Gaza Outages Expand After Fuel CutbacksAs Winter Sets In, Electricity Goes Off For Civilians

GAZA CITY — Palestinians in Gaza will be forced to live without electricity eight hours a day, beginning Sunday, because Israel has sharply reduced fuel supplies to the territory’s only electric plant, the head of Gaza’s energy authority said.Israel said the fuel cutback was meant to send a “stern message” to Gaza militants to stop rocket attacks on southern Israel. The power outages come just days ahead of President Bush’s visit to the region to promote nascent talks between Israel and the moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert said the military campaign against Gaza militants has grown harsher in recent days. On Sunday, five Palestinians were killed, including at least two civilians.

Immediately after Islamic Hamas militants seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, Israel sealed its border with the territory, cutting off the flow of all but humanitarian supplies. In October, it began to gradually scale back fuel shipments.

On Sunday, Kanan Obeid, chairman of Gaza’s Hamas-run energy authority, said Gaza now has only 35 percent of the power its 1.5 million residents need. Israel supplies all of Gaza’s fuel and 60 percent of the impoverished territory’s electricity.

“We have decided to reduce the amount of electricity that we supply and to have a gradual program, starting from today, of cutting the electricity for eight hours every day,” Obeid said.

Even before the latest cutback, which came as winter was setting in, blackouts in Gaza were common because Israeli military strikes have knocked out electrical transformers.

“The Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people,” said Hassan Akram, owner of a grocery in Gaza City. “We are the only losers. Now it’s cold and there’s no electricity.”

Reem Abu Ali, a teacher and 38-year-old mother of four, stopped by the grocery to buy candles.

“My children have exams. How will they study? How are we going to warm our houses? If the border opens, I might leave Gaza forever. This is no place to live,” she said.

Hamas announced that its men launched three rockets into Israel on Sunday - a rare statement from the group, which has largely left rocket fire to smaller militant organizations.

“Israel decided to send a stern message to the terror groups in Gaza, in the wake of continued rocket attacks, that we will take all measures necessary to defend our citizens,” Israeli government spokesman David Baker said of the fuel cutbacks.

The economic sanctions have been carried out in tandem with a military campaign against Gaza militants.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak “instructed the security forces to ratchet up the Israeli response” to a Palestinian rocket attack deep inside Israel on Thursday, Olmert said Sunday. Seventeen Gazans have since been killed - five of them civilians - in the airstrikes and ground assaults that followed.

Israel is trying to advance peacemaking with the moderate West Bank-based government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

On Sunday, a hardline lawmaker again threatened to pull his faction out of Olmert’s government if Israel opens talks with the Palestinians on the key issues dividing them. The loss of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which has 11 of parliament’s 120 seats, would badly weaken Olmert’s coalition.

“Any start of negotiations on the core issues … any attempt or removal of settlements or (unauthorized settlement) outposts, as far as we are concerned, will force us to quit immediately,” party leader Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio.

Olmert has promised that the negotiations, relaunched at a U.S.-sponsored conference, would address the main issues - final borders, sovereignty over disputed Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees from the war that followed Israel’s creation in 1948.

Olmert and Abbas, who have been meeting regularly in recent months, are tentatively scheduled to sit down together again on Tuesday, a day before Bush arrives, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday.

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19 Comments so far

redjeff January 6th, 2008 2:09 pm

The key comment above was from Hassan Akram, the grocer. He said, “the Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people.”

Until Israel and America understand that what they are doing every day perpetuates war and terror, rather than fosters peace and prosperity, we will always have plenty more stories to read like this one.

This is not to ignore the role of Hamas in doing the very same thing as Israel–using violence to stop violence, without considering the fact that it hasn’t worked yet in sixty years. Hamas is so extreme that they cannot be allowed to exist. But Israel’s policy is to match Hamas’ violent acts one-for-one, making Israel as extreme as Hamas.

Israel is better than that. They should be making appeals to the more moderate Palestinian population; they should be appealing to the fact that most Palestinians, like Hassan the grocer, just want to live and work in peace.

papananook January 6th, 2008 2:38 pm

What is Preznit Chimpy going to Isreal for?
Like he’ll be a real calming influence. I wish he’d just go to his ranch in Texas an cut brush and shut the fuck up.

shakker January 6th, 2008 3:37 pm

It sucks for the people living in the way of two feuding terrorist groups.

whatfools January 6th, 2008 3:45 pm

This torture, maiming and murder of the Palestinean people has been going on for over fifty years. When will Olmert implement Israel’s ‘final solution’ to their ‘Palestinean’ problem?

zoya January 6th, 2008 4:17 pm

This situation is so egregious. If there is really a hell, Israel, AIPAC, and Bush will burn in it.

ctrl-z January 6th, 2008 4:21 pm

“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
George Bernard Shaw

http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/learning/timeline/1943.html

1943

“At 6am on April 19, some two thousand German troops enter the ghetto but are repulsed within 90 minutes by ZOB fighters with homemade weapons. The Germans cut off gas, water, and electricity to the ghetto. Street fighting continues between Germans and Jews for a few days before General Jurgen Stroop orders that the ghetto be burned. By April 22 the burning is under way. Still Jewish fighters resist for another month, hiding in ghetto sewers, which become a route of escape to the Polish side of Warsaw for some Jews. In the end, the ghetto is in ruins and emptied of its inhabitants. Thousands of Jews are dead after the uprising, but not without inflicting damage on the Germans. The remainder of the Jews are deported to Treblinka.”

Southern Cross January 6th, 2008 5:10 pm

The best way Americans can help the Palestinians, is to fight against the poisonous influence of the Israel Lobby group (main group is AIPAC) which prevents critical comments about Israel from getting a fair hearing in the US and the world. Their main weapon is to charge anyone who criticises Israel’s actions - anti-Semitic. This group is so powerful, it has managed to disguise a genocide taking place against the Palestinians, and made the victims the perpetrators. The Zionist movement in America is a major distribution point for evil in the world.

chet January 6th, 2008 5:17 pm

Collective punishment of a people under occupation is a war crime.

Let us hope that that those who signed the authorizing orders will find themselves in The Hague in the future.

dreamertoo January 6th, 2008 9:19 pm

Dieplomacy.

Mike Corbeil January 6th, 2008 10:58 pm

I’ll just comment on what readers already posted above about Hamas, AIPAC, the Israeli govt, and Bush. Sure, it’s understandable that if there’s really a Hell, then these people have this for ultimate destination, nearly fate; as they make it their fate, not that they were born with this for certain conclusion.

But that’s exclusive of Hamas, for it is not what one of the above posts state and which is that Hamas is supposedly a ‘terrorist’ organisation. It is NOT that; what it is is a resistance group. They fight against and sometimes attack, but never in first-strike ways, only in retaliation; and sure they kill some citizens of Israel, Jews, Zionist “Jews”, and maybe other citizens or residents of Israel, but half or more of the Jews of Israel have been frequently reported as being supportive of what their govt has long been hellishly doing to the Palestinians, so killing some of these Israeli citizens isn’t like killing innocent people. They’re just as guilty as their political leaders and military members are; and they are extremely HELLish.

Many people bitch about Hamas, but all or most of these people don’t know other than false, deceiving, lying, … propaganda about Hamas; not knowing or else rejecting the truth about the organisation. And some of these people include Palestinians in Palestine; but they’ve all be proven to be grotesquely mistaken about their claimed bases or reasons for hating and opposing Hamas, and in continuing that way, they are basically complicit with the crimes of Israel, and its main backer, the U.S., and other supporting states, European, Arab, etc.

www.globalresearch.ca has provided very good articles that perhaps aren’t all specifically about Hamas, but still much enough, and importantly so.

There’s a lot of serious to extremely bad ignorance in our world, and ignorance is what people who fault Hamas like a bunch of self-righteous fools are; [awfully] ignorant. In continuing to stay that way, they only help all the lying propagandists from news and some views media, as well as the U.S. and Israeli govts.

They know so awfully little and yet pretend to be authoritative experts on what they know almost nothing worthwhile about. It’d be hilarious, if the matter wasn’t as dark, hellish as it is.

But while the Israeli and U.S. govt leaders who are guilty in this may well end up in hell after this life, they are far from consisting of only the president[s] (yes, plural) of the U.S. and the PMs and/or presidents of Israel, for they also include MANY or MOST members of both the U.S. Congress and Senate houses, as well as plenty of members of Israeli govt or politics, as well as IDF and Mossad schmucks.

Yet all of them and AIPAC combined don’t account for all of the equally and more-so guilty parties involved in all of this. Bush is only a puppet; no one of sane and reasonably educated awareness can argue to the contrary with any chance of being credible to [informed] people.

There are also the ruling elites.

F. William Engdahl (also at his own site, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net ), Stephen Lendman ( …, www.sjlendman.blogsspot.com ), Keith Harmon Snow (…, www.allthingspass.com ), Larry Chin (also at www.onlinejournal.com ), Jonathan Cook (…, www.jkcook.net ), who lives in Nazareth, and others from around the world, including Palestine and Israel, all have articles at www.globalresearch.ca and their own websites or those of their organisations. From the first three of these named authors, while Cook is also very good and important to read from, IMO, well, they have very good articles that tell us much about the real, top ruling elites; and I suggest that people give what these authors say a lot of careful attention while applying an OPEN MIND, instead of remaining infantiles in terms of intellectual capacity or capability.

GR is a good resource site. I don’t always agree with 100% of all articles posted there, but mostly find the content to be very qualitative. There are other good resource sites, but I’m not going to start listing those I know of; instead letting people come to learn of these the way I did. GR is all I’ll mention this time around; but then there is always www.Uruknet.info that just came to mind.

(With all I do, I don’t have time to get to all of the good sites I have come to know of, so the names don’t immediately come to mind; I’d need to go through my long list.)

For Palestine and Lebanon, I think Electronic Intifada should be a good resource site, and it is one that Uruknet often enough posts articles from. www.electronicintifada.net

On Israel and AIPAC, we have the evidently hated but excellent professor Norman G. Finkelstein , among others, too. www.normanfinkelstein.com

More specifically on the general misunderstanding of the power of AIPAC is the following excellent article by Joseph Massad.

“Blaming the lobby:
As someone who has been facing the full brunt of the might of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, Joseph Massad explains the deceit behind blaming the lobby for US policies towards the Palestinians and the Arab world”,
by Joseph Massad, associate prof. of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia U., March 23-29 2006,

Original (I believe) copy:

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm

Another copy:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10010

Consider, very, very carefully, all of what these resource people say and LEARN; open the bloody minds folks. Good intentions are NOT enough; they have long been correctly said to sometimes, if not often, pave paths to hell, or hellish paths. With only good (and inadequately informed) intentions, we can speak and act in ways which are actually pro-the-evil we claim to be opposed to.

Good intentions alone do NOT suffice. Instead, they’re mostly bs, dark and/or tragic “comedy” material.

People are dumb for not seeing that good intentions do not suffice and that what may appear to us to be bad intentions may actually be good; just that we’re too insufficiently informed to be able to understand what the whole “picture” consists of.

Judging based on only appearances is a very, very bad, awful habit that is “sister” to Injustice. Good intentions can also be that. After all, people who judge others based on only appearances often are folks who pretend to be based on good intentions, righteousness, …; and righteousness really dictates to NOT judge based on appearances.

Before passing judgement on others, we have to be very well informed about the matters or actions the persons are being judged for.

Self-righteous people prefer to stay in their hellish ignorance while pretending to live in bliss; thus giving reason, [a] reason for the expression, “ignorance is bliss” (when it’s really hellish, unless recognised and kept under control, by each and every one of us).

HAMAS is a fine organisation, and extremely better and more righteous than we can find even little example of in the U.S. and Israeli govts; and Hamas is the truly democratically ELECTED party in Palestine, and by MOST Palestinians.

So idiots like the one who above-stated that Hamas needs to be removed from power is just another American SCHMUCK or extremely ignorant and hypocritical fool; AGAIN. Just because he is as the “as usual” goes, this doesn’t make it right at all. It’s hellishly wrong, very tragic and dark “comedy” all over again; and again, and again, endlessly.

Parents should do a better job of home-educating their children, instead of leaving this crucial education only to schools that really are run by the ruling elites. They’re why the schools teach so much bs, propaganda, untrue and atrociously distorted history, etc. (also applies in economics and other academic studies).

Families who make sure to be well-reasoned, sane, non-judgemental or -prejudiced, etc., and of course informed, can do a far better job of educating their own children than pretty much any schools at all can or accept to provide; and one thing “Harvard doesn’t teach” and possibly can’t is sound COMMONSENSE.

If Hamas should be removed from being THE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED party BY THE PEOPLE of Palestine, then the U.S., Israel, and many other (so-called, this time) elected govts MUST BE REMOVED AND FAR FIRST.

Problem is, Hamas should NOT be removed and should NOT be opposed; it’s very, very right. It’s occasional flaws, if there really are any, far from displace its righteousness, fairness towards not only all Palestinians, but also that and honesty towards and about Israel, the arch-enemy, monster, hell-on-earth beast (along with of course the U.S.).

Hamas is totally honest and right in its position with respect to Israel. F.e., Israel has absolutely NO legitimate grounds for demanding that Hamas or any other Palestinian group recognise that Israel is a state; because Israel has perpetually refused to recognise this for Palestine. It’s total hypocrisy on the part of Israel and its hellbent backer U.S.A.

And the U.S. is more guilty in this than probably most people realise. Some or all of the above authors and sources help to shed the light on this very under- or un-reported reality. The U.S. news media is NOT going to be giving you this information; don’t ever count on it, for if you do, then you may live an entire lifetime before finding one article from these sources telling the truths that most people aren’t aware of and which the ruling elites don’t want people to be aware of.

What CD’ers really need to use to hold these little discussion is a REAL discussion forum. Posting comments on articles is nice, but it’s nothing like using real discussion forum sites, which now permit users to select to click a “Watch” link, for being notified via email when others post to the threads we click on this link in.

Those are the very best forum sites, for the others don’t notify us when threads we wish or would like to watch are posted to.

therzal January 7th, 2008 5:29 am

The IDF is the State of Israel, since Ben Gurion (I think it was ) conflated the State with the Army in the pre alNAqba days.
Every citizen of Israel will be, is or has been a member of the IDF.
The Palestinians are under occupation, under the heel of the IDF jackboot.
The IDF will not stop because their ultimate aim is the TOTAL ethnic cleansing of all the new untermensch from the splinters of their land that they obstinately cling to.
The Palestinians are doing what is legitimate. Fighting back in the only way they know how, the only way they can.
In this article, there is no mention of any Israeli casualties from the insignificant, largely symbolic primitive unguided missile aattack..
The anticipated “stern response” (i.e murderous over reaction) killed 17 .
“Oi vey… so why WHY , do they hate us so?? What have we ever done to them??”

therzal January 7th, 2008 5:40 am

Addendum…
The Palestinians are doing what is legitimate. Fighting back in the only way they know how, the only way they can.
In this article, there is no mention of any Israeli casualties from the insignificant, largely symbolic primitive unguided missile attack..
The anticipated “stern response” (i.e murderous over-reaction) killed 17 .
“Oi vey… so why WHY, do they hate us so?? What have we ever done to them??”

jfmxl January 7th, 2008 6:53 am

Gaza is coming to resemble nothing so much as the Warsaw Ghetto.

The world has turned full circle with the US the UK the whole of the EU and of course Israel now playing the role of the German Nazis.

Wake up. We have become our worst enemies. We are destroying ourselves along with the Palestinians.

Genocide. Premeditated. Meticulously planned.

The end came for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto 65 years ago this coming May. It looks as though the Israelis are headed toward a truly horrid re-enactment of that holocaust.

MeAlsoToo January 7th, 2008 7:37 am

Mike–a tad-wordy and directed-at-choir, but nice write-up. Be advised, however, that avowed Luciferian’s look-forward to Hell…so ‘to each, their own’.
Ashkenazic-Israel, and their conjoined/controlling-Interests elsewhere, will soon have what they have striven for from both Gaza and those resistant and ‘South of the Litani/headwaters’ — an excuse to ‘act decisively/defensively’, and with no effective blowback from a world and its sole ‘hyperpower’ now thoroughly-Dissonant and ‘pledged’/committed.
Sad, but a ‘done-deal’…
Those with ties to a ‘false-friend’ (meaning Iran/Pakistan&ISI, imho) are most “in harm’s way”, but it’s FAR too late for them to find any succor or real-Ally to ’save’ them. Lebanon and Palestinians/Iraqis/Afghans are ‘among the fallen’. Better, now, to focus upon Syria and the balkanized Caspian-area and Turkey, methinks. China has conceded (long-bought/inveigled?), Russia-waffles (and only ‘makes-noise, not War’), and that results in the entire ‘Third-World’ being left to Our ‘tender-mercies and depopulation-scheme’ (and accessible/’cheap’ energy for the ‘wrong people’ is an Impossible Dream within any foreseeable-future).
The ‘enemy’/Us are hellbent upon ’saving the world from its undesirable-selves’ with a well-Planed NWO that’s well-advanced, now — and we will use our precious&borrowed GWofT to effect all those ‘changes, regrettably-required’ and as ill-advised by Realists like HK/ZB/DP and their fellow-travelers from the Euro-elite, JDR’s Chi-school, and many-other “Stinker-Thinker” and wealthy ‘Eastern/Ivy-league/CFR/paper-clippers’/etc. cohorts and Alumn.
The People here won’t/can’t stop them, either — for we “can’t handle the Truth”. [As is obvious from how many ’seek a Faith’ currently, politically or spiritually, instead of ‘actions’ for Betterments]

Hope falls to ‘unintended consequences’ and/or fifth-column activists, acting covertly for some total Economic-collapse/setback or instigated Power-divisions/struggles — all these Forums and information-channels are too static-filled/infiltrated/abused for effectiveness today (other than to feed Dissonance and anomie). All Info is good-Info, however, and if enough of the ’so-informed’ survive to happily see this Pendulum swinging-back, they can all then “push, all the harder” to Setback the Clock on these All-Powerful self-Interests — or, so one can Hope?

Saila January 7th, 2008 9:40 am

“The Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people,”

Wrong. Israelis are equal-opportunity killers. They’ll kill anybody who is in their way of expansionism. Remember the Christian girl called Rachel Courie?

MeAlsoToo January 7th, 2008 10:44 am

I think you-two were in Agreement, Saila…?

Jim Glover January 7th, 2008 11:31 am

Mike,
Thanks for all the new links… I learned a lot.

citizen1 January 7th, 2008 7:41 pm

The Israelis have learned well from what Hitler had done to the Jews. Gaza is the new concentration camp. It is collective punishment - which is a war crime.

How many more war crimes are we going to perpetrate? Make no mistake, Israel is not doing anything without approval from the USA (or is it the other way round?!?).

Oh, why do they hate us? Sure, they hate our freedom, right?

nspire January 9th, 2008 11:20 am

they hate our bankers,

as we should as well,

to illuminate the source of all the ‘metaphoric fires’ of our world,

(almost) all started by the same bunch of greedy ‘pyromaniacal bankers’.

Extreme usury is the most pernicious of sins,

and pseudo-profitability has lead to the near (in USA) demise of most other

techniques to produce real wealth, which is the world’s loss

redjeff January 6th, 2008 2:09 pm

The key comment above was from Hassan Akram, the grocer. He said, “the Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people.”

Until Israel and America understand that what they are doing every day perpetuates war and terror, rather than fosters peace and prosperity, we will always have plenty more stories to read like this one.

This is not to ignore the role of Hamas in doing the very same thing as Israel–using violence to stop violence, without considering the fact that it hasn’t worked yet in sixty years. Hamas is so extreme that they cannot be allowed to exist. But Israel’s policy is to match Hamas’ violent acts one-for-one, making Israel as extreme as Hamas.

Israel is better than that. They should be making appeals to the more moderate Palestinian population; they should be appealing to the fact that most Palestinians, like Hassan the grocer, just want to live and work in peace.
papananook January 6th, 2008 2:38 pm

What is Preznit Chimpy going to Isreal for?
Like he’ll be a real calming influence. I wish he’d just go to his ranch in Texas an cut brush and shut the fuck up.
shakker January 6th, 2008 3:37 pm

It sucks for the people living in the way of two feuding terrorist groups.
whatfools January 6th, 2008 3:45 pm

This torture, maiming and murder of the Palestinean people has been going on for over fifty years. When will Olmert implement Israel’s ‘final solution’ to their ‘Palestinean’ problem?
zoya January 6th, 2008 4:17 pm

This situation is so egregious. If there is really a hell, Israel, AIPAC, and Bush will burn in it.
ctrl-z January 6th, 2008 4:21 pm

“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
George Bernard Shaw

http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/learning/timeline/1943.html

1943

“At 6am on April 19, some two thousand German troops enter the ghetto but are repulsed within 90 minutes by ZOB fighters with homemade weapons. The Germans cut off gas, water, and electricity to the ghetto. Street fighting continues between Germans and Jews for a few days before General Jurgen Stroop orders that the ghetto be burned. By April 22 the burning is under way. Still Jewish fighters resist for another month, hiding in ghetto sewers, which become a route of escape to the Polish side of Warsaw for some Jews. In the end, the ghetto is in ruins and emptied of its inhabitants. Thousands of Jews are dead after the uprising, but not without inflicting damage on the Germans. The remainder of the Jews are deported to Treblinka.”
Southern Cross January 6th, 2008 5:10 pm

The best way Americans can help the Palestinians, is to fight against the poisonous influence of the Israel Lobby group (main group is AIPAC) which prevents critical comments about Israel from getting a fair hearing in the US and the world. Their main weapon is to charge anyone who criticises Israel’s actions - anti-Semitic. This group is so powerful, it has managed to disguise a genocide taking place against the Palestinians, and made the victims the perpetrators. The Zionist movement in America is a major distribution point for evil in the world.
chet January 6th, 2008 5:17 pm

Collective punishment of a people under occupation is a war crime.

Let us hope that that those who signed the authorizing orders will find themselves in The Hague in the future.
dreamertoo January 6th, 2008 9:19 pm

Dieplomacy.
Mike Corbeil January 6th, 2008 10:58 pm

I’ll just comment on what readers already posted above about Hamas, AIPAC, the Israeli govt, and Bush. Sure, it’s understandable that if there’s really a Hell, then these people have this for ultimate destination, nearly fate; as they make it their fate, not that they were born with this for certain conclusion.

But that’s exclusive of Hamas, for it is not what one of the above posts state and which is that Hamas is supposedly a ‘terrorist’ organisation. It is NOT that; what it is is a resistance group. They fight against and sometimes attack, but never in first-strike ways, only in retaliation; and sure they kill some citizens of Israel, Jews, Zionist “Jews”, and maybe other citizens or residents of Israel, but half or more of the Jews of Israel have been frequently reported as being supportive of what their govt has long been hellishly doing to the Palestinians, so killing some of these Israeli citizens isn’t like killing innocent people. They’re just as guilty as their political leaders and military members are; and they are extremely HELLish.

Many people bitch about Hamas, but all or most of these people don’t know other than false, deceiving, lying, … propaganda about Hamas; not knowing or else rejecting the truth about the organisation. And some of these people include Palestinians in Palestine; but they’ve all be proven to be grotesquely mistaken about their claimed bases or reasons for hating and opposing Hamas, and in continuing that way, they are basically complicit with the crimes of Israel, and its main backer, the U.S., and other supporting states, European, Arab, etc.

www.globalresearch.ca has provided very good articles that perhaps aren’t all specifically about Hamas, but still much enough, and importantly so.

There’s a lot of serious to extremely bad ignorance in our world, and ignorance is what people who fault Hamas like a bunch of self-righteous fools are; [awfully] ignorant. In continuing to stay that way, they only help all the lying propagandists from news and some views media, as well as the U.S. and Israeli govts.

They know so awfully little and yet pretend to be authoritative experts on what they know almost nothing worthwhile about. It’d be hilarious, if the matter wasn’t as dark, hellish as it is.

But while the Israeli and U.S. govt leaders who are guilty in this may well end up in hell after this life, they are far from consisting of only the president[s] (yes, plural) of the U.S. and the PMs and/or presidents of Israel, for they also include MANY or MOST members of both the U.S. Congress and Senate houses, as well as plenty of members of Israeli govt or politics, as well as IDF and Mossad schmucks.

Yet all of them and AIPAC combined don’t account for all of the equally and more-so guilty parties involved in all of this. Bush is only a puppet; no one of sane and reasonably educated awareness can argue to the contrary with any chance of being credible to [informed] people.

There are also the ruling elites.

F. William Engdahl (also at his own site, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net ), Stephen Lendman ( …, www.sjlendman.blogsspot.com ), Keith Harmon Snow (…, www.allthingspass.com ), Larry Chin (also at www.onlinejournal.com ), Jonathan Cook (…, www.jkcook.net ), who lives in Nazareth, and others from around the world, including Palestine and Israel, all have articles at www.globalresearch.ca and their own websites or those of their organisations. From the first three of these named authors, while Cook is also very good and important to read from, IMO, well, they have very good articles that tell us much about the real, top ruling elites; and I suggest that people give what these authors say a lot of careful attention while applying an OPEN MIND, instead of remaining infantiles in terms of intellectual capacity or capability.

GR is a good resource site. I don’t always agree with 100% of all articles posted there, but mostly find the content to be very qualitative. There are other good resource sites, but I’m not going to start listing those I know of; instead letting people come to learn of these the way I did. GR is all I’ll mention this time around; but then there is always www.Uruknet.info that just came to mind.

(With all I do, I don’t have time to get to all of the good sites I have come to know of, so the names don’t immediately come to mind; I’d need to go through my long list.)

For Palestine and Lebanon, I think Electronic Intifada should be a good resource site, and it is one that Uruknet often enough posts articles from. www.electronicintifada.net

On Israel and AIPAC, we have the evidently hated but excellent professor Norman G. Finkelstein , among others, too. www.normanfinkelstein.com

More specifically on the general misunderstanding of the power of AIPAC is the following excellent article by Joseph Massad.

“Blaming the lobby:
As someone who has been facing the full brunt of the might of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, Joseph Massad explains the deceit behind blaming the lobby for US policies towards the Palestinians and the Arab world”,
by Joseph Massad, associate prof. of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia U., March 23-29 2006,

Original (I believe) copy:

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm

Another copy:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10010

Consider, very, very carefully, all of what these resource people say and LEARN; open the bloody minds folks. Good intentions are NOT enough; they have long been correctly said to sometimes, if not often, pave paths to hell, or hellish paths. With only good (and inadequately informed) intentions, we can speak and act in ways which are actually pro-the-evil we claim to be opposed to.

Good intentions alone do NOT suffice. Instead, they’re mostly bs, dark and/or tragic “comedy” material.

People are dumb for not seeing that good intentions do not suffice and that what may appear to us to be bad intentions may actually be good; just that we’re too insufficiently informed to be able to understand what the whole “picture” consists of.

Judging based on only appearances is a very, very bad, awful habit that is “sister” to Injustice. Good intentions can also be that. After all, people who judge others based on only appearances often are folks who pretend to be based on good intentions, righteousness, …; and righteousness really dictates to NOT judge based on appearances.

Before passing judgement on others, we have to be very well informed about the matters or actions the persons are being judged for.

Self-righteous people prefer to stay in their hellish ignorance while pretending to live in bliss; thus giving reason, [a] reason for the expression, “ignorance is bliss” (when it’s really hellish, unless recognised and kept under control, by each and every one of us).

HAMAS is a fine organisation, and extremely better and more righteous than we can find even little example of in the U.S. and Israeli govts; and Hamas is the truly democratically ELECTED party in Palestine, and by MOST Palestinians.

So idiots like the one who above-stated that Hamas needs to be removed from power is just another American SCHMUCK or extremely ignorant and hypocritical fool; AGAIN. Just because he is as the “as usual” goes, this doesn’t make it right at all. It’s hellishly wrong, very tragic and dark “comedy” all over again; and again, and again, endlessly.

Parents should do a better job of home-educating their children, instead of leaving this crucial education only to schools that really are run by the ruling elites. They’re why the schools teach so much bs, propaganda, untrue and atrociously distorted history, etc. (also applies in economics and other academic studies).

Families who make sure to be well-reasoned, sane, non-judgemental or -prejudiced, etc., and of course informed, can do a far better job of educating their own children than pretty much any schools at all can or accept to provide; and one thing “Harvard doesn’t teach” and possibly can’t is sound COMMONSENSE.

If Hamas should be removed from being THE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED party BY THE PEOPLE of Palestine, then the U.S., Israel, and many other (so-called, this time) elected govts MUST BE REMOVED AND FAR FIRST.

Problem is, Hamas should NOT be removed and should NOT be opposed; it’s very, very right. It’s occasional flaws, if there really are any, far from displace its righteousness, fairness towards not only all Palestinians, but also that and honesty towards and about Israel, the arch-enemy, monster, hell-on-earth beast (along with of course the U.S.).

Hamas is totally honest and right in its position with respect to Israel. F.e., Israel has absolutely NO legitimate grounds for demanding that Hamas or any other Palestinian group recognise that Israel is a state; because Israel has perpetually refused to recognise this for Palestine. It’s total hypocrisy on the part of Israel and its hellbent backer U.S.A.

And the U.S. is more guilty in this than probably most people realise. Some or all of the above authors and sources help to shed the light on this very under- or un-reported reality. The U.S. news media is NOT going to be giving you this information; don’t ever count on it, for if you do, then you may live an entire lifetime before finding one article from these sources telling the truths that most people aren’t aware of and which the ruling elites don’t want people to be aware of.

What CD’ers really need to use to hold these little discussion is a REAL discussion forum. Posting comments on articles is nice, but it’s nothing like using real discussion forum sites, which now permit users to select to click a “Watch” link, for being notified via email when others post to the threads we click on this link in.

Those are the very best forum sites, for the others don’t notify us when threads we wish or would like to watch are posted to.
therzal January 7th, 2008 5:29 am

The IDF is the State of Israel, since Ben Gurion (I think it was ) conflated the State with the Army in the pre alNAqba days.
Every citizen of Israel will be, is or has been a member of the IDF.
The Palestinians are under occupation, under the heel of the IDF jackboot.
The IDF will not stop because their ultimate aim is the TOTAL ethnic cleansing of all the new untermensch from the splinters of their land that they obstinately cling to.
The Palestinians are doing what is legitimate. Fighting back in the only way they know how, the only way they can.
In this article, there is no mention of any Israeli casualties from the insignificant, largely symbolic primitive unguided missile aattack..
The anticipated “stern response” (i.e murderous over reaction) killed 17 .
“Oi vey… so why WHY , do they hate us so?? What have we ever done to them??”
therzal January 7th, 2008 5:40 am

Addendum…
The Palestinians are doing what is legitimate. Fighting back in the only way they know how, the only way they can.
In this article, there is no mention of any Israeli casualties from the insignificant, largely symbolic primitive unguided missile attack..
The anticipated “stern response” (i.e murderous over-reaction) killed 17 .
“Oi vey… so why WHY, do they hate us so?? What have we ever done to them??”
jfmxl January 7th, 2008 6:53 am

Gaza is coming to resemble nothing so much as the Warsaw Ghetto.

The world has turned full circle with the US the UK the whole of the EU and of course Israel now playing the role of the German Nazis.

Wake up. We have become our worst enemies. We are destroying ourselves along with the Palestinians.

Genocide. Premeditated. Meticulously planned.

The end came for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto 65 years ago this coming May. It looks as though the Israelis are headed toward a truly horrid re-enactment of that holocaust.
MeAlsoToo January 7th, 2008 7:37 am

Mike–a tad-wordy and directed-at-choir, but nice write-up. Be advised, however, that avowed Luciferian’s look-forward to Hell…so ‘to each, their own’.
Ashkenazic-Israel, and their conjoined/controlling-Interests elsewhere, will soon have what they have striven for from both Gaza and those resistant and ‘South of the Litani/headwaters’ — an excuse to ‘act decisively/defensively’, and with no effective blowback from a world and its sole ‘hyperpower’ now thoroughly-Dissonant and ‘pledged’/committed.
Sad, but a ‘done-deal’…
Those with ties to a ‘false-friend’ (meaning Iran/Pakistan&ISI, imho) are most “in harm’s way”, but it’s FAR too late for them to find any succor or real-Ally to ’save’ them. Lebanon and Palestinians/Iraqis/Afghans are ‘among the fallen’. Better, now, to focus upon Syria and the balkanized Caspian-area and Turkey, methinks. China has conceded (long-bought/inveigled?), Russia-waffles (and only ‘makes-noise, not War’), and that results in the entire ‘Third-World’ being left to Our ‘tender-mercies and depopulation-scheme’ (and accessible/’cheap’ energy for the ‘wrong people’ is an Impossible Dream within any foreseeable-future).
The ‘enemy’/Us are hellbent upon ’saving the world from its undesirable-selves’ with a well-Planed NWO that’s well-advanced, now — and we will use our precious&borrowed GWofT to effect all those ‘changes, regrettably-required’ and as ill-advised by Realists like HK/ZB/DP and their fellow-travelers from the Euro-elite, JDR’s Chi-school, and many-other “Stinker-Thinker” and wealthy ‘Eastern/Ivy-league/CFR/paper-clippers’/etc. cohorts and Alumn.
The People here won’t/can’t stop them, either — for we “can’t handle the Truth”. [As is obvious from how many ’seek a Faith’ currently, politically or spiritually, instead of ‘actions’ for Betterments]

Hope falls to ‘unintended consequences’ and/or fifth-column activists, acting covertly for some total Economic-collapse/setback or instigated Power-divisions/struggles — all these Forums and information-channels are too static-filled/infiltrated/abused for effectiveness today (other than to feed Dissonance and anomie). All Info is good-Info, however, and if enough of the ’so-informed’ survive to happily see this Pendulum swinging-back, they can all then “push, all the harder” to Setback the Clock on these All-Powerful self-Interests — or, so one can Hope?
Saila January 7th, 2008 9:40 am

“The Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people,”

Wrong. Israelis are equal-opportunity killers. They’ll kill anybody who is in their way of expansionism. Remember the Christian girl called Rachel Courie?
MeAlsoToo January 7th, 2008 10:44 am

I think you-two were in Agreement, Saila…?
Jim Glover January 7th, 2008 11:31 am

Mike,
Thanks for all the new links… I learned a lot.
citizen1 January 7th, 2008 7:41 pm

The Israelis have learned well from what Hitler had done to the Jews. Gaza is the new concentration camp. It is collective punishment - which is a war crime.

How many more war crimes are we going to perpetrate? Make no mistake, Israel is not doing anything without approval from the USA (or is it the other way round?!?).

Oh, why do they hate us? Sure, they hate our freedom, right?
nspire January 9th, 2008 11:20 am

they hate our bankers,

as we should as well,

to illuminate the source of all the ‘metaphoric fires’ of our world,

(almost) all started by the same bunch of greedy ‘pyromaniacal bankers’.

Extreme usury is the most pernicious of sins,

and pseudo-profitability has lead to the near (in USA) demise of most other

techniques to produce real wealth, which is the world’s loss

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