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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Jan 15, 2009 - 11:50pm PT
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"Israel's bombing of the UN compound in Gaza has outraged UN chief Ban Ki-moon"
If Chief Ban Ki-Moon is so outraged, why doesn't he do something about it? The UN has thousands of people in Gaza already. Why don't they send in a peacekeeping force and, well, keep the peace? They could take the place of Hamas and run Gaza until a Palestinian state is formed.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 12:01am PT
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That is an outstanding idea Graniteclimber. The only problem is the US won't allow it, YET!
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jan 16, 2009 - 12:13am PT
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Meanwhile yesterday there was good news,
Hamas elite (oxymoron there)"Iran" batalion went off to cohabitate with the dark eyed virgins.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 12:13am PT
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http://palestinian.ning.com/profiles/blogs/1970466:BlogPost:21449
This is a heartrending look at what is really going down.
For those that think all arabs want to kill all Jews, Check out the vile graphitti scrawled on the ruins of Gaza. Particularly the one that says "GAS THE ARABS".
And for you who mindlessly insist that Arabs teach their children to be killing machines from birth, check out the picture of the Israelis teaching tiny children how to shoot semi automatic weapons.
And for you more heartless chicken hawks take a good look at the baby with no face.
Then tell me straight to my face she deserved this.
Open up your minds, unlock your hearts! This is a holocaust perpetrated deliberately by a people who should know better!
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jbar
Ice climber
Russia with love.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 01:44am PT
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"That is an outstanding idea Graniteclimber. The only problem is the US won't allow it, YET!"
I beg to differ. The UN is useless and corrupt. Those who depend on the UN for help are always let down. The only people who believe in the UN are dreamers believing in some machination of their perfect world dream. Give me an example of a UN program that has been a success. How about the "oil for opression of the Kurds" programme? Show me one instance when a UN intervention prevented the slaughter of innocent people.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Jan 16, 2009 - 07:02am PT
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"their genocidal ethnic cleaning"
"For those that think all arabs want to kill all Jews, Check out the vile graphitti scrawled on the ruins of Gaza. Particularly the one that says "GAS THE ARABS".
And for you who mindlessly insist that Arabs teach their children to be killing machines from birth, check out the picture of the Israelis teaching tiny children how to shoot semi automatic weapons.
And for you more heartless chicken hawks take a good look at the baby with no face.
Then tell me straight to my face she deserved this.
Open up your minds, unlock your hearts! This is a holocaust perpetrated deliberately by a people who should know better!"
i recall somebody on this thread accused me of "demonizing" all palestinians...who was that? well, whomever it was, i'm sure he would never demonize an entire nation, especially when he reveals in his OWN response the moral distinction between the parties involved ("No less than nine, count them NINE, Israeli, Yes that's right ISRAELI not Arab, human rights organizations have called for the immediate cessation of the seige of Gaza and "Crimes against Humanity trials for Israelli leaders.")
let's see, in this latest clash of civilizations, where should i put my support? with a society that recently reinstituted crucifixion as a form of punishment for nonbelievers? or the "oppressive" society that allows its own people to accuse its own leaders of "crimes against humanity"? tough one...you know this would be so much easier if, say, one side would do something outrageous, like call for the extermination of the other side
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 09:08am PT
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JBar I said the US not the UN. The UN is not useles. They are hamstrung by the regular US veto in the Security Council.
BookWorm, You obviously didn't want to upset your concretized beliefs by actually watching what I posted. You only wanted to attack me.
Try again only this time read the earlier post.
I mentioned the Israeli human rights organizations so I wouldn't be accused of being one sided or biased. While human rights organizations world wide have condemned Israel's actions I find it humorous how you chose to spin my post.
Are you even remotely capable of open minded free thought?
Or can you only re-spin regularly debunked Zionist propaganda?
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 09:25am PT
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Is Israel using illegal weapons in its offensive on Gaza?
By Amira Hass
Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Israel News
The earth shaking under your feet, clouds of choking smoke, explosions like a fireworks display, bombs bursting into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, mushroom clouds of pinkish-red smoke, suffocating gas, harsh burns on the skin, extraordinary maimed live and dead bodies.
All of this is being caused by the bombs Israel is dropping on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, according to reports and testimonies from there. Since the first day of the Israeli aerial attack, people have been giving exact descriptions of the side effects of the bombing, and claiming that Israel is using weapons and ammunition that they have not seen during the past eight years.
Furthermore, the kinds of grave injuries doctors at hospitals in the Strip have reported are providing yet another explanation for the overwhelming dread inhabitants are experiencing in any case.
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It is precisely for this reason that Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW), has come to Israel. His mission: to examine whether the weapons that both sides are using are themselves legal and whether the use of them is legal.
The American-born Garlasco has not been permitted to enter Gaza - as is also the case with people from other human rights organizations and foreign journalists. Therefore, he says, since he is unable to examine actual remnants of the explosives and see the wreckage with his own eyes, he can only guess or make assumptions in some cases. But even from afar, he has no doubt: Israel is using white phosphorus bombs. That was immediately clear to him while he stood last week on a hill facing the Gaza Strip and observed the Israel Defense Forces' bombings for several hours.
Last Saturday HRW hastened to publish a call to Israel to "stop unlawful use of white phosphorus in Gaza." The use of white phosphorus is permitted on the battlefield, explains Garlasco, but the side effects on humans and the environment are severe and highly dangerous. The statement notes that the "potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza's high population density, among the highest in the world."
The fireworks-like explosions, the thick smoke, suffocating gas, and flames that are not extinguished by water, but rather are heightened by it - all of these are characteristic of the white phosphorus bombs the IDF is using. Garlasco believes the decision to make such extensive use of these bombs, manufactured by America's General Dynamics Corporation, stems from conclusions drawn from the Second Lebanon War, in which the IDF lost many tanks.
"The phosphorus bombs create a thick smokescreen and if Hamas has an anti-tank rocket, the smoke prevents the rocket from tracking the tank," he explains. There are two ways to use the bombs: The first is to impact them on the ground, in which case the resulting thick smokescreen covers a limited area; the second way is an airburst of a bomb, which contains 116 wafers doused in phosphorus. The moment the bomb blows up and the phosphorus comes in contact with oxygen - it ignites. This is what creates the "fireworks" and billows of jellyfish-shaped smoke. The fallout covers a wide area and the danger of fires and harm to civilians is enormous. The phosphorus burns glass, and immediately ignites paper, trees, wood - anything that is dry. The burning wafers causes terrible injury to anyone who comes in contact with them. The irony is that tear gas is included in the Chemical Weapons Convention and is subject to all kinds of restrictions, whereas phosphorus is not.
And in the meantime, in the hospitals in Gaza there are people lying in beds - among them many children - whose severe injuries and burns have appalled the medical teams.
Missing the target
Another new weapon that has forced itself upon Gazans is the GPS-guided mortar - a system equipped with satellite navigation, developed in Israel in late 2006-early 2007, in the wake of the Second Lebanon War. According to local military sources, it was this kind of mortar that missed its target by 30 meters and erroneously hit a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school last week; according to the UN report, 30 people were killed immediately and others died later of their injuries. "It really boggles my mind," Garlasco comments. "According to the literature, it has 3 meters' error - not 30." It is a mortar that is launched in an arc toward an unseen target, he explains, with the intention of being precise and to some extent minimize civilian casualties.
Garlasco says this is the first time the weapon has been used in any military conflict: "The Palestinians say, 'Oh, they use it on us, experiment with it for the Americans.' Experimenting has a different meaning for Americans. We think animal experimenting, but it is indeed a field test."
The new mortar was developed jointly by the Israeli weapons industry and a private American company called Alliant. Israel, notes Garlasco, has learned a lot from the wars the U.S. is waging in Afghanistan and Iraq, but above all learned from its own war in Lebanon in 2006. The mortar that was not supposed to have landed on the school was developed with the knowledge that troops "are fighting an enemy that is in a densely populated area, and here is the first time they use it."
Another important lesson Israel learned from the Lebanon war is that it cannot rely entirely on the U.S. to provide weapons. During that war, when the IDF ran out of cluster bombs, Israel asked for an emergency shipment of 1,200 such munitions (each containing 644 bomblets). The United States refused, and at that point, Garlasco notes, Israel realized it could not rely solely on American help in this realm.
Therefore, Israel has, for example, developed a new type of rifle, the (Tavor) TAR-21 ("an incredible weapon," says Garlasco; he can't help being complimentary) to take the place of the U.S.-made M-16. It has also invented the Delilah guided missile, but Garlasco does not know whether it has been used in Gaza. But not to worry, he adds: Despite the cluster bombs and independent Israeli development, Israel and the United States "still have a great relationship. By and large, the weaponry that Israel is using is American."
Not all of the weapons are new and innovative. Most, in fact, are American products developed during the Cold War. The artillery and incendiary weapons in Israel's possession were designed to destroy Russian tanks "and not Palestinian homes," he notes. The weapons being produced now are developed in the knowledge that the target is militants who operate from within a civilian population. Yet, much of the killing and destruction in Gaza are the result of old-fashioned, cheaper and less-sophisticated weapons.
Only last September did the United States grant Israel's request to supply it with 1,000 bombs of a new type, the GBU-39. They arrived at the beginning of December, and inhabitants of Rafah have witnessed their use - without knowing what they were - since the first day of the aerial attacks on the tunnels there. (The Jerusalem Post was the first to identify these as GBU-39s.) Gazans were surprised when they did not hear an explosion immediately after the Israeli aircraft fired; instead, the earth shook beneath their feet.
The manufacturer of the GBU-39 is the Boeing Corporation. The small diameter and light weight of these guided bombs ensure that any fighter plane can carry a large number of them and thus increase the number of attacks in every sortie. Garlasco says that the weapon is very accurate and penetrates deep into the earth. It is also designed to minimize collateral damage, since it does not explode over a large area like other bombs do. But other types of bombs are also being used and are destroying houses along the border with Egypt.
Gazans have noticed that there are bombs that produce mushroom clouds in various shades of red. Here, Garlasco admits, "I can only speculate. It looks like Israel is maybe using a new weapon that it was not using before: DIME - the dense inert metal explosive, consisting of 25 percent TNT and 75 percent tungsten, a heavy metal. You mix the two, in a fine grain, like pepper, and when the bomb hits the ground it aerosolizes. In less than a second, the mist dissipates and explodes."
He says the advantage of DIME is that "it strikes a very small area, 10 to 20 meters, and the fire it ignites burns out very quickly; if it hits us now, we will die, but no one around us will be hurt. The problem is that when you are killed - you are ripped to shreds and there is nothing left." Indeed, the injuries DIME causes are in general more severe than those caused by a "regular" bomb.
A paramedic at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalya refugee camp has told the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that about 90 percent of the wounded he has rescued during the past few weeks were brought in with at least one limb missing. Is it the DIME that is causing the severe injuries being reported by the medical staff? Garlasco says there are "only rumors. No one has ever seen it used before, maybe it is being used now, but with Israel not letting in journalists and human rights organizations, these rumors are growing, and people say that Israeli is using terrible new weapons."
Perhaps, he says, the redness is a result of the metal in the explosives, but it will only be possible to ascertain this if experts are allowed into the Gaza Strip, or they talk to the IDF. Garlasco notes that herein lies the big difference between the Israeli army and the American army: As a worker for a human rights organization, he receives daily e-mails from the U.S. Air Force with a detailed report of the bombs it has dropped in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The Israelis would never do that," he explains. "They would never talk about what weapons they use and will never allow any discussion in society of whether the weapons should be used."
Another new weapon that he believes is now in use is the Spike: "It is very new, [from] 2005-2006, a special missile that is made to make very high-speed turns, so if you have a target that is moving and running away from you, you can chase him with the weapon. It was developed by the U.S. Navy jointly with Rafael [the Israel Armament Development Authority]. Rafael is the manufacturer."
Drones, incidentally, are a totally Israeli product, he notes; Israel is the world leader in this field, and America is learning a lot from it. The warships bombing Gaza are also Israeli made. But the cannons on the ships are Italian, produced by the Oto Melera company.
From his frustrating observation point outside Gaza, and on the basis of Israel's "very bad record of using cluster bombs in Lebanon and selling them to Georgia," Garlasco says he is worried that Israel is also now using the APAM (Anti Personnel/Anti Materiel) - a new type of round, or unit of ammunition, for tanks that was developed after Lebanon, each of which contains six cluster bombs. The tank guns aim above a target that is hiding behind some kind of cover and the ammunition explodes above people's heads - like those of Iz al-Din al-Qassam cells, for example, when they are firing rockets.
The other side
Garlasco and Human Rights Watch also examine the other side, and he says, "We believe that the Grad and Qassam are illegal weapons because they are not accurate enough to be used in this situation." He adds that Hamas makes frequent use of land mines and explosive charges that are liable to injure civilians.
However, because he and his fellow experts can't go into Gaza, "We don't know what the extent of any [Palestinian] civilian casualties is because of Hamas - whether they are shooting soldiers and their bullets end up killing civilians, or whether their anti-tank missiles miss an Israeli tank and hit a house. We don't know."
In 2005, Garlasco met with a political representative of Hamas and told him that use of Grads is a contravention of the Geneva Convention. The reply he got from the Hamas man was: "'All Israelis are military.' And I explained to them that their reading of international law is wrong." It is amazing, he adds, that the Palestinians can manufacture the Qassams under the conditions in Gaza. The Grad, however, "is a real military weapon, three meters long. It has a significant warhead. The problem is that it is designed to be fired in mass, to be fired 21 rockets at a time, so that you are covering an area and you are having a shock effect. You don't only have an explosion, but also a shock and it covers a big area. Shooting one at a time is almost useless from a military perspective."
As for the Israeli claim about weapons and ammunition being hidden in public buildings such as mosques, Garlasco reiterates that only independent sources will be able to examine this claim and clarify its veracity. If the mosques blown up in the heart of densely populated residential neighborhoods indeed served as hiding places for weapons and ammunition, he would expect to see many secondary explosions, which would have caused significant collateral damage and deep craters. It is difficult to analyze the Israeli claims on the basis of photographs, he notes.
Garlasco is not prepared to accept without question the Israeli claim that Hamas hides behind civilians and makes use of civilians. "Israelis are very quick to say they are doing it, but very short on proof. By keeping the independent people out, they leave doubt in people's minds." Furthermore, he believes, Israel has a record of not telling the truth: "They said in Lebanon they did not use cluster bombs. We found 4 million. They evade answering that they use phosphorus, and we stand there every day watching. They claim to have bombed a truck full of Grad missiles, and according to witnesses who spoke with Haaretz, it turned out to be a truck with oxygen tanks. Not everything that is long is a missile. How can anyone trust the Israeli military?'"
The IDF Spokesman responds: "The IDF is fighting the terror elements while meticulously observing the rules of engagement under international law. For understandable operational reasons, the IDF will not relate to a detailing of the materiel that is in its possession and the parameters in which it used. It should be emphasized, however, that the IDF uses only methods and materiel that are permitted under international law."
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 09:45am PT
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Jan 16, 2009 - 09:55am PT
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"This is a holocaust perpetrated deliberately by a people who should know better!"
oops...missed this...nothing one-sided about declaring a defensive/retaliatory war to be a "holocaust perpetrated deliberately by a PEOPLE"...my apologies for not reading more closely and recognizing the fair and balanced commentary that goes out of its way to portray the israelis as fighting a war against an enemy that continues to call for their "extermination"
philo, i do not need to see pictures of dead babies to know that war is horrible or to wish for there to be no more wars ever again...i do, however, believe that wars are sometimes necessary...and i believe that the only real hope for peace lies in the destruction of HAMAS and HEZBOLLAH...as long as these groups exist and as long as they continue to receive arms from syria and iran and support from the un and the "free" world, the israelis will need to fight, literally, for their survival
maybe you can explain to me why my beliefs are misguided...why the calls for israel's destruction do not justify their determined response to thousands of rockets launched into their neighborhoods...why the israeli response to HAMAS' rocket attacks are the cause of the suffering in gaza rather than the rocket attacks themselves...really, i want to learn
also, you missed my point...the israelis protest their own government when palestinian children die...where are the palestinians who protest their government's rocket attacks against israel? or their government's celebration of suicide bombers who kill israeli children?
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Jan 16, 2009 - 10:25am PT
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"If the media and the international community continue to play into the dirty hands of Hamas terrorists, its terrorism will continue and spread. Why not? It's a win-win strategy for terrorists and a lose-lose strategy for democracies. Hamas knows that by attacking Israeli civilians, they can secure one of two results: Israel will do nothing and Hamas will succeed in killing Israeli children; or Israel will respond and inevitably kill some Palestinian children, thereby provoking the ire of the media, the international community and ultimately decent people all around the world who are revolted by the cynically manipulated images of dead children."
here is the whole article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/16/hamas-dead-baby-strategy/
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 10:30am PT
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So are you all proud of US and our rogue 51st state? Have they "DEFENDED" themselves enough.
Their BS excuse of their right to defend themselves is the exact SAME reasoning used by the Nazis when they would slaughter 100 citizens in retaliation for 1 killed German.
The same obscene excuse used when Germans would go in and obliterate whole villages in Poland as retribution for the actions of the Polish Underground.
Bookworm you know so little that you can only incessantly spew about Hamas and their vow to destroy Israel. They have NO CHANCE! Israel will destroy it's self by the hypocrisy they perpetrate.
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UncleDoug
climber
No. Lake Tahoe, CA
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Jan 16, 2009 - 10:33am PT
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"Israel will destroy it's self by the hypocrisy they perpetrate."
This is the most intelligent statement posted to this thread.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 10:50am PT
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So I want to explain the origins of one of the oft repeated myths perpetrated by the Zionists of Israel. The notion that the "Arabs want to drive the Jews into the sea".
Few on this forum have any idea of the origins of this propaganda.
In 1948 after the Jews preemptively and illegally declared "STATEHOOD" they immediately proceeded with the expulsion of the Arabs with alacrity.
One such case was the prominent and wealthy city of Jaffa. The jews rounded up 95% of the Palestinian population and literally herded them to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Then they attacked them and literally drove THE ARABS INTO THE SEA! The Palestinians were left no other option but to board small boats and make their way to Gaza. Thousands drowned when overloaded boats capsized.
The world was outraged by this inhumane ethnic cleansing. The PR nightmare Israel faced threatened to scuttle support for their new state. So they fired up the full power of their propaganda machine. Now Americans with tragically short memories have been led to believe that it is the Arabs who want to drive the Jews into the sea. Which is plainly an impossibility for the Arabs but not for the Israelis.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 10:53am PT
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September 16, 2008
Jaffa's 'Renewal' Aims at Expulsion of Palestinians
by Jonathan Cook
The ground floor of Zaki Khimayl's home is a cafe where patrons can drink mint tea or fresh juice as they smoke on a water pipe. Located by Jaffa's beach, a stone's throw from Tel Aviv, the business should be thriving.
Mr. Khimayl, however, like hundreds of other families in the Arab neighborhoods of Ajami and Jabaliya, is up to his eyes in debt and trapped in a world of bureaucratic regulations apparently designed with only one end in mind: his eviction from Jaffa.
Sitting on the cafe's balcony, Mr. Khimayl, 59, said he felt besieged. Bulldozers are tearing up the land by the beach for redevelopment and luxury apartments are springing up all around his dilapidated two-story home.
He opened a briefcase, one of five he has stuffed with demands and fines from official bodies, as well as bills from four lawyers dealing with the flood of paperwork.
"I owe 1.8 million shekels [$500,000] in water and business rates alone," he said in exasperation. "The crazy thing is the municipality recently valued the property and told me it's worth much less than the sum I owe."
Jaffa is one of half a dozen "mixed cities" in Israel, where Jewish and Palestinian citizens supposedly live together. The rest of Israel's Palestinian minority, relatives of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, live in their own separate and deprived communities.
Despite the image of coexistence cultivated by the Israeli authorities, Jaffa is far from offering a shared space for Jews and Palestinians, according to Sami Shehadeh of the Popular Committee for the Defense of Jaffa's Homes. Instead, Palestinian residents live in their own largely segregated neighborhoods, especially Ajami, the city's poorest district.
Only last month, Mr. Shehadeh said, the Jewish residents' committees proposed creating days when the municipal pool could be used only by Jews.
Although Jaffa's 18,000 Palestinian residents constitute one-third of the city's population, they have been left powerless politically since a municipal fusion with Jaffa's much larger neighbor, Tel Aviv, in 1950. Of the cities' joint population, Palestinians are just three percent.
After years of neglect, Mr. Shehadeh said, the residents are finally attracting attention from the authorities – but the interest is far from benign. A "renewal plan" for Jaffa, ostensibly designed to improve the inhabitants' quality of life, is in fact seeking the Palestinian residents' removal on the harshest terms possible, he said.
"The municipality talks a lot about 'developing' and 'rehabilitating' the area, but what it means by development is attracting wealthy Jews looking to live close by Tel Aviv but within view of the sea," he said.
"The Palestinian residents here are simply seen as an obstacle to the plan, so they are being evicted from their homes under any pretext that can be devised.
"Some of the families have lived in these homes since well before the state of Israel was established, and yet they are being left with nothing."
The current pressure on the residents to leave Ajami has painful echoes of the 1948 war that followed Israel's declaration of its existence. Once, Jaffa was the most powerful city in Palestine, its wealth derived from the area's huge orange exports.
As Israeli historians have noted, however, one of the Jewish leadership's main aims in the 1948 war was the expulsion of the Palestinian population from Jaffa, especially given its proximity to Tel Aviv, the new Jewish state's largest city.
Ilan Pappe, an historian, writes that the people of Jaffa were "literally pushed into the sea" to board fishing boats destined for Gaza as "Jewish troops shot over their heads to hasten their expulsion."
By the end of the war, no more than 4,000 of Jaffa's 70,000 Palestinians remained. The Israeli government nationalized all their property and corralled the residents into the Ajami neighborhood, south of Jaffa port. For two years they were sealed off from the rest of Jaffa behind barbed wire.
In the meantime, Jaffa's properties were either demolished or redistributed to new Jewish immigrants. The heart of old Jaffa, next to the port, was developed as a touristic playground, with palatial Palestinian homes turned into exclusive restaurants and art galleries run by Jewish entrepreneurs.
The Ajami district, on the other hand, was quickly transformed from a distinguished neighborhood of Jaffa into its most deprived area, which became a magnet for crime and drugs. "The municipality showed its disdain for us by dumping all the city's waste, even dangerous chemicals, on our beach," Mr. Shehadeh said.
The residents – even those who continued to live in their families' original homes – lost their status as owners and overnight became tenants in confiscated property, forced to pay rent to a state-controlled company, Amidar.
Today, Amidar wants the families out to make way for wealthy Jewish investors and real estate developers.
Over the past 18 months, it has issued 497 eviction orders against Ajami families, threatening to make 3,000 people homeless.
"The problem for the families is that for six decades they have been ignored," said Mr. Shehadeh, who is standing in the local elections to the council next month.
"Four-fifths of Ajami's population is Palestinian and no investments were made by the municipality. Amidar refused to renovate the homes, and the planning authorities refused to issue permits to the families to build new properties or alter existing ones."
Faced with crumbling old homes and growing families, the residents had little choice but to fix and extend their properties themselves. Now years, sometimes decades, later Amidar is using these alterations as grounds for eviction, arguing that the residents have broken the terms of their rental agreements.
Mental Lahavi, vice-chairman of the local building and planning committee, recently admitted to the local media: "The municipality froze all [building] permits in the area for a long period and would not even let people replace an asbestos roof. They turned all the residents of the neighborhood into offenders."
Mr. Khimayl has amassed large debts because he used parts of his home that, according to Amidar, were not covered by his contract – even though the house has been owned by his family since 1902.
Amidar has also been waging a legal battle over a minor alteration he made to the property.
Many years ago, Mr. Khimayl rebuilt the dangerous external stone steps that provided the only access to the house's second floor. In 2005, Amidar inspectors told him he had broken the terms of his contract and should remove the new steps.
Unable to reach his home in any other way, he replaced the stone steps with a metal staircase. Another inspector declared the staircase a violation of the agreement, too.
Mr. Khimayl is currently using a metal staircase on wheels, arguing that the moveable steps are not a permanent alteration. Nonetheless, Amidar is pursuing him through the courts. Other families face similar problems.
A recent report by the Human Rights Association in Nazareth concluded the government was seeking to use a "quiet" form of ethnic cleansing, using administrative and legal pressure, to make Jaffa entirely Jewish.
Amidar has said it is simply upholding the law. "In cases in which the law has been broken, the company acts to protect the state's rights, regardless of the value of the property or the religion or nationality of the tenants."
This article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 11:09am PT
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The IDF and the IAF are cowardly bastards. The grieving Palestinian mothers who get in the Israeli soldiers faces have a thousand times more balls than these swine!
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mtnyoung
Trad climber
Twain Harte, California
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Jan 16, 2009 - 11:28am PT
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Philo, over weeks now, I've read every post here. Except for the thread's originator (who is likely rabid), you seem like the most dogmatic poster; unable to reason. Here's one example. First you post about the Israelis:
"...Deciding to continue prosecuting their genocidal ethnic cleaning instead."
OK, so the bad guys are committing genocide. I've seen genocide before, in my lifetime and in history. As I understand it it means deliberately wiping out a whole race or a discrete grouping of people. So, I get your post, the Israelis are trying to wipe out a whole race. But this seems fishy to me, aren't they the far superior military power? Couldn't they blot out the Palestinians at any time, if they so choose?
The answer to my questions, according to Philo, comes several posts later:
"... who want to drive the Jews into the sea. Which is plainly an impossibility for the Arabs but not for the Israelis."
So, now I'm confused, Philo. Clearly, according to you the Israelis have the power to commit genocide, that's clear. And, as you told us earlier, they are doing so? But there are a million and a half Palestinians in Gaza and only 1000 plus dead. Are the Israelis too incompetent to kill more, are they just doing this genocide poorly? I don't get it.
Actually, I do get it. There is no genocide, but instead remarkable restraint. Restraint that - if we believe what Hamas says, they would never practice toward jews.
It is clear Philo, that your sympathies lie with the Palestinians. But look back at your posts. Your sympathies make you blind (utterly). In your eyes, a people who endorse genocide, but are as yet incapable of causing it, can do very little wrong. Yet a people who could easily wipe out the other, but use great care to not do so, can do no right. A society that ruthlessly kills dissent (the Palestinians as governed by Hamas), is good and noble, whereas one that, as you've illustrated, tolerates vigorous dissent, is bad and genocidal.
I admire your humanity, your ability to sympathize. But your contradictions are hogwash. Your cant grows old. Both sides have problems; it takes two here to "tango" (and a lot of past bad blood). Open your eyes.
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Chris2
Trad climber
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Jan 16, 2009 - 11:28am PT
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Tragic photo’s for sure Philo and what the Israeli’s are doing is very wrong. But to keep up this “Nazi” comparison is ridiculous.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Jan 16, 2009 - 01:02pm PT
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Is it? The question I would ask is HOW could a people who suffered like that justify in any way behaving even remotely similarly?
Is it just that they haven't killed enough Palestinians in a quick enough manner?
Would you prefer if they just up and killed a million people?
And for the record I recognized the vitriolic response to the OP title.
So I offered a less offensive thread in What Gaza?
It is you all who keep bringing this thread to page one. Thank you for that. Because every time that title comes up the message is reinforced and revitalized.
Good on ya mate.
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Chris2
Trad climber
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Jan 16, 2009 - 01:05pm PT
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rolling my eyes...
I just happened to be sitting right here at my computer Philo, as this thread was about to go to page two...and then YOU bumped it to the top.
I only throw in my 2 cents, when it is already at the top.
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