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Today's Top News
Hearts and Flowers: From Israel With Love, Sort Of
The news
that Israel has opened the Gaza border to exports for the first time in
a year to allow the shipping of 25,000 carnations to Europe for
Valentine's Day is surreal, and heartbreaking. How's about letting out
some people to get medical care, food, or land instead?
Israeli spokesmen said the shipping of the flowers from blockaded Gaza
was a generous gesture. Gazans, understandably, said it was "nothing."
Abdul Karim Ashour of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees
called the opening "propaganda," adding that, besides, most of Gaza's
carnation crop has already been lost, and fed to the sheep. "The season
has finished," he said. "It is very sad."
Gazan growers used to send 40 million flowers abroad. Truth is, there
is so much, too much, sad here, and flowers don't begin to cover it.
15 Comments so far
Show AllIsrael's PR folks must be delusional if they consider this some sort positive gesture. They are exposed as nothing but racist, maniacal killers. And nothing their PR campaigners can do to change any of that image burned into the consciousness of the world at large.
Yes, but if you live here in the usa, that goes for all of us who supported pre-emptive invasion and torture with our tax dollars.
I am getting tired of our own hypocracy. We have nothing to stand on. It is like the pope coming out against pedophilia, and doing nothing to change anything.(which he has done, by the way.)
The London Guardian (typically more hostile to Israel than, say, Al Jazeera), reports that Hamas has executed at least two dozen opponents in street shootings. Two questions occur: 1)How many more of the 1300 casualties were inflicted by Hamas, and 2)Among so-called Progressives, are some Palestinian lives more valuable than others?
The people Hamas has executed were collaborators with Israel in the brutal attacks on Gaza.
Check out this article from the Middle East Times: "Israel's Intelligence Disaster," by Richard Sale. http://www.metimes.com/International/2009/02/12/israels_intelligence_disaster/8725/
"Palestinian intelligence agents, working for Israel in its recent "Operation Cast Lead," were exposed and many of them captured or killed in the aftermath, U.S. officials said.
"The ongoing round up is ongoing and expanding, these sources said. In the course of the operation, Israel also failed to find and reclaim Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006, and Tel Aviv also failed in its planned targeted killing of Ahmad Haabri, the commander of Hamas' military arm, the Al-Qassam Brigades, these sources said.
"The use of Palestinian agents to spy on Hamas has been Israel's operating philosophy for many years," said former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro.
.
.
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"Back in Israel, a joint probe by Israeli military intelligence and Shin Bet, its counterintelligence organization, is trying to determine the degree of decimation of Israel's human assets in Gaza, something they blame on flaws in operational technique, careless trade craft or improper or careless handling of the information."
What should happen to traitors and collaborators after they help bring death and destruction to the people they betray? I would say, arrest, trial, and jail sentences, but in the case of Gaza, Israel has imprisoned many members of the legally (and fairly) elected government, and has prevented what remains of the elected government from governing, through the strangling siege and constant "incursions" and "targeted assassinations" (murders). Israel has also decimated the police force in Gazq (remember that the graduation ceremony of the new police officers was Israel's first big kill of their recent killing spree in Gaza) and destroyed as much government infrastructure as possible. Have any jails or courts even been left standing?
Somehow, I don't feel too much sympathy for Israel's "human assets" in Gaza.
So that's a "Yes" on #2, then.
You can ask the Isrealis the same question too about how some jews lives are better than other jews. or even ask the americans that too...remember gulf of tonkin?
You apparently have no idea of Israeli false flag operations throughout its history I gather.....
I'm not old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin, the Lusitania, or San Juan Hill. However, I'd wager that none of them had anything to do with Israel. Furthermore, both warfare and politics are conducted on a scale that precludes secrecy, for the most part.
IzakFriend: "...both warfare and politics are conducted on a scale that precludes secrecy, for the most part."
Thanks for the comic relief.
We need to boycott Israel and Israeli products completely and shame them. The rest of the world needs to do the same. It worked for South Africa and there is no reason it wouldnt work in this case.
Carnage and carnations, how lovely. But they probably used up most of the flowers at funerals.
it's all a bit sick. another indication of how delusional and dysfunctional the Israelis are. First they call their massive murderous attack on gaza after a children's game for god's sake and now, while refusing to allow medical aid, food aid and necessities they allow out a few f.....g flowers and think it is a wonderful gesture. The society is sick, sick, sick. They need to be saved from themselves and others saved from them.
Pan
How big of a cut do the Israel`s get from the Gazans for being the brokers.
IzakFriend, you did not have to be alive to know about what Israel did to the USS Liberty, just "google" it and you will see real time film. You certainly were alive when Jonathan Pollard, Lawrence Franklin and Avi Kadich spied on the USA for Israel. I can't wait to find out where all of the billions Bernie Madoff embezzled went to.
and you certainly were alive a few years ago when Scooter Libby outed our spy Valerie Plame and put many other agents at risk! Mind you, all of the aforementioned were Americans! What country did they put before the USA? Israel (our ally) did not turn them in. They accepted the secrets and we caught them. Talk to us IzakFriend! All of these had everything to do with Israel unlike San Juan Hill, the Gulf of Tonkin, etc that you mentioned. However, you will avoid answers and of course name call. We are on to you.
Forty years ago, the Johnson Administration found that the US and Israel shared the blame for the USS Liberty tragedy. There's no need to consult Pallywood, at this late day. Jonathan Pollard spied for Israel. Madoff isn't a spy and Plame had nothing to do with Israel. Don't know who Franklin and Kadich are/were, and am not interested enough to google them.
IzakFriend gave the answer we expected. Now Pres Johnson and Israel were responsible for the USS Liberty. As for Bernie Madoff, we will find out if any money or relatives fled to Israel. Scooter Libby, Pollard and Lawrence Franklin and Avi Kadich have NOTHING TO DO WITH ISRAEL? You are a degenerate Israel War Crime Justifier! By his own mouth posters. Amazing, Lyndon Johnson & Israel were responsible for the USS Liberty!!! Why you are worse than I expected and I hate Israel more. It was Scooter Libby, Cheney and Eliot Abrams as well as the Israeli intelligence who were making the false case for war against Iraq!!