They call themselves peace activists, but the video of their actions shows something else. These people are ignorant they go up against the Military and expects not to get hurt. :roll:
What do you think Israel's mulit-million $$ public relations industry is doing all day? Sitting around playing Cluedo?
A second flotilla of ships is going to the Gaza Strip. Or should I say, trying to go there since it will be stopped if necessary by a legal Israeli blockade. In the first flotilla, the Islamist holy warriors organized by the Turkish government-backed IHH group all gathered on one ship. The other boats, the ships of (political) tools cooperated, no one was injured, and they were towed into port. The ship of jihadists attacked Israeli soldiers, kidnapped and beat up a couple of them, and had the “victory” of getting nine martyrs out of it. Let us never forget that when the Israeli Defense Forces made public a video showing these facts the New York Times blog in a particularly shameful moment dismissed it alleging that the soldiers might have been shooting down unarmed civilians just standing around the deck before the film began. (Thus posing the twenty-first century journalistic question: Who are you going to believe, the facts and your eyes or your predetermined ideological bias?)
This time there’s also a different strategy for the flotilla itself. The would-be terrorists have dispersed themselves among the naive “peace activists” who, whether wittingly or not, are helping a revolutionary Islamist terrorist group intent on committing genocide on Jews, expelling Christians, repressing women, and murdering gay people in their drive to impose a totalitarian state. Thus, there are two possibilities: the “peace activists” will pretend they are civil rights’ demonstrators and be nonviolent or the Islamists will try to provoke violence so as to reap good publicity. According to reliable information, some of the Islamist participants have spoken in conversation of their desire to kill Israeli soldiers. Some are also equipped with sulfuric acid to throw at Israel soldiers. We will see which of these scenarios take place.
A number of the organizing groups are fronts for Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood, raising money and political support for these organizations and often controlled by them. In other words, revolutionary Islamists are using Western pacifists and leftists to achieve their own ends. It isn’t clear whether Lenin invented the phrase “useful idiots” but it is useful nonetheless.
Here are some resources on the flotilla, its background, and participants:
Details on organizing groups
NGO Monitor page “International NGOs and the Second Gaza Flotilla: Links to Terror, No Humanitarian Purpose”
Canadian information
Stand With Us site
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
whatever happens will be the fault of those in the flotilla.
:idea:
AGREED.
"Our boat, The Audacity of Hope" hahahaha.
Hate the jews... blah blah... Its the Jews fault... blah, blah...... we live in mud huts and throw rocks.... blah blah..., bomb the jews... blah, blah.....
A second flotilla of ships is going to the Gaza Strip. Or should I say, trying to go there since it will be stopped if necessary by a legal Israeli blockade. In the first flotilla, the Islamist holy warriors organized by the Turkish government-backed IHH group all gathered on one ship. The other boats, the ships of (political) tools cooperated, no one was injured, and they were towed into port. The ship of jihadists attacked Israeli soldiers, kidnapped and beat up a couple of them, and had the “victory” of getting nine martyrs out of it. Let us never forget that when the Israeli Defense Forces made public a video showing these facts the New York Times blog in a particularly shameful moment dismissed it alleging that the soldiers might have been shooting down unarmed civilians just standing around the deck before the film began. (Thus posing the twenty-first century journalistic question: Who are you going to believe, the facts and your eyes or your predetermined ideological bias?)
This time there’s also a different strategy for the flotilla itself. The would-be terrorists have dispersed themselves among the naive “peace activists” who, whether wittingly or not, are helping a revolutionary Islamist terrorist group intent on committing genocide on Jews, expelling Christians, repressing women, and murdering gay people in their drive to impose a totalitarian state. Thus, there are two possibilities: the “peace activists” will pretend they are civil rights’ demonstrators and be nonviolent or the Islamists will try to provoke violence so as to reap good publicity. According to reliable information, some of the Islamist participants have spoken in conversation of their desire to kill Israeli soldiers. Some are also equipped with sulfuric acid to throw at Israel soldiers. We will see which of these scenarios take place.
A number of the organizing groups are fronts for Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood, raising money and political support for these organizations and often controlled by them. In other words, revolutionary Islamists are using Western pacifists and leftists to achieve their own ends. It isn’t clear whether Lenin invented the phrase “useful idiots” but it is useful nonetheless.
Here are some resources on the flotilla, its background, and participants:
Details on organizing groups
NGO Monitor page “International NGOs and the Second Gaza Flotilla: Links to Terror, No Humanitarian Purpose”
Canadian information
Stand With Us site
Finally someone with the facts. That does not spin it.
“We the people are the rightful masters of bothCongress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
A second flotilla of ships is going to the Gaza Strip. Or should I say, trying to go there since it will be stopped if necessary by a legal Israeli blockade. In the first flotilla, the Islamist holy warriors organized by the Turkish government-backed IHH group all gathered on one ship. The other boats, the ships of (political) tools cooperated, no one was injured, and they were towed into port. The ship of jihadists attacked Israeli soldiers, kidnapped and beat up a couple of them, and had the “victory” of getting nine martyrs out of it. Let us never forget that when the Israeli Defense Forces made public a video showing these facts the New York Times blog in a particularly shameful moment dismissed it alleging that the soldiers might have been shooting down unarmed civilians just standing around the deck before the film began. (Thus posing the twenty-first century journalistic question: Who are you going to believe, the facts and your eyes or your predetermined ideological bias?)
This time there’s also a different strategy for the flotilla itself. The would-be terrorists have dispersed themselves among the naive “peace activists” who, whether wittingly or not, are helping a revolutionary Islamist terrorist group intent on committing genocide on Jews, expelling Christians, repressing women, and murdering gay people in their drive to impose a totalitarian state. Thus, there are two possibilities: the “peace activists” will pretend they are civil rights’ demonstrators and be nonviolent or the Islamists will try to provoke violence so as to reap good publicity. According to reliable information, some of the Islamist participants have spoken in conversation of their desire to kill Israeli soldiers. Some are also equipped with sulfuric acid to throw at Israel soldiers. We will see which of these scenarios take place.
A number of the organizing groups are fronts for Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood, raising money and political support for these organizations and often controlled by them. In other words, revolutionary Islamists are using Western pacifists and leftists to achieve their own ends. It isn’t clear whether Lenin invented the phrase “useful idiots” but it is useful nonetheless.
Here are some resources on the flotilla, its background, and participants:
Details on organizing groups
NGO Monitor page “International NGOs and the Second Gaza Flotilla: Links to Terror, No Humanitarian Purpose”
Canadian information
Stand With Us site
this is probably the biggest, most biased op ed piece i have ever read....
here is a bio on the guy who wrote it.
"Barry Rubin is a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, the director of the Israel-based Global Research in International Affairs Center[1] (GLORIA) of the IDC, and a senior fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. He is also Research Director of the IDC's Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy; the editor of the journal Turkish Studies; the editor of The Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA); a member of the editorial board of Middle East Quarterly. He blogs regularly.[2]
Rubin was a deputy director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA).
He has been a Fulbright and a Council on Foreign Relations/National Endowment for the Humanities International Affairs Fellow; a U.S. Institute of Peace, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and Leonard Davis Center grantee; a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute (where he directed the program on terrorism funded by the Ford and the Bradley Foundations), and Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He is married to Judith Colp Rubin, with whom he co-wrote Hating America: A History (2004) and co-edited a related collection of essays entitled Loathing America (2004).[3]
He has been a guest on such television programs as This Week with David Brinkley, Nightline, Face the Nation, The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, The Larry King Show, and others on CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Among the newspapers around the world for which he has written are La Vanguardia in Spain, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany; The National Post and The Globe and Mail in Canada; La Opinión, Liberal Forum, and Limes in Italy; The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Australian Financial Review in Australia; Zaman, Referens, and Radikal in Turkey; and The Pioneer in India."
A second flotilla of ships is going to the Gaza Strip. Or should I say, trying to go there since it will be stopped if necessary by a legal Israeli blockade. In the first flotilla, the Islamist holy warriors organized by the Turkish government-backed IHH group all gathered on one ship. The other boats, the ships of (political) tools cooperated, no one was injured, and they were towed into port. The ship of jihadists attacked Israeli soldiers, kidnapped and beat up a couple of them, and had the “victory” of getting nine martyrs out of it. Let us never forget that when the Israeli Defense Forces made public a video showing these facts the New York Times blog in a particularly shameful moment dismissed it alleging that the soldiers might have been shooting down unarmed civilians just standing around the deck before the film began. (Thus posing the twenty-first century journalistic question: Who are you going to believe, the facts and your eyes or your predetermined ideological bias?)
This time there’s also a different strategy for the flotilla itself. The would-be terrorists have dispersed themselves among the naive “peace activists” who, whether wittingly or not, are helping a revolutionary Islamist terrorist group intent on committing genocide on Jews, expelling Christians, repressing women, and murdering gay people in their drive to impose a totalitarian state. Thus, there are two possibilities: the “peace activists” will pretend they are civil rights’ demonstrators and be nonviolent or the Islamists will try to provoke violence so as to reap good publicity. According to reliable information, some of the Islamist participants have spoken in conversation of their desire to kill Israeli soldiers. Some are also equipped with sulfuric acid to throw at Israel soldiers. We will see which of these scenarios take place.
A number of the organizing groups are fronts for Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood, raising money and political support for these organizations and often controlled by them. In other words, revolutionary Islamists are using Western pacifists and leftists to achieve their own ends. It isn’t clear whether Lenin invented the phrase “useful idiots” but it is useful nonetheless.
Here are some resources on the flotilla, its background, and participants:
Details on organizing groups
NGO Monitor page “International NGOs and the Second Gaza Flotilla: Links to Terror, No Humanitarian Purpose”
Canadian information
Stand With Us site
Finally someone with the facts. That does not spin it.
whatever happens will be the fault of those in the flotilla.
:idea:
AGREED.
"Our boat, The Audacity of Hope" hahahaha.
Hate the jews... blah blah... Its the Jews fault... blah, blah...... we live in mud huts and throw rocks.... blah blah..., bomb the jews... blah, blah.....
whatever happens will be the fault of those in the flotilla.
:idea:
Of course it will. Unarmed protestors delivering aid to an imprisoned people under military blockade will surely be at fault if the IDF decide to murder them all.
did you know knives and metal poles are weapons?
and oppression is a loaded gun. whats your point?
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
A second flotilla of ships is going to the Gaza Strip. Or should I say, trying to go there since it will be stopped if necessary by a legal Israeli blockade.
The Israeli blockade of Gaza is illegal.
Norman Finkelstein:
'In a study entitled 'One Big Prison', the respected Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem observed that the crippling economic arrangements Israel had imposed on Gaza would remain in place. In addition, Israel would continue to maintain absolute control over Gaza's land borders, coastline, and airspace, and the Israeli army would continue to operate in Gaza. "So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands," B'Tselem concluded, "Israel's claim of 'an end of the Occupation' is questionable". HRW (Human Rights Watch) was even more emphatic that evacuating settlers and troops from inside Gaza would not end the occupation: "Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around it's periphery, and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7069203.stm
'An occupying power is obliged to follow the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which seeks to protect the civilian population. The Security Council held in 1979 that the Fourth Convention did apply in the territories captured by Israel in 1967.
Article 48 of the additional protocol would seem to be most relevant in this case: "... The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objective."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_o ... _arguments
'Amnesty International said that “The blockade constitutes collective punishment under international law and must be lifted immediately.” And that as the occupying power, Israel has a duty under international law to ensure the welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, including their rights to health, education, food and adequate housing.'
In the first flotilla, the Islamist holy warriors organized by the Turkish government-backed IHH group all gathered on one ship. The other boats, the ships of (political) tools cooperated, no one was injured, and they were towed into port. The ship of jihadists attacked Israeli soldiers, kidnapped and beat up a couple of them, and had the “victory” of getting nine martyrs out of it. Let us never forget that when the Israeli Defense Forces made public a video showing these facts the New York Times blog in a particularly shameful moment dismissed it alleging that the soldiers might have been shooting down unarmed civilians just standing around the deck before the film began. (Thus posing the twenty-first century journalistic question: Who are you going to believe, the facts and your eyes or your predetermined ideological bias?)
This time there’s also a different strategy for the flotilla itself. The would-be terrorists have dispersed themselves among the naive “peace activists” who, whether wittingly or not, are helping a revolutionary Islamist terrorist group intent on committing genocide on Jews, expelling Christians, repressing women, and murdering gay people in their drive to impose a totalitarian state. Thus, there are two possibilities: the “peace activists” will pretend they are civil rights’ demonstrators and be nonviolent or the Islamists will try to provoke violence so as to reap good publicity. According to reliable information, some of the Islamist participants have spoken in conversation of their desire to kill Israeli soldiers. Some are also equipped with sulfuric acid to throw at Israel soldiers. We will see which of these scenarios take place.
A number of the organizing groups are fronts for Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood, raising money and political support for these organizations and often controlled by them. In other words, revolutionary Islamists are using Western pacifists and leftists to achieve their own ends. It isn’t clear whether Lenin invented the phrase “useful idiots” but it is useful nonetheless.
Here are some resources on the flotilla, its background, and participants:
Details on organizing groups
NGO Monitor page “International NGOs and the Second Gaza Flotilla: Links to Terror, No Humanitarian Purpose”
Canadian information
Stand With Us site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_floti ... passengers 'According to an early IDF press release, the ship carried 75 mercenaries with links to al-Qaeda and other terror organizations, who carried $10,000 apiece on their persons,[65] The claim was never substantiated and was later withdrawn...
Autopsies performed in Turkey showed that eight of the nine killed had died of 9mm gunshot wounds, with one death from an unnamed atypical round. Five had gunshot wounds to the head and at least four were shot from both back and front.[14][19] According to the UNHRC report, six were the victims of "summary executions," including two shot after they were severely injured.'
The summary execution of nine unarmed aid activists, supported and condoned by bigdvs.
It's actually pretty depressing to know that even some Pearl Jam fans support and condone the imprisonment and collective punishment of 1.5 million people by an aggressive military occupying power, along with the summary execution of nine aid activists bringing essential supplies to these people.
How do you people manage to look at yourselves in the mirror every day?
A second flotilla of ships is going to the Gaza Strip. Or should I say, trying to go there since it will be stopped if necessary by a legal Israeli blockade.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?N ... r=gaza&Cr1
Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory...characterized the blockade of Gaza as a “massive form of collective punishment” that is tantamount to a crime against humanity.
“Unless prompt and decisive action is taken to challenge the Israeli approach to Gaza all of us will be complicit in criminal policies that are challenging the survival of an entire beleaguered community,” he said.
The harmful effects of the blockade on Gazan civilians have included the denial of the basics of life, such as food, fuel, and medicine, as well widespread economic collapse.
The UN agency on the ground, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has described a "severe humanitarian crisis" in Gaza in relation to human development, health, education, "the psychological stress" on the population, high unemployment (at 45 per cent) and poverty (with 300,000 people living beneath the poverty line), and the collapse of commerce, industry and agriculture.
Such effects are manifestly excessive in relation to Israel's security objectives and cannot possibly satisfy the conditions of a lawful blockade. Disrupting wildly inaccurate rockets from being fired at relatively underpopulated areas of southern Israel cannot possibly justify the acute disruption of the daily lives and livelihoods of more than one million Gazans. Nor is it lawful to seek to pressure Hamas by instrumentally impoverishing its civilian supporters.
It seems that Israel is the only entity incapable of recognizing the effects of its blockade. The United States, European Union and numerous independent sources have deeply criticized the disproportionate harm to Gazan civilians.
The UN Secretary General has condemned the "unacceptable suffering" caused by the blockade. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has criticized it for violating the law of armed conflict. The UN Human Rights Council, UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordinator, Oxfam, and Amnesty International have all strongly condemned it.
The UN's Goldstone Report found that blockade may even amount to international crimes: "Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country… could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed."
It's actually pretty depressing to know that even some Pearl Jam fans support and condone the imprisonment and collective punishment of 1.5 million people by an aggressive military occupying power, along with the summary execution of nine aid activists bringing essential supplies to these people.
How do you people manage to look at yourselves in the mirror every day?
Amen.
Especially coming from the morally better Christian right.
Wait....scratch that......it is not surprising. I am sure Jesus would want them imprisoned too and if someone dares bring aid to the people, the right thing to do is to gun them down.
It's actually pretty depressing to know that even some Pearl Jam fans support and condone the imprisonment and collective punishment of 1.5 million people by an aggressive military occupying power, along with the summary execution of nine aid activists bringing essential supplies to these people.
How do you people manage to look at yourselves in the mirror every day?
not only that, but they complain about tax money being wasted on people who need it, yet not a peep when we give nearly $4 billion a year in military and financial aid to israel, which further strengthens israel's position in the conflict.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Israel steps up campaign to stop flotilla sailing to Gaza in defiance of blockade
Organisers say ships carrying humanitarian aid and peace activists, not 'extremists' as claimed by Israeli intelligence
Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 June 2011
Israel has stepped up its campaign to stop a flotilla of ships breaching its blockade of Gaza by accusing some of the passengers of intending to harm Israeli soldiers if they board the ships.
An Israeli government official said intelligence agents had discovered that extremists aimed to infiltrate the peace activists travelling on the 10-ship flotilla. "On the flotilla, there's an unofficial division of labour. There are activists, writers and politicians who say that they are not aware of anyone with bad motives. We believe them but the people that we are concerned about are avoiding the television cameras like the plague.
"We have put intelligence assets into operation so that we know what kind of people are on the flotilla. We believe there are people, and we don't know how many, who will mix in with the peaceful activists and will use violence directly against our soldiers," the official said.
The organisers of the flotilla say that all participants have undergone compulsory training in non-violent resistance and have pledged not to use violence. One organiser, Huwaida Arraf, said she was mystified by Israel's claims. "We don't know where they are getting this from. We are very open about who we are and what we are doing."
Arraf said the flotilla had faced other problems but they hoped to overcome them. One ship, the Juliano, is being repaired after a suspected underwater sabotage attack. The ship's propeller shaft was partially sawed while it was docked at the Greek port of Piraeus. Another ship, the Audacity of Hope, has been banned from leaving port until Greek authorities agree it is seaworthy.
"We can't say for certain that Israel was responsible for the sabotage but no one else wants to stop us sailing," said Arraf.
The flotilla was due to sail this week but it is expected to delayed until next week.
The latest activity against the flotilla follows two incidents which have embarrassed the Israeli government. In one, the director of the government press office in Jerusalem threatened journalists travelling with the flotilla that they risked having their equipment confiscated, being banned from Israel for 10 years and other sanctions.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was quick to disassociate himself from the threat and said journalists would not suffer any sanctions for travelling with the flotilla.
In another incident, government staff circulated a video purporting to be made by a gay rights activist whose offer to join the flotilla had been rejected. The activist said he was rejected because the organisers were associated with Hamas which was homophobic and antipathetic to human rights.
When the video was exposed as a hoax, the Prime Minister's office said the video was promoted by an intern, Guy Seemann. "Mr Seemann is a 25-year-old who is interning in our office. His tweet was a mistake on his part. It was done without authorisation and without approval. His mistake has been pointed out to him."
Finally someone with the facts. That does not spin it.
seriously ... you posted some things in the previous pages which others challenged you on ... you don't respond to a single one of them but then jump in when someone posts something absurd? ... do you even know the facts yourself?
did you know what items are banned on this blockade of gaza?
i suspect you don't ... i suspect you are buying into the same tired arguments your "trusted" sources tell you without actually thinking it through on your own ...
Also….were these ships not boarded in international waters? How can a military action against a ship from another country be considered self defense when the ship is in international waters? I’m not being a smartass, I’m curious how the report justifies these questions.
hey dude ... just as an fyi ... boarding the ship in international waters is irrelevant as long as the blockade is deemed legal ... so, ultimately the question is the legality of the blockade ...
that is the ultimate question - though I would not necessarily call it a question since its illegality is unquestionable - but I would say that the fact that they boarded the ship in international waters is perfectly relevant to the fact that Israel has absolutely no regard for international law. Just another example on a list of millions. Even if the blockade were legal in some strange alternate universe where injustice is accepted among the savage idiots roaming around that land, the fact that they boarded the ships in international law is still illegal. additionally, all the facts that came out of that raid proved that the Israeli forces boarded the Mavi Marmara savagely, which resulted in a clash, though I would not exactly call sticks versus guns a "clash." several of the members on board were executed, including an American citizen who was shot I believe about nine times including several times in the head, at close range.
I've seen some people on here post that the flotilla should just send what ever supplies it wishes through land rather than sea as the Israeli government wishes, as that would prevent another massacre. Tell me, in what alternate dimension does blame of murder come on the so-called preemption of it rather than the ones who pulled the trigger? Because they are acting on the universally accepted principle that the blockade is illegal (I say universally accepted despite the fact that Israel and the US disagree because they are clearly from another universe), they have every right to send a flotilla of goods to the impoverished Gaza Strip. The Israeli government on the other hand has absolutely no right. Even if some of you believe it may not be strategically best to act in this way (on behalf of the flotilla organizers that is), it is still extremely immoral for any of you to place any blame on the members of the flotilla for whatever outcome happens, considering the fact that the major issue here is the illegality of the blockade of Gaza, the Israeli government's continued disregard for international law and their vicious murder of international activists and Palestinians whenever they interfere with their political, and almost always inhumane policies.
that is the ultimate question - though I would not necessarily call it a question since its illegality is unquestionable - but I would say that the fact that they boarded the ship in international waters is perfectly relevant to the fact that Israel has absolutely no regard for international law. Just another example on a list of millions. Even if the blockade were legal in some strange alternate universe where injustice is accepted among the savage idiots roaming around that land, the fact that they boarded the ships in international law is still illegal. additionally, all the facts that came out of that raid proved that the Israeli forces boarded the Mavi Marmara savagely, which resulted in a clash, though I would not exactly call sticks versus guns a "clash." several of the members on board were executed, including an American citizen who was shot I believe about nine times including several times in the head, at close range.
I've seen some people on here post that the flotilla should just send what ever supplies it wishes through land rather than sea as the Israeli government wishes, as that would prevent another massacre. Tell me, in what alternate dimension does blame of murder come on the so-called preemption of it rather than the ones who pulled the trigger? Because they are acting on the universally accepted principle that the blockade is illegal (I say universally accepted despite the fact that Israel and the US disagree because they are clearly from another universe), they have every right to send a flotilla of goods to the impoverished Gaza Strip. The Israeli government on the other hand has absolutely no right. Even if some of you believe it may not be strategically best to act in this way (on behalf of the flotilla organizers that is), it is still extremely immoral for any of you to place any blame on the members of the flotilla for whatever outcome happens, considering the fact that the major issue here is the illegality of the blockade of Gaza, the Israeli government's continued disregard for international law and their vicious murder of international activists and Palestinians whenever they interfere with their political, and almost always inhumane policies.
It's what Fox News e.t.c does to people. Years of watching half-wiitted, glossy-lipped anchorwomen spouting their one-eyed gibberish on t.v turns people into myopic idiots incapable of imagination or compassion. This is what our society promotes in order to maintain the current order of things: keep the people we are terrorising and subjugating abroad de-humanised and distant, and fill the heads of our million couch-potatoes with enough half-truths, misinformation, and outright lies so they feel justified in their bigotry and xenophobia. Although something will always be niggling away at them deep down inside - for the truth they've buried inside knows that their apathy and reactionism is really just a masquerade - though they hate it when people expose them for what they are: mugs (aka, suckers).
Right. The article below is case in point. Michael Coren publishes nationwide via the Sun newspapers/Quebecor Media in Canada, and is about to gain a wider audience when Sun TV (Fox News North) debuts. (in my defense, I only picked up a copy of the Sun cause my Oilers drafted #1 and I wanted a copy of the paper for posterity’s sake). He is comparing humanitarian aid workers and peace activists to looters, vandals and thugs, and vilifying them while the whole country is/was obsessing over the black eye these rioters gave us internationally. Seriously, wtf? This is the biggest POS op ed I’ve read in ages. Because people allow themselves to be influenced by trash like this by not educating themselves on the topic, and by not thinking critically while reading it, it’s no wonder Israel has been allowed to continue their oppression for so long.
I hesitate to even reprint this, but it's another in an endless stream of perfect examples of what you're talking about:
Coren: Rebels without a clue
Vancouver rioters, blockade protesters share commonality
In an ideal world, the Vancouver rioters — including the particularly pathetic one who cried to his mom and dad on camera — and the neurotic Gaza flotilla twits who left Toronto this week for the Middle East would be forced to fight one another, the winner receiving the last government grant in Canadian history.
But, alas, we are not in control of history and must leave these selfish dunderheads to their own devices. There is, however, actually more commonality between these two groups than you’d imagine.
Privilege. The rioters have the time to stand around drinking and watching hockey games, the protesters evidently don’t have to go to work and can instead go on a cruise to the Mediterranean. Both gangs are overwhelmingly white and middle-class, and have had publicly funded education, health care and bucket loads of quality of life.
Lack of perspective. The rioters think it worthy to smash things because one hockey team full of millionaires loses to another hockey team full of millionaires. The protesters moan on interminably about Israel, when by any objective standard of dignity and decency the Jewish state guarantees more rights to its citizens, Jewish and Arab, than does any nation in the entire Arab world.
Bullying. The rioters beat up and stabbed good, ordinary people trying to defend the peace and protect property purchased through honest and hard work. The protesters isolate the one Jewish state in the world, the result of 2,000 years of anti-Semitic persecution and slaughter, and twist the truth, reshape the facts and scream and shout, so as to try to destroy it.
Hypocrisy. The rioters pretend to be sorry for what they have done in the streets of this great country only when they are caught and exposed as the criminals they are. Two of the leaders announced their homosexuality in Canada, knowing if they did so in their beloved Gaza — or in Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Syria, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the rest — they would be beaten, if not murdered.
A footnote: They could proclaim their gay pride in the vile Israel they so detest, where gay rights are enshrined legally and given police protection, especially against the Palestinians who would physically attack homosexuals, even in Tel Aviv and Haifa if they could.
Audacity. There must be a better word for it, but the chutzpah (whoops, Yiddish and thus to be boycotted) of rioters to go running to civil rights organizations when they are attacked by people because of their anarchic brutality.
The protesters are worse. They want to break laws and threaten a fellow democracy, but want the Canadian government to rescue them if they get in trouble.
Violence. The rioters clearly adore it, the protesters pretend to be against it, but in fact only when it comes from Americans or Israelis defending themselves.
Hysteria. The rioters’ hysteria is alcohol-induced; the protester variety comes from a deeper self-loathing, and a hateful core.
Irrelevance. Yes, in the long term. A few moments of publicity and then normal people ignore both. As we should.
:evil: garbage. I wouldn't even know where to start in response.
The summary execution of nine unarmed aid activists, supported and condoned by bigdvs.
Thats me all Boondock Saints.
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
A message for Israel and Evangelicals: Genesis isn’t a policy guide
With a dogmatic loyalty to Israel born out of a literal interpretation of the Bible, is the American Christian Right the new Jewish lobby in US politics? Mixing religion and statecraft isn’t just dangerous and unwise. It’s sacrilegious.
I recently passed a local evangelical church here in rural New England with a sign that read: “We Love You Israel. Hold God’s Land.”
The sign is part of a wider phenomenon: the American Christian right’s dogmatic support for Israel and the Jewish state’s claim to the “Holy Land.” It’s a loyalty born out of a literal interpretation of the Bible and its apocalyptic narrative and a view that ascribes divinity to a physical place. And this reflexive support for Israel has spread to the broader conservative base and American political scene in general. Look no further than Glenn Beck’s “Restore Courage” trip to Jerusalem planned for this August, which at least one GOP presidential contender has noted he will attend.
Such religious attachment isn’t an isolated theological agenda. It’s at the heart and history of the conflict in the Middle East.
But with a Palestinian bid for statehood planned for September and escalating tensions in the region, there’s too much at stake to use God as a real estate broker. To avoid a potentially violent flash point, leaders must look to a peaceful constituency – not the political ploys – of the world’s great religions, all converging in this Holy Land.
Mixing religion and foreign policy
Mingling religion with foreign policy has a longstanding history: from the Islamic armies of Allah marching across the first millennium Christian world, followed later by two centuries of theologically dubious European Christians crusading across Mediterranean lands. In some respects, we moderns have never escaped medieval traditions. The problem is that these traditions are the foundation on which diplomats are still forced to build.
“Isn’t it unwise to use the Bible to settle real estate disputes?” I asked the pastor of the conservative congregation whose sign I’d passed.
“We take the Bible literally, every word,” he replied on the other end of the phone.
“What about Genesis 15:18, where Jehovah promised Jews all the land ‘from the river of Egypt [the Nile] unto the great river, the river Euphrates [think Baghdad]’?” I said, “Surely you don’t think Israelis have claim to a huge chunk of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, do you?”
The evangelical clergyman replied, “I am kind of excited to see what God will do for Israel.” He went on to tell me he thought all Arabs and Palestinians living within Israeli borders should be deported to neighboring Arab countries, an idea that has had underground currency in Israel for more than a decade. “God made a covenant with the Jews that the land would be theirs in perpetuity,” the minister explained.
Finally I asked, “When you say ‘Hold God’s land,’” I asked, “which God are you talking about? Isn’t the Islamic Allah just another name for God?”
“No, Allah is a false God,” the evangelical clergyman said, lending credence to Muslim fears that some in the West are out to delegitimize their faith.
The concept of 'The Holy Land'
At the root of the issue is the concept of “The Holy Land.” Although the idea of the Holy Land didn’t exist in Jesus’ time and didn’t emerge until some centuries later, Timothy Robinson, a theology professor at Bright Divinity School at Texas Christian University, noted that “for a lot of Christians, there is a deep connection to earth where Jesus may have walked.”
Israeli tour guides often fabricate facts to gull the would-be pilgrims, Mr. Robinson said. “There is a lot of tripe they feed the crowds, especially Evangelicals.” Israeli tour guides generally ignore genuine Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem like Lazarus’s tomb. That would divert tourist dollars to Arabs and lend legitimacy to Palestinian claims to being the “first Christians.”
The very idea of the Holy Land is a sticky wicket. So many of the sites in the “Holy Land” are simply “traditional,” lacking any historical corroboration. The grotto below the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said to be where Jesus was born, is a prime example. I recall a discussion I had with one Israeli rabbi who privately acknowledged the worship of land itself probably violated the second commandment against graven images.
Theologically based claims to the Holy Land drive politics and undermine peace in the region. When the US Congress slavishly cheered and fawned over Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his recent address to a joint meeting of the House and Senate, it was, I suspect, as much this evangelical Christian constituency that lawmakers were pandering to as to the “Jewish Lobby.”
Mixing religion and statecraft isn’t simply dangerous and unwise; it also smacks of sacrilege.
Zealots and policymakers alike need to shift away from any obsession with the concept of a Holy Land and recognize that thousands of years of worshiping real estate has only produced several millenniums of war and shameful bloodshed. If there remains any constituency for peace, then the angels of humanity’s better nature – charity, tolerance, and simple decency – must supersede the religious triumphalism that seems to be too much in evidence today.
Walter Rodgers, who served as the CNN bureau chief in Jerusalem for 5-1/2 years, writes a biweekly column.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
protesting Israel for defending themselves and existing, and all that kind of stuff....
Except they're not protesting Israel for existing, and the illegal occupation, the blockade, and continued illegal settlement expansion have nothing to do with self-defence.
But don't let these inconvenient facts get in your way.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Authorities in Greece say they have arrested the captain of a boat that was to be part of a Gaza-bound flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian aid.
The 60-year-old captain, whose name was not released by authorities, is being held at Piraeus police headquarters and will remain there until a court hearing Tuesday.
Greece's coast guard said Saturday the captain of the "Audacity of Hope" faces charges of trying to leave port without permission and of endangering the lives of the boat's passengers. The latter charge is a felony.
The "Audacity of Hope" was due to carry 36 passengers, four crew and about 10 members of the media. Its attempt to sail Friday night from the port of Perama, near Athens, was thwarted by coast guard speedboats.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has denied claims it sabotaged ships trying to breach its sea blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Activists accuse Israel of damaging two ships docked in Turkey and Greece that are part of a flotilla attempting to reach the Palestinian territory with humanitarian aid. Efforts were further stalled Friday when Greece prevented ships from sailing.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor on Saturday dismissed the sabotage charges as "ridiculous," calling them "sad conspiracy theories."
Israel says it imposed the blockade in 2007 to stop weapons reaching the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules Gaza. Activists describe the blockade as a form of incarceration for the Palestinians.
Nine activists were killed last year in an Israeli raid on a similar flotilla.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
is it coincidence that all of these boats have had unexplained mechanical problems while in port or was it sabotage as has been alleged?
and why is it deemed "not safe to continue" unless something is known about israeli navy's planned response?
ATHENS, Greece -- American protesters on a boat bound for the Gaza Strip were escorted back to shore Friday, as Greece announced it was banning vessels heading to Gaza from leaving Greek ports.
The secretive attempt by the activists to head out to sea ended in failure after authorities in inflatable speedboats raced after them after their vessel tried to sail without permission from the port of Perama near the Greek capital, Athens.
"We shall overcome," the activists sang as security personnel watched from their boat just 10 meters away, according to updates protesters posted on the Internet during a brief standoff.
Greek officials appealed to them to turn around, arguing that it was not safe to continue, but activists responded that it was not safe in port because of fears of alleged sabotage of their vessels, organizers said.
On Thursday, an Irish ship, the MV Saoirse, said it had to abandon plans to set sail from the Turkish town of Gocek because of what it called Israeli sabotage. Earlier this week, activists said the propeller of a Swedish ship in a Greek port was sabotaged. Israel has not commented on the reports.
The activists were seen being escorted by a Coast Guard vessel and arriving back at the coast, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.
The Greek government action delivered a major blow to a flotilla of nine Greek and foreign-flagged vessels and several hundred activists who had said they want to break Israel's sea blockade and deliver aid to the Palestinian territory.
The setback followed a week of administrative delays that organizers attributed to Israeli pressure on Greece, which is mired in an economic crisis and has grown closer to Israel as it seeks more foreign investment.
Israel says its sea blockade stops weapons from reaching Iran-backed Hamas militants who control Gaza, and had warned it would stop any attempt to circumvent its restrictions. A year ago, nine activists on a Turkish boat died in an Israeli raid on a similar flotilla, with each side accusing the other of starting the violence.
Greece's Civil Protection Ministry said coast guard authorities were ordered to take "all appropriate measures" to implement the ban. It also said the "broader maritime area of the eastern Mediterranean will be continuously monitored by electronic means for tracking, where applicable, the movements of the ships allegedly participating" in the flotilla.
Greece as well as the United States had previously urged activists not to proceed with the flotilla, saying it could lead to confrontation and noting that there were other means of aid delivery. The protesters, however, rejected the option of funneling aid through Israeli channels and described the sea blockade as a form of incarceration for the Palestinians.
Flotilla organizer Vangelis Pissias condemned the Greek ban on Friday and argued the government had no legal grounds to block private vessels that were heading to international waters from its ports.
"The efforts to sail will continue," he said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he had no confirmation of actions taken by the Greek coast guard, but reiterated the U.S. position that the flotilla was a "bad idea." He said the transport of aid to Gaza could be facilitated by the international community through established channels.
"I don't think it's a freedom of navigation, freedom of the sea issue. These boats are trying to make a political statement. If they want to get assistance to Gaza there are ways to do it," Toner said at a news conference in Washington.
The American vessel, dubbed "The Audacity of Hope" after the title of a book by President Barack Obama, was intercepted about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) out at sea, vessel spokeswoman Jane Hirschmann told reporters in Athens.
She said they prepared a pasta meal at one point during the standoff with the Greek coast guard.
The American protesters posted an audio clip on Twitter in which they could be heard shouting at the Greek vessels: "We are unarmed civilians... We want to be able to go on our mission to Gaza."
The passengers included Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel who later worked for the U.S. State Department. She resigned from the U.S. mission in Mongolia in protest in 2003 as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq loomed.
Also on board was Ken Mayers, a 74-year-old retired major in the U.S. Marine Corps, and Ridgely Fuller, who described herself as a "suburban housewife" and social worker. The youngest passenger was 22-year-old Max Suchan, who said he learned how to swim only a few weeks ago in preparation for the sea voyage.
One-third of the passengers on the American boat were Jewish, and nearly two-thirds were women, half of them over 50 years old, according to organizers.
Israel imposed a blockade on the Palestinian territory after Hamas militants overran it in 2007. It eased restrictions on its land blockade of Gaza after the international uproar over the deadly raid on the flotilla last year. Egypt recently lifted its own blockade of Gaza at the Rafah crossing, though cross-border traffic is still slow.
The flotilla activists said they were peaceful, but Israel has alleged they are in collusion with Hamas, viewed as a terrorist group in the West.
Elena Becatoros and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, and Darko Bandic in Perama, Greece, contributed.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
This is the World we live in: Where humanitarian aid activists are prevented from doing their job by governments that support the imprisonment of 1.5 million people.
Winners win
They prolly sabotaged their own boat so the moving train could whine about it.
To "bring attention to the humanitarian crisis". :?
Dumbasses "the audacity of"
"tldr" = "too long didn't read"....we all know that you have posted that exact post on the moving train at least 30 times.....
i did not post my posts for you, as i knew you in your ignorance would not read it. why post in a thread and show your immaturity and bump the thread to the top of the forum when you do not read the presented material??? this is not a kindergarden. this is a serious discussion.
seriously, you are a troll, and you are a major part of the problem.
Post edited by gimmesometruth27 on
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Damning Report
Gaza Humanitarian Crisis Worst in 40 Years
A report sponsored by eight British-based aid agencies and human rights groups has described the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as the worst in 40 years. And a senior UN official has warned that the entire infrastructure there is close to collapse.
A group of aid agencies and human rights organizations say the people of the Gaza Strip are suffering the worst conditions since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.
The damning report on the humanitarian situation released on Thursday says that 80 percent of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants are now dependent on food aid, while unemployment is close to 40 percent.
The report, sponsored by eight British-based groups including Oxfam, Amnesty International UK and CARE International UK, also describes the terrible situation in hospitals where power cuts can last up to 12 hours a day, and where up to 18 percent of patients seeking emergency treatment outside of Gaza were refused permission to leave last year. The organizations warn that the water and sewage systems are close to collapse, with 40-50 million liters of sewage pouring into the sea every day.
The report comes hot on the heels of the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip that killed 125 people last week, many of them civilians. The incursion was a response to the escalation in rocket attacks fired by militants at Israel, which killed one person last week. The Israeli response was condemned by many international observers as disproportionate.
"Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care," said Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen on Thursday. "Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic rights is utterly indefensible."
Israel's Defense Ministry rejected the report, saying Hamas, the militant Islamist rulers in Gaza, was to blame for the hardships. It also pointed out that medicines and medical equipment were shipped into Gaza without limitations.
Israel and the West shun Hamas, labelled a terrorist organization, and have refused to deal directly with the group since it forcibly took control of Gaza last June. Since then Israel has imposed a blockade on the territory, virtually freezing economic activity there.
In response to the Israeli military action over the past week, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who now only controls the West Bank, broke off peace negotiations with the Israelis. However, under pressure from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who traveled to the region on Wednesday, Abbas agreed to resume talks and to drop a demand that Israel first reach a truce with Hamas in Gaza.
The ongoing talks are supposed to prepare the way for a deal on a Palestinian state this year but Israeli military action in Gaza and Abbas' lack of authority there have made negotiations difficult.
While the Israeli media reported on Thursday that peace talks could resume as early as this week, progress could be undermined by ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, which looks set to continue.
On Thursday morning an Israeli soldier was killed and another seriously injured when Palestinian militants blew up an Israeli army jeep on the border with the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said. A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Reuters.
On Wednesday a senior United Nations official warned that the dire conditions in Gaza would deteriorate even further if Israeli military action escalated. "It would be devastating," John Ging, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, told Reuters. "The whole infrastructure is in a state of collapse, whether it's water, sanitation or just the medical services, " he said. "If there's a further military offensive it will again just … compound an already desperate situation."
Comments
What do you think Israel's mulit-million $$ public relations industry is doing all day? Sitting around playing Cluedo?
By Barry Rubin
A second flotilla of ships is going to the Gaza Strip. Or should I say, trying to go there since it will be stopped if necessary by a legal Israeli blockade. In the first flotilla, the Islamist holy warriors organized by the Turkish government-backed IHH group all gathered on one ship. The other boats, the ships of (political) tools cooperated, no one was injured, and they were towed into port. The ship of jihadists attacked Israeli soldiers, kidnapped and beat up a couple of them, and had the “victory” of getting nine martyrs out of it. Let us never forget that when the Israeli Defense Forces made public a video showing these facts the New York Times blog in a particularly shameful moment dismissed it alleging that the soldiers might have been shooting down unarmed civilians just standing around the deck before the film began. (Thus posing the twenty-first century journalistic question: Who are you going to believe, the facts and your eyes or your predetermined ideological bias?)
This time there’s also a different strategy for the flotilla itself. The would-be terrorists have dispersed themselves among the naive “peace activists” who, whether wittingly or not, are helping a revolutionary Islamist terrorist group intent on committing genocide on Jews, expelling Christians, repressing women, and murdering gay people in their drive to impose a totalitarian state. Thus, there are two possibilities: the “peace activists” will pretend they are civil rights’ demonstrators and be nonviolent or the Islamists will try to provoke violence so as to reap good publicity. According to reliable information, some of the Islamist participants have spoken in conversation of their desire to kill Israeli soldiers. Some are also equipped with sulfuric acid to throw at Israel soldiers. We will see which of these scenarios take place.
A number of the organizing groups are fronts for Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood, raising money and political support for these organizations and often controlled by them. In other words, revolutionary Islamists are using Western pacifists and leftists to achieve their own ends. It isn’t clear whether Lenin invented the phrase “useful idiots” but it is useful nonetheless.
Here are some resources on the flotilla, its background, and participants:
Details on organizing groups
NGO Monitor page “International NGOs and the Second Gaza Flotilla: Links to Terror, No Humanitarian Purpose”
Canadian information
Stand With Us site
— Socrates
AGREED.
"Our boat, The Audacity of Hope"
Hate the jews... blah blah... Its the Jews fault... blah, blah...... we live in mud huts and throw rocks.... blah blah..., bomb the jews... blah, blah.....
Anti-semitism: Old as my Grampa's wooden rubber.
yawn... moving on because I couldn't care less.
Finally someone with the facts. That does not spin it.
here is a bio on the guy who wrote it.
"Barry Rubin is a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, the director of the Israel-based Global Research in International Affairs Center[1] (GLORIA) of the IDC, and a senior fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. He is also Research Director of the IDC's Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy; the editor of the journal Turkish Studies; the editor of The Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA); a member of the editorial board of Middle East Quarterly. He blogs regularly.[2]
Rubin was a deputy director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA).
He has been a Fulbright and a Council on Foreign Relations/National Endowment for the Humanities International Affairs Fellow; a U.S. Institute of Peace, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and Leonard Davis Center grantee; a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute (where he directed the program on terrorism funded by the Ford and the Bradley Foundations), and Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He is married to Judith Colp Rubin, with whom he co-wrote Hating America: A History (2004) and co-edited a related collection of essays entitled Loathing America (2004).[3]
He has been a guest on such television programs as This Week with David Brinkley, Nightline, Face the Nation, The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, The Larry King Show, and others on CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Among the newspapers around the world for which he has written are La Vanguardia in Spain, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany; The National Post and The Globe and Mail in Canada; La Opinión, Liberal Forum, and Limes in Italy; The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Australian Financial Review in Australia; Zaman, Referens, and Radikal in Turkey; and The Pioneer in India."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Rubin
so yeah, he is an unbiased authority... :roll: :roll:
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
bwahahahahahahahahaha
ever seen this? I know its old (2005) but wow.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1456395/posts
and oppression is a loaded gun. whats your point?
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
The Israeli blockade of Gaza is illegal.
Norman Finkelstein:
'In a study entitled 'One Big Prison', the respected Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem observed that the crippling economic arrangements Israel had imposed on Gaza would remain in place. In addition, Israel would continue to maintain absolute control over Gaza's land borders, coastline, and airspace, and the Israeli army would continue to operate in Gaza. "So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands," B'Tselem concluded, "Israel's claim of 'an end of the Occupation' is questionable". HRW (Human Rights Watch) was even more emphatic that evacuating settlers and troops from inside Gaza would not end the occupation: "Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around it's periphery, and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7069203.stm
'An occupying power is obliged to follow the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which seeks to protect the civilian population. The Security Council held in 1979 that the Fourth Convention did apply in the territories captured by Israel in 1967.
Article 48 of the additional protocol would seem to be most relevant in this case: "... The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objective."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_o ... _arguments
'Amnesty International said that “The blockade constitutes collective punishment under international law and must be lifted immediately.” And that as the occupying power, Israel has a duty under international law to ensure the welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, including their rights to health, education, food and adequate housing.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_floti ... passengers
'According to an early IDF press release, the ship carried 75 mercenaries with links to al-Qaeda and other terror organizations, who carried $10,000 apiece on their persons,[65] The claim was never substantiated and was later withdrawn...
Autopsies performed in Turkey showed that eight of the nine killed had died of 9mm gunshot wounds, with one death from an unnamed atypical round. Five had gunshot wounds to the head and at least four were shot from both back and front.[14][19] According to the UNHRC report, six were the victims of "summary executions," including two shot after they were severely injured.'
The summary execution of nine unarmed aid activists, supported and condoned by bigdvs.
What's your point?
How do you people manage to look at yourselves in the mirror every day?
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?N ... r=gaza&Cr1
Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory...characterized the blockade of Gaza as a “massive form of collective punishment” that is tantamount to a crime against humanity.
“Unless prompt and decisive action is taken to challenge the Israeli approach to Gaza all of us will be complicit in criminal policies that are challenging the survival of an entire beleaguered community,” he said.
http://www.nlginternational.org/news/ar ... hp?nid=313
National Lawyers Guild International Committee
Gaza Blockade Itself Illegal
The harmful effects of the blockade on Gazan civilians have included the denial of the basics of life, such as food, fuel, and medicine, as well widespread economic collapse.
The UN agency on the ground, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has described a "severe humanitarian crisis" in Gaza in relation to human development, health, education, "the psychological stress" on the population, high unemployment (at 45 per cent) and poverty (with 300,000 people living beneath the poverty line), and the collapse of commerce, industry and agriculture.
Such effects are manifestly excessive in relation to Israel's security objectives and cannot possibly satisfy the conditions of a lawful blockade. Disrupting wildly inaccurate rockets from being fired at relatively underpopulated areas of southern Israel cannot possibly justify the acute disruption of the daily lives and livelihoods of more than one million Gazans. Nor is it lawful to seek to pressure Hamas by instrumentally impoverishing its civilian supporters.
It seems that Israel is the only entity incapable of recognizing the effects of its blockade. The United States, European Union and numerous independent sources have deeply criticized the disproportionate harm to Gazan civilians.
The UN Secretary General has condemned the "unacceptable suffering" caused by the blockade. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has criticized it for violating the law of armed conflict. The UN Human Rights Council, UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordinator, Oxfam, and Amnesty International have all strongly condemned it.
The UN's Goldstone Report found that blockade may even amount to international crimes: "Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country… could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed."
Amen.
Especially coming from the morally better Christian right.
Wait....scratch that......it is not surprising. I am sure Jesus would want them imprisoned too and if someone dares bring aid to the people, the right thing to do is to gun them down.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... a-campaign
Israel steps up campaign to stop flotilla sailing to Gaza in defiance of blockade
Organisers say ships carrying humanitarian aid and peace activists, not 'extremists' as claimed by Israeli intelligence
Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 June 2011
Israel has stepped up its campaign to stop a flotilla of ships breaching its blockade of Gaza by accusing some of the passengers of intending to harm Israeli soldiers if they board the ships.
An Israeli government official said intelligence agents had discovered that extremists aimed to infiltrate the peace activists travelling on the 10-ship flotilla. "On the flotilla, there's an unofficial division of labour. There are activists, writers and politicians who say that they are not aware of anyone with bad motives. We believe them but the people that we are concerned about are avoiding the television cameras like the plague.
"We have put intelligence assets into operation so that we know what kind of people are on the flotilla. We believe there are people, and we don't know how many, who will mix in with the peaceful activists and will use violence directly against our soldiers," the official said.
The organisers of the flotilla say that all participants have undergone compulsory training in non-violent resistance and have pledged not to use violence. One organiser, Huwaida Arraf, said she was mystified by Israel's claims. "We don't know where they are getting this from. We are very open about who we are and what we are doing."
Arraf said the flotilla had faced other problems but they hoped to overcome them. One ship, the Juliano, is being repaired after a suspected underwater sabotage attack. The ship's propeller shaft was partially sawed while it was docked at the Greek port of Piraeus. Another ship, the Audacity of Hope, has been banned from leaving port until Greek authorities agree it is seaworthy.
"We can't say for certain that Israel was responsible for the sabotage but no one else wants to stop us sailing," said Arraf.
The flotilla was due to sail this week but it is expected to delayed until next week.
The latest activity against the flotilla follows two incidents which have embarrassed the Israeli government. In one, the director of the government press office in Jerusalem threatened journalists travelling with the flotilla that they risked having their equipment confiscated, being banned from Israel for 10 years and other sanctions.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was quick to disassociate himself from the threat and said journalists would not suffer any sanctions for travelling with the flotilla.
In another incident, government staff circulated a video purporting to be made by a gay rights activist whose offer to join the flotilla had been rejected. The activist said he was rejected because the organisers were associated with Hamas which was homophobic and antipathetic to human rights.
When the video was exposed as a hoax, the Prime Minister's office said the video was promoted by an intern, Guy Seemann. "Mr Seemann is a 25-year-old who is interning in our office. His tweet was a mistake on his part. It was done without authorisation and without approval. His mistake has been pointed out to him."
seriously ... you posted some things in the previous pages which others challenged you on ... you don't respond to a single one of them but then jump in when someone posts something absurd? ... do you even know the facts yourself?
did you know what items are banned on this blockade of gaza?
i suspect you don't ... i suspect you are buying into the same tired arguments your "trusted" sources tell you without actually thinking it through on your own ...
I've seen some people on here post that the flotilla should just send what ever supplies it wishes through land rather than sea as the Israeli government wishes, as that would prevent another massacre. Tell me, in what alternate dimension does blame of murder come on the so-called preemption of it rather than the ones who pulled the trigger? Because they are acting on the universally accepted principle that the blockade is illegal (I say universally accepted despite the fact that Israel and the US disagree because they are clearly from another universe), they have every right to send a flotilla of goods to the impoverished Gaza Strip. The Israeli government on the other hand has absolutely no right. Even if some of you believe it may not be strategically best to act in this way (on behalf of the flotilla organizers that is), it is still extremely immoral for any of you to place any blame on the members of the flotilla for whatever outcome happens, considering the fact that the major issue here is the illegality of the blockade of Gaza, the Israeli government's continued disregard for international law and their vicious murder of international activists and Palestinians whenever they interfere with their political, and almost always inhumane policies.
It's what Fox News e.t.c does to people. Years of watching half-wiitted, glossy-lipped anchorwomen spouting their one-eyed gibberish on t.v turns people into myopic idiots incapable of imagination or compassion. This is what our society promotes in order to maintain the current order of things: keep the people we are terrorising and subjugating abroad de-humanised and distant, and fill the heads of our million couch-potatoes with enough half-truths, misinformation, and outright lies so they feel justified in their bigotry and xenophobia. Although something will always be niggling away at them deep down inside - for the truth they've buried inside knows that their apathy and reactionism is really just a masquerade - though they hate it when people expose them for what they are: mugs (aka, suckers).
I hesitate to even reprint this, but it's another in an endless stream of perfect examples of what you're talking about:
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/24/co ... out-a-clue
Coren: Rebels without a clue
Vancouver rioters, blockade protesters share commonality
In an ideal world, the Vancouver rioters — including the particularly pathetic one who cried to his mom and dad on camera — and the neurotic Gaza flotilla twits who left Toronto this week for the Middle East would be forced to fight one another, the winner receiving the last government grant in Canadian history.
But, alas, we are not in control of history and must leave these selfish dunderheads to their own devices. There is, however, actually more commonality between these two groups than you’d imagine.
Privilege. The rioters have the time to stand around drinking and watching hockey games, the protesters evidently don’t have to go to work and can instead go on a cruise to the Mediterranean. Both gangs are overwhelmingly white and middle-class, and have had publicly funded education, health care and bucket loads of quality of life.
Lack of perspective. The rioters think it worthy to smash things because one hockey team full of millionaires loses to another hockey team full of millionaires. The protesters moan on interminably about Israel, when by any objective standard of dignity and decency the Jewish state guarantees more rights to its citizens, Jewish and Arab, than does any nation in the entire Arab world.
Bullying. The rioters beat up and stabbed good, ordinary people trying to defend the peace and protect property purchased through honest and hard work. The protesters isolate the one Jewish state in the world, the result of 2,000 years of anti-Semitic persecution and slaughter, and twist the truth, reshape the facts and scream and shout, so as to try to destroy it.
Hypocrisy. The rioters pretend to be sorry for what they have done in the streets of this great country only when they are caught and exposed as the criminals they are. Two of the leaders announced their homosexuality in Canada, knowing if they did so in their beloved Gaza — or in Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Syria, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the rest — they would be beaten, if not murdered.
A footnote: They could proclaim their gay pride in the vile Israel they so detest, where gay rights are enshrined legally and given police protection, especially against the Palestinians who would physically attack homosexuals, even in Tel Aviv and Haifa if they could.
Audacity. There must be a better word for it, but the chutzpah (whoops, Yiddish and thus to be boycotted) of rioters to go running to civil rights organizations when they are attacked by people because of their anarchic brutality.
The protesters are worse. They want to break laws and threaten a fellow democracy, but want the Canadian government to rescue them if they get in trouble.
Violence. The rioters clearly adore it, the protesters pretend to be against it, but in fact only when it comes from Americans or Israelis defending themselves.
Hysteria. The rioters’ hysteria is alcohol-induced; the protester variety comes from a deeper self-loathing, and a hateful core.
Irrelevance. Yes, in the long term. A few moments of publicity and then normal people ignore both. As we should.
:evil: garbage. I wouldn't even know where to start in response.
Thats me all Boondock Saints.
— Socrates
With a dogmatic loyalty to Israel born out of a literal interpretation of the Bible, is the American Christian Right the new Jewish lobby in US politics? Mixing religion and statecraft isn’t just dangerous and unwise. It’s sacrilegious.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Wal ... licy-guide
I recently passed a local evangelical church here in rural New England with a sign that read: “We Love You Israel. Hold God’s Land.”
The sign is part of a wider phenomenon: the American Christian right’s dogmatic support for Israel and the Jewish state’s claim to the “Holy Land.” It’s a loyalty born out of a literal interpretation of the Bible and its apocalyptic narrative and a view that ascribes divinity to a physical place. And this reflexive support for Israel has spread to the broader conservative base and American political scene in general. Look no further than Glenn Beck’s “Restore Courage” trip to Jerusalem planned for this August, which at least one GOP presidential contender has noted he will attend.
Such religious attachment isn’t an isolated theological agenda. It’s at the heart and history of the conflict in the Middle East.
But with a Palestinian bid for statehood planned for September and escalating tensions in the region, there’s too much at stake to use God as a real estate broker. To avoid a potentially violent flash point, leaders must look to a peaceful constituency – not the political ploys – of the world’s great religions, all converging in this Holy Land.
Mixing religion and foreign policy
Mingling religion with foreign policy has a longstanding history: from the Islamic armies of Allah marching across the first millennium Christian world, followed later by two centuries of theologically dubious European Christians crusading across Mediterranean lands. In some respects, we moderns have never escaped medieval traditions. The problem is that these traditions are the foundation on which diplomats are still forced to build.
“Isn’t it unwise to use the Bible to settle real estate disputes?” I asked the pastor of the conservative congregation whose sign I’d passed.
“We take the Bible literally, every word,” he replied on the other end of the phone.
“What about Genesis 15:18, where Jehovah promised Jews all the land ‘from the river of Egypt [the Nile] unto the great river, the river Euphrates [think Baghdad]’?” I said, “Surely you don’t think Israelis have claim to a huge chunk of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, do you?”
The evangelical clergyman replied, “I am kind of excited to see what God will do for Israel.” He went on to tell me he thought all Arabs and Palestinians living within Israeli borders should be deported to neighboring Arab countries, an idea that has had underground currency in Israel for more than a decade. “God made a covenant with the Jews that the land would be theirs in perpetuity,” the minister explained.
Finally I asked, “When you say ‘Hold God’s land,’” I asked, “which God are you talking about? Isn’t the Islamic Allah just another name for God?”
“No, Allah is a false God,” the evangelical clergyman said, lending credence to Muslim fears that some in the West are out to delegitimize their faith.
The concept of 'The Holy Land'
At the root of the issue is the concept of “The Holy Land.” Although the idea of the Holy Land didn’t exist in Jesus’ time and didn’t emerge until some centuries later, Timothy Robinson, a theology professor at Bright Divinity School at Texas Christian University, noted that “for a lot of Christians, there is a deep connection to earth where Jesus may have walked.”
Israeli tour guides often fabricate facts to gull the would-be pilgrims, Mr. Robinson said. “There is a lot of tripe they feed the crowds, especially Evangelicals.” Israeli tour guides generally ignore genuine Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem like Lazarus’s tomb. That would divert tourist dollars to Arabs and lend legitimacy to Palestinian claims to being the “first Christians.”
The very idea of the Holy Land is a sticky wicket. So many of the sites in the “Holy Land” are simply “traditional,” lacking any historical corroboration. The grotto below the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said to be where Jesus was born, is a prime example. I recall a discussion I had with one Israeli rabbi who privately acknowledged the worship of land itself probably violated the second commandment against graven images.
Theologically based claims to the Holy Land drive politics and undermine peace in the region. When the US Congress slavishly cheered and fawned over Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his recent address to a joint meeting of the House and Senate, it was, I suspect, as much this evangelical Christian constituency that lawmakers were pandering to as to the “Jewish Lobby.”
Mixing religion and statecraft isn’t simply dangerous and unwise; it also smacks of sacrilege.
Zealots and policymakers alike need to shift away from any obsession with the concept of a Holy Land and recognize that thousands of years of worshiping real estate has only produced several millenniums of war and shameful bloodshed. If there remains any constituency for peace, then the angels of humanity’s better nature – charity, tolerance, and simple decency – must supersede the religious triumphalism that seems to be too much in evidence today.
Walter Rodgers, who served as the CNN bureau chief in Jerusalem for 5-1/2 years, writes a biweekly column.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Except they're not protesting Israel for existing, and the illegal occupation, the blockade, and continued illegal settlement expansion have nothing to do with self-defence.
But don't let these inconvenient facts get in your way.
although i am surprised in the least...
Gaza-Bound Boat Captain Arrested In Greece
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/0 ... 89225.html
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Authorities in Greece say they have arrested the captain of a boat that was to be part of a Gaza-bound flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian aid.
The 60-year-old captain, whose name was not released by authorities, is being held at Piraeus police headquarters and will remain there until a court hearing Tuesday.
Greece's coast guard said Saturday the captain of the "Audacity of Hope" faces charges of trying to leave port without permission and of endangering the lives of the boat's passengers. The latter charge is a felony.
The "Audacity of Hope" was due to carry 36 passengers, four crew and about 10 members of the media. Its attempt to sail Friday night from the port of Perama, near Athens, was thwarted by coast guard speedboats.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has denied claims it sabotaged ships trying to breach its sea blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Activists accuse Israel of damaging two ships docked in Turkey and Greece that are part of a flotilla attempting to reach the Palestinian territory with humanitarian aid. Efforts were further stalled Friday when Greece prevented ships from sailing.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor on Saturday dismissed the sabotage charges as "ridiculous," calling them "sad conspiracy theories."
Israel says it imposed the blockade in 2007 to stop weapons reaching the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules Gaza. Activists describe the blockade as a form of incarceration for the Palestinians.
Nine activists were killed last year in an Israeli raid on a similar flotilla.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
and why is it deemed "not safe to continue" unless something is known about israeli navy's planned response?
Gaza-Bound Boats Barred From Leaving Greek Ports
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/0 ... 88748.html
ATHENS, Greece -- American protesters on a boat bound for the Gaza Strip were escorted back to shore Friday, as Greece announced it was banning vessels heading to Gaza from leaving Greek ports.
The secretive attempt by the activists to head out to sea ended in failure after authorities in inflatable speedboats raced after them after their vessel tried to sail without permission from the port of Perama near the Greek capital, Athens.
"We shall overcome," the activists sang as security personnel watched from their boat just 10 meters away, according to updates protesters posted on the Internet during a brief standoff.
Greek officials appealed to them to turn around, arguing that it was not safe to continue, but activists responded that it was not safe in port because of fears of alleged sabotage of their vessels, organizers said.
On Thursday, an Irish ship, the MV Saoirse, said it had to abandon plans to set sail from the Turkish town of Gocek because of what it called Israeli sabotage. Earlier this week, activists said the propeller of a Swedish ship in a Greek port was sabotaged. Israel has not commented on the reports.
The activists were seen being escorted by a Coast Guard vessel and arriving back at the coast, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.
The Greek government action delivered a major blow to a flotilla of nine Greek and foreign-flagged vessels and several hundred activists who had said they want to break Israel's sea blockade and deliver aid to the Palestinian territory.
The setback followed a week of administrative delays that organizers attributed to Israeli pressure on Greece, which is mired in an economic crisis and has grown closer to Israel as it seeks more foreign investment.
Israel says its sea blockade stops weapons from reaching Iran-backed Hamas militants who control Gaza, and had warned it would stop any attempt to circumvent its restrictions. A year ago, nine activists on a Turkish boat died in an Israeli raid on a similar flotilla, with each side accusing the other of starting the violence.
Greece's Civil Protection Ministry said coast guard authorities were ordered to take "all appropriate measures" to implement the ban. It also said the "broader maritime area of the eastern Mediterranean will be continuously monitored by electronic means for tracking, where applicable, the movements of the ships allegedly participating" in the flotilla.
Greece as well as the United States had previously urged activists not to proceed with the flotilla, saying it could lead to confrontation and noting that there were other means of aid delivery. The protesters, however, rejected the option of funneling aid through Israeli channels and described the sea blockade as a form of incarceration for the Palestinians.
Flotilla organizer Vangelis Pissias condemned the Greek ban on Friday and argued the government had no legal grounds to block private vessels that were heading to international waters from its ports.
"The efforts to sail will continue," he said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he had no confirmation of actions taken by the Greek coast guard, but reiterated the U.S. position that the flotilla was a "bad idea." He said the transport of aid to Gaza could be facilitated by the international community through established channels.
"I don't think it's a freedom of navigation, freedom of the sea issue. These boats are trying to make a political statement. If they want to get assistance to Gaza there are ways to do it," Toner said at a news conference in Washington.
The American vessel, dubbed "The Audacity of Hope" after the title of a book by President Barack Obama, was intercepted about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) out at sea, vessel spokeswoman Jane Hirschmann told reporters in Athens.
She said they prepared a pasta meal at one point during the standoff with the Greek coast guard.
The American protesters posted an audio clip on Twitter in which they could be heard shouting at the Greek vessels: "We are unarmed civilians... We want to be able to go on our mission to Gaza."
The passengers included Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel who later worked for the U.S. State Department. She resigned from the U.S. mission in Mongolia in protest in 2003 as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq loomed.
Also on board was Ken Mayers, a 74-year-old retired major in the U.S. Marine Corps, and Ridgely Fuller, who described herself as a "suburban housewife" and social worker. The youngest passenger was 22-year-old Max Suchan, who said he learned how to swim only a few weeks ago in preparation for the sea voyage.
One-third of the passengers on the American boat were Jewish, and nearly two-thirds were women, half of them over 50 years old, according to organizers.
Israel imposed a blockade on the Palestinian territory after Hamas militants overran it in 2007. It eased restrictions on its land blockade of Gaza after the international uproar over the deadly raid on the flotilla last year. Egypt recently lifted its own blockade of Gaza at the Rafah crossing, though cross-border traffic is still slow.
The flotilla activists said they were peaceful, but Israel has alleged they are in collusion with Hamas, viewed as a terrorist group in the West.
Elena Becatoros and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, and Darko Bandic in Perama, Greece, contributed.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Winners win
They prolly sabotaged their own boat so the moving train could whine about it.
To "bring attention to the humanitarian crisis". :?
Dumbasses "the audacity of"
i did not post my posts for you, as i knew you in your ignorance would not read it. why post in a thread and show your immaturity and bump the thread to the top of the forum when you do not read the presented material??? this is not a kindergarden. this is a serious discussion.
seriously, you are a troll, and you are a major part of the problem.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 32,00.html
03/06/2008
Damning Report
Gaza Humanitarian Crisis Worst in 40 Years
A report sponsored by eight British-based aid agencies and human rights groups has described the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as the worst in 40 years. And a senior UN official has warned that the entire infrastructure there is close to collapse.
A group of aid agencies and human rights organizations say the people of the Gaza Strip are suffering the worst conditions since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.
The damning report on the humanitarian situation released on Thursday says that 80 percent of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants are now dependent on food aid, while unemployment is close to 40 percent.
The report, sponsored by eight British-based groups including Oxfam, Amnesty International UK and CARE International UK, also describes the terrible situation in hospitals where power cuts can last up to 12 hours a day, and where up to 18 percent of patients seeking emergency treatment outside of Gaza were refused permission to leave last year. The organizations warn that the water and sewage systems are close to collapse, with 40-50 million liters of sewage pouring into the sea every day.
The report comes hot on the heels of the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip that killed 125 people last week, many of them civilians. The incursion was a response to the escalation in rocket attacks fired by militants at Israel, which killed one person last week. The Israeli response was condemned by many international observers as disproportionate.
"Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care," said Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen on Thursday. "Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic rights is utterly indefensible."
Israel's Defense Ministry rejected the report, saying Hamas, the militant Islamist rulers in Gaza, was to blame for the hardships. It also pointed out that medicines and medical equipment were shipped into Gaza without limitations.
Israel and the West shun Hamas, labelled a terrorist organization, and have refused to deal directly with the group since it forcibly took control of Gaza last June. Since then Israel has imposed a blockade on the territory, virtually freezing economic activity there.
In response to the Israeli military action over the past week, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who now only controls the West Bank, broke off peace negotiations with the Israelis. However, under pressure from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who traveled to the region on Wednesday, Abbas agreed to resume talks and to drop a demand that Israel first reach a truce with Hamas in Gaza.
The ongoing talks are supposed to prepare the way for a deal on a Palestinian state this year but Israeli military action in Gaza and Abbas' lack of authority there have made negotiations difficult.
While the Israeli media reported on Thursday that peace talks could resume as early as this week, progress could be undermined by ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, which looks set to continue.
On Thursday morning an Israeli soldier was killed and another seriously injured when Palestinian militants blew up an Israeli army jeep on the border with the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said. A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Reuters.
On Wednesday a senior United Nations official warned that the dire conditions in Gaza would deteriorate even further if Israeli military action escalated. "It would be devastating," John Ging, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, told Reuters. "The whole infrastructure is in a state of collapse, whether it's water, sanitation or just the medical services, " he said. "If there's a further military offensive it will again just … compound an already desperate situation."