E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Mohammed Saber / EPA
A man stands in the rubble of a destroyed house belonging to the Dallo family after it was hit by an Isareli air strike in the north of Gaza City on Sunday. The airstrike killed at least 10 members of the same family, including four children.
GAZA CITY -- Thousands of Palestinians filled Gaza City’s main square on Thursday to celebrate their "victory" in the latest round of violence with Israel, even as rescue workers were still sifting through the rubble of a home in the neighborhood of El Nasr on the city's outskirts.
Earlier in the week, rescue workers frantically combed through the three-story house, which was reduced to rubble by an Israeli airstrike that killed 12 people -- ten from a single family that included four children. Israel claimed it was home to a high-ranking commander with Hamas’ military wing.
The incident -- or, as Palestinians here describe it, "the Dallo massacre," in reference to the family that lived there -- has become one of the defining moments of the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Israel, Hamas claim victory amid Gaza cease-fire
After eight days of fighting -- 1,500 Israeli airstrikes and 1,500 Palestinian rockets fired, according to Israel Defense Forces -- both sides emerged claiming to be victorious: Palestinian factions for "resisting" and "withstanding" the might of the world’s fourth largest military; Israel for dealing Hamas a blow while minimizing the casualties of Hamas rockets on Israel.
Shops and stores are reopening and a semblance of normalcy is returning to Gaza's streets after a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas is put into effect. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Gaza.
But in the small farming community of Attatra, there were no winners.
Walid, 42, and has family were at home on Tuesday night when the Israeli military began dropping leaflets on their farm. Even before the leaflets hit the ground, Walid knew it what they were -- a warning sign. The Israeli military ordered them and their neighbors to evacuate their area immediately.
In 2008, Walid was sitting at home when the same leaflets fell on his house. Back then, he did not heed the warning. Instead he and his family remained on their farm. During that Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, Walid’s brother was killed, Walid’s home was destroyed and their farm, the source of their livelihood, razed.
Marco Longari / AFP - Getty Images
Members of the al-Attar family, displaced during the eight-day conflict with Israel, return to their home in the Atatra area in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday.
His is one of a thousand similar stories. This time around, he knew what a ground invasion would mean for his family. So he didn’t chance it. Once he saw the leaflets fall he packed his children and wife in the back of a car, grabbed whatever blankets, sheets and clothes they could, and headed to his sister's house where along with 40 other extended family members they took shelter until a ceasefire went into effect on Wednesday evening.
Israel's Iron Dome shield cost up to $30 million
There are no early warning systems, no bunkers or shelters to find a moment of refuge in the chaos of war for the people of Gaza. There is no Israeli-style Iron Dome system to protect them, just "Naseeb" – the Arabic word for destiny.
As the shops opened up and storekeepers surveyed the damage, families began setting up mourning tents to welcome condolences for those who died.
Near NBC News' hotel, a mourning tent was set up for 44-year-old Mohammed Saeed Al Qaddada. He was a member of Fatah, Hamas’ political rival that Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the American-backed Palestinian Authority, belongs to.
Former Ambassador to the U.N. Stuart Holliday explains the ongoing delicate diplomacy keeping the conflict between Israel and Hamas from escalating.
He was killed by an airstrike on his car while he was with fighters ferrying weapons and rockets, according to family. He was not loyal to Hamas, but felt compelled to join their ranks when Israel began another attack on Gaza.
At the Red Crescent ambulance dispatch center in Tel el Hawa, first responders worked nonstop for eight days. It’s not uncommon for the men and women here to spend days at a time away from their homes and families.
Israel declares mission accomplished, Hamas claims victory
On the day our crew spent a few hours with them they were dispatched multiple times, all to rescue or treat casualties from Israel’s attacks -- including a young child suffering from shock after a wall in the family home collapsed.
The plight of the first responders pales in comparison to the doctors at Gaza City’s main hospital. Poorly equipped, understaffed and inadequately trained, doctors and nurses worked endlessly to treat -- sometimes unsuccessfully -- the flow of patients. By the end of the fighting, the death toll stood at 162 people killed, according to hospital officials.
The painful reality of Gaza is that even after the fighting, the return to "normal" is far from it.
Blockaded since 2006 and under siege since 2007, Gaza has become a tough place to live. The U.N. predicts it will be uninhabitable by 2020. Stifled, underdeveloped and destitute, Gaza is a place where residents wait for their "Naseeb" to change.
Bernat Armangue / AP
Emergency workers help a woman after she was injured during an Israel strike on a sports field next to her house in Gaza City on Monday.
At a small auto mechanic shop a young technician named Wissam was covered in the grime of grease, car oil and dirt. His shop had reopened for the first time in days. He was not expecting any patrons on Thursday but for him it was important to get back to normal.
"Don’t feel sorry for those who died in this war, they are martyrs and will go to heaven," he said. "Feel sorry for those us who will have to stay here trapped in Gaza."
Back at the Dallo house, the workers sifting through the rubble made a gruesome discovery. Days after the attack and hours after they had begun once again to clear the rubble, they found the body of seven-year-old Ranin and the body of 35-year-old Mohammed el Dallo -- raising the death toll to 164.
More world stories from NBC News:
- China's latest supermodel? A 72-year-old farmer
- Despite US woes, Twinkies reign supreme on the Nile
- Analysis: Why Hezbollah sat out the Gaza conflict
- Vote rejecting women bishops was 'willfully blind,' Anglican leader says
- Too much democracy? Apathy triumphs in UK's latest election
- Obama's visit a sign of Myanmar's dizzying pace of change
Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook
Leave a Comment:
Posted: 21 Nov 2012 08:26 PM PST Sultan Knish gets it right!
For the last hundred years the best and brightest of the civilized world have been engaged in the business of peace. In the days before the Nobel Peace Prize became a joke, it was expected that scientific progress would lead to moral progress. Nations would accept international laws and everyone would get together to replace wars with international conferences.
Instead technological progress just gave us better ways to kill each other. There have been few innovations in the moral technology of global harmony since Immanuel Kant's "Perpetual Peace" laid out a plan to grant world citizenship to all refugees and outlaw all armies, invasions and atrocities with the whole shebang would be overseen by a League of Nations.
That was in 1795 and Kant's plan was at least more reasonable than anything we have two-hundred years later today because it at least set out to limit membership in this body to free republics. If we had done that with the United Nations, it could conceivably have become something resembling a humane organization. Instead it's a place where the dictators of the world stop by to give speeches about human rights for a show that's funnier than anything you could find eight blocks away at the Broadway Comedy Club.
Since the League of Nations folded, the warring peoples of the world have added the atom bomb, the suicide bomber, the jet plane, the remotely guided missile, the rape squad, the IED, the child soldier and the stealth fighter to their arsenals. And the humanitarians have murdered a few billion trees printing out more useless treaties, conventions and condemnations; more dead trees than accounted for by every piece of human literature written until the 19th Century.
There is no moral technology to prevent war. Or rather war is the moral technology, that when properly applied, ensures peace.
The humanitarians had gone down a dead end by trying to create perpetual peace by outlawing war, but the peace-shouters who wear their inverted Mercedes Logo don't really want peace, some of them reflexively hate war for sentimental reasons, but their leaders and most committed activists don't hate war, they hate the people who win the wars.
The plan for perpetual peace is really a plan for perpetual war. It necessitates that the civilized nations who heed its call amass overwhelming quantities of firepower as deterrents against war, which they will pledge to never use because if the threat of destroying the world isn't enough, their bluff will be called and they will fold. And if they don't fold, then the world will be destroyed because the humanitarians said that peace was better than war.
It also necessitates that the actual wars that they fight be as limited as possible by applying precision technology to kill only actual armed enemy combatants while minimizing collateral damage. And that humanitarian objective also necessitates that the other side reply with a counter-objective of making it as hard as possible to kill them without also killing civilians.
The humanitarian impulse makes the anti-humanitarian impulse inevitable. The more precisely we try to kill terrorists, the more ingeniously the terrorists blend into the civilian population and employ human shields. The more we try not to kill civilians, the more civilians we are forced to kill. That is the equal and opposite reaction of the humanitarian formula.
In Afghanistan, the Rules of Engagement were overhauled to minimize Afghan civilian casualties. This was so successful that not only did the casualty rate for American soldiers dramatically increase because they were not allowed to fire unless they were being fired at, but the number of Afghan civilian casualties killed by American forces also fell dramatically. It was a great triumph. But sadly the number of Afghan civilians killed by the Taliban increased dramatically and more than made up for the shortfall.
When the Taliban have won the war, the number of civilian casualties will be tremendous once Obama pulls the troops out and the cheerful bearded boys march into Kabul and start killing every woman who can read. But it was still a better thing than the unacceptable levels of civilian casualties under Bush. It was a better thing that the Taliban have free reign to kill as many Afghans as they want than that American soldiers should have been able to fight the Taliban without the humanitarian handcuffs.
Because sometimes you have to destroy the village to save the village, and that is true whether it's American planes bombing a terrorist hideout or humanitarians letting the Taliban take the village and kill every tenth woman in it.
And yet for all this monumental effort, for all the soldiers dead because they weren't sure if the man planting an IED in the road was a terrorist or just a decent upstanding poppy farmer checking the soil composition, for all the Afghan civilians killed by the moral technology of inaction, your unfriendly neighborhood peace-shouter is about as satisfied as a cannibal at a vegan banquet. Give him, her or it five valuable minutes of your time and it will begin shrieking about drone strikes, kill lists and the murderous rampage of a technology that is as far from Shock and Awe as you could possibly imagine without going completely Gandhi. If anything it hates drone strikes more than it hates Hiroshima. Mass killing justifies its smug contempt for the machinery of war, but anything that smacks of an attempt to moralize warfare challenges its principles and urges it on to greater displays of outrage.
Israel, in the name of peace, turned over the lives of millions of people to the control of a terrorist organization which taught their children to believe that their highest purpose in life was to die while killing Israelis.
The Oslo Accords turned stone-throwers into shooters and suicide bombers. It allowed the kind of people that most of Israel's Muslim neighbors had locked up and thrown away the key to, inside the country and gave them charge of the economy and the youth. Every peace dove, every peace song, every peace agreement, made the rivers of blood that followed not only inevitable, but mandatory.
For decades, every time that Israel was on the verge of finishing off the terrorists, there came a call for a ceasefire or a peace agreement. The call was heeded and the violence continued because all the peace agreements and ceasefires were just prolonged unfinished wars. They were a game of baseball that never ended because no home run was ever scored. Instead the New York Yankees were being forced to play the Martyrs of Muslimtown for thirty years with the umpire stepping in every time the hometown team was on the verge of winning the game. Each peace agreement did not mean peace, it meant that the Muslimtown Martyrs would have another few years to go on killing and being killed.
Peace meant that the war would never end. Instead of perpetual peace, it made for perpetual war.
In 1992 Israel deported 400 Hamas terrorists. It didn't kill them, lock them up or bake them into a pie. All it did was kick them out of a country they didn't recognize and closed the door behind them. That deportation became the leading human rights cause of the day. The UN issued a unanimous resolution condemning the deportation. The Red Cross brought them blankets. Newsweek accused Israel of "Deporting the Hope for Peace."
And so Israel took the 400 Hamas terrorists, the hope for peace, back. Over the next 20 years they shed rivers of blood and rivers of blood were shed because of them. There was never any peace with them and they made peace impossible.
But the humanitarians had gotten their way, as they always got their way, and their way was the blown up bus and the shattered cafeteria, the burning building and the suicide bomber making his way through a crowded mall, the child's mother lovingly tying on his martyr costume complete with Alfred Nobel's great invention, the jet plane releasing its cargo of bombs and the television screaming for war. But all these were far better than that 400 Hamas terrorists should sniffle into their Red Cross supplied cups of dark coffee on the hills of Lebanon.
To those who croon to that old Lennon song, peace is always better than war, and good intentions lead to good results. The only way forward is to keep extending your hand to the enemy and doing it over and over again no matter how much effort the doctors have to put into stitching it back together again after the last handshake.
Peace is still better than war. It is better that Israel and Hamas fight escalating mini-wars every 3 years than that Israel finish off Hamas once and for all. That price wasn't worth paying 20 years ago when all it meant was that 400 terrorists would have been forced to get jobs slinging Halal hash in Lebanese Hashish joints. It certainly isn't worth it today.
A flock of peace doves wings to Israel with proposals for engaging Hamas. But it's Israel that is supposed to figure out a way to live with its explosive bride. All the proposals call for some gradual process by which Hamas will be courted, engaged and weaned off terror to become an upstanding member of the international community. And that's all well and good if you have soy for brains.
Hamas is not interested in being engaged. Its goal is the destruction of Israel. This isn't posturing, it's not sullen resentment over being blockaded by Israel or outrage over the latest round of fighting. This is the essential ideology of Hamas, derived from the core Islamic principles over the proper role of non-Muslims in the Muslim world. It is not interested in a two-state solution, job creation programs or any of the meaningless shiny toys that diplomats wave when they arrive in the region. Its goal is to make Islam supreme over all other systems by destroying a non-Muslim state in what it considers to be Muslim territory.
Perpetual peace was not made for such conflicts. Peace was made for reasonable people who are willing to give and take. It was not made for those who only take.
Peacemaking is not a policy, it is a religion that we are all obligated to believe in. It is an immoral moral principle that ends in war. Peacemaking in the World War II cost more lives than Hitler could have ever taken on his own. Peacemaking in the War on Terror has cost a hundred times more lives than the terrorists could have ever taken on their own.
The business of peace is the industry of death. Behind the peace sign is a field of flowers with a grave for every one. Behind the peace agreement and the ceasefire is another war that will be worse than the last.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger
One word suffices to explain my response to this eloquent piece; beautiful.
Please write a book next time Ixor, this is a commentary.
BOTTOM LINE: Those fools on the Gaza strip should hunt down and hang the radicals firing rockets into Israel for no other reason than hate.
Very well stated. Thank you.
Pity the living is right. Why don't you all go kill yourselves and do the world a big favor. Just what has Gaza done to improve the world in the last 50 years? 100 years? Okay, let's try 200 years? Nothing. Absolutely f**king nothing. To allow an organization like Hamas take over your government is deplorable, and any deaths that resulted in their bombing of Israel are all Hamas' fault.
Ixor
Thank you for the post. I think you put the writer at the bottom, Daniel Greenfield.
It's is also a sad statement on the reality of the Middle East. Hamas and Hezbollah will either have to be destroyed or they will continue to attack Israel. The question is who will support them. Iran has been a huge supporter. Egypt was not. When the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt, after the way was cleared by the facebook generation, I was very concerned that Egypt would turn Islamist radical. I am pleasantly surprised with Morsi's efforts in bringing a ceasefire. But I still don't believe that Al Shater and the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood aren't pulling the strings on Morisi. I now have some hope that I am wrong.
But I agree with the philosophy you posted, unfortunately, there is likely a lot more death to come.
Alan
I agree with you. All the deaths, Palestinian and Israeli, are the result of Hamas. They wanted Palestinian deaths to support their cause. They probably pulled the trigger in many of the Palestinian deaths.
The Palestinians need to get rid of Hamas. But I don't know if they are capable or even want to. They may be the most stupid people in the world for electing Hamas, at the Palestinians in Gaza.
Nicely put and something that needed to be said. No better example of your concept than the Israeli/ Radical Islam conflict (s).
Any time the few hate filled can project acts of war , the innocents will suffer
Well Ixor, Of course the real problem is religion. And not your pseudo-peacemakers religion; what was once a useful method to help understand and survive a harsh world, has now become a divisive and dangerous threat to all humanity. The peculiar thing about brainwashing very young children with religion is that they actually believe the lies that they are told; furthermore, even in the face of incontrovertible factual evidence they will retain those beliefs (in almost all cases). Speaking as a rational and non-religious person, it is evident that until people can be weaned off their religious beliefs, little progress will be made towards peace in the region. The right question to ask of these folks is "Why do you believe what you believe?" the answer is "because I believe what somebody told me". Although the people in charge believe the general outlines of their religion, they really use it to maintain power-especially over women. In a modern world this is simply not good enough. Because someone was hallucinating in a desert several thousand years ago and made up a a pack of lies for whatever reason, why should that affect our lives today. The sooner people in the Middle East realize that their religions are total lies with no foundation in reality the sooner some kind of peaceful world may come into being. Unless you can submit some kind of objective truth, why should I believe you? I can present scientifically valid reasons for what I believe- religions cannot say the same. Of course many of the religious treat their faith like a cafeteria- pick and choose the parts you like and ignore the rest. (There also the hard core-to whom God speaks directly and to whom every word in their holy book is a direct word from God. These are the real nuts and are best represented by suicide bombers and their ilk) They treat science the same way- TV and the internet-OK; Astronomy? Geology? Biology? Global warming? No thanks, that's not convenient to believe. It will no doubt take a thousand years or more- but someday, I am confident, people will see the folly of false beliefs and the road to destruction whence it leads. The one fear I have is that before these religious constructs can be cast aside, their will be religious inspired wars which will destroy civilization. In case I wasn't explicit enough let me repeat- The Bible and the Koran are filled with lies-Moses and Mohammed were both crazy. There is no God. If you can prove otherwise Ixor and Daniel Greenfield please do so; until then please try to understand that it is the irrational belief in an afterlife that is ultimately responsible for these crimes. Have a nice day
IXOR
Wow, you have given this matter a great deal of seriously deep meditative thought. Have you resolved yourself to sadness rather than the frustration of asking "why". I didn't see any dot that you had not connected. Perpetual peace is the sleep of death. Improved war implements drive the creative spirit on to devise better defenses. Man may not love war, but he loves the game that challenges him to outwit another man. For some, the real challenge is not to just outwit the opponent but to torture him.
I think, the Arab has played the master in this game of Islam vs Jew. They use a group of people called the Palestinians, who may very well actually turn out to be Jewish, to both actively engage Israel in warfare and a psychological one too. Not the psychology of dreading where and when the next rocket will fall, but the silent deep inner core tormented fear that the Jew has of being returned to incarceration without justice or hope and the fear that nobody will care.
If I can see how strongly the Jew identifies their holocaust plight with the Palestinian refugee dilemma, don't you know the ever shrewd and cunning Arab saw the immediate possibility in 1948 of how to exploit the Palestinian refugees in tormenting the Jew with perpetual reoccurring fear. Punishing the Jew, not for his return to the Holy Land, because every Arab knows it belongs to Israel, but punishing the Jew because he just can't forget that he was cast out of Abraham's tent. No matter what the Jew does for peace the Arab makes sure he fails.
The Arab has insured that the Palestinian people's hope for peace means eradicating the Jew from Israel. They can not define peace any other way . . . complete destruction to the Jew is peace for the Palestinian. In this way, the Arab keeps the Palestinian people locked in perpetual combat, how intermitten it may be. Nothing the Jew concedes or gives away or proposes or performs to achieve peace will ever accomplish their absolute destruction. And that is the only thing the Arab has allowed the Palestinian believes to be lasting peace.
It is absurd for any leader in Islam to say that they can not control what the terriroist do. It is abslutely absurd for anyone outside of Islam to believe that it is not the Islamic leaders who set these dogs on fire and turn them loose on the world. Islam controls every detail of the muslim's life. Every detail. And the Muslim male and female comply otherwise their own family and firends and neighbors would turn them in or exact punishment against them without conscience. The Muslim terriorist dogs act strictly on command.
I strongly support the movement to have all Palestinians submit their DNA so that the origin of each individual in the Palestinian population can be conclusively identified and at least given the opportunity to return to the geographic area or people they are proven to be most recently descended from.
And if they don't want to submit to DNA test, then, I say give them the nuke. This has been the most extreme waste of human life and time and energy. The Palestinian people are nothing but a tool with which the Arab people torture the Jew. The Arab hates the Palestinian as much as he hates the Jew.
I want JUSTICE for the Jew. I want his persecutions to stop.
The Arab's blood fued has cost him his dignity.
The Palestinian's quest for peace has cost them their freedom.
The Jew has his freedom, he has his integrity, he has his dignity, he has his homeland in which he has prospered more than any other people . . . he belongs there
Give him the quality peace that he deserves. Get out of his country and go any where else on earth.
I deplore violence at all times. But the Palestinians have no one to blame but themselves for voting in Hamas and for passively participating in violence against Israel by allowing them, Hamas, to use their homes, schools, hospitals, children and wives as sanctuaries to launch attacks against Israel.
This has been going on since the establishment of the state of Israel. Normally, people learn from their mistakes, however Palestinians keep repeating the same mistake over and over again. They should be promoting peaceful existence and cooperation with Israel not violence and war!!
Both Palestinians and Israelis have a lot to offer each other so why not work together on resolving their differences to achieve a better future for all. That’s what they should be asking for from their leaders.
Thanks
Mr Greenfield is far more articulate than I.
+++
yep.....
Yes, I pity the living to have to live under the death rule of HAMAS funded by Iran now--
Check out the enormous amt. of citizens there who have no education, and most are poverty stricken in squalor. Three could even be more--the Palestinian people are helpless, with HAMAS planting rockets/missiles in the living rooms of the citizens, kid's schools, anywhere where the general public lives.
That does mean they want their own dead--Cowards; using the Children as Human Shields so the Terrorists never reach Allah, kidnapping them from their parents to become young Terrorists fighting for what "Cause"? Total misery---many of the Palestinians have been accepted to live in Israel. How's that for Compassion; of course there are background checks done before this happens.
Still the War will go on, all women can reproduce a child for them, even raped, so it is snatched from the Mother's arms. That's Palestine for ya---Murderers.
This post is not aimed at anyone in particular:
God is watching, even if you are not. God will remember, even if you don't. All the misinformation will not bring you forgiveness. But those who misinformed you, will pay god's price. Just be thankful that it was not your children blown to bits.
Marchant, who told you these things you call fact?
Sorry bud, your destiny is determined by allah and yet, you continue to worship him. The dead are not martyrs, they are fools who are now burning in hell wishing they could tell you how wrong they were. You chose to go to Gaza, if you don’t like it, CHANGE IT!!
Take a lesson from the Jews, who cherish their land. Their God has blessed their land......your god has destroyed yours!
So many blind, deaf and ignorant people.... There were no problems in the Middle East like this BEFORE the establishment of Israel. I am not Pro Palestinian or Anti Israel, but the attacks are coming from BOTH sides...this side strikes out and then the other side retaliates. I do feel empathy for the civilians on both sides, but I am sick of the fighting and the lies told by both sides. I am also sick of the people HERE who do not want to see both sides and always blame the Palestinians only because they are Muslims. And I sure as heck do not want OUR troops sent there to fight. It is bad enough we send MILLIONS (or is it billions, now?) of money, arms and "advisers" to Israel.
'There is no God. If you can prove otherwise Ixor and Daniel Greenfield please do so....'
B White - Can you prove there is no God?
You DON’T have an issue with sending money to terrorists (that we BORROW) to “be our friends” While Israel IS our friend and only ally in the Middle East! WHY are we funding TERRORISTS????
U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt has averaged about $2 billion a year since 1979
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/f.a.q.-on-u.s.-aid-to-egypt-where-does-the-money-go-who-decides-how-spent
President Barack Obama is proposing that American taxpayers spend about $1.55 billion on aid to Egypt and another $1.5 million – not billion - on aid to Libya in the fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1,
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/14/13866898-how-much-are-taxpayers-spending-on-egypt-and-libya?lite
The Finance Ministry said it welcomes American scrutiny of where billions of U.S. reconstruction dollars are being spent but denied a statement by the acting Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Herbert Richardson, that Afghanistan's central bank was hostile to international advisers.
The exchange is the latest in an increasingly deteriorating relationship between President Hamid Karzai's government and the United States, which has poured more than $70 billion in aid to Afghanistan since it invaded the country to oust the Taliban in late 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks.
http://news.yahoo.com/afghanistan-disputes-us-audit-report-aid-money-141441601.html
Pakistan has historically been among the top recipients of US aid - since 1948, the US has sent more than £30bn in direct aid to the country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jul/11/us-aid-to-pakistan
U.S. gives Jordan $100 million to help host Syrian refugees
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2909687/posts
US gives 78 Million to Jordan
http://www.haaretz.com/news/u-s-gives-jordan-78-million-aid-supplement-to-boost-security-1.229488
US donates $30 million for emergency operation in South Sudan
http://www.sudantribune.com/US-donates-30-for-emergency,42666
U.S. gives billions of dollars in foreign aid to world's richest countries - then asks to borrow it back
The Congressional Research Service released the report last month which shows that in 2010 the U.S. handed out a total of $1.4bn to 16 foreign countries that held at least $10bn in Treasury securities.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1393960/US-gives-billions-foreign-aid-worlds-richest-countries-asks-borrow-back.html#ixzz2D0XdWV2M
Well put Kleb, very well put. Nothing can be added to that....
Did anybody notice how one sided MSNBC reported the story?
I am 65 that said it means I am 6 months older than the state of Israel. In my lifetime Israel was born of the Partition of the British protectorate of Palestine being divided into the Arab section and the Jewish section based on where the majority of the people lived. Immediately the Arabs attacked the Jews and the Jews won and ended up with more territory than they started with. Since then we have had the Yom Kippur war the Arabs attacked on the Jewish High Holy day and the Jews won and they ended up with better borders. followed by the 6 day war Arabs attacked, Jews won better borders. Are you seeing a pattern here? It got so bad there was a spy novel series spoofing James Bond where it was said America gave the Arabs equipment so it could end up in Jewish hands without anybody knowing that was the plan. First rule never start a fight you can't win. If you do lose don't whine.
B White-519014
Oh just stuff it B White.....there are people out there that will fire rockets and kill for no other reason than HATE...get over it.
One of the most sickening things in this story is to watch msn try to twist for the Hamas Sympathy Vote - Shame on msn - absolutely vulgar.
Note to Gaza - if you don't want fiery death to keep raining down into your cities then stop lobbing missiles into Israel - it's just that simple.
And if it's really true, your claim to value death to the same extent that Israel and the West value life, then for heaven's sake put a gun in your collective mouths, pull the trigger and just be done with it - so that the rest of us can get on with living.
Gaza....Pfffft.....shut up and go away.
"rescue workers frantically combed through the three-story house, which was reduced to rubble by an Israeli airstrike that killed 12 people -- ten from a single family that included four children. Israel claimed it was home to a high-ranking commander with Hamas’ military wing."
This was a precision air strike by Israel. Even the commander living in a civilian area was killed!
Apparently, real problem is that there are huge numbers of informants in Gaza. Many are cowards too to run away.
Also, how could Israel make so many air strikes?
Hamas should make use of the truce period and eliminate all the Israeli informants and their families.
There are at least 30 percent of civilians who are informants and who have double crossed by running away.
LAR:
The Palestinians were forced to vote for HAMAS--or there for sure was Voter Fraud.
Palestine is not a Democracy. The Palestinian citizens like the Communists citizens, know when to keep their mouth shut, or vote for the right Leader--they have no choice or it is instant death by beheading, torture, or other means--they love the guns, of which Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela are supplying them with, so they can make more money as well. Anything to to overturn Western Society so it no longer exists. Let's hope that this eventually does not turn out to be a Nuclear War.
"You Are Judged by the Company You Keep". Quote. That is the Palestinian Leaders HAMAS/Hezbollah. Terrorist Groups.
Ixor my heart goes out to the Jewish people. They have been sorely abused. I pray for God to deliver them from their oppressors. Even with all the evidence the world does not want to face the truth about Islam. God bless you and keep you strong.
don't forget the part about people stealing other people's land... always a key component
Israel stole nothing.
You know, if someone keeps shooting at me, I WILL retaliate. Gazans stop trying to KILL and MURDER innocent people. Whether they are Jewish or not, you are the one that is in the wrong. STOP KILLING and HATING these people.
Dear Blondeness032,
Wars between and within Muslim countries and in the Muslim world have not ceased since its inception. Shia vs Sunni, Turks vs Arabs, Persians vs Arabs, and lets not forget the multiple attempts of Muslim armies to conquer Europe. By the time you read this, The Alawi clan running Syria (an ethnic minorty there) will have killed more Syrians in one day then were killed in the latest clash with Hamas. He is rivaling his father who put down a similar "civil war" by killing 10,000-30,000. Have you ever asked yourself how all these peoples in the middle east are called Arabs. Well, the islamic army of Mohammad swept out of Arabia to forcibly convert these peoples - which is a tenant of Islam. There was no Israel when this occurred and Israel has nothing to do with the internal power struggles of the Muslim world. Israel would love to live in peace with its neighbors, but they all externalize their failures by vilifying the tiny Jewish state.
The Palestinians are the ones that didn't exist before Israel came into being. Sure there were tribes of Arabs in Israel, mostly because the Ottaman empire brought them there as settlers. There have always been Jews in Israel throughout history. Even the name Palestine was a brand imposed by the Romans (Hadrian) after they conquered Judea in order to further humiliate the Jews. They changed the name to that of Israel's previous arch enemies the Philistines (David vs. Goliath, you remember). How ironic that that's how these Arabs label themselves.
But, be that as it may present day Israel has held out an olive branch at every turn, only to have it thrown back in its face.
Perhaps when oil isn't the oil that moves our economies, the Arab world will accept Israel as a legitimate state based on and in history.
Peace
Its really sickening seeing all the blind Zionists posting on these threads. All so partisan in supporting Israel that the truth doesn't mean a thing to you. Most of you have deluded yourselves for so long that there's no hope for you. But unfortunately for you,that self-delusion only works over here. Little bit,by little bit,its fading away in most of the world. And even many Americans are beginning to understand the truth about Israel as well. Once,again slowly,as they becomes the majority,then its all over for you guys. Israel will be held to the standards of other nations. And if they don't conform they will be forced to.
More to the immediate future for you guys is the UN vote for Palestine on Nov. 29th. The US has warned Israel to not try to punish the PA before or after it.Warnings given according to the Israeli press,during Clinton's visit. And the PA's Abbas says if Israel does,he will call Netanyahu to the PA Parliament,hand him the keys and go home. Ending the two state ideal,and making a one state a certainty. Then it will be civil rights demands,backed up by the entire world community. And if you think the US is going to support a Jim Crow system in Israel against the wishes of the worlds democracies ,you need to rethink that.
The Zionists here, are missing a golden opportunity. You should have pushed Israel to make a fair deal for a Palestinian State. It would have been demilitarized,small (pre-67 border),and by geographic location tied to Israel economically. Had you spent less time dehumanizing the Palestinians as sub-humans or even animals. You could have gotten vast numbers of Palestinians on your side. But instead,the Israelis and you,their faithful supporters,couldn't get over the idea of a greater Israel,with all the settlements. Now the positions are changing and Palestinians are coming to the realization that Israel with never accept a Palestinian State. But they will in time be forced to accept the Palestinians as their fellow citizens. You guys wanted the land,and it looks like your going to get it. And the people of the land as well. I think its around 4 million Palestinians in the WB and Gaza. Better start laying out a welcome for your new citizens.
This is who negotiated the truce with Israel? Are you kidding me???? What a fiasco!
http://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/protests-rock-egypt-after-morsi-seizes-sweeping-new-powers-report/
Protests rock Egypt after Morsi seizes sweeping new powers: report
There is an elephant in the room here, while the world tries to sort out Hamas/Palestinian vs Israeli difficulties. Morsi, as President of Egypt, and a card carrying Muslim Brotherhood Brother, has taken center state as a "great negotiator". We all know where is loyalties lie, with the Muslim Brotherhood that CREATED Hamas. Morsi is not really in charge of Egypt, he is a puppet of the Brotherhood. the Brotherhood is a brilliant organization having survived 50 years of being outlawed in Egypt. Many significant players in the world of Terrorism have Brotherhood connections including Ayman Al Zawahiri. Morsi will slowly take full control of Egypt (not so slowly after today's announcement), he will make Egypt an Islamist state, and use it as a base for the Brotherhood to create the Caliphate these Islamists want. Hamas and Hezbollah will be their radical military wing, while the Brotherhood takes command of the movement. The Iranian Shi'ite connection, with their continuing support of Hamas and Hezbollah, will join in. Only the Shi'ite/Sunni feud will get in the way of Iran and Egypt working together. Tribal differences do run deep.
Only Israel and the US stand in the way. Europe, as history has shown is pacifist.
Moshe:
Your commentary post is the most educated, and best descriptive analysis of the Middle East/N. Africa, between the Arabs and Jews, I have ever read on Newsvine. Iran formerly Persia. The Persian Jews.
Thank you very much for an excellent, insight education to others re: this subject.
What was said by you; has been to known to me throughout my entire life.
Peace as well.
Uncle Bob, you have it quite wrong. Israel truly intends full and equal rights for all.That is the way the legislation has been leaning for years. Palestinians already hold important places in Israeli government. Visit the following opinion page to read what a Bedouin Arab who held position in Israeli government had to say about Israeli Apartheid.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Lost-in-the-blur-of-slogans-3169337.php
Israel should blow up Hamas, Sunni Saudi front, at the earliest from Gaza.
Jews have another major new enemy Egypt with Sunni Saudi MB taking control!
Israel ought to wipe out Hamas before Morsi settles down.
It will be difficult to handle two major enemies.
Israel and Jewish lobby should not worry about Syria and Iran.
Let us all non-Muslims keep away from Syria and Iran.
Let Muslims kill each other on whose Allah is greater.
Dcpyle-Uncle Bob, you have it quite wrong. Israel truly intends full and equal rights for all.That is the way the legislation has been leaning for years. Palestinians already hold important places in Israeli government. Visit the following opinion page to read what a Bedouin Arab who held position in Israeli government had to say about Israeli Apartheid.
I read the piece. He really doesn't say anything about Israeli Apartheid. He denies it,but doesn't go into why its not true. His personal story,isn't convincing if you know the Middle East.Even in SA there were black officials of the Apartheid State. Not to mention,the Jewish Ghetto Police in WW2. He said he was Northern Bedouin Arab,here is what a pro-Israeli site says about the Northern Israeli Bedouin (they are different than the Southern Israeli Bedouin):
"Towards the end of the British Mandate and during the struggle for the establishment of the State of Israel, many Bedouin joined the Jewish forces, believing that the Jewish state would be generous to them. This also explains the continued good relations after the establishment of the State, as manifested, first and foremost, in volunteering for the security forces and serving on the front lines; volunteering is considered by the Bedouin to be part of their blood-pact with the State of Israel."
"One example of the good relations between the State and the Bedouin in the North is the tolerance displayed by the government regarding violations of building laws, non-expropriation of land and the establishment of the townships of Beit Zarzir and Ka’abiya."
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/Bedouin.html
Your point in mentioning the site you did? But, were there South African Blacks in top positions in government? If so, prove it. Bedouin are and have been in the highest positions in government, in the Knesset and in even the Cabinet.
The situation with the southern Bedouin is more akin to the situation with Blacks in the US than in South Africa during Apartheid. In addition, the government has made several attempts to resolve problems in the Negev. Nearly all attempts were refused by the southern Bedouin. That is not apartheid.
Apartheid is the mandatory separation of blacks from whites. An Israeli apartheid would be the entire mandatory separation of Jews and Arabs. Nothing like that is happening in Israel. If you think it is, you are even more clueless about the Middle East than I thought.
Incidentism
Posted: 18 Nov 2012 09:24 PM PST
Once upon a time it was the objective of the military to win wars. Now the objective of the military is to avoid incidents.
An incident happens when civilians are killed, prisoners mistreated or some other event that is photographed, videotaped and then flashed around the world. This results in an Incident, capital I, that triggers much artificial soul-searching by the media which spends the next two years beating the incident to death and flogging its corpse across television programs, newspaper articles, books, documentaries and finally, if it's a big enough incident, a real life movie version that is based on the book, which was based on the article, where the idealistic reporter/lawyer/activist who uncovered the truth about the incident will be played by Matt Damon or George Clooney.
The main objective of the military in most civilized countries is to prevent this chain of articles, programs, books, documentaries, dramatized plays and Matt Damon movies from coming about by making sure that no Incident can ever happen. And the best way to do that is by not fighting. And if the enemy insists on fighting, then he must be fought with razor sharp precision so that no collateral damage takes place. And if someone must die, it had better be our own soldiers, rather than anyone on the other side whose death might be used as an Incident.
Incidentism isn't derived from a fear of Matt Damon movies, but from the perception that wars are not won on the battlefield, but in the minds of men. And that perception has a good deal to do with the kind of wars we choose to fight.
The military, whether in the United States or Israel, does not exist to win wars. It exists to win over the people who don't want it to win a war.
The guiding principle in such conflicts is to use the military to push back the insurgency long enough to win over the local population with a nation building exercise. This program has never worked out for the United States, but that doesn't mean that generations of military leaders don't insist on going through the motions of applying it anyway.
In Israel, the last time the military was sent to win a war, was 1973. Since then the military has been used as a police force and to battle militias in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. In the Territories, the ideal Israeli soldier was supposed to be able to dodge rocks thrown by teenagers hired by Time correspondents looking to score a great photo. Today the ideal Israeli soldier is capable of visiting an American college campus to dodge the overpriced textbooks hurled at him by the local branch of Students for Justice in Palestine or the International Socialist Organization, while explaining why the IDF is the most moral army in the world except for the Salvation Army.
The ideal Israeli soldier, like his American, British and Canadian, but not Russian or Chinese, counterparts, is supposed to avoid Incidents. That means operating under Rules of Engagement which make firing at an assailant almost as dangerous as not firing at an assailant.
The ideal American soldier is supposed to avoid the Taliban, or as one set of orders urged, patrol in places where the Taliban won't be found. And that's sensible advice, because if the goal is to avoid creating an Incident, then avoiding the enemy is the best way to avoid an Incident. Unfortunately the enemy has a bad habit of appearing where he isn't supposed to be and creating his own Incidents, because Taliban and Hamas commanders are not concerned about being yelled at in a fictional courtroom by Matt Damon. They actually welcome Incidents. The bigger and bloodier the Incident, the more hashish and young boys get passed around the campfire that night.
American soldiers operate under the burden of winning over the hearts and minds of Afghans and New York Times readers. Israeli soldiers are tasked with winning over New York Times readers and European politicians. But some hearts and minds are just unwinnable. And most wars become unwinnable when the goal is to fight an insurgency that has no fear of the dreaded Incident, while your soldiers are taught to be more afraid of an Incident than of an enemy bullet.
Israeli leaders live in perpetual fear of "losing the sympathy of the world", little aware that they never really had it. The "Sympathy of the World" is the strategic metric for conflicts. And so Israel does its best to minimize any collateral damage by using pinpoint strikes and developing technologies that can pluck a bee off a flower without harming a single petal. But invariably the technocratic genius of such schemes has its limits, an Incident happens, the Israeli leftist press denounces the Prime Minister for clumsily losing the sympathy of the world, and international politicians order Israel to retreat back behind whatever line it retreated to during the last appeasement gesture before the last peace negotiations. And its experts ponder how to fight the next one without losing the sympathy of the world.
American and Israeli generals live in fear of losing political support and so they never put any plans on the table that would finish a conflict. Instead they choose low intensity warfare with prolonged bleeding instead of short and brutal engagements that would finish the job. They talk tough, but their enemies know that they don't mean it. Worse still, that they aren't allowed to mean it because meaning it would be too mean.
Incidentism leads to armies tiptoeing around conflicts and losing them by default. Avoiding them becomes the objective and that also makes Incidents inevitable because the enemy understands that all it will take to win is a few dead children planted in the ruins of a building; in a region where parents kill their own children for petty infractions and frequently go unpunished for it. The more an army commits to Incidentism, the sooner its war is lost. Prolonged low intensity conflicts are ripe with opportunities for Incidents, far more so that hot and rapid wars. And so the hearts and minds, those of the locals and those of New York Times readers, always end up being lost anyway.
War is no longer just politics by other means, it actually is politics with the goal of winning over hearts and minds, rather than achieving objectives. The objectives of a war, before, during and after, have become those of convincing your friends and your enemies, and various neutral parties, of your innate goodness and the justice of your cause. Propaganda then has become the whole of war and those who excel at propaganda, but aren't any good at war, now win the wars. The actual fighting is just the awkward part that the people who make the propaganda wish we could dispense with so they can focus on what's really important; distributing photos of our soldiers protecting the local children and playing with their puppies.
Take all that into account and the miserable track records of great armies are no longer surprising. Armies need to prove their morality to win a war, but are never allowed to win a war because it would interfere with proving their morality. Conflicts begin on the triumphant moral high ground and end with the victors slinking back defeated after an Incident or two has been splashed all over the evening news and the book based on the article on it has already been optioned by Matt Damon's production company for a movie to be funded by the same people who fund the terrorists.
The war of words, the conflict of images and videos, the clash of arguments, has become the sum of war. And that war is unwinnable because it must be fought on two fronts, against the cultural enemies within and the insurgents outside.
An army cannot win a war and win over the New York Times at the same time. And so long as it fears Incidents more than operating in an aimless counterinsurgency twilight that eventually shades into defeat, then it is bound to lose both to both the terrorists and the New York Times.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger
All I was going to say was those terrorists dragging those bodies on the Nice motor cycles, were wearing some really nice clothes, and shoes, and looked pretty well fed. Gaza also has some of the nicest beach front in Middle East. Maybe time to develop instead of fight.
Well! is the French who executed the Nazi Snitches terrorist? Or The Polish? or the Jews who also killed the Nazi Snitches are also Terrorists? but when Gaza people kill the same Snitches, they are called terrorists.
Are you sure they were snitches? Did they have a trial? Were there any evidence?
Do you also believe that shooting random rockets into residential area is not terrorism?
Do you believe that blowing up a bus full of civilians is not terrorism?
You sir/madam are much too engrossed in writing what is wished to be instead, of what is reality. The media has a feast with such. I'm not an Israeli, but my thoughts go to the scriptures.ie...turn the other cheek. Israel has done this time and time again. Now dear enlighten people, the argument is made the Nation Of Isreal "stole" this real estate from the Arabs/Muslims. That is not the case, they filed a"quit claim" deed on the property and made the desert bloom, became producers, improved the status of all coming to Israel. Yet, the Hamas/Muslim mentality is to take, kill, condemn and not contribute, hold women in bondage, kill in the name of Allah...and basically be a boil on the ass of the Middle East and world as a whole. Those of you reading this, finding fault, get over your whiny selves and look at reality. No more would I tolerate a neighbor transgressing upon me would I expect anyone to tolerate doing the same. I would ask to be left alone and to go about my business and they do the same. If unheeded, I would defend unto my death me and mine. Plain and simple...enough is enough to tolerate ignorance and the pursuit thereof by those of the Muslim world that wish to bring Israel to its knee,...just will not happen.
Special: I understand the sentiment of what you're saying - that it's a matter of perspective.
The answer to your question, though - is that people were calling them terrorists BEFORE these executions. This is just gas on the fire.
Tpack,
Who would want to go swimming in gaza dressed like a "letterbox lady"?
Eli100,
U R right. innocent bystanders (Killed for) taking videos of Gaza is not useful intel. Google earth is fine enough. Catching someone in the act of calling the IDF with "mohammoud" is home"..thats useful...and it sounds like that was not the case.
And still the unasked question: how did so may Palestinians become refugees? who kicked them out of where? Oh yeah, they lived in what you call isreal under English rule and owned no weapons. The English let the new comers kill whole towns and scare them into the west bank and Gaza. but to you that's just fine. As long as it didn't happen to you, that is. demonize the victims, that's so right wing of you. The truth is, more and more of us here in America, are finding out the truth. ,aybe someday, you will.
Actually, george, the Palestinians came from various Arab states in the region. I give you this from here:
Well put Kleb, very well put. Nothing can be added to that....
Did anybody notice how one sided MSNBC reported the story?
Special4ces I don't know or care about the French who killed Nazis but since I am Polish if my people killed Nazis I say good for them since the Nazis killed 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish people during WW II. Payback can be a bitch right.
Red Crescent members in many places have been found to be US, Western and Israeli agents.
Hamas should eliminate each and every member of Red Crescent. They can't permit a single double crossing double agents or cowards.
Hamas has to battle sooner or later Israel in a big battle to the finish.
So don't leave a single Hamas member who does not have commitment to jihad against Jews of Israel.
Never thought I'd write it but I wish all Muslims in Palestine would make their EXODUS. Israel needs a country. Arabs need a country. Saudi needs its country. There are many Rich Muslim countries these people could go. Most people living in Gaza & West Bank are immigrants from all over...Egypt,Lebanon,Syria,Jordan etc. Leave Palestine to Israel. EVERYONE would be relived. Even all the Middle East.
don't forget the part about people stealing other people's land... always a key component
After the Romans, Arabs ran the Jews out of the land first. The descendants of those who lost their lands by force just came in and took it back. That also is a key component.
Yes...I'm sure no one in India will forget that their land was carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey on the eastern and western sides of it to make Pakistan, a country that never existed before 1947. Millions were displaced, murdered, kidnapped and minorities are still targeted to this day. Here's what happens to the minorities in Pakistan.
http://hazaranewspakistan.wordpress.com/
I read a book once where the author lived in Israel some years before it was declared a country by the U.N. He lived in the Jewish communities and stated you could walk 25 miles in any direction and seldom see anyone other than maybe a Bedouin camel herder. It wasn't until after the Jews began to prosper that Arabs began to migrate for the jobs and that most of those living in Gaza, Israel and the west bank were descendants of people living in Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere. Even Yassar Arafat's parents were born in Egypt. Though I believe Israels seizing land for settlements is wrong I doubt Arabs would be any friendlier if they gave it all back. In any case we aren't the worlds policemen, any actions they wish to take should be theirs alone to do.
Chefaz: You really think there'd be less violence in India had it never been divided with most in the north Muslim and most in the south Hindu? The reason for the divide was because of the violence as Muslims never accept rule by those of other religions when they reach a certain percentage of the population.
chefaz: You are right on!
Larry: About Israel you are spot on. About Muslims in general, please carefully read this post before coming to conclusions.
The Islamic extremist Frankenstein monsters have started backstabbing big time the inventers of Pakistan, British, and the masters (US and allies) who kept them alive.
In most of the Islamic terrorism and plots in the US, Britain, Europe and other places, Pakis have a hand.
Half of NATO forces deaths in Afghanistan are due to Pakis.
Before followers of Islamic cult set their feet on Afghan and Paki regions, these regions were quite peaceful and prosperous.
Once the cancer of Islam gradually got control of the region, those regions have become raping, stealing, looting and killing fields.
In Afghanistan, Paki proxies Taliban did not even tolerate Buddha’s statue in Bamiyan.
Many Paki areas and some Afghan areas have become breeding and exporting centers for illegal activities including drugs growing and trading and export of Islamic radicals and terrorists all over the world.
British invented Pakistan in 47 and Pakistan is supposed to be a pure Islamic nation. In Pakistan, it was massive genocides of minorities in between 48-50.
Percentages of Hindus and Sikhs were reduced from about 24 percent less than three years by rapings, stealing, lootings, terrorizing and killing on a massive scale.
Paki Islamic religious madness did not end there.
Sunni Pakis are after Ahmedias, Sufis (fake love and dance Islamic soap opera people), Shiites (20 percent), Hazaras, and Baloochs and other minority sects/tribes.
Shiites, Sufis, Ahmedias and other minority sects/tribes people are blown up while they pray in their mosques on Fridays. Ad even hospitals are bombed to kill those injured.
A Washington, DC based think tank Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.org) provides good details on what is going in Pakistan.
Think I'll skip Ixor Kleb's cut'n'paste articles in favor of posting an actual comment on this story (you know, what this forum is technically for).
Can't see how Hamas can claim a victory when nothing's changed. Israel's objective was to stop the rocket attacks. Assuming Hamas doesn't start them up again, Israel won. If they break the truce and launch more rockets, then Israel will just bomb them some more. This is victory?
Well, 5 rockets were launched since the truce. Israel just swallowed that. It's only a matter of time before somebody tires to push a little harder. This is business as usual.
It is neither peace nor truce, just a cease-fire that will last until Hamas get resupplied with rocket components from Iran and get their assembly facilities up and running again. I'd guess that within four months they'll be ready to lauch more missiles. I expect that they still have a few 'left over' from the last ten days.
Yes, they're idiots and don't look at things in a way that makes sense.
AG99,
Is it fair that an opinion I agree with and care to share must not be "worthy" unless I personally wrote it?
You seem to think so.
Fine, I wont bother with any of your posts as they have not be published in respectable journals...
especially if that includes sentences with no subject.
Using what ever piss poor pedantic sophism you can to ignore a valid opinion strikes me as being disingenuous.
Go ahead. I daresay I won't be losing any sleep over it.
Hamas just like their religion can weave huge number of webs of fantasies!
Hamas lost badly from all sides.
Hamas, a Sunni Saudi front, is supposed to be pure group of Islamic group!
Israel losses were far less or almost nothing!
Still Hamas claim victory!!!!! What a bunch of followers of Islamic cult!
only twits write, "I daresay...."
How about some pictures of people and destruction in Israel. How about pictures of Hamas passing out candy in celebration of the bus being blown up. Stop with the pictures in Gaza. Do you, like Mr. Soetoro (AKA Obama) not understand that Hamas is our enemy? Shame on you. At least make an effort not to show whose side you are on. Can you at least show half from Gaza and half from Israel? And yes, your buddies in Gaza continued with sending rockets into Israel after the truce (LOL) was made. Okay. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
was wondering when one of you bitter Cons would blame Obama
Fitzgerald: Obama is not a Muslim. He's a naif.
Obama’s policies since he became President have revived suspicions that he is secretly a Muslim. He's not a Muslim. He's a naif. But so are a great many people in Washington. They are like high school kids who, when asked by an inquiring reporter what they intend to be, say with absolute conviction: "An astrophysicist." This despite not having any understanding of what kinds of study that would entail, and most of them are incapable of such study.
The previous Administration ended up squandering money on the sentimental messianism of what metamorphosed into a Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project, where "freedom" would be brought to "ordinary moms and dads," in Bush's unforgettably comic formulation. “Freedom” was defined as mere head-counting at election time, not as a resulting advanced Western democracy with guarantees for minorities and solicitude for individual rights, and with the Shari'a as the ultimate authority -- the Shari'a that in letter and spirit contradicts the most important principles of advanced Western democracy.
Then the plan became something less ambitious, which was, and is: Iraq as a state that would remain unified, and even become prosperous. Why "unity" in Iraq is good for Infidels has never been explained. Nor has it ever been explained why Iraq should not be seen as the ideal place in which to observe, and do nothing to prevent, the pre-existing sectarian fissure between Sunni and Shia from widening, and having effects outside of Iraq (in Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Pakistan) and even drawing in, from outside, men, money and materiel from co-religionists on both sides.
And this business of making sure that Muslims should become "prosperous" because, you see, if they are poor they tend to sign up for the Taliban and such-like, would, as a policy, if continued, logically force the entire Infidel world to supply endless aid to all the Muslims who forgot to be born with oil and gas under their soil, and to do this forever and ever, lest they become...."dangerous." And, paradoxically, those who are truly poor, and have no rich relatives as the Muslim poor do, would see aid that might go to them go instead to Muslims, as a bribe to keep those Muslims from becoming...."dangerous." The confusion, the illogic, the sheer craziness of American policy is something we can't wait, alas, for sober historians to analyze and hold up for ridicule. We need to change that policy, now.
Obama is a naif, for what else could he be? He had a biological absentee father whom, he knows, was called a "Muslim." He does not know, apparently, that to be Muslim fifty years ago in Kenya meant, and means today, something very different from being, say, a Muslim from an Arab country, where ethnicity reinforces rather than plays against Islam. The easygoing syncretistic Islam of its practitioners in West Africa and East Africa may be under assault from the Saudi-financed true-blue Muslims who are attempting to engage in ideological epuration, and thus making Islam in sub-Saharan Africa ever more dangerous because ever more true to the real thing, undiluted by time and custom and distance from the Middle East's fanatics.
But to take this, or to take Obama’s stay from the ages of 6 to 9 in a most atypical school in a fancy part of Jakarta four decades ago in Indonesia, as showing that he has some real knowledge of Islam, is even more naïve. Indonesia is the one Muslim state that was conquered not by Muslim warriors, but by traders from the Hadramaut who came to Java and established trading entrepots on the coasts. They then turned these into military centers, as was natural for Muslims, and then slowly expanded them, but in the main sought to win power through converting the leaders of Java and Sumatra, who then ordered their subjects to convert. And the continued presence of the monuments of the Hindu and Buddhist past, the pre-Islamic sites such as Borobudur, as with Persepolis in Iran, keep reminding people that they were not always Muslims, though of course the purest Muslims would just as soon raze to the ground any reminder of the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic elements in Indonesia.
Obama is a dab hand at presenting himself as thoughtful. He's a good speaker. But he keeps failing, and looking absurd, in the innocence, and arrogance, of such proposals as an "Islamic summit" where he, Barack Obama, would attend and presumably preside. He should try to exercise his imagination, and picture the reaction of sensible people to some Muslim leader claiming that, because he had, say, spent a few years as the son of a diplomat in London (or perhaps, like so many rich Gulf Arabs, gone to boarding school in London), he was going to call a "Christian summit" of leaders from countries in Western Europe and North America, and iron all those little differences and misunderstandings and misapprehensions out.
Interesting post and persuasive. However, I reserve the right to think Obama is not just naive. I think Obama is a mouthpiece for the elite who are pulling the strings in America and the world. America's foreign policy has been using terrorism against the American people. Sounds crazy but when you look at how lobbyists and coroporate interests influence our politicians then it not in my opinion unreasonable to consider that the government wants to bring the average American citizen to its knees and keep them there. How better to do that than to have one war after another without ever winning them at the expense of the taxpayer while the arms maker companies and oil companies have record profits.
Lianandanna: You sound like a liberal outraged that anyone could write an article that wasn't fair and balanced showing equal numbers of photo's from each side. The author of this article was in Gaza so that's the focus of his story and there's been plenty showing the Israeli side. Quit trying to be politically correct or being angry because you're pro Israel and are angered at any article that portray any Palestinians as victims though I'm sure many are. You wouldn't accept blame for any policies instituted by Obama so why would you blame them for something most have nothing to do with?
Lets see, Support and condone the actions of extremist that are deliberately launching missiles at civilian populations. Allow the same extremist to put launchers in your homes and on your roof tops. Let your families live and play next to these missiles while these extremists carry out attacks. Cry about the family members that are lost when the people being attacked strike back in retaliation. Apparently the people in Gaza are unable to connect the dots of cause and effect for their actions. If they go back to firing missiles at Israel then Israel should retaliate until every extremist is eliminated. Those that wish to survive should leave the ignorant to their own devices.
If your family owned a home and the Government installed rocket sites next door what would you do? Hamas is the government of Gaza and it's people very poor most living in the same home for generations. Packing up and moving is not an option.
"pity the living, not the dead." Gazan's say that do they? - My Grandmother used to say that too, but she never got her name in the news for saying it.
Pity the winners?
first this is 3rd time hamas has started something they could not finish, they cry to world about the situation.
Israel should have blown them back to the stonage. Obama the liar , traitor, coward he is will not back an allie. but wants to forgive debts to countries like eygpt and others, plus supply aid. why spend our money on them ?
Kleenex and Depends Corporations thank you for your increased demand after your useful idiot party of Conservative right wing NUTS lost the election to an African-American.
Jimee you won nothing because nothing changed. If you attempt to force me to violate my conscience I will refuse and force you to "detain me indefinitlly" first and then I will be one of those people the world rants about. You know the poster with detained so many days on a a facebook post by ACLJ. It never was about donkeys or elephants dude. That is your zoo not mine.
Jimee Johnson...Every time that I see a comment by you, you use the same old Kleenex and Depends spiel. Don't you realize that it is truly redundant, with no merit as an intelligent contribution to a discussion. You throw this in no matter what the topic is. Get over yourself and try to read some of the very well thought-out comments that others have made, if your attention span is long enough to focus on something other than the election. It is old news now.
I think Israel should have eradicated the terrorists now, but now they possibly have time to perfect and gain more Iron Dome Batteries. This lull in the conflict is short handed, we all know Hamas cant control themselves and their hate will eventually get the better of them. Remember the "palestineans" voted for the Government of Hamas, they support and harbor the terrorists more than people realize. God bless Israel and their leadership!
Happy Thanksgiving to all and prayers of blessings and peace for all who draw breath today. I do not care for your reasons to believe one side is right or the other side is wrong because there is no, No, NO justification for murder of any kind. Learn to live in peace and celebrate one another's difference or you will bring about your own annihilation by your egotistic short-sightedness. Do not follow leaders that say you must be afraid and that you must commit murder, follow Spirit, follow the Eternal, follow that which communicates to your soul, not that which speaks within your mind, in the name of Precious Love and Light, Amen.
Another article on the tragedy of war from an Israeli enemy perspective. Maybe if Hamas would stop lobbing rockets into Israel we wouldn't get these articles. I feel for the pedestrians who are the victims; but, they should know they're nothing but pawns and p.r. for Hamas who will allow them to die for the greater good.
If Gaza thinks they are victorious after getting their butts kicked, they will be ecstatic when Israel levels the whole strip in the next go-around!
Kinda like your "Lil" gw bush-League, sock puppet of that dick, Cheney, declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq. He's your useful idiot right wing NUT LOSER buddy.
Jimee, We are talking about the conflict in Gaza. Try to stay focused.
Duval he is still stuck on the election.
the elected representatives of the Palestinian people said, "we love death more than you love life".
we should be celebrating the dead with them. cheers
I believe that Golda Meir said something to the effect that, "there will be peace only when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate Israel."
I wished Israel would just completely pulverize Gaza before they can get these bogus cease fires agreed upon. So this one will last how long? 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, maybe a whole year before the Palestinians launch more rockets into Israel.
No people should tolerate being occupied, oppressed, massacred, and neither should the Palestinians, Hamas or not.The only reason Israel is doing it is because it can, and it has the weapons, US weapons of course.Sooner or later the Palestinians will have a bigger gun.The jews, Israel, and their sympathizers will have only themselves blame for the justice and likewise treatment they will get from the people of Palestine.What goes around comes around, you'd think jews would get it by now, but arrogance, greed and the superiority complex will forever be part of their DNA, and they will pay the price for it everytime, as the deservedly have.
chad10..............Israel for the sake of peace gave the Pals. the Gaza strip as part of a home land for them, and what did the Pals. do? They partnered up with a terrorist organization in Hamas who gets all their weapons from Iran and they then attack Israel. This is the thanks Israel gets. The Pals. have brought all their hardships upon themselves.
chad10
Tell me again why Israel should Give the people that are bombing them land (Gaza), recognition as their own government, and then build their infrastructure as well while the Palestinians import missiles and arms from Iran to carry out further attacks on Israel?
They sound a lot like useful idiot Republicans who lost the last election to an African-American TWICE!
This has happen because the African (@!$%#) won the election. He is a spineless prick. They waited to see who would win before doing anything. They know Obama will not stand by our allies. He didnt the last 4 years and he wont the next 4 years. If the American would have won this would not have happen. Nor all the lay offs. Closings. The dow jones dropping. Tell me Obama voter (jimee johnson) are you going to support all thoes who will be losing thier jobs because of his policies. Are you going to buy christmas for thier children. No, the 1 % will. The world will be the biggest loser here. When America falls the rest of the free world will too. Everyone sees how just a few weeks after the election things are starting to go from bad to worse. I blame Obama and his supporters. Good work! See you in the bread line.
To chad10
you must also agree with Al Qaeda and Taliban killing American Soldiers since they
are also claiming to fight against us occupying Afghanistan.
Chad, here's the problem: Gaza will never get the bigger gun. They call 12 deaths a massacre- That's nothing. If Israel ever truly wanted a massacre, the Strip would be radioactive for the next thousand years. That's what a real Gazan genocide would look like. Not leaflets and precision missile strikes.
Chad, See things changed so much in Palestine since it became Muslim Extremists...they only make it look like they were treated badly. The sent suicide bombers out all the time, even women, until Israel had no choice but to make a blockade for protection. Even on the Egyptian side was a blockade...to keep all the smuggling out of the tunnels. Food and water, medicine etc. WERE brought in. You could easily see they did not live in despair before they started this. Egypt really relaxed the tunnel with the new Morsi and with smuggling Hamas makes Big Business off of taxes on what they bring in...not to mention rockets from Iran. This despair is made up because they want to get into Israel for whatever...business, bombings, disruption. Israel needed the blockade. I hope they get to go through and inspect everything for weapons and keep guards in the tunnel.
Kimberlynow: Using every article no matter the content to bash Obama shows you to be a fool. Israel has been fighting these wars since 1948 and under no past president have we intervened. Obama did just what all other presidents have. He condemned the Hamas attacks and reiterated our position that Israel has the right to defend itself. Get over your hate. As for the stock market don't worry. It was at 7900 when he took office and is almost 13,000 today. Not really a good point for you to make as it's only down from worry about the fiscal cliff. If republicans are willing to compromise this time the stock market may well hit all time highs. What would you whine about then?
When Obama's energy plan if voted in for America, count on that market plunging. All the while, our utility rates will skyrocket and gasoline will become more expensive.
Hamas is really good at playing the victim for the world press. When the truth is, they would have had peace with Israel 10 years ago if they had renounced violence, recognized the state, and come to the table without a knife hidden behind their back. REALLY, I don't think they want to, as it gives them an 'enemy' to hate, so their population won't figure out just how corrupt and useless they REALLY ARE. Hide your rocket batteries in schoolyards, then parade your dead children for the press - they are NOT WORTHY of my pity.
I still remember the Palestinians celebrating in the streets after 9-11...You'll get no sympathy from me.
These people are morons, in war there is no victory, just destruction.
Tell Japan and Germany that. They lost all the land they had acquired plus their homeland got bombed into submission.
That's what is going to happen to their moral inheritors too. The parallels between the Zionists and the Nazis are striking.
Show me the ovens, John. I don't see them.
John, what you have heard about Nazis and Zionist is propoganda from Muslims. Just repeated nonsense. They have not been starved. another lie. It is crowded because of all the immigrants. Hamas has a heavy hand and its all Muslim. No other religion allowed. No Bahai, Zoroasterian, Christian or Jew. 99.3% Sunni Muslim. Lots of stuff comes in through Egypt. Lots is sold in their markets and there were many shopkeepers with a modern city. The old Egypt had a blockade on their border too because Gaza is wild. Morsi, with the Muslim Brotherhood has relaxed it more to let in weapons from Iran and whoever wants to sell. That stuff about Zioinists like Nazis is BS. They just can't stand suicide bombers.
This war was only created for one purpose only, it's to commercialize the so called '' IRON DOME '', how can Israel prove to the world its effectiveness, and create interest in their newly developed system. this is the way Israel does it, by waging a war and kill innocent women and children, destroy homes and massacre whole families. I'M PROUD OF YOU ISRAEL QUENCHER YOUR BLOOD THIRST. KILL MORE AND MORE CHILDREN.
You are an insult to morons!
You can put that pipe down anytime now.
No "iron dome" would even exist if Hamas wasn't importing rockets from Iran and constantly sending them over the border at Israel. Yes, go ahead now and cry "foul" to the world because women and children were killed in a war supported by Iranian money and weapons and created by Hamas, who have no care where their rockets land- as long as it's in Israel somewhere. No sympathy deserved, none coming. Go ahead and use the media to scream at the retaliation for your incessant attacks, you don't fool anyone.
Maibra, If your keeping score add 3 more kids killed today in Syria, along with a Dr., in addition to 40 people bombed yesterday in a hospital. That brings the 2 day tally to over 110
To the fool maibra Iron dome is anti missile
system not offensive weapon try some other delusional explanation please !!
lior solomon listen stupid I know that, but what can I say, you are nothing but an ignorant.
You really need to check your facts before making statements. The Iron Dome was financed by the USA but developed by Israel on a technology sharing basis. It is currently effective against crude slow moving third world missiles, not against modren high speed missile. Israel will not have a newer version of the Iron dome until 2015. Currently they are of no use in modren warefare.
nursecrd ....... I'm sorry you were insulted, you are not only a moron, but also an idiot.
Well it sure was nice for Hamas to start a conflict so they could test the system. You would think people would be happy that they were spending time and money on a defense system and not on killing.
If you want to target a rocket lancher and its in the kidergarten or on the roof of a daycare what can you do? Send leaflets telling the time, give directions for the safest road out of town, give the people a day to go and then blow the rocket launchers up. Why do you think they build them under childrens beds and in their playards? So they can cry to the world at what bad people Israelis are. But they planted their guns there! And, they trained the parents and children that to die for the cause is a great honor. They teach the kids to play a game called death for Allah. They know how much it hurts the families and they know that hurt makes vengeful soldiers for the cause, the Obsession, to kill all unbelievers.
Israel didn't start the bombings...Hamas did. They reap what they sow! I don't feel one bit sorry for them. The Hamas hides behind women and children, often in schools, hospitals, where the media is staying, and in child care centers. No wonder children are killed! I wish Israel would just bomb Gaza out of existance, tell the innocents to leave and give Hamas no place to hide...then bomb it into kitty litter.
Glenda- When you say "I wish Israel would just bomb Gaza out of existance" do you mean you want Israel to kill over a million people? The innocents just can't leave because they are not allowed to. This is what occupation is.
I pity only the children that are still to young to have learned to hate from their parents, teachers, and so called role models. The rest, specially those that voted for Hamas are sleeping in the bed they made. Part of me wants to see a change in direction that would allow Israel to live in peace with all its neighbors. However, I do not see that as a viable outcome given the history of Hamas. Hamas was founded with the singular purpose of the destruction of Israel and the elimination of the Jews in the middle-east. Their charter is impossible to reconcile against any possibility for lasting peace. The other part of me actually wants to see Hamas start lobbing rockets and missiles again because it will allow Israel and the world the excuse to apply the necessary force to exact the outcome that would eventually allow for peace to happen. Like the fable about the frog and the scorpion, Hamas' much like the scorpion's nature will eventually be their undoing and for the region's sake the sooner it happens the better.
You are right, there is No viable outcome except for all Palestine to be Israel. No pockets of Muslims want to forever live in Peace within Israel. They absolutely must move out. For the good of the Whole World..they must move out.
@Chad10,
It is arrogant for you to assume that Israel is the oppressor of the Fakestinians. I suggest that you look at life under the Nazis in Nazi Germany and then look at life under Hamas, Hizbullah or under the Mullahs in Iran. There is very little difference. Fakestinians are kept in camps of squalor as fodder for the terrorists. Do the Fakestinians really want to sacrifice their children or their own lives ? If they do not comply, they will either go to jail or be shot. That has never happened in Israel. In fact in a poll, more than 75% of arabs living in Israel or under Israeli rule prefer that over living under Hamas.
As to your comments about Jews, I guess you must be jealous as all I and others can see you as is a throw back to primative thinkers like Hitler, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1940's, Yasser Arafat and the like.
What is the truth ?
we know Hamas,Hezbollah and Iran have confidently charted the utter destruction of Israel.
we know the charter of the Quran is to dominate, destroy all infidels Christians and Jews
we know Israel has a right to defend itself.
So what's all the fuss about ?
Death is cruel
Death is glorified under Islam ..
There will be no peace until one or the other is extinct
or
the return of the Madhi for a false peace
or
the return of JC.
Isn't it absolutely amazing the worlds centerpiece of hate,violence and religious icons are
aligned with the biblical accounts and the turmoil with Jews and Arabs alike in this area of the world.
It's coming people .. sooner or later something is going to pop in the middle east and nobody .. NOBODY..
will be able to prevent/stop it .
Two Words Israeli Hasbra,
Two words: Islamic terrorism.
Israel was never interested in peace.When the Oslo accord was signed in 1993, there were only 100,000 settlers in the west bank.Now there are more than 600,000 settlers.2 weeks ago the israelis announced there were building 1200 new housing unit in east Jerusalem, an area that's supposed to go to a future Palestinian state.Israel gave up Gaza because the couldn't control it, not because they " gave back land to the Palestinians".
Israelis have no intention of allowing a Palestinian state, not in 93, not now, not ever.The latest excuse is that the 1967 border is indefensable, one excuse after the other.The problem for Israel is as it lies to the outside world, the Palestinians are not buying it.Even if Israel does NOTHING to the Palestinians, the Palestinians have the right to shoot, kill, injure, maim, frighten any, and everybody that steals their land, and if the Israelis and or jews are worried about their "civilians", then they should leave the lands they stole from the People of Palestine.Blonde haired, blue eyed Russian or American jew has no right to to Palestine.I don't car what their Torah tells them.
chad10....Why do you think no other Arab nation will take in the Pals.? Its because the Pals cause trouble where ever they go.
The Palestinians never owned Israel. They are from Jordan but because they basically tried to over throw the King and the government there, the King kicked them out where they fled to Lebanon to continue their terrorist activities and then eventually squatted in Israel to try and claim that land as theirs. Do some research on Black September will ya. Don't just take my word on it.
As for Israel not being able to control Gaza, where did you get that load of garbage? Jews had their homes in Gaza and were doing very well. The Israeli government forced them to leave Gaza so the Pals. could have it.
creynolds-2815122
"The Palestinians never owned Israel"
What nonsense. The Palestinian are original people before Abraham Left Ore.
Before Abraham, there were Canaan, but those are long gone.
The first time Arabs built any kind of country in the area was about 2000 years later.
Fitzgerald: "Palestinians" and Israelis
A Jihad Watch reader recently took issue with my noting that the world had never heard of the “Palestinian” nationality before the 1960s: "‘You are absolutely wrong on all counts. First of all there was never any Palestine to begin with... so who exactly do you mean by Palestinians?' There were also no "Israelis" as such until Israel was officially created. Both identities are constructed ones. Again, so what? In the end, they're fighting over land. If either side wanted peace, they'd have it by now. As it is, there are people on both sides who have profited, and continue to profit, from the continuation of hostilities."
No, but the word "Palestinians" and the invention of the "Palestinian people" was a deliberate construct. It did not begin right away. It was not the term used, ever since there were Arabs in what Western Christendom called "Palestine." The local Arabs never used the phrase until after the defeat in the Six-Day War. And then, having jettisoned Shukairy a few years before, the Arabs collectively decided, with a little help from public-relations advisers in the West, to thoroughly redo their presentation.
The most important thing was to redefine the conflict. No longer are all those Arabs against a tiny Jewish state. No. Now, by an act of optical illusion, the tiny Jewish state would be transformed into a vast empire, this Greater Israel. Why, the same BBC newscasters who routinely refer to Lebanon as that "tiny country" and to Jordan as that "tiny country" -- I hear it all the time -- for some reason never use that epithet with Israel. Never. Not once. Yet that Greater Israel, even if it came into being, would be all of the size of Massachusetts, and less than one one-thousandth the size of the Arab states.
But the absurdities pile up. It was time to rename the local Arabs, both those in the territories won by Israel that were part of the original Palestine Mandate (Gaza, the "West Bank" -- quondam Judea and Samaria) and those who had been called simply, and a bit too easily, "Arab refugees" -- by every single Arab spokesman at the U.N., the Arab League, and elsewhere. These were the people living in those villages (always described as "refugee camps," though some are full-fledged cities, and all have stores and built-up areas; these are not tent cities, the kind of thing that refugees in Darfur must endure) in Jordan, Lebanon, and so on.
The term "Israeli" was not deliberately invented to score political points. Far from it. The Jews of Israel are really what is in play here, the survival of a Jewish state, of the right of the Jews to have a state.
It is absurd to equate the deliberate and sinister creation of this fake "Palestinian identity" (google "Zohair Mohsen" and "Palestinian people" for more) for political ends, with the simple term "Israeli" to describe those who are citizens of the state of Israel.
So let's do it otherwise. Let's, more truthfully, talk about Arabs and Jews. Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Do the Jews who come from the Middle East have a right to a state? Remember, a million of them in 1948, having endured for centuries the life of dhimmis under Muslim rule (save in those places, such as North Africa, where the brief rule by European powers led to Jewish emancipation from the burden of living under Shari'a -- thanks in Algeria to the loi Cremieux of 1870), left the Arab countries where they had lived, and most fled to the state of Israel. Do the Jews have a right to a state, a state that can be defended against permanent Muslim aggression, or do they not?
And as for the local Arabs, their numbers have been exaggerated -- few bother to consult the Ottoman cadastral or demographic records, such as they are, in pronouncing on the subject of "Palestine," and fewer still put that "Palestine" and the non-Muslim and non-Arab minorities of the Middle East into their proper light, their proper perspective. Do the Kurds also, now is perhaps the time to add, have a right to an independent state? And Lebanon, by rights, should remain a haven, a final haven, for the Arabic-using Christians -- not all, by a long shot, are Arabs -- in the Middle East.
So there it is. A Jewish state, permanently imperiled, and asked to voluntarily make itself still more imperiled. And the implacable relentless Arabs, using salami tactics, and their vast unearned wealth, to apply every kind of pressure to get the world's Infidels to join in the gang-up, and to push Israel back to clearly indefensible borders, without control of vital aquifers, without control of traditional invasion routes, eight miles wide at its waist, from Qalqilya to the sea. And this is the one country, the only country, that the most persecuted tribe in human history, having recently been the victim of the most unbelievable crime in human history, that exists for that tribe to embody its national identity without any doubts or need to conform to what others would have.
And on the other hand, there are the Arabs, who have denied or attempted to deny every non-Muslim and non-Arab people in North Africa and the Middle East -- Kurds and Berbers and now blacks in Darfur and Christian Copts and Maronites and Assyrians and Chaldeans and others -- their rights, in some cases their linguistic and cultural rights, in others their rights to control or profit from their own natural resources, in still other cases, to enjoy freedom from Arab political masters. Those Arabs have denied these peoples the right to speak their own non-Arab languages (see the case of the Berbers), retain their own culture. They have even mass-murdered them in the Sudan and Iraq, with the other Arabs looking on, openly or silently supporting them, and blocking all attempts to stop the murder.
And those same Arabs, with their 22 states, have also been the beneficiaries of unmerited wealth, having nothing to do with their own efforts, their own industry or entrepreneurial flair. The rich Arabs and Muslims have received, for doing absolutely nothing, some ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone, and we all know the arms, and the luxurious palaces, and the call girls, and the yachts, and all the rest of it, that they have spent their money on, including the mosques and madrasas and Da'wa and propaganda on behalf of Islam -- through buying up journalists, creating academic centers, dangling possible contracts before greedy businessmen, and all the rest of it.
And a few parting words for that Jihad Watch reader: do you still wish to tell us you are morally neutral when it comes to Arabs and Jews in that little affair in a dusty sliver of land on the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean? You surely are not the moral idiot you have painted yourself to be. Surely you have not thought this all through. Surely history, including the last millennium or two, or at least back to the beginning of Islam's conquests and subjugations, and the fantastic story of what happened to the Jews, those who remained, and those who made their way out of the Middle East, should make some impression on you.
Assuming you are free of the usual mental pathology that explains so many cases of such "neutrality" in this case, one hopes you reconsider your declaration of "neutrality" -- as unacceptable a position as declaring moral neutrality between the Allies, and Nazi Germany, during World War II.
Herodotus (484-424 BC) would disagree with your fictions. In his "The Histories", the first real history of the ancient world, he reports that the land between Phoenicia and Egypt was called Palestine. The Roman Emperor Hadrian gave that name his official imprimatur in 135 AD when describing the Roman province occupying that territory. The names Palestine and Palestinian have existed from antiquity to describe the land and people of the eastern Mediterranean. They are not some modern invention.
Who gives a crap what thousand-year-old texts called the land? Israel has made the better nation. They're the more successful power. Nobody gets dragged behind a motorcycle in Israel. So what if they're squatting? They've done more with the land than 'Palestine' did. To the victor, the spoils.
John,
Herodotus' "The Histories" was written after the first destruction of Hebrew Kingdom by Babylonians. The Hebrew Kingdom stood for about 700 years before that. So, all it proves is that Romans were not the first to try to rewrite the history.
Pulsar182: you are one of those who distorted history and thank God that u R not a journalist writing editorials. Even the bible and the old testament testify to the name of "Philistine" which is the real name of the land and translated into Palestine.
To claim that God told his" chosen people" to conquer this land and kill its people and make it their own is absurd and only written by the conquers and gave it a divine mandate.
The whole world and especially the colonial powers conspired against the native to rob the holy land from the Arab since the crusaders failed to keep their grip on it, and remember they were evicted even after 200 years and history will and it will repeat itself, I can assure you, it may take sometime but the land will come back and only those of the Jewish faith who were there before 1930 will be allowed to stay there. the rest will be sent to Poland,Russia and Brooklyn or wherever they came from. you may not be alive when it happens but your kids or grand kids will, and Armageddon is a bunch of delusional southern Evangelist paid by the (so called)Israelis.
I visited China few years ago, it was hard for me to tell one Chinese from another , they all looked the same to, Chinese, I asked my tour guide to take me to an area on the east coast called Tel Shandi, he told me that I need a visa to enter , it was not easy to get it but I did, I was surprised to see different people at the border patrol, they looked like me, blonds with blue colored eyes and everywhere in that area looked anything but Chinese, when I questioned my guide he told me the real story, years ago when Britain was sucking the blood and the souls of the rest of the world and was ready to retreat, a group of greedy merchants who shared the same religious belief and a book they wrote and claimed to be the word of their God, they bribed the British and their alike to make them the owner of that land claiming their ancestors were buried in that land, they kicked all the chinese out and told them that ( you have enough lands next door to take you and we will fight you if you try to claim it back and we will be bringing more of our kind to fill this place and if we have to, we will expand in all directions to bring more of us in.
If you think that my story is fictional, well, it is not , it is a travel in the future and what happened in Palestine can happen anywhere else, Just remember that the Jews were thinking about settling in Africa before the f.... british (with small b) promised to give them the holy land.
I look at pics coming from Israel and see white people with blond hair and colored eyes and I say to myself : what happened to the middle east?? why did the people there became darker with dark hair and black eyes???????? open your eyes and read the real history. Shalom
Show me one ancient text that mentions "Palestinians." The inhabitants of Palestine that Herodotus mentions were called "Syrians," not "Palestinians." Palestine also included at that time the lands of several countries and peoples. The inhabitants of Palestine in the regions of Judaea and Samaria were called Israel and Jews by ancient cultures who mention them in the region. Samaria and Judaea are part of what is now called the West Bank. Jews have been in the region of Palestine for over 3,200 years. There are ancient writings that mention them there all during that time, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, which scrolls were found in caves in what is now the West Bank.
The Philistines lived in what is now referred to as the Gaza Strip. If the Palestinians really are Philistines they are more than welcome to it. Israel doesn't want it and dragged out their own settlers by force just to give it to the Palestinians back in 2005.
But what was Judaea and Samaria is now called the West Bank. These lands were inhabited by and ruled over by the children of Israel for over 3,200 years, with a few lapses in leadership. But Jews have lived in this region for over 3,200 years. Archaeology and the Bible itself demonstrates that claim.
And, the Qur'an itself teaches that Allah gave the land to the Bani Isra'il (children of Israel) for them to dwel in by the will of Allah after two exiles and returns. See Al Isra' [Surah 17:] 1-9, 101-104 for the passages that express the will of Allah for Israel to well in the land given to them by Allah.
Oh, and one other thing, John Carter. Were you aware that Herodotus' own people exiled him for writing those histories, and called him "Father of Lies" to go along with it? Don't rely on those histories too doggedly, or you will be misled. :-)
Pulsar182 According to the Abingdon Bible Commentary Palestine did exist and it was called the holy land, and the Hebrews that God made his covenant with were not the individuals who are on that land at this time. Professor Edwin E. Voigt wrote "the most common O.T. designation for the Holy Land is the land of Canaan. Literally the word means "lowland" and in the beginning the Canaanites were the inhabitants of the lowlands. In time they became masters of the hill country also and then the entire land of the Canaanites. In the O.T. this is commonly taken to refer to the territory west of the Jordan River (cf. Gen.11:31, 12:5, Ex. 6:4, 16:35, Lev: 1434, Num. 34:2, Judg. 3:11, etc.). Sometimes, however, the designation - land of Canaan- seems to have been applied only to the southern part of the land (Gen. 13:1 12), and on occasion to the northern part (Judg. 42, 7, 23f and 5:19). Once the territory east of the Jordan is included in the term (Gen.50:11), and in one instance the land of Canaan is equated with the land of the Philistines (Zeph. 2:5). It is perhaps through the Philistines who invaded the land of Canaan and subsequently settled on one of the important trade routes of the ancient world, that modernparlance knows this land as Palestine, which name is almost identical with one of the early Greek transliterations of Philista. Herodotus as far as we know was the first to apply this term to all of Canaan. Josephus (Antiquities bk. i, ch. 6) and the Latin historians followed the same custom, and thus by the beginning of the Christian era the older term had fallen into disuse, and Western Europe adopted "Palestine" as the name for the home land of the Hebrew people. Who were by the way Black Afrikan people with wholly hair as described by Herodotus in his book "The Histories".
The Abingdon Bible Commentary was copyrighted in 1929, it would be considered a primary source in the literary world. The problem is Britain and the US decided to put white people who could not stay in Europe on someone else's homeland that has been there for centuries. The arrogance of white people to even think it is okay and when the people who have been invaded fight back white people from all over the globe find and make up reasons for why that kind of behavior is okay. It is not okay to call people who don't look like you names and to wish them dead because they want their land and autonomy. The world is sick of Israel and her not being able to get along with her neighbors. She is constantly and consistently destablizing the area and the world is looking at Israel and noticing she does not have subject and verb agreement. Israel has moved into someone else's home and took it over. The Palestinians have no home and it is not their fault the white government of Britain decided to put a group of homeless white people in their house. Now they have nothing they are now homeless and the world is watching this travesty and they are looking with disdain at Israel. From reading a lot of the responses this is the reason we cannot have an honest, authentic and genuine discussion on race. Because a majority of white people think it is okay to treat people who don't look like them like they are invisible which makes it okay to mistreat them, maim, hang, kill and take all their organs out of their body. It's okay to do these things and think they are in the wrong for not accepting your wet dream or perception of them.
Herodotus mentions Syrians living in Palestine. And he is not the first to mention the name for a region of land. I have seen a cognate to the name in an old Assyrian record. As the Assyrian army was sweeping through that region, they laid waste to surrounding towns and villages and laid siege to Jerusalem, the royal city of Hezekiah the Jew, and shut him up in the city like a bird in a cage.
Have you ever looked at Egyptian artwork and noticed how the inhabitants of Canaan, Syria, and others (like the Amorites) in the same region are painted by the Egyptians? They certainly don't look like Africans. Amorites are depicted in Egyptian artwork with light skins and blue eyes. And, you don't have to be African to have woolly hair. I have woolly hair and I am not African. Many of the people of Israel intermarried with Canaanites, Amorites, Moabites, Ammonites, and what have you in the region. Abraham, claimed ancestor to both Jews and Arabs was not an African. He was from the region of Aram-Naharaim, which is up north to the northeast of modern-day Syria.
Aside from that the Abingdon Bible Commentary is a commentary (aside from being a bit out of date), not a primary source document. Ancient texts are primary source documents. Historical texts are considered in many cases to be primary source texts. Herodotus' Histories are a mixture of texts and ideas, some primary and some not. It also contains a number of tall tales. Herodotus himself was called by his own people "Father of Lies."
Israel moved back to their ancestral home. And, regardless of the lighter color of many of their skins, their DNA is a match for the region. They share the same thirteen paternal ancestors that many of the so-called Palestinian people do. So says their y-chDNA. I have seen the data. Afrocentrism has no place in the discussion and does not apply.
Israel is not destabilizing the area. It is Hamas. Israel is retaliating for what Hamas does on a regular basis, and trying to defend themselves. Hamas keeps firing into lands that the UN accepts as the undisputed lands of Israel.
Both Jews and Arabs belong in the same land. They just need to learn how to get along.
Dcpyle: there are tests called Genetic studies and DNAs, with that hair of yours, you should check if your father was an African..............
He isn't. Way ahead of you. :-)
Don't pity the dead? OK, as you wish. Pity the living? For what, backing Palestinian organizations that indiscriminately kept lobbing rockets over the border until Israel lost it's patience? I don't think so...
It would be nice if Hamas dropped leaflets over Israeli towns before firing their rockets, but such civility is not to be expected from reptiles.
The article makes it seem that Gaza is cut off. That is complete nonsense. See below---
"In July 2010, Egyptian journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl wrotein Al-Ahram (Egypt's most prominent newspaper) that "in actual terms" Gaza is not under siege. He further noted that stores were "flowing with goods" at "low prices." Abu Al-Houl went as far as detailing the thriving entertainment and amusement parks industry in Gaza.
Moreover, numbers speak for themselves: in March 2012, the same month when 300 Hamas rockets were fired from Gaza at Israeli towns, 3,653 truckloads of goods were delivered from Israel to Gaza and 1,375 Gazan patients and companions entered or passed through Israel for medical treatments, followed by another 1,364 in April, 2012.
In August 2012, the Hamas prime minister's brother in law was allowed to enter Israel for treatment in an Israeli hospital."
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3453/besieging-gaza
They don't have airplanes to drop leaflets. Maybe we should send them few fighterjets
Or they could just not shoot rockets then there would be no bombings and no need for leaflets.
.