thank you

surrounded on all sides by people's and nations whose religion calls for their annihilation, the Israeli's are not in an enviable position

and pro palestinian posturing is just amusing

tho I see no reason why humanitarian should be denied

because Israel believes that's how they are getting the weapons to use against Israel. if they don't stop and let Israel search them, they get sunk... their information is very accurate, and if gaza and west bank needed these supplies, they would stop the terroristic acts... it really is that simple

I think people are forgetting Israel is the only nuclear power in the middle east. Yes they have atomic bombs hundreds of them.


They refused to sign the nuclear non proliferation treaty.


Would anyone blame them if they used them if they were attacked on all sides as in the past?

Israel is no longer the underdog and hasnt been for along time.

Only the aiding and abeting by the US and the media have perpetuated the propaganda.

Time to wake up to reality folks.

yea, ok... like they ever used any... maybe you should see some reality...and what about Pakistan? aren't they middle east? Egypt, their neighbors? iran? ....they all have nuclear power...

The issue of Israel's nuclear weapons have nothing whatsoever to do
with the murdering of their citizens by rocket fire and bus or cafe bombings by Palestinians and radical Islamists.

The Palestinians are the ones who arbitrarily attack innocent
civilians as a matter of policy and routine tactics. It is the
Israelis who only respond in self-defense and do their utmost
to limit the risks and casualties to civilians.

No amount of attempted misdirection will alter the inhumanity of
what the Palestinians are doing. The Israelis on the other hand
generally react with restraint and honor.

I will always condemn Palestinian terrorism and acknowledge Israeli restraint and concessions.

OK Don't take it from me...Read instead the detailed critique of
the Goldstone report (which Goldstone himself now recants) which
outlines Palestinian terrorist tactics and how Israel was forced
to counter the attacks...

from http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1736

One Palestinian told Der Spiegel during a discussion about the war that "anyone who stands up to [Hamas] is killed.") The Report's acknowledgment that Palestinian testimony might be influenced by fear did not, however, prevent Goldstone from accepting most of the testimony as fact.



REPORT: There is no evidence of Palestinian fighters using civilian clothes.
FACT: Journalists and eyewitnesses repeatedly noted the use of civilian clothes by Hamas fighters.

REPORT: There is no evidence of armed groups directing civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forcing them to remain in the vicinity of attacks.
FACT: Palestinian witnesses and video evidence reveal that fighters did direct civilians to areas where attacks were being launched.

REPORT: There is no evidence that hospitals or ambulances were used for military activities.
FACT: Eyewitnesses describe Palestinian firing from hospitals and using ambulances.

REPORT: The mission could not determine whether mosques were used for military purposes.
FACT: There is video evidence of weaponry stored in a mosque, and of secondary explosions of mosques consistent with the storage of explosives.

REPORT: The amount of aid allowed into Gaza by Israel decreased after the end of the fighting.
FACT: If not false, the assertion is at best disingenuous. The average weekly number of humanitarian shipments increased in the months after the war ended.

REPORT: The "international community" regards the Gaza Strip as occupied even after Israel's 2005 withdrawal. Two UN documents are cited to substantiate this assertion.
FACT: Not only does the Report dismiss the international law and scholars who argue against this view, but the cited UN documents do not demonstrate such a position by the "international community."

REPORT: Israel retains significant control over the Rafah crossing.
FACT: The Rafah crossing is presently under Palestinian and Egyptian control, both de jure and de facto.

TESTIMONY:

The Zeitoun area is pacifist and had no militant groups or rocket fire.
REPORT:

This witness is credible and reliable, and there is no reason to doubt his testimony.
FACT:

There are many documented cases of Palestinian militants being killed in armed clashes in the neighborhood.

TESTIMONY: The al Fakhoura area was not used to fire at Israel, and no combatants were killed in the Fakhoura incident.
REPORT: The Report was based in part on three interviews with the Hamas official who made the above claim, and did not cast doubt on his testimony.
FACT: Palestinian eyewitnesses and Israel note that the area was used to fire at Israel, and that combatants were killed in the Israeli strike.


Double Standards List

Even more so than its factual problems, it is the Report's double standards that contributed to a distorted and one-sided document.

Acceptance of Evidence: The Report tends to base its acceptance of evidence less on the source of that evidence, and more on its target. That is, evidence damning Israel is normally deemed credible, where as evidence exonerating Israel or damning Palestinians is explicitly or quietly dismissed.

• When an NGO asserted that one Palestinian fighter denied using human shields and others admitted to it, the Report in effect dismissed the admission and accepted the denial.

• Similarly, information by other NGOs are given weight when they suggest Israeli culpability, but are ignored or minimized when they suggest Palestinian guilt.

• Purported contradictions and falsehoods by Israel were deemed a blow to Israeli credibility, while the same by Palestinian and pro-Palestinian sources were dismissed or ignored.

• Assertions by Palestinian political leaders are said not to constitute evidence, whereas statements by Israeli political leaders are considered to constitute evidence.

Photographic Evidence: Closely related to the above is the Report's clear double standard with regard to its consideration specifically of photographic evidence. Although the Goldstone Commission purported to review 1,200 photographs, it dismisses only Israeli photographs, claiming that "it is not reasonably possible to determine whether those photographs show what is alleged." On the other hand, no doubt is cast on photographs provided by Palestinians.

Motive: While the Goldstone Commission falsely attributes nefarious motives to Israeli actions in order to indict the state with war crimes, they do precisely the opposite regarding misdeeds by Hamas and Palestinian groups, attributing a lack of negative motive to Palestinian fighters in order to avoid charging them with war crimes.

Discrimination Against Women: The Report levels the extremely dubious charge that Israel violated the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women because it struck elements of Gaza's food and water infrastructure. Based on the Report's own loose criteria, it should have also charged the Palestinians with violating the convention. It did not.

Falsehood Details

Falsehood: No Civilian Clothes

REPORT: Paragraphs 495 (493) and 1953 (1750) assert:

The Mission ... found no evidence that members of Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat in civilian dress.

FACT: Numerous journalists in Gaza and Palestinian eyewitnesses described seeing Palestinian fighters in civilian dress. This information was relayed by some of the world's largest media organizations (emphasis added throughout):

New York Times, "Warnings Not Enough for Gaza Families," 1/6/09:

Hamada Al-Samouni, 28, who was lightly wounded by the Israeli rocket and was clearly still in shock, said this was all happening ''because of the rockets'' fired by Hamas.

He said he had seen the bodies of eight Hamas fighters dressed in civilian clothing lying in the streets around Zeitoun.

New York Times, "A Gaza War Full of Traps And Trickery," 1/11/09:

Unwilling to take Israel's bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms.

Times (London), "Gaza's tunnels, traps and martyrs: the Hamas strategy to defeat Israel," 1/12/09:

[Hamas figher Muhammed] said the fighters constantly changed their locations and tactics. They never attacked from the same place twice. They had secret means of communication, and spread disinformation to confuse the Israelis when speaking on their radios. They wore civilian clothes, concealed their weapons, and no longer walked around in groups.

Los Angeles Times, "Battered by Israel, Hamas faces tough choices," 1/12/09:

As the Israeli incursion rumbles into a 17th day, witnesses in Gaza and analysts portray the Islamic militant group as battered but defiant. Its walkie-talkie networks bleep and scratch through alleys, and its fighters, many in civilian clothes, move with the stealth of urban guerrillas, booby-trapping neighborhoods, communicating through e-mails, text messages and whispers in marketplaces.

Associated Press, "Hamas fighters seek to restore order in Gaza Strip," 1/20/09:

The high visibility of uniformed Hamas police [after the war] stood in contrast to the furtive movements of Hamas fighters in civilian clothing who confronted or tried to evade the Israeli onslaught that began Dec. 27.

^ Return to list



Falsehood: No Civilians Kept in Vicinity of Attacks

REPORT: Paragraphs 35 (35), 494 (492) and 1953 (1750) assert (with slightly varying language):

The Mission found no evidence to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or that they forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks.

FACT: A witness quoted in the New York Times and videos recorded by Israel reveal that Palestinians militants did indeed direct civilians to areas from which attacks were being launched. One report in the New York Times noted that

A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said a man had come to the mosque Tuesday and asked for volunteers to pile sand around the camp [near the Fakhura school] "to help protect the fighters." Ibrahim went to help with his brother, Iyad, 20, who was wounded by the Israeli mortar fire.

Ibrahim said that a commander of the military wing of Hamas, Abu Khaled Abu Asker, was in the area at the time and had been killed on the spot. ("Israeli mortars kill 40 Palestinian refugees," 1/6/09)

Witnesses quoted by the New York Times, Associated Press and the British Channel 4 television channel note that Palestinians were firing at the time from the area to which the Amen brothers were called. The Times noted:

Witnesses, including Hanan Abu Khajib, 39, said that Hamas fired just outside the school compound, probably from the secluded courtyard of a house across the street, 25 yards from the school. Israeli return fire, some minutes later, also landed outside the school, along the southwest wall, killing two Hamas fighters. ("Weighing Crimes and Ethics in the Fog of Urban Warfare," 1/17/09)

AP reported:

An Israeli military statement said it received intelligence that the dead at the girls school included Hamas operatives, among them members of a rocket-launching squad. It identified two of them as Imad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar. Two residents who spoke to an AP reporter by phone said the two brothers were known to be low-level Hamas militants. They said a group of militants -- one of them said four -- were firing mortar shells from near the school. (AP, "Gaza truce proposed after Israeli shell kills 30," 1/7/09)

And Channel 4 reporter Jonathan Miller stated on Feb. 5, "Local residents in the street told me that militants had been firing rockets — as the IDF claimed — and having been targeted in retaliatory fire by the IDF, they ran down the street past the school."

Indeed, the Goldstone Report itself hesitantly accepts the possibility that "some firing may have occurred that gave rise to the Israeli armed forces' response."

Additionally, video evidence shows children being beckoned to shield a Palestinian who had just fired a rocket at Israel, and a fighter entering a home full of civilians after planting an improvised explosive device:...

then there are many videos...

Successive Israeli governments since 1993 certainly must have known what they were doing, being in no hurry to make peace with the Palestinians. As representatives of Israeli society, these governments understood that peace would involve serious damage to national interests.

Economic damage:

The security industry is an important export branch - weapons, ammunition and refinements that are tested daily in Gaza and the West Bank. The Oslo process - negotiations that were never meant to end - allowed Israel to shake off its status as occupying power (obligated to the welfare of the occupied people) and treat the Palestinian territories as independent entities. That is, to use weapons and ammunition at a magnitude Israel could not have otherwise used on the Palestinians after 1967. Protecting the settlements requires constant development of security, surveillance and deterrence equipment such as fences, roadblocks, electronic surveillance, cameras and robots. These are security's cutting edge in the developed world, and serve banks, companies and luxury neighborhoods next to shantytowns and ethnic enclaves where rebellions must be suppressed.

The collective Israeli creativity in security is fertilized by a state of constant friction between most Israelis and a population defined as hostile. A state of combat over a low flame, and sometimes over a high one, brings together a variety of Israeli temperaments: rambos, computer wizards, people with gifted hands, inventors. Under peace, their chances of meeting would be greatly reduced.

Damage to careers:

Maintaining the occupation and a state of non-peace employs hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 70,000 people work in the security industry. Each year, tens of thousands finish their army service with special skills or a desirable sideline. For thousands it becomes their main career: professional soldiers, Shin Bet operatives, foreign consultants, mercenaries, weapons dealers. Therefore peace endangers the careers and professional futures of an important and prestigious stratum of Israelis, a stratum that has a major influence on the government.

Damage to quality of life:

A peace agreement would require equal distribution of water resources throughout the country (from the river to the sea) between Jews and Palestinians, regardless of the desalination of seawater and water-saving techniques. Even now it's hard for Israelis to get used to saving water because of the drought. It's not difficult to guess how traumatic a slash in water consumption to equalize distribution would be.

Damage to welfare:

As the past 30 years have shown, settlements flourish as the welfare state contracts. They offer ordinary people what their salaries would not allow them in sovereign Israel, within the borders of June 4, 1967: cheap land, large homes, benefits, subsidies, wide-open spaces, a view, a superior road network and quality education. Even for those Israeli Jews who have not moved there, the settlements illuminate their horizon as an option for a social and economic upgrade. That option is more real than the vague promises of peacetime improvements, an unknown situation.

Peace will also reduce, if not erase entirely, the security pretext for discriminating against Palestinian Israelis - in land distribution, development resources, education, health employment and civil rights (such as marriage and citizenship). People who have gotten used to privilege under a system based on ethnic discrimination see its abrogation as a threat to their welfare.

................................................................

http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-israel-doesnt-want-peace.html

You're best argument is that Israel *wants* bus bombings and
Qassam rocket attacks to help with their Social Security?!?!

Brilliant!



If the Israelis don't want peace then why is it that whenever
the Palestinians stop firing rockets and bombing cafes that
there are extended periods of peace?! Why did the Israelis
make huge land concessions and sign peace agreements with Egypt
and Jordan?



I guess it was just some very elaborate ruse to perpetuate war....
So complex that it is completely inscrutable!!



Good One!

The Palestinians not being free in their own lands is what is going on. Also having their lands taken from them. Basically what happened to the native Americans. If the native Americans had bombs do you think they would not have used them? Remember,the white man said the red man was angry and dangerous too......

I would be angry too if someone was taking the lands of my people and building settlements on them.............

The Palestinians have stopped attacks for periods of time and nothing happened. And rumor has it that Israel is behind a lot of the attacks to make the Palestinians look bad so they can bomb and kill more of them and take more of their land.It is Israels problem that they feel isolated,not the Palestinian people's. It is just like what was done to the native Americans.........

You cant reasone with a zionist they are like Nazis

Netanyahu is such an evil liar and a fake. He is a serpent. Leader of the NWO.

HaHa! I just seen Netanyahu got shouted down before the Senate! Haha! Free Palestine!!

Netanyahu's admission of guilt: "Israel will give up on peace when we achieve it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX18zUp6WPY&feature=youtu.be

The video that Israel does not want Americans to see.

yea, he's guilty of wanting peace...

FAIL!

He admitted that he does not want peace.Also,Netanyahu is a criminal that poisoned another man......

how is palestine "not free"?

Do you agree with the argument that Israel's military offensive in Lebanon is "legally and morally justified?"
Noam Chomsky: The invasion itself is a serious breach of international law, and major war crimes are being committed as it proceeds. There is no legal justification.

The "moral justification" is supposed to be that capturing soldiers in a cross-border raid, and killing others, is an outrageous crime. We know, for certain, that Israel, the United States and other Western governments, as well as the mainstream of articulate Western opinion, do not believe a word of that. Sufficient evidence is their tolerance for many years of US-backed Israeli crimes in Lebanon, including four invasions before this one, occupation in violation of Security Council orders for 22 years, and regular killings and abductions. To mention just one question that every journal should be answering: When did Nasrallah assume a leadership role? Answer: When the Rabin government escalated its crimes in Lebanon, murdering Sheikh Abbas Mussawi and his wife and child with missiles fired from a US helicopter. Nasrallah was chosen as his successor. Only one of innumerable cases. There is, after all, a good reason why last February, 70% of Lebanese called for the capture of Israeli soldiers for prisoner exchange.

The conclusion is underscored, dramatically, by the current upsurge of violence, which began after the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit on June 25. Every published Western "timeline" takes that as the opening event. Yet the day before, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother, and sent them to the Israeli prison system where they can join innumerable other Palestinians, many held without charges -- hence kidnapped. Kidnapping of civilians is a far worse crime than capture of soldiers. The Western response was quite revealing: a few casual comments, otherwise silence. The major media did not even bother reporting it. That fact alone demonstrates, with brutal clarity, that there is no moral justification for the sharp escalation of attacks in Gaza or the destruction of Lebanon, and that the Western show of outrage about kidnapping is cynical fraud.

Much has been said about Israel's right to defend itself from its enemies who are taking advantage of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, thus causing the latest chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Do you agree?

NC: Israel certainly has a right to defend itself, but no state has the right to "defend" occupied territories. When the World Court condemned Israel's "separation wall," even a US Justice, Judge Buergenthal, declared that any part of it built to defend Israeli settlements is "ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law," because the settlements themselves are illegal.

The withdrawal of a few thousand illegal settlers from Gaza was publicly announced as a West Bank expansion plan. It has now been formalized by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with the support of Washington, as a program of annexation of valuable occupied lands and major resources (particularly water) and cantonization of the remaining territories, virtually separated from one another and from whatever pitiful piece of Jerusalem will be granted to Palestinians. All are to be imprisoned, since Israel is to take over the Jordan valley. Gaza, too, remains imprisoned and Israel carries out attacks there at will.

Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, by the United States and Israel as well. Therefore, Israel still occupies Gaza, and cannot claim self-defense in territories it occupies in either of the two parts of Palestine. It is Israel and the United States that are radically violating international law. They are now seeking to consummate long-standing plans to eliminate Palestinian national rights for good.

The United States has refused to call for an immediate cease-fire, arguing that this would mean a return to the status quo ante, yet we are witnessing a "back to the past" re-occupation of parts of Lebanon, and Lebanon's rapid decline to political chaos by the current conflict. Is the US policy correct?

NC: It is correct from the point of view of those who want to ensure that Israel, by now virtually an offshore US military base and high-tech center, dominates the region, without any challenge to its rule as it proceeds to destroy Palestine. And there are side advantages, such as eliminating any Lebanese-based deterrent if US-Israel decide to attack Iran.

They may also hope to set up a client regime in Lebanon of the kind that Ariel Sharon sought to create when he invaded Lebanon in 1982, destroying much of the country and killing some 15-20,000 people.

What will be the likely outcome of this "two-pronged" crisis in Lebanon and the occupied territories, in the near and long-term?

NC: We cannot predict much. There are too many uncertainties. One very likely consequence, as the United States and Israel surely anticipated, is a significant increase in jihadi-style terrorism as anger and hatred directed against the United States, Israel, and Britain sweep the Arab and Muslim worlds. Another is that Nasrallah, whether he survives or is killed, will become an even more important symbol of resistance to US-Israeli aggression. Hezbollah already has a phenomenal 87% support in Lebanon itself, and its resistance has energized popular opinion to such an extent that even the oldest and closest US allies have been compelled to say that "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire." That's from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who knows better than to condemn the United States directly.

What steps do you recommend for the current hostilities to be brought to an end and a lasting peace established?

NC: The basic steps are well understood: a cease-fire and exchange of prisoners; withdrawal of occupying forces; continuation of the "national dialogue" within Lebanon; and acceptance of the very broad international consensus on a two-state settlement for Israel-Palestine, which has been unilaterally blocked by the United States and Israel for thirty years. There is, as always, much more to say, but those are the essentials.

Noam Chomsky is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the author of numerous books, and his latest is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006).

Kaveh Afrasiabi is the founder and director of Global Interfaith Peace, and a former political science professor at Tehran University. He is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press).

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14404.htm

more Israeli hatred garbage...