Posted on Tuesday, January 27, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/60853.html
EZBT ABED RABBO, Gaza Strip — Nasser Abu Freeh was one of the first to see the Israeli soldiers as they entered this pastoral Gaza neighborhood overlooking the Israeli border on Jan. 3, hours after the Israeli government ordered the first ground forces into Gaza.
Abu Freeh's two-story hilltop home is a favorite spot for Israeli soldiers, who used it as a command post during three previous attempts to deter Gaza militants from firing crude rockets into Israel from the surrounding cattle farms, orange groves and dirt alleys.
Scouts from the militant Islamist group Hamas also favored the hilltop as a place to watch for approaching Israeli soldiers, and the fighters tried to lure the Israelis into a trap by planting land mines outside Abu Freeh's home.
As the Israelis moved in, neighbors said, the Hamas scouts put up little resistance and quickly fell back into the more densely populated part of the neighborhood.
Within hours, the Israeli soldiers took over Abu Freeh's house, moved the seven people living there into one room and began interrogating the adults. The questioners were angry because one of their soldiers had been killed nearby in the early hours of the ground offensive, and they wanted to know what traps Hamas had set for the Israeli forces.
"Where are the tunnels?" Abu Freeh said the soldiers asked in Arabic. "I will kill you if you don't tell me."
Israeli tanks and bulldozers soon took up hilltop positions around Abu Freeh's home, and Khaled Abed Rabbo's five-story house in the valley below was one of those in the line of fire.
More than 70 members of his family crowded into one apartment for days. On Jan. 7, Abed Rabbo said, the shelling intensified, and they heard an Israeli solider calling for people to come out of their homes.
Abed Rabbo said he gathered his wife, their three daughters and his mother, Souad. Souad Abed Rabbo said that she tied a white robe around a mop handle and two of her granddaughters waved white headscarves as they walked outside.
When they opened the door, they saw an Israeli tank parked in their garden about 10 yards away.
"We were waiting for them to give us an order," Khaled said last week as he stood in the ruins of his home. "Then one came out of the tank and started to shoot."
Souad Abed Rabbo said she was shot as she pushed her son back inside and her granddaughters fell on the stairs. When the shooting was over, she said, 2-year-old Amal and 7-year-old Souad were dead.
The allegation is one of at least five such white flag incidents that human rights investigators are looking into across the Gaza Strip. It's part of a growing pattern of alleged abuses that have raised concerns that some Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes during their 22-day military campaign in Gaza.
"The evidence we've gathered in two of the cases so far is exceedingly strong," said Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch working in the Gaza Strip. "All the research so far suggests they shot civilians that were leaving their homes with white flags."
Along with the white flag incidents, Human Rights Watch is calling for an international investigation into widespread charges that Israel prevented medical teams from helping wounded Palestinians trapped in their homes and needlessly demolished hundreds of houses, including dozens in Ezbt Abed Rabbo.
"This was not a rogue unit," said Abrahams. "The needless civilian deaths resulted from concrete decisions made by the military."
The Israeli military, which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called "the most moral army in the world," said it's investigating the increasing number of war crimes allegations, but it rejected any suggestion that its soldiers had targeted civilians.
"IDF forces have clear firing orders," the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement in response to questions from McClatchy. "But in the complex situation in which fighting takes place inside towns and cities, placing our forces also at great risk, civilian casualties are regrettably possible."
Throughout the war, Israeli officials said Hamas militants put Palestinian civilians in danger by booby-trapping homes and firing on soldiers from crowded buildings.
However, residents living near Khaled Abed Rabbo all said that Hamas forces quickly abandoned the outlying neighborhood once the Israeli forces took over.
With his daughters bleeding to death, Abed Rabbo said, the family screamed for help.
Samieh al Sheik, an ambulance driver who lived in an adjacent home, heard the shouting. Without thinking about what could be waiting outside, Sheik said he ran to his ambulance, turned on the emergency lights and drove toward the screams.
As he turned the corner and headed for Abed Rabbo's home, Sheik said he came face-to-face with the Israeli tank unit. The soldiers ordered him to get out of the ambulance and told him to walk straight out of the neighborhood.
"I didn't see what happened to the family that day because I couldn't reach them," said Sheik, who returned to find the ambulance crushed under a demolished building.
Faced with his dying children, Abed Rabbo gathered up the wounded and sought to escape, even if the Israelis opened fire.
With Israeli soldiers shooting at the ground near their feet, Abed Rabbo said, the family walked more than a mile to the main road, where they finally found help. His surviving 4-year-old daughter, Samer, was one of the few to be allowed out of Gaza to receive special medical care in Brussels.
Halima Badwan was less fortunate. As Abed Rabbo rushed his surviving daughter to the hospital, she lay dying in a house nearby.
Halima and her husband, Ahmed, a retired 63-year-old Palestinian Authority general, were among nine people who'd gathered in one room during the fighting. The previous day, Ahmed Badwan said, a tank round had smashed into the room, killing a neighbor and seriously injuring his wife.
Badwan didn't think he could carry his wife to safety. Red Cross officials in Gaza said that Israeli military officials repeatedly denied their requests to send medical teams to the neighborhood.
So, when the Israeli military began declaring a short "humanitarian pause" to the shooting each day, Badwan said he took his wife's gold necklace and left her lying nearly unconscious in the ruins of their home.
As he walked out of his neighborhood, Badwan said, he stopped at a nearby ambulance station and asked for help. The International Committee for the Red Cross was powerless to do anything.
Iyad Nasr, a Red Cross spokesman in Gaza, said Israeli soldiers had fired at ambulances that tried to reach some areas, even when medical officials had received approval from the Israeli military to enter certain neighborhoods.
"Our request for Ezbt Abed Rabbo was just pending and pending and pending and pending day after day," Nasr said.
Israel's widespread denial of access to medical crews in Gaza appears to be a breach of humanitarian law, said Yuval Shany, a legal scholar at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
"In international law, there is obligation to facilitate access to the wounded and even to treat the wounded," Shany said. "In this area, I think there was a deviation from the international standard and this should be investigated."
When Badwan, Abed Rabbo and scores of other residents of Ezbt Abed Rabbo finally returned to their neighborhood after Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire on Jan. 17, they were stunned to discover that their neighborhood was reduced to rubble.
Using bulldozers, tank shelling and explosives placed in the houses, the Israeli military had leveled entire blocks of homes.
Badwan found his wife's body buried under the rubble of their building.
The destruction didn't come as a complete surprise to Taysir Abed Rabbo, who lived in a two-story home near Badwan's that Israeli soldiers had used as a temporary post.
Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestinian Authority presidential guard, was among dozens of men who were rounded up nearly a year ago during an operation called Operation Warm Winter and taken to Israel for interrogation.
The interrogators gave Abed Rabbo a prophetic warning.
"They said if we did not stop the rocket fire, they planned to make this area 'a red area,'" said Abed Rabbo, who said he wasn't sure at the time what the Israelis meant.
Israeli leaders are moving swiftly to insulate their soldiers from any penalties for their actions during the offensive, which left more than 1,200 Palestinians dead, destroyed more than 4,000 buildings and caused $2 billion in damage.
The Israeli military has barred reporters from printing the names of military leaders who took part in the Gaza campaign, known as Operation Cast Lead, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has created a legal defense unit to protect any soldiers accused of war crimes.
In a defense of his military on Sunday, Olmert accused Israel's critics of using "moral acrobatics" to question Israel for using its military to try to halt the Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza that's killed 12 people since September 2005.
"The soldiers and commanders who were sent on missions in Gaza must know that they are safe from various tribunals, and that the State of Israel will assist them on this issue and defend them just as they bodily defended us during Operation Cast Lead," Olmert said.
While human rights groups are investigating the allegations, Shany said, Israeli leaders should take the lead and investigate allegations of wrongdoing.
"It makes sense to try to protect the soldiers, but it would also make sense to investigate where needed," Shany said. "They should investigate, and when actions were justifiable they should protect, and when not, they should prosecute."
(Special correspondent Cliff Churgin contributed to this article from Jerusalem.)
The blood of the slained civilian is on the hands of the Hamas as much as the Isrealis.
This article provides the Italian newspaper name and one of its reporters, so the report can be verified.
By Telegraph blogger Stephanie Gutmann.
Corriere della Sera challenges the conventional wisdom on Gaza.
There was a very interesting article in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last week. It suggests that Palestinian hospital administrators and
other government officials in the Gaza strip gave greatly exaggerated
casualty figures to foreign reporters and aid groups during Israel's
just-ended Operation Cast Lead.
The number that has come to be
seen as "official" -- only because of repetition -- is 1,200 to
1,300. But reporter Lorenzo Cremonesi spoke to a Gazan doctor who
told him, "The number of deaths was between 500-600...Most were young
men between 17 and 23 who were recruited into the ranks of Hamas, which
sent them to be slaughtered...It was strange that the non-governmental
organizations, including Western ones, repeated the high number without
checking, but the truth will come to light in the end."
"It's like what happened in Jenin in 2002," the doctor said, referring to a UN investigation which contradicted media claims of a Israeli Defense Force "massacre"
in the West Bank and set the number of Palestinian dead at about 45.
"At the beginning they spoke of 500 dead; afterwards it was clear there
were only 54 dead, at least 45 of them fighters."
"It is
sufficient to visit several hospitals [in the Gaza Strip] to understand
that the numbers don't add up." Cremonesi wrote. He also noted that in
nearly all of Gaza's major hospitals, and especially those in major
conflict zones, he found most beds empty.
Cremonesi also wrote
that Gazans he interviewed confirmed Israeli accusations of Hamas war
crimes, especially the deliberate use of the civilian population as
human shields. When local Gazans demanded that Hamas and its allies
not take up positions near them, one interviewee said the terrorists
responded:
"Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah,
cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case
you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all
destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?"
well the kids watch this stuff anyway......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi-c6lbFGC4&feature=related
screw you extremists!!! i love my alcohol and pron.... youre not gonna take it away from me.... I do not want you to take over and lead the world!!!!
Israeli soldiers deliberately shooting at civilians? Oh what a very noble thing to do. . . Shame on you Israel.
Are they trying [hard] to prove something? To prove that they still can wage a war after they had their nose bloodied in the aftermath of the last lebanon war? Trying to redeem some sort of lost prestige?......by shooting at civilians....unarmed civilians. Now that a scary army lol. Really professional.
I'm not on either side. I'm on the innocent [powerless] side.
How do you tell a Hamas militant from a civilian?
How difficult can it be for a militant to fire at soldiers and then when run out of ammo, claims he is a civilain to soldiers and reporter as well as bleeding heart 'humanitarians'?
Have not we see all these hypocrite acts in our lives before?
What can be expected of soldiers when fired upon from a dwelling or watch missiles being launched from those dwellings, shooting and killing innocent israelis accross the border within several kilometres range as well, if not to fire everything they have to protect their love ones at homes and fellow comrades beside them?
Go down on their knees and plead with the terrorists to stop firing?!
They did. For months, weathering 90 missiles a day. But even the world did nothing. Never going to war, because of the palestinian civilians, even as their own innocent men, women and children lay dead in morgues and cemetries, their surviving love ones cried rivers of tears, until they couldnt bear with it anymore.
Opening the borders would only meant having more missiles and weapons being smuggled. Hamas, a terrorist organisation in the guise of political and religious leadership, have no intentions of peace.
Every other nation on Earth's constitution elevates freedom of mankind, but in Hamas contitution, it calls for the death and destruction of every jew and infidel - you and me whom are non-muslim.
I know from the bottom of my heart that my fellow citizens of the muslim faith as well as faithful muslims around the world shares no such horrendeous ideology of muslims having the exclusive right to commit murder on humans and get away with it as a religious right!
No, Hamas is fully responsible for their utterly inhuman acts of using innocent palestinians as sacrifices, placing them in the line of fire fully expecting the israeli soldier to shoot as an immediate response, to swing world opinion against Israelis!
Why else would they choose to hide in inhabitated areas such as schools, mosques, hospitals, UN centres, to fire when there are many other better battle locations to fight?
Hamas militants must answer for war crimes, just as any israeli soldier if there are evidences of such acts and not hearsay or twisted facts from militants disguised as civilians.
Moderate Muslims must stand up against them and unmask these evil apostates or else only more innocent palestinians as well as mankind -so called 'infidels' in their pysche' - will die!
if Hamas had attack helicopters and other shit like that, Israel would be blasted and there'd be total war...
think about it...
btw.. the Palestinians also blew up civilians who were going to work in buses.. they also targetted market places full of women and children... and most of all, they targetted EACH OTHER as Hamas and Fatah fought running battles in the streets..
both sides of this idiocy have blood on their hands..
like the BBC did, take an objective view.. and somehow, hypocrites will go end up lambasting you for not siding with them
Hamas is a national liberation movement that has organic roots in Palestinian society. It is politically supported by the majority of the Palestinian people. This political support is a result of the failure of other Palestinian liberation movements to make a deal with the Isreali Occupation that is not genocidal in nature. This failure is because the Israeli Occupation Forces do not desire political engagement, they desire the elimination of the Palestinian people. This is why the Isreali Occupation Forces purposely target and kill civilians, including defenceless women and children. This is why the Isreali Occupation Forces frequently assassinate Palestinian political leaders, so that there is no one for them to talk to.
The actions of the Isreali Occupation Forces is immoral and unholy. The supporters of the Isreali Occupation Forces are the Zionists, who also control the American economy and therefore the American political establishment. America is the largest military and economic power on the planet. The supporters of the Palestinians are the Muslims and Christians whose love for justice and compassion make them able to see that the Zionists who rejected the Enlighted Teachings enshrined in the Semitic Monotheistic Religions, are the Anti-Christ. "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad"!
The Zionist action plan, based as it is on evil intents and actions, are self destructive. Its consequences are:
1) Lack of security for the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine.
2) Heavy loss of lives among its supporters and victims.
3) Economic loss for its supporters and victims.
Because the American financial and political establishment is beholden to the Zionists, the American economy has suffered great loss and continue to do so. This decline in American power will continue as long as the American people fail to understand the problem and take effective steps to liberate their society from Zionist control. As it stands, the Zionists are no longer able to rectify the systemic economic problems of their vassals.
The decline of the American hegemony over economic matters and increasing economic competition from Russia, China and India makes the world less inclined to accept the immoral Zionist worldview, because it is self-destructive. Knowing that its economic influence is waning and therefore having only a dominant power in the military sphere, the Zionists or its American vassal must therefore make a show of force so that the world continues to accept its dominance in global affairs.
However, challenging a big power when the economy is in decline is risky and so the target of military violence must be some small state that is incapable of defending itself effectively, i.e. Pakistan and/or Afghanistan. Failure to assert military dominance against these targets will be a great blow to the Zionist domination agenda.
The victims of the Zionist agenda will become radicalized. They will engage in military resistance and their resolve to fight will increase with increasing injustice. The executors of Zionist Will who engage in evil acts will diminish in economic strength, political influence and finally the military will to fight. The rest of the world, will continue living and breathing, trading and procreating. Living well, they will survive and prosper. Hence, the truth that evil acts are self destructive becomes self evident.
go have a look here => Pallywood
Originally posted by BJK:Why are you people pointing fingers at who is right and wrong. Think before writing. Hamas like all other freedom fighters are fighting for their rights. They do not have aircrafts, helicopters. tanks. drones, missiles, artillery,armoured vehicles etc. Like all freedom fighters, they use light weapons (mortars, RPGs, firearms, other devices for bombs like crude rockets).Hence they are not an army from a recognised state like Israel (with nuclear bombs). It cannot give excuse that Hamas started first and retaliate with heavy bombardment to create holocaust in Gaza. Israel should used its tanks and armoured vehicles to pursue the members of Hamas who fired those crude rockets.
UN secretary-general should pursue the implementation of UN resolutions against member state ie Israel. World leaders also have the moral obligation to speak out against Israel.
If i took a piece of stone the size of a golf ball, and hit at your love ones, would you remain silent and let me continue on? I will aim it at your grandfather, just a stone, and somehow it hit his head and died. I aimed it at your newborn son, being young, had to have his head operated. I aim it at your sister, made her fall and forever fear walking out of her house.
Will you retaliate? Will you call the police to find out who i am? Will you yourself demand justice for the maiming, murders and oppression I caused, and should there be a lack of evidence, watch my everymove to make sure i will not harm another person?
Ask yourself this when you call those missiles fired 'crude' weapons.
Should you want to make a judgement, the best way is to step into the participants shoes, walk a mile in it and feel as they would have felt.
I stepped into Israeli shoes. Within a few steps i falthered. I could never be like them, so patient in the face of missile death oppression to their loved ones.
I stepped into Hamas shoes. I walked more than a mile. It gave me the greatest freedom in the world. I could kill anyone i like and get away with it.
I kick down the doors of my fellow palestinians, drag their daughter out and shot her infront of her parents for voicing out against me. The parents wanted to call the police, but the police were me!
And when things go wrong against me, I claim i am an innocent civilian, show pictures of children dead, and blame the Israelis for their acts. I got away scot free.
I felt powerful, like a gorilla, powerful, that is the barbaric lineage i came from.
I stepped into the palestinian civilian shoes. Within minutes i threw them away. I could never accept such terror, from Hamas who had wanted me as a sacrifice, not fight on the frontlines, but hidden in my own home with my children with them bombing and shooting soldiers, in their bid to murder all jews and infidels and gain power of dominance. No one could help me, for i am only a civilian.
Step into their shoes. Only then can you, an outsider understand above what the rhetoric claims.
Cheers ![]()
Death toll so little. Target is 200,000. Keep it up.
yes.. those are bullet holes..
the way you put it: "Zionist Propaganda" disqualifies you immediately from putting out an objective opinion at all..
the fact remains that the Palestinians are asswipes... and the Israelis are just as much asswipes as the Palestinians...
you seem to think that the Palestinians' shit don't stink
Can't they live peaceful together?
Originally posted by 4sg:Can't they live peaceful together?
it all started when someone visited here about 2000 years ago, so inorder to live in peace together, we have to ask that person why?? but too bad he is not around.
Originally posted by frakfrakfrak:I have better things to do that watch Zionist propaganda. It is indisputable that it is evil to carpet bomb a population in which more than 50% are children.
Btw, those are bullet holes.
Why should we believe that your Palestinian propaganda is indisputable?
We believe that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as cannon fodder. There are clips, pictures and articles by correspondents to prove it. Hamas are to be blamed, not Israel.![]()
Originally posted by angel7030:
it all started when someone visited here about 2000 years ago, so inorder to live in peace together, we have to ask that person why?? but too bad he is not around.
that man knew it was gonna happen, heck, it was his plan..... way before that it was the fault of this man and woman who ate a certain fruit
Originally posted by googoomuck:Why should we believe that your Palestinian propaganda is indisputable?
We believe that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as cannon fodder. There are clips, pictures and articles by correspondents to prove it. Hamas are to be blamed, not Israel.
Better still, how to prove that those bullet holes were fired from an Israeli soldier's weapon? Hamas has a pretty good track record of going around killing political opposition as well too last I checked.
Originally posted by BJK:Hamas rockets fired at Israel are home-made, improvised,inaccurate and have limited explosives(5 -10kg). These words can be found in the various articles in the internet. Even reputable org.like Jane Defence Magazine, BBC, used them to describe the rockets fired by Hamas. We can see the light damage to the area where the rockets landed in photographs released by Israel in the internet. Of course the rockets can killed if explode near a human being. Israel Defence Force (IDF) has admitted some time ago that the rockets are more of a psychological tactic than security threat. Only 3 civilian killed and light damage to buildings after more than hundreds of crude rockets fired into Israel are the proof of ineffective.
World leaders must be honest and sincere to solve the mideast problem. Moral courage is required to speak out at international meetings/forums. Don’t pretending to do some thing to solve mideast problem after so many years of bloodshed. I applauded Turkish PM for storming out of World Economic Meetings at Davos, 2 days ago. He was given 1 minute to speak whilst Israel President had more time to defend his state actions at Gaza. UN Sec-General, Mr Ban Ki Moon was present.
Despite my reply to you, you insist mindlessly in NOT acknowledging facts and rationale. Thus i would leave you to your perceptions and may you one day not fall prey to terrorism, for you are still one of us- humanity, even though made a sympathiser on your own free will to terrorist causes.
Extremist moslems and fundamentalists practised a deviant form of Islam - animalism. They believe that their actions - every step - are governed by the will of the Almighty, thus they took NO RESPONSIBILITY for their own acts, from drinking water to killing a child.
Anyone who doubts them are asked to refer to the Almighty Himself-a Supreme Being of many names and immeasurable nature - ,or scripture texts from the Koran, a holy book written in the 6th century to guide and elevate the arabs to a better life than the barbarism of warfare, corruption and rule of might during the Byzantine era.
We are no longer of that era, and every nation on Earth had heed the Almighty's guide to live by rule of law even though we had been given free will so as to know His merciful greatness and return to Him, when we broke laws, punished and are remorseful. We are His creations and no creator despise his own creations unless that creation turn against him.
Terrorism is an anathema to an Almighty's work of creating and building. It destroys lives. Had there been clear evidence of a divine epiphany for terrorists to kill all jews and mankind? All i saw was a false prophet flawed human named Osama calling for the destruction of jews and infidels, keep women in bondage.
Moderate muslims are educated and intelligent, whom take responsibility for their actions while praying for divine guidance daily. When they do wrong, they know it was their own actions or mistakes made and seek to correct it, and would come to understand the Koran better and be a better person closer to the Almighty.
But extremists and fundamentalists attribute everything to the almighty, and blame everyone else if they fail in their undertakings. They believe they are perfect beings, incapable of making mistakes. This is dangerous ideology which moderate muslims must seek to correct them, otherwise more of the Almighty's creations will be destroyed.
Gaza rocket 'hits south Israel'
Gaza rocket 'hits south Israel'

BBC News
BBC News - 1 hour ago
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip has hit southern Israel, exploding near the city of Ashkelon, the Israeli military has said. No casualties were reported from the rocket, which landed in a field.
Gaza rocket strikes southern Israel: army Reuters
Gaza Militants Fire Rocket Into Israel FOXNews
Xinhua - Calgary Herald - The Associated Press - Times Online
all 8,652 news articles »
Originally posted by AndrewPKYap:
Gaza rocket 'hits south Israel'
BBC News Gaza rocket 'hits south Israel'
BBC News - 1 hour ago
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip has hit southern Israel, exploding near the city of Ashkelon, the Israeli military has said. No casualties were reported from the rocket, which landed in a field.
Gaza rocket strikes southern Israel: army Reuters
Gaza Militants Fire Rocket Into Israel FOXNews
Xinhua - Calgary Herald - The Associated Press - Times Online
all 8,652 news articles »
Hamas's Preparation for Operation Cast Lead Part Deux.
Originally posted by googoomuck:Hamas's Preparation for Operation Cast Lead Part Deux.
Starring ....