Replies to post #185779 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Corporate Media Ignores War Against Palestinians

Monday July 03rd 2006, 10:23 am

In a brazen attempt to sugar coat Israel’s flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention, specifically Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is intended to protect civilians, the corporate media continues to spin the situation in the Gaza Strip.

“Israel Steps Up Raids in Bid to Free Soldier,” headlines the New York Times, reporting that “Israeli aircraft intensified their attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza.”

In fact, the Israelis are inflicting relentless collective punishment on the Palestinians, as B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, documents.

“During its operation in the Gaza Strip following the abduction of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Israeli air force jets have carried out low-altitude sorties over the Gaza Strip in which they intentionally cause powerful sonic booms,” explains B’Tselem. “The sole purpose of these sorties is to prevent the residents from sleeping and to create an ongoing sense of fear and anxiety. Regarding the sonic booms, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that, ‘thousands of residents in southern Israel live in fear and discomfort, so I gave instructions that nobody will sleep at night in the meantime in Gaza.’ The clear intention of the practice is to pressure the Palestinian Authority and the armed Palestinian organizations by harming the entire civilian population.”

No mention of this in the Israel-friendly New York Times, or the Washington Post for that matter. Of course, we shouldn’t expect the New York Times to report this, as they have functioned obediently as a propaganda tool for the neocons, who are joined at the hip with the Likudites in Israel and have the unwavering support of millions of Stepfordized Christian Zionists who believe the Palestinians must be ethnically cleansed in order that they may realize their delusional and selfish pretribulationist rapture.

“Children, in particular, suffer from the sonic booms. In the past, the Gaza Community Mental Health Center reported that the supersonic sorties caused fear among many children, which led to a loss of concentration, loss of appetite, bedwetting, and other disorders. The Center also reported that sonic booms caused headaches, stomach aches, shortness of breath, and other physical effects that appeared among both children and adults…. The use of sonic booms flagrantly breaches a number of provisions of international humanitarian law. The most significant provision is the prohibition on collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is intended to protect civilians in time of war, categorically states that ‘Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.’ The article also states that, ‘Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.’ Air force supersonic sorties also breach the principle of distinction, a central pillar of humanitarian law, which forbids the warring sides to direct their attacks against civilians.”

The Palestine Media Center (PMC) writes the following: “Using the release of the Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit as pretext, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unleashed his occupation forces to reoccupy Gaza Strip, terrorize Palestinian civilians with sonic booms, thin them to starvation, disrupt traffic, electricity supply, and access to water, bomb soccer fields, schools, TV stations, cultural centers and charities, vandalize hospitals, and kidnap mafia-like cabinet ministers, mayors and parliamentarians, revoke Palestinian residency in Jerusalem, and bomb the offices of prime and interior ministers.” PMC, filling in where the disgusting Israel-friendly corporate media has left off, notes specific incidents:

IOF warplanes bombed the soccer field of the Islamic University in Gaza late Wednesday after destroying the only power plant in the strip early in the day, plunging Gaza Strip into darkness and depriving about one million Palestinians from electricity for months to come, hitting very hard not only households but also hospitals and schools.

Water supplies were also cut early Wednesday by bombing water pipelines, after destroying three bridges linking the south and north of the Gaza Strip.

Al-Arqam school, a cultural center and a charity in Gaza city were bombed to rubble by the IOF warplanes.

The IOF also damaged the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children’s facilities in Gaza City. When IOF warplanes caused massive sonic booms and nearby explosions in air strikes, the Palestinian NGO’s building windows shattered. As a result, several deaf vocational trainees were injured from the shattered glass.

According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights six power transformers were destroyed, which provide an estimated 45 per cent of the electricity in Gaza for approximately half the population.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Gaza Electrical Distribution Company estimates it will take nine months to procure replacement transformers.

The Coastal Municipalities Water Utility manages the 132 water wells in Gaza, which is powered by GEDCO. Since back-up generators are needed to keep water flowing, there is concern about the financial and physical stability of using back-up generators because the IOF closed off the energy pipeline into Gaza.

Destroying critical civilian infrastructure, targeting facilities for the deaf, pitching hospitals and charities into the dark, creating a massive refugee situation—it is all in a day’s work for the neocons and their Likudite masters, from Gaza and the West Bank to the whole of Iraq.

“I take personal responsibility for what is happening in Gaza. I want no one to sleep at night in Gaza,” declared Olmert, who should also take responsibility for the fact Palestinians on life support and other critical health care systems will now die; he should take responsibility for all the miscarriages and mental problems caused by sonic boom warfare; he should take responsibility for terrorizing hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians, the vast majority who have nothing to do with the capture of IOF soldier Shalit, who is a prisoner of war.

Ehud Olmert, claiming responsibility for crimes against humanity, should face a tribunal immediately.

But then, as Olmert’s predecessor, the scurrilous terrorist leader (of Irgun) Menachem Begin, told Israel’s mafia, otherwise known as the Knesset, the Palestinians “are beasts walking on two legs.”

As such, according to the Israelis and their neocon co-conspirators, the Palestinians do not deserve hospitals, charities, clean water (or any water at all, as there is no electricity to drive well pumps), food, or even a night’s rest. The Fourth Geneva Convention applies to humans, not beasts on two legs.

Obviously, as well, the New York Times believes the Palestinians are beasts, although as “liberals,” they would not state such outright, as the leader of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, Menachem Begin did.


http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=443

[StephanieVanbryce]

Disgusting Israelis Prepare Genocide

Sunday July 02nd 2006, 1:07 pm

For the last day and a half, I have not read or watched the news. I was in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, with family, enjoying a small holiday. On my return, I expected the worse for the Palestinians, hemmed in by racist Israels, who are prepared to begin slaughtering them in earnest.

“Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet that the military had been ordered to ‘do all it can’ to return the captured 19-year-old corporal, and cautioned that arrests of senior Hamas officials could spread to Gaza, the Islamic militant group’s power base, a government official close to the prime minister said,” reports ABC News International.

In other words, Olmert has informed us a whole lot of innocent Palestinians will die soon and the democratically elected government of Palestine will be decimated.

“Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Cabinet meeting that Israel would go after ‘higher-caliber targets’ in the future a reference to senior Hamas officials inside and outside the Palestinian territories, a high-ranking political official said.” Translation: Syria can expect to be invaded, or at least have Israeli assassins kill “higher-caliber” people elected to represent the Palestinians.

“Israel threatened to kill Hamas militants based in Damascus,” reports Zaman Online. “The leader of Al Qaeda, Meshal is a terrorist of the worst kind, and the international community must exert pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to expel Meshal from Syria,” declared Justice Minister Chaim Ramon, thus making certain to link the Palestinian resistance to the CIA-ISI created boogieman.

As usual, the criminal Israelis blame the Palestinians. “Shimon Peres, the Israeli Vice Premier,” reports NDTV, “blamed the Hamas leadership for latest deterioration in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Peres said that both Egyptian and Palestinian efforts to release the soldier have been fruitless.” Never mind that a few days ago Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement on recognizing Israel’s “right to exist,” sort of like recognizing that a lion will eat a gazelle.

Israel has no intention of ever entering a “peace deal” with the Palestinians, as the entire history of the criminal state is one of apartheid and slow, inexorable genocide. “All our attempts to look for a political solution were rejected completely by the Hamas leadership,” declared the liar and criminal Peres. For the Israelis, any “political solution” requires the Palestinians to become hewers of wood and drawers of water, prisoners locked behind apartheid walls, a contemporary version of the Warsaw ghetto. Israel will not rest until Palestine is completely ethnically cleansed.

Israel’s “massive operation comes at a time when Hamas, once committed to the destruction of Israel, had come to an agreement with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah on a future two-state solution. This means Hamas tacitly accepts the existence of Israel. Many observers feel that Hamas has behaved with greater restraint since it acquired electoral legitimacy,”opines a DNA op-ed. “Abbas has, in recent times, been working towards bringing Hamas into the fold of his Fatah organization. With the Israeli incursion, the opposite will happen. The Palestinian radicals who had been marginalized in recent times will now get a boost. Granted that Israel has a duty to try and rescue the kidnapped soldier. But surely, it could have used the good offices of Abbas and other well-wishers. Egypt has already sent a top diplomat to Gaza to help negotiate Shilat’s release.”

In fact, Israel used the capture of its IOF soldier—who is actually a prisoner of war—as an excuse to further its genocidal pogrom against the Palestinians.

It should be obvious to anybody who reads beyond corporate media headlines that Israel has no intention of ever reaching accommodation with the Palestinians and in fact has, since Theodor Herzl founded the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, planned and carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Now that the upper echelon of the American government is riddled with neocons, many of them Israel First traitors and rabid Jabotinsky Zionists, Olmert and Peres believe they can get away with collectively punishing the Palestinians, especially the weak, infirm, and helpless who are now suffering without electricity or clean water. Soon more will die under direct military barrage.

It is disgusting the corporate media has not bothered to cover this immense crime against humanity in more detail, as usual deferring to Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East,” and making excuses for its criminal and racist behavior.

No doubt, when the Middle East finally erupts in flames, and the long sought after “clash of civilizations” is underway, they will sniff around for scapegoats.

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=442

[ieddyi]

the cruel way Israel is pursuing a land grab

Um, didn't Isreal just cede this land, along with land in the West bank, with more planned.?

But, go ahead and just blindly repeat the same phrases reagardless of whether they are not even close to reflecting reality