Israel Calls 5-Hour Truce In Gaza After 4 Palestinian Children Killed On Beach By War Planes
Source: REUTERS
The four children, all cousins ages 9 to 11, died during a shoreline strike by an Israeli warship. Israel is investigating the deaths and officials have announced the temporary ceasefire for Thursday. Some of Hamas’ top leaders have been driven underground by Israel’s offensive, which has been met rocket fire launched by the militant group.
BY Larry Mcshane
REUTERS
Updated: Wednesday, July 16, 2014, 4:41 PM
Israeli officials declared a “humanitarian ceasefire” in bloody Gaza after four Palestinian cousins were killed Wednesday as they frolicked on a beach.
The five-hour temporary truce, set for Thursday, came after the quartet of innocent victims — ages 9 to 11 — died in a shoreline strike by an Israeli warship stationed off the coast, according to a local human rights activist.
Israeli military Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai announced the respite in hostilities in an interview with the BBC.
The slaying of the boys was “a cold-blooded massacre,” fumed Abdel Kareem Baker, 41, an uncle to all four. “It’s a shame they didn’t identify them as kids with all of the advanced technology they claim they’re using.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/israel-warns-gaza-strip-residents-evacuate-article-1.1868604
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La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)
muriel_volestrangler
(101,257 posts)
Divernan
(15,480 posts)Can't have any humanitarian evacuation by ships, right? Sarcasm. Jon Stewart called this the other night. There is NO place for Palestinians to go.
Response to Divernan (Reply #6)
cerveza_gratis This message was self-deleted by its author.
ballyhoo
(2,060 posts)Divernan
(15,480 posts)Maybe just testing the weapons without aiming anywhere in particular?
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)
CommonAgenda
(1 post)off a building before firing into the air?
delrem
(9,688 posts)
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)840high
(17,196 posts)
Archae
(46,291 posts)Even money says 75 or more during that 5 hour unilateral cease-fire by Israel.
randys1
(16,286 posts)As long as there are humans someplace, one group will try to eradicate the other group, for being the wrong religion/color/whatever.
randys1
(16,286 posts)robbob
(3,522 posts)Poster is clearly saying nope; there is no end to this insanity. How did you go from there to "one side is 100% at fault...etc. etc."?
<on edit> ok ok, "ONE group will always try to eradicate the OTHER group...". ok, I get how that means one group is the aggressor. Maybe a better way to phrase is would be "Groups are always trying to eradicate one another for being the wrong color, religion, etc."
I still think the poster meant it seems to be an unfortunate trait of human nature that we continue this madness.
randys1
(16,286 posts)maybe i misunderstood
It's funny how 10 people (ok, TWO in this case) can read the same statement and come away with completely different interpretations! No wonder the world is in such a mess!
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)
mbperrin
(7,672 posts)either.
I know, facts, but that's all I have...
Divernan
(15,480 posts)WASHINGTON -- Congress is showing tangible support for longtime ally Israel as Gaza militants fire rockets, backing a measure that would double the amount of money for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.
The Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee approved a defense spending bill on Tuesday that would provide $621.6 million for Israeli missile defense, including $351 million for the Iron Dome system that intercepts short-range rockets and mortars. The system was developed by Israel but financed in part by hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S.
During the last serious conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2012, the Israeli Air Force says the system destroyed 85 percent of the rockets headed towards Israeli towns and cities.
In the latest hostilities between the two sides, Iron Dome has once again been credited with preventing Israeli deaths. The first Israeli casualty was reported Tuesday after more than a week of fighting when Israeli police said a man in his 30s was killed by fire from the Gaza Strip. By contrast, nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in strikes
The U.S. credits Israel $3 billion per year to buy anything we make. In other words Israel picks anything they want from our arsenal of weapons and we pick up the tab to the tune of $3 billion per year. After decades that adds up to a LOT more weapons than the Palestinians will ever have.
mbperrin
(7,672 posts)But I suppose we must feed the MIC, even if the diet is small children, even those on the beach.
robbob
(3,522 posts)Then they could sell armaments to both sides and they could fire away at each other to their hearts content and no one would have to die. It's a win-win-win situation. Esp. for US weapons manufacturers!
...do I need to add the sarcasm thingy?
chimpymustgo
(12,774 posts)tjl148
(185 posts)Last edited Wed Jul 16, 2014, 11:47 PM - Edit history (1)
Why do you think Hamas would continue the rocket launches knowing what the reply will be? I just doesn't make sense to me.
I think I found an answer on another post. Still interested in your (anybody) thoughts on this.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/113469388
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)WTF.
How about just stop bombing and shelling densely settled civilian areas.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)I remember the controversy in 1977 and 1978 involving Vanessa Redgrave--
In 1977, Redgrave funded and narrated a documentary film The Palestinian about Palestinians and the activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. That same year she starred in the film Julia, about a woman murdered by the Nazi German regime in the years prior to World War II for her anti-Fascist activism. Her co-star in the film was Jane Fonda (playing writer Lillian Hellman), who, in her 2005 autobiography, noted that:
there is a quality about Vanessa that makes me feel as if she resides in a netherworld of mystery that eludes the rest of us mortals. Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets. Watching her work is like seeing through layers of glass, each layer painted in mythic watercolor images, layer after layer, until it becomes dark – but even then you know you haven't come to the bottom of it ... The only other time I had experienced this with an actor was with Marlon Brando ... Like Vanessa, he always seemed to be in another reality, working off some secret, magnetic, inner rhythm.[18]
When Redgrave was nominated for an Oscar in 1978, for her role in Julia, members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, burned effigies of Redgrave and picketed the Academy Awards ceremony to protest against both Redgrave and her support of the Palestinian cause.[19]
Redgrave's performance in Julia garnered an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Accepting the award, Redgrave said:
My dear colleagues, I thank you very much for this tribute to my work. I think that Jane Fonda and I have done the best work of our lives, and I think this is in part due to our director, Fred Zinnemann.
And I also think it's in part because we believed and we believe in what we were expressing—two out of millions who gave their lives and were prepared to sacrifice everything in the fight against fascist and racist Nazi Germany.
And I salute you, and I pay tribute to you, and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you've stood firm, and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.
And I salute that record and I salute all of you for having stood firm and dealt a final blow against that period when Nixon and McCarthy launched a worldwide witch-hunt against those who tried to express in their lives and their work the truth that they believe in. I salute you and I thank you and I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism.[20]
In 1978, Rabbi Meir Kahane published a book entitled Listen Vanessa, I am a Zionist, which was later renamed Listen World, Listen Jew, in direct response to Redgrave's comments at the Academy Awards. To this day some Jewish groups, such as the Jewish Defense League, consider Redgrave an opponent and a supporter of terrorism, citing remarks she has made such as, "Zionism is a brutal, racist ideology. And it is a brutal racist regime."[21]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Redgrave#Political_activism
Killing children on the beach puts the Israelis in the same league as Bush and Cheney.
robbob
(3,522 posts)Hamas is using "human shields". Collateral damage. Blah blah blah. Same excuses USA used when it carpet bombed Baghdad.
I am SO sick of NPR and the "human shields" bullshit I am always hearing. Like a Hamas party member is supposed to go and live in the wilderness with a big target painted on the roof of their house?
7962
(11,841 posts)And this has NOTHING to do with the innocent kids getting killed, I doubt in this case that there were any bad guys near them. I'm merely responding to your post about the POOR Hamas leader who HAS to live among civilians because he has nowhere else to go. Poor fellow. If only he'd chose another career path......
delrem
(9,688 posts)Used as human shields, as is obvious from the fact that Israel was forced to kill them.
IMO, and I agree totally with your sentiments, every Gazan killed is proof of their perfidy, and esp. so for their "civilians" killed.
"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."
"There were no such thing as Palestinians."
"They did not exist."
Golda Meir.
7962
(11,841 posts)But to say "where else is a member of Hamas supposed to go?" is ridiculous.
SOmeones head needs to roll for the attack on the beach.
delrem
(9,688 posts)in context of this cold blooded killing of children on a beach.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not calling on any nation for "Vengeance for the blood of a small child", to say nothing of a nation that I lead.
I'm asking for some kind of fucking perspective.
robbob
(3,522 posts)There are justifiable circumstances in which you can claim Hamas is using civilians as 'human shields'. For example, if they set up a rocket launcher next to a school or hospital.
I take issue with trying to explain every instance of civilian casualties with claims of intent to use 'human sheilds'. If you are member of Hamas and your home is bombed and your family killed and your neighbours family killed then perhaps those are expected consequences to belonging to Hamas. To claim that this person is using his family and neighbours as 'human shields' is just an effort to justify the slaughter of those who are innocent.
Or I suppose his 'poor neighbours' and those 'poor children' should also have chosen a different career path then one that would have led them to living next door to a Hamas party member.
To be clear (since it seems you are so easily offended), my point isn't whether or not it is justified to lob missiles into a densely populated civilian area in order to eliminate members of Hamas, my point is that when the inevitable tragedy and loss of innocent lives results from this action to then try and deflect criticism by accusing your target of hiding (living) behind human shields is sickening and disengenuous.
Clear? Setting up rocket launchers next to hospital = using human shield.
Living in a home with your family next to neighbours who have nothing to do with your fanatical political party <> using human shields.
7962
(11,841 posts)If I'm dealing drugs out of my house, I cant complain when the kids get scared by the cops showing up at my door. If you choose to belong to a terrorist group, you also have chosen to put your family at risk if you choose to live at home like there's nothing going on. That being said, Israel should try to use their intel to try to catch these guys AWAY from their family. Incidents like what happened on the beach are totally uncalled for and should never happen with the technology Israel has.
But when Hamas proudly claim that every person wants to be a human shield (hear the speech) and you see them running TOWARDS a building about to be bombed, its tough to tell who the innocents are. Hamas bombers will TARGET school buses, restaurants, stores, etc. Israel has gotten a lot more efficient in catching them of late before they accomplish their tasks. Similarly, the Iron Dome has intercepted 90% of the rockets fired into the country. So since there have been no israeli deaths, should they not retaliate for the attacks?
regnaD kciN
(26,044 posts)Isn't it odd that, when presented with a statement like
And I salute you, and I pay tribute to you, and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you've stood firm, and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.
the only part of that the media reported her saying was
Zionist hoodlums
bravenak
(34,648 posts)They were on the beach or something playing with the kids? I am not seeing how this was a military target.
I would like for somebody to explain to me why this is supposed to be okay? And why we fund this?
Four children dead for no good reason.
EEO
(1,620 posts)
AngryOldDem
(14,061 posts)The video that NBC ran with Richard Engel's piece tonight made me sick.
Israel has NO fucking excuse for what happened today. None whatsoever.
Roy Serohz
(236 posts)Pearl Jam - Daughter - Milton Keynes National Bowl 11th July 2014
Violet_Crumble
(35,955 posts)
LuckyLib
(6,817 posts)Divernan
(15,480 posts)As Israel’s continued air offensive against Gaza saw the Palestinian death toll rise above 200 on Wednesday, a leading human rights organisation has warned a fifth of those who have died in the nine-day conflict are children.
Save the Children has become the latest body to voice its concern over the Palestinian death toll, which rose to 211 on Wednesday afternoon when an Israeli airstrike killed four boys from the Bakr family on a coastal road near a beach in the Gaza Strip. A further seven adults and children were wounded.
Last week, five children from the same family died in a pre-dawn bombardment.
In light of the violence, the group predicts that at least 25,000 children will need psycho-social support to cope with the trauma they have experienced since violence in the region restarted last Tuesday.
jonjensen
(168 posts)This is a battle between benjamin netanhayu and the children of gaza to see who is tougher. who can take it and come back for more saying "Is that all you got!" we have plenty of children. so we will see who is tougher.
nilesobek
(1,423 posts)invisible magic Gods and ignore basic human rights. If we are to believe either side, we would have to fall into the trap of believing in one ancient religion or other. If you removed the religion angle they might be able to share the land. I have yet to hear a contrite, self deprecating statement from Netanyahu or the Palestinian leaders. They talk tough words of war and that's what they get.
Israel is under extreme demographic pressure. The high birthrate of Palestinians is something no amount of bombing will deal with. The world has reached a saturation point in this conflict, and hopefully, the world will insist on a resolution. A good start would be for the US to vote yes for UN sanctions at the Security Council level.
