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Indybay Feature

Would you mind if Israel uses nerve gas against the Palestinians?

by svan
Would you mind if Israel uses nerve gas against the Palestinians? Because Iraw did it years ago to it's own citizens and now they are the left's dearest and most precious friends.
Would you mind if Israel uses nerve gas against the Palestinians? Because Iraq did it years ago to it's own citizens and now they are the left's dearest and most precious friends.

Gas Arafat - that is what Stalin would have done anyhow.
by ...
Above, a pro-Israeli explains how Zionists are very much like their Nazi counterparts before them.

Slaughtering Palestinians with bombs and bullets just doesn't do it for them -- better to gas them all...
by kudos
Is Saddam Hussein pro-Israeli, is he a Zionist? Why is he allowed to murder thousands of Iranians and thousands more from his own people?
by ...
--- "Why is he allowed to murder thousands of Iranians and thousands more from his own people?"

When Saddam did these things, he was supported by the US. These things were only crimes after he became an official US enemy.

That Saddam Hussein is monstrous is obvious and nobody disputes that. Ariel Sharon is equally monstrous, however, but is considered "a man of peace" by Bush.

Also, some of the most hawkish people now who want war against Iraq (in addition to every other "enemy of Israel" like Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) are pro-Israelis.

They are eager to fight to the last American to make the world a safe place for Israel.
by kudos
"That Saddam Hussein is monstrous is obvious and nobody disputes that"

Gee, I don't see many hate sites such as this aimed at his regime - i wonder why? It’s not because he is not Jewish by any chance?

"Ariel Sharon is equally monstrous"

I'm afraid you'll have to prove that. Show me that his regime is as bad as Saddam's, and don't bother posting more bubble over the Syrian orchestrated Sabra and Shatila massacre.

"Also, some of the most hawkish people now who want war against Iraq (in addition to every other "enemy of Israel" like Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) are pro-Israelis."

Lovely countries, aha? Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. Enlightened and democratic with liberal and peaceful regimes. By the way - ignoramus, Egypt is not an enemy of Israel. Last time I checked, Israel gave back plenty of land to Egypt for a peace treaty.
--"By the way - ignoramus, Egypt is not an enemy of Israel."
Tell that to Norman Podhoretz of the American Zionist magazine Commentary...

He wants the US to go to war against Egypt in addition to every neighbor of Israel.

http://www.sobran.com/columns/020912.shtml:
If we’re going to have a genuine world war, Podhoretz sensibly argues, we can’t stop with victory and “regime change” in Iraq. We have to clean up the whole evil Middle East and change all its regimes.

Lest the reader suspect that Podhoretz’s views are being caricatured here, let us quote his own words:

“The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, this axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends’ of America like the Saudi Royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen.”

also see:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j092702.html
But Israel's amen corner isn't going to be satisfied with just Iraq's scalp – they want the U.S. to take out the entire Middle East. Norman Podhoretz, the grand old man of the Israel Firsters, advances this agenda in the current issue of Commentary magazine, wherein he writes that it isn't enough to go after the Afghans and the Iraqis: we must also, he avers, take out after the Iranians, the Syrians, the Saudis, the Egyptians, and naturally the Palestinians, etc., etc. "Changes of regime are the sine qua non throughout the region," writes Field Marshall Podhoretz, because we must "fight World War IV – the war against militant Islam."
by svan
"If we’re going to have a genuine world war, Podhoretz sensibly argues, we can’t stop with victory and “regime change” in Iraq. We have to clean up the whole evil Middle East and change all its regimes."

He is entitled to his opinion. I for one don't believe that Arabs are ready for democracy, there are 22 Arab countries - none is democratic, they are all oppressive tyrannical regimes.
by cp
um, correlation does not equal causation.

That viewpoint, that only europeans can handle democracy, will seem to make sense if one considers things from a completely ahistorical point of view - say if you completely snoozed through all of history class and have never read much history on your own. Have you ever read about 'the era of colonialism' and imperialism? Are you aware that the US helped prop up and install dictators in half the countries with arabic people? Here's an exercise - rent the movie 'Rambo' where Rambo is in Afghanistan and do some research and tell us what the US was doing in Afghanistan in the 80s in the first place. Next - and this is even easier - tell us what the US was up to during the Iran-Iraq war. Which leader of one of those two countries did US elites send poison gas and guns to?
by svan
"Here's an exercise - rent the movie 'Rambo' where Rambo is in Afghanistan and do some research and tell us what the US was doing in Afghanistan in the 80s in the first place."

I thought the US was trying to make the red army life in Afganistan as hard as possible, the US certainly did not topple any democratic regime.

"Which leader of one of those two countries did US elites send poison gas and guns to?"

I'm not American so i don't have to give excuses, but if it was my deciesion i would have destroyed them both.

"That viewpoint, that only europeans can handle democracy, will seem to make sense if one considers things from a completely ahistorical point of view"

Is there a democratic liberal Arab society somewhere in the world? didn't think so.
by this thing here
... because arab societies "cannot handle" democracy, svan, it's o.k. to gas them with v.x. nerve agents? is this what you're saying svan? the very same v.x. nerve agents that cause uncontollable sweating, followed by uncontrollable vomiting, spasmodic muscle movements, loss of motor coordination, and finally asphixyation because the diaphram can no longer move? is this the plan svan? would this make you a hero svan? a big man...
by bov
"'Ariel Sharon is equally monstrous'

I'm afraid you'll have to prove that."

Once again, this shows we're dealing with an infant, trying to revise history. Nice try, but you already lost.

Sorry kudos, we all know about Sharon and don't need to explain it to infants.
by ...
I don't know what tear gas is like, but in this video, Palestinians were gassed by Israeli soldiers. They reel in agony from pain which they describe like needles all over their body. Is this a description of tear gas or are the Israelis using some sort of nerve agent.

I know that during the first intifida, Israelis fired tear gas containers into maternity wards on an all to frequent basis, killing many newborn infants.

by Miss
I THINK WHAT STRUCK ME MOST WERE THE PEOPLE HE FILMED.
THE FILM WAS DONE TWO YEARS AGO AND IT OCCURED THAT MAYBE NONE OF THOSE FEATURED ARE STILL ALIVE... BUT WERE POISONED OR KILLED IN COUTLESS OTHER WAYS.
by kudos
"... because arab societies "cannot handle" democracy, svan, it's o.k. to gas them with v.x. nerve agents? is this what you're saying svan?"

Nope, that is what Saddam Hussein did - you all support him, right?

"I know that during the first intifida, Israelis fired tear gas containers into maternity wards on an all to frequent basis, killing many newborn infants"

Until you provide proof for that, and not from the Palestinian propaganda ministry, you're just another lier.

"Sorry kudos, we all know about Sharon and don't need to explain it to infants"

;-) oh, you do. do you? what exactly do you know, moron?

by ...
During the first Intifada, back in the 80's, I listened to a Jewish woman, an Argentinian, whom had been a part of International Women's Group that had gone to the Palistinian lands to investigate what was going on. She said that even though at that time the press was reporting that about 600 Palestinians had been killed in the Intifada, in reality much more had been killed because they weren't counting children. At that time, she said, over 500 children younger than 5 years old had been killed, mostly shot in the head. She told how 16 babies in one hospital had been killed by Israeli troops deliberately shooting tear gas into the area where they were. She told how these troops would go up to houses and deliberately fire these tear gas canisters(marked clearly "Made in U.S.A. Not to be used in confined spaces") into them and stand outside the door and shoot whomever tried to escape. This usually killed the elderly and the very young.
The following report is corrobarated by the above video which shows the effects of what appears to be Israeli nerve gas on Palestinian civilians.

Tear gas makes you tear and mostly causes respiratory problems. People suffering from Israeli gassing showed no signs of respiratory problems -- not even a runny nose. But they did reel from excruciating, unstoppable pain...

This was not reported in the US media which if it were Arabs doing this to Israelis, you can just imagine the reaction.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Athens, Oct 29, IRNA -- Israeli occupation troops on Sunday shot tear gas canisters into classrooms at a West Bank village, seriously suffocating scores of children, said a dispatch from al-Qods.
Palestinian sources said heavily armed Israeli soldiers raided the primary school at the village of T'ku, near Bethlehem, and shot several tear-gas shells inside class rooms in the school yard.
The sources said over 24 children suffered from gas
inhalation and required hospitalization. Palestinian medical sources said the type of tear-gas used by Israeli occupation troops against Palestinian children differs from the standard tear-gas used around the world in dispersing demonstrations.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry said the type used by Israel is a semi-poisonous gas that leaves strong aftereffects, including spasmodic reactions, nervous reactions as well as strong abdominal pains. Moreover, the use of the tear-gas in closed areas, such as classrooms, exacerbates its effect and could result in death. KA/NK/HR END ::irna 29/10/2000 21:45
by ...
--"oh, you do. do you? what exactly do you know [about Sharon]...?"

I know for one thing that he is beloved by a great portion of the Israeli population. They call him Arik Sharon and swoon over him. Even Madeleine Albright was photographed swooning over him on a park bench in Camp David.

He started out his career in Qibya around 1954. There, he killed around 70 people by forcing them into their homes and then running over those homes with tanks shooting anyone trying to escape.

In 1982, he led his army into Lebanon indiscriminately bombarding civilians in their cities. Under his orders, his army demolished at least 340 buildings burying many of their inhabitants under them.

A body count by the Lebanese police revealed that at least 18,000 civilians were killed. It was estimated that the actual number of dead was far greater because most of the bodies were unrecoverable under the rubble of the highrises.

But the number of dead that was released by the Lebanese police was the 18,000 -- which was the number of bodies they actually recovered.

For a discussion on the body count (which was meticulous because it was understood that it would be denied if mentioned at all), see "Race and Class" Vol. XXIV (Volume 24), No. 4, Spring 1983. This is an academic journal found in most good research libraries.

Return of the Terrorist
The Crimes
of Ariel Sharon
Some incorrigible optimists have suggested that only a right-wing extremist of the notoriety of Likud leader Ariel Sharon will have the credentials to broker any sort of lasting settlement with the Palestinians. Maybe so. History is not devoid of such examples. But Sharon?

Sharon's history offers a monochromatic record of moral corruption, with a documented record of war crimes going back to the early 1950s. He was born in 1928 and as a young man joined the Haganah, the underground military organization of Israel in its pre-state days. In 1953 he
was given command of Unit 101, whose mission is often described as that of retaliation against Arab attacks on Jewish villages. In fact, as can be seen from two terrible onslaughts, one of them very well known, Unit 101's purpose was that of instilling terror by the infliction of discriminate, murderous violence not only on able bodied fighters but on the young, the old, the helpless.

Sharon's first documented sortie in this role was in August of 1953 on the refugee camp of El-Bureig, south of Gaza. An Israeli history of the 101 unit records 50 refugees as having been killed; other sources allege 15 or 20. Major-General Vagn Bennike, the UN commander, reported that "bombs were thrown" by Sharon's men "through the windows of huts in which the refugees were sleeping and, as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic weapons".

In October of 1953 came the attack by Sharon's unit 101 on the Jordanian village of Qibya, whose "stain" Israel's foreign minister at the time, Moshe Sharett, confided to his diary "would stick to us and not be washed away for many years". He was wrong. Though even strongly pro-Israel commentators in the West compared it to Lidice, Qibya and Sharon's role are scarcely evoked in the West today, least of all by journalists such as Deborah Sontag of the New York Times who recently wrote a whitewash of Sharon, describing him as "feisty", or the
Washington Post's man in Jerusalem who fondly invoked him after his fateful excursion to the Holy Places in Jerusalem as "the portly old warrior".

Israeli historian Avi Shlaim describes the massacre thus: "Sharon's order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants. His success in carrying out the order surpassed all expectations. The full and macabre story of what happened at Qibya was
revealed only during the morning after the attack. The village had been reduced to rubble: forty-five houses had been blown up, and sixty-nine civilians, two thirds of them women and children, had been killed. Sharon and his men claimed that they believed that all the inhabitants had run away and that they had no idea that anyone was hiding inside the houses."

The UN observer on the scene reached a different conclusion: "One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshhold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them." The slaughter in Qibya was described contemporaneously in a letter to the president of the United Nations Security Council dated 16 October 1953 (S/3113) from the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Jordan to the United States. On 14 October 1953 at 9:30 at night, he wrote, Israeli troops launched a battalion-scale attack on the village of Qibya in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (at the time the West Bank was annexed to Jordan).

According to the diplomat's account, Israeli forces had entered the village and systematically murdered all occupants of houses, using automatic weapons, grenades and incendiaries. On 14 October, the bodies of 42 Arab civilians had been recovered; several more bodies were still under the wreckage. Forty houses, the village school and a reservoir had been destroyed. Quantities of unused explosives, bearing Israel army markings in Hebrew, had been found in the village. At about 3 a.m., to cover their withdrawal, Israeli support troops had begun shelling the
neighbouring villages of Budrus and Shuqba from positions in Israel.

And what of Sharon's conduct when he was head of the Southern Command of Israel's Defense Forces in the early 1970s? The Gaza "clearances" were vividly described by Phil Reeves in a piece in The London Independent on January 21 of this year.

"Thirty years have elapsed since Ariel Sharon, favourite to win Israel's forthcoming election, was the head of the Israel Defence Forces' southern command, charged with the task of 'pacifying' the recalcitrant Gaza Strip after the 1967 war. But the old men still remember it well. Especially the old men on Wreckage Street. Until late 1970, Wreckage, or Had'd, Street wasn't a street, just one of scores of narrow, nameless alleys weaving through Gaza City's Beach Camp, a shantytown cluttered with low, two-roomed houses, built with UN aid for refugees from the 1948 war who then, as now, were waiting for the international community to settle their future. The street acquired its name after an unusually prolonged visit from Mr Sharon's soldiers. Their orders were to bulldoze hundreds of homes to carve a wide, straight street. This would allow Israeli troops and their heavy armored vehicles to move easily through the camp, to exert control and hunt down men from the Palestinian Liberation Army.

"'They came at night and began marking the houses they wanted to demolish with red paint,' said Ibrahim Ghanim, 70, a retired labourer. 'In the morning they came back, and ordered everyone to leave. I remember all the soldiers shouting at people, Yalla, yalla, yalla, yalla! They threw everyone's belongings into the street. Then Sharon brought in bulldozers and started flattening the street. He did the whole lot, almost in one day. And the soldiers would beat people, can you imagine? Soldiers with guns, beating little kids!' By the time the Israeli army's work was done, hundreds of homes were destroyed, not only on Wreckage Street but throughout the camp, as Sharon ploughed out a grid of wide security roads. Many of the refugees took shelter in schools, or squeezed into the already badly over-crowded homes of relatives. Other families, usually those with a Palestinian political activist, were loaded into trucks and taken to exile in a town in the heart of the Sinai Desert, then controlled by Israel."

As Reeves reported, the devastation of Beach Camp was far from the exception. "In August 1971 alone, troops under Mr Sharon's command destroyed some 2,000 homes in the Gaza Strip, uprooting 16,000 people for the second time in their lives. Hundreds of young Palestinian men were arrested and deported to Jordan and Lebanon. Six hundred relatives of suspected guerrillas were exiled to Sinai. In the second half of 1971, 104 guerrillas were assassinated. 'The policy at that time was not to arrest suspects, but to assassinate them', said Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City".

Israeli complacency leading to their initial defeat by the Egyptians in the 1973 war was in part nurtured by the supposed impregnability of the "Bar Lev line" constructed by Sharon on the east bank of the Suez canal. The Egyptians pierced the line without undue difficulty.

In 1981 Sharon, then minister of defense, paid a visit to Israel's good friend, President Mobutu of Zaire. Lunching on Mobutu's yacht the Israeli party was asked by their host to use their good offices to get the US Congress to be more forthcoming with aid. This the Israelis managed to accomplish. As a quid pro quo Mobutu reestablished diplomatic relations with Israel. This was not Sharon's only contact with Africa. Among friends he relays fond memories of trips to Angola to observe and advise the South African forces then fighting in support of the murderous CIA stooge Jonas Savimbi.

As defense minister in Menachem Begin's second government, Sharon was the commander who led the full dress 1982 assault on Lebanon, with the express design of destroying the PLO, driving as many Palestinians as possible to Jordan and making Lebanon a client state of Israel. It was a war plan that cost untold suffering, around 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese lives, and also the deaths of over one thousand Israeli soldiers. The Israelis bombed civilian populations at will. Sharon also oversaw the infamous massacres at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. The Lebanese government counted 762 bodies recovered and a further 1,200 buried privately by relatives. However, the Middle East may have been spared worse, thanks to Menachem Begin. Just as the '82 war was getting under way, Sharon approached Begin, then Prime Minister, and suggested that Begin cede control over Israel's nuclear trigger to him. Begin had just enough sense to refuse.

The slaughter in the two contiguous camps at Sabra and Shatilla took place from 6:00 at night on September 16, 1982 until 8:00 in the morning on September 18, 1982, in an area under the control of the Israel Defense Forces. The perpetrators were members of the Phalange militia, the Lebanese force that was armed by and closely allied with Israel since the onset of Lebanon's civil war in 1975. The victims during the 62-hour rampage included infants, children, women (including pregnant women), and the elderly, some of whom were mutilated or disemboweled before or after they were killed.

An official Israeli commission of inquiry - chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel's Supreme Court - investigated the massacre, and in February 1983 publicly released its findings (without Appendix B, which remains secret until now).

Amid desperate attempts to cover up the evidence of direct knowledge of what was going on by Israeli military personnel, the Kahan Commission found itself compelled to find that Ariel Sharon, among other Israelis, had responsibility for the massacre. The commission's report stated: "It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for having disregarded ["entirely cognizant of" would have been a better choice of words] the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed [i.e."eagerly taken this into consideration"] to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the
non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense Minister was charged". (For those who want to refresh their memories of Operation Peace for Galilee, of the massacres and the Kahan coverup we recommend Noam Chomsky's The Fateful Triangle.)

Sharon refused to resign. Finally, on February 14, 1983, he was relieved of his duties as defense minister, though he remained in the cabinet as minister without portfolio.

Sharon's career was in eclipse, but he continued to burnish his credentials as a Likud ultra. Sharon has always been against any sort of peace deal, unless on terms entirely impossible for Palestinians to accept. As Nehemia Strasler outlined in Ha'aretz on January 18 of this year, in 1979, as a member of Begin's cabinet, he voted against a peace treaty with Egypt. In 1985 he voted against the withdrawal of Israeli troops to the
so-called security zone in Southern Lebanon. In 1991 he opposed Israel's participation in the Madrid peace conference. In 1993 he voted No in the Knesset on the Oslo agreement. The following year he abstained in the Knesset on a vote over a peace treaty with Jordan. He voted against the Hebron agreement in 1997 and objected to the way in which the withdrawal from southern Lebanon was conducted.

As Begin's minister of agriculture in the late 1970s he established many of the West Bank settlements that are now a major obstruction to any peace deal. His present position? Not another square inch of land for Palestinians on the West Bank. He will agree to a Palestinian state on the existing areas presently under either total or partial Palestinian control, amounting to merely 42 per cent of the West Bank. Israel will retain control of the highways across the West Bank and the water sources. All settlements will stay in place with access by the IDF to them. Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty and he plans to continue building around the city. The Golan heights would remain under Israel's control.

It can be strongly argued that Sharon represents the long-term policy of all Israeli governments, without any obscuring fluff or verbal embroidery. For example: Ben-Gurion approved the terror missions of Unit 101. Every Israeli government has condoned settlements and
building around Jerusalem. It was Labor's Ehud Barak who okayed the military escort for Sharon on his provocative sortie that sparked the second Intifada and Barak who has overseen the lethal military repression of recent months. But that doesn't diminish Sharon's sinister shadow across the past half century. That shadow is better evoked by Palestinians and Lebanese grieving for the dead, the maimed, the displaced, or by
a young Israeli woman, Ilil Komey, 16, who confronted Sharon recently when he visited her agricultural high school outside Beersheva. "I think you sent my father into Lebanon", Ilil said. "Ariel Sharon, I accuse you of having made me suffer for 16 some odd years. I accuse you of having made my father suffer for over 16 years. I accuse you of a lot of things that made a lot of people suffer in this country. I don't think that you can now be elected as prime minister".

Ilil was wrong. He's there. And now the bloodbath will begin. CP
by Kudos
showpic2_1_.jpgr79694.jpg
"Israeli occupation troops on Sunday shot tear gas canisters into classrooms at a West Bank village, seriously suffocating scores of children, said a dispatch from al-Qods."

;-) I'm sorry, Islamo-fascist propaganda sites won't do. Especially when the links are conveniently broken.

no terrorism, no tear gas.
It's the terrorism, stupid.
by ...
How about the above video.

It shows the effects of Israeli gas on its victims.

They reel in pain till they become paralyzed. The effects were captured on film and described by a French physician on the scene.

by T
*tell us what the US was up to during the Iran-Iraq war. Which leader of one of those two countries did US elites send poison gas and guns to?

saddam knew he was being used by the US to fight Iran. hes stupid but hes no dummy.

*the very same v.x. nerve agents that cause uncontollable sweating, followed by uncontrollable vomiting, spasmodic muscle movements, loss of motor coordination, and finally asphixyation because the diaphram can no longer move?

damn this thing here, sounds like what people do when they inadventantly listen to your blather.

*Nice try, but you already lost.

we'll see who loses,arafat or sharon

by this thing here
let's recall the title of this post:

>Would you mind if Israel uses nerve gas against the Palestinians?<

i would, "T". i would mind a whole lot. but i guess it wouldn't bother you.

perhaps you would take some pleaure in seeing people vomiting, pissing and defecating on themselves, and thrashing about like a dying fish out of water. just trying to point out what nerve gas does to its victims, "T", that's all. i think it makes a point in itself. the sick, sick, evilness of using it on anyone, anywhere on earth. nothing justifies it. but if it's cool with you, then hey dude, whatever floats your boat. whatever makes you feel like you're a big man on the block...

arafat and sharon are symptoms of the disease. two sides of one coin. the opposite of extremes.

we're all adults here. we know exactly what the disease is.

if arafat was killed, the problems would not stop.

if sharon died this second, the problems would not stop.

if all palestinian militants were killed this second, the problem would still be very much front and center. the problem would not be solved.

who owns the land. who lives on the land.

everything else is based on this dispute.
by svan
Saddam Hussein used nerve agents on the population in his own country and on the Iranian population, killing thousands - no condemnation from leftist groups, no anti-war rallies, no hate sites.
Israel is fighting for it's life and trying to minimize civilian casulties amongst the Palestinians - and suddenly Israel is demonized by terror apologists all over.

Strange, aint it? It's not because it's a Jewish state, is it?
by ...
Death toll of civilians during Israel's invasion of Lebanon:
"The Lebanese government casualty figures are based on police records, which in turn are based on actual counts in hospitals, clinics and civil defense centers. These figures, according to police spokesmen, do "not include people buried in mass graves in areas where Lebanese authorities were not informed."108 The figures, including the figure of 19,000 dead and over 30,000 wounded, must surely be underestimates, assuming that those celebrating their liberation (the story that Israel and its supporters here would like us to believe) were not purposely magnifying the scale of the horrors caused by their liberators. Particularly with regard to the Palestinians, one can only guess what the scale of casualties may have been." (http://www.infotrad.clara.co.uk/antiwar/fatefultri.html)
-Noam Chomsky
The Fateful Triangle
I would say this compares rather well with Saddam's crime of gassing Kurds. Israelis used cluster bombs on densely crowded civilian areas in this conflict.

--"no condemnation from leftist groups"

Everyone condemns the use of gas on the Kurds -- including the left. No special condemnation from the left is required. The US government wants to use this an excuse to bomb the Iraqi people.

--"Israel is fighting for it's life and trying to minimize civilian casulties amongst the Palestinians"

Israel is fighting for more land. It is an expansionist state. Palestinians have proposed letting in UN peacekeeping troops to protect the two peoples from each other (Palestinians are the main victims), but Israel refuses because this would get in the way of conquest.

There have been more than three times as many Palestinians killed as Israelis and some 26,000 Palestinians injured or maimed which does not make any headlines at all. In fact, the main Israeli policy is that of maiming knowing full well that the world media pays this no attention.

During the first Intifada, a policy of breaking of bones and beatings was instituted.

Censorship affects all video or photography leaving the territories. The worst of what goes on is never seen.

-- "Strange, aint it? It's not because it's a Jewish state, is it?"
No. It's because it's a terrorist state.

by ...
-- "Do you mean like the one used by the Mossad in their botched attempt to kill Khalid Meshal in Amman five years ago?"

Interesting, this is the first I've heard of this one.

"The attack on Khalid Meshal by five or six Israeli agents disguised as Canadian tourists looked like that of a rushed mission mounted without Mossad's usual meticulous preparation, suggesting someone high up ordered an immediate hit. "
http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/IsraelBotched.html

By disguising themselves as Canadians, Mossad could put real Canadian citizens in jeopardy. I suppose though if that were to happen, the Mossad would consider it a positive outcome...

Though they didn't use gas to do it, pro-Israelis in this country killed Alex Odeh with a bomb planted in his ADC office in Santa Ana. The FBI named members of the JDL (Jewish Defense Leagues) as the perpetrators. They conveniently slipped off to Israel before being arrested and Israel refused extradition until recently...

THE DETAILS SURROUNDING THE CRIME
On October 11, 1985 Alexander Michel Odeh was killed when a bomb exploded at the Office of the American-Arab Anti-Defamation Committee (ADC) at 1905 East 17th Street in Santa Ana, California. Odeh, who was the Western Regional Director of the ADC, was killed when he unlocked and opened the door of the ADC's office at approximately 9:00 a.m. In addition to killing Odeh, the bomb injured several other people and caused massive damage to the building.
http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/seekinfo/odeh.htm

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0497/9704067.htm


by svan
"Do you mean like the one used by the Mossad in their botched attempt to kill Khalid Meshal in Amman five years ago?"

Israel used an agent of some sort in an attempt to execute a murderer, Saddam Hussein used Sarrin to wipe out thousands of men, women and children and is being cherished by "peace" organizations world wide.
by just wondering
What are you trying to say here, svan, that it's OK to summarily execute a man without a trial? Is that what you are saying?
by Islamic Bullshit
There is all to much Islamic bullshit nonsense going on here. Anti-democratic, anti-Jewish myths just blur the picture. But, I guess, that's what Islamic lobbyists want to do - to blur the real picture. Let's get back to the point of the post.

Would you mind if Israel uses nerve gas against the Palestinians? Because Iraw did it years ago to it's own citizens and now they are the left's dearest and most precious friends.

Would you mind if Israel uses nerve gas against the Palestinians? Because Iraq did it years ago to it's own citizens and now they are the left's dearest and most precious friends.

by svan
"What are you trying to say here, svan, that it's OK to summarily execute a man without a trial? Is that what you are saying?"

What do you think happens in a war?? For crying out loud, in a war soldiers die. The man was a well known, self proclaimed terrorist leader, not an innocent bystander.
by wj
if Jordan were concerned about peace, they would arrest Khalid Meshal themselves and put him on trial. Were they going to do that, or did they appove of his methods?
§O
by wj
The Palestinians have every right to defend their land, we all know that. If they or Israel are defeated militarily, what is new under the sun? Let Israel and the Palestinians fight. The victor will reign.
by still laughing
OK, but
by just a suggestion • Tuesday October 01, 2002 at 10:35 AM
make it a fair fight. Arm both sides with the same weapons.


Damn!!!! This is an absolute CLASSIC!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
by what's so funny?
Don't you think a fair fight would be a more moral solution than having one side slaughter the other with weapons paid for by American tax dollars?

Or don't morals factor into your analysis?
by what isn't funny?
Fair fight. Show me in history where any military leader with a superior advantage gave it up in order to have a "fight fair" and I'll show you a complete fool for a military leader.

That just doesn't happen, isn't going to happen here, and to suggest that is should happen is stupid as fucking hell. Dumbass.

And since you brought up the word "slaughter", isn't fighting against a military force you couldn't possibly defeat in essance "suicide"? Hasn't it been the case that when a kingdom knew they were being approached by a conquering military that they often sent out an ambassador to secure conditions of peace?

Fair fight. HA!!!
by NO!
One has weapons of mass destruction and the other has some pebbles
by even more of a reason to
send out an ambassador to secure conditions of peace.
by tap tap tap
anybody else got any other BRIGHT IDEAS???
--"Fair fight. Show me in history where any military leader with a superior advantage gave it up in order to have a "fight fair" and I'll show you a complete fool for a military leader. "

It's not about Israel voluntarily giving up its military advantage. It's about us here in the US ending aid to Israel and stop being Israel's personal weapons factory. And stop blocking UN resolutions meant to bring safety to both people but especially the Palestinians who are the main victims here.

This is not a fight between two countries. This is a war between a state with a military given to it free of charge by us and used against a defenseless unarmed people with no military. No one gives weapons to Palestinians, because if they did, the US government and media would freak.

Israel could not be in the military position it is in today without our overly generous aid.
by ...
And it is this giveaway of weapons (to the tune of five billion a year) that fuels this perpetual crisis in the Middle East.

Without it, Israel would have had to compromise long ago, giving the Palestinians a peace of land on which to live and allowing refugees kicked out to return to their homes as required by UN Resolutions, international law, and world opinion.
by ...
And it is this giveaway of weapons (to the tune of five billion a year) that fuels this perpetual crisis in the Middle East.

Without it, Israel would have had to compromise long ago, giving the Palestinians a peace of land on which to live and allowing refugees kicked out to return to their homes as required by UN Resolutions, international law, and world opinion.
by some guy
. . . in history where any military leader with a superior advantage gave it up in order to have a 'fight fair'"


Let the Israelis keep their weapons. Arm the Palestinians with the same weapons. Then we'll see how brave these Israelis really are. It's one thing to push the weak around. It's quite another to confront equals.
by blah
OK. Stick a 16 year old prospective suicide bomber in the cockpit of an F16 and see what happens.

In a word - nothing.
by leaf
so, in a word - everything.
by svan
"Let the Israelis keep their weapons. Arm the Palestinians with the same weapons."

The IDF was not created to fight the Palestinians - there were no Palestinians at that time. The IDF's role is to defend Israel from the 400,000,000 Arabs that object to Israel's existence. If you want equal odds - get rid of 394,000,000 Arabs, so there will be 6,000,000 Arabs vs 6,000,000 Israelis. By the way - Israel did arm the Palestinians during the peace process.

btw2: US is the main arms supplier for Egypt too, Egypt is a country that has far more human rights violations than Israel, in Egypt - homosexuality alone will get you in prison.
by just wondering II
So what do you call the people who were living in Palestine? They sure as hell weren't called Floridians, Angelinos or Ugandans. Neither were they called Hoosiers, Yinzers or Porteños. They weren't called Bavarians, Moscovites, Highlanders or Sonorans, either. What were they called if not Palestinians?

Someone who lives in Palestine is a Palestinian by definition. It doesn't matter what their ethnicity or religion is. If they lived in Palestine they were Palestinians. Period. They don't cease to exist because some Zionists lie about history.
by ...
What was that lie?
Was it "a land for a people for a people without a land"?

The person who originated this lie was Joan Peters and her book "From Time Immemorial" made all the usual rounds before it was completely debunked and refuted as virtually total fabrication.

Pro-Israelis still bring this lie up at every opportunity, however.

What I find really intereting, is that most of their lies are patently absurd, but they seem to believe in them wholeheartedly -- almost as though Israel were their religion.
by svan
"What were they called if not Palestinians?"

Gee, i don't know? ...Arabs maybe?
What exactly is Palestine? there was never a country that was named Palestine, no king of Palestine, no government of Palestine, Palestine never had borders - the notion of Palestine is as real as never never land.
If Palestine is the piece of land Israel is on, than ok - every Israeli is a Palestinian, because he is living in Palestine.
by blah
--Israel could not be in the military position it is in today without our overly generous aid.

Regardless of how they got it, they got it.

--Arm the Palestinians with the same weapons.

Tell 'em to find their own damn source of weapons. Israel did.

Damn you people blabber on about nothing. The Palestinians have a right to fight over the land. If they can win it in battle or diplomatically or however, fine and good. If they can't, they need to ask for terms of peace.
by stop it right now
Israel already gasses the palestinians with impunity.
The questioner was meant to check public outrage if Israel made it their public policy.
The bottom line is it dont mattter how one dies.
After a peson dies she dont wish she would have died o nerve gas instead of tear gas and vica versa.
israels assasination policy is troubling enough without it using nerve gas against their perceived enemies...
by elsie m. paradise (elsiemparadise [at] aol.com)
I think it is totally barbaric for the Jews to use nerve gas against the palestinians. This whole mess started when Sharon went to the Dome of the Rock to show what a big deal he was. I am a catholic and I do not have any understanding of how cruel the jews are to the arabs....especially when you consider what hitler did to them. One would think that the jews would have some compassion, instead of going on killing sprees.
by elsie m. paradise (elsiemparadise [at] aol.com)
I think it is totally barbaric for the Jews to use nerve gas against the palestinians. This whole mess started when Sharon went to the Dome of the Rock to show what a big deal he was. I am a catholic and I do not have any understanding of how cruel the jews are to the arabs....especially when you consider what hitler did to them. One would think that the jews would have some compassion, instead of going on killing sprees.
Israel has used tear gassed laced with an unknown toxic substance. Victims of the gas reeled in pain for days -- some as long as one month. This was documented by James Longley who is a photo journalist.

See this thread which includes a video of some of the victims of this gas as well as an eyewitness account from a French physician on the scene:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/09/152251_comment.php

Also see this report for Longley's account:
http://www.littleredbutton.com/gas_interviews/interviews.pdf
by Radian
CS teargas is now nerve gas...What a pile of steaming shit. They probably bought the gas, fired from a standard grenade launcher from us or western europe. Same shit we use on rioting college students. I've been tear gassed it's not fun but it's not supposed to be. It is not nerve gas. They should use live 7,62 nato from M-60 machine guns, that way there would be less confusion. I hear those rubber bullets hurt like hell to, Is it PC to shoot people with rubber bullets?
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