I wish them the best... this world has not clue about what is the meaning of justice
please watch the report here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpksyMmSWlE
If you hate reading just watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGITh9HPJ7g
ISRAEL ADMITS GAZA WAR CRIMES
JERUSALEM — An increasingly disturbing picture of the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) misconduct in the Gaza invasion has emerged as confessions from Israeli troops describe wanton destruction of Palestinian homes, humiliation of civilians, and loosened rules of engagement that resulted in high civilian casualties.
An Israeli defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to make the information public, said the IDF used 120-mm mortar rounds, among the largest, on a large group of civilians who had taken refuge for safety in a hospital. At least five blast patters indicating direct hits were found on the hospital floors.
Revelations of the IDF Gaza crimes have set off alarms in a nation where the military is revered. They also confirm Palestinian allegations that the IDF did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and the admissions also confirmed international human rights groups' contention that Israel deliberately violated the humanitarian laws of war.
Israel launched the Gaza offensive on Dec. 27, 2008 in what it explained was an effort to end Palestinian rocket attacks in which four Israeli citizens were hit. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which conducted casualty count, reported a total of 1,417 people killed during the offensive, including at least 930 civilians.
Israel originally denied the findings, saying the most of the dead were legitimate targets, but offered no evidence to back up that allegation.
The Israeli government has insisted it did everything it could to prevent civilian casualties. But the IDF has now ordered a criminal inquiry into its own soldiers' reports that IDF troops deliberately targeted civilians, including children, by shooting them or by calling in air strikes, confident that the Israeli relaxed rules of war would protect them.
The inquiry is based on postwar testimony from IDF soldiers who were involved in the Israeli offensive and who were eye-witnesses. The findings were published in a military institute newsletter and leaked to two Israeli newspapers. The Haaretz daily published additional details. A transcript of the IDF soldiers' confessions was obtained by The Associated Press.
According to one account, an Israeli sniper killed a Palestinian woman and each of her two children after they misunderstood another soldier's shouted order and turned in the wrong direction. The sniper was not told that the family had just been released, and so he opened fire on them as they walked toward him.
In another account, an elderly woman was shot dead while walking alone on a road. The soldier who described the incident, identified only as "Aviv," said the woman was not a threat. "I simply felt it was murder in cold blood," Aviv said, according to the transcript. "The order was to take that woman out the moment you see her."
Aviv admitted in another instance his unit was sent to take over a house by bursting in, going up floor by floor and shooting to death anyone they saw alive.
"I call this murder," he said. "...they told us it was permissible because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City, was in effect condemned to death as a terrorist, because they hadn't yet fled." In the end, he said he managed to change the order so residents would be given five minutes to leave their homes, drawing protests from other soldiers. "Anyone who's in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact!" he quoted another soldier as saying.
(Note: The borders were closed and tenants had no place to flee to/ blogger)
In another incident, a large group of Palestinian civilians were herded into a school building and forced to stay inside "for their own safety." A few minutes later, Israeli artillery strikes were called in on the building.
Some 15,000 Palestinians packed the UN's 23 Gaza schools because their homes were destroyed, or they were designated a safe haven from the fighting. The UN had provided the IDF with GPS coordinates for all of them so they could be avoided.
The IDF reported the shelling of the school - the deadliest single episode in the first two weeks of the IDF invasion of Gaza - was a response to mortar fire from within the school building, and that Hamas militants were using the civilians as cover. The IDF had no additional comment.
During the fighting, the military acknowledged it loosened the rules of engagement aiming to reduce casualties among IDF troops.
At one point, six hundred Palestinian civilians were trapped under fire when Israeli forces refused to allow them to leave Gaza in safety.
Another soldier, "Ram", described what appeared to be a rift between secular and religious soldiers. "What I do remember in particular at the beginning was the feeling of an almost religious mission," he said.
"Their message was very clear: 'We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle. God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land,'" he said.
(This kind of talk about God I find it funny/ blogger)
Earlier the IDF "severely reprimanded" an officer for distributing a religious booklet urging soldiers to show no mercy to their enemies. The army said the chief military rabbi had not yet approved it.
The published accounts revealed debate and soul-searching among the soldiers. Discussing the death of the old woman, one soldier, Zvi, said the shooting could be understood in the context of the battle zone. "Logic says she should be there," he said.
(Another funny remark about LOGIC!/ blogger)
IDF trooper Yossi said his unit was forced to clean up a home it had occupied on the same day that a Palestinian rocket wounded a mother and baby in an Israeli city. He said soldiers were unhappy, but they complied. "In the end, I was convinced it was the right thing to do," Yossi added.
(I thought Hamas' problem is that it fires rockets... it seems the real problem is that HAMAS DO NOT FIRE ROCKETS ENOUGH/ blogger)
Danny Zamir, the head of the military institute, called the discussion "instructive," but also "dismaying and depressing. You are describing an army with very low norms of value," he said.
The heavy Palestinian civilian casualties and widespread destruction during the three-week war provoked international outcry against Israel, which ceased fire on 18 Jan. 2009.
source: Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072830.htmlGAZA STRIP - "Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue," was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing. One of the main themes in news reports during the Gaza operation, and which appears in many testimonies, is that IDF soldiers shot at Palestinian and Red Cross rescuers, making it impossible to evacuate the wounded and dead. As a result, an unknown number of Palestinians bled to death as others cowered in their homes for days without medical treatment, waiting to be rescued. The bodies of the dead lay outside the homes or on roadsides for days, sometimes as long as two weeks. Haaretz has reported a number of such cases, some of them as they happened. The document found in the house provides written proof that IDF commanders ordered their troops to shoot at rescuers. The sheet of paper entitled "Situational Assessment" was found by a field researcher of The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in the home of Sami Dardone's family in Jabal al-Rayes, east of Jabalya. The extended Dardone family lives in about 40 homes in this neighborhood, built on a hilltop. Some of the homes were taken over by the army to house troops during the offensive and to serve as sniping positions, or for shooting in general. Most of the homes were seriously damaged when the IDF directly bombed them or other targets nearby at the start of the ground operation. This was also the reason the homes' residents fled on January 4. When the residents returned to the neighborhood at the end of the offensive on January 18, they found that the IDF had completely destroyed some of the homes, in addition to those that had been damaged by shelling and others that were wrecked when soldiers broke in through the walls. Sometimes the soldiers needed explosives to break in. A military source told Haaretz that "the document that was found is not an official document signed by a particular commander, and as such the IDF cannot comment on fragments of sentences that were jotted down on a piece of paper, and asks that this not be interpreted as directives and instructions that were issued by commanders." 'Situational assessment' According to the reservist officer who did not participate in Operation Cast Lead and who received a copy of the document via fax, the "Situational Assessment" was written by a platoon commander, or at the highest level a company commander. The reservist says the author of the "Situational Assessment" was making notes to brief his soldiers based on a briefing that low-ranking commanders receive from senior officers. The date on the sheet is "16.1.08," clearly an error because it should read one year later. It comments on political and military events that occurred in mid-January 2009. It's possible to conclude that the author is discussing the possibility of a cease-fire, which was being discussed publicly by Israeli officials at that time. "The next 24 hours are important; there is a likelihood they [Hamas] will not accept the agreement," the author writes. He also mentions the "Interior Minister." The reference is probably to Hamas Interior Minister Said al-Sayam, who was killed on January 15 when the IDF bombed his home. Four members of his family and five members of a neighbor's family were killed. Among the dead were four children. (so that is how Hamas members hide among civilians? by staying at home?/ it is me)The commander's notes toward the top of the sheet are largely a short political briefing - for example, "the local leadership wants [a cease-fire], the external [Hamas leadership] is out of touch" - and an assessment of the enemy's intentions - "the enemy would like to achieve a kidnapping [of soldiers], the destruction of homes." "Rules of Engagement" is written in the lower half of the sheet, along with one other category: - "Operational Routine." The following is written: "Rules of Engagement: Fire also upon rescue. Not on women and children. (they forgot to read the last sentence/NewHolocaust) Beyond the tantcher - incrimination." "Tantcher" is what the IDF calls Salah al-Din - the route that runs the length of the Gaza Strip. The home of the Dardone family is east of the route, so it is possible to assume these are instructions on shooting at anyone crossing the route to the east into areas held by the IDF. A reservist soldier who did not participate in Cast Lead says that to the best of his knowledge "incrimination" refers to the process of identifying whether a person approaching is a terrorist. The reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza operation spoke with reservists who said "incriminating" was a shoot-to-kill order, contrary to "suspect procedure," in which shots are fired in the air and then at the legs. (they also missed shots, people were found shot in the heads/ NH) The IDF spokesman said in response that "IDF forces were given unequivocal instructions not to fire at those identified as not being involved in the fighting, and to assist as much as possible injured Palestinians under battle conditions." The reservist officer told Haaretz that "according to the details mentioned in the paper it appears the author was a low-ranking officer who dealt with the affairs of about 30 soldiers - like organizing their platoon equipment and oiling their weapons." He says the author might have taken part in an earlier briefing by more senior officers and took notes for his political and military briefing. That is where he received his instructions on the rules of engagement. "The rules of engagement are not something the platoon or company commander makes up," the reservist officer said. According to the graffiti left in the Dardone homes, and based on what is known about the IDF's deployment in the Strip, the unit involved was part of the Golani Brigade. The last portion of the document is entitled "Operational Routine - Fighting Timeline," and includes things such as guard duty, responsibility for platoon equipment and briefings. Under "Operational Routine" a note is included whose title can be translated as "Shitting of Houses." The reservist officer and soldier with whom Haaretz spoke said they were not aware of that term. Many of the homes the IDF troops took over were left in particularly unsanitary conditions; the residents of Sami Dardone's home found their clothes in piles with obvious signs of human feces. (Nevermind, it is a blessed feces... feces of the most moral troops/ NH)Sealed bags Haaretz asked the IDF spokesman whether "Shitting of Houses" refers to "an intentional action of turning the homes into latrines, or whether the commander wanted to talk to his soldiers about the fact that they had turned their living space into latrines." A reservist soldier who took part in Cast Lead told the reservist officer that "going to the toilet was part of the briefing, and perhaps 'Shitting of Houses' is a reference in the briefing to where to pile up the sealed bags the IDF provides the soldiers for relieving themselves." (let us pray that they found it really relieving/NH)The IDF spokesman said that "soldiers who were in the homes were instructed to relieve themselves in areas where it did not endanger their lives, mostly inside the house, and which allowed them to carry out their operational activities in the best possible way, and for as long as it would be necessary." The other side of the "Situational Assessment" sheet shows that it was written on a letter sent to the troops by a child. "To the Golani soldiers, good luck in the war," the letter reads in the hand of a young child. In the middle of the page there is a drawing of an armed soldier. "Love, the S. family."---------Comments written between brackets are by me not in the article.
We are the Nazis of our time and we are proud of it By Uri Blau (Israeli writer) The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product. Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it." There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants. Advertisement In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere. For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year. The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan. "It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful. The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him." Does the design go to the commanders for approval? The Givati soldier: "Usually the shirts undergo a selection process by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of platoon sergeant. We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on average." What do you think of the slogan that was printed? "I didn't like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it." Many controversial shirts have been ordered by graduates of snipers courses, which bring together soldiers from various units. In 2006, soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.] Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions." G., a soldier in an elite unit who has done a snipers course, explained that, "it's a type of bonding process, and also it's well known that anyone who is a sniper is messed up in the head. Our shirts have a lot of double entendres, for example: 'Bad people with good aims.' Every group that finishes a course puts out stuff like that." When are these shirts worn? G. "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the army. Not for going out. Sometimes people will ask you what it's about." Of the shirt depicting a bull's-eye on a pregnant woman, he said: "There are people who think it's not right, and I think so as well, but it doesn't really mean anything. I mean it's not like someone is gonna go and shoot a pregnant woman." What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"? "It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller." Do your superiors approve the shirts before printing? "Yes, although one time they rejected some shirt that was too extreme. I don't remember what was on it." These shirts also seem pretty extreme. Why draw crosshairs over a child - do you shoot kids? 'We came, we saw' "As a sniper, you get a lot of extreme situations. You suddenly see a small boy who picks up a weapon and it's up to you to decide whether to shoot. These shirts are half-facetious, bordering on the truth, and they reflect the extreme situations you might encounter. The one who-honest-to-God sees the target with his own eyes - that's the sniper." Have you encountered a situation like that? "Fortunately, not involving a kid, but involving a woman - yes. There was someone who wasn't holding a weapon, but she was near a prohibited area and could have posed a threat." What did you do? "I didn't take it" (i.e., shoot). You don't regret that, I imagine. "No. Whomever I had to shoot, I shot." A shirt printed up just this week for soldiers of the Lavi battalion, who spent three years in the West Bank, reads: "We came, we saw, we destroyed!" - alongside images of weapons, an angry soldier and a Palestinian village with a ruined mosque in the center. A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: "If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!" Y., a soldier/yeshiva student, designed the shirt. "You take whoever [in the unit] knows how to draw and then you give it to the commanders before printing," he explained. What is the soldier holding in his hand? Y. "A mosque. Before I drew the shirt I had some misgivings, because I wanted it to be like King Kong, but not too monstrous. The one holding the mosque - I wanted him to have a more normal-looking face, so it wouldn't look like an anti-Semitic cartoon. Some of the people who saw it told me, 'Is that what you've got to show for the IDF? That it destroys homes?' I can understand people who look at this from outside and see it that way, but I was in Gaza and they kept emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction on the infrastructure, so that the price the Palestinians and the leadership pay will make them realize that it isn't worth it for them to go on shooting. So that's the idea of 'we're coming to destroy' in the drawing." According to Y., most of these shirts are worn strictly in an army context, not in civilian life. "And within the army people look at it differently," he added. "I don't think I would walk down the street in this shirt, because it would draw fire. Even at my yeshiva I don't think people would like it." Y. also came up with a design for the shirt his unit printed at the end of basic training. It shows a clenched fist shattering the symbol of the Paratroops Corps. Where does the fist come from? "It's reminiscent of [Rabbi Meir] Kahane's symbol. I borrowed it from an emblem for something in Russia, but basically it's supposed to look like Kahane's symbol, the one from 'Kahane Was Right' - it's a sort of joke. Our company commander is kind of gung-ho." Was the shirt printed? "Yes. It was a company shirt. We printed about 100 like that." This past January, the "Night Predators" demolitions platoon from Golani's Battalion 13 ordered a T-shirt showing a Golani devil detonating a charge that destroys a mosque. An inscription above it says, "Only God forgives." One of the soldiers in the platoon downplays it: "It doesn't mean much, it's just a T-shirt from our platoon. It's not a big deal. A friend of mine drew a picture and we made it into a shirt." What's the idea behind "Only God forgives"? The soldier: "It's just a saying." No one had a problem with the fact that a mosque gets blown up in the picture? "I don't see what you're getting at. I don't like the way you're going with this. Don't take this somewhere you're not supposed to, as though we hate Arabs." After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied by a particularly graphic slogan. S., a soldier in the platoon that ordered the shirt, said the idea came from a similar shirt, printed after the Second Lebanon War, that featured Hassan Nasrallah instead of Haniyeh. "They don't okay things like that at the company level. It's a shirt we put out just for the platoon," S. explained. What's the problem with this shirt? S.: "It bothers some people to see these things, from a religious standpoint ..." How did people who saw it respond? "We don't have that many Orthodox people in the platoon, so it wasn't a problem. It's just something the guys want to put out. It's more for wearing around the house, and not within the companies, because it bothers people. The Orthodox mainly. The officers tell us it's best not to wear shirts like this on the base." The sketches printed in recent years at the Adiv factory, one of the largest of its kind in the country, are arranged in drawers according to the names of the units placing the orders: Paratroops, Golani, air force, sharpshooters and so on. Each drawer contains hundreds of drawings, filed by year. Many of the prints are cartoons and slogans relating to life in the unit, or inside jokes that outsiders wouldn't get (and might not care to, either), but a handful reflect particular aggressiveness, violence and vulgarity. Print-shop manager Haim Yisrael, who has worked there since the early 1980s, said Adiv prints around 1,000 different patterns each month, with soldiers accounting for about half. Yisrael recalled that when he started out, there were hardly any orders from the army. "The first ones to do it were from the Nahal brigade," he said. "Later on other infantry units started printing up shirts, and nowadays any course with 15 participants prints up shirts." From time to time, officers complain. "Sometimes the soldiers do things that are inside jokes that only they get, and sometimes they do something foolish that they take to an extreme," Yisrael explained. "There have been a few times when commanding officers called and said, 'How can you print things like that for soldiers?' For example, with shirts that trashed the Arabs too much. I told them it's a private company, and I'm not interested in the content. I can print whatever I like. We're neutral. There have always been some more extreme and some less so. It's just that now more people are making shirts." Race to be unique Evyatar Ben-Tzedef, a research associate at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and former editor of the IDF publication Maarachot, said the phenomenon of custom-made T-shirts is a product of "the infantry's insane race to be unique. I, for example, had only one shirt that I received after the Yom Kippur War. It said on it, 'The School for Officers,' and that was it. What happened since then is a product of the decision to assign every unit an emblem and a beret. After all, there used to be very few berets: black, red or green. This changed in the 1990s. [The shirts] developed because of the fact that for bonding purposes, each unit created something that was unique to it. "These days the content on shirts is sometimes deplorable," Ben-Tzedef explained. "It stems from the fact that profanity is very acceptable and normative in Israel, and that there is a lack of respect for human beings and their environment, which includes racism aimed in every direction." Yossi Kaufman, who moderates the army and defense forum on the Web site Fresh, served in the Armored Corps from 1996 to 1999. "I also drew shirts, and I remember the first one," he said. "It had a small emblem on the front and some inside joke, like, 'When we die, we'll go to heaven, because we've already been through hell.'" Kaufman has also been exposed to T-shirts of the sort described here. "I know there are shirts like these," he says. "I've heard and also seen a little. These are not shirts that soldiers can wear in civilian life, because they would get stoned, nor at a battalion get-together, because the battalion commander would be pissed off. They wear them on very rare occasions. There's all sorts of black humor stuff, mainly from snipers, such as, 'Don't bother running because you'll die tired' - with a drawing of a Palestinian boy, not a terrorist. There's a Golani or Givati shirt of a soldier raping a girl, and underneath it says, 'No virgins, no terror attacks.' I laughed, but it was pretty awful. When I was asked once to draw things like that, I said it wasn't appropriate." The IDF Spokesman's Office comments on the phenomenon: "Military regulations do not apply to civilian clothing, including shirts produced at the end of basic training and various courses. The designs are printed at the soldiers' private initiative, and on civilian shirts. The examples raised by Haaretz are not in keeping with the values of the IDF spirit, not representative of IDF life, and are in poor taste. Humor of this kind deserves every condemnation and excoriation. The IDF intends to take action for the immediate eradication of this phenomenon. To this end, it is emphasizing to commanding officers that it is appropriate, among other things, to take discretionary and disciplinary measures against those involved in acts of this sort." Shlomo Tzipori, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and a lawyer specializing in martial law, said the army does bring soldiers up on charges for offenses that occur outside the base and during their free time. According to Tzipori, slogans that constitute an "insult to the army or to those in uniform" are grounds for court-martial, on charges of "shameful conduct" or "disciplinary infraction," which are general clauses in judicial martial law. Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of "Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome - the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward. "This tendency is most strikingly evident among soldiers who encounter various situations in the territories on a daily basis. There is less meticulousness than in the past, and increasing callousness. There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human being entitled to basic rights, and therefore anything may be done to him." Could the printing of clothing be viewed also as a means of venting aggression? Sasson-Levy: "No. I think it strengthens and stimulates aggression and legitimizes it. What disturbs me is that a shirt is something that has permanence. The soldiers later wear it in civilian life; their girlfriends wear it afterward. It is not a statement, but rather something physical that remains, that is out there in the world. Beyond that,I think the link made between sexist views and nationalist views, as in the 'Screw Haniyeh' shirt, is interesting. National chauvinism and gender chauvinism combine and strengthen one another. It establishes a masculinity shaped by violent aggression toward women and Arabs; a masculinity that considers it legitimate to speak in a crude and violent manner toward women and Arabs." Col. (res.) Ron Levy began his military service in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando force before the Six-Day War. He was the IDF's chief psychologist, and headed the army's mental health department in the 1980s. Levy: "I'm familiar with things of this sort going back 40, 50 years, and each time they take a different form. Psychologically speaking, this is one of the ways in which soldiers project their anger, frustration and violence. It is a certain expression of things, which I call 'below the belt.'" Do you think this a good way to vent anger? Levy: "It's safe. But there are also things here that deviate from the norm, and you could say that whoever is creating these things has reached some level of normality. He gives expression to the fact that what is considered abnormal today might no longer be so tomorrow." (end)----------------This article was written by an Israel journalist. I wonder how come he is so calm? A group of crazy jerks are released to spread their insanity and some psychological ans sociological pimps rationalizing what they are doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was interesting when some western officials commented on the Israeli atrocities against Gaza saying that when they walk in the Israeli shoes they find themselves doing whatever it takes to “defend” themselves.
You know this was outrageous to my people here. Everybody, including taxi drivers, kept murmuring with anger: what about walking on some occupied people shoes? What about walking in some starved Palestinian boy shoes? What about walking in the shoes of some Palestinian mother who had her babies burned right under her sight? What about walking in the shoes of a people who have been suffering for more than sixty years, experiencing all kinds of deportation, killing, terror and persecution?
What about walking in the shoes of a poor peasant who have been expelled from his land in order to build illegal settlements? What about walking in the shoes of labourers who are literally enslaved in Israeli factories? What about walking in the shoes of school children have the Israeli gun pointed to their faces in check points? Pregnant women who give birth in the check points? What about walking in the shoes of innocent people who woke up someday to find some strangers speaking a strange language look like foreigners, bombing them and telling them to leave a land which was their country for thousands years… because the UN decided in moment that their country Is no more theirs? My people are asking silly questions. That is because….. Palestinians DO NOT WEAR SHOES They cannot afford it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUh067U7E1A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jITO32SgYcE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu1barPiRN0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMlC22Og8UM&feature=related
Imagine the following situation:
A neighbour in your district whenever you walk in the street he hurls stones on you, sometime tosses stones on your house and breaks your window.
Once upon a day you decided to get rid of this mischievous neighbour once and for all.
You took your gun and went out to the street where the neighbour was standing steady to toss stones on you. Once he sees your gun he runs and hides behind a couple of babies and a woman.
What would you do?
Conditions:
1- free your mind and use imagination and contemplation
2- try to be as honest as you can
3- feel the situation vividly
4- Don’t overload the situation with your political derivations… try to be simple and human.
This poll is opened for 3 days. During these days I will not comment or interfere.
The following are Portrays that depict the detailed torment of Muslims and Arabs in Spain by the inquisitions.
These were Arabs from different religions, mostly Muslims. They were physicians, mathematicians, philosophers and scholars. They were tortured to death and their books were burned. Just because they were Arabs and Muslims, just because they were scientists.
Would Pope Benedict apologize to Muslims and Arabs for this brutality committed against them in the Name of the Catholic Church?
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute youMatthew 5:44
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you
Matthew 5:44
I can understand that after centuries of persecution it's satisfying for a Jewish state to be the aggressor for a change, but there's a codicil that goes with that role. You don't get to act like a victim any more. "Poor little Israel" just sounds silly when you're the dominant power in the Middle East. When you've invaded several of your neighbors, bombed and defeated them in combat, occupied their land, and taken their homes away from them, it's time to stop acting oppressed. Yes, Arab states deny your right to exist, threaten to drive you into the sea, and all the rest of their futile, helpless rhetoric. The fact is, you have the upper hand and they don't. You have sophisticated arms and they don't. You have nuclear weapons and they don't. So stop pretending to be pathetic. It doesn't play well in Peoria.
(Yes, I know, we Americans should talk--always trembling in our boots about terrorists and 'rogue states' and 'evil empires' when we have enough nukes to blow up entire continents, and spend more on arms in an hour than most of the world's nations spend in a year. But just because we're hypocrites and Nervous Nellies doesn't mean you have to be).
Calling Hamas the 'aggressor' is undignified. The Gaza strip is little more than a large Israeli concentration camp, in which Palestinians are attacked at will, starved of food, fuel, energy--even deprived of hospital supplies. They cannot come and go freely, and have to build tunnels to smuggle in the necessities of life. It would be difficult to have any respect for them if they didn't fire a few rockets back.
The Israel lobby has a hissy fit when anyone points out that Israel has been borrowing liberally from the Nazi playbook, but to punish a whole nation for the attacks of a few--which Israel has been doing consistently in Gaza--is a violation of international law--a law enacted in response to the Nazi practice. And please, spare us the hypocrisy--borrowed, I'm ashamed to admit, from my own government--of saying 'every effort is made to avoid civilian casualties'. When you drop bombs on a crowded city you're bombing civilians. Bombs don't ask for ID cards. Bombs are civilian killers. That's what they do. They're designed to break the spirit of a nation by slaughtering families. They were used all through World War II by all sides for that very purpose. And that's what they're intended for in Gaza.
And please, Israel, try to restrain yourself from using that ridiculous argument, borrowed again from Bush (how low can you get?), that Hamas leaders "hide among civilians", by living in their own homes. Apparently, in the thinking of Israelis, they should all run out into an uninhabited area somewhere (try to find one in Gaza), surround themselves with flares and write in the sand with a stick, "Here I am!"
Yesterday you shelled three UN-run schools, killing several dozen children and adults, despite the fact that the UN had given you the precise coordinates of all its schools in Gaza. So much for 'taking every care to avoid civilian casualties'. You seem to feel you can kill whomever you like, whenever you like, and wherever you like, just because you have a blank check from the United States. Every day this assault goes on you're demonstrating contempt for the UN, the international community, and human life. Talk about a rogue state.
You might also pay attention to the fact that your outdated policy of macho bullying--the policy you've been following for decades--isn't working! The Palestinians are human. They're not dogs you can beat into submission. The worse you treat them, the more they'll fight back. That's what it means to be human. The more you oppress people, the more people resist. We dropped more bombs on Viet Nam than all the bombs dropped by all nations in World War II. Not to mention napalm, herbicides and all kinds of sophisticated land mines. But did they bow down and kiss the feet of their conquerors? They did not.
You'll have to kill them all. And when you do, you may finally lose the support even of the United States.
Remember that American support is based entirely on the notion that no politician can win without the Jewish vote. But not all American Jews think Israel is on a divine mission from God. A great many American Jews believe in international law and justice.
I can understand how Israel could resent this lecture coming from an American. After all, isn't this what we Americans did? Came into someone else's country, slaughtered 95% of its inhabitants and took over? And didn't we go all Nervous Nellie whenever they fought back, accusing them of aggression to justify even more genocidal slaughter? And didn't we get away with it?
Yes, but I'm sorry to tell you, Israel, you came on the scene too late. Genocide just doesn't fly any more. I know it isn't fair, you have every right to feel aggrieved about this, but the world's smaller, cowboys are passé, and bullies aren't heroes any more.
I don't think so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRClRoKGRdU
How old is the state of Israel? How old is Zionism? How old is Judaism? How old are Semites? And who are Semites?
For thousands years there have been historical and scientific facts that were established and agreed upon by all human beings. These facts are now distorted and turned upside-down to serve a losing forged case called Zionism.
Since Zionism was founded it tries to cloud the obvious and forge facts:
1- Since when a religion is mixed with ethnicity along with nationality? Religion is connected to spirituality that has nothing to do with colour or race and it is as old as the human belief in God, ethnicity is connected to race and it is as old as Noah, nationality is related to the notion of state, this notion is a relatively modern, it has nothing to do either with religion or with ethnicity, it is a political entity. The Zionist state is the only state on earth that mixes the three of them in a really confusing mixture.
2- Semitic race is scientifically defined as the groups of people who dwelled the middle east for thousands years: Akkadian, Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Phoenician, Tigre and Tigrinya among others, these are called members of the Semitic family. Since when Semites were restricted in Hebrews only?
3- Since when Hebrews were restricted in Jews only? Even Jesus Christ and his disciples were Hebrews, many Hebrews embraced Christianity and Islam. It is an ethnicity not a religion.
4- Since when Jews were restricted in Zionism? Judaism is more than 25 centuries old and Zionism is only one century old. Judaism is a religion connected to spirituality and constant belief, Zionism is a political movement and politics are always disputable.
5- Since when there were clear cut lines separating Arabs from Aramaeans from Assyrians from Babylonians from Chaldeans from Sabaeans from Hebrews? If even Yitzhak’s and Jacob’s children and descendents got married to people from all these branches of the Semitic family? The process of mingling between the Semitic branches took place, constantly, for five thousands years.
6- Since when cousins became enemies? Name one battle between Arabs and Hebrews before the foundation of the state of Israel. They were in good terms, very close to each other even before Islam. After Islam, and because of the many resemblances between Judaism and Islam in theology, law, traditions and even food they became the two closest people (Muslims and Jews) and shared mutual friendly cooperative history for ten centuries to the extent that they both have been slaughtered and expelled together by the Catholic church in Spain, and when Muslims left Spain, Jews left with them, that is why a great population of Jews are located in Morocco.
7- Since when Jews became warriors? They are known throughout history of hating war, it is even mentioned in the bible that they have been ordered by God to wage a war and they refused because they hate war. Jews throughout history worked as merchants and scholars, and within scholarship they mainly worked in philosophy and as much as they led philosophical disputes as much as they avoided political and military conflicts, since when they turned from philosophers to warriors? Only when Zionism was founded and formed the Zionist terrorist groups which attacked hotels, cinemas and restaurants. (Mahachem Begin, Rabin, Peres, Shamir, Sharon and most of the Israeli leaders were wanted terrorists in Britain and several western states, they had their pictures hanged on walls with the label: wanted.)
Furthermore, who are those “blond” Jews? Yasser Arafat looks more Jewish than them! From where did they come? Are they Semites?
Semites are not blond :).
Are they non-Semite Jews? They have to enjoy citizenship in their own countries. Judaism is not a nationality. No religion on earth have been either a nationality nor an ethnicity.
I recommend a DNA test proceeded by a neutral, honest lab that does not accept bribes. Arabs had their DNA tests and it proved that it is the same DNA of their ancestors who existed in the region thousands years ago, and we are ready to be submitted to another test. What about the nice blond Tzipi Livni?
PS: Hitler is not hidden in the Middle East region, Arabs have nothing to do with Hitler, and if he hated Jews it is essential that he hated Arab Muslims and Arab Christians too, but his short life time did not give him the chance to express his feelings toward them, yet the Zionist entity is doing the job for him. There is no Hitlarization here, Arabs are not Hitlarized, scientists can develop a way to resurrect Hitler and give him to the European Jews to torture him as much as they can till he dies and resurrect him again and again a million times until their fiery desire of retaliation is fully satisfied instead of forcing innocents to pay bills for things they didn’t even buy.
Israel is a Western-style democracy in which the rights of all individuals are protected by law. If you believe that, guess again! Like many other Western democracies, Israel has relied on a slave class to do the hard labor to create a society in which the "decent people" can enjoy a comfortable standard of living.
It wouldn't be fair to single Israel out for its shortcomings; even the United States turned a blind eye and allowed slavery from the time of its founding and denied a sizeable segment of the population rights under the Constitution that was designed to ensure those rights to all persons living within the borders of the country. However, it is also far from praiseworthy for a society to assume a facade of being a democracy when it continues to build its economy on the backs of men -- and only men -- who provide slave labor to build the country while the "good Israelis" regard the tasks that these men perform as beneath their dignity.
Nowhere is slave labor more obvious than in the construction industry. This problem was not born when the young state was created, as comedian Dudu Topaz pointed out in his Slip of the Tongue routine in the 1980's; one of his jokes included a man telling his grandson about how he helped build so many buildings in Tel-Aviv, which prompted his grandson's question: "Grandpa, were you an Arab?" In truth, one of the legacies of the 1967 Six Day War was a large Arab population living under Israeli military rule in the occupied territories; the male residents of these territories, anxious to profit from the new political realities, were only too willing to enter Israel to seek work, and Israeli employers, who knew that the spending power in the territories would enable Arab laborers to work for competitively low wages, were prepared to take the risk of hiring workers whose political sentiments might be hostile in order to build up their empires within Israel.
For close to two decades, this arrangement worked for the most part; all over the country, areas that became known as the "slave markets" sprang up, where Arabs from the territories stood and waited for Israeli entrepreneurs in need of laborers to come by to offer them work, whether on a daily or weekly basis. Technically, every Arab laborer was supposed to be registered with the Israeli government to be allowed to work within Israel; in practice, not always did the employers go through the trouble to register their fly-by-night hires. Because not all the Arab laborers regarded the Israeli-Arab dispute as something they wanted to forget, violent clashes often occurred; just as often, Israeli employers, fearful of such reprisals that could harm or incriminate them, saw fit to lock the Arab workers inside their temporary sleeping quarters. This latter practice could, and did, result in tragedy if a fire or other hazard broke out; the male slave laborers were helpless to flee the danger.
The intifada brought this arrangement to an end rapidly. Contractors, suddenly faced with a glaring lack of workers to complete their construction projects, made a desperate attempt to encourage young Israelis looking for career vocations to turn back to the construction industry in the hopes of solving both the problem of the labor shortage and the risk that employing residents of hostile areas had posed. This attempt, while well intended, did not gain sufficient popularity to return the construction industry to a "respectable" status in the eyes of Israelis; to them, construction was still too lowly for them to allow their children to do.
Faced with no alternatives locally, building contractors turned abroad to look for men desperate to feed their families to offer them contracts for work in Israel. In Romania, Israeli contractors found a sizeable audience of men who could not make a living in their own country. The contractors made arrangements to pay for their passage to Israel, to pay their wages, to provide them with living quarters, and to pay for their return passage at the completion of the work. All the laborers worked according to a contract properly drawn up, so the arrangements looked acceptable.
Unfortunately for the men who came to work in Israel, soon they were to learn the meaning of what Israelis call "Israbluff". Soon, they learned that the employers would confiscate their passports to prevent them from abandoning the project once they discovered that they would be living in conditions unfit for human habitation, that they would have meager quantities of food shoved into their quarters under doors or through bars, as if they were in a cage in a zoo, and that they would receive what was written in their contracts minus several onerous deductions about which the employers had not mentioned a word at the time the contracts were signed. Worse yet, they would soon learn that while the Israeli media would put them on display as subjects for stories, nobody would come to their assistance; either they were "those foreigners" or they were "stealing jobs from Israelis." Either way, nobody cared enough to fight for the rights of these men.
It must be noted that only men fall into this category; women are noticeably absent. Part of the reason for the indifference of the Israeli public towards the plight of these men is because they are men and not women; these men are expected to accept slave labor conditions graciously because otherwise they would not be able to support their families and, consequently, would fail as men. Of the few Israeli politicians who have shown empathy with the plight of these slave laborers, the absence of female politicians is even more conspicuously absent. The message is clear: men are beasts of burden to Israelis, creatures who are on the earth just to spawn children, work until exhausted to provide for others, be locked away like animals at any time someone sees fit to do so to them, and to jump on live grenades to prove that they are "heroes." Any man who deviates from this stereotype is not worthy of being called a man -- which may explain why women do not try to compete!
The slave labor trade in Israel will continue to exploit men unless men speak up to stop the slavery. Before they do that, they have to redefine manhood and to seek their own liberation from the slavery that every man faces in a world that seeks to "put men in their place." It is easy to say, "It's not my problem," just because a man isn't a Romanian locked in some hovel while he works to support a family in Timisoara; the truth is that it is every man's problem, because the original problem would never have occurred if men were freed of their role as slaves to their families who can desert them the moment that they are no longer able to produce any more.
All the ills that affect men living in Israel can be seen in the case of these foreign laborers: exploitation, denial of human rights and dignity, denial of the right to travel freely, and the worst nemesis of them all: public apathy towards the plight of men in general. How about it, men? Who'll pick up the glove?
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Learn from history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpdXEpBLdU8
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=51776392
Al-Jazeera reporter, Salam Khoder, said Thursday morning to Al-Jazeera broadcast, that about three Israeli soldiers stormed into the medical aid boat “brotherhood” attacking civilians on board.
The aid boat was shipping medical aid, children toys, cloths and blankets to civilians in Gaza suffering inhuman condition due to the blockade and the last war on Gaza. Israeli forces endeavoured to prevent the boat from reaching Gaza, trying, in vain, to compel the boat to return back to Lebanon.
Before the phone line was disconnected, Salam Koder, in a phone call to al-Jazeera, was entirely terrified saying: ‘they stormed into the boat, three…. Three soldiers pointing their weapons toward us… they climbed the back of the boat… they are attacking us… they…. Kicking the passengers… beating us.. they are beating us.. they…”.
All contacts with the boat are disjointed.
The boat is carrying reporters, doctors, Christian priests, Muslim clerics and human rights activists.
Israeli army announced that their soldiers led the boat to Ashdod harbour to investigate passengers and inspect the boat.
International media did not mention a word about this incident till this moment.
