sj2
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response 51 of 72:
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Jun 29 06:32 UTC 2003 |
Hamas is definitely a terrorist organisation and EVIL. There is no
excuse for killing innocent civilians. Any organisation or state doing
so or sponsoring such activities should be labelled terrorist.
I am taking a look at archives from June 8th onwards. Not too far back.
On June 11th, GAZA CITY Abdul Aziz Al Rantissi, a senior Hamas
leader, was wounded in an Israeli helicopter raid yesterday in Gaza
City. One of Rantissi s bodyguards was killed as well as a 50-year-old
woman, medical sources said, while an eight-year-old girl was
critically wounded in the head and kept alive artificially.
On June 12th, two members of Hamas armed wing, were killed when two
Israeli Apache attack helicopters attacked a car in Gaza City s
eastern Shajayah neighbourhood, Palestinian medical and security
sources said.
They said two members of the Ezzedin Al Qassam Brigades, Massud Titi
and Soheil Abu Nahel, were among those killed. Two women were also
killed and some 20 people wounded.
On June 13th, Helicopters fired six missiles into Gaza City, reducing
a Subaru car to charred metal and injuring more than 40 bystanders,
witnesses said.
Palestinian sources identified the dead as Yasser Taha, a senior
member of Hamas s military wing wanted by Israel. The sources said his
wife and one-year-old daughter also died in the strike. They had
earlier said the child was three years old.
On June 14th, A Hamas fighter was killed and 26 other people were
injured, many of them children, when Israeli helicopter gunships fired
missiles at a car in Gaza City late yesterday, Palestinian sources
said.
The missiles hit the car in the city s eastern Al Sabra sector,
gutting it and killing Adel Al Lidawi, 26, according to Hamas sources.
Among the wounded were eight children under the age of 10, said
medical sources at the city s main Al Shifa hospital, adding that
three were in critical condition.
On June 25th, Israeli helicopters fired missiles into a car in the
Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, killing two people and injuring 15.
The Israeli army said it had targeted a member of the militant group
Hamas, who was injured in the attack.
However the people who were killed - named by Palestinian hospital
officials as Arkram Yousef Abu Farhana, 30, and a 20-year-old woman -
had no links to a militant group.
In each attack, for every one or two Hamas militants, several
civilians have either died or been seriously injured.
This is not to say that all this while Hamas hasn't been killing
innocent Israeli civilians but Israel's use of force also does not
seem to be discreet.
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sj2
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response 61 of 72:
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Jun 30 06:02 UTC 2003 |
"sj2: It is tragic that innocents get killed in war, but the killing
of people near legitimate targets is not "indiscriminant". As I've
previously documented, this is within the confines of the Fourth
Geneva Conventions. As noted previously, Israel takes great effort to
avoid civilian casualties, sometimes to the detriment of its own
troops."
I just read the fourth Geneva convention. But is it ok with you? Would
it be ok if a couple of Arabs walked into a restaurant in US and
bombed it? Later they could claim that they are at war with the US.
Note here that the FGC (Fourth Geneva Convention) is applicable to "In
addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peacetime,
the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of
any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the
High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized
by one of them."
So the US need not necessarily recognise the war.
As you have pointed out above, its Palestinian terrorists who have
breached their promises time and again. But as I said in the first
line of my post that they are definitely terrorist and EVIL. I can
only hope that the latest cease-fire, due to be declared soon, works.
Coming back to the FGC, it says
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character
occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties,
each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the
following provisions:
1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members
of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de
combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in
all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction
founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or
any other similar criteria.
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any
time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned
persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,
mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) Taking of hostages;
(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and
degrading treatment;
(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions
without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court,
affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as
indispensable by civilized peoples.
Re. #54. I am posting a few facts from a report. I leave it to you to
decide whether the US can be labelled as a terrorist nation and can be
charged with genocide.
====================================================================
The military power arrayed and employed by the US, Britain, and their
allies was grotesquely disproportionate to Iraqi defences. Evidently,
the intent was to punish Iraq so severely as to create an
unforgettable object lesson for any nation contemplating defiance of
US wishes. The Gulf War s aerial bombing campaign was the most savage
since Vietnam. During 43 days of war, the US flew 109,876 sorties and
dropped 84,200 tons of bombs. Average monthly tonnage of ordnance used
nearly equaled that of World War II, but the resulting destruction was
far more efficient due to better technology and the feebleness of
Iraq s anti-aircraft defenses. ("Airpower in the Gulf War," Air and
Space Power Mentoring Guide Essays II, pp. 72-73 (U.S. Air Force 1999)"
While war raged, the US military carefully managed press briefings in
order to suggest that the bombing raids were surgical strikes against
purely military targets, made possible by a new generation of
precision-guided smart weapons . The reality was far different.
Ninety-three per cent of munitions used by the allies consisted of
unguided dumb bombs, dropped primarily by Vietnam-era B-52 carpet-
bombers. About 70 per cent of bombs and missiles missed their targets,
frequently destroying private homes and killing civilians. (John
MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War,
1993, p. 161) The US also made devastating use of anti-personnel
weapons, including fuel-air explosives and 15,000-lb. daisy-cutter
bombs (conventional explosives capable of causing destruction
equivalent to a nuclear attack-also used by the US in Afghanistan);
the petroleum-based incendiary napalm (which was used to incinerate
entrenched Iraqi soldiers); and 61,000 cluster bombs from which were
strewn 20 million bomblets, which continue to kill Iraqis to this
day. ("US urged to ban cluster bombs," Boston Globe, 18/12/02)
Predictably, this style of warfare resulted in massive civilian
casualties. In one well-remembered incident, as many as 400 men,
women, and children were killed at one blow when, in apparent
indifference to the Geneva Conventions, the US targeted a civilian air
raid shelter in the Ameriyya district of western Baghdad. Thousands
died in similar fashion due to daylight raids in heavily-populated
residential areas and business districts throughout the country.
(Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: Civilian Casualties During the Air
Campaign and Violations of the Laws of War, Human Rights Watch 1991)
According to a UN estimate, as many as 15,000 civilians died as a
direct result of allied bombing.
The US tried to limit the definition of "humanitarian goods" to food
and medicine alone, preventing the import of items needed to restore
water supply, sanitation, electrical power, even medical facilities.
Among the items kept out by American veto, on the grounds that they
might have a military application, were chemicals, laboratory
equipment, generators, communications equipment, ambulances (on the
pretext that they contain communications equipment), chlorinators, and
even pencils (on the pretext that they contain graphite, which has
military uses). "
"Sanctions impinge on the lives of all Iraqis every moment of the day.
In Basra, Iraq s second city, power flickers on and off, unpredictable
in the hours it is available.... Smoke from jerry-rigged generators
and vehicles hangs over the town in a thick cloud. The tap-water
causes diarrhoea, but few can afford the bottled sort. Because the
sewers have broken down, pools of stinking muck have leached through
the surface all over town. That effluent, combined with pollution
upstream, has killed most of the fish in the Shatt al-Arab river and
has left the remainder unsafe to eat. The government can no longer
spray for sand-flies or mosquitoes, so insects have proliferated,
along with the diseases they carry.
There is no room for doubt that genocide was conscious US policy. On
May 12 1996, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked by
Lesley Stahl of CBS television: "We have heard that half a million
children have died. I mean, that s more than died in Hiroshima. And,
you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a
very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."
======================================================================
You can also read the Human Rights Report on the Gulf war here:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/
The report is very detailed in its reporting of not only how coalition
attacks killed thousands of civilians but also utterly destroyed the
civilian infrastructure of Iraq.
======================================================================
My father worked as a mining engineer at a Cement factory near Al-Qaim
near the Syrian border. About a dozen or so dump-trucks were bombed
with precision-guided munition. So my own guess is that the coalition
forces bombed every bit they even remotely suspected could be used for
any military purposes.
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lk
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response 65 of 72:
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Jul 1 04:36 UTC 2003 |
Exactly. It is the PA, not Israel, who has put Hamas in a position of
power by failing to act against them, by failing to dismantle the
terrorist infrastructure (same holds true for Islamic Jihad and the PFLP).
In the case of the Al Aqsa Brigades, the PA's complicity has been proven
far greater, for not only did they fail to move against this terrorist
group, they funded, armed and supported it. All this even before Israel
moved against the PA Police for its failure to do so.
The numbers speak volumes. The PA Police numbers about 50,000 men. The
various terrorist groups, at the height of their power, were about 5%
of that. Arafat remains the most popular person within the PA. All he
had to do, over the course of 32 months, was to tell the terrorists to
stand down and for his forces to make sure that happened. No, this wouldn't
have prevented all attacks right away. But many would have been aborted
while others prevented. And if those who persisted were punished, that
would have spoken volumes.
Instead, month after month, the PA Police managed to prevent 0% of all
terrorist attacks. Not because it couldn't but because it wouldn't. The
problem has always been a lack of desire and therefore a lack of effort.
The PA has now assumed security control over areas of Gaza frm which
Israeli troops have withdrawn. As I noted before, they don't resort to
gull's excuse that they are incapable of acting because Israel bombed
some empty offices and because they have suffered a few hundred casualties
(of which many were involved in fighting).
If the PA is serious about preventing attacks on Israel, the cease-fire
will succeed (it's next test will be in 3 months). If attacks are allowed
to continue without no real effort to prevent them, then the cease-fire
will be proven a sham and will fail.
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