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Israel Hunts Syria Infiltrators After Day of Bloodshed
Hundreds of police fanned out across the Golan Heights on Monday in search of refugees who crossed over from Syria in some of the bloodiest violence in years along Israel's borders.
A Palestinian protester holds up a large mock key symbolizing the right of return of refugees during clashes that erupted at a demonstration marking the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, or 'catastrophe.' (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)
In Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories, people gathered to mourn the 14 people killed when Israeli troops opened fire on thousands of protesters who sought to breach its northern borders.
Hundreds were injured in the occupied Golan Heights, as well as in clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank and northern Gaza Strip as Palestinians marked the anniversary of Israel's founding in 1948, in an event known in Arabic as the "nakba" or "catastrophe."
Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said house-to-house searches were ongoing on Monday afternoon and roadblocks had been set up around the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams, where protesters who crossed over from Syria gathered.
On Monday morning, police detained a 34-year-old Syrian, who was trying to leave the town in a taxi driven by a Palestinian from east Jerusalem, he said.
Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told army radio the military remained "in a state of high alert in the north, the south and the centre."
Defence chiefs also extended a 24-hour lockdown on the occupied Palestinian territories which had been due to end at midnight on Sunday.
The White House accused Syria on Monday of stoking protests in the Golan Heights as a "distraction" from its repression of anti-government protests, which entered a third month Sunday.
The United States is "strongly opposed to the Syrian government's involvement in inciting yesterday's protests in the Golan Heights," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.
"Such behaviour is unacceptable and does not serve as a distraction from the Syrian government's ongoing repression of demonstrators in its own country," Carney said.
Sunday's violence was some of the worst in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights since a 1974 truce accord, and the clashes along the Lebanese border marked the bloodiest confrontation since the 2006 war between the two neighbours.
Most of the victims were in Lebanon, where 10 people were killed and 110 injured when Israeli troops opened fire on people trying to scale the border fence.
Another four people were killed when they entered the Golan Heights, along with hundreds of other protesters, Syrian medics said.
The Israeli army said "dozens" had been injured in the two incidents, along with 13 soldiers.
In Gaza, 125 people were injured, five of them seriously, when troops opened fire as more than 1,000 Palestinians marched on the northern Erez crossing.
Elsewhere, 29 others were injured in clashes in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem.
Palestinian refugee camps across Lebanon declared a day of mourning, with shops observing a general strike ahead of the funerals for the 10 victims, which were taking place in four refugee camps on Monday.
In the Palestinian territories, President Mahmud Abbas announced a two-hour strike in all public institutions except schools and ordered all Palestinian flags be flown at half-mast.
Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese Shiite militia group Hezbollah praised the protesters, saying they had "given the nakba new meaning," and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, speaking from Damascus, condemned Israel's "new Zionist crime against our people who were demonstrating peacefully."
Lebanon has filed a complaint with the United Nations, urging it to make Israel "halt its aggression and provocation" while Syria warned that the Jewish state would bear full responsibility for its "criminal" actions.
Israel responded by saying it would file its own complaint against both Syria and Lebanon, accusing them of violating Israeli borders.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep concern over the violence and urged all sides to show the "utmost responsibility" to avoid new hostilities, a spokesman said.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish state was "determined" to defend its borders against protesters bent on denying Israel's right to exist.
More than 760,000 Palestinians -- estimated today to number 4.8 million with their descendants -- were pushed into exile or driven out of their homes in the conflict that accompanied the Jewish state's foundation.
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27 Comments so far
Show AllWhere is Moses? I think he found the wrong promised land.
By "refugees" is this article implying that the Syrians whom the Israeli occupation forces are hunting down may be trying to escape the violence of their own government? I guess all Arabs look the same to a racist zionist.
Just more knee-jerk American support for Israel. In every Arab nation where the people are rising up against dictators (all supported by the U.S.), the press reports it as an Arab Spring, a democratic uprising, a peoples' movement! But apparently not when those people are Palestinians rising up against the Israeli jackboot. If any people in the Mideast had a right to protest, it's the Palestinians. They have endured decades of an illegal military occupation, have had their land stolen by Jews from New York, Russia and other nations, have had their children imprisoned and tortured, and have had their homes and olive groves demolished. And when they try to resist, they are labeled "terrorists" by ignorant journalists and corrupt politicians. Israel is in violation of UN resolutions, of human rights laws, and of the rules of war. By international law, Israel should not annex and build settlements on land captured during war--but it does, and those settlers are the most rabid racists in Israeli society. Israel's own high court condemned the apartheid wall it built to capture more land from Palestinians, yet Isreal continues to build it. And what civilized and democratic country demolishes peoples' homes and blockades their ports, denying them shelter, food and medicine? This is your "democratic" Israel that lives off the American taxpayers because corrupt politicians pocket money from AIPAC. The only way to end these egregious crimes against humanity is to boycott Israel and support Move Over AIPAC.
The United Nations and its corrupt Security Council, dominated by Western class states has managed to corrupt General Sec. President Ban Ki- Moon and international laws to become adjuncts to the criminal, fascist Empire of the Amerikan-Nato alliance. When class hierarchies can negate democracies for totalitarian policies, within states, and do the same through class hierarchies of nation states, negating international laws for blackmailing military arrangements, the function of the U.N. has no purpose anymore, other than to become part of the GLOBAL FASCIST MATRIX of Nato, Amerika and Israel.
God is small and individual.
-------------------------------------
Rights to exist are not new.
Only God has no right to exist,
since Gods self chosen crew,
is chosen by weapons and fist.
Its the weapons and cruelty,
that guides human souls.
Hate combined with credulity,
turns lifes prisoners into ghouls.
Religious zombies of all sects,
hate and fear each other.
None of them the truth respects,
instead strive to kill and smother.
Survival instincts of the strongest,
worship themselves as true goddies,
They race to breed the longest,
and need to kill all other bodies.
From humanity are held apart,
Nationalists, Christians, Muslims or Jews,
abuse politics, nature, science and art,
to reflect their own heretical views.
The brain ego always believes,
the universe made it special.
Every individual god thieves,
and enjoys life when in denial.
Each little god will die,
and so they recruit in numbers.
Teach each their big god lie,
while intelligence slumbers.
Agreed, very much. BRAVO!
Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors. If they were smart and that's a big if, they would seek peace. If you want a better neighborhood, then be a better neighborhood. Their bullying tactics will only stretch but so long. What will they do, nuke the entire Arab world? Sooner or later Israel will have to stop it's brutality and end it's apartheid of the Palestinians. And the Palestinians will realize suicide diplomacy doesn't work either.
God, your children are misbehaving again
Syria deserves encouragement for its willingness to allow protesters to challenge the Israeli boundary. Syria long has supported Palestine by opposing Israel's expansion into the land of others. It is time-- way OVERtime-- for the United States to end reflexive support for Israel, and to discontinue aid to Israel. Then peace may have a chance. = George Beres
When Israel illegally seized the Golan Heights from Syria, tens of thousands of Syrians were violently displaced from the Golan Heights. So for them to want to to return home is more than understandable. Unlike Jewish emigres ``returning'' to Israel, their claim is not based on land ownership there 2,000 years ago.
This has gone too far. I shall refuse to vote for any congressional incumbent
unless Israel returns to it's 1948 borders and the Palestineans have returned.
I want to thank every single person who understands and supports the Palestinian effort against Israel. It may seem out of place, but most don't understand the extent to which these people have suffered and how much neglect they have been served. Reading comments like these helps me believe that there are still intelligent and moral people on this planet.
The Palastinians were offered citizenship in Israel at the time of its birth but decided they would destroy it instead and began murdering and destroying Israel. They caused their own suffering and it could have been very different for them but they decided to kill instead of becoming citizens of the new state. Smart move, huh? And where are they today? Where they belong for their evil intentions and actions. Not to mention how many thousands of innocent people they have murdered all around the world since then. Notice no Arab country will take them in. Wonder why???? Not trustworthy, that's why...they are the enemies of civilization. Now they have Hamas, another enemy of civilization that they voted into office. Good move! They repeatedly prove they are unworthy of a country of their own. Barbarian savages. Sad but true.
Johnny
Please can I have some of the drugs you're obviously on?
Clearly you have never engaged with a Palestinian Israeli (Third Class), possibly never even visited the region and haven't a clue about the true history of the region.
"They repeatedly prove they are unworthy of a country of their own" - It was their country in the first place which was stolen from them at the point of a gun by people totally unconnected with the region.
As far as so called Israeli "borders" in the Gollan Heights are concerned, this is another chunk of land stolen from the Syrians at the point of a gun.
Israel - the only true Kelptocracy in the Middle East!
Interestingly, in the UK "Johnny" is just another name for a condom, now there's irony for you!
THATS THE EXPLANATION FOR "ETHNIC CLEANSING"
(See "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", Ilan Pappe)
The Palestinians could "offer" Israelis citizenship in the Palestinian (sovereign,
independent) State. Whether the Israelis who "choose" to apply would have
to declare their loyalty to a Muslim State would be for Palestine to decide.
According to this contribution (and there are many like it), one could then
say it is the "fault" of Israelis if they "choose" not to join Palestine.
Of course, recognition of Palestinian ethnic cleansing and slaughter ,violence
(see Pappe, op cit) cannot be part of any discussion. Neither the US nor
Israel recognizes it as having happened at all. So one can only suppose
it didn't happen. No white phosphorous bombs were dropped, no mosques destroyed, no Palestinians massacred, no schools or hospitals were destroyed....and on and on.
Remember the Nakba !!
email:peterloeb@yahoo.com
But of course if your fucked up blame the victim racism was applied in reverse, for example saying that Jews deserved what they got in the second world war because they got too much money, power, influence in all walks of life, you'd loudly denounce it as anti-semitism. And of course you'd be right, but not nearly as right as when I am when I say you're a racist scum.
As for the Israeli ethnic cleansing apologists that are popping up again on CD, rather than take the bait and respond to a professional troller, I'll once again post the following:
Apologists use tools such as Megaphone Desktop (www.giyus.org) to alert themselves when articles about Israel's destructive policies appear on the internet so they can use tactics like those below to try to win public or opinion, divert attention from the article or simply clog the comment thread by picking discussion thread fights.
Apologists' tactics in regards to the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (they will also attack this list, but nevertheless use the tactics of the list):
1 – Avoid talking about the substance of the article, the occupation, the ethnic cleansing and the illegal acts: land confiscation, house demolitions and evictions, burning and razing of Palestinian farmland, illegal land annexations, specific apartheid policies in the West Bank, shooting and arrests of non-violent demonstrators on occupied land, restriction of movement, land and sea blockade, restrictions of imports of medicine, food, school supplies and building materials, illegal shooting of Gazan farmers and fishermen...
2 – Attack the messenger (CD poster or whoever criticizes the US/Israel's ethnic cleansing)
3 – If the critic is a Jew, call the Jew anti-semetic or a self-hating Jew
4 – Make it sound like Israel is the victim although Israel is the aggressor and occupier.
5 – Point to other injustices in the world to deflect attention of Israel's illegal acts.
6 – State that Jews and Palestinians have a long history of conflict therefore the situation is unresolvable (ignoring Israel's illegal occupation) in order to maintain status quo and further Israel's expansion of illegal settlements
7 – Claim Israel has biblical rights to Palestinian land (thus God supports the ethnic cleansing)
8 – Claim the occupied territory was either no man's land or another countries land to justify Israel's illegal confiscation of the land and the people on it.
9 - Try to make the ridiculous argument that Palestinians are a threat to Israel or have the capacity to destroy Israel, which they don't and will never have due to Israel's massive military with over 1200 Air Force aircraft, 18 Navy ships, 14,000 Army land based weapons, laser guided bombs and missles, illegally used cluster and phosphorus bombs, and nuclear weapons (and this list is conservative).
10 – Make illegitimate arguments or use inaccurate/misleading facts to justify Israel's illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing policy that it is impossible to respond to them all because every time you try, another illegitimate argument is made. (The Bush administration was a master of this in the buildup to the Iraq war. It seemed every week, another piece of unsupported evidence was made to support attacking Iraq. And every time you challenged one illegitimate argument, the arguer (usually a Fox News viewer) would abandon that argument and jump to the next illegitimate argument and this would continue to the point of exhaustion.)
11 – Switch between tactics 1-10 above in your non-stop argument whenever one of the tactics runs out of steam.
12 – In regards to blogging, create discussion fights and go off topic (article is rarely discussed).
13 – In regards to blogging, apologist is either ignorant or feigns ignorance and attempts to attack the credibility of the comment by asking for a link to the source (effort to waste time of blogger when information is readily available on the internet and the apologist doesn't provide support for his own misinformation). If you don't respond, e.g., because you don't monitor the site all day, apologist discounts your argument, and if you respond, the apologist changes the subject, makes a new attack, or ignores the response.
That really sums it up. Great post.
The term 'refugees' is ambiguous here and generally refers to people with whom one sympathizes. Is it intended in this article to mean that these are refugees fleeing from the repression in Syria now, or the refugees who fled from the Israeli occupation and annexation then? Either way, it is surprising to see the Israelis cast as refugee hunters, however accurate. It is rare because the Israelis usually get the most positive spin from the MSM and this ain't that.
And am I dreaming or did they change the headline from "refugees" to "infiltrators?" If so, then I won't be surprised if the word 'refugee' disappears entirely from the article.
How soon you forget! Israel has either bombed or invaded Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. Israel is a BAD neighbor. How did thay get there? With a swath of death and distruction from Egypt to the Mideast killing "every man, woman, child and beast of burden". Their history is in the Bible. They call themselves "The Chosen Ones". Everyone else is Jack Shit, not just the Palestinians. They started out blood thirsty killing machines and have maintained their inate nature. BenLaden said that he bombed the Towers because of "The supression of the Palestinian people." He again repeated it 2 weeks after the bombing. We were warned. How is that for history
Not to put too fine a point on it Claudia, All those countries have invaded Israel as well along with Egypt. (Except Lebanon which sided with, but did not supply troops in any invasion of Israel.) There is room to point fingers in all directions in the ME although to do so here, is instant death... Not much room for debate on this forum. Just an echo chamber.
The article is very misleading as it does not explain clearly that the protesters came to Israel's borders to remember the Nakba. It fails to mention that the first Palestinian was shot on Friday in Jerusalem ( by an Jewish-Israeli infiltrator=settler). It quotes Haniyeh out of context: "Speaking after dawn prayers in Gaza City, Haniyeh said the rallies demonstrated that Palestinians would not forget their homeland. "This is the first year crowds will march to Palestinian borders, annulling the old saying that elderly people die and younger generations forget the past."(Haniyeh: Nakba marked in changed region
, Ma'an News)
Israel has a right to defend itself in accordance with international law - but acts very much like the other thuggish regimes in the region.
Speaking of rights and the UN:
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country - Article 13(2), 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UN resolution 194 resolved in 1949 that the Palestinian refugees wishing to return to their homes should be permitted at the earliest practicable date.
UN resolution 3236 passed in 1974 declared the Palestinian right of return to be an "inalienable right"
As for rewriting history: I have to give that one a pass as Zionists are the world's most successful manipulators of history.
@#$%^!!
There is no law on this Earth, and we are ruled by psychopathic monsters who eat their own. What the fuck else is there to say?
Tue, May 17, 2011
'It was always my dream to reach Jaffa', Syrian infiltrator says
Hassan Hijazi, 28, surrenders to police a day after he pushed through Syrian border, and then hitch-hiked and took a public bus to Jaffa in search of what he says is his parents' former house.
By Reuters
A man identifying himself as a Syrian civil servant said on Monday he hitch-hiked and rode a bus alongside Israeli soldiers to Tel Aviv after pushing through an Israeli frontier fence with Palestinian demonstrators.
"It was my dream to reach Jaffa," Hassan Hijazi, 28, said on Channel 10 TV, from the biblical city now a section of Israel's commercial hub, 130 miles from the Golan Heights where he had penetrated from Syria on Sunday.
Hijazi, who later surrendered to Israeli police who said he was being questioned, was among dozens who penetrated Israeli-held territory in a protest marking Israel's founding, a day mourned by Palestinians as a "nakba" or catastrophe.
Similar protests were staged across the Lebanese and Gaza borders with Israel, and deadly confrontations ensued with Israeli forces in which 13 people were killed.
Many of those who broke through a fence in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally, had already been apprehended.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that in addition to Hijazi who has turned himself in, three more Syrian nationals were arrested on Monday in the vicinity of Majdel Shams, the Golan Heights frontier village near where most had infiltrated.
The channel said that Hijazi had gone to Jaffa in search of what had been his parents' home before they joined the ranks of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee or be driven away during a war over Israel's founding in 1948.
He told of how after hitch-hiking in a minivan, he had also taken a public bus to the Israeli city, alongside uniformed Israeli combat soldiers.
Asked about Israel's objections to seeing Palestinian refugees and their offspring, who now number in the millions, returning to former homes, Hijazi replied: "I imagine there are many Palestinians who don't want to come back here, just like there are many Jews who also don't want to stay."
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/it-was-always-my-dream-to-reach-jaffa-syrian-infiltrator-says-1.362166
If you want to know what the "key" is all about watch the UK TV mini-series "The Promise" it's a rather bizarre scenario but the actual fact based plot compontents (The first ever IED planted by Irgun at the King David Hotel, killing nearly 100 UK soldiers who only 18 months previously had been fighting in Germany, thus liberating the people in the death camps, Deir Yassin massacre, the hanging of the British Sergeants by Irgun, etc are spot on). It's up for a BAFTA in the UK and the Zionists are trying to have it banned. (see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Promise-DVD-Claire-Foy/dp/B004G5YVC8/ref=amb_link_159958087_1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=auto-sparkle&pf_rd_r=15PXD6VC6YHHGZ217N0G&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_p=240716727&pf_rd_i=the%20promise)
I discover during the course of a conversation with a Palestinian recently that somewhere in just about every Palestinian family they have the key to their old house stolen from them by Zionists in 1948.