Death in the Middle East

No mention of the 3 children killed as they fed birds on the roof of their house?

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/israel-launches-gaza-ground-offensive-as-four-more-palestinian-children-are-killed-including-a-fivemonthold-baby-30440867.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-idf-begins-ground-offensive-9613461.html

Earlier an Israeli air strike killed three children from the same family in Gaza City.

Two boys and a girl between the ages of eight and 10 were killed when their home was hit.

Their grandfather, Marzouk Shahaibar, said they had gone on the roof of the home to feed pigeons.

Mr Shahaibar told the Associated Press: "Without even realising it, they were struck from above. They weren't fighting. They did nothing."

TV footage from the scene showed a doll and a sandal near pools of blood on the roof.

The deaths come a day after four cousins aged nine to 11 were killed on the beach as they played football beside a coastal road west of Gaza City.

Five-month-old baby 'killed by tank fire'

During a period of unusually intense shelling late yesterday, the lights went out across parts of Gaza as the power was cut and the skyline was then lit by what appeared to be flares fired ahead of the assault.

Heavy fighting was reported to be taking place in the north of the Strip, in the Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya areas and also in Khan Younis and Rafah. Artillery fire, believed to be mortar and howitzer, was coming from the north intermittently, with rockets from Gaza arcing towards Israel.

Israeli media reported the loud rumblings of Israeli tanks and D9 bulldozers revving up their engines to cross the border. Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told the AFP news agency that Israeli tank fire had killed a five-month-old baby and another person in Rafah, southern Gaza, in the early hours of Friday local time.


What heroes! Killing babies with tanks - the Israelis must be so proud of themselves.

But, Bonny, to the Israelis the Palestinians are untermensch, sub-humans, vermin, to be eradicated from man's sight. A dead Palestinian baby, kid, teenager, is one less terrorist, which is how they see it. They don't seem to understand they are building up such a mound of hatred one day the reckoning will come and it will be Armageddon for them. Hitler's wish to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth might just happen, not in our lifetime, but in the future if they go on like this. LL

I've seen enough of Israeli social media recently to know you are right about the new generation of Israelis, LL, I find them repellent, and no, they don't regard Palestinians as human beings.

If their neighbours ever stop fighting each other about which branch of Islam is the best, and turn on their common enemy, then as you say, the retribution will be terrible.

Unfortunately, you can guarantee that the Israeli politicians and generals that have caused all this will be on the first planes out to the USA, and ordinary Israelis will pay a terrible price for crimes committed in their name.

The other problem the Israelis are causing is the reaction of non-Jews to Jews outside Israel.   There are a huge number of Jews who do NOT support Israel, who are angry at what Netanyahu does, who want only peace with the world and now they are beginning to be coupled with the Israelis as evil child killers.   It would not take much for some fundamentalist Christians to turn on the Jews in their village, town or city, using the ongoing killings in the Gaza as a way to ignite the old hatreds, the stories that the Jews killed Christ (they didn't the Romans did), the blood libel that Jews kill babies to mix their blood with the matzo bread and so on.   A future Holocaust in the making?   LL

LL, I have reached the conclusion that extremist Christians, Muslims and Zionists are all EXACTLY the same. They all claim to follow the same one god and slaughter each other, and anyone else they fancy, in their god's name. Five per cent of the population is responsible for 95% of the bloodshed.

A pretty fair report, by the standards of these times:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/israel-us-caution-deaths-gaza-ground-fighting

I generally stay out of these discussions because I know that my views are not popular.  But it doesn't mean that I don't care, because I do.  And I have followed the ongoing situation since way before most people even knew it was happening.

In the aftermath of The Shoa when Jews were beaten and bleeding, it was they who turned vast areas of desert into agricultural land, and against interference from all sides, including Britain.  They have made Palestine, or Israel, what it has become.

The Palestinian Arabs could have done this, but didn't even try.  They were far too busy bombarding and killing The Jews, although I don't think that most  ordinary Palestinian Arabs necessarily hate Jews.

I know a fairly high ranking Australian Naval Envoy who has been involved in peace talks for knocking on twenty years now, and he despairs of there ever being a solution.  The Palestinians want the Jews dead or out.  And this is simply not going to happen.

Your views don't have to be popular, Sabot, they're your views and you are entitled to them.   

There's always a difference between the people who are doing the suffering at ground level, be they Jews, Palestinians or Ukrainians and those at the top who pull the strings and rarely if ever suffer.

I'm on the side of the people at the bottom whatever their race, colour or creed.

A lot of the people at the top in Israel today, were at the bottom when it really mattered.

Thanks, by the way, Bonny. I never deliberately set out to offend.

One of the problems, IMO, is that the generation that founded Israel is dying out, Sabot, and many of the up-and-coming Israelis aren't fit to lick their boots. Actually, that's a bad way of putting it. Zionist extremists are appearing, that have as much in common with ordinary Israelis that want to live their lives in peace as crazed jihadists do with ordinary muslims that want to live their lives in peace.

I've taken to discounting an awful lot of what is regurgitated in newspapers, time and again it bears little resemblance to reality and is just some government's line being pushed.

Zionist social media is horrifying, it's actually worse than ISIS, the extremists regard Palestinians as nazis regarded jews....it's sickening.

Zionist social media is horrifying, it's actually worse than ISIS, the extremists regard Palestinians as nazis regarded jews....it's sickening.

As I said earlier, genocide, plain and simple. LL

Israeli version:

http://news.sky.com/story/1303825/israeli-troops-fight-hamas-militants-on-border

Israeli troops have clashed with Hamas militants on the Gaza border, with reports of some heavy fighting inside Israeli territory.

The military wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al Qassam Brigades, said some of its fighters were "behind enemy lines" and were involved in gun battles with the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) near the Gaza border fence.

In a statement, it said: "The Qassam Brigades carried out an operation behind enemy lines.

"Heavy fighting is ongoing with the forces of the occupation."

Israeli soldiers were injured during firefights in the north of the Gaza Strip and security alerts were issued on parts of Highway Four in southern Israel on Saturday, according to Ynetnews.

A statement from the ISraeli military said two soldiers were treated in hospital.

"Earlier today, terrorists attempted to execute an attack against Israelis. The attack was foiled by an IDF force," it said.

"Several terrorists infiltrated into Israel from the central Gaza Strip through a tunnel.

"They were aiming to carry out a lethal attack in one of the nearby communities when they came upon an IDF force patrolling the vicinity

AJ version:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/gaza-under-intense-fire-as-death-toll-mounts-201471983154656378.html

At least 34 people have been killed in Gaza after Israeli army bombardment intensifies on the second day of a ground offensive it says is aimed at destroying Hamas' cross-border tunnels.

Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Gaza, spoke of of "relentless and constant thuds" of tank fire across the eastern border of Gaza on Saturday, "with only around 10 seconds between each".



She said the tanks were concentrated along eastern Gaza, bordering Israel, and that there were many civilian casualties in that area.

Heavy Israeli artillery attacks were reported by an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent across other areas of the enclave. Drones, jets and attack helicopters patrolled the skies.

The Gaza Health Ministry said the death toll over 12 days now stands at 333. That figure includes 77 children, 24 women and 18 senior citizens, and that more than 2,385 people have been injured.

In Israel, one civilian was killed and two others were injured by a rocket strike on a Bedouin communnity near Dimona, bringing the Israeli death toll to two civilians.

The army said that an Israeli soldier was killed in friendly fire earlier in the week.


More at links.

Speaks for itself.

Sorry cannot get picture on here. So have deleted.

Got the link, Lily.



I don't even think it's fair to call these poor people 'human shields'. There are so many people in Gaza, in such a small space, that there's nowhere for them to go, and no escape.

I know, Bonny, and thank you.

The human shields angle is often referred to here as the excuse for the bombing.

The cartoon illustrates to me, that the people just cannot win and are the sacrificial pawns in this game.

As you say, where can they go?

This is interesting:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/israel-media-strategy-2014716114935957662.html

Yes it is...

I found it especially interesting having watched some Israeli defence female get asked a difficult question and then start stuttering and hyperventilating. I assumed it was because she didn't know the answer, but that suggests it was because the question wasn't covered by her script.

Ah.....she may need a teleprompter. She could ask O....

The one to watch is Mark Regev, Netanyahu's mouthpiece.  Talk about glib, he comes over as downright slimy.   He's Australian which is why his English is good.   As regards Netanyahu, between 1956 and 1958, and again from 1963 to 1967, his family lived in the United States in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where he attended and graduated from Cheltenham High School and was active in a debate club. To this day, he speaks American English with a Philadelphia accent.   He calls himself a 'secular Jew'.    LL

http://www.dailysabah.com/europe/2014/07/19/jon-snow-slams-israeli-pms-spokesperson-on-gaza-killings

I haven't seen him, LL. I did notice one of their military blokes had a very English accent, but I can't recall his name.

bb1 wrote:I haven't seen him, LL. I did notice one of their military blokes had a very English accent, but I can't recall his name.

Watch Regev on the link above and revel in the demolition job Jon Snow does on him, and not for the first time. LL