,

Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Arab Emirates and other countries in the Middle East

should not exist because their borders were drawn arbitrarily by Western colonial

aggression?

True, but there is more scope for debate when the 'land seizure' took place within recent living memory.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

They're both as bad as each other. Israel is particularly tragic considering their history - that large areas of their state are a police state, in many ways not too dissimilar from a Roman Protectorate.

Palestinians want to kill Israeli civilians. Israel doesn't want to kill Palestinian civilians but ends up doing it because the chicken sh!t 'militants' use their own people as human shields.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!!! Lie to us all day but please stop lying to yourself.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

They're both as bad as each other. Israel is particularly tragic considering their history - that large areas of their state are a police state, in many ways not too dissimilar from a Roman Protectorate.

Palestinians want to kill Israeli civilians. Israel doesn't want to kill Palestinian civilians but ends up doing it because the chicken sh!t 'militants' use their own people as human shields.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!!! Lie to us all day but please stop lying to yourself.

Laying the blame for this entire sorry situation solely in the lap of an Arab underclass doesn't seem particularly fair to me. Yes, there is terrorism. Yes the terrorists live among the civilian population (which is part and parcel of guerila warfare). They don't have the manpower or resources to attack 'fairly', that is to say directly - so what exactly is to be expected?

Seems to me that its not just the people who carry out the atrocities who have grievances - they're just the ones who choose to turn those grievances into violent action and murder.

Edited November 13, 2006 by erekose