Thank you for this, Siun. Does the Al-Aqsa station have a web site, by any chance?

If a picture is worth a thousand words; here is a few million.

http://208.43.122.193/showthread.php?t=99232

Isn’t it, like, a war crime to strike civilian communications infrastructure?

Or civilians?

jesus effing christ

you were more than right, siun. you were prescient, i am sorry to say

I’m searching for a link PW but no luck so far.

Apparently not if they are Palestinian.

I’ve Dugg it here.

Are the arab governments going to do nothing? They risk their own heads if they don’t. They all have fundamentalist groups that would like to replace them.
An oil embargo is a possibility is anyone even bothering to complain to the UN anymore or the Hague?

Disgusting and tragic…! Aloha, Siun!

Btw, Siun, Badger points to evidence that the Egyptians played a role in deceiving Hamas…!

That was the first thing I thought. They’re trying to keep independent news from coming out of Gaza.

This is an outrage planned for this time of year, when USTradMed won’t want to disturb the good holiday feelings except for the Blago “scandal” and other frippery they can speculate endlessly about.

We’ve seen very little about the toxic spill and very little about this toxic attack. No toxinz during the holidaze! Might displease the viewers.

There are calls out now for some sort of embargo but it’s unclear how many Arab countries will support it. There has been an ongoing boycott campaign in Europe to boycott all Israeli goods.

The reactions in Arabic countries are just developing – and are complex. The Gazans and the Palestinians in general are seen as a burden to many of the governments while they have strong support on the streets (see the video in my post earlier today (I think it was the top one from Al Jazeera) showing the reaction of the Islamic Brotherhood in Jordan for example.

In Hawaii, Obama Monitoring Gaza Conflict
President-Elect Has Received Intelligence Briefings, But Stresses “One President At A Time”

…According to an Obama transition aide, the president-elect discussed the Mideast situation today with Secretary of State Condelezza Rice. “They discussed the situations in Gaza and in South Asia. The president-elect appreciated the call and the information from Secretary Rice. He will continue to closely monitor these and other global events. The call lasted approximately eight minutes and was initiated by the president-elect,” the aide said.

However, I’m not placing faith in Obama in this travesty… Like, Pelosi…

Asked by the New York Times whether Israel should negotiate with Hamas in Gaza, he replied, “I don’t think any country would find it acceptable to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens.”

“The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if — I don’t even care if I was a politician. If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

“In terms of negotiations with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries. I think that Hamas leadership will have to make a decision at some point as to whether it is a serious political party seeking to represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people. And, as a consequence, willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence as a tool to achieve its aims. Or whether it wants to continue to operate as a terrorist organization. Until that point, it’s hard for Israel, I think, to negotiate with a country that — or with a group that doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

I saw Badger’s report – the role of Egypt is also complex – Israeli and US media have said Egypt approved a limited attack as does the source Badger is using. I’m not confident enough to make a judgement on that.

Mechanized animals.

It would cost Obama nothing to issue a statement lamenting civilian casualties and suggesting Israel’s action is in no way commensurate with the level of provocation.

I have seen or heard nothing that would make me think he intends to break with the tradition of unconditional U.S. support for Israeli aggression.

Honest exposure of Gaza is everywhere..except in the US.

The world recoils at Gaza bloodshed, US backs Israel.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/sto…..ion=justin

The Gaza massacres must spur us to action.
http://electronicintifada.net/…..0055.shtml

Video..warning attached..
http://beyond.euskalaretoa.com…..409988/0#0

Good articles here:
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/

Obama’s comment on Gaza…is no comment.
http://news.antiwar.com/2008/1…..o-comment/

Actually I had first wondered if this is happening on the eve of the inauguration because Israel would find a less willing partner in the US for this kind of action. Not so sure now.

The Arab League of Nations has delayed their emergency meeting until Wednesday.

http://www.news.com.au/heralds…..63,00.html

Israel was hedging it’s bets with the timing. Just in case Obama is less supportive, they would get it done on Bush’s watch. If McCain had won the election, no problem, business as usual.

It is a safe bet the U.S. has been fully aware of Israel’s plans. Also worth noting that Obama has been getting all the presidential briefings, so this travesty can come as no surprise to him.

Thanks for all the good links – I hope folks will share any links they find as we continue this coverage.

As I said, I am undecided as to what Israel expects from an Obama administration. “Whoops” from Israel won’t quite cover it if Obama seeks to rein them in.

Quick- Where’s the roadmap? Get out that damned roadmap?

I seriously doubt if they are concerned. Israel appears to have more influence over U.S. foreign policy than does any U.S. president.

Unfortunately, there is no sign that Obama wants to rein them in.

Bush’s ”roadmap for peace” is as pertinent as ”My Pet Goat”.

thers upstairs

Oh, Obama was aware of it awhile ago… So was most of the UN SC..

Israel initiates a media campaign to prepare for a Gaza offensive

Monday December 21, 2008

The Israeli Foreign Ministry started an international media campaign in an attempt to garner support for a large-scale military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, instructed the Israeli embassies around the world to start diplomatic activities in order to gather support for an offensive in Gaza.

The main Israeli focus right now is on countries that are members of the Security Council and a number of EU countries.

Also, Livni instructed the Israeli delegates to the United Nations to file an official complaint to UN Security General, Ban Ki-moon. She said that the UN must understand that Israel will “not remain idle while Qassam shells are being fired at Israeli areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip”.

Btw, click on home at the top of the page and look at the plethora of Gaza stories…!

My hope, however dim, is that once he can actually apply some policies, this will be one of them. I am not however, optimistic.

The other day there were reports of people in Gaza picking through the garbage dump looking for food.
Now this. NY Times said 225 dead was the highest level in 10 years? Except for every year since!

Israel to mount emergency international PR effort in wake of Gaza campaign

Merry Christmas.

The UN has actually been very good on the issues of the blockade and devastation of Gaza … they have pushed over and over to get food relief in for the past two months and have been outspoken on the issues. So outspoken in fact that Israel deported the Special Rights Envoy rather than allow him to investigate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..51772.html

I have an oxdown diary up in part on this. Basically the timing has to do with elections in Israel in February. Kadima wanted to show they were as tough as Likud so they decided to beat up on the Palestinians. As obscene as this is it is nothing more than a campaign ploy.

Pictures..it was a beautiful day until…’Today’s massacre’
http://picasaweb.google.com/sa…..ySMasscre#

The hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n…..13839.html

In this article, the Israeli Gush Shalom peace movement blames Israel for the escalation of violence.
http://www.middle-east-online……/?id=29402

New Poll: Kadima surges into the lead.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/S…..0111709915

The article mentions the Likud party activist, Moshe Feiglin. He knows how to arrange the ethnic cleansing of Arabs.Here he is giving his speech in Toronto explaning how to accomplish that. It has bad video sound. At the end he says the 6th step is to never sign a peace agreement. All hate speech is acceptable if one is a Zionist, apparently.

http://video.google.ca/videopl…..5452525532

Funny thing is if you want to leave Gaza you can’t no one no one will take you. All the Arab countries say they have too many Palistinians. Hell you even have to wait for Canada. Yeah what’s going on there is a WAR CRIME but O doesn’t do WAR CRIMES so don’t hold your breath.

Damn Harry Truman anyways it’s all his fault. And the Law of Unintended Consequences. You know these Israel firsters are all suspect morally. Did Washington say something about beware of foreign entanglements. Well we should have listened. How many Billions have we given them and this is how they pay us back. I love how Hamas is supposed to stop themselves from giving the Israeli’s an excuse to kill them some civilians. I guess they’re supposed to listen to those leaders that keep dying. Now they’ll just have to go in there and crush some kids with tanks and burn those garbage dumps they’ve been letting those people eat from.

The only map that Bush is interested in is the one of Iraq’s oilfields. The one that Cheney had in March 2001.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/s…..oil-fields

Oh, of course, sure it’s Israel’s fault. Always our fault. I mean, rockets were rained on us for eight years on an almost daily basis, even when we and the Hamas had cease fire agreement. Must’ve been our fault then, too. Yes, innocent civilians will be killed, but this is WAR, this is how it works. Give me one war, one, in which only soldiers were killed.

The Hamas is their government , for crying out loud – this isn’t some little fanatic group that is attacking Israel, it’s their government!

And before someone says that if it’s ok to kill civilians in a war terrorism is ok, Hamas never attacks the IDF because they are cowards. They attack civilians on purpose, and only civilians. While it’s a shame that innocent arabs get caught in the middle, it’s the Hamas who’s using them as human shields.

Where were you when Israel civilians were killed? When Hamas killed those who came to give them humanitarian aid? When they killed captives and traded their bodies for the murderers we had in captivity?

Before you go around yelling how Israel is evil, do your frigging research.

For those who are seeking out more perspectives and POV’s regarding what Israel is doing or more to the point not doing suggested reading is to be found at http://www.zmag.org on daily/weekly basis.

For December 28,2008 at http://www.zmag.org Znet site one will find two articles that are directly addressed to Israeli genocidal ambitions and Israeli conduct of past 36 hours in Gaza.

To be found at the Znet site,under 12/28 entries–

First article,titled “Stop The Massacre In Gaza–Boycott Israel Now!” was submitted by BNC on 12/28.

Second article,titled “Gaza Massacres Must Spur Us To Action” was submitted by Ali Abunimah on 12/28. A short excerpt from this article below–

” What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce,Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them,kills them and continuess to violently colonize their land.”

— above excerpt from “Gaza Massacres Must Spur Us To Action”

What I would like to put to soon to be American President Barack Obama are three questions regarding where he stands on what Israel is doing to/in West Bank and Gaza based on above excerpt.

President Obama–are you for starving a people,killing a people in order to violently steal and colonize their land?

President Obama–will you go to Gaza in first week of your being American President–fully independent of any Israeli interference or meddling and see Gaza for yourself?

President Obama–will you do this?

President Obama can either display true moral/ethical authority or he can do more of what war criminal SOS Rice and all other Bush/Cheney regime war criminals have been greenlighting Israel on over and over.

If President Obama rises to this moral/ethical call to action good for him and all Americans.

If he does not then he becomes an American war criminal on Jan.20,2009 and he cannot escape his decision based on “not knowing” what Israel is doing or has done to/in West Bank and Gaza.

It is this simple.

Sad to say, but I don’t think Obama is going to do anything other than defend Israel. He spoke with Rice and she is defending Israel. The US government is defending Israel. Obama’s cop out for not speaking at this time is that there is only one president at a time. Pelosi and Emmanuel are Israeli ‘firsters’;the chance of Obama being any different is about zero.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI…..ef=topnews
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..us_mideast

Found this by Pelosi on Nov. 5/08. She says Obama must govern from the middle. If he goes too far left it might cause the loss of seats in 2010.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI…..cnnSTCText

Feel better now? I do lots of research. Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Many here in the past 24 hours have done their research and that is why links are provided. Many around the world are doing their research. None of us make up stories. The stories are real, the pictures are real, the slow motion genocide of the past two years is real.

Is this what you are part of? I do my research.

http://www.masortiyouth.org/noam

There are peace groups within Israel that horrified by what is happening. I am sure that you know that. Do you think that they are wrong? They certainly know what reality is. They have lived their research.

Orthodox Rabbis for a single state solution.

http://www.nkusa.org/

How widely will this spread? Last Feb., Robert Baer wrote in Time:

“Israel knows too that Hamas would like to drag Egypt into it. And, who knows, it might work. At some level someone in Egypt is complicit in smuggling weapons into Gaza. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition party, still looks at Hamas as its Palestinian branch. Iran and Hizballah have been soliciting Egypt’s cooperation in more help for Gaza. Will Egyptian President Mubarak be able to hold the line, keep a lid on Gaza, when Israel itself can’t?

Count on it, Israel will do something to change the status quo in Gaza… what Israel sorely misses is the capacity to strike fear into its neighbors, deterrence. Lebanon is second on the neighborhood triage list.. The only reason Hizballah has not responded more forcefully is that the time is not right. But a war in nearby Gaza might just be the perfect time.”

http://www.time.com/time/world…..78,00.html

As predicted, “Iran Orders Muslims to Defend Palestinians”: “Echoing Khameini and Larijani’s hints, Borujerdi called Egypt out by name and censured the Arab nation for being the primary obstacle to Iran’s attempts to send aid to Gaza.”

http://www.ynetnews.com/articl…..19,00.html

Gee, what an entirely unforeseeable chain of events. Hamas declares an end to the ”truce” (which still involved at least one rocket and/or mortar attack a day on civilians), ratcheted up the attacks, and reaffirmed their dedication to the destruction of Israel, and Israel does something completely UNEXPECTED AND UNREASONABLE AND UNJUSTIFIED and starts blowing the shit out of Hamas.

Who, I believe, still holds at least one or two Israeli soldiers hostage.

Nope. Never saw that coming.

J.

The word you forgot to capitalize is “DISPROPORTIONATE.” As Juan Cole puts it:

“Israel blames Hamas for primitive homemade rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Sederot. In 2001-2008, these rockets killed about 15 Israelis and injured 433, and they have damaged property. In the same period, Gazan mortar attacks on Israel have killed 8 Israelis.

Since the Second Intifada broke out in 2000, Israelis have killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly a thousand of them minors. Since fall of 2007, Israel has kept the 1.5 million Gazans under a blockade, interdicting food, fuel and medical supplies to one degree or another. Wreaking collective punishment on civilian populations such as hospital patients denied needed electricity is a crime of war.

The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.

http://www.juancole.com/

I can’t take it no more, Obama is showing every sign of being a War Pig just like Bush. Man has no morals no empathy just a smiley face fascist pig.

And the business of America is War…

So, because Hamas is incompetent, Israel should tie its hands behind its back?

Israel’s response is VERY disproportionate — on the basis of intent. Hamas’ goal is the complete and utter extermination of the state of Israel. (Read Hamas’ charter.) Israel’s intent is to get them to stop shooting.

If I walk up to someone three times my size and kick them in the shins and slap them in the face, I will not expect them to refrain from kicking my ass.

”Proportionate” is based on the idea that things should go back to the status quo. In this case, it means Hamas will cut back to only a couple of rockets and mortars a day. Sorry, NOT ACCEPTABLE.

J.