Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rusty1983]

Just thought Id post this link

Weird how its not being discussed on here

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5459394.ece

"The death of forty-two people in an Israeli attack at a UN-run school in Gaza today finally forced Barack Obama to break his silence over the conflict.

"The loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel is a source of deep concern for me," the US President-elect said.

He would not be drawn further, promising to abide by his principle that only George W. Bush would speak for American foreign policy while he was still President of the United States. Mr Obama added that would have plenty more to say after his inauguration on January 20.

Gordon Brown said that the recent fighting marked the "the darkest moment yet for the Middle East".


The attack, which appeared to come from an air strike from two Israeli F16s, happened at the al-Fakhora school in Jabaliya refugee camp, causing carnage inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. Initial reports had said the devastation was caused by a tank shell exploding.

Bodies lay scattered on the ground in pools of blood amid shredded clothing and shoes after the attack, in which several dozen people were also wounded.

As the death toll in the conflict rose, the US Administration appeared to be split on its stance towards the conflict. The State Department today made its first call for an end to the violence but a spokeswoman for the White House said it was confident that Israel was taking care to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza. "

[mises]

[Pligganease]

Would it surprise me if Israel blew up a school? No.
Would it surprise me if they did it on purpose? No.
Would it surprise me if Hamas was using the school for cover? No.
Would it surprise me if Hamas staged the massacre? No.
Would it surprise me if Hamas set the explosions that created the carnage? No.

Nothing in that region surprises me anymore, I guess.

[Bigfeet]

Nothing's going to change. There'll be a temporary peace then Hamas will fire rockets into Israel again and have amnesia about it.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[Jandar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBR8Z-l8LXg

Human shielding and how it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS9SloFCilc

[Kuros]

The most likely explanation is that Israel hit the school without knowing it was a school. This happens way too often, and is my #2 reason why air forces need to become subsets of the Army and Navy (my #1 reason is that strategic bombing doesn't work).

Its absolutely awful. Even if Hamas is hiding weapons in a school, you do not bomb the school! Bombing schools are never a proportionate response as long as there are children within.

[Jandar]

[blade]

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

Wednesday, 7 January 2009


So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead � almost all civilians, most of them children and women � in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East � by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops � I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 � a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border � were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village � again after they were ordered to leave by Israel � and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie � heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime � and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 � when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel � is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-do-they-hate-the-west-so-much-we-will-ask-1230046.html

[blade]

[sojourner1]

When are they going to stop fighting? What in the world is worth fighting like this for? No one is winning nor is it fruitful. Is someone led by a retarded leadership?

[sharkey]

israel just smoked the shit out of a UN convoy.. thus ending humanitarian aid. Im on the fence of who to support , and to be honest, its all annoying and getting tiresome trying to keep up with the middle east. However, in light of recent destructive events , such as this school getting blown to shit and Israel hitting the UN themselves, they arent painting the best picture for themselves and one has to question the accuracy of their attacks, legitimate or not.

[rusty1983]

I read an article today proposing a solution......

....There is a ceasefire under the condition that Israel stop the economic blockade and Hamas stop launching rockets. If Israel keep their part and Hamas keep on firing rockets, then Israel is free to do whatever.......

[rusty1983]

[Ilsanman]

If they wanted to bomb a school, they should have done it at night. Period. the end.

Zionists consider 1 jewish life to be more valuable than 100 Palestinian lives. And their actions speak for thier beliefs.