(Updated: Originally published November 8, 2006)
I am continually taken aback by the actions of Israel. It almost defies description.
Says Israel's troops are leaving Gaza, but clashes persist (sounds like a broken record, doesn't it?):
Israel left behind "wrecked homes, uprooted trees and sewage-covered streets... Israel kept up its onslaught... killing 10 Palestinians in air strikes, gunfire and tank shelling... Two Israeli tank shells hit the house of Jamila Shanti, a Hamas lawmaker who helped organize a demonstration of women Friday that allowed dozens of Hamas militants to escape an Israeli siege on a mosque. Shanti was not at home at the time of the attack, which Palestinian doctors said killed three people (Boston Globe November 8, 2007).
We're leaving -- and TAKE THAT!
After the predawn Israeli pullback, hundreds of Beit Hanoun residents, who spent most of the last week holed up inside their homes as troops and militants battled in the streets, milled around inspecting the damage. Homes in the town of 50,000 were damaged by tanks that rumbled through its narrow streets, ripping up asphalt, toppling trees, and destroying cars. The mosque that was the site of last week's standoff was reduced to rubble. Only its minaret was left standing.
Are you efin' crappin' me? Did you just read what I read?
The "MOSQUE... REDUCED to RUBBLE?" Only the minaret left standing?
Does Israel even understand what the frikkin' hell they are doing?!!!
Does the Zionist state UNDERSTAND what RELIGIOUS DESECRATION is?
I am totally aghast (yet worse still to come)!
Khalil Yazgi, 45, watched as children and women picked through the rubble of the four-story structure that had been home to his extended family of 50 people. All that remained was a staircase and the exposed rooms of an apartment.
Mr. Yazgi: "If I was against the rockets, now I will encourage people to launch rockets from every spot. This is an act of terror. It's as though a crazy cow walked through a porcelain shop."
Telephone and electricity wires lay exposed on ruined roads marked with tank tracks. Tanks destroyed the outer wall of the town's cemetery, uprooting several tombstones. Some residents tried to fix the tombstones, while others dug fresh graves for those killed in the fighting.
Oh my Lord! Desecrating a CEMETERY!!!
And you have no clue, no clue at all, as to why Mr. Khalil Yazgi would feel the way he does?
Are you a zombie?
Is there nothing Israel won't do in the name of "fighting terror?"
My heart totally grieves for the poor Palestinians!!!
At a funeral procession, tens of thousands of mourners filed behind ambulances carrying 23 bodies... As the ambulances struggled along damaged roads... the streets were awash in Palestinian flags and flags of militant groups.
President Mahmoud Abass denounced Israel for the attacks: "If Israel appeals for security and stability, shedding the blood of Palestinians is not the way."
Gee, now he is there best buddy. Like Abass said, "Naw, I'll do it instead!"
Please click on the link and see the picture, readers:
"Israel Declares End to Gaza Mission, but Firing Continues" by IAN FISHER
BEIT HANUN, Gaza, Nov. 7 — “My heart is bouncing,” Hiam Yazgi, 24, said Tuesday, and for good reason: Palestinian militants had just fired four homemade rockets, and the Israelis were rattling down retaliatory shells dangerously close to her toppled house here.
One resident of Gaza seemed unfazed, and maybe because she has known only fighting in her short life: Ms. Yazgi’s daughter, who was born in the middle of the street just three days ago, halfway through a major Israeli military operation to stop the ongoing rocket fire from Gaza.
As the older children flinched at every shell, the baby, Fairouz, lay sleeping in a turquoise blanket.
“This is our fate,” Ms. Yazgi said.
I mean, REALLY!!!!! I want Israel to STOP RIGHT NOW!!!!
In theory, today should have been quiet, at last. Israeli tanks and soldiers... showed the Palestinians the price of such attacks.
At least 30 houses were destroyed, or nearly so, with 100 more damaged.... The stench of sewage wafted over streets churned up and sopping after Israeli bulldozers crunched through water mains. Scores of trees and lampposts were uprooted. At least 52 Palestinians were dead.
The violence continued elsewhere in Gaza. In scattered incidents around the strip, the Israeli military said it had hit as many as 10 Palestinian fighters. Reuters reported that at least eight people were killed.
Among them were two people, including a woman, Nahla Shanti, killed after Israeli tank fire hit the house of Jamila Shanti, a Palestinian legislator from the militant faction Hamas.
The military said it had responded to two rocket-propelled grenades fired from the house. Ms. Shanti was reported to have been in the house at the time but was not wounded. The dead woman was her sister-in-law.
Yup, taught 'em a lesson, 'eh, Israel?
Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, qouted by Reuters:
“The Israelis leave one area and enter another. We have spoken to the American administration and to the Europeans that such a situation cannot help restore security and stability.”
The Israeli operation was intended to stop the rocket fire.... The rockets hit deeper into Israel than they have in months, landing in the city of Ashkelon, about six miles north of Gaza, but there were no injuries, the Israeli military reported. A fifth rocket landed harmlessly in the Negev desert. Israel responded rapidly, hammering Beit Hanun with dozens of artillery rounds.
The disparity in damage and death toll is an abominable WAR CRIME!!!!
The rounds fell as Yousef Seweil, 47, greeted mourners for his son, Ayman, 18, killed by Israelis on Friday in front of the Nasir mosque here — now leveled except for the minaret. Ayman, his father said, was killed along with two women after the Israelis opened fire on a crowd during a standoff between Israelis and fighters in the mosque.
Palestinians say it was a peaceful demonstration. Israelis counter that the women were acting as human shields to allow the fighters to escape and that there was fire from the crowd.
Mr. Seweil was unable to bury his son until Tuesday, he said, because the soldiers in tanks outside his house would not let him go to the hospital to retrieve the body. Mr. Seweil — who had another son, a fighter for the militant group Islamic Jihad, killed two years ago — said he was not sure whether he supported the firing of the rockets if the cost was so much destruction.
Mr. Seweil was furious with Israel: “They kill. They do whatever they want. They demolish houses. They arrest people. This time, they had no mercy.”
Nice going, Israel! Doing what you do will NEVER BRING PEACE!!!!!
In a week when a Palestinian newspaper issued a rare public questioning of the wisdom of firing the rockets, many on the streets said they strongly supported it, no matter the price, simply because it scared the Israelis.
Ibrahim Seweil, Yousef Seweil’s brother, a policeman who said he was arrested during the operation and whose son was arrested, and let go, four times:
“We fire rockets to respond to what Israel is doing to our people. We are not sheep they can just slaughter.”
The concept Mr. Seweil refers to is known as self-defense!
Here is more information (click on link to see picture):
"Israeli Shelling Kills 18 Gazans; Anger Boils Up" by IAN FISHER and STEVEN ERLANGER
BEIT HANUN, Gaza Strip, Nov. 8 — Israeli artillery shells killed 18 Palestinians, including 8 children and 6 women, at a cluster of houses here on Wednesday, igniting a fury that threatened a steep escalation in violence, with a Hamas leader calling for retaliation against Israel.
“Nothing happened,” mumbled Isra Athamnah, 5 years old, who was pocked with shrapnel and in shock. The news that her widowed mother, Sanaa, 35, was dead and that she was now an orphan did not sink in.
Are you crying like I am right now? WTF?!!!!!
Others described how an artillery shell had hit a home here in northern Gaza, sending scores of sleeping members of the extended Athamnah family outside before dawn. The next volleys struck them as they crowded in a narrow alley between the houses. The dead ranged from less than a year old to 70 years old, witnesses said.
An elderly woman cried out, apparently referring to a dead granddaughter:
"What can I tell you about Maisa now? All I could see was parts of bodies -- a head here, brains on the other side."
In response to one of the largest single losses of life here in years, several Hamas leaders called for renewed suicide bombings in Israel, after largely observing a unilateral truce that it declared a year and a half ago. Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas’s political bureau exiled in Syria, said Hamas would answer the deaths with “deeds, not words.”
Hamas’s military wing also said in a statement that the United States should be taught “hard lessons” for supporting Israel. The threat, though vague, was an unusual escalation for Hamas, an Islamic-based militant group that has pointedly portrayed its fight as being against Israel alone. It was immediately disavowed by Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government in Gaza.
Well, I can certainly understand the Palestinians feeling hurt and angry, and lashing out with words.
Does it really say that the bloodthirsty Palestinians were "largely observing a unilateral truce it declared a year and a half ago?" That can't be true! It must be a lie!
I'm so devastated after reading what's above.
Is AmeriKa that brain-dead that it can not see what is right in front of it?
And here's a new one:
The Israeli military said it had launched a preventive artillery barrage near the area... The Israeli notion that shelling open areas will deter Palestinian militants from firing rockets from there, even though deterrence is not clear and the shells are not uniformly accurate.
In this case, the military said in a statement, initial reports show rounds landing 'at a location distant from the one reportedly hit.' Both Israeli political and military leaders laid the blame for am]ny deaths on the Palestinian fighters who launch the rockets from civilian areas, then hide among civilians.
This is not the first time that such shelling has gone awry, hitting houses in Bet Hanun and nearby Beit Lahiya, and killing or wounding those inside or nearby and emboldening extremists on all sides.
And it is not the first time errant rounds have led to a halt or delay in efforts to find new paths of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians, and among the Palestinian factions themselves.
How do you like it? "Preventive shelling!"
What a WAR-CRIMINAL NATION!
In typical Zionist fashion, they then turn around and BLAME the VICTIM!
Unbelievable!
Oh, and all those errant rounds and attacks that sabotage peace?
One word: Mossad!
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, both of whom gave blood for the victims and visited them in hospitals.
In June, a similar cycle followed another apparently errant Israeli shell that killed Palestinian civilians, including seven members of a single family, the Ghaliyas, who were enjoying a day at the beach. The Israelis said they were shelling areas where rocket teams had fired into Israel, and denied that the shell that killed the Ghaliyas was theirs.
But no Palestinian believed the Israeli denial, there was never any conclusive alternative explanation.
Yeah, Israel never sops lying and denying -- and murdering!!!!!
Israeli Army officials,who regularly conduct such operations in the West Bank, call it 'cutting the grass,' challenging militants to fight, arresting others and interrogating them.
Witnesses said the shelling began about 5:30 a.m., at a cluster of houses belonging to three brothers, one of whom died about a year ago, and dozens of extended family members.
Ali Athamnah, 29, a doctor, said he heard the crash of a shell, then glass from a window spattered on his face. He looked down from his second-story balcony and saw one relative, Ahmad, wounded and scores of other family members running outside.
Then the other shells hit, and he did not see the crowd standing anymore. “They just left — they withdrew,” he said, walking over puddles filled with blood, spattered human remains and sandals, many belonging to children. "They were gone."
Abu Ahman, 42, a rescue worker who lives on the street and arrived right after the rockets hit:
“Children! Women! Parents! I can’t find the words that describe this action — legs of children, head of a small girl. Pieces of intestine.”
At the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Maali Athamnah, 27, the aunt of the newly orphaned Isra and two other siblings who survived, Islam, 14, and Muhammad, 3, who broke both his legs, broke into tears reading a list of the dead, nearly all of them relatives. Another 80 people were wounded.
Ms. Athamnah, who said she did not support the militants’ firing rockets into Israel, wailed:
“What did they do? They were sleeping in their beds. They didn't fire rockets. Just think who is firing them: those who lost family members to Israel. And think about these kids now. They will be the rocket firers in the future. No mother, no father. No house. They will be the next ones to fire the rockets.”
Ms. Athamnah is 100% correct!: Israel is not a humane state in any way!
On Wednesday night, Israeli rockets killed Ahmed Awad and another Hamas member in Gaza City. Mr. Awad was said to be a rocket maker and the son-in-law of the Hamas foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar.
Oh, and over in the occupied West Bank:
In the West Bank on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers killed four gunmen and a civilian during a raid near Jenin, Palestinian security officials said.
Israeli forces also killed a Hamas gunman and a 17-year-old civilian near the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza."
Just for GOOD MEASURE, right, Israel? I'm appalled!
"Israeli tank shells 'kill 18 Palestinians in sleep'" by Ibrahim Barzak/Associated Press November 8, 2006
Israeli tank shells ripped through a residential neighbourhood in the northern Gaza Strip early today, killing at least 18 members of an extended family, including 10 children, as they slept, Palestinian witnesses and health officials said.
According to witnesses, all those killed were women and children. Palestinian hospital officials said dozens of wounded people were being treated at four Gaza hospitals. Hundreds gathered outside the Kamal Adwan hospital, weeping as bodies arrived.
Witnesses said many of the dead arrived in their sleeping clothes. Schoolchildren swept out to the street to protest the attack as mosques amplified angry speeches on the street.
Rahwi Hamad, 75, said he was awakened by the sound of explosions at about 5:15 a.m. and emerged from his home to find bodies and blood in the streets:
"I saw people coming out of the house, bleeding and screaming. I carried a girl covered with blood. Inside the houses, we evacuated dismembered bodies. Everything was disgusting."
Khaled Radi, a health ministry official, said that of the 18 dead, seven were children and 13 were from the same family. He said at least 40 more were wounded, all civilians."
The tank shells landed around a compound of four apartment buildings in Beit Hanoun... Gaping holes were torn into the structures, owned by four brothers from the al-Athamna family who lived side by side. A large pool of blood collected in front of the houses, and stairs in an outside stairway were covered with blood.
Asma al-Athamna, 14, said her family was woken by the sound of an explosion. Her mother quickly ordered everyone out of the house. As the family left their home, another shell landed, killing the girl's mother, older sister and brother-in-law.
The weeping girl, speaking from her hospital bed:
"They were killed when they came out of our house into the corridor. A tank shell killed them. I was behind them and I was wounded."
Parts of dismembered bodies were plastered to walls of the damaged building and lying on the ground. A woman's headscarf, children's boots and slippers, and a pair of jeans - all burnt - were strewn outside the houses.
A government spokeswoman said Israel would continue its offensive throughout the Gaza Strip, despite the deadly shelling."
Had enough of Israel, like me? MONSTRIFIC HORROR!!!!
