In response to the "retaliatory" efforts. On June 17, 2008, after several months of indirect contacts between Israel and Hamas through Egyptian mediators, Hamas agreed to a cease-fire (tahadiya). Almost immediately afterward, terrorists fired rockets into southern Israel. Despite what it called a “gross violation” of the truce, Israel refrained from military action.1 In fact, during the six months the arrangement was supposed to be observed, 329 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel.2 While there were considerably fewer Palestinian assaults after the agreement than before, terror continued. Nevertheless, the IDF did not respond to the provocations. On the contrary, Israel significantly increased the amount of goods delivered to the Gaza Strip. During this period, Israel also expected to negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier taken hostage by Hamas in June 2006. The group repeatedly increased its demands for the number of prisoners it wanted released in exchange for the lone Israeli captive, but never agreed to grant his freedom. Violence escalated in early November after the IDF carried out a military operation close to the border security fence on the Gazan side that killed seven Hamas terrorists. Israel acted after discovering that Hamas had dug a tunnel under the fence and planned to abduct more Israeli soldiers. Hamas responded by shelling Israeli towns and has continued the rocket barrage ever since. When the Hamas-imposed six-month deadline expired in December, Israel hoped an agreement could be reached to extend the cease-fire. Instead, Hamas began firing what would be hundreds of rockets into Israel. When the bombardment began, it became apparent Hamas had used the lull to upgrade its arsenal with weapons that were too sophisticated to have been designed or built in Gaza. These advanced Qassam and Grad rockets, which have placed 1 in every 8 Israelis in mortal danger, originated in Iran. They were smuggled into Gaza in pieces, assembled, and fired from launch pads well-hidden and shielded in Palestinian population centers.
To those that say “Israel should negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas.” Hamas does not negotiate with Israel. Hamas denies Israel's right to exist. Hamas refuses to abide by previously signed agreements. Even the recently-expired six-month “cease-fire” between Israel and Hamas had to be slowly and painstakingly negotiated through Egypt because Hamas would not talk to Israel. Throughout 2008, Israel worked with the United States toward an equitable two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority while Hamas did everything in its power to disrupt and derail the peace process – firing thousands of rockets into Israeli towns and cities, firing on Israeli soldiers and civilians and attempting to infiltrate Israel for the purpose of committing suicide bombing attacks. Hamas also continues to hold 22-year-old Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier the group kidnaped in June 2006. Hamas made clear that the “cease-fire” was not a prelude to peace. On the contrary, Hamas used the time to build more tunnels to smuggle weapons and supplies from Egypt; to build more rockets and to improve the range and accuracy of its existing arsenal. A new cease-fire before the tunnels and weapons are destroyed or neutralized would simply give Hamas the opportunity to follow the example of Hezbollah and rearm and regroup for a future battle to achieve its goal of Israel's destruction.
MYTH “Israel deliberately attacked a UN school.” FACT They say that truth is the first casualty of war and Israel has frequently found this to be the case. Reports of Israeli atrocities in its military operations are often out of context, misleading, half-truths, or outright fabrications. Israel often reinforces negative media reports by reacting in a knee-jerk way to accept blame when asked for a reaction to allegations. The media does not wait to learn the truth because that typically requires careful, dispassionate analysis that does not conform to journalists’ need to immediately fill time and space. The best example of this was the infamous case that occurred during an Israeli anti-terror operation in Gaza in 2000 when a TV broadcast showed a Palestinian father shielding his son from bullets. The child was allegedly killed and Israel was immediately blamed. It took many months, but we now know Israeli troops did not kill Mohammed al-Dura. Israel faced a similar rush to judgment after reports of an Israeli attack on January 6, 2009 on a UN-run school in Jabalya. The building was not being used as a school at the time but was sheltering Palestinian noncombatants. Initial reports said at least 30 Palestinians were killed and UN officials claimed they had given Israeli forces coordinates of this building and others that they said were not associated with Hamas. The incident was immediately portrayed as a deliberate Israeli attack on innocent people. The details of what happened are still under investigation, but Israel maintains it was not aware that the building was being used as a shelter and that Israeli forces fired at the building because they were attacked by Hamas terrorists launching mortars from the area. Israel later identified two of the casualties at the site as Imad and Hassan Abu Asker, who served as heads of the Hamas mortar units in Gaza. A witness from Jabalya said that he had seen Abu Asker in the area of the school right before the attack when he answered a call for volunteers to pile sand around the camp “to help protect the resistance fighters”.5 In addition, two residents of the area near the school told the Associated Press they had seen a small group of terrorists firing mortar rounds from a street close to the school .6 A series of explosions followed, indicating the presence of munitions and explosives in the building, which was not being used as a school at the time. This is not the first time terrorists have fired mortars from a school in Gaza, nor is it the first time terrorists have exploited UN facilities. UN officials in Gaza, who never condemn Palestinian terror (the UN never passed a resolution condemning Hamas terrorism), have a long record of looking the other way while Hamas carries out its activities. UN officials in Gaza are there to help Palestinians and their bias often clouds their judgment and therefore independent verification is needed before accepting their claims. We do know that through its use of civilians as shields, Hamas has brought death and destruction to the people of Gaza as well as southern Israel. The loss of life in Jabalya is tragic and would not have happened if Hamas was not rocketing Israel. The rush to blame Israel is also a reminder that first reports out of Gaza cannot be trusted.
And last post I am making today in here.... This sums up why I support Israels actions. To the idea that “Palestinians in Gaza are innocent victims.” ---- It is tragic that many Palestinians who are not directly involved in terrorism are suffering as a result of the actions of their leaders. While no one wants to see any noncombatants harmed, it is important to acknowledge that all Palestinians in Gaza bear some responsibility for their current predicament. After all, they voted to empower Hamas in an election in which they knew the organization's platform called for the destruction of Israel and the use of terrorism to achieve its aims. The Palestinians in Gaza have done nothing during the last three years to stop Hamas from launching rockets into Israel. At any time the people could have said, “Enough! We do not support terror.” Instead of allowing rocket crews to fire Qassams from their houses, yards, or neighborhoods, the people could have said, “Stop! I will not allow you to make us a target. I will now allow you to use my family as a shield.” For the last three years, the Palestinians of Gaza have said, in effect, “We don't mind if Israelis are murdered by Hamas rockets, but the world should support us.” During World War II, the German people were not spared suffering from the Allied invasion because they were noncombatants or because some could claim they were not Nazis and did not support Hitler. All the German people were held to account for their failure to stop their leaders from carrying out their aggression and genocidal policies. The Palestinians now are also being held to account. What is different, however, is that unlike the Allies in World War II, Israel is doing everything possible to avoid hurting Palestinian noncombatants despite their culpability. Even now the Palestinians have the power to stop the war by demanding that Hamas cease firing rockets. Alas, they refuse to take the one step within their power to ease their suffering.
You do realize that there are hundreds of dead women and children in Gaza? This is the same kind of flawed thought process that justifies killing civilians in Israel because the country has conscription.
This is incredibly disingenuous. Hamas was voted in due to a social services vacuum. This is akin to Islamic extremist claims that U.S. citizens are fair-game combatants as they willingly re-elected a hawkish regime.
Hamas has broken agreements, but so has Israel as they did with the cease fire in this case. As has been discussed there were periods for over a year where the Palestinians stopped the violence against Israel, and Israel didn't live up to its obligation. I'm not going to pretend that Hamas hasn't broken agreements. They certainly have. But to pretend like the nation with a vast superior military, technology, weapons, is an occupier, has also broken agreements including the recent cease fire, is somehow purely a victim is bogus. This isn't the first time they've blown up a UN post. They did it in '96, they did it in 2006, and they've done it again. They aren't trying to avoid civilian deaths or they wouldn't be using cluster bombs, and phosphorus weapons. When they aren't at war with them, they are oppressing the Palestinians, so the victim card just doesn't go too far. In every conflict they've killed more civilians of the other side than they've had civilians killed.
You would think that people would learn that messing with Israel is a mistake. Israel is not the only country oppressing the Palestinians. Not one of the Arab nations has offered to give them a place to live in their countries. In fact were the Palestinians to try and leave and move into a bordering country they would be herded back. Nobody wants to deal with these people. If your neighbor were to start throwing rocks at your house would you do nothing? Maybe sign a treaty with him?
Well they are Palestinians so why should another country take them instead of letting them stay in Palestine.
Why should they have to? Taking on any large influx of refugees would be a strain on any nation's economy. Just because no one has done anything to fix a problem doesn't give any moral justification for an aggressor's actions.
(1) You can't conflate all "terrorists" with Hamas. Hamas can't just say, "Ok, fellow terrorist brothers! Stop firing rockets", and in an instant they will. You can't assume there exists such a level of organization. As has been discussed elsewhere, not a single rocket attack between the signing of the cease-fire and November 4th can be attributed to Hamas. (2) To say that Israel didn't "respond" to the provocations is an outright lie. Israel, under the cease-fire agreement, was supposed to lift its blockade. It refused to do so, and in fact maintained from the beginning that it never intended to do so. Either that is a "response" or it is a "provocation" itself. Israel clearly was never interested in abiding by a cease-fire agreement with a negotiating partner like Hamas. Here are the facts: [rquoter] According to a December 2008 publication by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, for example, the number of Palestinian projectiles launched from Gaza into Israel decreased from 2,278 during the six months before the tahdi’a to 329 during it, with most of the latter being fired after hostilities resumed on November 4. A good proportion of the remainder, furthermore, were fired during the first 10 days of the truce while Hamas acted to establish control over organizations that did not countenance an agreement limited to the Gaza Strip or had other reasons for undermining the tahdi’a. Thus, according to statistics disseminated by the Israeli consulate in New York, the sum total of Palestinian projectiles launched between July 1 and November 1, 2008 stood at 15 mortar shells and 11 rockets with no fatalities recorded. While by no means 100 percent secure, the southern Israeli town of Sderot was hardly living under a ceaseless rocket barrage. [/rquoter] They didn't "discover" such a plan. They just claimed it. And I know of no evidence that there actually was plan of an imminent attack either. All we know is there was a tunnel (maybe Hamas used it to smuggle in weapons/supplies), and there were Palestinian security forces around it that Israel chose to kill. Here's another view of the events leading up to Israel's invasion: [rquoter] The countdown to conflict began not with the expiration of the ceasefire on December 19, but rather on November 4. With the world fixated on the drama of the US presidential election, Israel launched an unprovoked incursion into the Gaza Strip that left six Palestinians, all members of the Qassam Brigades, dead. Israel claimed that the army had successfully foiled an imminent attempt to provide Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal captured by Palestinian fighters in June 2006, with some company. But these claims were widely ridiculed by Israeli military correspondents. Greater credence was given to the view that this was a premeditated and purposeful raid intended to elicit a response from Hamas that would furnish a pretext to dismantle the ceasefire. Indeed, the period between November 4 and December 19 -- during which, again, all fatalities were Palestinian -- was characterized by growing escalation by both sides, including an unprecedented tightening of the blockade by Israel and Egypt. Poverty levels climbed further into the stratosphere, malnutrition skyrocketed and essential supplies of every sort ran out. Even before the latest emergency spurred UN agencies and the Red Cross to warn of imminent collapse, former UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson had on a November 4 visit denounced international indifference to the “shocking violation of so many human rights” of Gaza’s population as “almost unbelievable.” “Their whole civilization has been destroyed,” she concluded. “I’m not exaggerating.” [/rquoter] Oh really? http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45350 [rquoter]Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal. The proposal to renew the ceasefire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza. [/rquoter] Hamas was prepared to go back to the terms of the original cease-fire -- not surprisingly, as they were ones getting assassinated -- and Israel refused. Remind me again, how many people have died in Gaza population centers and how many people have died in Israeli population centers since last June. Moreover, it is well known that Israel was planning its offensive into Gaza for several months. Hamas probably understand the distinct possibility of such an attack and felt it had to arm itself. As for Hamas launching attacks from civilian buildings, that's wrong in no uncertain terms. It is, in fact, a war crime according to international law. But let's be clear on the situation. This is an asymmetric war being fought against and from a densely populated urban area. Where exactly is Hamas expected to fight from, if not from a population center? They don't have an air force. It's not like Israel has granted them a huge swath of open land through which they can march a grand army. This is a situation that Israel has created. Israel knows it is facing an angry, militant enemy, and it knows the manner in which that enemy will fight back. Also, let's talk a bit about hypocrisy. Israel has been pretty explicit -- any Hamas personnel or those affiliated with Hamas are deemed acceptable military targets. Imagine Hamas had the same military capabilities as Israel, and they publicly put forward the same edict with respect to Israeli government officials. We'd all rightly condemn it. I mean, would they be justified in bombing a residential area in which a couple government officials happen to reside while also wiping out entire familes? Would that not be a blatant act of terrorism? Of course it would be. But somehow, if Israel does it, we say they are defending themselves instead of calling it what it is -- a flagrant war crime. It's just lost on me how you put all the blame one side, while totally giving a pass to the other side -- the one that's doing virtually all of the killing in the conflict. Hamas personnel and/or whichever other groups in Gaza or West Bank that launch rockets into Israel are both criminal and stupid in equal measure. But it's not an excuse for the on-going assault on Gaza. Israel knows full well the consequences of its actions, and it should be for once held accountable.
The no neighbors want to deal with the Palestinians myth has reared its ugly head again. Jordan is close to 90% Palestinian.
What makes you think the Palestinians want to be "herded" into another country, ethnically cleansed from their own homeland? What a proposal. Hey, how come the US or Western Europe or Russia didn't step forward and offer to give the Jews autonomy and statehood within their own country? Oh right, no one wanted to deal with "those people". No, you know what I'd do? I'd fire a scud missile at his house and wipe out his entire family. Yep, you can't take any chances.
MYTH “Israel is using white phosphorous as a chemical weapon against Gazans.” FACT The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that Israel is not using white phosphorous illegally. White phosphorous shells are used to light up the sky during night operations in Gaza so that the Israeli Air Force can see its target more clearly. Additionally, white phosphorous can be used during the day to create a smokescreen so as to hide air or ground forces in the area to protect them from Hamas fire and kidnappers. Israel has never used these shells as a weapon in its offensive against Hamas. “It's not very unusual to use phosphorus to create smoke or illuminate a target,” according to Peter Herby, head of the Red Cross mines-arms unit. “We have no evidence to suggest it's being used in any other way.”20 The Israeli military maintains that it has not broken any international laws in their operations. Indeed, according to international law, the use of white phosphorous as an illuminary mechanism is always permitted. Furthermore, white phosphrous is not considered a chemical weapon. The Palestinians have brought people covered in bandages before television cameras and claimed they were burned by white phosphorous. Human Rights Watch, well-known for making unsubstantiated claims of abuse against Israel, has repeated similar unverified charges. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, January 14, 2009, Hamas fired its own white phosphorous shell into the city of Eshkol. Hamas operatives clearly used the phosphorous shell as a terror weapon as there were no Hamas forces in the area to hide under a white phosphorous-delivered smoke screen. Hamas fired the shell with the obvious intent of trying so injure civilians living in the town.21 To those that say “Israel has reacted to Hamas rocket fire with ‘disproportionate force.’” FACT Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. As Professor Alan Dershowitz has also noted, “The claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality -- by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets -- is absurd. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian. Second, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk posed. This is illustrated by what happened on Tuesday (December 30, 2008), when a Hamas rocket hit a kindergarten in Beer Sheva, though no students were there at the time. Under international law, Israel is not required to allow Hamas to play Russian roulette with its children’s lives.”3 As the London Times said in response to this charge during Israel's war with Hezbollah, this criticism “is lazy and facile in several ways, especially in implying a moral relativism between the two sides that does not exist. This is not the contest between misguided equals that many in the West seem to see. One is the region's lone democracy, which for much of its existence has faced a very real existential threat and would like, if possible, to live in peace with its neighbors. The other is a terrorist organization, bent on preventing such a future.”4 Furthermore, Since Hamas' stated objective is the destruction of Israel, isn't the appropriate response the destruction of Hamas? Wouldn't random missile strikes on Palestinian cities be proportionate to Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel? Can you imagine any of Israel's critics accepting those responses? When Palestinian terrorists plant bombs at Israeli shopping malls and kill and maims dozens of civilians, would the "proportionate response" be for Israelis to plant bombs in Palestinian malls? No one in Israel believes this would be a legitimate use of force. Thus, Israel is left with the need to take measured action against specific targets in an effort to either deter Palestinian violence or stop it. What would America do if terrorists fired thousands of rockets targeting U.S. cities? After 9/11, we saw that America took the same type of action as Israel by launching military strikes against the terrorists. U.S. forces used overwhelming force and though they never targeted civilians, some were inadvertently killed. Americans believe in Colin Powell's doctrine, which holds that “America should enter fights with every bit of force available or not at all.” The United States uses overwhelming force against its enemies, even though the threats are distant and pose no danger to the existence of the nation or the immediate security of its citizens. The threat Israel faces is immediate in time and physical proximity, and poses a direct danger to Israeli citizens. More than 6,000 rockets have now fallen on Israel's cities and now that Hamas has acquired long-range missiles, more than 900,000 civilians are in danger. Still, Israel has not used its full might as the Powell Doctrine dictates. The use of force has been judicious and precise. Israeli soldiers do not deliberately target noncombatants. The murder of innocents is the goal of the Palestinian terrorists. In fact, what other army drops leaflets to warn people to leave an area they intend to attack even though it gives up the element of surprise and allows the bad guys to hide as well as the innocent to escape? IDF activities are governed by an overriding policy of restraint and a determination to take all possible measures to prevent harm to innocent civilians. No innocent Palestinians would be in any danger if the Palestinian Authority took steps to stop terrorism or if the international community, especially the Arab world, had pressured Hamas to stop attacking Israel. No innocent Palestinians would be in danger if Hamas terrorists did not deliberately hide among them. If the peace-seeking Palestinians prevented the terrorists from living in their midst, Israel would have no reason to come to their neighborhoods. It is a tragedy whenever innocent lives are lost, and Israelis have consistently expressed their sadness over Arab casualties. By contrast, when innocent Israelis are murdered by terrorists, Hamas holds rallies to celebrate the murders.
We can post articles refuting the opposite side all day. Just have to agree to disagree. --- “Media coverage of Operation Cast Lead is fair and accurate.” FACT Israel has learned that its enemies will do everything they can to manipulate the media to influence public opinion during conflicts such as the one going on in the Gaza Strip. Israel will be accused of massacres, fabricated casualty figures will be distributed, photographs will be doctored and journalists will be threatened. These and other ploys will be used to create sympathy for the Palestinians and cast aspersions on Israeli forces in the hope of turning world opinion against Israel. Too often, irresponsible journalists have repeated unverified and often inaccurate information in their haste to be the first to report a story. In an effort to present an evenhanded account, some reporters have the mistaken belief that allowing an Arab spokesperson to lie and then giving an Israeli a chance to respond represents a balanced account. This is like allowing a spokesperson to accuse Israelis of beating their spouses and then inviting an Israeli to deny that they beat their husbands and wives. Israel is always put on the defensive, often through outrageous and false accusations, which are repeated by other media so lies become accepted as truth. One of the first examples of this in the Gaza war occurred after Israeli forces fired on a UN-run school on January 6, 2009. The press immediately reported that more than 30 Palestinians seeking shelter in the building were killed and the attack was portrayed as a deliberate assault on innocent people. Hours later, Israeli investigators reported that they had fired on the building because they were attacked by Hamas terrorists launching mortars from the area. Witnesses supported the Israeli account, but the initial impression was already created and reinforced by repeated claims by UN officials discounting the Israeli version. France 2, the same television network that broadcast the notoriously inaccurate story about Mohammed al-Dura during the Palestinian War, broadcast a false report showing dead children allegedly killed in the Gaza fighting. The amateur video of the dead toddlers being laid out on a white sheet was actually shot after they were killed by the explosion of a Hamas ammunition truck during a parade in Gaza in September 2005.6a Israel was consistently victimized by Arab propaganda and media irresponsibility during the 2006 Lebanon War. Israel was accused of massacres that never happened. Reuters was duped by doctored photos and had to withdraw them. Other photos, showing Hizballah fighters setting up rockets in civilian neighborhoods were suppressed because they did not conform to Hizballah's propaganda message that Israel was indiscriminately attacking innocent Lebanese. Hamas has adopted a similar approach. As CNN's Anderson Cooper reported, “Inside Gaza, press controlled by Hamas is heavy-handed. There are few press freedoms inside Gaza and Hamas controls who reports from there and where they can go. While pictures of wounded children being brought to hospitals are clearly encouraged, we rarely see images of Hamas fighters or their rockets being fired into Israel.”7 Israel naturally wants to shape media coverage as well, but Israelis know the first time they are caught telling the type of lies common to the other side their credibility will be shot. Moreover, while they may want to exert some influence by, for example, limiting reporters’ access to troops, the other side still succeeds in making its case. As CNN’s Nic Robertson noted in criticizing Israel’s decision not to embed reporters during the Gaza operation, “The officials we talk to say it’s for security and our safety, but it creates an impression that they don’t want the suffering that’s happening in the Gaza Strip right now to be witnessed by the world, but it is and right now you could make a real case that the message that’s coming out is one that’s essentially controlled by people that are perhaps more partisan to the situation inside the Gaza Strip than a lot of international journalists.”8 Given the history of coverage of the Middle East conflict, it behooves journalists to take great care in how they report stories from both sides of the Gaza battlefront and it will be up to those following the coverage to hold the reporters to the highest journalistic standards. Even before Israel initiated Operation Cast Lead, many journalists were quick to report whatever they were told by Hamas. When Hamas staged blackouts in Gaza, the media incorrectly reported that Israel was preventing the Gazans from having fuel and electricity. Israel was regularly blamed for a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza while, at the same time, truckloads of goods were sent in from Israel each day. While Israel's air attacks on Gaza immediately made the front page of newspapers around the world, the rocket barrages on southern Israel, and the impact they have had on the population over the last three years, have rarely been mentioned. The media often turns conflicts into numbers games, keeping running tallies of casualties. Israel always is accused of disproportion because fewer Israelis typically die in confrontations. Israelis, however, are under no obligation to take greater casualties for the sake of looking better in the media box score. It also should come as no surprise that a regular army that is highly trained and is targeting terrorists will kill more people than the terrorists who are indiscriminately firing explosive rockets at civilian population centers in Israel. The casualty figures reported by Palestinians have also proven completely unreliable in the past and no one should take them as fact. We know that the Palestinians will routinely call attacks “massacres” and invent large numbers of fatalities, so journalists should be on guard for such unverified claims. Even when bodies are presented as evidence, we have learned that they are often not the victims of an Israeli attack and sometimes they are not even dead (a classic Palestinian video shows a funeral in which the pall bearers drop the stretcher with the “corpse” who then gets up and runs away). Perhaps the most dramatic example occurred when the Washington Post published a photograph9 during the first Lebanon War of a baby that appeared to have lost both its arms. The UPI caption said that the seven-month-old had been severely burned when an Israeli jet accidentally hit a Christian residential area. The photo disgusted President Reagan and was one reason he subsequently called for Israel to halt its attacks. The photo and the caption, however, were inaccurate. The baby, in fact, did not lose its arms, and the burns the child suffered were the result of a PLO attack on East Beirut. Early in the Gaza war, the media reported that nearly three hundred Gazans were killed in the incursion. These numbers came from Palestinian sources. Moreover, what many reporters left out is the fact that even Palestinians admitted the majority of those casualties were Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists. Some reports have also cited UN officials on conditions in Gaza and these must also be treated as suspect. UN representatives in Gaza are not impartial observers; they are individuals there specifically to aid the Palestinians and are naturally sympathetic to their cause. UN operatives in Palestinian territories have often been found to be apologists for terror with an animus toward Israel. Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, for example, has a long history of venomous anti-Israel remarks. The media is reporting how the Arab world is outraged by Israeli actions, but this is also not a complete account of the facts. First, most of the Arab world does not get its news from the Western media, which at least claims a measure of objectivity; the leading source of news for most Arabs is Al-Jazeera. This network has no pretensions that it is balanced and presents non-stop coverage from a Palestinian perspective with the aim of generating hostility toward Israel. Al-Jazeera has not been reporting on the incessant rocket fire on Israel or its impact on the population. Still, what is striking is how many Arab leaders and commentators have blamed Hamas for provoking Israel. Also, while Hamas has received some rhetorical support from Arab states, they have shown no interest in coming to the group’s defense. Accurate reporting would note that for all their statements of support for the Palestinian cause, none of the Arab states are willing to do any more to defend them. It is a journalist’s duty to report on every situation in as unbiased a manner as possible. To do this, reporters who interview Palestinian spokespeople or hospital officials should check their facts with other sources, including the IDF and the Israel Foreign Ministry, both of which have been historically honest in their fact-collecting. If journalists are not careful in their reporting of the situation in Gaza they will be later castigated by their colleagues, as was the case after the last Lebanon War.
You think the IDF is using white phosphorous so they can see their targets better? In that case give me some WP over night vision guided weaponry anyday!!
I'm not going to respond to everything you wrote, but this Dershowitz is a totally discredited clown on this issue. Let's run through his distortions: "The claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality -- by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets -- is absurd. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian." Israel is not only targeting "combatants". Anyone affiliated with Hamas is considered a military target. This is like saying our enemy can fire rockets at a US senator and claim that he's an enemy combatant. Moreover, Israel has targeting locations where at various points in the past they observed enemy fire. Nevermind if those locations only hold schoolchildren now, according to Dershowitz those somehow are now legitimate "terrorist"/"combatant" targets. Absurd. "Second, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk posed. This is illustrated by what happened on Tuesday (December 30, 2008), when a Hamas rocket hit a kindergarten in Beer Sheva, though no students were there at the time. Under international law, Israel is not required to allow Hamas to play Russian roulette with its children’s lives." He's right, proportionality SHOULD be measured by the risk posed. So, when Israel chooses to fire at a school or residential area, they are responsible not for simply for who they intend to kill but rather the risk (i.e. the chances) of civilians getting killed. Now Dershowitz would have us believe that even though the number of civilian casualties in this conflict has been something on the order of 100 to 1, that there has been greater risk or chance of casualties among Israeli civilians rather than the Palestinian civilians. Like I said, he's a buffoon.
From Mr. Dave's uncited article: I love this excuse, truly. Palestinians and UN buildings are getting bombed. They complain about it. And the apologists response, "We can't trust you. You're biased." And at the same time, Israel refuses to let the international media in to cover what's going on. So, basically, we have to just trust the invading force's account on things. How convenient.
