Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ma'ariv's Ben-Dror Yemini
(h/t t34zakat)
The Abd Rabbo family kept quiet while Hamas fighters turned their farm in the Gaza strip into a fortress. Right now they are waiting for the aid promised by the [Hamas] movement after Israel bombed the farm and turned it into ruins...
The hill on which the Abd Rabbo family lives overlooks the Israeli town Sderot, a fact that turned it into an ideal military position for the Palestinian fighters, from which they have launched hundreds of rockets into southern Israel during the last few years. Several of the Abd Rabbo family members described how the fighters dug tunnels under their houses, stored arms in the fields and launched rockets from the yard of their farm during the nights.
The Abd Rabbo family members emphasize that they are not [Hamas] activists and that they are still loyal to the Fatah movement, but that they were unable to prevent the armed squads from entering their neighborhood at night. One family member, Hadi (age 22) said: "You can't say anything to the resistance [fighters], or they will accuse you of collaborating [with Israel] and shoot you in the legs."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 27, 2009]
480. On the basis of the information it gathered, the Mission finds that there are indications that Palestinian armed groups launched rockets from urban areas. The Mission has not been able to obtain any direct evidence that this was done with the specific intent of shielding the rocket launchers from counterstrokes by the Israeli armed forces. The Mission also notes, however, that Palestinian armed groups do not appear to have given Gaza residents sufficient warning of their intention to launch rockets from their neighbourhoods to allow them to leave and protect themselves against Israeli strikes at the rocket launching sites. The Mission notes that, in any event, given the densely populated character of the northern half of the Gaza Strip, once Israeli forces gained control of the more open or outlying areas during the first days of the ground invasion, most -- if not all -- locations still accessible to Palestinian armed groups were in urban areas.The bar that Goldstone creates of determining "specific intent" is much higher for Hamas than for the IDF, which it declares multiple times "deliberately" targeted civilians.
While reports reviewed by the Mission credibly indicate that members of Palestinian armed groups were not always dressed in a way that distinguished them from civilians, the Mission found no evidence that Palestinian combatants mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack.Finally, ten paragraphs later, Goldstone talks about the legal definition of human shields:
491. The Mission finds it useful to clarify what is meant, from a legal perspective, by using civilians or a civilian population as a human shield. Parties to a conflict are not permitted to use a civilian population or individual civilians in order to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. It is not in dispute that both Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces were fighting within an area populated by civilians. Fighting within civilian areas is not, by itself, sufficient for a finding that a party is using the civilian population living in the area of the fighting as a human shield. As the words of article 57 (1) show (“shall not be used to render”, “in order to attempt to shield”), an intention to use the civilian population in order to shield an area from military attack is required.Even though Goldstone started off the discussion as to whether Hamas forced civilians to stay in areas of fighting, at this point - 18 paragraphs later - he mentions that the legal requirement has nothing to do with someone being forced to act that way. The video of Hamas' "Mr. Hammad" that says explicitly that Gaza civilians were used to shield militants from attack is very relevant now, but Goldstone dismissed it above in context of whether civilians were forced to act that way - which is irrelevant for the purposes of this law.
This of course helps fulfill the Biblical verse in Esther 8:16:Student Jessica Taylor was shocked to see her late-night gefilte fish snack light up the kitchen of her north London family home by glowing bright green and yellow. Her mother had bought the Hoffman’s product the previous day at Moshe’s Deli in Temple Fortune.
Joff Taylor, Jessica’s father, said: “My daughter came home at two or three in the morning and was starving. She did not put on the kitchen light, took out the fish and closed the fridge.
“The fish was glowing very brightly so she took it out of the pack and held it in her hands. When she put it down, her hands were glowing.”
Suspicious of Jessica’s claim, Mr Taylor and his wife asked her to recreate the scene the following evening. “We turned off the lights and she brought the fish out. We all stood there amazed. It was brighter than a glow-stick.”
The Taylors opted not to eat the fluorescent fish, which was not beyond its use-by date, and threw it away.
A Moshe’s spokesman said: “Sometimes the fish eat some phosphorus and it glows. It’s good for you. We’re not the manufacturer, we just sell it.” Geeta Cohli, a consultant to Hoffman’s Foods, said the company had received no complaints from customers. “The family should have kept the fish as evidence. We would have done some tests. I’m a qualified micro-biologist and I have never heard of this. I think it was an act of God.”
A Food Standards Agency spokeswoman attributed the glowing fish to luminescent bacteria which occur naturally in sea water. “Most luminescent bacteria are harmless but their presence may indicate that other, harmful bacteria are also present through cross-contamination with other uncooked products. We would advise that the fish should not be consumed.”
No current world refugee crisis has gone unresolved longer than the Palestinian exodus, said the UN Relief and Works Agency's commissioner-general, Karen Abu Zayd, in New York on Thursday.What Abu Zayd didn't bother mentioning is some other salient facts about Palestinian Arab "refugees" that make them so unique.
"The Palestinians make up the world's largest refugee group, and their plight has gone on longer than any other," the AP quoted Abu Zayd as saying during an event marking 60 years since UNRWA was established.
The UN's relief agency for Palestine refugees was founded in 1949, although its original mandate was temporary. Now deeply interwoven within Palestinian society itself, it still provides essential services to millions of refugees in camps throughout the Middle East.
"The protracted exile of Palestine refugees and the dire conditions they endure, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territory, cannot be reconciled with state obligations under the UN charter," Abu Zayd added at the UN General Assembly meeting.
Egypt's culture minister on Wednesday blamed a conspiracy "cooked up in New York" by the world's Jews for keeping him from becoming the next head of the U.N.'s agency for culture and education.Sounds like he would have been an appropriate representative of the UN!Farouk Hosny was defeated on Tuesday by Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova in a tight race for the position of UNESCO chair.
"It was clear by the end of the competition that there was a conspiracy against me," Hosny told reporters at the airport upon his return from Paris.
"There are a group of the world's Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position," he said.
Hosny's candidacy raised an outcry because of a threat he made in the Egyptian parliament last year to personally burn any Israeli book he found in Egypt's famed Library of Alexandria. While he later apologized and Israel said it had withdrawn its opposition to his candidacy, several prominent Jewish activists spoke out against him in the runup to the vote.
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann wrote a protest letter listing comments they took issue with, including Hosni's 2001 description of Israeli culture as "inhumane" and "racist."
Opposition came from other quarters as well. International human rights activists, as well as some Egyptian artists and intellectuals, expressed concerns over his role in the Egyptian government's restrictions on freedom of expression.
The tight UNESCO race was closely watched, with a flurry of secretive diplomatic efforts between each round.
While Hosni was cited as a favorite for months before the election, Bokova gained ground at the last minute as other candidates dropped out, partly amid attempts to consolidate support for a strong challenger to the Egyptian candidate.
It's nice to see that Abu Kraisha agrees that Israel has been a Jewish nation since Biblical times.In a long rant in the state-run Al-Gomhuria, Mohamed Abu Kraisha begins by describing the Jewish love of “bargaining” and the fact that “they want everything brought to them, like ‘home delivery.’”
Abu Kraisha then goes on to say that “Israel, ruled by the Jewish nature since the time of Moussa [Moses], is never patient for one meal, even if it is a strategic choice. It wants more meals, and more Arab concessions, and more negotiations to amuse itself with, and more dancing of Arab monkeys on tables.”
“Israel will never give up it’s strategy, which is war and aggression towards Arabs…It is for this reason that they waged war against the Arabs in UNESCO, and fought viciously in order to bring down the Arabs’ candidate, Farouk Hosni.”
Writing in Al-Ahram Ahmed Moussa laments the fact that “some people in Egypt stood against Hosni and attacked and criticized him. In so doing they lent support to the Israeli and American positions.”
The US, Moussa says, rallied “all its forces” against Hosni “with the support of the Jewish lobby.”
Moussa also criticizes Egyptians who did not support Hosni’s UNESCO bid.
He asks, “why is there a group of people living side by side with us in our nation who have no sense of loyalty to the country and its people, and who are in alliance with the Americans and the Jews? Are these people really Egyptian?”
Iran police have banned the display of women's underwear in shop windows across the Islamic republic, Tehran dailies said on Wednesday.
There have been reports of the use of inappropriate and shocking mannequins in shop windows in a bid to draw in customers, which has been the source of public dissatisfaction," the Arman newspaper quoted a police statement as saying.
The statement said it was an offence to "display women's underwear in shop windows".
The police also took issue with displays of "Western brands of clothing, immoral photographs or ties and bow-ties, and the use of manneqins with a revealing body shape or with the head and face on show without a headscarf".
The statement also barred male shop assistants from selling women's lingerie.
One can imagine the kinds of art in Iranian museums (from Iran Politics Club)
It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery, and harm the reputation of other nations, even European nations and the U.S., to attain its racist ambitions.Of course, 'Mad-e-jad knew about me a couple of years ago. But since then I have graduated from merely trying to stop him from attending soccer games to enslaving the entire world through my complicated networks.
TEHRAN - Iran's sole Simorgh AWACS aircraft was lost during a military parade Sept. 22, one of two Iranian military aircraft that crashed in Tehran while participating in a display to mark the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.I like how it gets destroyed on top of Ayatollah Khomeini's shrine. Nice poetic touch. Kudos to whoever - or Whoever - is responsible.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force operated a single Simorgh, a former Iraqi Air Force Adnan. The Adnan AWACS was in turn a modification of a Soviet-built Ilyushin Il-76 transport.
The Simorgh collided with one of the Air Force's Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighters over the area of the Imam Khomeyni Shrine, southern Tehran. According to eyewitnesses, the crash occurred immediately after the parade. Apparently, no mayday call was issued.
Both aircraft crashed in flames. Initial reports indicate that seven crewmembers were killed in the crash.
In total, Iraq built three AWACS aircraft, one Baghdad, and two Baghdad-2s, the latter later renamed Adnans. One Adnan and the Baghdad were evacuated to Iran during the 1991 Gulf War, while the second Adnan was destroyed on the ground by a coalition air strike in January 1991.
The exact status of the Iranian Simorgh and its onboard systems was long uncertain. However, photographs suggest that the aircraft was equipped with a newly fitted functioning radar suite.
41. The Mission examined the mortar shelling of al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to a UNRWA school which at the time was used as a shelter housing more than 1,300 people (Chapter X). The Israeli forces launched at least four mortar shells. One landed in the courtyard of a family home, killing eleven people assembled there. Three other shells landed on al-Fakhura Street, killing at least a further 24 people and injuring as many as 40.
687. Three other shells landed on al-Fakhura Street, which was busy at the time, killing at least a further 24 people and injuring as many as 40.
661. The three other shells that the Mission could identify as having landed at different places on al-Fakhura Street killed at least 24 people. The witnesses estimate that up to another 40 were injured by the blasts. The Mission has not been able to verify those figures, but having inspected the site and viewed the footage, it does not consider these numbers to be exaggerated.In other words, the Goldstone Commission did not even attempt to enumerate the people allegedly killed on al-Fakhoura street, taking Palestinian Arab witnesses at their word!
- Khaled Mohammed Fuoad Abu Askar (Abu al-‘Izz), an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative, was born on December 12, 1989, in Jabaliya. At the age of 15 he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and was active in the Hamas student organization, which serves as a recruiting agency for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. In 2006 he was accepted into fighting groups posted in front-line positions. He underwent an advanced military training course and was posted to a special unit of the north Gaza battalion where he participated in dozens of ambushes and fought against IDF forces. He served as a military instructor in the Imad Aqel battalion and supervised the ambush and suicide unit.
- Raafat Abu Askar, a military-terrorist operative in the security services with the rank of warrant officer, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.
- Osama Jemal Obeid, an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.17
- Iyad Jaber Aman, an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.18
- Abd Muhammad Abd Qudas, a Fatah operative active in Palestinian Military Intelligence, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.19
- Atia Hassan al-Madhoun and his son, Ziyad al-Madhoun, operatives in the Brigades of National Resistance, the military-terrorist wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Atia was regional commander for Jabaliya. The two were the father and brother of Hassan al-Madhoun, one of the senior commanders of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who was lynched by Hamas in the summer of 2006. The two were killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.20
The IDF internal investigation provided important context for this incident. It revealed that Hamas often used 120mm mortars to attack Israeli towns and villages near the border of Gaza. Hamas terrorists had acquired significant expertise with these weapons and improved the accuracy of their technique; this tactic was central to Hamas‘ method of fighting the IDF in urban areas. Hamas‘ use of 120mm mortars posed a serious threat to IDF ground forces. Only a day before the incident in question, Hamas mortar fire had injured 30 IDF soldiers.Goldstone describes the legal issues this way:
42. In drawing its legal conclusions on the attack against al-Fakhura junction, the Mission recognizes that for all armies proportionality decisions, weighing the military advantage to be gained against the risk of killing civilians, will present very genuine dilemmas in certain cases. The Mission does not consider this to be such a case. The firing of at least four mortar shells to attempt to kill a small number of specified individuals in a setting where large numbers of civilians were going about their daily business and 1,368 people were sheltering nearby cannot meet the test of what a reasonable commander would have determined to be an acceptable loss of civilian life for the military advantage sought. The Mission considers thus the attack to have been indiscriminate in violation of international law, and to have violated the right to life of the Palestinian civilians killed in these incidents.In either of the two possible scenarios I mention, where either 3 out of 12 or 10 out of 24 killed were terrorists, it is far from clear that Goldstone's analysis holds water.
Online reports of a study by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency cast doubt over the survival of Israel beyond the next two decades. Regardless of the validity of the report, with what is now known about the costs in blood and treasure that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has imposed on the U.S., its key ally, Israel could fall within five years.Gates, a rabid Israel basher, hangs his latest article on this bizarre "report" that he admits he doesn't know the validity of.
Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has targeted and downed an unidentified shining object after sighting it over Persian Gulf waters.Which brings up the question: are Martians also part of the arrogant Big Satan/Little Satan Zionist alliance?
"Glowing objects were sighted over the Persian Gulf. IRGC air defense targeted one of the objects successfully, forcing it to plummet and sink in the seas off Boushehr (Province)," said top regional commander, Brigadier Ali Razmjou.
"The three bright objects were detected by our radars when flying over the Persian Gulf Islands of Khark and Khargou," he added, according to a Monday report posted on IRNA.
Brig. Razmjou explained that when the radars indicated that they were not Iranian aircrafts, the IRGC fired at the three objects. He also added that the fallen objects' remains have not been found yet.
The exact time and location of the sighting and downing of the weird aircraft has not been announced.
"Simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward. It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that's necessary to achieve our goals. Permanent status negotiations must begin and begin soon. And more importantly, we must give those negotiations the opportunity to succeed." - Barack ObamaIs Obama short-circuiting the roadmap?
The Palestinian presidency clarified in a statement that Abbas' acceptance of the U.S. invitation to join the summit at the UN General Assembly "does not mean that the Palestinian leadership accepted the resumption of the peace talks without Israel's freeze of settlement activities."Face-saving from Abbas.
Haniyeh spoke during a conference titled, "The al-Aqsa Victory." According to the Hamas leader, Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque would be freed by "those holding a gun in one hand and the Koran book in their other hand."
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The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
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