Israel Bombs Gaza - Hundreds Dead

[ejaz007]

Israeli troops admit shooting Gaza civilians
Updated at: 0810 PST, Friday, March 20, 2009


JERUSALEM: Striking testimony has emerged from Israeli soldiers involved in the recent Gaza war, in which they describe shooting unarmed civilians, sometimes under orders from their officers.

One soldier described how an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian mother and her children, adding that troops believed Palestinian lives were "very, very, less important than the lives of our soldiers".

The accounts, published in two Israeli newspapers on Thursday, gave rare insight into how the soldiers acted. It reinforces Palestinian accounts of disproportionate Israeli force and contradicts the Israeli military's official version of events.

The accounts come from unnamed soldiers who were graduates of a pre-military course at Oranim Academic college, in Tivon, near Haifa. Their testimony was given in mid-February, and the transcript of the session was published this week.

A newspaper printed one infantry squad leader's description of the shooting of unarmed civilians: "There was a house with a family inside ... We put them in a room ... a few days after there was an order to release them. There was a sniper position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right.

One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was OK, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders.

"The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them ... In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them."

He believed the sniper did not feel regret. "I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it ... the lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very, less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way."

According to a Palestinian human rights group, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the three-week war, which began in late December. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the conflict.

A second squad leader, from the same brigade, related how a commander told troops to shoot a Palestinian woman walking near a house the soldiers had taken over. He added that "to write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them" happened "just because you can".

The Israel Defence Forces had "fallen in the realm of ethics", he said. Another soldier, recalling ransacking Palestinian homes, said: "The entire contents of the house flew out the windows: refrigerator, plates, furniture."

Israeli troops admit shooting Gaza civilians

 

[happy.muslimah]

i dont know us claism that they are doing war against terror in pak and afghanistan..but my question is this is not terrorism wat israel is doing this is love peace or terrorism..they are killing thousands of inncocent muslims thats fair but when talibans kills us army they are called terrorist...wat a double standard..

in my eyes biggest terrorist in the world is us and israelll...not pakistani or afghanis

where are u muslims they are killing our brothers and sister and we are fighting against our own brothers sisters........................

jaag jao apny apko or deen e haq ko yun tamasha bnana chor do...wake up and be united...!!!

may Allah Almighty show us right path...Ameen

 

[sergente rehan]

After 9/11 there is a serious discrimination and racism against Muslms of the entire world! west and anti-Muslim forces are using there fake propaganda to do what they want to the Muslim world....the hole world talk only about genocide of jews during II world war but why they don't talk about Genocide of Muslims in Bosnia by serbs?! why they don't talk about thousands of innocent Muslims killed by F****** jews every year?! i simply don't understand why the people still cry the jews victims of II world war...it's has happend more then 60 years ago, in these past 30 years world had seen more brutal wars and crimes against humanity so why we have to spend a day for shoa? it's meanless bcz jews are now the agressors they are the evil ones...shoa is a total BS so why the west & US spend it's time on meanless things rather to fix now days problems (racism & discrimination against the Muslims)? because they all are of the same side....they will never accuse US, Israel or any other country if they are killing Innocent Muslims.
The only solution is that the entire Muslim world must become united and stand against the evil jews and all anti-Muslim forces, to start we must wipe out Israel they are our real enemy becasue they are controling US and using also india against Pakistan!

WIPE OUT ISRAEL & you will solve 50% of the worlds problems!
now i realise why Hitler done all that mess....(bcz jews were taking over German economy)

 

[Solomon2]

April 29, 2009: Israeli researchers continue to pick apart Palestinian claims that the 22 Day War last January "indiscriminately killed civilians." Hamas claims that 1,434 Palestinians were killed. Hamas further claims that only 235 were Hamas fighters, while another 239 were police officers, and 960 of the dead were civilians. Hamas admits that most of the "civilians" were men, mostly of military age. They also claim that 121 of the dead civilians were women and 288 were children (defined as anyone under 18).

Israel has been compiling and scrutinizing all reports of Palestinian deaths during the 22 day war. Israel has a lot of data on who Gazans are, both from when they ran the place (until they withdrew in 2005) and from intel collected since then. This includes data that appears on websites, where Hamas, and other Palestinian terrorist groups, tend to memorialize their dead. This is important for morale, and helps with recruiting, but it has also proved to be an embarrassing, if inadvertent, admission that Hamas has lied about who died.

Israel found that over two-thirds of the Palestinian dead were men of military age (18-35). They also found that most of the "children" were teenage males, and some have been found memorialized in Palestinian web sites as "martyred fighters." That means they were armed and on the payroll. Moreover, Hamas openly uses younger kids as lookouts and messengers. Lots of these "fighters" got killed simply because they deliberately placed themselves in the combat zone, or were sent there by their adult commanders. Thus over 70 percent of the Palestinian dead were working for Hamas, and most of them were armed...

link

 

[SoulOnIce]

The largest financial supporters of the Palestinians are the US, EU and the UN. The OIC nations are the ones giving the most "lip service" to them.

Any aid that Palestinians get is miniscule in contrast to Israel directed aid. That is a fact.

Also, Palestinians have nowhere the financial autonomy necessary to reap benefits such as sustainable development from the aid. Unlike American financial aid that buoyed the Israeli economy repeatedly through difficult periods.

Nor do Palestinians have the stability necessary to actually make the aid give returns, most of the money is embezzled by the corrupt Palestinian Authority.

Palestinians also get nowhere the military aid that Israel does.

Just because the largest donors to the Palestinian Authority (which ultimately has little to no influence over the lives of Palestinians, and in fact lost ground to Hamas in a fratricidal takeover in the West Bank) are the US, EU, and the UN does not mean that there are actually tangible results or changes on the ground.

Most of the aid in fact trickles down into low value commodities, staple meals, medicine, and infrastructure maintenance. That is enough for survival, not prosperity.

Palestinians are without internationally normative rights, including those pertaining to rights to property. They are a people besieged in their own land, why do you not understand that? Why do you believe that the Palestinians should pay the price for a German orchestrated genocide? Why do you refuse to admit that Israel is infact guilty of ethnic cleansing, and that they keep refugee populations under horrible, racist, cruel, and unjust constraints?

Its time you grew up and realized that blankly throwing money at the problem is only another type of lip service

 

[SoulOnIce]

It's barbaric because some terrorist went into a school of innocent defenseless kids and shot them to death. First of all, when they say 'civilians died in Gaza,' it doesn't mean innocent bystanders. Their 'civilians' shoot rockets too. So it's all propoganda to elicit sympathy from naive people. Second, because Israel is retaliating, not attacking. Thirdly, they are only retaliating there to begin with because that is where Hamas shoots rockets from. Tell Hamas to stop attacking from civilian locations. There's your answer, I hope you have enough sense to see the truth (samsonblinded.org/news).

You should realize that there has been too much bloodshed on both sides of civilians (btw hardline Israeli settlers whose settlements are illegal under international law also shoot) for a tit for tat preemptive/retaliatory measures to work effectively. Theres too much history involved now. They will not deter anyone who has nothing to lose.

Hamas attacks from civilian locations, so what? The Palestinians have no army, they're all "civilians", besides in the tiny, oppressed enclave of the West Bank, it should be obvious that they have very limited options as to where to attack from . Second civilian locations have never deterred any other army.

But has it ever occurred to you that Hamas fights from "civilian" locations because the Israeli army attacks civilian locations? Israeli war crimes on Palestinian civilians are well documented, and by fr overshadow Palestinians war crimes thanks to the disproportionate response/initiative of the Israeli. A few homemade Hamas Katyushka rockets versus Illegal Israeli cluster bombing.

 

[Solomon2]

Israeli war crimes on Palestinian civilians are well documented, and by fr overshadow Palestinians war crimes thanks to the disproportionate response/initiative of the Israeli

Please provide proofs or references for all these assertions.

 

[Solomon2]

"...the report the UN has produced does little to bring understanding or justice to the conflict in Gaza. The UN secretary general appears to have realised this and has tried to distance himself from it.

The report's underlying premise is that UN property enjoys absolute immunity. Of course, that is right, but the report should surely have explored why a military force needed to take action against an enemy in a built-up area at all. The undisputed fact – that Hamas was deliberately operating from such areas to launch attacks on Israeli civilian targets – is simply ignored." link

 

[Solomon2]

A British military expert tells truth to prejudice

Tuesday, 7th July 2009

During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza at the turn of the year, when it was being demonised daily for its ‘disproportionate’ response to Gaza’s rocket attacks and accused (falsely) of recklessly or wilfully killing huge numbers of Palestinian civilians, particularly children, the BBC conducted an interview which shone out like a diamond on a dunghill in those dark and bigoted days. It was with Colonel Richard Kemp, formerly both commander of British forces in Afghanistan and the intelligence co-ordinator for the British government. In that interview, Col Kemp disconcerted the BBC’s boilerplate group-thinking presenter by stating that

I don’t think there’s ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.

Now Col Kemp has amplified his remarks in a speech at a conference in Israel. It is worth watching or reading this remarkable speech in full -- because he says things that are as well-informed, obvious and decent as they are rare and poorly understood in the society that he has spent his life defending. He points out, for example, that Britain, America and Israel are up against the same type of enemy which operates under a new and very different set of rules:

Hizballah and Hamas over here, Al Qaida, Jaish al Mahdi and a range of other militant groups in Iraq. Al Qaida, the Taliban and a diversity of associated fighting groups in Afghanistan. They are different but they are linked. They are linked by the pernicious influence, support and sometimes direction of Iran and/or by the international network of Islamist extremism. These groups, as well as others, have learnt and continue to learn from each others’ successes and failures. Tactics tried and tested on IDF soldiers in Lebanon have also killed British soldiers in Helmand Province and in Basra. These groups are trained and equipped for warfare fought from within the civilian population.

Do these Islamist fighting groups ignore the international laws of armed conflict? They do not. It would be a grave mistake to conclude that they do. Instead, they study it carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy’s main weaknesses.

Their very modus operandi is built on the, correct, assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules. It is not simply that these insurgents do not adhere to the laws of war. It is that they employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. Their entire operational doctrine is founded on this basis. In Gaza, as in Basra, as in the towns and villages of southern Afghanistan, civilians and their property are routinely exploited by these groups, in deliberate and flagrant violation of any international laws or reasonable norms of civilised behaviour for both tactical and strategic gain.

Stripped of any moral considerations, this policy operates simply and effectively at both levels. On the tactical level, protected buildings, mosques, schools and hospitals, are used as strongholds allowing the enemy the protection not only of stone walls but also of international law. On the strategic level, any mistake, or in some cases legal and proportional response, by a Western army will be deliberately exploited and manipulated in order to produce international outcry and condemnation. And in sophisticated groupings such as Hamas and Hizballah, the media will be exploited also as a critical implement of their military strategy. [my emphasis]

And of course the British and American media have done everything they can to act as the jihadis’ fifth column against the west – nowhere more so than in Israel, on which Col Kemp had this to say:

What is the other challenge faced by the IDF that we British do not have to face to the same extent? It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

So what did the IDF do in Gaza to meet their obligation to operate within the laws of war? When possible the IDF gave at least four hours’ notice to civilians to leave areas targeted for attack. Attack helicopter pilots, tasked with destroying Hamas mobile weapons platforms, had total discretion to abort a strike if there was too great a risk of civilian casualties in the area. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were cancelled because of this.

During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. This sort of task is regarded by military tacticians as risky and dangerous at the best of times. To mount such operations, to deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands, is to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. [my emphasis] But the IDF took on those risks.

In the latter stages of Cast Lead the IDF unilaterally announced a daily three-hour cease fire. The IDF dropped over 900,000 leaflets warning the population of impending attacks to allow them to leave designated areas. A complete air squadron was dedicated to this task alone. Leaflets also urged the people to phone in information to pinpoint Hamas fighters vital intelligence that could save innocent lives.

The IDF phoned over 30,000 Palestinian households in Gaza, urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight. Similar messages were passed in Arabic on Israeli radio broadcasts warning the civilian population of forthcoming operations. Despite Israel’s extraordinary measures, of course innocent civilians were killed and wounded. That was due to the frictions of war that I have spoken about, and even more was an inevitable consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting.

By taking these actions and many other significant measures during Operation Cast Lead the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other Army in the history of warfare. But the IDF still did not win the war of opinions – especially in Europe.

Israel’s military therefore observes a high standard of ethical behaviour and concern for innocent life which is simply without parallel or precedent anywhere else in the world. And yet it is Israel which the west singles out for demonisation and delegitimisation for ‘war crimes’ -- so much so that the very same Israeli military eulogised by Col Kemp cannot set foot in Britain without a ‘human rights’ lawyer trying to arrest them for ‘crimes against humanity’ as soon as they step off the plane.

Go figure.

 

[Solomon2]

TIME MACHINE​

Hamas: 87 shells fired at Israeli targets in 24 hours
Published Thursday 25/12/2008 10:19

.

Gaza - Ma'an - The military wing affiliated to Hamas, Al-Qassam Brigades released a statement on Thursday morning briefing the group's military activities over the first twenty four hours of an operation they called "Oil Stain" which started Wednesday morning.

According to the statement, a total of 87 shells have been fired at Israeli targets bordering the Gaza Strip including 54 mortar shells, 31 homemade projectiles which Hamas calls "Qassam", and two Soviet-made Grad missiles.

Al-Qassa Brigades threatened to enlarge the "Oil Stain" to get more thousands of Israelis "under fire". The group asserted that its fighters are "far greater than surrendering to Israeli threats and that they became much more prepared to counter Israeli aggression and to defend themselves than in the past."

**

That was then. And today what does Ma'an write?

"Palestine marks 6th anniversary of 2008-9 Israeli assault on Gaza"

...Until this year, the 2008-9 assault was the bloodiest sustained Israeli assault on Palestinians since 1967, with more than 80 percent of victims thought to have been civilians.

The offensive, known by its Israeli moniker "Cast Lead," began on Dec. 27, 2008 around 11:30 a.m., when Israeli warplanes launched more than 100 airstrikes on Gaza simultaneously.

..Israel launched the attack at the conclusion of a six-month ceasefire with Hamas that it repeatedly violated, despite Hamas' general adherence -

**

The terrorists lie about so many things and they lie constantly, day after day, year after year - but you can catch them because they keep changing their "truth". Why must Pakistanis put up with being yanked by this leash every single day, year after year, as a matter of blind loyalty to the "Palestinian cause"?