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Sharon is war criminal says London Mayor Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone has reignited his dispute with Britain's Jewish leaders by launching a provocative attack on the "war criminal" Ariel Sharon.
In a riposte to criticism from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the London mayor accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and said its prime minister should be imprisoned. He also accused Israel of demonising Muslims.
Writing in the Guardian, he again rejected accusations of anti-semitism arising from his confrontation two weeks ago with the Jewish newspaper reporter he likened to a German concentration camp guard.
In a riposte to criticism from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the London mayor accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and said its prime minister should be imprisoned. He also accused Israel of demonising Muslims.
Writing in the Guardian, he again rejected accusations of anti-semitism arising from his confrontation two weeks ago with the Jewish newspaper reporter he likened to a German concentration camp guard.
But while stressing his steadfast opposition to racism and his regard for the Jewish people, he accused Israel of spreading misinformation about the scale of anti-semitism in Europe, and seeking to silence critics by calling them anti-semitic.
Mr Livingstone said: "Israel's expansion includes ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at ethnically cleansing what became a large part of the Israeli state."
He added: "Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return.
"Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila [Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut] massacre."
Mr Livingstone said the Israeli government presented a "wholly distorted picture of racism and religious discrimination in Europe", so it appeared Jews suffered most discrimination.
"The reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims. They are the primary targets of the extreme right."
Relations between the mayor and key sections of the Jewish community are tense because of his clash with the Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold and his subsequent refusal to apologise, and his invitation to the Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi to speak at a conference in London last year.
One of Mr Livingstone's most high-profile critics following the clash with Mr Finegold was Zvi Heifetz, the Israeli ambassador to London.
He said last night: "The mayor is confused once again. Ethnic cleansing was perpetrated in the concentration camps which he should know being such an expert on them.
"The dozens of world leaders who attended the London meeting only two days ago [all commend Mr] Sharon, for his courageous steps to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Commenting on the row with an article in Wednesday's Guardian, Henry Grunwald of the Board of Deputies said Mr Livingstone must reverse his stance and make amends, adding: "He has let us down. He has let his office down. Oliver Finegold deserves an apology, Holocaust survivors deserve an apology, the Jewish community deserves an apology and most of all, London deserves an apology. Then we can all move on."
The Board of Deputies has triggered an investigation into Mr Livingstone's conduct by the local government watchdog, the Standards Board for England.
A spokesman for the Board of Deputies last night accused Mr Livingstone of seeking to deflect attention away from his own behaviour by attacking Israel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1430316,00.html
Mr Livingstone said: "Israel's expansion includes ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at ethnically cleansing what became a large part of the Israeli state."
He added: "Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return.
"Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila [Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut] massacre."
Mr Livingstone said the Israeli government presented a "wholly distorted picture of racism and religious discrimination in Europe", so it appeared Jews suffered most discrimination.
"The reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims. They are the primary targets of the extreme right."
Relations between the mayor and key sections of the Jewish community are tense because of his clash with the Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold and his subsequent refusal to apologise, and his invitation to the Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi to speak at a conference in London last year.
One of Mr Livingstone's most high-profile critics following the clash with Mr Finegold was Zvi Heifetz, the Israeli ambassador to London.
He said last night: "The mayor is confused once again. Ethnic cleansing was perpetrated in the concentration camps which he should know being such an expert on them.
"The dozens of world leaders who attended the London meeting only two days ago [all commend Mr] Sharon, for his courageous steps to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Commenting on the row with an article in Wednesday's Guardian, Henry Grunwald of the Board of Deputies said Mr Livingstone must reverse his stance and make amends, adding: "He has let us down. He has let his office down. Oliver Finegold deserves an apology, Holocaust survivors deserve an apology, the Jewish community deserves an apology and most of all, London deserves an apology. Then we can all move on."
The Board of Deputies has triggered an investigation into Mr Livingstone's conduct by the local government watchdog, the Standards Board for England.
A spokesman for the Board of Deputies last night accused Mr Livingstone of seeking to deflect attention away from his own behaviour by attacking Israel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1430316,00.html
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Not to speak out against this injustice would not only be wrong. It would ignore the threat it poses to us all
Ken Livingstone
Friday March 4, 2005
The Guardian
Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history - the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity.
Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism.
No serious commentator has argued that my comments to an Evening Standard reporter outside City Hall last month were anti-semitic. So I am glad that Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, accepted on these pages that "Ken is sincere when he states that he regards the Holocaust as the worst crime of the last century".
The contribution of Jewish people to human civilisation and culture is unexcelled and extraordinary. You only have to think of giants such as Einstein, Freud and Marx to realise that human civilisation would be unrecognisably diminished without the achievements of the Jewish people. The same goes for the Jewish contribution to London today.
As mayor, I have pressed for police action over anti-semitic attacks at the highest level, and my administration has backed a series of initiatives of importance to the Jewish community, including hosting the Anne Frank exhibition at City Hall and measures to ensure the go-ahead for the north London eruv.
Throughout the 1970s, I worked happily with the Board of Deputies in campaigns against the National Front. Problems began when, as leader of the Greater London Council, I rejected the board's request that I should fund only Jewish organisations that it approved of. The Board of Deputies was unhappy that I funded Jewish organisations campaigning for gay rights and others that disagreed with policies of the Israeli governmen.
Relations with the board took a dramatic turn for the worse when I opposed Israel's illegal invasion of Lebanon, culminating in the massacres at the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. The board also opposed my involvement in the successful campaign in 1982 to convince the Labour party to recognise the PLO as the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people.
The fundamental issue on which we differ, as Henry Grunwald knows, is not anti-semitism - which my administration has fought tooth and nail - but the policies of successive Israeli governments.
To avoid manufactured misunderstandings, the policies of Israeli governments are not analogous to Nazism. They do not aim at the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people, in the way Nazism sought the annihilation of the Jews.
Israel's expansion has included ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at ethnically cleansing what became a large part of the Israeli state. The methods of groups like the Irgun and the Stern gang were the same as those of the Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic: to drive out people by terror.
Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
Sharon continues to organise terror. More than three times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed in the present conflict. There are more than 7,000 Palestinians in Israel's jails.
To obscure these truths, those around Israel's present government have resorted to demonisation. Initial targets were Palestinians, and have now become Muslims. Take the Middle East Media Research Institute, run by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence, which poses as a source of objective information but in reality selectively translates material from Arabic and presents Muslims and Arabs in the worst possible light.
Today the Israeli government is helping to promote a wholly distorted picture of racism and religious discrimination in Europe, implying that the most serious upsurge of hatred and discrimination is against Jews.
All racist and anti-semitic attacks must be stamped out. However, the reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims - and they are the primary targets of the extreme right. For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments - not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral.
They are also fuelling anger and violence across the world. For a mayor of London not to speak out against such injustice would not only be wrong - but would also ignore the threat it poses to the security of all Londoners.
· Ken Livingstone is the London mayor
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1430184,00.html
It was demonstrated long ago that Israel didn't commit the killings of Sabra and Shatila. The authors of those killings were the Christian Lebanese Phalanges.
Why was the invasion of Lebanon illegal? Israel and the legitimate government of Lebanon were allies. The Palestinians were massacring Christian Lebanese and launching terrorists attacks against Israel from Lebanon. That was the reason why Israel invaded that country. Once the terror problem solved, they withdrew.
At that time, Syria also invaded Lebanon. Its aim was to help the Palestinians with the massacres they were carrying out and with stablishing an Islamic regime. Syria is still there. What does that mayor think about it?
He says he had an important part in the recognision of the PLO as the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people. What a deed: the PLO was a terrorist organization.
And the Israeli government is right when it says that there is anti-Semitism in Europe, which is stated not only by Israel but also by some European intelectuals, mainly French, perhaps because in France the problem is more serious than in any other European country.
First he says what Israel is doing has nothing to do with Holocaust because Israel's aim is not to systematically kill Palestinians. However, his conclusion is that it is Holocaust.
And why does he say that Sharon commits acts of terror against the Palestinians? If that was so, not one Palestinian would have been left by now.
Ken has shown that in a world dominated by Americans and Jews there is someone bold enough to call Bush and Sharon threat to life on planet.
Why should Mr. Ken apologize to the reporter as asked by Bush's tail, Tony Blair. Tony must see that intelligence reports on WMDs of Iraq were prepared by NGOs run by jews.
To me Islam is a religion of peace and peace will prevail ultimately.
What the London mayor said is a lie. He is anti-Semite and wants the Palestinian terrorists to kill the Israelis.
What does Islam have to do with the matter?
And besides, isn't it true that there are Muslims who want to kill non-Muslims?
When opponentes detailed Qaradawi's statements regarding homosexuality, female genital mutilation and terrorism, Livingstone staunchly supported the sheikh and dismissed the outcry as a "Zionist smear campaign."
He added: "Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return.<<<FROM ABOVE ARTICLE>
If we do not like what Mr. Livingstone is saying, then let us change things so what he is saying is not true.....as it stands today what he says is true and pretending that it is not true will not change that fact.
The Jews need to stop supporting the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian People so that they can regain the full respect of the People of the World.
It is Israel that is taking Palestinian Land for it own use, not the other way around, until this one true fact is faced there will not be Peace in the Middle East and the Jews around the World will continue to lose more and more respect (therefore an increase in Anti-Semitism).
Most Jewish People are good People just like Most Palestinians are good People, let us not let the greedy few ruin it for the rest.
Do the right thing and Peace Will Follow......
Hypocrisy and double standard does not lead to peace, and people are not blind and they can see the truth as it really is.
Thirty-six years of war should be enough for such a small number of people, when you consider the World Population.
Allowing the Palestinian People to have their small state in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza can solve this conflict.
There are 1,200,000 or so Arabs living inside Israel Proper.
There are 400,000 or so Jews living inside the West Bank and Gaza.
Trying to remove all the settlement can be an almost undoable task.
So Set the Borders for Israel to it Pre 1967 Border (Green Line) and have the State of Palestine inside the West Bank and Gaza.
If the U.N. can decide the Borders of Israel in 1948,
The U.N. can decide the Borders of Palestine in 2005.
You would end up with Israel with a majority Jewish Population and Palestine with a majority Muslim Population.
This would allow for the Israeli Military to Guard and Control the Israeli pre 1967 borders instead of confiscating Palestinian Land and Demolishing Palestinian Homes in the West Bank and Gaza that only goes to fuel the need for the Palestinian People to fight for their Freedom.
The Jews who do not like living in the new Palestinian State can feel free to move to Israel if they so choose.
The Arabs living inside Israel can feel free to move to the new Palestinian State if they so choose.
Almost every nation on earth has more then one ethnic group or religious group, so why not Israel and Palestine?
It would sure be better then the never-ending conflict we have right now.
Who has died and how in this struggle for Palestinian Freedom?
CLICK HERE > http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html
Red Ken strikes again
A few weeks ago London Mayor Ken Livingstone likened a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard because he didn't approve of the reporter's employer. Despite the furor, the mayor remains unrepentant.
Offensive as this comment was, abetted by his lack of minimal remorse, it could have been dismissed as a momentary indiscretion that he was psychologically incapable of retracting. Livingstone, after all, has a long history of putting his foot in his mouth.
But on Friday Livingstone dispelled any lingering doubts. This time his bile couldn't be ascribed to an off-the-cuff gaffe. It was carefully premeditated and formulated in writing for a Guardian op-ed. Among repeated calumnies against the Jewish state, Livingstone opined that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is "a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office."
Not only is Livingstone not seeking to extricate himself from the mess he got himself into last month, but he's clearly out to pick an even greater fight. Moreover, he does so at a time in which Britain's Jews face increased hostility both from homegrown hate-mongers and from the UK's growing, sometimes extreme, Muslim community.
We haven't forgotten the fact that the terrorists who attacked Mike's Place on Tel Aviv's beachfront in 2003 came here from Britain, where they were exposed to anti-Israeli diatribes of the sort Livingstone dispenses so generously. Moreover, recent statistics show that in 2004 anti-Semitic incidents in Britain rose by a whopping 41%.
If he were a responsible politician, Livingstone would spend his energies calming intercommunal tensions and combating anti-Jewish libels, which further feed the blazing fires of anti-Semitism. To refrain from doing so is grossly negligent. To fan the flames – as Livingstone blithely does with no provocation – is outrageous.
The distinction Livingstone presumes to draw between being anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic is itself threadbare.
Anti-Semitism couched in ostensibly anti-Israeli mantras is as commonplace as the "some of my best friends are Jews" affectation – which Livingstone indeed reiterates.
This is not to say that Israel or its leaders are exempt from any criticism. If that were the case every local newspaper, including this one, would be out of business. The test, however, is whether said criticism is reasonable, of the sort that could be addressed to any other country. Minister Natan Sharansky has proposed a "3-D" test.
His D's include Demonization – when, for example, Israel is painted with Nazi images; Double-standards – when Israel is measured by a different yardstick from that applied to other countries; and Delegitimization – when Israel's basic right to exist as a secure Jewish state is denied.
If we apply this test to Livingstone's spoken and written pronouncements, it fast becomes obvious that he fails on all three counts. He has crossed the line of legitimate criticism over to what is effectively anti-Semitism.
Livingstone demonizes, applies double standards and delegitimizes Israel. Indeed he portrays Israel as "a threat to us all."
He falsely accuses it of "organizing terror" and of persisting in policies of "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians. This is not even a stone's throw from classic anti-Semitic assertions that Jews are the source of all evil. It is all but indistinguishable, except that instead of individual Jews being assailed, his barbs are aimed at the Jews' state.
Livingstone has basically said that this Jewish state deserves misfortune and bloodshed, that it brings these upon itself and that it destabilizes the rest of the world. And he has automatically made anyone who supports or is presumed to support Israel, such as British Jewry, accessories to a "crime."
Livingstone strives hard to portray himself as motivated by the purest and most high-minded of principles. Here also he fits into an all-too-familiar mold.
Livingstone would strenuously deny that he is a Jew-hater. But he cannot deny that he is sowing hatred of Jews and of Israel. For that he should be held accountable, not just by British Jewry, but by all decent Britons, the British government and the Jewish state.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull%26cid=1110079164046
_______________________________________________________________________________________
We're back to censorship? If you let the theose repulsive racist and mendacious comments by both of those "people" stand, then mine remains too.
I agree that if we were telling lies, then we should be dismissed with a wave of the hand......
But what we say is documented proof.
It is in more then one source that a wall/fence/barrier is being built inside the West Bank and not on the Green line. (an obstacle to peace)
It can be found in more then one place that the population of the settlements have gone from around 100,000 in the early 1990's to around 400,000 Today.
ANGEL is not the one who came up with a Viable Palestinian State for the Palestinian People....It was the U.S. the U.N. the E.U. and Russia. I just want it to happen sooner so that the conflict can end.
and How can you expect the Palestinians to sit there and do nothing while these obstacles to Peace continue?
Instead of going around and around give us some good answers.
INDYBAY EDITORS DELETE ANTI-ZIONISTS AND ZIONISTS, LEFTIST AND RIGHT-WINGERS, ALIKE.
WHO KNOWS ****WHAT***** THEIR DELETION CRITERIA ARE!!!
YOU JUST GOTTA COPY AND SAVE EVERTHING YOU POST!! -- AND REPOST IT LATER.
IT'S LIKE ICE-T SAYS, "FREEDOM OF SPEECH: JUST WATCH WHAT YOU SAY."
THE EDITORS EVEN DELETED JOHN SABATINO'S RACIST POST AGAINST ME -- EVEN THOUGH I *ASKED* THEM NOT TO!
NO WONDER THE LEFT IS THIS COUNTRY IS DAMN NEAR HOPELESS!! -- WE CAN'T EVEN RUN OUR OWN MEDIA WITH A WHOLE LOT MORE PRINCIPLES THAN THE RIGHT DOES!!
INDYBAY IS BECOMING *****NESSIE-IZED***** !!!!!
=============================================================================
AS FOR *YOU* NON-AFRO CRITICAL WANKIFIER..., IT'S BAD ENOUGH THAT YOU REGULARLY FORGE ME, WHENEVER YOU CAN'T REBUT ME INTELLECTUALLY
-- BUT NOW YOU'RE EVEN STEALING MY LINES!
GET YOUR *OWN* LINES!! ...ASK GERHIG FOR HELP, IF YOU CAN'T THINK OF ANY!!
HA-HA-HA!!
HE HADN'T ASSUMED 'THE PROPER POSITION' FOR THE ZIONISTS!!
DOESN'T KEN KNOW THAT TO ZIONISTS ***ONLY*** THE ***JEWS*** COUNT!!!?
"Finegold deserves an apology, Holocaust survivors deserve an apology, the Jewish community deserves an apology and most of all, London deserves an apology. APOGLIZE FOR THIS..., APOLOGIZE FOR THAT..., BLAH BLAH BLAH..., GET ON YOUR KNEES AND SUCK US..., PROSTRATE YOURSELF BEFORE US!!"
LIVINGSTONE -- AND THE REST OF US -- SHOULD JUST TELL THOSE ZIONISTS, "WE'RE ALL *TIRED* OF YOUR 'OH, THE WHOLE WORLD IS ALL ABOUT *ME*, *WE'RE* THE ONLY ONES THAT COUNT' ATTITUDE -- GO *FUCK* YOURSELVES!!"
THAT'S BASICALLY WHAT *I* TELL 'EM!!
OR, TO BORROW FROM MALCOLM X, THAT ZIONIST "ANTI-SEMITIC" STICK -- OR SHOULD I SAY *SCHTICK* -- *DON'T HURT* ME!!
John Sabatino Wednesday, Mar. 09, 2005 at 3:45 PM.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/02/1721876_comment.php#1725974
BUT, JEEESH...!!: WHEN YOU DELETE POSTS SEEMINGLY WILLY-NILLY (like mine above, about London Mayor Ken Livingstone standing up to the Zionists) WITH NO DISCERNABLE, *UNIFORM*, *STANDARD* CRITERIA, *ANYONE* COULD GET CONFUSED!!
We don't have to forget that the Palestinians have never wanted that state.
First, they refused it in 1948, when it was offered to them by the UN. Then they have always breeched all the agreements which could have make it possible.
But ANGEL *was* the one who came up with the following text sporting condescendingly racist statements:
>>>"The Jews need to stop supporting the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian People so that they can regain the full respect of the People of the World.
It is Israel that is taking Palestinian Land for it own use, not the other way around, until this one true fact is faced there will not be Peace in the Middle East and the Jews around the World will continue to lose more and more respect (therefore an increase in Anti-Semitism)."<<<
Just imagine what the reactions would have been if someone dared to say identical stuff about Muslims instead of Jews.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Editors: Censorship will lead you nowhere. I shall keep reposting this until you back off.
by Critical Thinker Thursday, Mar. 10, 2005 at 5:21 AM
Put it in context
The article was about the increase in Anti-Semitism, which is wrong.....
But if the right thing was done then there could be a decrease in Anti-Semitism which is wrong.
But if we do not look at the reason for it, How can you solve the Problem.
What Al Qaida does is wrong We say that what they do is wrong, Just because they are Muslim does not make us anti all- Muslims. It only makes us anti Al Qaida....
Just like all Muslims might unfairly get a blames becaus of Al Qaida.
All Jews might unfairly get a blamed because of what Israel does.
Just because we are against what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinian People does not make us againts all Jews, only against what Israel is doing to the Palestinian People.
If you want to end a Problem you have to look at both sides.
Why do you find a justification for anti-Semitism?
And why don't you take into account that the Israelis and the Jews have to defend themselves?
That's what happens with all the anti-Semites: first they are anti-Semite and then they look for reason. for it.
A spokesman for the Board of Deputies last night accused Mr Livingstone of seeking to deflect attention away from his own behaviour by attacking Israel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1430316,00.html
...IF... I were anti-Semitic I would not be for Israel existing in its pre 1967 (Green Line) borders. Since I am for Israel existing I am not anti-Semitic. And as I have stated in the past there are good and honest Jewish People all over the World who know that what Israel is doing is wrong and in turn is hurting them.
The Israelis would not have to defend themselves if they were not taking Palestinian Land in the West Bank for their Wall/Fence/ Barrier and for their ever growing settlements.
We could have the Viable Palestinian State called for in the road map to Peace instead of this continuing conflict.
The Israeli Military could be guarding and controlling their pre 1967 (Green Line) Borders instead of committing atrocities that causes the actions which you say they must defend themselves against.
If you want these actions to stop you have to end the reason for such actions.
The question was why there is a rise in Anti-Semitism?
There would be a decrease in Anti-Semitism if the Israeli did the fair, right, just, thing and allowed the Palestinian People to have their Tiny State in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza. Which is only 22% of what is Today Israel, West Bank and Gaza.
The Palestinians we are concerned with are the ones who live in the West Bank and Gaza...not in other Parts of the World. Just like the Jews we are concerned with are the Jews in Israel and not in other parts of the world...as far as this Middle-East Conflict goes.
4,000,000 or so Palestinians on 22% of the land.
6,000,000 (including some Arab Israelis) on 78% of the land
Do the simple math.....
Who gets the most land per person.....Fair and Just, Fair and Just, Fair and Just is the answer in the end, anyway you want to look at it.
I wish to confess that every thing that I have posted here over the last few years has been false. I have lied about facts and events that I have told you about. I wish to ask for your forgiveness as I wish to absolve myself of all my sins.
I ask the Loard to forgive me and teach me right from wrong.
Special Dispatch Series - No. 869
February 25, 2005 No.869
Al-Qaradhawi at Solidarity Conference: 'I Hope to Die a Virtuous Death Like a Jihad Warrior, with the Head Severed from the Body; The Qatar Authorities Do Not Interfere in My Sermons'
In light of the criticism recently leveled against Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, the Doha Youth Center held a solidarity conference on February 17, 2005. Various Arab and Islamic personalities participated in the conference, such as the Mufti of Oman, Ahmad Al-Khalili, Sudan's Minister of Awqaf (Endowments) 'Asim Al-Bashir, and the editor of the Egyptian nationalist weekly Al-Usbu' Mustafa Bakri. The following are excerpts from the conference:
Al-Qaradhawi: Nobody in Qatar Dictates to Me What to Talk and What Not to Talk About in My Sermons
During the conference, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi noted that the Qatari authorities give him complete freedom of action, and that they never intervened in the contents of his sermons: "I can testify about the country [Qatar] that for 44 years, since I arrived there, nobody has interfered with my freedom, prevented me from giving a sermon, or dictated to me what to talk about and what not [to talk] about. Moreover, I am the one who decides what I will talk about…
"When I was only nine, the people of my village gave me the title 'sheikh [who teaches] the Koran and religious science.' I have devoted myself to religious propagation [ da'wa ] for the sake of Allah, and I have not relinquished the mission that Allah entrusted to me. I see myself as appointed by Allah. I will never withdraw from this mission. I hope my life will end with a virtuous death, like [the death] sought by warriors fighting Jihad for the sake of Allah. I do not defend falsehood or the tyrants … but I defend and am beneficial to the affairs of my nation. I will not relinquish my mission whatever accusations are leveled at me regarding terrorism or other matters." [1]
The London Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat reported that Al-Qaradhawi said: "I am not afraid of the Mossad or the Americans." He also said: "The Mossad has threatened to eliminate me, and I hope that Allah will grant me martyrdom [ shahada ] for His sake and that my life will end by my dying at the hands of the enemies of Islam." According to the daily, Al-Qaradhawi hoped to die "a virtuous death" and that this meant "that the head would be severed from the body." [2]
London Mayor Livingstone: 'Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi's Ideology is Utterly Remote from Extremism'
During the solidarity conference, a film about Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi was aired, in which London Mayor Ken Livingstone appeared. According to a report on Al-Jazeera TV 's Internet site, Livingstone said: "We were surprised by the onslaught of unbridled distortion of facts in the papers, which described this man as a wild animal and presented him as the jurisprudent of Satan... We were therefore of the opinion that it is important to conduct a comprehensive inquiry, in which we will consult with the world's ' ulema and study Dr. Al-Qaradhawi's 140 books.
"The results of the report were astounding. It transpired that most of the fabrications that distorted Dr. Al-Qaradhawi's words come from the institute called 'The Middle East Media Research Institute,' which purports to be an objective institute interpreting the words of the Muslim ' ulema from around the world. However, we have discovered that an ex-officer in the Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, is running this institute and that the institute systematically distorts not only Al-Qaradhawi's words, but the words of many [other] Muslim ' ulema as well. In most cases, this distortion is comprehensive, and therefore we printed this document." [3]
According to the Qatar daily Al-Sharq, Livingstone noted that after special committees had studied Al-Qaradhawi's ideology by reviewing over 140 books, as well as sermons and lectures by Al-Qaradhawi, it was found that "Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi's ideology is utterly remote from extremism." [4]
Participant: 'Yesterday It Was Garaudy, Today It Is Al-Qaradhawi'
In their speeches, some of the conference's participants recalled the fact that the center had previously held a conference in solidarity with Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy. One of the participants, Muhammad Al-Musfir, a political science lecturer at Qatar University, said: "I thank Qatar's political leadership for [the way] it has treated thinking and sensible men, despite the great onslaught against it. I also thank the youth center in Doha, which respects independent-minded people and supports them. Yesterday it was Garaudy, and today it is Al-Qaradhawi, with whom we totally identify." [5]
Dr. Hayat Al-Hweiek 'Atiya, who is close to Garaudy and who translated one of his books denying the Holocaust, also participated in the conference. 'Atiya, the only Christian participant, said: "Muslim civilization is being targeted. As a Christian, I think we are gathering today [to honor] the supreme value that this man represents." [6]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Al-Sharq (Qatar), February 20, 2005.
[2] Al-Hayat (London), February 19, 2005. In his memoirs, Al-Qaradhawi noted that Hasan Al-Bana, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood movement in 1936, related to " virtuous death" as follows: "Jihad in this period is a personal duty of every Egyptian and Sudanese until the English leave his homeland. Each citizen must sacrifice whatever he can. The Muslim Brotherhood is prepared to sacrifice thousands of young men as offerings to their homeland, which is a large part of the land of Islam... Oh Allah, give me a virtuous life and a virtuous death. What is a virtuous death, oh [Muslim] brothers? Is it to die in bed next to your wife, your children, and your relatives? The virtuous death that I imagine is [one in which] this head – pointing to his own head – is severed from this body for the sake of Allah." See:
http://www.islam-online.net/Arabic/personality/2001/12/article5.SHTML#5.
[3] Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar), February 18, 2005.
http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D9867A71-E798-4987-A8D8-5B9C34F346DC.htm.
[4] Al-Sharq (Qatar), February 20. 2005.
[5] Al-Sharq (Qatar), February 20. 2005.
[6] Al-Raya (Qatar), February 20, 2005.
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD86905
...IF... I were not anti-Semitic I would not be talking of how Israel most avoid doing certain actions so that all Jews around the world would not lose respect. Since I do say those things, I am anti-Semitic. And as I have stated in the past there are good and honest Jewish People all over the World who know that what Israel is doing is often right and my words in turn are hurting them.
The Israelis would not have to defend themselves if Palestinians were not trying to murder them on their Land in Israel proper and the West Bank allegedly for the Wall/Fence/ Barrier and for the ever growing settlements.
We can not now have the Viable Palestinian State called for in the road map to Peace instead of this continuing conflict.
The Israeli Military could be guarding and controlling somewhat beyond their pre 1967 (Green Line) Border instead of trying to stop Palestinians from committing atrocities that cause the Israeli military actions which you say the Palestinians must defend themselves against.
If you want these actions to stop you have to end the reason for such actions.
The question was why there is a rise in Anti-Semitism?
There would be a decrease in Anti-Semitism if the Palestinians did the fair, right, just, thing and allowed the Israeli People to have their Freedom also in the West Bank Which is only 9% of what is Today Israel, Jordan, West Bank and Gaza.
The Palestinians we are concerned with are the ones who live in the West Bank and Gaza...not in other Parts of the World. Unlike the Jews I am concerned which are the Jews in Israel and also in other parts of the world...as far as this Middle-East Conflict goes.
3,700,000 or so Palestinians on 86% of the land.
6,000,000 (including some Arab Israelis) on 14% of the land
Do the simple math.....
Who gets the most land per person.....Fair and Just, Fair and Just, Fair and Just is the answer in the end, anyway you want to look at it.
It is high time for the Palestinians to demonstrate they want peace.
It has been always Israel that has been making the effort while the Palestinians' only aim is to destroy Israel.
Why does the Fatah constitution states that its goal is to destroy Israel?
Why have they kept killing Israelis while Israel was making concessions?
Why has the PA ever done nothing to stop terrorism?
Why Palestinian children are taught that they have to kill Israelis?
Why in the Palestinian maps Israel is considered to be the "occupied Palestine"?
Gazan wounded trying to enter Israel
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH
IDF soldiers thwarted an attempt by three Palestinians to illegally cross into Israel from the Gaza Strip overnight Sunday.
Soldiers spotted the three crossing a restricted area near the northern Gaza security fence close to kibbutz Kfar Aza.
Troops opened fire at the three as they attempted to climb the fence. One of the Palestinians was wounded and taken to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. The two others managed to escape.
Also overnight Sunday, Palestinian gunmen opened fire at an IDF vehicle near Neveh Dekalim, in the southern Gaza Strip.
No one was wounded from the shooting.
Cockroaches need to see Justice in Action COMMITTEE
Relevent provisions of the Geneva and Hague Conventions, with links
Examples of war crimes by the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Liberation Organization
Abuse of the Red Crescent, transportation of war materials in an ambulance
Complicity in war crimes by the United Nations
The deadly game of "Pallie Alley" (mine, feel free to paraphrase for your local paper)
Palestinian terrorists use hospitals and schools as gun emplacements
Syrians use "humanitarian aid shipments" to transport weapons
Israel's stupidity in apologizing for collateral damage in the death of Salah Shehada
How to handle Palestinian (and Al Qaida) war criminals: "Marwan Barghouti," with due credit to Kipling
Relevent provisions of the Geneva and Hague Conventions
The Hague Convention on PLO terrorists who dress as civilians
The Qualifications of Belligerents
Article 1. The laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps fulfilling the following conditions:
1. To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
2. To have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance;
3. To carry arms openly; and
4. To conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
The Geneva Convention on PLO terrorists who fire from among civilians
The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.
The Geneva Convention on the PLO's practice of recruiting young teenagers to attack the Israelis
The Parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces.
My newspaper column on this subject
A recent item in the Wall Street Journal said that the UN had condemned Israeli air attacks on PLO terrorists. The UN remains silent when PLO terrorists kill Israeli women and children; it is obvious where the UN stands.
Palestinian Authority and PLO War Crimes
Palestinians use church as a fighting position
"About 300 Palestinians, nearly all of them armed, have been holed up in the shrine [Church of the Nativity, "built over the site where tradition says Jesus was born and one of Christianity's major shrines"] since Tuesday..." [Ibrahim Hazboun, Associated Press writer, 4 April 2002]
The PLO tactic is obvious. Their gunmen shoot at the Israelis. If the Israelis return the fire, they will damage one of Christianity's holiest shrines.
Palestinian ambulance driver transports explosives
"Reserve soldiers at a mobile roadblock today captured a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance driver who was caught transporting an explosive belt of the type detonated by suicide bombers, Israel Radio reported." Jerusalem Post, 28 March, 2002. Abuse of the Red Cross or Red Crescent in this manner is, I believe, a capital war crime.
Palestinians use wheelchair-bound man as cover
From Aruz 7
Lt.-Col. Tal, who lives in a Jezreel Valley with his wife and three daughters, fought in the recent anti-terrorism offensive in Jenin.
"At one point, Palestinians booby trapped a wheelchair and pushed its occupant into the open in hope of attracting Israeli soldiers to become victims..."
Palestinians dress in Israeli uniforms, murder young girl
Sudarsan Raghavan, Knight Ridder-Newspapers, 28 April 2002 "Disguised gunmen kill 4: Girl, 5, among victims of terrorists in Israeli army uniforms"
ADORA, West Bank
Palestinian terrorists dressed as Israeli soldiers slipped into a quiet Israeli settlement near Hebron Saturday morning...
The gunmen entered the home of 5-year-old Danielle Sheffi, who lived with her parents and three siblings. After they left, the little girl's room-- decorated with a Micky Mouse doll, bed sheet, and poster-- was scattered with bullet holes and stained with blood.
Danielle died instantly.
Pay close attention to the traditional punishment for this behavior, even if the perpetrators harm no one. ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCE, PLEASE READ THIS.
From "World War II" at http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Camp/7624/wwII.htm
(Dec. 16, 1944 - Jan. 25, 1945)
A special Nazi unit (under Col. Otto Skorzeny) disguised as Americans penetrated the rear, disrupting communications and transportation. They spoke perfect english and once caught they were to say that thousands of German SS soldiers had infiltrated dressed as American soldiers in a special mission. This slowed American movement because now every soldier was stopped at checkpoints and asked American questions to see if he was a real American. Thousands were arrested because they did not know the height of the Empire State building for example. However, under the Geneva Convention, German soldiers in American uniforms were not protected and thus any caught was executed on the spot. The Germans were forced to abandon this successful mission because of the American executions.
"Executed on the spot" sounds like they didn't even bother with a court-martial, let alone a "tribunal" of the type for which some people are criticizing President Bush.
War crimes against Americans
Read the following and recall that piracy (to which these events are similar) was once dealt with by immediate court-martial and, upon conviction, prompt execution of the perpetrators.
The first American to be murdered by a PLO-sponsored group was Shirley Anderson on June 17, 1969. Since then, PLO groups have murdered more than 60 American citizens and wounded at least as many. Among the dead were two ambassadors, an Olympic athlete, tourists, business persons and students.
...Americans were murdered in numerous ways by PLO members. Eight were killed when their Swissair jet was blown up enroute to Tel Aviv, others died in bus and car bombings or were shot. Especially shocking were the ax-murder of a student (1975) and the brutal murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound elderly tourist on the hijacked Achille Lauro (1985).
Guest Editorial: Remembering the many American victims of Arafat's terrorist network
By William J. Daugherty, Ph.D. Armstrong Atlantic State University
More war crimes and atrocities (thanks to Deborah Nyob, soc.culture.israel, for the information. Bracketed remarks are mine.) Mar 28, 2001
Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat, 15, of Givat Shmuel and Naftali Lanzkorn, 13, of Petah Tikva were killed in a suicide bombing at the Mifgash Hashalom ("peace stop") gas station several hundred meters from an IDF roadblock near the entrance to Kalkilya, east of Kfar Saba. Four people were injured. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Apr 22, 2001
- Dr. Mario Goldin, 53, of Kfar Sava, was killed when a terrorist detonated a powerful bomb he was carrying near a group of people waiting at a bus stop on the corner of Weizman and Tchernichovsky streets. About 60 people were injured in the blast. Hamas claimed responsibility.
[It takes more than 20 years of training to create a doctor. How long did it take Hamas to kill one? This is consistent with the difference between Western Civilization and militant "Islam." The former turns deserts into gardens, e.g. through irrigation, the latter turns gardens into deserts.]
Apr 1, 2001
- Dina Guetta, 42, of Haifa, was stabbed to death on Ha'atzmaut Street. Her murder was the initiation rite into a terrorist cell apprehended in July.
[The typical courage of the Palestinian terrorist: stab a helpless woman instead of an armed man.] May 9, 2001
- Yossi Ish-Ran, 14, and Kobi Mandell, 14, both of Tekoa, were found
stoned to death in a cave about 200 meters from the small community south of Jerusalem where they lived. [Palestinian courage: stoning teenage boys to death!]
May 29, 2001 [Brave Fatah terrorists shoot unarmed women]
- Sarah Blaustein, 53, and Esther Alvan, 20, of Efrat, were killed in a drive-by shooting near Neve Daniel in the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem. The Fatah Tanzim claimed responsibility for the attack.
June 11, 2001 [Brave Palestinians stone newborn to death.]
- Yehuda Shoham, aged 5 months, of Shilo, died of injuries incurred
in a fatal stoning on June 5. He was critically injured by a rock thrown at the family's car near Shilo in Samaria.
June 1, 2001
- Marina Berkovizki, 17, of Tel Aviv; Roman Dezanshvili, 21, of Bat Yam; Ilya Gutman, 19, of Bat Yam; Anya Kazachkov, 16, of Holon; Katherine Kastaniyada-Talkir, 15, of Ramat Gan; Aleksei Lupalu, 16, of the Ukraine; Mariana Medvedenko, 16, of Tel Aviv; Irina Nepomneschi, 16, of Bat Yam; Yelena Nelimov, 18, of Tel Aviv; Yulia Nelimov, 16, of Tel Aviv; Raisa Nimrovsky, 15, of Netanya; Pvt. Diez (Dani) Normanov, 21, of Tel Aviv; Simona Rodin, 18, of Holon; Ori Shahar, 32, of Ramat Gan; Liana Sakiyan, 16, of Tel Aviv; Maria Tagilchev, 14, of Netanya; and Irena Usdachi, 18, of Holon were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself outside a disco near Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium along the seafront promenade just before midnight on Friday. Sergei Pancheskov, 20, of the Ukraine; Yael-Yulia Sklianik, 15, of Holon; Jan Bloom, 25, of Ramat Gan; and Yevgenia Dorfman, 15, of Bat Yam died subsequently from their injuries. 120 people were wounded in the bombing.
June 12, 2001 [Palestinian terrorists murder Christian monk]
- Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis, 34, a Greek Orthodox monk from the
St. George Monastery in Wadi Kelt in the Judean desert, was shot and
killed while driving on the Jerusalem-Ma'ale Adumim road. June 28, 2001 [Valiant "freedom fighters" ambush women]
- Ekaterina (Katya) Weintraub, 27, of Ganim in northern Samaria was
killed and another woman injured late Thursday afternoon by shots fired at the two-car convoy on the Jenin bypass road.
Aug 5, 2001 [Palestinians murder pregnant woman]
- Tehiya Bloomberg, 40, of Karnei Shomron, mother of five and 5 months
pregnant, was killed when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the family
vehicle between Alfei Menashe and Karnei Shomron. Three people were
seriously wounded, including her husband, Shimon, and daughter,
Tzippi, 14. Oct 4, 2001
- Sgt. Tali Ben-Armon, 19, an off-duty woman soldier from Pardesia,
Haim Ben-Ezra, 76, of Givat Hamoreh, and Sergei Freidin, 20, of Afula
were killed when a Palestinian terrorist, dressed as an Israeli paratrooper, opened fire on Israeli civilians waiting at the central bus station in Afula. 13 other Israelis were wounded in the attack. Fatah claimed responsibility for the attack.
[I recall that Germans dressed as Americans to misdirect American troops during the Battle of the Bulge. When they were caught, they were executed on the spot-- I'm not even sure if the Americans bothered to hold a court-martial. "German combatant in an American uniform" was good enough.]
Oct 28, 2001
- Ayala Levy, 39, of Elyachin; Smadar Levy, 23, of Hadera; Lydia Marko, 63, of Givat Ada; and Sima Menachem, 30, of Zichron Yaakov were killed when two Palestinian terrorists, members of the Palestinian police, armed with assault rifles and expanding bullets, opened fire from a vehicle on Israeli pedestrians at a crowded bus-stop in downtown Hadera. About 40 were wounded, three critically. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsiblity for the attack. Dec 1, 2001
- Assaf Avitan, 15, of Jerusalem; Michael Moshe Dahan, 21, of Jerusalem;
Israel Ya'akov Danino, 17, of Jerusalem; Yosef El-Ezra, 18, of Jerusalem; Sgt. Nir Haftzadi, 19, of Jerusalem; Yuri (Yoni) Korganov, 20, of Ma'alei Adumim; Golan Turgeman, 15, of Jerusalem; Guy Vaknin, 19, of Jerusalem; Adam Weinstein, 14, of Givon Hahadasha, and Moshe Yedid-Levy, 19, of Jerusalem were killed and about 180 injured - 17 seriously - when explosive devices were detonated by two suicide bombers close to 11:30 P.M. Saturday night on Ben Yehuda Street, the pedestrian mall in the center of Jerusalem. A car bomb exploded nearby 20 minutes later. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Ido Cohen, 17, of Jerusalem, fatally injured in the attack, died of his wounds on December 8.
Jan 15, 2002
- Avraham (Avi) Boaz, 71, of Ma'aleh Adumim, an American citizen,
was kidnapped at a PA security checkpoint in Beit Jala. His bullet-riddled body was found in a car in Beit Sahur, in the Bethlehem area. The Fatah's Al-Aksa Brigade claimed responsibility for the murder. Jan 17, 2002
- Edward Bakshayev, 48, of Or Akiva; Anatoly Bakshayev, 63, of Or
Akiva; Aharon Ben Yisrael-Ellis, 32, of Ra'anana; Dina Binayev, 48, of Ashkelon; Boris Melikhov, 56, of Sderot; and Avi Yazdi, 25, of Hadera were killed and 35 injured, several seriously, when a terrorist burst into a bat mitzva reception in a banquet hall in Hadera shortly before 23:00, opening fire with an M-16 assault rifle. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Feb 16, 2002
- Nehemia Amar, 15, and Keren Shatsky, 15, both of Ginot Shomron
were killed and about 30 people were wounded, six seriously, when a suicide bomber blew himself up on Saturday night at a pizzeria in the shopping mall in Karnei Shomron in Samaria. Rachel Theler, 16, of Ginot Shomron died of her wounds on February 27. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack. Mar 2, 2002
- Ten people were killed and over 50 were injured, 4 critically, in a suicide bombing at 19:15 on Saturday evening near a yeshiva in the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem where people had gathered for a bar-mitzva celebration. The terrorist detonated the bomb next to a group of women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to leave the nearby synagogue. The victims: Shlomo Nehmad (40), his wife Gafnit (32), and their daughters Shiraz (7) and Liran (3), of Rishon Lezion; Shaul Nehmad (15), of Rishon Lezion; Lidor Ilan (12) and his sister Oriah (18 months), of Rishon Lezion; Tzofia Ya'arit Eliyahu (23) and her son Ya'akov Avraham (7 months), of Jerusalem. Avi Hazan, 37, of Moshav Adora, died of his injuries on Monday morning (Mar 4). The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade took responsibility for the attack.
United Nations' participation in war crimes
Michael Rubin, "The UN's Refugees," Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2002, page A12.
"Israel's raids did damage the camps [Jenin and Balata]. But as a result of the operation, Israel uncovered illegal arms caches, bomb factories, and a plant manufacturing the new Kassam-2 rocket... Confronted with evidence of illegal Palestinian mines, mortars, and missiles, no U.N. official questioned how it was that bomb factories could exist in U.N.-managed refugee camps. Either the U.N. officials were unaware of the bomb factories-- a fact which would suggest utter incompetence--- or, more likely, the U.N. officials simply turned a blind eye."
"The fact that U.N. observers protected and defended guerilas who crossed a U.N.-certified border, using cars with U.N. license plates while under the cover of U.N. flags, was apparently of no consequence to UNIFIL."
The Deadly Game of "Pallie Alley"
To the Editor;
Palestinian sympathizers are trotting out the tired "One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" argument to justify atrocities. The Geneva and Hague Conventions, however, explicitly define Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen as war criminals. The Hague Convention requires combatants to (1) "have a fixed distinctive emblem [e.g. a uniform] recognizable at a distance," (2) "carry arms openly," and (3) "conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war." They don't even need to bomb a Passover seder to deserve death; violation of the first provision alone is a capital war crime.
Why has death been the traditional punishment for combatants who masquerade as civilians? In the police training program known as "Hogan's Alley," officers must make split-second decisions to shoot or not shoot at targets that represent armed criminals and innocent bystanders respectively. The Geneva and Hague Conventions protect both soldiers and noncombatants by making a clear difference between "shoot" and "don't shoot" targets in war.
As an example, the laws of war immunize the Red Cross and its Muslim equivalent, the Red Crescent, from military action. The same laws assure combatants that anything that displays these emblems is harmless. A Palestinian ambulance driver was recently caught carrying 20 pounds of explosives underneath a seven-year-old boy. Israel failed in its duty not only to itself, but also to every legitimate medical aid worker in the region, by not executing him for misusing the Red Crescent to conceal munitions.
Terrorists have deliberately chosen to make "Pallie Alley" a deadly game in which the "shoot" and "don't shoot" targets look exactly alike. This causes the deaths of many innocent Palestinians when Israelis must make split-second shoot/don't shoot decisions. This is why any terrorist who masquerades as a civilian should, upon conviction by court-martial, be put to death.
Let's play "Pallie Alley" You are an Israeli soldier or an armed Israeli civilian, and you are presented with the targets shown at right. You must make a split-second decision to shoot or not shoot. A wrong decision (either way) will cost innocent lives.
Is he a father with a baby, or is he a suicide bomber with a doll's head on his package of explosives? He's walking into a pizza parlor or a Passover Seder; you have about a second to make up your mind.
Is this Palestinian businessman looking at his watch to see if he's on time for his appointment with his client as he walks into an Israeli office building, or is this terrorist checking to see when the bomb in his briefcase will explode?
Is this ambulance carrying medical personnel and patients, or explosives?
A house of worship or a gun emplacement?
What's the matter? You don't like this game because you can't tell the "shoot" targets from the "don't-shoot" targets? Guess what: Israel doesn't like it either, but it's the Palestinians who choose to play it this way.
Palestinian terrorists use hospitals and schools as gun emplacements
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/13/News/News.45068.html (source)
...Palestinian gunmen had fired from hotels, hospitals, and schools.
At one point, gunmen opened fire from the Ramallah hospital, lightly wounding a soldier, the army said, and troops returned fire. The International Committee of the Red Cross was called upon to mediate and convinced the Palestinians to remove the gunmen from the hospital, said ICRC spokesman Uri Massad.
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/27/LatestNews/LatestNews.46007.html (source)
Reserve soldiers at a mobile roadblock today captured a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance driver who was caught transporting an explosive belt of the type detonated by suicide bombers, Israel Radio reported.
Syrians use "humanitarian" aid to ship weapons to terrorists
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380730.html for complete article
According to the report, Syria dispatched a number of planes to Iran last week posing as humanitarian aid transports for Iranian earthquake victims.
When the flights returned to Syria, they were filled with weaponry which was unloaded in Damascus and transferred to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Israel's stupidity in apologizing for collateral damage in the death of Salah Shehada
The Wall Street Journal's opinion column writers have brains, even if Israel's public relations people do not.
Retired Army officer Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World, "Civilian Casualties: No Apology Needed," Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2002
Earlier this week, Israel succeeded in killing Salah Shehada, a savage Hamas mastermind, and one of his top aides. A dozen Palestinian civilians died in the attack, including members of Shehada's family. The civilian deaths may be lamentable, but they were also justifiable. A terrorist leader used his relatives and neighbors as shields, and they died with him. Their deaths were Shehada's fault, not Israel's.
...If they use their neighbors as shields, it is the terrorists who are to blame should civilians die. If they attempt to use their families as cover, they will be responsible for the deaths of their own loved ones. The world must learn that, when civilians allow terrorists to use them, the civilians become legitimate military targets.
This is not about diplomatic table manners. It is a fight to exterminate human monsters.
Any questions???
Saudi Arabia and Iran: two poster children for "Western Civilization's Burden."
(Source): "Infidels Forbidden" warn signs outside the city of Medina, where the prophet Muhammed once lived. This ominous message causes Western visitors to Saudi Arabia to shiver in fear. ...two Filipino Christians were beheaded for studying the Bible and praying in a Saudi prison. ...In Iran, four prominent Christian leaders have been killed in this decade. In Iraq, Pakistan and Syria—and likely others—family members who kill converts to Christianity experience no punishment.
How to handle Palestinian (and Al Qaida) war criminals: "Marwan Barghouti"
with due credit to Rudyard Kipling's "Danny Deever" "What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.
"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti, you can hear the Dead March play,
The regiment's in 'ollow square -- they're hangin' him to-day;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'.
"What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What makes that front-rank man fall down?" said Files-on-Parade.
"A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun", the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Marwan Barghouti, they are marchin' of 'im round,
They 'ave 'alted Marwan Barghouti by 'is coffin on the ground;
An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' murderin' hound --
O they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'!
"'E demanded 'land for peace'", said Files-on-Parade.
"'E'll 'ave all the land he needs to-night", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"'E murdered innocents a score o' times", said Files-on-Parade.
"'E'll murder no more", the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Marwan Barghouti, you must mark 'im to 'is place,
For 'e bombed a Seder and slaughtered children -- you must look 'im in the face;
All of 'is people's an' Humanity's disgrace,
While they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'.
"What's that so black agin' the sun?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's Marwan fightin' 'ard for life", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What's that that whimpers over'ead?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's Marwan's soul that's passin' now", the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're done with Marwan Barghouti, you can 'ear the quickstep play,
The regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away;
Ho! the terrorists are shakin', an' they'll want their hashish* to-day,
After we hanged Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'.
* The hashisheen, or assassins, got hopped up on hashish and thought they were in Paradise. The "Old Man of the Mountains" told them they'd go to Paradise forever if they died on their missions. This should sound very familiar.
Palestinian War Crimes
Relevent provisions of the Geneva and Hague Conventions, with links
Examples of war crimes by the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Liberation Organization
Abuse of the Red Crescent, transportation of war materials in an ambulance
Complicity in war crimes by the United Nations
The deadly game of "Pallie Alley" (mine, feel free to paraphrase for your local paper)
Palestinian terrorists use hospitals and schools as gun emplacements
Syrians use "humanitarian aid shipments" to transport weapons
Israel's stupidity in apologizing for collateral damage in the death of Salah Shehada
How to handle Palestinian (and Al Qaida) war criminals: "Marwan Barghouti," with due credit to Kipling
Relevent provisions of the Geneva and Hague Conventions
The Hague Convention on PLO terrorists who dress as civilians
The Qualifications of Belligerents
Article 1. The laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps fulfilling the following conditions:
1. To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
2. To have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance;
3. To carry arms openly; and
4. To conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
The Geneva Convention on PLO terrorists who fire from among civilians
The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.
The Geneva Convention on the PLO's practice of recruiting young teenagers to attack the Israelis
The Parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces.
My newspaper column on this subject
A recent item in the Wall Street Journal said that the UN had condemned Israeli air attacks on PLO terrorists. The UN remains silent when PLO terrorists kill Israeli women and children; it is obvious where the UN stands.
Palestinian Authority and PLO War Crimes
Palestinians use church as a fighting position
"About 300 Palestinians, nearly all of them armed, have been holed up in the shrine [Church of the Nativity, "built over the site where tradition says Jesus was born and one of Christianity's major shrines"] since Tuesday..." [Ibrahim Hazboun, Associated Press writer, 4 April 2002]
The PLO tactic is obvious. Their gunmen shoot at the Israelis. If the Israelis return the fire, they will damage one of Christianity's holiest shrines.
Palestinian ambulance driver transports explosives
"Reserve soldiers at a mobile roadblock today captured a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance driver who was caught transporting an explosive belt of the type detonated by suicide bombers, Israel Radio reported." Jerusalem Post, 28 March, 2002. Abuse of the Red Cross or Red Crescent in this manner is, I believe, a capital war crime.
Palestinians use wheelchair-bound man as cover
From Aruz 7
Lt.-Col. Tal, who lives in a Jezreel Valley with his wife and three daughters, fought in the recent anti-terrorism offensive in Jenin.
"At one point, Palestinians booby trapped a wheelchair and pushed its occupant into the open in hope of attracting Israeli soldiers to become victims..."
Palestinians dress in Israeli uniforms, murder young girl
Sudarsan Raghavan, Knight Ridder-Newspapers, 28 April 2002 "Disguised gunmen kill 4: Girl, 5, among victims of terrorists in Israeli army uniforms"
ADORA, West Bank
Palestinian terrorists dressed as Israeli soldiers slipped into a quiet Israeli settlement near Hebron Saturday morning...
The gunmen entered the home of 5-year-old Danielle Sheffi, who lived with her parents and three siblings. After they left, the little girl's room-- decorated with a Micky Mouse doll, bed sheet, and poster-- was scattered with bullet holes and stained with blood.
Danielle died instantly.
Pay close attention to the traditional punishment for this behavior, even if the perpetrators harm no one. ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCE, PLEASE READ THIS.
From "World War II" at http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Camp/7624/wwII.htm
(Dec. 16, 1944 - Jan. 25, 1945)
A special Nazi unit (under Col. Otto Skorzeny) disguised as Americans penetrated the rear, disrupting communications and transportation. They spoke perfect english and once caught they were to say that thousands of German SS soldiers had infiltrated dressed as American soldiers in a special mission. This slowed American movement because now every soldier was stopped at checkpoints and asked American questions to see if he was a real American. Thousands were arrested because they did not know the height of the Empire State building for example. However, under the Geneva Convention, German soldiers in American uniforms were not protected and thus any caught was executed on the spot. The Germans were forced to abandon this successful mission because of the American executions.
"Executed on the spot" sounds like they didn't even bother with a court-martial, let alone a "tribunal" of the type for which some people are criticizing President Bush.
War crimes against Americans
Read the following and recall that piracy (to which these events are similar) was once dealt with by immediate court-martial and, upon conviction, prompt execution of the perpetrators.
The first American to be murdered by a PLO-sponsored group was Shirley Anderson on June 17, 1969. Since then, PLO groups have murdered more than 60 American citizens and wounded at least as many. Among the dead were two ambassadors, an Olympic athlete, tourists, business persons and students.
...Americans were murdered in numerous ways by PLO members. Eight were killed when their Swissair jet was blown up enroute to Tel Aviv, others died in bus and car bombings or were shot. Especially shocking were the ax-murder of a student (1975) and the brutal murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound elderly tourist on the hijacked Achille Lauro (1985).
Guest Editorial: Remembering the many American victims of Arafat's terrorist network
By William J. Daugherty, Ph.D. Armstrong Atlantic State University
More war crimes and atrocities (thanks to Deborah Nyob, soc.culture.israel, for the information. Bracketed remarks are mine.) Mar 28, 2001
Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat, 15, of Givat Shmuel and Naftali Lanzkorn, 13, of Petah Tikva were killed in a suicide bombing at the Mifgash Hashalom ("peace stop") gas station several hundred meters from an IDF roadblock near the entrance to Kalkilya, east of Kfar Saba. Four people were injured. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Apr 22, 2001
- Dr. Mario Goldin, 53, of Kfar Sava, was killed when a terrorist detonated a powerful bomb he was carrying near a group of people waiting at a bus stop on the corner of Weizman and Tchernichovsky streets. About 60 people were injured in the blast. Hamas claimed responsibility.
[It takes more than 20 years of training to create a doctor. How long did it take Hamas to kill one? This is consistent with the difference between Western Civilization and militant "Islam." The former turns deserts into gardens, e.g. through irrigation, the latter turns gardens into deserts.]
Apr 1, 2001
- Dina Guetta, 42, of Haifa, was stabbed to death on Ha'atzmaut Street. Her murder was the initiation rite into a terrorist cell apprehended in July.
[The typical courage of the Palestinian terrorist: stab a helpless woman instead of an armed man.] May 9, 2001
- Yossi Ish-Ran, 14, and Kobi Mandell, 14, both of Tekoa, were found
stoned to death in a cave about 200 meters from the small community south of Jerusalem where they lived. [Palestinian courage: stoning teenage boys to death!]
May 29, 2001 [Brave Fatah terrorists shoot unarmed women]
- Sarah Blaustein, 53, and Esther Alvan, 20, of Efrat, were killed in a drive-by shooting near Neve Daniel in the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem. The Fatah Tanzim claimed responsibility for the attack.
June 11, 2001 [Brave Palestinians stone newborn to death.]
- Yehuda Shoham, aged 5 months, of Shilo, died of injuries incurred
in a fatal stoning on June 5. He was critically injured by a rock thrown at the family's car near Shilo in Samaria.
June 1, 2001
- Marina Berkovizki, 17, of Tel Aviv; Roman Dezanshvili, 21, of Bat Yam; Ilya Gutman, 19, of Bat Yam; Anya Kazachkov, 16, of Holon; Katherine Kastaniyada-Talkir, 15, of Ramat Gan; Aleksei Lupalu, 16, of the Ukraine; Mariana Medvedenko, 16, of Tel Aviv; Irina Nepomneschi, 16, of Bat Yam; Yelena Nelimov, 18, of Tel Aviv; Yulia Nelimov, 16, of Tel Aviv; Raisa Nimrovsky, 15, of Netanya; Pvt. Diez (Dani) Normanov, 21, of Tel Aviv; Simona Rodin, 18, of Holon; Ori Shahar, 32, of Ramat Gan; Liana Sakiyan, 16, of Tel Aviv; Maria Tagilchev, 14, of Netanya; and Irena Usdachi, 18, of Holon were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself outside a disco near Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium along the seafront promenade just before midnight on Friday. Sergei Pancheskov, 20, of the Ukraine; Yael-Yulia Sklianik, 15, of Holon; Jan Bloom, 25, of Ramat Gan; and Yevgenia Dorfman, 15, of Bat Yam died subsequently from their injuries. 120 people were wounded in the bombing.
June 12, 2001 [Palestinian terrorists murder Christian monk]
- Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis, 34, a Greek Orthodox monk from the
St. George Monastery in Wadi Kelt in the Judean desert, was shot and
killed while driving on the Jerusalem-Ma'ale Adumim road. June 28, 2001 [Valiant "freedom fighters" ambush women]
- Ekaterina (Katya) Weintraub, 27, of Ganim in northern Samaria was
killed and another woman injured late Thursday afternoon by shots fired at the two-car convoy on the Jenin bypass road.
Aug 5, 2001 [Palestinians murder pregnant woman]
- Tehiya Bloomberg, 40, of Karnei Shomron, mother of five and 5 months
pregnant, was killed when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the family
vehicle between Alfei Menashe and Karnei Shomron. Three people were
seriously wounded, including her husband, Shimon, and daughter,
Tzippi, 14. Oct 4, 2001
- Sgt. Tali Ben-Armon, 19, an off-duty woman soldier from Pardesia,
Haim Ben-Ezra, 76, of Givat Hamoreh, and Sergei Freidin, 20, of Afula
were killed when a Palestinian terrorist, dressed as an Israeli paratrooper, opened fire on Israeli civilians waiting at the central bus station in Afula. 13 other Israelis were wounded in the attack. Fatah claimed responsibility for the attack.
[I recall that Germans dressed as Americans to misdirect American troops during the Battle of the Bulge. When they were caught, they were executed on the spot-- I'm not even sure if the Americans bothered to hold a court-martial. "German combatant in an American uniform" was good enough.]
Oct 28, 2001
- Ayala Levy, 39, of Elyachin; Smadar Levy, 23, of Hadera; Lydia Marko, 63, of Givat Ada; and Sima Menachem, 30, of Zichron Yaakov were killed when two Palestinian terrorists, members of the Palestinian police, armed with assault rifles and expanding bullets, opened fire from a vehicle on Israeli pedestrians at a crowded bus-stop in downtown Hadera. About 40 were wounded, three critically. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsiblity for the attack. Dec 1, 2001
- Assaf Avitan, 15, of Jerusalem; Michael Moshe Dahan, 21, of Jerusalem;
Israel Ya'akov Danino, 17, of Jerusalem; Yosef El-Ezra, 18, of Jerusalem; Sgt. Nir Haftzadi, 19, of Jerusalem; Yuri (Yoni) Korganov, 20, of Ma'alei Adumim; Golan Turgeman, 15, of Jerusalem; Guy Vaknin, 19, of Jerusalem; Adam Weinstein, 14, of Givon Hahadasha, and Moshe Yedid-Levy, 19, of Jerusalem were killed and about 180 injured - 17 seriously - when explosive devices were detonated by two suicide bombers close to 11:30 P.M. Saturday night on Ben Yehuda Street, the pedestrian mall in the center of Jerusalem. A car bomb exploded nearby 20 minutes later. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Ido Cohen, 17, of Jerusalem, fatally injured in the attack, died of his wounds on December 8.
Jan 15, 2002
- Avraham (Avi) Boaz, 71, of Ma'aleh Adumim, an American citizen,
was kidnapped at a PA security checkpoint in Beit Jala. His bullet-riddled body was found in a car in Beit Sahur, in the Bethlehem area. The Fatah's Al-Aksa Brigade claimed responsibility for the murder. Jan 17, 2002
- Edward Bakshayev, 48, of Or Akiva; Anatoly Bakshayev, 63, of Or
Akiva; Aharon Ben Yisrael-Ellis, 32, of Ra'anana; Dina Binayev, 48, of Ashkelon; Boris Melikhov, 56, of Sderot; and Avi Yazdi, 25, of Hadera were killed and 35 injured, several seriously, when a terrorist burst into a bat mitzva reception in a banquet hall in Hadera shortly before 23:00, opening fire with an M-16 assault rifle. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Feb 16, 2002
- Nehemia Amar, 15, and Keren Shatsky, 15, both of Ginot Shomron
were killed and about 30 people were wounded, six seriously, when a suicide bomber blew himself up on Saturday night at a pizzeria in the shopping mall in Karnei Shomron in Samaria. Rachel Theler, 16, of Ginot Shomron died of her wounds on February 27. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack. Mar 2, 2002
- Ten people were killed and over 50 were injured, 4 critically, in a suicide bombing at 19:15 on Saturday evening near a yeshiva in the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem where people had gathered for a bar-mitzva celebration. The terrorist detonated the bomb next to a group of women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to leave the nearby synagogue. The victims: Shlomo Nehmad (40), his wife Gafnit (32), and their daughters Shiraz (7) and Liran (3), of Rishon Lezion; Shaul Nehmad (15), of Rishon Lezion; Lidor Ilan (12) and his sister Oriah (18 months), of Rishon Lezion; Tzofia Ya'arit Eliyahu (23) and her son Ya'akov Avraham (7 months), of Jerusalem. Avi Hazan, 37, of Moshav Adora, died of his injuries on Monday morning (Mar 4). The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade took responsibility for the attack.
United Nations' participation in war crimes
Michael Rubin, "The UN's Refugees," Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2002, page A12.
"Israel's raids did damage the camps [Jenin and Balata]. But as a result of the operation, Israel uncovered illegal arms caches, bomb factories, and a plant manufacturing the new Kassam-2 rocket... Confronted with evidence of illegal Palestinian mines, mortars, and missiles, no U.N. official questioned how it was that bomb factories could exist in U.N.-managed refugee camps. Either the U.N. officials were unaware of the bomb factories-- a fact which would suggest utter incompetence--- or, more likely, the U.N. officials simply turned a blind eye."
"The fact that U.N. observers protected and defended guerilas who crossed a U.N.-certified border, using cars with U.N. license plates while under the cover of U.N. flags, was apparently of no consequence to UNIFIL."
The Deadly Game of "Pallie Alley"
To the Editor;
Palestinian sympathizers are trotting out the tired "One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" argument to justify atrocities. The Geneva and Hague Conventions, however, explicitly define Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen as war criminals. The Hague Convention requires combatants to (1) "have a fixed distinctive emblem [e.g. a uniform] recognizable at a distance," (2) "carry arms openly," and (3) "conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war." They don't even need to bomb a Passover seder to deserve death; violation of the first provision alone is a capital war crime.
Why has death been the traditional punishment for combatants who masquerade as civilians? In the police training program known as "Hogan's Alley," officers must make split-second decisions to shoot or not shoot at targets that represent armed criminals and innocent bystanders respectively. The Geneva and Hague Conventions protect both soldiers and noncombatants by making a clear difference between "shoot" and "don't shoot" targets in war.
As an example, the laws of war immunize the Red Cross and its Muslim equivalent, the Red Crescent, from military action. The same laws assure combatants that anything that displays these emblems is harmless. A Palestinian ambulance driver was recently caught carrying 20 pounds of explosives underneath a seven-year-old boy. Israel failed in its duty not only to itself, but also to every legitimate medical aid worker in the region, by not executing him for misusing the Red Crescent to conceal munitions.
Terrorists have deliberately chosen to make "Pallie Alley" a deadly game in which the "shoot" and "don't shoot" targets look exactly alike. This causes the deaths of many innocent Palestinians when Israelis must make split-second shoot/don't shoot decisions. This is why any terrorist who masquerades as a civilian should, upon conviction by court-martial, be put to death.
Let's play "Pallie Alley" You are an Israeli soldier or an armed Israeli civilian, and you are presented with the targets shown at right. You must make a split-second decision to shoot or not shoot. A wrong decision (either way) will cost innocent lives.
Is he a father with a baby, or is he a suicide bomber with a doll's head on his package of explosives? He's walking into a pizza parlor or a Passover Seder; you have about a second to make up your mind.
Is this Palestinian businessman looking at his watch to see if he's on time for his appointment with his client as he walks into an Israeli office building, or is this terrorist checking to see when the bomb in his briefcase will explode?
Is this ambulance carrying medical personnel and patients, or explosives?
A house of worship or a gun emplacement?
What's the matter? You don't like this game because you can't tell the "shoot" targets from the "don't-shoot" targets? Guess what: Israel doesn't like it either, but it's the Palestinians who choose to play it this way.
Palestinian terrorists use hospitals and schools as gun emplacements
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/13/News/News.45068.html (source)
...Palestinian gunmen had fired from hotels, hospitals, and schools.
At one point, gunmen opened fire from the Ramallah hospital, lightly wounding a soldier, the army said, and troops returned fire. The International Committee of the Red Cross was called upon to mediate and convinced the Palestinians to remove the gunmen from the hospital, said ICRC spokesman Uri Massad.
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/27/LatestNews/LatestNews.46007.html (source)
Reserve soldiers at a mobile roadblock today captured a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance driver who was caught transporting an explosive belt of the type detonated by suicide bombers, Israel Radio reported.
Syrians use "humanitarian" aid to ship weapons to terrorists
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380730.html for complete article
According to the report, Syria dispatched a number of planes to Iran last week posing as humanitarian aid transports for Iranian earthquake victims.
When the flights returned to Syria, they were filled with weaponry which was unloaded in Damascus and transferred to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Israel's stupidity in apologizing for collateral damage in the death of Salah Shehada
The Wall Street Journal's opinion column writers have brains, even if Israel's public relations people do not.
Retired Army officer Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World, "Civilian Casualties: No Apology Needed," Wall Street Journal, 25 July 2002
Earlier this week, Israel succeeded in killing Salah Shehada, a savage Hamas mastermind, and one of his top aides. A dozen Palestinian civilians died in the attack, including members of Shehada's family. The civilian deaths may be lamentable, but they were also justifiable. A terrorist leader used his relatives and neighbors as shields, and they died with him. Their deaths were Shehada's fault, not Israel's.
...If they use their neighbors as shields, it is the terrorists who are to blame should civilians die. If they attempt to use their families as cover, they will be responsible for the deaths of their own loved ones. The world must learn that, when civilians allow terrorists to use them, the civilians become legitimate military targets.
This is not about diplomatic table manners. It is a fight to exterminate human monsters.
Any questions???
Saudi Arabia and Iran: two poster children for "Western Civilization's Burden."
(Source): "Infidels Forbidden" warn signs outside the city of Medina, where the prophet Muhammed once lived. This ominous message causes Western visitors to Saudi Arabia to shiver in fear. ...two Filipino Christians were beheaded for studying the Bible and praying in a Saudi prison. ...In Iran, four prominent Christian leaders have been killed in this decade. In Iraq, Pakistan and Syria—and likely others—family members who kill converts to Christianity experience no punishment.
How to handle Palestinian (and Al Qaida) war criminals: "Marwan Barghouti"
with due credit to Rudyard Kipling's "Danny Deever" "What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.
"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti, you can hear the Dead March play,
The regiment's in 'ollow square -- they're hangin' him to-day;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'.
"What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What makes that front-rank man fall down?" said Files-on-Parade.
"A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun", the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Marwan Barghouti, they are marchin' of 'im round,
They 'ave 'alted Marwan Barghouti by 'is coffin on the ground;
An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' murderin' hound --
O they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'!
"'E demanded 'land for peace'", said Files-on-Parade.
"'E'll 'ave all the land he needs to-night", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"'E murdered innocents a score o' times", said Files-on-Parade.
"'E'll murder no more", the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Marwan Barghouti, you must mark 'im to 'is place,
For 'e bombed a Seder and slaughtered children -- you must look 'im in the face;
All of 'is people's an' Humanity's disgrace,
While they're hangin' Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'.
"What's that so black agin' the sun?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's Marwan fightin' 'ard for life", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What's that that whimpers over'ead?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's Marwan's soul that's passin' now", the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're done with Marwan Barghouti, you can 'ear the quickstep play,
The regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away;
Ho! the terrorists are shakin', an' they'll want their hashish* to-day,
After we hanged Marwan Barghouti in the mornin'.
* The hashisheen, or assassins, got hopped up on hashish and thought they were in Paradise. The "Old Man of the Mountains" told them they'd go to Paradise forever if they died on their missions. This should sound very familiar.
http://www.omdurman.org/warcriPalestinian War Crimesme.html
But, I dont know if one can really call an incident in which just a hand full of people were killed and only 2 with direct intention, the WORST of such incidents. In terms of terorrist attacks against Palestinians, Sabra and Chatila would probably be the worst, and in terms of attacks on Israelis perhaps the March 27, 2002 bombing. In terms of numbers Sabra and Chatila could have been several thousand civilian deaths and March 27, 2002 involved 29 civilian deaths.
Compare that to US bombing of Iraq (tens of thousands of civilians dead) and the 29 Aug 2003 Najaf car bombing in Iraq in which 125+ people died. Or even Beslan (366 dead), the WTC attacks (2,993 deaths), or the 11 Mar 2004 Madrid train bombings (191 dead). While Israel always complains about how much it has had to deal with "terrorist" attacks, the numbers are pretty damn low compared to what other countries have suffered without the self-righteous talk about an ethnic groups associated with the attacks being evil (as one always hears from Israelis about Palestinian attacks). Did Spain carry out extrajudicial executions of Islamic leaders after the train bombing?
For Arab residents of south Lebanon, PLO rule was a nightmare. After the PLO was expelled from Jordan by King Hussein in 1970, many of its cadres went to Lebanon. The PLO seized whole areas of the country, where it brutalized the population and usurped Lebanese government authority.
On October 14, 1976, Lebanese Ambassador Edward Ghorra told the UN General Assembly the PLO was bringing ruin upon his country: “Palestinian elements belonging to various splinter organizations resorted to kidnaping Lebanese, and sometimes foreigners, holding them prisoners, questioning them, and even sometimes killing them.”6a
Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, not known for being sympathetic toward Israel, declared after touring south Lebanon and Beirut that the facts "tend to support Israel's claim that the PLO has become permeated by thugs and adventurers."6b
The columnists talked to a doctor whose farm had been taken over without compensation by the PLO, and turned into a military depot. "You ask how do we like the Israelis," he said. "Compared to the hell we have had in Lebanon, the Israelis are brothers." Other Lebanese — Christian and Muslim alike — gave similar accounts.
Countless Lebanese told harrowing tales of rape, mutilation and murders committed by PLO forces. The PLO "killed people and threw their corpses in the courtyards. Some of them were mutilated and their limbs were cut off. We did not go out for fear that we might end up like them," said two Arab women from Sidon. "We did not dare go to the beach, because they molested us, weapons in hand." The women spoke of an incident, which occurred shortly before the Israeli invasion, in which PLO men raped and murdered a woman, dumping her body near a famous statue. A picture of the victim's mangled corpse had been printed in a local newspaper.7
Dr. Khalil Torbey, a distinguished Lebanese surgeon, told an American journalist that he was "frequently called in the middle of the night to attend victims of PLO torture. I treated men whose testicles had been cut off in torture sessions. The victims, more often than not, were...Muslims. I saw men — live men — dragged through the streets by fast-moving cars to which they were tied by their feet."8
New York Times correspondent David Shipler visited Damour, a Christian village near Beirut, which had been occupied by the PLO since 1976, when Palestinians and Lebanese leftists sacked the city and massacred hundreds of its inhabitants. The PLO, Shipler wrote, had turned the town into a military base, "using its churches as strongholds and armories" (New York Times, June 21, 1982).
When the IDF drove the PLO out of Damour in June 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced that the town's Christian residents could come home and rebuild. Returning villagers found their former homes littered with spray-painted Palestinian nationalist slogans, Fatah literature and posters of Yasser Arafat. They told Shipler how happy they were that Israel had liberated them.9
IT WAS THE LEBANESE
The Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia was responsible for the massacres that occurred at the two Beirut-area refugee camps on September 16-17, 1982. Israeli troops allowed the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila to root out terrorist cells believed located there. It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years, and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition.15
When Israeli soldiers ordered the Phalangists out, they found hundreds dead (estimates range from 460 according to the Lebanese police, to 700-800 calculated by Israeli intelligence). The dead, according to the Lebanese account, included 35 women and children. The rest were men: Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians and Algerians.16 The killings were perpetrated to avenge the murders of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel and 25 of his followers, killed in a bomb attack earlier that week.17
Israel had allowed the Phalange to enter the camps as part of a plan to transfer authority to the Lebanese, and accepted responsibility for that decision. The Kahan Commission of Inquiry, formed by the Israeli government in response to public outrage and grief, found that Israel was indirectly responsible for not anticipating the possibility of Phalangist violence. Israel instituted the panel's recommendations, including the dismissal of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Gen. Raful Eitan, the Army Chief of Staff.
The Kahan Commission, declared former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, was "a great tribute to Israeli democracy....There are very few governments in the world that one can imagine making such a public investigation of such a difficult and shameful episode."18
Recently, efforts have been made in Belgium to try Sharon for his role in what happened in Lebanon. The appellate court there, however, threw out the case.[fn Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, (June 26, 2002).] The European campaign appears designed to smear Israel in general, and Sharon in particular, and is particularly odious given that Israel's own democratic judicial institutions already dealt with this tragedy.
Ironically, while 300,000 Israelis demonstrated in Israel to protest the killings, little or no reaction occurred in the Arab world. Outside the Middle East, a major international outcry against Israel erupted over the massacres. The Phalangists, who perpetrated the crime, were spared the brunt of the condemnations for it.
By contrast, few voices were raised in May 1985, when Muslim militiamen attacked the Shatila and Burj-el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camps. According to UN officials, 635 were killed and 2,500 wounded. During a two-year battle between the Syrian-backed Shiite Amal militia and the PLO, more than 2,000 people, including many civilians, were reportedly killed. No outcry was directed at the PLO or the Syrians and their allies over the slaughter. International reaction was also muted in October 1990 when Syrian forces overran Christian-controlled areas of Lebanon. In the eight-hour clash, 700 Christians were killed — the worst single battle of Lebanon's Civil War.19 These killings came on top of an estimated 95,000 deaths that had occurred during the civil war in Lebanon from 1975-1982.19a
Take into consideration that Israel has been dealing with terroristic attacks claiming victims since right after its independence war concluded in 1949. So there's an element of cumulative effect at work. How many states presently dealing with terror have been suffering incessant terror by the same enemy for at least half a century since the day they were created?
Secondly, this notion of self-righteous talk about an ethnic groups associated with the attacks being evil (as one always hears from Israelis about Palestinian attacks) is not official Israel's claim but your own spin on the issue.
>>>"Did Spain carry out extrajudicial executions of Islamic leaders after the train bombing?"<<<
They would have been perfectly within their rights in int'l law had they begun doing that. The term "extrajudicial executions" implies an unfair negative connotation. Unfair, because the UN wouldn't intervene to apprehend Islamists and bring them to justice in the Hague. That leaves the victimized state two options: simply absorb the terroristic attack, or retaliate. Under certain provisions, the Spaniards are entitled to strike at those Islamists who had dispatched the terrorists to commit the Madrid atrocity.
Israel does not attack Palestinian areas indiscriminately. On the contrary, the IDF takes great care to target people who are planning terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Israeli forces have a history of accuracy in such assaults, nevertheless, mistakes are sometimes made. Whereas the terrorists make no apology for their attacks on civilians, and purposely target them, Israel always investigates the reasons for any errors and takes steps to prevent them from reoccurring
Israel is faced with a nearly impossible situation in attempting to protect its civilian population from Palestinians who are prepared to blow themselves up to murder innocent Jews. One strategy for dealing with the problem has been the peace process. Since 1993, Israel believed that negotiating was the way to reach peace with the Palestinians, but after Israel gave back much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and offered virtually all of the remainder, the Palestinians rejected their concessions and chose to use violence to try to force Israel to capitulate to all their demands.
A second strategy is for Israel to "exercise restraint," that is, not respond to Palestinian violence. The international community lauds Israel when it simply turns the other cheek after heinous attacks. While this restraint might win praise from world leaders, it does nothing to assuage the pain of the victims or to prevent further attacks. Moreover, the same nations that urge restraint to Israel have often reacted forcefully when put in similar situations. For example, the British assassinated Nazis after World War II and targeted IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland. And, in the wake of the murderous attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it was revealed that the Clinton Administration had attempted to assassinate Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden in 1998 in retaliation for his role in the bombings of the United States embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The Administration of George W. Bush has said it also would not hesitate to kill bin Laden and has targeted a number of other al-Qaeda operatives.On November 4, 2002, for example, the United States killed six suspected al-Qaeda members in Yemen with a Hellfire missile fired from an unmanned CIA drone at the car in which they were traveling.
In April 1986, after the U.S. determined that Libya had directed the terrorist bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed one American and injured 200 others, it launched a raid on a series of Libyan targets, including President Muammar Qaddafi's home. This was widely viewed as an assassination attempt. Qaddafi escaped, but his infant daughter was killed and two of his other children were wounded. In addition, a missile went off track and caused fatalities in a civilian neighborhood. Reagan justified the action as self-defense against Libya’s state-sponsored terrorism. "As a matter of self-defense, any nation victimized by terrorism has an inherent right to respond with force to deter new acts of terror. I felt we must show Qaddafi that there was a price he would have to pay for that kind of behavior and that we wouldn't let him get away with it." More recently, George W. Bush ordered “hits” on the Iraqi political leadership during the 2003 war in Iraq.
Israel has chosen a third option – eliminating the masterminds of terror attacks. It is a policy that has caused great debate in Israel, but is supported by a vast majority of the public (70 percent in an August 2001 Ha'aretz poll). The policy is also supported by the American public according to an August 2001 poll by the America Middle East Information Network. The survey found that 73 percent of respondents felt Israel was justified in killing terrorists if it had proof they were planning bombings or other attacks that could kill Israelis.
Deputy Chief of Staff Major-General Moshe Ya'alon explained the policy this way:
"There are no executions without a trial. There is no avenging someone who had carried out an attack a month ago. We are acting against those who are waging terror against us. We prefer to arrest them and have detained over 1,000. But if we can't, and the Palestinians won't, then we have no other choice but to defend ourselves."
The Israeli government also went through a legal process before adopting the policy of targeted killings. Israel's attorney general reviewed the policy and determined that it is legal under Israeli and international law.
Targeting the terrorists has a number of benefits. First, it places a price on terror: Israelis can't be attacked with impunity anymore, for terrorists know that if they target others, they will become targets themselves. Second, it is a method of self-defense: pre-emptive strikes eliminate the people who would otherwise murder Jews. While it is true that there are others to take their place, they can do so only with the knowledge they too will become targets. Third, it throws the terrorists off balance. Extremists can no longer nonchalantly plan an operation; rather, they must stay on the move, look over their shoulders at all times, and work much harder to carry out their goals.
It is always a tragedy when innocent civilians are killed in a counterterrorism operation. Civilians would not be at risk, however, if the Palestinian Authority arrested the terrorists, the murderers did not choose to hide among noncombatants and the civilians refused to protect the killers.
Israel is not alone in using military force against terrorists or in sometimes inadvertently harming people who are not targets. For example, on the same day that American officials were condemning Israel because a number of civilians died when Israel assassinated the leader of the military wing of Hamas, news reports disclosed that the United States bombed a village in Afghanistan in an operation directed at a Taliban leader that instead killed 48 Afghan civilians at a wedding party. In both cases, flawed intelligence played a role in the tragic mistakes.
Historian Michael Oren writes:
“In Gaza last week, crowds of children reveled and sang while adults showered them with candies. The cause for celebration: the cold-blooded murder of at least seven people — five of them Americans — and the maiming of 80 more by a terrorist bomb on the campus of Jersualem's Hebrew University.”
Ther is no equivalent - none - in Israeli society that is even remotely accepted in the mainstream. Nobody ever celebrates the death of even Yassin and other terror masterminds. The enemies of the Jews dance in the streets when children are blown up in buses and give out candy.
The Israelis are much more moral than any other nation under similiar attacks since the 1920s. Jews do not cultivate a culture of exterminatory hatred like practically all Arab, Persian theocracies and third world dictatorship do. If the Israelis wanted to kill Palestinians indiscriminately, they'd do what the Russians in Grozny (30,000 dead in one town), Assad Sr in Hama (20,000 dead in two weeks), King Hussein in Jordan (expelled the PLO after they tried to take over Jordan, thousands of dead) did.
I stand with Israel and the Jews against those who want to murder, defame and destroy her. Every humane person should. And every humane person should act to prevent the slaughter of 100,000s animist and Christian Africans from the murdereous Arab Muslim hordes in Sudan. The people who have early on, consistently and repeatedly urged nations to act against this genocide in 2004, 2005 are Jewish groups.
THIS SITE IS INFESTED WITH COCKROACHES THAT DESTROY IMPORTANT POSTS.
HIDING POSTS IS ONLY PART OF THE PROBLEM, ELIMINATING POSTS IS THE REAL PROBLEM.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING AND WHO IS DOING IT
INCONSISTENCY, LACK OF DELETION/HIDDEN WRITTEN POLICY - WHY?
ARE PRO-ZION DELETIONS USED AS COVER???
Debate over whether to call the mass murder in Darfur "genocide" is preventing efforts to bring those responsible to justice
Ben Kiernan
YaleGlobal, 4 February 2005
Horsemen of death: Janjaweed rebel leader Musa Hilal (left) and his men have been accused of committing genocide in Darfur
NEW HAVEN: In two years of mass killings and forced population displacements, Sudan and its Arab Janjaweed militias have caused the deaths of over 200,000 Africans in the country's Darfur provinces. Though existing international law already provides both a relevant statutory definition of genocide and a court to judge these crimes, needless semantic disputes are hampering effective punishment and deterrence. Failure to promptly bring those responsible before the International Criminal Court (ICC) could render the international community helpless onlookers – and would further encourage such crimes.
Despite persistent reports of attacks on Africans in Darfur, military intervention has been slow. The African Union peacekeeping force is small. Guarding their own sovereignty, few African or Arab governments will intervene in a regional Islamic state, or prosecute its crimes. US intervention, with American forces extended in Iraq and elsewhere, seems unlikely. Washington favors a genocide tribunal, in a special court restricted to hearing the Darfur case. It opposes the new permanent ICC, which one day might try US war crimes.
Differing definitions of genocide plague the legal response. A United Nations commission, urging referral of the case to ICC prosecutors, recently found that crimes against humanity and war crimes are occurring in Darfur. The commission avoided charging Sudanese government officials with genocide – the most heinous crime against humanity – stating that "only a competent court" can determine if they have committed "acts with genocidal intent." Meanwhile, the US government, the German government, the Parliament of the European Union, the US Holocaust Museum's Committee on Conscience, and Yad Vashem, all accuse Khartoum of "genocide."
Why this debate over the definition of genocide? Although the concept of genocide preceded the invention of the term, the jurist Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" in his 1944 classic Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Warning of what we now call the Holocaust, he cited previous cases, particularly the 1915 Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Young Turk regime. Lemkin thought that the term should denote the attempted destruction not only of ethnic and religious groups, but also of political ones, and that it encompassed systematic cultural destruction as well.
The 1941-45 Nazi genocide of Jews and Gypsies constitutes not only the most extreme case of genocide; it differs from previous cases – the conquistadors' brutality in the New World or nineteenth-century Ottoman massacres of Armenians – in an important respect: The Holocaust was one of the first historical examples of attempted physical racial extermination. On a smaller scale, this fate had already befallen a number of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Australia – and later, the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia, and Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. By then, planned near-complete annihilation of a people had become the colloquial meaning of "genocide."
Yet the postwar United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide adopted Lemkin's broader concept, which encompasses the crimes in Darfur. Ratified by most UN member states, the 1948 Convention defines genocide as acts committed "with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such." It includes even non-violent destruction of such a group. While excluding cultural destruction and political extermination, the Convention specifically covers removal of children, imposing living conditions that make it difficult to sustain a group's existence, or inflicting physical or mental harm, with the intent to destroy a group "as such." Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found in 1997 that the UN definition of genocide applies to the removals of Aboriginal children from their parents to "breed out the color" – as one Australian official put it in 1933. The law thus expands the popular understanding of genocide. As in the case of Darfur, genocide may fall well short of total physical extermination.
While some scholars use the term more broadly, to include destruction of political groups, the legal recourse now available to victims under international law is a good reason to accept the 1948 UN definition. In 2003, Sudan acceded to the Genocide Convention (which the US ratified in 1988). It is statutory international law, binding on 136 states. In the past decade, UN tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda have prosecuted and convicted genocide perpetrators from both countries. The Convention's definition is enshrined in the statute of the ICC, created in 2002 and ratified by 94 states.
The legal definition is broad in another sense, too. In criminal law, the term "intent" does not equal "motive." One of Hitler's motives for the construction of Auschwitz was to destroy the Jews directly, but other genocide perpetrators have pursued different goals – communism (Stalin and Pol Pot), conquest (Indonesia in East Timor), "ethnic cleansing" (in Bosnia and Darfur) – which resulted in more indirect cases. If those perpetrators did not set out to commit genocide, it was a predictable result of their actions. The regimes pursued their objectives, knowing that at least partial genocide would result from their violence: driving Muslim communities from Bosnia or Africans from Darfur, crushing all national resistance in East Timor, imposing totalitarian racism in Cambodia. When such policies, purposefully pursued, knowingly bring genocidal results, their perpetrators may be legally judged to have possessed the "intent" to destroy a group, at least "in part," whatever their motive. Such crimes are not the same as the Holocaust, but international law has made them another form of genocide.
The 1948 Convention also outlaws complicity, incitement, conspiracy, and attempt to commit genocide. A government could commit those crimes by facilitating an ongoing genocide against indigenous people. Darfur may include such cases of official complicity with the Janjaweed militia attacks. In colonial Australia, British authorities did not set out to exterminate Aborigines, but some police and settlers did. Nor did US federal officials adopt such a goal in California and the West, though some state governments and bounty-hunting posses did. Yet courts in both countries prohibited testimony by native people. Such official policies and their deliberate, sustained enforcement facilitated or resulted in the predictable genocide of a number of Aboriginal and Native American peoples.
Complicity, discrimination, and refusal of legal responsibility to protect threatened groups continued in the twentieth century. Even after World War II, the UN Security Council failed to enforce the 1948 Genocide Convention until the crime recurred in Europe. By then genocides had proliferated elsewhere. A few independent scholars, inspired by Lemkin, had long been working to broaden understanding of the phenomenon beyond the Holocaust. Most scholars now include the Armenian, Bangladeshi, Cambodian, East Timorese, Guatemalan, Sudanese, and other cases, along with those of Bosnia and Rwanda.
Attention has also turned to indigenous peoples. A German official recently apologized to the Herero people of Namibia for Berlin's genocidal conquest of Southwest Africa in 1904-05. The United States and Australia have yet to acknowledge earlier genocides against their indigenous inhabitants, but now the Muslim Africans of Darfur have a legal remedy.
After a century of genocide, resistance, and research on the phenomenon, the world community has a legal definition, an international statute outlawing the crime, and a court asserting jurisdiction over it. The task now requires less definitional disputation, more investigation, rigorous enforcement, and compensation for the victims. Unless either the Sudanese government invites the ICC, or the UN decides to send the case before the ICC, the Darfur crimes may go unpunished. Lest international efforts to prevent genocide disintegrate into empty talk, the ICC should be allowed to take up the case of Darfur.
Ben Kiernan is the A.Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, http://www.yale.edu/gsp. He is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power, and The Pol Pot Regime (Yale 2002, 2004), and co-editor of The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2003).
Rights:
© 2005 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
Rome (Fides Service)- “The situation in Darfur is unbearable” Caritas Italy said in a report to Fides underlining the urgent need for decisive intervention on the part of the international community to put an end to the suffering caused to civilians in this western region of Sudan. “The latest UN resolution to put sanctions on the Sudanese government unless it stops the violence, is a break through. It also asked the General Secretary to set up a commission to investigate violation of international law and human rights and Security Council member States to provide funds for a larger African Union peacekeeping force to protect civilians. In fact while the international community discusses what to do people continue to die, an average of 10,000 a month according to the World Health Organisation, and to remain without a home or concrete prospects of ever returning to their villages” Caritas Italy reports.
In recent weeks another 5,000 people abandoned their homes and are now living in the open. Caritas warns that it is dangerous for them to collect firewood and that an alternative must be found. In collaboration with Action by Churches network of Orthodox and Protestant churches, Caritas Italy hopes to collect 14 million Euro to help 500,000 people in three specific areas: Zelingi, in Hassa Hissa camps in the town of Zelingi and soon in camps in Dileij, Garsila and Umkher; Ta’asha, camps in Hashaba (1,360 families), Bashum (1,986 families), Borgy (1.975 families) and Belil B; Kubum, camps at Kubum (30,000 ), Um Labassa (13,000) and Dagadoussa (2,873).
Four areas of intervention:
Health Care: Open three health centres in Kubum, Um Labassa and Dagadoussa, and 12 more.
Sanitation: sanitation in Zelingi, Hassa Hissa camps, in Ta’asha and for hygiene education committees in Hashaba camp and Bashum camp. To improve hygiene, a problem everywhere, wells are being built and pumps repaired.
Food aid: distribution of cereals, oil and sugar for 300 children under 3 suffering from malnutrition in Hashaba camp and similar interventions in zone Ta’asha, Zelingi and Kubum.
Non food aid: distribution of tents, water cans, blankets, mosquito nets, cooking utensils, and soap for 200 new arrivals in Hashaba camp, and 576 people in Bashum camp. More than 2,000 cooking utensil sets were distributed in Bashum camp, tents and water cans at Wadhi Salik, near Zelingi. And there are plans to build 300 huts in Belil B camp.
Caritas is also assisting some 190,000 refugees from Darfur in Chad, mostly in 10 camps. Caritas N’djamena diocese is in charge of three camps: Farchana, Kounougou and Touloum caring for a total of 38,865 refugees. Caritas Internationalis is helping to provide schooling for children and non food aid including seeds and vaccine for animals. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 20/10/2004 righe 46 parole 591)
You continue to complain of all the deaths the evil Palestinian People are causing, Yet since this latest struggles for Palestinian Freedom began in Sept, of 2000:
1047 Israelis have died including 118 Children.
3593 Palestinian have died including 680 (a lot of children to have been just an accident?)
1047 Israelis Deaths out of a population of some 5,000,000 Jews.
3593 Palestinians out of a population of some 4,000,000 or so Palestinians.
So who are the evil ones the ones who have caused the death of 3593 or the ones who have caused the death of 1047?
For Details on these numbers:
CLICK HERE> http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html
Israel is defending herself from being destroyed.
Those Palestinian "Freedom fighters"' aim is to wipe Israel out
(see Fatah constitution, which Hamas or the Al-Aqsa Brigades consist of, etc.).
If it is Israel that is being destroyed they should have the higher death rate.
Could it be that Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinians since the Palestinian have the higher death rate as a result of theis struggle for Palestinian Freedom?
and 680 dead Palestinian Children, Israel has to defend itself from Children?
For Details on these numbers:
CLICK HERE> http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html
Why doesn't Israel allow the Palestinians to have there little State called for in the Road Map to Peace? That way we can find out for sure if it is the Palestinians who are causing the Problem or if the Problem is really the Occupation and Oppression of the Palestinian People.
No, Israel is using every means available to keep the Palestinians boiling mad so they can maintain the above PRIME EXCUSE for ripping off everything they have. It's the same exact thing the U.S. did to Native Americans.
To see a chronology that reveals the viciously bigoted and ludicrous nature of Sefarad's "reality," go here:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/03/1726547.php