Latest reports points to 40 casualties from this latest bombing.

“”House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that leading House Democrats are currently drafting a non-binding congressional resolution to support Israel’s Gaza incursion. The resolution, being drafted by the office of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), will offer tacit support for Israel and look into conditions for peace without explicitly demanding a ceasefire.”"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..ostComment

Seems like a good time for us all to make some calls. All the contacts are here.

What part of civilian does the IDF not understand?

To the IDF all Arabs are terrorists; there’s no such thing as a civilian. Additionally, by killing the women and children the IDF attempts to ensure a lower birth rate amongst the Palestinians and children won’t grow up to be terrorists.

Apparently, descriptions like “pinpoint accuracy” and “surgical precision” are inventions of somebody’s marketing department.

When your goal is the total elimination of a race,why does it matter what you bomb?

Something to ponder…Hitler nearly swept up all of Europe before the US got directly involved, and entered the fight on the correct side.

[Mod: we trust you mean the US entered on the right side, and not Hitler]

I just called my Rep, Lloyd Doggett from Austin, TX. I spoke to an aide saying I wanted him to do everything in his power to create a cease fire. Even though he’s one of the most progressive reps in the House, I don’t hold out much hope. In the past he has supported the travesty of a “Wall” that the Israelis have created. It’s frustrating – the Israel situation is the only issue where his views aren’t in complete agreement with my own.

I was born and raised in America and have lived here almost all my life. I hold dual American and Israeli citizenship. What the leaders of both countries are doing to support the Gaza travesty is horrendous. It breaks my heart. Just as Fallujah broke my heart, just as Iraq breaks my heart.

Digg is open.

The Israelis have helped create a situation ,where there can never be peace.
The two groups have so much hatred for each other,they will never be able to live side by side
The attacks on Gaza are only gonna fuel that hatred.
The only way the Israelis can have peace is to completely eliminate the Palestinians ,otherwise the rocket attacks or suicide bombings will never stop.As long as there are any Palestinians left alive the attacks will continue!

Where are the mods?

Dugg SD

If what you say is true, then the Israelis had better do a good job. Precision targetting of places terrorists are likely to hide (civilian centers) is exactly what is required.

It’s okay. Surely there were Hamas militants in there, or kids who were going to grow up to be militants, or women who were going to get pregnant by militants, or someone who was just thinking about militants, or someone that resembled a militant. Nothing to see here. Move along.

/snark

Whatever I could say about Israel that would drive you absolutely ballistic, consider it said.

I don’t see the US govt. restraining Israel from these incursions anytime in our lifetime

Palestinians are going to need help from other quarters….

If middle east oil countries were willing to turn off the oil spigots, we’d see action fast- but they are not.

It’s the golden rule–”They guy with the gold makes the rules”

Can anyone really take the Democrats seriously about anything? Hoyer’s action is just so typical. Democrats will cave to Bush, to the Republicans, to Israel. They will cave to anybody but those who elected them.

Reports say the UN provided the GPS coord’s of the school to the IDF yet they still bombed it…or more clearly stated, enabling them to bomb it with greater precision.

It seems a bit cycnical to kill all these people for the sake of winning and election- but that’s what’s going on…seems familiar.

Have we got candidates for primaries in mind yet? If not, we’d better get hot. We need to get the neocons out of Congress.

dugg

This does not look good happening the day after UN SG Ban met with foreign ministers to try and secure a cease-fire in Gaza.

Funny, the same day, discussions were held regarding reunifying Cyprus.

Maybe UN Forces need to go to Gaza and provide peacekeeping as they do in Cyprus.

Hamas stays in power by provoking Israel into over reaction..hardliners in Israel stay in power by taking advantage of the provocation to show their muscles…

Democracy among the weak, stupid, and fearful, has heavily adverse consequences.

I’d say that these attacks will continue for about two weeks.

pup34: Siun tells us that the UN had given the GPS coordinates for the location of all its institutions in Gaza, yet 3 of the UN schools were hit with Israeli bombs. The schools were clearly marked and flying the UN flag yet 3 schools targeted in the same raid???? Israel has got to know that they are creating a generation of future extremist by this inhumane assault on Gaza; is this their way of eliminating that future generation?

Israel’s genocide against Gaza has turned me from a life-long, strong Israel supporter to a supporter of those imprisoned in the Gaza Ghetto.

Those daggnabbit terrorists. The only way to deal with them is to bomb willynilly and hope ya get a few. Those dead and mutilated kids are just terrorist propaganda tools and should be ignored. It’s just a good thing there’s no animals in there getting burned or mutilated as greenpeace and peta would be raising a ruckus. Don’t know why this is even getting any attention with that important Burris thing going on, and the bottom line is Israel has the right to kill as many terrorists and collatorals as they think necessary in the war on terror, especially as God gave them that land in the first place.

Maybe UN Forces need to go to Gaza and provide peacekeeping as they do in Cyprus.

Neither Israel nor the United States would ever permit this to happen.

The UN fell for the same trick al-Jazeera fell for in Irak. By giving GPS coordinates to the aggressors so that they wouldn’t be targeted the aggressors used those coordinates specifically to target those installations.

Except for a handful of Senators and Congress members, they are all neocons.

Biden opines that Obama fucked up by not speaking to Feinstein about CIA pick:

“The Obama transition team made a mistake by not consulting with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California before choosing Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Vice President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday”

That makes at least three mistakes for Obama

Not talking to Feinstein

Picking Richardson

Picking Biden

This is beginning to look like a rough start….

Biden needs his vocal chords temporarily removed.

your first post seemed to blame Israel for trying eliminate a whole race, in this post you are justifying what you think is eliminating a whole race. Do you not realize that there are more arabs just like these palestinians on the north, east, and south of Israel. There is also a whole population of Arabs living inside Israel. Israel is not bombing any of these Arab groups because they are not bombing Israel. So your idiotic idea, of genocide with in a small area and forgetting that there are more Arabs in Israel that are being left alone, needs some more thought.

I agree. That’s why we need to get hot.

Hamas stays in power by provoking Israel into over reaction..hardliners in Israel stay in power by taking advantage of the provocation to show their muscles…

It can be argued, that the extreme radicals’ acts call for an extreme response, and on it goes an escalating spiral of violence that will pass the torch of extremism from one generation to the next.

See my 14 above.

Oh yes- but it’s important to see who is profiting from it and how.

Can anyone really take the Democrats seriously about anything? Hoyer’s action is just so typical. Democrats will cave to Bush, to the Republicans, to Israel. They will cave to anybody but those who elected them.

To call it caving implies that they hold opposing beliefs, and are simply acquiescing under pressure to deny them.

I think it’s relatively obvious that’s not the case. They’re not caving, they’re complicit.

Democrats are just self-loathing Republicans, hence the minor variations in rhetoric and unequivocal congruency in action.

The democratic party has been the traditional defender of Israel- warts and all. Nothing has changed except that goopers decided to get in on the act because of the christian right.

Biden opines that Obama fucked up by not speaking to Feinstein about CIA pick:

“The Obama transition team made a mistake by not consulting with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California before choosing Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Vice President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday”

No, here’s what is going down. There are times, when as the one in charge, you act and then apologize. The action is one you know will get the job done but if it was presented before acting on it, could stir opposition.

Rather than make a president look weak by him stating, “I made a mistake.” Biden carries water and states “the transition team made a mistake” by not consulting. Biden never criticizes the choice. This is golden and well played.

Biden is watching Obama’s back and doing it beautifully. No chords need be removed.

I hear ya, although i can not really defend bombing refugees, I do hope that either somebody messed up or they know something we dont. I cannot condone killing innocent people trying to take refuge in a school.

I’m pasting my comment from Siun’s last update. It got in almost too late, and it contains a link that is important.

Nomolos gave a link that led me to a site to donate to the people imprisoned in the Gaza Ghetto. The link below gives info about the organization, United Palestinian Appeal, which was organized in 1978.

If you read the info there and consider it worthy, you can donate any amount from $10.00 on up.

I just donated $50.00. If it will buy a few loaves of bread, some aspirin, a few jugs of clean water, a few rolls of bandages, maybe then I will feel less like crying all the time.

I’ll tell you how I have been turned from a strong pro-Israel supporter since my childhood to a strong supporter of Israel’s victims inside their Gaza Ghetto:

I was about 11 or 12 when the movie newsreels showed Ike opening the gates of Auschwitz and left those scenes imprinted on my young brain. Then in high school I read the book, The Wall, written about the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto where Hitler’s Nazis did to the Polish Jews exactly what Israel is doing to the Palestinians now in Gaza – walled in, no food, no medicine, no fuel for heating and cooking, no communication with the outside to allow the non-Jewish citizenry to know the atrocities being committed.

And now our own dictator-president furnishes the hideous weapons that enable Israel to commit these crimes against humanity and blocks the UN Security Council’s efforts to call for a cease fire.

Yes, I’m crying; for the children of Gaza, the dead, wounded and those forever psychologically harmed; for all those trapped there with all doors closed to them and nowhere to flee as the bombs rain down and the white phosphorus shells burst plastering all below with blobs of inextinguishable heat that melts whatever it touches – on and on.

But I also cry for a world that condemned such inhumanity and an America when honor was a noble word and men fought and died to put a stop to such genocide as is now being conducted.

To read and consider contributing, here is the link:

http://www.helpupa.com/

Oh, some Arabs are being “left alone” and not murdered while they are seeking shelter in UN designated safe areas. How thoughtful!

Think so?

Sounds like a typical Biden foot chewing instance to me- a comment made off the cuff and unscripted. It is of no value other than prolonging an issue for another news cycle. It does NOTHING for Obama that I can see.

That was the conclusion I came to – it is so ugly.

The US can veto any “product” of the Security Council, but there is no veto in the UN General Assembly. Maybe there are enough countries with souls left in the world to condemn Israel for this genocide in the Gen Assembly.

Is there a petition going to stop this?

You’re naive to think that Israel won’t suffer attacks from groups outside of the Gaza strip
This kind of aggression only helps to fuel that intense hatred one group has for the other,basically creating a breading ground for terrorists

Obama breaks his silence long enough to tell the world that he will stay silent.

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, breaking his silence about the Gaza war, expressed deep concern on Tuesday about the loss of civilian lives in Gaza and in Israel.

Speaking after Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, Obama told reporters “the loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel is a source of deep concern for me.”

But Obama otherwise said he would adhere to his principle that only U.S. President George W. Bush would speak for American foreign policy at this time, but said he would have plenty more to say after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenew…..010721.htm

It may sound off the cuff but Biden does not state that anything is wrong with the pick or Obama. Just the transition team. Thus, a more calculated statement than it may have come off as. Intell and foreign policy have been huge to Joe. He would back Obama on this choice.

So Obama walks away with a strong choice and the transition team takes a hand slap.

Jay and Diane will eventually come off as, ”Me thinks thou dost protest too much.” They would be smart to get in line, acknowledge the transition team had a slight protocol error, but that they (transition team) have the biggest problems to overcome of any transition team in history and this protocol error was small in comparison to the country’s problems and then make a VERY supportive comment of Obama’s strong leadership during such a challenging transition.

Let’s see how this goes…I suspect we’ll hear a Jay and Diane Obama cheer within 24 hours.

Thanks for the update, bb. I’m sure it is hard for Obama to hold his tongue; and it is very, very hard for me to accept his silence!

I take it that these bombings are a message to the UN and to any UN staff in Gaza?

exactly!

Panetta will bring his former Army intel background, Nixonian challenge experience and service on the Iraq Study Group to his position in addition to his Washington insight, contacts and understanding of the types of information a WH needs in terms of intel.

“What part of civilian does the IDF not understand?”
Apparently, all of it. There is no concept more ungracious than ‘acceptable collateral damage’. It is used to justify all manner of terrorist acts. Like all ungracious choices, it invites instructive consequences with its use as demonstrated by all parties in this conflict.

I am mostly with Acquarius except I dropped my politeness on this subject long ago.

Like most Americans I grew with the typical Hollywood inspired sympathy for the jews and Israel. When lightening struck me about 7 years ago in regard to exactly what Israel was doing I couldn’t believe it…absolutely could not believe it. When I realized that Jewish politics in congress was the overriding factor enabling Israel’s actions I couldn’t believe it.
I railed against the idea, tried to research my way into disproving it tomyself. Surely the US foreign policy couldn’t be controled by a minority domestic faction and a foreign country…especially when that country is in the wrong. But it is and that’s just a fact.

I have called, written, faxed, implored,done it all on Israel just as I did on Iraq…it makes no difference.

Say good-by to America and hello to ISR’merica..cause that’s what we have now.

And the pattern of Israel repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats…and the excusing lies of ’self defense” repeat and repeat and repeat,over and over.

Don’t bother me with crapola about how Israel isn’t trying to destroy the civilian population of Gaza..raze it to the ground to make way for Greater Isral and more jewish settlers.
The pattern is clear and goes on and on…2006 2008, Palestine, Lebanon it’s the same. And we and the Palestines and everyone near the Iraelis pay and pay and pay.

Last update – 22:22 01/07/2006

U.S. to pay $48 million to cover damages to Gaza power station

By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

United States officials said they expect that U.S. funds will be used to pay for the damages caused by an Israel Air Force strike Tuesday on a Palestinian power station in the Gaza Strip. The power station was insured by a U.S. government agency, according to The Boston Globe.

The power station in Gaza was built over a period of five years, at a cost of $150 million.

@ Acquarius

Thanks for the link I will do the same.

Bless you, Carroll. You woke up earlier than I did. I’ve only had the internet about 3 years; that’s how I began to learn the truth about a lot of things our government does and the lies propagated by the MSM. It’s like I have gone to Hell but just didn’t die first.

This is an excellent point, and one which bears emphasizing. If Israel was actually trying to exterminate the Palestinian population (in toto or merely in Gaza) then they could have done so within an hour — and at very low cost. Merely carpetbombing the entire region with incendiaries would suffice, I should think.

Instead, many breathless, highly emotional commentators have tried to convince us that (a) the Israelis are cold, cunning genocidal maniacs while (b) they lack a basic grasp of military strategy and tactics and are thus unable to accomplish a simple task like killing everyone within a given (small) region. The inherent contradictions in this seem to have utterly escaped them.

Of course, the real responsibility for this lies with Hamas, which today said yet again that it would continue to attack Israel. The fact that this is utterly futile and will only provoke more IDF action seems to have eluded their tiny little minds. I do wonder when their fellow Palestinians will tire of Hamas’s rather obvious tactical stupidity.

Funny how no one, including the post author, has mentioned that Hamas was using the UN school to store weapons, that the weapons were also booby trapped, and that the IDF returned fire after mortars were shot at them from the school.

You want to come up with even a shred of evidence or proof? Or are you one of those who takes IDF propaganda statements as all the proof that’s needed?

When your goal is the total elimination of a race,why does it matter what you bomb?

Give it a break. We all know the Nazis tried to kill all the German Jews.

This is a different time with different people in a different place. It’s hardly a planned genocide.

It is, however, getting old very quickly. We’ve been here and seen this many times before and we know where this road leads. How long will it take for both the Israelis, including their hard-Right nuts, and the Palestinians, especially Hamas, to recognize this?

How long must they fight to show which one is more outraged at what the other has done? Even a moron could see this outrage and reaction doesn’t lead anywhere beneficial.

the travesty of a “Wall”

I don’t know about “travesty” in light of the DMZ we’ve maintained between N. and S. Korea for decades.

But, more than that, have you got a better solution?

Reports say the UN provided the GPS coord’s of the school to the IDF yet they still bombed it…or more clearly stated, enabling them to bomb it with greater precision.

Hmmm. Now there’s a take on it that the U.N. might not be happy to hear. Yet, you might be right.

Israel certainly isn’t keeping friends with this kind of “mistake”.

It can be argued, that the extreme radicals’ acts call for an extreme response, and on it goes an escalating spiral of violence that will pass the torch of extremism from one generation to the next.

Do you also wonder if arms dealers are inspiring each to try out their new toys against the other?

Arms dealers — inflaming the Middle East for generations!

Hey, Siun and pups: I Googled: UN schools bombed and this article came up second on the menu! I clicked it and here I am.

hmmmm that might bring in some interesting comments….

Congrats to FDL for hitting the Big Billboard!

Contrary to the movies, WWII was not about the jews. It was actually a “world war.’

Jew were incidentialtothe war and less than half of the total number of people who died in German camps. Gays, the mentally retarded, those born with handicaps, German objectors,Russian prisoners and others were all put into camps. Jews and everyone else who didn’t fit the perfect Aryan model were disposed of.

Civilian deaths in WWII were 41,749,400,not counting jews…11 million of those were Russian.
Military deaths were 25, 280,000…10 million of those, again, Russian.
The UK and US lost only half a million apeice.

So 67+ million people, other than jews were killed in WWII.

What on earth could your point possibly be?

My point is the holocuast and victimhood excuse, and that is what it is, used by Israel every time they holocaust some people themselves, doesn’t fly.

Shit happens,life is unfair and war is hell.

Every serial killer,child abuser and run of the mill criminal has an excuse for his crimes…Mommy abused me, my wife cheated on me, I was beat up by bullies in the second grade…it’s always someone else made me do it.

Other than the ‘genetically’ criminaly insane, killers don’t get aquitted of their crimes because someone else made them do it.