Congratulations Israel!

[Leongsam]

<hr class="displayNone"> <!-- First Image Width= 160 --> Ceasefire in Gaza; Israel 'has achieved goals'

11:00AM Sunday Jan 18, 2009

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Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert

Israel's leaders voted this morning (NZ time) to halt an offensive that has killed nearly 1,200 people, turned the streets and neighbourhoods of the Gaza Strip into battlegrounds and dealt a stinging blow to the Islamic militants of Hamas.

In announcing the unilateral cease-fire, Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert said in a televised address that Israel had achieved its goals, and more: "Hamas was hit hard, in its military arms and in its government institutions," Olmert said.

Fighting will stop at 2 a.m. local time (midnight GMT), but Israel will keep troops on the ground for the time being, Olmert said. If Hamas holds its fire, the military "will weigh pulling out of Gaza at a time that befits us." If not, Olmert said, Israel "will continue to act to defend our residents."

Israeli insistence on keeping troops in Gaza raises the spectre of a stalemate with Hamas, which has repeated that it will not respect any cease-fire until Israel pulls out of the territory.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum in Gaza said in a televised address that a unilateral cease-fire was not enough to end Hamas' resistance - joining the harder-line stance taken earlier by Hamas leaders in exile.
"The occupier must halt his fire immediately and withdraw from our land and lift his blockade and open all crossings and we will not accept any one Zionist soldier on our land, regardless of the price that it costs," Barhoum said.

Palestinians reacted with scepticism and called on world leaders attending a summit Sunday in Egypt to put pressure on Israel to withdraw immediately.

"We had hoped that the Israeli announcement would be matched by total cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza," said Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival. "I am afraid that the presence of the Israeli forces in Gaza means that the cease fire will not stand and will so fragile." Israel began the offensive on Dec. 27 in response to eight years of bombardments on Israeli towns.

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the three weeks of violence [not enough - should have killed at least 50,000], according to Palestinian and UN officials. Thirteen Israelis have also died.

Even as the 12-member Security Cabinet met, Israel kept bombarding Gaza. Earlier Saturday, in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Israeli shells struck a UN school where 1,600 people had sought shelter. One shell scored a direct hit on the top floor of the three-story building, killing two boys, UN officials said

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni indicated that Israel would renew its offensive if Hamas militants continued to fire rockets at Israel after a truce is declared. "This campaign is not a one-time event," she said in an interview with the Israeli YNet news website. "The test will be the day after. That is the test of deterrence."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and UN chief Ban Ki-moon both demanded on Saturday an immediate end to the Israeli assault and pullout of all troops.

A summit aimed at giving international backing to the cease-fire will be held in Egypt on Sunday. It is to be attended by the leaders of Germany, France, Spain, Britain, Italy, Turkey and the Czech Republic - which holds the rotating EU presidency - as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Mubarak and UN chief Ban.

It was not immediately clear whether Israel would send a representative, and Hamas has not been invited.

Israel's key demand is for guarantees that Hamas halt the smuggling of rockets, explosives and other weapons through the porous Egyptian border. Under the deal, Egypt would shut down weapons smuggling routes with international help and discussions on opening Gaza's blockaded border crossings - Hamas' key demand - would take place at a later date.

Israeli strikes on Gaza kept up even after the Cabinet meeting began. Walls shook and windows trembled in the southern Gaza border town of Rafah as fighter jets soared above head, apparently focusing their missiles on the no-man's land with Egypt where many suspected smuggling tunnels lie.

A total of 13 Palestinians were killed in battles throughout Gaza Saturday, Palestinian medics said.

John Ging, the top UN official in Gaza, condemned the attack on Beit Lahiya that killed the two boys - the latest in a series of Israeli shellings that have struck UN installations.

"The question that has to be asked is for all those children and all those innocent people who have been killed in this conflict. Were they war crimes? Were they war crimes that resulted in the deaths of the innocents during this conflict? That question has to be answered," he said.

The Israeli army said it was launching a high-level investigation into the shelling, as well as four other attacks that hit civilian targets, including the UN headquarters in Gaza. The army investigation also includes the shelling of a hospital, a media centre and the home of a well-known doctor.
- AP

Copyright ©2009, APN Holdings NZ Limited

 

[theblackhole]

ISRAEL’S LEADERS ARE NOT SIMPLY WAR CRIMINALS; THEY ARE FOOLS

By Sir Gerald Kaufman, House of Commons (British Parliament), January 15, 2009

Iwas brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.

I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.

I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.

On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that

“500 of them were militants.”

That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah. It is too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him. Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006. Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:

“You make peace by talking to your enemies.”

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the West Bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

Sir Gerald Kaufman has been a Member of Parliament since 1970 and when the Labour Party was in the oppostion served as Shadow Environment Secretary, (1980-1983), Shadow Home Secretary (1983-1987) and Shadow Foreign Secretary (1987-1992). Since 1992 he has been one of the Labour Party’s most influential back-benchers.

 

[Leongsam]

ISRAEL’S LEADERS ARE NOT SIMPLY WAR CRIMINALS; THEY ARE FOOLS

I couldn't care less what they are as long as they get rid of as many Palestinians as possible.

 

[dysentry]

A PORTUGESE cardinal has warned Roman Catholic women against marrying Muslim men.

"Be careful with love. Think twice before marrying a Muslim, think seriously because it brings loads of hassle - and even Allah can't say where all that will end,'' Jose Policarpo, the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, said during a public debate.

"When you recognise what a young European of Christian upbringing is subjected to, given Muslim attitudes to women, the first time she goes to their countries, we can imagine what that entails.

"You can only dialogue with someone who is willing to dialogue. With our Muslim brothers, for example, dialogue is very difficult,'' he said.

"We have taken the first steps, but it's extremely difficult - because for them, their truth is the only way.''

Around 40,000 Muslims live in Portugal, according to Lisbon's Islamic community leaders - who have yet to react to the cardinal's remarks.

 

[dysentry]

 

[ahbengsong]

fuck those hama or hizbollas or whatever shit terrorists back to their fucking evil allah...

 

[tima81]

fuck those hama or hizbollas or whatever shit terrorists back to their fucking evil allah...

Think they will be better people if they stop praying to allah

 

[3_M]

Well done Israel!

 

[loeggusder]

The Israelis were using the window between W depatures and the O's incoming.

They hadnt achieved anything special. Just about killing a couple thousand Palestinians. More hatred sown.

 

[Zeitgeist]

The Israelis were using the window between W depatures and the O's incoming.

They hadnt achieved anything special. Just about killing a couple thousand Palestinians. More hatred sown.

How about using it as a welcoming gift to Obama! The offensive was political in nature, was it not?

 

[3_M]

The Israelis were using the window between W depatures and the O's incoming.

They hadnt achieved anything special. Just about killing a couple thousand Palestinians. More hatred sown.

Israel didn't initiate this conflict in the first place. There was a period of relative calm for the past 6 months before HAMAS decided to be more adventurous.

1,100 lives killed is just a small price to pay for another few months of peace to come before we start round 3 ding ding.