not even 24 hours

Terrorists fire two Kassam-2 missiles at Israel from Gaza

By Margot Dudkevitch and Arieh O'Sullivan


TEL AVIV (February 11) - Palestinian terrorists fired two Kassam-2 rockets at Israel for the first time yesterday morning. All were aimed at different parts of the Negev. A third rocket was destroyed by an IDF tank shell before it was launched after it was spotted by soldiers near Beit Hanoun.


One rocket landed in a field of Moshav Shuva, a second rocket landed east of Kibbutz Sa'ad. The third rocket that was destroyed had been aimed at Sderot and Netivot.

The Guardian, 2/11/2:


"In retaliation, Israeli F16 jets dropped two bombs on the main Palestinian security installation near the Mediterranean coast in Gaza City and helicopters fired missiles at a foundry and other targets in the Jabalya area, in the northern Gaza Strip, witnesses said.


The warplanes bombed a Palestinian security complex a few hundred metres from offices of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. The complex was already badly damaged by previous attacks. The planes had circled overhead for several minutes before striking, and Palestinian security officials dashed out of the complex before the bombing.


The UN envoy to the region, Terje Roed-Larsen, expressed "outrage" at the heavy bombardment so close to civilian areas and the UN's offices. "Israel's security needs will not be met by hitting civilian targets or by destroying the Palestnians' ability to police and maintain order," he said."


This logic cannot be lost on those ordering the bombings, but in their view Israel's security needs pale in comparison to the settlement freeze contemplated by the Mitchell plan.


Israelis victims of terror, 2001: 208 killed, 1,523 injured. (Ha'aretz, 2/10/2)


Palestinian victims of Israeli soldiers, policemen and settlers from 9/29/00 -- 1/9/02 (Al-aqsa intifada dates): 911 killed, 17,032 injured. (Palestinian Red Crescent Society)


"Human Rights Watch said its week-long investigation of clashes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and northern Israel showed repeated use by Israeli security forces of lethal force in situations where demonstrators posed no threat of death or serious injury to security forces or others. In situations where Palestinians did fire upon Israeli security forces, the IDF showed a troubling proclivity to resort to indiscriminate lethal force in response."


Human Rights Watch Website. But of course using "indiscriminate lethal force" isn't terrorism when Israel does it, because the only terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinians, by definition.

Reviewing police activities in the past year, Aharonishky dubbed 2001 "the year of terror." He noted that the number of terrorist attacks over the past year - including shootings, bombings, and mortar shells attacks - was greater than the number of terrorist attacks in the 1997-2000 combined.


The 1,794 reports of terrorist attacks across the country that killed 208 Israelis and wounded 1,523 others in the course of 2001 represented a whopping 337% increase over the 410 attacks in the year 2000.

There is no solution but continual war. The Palestinians won't stop even with statehood. It will only excite them to continue to annihilate the Jews. The "final solution" is the Palestinian solution.


Rejection of the Clinton-Barak offer was proof of that. They don't want peace at all.


All Israel has gained by the 1993 Wye River accord is more terrorism emboldened by the perceived show of weakness.

Just a small point about deaths from responses to terrorist acts in general: it isn't only the numbers that matter. For instance, I believe Cyrus provided some figures on deaths in Afghanistan. He seemed to be saying it may have been unjustifiable based on the fact that we in the USA lost only a few thousand lives. However this line of reasoning neglects to consider who the aggressor was. In other words, the defender may well have the right to inflict far more damage, not merely equivalent damage, in repelling aggression. I don't know the veracity of the numbers you cite or anything about the Palestinian Red Crescent Society which provided them, but I do think the point that Israel has long been a focus for Palestinian and even Arab aggression weighs heavily in judging the Israeli's right to respond to aggression with overwhelming force. I'm not saying Israel probably shouldn't be more careful about collateral damage, but they do have the right to defend themselves. Also it is worth noting that the Palestinians seem far more fond of targeting purely civilian targets.


I think the French were right recently (surprise!) when they stated the Palestinians need to have Statehood ASAP, even before the violence ends, since the violence doesn't seem to be ending. I agree. Hammer out a deal even with the violence going on and bring their Statehood into reality. After that, and a cooling-off period which may hopefully result from it while the Palestinians are trying to organize their state (hopefully with some assistance from the UN and the IMF or World Bank if needed), there really must be no more terrorism. What I mean by that is that the US, Israel and NATO (or any combination thereof) should go in and crush Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and any other terrorist groups which refuse to dissolve themselves voluntarily within a given time frame. And yes I do mean crush. And on a worldwide basis, in the war against terror, I believe NATO should become as active as the USA. They probably won't, but that is what I believe should be done.

I agree with you on the French initiative. However, you said


"they do have the right to defend themselves."


Israel certainly has the right to right to defend itself, and to kill terrorist on it's soil and traveling to its soil, but the acts I described referred to violence by the occupying forces of the West Bank and Gaza against civilian demonstrators and those shooting at an invading army.


Israel has no right to conquer foreign countries and people and call their actions "self-defense." Quite the opposite, under long-standing principles of international law the people conquered have a right to defend themselves, including the use of violence and the obtaining of arms from outside sources. These principles have been repeatedly ratified by the UN (including the U.S.) in all sorts of colonial conflicts. If the Afghanis had the right to violently resist the Russian invaders, if the Timorese had the right to violently resist Indonesian invaders, why don't the Palestinians have the right to resist Israeli invaders?


The unprecedented build-up of settlements in the West Bank after Oslo, after the sides agreed to negotiate the terms of Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank, has nothing to do with the self-defense of Israel. It is purely landgrabbing to effect political domination under the "principles" of racial and religious supremacy. If any other country did that, we'd see it as a simple colonialism, profoundly racist, utterly indefensible. But when one of our clients does it, and our government sees some strategic advantage to supporting the client, we put the blinders on and label it "self-defense," just as much of Germany saw Hitler's conquest the Sudentenland as an act of self-defense, a necessary imperative to cultural survival, and so forth, to their shame and lasting regret.


"Also it is worth noting that the Palestinians seem far more fond of targeting purely civilian targets."


Claiming that "Palestinians," over 4 million in number, prefer to kill civilians because of a relative handful of suicide bombers is no fairer than claiming that "Israelis" prefer to kill civilians because of the actions of the IDF. Indeed, condemning Israelis has a slightly more compelling logic in light of it's status as the "only democracy" in the Middle East, so we can presume a certain amount of popular and institutional support in Israel for IDF atrocities. But it would be wrong to tar all Israelis with the same brush, particularly since so many are working hard and sacrificing much to resolve this conflict peacefully, as is the case with many Palestinians.


OTOH, the suicide bombings of civilians are certainly unspeakable crimes that obviously have some support beyond the terrorists themselves, and Israel engages in nothing as spectacularly repugnant. There are three critical points that bear considering before we adopt the conventional propaganda line of Palestinian violence being terrorism and Israeli violence being something less (or even the opposite!):


(1) The "indsicriminate use of lethal force," the phrase with which Human Right Watch described IDF actions, is unconscionable. It makes very little difference whether the perpetrator is a suicide bomber or an unsupervised soldier. It's all murder of innocents, the victims suffer equally, and if we oppose that, we demean ourselves by arbitrary hair-splitting over the degree of evil that motivated the perpetrator.


Moreover, the Palestinian death statistics show a distinct preference for shooting children in the head and chest with live ammunition from fairly accurate rifles, in several cases where children were not even taking part in demonstrations. Israelies, including many from the security forces, complain about this constantly. The underlying logic to these deliberate killings is that they prevents the children from becoming more dangerous young men, and it completely demoralizes (terrorizes) the civilian population. Anyone who finds these killings somehow more acceptable than suicide bombings has no moral basis to object to suicide bombings at all.


(2) I don't subsidize the suicide bombers, but I help pay for the arms used by the IDF. As much as I hate the suicide bombers, my responsibility for them is therefore less than it is for the IDF. I cannot invoke any principle to condemn the suicide bombers if I am unwilling to apply that principle to myself, otherwise I have no moral credibility, and am favoring victim x over victim y or perpetrator x or perpetrator y with as much moral force as if I were flipping a coin.


3. Much hand-wringing over terrorism involves condemning it in one situation but forgiving or even applauding it in others. Zionist and Israeli forces freely used mass terror, including car bombs, marketplace bombs, bus bombs, drive-by shootings and even invented the practice of hijacking civilian airliners (Syria 1954), in order to build and protect their country as they saw fit. Here's just a snippet, a few weeks over the course of decades, from [i]Righteous Victims by Benny Morris (history prof. at Ben-Gurion U.):


In Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem, in December and January 1948, hundreds of Arab civilians were killed or wounded by IZL terror [Irgun Z'vai Leumi, militant zionists and ancestors of the current Likud]. In Jerusalem alone, 37 Arabs were killed and 80 wounded in two bombinds on Decmeber 13 and 29. Another such operation set in motion one of the bloodiest, most vicious cycles of terror and retaliation of the period: On December 30, an IZL squad threw a number of bombs into a crowd as a bus stop outside the Haifa Oil Refinery, killing six people and wounding dozens more."


Then, in retalliation for the Arab retalliation of the above attack, the "Hagahan General Staff" ordered its forces to the village of Balad ash Sheikh, with orders to "kill a maximal number of adult males, destroy furniture, etc." The troops went door to door, murdering all the civilian men, sometimes slaughtering entire families. Similar events occured in Deir Yassin and, later, in Qibya, there under the personal supervision of Ariel Sharon. BTW, like the Palestinians and their "martyrs," the Irgun terrorists are remembered fondly by many in Israel, with place names and streets and so forth to commemorate their noble achievements.


Today, in its position of overwhelming domination over Palestine but dependent on the U.S. and isolated from the rest of the world, Israel's practical capacity for violence is more restrained. But this could change. Hardline supporters of the Sharon government and certainly Sharon himself have more than once shown their willingness to engage in outright mass murder. This was the case in Lebanon. With it's current level of armaments, an unleashed IDF could create a swathe of terror leaving tens of thousands dead and millions homeless, making the truly horrific suicide bombers pale by comparison. The worst-case scenario of effects of such a conflict are involves horror on a scale that's scarcely imaginable, even for a generation that can suddenly imagine much more than it ever seriously dreaded, until recently.

The Palestinians have the responsibility to restrain or eliminate those terrorist groups which launch attacks upon Israel from within Palestinian territory. If they don't, Israel has the right to invade and deal with such groups as necessary. Unfortunately this will inevitably involve some harms or deaths to civilians as well.


I don't believe the Palestinians or even many neighboring Arab states have ever truly accepted Israel's right to exist, whatever they may reluctantly profess to the contrary. Yes, Israel did annex some land after 1967. However, given that this included key strategic areas from which attacks were launched I think they had the right to so at that time as a matter of strategic self-defense. Today Israel is so well-armed that they might well be able to defend themselves even without these key strategic areas. Back then, however, it may have been a much different story.


Also, what about Jordan and another country having annexed land that was meant for the Palestinians? Didn't this happen also? Shouldn't they have to give it back too?


Arabs as a whole control VAST amounts of land in the region...Israel is really a very tiny state by comparison. Why the other Arab states should even CARE about Israel is something I find rather mind-boggling. They have plenty of land and resources...I mean jeez...let them focus on their own business instead of worrying about so insignificant a piece of land and state as Israel is to them. The Palestinians have of course a much different and more complex situation and pressing problems.


One real problem is also Fundamentalism. I'm going to be very blunt here for a moment. Fundamentalism, whether Islamic or Christian, is a stupid belief system. That doesn't mean that everyone who believes it is stupid because of course there are intelligent people who do subscibe to these beliefs. However any form of Fundamentalism is highly illogical and is not only not supported by scientific evidence, it is in some ways even controverted by scientific evidence. Well, that wouldn't be so much of a problem if Fundamentalism didn't so often go hand-in-hand with close-mindedness, and worse yet, with violence. And here we see a real problem with Islam: Islam seems to have a much higher percentage of Fundamentalists than does Christianity. People actually believe in this ridiculous concept of holy war, and further construe it asd to embrace terrorism. Sorry, but I have a very low tolerance for ignorant or stupid ideas when they lead to violence. Only time will cure these sort of ills, I'm afraid...lots and lots of time.


I know I'm not addressing everything in your post and that I have even taken some tangential detours...and looking up on the Preview screen I don't see the text of your post anymore...and I must go for now. I would just like to stress that I feel Israel and the Palestinians should be pushed into a settlement ASAP...and after that it should be enforced and no more terrorism permitted. I really don't think we will see Israel committing the types of acts which you are citing if only the attacks upon them cease. It's probably to much to dream of but getting something even close to this should be a major driving force right now.

You keep saying that Israel is in the West Bank and Gaza to find terrorists to prevent them from attacking Israel, but that's just the propaganda line: Israel only defends itself from terror, the Palestinians only commit terrorism. The IDF isn't shooting at demonstrators and funeral marchers and farmers and cab drivers because they're looking for terrorists, they do it because they're constantly encountering resistance to their roadblocks, checkpoints, "incursions" and so forth, which is what an army of occupation in hostile territory experiences. When you say that the anti-terrorist process "inevitably" causes civilian deaths, you make it sound as if all the 900 recent civilian deaths were are a series of unfortunate accidents. But how do you explain the Human Rights Watch documented allegation of "indiscriminate use of lethal force?" If it was aimed at terrorists, it would by definition have been discriminate.


Here's an account of one weekend's violence by the IDF in the occupied territories taken at random from the website of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Notice how there aren't any suicide bombers or bomb factories or terrorists being killed, just ordinary people resisting and protesting the IDF's occupation of their homeland:


Friday, 11/23/01:


In the afternoon, after the funeral procession of the five children who were killed in Khan Yunis on Thursday [by an IDF booby-trap], clashes erupted near the city cemetery between dozens of Palestinian children and Israeli occupation forces, stationed at “Neve Dekalim” settlement. Israeli occupation soldiers opened fire on the children, killing 15-year-old Wa’el ‘Ali Radwan, from ‘Aabasan village in Khan Yunis, with a live bullet in the head. Three civilians were also wounded.


After the Friday prayers, a peaceful demonstration moved from the center of Ramallah towards the northern entrance of Al-Bireh. As soon as the demonstrators moved closer to an Israeli military roadblock, four military jeeps moved towards them. Israeli occupation soldiers fired live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas. Four Palestinian civilians were wounded.


In the evening, Israeli occupation forces fired at a Palestinian taxi in Rafah, killing the driver and wounding two passengers. According to PCHR’s investigation, at approximately 21:00, the taxi was transporting a family from Rafah to Khan Yunis after they visited relatives in Rafah. The driver mistakenly drove towards Rafah Border Crossing. When he realized his mistake and turned the car around towards Khan Yunis, Israeli occupation forces in a military location near the crossing opened fire on the car without warning. The driver died of his injuries and two passengers sustained serious injuries.


The Israeli forces denied ambulance access to the area for around 45 minutes.


Saturday, November 24, 2001


At approximately 08:45, Israeli occupation forces in a military location west of Bitounia fired at a site of Palestinian President’s Guard (Force 17), around 150m away. A member of the site, Mohammed Yousef Qaddoura, 26, from Ramallah, was wounded by a live bullet in the left thigh. According to eyewitnesses, the shooting took place for no apparent reason as the area did not witness any clashes.


At approximately 18:30, Israeli occupation forces, positioned in the northwest of Shweika neoghborhood in Tulkarm, fired at Palestinian houses in the neighborhood. Ahmed Mohammed Fureij, 26, was seriously wounded by a live bullet in the abdomen.


Sunday, November 25, 2001


In the afternoon, Israeli occupation forces, positioned in the vicinity of Bilal Ben Rabah mosque in the north of Bethlehem, fired at a number of school children who were demonstrating in protest against violations perpetrated by these forces, especially the killing of the five children in Khan Yunis. Kifah Khaled Mahmoud ‘Obeid, 13, from Al-Duheisha refugee camp, was critically wounded by two live bullets in the chest and the abdomen. Efforts made at hospital to save his life failed.


At approximately 14:30, Israeli occupation forces, positioned in an observation tower at a military roadblock on Salah El-Din Street – the road between the north and south of the Gaza Strip – fired at a Palestinian taxi that was waiting at the roadblock to be allowed to move towards Khan Yunis. A passenger, Mohammed Hamad Bureika, 21, was wounded by a live bullet in the face. The Israeli forces claimed that the driver moved when the traffic light was red.


At approximately 14:45, Israeli occupation forces, positioned in a military location near Salah Al-Din Gate at the Egyptian border, south of Rafah, fired at Sa’deya ‘Abdel-Karim Hassanein, 31, pregnant, from Rafah refugee camp, wounding her with a live bullet in the pelvis. According to medical sources, she was in stable condition and the fetus was safe.


This is the way you kill 900 civilians in a year, not by fighting "terrorists." I suppose that Israel every now and again actually snags a terrorist, but the daily activities more commonly resemble the above.

No, I'm not saying that Israel is in the West Bank or Golan Heights or Gaza recently

today for that reason so much as it was true decades ago, because then Israel was being attacked by other countries, not just the Palestinian terrorists, and certain areas were very ket points in ailitary/strategic sense.


I am also not saying that the IDF is not occupying those lands or that they may not at times use more force than is necessary. I do think however that Israel would not be responding with military force if the Arabs and Palestinians had not been attacking over so many years.

Israel is still regularly attacked by Lebanese/ Syrian backed forces. The Iranians supply arms to the PA, Al Queda recruits heavily from Palestinians and have cells in palestine and the USA. Of course, Alger would have you believe that the FBI lies about this. He believes that the entire US Congress, the Executive branch, and the judicial system in the USA are run by , and are, organized criminals. Of course he believes that the Nevada black book ex-patriots of LCN that run Paradise poker are honest.


Alger has not stated once that he believes in Israel's right to exist. He doesn't accept 242.

chris Alger is eLROY. He is also ripdog.

He posts under 3 to 4 psuedonyms on the internet and low-limit boards.

eLROY, in threads below, appears to be arguing strongly for capitalism. It seems Alger, however, may have socialist or even communist leanings--or, at the very least, Alger is not so pro-capitalistic as eLROY (at least in theory). Therefore it is doubtful that the two are one.

I'm not saying that Alger is a socialist or communist, although some of his posts seem to be lending support to systems other than free enterprise, and are somewhat critical of capitalism. I apologize to Chris if my prior post erroneously gave the impression that I was labeling him as such. I am just observing that he does not appear to be an ardent supporter of capitalism, while eLROY does--I can't imagine that he and eLROY could be the same person. Besides, Chris' posts are generally laid out in a much more orderly fashion than eLROY's, although eLROY does have his moments too;-)

I always post under my own name.

He still has delusions. He thinks that George Bush is Don Corleone, and he thinks that the fairest system of world government is demonstrted by Osama Bin Laden,Yasser Arafat, and Paradise Poker. Of course he mixes mama and papa into his garbled speach when discussing Paradise.....


The medication hasn't helped.