"Pat I am enclosing some photos which were just sent to me by a concerned colleague in Egypt. Perhaps SST readers will find them of interest. Also some SST readers may have more documentation which they can share.
Best,
Cliff
————————————————————————
There are a lot more pictures. Neither Cliff nor I can vouch for them. These are not the most difficult. Is this Gaza? I do not know. Who or what killed these kids? I do not know. Someone killed them. May God forgive them. pl
This is from a week ago – the little child I mentioned on another thread.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/phopto-gallery-of-gazas-martyred-children/
Needed: any provenance available for any of these horrifying photos so they can circulate in the blogosphere (as they no doubt will) w/out being dismissed as other than what I’m thinking they are.
Please also take a look at the comparing photo line Norman Finkelstein posted.
And a pic of Kaukab Al Dayah, who died in this one-sided war.
It might interesting for some to look at those pictures and then read CHILDREN DURING THE HOLOCAUST http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005142
Perhaps the murdering of little children, who have nothing to do with the actions of Hamas, is seen as a sort of pre-emptive strike against future suicide bombers?
Obviously, Israel is heavily populated with some seriously sick sociopaths that have an unquenchable thirst for the blood of children that is equal to or perhaps far greater than some Nazis.
It might interesting for some to look at those pictures and then read CHILDREN DURING THE HOLOCAUST http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005142
Perhaps the murdering of little children, who have nothing to do with the actions of Hamas, is seen as a sort of pre-emptive strike against future suicide bombers?
Obviously, Israel is heavily populated with some seriously sick sociopaths that have an unquenchable thirst for the blood of children that is equal to or perhaps far greater than some Nazis.
I believe the photo on the upper right was taken in South Lebanon, in an incident where villagers were ordered by the IDF to evacuate, which they did, but were then shelled.
Colonel,
Not for a lack of photos (I no longer look at the photos sent to me, the effect has meant that I have slept very little over the last few weeks), but the third picture from the left on the top row and the middle picture in the bottom row are from the massacre of the Marwahin refugees in Lebanon in 2006 (families who were ordered out of their homes by the Israelis and then executed by an Israeli Apache – Perhaps the same Israelis who, according to the ex-IDF posters on here, do not kill civilians)
Music of our times.
A sad commentary on the cruelty of modern man.
No matter whose war, it’s always the innocent who suffer most.
I think they are Gaza. They are definitely Arab and Levantine, not Iraq. Where else are there so many dead children?
I think myself there will be a much higher figure for the dead than what is said now. They’ve hardly had a chance to clear the bombed buildings. Probably a lot more dead under the rubble.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIhVbD0Ocoo
Yes
These are very sad and tragic pictures, if indeed they are actually the truth floating around on the internet.
Digital photography is a hobby of mine. With easily available software programs such as Photoshop, you can make up any image of anybody doing anything (including dead babies wraped in Hamas flags). Photography simply can’t be taken at face value anymore. For an islamicist propagandist it’s almost better than getting the “72 virgin” deal.
I’ve created a little propaganda and disinformation in my time.(The Colonel is very familar with the concepts. He may have even done a little himself.) I’m not saying some innocents weren’t killed in Gaza. But I’d say these particular photos smell like propaganda to me.
I have no way of knowing for sure, and neither do any of you. But my personal bet about these photos is to paraphrase one Mr Valdimir Ilyich Lenin (lead man in slaughtering a 100 million or so innocents) “boys let’s create some good propaganda and fish for useful idiots”.
May God have mercy on their souls–and on the souls of those who did this.
Don’t expect much of that from the relatives of these dead kids. Consider how you would feel, if that was your son or daughter, or niece or nephew lying there torn to bits in the dust. I know how I would feel, and I have to say, that if I could identify someone to focus that on, the results wouldn’t be particularly pretty.
And by extension, think about Thomas Jefferson’s comment, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” He was talking about slavery, but the thought is just as relevant here–in the end, what goes around comes around, and chickens generally come home to roost.
I think that it’s about time (PAST time) to begin formulating an intellectual foreign policy that includes a moral dimension as a first-order component.
“you can make up any image of anybody doing anything (including dead babies wraped in Hamas flags)”
Highlander, maybe you should have been watching something other than the MSM (if you are in the US) then you would have seen the children dying in the hospitals. In fact, if you contact Al Jazeera, Press TV or Ramattan they have footage of one of the children in the top left picture dying on camera. I presume he was dying but hey he could have been a really good 3 year old actor.
The Angry Arab has been posting many photos like these over the past 3 weeks.
One can only expect that the Palestinians will want to return the favor.
Highlander, always remember all sides look for useful idiots, and you could just as easily be one.
Highlander, re:
“But my personal bet about these photos is to paraphrase one Mr Valdimir Ilyich Lenin (lead man in slaughtering a 100 million or so innocents) “boys let’s create some good propaganda and fish for useful idiots”.
What planet are you living on.
There is no need to fake anything. Hundreds of real beseiged human beings trapped in the mostdensly populated tiny little patch of the ME have been slaughtered by real state-of-the-art weapons. Hundreds of them children. Thousand upon thousands wounded. 21 days of aerial bombardment, shelling and tank fire, replete with the cold-blooded murder of a little girl by an Israeli Captain, reported here earlier, apparently documented by the captain’s own contemporaneously recorded words.
The stomach-churning evidence is readily available from a plethora of sources in only a bit longer than it takes to quote Lenin.
The useful idiots are those who allow this carnage and criminality to rage on unabated as intended by the criminals and their armourers. The people who call for securing Gaza against arms smuggling whilst saying nothing about arms smuggling to the aggressor Occupying Power, Israel.
Nevermind semantics about the divided nature of Fatah/Hamas control of the Occupied Territories. They have been at war, occupied and under siege. Legally Gaza and the West Bank are one political entity occupied and abused by Israel for decades. Legally, they are entitled to engage in armed struggle against the occupier from any part of the occupied territories by the feeble means available.
The international community, under international law, the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions has a duty to give succor to the Palestinians and to prosecute Israel.
Sadly, you live on the same planet I do. Where talk is of sealing the Gaza border from arms smuggling instead of ousting the Israelis from Gaza and the West Bank, and securing Israel’s neighbours from it, then extracting massive reparations to rebuild the destroyed lands.
I’d be prepared to trust material from here:
http://electronicintifada.net/;
and from the Palestinain Centre For Human Rights here:
http://www.pchrgaza.org
The latter has a lot of pictures and video. It also has daily reporting from the scene detailing the specifics – names, addresses, ages, times of incidents – of buildings struck, deaths, injury and casualty reports, including more deaths announced daily by hospitals in Gaza.
Please go to these sights and let us know if you divine them frauds after actually reviewing them in some depth.
This link contains a series of photos of child victims of the Israeli attack on Gaza complete with sources (mostly WAFA and AFP) and context, i.e. place, date, names of victims. The children shown in 2 of the pictures you posted: those in the top line – far left and middle – are from this same tragic occasion (Zaitoun, Gaza Strip, 5th Jan).
http://group121.blogspot.com/2009/01/gaza-photo-gallery.html
Dear Highlander,
You’re absolutely right that digital photography and Photoshop have allowed people with agendas to fabricate “evidence” to support those agendas. But the baseline truth–and there is NO avoiding this–is that the policies of both Israel (and by extension the United States) and Hamas have directly, and predictably, resulted in the deaths of many children in Gaza. There is just NO way that anyone can avoid that conclusion. These pictures may or may not be accurate (my guess is that they probably are), and they may or may not be from this particular conflict (at some point I guess I really don’t care about that–we’re talking about dead babies one way or another). Even if you are a propagandist and you want to wrap a dead child in an Israeli or Palestinian flag (notice, please, that this is not the case with all except perhaps one pictures), you have to start with a baseline picture–which in this case is a dead kid. I’m sorry, but that attempt at whitewashing these pictures just won’t fly.
The one response to these pictures (which reflect a fundamental reality whether they are themselves specifically accurate or not) that is unacceptable to me, is to deflect the discussion into a technical analysis of whether they are themselves 100% accurate, unmodified, and representative.
The bottom line is, I really don’t much care if these pictures are from Gaza last week, or Lebanon a few years ago, or from Israel or for that matter from Germany in 1943. The central point for me is, enough is damn well enough. It’s time to end this [expletive deleted] exercise, and stop our (I write from a US perspective) enabling of this bullshit.
The Israelis have now used up every free pass they ever could have expected to get, and as far as I’m concerned, they can go whistle for their supper until they roll back the settlements to where they were around 1975, put Jerusalem and the Golan Heights back on the table, and admit their guilt over the Liberty.
Fuck it (Pat, feel free to delete that) — I’ve had enough, and this last exercise in state-sponsored terror (and there really is no other way to characterize it once you really begin to think about what they’ve been doing) is one step over any line I’m prepared to spot them.
Al-Jazeera provides a list with the full names, ages and dates of death of 210 of the 300+ children killed in Gaza:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911591418168902.html
– accompanied by yet-another tragic funeral pic (Getty).
…..
Homer,
Especially at this time, it is important to keep things in perspective. Nazis did not believe that the Jews represented an existentialist threat to them; many Israelis do believe that of the Palestinians, devoid of any reality that view might be, it still is true that this is what many of them believe. Israelis are not Nazis, horrifying as some of their works are. Do not let your grief run away with your common sense.
Highlander,
So we should understand that you are telling us that these could not possibly be pictures of recently dead Palestinian children? Or, are you telling us that they were all holding AK-47s in their hands when the brave Israeli soldiers shot them with great reluctance, weeping all the while, and the Hamas propagandists removed the guns and put dolls in their hands to make it look like they were innocents, gleefully chuckling all the while at that stupid American Byron who would become an instant Palestinian sympathizer?
B.R.
This may be of some interest to those who believe that the IDF is an honorable army.
“Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head.”
But if you don’t have the time to read it or the url isn’t apparent, here are some pertinent excerpts:
“Dr Yahia, a professor of neurosurgery, believes that the bullet was shot from close range. “If it changes course inside the brain it has high velocity and its penetrative force is also high. I can’t precisely decide whether these children are being shot at as a target, but in some cases the bullet comes from the front of the head and goes towards the back, so I think the gun has been directly pointed at the child.”
Dr Ayman Abd Al Hadi, a medical team leader at the hospital, said: “We’ve had one child with two bullets in the head and nowhere else.”
http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Egypt/10276545.html
Thank you all for info posted. The website http://www.pchrgaza.org is especially helpful.
The suggestion made re “formulating an intellectual foreign policy that includes a moral dimension as a first-order component” seems wise.
Perhaps the introductory of the US declaration of independence provides a starting point that will resonate.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in Dec-1948, provides a more detailed framework for moral conduct in international relations.
Maslov’s hierarchy of needs is also a starting point. How can we find it acceptable to be completely at our ease while others lack food, water, shelter, and security?
The New Testament’s message is one of love. Recall Matthew 22:39 “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. That should resonate as well.
I am not as good as those declarations and as the people who exemplify best moral conduct, but at least I sometimes know what is right, and what is wrong, and have the responsibility and free will to choose.
It is useful to think globally but effective action for most of us is local, particular to our situations.
Video – uploaded Jan 7 09 – of mass funeral of children killed in Israeli strike on UN school, showing rows of small shrouded bodies looking near-identical to those in 2 of the pics posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-i2tbYmflI&feature=related
Info posted by uploader:
From AFP via Yahoo News yesteday:
(My Bold)
410 were children out of 1200 killed!
34% of those killed were children!
Not even folks with chutzpah would attempt to benignly call that “collateral damage”, would they?
Well, enough with the rhetorical questions.
And just so there is no misunderstanding, here’s what the real point of the news article was all about:
While the Israeli military’s war against Gaza is over, the Israeli propaganda war against us, the rest of the world, is not.
HIghlander:
Digital photography is a hobby of mine. With easily available software programs such as Photoshop, you can make up any image of anybody doing anything (including dead babies wraped in Hamas flags). Photography simply can’t be taken at face value anymore. For an islamicist propagandist it’s almost better than getting the “72 virgin” deal.
Oh, really? Well, digital simulation is something of a professional sideline for me, too, and I disagree completely with your assertions here.
I’ll also note that while it’s possible in theory to use digital tools (e.g., Gimp, Photoshop) to modify images, fabricating realistic images (and especially videos) out of whole cloth is a lot less tractable in practice, as the special-effects wizards of Hollywood can attest.
So… could you please back up your assertions with some concrete evidence of your skills? How about cooking up a believable picture of Lenin hugging Arafat? Or better still. how about a video of children of Gaza threatening IDF troops?
If it’s so easy for you to do, then please let’s see you produce some of the appropriate evidence so the rest of us can more fully subscribe to your assertion.
And while we’re on this topic, it’s worthwhile to look at the metadata for the images (which here has been stripped, unfortunately). A digital image contains considerable metadata (i.e., ‘data about the data”) that should help verify its authenticity, e.g., date the photograph was taken, type of camera, etc. Just about any digital camera stores this information — the trick is not losing it as it’s transferred.
Anyone who receives such images should first check for the presence of such metadata, as that’s a key step in determining authenticity and provenance of the images.
Cieran,
the point is probably that there are hobby digital photographers much as there are hobby apologists. It’s also very easy to write a few lines about how inconvenient photographs could be, must be fakes and can thus be discounted – much easier actually than photoshop-ing some casualty photos.
Which is in a sense comforting. Highlander doesn’t really like children casualties, or so I presume. He probably just chooses to believe that these particular ones aren’t for real because if they were, he’d face a moral dilemma. So they must be fakes. That’s my most benevolent guess.
Take note:
Israel recruits ‘army of bloggers’ to combat anti-Zionist Web sites
The effort is already going on for a while. I guess this site is labled “problematic” too.
A couple of Chinese idioms :”Kill a chicken before a monkey.” “Kill one to warn a hundred.”
A message to the Iranians?
“Children found with bullets lodged in their head
By Topaz Amoore/The Telegraph Group Limited
Published: January 18, 2009, 23:15
“Cairo: Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head…”
http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Egypt/10276545.html
Would these bullets be from pistols or assault rifles? Both? Any two to the body and one to the head patterns? Just curious. Data?
Will the “pro-Israel” US media interview doctors and surviving children? Probably a bit much for the “pro-Israel” onwers of US media. Have to keep the bovine American masses in their pens after all…awaiting slaughter like the Palestinians today and, say, the Russian Slavs under the Bolsheviki.
I have been trying to avoid looking at too many images, to keep from nightmares. Stress reduction is an important part of my treatment of advanced breast cancer.
Are photographs necessary? Does anyone doubt that 300+ dead children is simply horrible?
If the number were “only” 100 children would it be acceptable?
The Israel-right-or-wrong crowd always squawks about any images or facts posted about the effects of Israel’s wars. THey just don’t want light shone on the IDF’s actions. THey know it’s all about public perception. They want to allow Israel to butcher Arabs in secret.
I have lived a long time, through many Israeli killings, and while I am sorrow-stricken at this latest round, at least I can take comfort that more information is available about this one, and more non-Arabs seem to care than in 1982, 1974, 1996 or even 2006.
Cieran,
Highlander has told us that he has ‘created a little propaganda and disinformation in my time.’
Earlier he wrote that ‘it is purely my personal opinion, but I think the BBC like a lot of liberals are closet anti semites.’
To anyone who knows anything about the BBC, or contemporary British society, or British history — including, notably, the history of the debates over appeasement — this is palpable nonsense.
I had thought it was simple ignorance. But who knows — perhaps Highlander knew what he was saying was false, and was simply practising disinformation!
David Habakkuk:
I agree completely. And I’ll note that the relationship between “digital photography as a hobby” and “being able to create believable faked images” is similar to the relationship between “eating” and “being a great cook”, namely one is a lot easier than the other!
But my real comment was the one regarding photo metadata. The EXIF fields, when left untampered, are a bonanza of useful information. Some newer cameras even note where the picture was taken (thanks to GPS technology). And since many folks who take digital pictures aren’t aware of the existence or utility of picture metadata, it often is preserved for perusal.
By the way, if you’ve never visited Driftglass’ website (at driftglass.blogspot.com), it’s well worth a trip to that part of the web. In addition to writing some of the planet’s best polemical prose, he’s very good at photoshopping images of our so-called leaders.
1. The SST posted images are consistent with those posted at the Palestine Center for Human Rights Gaza.
2.Go to Google Images and enter “children dead gaza” for example to see a large selection. Again the SST posted images appear to be consistent.
3. In the past, I have been a member of the working press, journalist and photographer, and an editor of a newspaper in Virginia. We used Photoshop-Quark for layout and I worked with it extensively. I have been involved with photography since 1963 and have won awards from the Virginia Press Association for my press images. I know something about documentary and press photography.
Israel making friends. UN damage assessment. http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/asp/prod_free.asp?id=120
Its been fascinating to follow the consistency of the talking points of the practitioners of the Art of Hasbara (propaganda) across the internet. It seems more and more obvious to me that the Georgian campaign was a dry run for this one, and makes me wonder just how much influence Israel had over the Georgian decisions. From a Norwegian pov, the sliming of the names of the surgeons Gilbert and Fosse who at one point were the only western voices talking out of Gaza has been disturbing. This also sets into perspective a campaign among the Israel-firsters about a month before the war against Norway, who is the only NATO country to keep in contact with Hamas.
Over at Abu Muqawama we have seen highly decorated US officers functioning as more or less propaganda outlets. Its disconcerting to see how the left lacks a similar capacity of gathering together overwhelming detailed data to cover the greater lies. I would really like to see some linguists and logicians analyse the Israeli rhetoric models (always get hung up on points! Never talk strategy! Work in packs, good cop/bad cop!) as well as their memetic structures.
“Dr Erik Fosse, a Norwegian surgeon who worked at the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, also told Al Jazeera there was a significant increase in double amputations.
“We suspect they [Israel] used Dime weapons because we saw cases of huge amputations or flesh torn off the lower parts of the body,” he said.
“The pressure wave [from a Dime device] moves from the ground upwards and that’s why the majority of patients have huge injuries to the lower part of the body and abdomen.”
Cancer fears
Fosse described the injuries as “extreme” and “much more dramatic” than those inflicted by landmines as “legs are blown off to the groin, it’s like they have been cut to pieces”.
He described them as “new injuries” that most doctors will not have come across, although he noted similar wounds were reported in the 2006 Lebanon war.
Noting that Dime explosives are precision weapons that are supposed to minimise civilian casualties, Fosse said: “The problem is that most of the patients I saw were children. If they [the Israelis] are trying to be accurate, it seems obvious these weapons were aimed at children.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911916132228885.html
There are some maps about Gaza with statistics per deaths and wounded at
http://kharita.wordpress.com/
Along the right hand margin of the website there are numerous links per Gaza situation.
fnord
Somehow, these “US officers” don’t seem to show up here to discuss this with me… pl
P. Lang: I do believe the one acknowledged officer dropped by a couple of threads ago under the nick “Observer”. I seemed to recognise a certain signal profile. From pretty secure named sources, I dont think you have to put US officer in brackets, though. Theres people who volunteer for the Hasbara campaign from personal reasons as well, they dont always get paid. Some see it as duty, I would believe, as a service on the cyberfront that doesnt interfer with their loyalties (as indeed it does not, in my opinion).
I wonder how commentators on this blog would react to pictures of Israeli children injured or killed by Hamas rockets? Would Mr Lang post them too?
Kolya
I am waiting for the pictures. Please provide documentation if it is available. That will lend force to your argument. pl
fnord
If “Observer” is a US officer, active, former or retired, then I missed that.
I don’t recall that he identified himself as such, but I am sure that someone will tell me if he did. I DO recall his discussion of his outraged patriotism, etc.
I await his return. pl
fnord.
The kind of ignorance and vitriol that is common among two of AM’s most prolific contributors makes me wonder if they are members of JINSA. Even General Keith Dayton, who is in charge of training Fatah’s new militias was positively gushing about his IDF “colleagues” in a JP interview awhile back.
As for Georgia, the Israeli media was rife with articles detailing the extent of Israeli involvement with training, advice, weapons, etc but stressed that not only did they warn Saakashvili against his foolish crusade, they pulled Israeli personnel out several weeks before it commenced and months earlier, had stopped providing Georgia with anything other than defensive weapons.
(Nasrallah made great hay of the Israeli-trained Georgian troops who threw down their weapons and deserted the battlefield)
Israel is always pragmatic when it comes to such matters and in balance, having the delusional Saaka as an ally couldn’t compete with having Putin as an enemy.
Kolya:
I wonder how commentators on this blog would react to pictures of Israeli children injured or killed by Hamas rockets? Would Mr Lang post them too?
You already know the answer, if you’ve spent any time reading those who post here. Kids are kids, regardless of where they are born. All are innocents, and deserve to be treated as such.
SOmething really pleasant is the fact that Ban Ki-moon is set to tour Gaza later today. As an old UN fan, I have to say that the stance of the UN in this issue has been the most heartening so far. It seems clear to me that Obama by necessity must re-engage the UN in order to fulfill his policies. Ban Ki-moons presence in Gaza as a guest of Hamas is a pretty strong signal.
The Palestine Human Rights Center website has a special report entitled “Blood on Their Hands. Child Killings by Israeli Occupation Forces in the Gaza Strip, June 2007-June 2008.”
http://www.pchrgaza.org/
Data in this report indicates about 50% or so of the child deaths are from gunshot wounds.
In the thread here some SST readers have posted statistics about the current situation indicating about 30 percent of victims are children.
Do such reports suggest a sort of ritual murder of gentile children by dark circles in the IDF, or the IDF generally?
Clifford,
A former member of the IDF has already been on here and informed us that the IDF does not kill civilians.
Any suggestion that they do from simply proves that you are part of an orchestrated campaign to besmirch the good name of Israel, that you are trying to dim the “light unto the nations” and you are most likely ant-semitic.
And all data, from any organisation implying that civilians wee targetted are pure lies (that is if they werent created in photoshop)
fnord,
Why do you spend some much time arguing with these guys over at AM? They couch their propaganda in stastics that are all lies (which ive shown tme and time again) and do a pretty bad job of hiding their obvious racist leanings.
lalla
>Israel is always pragmatic when it comes to such matters and in balance, having the delusional Saaka as an ally couldn’t compete with having Putin as an enemy.
They certainly started kow-towing to Moscow immediately after the war with an alacrity and an abasement never seen in their relations with Washington.
I found it quite funny.
If pictures like these aren’t being taken in Gaza, why is Israel censoring the media there?
Mo,
As I was saying, some might argue that there is a pattern of Israeli systematic slaughter of gentile children whether in Occupied Palestine or in Lebanon. Whether it is “ritual murder” or not I suppose some historical or forensic experts can tell us. At a minimum, it appears genocidal.
1. For comparative purposes we can look at the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006. For example, here is an article about Qana and the several dozen gentile children murdered there by the Israelis.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003164325_qana31.html
2. Here is a Wiki piece on ritual murder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel_against_Jews
3. A separate analysis of the Israeli murder of gentile women is also in order. Some statistics combine “women and children” into one category but it would be better to have separate categories for a more detailed analysis.
4. For the word “gentile” see Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentile
When you elect a government which promises to fight Israel to the death, don’t be surprised when the Israelis take you at your word. When you hide behind women and children to fire your weapons, don’t cry when your shields get shot in the return fire.
Clifford,
Sometimes my attempts at humor fall rather flat. I do hope you read the sarcasm in my earlier post…
Mark,
Read up, grow up or shut up.
Mo,
I did note your apt humor and tried to put a little sarcasm into my own reply.
But I still am troubled by the statistical matter (not to mention the photographic evidence) of systematic slaughter of children by the IDF whether in Gaza, West Bank, or Lebanon. There is something unusual about these high numbers which needs investigation.
Also, there are some reports that new types of weapons were used in Gaza as doctors report new types of wounds not encountered before. These are not only blast effect wounds but also highly unusual and fatal internal wounds.
Are these weapons from US inventories to be tested out on the Palestinians by the IDF? The US reportedly sent a massive amount of ordnance to Israel in the fall of 2004 prior to the elections here. (so they would have them in Israel if Bush lost).
Or are the weapons of Israeli design? Just what type of “experiments” are the Israelis up to with respect to the slaughter of Palestinians, children in particular.
In any case, some might say Dr. Mengele would be proud of the IDF as would be many of the old Chekisti.
Mark:
Indeed, and this will work both ways, won’t it?
And thus this war, the latest battle of which has been just concluded, will continue for decades to come.
Mo, really? Really? Is that the best you can do? Babak, No, the morality does not work both ways, as of the various Israeli parties who actually share control of the country, I’ve not heard of any platforms which call for the complete eradication of the Palestinians.
How much are you getting paid to defend the killing of babies, children and women, Mark?
Yes Mark, for propogators of cliched and outdated agitprop thats all you get.
1. Ritual murder of children:
“One of the most alarming features of the conflict in Gaza is the number of child casualties. More than 400 were killed. Many had shrapnel or blast injuries sustained as the Israeli army battled Hamas militants in Gaza’s densely populated civilian areas.
But the head of neurosurgery at the El-Arish hospital, Dr Ahmed Yahia, told me that brain scans made it clear that a number of the child victims had been shot at close range.”…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/
from_our_own_correspondent/7843307.stm
2. Medical experimentation on Palestinians:
“Local doctors say a number of both widespread and unusual injuries may indicate that new types of weapons were used on the Gaza population during the war. Health officials are seeing wounds they have never seen before, or at least not on such a massive scale.
“There has been a significant loss of life here in Gaza for reasons that are unexplainable medically,” said Dr. Skaik.
Mona’s injury is characteristic of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). DIMEs are munitions that, packed with tungsten powder, produce an intense explosion at about the level of the knee, with signs of severe heat at the point of amputation.”
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/cunningham.php?articleid=14121
Mark:
You had written “When you hide behind women and children to fire your weapons, don’t cry when your shields get shot in the return fire.”.
To which I replied that “…will work both ways”.
I will try to illustrate my reply by the following actual event.
A Palestinian man broke into one of the Jewish settlement in Gaza a few years back and killed a pregnant woman and her four young children (all less than 10 years of age – if I recall correctly).
One could argue, in the same vein as your remarks, that indeed the settler family, by choosing to live among an alien, conquered, and hateful people, brought it onto themselves. [In my opinion, as responsible parents, their primary responsibility should have been to the welfare of their children first & foremost.]
You also wrote: “I’ve not heard of any platforms which call for the complete eradication of the Palestinians”. In fact, I am not aware of a platform by Palestinians that specifically calls for the destruction of Israelis; what I have heard is HAMAS charter stipulating the destruction of the State of Israel. I do not believe those are the same statements.
And I do not believe that these types of statements carry moral purport. The reason I do not think so it because morality has to do – in my opinion – with individual action (moral choice) at an specific occasion in specific place and time. On paper, everyone is ethical – but one is best pray to God not to test his moral mettle in practice.
I would like to further observe that Israelis, even those who are considered “liberal” by the Israeli standards, want to get rid of the Arab citizens of Israel one way or another. Their argument – if one could call it such – is that Jews have only one country while Arabs have 22 states. The desire to get rid of Palestinians exists at all levels of the Israeli society for they covet the land.