I expected to see an ambulance hurtling round the corner and saw instead a donkey-drawn cart pulling three children and two male relatives.Jesus. There's no excuse for this. None.
Twelve-year-old Haya was dead, her singed body quickly covered by a white sheet. Four-year-old Lamma died in front of us. Ismaeel, nine, came in breathing. "We think he'll be ok, we need to x-ray his legs," doctors said. [He died on Thursday morning.] The children died of internal injuries consistent with having been thrown in the air and bounced some 10 metres off the ground. They had gone to throw the rubbish out.
Barefoot boys, clutching kites made out of scraps of paper and ragged soccer balls, squat a few feet away under scrub trees. Men in flowing white or gray galabias—homespun robes—smoke cigarettes in the shade of slim eaves. Two emaciated donkeys, their ribs protruding, are tethered to wooden carts with b rubber wheels.posted by Grangousier at 1:00 PM on January 3, 2009
It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker.
"Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!"
I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's cunt!"
The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come.
A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.
At 2:06 pm on Saturday 1/3 EST, I was watching CNN, the US feed, which had temporarily switched to the London desk of CNN International. CNN International began an interview with PLO spokesman Saeb Erakat, the first time I have seen a Palestinian commenter on US television during the past week with the exception of the PA envoy to the UN.posted by delmoi at 2:53 PM on January 3, 2009
If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them?posted by fleetmouse at 9:02 PM on January 3, 2009 [2 favorites]
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!"Zionists are scum.
-- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979
"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25, 1982.
"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."
-- Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."
-- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.
"The Jews seek to conquer the world...We must expose the Zionist-Colonialist plot and its goals, which destroy not only our people but the entire world."Arabs are scum.
-- PA Minister of Agriculture, Abdel Jawad Saleh
"Global Zionism has tried to forge the Holy Koran, and has printed many copies of this forgery. It
has been discovered that many extremist movements were backed by [global Zionism]."
-- Ret. Lebanese General, Hisham Jaber
"If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew."
-- Hassam Nasrallah
"We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilt to redeem our land!"
-- Yasser Arafat
Like other religious minorities in Iran, Jews suffer from discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and housing. According to the U.S. Department of State, Jews may not occupy senior positions in the government or the military and are prevented from serving in the judiciary and security services and from becoming public school heads.Yeah, it's a pretty sweet life, you're right. I don't even need to mention all the Jews expelled from Muslim nations following the creation of Israel in a stunning display of cultural acceptance. I'm sure the inhabitants of one of the most liberal and advanced nations in the Middle East will jump at the chance to be dhimmis. And I'm sure Hamas and other Palestinian factions will treat Jews even better in a one-state arrangement after trying to kill them for decades.
The anti‑Israeli policies of the Iranian government create a hostile atmosphere for the Jewish community. In 2004, many Iranian newspapers celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the publishing of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Jews are often the target of degrading caricatures in the Iranian press. Jewish leaders reportedly are reluctant to draw attention to official mistreatment of their community due to fear of government reprisal.
How does preventing food going in prevent suicide bombers coming out? Can you elaborate? Before Hamas broke the cease fire, did Israel prevent food from going in? I don't think this was the case.Israel absolutely was preventing food from getting in. Try to pay attention.
What if Canada elected a prime minister and several cabinet members who were all part of a group who believed that North America was promised to them by Divine Right and it was their sacred duty to reclaim it?What if the Mexicans gained superpowers and threatened to invade us with their unicorn brigades!? What the hell is this nonsense.
yeah, except that time when their ancestors conquered and then kicked the jews out of israel.Israelis and Palestinians have the same ancestors. In fact, if you back a few hundred years everyone's family tree converges. Not that it really matters anyway.
Not true at all. I would never consider launching a rocket at my neighbors in the first place. If they don't try to kill me they have nothing to worry about from me.So you wouldn't mind if they walled off your neighborhood and didn't allow any food to enter, or at least not enough food for everyone, you wouldn't have a problem with that?
Considering five fresh fish only quoted Israeli leaders, I thought it was appropriate enough to refer to Arabs rather than an ideology.Because you're a racist.
The 28th Zionist Congress, meeting in Jerusalem 1968, adopted the five points of the "Jerusalem Program" as the aims of Zionism today. They are:They are, specifically, Nationalist Zionists: they believe force should be used against Arabs and that Palestine should be eroded. How that is accomplished is made perfectly plain in historical maps.
The unity of the Jewish People and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life;
The ingathering of the Jewish People in its historic homeland, Eretz Israel, through Aliyah from all countries;
The strengthening of the State of Israel which is based on the prophetic vision of justice and peace:
The preservation of the identity of the Jewish People through the fostering of Jewish and Hebrew education and of Jewish spiritual and cultural values;
The protection of Jewish rights everywhere. wiki
[Israel] has dropped millions of flyers on the occupied, besieged Gaza Strip.posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:45 PM on January 4, 2009
One such flyer [...] invites Palestinians to call or email the Israeli army "to inform us about the location of rocket launching sites and the terrorist gangs that made you hostages of their actions."
[...]
EI I want to give you names of the biggest terrorist organizations, not just in Gaza, but in all Palestine. [...] The first one, his name is Ehud Barak [[Israeli minister of defense]].
[...]
Israeli officer: Maybe we'll see each other under better circumstances.
EI: Yes, I hope it will be at the International Court in The Hague.
Vice Premier Haim Ramon went even further Friday night in an interview on Israeli television, saying Israel must not end this operation with Hamas in charge of Gaza.I wonder if Israel has reached the point where its actions are increasingly indefensible outside of its borders (and hopefully, within). It wasn't long ago that Israel could do no wrong in the public eye in the US. (note: "Nearly half (47%) of Israelis expressed the belief that the U.S. favors Israel too much"!) In Great Britain public opinion has already turned in favor of Palestinians, while other European countries show higher levels of support relative to the US. Of course, in 2003, Pew found "44% of Americans expressed their belief that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people."
This war is wrong because it is not heading toward a viable solution of the conflict but is instead creating more hatred and greater determination on the part of both peoples to harm one another.and, what should be repeated every time there is the call for war:
It is difficult to find public forums that welcome a call for a new cease-fire and for alternative solutions to the conflict -- ones that do not rely on military strength or a siege of Gaza. When people are in the midst of war, they are not open to voices of peace; they speak (and scream) out of fear and demand retribution for the harms they have suffered. When people are in the midst of war, they forget that they can harness higher cognitive abilities, their reason and logic.posted by zenon at 9:34 AM on January 5, 2009
Joe in Australia, uh, all of the Palestinians were there first?
Really, the Palestinians did not come to that land in the 19th and 20th century, then use European and North American wealth to drive out the current inhabitants.
Yes, some Jews always lived in that land, too, as witnessed by the fact that Hebrew is essentially a Canaanite dialect.
But if you want to understand the conflict, you need to know who was driven from their homes and not allowed to return.
Your digression about the histories of a few families is very odd. Of course people travel. When I said "all," I thought we were talking about populations.
all of the Palestinians were there firstis "there was a Palestinian population in what is now Israel before there was a Jewish population there." Is that right?
I didn't realize you wanted the phone books for each community and an account of each person's history.
Really, the Palestinians did not come to that land in the 19th and 20th century, then use European and North American wealth to drive out the current inhabitants,but in a followup message you wrote
Palestinians were not driven from their homes two hundred years ago. Incidents like the massacre at Deir Yassin were less than a century ago.
Here's my take Joe, if [...] that house was never sold, but was indeed illegally seized by the Israeli government so as to put an Israeli citizen in it....then yeah, the property was stolen.
Some Jewish sects, like the Samarians, stayed in the area.
Joe, 'Samaritans' is more popular, probably because of the King James Version, but 'Samarians' is legit when referring to the people of Shomron/Samaria. Since there's no "Samarita", I prefer Samarian.
It's a quirk from reading too much, I admit.
Following a day of sometimes fierce fighting outside Gaza City, Israeli military officials reported their first significant casualties of the 12-day offensive when three soldiers were killed by an errant Israeli tank shell. The friendly fire incident on Monday evening also injured two dozen others.Craig Whitlock, "Israel Pushes into Southern Gaza," Washington Post, 6 Jan 09
Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN until a few months ago, was brought in by the Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and political groundwork has been under way for months.posted by asok at 7:18 AM on January 6, 2009
"This was something that was planned long ahead," he said. "I was recruited by the foreign minister to coordinate Israel's efforts and I have never seen all parts of a very complex machinery - whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the prime minister's office, the police or the army - work in such co-ordination, being effective in sending out the message."
Joe, I can't remember where I ran into "Samarian" initially [...]
The first hit I get when I google it now that uses it in the same way is here.
This incident is the origin of the Samaritan religious community.
If I remember correctly, "Shomron" or "Shomeron" comes from the Hebrew, and "Samaria" comes from the Aramaic that replaced Hebrew in that land, so "Shomronans" or "Samarians" both make more sense than "Samaritans. But people use what they're used to. It's kind of like Beijing versus Peking, or Mumbai versus Bombay. It would take a major effort to change the name.
That "t" is old--Wycliffe used it.
Still, if you google "Samarian", you'll get a good number of hits that aren't misspellings.
Is the "t" sound in the Greek? My understanding is that it's not in the Aramaic.
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posted by stinkycheese at 10:28 AM on January 3, 2009 [4 favorites]