Israel launches aerial assaults on Gaza

[BSB]

Israel launches aerial assaults on Gaza; Hamas leader killed
By Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram

New York Times

mercurynews.com

Posted:   11/14/2012 09:40:39 PM PST
November 15, 2012 5:41 AM GMTUpdated:   11/14/2012 09:40:40 PM PST

JERUSALEM -- Israel on Wednesday launched the most ferocious assault on Gaza in four years after persistent Palestinian rocket fire, hitting at least 20 targets in aerial attacks that killed the top military commander of Hamas, damaged Israel's fragile relations with Egypt and escalated the risks of a new war in the Middle East.

The Israel Defense Forces coupled the intensity of the airstrikes with the threat of a ground invasion of Gaza recalling its three-week operation in the winter of 2008-2009, shifting infantry brigades and calling up some specialist reserves. The Israelis also warned all Hamas leaders in Gaza to stay out of sight or risk the same fate as the Hamas military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, who was killed in a pinpoint airstrike as he was riding in a car down a Gaza street.

"We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead," the Israel Defense Forces said in a Twitter message. Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the military spokesman, said, "If I were a senior Hamas activist, I would look for a place to hide."

The escalation in hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the militant organization regarded by Israel as a terrorist group sworn to its destruction, prompted Egypt to recall its ambassador and demand meetings of the Security Council and the Arab League.

Israel had already been facing growing tensions with its Arab neighbors. Israel has confronted

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lawlessness on its border with Sinai, including cross-border attacks. It recently fired twice into Syria, which is caught in a civil war, after munitions fell in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and it has absorbed more than 750 rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel this year. The rockets have hit homes, caused injuries and frightened the population. On Saturday, Gaza militants fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli army jeep patrolling the Israel-Gaza border, injuring four soldiers.

It is both the rocket fire and the buildup of advanced weaponry in Gaza that has increasingly tested Israeli officials and prompted such an intense attack, according to military experts in Israel.

"Deterrence has to be maintained," said Gabi Siboni, a colonel in the reserves who leads the military and strategic affairs program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. "It was only a question of time until this moment arrived."

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said the Israeli attacks killed at least five others besides Jabari, including a baby and a 7-year-old girl, and had wounded at least 40.

The ferocity of the airstrikes provoked rage in Gaza, where Hamas said the campaign amounted to war and promised a harsh response. It quickly launched dozens of rockets into southern Israel. Several barrages struck the city of Beersheba, shattering windows and damaging cars but causing no injuries.

Civil-defense authorities in Israel, anticipating retaliation, instructed residents within a 25-mile radius of Gaza not to go to school or work Thursday. Many remained indoors or congregated in bomb shelters.

Mordechai said the operation "would continue and grow." The military said it was designed to "severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership."

By targeting Jabari, 52, the Israelis said they had killed the mastermind of virtually every attack to come from Gaza in recent years, including the kidnapping in 2006 of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Jabari was involved in the negotiations to release Shalit, whose five years as a prisoner was a source of national anguish. When he was finally released through Egypt, Jabari made a rare public appearance alongside him.

The attacks on Gaza were undertaken at a delicate time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nine weeks before elections, and may have partly reflected his administration's own sense that it needed to send a message of deterrence beyond Gaza. In a statement, Netanyahu praised the military for the operation and said: "We will not accept a situation in which Israeli citizens are threatened by the terror of rockets. No country would accept this."

In Washington, the White House issued a carefully worded statement saying that President Barack Obama had spoken with both Netanyahu and President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, reiterating to both that the United States supports Israel's right to self-defense from the rocket attacks. The statement said that Obama had urged Netanyahu to "make every effort to avoid civilian casualties," and that Obama and Morsi "had agreed on the importance of working to de-escalate the situation as quickly as possible."

http://www.skweezer.com/s.aspx?q=http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_21999818/israel-launches-aerial-assaults-gaza-hamas-leader-killed

[Christians4LessGvt]

'bout time!

Israeli Airforce Kills Top Hamas Commander Ahmed Al-Jabari

"By targeting Jabari, 52, the Israelis said they had killed the mastermind of virtually
every attack to come from Gaza in recent years, including the kidnapping in 2006 of
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit"

[Christians4LessGvt]

Miraculous Recovery by Injured Gaza Man?
Pallywood is in high gear as Gazans dupe BBC viewers in time-honored style.

By Gil Ronen
11/15/2012

Barely one day into the fighting in Hamas-run Gaza, the locals are hard at work playing the victim for the world's press.

Footage from the BBC captured by watchdog group Honest Reporting shows a heavy man lying on the ground and being carried away by residents, apparently after being injured by an Israeli attack.

Moments later, that same man again fills the frame, except he is walking about and obviously unhurt.

The widespread staging of such victim situations is a favored tactic of Arabs fighting Israel and has come to be known as "Pallywood." Because Israel is stronger militarily, the Arabs cling to the underdog image of poor refugees under occupation and siege by evil Israelis, thus eliciting sympathy.

Exposed: Pallywood Returns to Gaza

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/162130#.UKU_0odJHGC

[Xavier_Onassis]

The people who are forced to live in Gaza certainly deserve sympathy. It is a squalid impoverished mess, thanks to the Israelis.

[sirs]

Notice how it's always the Israelis fault, and never any of the Muslim countries who could easily embrace and accept their fellow "Arabs" into their own country, or provide them with some of their oil rich fortunes.  Naaaa....let's bash the one little country that actually has a functioning democracy in the region.  Yea, that's the ticket

[Xavier_Onassis]

Israel made those people refugees. Israel is the root cause of their suffering.

[sirs]

Israel made no one anything.  The UN made remade Israel.  The Arab countries that then atttacked Israel, helped produce the Palestinian refugees.  Those same Arab nations have done squat for their fellow Arabs since, outside of use them as political fodder, in in Hamas' case, human shields

No, Israel does not have completely clean hands in this whole middle east debacle, but to keep trying to claim that they're the reason for it all, is pure ignorance.......probably sprinkled with hatred and anti-semetism

[Xavier_Onassis]

Bullshit Zionist propaganda custom made for unthinking dolts.

[Christians4LessGvt]

[hnumpah]

No, Israel does not have completely clean hands in this whole middle east debacle...

That's an understatement. They have refused to let those Arabs who fled the war to return to their homes. They have violated several UN mandates by building, and refusing to stop building, settlements in occupied territories, and taking more Arab lands. Most of the issues that are the root cause of the conflict they face now are of their own making.

[sirs]

Bullshit Zionist propaganda custom made for unthinking dolts.

Well you are the BS master and professor for such dolts, I'll give you that, though in this case its more leftist dogma

[sirs]

Most of the issues that are the root cause of the conflict they face now are of their own making.

While I've conceded Isreal has issues, and has contributed to the problems in the Middle East, your above summation is that would be you are in error.  The "root" causes is the ongoing mindest, as soon as Israel was allowed to relocate via the UN, that they cease to exist.  Every effort was brought to bear in that endeavor.  Initially it was militarily, but when that backfired big time, now its the ongoing effort to bring about a political war, with the unfornate casualties of Palestinians being used by the Arab world, the UN, and terrorists like Hamas.  The goal of their being removed is the "root cause" I'm afraid, and hardly of their making

[hnumpah]

The Arabs that fled had homes and property in what is now Israel, and were never allowed to return to them after the war. Their homes and property were confiscated and the Israeiis forced them to become refugees. They want what is theirs returned to them, not to be forced to move to another country and be assimilated there. I would feel the same way - this is my home, my property, and anyone who tries to remove me by force and take it from me is going to get a fight. If I evacuate because of a hurricane and return to find squatters on my land tryng to claim it for their own. the same applies.

The Israelis had the opportunity, after the wars following their independence, to allow the Arabs to return to their homes and property. They didn't, claiming that simply becausae they were Arab, they would be a security risk. No appeals, no hearings, no attempt to screen out the real threats from those who simply wanted to go home and live peacefully, just a slap in the face and a fuck you as they confiscated their homes and property for themselves.

That was the beginning of their land grab that has lasted ever since, in violation of UN mandates (which for some reason we can enforce against Iraq but not Israel) and human rights conventions that persons displaced by war should be allowed to return to their homes. They force the Arabs to show documents and get permission to travel from place to place, they build settlements and roads exclusively for non-Arab use, confiscate and destroy Arab property at will - sounds like Nazi Germany under Hitler. They build walls and put in checkpoints to make it difficult for Arabs to get to work and move from one place to another, does the Berlin Wall ring a bell? Or the Polish ghettoes under the Nazis? They are doing the same things to the Arabs that were done to them before and during WWII, and using the same excuse, national security. And, lo and behold, partisan groups and freedom fighters sprang up then too, to fight the Nazis.

[Christians4LessGvt]

Their homes and property were confiscated and the Israeiis forced them to become refugees. They want what is theirs returned to them, not to be forced to move to another country

Their homes and property were confiscated (The American Indian) and the American Indians wanted/want what was theirs returned to them. We see how that worked out. And we see how it's worked out for centuries when countless "new nations" were founded. Almost always somebody on the land that is known today as _______________ (fill in the blank) someone else at some time in history was run off that same land.

and anyone who tries to remove me by force and take it from me is going to get a fight.

And that's really the bottom line.
They will only stop fighting when the Palestinians are utterly destroyed.
Thats pretty much how it's worked throughout history.
If the American Indian would have been allowed to get missles from Iran (had missles existed)
and the United States had allowed them to keep shooting missles without destrying the American Indian's will to fight....then we'd still be having squirmishes today. The answer for Israel just like it's been for countless other countries exsiting today...is to utterly destroy the enemy by whatever means necessary. The sooner this is done, the less killing in the future. Isreal should not negotiate with those that want to end it's existence, they should seek utter destruction of any entity attacking Israel directly or indirectly.

[hnumpah]

...The answer for Israel just like it's been for countless other countries exsiting today...is to utterly destroy the enemy by whatever means necessary...

In other words, ethnic cleansing. Much like the Nazis tried to do.