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Originally posted by subz
If a Mexican citizen crossed the US border and shot and killed 10 American civilians would the US Army fire rockets into Tijuana? Of course not!
Originally posted by subzIf a Mexican citizen crossed the US border and shot and killed 10 American civilians would the US Army fire rockets into Tijuana? Of course not!
[edit on 28/10/05 by subz]
Originally posted by Souljah
Originally posted by namehere
and when extremists keep PURPOSELY TARGETTING CIVIIANS what do you expect? inaction? yea good idea if you want angry israelis revolting and going after every muslim, i rather a few accidental deaths than thousands being killed on both sides in a bloody civil war, if israel listened to the UN and took the barrier down and quit attacking IN DEFENSE i bet it would be 1000x worse.
when you have an enemy determined to destroy you, how will anything you dont do, bring peace? do you hug a cactus so it wont prick you? do you stick your head in an alligators mouth for it to not hurt you? i mean hamas has stuck to the truce, israel has too, yet palestinian groups have been attacking the whole time....AND YOU CONDEMN ISRAEL FOR DEFENDING ITSELF? why? if palestinians want peace THEY should prove it, THEY are the aggressors.
In any case, every single house demolishment the IDF undertakes has to do with security, either of its personnel or of the citizens of Israel. There is no "ethnic cleansing" or revenge involved. Just to go into the former for a bit, ethnic cleansing is not destroying somebody's house so they must move 20 metres away. Ethnic cleansing is attacking a certain racial or religious group, in a concerted manner, with intent to either kill them all or get them all to move far, far away to a different country, in order to make your own abode "pure". Evidently, with a 20% Arab minority population, and no concerted attempt to kill or move all Palestinians, there is no ethnic cleansing going on.
So now we move to the reasons behind the home demolitions. I already went into great detail about the IDF destroying the homes of suicide bombers, so now let me move into two other reasons the IDF destroys houses, namely the Philadephi Line and similar buffers, and tunnels. Now the Philadelphi Line is the buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza, which Israel is obliged to patrol by treaty with Egypt. Recently they lost quite a few soldiers through the booby-trapping of the roadway, and snipers shooting them. So they destroyed a patch of houses along one part of the strip to widen it and make it harder for their personnel to be targetted and killed by militants. Related is the issue of tunnels, particularly from Egypt, which run under the Philadelphi Line and come up inside Palestinian houses. Each time Israel destroys a tunnel inside a house, the explosives destroy the house itself. Moral of the story? Don't hide a weapons-smuggling tunnel in your house. Added to this is the fact that Palestinian militant organisations often booby trap a number of houses and roads, in order to detonate the explosives and kill IDF troops on operations, so not all houses that are destroyed are destroyed by the IDF.
So, while we may disagree with the tactics used (some regard house demolitions as an excessive use of force), I think it's rather clear that the reasons behind it are security, not revenge or ethnic cleansing. If you have evidence to refute that, you're welcome to share it.
Originally posted by Souljah
Isreali Miltary Historian, Aryeh Yitzakhi
He [Aryeh Yitzhakhi] was a clerk in the department's archive.
In 1968, he was an assistant of mine when I conducted a comparative study of the conquests of Sinai in 1948, 1956, and 1967.
Had he stumbled on these devastating so-called facts, he would have said so then.
The fact is he didn't.
... several hundred armed Palestinian soldiers, in Egyptian Army uniforms, were trying to escape from the Gaza Strip towards Port Said – not knowing that the area was already under IDF control – on the last day of the war [with Egypt]. They exchanged fire with Nahal soldiers and most were later killed by soldiers from the Shaked reconnaissance unit.
Supporting this is a contemporaneous account from the New York Times, which reported precisely such battles, but no massacres. Datelined El-Arish, June 7, the Times article reported that:
... pockets of Egyptian troops in Sinai and Palestinian troops in the Gaza Strip continued desperate resistance...
The army base here was also in Israeli hands yesterday evening after a three hour battle. Heavy casualties were inflicted, more than a thousand prisoners surrendered and some Egyptian soldiers fled into the desert.
At dawn today an Egyptian commando company struck back. An officer told reporters that the enemy had stormed the camp at daybreak with submachine guns blazing. They inflicted casualties, but were gunned down.
Later this morning, when a battalion commander went toward the home of the governor to arrange for a formal surrender, fire was opened from several houses in the town. The Israelis withdrew, and orders were given to subdue the enemy by shelling.
Brief and sporadic bursts of machinegun fire were heard between mortar blasts. Reporters were told that Egyptians were being flushed out of stone-lined trenches around the town. (New York Times, June 8, 1967; (emphasis added)
"Israeli soldiers killed hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war during the 1967 Middle East war - deaths that commanders who are now prominent leaders have known about for years, historians said today. The controversy involves some top politicians, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and legislator Rafael Eitan [who also gave us U.S. Navy spy Jonathan Pollard, and then lied about it], a former army chief. The allegations dominated news shows, shocking many Israelis who have long prized the notion that their army maintained high ethical standards throughout decades of warfare with the Arab world and military rule over Palestinians. The Army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Amos Gilad, refused to comment. Rabin, who was chief of staff when some of the 1967 killings allegedly were committed, walked away today when a reporter shouted a related question. His office later issued a statement denouncing the killings and calling them isolated incidents.
"Military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki said today that Israeli troops carried out several mass killings in 1967 in which about 1,000 Egyptian prisoners were slain in the Sinai. Yitzhaki, who worked in the army's history department after the war, said he and other officers collected testimony from dozens of solders who admitted killing POWs. He said a report on the killings submitted to his superiors has been locked in a safe at military headquarters.
"Another Israeli historian, Uri Milstein, said there were many incidents in the 1967 war in which Egyptian soldiers were killed by Israeli troops after they had raised their hands in surrender.
"It was not an official policy, but there was an atmosphere that it was okay to do it," Milstein said. "Some commanders decided to do it; others refused. But everyone knew about it."
Zionist Massacres in 1948: New Evidence
There are a number of reasons why the publication of this information is important:
- It shows once more and through the pen of Israeli historians what motivated the Palestinian Arabs to flee in 1948.
- It shows how the Zionist establishment has attempted and still attempts to hide the truth about the massacres of Palestinians in the 1948 War.
- It exposes the fallacy according to which it was mainly right-wing Zionists (the terrorist groups IZL and LEHI led by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir) who committed atrocities against Palestinian Arabs in 1948. In fact, most atrocities and massacres were committed by 'nice Jewish boys and girls', from the Labour movement, many of whom grew up in kibbutzim in a humanist environment.
- It exposes the myth, entertained in the West, according to which Israel's practices towards Palestinians worsened when the right-wing Likud came to power.
- It documents the development of a growing awareness among Israeli intellectuals of the need to face the past with honesty. This is a rather recent and salutary phenomenon.
Since its establishment, the State of Israel keeps a conspiracy of silence concerning massacres committed in the War of Independence (4). The only massacre acknowledged in official publications is that of Deir Yassin, perhaps because it was perpetrated by the IZL (Irgun). Books and press reports have referred to dozens of cases, but only partially and incompletely.
Originally posted by mrjones
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Praise Israel for showing restraint.