Category: Uncategorized

News and not news


It’s news because its revelatory but it’s not news because it happens time and time again between Israel and its interaction with its neighbors.  The latest Gaza incursion was a bloodfest which made it a war crime.  Max Blumenthal writes about that conclusively here.

Dan Cohen and I conducted an interview with two ICRC volunteers from Gaza, 25-year-old Ahmed Awad, and 24-year-old Ala’a Alkusofi, who worked with ambulance crews throughout the war, the video of which will be released in the near future. They recalled entering Khuza’a during the siege of the town to collect the body of Mohamed Abadla, a local man who had been tied to a tree by both arms and riddled with bullets. When they arrived at the execution site, a group of Israeli soldiers ordered one of the volunteers’ colleagues to exit the ambulance, walk five meters forward, then light a cigarette lighters. When he did so, they shot him in the heart and leg, killing him in front of his colleagues.

The ICRC volunteers told us they later found a man in Khuza’a with rigor mortis, holding both hands over his head in surrender, his body filled with bullets. They then discovered a family — men, women and children — so badly decomposed they had to bury them with a bulldozer in a mass grave. The vast majority of bullet wounds they found were to the head and chest.

In Beit Hanoun, a northern border city that had been comprehensively by Israeli shelling, I met Abdul Rahman, a 50-year-old farmer whose orange groves, bee farm, goat herd, wheat fields and four story home had all been destroyed prior to or during Operation Protective Edge. Rahman told me how his neighbors, the Wahadan family, had been prevented from evacuating by Israeli forces, who warned them they would be shot if they left. Remember that the Israeli military dropped leaflets on Beit Hanoun warning its residents to leave just prior to the ground invasion. A week after trapping seven members of the Wahadan family, the Israeli air force bombed their home, killing seven members, including two-year-old Ghena Wahadan. The survivors of the family were male relatives who had been abducted and interrogated for days in Israeli prisons.

shieldWere the Wahadans used as human shields? That’s an open and legitimate question. In other areas, I documented cases in which the use of human shields by Israeli soldiers was undeniable. On the outskirts of Rafah, for instance, soldiers stripped 19-year-old Mahmoud Abu Said of his clothes and stood him in front of windows in his home while they sniped at his neighbors. In Khuza’a, members of the Najjar family told me soldiers forced them to stand at opposite corners of their roof for a full day. And in the northern village of Oum Al Nasser, members of the Mismeh, Madhoun and Jarrad family told me they forced to sit in the center of town for three hours between 6:30am and 9:30am on July 18 — 100 meters in front of Israeli tanks.

 

You will not hear about this case of Israel using human shields as it kills Palestinians although the contrast is certainly the case.  Also you can be sure nothing will happen as a result of this exposure although plenty will be said about any cases where Palestinians did such a criminal act and some sort of punitive action will result this is why although it is newsworthy this happened repeatedly during the Gaza invasion last month, nothing will result from it.

Taking the fight to ISIL


America has managed to enlist the support of five Arab countries in the fight with ISIL/ISIS/the Islamic state and the UAE has stepped up to the plate big time.  I don’t like self-promotion and it seems there’s a hint of that here in releasing this information…..I mean we rarely know the names of fighter pilots who fly sorties for the American military but the fact that this is even news is somewhat exceptional for the time and place in which it was revealed.

The first female pilot for the United Arab Emirates military was used in a multi-national air strike against ISIL/ISIS/the Islamic state and she is one Major Miriam al-Mansouri. mansouri I have often written here on the pages of Miscellany101 of the forward thinking all inclusive nature of Emirati society as it pertains to Emirati women  and this is just another feather in their cap. It’s ironic that one of the other countries participating in the airstrikes with the UAE military was Saudi Arabia where Ms. al-Mansouri wouldn’t even be able to drive a car, much less pilot an airplane.  That fact alone makes me question the legitimacy of the coalition and its goals.  Why are the two even on the same side in this matter…..it would seem to me al-Mansouri should be leading airstrikes against KSA instead of joining with them to fight an opponent as conservative and backwards as the Saudis.

You can read about the UAE’s integration of female pilots in the military here

An Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi


There’s no doubt this phenomenon of ‘The Islamic State’ has very little to do with Islam…..rather it is a geopolitical group put together by who knows to further the aims of those who want to see confusion and strife rule in the Arab/Muslim world.  We are all well acquainted with what ISIL, ISIS, ‘the Islamic State has done but now there is no room for doubt about what the world’s “other” Muslims or people of good will and common sense think about them.  The image below makes a rather simplified distinction between who and what ISIL/ISIS/’the Islamic state is and the religion of Islam itself in what could only be called a double entendre.

convert

 

 

 

The international Muslim community has decided to take on ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic state head on using the very weapons employed by them to justify their murderous binges and have literally bitch slapped them harder than Ray Rice beat his wife in what could only be decisively and irrefutably removing from them the cloak of Islamic legitimacy.  They wrote an open letter to Al-Baghdadi which can be found in its entirety here and it leaves no doubt where the signatories stand nor where the rest of the Muslim world SHOULD stand.  It also stands as a document every Muslim can point to when those too lazy to find it themselves and who then like to ask facetiously where are the Muslim voices of condemnation to silence such haphazard and sophomoric excuses.  The points made by the over 100 Muslim scholars who put this document together were summarized on the first page of the letter, but each point was expounded on in detail throughout the 23 page document…

It is permissible in Islam [for scholars] to differ on any matter, except those fundamentals of
religion that all Muslims must know.
It is forbidden in Islam to ignore the reality of contemporary times
when deriving legal rulings.
It is forbidden in Islam to kill the innocent.
It is forbidden in Islam to kill emissaries, ambassadors, and diplomats; hence it is forbidden to kill journalists and aid workers.
Jihad in Islam is defensive war. It is not permissible without the right cause, the right purpose
and without the right rules of conduct.
It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non Muslim unless he (or she) openly declares
disbelief.
It is forbidden in Islam to harm or mistreat in any way Christians or any ‘People of the
Scripture’.
It is obligatory to consider Yazidis as People of the Scripture.
The reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam. It was abolished by universal consensus.
It is forbidden in Islam to force people to convert.
It is forbidden in Islam to deny women their rights.
It is forbidden in Islam to deny children their rights.
It is forbidden in Islam to enact legal punishments (hudud) without following the correct
procedures that ensure justice and mercy.
It is forbidden in Islam to torture people.
It is forbidden in Islam to disfigure the dead.
It is forbidden in Islam to attribute evil acts to God
It is forbidden in Islam to destroy the graves and shrines of Prophets and Companions.
Armed insurrection is forbidden in Islam for any reason other than clear disbelief by the ruler
and not allowing people to pray.
It is forbidden in Islam to declare a caliphate without consensus from all Muslims.
Loyalty to one’s nation is permissible in Islam.
After the death of the Prophet, Islam does not require anyone to emigrate anywhere.
The above is a pretty comprehensive list of dos and don’ts that has been flaunted by ISIL/ISIS/the Islamic state in ways that are almost cartoonish in nature.  One of the signees of the above missive, Hamza Yusuf an American Muslim addressed the issue of ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic state in a rousing sermon for the Friday prayers which for those too lazy or disinclined to read the letter to Al-Baghdadi can listen to what he had to say here.  It’s something that has been consistently said by Muslims in America but has equally been ignored by their detractors.

Look what I found


Somalis I ran across this picture here.  It was taken in 1998 in South Minneapolis and it is a group of Somali students praying at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church (whose generosity and good will I and every decent American should applaud) across the street from Roosevelt High School during the time of the Friday prayer.  What struck me was the number of people in the photo all of whom are students and primarily Somalis.  Moreover, this picture is 16 years old and more than likely the numbers of Muslim students have increased as has the fear their mere presence generates in the hearts and minds of America’s #Islamophobes. America’s call for homeless refuse yearning to be free doesn’t apply to people of color who lie outside the Judea-Christian ethic.  American hypocrisy will be America’s downfall.

Pretty…… damned dumb!


TantarosOnly at FoxNews can someone look like this yet be so ugly, hateful and racist enough that people she wasn’t even talking about take offense at what she says. In a rant typical of people at FoxNews Andrea Tantaros said, referring to the latest ISIS video which features the beheading of an American:

They’ve been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years if you study the history of Islam…You can’t solve it with a dialogue. You can’t solve it with a summit…You solve it with a bullet to the head. It’s the only thing these people understand.

Of course the only thing people at FoxNews understands is the language of racism.  It doesn’t matter that Muslims universally have condemned what this latest atrocity from ISIS depicts, in fact FoxNews will insist there are no voices of contempt from Muslims….something that’s been disproven time and time again. But in case FoxNews doesn’t get it, such blatant incitement is not acceptable for Americans on American airwaves…or at least not acceptable to some and especially Asian American Journalists who condemned in the strongest terms Tantaros’ diatribe and I salute them.  Racism is unacceptable even if one is not the intended target, something the likes of Tantaros probably doesn’t get.

Bargaining from a position of moral clarity


ramadanThat’s what Tariq Ramadan says should be the attitude of Muslims in the West and anything less than that is unacceptable.

The leaders of ISNA can boast a proud record of service to American Muslims, for which they must be thanked and congratulated. The annual ISNA convention is an important gathering, featuring a multiplicity of participants and a broad cross-section of activities. In recent years, however, the political positions taken by the organization’s leadership have not always been clear-cut. Though it is essential, I believe, to remain open to dialogue with the authorities, it is likewise essential that positions of principle must be maintained, re-affirmed and defended. Not simply for the good of the Muslims, but in the name of the contribution of American Muslims to their society. Criticism of the domestic policy of the current administration, like those that preceded it, is a moral obligation. Summary arrests, arbitrary prison terms, inhuman psychological torture and solitary confinement, the shadowy role of informers and the deeply troubling and unacceptable methods used by the FBI, which has provoked young people to engage in extremist actions, must be unconditionally condemned. Not in the name of Islam, but in the name of the values proclaimed by the United States. However, the ISNA leadership is too often silent, as if paralyzed by fear. It fares no better with respect to American foreign policy. Its silence over American support for the outlaw and inhuman policies of Israel cannot be justified, even less so after attending an iftar organized by the White House during which President Obama defended Israel while the Israeli ambassador tweeted his delight! We cannot be forever silent: what kind of active and responsible citizenship does the ISNA leadership offer young American Muslims? What kind of example? That of silent, fearful sycophants–or of free, public-spirited citizens who, while defending the values of human dignity and justice, serve their country in the most sincere and critical way? That of the unconditional loyalty of the timorous, or the critical loyalty of free individuals? To attend the ISNA convention would be to endorse their silence.

This is what happens to you when you’re white and confronted by police


In fact this is the way all encounters should be handled between police and citizens, patiently and deliberately, but unless you’re an armed white man it never does.  If you’re black the least you could hope to happen is being assaulted; the most likely thing to happen is you’ll be shot and possibly killed.

On May 4, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers responded to multiple reports of a man, possibly intoxicated, carrying a rifle along East Cork Street in the city’s Milwood neighborhood. Joseph Houseman, 63, was eventually persuaded to hand over the gun, which was returned to him the next day. Police considered but ultimately decided against seeking a misdemeanor charge of brandishing a firearm.

It is legal to openly carry a gun in Michiganbut illegal to brandish one, which KDPS Assistant Chief Donald Webster described as essentially “waving or displaying the firearm in a threatening manner.”

Police reports and recordings from dash-mounted cameras in patrol cars and body microphones on officers, obtained by the Kalamazoo Gazette through the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, reveal how officers deliberated over how to enforce the law and protect public safety while respecting the man’s right to bear arms.

Another one of those driving while black posts that has a surprising ending


Police misconduct against ANY citizen of America usually gets swept under the rug…….and even when its recorded for all the world to see it gets ignored, given the proverbial blind eye.  In the case of  Marcus Jeter who thought all was well after he left from his first encounter with police…..left with their permission, he’s lucky to be alive while the police have been charged with official misconduct and related charges.  The police abuse was captured by the police’s own dashboard cameras yet the same police in preparation for their court case want to dismiss their own evidence!!

Jeter is lucky to be alive….and his case is one of those rare examples where police are being held accountable for their egregious behavior.

Israel’s war on Islam


destroyed masjidIsrael, that racist bastion of religious zionist zealotry and Islamophobia (two deadly combination for everyone)  is hell bent on killing Muslims and destroying their religious symbols.  This article makes that painfully obvious.

The Israeli onslaught on Gaza demolished 73 mosques in 51 days, while 205 others were partially destroyed, a government report said.

According to a committee formed by the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Construction, the damages caused by Israeli aggression on houses of worship, tombs, and charity offices amount to $40.4 million.

The only two churches in Gaza were also hit and partially damaged, while the gates of 10 tombs were destroyed.

The affected mosques represent one-third of Gaza’s mosques, the committee said.

Among the destroyed mosques were historical ones, particularly Al-Omari Mosque in Jabalya which dates back to 649 AD.

The mosque was built 1,365 years ago during the rule of the Muslim leader Amr Ibn Al-‘As and was named after him. It is also called Manarat Al-Zaher.

It consisted of three floors and its area was greater than 3,000 square metres. It could accommodate more than 2,000 worshippers.

Al-Omari Mosque was previously hit by Israeli strikes in 2008 and 2009 and later renovated, but it was completely destroyed in the most recent assault.

The report added that most of Gaza’s mosques were built thanks to donations by citizens since donor countries exclude houses of worship from reconstruction aid.

The targeting of mosques by Israeli warplanes in the latest offensive was three times higher than in 2008 and 2009, the report said.

It’s very difficult to imagine why and how any country that calls itself a democratic country could support an entity that so recklessly and blatantly targets a religion and its adherents as Israel does with Palestinians and Islam.

Walking while black


There’s a lot to say about being a minority in today’s America and from where Miscellany101 sits none of it is good.  We haven’t talked about the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri although at some point we will, nor have we really dealt with Eric Gardner’s brutal publicly recorded execution by New York City police although we should.

If one really wants to know the depths of American racism, however, and with out ambiguity attached….you only need to look here, where Raymond Wilford was pepper sprayed because he was walking down the street minding his own business and ran across a security guard who thought it was his time to dispense some street justice to the first black person he saw.

Twenty-five-year-old Raymond Wilford, who is black, was walking by on his way to meet a friend at the Westlake Center mall. The shirtless man spit at him, Wilford said, and the two squared off but didn’t throw any punches at each other. Then a Westlake security guard appeared.

“The security guard was like, ‘Stop,'” Wilford said in an interview. “The white guy was still yelling and walking towards the security guard. I was like, ‘Why are you pointing your Mace at me? He’s the one being aggressive.’ And then he [the mall cop] pepper-sprayed me.” According to witnesses and a police report, the spray blew into other people’s faces and left them with red eyes.

ron-johnson-fraternityEven shaking hands and greeting one another on the street can get black men in trouble with the law even when they ARE the law in today’s America.

Today in Ferguson, Mo., news, The Washington Post takes on the assertion that Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson has been photographed flashing gang signs with members of the community.

He has not.

To reiterate: Capt. Johnson is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, a black fraternity that was formed in 1911 at Indiana University in Bloomington, and the hand sign you see in the pictures below is a Kappa greeting.

 

 

 

Even on the receiving end of illegal behavior the results are not the same if you’re black


Don’t think so?  Ask Ray Allen.  ray allenHis house was broken into recently while he and his family were still living there.  This wasn’t an ordinary break-in, it happened in the middle of the night and the intruders walked into the bedroom where Allen’s wife and children were sleeping discussing, in loud enough voices to wake Ms. Allen, the items of the house. It appears Allen was not home at the time, and a startled Ms. Allen called the police after they ran away.  The perpetrators were caught, but officials decided NOT to file charges against the seven people who broke into the Allen residence.  In today’s America, where people are demonstrating with their lives the inequities of justice for people of color who commit crimes, it also appears there’s a difference when people of color are victims of crimes committed by whites.  Ray Allen was not happy officials didn’t charge the young men for breaking into his house and made it a point to express his displeasure with this decision, enough so that charges were filed at Allen’s request.    The people who broke into Allen’s home were young white men.  This is not the time for racial disparity in administering justice, if you didn’t know that already.

Jihad in Islam


One always hears how there are no voices opposing Islamic terrorism, or so the saying goes, although the two term “Islamic terrorism” is an oxymoron, and it’s really a false argument.  If you want to know what Muslims say about terrorism there are plenty of places where you can find the voice that expressly unequivocally denounces terrorism.  One can find a very good source here if you care to look.  jihad

However, as for the issue of “jihad”, there’s lots written about it but it all boils down to this.

Declare your Jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see – egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping, and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you are ready to fight the enemy you can see.

Ok…do you know anyone who has fought jihad in the way described above?

 

Another reason to oppose the current government of Egypt


…they are engaging in fratricide in ways that call to mind some of the world’s worst dictatorships.

Egyptian security forces intentionally killed at least 817 protesters during last August’s Rabaa massacre, in a premeditated attack equal to or worse than China’s Tiananmen Square killings in 1989, Human RightsWatch (HRW) has argued in a report.

The 195-page investigation based on interviews with 122 survivors and witnesses has found Egypt‘s police and army “systematically and deliberately killed largely unarmed protesters on political grounds” in actions that “likely amounted to crimes against humanity”.

The report recommends that several senior individuals within Egypt’s security apparatus be investigated and, where appropriate, held to account for their role in the planning of both the Rabaa massacre and others that occurred last summer – including Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt’s then defence minister and new president. As head of the army at the time, Sisi had overall responsibility for the army’s role at Rabaa, and has publicly acknowledged spending “very many long days to discuss all the details”.

 

In other words, the current President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is a war criminal who encouraged his army to commit crimes against humanity on several occasions!! In an extreme example of chutzpah, this government of war criminals went on to declare the party they ousted and enforced that coup with murder of its citizens, the Sisi regime went on to criminalize the Muslim Brotherhood, calling it a terrorist organization and sentencing close to 200 members of that group with death for “taking part in a deadly attack on a police station”.  What’s important to remember is this is the government which slaughters its citizens in much the same way the Israelis slaughtered people of Gaza that is negotiating on behalf of those Palestinians.  To renew the saying, ‘ it’s the fox guarding the chickens’……

The “specialness” of Israel


Israel claimed Hamas used the civilians of Gaza as human shields for their rocket attacks when it fact it turns out Israeli forces used Palestinians in that way.  Here is the story and eye witness accounts of what happened.

The article below describes how US officials have enabled the Israeli regime to commit and get away with war crimes and are as accountable as the very Israelis who are responsible for the Gaza massacre.  Unfortunately, American administrations are quick to hurl accusations of illegality towards members of the international community but are almost never willing to prosecute its own for illegal acts. In the case of Israel, even when there is compelling evidence that crimes were committed such an acknowledgment is never forthcoming from an American administration.  The ramifications of that are severe for America…..making it as much a pariah state as the one it enables.

 

Dick Cheney WAS right!


back in 1994 when he talked about Iraq and the first Gulf war

Notice how all the things he talked about might possibly happen if they invaded Iraq then actually DID happen! The difference between Dick Cheney first Gulf war and Vice President Dick Cheney is Halliburton.  When the first Gulf war was waged and when he gave this interview in 1994 Cheney was not involved with Halliburton; it wasn’t until 1995 when he became chairman and CEO of the company that had a tremendous financial interest in waging war.  One more example of people who place their financial gain above the society’s.

Media’s role in dumbing down America


Gavin-Ellzey

I can’t imagine how incredibly stupid this guy is or how he’s been lead so astray by the folks who’re supposed to provide us with information. It’s one thing to believe everything you hear but then to respond to it in such incendiary ways that are or bordering on criminality is inexcusable.  In any event it is sad to hear, see people in positions of policy or authority make such comments; they should forfeit such places in society or be made to resign.

Gavin Ellzey, the vice chairman of the Kansas Republican 3rd Congressional District Committee, advised on Twitter in early July that “offending Muslims is the duty of any civilized person.”

Ellzey added, “Especially with a .45.”

In an interview with The Star, the Overland Park resident acknowledged writing the tweet in response to television news reports about Christians being “crucified” overseas

Here’s the issue. The report he read or saw was most likely false, made up out of thin air, and Ellzey living in 21st century America was not able to know that or didn’t care to.  Ignorance is one thing, apathy or indifference that causes one to incite others towards acts of violence is another. Both Ellzey and the media reports he listened to are guilty of the latter.  We don’t know or can blame that media outlet that led Ellzey to say such insane things but we can hold his feet to the fire.  If one thinks that media can’t possibly be so irresponsible, here’s an excellent case in point.

Commentators who were not there provided chilling descriptions of an alleged attack on the Roquette Synagogue in the Bastille area of Paris last month. Evoking the Nazi Holocaust, they described hordes of thugs desecrating the building as they tried to harm those inside. According to the reports those responsible were Muslim, pro-Palestinian demonstrators consumed by anti-Semitism, inflamed by the slaughter of civilians in Gaza by Israel.

“Worshippers barricaded themselves inside the Synagogue de la Roquette as demonstrators tried to storm the building with bats and chairs,” is how The Independent’sabsent Paris correspondent chose to put it. The seemingly authoritative claim was followed up around the world.

An alleged testimony was published by a US-based news site called The Tablet. With a mixture of blood-curdling melodrama, murderous threat and pure racism it recounted how “Parisians from Arab countries” used an axe and even firearms. The writer – allegedly a Jewish woman solely identified as ‘Aurélie A’ – says of one: “I want to leave him for dead!”

Now, more than three weeks since the 13 July incident, the international current affairs magazine Newsweek is running a cover story on the Synagogue ‘attack’ claiming it has contributed to a new “Exodus” of Jews from Europe. Elaborating on the picture of vengeful Islamists, writer Adam LeBor quotes another “trapped” witness – who is not identified at all – maintaining that the alleged siege was “like an Intifada.”

Mr. LeBor opens his piece with the words: “The mob howled for vengeance, the missiles raining down on the synagogue walls as the worshippers huddled inside. It was a scene from Europe in the 1930s, except this was eastern Paris on the evening of 13 July, 2014.”

Except it wasn’t. Such reports are pure fabrication. Nobody attacked the synagogue, nobody was trapped inside, no worshippers were hurt and there were no missiles thrown at it. Comparisons with the kind of demonic crimes committed against European Jews in the pre-war years, and during the occupation of Paris, are profoundly wicked.

I was in rue de la Roquette on 13 July and what actually happened was that a vigilante group called the LDJ (Ligue de Défense Juive, or Jewish Defence League) stormed away from the synagogue towards a largely peaceful protest in Place de la Bastille. Armed with metal batons, gas canisters and café chairs and tables, they initiated street fights with their enemies while chanting ‘F*** Palestine’.

The truth was not only recorded on film, but Serge Benhaïm, the President of the Synagogue, confirmed categorically that there had been no attack on his place of worship, and no damage caused to it or those inside. He said that none of the opposing groups had got within 150 metres of his synagogue……

If you ever want to express your outrage as I have, you can write him here: gavingop@gmail.com

You knew it was headed here


Even though there may be a cessation of hostilities, there are some who will try to manifest them this way

Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, Moshe Feiglin, has called for the use of concentration camps for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.”

Sharing a plan for the destruction of Gaza in a letter addressed to Netanyahu on his Facebook page on August 1, Feiglin wrote “What is required now is that we internalize the fact that Oslo is finished, that this is our country – our country exclusively, including Gaza.”

In his letter, Feiglin urged Netanyahu to “turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians,” in reference to a Palestinian coastal city that was ethnically cleansed by in 1948 and incorporated into present-day Israel.

He called for tent encampments where the Palestinian civilian population would be “concentrated” to be established along the Sinai border until relevant emigration destinations are determined, adding that the supply of electricity and water to the formerly populated areas will be disconnected while they are “shelled with maximum fire power” in order to destroy the civilian and military infrastructure of Hamas as well as its means of communication and of logistics.

….so Israel wants to move from genocide to ethnic cleansing. Does Israel really want to be identified with Buchenwaldconcentration camps on today’s world stage or are they so oblivious that they just don’t care?Perhaps this is the same attitude of the 40s that led people to oppose the nascent zionist regime.  It’s not that people don’t want to live peacefully with Israel as their neighbor it’s that they simply want to live as Palestinians.

 

Dueling tweets


These two tweets ran across one another in the net-o-sphere

Right

 

Left

…and here’s the skinny

The number of Americans who have been killed by Islamic extremists in the United States since September 2001 is just 21 — less than two per year — and none of them on airplanes. Statistically speaking, you’re several times more likely to be fatally attacked on an American schoolyard: in just the year and a half since the December 2012 Sandy Hook attack, 28 people have been killed in US school shootings. And meanwhile, right-wing extremists — virtually all of them white — have killed 37 people since 2001.

The truth about Gaza’s tunnels


A thing or two about “terror tunnels”

SAMI KISHAWI

When I visited family in Gaza City in 2011, they reluctantly agreed to take me to see some of the tunnels that had been constructed in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

At the time, there were an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 tunnels criss-crossing their ways underneath Gaza’s border with Egypt. Designed to outsmart the blockade that had essentially cut the coastal territory off from the world since 2006, the tunnels instantly grew in popularity. They were seen as a source of relief. The food, construction materials, and even animals that Israel had banned from entering the Strip was finding another way in.

As Israel and the Egyptian government cooperated to keep even the most basic necessities out of the Gaza Strip, smugglers went to work. In just three to ten minutes, a runner could smuggle anything he wanted from one of the tunnel to the other. Many requests were bold — new cars, tunnel-kfc deliveryhealthy sheep, a family who had waited too long at the border — and some were ridiculous — a family meal from KFC, and why not a wife — but they all got through. So is the quick-witted brilliance of the Palestinian under occupation.

With the popularity grew attention, and the Israeli and Egyptian governments agreed to handle the threatening illusion of freedom with force. Egyptian armed forces demolished any tunnel they uncovered. The Israeli military launched air strikes even during periods of rest with the same purpose in mind.

Since then, the number of tunnels in Gaza has certainly grown. It is a bafflingly elaborate system, and although few people will ever be able to conceptually grasp the full extensiveness of the tunnel network, a quick look at the tunnels themselves reveal just how much time and effort goes into them.tunnel-bride

As I stood at the mouth of a tunnel used primarily to shuttle fish from an Egyptian port, one smuggler gave me a brief rundown of how the tunnels are built and, in some cases, destroyed. Curiously, he had no qualms about me taking photographs. Israel knew everything there was to know about his tunnels, he informed me. The one that smuggled fish and other small food goods had been hit six times already, prompting him to reinforce the interior of his tunnel with steel plates. Three years later, I am unsure if his tunnels still exist.

This is what the tunnels were built for in the first place, and for the most part, this is what they continue to be used for. Israel knowingly targets them, claiming them to be security concerns when all the tunnels really do is relieve a bit of the pressure that people in Gaza have had to face for almost a decade now.

There are other tunnels that are used to connect opposite ends of the Gaza Strip without exposure to Israeli weaponry. These tunnels are used by Palestinian government leaders who constantly have to duck Israeli assassination attempts as well as resistance fighters who are legally entitled to resist their occupier. Never forget this last part, I am always told.

These very same tunnels were the ones used to keep Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit alive when he was captured and taken as a prisoner of war on June 25, 2006. Shalit would later be swapped in a prisoner exchange with the Israeli government.

Lately, however, new tunnels have been uncovered in the northern Gaza Strip that are being used in the defense of Palestine. As part of the Israeli military’s egregious public relations campaign, Israel has officially dubbed them “terror tunnels,” carrying absolutely no context whatsoever.

tunnel-sheepTo Israel, every tunnel — be it one that brings food into an impoverished Gaza Strip where over half of the population depends on food aid or one that delivers sheep to a Khan Younis farmer who lost his other farm animals to a prior Israeli incursion — is a “terror tunnel”. The phrase alone has given Israel the impunity it feels it needs to enact vengeance against the Gaza’s population. After all, “terror tunnels” was the pretext for Israel’s repeated bombardment of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood or the Jabalya Refugee Camp, where hundreds including many children were massacred and thousands displaced.

“Terror tunnels” is also why entire city blocks were wiped off the map, or why every single building in Beit Hanoun is either damaged or demolished, or why Eid Al-Fitr wasn’t celebrated in Gaza. “Terror tunnels” is Israel’s attempt at justifying war crimes and human rights abuses in the Strip, which are increasingly being investigated by the United Nations and other international observers.

Israel’s media strategists and spokespeople have been trained to bring up the “terror tunnels” as often as possible. In some cases, they even present the tunnels with unsubstantiated claims that they were built to ‘massacre’ Israelis.

The message they give is that Palestinians are popping out of the ground like groundhogs, and that Israel is simply hammering them back into the ground. Israel is, in essence, basing its invasion of the Gaza Strip on a hypothetical. But Gaza is all too familiar with this. Each Israeli major military offensive on the Gaza Strip has been announced as a necessary defensive maneuver to keep Israel from being wiped off of the map. Meanwhile, Israel wipes Gaza off the map.

Incidentally, one such “terror tunnel” made its way onto cameras yesterday when Hamas fighters filmed their infiltration of the Nahal Oz military base in southern Israel. Five Israeli soldiers were reported killed.

In another “terror tunnel” story that happened today, three Israeli soldiers fell into a booby-trapped tunnel entrance in the southern Gaza Strip.

While the Israeli government continues to purport the idea that the tunnels are meant to target thousands of Israelis, we are left with the very obvious: every single military assault carried out by Palestinian fighters that has used an infiltrating tunnel has only ever targeted Israeli soldiers. In other words, armed tunnel activity is targeting armed and active combatants, not civilians or noncombatants. Maybe Israel can learn a thing or two.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Gaza has just exceeded 1,300. Most of the dead, according to the United Nations, are civilians, with over 250 children.

Israel, who says that it acts solely in self-defense, is enacting on Gaza the kind of destruction and misery that it projects to the world as its greatest fear.

Israel, whose spokespeople say it acts “as surgically as is humanly possible,” has no regard for civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Israel, with its seemingly endless supply of advanced and pinpoint-accurate weaponry, has demolished entire neighborhoods and taken so many lives in search of tunnel entrances no larger than two meters in width.