Children's bodies are being covered with cardboard boxes in Gaza -- the hospitals have run out of sheets -- as Washington and London urge Israel to use restraint and avoid civilian casualties.
Palestinians on the West Bank are organizing in protest, but this was Israel's plan all along. Less than two weeks ago some 50 Israeli policemen injured each-other in "gloves-off" training that a spokesman described as "a huge police training exercise to prepare for riot control and to deal with different scenarios."
Israel is trying to decapitate Hamas in Gaza, to use an favorite expression of military spokesmen and a docile American media, and the bodies are piling up. What is the limit? As it stands, over 200 Palestinians are dead. One Israeli died today from a rudimentary rocket fired from the Gaza, the supposed impetus for all this.
When the "operations" subside -- after how many days? -- what will have changed? More Palestinians will have died because Israeli "security" is sacrosanct in the current international system but Arab lives are not. But it goes beyond American-made bombs and jets and stonewalling in the Security Council. Blame falls also on the supportive Arab regimes in America's orbit -- perhaps Egypt most of all -- as Gaza is blockaded, bombed, blockaded, and bombed again, this time among the worst in its history.
Tzipi Lizni was just in Cairo, smiling with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit after she told reporters "enough is enough." The meeting, at Egypt's invitation, was described by the BBC "as the first of several diplomatic steps Israel must take before launching military action." Apparently it was the only step, at least publicly.
Meanwhile, commentators and politicians will justify the killing in Gaza because Israel needs "moderates," legitimate negotiating partners, anyone but Hamas -- which will ignore, as always, how you manufacture opponents to your state.
To quote the Ma'an News Agency:
Twelve year old Ayaman is screaming at his father who tries to prevent him from seeing the bodies of his uncle and brother, torn to pieces under sheets. "I'm not afraid to see them," he screamed. In a rage as his father holds tight, Ayman catches the hand of a resistance fighter; "shell and kill them as they did to us," he says.
Israel's leader sit at a podium and say "We are not fighting against the people of Gaza" as they ready a probable ground invasion.
Reading some Mahmoud Darwish in between news reports only seems appropriate. He writes about air strikes at the outset of Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982, his meditation on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the destruction of Beirut.
"The hysteria of the jets is rising. The sky has gone crazy. Utterly wild. This dawn is a warning that today will be the last day of creation. Where are they going to strike next? Where are they not going to strike? Is the area around the airport big enough to absorb all these shells, capable of murdering the sea itself?"
Please stop rejecting reality and substituting your own when dealing with this.
Jesus wouldn't own a gun or kill.
This is about Israel. And death and control. This is painful beyond words to bomb the world's largest prison in such a manner takes a certain amount of cruelty I can't even imagine. These are America's Friends. I wonder why the world hates us.
Even when a complacent dog is pushed into a corner and goaded with a stick, it will come out snarling. The latest blockade on the Gaza strip may have been the straw that broke the camels back. (no pun intended).
Israel only wants to increase their borders and exterminate the Palestinian people. One sees that they have learned well the lessons of WW II.
Gordon Brown said - "I call on Gazan militants to cease all rocket attacks on Israel immediately. These attacks are designed to cause random destruction and to undermine the prospects of peace talks led by (Palestinian) president (Mahmud) Abbas." (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5htit1HYbDNPJanOFqCUKauypXwnw)
While, During a visit five months ago to the southern Israeli city of Sderot, US President-elect Barack Obama defended Israel’s right to protect itself from such attacks: "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing." (http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004747.html)
Israel targets Hamas leaders in a response to the threat to the lives of 2,500 Israeli civilians. Israel seeks not to harm Palestinian civilians, unfortunately however, Hamas leaders deliberately hide in densely civilian areas and do not order civilians into bomb shelters - unfortunately, Hamas puts Palestinian civilians at risk.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karin-kloosterman/israels-president-shimon_b_153749.html
It is "ridiculous" to exonerate Israel from any culpability in causing this misery.
By the way, punishing civilians for the actions of partisans in their midst is considered to be a war crime.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/world/
I'll also agree this is all Israel's fault once the poster explains to me the point of lobbing Kassams.
I really want to know.
I want to banish all who use violence of any kind anywhere to some secure place where they can play our their harm only with each other.
The Israeli's have dropped at least 100 tons of bombs on Gaza. They've caused at least 200 deaths. These are minimum figures, mind you.that's at least a kill rate of two people to one bomb, assuming it weighs a ton. And that's before we even have the final death toll.
Do the math. Who's got the blood on their hands, really?
Tommy Franks and his bloodthirsty cowboys screwed up in Iraq by using conventional weaponry including tanks and air strikes against insurgents sheltered within the civilian population. The effect of this high testosterone strategy, ignorant of the military lessons of Vietnam, is that the civilian population of the entire region turned against us, feeling like victims and "collateral damage," having been driven into the arms of the insurgency.
Petraeus has sought to promote the goal of any effective counterinsurgency operation -- winning the civilian population. The war is hopeless without this. In fact, by the time Rumsfeld was fired, it was already too late.
The IDF is stupidly employing conventional weaponry. They do not seem to want to win the population. Conversely they appear to want to continue the expansionist strategies that brought them to the dance. They want to roll up the Palestinians and send them into exile. But this is not democracy; it is chianism (spelled with a zee).
The point I am trying to make, not very articulately as it appears, is that Israel does not seem to want to grant these people autonomy as per their posturing in the world press. Rather than even use effective and humane counterinsurgency measures promoted by General Petraeus, they are revealing themselves as monsters intent on exiling the Palestinians and then forbidding their return. There's is not a haphazard strategy. They know exactly what they are doing. They may not like the label but most sane observers would call it "G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E." Pray to G-d the international community, including the US, will recognize the strategy for what it is and force an intervention.