It Started With Gaza Beach Massacre, Not Kidnapped Israel Soldier

[McCamy Taylor]

Here is something that Fox News isnt talking about. Way back on June 10, Israel was in a heap of trouble at home, because it had killed 8 peaceful Palestinean civilians who were picnicking on a Gaza beach.

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/article_full_story.asp?service_id=11433

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WaCJn4hdjc

Here is the follow up: angry Israeli peace activists demanding government accountability.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CABE0803-B760-4A7C-BBD9-AEB17E1A2FE4.htm

"Hundreds of Palestinians, Israeli and international peace activists have protested against the killing of eight Palestinians while they picnicked on a Gaza beach....The protesters demanded that Amir Peretz, the Israeli defence minister, resign from his post, which he assumed weeks ago.

One Israeli protester told Aljazeera.net that "we thought Peretz would be a peace asset in the new government, we didn't know that children and babies would be murdered under his command".

In addition to scores of Israeli peace activists, more than two dozen foreigners, many of them affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) participated in the protest."

The article goes on to describe another peace protest by Israeli activist including the prime minister's daughter.

Another article describes how international human rights groups labeled Israel's investigation into the massacre a coverup and demanded an neutral party conduct an independent investigation (this was in late June)

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11523

Other newspapers questioned the Israeli report:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1799825,00.html?gusrc=rss

Now, Israel kills Palestinians all the time. So why is this killing special? For one thing, it had caught the attention of humam rights groups outside of Israel, who were demanding an inquiry. It was also giving peace activists at home something to talk about. For another, the Cheney-Bush administration were looking for a way to escalate the violence in the middle east in order to provoke a war with Iran. And they wanted it now, before the midterm elections. So, if Cheney's NeoCon allies were to whisper into Israel's ear "Now is a good time to take care of your Hezbollah problem once and for all. And the US has got your back." Israel might see this as the perfect way to distract the world from this latest scandal and silence peacemongers at home. Once fighting between it and Hezbollah began to escalate (as it invariably would), fresh outrages would occur and that beach massacre would be forgotten. As it has been. Now the US media would have us believe that the hostilities began when Palestinians, out of the blue, kidnapped an Israeli soldier. As if there were no bad blood between Israel and the Palestinians before this.

I do not believe that Israel is dumb enough to invade Lebanon without US approval and without a promise of US military support should Syria and Iran intervene. Israel is aggressive but it has never shown itself to be stupid. That is how it has survived as long as it has in the middle east.

The blinding speed with which the White House and its toadies at Fox News began to chant the mantra "Blame Iran and Syria" (within hours of Israel declaring war with Lebanon) should be proof that the administration is acting in coordination with Israel. Although Israel and US have different goals, they are partners, linked by the Neo-cons. For those who think that I am a tinfoil hat loonie, I am not alone

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/17/neocons_rise_from_mideast_ashes.php

And remember, Dick Cheney knew that Valerie Plame would be filing a civil suit against him last week since the three year statute of limitations was about to run out. That must have made him mad as hell. A war between Israel and Lebanon would provide a welcome distraction.

Which raises an awful possibility. In the long run, this conflict is about mid east power, but in the short run are innocent Lebanese dying RIGHT NOW in order to keep Israel from accepting responsibility for killing other innocents on Gaza Beach and to keep Dick Cheney from accepting responsibility for outing a CIA spy?

PS: Other evidence that Israeli might have been poking the stick at Hammas and Hezzbolah to incite them-- kidnapping the entire Hammas leadership to hold as hostage after one Israel soldier was kidnapped, an act that the US media seems to forget:

http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2006%20News%20Archives/June/29%20n/Israeli%20Occupation%20Terrorist%20Government%20%20Kidnaps%20as%20Hostages%2060%20Palestinian%20Elected%20%20Members%20of%20Parliament,%20Cabinet%20Ministers,%20and%20Mayors.htm

Oh, and here is what Hammas has to say about the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier that Israel says started all this:

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76854

"The action was in response to the mass murder of Palestinian children by Israeli Forces. The Palestinian Commandoes showed they were true soldiers by attacking military targets."

[cantstandbush]

1. Pretty plain, isn't it? nt

[Full Metal]

2. Propoganda

It was a Hamas mine.

[gratuitous]

4. Really?

And you have an independent investigation that explains the Israeli shrapnel removed from one of hte victims to back up this assertion? Because I haven't seen any proof one way or the other that absolves Israel from this attack.

[Full Metal]

7. The shrapnel removed was not from Israeli ordnance:

It is now becoming clear that, despite the claims of the Palestinians and the international media's rush to blame Israel, the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians on a beach in Gaza on 9 June were not caused by the IDF. Investigations by the IDF and others over the past few days have revealed new evidence that a Hamas mine was most likely the cause of the beach blast:

1) Shrapnel removed from two of the wounded Palestinians evacuated to Israeli hospitals was not from Israeli-made ordnance.

2) No large crater was evident on the beach as would be expected from the impact of an artillery shell landing from above. The blast site would suggest the likelihood of a mine exploding from below the sand rather than above.

3) The IDF fired six shells towards the Gaza area, one of which remained unaccounted for. All of the shells were fired, however, more than 10 minutes before the blast that killed the Palestinians.

It is now increasingly likely, that in true "Pallywood" fashion, as seen in the Mohammed Al-Dura case and the Jenin "massacre" libel, the Palestinians have attempted another cover-up in order to smear Israel:

1) Palestinian Television broadcast doctored scenes showing file footage of Israeli naval vessels shelling Gaza, interspersed with video of the beach victims, despite the fact that the Israeli Navy was not responsible for any shelling at the time. Click here to see the footage courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.

2) Suspicions were initially raised by the Palestinian refusal to cooperate with Israeli investigators and the remarkably swift cleansing of evidence from the blast scene by Hamas gunmen who arrived shortly after the incident. Palestinian spokespeople usually display parts of Israeli shells to the international media - but not this time.

3) Israeli intelligence suggests that Hamas had mined the beach area in order to prevent Israeli naval commandos from landing there as part of anti-terror operations to prevent Qassam missile launches.

http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Gaza_Beach_Libel.asp

[McCamy Taylor]

9. Point and now Counterpoint(s)

Take your pick:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13633.htm

"Once again, Israel has decided to invoke the familiar strategy of “blaming the victim”. Fortunately, forensic evidence has already proved beyond a doubt that the shrapnel came from a “155 millimeter howitzer shell from a land-based Israeli firing device”. On top of that, the last surviving member of the family, 12 year old Huda Ghalia, has provided a lurid description of the Israeli shelling of the beach.

“We were sitting and all of a sudden the shells just started falling on our heads,” she said. What could be clearer?"

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9224

"Professor Juan Cole, of the University of Michigan, takes the media to task for dropping the context of the escalating conflict:

"The U.S. press has, as far as I can see, been irresponsible in not broadcasting much about the prologue to the present violence, the Israeli military's bombing of civilians on a Gaza beach earlier in the month. This atrocity was on the front page of every Arabic language newspaper every day for a while earlier this month. We cannot understand the region if we cannot understand how outraged they are, and the source of the outrage."'

[Full Metal]

11. way to push that propoganda

[endarkenment]

19. So they blew themselves up?

Just to make Israel look bad?

[Full Metal]

22. no it was not intentional

Hamas placed the mines there to repel a Israeli landing force from the sea because Hamas was launching Qassam rockets from that beach.

[Recursion]

10. I wish this board were as quick...

...to see through Palestinian BS as they are quick to see through US and Israeli BS.

[McCamy Taylor]

13. More Counterpoint: Here is the News Footage with English language

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1661141234372301249&q=Gaza%2Bbeach%2Battack&time=40000

Watch the scene on the beach. (Turn off the sound if you do not want to be influenced by any Palestinian viewpoints)

[Recursion]

20. Neither the video, nor either side's rhetoric...

...can establish who is responsible for those horrible deaths. There is convincing (to me) evidence that they were not killed by Israeli shells. Was it a Hamas mine? An Israeli mine? A Hamas rocket? I don't know and neither does anybody here. But laying the blame for this round of violence on Israel for these deaths is premature since we don't know
1. What killed these people
2. Who fired / placed whatever killed them
3. Whether they meant to kill them or not

I've seen mujuhadin in Iraq shoot at civilians (using AR-15s that they got God knows where) hoping to blame their deaths on us. I've heard reports that I believe of Al Aqsa doing the same thing in the West Bank. So I'm not going to put that same behavior past Hamas. I also think it's very possible that this was a mine and a horrible tragic accident.

[Supersedeas]

24. there's a lot of extrapolating going on, but little in the way of links

[endarkenment]

25. Other than the hundreds of witnesses and the actual

independent investigations that all concluded that the IDF shelled the beach, there is indeed no credible evidence.

Were I sitting here on this board claiming that the IDF staged rocket attacks to look like they were done by Hamas militants I would be hooted off as an idiot, instead we get you Israel Can Do No Wrong types and we have to put up with utter and complete bullshit lest we be called anti-semites. Feh.

[endarkenment]

18. Try a credible news source.

Honestreporting, in true rightwing fashion, is anything but. At least you should identify your source for what it is.

[gratuitous]

23. See, I don't consider an IDF investigation independent

Sort of like I view any verdict coming out of a U.S. military court with a jaundiced eye when they're considering the misconduct of their own troops. Misconduct that would look disturbingly like a war crime or a crime against humanity if it was being considered by another tribunal or investigatory body.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Whatever IT was, the deaths on that beach are the cause. Everything

that has happened since flowed from those deaths. The UN needs to step in and allow everyone to cool off, and then it needs to do some investigating and hold some people accountable.

[cali]

15. Wrong.

And by the way, I believe that Israel absolutely killed the family on the beach, but that's not the start of all this.

[Lindacooks]

29. Bullshit.

Any proof of that?? Links?


I didn't think so.

[baldguy]

3. It started with Ishmael and Isaac.

[Critters2]

5. .

:eyes:

[Ian David]

8. Well, let's see... First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came...

... but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di's clothes, I couldn't believe it...

[Rosemary2205]

12. Pick yer starting point here.

Everybody's got one. This shit has been going on a long time and people in the Middle East tend to think in terms of centuries.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. I am amazed at how quickly people with a certain view found this thread.

Almost like they were hanging around waiting for it to show up.

I dont really have a viewpoint*, since I am a Buddhist, I just dont like out unfair and unbalanced news media and so I decided to google and see what Fox and the others were leaving out of the story and boy did I find a lot!

*This isn't really true. I know what happened. Israel didnt mean to kill innocent tourists. They either thought they were terrorists or some one made a mistake. But Israel could not be a man and admit it made a mistake and console the victims, so it had to launch a cover up. The cover up is what inflamed its own citizens, the Palestinians and people around the world, which only made Israel's predicament worse. Desire is the root of all suffering. Had Israel not been consumed by a desire to appear perfect in the eyes of man, it would not have lied and made itself appear worse in the eyes of man and been backed into a corner where it felt that it had no option except to fight (there is always another option besides fighting). The US carries a very, very large part of the blame for encouraging a few peope in Israel to persue their present reckless, murderous and suicidal course in Lebanon. Indeed, I blame the US more than anyone, because the US is risking nothing, not its lives, its reputation, its goods. It is just hanging back like a group of vultures waiting to pillage the spoils.

[Rosemary2205]

16. Well

it could be a bunch of older folk that have been through this 12 or 30 times in thier lives just happens to be on the board at the moment. Give it an hour or two and all the one's who have picked a side are bound to show up and start hammering one side or the other. :)

[donkeyotay]

17. No, you're wrong. I watched FOXCNNMSNBC and the prez

and they ALL AGREED that it was that act and that act alone. Nothing had happened previously. Please get with the program, because later on we will all need to accept this consensus version of events. Hezbollah and Hamas are not political movements or parts of governments or responses to anything that happened previously. They are terrists and we must destroy them even if we have to kill millions and destroy nascent democracies and the economies that would support them.

[Supersedeas]

27. Paula Zahn and Blitzer continue to wave the proud flags of war--

didn't they learn a damned thing from the WMD morass.

[McCamy Taylor]

21. This thread is meant to chastise the press for its bias in reporting.

All we get is "Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier for no reason." Then "Hezbollah kidnapped TWO Israeli soldeirs for no reason." This makes Palestinians out to be psycho killers without any kind of common sense or compassion or judegment. So, Americans sitting at home think "Yes, invading Lebanon over something like that is over kill, but on the other hand that Hezbollah and that Hamas are pretty bad if they just go and kidnap Israeli soldiers out of the blue for no reason."

The US Press is derelict in its duty for not reporting that Hamas cites as its reason for kidnapping the first soldier its belief that Israel killed innocent tourists (probably by accident, no one actually suggests it was on purpose in the sources I read) and then tried to COVER IT UP. No one likes a cover up. It smacks of fascism and goverment abuse of power. And the US press is derelict for not reporting that in response to kidnapping of one soldier, Israel kidnapped the entire civilian government of Hamas. What would the US do if a foreign power swept in and kidnapped the Bush cabinet? Would we limit ourselves with having Canada kidnap two of that countries generals to use in negotiations to get our cabinet back? If we did so, I would say that showed that we were pretty restrained ( most people would call us pussies).

So, anyway, Isreal and Palestine hate each others guts. Israel dun bad when its launched an official overup. Palestine dun bad when it retaliated to the cover up by kidnapping a soldier. Israel dun bad when it retaliated to the kidnapping of the soldier by kidnapping an entire government. It just gets worse from there.

But there is no excuse for what the US Press is doing.

[applegrove]

26. Hamas & Hizbollah certainly don't want to make any pointed references

to the value of life. If they did..they would have called for peace right after that family was massacred.

[McCamy Taylor]

28. Guardian reports Bush just gave Israel one more week to bomb Lebanon

So I guess this proves that the Bush administration gave Israel the thumbs up to invade its neighbor. Poor Lebanon. Sold out by a country that claimed to be its ally.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1823818,00.html

[blindpig]

30. It started with the Balfour Declaration.

You go around giving away other people's land, they're bound to be pissed off.

[Lithos]

31. Locking per I/P guidelines

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