Israeli Attack on Gaza: 2014 Version

[Peter Lemkin]

Well, looks like the ceasefire is over already. Was supposed to be for 72 hours. To bury the dead, get some food. Israel did a mass bombing in the few hours before the ceasefire took effect. It seems only to have been quiet for an hour or so and now Israel is back to bombing. They claim Hamas shot a rocket but no evidence. 34 dead they say.

Middle-East experts are beginning to talk now of 'all hell breaking out' regionally - and this spreading far wider than just between Gaza and the IDF.....of course this means many more innocent dead and many more nations involved. With the few hours of calm before the IDF started bombing again, some Al Jazeera crew got in to one entire neighborhood of Shujayea that looked like Berlin after the War....nothing standing and bodies lying around still. This is what the IDF calls their benign and pinpoint targeting?! I guess they consider any place and anyone in Gaza or the West Bank a valid target.....babies included.

As a side note, it is modestly encouraging to hear that even the dumbed-down and propagandized Americans are more and more starting to criticize what Israel is doing to the Palestinians now. Of course the American political elites and weapons makers will never criticize Israel and its policies.

Two addendum: An Israeli soldier WAS taken prisoner!...and now Israel is bombing Rafa and the central business district [markets full of unwarned persons] in Gaza City. Some cease-fire; this is the most intensive fighting in Gaza EVER!

[Magda Hassan]

:hock::

Senate blocks aid to Israel

'Our number one ally at least in my mind is under attack,' Reid says. | AP Photo





By BURGESS EVERETT | 7/31/14 8:46 PM EDT
In the end, the Senate couldn't even agree to deliver emergency aid to one of the United States' closest allies.
A last-ditch effort to deliver aid to Israel during its war with Hamas died on the Senate floor, as Republicans blocked the proposal over concerns that it would increase the debt.

After Senate Republicans blocked Democrats' $2.7 billion border aid package, which also included $225 million for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system and $615 million to fight Western wildfires, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to split off the Israel and wildfire money as a standalone bill, hoping to put aside the dispute over border funding and appeal to Republicans' deep ties to Israel.


"We've all watched as the tiny state of Israel, who is with us on everything, they have had in the last three weeks 3,000 rockets filed into their country," Reid said. "Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel asked for $225 million in emergency funding so that Israel's arsenal as it relates to the Iron Dome could be replenished. It's clear that is an emergency, and we should be able to agree on that."
It didn't work.
Even though GOP leaders had vowed to pass an Israel aid bill in recent days, Republicans rejected Reid's request. First Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) objected to Reid's request for a straight emergency cash infusion for firefighting and Israel. Then Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) offered an alternative that would deliver money to Israel and the West and offer commensurate spending cuts to international organizations like the United Nations; Reid blocked that.
"Our number one ally at least in my mind is under attack. If this isn't an emergency I don't know anything that is," Reid said.
"I want to fund Israel," replied Coburn. "I also want to make sure our children have a future."
The stumble on delivering $225 million for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, which is used to shoot down rockets aimed at Israel, infuriated GOP hawks who'd been pushing Reid to break the Israel funding from the border bill.
"It's an important moment for the Senate and the House to show support for Israel. All I can say that if you don't see the need to come to Israel's aid now, and the message that it would send now, it would be a big mistake," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "Any person who thinks that the Iron Dome is unnecessary needs to go to the floor and tell us why, why we don't need to help Israel right now. They're asking for our help, they're our best friend in the region, one of our best friends in the world. "

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/se...09617.html

[Magda Hassan]

Hamas have confirmed they have captured an Israeli soldier. He was captured before the ceasefire. This will not go well. Rafah sounds like it already under massive attack. Bodies all over the streets and the medics cannot get to them.

[Peter Lemkin]

Hamas have confirmed they have captured an Israeli soldier. He was captured before the ceasefire. This will not go well. Rafah sounds like it already under massive attack. Bodies all over the streets and the medics cannot get to them.

Death toll by end of today will exceed by about +200 those who died in 'Cast Lead' - which lasted much longer. The actual death toll is predicted to be double the 'known' death toll...as whole towns in Gaza have been destroyed and in many the IDF have not allowed anyone to go back to collect and bury the bodies. So, a total of about 3000 would not be out of the question, thus far...!

Israel secretly [only to the world, not within the leadership] will do ANYTHING to see that the Palestinians never get a state of their own nor are allowed to live in the one they and their ancestors lived in for millennia. The Stern Gang and the Haggenah [two of the most powerful early Zionist terrorist groups] are being modeled still. Very sad. These same types assassinated Rabin - as similar groups did in the USA to JFK - to prevent Peace and Justice.

[Michael Barwell]

Israel seems to me to be a very fractured society; the largest peace/anti-war demos over the '82 Lebanon invasion were in Israel, but then the UK's Channel4 aired a docu on how 'all' of the US's neocons were Jewish.

[Magda Hassan]

British-Israeli soldier understood captured by Hamas

Tweet



A soldier captured alive by Hamas fighters in Gaza, is a British Israeli cousin of Israel's defence minister, Channel 4 News understands.


Rumours began circulating about the captured soldier this morning, and at around lunchtime the Israeli military spokesman announced that they feared a soldier had indeed been taken.
The Israeli defence forces have named the captured soldier as Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23, from Kfar Saba.
Channel 4 News understands that the soldier is from a family of British Jewish immigrants. It is also understand that he is a cousin either second or third of Israeli's defence minister, Moshe Ya'alon.
THE IDF spokesman said that around 9.30am Israeli soldiers came under fire in an area around the border of the southern Gaza Strip and "there's a fear" that during the incident a soldier "has been kidnapped by the terrorists".
The spokesman added that the family of the soldier had been informed. The military said the situation is still evolving and that the IDF is making "big efforts, operational and intelligence, to locate the soldier".
The 72-hour ceasefire had already broken down this morning but the reported kidnapping of the Israeli soldier will raise the stakes in the conflict to a completely different level.
Israelis were horrified when another soldier, Gilad Shalit, was previously kidnapped in the Gaza area and held by Hamas militants. He was released in October 2011 after five years and four months - but only in exchange for 1,027 Palestinains prisoners, including many linked to Hamas.
The names of four of the five Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian mortar fire near the Gaza Strip border earlier have been released by the IDF. The number of Israeli military fatalities now stands at 61.





http://www.channel4.com/news/gaza-israel...-ceasefire

[Peter Lemkin]

The Israeli defense forces have named the captured soldier as Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23, from Kfar Saba.

I can't confirm yet if he is a relative of any high-level military/political leaders...but that would be cosmic justice!

[Lauren Johnson]

Hamas have confirmed they have captured an Israeli soldier. He was captured before the ceasefire. This will not go well. Rafah sounds like it already under massive attack. Bodies all over the streets and the medics cannot get to them.

Rafah possibly under fire because of the unstated Israeli policy called The Hannibal Directive. Summed up it states no Israeli soldier is to captured and left alive.

From MofA

A cease-fire between Gaza and Israel was announced for this morning at 8am local time. The Israeli defense forces continued to operate in Gaza and to destroy the Palestinian tunnels. Shortly before the official cease-fire start, according to Palestinian sources, a commando of Islamic Jihad fighters infiltrated the Israeli line through a tunnel, attacked a group of Israeli soldiers, killed several and captured one of them alive. This happened near the southern Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

The Israelis took a while to notice that a soldier had been captured but when they found out they immediately responded according to the Hannibal directive which demands to do everything possible to prevent that an Israeli soldier captured alive stays captured alive.

Accordingly, even before the capture of its soldier was publicly known, the Israeli army opened a barrage of artillery fire over south Gaza killing some 50 Palestinians and wounding more than 200 of them. These people were out in the streets and markets because they thought that the cease-fire was in place.

The cease-fire is for now over. It is unlikely that the Israelis have a chance to find their soldier.

Will they now again escalate and risk more possible captures or will they negotiate a new cease-fire and later the captured soldier's release?

Posted by b at 07:27 AM | Comments (44)

[Peter Lemkin]

Hamas claims it doesn't have any Israeli soldier, dead or alive, as captive....while this can't be confirmed, it does open up the possibility of a false-flag operation on the part of Israel to bomb the hell out of Gaza until they 'find' the soldier who may already be dead or other.....

....and the US Congress just gave Israel [who do NOT need nor deserve any] a quarter of a billion in military aid on an emergency basis....and nothing for the Palestinians [who DO desperately need and deserve it]....but then the USA has been on the wrong side of every war [and most political stances/ 'wars on....' (fill in the blank)] since WW2.....

[Magda Hassan]

While I don't think this reflects universal opinion in Israel, any more than all Palestinians want to drive Israel into the sea, it display the very ugly mindset of far too many. The writer got many 'likes' and shares for his post in the short time it was up before it was removed by the Times of Israel.

Here's the full text of the deleted Times of Israel post backing genocide in Gaza

Updated by Max Fisher on August 1, 2014, 12:41 p.m. ET @Max_Fisher max@vox.com

The English-language Israeli publication Times of Israel today published, and then quickly deleted, a blog post by the writer Yochanan Gordon with the extremely inflammatory headline "When Genocide is Permissible." The post does not explicitly endorse the genocide of Palestinians, but it asks if doing so would be morally justified after building up the case it would be and presenting only evidence in the affirmative.

"What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?" Gordon asks. And later, arguing that Hamas will never accept peace and that Israel is justified in doing anything necessary to impose it, "If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?"


We've preserved the full text of the now-deleted blog post below; you can read it for yourself. This is not because Gordon himself is a particularly influential writer, much less a political leader of any kind, but because this post represents an extreme iteration of a much broader problem, in which the conflict and the discourse around it exacerbates and empowers extremism on both sides of the conversation. There is real social science behind this phenomenon, which pushes the politics of the conflict away from peace and toward more hard-line positions, as well as raising voices that de-humanize the "other side" in a way that makes it easier to perpetuate the fighting.
Again, this post is obviously an extreme position, which is why the Times of Israel deleted it, but it is most unusual not for his argument for the plain-stated clumsiness of it. Both the Israeli far-right and Palestinian militant groups will at times advocate for the absolute elimination of the other side from the land; they just know how to do it in a way that won't raise so many eyebrows.

Judging by the numbers of casualties on both sides in this almost one-month old war one would be led to the conclusion that Israel has resorted to disproportionate means in fighting a far less- capable enemy. That is as far as what meets the eye. But, it's now obvious that the US and the UN are completely out of touch with the nature of this foe and are therefore not qualified to dictate or enforce the rules of this war - because when it comes to terror there is much more than meets the eye.
I wasn't aware of this, but it seems that the nature of warfare has undergone a major shift over the years. Where wars were usually waged to defeat the opposing side, today it seems - and judging by the number of foul calls it would indicate - that today's wars are fought to a draw. I mean, whoever heard of a timeout in war? An NBA Basketball game allows six timeouts for each team during the course of a game, but last I checked this is a war! We are at war with an enemy whose charter calls for the annihilation of our people. Nothing, then, can be considered disproportionate when we are fighting for our very right to live.
The sad reality is that Israel gets it, but its hands are being tied by world leaders who over the past six years have insisted they are such good friends with the Jewish state, that they know more regarding its interests than even they do. But there's going to have to come a time where Israel feels threatened enough where it has no other choice but to defy international warnings - because this is life or death.
Most of the reports coming from Gazan officials and leaders since the start of this operation have been either largely exaggerated or patently false. The truth is, it's not their fault, falsehood and deceit is part of the very fabric of who they are and that will never change. Still however, despite their propensity to lie, when your enemy tells you that they are bent on your destruction you believe them. Similarly, when Khaled Meshal declares that no physical damage to Gaza will dampen their morale or weaken their resolve - they have to be believed. Our sage Gedalia the son of Achikam was given intelligence that Yishmael Ben Nesanyah was plotting to kill him. However, in his piety or rather naiveté Gedalia dismissed the report as a random act of gossip and paid no attention to it. To this day, the day following Rosh Hashana is commemorated as a fast day in the memory of Gedalia who was killed in cold blood on the second day of Rosh Hashana during the meal. They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over. History is there to teach us lessons and the lesson here is that when your enemy swears to destroy you - you take him seriously.
Hamas has stated forthrightly that it idealizes death as much as Israel celebrates life. What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?
News anchors such as those from CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera have not missed an opportunity to point out the majority of innocent civilians who have lost their lives as a result of this war. But anyone who lives with rocket launchers installed or terror tunnels burrowed in or around the vicinity of their home cannot be considered an innocent civilian. If you'll counter, that Hamas has been seen abusing civilians who have attempted to leave their homes in response to Israeli warnings to leave - well then, your beginning to come to terms with the nature of this enemy which should automatically cause the rules of standard warfare to be suspended.
Everyone agrees that Israel has the right to defend itself as well as the right to exercise that right. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has declared it, Obama and Kerry have clearly stated that no one could be expected to sit idle as thousands of rockets rain down on the heads of its citizens, placing them in clear and present danger. It seems then that the only point of contention is regarding the measure of punishment meted out in this situation.
I will conclude with a question for all the humanitarians out there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/1/5959635/here...st-backing