Foofie and Avatar ADV,
You guys are have been totally misleading, infact maybe even lying.
That is out of order. I will challage both of you. I have 100's of credible sources, phototographs, statement and reports, which will without a doubt prove once and for all that Israel/IDF soldiers do indeed deliberately target Palestinian children/civilians. You've done it now. I am really angry.
I will post 100's of article/threads to prove my point, i am going to debunk this silly myth. Get ready dudes!
Here is the first: (note: unless you agree, i will continue to post more information)
Quote:[size=25]
Snipers with children in their sights[/size]
Palestinian civilians have been killed by the army with impunity
It was the shooting of Asma Mughayar that swept away any lingering doubts I had about how it is the Israeli army kills so many Palestinian children and civilians.
Asma, 16, and her younger brother, Ahmad, were collecting laundry from the roof of their home in the south of the Gaza Strip in May last year when they were felled by an Israeli army sniper. Neither child was armed or threatening the soldier, who fired unseen through a hole punched in the wall of a neighbouring block of flats.
The army said the two were blown up by a Palestinian bomb planted to kill soldiers. The corpses offered a different account. In Rafah's morgue, Asma lay with a single bullet hole through her temple; her 13-year-old brother had a lone shot to his forehead. There were no other injuries, certainly none consistent with a blast.
Confronted with this, the army changed its account and claimed the pair were killed by a Palestinian, though there was persuasive evidence pointing to the Israeli sniper's nest. What the military did not do was ask its soldiers why they gave a false account of the deaths or speak to the children's parents or any other witnesses.
When reporters pressed the issue, the army promised a full investigation, but a few weeks later it was quietly dropped. This has become the norm in a military that appears to value protecting itself from accountability more than living up to its claim to be the "most moral army in the world".
As Tom Hurndall's parents noted yesterday after the conviction of an Israeli sergeant for the manslaughter of their son, the soldier was put on trial only because the British family had the resources to bring pressure to bear. But there has been no justice for the parents of hundreds of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers.
According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, the army has killed 1,722 Palestinian civilians - more than one-third of them minors - as well as 1,519 combatants, since the intifada began nearly five years ago; the comparable Israeli figures are 658 civilians killed - 17% minors - along with 309 military. The army has investigated just 90 Palestinian deaths, usually under outside pressure. Seven soldiers have been convicted: three for manslaughter, none for murder.
Last month, a military court sentenced a soldier to 20 months in prison for shooting dead a Palestinian man as he adjusted his TV aerial, the longest sentence yet for killing a civilian, and less than Israeli conscientious objectors have got for refusing to serve in the army.
B'Tselem argues that a lack of accountability and rules of engagement that "encourage a trigger-happy attitude among soldiers" have created a "culture of impunity" - a view backed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which last week described many army investigations of civilian killings as a "sham ... that encourages soldiers to think they can literally get away with murder".
In southern Gaza, the killings take place in a climate that amounts to a form of terror against the population. Random fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis has claimed hundreds of lives, including five children shot as they sat at their school desks. Many others have died when the snipers must have known who was in their sights - children playing football, sitting outside home, walking back from school. Almost always "investigations" amount to asking the soldier who pulled the trigger what happened - often they claim there was a gun battle when there was none - and presenting it as fact.
The military police launched an investigation into the death of Iman al-Hams last October only after soldiers went public about the circumstances in which their commander emptied his gun into the 12-year-old. He was recorded telling his men that the girl should be killed even if she were three.
Colonel Pinhas Zuaretz was commander in southern Gaza two years ago when I asked him about the scale of the killing. The colonel, who rewrote the rules of engagement to permit soldiers to shoot children as young as 14, acknowledged that official versions of several killings were wrong, but justified the tactics as the price of the struggle for survival against a second Holocaust.
Perhaps that view was shared by the soldier who shot dead three 15-year-old boys, Hassan Abu Zeid, Ashraf Mousa and Khaled Ghanem, as they approached the fortified border between Gaza and Egypt in April. The military said the teenagers were weapons smugglers and therefore "terrorists", and that the soldier shot them in the legs and only killed them when they failed to stop.
The account was a fabrication. The teenagers were in a "forbidden zone" but kicking a ball. Their corpses showed no evidence of wounds to disable them, only single high-calibre shots to the head or back. The army quietly admitted as much - but there would be no investigation.
[email protected]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jun/28/comment.israelandthepalestinians
Quote:Every single human rights organization that visited the area issued reports stating that the Israeli government and its forces seem to target civilians and exhibit reckless disregard for human life. Not one human rights non-governmental organization agreed with Israeli government propaganda that they are careful not to kill civilians and that civilians killed are "accidental" (so far in two years over 3700 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces including over 700 children).
As documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights watch, Israel now holds 3.5 million people essentially hostages in their own homes denying them the right to travel, work, and even go to school, clinics, or places of worship (Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza).
- Israeli forces target civilians for political purposes (the classic definition of terrorism). Here are several lines of proof from independent sources plus from the perpetrators themselves.
- Defense of Children International Full Report on IDF (aka Israel Occupation Forces) kiling of Palestinian Children in 2006
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/LSGZ-72THRJ/$File/Full_report.pdf
- Israeli continues to use Palestinian civilians as human shields
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=76d_1173007758
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story2124.html
-Shin Bet uses torture regularly, B'Tselem report says, Ynetnews, Israel, May 6, 2007
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3396093,00.html
- Most Palestinians killed in Israeli raids were civilians, Amnesty says By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem The Independent - 24 May 2007
"More than 320 civilians were among a threefold increase in the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces last year, according to Amnesty International. The human rights group's 2007 report says that over half of the more than 650 Palestinians killed in 2006 were civilians, 120 of them children and young people under 18. "
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2578484.ece
-Israeli forces routinely mistreating detainees
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6630139.stm
-Israeli human rights groups state Israeli forces routinely torture prisoners
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/856142.html
-Israel forces use civilians as human shields. Example from B'Tselem
http://www.btselem.org/english/Human_Shields/20070225_Human_Shields_in_Nablus.asp
and video clips
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2503754030571816166
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiO0GYsyR4A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjEd4hJNVCE
-Israeli forces humiliate and strip search women and children (Video)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-691161000548687549&hl=en
- Physicians for Human Rights USA investigated the high number of Palestinian deaths and injuries in the first months of the Intifada, concluded that: "the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF (Israeli Army) use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing."
http://www.phrusa.org/research/forensics/israel/update_commentary.html
- In an interview with Ha'aretz reporter Amira Hass, an Israeli sniper described the commands he receives from his superiors: "Twelve and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us," he said. "So," responded the reporter "according to the IDF, (the appropriate minimum age group at which to shoot) is 12?" the soldier replied, "According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don't know if this is what the IDF says to the media."
- Yediot Aharonot (Hebrew Edition, 11/17/00) quoted Tal Etlinger, a "border guard" trained to quell demonstrations as stating that riots at Um Al Fahm (where scores of unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel were shot and many killed by snipers) were much less violent than Jewish riots (such as in Tiberias) which were "much worse..but we handle Jewish riots differently..to a demonstration like this we know in advance to come without weapons.. These are the orders from above, and we use only gas."
- Human Rights Watch issued a report May 3, 2002 on Israeli atrocities in Jenin stating in part: “civilians (in Jenin) were killed willfully or unlawfully (by the Israeli military). (which) used Palestinian civilians as ‘human shields’ and used indiscriminate and excessive force.. The abuses we documented in Jenin are extremely serious, and in some cases appear to be war crimes.." (http://hrw.org/press/2002/05/jenin0503.htm)
- New York Times journalist Chris Hedges stated: " And it was--I mean, I've seen kids shot in Sarajevo. I mean, snipers would shoot kids in Sarajevo. I've seen death squads kill families in Algeria or El Salvador. But I'd never seen soldiers bait or taunt kids like this and then shoot them for sport. It was--I just--even now, I find it almost inconceivable. And I went back every day, and every day it was the same." Full transcript:
http://64.226.129.19/pmw/manager/features/display_message.asp?mid=487
- Videos clearly implicated the army where soldiers were cavalierr about killing civilians:
BBC obtains video showing shelling children running away
- In an article in the Washington Post, Keith Richburg reported (11/ 30/2000; Page A01): "Iyad was shot because he ran too fast. Nshat was shot because he missed his ride. Ronny was shot for throwing a stone. And Abdel Kareem was shot where his two friends died. Iyad, Nshat, Ronny and Abdel Kareem had never met before. But these four young Palestinians now see one another daily, as patients at the Abu Raya Rehabilitation Center."
- Moshe Nissim, who operated a bulldozer for 75 straight hours in Jenin was quoted in Yediot Ahoronot:
"No one refused an order to take down a house. When they told me to destroy a house I exploited that in order to destroy a few more homes. On the loudspeaker (the Palestinian residents) were warned to get out before I came in. But I didn't give a chance to anyone. I didn't wait. I'm sure that people died inside of those houses. From my perspective we left them a football field, they should play there. The 100x100 was our present to the camp. Jenin will not return to be what it was." (Yedioth Ahronot, Friday 31 May 2002, translated by Alternative Information Center).
- B'Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights group, reported in October 2001 that "the IDF continues to employ a policy of 'an easy trigger-finger' and demonstrates a disregard for human life." In one Press Release (12 March 2002) B'Tselem stated: "In every city and refugee camp that they have entered, IDF soldiers have repeated the same pattern: indiscriminate firing and the killing of innocent civilians, intentional harm to water, electricity and telephone infrastructure, taking over civilian houses, extensive damage to civilian property, shooting at ambulances and prevention of medical care to the injured." (http://www.btselem.org/ )
- "As a young soldier serving in the Israeli army, I was ordered to commit grave human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. My platoon meted out collective punishment on Palestinian communities, shot and killed unarmed Palestinian civilians, and enforced prolonged curfews on Palestinian villages. I witnessed the arbitrary destruction of Palestinian houses, property and agricultural land. These acts were not rare occurrences, nor were they the result of overly cruel soldiers. It was part of the norm; a habit that an Occupation soldier gets used to doing. These daily occurrences constituted, as I later understood, war crimes."
http://alawda.rso.wisc.edu/why.htm
- Israeli soldiers admitted to Maariv (Israeli mainstream newspaper) that they targeted non-combatants, did horrible things and "acted Like Zombies see
http://www.geocities.com/keller_adam/breaking_silence.htm
- A Video Israeli censors did not Want You To See.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1-_JmXQt0&mode=related&search
- Not seen on the news (this one slipped through)
http://tvnewslies.org/html/the_israel_you_don_t_see_on_th.html
-Researcher Says Israel Responsible for at least 97.8 Percent of Serious Human Rights Abuses in Conflict.
http://www.dada.at/gems/gesellschaft/Apartheid.pdf
We did not discuss here the Israeli laws and "system" of stripping Palestinians of their land and destroying their homes. This process, ongoing for the past 58 years, has already left 2/3rds of teh native Palestinians as refugees or displaced people. One can then add to that laws that are racist such as the law that Israelis can marry and bring any foreigners as spouses to live with them in Israel with one exception: If the spouse happens to be Palestinian (see
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/528450.html)
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Quote:[size=25]IDF admits targeting civilian areas in Lebanon with cluster bombs[/size]
By Nir Hasson and Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondents
The Israel Defense Forces discovered that there had been "irregularities" in the use of cluster munitions, even before the end of the recent Lebanon war, sources in the defense minister's office said Monday. As a result of this information, Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered an "extensive inquiry" into the use of these munitions before the war's end.
Meanwhile, for the first time Monday, the IDF admitted targeting populated areas with cluster munitions. In a statement released by the IDF Spokesman's Office, "the use of cluster munitions against built-up areas was done only against military targets where rocket launches against Israel were identified and after taking steps to warn the civilian population."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/789876.html
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