Israel-Gaza conflict: What has Israel achieved in 26 bloody days?

[OriZ 3,157]

Lets talk about indoctrination though.

2 out of hundreds:

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4265.htm

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4286.htm

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

Only a terrorist would support the activities of a terrorist group. Hail Hamas!!

[Expat1 971]

Only a terrorist would support the activities of a terrorist group. Hail Hamas!!

Waving the flag of support for murdering women and children in their homes, schools, and streets brands one as such.

I'll stick with what I believe and was taught - that people, anywhere and everywhere, have a right to personal freedom, property, and equal protection under law and they have the right to fight for it until they get it.

I don't side with thieves and I don't side with murderers and I don't side with people who operate under the view that because of who they are and where they are from feel they are entitled to deny others the basic rights that they enjoy for themselves. You pick your side, I'll pick mine.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Expat1

[Expat1 971]

Keep up the good work. You are a voice of reason to counter the sea of anti-Semitic propaganda passed off as "facts" so beloved by the media and many on this site.

Call it anti-Semitic if you want. Trapping people into crowded camps for generations is wrong no matter who does it. It just happens to be Israel this time.

[Expat1 971]

No more than a blood libel, I bet you also believe the jews make matzoh using christian boys' blood. Ridiculous.

Funny thing is, I bet I have more Palestinian and Arab friends than all of the so called Palestinian supporters on this forum. So called, because when push comes to shove, they are for Hamas, not for the Palestinians, and Hamas is equally as bad for the Palestinians as it is to Israel.

I don't know anything about jews except what I was taught as a kid. My grandmother was jewish.

I also don't care what they call themselves today - if they are trying to fight their way out of the situation that they have been put into then they have a fundamental right to do so.

[OriZ 3,157]

With few exceptions, reporters, commentators, and analysts unquestioningly accept the casualty statistics given by Gaza's Hamas-controlled medical authorities, who ascribe alldeaths to the IDF. We have never seen so much as a glimpse of killed or wounded fighters.

Analysis of casualty details released by Qatar-based Al Jazeera indicate that so far most of those killed in Gaza have been young men of fighting age, not women, children or old people.

All Palestinian civilian casualties in this conflict result ultimately from Gaza terrorists' aggression against Israel, and Hamas's use of human shields — the most important plank of Hamas's war-fighting policy.

"So are you going after innocent civilians or is it incompetence Colonel Lerner?" asks the interviewer, her face contorted with a contempt apparently reserved only for Israelis. Such shrill disrespect hurled at an American or British officer would alienate viewers, and, at an Arab commander, provoke accusations of racism.

This line of questioning – repeated across the networks on a daily basis – betrays a naïve and uncomprehending willingness to believe, and encourages viewers to believe, the absurd notion that the Israel Defence Force [iDF] is commanded and manned from top to bottom by psychopathic baby-killing thugs.

To suggest that military incompetence is the only explanation for civilian deaths other than deliberate mass murder reveals a breathtaking but unsurprising ignorance of the realities of combat.

Although rarely allowed to complete so much as a single sentence, Israeli attempts to explain IDF targeting policies are inevitably dismissed as laughable fabrication.

The truth is very different. The IDF has developed the most comprehensive and sophisticated measures to minimize civilian casualties during attacks against legitimate military targets.

Mandatory, multi-sensor intelligence and surveillance systems to confirm the presence or absence of civilians precede attacks on every target from the air. Text messages, phone calls and radio messages in Arabic warn occupants to leave. Air-dropped leaflets include maps showing safe areas. When warnings go unheeded, aircraft drop non-lethal explosives to warn that an attack is imminent.

Only when pilots and air controllers are sure that civilians are clear of the target will authorization be given to attack. When pilots use laser-guided munitions they must have pre-designated safe areas to which to divert the missiles in flight should civilians suddenly appear.

A Hamas military commander recounts on Palestinian TV how Israeli forces gave advance warning to him, to evacuate his home before bombing it. He goes on to describe how after the warning, he rushed to gather friends, family and neighbors on the roof of the building.

Two pictures showing Palestinian human shields gathered on buildings for which the Israel Air Force has given advance warning of a pending bombing.

In the last few days IDF pilots have aborted many missions because civilians remained in the target area.

Ground forces have equivalent engagement procedures, although the nature of ground combat means that these are blunter and less sophisticated. Discussions with IDF infantrymen fresh from the fight on the Gaza border confirm, however, that avoiding civilian casualties is uppermost in their minds even when under fire themselves.

Meanwhile back in the safety of the studio, the interviewer's visible fury at the IDF Spokesman has got the better of any professional objectivity: "You go on endlessly about all the warnings you give but the fact is you have killed one-and-a-half thousand people, the overwhelming majority of them civilians!"

But of course the colonel is not permitted to give a proper answer that might help viewers understand the reality of the situation.

With few exceptions, reporters, commentators and analysts unquestioningly accept the casualty statistics given by Gaza's Hamas-controlled medical authorities, who ascribe all deaths to the IDF. Is anyone in Gaza dying of natural causes? Mass executions of "collaborators," and civilians killed by malfunctioning Hamas rockets, are all attributed to IDF fire.

Are the "overwhelming majority" of the dead really civilians? It would seem so. We see a great deal of grotesque and heart-rending footage of dead and bleeding women and children but never so much as a glimpse of killed or wounded fighters. Nor do reporters question or comment on the complete absence of Gazan military casualties, an extraordinary phenomenon unique to this conflict. The reality of course is that Hamas make great efforts to segregate their military casualties to preserve the fiction that Israel is killing civilians only. There are also increasing indications that Hamas, through direct force or threat, are preventing journalists from filming their fighters, whether dead or alive.

We will not get to the truth until the battle is over. But we know now that Hamas have ordered their people to report all deaths as innocent civilians. We know too that Hamas has a track record of lying about casualties. After Operation Cast Lead, the 2008-09 fighting in Gaza, the IDF estimated that of 1,166 Palestinian deaths, 709 were fighters. Hamas – backed by several NGOs – claimed that only 49 of its fighters had been killed, the rest were innocent civilians. Much later they were forced to admit that the IDF had been right all along and between 600 and 700 of the casualties had in fact been fighters. But the short-memoried media are incapable of factoring this in before broadcasting their ill-founded and inflammatory assertions.

Analysis of casualty details released by Qatar-based Al Jazeera indicate that so far in the conflict most of those killed in Gaza have been young men of fighting age, not women, children or old people. According to one analyst, despite comprising around 50% of the population, the proportion of women among the dead is 21%.

Preliminary analysis by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel suggests that 71, or 46.7%, of the first 152 Palestinians killed were fighters and 81, or 53.3%, non-involved civilians.

None of this analysis is definitive. But it does cast doubt upon the accusations of indiscriminate attack against the population by the IDF and upon the UN estimates – widely trumpeted as fact by the media and the not-exactly unbiased United Nations – that between 70 and 80% of Palestinian casualties have been civilians.

Nevertheless, many innocent civilians have tragically been killed. How has this happened, given the IDF's measures aimed at minimizing such deaths?

IDF commanders say they never intentionally fire at targets where uninvolved civilians are present, a policy that goes much further than the Geneva Conventions demand. This policy has been confirmed to me by foot soldiers on the ground and F16 pilots carrying out strikes into Gaza.

But mistakes happen. Surveillance and intelligence can never be foolproof. There have been reports of Hamas forcing civilians back in once buildings have been evacuated. There is sometimes unexpected fallout from attacks, for example when an adjacent building containing civilians collapses, often caused by secondary explosions resulting from Hamas's own munitions.

Errors can be made in interpretation of imagery, passage of information and inputting of target data. We don't yet know what happened to the four boys tragically killed on a Gaza beach; it is not credible that they were identified as children and then deliberately killed.

Weapons guidance systems sometimes malfunction and bombs, bullets or missiles can land where they are not supposed to. Even the most hi-tech communications systems can fail at the critical moment.

Nowhere are these errors more frequent and catastrophic than in ground combat, where commanders and soldiers experience chaos, noise, smoke, fear, exhaustion, danger, shock, maiming, death and destruction that are beyond the comprehension of our interviewer in her air conditioned TV studio.

These mistakes and malfunctions happen in all fighting armies and in all conflicts. And in all conflicts, mistakes include the deaths of soldiers by friendly fire. Do those who condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians as deliberate acts by the IDF suggest that the friendly fire incidents in Gaza are also intentional?

The Israeli policy of not attacking targets where civilians are present is likely however to be deliberately waived in one specific situation. If troops are under lethal fire from an enemy position, the IDF are entitled to attack the target even with the certainty that civilians will be killed, subject to the usual rules of proportionality.

By definition Israeli soldiers' lives are placed at greater risk by restrictive rules of engagement intended to minimize civilian casualties. But commanders in the field must balance their concern for civilians with the preservation of their own men's lives and fighting effectiveness.

These realities aside, all Palestinian civilian casualties in this conflict result ultimately from Gaza terrorists' aggression against Israel, and Hamas's use of human shields – the most important plank of Hamas's war-fighting policy.

Storing and firing weapons within densely populated areas, compelling civilians to stay put when warned to leave, luring Israeli forces to attack and kill their own people, the Palestinian body count is vital to Hamas's propaganda war that aims to bring international pressure on Israel and incite anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic hatred around the world.

This sickening exploitation of their own people's suffering, and media's complicity in it, is nowhere more cynically demonstrated than in the operating theaters of the Gaza Strip. Without the slightest regard for life-saving hygiene, or for the care, privacy or dignity of the wounded, Palestinian officials enthusiastically hustle camera crews in to the emergency room as desperate surgeons battle for a bleeding and broken child's life.

Colonel Richard Kemp spent most his 30-year career in the British Army commanding front-line troops in fighting terrorism and insurgency in hotspots including Iraq, the Balkans, South Asia and Northern Ireland. He was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan in 2003. From 2002 - 2006 he heading the international terrorism team at the Joint Intelligence Committee of the British Prime Minister's Office.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4570/gaza-civilian-casualties

[Hei Guizi 21]

"Mission accomplished," the Israel Defense Forces said on Twitter. "We have dismantled the underground terror network built by Hamas to infiltrate and attack Israel." The military said 32 tunnels were destroyed in the four-week conflict.

Israel’s military has estimated that more than 10 percent of Hamas missile launches fell in the Gaza Strip.

The military has asserted that nearly 300 rockets fired by Hamas and its Palestinian militia allies landed in the Gaza Strip. In at least one case, a medium-range M-75, based on Iran’s Fajr-5 rocket, exploded during launch. The rocket contains a conventional warhead of at least 100 kilograms and at least seven Palestinians were killed.

A Hamas rocket is fired from the Gaza Strip. /AP

“Over the course of the operation approximately 280 rockets were launched and landed within the Gaza Strip,” the military said on July 30.

“We believe that some 70 percent of their rocket arsenal has been depleted and now they are firing from the bottom of the heap,” a source said.

[Ryan H 3,818]

***Posts containing personal attacks and inappropriate comments removed along with posts quoting. Posts minus the inappropriate content returned below.***

(Inappropriate content removed - VJ Moderation) throwing people off of their property, then building houses on their property, then locking them behind walls and fences, then cutting off their access to basic needs, then randomly entering their communities, then shooting them when they throw rocks at you because you are in their communities, then jailing them with no trial, then indiscriminately shooting and bombing them for finally fighting back somehow in some twisted way defines "self-defense".

Get this: Rockets fired from these communities are closer to self-defense than randomly bombing the women and children who live there and have no place to go.

(Inappropriate content removed - VJ Moderation). So much misinformation....

There is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of Israel going after Hamas.

No reason to be ashamed of Israeli soldiers finding a mentally ill boy chained to a wall in an abandoned house in Khan Younis, releasing him from the chains, giving him food and medical assistance and then transferred him to the Red Crescent for further treatment

Nothing to be ashamed of with Israeli soldiers helping old and disabled Palestinian women, or setting up a field hospital which of course Hamas prevents Gazans from going to.

Nothing to be ashamed of with killing 900 terrorists.

So while you keep repeating the same old false claims, Israel will keep doing everything it needs to do to survive, in a much moral manner than any other country would do it in place of it.

Certainly not to those "indoctrinated from the age of three in the spirit of Jewish victimhood and superiority" (thank you kindly though for feeding us regular doses of THAT sick schict)

(Inappropriate content removed - VJ Moderation)

No more than a blood libel, I bet you also believe the jews make matzoh using christian boys' blood. Ridiculous.

Funny thing is, I bet I have more Palestinian and Arab friends than all of the so called Palestinian supporters on this forum. So called, because when push comes to shove, they are for Hamas, not for the Palestinians, and Hamas is equally as bad for the Palestinians as it is to Israel.

Keep up the good work. You are a voice of reason to counter the sea of anti-Semitic propaganda passed off as "facts" so beloved by the media and many on this site.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Ryan H

[Póg mo 1,749]

Colonel Richard Kemp spent most his 30-year career in the British Army commanding front-line troops in fighting terrorism and insurgency in hotspots including Iraq, the Balkans, South Asia and Northern Ireland. He was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan in 2003. From 2002 - 2006 he heading the international terrorism team at the Joint Intelligence Committee of the British Prime Minister's Office.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4570/gaza-civilian-casualties

Nice, you smirk at my articles, yet have no problem posting stuff from an institution chaired by none other than John R. Bolton. He is not exactly impartial what one would call impartial when it comes to supporting Israel. Edited August 5, 2014 by InKorea

[Póg mo 1,749]

From Wikipedia:

The Gatestone Institute, formerly Stonegate Institute and Hudson New York, is a think tank based in New York City.[2][3][4] The organization is chaired by John R. Bolton, former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, from 2005 to 2006, and Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, from 2001 to 2005.[5]

It was formerly Stonegate Institute, and was devolved from the Hudson Institute, New York.[2][6] It identifies itself as a nonpartisan, not-for-profit international policy council and think tank for international and domestic policy, based in New York City.[7][8] It was founded in 2012 by Nina Rosenwald, who serves as its president.[9][10] Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton is its chairman.[11][12][13][14] In The Nation, journalist Max Blumenthal reported it began as a branch of the Washington D.C. Hudson Institute, and was known as "Hudson New York City".[15][16]

Gatestone publicizes the writings of authors as diverse as Alan Dershowitz, Robert Spencer, Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, and Harold Rhode.[15] It is described by some media as an internationally known American think-tank, specialized on strategy and defense questions. [17]

Sorry, but there is no way hell that an institution chaired by John R.Bolton is non partisan.

Wasn't Harold Rhode under investigation for sharing classified secrets with Israel?

Robert Spencer famous for being impartial:-)

Edited August 5, 2014 by InKorea

[OriZ 3,157]

Again, lets completely skip the fact that Richard Kemp is the one who wrote this. You guys are so funny.

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

So what you are saying then is not only that Hamas are to blame for what is Israel is doing in Gaza, but that Palestinian civilians actually deserve to die. At best, you seem to be suggesting that they don't deserve any sympathy.

These days calling someone an extremist on VJ is seen as a TOS violation - but when you've proven that yourself nothing more needs to be said.

Seriously amazing.

Its cute when you pretend not to understand..

Its not about what has happened but who is responsible.. Look if the Untied States and Russia went to war and agreed that a red cross represented a medical location and was not to be bombed - then the united states put up a big tent with a big red cross on top and then used the location to develop new weapons.. The Russians find out and at that point no longer respect the red cross and start bombing away.. Now we can show bombed out red cross medical centers that the Russians have clearly bombed and caused all sort of carnage.

Who's fault is it?? Your logic says its the Russians fault for bombing where they new there was a red cross and likely medical facilities. Its not.. The US decided to use the red cross for an advantage and forfeited their right to complain about the subsequent bombing - the fault would belong to the US.

The same is true of Hamas - They chose to put rockets in UN sponsored schools, they chose to put tunnels just outside hospitals. They chose that route they get the blame - Hate all you want but direct it to those that caused it: HAMAS. They made the conscious decision to bring civilians in it to bring simple minded people around to their side - You may think different - you are wrong.

[Póg mo 1,749]

Again, lets completely skip the fact that Richard Kemp is the one who wrote this. You guys are so funny.

Sure, Richard Kemp is sooo independent. :-D

[Póg mo 1,749]

Hes the former British army officer whos the toast of pro-Israel propaganda groups around the world. One of them has termed him the voice of reason for defending Israeli conduct in war.

But recent reports suggest former Colonel Richard Kemp is also a religious fundamentalist motivated in his ideological support for Israel by a hard-line Christian Zionism.

In July, Kemp spoke at the Christians United For Israel annual summit in Washington, DC. A report on one right-wing site said he had delivered an impassioned defense of Israel that brought many in the room to tears.

Kemp began by revealing his own Christian faith, claimed the report on Frontpage Mag (the site is run by David Horowitz, a key figure in Americas Islamophobia industry).

Speaking to the dead

Kemp also reportedly told his Christians United For Israel (CUFI) audience that he had communicated with the dead. According to the Frontpage Mag report, he had that morning, spoken to Orde Wingate I spoke to him this morning at Arlington [military cemetery].

The late British officer infamously led the Special Night Squad, a militia used to crush Palestinian rebels who fought against the British occupation in the 1930s. According to one history of the British occupation of Palestine, Wingate had a passionate pro-Zionism born of the religious tenets he had absorbed as a member of the Plymouth Brethren a conservative Evangelical denomination.

The squad was mostly populated by Zionists with the British knowing that they were simultaneously members of Haganah, the militia which would in 1948 play the leading roll in ethnically cleansing 750,000 Palestinians. At the same time, Arabs caught with arms were routinely prosecuted, and some hanged while Haganah training and arming had been winked at (A. J. Sherman, Mandate Days, John Hopkins University Press: 1997, pp. 121, 151).

Kemp reportedly told his audience Wingate was the greatest Christian Zionist in Britain.

Kemp posted an earnest-looking photo on Twitter of himself posing at Wingates graveside a few days after his CUFI appearance (seen at the top of this article).

When The Electronic Intifada contributor Ben White took to Twitter to point out this strange incident, Kemp replied that he had got more sense out of him than Ive got out of many living Maj[or] Gen[eral]s and that Wingate sent his regards."

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Its cute when you pretend not to understand..

Its not about what has happened but who is responsible.. Look if the Untied States and Russia went to war and agreed that a red cross represented a medical location and was not to be bombed - then the united states put up a big tent with a big red cross on top and then used the location to develop new weapons.. The Russians find out and at that point no longer respect the red cross and start bombing away.. Now we can show bombed out red cross medical centers that the Russians have clearly bombed and caused all sort of carnage.

Who's fault is it?? Your logic says its the Russians fault for bombing where they new there was a red cross and likely medical facilities. Its not.. The US decided to use the red cross for an advantage and forfeited their right to complain about the subsequent bombing - the fault would belong to the US.

The same is true of Hamas - They chose to put rockets in UN sponsored schools, they chose to put tunnels just outside hospitals. They chose that route they get the blame - Hate all you want but direct it to those that caused it: HAMAS. They made the conscious decision to bring civilians in it to bring simple minded people around to their side - You may think different - you are wrong.

Cute eh? Whatever.

I am only interested in the humanitarian angle, the deaths of civilians and the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure. By taking a side you are simply politicising the narrative and you are no more informed on what is going on than anyone else.

You seem to think it appropriate to allow extremists to dictate the debate. And you don't even live in Israel.

The only solution to this is to get people around the negotiating table to try to find a permanent solution.

I think you need to get over yourself and stop trying to find justifications for unjustifiable things.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Hail Ming!