Revealed: the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces

[riverwalker]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/10984259/Revealed-the-Palestinian-children-killed-by-Israeli-forces.html

[Marrah_G]

1. I found this online last night- it's heartbreaking.

[malaise]

2. Get thee to the greatest page

This is a war crime

[kelliekat44]

12. A war crime that will undoubtedly go unpunished my man. Only Karma. nt

[frazzled]

3. And for good measure ...

Let's consider the 11,420 children killed in Syria in the past two and a half years.

The Oxford Research Group study found that this is how most children die in Syria — from explosive weapons, Syrian army assaults on their neighborhood. But others are singled out, according to the data, killed by snipers and by executions. There are 112 recorded cases of death by torture.

In every war, children are casualties, caught in the crossfire of adult conflicts, but the numbers suggest this one is different: 11,420, or about 10 percent of a total 113,735 civilian and combatant casualties. This latest report — compiled from four databases that record the death count in Syria by name, age and cause of death — makes the case that children are specifically targeted.

The only refuge is the border lands of neighboring countries. Here's another number that describes the Syrian conflict: 2 million refugees, more than half of them children. For the survivors, childhood vanishes with the hardships.



http://www.npr.org/2013/12/19/255406234/more-children-become-victims-of-syrias-civil-war

Or do we not care about those children? It seems we don't have any interest whatsoever. There really hasn't been a single post (or more than a handful of quickly dropping posts) about them over the past several years. Maybe it's because there are no little icon-figures to put up.

[frazzled]

4. Here's the report on the 11,420 children recently killed in Syria

http://www.npr.org/documents/2013/dec/syria_report.pdf

Look at their faces, and explain why they are not getting any attention.

[LittleBlue]

6. Did you forget that we were one British parliament vote away from war with Syria?

You act like they got no exposure, but on the mainstream American media they got far more exposure than Palestinians. In the lead-up to the vote on Syria, we got nonstop coverage of Syria war crimes against civilians as a reason to go to war.

Don't act like Syrian war crimes didn't get far more coverage in America than anything happening in Gaza. That was only seven months ago, so it's hard to believe you forgot. Here, look at all the public statements the Obama administration made about Syrian civilians:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=syria+obama+civilians


?w=720


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tCXFEnH47Cw/UmbXcSN_4gI/AAAAAAAAABc/Qi-Zz3oUKBU/s1600/The+Times_frontpage_2013-10-19c.jpg

[frazzled]

17. I was referring to discussion on DU, not in the general media

And if you recall, a good chunk of this board was going "meh," we should stay out of this. That, or even going so far as to support Assad.

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. Americans, even on DU, don't seem all that interested in foreign affairs...

...unless there is a direct American connection.

In Syria, never mind the CIA program delivering goodies to the rebels, the only time most people got interested was when in looking like Obama would start bombing.

And even then, it wasn't really about Syria, but about American politics.

Ukraine gets a lot of attention not for its own sake, but because it includes an American-Russian face-off.

In the case of Israel, there is a direct American connection. We supply billions of dollars worth of military aid to the side that is killing all the children. Our hands are bloody.

[sabrina 1]

8. And there are the children of Iraq, do they not count, including the babies being born

still, deformed, or dead due to their exposure to our WMDs, and most heartbreaking, the Children of Afghanistan, see Robert Greenwald's excellent documentaries on the children of that war torn country.

Not to mention Libya, does ANYONE care about the children of Libya? Or do we ONLY care when it suits our politics. Lybia, remember, we were 'going there to protect civilians'. It is now a failed state, with untold numbers of civilian victims. NATO didn't stick around to protect the children once they accomplished their real goal.

Why do you assume that focusing on what is currently in the news means we don't care about all the other children, most of them dead due to US/Western foreign policies over the past more than a decade or so?

Have you been following up on the plight of the children in all these places? The refugee camps in Syria eg, which took in approx 2 million Iraq refugees after the Western allied forces invaded that country? The refugee camp in Jordan also, where Iraqi children have grown up instead of in their own country?

Dahr Jamail has, I have and so have millions of people around the world including human rights orgs, present in most of these places.

It's hard to keep up with all of these horrific tragedies but I try to.

I'm sure the Palestinian children will be forgotten in a couple of weeks, except by those of us who do try to keep up. Not to mention the children of Pakistan and Yemen victims of our drones.

If only we could stop it. We tried, but even now the war drums are beating again and there will be more dead children if someone doesn't stop it.

RIP to all the sweet, beautiful innocents who have been the victims of brutality and greed and power and lies. I truly want to believe there is a better place somewhere, that this was not all there is for them.

[frazzled]

16. Why do I think it?

Because there are hardly ever any posts on it—even at the time. That's my basic reason. Is there a reason you object to my bringing it up?

[sabrina 1]

18. Did I object to your bringing it up?

I merely pointed out how these things work, and that simply because DU isn't discussing something it doesn't mean that there isn't huge interest out in the RW.

I eg, have been following, and on other forums for several years writing about, the plight of the Children of Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen, Palestine and still follow the work of Human Rights Orgs, who are very much engaged in all of these areas of the world. Somalia, have written about them here on DU eg.

DU is a discussion of mostly the latest news.

I didn't get much response to my posts on the children of Somalia or Pakistan during the terrible floods in that country, Pakistan, HERE. But elsewhere these issues are still very, very much discussed.

[kelliekat44]

13. Same war type of war crime. No one is forgetting the Syrian children. We bemoaned them over months

to no avail. Changing the subject will not justify what is happening now in Gaza. I bemoaned the children killed in Libya and Iraq and Afghanistan too. I weep for the dead mothers and fathers and those who live in mourning their dead loved ones. We will answer and so will all those who prefer war over peace, land over life, power over freedom, and privilege over justice.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Israeli soldiers should be given the Nobel Peace Prize

WASHINGTON - Israeli soldiers should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for the "unimaginable restraint" they are showing in fighting Hamas, Israel's ambassador to the US has said, backing his country's right to self-defense.

Ambassador Ron Dermer made the comments at an event hosted by the Christians United for Israel group late Monday, according to a text of the speech posted on his Facebook page.

Comparing Hamas rocket fire on Israel to Germany's bombardment of London during World War II, Dermer slammed those "shamelessly accusing Israel of genocide and (who) would put us in the dock for war crimes."

"The truth is that the Israeli Defense Forces should be given the Nobel Peace Prize... a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting with unimaginable restraint."

Addressing journalists early Tuesday at a separate event, Dermer did not go quite as far, and admitted Israel was "not perfect, we make mistakes."

"A missile can hit the wrong place. We can have intelligence failures. But we don't target civilians," he insisted.

Israel was making "remarkable" efforts, he added, to get civilians to clear an area that was about to be hit including by sending out leaflets, text messages and dummy bombs ahead of the real strike.

"Israel does not target a single Palestinian civilian... when a civilian is killed it's an operational failure... and a tragedy in and of itself"

The Palestinian death toll in the 15-day war is at 620, most of them civilians, with some 29 Israelis, all but two of them soldiers, also having been killed.

"I think Israel should earn the admiration of the international community for the restraint that it has shown in the face of these threats," Dermer told a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor.

"Our soldiers are dying so that innocent Palestinians can live.


http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=67257

[sabrina 1]

9. Well, if you have that high a rate of 'operational failure' maybe you just ask yourself

a few questions, such as 'ARE we responsible, and should we, considerring our failure rate, be in this business of forever war'.

Disgusting statements in the face of this horrible situation.

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Dermer

Dermer is viewed with suspicion by the Obama administration. He is identified there as a supporter of the Republican party. His family in Miami Beach have close ties with the Bush family, particularly with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, whose name has been mentioned as one of a number of possible contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Many Democrats also see Dermer as the brains behind Netanyahu's support for Mitt Romney. An article published in Tablet Magazine a few months before the election revealed that Dermer was the one who conceived and planned Romney's visit to Israel in July this year, along with Dan Senor, an adviser to Romney.

Romney’s visit is the brainchild of two men: Dermer, the American-born political operative who is Netanyahu’s chief strategist and speechwriter and, more importantly, Dan Senor, a Republican politico-turned-investor who is a close adviser

Dermer is the person who tried to convince Netanyahu by any means possible that Romney was set to win the elections. With the Obama starting his second term in the White House, it may be hard for Dermer to develop a network of trusted and intimate contacts among the president's most senior advisers.

Dermer's positions on policy are far more extreme than Netanyahu's. European and American officials have expressed shock by his positions on the settlement issue, on peace talks with the Palestinians, and on the principle of an independent Palestinian state.

On the way back from Netanyahu's first visit to Washington, for example, Dermer told reporters on the prime minister's plane that "the principle of two states for two peoples is a childish solution to a complicated problem." A U.S. State Department diplomatic cable that was leaked to Wikileaks revealed that Dermer is convinced that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is no partner for peace. (Click here for the original document).

Dermer immigrated to Israel in 1997 at the age of 26. He did not serve in the IDF or do national service (he claims that he went to sign up, but the IDF rejected his request to enlist). Since he moved to Israel, he has mainly been involved in politics – at first as an adviser to Natan Sharansky and later as an aide to Netanyahu. For four years, from 2004 to 2008, he was not in Israel, after Netanyahu nominated him as a representative of Israel's Finance Ministry to Washington.


http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.534794?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.216%2C2.217%2C

[sabrina 1]

14. Quite a motley crew of extremist far right morons, isn't it? I remember Senor during the

Iraq debacle. And he is married to a member of Corporate Media. The ties that bind. No wonder we cannot get peace in this world.

I am glad that it is Obama in the WH right now. I imagine they chose Romney as he would make a perfect puppet. To thing our government is so influenced now by foreign interests is simply disgusting.

Thanks for that information, IC, it's good to keep track of the war criminals.

[Comrade Grumpy]

10. Says the representative of the racist apartheid state.

[blackspade]

15. Ambassador Ron Dermer is a lying sack of shit.

[alsame]

20. The Israeli Rove, he's even called

"Bibi's Brain".

Bibi’s Brain: Meet Ron Dermer, Israel’s new ambassador to the U.S.
Ron Dermer, a Florida-born Jew who started in politics working on the 1994 Republican Revolution, is Benjamin Netanyahu’s most influential aide.


The Prime Minister’s Office, Israel’s equivalent to the West Wing of the White House, is a nondescript complex located in Givat Ram, a neighborhood at Jerusalem’s western edge. Most of the building, which sits in the shadow of the hulking Bank of Israel and the grandly winged Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is given over to bureaucratic departments, but at its heart sits the Aquarium, a block sealed behind a series of passcard-protected glass doors that is the government’s nerve center. It’s where the prime minister—currently, Benjamin Netanyahu—does his business. Netanyahu’s national-security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, works in an adjacent room, and next to that is a modest suite belonging to an American Jew named Ron Dermer. Dermer is the prime minister’s alter-ego, and he has done more to shape Israel’s relationship with the United States, its Arab neighbors, and the Palestinians over the past few years than any man aside from the prime minister himself.

Dermer’s title is senior adviser to the prime minister, and he’s a jack-of-all-trades—strategist, pollster, and speechwriter for Netanyahu, as well as his chief proxy in foreign affairs. A constant presence in Netanyahu’s meetings in Washington, he has helped shape Israel’s posture in the American capital most notably through Netanyahu’s spring speech to the U.S. Congress, which foiled President Barack Obama’s effort to pressure the prime minister into meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians. “Bibi doesn’t move an inch without talking to him,” said one person who has been in meetings with both men.

<snip>

Yet of all the Americans in the Aquarium, Dermer is uniquely fluent in Israel’s convoluted coalition government system, and he is adept at defending Netanyahu’s partisan flanks. His professional political background gives him another asset: exceptionally deep and longstanding relationships with Washington’s Republican establishment, particularly its neoconservative wing, which are entirely independent of his connection to Netanyahu. The youngest son of a Miami Beach politico, Dermer took a job right out of college in Washington as an assistant to Frank Luntz, the Republican consultant who engineered the watershed 1994 “Contract With America” House campaign for Newt Gingrich. His second was in Jerusalem, as a pollster for the Soviet-dissident-turned-Israeli-politician Natan Sharansky, a connection forged with help from Richard Perle, the Reagan (and, later, George W. Bush) Administration defense specialist.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/78543/bibis-brain


It's always so nice to see Democrats supporting neocons.

[countryjake]

19. Peace to them all