I thought spending a Saturday morning doing some yard work while taking a summer job would have been a good thing. Then I remembered: Mowing the Grass
Now I am angry. To talk of people and human beings as if they are blades of grass that need to be culled from time to time (with corre$ponding benefits, of cour$e) is monstrous.
"Israel, Hamas set a 12-hour Gaza cease-fire; But officials hint of wider assault" by Isabel Kershner and Said Ghazali | New York Times July 26, 2014
I'm already predisposed against the propaganda.
JERUSALEM — Israel signaled that it is preparing to broaden its ground operation, and violence spread to the West Bank as enraged Palestinians protested Israel’s continuing offensive in Gaza....
I'm already cooling off because I don't have a rewrite on my hands(?).
Israeli planes hit more than 80 sites in Gaza on Friday, while militants in the tiny Mediterranean strip fired 50 rockets at Israel, the army said. Among the sites hit in Gaza were 30 homes, including that of a leader of the Islamic Jihad group who was killed, Palestinian officials said.
The airstrike killed Salah Abu Hassanein, 45, and his sons, ages 15 and 12, in the entrance to their home. Hassanein was a spokesman for Islamic Jihad’s militia, the Al-Quds Brigades.
It has reached the point where I no longer care what the name is or what "terror group" they are allegedly from (put aside the fact that they are all created, funded, and directed by western intelligence agencies for the moment), this has reached the point of wanton murder be it Israel or U.S. drone strikes. All I can do is condemn it from my perch and say it is not in my name, then head on down to the common to protest with the two old guys still showing up. I'll tell 'em Obummer ended the wars (ha!) so what are they doing?
In the West Bank, at least five Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces, according to Palestinian medical officials and local news reports, adding to the explosive atmosphere in the region and raising the specter of further unrest.
The protests came on what Palestinians planned as a “day of rage” over the war in Gaza, where 18 days of combat have cost the lives of more than 800 Palestinians, most of them civilians, as well as 35 Israeli soldiers. Three civilians in Israel have been killed in rocket and mortar fire from Gaza.
After an international outcry over a deadly strike Thursday on a school in Gaza where civilians had taken refuge, Secretary of State John Kerry and other diplomats pressed their efforts to arrange a cease-fire, but Kerry said in Cairo late Friday that more work was needed to conclude an agreement.
“The agony of events in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, all of them together, cannot be overstated,” Kerry said.
I suppose in the context in which we live he's about as good as we're gonna get. The precise sarcasm that sometime pisses certain interests off is appreciated in that realm.
In a way, Kerry is like Darth Vader: there is still good in him.
The Israeli security Cabinet on Friday considered Kerry’s proposal for a one-week humanitarian cease-fire, and asked for modifications.
Kerry said he called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to arrange a “down payment” of a 12-hour humanitarian pause in the fighting. The Israeli military and a Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, later said the 12-hour cease-fire would start at 8 a.m. Saturday. On the broader proposal, Kerry said, the parties still had “some terminology” to work through.
So as I type this the fighting has stopped?
Palestinians demonstrated in Jerusalem and across the West Bank on Friday, the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, known as Al-Quds, or Jerusalem, Day.
A spokesman for the Israeli police said that sporadic disturbances broke out in some East Jerusalem neighborhoods early in the afternoon, as 10,000 Muslims attended prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Hoping to head off trouble, Israeli authorities barred men younger than 50 from entering the compound.
Trouble erupted Thursday night during a march at the Qalandia checkpoint that separates the West Bank town of Ramallah from Jerusalem.
Thousands of marchers chanted, “With our soul and blood, we will redeem Gaza,” and clashes broke out between stone-throwing youths and Israeli security forces. One Palestinian teenager was killed and scores were wounded.
You know, Israel didn't want a unity government and all they have done with this latest war-criminal assault has drive Palestinians closer together, more so than in decades.
It's a David and Goliath situation -- with Israel's ass in a sling.
The funeral of the youth, Muhammad al-Araj, 17, drew thousands of mourners Friday. His father, Ziad al-Araj, 41, a plasterer from the nearby Qalandia refugee camp, said that after seeing the bodies of women and children killed in Gaza on television, his son had told him that he wanted to join the fighters there.
“He wrote in his phone, ‘I hope to be a martyr,’ ” al-Araj said.
The Israeli military said it had concluded that Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, a soldier who had been missing in Gaza since Sunday, was killed in battle. The military wing of Hamas claimed to be holding him captive, but did not offer any evidence or details of his condition.
Shaul was one of seven soldiers who entered the Gaza Strip early Sunday in an armored personnel carrier that was stopped in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City and then was hit and incinerated by an antitank missile.
Then he was part of Golani and that elite unite got its ass kicked.
Palestinian militants in Gaza continued to fire rockets into Israel on Friday. The Israeli military said two were intercepted over Tel Aviv by the country’s Iron Dome antimissile system, but shrapnel from another damaged an apartment building in the coastal city of Ashkelon.
Just add at least another $200,000 to the American taxpayers bill, thank you.
Related: Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza
They are not running for air raid shelters?
Israeli news outlets reported that Kerry would fly to Paris to meet with his counterparts from France, Britain, Qatar and Turkey, as well as the European Union’s foreign policy chief and the secretary-general of the Arab League. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was also in Cairo.
I thought he was on his way home.
--more--"
Also see:
Airlines lift safety ban, resume flights to Tel Aviv
It is as I suspected....
Suppose I will be staying on this each and every day until it's conclusion in one form or another.