Israelis fired on girl identified as 10-year old (w/tape)

[bapcathluth]

gilliam:

I want to be very clear on this. I am not anti-Palestinian. I would not want to be in their shoes and I wish them the best. My point of view is that they will never have peace by trying to push Israel into the sea with terrorism.

If they want to live in peace and have their own country, I think they now have that opportunity. They need to grab it. They need to be parrt of the connected world community of nations, not a rebel gang.

Gilliam, I am with you there. I have often thought that if the Palestinians had used non-violence like Ghandi and ML King, they would already have had a state. In 1996 after Rabin’s assasination, there was a groundswell of support for the peace process and for Shimon Peres–a big peace supporter. Then one bus bombing after another happened and the Israelis got frightened for their security and elected Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

[St.James]

cestusdei:

… I am pleased the Israeli’s work so hard to defeat the terrorists. These terrorists have used children and put them in harms way. Sometimes even trying to get the IDF to shoot at them so they can get “good” press.

gilliam:

The Guardian is a pretty pro-palestinian leaning newspaper and you need to read their articles carefully.

Murdering Children for Sport

"Ali Murad Abu Shaweesh was 12 when Israeli soldiers shot him in the back. Ali was killed on the same day in June, 2001 that Sharon refused to let the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, meet with Yasir Arafat, yet his death also went unnoticed by American television news. But not entirely unnoticed, since the Israeli soldiers, who taunted the Palestinian boys over loudspeakers outside the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, goading them to come out and throw rocks, did so under the gaze of Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times.

“Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered–death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights…in Sarajevo–but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport," Hedges wrote. His account, coolly factual yet full of passionate intensity, was written not for his own paper but for Harper’s Magazine, which sent Hedges to Gaza on his vacation.” The Nation, March 11, 2002

 

[manualman]

What a sad tragic situation. For the record, I’m an American Catholic. Totally western Euro background. No jewish relatives. No built-in biases.

I find it helpful to ask myself what the true difference in character is here. If you took a group of 500 Israeli men at random from any given year of Israel’s modern history (1948-2004), gave them machine guns and set them loose in an unarmed Palestinian Village, what would happen? Now, what would happen if the reverse were to occur. I would suggest that that in one case, you’d have some arguing and indecision before the group decided “lets get the hell outta here.” I also suggest that in the other you’d have an awful lot of dead Jews.

Israel is a nation of flawed humans. Some damaged, some given over to evil, most just good-but-fallen. Some of the evil ones gravitate to the military. Some of the damaged ones just can’t handle military service and the horribly difficult decisions that must be made in a milisecond. But what I see is that Israel is a nation TRYING to live safely and justly, while struggling to figure out how do that when tens of thousands of their neighbors want them all dead. Often they do an admirable job. Sometimes they fail.

The Palestinians are also a group of flawed humans. Some damaged, some given over to evil, most just good-but-fallen. Unfortunately, this culture seems drawn to leaders of the evil variety. Not consciously, but drawn that way nevertheless. From Haj Amin to Arafat, PLO/PA to Hamas, the leaders are evil men who always seek to blame all the Palestinian’s problems on Israel(while personally profiting enormously) . Such a nice, easy scapegoat. Such men care little that scapegoatism of this sort leads to endless bloodshed, conflict with no end.

The Israelis must stop the small fanatical settlement types that advocate seizing more land and killing whoever stands in the way. Palestinians must change their culture of death, suicide and celebration of killings.

Make me pick sides and I’ll choose Israel. Yup, they have some bloodthirsty monsters on the loose. But the great majority want reasonable, just peace. Too many Palestinians just want more killing. Even if a good man were to become their leader, one who genuinely supported an end to all the killing, I betcha he’d be assisinated by a Palestinian inside of two weeks. And far fewer Palestinians would mourn him than Israelis mourned the loss of their own peacemaker to an Israeli fanatic.

It is a telling indicator of the culture that Israel has courts that imprison Israelis for crimes against Palestinians and Israeli journalists who make a living trying to root out and stop evil deeds performed by Israeli soldiers. I see nothing of this kind on the Palestinian side.

 

[St.James]

manualman:

It is a telling indicator of the culture that Israel has …Israeli journalists who make a living trying to root out and stop evil deeds performed by Israeli soldiers. I see nothing of this kind on the Palestinian side.

The Israeli military conducts it’s terrorist operations under a state imposed media blackout. Reporters who have defied this media blackout and attempted to document the atrocities have themselves been killed by the Israeli military.

The result of this media blackout is that the established media gets the “official story” from Israeli state officials, not by witnessing the events themselves.

Palestinians, on the other hand, welcome journalists to document the conflict. The problem is that there are not many who are willing to risk their lives and their careers to do so. God bless the ones who do take that risk to make the truth known.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

gilliam:

The Guardian is a pretty pro-palestinian leaning newspaper and you need to read their articles carefully.

Diabolical? Well, let’s look at the article and try to figure out what is going on. Here is a quote from the article:

The killing of Haneen is clearer in the commander’s mind. “We checked it and we know that on the same day there was shooting of a mortar,” he says. “The troops from the post shot back at the area where the mortar was launched, the area where the girl was killed. We didn’t see if we hit someone. I assume that a stray bullet hit Haneen. Unfortunately.” Doesn’t he think that simply shooting back in the general direction of a mortar attack is irresponsible at best? He says not. “You cannot have soldiers sitting and doing nothing when they are shot at,” he says.

Doesn’t sound diabolical to me.

What is diabolical is for Palestinians to hide behind children and fire mortars. Why are they firing mortars anywhere around children?

Gillam,I consider hatred and murder on both sides diabolical.Who is behind the mindset of terrorist and who is behind the mindset of soldiers killing children?If we don’t pray for both peoples,this will continue. I am Not anti Isreal nor am I antiPalestine,I am however anti-hatred,anti-terrorist,and I believe that if we do not pray for both peoples the situation will only get worse.God Bless

 

[cestusdei]

St. James,
Islamic terrorists don’t mind killing children one little bit. You seem to have no care about the Jewish children blown up on PURPOSE by Islamic militants. And as I said sometimes they deliberately put these children in these situations so they will be shot. Then they can blame the Jews for it. Just a few weeks ago a 10 year old boy was given some cash to run an Israeli checkpoint. He didn’t realize they wanted him shot by the Israeli’s. They didn’t shoot him although they took a risk in not doing so. Muslims have blown up buses and pizza joints and of course the wtc. I guess that doesn’t bother you.

 

[gilliam]

Lisa4Catholics:

Gillam,I consider hatred and murder on both sides diabolical.Who is behind the mindset of terrorist and who is behind the mindset of soldiers killing children?If we don’t pray for both peoples,this will continue. I am Not anti Isreal nor am I antiPalestine,I am however anti-hatred,anti-terrorist,and I believe that if we do not pray for both peoples the situation will only get worse.God Bless

I didn’t see where the soldiers in the article set out to kill children. If they did, sure it would be murder and it would be diabolical. If it was an accicent because they were being fired upon by others, than it was not murder.

 

[gilliam]

You all might be interested in this. Note it comes from the Israelies:

With the construction of the security fence, which makes it difficult for the terrorist organizations to perpetrate attacks, the terrorist organizations have increasingly used minors and women to perpetrate suicide attacks by exploiting their innocent appearance, in an attempt to fool security force personnel at the various checkpoints.

2004 saw a 64% increase in the number of minors involved in terrorism, as
opposed to 2003. The innocent appearance of children and young people
arouses less suspicion and enables them to more easily blend in crowded
places. Moreover, children and teenagers are seen by the terrorist
organizations as more easily influenced and constitute an easier recruitment
base for suicide attacks.

Women are also seen as arousing less suspicion than men. In each instance
in which women were involved, the terrorists were aware of their need for a
disguise that would allow them to blend in on the Israeli street. The
terrorists tried to give themselves an overall Western appearance, including
by wearing non-traditional clothing such as short clothes, pregnancy outfits
and modern hairstyles. In most of the aforementioned incidents, the women
were from the margins of Palestinian society and did not usually fit the
“accepted” profile of “the average Palestinian woman”, with the main motive
for the involvement of women in terrorism being personal (alongside the
basic nationalistic motive). Thus, for example, there is the romantic
motive (i.e. romantic links with the militants involved in recruiting them)
and the personal distress motive (i.e. suicidal tendencies in the context of
despair over life and parental opposition to the daughter’s marriage).

The integration of women in terrorism is divided among various levels with
the uppermost being the involvement of women as suicide bombers or intended
suicide bombers whose intentions were foiled before they could be realized.
Moreover, women have served as assistants for terrorist activity regarding
both planning and perpetration.

WOMEN’S AND MINOR’S INVOLVEMENT IN TERROR ATTACKS IN 2003-2004.

2003: 59 Women 102 Minors
2004: 61 Women 168 Minors

imra.org.il/story.php3?id=23521

 

[St.James]

gilliam:

I didn’t see where the soldiers in the article set out to kill children. If they did, sure it would be murder and it would be diabolical.

In the recorded exchanges someone in the operations room asks: “Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?” The observation post, housed in a watchtower, replies: **"It’s a little girl. She’s running defensively eastwards, a girl of about 10. **
She’s behind the embankment, scared to death."

Not until four minutes later was it reported that the girl had been hit and had fallen. The observation post reports: “Receive, I think that one of the positions took her out.” … Operations room: “What, she fell?” Observation post: “She’s not moving right now.”

The tape records the commander as telling his men, after firing at the girl with an automatic weapon and declaring he has “confirmed” the killing:** “Anyone who’s mobile, moving in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed.”**

The soldiers said that the commander had fired two shots at the girl from close range as she lay on the ground before withdrawing, turning and “emptying his magazine” by firing some 10 bullets at her body.

Full article accompanied with video footage:

informationclearinghouse…article7363.htm

 

[bapcathluth]

manualman:

What a sad tragic situation. For the record, I’m an American Catholic. Totally western Euro background. No jewish relatives. No built-in biases.

I find it helpful to ask myself what the true difference in character is here. If you took a group of 500 Israeli men at random from any given year of Israel’s modern history (1948-2004), gave them machine guns and set them loose in an unarmed Palestinian Village, what would happen? Now, what would happen if the reverse were to occur. I would suggest that that in one case, you’d have some arguing and indecision before the group decided “lets get the hell outta here.” I also suggest that in the other you’d have an awful lot of dead Jews.

Israel is a nation of flawed humans. Some damaged, some given over to evil, most just good-but-fallen. Some of the evil ones gravitate to the military. Some of the damaged ones just can’t handle military service and the horribly difficult decisions that must be made in a milisecond. But what I see is that Israel is a nation TRYING to live safely and justly, while struggling to figure out how do that when tens of thousands of their neighbors want them all dead. Often they do an admirable job. Sometimes they fail.

The Palestinians are also a group of flawed humans. Some damaged, some given over to evil, most just good-but-fallen. Unfortunately, this culture seems drawn to leaders of the evil variety. Not consciously, but drawn that way nevertheless. From Haj Amin to Arafat, PLO/PA to Hamas, the leaders are evil men who always seek to blame all the Palestinian’s problems on Israel(while personally profiting enormously) . Such a nice, easy scapegoat. Such men care little that scapegoatism of this sort leads to endless bloodshed, conflict with no end.

The Israelis must stop the small fanatical settlement types that advocate seizing more land and killing whoever stands in the way. Palestinians must change their culture of death, suicide and celebration of killings.

Make me pick sides and I’ll choose Israel. Yup, they have some bloodthirsty monsters on the loose. But the great majority want reasonable, just peace. Too many Palestinians just want more killing. Even if a good man were to become their leader, one who genuinely supported an end to all the killing, I betcha he’d be assisinated by a Palestinian inside of two weeks. And far fewer Palestinians would mourn him than Israelis mourned the loss of their own peacemaker to an Israeli fanatic.

It is a telling indicator of the culture that Israel has courts that imprison Israelis for crimes against Palestinians and Israeli journalists who make a living trying to root out and stop evil deeds performed by Israeli soldiers. I see nothing of this kind on the Palestinian side.

Manualman, you are so right. This was very thought-provoking and well written.

 

[HagiaSophia]

gilliam:

You all might be interested in this. Note it comes from the Israelies:]

Does no one remember when they blew up some public restaurant or pizza parlor and set the next wave of detonations for 20 minutes later so that those rushing to the aid of the dismembered, the injured and the dying would be blown up too?

 

[St.James]

gilliam:

I didn’t see where the soldiers in the article set out to kill children. If they did, sure it would be murder and it would be diabolical.

Murdering Children for Sport

"Ali Murad Abu Shaweesh was 12 when Israeli soldiers shot him in the back. Ali was killed on the same day in June, 2001 that Sharon refused to let the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, meet with Yasir Arafat, yet his death also went unnoticed by American television news. But not entirely unnoticed, since the Israeli soldiers, who taunted the Palestinian boys over loudspeakers outside the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, goading them to come out and throw rocks, did so under the gaze of Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times.

“Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered–death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights…in Sarajevo–but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport," Hedges wrote. His account, coolly factual yet full of passionate intensity, was written not for his own paper but for Harper’s Magazine, which sent Hedges to Gaza on his vacation.” The Nation, March 11, 2002

 

[gilliam]

Murdering Children for Sport

"Ali Murad Abu Shaweesh was 12 when Israeli soldiers shot him in the back. Ali was killed on the same day in June, 2001 that Sharon refused to let the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, meet with Yasir Arafat, yet his death also went unnoticed by American television news. But not entirely unnoticed, since the Israeli soldiers, who taunted the Palestinian boys over loudspeakers outside the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, goading them to come out and throw rocks, did so under the gaze of Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times.

“Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered–death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights…in Sarajevo–but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport,” Hedges wrote. His account, coolly factual yet full of passionate intensity, was written not for his own paper but for Harper’s Magazine, which sent Hedges to Gaza on his vacation." The Nation, March 11, 2002

If this occurred as reported by Hedges, it is definately a war crime, but for loudspeakers to be used to lure out terrorists themselves is not that unusual. Are you sure they were not trying to get the adults? I don’t know. Would have to investigate more.

I don’t know enough about Hedges to say where his political leanings lie. … Oh, wait a minute, LOL! you mean this Chris Hedges! New York Times Reporter, Chris Hedges was Booed off the Stage and had his Microphone Cut Twice as he Delivered a Graduation Speech on War and Empire at Rockford College in Illinois

 

[St.James]

HagiaSophia:

Does no one remember when they blew up some public restaurant or pizza parlor and set the next wave of detonations for 20 minutes later so that those rushing to the aid of the dismembered, the injured and the dying would be blown up too?

How could we forget?

The media has seared this image into the public mind.

If only the media would cover atrocities caused by Israelis with the same intensity. The media hardly covers Israeli atrocities at all.

There is a double standard where the Israeli state is concerned.

 

[St.James]

gilliam:

Let’s see a mortar goes off…

Perhaps you should read the articles that you comment on. Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter (hardly an anti-Israel organ) mentioned nothing about a “mortar going off.”

Could I recommend that your position would benefit from some even handedness?. Killing children is wrong, even when the “holy people” of the Israeli state perpetrate it. Can you bring yourself to admit this? It seems that you cannot.

 

[gilliam]

St. James:

Perhaps you should read the articles that you comment on. Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter (hardly an anti-Israel organ) mentioned nothing about a “mortar going off.”

Could I recommend that your position would benefit from some even handedness?. Killing children is wrong, even when the “holy people” of the Israeli state perpetrate it. Can you bring yourself to admit this? It seems that you cannot.

Sorry I did and updated the post. Read my reply again.

Yes, killing children is wrong and so is deliberatly placing them in harms way. And I don’t think of the Israelies as the ‘holy people’. You need to cool down and stop being so beligerent.

 

[Lilyofthevalley]

It’s a sad incident. Maybe the reason it happened is because the poor terrorists resort to villiany such as this:
(Teenage Suicide Bombers)

On March 16, 2004, Palestinian terrorists associated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group tricked a 12-year-old boy into carrying a large bomb in his school bag into a checkpoint near Nablus. Abdullah Quran’s life was saved only because a cell phone rigged to detonate the 13-pound bomb failed to set off the explosive at the checkpoint as it had been designed to do. The border guard heard the cell phone and opened the bag.
The unwitting youngster did not understand that he had been selected to be the youngest suicide bomber nor did he realize that the men who had persuaded him to carry the bomb were planning to kill him. He had been instructed to carry the package, which he believed were car parts, to a woman waiting on the other side of the checkpoint.

After hours of questioning, the child was released when it became clear that he did not know what he was carrying.​

Golda Meir summed up the situation well. "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

gilliam:

Sorry I did and updated the post. Read my reply again.

Yes, killing children is wrong and so is deliberatly placing them in harms way. And I don’t think of the Israelies as the ‘holy people’. You need to cool down and stop being so beligerent.

Gillam and St.James, be nice:tsktsk: Don’t you think something besides God wins win two Catholics are getting so upset with each other:crying: God Bless you both and please both of you guys need to try to see the others possition and pray for both sides God Bless

 

[St.James]

gilliam:

I don’t know enough about Hedges to say where his political leanings lie. … Oh, wait a minute, LOL! you mean this Chris Hedges! New York Times Reporter, Chris Hedges was Booed off the Stage and had his Microphone Cut Twice as he Delivered a Graduation Speech on War and Empire at Rockford College in Illinois

Thanks for the link.

"The speaker wasn’t an antiwar student. It wasn’t an antiwar faculty member. It was New York Times reporter and veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges.

Hedges reported from war-torn countries for fifteen years. Hedges spent the last year covering Al Qaida cells in Europe and North Africa.

He was a member of the New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism."

Apparently you believe that Chris Hedges’ 15 years of experience as a jounalist in war torn countries is of little value compared to the “experience” of a pack of undergraduate students who’s only experience of war is televised propaganda.

I’d have to disagree with you there.

Your appeal to pack mentality is not Catholic.

If bucking the consensus view in itself makes someone wrong, then our Lord and His Apostles were wrong.

God bless those who have the courage to face ridicule when speaking the truth.

 

[gilliam]

St. James:

Thanks for the link.

Apparently you believe that Chris Hedges’ 15 years of experience as a jounalist in war torn countries is of little value compared to the “experience” of a pack of undergraduate students who’s only experience of war is televised propaganda.

Nope, but the story shows he isn’t an objective journalist either.

I’d have to disagree with you there.

Your tar and feather tactics are not Catholic.

f bucking the consensus view in itself makes someone wrong, then our Lord and His Apostles were wrong.

Are you arguing with yourself?

God bless those who have the courage to face ridicule when speaking the truth.