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

[larsonstdoc]

Israeli Troops Mobilize as Gaza Assault Widens

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473448,00.html

[cathiasus]

Israeli Troops Mobilize as Gaza Assault Widens
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473448,00.html

Odd how the above article mentions many of the Arab world are pizzed, but doesn't mention Iran at all. Very odd we haven't heard much on Iran's perspective of the recent events in Gaza imo, but maybe a good thing. We'll see.

[Optimus]

Lebanese Army, UNIFIL on Alert in South Lebanon in Wake of Israel's Gaza Attack
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/0/0ACF65487FE90C18C225752E002202AF?OpenDocument

Lebanese army troops and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon have stepped up security at the border with Israel and across south Lebanon following the Jewish state's massive military operation on Gaza over the weekend.
"The army and UNIFIL have strengthened security measures in the south of the country to stop anyone from exploiting the situation beyond protesting against the Zionist aggression on the Gaza strip," a military spokesman said.

Tension remains high in south Lebanon two years after the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hizbullah.

Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes continued for a second day Monday to fly over south Lebanon, carrying out intensive mock air raids over Hasbaya, Nabatiyeh Khiam, Iqlim al-Tuffah and Marjayoun all the way to east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who attacked Egypt for not opening its border to Palestinians, has threatened to "destroy" Israel if a new conflict erupts.

Israel says Hizbullah has "tripled its firepower" since the 2006 conflict and has pledged to attack Lebanese civilian locations in the event of renewed hostilities.

Israeli flights over Lebanon are in breach of U.N. Security Council resolution 1710, which in August 2006 ended the Israel-Hizbullah war.

U.N. forces and the Lebanese army had already increased patrols on the border after the discovery on Thursday of eight Katyusha rockets pointed at Israel and ready to be fired.

The area where the rockets were found is a Hizbullah stronghold and lies less than five kilometers from the border with Israel.(AFP-Naharnet)
 
Beirut, 29 Dec 08, 08:09

[cathiasus]

David Gregory and Tzipi Livni
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28407173#28407173

Some pretty narrow perspective from Israel on meet the press. Suxor for all those dead, on either side. Also, pretty sure Israel is not done chitting all over the mid east yet. I think unfortunately this will go on well into the new year. Lulz, I noticed on MTP this morning, Gregory has a cold. 

[Avers]

David Gregory and Tzipi Livni
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28407173#28407173

Some pretty narrow perspective from Israel on meet the press. Suxor for all those dead, on either side. Also, pretty sure Israel is not done chitting all over the mid east yet. I think unfortunately this will go on well into the new year. Lulz, I noticed on MTP this morning, Gregory has a cold. 

The excuse I have seen being used for a prolonged and hardening war in Gaza (was on bbcworld I think) is that Israel needs a decisive victory over Hamas before Obama takes office, apparently for two reasons:

- The general perception is that Obama would not be as supportive regarding these war crimes as Bush is and may try to put a stop to it (we all know better of course)
- If after Israel ceases their murdering, Hamas would still be able to fire rockets (and we are starting to learn that a lot of those are Israeli false flag ones), it would be seen as much a defeat as the war in Lebanon in 2006 was

As it seems that the upcoming election in Israel is playing a large role in this war (you know, gaining favor with the Israeli people by murdering Palestinians, seems to work every time), I suspect that this time Israel will not be stopped by any negative international voices and just carry on until they have full control over Gaza. By that time I wouldn't be surprised if the situation has escalated beyond Gaza into countries like Syria and Lebanon, which I think is exactly the plan of whoever thought up this sickening situation...

[mr anderson]

Arab Australians protest Gaza bombings

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=28&ContentID=115280

29th December 2008, 18:15 WST

Angry Arab Australians faced riot police outside the United States consulate in Sydney as nationwide protests condemned Israel’s bombing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Downtown Sydney went into gridlock on Monday with more than 1000 Arab Australians crippling peak-hour traffic in the CBD as they marched on the consulate.

Police stopped traffic on George Street so the mostly male group of protesters could move from an anti-Israel, anti-US rally at Town Hall to Martin Place around 3pm (WST).

Palestinian activist Rawan Abdul chastised Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard for stating that the ruling Hamas party in Gaza initiated hostilities with Israel.

“While (Prime Minister Kevin) Rudd sits around and watches the cricket, his deputy comes out and says ‘Israel, Israel (is) retaliating in self-defence,’” Ms Abdul shouted through loudspeakers at the rally.

“Do we agree with that? No!”

University of Western Sydney professor John Macdonald, who is also a visiting professor at Birzeit University in the Palestinian territories, said the 1.5 million people in Gaza live in a “concentration camp”.

“Palestine and Gaza are occupied places,” Mr Macdonald told the rally.

“There are international regulations about occupied people which are totally ignored by our own (Australian) government, by the governments of the world.”

The few hundred people who attended the rally moved slowly towards Martin Place and the crowd more than tripled in size along the way, spanning three city blocks.

They protested against Israel’s massive air offensive on Gaza which has claimed more than 300 lives and injured 1000 more since Saturday.

Holiday shoppers stopped to watch mainly young Arab men shouting slogans against Israel and the US.

“Bomb (President George W) Bush and the Jews,” they yelled along with “Israel, USA, how many children have you killed today?”

Tensions heightened when the marchers arrived at Martin Place and a number of them, led by former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib, approached a wall of riot police protecting the entrance to the US consulate.

Private security guards attached to the protest positioned themselves in between, preventing the potential for a riot.

The event concluded with more speeches from a stage where controversial Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali joined other religious leaders.

Smaller protests were held at the Sheik’s home mosque at Lakemba, in Sydney’s west, and at other capital cities in Australia.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils in a statement condemned the bombings and so did the Socialist Alliance and the CFMEU.

The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council welcomed Ms Gillard’s comments, stating that Hamas broke the ceasefire with Israel by firing rockets and mortars at their neighbour.

SYDNEY
AAP

[mr anderson]

Ten ways Israel keeps Hamas afloat

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/967828.html

By Bradley Burston
Tags: peace process, Gaza, Hamas

Say you really want Hamas to win the current installment of the 60 Year War between Israelis and Palestinians. What's the most direct, efficacious way to go about this?

Simple. Just do exactly what Israel does.

The student of history may at this point note that during the 1970s and much of the 1980s, Israeli defense officials, keen to foster a faith-based counterweight to the Marxist ideology of hardline armed groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, quietly but crucially aided the leaders of the Gaza branch of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood - a group which, six days after the eruption of the first Palestinian uprising, was to found the Islamic Resistance Movement, whose acronym was Hamas.

But let us leave, for the moment, history aside. Let us look at what Israel is doing at present, and, as a result, the extent to which Hamas thrives.

1. If Hamas governance is untenable, act to make it work

Prior to the implementation of Israel's curious, loudly-trumpeted and, in the end, half-hearted lock-down of assistance to the Strip, Gazans had begun grumbling aloud about the corruption of the new Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Instead of pulling out all stops to make sure that food, home heating fuel, schooling and health care were available to Gazans the length of the Strip, Hamas officials had begun diverting critical aid to their own people, a practice which led directly to the downfall of the previous Fatah regime.

As soon as Israel began curtailing its supply of electrical power to Gaza, Hamas played the move to the hilt, inviting journalists to a daytime cabinet meeting in which Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud Zahar sat in front of drawn curtains in a gloomy darkness, candles pointedly burning on the desk in front of them.

The aim of the Israeli move was to prod Gazans to rise up and topple the Hamas government. The result of the Israeli move was to shore up Hamas at a time when no one else would help.

2. If West Bank Arabs lean toward Fatah, undermine Fatah in any way possible

If police units of Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority begin to arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives in places like Jenin and Nablus, and have begun to restore a semblance of civilian order in places where the Israeli army has largely vacated, and if there is a lull in terrorism, order high-profile, guns-drawn, often lethal commando raids in the same areas, to underscore who's really in charge.

If there are any chances of renewed peace progress, such as internationally sponsored talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas in Annapolis, make certain to follow it up with announcements of new housing construction in especially sensitive areas beyond the Green Line, like the settlement suburb of Har Homa between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

If you have pledged to remove illegal outposts and freeze new settlement construction in many areas of the West Bank, renege.

If there is relative calm in the West Bank, make certain that all checkpoints , roadblocks, tall earthen barriers, impassable excavated trenches, locked entrance gates to villages, many of them intended to be only implemented for a few days duration, stay in place, regardless of the security role they may or may not serve.

If you are the defense minister, promise that Israel will soon begin making life easier for West Bank Palestinians, but then say in the next breath that it won't remove checkpoints for now, and that it has no timetable to allow already agreed-upon industrial zones funded by foreign governments and meant to supply Palestinians thousands of new jobs.

Have the Israeli army continue to stop Palestinians randomly in the streets of Ramallah, checking their identity papers. Have the Israeli army beat Palestinian policemen on duty in the West Bank.

3. If the Quartet supports a plan to shore up the PA, stonewall it

As PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad noted in an interview last week with Haaretz' Akiva Eldar, prior to the Hamas-initiated rupture of the Gaza-Egypt border at Rafah, the U.S.-UN-EU-Russian Quartet backed a plan to lessen tensions and bolster the PA by placing the border crossings between Israel and Gaza under the responsibility of the Abbas-led Authority.

Israel, not in a position to say no to the Quartet, simply failed to say yes. And that was enough to stall the situation into further degeneration.

4. Do everything humanly possible to keep Gazans out of work

This benefits Hamas in a number of ways.

On a political level, if Gazans are forbidden from working in Israel, we can be certain that their only impressions of Israelis and of Israeli society will be those processed and broadcast by Hamas. The message will be clear: Israelis are bloodthirsty reincarnations of the Nazis. Israelis are monstrous defilers of Muslim shrines, ravenous thieves of Arab property, money-grubbing, international power-broking genocidal usurpers of Arab land. Israel is what stands between Palestinians and the glorious future of prosperity that is their birthright.

Certainly, this makes it easier for Gazans to support the concept of rocket attacks against Israeli towns, and the recent massacre at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem.

On a financial level, if Israel bars Gazans from crossing in to work, if Israel freezes out subcontractors which once-shipped Gaza-manufactured good to Israeli firms, if Israel forbids the passage of raw materials across the border to allow Gaza industries to remain open, the Jewish state will be held responsible for the deepening despair of the Strip, something which Hamas has done nothing to rectify, but which can be blamed on Israel.

The result is already horrendous. Four of five Gazans now live on $2 or less a day, fed by donations from international agencies. Seven of 10 are out of work. Those who do work, bring in meager incomes. Electricity lasts for a quarter to a third of the day, following Israel's June bombing of the Strip's power station.

5. Threaten

Promise to invade Gaza. Promise to bring holocaust down upon them. Promise to dismantle Hamas, topple Hamas, annihilate the terror infrastructure. Promise to "clean" Gaza of Hamas terrorists, "purify" it of the lesion of Hamas, once and for all.

In other words:

6. Make heroes of Hamas

7. If you do invade, lie about it

On the last day of the recent IDF incursion into Gaza, state radio's Reshet Bet news network opened its morning news broadcast by quoted army spokesmen as saying that in the five days of fighting, "some 100 terrorists have been killed."

That was the word on casualties. No mention of the fact that independent rights groups had determined that about half of the total of about 120 dead were unarmed civilians, and that about a third of the non-combatant dead were children.

8. Do not press for international peace keepers in Gaza

There is reason to believe that UN, EU, and other peacekeepers on the ground in northern Gaza could have an influence in curtailing Qassam fire, thus helping protect the Gaza population as well as the people of Sderot and the western Negev.

9. Leave the media battle to Al Jazeera and Hamas TV

Media authority Nachman Shai, who served as IDF chief spokesman during the 1991 Gulf war, has argued cogently that Israel must mount a strong media advocacy effort aimed at the Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims, broadcasting by satellite and Internet in Arabic, and presenting Israel's side in a light which the Muslim world audience has no access to at present.

It should also be pointed out that after decades of exposure to the west and sincere efforts to improve, Israel's spokesmanship for Europe and the States is still plagued by poor judgment, cronyism, poor presentation and, in some cases, poor command of languages.

10. Isolate Gaza no matter what

Thanks in part to Hamas' own knack for working against its own interests - and in favor of Israel's - you can depend on supporters of Israel to hold Hamas responsible for whatever happens to the Gazans. If Israel blockades all coastal areas, shoots at all Palestinians who approach its border fence, and keeps all Gazas bottled up within the Strip, a chorus in Israel and abroad will agree that Hamas brought it all upon itself.

Israelis will see little of the negative effects, apart from the criminal practice of rocketing Israeli population centers. Thus far, the Quartet, which fears, distrusts, and profoundly dislikes Hamas, is standing firm with Israel, regardless of the outcome of the policy of isolating Gaza.

But what if it doesn't work?

The fact is, it hasn't yet. The likelihood is that it will not. Why not?

The student of current affairs may sense a pattern here.

The bottom line: Distress + Hatred of Israel = Hamas Rule

The Palestinian credo of summud, steadfastness in the face of oppression, plays directly into Hamas' hands. Too bad that after all these years, all this failure, all this experience, Israel is doing exactly the same.

[mr anderson]

Is Israel deliberately strengthening Hamas?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037879.html

By Amira Hass

Let's not be dragged into calculating how many tons of rice, flour and cooking oil there are in the Gaza Strip 10 days after Israel once again hermetically sealed all the crossings into the enclave. Let's not count the number of children who wait for a nutritious meal at UN Relief and Works Agency schools, and the number of families to whose doorstep Hamas delivers boxes filled with grocery staples. (There are those who swear that these groceries are only given to Hamas members and supporters.) Let's not calculate the number of people dependent on their families for sustenance. There is food in the Gaza Strip, and there will continue to be. Does anyone really think that Israel, the state of the Jews, would allow 1.5 million people to be tossed, crowded and crammed, behind the barbed-wire fences and watchtowers surrounding the narrow strip and starve to death?

Let's leave aside the stories of darkness, of how children do (or don't do) their homework by the light of a candle or kerosene lantern. Let's even put off the discussion on the serious environmental hazards - pollution of the groundwater and sea - posed to the people of Gaza and Ashkelon alike as a direct consequence of the intentional fuel shortage, or of Israel's refusal to permit the entry of pipes to upgrade the water and sewage infrastructure. Let's not go now into descriptions of how the sewage flows directly into the sea because there's not enough electricity to operate the sewage treatment plant. Let's not talk about fears that sewers will back up in the winter and flood residential neighborhoods because parts needed to fix the treatment plant were not brought in.

Let's not get dragged into that number crunching, into reducing the Palestinians' lives to a near-animal level, to a humanitarian problem that is easy to prove is not as bad as it can be.
   
The deliberations over the Palestinians and the methods of coping with the blockade should be converted into a discussion about the Israelis - about those who make policy and the many diligent people who carry it out, about the many citizens who support and encourage it. Instead of discussing quantities of diesel fuel and flour, the talk should be of the logic behind the siege and those who impose it.

People in the Israeli cabinet, Defense Ministry and Shin Bet security service know full well what they are doing when they prohibit anything other than essential food or medicines from passing through the checkpoints, when they prohibit the entry of raw materials and the exit of agricultural and industrial products and prevent normal human traffic for studies, medical care, work or family. Don't underestimate them and don't belittle their judgment. They knew perfectly well when they decided more than two years ago on the tightest closure of the Gaza Strip since the closure policy began in 1991, that industry would collapse, agriculture would wither, tens of thousands of young people would join the jobless and hopeless, that it would be hard for schools to operate and education would suffer, that sewage would back up and seep into the drinking water, that water would no longer reach the upper floors of apartment buildings.

This policy was presented to the Israeli public in a semiofficial manner as a justified punishment of the Palestinians for electing Hamas (and to hell with international law). "Quarterofficially" we know there was an expectation, or a prediction, that the siege would cause the Gazans to loathe Hamas and end its government in Gaza (after it lost its official grip on the West Bank). That was certainly the hope of the Ramallah government.

Gazans have a bellyful of complaints, and rightfully so, about the Hamas regime. It has already proven itself - mainly to Fatah members - as a regime of fear and repression. But the kind of punishment tactic currently in force is exactly what strengthens Hamas. Instead of the movement being judged according to its ability to run a government and meet its governmental obligations to ensure its citizens' welfare, it can blame the emergency situation created by the siege for every manifestation of immaturity and unprofessionalism.

The public feels that the government is part of it. Like the public, the government is a target for the occupation's cruelty. The brutal siege also saves Hamas from having to cope with the contradiction between its platform (the liberation of all of Palestine) and its integration, despite its denials, into the institutions created by the Oslo Accords. If Israel jeopardizes the lives of premature babies and causes business owners, including supporters of Oslo and Yasser Arafat, to go broke, the Hamas government can present itself as resisting the occupation by its very nature. The extraordinary conditions of the extreme siege and the disconnection between Gaza and the West Bank (another intentional Israeli policy) have made the possibility of holding new Palestinian general elections a very distant one. Hamas can thus bolster its rule with coercion, wages, charity and the consoling power of religion.

And perhaps that is exactly what the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces and government want?

[illeagalhunter]

The spineless UN stands back and does nothing. No wonder the Muslim world hates the west.

[Doctor No NWO]

Global community pressuring Israel
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 » 02:26am
Live News:

The international community has piled pressure on Israel to halt its offensive in the Gaza Strip.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his voice to the 15-member Security Council's call for an immediate end to hostilities and urged Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the poverty-stricken territory.

'He deplores that violence is continuing today, and he strongly urges once again an immediate stop to all acts of violence,' which has already left more than 300 people dead, his spokeswoman Michele Montas said

in a statement.

The Security Council earlier issued a non-binding statement calling for 'an immediate halt to all violence' in the Gaza Strip and urged the parties 'to stop immediately all military activities'.

As Israeli air strikes continued and with tanks massed on the border for a possible land offensive, China called for a halt to the military operation.

'The Chinese side is shocked and seriously concerned over the current military operations in Gaza that have caused a large number of deaths and injuries,' Vice Premier Li Keqiang said in a statement.

He called on the Israelis and Hamas to work towards peace, saying both sides 'need to resolve differences through dialogue'.

Demonstrators in cities around the world marched on Sunday in protest against the air strikes, which have wounded more than 600 people.

The largest single protest of about 8,000 people took place in Egypt in the southern city of Assiut, while rallies in the capital Cairo and the port city of Alexandria drew around 4,000 each.

Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah urged Egyptians to take to the streets in their 'millions' to force their government to open the country's border with Gaza and help save Palestinians from the

bombardments.

In Turkey, thousands of people joined demonstrations in about a dozen cities, while in Syria, protesters burned Israeli and American flags as thousands demonstrated in central Damascus.

There were similar scenes in the Jordanian capital Amman, where hundreds of people led by Islamist lawmakers gathered to demand the closure of the Israeli embassy.

With Egypt, Jordan is one of only two Arab governments to have signed peace treaties with Israel.

In Europe, British police made 10 arrests as a demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in London turned violent. Danish police arrested a man on the fringes of a march in Copenhagen after he threw a petrol bomb

at officers.

Protest rallies were also held in Paris and Madrid.

Earlier, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called for an 'urgent ceasefire and immediate halt to all violence'.

A call to 'urgently halt' the military action also came from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who spoke to his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni.

Japan, a leading donor to the Middle East peace process, expressed its deep concern, urging both sides to immediately stop the use of force to avoid a further escalation, Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said in

a statement.

The top diplomats in Italy and Spain, Franco Frattini and Miguel Angel Moratinos, also spoke by telephone with Livni, who said Israel would try 'to limit the suffering of the people of Gaza', the Italian foreign ministry

said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the European Union presidency, told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas by telephone of his grave concerns about the escalating

violence.

Pope Benedict XVI urged everyone involved in the 'tragic situation in the Middle East' to strive for humanity and wisdom.

Canada also appealed for a halt to violence, while mostly Muslim Malaysia accused Israel of using 'disproportionate' force and Pakistan condemned the air attacks as 'counterproductive'.

A top aide to Barack Obama said the US president-elect was committed to achieving peace in the Middle East.

Recognising the special relationship between the United States and Israel, Obama would work closely with the Israelis, David Axelrod said in an interview on CBS television.

'But he will do so in a way that will promote the cause of peace, and work closely with the Israelis and the Palestinians on that - toward that objective,' said Axelrod.

By contrast, the outgoing Bush administration blamed Hamas 'thugs' for provoking the offensive by firing rockets into Israel from Gaza.


So Hamas are 'thugs' according to the Israeli NWO puppet Bush ... well what do you call a 300 + massacre of Innocent people Bush?
you supplied Israel the US weapons to do it!  
Now we can see where all those US tax dollars are spent...the day will come when all you evil NWO criminals will be brought to justice in the court of GOD for your crimes against humanity
May God have NO mercy on your evil blackened NWO souls....Amen!

[Doctor No NWO]

Egypt takes in first wounded from Gaza
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 » 02:26am
Live News:

Egypt is taking in wounded Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

Ambulances ferrying the wounded are heading from Gaza toward the border crossing at Rafah .. where more than a dozen Egyptian ambulances were waiting.

An Egyptian paramedic says he has been told Egypt will take about 20 to 30 Palestinian casualties to the hospital in the Sinai town of El-Arish.

Earlier, Egypt allowed trucks with food and medical supplies to pass through its border crossing with the Gaza Strip.

[Doctor No NWO]

Civilians dying in Israeli blitz UN
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 » 02:26am
Live News:

At least 51 civilians are among the victims of an Israeli blitz on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip that has so far killed more than 310 people, a UN agency says.

'We have been compiling a list of civilian casualties from medical and hospital sources,' said Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the UNRWA agency.

'We have 51 confirmed civilian casualties including women and children.'

The massive Israeli bombardment of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip has so far killed 312 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,400 others, according to the head of Gaza emergency services, Moawiya Hassanein.

Most of the victims appear to be members of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has run Gaza since June 2007, according to Palestinian medics.

Israel unleashed on Saturday a massive air campaign against Hamas targets in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire from its Gaza Strip stronghold, one of the most densely populated places on earth.

There have been growing international calls for a halt to the violence.

As Israeli tanks massed ahead of an expected ground operation, warplanes staged dozens of bombing raids in the densely-populated Palestinian enclave overnight, killing seven people including six children, medics said.

They said that among those killed overnight were four girls from the same family aged from one to 12 years old.

They died in an air raid in the northern town of Jabaliya that targeted a mosque near their home, while two boys were killed in a raid on the southern city of Rafah, medics said.

Meanwhile, an Israeli was killed in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon by a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, medical rescue services said.

Another eight people were wounded in the blast on Monday, three seriously.

It marked the second civilian killed inside Israel by Palestinian militant fire since Saturday.

The projectile smashed in the city centre near a construction site that mostly employed Arab workers.

Ashkelon lies some 13km north of the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas Islamist movement has ruled since June 2007.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon repeated his call for an end to the hostilities and urged Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the enclave that it has kept virtually sealed since Hamas seized power there in June 2007.

'He strongly urges once again an immediate stop to all acts of violence,' his spokeswoman said.

China and Japan joined the growing international chorus for a halt to the violence, which has also included Britain, France and Russia.

Beijing said it was 'shocked and seriously concerned' at the violence, while Japan called on Israel to 'exercise its utmost self-restraint' and for Palestinian militants to halt rocket attacks.

Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian movement branded a terror group by Israel and the West, remained defiant and lashed out at the world for not doing enough to end the Israeli blitz.

Israel is 'committing a holocaust as the whole world watches and doesn't lift a finger to stop it,' Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told reporters.

The Islamist group 'reserves the right to hit back at this aggression with martyr operations,' meaning suicide bombings of the sort Hamas has not carried out inside Israel since January 2005, he said.

Hamas has responded to the Israeli onslaught by firing nearly 100 rockets and mortars into the Jewish state.

Some of the rockets landed some 30km inside Israel, the farthest yet.

Despite the ongoing bombardment, Israel said that it would allow 100 truckloads of humanitarian aid into Gaza on Monday. The Kerem Shalom crossing

in Gaza's south was opened on Monday morning to allow the passage of the goods, an Israeli military spokesman told AFP.

As pressure mounted within the impoverished territory, dozens of Gazans tried to break through the border into Egypt on Sunday, to be stopped by

Egyptian police firing into the air.

An Egyptian policeman was killed and another wounded by shots from across the border in the divided town of Rafah, a security official and medics said, adding that the source of the fire was unclear.

Amid vows by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to expand the air blitz and to send in ground troops if necessary, the Israeli cabinet on Sunday gave the green light to call up 6,500 reserve soldiers.

The Israeli offensive sparked protests across the world, with demonstrations held in European capitals, Turkey, Egypt and Syria.

At least two Palestinians were killed with clashes with Israeli security forces during protests in the occupied West Bank.

Israel unleashed 'Operation Cast Lead' against Hamas in the middle of Saturday morning, with some 60 warplanes bombing more than 50 targets in just a few minutes.

The Israeli blitz came after days of spiralling violence since the expiry of the Gaza truce. It comes less than two months before snap parliamentary elections in Israel called for February 10.

[Rak HaEmet]

yep i will say he reminds me of a shill

First, I'm a x-US Army combat war veteran. Second, I have a degree in Middle East relations.

Combined, I have a thick skin, and have seen children starving because of US embargoes, and understand that the situation with the Arabs in Palestine is much more complex than a week of bombings.

If i am apathetic that human being have made a bed they must continue to sleep in (on both sides), I am not picking any side. I have friends on both sides of the fighting, and wish them the best; however, these groups have chosen their path long ago, and aren't doing much to change it.

Human beings are dying- and I know this. Do I care? Well, if they've made a decision to enter into combat (like so many of you have eluded to in this forum about going to war against the NWO should it finally come time to water the tree of liberty), then how can I be saddened by the choices you are endeavoring to fulfill?

So, they're watering their tree of liberty out there- why should we shed a tear?

In war, there is only victors and the dead. Those folks have chosen combat, and therefore there are only two ends they may find themselves in.

[Avers]

Those folks have chosen combat, and therefore there are only two ends they may find themselves in.

Tell that face to face to those who were living peacefully in Palestine in 1948 and their currently imprisoned descendents, Mr. 'x-US Army combat war veteran, I have a degree in Middle East relations' with your self believed righteous attitude.

[OldSchool]

I disagree OldSchool. Israel is trying to do what we should have done along the Southern Border already. Put up a wall, only allow folks with a visa in...

I don't see how israel is treading them like dogs. By closing off the border is to treat them like dogs? So, you're for NAU??

Truly, they can't be isolated, as Gaza also borders Egypt, and if these Gazans were friendly with the Egyptians, then Egypt could open its borders, no? Were you aware that Gaza also bordered Egypt?

What most don't know is that these Gazans enjoy work visas in israel. They're hired as cheap labor (much akin to Mexicans down South). If Tiajuanna started firing rockets at Sacramento, would the Kalifornians be so horrible if they closed up the border and revoked all the work visas?

Treating them like dogs? I can't see that. They have their place, and likely, if they didn't shoot any rockets into Sacremento, no one would care what they're doing (and even more importantly, there would be 1.5 million people needing toilet paper, cell phones, building materials.... it would be in a merchant's best interest if everything was calm, cool, and collected).

btw, don't believe everything you see on youtube- the arab journalists have already been caught doctoring photos, and/or using photos of other incidents in the past to bolster the emotive factor in sheep. don't be sheepish!

Hi Rak. My point here is that the Israelis DID isolate Gaza. It's not a question of them putting up a roadblock at their border. I understand that. Last month a supply ship from Libya was deployed to Gaza, and Israel turned it back. We'll have to see what they do when the Iranian supply ship arrives. Sure Israel sent in 20 trucks full of supplies. Why, I ask you, does Israel NOW send in supplies when it has been rationing them during the ceasefire? They choose to send help NOW that they are bombing the place? Too little too late, huh?
 Yes Hamas kept firing rockets at Israel, and 99% hit dirt outside the city. Israel has a soft and wide border there. You example of Tijuana firing rockets at Cali is quite mute. Another example is you standing on one side of a river, and your enemy on the other side throwing rocks. The rocks don't make it across the river, but its' annoying. Do you get out your rocket launcher and kill him?
 Gaza is being caged in on all sides. They are powerless to conduct anything on their own shores as Israel controls it. They cannot flee to Egypt as they are repelled. Commerce inside Gaza has come to a screeching halt, BUT the Israelis will allow them to come across the border to work. Kinda one sided, don't you think?
 The whole event there reeks of a set-up and we all know it. And Israel refuses to cease fire and has declared war. On Gaza? No. They declared war on hamas. Reminds me of th old sham of invading Afghanistan for Bin Laden. The war is declared on a group of people, not a territory. Same with Iraq. The invasion was launched in false pretense. And in all of these 'offensives', their 'global war on terror' has claimed millions of innocent lives. The Cast Lead operation has killed more Palestinians than it has Hamas soldiers. So, in my opinion, Israel followed their NWO protocol. Create problem, generate solution, initiate response. They have been doing it all over the planet. It's time to call a spade, a spade.
 It is no more the fault of the Israeli citizens, as it is America's fault. There are small groups of corrupt military-industrial factions creating this whole mess, and it is always the country of origin that gets the bad rap. The problem with these small factions is no matter where they originate, there is only chaos and mayhem left in their wake. Unfortunately, for the regular Israeli community, the Satanic Zionists are giving them the bad rap.

[Doctor No NWO]

The Truth will stand on its own merit

A Jewish Defector Warns America:

Benjamin Freedman Speaks

by Benjamin H. Freedman
     Introductory Note  -- Benjamin H. Freedman was one of the most intriguing and amazing individuals of the 20th century.

     Mr. Freedman, born in 1890, 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 after the Judeo-Communist victory of 1945, and spent the remainder of his life and the great preponderance of his considerable fortune, at least 2.5 million dollars, exposing the Jewish tyranny which has enveloped the United States.

     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.

This speech was given before a patriotic audience in 1961 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Conde McGinley's patriotic newspaper of that time, Common Sense.  Though in some minor ways this wide-ranging and extemporaneous speech has become dated, Mr. Freedman's essential message to us -- his warning to the West -- is more urgent than ever before. -- K.A.S. ---

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE HOLOCAUST

Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to hear a very frightening speech.  This speech is an explanation of the plans now being laid to throw the United States into a third world war.  It was made a short time ago before a large group in the Congressional `Room of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.  Both the speech and the question and answer period later so electrified the audience that a group of patriots has transferred it to two long-playing records which you may buy to play for friends, clubs, and your church group in your community. The speaker is Mr. Benjamin Freedman, noted authority on Zionism and all of its schemes. Mr. Freedman is a former Jew, and I mean a FORMER Jew.  He has fought the Communist world conspiracy tooth and nail, and stands today as a leading American patriot. We now take you to the speaker's platform to present Benjamin Freedman.

(applause)

[Freedman's speech]

     What I intend to tell you tonight is something that you have never been able to learn from any other source, and what I tell you now concerns not only you, but your children and the survival of this country and Christianity.  I'm not here just to dish up a few facts to send up your blood pressure, but I'm here to tell you things that will help you preserve what you consider the most sacred things in the world:  the liberty, and the freedom, and the right to live as Christians, where you have a little dignity, and a little right to pursue the things that your conscience tells you are the right things, as Christians.   

   Now, first of all, I'd like to tell you that on August 25th 1960 -- that was shortly before elections -- Senator Kennedy, who is now the President of the United States, went to New York, and delivered an address to the Zionist Organization of America.   In that address, to reduce it to its briefest form, he stated that he would use the armed forces of the United States to preserve the existence of the regime set up in Palestine by the Zionists who are now in occupation of that area.

  In other words, Christian boys are going to be yanked out of their homes, away from their families, and sent abroad to fight in Palestine against the Christian and Moslem Arabs who merely want to return to their homes. And these Christian boys are going to be asked to shoot to kill these innocent [Arab Palestinians] people who only want to follow out fifteen resolutions passed by the United Nations in the last twelve years calling upon the Zionists to allow these people to return to their homes.

     Now, when United States troops appear in the Middle East to fight with the Zionists as their allies to prevent the return of these people who were evicted from their homes in the 1948 armed insurrection by the Zionists who were transplanted there from Eastern Europe... when that happens, the United States will trigger World War III.   

     You say, when will that take place?  The answer is, as soon as the difficulty between France and Algeria has been settled, that will take place.  As soon as France and Algeria have been settled, that will take place. As soon as France and Algeria have settled their difficulty, and the Arab world, or the Moslem world, has no more war on their hands with France, they are going to move these people back into their homes, and when they do that and President kennedy sends your sons to fight over there to help the crooks hold on to what they stole from innocent men, women and children, we will trigger World War III; and when that starts you can be sure we cannot emerge from that war a victor. We are going to lose that war because there is not one nation in the world that will let one of their sons fight with us for such a cause.   

     I know and speak to these ambassadors in Washington and the United Nations -- and of the ninety-nine nations there, I've consulted with maybe seventy of them -- and when we go to war in Palestine to help the thieves retain possession of what they have stolen from these innocent people we're not going to have a man there to fight with us as our ally. 

   And who will these people have supporting them, you ask.  Well, four days after President Kennedy -- or he was then Senator Kennedy -- made that statement on August 28, 1960, the Arab nations called a meeting in Lebanon and there they decided to resurrect, or reactivate, the government of Palestine, which has been dormant more or less, since the 1948 armed insurrection by the Zionists.

     Not only that... they ordered the creation of the Palestine Army, and they are now drilling maybe a half a million soldiers in that area of the world to lead these people back to their  homeland.  With them, they have as their allies all the nations of what is termed the Bandung Conference Group.  That includes the Soviet Union and every Soviet Union satellite.  It includes Red China; it includes every independent country in Asia and Africa; or eighty percent of the world's total population.  Eighty percent of the world's population.  Four out of five human beings on the face of the earth will be our enemies at war with us.  And not alone are they four out of five human beings now on the face of this earth, but they are the non-Christian population of the world and they are the non-Caucasians... the non-white nations of the world, and that's what we face.

  And what is the reason?  The reason is that here in the United States, the Zionists and their co-religionists have complete control of our government.  For many reasons too many and too complex to go into here at this -- time I'll be glad to answer questions, however, to support that statement -- the Zionists and their co-religionists rule this United States as though they were the absolute monarchs of this country.   

     Now, you say, 'well, that's a very broad statement to make', but let me show what happened while you were -- I don't want to wear that out --- let me show what happened while WE were all asleep.  I'm including myself with you. We were all asleep.  What happened? 

     World War I broke out in the summer of 1914.  Nineteen-hundred and fourteen was the year in which World War One broke out.  There are few people here my age who remember that. Now that war was waged on one side by Great Britain, France, and Russia; and on the other side by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. What happened?

     Within two years Germany had won that war:  not alone won it nominally, but won it actually. The German submarines, which were a surprise to the world, had swept all the convoys from the Atlantic Ocean, and Great Britain stood there without ammunition for her soldiers, stood there with one week's food supply  facing her -- and after that, starvation.   

     At that time, the French army had mutinied.  They lost 600,000 of the flower of French youth in the defense of Verdun on the Somme.  The Russian army was defecting.  They were picking up their toys and going home, they didn't want to play war anymore, they didn't like the Czar.  And the Italian army had collapsed.

     Now Germany -- not a shot had been fired on the German soil.  Not an enemy soldier had crossed the border into Germany.  And yet, here was Germany offering England peace terms.  They offered England a negotiated peace on what the lawyers call a status quo ante basis.  That means: “Let's call the war off, and let everything be as it was before the war started.”   

    Well, England, in the summer of 1916 was considering that. Seriously!   They had no choice.  It was either accepting this negotiated peace that Germany was magnanimously offering them, or going on with the war and being totally defeated.

    While that was going on, the Zionists in Germany, who represented the Zionists from Eastern Europe, went to the British War Cabinet and -- I am going to be brief because this is a long story, but I have all the documents to prove any statement that I make  if anyone here is curious, or doesn't believe what I'm saying is at all possible -- the Zionists in London went to the British war cabinet and they said: “Look here.  You can yet win this war.  You don't have to give up.  You don't have to accept the negotiated peace offered to you now by Germany.  You can win this war if the United States will come in as your ally.”

    The United States was not in the war at that time.  We were fresh; we were young; we were rich; we were powerful.  They [Zionists] told England: “We will guarantee to bring the United States into the war as your ally, to fight with you on your side, if you will promise us Palestine after you win the war.”

     In other words, they made this deal:  “We will get the United States into this war as your ally. The price you must pay us  is Palestine after you have won the war and defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey.”

     Now England had as much right to promise Palestine to anybody, as the United States would have to promise Japan to Ireland for any reason whatsoever.   It's absolutely absurd that Great Britain -- that never had any connection or any interest or any right in what is known as Palestine -- should offer it as coin of the realm to pay the Zionists for bringing the United States into the war.

      However, they made that promise, in October of 1916.   October, nineteen hundred and sixteen. And shortly after that -- I don't know how many here remember it -- the United States, which was almost totally pro-German -- totally pro-German -- because the newspapers here were controlled by Jews, the bankers were Jews, all the media of mass communications in this country were controlled by Jews, and they were pro-German because their people, in the majority of cases came from Germany, and they wanted to see Germany lick the Czar.

       The Jews didn't like the Czar, and they didn't want Russia to win this war.  So the German bankers -- the German-Jews -- Kuhn Loeb and the other big banking firms in the United States refused to finance France or England to the extent of one dollar.   They stood aside and they said: “As long as France and England are tied up with Russia, not one cent!”  But they poured money into Germany, they fought with Germany against Russia, trying to lick the Czarist regime.

     Now those same Jews, when they saw the possibility of getting Palestine, they went to England and they made this deal.  At that time, everything changed, like the traffic light that changes from red to green.  Where the newspapers had been all pro-German, where they'd been telling the people of the difficulties that Germany was having fighting Great Britain commercially and in other respects, all of a sudden the Germans were no good.   They were villains.   They were Huns. They were shooting Red Cross nurses.  They were cutting off babies' hands.  And they were no good.

     Well, shortly after that, Mr. Wilson declared war on Germany.

    The Zionists in London sent these cables to the United States, to Justice Brandeis: “Go to work on President Wilson.  We're getting from England what we want.  Now you go to work, and you go to work on President Wilson and get the United States into the war."  And that did happen. That's how the United States got into the war.  We had no more interest in it; we had no more right to be in it than we have to be on the moon tonight instead of in this room.

     Now the war -- World War One -- in which the United States participated had absolutely no reason to be our war. We went in there -- we were railroaded into it -- if I can be vulgar, we were suckered into -- that war merely so that the Zionists of the world could obtain Palestine.   Now, that is something that the people  in the United States have never been told. They never knew why we went into World War One. Now, what happened?

    After we got into the war, the Zionists went to Great Britain and they said: “Well, we performed our part of the agreement.  Let's have something in writing that shows that you are going to keep your bargain and give us Palestine after you win the war.”   Because they didn't know whether the war would last another year or another ten years.   So they started to work out a receipt.   The receipt took the form of a letter, and it was worded in very cryptic language so that the world at large wouldn't know what it was all about.   And that was called the Balfour Declaration.

    The Balfour Declaration was merely Great Britain's promise to pay the Zionists what they had agreed upon as a consideration for getting the United States into the war.   So this great Balfour Declaration, that you hear so much about, is just as phony as a three dollar bill.   And I don't think I could make it more emphatic than that.

     Now, that is where all the trouble started.  The United States went in the war.  The United States crushed Germany.  We went in there, and it's history. You know what happened.  Now, when the war was ended, and the Germans went to Paris, to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, there were 117 Jews there, as a delegation representing the Jews, headed by Bernard Baruch.  I was there: I ought to know. Now what happened?   

    The Jews at that peace conference, when they were cutting up Germany and parceling out Europe to all these nations that claimed a right to a certain part of European territory, the Jews said, “How about Palestine for us?”  And they produced, for the first time to the knowledge of the Germans, this Balfour Declaration.   So the Germans, for the first time realized, “Oh, that was the game!  That's why the United States came into the war.”  And the Germans for the first time realized that they were defeated, they suffered this terrific reparation that was slapped onto them, because the Zionists wanted Palestine and they were determined to get it at any cost.

     Now, that brings us to another very interesting point.  When the Germans realized this, they naturally resented it.  Up to that time, the Jews had never been better off in any country in the world than they had been in Germany.

     You had Mr. Rathenau there, who was maybe 100 times as important in industry and finance as is Bernard Baruch in this country.   You had Mr. Balin, who owned the two big steamship lines, the North German Lloyd's and the Hamburg-American Lines. You had Mr. Bleichroder, who was the banker for the Hohenzollern family.  You had the Warburgs in Hamburg, who were the big merchant bankers -- the biggest in the world.  The Jews were doing very well in Germany. No question about that.  Now, the Germans felt: “Well, that was quite a sellout.”

    It was a sellout that I can best compare -- suppose the United States was at war today with the Soviet Union.  And we were winning.  And we told the Soviet Union: “Well, let's quit.  We offer you peace terms.  Let's forget the whole thing.” And all of a sudden Red China came into the war as an ally of the Soviet Union.  And throwing them into the war brought about our defeat.  A crushing defeat, with reparations the likes of which man's imagination cannot encompass.

     Imagine, then, after that defeat, if we found out that it was the Chinese in this country, our Chinese citizens, who all the time we thought they were loyal citizens working with us, were selling us out to the Soviet Union and that it was through them that Red China was brought into the war against us. How would we feel, in the United States against Chinese?  I don't think that one of them would dare show his face on any street.  There wouldn't be lampposts enough, convenient, to take care of them. Imagine how we would feel.

     Well, that's how the Germans felt towards these Jews.  "We've been so nice to them"; and from 1905 on, when the first Communist revolution in Russia failed, and the Jews had to scramble out of Russia, they all went to Germany.  And Germany gave them refuge.  And they were treated very nicely.  And here they sold Germany down the river for no reason at all other than they wanted Palestine as a so-called “Jewish commonwealth.”

    Now, Nahum Sokolow -- all the great leaders, the big names that you read about in connection with Zionism today -- they, in 1919, 1920, '21, '22, and '23, they wrote in all their papers -- and the press was filled with their statements -- that "the feeling against the Jews in Germany is due to the fact that they realized that this great defeat was brought about by our intercession and bringing the United States into the war against them."

    The Jews themselves admitted that.  It wasn't that the Germans in 1919 discovered that a glass of Jewish blood tasted better than Coca-Cola or Muenschner Beer.  There was no religious feeling. There was no sentiment against those people merely on account of their religious belief. It was all political.  It was economic.  It was anything but religious.   

     Nobody cared in Germany whether a Jew went home and pulled down the shades and said “Shema' Yisrael” or “Our Father.”  No one cared in Germany any more than they do in the United States.  Now this feeling that developed later in Germany was due to one thing: that the Germans held the Jews responsible for their crushing defeat, for no reason at all, because World War One was started against Germany for no reason for which they [Germans] were responsible.  They were guilty of nothing. Only of being successful.  They built up a big navy. They built up world trade.

    You must remember, Germany, at the time of Napoleon, at the time of the French Revolution, what was the German Reich consisted of 300 -- three hundred! -- small city-states, principalities, dukedoms, and so forth.  Three hundred little separate political entities. And between that time, between the period of. . . between Napoleon and Bismarck, they were consolidated into one state. And within 50 years after that time they became one of the world's great powers. Their navy was rivalling Great Britain's, they were doing business all over the world, they could undersell anybody and make better products.  And what happened?  What happened as a result of that?

     There was a conspiracy between England, France, and Russia that: "We must slap down Germany", because there isn't one historian in the world that can find a valid reason why those three countries decided to wipe Germany off the map politically. Now, what happened after that?

     When Germany realized that the Jews were responsible for her defeat, they naturally resented it.   But not a hair on the head of any Jew was harmed.  Not a single hair.  Professor Tansill, of Georgetown University, who had access to all the secret papers of the State Department, wrote in his book, and quoted from a State Department document written by Hugo Schoenfelt, a Jew who Cordell Hull sent to Europe in 1933 to investigate the so-called camps of political prisoners. And he wrote back that he found them in very fine condition.

    They were in excellent shape; everybody treated well.  And they were filled with Communists. Well, a lot of them were Jews, because the Jews happened to be maybe 98 per cent of the Communists in Europe at that time.  And there were some priests there, and ministers, and labor leaders, Masons, and others who had international affiliations.

     Now, the Jews sort of tried to keep the lid on this fact.  They didn't want the world to really understand that they had sold out Germany, and that the Germans resented that.

     So they did take appropriate action against them [against the Jews].  They. . . shall I say, discriminated against them wherever they could?  They shunned them.  The same as we would the Chinese, or the Negroes, or the Catholics, or anyone in this country who had sold us out to an enemy and brought about our defeat.

     Now, after a while, the Jews of the world didn't know what to do, so they called a meeting in Amsterdam.  Jews from every country in the world attended in July 1933.  And they said to Germany: “You fire Hitler!  And you put every Jew back into his former position, whether he was a Communist, no matter what he was.  You can't treat us that way!  And we, the Jews of the world, are calling upon you, and serving this ultimatum upon you.”  Well, the Germans told them. . . you can imagine.  So what did they [the Jews] do?

     They broke up, and Samuel Untermyer, if the name means anything to people here. . .  (You want to ask a question? --- Uh, there were no Communists in Germany at that time.  they were called 'Social Democrats.)

     Well, I don't want to go by what they were called.  We're now using English words, and what they were called in Germany is not very material. . . but they were Communists, because in 1917, the Communists took over Germany for a few days. Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, and a group of Jews in Germany took over the government for three days.  In fact, when the Kaiser ended the war, he fled to Holland because he thought the Communists were going to take over Germany as they did Russia, and that he was going to meet the same fate that the Czar did in Russia. So he left and went to Holland for safety and for security.

     Now, at that time, when the Communist threat in Germany was quashed, it was quiet, the Jews were working, still trying to get back into their former -- their status -- and the Germans fought them in every way they could, without hurting a hair on anyone's head.  The same as one group, the Prohibitionists, fought the people who were interested in liquor, and they didn't fight one another with pistols, they did it every way they could.   

     Well, that's the way they were fighting the Jews in Germany.  And, at that time, mind you, there were 80 to 90 million Germans and there were only 460,000 Jews. . . less than one half of one percent of Germany were Jews.  And yet, they controlled all of the press, they controlled most of the economy, because they had come in and with cheap money -- you know the way the Mark was devalued -- they bought up practically everything.

     Well, in 1933 when Germany refused to surrender, mind you, to the World Conference of Jews in Amsterdam, they broke up and Mr. Untermeyer came back to the United States -- who was the head of the American delegation and the president of the whole conference --  and he went from the steamer to ABC and made a radio broadcast throughout the United States in which he said:

"The Jews of the world now declare a Holy War against Germany.  We are now engaged in a sacred conflict against the Germans.  And we are going to starve them into surrender.  We are going to use a world-wide boycott against them, that will destroy them because they are dependent upon their export business."

     And it is a fact that two thirds of Germany's food supply had to be imported, and it could only be imported with the proceeds of what they exported.  Their labor.  So if Germany could not export, two thirds of Germany's population would have to starve. There just was not enough food for more than one third of the population.

     Now in this declaration, which I have here, it was printed on page -- a whole page -- in the New York Times on August 7, 1933,  Mr. Samuel Untermyer boldly stated that: “this economic boycott is our means of self-defense.  President Roosevelt has advocated its use in the NRA" . [National Recovery Administration]  -- which some of you may remember, where everybody was to be boycotted unless they followed the rules laid down by the New Deal, which of course was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court at that time.

     Nevertheless, the Jews of the world declared a boycott against Germany, and it was so effective that you couldn't find one thing in any store anywhere in the world with the words "made in Germany" on it.

     In fact, an executive of the Woolworth Company told me that they had to dump millions of dollars worth of crockery and dishes into the river; that their stores were boycotted.  If anyone came in and found a dish marked "made in Germany," they were picketed with signs: "Hitler",  "murderer", and so forth,  and like -- something like these sit-ins that are taking place in the South.

     R. H. Macy, which is controlled by a family called Strauss who also happen to be Jews. . . a woman found stockings there which came from Chemnitz, marked "made in Germany".  Well, they were cotton stockings. They may have been there 20 years, because since I've been observing women's legs in the last twenty years, I haven't seen a pair with cotton stockings on them.  So Macy!  I saw Macy boycotted, with hundreds of people walking around with signs saying "MURDERS"  and "HITLERITES", and so forth.

     Now up to that time, not one hair on the head of any Jew had been hurt in Germany.  There was no suffering, there was no starvation, there was no murder, there was nothing.

     Now, that. . . naturally, the Germans said, "Why, who are these people to declare a boycott against us and throw all our people out of work, and our industries come to a standstill?  Who are they to do that to us?"  They naturally resented it.  Certainly they painted swastikas on stores owned by Jews.

     Why should a German go in and give their money to a storekeeper who was part of a boycott who was going to starve Germany into surrender into the Jews of the world, who were going to dictate who their premier or chancellor was to be?  Well, it was ridiculous.

     That continued for some time, and it wasn't until 1938, when a young Jew from Poland walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot one of the officials [a German official] that the Germans really started to get rough with the Jews in Germany.  And you found them then breaking windows and having street fights and so forth.

     Now, for anyone to say that --  I don't like to use the word 'anti-Semitism' because it's meaningless, but it means something to you still, so I'll have to use it -- the only reason that there was any feeling in Germany against Jews was that they were responsible: number one, for World War One; number two, for this world-wide boycott, and number three -- did I say for World War One, they were responsible? For the boycott -- and also for World War II, because after this thing got out of hand, it was absolutely necessary for the Jews and Germany to lock horns in a war to see which one was going to survive.

     In the meanwhile, I had lived in Germany, and I knew that the Germans had decided [that] Europe is going to be Christian or Communist: there is no in between. It's going to be Christian or it's going to be Communist. And the Germans decided: "We're going to keep it Christian if possible".  And they started to re-arm.

     And there intention was -- by that time the United States had recognized the Soviet Union, which they did in November, 1933 -- the Soviet Union was becoming very powerful, and Germany realized: "Well, our turn is going to come soon, unless we are strong."  The same as we in this country are saying today, "Our turn is going to come soon, unless we are strong."   

     And our government is spending 83 or 84 billion dollars of your money for defense, they say. Defense against whom?  Defense against 40,000 little Jews in Moscow that took over Russia, and then, in their devious ways, took over control of many other governments of the world.

     Now, for this country to now be on the verge of a Third World War, from which we cannot emerge a victor, is something that staggers my imagination.  I know that nuclear bombs are measured in terms of megatons.  A megaton is a term used to describe one million tons of TNT.  One million tons of TNT is a megaton.  Now, our nuclear bombs have a capacity of 10 megatons, or 10 million tons of TNT.  That was when they were first developed five or six years ago.  Now, the nuclear bombs that are being developed have a capacity of 200 megatons, and God knows how many megatons the nuclear bombs of the Soviet Union have.

     So, what do we face now?   If we trigger a world war that may develop into a nuclear war, humanity is finished.  And why will it take place?  It will take place because Act III. . . the curtain goes up on Act III.  Act I was World War I.  Act II was World War II.  Act III is going to be World War III.

     The Jews of the world, the Zionists and their co-religionists everywhere, are determined that they are going to again use the United States to help them permanently retain Palestine as their foothold for their world government.  Now, that is just as true as I am standing here, because not alone have I read it, but many here have read it, and it's known all over the world.

     Now, what are we going to do?  The life you save may be your son's.  Your boys may be on their way to that war tonight; and you you don't know it any more than you knew that in 1916 in London the Zionists made a deal with the British War Cabinet to send your sons to war in Europe.  Did you know it at that time?  Not a person in the United States knew it.  You weren't permitted to know it.

     Who knew it?  President Wilson knew it.  Colonel House knew it.  Other 's knew it. Did I know it?  I had a pretty good idea of what was going on:  I was liaison to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., in the 1912 campaign when President Wilson was elected, and there was talk around the office there.

     I was 'confidential man' to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who was chairman of the Finance Committee, and I was liaison between him and Rollo Wells, the treasurer.  So I sat in these meetings with President Wilson at the head of the table, and all the others, and I heard them drum into President Wilson's brain the graduated income tax and what has become the Federal Reserve, and also indoctrinate him with the Zionist movement.

     Justice Brandeis and President Wilson were just as close as the two fingers on this hand, and President Woodrow Wilson was just as incompetent when it came to determining what was going on as a newborn baby.  And that's how they got us into World War I, while we all slept.   

     Now, at this moment... at this moment they may be planning this World War III, in which we don't stand a chance even if they don't use nuclear bombs.  How can the United States -- about five percent of the world -- go out and fight eighty to ninety percent of the world on their home ground?  How can we do it... send our boys over there to be slaughtered?  For what?  So the Jews can have Palestine as their 'commonwealth'?  They've fooled you so much that you don't know whether you're coming or going.

     Now any judge, when he charges a jury, says, "Gentlemen, any witness that you find has told a single lie, you can disregard all his testimony." That is correct.   I don't know from what state you come, but in New York state that is the way a judge addresses a jury.  If that witness said one lie, disregard his testimony.

     Now, what are the facts about the Jews?

     The Jews -- I call them Jews to you, because they are known as Jews. I don't call them Jews.  I refer to them as so-called Jews, because I know what they are.  If Jesus was a Jew, there isn't a Jew in the world today, and if those people are Jews, certainly our Lord and Savior was not one of them, and I can prove that.   

     Now what happened?  The eastern European Jews, who form 92 per cent of the world's population of those people who call themselves Jews, were originally Khazars.

     They were a warlike tribe that lived deep in the heart of Asia.  And they were so warlike that even the Asiatics drove them out of Asia into eastern Europe -- and to reduce this so you don't get too confused about the history of Eastern Europe -- they set up this big Khazar kingdom: 800,000 square miles.  Only, there was no Russia, there were no other countries, and the Khazar kingdom was the biggest country in all Europe -- so big and so powerful that when the other monarchs wanted to go to war, the Khazars would lend them 40,000 soldiers. That's how big and powerful they were.

      Now, they were phallic worshippers, which is filthy.  I don't want to go into the details of that now.  It was their religion the way it was the religion of many other Pagans or Barbarians elsewhere in the world.

     Now, the [Khazar] king became so disgusted with the degeneracy of his kingdom that he decided to adopt a so-called monotheistic faith -- either  Christianity, Islam -- the Moslem faith -- or what is known today as Judaism -- really Talmudism.  So, like spinning a top and calling out "eeny, meeny, miney, moe,"  he picked out so-called Judaism.  And that became the state religion.

     He sent down to the Talmudic schools of Pumbedita and Sura and brought up thousands of these rabbis with their teachings, and opened up synagogues and schools in his kingdom of 800,000 people -- 800,000 thousand square miles -- and maybe ten to twenty million people; and they became what we call Jews.  There wasn't one of them that had an ancestor that ever put a toe in the Holy Land, not only in Old Testament history, but back to the beginning of time.  Not one of them!  And yet they come to the Christians and they ask us to support their armed insurrection in Palestine by saying:   

"Well, you want to certainly help repatriate God's  chosen people to their Promised Land, their ancestral homeland,  It's your Christian duty.  We gave you one of our boys as your Lord and Savior.  You now go to church on Sunday, and kneel and you worship a Jew, and we're Jews."

     Well, they were pagan Khazars who were converted just the same as the Irish [were converted].  And it's just as ridiculous to call them "people of the Holy Land," as it would be. . . there are 54 million Chinese Moslems.  Fifty four million!  And, Mohammed only died in 620 A.D., so in that time, 54 million Chinese have accepted Islam as their religious belief.   

     Now imagine, in China, 2,000 miles away from Arabia, where the city of Mecca is located, where Mohammed was born. . . imagine if the 54 million Chinese called themselves  'Arabs'.  Imagine! Why, you'd say they're lunatics.  Anyone who believes that those 54 million Chinese are Arabs must be crazy.  All they did was adopt as a religious faith; a belief that had its origin in Mecca, in Arabia.

      The same as the Irish.  When the Irish became Christians, nobody dumped them in the ocean and imported from the Holy Land a new crop of inhabitants that were Christians. They weren't different people.  They were the same people, but they had accepted Christianity as a religious faith.

     Now, these Pagans, these Asiatics, these Turko-Finns. . . they were a Mongoloid race who were forced out of Asia into eastern Europe.  They likewise, because their king took the faith -- Talmudic faith -- they had no choice.  Just the same as in Spain:  If the king was Catholic, everybody had to be a Catholic.  If not, you had to get out of Spain.  So everybody -- they lived on the land just like the trees and the bushes; a human being belonged to the land under their feudal system -- so they [Khazars] all became what we call today, Jews!   

      Now imagine how silly it was for the Christians. . . for the great Christian countries of the world to say, "We're going to use our power, our prestige to repatriate God's chosen people to their ancestral homeland, their Promised Land."

     Now, could there be a bigger lie than that?  Could there be a bigger lie than that? 

     And because they control the newspapers, the magazines, the radio, the television, the book publishing business, they have the ministers in the pulpit, they have the politicians on the soap boxes talking the same language . . . so naturally you'd believe black is white if you heard it often enough.  You wouldn't call black black anymore -- you'd start to call black white.  And nobody could blame you.

     Now, that is one of the great lies. . . that is the foundation of all the misery that has befallen the world.  Because after two wars fought in Europe -- World War I and World War II -- if it wasn't possible for them to live in peace and harmony with the people in Europe, like their brethren are living in the United States, what were the two wars fought for?  Did they have to -- like you flush the toilet -- because they couldn't get along, did they  have to say, "Well, we're going back to our homeland and you Christians can help us"?

     I can't understand yet how the Christians in Europe could have been that dumb because every theologian, every history teacher, knew the things that I'm telling you.  But, they naturally bribed them, shut them up with money, stuffed their mouths with money, and now. . . I don't care whether you know all this or not.  It doesn't make any difference to me whether you know all these facts or not, but it does make a difference to me.  I've got, in my family, boys that will have to be in the next war, and I don't want them to go and fight and die... like they died in Korea.  Like they died in Japan. Like they've died all over the world.  For what?   

     To help crooks hold on to what they stole from innocent people who had been in peaceful possession of that land, those farms, those homes for hundreds and maybe thousands of years?  Is that why the United States must go to war?  Because the Democratic Party wants New York State -- the electoral vote?  Illinois, the electoral vote? And Pennsylvania, the electoral vote?... which are controlled by the Zionists and their co-religionists?. . . the balance of power?   

     In New York City there are 400,000 members of the liberal party, all Zionists and their co-religionists.  And New York State went for Kennedy by 400,000 votes.  Now, I don't blame Mr. Kennedy.  I'm fond of Mr. Kennedy.  I think he's a great man.  I think he can really pull us out of this trouble if we get the facts to him.  And I believe he knows a great deal more than his appointments indicate he knows.  He's playing with the enemy.  Like when you go fishing, you've got to play with the fish.  Let 'em out and pull 'em in.  Let 'em out and pull 'em in.  But knowing Mr. Kennedy's father, and how well informed he is on this whole subject, and how close Kennedy is to his father, I don't think Mr. Kennedy is totally in the dark.   

     But I do think that it is the duty of every mother, every loyal Christian , every person that regards the defense of this country as a sacred right, that they communicate -- not with their congressman, not with their senator, but with President Kennedy.  And tell him, "I do not think you should send my boy, or our boys, wearing the uniform of the United States of America, and under the flag that you see here, our red, white and blue, to fight there to help keep in the hands of these that which they have stolen".  I think everyone should not alone write once, but keep writing and get your friends to write.

     Now, I could go on endlessly, and tell you these things to support what I have just asked you to do.  But I don't think it's necessary to do that.  You're above the average group in intelligence and I don't think it's necessary to impress this any more.

     But. . . I want to tell you one more thing.  You talk about... "Oh, the Jews.  Why the Jews?  Christianity.  Why, we got Christianity from the Jews and the Jews gave us Jesus, and the Jews gave us our religion".  But do you know that on the day of atonement that you think is so sacred to them, that on that day... and I was one of them!  This is not hearsay.  I'm not here to be a rabble-rouser.  I'm here to give you facts.

     When, on the Day of Atonement, you walk into a synagogue, the very first prayer that you recite, you stand -- and it's the only prayer for which you stand -- and you repeat three times a short prayer. The Kol Nidre.  In that prayer, you enter into an agreement with God Almighty that any oath, vow, or pledge that you may make during the next twelve months -- any oath, vow or pledge that you may take during the next twelve months  shall be null and void.

     The oath shall not be an oath; the vow shall not be a vow; the pledge shall not be a pledge. They shall have no force and effect, and so forth and so on.

     And further than that, the Talmud teaches: "Don't forget -- whenever you take an oath, vow, and pledge -- remember the Kol Nidre prayer that you recited on the Day of Atonement, and that exempts you from fulfilling that".

     How much can you depend on their loyalty?  You can depend upon their loyalty as much as the Germans depended upon it in 1916.

     And we're going to suffer the same fate as Germany suffered, and for the same reason.  You can't depend upon something as insecure as the leadership that is not obliged to respect an oath, vow or pledge.  Now I could go on and recite many other things to you, but I would have a little respect for your time, and you want to really, uh, get through with all of this.  Tomorrow's going to be a long day.   

     Now I want to say one thing. You ask me. . . well, you think to yourself: "well how did this fellow get mixed up in this the way he got mixed up in it."  Well, I opened my mouth in 1945, and I took big pages in newspapers and tried to tell the American people what I'm telling you.  And one newspaper after another refused the advertisement.  And when I couldn't find a newspaper to take them -- I paid cash, not credit -- what happened?  My lawyer told me, "There's an editor over in Jersey with a paper who will take your announcement".  So, I was brought together with Mr. McGinley, and that's how I met him.

     So somebody told me the lawyer who introduced me, who was the son of the Dean of the Methodist Bishop, he said: "Well, I think he's a little anti-Semitic.  I don't know whether I can get him over here.  So he brought him over to my apartment and we hit it off wonderfully, and have since then.

     Now, I say this, and I say it without any qualifications.  I say it without any reservations.  And I say it without any hesitation. . . if it wasn't for the work that Mr. Conley McGinley did with "Common Sense" -- he's been sending out from 1,800,000 to 2,000,000 every year -- if it wasn't for the work he's been doing sending those out for fifteen years now, we would already be a communist country. Nobody has done what he did to light fires.  Many of the other active persons in this fight learned all about if for the first time through "Common Sense".   

     Now, I have been very active in helping him all I could.  I'm not as flush as I was.  I cannot go on spending the money. . . I'm not going to take up a collection.  Don't worry.  I see five people getting up to leave.  (laughter)

     I haven't got the money that I used to spend.  I used to print a quarter of a million of them out of my own pocket and send them out.  Mr. McGinley, when I first met him, had maybe 5,000 printed and circulated them locally.  So I said, "With what you know and what I know, we can really do a good job".  So I started printing in outside shops of big newspaper companies, a quarter of a million, and paid for them.  Well, there's always a bottom to the barrel.  I suppose we've all reached that at times.

     I'm not so poor that I can't live without working and that's what worries the Anti-Defamation League.  I can just get by without going and asking for a job or getting on the bread line.  But Mr. McGinley is working.  He's sick and he's going at this stronger than ever.  And all I want to say is that they want to close up "Common Sense" more than any other single thing in the whole world, as a death-blow to the fight Christians are making to survive.   

    So I just want to tell you this.  All they do is circulate rumors: "Mr. Benjamin H. Freedman is the wealthy backer of 'Common Sense'."   The reason they do that is to discourage the people in the United States: don't send any money to Common Sense. They don't need it.  The've got the wealthy Mr. Freedman as a backer.  That all has strategy.  They don't want to advertise me so that people that have real estate or securities to sell will come and call on me. They just want people to lay off "Common Sense". And all I'm telling you is, I do try to help him, but I haven't been able to.  And I will be very honest. One thing I won't do is lie.  In the last year I've had so much sickness in my family that I could not give him one dollar.     

     How he's managed to survive, I don't know. God alone knows.  And he must be in God's care because how he's pulled through his sickness and with his financial troubles, I don't know.  But that press is working. . . and every two weeks about a hundred or a hundred-fifty-thousand of "Common Sense" go out with a new message.  And if that information could be multiplied. . . if people that now get it could buy ten or twenty five, or fifty, give them around.  Plow that field.  Sow those seeds, you don't know which will take root, but for God's sake, this is our last chance.

    [Freedman then discusses the importance of people forgoing unnecessary purchases to 'buy more stuff', play golf, etc., and use the money to keep "Common Sense" going.  He explains that the paper is going in debt; could be closed down and he (Freedman) no longer has the funds, having spent some $2,400,000 in his attempt to bring the information to the American public and elected officials.  He then asks for questions from the audience.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{Question inaudible]   

Freedman:  All right, I'll comment on that.  This is rather deep, but you all have a very high degree of intelligence, so I'm going to make an attempt.  In the time of Bible history, there was a geographic area known as Judea.  Judea was a province of the Roman Empire.  Now, a person who lived in Judea was known as a Judean, and in Latin it was Judaeus; in Greek it was Judaius.  Those are the two words, in Greek and Latin, for a Judean.   

     Now, in Latin and Greek there is no such letter as 'j', and the first syllable of Judaeus and Judaius starts 'ghu'.  Now, when the Bible was written, it was first written in Greek, Latin, Panantic, Syriac, Aramaic... all those languages.  Never Was the word Jew in any of them because the word didn't exist.  Judea was the country, and the people were Judeans, and Jesus was referred to only as a Judean.  I've seen those early... the earliest scripts available.   

     In 1345, a man by the name of Wycliffe in England thought that it was time to translate the Bible into English.  There was no English edition of the Bible because who the Devil could read?  It was only the educated church people who could read Latin and Greek, Syriac, Aramaic and the other languages.  Anyhow, Wycliffe translated the Bible into English.  But in it, he had to look around for some words for Judaeas and Judaius.   

     There was no English word because Judea had passed out of existence.  There was no Judea.  People had long ago forgotten that.  So in the first translation he used the word, in referring to Jesus, as 'gyu', "jew".  At the time, there was no printing press.

     Then, between 1345 and the 17th century, when the press came into use, that word passed through so many changes... I have them all here.  If you want I can read them to you.  I will.  That word 'gyu' which was in the Wycliffe Bible became. . . first it was ' gyu ',  then ' giu ',  then ' iu ' (because the ' i ' in Latin is pronounced like the ' j '.    Julius Caesar is ' Iul '   because there is no 'j' in Latin) then ' iuw ',   then ' ieuu ',  then ' ieuy ',  then ' iwe ',  then ' iow ',  then ' iewe ', all in Bibles as time went on.  Then ' ieue ',  then ' iue ',  then ' ive ',  and then ' ivw ', and finally in the 18th century... ' jew '.  Jew.   

     All the corrupt and contracted forms for Judaius, and Judaeas in Latin.  Now, there was no such thing as 'Jew', and any theologian -- I've lectured in maybe 20 of the most prominent theological seminaries in this country, and two in Europe -- there was no such word as Jew.  There only was Judea, and Jesus was a Judean and the first English use of a word in an English bible to describe him was 'gyu'  -- Jew.  A contracted and shortened form of Judaeus, just the same as we call a laboratory a 'lab', and gasoline 'gas'... a tendency to short up.   

     So, in England there were no public schools; people didn't know how to read; it looked like a scrambled alphabet so they made a short word out of it.   Now for a theologian to say that you can't harm the Jews, is just ridiculous.  I'd like to know where in the scriptures it says that.  I'd like to know the text.   

    Look at what happened to Germany for touching Jews.  What would you, as a citizen of the United States, do to people who did to you what the so-called Jews -- the Pollacks and Litvaks and Litzianers -- they weren't Jews, as I just explained to you.  They were Eastern Europeans who'd been converted to Talmudism.  There was no such thing as Judaism.  Judaism was a name given in recent years to this religion known in Bible history as Torah [inaudible].  No Jew or no educated person ever heard of Judaism.  It didn't exist.   They pulled it out of the air. . . a meaningless word.   

     Just like 'anti-Semitic'.  The Arab is a Semite.  And the Christians talk about people who don't like Jews as anti-Semites, and they call all the Arabs anti-Semites.  The only Semites in the world are the Arabs.  There isn't one Jew who's a Semite.  They're all Turkothean Mongoloids.  The Eastern european Jews.  So, they brainwashed the public, and if you will invite me to meet this reverend who told you these things, I'll convince him and it'll be one step in the right direction.  I'll go wherever I have to go to meet him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes, ma'am.  Well... I can answer that.  First of all, your first premise is wrong.  Your first premise that all the Jews are loyal to each other is wrong.  Because, the Eastern European Jews outnumber all the rest by so many that they create the impression that they are the Jewish 'race'; that they are the Jewish nation;  that they are the Jewish people. . . and the Christians swallow it like a cream puff.   

     But in 1844 the German rabbis called a conference of rabbis from all over the world for the purpose of abolishing the Kol Nidre from the Day of Atonement religious ceremony.  In Brunswick, Germany, where that conference was held in 1844, there was almost a terrific riot.  A civil war.   

     The Eastern Europeans said, "What the hell.  We should give up Kol Nidre?  That gives us our grip on our people.  We give them a franchise so they can tell the Christians, 'Go to hell.  We'll make any deal you want', but they don't have to carry it out.  That gives us our grip on our people".  So, they're not so united, and if you knew the feeling that exists. . .

    Now, I'll also show you from an official document by the man responsible for. . . uh, who baptized this race.  Here is a paper that we obtained from the archives of the Zionist organization in New York City, and in it is the manuscript by Sir James A. Malcolm, who -- on behalf of the British Cabinet -- negotiated the deal with these Zionists.   

     And in here he says that all the jews in England were against it.  The Jews who had been there for years, the [inaudible - probably Sephardim], those who had Portuguese and Spanish ad Dutch ancestry... who were monotheists and believed in that religious belief.  That was while the Eastern European Jews were still running around in the heart of Asia and then came into Europe. But they had no more to do with them than. . . can we talk about a Christian 'race'?  or a Christian religion?... or are the Christians united?   

     So the same disunity is among the Jews.  And I'll show you in this same document that when they went to France to try and get the French government to back that Zionist venture, there was only one Jew in France who was for it.  That was Rothschild, and they did it because they were interested in the oil and the Suez Canal

------------------------------------------------

[Question inaudible]  Freedman:  You know why?  Because if they don't, they're decked up.  They come around and they tell you how much you must give, and if you don't . . . oh, you're anti-Semitic. Then none of their friends will have anything to do with them, and they start a smear campaign. . . and you have got to give.   

     In New York city, in the garment center, there are twelve manufacturers in the building.  And when the drive is on to sell Israel Bonds, the United Jewish Drive, they put a big scoreboard with the names of the firms and opposite them, as you make the amount they put you down for, they put a gold star after the name.  Then, the buyers are told, "When you come into that building to call on someone and they haven't got a gold star, tell them that you won't buy from them until they have the gold star".  BLACKMAIL.  I don't know what else you can call it.

     Then what do they do?  They tell you it's for 'humanitarian purposes' and they send maybe $8 billion dollars to Israel, tax exempt, tax deductible.  So if they hadn't sent that eight billion dollars to Israel, seven billion of it would have gone into the U.S. Treasury as income tax.  So what happens? That seven billion dollars deficit -- that air pocket -- the gullible Christians have to make up.   

     They put a bigger tax on gas or bread or corporation tax.  Somebody has to pay the housekeeping expenses for the government.  So why do you let these people send their money over there to buy guns to drive people out of their ancient homeland?  And you say, "Oh, well.  The poor Jews.  They have no place to go and they've been persecuted all their lives".  They've never been persecuted for their religion.  And I wish I had two rows of Rabbis here to challenge me.  Never once, in all of history, have they been persecuted for their religion.   

     Do you know why the Jews were driven out of England?  King Edward the First in 1285 drove them out, and they never came back until the Cromwell Revolution which was financed by the Rothschilds.  For four-hundred years there wasn't a Jew.  But do you know why they were driven out?  Because in the Christian faith and the Moslem faith it's a sin to charge 'rent' for the use of money.  In other words - what we call interest [usury] is a sin.   

     So the Jews had a monopoly in England and they charged so much interest, and when the Lords and Dukes couldn't pay, they [Jews] foreclosed.  And they were creating so much trouble that the king of England finally made himself their partner, because when they they came to foreclose, some of these dukes bumped off the Jews. . . the money-lenders.  So the king finally said -- and this is all in history, look up Tianson [Tennyson?] or Rourke, the History of the Jews in England; two books you can find in your library.  When the king found out what the trouble was all about, and how much money they were making, he declared himself a fifty-percent partner of the money lenders.  Edward the First.  And for many years, one-third of the revenues of the British Treasury came from the fifty-percent interest in money-lending by the Jews.   

     But it got worse and worse.  So much worse that when the Lords and Dukes kept killing the money-lenders, the King then said, "I declare myself the heir of all the money-lenders.  If they're killed you have to pay me, because I'm his sole heir".  That made so much trouble, because the King had to go out and collect the money with an army, so he told the Jews to get out.  There were 15,000 of them, and they had to get out, and they went across to Ireland, and that's how Ireland got to be part of the United Kingdom.   

     When King Edward found out what they were doing, he decided to take Ireland for himself before someone else did.  He sent Robert Southgard with a mercenary army and conquered Ireland.  So, show me one time where a Jew was persecuted in any country because of his religion.  It has never happened.  It's always their impact on the political, social, or economic customs and traditions of the community in which they settle.   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Question inaudible] Freedman:  Yes, sir.  Well, they say most of those things themselves.  It was unnecessary for Benjamin Franklin to say it.  Most of those things they say themselves.  But Benjamin Franklin observed, and by hearsay understood, what was happening in Europe.   

     When Russia, in 920 was formed, and gradually surrounded the Khazar Kingdom, and absorbed them, most of the well-to-do Khazars fled to Western Europe and brought with them the very things to whi

[Biffa22]

Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

Monday, 29 December 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-true-story-behind-this-war-is-not-the-one-israel-is-telling-1214981.html

The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave. They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 – there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine. So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food.

It was in this context – under a collective punishment designed to topple a democracy – that some forces within Gaza did something immoral: they fired Qassam rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. These rockets have killed 16 Israeli citizens. This is abhorrent: targeting civilians is always murder. But it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim now to speak out for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians as a matter of state policy.

The American and European governments are responding with a lop-sidedness that ignores these realities. They say that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate while under rocket fire, but they demand that the Palestinians do so under siege in Gaza and violent military occupation in the West Bank.

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them.

The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: "Israel's war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth... If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas's court – it is in ours."

[Biffa22]

So it looks certain that this attack has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel's security, indeed they have engineered the instability for their own aims. The great majority of Gazans want a two state solution. Israeli Zionists do not. They are instead are seeking to destroy and undermine the Palestinians so that the Zionist agenda of blocking in Gaza and occupying swathes of the West Bank can go ahead.

[Doctor No NWO]

Sorry about the technical problems I'm having today people, PP forum is getting harder to access today, must be those evil bastards that control the search severs at it again...

here is the remander of Benjamin Freedman Speech



[Question inaudible] Freedman:  Yes, sir.  Well, they say most of those things themselves.  It was unnecessary for Benjamin Franklin to say it.  Most of those things they say themselves.  But Benjamin Franklin observed, and by hearsay understood, what was happening in Europe.  

     When Russia, in 920 was formed, and gradually surrounded the Khazar Kingdom, and absorbed them, most of the well-to-do Khazars fled to Western Europe and brought with them the very things to which you object and I object and a lot of other people object.  The customs, the habits, the instincts with which they were endowed.

     When Benjamin Franklin referred to them as Jews because that's the name that they went by, and when the Christians first heard that these people who were fleeing from Russia -- who they were -- that they had practiced this Talmudic faith -- the Christians in Western Europe said, "They must be the remnants of the lost ten tribes!"  

     And Mr. Grutz, the greatest historian amongst the Jews, said that -- and he's probably as good an authority on that subject as there is.  So when Ben Franklin came to Europe in the 18th century, he already saw the results of what these people had done after they left their homeland.  And every word of it is true... they say it themselves.  I can give you half a dozen books they've written in which they say the same thing:  When they have money they become tyrants.  And when they become defeated, they become ruthless.  They're only barbarians.  They're the descendants of Asiatic Mongols and they will do anything to accomplish their purpose.

     What right did they have to take over Russia the way they did?  The Czar had abdicated nine or ten months before that.  There was no need for them. . . they were going to have a constitutional monarchy. But they didn't want that.  When the constitutional monarchy was to assemble in November, they mowed them all down and established the Soviet Union.

     There was no need for that.  But they thought, "Now is the time", and if you you will look in the Encyclopedia Britannica under the word 'Bolshevism', you'll find the five laws there that Lenin put down for a successful revolution.  One of them is, "Wait for the right time, and then give them everything you've got".  It would pay you to read that.  

     You'd also find that Mr. Harold Blacktree, who wrote the article for the Encyclopedia Britannica states that the Jews conceived and created and cultivated the Communist movement.  And that their energy made them the spearhead of the movement.  Harold Blacktree wrote it and no one knew more about Communism than he.  And the Encyclopedia Britannica for 25 years has been printing it.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Question inaudible] Freedman:  Well, I can't advocate that you do anything that's criminal, but I can tell you this.  You can start what I call an endless chain.  If you can get your friends to write, objectively, here is the statement:  Mr. Kennedy's office gave me this himself.  Mr. Smith, who succeeded Mr. Kennedy, took over his office -- was in his office -- and gave me this.  He delivered this on the 25th, and it says here:

 "For release to AM (that means morning papers), August 25th".  "Israel is here to stay.  It is a national commitment, special obligation of the Democratic Party.  The White House must take the lead.  American intervention.  We will act promptly and decisively against any nation in the Middle East which attacks its neighbor.  I propose that we make clear to both Israel and the Arab states our guarantee that we will act with whatever force and speed are necessary to halt any aggression by any nation".

     Well, do you call the return of people to their homeland [the Arab Palestinians] aggression?  Is Mr. Kennedy going to do that?  Suppose three million Mexicans came into Texas and drove the six million Texans into the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.  Suppose these Mexicans were slipped in there armed -- the Texans were disarmed -- and one night they drove them all out of Texas and declared themselves the Republic of the Alamo.  What would the United States say?

     Would we say it's aggression for these Texans to try to get their homes back from the Mexican thieves?  Suppose the Negroes in Alabama were secretly armed by the Soviets and overnight they rose up and drove all the whites into the swamps of Mississippi and Georgia and Florida. . . drove them out completely, and declared themselves the Republic of Ham, or the Republic of something-or-other.  Would we call it aggression if these people, the whites of Alabama, tried to go back to their homes?

     Would we. . . what would we think if the soviet Union said, "No, those Negroes now occupy them! Leave them there!", or "No, those Mexicans are in Texas.  they declared themselves a sovereign state.  Leave them there.  You have plenty of room in Utah and Nevada.  Settle somewhere else".  

     Would we call it aggression if the Alabama whites or the Texans wanted to go back to their homes?  So now, you've got to write to President Kennedy and say, "We do not consider it aggression in the sense that you use the word, if these people want to return to their homes as the United Nations -- fifteen times in the last twelve years -- called upon the Zionists in occupation of Palestine to allow the Arab Palestinians to return to their former homes and farms".    

[End of transcript of Benjamin Freedman speech, given in 1961 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Conde McGinley's patriotic newspaper of that time, Common Sense.]

[Rak HaEmet]

Hi Rak. My point here is that the Israelis DID isolate Gaza. It's not a question of them putting up a roadblock at their border. I understand that. Last month a supply ship from Libya was deployed to Gaza, and Israel turned it back. We'll have to see what they do when the Iranian supply ship arrives. Sure Israel sent in 20 trucks full of supplies. Why, I ask you, does Israel NOW send in supplies when it has been rationing them during the ceasefire? They choose to send help NOW that they are bombing the place? Too little too late, huh?

Point well taken and agreed. They're blockading and embargoing just like the Western states have used (which I prefer open ground assaults to versus this kind of chicken-shit tactic) with North Korea, Iraq (under Saddam), and Cuba to name a few. I definately will agree with you that this tactic is undesirable, and hurts more than just the leadership. I will agree there are more preferred methods (CAS ground assaults in my book).

You're elluding to what I believe the discussion should be about (rather than group a killed x of group b, and vis versa)- "Why now". While there is much to discuss and inquire about, I honestly wish that there was such a fervor over whether or not the US has declared any war and has a standing army/ or the huge issue of sovereignty of states, and of the union in the NWO... But, the "why now" is the true question of the issue, I agree.

Yes Hamas kept firing rockets at Israel, and 99% hit dirt outside the city. Israel has a soft and wide border there. You example of Tijuana firing rockets at Cali is quite mute. Another example is you standing on one side of a river, and your enemy on the other side throwing rocks. The rocks don't make it across the river, but its' annoying. Do you get out your rocket launcher and kill him?

I fully concur with the poor outcomes of Hamas attacks, and called it "poking" in my posts. I'm certain that this would all change however if you had a family member that was part of that 1%. You would gather together with other surviving victims, some politico would stand up and speak for you, a bunch of pro-patriot border watchers would rally to your cause- and in no short order, Governor Shvartzenegger would be making speaches about the Tiajuannans agreession, and it must end.

(Militarily though, does it make much sense to allow your enemies to do such to you- or would you go in and squash them when finally you upset them?  -I think of Panama, Somalia, Grenada, Iraq, Afganistan... While these Amerikan examples are similar in my mind, not one of them is a border-neighbor, and in the case of the union, it is NWO.)

Gaza is being caged in on all sides. They are powerless to conduct anything on their own shores as Israel controls it. They cannot flee to Egypt as they are repelled.

Now you're talking! Do you find it interesting that Arabs identifying themselves as Palestinians have not assimilated into any of the surrounding countries (not just Israel, but the Muslim Arab states!)? These folks are disliked throughout the Arab world, from Jordan, to Syria (both of which killed whole villages of Palestinians- several times!), through Lebanon and West to Egypt.  You're absolutely correct- the Arab world has regected the "Palestinians" and I believe the leaders of these Arab states use the Palestinian/Israeli issue to keep their own tribal members from going one versus the other (or Shiite versus Sunni for that matter) on a large scale. Israel is the common enemy that a shared Muslim unification is possible.

Commerce inside Gaza has come to a screeching halt, BUT the Israelis will allow them to come across the border to work. Kinda one sided, don't you think?

I do. The Gazans are no different than the Egyptians. When Israel took the Sinai and Gaza, they gave back only the Sinai to Egypt- because Egypt didn't want the head-ache of the Gazans. If Hamas would have spent as much time building bridges with Egypt, then we'd hear of different outcomes. Israel exploits Gazans (a island-like people) for cheap labour, and many Gazans are happy with the arraingement. Would not the better question be- why is this situation so bi-polar, and seemingly contrived, when there are so many other actors on the stage?

The whole event there reeks of a set-up and we all know it. And Israel refuses to cease fire and has declared war.

Hamas took responsibility for the last few rocket attacks after the cease fire expired... (ie- they resumed fighting)

They declared war on hamas. Reminds me of th old sham of invading Afghanistan for Bin Laden. The war is declared on a group of people, not a territory. Same with Iraq.

I concur. This is THE dillema of the Palestine/Israel problem.  When you begin to count the actors on the stage of events (who rightly can speak with what authority to do what they say they will do), you'll end up with so much of a headache.

Israel is a sovereign state. They have branches of governments and accountibilty.

The Gazans are tribal and fractionalized (and recently had a little civil war themselves). There is no one actor in Gaza (or in the WB for that matter) who doesn't have someone challenging his authority to speak. What is the PLO? - it's a political body made up of resistance groups! Islamic Jihad, Fatah Martyr's Brigade, Hamas, Hezbullah, etc... These guys are fighting one with the other, and there isn't any one person to speak with... (not even Yassir had it so clear cut). So... declaring war on one of the factions (who are busy already fighting with the other factions) can seem plausible in this case. The PLO doesn't have the authority nor power to put any one party into line with the rest (and that is SUPER obvious).

Doesn't sound alarm bells that when Fatah and Hamas are fighting in the streets, hanging dead men from light poles, that no one seems to care... then when Israel does the same thing- everyone leans forward in their chair. Doesn't this seem a bit contrived?

I say we stop funding Israel period. Then, when they're no longer an "investment" they can do whatever the hell they want to- they're a sovereign state for f*cks sake.

Why would our eyes be so far from the town square when the NWO is preparing to eviserate the Constitution (at least in a credible way- a con-con), and military check points surround us... I enjoy heated discussions about the ME, but there is a much more pressing issue of my rights here, on this soil that soon may see its share of innocent bloodshed.

[OldSchool]

Rak. You seem to understand the conflicts within these factions well. I would also like to add, as per your comment about the Fatah and Hamas fighting and that nobody seems to care. I can agree with you on that point, but only in the scope being that :
 Fights among families and within families from the same area are aestetically accepted, but as soon as an outsider enters the area and begins fighting the families, they will unite againtst the outsider. Like they say - the enemy of your enemy is my friend. And all too often this has empirical impacts upon societies and individuals the same.
 The disturbing part about many of the wars being waged is the cumulative effort of countless and decietful manipulations from a select few, who want only to control the world. With that being said, it is quite easy to tell that these factions have heavily infiltrated and saturated the American infrastructure with false ideas and deceptive foreign policy. Yes, Amerika supports Israel in all thiat it does, but this is only because the people who control the money and political influence are all part of this faction now. The taxpaying citizen is insignificant to them at this point, and they have proven this time and time again through deception and disregard of the social reaction. We have been invaded and usurped, and since we are a world power with many resources, it is unfortunately opportunistic of them to rob the taxpayers here for their rediculous agenda.
 Now, in ANY skirmish or trade of aggression, even 1 life lost is bad enough, but who do we deem to be the good guy, and who the bad guy?
 In the accepted assumption these days, it is safe to ponder if the controlling Israeli Zionists have been a bad investment all along. They have had a hand in starting, manipulating, or perpetuating practically every war and genocidal act on this planet, sans the border clashes, and skirmishes we all have from time to time. If they were actually a populous living in another area, say Iraq or Libya, they would have already been dealt with, but since they are in and around Jerusalem, well, that's a whole different story, eh?
 Arabs, and muslims, and even Jews living in other parts of the world are protesting, and are outraged by the Israeli governments actions. Dealing with 'terrorists' is one thing, but they have opened the floodgates of irrepairable damage, both in reconciliation of regional prosperity, and the huge toll of civilian life.

[Biggs]

Dec 30, 2008 0:13 | Updated Dec 30, 2008 1:41
Hamas calls 'reservists' to foil attack
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH Print   Subscribe   

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230456522885&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


Hamas's armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, on Monday announced that it was recruiting an additional 1,000 militiamen ahead of a possible IDF ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

The group said that thousands of volunteers from the Gaza Strip had also asked to be recruited to the movement in the past 48 hours so that they could fight against IDF soldiers.

The announcement came as sources close to Hamas said that the movement's armed wing had hardly been affected by the IDF operation that began on Saturday.

The sources told The Jerusalem Post that many of the casualties in the first two days of the operation were "ordinary" policemen who had been recently recruited to various branches of the security forces.

"These policemen were being enlisted to direct the traffic and fight crime," the sources said. "These are not the militiamen who are responsible for the rocket attacks on Israel."

This explains why Hamas did not rush to evacuate the headquarters of the "civilian" police force in Gaza City before the IDF offensive.
 

On the contrary, the police chiefs decided to go ahead with plans to hold a graduation ceremony for the cadets on Saturday because they did not believe that they would be targeted by Israel.

According to the sources, these policemen were not members of Izaddin Kassam. As such, they were never asked to participate in armed attacks on Israel. Nor had they been asked to prepare for the possibility of having to fight against the IDF when and if it invades the Gaza Strip.

"Almost all the policemen who were killed in the past three days were responsible for imposing law and order in the Gaza Strip," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. "Many of them were not even Hamas members."

Another Hamas operative said that Izaddin Kassam, which functions as the official Hamas "army," has over 15,000 men throughout the Gaza Strip who are better trained and equipped to fight against the IDF.

This is the same paramilitary force that defeated tens of thousands of US-backed Fatah policemen and security officers in the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Ever since taking full control of the Gaza Strip, the Hamas militia have been busy training its men for the possibility of an IDF invasion or a revolt by Fatah loyalists.

The preparations included the construction of a vast network of underground tunnels and bunkers in various parts of the Gaza Strip, as well as the smuggling of tons of explosives and missiles across the border with Egypt.

A former Palestinian Authority security official estimated that Izaddin Kassam has over 20,000 rockets and mortars, as well as tens of thousands of tons of explosives.

The official said that according to reports emanating from the Gaza Strip, most of the group's commanders have survived the IDF offensive.

"Israel has managed to kill only a small number of Izaddin Kassam members," said a Palestinian journalist in Gaza City. "The Kassam doesn't have offices and public security bases. This is a clandestine organization entrusted with carrying out special missions."

The Hamas militiamen have now been entrusted with the task of repelling an IDF ground attack. Spokesmen for the group said on Monday that their men are determined to fight to the end.

"We have many surprises for Israel," said one of the spokesmen. "We are just waiting for the ground attack to teach them an unforgettable lesson."

[OldSchool]

Well Biggs, it looks like the short fuse on the powderkeg just got lit. Wouldn't ya think?

[larsonstdoc]

Well Biggs, it looks like the short fuse on the powderkeg just got lit. Wouldn't ya think?

  Agreed, the IDF is insane. It is such a mismatch.  It is like one of us beating up an old lady.  It looks like Israel wants to level Gaza.

[OldSchool]

  Agreed, the IDF is insane. It is such a mismatch.  It is like one of us beating up an old lady.  It looks like Israel wants to level Gaza.

It does seem IDF wants to level the place, and they'll have to go cavediving to do it (or they can endanger every civilian in the area by dropping US made cluster bombs  )

As the article Biggs posted:

Ever since taking full control of the Gaza Strip, the Hamas militia have been busy training its men for the possibility of an IDF invasion or a revolt by Fatah loyalists.

The preparations included the construction of a vast network of underground tunnels and bunkers in various parts of the Gaza Strip, as well as the smuggling of tons of explosives and missiles across the border with Egypt.
A former Palestinian Authority security official estimated that Izaddin Kassam has over 20,000 rockets and mortars, as well as tens of thousands of tons of explosives.

The official said that according to reports emanating from the Gaza Strip, most of the group's commanders have survived the IDF offensive.

...it looks as though the IDF will have their hands full, and I'm sure Egypt will be implicated for aiding 'the enemy'.

[larsonstdoc]

Dr. Hesam Tillawi

   
Hesham Tillawi, PhD International Relations is a Palestinian American writer, Political Analyst and a TV show host. His program Current Issues with Hesham Tillawi can be viewed live every Tuesday evening between 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM CST on Cox Cable System Channel 5 in Louisiana as well as Live on the internet at www.currentissues.tv.

He will give you the Palestinian view of what is going on in Gaza.  Here is a couple of his websites.
http://www.currentissues.tv/
http://heshamtillawi.wordpress.com/



 

 

[OldSchool]

EU to press Israel on ceasing Gaza operation 
 
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent 
 
Tags: ISrael, Hamas, Gaza   

France and Great Britain will present a proposal on Tuesday aimed at forcing a cease-fire on Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

A senior government source in Jerusalem said the initiative would be presented at a emergency session of the European Union's foreign ministers in Paris.


Foreign Ministry sources in Jerusalem said on Monday that the "international hourglass" would allow Israel to continue its operation in the Gaza Strip, at most, until January 5.

Now what the HELL is ^that^ all about?

 
 
A source said Britain is pushing to pressure Israel, among other things, by releasing a statement by the 27 foreign ministers of the European Union that will call on Israel to stop the operation.

The British are promoting a very bad proposal for Israel," a Foreign Ministry source said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke Monday and Sunday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to move ahead on a cease-fire.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a similar round of calls. Brown and Sarkozy asked for Egypt's help in restoring the cease-fire.

According to the information Jerusalem has, the British and the French seem interested in Egypt or the Arab League leading talks with Hamas. The British and French foreign ministers also brought up the matter on Monday with United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who reportedly expressed her support.

The British-French initiative apparently consists of a number of clauses, starting with a humanitarian cease-fire of 48 hours Later, attempts will be made to restart the cease-fire on a long-term basis. The agreement also includes sending immediate humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and a review of the possibility of reopening the Rafah crossing by means of updating the 2005 agreement, once again under EU supervision.

""All hostile acts in Gaza must stop at once," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a statement.

According to Kouchner, Hamas is the party that broke the cease-fire first when it began to fire rockets at Israel but that "renewed calm will ensure basic conditions for life among the residents of Gaza."

His British counterpart, David Miliband, called Monday for "an urgent cease-fire and immediate halt to all violence."

Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry Director General Aaron Abramovich held a series of meetings on Monday to assess how much longer the Israel Defense Forces could operate in Gaza before heavy international pressure began. The Foreign Ministry believes that Israel has until January 5, which marks the end of the holiday vacation in Europe and the United States.

The Foreign Ministry says that serious civilian casualties would lessen international legitimization for Israel's operation.

However, senior officials close to Olmert said the government's directives to the IDF had not changed.

"Everything is going exactly according to plan," sources in Olmert's bureau said, adding that they knew it would not be a quick and easy operation. "For now, we have the understanding of the international community."

 

[larsonstdoc]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.israel.airstrikes/index.html


Gaza death toll from Israeli offensive exceeds 375


GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Israel bombed a Hamas government compound early Tuesday, leveling at least three structures, including the foreign ministry building, eyewitnesses and Hamas security sources told CNN.


Relatives mourn three boys from the same family who were killed in an Israeli airstrike Monday in Gaza.
1 of 3more photos »

A Gaza-based journalist, whose name was withheld for security reasons, told CNN he heard 18 blasts in the area and that two fires were burning at the compound early Tuesday. More bombs continued to drop over Gaza through the morning.

Also, an Israeli patrol boat collided with a boat carrying medical volunteers and supplies to Gaza early Tuesday, witnesses and Israeli officials said.

CNN Correspondent Karl Penhaul was aboard the 60-foot, Gibraltar-registered Dignity when the contact occurred.

In a radio message, the Israelis ordered the boat to turn back to Cyprus and accused the vessel of being involved in terrorist activity, its captain said.  Watch CNN reporter describe the incident »

An Israeli military spokesman said there was "some sort of contact" between the Israeli craft and the volunteer boat during the interception.

But Yossi Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said the collision occurred when the Israeli vessel attempted to turn around after ordering the Dignity to turn back.

With Tuesday's bombs, Israel appeared to extend its airstrike campaign in Gaza to a fourth day.

The strikes, which Israel says are aimed at stopping the firing of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, have killed more than 375 Palestinians, most of them Hamas militants, Palestinian medical sources said Tuesday.

At least 60 civilians have been killed in Gaza, U.N. officials said. About 650 people have been wounded there, according to the Palestinian medical sources.

Monday, Israel's defense minister said the nation was in an "all-out war" with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules Gaza.

"We have stretched our hand in peace many times to the Palestinian people. We have nothing against the people of Gaza," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel's parliament. "But this is an all-out war against Hamas and its branches."

Israel continues to strike Hamas targets in Gaza, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman told CNN.

Mortar fire along the Gaza border late Monday killed one Israeli soldier and wounded four others, he said.

Earlier Monday, columns of smoke rose over Gaza City as warplanes carried out strikes. Though there was no indication of an Israeli military ground operation in Gaza, Israeli tanks cruised along the territory's edges.  Watch rocket fire force a reporter to take cover »

Iyad Nasr, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the streets of Gaza were largely empty during airstrikes Monday morning.

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Despite the airstrikes, militants fired more than 40 rockets and mortar shells into Israel on Monday, according to Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld. More than 150 rockets have been launched into Israeli territory since the campaign began, Israel Defense Forces said.  Watch damage in Sderot »

Six Israelis have died over the past three days, five of them civilians.

One of the rocket strikes killed an Israeli at a construction site in Ashkelon, 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of Gaza, and wounded eight others, a hospital spokeswoman said. Rocket strikes killed an Israeli and wounded two others at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, according to Israeli police and hospital spokespersons.

Rocket attacks also wounded two people, one seriously, in Ashdod. One woman who was critically injured during the attack died later during an operation, according to Israeli medical sources.

The White House on Monday called on Hamas to halt rocket fire against Israel, so calm can be restored in Gaza.  Watch the White House blame Hamas »

Israel has struck more than 300 Hamas targets since Saturday, its military said. The Israeli air force carried out at least 20 airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, Israeli military sources said.

Hamas security sources said the targets included the homes of two commanders of Hamas' military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in the Jabalya refugee camp just north of Gaza City. Neither commander was among the seven people killed in those strikes, the sources said.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on a report by Dr. Mu'awiya Hassanein that a strike near a mosque in Jabalya killed five children in a nearby home.

The situation triggered protests in Iran, Greece, Britain and Lebanon, and the Iranian government declared a day of mourning for Palestinians in Gaza.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei urged the world's Muslim populations to unite against Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza.  Watch a demonstration in London »

"All true believers in the world of Islam and Palestinian fighters are duty-bound to defend the defenseless women and children in Gaza Strip and those giving their lives in carrying out such a divine duty are 'martyrs,' " Khamenei said through Iran's official news agency IRNA.

U.S. and Israeli officials told CNN that Hamas militants in Gaza have received support from Iran in the past in the form of weapons, training and cash.

"We know of Hamas operatives, commandos and soldiers who were trained in Iran itself. We know that. So there is a close cooperation and exchange of know-how and activities," said Isaac Herzog, a member of the Israeli Security Cabinet.

Iran denies any involvement with Hamas. But an Iranian official told CNN Iran has ties to Shiite groups such as Hezbollah, a political party in Lebanon with alleged terrorist roots.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Hamas for the rocket attacks, but also had strong words for Israel.

"While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, I have also condemned the excessive use of force by Israel in Gaza. The suffering caused to civilian populations as a result of the large-scale violence and destruction that have taken place over the past few days has saddened me profoundly," he said in a prepared statement.

The U.N. Security Council called for both sides to immediately end the violence, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that the campaign could last "for some time," and his Cabinet voted to call up 7,000 reservists.

So far, about 2,000 reservists have been activated, according to the government. Read analysis of what may happen next

Hamas pledges it will defend its land and people from what it calls continued Israeli aggression. Each side blames the other for violating an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. The truce formally expired December 19, but it had been weakening for months.

Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian parliament member, flatly blamed the violence on the Israeli "occupation" of the Palestinian territories and dismissed Israeli claims that it is targeting only Hamas.  Watch why one Palestinian lawmaker blames Israel »

"This is not a war on Hamas; it is a war on the Palestinian people," he said. "The Israeli politicians are using this bloodbath, which is the worst since 1967, for their election campaigns. This is insane."  Watch Barghouti warn "violence breeds violence" »

Both Barak and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will be vying in February for the prime minister's post against Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Barak and Netanyahu have previously held the post.

The ongoing assault and threat of Israeli military ground incursion caused panic in Gaza City, the territory's densely populated capital, a U.N. humanitarian official told CNN on Monday.

"It's very bad, people are running in all directions because of the bombings that are happening everywhere," Karen AbuZayd said from Gaza City.

AbuZayd is the commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which provides assistance to about 80 percent of Gaza's 1.5 million residents.

Israel allowed more than 50 trucks carrying relief aid into Gaza on Monday -- in addition to 40 on Sunday -- Israeli military sources said. The U.N. is expecting 100 trucks Monday, but a U.N. official said it will not be enough to alleviate the worsening humanitarian situation.



In the West Bank, Saeb Erakat, adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, urged Israeli and Hamas leaders to put another cease-fire in place.

The power base of Abbas' Fatah party is in the West Bank. The party is locked in a power struggle with Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and wrested Gaza from Fatah in violent clashes last year. Abbas, a U.S. ally, wields little influence in Gaza.

[mr anderson]

For those of you that hate the jews...that think this is all about the jews in the wrong, that they are only zionists..here is an interesting and eye-opening look at what brought things to this point. Written by one that has experienced it.
"After 7 years of bombardment from Gaza into Israeli towns and
villages this failed Israeli Government finally took action to stop
Hamas who were once a small terrorist group but today a 20,000 strong
well trained army supplied by Iran. I woke this morning to see how
terrible us Jews are by killing "Palestinian children" in Gaza. For 7
years they have targeted our civilian population with no out-cries
from the world's media. When our children were being blown to pieces
and baby body parts were scattered across the streets of our cities
there was no out-cry. The question must be asked why is Jewish life
so cheap that the world doesn't care how we are treated or murdered.

Before Israel hit Hamas there was months even years of intelligence
gathering in order to not hit civilians or as little civilian
collateral damage as possible. But when you have a terrorist group
that hides in crowded populations and shoots there missiles from back-
yards, school-yards, and Mosques it is not so easy to go after them
without some collateral damage. The one thing I am certain of is
there are no other governments in the world that would try as hard as
we do to not kill civilians, even when these civilians, when asks,
will tell you they want to kill Jews. And have been raised from
childhood to believe to kill Jews and Infidels pleases Allah."

Now....tell me that all of Israel is at fault in this!

So it's ok for a holocaust on the Palestinian people by your logic.

And that's what it is.

Barbed wire, military checkpoints, border closures, food-fuel-medical supplies blocked.

And then the over handed responses with helicopter gunships, tanks, troops, shelling, bombings of electrical plants etc.

And yet you cannot even see Hamas was a creation of the Israeli Government!!! If there is not a big enough monster from the other side of the fence to scare your public, you build up your own creation, set it loose and manage it from afar. Get that through your thick skull.

Hamas history tied to Israel
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10456.htm

Ten ways Israel keeps Hamas afloat
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/967828.html

Is Israel deliberately strengthening Hamas?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037879.html

[mr anderson]

Israel phones in warning to flee Gaza Strip strikes

By Abraham Rabinovich in Jerusalem | The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24853989-15084,00.html

RESIDENTS at certain addresses in the Gaza Strip have been receiving unusual phone calls since the Israeli air assault began on Saturday -- a request that they and their families leave their homes as soon as possible for their own safety.

More unusual than the recorded message is the Arabic-speaking caller, who identifies himself as being from the Israeli defence forces.

Dipping into their bag of tricks for the updated Gaza telephone numbers, Israel's intelligence services are warning Palestinian civilians in Gaza living close to Hamas facilities that they may be hurt unless they distance themselves from those targets.

In some cases, the warning comes not by telephone but from leaflets dropped from aircraft on selected districts.

Such warnings clearly eliminate the element of surprise, butfor Israel it is of cardinal importance to minimise civilian casualties, and not just for humanitarian reasons.

The principal calculation is fear that a stray bomb hitting a school or any collection of innocent civilians could bring down the wrath of the international community on Israel, as has happened more than once in the past, and force it to halt its campaign before it has achieved its objectives.

Israel Radio reported that leaflets had been dropped at the beginning of the operation in the Rafah area near the border with Egypt, warning residents that the tunnels to Egypt through which weapons and civilian products were smuggled would be bombed.

Many of the residents, mostly youths, are employed in the tunnels. Initial reports said two people were killed when the tunnels were bombed.

Gaza is one of the most densely built-up areas in the world, making it extremely difficult to pinpoint targets without collateral damage. Israeli officials say that the small percentage of civilians killed so far is due to precise intelligence regarding the location of Hamas targets and accurate bombing and rocketing.

But there are conflicting reports about how successful the air force has been avoiding civilian casualties. On Sunday, Israeli officials, citing Palestinian sources, said of the almost 300 fatalities reported until then in Gaza, all but 15 were members of Hamas. Hamas officials said yesterday that one-third of fatalities were civilian.

Last night the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said at least 51 civilians had been among those killed.

Palestinians reported yesterday that three siblings, including a 14-month-old baby, were killed in a bombing in the large Jabalya refugee camp on Sunday night.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, meeting with foreign diplomats in Jerusalem yesterday, said she understood the difficulty for them to express understanding for an armed attack.

"But this is the only way to change realities on the ground," she said. This is what is needed to change the situation."

[Avers]

Israeli spokesperson: children are legitimate target
(Source: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/171785-Israeli-spokesperson-children-are-legitimate-target)


Not only are children in the Gaza Strip losing their parents, missing food, medicines and school, they are being killed.

Israeli forces took the lives of at least 30 children in Gaza since air attacks began on Saturday. A statement issued by the Global Movement for the Defense of Children says its initial reports indicate that another 150 children are injured.

The first children hit en masse were during struck during the beginning of the attacks when they were leaving school. Dozens of school children were raced to area hospitals in Gaza City on Saturday. Among the children killed are the sisters in Jabaliya yesterday and the eight year old boy today in Khan Younis.

The British university movement to boycott Israel wrote in their petition, "'Children,' says an Israeli spokeswoman, 'are legitimate targets because if they inhabit a house allegedly being used to manufacture home-made rockets to fire into Israel, they are 'terrorists' themselves.'"

The international children's agency Global Defense for Children called today on the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency session. The UNSC has yet to take effective action to force Israel to stop its aggression or apply previous UN resolutions, which include an end to occupation.

Defense for Children asked that the European Union and its member states seek to for the application of the rules of international humanitarian law. The Israeli administration has a poor record internationally when it comes to Palestinian children with at least 300 in its prisons.

The EU is under heavy pressure by humanitarian organizations to impose sanctions on Israel and to cease all diplomatic relations.

At the same time the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions are obliged to respect and enforce the convention as stated in Article I. Those who violate it are subject to criminal charges of crimes against humanity. The Global Defense for Children noted today that the individual criminal responsibility does not become obsolete and that at some point all will be prosecuted.
=============

How sick must this situation become, before someone finally forces Israel to stop their murdering?

[Triadtropz]

 "'Children,' says an Israeli spokeswoman, 'are legitimate targets because if they inhabit a house allegedly being used to manufacture home-made rockets to fire into Israel, they are 'terrorists' themselves.'"

How sick must this situation become, before someone finally forces Israel to stop their murdering?

Thats how the israelis wage war, they use children,women,food,medicine,on purpose,...they are the scum of war..

[Biggs]

Well Biggs, it looks like the short fuse on the powderkeg just got lit. Wouldn't ya think?

I sure cannot see how things are going to end well, just more violence and bloodshed and more trouble stored up for the future,

clearly there is a risk of a major bloodbath and the dragging in of Hizballah into the conflict, perhaps then further widening of the conflict as Hizballah are better equipped now than in 2006 to hit Israel hard with better, bigger longer range rockets.

I feel if Israel goes in on the ground with full force then there is a real chance Hizballah will react with rockets, then Israel retaliates and so on, escalations keep mounting.

However, it coudl be that Israel just keeps bombing some, does a few small incursions into Gaza and leaves it at that for now, until after the election anyway. Then a lunatic will be in charge again (Netanyahu or Livni and then god help us all)

[Biggs]

Israel vows lasting Gaza campaign

Devastation in the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces gather on boundary

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7804218.stm



Israel says it is ready for "long weeks of action" as it continues its fiercest air assault on Gaza for decades to stamp out militant rocket attacks.

Palestinian officials say 10 people died in the latest attacks, taking the death toll to over 360 since Saturday. Four Israelis have died in rocket fire.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said this was the "first of several stages" of military action.

A UN human rights monitor accused Israel of "shocking atrocities".

Richard Falk - the special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories - said the international community must put more pressure on Israel to end its attacks on Gaza.

"Israel is committing a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defenceless population - attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for many months," Mr Falk said in a BBC interview.

The UN says at least 62 of the Palestinians killed so far have been women and children, and it is calling for an investigation into the attacks, which are causing heavy civilian casualties.

One air strike on Tuesday morning killed two sisters, the eldest aged 11, riding in a donkey cart in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said.

Coastal clash

Israeli jets attacked targets linked to the militant Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, for a fourth day, hitting a number of government buildings and security installations.
See detailed map of attacks

Forty people were said to have been wounded in Tuesday's raids.

The Israeli military "has made preparations for long weeks of action", deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai said in an interview.

Mr Olmert's statement that the bombardment was "the first of several stages approved by the security cabinet" was quoted from a briefing he gave to President Shimon Peres on Tuesday.

Separately, Israeli naval vessels confronted pro-Palestinian activists seeking to break the Gaza blockade by boat about 45 miles (70km) off the Israeli coast in international waters.

The boat setting off from Cyprus with aid

The activists said one vessel had rammed them without warning during the confrontation. Their boat put into port in Lebanon with heavy damage on one side.

Israel has massed forces along the boundary with Gaza and political leaders have not ruled out ground operations.

The Egyptian-Gaza border was due to be opened to permit more trucks carrying aid to enter the territory, and for wounded Palestinians to be transported to Egyptian hospitals.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, under popular pressure to open the crossing fully, said that could not happen while Hamas, rather than the Palestinian Authority, led by its rival Fatah, controlled the border.

Demonstrators in Yemen, angered by Egypt's co-operation with the blockade on Gaza, briefly stormed the country's consulate in Aden, where they burned an Egyptian flag and hoisted a Palestinian one.

There have been angry protests against the Israeli offensive in many cities across the Arab world and in several European capitals.

European Union foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in Paris later (1730 GMT) to discuss the escalating crisis.

The European Commission has issued a statement urging both sides to halt the conflict so supplies can be delivered to Gaza's 1.5m population, and expressing "deep concern" about the situation.

Ceasefire expiry

Hamas has pressed on with rocket and mortar assaults, killing three Israeli civilians and a soldier in areas that have not previously suffered such fatalities.
   

US tacitly backs Israeli offensive
Aid worker diary: Gaza raids
Rocket attacks plague Israeli towns


Israeli military officials said rocket attacks landing more than 25 miles (40km) from Gaza put nearly 10% of Israel's population of seven million within range.

Israeli political leaders have been under pressure to act against rocket fire with a general election looming in early February.

Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu has backed the campaign, telling the BBC that "Israel is using a fraction of its power to try to target surgically the terrorists".

The strikes began less than a week after the expiry of a six-month-long ceasefire deal with Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.

Correspondents say short of a full-scale invasion of Gaza, it is unlikely Israel will be able to prevent rocket fire permanently.

Israel dismantled its strategic settlements and military bases in Gaza in 2005 but has kept tight control over access in and out of the narrow coastal strip and its airspace.

GAZA VIOLENCE 27-30 DECEMBER

[Biggs]

The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again

By Gideon Levy

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21564.htm

December 29, 2008 "Haaretz" -- - Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: "Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn't be provoked into anger... Not that the bully's not right - someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!"

Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation "Cast Lead" is only in its infancy.

Once again, Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.

What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a country. History's bitter irony: A government that went to a futile war two months after its establishment - today nearly everyone acknowledges as much - embarks on another doomed war two months before the end of its term.

In the interim, the loftiness of peace was on the tip of the tongue of Ehud Olmert, a man who uttered some of the most courageous words ever said by a prime minister. The loftiness of peace on the tip of his tongue, and two fruitless wars in his sheath. Joining him is his defense minister, Ehud Barak, the leader of the so-called left-wing party, who plays the role of senior accomplice to the crime.

Israel did not exhaust the diplomatic processes before embarking yesterday on another dreadful campaign of killing and ruin. The Qassams that rained down on the communities near Gaza turned intolerable, even though they did not sow death. But the response to them needs to be fundamentally different: diplomatic efforts to restore the cease-fire - the same one that was initially breached, one should remember, by Israel when it unnecessarily bombed a tunnel - and then, if those efforts fail, a measured, gradual military response.

But no. It's all or nothing. The IDF launched a war yesterday whose end, as usual, is hoping someone watches over us.

Blood will now flow like water. Besieged and impoverished Gaza, the city of refugees, will pay the main price. But blood will also be unnecessarily spilled on our side. In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel's overreaction.

The history of the Middle East is repeating itself with despairing precision. Just the frequency is increasing. If we enjoyed nine years of quiet between the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, now we launch wars every two years. As such, Israel proves that there is no connection between its public relations talking points that speak of peace, and its belligerent conduct.

Israel also proves that it has not internalized the lessons of the previous war. Once again, this war was preceded by a frighteningly uniform public dialogue in which only one voice was heard - that which called for striking, destroying, starving and killing, that which incited and prodded for the commission of war crimes.

Once again the commentators sat in television studios yesterday and hailed the combat jets that bombed police stations, where officers responsible for maintaining order on the streets work. Once again, they urged against letting up and in favor of continuing the assault. Once again, the journalists described the pictures of the damaged house in Netivot as "a difficult scene." Once again, we had the nerve to complain about how the world was transmitting images from Gaza. And once again we need to wait a few more days until an alternative voice finally rises from the darkness, the voice of wisdom and morality.

In another week or two, those same pundits who called for blows and more blows will compete among themselves in leveling criticism at this war. And once again this will be gravely late.

The pictures that flooded television screens around the world yesterday showed a parade of corpses and wounded being loaded into and unloaded from the trunks of private cars that transported them to the only hospital in Gaza worthy of being called a hospital. Perhaps we once again need to remember that we are dealing with a wretched, battered strip of land, most of whose population consists of the children of refugees who have endured inhumane tribulations.

For two and a half years, they have been caged and ostracized by the whole world. The line of thinking that states that through war we will gain new allies in the Strip; that abusing the population and killing its sons will sear this into their consciousness; and that a military operation would suffice in toppling an entrenched regime and thus replace it with another one friendlier to us is no more than lunacy.

Hezbollah was not weakened as a result of the Second Lebanon War; to the contrary. Hamas will not be weakened due to the Gaza war; to the contrary. In a short time, after the parade of corpses and wounded ends, we will arrive at a fresh cease-fire, as occurred after Lebanon, exactly like the one that could have been forged without this superfluous war.

In the meantime, let us now let the IDF win, as they say. A hero against the weak, it bombed dozens of targets from the air yesterday, and the pictures of blood and fire are designed to show Israelis, Arabs and the entire world that the neighborhood bully's strength has yet to wane. When the bully is on a rampage, nobody can stop him.

[Biggs]

Astrocious Images of the Zionist " Casting Lead Massacre" - Gaza December 29 2008
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice

MORE IMAGES AT LINK -
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m50105&hd=&size=1&l=e

December 29/30 2008 4:31am

GAZA - The Israelis are mobilising 6700 reservists in preparation for a ground incursion,and the Israeli minister of defense, Ehud Barak have officially declared war against Hamas.

In the third day of the Israelis war campaign against Gaza Strip,called "Casting Lead Operation" Israeli panzer and bulldozers are now deployed along the borders of the Palestinian territory. The senior Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad warned last night the warlord Ehud Barak, advising him to carefully watch his back.

"Ehud Barak will be the next target for assassination, if he continue the air strikes in Gaza Strip". The border between Gaza and Israel have been declared a closed military zone. Earlier,in the past such a move has often followed by an Israeli ground attack on Gaza.

In three days,Israeli massive bombardment have killed over 300, including 23 children and injured more than 1.200 Gaza residents. In retaliation for Israelis atrocities in Gaza, condemned as war crimes by leaders in the Arab world, and by other leaders around the globe, Hamas will call for suicide bombers to attack inside Israel.


"You [Israelis] owe me,and you owe me big.You robbed me of my city and my property.You owe me reparations (which I know that you,or your children,will one day have to pay,and under duress if need be) for all the pain and unspeakable suffering you have put me, my family and my fellow exiles through....."Author and political activist Fawaz Turki

[Biggs]

Complete families have been wiped out
Israeli occupation holocaust in Gaza reaps 360 lives and 1700 wounded
Palestinian Information Center

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m50098&hd=&size=1&l=e

December 29, 2008


GAZA, (PIC)-- Death toll resulting from the Israeli occupation holocaust in the Gaza Strip, at dawn Tuesday, has reached 360, and the number of wounded rose to more than 1700, Palestinian sources confirmed.

Israeli occupation warplanes, at dawn Tuesday, have launched airstrikes against the government buildings killing ten people and wounding tens others.

Israeli occupation warplanes intensified their bombardment of the west of Gaza City targeting sports and government facilities. A huge number of bombs were dropped on the targets in three minutes.

Eyewitnesses said that an F16 fired about 20 rockets on the ministries complex in the western part of Gaza City, al-Shams sports club, naval police headquarters and the headquarters of the defunct preventive security.

They added that all these rockets were fired within five minutes, that there were many injuries amongst the residents, and that ambulances were hampered by the continuation of the air raids.

Earlier Israeli occupation warplanes and gunboats concentrated their air strikes and missile attacks on buildings and targets west of Gaza city, including building of the Palestinian civil defense, inflicting huge damage in the area.

The continued Israeli raids have also buried five young sisters under the rubbles of their devastated home after it was bombed along with a mosque next to it. Bodies of the perished sisters were mutilated as a result of the attack.

Although the Israeli occupation government alleged it wasn’t targeting civilians in the assault on Gaza, international agencies, including the UNRWA among others accused it of committing horrible carnage against the children and civilians in Gaza.

Dr. Basim Naim, the PA health minister, confirmed earlier that Gaza hospitals have ran out of medicine, in addition to spare parts and electricity to keep medical equipments in Gaza functioning.

He also blamed the siege on the Strip for suspending half of the Palestinian ambulances working through out the densely populated Strip where more than 1.5 million Palestinians were lacked up.

[Biggs]

"I Heard the Missile Coming"
Sameh A. Habeeb,

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m50096&hd=&size=1&l=e

Monday, December 29, 2008

GAZA CITY — Ali Abu-Fatahi will never forget the terrifying sound of a missile fired by an Israeli warplane as it zoomed in on his house.

"I was having my dinner when I heard the missile's whistle," a helpless Abu-Fatahi told IslamOnline.net from his bed at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

In just seconds, the missile hit his family's house in the Dir Al-Balah City, razing it to the ground.

"I flew in the sky and then I found myself lying on the floor at our neighbors' house," he recalled the harrowing moments with tears flashing in his eyes.

Abu-Fatahi can't remember what happened next.

* Gaza Holocaust Museum
* Killed in Cradle

He woke up with head injuries. It was later that he knew that all his 15 family members who were in the house were also hospitalized.

"All my family members were hit."

At least 345 people were killed and more than 1,650 wounded since Israel blitzed the Gaza Strip with massive air strikes on Saturday, December 27.

The aggression against the impoverished seaside territory, the world's most densely populated area, continued on Sunday, killing scores of Palestinians and wounding hundreds.

From his bed, Abu-Fatahi can hear his traumatized brother, Mahmoud, screaming.

He is still suffering from the shock of seeing his neighbors torn into pieces by the killer bombing.

"My sister who is only 2 is in another room."

Mass Grave

Across Gaza, many are still frantically looking for bodies of their beloved ones under the rubbles. (Reuters)

The battered Gaza Strip has turned into a mass grave.

The scene of people screaming in grief while taking their family members to burial is repeated over and over.

Civil defense forces are desperately trying to help people moving the corpses found buried under the rubbles of flattened buildings.

"We have dug out many bodies with no legs or heads," a civil defense officer told IOL.

In mass funeral processions, formed outside almost every Gaza house, the sound of Qur'an recitation is mixed with the distant sound of explosions.

The wailing of the grief-stricken and prayers for the departed are mixed with calls for reprisal.

Other Gazans, however, are still frantically looking for their beloved ones among the dead bodies.

"My sons have left the house at 10 am. I went to search for them in all hospitals but in vain," a shocked Om Ahmed Abu-Aqal said, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Her sons were among scores of people inside one of the security compounds bombed out on Saturday.

"I came here to see if they are alive or dead under the rubbles of this building," said the weeping mother.

"I need to know what happened to them, where are they? Anyone tells me."


Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Photojournalist & Peace Activist
Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
E-mail: Sam_hab@gmail.com
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habee

[Biggs]

The Inalienable Right to Resist Occupation
Kim Petersen

www.uruknet.info?p=50091

Link: www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/12/the-inalienable-right-to-resist-occupation/

December 29, 2008

Israeli Jews are massacring Palestinians again. Zionists are pinning the blame on the elected representative of the Palestinians: Hamas.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni demonized the Palestinian movement: "Hamas is a terrorist organization and nobody is immune."

Complicitly, the Whitehouse blamed Hamas, as did Canada’s government. Government officials in the US, Canada, and Europe spoke the same lame phrase, "Israel has a right to defend itself," as if the slaughter being carried out by a world military power against a starving population could be construed as some kind of defense. Israel, the world’s most frequently cited violator of international law, a racist state, an occupation state built through violence and slow-motion genocide is being acknowledged as having the right to defend its criminality. This is preposterous; there is no right of an occupation regime to defend its occupation. Palestine, however, has a right to resist occupation!

Israeli writer Gideon Levy called Israel’s actions a war crime, but he also blames Hamas: "In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel’s overreaction."1

Hamas chooses to stand and resist occupation rather than getting down on its knees to Israel. It seems for Levy that resistance is foolish.

Levy implied that Israel had a right to react — just it went too far. Thus, Levy depicted Israel as the reactor and Hamas as the provocateur. This is false.2 Levy attempts to present Israel as blameless for Hamas’s firing of rockets — as if all the violent crimes he reported against Palestinians had never happened before the rockets from Gaza.

What the critics of Hamas are alleging — without showing evidence — is that Hamas (or any Palestinian, for that matter) is behind the launching of rickety rockets from Gaza. However, even if Hamas is behind the launching of the rockets, so what!? Hamas, is the elected representative of Palestinians. Palestinians have the legal right to self-determination. They have the moral right to resist occupation. However, the right to resist must also be recognized as a legal right.3 It is absurd to argue that there is no legal right to resist the illegal act of occupation — a prima facie denial of the right to self-determination. History bears this out. Did the early Americans not claim a right to resist British colonialism?4 Did the Europeans not have a right to launch guerrilla attacks on the Nazi occupation regimes? Why does Levy deny this right to Palestinians?

Whether the tactics of Palestinian resistance are in their best interests is debatable. Nonetheless, the Jewish state has never been at a loss to conjure pretexts for its criminal acts.

Demonizing Hamas

In a recent article,5 I took exception to Levy demonizing Hamas. As a "benign" or moderate Israeli voice, Levy, wittingly or unwittingly, fortified a pretext for the destruction heaped on Gaza.

One writer supportive of Palestinian rights rejected criticism of Levy’s writing. Paulo de Rooij wrote, "This portrayal of Gideon Levy is rather unfair, it fails to appreciate Levy’s courage, …"6

De Rooij sets up a hoop: before you analyze and criticize the content of someone’s writing, you must first acknowledge any courage. No, I did not say Levy was courageous but neither did I say he was cowardly. I made no portrayal of Levy. I focused only on what he wrote. When someone writes for public readership, one can usually expect that there will be some who disagree, and some people will express their disagreement. For these purposes, there are widely accepted guidelines for appropriate and rationale discourse.

De Rooij says that the article "fails to understand his value in the Israeli context, and it attacks one of the more benign Israeli personalities."

Yes, Levy goes against the grain in Israel in that he reports that Palestinians are human and that they suffer. Israelis know about Palestinian suffering, and it certainly causes no massive outpouring of shame or sympathy for their Palestinian victims.

De Rooij often writes about language and how it is twisted in usage, yet he claims the article "attacks" Levy, although nowhere in the article have I criticized Levy the person; I have only dealt with the content of what he wrote. To criticize the written word is not to attack the person.

The writer suggests, "Maybe attacking some of the pernicious zionists would have been more fruitful."

I submit that the more pernicious Zionists are obvious and do not need exposing; I am, however, concerned about those media types who come across as progressives and yet write Zionist propaganda. I took issue with Levy’s maligning of Hamas. He demonizes Hamas. Is this fair? Should Levy of the occupying Jewish state be criticizing resistance to the occupation?

The critic writes, "Despite the fact that Levy does exhibit some contradictions, he has rendered the Palestinian victims a great service. Primarily because of Levy’s (and Hass’) reporting, Israelis cannot say 'we did not know’. Is it just because of some of his contradictions that anyone should urge readers to shunt his writings?"

Who suggested Levy’s writings should be shunted?

He argues, "Yes, Levy exhibits some contradictions — most of us do so too — but it is simply absurd to abuse someone who should be clearly considered to be on 'our’ side."

Clearly? Who decides what is "our" side? I submit that there are clear principles involved: (1) dispossession of an Indigenous people or other legitimate settlers is a crime against humanity, in its worst form – a genocide; (2) the occupation of the territory of an Indigenous people and legitimate settlers is criminal, and (3) the victims of dispossession and occupation have the right to resist and reclaim their territory and liberate themselves from their occupiers.

Levy fails on (1) and (3). If the dispossession of Palestinians from their territory was wrong in 1967, then why was it right in 1948? Why does Levy deny the inalienable right to resist dispossession, occupation, humiliation, and violence? Is this the side of social justice activists?

De Rooij alleges "abuse" against Levy in the article. If so, then he should point out an instance of such abuse.

He delves further into what appears to be innuendo. The nature of innuendo is that it is murky. He talks about activist posers, about "hurdles," about "idiocy," and about hoop jumping. I never imagined that calling for adherence to international law might be equated with requiring someone to jump a hoop, and if antiwar activists, if social justice activists can’t call for simple adherence to the norms of international law, then what can they ask for? Talk? Talk is important, but isn’t that what Oslo and the Roadmap were? Where did that get the Palestinians?

He agrees that Levy has contradictions, and I agree that Levy also does fine reporting. It is not the fine reporting that I am at odds with. I am concerned with the Zionist-serving writing of Levy that defies Palestinian aspirations. To wit, Palestinians voted overwhelmingly for Hamas. By demonizing Hamas in his writing, Levy gives succor to the Israeli extremists strangling Gaza, even though he does not agree with the criminal methods. Militant Israelis could point to his writings and say that even Levy is against Hamas. How benign is that? How does that help Palestinians?

It appears that de Rooij’s attack is based on his contention that the writings of certain people are above criticism. I am obviously not one of them. This is fine because I reject the notion that the writings of anyone are beyond logical analysis, rebuttal, and criticism.

Progressivism is grounded in principles. When progressivist writers waver on principles, when they surrender to lesser evilism of a sort, the danger of the slippery slope presents itself. The equality of people(s) is a fundamental principle. All writers are equals. Every writer’s word must be open to scrutiny and questioning — and where the writing is suspect, it must be open to challenge.

Although progressives may have disagreements, in the end, what is important is solidarity for the rights of the oppressed. Palestinians are being slaughtered again. Palestinians have the same rights as all other peoples have, and these rights must be upheld. Among these rights must be the right to resist all forms of oppression.
Gideon Levy, "The neighborhood bully strikes again," Haaretz, 27 December 2008. How accurate is his characterization of the Jewish state — "neighborhood bully"? Would calling the Nazi state a "neighborhood bully" have been appropriate? [↩]
Israel violated the cease-fire on 4 November. This allowed it to escalate the situation to its present massacres. "Israel Breaches Gaza Ceasefire: Invades, Kills 7, Seizes Many," From Occupied Palestine, With Love, 5 November 2008. [↩]
Diakonia, a Swedish church-based sustainable development organization, recognizes the right to resist with non-violent means, but finds that under international humanitarian law there is no explicit mention of the right of an occupied people to resist an occupation. Ingela Karlsson, "Resistance to Israeli occupation – a right?" Diakonia, 24 October 2006. [↩]
Of course, resisting British colonialism did not give Americans the right to dispossess the Indigenous peoples of the land. [↩]
Kim Petersen, "Talk Is Cheap, Human Life Is Not: Justice and Freedom for Palestinians Now!" Dissident Voice, 22 December 22 2008. [↩]
Paul de Rooij, "Commentary on Talk Is Cheap, Human Life Is Not," Palestine: Information with Provenance. [↩]

Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org. Read other articles by Kim.

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"Just let me die"
Sabah,

www.uruknet.info?p=50122

Link: english.sabah.com.tr/0CB0CB8781B0439A9089BA3AD142F54B.html

December 30, 2008

"Just let me die"

Due to a lack of electricity, surgeries are being conducted by the light of cellular phones, and hospitals no longer have room to take in those deceased, A doctor in Gaza said that a patient he had to work on without anesthesia cried out these words.

With Israel's blockade on the admittance of medical supplies and food within the border, Gaza is in the midst of a serious humanity drama, going into the fourth day of Israeli operations. With death tolls reaching 364 and the number of wounded surpassing 1,400, there are practically no doctors, hospitals or medicine to be found in the region. With a total patient capacity of 2,000, private clinics and hospitals are unable to handle the increasing capacity of hose wounded. The city is limited to six hours of electricity access. Finding clean water is equivalent to a miracle. Due to Hamas' coming to power and 19 months of an Israeli blockade, medical supplies have practically been depleted.

'I constantly hear moaning'

Doctors are praying that help will come as soon as possible. The drama taking place at the city's largest hospital, Sifa, is like a memorial of hopelessness... Despite the destitute conditions, doctors are doing all they can to bring the wounded back to life. Describing the conditions to England's Guardian newspaper, doctors stated; "The corridors are completed filled with stretchers. Meanwhile, not only are there not enough doctors to treat the patients, there is also not enough medicine. Surgeries are being conducted without using anesthesia. Due to the electricity cuts, patients can not be put on medical equipment, nor do the morgues have enough room to take in corpses. The sounds of patients moaning in pain are constantly heard in our minds. In fact, I can still hear the words of a patient who was drenched in blood having had his leg ripped off, saying; for God's sake, just let me die."

THE INJURED ARE BEING TREATED AT HOME

"Because there is no electricity, surgical operations are being done with the light from cellular phones. Due to the constant flow of wounded patients coming into the hospital, corpses are piled one on top of another in a corner of the corridor. Patients nauseated by the blood leaking from the corpses, scream for help from doctors. Many patients are being treated at home due to the lack of space in the hospitals. Meanwhile, the hopeless looks from parents trying to find their children, cuts to the heart."