unbelievable barbarity.

it reminds me of Apocolypto by Mel Gibson - which  finally I had the pleasure of seeing this weekend.

the fictional tribe of sunworshippers that Gibson came up with in the film, could easily be replaced by the zionists - aka mammon worshippers - we all know and hate.

___________________________

"Money" has no value - people do.

By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

April 23, 2008

One week ago, in yet another Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip which claimed 21 Palestinians in a day, Reuters photographer Fadel Shana lost his life. According to media reports, the 23-year old cameraman was filming invading Israeli tanks in Gaza City when he stepped out of his van, clearly marked with the word “press”, and was hit by the same tank’s fire. Later photos showed Shana’s blood-soaked flack jacket and his burning van as fellow Palestinians hovered over the young man’s lifeless body.

Given that Shana worked with an international media organization, it is no surprise that Reuters has demanded an investigation into the death. Reuters Editor-in-chief David Schlesinger fell short of explicitly chiding Israel but got his message across all the same. “This tragic incident shows the risks journalists take every day to report news,” he said. “All governments and organizations have the responsibility to take the utmost care to protect professionals trying to do their jobs.” Later, he continued, “The markings on Fadel Shana’s vehicle showed clearly and unambiguously that he was a professional journalist doing his duty.”

The fact is, this is hardly the first journalist to be killed by Israeli fire while covering events in the occupied Palestinian territories. At least 10 journalists have been killed since the start of the Intifada in September, 2000, including two Europeans. According to a December 2006 report by Reporters Without Borders, the Israeli army attacked or threatened 16 journalists in that year alone along with destroying three news media offices. Since the Intifada, journalists have been harassed, beaten, denied entry and killed or wounded by the Israeli army without any so-called investigation resulting in holding the army accountable for the death. When confronted with this fact by Reporters Without Borders, head of the foreign press section of the Israeli army Avital Leibovich replied, “The investigations have not resulted in charges because the evidence proved insufficient for prosecuting any particular officer.”

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So much for the way over the top BS psyop piece about the IAF on what used to be a good source of news, the defunct "60 Minutes."

CBS's pack of lies about the alleged moralists inhabiting the IAF let the world know that gosh, we try not to bomb, strafe and blow to smithereens Palestinian civilians, but golly gosh, we're the good guys and sometimes, in the fog of war, blah, blah, blah.

By the time Zionist scum bags like that little bitch on CNN, Blitzer gets done cooking this story for consumption, it will come out as the children's fault for being born and living in Occupied Palestine.

On the other Zionist owned channel, F**, the usual suspects, like the imperious looking, arrogant SOB Charles Krauthammer will pick up the pace and heap more abuse on the victims of this murder, all the while absolving the murderous thugs in the Zionist Occupation Force.

Independent.co.uk

Johann Hari

How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago end up throwing filth at cowering Palestinians?

Monday, 28 April 2008

***

When it became clear these Palestinians would not welcome becoming a minority in somebody else's country, darker plans were drawn up. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote in 1937: "The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war."

So, for when the moment arrived, he helped draw up Plan Dalit. It was – as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe puts it – "a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; and laying siege to and bombarding population centres". In 1948, before the Arab armies invaded, this began to be implemented: some 800,000 people were ethnically cleansed, and Israel was built on the ruins. The people who ask angrily why the Palestinians keep longing for their old land should imagine an English version of this story. How would we react if the 30m stateless, persecuted Kurds in the world sent armies and settlers into this country to seize everything in England below Leeds, and swiftly established a free Kurdistan from which we were expelled? Wouldn't we long forever for our children to return to Cornwall and Devon and London? Would it take us only 40 years to compromise and offer to settle for just 22 per cent of what we had?

If we are not going to be endlessly banging our heads against history, the Middle East needs to excavate 1948, and seek a solution. Any peace deal – even one where Israel dismantled the wall and agreed to return to the 1967 borders – tends to crumple on this issue. The Israelis say: if we let all three million come back, we will be outnumbered by Palestinians even within the 1967 borders, so Israel would be voted out of existence. But the Palestinians reply: if we don't have an acknowledgement of the Naqba (catastrophe), and our right under international law to the land our grandfathers fled, how can we move on?

It seemed like an intractable problem – until, two years ago, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted the first study of the Palestinian Diaspora's desires. They found that only 10 per cent – around 300,000 people – want to return to Israel proper. Israel can accept that many (and compensate the rest) without even enduring much pain. But there has always been a strain of Israeli society that preferred violently setting its own borders, on its own terms, to talk and compromise. This weekend, the elected Hamas government offered a six-month truce that could have led to talks. The Israeli government responded within hours by blowing up a senior Hamas leader and killing a 14-year-old girl.

Perhaps Hamas' proposals are a con; perhaps all the Arab states are lying too when they offer Israel full recognition in exchange for a roll-back to the 1967 borders; but isn't it a good idea to find out? Israel, as she gazes at her grey hairs and discreetly ignores the smell of her own stale shit pumped across Palestine, needs to ask what kind of country she wants to be in the next 60 years.

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Barak: Hamas responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza

Defense minister says that by operating from within civilian areas, Hamas effectively contributes to high number of civilian casualties in Gaza

Hanan Greenberg

Published: 04.28.08, 15:47 / Israel News

While Palestinian organizations blamed Israel Monday for the killing of five Gaza family members, Defense Minister Ehud Barak maintained that it was Hamas that is responsible for their deaths.

An IDF shell hit a house in the town of Beit Hanoun Monday morning, killing five members of the Abu Meatak family. A 15-year-old boy was also killed in the strike while making his way to school. Nine people were reportedly injured, three of them sustaining serious to critical wounds.

"We hold Hamas responsible for anything that goes on inside Gaza and for all the strikes," Barak said during a tour of an Israel Military Industries facility in central Israel.

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Related
Democracy Becoming a Joke: The Presidential Election and the Lobby
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Carter was Right but Bush, Media Black Out Hamas' Overtures Towards Peace

If the U.S. or Israel were to accept Hamas' willingness to negotiate, they would tacitly acknowledge that Hamas is a player in the game.

By Ira Chernus, AlterNet

April 28, 2008

Here is some recent news from Israeli and Arab sources that you might have missed:

Haaretz reported that "Hamas' political leader Khaled Meshal said Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along Israel's pre-1967 borders, and would grant Israel a 10-year hudna, or truce, as an implicit proof of recognition if Israel withdraws from those areas."

According to Gulf News, "Former US president Jimmy Carter said that exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal had told him the movement would accept a peace deal if it was approved in a Palestinian vote. ... Hamas will accept a ceasefire that is limited to the Gaza Strip, dropping its long-standing demand that the West Bank be included in any halt in fighting with Israel, senior representatives of the group said."

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w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

Last update - 15:37 28/04/2008

By Bradley Burston

I want to apologize for the unforgivable.

It is time for us to stop "understanding" why so many we kill so many Palestinian civilians. It is time for us to stop explaining away the deaths we excuse as the unfortunate and incidental by-product of a terrible war.

If it had been only an isolated incident, a tragic aberration, I would have kept my peace, said nothing, just moved on.

But the same crime, the same - let's call it by its real name - atrocity, has been committed time and again, under the same circumstances, for the same reasons, with the same indefensible result.

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Here's the 3Mb .flv file of the murders

It's a heartbreaker.

Sorry for the broken link, i must have forgotten a quotation.

I added your video link to the main post above.

best,

marc