Israel expands Gaza offensive

[BoarSpear]

Israel expands Gaza offensive

By Nidal al-Mughrabi 56 minutes ago

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli tanks swept into the central
Gaza Strip on Wednesday and an air raid targeting top Hamas commanders killed six Palestinians as
Israel broadened a two-week-old offensive.


Israel has vowed to continue the operation, which has already cost the lives of over 65 Palestinians, until militants free captured Corporal Gilad Shalit and stop launching makeshift rockets over the border.

Dozens of armoured vehicles trundled into central Gaza before dawn, effectively cutting the main road down the territory from which Israel withdrew less than a year ago after a 38-year occupation.

Israel has rejected calls from the governing Hamas Islamist movement for negotiations on a prisoner swap for the 19-year-old tank gunner, whose abduction on June 25 has triggered the worst fighting between Israelis and Palestinians since 2004.

In an attempt to kill senior commanders of Hamas's armed wing, an Israeli air raid brought down a three-storey building on the northern edge of Gaza City.

At least six people, including two women and two children, were killed in the attack that turned the house into a tangle of twisted metal, broken concrete, blood and dust.

But the blast and air strike on a nearby car hurt only one Hamas leader, militants said. Abu Anas al-Ghandour, commander in northern Gaza, was not in a life-threatening condition. Hamas militants helped capture Shalit in a raid into Israel.

"There was an attack on a structure in the northern Gaza Strip used by senior members of the Hamas terrorist group," an army spokeswoman said. "Following intelligence information it was decided to target them to thwart future attacks."

The wreckage of the building recalled Israel's assassination of Hamas military commander Salah Shehada in 2002 by dropping a one-tonne bomb on his home. The death of 14 other people in that attack drew a wave of international criticism.

CRITICISM

Israel has come under pressure from the
European Union and
United Nations over its Gaza offensive. They have said they fear it will cause a humanitarian catastrophe in the densely populated territory of 1.4 million.

But Israel has not faced criticism from its main ally, the United States, leading a Western aid embargo on the Hamas-led government in the hope of pressing it to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept peace accords.

Hamas accuses Israel of using the offensive to try to topple its elected government.

The Israeli thrust into central Gaza took troops up to the main road linking the north and south of the territory, a route that was often cut during the years of Israeli rule. Police told travelers to seek an alternative route along the coast.

Israeli forces had already pushed into the edge of southern Gaza, where Shalit was taken immediately after his capture. They had also entered the north of the territory, source of much of the rocket fire into Israel.

One policeman was killed in clashes as the Israeli troops entered central Gaza. A commander of the Popular Resistance Committees militant group died in an air strike close to the Kissufim crossing point from Israel.

[Uke]

Amnesty slams Israel 'war crimes'

AS REPORTED BY BBC NEWS:

Amnesty slams Israel 'war crimes'

Most Palestinian casualties are unjustifiable, Amnesty says
Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The rights group's report for 2004 says Israeli forces have killed some 700 Palestinians - including 150 children - mostly in unlawful circumstances.

The report lists "reckless shooting, shelling and air strikes in civilian areas... and excessive use of force".

It also condemns the killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants and violence by Jewish settlers.

"Certain abuses committed by the Israeli army constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes," Amnesty's report says.

"The deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian armed groups constituted crimes against humanity," it adds.

An Israeli opposition MP has requested an urgent parliamentary debate on the report.

But an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman denied the charge of war crimes and said Amnesty's analysis appeared "one-sided".

The report says Palestinian armed groups killed 109 Israelis, including 59 civilians and eight children, in suicide bombings, shootings and mortar attacks.

'Impunity'

Amnesty's accusations against the Israeli army include unlawful killings, torture, extensive and wanton destruction of property, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel.


Amnesty International Report 2005 - Introduction (935K)
A-Z summary of key countries (1MB)
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Download the reader here
Amnesty also says Israel has continued to use Palestinians as "human shields" during military operations, "forcing them to carry out tasks that endangered their lives", despite an injunction by Israel's high court banning the practice.

The report accuses Israel of offering impunity to soldiers and settlers who commit crimes against Palestinians.

"In the overwhelming majority of the thousands of cases of unlawful killings and other grave human rights violations in the previous four years, no investigations were known to have been carried out," the report says.

"The Israeli army and police ... routinely increased restrictions on the local Palestinian population in response to attacks by Israeli settlers," it adds.

Dire situation

In addition to the report's focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Amnesty criticises a number of regimes in neighbouring Arab countries.


Palestinian suicide bombings are "crimes against humanity"

Egypt and Syria are blamed for systematic torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners.

In Saudi Arabia, Amnesty highlights killings by security forces and armed groups, exacerbating the "already dire human rights situation in the country".

Jordan is said to have made scores of political arrests, amid reports of torture and ill-treatment in custody.

In Iraq, the report says US-led forces committed gross human rights violations, including unlawful killings, arbitrary detention and torture.

Armed groups in Iraq are similarly blamed for targeting civilians, hostage-taking and killing hostages.

[treelizard]

Worry About the West -- Not Israel
By Victor Davis Hanson

The reactions and media coverage coming out of the West regarding this latest war in the Middle East are as bewildering as they are instructive.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., for example, recently said, "I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel."

Meanwhile, the Western news agency Reuters, responding to scrutiny by bloggers, withdrew wire photos taken by a freelance photographer of a smoky and burning Beirut. Reuters had failed to catch the freelancer's doctoring of the photos to emphasize unduly the damage from Israeli bombs.

And the Associated Press notes that initially reported Lebanese claims of 40"civilians" killed by Israeli air strikes at Houla, Lebanon, in fact, were mistaken -- and that the latest reports have lowered the death toll to one.

In Qana, where the Israeli military had hit an apartment building (and were quickly censured by European statesmen), the number of civilian fatalities reported also kept decreasing as reports were scrutinized. Plus, we have learned that several hours lapsed between the dropping of the bombs and the fatal collapse of the building, raising further questions about the relationship between the bombing and the fatalities that followed. Finally, based on photographs from the scene, the onsite rescue appeared staged for reporters.

These discrepancies suggest we have little idea what actually happened on the ground there -- other than that Qana has been a favored missile-launching site against Israel, as a recent deadly aerial assault from there on Haifa attests.

There is a depressing pattern here. The sources for Western erroneous reports and faked pictures always seem to exaggerate the damage to Lebanon -- but never to Israel.

Likewise, Western news agencies rarely list a precise number of Hezbollah losses, instead lumping them in with civilian fatalities. Does that mean that someone who launches a missile in Levis and sneakers is not a combatant?

In addition, the history and nature of Hezbollah do not matter to many in the West.

Knowingly or not, news outlets continue to spread Hezbollah's propaganda. One wonders if Westerners remember or know that, until Sept. 11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than had any other terrorist organization.

Most ignore as well that Hezbollah precipitated the present crisis by kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers, and launching missiles against Israel's cities.

In retaliation, the Israeli Defense Forces use precision bombs to target combatants and try to avoid civilian casualties (though the latter is nearly impossible against an enemy who doesn't wear uniforms and uses non-combatants as "human shields"). In contrast, every random missile launched by Hezbollah is intended to hit a civilian target.

On one side of this conflict is a true democracy that was attacked. On the other are terrorists who hijacked the sovereign government of Lebanon, instituted theocratic rule over a third of the country -- and started a war.

Hezbollah, of course, has been enabled in large part thanks to Iranian petro-dollars and intimidation. But the nature of Hezbollah's patrons doesn't seem to matter to many Westerners, either.

Those now calling for "dialogue" with the "major players" ignore that Iran promises to wipe out Israel. The French foreign minister was quick to praise the regional role of theocratic Iran as "stabilizing."

Then there's Hezbollah's other patron, Syria, a country that brutally occupied Lebanon, harbors terrorists and is suspected of being behind the assassination of Lebanese reformist Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

So, what then does matter to so many Westerners about this war?

Our fear, of course. We want to avoid messy complications like stirring up another 9/11 or Madrid bombing, spiking oil prices to over $80 a barrel, or treading on politically incorrect ground by criticizing the "other" of the former Third World.

The Western press -- usually so careful to condemn hate speech -- is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads.

Still, when this is all over, we should not worry about the survival of Israel. For weeks, pundits have been lecturing how canny and adept Hezbollah has proved -- and how a clumsy Israel could only respond by destroying Lebanon's infrastructure. Yet, when the dust settles, the world will learn that Lebanon outside Hezbollah's domain is not destroyed. And, one hopes, those who have suffered in the Hezbollah-controlled south will reexamine their support for a terrorist organization that has brought them -- and itself -- to near ruin.

Instead far more worrisome is the moral crisis in the West itself. If so many of its politicians, intellectuals and media will not or cannot fathom moral differences in this war, they will hardly be able to see them anywhere else.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
©2006 Tribune Media Services

[Uke]

When Americans oppose Zionism, they're labeled as anti-semitic. What about when Jews throughout the world oppose Zionism?

[jubaji]

Couldn't find an older thread to post on?