http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/November/16%20o/Palestine%20Wake%20Up%20America%20By%20Sarah%20Meyer.htm
Palestine: Wake Up America

By Sarah Meyer

Al-Jazeerah, November 16, 2006

Index Research

Beit Hanoon Massacre 8 November 2006

Protocol I, Article 85, Section 3 of the Geneva Convention: "An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions."

“The lesson Israel is imparting in Gaza is unequivocal: War crimes are fine, so long as you remember to say sorry afterwards.”
Arthur Nelson,The Telegraph.

1. Prologue
2. Beit Hanoun: a Microcosm of War Crimes
3. References



1. Prologue

An American woman wrote to me about her support for Israel in the war against Lebanon. Another told me about an anti-Iraq-war relative who was a candidate in the recent US elections, and who also supported Israel’s policies. I protested. “You are wrong,” she said. I asked, “Are, then, Amnesty, the Red Cross, the UN, Human Rights Watch, and other respectable organisations as well as many people in our world all wrong?” An American man dismissed these organisations in a ‘comments’ section as being ‘leftie’ – thus, with 20th century ‘Cold War’ language, consigning moral integrity to the dustbin.

There is an ignorant ‘blind spot’ in America. That Palestine was a central cause of 9/11 has never been acknowledged or addressed. America, instead, bombed the soul out Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of ‘democracy and freedom,’ never mentioning oil. The Guardian headline (14.11.06), Blair urges White House to shift focus to Israel-Palestine conflict, is three years out of date. And will anything change with Mrs. Pelosi, America’s new darling? I doubt it. Read Robert Thompson’s article here.

Who is responsible for giving the American people warped facts, or no facts at all, about the plight of the Palestinian people? Why are the White House, Congress and the Senate, as well as Mainstream Media in collusion with the massive lobby, AIPAC? This lobby, according to the NY Times banner on their webpage, is “The most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel.”

It is time for the Sleeping Beauty - America the Beautiful, land of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights - to wake up not only to the so-called ‘war on terror’ and Iraq war lies, but also to the lies they have been fed about Palestine over many years.

Following is a short synthesis of articles and videos focusing on the Beit Hanoun horror – a microcosmic mirror of Israeli crimes perpetrated upon the Palestinian people. Read and watch, and wake up America. Then demand that the problem which was a causative factor in 9/11 be addressed. Hopefully, then, terrorism will decrease and we can share our planet together with integrity, respect and love. This must happen.



2. Beit Hanoun; A Microcosm of War Crimes



04.11.06. Murder at the Mosque


Video. Beit Hanoon Massacre 8 November 2006.
“My wife recorded this for my blog a couple of days ago. Since then, she won’t even look at the news.” Haitham Sabbah.

Listen Carefully to Condi’s Silence on Beit Hanoun
08.11.06. Haaretz / ICH. "I lost my sister, my brother-in-law and five of my nieces and nephews this morning. I feel nothing now; I can’t find the right words. All I know that the attack wasn’t a mistake. Israel fired six shells, how can that be a mistake? Israel wants to push us from our homes, but we will stay. This is our land.” -- Omar Thamena, 46, engineer.

ICRC deplores civilian deaths and casualties
08.11.06. ICRC. "The ICRC is appalled that at least 18 persons, including seven children and seven women, lost their lives and at least 58 others were wounded, some of them very severely, as a result of Israeli military operations in Beit Hanoun in the early hours of 8 November. … International humanitarian law strictly prohibits attacks against civilians and civilian objects and requires that a strict distinction be made between the civilian population and military objectives."

We overcame our fear
09.11.06.Jameela al-Shanti, Guardian. “Yesterday at dawn, the Israeli air force bombed and destroyed my home. I was the target, but instead the attack killed my sister-in-law, Nahla, a widow with eight children in her care. In the same raid Israel's artillery shelled a residential district in the town of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, leaving 19 dead and 40 injured, many killed in their beds. One family, the Athamnas, lost 16 members in the massacre: the oldest who died, Fatima, was 70; the youngest, Dima, was one; seven were children. The death toll in Beit Hanoun has passed 90 in one week."

Organization of the Islamic Conference accuses Israel of 'war crimes' and committing 'terrorist attacks' in Beit Hanoon
09.11.06. Aljazeerah.info. The Organization of the Islamic Conference accused Israel of committing a war crime after the Israeli army shelled a residential area in Beit Hanoon in the northern Gaza Strip, killing 18 Palestinians, on Wednesday.

Members of the European Parliament 'shocked and appalled' by the 'horrible carnage' in Gaza
Aljazeerah.info.

*It is not enough to feel ‘shocked and appalled’.

Video. (The Media Story) Beit Hanoun: Massacre or Technical Error? CNN / BBC. 7 min.

How did Mathew Price, a BBC reporter, feel? This article tells of Palestinian suffering. But the BBC been accused numerous times of being biased in favour of Israel. Who is telling Americans that the BBC is biased in favour of Palestine? Will you google ‘BBC bias Israel’ and read the truth for yourself?

VIDEO: Massacre of Palestinian Women and Children Israel's "Cloud of Autumn" Massacre in Gaza
10.11.06. M. Chossudovsky, Global Research. “The official story of the Israeli military is that this was an crack-down operation on "terrorists". Read the semi-official report by the Voice of America (VOA) (below) and then view the video to see what really happened.”

M. Chossudovsky gives related press reports: Mass kidnapping of Palestinian men in Beit Hanoun by Israeli occupation forces; Khalleez Times Online story; Xihua story.

Western Media Parrots Israeli Narrative on Beit Hanoun Massacre
12.11.06. K. Amayrah, a Palestinian blogger.

Names of 83 Palestinian Martyrs Victims of Israeli Massacre in Bait Hanoun Gaza Strip
12.11.06. Palestine Free Voice / uruknet.

How a Beit Hanun family was destroyed
13.11.06. Amira Hass, Haaretz. "They knew very well who was in the house, how many children, how many women. They knew very well there were no terrorists and no arms in this house," said Majdi.

US vetoes UN resolution urging Israel to respect international humanitarian law in Gaza
10.11.06. The Jurist. The Palestinian government. says this veto “backs further massacres.”

Arab Nations To Lift Financial Blockade On Palestine
10.11.06. Nasdaq. ‘Arab nations on Sunday decided to lift the financial blockade on Palestine following the US veto on a U.N. Security Council draft resolution on Saturday, which would (have) condemned Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip, reported AP. The Arab decision to lift the blockade on Palestine was arrived at following discussions at a meeting of 11 Arab foreign ministers and other senior officials and diplomats at the headquarters of the Arab League in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.’

How Israel put Gaza civilians in firing line
12.11.06. Observer exclusive. “Israeli military commanders drastically reduced the 'safety' margins that separate artillery targets from the built-up civilian areas of Gaza earlier this year, despite being warned that the new policy risked increasing Palestinian civilian deaths and injuries. … According to Human Rights Watch, since September 2005 Israel has fired about 15,000 rounds at Gaza while Palestinian militants have fired around 1,700 back. … The IDF has claimed a fault in the artillery radar system's co-ordinates for the missiles changed the margin of error from 25 to 200m, but that still does not explain why it waited until the following day to return fire to a general area - a policy that the Israeli peace group B'Tselem describes as a 'war crime'. … As a point of comparison, between June 2004 and July 2006, 14 civilians (six of them minors) were killed by Qassam gunfire fired by Palestinians into Israeli territory and at settlements in the Gaza Strip. In the four weeks from 26 June-24 July this year, however, IDF actions in the Gaza Strip to end the Qassam rocket fire caused the death of 126 Palestinians, 63 of whom did not participate in the hostilities. Twenty-nine of these were minors. According to the UN, since the end of June 450 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.”

Nobel winners petition Israel to outlaw targeted killing
13.08.06. AFP / Khaleej Times. ‘Hundreds of Israeli peace activists, joined by three foreign Nobel laureates, asked the nation's high court to rule against targeted assassinations carried out by the army in the Palestinian territories, saying the attacks were killing civilians. The petition, signed by 10 peace groups and 200 individuals, urged the supreme court to rule immediately on the issue in light of last week's Israeli fire in Gaza's Beit Hanun that killed 19 people, mostly women and children.’

US Officers planned the Beit Hanoun Massacre
13.11.06. Kawther Salam, Sabbah’s blog. WARNING: DISTURBING PHOTOS: “people everywhere in Palestine see such images on a daily basis not as pictures but live and anywhere they go.” ‘I often ask myself why the U.S.A does not stop donating to Israel the bombs which they use against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. What, ever, have we done to the USA? … Why does the international media impose a veil of silence over what is happening in Palestine? …

What is the DIME weapon? DU researcher and expert, Dai Williams, believes this is a new class of weapons using enriched uranium, not through fission processes but through new physical processes kept secret for at least 20 years. Physicist Emilio del Giudice form the National Institute of Nuclear Physics came to the same conclusion.”



Leg injuries inflicted by new Israeli weapons. The flesh is apparently burnt and disintegrates into crumbles and liquids.

SORRY WE KILLED YOU IN YOUR SLEEP....WE'LL WAKE YOU NEXT TIME
13.11.06. Desert Peace, Israeli Jewish blogger. Includes Olmert’s interview with Al Quds newspaper.



3. References

Video. Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land.
U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: How Israel manipulates and distorts American public perceptions. (17.07.06). This video ‘carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one.’ 79 min.

Aid to Israel

• Perspective from Israel:

In Washington: Really helping Israel
09.11.06. Jerusalem Post. One of the reasons Israel is rarely an issue in House and Senate campaigns is that Congress only considers one significant piece of legislation relating to Israel every year. That is the Israel aid package, which is itself part of the overall foreign aid bill.

• Perspective from Palestine:

True Lies About U.S. Aid to" Israeli " War Machinery: Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers
10.11.06. Palestine Free Voice. “Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that "Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid." That's true. But it's still a lie. The problem is that in fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.” An analysis of who does give and promote for Israeli interests.

• Perspective of the Law

US vetoes UN resolution urging Israel to respect international humanitarian law in Gaza
11.11.06. The Jurist.

US Arms Sales to Israel



GAZAN DOCTORS PULL SHRAPNEL MARKED “MADE IN USA” OUT OF PALESTINIAN


• U.S. eyes up to $750 million in military sales to Iraq
19.09.06.Reuters.

• U.S. Congress okays $500m for defense projects with Israel
30.09.06. Haaretz.

• Index on Illegal Weapons in Lebanon

• Appendex II: Index on Weapons in Lebanon. War Crimes in Lebanon and Palestine

• Lebanon: The Aftermath of War (updated to 14.11.06).

Nuclear Weapons

Then, of course, there is the unmentionable story of the “WMD” nuclear weapons in Israel. The US government prefers to focus on the non-existent WMDs in Iran - and support Israel’s (nuclear ?) threats on Iran.

US Vetoes

U.S. Vetoes of UN Resolutions Critical of Israel 1972 – 2006
Jewish Virtual Library / ICH.

The Wall

Video. Wall of Shame.
‘The wall being constructed on the West Bank by the Israeli government is twenty-five feet high. Studded with guard towers and armaments, and encrusted with high-tech sensors, the wall cuts across the land, separating Palestinians from their own farms, their own neighbors, and from the Israeli settlements which have sprung up rapidly as a result of lavish subsidies from the Israeli government.’ 28 min.

The Media

The Haditha Doctor and the Media Dissemblers
19.06.06. S. Meyer, Index Research. This research article probes the media stories on the murders in Haditha, Iraq – the ‘right-wing’ clan – and their funders.

Further Reading

JAMES PETRAS' NEW BOOK - THE POWER OF ISRAEL IN THE UNITED STATES
26.10.06. Stephen Lendman Review.

Other references



Haitham Sabbah


I asked Haitham Sabbah if he had any suggestions for this reference section. He wrote: “You can also find a good source of Palestinian bloggers in my other project, Palestine Blogs. It is an aggregator of all known Palestinian bloggers and/or bloggers who write and support Palestinians.” He mentioned his favourites, but I am hoping that those who want to know more will find their own favourites.

STOP PRESS: Sabbah emailed me at 16.54 today: "Tonight, the news is bad. Some angry Palestinian decided to take
revenge to Beit Hanoun massacre. A qassam rocket killed one and injured another Israli. This is so sad happening, again. Now the Israelis are saying that they will take a hard revenge, so God knows how many willbe killed more.... It's really devastating times that we are going through :( Lets pray for peace, soon...

Thank you Haitham Sabbah. Thanks also, to your family – and to the Palestinian people for their fortitude. All of you deserve some good health, good schools and real “democracy and freedom.” No more bombs or tanks. No more suffering. This will happen if the American people WAKE UP.


Postscript: My best wishes also to the Israeli people – as distinct from the Israeli government - and especially to my dearest lifelong close friend, Beth. I feel your suffering, too.

With thanks to W.W., M. and Kewe for their help and support.

Sarah Meyer is retired and now a researcher living in England.

Palestine: Wake Up America was first published by the BRussels Tribunal at: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/MeyerPalestine.htm

The Index Research url to ‘Palestine: Wake Up America’ is: http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2006/11/palestine-wake-up-america.html

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/788016.html
Preparing for the next invasion

By Amira Hass

The management of the Beit Hanun hospital decided to dig a well in the hospital's yard. By Saturday, laborers and bulldozers were already on the job. That is how the hospital is readying itself for the next invasion by the Israeli army.

The hospital, like the rest of Beit Hanun, has faced serious water supply difficulties due to the week-long military assault on the city and its 43,000 inhabitants. On the third night of the invasion, the army removed about 300 people from their homes in anticipation of the planned explosion of a nearby building. Everyone went to the hospital, joining the many injured individuals who were already there. Women and children who had gone out to the street Friday morning were also sent to the small hospital by soldiers.

Hundreds of people gathered there, exhausted and frightened by two sleepless nights, by the unending weapons fire from the positions taken up by the Israel Defense Forces in the houses it had occupied, by the sound of explosions and roar of dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers that advanced through the streets shredding the roads, knocking down electricity poles, breaking water and sewage pipes, and destroying walls and fences.



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Normally, the hospital uses 50,000 liters of water a day. During the entire week of the invasion, the hospital received only 15,000 liters. Children cried from thirst, their parents helpless to ease their suffering. Even in the neighborhood of the Athamna family, which IDF soldiers shelled with a series of deadly artillery shells, people recalled the thirst with a shudder.

The hospital learned other lessons as well. The refrigerator in its morgue had room for three bodies. Another refrigerator has been added, with room for six additional corpses. The hospital will also purchase an underground diesel fuel tank. The western part of the hospital was hit during last week's invasion, a precedent whose lesson is that in the future, flammable materials must be kept out of the range of IDF bullets. The hospital also asked for a budget for ambulances with front-wheel drive, since the current ones could not easily navigate the streets torn up by the tank treads.

The assumption is that the Israeli army will continue to invade, destroy and damage infrastructure - either intentionally, or because that is the nature of tanks - impeding water and electricity supplies and shooting at civilian institutions. The army will not change, and no one will restrain it. Therefore, appropriate preparations must be made.

But how can one prepare for the complicated and prolonged to the level of life-endangering coordination involved in evacuating the sick and wounded? Hospital director Dr. Jamil Suleiman tells the story of a man, about 50 years old, who suffered a heart attack. The medical team waited for about two hours before receiving permission from the army to rescue him. The man died. In the case of a woman who was about to give birth, the coordination took five hours and eventually she gave birth in the ambulance. It took about 10 hours to bring a man with leg injuries to the hospital by ambulance. The ambulance kept running into tanks that blocked its progress.

The sterile, deceptive expression "IDF operation" commonly used in the Israeli media, conceals thousands of details of killing, destruction and terror carried out by the Israeli war machine and the commanders and soldiers that operate it - in Beit Hanun last week and in other assaults and invasions over the past six years that were termed "operations."

One of those who disappeared in this manner is Bara Fayyad, aged four. Soldiers burst into the Fayyads' home, made of tin, plaster and asbestos, through the wall they destroyed using explosives. The meager house and its contents were badly damaged by the explosion. Throughout Beit Hanun, frightened children clung to their parents everywhere they went. Bara and his brothers were clinging to their parents at dawn Friday when the latter went outside to wash their hands in a sink in the yard prior to morning prayers. A missile fired from a helicopter or an unmanned aerial vehicle - the neighbors do not know which - hit the yard and created a deep hole. Bara was killed.

Also among those who disappeared are Abu Bassam, 52, and his two sons. All three were injured when an Israeli missile landed on, and badly damaged, their house. Abu Bassam was wounded again, in the leg, by sniper fire when he went to the outhouse in the yard of relatives he was staying with after suffering his original injury.

At least four civilians were shot and injured twice by soldiers. They disappeared from Israeli public awareness, like Mazen Kafrana, one of thousands of men rounded up from their homes, arrested, briefly interrogated and released. Mazen was released at the Erez crossing and walked home. The area was under curfew, and soldiers shot him to death.

Twenty-five houses also disappeared from the media. They were destroyed completely, while another 400 were damaged, some of them so badly they have to be demolished. All told, about one-tenth of the 4,500 residential buildings in the town were damaged. The Beit Hanun municipality estimates the cost of the damage at about $14.5 million, in addition to the $6 million in damages from July's attack.

The lack of desire by the Israeli public to know is reinforced and completed by the "lack of space" in the media and the hierarchy of editing that deletes critical information about the Israeli army and, in effect, about Israeli society - a society that is constantly manufacturing destructive capabilities, and sending its twenty something-year-olds to destroy lives, cities and futures.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=11/15/2006&Cat=4&Num=002

DU behind the surge in cancer rates in Iraq

In 1991, Washington and its Persian Gulf War allies used armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the first time such weapons had been used in military conflicts -- as the Iraqis retreated from Kuwait.

Up till now, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery despite many studies and many attempts by scientists to fully discover its secrets. In military applications, when alloyed, Depleted Uranium

[DU] is ideal for use in armor penetrators. These solid metal projectiles have the speed, mass and physical properties to perform exceptionally well against armored targets.

DU provides a substantial performance advantage, well above other competing materials. This allows DU penetrators to defeat an armored target at a significantly greater distance. Also, DU's density and physical properties make it ideal for use as armor plate. DU has been used in weapon systems for many years in both applications.

Depleted uranium results from the enriching of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors. Natural uranium is a slightly radioactive metal that is present in most rocks and soils as well as in many rivers and sea water.

Natural uranium consists primarily of a mixture of two isotopes (forms) of uranium, Uranium-235 (U235) and Uranium-238 (U238), in the proportion of about 0.7 and 99.3 percent, respectively. Nuclear reactors require U235 to produce energy, therefore, the natural uranium has to be enriched to obtain the isotope U235 by removing a large part of the U238.

Once DU round strikes a solid object like a tank, it bursts into a burning spray of radioactive dust, which can remain on site for years.

Many reports and political experts confirmed that the U.S. and British troops fired more than 940,000 depleted uranium projectiles during the 1991 conflict.

The Pentagon refuses to clarify the exact effects of depleted uranium, but Iraqi doctors attribute the significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region to the U.S. and British troops’ use of DU.

Many researches conducted outside Iraq, and by several U.S. veterans organizations, suggested that depleted uranium could have played a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.

The U.S. is believed to have used 320,000 tons of depleted uranium during the Persian Gulf War alone. Also British Armed Forces used depleted uranium in some of its ammunition.

Iraqi doctors reported significant growth in cancer and birth defects during the period between 1991 and 2003; the period of the two wars the country fought and in which the U.S. and the British forces were involved.

It was during these two wars that such weapons were used; which led to the noticeable growth in cancer and birth defects in Iraq.

In 2001, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a study on depleted uranium after serious doubts emerged over its damage to health.

The study claimed that depleted uranium had very little risk of spreading.

But a scientist who had worked for the WHO at that time later stated that another study that was kept concealed from the public contradicted WHO’s claim, and that it asserts that depleted uranium can cause cancer.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Dr. Keith Baverstock, who worked on the published study, said that Depleted uranium inhalation has geno-toxic effects on DNA.

"When you breathe in the dust the deeper it goes into the lung the more difficult it is to clear. The particles that dissolve pose a risk - part radioactive - and part from the chemical toxicity in the lung - and then later as that material diffuses into the rest of the body, and into the blood stream, a potential risk at sites like the bone marrow for leukemia, the lymphatic system and the kidney," Dr. Baverstock said, adding that this study was excluded from the report released earlier by WHO.

British and American troops in Iraq today continue using depleted uranium weapons ignoring the deadly impact it has on civilians’ lives and health.

It had also been revealed that the Israeli occupation army used uranium in the recent offensive Lebanon.

Cancer rate in Iraq has increased tenfold, and the number of birth defects has multiplied fivefold times since the 1991 war. The increase is believed to be caused by depleted uranium.

Many scientists sought to investigate these events, but Washington is blocking any attempt to inspect the aftermath of the war.

Also the U.S. refused to cooperate with the United Nations on the issue. _(Source: ALjazeera.com)

http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22637/1/
Shin Bet Chief claims that fighters managed to smuggle 30 tons of explosives since Gaza pullout
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies - Tuesday, 14 November 2006, 21:00

Israeli online daily Haaretz reported that the Shin Bet security service chief, Yuval Diskin, stated on Tuesday that the government must prepare for a "military option" in Gaza, and claimed that Palestinian resistance factions had smuggled 30 tons of explosives into the Gaza Strip since the IDF pulled out of Gaza last year.

The statements of Diskin came during a meeting with the Knesset Foreign Affairs and defense Committee. “All options are awful”, he stated, “But Israel must choose the least awful option”.

According to Diskin, armed factions managed to smuggle 30 tons of explosives and large quantities of arms and cash.

He added that the Popular Resistance Committees pose “greater threats than Hamas, because “its members are more extreme religious fundamentalists”, according to Diskin.

Also, Diskin added that Hamas is not as powerful as it was before the elections because it is facing difficulties in running the Palestinian Authority as a result of the siege and embargo.

Meanwhile, Likud member of Knesset Yuval Steinitz, who used to head the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that the Israeli army should carry a broad military offensive in the Gaza Strip adding that “this is the only way to keep Gaza from becoming another southern Lebanon.

He added that the army must carry “Operation Defensive Shield II”, similar to Operation Defensive Shield carried in 2002, and should reoccupy the Philadelphi Route, the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Shin Bet Calls for Broad Offensive into Gaza
Caysha Cay- IMEMC & Agencies, 15:35

In response to one Qassam rocket that landed near a children’s dormitory on a Western Negev kibbutz Tuesday, Yuval Diskin, Shin Bet security service chief said that Israel must prepare to respond with a broad military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

In a testimony to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Diskin said on Tuesday, “"If the Fatah movement continues to weaken in the face of the extremist elements in the [Palestinian] Authority, there will be no alternative but to take action.”

The rocket caused damage but no injuries; apparently it was enough to justify another full scale military invasion of Gaza, in addition to Operation Summer Rains and Operation Autumn Clouds, both of which have left over 300 dead and a thousand injured.

Sourced from Haaretz
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Any excuse for brutality is better than none.... provide no real facts... just conjecture... go wipe out a few more hundrend Palies and make points in IsraHell.

A Quassan accidently fell near a school... not a good landing spot but good enough if killing Palestinians is your goal! Now go get em'.

Would I like a Quassam lnding on my roof? No.... But if you were bulldozing my house, killing every person born or unborn in my nation ... I might start to investigate missile building too....

If Quassams stopped falling would Israel change it's strategy? No. Would the massacres stop? No. Would the 10,000+ prisoners, many of who are uncharged, be freed? No. Would Israel return the illegally taken West Bank, Golan Heights, Sheba Farms, and let Gaza actually be free? No. So why quite? Occupation breeds resistance! That resistance is little more than an anoying nuisance, we all understand that, but in frustration, it seems it will be continued.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/348DA1B4-45B4-4EB8-9BA0-CBC225743E70.htm
Annan: Politics behind rift with Islam

Monday 13 November 2006, 23:29 Makka Time, 20:29 GMT

Kofi Annan: The problem is never the faith

Politics, and not religion, is at the heart of the growing rift between the West and the Muslim world, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has said.

Annan made the comments in Istanbul on Monday, as he met scholars, politicians and religious leaders to discuss ways to improve relations between 'East' and 'West'.

"We should start by reaffirming and demonstrating that the problem is not the Quran or the Torah or the Bible," Annan said in response to a report by the multinational group of scholars that sets out proposals to overcome the problem.

"Indeed, I have often said that the problem is never the faith, it is the faithful and how they behave towards each other."

The 'Alliance of Civilisations' was jointly formed by Spain and Turkey in 2005 as part of a UN-backed initiative which was led by the Spanish government in response to the Madrid train bombings.

Middle East peace

Annan also said that any effort to stop growing violence between Islamic and Western societies must include an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"We may wish to think of the Arab-Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict amongst many. It is not. No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield," he said.

Annan said he would work along with his successor, Ban Ki-moon, to help implement the recommendations of the report, which called for renewed efforts toward the goal of establishing "two fully sovereign and independent states co-existing side by side in peace and security."

"As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation, and as long as Israelis are blown up in buses and in dance halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed," Annan said.

The report

The report was drafted over the past year by a group of 20 prominent men and women, which includes Mohammad Khatami, the former Iranian president, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Both were in attendance at the ceremony held in Istanbul.

The UN initiative is co-sponsored by the prime ministers of Spain, a predominantly Catholic country, and Turkey, which is 99 per cent Muslim.