Since this issue is being debate in great detail? I decided to save the readers the trouble from strolling down. I might add that you can write the tilte in - search this blog. Just click here..
15 children massacred fleeing town on Israel's orders LAILA BASSAM
Reuters, 15 July 2006
An Israeli missile incinerated a van in south Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the four-day-old campaign launched by Israel after Hizbollah captured two of its soldiers and killed eight. ...
Actually, its anybody who thinks that Israel has been trying to make peace that is the ultimate in ignorance. Just go do some research, its easy to find. But Israel does nothing without permission of the US, its the US that has been the biggest obstacle to peace, that is done through the UN. Just go look at the UN resolutions and see who votes against them on a regular basis for your answer. If your opinion comes from blogs or the corporate press, dont be calling other people ignorant--look in the mirror.
Hezbollah made the first agressive move. Sounds like self defense by Israel to me. Who can blame them for being spooked? No nation on Earth has been persecuted as much throughout history than the Jews. It's self-preservation, folks. Let's at least admit that a lot of people would like to have Israel wiped off the map including I suspect a few posters here given the comments. I'd like to see a peacedful solution too but that requires both sides. Hezbollah hasn't exactly extended the olive branch.
Israel is the terrorist state. It has terrorized the whole region since it was imposed on the region. Israel has replaced Nazi Germany.
During Nazi Germany President of United States had brains and fought against Nazis.The current President of United States is a moron so he supports Nazi Israel. Now we have elected another moron in Canada, Harpie.
Jews may be God's chosen people but Israel is not God's chosen state. It is a hell-hole which is terrorizing the whole region. Who knows it may terrorize the world.
That's crazy, nobody here has said anything about 'wiping Israel off the map', that's just fearmongering. Was Nazi germany 'protecting' itself against Austria? Or Poland? That's what they always claimed as well, that doesn't make it true. In virtually every instance that peace has arisen Israel has attacked in order to 'justify' its aggression. They move in, when Palestinians fight back, they use that as their justification.
But as said, it is the US that runs the world now, nothing gets done without the US approval, especially in Israel since virtually all their military and funding comes from the US. The Israeli people have no say, and the Isreali anti war demonstrations weren't even covered in the western press.
There's a big difference between supporting a people and supportign a state government. In 90% of the cases around the world the central problem is national governments-not their citizens, and the same goes here in Canada.
By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel's latest military operations reflect a fighting machine bolstered by U.S. weaponry, jet fuel and technology transfers -- and more is on its way. From 1971 through 2005, U.S. aid to Israel has averaged more than $2 billion a year, two-thirds of which has been military assistance, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. U.S. military grants to Israel totaled $2.28 billion in fiscal 2006 ending September 30, according to a new tally in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, a nonpartisan magazine.
Nazi Germany DIDN"T want to take over the world. Find one source that says that. Israel has been using torture for years, however, they don't 'exterminate' people so long as they tow the line. Ironically, what they were doing to Palestine was adopting Canada's native strategy-isolate the group and use poverty, lack of resources and blocking them from land resources in order to slowly let the culture exterminate itself.
Again, this is all in the public record, but is never reported in the newspapers. There are very few case s that can openly be compared to Nazi Germany though, Stalin for sure, Vietnam, perhaps even Rwanda. However, Israelis' will shoot first and ask questions later, but it certainly isn't methodical genocide like the nazi's were perpetrating. Keep in mind Jews weren't the only ones-catholics, gays, gypsies, the poor, and the 'mentally deficient' were also rushed to the concentration camps.
Keep in mind that forced sterilization was the norm back then, canada had a very advanced eugenics program designed to 'weed out the feeble'. They were also doing forced experiments on them, however,they certainly weren't gassing millions of them.
Sorry 11:33 the Nazis were only looking for half the world. My mistake. Yep, lots of others were killed too but not to the extent of the 6,000,000 Jews.
Syria and Iran support and supply Hezbollah officially and I'm sure other Arab countries do unofficially. Their hands aren't any cleaner than Israel.
What about $2.3 billion military aid annually given by U.S to Israel. That surpases all the aid put together from Arab governments if we buy your argument. Some Arab government's total budget is not $2 billion. So who are you kidding.
Israel keeps killing Arabs. Are Arabs are less of human beings? Israel is committing war crimes, has been doing so since its inception.
Nowadays supplying Hezbollah is no war crime. Just go read something for a change. Hezbollah was democratically elected, and until last year Canada was also aiding them. Why wouldn't they support them? In fact, I think they would be morally culpable if they didn't.
There is only one country that has been found guilty of international terrorism, and that is the US. Israel won't even let the UN know about nuclear weapons let alone check their factories. No country has broken more UN resolutions than they have.
But when you get your education from Fox we can see why it comes down to that.
A European Union report concludes that U.S.-backed Israeli programs will virtually end the prospects for a viable Palestinian state by the cantonization and by breaking the organic links between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch, in a recent statement, concurs.
There was no effort to conceal the fact that Gaza disengagement was in reality West Bank expansion. The official plan for disengagement stated that Israel will permanently take over major population centers, cities, towns and villages, security areas and other places of special interest to Israel in the West Bank. That was endorsed by the U.S. ambassador, as it had been by the President, breaking sharply with U.S. policy.
Along with the disengagement plan, Israel announced investment of tens of millions of dollars in West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Sharon immediately approved new housing units in the town of Maale Adumim that’s to the east of Jerusalem, the core of the salient that divides the southern from the central Bantustan, to use Benvenisti’s term, and also announced other expansion plans.
There is near unanimity that all of this violates international law. The consensus was expressed by U.S. Judge Buergenthal in his separate declaration attached to the World Court judgment, ruling that the separation wall is illegal. In Buergenthal's words, “The Fourth Geneva Convention and International Human Rights Law are applicable to the occupied Palestinian territory and must therefore be fully complied with by Israel. Accordingly, the segments of the wall being built by Israel to protect the settlements are ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law,” which happens to mean about 80% of the wall.
Two months later, Israel's high court rejected that judgment, ruling that the separation wall, quoting, “must take into account the need to provide security for Israelis living in the West Bank, including their property rights.” This is consistent with Chief Justice's Barak's doctrine that Israeli law supersedes international law, particularly in East Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders.
And practically speaking, he is correct, as long as the United States continues to provide the required economic, military and diplomatic support, as it has been doing for 30 years, in violation of the international consensus on a two-state settlement.
You can find detailed documentation about all of this . In Morris's words, “founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers and daily intimidation, humiliation and manipulation, along with stealing of valuable land and resources.” Like other Israeli political and legal commentators, Morris reserves special criticism for the Supreme Court, whose record, he writes, “will surely go down as a dark day in the annals of Israel's judicial system.”
Keeping to the diplomatic record, the first -- both sides, of course, rejected 242. The first important step forward was in 1971, when president Sadat of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. That would have ended the international conflict. Israel rejected the offer, choosing expansion over security. In this case, expansion into the Egyptian Sinai, where General Sharon's forces had driven thousands of farmers into the desert to clear the land for the all-Jewish city of Yamit. The U.S. backed Israel's stand.
Those decisions led to the 1973 war, a near disaster for Israel. The U.S. and Israel then recognized that Egypt could not be dismissed and finally accepted Sadat's 1971 offer at Camp David in 1979. But by then, the agreement included the demand for a Palestinian state, which had reached the international agenda.
In 1976, the major Arab states introduced a resolution to the U.N. Security Council calling for a peace settlement on the international border, based on U.N. 242, but now adding a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories. That's Syria, Egypt, Jordan and every other relevant state. The U.S. vetoed the resolution again in 1980. The General Assembly passed similar resolutions year after year with the United States and Israel opposed.
The matter reached a head in 1988, when the PLO moved from tacit approval to formal acceptance of the two-state consensus. Israel responded with a declaration that there can be no, as they put it, “additional Palestinian state between Jordan and the sea,” Jordan already being a Palestinian state -- that's Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir -- and also that the status of the territories must be settled according to Israeli guidelines. The U.S. endorsed Israel's stand. I can only add what I wrote at the time: “It's as if someone were to argue the Jews don't need a second homeland in Israel, because they already have New York.”
In May 1997, for the first time, Peres's Labour Party agreed not to rule out the establishment of a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty in areas excluding major Jewish settlement blocks, that is, the three cantons that were being constructed with U.S. support. The highest rate of post-Oslo settlement was in 2000, the final year of Clinton's term and Prime Minister Barak's.
Maps of the U.S.-Israel proposals at Camp David show a salient, east of Jerusalem, bisecting the West Bank, and a northern salient virtually dividing the northern from the central canton. I have the maps if you want them. The current map considerably extends these salients and the isolation of East Jerusalem. My maps are from the leading Israeli scholars, Ron Pundak, the Director of the Shimon Peres Center. The crucial issue at Camp David was territorial, not the refugee issue, for which Arafat agreed to a pragmatic solution, as Pundak, the leading scholar, reveals. No Palestinian could accept the cantonization, including the U.S. favorite, Mahmoud Abbas.
Clinton -- we don’t have to debate it, because Clinton recognized that Palestinian objections had validity, and in December 2000 proposed his parameters, which went some way toward satisfying Palestinian rights. In Clinton's words, “Barak and Arafat had both accepted these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have expressed some reservations.”
The reservations were addressed at a high level meeting in Taba, which made considerable progress and might have led to a settlement, but Israel called them off. That one-week at Taba is the only break in 30 years of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. High-level informal negotiations continued, leading to the Geneva Accord of December of 2002, welcomed by virtually the entire world, rejected by Israel, dismissed by Washington. That could have been the basis for a just peace. It still can. By then, however, Bush-Sharon bulldozers were demolishing any basis for it.
Every sane Israeli hawk understood that it was absurd for Israel to leave 8,000 settlers in Gaza, protected by a large part of the army, while taking over scarce water resources and arable land. The same conclusion was to withdraw from Gaza while expanding through the West Bank, and that will continue as long as Washington insists on marching on the road to catastrophe by rejecting minimal Palestinian rights. I'm quoting the warning of the four former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet Security Service. “There are clear alternatives, and if that march to catastrophe continues, we will have only ourselves to blame.”
The balance of terror and violence is overwhelmingly against the Palestinians, not surprisingly, given the balance of forces, and that's even true -- that's true right to the present. I mean, for -- you know, for decades, Israel was able to run the West Bank virtually with no forces, as Morris and others point out, because the population was so passive, while they were being humiliated, beaten, tortured, land stolen and so on, just as I quoted.
Finally, there was a reaction, and it's interesting to see the U.S. reaction to it. In the first month of the Intifada -- this one, October 2000 -- in the first month of the Intifada, seventy-four Palestinians were killed, four Israelis were killed. This was all in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli army, according to its own records, fired a million bullets in the first day, which disgusted the generals when they learned about it.
Israel, in the first few days of the Intifada, was using U.S. helicopters – they don’t make them – U.S. helicopters to attack civilian complexes, apartment houses and so on, killing and wounding dozens of people. And the U.S. did respond to that. Clinton responded by sending the biggest shipment of military helicopters in a decade to Israel. The press responded, too, by not publishing it, I should add, refusing to publish it, because it was repeatedly brought to their attention. Well, while the ratio was 20 to 1, which is pretty much what it has been for a long time, there was no concern here. Then, over the next two, three years, the ratio reduced to closer to 3 to 1, and then came enormous concern. About the one, not the three. And this goes back for a long time. What I quoted from Morris is accurate.
In other words Israel is the terrorist state in the modern world supported by Bush Government. Israel is carrying on its atrocities with impunity because supper power supports it unconditionally.
Even Britain has spoken against the current slaughter and indiscriminate killing of Lebanese. World community should do more to stop this terrorist state and its atrocities. Beside Britain France has expressed displeasure too. More needs to be done to stop these crimes against humanity being committed by Israel.
Gaza, itself, the latest phase, began on June 24. It was when Israel abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. We don't know their names. You don't know the names of victims. They were taken to Israel, presumably, and nobody knows their fate. The next day, something happened, which we do know about, a lot. Militants in Gaza, probably Islamic Jihad, abducted an Israeli soldier across the border. That's Corporal Gilad Shalit. And that's well known; the first abduction is not. Then followed the escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza, which I don't have to repeat. It's reported on adequately.
The next stage was Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers, they say on the border. Their official reason for this is that they are aiming for prisoner release. There are a few, nobody knows how many. Officially, there are three Lebanese prisoners in Israel. There's allegedly a couple hundred people missing. Who knows where they are?
The fact is that we have no information about Iran and Syria, and I doubt very much that the people who are writing it have any information. And frankly, I doubt that U.S. intelligence has any information. It's certainly plausible. I mean, there's no doubt that there are connections, probably strong connections, between Hezbollah and Syria and Iran, but whether those connections were instrumental in motivating these latest actions, I don't think we have the slightest idea. You can guess anything you'd like. It's a possibility. In fact, even a probability. But on the other hand, there's every reason to believe that Hezbollah has its own motivations, maybe the ones that Hirst and the Financial Times and others are pointing to. That seems plausible, too. Much more plausible, in fact.
the rockets were fired after the heavy Israeli attacks against Lebanon, which killed -- well, latest reports, maybe 60 or so people and destroyed a lot of infrastructure. As always, things have precedents, and you have to decide which was the inciting event. In my view, the inciting event in the present case, events, are those that I mentioned -- the constant intense repression; plenty of abductions; plenty of atrocities in Gaza; the steady takeover of the West Bank, which, in effect, if it continues, is just the murder of a nation, the end of Palestine; the abduction on June 24 of the two Gaza civilians; and then the reaction to the abduction of Corporal Shalit. And there's a difference, incidentally, between abduction of civilians and abduction of soldiers. Even international humanitarian law makes that distinction.
24 comments:
Self-Defence Is Common Sense Says I.
Hey Charles. Did you know your photos are linked on anarchist news here:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060719123457563
and in the comments section of this indymedia feature on the anti-choice crusaders:
www.maritimes.indymedia.org
I'm a fan,
John D of www.eabhathekiwi.blogspot.com
I don't think he meant defense of isreal
10:40 AM you are right that is why word "if" was used.
15 children massacred fleeing town on Israel's orders
LAILA BASSAM
Reuters, 15 July 2006
An Israeli missile incinerated a van in south Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the four-day-old campaign launched by Israel after Hizbollah captured two of its soldiers and killed eight. ...
Read rest at http://fromoccupiedpalestine.org/
11:59 AM the real terrorist in this case is Israel who is killing innocent children and women.
Israel is sitting on Arab lands. Arabs are willing to recognize it nonetheless but Israel wants total dominance of the region and dictate its terms.
Who knows these abductions were staged by Israel secret service in order to find justification to kill more Palestinians and Arabs.
If there is going to be a third world war Israel will be responsible who is undertaking holocaust of its own against Arabs.
Actually, its anybody who thinks that Israel has been trying to make peace that is the ultimate in ignorance. Just go do some research, its easy to find. But Israel does nothing without permission of the US, its the US that has been the biggest obstacle to peace, that is done through the UN. Just go look at the UN resolutions and see who votes against them on a regular basis for your answer. If your opinion comes from blogs or the corporate press, dont be calling other people ignorant--look in the mirror.
Hezbollah made the first agressive move. Sounds like self defense by Israel to me. Who can blame them for being spooked? No nation on Earth has been persecuted as much throughout history than the Jews. It's self-preservation, folks. Let's at least admit that a lot of people would like to have Israel wiped off the map including I suspect a few posters here given the comments. I'd like to see a peacedful solution too but that requires both sides. Hezbollah hasn't exactly extended the olive branch.
Everybody knows that the jewsish people are God's Chosen People. I say, the Jewsish people are just doing Self Defence.
And all their doing is fighting the Good Fight against Terrorism.
Israel is the terrorist state. It has terrorized the whole region since it was imposed on the region. Israel has replaced Nazi Germany.
During Nazi Germany President of United States had brains and fought against Nazis.The current President of United States is a moron so he supports Nazi Israel. Now we have elected another moron in Canada, Harpie.
Jews may be God's chosen people but Israel is not God's chosen state. It is a hell-hole which is terrorizing the whole region. Who knows it may terrorize the world.
That's crazy, nobody here has said anything about 'wiping Israel off the map', that's just fearmongering. Was Nazi germany 'protecting' itself against Austria? Or Poland? That's what they always claimed as well, that doesn't make it true. In virtually every instance that peace has arisen Israel has attacked in order to 'justify' its aggression. They move in, when Palestinians fight back, they use that as their justification.
But as said, it is the US that runs the world now, nothing gets done without the US approval, especially in Israel since virtually all their military and funding comes from the US. The Israeli people have no say, and the Isreali anti war demonstrations weren't even covered in the western press.
There's a big difference between supporting a people and supportign a state government. In 90% of the cases around the world the central problem is national governments-not their citizens, and the same goes here in Canada.
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel's latest military operations reflect a fighting machine bolstered by U.S. weaponry, jet fuel and technology transfers -- and more is on its way.
From 1971 through 2005, U.S. aid to Israel has averaged more than $2 billion a year, two-thirds of which has been military assistance, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.
U.S. military grants to Israel totaled $2.28 billion in fiscal 2006 ending September 30, according to a new tally in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, a nonpartisan magazine.
Nazi Germany DIDN"T want to take over the world. Find one source that says that. Israel has been using torture for years, however, they don't 'exterminate' people so long as they tow the line. Ironically, what they were doing to Palestine was adopting Canada's native strategy-isolate the group and use poverty, lack of resources and blocking them from land resources in order to slowly let the culture exterminate itself.
Again, this is all in the public record, but is never reported in the newspapers. There are very few case s that can openly be compared to Nazi Germany though, Stalin for sure, Vietnam, perhaps even Rwanda. However, Israelis' will shoot first and ask questions later, but it certainly isn't methodical genocide like the nazi's were perpetrating. Keep in mind Jews weren't the only ones-catholics, gays, gypsies, the poor, and the 'mentally deficient' were also rushed to the concentration camps.
Keep in mind that forced sterilization was the norm back then, canada had a very advanced eugenics program designed to 'weed out the feeble'. They were also doing forced experiments on them, however,they certainly weren't gassing millions of them.
Sorry 11:33 the Nazis were only looking for half the world. My mistake. Yep, lots of others were killed too but not to the extent of the 6,000,000 Jews.
Syria and Iran support and supply Hezbollah officially and I'm sure other Arab countries do unofficially. Their hands aren't any cleaner than Israel.
What about $2.3 billion military aid annually given by U.S to Israel. That surpases all the aid put together from Arab governments if we buy your argument. Some Arab government's total budget is not $2 billion. So who are you kidding.
Israel keeps killing Arabs. Are Arabs are less of human beings? Israel is committing war crimes, has been doing so since its inception.
Nowadays supplying Hezbollah is no war crime. Just go read something for a change. Hezbollah was democratically elected, and until last year Canada was also aiding them. Why wouldn't they support them? In fact, I think they would be morally culpable if they didn't.
There is only one country that has been found guilty of international terrorism, and that is the US. Israel won't even let the UN know about nuclear weapons let alone check their factories. No country has broken more UN resolutions than they have.
But when you get your education from Fox we can see why it comes down to that.
A European Union report concludes that U.S.-backed Israeli programs will virtually end the prospects for a viable Palestinian state by the cantonization and by breaking the organic links between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch, in a recent statement, concurs.
There was no effort to conceal the fact that Gaza disengagement was in reality West Bank expansion. The official plan for disengagement stated that Israel will permanently take over major population centers, cities, towns and villages, security areas and other places of special interest to Israel in the West Bank. That was endorsed by the U.S. ambassador, as it had been by the President, breaking sharply with U.S. policy.
Along with the disengagement plan, Israel announced investment of tens of millions of dollars in West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Sharon immediately approved new housing units in the town of Maale Adumim that’s to the east of Jerusalem, the core of the salient that divides the southern from the central Bantustan, to use Benvenisti’s term, and also announced other expansion plans.
There is near unanimity that all of this violates international law. The consensus was expressed by U.S. Judge Buergenthal in his separate declaration attached to the World Court judgment, ruling that the separation wall is illegal. In Buergenthal's words, “The Fourth Geneva Convention and International Human Rights Law are applicable to the occupied Palestinian territory and must therefore be fully complied with by Israel. Accordingly, the segments of the wall being built by Israel to protect the settlements are ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law,” which happens to mean about 80% of the wall.
Two months later, Israel's high court rejected that judgment, ruling that the separation wall, quoting, “must take into account the need to provide security for Israelis living in the West Bank, including their property rights.” This is consistent with Chief Justice's Barak's doctrine that Israeli law supersedes international law, particularly in East Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders.
And practically speaking, he is correct, as long as the United States continues to provide the required economic, military and diplomatic support, as it has been doing for 30 years, in violation of the international consensus on a two-state settlement.
You can find detailed documentation about all of this . In Morris's words, “founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers and daily intimidation, humiliation and manipulation, along with stealing of valuable land and resources.” Like other Israeli political and legal commentators, Morris reserves special criticism for the Supreme Court, whose record, he writes, “will surely go down as a dark day in the annals of Israel's judicial system.”
Keeping to the diplomatic record, the first -- both sides, of course, rejected 242. The first important step forward was in 1971, when president Sadat of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. That would have ended the international conflict. Israel rejected the offer, choosing expansion over security. In this case, expansion into the Egyptian Sinai, where General Sharon's forces had driven thousands of farmers into the desert to clear the land for the all-Jewish city of Yamit. The U.S. backed Israel's stand.
Those decisions led to the 1973 war, a near disaster for Israel. The U.S. and Israel then recognized that Egypt could not be dismissed and finally accepted Sadat's 1971 offer at Camp David in 1979. But by then, the agreement included the demand for a Palestinian state, which had reached the international agenda.
In 1976, the major Arab states introduced a resolution to the U.N. Security Council calling for a peace settlement on the international border, based on U.N. 242, but now adding a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories. That's Syria, Egypt, Jordan and every other relevant state. The U.S. vetoed the resolution again in 1980. The General Assembly passed similar resolutions year after year with the United States and Israel opposed.
The matter reached a head in 1988, when the PLO moved from tacit approval to formal acceptance of the two-state consensus. Israel responded with a declaration that there can be no, as they put it, “additional Palestinian state between Jordan and the sea,” Jordan already being a Palestinian state -- that's Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir -- and also that the status of the territories must be settled according to Israeli guidelines. The U.S. endorsed Israel's stand. I can only add what I wrote at the time: “It's as if someone were to argue the Jews don't need a second homeland in Israel, because they already have New York.”
In May 1997, for the first time, Peres's Labour Party agreed not to rule out the establishment of a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty in areas excluding major Jewish settlement blocks, that is, the three cantons that were being constructed with U.S. support. The highest rate of post-Oslo settlement was in 2000, the final year of Clinton's term and Prime Minister Barak's.
Maps of the U.S.-Israel proposals at Camp David show a salient, east of Jerusalem, bisecting the West Bank, and a northern salient virtually dividing the northern from the central canton. I have the maps if you want them. The current map considerably extends these salients and the isolation of East Jerusalem. My maps are from the leading Israeli scholars, Ron Pundak, the Director of the Shimon Peres Center. The crucial issue at Camp David was territorial, not the refugee issue, for which Arafat agreed to a pragmatic solution, as Pundak, the leading scholar, reveals. No Palestinian could accept the cantonization, including the U.S. favorite, Mahmoud Abbas.
Clinton -- we don’t have to debate it, because Clinton recognized that Palestinian objections had validity, and in December 2000 proposed his parameters, which went some way toward satisfying Palestinian rights. In Clinton's words, “Barak and Arafat had both accepted these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have expressed some reservations.”
The reservations were addressed at a high level meeting in Taba, which made considerable progress and might have led to a settlement, but Israel called them off. That one-week at Taba is the only break in 30 years of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. High-level informal negotiations continued, leading to the Geneva Accord of December of 2002, welcomed by virtually the entire world, rejected by Israel, dismissed by Washington. That could have been the basis for a just peace. It still can. By then, however, Bush-Sharon bulldozers were demolishing any basis for it.
Every sane Israeli hawk understood that it was absurd for Israel to leave 8,000 settlers in Gaza, protected by a large part of the army, while taking over scarce water resources and arable land. The same conclusion was to withdraw from Gaza while expanding through the West Bank, and that will continue as long as Washington insists on marching on the road to catastrophe by rejecting minimal Palestinian rights. I'm quoting the warning of the four former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet Security Service. “There are clear alternatives, and if that march to catastrophe continues, we will have only ourselves to blame.”
The balance of terror and violence is overwhelmingly against the Palestinians, not surprisingly, given the balance of forces, and that's even true -- that's true right to the present. I mean, for -- you know, for decades, Israel was able to run the West Bank virtually with no forces, as Morris and others point out, because the population was so passive, while they were being humiliated, beaten, tortured, land stolen and so on, just as I quoted.
Finally, there was a reaction, and it's interesting to see the U.S. reaction to it. In the first month of the Intifada -- this one, October 2000 -- in the first month of the Intifada, seventy-four Palestinians were killed, four Israelis were killed. This was all in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli army, according to its own records, fired a million bullets in the first day, which disgusted the generals when they learned about it.
Israel, in the first few days of the Intifada, was using U.S. helicopters – they don’t make them – U.S. helicopters to attack civilian complexes, apartment houses and so on, killing and wounding dozens of people. And the U.S. did respond to that. Clinton responded by sending the biggest shipment of military helicopters in a decade to Israel. The press responded, too, by not publishing it, I should add, refusing to publish it, because it was repeatedly brought to their attention. Well, while the ratio was 20 to 1, which is pretty much what it has been for a long time, there was no concern here. Then, over the next two, three years, the ratio reduced to closer to 3 to 1, and then came enormous concern. About the one, not the three. And this goes back for a long time. What I quoted from Morris is accurate.
In other words Israel is the terrorist state in the modern world supported by Bush Government. Israel is carrying on its atrocities with impunity because supper power supports it unconditionally.
Even Britain has spoken against the current slaughter and indiscriminate killing of Lebanese. World community should do more to stop this terrorist state and its atrocities. Beside Britain France has expressed displeasure too. More needs to be done to stop these crimes against humanity being committed by Israel.
Charles, move this further up again. It is too important and discussion must continue.
Gaza, itself, the latest phase, began on June 24. It was when Israel abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. We don't know their names. You don't know the names of victims. They were taken to Israel, presumably, and nobody knows their fate. The next day, something happened, which we do know about, a lot. Militants in Gaza, probably Islamic Jihad, abducted an Israeli soldier across the border. That's Corporal Gilad Shalit. And that's well known; the first abduction is not. Then followed the escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza, which I don't have to repeat. It's reported on adequately.
The next stage was Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers, they say on the border. Their official reason for this is that they are aiming for prisoner release. There are a few, nobody knows how many. Officially, there are three Lebanese prisoners in Israel. There's allegedly a couple hundred people missing. Who knows where they are?
The fact is that we have no information about Iran and Syria, and I doubt very much that the people who are writing it have any information. And frankly, I doubt that U.S. intelligence has any information. It's certainly plausible. I mean, there's no doubt that there are connections, probably strong connections, between Hezbollah and Syria and Iran, but whether those connections were instrumental in motivating these latest actions, I don't think we have the slightest idea. You can guess anything you'd like. It's a possibility. In fact, even a probability. But on the other hand, there's every reason to believe that Hezbollah has its own motivations, maybe the ones that Hirst and the Financial Times and others are pointing to. That seems plausible, too. Much more plausible, in fact.
the rockets were fired after the heavy Israeli attacks against Lebanon, which killed -- well, latest reports, maybe 60 or so people and destroyed a lot of infrastructure. As always, things have precedents, and you have to decide which was the inciting event. In my view, the inciting event in the present case, events, are those that I mentioned -- the constant intense repression; plenty of abductions; plenty of atrocities in Gaza; the steady takeover of the West Bank, which, in effect, if it continues, is just the murder of a nation, the end of Palestine; the abduction on June 24 of the two Gaza civilians; and then the reaction to the abduction of Corporal Shalit. And there's a difference, incidentally, between abduction of civilians and abduction of soldiers. Even international humanitarian law makes that distinction.
We have nothing the U.S. Wants
U.S wants Canadian oil you nincompoop.
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