Israel and Palestine

[gwprod12]

There's no such thing as accidental murder.

[AppleLegal]

Also it's higly likely that the laser guided weapon used to muder the UN peacekeepers was US.

But wonder this. If Israel can kill unarmed International UN Peacekeepers in a terrorist like attack (similar to that in Iraq a while back), what concern do they have with civilian deaths of arabs?

NONE AT ALL

And if Hezbollah can refuse to let the Red Cross visit Israeli soldiers..

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060728/wl_mi...conflictlebanon

 

On that note, In Iraq, more civilians have been killed by insurgant attacks on popular places then by US attacks. the Shi'ite vs Sunni conflict there is as bad as the Israel vs Rest of the Region one. Only difference is the Shi'ite vs Sunni conflict has not gotten as much press.

[yossicl]

UN peacekeepers ????

 

The holier-than-thou tone of outrage taken by Annan is surprising when it generally known that many UN missions are exploited as the cover for foreign agents, often hostile, to carry out spying operations in war zones. The inadvertent Israeli air strike revealed the fact that the UN force in Lebanon includes Chinese observers. One was killed along with an Austrian, a Canadian and a Finn. The presence of Chinese observers keeping an eye on the combat in South Lebanon has never before been reported.

 

Our intelligence experts compare the incident to the inadvertent US bombardment which destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1998, killing a number of Chinese “diplomats.” It was discovered that from that building the Chinese had operated sophisticated surveillance to track the performance of American warplanes, missiles and smart bombs.

 

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1191

[yossicl]

& today 20 wemen & 20 children killed by israeli's bombs !

 

welcome to the bush's peace !

 

The Israeli military said it had ordered residents of Qana, in the hills to the

east of the city of Tyre, to flee. It blamed Hizbollah for the casualties, saying

the militant group had been firing rockets from the village.

Israeli sources said the building had been

identified as a Hizbollah target and bombed

deliberately. But they said that had they

known how many women and children were

inside, the mission would have been aborted.

 

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,300...3535658,00.html

 

As I alredy said "the Palestinian (Hizbollah... whatever...) terrorists used their children as a “shield” to protect them from IDF. If they are so brave (as they says) why they are using their children's?"

 

 

If someone goes to sleep with rockets he should no cry when it’s falling on his head…

[gwprod12]

This is such a dumb war. I'm just hoping one side wipes the other out for good, so we can all move on.

[A Nonny Moose]

& today 20 wemen & 20 children killed by israeli's bombs !

 

welcome to the bush's peace !

 

Yeah, blame Bush for what is most likely terrorists planting people there to be killed. Sound strategery

[Korrupted]

I just hope some kind of resolution is able to be made soon..this bloodshed over land is so pointless.

[Mebster]

And if Hezbollah can refuse to let the Red Cross visit Israeli soldiers..

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060728/wl_mi...conflictlebanon

 

On that note, In Iraq, more civilians have been killed by insurgent attacks on popular places then by US attacks. the Shi'ite vs Sunni conflict there is as bad as the Israel vs Rest of the Region one. Only difference is the Shi'ite vs Sunni conflict has not gotten as much press.

I and any rationally minded person would call Hezbollah stupid if they allowed the Red Cross to visit the Israeli soldiers. I mean you just know that Israel would have spies tagging along. If not that, then using American satellite to track where the Red Cross go. So if we be honest... this is only expected and a rationally thing to reject.

 

Quiet different from not allowing Israeli civilians from getting aid... which is what Israel has been doing with the Lebanese civilians until more recently.

 

"On that note, In Iraq, more civilians have been killed by insurgent attacks on popular places then by US attacks" - That's the weakest defence possible. You basically saying if insurgents kill 100 civilians today... then the americans are allowed to get away with killing 10 civilians. I know you're not trying to say civilian deaths are ok, but simply because insurgents kill more civilians than the US does doesn't give them an defence case. That's just depressing thinking about it.

 

After all the Americans are the so called liberators (not). They should have the moral high ground. The insurgents weren't even there before they INVADED. There was no Shi'ite vs Sunni civil war erupting.

 

UN peacekeepers ????

 

The holier-than-thou tone of outrage taken by Annan is surprising when it generally known that many UN missions are exploited as the cover for foreign agents, often hostile, to carry out spying operations in war zones. The inadvertent Israeli air strike revealed the fact that the UN force in Lebanon includes Chinese observers. One was killed along with an Austrian, a Canadian and a Finn. The presence of Chinese observers keeping an eye on the combat in South Lebanon has never before been reported.

 

Our intelligence experts compare the incident to the inadvertent US bombardment which destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1998, killing a number of Chinese “diplomats.” It was discovered that from that building the Chinese had operated sophisticated surveillance to track the performance of American warplanes, missiles and smart bombs.

 

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1191

I actually can't belive this. You saying the Israeli defence murdered 4 UN peace keepers because they suspected one being a spy. Even if that was to be true... these are sick actions. To murder 4 unarmed peacekeepers who made six calls pleading for their lives, sounds a lot like wat the terrorists in Iraq have done. You've just proved it to me. Israel = Terrorist

 

And the continous LIES. They said it was an accident, which is a clear lie. I mean a precision-guided bomb hit the building. How can that be a accident.

Israel lies ALLLLLL the time. This is isn't coming from some hate in me. It's the truth. They lie when Israeli soldiers shoot peacekeepers, aid workers, civilians.... all later known to be {censored} lies.

I know this isn't exactly related but one of the worst accusition it has of the Jews in the Quran is that they lie. This is clearly true.

 

The Israeli military said it had ordered residents of Qana, in the hills to the

east of the city of Tyre, to flee. It blamed Hizbollah for the casualties, saying

the militant group had been firing rockets from the village.

Israeli sources said the building had been

identified as a Hizbollah target and bombed

deliberately. But they said that had they

known how many women and children were

inside, the mission would have been aborted.

You would have to have the shabbiest inteligence service in the world (which you don't) to not know that there are 50 civilians living in a area you're about to fire on. I don't belive for once that had they known civilians were there they would had aborted. That's bull. No not the Israeli style of doing this.

[Swad]

I and any rationally minded person would call Hezbollah stupid if they allowed the Red Cross to visit the Israeli soldiers. I mean you just know that Israel would have spies tagging along.

 

Prisoners of war are to be allowed Red Cross treatment. I would argue that any "rationally minded persion" should probably allow them access, since it's the right thing to do... not to mention the PR benefit it would bring. What's the standard for rationality here?

 

Hizbollah and Hamas did not sign the Geneva Accords, however, and technically aren't bound by them. But if they want to stop being seen as terrorists, it helps to stop acting like them. Also AcePlayer, later on in your post you say it's absurd for one of the UN peacekeepers to be a spy (I agree). But it's less likely that a Red Cross member will be?

 

EDIT: As much as I enjoy this topic (since I started it), the direction it's taken at times concerns me greatly. Thus, any name calling of any ethnic or religious group, any essentialization of any of these groups (liars, etc), anything that could possibly offend anyone else (and by offense I mean offend them morally, not just make them realize they might be wrong)... if any posts have any of these things, they'll be deleted immediately. You will also be warned, and after repeated offenses, banned. We just can't, and won't, tolerate it.

 

I started this thread to have a logical discussion, not a propaganda swap meet. If we don't see peace in the middle east, it's because we're calling each other too many names and not setting down at the table of reason and discussing these things like adults. This thread has had it's moments of reason and its moments of non-reason. But from now on it will only have the former. Back yourself up with statistics, make enlightened posts, attack logical incosistancies (see my note on AcePlayer's spy thing above for an example... this is not attacking him, but his argument.), but don't come close to essentializing or name calling.

 

If we'll all agree to that, this thread can be interesting. If not, well, this may be the last post...

[AppleLegal]

I and any rationally minded person would call Hezbollah stupid if they allowed the Red Cross to visit the Israeli soldiers. I mean you just know that Israel would have spies tagging along. If not that, then using American satellite to track where the Red Cross go. So if we be honest... this is only expected and a rationally thing to reject.

Erm.. Yeah - Red Cross is an INTERNATIONAL group. Besides - Lebanon is not a big country, if Israel, the US, France, Germany, or any other nation in the world wanted to, chances are, they could blow it up easily. Same goes for about 190 of the 220 countries that exist. There's only so many places that Hezbollah can hide - and they know it. Thats why they use civilians - women & children - as shields after they launch bombs at Israel.

 

"On that note, In Iraq, more civilians have been killed by insurgent attacks on popular places then by US attacks" - That's the weakest defence possible. You basically saying if insurgents kill 100 civilians today... then the americans are allowed to get away with killing 10 civilians. I know you're not trying to say civilian deaths are ok, but simply because insurgents kill more civilians than the US does doesn't give them an defence case. That's just depressing thinking about it.

 

After all the Americans are the so called liberators (not). They should have the moral high ground. The insurgents weren't even there before they INVADED. There was no Shi'ite vs Sunni civil war erupting.

I actually can't belive this. You saying the Israeli defence murdered 4 UN peace keepers because they suspected one being a spy. Even if that was to be true... these are sick actions. To murder 4 unarmed peacekeepers who made six calls pleading for their lives, sounds a lot like wat the terrorists in Iraq have done. You've just proved it to me. Israel = Terrorist

INSURGANTS - lead on by Al Quaeda and other groups - Kill more then DOUBLE the amount of civilians in Iraq then Hezbollah or Israel do in Lebanon or Israel. What could POSSIBLY give Hezbollah the right to even THINK they can use civilians as a human shield and get away with it? If you honestly dont see a problem with what Hezbollah's doing, then i suggest you take a closer look at BOTH sides of the issue, not just the side you want to see. What could POSSIBLY give insurgants in Iraq the idea that they have the right to bomb cafe's and businesses in Iraq when civilians are there?

 

Before America entered Iraq, there was no Sunni vs Shi'ite war, true, but before that, the Shi'ite Majority opressed the Sunni Minority in Iraq, to the point where they didnt have the ability to do anything aside from exist. As far as i understand, from various reports on CNN, Time, and NY Times, they were as opressed as people in China were

[yossicl]

Mash,

 

I hop the following will no be censor by you…

 

You would have to have the shabbiest inteligence service in the world (which you don't) to not know that there are 50 civilians living in a area you're about to fire on. I don't belive for once that had they known civilians were there they would had aborted. That's bull. No not the Israeli style of doing this.

Yes you’re right...

It’s Hezbollah’s style of hiding between Lebanon’s civilians and shooting their missiles (as probably you know they are not for happy New Year fireworks) on innocent civilian’s women & children for killing them.

I’m presuming that it doesn’t bother you eventually they are only Jews, Cristians and some Israeli’s Arabs Shaheeds.

 

So you still believe that what Hezbollah doing is the right thing to do?

 

About lies… You should read more newspapers…

[AppleLegal]

yossicl, your post wont be deleted as long as you dont make any racist remarks. Your post seems to be fine so i cant see it being removed.

[yossicl]

Here is a powerful and amazing statement on Al Jazeera television. The woman is Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist from Los Angeles. I would suggest watching it ASAP because I don't know how long the link will be active.

 

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=...wmv&ak=null

 

I think it is amazing.

 

Edit: Another interesting Lebanon's link –

http://www.libanoscopie.com/fulldoc.asp?do...e=994&cat=2

[Mebster]

Prisoners of war are to be allowed Red Cross treatment. I would argue that any "rationally minded persion" should probably allow them access, since it's the right thing to do... not to mention the PR benefit it would bring. What's the standard for rationality here?

 

Hizbollah and Hamas did not sign the Geneva Accords, however, and technically aren't bound by them. But if they want to stop being seen as terrorists, it helps to stop acting like them. Also AcePlayer, later on in your post you say it's absurd for one of the UN peacekeepers to be a spy (I agree). But it's less likely that a Red Cross member will be?

 

EDIT: As much as I enjoy this topic (since I started it), the direction it's taken at times concerns me greatly. Thus, any name calling of any ethnic or religious group, any essentialization of any of these groups (liars, etc), anything that could possibly offend anyone else (and by offense I mean offend them morally, not just make them realize they might be wrong)... if any posts have any of these things, they'll be deleted immediately. You will also be warned, and after repeated offenses, banned. We just can't, and won't, tolerate it.

 

I started this thread to have a logical discussion, not a propaganda swap meet. If we don't see peace in the middle east, it's because we're calling each other too many names and not setting down at the table of reason and discussing these things like adults. This thread has had it's moments of reason and its moments of non-reason. But from now on it will only have the former. Back yourself up with statistics, make enlightened posts, attack logical incosistancies (see my note on AcePlayer's spy thing above for an example... this is not attacking him, but his argument.), but don't come close to essentializing or name calling.

 

If we'll all agree to that, this thread can be interesting. If not, well, this may be the last post...

 

The soldiers may or may not need medical aid... but for Hizbollah to allow the Red Cross or anyone one to see them would be one of the stupidest thing they could be doing. It's easier to just hand them over. Like i said earlier a Red Cross memeber doesn't have to be a Israelie spy. All they have to do is follow the van and see where it leads. So it might be a humain thing to do but when your opponent has no much power over you it's just think. Once again... you might as well hand them over.

 

Also i didn't think the idea of a UN peacekeeper being a spy was an absurd one (sounds like it but that's not what i said). What I did think was absurd was that they were willing to murder UN peacekeepers on the simple suspicion of one possibly being a spy. I would assume no one will disagree with that (unless you blindly follow Israel) as thats' cold blooded murder from a state.... not terrorists but a state.

 

Mash, a liar is someone who is caught lying. Israel has.. many times. The reason i didn't add any links is because this is quiet well known. Well at least here in the UK. I'm sure the US media censors those reports or at least sugar coats them. So once again i call them liars not because i 'feel' it but because they have been caught doing so. A thief is a thief. A liar is a liar.

 

If i remember correctly you called this thread Israel and clearly from that i understood what side you were on (everyone takes sides). You all know what side i'm on but i have to say i am supprised the one you took just as monkey was. Especially given you're a peace loving type of guy. You didn't even try and take the centre. You support them no matter what (bit like blind loving OryHara)... which is just too wrong. I'm a muslim. But it doesn't mean i support Muslims no matter what. I don't support the fact the Hizbollah fires rockets (although i can see why), but it's depressing to know many like you whp support one side... no questions asked.

 

I'm sure you're a nice guy but you're just like you're country. US tries to show the world it's equal to both sides. which it clearly isn't.... just watch how the international media (even US loving UK - watch BBC news, ITV - even worse) sees you as. We see the pat to one side and the kick to the other.

 

Mash,

 

I hop the following will no be censor by you…

Yes you’re right...

It’s Hezbollah’s style of hiding between Lebanon’s civilians and shooting their missiles (as probably you know they are not for happy New Year fireworks) on innocent civilian’s women & children for killing them.

I’m presuming that it doesn’t bother you eventually they are only Jews, Cristians and some Israeli’s Arabs Shaheeds.

 

So you still believe that what Hezbollah doing is the right thing to do?

 

About lies… You should read more newspapers…

I never said what hizbollah was doing was the right thing. Attacking civilains is wrong. But don't point the finger at hizbollah as though they are the only ones. Israel shoots at ambulances, hospitals and schools. They kill civilians without much though either. And ohh yeah aid workers covering to protect chrildren.

I don't defend the killing of innocent people.... neither should you.

[AppleLegal]

a liar is someone who is caught lying. Israel has.. many times. The reason i didn't add any links is because this is quiet well known. Well at least here in the UK. I'm sure the US media censors those reports or at least sugar coats them. So once again i call them liars not because i 'feel' it but because they have been caught doing so. A thief is a thief. A liar is a liar.

Im interested in this - What act was Israel caught lying in? And what acts was Hezbollah caught lying in?

 

The more educated you are on the issue, the more biased you are.

[yossicl]

Aceplayer,

 

In Qana village case, it was said (by some honest people...) 50 people was killed by Israeli air bombing then it’s grow to 57 people…

Now the Red Cross says it was 28 people (and yes, I believe that all of them was innocent people).

I hop this will demonstrating you what is lie and what is not.

 

Almost all the Israeli - Arabs war was enforce by the Arabs nations and by Arab’s terrorists.

but after they get on their heads by the Israeli IDF (personally I believe it was by power of God. 100 million Arabs vs. less then 6 million Israelis - it's doesn't make sense),

they ware went and cried to UN to stopped the Israeli…

[yossicl]

The media aims its missiles (OR The BBC aims its missiles)

By Tom Gross

 

Large sections of the international media are not only misreporting the current conflict in Lebanon. They are also actively fanning the flames.

 

The BBC world service has a strong claim to be the number one villain. It has increasingly come to sound like a virtual propaganda tool for Hizbullah, and as it desperately attempts to prove that Israel is guilty of committing “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” it has introduced a new charge – one which I have heard several times on air in recent days.

 

The newscaster reads out carefully selected “audience comments,” and among these we are told that “Israel’s attack on Lebanon” will serve as “a huge recruitment drive for al-Qaeda worldwide.”

 

But if anything is going to win new recruits for bin Laden and his like, it will not be Israel’s defensive actions, which are far less damaging than western TV stations have been trying to convince us, but the inflammatory and hopelessly one-sided way in which they are being reported by those very same news organizations.

 

While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of pictorial distortion is even worse. The way many TV stations worldwide are portraying it, you would think that Beirut has begun to look like Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of World War II air raids. International television channels have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a few individual buildings in a manner which suggests that half the city has been razed.

 

A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hizbullah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites like airport runways used to ferry Hizbullah men and weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.

 

From the distorted imagery, selective witness accounts, and almost round-the-clock emphasis on casualties, you would be forgiven for thinking that the level of death and destruction in Lebanon is on a par with that in Darfur, where Arab militias are slaughtering hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs, or with the 2004 tsunami that killed half a million in Southeast Asia. In fact Israel has taken great care to avoid killing civilians – even though this has proven extremely difficult and often tragically impossible, since members of Hizbullah, the self-styled “Party of God,” have deliberately ensconced themselves in civilian homes. Nevertheless the civilian death toll has been mercifully low compared to other international conflicts in recent years.

 

A CNN MAN LETS SLIP

 

The BBC, which courtesy of the British tax payer is the world’s biggest and most lavishly funded news organization, would of course never reveal how selective their reports are, since this might spoil their campaign to demonize Israel and those who support her. But one senior British journalist, working for another company, last week let slip how the news media allows its Mideast coverage to be distorted.

 

“CNN Senior international correspondent” Nic Robertson admitted that his anti-Israel report from Beirut on July 18 about civilian casualties in Lebanon, was stage-managed from start to finish by Hizbullah. He revealed that his story was heavily influenced by Hizbullah’s “press officer” and that Hizbullah have “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations.”

 

When pressed a few days later about his reporting on the CNN program “Reliable Sources,” Robertson acknowledged that Hizbullah militants had instructed the CNN camera team where and what to film. Hizbullah “had control of the situation,” Robertson said. “They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.”

 

Robertson added that Hizbullah has “very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access into those areas. You don’t get in there without their permission. We didn’t have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hizbullah fighter by night.”

 

Yet “Reliable Sources,” presented by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, is broadcast only on the American version of CNN. So CNN International viewers around the world will not have had the opportunity to learn from CNN’s “Senior international correspondent” that the pictures they saw from Beirut were carefully selected for them by Hizbullah.

 

 

Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week. Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton, casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: "To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one."

 

Robertson is not the only foreign journalist to have misled viewers with selected footage from Beirut. NBC’s Richard Engel, CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer, and a host of European and other networks, were also taken around the damaged areas by Hizbullah minders. Palmer commented on her report that “Hizbullah is also determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see.”

 

Palmer’s honesty is helpful. But it doesn’t prevent the damage being done by organizations like the BBC. First the BBC gave the impression that Israel had flattened the greater part of Beirut. Then to follow up its lop-sided coverage, its website helpfully carried full details of the assembly points for an anti-Israel march due to take place in London, but did not give any detail for a rally in support of Israel also held in London a short time later.

 

IN AZERI AND UZBEK, PASHTO AND PERSIAN

 

The coverage of the present war by the BBC has been quite extraordinary, and even staunch BBC supporters in London seem rather embarrassed – in conversation, not on the air, unfortunately.

 

If the BBC were just a British problem that would be one thing, but it is not. No other station broadcasts so extensively in dozens of languages, on TV, radio and online.

 

Its radio service alone attracts over 163 million listeners. It pours forth its worldview in almost every language of the Middle East: Pashto, Persian, Arabic and Turkish. Needless to say it declines to broadcast in Hebrew, even though it does broadcast in the languages of other small nations: Macedonian and Albanian, Azeri and Uzbek, Kinyarwanda and Kyrgyz, and so on. (It doesn’t broadcast in Kurdish either; but then the BBC doesn’t concern itself with Kurdish rights or aspirations since they are persecuted by Moslem-majority states like Syria and Iran. We didn’t hear much on the BBC, for example, when dozens of Syrian Kurds were killed and injured in March 2004 by President Assad’s regime.)

 

It is not just that the supposed crimes of Israel are completely overplayed, but the fact that this is a two-sided war (started, of course, by Hizbullah) is all but obscured. As a result, in spite of hundreds of hours of broadcast by dozens of BBC reporters and studio anchors, you wouldn’t really know that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been living in bomb shelters for weeks now, tired, afraid, but resilient; that a grandmother and her seven-year old grandson were killed by a Katyusha during a Friday night Sabbath dinner; that several other Israeli children have died.

 

You wouldn’t have any real understanding of what it is like to have over 2000 Iranian and Syrian rockets rain down indiscriminately on towns, villages and farms across one third of your country, aimed at killing civilians.

 

You wouldn’t really appreciate that Hizbullah, far from being some rag-tag militia, is in effect a division in the Iranian revolutionary guards, with relatively advanced weapons (UAVs that have flown over northern Israel, extended-range artillery rockets, anti-ship cruise missiles), and that it has a global terror reach, having already killed 114 people in Argentina.

 

The BBC and others have carried report after report on the damaged Lebanese tourist industry, but none on the damaged Israeli one, even though at least one hotel in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, was hit by a Hizbullah rocket. There are reports on Lebanese children who don’t know where they will be going to school, but none on Israeli ones.

 

ET TU, TELEGRAPH?

 

The relentless broadcast attacks on Israel have led to some in the print media indulging in explicit anti-Semitism.

 

Many have grown accustomed to left-wing papers like the Guardian allowing their Mideast coverage to spill over into something akin to anti-Semitism. For example, last month a cartoon by the Guardian’s Martin Rowson depicted Stars of David being used as knuckle dusters on a bloody fist.

 

Now the Conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph, Britain’s best-selling quality daily, and previously one of the only papers in Europe to give Israel a fair hearing, has got in on the act. The cartoon at the top of the Telegraph comment page last Saturday showed two identical scenes of devastation, exactly the same in every detail. One was labeled: “Warsaw 1943”; the other: “Tyre, 2006.”

 

A politician had already given the cue for this horrendous libel. Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell told the House of Commons that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was “colluding” with U.S. President George W. Bush in giving Israel the okay to wage a war crime “gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.”

 

Of course, there was no “Jewish quarter” of Warsaw. In case anyone need reminding (Sir Peter obviously does) the ghetto in the Polish capital, established in October 1940, constituted less than three square miles. Over 400,000 Jews were then crammed into it, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. 254,000 were sent to Treblinka where they were exterminated. Most of the rest were murdered in other ways. The ghetto was completely cleared of Jews by the end of May 1943.

 

ECHOING SCHINDLER’S LIST

 

The picture isn’t entirely bleak. Some British and European politicians, on both left and right, have been supportive of Israel. So have some magazines, such as the Spectator. So have a number of individual newspaper commentators.

 

But meanwhile anti-Semitic coverage and cartoons are spreading across the globe. Norway’s third largest paper, the Oslo daily Dagbladet, ran a cartoon comparing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the infamous Nazi commander SS Major Amon Goeth who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them from his balcony and was depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. (A month earlier Dagbladet published an article, “The Third Tower,” which questioned whether Muslims were really responsible for the September 11 attacks.)

 

Antonio Neri Licon of Mexico’s El Economista drew what appeared to be a Nazi soldier with – incredibly – stars of David on his uniform. The “soldier” was surrounded by eyes that he had apparently gouged out.

 

A cartoon in the South African Sunday Times depicted Ehud Olmert with a butchers knife covered in blood. In the leading Australian daily The Age, a cartoon showed a wine glass full of blood being drunk in a scene reminiscent of a medieval blood libel. In New Zealand, veteran cartoonist Tom Stott came up with a drawing which equated Israel with Al-Qaeda.

 

At least one leading European politician has also vented his prejudice through visual symbolism. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wore an Arab scarf during an event at which he condemned Israel, but not Hizbullah, who he presumably thinks should not be stopped from killing Israelis.

 

THE ASHES OF AUSCHWITZ

 

It’s entirely predictable that all this violent media distortion should lead to Jews being attacked and even murdered, as happened at a Seattle Jewish center last week. ול

 

When live Jews can’t be found, dead ones are targeted. In Belgium last week, the urn that contained ashes from Auschwitz was desecrated at the Brussels memorial to the 25,411 Belgian Jews deported to Nazi death camps. It was smashed and excrement smeared over it. The silence from Belgian leaders following this desecration was deafening.

 

Others Jews continued to be killed in Israel itself without it being mentioned in the media abroad. Last Thursday, for example, 60-year-old Dr. Daniel Ya’akovi was murdered by the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist group within Fatah that Yasser Arafat set up five years ago using European Union aid money.

 

But this is far from being an exclusively Jewish issue. Some international journalists seem to find it amusing or exciting to bait the Jews. They don’t understand yet that Hizbullah is part of a worldwide radical Islamist movement that has plans, and not pleasant ones, for all those – Moslem, Christian, Hindu and Jew – who don’t abide by its wishes.

 

(Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph. www.tomgrossmedia.com)

[gwprod12]

Tom Gross seems a little more than "biased", but even if he's strictly neutral, what's the point?

 

I just dont understand what I'm supposed to care about. This war is Israel's business. If Israel doesnt care about winning the public relations battle, that's fine. But seriously, Israel isnt looking good right now. They look like an overeager bully with no consideration for innocent people. I dont know if that's true or not, but that's what it looks like.

 

If Israel wants to {censored} off everyone else in the world to achieve whatever goal they're trying to achieve, then more power to them.

 

But that doesnt mean there is a vast anti-semitic conspiracy in play.

 

And frankly, the whole "you're criticizing Israel, you must be an anti-semite" act is getting a little old. Same with the "All white men are racists towards black men".

[yossicl]

This is exactly the point.

 

You think (and not just you) that Israel look like an overeager bully with no consideration for innocent people and Israel pissing off everyone else in the world also you think that Israel doesn’t care about “winning the public relations battle” and that’s way?

Because of the international media is “misreporting” the current conflict in Lebanon. And you and other people falling the falsehood and believe them.

 

btw. Tom Gross works for large international media.

[gwprod12]

okay. What's being misreported? Israel is bombing southern lebanon, and hezbollah is bombing Israel... Israeli ground forces have entered into Lebanon to get rid of Hezbollah.

 

Am I right so far?

[yossicl]

You may get your answer in the following link:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videopla...6_1430,00.html#

[Mebster]

What you've said about the BBC is odd because i've actually heard it the other way round too many times.

 

Also when i look at the images it does saddens me. But i don't see the same images all the time like you've said. That's just reaching a little too far.

 

What angers me is when i hear "today 1 isralie died in his home (normally i hear outside)" and then "10 Lebonese died in their home".

 

And you can't say they all died as shields of Hezbollah fighters. Because i hear a lot to show otherwise.

 

Lebanon death toll 'reaches 900'

More than 900 Lebanese people have been killed in three weeks of fighting with Israel, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has said.

 

More than 3,000 have been wounded and 1m - or a quarter of the total population - had been displaced, he told a Muslim summit in a message.

 

Previous estimates have put Lebanon's death toll between 500 and 700.

 

Israel's death toll in the conflict rose to 62, including 24 civilians, after new Hezbollah attacks.

 

Thursday saw at least three Lebanese civilian deaths from Israeli air attacks.

 

Child deaths

 

Speaking from Beirut in a video address to a summit in Malaysia, Mr Siniora said a third of the casualties in the conflict had been children under 12.

 

The United Nations' emergency relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, said last month that nearly a third of the dead or wounded in Lebanon were children.

 

Latest UN estimates for displaced people in Lebanon put the figure at between 700,000 and 800,000.

 

Reporting the death toll given by the prime minister, Reuters news agency said its own count was at least 683.

 

The Associated Press noted a previous toll of 548 people confirmed dead and AFP news agency said earlier this week that its own Lebanese death count was 530.

 

Quoted of 650+ is what is quoted most often but also at the same time many have said doctores say deaths toll is more than double that.

 

Published on Friday, July 28, 2006 by Inter Press Service

Death Toll Could Be Twice the Official Figure

by Dahr Jamail

 

 

BEIRUT - Lebanese doctors, aid workers and refugees are all reporting that the official number of dead in Lebanon is far lower than the actual.

 

"I think that the real number is at least 750 dead so far," Dr. Bachir el-Sham at the Complex Hospital in Sidon city told IPS in a telephone interview. Sidon is 43 km south of Beirut, and just north of Tyre. This region has seen the worst of the Israeli bombing.

 

Sham said that by coordinating casualty figures with other hospitals and clinics in the south, he believes that an average of 40 civilians are being killed by Israeli air strikes each day.

 

"One day we had 100 dead. The authorities in Beirut can only estimate -- we never have official statistics about anything in Lebanon," he said. "Regarding the number of dead, we can say for sure that by the numbers we're seeing down here, it is at least 750, if not more."

 

One reason the real number will be higher is that "so many people are buried in the rubble," he said.

 

As in Dahaya district of southern Beirut, both Sidon and Tyre have had large numbers of civilian apartment buildings bombed to the ground, many with entire families in them.

 

"When you have a building demolished, how many people are under the rubble? Who can say? But we know there are many."

 

Bilal Masri, assistant director at the large Beirut Government University Hospital in Beirut, also told IPS that the official number was far too low.

 

"We have had several reports from the south that there are many bodies buried under buildings, or left in cars that were hit by Israeli rockets," he said.

 

Ghadeer Shayto, a 15-year-old girl being treated at the Beirut hospital for wounds she suffered during an Israeli rocket attack while fleeing her village Kafra near Bint Jbail, said she had seen many dead on her way to Beirut.

 

"On our way out we passed so many civilian cars which had burnt bodies in them," she said, weeping. "They were burnt, and left there because nobody could come to take the bodies away." Bint Jbail is the southern town that has seen the most intense fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.

 

She said the bus in which they were leaving had hoisted white flags, but it was hit by a rocket. "My brother and cousin were killed, and the rest of us are wounded."

 

Abdel Hamid al-Ashi, father of two, saw similar sights as he fled Bint Jbail.

 

"I had to walk 10 kilometres to a small village to find a taxi, and along the road I saw many bodies rotting in the sun," he told IPS. "There were also cars which had been rocketed which were full of bodies."

 

Many patients and refugees reported seeing bodies along the way when they fled. Under continuing air strikes, no aid teams have been able to rescue anyone or retrieve the bodies.

 

In Dahaya district of Beirut about a fifth of all buildings have been totally demolished. There was a strong smell of rotting corpses at many of those sites that this correspondent visited.

 

Volunteer workers are also reporting that the officially declared toll is too low.

 

"Several of our relief workers who tried to help in Dahaya have reported to us that many families are buried under the rubble there," Wafaa el-Yassir, a representative of Norwegian People's Aid-Lebanon told IPS at her office. "And we have similar reports from Tyre and Sidon."

 

"The number of dead is as much as 800 by now," she added. "And probably even more, but it will take some time to find all of the bodies."

 

Ahmad Halimeh, with the non-governmental organisation Popular Aid for Relief and Development who is now working primarily to aid war victims in Beirut and southern Lebanon, said that "in my experience you can always at least double the initial figure, and we are seeing the same thing happen again now. So the number is at least 800, and will be more over time as we continue to gain access to these areas that have been destroyed."

 

There is little doubt that the real death toll is far higher than the official one. The question remains, by how much?

 

Israelie deaths: 62, including 24 civilians

Lebanese deaths: 650-900, how many do you think are civilians?

 

And a third are chrildren like them:

[Swad]

Part of the reason for the death toll numbers being the way they are is because Israel has a massive organization of bomb shelters and better warnings than Lebanon.

[yossicl]

AcePlayer,

 

As I’m looking at the terrible picture you’ve been post (from the Qana village and I saw more terrible pictures before your post), I see no blood on their body and I see putrefaction (Taphonomy, rigor mortis) children body!!!

Do you have any explain for this?

 

The most of the reason for the death toll numbers being the way they are is because Hezbollah are using civilian people as “human - shield”.

 

I find it strange that all from the Lebenase is civilian death and casualties.. it seems that not one Hizbullah terrorist has been killed.. so who is firing all these rockets? is it these civilians?

[lood]

I find it strange that all from the Lebenase is civilian death and casualties.. it seems that not one Hizbullah terrorist has been killed.. so who is firing all these rockets? is it these civilians?

 

 

So why don't you think for a while that Hizbullah is not "using civilian people as “human - shield” "

and that israeili bombs are just blind !