"Cease-fire in Gaza may be short-lived; Israeli official says invasion is likely" by Jodi Rudoren | New York Times July 17, 2014
When I get back in the air you will see why I don't trust a word she writes.
TEL AVIV — Even as Israel and Hamas agreed to pause hostilities briefly Thursday at the request of the United Nations, a senior Israeli military official said that his government was increasingly likely to order a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip that it had hoped to avoid.
Though Israel initially set limited goals of halting the rocket assaults against it and degrading Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates Gaza, the group’s tenacity and surprisingly deep arsenal have to led to widespread calls to expand the mission.
By who? Other than the psychopathic power wielders in Israel?
The military official said that only “boots on the ground” could eradicate terrorism from Gaza and indicated that Israel was even considering a long-term reoccupation of the coastal territory.
You have been warned.
But with the Palestinian death toll reaching 214 on Wednesday, Israel and the Gaza militants agreed to end the violence for five hours Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
It's going to get a lot higher. Over 700 now.
For Israel, it was a move that might help mitigate international criticism of rising civilian casualties, and that carried little cost: The military warned that if Hamas or other groups “exploited” the “humanitarian window” to attack Israel, it would “respond firmly and decisively.”
Yeah, well, ALL the P.R. PRE$$ in the world isn't going to remove the stain on that band of war criminals.
Hours earlier, Israel had called up 8,000 reservists in addition to the 42,000 troops already mobilized. With no progress reported from Cairo, where President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority had gone to discuss terms to end the fighting, Israel’s airstrikes intensified despite what the military official acknowledged were diminishing returns.
Who cares? Make the rubble and the corpses, too. U.S. taxpayers will repleni$h it all, too!!
*************
The military official, who has been briefing Israeli ministers responsible for strategic decisions and spoke on condition of anonymity under military protocol, told a handful of international journalists in a briefing at the military’s Tel Aviv headquarters an Israeli takeover of Gaza would not be “a huge challenge,” estimating that it would take “a matter of days or weeks.”
Looking like weeks now. Maybe months. Hamas is fighting hard.
************
The stark assessment came as Israel bombed scores of targets, many of them homes in northern Gaza, after warning 100,000 residents via leaflets, text messages, and automated telephone calls to evacuate by 8 a.m.
Ummm, small point, WHERE are they supposed to GO?!!!!
Palestinian health officials said that more than 1,500 people had been injured since the Israeli operation began July 8, and that several young children, including four boys on a beach, had been killed Wednesday in separate strikes.
That has become a NOTORIOUS and SEMINAL EVENT that will be remembered LONG AFTER! It has DEFINED the CONFLICT!
The lone Israeli casualty, a man killed by a mortar round as he distributed food to soldiers Tuesday near the Erez crossing into Gaza, was eulogized at his funeral by Israel’s president-elect, Reuven Rivlin.
Man, am I ever sick of the $uck-a$$ Jewi$h media.
In Washington, President Obama called for both sides to exercise restraint, and Secretary of State John Kerry continued making phone calls to the region.
“The Israeli people and the Palestinian people don’t want to live like this,” Obama told reporters. “We will use all of our diplomatic resources and relationships to support efforts of closing a deal on a cease-fire.”
Obama reiterated his support for Israel while expressing sorrow over civilian casualties.
“Israel has a right to defend itself from rocket attacks,” he said. “But over the past two weeks, we’ve all been heartbroken by the violence, especially the death and injury of so many innocent civilians in Gaza.”
Sorry, no buts here.
Did someone hear something?
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And IN WE GO!
"Israel launches invasion of Gaza; Says ground attack targets tunnels" by Jodi Rudoren and Anne Barnard | New York Times July 18, 2014
JERUSALEM — Tanks rolled into the northern Gaza Strip Thursday night and naval gunboats pounded targets in the south as Israel began a ground invasion after 10 days of aerial bombardment failed to stop Palestinian militants from showering Israeli cities with rockets.
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
It shows.
Israeli leaders said the incursion was a limited one focused on tunnels into its territory like the one used for a predawn attack Thursday that was thwarted. They said it was not intended to topple Hamas, the militant Islamist movement, from its longtime rule of Gaza.
That is a lot different than the long occupation reported yesterday. WTF?
As rockets continued to rain down on Israeli cities, a military spokesman said the mission’s expansion was “not time bound” and was aimed to ensure Hamas operatives were “pursued, paralyzed, and threatened” as it targeted “terrorist infrastructure” in the north, south, and east of Gaza “in parallel.”
As midnight approached Thursday, residents of some sparsely populated farmland in northern Gaza were cowering in their homes, afraid to answer mobile phones or peek out windows. Some sent text messages reporting that they could hear tank shelling, heavy artillery, and F-16s dropping bombs. Moussa al-Ghoul, 63, who lives northwest of Beit Lahiya, said his neighborhood had turned into “a war zone” with tanks surrounding his home, having destroyed those of two of his sons. He said shells were landing everywhere.
Gaza news outlets reported that electricity had been cut to 80 percent of the coastal territory after cables bringing power from Israel were damaged.
They are dependent on Israel for the lights?
After the early-morning tunnel episode, the day settled into an extended calm as both sides abided a United Nations request for a five-hour humanitarian pause in the fighting. But by 3 p.m., the violence roared back as the Palestinian death toll neared 250 and more than 120 rockets rained on cities throughout southern and central Israel all afternoon and evening.
“We will strike Hamas and we are determined to restore peace to the state of Israel,” the military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, told reporters in a conference call. “It will progress according to the situation assessment and according to our crafted and designed plan of action to enable us to carry out this mission.”
Israel began to draft 18,000 reservists, adding to 50,000 already mobilized in recent days; Lerner said the ground forces would include infantry and artillery units, armored and engineer corps, supported by Israel’s “vast intelligence capabilities,” air force, and navy.
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, called the invasion “a dangerous step.”
“The occupation will pay its price expensively,” he said in a statement, referring to Israel, “and Hamas is ready for confrontation.”
I'm sure they would rather it be on the ground and in the streets than from the air.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel did not make a public statement Thursday night, but several of his ministers said on television that a unanimous Cabinet had authorized Netanyahu and the defense minister a few days ago to send in ground troops when they deemed necessary.
“With a heavy heart we embarked on this operation, in order to destroy the tunnels, as just this morning we have seen their deadly potential,” said Naftali Bennett, the economy minister and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party. “Difficult days are ahead of us,” he added. “We are also operating against the rockets and all of the existing threats, but the number one target is the tunnels.”
Israel did not send ground troops into Gaza during eight days of cross border violence in 2012.
It was condemned internationally for an intense three-week air-and-ground campaign in 2008-09, when 1,400 Palestinians were killed along with 13 Israelis in fierce street fighting.
Over 100 to 1. That's Hitlerian, or so I've been told.
Israel originally seized the territory in the Six-Day War in 1967 and evacuated its settlers and soldiers in 2005, but maintained restrictions on imports, exports, and travel for the Palestinians left behind.
The military operation started about 10 p.m., hours after Israel bombed a rehabilitation hospital and another airstrike killed four children playing on a Gaza City rooftop — an echo of the previous day’s bombing that left four young children, all cousins, dead on a beach.
That is what I will be thinking of when the children are waived in my face.
At the Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City, most but not all of the 17 patients and 25 doctors and nurses were evacuated before the electricity was cut and heavy bombardments nearly destroyed the building, doctors said.
“We evacuated them under fire,” said Dr. Ali Abu Ryala, a hospital spokesman. “Nurses and doctors had to carry the patients on their backs, some of them falling off the stairway. There is an unprecedented state of panic in the hospital.”
Oh, yeah, btw, bombing hospitals is a war crime. There is no excuse even though Israel offers one.
Along the Gaza City seafront, as tanks entered the north, there was a near-constant staccato of gunboats firing in bursts of five blasts each, sending flashes above the dark water. They were shelling a target south of Gaza’s port, the red lights of their barrels visible from shore, the impact of their artillery echoing a second later.
Earlier, warplanes whooshed over the city as they have for more than a week, and the high-pitched hum of drones could be heard over the call to prayer from mosques to end the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Oh, right, this is all being done during Ramadan.
Talk about adding insult to injury! What sphincters!
Communications with Gaza have become problematic” since the ground invasion, said a statement from Christopher Gunness of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides health care, education, and other services for the more than half of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, who are classified as Palestinian refugees. The agency is currently sheltering thousands who evacuated their homes.
It had been a roller-coaster day, starting with Israel’s early-morning report that it had foiled the attack through the tunnel at about 4:30 a.m. by striking from the air at 13 Palestinians who emerged from it and tried to infiltrate a kibbutz, the first time that had happened in the current conflagration. Lerner said later that the incursion “illustrates the clear and immediate threat we have from the Gaza Strip,” and noted that Israel had uncovered four similar tunnels into its territory over the last 18 months.
Oh, STINK! Now I doubt the story is even real!
The humanitarian pause urged by the United Nations started at 10 a.m., and Gaza residents filled the streets, shopping for food and toys and crowding cash machines open for the first time since the operation began.
After Israel bombed the bank?
But the lull was pierced around noon by a brief flurry of mortars fired from Gaza, with rockets fired toward Israel precisely at 3 p.m., the designated endpoint of the lull. The strikes continued through the afternoon and evening.
At one point, there was word from Egypt that an agreement had been reached for a cease-fire starting at 6 a.m. Friday. Instead, the violence only increased.
“We have to look at this as an operation in stages: its first stage was attacks from the air and sea, and this is the second stage, where we reach contact with the Hamas,” Eli Marom, commander of Israel’s navy from 2007 to 2011, said on Israel’s Channel 2 News. “You have to understand this is a long campaign. This is only its second stage, and there can be other stages.”
Michael B. Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to Washington, said in a late-night interview that Netanyahu had “exercised extraordinary restraint up until now” by not engaging ground troops and “paid a heavy political price for it.” Thursday’s tunnel attack, he said, “was a game changer,” adding: “Essentially, Hamas invaded Israel first.”
Translation: It's a HOAX! And this idea that it is Israel who has been restrained and paid the price when the death tolls are so out of whack.... save the somber and morose violin music.
In contrast to the Iron Dome missile defense system that Israel says has stopped some 300 rockets from hitting populated areas over the last 10 days, Oren said, “We don’t have a response to the tunnels.”
Related: Under Israel's Iron Dome
Also see: Evil Egypt
Suggest such things in America and you are a racist, according to the supremacist Jew War Daily.
He added, “They are reinforced concrete tunnels, basically impregnable from the air and their openings are camouflaged.”
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Thought you might like to take a look at Gaza in scale:
Wow, is that place ever small. It's a strip of dirt and rubble!
"Israel’s ground operation has roots outside of kibbutz" by Isabel Kershner | New York Times July 18, 2014
"Isabel Kershner.... is an Israeli citizen.... possible family ties to the Israeli military"
At least we are getting it straight from the horse's ass.
SUFA, Israel — Israel’s decision to invade Gaza has its roots just outside of this small kibbutz in southern Israel where open fields and citrus orchards offer a pastoral scene that residents say has long been deceptive.
Just like the Israeli government!
At dawn on Thursday, 13 Hamas gunmen from Gaza emerged from the mouth of an underground tunnel about a mile away, inside Israel territory. The air force thwarted the attack, but the government said that the attempted incursion was the final straw and that the ground invasion would commence.
Another Israeli hoax or false flag!
By Friday, the Israeli military said it had already uncovered 10 tunnels with 22 exit points and that there were “dozens” more “terror tunnels” spread around Gaza. In a statement, it described tunnels crossing the border from Gaza to Israel as “complex and advanced,” and said they were “intended to carry out attacks such as abductions of Israeli civilians and soldiers alike; infiltrations into Israeli communities, mass murders and hostage-taking scenarios.”
All of Gaza has been held hostage by siege, and the biggest mass murderer is the same stink state wailing.
Gadi Shamni, a former commander of the Israeli army’s Gaza division and of its central command, said that destroying the tunnels posed a technological and operational challenge and that each had offshoots going in different directions, making it difficult to track and disable the whole route.
The residents of the kibbutz, called Sufa, are accustomed to living under threat. Mortar shells fired from Gaza strike without warning here, and if there is a warning, residents have 15 seconds to run for cover. But the attempted incursion through a tunnel was what shook them, even though they have known for years about the tunnels.
“They planned to carry out a massacre here,” Eyal Brandeis, 50, a lecturer in political science and one of the few residents remaining, said of the Hamas militants who came out of the tunnel with machine guns and grenades.
Not far from here, Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured in a cross-border raid in 2006, was spirited into Gaza through a tunnel and held there by Hamas for five years. Two other soldiers were killed in the attack.
Hamas’ military wing has repeatedly boasted that it has “surprises” in store for Israel, presumably a reference to its tunnel network.
Blah, blah, f***ing blah, and I'm not buying it anymore. I'm so tired of hearing about Jewish suffering when they inflict so much on other people.
The air force stopped the militants from Gaza Thursday with bombs, and they hurried back underground.
Hamas’ military wing claimed they all returned safely. The Israeli military estimates that at least three were killed and says that its action thwarted a major terrorist attack presumably planned against Sufa, the closest concentration of Israelis.
Honestly, I'm not interested in the debate over what lies Israel transmitted through my ma$$ media anymore.
A propaganda video posted by Hamas’ military wing on its website Thursday showed its special forces training for an operation against a background of dramatic music.
Pot, kettle, black.
In a mock village similar to ones that can be found in Israeli military bases, they went from house to house, blasting open doors and throwing smoke grenades inside before entering and shooting wildly.
“They train like we train,” Brandeis said, “but regrettably for other purposes.”
Yeah, Israel is the good guys.
Several other “offensive tunnels,” as the military calls them, have been discovered in the last few years, some packed with explosives.
In 2012 one tunnel blew up, injuring a soldier and destroying an army vehicle. In 2013 the army discovered a mile-long tunnel leading from a house in Gaza to Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. It had electricity and a phone line. In March, the army found another one it said looked like a subway passage.
The air force struck another one leading from Gaza toward Kerem Shalom, just south of Sufa, about two weeks ago. When Hamas militants entered the damaged tunnel a day or so later they apparently set off explosives there. Five were killed and Hamas blamed Israel, escalating the hostilities that grew into the current confrontation.
Others tunnels lead from homes in Gaza to concealed rocket launchers or are used to store weapons, according to Israeli military officials. “Actually there are two Gazas,” one senior military official said. “One above ground and another under the ground.”
By Friday morning, most of the 300 residents of this kibbutz fled to safer areas of the country and the soldiers guarding the place moved into the empty kindergartens. The windows and the walls shook here, a reminder of just how close the fighting in Gaza was.
Gazans have nowhere to go, and is this ever a one-sided piece of supremacist slop!!!
Brandeis moved to Sufa in 1986 “out of ideology,” he said. “Socialism and Zionism — living in the Negev, settling the country.” He said there was “no way” he would leave, even for the weekend.
Two horrible things that do not go well together!
Hadas Grinspan, 55, who leads the community’s emergency team, also stayed behind. In a small office she was composing a short newsletter to send by email to all the residents now scattered around the country. “We have been through a challenging experience,” she wrote of the tunnel episode. “The details are in the news media.”
The windows of her small office shook as Grinspan identified the different booms coming from Gaza, distinguishing between a missile fired from an attack helicopter and tank and artillery fire.
Dror Efrati, 52, who came here in 1983 from Jerusalem, said the tunnels were hard to find because the militants open up the last couple of yards only in the final hours before emerging from them.
What about ground-penetrating sonar that didn't find mass graves at Treblinka? They could help chart the tunnels.
Efrati remembered the days when Sufa residents had good working and trade relations with their Palestinian neighbors, but that all came to an end with the outbreak of the first intifada in the late 1980s. He said he hoped those days would come back. Outside, a black plume of smoke was rising up from Gaza.
Yeah, it is all the Palestinians fault.
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"In this invasion, a less isolated position for Israel; Scope of attack, diplomatic corps differ from ’09" by Jodi Rudoren | New York Times July 19, 2014
This article has been cleared through through Israel.
Have you seen the protests in the streets all over the planet yet?
JERUSALEM — As Israeli troops once again operated inside the Gaza Strip on Friday, the risks of a deep entanglement, a failure to curb the rocket fire, and the condemnations over civilian casualties were all too apparent.
Twice before, Israel has battled Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that dominates Gaza, and twice before, Israel has halted under international pressure without eliminating the threat of rocket fire.
But this time, officials and analysts say, the landscape is different. Israel has publicly framed a clear agenda targeting tunnels it says militants built to store weapons or stage attacks on its territory. This time, a weakened Hamas cannot turn to Egypt for respite.
Give it a day or two.
This time, Western leaders appear more patient: President Obama expressed concern Friday about “the loss of more innocent life” but also said no nation should be subjected to a hail of rockets or underground incursions.
Why not? We rain them down on people and Israel has been subverting this government for decades.
The start of the ground campaign was a stark contrast to Israel’s 2009 invasion, when forces quickly bisected the tiny coastal enclave and blockaded Gaza City, where they engaged in gunbattles with Hamas fighters. On Friday, the troops operated mainly in farmland within about a mile of Gaza’s northern, southern and eastern edges, and quickly announced they had uncovered more than 20 tunnel exit points.
Setting the bar relatively low helps hold back public expectations, provide the military with achievable goals, and build international legitimacy.
This makes me laugh! Look at the NYT ALL WORRIED ABOUT ISRAEL'S IMAGE!!
Doing all they can to make the monsters of Israel look good!
It also reflects Israel’s reluctance to re-engage long-term in Gaza or rout Hamas only to find it replaced by even more radical groups, though on Friday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to “prepare for the possibility of widening, significantly,” its offensive.
Obviously the pressure is already getting to them for I was told days before a long reoccupation!
But if the action on the ground has changed from past conflicts, so has the diplomatic horizon. Analysts said that political shifts among Palestinians and across the region had made the familiar paths to cease-fire agreements harder to find this time.
That 180-degree spin in favor of Israel is gross and not worthy of the New York Times.
Hamas, financially desperate and politically isolated but rich in armaments, is desperate to score points with the public either by harming Israelis or curbing what it calls the siege that has plunged Gaza into an economic and humanitarian disaster.
I don't see Obummer citing children and hauling them over here to put in camps, do you? And that Zionist spit-shine the NYT is applying is dizzying.
Israel, under pressure internationally for expanding settlements in the West Bank and for the number of civilians killed, including some 65 children, in the 11-day assault on Gaza, wants mainly to disarm the militants.
Of course, that LAST PARAGRAPH FLIES in the FACE of the ENTIRE NARRATIVE!
“There’s a certain contradiction here,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli diplomat and university president. “That’s what you need mediators for — you find that magic formula, constructive ambiguity, that enables both parties to claim achievement.
“Right now, those actors are not there.”
Washington, which has helped broker previous cease-fires, is consumed with other crises and has diminished credibility in the Middle East. Egypt, which during the brief presidency of Mohammed Morsi strongly supported Hamas, now treats the group as an enemy and is loath to let its rivals Qatar and Turkey play a significant diplomatic role to aid residents of Gaza.
I want the NATO powers to CONFRO0NT ISRAEL MILITARILY! Start shelling Israel!
That leaves President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, an adversary of both Israel and Hamas, as the primary Palestinian interlocutor. Weak at home but increasingly active on the international stage, he shuttled from Cairo to Istanbul on Friday for what were described as cease-fire negotiations.
Oh, now he is an adversary! (Blog editor grits teeth and shakes head!)
“The fact that Abbas is involved this time, unlike all previous cases, could mean something,” said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and analyst. “He does not have a lot of leverage here, but the little he has might allow for a three-way deal — Hamas, Abbas, and the Israelis. That’s the way things might be smoother than to wait for the battlefield itself to determine the outcome, which could take a very, very long time, and a great deal of bloodshed.”
The bloodshed continued Friday as an artillery shell killed three children of Ismail Abu Musalam in their bedroom near the northern entry to Gaza around noon — the third day in a row in which groups of youths were killed — and another shell killed eight members of the Abu Jarad family, four of them children, at night. The Palestinian death toll topped 280, plus 2,000 wounded, as airstrikes continued over the relatively contained ground operations.
Good thing the diplomatic situation is more in favor of Israel now.
The Israeli military said it uncovered 10 distinct tunnels, struck 240 targets, killed 17 militants, and detained 21 others for questioning on the first day of the ground operation. A 20-year-old soldier, Eitan Barak, was shot and killed in the early hours — the second Israeli death of the war.
Sirens signaling rockets from Gaza sounded all day and night throughout southern and central Israel — one of several over Tel Aviv sounded during a phone conversation between Obama and Netanyahu. The Israeli military counted 135 rockets in the first 24 hours of the ground operation, 40 of them blocked from hitting cities by the Iron Dome defense system. One damaged an empty kindergarten and a synagogue.
Related: The Gaza Rocket Squads
My Zionist MSM tells me they were Palestinian.
Netanyahu expressed regret Friday “for every mistaken strike on civilians.”
Such hollow words.
But he also said he was engaged in “unending” diplomacy to create “the international space” so Israel could “act systematically and with power against a murderous terrorist organization and its partners.”
Doesn't sound very regretful.
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"Militants slip into Israel using tunnels; Enter despite military’s push deeper into Gaza" by Anne Barnard and Jodi Rudoren | New York Times July 20, 2014
Why would one want to read this?
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Eight Palestinian militants emerged from a tunnel some 300 yards inside Israel on Saturday morning, surprising an Israeli border patrol with a rocket-propelled grenade shot at their jeeps and starting a gunbattle that left two Israeli soldiers and one militant dead before the Palestinians retreated underground, the Israeli military said.
Saturday afternoon, two more militants entered Israel, a military spokesman said, either through a tunnel or breaching the border fence, and carrying tranquilizers and handcuffs. Israeli soldiers fatally shot one; the other was wearing an explosive vest that detonated, killing him.
Hours later, another militant slipped through a different tunnel into Israeli territory and, according to the military, fired on troops who killed him.
The infiltrations came as the Israeli military pressed deeper into Gaza in an intensifying ground war it says is meant to destroy a labyrinth of tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel before they can be used for launching attacks.
Again, the impression is first Israel being invaded!
No wonder the New York Times is dying.
The morning clash was the first time in the current war that the militants killed soldiers inside Israel, and came just three days after another infiltration that the military said was the immediate trigger for adding a ground invasion to a deadly air campaign.
The developments also came as Israeli officials revealed that the tunnel network was far more extensive than had been publicly known, with 13 tunnels discovered and an estimated dozens more suspected.
Meaning this is going to be a long occupation, 'er, operation.
Though the government has said the ground campaign will be limited and aimed only at the tunnels, the growing intensity of the battles that are pushing deeper into civilian areas suggested that the fighting could grow far worse.
Already, tens of thousands have been forced to flee. At one hospital in northern Gaza, the director said that 50 casualties arrived in just three hours Saturday morning, a number that had been typical for an entire day during Israel’s air campaign that began July 8.
The Israelis dropped leaflets urging residents of two crowded refugee camps, Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi, to evacuate, raising alarms from the United Nations, which said that shelters were already overwhelmed and in danger of running out of supplies.
Where are refugees supposed to run?
Among the dead in recent fighting were eight members of a Palestinian family, including four children, killed by an Israeli artillery barrage Friday night. During the funeral Saturday, artillery and small-arms fire echoed nearby from clashes between militants and Israeli forces. Hamas rockets whooshed into the sky from a nearby launch site, and some mourners hurried away before the ceremony was over.
Tunnels under the border with Gaza have had a powerful hold on the Israeli psyche since 2006, when Hamas fighters used one to capture an army lieutenant, Gilad Shalit, who was held for six years. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said a task force had been working for a year on a plan for a ground invasion to destroy the tunnels.
Oh, so this was IN THE PLANNING STAGES for YEARS!
Israeli troops have uncovered 13 tunnels from Gaza into Israel since the start of the ground operation, some of them as much as 30 yards underground, with multiple entry points beneath greenhouses and open fields, he said Saturday. He added that the 13 tunnels, which he now said were under Israeli control, were all over the periphery of Gaza and that he believed there were “tens” more.
The military said the infiltrators Saturday had planned “a lethal attack” in a nearby community, but did not name the town.
Lerner said troops were in the process of demolishing the tunnels, and have been engaged in “urban warfare” inside Gaza.
Israel sure knows how to do that!
Hamas militants were fighting back with antitank missiles, small-arms fire, and grenades, Lerner said.
Do they have an Army, Navy, Air Force, and armed-to-the-teeth patron like the U.S.?
A rocket fired from Gaza killed an Israeli, Odeh Lafia al-Waj, 32, in a Bedouin village near Dimona, injuring four members of his family, including a 3-month-old girl who was critically hurt. He was the first Israeli civilian killed by one of about 1,600 rockets fired by Hamas, most of which are intercepted by defense systems or fall in open fields. Another was killed by a mortar shell close to Gaza.
What terrible aim!
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose to 301 since July 8, including 72 children, 24 women, and 18 elderly people, with more than 2,000 wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said. About 75 percent of the casualties have been civilians, according to a United Nations count.
As the funeral procession for the Abu Jarad family wound through the streets of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, men took turns carrying the bodies of an infant and a toddler, wrapped in bloody white shrouds. The adults’ bodies were wrapped in the yellow flags of Hamas’s rival party, Fatah.
In Khan Younis, in central Gaza, seven people were killed, mostly men, and others were wounded when a drone struck a group of people in the middle of the city, the health ministry said.
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Related:
"7 more Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza operation" by Ibrahim Barzak and Peter Enav | Associated Press July 21, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military says seven soldiers have been killed in a firefight with Gaza militants.
That raises the total Israeli death toll in the two-week conflict to 27, including two civilians. At least 550 Palestinians have been killed.
Wow, that is a HUGE JUMP over a DAY!
The military didn’t elaborate on the circumstances of the seven deaths on Monday.
The top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip signaled Monday that the Islamic militant group will not agree to an unconditional cease-fire with Israel, saying that the aim of the current battle is to break a 7-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Ismail Haniyeh’s comments came as U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry headed to Cairo to try to renew cease-fire efforts aimed at ending the Israel-Hamas fighting that has killed at least 530 Palestinians and 20 Israelis and displaced tens of thousands of Gazans in the past two weeks.
Good thing Israel is not isolated.
Despite the new diplomatic push, Israel continued to attack targets in the densely populated coastal strip from the air and from tanks, while Hamas fired more rockets and tried to infiltrate into Israel.
Sort of like what Israel has done to the U.S. government.
Last week, Egypt called for an unconditional cease-fire, to be followed by talks on easing the closure of Gaza. Israel accepted the proposal at the time, but Hamas rejected it, saying it wants guarantees first on lifting the closure.
Israel accepted it because it would have required Hamas to hand over all their weapons. That was it. That was the deal. Cease fire, hand over your weapons.
The blockade was imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas overran Gaza in 2007.
Well, they won elections and the NYT knows it, so.... !!!!
Over the past year, Egypt has further tightened restrictions, driving Hamas into a deep financial crisis.
Yeah, Egypt is also culpable for war crimes.
Haniyeh said in a televised speech Monday that ‘‘we cannot go back, we cannot go back to the silent death’’ of the blockade.
He said all of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents shared this demand.
‘‘Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and by its courage,’’ he said. ‘‘This siege, this unjust siege, must be lifted.’’
On Monday, Israeli tank shells struck a hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing four people and wounding 60, Palestinian officials said, as Israel’s defense minister vowed to press on with the war against Hamas ‘‘as long as necessary.’’
WHERE is the "world community?"
A dozen shells hit the Al Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir el-Balah on Monday, Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said. He said four people were killed and 60 wounded when the shells landed in the administration building, the intensive care unit and the surgery department.
Live footage on Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV station showed wounded being moved on gurneys into the emergency department.
A doctor at the hospital, Fayez Zidane, told the station that shells hit the third and fourth floor as well as the reception area.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
In one of several airstrikes, 25 people were buried under the rubble of a home in the southern town of Khan Younis, including 24 from the same family. Rescue workers pulled the bodies from the wreckage Monday.
‘‘Twenty-five people!’’ said family member Sabri Abu Jamea. ‘‘Doesn’t this indicate that Israel is ruthless? Are we the liars? The evidence is here in the morgue refrigerators. The evidence is in the refrigerators.’’
Another Israeli airstrike hit the home of the Siyam family in southern Gaza, near the town of Rafah, said the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The strike killed 10 people, including four young children and a 9-month-old baby girl, al-Kidra said.
Oh, this is WANTON and INTENTIONAL SLAUGHTER!!!!!!
Hamas militants, meanwhile, tried to sneak into Israel through two tunnels, the latest in a series of such attempts. The Israeli military said 10 infiltrators were killed after being detected and targeted by Israeli aircraft.
Hamas also fired 50 more rockets at Israel, including two at Tel Aviv, causing no injuries or damage. Since the start of the Israeli operation, Hamas has fired almost 2,000 rockets at Israel.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said the Gaza military operation would have no time limit.
‘‘If needed we will recruit more reservists in order to continue the operation as long as necessary until the completion of the task and the return of the quiet in the whole of Israel especially from the threat of the Gaza Strip,’’ Yaalon told a parliamentary committee.
Israel accepted an Egyptian call for an unconditional cease-fire last week, but resumed its offensive after Hamas rejected the proposal.
Hamas says that before halting fire, it wants guarantees that Israel and Egypt will significantly ease a seven-year border blockade of Gaza.
‘‘The resistance (Hamas) will not respond to any pressure,’’ Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a text message, in a reference to the renewed cease-fire efforts.
Yeah, it's all Hamas's fault.
Kerry left Washington early Monday for Cairo, where he will join diplomatic efforts to resume a truce that had been agreed to in November 2012.
Hamas remains deeply suspicious of the motives of the Egyptian government, which has banned the Muslim Brotherhood, a region-wide group to which Hamas also belongs.
Israel invaded Gaza late last week, preceded by a 10-day air campaign. Air and artillery strikes have targeted Gaza’s border areas in an attempt to destroy tunnels and rocket launchers.
Sunday marked the single deadliest day in Gaza since the conflict erupted on July 8, with more than 100 Palestinians killed, according to Palestinian health officials. Most died in the first major ground battle of the conflict, in Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighborhood, which Israel says is a major source for rocket fire against its civilians.
In response to the escalation, the U.N. Security Council expressed ‘‘serious concern’’ about the rising civilian death toll and demanded an immediate end to the fighting.
Aaaah! Israel has people on her side now. That's what I read.
On Sunday afternoon, rescue workers making a last sweep through Shijaiyah had heard the voice of a woman under the rubble, pleading for help.
The team left because it deemed the situation too dangerous, but returned later Sunday with a bulldozer to rescue the three people trapped underneath.
Seven-year-old Bissam Dhaher, her face bruised and bandaged, was recovering Monday at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. Relatives watched over her as the girl slept. Her uncle remained hospitalized, while an aunt — the one who had called out for help — was released, relatives said.
On Sunday evening, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri in Gaza claimed his group had captured an Israeli soldier. An announcement on Gaza TV of the soldier’s capture set off celebration in the streets of West Bank.
But there was no official confirmation or denial of the claim in Israel.
They always have the final word.
For Israelis, a captured soldier would be a nightmare scenario. Hamas-allied militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held him captive in Gaza until Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were involved in grisly killings, for his return in 2011.
Poooow widdle Iswael!!
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli tank shells struck a hospital in central Gaza on Monday, a health official and a doctor at the facility said. The health official said the shells killed at least four people and wounded 60, including 30 medical staff.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Health official Ashraf al-Kidra said 12 shells hit the Al Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir el-Balah. He said the shells landed in the administration building, the intensive care unit and the surgery department.
Live footage on Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV station showed wounded being moved on gurneys into the emergency department.
A doctor at the hospital, Fayez Zidane, told the station that shells hit the third and fourth floor as well as the reception area.
‘‘There is still shelling against the hospital,’’ he said. He said he found bits of a rocket, presumably from one of the projectiles.
Zidane appealed to the Red Cross and a nearby hospital to send help.
On Monday, the U.N. chief and the U.S. secretary of state headed to Cairo to try to end two weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting that has killed at least 508 Palestinians and 20 Israelis and displaced tens of thousands of Gaza residents.
The new cease-fire efforts by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry followed the deadliest day of fighting since the escalation erupted on July 8.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council expressed ‘‘serious concern’’ about Gaza’s rising civilian death toll and demanded an immediate end to the fighting following an emergency session.
As Israeli airstrikes continued to pound Gaza, rescue workers near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis were digging out bodies early Monday from the one-story home of the Abu Jamea family, flattened in one of the strikes overnight, said Ashraf al-Kidra, a Gaza health ministry official.
Al-Kidra said the Palestinian death toll from the two-week offensive stood at 508 as of Monday morning. More than half of those victims — 268 — were killed since an Israeli ground operation in Gaza began late Thursday.
That total included 20 bodies that were found at the site near Khan Younis, where two people were pulled alive from the rubble, Al-Kidra said.
(Blog editor can only read with horror)
Elsewhere in Gaza, he said, Israeli tanks opened fire on the home of the Siyam family west of Rafah in the southern part of the strip, killing 10 people, including four young children and a 9-month-old baby girl.
‘‘Without any warning at all they began bombarding us at midnight, at 2 a.m., said Dr. Mahmoud Siyam, the head of the family. ‘‘We are not related to any military or political activities. We are civilized people (living) in this area of Gaza, what crime have we committed?’’
None except be on land Israel wants.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it foiled a Hamas infiltration attempt on Monday through two tunnels leading from northern Gaza into southern Israel. The military said 10 infiltrators were killed after being detected and targeted by Israeli aircraft.
On Sunday, the first major ground battle in two weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting exacted a steep price, killing 65 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers and forcing thousands of terrified Palestinian civilians to flee their devastated Shijaiyah neighborhood, which Israel says is a major source for rocket fire against its civilians.
I will be making this part of my upcoming World War III on Blog Series.
Large sections of Shijaiyah were pulverized by a barrage of Israeli tank and artillery bombardments and repeated Israeli air strikes that buffeted the densely populated neighborhood for most of Sunday.
Speaking on national television shortly after the military announced the deaths of the 13 Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Gaza offensive would continue ‘‘as long as necessary’’ to end attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.
Appearing with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that Israel expected to complete its work neutralizing the Hamas tunnels leading into Israeli territory within several days — a possible hint of a timeframe for the end of the operation.
Meaning world outrage is getting to them.
Still, much work remains if diplomats are to succeed in brokering a sustainable cease-fire. On Sunday, Kerry said the U.S. still supports the Egyptian proposal for a halt to the hostilities that Israel accepted and Hamas rejected last week.
Hamas remains deeply suspicious of the motives of the Egyptian government, which has banned the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that Hamas closely identifies with.
The 13 Israeli soldiers who died in Shijaiyah brought the overall Israeli death toll to 20, including two civilians who died from rocket and mortar fire directed at Israeli towns and villages from different parts of Gaza.
On Sunday evening, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri in Gaza claimed his group had captured an Israeli soldier. An announcement on Gaza TV of the soldier’s capture set off celebration in the streets of West Bank.
But there was no official confirmation of the claim in Israel. Earlier, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Ron Prosor, said the Hamas claim was untrue.
For Israelis, a captured soldier would be a nightmare scenario. Hamas-allied militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held him captive in Gaza until Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were involved in grisly killings, for his return in 2011.
What do you think Israel is doing now?
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"Death toll climbs in Gaza; Day is deadliest yet; Obama airs concern to Netanyahu" by Anne Barnard and Isabel Kershner | New York Times July 21, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The fierce battle began in the early hours of Sunday morning in Shejaiya, an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, where Israeli forces battled with Hamas militants. Terrified civilians fled, sometimes past the bodies of those struck down in earlier artillery barrages. By dusk it was clear that Sunday was the deadliest single day for the Palestinians in the latest conflict and the deadliest for the Israeli military in years.
At least 60 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers and officers were killed in Shejaiya alone, and the shattered neighborhood became the latest symbol of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, underlining the rising cost of this newest Gaza war.
The death tolls and the withering assault on Shejaiya appeared to shake the international community, with world leaders continuing to carefully call for both sides to step back but with criticism of Israel rising.
What, what, what?
Within hours, President Obama had called the Israeli prime minister for the second time in three days, the UN Security Council had called an emergency session at the urging of the Palestinians, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had issued a statement calling the attack on Shejaiya “an atrocious action.”
By early evening, the Obama administration revealed that Secretary of State John F. Kerry would head to Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire.
Throughout Gaza, at least 87 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire Sunday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, bringing the death toll there since the Israeli air offensive began July 8 to at least 432, with more than 3,000 injured. The toll includes more than 100 children.
Israel has lost 18 soldiers so far, as well as two citizens killed by rocket and mortar fire. Two Americans — a Californian and a Texan — were among the soldiers for the Israel Defense Forces killed in Gaza, the Associated Press said.
The government doesn't care about dual nationals killed by Israel, so....
In Shejaiya, the panic Sunday was palpable. Some of the men, women, and children who streamed out of the area were barefoot. Israeli shells crashed all around, rockets fired by Palestinian militants soared overhead toward Israel, and small-arms fire echoed. Asked where they were going, one woman said, “God knows.”
The casualties quickly overwhelmed local hospitals. Doctors treated some victims on the floor.
OMG!
As the casualties mounted, it became apparent that what had begun Thursday night as a limited ground invasion to follow 10 days of intense airstrikes had developed into a dangerous phase for both sides.
Late Sunday, the military wing of Hamas said it had captured an Israeli soldier, though the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said, “Those rumors are untrue.”
I suppose they were only trying to get in on the act.
Despite the growing international alarm, Israel’s political and military leaders said that while acknowledging the pain for both sides, they were determined to continue with their mission.
God damn you!!
They have said the offensive is meant to root out the vast network of underground tunnels used by Hamas, many of them leading into Israel, and to quell the rocket fire from Gaza, which continued Sunday.
In a televised prime-time address to the nation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We are not deterred.”
Netanyahu said he had “laid the diplomatic foundation that has given us international credit to operate,” listing major Western countries that he said understood Israel’s right to defend itself.
In another sign that the conflict could continue to take a high toll, a senior Israeli military official noted that the Hamas fighters Israel faced in Shejaiya had “learned lessons” from past conflicts and were tough adversaries.
“I have to admit that we were facing good fighters on the other side,” he said.
Either that or Israel's vaunted juggernaut, as unbeatable as Hitler's forces at one time, may be a deteriorating force.
So far, Netanyahu appears to have the support of many Israelis, who were particularly shaken in recent days when militants used the “terror tunnels” that the government had warned about to infiltrate their country.
Then I hold them responsible as well. To hell with Israel!
It is unclear how much support Israel will continue to receive abroad if the bombardment continues.
After I was told the diplomatics had shifted over the las.... never mind.
Last week, Obama reaffirmed his “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself” but suggested that it was based on his understanding that “the current military ground operations are designed to deal with the tunnels.”
On Sunday, he again backed Israel’s right to self-defense but also raised “serious concern about the growing number of casualties,” according to a statement released by the White House.
This world isn't going to take any more invasions and wars!!
Ban called on Israel to halt its operation in Gaza immediately, saying, “Israel must exercise maximum restraint and do far more to protect civilians.” He also called for an end to the rocket fire from Gaza.
Don't Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?
Ban spoke in Doha, Qatar, hours before a scheduled meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas called the Israeli action in Shejaiya “a crime against humanity,” according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.
It is.
Like other Israeli officials, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, noted that ground forces moved into Shejaiya after residents had been warned to leave for days. But some residents have said they are unsure where they could go to be safe in the small, densely populated enclave.
The two Americans killed were soldiers for the Israel Defense Force.
Stuart Steinberg confirmed the death of his son, Max, 24, to the Associated Press. Max Steinberg, whose family lives in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, was a sharpshooter for the Golani Brigade.
The Israeli defense force said in a statement that Sergeant Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, was killed in combat in the Gaza Strip. Carmeli was from South Padre Island, Texas.
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"Kerry backs Israel but bemoans casualties" by Brian Knowlton | New York Times July 21, 2014
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John F. Kerry strongly criticized Palestinian leaders Sunday for rejecting a cease-fire plan, but he also appeared — in comments captured by a live microphone — to express exasperation with the high cost in civilian lives as Israel pressed its ground attack on Gaza.
It is really telling that these guys can feel one way privately but then have to suck Israeli ass publicly.
Kerry, who was expected to leave Monday for the region, was making a sweep of the five major network television programs when, between interviews, he spoke by cellphone to an unidentified aide.
Chris Wallace, the interviewer for “Fox News Sunday,” confronted Kerry with a tape of those remarks during his appearance on that program.
In it, Kerry is heard to say: “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation. We’ve got to get over there. Thank you, Jon. I think, Jon, we ought to go tonight. I think it’s crazy to be sitting around.”
I'm hardly a fan of John Kerry, but at least he is showing he is a better man that the Zionists he serves.
The State Department later identified the aide as Jonathan Finer, Kerry’s deputy chief of staff, who accompanies him on his trips.
The comments were without context, but Wallace’s questioning and Kerry’s reply seemed to make clear that the secretary had been speaking ironically about a “pinpoint operation” to express that he was disturbed by the deaths of Palestinian civilians, including many children.
It's a very small thing, but thank you.
The Israeli operation is aimed at militant extremists who have been smuggling arms into Gaza and raining rockets on Israel.
Blah, blah, excuse.
Asked if he was “upset that the Israelis are going too far,” Kerry replied: “It’s very, very difficult in these situations.” He continued: “I reacted, obviously, in a way that anybody does with respect to young children and civilians.”
But on the Fox program and the others, Kerry vociferously defended Israel’s right to take action, including efforts to destroy some of the hundreds of tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle arms and fighters.
Amazing, isn't it?
“We defend Israel’s right to do what it is doing in order to get at those tunnels,” he said on Fox, and he called Palestinian leaders “intransigent” for turning down a cease-fire plan put forth last week by Egypt.
:-(
Since Israel did accept that proposal, he added, “it is important for Hamas to now step up and be reasonable and understand that you accept the cease-fire, you save lives, and that’s the way we can proceed.”
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Related:
Israeli official says Hamas’s claims are false
Democrats losing moral clarity on Israel
Says the Globe's Jewish neo-con resident of the opinion pages.
"Death toll passes 100 for second day in Gaza, as truce effort intensifies" by Karin Laub and Yousur Alhlou | Associated Press July 22, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli fighter planes hit homes across Gaza on Monday, including a high-rise tower in which 11 people died, Palestinian officials said. Israeli tanks, meanwhile, shelled a hospital in central Gaza, killing four people and wounding dozens as the daily death toll surpassed 100 for a second day.
The strike on the Gaza City tower brought down most of the building, said Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra, adding that 40 people were injured.
Israeli officials said the bombing and shelling targeted rocket launching sites and weapons stockpiles. They have said they are trying to minimize civilian deaths and accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Also Monday, Israel said four of its soldiers and 10 Palestinian militants were killed inside Israeli territory after armed gunmen from Gaza infiltrated the country through two more of the tunnels that the ground operation is targeting. The tunnels have been used to enter Israel and to hide weapons.
At least 565 Palestinians have been killed and more than 3,600 wounded in the past two weeks, Kidra said.
On the Israeli side, seven soldiers overall were killed in clashes with Gaza fighters Monday, bringing the military death toll to 25, more than twice as many as in Israel’s last Gaza ground war in 2009. Two Israeli civilians have also died in Palestinian rocket attacks and scores of soldiers have been injured.
The mounting bloodshed brought UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Secretary of State John Kerry to Cairo on Monday, for a new cease-fire push. However, the gaps remain wide and no credible mediator has emerged.
Egypt, Israel, and the United States back an unconditional cease-fire, to be followed by talks on a possible new border arrangement for Gaza. Israel and Egypt have severely restricted movement in and out of Gaza since Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
Hamas, with some support from Qatar and Turkey, wants guarantees on lifting the blockade before halting fire. The Islamic militant group has no faith in mediation by Egypt’s rulers, who deposed a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo a year ago and tightened restrictions on Gaza — to the point of driving Hamas into its worst financial crisis since its founding in 1987.
The top Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said Monday that Gaza’s 1.7 million people share Hamas’s goal of forcing Israel and Egypt to lift the blockade.
‘‘We cannot go back, we cannot go back to the silent death’’ of the blockade, he said. ‘‘Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and by its courage.’’
After a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri, Ban said that ‘‘violence must stop by all sides’’ and that they must enter negotiations, seemingly siding with Cairo’s approach.
However, Ban also said: ‘‘We can’t claim victory simply by returning matters to where they stood before they led to terrible bloodshed.’’
The border blockade has set Gaza back years, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs through bans on most exports and on imports of vital construction materials.
It was meant to keep Gaza one step above catastrophe forever.
Israel allows many consumer goods into Gaza, but specialists say Gaza’s economy cannot recover without a resumption of exports.
The Rafah passenger crossing with Egypt is Gaza’s only gate to the world, but Egypt has tightened restrictions over the past year, allowing only medical patients, Muslim pilgrims, and Gazans with foreign passports to travel.
On Monday, President Obama reaffirmed his belief that Israel has the right to defend itself against rockets being launched by Hamas into Israel. Yet, he contended that Israel’s military action in Gaza had already done ‘‘significant damage’’ to the Hamas terrorist infrastructure and said he doesn’t want to see more civilians getting killed.
Yeah, you Israelis are making them all look bad!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Sky News Arabia that the goal of Israel’s strikes on Gaza is ‘‘to restore quiet and security for the people of Israel for a significant period of time.’’
‘‘We’ll take whatever action is necessary to achieve that goal,’’ he said, adding that Israel has accepted cease-fire offers, while Hamas has rejected them.
Israel says the tunnels, some starting from homes and mosques, are a strategic threat because they reach inside Israel and demolishing them is a high priority. Gaza militants have fired more than 2,000 rockets at Israel in the past two weeks, including 130 on Monday, the army said.
Same must go for Palestinian homes.
The Israeli strikes on homes have driven up casualties.
That's a surprise. Who could have seen that coming?
About half of the dead were killed in their homes, according to the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, a Palestinian human rights group. Various Palestinian rights groups estimated that at least 425 homes across Gaza were attacked by the military since July 8.
That's terrorism. Being frightened in your own home and then killed.
Among the dead in the strike on the Gaza City apartment tower Monday was Zakariya Abu Dagha, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of several small PLO factions.
Six of the 11 killed were members of the same family, Kidra said. He said the family — a German-educated engineer, Ibrahim Kelani, his wife and four children — had sought refuge in the apartment tower after fleeing their apartment in a border area of Gaza that has come under heavy Israeli fire.
So Israel tells them to leave, then bombs where they went!
The Israeli military reported heavy fighting with Hamas in Gaza on Monday. Three soldiers were killed in those clashes, while a female suicide bomber was shot before she could detonate her explosive belt among soldiers, the military said.
A firefight broke out when Hamas militants snuck into Israel through a tunnel from Gaza. The militants popped out of the ground close to an Israeli community near the border with Gaza before they were spotted by the military, the army said. Israeli media said 10 Hamas fighters were killed, along with four Israeli soldiers.
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"US urges global push for Israeli, Hamas cease-fire" by Michael R. Gordon | New York Times July 22, 2014
Print copy Lara Jakes, rather that than Gordon but I can't find that on the web.
CAIRO — As Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived here Monday night to try to craft a cease-fire in the Gaza crisis as rapidly as possible, he confronted an uncomfortable reality.
The United States must rely heavily on Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey to play intermediary and exert their influence because it has no direct contact and little leverage with the militant group Hamas. Those countries, however, have their own deep-seated differences about Hamas. While Egypt has been opposed to Hamas and other Islamic movements, Turkey has been supportive. Qatar, for its part, has provided financial assistance to Hamas and also a base of operations for Khalid Meshal, the group’s political leader.
“It will be extremely difficult for the United States to bring Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar together right now,” said Robert M. Danin, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior State Department official.
“However, all three countries do wish to see an end to the fighting,” Danin added. “Moreover, Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar all stand to benefit politically and in their regional standing by serving as power brokers to a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.”
Kerry’s visit here comes after a successful effort to forge a compromise in Afghanistan that led to an agreement to an international audit of the ballots of a disputed election. And Kerry brought a similar sense of urgency to the Gaza crisis.
How quickly his peace efforts have been forgotten.
“We’ve got to get over there,” he said Sunday in an unguarded comment to an aide during a television interview when he thought his microphone was off. “Let’s go.”
Kerry, who plans to stay in Cairo until Wednesday morning and could travel to other Middle Eastern capitals after that, met with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and announced $47 million in US humanitarian aid for Gaza.
You won't see me complaining about that.
On Tuesday, Kerry was scheduled to meet with Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the Egyptian president, and with its foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, and Nabil Elaraby, the head of the Arab League.
“Our immediate goal is stop the fighting as quickly as possible,” said a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, citing agency protocol on briefing reporters. The official added that the Obama administration hoped to end the combat before tackling more thorny and time-consuming issues about Gaza’s future and the security arrangement there.
Yet Hamas and Israel are each expected to add further demands.
“The military wing of Hamas is calling the shots now and will try to hold out to show they achieved something,” said Dennis B. Ross, a former top Middle East negotiator, adding that the group can be expected to insist on reopening the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, money from Qatar, and the release of some Hamas prisoners Israel has detained recently.
“Israel will want to hold out until they have destroyed a large number of the tunnels, making rebuilding difficult, and will seek to get Kerry to insist on the dismantling of the rocket infrastructure in return for rebuilding Gaza,” Ross added.
“Israel may not have a problem with money going to Hamas but will mightily resist the release of Hamas prisoners,” he said.
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"US says cease-fire must precede talks" by Michael R. Gordon | New York Times July 23, 2014
He is one of the guys who helped sell all the Iraq lies.
CAIRO — Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday that the United States was prepared to address the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and the political demands of the Palestinians living there, but that a cease-fire first must be carried out.
Looks like things turned on Israel fast!
After a two-hour meeting with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, Kerry said Egypt’s cease-fire proposal had provided the framework for discussions on how to arrange one.
All of a sudden Egypt's coup not a concern.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that it is his ‘‘hope and belief’’ that his emergency mission to the Middle East will lead to a cease-fire ‘‘in the very near future.’’ He cautioned, however, that ‘‘of course there are many obstacles and complexities.’’
Ban told the Security Council by video conference from the West Bank city of Ramallah that he could not publicly reveal details ‘‘at this highly sensitive moment,’’ the Associated Press reported. The UN chief has also visited Qatar, Kuwait, Cairo, and Jerusalem on his mission to halt the fighting.
Kerry said his meetings in Cairo had been constructive but gave no indication of an imminent breakthrough on a cease-fire deal. He suggested his deliberations might continue for the next few days.
From the start, State Department officials have signaled that the United States is hoping to quickly arrange a cease-fire and avoid being dragged into detailed discussions about the political demands of Hamas, the militant organization that governs Gaza and that Israel has been targeting since the latest hostilities broke out two weeks ago.
Hamas’s demands include opening a major border crossing with Egypt and the release of prisoners held by the Israelis. Discussions might be unavoidable, officials say, particularly because demands to open the border crossings were addressed in a 2012 cease-fire agreement.
“There may be an element of ironing out and nailing down a little bit more on the crossings as a part of our effort to get to a cease-fire as soon as possible,” a senior State Department official told reporters Monday. He spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with the agency’s protocol for briefing the news media.
That approach appears to be generally consistent with Egypt’s proposal.
Sketching out a two-stage process, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, told Kerry at the start of their meeting Tuesday morning that he hoped Kerry’s visit would result in a cease-fire “that provides the necessary security for the Palestinian people,” and that “medium- and long-term” issues on Gaza’s future could be addressed after the fighting stopped.
With no contact and little leverage with Hamas, Kerry has been relying on Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey to use their influence. Egypt has the power to open the Rafah border crossing, while Qatar is a major financial contributor to Hamas.
But it remained unclear whether the United States and its partners were making any headway.
“Hamas has a fundamental choice to make, and it is a choice that will have a profound impact for the people of Gaza,” Kerry said. “And the Egyptians have provided a framework and a forum for them to be able to come to the table to have a serious discussion together with other factions of the Palestinians.”
Kerry’s comments came in a joint appearance with Shoukry, and both declined to take questions.
In addition to the Egyptian president and foreign minister, Kerry met with Majid Faraj, the intelligence chief for the Palestinian Authority, and was scheduled to meet Tuesday night with General Mohamed Farid el-Tohamy, the head of Egyptian intelligence.
Kerry has also spoken by phone several times in recent days with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. He has also spoken recently to his counterparts from Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
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Related:
Protesters gather in Boston in response to Gaza conflict
Netanyahu should consider future costs of Gaza invasion
Globe always has the answers. Good thing they are not isolated like last time.
Time to get back up into the air:
"US halts flights to Israel; Hamas rocket hits near airport; soldier missing 2 days after attack" by Aron Heller | Associated Press July 23, 2014
JERUSALEM — A Hamas rocket exploded Tuesday near Israel’s main airport, prompting a ban on all flights from the United States and many from Europe and Canada as aviation authorities responded, in part, to the shock of seeing a civilian jetliner shot down over Ukraine.
Israel declared that Ben-Gurion Airport, outside Tel Aviv, was safe and said there was no reason to ‘‘hand terror a prize’’ by halting flights.
The rare flight ban came as Israel confirmed that one of its soldiers has been missing for two days after an attack in the Gaza Strip.
Then the RUMORS WERE TRUE and the U.S. and ISRAEL LIED! AGAIN!
Israeli officials raised the possibility he was abducted, which could complicate intense diplomatic efforts to end the two-week conflict.
Palestinian militants have fired more than 2,000 rockets toward Israel since fighting began on July 8, but most — including several heading toward Tel Aviv — fell harmlessly into open areas or were shot out of the sky by the Iron Dome missile defense system.
Related: Under Israel's Iron Dome
It's $100,000 dollars every time you hear a whoosh, taxpayers.
Tuesday’s rocket attack was the closest to the airport so far, said police spokeswoman Luba Samri, and largely destroyed a house, slightly injuring one Israeli in the nearby Tel Aviv suburb of Yehud.
Aviation authorities reacted swiftly. The US Federal Aviation Administration prohibited American airlines from flying to Tel Aviv for 24 hours because of the potential danger created by the fighting. Later, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued an advisory to airlines saying it ‘‘strongly recommends’’ airlines avoid the airport.
Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz called on the US aviation authority to reconsider, calling the flight ban ‘‘unnecessary’’ and saying the Iron Dome system provided cover for civil aviation.
‘‘Ben-Gurion Airport is safe and completely guarded and there is no reason whatsoever that American companies would stop their flights and hand terror a prize,’’ his office said in a statement.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, raised the issue of the ban with Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in the Middle East on Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Looks like the false flag backfired, huh?
‘‘The FAA’s notice was issued to protect American citizens and American carriers. The only consideration in issuing the notice was the safety and security of our citizens,’’ Psaki said in a statement.
International airlines and passengers have grown more anxious about safety since last week, when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
While Hamas rockets aren’t guided missiles, they still can cause massive damage to an aircraft.
They just can't hit stationary targets in Israel!
Wow, did the Jewish propaganda ever jump the shark there! Next thing you know they will be saying the Palestinians shot down MH-17.
For instance, unguided mortar fire in Tripoli from a militia battling to control its international airport destroyed an Airbus A330 on the ground over the weekend.
Libya, what?
So a parked jet was destroyed; that's a lot different than bringing one down out of the sky!
The Tel Aviv airport is Israel’s main gateway to the world and Hamas militants have said they hoped to target it to disrupt life in Israel.
Another Hamas objective was to abduct an Israeli soldier, and Israeli fears over such an occurrence were revisited Tuesday when the military said that a soldier was missing after a deadly battle in Gaza, where the Israelis are fighting Hamas militants in the third such war in just over five years.
The military said Sergeant Oron Shaul was among seven soldiers in a vehicle that was hit by an antitank missile in a battle in Gaza over the weekend. The other six have been confirmed as dead, but no remains have been identified as Shaul’s.
Hamas claims to have abducted him and has flaunted his name and military ID number to try to back that claim. Military officials say the soldier is almost certainly dead, but it would be a nightmare scenario for the Jewish state if even his remains were in the hands of Hamas.
Yeah, poow Iswael. Just forget the hundreds of dead Palestinian kids.
Past abductions of Israeli soldiers have turned into painful drawn-out affairs and Israel has paid a heavy price in lopsided prisoner swaps to retrieve captured soldiers or remains held by its enemies.
What about the LOPSIDED DEATH TOLL!!?
Oh, readers, this is RANK ROT!
The prolonged saga of Gilad Schalit, a soldier captured by Hamas-allied militants in 2006 and held for more than five years before he was swapped for more than 1,000 Palestinians prisoners, still weighs heavily in Israel.
I'm tired of hearing about Shalit in the Tel Aviv hotel room.
******************
Israeli airstrikes continued to pummel Gaza tunnels, rocket launchers, and militants on the 15th day of the war Tuesday as diplomatic efforts intensified to end fighting that has killed at least 630 Palestinians and 29 Israelis — 27 soldiers and two civilians.
So all the talk and poow widdle Isael is still killing.
Israel says its troops have killed hundreds of Hamas gunmen, while Gaza officials say the vast majority have been civilians, many of them children.
Israel says it is trying hard to avoid civilian casualties and blames Hamas for using civilians as ‘‘human shields.’’ Human rights activists say past confrontations have shown that when Israeli carries out attacks in densely populated Palestinian areas, civilian deaths are inevitable.
Egypt, Israel, and the United States back an unconditional cease-fire, to be followed by talks on a possible new border arrangement for Gaza.
Oh, Israel will want to avoid that, and it shows you they are LOSING the BATTLE for WORLD OPINION! That right there is a Hamas victory!
Israel and Egypt have severely restricted movement in and out of Gaza since Hamas seized the territory in 2007. But Hamas has rejected repeated Egyptian truce proposals.
Before it agrees to a cease-fire, Hamas wants guarantees that Israel will lift its border blockade on Gaza.
Not an unreasonable demand.
--more--"
"Israel flight ban a sign of airlines’ growing sensitivity to risks" by Jad Mouawad | New York Times July 23, 2014
NEW YORK — The Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to instruct American air carriers on Tuesday not to fly to Israel for 24 hours was another sign that airlines around the globe are becoming much more sensitive about the risks of flying over conflict areas, after the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine last week.
It also allows them an indirect way to boycott Israel!
All three US carriers with service to Israel — Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and US Airways — said they had temporarily suspended their flights after a rocket fell a mile from the airport outside Tel Aviv. The move highlighted the impact the conflict in the Gaza Strip is having on the Israeli economy at the height of the summer tourism season.
Oh, that is why Netanyahu is out there whining.
While not issuing a ban on flights, the European Aviation Safety Agency said Tuesday that it ‘‘strongly recommends’’ that airlines refrain from operating flights to and from Tel Aviv.
The recommendation by Europe’s main aviation safety body came after the FAA announced its order. The European agency didn’t give a timeframe, but it said it would ‘‘monitor the situation and advise on any update as the situation develops.’’
Germany’s Lufthansa, Air France, Air Canada, Alitalia, Dutch KLM, Britain’s easyJet, Turkish Airlines, and Greece’s Aegean Airlines were among the carriers canceling flights to Tel Aviv over safety concerns, the Associated Press reported. British Airways said it was operating flights but monitoring the situation closely.
Delta suspended its service between Kennedy International Airport and Tel Aviv “until further notice” and did not indicate when it might resume flights.
US Airways said it canceled Tuesday’s flight from Philadelphia and was in contact with federal authorities. United canceled its two daily flights from Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday.
Delta had a flight in the air on its way to Israel when the decision was made. Flight 468, a Boeing 747 with 273 passengers and 17 crew members aboard, was diverted to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris after the rocket fell in Yehud, a Tel Aviv suburb just north of the airport.
According to Flightradar24.com, the Delta plane was flying over Greece, about two hours from its destination, when it turned around and diverted to Paris.
The State Department warned American travelers on Monday to put off going to Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza because of the increasing danger from combat and from rocket fire.
:-)
Hit 'em where it hurt$!
An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Israel had had no advance notification by the airlines of their intention to cancel flights. The official insisted that it was safe to fly to Israel.
“If they wanted to hand the terrorists a prize, they couldn’t have chosen a better way,” the official said, adding, “If it was safe so far, why would it not be safe now? Nothing has changed. The airport has been there since Day 1.”
I think it is so great that Israel stepped in its own pile of propaganda!
The rocket that struck Yehud on Tuesday, less than 1 mile from Ben-Gurion International Airport, landed between two houses and caused extensive damage to them, according to the police.
But the Israeli official noted that most of the rockets fired at the Tel Aviv area by militants had been successfully intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system.
He said he hoped flights would resume after 24 hours.
Looks like Israel has gone to far.
--more--"
Speaking of plane crashes: Down About Ukraine Coverage
U.S. now backpedaling like an airliner destined for Israel. Makes you sick.
"EU imposes new sanctions on Russia, holds off tougher penalties" by Anthony Faiola | Washington Post July 23, 2014
BERLIN —Igor Sutyagin, a defense analyst with the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said a ban on the sale of European weapons components would strike a blow to the Russian military’s ability to modernize its arsenal. ‘‘They rely on Western machinery,’’ he said.
But Sutyagin said any outright ban could also do serious damage to the European defense industry. The French, for instance, are preparing to deliver two warships to the Russians — one due this year and one next year. A halt to the sale could be devastating for the French shipyard at Saint-Nazaire.
The shipyard has 2,500 workers, Sutyagin said. ‘‘There are no other orders, so if this one’s canceled, you'd just have to shut it down.’’
France has strongly resisted pulling out of the $1.7 billion sale. On Monday, however, President Francois Hollande said Paris would not terminate the sale of the first craft, which has already been paid for, but he left open the option of canceling the second ship if Russia did not change course.
The $ociali$t willing to hurt his own people for the sake of globalist shit-kickers.
Citing mounting evidence, Kiev and Washington have built a case that a Russian-made missile fired by pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine brought down the Boeing 777 airliner, killing all 298 people on board, nearly two-thirds of them Dutch citizens.
Actually, they heave been indicated mistake with no Russian involvement the last few days. C'mon, WaPo!
Related:
Bodies, black boxes from Flight 17 are delivered
Lax security at crash site puts evidence in doubt
Sorry I'm not up for that propaganda.
Going into the meeting, European diplomats were divided about the strength of sanctions, and several nations — especially those with strong economic ties to Russia — remained cautious. But others signaled new willingness to press Moscow amid a surge of public outrage across the continent.
Whatever.
In Washington, President Obama visited the Dutch Embassy to sign a condolence book Tuesday morning. ‘‘Obviously, we are all heartbroken,’’ he told reporters. He said he wanted to ‘‘express our solidarity with the people of the Netherlands,’’ adding that ‘‘we will work with them to make sure their loved ones are recovered’’ and justice is done.
If it was a Kiev shootdwon, he's disgusting.
--more--"
Related: Enough with the niceties with Russia
"UK announces inquiry for Russian spy death" by Sylvia Hui | Associated Press July 23, 2014
LONDON — The British government on Tuesday announced plans for a wide-ranging public inquiry into the mysterious 2006 death by poisoning of a former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko.
Odd timing, isn't it?
See: Perepilichny Death Plot Covered Up by British Police
I hope that gives you piece of mind.
The decision, which comes at a time of rising tensions with Russia, is a breakthrough in the much-delayed inquiry because it means investigators can look into whether the Russian state was involved in Litvinenko’s death.
Litvinenko, a former officer in the Russian intelligence service, had a falling out with the Russian government and became a strong critic of the Kremlin. He went to Britain in 2000 and obtained political asylum.
Litvinenko died in 2006, at age 43, after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at a hotel in London.
Who killed him remains a mystery.
See: BEREZOVSKY; LITVINENKO; BIN LADEN; JEWISH MAFIA
Mystery solved.
On his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, of being responsible. The former agent’s family believes the Kremlin ordered his killing.
Britain identified the two Russian men who met Litvinenko for tea — former KGB agent Alexander Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun — as prime suspects. Both denied responsibility.
British prosecutors decided to charge Lugovoi with murder, but Moscow refused to extradite him.
Questions were also raised about whether British security officials could have done anything to prevent the death. Lawyers for Litvinenko’s family said he was working for the British intelligence service MI6 at the time of his death.
And likely before.
British authorities for years delayed conducting an inquest because they believed they could bring criminal cases against the Russian suspects.
But when the inquest finally began it was rife with problems, because much of the key evidence in the case was deemed too sensitive to disclose to the public.
(Blog editor shakes head)
The coroner, Robert Owen, reluctantly accepted a British government request to bar the inquest from considering evidence relating to Russia’s alleged role, because of national security concerns. Evidence relating to Litvinenko’s alleged relationship with MI6 was also off the table.
The British government has resisted calls for a full-scale inquiry, but in February the High Court sided with Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, and ruled that the government had to reconsider its decision.
The new inquiry, an independent investigation, aims to ‘‘identify where responsibility for the death lies and make appropriate recommendations.’’ It is not a trial and is designed only to establish the facts, however.
It is expected to overcome previous hurdles because Owen, who will lead it, will have authority to summon witnesses and documents from the British intelligence services and assess whether evidence suggests Russian state involvement. It is possible some evidence will be presented in sessions closed to the public.
Still, it is a victory for Litvinenko’s widow, who has long argued that only a public inquiry would reveal whether the Russian state was behind his killing.
On Tuesday, she said the decision sends a message to the killers that ‘‘no matter how strong and powerful you are, truth will win out in the end.’’
The case was a focal point in the souring of British-Russian relations, which turned into an ugly spat, with both sides expelling diplomats.
Those lingering political tensions worsened recently as Britain and other Western powers accuse Russia of fomenting unrest in Ukraine and being complicit in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over eastern Ukraine. Britain, along with France and Germany, has been pushing for harsher sanctions against Russia.
And then this popped up.
British officials stressed Tuesday that the timing of the Litvinenko decision and the push to punish Moscow were unrelated.
But the British government acknowledged last year that ‘‘international relations’’ had been a factor in the earlier decision to forgo a full investigation into the death.
But not now. C'mon!
--more--"
Back to the reports from Israel:
"Witch Hunt': Fired MSNBC Contributor Speaks Out on Suppression of Israel-Palestine Debate; As Gaza body toll mounts, NBC executives crack down on criticism of Israel
And IN WE GO!
"Israel launches invasion of Gaza; Says ground attack targets tunnels" by Jodi Rudoren and Anne Barnard | New York Times July 18, 2014
JERUSALEM — Tanks rolled into the northern Gaza Strip Thursday night and naval gunboats pounded targets in the south as Israel began a ground invasion after 10 days of aerial bombardment failed to stop Palestinian militants from showering Israeli cities with rockets.
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
It shows.
Israeli leaders said the incursion was a limited one focused on tunnels into its territory like the one used for a predawn attack Thursday that was thwarted. They said it was not intended to topple Hamas, the militant Islamist movement, from its longtime rule of Gaza.
That is a lot different than the long occupation reported yesterday. WTF?
As rockets continued to rain down on Israeli cities, a military spokesman said the mission’s expansion was “not time bound” and was aimed to ensure Hamas operatives were “pursued, paralyzed, and threatened” as it targeted “terrorist infrastructure” in the north, south, and east of Gaza “in parallel.”
As midnight approached Thursday, residents of some sparsely populated farmland in northern Gaza were cowering in their homes, afraid to answer mobile phones or peek out windows. Some sent text messages reporting that they could hear tank shelling, heavy artillery, and F-16s dropping bombs. Moussa al-Ghoul, 63, who lives northwest of Beit Lahiya, said his neighborhood had turned into “a war zone” with tanks surrounding his home, having destroyed those of two of his sons. He said shells were landing everywhere.
Gaza news outlets reported that electricity had been cut to 80 percent of the coastal territory after cables bringing power from Israel were damaged.
They are dependent on Israel for the lights?
After the early-morning tunnel episode, the day settled into an extended calm as both sides abided a United Nations request for a five-hour humanitarian pause in the fighting. But by 3 p.m., the violence roared back as the Palestinian death toll neared 250 and more than 120 rockets rained on cities throughout southern and central Israel all afternoon and evening.
“We will strike Hamas and we are determined to restore peace to the state of Israel,” the military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, told reporters in a conference call. “It will progress according to the situation assessment and according to our crafted and designed plan of action to enable us to carry out this mission.”
Israel began to draft 18,000 reservists, adding to 50,000 already mobilized in recent days; Lerner said the ground forces would include infantry and artillery units, armored and engineer corps, supported by Israel’s “vast intelligence capabilities,” air force, and navy.
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, called the invasion “a dangerous step.”
“The occupation will pay its price expensively,” he said in a statement, referring to Israel, “and Hamas is ready for confrontation.”
I'm sure they would rather it be on the ground and in the streets than from the air.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel did not make a public statement Thursday night, but several of his ministers said on television that a unanimous Cabinet had authorized Netanyahu and the defense minister a few days ago to send in ground troops when they deemed necessary.
“With a heavy heart we embarked on this operation, in order to destroy the tunnels, as just this morning we have seen their deadly potential,” said Naftali Bennett, the economy minister and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party. “Difficult days are ahead of us,” he added. “We are also operating against the rockets and all of the existing threats, but the number one target is the tunnels.”
Israel did not send ground troops into Gaza during eight days of cross border violence in 2012.
It was condemned internationally for an intense three-week air-and-ground campaign in 2008-09, when 1,400 Palestinians were killed along with 13 Israelis in fierce street fighting.
Over 100 to 1. That's Hitlerian, or so I've been told.
Israel originally seized the territory in the Six-Day War in 1967 and evacuated its settlers and soldiers in 2005, but maintained restrictions on imports, exports, and travel for the Palestinians left behind.
The military operation started about 10 p.m., hours after Israel bombed a rehabilitation hospital and another airstrike killed four children playing on a Gaza City rooftop — an echo of the previous day’s bombing that left four young children, all cousins, dead on a beach.
That is what I will be thinking of when the children are waived in my face.
At the Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City, most but not all of the 17 patients and 25 doctors and nurses were evacuated before the electricity was cut and heavy bombardments nearly destroyed the building, doctors said.
“We evacuated them under fire,” said Dr. Ali Abu Ryala, a hospital spokesman. “Nurses and doctors had to carry the patients on their backs, some of them falling off the stairway. There is an unprecedented state of panic in the hospital.”
Oh, yeah, btw, bombing hospitals is a war crime. There is no excuse even though Israel offers one.
Along the Gaza City seafront, as tanks entered the north, there was a near-constant staccato of gunboats firing in bursts of five blasts each, sending flashes above the dark water. They were shelling a target south of Gaza’s port, the red lights of their barrels visible from shore, the impact of their artillery echoing a second later.
Earlier, warplanes whooshed over the city as they have for more than a week, and the high-pitched hum of drones could be heard over the call to prayer from mosques to end the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Oh, right, this is all being done during Ramadan.
Talk about adding insult to injury! What sphincters!
Communications with Gaza have become problematic” since the ground invasion, said a statement from Christopher Gunness of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides health care, education, and other services for the more than half of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, who are classified as Palestinian refugees. The agency is currently sheltering thousands who evacuated their homes.
It had been a roller-coaster day, starting with Israel’s early-morning report that it had foiled the attack through the tunnel at about 4:30 a.m. by striking from the air at 13 Palestinians who emerged from it and tried to infiltrate a kibbutz, the first time that had happened in the current conflagration. Lerner said later that the incursion “illustrates the clear and immediate threat we have from the Gaza Strip,” and noted that Israel had uncovered four similar tunnels into its territory over the last 18 months.
Oh, STINK! Now I doubt the story is even real!
The humanitarian pause urged by the United Nations started at 10 a.m., and Gaza residents filled the streets, shopping for food and toys and crowding cash machines open for the first time since the operation began.
After Israel bombed the bank?
But the lull was pierced around noon by a brief flurry of mortars fired from Gaza, with rockets fired toward Israel precisely at 3 p.m., the designated endpoint of the lull. The strikes continued through the afternoon and evening.
At one point, there was word from Egypt that an agreement had been reached for a cease-fire starting at 6 a.m. Friday. Instead, the violence only increased.
“We have to look at this as an operation in stages: its first stage was attacks from the air and sea, and this is the second stage, where we reach contact with the Hamas,” Eli Marom, commander of Israel’s navy from 2007 to 2011, said on Israel’s Channel 2 News. “You have to understand this is a long campaign. This is only its second stage, and there can be other stages.”
Michael B. Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to Washington, said in a late-night interview that Netanyahu had “exercised extraordinary restraint up until now” by not engaging ground troops and “paid a heavy political price for it.” Thursday’s tunnel attack, he said, “was a game changer,” adding: “Essentially, Hamas invaded Israel first.”
Translation: It's a HOAX! And this idea that it is Israel who has been restrained and paid the price when the death tolls are so out of whack.... save the somber and morose violin music.
In contrast to the Iron Dome missile defense system that Israel says has stopped some 300 rockets from hitting populated areas over the last 10 days, Oren said, “We don’t have a response to the tunnels.”
Related: Under Israel's Iron Dome
Also see: Evil Egypt
Suggest such things in America and you are a racist, according to the supremacist Jew War Daily.
He added, “They are reinforced concrete tunnels, basically impregnable from the air and their openings are camouflaged.”
--more--"
Thought you might like to take a look at Gaza in scale:
Wow, is that place ever small. It's a strip of dirt and rubble!
"Israel’s ground operation has roots outside of kibbutz" by Isabel Kershner | New York Times July 18, 2014
"Isabel Kershner.... is an Israeli citizen.... possible family ties to the Israeli military"
At least we are getting it straight from the horse's ass.
SUFA, Israel — Israel’s decision to invade Gaza has its roots just outside of this small kibbutz in southern Israel where open fields and citrus orchards offer a pastoral scene that residents say has long been deceptive.
Just like the Israeli government!
At dawn on Thursday, 13 Hamas gunmen from Gaza emerged from the mouth of an underground tunnel about a mile away, inside Israel territory. The air force thwarted the attack, but the government said that the attempted incursion was the final straw and that the ground invasion would commence.
Another Israeli hoax or false flag!
By Friday, the Israeli military said it had already uncovered 10 tunnels with 22 exit points and that there were “dozens” more “terror tunnels” spread around Gaza. In a statement, it described tunnels crossing the border from Gaza to Israel as “complex and advanced,” and said they were “intended to carry out attacks such as abductions of Israeli civilians and soldiers alike; infiltrations into Israeli communities, mass murders and hostage-taking scenarios.”
All of Gaza has been held hostage by siege, and the biggest mass murderer is the same stink state wailing.
Gadi Shamni, a former commander of the Israeli army’s Gaza division and of its central command, said that destroying the tunnels posed a technological and operational challenge and that each had offshoots going in different directions, making it difficult to track and disable the whole route.
The residents of the kibbutz, called Sufa, are accustomed to living under threat. Mortar shells fired from Gaza strike without warning here, and if there is a warning, residents have 15 seconds to run for cover. But the attempted incursion through a tunnel was what shook them, even though they have known for years about the tunnels.
“They planned to carry out a massacre here,” Eyal Brandeis, 50, a lecturer in political science and one of the few residents remaining, said of the Hamas militants who came out of the tunnel with machine guns and grenades.
Not far from here, Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured in a cross-border raid in 2006, was spirited into Gaza through a tunnel and held there by Hamas for five years. Two other soldiers were killed in the attack.
Hamas’ military wing has repeatedly boasted that it has “surprises” in store for Israel, presumably a reference to its tunnel network.
Blah, blah, f***ing blah, and I'm not buying it anymore. I'm so tired of hearing about Jewish suffering when they inflict so much on other people.
The air force stopped the militants from Gaza Thursday with bombs, and they hurried back underground.
Hamas’ military wing claimed they all returned safely. The Israeli military estimates that at least three were killed and says that its action thwarted a major terrorist attack presumably planned against Sufa, the closest concentration of Israelis.
Honestly, I'm not interested in the debate over what lies Israel transmitted through my ma$$ media anymore.
A propaganda video posted by Hamas’ military wing on its website Thursday showed its special forces training for an operation against a background of dramatic music.
Pot, kettle, black.
In a mock village similar to ones that can be found in Israeli military bases, they went from house to house, blasting open doors and throwing smoke grenades inside before entering and shooting wildly.
“They train like we train,” Brandeis said, “but regrettably for other purposes.”
Yeah, Israel is the good guys.
Several other “offensive tunnels,” as the military calls them, have been discovered in the last few years, some packed with explosives.
In 2012 one tunnel blew up, injuring a soldier and destroying an army vehicle. In 2013 the army discovered a mile-long tunnel leading from a house in Gaza to Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. It had electricity and a phone line. In March, the army found another one it said looked like a subway passage.
The air force struck another one leading from Gaza toward Kerem Shalom, just south of Sufa, about two weeks ago. When Hamas militants entered the damaged tunnel a day or so later they apparently set off explosives there. Five were killed and Hamas blamed Israel, escalating the hostilities that grew into the current confrontation.
Others tunnels lead from homes in Gaza to concealed rocket launchers or are used to store weapons, according to Israeli military officials. “Actually there are two Gazas,” one senior military official said. “One above ground and another under the ground.”
By Friday morning, most of the 300 residents of this kibbutz fled to safer areas of the country and the soldiers guarding the place moved into the empty kindergartens. The windows and the walls shook here, a reminder of just how close the fighting in Gaza was.
Gazans have nowhere to go, and is this ever a one-sided piece of supremacist slop!!!
Brandeis moved to Sufa in 1986 “out of ideology,” he said. “Socialism and Zionism — living in the Negev, settling the country.” He said there was “no way” he would leave, even for the weekend.
Two horrible things that do not go well together!
Hadas Grinspan, 55, who leads the community’s emergency team, also stayed behind. In a small office she was composing a short newsletter to send by email to all the residents now scattered around the country. “We have been through a challenging experience,” she wrote of the tunnel episode. “The details are in the news media.”
The windows of her small office shook as Grinspan identified the different booms coming from Gaza, distinguishing between a missile fired from an attack helicopter and tank and artillery fire.
Dror Efrati, 52, who came here in 1983 from Jerusalem, said the tunnels were hard to find because the militants open up the last couple of yards only in the final hours before emerging from them.
What about ground-penetrating sonar that didn't find mass graves at Treblinka? They could help chart the tunnels.
Efrati remembered the days when Sufa residents had good working and trade relations with their Palestinian neighbors, but that all came to an end with the outbreak of the first intifada in the late 1980s. He said he hoped those days would come back. Outside, a black plume of smoke was rising up from Gaza.
Yeah, it is all the Palestinians fault.
--more--"
"In this invasion, a less isolated position for Israel; Scope of attack, diplomatic corps differ from ’09" by Jodi Rudoren | New York Times July 19, 2014
This article has been cleared through through Israel.
Have you seen the protests in the streets all over the planet yet?
JERUSALEM — As Israeli troops once again operated inside the Gaza Strip on Friday, the risks of a deep entanglement, a failure to curb the rocket fire, and the condemnations over civilian casualties were all too apparent.
Twice before, Israel has battled Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that dominates Gaza, and twice before, Israel has halted under international pressure without eliminating the threat of rocket fire.
But this time, officials and analysts say, the landscape is different. Israel has publicly framed a clear agenda targeting tunnels it says militants built to store weapons or stage attacks on its territory. This time, a weakened Hamas cannot turn to Egypt for respite.
Give it a day or two.
This time, Western leaders appear more patient: President Obama expressed concern Friday about “the loss of more innocent life” but also said no nation should be subjected to a hail of rockets or underground incursions.
Why not? We rain them down on people and Israel has been subverting this government for decades.
The start of the ground campaign was a stark contrast to Israel’s 2009 invasion, when forces quickly bisected the tiny coastal enclave and blockaded Gaza City, where they engaged in gunbattles with Hamas fighters. On Friday, the troops operated mainly in farmland within about a mile of Gaza’s northern, southern and eastern edges, and quickly announced they had uncovered more than 20 tunnel exit points.
Setting the bar relatively low helps hold back public expectations, provide the military with achievable goals, and build international legitimacy.
This makes me laugh! Look at the NYT ALL WORRIED ABOUT ISRAEL'S IMAGE!!
Doing all they can to make the monsters of Israel look good!
It also reflects Israel’s reluctance to re-engage long-term in Gaza or rout Hamas only to find it replaced by even more radical groups, though on Friday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to “prepare for the possibility of widening, significantly,” its offensive.
Obviously the pressure is already getting to them for I was told days before a long reoccupation!
But if the action on the ground has changed from past conflicts, so has the diplomatic horizon. Analysts said that political shifts among Palestinians and across the region had made the familiar paths to cease-fire agreements harder to find this time.
That 180-degree spin in favor of Israel is gross and not worthy of the New York Times.
Hamas, financially desperate and politically isolated but rich in armaments, is desperate to score points with the public either by harming Israelis or curbing what it calls the siege that has plunged Gaza into an economic and humanitarian disaster.
I don't see Obummer citing children and hauling them over here to put in camps, do you? And that Zionist spit-shine the NYT is applying is dizzying.
Israel, under pressure internationally for expanding settlements in the West Bank and for the number of civilians killed, including some 65 children, in the 11-day assault on Gaza, wants mainly to disarm the militants.
Of course, that LAST PARAGRAPH FLIES in the FACE of the ENTIRE NARRATIVE!
“There’s a certain contradiction here,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli diplomat and university president. “That’s what you need mediators for — you find that magic formula, constructive ambiguity, that enables both parties to claim achievement.
“Right now, those actors are not there.”
Washington, which has helped broker previous cease-fires, is consumed with other crises and has diminished credibility in the Middle East. Egypt, which during the brief presidency of Mohammed Morsi strongly supported Hamas, now treats the group as an enemy and is loath to let its rivals Qatar and Turkey play a significant diplomatic role to aid residents of Gaza.
I want the NATO powers to CONFRO0NT ISRAEL MILITARILY! Start shelling Israel!
That leaves President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, an adversary of both Israel and Hamas, as the primary Palestinian interlocutor. Weak at home but increasingly active on the international stage, he shuttled from Cairo to Istanbul on Friday for what were described as cease-fire negotiations.
Oh, now he is an adversary! (Blog editor grits teeth and shakes head!)
“The fact that Abbas is involved this time, unlike all previous cases, could mean something,” said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and analyst. “He does not have a lot of leverage here, but the little he has might allow for a three-way deal — Hamas, Abbas, and the Israelis. That’s the way things might be smoother than to wait for the battlefield itself to determine the outcome, which could take a very, very long time, and a great deal of bloodshed.”
The bloodshed continued Friday as an artillery shell killed three children of Ismail Abu Musalam in their bedroom near the northern entry to Gaza around noon — the third day in a row in which groups of youths were killed — and another shell killed eight members of the Abu Jarad family, four of them children, at night. The Palestinian death toll topped 280, plus 2,000 wounded, as airstrikes continued over the relatively contained ground operations.
Good thing the diplomatic situation is more in favor of Israel now.
The Israeli military said it uncovered 10 distinct tunnels, struck 240 targets, killed 17 militants, and detained 21 others for questioning on the first day of the ground operation. A 20-year-old soldier, Eitan Barak, was shot and killed in the early hours — the second Israeli death of the war.
Sirens signaling rockets from Gaza sounded all day and night throughout southern and central Israel — one of several over Tel Aviv sounded during a phone conversation between Obama and Netanyahu. The Israeli military counted 135 rockets in the first 24 hours of the ground operation, 40 of them blocked from hitting cities by the Iron Dome defense system. One damaged an empty kindergarten and a synagogue.
Related: The Gaza Rocket Squads
My Zionist MSM tells me they were Palestinian.
Netanyahu expressed regret Friday “for every mistaken strike on civilians.”
Such hollow words.
But he also said he was engaged in “unending” diplomacy to create “the international space” so Israel could “act systematically and with power against a murderous terrorist organization and its partners.”
Doesn't sound very regretful.
--more--"
"Militants slip into Israel using tunnels; Enter despite military’s push deeper into Gaza" by Anne Barnard and Jodi Rudoren | New York Times July 20, 2014
Why would one want to read this?
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Eight Palestinian militants emerged from a tunnel some 300 yards inside Israel on Saturday morning, surprising an Israeli border patrol with a rocket-propelled grenade shot at their jeeps and starting a gunbattle that left two Israeli soldiers and one militant dead before the Palestinians retreated underground, the Israeli military said.
Saturday afternoon, two more militants entered Israel, a military spokesman said, either through a tunnel or breaching the border fence, and carrying tranquilizers and handcuffs. Israeli soldiers fatally shot one; the other was wearing an explosive vest that detonated, killing him.
Hours later, another militant slipped through a different tunnel into Israeli territory and, according to the military, fired on troops who killed him.
The infiltrations came as the Israeli military pressed deeper into Gaza in an intensifying ground war it says is meant to destroy a labyrinth of tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel before they can be used for launching attacks.
Again, the impression is first Israel being invaded!
No wonder the New York Times is dying.
The morning clash was the first time in the current war that the militants killed soldiers inside Israel, and came just three days after another infiltration that the military said was the immediate trigger for adding a ground invasion to a deadly air campaign.
The developments also came as Israeli officials revealed that the tunnel network was far more extensive than had been publicly known, with 13 tunnels discovered and an estimated dozens more suspected.
Meaning this is going to be a long occupation, 'er, operation.
Though the government has said the ground campaign will be limited and aimed only at the tunnels, the growing intensity of the battles that are pushing deeper into civilian areas suggested that the fighting could grow far worse.
Already, tens of thousands have been forced to flee. At one hospital in northern Gaza, the director said that 50 casualties arrived in just three hours Saturday morning, a number that had been typical for an entire day during Israel’s air campaign that began July 8.
The Israelis dropped leaflets urging residents of two crowded refugee camps, Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi, to evacuate, raising alarms from the United Nations, which said that shelters were already overwhelmed and in danger of running out of supplies.
Where are refugees supposed to run?
Among the dead in recent fighting were eight members of a Palestinian family, including four children, killed by an Israeli artillery barrage Friday night. During the funeral Saturday, artillery and small-arms fire echoed nearby from clashes between militants and Israeli forces. Hamas rockets whooshed into the sky from a nearby launch site, and some mourners hurried away before the ceremony was over.
Tunnels under the border with Gaza have had a powerful hold on the Israeli psyche since 2006, when Hamas fighters used one to capture an army lieutenant, Gilad Shalit, who was held for six years. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said a task force had been working for a year on a plan for a ground invasion to destroy the tunnels.
Oh, so this was IN THE PLANNING STAGES for YEARS!
Israeli troops have uncovered 13 tunnels from Gaza into Israel since the start of the ground operation, some of them as much as 30 yards underground, with multiple entry points beneath greenhouses and open fields, he said Saturday. He added that the 13 tunnels, which he now said were under Israeli control, were all over the periphery of Gaza and that he believed there were “tens” more.
The military said the infiltrators Saturday had planned “a lethal attack” in a nearby community, but did not name the town.
Lerner said troops were in the process of demolishing the tunnels, and have been engaged in “urban warfare” inside Gaza.
Israel sure knows how to do that!
Hamas militants were fighting back with antitank missiles, small-arms fire, and grenades, Lerner said.
Do they have an Army, Navy, Air Force, and armed-to-the-teeth patron like the U.S.?
A rocket fired from Gaza killed an Israeli, Odeh Lafia al-Waj, 32, in a Bedouin village near Dimona, injuring four members of his family, including a 3-month-old girl who was critically hurt. He was the first Israeli civilian killed by one of about 1,600 rockets fired by Hamas, most of which are intercepted by defense systems or fall in open fields. Another was killed by a mortar shell close to Gaza.
What terrible aim!
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose to 301 since July 8, including 72 children, 24 women, and 18 elderly people, with more than 2,000 wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said. About 75 percent of the casualties have been civilians, according to a United Nations count.
As the funeral procession for the Abu Jarad family wound through the streets of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, men took turns carrying the bodies of an infant and a toddler, wrapped in bloody white shrouds. The adults’ bodies were wrapped in the yellow flags of Hamas’s rival party, Fatah.
In Khan Younis, in central Gaza, seven people were killed, mostly men, and others were wounded when a drone struck a group of people in the middle of the city, the health ministry said.
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Related:
"7 more Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza operation" by Ibrahim Barzak and Peter Enav | Associated Press July 21, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military says seven soldiers have been killed in a firefight with Gaza militants.
That raises the total Israeli death toll in the two-week conflict to 27, including two civilians. At least 550 Palestinians have been killed.
Wow, that is a HUGE JUMP over a DAY!
The military didn’t elaborate on the circumstances of the seven deaths on Monday.
The top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip signaled Monday that the Islamic militant group will not agree to an unconditional cease-fire with Israel, saying that the aim of the current battle is to break a 7-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Ismail Haniyeh’s comments came as U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry headed to Cairo to try to renew cease-fire efforts aimed at ending the Israel-Hamas fighting that has killed at least 530 Palestinians and 20 Israelis and displaced tens of thousands of Gazans in the past two weeks.
Good thing Israel is not isolated.
Despite the new diplomatic push, Israel continued to attack targets in the densely populated coastal strip from the air and from tanks, while Hamas fired more rockets and tried to infiltrate into Israel.
Sort of like what Israel has done to the U.S. government.
Last week, Egypt called for an unconditional cease-fire, to be followed by talks on easing the closure of Gaza. Israel accepted the proposal at the time, but Hamas rejected it, saying it wants guarantees first on lifting the closure.
Israel accepted it because it would have required Hamas to hand over all their weapons. That was it. That was the deal. Cease fire, hand over your weapons.
The blockade was imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas overran Gaza in 2007.
Well, they won elections and the NYT knows it, so.... !!!!
Over the past year, Egypt has further tightened restrictions, driving Hamas into a deep financial crisis.
Yeah, Egypt is also culpable for war crimes.
Haniyeh said in a televised speech Monday that ‘‘we cannot go back, we cannot go back to the silent death’’ of the blockade.
He said all of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents shared this demand.
‘‘Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and by its courage,’’ he said. ‘‘This siege, this unjust siege, must be lifted.’’
On Monday, Israeli tank shells struck a hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing four people and wounding 60, Palestinian officials said, as Israel’s defense minister vowed to press on with the war against Hamas ‘‘as long as necessary.’’
WHERE is the "world community?"
A dozen shells hit the Al Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir el-Balah on Monday, Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said. He said four people were killed and 60 wounded when the shells landed in the administration building, the intensive care unit and the surgery department.
Live footage on Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV station showed wounded being moved on gurneys into the emergency department.
A doctor at the hospital, Fayez Zidane, told the station that shells hit the third and fourth floor as well as the reception area.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
In one of several airstrikes, 25 people were buried under the rubble of a home in the southern town of Khan Younis, including 24 from the same family. Rescue workers pulled the bodies from the wreckage Monday.
‘‘Twenty-five people!’’ said family member Sabri Abu Jamea. ‘‘Doesn’t this indicate that Israel is ruthless? Are we the liars? The evidence is here in the morgue refrigerators. The evidence is in the refrigerators.’’
Another Israeli airstrike hit the home of the Siyam family in southern Gaza, near the town of Rafah, said the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The strike killed 10 people, including four young children and a 9-month-old baby girl, al-Kidra said.
Oh, this is WANTON and INTENTIONAL SLAUGHTER!!!!!!
Hamas militants, meanwhile, tried to sneak into Israel through two tunnels, the latest in a series of such attempts. The Israeli military said 10 infiltrators were killed after being detected and targeted by Israeli aircraft.
Hamas also fired 50 more rockets at Israel, including two at Tel Aviv, causing no injuries or damage. Since the start of the Israeli operation, Hamas has fired almost 2,000 rockets at Israel.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said the Gaza military operation would have no time limit.
‘‘If needed we will recruit more reservists in order to continue the operation as long as necessary until the completion of the task and the return of the quiet in the whole of Israel especially from the threat of the Gaza Strip,’’ Yaalon told a parliamentary committee.
Israel accepted an Egyptian call for an unconditional cease-fire last week, but resumed its offensive after Hamas rejected the proposal.
Hamas says that before halting fire, it wants guarantees that Israel and Egypt will significantly ease a seven-year border blockade of Gaza.
‘‘The resistance (Hamas) will not respond to any pressure,’’ Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a text message, in a reference to the renewed cease-fire efforts.
Yeah, it's all Hamas's fault.
Kerry left Washington early Monday for Cairo, where he will join diplomatic efforts to resume a truce that had been agreed to in November 2012.
Hamas remains deeply suspicious of the motives of the Egyptian government, which has banned the Muslim Brotherhood, a region-wide group to which Hamas also belongs.
Israel invaded Gaza late last week, preceded by a 10-day air campaign. Air and artillery strikes have targeted Gaza’s border areas in an attempt to destroy tunnels and rocket launchers.
Sunday marked the single deadliest day in Gaza since the conflict erupted on July 8, with more than 100 Palestinians killed, according to Palestinian health officials. Most died in the first major ground battle of the conflict, in Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighborhood, which Israel says is a major source for rocket fire against its civilians.
In response to the escalation, the U.N. Security Council expressed ‘‘serious concern’’ about the rising civilian death toll and demanded an immediate end to the fighting.
Aaaah! Israel has people on her side now. That's what I read.
On Sunday afternoon, rescue workers making a last sweep through Shijaiyah had heard the voice of a woman under the rubble, pleading for help.
The team left because it deemed the situation too dangerous, but returned later Sunday with a bulldozer to rescue the three people trapped underneath.
Seven-year-old Bissam Dhaher, her face bruised and bandaged, was recovering Monday at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. Relatives watched over her as the girl slept. Her uncle remained hospitalized, while an aunt — the one who had called out for help — was released, relatives said.
On Sunday evening, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri in Gaza claimed his group had captured an Israeli soldier. An announcement on Gaza TV of the soldier’s capture set off celebration in the streets of West Bank.
But there was no official confirmation or denial of the claim in Israel.
They always have the final word.
For Israelis, a captured soldier would be a nightmare scenario. Hamas-allied militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held him captive in Gaza until Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were involved in grisly killings, for his return in 2011.
Poooow widdle Iswael!!
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli tank shells struck a hospital in central Gaza on Monday, a health official and a doctor at the facility said. The health official said the shells killed at least four people and wounded 60, including 30 medical staff.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Health official Ashraf al-Kidra said 12 shells hit the Al Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir el-Balah. He said the shells landed in the administration building, the intensive care unit and the surgery department.
Live footage on Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV station showed wounded being moved on gurneys into the emergency department.
A doctor at the hospital, Fayez Zidane, told the station that shells hit the third and fourth floor as well as the reception area.
‘‘There is still shelling against the hospital,’’ he said. He said he found bits of a rocket, presumably from one of the projectiles.
Zidane appealed to the Red Cross and a nearby hospital to send help.
On Monday, the U.N. chief and the U.S. secretary of state headed to Cairo to try to end two weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting that has killed at least 508 Palestinians and 20 Israelis and displaced tens of thousands of Gaza residents.
The new cease-fire efforts by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry followed the deadliest day of fighting since the escalation erupted on July 8.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council expressed ‘‘serious concern’’ about Gaza’s rising civilian death toll and demanded an immediate end to the fighting following an emergency session.
As Israeli airstrikes continued to pound Gaza, rescue workers near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis were digging out bodies early Monday from the one-story home of the Abu Jamea family, flattened in one of the strikes overnight, said Ashraf al-Kidra, a Gaza health ministry official.
Al-Kidra said the Palestinian death toll from the two-week offensive stood at 508 as of Monday morning. More than half of those victims — 268 — were killed since an Israeli ground operation in Gaza began late Thursday.
That total included 20 bodies that were found at the site near Khan Younis, where two people were pulled alive from the rubble, Al-Kidra said.
(Blog editor can only read with horror)
Elsewhere in Gaza, he said, Israeli tanks opened fire on the home of the Siyam family west of Rafah in the southern part of the strip, killing 10 people, including four young children and a 9-month-old baby girl.
‘‘Without any warning at all they began bombarding us at midnight, at 2 a.m., said Dr. Mahmoud Siyam, the head of the family. ‘‘We are not related to any military or political activities. We are civilized people (living) in this area of Gaza, what crime have we committed?’’
None except be on land Israel wants.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it foiled a Hamas infiltration attempt on Monday through two tunnels leading from northern Gaza into southern Israel. The military said 10 infiltrators were killed after being detected and targeted by Israeli aircraft.
On Sunday, the first major ground battle in two weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting exacted a steep price, killing 65 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers and forcing thousands of terrified Palestinian civilians to flee their devastated Shijaiyah neighborhood, which Israel says is a major source for rocket fire against its civilians.
I will be making this part of my upcoming World War III on Blog Series.
Large sections of Shijaiyah were pulverized by a barrage of Israeli tank and artillery bombardments and repeated Israeli air strikes that buffeted the densely populated neighborhood for most of Sunday.
Speaking on national television shortly after the military announced the deaths of the 13 Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Gaza offensive would continue ‘‘as long as necessary’’ to end attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.
Appearing with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that Israel expected to complete its work neutralizing the Hamas tunnels leading into Israeli territory within several days — a possible hint of a timeframe for the end of the operation.
Meaning world outrage is getting to them.
Still, much work remains if diplomats are to succeed in brokering a sustainable cease-fire. On Sunday, Kerry said the U.S. still supports the Egyptian proposal for a halt to the hostilities that Israel accepted and Hamas rejected last week.
Hamas remains deeply suspicious of the motives of the Egyptian government, which has banned the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that Hamas closely identifies with.
The 13 Israeli soldiers who died in Shijaiyah brought the overall Israeli death toll to 20, including two civilians who died from rocket and mortar fire directed at Israeli towns and villages from different parts of Gaza.
On Sunday evening, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri in Gaza claimed his group had captured an Israeli soldier. An announcement on Gaza TV of the soldier’s capture set off celebration in the streets of West Bank.
But there was no official confirmation of the claim in Israel. Earlier, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Ron Prosor, said the Hamas claim was untrue.
For Israelis, a captured soldier would be a nightmare scenario. Hamas-allied militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held him captive in Gaza until Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were involved in grisly killings, for his return in 2011.
What do you think Israel is doing now?
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"Death toll climbs in Gaza; Day is deadliest yet; Obama airs concern to Netanyahu" by Anne Barnard and Isabel Kershner | New York Times July 21, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The fierce battle began in the early hours of Sunday morning in Shejaiya, an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, where Israeli forces battled with Hamas militants. Terrified civilians fled, sometimes past the bodies of those struck down in earlier artillery barrages. By dusk it was clear that Sunday was the deadliest single day for the Palestinians in the latest conflict and the deadliest for the Israeli military in years.
At least 60 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers and officers were killed in Shejaiya alone, and the shattered neighborhood became the latest symbol of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, underlining the rising cost of this newest Gaza war.
The death tolls and the withering assault on Shejaiya appeared to shake the international community, with world leaders continuing to carefully call for both sides to step back but with criticism of Israel rising.
What, what, what?
Within hours, President Obama had called the Israeli prime minister for the second time in three days, the UN Security Council had called an emergency session at the urging of the Palestinians, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had issued a statement calling the attack on Shejaiya “an atrocious action.”
By early evening, the Obama administration revealed that Secretary of State John F. Kerry would head to Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire.
Throughout Gaza, at least 87 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire Sunday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, bringing the death toll there since the Israeli air offensive began July 8 to at least 432, with more than 3,000 injured. The toll includes more than 100 children.
Israel has lost 18 soldiers so far, as well as two citizens killed by rocket and mortar fire. Two Americans — a Californian and a Texan — were among the soldiers for the Israel Defense Forces killed in Gaza, the Associated Press said.
The government doesn't care about dual nationals killed by Israel, so....
In Shejaiya, the panic Sunday was palpable. Some of the men, women, and children who streamed out of the area were barefoot. Israeli shells crashed all around, rockets fired by Palestinian militants soared overhead toward Israel, and small-arms fire echoed. Asked where they were going, one woman said, “God knows.”
The casualties quickly overwhelmed local hospitals. Doctors treated some victims on the floor.
OMG!
As the casualties mounted, it became apparent that what had begun Thursday night as a limited ground invasion to follow 10 days of intense airstrikes had developed into a dangerous phase for both sides.
Late Sunday, the military wing of Hamas said it had captured an Israeli soldier, though the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said, “Those rumors are untrue.”
I suppose they were only trying to get in on the act.
Despite the growing international alarm, Israel’s political and military leaders said that while acknowledging the pain for both sides, they were determined to continue with their mission.
God damn you!!
They have said the offensive is meant to root out the vast network of underground tunnels used by Hamas, many of them leading into Israel, and to quell the rocket fire from Gaza, which continued Sunday.
In a televised prime-time address to the nation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We are not deterred.”
Netanyahu said he had “laid the diplomatic foundation that has given us international credit to operate,” listing major Western countries that he said understood Israel’s right to defend itself.
In another sign that the conflict could continue to take a high toll, a senior Israeli military official noted that the Hamas fighters Israel faced in Shejaiya had “learned lessons” from past conflicts and were tough adversaries.
“I have to admit that we were facing good fighters on the other side,” he said.
Either that or Israel's vaunted juggernaut, as unbeatable as Hitler's forces at one time, may be a deteriorating force.
So far, Netanyahu appears to have the support of many Israelis, who were particularly shaken in recent days when militants used the “terror tunnels” that the government had warned about to infiltrate their country.
Then I hold them responsible as well. To hell with Israel!
It is unclear how much support Israel will continue to receive abroad if the bombardment continues.
After I was told the diplomatics had shifted over the las.... never mind.
Last week, Obama reaffirmed his “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself” but suggested that it was based on his understanding that “the current military ground operations are designed to deal with the tunnels.”
On Sunday, he again backed Israel’s right to self-defense but also raised “serious concern about the growing number of casualties,” according to a statement released by the White House.
This world isn't going to take any more invasions and wars!!
Ban called on Israel to halt its operation in Gaza immediately, saying, “Israel must exercise maximum restraint and do far more to protect civilians.” He also called for an end to the rocket fire from Gaza.
Don't Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?
Ban spoke in Doha, Qatar, hours before a scheduled meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas called the Israeli action in Shejaiya “a crime against humanity,” according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.
It is.
Like other Israeli officials, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, noted that ground forces moved into Shejaiya after residents had been warned to leave for days. But some residents have said they are unsure where they could go to be safe in the small, densely populated enclave.
The two Americans killed were soldiers for the Israel Defense Force.
Stuart Steinberg confirmed the death of his son, Max, 24, to the Associated Press. Max Steinberg, whose family lives in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, was a sharpshooter for the Golani Brigade.
The Israeli defense force said in a statement that Sergeant Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, was killed in combat in the Gaza Strip. Carmeli was from South Padre Island, Texas.
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"Kerry backs Israel but bemoans casualties" by Brian Knowlton | New York Times July 21, 2014
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John F. Kerry strongly criticized Palestinian leaders Sunday for rejecting a cease-fire plan, but he also appeared — in comments captured by a live microphone — to express exasperation with the high cost in civilian lives as Israel pressed its ground attack on Gaza.
It is really telling that these guys can feel one way privately but then have to suck Israeli ass publicly.
Kerry, who was expected to leave Monday for the region, was making a sweep of the five major network television programs when, between interviews, he spoke by cellphone to an unidentified aide.
Chris Wallace, the interviewer for “Fox News Sunday,” confronted Kerry with a tape of those remarks during his appearance on that program.
In it, Kerry is heard to say: “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation. We’ve got to get over there. Thank you, Jon. I think, Jon, we ought to go tonight. I think it’s crazy to be sitting around.”
I'm hardly a fan of John Kerry, but at least he is showing he is a better man that the Zionists he serves.
The State Department later identified the aide as Jonathan Finer, Kerry’s deputy chief of staff, who accompanies him on his trips.
The comments were without context, but Wallace’s questioning and Kerry’s reply seemed to make clear that the secretary had been speaking ironically about a “pinpoint operation” to express that he was disturbed by the deaths of Palestinian civilians, including many children.
It's a very small thing, but thank you.
The Israeli operation is aimed at militant extremists who have been smuggling arms into Gaza and raining rockets on Israel.
Blah, blah, excuse.
Asked if he was “upset that the Israelis are going too far,” Kerry replied: “It’s very, very difficult in these situations.” He continued: “I reacted, obviously, in a way that anybody does with respect to young children and civilians.”
But on the Fox program and the others, Kerry vociferously defended Israel’s right to take action, including efforts to destroy some of the hundreds of tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle arms and fighters.
Amazing, isn't it?
“We defend Israel’s right to do what it is doing in order to get at those tunnels,” he said on Fox, and he called Palestinian leaders “intransigent” for turning down a cease-fire plan put forth last week by Egypt.
:-(
Since Israel did accept that proposal, he added, “it is important for Hamas to now step up and be reasonable and understand that you accept the cease-fire, you save lives, and that’s the way we can proceed.”
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Related:
Israeli official says Hamas’s claims are false
Democrats losing moral clarity on Israel
Says the Globe's Jewish neo-con resident of the opinion pages.
"Death toll passes 100 for second day in Gaza, as truce effort intensifies" by Karin Laub and Yousur Alhlou | Associated Press July 22, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli fighter planes hit homes across Gaza on Monday, including a high-rise tower in which 11 people died, Palestinian officials said. Israeli tanks, meanwhile, shelled a hospital in central Gaza, killing four people and wounding dozens as the daily death toll surpassed 100 for a second day.
The strike on the Gaza City tower brought down most of the building, said Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra, adding that 40 people were injured.
Israeli officials said the bombing and shelling targeted rocket launching sites and weapons stockpiles. They have said they are trying to minimize civilian deaths and accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Also Monday, Israel said four of its soldiers and 10 Palestinian militants were killed inside Israeli territory after armed gunmen from Gaza infiltrated the country through two more of the tunnels that the ground operation is targeting. The tunnels have been used to enter Israel and to hide weapons.
At least 565 Palestinians have been killed and more than 3,600 wounded in the past two weeks, Kidra said.
On the Israeli side, seven soldiers overall were killed in clashes with Gaza fighters Monday, bringing the military death toll to 25, more than twice as many as in Israel’s last Gaza ground war in 2009. Two Israeli civilians have also died in Palestinian rocket attacks and scores of soldiers have been injured.
The mounting bloodshed brought UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Secretary of State John Kerry to Cairo on Monday, for a new cease-fire push. However, the gaps remain wide and no credible mediator has emerged.
Egypt, Israel, and the United States back an unconditional cease-fire, to be followed by talks on a possible new border arrangement for Gaza. Israel and Egypt have severely restricted movement in and out of Gaza since Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
Hamas, with some support from Qatar and Turkey, wants guarantees on lifting the blockade before halting fire. The Islamic militant group has no faith in mediation by Egypt’s rulers, who deposed a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo a year ago and tightened restrictions on Gaza — to the point of driving Hamas into its worst financial crisis since its founding in 1987.
The top Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said Monday that Gaza’s 1.7 million people share Hamas’s goal of forcing Israel and Egypt to lift the blockade.
‘‘We cannot go back, we cannot go back to the silent death’’ of the blockade, he said. ‘‘Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and by its courage.’’
After a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri, Ban said that ‘‘violence must stop by all sides’’ and that they must enter negotiations, seemingly siding with Cairo’s approach.
However, Ban also said: ‘‘We can’t claim victory simply by returning matters to where they stood before they led to terrible bloodshed.’’
The border blockade has set Gaza back years, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs through bans on most exports and on imports of vital construction materials.
It was meant to keep Gaza one step above catastrophe forever.
Israel allows many consumer goods into Gaza, but specialists say Gaza’s economy cannot recover without a resumption of exports.
The Rafah passenger crossing with Egypt is Gaza’s only gate to the world, but Egypt has tightened restrictions over the past year, allowing only medical patients, Muslim pilgrims, and Gazans with foreign passports to travel.
On Monday, President Obama reaffirmed his belief that Israel has the right to defend itself against rockets being launched by Hamas into Israel. Yet, he contended that Israel’s military action in Gaza had already done ‘‘significant damage’’ to the Hamas terrorist infrastructure and said he doesn’t want to see more civilians getting killed.
Yeah, you Israelis are making them all look bad!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Sky News Arabia that the goal of Israel’s strikes on Gaza is ‘‘to restore quiet and security for the people of Israel for a significant period of time.’’
‘‘We’ll take whatever action is necessary to achieve that goal,’’ he said, adding that Israel has accepted cease-fire offers, while Hamas has rejected them.
Israel says the tunnels, some starting from homes and mosques, are a strategic threat because they reach inside Israel and demolishing them is a high priority. Gaza militants have fired more than 2,000 rockets at Israel in the past two weeks, including 130 on Monday, the army said.
Same must go for Palestinian homes.
The Israeli strikes on homes have driven up casualties.
That's a surprise. Who could have seen that coming?
About half of the dead were killed in their homes, according to the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, a Palestinian human rights group. Various Palestinian rights groups estimated that at least 425 homes across Gaza were attacked by the military since July 8.
That's terrorism. Being frightened in your own home and then killed.
Among the dead in the strike on the Gaza City apartment tower Monday was Zakariya Abu Dagha, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of several small PLO factions.
Six of the 11 killed were members of the same family, Kidra said. He said the family — a German-educated engineer, Ibrahim Kelani, his wife and four children — had sought refuge in the apartment tower after fleeing their apartment in a border area of Gaza that has come under heavy Israeli fire.
So Israel tells them to leave, then bombs where they went!
The Israeli military reported heavy fighting with Hamas in Gaza on Monday. Three soldiers were killed in those clashes, while a female suicide bomber was shot before she could detonate her explosive belt among soldiers, the military said.
A firefight broke out when Hamas militants snuck into Israel through a tunnel from Gaza. The militants popped out of the ground close to an Israeli community near the border with Gaza before they were spotted by the military, the army said. Israeli media said 10 Hamas fighters were killed, along with four Israeli soldiers.
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"US urges global push for Israeli, Hamas cease-fire" by Michael R. Gordon | New York Times July 22, 2014
Print copy Lara Jakes, rather that than Gordon but I can't find that on the web.
CAIRO — As Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived here Monday night to try to craft a cease-fire in the Gaza crisis as rapidly as possible, he confronted an uncomfortable reality.
The United States must rely heavily on Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey to play intermediary and exert their influence because it has no direct contact and little leverage with the militant group Hamas. Those countries, however, have their own deep-seated differences about Hamas. While Egypt has been opposed to Hamas and other Islamic movements, Turkey has been supportive. Qatar, for its part, has provided financial assistance to Hamas and also a base of operations for Khalid Meshal, the group’s political leader.
“It will be extremely difficult for the United States to bring Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar together right now,” said Robert M. Danin, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior State Department official.
“However, all three countries do wish to see an end to the fighting,” Danin added. “Moreover, Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar all stand to benefit politically and in their regional standing by serving as power brokers to a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.”
Kerry’s visit here comes after a successful effort to forge a compromise in Afghanistan that led to an agreement to an international audit of the ballots of a disputed election. And Kerry brought a similar sense of urgency to the Gaza crisis.
How quickly his peace efforts have been forgotten.
“We’ve got to get over there,” he said Sunday in an unguarded comment to an aide during a television interview when he thought his microphone was off. “Let’s go.”
Kerry, who plans to stay in Cairo until Wednesday morning and could travel to other Middle Eastern capitals after that, met with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and announced $47 million in US humanitarian aid for Gaza.
You won't see me complaining about that.
On Tuesday, Kerry was scheduled to meet with Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the Egyptian president, and with its foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, and Nabil Elaraby, the head of the Arab League.
“Our immediate goal is stop the fighting as quickly as possible,” said a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, citing agency protocol on briefing reporters. The official added that the Obama administration hoped to end the combat before tackling more thorny and time-consuming issues about Gaza’s future and the security arrangement there.
Yet Hamas and Israel are each expected to add further demands.
“The military wing of Hamas is calling the shots now and will try to hold out to show they achieved something,” said Dennis B. Ross, a former top Middle East negotiator, adding that the group can be expected to insist on reopening the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, money from Qatar, and the release of some Hamas prisoners Israel has detained recently.
“Israel will want to hold out until they have destroyed a large number of the tunnels, making rebuilding difficult, and will seek to get Kerry to insist on the dismantling of the rocket infrastructure in return for rebuilding Gaza,” Ross added.
“Israel may not have a problem with money going to Hamas but will mightily resist the release of Hamas prisoners,” he said.
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"US says cease-fire must precede talks" by Michael R. Gordon | New York Times July 23, 2014
He is one of the guys who helped sell all the Iraq lies.
CAIRO — Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday that the United States was prepared to address the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and the political demands of the Palestinians living there, but that a cease-fire first must be carried out.
Looks like things turned on Israel fast!
After a two-hour meeting with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, Kerry said Egypt’s cease-fire proposal had provided the framework for discussions on how to arrange one.
All of a sudden Egypt's coup not a concern.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that it is his ‘‘hope and belief’’ that his emergency mission to the Middle East will lead to a cease-fire ‘‘in the very near future.’’ He cautioned, however, that ‘‘of course there are many obstacles and complexities.’’
Ban told the Security Council by video conference from the West Bank city of Ramallah that he could not publicly reveal details ‘‘at this highly sensitive moment,’’ the Associated Press reported. The UN chief has also visited Qatar, Kuwait, Cairo, and Jerusalem on his mission to halt the fighting.
Kerry said his meetings in Cairo had been constructive but gave no indication of an imminent breakthrough on a cease-fire deal. He suggested his deliberations might continue for the next few days.
From the start, State Department officials have signaled that the United States is hoping to quickly arrange a cease-fire and avoid being dragged into detailed discussions about the political demands of Hamas, the militant organization that governs Gaza and that Israel has been targeting since the latest hostilities broke out two weeks ago.
Hamas’s demands include opening a major border crossing with Egypt and the release of prisoners held by the Israelis. Discussions might be unavoidable, officials say, particularly because demands to open the border crossings were addressed in a 2012 cease-fire agreement.
“There may be an element of ironing out and nailing down a little bit more on the crossings as a part of our effort to get to a cease-fire as soon as possible,” a senior State Department official told reporters Monday. He spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with the agency’s protocol for briefing the news media.
That approach appears to be generally consistent with Egypt’s proposal.
Sketching out a two-stage process, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, told Kerry at the start of their meeting Tuesday morning that he hoped Kerry’s visit would result in a cease-fire “that provides the necessary security for the Palestinian people,” and that “medium- and long-term” issues on Gaza’s future could be addressed after the fighting stopped.
With no contact and little leverage with Hamas, Kerry has been relying on Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey to use their influence. Egypt has the power to open the Rafah border crossing, while Qatar is a major financial contributor to Hamas.
But it remained unclear whether the United States and its partners were making any headway.
“Hamas has a fundamental choice to make, and it is a choice that will have a profound impact for the people of Gaza,” Kerry said. “And the Egyptians have provided a framework and a forum for them to be able to come to the table to have a serious discussion together with other factions of the Palestinians.”
Kerry’s comments came in a joint appearance with Shoukry, and both declined to take questions.
In addition to the Egyptian president and foreign minister, Kerry met with Majid Faraj, the intelligence chief for the Palestinian Authority, and was scheduled to meet Tuesday night with General Mohamed Farid el-Tohamy, the head of Egyptian intelligence.
Kerry has also spoken by phone several times in recent days with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. He has also spoken recently to his counterparts from Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
--more--"
Related:
Protesters gather in Boston in response to Gaza conflict
Netanyahu should consider future costs of Gaza invasion
Globe always has the answers. Good thing they are not isolated like last time.
Time to get back up into the air:
"US halts flights to Israel; Hamas rocket hits near airport; soldier missing 2 days after attack" by Aron Heller | Associated Press July 23, 2014
JERUSALEM — A Hamas rocket exploded Tuesday near Israel’s main airport, prompting a ban on all flights from the United States and many from Europe and Canada as aviation authorities responded, in part, to the shock of seeing a civilian jetliner shot down over Ukraine.
Israel declared that Ben-Gurion Airport, outside Tel Aviv, was safe and said there was no reason to ‘‘hand terror a prize’’ by halting flights.
The rare flight ban came as Israel confirmed that one of its soldiers has been missing for two days after an attack in the Gaza Strip.
Then the RUMORS WERE TRUE and the U.S. and ISRAEL LIED! AGAIN!
Israeli officials raised the possibility he was abducted, which could complicate intense diplomatic efforts to end the two-week conflict.
Palestinian militants have fired more than 2,000 rockets toward Israel since fighting began on July 8, but most — including several heading toward Tel Aviv — fell harmlessly into open areas or were shot out of the sky by the Iron Dome missile defense system.
Related: Under Israel's Iron Dome
It's $100,000 dollars every time you hear a whoosh, taxpayers.
Tuesday’s rocket attack was the closest to the airport so far, said police spokeswoman Luba Samri, and largely destroyed a house, slightly injuring one Israeli in the nearby Tel Aviv suburb of Yehud.
Aviation authorities reacted swiftly. The US Federal Aviation Administration prohibited American airlines from flying to Tel Aviv for 24 hours because of the potential danger created by the fighting. Later, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued an advisory to airlines saying it ‘‘strongly recommends’’ airlines avoid the airport.
Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz called on the US aviation authority to reconsider, calling the flight ban ‘‘unnecessary’’ and saying the Iron Dome system provided cover for civil aviation.
‘‘Ben-Gurion Airport is safe and completely guarded and there is no reason whatsoever that American companies would stop their flights and hand terror a prize,’’ his office said in a statement.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, raised the issue of the ban with Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in the Middle East on Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Looks like the false flag backfired, huh?
‘‘The FAA’s notice was issued to protect American citizens and American carriers. The only consideration in issuing the notice was the safety and security of our citizens,’’ Psaki said in a statement.
International airlines and passengers have grown more anxious about safety since last week, when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
While Hamas rockets aren’t guided missiles, they still can cause massive damage to an aircraft.
They just can't hit stationary targets in Israel!
Wow, did the Jewish propaganda ever jump the shark there! Next thing you know they will be saying the Palestinians shot down MH-17.
For instance, unguided mortar fire in Tripoli from a militia battling to control its international airport destroyed an Airbus A330 on the ground over the weekend.
Libya, what?
So a parked jet was destroyed; that's a lot different than bringing one down out of the sky!
The Tel Aviv airport is Israel’s main gateway to the world and Hamas militants have said they hoped to target it to disrupt life in Israel.
Another Hamas objective was to abduct an Israeli soldier, and Israeli fears over such an occurrence were revisited Tuesday when the military said that a soldier was missing after a deadly battle in Gaza, where the Israelis are fighting Hamas militants in the third such war in just over five years.
The military said Sergeant Oron Shaul was among seven soldiers in a vehicle that was hit by an antitank missile in a battle in Gaza over the weekend. The other six have been confirmed as dead, but no remains have been identified as Shaul’s.
Hamas claims to have abducted him and has flaunted his name and military ID number to try to back that claim. Military officials say the soldier is almost certainly dead, but it would be a nightmare scenario for the Jewish state if even his remains were in the hands of Hamas.
Yeah, poow Iswael. Just forget the hundreds of dead Palestinian kids.
Past abductions of Israeli soldiers have turned into painful drawn-out affairs and Israel has paid a heavy price in lopsided prisoner swaps to retrieve captured soldiers or remains held by its enemies.
What about the LOPSIDED DEATH TOLL!!?
Oh, readers, this is RANK ROT!
The prolonged saga of Gilad Schalit, a soldier captured by Hamas-allied militants in 2006 and held for more than five years before he was swapped for more than 1,000 Palestinians prisoners, still weighs heavily in Israel.
I'm tired of hearing about Shalit in the Tel Aviv hotel room.
******************
Israeli airstrikes continued to pummel Gaza tunnels, rocket launchers, and militants on the 15th day of the war Tuesday as diplomatic efforts intensified to end fighting that has killed at least 630 Palestinians and 29 Israelis — 27 soldiers and two civilians.
So all the talk and poow widdle Isael is still killing.
Israel says its troops have killed hundreds of Hamas gunmen, while Gaza officials say the vast majority have been civilians, many of them children.
Israel says it is trying hard to avoid civilian casualties and blames Hamas for using civilians as ‘‘human shields.’’ Human rights activists say past confrontations have shown that when Israeli carries out attacks in densely populated Palestinian areas, civilian deaths are inevitable.
Egypt, Israel, and the United States back an unconditional cease-fire, to be followed by talks on a possible new border arrangement for Gaza.
Oh, Israel will want to avoid that, and it shows you they are LOSING the BATTLE for WORLD OPINION! That right there is a Hamas victory!
Israel and Egypt have severely restricted movement in and out of Gaza since Hamas seized the territory in 2007. But Hamas has rejected repeated Egyptian truce proposals.
Before it agrees to a cease-fire, Hamas wants guarantees that Israel will lift its border blockade on Gaza.
Not an unreasonable demand.
--more--"
"Israel flight ban a sign of airlines’ growing sensitivity to risks" by Jad Mouawad | New York Times July 23, 2014
NEW YORK — The Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to instruct American air carriers on Tuesday not to fly to Israel for 24 hours was another sign that airlines around the globe are becoming much more sensitive about the risks of flying over conflict areas, after the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine last week.
It also allows them an indirect way to boycott Israel!
All three US carriers with service to Israel — Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and US Airways — said they had temporarily suspended their flights after a rocket fell a mile from the airport outside Tel Aviv. The move highlighted the impact the conflict in the Gaza Strip is having on the Israeli economy at the height of the summer tourism season.
Oh, that is why Netanyahu is out there whining.
While not issuing a ban on flights, the European Aviation Safety Agency said Tuesday that it ‘‘strongly recommends’’ that airlines refrain from operating flights to and from Tel Aviv.
The recommendation by Europe’s main aviation safety body came after the FAA announced its order. The European agency didn’t give a timeframe, but it said it would ‘‘monitor the situation and advise on any update as the situation develops.’’
Germany’s Lufthansa, Air France, Air Canada, Alitalia, Dutch KLM, Britain’s easyJet, Turkish Airlines, and Greece’s Aegean Airlines were among the carriers canceling flights to Tel Aviv over safety concerns, the Associated Press reported. British Airways said it was operating flights but monitoring the situation closely.
Delta suspended its service between Kennedy International Airport and Tel Aviv “until further notice” and did not indicate when it might resume flights.
US Airways said it canceled Tuesday’s flight from Philadelphia and was in contact with federal authorities. United canceled its two daily flights from Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday.
Delta had a flight in the air on its way to Israel when the decision was made. Flight 468, a Boeing 747 with 273 passengers and 17 crew members aboard, was diverted to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris after the rocket fell in Yehud, a Tel Aviv suburb just north of the airport.
According to Flightradar24.com, the Delta plane was flying over Greece, about two hours from its destination, when it turned around and diverted to Paris.
The State Department warned American travelers on Monday to put off going to Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza because of the increasing danger from combat and from rocket fire.
:-)
Hit 'em where it hurt$!
An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Israel had had no advance notification by the airlines of their intention to cancel flights. The official insisted that it was safe to fly to Israel.
“If they wanted to hand the terrorists a prize, they couldn’t have chosen a better way,” the official said, adding, “If it was safe so far, why would it not be safe now? Nothing has changed. The airport has been there since Day 1.”
I think it is so great that Israel stepped in its own pile of propaganda!
The rocket that struck Yehud on Tuesday, less than 1 mile from Ben-Gurion International Airport, landed between two houses and caused extensive damage to them, according to the police.
But the Israeli official noted that most of the rockets fired at the Tel Aviv area by militants had been successfully intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system.
He said he hoped flights would resume after 24 hours.
Looks like Israel has gone to far.
--more--"
Speaking of plane crashes: Down About Ukraine Coverage
U.S. now backpedaling like an airliner destined for Israel. Makes you sick.
"EU imposes new sanctions on Russia, holds off tougher penalties" by Anthony Faiola | Washington Post July 23, 2014
BERLIN —Igor Sutyagin, a defense analyst with the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said a ban on the sale of European weapons components would strike a blow to the Russian military’s ability to modernize its arsenal. ‘‘They rely on Western machinery,’’ he said.
But Sutyagin said any outright ban could also do serious damage to the European defense industry. The French, for instance, are preparing to deliver two warships to the Russians — one due this year and one next year. A halt to the sale could be devastating for the French shipyard at Saint-Nazaire.
The shipyard has 2,500 workers, Sutyagin said. ‘‘There are no other orders, so if this one’s canceled, you'd just have to shut it down.’’
France has strongly resisted pulling out of the $1.7 billion sale. On Monday, however, President Francois Hollande said Paris would not terminate the sale of the first craft, which has already been paid for, but he left open the option of canceling the second ship if Russia did not change course.
The $ociali$t willing to hurt his own people for the sake of globalist shit-kickers.
Citing mounting evidence, Kiev and Washington have built a case that a Russian-made missile fired by pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine brought down the Boeing 777 airliner, killing all 298 people on board, nearly two-thirds of them Dutch citizens.
Actually, they heave been indicated mistake with no Russian involvement the last few days. C'mon, WaPo!
Related:
Bodies, black boxes from Flight 17 are delivered
Lax security at crash site puts evidence in doubt
Sorry I'm not up for that propaganda.
Going into the meeting, European diplomats were divided about the strength of sanctions, and several nations — especially those with strong economic ties to Russia — remained cautious. But others signaled new willingness to press Moscow amid a surge of public outrage across the continent.
Whatever.
In Washington, President Obama visited the Dutch Embassy to sign a condolence book Tuesday morning. ‘‘Obviously, we are all heartbroken,’’ he told reporters. He said he wanted to ‘‘express our solidarity with the people of the Netherlands,’’ adding that ‘‘we will work with them to make sure their loved ones are recovered’’ and justice is done.
If it was a Kiev shootdwon, he's disgusting.
--more--"
Related: Enough with the niceties with Russia
"UK announces inquiry for Russian spy death" by Sylvia Hui | Associated Press July 23, 2014
LONDON — The British government on Tuesday announced plans for a wide-ranging public inquiry into the mysterious 2006 death by poisoning of a former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko.
Odd timing, isn't it?
See: Perepilichny Death Plot Covered Up by British Police
I hope that gives you piece of mind.
The decision, which comes at a time of rising tensions with Russia, is a breakthrough in the much-delayed inquiry because it means investigators can look into whether the Russian state was involved in Litvinenko’s death.
Litvinenko, a former officer in the Russian intelligence service, had a falling out with the Russian government and became a strong critic of the Kremlin. He went to Britain in 2000 and obtained political asylum.
Litvinenko died in 2006, at age 43, after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at a hotel in London.
Who killed him remains a mystery.
See: BEREZOVSKY; LITVINENKO; BIN LADEN; JEWISH MAFIA
Mystery solved.
On his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, of being responsible. The former agent’s family believes the Kremlin ordered his killing.
Britain identified the two Russian men who met Litvinenko for tea — former KGB agent Alexander Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun — as prime suspects. Both denied responsibility.
British prosecutors decided to charge Lugovoi with murder, but Moscow refused to extradite him.
Questions were also raised about whether British security officials could have done anything to prevent the death. Lawyers for Litvinenko’s family said he was working for the British intelligence service MI6 at the time of his death.
And likely before.
British authorities for years delayed conducting an inquest because they believed they could bring criminal cases against the Russian suspects.
But when the inquest finally began it was rife with problems, because much of the key evidence in the case was deemed too sensitive to disclose to the public.
(Blog editor shakes head)
The coroner, Robert Owen, reluctantly accepted a British government request to bar the inquest from considering evidence relating to Russia’s alleged role, because of national security concerns. Evidence relating to Litvinenko’s alleged relationship with MI6 was also off the table.
The British government has resisted calls for a full-scale inquiry, but in February the High Court sided with Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, and ruled that the government had to reconsider its decision.
The new inquiry, an independent investigation, aims to ‘‘identify where responsibility for the death lies and make appropriate recommendations.’’ It is not a trial and is designed only to establish the facts, however.
It is expected to overcome previous hurdles because Owen, who will lead it, will have authority to summon witnesses and documents from the British intelligence services and assess whether evidence suggests Russian state involvement. It is possible some evidence will be presented in sessions closed to the public.
Still, it is a victory for Litvinenko’s widow, who has long argued that only a public inquiry would reveal whether the Russian state was behind his killing.
On Tuesday, she said the decision sends a message to the killers that ‘‘no matter how strong and powerful you are, truth will win out in the end.’’
The case was a focal point in the souring of British-Russian relations, which turned into an ugly spat, with both sides expelling diplomats.
Those lingering political tensions worsened recently as Britain and other Western powers accuse Russia of fomenting unrest in Ukraine and being complicit in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over eastern Ukraine. Britain, along with France and Germany, has been pushing for harsher sanctions against Russia.
And then this popped up.
British officials stressed Tuesday that the timing of the Litvinenko decision and the push to punish Moscow were unrelated.
But the British government acknowledged last year that ‘‘international relations’’ had been a factor in the earlier decision to forgo a full investigation into the death.
But not now. C'mon!
--more--"
Back to the reports from Israel:
"Witch Hunt': Fired MSNBC Contributor Speaks Out on Suppression of Israel-Palestine Debate; As Gaza body toll mounts, NBC executives crack down on criticism of Israel
MSNBC contributor Rula Jebreal’s on-air protest
of the network’s slanted coverage of Israel’s ongoing assault on the
Gaza Strip has brought media suppression of the Israel-Palestine debate
into sharp focus. Punished for her act of dissent with the cancellation
of all future appearances and the termination of her contract, Jebreal
spoke to me about what prompted her to speak out and why MSNBC was
presenting such a distorted view of the crisis.
“I couldn’t stay silent after seeing the amount of airtime given to
Israeli politicians versus Palestinians,” Jebreal told me. “They say we
are balanced but their idea of balance is 90 percent Israeli guests and
10 percent Palestinians. This kind of media is what leads to the failing
policies that we see in Gaza.”
She continued, “We as journalists are there to afflict the
comfortable and who is comfortable in this case? Who is really
endangering both sides and harming American interests in the region?
It’s those enforcing the status quo of the siege of Gaza and the
occupation of the West Bank.”
Jebreal said that in her two years as an MSNBC contributor, she had protested the network’s slanted coverage repeatedly in private conversations with producers. “I told them we have a serious issue here,” she explained. “But everybody’s intimidated by this pressure and if it’s not direct then it becomes self-censorship.”
With her criticism of her employer’s editorial line, she has become the latest casualty of the pro-Israel pressure. “I have been told to my face that I wasn’t invited on to shows because I was Palestinian,” Jebreal remarked. “I didn’t believe it at the time. Now I believe it.”
An NBC producer speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed Jebreal’s account, describing to me a top-down intimidation campaign aimed at presenting an Israeli-centric view of the attack on the Gaza Strip. The NBC producer told me that MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC executives are micromanaging coverage of the crisis, closely monitoring contributors’ social media accounts and engaging in a “witch hunt” against anyone who strays from the official line.
“Loyalties are now being openly questioned,” the producer commented.
The suppression campaign culminated after Jebreal’s on-air protest during a July 21 segment on Ronan Farrow Daily.
“We are disgustingly biased on this issue. Look at how much airtime Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis, Andrea Mitchell and others,” Jebreal complained to Farrow. “I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on these same issues.”
When Farrow claimed that the network had featured other voices, Jebreal shot back, “Maybe for thirty seconds, and then you have twenty-five minutes for Bibi Netanyahu.”
Within hours, all of Jebreal’s future bookings were cancelled and the renewal of her contract was off the table. The following day, Jebreal tweeted: “My forthcoming TV appearances have been cancelled. Is there a connection to my expose and the cancellation?”
Jebreal is the author of Miral, a memoir about her coming of age in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Her former partner, Jewish-American filmmaker and artist Julian Schnabel, adapted the book into full length film. A widely published journalist and former news presenter in Italy, Jebreal was a vocal supporter of the now-extinct peace process and a harsh critic of Islamist groups including Hamas. Her termination leaves NBC without any Palestinian contributors.
According to the NBC producer, MSNBC show teams were livid that they had been forced by management to cancel Jebreal as punishment for her act of dissent.
At the same time, social media erupted in protest of Jebreal’s cancellation, forcing the network into damage control mode. The role of clean-up man fell to Chris Hayes, the only MSNBC host with a reputation for attempting a balanced discussion of Israel-Palestine. On the July 22 episode of his show, All In, he brought Jebreal on to discuss her on-air protest.
In introducing Jebreal, Hayes took on the role of the industry and network defender: “Let me take you behind the curtain of cable news business for a moment,” Hayes told his viewers. “If you appear on a cable news network, you trash that network and one of its hosts by name, on any issue — Gaza, infrastructure spending, sports coverage, funny internet cat videos — the folks at the network will not take kindly to it.”
In fact, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough has publicly attacked fellow MSNBC hosts and slammed the network for its support for the Democratic Party.
“I did not think that i was stepping in a hornet’s nest,” Jebreal told me. “I saw Joe Scarborough criticizing the network. I thought we were liberal enough to stand self criticism.”
Yet when she appeared across from Hayes, Jebreal encountered a defensive host shielding his employers from her criticism. “We’re actually doing a pretty good job” of covering the Israel-Palestine crisis, Hayes claimed to her. “I think our network, and I think the New York Times and the media all around, have been doing a much better job on this conflict.”
Jebreal appeared on screen as a “Palestinian journalist” — her title as a MSNBC contributor had been removed. When she insisted that American broadcast media had not provided adequate context about the 8-year-long Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip or the roots of Palestinian violence, Hayes protested that he had wanted to host Hamas officials alongside the Israeli government spokespeople he routinely featured but that it was practically impossible.
“Not all Palestinians are Hamas,” Jebreal vehemently replied.
“Airtime always strikes me as a bad metric,” Hayes responded. “I mean there are interviews and then there are interviews. I had [Israeli government spokesman] Mark Regev on this program for 16 minutes, alright? That’s a very long interview but there was a lot to talk to him about.”
The NBC producer remarked to me that the network’s public relations strategy had backfired. Hayes’ performance was poorly received on social media while Jebreal appeared as another maverick journalist outcasted by corporate media for delivering uncomfortable truths.
For her part, Jebreal told me she was disturbed by Hayes’ comments. “I admire that Chris [Hayes] wanted to have me on but it seems like he was condoning what happened to me,” she said. “He was saying, ‘What do you expect? We rally around our stars.’ Well, I rally around reality, if that still matters in media.”
Jebreal continued: “I didn’t tell him this on air but I said, ‘I hope you don’t condone other things the network did, like what happened with Ayman.’”
Jebreal was referring to NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin and his sudden removal by the network from the Gaza Strip. Mohyeldin, a rising star in the network and its only Arab-American reporter in the region, was an eyewitness to the Israeli killing of four young boys who had been playing soccer on a beach near Gaza City.
Moments after the killings, Mohyeldin relayed intimate accounts of the scene through Twitter, then released harrowing footage of the boys’ mother wailing as she learned of their deaths. Oddly, NBC correspondent Richard Engel was summoned to deliver Mohyeldin’s package that evening.
The NBC producer told me that the network was deluged with angry letters and phone calls from pro-Israel activists about Mohyeldin’s reporting.
Hours later, Mohyeldin’s summary of the US State Department’s statement defending Israel’s actions disappeared from his Facebook and Twitter accounts. He had apparently been forced to delete the postings. Next, NBC removed Mohyeldin from Gaza, sending him out of the area on the first plane available.
To replace Mohyeldin, NBC dispatched Engel, a veteran foreign
correspondent well-liked by top brass and regarded as the network’s
“star.” Engel was the keynote speaker
at a 2013 event at the Newseum in Washington DC honoring journalists
killed that year. Under Israel lobby pressure, the Newseum had removed
the names of three Palestinian journalists killed in targeting Israeli
strikes during the November 2012 assault on Gaza, accepting claims by
anti-Palestinian groups like the Anti-Defamation League that their
employment by Hamas-affiliated outlets rendered them enemy combatants.
During his speech, Engel carefully avoided condemning the Newseum for
its capitulation.
The removal of Mohyeldin sparked an international backlash, with tens of thousands from around the world protesting the decision through viral Twitter hashtags like, #LetAymanReport and #FreeAyman. Two days later, an apparently chastened NBC returned Mohyeldin to the Gaza Strip, but the damage had been done.
Unwilling to explain its unusual actions, NBC left it up to media
critics to guess at its motives. CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter
chalked up
the removal of Mohyeldin to “infighting and bureaucracy,” claiming that
NBC was concerned primarily with ratings. Glenn Greenwald, the
editor-in-chief of the The Intercept, wrote
that Mohyeldin was ordered out of Gaza by David Verdi, a top NBC
executive, for political reasons — his reporting was deemed too
sympathetic to Palestinians.
The NBC producer insisted that Greenwald’s account was the more accurate one. “Greenwald was right,” the producer told me. “And I hate to say that.”
For her part, Jebreal does not expect to be welcomed back on MSNBC again. “I’m done there,” she told me. “It’s not happening any more. My contract is over. I’m fine with it. I’m not complaining.”
She cited the distorted coverage of Israel-Palestine in American broadcast as the central reason behind the American public’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
“I believe this is a shifting moment in history and we need to make a decison,” Jebreal said. “It’s easier when there’s Bridgegate but there is another gate: This is Mediagate and we need to begin to challenge our responsibilities.”
--MORE--"
Remember, that is the same network that canned Phil Donahue on the eve of the Iraq invasion. No wonder it is the Most Shitty News Broadcast Channel.
I also wanted to take a moment to let you know there is some outstanding reporting coming from the region.
I also wanted to take a moment to let you know there is some outstanding reporting coming from the region.
