The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reports that Israeli forces shot two Palestinian boys when they came within about 1/5 of a mile of the border fence in northern Gaza.
One boy was 16. He was killed instantly. The other was 19. "They attempted to get close to the border to find metal wires to sell them. They were unarmed."
Let my people go.
Related posts:
- 2 more Warsaw Ghetto analogies, from the left
- Vermont Jew breaks personal taboo and decries Gaza as Warsaw Ghetto (Gaza effect in U.S. is still subterranean but Huge)
- Why it’s appropriate to remember the Warsaw Ghetto when considering Gaza
- Dershowitz likened Gaza to Warsaw ghetto
- ‘New Republic’ attacks ADL for ‘inquisition’ against California professor who likened Gaza to Warsaw ghetto
{ 45 comments }
It is “forbidden” for Gazans to approach the Israeli fence – inside Gaza. Even if they own the land. It is not forbidden for Israeli soldiers to man watchtowers on the fence itself.
It is not forbidden for Israelis to shoot and kill Gazans inside Gaza. It is forbidden for Gazans to retaliate for these killings. It is not forbidden for Israel to retaliate for the retaliation, killing more Gazans.
And the Israelis call the Gazans terrorists, when it is Gazans who are the ones killed by Israeli terror attacks.
Everything in this situation is unbalanced. The power is totally unbalanced. The supply of food and medicine is unbalanced. The supply of water is unbalanced. Why should discussion of this criminal situation be balanced?
Yet what do the headlines say? Gazans fire mortars at Israel! Yep, more of that terrorist Hamas aggression. Bomb the tunnels again. Show those terrorists that they don’t dare retaliate for Israeli killings of their people.
A stretch of land mile wide from border between Gaza and Israel is a killing zone – preventing Gazans from using a significant amount of agricultural land.
It isn’t between Israel and Gaza, it’s within Gaza. It’s Gazan land, formerly Gazan farmland, stripped bare by Israeli bulldozers to make a clear field of fire.
It makes a lie of the Israeli claim that they are not occupying Gaza.
Feudal? All they need is a drawbridge.
This makes me wonder what is the organized Jewish American POV on the USA borders–the southern borders since that accounts for most illegal immagrants and legal immigrants? Is organized and influential Jewry all for open borders?
Cut the crap that it is “The Jews” who want open borders. That’s a silly and dishonest meme.
Who wants open US borders? The folks that benefit–large US corporations that are anti-labor rights and labor intensive.
It’s not an ethnic thing, it’s an economic thing–encompassing all ethnicities who benefit.
To blame it on “The Jews” evidences some fantasy that calls into question your support for Palestinian justice. In other words, what is your driving belief? That Jews are bad or that Palestinians deserve justice?
I agree the large US corporations are the key culprits behind open borders and have been so all along; as you say cheap labor driver; and now it’s also an ethnic (Hispanic) voting block issue. I was just wondering if any Jewish organization has ever taken a public stance on the open borders issue. I know many did take a stance in the mid-1960s regarding the then reformed Immigration Act, as reflected in our federal legistlative history.
The construction of “border fences,” between the US and Mexico border was usually presented as so urgently necessary for “homeland defense” that environmental review was a “nicety,” deemed an unnecessary obstruction to the security of American. Several years down the road. Now the emphasis has shift to drug interdiction.
Federal officials create opening over border fence public access
San Diego Union-Tribune
by Leslie Berestein, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
June 1, 2009
SOUTH COUNTY — Less than five months after federal officials pulled the plug on public access through a new border fence to a historic monument at Border Field State Park, the possibility is back on the table.
Speaking at a luncheon in downtown San Diego last week, Homeland Security border czar Alan Bersin told the audience that immigrant-rights groups have been discussing prospects for public access with department officials.
“It is a dialogue under way,” said Bersin, who was recently named the department’s assistant secretary for international affairs.
In January, two weeks before the Obama administration took office, U.S. Border Patrol officials announced a decision to permanently close access to a popular cross-border meeting spot within the state park, where a marble obelisk dating to 1851 marks the U.S.-Mexico border.
Until late last year, the area surrounding the monument – accommodated within a cutout in the steel mesh fence separating the two countries – was easily accessible. On weekends, it was common for U.S. visitors with family in Baja California to bring picnics and chairs to the area, known as Friendship Park, and spend the day chatting with relatives through the fence.
The area was declared off-limits in December, shortly before construction began on a secondary fence through Border Field State Park. That barrier, which is mostly completed, is north of and runs parallel to the main border fence. State and federal officials discussed public access to the monument, and until January there were tentative plans to allow visitors to use a gate in the secondary fence to get to a 40-foot-wide space that flanks the obelisk.
This changed after local Border Patrol officials concluded it would be too difficult for agents to monitor a public gathering place between the two fences. At the time, an agency official in Washington, D.C., said that while visitors frequently pass innocuous items such as food back and forth through small openings in the fence, they could also pass fraudulent documents or drugs.
Bersin said last week that while security would not be compromised, the idea is to rethink the access issue in hopes of being able to have both security and controlled interaction.
Since the decision was made to bar public access, a coalition of local community, immigrant-rights, environmental and religious groups have lobbied federal officials and policy makers to reconsider.
John Fanestil, a United Methodist minister and one of several local proponents of maintaining public access to Friendship Park, promoted the issue in Washington, D.C., last month. He and other Southwest border activists traveled there to show support of legislation that would require the government to adhere to environmental laws when considering border security.
However, access to the monument and the fence could be compromised by the state budget crisis. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting more $213 million from state parks over the next two fiscal years, resulting in the possible shutdown of more than 200 state parks, among them Border Field.
jholslin.blogspot(dot)com/2009/06/federal-officials-create-opening-over.html
California’s Governor seems to think the primary business of government is to promote business. The emphasis on the need for border fences now is drug interdiction.
Bush scared the h*ll out of me and I do sometimes feel like I’ve just woken up. Palestine is urgent; Afghanistan became urgent. Internal issues are urgent, also, but the problems aren’t highlighted by massive deaths as they are with war – it’s more often a matter of steady degradation – as V., Citizen and others point out.
Phil, how dare you print this anonymous-sourced and unbelievable piece of anti-Semitic trash..??!?
Oh wait, I’m not Richard Wi…
In that case, thanks for bringing a voice and a spotlight to this awful situation.
I’m confused by the headline. If they were scrounging for scrap metal, were they farming as the article reported?
Phil,
Did you mean to lend a potential contradiction?
Maybe the report is true, maybe not. Is there some other verification?
It did invoke the intended response though.
From the report:
Al-Husumi and Tanboura were working in a farm in Beit Lahia town, approximately 350 meters away from the border fence. They attempted to get close to the border to find metal wires to sell them. They were unarmed.
There is no ‘potential contradiction’ in the excerpt from the report referring to the victims’ activities. You are being disingenuous, to put a polite spin on it.
Sorry, I misread. Thanks for pointing that out.
Richard,
I grant that you want “some other verification” for the story. That’s a good idea in life. But do you insist on independent verification for everything you read, or only when Israelis are the bad guys in the story? Do you insist on independent verification when you read about Israelis being suicide bombed in a pizza parlor, or do you withhold judgment about the factuality of that situation too? How do you decide what’s credible and what isn’t? Help me out here.
The answer to your question, Gellian, is, what does Dick Witty think at the moment on the particular scrap of data at issue, is good for the Jews? That’s his pattern and it
never deviates. Just so you know, when you are thinking about what’s best for the whole world, all things cosinsidered. Dick calls his POV “humanistic Zionism.” If you have a problem with that as an oxymoron, you have a major problem with Dick Witty.
I definitely look for verification for any story that could invoke Pavlovian rage, which this did.
Phil likes reporting those stories. He feels that he is providing balance to the mass media that typically doesn’t report each detail.
But, he does edit out stories of terror on Israelis, or even of shelling of civilians with rockets.
Richard, now I think I understand your position.
You are a Palestinian-holocaust denier.
By denying the reality of documented killings of Palestinians, you kill the victims a second time over.
Good switch.
I’ve been lied to by solidarity supporters, haven’t you?
No, I haven’t been lied to by Palestianian activists, at least that I know of. But do name names, if you have. I don’t like misinformation either.
I have been lied to by Zionists; I think in particular of the lie that Palestine was empty when the Zionists arrived.
Hey Witty–
How about the article invoke in you a bit of compassion and the humility of self-awareness that your word games are a convenient pass that excludes any moral judgment at all?
Nah . . .
If it wasn’t so Pavlovian, it would evoke compassion.
And, if anyone had bothered to document a single non-repetitive source of verification, then I wouldn’t easily be able to dismiss it as potentially false.
Thats part of what professional journalism is, no?
I don’t believe it nor disbelieve it. I cry at movies too, without knowing if they are fiction or fact, so why not here?
Some things never change, this will give you an idea of how long these atrocities have been going on –
AS HE REACHED FOR THE COPPER THE ISRAELI SNIPER SHOT THE BOY IN THE HEAD
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418687505&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Earlier Monday, a Palestinian gunman was killed in a shootout with IDF troops on the northern border of the Strip.
According to reports, the exchange of fire occurred after an IDF patrol spotted the gunmen planting a bomb near the security fence. When the troops attempted to apprehend the group, they were met by gunfire.
Two of the gunmen succeeded in escaping back into Gaza, while the third died on the spot.
Following the firefight, Palestinians launched a small volley of mortar shells into Israeli territory. The soldier wounded was hit by shrapnel from one of the shells.
We get it, Julian. Moral equivalency, right? Two kids searching for scrap metal get bullets in the head from the IDF and it’s precisely the same thing as an alleged “bomber” who gets shot in a gun-battle with IDF troops.
As a point of fact, the only way these two incidents are related is that in both cases Palestinians were killed and no IDF soldiers even broke a fingernail. Go back to the 1967 borders and stop the ethnic cleansing, wouldja?
I think we are seeing two versions of the same incident. If you are Israeli you will believe their version, if you are tired of being lied to by the Israelis you certainly won’t believe their version. Other than that I don’t know what happened.
This is the Israeli lie version of the story reported above.
Without realizing it, Julian has just provided corroborating evidence for the PCHR version and proved that the IDF often lies about these types of incidents. Julian posted his excerpt from the August 24th version of the JPost, see the cached version from Google here.
Note that it mentions “gunmen” and an “exchange of fire”. However, if you click on Julian’s link today, 8/26, as I just did, you’ll notice that the story has been updated today, and this is the new version of events, per the IDF spokeswoman:
Notice that there is now no mention that the Palestinians had guns or were “exchanging gunfire”, as in the earlier IDF version. Likewise, in referring to the IDF’s “rules of engagement”, the spokeswoman is acknowledging that the IDF patrol fired on the Palestinians merely because they were within 300 meters of the border fence on the Gaza side of the border. There is now no mention of anyone “escaping back into Gaza”, as also mentioned in the IDF’s first version, because the Palestinians were never in Israel but were merely in the killing zone that the IDF has created in Gaza along the border. Therefore, as admitted in the new IDF version, the IDF patrol had to cross the fence into Gaza in order to approach the mortally wounded Palestinian.
Thanks, Julian, you just gave us yet another example of how the IDF consistently lies. I seriously doubt that the IDF’s story is the honest truth in this second version either, but it clearly proves that the first IDF story was a pack of lies.
Richard, isn’t this new IDF version a subtle corroboration of the PCHR version that you claimed you were looking for? Personally, when it comes to the veracity of the PCHR versus the veracity of the IDF, experience has taught me to generally believe the PCHR, and to disbelief anything the IDF says, most particularly to disbelieve their first version of events. This incident merely adds to that body of experience.
The PCHR story, just like all their stories is absurd. They were farming, looking for metal wire and picking flowers. I heard a lot of metal wire grows right by the fence.
It indicates the need for professional journalistic standards, not only repetition of propaganda.
In case you didn’t notice this above, Julian, the IDF has now changed its story and makes no claims about the men being armed or firing on the IDF, and admits that they were shot because they were within 300 meters of the border fence, not at the fence, or in Israel. The IDF has just corroborated several facts mentioned in the PCHR report. Check your JPost link for the update.
Yeah Julian, what I would like to know is how a heart and head like yours turns to hard callous stone, tell me how it happens?
It happens through creeping exceptionalism, beginning when the Julians of the world decide that the rights of Jews take priority over the rights of everyone else, proceeding to the conviction that non-Jews have no rights to be violated, concluding by denying their humanity.
There is no Palestinian story that would touch Julian in a humanistic way, a frightening exceptionalism that pushes Julian’s side from the rest of the world of nations.
As much as I reluctantly come to this conclusion, Julain’s attitude is strikingly similar to the citizens of WWII-era Germany, who were living near the concentration camps and refused to believe what was happening mere kilometres away from their farms.
This was extensively documented in historian Daniel Goldhagen’s well-reviewed book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” which (according to Wikipedia) “posits that ordinary Germans not only knew about, but also supported, the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent ‘eliminationist antisemitism’ in the German identity, which had developed in the preceding centuries. Goldhagen writes that this special mentality grew out of medieval attitudes from a religious basis but was eventually secularized.”
What’s happening in Palestine is shocking to the conscience. While Goldhagen emphasizes “Never Again,” we witness Israel doing precisely that with no apologies. The pages of history will not be as complacent as the MSM is in allowing this ethnic cleansing.
Check out the analogy by clicking here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler’s_Willing_Executioners
Yad Vashem fires employee who dared to show the irony of Deir Yassin being in sight of Yad Vashem
Daniel McGowan - mcgowan@hws.edu
Deir Yassin Remembered
Yad Vashem, the most famous Holocaust Museum in the world, has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in the Naqba.
Itamar Shapira, 29, of Jerusalem, was fired from his job at Yad Vashem, where he had worked for the past three and a half years as a tour guide. Shapira confirmed that he had spoken to visitors about the 1948 massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin, which lies in clear sight 1,400 meters to the north of the Children’s Museum at Yad Vashem.
While Yad Vashem visitors are taught to “Never Forget” the trauma suffered by Jews under the Nazis, they are encouraged to “Never Mind” the trauma suffered by Palestinians under Zionists building a Jewish state on lands where Palestinians had lived for centuries.
Shapira stated, “I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation.”
Yad Vashem’s position is that the Holocaust and Jewish suffering cannot be compared to any other event. While there are hundreds of memorials for Jews, there is not even a sign post at Deir Yassin, the emblem of Palestinian dispossession and ethnic cleansing.
Deir Yassin Remembered was founded in 1995 at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. DYR works toward building a truth and reconciliation center at Deir Yassin. We ask that you open your hearts and wallets and make a donation to Deir Yassin Remembered, a charitable and educational not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
Deir Yassin Remembered
c/o Daniel McGowan or PayPal DYR1948@deiryassin.org
300 Pulteney Street
Geneva, New York 14456
Yad Vashem fires employee who compared Holocaust to Nakba
By Yoav Stern
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=1080456
Small subject change. Gabriel Kolko is a very interesting historian that is worth reading. Here is one of his latest:
http://counterpunch.org/kolko08252009.html
I think he is right about this. Israel is going to wither from within through emigration of its most highly educated. It will have have neither a two-state or one-state solution. The danger with that solution is that at some point Israel will be reduced to only its most fanatical members and they will be armed with over 200 nuclear weapons.
“The danger with that solution is that at some point Israel will be reduced to only its most fanatical members and they will be armed with over 200 nuclear weapons”
Unlike that poor old confused and possibly apocryphal Rabbi, do we have to ask if that would be “good for the Jews, or bad for the Jews”? Won’t we be in good odor with the world then!
I think there is no question. Israel is bad for the Jews, and other living things.
RE: “Let my people go.” – Phil(l)
MY COMMENT: Let all people go!
2 videos of Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom, on Israeli Organ Harvesting:
Donald Bostrom: Israeli Govt needs to read about democracy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZdI0JQlHaQ
.
Donald Bostrom Swedish Journalist on Israeli organ harvesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZxyD931dEQ
I don’t think “let my people go” quite works as a catchphrase for the Palestinians, since “OK, go ahead and leave” would be the likely response. As to the shooting, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has an unfortunate habit of lying about the ages, circumstances of death, and affiliations of Palestinians killed by Israelis. For example, in the Gaza war, they listed well known terrorist leaders among the “civilians” killed by Israel. Here, we have no way of knowing whether these young men were unarmed or not. We have no way of knowing whether warning shots were fired and ignored. That is the problem with making easily detectable lies (like that a famous terrorist leader is a civilian) it destroys your credibility to anyone who is paying attention.
Speaking of easily detectable lies, you obviously missed the revision in the IDF’s description of the events. They now conform to the description provided by the PCHR, which has a much better track record than the IDF when it comes to telling the truth. (See the JPost articles cited above.)
According to the IDF’s first report, the teenagers were “gunmen” trying to plant a bomb who fired on IDF soldiers. When one of them was killed, the others “escaped” into Gaza.
According to the IDF spokesperson’s later description, the Palestinians were not armed, did not fire at the IDF soldiers and there was no mention of a bomb. The Israeli soldiers fired at the Palestinians in line with the IDF’s “rules of engagement” which allow for shooting any Palestinian who is within 300 meters of the border with Gaza. The IDF soldiers crossed the border into Gaza when they approached the mortally wounded Palestinian. All of these admissions by the IDF spokesperson are completely at odds with their earlier version of events, and instead coincide with the PCHR’s version of events. Are you really paying attention? Its the IDF’s credibility that is in tatters. This is just another example of their lies.
Funny thing, isn’t it? Zionists keep on insisting the whole world hates the Jews, and then they expect they entire world to applaud Israeli intransigence and crimes!
What the hell am I saying? I forgot- always go to the addiction model, and it all makes sense.
I think the Zionist mentality, is slow to realize that colonialism has came and went. They seem to relish in military power, since Jews have longed to be capable of maintaining land militarily.
This Palestinian destruction is like a war in slow motion. Six decades expansion, murder, torture, mixed with worldwide propaganda. It’s good to see it’s coming to an end.
I wish I could be sure it was.
Netanyahu is being received with warmth and applause everywhere he goes on his latest trip to drum up support for stealing more Palestinian land. Only a few protesters off to the side.
Reasonable people understood quite well who the Israelis were after Sabra and Shatilla. That was a very long time go.
You can’t accuse the Israelis of being subtle. The Nazis at least tried to disguise their evil. The Israelis have always boasted to the world of it. Yet nothing changes.
Clearly, raising public awareness is not the answer.
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