IT = Islamo Totalitarians (e.g., Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Baathists, et al)
Quote:= IT = IcanoturdoshiteIT = Islamo Totalitarians (e.g., Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Baathists, et al)
ican
I haven't read it yet. Still working on "Fiasco". You can read the transcript of the interview with the book's author HERE
Retaliation is not a valid reason to kill innocents
...
Cycloptichorn
Yes, but defense is a valid reason. And watch your use of the word innocents. Those on either side who harbor those who bomb non-combatant children, women, and men are not innocents.
Palestinian children pay price of Israel's Summer Rain offensive
Rights group says 197 civilians have been killed in military operation, including 48 minors
Rory McCarthy in Gaza City
Thursday September 7, 2006
The Guardian
On a humid afternoon, an hour or two after lunch, Nadi al-Attar, 12, set off on a donkey-drawn cart with his grandmother Khariya and two of his young cousins to pick figs from a small orchard near their home in northern Gaza.
Ahmed, 17, one of the cousins, remembers the moment when the shell struck, but pauses as he tells his story to nervously rub the muscles at the top of his thighs. The shell that hit their cart that afternoon sliced off his left leg just above the knee and his right leg halfway up his calf. He still has an aching pain in his bandaged stumps.
They had stopped the cart and two of the boys jumped off. "They went to collect something, some metal bars, and then they came back to the cart," he said. The boys hoped to sell the strips of metal for scrap. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) later determined that the metal came from a launcher for a Qassam, one of the crude rockets launched by Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israel. Qassams had been fired from the area that morning, though the militants had since left.
"Then the shell struck. I saw my mother [Khariya] dead and Nadi killed. I saw them dead on the ground," Ahmed said. "I looked down and then I saw my legs were cut away."
Human rights field workers believe an artillery shell, fired from an Israeli military position not far away at the border with the Gaza Strip, hit the cart. Several were fired that day, July 24 - one day in a long and damaging Israeli military operation.
"I think it happened because of the metal we were collecting," Ahmed said. "But we were just going to the farm." He was taken to hospital with another cousin, Shadi, who was wounded in the stomach by shrapnel. Nadi and Khariya, 58, were killed instantly.
"We had lunch together," said Nadi's father, Habib, 36. "Then he went with his grandmother and never came back."
The deaths are not an isolated case. For the past two months, while the world's attention in the Middle East has been focused on the conflict in Lebanon, the Israeli military has led a wave of intense operations along the length of the Gaza Strip. It began after the capture of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants on June 25. The Israeli military said its operations were intended to free Cpl Shalit and to halt Qassam rocket fire. Early on the Israelis bombed Gaza's only power plant and they have kept Gaza's crossing points to Israel and Egypt closed for most of the time.
Since the start of the operation, codenamed Summer Rain, at least 240 Palestinians have been killed. One in five were children. According to the PCHR, which has investigated each case, 197 of the dead were civilians and the vast majority were killed in Gaza. Among them were 12 women and 48 children.
Yesterday an Israeli military spokesman said his forces did not target civilians. "Our actions are targeted only at terrorist organisations, terror activities and infrastructure," he said. "It can happen that innocent people are hit. But the responsibility does not lie with the Israeli army, but rather with the terror groups who are working within civilian populations without any regard to the danger they are causing."
More than two months into the Gaza operation Israel has still not secured the release of Cpl Shalit or stopped Qassam rocket fire.
"We believe that the whole offensive against the Gaza Strip is characterised by being an act of revenge and retaliation in which civilians are paying the price," said Hamdi Shaqqura, a founder member of the PCHR in Gaza City. "They have demonstrated total disregard for the rights of innocent Palestinian civilians. There has been an excessive use of force, a disproportionate use of force in civilian areas, and that explains the high toll of death."
Mr Shaqqura also condemned the Palestinian militants for launching the Qassams and for firing them from civilian areas. "This is illegal and we have called on them to stop," he said.
Many relatives of those killed by the Israelis in Gaza have been equally critical of the rocket attacks. "We get nothing out of it," said Muhammad al-Attar, 23, another of Nadi's cousins. "After they launch rockets we get killed and they destroy our farms."
A few hours after the donkey cart was hit a shell was fired into Beit Hanoun, another district of northern Gaza. It killed Khitam Tayeh, 11, who was on her way to the shops after school with her sister Nuha, 12. Nuha was hit by a piece of shrapnel in her left thigh, but survived. Khitam had a severe head injury and died in hospital.
"I carried her in from the ambulance and took her to the operating room in my arms," said her father, Muhammad 48. "Then she died. They couldn't do anything." He showed several framed photographs of his daughter, with long dark hair and wide brown eyes. Two bright stars had been superimposed in the background.
Mr Tayeh has collected a box of shrapnel from the scene, a couple of dozen sharp, rigid shards of metal, each three or four inches long, and talks of bringing a legal case against the Israeli military. Like many, a year ago he had hoped that life in Gaza would improve when Israeli settlers were withdrawn, in what seemed a ground-breaking move.
"People expected it would get better, but it's been the opposite," he said. "Don't tell me they withdrew. It's like they didn't leave. They are everywhere."
On the eastern side of Gaza, in Shujaiya, Hussam al-Sirsawi, 12, was with his friends standing on the street watching Israeli troops fighting against militants in the distance on August 27. He was badly injured by a piece of shrapnel and died three days later.
"You know how children are when they hear something happen. They want to go and see," said his uncle Nasser al-Sirsawi, 37. "I can't say why the Israelis killed him. These army people are full of hatred. Maybe these kids went to watch some resistance people and they were in the wrong place. To kill a child like this is not natural." On the wall opposite his cloth shop there is graffiti dedicated to his nephew. "Hussam," it says, "we swear to God you won." "Of course," said his uncle, "he's a martyr."
Two days later there was another incident in Shujaiya, when again a group of children were watching the fighting. Either a tank shell or a large chunk of shrapnel flew at them and hit Muhammad al-Ziq, 14, on the head. He died instantly. "I think sometimes they just want the Palestinians to pay," said his uncle, Ziad al-Ziq, 36. "He was with children wanting to see what was happening. There was no excuse for what happened."
All of the dead and most of the injured pass through the Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Staff photograph the bodies of the dead - they call the victims "martyrs" - and document their injuries. Juma'a al-Saqqa called up a picture on his computer screen of Muhammad al-Ziq, an appalling image of the boy lying on his side on a metal morgue table, the side of his head sliced away. In the past two months the hospital's doctors have dealt with 1,280 injured from the military operations, a third of whom were children. The doctors performed 60 amputations.
Dr Saqqa flicks through the photographic record, images of bodies charred beyond recognition, flesh no longer human in form. Many of the figures were young children, at least one in a shredded blue school uniform. "We have passed through the worst situation we have ever come across in our years of work," he said. "But this is our situation. What can we do? We raised our voices to the world, but nobody moves."
Quote:
Yes, but defense is a valid reason. And watch your use of the word innocents. Those on either side who harbor those who bomb non-combatant children, women, and men are not innocents.
Then, there are no innocents here in America, either, as we harbor our military and support them financially, and they bomb non-combatant women, children, and men all the time.
It doesn't matter one whit if you say that we are 'trying to get military targets and only hitting the innocents by mistake.' Dead is dead either way.
Cycloptichorn
Those on either side who harbor those who bomb non-combatant children, women, and men are not innocents.
Ican, just remember to keep your nose up.
Please cite your credible sources that show how Israel bombs crowded Arab market places and school busses or has attacked any Arabs other than in self defense or in retaliation for Arab attacks such as bombing of crowded markets and busses filled with school children.
Take your time. I'll wait.
The Zionists invented Terrorism
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/94463
"Terror using modern tools (letter bombs, car bombs, etc.) and weapons was first adopted in the Middle East by Zionists working outside state control and outside of any geographically limited area. This was truly the first non-state, global terror network. In the single month of July 1938, the Irgun killed 76 Palestinians in terrorist attacks. On July 22,1946, a Zionist truck-bomb blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem (housing also the British civil administration) killing 28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish, and 5 others while injuring over 200. This was the first use of a car bomb in the Middle East. While Irgun claimed responsibility, later evidence also showed involvement of the Hagannah. The first letter bombs used by groups operating from the Middle East were made by Zionists and sent to British Cabinet Ministers in London in June 1947.
Economic sabotage was also first introduced by the Zionists. In 1939 the Haganah blew up the Iraqi oil pipeline near Haifa. Moshe Dayan was one of the participants in this act. The first airplane hijacking was committed by Israel. On 12 December 1954 Israel hijacked a civilian Syrian airliner shortly after take-off. In 1973, Israel shot down s Libyan civil aircraft (which strayed over Sinai in a sandstorm) killing all its 106 civilian passengers.
On Nov. 6 1944 Zionist belonging to Stern assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, in an ambush in Cairo (well beyond the borders of Palestine).
The first attack on a ship by terrorists was on November 25, 1940 when the S.S. Patria carrying illegal Jewish immigrants was attacked by Zionists with explosives in Haifa Harbor (attack was to embarrass the British and for rivalry among Jewish groups). 268 Jewish immigrants drowned.
On January 5, 1948, the Haganah forces planted bombs in the Palestinian-owned Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 20, among them Viscount de Tapia, the Spanish consul.
Between 1947 to 1949, over 530 Palestinian villages were emptied of their populations by a process of ethnic cleansing including targeted terror with over 33 massacres according to Israeli and other historians. More than half of the Palestinian villages and towns were depopulated by Israeli military actions before Israel was established in May 15, 1948 and thus before the beginning of the first major Arab Israeli war according to Israeli historians. Israel also continued to terrorize the natives into leaving even after the hostilities ended and cease-fires were signed. This post war ethnic cleansing occurred in 64 of the 531 Palestinian localities depopulated according to Israeli historians.
More cross border massacres and terror ensued afterwards. 700 Israeli troops (Force 101) attacked the border village of Qibya on October 14, 1953. The troops led by a young commander, Ariel Sharon, used mortars, machine guns, rifles and explosives. 42 houses were blown up as well as the local schools and the mosque. Every man, woman and child found was murdered in cold blood (a total of 53 to 75 according to independent estimates). Ben-Gurion initially claims this was carried out by "Jewish terrorists" and not by the IDF but he later admitted government involvement. However, Qibya was only a minor massacre compared to those committed in Lebanon by Israel (e.g. at Tantura or Qana) or its paid cronies (at Sabra and Shatila etc.). Israeli actions were responsible in total for the killing of perhaps as many as 50,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. Historians also now acknowledge that Israeli forces also executed hundreds of prisoners of war in the Sinai in 1967.
Israel also maintained many colonial terror groups operating in the remaining 22% of Palestine that was conquered in 1967 (i.e. the West Bank and Gaza). Referring to members of underground Jewish organizations there, General Yehoshafat Harkabi observed that "they are rational people whose chief motivation stems from their awareness that annexation of the West Bank together with its Arab population would be disastrous and tantamount to national suicide - unless that population were thinned out and made to flee by means of terrorism...". He added that terrorism was "the logical, rational conclusion of the policy that aims at annexation. Such terrorism is neither a punishment nor a deterrent; it is a political instrument."
Various groups within the PLO and outside it also resorted to killing civilians in its struggle against colonial Zionism (as did the native Americans, the IRA, the African National Congress in South Africa and a many other such struggles). But the number of civilians killed by Palestinian action pales by comparison (both quantitatively and qualitatively) to those killed by intentional Israeli actions. Reports from Human Rights Organizations clearly document this.
The majority of people do not (and should never) excuse killing civilians (including colonialists gathered from throughout the world to settle in native people lands). This is true whether the killing is done by individuals belonging to a group like Irgun, Kakh, or Hamas or whether by states with a well-oiled military machine that inflicts much heavier toll on civilians (e.g. shelling neighborhoods with US supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters) or by so called " intelligence agencies" operating now in dozens of countries and essentially unanswerable to the people.
Violence by the way is not an incidental byproduct of occupation or oppression or dispossession. It is an inevitable consequence of these injustices (which are of course sustained themselves by violence which forms part and parcel of colonialism and occupation). Any people in a situation of violent oppression or colonization develop a bell-shaped curve of resistance ranging from all non-violent forms on one end of the curve to sometimes horrible crimes (we call it terrorism) on the other end. The majority in the middle of this curve will always have some elements of resistance that is neither terrorism nor completely non-violent resistance. Any casual examination of history will reveal examples of a wide range of tactics adopted by different segments of the society even when all are living under the same degree of occupation or repression. Differences in tactics between individuals in their responses can but do not need be related to the external pressures faced by that individual. Examples of the full range of this bell shaped curve was evident among the Irish, Black South Africans, African American blacks, and Native Americans. In each of those groups, segments within the same society expressed their emotions and their aspirations using forms ranging from writing, to peaceful demonstrations, to civil disobedience, and to extreme violence. In short, Violence is the symptomology and one must then examine the etiology of the underlying disease."
(From "State and non-state terrorism" by Prof. Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Yale University, April 11, 2003)
Some of you that are calling Israel racist towards the Arabs seem to be basing that on Israel's refusing the "right of return".
Now,I have a question for you.
Would you be willing to allow the "right of return" to any American Indian tribes or families that lived on your land years ago?
Would you willingly and gladly cede your house over to someone that claims that their ancestors lived on that land several hundred years ago,based on your support of "right of return"?
Would you also be willing to force someone in whatever countries your ancestors emigrated from off their land,because your family once lived there and you demand "right of return" also?
Infrablue wrote:
The right of return for the Palestinians should be effected along with the dismantling of the ethnocentric Zionist state, and a single egalitarian and pluralistic nation formed for all of the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine.
END OF QUOTE
Really????
How many Jews live in Lebanon?
How many Muslims live in Israel?
It seems to me that Israel is much farther along on that road than the Islamo-fascists!
"ethnocentric Zionist state" indeed!!!!
I can almost hear the Nazi SS Boots in the background!!!
blatham wrote:ican
I haven't read it yet. Still working on "Fiasco". You can read the transcript of the interview with the book's author HERE
I read the transcript. What I got out of that read is the theory that al-Quada was essentially dead after our invasion of Afghanistan, but was renewed by our invasion of Iraq.
I've encountered this theory multiple times now. It is now just as incredible to me as it has been all along.
I have encountered what to me is a preponderance of irrefutable evidence that this theory is irrational.
In the 5 years 5 months of its existence in Afghanistan, 1996 - 2001, al-Qaeda was responsible for multiple terrorist attacks prior to as well as on September 11, 2001. None of these arttacks including 9/11 itself were encouraged by USA invasion of anything. Also during that time al-Qaeda trained more than 10,000 fighters plus additional al-Qaeda cadre--many of whom we are currently fighting.
Al-Qaeda fled Afghanistan for other countries soon after our invasion of Afghanistan. One of those countries it fled to was Iraq. To me, it is practically a sure thing that if we hadn't also invaded Iraq, al-Qaeda would during 5 years 5 months in Iraq (i.e., December 2001 thru May 2007), have repeated many times what it did on 9/11 and before.
The real issue is not whether we should have invaded Iraq. The real issue is how can we best secure Iraq and Afghanistan against new al-Qaeda startups. Yes, the USA is not doing a satisfactory--competent, adequate, effective, et cetera--job in either country. It seems to me that because of that, we should be reading, discussing, and searching for how to correct that; not whether or not we have adequate evidence to show that Bush and his administration are no damn good.
It seems to me that because of that, we should be reading, discussing, and searching for how to correct that; not whether or not we have adequate evidence to show that Bush and his administration are no damn good.
Foxfyre wrote:Please cite your credible sources that show how Israel bombs crowded Arab market places and school busses or has attacked any Arabs other than in self defense or in retaliation for Arab attacks such as bombing of crowded markets and busses filled with school children.
Take your time. I'll wait.
In his book, Terror Out of Zion, J. Bowyer Bell tells about how in 1938 the Irgun Zvai Leumi (Irgun), one of the two (the other being Lohamei Herut Israel (LEHI) main Zionist terrorist groups in Palestine at the time, began its tactic of planting milk cans with time bombs hidden in them in Arab markets. Gundar "Arieh" Yitzhaki, who became the Irgun's explosives expert in that same year, devised letter bombs that would be mailed to Arabs in Jaffa. He also devised trapbombs that would explode when officials with the British Criminal Investigation Division (CID) would try to dismantle them. He also designed the time bombs that would be hidden in the Arab markets. He himself would throw his bombs into shops in Jaffa, and would participate in attacks against Arab buses on the Jaffa-Salameh road.
Wikipedia also lists some of the Irgun's attacks during the 1930's.