A recently retired US Marine who served in Iraq says US soldiers would never respond like the Israelis:

[emphasis added]

I am dismayed by the rhetoric from US politicians and pundits to the effect that “if the US were under rocket attack from Mexico or Canada, we would respond like the Israelis”. This a gross insult to US servicemen; I can assure you that we would NOT respond like the Israelis. In fact, US armed forces and adjunct civilians are under attack constantly in Iraq and Afghanistan by people who are much better armed, much better trained and far deadlier than Hamas (I’ll ignore for now that the politicians seem to be oblivious to this fact). Israel has indeed taken a small number of casualties from Hamas rocket fire (about 20 killed since 2001), but we have taken thousands of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, including many civilian personnel. Hundreds of American casualties have occurred due to indirect fire, often from mortars. This is particularly true in or near the Green Zone in Baghdad. This fire often originates from densely populated urban areas.

Americans do not, I repeat DO NOT, respond to that fire indiscriminately. When I say “indiscriminately”, I mean that even if we can precisely identify the source of the fire (which can be very difficult), we do not respond if we know we will cause civilian casualties. We always evaluate the threat to civilians before responding, and in an urban area the threat to civilians is extremely high. If US servicemen violate those rules of engagement and harm civilians, I assure you we do our best to investigate — and mete out punishment if warranted. There are differing opinions on the conflict in Iraq, but I am proud of the conduct of our servicemen there.

With that in mind, I find the conduct of the Israeli army in Gaza to be brutal and dishonorable, and it is insulting that they and others claim that the US military would behave in the same way. I know the Israelis are operating under difficult circumstances, but their claim that they follow similar rules of engagement rings hollow; I see little evidence for this claim given the huge number of civilian casualties they have caused from indirect fire.

In particular, I am stunned at the Israeli explanation for the 30+ civilians killed at the UN school. The Israelis say they were responding to mortar fire from the school. Mortars are insidious because their high trajectory and lack of primary flash make it very difficult to trace the source of the fire; you have to have a spotter locate the crew. The Israelis claim that they traced the source of the fire precisely to the school; if so, they must have directly spotted the crew. Thus it is inconceivable that the Israelis did not know that the target was a crowded UN school, yet they chose to fire on the school anyhow.

I say without hesitation that this is a criminal act. If the Israelis had said, “sorry, it was an accident”, that could indicate a targeting problem, confusion, or inferior training.

But to openly admit that they responded reflexively to the Hamas fire without consideration for the inevitable civilian casualties is beyond the pale. The Israelis blame Hamas for firing from the school (although UN personnel on the ground dispute this), but choosing to fire directly at civilians is far worse; it is tantamount to murder. US servicemen do not behave that way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we face much deadlier adversaries (Hamas mortar crews are apparently not very effective: I believe that all but one of the total Israeli combat fatalities have been from friendly fire). In the rare and unfortunate cases where US personnel have willingly targeted civilians, they have been court-martialed and punished.

The Israeli approach in Gaza strikes me as uncontrolled and vengeful. My objective analysis is that it has little tactical effectiveness; my opinion is that its main goal is to whip the entire Gaza population into submission. This is disturbingly similar to the Israelis’ conduct in Lebanon in 2006, so I feel obliged to say that the Israeli military displays a concerted pattern of disregard for civilian lives. I am not a politician, but in my opinion the US should take some sort of political action in this regard. If we continue to formally condone Israel’s dishonorable and brutal military conduct in Gaza, I fear there will eventually be dire consequences for our country.

— JDS, North Carolina

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/01/08/opinion/08kristof.html?permid=141#comment141

Tim Butcher
London Telegraph
Saturday, Jan 10, 2008

The United Nations has called for Israel to be investigated for war crimes over the shelling of a house full of Palestinian civilians which left dozens dead.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the attack, first revealed in The Telegraph, on members of the extended Samouni family in the Gazan town of Zeitoun “appears to have all the elements of war crimes.”

Her remarks came after the International Committee of the Red Cross accused Israel of breaking the rules of war by failing to help the wounded in the incident.

According to the ICRC, four infant children were found too weak to stand after clinging for 48 hours to what ambulance crew believed to be the corpses of their mothers while Israeli soldiers were less than 100 yards away.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4209242/Israeli-strike-on-civilian-house-may-be-war-crime-says-UN-gaza.html

“The delivery of ammunition is to a pre-positioned U.S. munitions stockpile in Israel in accordance with a congressionally authorized 1990 agreement between the U.S. and Israel,” Ryder said.

“This previously scheduled shipment is routine and not in support of the current situation in Gaza.”

The shipment originated in the United States, Ryder said. He provided no further details on the intended cargo.

A “hazardous material” designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators but gives no other details.

The request for the ship was made Dec. 31, with the first leg of the charter to arrive no later than Jan. 25 and the second at the end of the month.

The tender for the vessel follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December.

A German shipping firm which won that tender confirmed the order when contacted by Reuters but declined to comment further. (Additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Washington)

Source: Reuters North American News Service

JOHN HEILPRIN
AP News

Jan 09, 2009 03:03 EST

http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/01/09/un-one-third-of-gaza-dead-injured-are-children/

DID YOU VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA? he’s the President now…is that unconnected?

You are working so hard to make everyone in Palestine pay for it, and this is actually a perfect example of “collective punishment” behavior. “Collective punishment” is a war crime.

From the Geneva Conventions:

“Collective punishments

Article 33. No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”

So if someone came here and punished you for voting for Barack Obama, that would be a war crime as well.

Israeli extremists take revenge on Palestinians

By Jack Kelley
USA Today
September 4, 2001

HEBRON, West Bank – After a quick prayer, Avi Shapiro and 12 other Jewish settlers put on their religious skullcaps, grabbed their semi-automatic rifles and headed toward Highway 60. There, they pushed boulders, stretched barbed wire and set tires afire to form a barricade that, they said, would stop even the biggest of Palestinian taxis. Then they waited for a vehicle to arrive. As they crouched in a ditch beside the road, Shapiro, the leader of the group, gave the settlers orders: Surround any taxi, “open fire” and kill as many of the “blood-sucking Arab” passengers as possible. “We are doing what (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon promised but has failed to do: drive these sons of Arab whores from the land of Israel,” said Shapiro, 42, who moved here with his wife and four children three years ago from Brooklyn. “If he won’t get rid of the Muslim filth, then we will.”

Claiming they have been abandoned by Israel’s government and determined to rid the West Bank of Arabs, vigilante Jewish settlers are shooting and beating Palestinians, stealing and destroying their property and poisoning and diverting their water supplies, Israeli and Palestinian officials say.

While Jewish extremists have lashed out before, most notoriously in 1994 when a U.S. settler, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down 29 Arabs in a nearby mosque, never before have they struck with such frequency, Israeli officials say. And nowhere has the violence been as intense as in this disputed city, believed to be the burial place of the biblical prophet Abraham.

Nearly 450 right-wing Jews, all of whom are armed and claim a biblical right to the land, live here among 120,000 Palestinians. Many, like Shapiro and his colleagues, are ready to strike at any time.

Israeli and U.S. officials have warned Sharon that if the violence against Palestinian civilians increases, it could enflame already high emotions and lead the entire region into war.

“It only takes a spark to light a very big fire here,” says Yossi Sarid, a left-wing Israeli opposition leader. “This is a city that is cursed.”
‘A time bomb’

Since the start of the latest surge of violence in Israel a year ago this month, at least 119 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group that has been sympathetic to the Palestinians’ plight. Hundreds of others have been hospitalized, it says.

During the same time, at least 30 settlers have been killed by Palestinian gunmen.

In July, Jewish vigilantes killed three Palestinians, including a 3-month-old boy, in Nablus. The State Department condemned the attack as a “barbaric act” of “unconscionable vigilantism.” No one has been charged in the attack.

“These people are a time bomb,” says Hanna Nasser, Palestinian mayor of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. “No one is safe.”

The attacks, occurring almost daily, have been condemned by nearly all Israelis. Politicians, who fear the extremists will spoil Israel’s attempt to portray itself as the victim rather than the aggressor in this conflict, have been the most vocal. “These Jewish terrorists are criminals,” Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres says. “They’ve gone too far.”

Yet, the attacks are expected to increase, Israeli officials say. A group of Jewish vigilantes who possess bomb-making materials has formed in Hebron, they say.

The group, which claimed responsibility for the three recent Palestinian deaths, has been distributing fliers in the West Bank that read: “Revenge is holy. It should be up to the government to do it, but unfortunately, the government does not care about the murder of Jews. There are people whose patience has run out.”

Security officials also fear the extremists are widening their targets to include Israeli police and soldiers sent to protect the settlers, as well as Western diplomats and European peace monitors. All have recently been attacked. The settlers accuse them of not doing enough to protect them or of favoring the Palestinians.

Last week, 85 European Community monitors who had patrolled Hebron since 1994 withdrew after complaining of weeks of verbal and physical abuse by the settlers. “Every day, we were kicked, dragged and beaten by the settlers,” says Karl-Henrik Sjursen of Norway, chief of the observer mission. “They made life impossible for us.”
Shots at a taxi

On a recent Sunday, Shapiro and the 12 other extremists spotted their first target: a white Palestinian taxi that had turned the corner and begun to rumble toward them. From a hill 50 yards away, the men could be seen removing the safety locks from the weapons. Their wives were grabbing extra ammunition clips. Their children, all of them under age 12, were picking up rocks.

But the Palestinian driver, upon seeing the settlers, brought his Mercedes stretch taxi to a sudden stop 50 yards from the checkpoint. He quickly turned the car around. Cursing aloud, Shapiro ordered the men to open fire. The shooting lasted for 10 seconds.

At least two bullets hit the car. One shattered its back window. Several women wearing white Islamic headscarves could be heard screaming and seen ducking. It wasn’t known whether anyone was wounded.

“We’ll keep this up until we eliminate all the Muslim filth,” Shapiro said before the confrontation. “We have to: It’s our Jewish duty.”
God’s land

Analysts such as Elisha Efrat of Tel Aviv University estimate that only 10% of the 177,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza are extremists, people who are willing to die before giving up their land.

Many of them live behind 25-foot tall stone fences and bulletproof windows in Hebron. The 450 settlers here, and the 7,000 others who live down the road in Israeli-controlled territory, see themselves as the guardians of Hebron, which is considered Judaism’s second holiest city after Jerusalem. All are protected by several thousand Israeli soldiers and police.

“This is God’s land given to us, the Israeli people,” says settler Ariel Fischer, 38, citing biblical passages that support Israel’s claim of the land. Like most of the extremists, he’s Israeli-born. “If you don’t wear a yarmulke (skullcap), get out.”

Hebron is also home to 120,000 Palestinians, many of whom live in the hilltop area of Abu Sneineh.

For centuries, Arabs and Jews coexisted peacefully in Hebron. But a 1929 riot resulted in the deaths of more than 60 Jews. The British, who governed what was then Palestine, resettled the remaining Jews elsewhere.

In 1967, after Israel captured the West Bank of the Jordan River, some Jews returned. But those who came were the most ideologically extreme of Israelis. Backed by government policies that encouraged them to move into the West Bank, the Israelis claimed a biblical right to the city and demanded that the Arabs leave.

Then in 1997, the Israeli Army, which had controlled Hebron since the ‘67 war, withdrew from 80% of the city and ceded control to the Palestinian Authority. The remaining 20% was left for the settlers.

That was a recipe for disaster, settlers say. Almost daily since September, there have been shots fired into their settlement by Palestinian snipers. In response, Israel put 30,000 Palestinians, whose homes surround the settlement, under a 24-hour curfew. It prohibits them from leaving their homes, even to go to a doctor or attend school, and jails them if they do. Twice a week, the curfew is lifted for a few hours to allow the residents to shop. The rest of the time, they are in their homes.

Last week, hundreds of Israeli troops, backed by dozens of tanks and bulldozers, swept into Hebron for several hours to destroy buildings they say had been used by Palestinian snipers. Settlers want Israel to reestablish control of the area by permanently reoccupying all of Hebron. Until that happens, settlers say they’re forced to take “pre-emptive actions” to stop the Palestinian gunfire.

“People here are extremely upset,” says David Wilder, a spokesman for Jewish settlers here. “We’re upset by the daily shooting, killings and harassment by Palestinians. People feel abandoned (by Israel’s government) and so some people are going to take up guns.”

Says another settler spokesman Noam Federman, “If we don’t take up guns, we’ll be ducks in a shooting range.”

But Israeli officials say the settlers often provoke the violence. Unlike the Palestinians, the settlers are free to leave their homes at will. They regularly attack Palestinian shops while the Palestinians, who are forced to stay indoors because of the curfew, can only watch, human rights groups say.

Ahmad Abu Neni, 55, is blind and a Palestinian. His small kiosk of cleaning supplies has been ransacked three times since last September by settlers, human rights officials say. He’s also been beaten in the back with a brick and punched repeatedly, they add.

Neni says Israeli soldiers tried to break up one of the attacks by firing a concussion grenade at the attackers, only to set his clothes on fire. He suffered third-degree burns. His shop now closed, he survives on handouts of food and money. “If I had money and could see, I would leave,” Neni says. “It’s just a matter of time before they beat me again.”

Nearby, Nafez Bani Jaber, 45, was burying 123 of his sheep. He says they were poisoned last week after 10 Jewish extremists chased him off his fields. Israeli police say they have found needles dipped in poison that they believe the settlers used on the sheep. Police say poison also was dumped down a nearby well used by Palestinians.

“First they poisoned the sheep. Next will be the children,” Jaber says. “These are war crimes.”

Often, the violence directed at the Palestinians is aimed at their Muslim faith.

Settlers have spray painted graffiti reading “Mohammed is a homosexual,” referring to the Islamic prophet, and painted Jewish Stars of David on the walls of the local Arab market. They have also surrounded Muslim women and tried to rip off their Islamic headscarves and body veils, human rights groups say.

Samar Abdul-Shafti, a 36-year-old Palestinian mother of two, was photographed last month trying to escape several settlers who were beating her as they tried to remove her headscarf. It has happened two other times since then, she says, revealing bruises on her arms, legs and forehead.

“The Jews are trying to do to us what was done to them during the Holocaust,” Shafti says. “They must not be allowed to drive us from our homes. Someone must help.”
God’s army

Palestinian police say they don’t have the means to defend the Arab residents. Israeli soldiers seem unwilling or unable to help. Noam Tivon, Israeli Defense Forces brigade commander for Hebron, says his soldiers are in Hebron to protect the settlers, not the Palestinians. Tivon says his soldiers and police officers often are ambushed by the settlers, whom he calls “hooligans.” The settlers accuse the police of failing to stop the Arab violence.

“They throw rocks at us, curse at us and vandalize our police cars,” says Israeli policeman Shahar Mahsomi, 25. He suffered a concussion in March after a settler struck him on the head with a rock. Another settler tried to stab two police officers in the same scuttle. “I never thought I’d be fighting Jews,” Mahsomi says.

The situation is just as dangerous at the nearby settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Harsina where nearly 7,000 settlers, many of whom are hard-liners, regularly attack neighboring Palestinians.

“I can’t believe we are risking our lives to defend these fanatics,” says Sgt. Avi Alamm, 28 as he watches a settler boy, dressed as the late Goldstein, walk by with an Israeli flag. Goldstein, who gunned down the 29 Muslims, is revered among some settlers as a prophet. They encourage their children to dress like him on occasion. “The people make me ashamed to be a Jew,” Alamm says.

Now, many Israelis are calling on the government to dismantle extremist settlements such as the one here. “The Jewish settlement in Hebron is a major nuisance, and the lawless behavior by Jews there in recent days leads to one conclusion,” the Israeli newspaper “Ha’aretz” recently editorialized. “Hebron must be evacuated.”

There are militants in Israel who want all the Palestinian land.

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052596.html

‘We lost our homes for nothing,’ says reservist from former Gaza settlement

Three years after being evacuated from settlements in the Gaza Strip, some of the evacuees are now returning – in uniform.

Aharon Cruz, a paratroops officer, lived in Netzarim for two years before the disengagement. On Sunday, he and his unit, to which he had been recalled a mere day after his wedding last Thursday, were back at the settlement’s ruins in central Gaza.

“On one hand, there’s a feeling of ‘what did we leave for?’” said his father, Rabbi Ze’ev Cruz. “On the other hand, there’s joy that he is returning to a place he knows.”

“It’s a destructive feeling,” Neuman said. “I’m here on an emergency call-up and my son is fighting for what we once had. We said missiles would haunt Ashkelon and they said we were delusional. We lost our homes and our lives for nothing, for nothing at all in exchange. And in the end, we’re returning to fight there.”

and…
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1008454.html

05/08/2008
Settler group planning to reestablish Gaza bloc

The Homesh First Movement is expected to announce Tuesday that settlement groups are planning to return to settlements in Gush Katif evacuated during the August 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip. The core settlement groups hope to return the minute it is acceptable from a security standpoint, explained Boaz Haetzni, one of the leaders of the movement.

Haetzni told Haaretz that as soon as the Israel Defense Forces reenters the Gaza Strip, “and in our estimation the ‘big operation’ is only a matter of time, we will follow them in. We will not ask for permission from anyone. The [settlement] groups will be ready, and this evening we will start an organized sign-up for them. These core groups will do exactly what the group that reestablished Kfar Etzion did after 1967. They will return to the lands where they existed in the past, and will rebuild them,” said Haetzni.

I could overload this blog with the amount of rhetoric from these groups who would love to destroy all Palestinian homes to gain the land.

SO if you are going to focus on “the vast arab majority” instead of what was said, then you aren’t going to get it. There are many Israeli settlers who want the land. PERIOD, END O SUBJECT.

well with all due respect, I disagree with Ahmadinejad, but he specifically was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini, and and the comment was referring to the “regime” and there is no such phrase as “wipe off the map”.

Now I don’t want to get into a war of semantics, but I do find it alarming when people repeat misquotes, especially based on mistranslations. It is important to keep facts straight.

I asked my good friend to translate the text for me instead of relying upon someone else and he pointed to the words that clearly said in an email:
that it translated to…

“Emam goft een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzegar mahv shavad.”

“(Emam)Imam (goft)said (een)this (rezhim-e)regime (eshghalgar)occupying (Qods) Jerusalem (bayad)must (Safheye) pages of (ruzegar)times (mahv shavad)vanish”

Now, this doesn’t make it much less threatening, but it also doesn’t sound nearly as much like nuclear annihilation as many ignorant Americans make it when they repeat the meme “wipe off the map” when no such idiom exists in Farsi.

These details matter to any of us who are seriously trying to achieve peace because by endorsing our policies based on hyperbole laced translations is dangerous.

And same as I said about Hamas, better to not give fuel and win, than pour fertilizer on the garden of dissent and be guaranteed our conflicts.

I don’t take this shit lightly. I’ve been this way since I first heard Hal Lindsey go apeshit with the “Late Great Planet Earth” end times movie and book.

We have zealots on all sides here that will drive us to our own annihilation if we aren’t careful.

Just like I said about Hamas, we can really empower the radicals of Iran by acting ignorant about their culture, attacking them at every breath, and ignoring that they too have dissent.

Most people have no idea that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected (no naivety about whether it is rigged somewhat) by a system like ours with primaries and such. And even then he isn’t really the ultimate power, as that is left to the clerical elite.

This sort of ignorance and the lack of historical perspective on Persia and the battles between Iran and Iraq can undermine our goal of a peaceful middle east.

I do believe Iran can become a good player in the end. It all depends on whether we regain or maintain the moral high ground. Bush the Idiot doesn’t get it and Cheney the Zealot doesn’t want to.

But like you I have many years experience with Persians and I know more about it than I used to.

When I was young the big word of the day was Embargo! We were being conditioned to believe that having a Shah was good. Never mind that every year on the 4th of July we celebrated overthrowing the power of the monarchy here…lets prop up a monarch there!

And by doing so, we helped set up the Iranian revolution by ignorance.

One of my dear friends in LA still has wounds from chemical attacks when he was conscripted into the Iranian army back then. He’s one of the most peaceful guys in the world, and he’s a sufi, not a rabid muslim like most people think Iran is filled with.

Thanks for your thoughts.

I’d like to create an environment where it won’t matter if Hamas allows it.

I don’t think it is incumbent upon Israel to change the inner politics of Palestine, but it certainly within her power to help undermine the power of Hamas. It has been done before, so it just takes the will to do so.

I don’t disagree that Hamas is a bad player. And to be honest, I don’t know if there are people in Hamas who don’t want militant action…doesn’t seem like it at all, but ya know…factions do form.

Master Sun Tzu was clear that the best militarists undermine alliances, then plots.

I think we have more in common that we have been acknowledging Zeke.