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Post by IrishMike on Jan 6, 2009 20:15:00 GMT -5
Hi Larry,this is off subject-I saw a chat subject from you on Obama's first 100 days.Is that scheduled for a chat date or something?I wasn't sure how to engage on the subject there was no reply button or anything,very good subject.
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CM
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Post by CM on Jan 6, 2009 21:57:27 GMT -5
Hi Larry,this is off subject-I saw a chat subject from you on Obama's first 100 days.Is that scheduled for a chat date or something?I wasn't sure how to engage on the subject there was no reply button or anything,very good subject. Irish Mike, look to the top right of your screen, right under the Welcome banner you will see the “Chat” button, click and it will ask you for a login name: enter “Irish Mike” and you are in. I will be there as an observer, so I may fine tune our "Chat" features. I fully expect response times to lag but as I’ve said in other post, our site is in its infancy and we will experiences growing pains. I do hope you will join in so we can load test our chat feature. Wednesday, Jan 7, 5:00 p.m.
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Post by IrishMike on Jan 6, 2009 22:34:25 GMT -5
Understood,thanks CM.
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Post by jackoliver on Jan 7, 2009 16:52:17 GMT -5
CM have you read Allan W Eckert's series of books on the French and Indian War? They are excellent!! However, as good as you quoted past history, your recent history is lacking. Shock and Awe doesn't work in Urban Warfare. It kills the innocent and does little to destroy a culture or an ideology. If you care about the human race, people in general, you would use mass destruction of the general public as a last resort. It is not ethical or moral. If you want total destruction at any cost, you become the same as the terrorist. I agree with VOR- suprise suprise. All this fighting does is create more terrorist and vengance. I do admitt though, Isreal has a right to defend itself. and If they want to do it this way, then its their f-ing problem when more terrorist attack them. IMO, Isreal has to win the hearts and minds of their enemies, or else THEY WILL NEVER HAVE PEACE. IMO, if china and Iran are funding the weapons, then some sactions need to happen. there is no profit in peace.
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Post by retiredsocal on Jan 8, 2009 0:50:09 GMT -5
I agree with tpfkalarry. I don't think that Israel has a problem with FATAH if they looking at Israel as being liberators. I believe that FATAH realizes that they will have civilian casualties as a result of HAMAS hiding behind civilians to perform their attacks. They want Israel to wipe out HAMAS so that they can go back to a more peaceful existence. One wonders why they voted HAMAS into office unless there was a lot of strong arm tactics and threats to the general population. It is obvious that HAMAS will use violence to stay in charge as well.
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CM
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Post by CM on Jan 19, 2009 17:17:02 GMT -5
An email from a friend of a friend.
The Gaza strip is one of two home fronts in this nasty and unwanted war. There is ample and disturbing evidence, shown daily in fearful living color on televised news and internet videos, of the terrible suffering of civilians in Gaza. The Israeli air force and ground forces have been hitting relentlessly at the Hamas military infrastructure, and there are also civilian casualties. Although civilians are often warned prior to attacks by leaflets dropped by the IAF and even phone calls made by the IDF, there is enormous anguish involved in people having to flee their homes under fire, often uncertain as to where to go and how to get away. Israelis are not oblivious to this. The suffering of Palestinian civilians and ways to mitigate it are a topic of continual public debate and government activity.
But it has by now also become clear that Hamas is using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, and that homes, schools, and even mosques have been turned into armories and launching sites for missiles. They have dug a vast labyrinthine network of tunnels under Gaza, which they use for smuggling armaments, explosives and personnel from across the border with Egypt and also into Israel. Hamas painstakingly and deliberately built these vast underground battlefields in civilian areas. They did not provide their citizens with bomb shelters or safe zones for the battle they themselves were preparing to initiate. This enormous superstructure is dedicated to destroying Israelis – that includes me, my family and friends. So much good might have been accomplished had even a fraction of these resources and energies been used to develop an economic and cultural infrastructure to benefit the Palestinian people.
But there is also another home front, one that is less photographed and appears less dramatic on TV and video screens. It is, for all that, no less real. I am a native Bostonian and have made my home in the northern Negev for more than three decades. I’ve just returned from my winter break to Brandeis where I have come to teach Israel Studies. I want to share what my home front is like as a way of explaining a sometimes-ignored dimension of what this war is about.
When we built our home in 1976 on a patch of desert, just north of Beer-Sheva towards the Judean hills and Hebron, the zoning ordinance required us to include a bomb shelter with all walls and the ceiling of at least one-half meter of reinforced concrete and a heavy metal door. At the same time, in a place that was probably never cultivated before in history, we planted olive, pomegranate, lemon, grapefruit and cumquat trees, and an abundance of plants and flowers. That has been the setting in which we have brought up our children.
This is where my wife and I, our two daughters and sons-in-law, our son and 8 of our grandchildren spent New Year’s eve of 2009 after a siren warned us we had 60 seconds to find shelter from yet another missile attack. It’s true we are personally fortunate. No home in our own community has (yet) been hit. But this “routine” takes a real toll. Our grandchildren from 18 months to 20 have been out of school since the Hannukah vacation began in late December. The decision to close kindergartens, schools and university and college campuses and disallow any public gatherings proved fortunate.
One of the first grad missiles to hit Beer-Sheva exploded at a kindergarten; another at the high school where two of our children were students and where our son-in-law taught. Our daughter and son-in-law had to stop their car by the side of the road and run with their 18- month-old son to a ditch where they lay over him and covered their heads with their hands. They heard the four loud explosions of the falls but were unharmed. They were on their way to the pediatrician. Luckily they got there before the next siren sounded and they were able to get to the public shelter. We have had other close calls and many other runs to the shelter, almost daily, from first thing in the morning until well after midnight.
It is not the first time we have used our shelter. During the first Gulf War we sought refuge from Saddam Hussein’s Scuds. It was worse then. We were then instructed to wear gas masks. During the last war with the allies of Hamas, the Hezbullah of Lebanon, we housed for more than a month a three-generation family from the Galilee who could no longer risk the danger from missiles at their own home.
I concluded my military service in the IDF reserves around 1990 as a member of Civil Defense. During the previous decade we learned how to jack up concrete slabs from buildings destroyed by bombs, to extricate victims and to protect civilians from chemical and biological warfare. We were warned then that while the army was largely preparing for conflict on the battlefield with enemy armies, it was likely we were about to enter an era in which the conflict would be waged behind the lines, on the home front. The First Gulf War, when we wore gas masks as scud missiles hit targets largely in and around Tel-Aviv and Ramat-Gan, was our first experience of this new reality. Modern warfare was being deliberately directed against civilians, not only in Israel.
The assault on Twin Towers, the bomb attacks in Madrid and London, the suicide attacks on the buses of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv may be harbingers of the world in which we now live. Every time you take off your shoes and go through a scanner to get on a plane suggest that the front lines may be everywhere and anywhere. For Israelis this has not been an abstraction for several decades. Targeting Israeli civilians is a well-practiced strategy with increasing ferocity, sophistication and, now, with the legitimacy that comes from sacred, religious texts.
7,000 plus missiles since Israel withdrew from Gaza, the Hamas began by hurling primitive katyusha rockets on Sderoth and other border settlements within easy range, exploding buildings, injuring, maiming, killing and terrifying men, women and children and making it nearly impossible to live. Longer-range katyushas then reached even deeper inside Israel’s rather narrow territory. In the past weeks they’ve used (and revealed) an arsenal of Grad missiles that make it possible for Hamas to target our home and all homes and institutions 40 kilometers from the border with Gaza and further still from the launching pads. Vast numbers of these rockets, not locally made, are regularly smuggled into Gaza to be used on civilian, not military targets. This last point is crucial.
We are not willing to turn the other cheek any longer to this constantly menacing threat, or to accept deliberately random acts of terror practiced with increasing virulence and cynicism as a normal part of everyday life, as merely part of our “routine.” Hamas decreed on December 19 it would not renew the temporary truce (Ta’hdiya or calm) that could have lead toward coexistence with Israel. It would have been immoral not to respond to their renewal of terror in the form of rockets fired at the real people living in Israeli cities and towns. For me and most of my countrymen, there is sense of “no choice” in fighting this war. The success rate in calling up the reserves was more than 100%. That is, many who did not receive the call – the famous “Order No. 8” – volunteered to take part.
Our youngest son, born in Beer Sheva had the privilege of attending courses for a semester at Brandeis before beginning his service in the IDF, where he trained as a paramedic. He chose this service he said, because he “would like to save lives, rather than take them.” He is now attached to an armored unit in Gaza.
Abe called us several times before he entered Gaza to ask if we were OK, after hearing that rockets had fallen in our area. On his last leave he even shared the shelter with us civilians. I can only imagine how he and his comrades view the conflict now taking place, from the inside. I believe they will be protective of the lives of innocent civilians among whom Hamas fighters, waiting to kill or if possible, kidnap them, are embedded. Their job is daunting.
We know this is a war we must win. Winning means reducing the capacity of Hamas in transforming their territory into a launching site for weapons designed to destroy our families and our society.
The Hamas is not a military force designed for warfare on the conventional battlefield. Their target is civilian areas with attacks originating from their own civilian heartland. The only way out for us is to excise or contain this cancer before it destroys further its own host as well as its neighbors. Hamas has yet to foreswear their goals or methods. Their version of Islamic theology is fundamentally anti-Semitic, likening Jews with pigs and apes, and surely unworthy of independence and equality in the world they define as the “Abode of Islam.”
Reluctantly, my own conclusion is that it is far better to allow Israel to contain and neutralize this virulent fundamentalism now. Otherwise, I expect I will be back in my bomb shelter together with my family yet another time with results on all sides that could be even more catastrophic.
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CM
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Post by CM on Jan 22, 2009 1:12:14 GMT -5
For eight years, approximately 8,000 rockets have been sent to Israeli population centers by Hamas terrorists, whose purpose is to kill or maim civilians. The favorite hour of launching daily Hamas rockets is 7:45 in the morning on weekdays because that is when the streets are full of Israeli children on their way to school. Eight year old children in the Israeli town of Sderot, who must race to shelter within 15 seconds of the alarm, have known no other life. Hamas refers to Israel itself as "occupied territory," and to any town in Israel as an "illegal settlement." Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip in 2005; not one Israeli soldier or civilian remained there. Everything was ready for the Gazans to start a new life and economic development - there was no blockade, border crossings were open. Instead came rockets into Israel, a Hamas coup, throwing Fatah Palestinians to their deaths from roofs of buildings, torturing their own people in their prisons. It is regrettable that Israel did not react with full force to the very first rockets after its withdrawal from Gaza, but there was the naïve illusion that perhaps talks, discussions, verbal threats and temporary closings of the border crossings, might do the job. Israel did not take into account that Iran, directly or through Hizballah, was paying for the Hamas operatives, per rocket launch. Through the elaborate system of tunnels dug by Hamas under the Gaza- Egypt border, thousands of tons of explosives and larger and better Iranian missiles have been smuggled into Gaza. During the mid 2008 six-month "cease fire," during which many rockets were launched into Israel, Hamas acquired Iranian rockets with larger warheads, a longer range, carrying numerous tiny steel balls and with a rocket range that covered a population of close to one million Israelis. Larger and better rockets were now stored in mosques, schools, hospitals and normal apartment buildings. Schools, financed by the UN, and the greenhouses left intact by the Israelis, were used in order to launch mortar shells and missiles. Whenever Israel opened the border crossings to supply Gaza with food and fuel, Hamas attempted to blow up the crossing points. Too much food and fuel would disturb the flourishing black market controlled by Hamas chiefs and would spoil their propaganda machine. Most supplies were transported through the tunnels from Egypt under Hamas auspices, creating a lucrative business for Hamas families. The absurd notion that Israel must supply fuel, electricity, food and medication to an outlaw region controlled by a terror organization, became a permanent mantra in the western media. Israel was supposed to provide Hamas with raw materials for the rockets, with electricity for the machinery used to produce them, with food for its manufacturers and with building materials for safe bunkers under schools and hospitals for its leaders. Once the border crossing was closed, as a result of repeated Hamas attacks, the international game of a "humanitarian crisis" was successfully played, with full cooperation of the western media. Famous incidents included photos of Gaza residents with candles (allegedly no electricity), staged behind black curtains in full outside daylight (visible through cracks between the curtains.) Most western media used these fake pictures and, when the lie was exposed, never mentioned it. Hamas leaders were never lacking food, fuel, electricity, luxurious private vehicles and all amenities of well-to-do black market profiteers. Almost all reports to western media come from Palestinians, who are either sympathetic to Hamas, or afraid of it, or openly active in its ranks, or all of the above. All photos and videos are provided by Palestinian operatives. On western TV, Hamas rockets are launched only from empty fields, never from a school or crowded neighborhood as it is in reality. United Nation sources in Gaza are often quoted, condemning Israel for a humanitarian crisis; but these sources are normally employees of UNRWA, the UN agency that, since 1948, makes every effort to perpetuate the "refugee" status of the great-grandchildren of the 1948 refugees. The grandparents of these "refugees" were displaced 60 years ago by a distance of a 20-minute drive and were never resettled because they were receiving free food from the UN. The UN objected vehemently to any attempt at settling the refugees, their children and grandchildren. The few real refugees who remain alive today, and are 80 years of age, were 18 years old when they were displaced. All the terrorists are third or fourth generation "refugees" held as such, courtesy of UNRWA. These UN organizations employ, by their own admission, numerous active Hamas members. When the latter make statements on behalf of "UN sources in Gaza," the Palestinian journalists never mention to us who they are. The public gets the impression that these are truthful objective sources, while being fed standard Hamas lies. Western media never disclose that the jobs of these people depend on perpetuating the misery of the so-called "refugees." A Headmaster and science teacher of one of the UNRWA schools in Gaza was a leader in the rocket industry of Islamic Jihad. The UN strongly denied Israel's accusations that they employed such a person, until the man was killed by Israel and was eulogized by his friends as a leader of I.J. and a designer of rockets. When Israel truck drivers brought humanitarian supplies to Gaza, they were often attacked by Hamas. At least one driver, supplying the Palestinians, was murdered. No protest by the UN. But, when during the current fighting, an Arab truck driver, employed by the UN, was accidentally killed, the UN became indignant and stopped all its "humanitarian" activity in protest. The Israeli Defense Forces monitor every detail of this fantasyland by using airborne drones and by a very successful intelligence penetration of Hamas ranks. They know which apartment building serves as a missile storage place, the addresses and phone numbers of Hamas leaders, which school serves as an ammunition depot, etc. In retrospect, when the six-month "ceasefire" ended and Hamas refused to continue it, a much more dangerous future situation was prevented. With an additional "ceasefire," Hamas would have acquired rockets covering all of Israel and possibly much more accurate Iranian missiles. During the current operation, when the Israeli Air Force wants to blow up a house which serves as a missile storage, Israel phones every family in the house and gives them 15 minutes to evacuate. Hamas then sends the women and children to the roof of the building to prevent Israel from striking. Israel has now developed a tiny arrow-like missile which can be sent to the corner of the roof, making a loud noise and harming no one, in order to scare away the women and children before the real bomb destroys the missile collection. Often the women and children used by Hamas as human shields, escape and the house is then blown up, with a secondary explosion of the stored missiles. Other times, a Hamas person gets to the roof and prevents the women and children from leaving. In those cases, the operation is not completed by the Israeli Air Force, in order to spare civilian lives, at the risk of having the rockets launched into Israel on the following day. Never in history has any country made such an enormous effort to avoid civilian casualties, in fighting against murderers who target only civilians. No one in Kosovo, Serbia, Georgia or Iraq was offered such a courtesy by the bombing and attacking powers. This fact is never mentioned by the western media. Many of the Hamas commanders are hiding in the central hospital of Gaza, in an elaborate network of bunkers. Hamas spokesmen issue proclamations from the maternity ward, knowing Israel will not hit them there. Ironically, of all non-Israels, Hamas leaders are the only ones who know for sure that Israel never deliberately hurts civilians. The rest of the world buys the Hamas lies and blames Israel for hurting civilians. Repeated claims of "humanitarian crisis" are made from the same hospital. The doctors in charge never tell us that the hiding leaders of Hamas are using them and the patients as human shields. We never hear a word from the International Red Cross regarding the use of hospitals as the headquarters of terror leaders. One of the most horrible "impartial" testimonies on the humanitarian situation in the hospital, is delivered repeatedly to the western media by a "Norwegian Doctor" serving there. The man is well known from his 2001 interview with Norwegian TV, in which he explicitly supported and justified the 9/11 attacks. Needless to say, none of the networks who bring us the righteous doctor, mention this. Palestinian ambulances are routinely used to move terrorists around - it is an ideal way of transporting a suicide murderer across check points. Several Hamas leaders are moving around Gaza surrounded by children, and often holding a child on their arms. There are well-documented cases in which Hamas terrorists were pulling reluctant children by their ears to accompany them when they move from building to building. None of this is mentioned by the western media. But the same western media repeatedly show the pictures of injured or dead children, some of whom were indeed accidentally injured or killed by Israeli attacks on military and terror targets, and some are obviously fake pictures with red paint smeared on children's faces. At least in one case, the same child, obviously painted and not injured, has been paraded in front of various TV cameras by several different men, each declared to be his father. Tragically, children and innocent civilians are indeed killed and injured, in spite of the enormous precautions of the Israeli forces. But the only alternative for Israel is to sit still, absorb the thousands of missiles on its civilian population and wait for bigger, deadlier and longer-range missiles to start destroying everything in Israel. Most Hamas terrorists hide in safe bunkers, leaving their families in the war zone. Women and children are moving within the battlegrounds, with Hamas snipers shooting, using them as cover. The women and children are not allowed into the limited space of the Hamas bunkers. When the Hamas terrorists are killed, they are counted by the "UN sources" as civilians. That is how the "UN sources" reach the huge numbers of dead civilians they are reporting. Interestingly Al Jazeera almost never shows dead bodies of young males, and the western media, fed by Palestinian stringers, follow suit. Hamas TV, Al Aksa TV and Al Jazeera, show, 24 hours a day, repeated video clips with loud music, showing injured children. Some injuries are real, some are not. A video taken several years ago in Gaza, documents an accidental explosion of a Hamas truck, carrying a large number of missiles, among celebrating Palestinians. Many were killed and injured in this accident and the pictures were devastating. There was no Israeli involvement whatsoever, and the event happened a few years ago. European networks, including France 2, are showing it now as evidence for the current "criminal" behavior of Israel. The French channel apologized later, but the number of people who heard the apology is far fewer than those who saw the horrible pictures and believed the lies Israel opens the border crossings daily, during the fighting, in order to provide basic food ingredients and medication. N one can remember such a gesture in any other war in history; certainly not toward the side that attacks only civilians and announces that its only aim is to annihilate its opponent. Most of the supplies are captured by the Hamas terrorists and used for their own troops and their flourishing black market, never providing them in an organized way to the population. "UN sources" claim not enough food is transported. That the Hamas murderers use these tactics, lies and methods, is not at all surprising. That the international community, with all its investigative reporters, swallows these lies so eagerly, without exposing them, is something which demands an explanation.
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CM
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Post by CM on Jan 22, 2009 12:54:56 GMT -5
Children of Hamas
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VOR
banned
BANNED FOR LIFE
VOR
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Post by VOR on Jan 22, 2009 13:20:18 GMT -5
Now come on CM.......This could be a picture of any American child today carrying a toy gun. For years toy guns were almost extinct here in the states but over the last 8-10 years, basically since 9-11 their has been a major comeback. As a kid, thats all we played with were guns portraying the Americans against the Germans or Japanesse.
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Post by jackoliver on Jan 22, 2009 13:22:29 GMT -5
these Hamas kids remind me the the right wing wack JESUS CAMP people...
wasnt that run by that disgraced crystal meth closet gay reverend?
both Hamas and Jesus camp people are freaks.
at least the Jesus camp people dont blow up inocent people, but who knows what they are capable of..
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CM
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Post by CM on Jan 22, 2009 13:40:43 GMT -5
Although purposeful use of phosphorous munitions by the Israel Defense Forces may have been seen as a necessary action, I believe that it was an unfortunate decision made by the IDF in light of the negative propaganda value it will have not to mention the injury sustained by innocents even if it can be shown that innocents are used as shields. I would have rather not learned of these incidents. www.truthout.org/012109D
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Post by EscapeHatch on Jan 22, 2009 15:14:20 GMT -5
Larry, are you able to read what is written on the child's headband?
Folks, I ask this because Larry has some handle on the Arabic language.
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Post by bruce on Jan 22, 2009 15:48:42 GMT -5
The video is both shocking and disgusting.What we don't know is if these activities are widespread or if it is just a few radicals doing this.Also interesting to know is who produced and distributed the video.Propaganda??
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Post by jackoliver on Jan 22, 2009 15:50:12 GMT -5
I believe it says "McCain / Pallin 2008"
Ha ha.
we all know Bush and GOP policies encourage terrorism, that is how the GOP stays in power. To scare America into voting for the GOP.
Im sure the terrorist like the GOP way of doing things becuase it just adds fuel to their cause and creates even more recruits..Just look at Iraq.
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CM
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Post by CM on Jan 22, 2009 16:13:15 GMT -5
I have friends that are very close to the conflict, I’ll post their observations without endorsement, condoning or condemning. Their thoughts and positions I find valuable, interesting and sometimes disturbing, I share not to debate but to inform those of similar interest. Follow the below link regarding Obama’s first Presidential phone call. www.truthout.org/012209J
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