Category Archives: Gaza
Israel denounces Gaza war crimes investigation by UN
And this really, would be laughable if it wasn’t so damn disgusting. It is also a high-irony alert. From Jurist:
In an interview with a reporter, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the probe is an attempt to demonize Israel and that it has no moral ground. Palmor also condemned the UNHRC as unreliable and having the worst history of all the organizations within the UN. The criticism came the same day that the UNHRC announced the appointment of South African judge Richard Goldstone to head the fact-finding mission. Israel has not said if it will cooperate with the probe, which was originally approved by the UNHCR in January.
The impetus for the probe was a report [authored by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk], which criticized Israel for failing to take adequate precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants in their offensives in the region. Both Israel and the US criticized the report, calling the rapporteur’s views “anything but fair.” An internal Israeli military investigation found earlier this week that war crimes had not been committed in the offensive despite individual reports by Israeli soldiers. Israel has already disputed a previous report to the UNHRC that accused it of human rights violations. In January, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said that it lacked standing to investigate possible war crimes in Gaza.
Sweet Jaysus in a speedo..demonize Israel and that it has no moral ground? Dude, you are so full of shit, your eyes better be brown. Morally, Israel is so bankrupt, when it comes to Palestine..I can’t even begin to point out the obvious here…but let me try..
Letting Israel’s military investigate their own war crimes is tantamount to the fox guarding the henhouse.
Their own soldiers reported various war crimes during the latest Gaza seige.
Plenty of news reports are out there..including numerous videos of Israel bombing civilians homes.
More civilians were killed than Hamas soldiers in Gaza, by all news accounts. This one alone states 1,434 Palestinians, including 960 civilians were killed.
Violations of the Geneva Conventions which require the military to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.
From The Guardian:
The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals.
A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their operators can tell the colour of the clothes worn by a target.
*snip*
Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. They describe how they were taken from home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of Israeli tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing, and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them. “They would make us go first so if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us, not them,” 14-year-old Al’a al-Attar said.
Israel isn’t above the law or the Geneva Conventions. That they would kill more civilians than Hamas soldiers and use children as human shields turns my stomach. Watch all three parts of The Guardians investigation into Israel war crimes here.
9 Israeli human rights groups think Israel has committed war crimes
I shit you not people. From IHT:
Nine Israeli human rights groups called on Wednesday for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza since tens of thousands of civilians there have nowhere to flee, the health system has collapsed, many are without electricity and running water, and some are beyond the reach of rescue teams.
“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare and raises the suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of the commission of war crimes,” the groups said in their first news conference on the 19-day-old war.
If that doesn’t tell you something, your fucking daft. Keep in mind that both Hamas and Israel are asshats of the highest order. Both are war-mongering fucks.
But Israel admits it has not slowed down Hamas. From another IHT article:
Despite heavy air and ground assaults, Israel has yet to cripple the military wing of Hamas or destroy the group’s ability to launch rockets, Israeli intelligence officials said on Tuesday, suggesting that Israel’s main goals in the conflict remain unfulfilled even after more than two weeks of war.
The comments reflected a view among some Israeli officials that any lasting solution to the conflict would require either a breakthrough diplomatic accord that heavily restricts Hamas’s military abilities or a deeper ground assault into urban areas of Gaza, known here as a possible “Phase Three” of the war.
Over a thousand Palestinians have been killed so far. From the Guardian article:
So far 1,010 Palestinians have died, including 315 children and 95 women, Dr Moawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza’s medical emergency services, told the Guardian. The number of injured after 19 days of fighting stood at 4,700, he said. On the Israeli side, 13 people have died, among them three civilians, and four soldiers accidentally killed by their own troops.
If two weeks of constant shelling has not stopped Hamas…perhaps it is time to talk ya’all? Or do the numbers of dead and wounded in this pissing contest mean nothing to either side?
Dick Cheney has no remorse for the thousands of dead and wounded in Iraq…it’s not impossible to believe the same about Hamas and the government of Israel..but it does sicken and anger me.
Speaking of moi…..now the doc thinks I have Mono..an old bat with mono…wtf? All I know is I ain’t getting any better and I am a tad bitchy..ok…real bitchy. The ball and chain is real glad I am sleeping a LOT. 😉
Lebanon fires rockets into Israel
Sweet-Jaysus-in-a-speedo….the shit has not only hit the fan, its getting knee-deep. From Reuters:
Israel pressed its offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday amid sharp Red Cross criticism that it was delaying access to casualties.
A rocket salvo from Lebanon slightly wounded two people in northern Israel and briefly raised fears that Hezbollah fighters were opening a second front to relieve pressure on Gaza. But an Israeli cabinet minister blamed Palestinian groups in Lebanon.
This isn’t going away any time soon. It will only get worse. Keep in mind that very few Israeli’s have been killed while over 700 Palestinians are dead from this pissing contest. Again from Reuters:
Eleven Israelis have died in the past 13 days, eight of them soldiers, including four killed by “friendly” fire.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its officials and Palestinian ambulance workers had found four starving children huddled with at least 12 corpses in Gaza in a house 80 meters from an Israeli military position.
Among the dead in the house, found lying on mattresses, were the children’s mothers, the ICRC said.
In nearby houses in Gaza’s devastated Zeitoun neighborhood, the team found another three corpses and 15 survivors, including several who were wounded, the Geneva-based agency said.
It is so hard to wrap my mind around this carnage. It makes me weep.
Two wrongs do NOT make a right.
Hamas is pure, unadulterated, evil batshit on one hand. This fact can not be denied. They are as extreme as you can get. They also help what is one of the worlds poorest populations. From CFR:
In addition to its military wing, the so-called Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, Hamas devotes much of its estimated $70-million annual budget to an extensive social services network. It funds schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues. “Approximately 90 percent of its work is in social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities,” writes the Israeli scholar Reuven Paz. The Palestinian Authority often fails to provide such services; Hamas’s efforts in this area—as well as a reputation for honesty, in contrast to the many Fatah officials accused of corruption—help to explain the broad popularity it summoned to defeat Fatah in the PA’s recent elections.
The fact that they have a totally fucked up military presence in Gaza however, does not give Israel the right to use the full force of it’s military to bomb Gaza off the face of the earth. There are a million and a half Palestinian’s that live in Gaza.
They are not all insurgents. Anyone that says otherwise is not only uninformed, they are stupid.
Currently, over 345 residents of Gaza are dead due to Israel’s bombs, with another 1400 injured with at least a third being innocent civilans. How many Israeli’s have been killed by Hamas’ crude bombs during the same period?
The whole fucking eye for an eye biblical bullshit is lost on me, but that said…this pissing contest between Hamas and the Israeli government is very lopsided. For a historical perspective, check out this McClatchy article:
It was the highest death toll from Gaza rockets and mortars in a single day. Until Monday, Palestinian rocket fire had killed eight Israelis in the past two years. Since Israel launched the air strikes on Saturday, four Israelis have been killed in attacks from Gaza.
One of my commenter’s had the audacity to state, in the post below, that all Palestinians are vermin, that they teach their children to hate Israeli’s. Besides the fact that his statement is unprovable, its inaccurate as all get out. It’s equivalent to saying all American’s are vermin and hate Iraqi’s just because the Bush Administration invaded Iraq and commenced tearing that country apart, installing a government as corrupt as Saddam’s was and blowing their infrastructure to hell so that clean water and electricity are things of the past.
I see what Israel is doing as a ridiculous dance of futility. They will not endear themselves to anyone with their show of force. They already control how much food, energy and medical supplies get into Gaza, and they use that weapon to it’s fullest. They force all Palestinians to suffer for the actions of the extremists.
They remind me of Bush, Cheney and the whole PNAC crowd… and we all know how that has turned out, don’t we?
There has to be a better way to create livable conditions for both Palestinian’s and Israeli’s…there has to be. All Israel is doing now is alienating Palestinians that hold no allegiance to Hamas.
Like Bush and Cheney did in Iraq.
Using a wrecking ball when a hammer will do the job.
This just freaks me the hell out. As of today, almost 300 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets in this latest pissing contest between Hamas and Israel. Women and children, people, …they are killing civilians en masse over the death of one Israeli.Â
Methinks this is a form of genocide. In any case, Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong..
Its my Right to be Left of the Center 