***Israel initiates genocidal ground war into Gaza: 1,300 killed > 6,000 wounded

[Triadtropz]

I saw the israeli defense minister on the news..he says they will fight til hamas is no more,...he hinted this was just the start..

[Biggs]

e.g.look at the size of these explosions compared to the size of several story buildings, you just cannot drop bombs that big in built up areas, they have plenty fo Hellfire and similar smaller bombs they can use, it is no risk for them to fire 10 hellfires at a target, but no they woudl rather drop 1 or 2 tonne bombs and kills lots of civilians

[Biggs]

this is what a slaughter looks like

[Biggs]

Palestinian stone-throwers, protesting the Israeli air strikes in Gaza, take cover from a stun grenade fired by Israeli border police officers in the village of Issawiya in Arab East Jerusalem

[Biggs]

Palestinian youths throw stones towards Israeli border police officers in the village of Issawiya in Arab East Jerusalem in protest of the Israeli air strikes in Gaza December 27, 2008. Israeli warplanes and helicopters pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 205 people in the bloodiest one-day death toll in 60 years of conflict with the Palestinians.

[Pheonix Renewed]

I saw the israeli defense minister on the news..he says they will fight til hamas is no more,...he hinted this was just the start..

Yes, and he really looks his part... he looks very, very evil.

[Biggs]

Israel spreading  hate - large pro-palestinian protests in Turkey, Lebanaon, West Bank, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Egypt

Protesters shout anti-Israel and anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration against Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip in Amman Jordan

[Biggs]

I am seeing rumours of fresh Israeli strikes tonight (2am Palestine time), including perhaps a hospital, but this is totally unconfirmed at the moment

[deconstructmyhouse]

bethanne quote:

but I know in my heart of hearts it will not happen until our Lord returns. This is Know deeply. And when He does, finally....finally, the evil in this world that kills and tortures innocents will be dealt with once and for all.

no, your Lord did not make this mess and will not appear and save us.
That's not what good parents do when children screw up.  Please don't wait for that to happen.  What a cop out.

This mess in Gaza is a mindboggling consequence of human misunderstanding, misconduct, thoughtless violence, raw evil, and greed, overlaid with impossible complexities of historical genocide of the Holocaust tempered with the eternal longing for the right to ancestral homelands all twisted and turned up to a fever pitch by death cult illuminati f*cks.   It is not a mess any God made, it is uniquely human; it is up to humans to deal with it.  If I hear one more "I hope the rapture comes and gets us outta this mess" I'm gonna blow Christmas cookies all over my screen.

We each have our mini Gaza's in our own lives to deal with: treat your families and neighbors well. Put love and respect into every word, deed and thought.

It all telescopes out. all of it.
So what can I do about the horrors taking place right now?
I can write about it, talk about it, read about it, then go see that old lady up the street who lives alone with her cat who nobody likes because her house stinks and she's a million years old.  She spent christmas alone, and I feel almost as badly about that as I do what's happening in Gaza, but the difference is I can do something about it.  

[Biggs]

Ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza; 225 killed over 700 wounded, Israel prepares for further attacks
Saed Bannoura - IMEM

www.uruknet.info?p=49955

Link: www.imemc.org/article/58173

December 27, 2008



As instructed by its political leadership, the Israeli army continued its military offensive against the Gaza Strip and shelled further targets raising the number of deaths among the residents to 225, and at least 700 residents were wounded, dozens seriously.

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera News Satellite news Agency said that the simultaneous and ongoing Israeli strikes also targeted a mosque, the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees, and dozens of civilian homes and facilities.

At least 40 security centers were simultaneously hit; some centers were repeatedly hit which increased the number of casualties as the residents and medics rushed to evacuate the wounded and the casualties before the Israeli force struck the same targets again

AL Shifa hospital in Gaza, the main hospital in central Gaza, is overloaded with killed and wounded residents.

Dr. Hasan Khalaf, head of the hospital, said that the hospital had to use some ordinary rooms as primitive intensive care units due to the large number of injuries.

Dr. Khalaf added that dozens of families were hit, members of the same family killed and wounded after the army shelled their homes.

Dozens of children were also wounded as the shelling was carried out as school children were heading back home from school.

In the west Bank thousands of residents marched in the streets calling for unity and demanding Arab countries to interfere and calling for ending talks with Israel.

President Mahmoud Abbas contacted several Arab leaders asking them to intervene immediately and stop the Israeli assaults.

Also in the West Bank, the army violently attacked hundreds of protesters in villages and towns in east Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron and several other Palestinian areas.

Arab leaders and Arab residents of Israel also took off to the streets protesting against the ongoing Israeli offensives in the Gaza Strip.

Arab member of Knesset, Jamal Zahalka, participated in a protest in Nazareth and called for indicting the Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, for war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Mohammad Nazzal, one of Hamas political leaders in Damascus, said that Hamas and all resistance factions are ready to defend the residents of the Gaza Strip, and added that the Israeli crimes in Gaza require a massive response from the resistance in retaliation to the "massacres in Gaza".

Nazzal demanded Arab countries not only to slam the Israeli offensive, but to act on the ground by cutting their relations with Israel, by breaking the Israeli siege and opening the Rafah Border terminal.

He also demanded the Arab countries and leaders to practice pressure on the international community to stop the Israeli offensive.

In Ramallah, Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr, Hanan Ashrawi, said that Europe and the United States are supporting Israel as Europe is upgrading its relations with Israel which is encouraging it to carry further attacks against the Palestinians while the US is sending more financial and military support to Israel.

Ashrawi added that Arab leaders must be decisive in their response to the Israeli offensive and must act to stop these attacks. In Bethlehem, Dr. Victor Batarsa, mayor of the city, said that the municipality decided to cancel all Christmas celebrations and to remove Christmas tree from the manger square in addition to removing Christmas lights and decorations.

Thousands of Palestinian refugees in Jordan along with Jordanian nationals took off to the street protesting against the Israeli attacks in Gaza and called on Jordan to cut its diplomatic ties with Israel.

Massive protests were also reported in Egypt as the protesters calls for a response to the Israeli offensive and crimes against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Protests were also reported in refugee camps in Lebanon calling for unity among the Palestinian factions and demanding Arab unity in order to counter the Israeli crimes.

They also called on all resistance factions to step-up their retaliation against the Israeli offensive and to strike back in the occupied territories and in Israel.

[deconstructmyhouse]

Sounds too horrific: The policy of restraint is over??


Dec 27, 2008 16:10 | Updated Dec 27, 2008 19:50
Analysis: The policy of restraint is over
By DAVID HOROVITZ
 
 

The Israeli air strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza on Saturday, hugely dramatic in their scope, nonetheless mark only the beginning of an ongoing, potentially lengthy operation aimed at restoring calm to the South, rather than a one-off response to the escalated Kassam rocket fire. The policy of restraint, officials say, is over.

For months, Israel has been refining its intelligence information on the key physical locations that are crucial to the rule of Hamas in the terror state that the Gaza Strip has become since the Islamist group seized power there in June 2007.

And rather than seeking to target the fast-moving offshoots of that terrorist rule - the Kassam crews that set themselves up in residential Gaza neighborhoods, fire into Israeli residential areas and then quickly melt away - Israel has elected to fire into the heart of the terror beast.

Defense Ministry officials, from Ehud Barak on down, were Saturday preparing the Israeli public for what they said was likely to be a difficult period ahead.

Hamas is threatening a further escalation in rocket fire - with missiles reaching to Beersheba - and the mobilization of a new wave of suicide bombers.

The international fallout, even amid the relative inattention of the Christmas-New Year period, began remarkably quickly, with a chorus of calls for Israeli restraint, including predictable fury in the Arab world and a vehement protest from France at Israel's ostensibly disproportionate response.

Amid the military preparations, it will quickly become clear whether Israel has made parallel diplomatic preparations, with articulate officials prepped and ready to highlight to the watching world how untenable has been the situation of Hamastan firing into Israel for eight years, with interim lulls to rearm, and no cessation even after Israel pulled all its civilians and all military infrastructure out of Gaza in 2005.

The word from the defense establishment on Saturday afternoon was that some 60 planes had participated in the strikes at dozens of Hamas military and logistical targets. Preparations were in place for an intensification of military action, with the potential use of ground forces, officials said. No call up of reserves was under way but, again, the preparations were in place should it be deemed necessary.

Naturally, the effort launched Saturday to defang a rocket-firing, Iranian-backed terror army across a hostile border invites immediate comparison with the bid to destroy Hizbullah's terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon two and a half years ago.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert relentlessly insisted that he was the man best placed to learn the lessons of that indecisive and ultimately unsuccessful resort to force - a war mis-stewarded by an inexperienced prime minister, a defense minister, Amir Peretz, who was entirely unqualified for the job, and a chief of staff, Dan Halutz, who placed exaggerated confidence in the air force's capacity for destroying carefully protected underground infrastructure and a highly mobile Hizbullah fighting force.

We are now going to find out whether those lessons from 2006 - on military preparation, on the need for effective military-political coordination, on operating in an immensely complex regional and global context, and on setting realistic goals for the use of military force - were indeed well learned.

[deconstructmyhouse]

Left-wing activists protest Gaza op as 'genocide'

Around 300 left-wing activists gather on Defense Ministry lawn to protest offensive against Hamas during Olmert's speech; five arrested after clashing with police

Sharon Navot
Published:    12.27.08, 22:00 / Israel News

While Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for the unity of the citizens of Israel and their support for the operation in Gaza, hundreds of left-wing activists gathered on the Defense Ministry's lawn to protest the deaths of over 200 Palestinians. 

 

Five of the protestors were arrested for rioting after they damaged the security fence and clashed with police forces on the scene.


Protestors clash with police (Photo: Dudu Azulay)

 
Around 300 activists took part in the protest, in order to condemn what they called Israel's "genocide and war crimes". The demonstrators marched through the streets of Tel Aviv until they reached the ministry's headquarters.

 
Many cried slogans such as "No to war – yes to peace", and carried signs saying "Israel's government is committing war crimes", "Negotiation instead of slaughter", and "Lift the siege from Gaza".

 
During his speech the prime minister noted that Israel did everything in order to enable the lull in the south to go on.
 
      

“The desire for calm was met with terror,” he said. “No country would reconcile itself to such reality. In recent days it turned out that Hamas was interested in a confrontation. Under such circumstances, we had no choice but to respond.”

 

He added that “the operation is meant to improve the security reality of southern residents in a thorough manner.”

[deconstructmyhouse]

Shock treatment in Gaza
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3645007,00.html

IDF achieves tactical surprise as Israel tries to change rules of game in Gaza Strip

Published:    12.27.08, 15:42 / Israel Opinion

What started in Gaza Saturday morning is apparently a limited move aimed at securing a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on terms that are favorable to Israel. These terms include the following: An end to mortar and rocket attacks; an end to terror attacks across the Gaza fence; serious negotiations on the release of Gilad Shalit; and an end to Hamas’ military buildup.

 
The means for securing the above objectives is shock treatment – literally. This way, Hamas will no longer be initiating and setting the
   Advertisement   
      
pace of developments, while Israel takes the initiative and makes it clear to Hamas that it would respond “disproportionally” every time western Negev residents are hurt. At this time, we are not talking about an attempt to topple Hamas’ regime in Gaza, but rather, the formulation of new rules of the game – and an effort to prompt Hamas to accept a new ceasefire agreement.

 
Despite estimates on the Palestinian side that an Israeli operation was forthcoming, the IDF nonetheless managed to secure a tactical surprise in respect to the operation’s timing. Now it is clear what Chief of Staff Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Barak were talking about when they spoke about waiting for an “operational opportunity.” We should also make note of the diversions and acts of deception undertaken in recent days, such as the transfer of goods through the Gaza crossings Friday.

 
Despite reports about the possibility that senior Hamas figures were hurt in the initial strike, Israel’s objective, for the time being, is not to topple the Hamas regime. Such move would require a lengthy stay of large forces in the Gaza Strip, and it is unclear whether this can be maintained over time. The move that started Saturday will comprise a series of operations, until Hamas announces its willingness to accept a long-term ceasefire on conditions acceptable to Israel.

 
Revenge attacks abroad feared

In fact, the move we see right now got underway early last week already, when Israel embarked on a political and diplomatic campaign aimed at creating a convenient international backdrop for IDF operations, and particularly aimed at ensuring that the international community does not stop Israel before it achieves its goals.

 
This international campaign comprised several steps, including Prime Minister Olmert’s visit to Turkey, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s meeting with President Mubarak in Cairo, and the interviews granted by President Peres to several Western and Arab media outlets. Now we can only hope that Israel would not need to utilize all the operational options it prepared for the limited move – thereby sparing some suffering to the Palestinians in Gaza and to residents of southern Israel.

 
It is certainly reasonable to assume that Hamas and the organizations operating under its auspices will now attempt to turn the lives of southern Israel residents into hell, both due to a desire for revenge as well as an attempt to create a strategic equation, as the Hizbullah did at the end of the Second Lebanon War. Technically, Palestinian organizations in Gaza are capable of launching more than 100 rockets a day. This is of course a theoretical pace, which also depends on the actions undertaken by the IDF.

 
On a wider front, we can assume that Hamas will attempt to dispatch members of the group and of Islamic Jihad to carry out suicide attacks in Israel at any price, with bombers originating in the West Bank and attempting to enter Israel or target settlements. The even wider circle could be an attempt to hit Israeli targets in Islamic countries as well as in countries in South America, Africa, and Asia where the regimes are weak.

 
We can draw this conclusion from past experience in the 1980s, when the Air Force bombed a Hizbullah training camp in Lebanon. Hizbullah’s response came in the form of revenge attacks, including some abroad. We can also expect riots among Arab-Israelis as well as protests against Egypt in the Arab and Muslim world.

 
However, a determined stance by the Israeli government, the Israeli public, and our friends in the international community are supposed to enable the IDF to secure the operation’s objectives.

[voodo0]

Israel resumes airstrikes on the Gaza Strip

 GAZA, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Israeli F16 warplanes hovered on Saturday night on the Gaza Strip and hit targets belong to Islamic Hamas movement as well as makeshift rockets workshops and roads, witnesses and security sources said.

    The witnesses said that Israeli F16 warplanes destroyed the main road of Sallah el-Dein in northern Gaza Strip that leads to the towns of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia, adding that the roads were destroyed and no injuries were reported.

    Security sources of Hamas in Gaza said that an Israeli air-to-ground rocket destroyed a metal workshop in northern Gaza City, which Israel says to be used in manufacturing homemade rockets fired at Israel.

    The sources also said that Israeli warplanes bombarded al-Noor social organization in Gaza City that belongs to Hamas movement, adding that severe destruction was caused to the building.

    The residents of Gaza City said they still hear the buzzes of helicopters and F16 warplanes hovering over the city, and also hearing several explosions due to airstriking different targets in the Gaza Strip.

    Israel began a military operation called "the poured lead" on the Gaza Strip in response to homemade rockets attacks carried out by Hamas and other factions' militants on southern Israeli towns and cities in the vicinity of the enclave.

    The operation began by carrying out intensive airstrikes on Hamas police installations allover the Gaza Strip, killing and wounding hundreds of Palestinians. Most of them were Hamas police officers.

    Mo'aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian health ministry said death toll in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Israeli airstrikes has hit to 225killed and around 750 wounded.

    Israel said that the intensive airstrike was the first stage of a large-scale military operation against the Hamas movement that has been ruling the Gaza Strip after it routed President Mahmoud Abbas security forces last year.

    Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, said in a statement that the Islamic movement "will not surrender," adding that "the Palestinian people and Hamas movement "would keep their resistance against the Zionist enemy."

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/28/content_10568951.htm

[chris jones]

I get the feeling you have never met a good pastor in your life.

I have to get into this now. yes friend, I have met some good one, marching after the war in Washington DC, but very few, and they were ostrasized for their stand.

You admit to being a Chrisitan, thats fine, tell me, did Christ teach genocide, or was he against it. I won't ramble on this don't worry. Are the pecemakers something special to the master. OK, get my point i'm sure, your very intelligent.

Where are our pastors who preach the word, i don't see them lining up at the halls of congress or the WH speaking out agasint genocide, Illegal invasions, lost freedoms, very few actualy. Is this what they preach behind the pulpit, Gods word allows this. Send cookies and a letter to our troopers and all is well.

No my friend, many pastors are hypocrits, they keep their flock entangled in the churches, far from the truth of this regimes crimes, and you know that I'm sure.

How many do you know took a stand for the teachings of Christ against this evil plague that envelops this nation.  Let us get real, how many???

Or do they pamper their flock with hyms and paryers to support our troops, and pary for the 896,000 dead Iraqis, mostly civilians. Are they in fear to  that if they tell the truth to their flock they may loose parishoners, or the Gov. will get on them, whats the deal here. You tell me, you appear to have the answer.

You are Christian, where are the leaders, do they want to stop this insanity, do they preach agsint this abomination, you tell me. What would Christ have to say.
Are we here to sing hyms, or are we here to prove we have faith, beleive in truth, that we will stand up to evil.

Friend, Billy Graham was a sold out, a fake, those who admired him and his act were not aware of the obvious. Did this man stand with presidents during the Vietanam war and tell his followers to support the troops, YES, why did he not turn on the politicians and tell them the truth, the war was a genocide for profit, and beleive me he knew it. Yes, why did he not say support the troops and bring them home, stop the insanity.

I assume being a historian you have read this. My first month in Nam. I was present when this prayer was written by an avid Christian, our battalion commander. Collonel Patton. ( to add each day his chaplains would also say similar prayers)
***************************************************************
God, our Heavenly Father, hear our prayer. We acknowledge our shortcomings and ask thy help in being better soldiers for thee. Grant us, O Lord, those things we need to do they work more effectively. Give us this day a gun that will fire ten thousands rounds a second, a napalm that will burn for a week. Help us to bring death and destruction wherever we go, for we do it in thy name and therefore it is meet and just. We thank thee for this war, fully mindful that, while it is not the best of all wars, it is better than no war at all. We remember that Christ said "I come not to send peace, but a sword," and we pledge ourselves in all our works to be like Him. Forget not the least of thy children as they hide from us in the jungles; bring them under our merciful hand that we may end their suffering. In all things, O God, assit us, for we do our noble work in the knowledge that only with they help can we avoid the catastrophe of peace that threatens us ever. All of which we ask in the name of thy son, George Patton. Amen.
There were some high-ranking people there, including General Creighton Abrams, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. There were also a lot of journalists. One of them ask Patton if that was the official unit prayer.
Dr. Gordon Livingston was arrested and an investigation was launched to see if he was a candidate for court-martial. They decided against it. It would have been inconvenient to try a West Point graduate who could testify firsthand about war crimes. So they sent him home as "an embarrassment to the command." He subsequently resigned from the army and worked with many others to end the war. They were not immediately successful. It took four years and 25,000 addtional American deaths before the last U.S. soldiers finally lelt.

It appears to me that Chrisianty in many areas have forgotten the true message and have been using this religion for their own gain.

We did every so often gt letters from the churches, and one time we recived cookies.

You tell me what is hypocracy, its evident you will not admitt to my ramblings.

No offense, just truth.

[Pheonix Renewed]

During his speech the prime minister noted that Israel did everything in order to enable the lull in the south to go on.

Everything, that is, except stop starving people...       

“The desire for calm was met with terror,” he said. “No country would reconcile itself to such reality. In recent days it turned out that Hamas was interested in a confrontation. Under such circumstances, we had no choice but to respond.”

 

He added that “the operation is meant to improve the security reality of southern residents in a thorough manner.”

Translation: If those stupid Palestinians would just shut up and die already, our people could move in there unimpeded! Damn it, WHY WON'T THEY JUST SHUT UP AND DIE ALREADY??

[Doctor No NWO]

At least 205 killed in Israeli air raids
Sunday, December 28, 2008 » 05:34am
Live News:  
 
At least 205 Palestinians have been killed after Israeli aircrafts launched air strikes inside the Gaza Strip.


Israel hammered Hamas targets in Gaza, killing at least 205 people in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire in one of the bloodiest days of the decades-long Middle East conflict.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said 'Operation Cast Lead', which has also left about 300 wounded, would continue 'as long as necessary'.

'The battle will be long and difficult, but the time has come to act and to fight,' he said.

Following the mid-morning wave of attacks, in which about 60 aircraft bombed the impoverished, overcrowded territory, Hamas swiftly responded by firing several dozen rockets into the Jewish state, killing one Israeli.

The Islamist movement, which seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas last year, warned Israelis living near Gaza to 'prepare the funeral shrouds'.

Air strikes continued sporadically throughout the day and into the evening, with no immediate reports of casualties.

The Palestinian leadership slammed the 'massacre', and the European Union, Russia, Britain and France urged both sides to stop fighting.

The United States said Israel should avoid civilian casualties, while the Arab League and several Middle Eastern states slammed Israel for the strikes.

In Gaza, thick clouds of smoke billowed into the sky. Mangled, bloodied and often charred corpses littered the pavement around Hamas security compounds, and frantic relatives flooded hospitals.

Ambulances and private cars rushed the wounded and dead to Al-Shifa hospital, where staff used sheets as makeshift stretchers for some.

There was no space left in the morgue and bodies were piled up in the emergency room and in the corridors, as many of the wounded screamed in pain.

'My brother was still alive when he arrived here and was talking to me, but no one could help him. He died,' said Ahmed al-Gharabli, his voice shaking and tears streaming down his cheeks. His brother Baha was a policeman.

Medics said civilians had been hit, but the majority of the victims appeared to be members of Hamas, branded a terror group by Israel and the West.

At least 205 Palestinians were killed and about 300 others wounded, said Dr Moawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.

The bombardment, which marked one of the bloodiest single days in the 60-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict, came after days of spiralling violence, with militants firing rockets and Israel vowing a fiery response.

Abbas told AFP from Saudi Arabia that he was in 'urgent contact' with numerous countries to stop 'the cowardly aggressions and massacres in the Gaza Strip'.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who brokered a six-month Israeli-Hamas truce that expired on December 19, slammed the 'Israeli military aggression' on the Gaza Strip and blamed Israel, as an occupying force, for the victims and the wounded.

He ordered the Rafah crossing, the only one that bypasses Israel, to be opened to allow the evacuation of the wounded, dozens of whom had passed through by mid-afternoon, state news agency Mena reported.

Hamas militants warned Israelis living near the border to 'prepare the funeral shrouds', vowing that the Islamists' response was 'on its way'.

One rocket hit the southern Israeli town of Netivot, killing a man and wounding four other people, Israeli medics said.

The air strikes come less than two months ahead of Israeli elections on February 10.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the head of the governing Kadima party and one of the front-runners for the premier's chair, said that 'today there is no other option than a military operation'.

'We need to protect our citizens from attack through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza.'

[Dig]

Has gambler Israel overplayed its hand?
http://www.blatherskite.com/index.php/2008/12/has-gambler-israel-overplayed-its-hand-air-attacks-gaza-strip-200-killed-hamas-united-states-barack-obama-egypt-syria/
Posted on December 27, 2008 in Politics

Israel today bombed Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, killing over 200 people and wounding many more. Many observers expect ground forces to follow in a limited invasion shortly.

Once again Israel has timed its actions precisely; ahead of domestic elections and timed to coincide with the transition of the US presidency from George Bush to Barack Obama on January 20. As ever it will be gambling that it can gain what it wants before the US, western nations and the likes of China and Russia respond to Arab outrage and opinion in their own countries (outside the US anyway) that the Israeli action must cease.

Israel took a similar gamble in its recent invasion of Lebanon and that backfired disastrously, Hamas there fought back and the Israelis were forced to withdraw in a de facto defeat.

Already there are the usual noises; the UN secretariat has condemned the assault, the US and Britain have said, steady on chaps but it’s still the fault of Hamas for firing a few rockets (disregarding the year-long wholly illegal Israeli siege of Gaza) while the Israelis maintain that they are protecting their borders and themselves (although Gaza isn’t Israeli territory, even by the most elastic Israeli definition).

As ever the key player will the United States.

Israel is wholly dependent on US money and weaponry. In the Yom Kippur War in the 1970s it very nearly lost to Egypt and Syria when the US was initially reluctant to bail it out as Israel had refused to retreat to the its original borders following the Six Days War in 1967.

Since then the US has supported anything and everything that Israel has done, seeing it as a buttress against hostile middle eastern nations and a possible launching pad for action against Iran.

Even the Republicans, who had previously devoted their time to keeping Jewish people out of their smart golf clubs, became fully signed-up supporters of the fantastically powerful US Jewish lobby, previously the territory of the Democrats.

So unless this is all done and dusted in a couple of weeks, highly unlikely in the Middle East, Barack Obama will have yet another nightmare to deal with. He can hardly, with a name like his, turn round and tell the Israelis where to get off.

Which is exactly what the Israelis are banking on.

But Israel is no longer the plucky, amazingly liberal and courageous outpost on the Mediterranean that, rightly or wrongly, was ceded to persecuted Jews in the aftermath of the Second World War (the original, typically ambiguous, Balfour declaration from the British government offering Jewish people a Palestinian homeland was in 1917).

It’s now increasingly behaving like a flat track bully towards its neighbours.

And the country is increasingly dominated by right-wing extremists, many of the most eloquent from New York.

So we look as though we have yet another full-on Middle Eastern crisis on our hands as we go into 2009.

[Biggs]

a moving poem about the plight of Palestinians, written by Nahida  - ICH'ers may know her, here is her website -

http://poetryforpalestine.spaces.live.com/

Look at me

I would love to write poetry about love,
Paint rainbows and butterflies,
Smell the scent of rose buds,
And dance;
Dance with the melody of birds singing

I would love to close my eyes and see children smiling
No guns pointing at their heads
Tell them stories of little fairies in far away lands
Not bullets shooting... missile exploding

But
How can I?

There is a knife in my heart

I am hurting
Hurting
I bleed,
I cringe
I cry

HUMANITY, WHERE ARE YOU?

I am being slaughtered
Under your watchful eyes
I am cold… cold…. cold
I cringe
I cry

Humanity, where are you?
Why do you turn your face away?
Why do you keep looking the other way?

I am here
Languishing
In Gaza alleyways

Humanity, where are you?
Look at me
Look at me
I am here
In Gaza alleyways
I cringe
I cry

Humanity,
Enough turning the other way

[Biggs]

also some rumours of a missile hitting a mosque in Gaza in this evening's latest attacks, again no verification as yet

[Biggs]

The rains of death in Gaza
Laila El-Haddad

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m49959&hd=&size=1&l=e


December 27, 2008


We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. It seems we always wake up to news there- so its become a matter of perspective how bad the news is each time; how remote it seems each time; how real or not; how severe-and whether the severity warrants an "international outcry" or whether the animals can continue to fester in their cages for a while longer.

We received a call from my in-laws in Lebanon at an early hour, checking in on my family in Gaza, since they cannot call them directly. We call my parents. My father does not answer. We call his mobile- we reach him. He has just returned from Shifa hospital- we hold our breaths.

"We are OK. We went to donate blood and to see if they needed any help" says my father, a retired surgeon.

"I was out in the souk when the strikes began- I saw the missiles falling and prayed; the earth shook; the smoke rose; the ambulances screamed" he said, the sirens audible in the background. he was on talateeni street at the time of the attacks, just a few streets down from one of the attack sites.

My mother was in the Red Crescent Society clinic near the universities at the time of the initial wave of attacks, where she works part-time as a pediatrician. Behind the clinic was one of the police centers that was leveled. She said she broke down at first, the sheer proximity of the attacks having shaken her from the inside out. After she got a hold of herself, they took to treating injured victims of the attack, before they transferred them to Shifa hospital.

There, she said, medical supplies were in short supply: face masks, surgical gloves, gowns...

My parents live in the the city center, and the Israeli war planes attacked people and locations all around them. Over 50 "targets"by 60 warplanes, read the headlines in Haaretz. And over 220 killed- in broad daylight; in the after-school rush.

Like a movie tagline. Or a game. If you say it enough times, it does not sound real anymore: 50 targets, 60 warplanes, 200 people, 1 day.

All very sanitary. Very sleek. Neatly packaged: war in a gift-box.

"There is a funeral passing every minute. The bodies are piling up." Gaza's air is saturated with the smell of burning human flesh. There is panic, as one would imagine dogs would panic in an overcrowded cell when several of their own are violently, abruptly killed. But dead dogs-in a cage, no less, would create an outcry.

The rains of death continue to fall in Gaza. And silently, we watch. and silently, governments plotted: how shall we make the thunder and clouds rain death onto Gaza? Egypt; the United States; Israel...

And it will all seem, in the end of the day, that they are somehow a response to something. As though the situation were not only acceptable- but normal, stable, in the period prior to whatever this is a response to. As though settlements did not continue to expand; walls did not continue to extend and choke lands and lives; families and friends were not dislocated; life was not paralyzed; people were not exterminated; borders were not sealed and food and light and fuel were in fair supply.

But it is the prisoners' burden to bear: they broke the conditions of their incarceration. They deviated. But nevertheless, there are concerns for the "humanitarian situation": as long as they do not starve, everything is ok. Replenish the wheat stocks immediately.

The warden improves the living conditions now and then, in varying degrees of relatively, but the prison doors remain sealed. And so when there are 20 hours of power outages in a row, the prisoners wish that they were only 8; or 10; and dream of the days of 4.

For more analysis, details, and calls to action, see Ali Abu Nimah's article here:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml

[sociostudent]

Whoa. This is getting kinda serious. They killed and wounded 1,000 people in one day and the front page of google news STILL HAS THE STUPID "SANTA SHOOTER" ON IT?

[jannerbob]

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m49952&hd=&size=1&l=e

Due to Israel's policy of denying access to international media, human rights defenders and aid agencies to the Occupied Gaza Strip, many of these Human Rights Defenders arrived in Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement's boats. FREE GAZA boats have broken Israel's siege of Gaza five times in the past four months.

"At the time of the attacks I was on Omar Mukhtar street and witnessed a last rocket hit the street 150 meters away where crowds had already gathered to try to extract the dead bodies. Ambulances, trucks, cars - anything that can move is bringing injured to the hospitals. Hospitals have had to evacuate sick patients to make room for the injured. I have been told that there is not enough room in the morgues for the bodies and that there is a great lack of blood in the blood banks. I have just learned that among the civilians killed today was the mother of my good friends in Jabalya camp."

- Eva Bartlett (Canada) International Solidarity Movement

"Israeli missles tore through a children's playground and busy market in Diere Balah, we saw the aftermath - many were injured and some reportedly killed. Every Hospital in the Gaza strip is already overwhelmed with injured people and does not have the medicine or the capacity to treat them. Israel is committing crimes against humanity, it is violating international and human rights law, ignoring the United Nations and planning even bigger attacks. The world must act now and intensify the calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; governments need to move beyond words of condemnation into an active and immediate restraint of Israel and a lifting of the siege of Gaza"

- Ewa Jasiewicz (Polish and British) Free Gaza Movement

"The morgue at the Shifa hospital has no more room for dead bodies, so bodies and body parts are strewn all over the hospital."

- Dr. Haidar Eid, (Palestinian, South African) Professor of Social and Cultural Studies, Al Aqsa University Gaza

"The bombs began to fall just as the children were on the streets walking back from school. I went out onto the stairs and a terrified 5 year old girl ran sobbing into my arms."

- Sharon Lock (Australian) International Solidarity Movement

"This is incredibly sad. This massacre is not going to bring security for the State of Israel or allow it to be part of the Middle East. Now calls of revenge are everywhere."

- Dr. Eyad Sarraj - President of the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre

"As I speak they have just hit a building 200 metres away. There is smoke everywhere. This morning I went to the building close to where I live in Rafah that had been hit. Two bulldozers were immediately attempting to clear the rubble. They thought they had found all the bodies. As we arrived one more was found."

- Jenny Linnel (British) International Solidarity Movement

"The home I am staying in is across from the preventive security compound. All the glass of the house shattered. The home has been severely damaged. Due to the siege there is no glass or building materials to repair this damage. One little boy in our house fainted. An eight year little boy was trembling on the ground for an hour. In front of our house we found the bodies of two little girls under a car, completely burnt. They were coming home from school. This is more than just collective punishment. We are being treated like laboratory animals. I have lived through the Israeli bombardment of Beirut and the Israel's message is the same in Gaza as it was in Beirut- The killing of civilians. There was just another explosion outside!"

- Natalie Abu Eid (Lebanon) International Solidarity Movement

[jannerbob]

The Continuing Horror of Palestine by Craig Murray,

The call by the US Presidential spokesman for Hamas to stop its rocket attacks on Israel, as Israel pours over 100 tonnes of high explosive into that cooped-up territory, illustrates perfectly the "Big lie" school of propaganda about Palestine to which the people of the United States have been subjected for the past sixty years.

Of course Hamas should stop the rocket attacks. But the Israeli response is wholly disproportionate. Only today did Hamas kill their first Israeli in the last twelve months. So far today Israel has killed 212 Palestinians, and counting.

I regard Hamas as an unpleasant aberration, but just the kind of aberration you will get when you steal the land of an entire population, and ethnically cleanse them into a ghetto so tight, poor and beleagured it is simpy a prison. What Israel has done to the Palestinians for decades, with strong US support, is as unconscionable as the crimes of Hitler and Stalin. It may not reach those tyrant's full scale, but there comes a level of evil where further scale is irrelevant. After what has been done, and is being done, to the Palestinians, did people seriously expect them to turn round and vote for Liberals?

The Israeli state is an appalling racist aberration. Israel's creation was, exactly like the growth of Hamas, an understandable but deeply regrettable phenomenon arising from a terrible evil done to a people, hijacked by a rampant religious extremism and its pre-existing plans. For cultural reasons, and in strong contrast to the religous extremism of Hamas, the religious extremism of Zionism found strong support in the West.

Zionism is complete bullshit. I have just as much right to claim the Celtic lake sites in Switzerland that were holy to my vague and supposed ancestors.

It is high time that thinking Europeans had the courage of their convictions and completely rejected the notion of the racist and mystic Israeli state. There can and should be no two state solution. What is needed is a single state, blind to ethnicity or religion, on the lands of Israel/Palestine. That is the only path that has any hope of leading to peace.

[voodo0]

 
Commander: Operation will 'send Gaza decades back'

By Uri Blau


In attacking Hamas' regime in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces will try to "send Gaza decades into the past" in terms of weapon capabilities while achieving "the maximum number of enemy casualties and keeping Israel Defense Forces casualties at a minimum," GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant said.

Major General Galant, one of the key figures in the Israeli operation that began yesterday in the Gaza Strip, said this during discussions before the move. Israel's aim in the operation will be to significantly damage Hamas' leadership, tactical capabilities and smuggling routes, he said.
   

Despite efforts to keep IDF casualties to a minimum, Galant said that once troops are actually sent after the enemy, "what will take precedence is the need to fulfill the mission." He added, "Under no circumstance can we accept a norm that leaves missions unmet."

As for Hamas' military presence in Gaza, Galant proposed treating it as a force tantamount to a fortified infantry division with anti-tank capabilities, deployed in defensive formations. The urban setting - Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated areas - "presents complexities and difficulties," he said.

This setting dictates that ground forces closely cooperate with the Air Force. "This will underline our military achievements and reinforce our legitimacy in continuing the IDF activities," he added.

Hamas' militant force is several thousand strong, according to the Southern Command leader. "The longer Israel waits, the more capabilities Hamas will accumulate and develop, allowing Hamas to reduce Israel's relative advantage over the organization," Galant said before the operation was launched.

He also said that should Israel "be forced to launch the operation" instead of launching it at a time of its convenience, then "this will cost the Israeli side dearly on the battlefield."

Galant said he is concerned that Hamas might acquire surface-to-sea ballistic capabilities, allowing it to target Israel Navy vessels, as when Hezbollah nearly sank the INS Hanit off Beirut's shores in the summer of 2006.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050434.html

[Rock]

http://www.cnn.com/



Why doesn't CNN show the same kind of pictures of Iraq citizens being killed - like it does the Palestinians on its front page ?  

Media is playing us.


Rock

[ellas95]

Hundreds killed in a series of bloody IOF air raids on Gaza
The IOF air raids mass execution of Gaza inhabitants

http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/Default.aspx




GAZA, (PIC)-- Hamas on Saturday charged that the Israeli occupation forces' carnage in the Gaza Strip was made with the green light of regional parties and constituted a mass execution of the Gaza people.

Barhoum, in a statement, pointed out that the raids came 24 hours after Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni's visit to Cairo where it met with the Egyptian president and senior officials then talked in a press conference about toppling Hamas's rule in Gaza.

He said that such a massacre was possible thanks to Arab silence, European collusion and American support for Israeli occupation.

"This bloody day was never witnessed before in the Gaza Strip", Barhoum underlined, adding that 150 martyrs fell in less than half an hour while 200 others were injured.

He finally asked the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, to strongly retaliate to the IOF aggression and to use all means available to defend the Palestinian people.

[jannerbob]

Commander: Operation will 'send Gaza decades back'

By Uri Blau


In attacking Hamas' regime in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces will try to "send Gaza decades into the past" in terms of weapon capabilities while achieving "the maximum number of enemy casualties and keeping Israel Defense Forces casualties at a minimum," GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant said.

Major General Galant, one of the key figures in the Israeli operation that began yesterday in the Gaza Strip, said this during discussions before the move. Israel's aim in the operation will be to significantly damage Hamas' leadership, tactical capabilities and smuggling routes, he said.
   

Despite efforts to keep IDF casualties to a minimum, Galant said that once troops are actually sent after the enemy, "what will take precedence is the need to fulfill the mission." He added, "Under no circumstance can we accept a norm that leaves missions unmet."

As for Hamas' military presence in Gaza, Galant proposed treating it as a force tantamount to a fortified infantry division with anti-tank capabilities, deployed in defensive formations. The urban setting - Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated areas - "presents complexities and difficulties," he said.

This setting dictates that ground forces closely cooperate with the Air Force. "This will underline our military achievements and reinforce our legitimacy in continuing the IDF activities," he added.

Hamas' militant force is several thousand strong, according to the Southern Command leader. "The longer Israel waits, the more capabilities Hamas will accumulate and develop, allowing Hamas to reduce Israel's relative advantage over the organization," Galant said before the operation was launched.

He also said that should Israel "be forced to launch the operation" instead of launching it at a time of its convenience, then "this will cost the Israeli side dearly on the battlefield."



, allowing it to target Israel Navy vessels, as when Hezbollah nearly sank the INS Hanit off Beirut's shores in the summer of 2006.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050434.html

In attacking Hamas' regime in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces will try to "send Gaza decades into the past" in terms of weapon capabilities

What a twat! Gazans make their own rockets out of things like sugar just for the fun of it.All they have is stones and fireworks,how can you send them back ten years.These people are unbelievable liars!.

As for Hamas' military presence in Gaza, Galant proposed treating it as a force tantamount to a fortified infantry division with anti-tank capabilities, deployed in defensive formations

Unbelievable nonsensical bullshit!

Galant said he is concerned that Hamas might acquire surface-to-sea ballistic capabilities

From where? is that a surface to sea missile in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me.This pillock is actually trying to con us that Hamas are a threat to the 4th strongest military in the world,what a sad joke!.

[Doctor No NWO]

Israel & its Satanic Zionist regime at it again  

Israeli elections on February 10
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the head of the governing Kadima party and one of the front-runners for the premier's chair, said that 'today there is no other option than a military operation'.

In other words, Israel will do as it pleases

Look at the history here & every-time Israel has elections, I bet you that you will find every-time Israel has elections, Innocent people Christian/ Muslim/ Hebrew/ are sacrificed by the Zionist Israeli regime to their God Lucifer...

If the world only could see the truth &  who is running the Illegitimate state of Israel, then Israel would no-longer be a threat to humanity because the world would put a stop to Israel war crimes.

There will never be peace in the Middle East under a Satanic Zionist regime

> http://www.nkusa.org/activities/statements/062504Vienna.cfm
 
Israel has the power to control American policy.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee - (AIPAC) can make or break any politician of its choosing, and as you see, they all compete to please Israel. All the forces of the world are powerless against Israel, including the UN as Israel has the American veto to block any condemnation of war crimes.

As Sharon so eloquently phrased it, "We control America". Israel has influenced American mainstream media for many years, Total mind control over the USA media and you will always find the news tailored to favor Israel.
Israel has invested millions of dollars into PR representation, and CNN, New York Times, and others have been doing an excellent job of promoting Israeli propaganda.
Just look at other international news sources and you will see the difference.


  
"Today the Jews rule this world by proxy.  They get others to fight and die for them." Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, October 17, 2003.
 
Benjamin H. Freedman was an insider in the world Zionist conspiracy. He was a successful Jewish businessman of New York City who was at one time the principal owner of the Woodbury Soap Company. He broke with organized Jewry in 1945, when by the grace of God he was saved and became a Christian. He spent the remainder of his life and the great preponderance of his considerable fortune, exposing the Jewish conspiracy against the United States and the world. "Mr. Freedman knew what he was talking about because he had been an insider at the highest levels of Jewish organizations and Jewish machinations to gain power over our nation. Mr. Freedman was personally acquainted with Bernard Baruch, Samuel Untermyer, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy, and many more movers and shakers of our times." In the following 1961 speech given at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. on behalf of Conde McGinley's patriotic newspaper of that time, Common Sense, Freedman revealed the plans the Zionist Jews have for World War III.  

Listen to him reveal in his own words reveal the Zionist conspiracy against the United States.

MP3 Audio File > http://www.antichristconspiracy.com/synagogue_of_satan.htm

Benjamin Freedman Speaks - A Jewish Defector Warns America
 
Please enjoy the Site,
America are you ready for the Truth  

[chris jones]

http://www.cnn.com/



Why doesn't CNN show the same kind of pictures of Iraq citizens being killed - like it does the Palestinians on its front page ?  

Media is playing us.


Rock

Hi Rock.   You got ahead of me on that one, no BS, I was getting ready to do the same post as you,was scrolling down and there it was.

You picked it up too, YES, the regime wont allow it.  896,000 dead, and how many pictures did we see?

Good work brother, we can not push asside what this regime has done. The Isrealites did their thing, what did we do...easy math.. 1000 or 896,000...........CNN doesn't want to know do they.

[Dig]

http://www.cnn.com/



Why doesn't CNN show the same kind of pictures of Iraq citizens being killed - like it does the Palestinians on its front page ?  

Media is playing us.


Rock

Yes we have killed over 1.5 Million innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the agenda is to bring all attention to diversions like this one.

Over 200 have died in Gaza, what else happened around the world...

Baghdad bombs kill 28 people - police
http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=13081
December 28,2008


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two bombs killed at least 28 people and wounded 55 in Baghdad on Saturday, police said. The explosions on a long holiday weekend shook the city, where car bombs, roadside blasts and other attacks still strike routinely despite a sharp drop in violence in the last year. The first explosion took place at a bus and taxi station in the Shiite district of Kadhimiya in northwestern Baghdad, where people usually gather at a major Shiite shrine on Saturdays. Police said women and children were among the 25 dead and 45 wounded in the attack. The US military put the toll at 20 dead and 25 wounded. After the attack, security forces sifted through twisted metal and burned shells of cars, some with bloodstained seats. It was not clear if the blast was a suicide attack, which is the hallmark of Al Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist group blamed for targeting civilians in the bloodshed unleashed by the US-led invasion in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. The second attack occurred later in Jurf Al Sakhar, on Baghdad's southern outskirts, as Iraqi soldiers and members of a local patrol were trying to defuse a roadside bomb. According to police, one soldier and two patrol members were killed when the bomb exploded. Five soldiers and five guards were wounded. Baghdad is now a far safer city than it was at the height of sectarian bloodshed between Iraq's Sunni Arab minority and Shiite Arab majority in 2006 and 2007. The United States has credited its decision to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Iraq in 2007, along with newfound cooperation from Sunni tribal leaders, for that change. Washington plans to gradually remove its 143,000 troops now in Iraq and restrict military operations as it looks towards a withdrawal deadline at the end of 2011. Iraqis have begun to resume normal life in Baghdad, cautiously returning to parks and shops and public places that could be vulnerable to suicide attacks. But Baghdad remains a dangerous city. On December 17, successive bomb blasts in central Baghdad killed 18 people and wounded more than 50.

Jailbreak
Police tracked down and killed a suspected Iraqi militant on Saturday, the night after the man believed to have links to Al Qaeda [I cannot believe they still say this shit] disappeared in a bold jailbreak in western Iraq, a senior police official said. Police shot Imad Ahmed Farhan, described as a leader of the Islamic State in Iraq, a Sunni Islamist group linked to Al Qaeda, after surrounding a house where he was holed up in the city of Ramadi, said Major-General Tareq Yusuf, police commander for western Anbar province. Farhan, who was accused of killing 37 people, and two other suspected militants escaped from a police jail in Ramadi, 100km west of Baghdad, in a dramatic riot overnight on Friday. Prisoners lured a policeman into their cell, stealing his weapon and killing him. Six other police officers and seven prisoners were killed in the subsequent fighting. Yusuf said the two other men who escaped with Farhan, were still at large. "We are chasing them, we are following them, and we will soon arrest them, God willing," Yusuf said. Yusuf said that Farhan had taken the family which lived in the home where he was killeda hostage and fired at police from inside until he was shot dead himself. A local resident who witnessed the events, however, said that the standoff continued even after Farhan was shot, suggesting the other militants may have been inside as well. A lieutenant colonel in the Ramadi police, who asked to go unnamed, said that two accomplices surrendered after Farhan was shot, but they were not the two escaped prisoners. He said one civilian in the area was killed and one was wounded during the standoff. Three police officers were wounded, he said.

Basra autonomy
Thousands of protesters in Iraq's southern oil city of Basra demanded their own federal region on Saturday, akin to minority Kurds' peaceful, prosperous enclave in the country's north. Some three thousand people took to the streets in mainly Shiite Basra, demanding a referendum on whether the city and surrounding province might become a semi-autonomous state. "Yes, yes for the Basra region," demonstrators shouted. Ahmed Ali, a 27-year-old civil servant, said Basra wanted to "cut the cord with the central government, which has brought us only trouble, poverty and unemployment". While the odds appeared long that such a bid could succeed, it reflects Iraqis' deep discontent with the government in Baghdad and highlights the power struggle unfolding in a nation that is home to a volatile mix of religions and ethnicities. Even as security improves across Iraq, the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite, is criticised by many Iraqis for failing to deliver basic services and prosperity. Some in Basra, which produces three-quarters of Iraq's oil, see themselves marginalised by successive Baghdad governments since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 and aspire to the same status as Iraqi Kurdistan.

=======================

Afghan attacks leave eight dead
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ibLDT0MU10ZsfirpXGEGoKXy9rLw
9 hours ago

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — A suicide car bomber killed five people at a police checkpoint in southern Afghanistan Saturday and a rocket attack in the capital killed three civilians, officials said. There were no claims of responsibility for the attacks but they appeared linked to an extremist Islamic insurgency that has grown steadily since the hardline Taliban group was removed from government in 2001. The suicide attacker drove an explosives-filled vehicle to the checkpoint in the southern province of Kandahar, where police were searching cars, and then detonated his bombs, police said. "Initial assessments show that three policemen and two civilians are killed. Four police and a civilian are wounded," local police commander Mohammad Akbar told AFP. The civilians were two men on a motorbike, he said. Another five people were wounded in the blast which was outside the southern city of Kandahar on the key road leading to Herat in the west. Canadian soldiers serving with a NATO-led military force were metres (yards) away at the time of the blast. They helped to evacuate the wounded. A Canadian soldier was killed and three others wounded in a bomb blast in the nearby Zhari district on Friday. There were also two suicide car bombs in western Afghanistan on Friday. Only the attackers were killed in the blasts, although three foreigners were wounded in an attack in Herat.

Late Saturday a rocket fired into the Afghan capital Kabul landed on a home near the city's police academy and killed three people, a police commander and witnesses said. Another rocket was also launched into the western residential neighbourhood but caused no casualties [Really, no casualties? Who is investigating there anyway? Remember the body counting in Vietnam? Now we have the reverse in these wars.  They are under reporting the bloody massacres], they said. "One of the rockets has landed on a house and has killed three people and wounded another three," a city police chief, General Alishah Paktiawal, told AFP. He could not identify the casualties but said they included women. The rocket destroyed one room of the home, which was about 100 metres (yards) from the police school, said an AFP photographer at the scene. People from the area said the dead were all women, he said. It was not clear who had fired the rockets. abul has suffered several deadly suicide attacks blamed on the Taliban. Rockets are also launched into the city every few months but they rarely kill people. The US military, which provides most of the nearly 70,000 international troops helping Afghan forces, announced meanwhile that soldiers had killed six suspected militants in the southern province of Helmand on Thursday. The men were seen collecting weapons from a cache and had shown "hostile intent," it said in a statement Saturday. Their identities could not be independently verified.

=========================

The United States Government is engaged in 2.5 illegal occupations of sovereign countries.  They have genocided the civilian population by killing/torturing/enslaving/prostituting/exodus-ing.  Over 10 million people are involved with this holocaust caused by CFR/Bilderberg/Rothschild/Rockefeller/Beatrix and their puppet minions.

Obama has made it abundantly clear that he will not slow the genocide, but will expand it to Pakistan and possibly Iran.

When will the killing fields end?

Possibly when we stop being distracted by the Zionist/Israeli incursions that only happen when Rockefeller/Rothschild/Beatrix demand it!

Wake up: The Neo-con Israeli government cannot take a piss unless Rothschild/Rockefeller/Beatrix sign the hall pass.

[Rock]

Hi Rock.   You got ahead of me on that one, no BS, I was getting ready to do the same post as you,was scrolling down and there it was.

You picked it up too, YES, the regime wont allow it.  896,000 dead, and how many pictures did we see?

Good work brother, we can not push asside what this regime has done. The Isrealites did their thing, what did we do...easy math.. 1000 or 896,000...........CNN doesn't want to know do they.

Yep, if the media did its job honestly as regards Iraq (pictures), the war would have been over in less than a year.

CNN or CIA Propaganda


Rock

[voodo0]

Obama No Comment On Israeli Air Massacre

With today's news of IDF air strikes abruptly ending the lives of some 140+ Gazans, I can't help but feel an abject sense of horror at the fact that most Americans will probably find some way to blame the Palestinians for bringing this on themselves.

Nevermind the fact that it was Israel who initially broke the ceasefire. Forget the fact that Israel kidnapped two civilians from Gaza before Corporal Gilad Shilat became a household name. Nevermind that Israel's strangulation of the Gaza Strip began immediately after the so-called disengagement and before the electoral victory of Hamas.

I remain confounded by the American progressive movement's widespread refusal to stand behind the Palestinian people as they are subjected to an endless barrage of colonialist, racist aggression.

Their timidity in the face of blatant war crimes and melting away at the mere mention of the word "Sderot" is nothing short of pathetic. We cannot seriously expect Hamas to end their barrage of rocket attacks on southern Israel until the Israelis make good faith efforts to recognize the legitimate claims of the Palestinian people. Condemnations of Hamas should be considered utterly worthless unless they are made by people who condemn Israel's daily violations of human rights.

When Chris Hedges asked U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory Richard Falk about the situation in the Gaza Strip, here is how he responded:

"A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live."

Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.

The West Bank, despite the fact that it is ruled by a virtual client of U.S./Israeli interests, is fairing little better. The colonist population is increasing at an alarming rate. Plans for forcing all West Bank trade through a new network of crossing points continue despite international criticism. The "Judaization" of Arab sections of Jerusalem through demolition and settlement is also continues to go on unimpeded by the so-called peace process. This pattern of demolition, restriction, and colonization that I documented months ago is never ending. How can we possibly expect the Palestinians to not resist?

There is clearly very little incentive for Gazans to ditch Hamas as long as the the West Bank remains under the iron fist of the IDF and its most fertile lands in the hands of the colonial settlers. There is also no real incentive for Hamas to end its rocket attacks on Israel as long as we make regime change a condition for removing the blockade on Gaza. The only temporary solution to the current crisis is another ceasefire in which Hamas agrees to halt its rocket attacks and Israel agrees to end IDF assaults and ease its embargo on Gaza. We should remember that Hamas largely stuck to the ceasefire while it was going on and even arrested members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for shooting rockets into Israel. If Israel continues to play with fire, then the incoming Obama administration should consider withholding military assistance.

There's no excuse for putting up with Israel's bullshit anymore. We give more governmental foreign aid to them than any other nation in the world. We therefore have a direct moral responsibility for their actions and should see to it that they abide by the rules set by our own peace process.

Edit: More thoughts from Lenin's Tomb.

Edit 2: According to the AFP, the death toll is now exceeding 200. Everyone, even the U.S. client regime in Cairo, is condemning this senseless massacre. The U.S. has so far released this statement:

In Waco, Tex., where President Bush is vacationing, a White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said: "Hamas must end its terrorist activities if it wishes to play a role in the future of the Palestinian people. The United States urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza."

Typical.

Edit 3: Sigh:

"There was no immediate comment on the Israeli air strikes on Gaza from Obama, who is vacationing with his family in Hawaii, or his staff."

Disappointing, but not surprising.

Edit 4: Essential reading from Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, "Gaza massacres must spur us to action."

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels "terrorists" were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

http://www.huliq.com/1/75116/obama-no-comment-israeli-air-massacre

[Rock]

@ Sane

Your right: The CNN grandstanding of 200 deaths with pics tops the 1 million deaths of Iraq.

Good to see this along with the Negro song takes center stage.

Thank God for Wine (red).


Rock

[voodo0]

US: Hamas ‘responsible’ for Gaza attacks

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 08:29:00 12/28/2008

Filed Under: Armed conflict
WASHINGTON – The United States "holds Hamas responsible" for the renewal of deadly violence in Gaza after the Islamist group broke its ceasefire with Israel, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

"The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," Rice said in a statement.

The six-month ceasefire that expired December 19 and which Hamas, which rules the impoverished Palestinian territory, said last week it would not renew, "should be restored immediately," she said.

Washington also "calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza," Rice added.

Punishing Israeli air raids into the Gaza Strip Saturday left at least 210 people dead and more than 300 wounded, in retaliation for rocket fire in one of the bloodiest days of the decades-long Middle East conflict.

Rice, who leaves her post as secretary of state January 20 when Barack Obama takes over as the US president, helped launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks one year ago.

On the day of the expiry of the truce, she warned that renewed violence against Israel by Hamas would only hurt the Palestinians, and that the movement "needs to concentrate on turning away from violence."

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20081228-180329/US-Hamas-responsible-for-Gaza-attacks
 

[jannerbob]

US: Hamas ‘responsible’ for Gaza attacks

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 08:29:00 12/28/2008

Filed Under: Armed conflict
WASHINGTON – The United States "holds Hamas responsible" for the renewal of deadly violence in Gaza after the Islamist group broke its ceasefire with Israel, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

"The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," Rice said in a statement.

The six-month ceasefire that expired December 19 and which Hamas, which rules the impoverished Palestinian territory, said last week it would not renew, "should be restored immediately," she said.

Washington also "calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza," Rice added.

Punishing Israeli air raids into the Gaza Strip Saturday left at least 210 people dead and more than 300 wounded, in retaliation for rocket fire in one of the bloodiest days of the decades-long Middle East conflict.

Rice, who leaves her post as secretary of state January 20 when Barack Obama takes over as the US president, helped launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks one year ago.

On the day of the expiry of the truce, she warned that renewed violence against Israel by Hamas would only hurt the Palestinians, and that the movement "needs to concentrate on turning away from violence."

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20081228-180329/US-Hamas-responsible-for-Gaza-attacks
 

Gaza: Silence is not an option


   
xxxxxxxxxx
9 December 2008
The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk, issued the following statement:

GENEVA -- In recent days the desperate plight of the civilian population of Gaza has been acknowledged by such respected international figures as the Secretary General of the United Nations, the President of the General Assembly, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Last week, Karen AbyZayd, who heads the UN relief effort in Gaza, offered first-hand confirmation of the desperate urgency and unacceptable conditions facing the civilian population of Gaza. Although many leaders have commented on the cruelty and unlawfulness of the Gaza blockade imposed by Israel, such a flurry of denunciations by normally cautious UN officials has not occurred on a global level since the heyday of South African apartheid.

And still Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease. Such a policy of collective punishment, initiated by Israel to punish Gazans for political developments within the Gaza strip, constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It is long past the time when talk suffices. As AbuZayd has written, "the chasm between word and deed" with respect to upholding human rights in occupied Palestine creates a situation where "radicalism and extremism easily take root." The UN is obligated to respond under these conditions. Some governments of the world are complicit by continuing their support politically and economically for Israel's punitive approach.

Protective action must be taken immediately to offset the persisting and wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life, and in view of the emergency situation that is producing a humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding day by day. However difficult politically, it is time to act. At the very least, an urgent effort should be made at the United Nations to implement the agreed norm of a 'responsibility to protect' a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a Crime Against Humanity.

In a similar vein, it would seem mandatory for the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law. As AbuZayd has declared, "This is a humanitarian crisis deliberately imposed by political actors."

It should be noted that the situation worsened in recent days due to the breakdown of a truce between Hamas and Israel that had been observed for several months by both sides. The truce was maintained by Hamas despite the failure of Israel to fulfill its obligation under the agreement to improve the living conditions of the people of Gaza.

The recent upsurge of violence occurred after an Israeli incursion that killed several alleged Palestinian militants within Gaza. It is a criminal violation of international law for elements of Hamas or anyone else to fire rockets at Israeli towns regardless of provocation, but such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel's imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the UN or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.

[voodo0]

UN steps up Lebanon border patrols after rockets found


BEIRUT (AFP) – UN peacekeepers and Lebanese troops have stepped up patrols along the border with Israel after rockets were discovered aimed at the Jewish regime and ready to fire, a UN spokeswoman said on Friday.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon and the Lebanese army ""have deployed additional troops and intensified patrols and security control of the area,"" said UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane.

UNIFIL commander Major General Claudio Graziano of Italy, is in contact with senior Lebanese and Israeli military officials, Bouziane added.

On Thursday, security forces found eight Katyusha rockets in the coastal region between Naqura and Tair Harfa.

The rockets were ""aimed at Palestine (Israel) and connected to a timer,"" an officer said on Friday, adding that an investigation was under way and that the rockets had been dismantled.

The area where the rockets were found is a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah group and lies less than five kilometres (three miles) from the border.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating 34-day war in 2006 that killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

During the war, Hezbollah fired more than 4,000 rockets at Israel.

The group has been accused by the Jewish state of using the time since the end of the conflict to rearm. Last month, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told parliament that Hezbollah is now three times stronger than it was in 2006.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=185726

[deconstructmyhouse]

http://www.sana.sy/index_eng.html

Syria Calls For Emergency Arab Summit to Discuss the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip

Dec 27, 2008

Damascus, SANA _ An official source on Saturday stated the following:

Syria follows, with deep concern, the brutal Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people in Gaza and stresses that what is going on is a heinous crime and convicted terrorist act.

" Syria condemns this appalling crime and calls on the Arab nation and the international community to use all available means to pressure Israel to stop this aggression immediately and allow the transfer of injured and insure them the medical care and to open all crossings to allow access of foodstuffs and health needs
to the besieged Palestinian people," the source said.

The source added that Syria, in her capacity as head of the current session of Arab summit, calls Arab leaders to hold an emergency Arab summit to discuss the grave situation in Gaza.

[Biggs]

now a rumour of a missile attack on Al Aqsa tv station in Gaza, not a military target at all, and also likely full of journalists at the time

due to it being the middle of the night in Palestine, and 1am in UK, and Saturday evening in US it will likely be a few hours before we have confirmation of the evening's new attacks and where was hit, how many killed etc

but in the meantime

END THE CRIMINAL SIEGE OF GAZA


FREE PALESTINE!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Freeski]

Free us all from them!