”We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map” Cabinet Minister Meir Sheetrit, New York Times, 10th Feb
While an alleged call for Israel to be wiped off the map provokes outrage it seems it is perfectly acceptable to prescribe the same for Gaza.
Its almost comical how anti-Iranian propaganda has become such lexicon in Israel that a Government Minister has slipped up revealing his true feelings towards the Palestinians by using it. While no such claim was made against Israel, President Ahmadinejad was misquoted, here we have it - Israel calling for Gaza to be “wiped off the map.”
The rest of the article is equally as terrible and ignores the fact that Hamas has constantly tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement and that Israel refuses to talk. Israel’s goal after all is to break Hamas and break the backs of the Palestinian people so they submit to Israeli authority.
http://fanonite.org/2008/02/11/gaza-wipe-it-off-the-map/
Its almost comical how anti-Iranian propaganda has become such lexicon in Israel that a Government Minister has slipped up revealing his true feelings towards the Palestinians by using it. While no such claim was made against Israel, President Ahmadinejad was misquoted, here we have it - Israel calling for Gaza to be “wiped off the map.”
The rest of the article is equally as terrible and ignores the fact that Hamas has constantly tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement and that Israel refuses to talk. Israel’s goal after all is to break Hamas and break the backs of the Palestinian people so they submit to Israeli authority.
http://fanonite.org/2008/02/11/gaza-wipe-it-off-the-map/
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One Difference
12.02.2008 03:24
'IDF should wipe out parts of Gaza'
By YAAOV KATZ AND TOVAH LAZAROFF
Israel will escalate its ground and air operations in the Gaza Strip this week and may begin targeting members of the Hamas political leadership in the wake of intensified Kassam rocket attacks against Sderot, senior defense officials said Sunday.
(This was planned before the Annapolis Conference. Israel was simply awaiting a politically-expedient ‘crisis’ it could excuse its aggression with. The rocket attacks are actually down.)
The officials said it was premature to launch a major ground operation and that the army still had a number of steps to try before reaching that point.
"The IDF has not exhausted all of its options," a defense official said. The decision to escalate military operations was made after two brothers, aged eight and 19, were seriously wounded by a Kassam rocket in Sderot on Saturday night.
(Which provides the pretext for the premeditated attack. The attack which injured these young men is on the heads of the Extremists within the Israeli Government who reject the prospect of negotiating and making compromises in the name of peace.)
Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit told The Jerusalem Post that during Sunday's cabinet meeting, he had called on the IDF to "take off its gloves," head into Gaza with armored tractors and raze an entire neighborhood from which rockets have been launched, and then withdraw. The residents of that neighborhood would be warned in advance to flee, he said.
(How nice of him. Imagine if the roles were reversed, and the Palestinians proposed the destruction of entire illegal Israeli settlements on Occupied Territory. What would the condemnation look like?)
Under international law, people have the right to defend themselves, he said.
(Unless they’re Palestinian …)
"This kind of action would be very well understood by the Palestinians," Sheetrit said. "It is inconceivable to leave the situation as it is."
Past restraint had been interpreted by the Palestinians as weakness, and as a result the number of attacks had increased, he said.
(Israel’s attacks on Gaza since Annapolis has more than doubled, and Ha’Aretz just published the findings of a report which showed that over half of the Palestinians murdered in those attacks were civilians.)
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke with reporters on Sunday about the Palestinian rockets while en route to Berlin for a two-day visit, his office said. Israel was doing everything that it could to halt the attack, he said, but "there is no way to stop terrorism in one fell swoop or with one bomb."
(There is a myriad of other measures Israel could use to halt the rockets, but it doesn’t want to, because they provide a convenient pretext for attacks which were planned long before Annapolis.)
Earlier at the cabinet meeting, as angry Sderot residents protested outside, Olmert dismissed calls for a broad Gaza incursion by saying: "There is no doubt that the pain [of Sderot] is felt by all; the outrage is natural, but outrage is not an action plan. We must act in a systematic and orderly fashion, over time. This is what we are doing. This is what we will continue to do."
(What they are doing, systematically, over time, is murdering the Palestinians, annexing their land, and trying to create the illusion that the prospect of a just peace is impossible. They have rejected peace, after all, because a ‘just peace’ will involve Israel giving back much of what it has stolen. These Israelis should be directing their anger at the Extremists within their own Government, who reject peace in the name of the Zionist dream of wiping Palestine off the map.)
He noted that Defense Minister Ehud Barak had visited Sderot that morning and that in recent months, 200 terrorists had been killed and hundreds of others had been wounded in Gaza.
(And even more civilians had been killed and wounded. Wonder why the Palestinians are so angry?)
"Naturally, we cannot be oblivious to the sense of distress in Sderot and the communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip," Olmert said.
(Just to those WITHIN the Gaza Strip, because those people are ‘just Arabs’ …)
Following security consultations held Sunday between Olmert, Barak and senior security officials, the IDF was given the green light to slightly escalate operations against a previously-approved bank of targets that includes Hamas "military" installations and buildings affiliated with the Hamas government in Gaza. The army will also continue its raids into the Strip.
"We will continue with the targeted killings and the pinpointed raids into Gaza," the official said. "We need to keep up the pressure on the terrorist groups and not stop even for one moment."
As The Jerusalem Post reported exclusively on Friday, the defense establishment is also studying the possible consequences of killing senior Hamas political leaders - such as Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud Zahar - and the effect such a move would have on the attacks from Gaza.
(Imagine now, for a moment, that it was learned that Hamas was plotting to assassinate people within Israel’s Political Class. What would Israel’s coverage look like …? Immorality breeds contradiction.)
Before this happens, we need to review the consequences and whether it will be effective," an official said.
Senior IDF officers said that while the military was prepared for a large operation in Gaza, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi did not believe that the time was ripe since Israel had yet to formulate an "exit strategy" for such an incursion.
(And, due to Israel’s War Crimes against Gaza, the world is currently against Israel, and understands who is truly ‘retaliating’ here.)
"We know how we get in but we do not know how we get out," a senior officer said, adding that an operation would be pointless in the absence of a multinational force that would deploy in Gaza or Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas taking control from the IDF. "Neither of these options are very realistic today," the officer said.
(But plans for a reoccupation has been drawn up.)
Sheetrit told the Post he too was concerned about the IDF's ability to exist in Gaza and that therefore Israel had to be careful not to reoccupy Gaza. At the same time, he said, it should not agree to a cease-fire with Hamas.
(And right there is where the problem lies. Israel will not make peace through any process it cannot control.)
Vice Premier Haim Ramon said Israel should focus on measures such as cutting electricity immediately after rocket attacks.
(Collective Punishment is a War Crime.)
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said past IDF actions had only seemed to draw more rocket fire. In the first five weeks of 2008, Gazans had fired 330 rockets at Negev communities, one-third of what they fired at Israel in all of 2007, he said.
(And how many missiles, rockets, tank shells, etc. were fired INTO Gaza during this same period? How many Palestinians were murdered?)
Last weekend alone 40 rockets were launched, of which 14 struck Sderot, Dichter said. He, too, hinted at the need for large-scale ground activity.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters after the cabinet meeting, "There is no hope for the Palestinian people with Hamas. There is no hope for any kind of peace or the vision of a Palestinian state which includes the Gaza Strip without a real change on the ground."
(Indeed. So long as Israel remains ruled by these Extremists, there is no hope for peace.)
She added that the rocket attacks were not part of a "vicious cycle" as described in the international media, but rather an action that could be stopped by Hamas.
(But Israel’s rejection of Palestinian democracy, its attempted Coup, and its illegal Collective Punishment, is what initiated this aptly-named cycle, in which Israel is the initiator of hostilities. It is the Palestinians who have no ‘partner for peace’.)
"The world cannot dismiss this by simply saying that there are casualties on both sides. That is not a just comparison," she said.
(Right. The Palestinian body count is vastly larger, and this is a Zionist war.)
She called on the international community to support Israeli retaliatory actions and to take steps themselves against Hamas.
Speaking on the plane to Berlin, Olmert said Hamas was not a partner for peace as long as it refused to return Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who it kidnapped in June 2006. It must also accept the principles laid out by the Middle East Quartet, including renouncing violence and recognizing Israel's right to exist, said Olmert.
(All of which could be achieved if Israel would agree to a cease-fire and enter into negotiations. Israel makes these preconditions for negotiations because it isn’t interested in talks, only ‘might makes right’.)
Also on Sunday, IDF soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian gunman who opened fire at them near the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip. Overnight Saturday, the air force bombed a number of Hamas targets throughout Gaza, including a weapons-manufacturing plant in Rafah and a weapons storehouse in Gaza City.
(But we’re only supposed to condemn the crude, relatively harmless rockets. Right?)
Major IDF Operation into Gaza "Back on Agenda"
ALERT: Annapolis a Charade: Israeli Extremists Plotting Massive AggressionAuthor
In Germany, according to historian Richard Evans, in 1931-1932, if enough Germans of conscience had begun to say No -- history would have had an entirely diferent outcome.
If we go any further down this road the tears will be those of conservatives as well as progressives. They will be (Israeli) tears.
The time for weeping has to stop; the time for confronting must begin.
Adapted from "American Tears"
www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/american-tears_b_68141.html
Censoring Neo-Con Role in Gaza Crisis
Warnings Pour in For Israel to Cease Collective Punishment
Red Cross Condemns Gaza Collective Punishment (the First Round)
winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?8994S
As Predicted: Gaza Reoccupation Planned
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/388658.html
As Predicted: Israel Attacks Gaza
alaanasnews.blogspot.com/2007/12/as-predicted-israel-attacks-gaza.html
Gaza Food Supplies 'Getting Worse by the Day'
winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?10015S
Israel Destroys Gaza Interior Ministry, Blocks UN Aid
today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2008-01-18T
Probe: At Least Half of Palestinians Killed by IDF Were Civilians
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/944276.html
Israeli Attacks on Palestinians, Killings, Doubled Since Annapolis
www.uruknet.de/?p=m40008&hd=&size=1&l=e
UN Condemns Collective Punishment of Gaza
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/389757.html?c=on#c187937
UN Condemns 'Cowardly Israeli War Crime'
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/389828.html
It's All Right, I'm Only Bleeding
Bush's Delusions Die in Gaza
An Experiment in Famine: Hamas is Not the Real Issue
Jewish Groups Condemn Collective Punishment of Gaza
The Strangulation of Gaza
Starting Tomorrow: Escalation in Collective Punishment of Gaza
EU envoy warns Gaza could become the next Somalia
Zionist Extremism Key Impediment to Peace