Israel invades Gaza

Spot on article if I may say so.

I was speaking idiomatically.

The only democratic nation in a region filled with Moon God worshiping mud bloods displays its superior culture by banning arab parties.

Quote:

Israel bans Arab parties from coming election - World AP - MiamiHerald.com
JERUSALEM -- Israel on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month's parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country's Supreme Court.

The ruling by parliament's Central Election Committee reflected the heightened tensions between Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority caused by Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip. Arabs have held a series of demonstrations against the offensive.

Parliament spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist. Arab lawmakers have traveled to some of Israel's staunchest enemies, including Lebanon and Syria.

The 37-member committee is composed of representatives from Israel's major political parties. The measure was proposed by two ultranationalist parties but received widespread support.

The decision does not affect Arab lawmakers in predominantly Jewish parties or the country's communist party, which has a mixed list of Arab and Jewish candidates. Roughly one-fifth of Israel's 7 million citizens are Arabs. Israeli Arabs enjoy full citizenship rights, but have suffered from discrimination and poverty for decades.

Arab lawmakers Ahmed Tibi and Jamal Zahalka, political rivals who head the two Arab blocs in parliament, joined together in condemning Monday's decision.

"It was a political trial led by a group of Fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs," said Tibi.

Together, the Arab lists hold seven of the 120 seats in the Knesset, or parliament.

Tibi said he would appeal to the high court, while Zahalka said his party was still deciding how to proceed.

Pordes, the parliament spokesman, said the last party to be banned was the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach Party, a list from the 1980s that advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

You said Israel withdrew from Gaza and ended their settlement program, as if that was supposed to make Hamas go "gee thanks guys" and just completely ignore everything that's been going on in the West Bank.

Not like Israel has left Gaza alone, mind. There's still the economic strangulation and fun stuff like low-flying Israeli jets creating sonic booms that cause health problems like damaging children's ears.

I never said I agreed with everything Israel does. What I don’t agree with is your characterization of Israel. Israel has just as much right to launch an embargo/blockade of Palestine as the Americans do against Cuba. Equally, if the Palestinians want to try and compel Israel into lifting its blockade by firing rockets into their territory, they should expect retaliation. I don’t see why you expect Israel to just sit back and absorb attacks against its territory.
As for the disengagement plan, at least Israel has made gestures towards peace. I’m sure Israel is very sorry they couldn’t do more for the Palestinians when they’ve been so committed to the peace process since 2001. Can you remind me how many times Hamas has extended some kind of peace gesture towards Israel?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Yeah, they should have just put that children's hospital on wheels and rolled it into Egypt.

Or leave if someone's launching rockets near your home?

FELIPE NO

The US embargo on Cuba is the most pointless gesture of US foreign policy on the books, and outlasted its relevancy when Soviet missiles left the island. Of course you'd equivocate one of our dumbest policies with Israeli apartheid.

Saying that Israel has made gestures towards peace is also a fucking laugh and a half. Israel violates its peace accords regularly and Jewish settlements still continue to grow while Palestinians are forced into smaller and smaller ghettoes. Palestinians have no political route to peace since the PLO sold out to European corporate interests, and now Arab Israelis can't even affect Israeli policy because their political parties are banned.

You can't just leave Gaza, they call it a ghetto because people can't escape. I'd like to hear your suggestions about where exactly the Palestinians in Gaza CAN go that's safe keeping in mind the IDF already bombed a clearly marked UN SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN.

Additional Spam:

YouTube Video

Originally Posted by Joe the Plumber

The people of Sderot "can't do normal things day to day," like get soap in their eyes in the shower, for fear a rocket might come in, said Joe the Plumber, so dubbed by Republican Sen. John McCain's campaign, but whose real name is Samuel Wurzelbacher.

"I'm sure they're taking quick showers," he said. "I know I would."

Joe the Plumber should take a Zyklon B shower.

Additional Spam:
Israelis demonstrate the danger of Hamas rocket attacks.

Additional Spam:
Joe The Plumber asks for the REAL STORY from the only brown reporter.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Demands grow for Gaza war crimes investigation:

Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the "reckless and indiscriminate" shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers.

With the death toll from the 17-day Israeli assault on Gaza climbing above 900, pressure is increasing for an independent inquiry into specific incidents, such as the shelling of a UN school turned refugee centre where about 40 people died, as well as the question of whether the military tactics used by Israel systematically breached humanitarian law.
Link to this audio

The UN's senior human rights body approved a resolution yesterday condemning the Israeli offensive for "massive violations of human rights". A senior UN source said the body's humanitarian agencies were compiling evidence of war crimes and passing it on to the "highest levels" to be used as seen fit.

Some human rights activists allege that the Israeli leadership gave an order to keep military casualties low no matter what cost to civilians. That strategy has directly contributed to one of the bloodiest Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territories, they say.

John Ging, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said: "It's about accountability [over] the issue of the appropriateness of the force used, the proportionality of the force used and the whole issue of duty of care of civilians.

"We don't want to join any chorus of passing judgment but there should be an investigation of any and every incident where there are concerns there might have been violations in international law."

The Israeli military are accused of:

• Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;

• Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;

• Holding Palestinian families as human shields;

• Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;

• Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.

Israeli military actions prompted an unusual public rebuke from the International Red Cross after the army moved a Palestinian family into a building and shelled it, killing 30. The surviving children clung to the bodies of their dead mothers for four days while the army blocked rescuers from reaching the wounded.

Human Rights Watch has called on the UN security council to set up a commission of inquiry into alleged war crimes.

Two leading Israeli human rights organisations have separately written to the country's attorney general demanding he investigate the allegations.

But critics remain sceptical that any such inquiry will take place, given that Israel has previously blocked similar attempts with the backing of the US.

Amnesty International says hitting residential streets with shells that send blast and shrapnel over a wide area constitutes "prima facie evidence of war crimes".

"There has been reckless and disproportionate and in some cases indiscriminate use of force," said Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty investigator in Israel. "There has been the use of weaponry that shouldn't be used in densely populated areas because it's known that it will cause civilian fatalities and casualties.

"They have extremely sophisticated missiles that can be guided to a moving car and they choose to use other weapons or decide to drop a bomb on a house knowing that there were women and children inside. These are very, very clear breaches of international law."

Israel's most prominent human rights organisation, B'Tselem, has written to the attorney general in Jerusalem, Meni Mazuz, asking him to investigate suspected crimes including how the military selects its targets and the killing of scores of policemen at a passing out parade.

"Many of the targets seem not to have been legitimate military targets as specified by international humanitarian law," said Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem.

Rovera has also collected evidence that the Israeli army holds Palestinian families prisoner in their own homes as human shields. "It's standard practice for Israeli soldiers to go into a house, lock up the family in a room on the ground floor and use the rest of the house as a military base, as a sniper's position. That is the absolute textbook case of human shields.

"It has been practised by the Israeli army for many years and they are doing it again in Gaza now," she said.

While there are growing calls for an international investigation, the form it would take is less clear. The UN's human rights council has the authority to investigate allegations of war crimes but Israel has blocked its previous attempts to do so. The UN security council could order an investigation, and even set up a war crimes tribunal, but that is likely to be vetoed by the US and probably Britain.

The international criminal court has no jurisdiction because Israel is not a signatory. The UN security council could refer the matter to the court but is unlikely to.

Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said an international investigation of the army's actions was not justified. "We have international lawyers at every level of the command whose job it is to authorise targeting decisions, rules of engagement ... We don't think we have breached international law in any of these instances," he said.

source

I find the last few paragraphs particularly interesting. I'm not too familiar with the process, but is there a way that Ehud Olmert and his defense minister can be held responsible for their war crimes? What is the probability that it will happen?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Now that Israel has withdrawn from Gaza as a homemaking present for Obama let's look at the deadly toll caused by Hamas's Qassam rockets:

Quote:

[url]http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=883997&ct=3887857[url]
List of Deaths Caused by Qassam Rockets and Mortar Fire. Total: 23

Total Deaths Within Israel: 16

June 5, 2008 - Amnon Rosenberg, 51, killed by a mortar bomb which struck Moshav Yesha [1]

May 12, 2008 - Shuli Katz, 70, killed by a Qassam rocket which struck Moshav Yesha [2]

May 9, 2008 - Jimmy Kedoshim from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, aged 48, killed by a mortar shell fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip [3]
Feb 27, 2008 – Roni Yihye, 47, a mature student, killed on Sapir College campus while sitting in his car [4]

May 27, 2007 - Oshri Oz, 36, from Hod Hasharon. Killed in Sderot when a rocket hit his vehicle as he was driving in the city, where he worked as computer technician.

May 21, 2007 - Shirel Friedman, 32, from Sderot, killed when standing near a car that was struck by a rocket

Nov. 21, 2006 - Yaakov Yaakobov, 43, from Sderot. Severely injured while at work in a Sderot poultry processing plant and died from his wounds one day later.

Nov. 11, 2006 - Faina Slutzker, 57, killed when a rocket hits the street where she is walking near the home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

March 28, 2006 - Salam Ziadin and Khalid, 16, a Bedouin father and son, killed when a Qassam rocket they find in the Nahal Oz area explodes.

July 15, 2005 - Dana Gelkowitz, 22, killed by a Qassam that strikes a home in Moshav Nativ Ha'asara.

Jan. 15, 2005 - Ayala Haya Abukasis, 17, killed when a rocket hits Sderot.

Sept. 29, 2004 - Dorit Inso, 2, killed when two rockets hit her residence building.

Sept. 29, 2004 - Yuval Abeva, 4, killed when two rockets hit his residence building.

June 28, 2004 - Afik Ohion Zehavi, 4, killed when a rocket lands in his nursery school in Sderot.

June 28, 2004 - Mordechai Yosephus, 49, killed when a rocket lands in a kindergarten in Sderot.

Total Deaths from Mortar Fire in the Former Israeli Settlements in Gaza: 8

Dec. 14, 2005 - Jitladda Tap-arsa, 20, a female Thai national, was killed while working in a greenhouse in the Gush Katif settlement of Ganei Tal.

June 7, 2005 - Bi Shude, 46, a Chinese national, was killed while working in a greenhouse in the Gush Katif settlement of Ganei Tal.

June 7, 2005 - Muhammad Mahmoud Jaroum, a Palestinian worker, was killed while working in a greenhouse in the Gush Katif settlement of Ganei Tal.

June 7, 2005 - Muslah Umran, a Palestinian worker, was killed while working in a greenhouse in the Gush Katif settlement of Ganei Tal.

Jan. 2, 2005 - Nissim Arbiv, 26, of Nissanit, was severely injured by a mortar shell in the Erez industrial zone. He died from his injuries ten days later.

Oct. 28, 2004 - Sgt. Michael Chizik, 21, of Tiberias, was killed when a mortar shell landed in the Morag outpost in Gush Katif.

Sept. 24, 2004: Tiferet Tratner, 24, of Neve Dekalim, was killed in her home by a mortar attack on the Gush Katif settlement bloc.

Nov. 24, 2001 - St.-Sgt. Barak Madmon, from Holon, 26, was killed by a mortar strike while on reserve duty in Kfar Darom.

Those monsters, surely the IDF responded surgically and professionally by -

Quote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7835981.stm
At least 1,300 Palestinians, according to Palestinian sources, and 13 Israelis have been killed since Israel launched its offensive on 27 December.

There's nowhere I can't reach.