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Israel Vows 'Powerful Response' to Gaza Attacks
GAZA/JERUSALEM - Three Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a "powerful response" to any attacks from the territory.
Palestinians youth inspect a crater on the ground opened by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on January 8. Israeli warplanes targeted a group of Palestinian militants in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing three gunmen, Palestinian medics said. An Israeli army spokesman said an Israeli aircraft carried out an air strike against militants spotted preparing to launch rockets toward Israel.
Palestinians said the three militants were killed in a field often used to launch rockets toward Israel.
Netanyahu told a weekly cabinet session 20 mortar bombs and rockets had been fired at Israel from the Hamas-ruled territory last week. "I view this very seriously. The government's policy is clear, any shooting at our territory will receive an immediate and powerful response," he said.
Violence has risen along the Israeli-Gaza frontier in the past month, which could further complicate U.S.-backed diplomacy in the region, after a respite following a three-week Gaza war a year ago in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died.
Three Palestinians were killed in a series of Israeli air strikes in Gaza on Thursday, including the first air raid in months to target a site inside Gaza City.
LEAFLET DROP
Palestinians said the targets were sites belonging to other militant groups, not Hamas Islamists who seized the territory in 2002 and are seen as having reined in violence since the Israeli offensive last January.
Israel also dropped leaflets warning Gaza's 1.5 million residents to avoid coming within 300 meters (yards) of the border fence with Israel, citing security reasons.
Netanyahu told his cabinet Israel had targeted factories used to were make rockets and tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt, where "Iran smuggles in missiles and rockets" into Gaza, naming an arch-foe Israel accuses of arming militants.
Turning his attention to the occupied West Bank, where Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement holds sway, Netanyahu demanded leaders there "stop incitement" that violated a U.S.-backed peace road map.
He charged a public square had been named in the West Bank for a militant involved in a lethal 1978 bus attack in Israel, and that three other militants Israel killed after they gunned down a Jewish settler have been hailed as martyrs.
"This is not the way to make peace," Netanyahu said.
Abbas has refused to resume negotiations with Israel, stalled for a year, before a halt to Jewish settlement building in the West Bank which Palestinians see as an obstacle to achieving a two-state solution of their conflict with Israel.
Abbas has rejected a limited, 10-month halt to settlement building announced by Israel in November as insufficient.
(Editing by Jon Boyle)
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62 Comments so far
Show AllGENOCIDE GENOCIDE GENOCIDE.
Killing three armed militants, who were about to commit a war crime (firing rockets against civilians,) is NOT GENOCIDE GENOCIDE GENOCIDE.
Sorry, but your argument rings as quite hollow in the light of Israeli atrocities over the past several years.
Yes, the zionists are practicing genocide against the Palestinians and have been doing so for decades, stealing Palestinian land and murdering as many of them as possible.
The fact that one isolated incident may not fit the technical definition of genocide is really beside the point.
As for the Palentinians who supposedly were firing rockets "at civilians," I respect them for fighting back with the only weapons that they have.
q
quickstepper: "As for the Palentinians who supposedly were firing rockets "at civilians," I respect them for fighting back with the only weapons that they have."
Against innocent civilians? Do you, quickstepper, support indiscriminate bombings against civilian targets?
It was determined at Nürnberg that all Resistance activities, including killing non-uniformed German or collaborator personnel, were legitimate. People are allowed to resist murderous criminals in any way they can.
If the Zionists don't want to be the targets of Resistance, the solution is simple, straightforward, and completely within their remit: surrender and give the Palestinian people back their land. Negotiate for the right to co-exist in peace in the nation called Palestine.
Mairead: "It was determined at Nürnberg that all Resistance activities, including killing non-uniformed German or collaborator personnel, were legitimate. People are allowed to resist murderous criminals in any way they can."
Nuremberg trials took place from 1945 until 1946. Humanity had made some progress since. According to the 4th Geneva convention, which was signed in 1949 - It constitutes a war crime to target innocent civilians. (Hence, these Palestinian militants were committing a war crime when they were killed)
Mairead: "If the Zionists don't want to be the targets of Resistance, the solution is simple, straightforward, and completely within their remit: surrender and give the Palestinian people back their land. Negotiate for the right to co-exist in peace in the nation called Palestine."
Are you proposing is that all the six million people who constitute the Jewish population of Israel, will pack and leave their homes? Can you remind me where do you, Mairead, live? Who's land was it before, and why don't you pack and leave?
I can't imagine why I let myself get sucked into talking to a psychopathic, lying, tape recorder. I'll try to remember the futility of the exercise sooner in future. I hope others will, too. You don't deserve even a moment of anyone's time.
I'm glad you think that targeting innocent people is a war crime - it certainly is under the Geneva convention, as you say. Now, what are we going to do about those war criminals who targetted about 1400 innocent people in Gaza a year ago?
Humanity progressed since, I agree. Yet, Israel seems to be operating based on principles common in the 1930s. In other words, for a clown like you to pass off such cynical arguments for nothing more than rhetorical points, is rather disgusting. You don't even know what humanity means since you seem to be a robot or a drone, programmed to spout propaganda, lies and Orwellian spin.
Not leave their homes .... leave somebody else's home which they stole -- on land they are continuing to steal. That's the one fact that all of the propaganda and "facts on the ground" can't erase: the Palestinian's land was stolen from them, since 1948 (actually a bit before then) and right up to the present day. There is room enough for everyone to live there in peace if it's under a true democratic state and justice -- similar to what there was for hundreds of years before the zionists invaded. Without true democracy and justice there is not room for anyone to live in peace.
The Israeli "settlers" are not innocent, "civilian targets."
If home invaders who are brutalizing a family and destroying and stealing their possessions are injured or killed when the family tries to fight back, our sympathies are with the innocent family, not with the criminals who invaded their home.
The Israeli "settlers" are just a huge number of home invaders, brutalizing the Palestinian families and destroying and stealing their possessions. The Palestinians have every right to resist. Since Israel violently punishes nonviolent resistance of the Palestinians, the Palestinians have turned to the only weapons they have--unguided, homemade rockets. While Israel is armed by the U.S. with the very latest in every death-dealing war technology.
Zionists may think that the Palestinians should just die or vanish away and stop fighting for their rights, but it's not going to happen. We can assist them by joining the campaign to Boycott, Divest and Sanction the apartheid, Nazi state of Israel.
petrkrop: "The Israeli "settlers" are not innocent, "civilian targets.""
1. What about babies or kindergarten children? Are they guilty or innocent?
2. These rocket were targeting pre- 1967 Israel and not settlers in the west bank or in Gaza.
3. Moreover, targeting innocent civilians, even if live in settlements, (Not the case here) is a war crime, and a crime against Humanity.
Your comment have only one logical conclusion, petrkrop : You believe that committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, is perfectly fine, as long as the victims are Jews who live in Israel. (Anywhere in Israel.)
As a progressive person, I hope you are not like that.
The solution is simple: invaders SURRENDER! Give the stolen land BACK TO THE PALESTINIANS.
It's going to happen one of these days. The only question is: how much agony will the Zionist criminals inflict on everyone --including their own "babies [and] kindergarten children"-- till then?
Mairead: "The solution is simple: invaders OUT! Give the stolen land BACK TO THE PALESTINIANS."
First: Jews lived in Israel / Palestine long before the term Palestinian was re-invented by the British Empire. (When Jesus walked the streets of Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Nazareth, the people he saw were Jews, and NOT Palestinians.)
Second: Why don't you pack and leave back to your ancestor's land, before you preach to others something you, yourself, are unwilling to do?
Mairead: "" It's going to happen one of these days (that all Jews will pack and leave Israel). The only question is: how much agony will the Zionist criminals inflict on everyone --including their own "babies [and] kindergarten children"-- till then?"
Many people claimed to have the power to predict the future. Some were right, some were wrong. Unless you have a working a time-machine, your prophecy is not better than any.
most of the land in the surrounding areas, were not divided into "countries" such as the country of Palestine, but there were a vast majority of palestinians living there, and some who were jewish, but they made up the minority. It was only in 1947 when the "state of israel" was created by the winners of the 2nd World War, did the majority of jews arrive onto the land that was inhabited by the 90% Palestinian. they were put there by colonial powers that had a history of invading other countries and calling them their own, simply because the inhabitants hadn't named there country, ie what happened to the Native Population that lived in the Americas when the europeans came.
As for the comment of "when Jesus walked the streets of Bethlehem.....the people he saw were Jews NOT Palestinians" that is sheer zionist propoganda based on materials that had been written by jews for the sake of Jews.
Are you saying that Jews were not the majority of the people of Israel (then Judea) at 30AD?
Are you saying that Palestinians lived in Judea, during or before the Roman occupation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Judah
When Jesus walked the lands it was not called Israel. The ROmans, Egyptians and Sumerians, the Babylonians and the Hittites all reffered to the region as PALESTINE or a derivative thereof. The Hittitesand Egyptians predated any Hebrew prescence in the region.
When Jesus walked the lands those lands were ruled by the Romans who called the region "Palestine".
The smaller area called Judea was the very southern region of The District called Palestine which today is mostly desert. This would be like someone claiming that because a State called Maryland existed inside the Country called "The United States of America" , that people claiming to trace a lineage to "Maryland" somehow would hold title to all of the United States of America.
The Bible is not a historical record, it is a myth and a fiction. Archaelogy shows no record of an Israeli Kingdom as alluded to in the bible. In fact the consensus is that the Hebrews were just one of the many tribes that were in the region at the time.
Furthermore the Exodus is a myth. The Romans did not deport Every Jew. The vast majority remained on in the lands. The group the Romans deported were the Zealots which was a subsection of the larger population.
The bulk of the Inhabitants of PALESTINE which is what the Romans called the region remained in that region later Converting to Islam when it became part of the various Caliphites.
Letto still thinks if he regurgitates enough lies over and over they will become a reality.
Please ignore him.
And for the record, the Jews that were in Palestine throughout the 1800s and the early 1900s made up less than 10% of the population of Palestine. They were Mizrahi Jews, not racist, Zionist immigrants from Europe.
Just look at Israel's current law of return that prohibits native born Palestinians from returning to their homes, while allowing a schmuck from Brooklyn or Miami to get an Israeli citizenship overnight by virtue of his "Jewishness".
Furthermore, the tired argument that Palestinians are a new invention, just look at Zionism and its birth in Eastern Europe in the late 1800s.
You're a psychopath. You have a sickness that needs to be treated, not to mention your blatant hypocrisy.
It is that there are so many zionist like Letto, and the actions of Israel, that I have become convinced that Israel has forfeited any right it might have claimed to exist as a state, especially as a Jewish state. These zionists will never be content to just live in peace until it has wiped out all non-Jews and non-zionists from Palestine, and take everything from them, by any means possible. This leaves only one solution: one democratic state -- maybe called Palestine, or Israel Palestine, or The Holy Lands (with Christians and other religions included) -- where religion has no part of the government, much less a theocracy. This can not happen until the US either decides to stop supporting Israel as an outpost of the empire, or the US collapses so it is no longer able to support Israel -- and one or the other can not be very far away. Whether this change will be relatively peaceful or new holocaust depends on whether Israel and the zionists change their immoral ways in the meantime, and so far it's not looking hopeful.
Interesting questions you raise bluepilgrim,
I agree with everything in your post, but I suspect Israel will endure until the extinction of man (which is not far away) because of it's, what? Third biggest army in the world? And 200 plus nukes?
With all the Israeli-American Bankers on wall street looting the US treasury in broad daylight, It's clear to me at least that Israel is a secret empire who specializes in taking over democracies for their own purposes. They have destroyed the US with their holy wars for money and energy control, and no important decision is made any more by the people of the US. All policy is dictated by the Wall Street Boardroom, (especially, the Godzilla-sized banks).
The solution obviously, is what shakespeare said about the lawyers of his day: First: we have to kill all the bankers! ;-)
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Israel uses their babies and children as "human shields" while they steal the Palestinians' land and destroy the Palestinians' lives.
Trapped in the open-air concentration camp called Gaza are Palestinian families who own the area now called "Siderot," an Israeli town built on land ethnically cleansed of the Palestinians. The Palestinians have every right to shoot rockets at Siderot and other land that has been stolen from them.
If Israel cared about their babies and children, they would not encourage the "settlers" to live on stolen Palestinian land.
You failed to answer my question, petrkrop.
Do you support war crimes and crimes against humanity, if the victims are Jews who live in Israel?
A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice.
You failed to answer my question, petrkrop.
Do you support war crimes and crimes against humanity, if the victims are Jews who live in Israel?
A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice.
------------------------------------------
Notice how lotto didn't say "Israelis", but "Jews". In other words, lotto, doesn't consider Palestinian citizens of Israel to be "humans" (I don't even want to know what he considers Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza to be).
Hey Letto, have you got some sort of light on your desk that blinks whenever CD posts an article about Israel? Talk about one-dimensional! Do you ever think about anything else?
There are no innocent civilians in Israel..Israel is made up of a civilian army you zionist buffoon!
Horrified January 10th, 2010 6:43 pm
"There are no innocent civilians in Israel"
A "true" "progressive" talking.
Look up the word "hypocrite" and then look in the mirror.
I'm not the one who claim that a baby who was born 5 minutes ago, is guilty of some real or imaginary crimes.
I'm not the one who say it's perfectly fine, and not a war crime, to indiscriminately bomb civilian populations - including babies. (as long as they are Jews who live in Israel.)
Well... I will not go down to your level, and call you names. You can find out what you are without any help.
[I'm not the one who say it's perfectly fine, and not a war crime, to indiscriminately bomb civilian populations - including babies. ]
Are you really? Hmmm, so if I will search for a comment by your username on another tread about Gaza I won't find any evidence that you don't argue that? By which I mean that I could swear that you have claimed that the slaughter of children and babies last year was not a war crime at all.
[Letto March 13th, 2009 1:20 pm
[snip]
Targeting civilians is a War-Crime according to the Geneva convention.
As for Israel - It does NOT target civilians. Israel only target millitants.
It is true that many civilians were hit, but that's not because Israel targeted them, but because the Hamas was using these Palestinian civilians as human shield.]
Well, there's at least one example of you saying that when Israel does it it's not a crime... Of course you're quite wrong as Israel _did_ target civvies.
I never said that if Israel is doing a war crime, it's not a war crime. War crime is based on international law. And it is universal.
When X targets civilians it's a war crime.
When Y targets only armed militants and civilians die as collateral damage, it's not necessary a war crime.
Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm
Article 28
The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.
It doesn't matter who X or Y are. Though in the example you've brought, the Hamas acted like X, and Israel acted like Y.
So what, in your twisted mind, crimes did Israel commit when it terrorized and killed 1500 palestinians? They were all militants? Or are you proposing colateral damage? You are a pathetic twisted zionist who probably was picnicking on the hills overlooking Gaza while the iDF was murdering the civilians there.
From the 1400, (or 1500) Palestinians who were killed in that war, about half were militants and about half were innocent civilians. (The exact percentage depends on how you count the armed Hamas police officers.)
The innocent Palestinians were killed in that war not because the IDF targeted them, but because the Hamas chose to commit its war crimes against Israel's civilians, from within concentrated Palestinian civilian population.
That's rich. Unless you had a change of heart since a few weeks ago when I asked you about that very point, you're still nothing but a hypocrite. Back then you said that Israel did not commit war crimes in Gaza. You claimed that no massacres took place. You claimed that an ethnic cleansing was not a trend inflicted on the Palestinians. But, god help us all if a Palestinian boy dared throw a stone at a racist colonialist in the occupied territories who was harassing that boy's family and terrorizing them.
I'll say it again, you have a mental sickness that needs treatment. Your copy and paste jobs and your $1.50 education won't cut it. You're going to have to do better. Since you're in Miami, or whatever, why don't you spend your days on the beach getting drunk. Being a drunk is more dignified than the lies you're spreading on these boards.
To accuse the Palestinians of targeting civilians is the absolute, breathtaking, height of chutzpah, to use one of your Jew-words.
Can you document that they were targeting civilians? The same charges always get leveled at the Palestinians and Hizballah while Israel rains hell on the civilians with the most flagrant of humanitarian crimes.
Hey why don't you go to bed. It's past your bed time anyway, lotto.
As for the above article, Israel has been shelling Gaza for two weeks now, killing two here and three there.
Now that Hamas responded by firing rockets, you come on here spreading lies, lies and more lies pretending it's the "militants'" fault.
Israel considers every non-Zionist to be a militant. Even Jews get labeled anti-Semitic and self hating the minute they don't spew the same racist ideology you seem to adept at peddling.
So why don't you crawl back to the rock under which you were hiding and stay there, eh?
It's getting tedious babysitting you.
Well, killing 1500 people didn't stop the bottle rockets, maybe killing 15,000 will...
Nuttyahoo says that "This is not the way to make peace," I agree with him. But I don't agree that it's only the Palestinian militants who don't want peace. If I was a Palestinian, I'd not want any peace with a nation that occupied my land, and shot my neighbours at will for crimes real and imagined.
"Well, killing 1500 people didn't stop the bottle rockets, maybe killing 15,000 will..."
Killing 1,500,000 will, isn't that the goal?
If not, than perhaps the killing of 1.5 billion will. I mean it's not like they're trying something that's never worked in the past, but expecting that this time it'll work is it? Oh, right. They have tried this in the past, as have many other peoples, and it's never worked... My bad.
Yeah... gotta get ALL them carbon units...
No more US taxpayer money for nations including Israel who are in fact bases for US military domination of the region in which they exist.
The Palestinians are suffering a holocaust under Israel--in the truest sense of the term. A holocaust isn't just a question of numbers; it's an act of genocide. And it's not the right of any one group to use the term. The Palestinian holocaust has been going on for over 60 years and has slaughtered thousands of Palestinians, mostly children. Thousands more are starving, stateless, and living in poverty. They have no human rights under Israeli apartheid, and their land is daily being stolen and given to Jewish religious fanatics. Through all those years, the US and Europe have shamefully sided with the Israeli war criminals, and US tax dollars have propped up this barbaric nation. Time is running out for the Israelis, since despicable regimes like theirs inevitably crash and burn under their own excesses.
I am sure if they had rockets which could be properly targeted then they would target soldiers. But seeing that they don't have such weapons - the civilians end up being collateral damage - to use an often used US and Israeli term.
Israel's military policy does not seem to be 'an eye for an eye' as the Old Testament says. In Operation Cast Lead, there was no reason for retaliation against Gaza at all, yet 2800 Palestinian eyes were taken during a conflict that saw the loss of only 26 Israeli eyes.
Israel has spun out of control. I wish that George Mitchell's comment about restricting aid to that country were true, but somehow we always end up kissing the derrieres of the most corrupt nations in the world. Maybe that's because we can buy their support. Maybe that's because birds of a feather flock together?
The claim of Netanyahu that Iran is getting missiles and rockets into Palestine, if true, suggests a widening of the conflict. Perhaps, Palestinians' only hope for deliverance from the yoke of a ruthless Israel is a rising Iran to give some balance of power in the region. Israel owns Washington so the United States can never be a honest broker. The oil is flowing into the economies of the world. The status quo is set against Palestine.
The sooner oil is used as weapon against Israel the sooner real pressure can be put on her. The United States, in particular, and the West in general, cannot tolerate even a slight drop in supply. The sooner Iran can get a nuclear deterrent, the better it will be for the Palestinians. The corrupt governments in the Middle East are ripe for revolution, but there is no leadership in the world capable of standing up to Israel.
Yet, the continuing onslaught by Israel could very well be the unifying cause for the Muslims in the region. Iraq, once used by the West to check Iran, has more in influence in Iraq then was ever possible before George Bush took office. It seems that the US, exhausted by its continuing escalation in Afghanistan, will sooner or later have to pull its finger out of the dam. and realize that the western Empire days are over. Israel feels very immune to the consequences of unbridled aggression. Palestinians have gotten precious little support from its Muslim brethren.
Maybe Iran will finally lead the way. Until Israel takes real casualties and has only savored the spoils of war, it will not deviate from its wicked ways. Where is a Hebrew prophet, now that they really need one, to find a different set of morals. Will they ever learn? Netanyahu sees hatred as of no consequence. Yet, the balance of power maybe changing. What if the god of Israel is really a loving god? How do you serve love when you are so hateful?
The government of Israel is a nation-sized pathological rageaholic; a textbook case writ large of an abused child growing-- but not growing up-- until it becomes an adult abuser.
Apart from its general "don't let me hear you cry, or I'll give you something to cry about!" policy towards Palestine, it also exhibits the abuser's penchant for absolute violent overreaction whenever the abused dares to raise a hand to it.
This remains the case whether or not this is an instance of legitimate self-defense. And that's always an open question, given the Israeli government's appalling predilection for habitual mendacity, opacity, and deceit.
· Yr Obd't Servant
My compliments for even mentioning that there COULD be a question that the Israeli were involved in self defense.
In spite of the anti-semites opinions here that somehow came to the conclusion that I favor Isreal, and I really have a hard time figuring out where they got the opinion, since I don't, unless its because I do not believe the silly premise that there is no fault except with the Israeli and say so. History is quite plain on that.
The unquestioning acceptance of reportage that supports your prejudices or beliefs always bothers me. Factual reporting is of course different. 3 dead is still 3 dead.
My respects to you.
"I do not believe the silly premise that there is no fault except with the Israeli and say so. "
I agree 100%. Neither side wants peace except on their own terms which means there can't be justice since neither side would agree exactly what justice is. Justice for one would be injustice for the other. Better to agree on not killing each other, on peace, then work on what justice for both will look like. It can be done, but not whilst killing one another.
Sorry, but it's really not balanced as you imply.
The reality is that the differing interests are analogous to those of a criminal home-invader and the homeowner he has turfed out into the street with the collusion of corrupt cops and judiciary. Just because corrupt cops and courts support the criminal doesn't make the crime not-a-crime. The interests of a criminal are *NOT* ethically equivalent to those of his victim.
Palestine has belonged to --been continuously occupied by-- the Palestinians since the Middle Ages at least. The land is theirs by the traditional right-of-long-use. In 1946, the world (or at least the victorious Allies) declared taking land by force to be world-crime 1, the Crime Against Peace, and hanged quite a few Germans and Japanese for it. The Zionists took land by force in 1948, making themselves world-criminals and the US and UK government officials accessories before and after the fact.
I look forward to the day when the psychopathic/psychotic Zionist ruling class and their fellow-travellers in the US also stand in the dock in peril of their unnatural lives.
Who wrote this article?
Stop Stop Stop.
Sorry Reuters, you reported in 2002 that Hamas was democratically elected much to the chagrin of the Western World. Now you use the phrase: "SEIZED POWER", as in: armed takeover. So which is it? So much for mainstream media integrity. No wonder MSM is shrinking in size. I hope Newscorp dies from it's own dishonesty. Since the dipshidt who wrote this article won't sign his name to it, I can't write a letter to competing news services asking them to point this re-write of history out, and shame him into resigning.
Our predator drones set a hell of an example didn't they? Looks like a bad guy there and BOOM. Get the Mossad or CIA to leave a pile of rockets sitting around, and PRESTO; Instant MIC terrorists.
It just couldn't be any easier, or more of a temptation to toss some harmless firecrackers over the wall to some kids who are unwitting patsies.
As a taxpayer and a voter, I'm SICK of it. Get angry. Cancel the subscription to the newspapers and magazines, and jerk the TV cable out of the wall. Blog about these atrocities (15 year old boy vs. F-16) until you die. The only terrorist we need to be afraid of sits in the top floor of a skyscraper at Newscorp.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
just got back from seeing "Avatar". I'm no mood to argue with swaggering Zionist aggressors against a down-trodden people and land.