Well, this is a novel development. According to The Australian, Israel is now threatening to assassinate the Prime Minister of Palestine. This is after Israel seized a sizeable portion of the parliament.
Thousands of Hamas supporters protested in Gaza City late on Thursday over the arrest by Israeli forces of up to 32 Hamas MPs on the West Bank that day…
The arrested Hamas legislators have been sent to security prisons and many will stand trial on terrorism offences. The detentions have hurt Hamas’s already limited ability to govern and are likely to force a regime change.
Interesting times. It looks like another example of the fantastic progress Bush is making in democratizing the Middle East. The whole sad affair was precipitated by the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit. Hamas is asking for the release of 1,000 prisoners in return for Shalit’s freedom. The wingnuts very much approve of Israel’s measured response. Hosni Mubarak is trying to negotiate a sane settlement of the crisis, while Israel threatens to invade the northern part of the Gaza Strip and do what?
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed the military will do all it can to avoid civilian deaths if a full-scale assault is launched.
So, I guess they will focus on killing Gaza’s huge military forces.
and they do learn mostly through osmosis no matter what that fucking fruitcake Dobson says!
This is how it ends. Neither Israel nor the US has any more claims to being democratic countries.
This is total insanity. I really don’t know what else to say. Both sides have gone over the edge.
I have to agree with you totally! W/O any type of sane leadershipin this world, we really are on the brink of total distruction of each other, one way or the other. I understand that Egypt is totally angry to this developement. There goes the peace accord down the tube…
I know this will be a “broken record” kind of comment, but why the hell was CNN non-stop coverage of the infamous trip to Graceland yesterday and the never-ending “will it or won’t it launch” NASA coverage today with rarely a moment spent on this story?
Ok, I know, but still….
It is called putting on a happy face, my Dear. This administration has to do this for it’s own survival sake, for they know their bubble is burst!
for American media:
Thou shall not run a story that makes Israel look bad.
They’d run 24×7 coverage of a dog and pony show in Peoria (or of Georgie and a flea market velvet Elvis) before they’d tell the truth about Israel.
Fear not, the U.S. administration is closely monitoring the situation. In the event that the U.S. government is taken over by Democrats and their blogofascist allies via nefarious and widespread democratic voter fraud, these tactics will prove greatly useful to defend Democracy by protecting us from such an illegitimately and improperly elected government.
before I die: Why do groups of people devolve into the behavior that they start out opposing? Israel was born out of a reaction to genocide and now that government is essentially the perpetrator of genocide. Their actions aren’t as cold and systematic as the Nazi’s but the end goal is the same — the elimination of the Palestinian people.
Amazing on its own merit! I so stipulate you are so correct in your observation.
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From friend and partner Israel. An IDF soldier was captured and held captive by Palestinian freedom fighters – activists – terrorists …
Hamas has reacted to the continued assassinations from Israeli air attacks and the shelling of the beach killing innocent Palestinians.
So Israel goes into Gaza and destroys the only electrical power plant of Gaza and two main bridges. This is nothing more than collective punishment for the civilian population.
CUT OFF: Palestinians assess a bridge destroyed by Israeli warplanes on a main road in the northern Gaza Strip. Israel knocked out electricity and attacked exit routes. Hatem Moussa/AP● IDF bars East Jerusalem residents from using Bethlehem crossing
See my previous diary :: Bush and Olmert Choking Gaza & Palestinian Economy
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
That is the one thing that bothers me – the actions Israel has taken has done far more to hurt innocent Palestinians than anyone else. That doesn’t seem fair or humane.
The whole sad affair was precipitated by the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit.
if one could identify a precipitating event in this endless cycle of violence, surely it would be the killing of the Palestinian family on the Gaza beach 2 weeks ago. Despite the IDF (typical) denials of responsibility it appears that there is solid evidence that the deaths were caused by an Israeli artillery shell.
Notice the pattern by the Israeli government-they always escalate these situations, by deploying disproportionate and brutal countermeasures.
They use iron-fist measurres while loudly proclaiming their victim status.
any objective observer should be able to parse this when reading accounts from any non-US news source (like the BBC for example).
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Human Rights Watch Expert Disagrees
GAZA CITY (BBC News) June 13 — An expert working for the Human Rights Watch said the Palestinians’ injuries were not consistent with a blast taking place beneath them. “It has been suggested by some that the family was killed by a land mine, and this is patently not the case,” Mark Garlasco¹ said.
“All of the evidence is pointing to a 155mm shell as having killed and injured the Palestinians here on the beach,” he said. “My assessment [is] that it’s likely that this was incoming artillery fire that landed on the beach and was fired by the Israelis from the north of Gaza.”
Eyewitness: Gaza beach shellingFrom my diary ::
Gaza Beach Deaths: ‘Incoming fire’ – HRW Expert
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
The whole sad affair was precipitated by the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit.
This sentence reads just like the one-sided, partial reporting we get in the corporate media. At this point, positing a precipitating cause to a decades-long struggle is pretty meaningless, but it would be just ever so slightly relevant to note that preceding the “kidnapping(?)” (no, that word is used for civilians — appropriate to the settler who got killed & the other one being held, but not to a CAPTURED soldier) the Israelis had been shelling Gaza the previous week, eventually killing a family, picnicking on the beach. Or the 50 airstrikes over the past month?
Wouldn’t it be relevant to note that according to Israel, they were planning to kidnap the Hamas leadership weeks ago?
As the Ha’aretz editorial put it yesterday:
. . . arresting people to use as bargaining chips is the act of a gang, not of a state
Can’t “progressives” learn to use the words Collective Punishment?
There is major humanitarian crisis about to erupt in Gaza, one for which the US bears some direct responsibility. If progressives won’t speak out, who will?
From yesterday’s NewsBucket:
Think this doesn’t affect “US interests?” Think again & recall what triggered the killing of the 4 Blackwater contractors in Fallujah, what we now see as a decisive point in the Iraq occupation. It was the Israeli assasination of a prominent Hamas leader.
Helena Cobban:
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WASHINGTON D.C. – U.S. State Dep’t — According to news reports, Israel also has detained dozens of Palestinian officials including at least eight Cabinet members and 20 legislators.
Bolton placed the blame for the crisis squarely on the Palestinian Authority’s governing Hamas party. Calling the abduction of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit a clear act of terrorism, he said, “The attack and hostage-taking by Hamas last week precipitated this crisis, and their refusal to release their hostage continues to place innocent Palestinians in harm’s way.”
Bolton called on all parties to avoid actions that would escalate the situation but affirmed “Israel’s unequivocal right to defend itself and the lives of its citizens.”
The ambassador also blamed Syria and Iran for fueling the conflict through their support for terrorism. He called on Syria to arrest Damascus-based Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal and “close down the various terrorist headquarters in Damascus.”
In light of the ongoing attacks on Gaza, Bolton urged “close attention to the humanitarian needs of the population of Gaza, and action to ensure that those needs are met expeditiously.” Much of Gaza’s water and sewage system has been incapacitated by the destruction of the power plant.
● Arab League calls on US to stop blaming Syria
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
There seems to be a blackout of any videos or photos of Gaza.
“It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.”
— Ariel Sharon, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m24299&hd=0&size=1&l=e
None of this is new . . . it’s just more and more and more of the same.