Last night I got embroiled in a discussion on an "I/P," or Israel/Palestine post. I find such discussions sad and sometimes scary and always futile. But I go to them, and this time I got more involved. One of my comments was "hide rated," and hours later when I saw it I did some research on Arab involvement with the Nazis, looking for sites to link to, and got thoroughly depressed. This morning, still feeling sad, I decided to write this diary.
Got a short and sweet email from my good friend Makbula Nassar (مقبولة نصار), a Palestine reporter who does radio and print out of Haifa. She was recently interviewed by Haaretz.com and proudly sent the link to the buddies. I thought some of you might find it a great read, thus gladly I share.
So there was some violent infighting a few days ago in Gaza. Hamas blamed the recent car bombing there which killed 5 militants and a little girl on the Hilles clan, who were the last remaining Fatah stronghold there.
That's one violent reaction to a bombing. Raid an entire neighborhood with overwhelming force and send a dozen (of their own) Palestinian children to the hospital. Undoubtedly, Hamas used the bombing as a pretext to solidify thier iron grip on Gaza by driving out the Hilles clan - nobody knows who really did it, there won't be a trial , no appointed attorneys for defendants.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas forces battled Fatah-linked fighters with mortars and machine guns in a crowded Gaza neighborhood Saturday, leaving at least four dead in the worst Palestinian infighting in nine months.
About 80 people were injured, 12 of them children, hospital officials said.
Whoever scheduled Gordon Brown’s recent visit to Israel is surely out of a job. Brown’s dreary, etiolated performance – appropriate for a political corpse – was rendered even flatter by its proximity to Barack Obama’s headline-hogging whirlwind tour of Europe and the Middle East. Despite the differences in style, however, both politicians took to the podium in Israel with a similar message: one of support for the latter’s rejectionist expansionism.
Israel has agreed to move part of the wall closer to the green line.
After a five-year battle, the defense establishment has finally given in: It agreed to dismantle a 2.4-kilometer stretch of the separation fence north of Qalqilyah. The move will return 2,600 dunams of agricultural land to its Palestinian owners.
The dismantled stretch will be replaced by 4.9 kilometers of fencing closer to the Green Line, at a cost of more than NIS 50 million. The new route largely follows the one proposed years ago by the Council for Peace and Security.
So in a recent diary I threw out the proposition that the hundreds of Fatah members just arrested in Gaza (and the dozens of Hamas dudes arrested in the WB) could be facing torture at the hands of their captors.
One or two posters in the thread doubted that assertion. This diary should tidy up any outstanding questions regarding the widespread use of torture by both Hamas and Fatah.
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Two human rights groups on Monday decried widespread mistreatment and torture in Palestinian jails -- an issue taking on fresh urgency with a new round of mass arrests over the weekend in both in Hamas-run Gaza and in the Fatah-controlled West Bank.
Two reports, one by the international group Human Rights Watch and the other by independent Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, condemned Fatah and Hamas for the systematic use of arrests, torture and ill treatment against their political opponents.
When discussing Israel one of the questions that perpetually arises is the question of land ownership among Jewish people, in terms of the size of the state of Israel, after the smoke cleared in 1948. The perpetual charge is that Israel, Zionists, or Jews, "stole the land."
In order to put this into any sort of perspective the first thing to note is that Israel is about the size of New Jersey. Its population as of May, 2008, was 7,280,000 people, about 20% of whom are Arab.
In 1948, the year of the War for Israeli Independence, there were 538,000 Jews living in the area partitioned by the UN for Israel, alongside 397,000 native Arabs.</div>
The resolution of Israel/Palestine dispute was to be George W Bush's great legacy. He would go down in history as the one who brought peace to the region and people would forget the quagmire a little further right on the map. In the heady days of 2007 he brokered the Annapolis understanding in which the two parties affirmed:
"In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, we agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements.
"We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008."
Hard luck George, your legacy has gone. On Monday Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert abandoned that promise.
JERUSALEM -- While meeting with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salim Fayyad on Wednesday, Barack Obama appealed to him on behalf of a suburban Chicago woman who is fighting to get her four daughters back after their father refused to let them leave the West Bank.
Obama handed Fayyad a note and some background information about the situation, "asking the prime minister to look into this issue."
Colleen Davis Bargouthi, who lives in south suburban Midlothian, pressed Obama to visit her daughters, who live near Ramallah. The girls, ages 6 to 11, have been there since 2007, when her husband, Yasser Shibli Bargouthi, took his family to the West Bank to visit relatives.
Obama made a specific request of the Palestinian Authority in the note, according to a statement. "I would ask that the minister of justice look into this case, and our consul general will follow up."
So Hamas is going buck wild in Gaza after 5 of their operatives and a 6 year old girl were killed in a bombing there yesterday. Hundreds of Fatah operatives were arrested, their offices raided even though Fatah has denied any involvement in the bombing.
GAZA CITY: Clashes broke out in Gaza City on Sunday, wounding at least six people, as Hamas-run security forces pressed on with a territory-wide crackdown on rival Palestinian factions after a deadly bombing. The fighting erupted when Hamas-run police moved to arrest members of the Army of Islam, a small shadowy group believed to have links to Al-Qaeda.
"Hamas forces came to arrest us early this morning, just after midnight," one member of the group who asked not to be identified told reporters.
"There was fighting for several hours, with rocket-propelled grenades, explosions and gunfire, but they did not arrest anyone," he added.
So Hamas has publicly pointed the finger at Fatah, yet goes after a shadowy clan in gaza, the Army of Islam today. hmmm. That doesn't make much sense, does it? I mean Hamas isn't using this episode as an excuse to frantically clamp down on Fatah, are they? You decide.
A bomb went off in Gaza killing 5 Hamas operatives and a 5 year old Palestinian girl.
The Hamas government in Gaza convened on Saturday for an emergency meeting following the unexplained car blast that killed five of the group's operatives and a 6-year old girl. In response to the explosion, Hamas security forces launched a broad arrest operation and have so far taken a reported 200 Fatah operatives into custody to the prison facility known as 'Gaza's Guantanamo.
Uh oh. Torture anyone? 200 arrests for one bombing. Jesus, that's a bit extreme , oh yeah, that's Hamas we're talking about..... So ok, that sounds about right.
A Hamas spokesman vowed the perps will be hung and shot simultaneously.
"Those who carried out this crime are making war on God, on the security of Gaza, and on the resistance," he said. "They will not be released after six months but will be hanged from the gallows and shot."
Last night, I watched Obama making his speech in Berlin where the infamous wall once stood, "the walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand," he said. I imagined him delivering the same speech with the separation wall Israel has created in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis, in the background...but it was only a fleeting fantasy.
I don't know why I do this. A friend of mine wrote a song called "Futility Attacks," with the line
"And the sound of the washing machine
in the basement
reminds us
we could have saved some money..."
I always feel a futility attack when I write about Palestine.
Here's someone who's more eloquent than I, even though some of the writing makes my gorge rise. In this column, Nicholas Kristof discussses solutions to the Israel/Palestine problem by addressing arguments of those who see Israel's draconian policies as right"
So no surprises here. As anyone who knows anything about Hamas and isn't a Hamas apologist predicted, Hamas has been busy rearming, planting mines, building new and improved missiles, smuggling in better rockets and weapons, consolidating their iron grip on Gaza. I mean it's the A B C's of Islamist rule.
Hamas has been taking advantage of the truce in order to plant mines in wide areas in the Gaza Strip, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin warned the Knesset's Foreign Affairs on Tuesday.
"This is one of the reasons I objected to the ceasefire," he said. "I'm not saying how we should do things, but in order to fight terror we have no choice but to be present in the area."
The Shin Bet chief added that the truce is enabling Hamas to get stronger. They have not abandoned their long-term plans. They were not required to stop the weapons smuggling and return (kidnapped soldier) Gilad Shalit in return, and they have achieved their main goals."
That the Republican water carrier and New York Times columnist David Brooks would blast Barack Obama's Berlin speech was utterly predictable. (Kevin Drum even predicted the title of the piece, "Playing Innocent Abroad.") To be sure, by slandering Obama's call to "remake the world" with epithets including "saccharine," "treacle," and "Disney," Brooks did not disappoint. Of course, even less surprising is that back in 2005, David Brooks had only glowing praise for President Bush's democratization agenda and its audacious vision to "imagine new worlds."
More insanity in Palestinian Arab schools. Pay attention at the very beginning — literally five seconds in — and you’ll see the kiddie jihadis rush the stage as the "Israeli soldiers" fall down dead.
Great. Young kids being turned into terror tots. Like father like son. You've got Hamas flags, black hoods, fake ? guns, missiles and goose stepping marches around the stage in front of beaming parents.
They are five and six years old.
The children of Hamas.
You be the judge.
I don't see any love thy neighbor anywhere.
Watch this bizarre display of Hamas indoctrination and hate.
