The State of "Palestine" Quiz

yosi wrote:

You didn't look very hard. In the NY Times for April 12, 2002, Serge Schemann reported as follows:

"The Israeli police said today that they had found a belt with explosives in a Palestinian ambulance during a check at a roadblock inside the West Bank. The ambulance was headed toward Israel with the body of a Palestinian man, the police said, and they found the device alongside him. It was the second time in two weeks that Israel has reported finding explosives in an ambulance."

In an opinion piece (which I assume was fact-checked) published by the NY Times on April 13, 2002, Daniel Gordis wrote the following:

"Two weeks ago Israeli soldiers stopped a Palestinian ambulance with a child in the back on a stretcher, and under him soldiers found an explosive belt."

Showing that use of ambulances to aid terror actually goes back quite a bit further than the early 2000's, the NY Times published a report by Youssef M. Ibrahim on December 14, 1993, in which Mr. Ibrahim reported that:

"Early this morning a Islamic guerrilla drove an ambulance loaded with explosives into an Israeli Army jeep, killing himself and wounding an Israeli soldier."

Steven Erlanger, in a very interesting piece about the laws of war and IDF actions in Gaza, published on January 16th, 2009, reported the comments of an IDF major as follows:

"Hamas has misused ambulances and Red Crescent and United Nations symbols in the past and is doing so during this conflict, Major Lerner charged.

“We’ve had gunmen coming out of ambulances and taking up positions here in the last week; my people saw it,” he said. “So of course this makes the troops in the field very wary about any vehicles approaching them, and why coordination has to be from the top to the very bottom, all the way down the line to the unit in the field.”"

I'm sure I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Take it up with the NY Times.

Norman Finkelstein - 'Beyond Chutzpah: On The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History'.


P.129: 'Terror Ambulances'

'...To document that Palestinian "ambulances are often used to transport explosives and suicide bombers"...Dershowitz cites only the uncorroborated allegation of an Israeli "senior security official" (Greg Myre, "The Mideast Turmoil: Security," New York Times, 21st May 2002). A November 2002 Physicians for Human Rights-Israel study concluded: "Israel has provided evidence of such abuse in one single case." Even this one single instance lacks certainty. Referring to that same "one, widely publicized occasion when, on 27 March 2002, a suicide belt was found on an ambulance," Amnesty International wrote:

'There are several suspicious circumstances about it. The ambulance passed through four checkpoints on the way to Jerusalem without being searched (which is abnormal) and then was delayed for more than an hour before being searched to allow T.V cameras to arrive (which suggests that the IDF had, at the least, prior knowledge of something hidden there).'

Apart from the alleged March 2002 incident, the only documented misuses of an ambulance were committed by Israel. For example, "soldiers were crammed into a bullet-proof ambulance in order to get as quickly as possible to the house" of a wanted Palestinian; "IDF soldiers in Nablus forced several ambulance drivers to stop, get out of their ambulances, and stand between the soldiers and stone throwers"; "soldiers took control of an ambulance and used it to block entry to the hospital in Tulkarm." B'Tselem comments on these incidents and Israeli allegations:

'The IDF's use of ambulances for military purposes is especially disturbing in light of the repeated claims made by the IDF that Palestinians use ambulances to transport weapons and explosives....It should be noted that, with the exception of one case, and despite repeated requests by Physicians for Human Rights and the International Red Cross, the IDF has not presented any evidence to support this contention, not even in response to petitions filed in the Supreme Court.'

And again: "Official [Israeli] sources repeatedly state the claim that Palestinians use ambulances to transport weapons and explosives without providing proof of this claim." Finally, it bears emphasizing that Israel already targeted Palestinian ambulances long before the alleged March 2002 incident [...]and even if the March 2002 incident did happen, it cannot justify deliberate attacks on an entire network of ambulances performing their medical function and enjoying legal protection" (PHR-Israel).

Care to reply to my previous post Yosi?

Israel may destroy the homes of jailed Palestinian terrorists. The country’s domestic security agency has suggested razing two houses to deter other Palestinians from violence – a move supported by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.



In 2011, two cousins, Hakim and Ajmad Awad of the Palestinian town of Awarta, were found guilty of murdering an Israeli family. A few months prior they had attacked the home of Israeli couple Udi Fogel, 36 andRuth Fogel, 35, in the northern West Bank town of Itamar.
They killed them along with their three children: the two kids aged 11 and four were stabbed to death as well as the third victim – a three-month-old baby girl. Three other children were not discovered by the murderers, thus being orphaned by the massacre.
The men are serving five life sentences for the crime. During the court proceedings, both called what they had done a “deed committed for Palestine’s liberation” and said they are proud of it.

I guess there is some legal stuff to deal with but damn, proud killers they are. Razing homes won't stop violence but it's a nice "fuck you" to the evil-do'ers!

usamamasan1 wrote:

Israel may destroy the homes of jailed Palestinian terrorists. The country’s domestic security agency has suggested razing two houses to deter other Palestinians from violence – a move supported by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.



In 2011, two cousins, Hakim and Ajmad Awad of the Palestinian town of Awarta, were found guilty of murdering an Israeli family. A few months prior they had attacked the home of Israeli couple Udi Fogel, 36 andRuth Fogel, 35, in the northern West Bank town of Itamar.
They killed them along with their three children: the two kids aged 11 and four were stabbed to death as well as the third victim – a three-month-old baby girl. Three other children were not discovered by the murderers, thus being orphaned by the massacre.
The men are serving five life sentences for the crime. During the court proceedings, both called what they had done a “deed committed for Palestine’s liberation” and said they are proud of it.

I guess there is some legal stuff to deal with but damn, proud killers they are. Razing homes won't stop violence but it's a nice "fuck you" to the evil-do'ers!

Norman Finkelstein - Beyond Chutzpah - On The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and The Abuse of History

P.175-177

To be sure, It's rather easier to apply moral principles to others than to oneself. In the case of Israel, [Professor Alan] Dershowitz justifies the resort to sanctions such as house demolitions on the grounds that, judging by poll data, Palestinians overwhelmingly "supported continuing terrorist attacks" and, accordingly, are "themselves complicit" in these attacks (pp. 168-69; 'Why Terrorism Works, pp.174-75). Indeed, he advocates not only individual house demolitions, but also "the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations" after each Palestinian attack. "The response will be automatic." Such massive destruction, he concludes, will further the "noble causes" of reducing terrorism and promoting peace.

...When Israel attacked Lebanon in in June 1982 in order to "safeguard the occupation of the West bank" (Yehoshafat Harkabi's phrase), the popularity ratings of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Begin soared, while more than 80 percent of Israeli's held the invasion to be justified. When Israel's battering of Beirut in August 1982 reached new heights of savagery, more than half of Israeli's still supported the begin-Sharon government, while more than 80 percent still supported the invasion - which in the end, left up to twenty thousand Lebanese and Palestinians, almost all civilians, dead, and which the U.N General Assembly condemned by a vote of 143 to 2 (United States and Israel) for inflicting "severe damage on civilian Palestinians, including heavy losses of human lives, intolerable sufferings and massive material destruction." Only when the costs of the Lebanon aggression proved too onerous - initially, from the worldwide outcry against the Sabra and Shatila massacres and, later, from the escalating military casualties - did Israeli's turn against it.
When Israel's violent repression of the first Intifada reached new heights of brutality in 1989, more than half of all Israeli's supported the deployment of yet "stronger measures" to quell the largely nonviolent civil revolt (only one in four supported any lessening of the repression), while "an overwhelming 72 percent...saw no contradiction between the army's handling of the uprising and 'the nation's democratic values.'"
Operation Defensive shield (March - April 2002), although wreaking devastation on Palestinian society and culminating in the commission by Israeli forces of "serious violations" of humanitarian law and "war crimes" in Jenin and Nablus, was supported by fully 90 percent of Israeli's.

Beyond the emotional support that Israeli's have lent to crimes of state, it bears emphasis that Israel relies on a citizen army to implement policy: the collective responsibility of the Israeli people accordingly runs much deeper than "moral complicity." Finally, Israel couldn't commit such crimes without unconditional political and economic support from the United States, and it's the likes of Dershowitz who, through shameless apologetics and brazen distortions, crucially facilitate this unconditional support. What if Dershowitz's home were subject to the "benign form of collective accountability" he urges for Palestinians?'