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UN seeks Israel Gaza school hit probe
(The Sydney Morning Herald) Sat. Jan. 17 2009 – United Nations official has condemned an Israeli shelling attack that struck a UN school in the northern Gaza Strip and killed two people, a boy and a woman.
Spokesman Chris Gunness said the school was crowded with 1,600 people who had sought shelter from Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza.
Palestinian civilians and medics run to safety during an Israeli strike over a UN school in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip. (Getty Images)
and with more willie pete no less. certainly wasn’t needed for “illumination” or “screening” purposes, eh.
but before passing judgement, one must considerer that the
oppressed, starving, trapped, and traumatizedisraelis have agreed to a 6 month ceasefire……………starting thursday………………………………maybe./snark
Israel with Bush’s blessing miscalulated, Again. But this time in a big way.
Was this Gaza bombing a field testing of new U.S. weapons.
from The Independent, UK
A related item worth watching:
Has anyone noticed the irony?
Two weeks ago U.S. court sentenced Charles Taylor’s son to 97 years for war crimes and torture committed in Liberia.
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Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) is an LCD (“low collateral damage”) weapon developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory partnered with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Publicly, it is slated for initial deployment in 2008. DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated “micro-shrapnel” of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic).
Tungsten in Tissue Samples: A DIME Weapon?
On October 19, 2006, Italy’s Rai24news televised an investigative report that supplied crucial new information. The Italian investigators had tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at University Parma. Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found “a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and tungsten.” The doctor concluded that her “findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME.”
Rai24news reporters also talked to Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former chief of the IDF’s weapons development program. General Ben-Israel appeared to be familiar with DIME weapons. He explained that, “one of the ideas is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons.” The US Air Force refers to this emerging realm of weaponry as FLM (Focused Lethality Munitions). FLM is expected to provide the `weapons of choice’ for targeting “terrorists hiding among civilians”, as a cheerleading Wall Street Journal article put it.
With “focused lethality [and] higher energy materials…nano particles, intelligent fuzing, [and] mass focus lethality”, the Air Force “will be able to strike effectively, wherever and whenever necessary, with minimal collateral damage.” Ominously, the military thinks these weapons will allow it to target sites “previously off limits to the warfighter.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
By Kim Sengupta in Jerusalem and Donald Macintyre on the Gaza-Egypt border
(The Independent) Jan. 18, 2009 – For many Israelis the cost of the war became clear when a Hebrew-speaking physician, Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who had been frequently interviewed on prime-time TV by a top reporter, Shlomi Eldar, phoned the journalist live on air to announce that his three daughters had been killed. “My God, my girls, Shlomi,” viewers heard him say. “Can’t anybody get to us, please?” As Mr Eldar got the authorities to allow rescue services to the stricken family, it was not lost on commentators that the same disaster was striking hundreds of other families without direct access to Israeli TV.
Ari Shavit, a leading columnist on the newspaper, ‘Haaretz’, was a fervent proponent of the “just war” at the outset. By Friday, he was writing: “Shelling a United Nations facility is something not to be done at any time, but doing it on the day when the UN Secretary-General is visiting Jerusalem is beyond lunacy. The level of pressure the Israel Defence Forces have been exerting on Gaza may be squeezing Hamas, but it is destroying Israel. Destroying its soul and its image. Destroying it on world television screens, destroying it in the living rooms of the international community… “
Weblog reactions
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Many people, Israeli and non-Israeli, have predicted that Israel will, sooner or later, destroy itself. It is an outcome devoutly to be wished for. I only hope that when it happens it is soon, and is accomplished with a minimum of loss of life, Israeli and non-Israeli.
Victorious by whose definition?
Israel has more than a PR debacle on its hands. Ruminit below Gordon Brown’s ‘carefully chosen words’
Gaza conflict has cost too many lives, says Brown
Prime minister calls on Israel to reopen Gaza crossings as he heads to humanitarian conference in Egypt
Have you seen Gerald Kaufmann MP address parliament on Gaza? If not, see YouTube, Gerald Kaufmann, ‘Jewish viewpoint on Israel’. George Galloway MP also tears into the hypocritical nastiness on clips.
I believe this is what you are referring to.
Right, thanks. Could you maybe also put up George Galloway, ‘We are the authors of this Palestinian tragedy’. I have to learn someday how all of this works.
The CONSEQUENCES are unavoidable.
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GAZA (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, voicing shock and anger at the “heartbreaking” devastation, visited the Gaza Strip on Tuesday to pledge aid for Palestinians after Israeli attacks killed 1,300 and made thousands homeless.
Israel had withdrawn most of its force before U.S. President Barack Obama was inaugurated — Israeli leaders seemed eager not to cloud the start of a new era in a key alliance. Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket fire by Gaza’s ruling Islamists.
A Palestinian boy stands next to his family's house, destroyed during Israel's offensive, in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)“I have seen only a fraction of the destruction. This is shocking and alarming,” Ban said, condemning an “excessive use” of force by Israel as well as Hamas’s rocket fire into Israel.
“These are heartbreaking scenes I have seen and I am deeply grieved by what I have seen today,” he told a news conference held against a backdrop of still smoldering food aid in a U.N. warehouse set ablaze by Israeli gunfire.
Ban called the attack “outrageous” and demanded an inquiry and, if need be, the guilty to be held to account.
Just recently: FM Livni says ‘No humanitarian crisis in Gaza’
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The warehouse was not set ablaze by Israeli gunfire, it was set ablaze by Israeli white phosphorous.