An unremarkable op ed in the LA Times that trots out Israel’s boilerplate arguments that bombing the crap out of Gaza is actually an attack on Iran, was penned by Yossi Klein Halevy and Michael Oren. What is remarkable, though, is that Oren, AIPAC’s favorite historian, is listed simply as “a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center and a professor at the foreign service school of Georgetown University.” What they forgot to note, of course, is that Oren is currently in Gaza, in the uniform of the Israeli Defense Force, in which he is a reserve officer whose current duty is as a media officer working to shape perceptions of the Gaza operation. I’d have thought that should have been made clear.
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so what? You are wearing the uniform of Hamas hasbara. If you were in Europe 60 years ago, you would be uring your fellow Jews to board the trains more quickly to Auschwitz so as not to annoy the Germans.
I would put Oren’s credentials as a historian and observer of the geopolitical over his critics here. Iran is the key supplier of armaments, funding and training to Hamas. By escalating the threat with increasingly longer range missiles, it was only a matter of time before Israel would have had to take action. With out Iranian support there would be no conflict in Gaza today, and there would have been no conflict with Hezbollah in 2006 on Israel’s northern border. The Iranians supply these weapons knowing full well that they will put civilians at risk. The idea that Iran’s support is a part of its ambitions in the region, and not any concern for the people in Gaza seems pretty credible. Oren’s discussions of Hamas’ manipulation of the media also rings true. That Oren is in the IDF does not mean he doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Israeli troops are withdrawing from Gaza, yet we are seeing Palestinian schools and hospitals being used as centres for ‘brutal torture’, Palestinians kidnapped at funerals, Palestinians shot in the legs and their hands broken, Palestinians summarily executed on trumped up charges. Israeli war crimes? No, it’s not the work of the IDF; all this comes courtesy of the ruling Islamist faction of the Palestinian ‘resistance’. We have seen recently a number of Western commentators playing down the violence inherent in Hamas’s ideology and world view. We hear much of the ‘democratically elected Hamas’, and now we see, yet again, the reality of rule by Hamas.
From the Jerusalem Post:
Hamas militiamen have rounded up hundreds of Fatah activists on suspicion of “collaboration” with Israel during Operation Cast Lead, Fatah members in the Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
They said the Hamas crackdown on Fatah intensified after the cease-fire went into effect early Sunday morning.
The Fatah members and eyewitnesses said the detainees were being held in school buildings and hospitals that Hamas had turned into make-shift interrogation centers.
[…]
A Fatah official in Ramallah told the Post that at least 100 of his men had been killed or wounded as a result of the massive Hamas crackdown. Some had been brutally tortured, he added.
The official said that the perpetrators belonged to Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, and to the movement’s Internal Security Force.
According to the official, at least three of the detainees had their eyes put out by their interrogators, who accused them of providing Israel with wartime information about the location of Hamas militiamen and officials.
[…]
“They were afraid to confront the Israeli army and many Hamas militiamen even ran away during the fighting,” he said. “Hamas is now venting its anger and frustration against our Fatah members there.”
Eyewitnesses said that Hamas militiamen had turned a number of hospitals and schools into temporary detention centers where dozens of Fatah members and supporters were being held on suspicion of helping Israel during the war.
The eyewitnesses said that a children’s hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into “torture centers.”
A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas’s house-arrest orders.
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah,” he said. “Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?”
[…]
Relatives of Abed al-Gharabli, a former Fatah security officer who spent 12 years in Israeli prisons, said he was kidnapped by a group of Hamas militiamen who shot him in both legs after severely torturing him.
Ziad Abu Hayeh, one of the commanders of Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, is reported to have lost his sight after Hamas gunmen put out his eyes. According to Fatah activists, Abu Hayeh was kidnapped from his home in Khan Yunis by Hamas militiamen.
The Fatah men said that in a number of incidents, Hamas militiamen had kidnapped Fatah activists while they were attending the funerals of people killed during the war. In other cases, activists were detained and shot in the legs after they were spotted smiling in public – an act interpreted by Hamas as an expression of joy over Israel’s military offensive.
On Saturday night, three brothers from the Subuh family were abducted by Hamas militiamen and taken to the Abdel Aziz Rantisi Mosque in Khan Yunis, where they were shot in the legs, a local journalist told the Post.
In a more recent incident, Hamas gunmen shot and killed 80-year-old Hisham Tawfik Najjar after storming his home and beating his four sons – all Fatah activists.
Fahmi Za’areer, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, revealed that at least 16 Fatah activists had been executed by Hamas in the past few days. He strongly condemned the Hamas clampdown on Fatah and warned against a bloodbath in the Gaza Strip.
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The Little Dickie Silverstein Marching Song
I am a little kapo,
It makes my mommy mad,
Cause when I am a kapo,
Those Zionists get sad!
I celebrate the jihad,
and terror all the while,
I fill my blog and web page,
With loud salutes of Sieg Heil!
I want to see them Zraelis,
All dumped out in the sea,
My swastika a waving,
Cause everything’s bout me
I found this on another blog, very funny.
The Little Dickie Silverstein Marching Song
I am a little kapo,
It makes my mommy mad,
Cause when I am a kapo,
Those Zionists get sad!
I celebrate the jihad,
and terror all the while,
I fill my blog and web page,
With loud salutes of Sieg Heil!
I want to see them Zraelis,
All dumped out in the sea,
My swastika a waving,
Cause everything’s bout me.
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So what? You are wearing the uniform of Hamas hasbara. If you were in Europe 60 years ago, you would be uring your fellow Jews to board the trains more quickly to Auschwitz so as not to annoy the Germans.
I celebrate the jihad,
and terror all the while,
I fill my blog and web page,
With loud salutes of Sieg Heil!
Arabs sold land to Israelis of the Palestinian question çözülememesinin the only reason they are stupid.
You’ve got the best online websites
NFL 17 http://lindast.com/event/35