Israeli Ground Troups Invade Gaza

"This will not be easy and it will not be short," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on national television about two hours after ground troops moved in.

Of course it won't. Because the current war hawks in the Israeli government don't want it to be easy or short.

"We have many, many targets," Israeli army spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich told CNN. "To my estimation, it will be a lengthy operation."

Israeli leaders said the operation, meant to quell militant rocket and mortar fire on southern Israel, would not end quickly, but that the objective was not to reoccupy Gaza or topple Hamas. The depth and intensity will also depend on parallel diplomatic efforts that so far have been unacceptable to Israel, the officials said. [emphasis added]

This is the Bush Regime's "my way or the highway" diplomacy. Do what we say, or no deal.

Before the ground invasion, defense officials said about 10,000 Israeli soldiers had massed along the border in recent days.

Israel initially held off on a ground offensive, apparently in part because of concern about casualties among Israeli troops and because of fears of getting bogged down in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his government decided to mount a land operation despite the risk it posed to thousands of soldiers.

An inner Cabinet of top ministers met with leading security officials for four hours Saturday before deciding to authorize the ground invasion.

Olmert told the meeting that Israel's objective was to bring quiet to southern Israel but "we don't want to topple Hamas," a government official quoted the prime minister as saying. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to share the information.

The immediate aim of the ground operations was to take control of sites militants use as rocket-launching pads, the military said. It said large numbers of troops were taking part but did not give specifics.

Israeli airstrikes intensified just as the ground operation was getting under way, and 28 Palestinians were killed. Palestinian health officials said civilians were among the dead, including a woman, her son and her father who died after a shell hit their house.

One raid hit a mosque in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, killing 13 people and wounding 33, according to a Palestinian health official. One of the wounded worshippers, Salah Mustafa, told Al-Jazeera TV from a hospital that the mosque was packed.

"It was unbelievably awful," he said, struggling to catch his breath.

The whole thing is unbelievably awful. Don't get me wrong, any jerk firing a rocket at anybody is an assclown. But organized mass deaths as a response is morally unacceptable to me.

UPDATE: It appears the Israelis are using cluster bombs. In this dense, dense little tiny strip of land. FDL has this: Gaza Update - Nowhere to Hide:

Laura Doty over at Oxdown asks Are Cluster Bombs Falling on Gaza Today? and quotes Sameh Habeeb of Gaza

Today. In reviewing the footage starting to come out (CNN's shows the same but is not yet online in embed format, this is from Italian tv, the same is seen in a Ha'retz tv video), we do see explosions in the air with multiple projectiles - you can see this in the video at right. I asked markfromireland, who is quite familiar with such weapons, if these are cluster bombs and he replied:

"Hard to tell exactly what shell they're using but yes thats what they look like. If you're asking is that what a cluster looks like then the answer is yes."

Each report we see and hear repeats, as I just did, the words “densely populated” and that repetition too easily jades us to the meaning behind those words. Gaza is packed with people – the majority under the age of 17.

It is hard to realize how very small the Gaza Strip is, "about 41 kilometers (25 mi) long, and between 6 and 12 kilometers (4–7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of 360 square kilometers (139 sq mi)."

To get a better sense of that density, look at this map

What's just making me insane is that there is a cure available; withdraw support from Israel. I mean that US policy should say "Israel, these mass killings and invasions aren't going to do you any good. So guess what? Our $6 Billion per year support is going bye-bye. There's nothing you can do to get it back. "

There's a couple other things we should do in terms of moderating US policy in the Middle East if you ask me, which nobody will.

After telling Israel nuh-uh, we should just say to Afghanistan "Provide Bin Laden's body for irrefutable proof of death; we will withdraw immediately afterward. And should you choose to continue a democratic form of government, you will get $2 Billion per year of what we used to give the Israelis. For as many years as we occupied Afghanistan. Strings attached; you have to educate women, and they must be equal in your law and society. That's it. If you don't want to do that, no problem, we just won't give you any monetary support. Your choice."

We then fund an immediate program of green tech science with another of the $2 billion to replace oil. We make sure the Saudis know. In fact, we should hire their American PR firm, Qorvis Communications LLC, as they could use a little rehabilitation, eh?

The other $2 billion should come home and take care of our own homeless. And our own hungry people. All this goes without saying that we should have been out of Iraq yesterday (or 2003 if you lke) as far as I am concerened.

Can you imagine that situation happening? All of the sudden, the US wouldn't be fueling oxygen to the fire of Muslim resentment. We would actually be working on our own security issues by helping real people. And it would all be a hell of a lot less expensive. Including the moral costs.

Nobody's going to let the Holocaust happen to Israel again. But will we let it happen to Palestinians in Gaza?

Yep - just a Dirty Fucking Hippy, but all I am saying, is:




TAGS: Palestinian Occupation, Ethnic Cleansing, Neocons Suck, War is bad for everybody- anywhere, anytime

Iranian Diplomat Kidnapped

..By Gunmen in Iraqi Uniforms

From CBC.ca:

"Thirty armed men dressed as Iraqi soldiers kidnapped a senior Iranian diplomat on the streets of Baghdad, an Iraqi government official said on Tuesday.. ..The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini as saying the Defence Ministry was ordered to detain Jalal Sharaki, the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy.

'Iran holds American forces in Iraq responsible for the safety and life of the Iranian diplomat,' Hosseini was quoted as saying, in his condemnation of the 'aggressive act.'

One Iraqi government official backed those statements, telling the Associated Press the diplomat was seized by a special Iraqi army unit that reports directly to the U.S. military.

But a military spokesman denied any U.S. troops or Iraqis could have been involved. 'We've checked with our units and it was not an MNF-I (Multi-National Forces-Iraq) unit that participated in that event,' U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said."

Whether the unidentified gunmen were acting under US authority or not, this is incredibly bad news. On the one hand, assuming they were not acting on American orders, you have a scenario very similar to events of Jan. 22 in Karbala, when a group in Iraqi uniform entered a government compound in GMC SUVs;

"Once inside, [ ] the men unleashed one of the deadliest and most brazen ambushes of U.S. forces in a secure, official area. Five U.S. service members were killed in a hail of grenades and gunfire in a breach of security that Iraqi officials called unprecedented."

One has to ask, how did these uniforms, weapons, and equipment (GMC SUVs for cryin' out loud !?!) get in the hands of the insurgency? And the simplest answer would be that the insurgents simply stood in line and signed up with the Iraqi army. They were then issued all the necessities to wage war against coalition troops, trained in their use, fed and payed for months.. then, when the time was ripe they deserted, taking as much with them as they could lay their hands on. That's what happens when you arm and train people who hate you. I'm waiting now for the inevitable 'Who could have anticipated this?' statement from Condi Rice.

Of course the alternative scenario, where the kidnappers were under US command, although covertly so, is much worse. That would signal the US invasion of Iran, the expansion of the war in the Middle East, and all the bloody horror that would entail. With only two years to achieve Armageddon, the Stuffed Codpiece in Chief may be kicking it up another notch. Anyone who believes that the Iraq war isn't the biggest foreign policy boondoggle in American history should read this editorial from Common Dreams, by Jay Bookman. Pretty gloomy - but true.

TAGS: Iraq War, Insurgency, Iranian Diplomat, Armageddon

Ending the neoconservative nightmare

by Daniel Levy
This article Nigel cited in the threads below deserves to be highlighted.

Witnessing the near-perfect symmetry of Israeli and American policy has been one of the more noteworthy aspects of the latest Lebanon war. A true friend in the White House. No deescalate and stabilize, honest-broker, diplomatic jaw-jaw from this president. Great. Except that Israel was actually in need of an early exit strategy, had its diplomatic options narrowed by American weakness and marginalization in the region, and found itself ratcheting up aerial and ground operations in ways that largely worked to Hezbollah's advantage, the Qana tragedy included. The American ladder had gone AWOL. (...)

In 1996 a group of then opposition U.S. policy agitators, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, presented a paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The "clean break" was from the prevailing peace process, advocating that Israel pursue a combination of roll-back, destabilization and containment in the region, including striking at Syria and removing Saddam Hussein from power in favor of "Hashemite control in Iraq." The Israeli horse they backed then was not up to the task.

Ten years later, as Netanyahu languishes in the opposition, as head of a small Likud faction, Perle, Feith and their neoconservative friends have justifiably earned a reputation as awesome wielders of foreign-policy influence under George W. Bush. (...)

Beyond that, Israel and its friends in the United States should seriously reconsider their alliances not only with the neocons, but also with the Christian Right. The largest "pro-Israel" lobby day during this crisis was mobilized by Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United For Israel, a believer in Armageddon with all its implications for a rather particular end to the Jewish story. This is just asking to become the mother of all dumb, self-defeating and morally abhorrent alliances. Click the title above to read more

Daniel Levy was a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative.

Is Israel Good for the Jews?

By Norman Birnbaum of The Nation

American Jewish citizens can be sure that a large number of Jewish organizations will claim to speak in our name--without being asked to do so. We can also be sure that should we dissent from the US Jewish community's central item of faith, that Israel can do no wrong, we will be pilloried. When our gentile fellow citizens express doubt, they are accused of anti-Semitism. Those of us who are Jewish are taxed with self-hatred.

Is it the supreme duty of American Jews to use our considerable influence to align US policy with that of Israel? There is, the Jewish organizations tell us, no conflict of loyalties and responsibilities; the two nations have common values and common ends. The assertion is nonsensical, but its repetition does negate one stereotype about Jews, our supposed intelligence. (...) Click title to read more

Breaking: Israeli Military Vehicles in Central Ramallah and arrests Chairman of Palestinian Parliament Dr. Aziz Dawik

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Les Enragés Scoops the MSM again

Ynet's Ali Waqad reports in Hebrew that Israeli military vehicles have reached the Muqata in Ramallah - the main government building for the Palestinian Authority, and the one where Yasir Arafat was kept under seige for the last two years of his life. The purpose of this incursion is not clear - this looks like either a phone or internet communication.

Despite the closure/lockdown Israel imposed on the Occupied Territories, driving into the middle of the city consitutes an escalation. In light of the other two fronts Israel is fighting at, a very curious escalation.

It'll probably hit the news outlets in the next couple of hours, but you heard it here first.

Edited to add: OK folks, this is HUGE. A further Hebrew report cites the Machsom Watch women as saying that large forces are converging on Nablus, as well, and the military presence at the checkpoints has been increased. In the same report, approximately 1,000 people have been waiting at the checkpoint since 4 p.m. local time, and are still waiting there at midnight, local time. Women and children included.

I'll put more updates in the comments as this develops. Edited later: Or change the heading. Arresting parliament chairmen is big enough for that.

Hizbullah rockets cannot be fired from buildings (ie the one bombed in Qana)

(...) The type of missiles being fired by Hizbullah at Israeli cities cannot be fired from within houses, mosques, hospitals or even UN facilities as has been suggested by the IDF. Due to the massive "back-blast" caused by the rocket launchers of these missiles, they can only be fired from open ground. To fire them from within a building would result in the instant death of the missile crew and probable destruction of the missile before launch. Most of the missiles are truck-mounted and are fired - on open ground - from the backs of flat-bedded trucks or larger four-wheel-drive vehicles.

When fired, these missiles generate an enormous flare of light, heat and sound energy - a heat and light signature which is readily detected by IDF target-acquisition systems. Accurate retaliatory fire can be directed at Hizbullah launch sites by IDF aircraft and ground artillery in seconds. Such a reaction would be considered by international military norms to be proportionate and within the general "rules of engagement". (...) Read more here.

Author Tom Clonan is The Irish Times security analyst. (h/t whatreallyhappened.com)

Gaza: scare tactics leading to new refugee crisis?

Disturbing reports from Khalid Amayre in Egyptian paper Al Ahram (in English, this time):

In its blitz on unprotected Gazans, Israel has introduced a new tactic which takes the form of a telephone call to Gazan families from the Israeli Shin Bet (domestic intelligence agency) warning that them that they must leave their homes or be bombed within 20 minutes. Predictably, the manifestly sadistic tactic has terrorised the entire population, many left wondering if a given call is genuine or a hoax.

Some families, convinced by such calls, have left their homes at two o'clock in the morning only to see them bombed directly by Israeli F-16 fighters. Others have abandoned their homes and seen them stand untouched. So fearful are they that they refuse to return in case bombings are merely delayed.

In 1948 they sent a band of rowdies to scare Palestinians out of their villages; the ones who left are still waiting to be allowed to return.

In Lebanon Israel justifies its mass killings by saying "we told them to get out". But where can they go from Gaza? Into Israel? Hollow laugh. Anyone taking that route gets shot.

Who is pushing whom into the sea?

Israel imposes the tactics of military rule on some Arab cities inside its borders

Here's another story with Hebrew-only confirmation: Israeli policemen chased children into their homes at gunpoint in the Israeli city of Umm Al Fahm. They conducted searches in these homes. Gunshots were heard - nothing explaining them. No warrants, no warning, no kidding.

Back to English sources, Amir Oren reports in Haaretz about the pummelling of Gaza - 12,000 bombs hit it in the past three weeks.

And more in English - Israel has locked the folks in Occupied Territories into check-point-surrounded ghettoes, and now keeps them in their homes until Saturday, and points guns at Palestinian children with Israeli citizenship.

Who is driving the policy? What are they trying to achieve with the point-guns-at-children tactic?

Breaking: Venezuala Recalls Ambassador from Tel-Aviv

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Les Enragés Scoop Reuters

Link in Hebrew - Chavez seems to disagree with the whole idea of heading into Lebanon and bombing infrastructure and civilians. He announced the recall in a televised speech. I've found no corroboration beyond this Ynet report.

Also, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, threatened that if Israel strikes Beirut, he'll send missiles to Tel-Aviv. So far, he has lived up to everything he has said he would do. If he does direct his firepower towards, I hope the missile does not hit any civilians - Tel Aviv is full of (many, many) military installations. Civilians should just NOT be hurt in wars.

Especially pointless wars.

Update: plenty of corroboration now. Here's one item from Reuters... gratifyingly, posted after ours.
The Unruly Mob Scoops Reuters!

Let's hope that US and Israeli Generals read Sun Tzu's 'Art of War'

China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday told Chinese nationals to leave Israel due to fighting on the Lebanese border, the government's main news agency reported. "The conflict between Lebanon and Israel is increasing, so Chinese citizens in Israel should get as far from the battle area as possible," the notice said, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Pushing, shoving, conniving towards an ineluctable need for war

RawStory features Sidney Blumenthal's disturbing assertion that the White House wants a 'four-front war'

The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

According to this national security insider, "the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a 'cleansing war' with Syria and Iran," with the full admission that their current guidebook, written originally for the Israeli Likud Prime Minister to use inside Israel, is: "a 1996 neocon manifesto against the Middle East peace process [entitled] A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm"

A 20th C foreign nation's screed now dictates policy in 21st C America?

Blumenthal's tagline ought to send chills up the back of any reasonably intelligent average American: Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot,because it begs the harrowing question of what happens to the 135,000 troops at the center of this "ring of fire" who are now its bull's eye.

Losing Relevance

Journalist and historian Tom Segev wonders in this English article whether IDF spokeswoman Miri Regev or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the more annoying, and decries the fact that Israel has adopted the moral values of Hezbollah: Whatever they are doing to the residents of northern Israel, we can also do to the citizens of Lebanon, and even more. Many Israelis tended to look at the Qana incident primarily as a media disaster and not as something that imposed on them any ethical responsibility.

Having identified the collapse of the U.S. as a leader in morality and justice, he recommends that Israel turn to Europe, which understands that even if the United States conquers Tehran, [Israel] will still have to live with the Palestinians. - while the U.S., driven by the NeoCons and their delusional map of the world, apparently does not.

How badly have we lost relevance as a world leader when even in Israel our foreign policy appears immoral and unpractical?

Ex-patriots?

What about the Americans? There is no real way to find out how many U.S. citizens are fighting in Lebanon and Gaza right now. 2400 of the soldiers are so keen on Israel that they came there especially for the purpose of joining Israel's army - 120 of them from the U.S. and Canada. In the article, the soldiers from the U.S. are described as "the most patriotic, the most 'poisoned'". Poisoned? Are we talking toxins? Of sorts. Israeli military slang refers to people who take their roles seriously as "poisoned soldiers" - perhaps because they're the ones who really drank the [famous trademarked drink]?

Now, I fully realize that Israel requires military service from all Jews living in it (actually, all non-Arabs), so that if you happen to be an American living there, you can't really get out of the service. But wouldn't you think that going to a foreign country expressly for the purpose of volunteering for a foreign army - to which the soldiers swear their allegiance - would be an expatriating act?