Gaza ceasefire reveals full extent of Israeli destruction

[Roy Serohz]

Source: The Guardian

Thousands of people in Gaza have ventured out from homes and shelters during a 12-hour ceasefire to find that whole streets and neighbourhoods have been destroyed in the last week.

Israel and Hamas both agreed to a UN request to stop fighting from 8am until 8pm on Saturday. Shortly before the ceasefire took effect, at least 18 members of the al-Najar family, including many children, were killed in an air strike on Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. The family had recently gone there to escape fighting in a nearby village, a Palestinian health official said.

As the Palestinian death toll in the 19-day-long conflict topped 1,000, diplomatic efforts to forge a longer ceasefire continued in Paris. Foreign ministers from seven nations – the US, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Turkey and Qatar – called for an extension of Saturday's 12-hour humanitarian truce.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/26/gaza-ceasefire-reveals-full-extent-israeli-damage

[moondust]

1. So if Putin is responsible

for the reprehensible acts done with weapons he provided then...

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. GOPers in congress would have you arrested for thinking

such thoughts. Sadly, they would be joined by democrats.

[BlueMTexpat]

8. I would be joining moondust in jail then

because I have been thinking those thoughts for some time now.

[intaglio]

26. You could have stopped your post after the reply title

GOPers in congress would have you arrested for thinking

[ChairmanAgnostic]

28. That being such an alien action to them.

[n2doc]

3. And it's not like Putin is being punished either. n/t

[el scorcho]

6. Holocaust?

Apparently you don't understand the meaning of the word.

[A Simple Game]

10. I agree with you, this is nothing more than mass murder. We do agree, right?

Now can we discuss war crimes?

[el scorcho]

12. Have at it

But before you do consider the deaths of millions of innocent civilians who've been trapped in war zones before this latest outbreak of hostilities. Not everything rises to the level of "war crimes".

[A Simple Game]

19. But the problem with war crimes is who gets to define them. Don't worry it won't be you or me.

Sadly it is never the loser and usually the winner who gets to decide.

People need to start understanding that no one ever wins a war. Never! I truly believe civilization has gone downhill since my birth in 1950. Otherwise why would people, especially people that don't belong to either group involved, be so picky about the terms for one group killing another group's people?

So let's have your defining term for what Israel did in Gaza. Let me guess, collateral damage, right? Well I guess if firebombing Dresden was OK, a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima was OK, and Shock and Awe for Baghdad was OK, then this little thing Israel did is just OK, isn't it? Otherwise someone may have to look in a mirror and see just how ugly they really are.

[el scorcho]

29. My description would be "tragic"

Because that's what it is. Neither side is blameless and the civilians are caught in the middle.

[MH1]

13. From Dictionary.com ....

holocaust
[hol-uh-kawst, hoh-luh-] IPA Syllables
Synonyms Word Origin
noun
1. a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire.
2. a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering.
3. (usually initial capital letter) the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II (usually preceded by the).
4. any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.


The word "holocaust" has a meaning outside its use in reference to the Nazi atrocities against Jews.

[Roy Serohz]

18. Let's not forget the other 6 million victims of the Nazi Holocaust

Gays, "decadent artists," Poles, POWS, Roma, etc.

[MH1]

21. Yes, that's another good point.

Most people only think of the Jews as being the victims of the Holocaust. There were all these others, too.

[Divernan]

17. The Israeli military call it "mowing the lawn" -

Israel’s agenda has been different. Had it been determined to end Hamas rule it could easily have done so, particularly while Hamas was still consolidating its control over Gaza in 2007, and without necessarily reversing the 2005 disengagement. Instead, it saw the schism between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as an opportunity to further its policies of separation and fragmentation, and to deflect growing international pressure for an end to an occupation that has lasted nearly half a century. Its massive assaults on the Gaza Strip in 2008-9 (Operation Cast Lead) and 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defence), as well as countless individual attacks between and since, were in this context exercises in what the Israeli military called ‘mowing the lawn’: weakening Hamas and enhancing Israel’s powers of deterrence. As the 2009 Goldstone Report and other investigations have demonstrated, often in excruciating detail, the grass consists overwhelmingly of non-combatant Palestinian civilians, indiscriminately targeted by Israel’s precision weaponry.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n15/mouin-rabbani/israel-mows-the-lawn

Once again, Israel is ‘mowing the lawn’ with impunity, targeting civilian non-combatants and civilian infrastructure. Given its continual insistence that it uses the most precise weapons available and chooses its targets carefully, it is impossible to conclude that the targeting is not deliberate. According to UN agencies, more than three-quarters of the more than 260[1] Palestinians killed so far have been civilians, and more than a quarter of them children. Most were targeted in their own homes: they cannot be described as collateral damage under any definition of the term. Of course Palestinian militants have also been recklessly targeting Israeli population centres, though their attacks have resulted in just a single death: a man handing out sweets to the soldiers pulverising the Gaza Strip. Human Rights Watch has criticised both sides but, true to form, has accused only the Palestinians of war crimes.

[1] update: since this article was published, as of today, the Palestinian body count is over 1,000 and growing as more of the rubble of totally destroyed apartment buildings is searched.

[Roy Serohz]

20. And we've provided them with the mowers and the fuel

[cosmicone]

7. yes, Putin is responsible but we are not.

we are exceptional.

[broiles]

15. Don't you know America is exceptional?

[MH1]

16. Is that really being said? As I understand it, Putin is being held "responsible"

(rhetorically to some extent anyway, if not in any significant real way)

for Russia's active support of the rebels and the way they have mishandled the aftermath of the tragedy of downing a civilian plane. There were hundreds of victims from other countries on that plane, who had no knowledge that they were even entering a war zone. So, many previously "uninterested" countries are now drawn into the conflict due to the loss of their citizens.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, you have an ongoing conflict with legitimate grievances on both sides, even if people disagree vociferously about the relative scale and legitimacy of grievances on the different sides. The victims on each side are almost exclusively citizens of the warring parties (notwithstanding the visiting teenager who was beat up in Israel - that is an exception). Some might argue that the citizens of a country are somewhat responsible for the actions of their government, if only for not rising up against the government to replace it. In the case of Gaza that is probably an extremely simplistic and naive view, but I think that is one reason there is less sympathy for the victims, and less motivation to ascribe blame to the allies of the perpetrators.

It's a distinct difference in the two kinds of actions. Whether it's important or not depends on one's larger feelings about the conflicts.

Would we hear about the horrors being done by the "rebels" in Ukraine and be ascribing that to Putin, if not for the downing of the Malaysian airliner? I suspect not.

[alsame]

9. From Ayman Mohyeldin

aymanm
4 hours ago · Shejaiya
July 26, 2014 | Shejaiya Cemetery, Gaza. Relatives frantically digging graves in an open lot being used as a cemetery. The stream of bodies was too fast for gravediggers to keep up with number of bodies being brought from nearby hospitals. The graves were being marked with cinder blocks from the rubble of nearby buildings destroyed by Israeli shelling. All that identifies where the dead are buried are the pieces of hand-written cardboard.

aymanm
4 hours ago · Shejaiya
July 26, 2014 | Shejaiya, Gaza. An open lot of land is converted to a cemetery allowing for people to bury relatives. There is no time for proper burials here. Bodies are buried and their graves marked with cinder blocks from bombed out buildings nearby. In the distance, people frantically dig to make more space for more dead bodies. A steady stream of bodies was coming from several hospital so quickly that families had to wait in the shade until their graves were dug up.

aymanm
5 hours ago · Al Shifaa Hospital
July 26, 2014 | Shifa Hospital Morgue, Gaza. Bodies on top of bodies next to bodies. In four hours, at least 81 bodies have been pulled from the rubble pushing the overall death toll to more than 1,000 Palestinians killed since the war began. The smell of decomposed bodies, some who had been rotting there for a week was suffocating making it almost impossible for anyone to breathe without a mask. Hospital workers were barely capable of identifying bodies and were issuing death certificates on the fly and for parents who wanted a cause of death, there was simply no time for proper autopsies meaning few if any will be able to pursue legal recourse against their relative's killers. They had to choose between a full autopsy or laying their loved ones to rest in the few hours of a ceasefire. All of them chose to take their relatives for burial.

His Twitter - be warned there are some graphic photos with these tweets

https://twitter.com/AymanM/with_replies

[riverwalker]

11. his reporting is incredible

Twitter is now documenting war crimes. #ICC4Israel has been trending worldwide all morning.
(International Criminal Court)

[Divernan]

23. Who'd have thought? Twitter vs. the MIC

Another tweet today:

Ayman Mohyeldin @AymanM · 9h

In 13 years, I have never seen or smelt death the way I have seen and smelt it on bodies dragged from Shejaiya into the Shifa morgue today

Makes one think that social media could have stopped the Nazis with their very first false flag operation in Poland and motivated world wide opposition to them immediately by exposing their lying propaganda machine.

The Gleiwitz incident (German: Überfall auf den Sender Gleiwitz; Polish: Prowokacja gliwicka) was a false flag operation by Nazi forces posing as Poles on 31 August 1939, against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Poland) on the eve of World War II in Europe. The goal was to use the staged attack as a pretext on the basis of which to invade Poland.

This provocation was the best-known of several actions in Operation Himmler, a series of unconventional operations undertaken by the SS in order to serve specific propaganda goals of Nazi Germany at the outbreak of the war. It was intended to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany in order to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident

[LovingA2andMI]

24. Thanks for the information and Ayman's Twitter Account Information....

This entire situation makes us uneasy. Spent much time over the last week reading various information on this conflict.

We're having a problem with 1,000 Palestinians being killed and the U.S. is saying the same old crapola, "Israel has a right to exist". The People of Gaza has a similar RIGHT to exist, yet it is being snuffed out by continued bombing against innocent people Palestine, many of which are INNOCENT CHILDREN.

With such, we at @IUNewsTalk will be following Ayman's tweets and RT important information. Frankly, this entire situation brings ill feelings to our stomachs.

[countryjake]

37. Ayman Mohyeldin finally had a report again tonight on NBC...

In his report he detailed the story of the father who had seen the viral video from last weekend, discovering his son's body. The young man had been shot by a sniper during a brief ceasefire a week ago, as he walked thru his bombed-out eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujai'iya searching for relatives. International volunteers and journalists who were with him filmed the whole thing. 20-year-old Salem Shamaly has now finally been found and buried.

Israel Extends Temporary Cease-Fire for 24 Hours by Ayman Mohyeldin
http://www.nbcnews.com/#/nightly-news/israel-extends-temporary-cease-fire-24-hours-n165851


Ayman Mohyeldin on Twitter



This article from early last week in the NYTimes shows almost 16 minutes of the raw footage of the murder of Salem Shamaly.

Palestinian Family Finds Missing Son in YouTube Video of His Shooting July 22, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/world/middleeast/palestinian-family-finds-missing-son-in-youtube-video-of-his-shooting.html?_r=0

[alsame]

38. As soon as he announced the

coming story on Twitter, I knew it was probably the young man in the green shirt.

[dipsydoodle]

14. Ceasefire extended by 4 hours.

That long

[whistler162]

34. Which might have led to a 24 hour

cease fire. Except Hamas decided it would rather start firing rockets again.

[Historic NY]

36. Exactly there will never be peace until they reject Hamas....

we only hear a fraction of what goes one depending what side is telling. I have a few acquaintances who live in the area an its not uncommn for them to go home and find rockets hit their apt tower. It so prevelant that most buildings have outside enclosed staircases, so people can escape.

Perhaps its time to stop aid to both sides.

[jamzrockz]

22. 100 of the senators

voted for some pro Israel resolution. The US cannot agree on anything but support for Israel killing of Palestinians. That is just sad

[riverwalker]

27. they are targeting unarmed women and children

that's not hysterical hyperbole, the numbers speak.

Israeli Army T shirts. The navy one shows pregnant Palestinian woman "One shot, two kills"
The other shows a child and says "The smaller the target, harder to hit"



http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-soldiers-anti-palestinian-t-shirts-are-tasteless-1.272712

[Voice for Peace]

30. that's hideous. and even if the army is condemning.

it illustrates a mindset. That doesn't come out of nowhere.

[Rhinodawg]

42. Hmmm.....I think it comes from ..

Hamas declaring it wanted all Jews dead

Rockets that never end

Tunnels

But what do I knw.


What is amazing how much better the Palestinians would be if they trying to kill Israelis and try working with them.

Throw Hamas out and accept the existence of Israel .

[Voice for Peace]

43. no disrespect intended but I recommend getting more informed from both sides.

[BillZBubb]

31. That's the kind of thing the Einsatzgruppen would have worn.

Except the targets would be Jews.

How low Israel has sunk!

[BillZBubb]

32. You should start a thread with this!!!!!

More people need to see it.

[King_David]

35. From 2009 ?

Army says shirts depicting violent scenes against Palestinians are out of line with IDF values and should be condemned.
By The Associated Press
Published 15:00 23.03.09


Almost 6 years ago.

[Uncle Joe]

33. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Roy Serohz.

[Roy Serohz]

39. You're most welcome, sir

I've noticed that you've thanked me for posting other threads, and I greatly appreciate that: You are obviously nothing like my actual uncle Joe, who is somewhere to the right of the John Birch Society!

PS: Call me Roy

[Uncle Joe]

41. Thanks, Roy

Peace to you.

[Rhinodawg]

40. Hamas has piled up more and more dead bodies.

They tell the Palestinian civilians to stay put despite the warnings.