Israel: the assassins are alive and well .
The weapon of assassination is threaded throughout the history of modern Israel. It was a tool of Jewish extremists in the fight for independence. It is a weapon in the state's struggle against militant non-state actors that seek Israel's destruction. And we have tragically turned it against ourselves in the struggle to define the narrative and boundaries of the state and its relationship with its closest neighbor.
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The Lehi (Stern gang) terrorists who assassinated Lord Moyne, the British governor of Egypt in 1944 during the pre-state period, sought to strike a blow for independence. They were executed by the British. Today they have streets named after them in Israeli towns and cities. Those who assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte in the early days of independence in 1948 in an effort to thwart United Nations compromise proposals served brief and symbolic prison sentences in Israel.
Their commander, Yitzhak Shamir, went on to become prime minister in the 1980s. If the Israeli mainstream was uncomfortable at the time with this use of the assassination tactic and condemned it, the public has long since embraced the killers as heroes of Israel's independence.
The unnamed Mossad, IDF commando and Israel Air Force personnel responsible for fighting first Fatah, then Hamas and Hizballah leaders with a variety of assassination tactics are certainly viewed by Israelis as heroes. From the assassination of Fateh no. 2 leader Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir) in Tunis in 1988, through the Mossad's alleged assassination of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki in Malta in 1995 and the air strike that killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza in 2004, to Israel's reported involvement in the recent assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh, the elimination of Palestinian and other terrorist leaders who seek Israel's destruction is seen by the Israeli public as a legitimate act--for a number of reasons.
For one, it is perceived to deter and deprive a ruthless terrorist enemy of a key leader, thereby constituting a net security achievement. This, of course, has not always been the case: witness, for example, the acts of mass revenge for Israeli assassinations enacted by Iran and Hezbollah in Argentina in 1982 and 1984. On the other hand, note the success of the elimination of Shikaki in virtually shutting down PIJ for years and the effect of the Yassin and Rantisi assassinations in ceasing Hamas rocket fire from Gaza into Israel for around half a year. Indeed these assassinations, it can be argued, ultimately saved a lot of Israeli and Palestinian lives. Assassination of terrorist leaders is also understood as a legitimate act of revenge in the biblical "eye for an eye" sense, and is seen as a debt owed by Israel's leaders to the civilian victims of terrorism.
But when Yigal Amir shot and killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, he almost certainly did not draw inspiration from the events and episodes described above. Rather, he was motivated by extremist religious interpretations of biblical injunctions regarding the punishment of traitors. Rabin was leading a peace process that involved territorial compromise with the PLO; Amir saw himself as the savior of the Land of Israel. His act had been preceded by murders of a Jewish peace activist and of Arab day laborers by similarly motivated Jewish assassins.
Sadly, the murder of Rabin, orchestrated by the clan of the incubators and precursors of the MOSSAD/PNAC evil alliance of the killers, CIA/MOSSAD/AMAN/DIA, caused a massive setback to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that is felt to this day. It is an outstanding example of the political gain that can be achieved by a determined assassin; it was not accidental that the Israeli majority narrative of the event compared it to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 in terms of its effect on peace and national unity.
http://americanassassination.blogspot.com/
The recent assassination of Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, believed by Hizballah and most of the world to be the work of Israel's handy men in Damascus, Bashar’s brother-in-law Asef Shawkat was confirmed as the head of military intelligence, perhaps one of the most sensitive and powerful positions in Syria today...in order to "bring to pass" the continuum of the "US Matrix of Murder in the Levant", started on January 24th 2002, with the savage assassination of an MP, Ex-Minister and immensely popular Christian politician, the Lebanese Hero of Heroes, Mr. Elie Hobeika, Dimitri Ajram, Walid El-Zein and Fares Sweidan, on instructions from the White House Murder Inc., in collusion with Ariel Sharon, Elliott Abrams, and executed by the Syrian Handy Man Assef Shawkat, who strongly believed "from then on"... and was lead to believe..., that he is an "invincible" covert assassin and mass murderer, since he has the protection of the biggest MAFIA in the World, the Neocon Mafia of the Killers on the Potomac and Langley...will most likely invite retaliation, which in turn one should expect will lead to a cycle of violence. Many non-combatants will be victims, which again will raise the moral question, also in relation to the aftermath. It is noteworthy that the State Department's list of global terrorist incidents for 2002 worldwide failed to list the car bombing attack on Hobeika and his party.... But Listed a small Hand Grenade thrown at a U.S. franchise in the middle of the night when the place was closed, empty and no one was hurt?
The White House wanted to ensure the terror attack on Mr. Elie Hobeika, and his party of three young men with families, was censored from the report. The reason was simple: this attack ultimately had Washington's and Israel's fingerprints all over it.... ! Assef Shawqat, went on his murderer "besogne" in Lebanon and Damascus ever since, with a string of Assassinations, successfully evading all the Overhead surveillance of a string of US and Israeli and other spy satellites.... that record every move, whisper and more on Planet earth....and yet, after several years of "intense" UN inspired investigations....there is nothing on Shawkat....because they want him "protected" for the next round....and all the fanfare which accompanied the arrest of the"Four Generals" in 2005 is a monumental fraud since they are also "protected" by CIA because they know so much...and the latest "state Department report" attests to the fact that the USA considers them... "illegal prisoners" for Political expediency of the 14Hmars... which in other words means that the USA is paving the way for their "timely" release for good.
In some ways, Israel's judgment and treatment of Rabin's assassin are even more troubling....., just like the soft treatment of the 4 Generals in Lebanon.... since the assassination by the White house Murder Inc., of prominent and most popular Christian politician in Lebanon, Mr. Elie Hobeika. With no death penalty and a highly developed judicial tradition of protecting prisoners' rights regardless of the nature of their crime, the penal system has enabled Amir to live a comfortable life in his cell, to marry and to produce a son. A small band of fanatic supporters hope one day to obtain a presidential pardon for him, perhaps within the framework of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that comprises a comprehensive release of Palestinian prisoners guilty of murdering Israelis...
Given the intimacy of Israeli society, for Yigal Amir to walk among us as a free man thanks to a successful HUBRIS State would be the ultimate irony.....but it isn't seeing the light of day anytime soon.
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Condemnation of "collective punishment" Israeli attack on Gaza mounts...
Israel's brutal "collective punishment" air Blitzkrieg that has killed over 230 mostly civilians in the Gaza Strip, Israel's version of Nazi Germany's Warsaw Ghetto, is resulting in widespread international condemnation. One notable exception is the United States. Gordon Johndroe, National Security Council spokesman, expressed U.S. support for the Israeli collective punishment assault on Gaza.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry called the Israeli attack "a genocide and crime." From Johannesburg, South Africa's ruling African National Congress stated: "'Collective punishment' which saw children and civilians killed would not solve the problems in the Mideast."
Jordan's lower house of Parliament issued a statement on the Israeli attack: "This aggression will only lead to more hatred and push the region towards more violence."
From Jakarta, the following statement was released: "The Indonesian government condemns the attack and calls for Israel to end the use of violence in the Gaza Strip because this will prompt new tensions, while, on the other side, the attack is an abuse of the Annapolis agreement which had been negotiated."
The French presidency of the European Union condemned "the disproportionate use of force" by Israel. The European Union's top foreign policy official, Javier Solana, stated, "The current Israeli strikes are inflicting an unacceptable toll on Palestinian civilians and will only worsen the humanitarian crisis as well as complicate the search for a peaceful solution."
The Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara said, "We strongly condemn the death of many Palestinians as result of Israel's attack on Gaza. We are calling for restraint and an immediate halt of the Israeli operation."
From Baghdad's "Green Zone," the U.S.-supported Iraqi government issued a statement: "The government demands a halt in military operations, so as not to endanger lives of civilians and to avoid a policy of collective punishment."
Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin said, "I condemn in the strongest terms Israel's action in launching air strikes in Gaza against Hamas targets which have resulted in widespread civilian fatalities."
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela called the Israeli attack "criminal" and urged a "massive campaign of repudiation."
The Jewish Association of Tehran said in a statement, "the Zionist criminals, in a racist move, once again attacked the oppressed and defenseless people of Gaza and proved that they are by no means committed to any human rules."
Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallukh said, "No words can describe the horrible nature of what is happening in terms of killing innocent people. It seems that the hot and reckless heads in Israel have not learned from the experience of the 2006 aggression against Lebanon and are still not convinced that killing and use of excessive force cannot lead to any result and would not make people abandon demanding their rights and defending their dignity."
Qatar's Foreign Ministry said the Israeli attack "constituted a continuation of the aggression policy carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people in a clear challenge and a flagrant violation of the international legality's resolutions and the international and humanitarian law's principles."
Israeli Arabs staged protests against the Israeli attack in by Israeli Arabs in Umm al-Fahm, Dayr al-Asad, Kafr Qana, Daburiyah, and Laqiya.
Global Peace and Justice of New Zealand spokesman John Minto urged Israeli and Palestinian New Zealanders to protest "the slaughter in Gaza" outside the United States consulate in Auckland on December 30. Minto added, "We are calling on the New Zealand Government to condemn these cowardly Israeli attacks."
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos condemned Israel's "disproportionate" response" to Hamas rocket attacks.
Historical note: The German Nazis pioneered the modern use of "collective punishment" against innocent civilians. The Germans wiped out the villages of Lidice in Czechoslovakia, Oradour-sur-Glane in France, Pirciupis in Lithuania, and Distono in Greece in retaliation for attacks on German forces. The individuals responsible for the collective punishment atrocities were tried as war criminals.
ANOTHER MASSACRE by the Israeli killing machine IDF, IAF, Sayyaret Metkal etc.
Massacres were part and parcel of the Zionist project in Palestine. They aimed at intimidating the Arabs and make them leave the country.
Dozens of massacres were committed against the Arabs starting with the Massacre at Baldat al-Shaikh in December 1947 and not ending with the massacres in Qana in South Lebanon in 1996 and 2006.
Another brutal massacre is being committed in Gaza today. Hundreds of Palestinian Arabs have been killed and/or wounded.
Given below, is a list of some of the massacres committed by the Zionists since 1947:
Massacre in Baldat al-Shaikh (31 December 1947): Haganah gang members stormed the village of Baldat al-Shaikh in pursuit of unarmed citizens. The death toll was about 600 people, most of whose corpses were found inside the houses of the village.
Massacre in Deir Yassin (10 April 1948): A brutal massacre was committed by Ariel Sharon and Unit 101 of IDF in Deir Yassin: over 250 men, women and children were killed.
Massacre in Lid (11 July 1948): A commando unit led by Moshe Dayan carried out this massacre. The unit stormed the city in the evening and many of the Arab citizens of the city took refuge from the attack in the Dahmash Mosque. The Zionists reached the mosque and killed 176 civilians who took refuge to the mosque raising the victims of the massacre in Lid to 426 Palestinian Arabs.
Once the slaughter had come to an end, the unarmed civilians were led to the city’s sports stadium, where the young men were detained. Then the families were given a mere half-hour to leave the city for the area where the Jordanian Army was located. They were to go there on foot and without food or water, which ca used the deaths of many women, children and elderly people.
Massacre in the Village of Eilaboun (30 October 1948): The village was attacked on October 29, 1948. The Israeli forces managed to enter the town at five o’clock a.m. on October 30.
The people of Elabun took refuge in the two local churches where yellow and white flags of submission were flown. Marcos Daoud, the Greek Catholic priest, told the Israelis, "I put my village under the protection of the State of Israel". The Israeli answer was as follows:
1. Thirteen young men were murdered.
2. The surviving young men were taken as POWs.
3. The women and children were marched off to the Lebanese border under severe conditions, which resulted in many casualties.
4. Looting and desecration of the churches followed the evacuation of the village.
Massacre in Dawayma (15 October 1948): Operation Ten Plagues was launched against the Egyptians in the South. Mass murder took place in many of the towns on the southern front during the October offensive. One of the worst massacres during the offensive took place at Dawayma.
The American Consul in Jerusalem , William Burdett, had heard about the visit of the UN team to Dawayma. After making inquiries, on 6 November, he reported to Washington , “Investigation by UN indicates massacre occurred but observers are unable to determine number of persons involved”. Estimates vary considerably but probably about 300 Arab civilians were slaughtered in the town.
The Massacre at Qibya (14 October 1953): The fatalities from the massacre numbered 67, including men, women and children, while hundreds of others were injured.
The Massacre at Kufr Qasim (29 October 1956): A curfew was imposed on the village of Kufr Qasim, after which a number of children and elderly people took off to inform the young men who were working in the fields outside the village about the curfew. However, the forces stationed outside the village killed them in cold blood, murdering the young men before they could reach the village. The death toll for this massacre came to 49 civilians, including a number of children and elderly people.
Massacre at Sabra and Shatila (18 September 1982): A plan had been laid to storm the Sabra and Shatila camps for Palestinian refugees in the Beirut area since the first day of the Israeli invasion's planning in early 1981 of Lebanon in June 6th1982. The name of the operations was : operations "Spark" and "Iran Brain".... Spark referred to the assassination of Bashir Gemayel...., and Iran Brain, referred to the inevitable manipulation which will be endorsed by his father : Pierre Gemayel....and that's exactly what happened, and Israel got all the right excuses needed to launch the Sayyaret Metkal of IDF into the camps on September 14th/15th 1982 to carry out the targeted killings/assassinations. Its purpose was to weaken the Palestinian refugee ca mps in Beirut and force the Palestinians to emigrate outside Lebanon.....the Initial versions of Shock and Awe....
Before sundown on September 14, 1982, the storming of the camps began. The massacre itself, which was carried out by the ( Sayyaret Metkal of IDF ) , continued for approximately 60 hours. During the operation, the Israeli army surrounded the camps, preventing anyone from entering or leaving. In addition, the occupation soldiers set off incandescent bombs by night to facilitate the IDF’s mission. The Zionist soldiers also provided all logistical services to the SLA militiamen during the massacre, which IDF flew into Beirut International Airport by IAF C-130 Hercules aircraft of the Israeli Army, in full view of many Lebanese Army officers stationed there during the fighting in Sep. 1982.
Information about the massacre began to leak out after a number of children and women fled to the Gaza hospital in the Shatila camp, where they informed doctors of what was happening. News of the massacre likewise reached some foreign journalists on Friday morning, September 17, 1982. The bloodletting went on until noon on Saturday, September 18.
Three thousand two hundred ninety-seven (3,297) men, women and children were killed within forty hours, between September 14-17, 1982. Among the dead bodies, 336 Lebanese were found; 1,800 victims were killed in the streets and alleys of the camp, while 1,097 were killed in the Gaza Hospital and 200 others in the Akka Hospital, while many more were driven by Israeli IDF army trucks from the Sports Stadium in proximity, never to be found again.....until today .
http://newhk.blogspot.com/search/label/AMAN.
Commenting on the massacre, Menachem Begin described the Palestinian resistance fighters to the Israeli Knesset as “animals that walk on two legs”.
Massacre at the Ibrahimi Mosque (25 February 1994): Before worshippers had completed the dawn prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron , the blast of hand grenades exploding and the sound of bullet spray filled the mosque. Bullets and splinters from the grenades pierced the heads, necks and backs of the worshippers, wounding more than 350.
The crime began when terrorist Baroukh Goldstein and a group of Jewish settlers from the Kiryat Arba settlement entered the mosque. Goldstein was carrying his military machine gun and hand grenades along with large amounts of ammunition. He stood behind one of the pillars in the mosque and waited until the worshipers had prostrated, then opened machine gun fire on them. Meanwhile, others helped him load the ammunition, which included the internationally banned explosive dumdum lead.
Goldstein carried out the massacre at a time when Zionist soldiers had closed the mosque doors to prevent worshipers from fleeing. They also prevented those coming from outside the mosque precincts from coming in to rescue the wounded. Later, others were shot to death by occupation soldiers outside the mosque and at the cemetery during the funeral processions of those who had been martyred in the mosque. The massacre led to fifty deaths, twenty-nine of which occurred inside the mosque.
The Massacre at Qana (18 April 1996): The Israeli artillery and helicopters shelled a shelter inside the Fijian battalion working within the UN forces in south Lebanon, using bombs which explode in the air in order to increase casualties among the ranks of civilians who might try to seek refuge in shelters. The operation led to the deaths of 160 civilians, most of them women, children and the elderly who were unable to flee toward Beirut and were thus obliged to seek refuge in the shelter at the Fijian Battalion headquarters in the Lebanese village of Qana.
Another Massacre at Qana (2006): During Israel’s ‘open war’ against Lebanon using Hezbollah’s kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers as a pretext, another massacre was committed by Israel in Qana. About 54 innocent Lebanese civilians, including about 37 children, were killed through an air raid....
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