Comments on: On a Gaza beach, they smoke the hubble-bubble and yearn for a connection to the world

By: LanceThruster

LanceThruster — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:04:00 +0000

Ms. Shammas is doing a marvelous job putting a wonderfully human face on the victims of Israeli aggression. Thanks for this firsthand account.

By: Nth Republic

Nth Republic — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:21:14 +0000

OK, thanks for replying Diane and Senhal, sorry it took me a bit to respond, I got lost in the fray ;) I'll be pushing this on, and I've copied all this down including your contact info… might be a while before we coordinate out here and contact you, but rest assured we won't forget and we'll do everything we can.

By: Thom

Thom — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:42:39 +0000

That's odd, I posted a response to this, now it's missing. As is the response of someone else who posted a response to this. I guess the anti-Semites who post here don't think their own posts will stand up in the face of opposing viewpoints. Censorship of posts that don't attack Israel? Priceless.

By: Thom

Thom — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:36:31 +0000

Oops, most of my reply was posted as a separate comment. BTW, knocking down the home of a terrorist or a war criminal is not collective punishment, it is individual punishment. The only kind that can be meted out to suicide terrorists or non-terrorist war criminals like Sami Abdel Salam (fighting while disguised as a civilian is a war crime). I shouldn't make that assumption. He wasn't killed in an act of terrorism (according to this story anyway), but we don't know whether he committed acts of terrorism before his fatal attack. How else do you punish an individual who believes that he can get 72 virgins in heaven by dying while murdering as many of your people as possible (including children)?

By: Thom

Thom — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:35:16 +0000

ROFL. As I said before "Tree" most trees are smarter than you. Which "decades of peace" would these be? The decade from 1967 to 1976? With its over 380 dead victims of Palestinian terrorism (not counting Palestinians murdered on suspicion of "collaborating" with Israel? The decade from 1977 to 1987 with over 180 dead victims of Palestinian terrorism? Since Israel's founding, there has not been a single year in which Palestinian (or whatever they called themselves at the time) terrorist attacks didn't kill Israelis. Is one of the things being kept out by the blockade condoms? These stories all seem to have "Mother of 8, 9, 10, etc." Gee, maybe the Gaza wouldn't be so crowded and unpleasant it the Palestinians didn't all have 10 kids. Seriously, have as many kids as you want, but if you are going to have more than you can afford, quit complaining about being poor. Actually, we have no idea whether the soldiers who accidentally killed Noha-Al Makadam were firing at a terrorist or not. The Palestinians and their supporters have a tendency to lie about the circumstances of deaths. See Barbara Lubin who confessed to lying about an atrocity that never happened. The Palestinians often fire at Israelis who come to demolish the houses of terrorists, that's why the bulldozers are armored. Sounds as though there was a battle and the wall was knocked down in the course of it. For all we know a grenade or an anti-tank missile fired by Hamas hit it.

By: Koshiro

Koshiro — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:00:31 +0000

Hmm, simple ignorance of the suggestions. An underperformance. Pretty much a standard maneuver, nothing fancy. 2 out of 5. As for your unrelated new rantings: Yes. Infinitely as much, as I said. Because even "very little" would be infinitely as much as "zero". Individual democratic rights, btw, can be defined as the rights one has to influence and change the authorities which govern them. How much of this ability does a Palestinian in Jordan have? A little. By middle east standards, quite a lot, actually. How much of this ability does a Palestinian does a Palestinian under Israeli occupation have? Zero. None. Nada. Zip. (And by the way: This is not about "Arabs in Israel". Those are citizens. Give all the Palestinians on the West Bank the same rights, and nobody has a problem with that.) P.S.: Do you have to swear some kind of oath at whatever institution educated you never to say or spell "Palestinian"? Even if the only resort is using faux-native spellings? Is there also a rule on a minimum number of capital letters?

By: Koshiro

Koshiro — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:52:24 +0000

Oh, come on. The old "Why don't YOU take them if you love them so much" is really stale compared to your previous efforts. Barely registers on the nuts-o-meter. Answer btw: Because they don't live under our control, but under yours. And anti-Muslim tu quoque fallacies? Now you're not even trying.

By: tree_

tree_ — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:27:24 +0000

Why was it then that with decades of peace and quiet from the Palestinians in the occupied Territories, the Israeli response was not an end to the occupation and the encouragement and support of Palestinian independence? Instead the Israelis responded with more and more settlements and land theft and tighter and tighter restrictions on the Palestinians. Here's a clue for you on how life works. If you treat a people with cruelty and injustice and act as if you consider their needs and desires as inferior to your own wishes, they aren't going to like you and they aren't going to pretend that they think you have their best wishes at heart. The worst indoctrinators of hate in the occupied territories are the IDF and the settlers. "New widower Shukri al-Makadama lies on the floor of his brother's house, lighting cigarette after cigarette. His neck is encased in plaster, due to a possible fractured vertebra caused by a wall falling on top of him. He mourns his dead wife and moans in pain. Staring at the ceiling, he quietly describes – in fluent Hebrew, from all the years he worked in Tel Aviv – the events of that terrible night when the Israel Defense Forces destroyed his house and his world, and killed his wife – Noha al-Makadama, a mother of 10, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy. Late one night last week, the army came to demolish the house of the family of teenage terrorist Sami Abdel Salam, who was shot dead on February 9 after he and several others started shooting at IDF soldiers in the El Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. In the process, they also demolished the homes of seven other families – without warning and while the residents were inside. Before she lost consciousness, Noha, who was due to give birth any day, managed to shout to her husband to protect the children and to hand him the small purse that held the money she was saving for a washing machine. He shows us the blue purse, still full of coins. Noha was buried alive under the rubble of her house last Monday, and her unborn child died with her. Brigadier General Gadi Shemani, the Gaza division commander, said the next day that the IDF has "no evidence" of the woman's death and thereby exempted himself and his soldiers from any responsibility for the despicable killing. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said something similar and just as outrageous at the cabinet meeting. So, as a service to the defense minister and the division commander, the full story of the killing of Noha al-Makadama and her unborn child, crushed to death when their home was demolished by the IDF, is hereby presented…" — 'Save the children, Shukri!', by Gideon Levy; Ha'aretz, 12 Mar 2003. The soldiers who killed Noha-Al Makadama were not firing at a terrorist. They were executing a punitive collective punishment, after the fact, by destroying the home of a Palestinian who had already died at another place and time while attacking IDF soldiers(note: not civilians). And in executing that collective punishment they destroyed the home of several other unrelated families, without even a warning or a notice. How can any Palestinian successfully teach their children not to hate the IDF when the IDF itself is so successfully teaching hate day in and day out in the occupied territories?

By: dshammas

dshammas — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:07:05 +0000

This particular child is not used as a human shield. In fact, the family represents Fatah that our government and Israel recognizes as the sole representative of the Palestinians.

By: Citizen

Citizen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:31:44 +0000

Similarly, the use of settlements as human shields and swords is wonderful too–especially those with so many dual citizen Americans. It does not get much better than that. All we need is some powerful nation giving a blank check to arm the Pals with sophisticated military tools; you know, support the resistance fighters, rather than the colonials? Take the high ground, in exchange for proxy hegemony in such a key geo-strategic area?