Middle East Terrorists Kill 20. Bush: oh well

[Chris Alger]

Every terrorist is at war with civilization, and every group or nation that aids them is equally responsible for the murders that the terrorists commit. President Bush yesterday, addressing Israel lobbyist AIPAC

On the heels of Powell’s demand that Arab leaders more forcefully condemn terrorism, U.S. officials in both parties continue to relish America’s role as chief patron of the most hated terrorists in the region, the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Israel's military killed 18-20 people yesterday to accomplish what Amnesty International calls “grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention” and “war crimes,” namely the continued mass destruction of civilian housing. Senior Labor MP joined EU, UN and Arab protests, accusing the Israeli armed forces of “slaughtering large numbers of Palestinians day after day, and demolishing huge numbers of homes ... in violation of international law and human decency.” No suicide bombers were killed or appartently even targeted, but they managed to shoot up an ambulance pretty well, as the following photograph attests. In Newspeak, this is called “self-defense” in the “war against terror.”

From the Beruit Daily Star: <ul type="square"> Israel's Army killed at least 20 Palestinians on Tuesday in the heaviest raid inside the Gaza Strip for years, as tanks and infantry thrust into the Rafah refugee camp despite an international outcry.
The assault on the camp drew UN and EU condemnation because of Israeli threats to destroy hundreds of Palestinian homes in the area, while Arab governments said the tactics constituted war crimes.

The Israeli Army claimed there were no plans for systematic demolition during what it called an open-ended operation to stop the smuggling of weapons through tunnels from nearby Egypt.
US President George W. Bush called the Gaza bloodshed "troubling" but, addressing Jewish-Americans in a tight election campaign, told the powerful pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that Israel "has every right to defend itself from terror."
The raid exacted the highest single-day Palestinian death toll - militants and civilians alike - since May 2002, when 23 were killed in an army sweep into the nearby Khan Younis area.[/list]Palestinian sources described the action as follows: “The Israeli military broke into many houses in Bedir and Tel Sultan neighborhoods and occupied the roofs, opening fire on any people in the streets. The Israeli military also targeted the electrical stations, shooting out the electricity in most Rafah neighborhoods. The tanks on Salah Adiin Road are opening fire at cars and people on this main street, and in the western neighborhood in Sofia area. Those soldiers detained three ambulances and held their M16s at the medics through the ambulance windows. Iraeli occupation forces attacked an ambulance while it carried injured patients to the European Hospital in the northeast of Rafah, and detained another ambulance on its way. (Palestine News Network)

CBS described one incident, when 13-year-old Ahmed Mughayer and his 16-year-old sister Asma “were killed when they ventured onto the roof of their three-story apartment building to bring in the laundry, their father Mohammed said. The family said the teenagers were hit by shots fired from an Israeli army position on the sixth floor of the neighboring building.”

Predictably and no doubt intentionally, the vast majority of victims were civilians. According to CNN, "The incursion left 20 Palestinians dead and 35 wounded, according to Palestinian security and hospital sources. The dead included three members of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a military offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, and two children, the sources said. The remaining dead were civilians, they said."

The carnage hewed closely to the pattern followed by Israeli terrorists for the last four years, during which “almost all of the 2,886 Palestinian fatalities since September 2000 have been civilians, about eighty of them “collateral damage” to 230 extrajudicial assassinations, which are themselves violations ofthe Fourth Geneva Convention.” (Stanford Professor of Middle East history Joel Beinin in this week's Nation).

[jdl22]

LOL. You never cease to amaze me with your "logic."

Oh, sorry Gamblor hasn't responded yet. Guess I was a little premature.

[hetron]

This is the stuff that gets people so angry at the US. It coddles its allies (in this case, Israel) and has a different standard for "terrorism" and "ethnic cleansing" depending on whether you are in Iraq, Cyprus, Kosovo, Afghanistan, or the gaza strip. People around the world see this and then see Bush talk grandiosely about freedom and democracy and know he is full of crap.

[Utah]

I bet this post really impressed your Hamas, PLO, and Al Qaeda friends.

Hell, I bet it might even get you some sort of year end award in your Hamas Support Group. maybe something like, "American Who Hates His Country the Most Award" or maybe "Best US Citizen in support of Suicide Bombers"

[hetron]

Do you really believe anyone who criticizes US foreign policy backs Al Qaeda and Hamas? Why do you associate the two? Because Rush Limbaugh told you to?

[Utah]

No, I believe Alger is a terrorist supporter and I believe he hates the U.S. and wishes it harm based on his long history of anti-American posts.

In a recent post he called someone that would sabatoge a U.S. military mission a hero and in another recent post he called a U.S. soldier that died in the line of duty a idiot who deserves to be slapped.

BTW - your argument is a weak one and can just as easily be turned. "So, you think that everyone who criticizes the war is being patriotic? Or,is that just what Michael Moore told you?"

[Gamblor]

Rafiach is the main smuggling pipeline for Strella shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, Sagger anti-tank missiles, and Kassam long-range rockets that wait on the Egyptian side of the border to be smuggled through tunnels into the Gaza Strip.

Weapons such as these with a long-distance capability threaten not only Israeli settlements within Gaza, but major cities like Ashkelon and Ashdod as well as Negev villages.

House demolitions include those along the Philadelphi route,

According to Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon, at least nine of the 20 dead are fugitives who resisted arrest, while the rest were either armed or in a combat zone, which was given a full day to be evacuated when the Israeli Army announced it's intention to conduct a specific operation in a specific location - in an effort to encourage innocents to evacuate in the event of terrorist resistance to the IDF cutting off its weapons source. The situation that killed the children on the rooftop is being investigated by an IDF committee.

Because Rafiach has become the gateway of terrorism through which rockets, RPGs, and other weapons are smuggled in, several Palestinian homes in Rafah have been demolished in ongoing operations, both Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and Ya'alon said the IDF has no policy of systematic demolitions. "If they want to prevent houses from being demolished," said Ya'alon, "they must stop the arms smuggling."

Only those houses where tunnels are concealed or terrorists launch attacks will be destroyed, he said.

We see the PA has once again begun with unfounded massacre accusations. "The Palestinian leadership calls on all the world's countries – the US, the Quartet, the Arab brothers, the European Union, and the UN Security Council – to stop this big brutal massacre decided by the Israeli government," said a statement issued by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's office.

Naturally, groups like Amnesty International are located in the refugee camps and only see big bulldozers, ignoring the reasons why those bulldozers have come - to uncover the tunnels used to smuggle rockets that have been landing in the middle of Israeli towns on such a daily basis, that a mortar landing on a city road is no longer news.

Source:

Ma'ariv, May 18, 2004

Choosing Terrorist Apologizers Electronic Intifada as a news source is highly dubious, as is choosing the "Beirut Daily Star" and "Palestine News Network"

Keep hiding the fact that it is the terrorists that brought the IDF to Rafiach in the first place.

[ACPlayer]

The logic is right on the money. Not really much to be amazed about.

Now Gamblor -- he/she/it is truly an amazing mass of illogic and contradictions.

[hetron]

[ QUOTE ]
No, I believe Alger is a terrorist supporter and I believe he hates the U.S. and wishes it harm based on his long history of anti-American posts.


[/ QUOTE ]
Terrorist supporter? As in you think he wires money to Hezbollah? Has a picture of Abu Nidal on his wall? Or is this just the "anyone who isn't with us is with the terrorists" school of thought?

[ QUOTE ]

In a recent post he called someone that would sabatoge a U.S. military mission a hero and in another recent post he called a U.S. soldier that died in the line of duty a idiot who deserves to be slapped.


[/ QUOTE ]

In the first case, he was referring to someone who would refuse to initiate a thermonuclear war. You are making it sound like he would fail to intercept a missile aimed at the US.

In regards to the Pat Tilman story, while I feel that perhaps Gonzalez and Alger were harsh in their words, but anyone who is voluntarily joining the military to "fight for freedom" has to know that maybe "fighting for freedom" wouldn't be necessary if US aid to certain regimes hadn't taken away that freedom in the first place.

[ QUOTE ]

BTW - your argument is a weak one and can just as easily be turned. "So, you think that everyone who criticizes the war is being patriotic? Or,is that just what Michael Moore told you?"

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know too much about Michael Moore. I used to listen to a Pacifica station, and they had some lefty wackos on there. For the most part, the lefty far out types seem like ex-hippies who want peace, a clean environment, and more aid for the poor and suffering throughout the world. To me, the righty wackos are far more malignant- they are obsessed with war, censorship, and the destruction of the Us's left wing.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
"In a recent post he called someone that would sabatoge a U.S. military mission a hero...."

[/ QUOTE ]
You don't know what you're talking about. The "military mission" of a fleet ballistic missile submarine is to act as a deterrent, not to blow up the world. In the event of an actual launch order, that mission will either have failed or been violated. Whatever the cause, there is never any "military" basis for nuking dozens of cities or, more likely, bouncing the rubble in a chain reaction of a system gone mad.

In any event, the hypothetical I posited consisted of a choice between preventing the incineration of millions of civilians and following orders for their own sake. Your position on this sheds a lot of light into how seriously we should take your condemnations of terrorism.