The shells could not have fallen at a worse time. Yesterday's afternoon prayers in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya were unusually busy because worshippers had abandoned their evening prayers in the belief that if the Israelis planned to strike, they would do so at night.
But as the townspeople left the mosque at dusk, the explosions began, killing at least 12 people, six of whom were children. They came only hours before the Israeli ground offensive was launched into Gaza.
You can read more about yesterdays bombing of a crowded mosque in Gaza during afternoon prayers, by Israeli forces here.
Read it, and read about the other attacks on civilians carried out by Israel these past few days, and then ponder these words of Israeli's Foreign Minister Tzipni Livni, in her address to The Knesset.
The true conflict is between the extremist elements and the moderates in the region.
Well, I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I don’t think 'moderates' bomb a crowded place of worship and kill 12 people at prayer, do you?
17 comments:
Neil, what you say is a very good riposte to the usual neocon rubbish about "smart bombs", "surgical strikes", etc, etc..
"Smart bombs" indeed!
We can call them "Granny-Buggins-Pink-Furry-Slipper-Bombs" if it makes us feel any better. Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that they are lumps of super high explosive which are being rained down on a tiny and densely populated area, where thousands of civilian people have - literally - nowhere to run and nowhere to hide!
"Smart bombs"?
Yeah right! So "smart" that they are slamming into mosques, homes, and schools, killing and maiming hundrends, and leaving 1000s more homeless and destitute in winter - including the elderly, women and small children.
So please don't give me any f*cking neocon bullshit about nice harmless little "smart bombs"!
The Zionist occupation is testing us with these pictures of dismembered and burned bodies of women and children.
The link below is extremely graphic, it shows pictures of dead children, the first 5 pictures are for Nizar Ryyan daughters, which his killng was hailed as a good thing, not only by the criminal israelis but western sympathizers as well.
http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/67E65341-758D-4BC3-92B0-B539B0C7D793.htm
There was a live report from Gaza hospital on Aljazeera yesterday, people are struggling to resuscitate injured civilians on the floor, while bodies of dead children were laying on the floor, waiting to be cleared to the fridge when doctors nurses find time.
Despite this ongoing massacre, it worth to remember the palestinian cause is not solely humanitarian case.
The cause of this is occupation.
The source of all atrocities is occupation.
Israel killed because they can kill and get away with it.
Israel killed because the other side is too weak to respond as effectively and until this equation change, we are bound to see a lot more bodies of Palestinian children.
Hell with israel.hel with zionists.they hav dun this in kashmir giving logistic suport.they r doing it n palestine.
Yet it is Hamas who refuse to have a cease fire. Hamas who is purely targeting civilians, with their rockets & has been doing so for 8 years. Hamas who is using the locals as human shields.
Does Israel have a right to defend itself or not & if not why not?
Neil Craig said:
"Does Israel have a right to defend itself or not & if not why not?"
------------------------------
You might just as well ask: "did the UK have a right to defend itself against the IRA?"
Yes, of course we did!
But we didn't ever send in the RAF to bomb Dublin day and night, and kill hundreds of innocent Irish civilians in the process, did we?
(Nevertheless, bombing Dublin would STILL have been more humane than what Israel is doing now: the people could have fled to safety from there - but the poor bastards trapped in Gaza have got nowhere to run to!)
ken: good post: i think every moral person on this planet is sick and tired of 'fxxing neocon bullshit' and neocon bullshitters too.
dan: thanks for the link.
neil: i think anonymous has answered yr point very well. Israel's response is massively disproportionate, just compare it to the British response to the IRA.
anonymous: excellent analogy.
Anonemous & Clark;
Israel don't have the right of self-defence against the Palestinians.
Firstly: Israel is an occupying power, Gaza is an occupied territories, the law applicable here is the Geneva convention, which Israel has signed. and it gives the occupied people the right to resist. it doesn't give the occupiers the right to oppress.
Secondly, International court of Justice, has ruled in 2004, that right of self defense can be invoked in the case of an armed attack by one State against another State.
Israel can't use it in the west bank and Gaza. in other words Israel can't justify attacking palestinians for self-defense, the court judgement is here:
http://www.nad-plo.org/inner.php?view=facts_wall_f20p
Does Israel have the right to defend itself? I don't accept that 'it' does, or that it has a 'right' to exist. But that's beside the point. The responses to this question seem to accept that 'self-defence' has something to do with Israel's action in Gaza. The comparison with the IRA is ludicrous. Did the British ever build a wall round the Catholic areas of Northern Ireland, refuse entry to food and medicine, state publicly that their aim was to 'make them lose weight'? As Sara Roy (the best academic expert on Gaza) pointed out in the London Review of Books recently, 50% of Gaza's children suffer from some degree of deafness because Israeli jets nightly overfly gaza creating sonic booms deliberately to frighten the population; some 30% of children suffer from some permanent mental retardation as a result of malnutrition. The list could go on and on. I happened to live in the YMCA at the time of the Jenin invasion/massacre, and I was able to read the YMCA's internal magazine which contained reports of Israeli assaults on its hostels in the West Bank - trashed, all records and computers stolen, as with everywhere else. Like Jenin, this Gaza assault is not an assault on Hamas, but on Palestinian identity, civilization and life. The Israelis are nazi scum - they have no right to anything. Those who apologise for them, like Neil Craig, our government, the 'Friends of Israel', nearly all jewish organisations, the owners, managers and editors of our media - all these should be tried for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, not to mention treason.
Neil.
I meant Neil craig and Robin in my last reply, sorry if I didn't clarified this.
On the disproportionality argument:
Firstly it is inherently inhumane. Sun Tzu taught that perfection in war was making the eneny surrender without fighting - the ultimate minimisation of casualties. Earl haig said that what he wanted was to keep killing German & allied troops in equal numbers until the Germans ran out. I do not think the Somme was admirable because casualties were so proportionate.
Secondly It automatically awards "victory" to the largest country. Georgia is given a perfect right to overeun Ossetia & Russia in turn has the same right towards Georgia, which doesn't do the Ossetians much good.
Thirdly it very strongly rewards those governments & societies which have little regard for human life & I think this would be a backward step for civilisation. I think it is unarguable that hamas have less respect for the lives of their citizens than Israel has for their's, indeed the evidence shows that Hamas has less respect for Palestinain civiliam lives than Israel has for Palestinian civilians.
Fourthly it is hypocritical because it is not an argument our leaders use anywhere else. I would challenge anybody to find some prominent western politician who said that the intervention in Afghanistan should have been stopped specificly after 3,000 people had died (ie the same as on 9/11).
Fifthly it is clearly racist to use this argument only with Jews. Nobody can ethicly make this argument unless they are on record as publicly criticisinmg obscene genocidal Nazi scum like Livingston, Short & many other friends of Hamas who never once said that the NATO bombing of civilians was "disproportionate" considering the Serbs had done nothing. I know Neil Clark has criticised them but I have seen nothing from most commenters here.
Sixthly Hamas certainl;y do not consider their people's losses "disproportionate" since we all know they could stop the war instantly by agreeing to a ceasefire if they wished.
Stupid craig;
you claimed " indeed the evidence shows that Hamas has less respect for Palestinain civiliam lives than Israel has for Palestinian civilians.".
provide evidence on this,
Dan demands "provide evidence on this"
Hamas are using their people as human shields. This is also a tactic regularly used by your firends - the Bosnian Moslem Nazis, the KLA & Hezbollah in Lebanon. They, rather than the Israelis, are also the ones who are refusing to have a ceasfire.
Stupid craig:
The evidence shows that Israel has supplied the Serbs with weapons and ammunitions during the Bosnia war, do you want to deny this as well?
This is why you are defending the so-called israeli crimes.
Again, you gave no evidence to support your claims about palestinians ... sod off, try to sell your lies somewhere else.
Would like to see your "evidence".
So the Jews & the Serbs are in a conspiracy against you Nazis & your trained mice then?
The stupid CRAIG the lier said:
((Would like to see your "evidence".)).
Extract from an old Guardian report, published 22 April 2002, by Richard J Aldrich;
"Meanwhile, the secret services of Ukraine, Greece and Israel were busy arming the Bosnian Serbs. Mossad was especially active and concluded a deal with the Bosnian Serbs at Pale involving a substantial supply of artillery shells and mortar bombs. In return they secured safe passage for the Jewish population out of the besieged town of Sarajevo. Subsequently, the remaining population was perplexed to find that unexploded mortar bombs landing in Sarajevo sometimes had Hebrew markings."
That would be the same Guardian which claimed that anybody who didn't support Izetbegovic the openly genocidal anti-Semitic (ex-)Nazi Bosnian Moslem leader was automatically guilty of "anti-semitism". The same Guardian that put up a front page picture of a hanged woman whose "suicide" they specificly blamed on the Serbs when in fact she had been murdered by your Bosnian Moslem Nazi friends purely to give the Guardian a useful picture.
Please produce some "evidence" from some non-Nazi source, not supportive of genocide, child enslavement & dissecting people to steal their organs & some thousands of times more honest than you Dan.
Craig;
I have no intention of cleaning the shit you soaked yourself in.
I've provided evidence on what I said, you had nothing in return other than the usual splashes of hate.
Here is a gift for you, an article by Israeli academic, Historian, and ex israeli soldier,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine
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