Israeli jets target Gaza tunnels

[Adsos Letter]

Source: BBC

Israeli air strikes have targeted the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt, as part of Israel's response to an attack on one of its frontier patrols on Tuesday.

Residents near the town of Rafah fled as missiles hit tunnels through which Israel says militants smuggle arms.

The strikes came ahead of US envoy George Mitchell's visit to promote a permanent Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7855086.stm

[Scurrilous]

1. Palestinians back to work on tunnels after bombing

<snip>

"Smugglers were back at work in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Wednesday repairing tunnels running under the border with Egypt only hours after Israeli aircraft bombed the underground network.

"They dropped two or three bombs. But look, everybody is still working," said a 30-year-old digger who gave only his nickname, Abu Ali.

Israel bombed the tunnels heavily during the 22-day offensive it launched on Dec. 27 with the declared aim of halting Hamas rocket attacks on its southern communities.

The Israeli military fears Hamas can rearm through tunnels and targeted them again after a bomb detonated by Palestinian militants on Tuesday killed an Israeli soldier on the Gaza frontier, 10 days into a ceasefire.

There was nothing clandestine about the bulky, bright yellow diggers and bulldozers grinding around the dusty area known as the Philadelphi corridor that divides the Gaza Strip from Egypt's Sinai peninsula. The work was carried out in open view of Egyptian border guards 50 metres to the south.

"I'm scared but I have to work. What else can I do? It's the only job," said a 17-year-old, who gave his name only as Mohammed. He said he would use the tunnel to bring in clothes.

For the 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, the tunnels have become a main source of goods, including fuel, since Israel tightened its embargo following Hamas's seizure of control in 2007 from the forces of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas."

more

[Tripmann]

2. Wonderful

Tunnels being bombed, aid trucks stuck at the border.

Collective punishment. Full stop. Warsaw ghetto part two.

[cali]

3. sigh. awful but no, not like the Warsaw Ghetto

Were it like the Warsaw Ghetto, virtually all the Gazans would be dead and not only would they have been actively murdered on a large scale, they would have died by the tens of thousands- or more- from starvation and disease. Much more like Chechnya than the Warsaw Ghetto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya#First_Chechen_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto

[Tripmann]

4. Well, the problem isn't solved yet. What IS the running

total at the moment for palestinians who died in Gaza at Israeli hands since it became a refugee camp?

A lot of people use the comparison , Cali, to highlight the the abused becoming the abuser. That israel can collectively punish, lay siege and slaughter innocent people in a cage and its apoogists will constantly make reference to the suffering of the jewish people at the hands of the Nazis.

We don't excuse wife beaters because they were abused as a child. We may understand the roots of the behaviour that has developed, but the wife, the victim, is the priority. No more excuses.

[hack89]

5. I would suspect the total is very low

just like the Jena "massacre" you are going to see the civilian death toll numbers go down as neutral international organizations start actually counting.

[Tripmann]

6. Thankfully, continuing the siege will be a much more media

friendly way of punishing the palestinians than dropping bombs. :sarcasm:

By the way I was talking about the total killed since they were thrown off their land.

[hack89]

8. 12,000 - ranks 65th in most lethal wars since 1950

http://tmq2.wordpress.com/2007/03/28/ranking-of-death-tolls-the-66-most-lethal-conflicts-after-1950/

in the same period the Palestinian population grew from 1.2 million to 3.7 million.

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story559.html

Hell of a genocide wouldn't you say?

[cali]

7. I believe the running total of all Palestinian deaths since

the foundation of Israel is around 60,000. The total number of deaths of persons in the Warsaw Ghetto was around 400,000 in about 3 years.

I understand the point of comparing the two, but it's simply not supported by the facts- and I'm not just talking about numbers of the dead. One doesn't have to excuse the Israeli occupation or killings, but one doesn't need to make historically fallacious comparisons to make the apt point that the abused have become the abusers.

History counts to me. I spent years (formally and informally studying it). It's not just this comparison that I find off base. It's the tendency to compare, for instance, bush to Hitler.

[hack89]

9. Actually just Palestinian deaths is much lower - about 12,000

53,000 of 65,000 deaths since 1948 are from the various Arab Israel wars which are mainly Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians.


http://tmq2.wordpress.com/2007/03/28/ranking-of-death-tolls-the-66-most-lethal-conflicts-after-1950/

[Tripmann]

10. Not at all

People refer to the 7/7 bombings in London as Britains 9/11, and to the madrid bombings as Spains 9/11. Comparitively speaking, there were a fraction of the number of people killed compared to the twin towers. The comparison is also a mark of respect and understanding for the people who were killed and injured in london and madrid. Are you telling me that we should not refer to the incidents as such? Going by your own yardstick of counting deaths, we should not.

There will always be a differential of some sort. Ignoring the blatant similarities and focusing on numerical differences is clutching at straws. I certainly think that anybody who is brazen enough to say "Don't compare 7/7 to 9/11, there were far more people killed in the towers" would deserve a smack in the mouth, don't you??

Lets flip it. If 1 million jewish people were currently in concentration camps awaiting execution, would we not have the right to refer to it as a modern day holocaust? Would you be posting here about how we cannot describe it as such because 6 million jewish people died in the original one?
The comparison is apt.

[Scurrilous]

11. IAF commander: Bombing of tunnels not a solution to Gaza arms smuggling

<snip>

"Israel Air Force Commander Major General Ido Nehushtan said Wednesday that he doubted the long-term efficacy of Israel's bombing of the tunnels on the Philadelphi Route in southern Gaza. In the first remarks on the outcome of Operation Cast Lead by a member of the Israel Defense Forces General Staff, Nehushtan said he recommended focusing on all means of weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip.

The air force carried out hundreds of sorties around the Philadelphi Route during the Gaza operation, focusing mainly on houses suspected of hiding tunnels. On Tuesday night, following the attack on an army patrol hear Kissufim, the IDF responded by bombing tunnels in that area. Speaking at the Ilan Ramon Annual International Space Conference in Herzliya, Nehushtan attempted to reduce the importance of tunnels for smuggling arms, calling them "merely the spout of the toothpaste tube." Nehushtan said: "If we hit them today, they'll open again tomorrow and they'll be dug in the future, too."

more