IAP Political Forum

Gunman kills 8 at Jerusalem seminary

By ARON HELLER and STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 6, 10:20 PM ET

JERUSALEM - A gunman entered the library of a rabbinical seminary and opened fire on a crowded nighttime study session Thursday, killing eight people and wounding nine before he was slain, police and rescue workers said. It was the first major militant attack in Jerusalem in more than four years.

Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip praised the operation in a statement, and thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza to celebrate.


......Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev and moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the shooting. But Regev said the Palestinian government must take steps against the extremists — not just denounce their attacks.

"Tonight's massacre in Jerusalem is a defining moment," he told The Associated Press. "It is clear that those people celebrating this bloodshed have shown themselves to be not only the enemies of Israel but of all of humanity."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who only on Wednesday persuaded Abbas to return to peace talks with Israel, called the attack an "act of terror and depravity."

Israeli defense officials said the attacker came from east Jerusalem, the predominantly Palestinian section of the city. Jerusalem's Palestinians have Israeli ID cards that give them freedom of movement in Israel, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the attacker walked through the seminary's main gate and entered the library, where witnesses said some 80 people were gathered. He carried an assault rifle and pistol, and used both weapons in the attack. Rosenfeld said at least six empty bullet clips were found on the floor.

.....Hamas stopped just short of claiming responsibility (but later proudly claimed responsibility http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080307/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflicthamasclaim_080307144100;_ylt=ArXk.6q5QeauYqClV0J0sAMUvioA    ) for the Jerusalem shootings. "We bless the operation. It will not be the last," Hamas said in a statement sent to reporters by text message.

At mosques in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, many residents performed prayers of thanksgiving — only performed in cases of great victory to thank God.

About 7,000 Gazans marched in the streets of Jebaliya, firing in the air in celebration, and visited homes of those killed and wounded in the last Israeli incursion. In the southern town of Rafah, residents distributed sweets to moving cars, and militants fired mortars in celebration.

Rice said she spoke with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to express U.S. condolences to the people of Israel and the families of the victims.

"This barbarous act has no place among civilized peoples and shocks the conscience of all peace loving nations. There is no cause that could ever justify this action," she said......

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080307/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians_24;_ylt=AhqKvI8zZ4HWdQZex60uKv8UvioA

World disgusted by attack on Jerusalem school

Fri Mar 7

WASHINGTON (AFP) - World governments issued a fresh wave of condemnation Friday of a gun attack in a Jerusalem religious school, after the Islamist group Hamas claimed responsibility for the shooting.

The strongest language came from Washington, where there was anger over the scenes of joy in the streets of Gaza, where crowds of Palestinian gunmen fired into the air to celebrate Thursday's murder of eight teenagers.

"It was extremely disheartening to see people in the streets in Gaza and elsewhere celebrating such an attack. That is fairly disgusting, actually," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080307/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictisraelattackworld_080307165642;_ylt=AmHu_7aJ2VKr2Ofnc2AIp8IUvioA

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/hamas.htm

You people seem to forget that just a few days ago, Israel liked 130 Palestinians in Gaza. Not to mention, the open-air-prison that Israel built to lock innocent Palestinians up. Israel killed 130 Palestinians in response to two Israeli soldiers dying. If Israel continues such barbaric actions, then of course Hamas will retaliate.

Hamas made it clear that they want peace, but Israel refuses.

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10808635

Of course you conveniently forget that most of those killed were militants, the rest were allowing the militants to operate in civilian areas. Sadly, hiding behind women and children doesn't matter to the terrorists.  Roll Eyes--Terry Mathis

And what did the militants do to get such a retaliation from Israel? Kill two Israeli soldiers 

You miss the forest for the trees. The point is that all this would stop if Hamas quit attacking Israel, as Israel has every right to proactively protect itself. Are you a anti-Hebrew? Sure post like one.  ::)

Blackening the Palestinian soul
By Gil Troy   March 9, 2008

Sometimes, for a brief moment, the clouds part and the moral issues surrounding the Middle East conflict become clear.

This week's shooting at a Jerusalem school shined a harsh spotlight on the nihilistic violence that lies at the core of Palestinian nationalism. Building an entire ideology -- eagerly fed by the rest of the Arab world -- that focuses so much on attacking the Jewish state is perverse and self-destructive. In the wake of this week's tragedy, the challenge now is for those forces able to trigger reforms within Palestinian society to recognize its self-destructive path, and demand change.

On Thursday, a Palestinian terrorist entered the library of a Jerusalem Yeshiva, Mercaz HaRav, and sprayed students with as many as 600 bullets. Moments later, eight students, ranging in age from 15 to 26, lay dead, and another 10 lay wounded. Although Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vaguely condemned "all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli," this bloodbath triggered celebrations in Gaza and the West Bank. Gazans proudly shot rifles into the air and threw candy in delight. The murderer's family claims his entire village is proud of him.

(The murderer's family claims his entire village is proud of him.)

 By contrast, earlier in the week, when Israel felt compelled to enter Gaza temporarily after over 7,000 rockets had rained down on the town of Sderot during seven trying years, and long-range rockets from Iran had ripped into the city of Ashkelon, Israel's soldiers tried hitting surgically. Most of the Gazan dead were terrorists -- and the civilian casualties that resulted triggered an anguished debate among Israelis. The bystanders' deaths were mourned not celebrated; the difficult dilemma of how to fight an enemy embedded among civilians was dissected endlessly.

Imagine that after the Dawson College shootings in Montreal last year, the gunman Kimveer Gill had become a pop star to young Americans, and no American leaders specifically condemned worshiping this murderer.  How would Canadians react?.  Imagine that Mexicans toasted Steven Kazmierczak on the streets of Tijuana after he slaughtered five students at Northern Illinois University last month. Would Americans forgive Mexicans for the gesture? .  Would they consider making political concessions to Mexico as a result? The celebration of this sort of slaughter entails a dehumanization of the victims so intense as to dehumanize the apologist. Such hatred is all-consuming.

This addiction to violence has been the Palestinian national movement's central failing. The repeated embrace of violence over compromise, and the celebration of barbaric terrorist attacks, serve to blacken the soul, individually and collectively. Such mindless outward violence inevitably leads to a society that solves internal problems with similar brutality. The Fatah-Hamas blood feuds in the West Bank and Gaza reveal the legacy of decades of Jew-hatred. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's insight rings truer than ever: As long as Palestinians hate Israeli children more than they love their own kids, peace is unattainable. As long as organizations such as Hamas invest more in trying to destroy Israeli society than building a Palestinian state, the violence will only fester.

Not surprisingly, the United Nations Security Council refused to condemn the Mercaz HaRav attack. As long as phrases such as "cycle of violence" are used to rationalize pathological behaviour, the most violent nihilists in the Palestinian national movement will feel emboldened. The equivocators enable the terror, and share the blame -- at least indirectly.

Another truism of unclear origin: If the Palestinians had produced a Gandhi, instead of a Yasser Arafat, if the Palestinians had relied on non-violence not terrorism, they would have had a strong, viable state long ago. To that insight, we must add a new truism: that if so many people in the world did not equivocate in the face of Palestinian terror, let alone justify it, peace would have been achieved long ago, too.

The enablers and perpetrators of terror are both guilty, not only of crimes against Israel, but of crimes against humanity.

http://web.israelinsider.com/views/12698.htm

And what did the militants do to get such a retaliation from Israel? Kill two Israeli soldiers 

That was a very good article realityman, and oh so true!
.. it actually mirrors my thoughts on the subject. Right now there is kind of a 'lull' in the fighting between Israel and Hamas while U.S./Egyptian negotiators talk to both sides (different rooms  ;D ) in Cairo trying to hammer out a workable truce between the two. Hamas so far isn't giving so much as demanding things. So keep your fingers crossed.. with both hands. Hamas is still insisting on its own armed guards at the Egyptian/Gaza crossing... and so on.

Unforunately, I seriously doubt that the fighting between the two will EVER stop ..... At least, not until Israel completely unleashes it's full military-might, and a MAJOR conflict/war happens.  Then, and IMO, only then, it will stop, and it's not going to be good for the Palestinians.  This mini war has been going on way too long for people just to suddenly stop....It's not going to end like that....not in a truce or not in a peace agreement.

I kind of think so too, but at least the US and Egypt are making the effort. Hamas WANTS Israel to invade, so that they can claim to the world that they have the moral high ground and isolate Israel and turn them into a pariah nation state...

Unfortunately, Hamas does not put a high value on its peoples lives when it comes to fighting the 'infidel' Jews.  ;)

Why is that good deeds toward the Palestinians always go unrewarded?

By Bob Tyrrell
March 20, 2008

On the evening of March 6 in Jerusalem, a heavily armed Palestinian terrorist from nearby east Jerusalem entered the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and opened fire on the unarmed teenage students studying there. Eight died, and 11 were badly wounded before another student and an off-duty soldier shot the terrorist. The atrocity ignited wild celebrations in Gaza.


If you thought that the celebrations were anomalous, you might want to know about recent findings just published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent polling organization based on the West Bank. According to its polls, 84 percent of Palestinians approved of this attack. Moreover, 64 percent approve of Hamas randomly firing rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israeli communities, and 75 percent favor ending negotiations between their leaders and the Israeli government.

In September 2005, Israel, in an irenic gesture, withdrew its military from Gaza, but since then, it has endured about 2,500 rocket attacks from Gaza and almost an equal number of mortar attacks. I wonder whether 64 percent of the Palestinians would approve if Israel began reciprocal random attacks on Gaza. What is the old line, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"?

Instead of lobbing artillery randomly, the Israel Defense Forces have attempted to counter Hamas' attacks with surgical strikes against their leaders and their rocket factories. However, Hamas' leaders nestle their headquarters and rocket factories in civilian neighborhoods, and civilians suffer collateral damage. That appears to have made Palestinians angry, and not at Hamas for its bellicosity but at Israel for responding to these cruel attacks. According to Khalil Shikaki, the Palestinian pollster who headed the aforementioned poll, never in the 15 years that the poll has been conducted has a majority of Palestinians favored rocket assaults on Israel or an end to negotiations. For handing over Gaza to the Palestinians, this is the thanks Israel has received. Now Palestinians want further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank. One does not have to be a student of the late Niccolo Machiavelli to advise against further withdrawals. Shikaki's poll demonstrates that such withdrawals only make the Palestinians angrier.


When the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from Gaza (taking with them civilian settlers), the Palestinians had an opportunity to set up a peaceful community that might encourage further accommodations from Israel. As JWR contributor Victor Davis Hanson observed in a recent column, "Gaza has plenty of natural advantages. It enjoys a picturesque coastline on the Mediterranean with sandy beaches and a rich classical history. There is a contiguous border with Egypt, the Arab world's largest country and spiritual home of pan-Arabic solidarity." Hanson mused imaginatively that Gaza could become another Singapore or Hong Kong. Instead the Palestinians immediately began a civil war among themselves, and after that, they began lobbing rockets and mortars into Israel. Somehow I doubt these people want peace. In fact, I suspect peace would be a disappointment to many of them.

A recent report, "The Global War on Terrorism: An Assessment," by Robert C. Martinage of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, illuminates the problem that Israel faces with Hamas and that the West faces with Islamic terror in general. Says Martinage, "Since the death of Muhammad in 632, Islamic history has been punctuated by many periods in which various heterodox sects have emerged and clashed violently with mainstream Muslims, as well as with the West." We are living through one of those periods. Whether Israel existed or not, these Islamic terrorists still would be with us.

All that Israel and the West can do is resist the terrorists, the best way being to go on the offensive. Withdrawing from Gaza certainly has not weakened the terrorists. It has made them and their Palestinian sympathizers more eager for violence. There is one sentiment, however, in this poll that I, for one, agree with: Negotiations have been of no benefit, at least not to those who want peace.

 http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/tyrrell032008.php3

...It IS a reliable source. ...

The Israeli people are right now almost going berserk over their governments inability to protect them.

Talks don't work because not enough land is offered.

lol.

Oh. Is that why they don't work.

Ahk

...Three Kassam rockets were fired at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip on Friday morning, one of them hitting the outer wall of a preschool...
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632354848&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

....Mark my words, Israel will be destroyed, and it will be American Jews who will have killed it. By overpatronizing. Halliluya

Realityman, u have this habit of taking a long break, then coming back to open the already debated and re-debated topic...
http://www.itsallpolitics.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,26/topic,1668.15/

lol.


Oh. Is that why they don't work.


Ahk

Mainly, yes.  The Israeli propaganda machine churns continually that 'we want pewace', 'final borders are amatter for negotiation', 'Hamas commit random acts of violence'... as if all the problem is one-sided.   

Israel has fired approximately 1,000 times the amount of ordnance ibto Gaza that Hamas have fired out (ironically, many Qassam rockets carry charges of unexploded Isaeli shells);the 'kill ratio' of civilians is approximately 4 to 1 and has remained that way for 7 years (and another small coincidence, the number of palestinian children killed has virtually consistently equalled Israeli civilian deaths throughout those years);

Once Israel shows some sincerity and honesty then perhaps negotiations can start.   

Callum, I hate to disillusion you, but you are not the second coming of Christ.

How dare you put down others posts as if your view reflect any form of superior intellect. All it does is highlight your own insecurities and ignorance.

Terry
Akh and others of your mates chose to make this personal - 'guys like me' usually stick to facts (real ones, not opinions shouted loud).    I got pulled into brawl about 'guys like me' and 'guys like you' before, and withdrew when it was pointed out I had sunk to the abysmal level of my provocateur.  Sadly, such restrictions on behaviour do not apply to the exalted few who feel they are permitted to apply them. 

You may chose to judge and denigrate all you wish - it is what passes for argument I notice in your coterie.  However, your assumptions about me are wrong; your own 'sense of superiority' is even more unfounded.  How dare you admonish me.

I'll offer you a chance to raise this section to something approaching real discussion. You can address the question that (as usual) you and 'guys like you' consistently ignore, hedge, avoid, skirt, temporise....  See if you can answer without getting the Liar to post an interminable "justification" of everything your 'side' ever does.  See if you can give a simple, straight answer....

I believe that both sides in the Israel/Palestine conflict have commited acts of barbarism and evil: both are guilty of lying and dishonesty.   Do you agree?  Yes or no.

I point out that the problem is not one-sided, and your immediate response is not to attempt a defense of Israeli actions, but to start squawking about palestinbian propganda.

I would wager you have NEVER read an independent report from the Holy Land, and certainly never an uncommented, 'debunked' report out of palestinian lands.

Terry
Akh and others of your mates chose to make this personal......  Rather like your mate,

I'll offer you a chance to raise this section to something approaching real discussion. You can address the question that (as usual) you and 'guys like you' consistently ignore, hedge, avoid, skirt, temporise....

Rather like your mate, for you Israel has never performed a wrong action, not told a lie.....

LMAO  step one in growing up

What native american land are you living on?  What profits of slavery have produced your lifestyle?

'Bush killed' in Palestinian kids TV show
Repeatedly stabbed after White House 'turned into a great mosque'

March 31, 2008
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A child stabs President Bush to death and turns the White House into a mosque in a children's puppet show broadcast on the television channel of the ruling Palestinian Authority party, Hamas.

In the Al-Aqsa TV skit, aired yesterday, the child confronts the American leader: "I have come to take revenge with this sword – revenge for my mother and my sisters. You are a criminal, Bush! You are despicable. You made me an orphan! You took everything from me, Bush! I must take revenge on you, with this sword of Islam, the prophet's Al-Battar sword."

The Bush character tries to appease the child with food, toys and a visit to the White House but is rebuffed, as seen in a video clip translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.

"You are impure, Bush, so you are not allowed inside the White House," the child figure says, because "it has been turned into a great mosque for the nation of Islam."

The child declares: "I will kill you just like Mu'az killed Abu Lahab (an enemy of Islam's prophet Muhammad). I will kill you, Bush, because that is your fate."

The child stabs Bush repeatedly: "Ahhh, I killed him."

Hamas, which won a majority in parliament in January 2006 elections, officially is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. As WND reported, a prominent Hamas leader recently was captured on video boasting of using children, women and the elderly as human shields in its firefights with Israeli soldiers.

Farfur the mouse teaches Palestinian children jihad

Al Aqsa TV also has broadcast shows for children featuring a squeaky-voiced Mickey Mouse look-alike who became "martyred" at the hands of Israeli "child killers" and a bee that sought to continue the "path of martyrdom, the path of the jihad warriors" and "take revenge upon the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets."

As WND reported one year ago, an online forum tied to the website of Hamas posted a photo of a little girl in a combat vest and the head band of the terrorist Al-Qassam Brigades.

The message accompanying the photo said the girl "is part of the Muslim generation which will go down in history [as a generation] … that refused to [accept] humiliation and defeat."

WND also reported Hamas launched a children's website in 2002 that encourages kids to follow the example of terrorist suicide bombers.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60382

...They think they are training their kids to fight and win. They are training them to die...

Ahk

"This is a test. We need to convince the world we deserve a state that would be a stabilizing factor in the region. If we fail, history will not forgive the Palestinians,"

Jibril al-Rajoub, Security Adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas

http://www.redorbit.com/news/international/203291/gaza_withdrawal_a_test_for_palestinian_statehood/

You miss the forest for the trees. The point is that all this would stop if Hamas quit attacking Israel, as Israel has every right to proactively protect itself. Are you a anti-Hebrew? Sure post like one.  ::)

Hamas: Jews planned the Holocaust
By HAVIV RETTIG
Apr 30, 2008

Jewish leaders concocted the mass murder of handicapped Jews in order to keep from having to support them, and this murder is what the Jews term "the Holocaust," according to a documentary special that aired on April 18 on Hamas's Al Aqsa television station.

According to the documentary's narrator, Israel's first prime minister David Ben Gurion decided that Jewish "disabled and handicapped are a burden to the state," after which "the Satanic Jews" - the film cuts to a picture of a hassidic Jew - "thought up an evil plot to be rid of the burden of disabled and handicapped" - the film then cuts to piles of emaciated corpses - "in twisted criminal ways."

"This is official Hamas TV," explained PMW director Itamar Marcus. "It's owned and totally controlled by the Hamas leadership in Gaza, and it goes out by satellite to the whole Arab-speaking world."

The program dealt primarily with the Holocaust, but included comparisons to the Palestinian situation, calling the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps a "holocaust" and blaming Israel for a "Palestinian holocaust."

"They [the Jews] were the first to invent the methods of evil and oppression," explains the documentary's narrator, cutting to scenes of Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan and Ben Gurion.

The film claimed Jewish leaders blamed the Nazis for their own massacre of Jews "so the Jews would seem persecuted and try to benefit from international sympathy."
 
The film offers an "expert" - Amin Dabur, head of the "Center for Strategic Research" - who explains that "the Israeli Holocaust, the whole thing was a joke and part of the perfect show that Ben Gurion put on."

There is some tension in the film between blaming the Jews for the massacre of Jews, and denying the massacre took place. According to Dabur, Ben Gurion was interested in sending "strong and energetic youth [for Israel], while all the rest - the disabled, the handicapped, and people with special needs, they were sent [to die] - if it can be proven historically" - a reference to a claim heard often on Hamas television, from Iranian leaders and elsewhere in the Muslim world that the Holocaust has yet to be proven historically.

Continues Dabur: "They were sent [by the Jews to die] so there would be a Holocaust, so Israel could 'play' it for world sympathy."

at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870534661&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull