January 18, 2009

Ceasefire in Gaza.

Just reported:
"Hamas and the factions announce a ceasefire in Gaza starting immediately and give Israel a week to withdraw," said Ayman Taha, a Hamas official in Cairo for talks with Egypt on a truce deal.

The Islamist group said previously it would not stop its attacks as long as Israeli soldiers remained in the Gaza Strip.

20 comments:

traditionalguy said...

What, no surrender from the Noble Murders' for Muhammed? Is this like a football halftime so they can review strategy with their Iranian coaching staff, decide what works and how to run better plays in the second half? Maybe they need to bus in more women and children to be their human shields since they are running low. If they don't offer to surrender-- "nuts" would be a good reply. I sure hope that doesn't ofend the Mullahs too much, and distract them from work on their the Final Solution Hiroshima style.

Fred4Pres said...

Good manners, just in time for Obama's party!

AlphaLiberal said...

Over 1,000 people killed in this massacre. Israel has been dropping white phosphorus bombs - bombs that rain down burning phosphorus that adheres to the skin as it keeps burning away the flesh.

It's a horrible thing to do to civilians. I hope it's going to end and that there will be an investigation of such use of weapons on a civilian population.

holdfast said...

AlphaLiberal - Blowing up buses and raining rockets on schools are also horrible things to do to civilians, but you didn't seem to care much when it was Israelis getting killed. The only way to deter the psycho society that is the Palestinians is to subject them to an unacceptable level of pain on a regular basis, to kill their leader, blow up their ammo dumps and reduce them to a stoneage existence. They'll still all be psychos or psychos in training, but if we can reduce them to rocks and sticks it won't matter. If the Palestinians don't care about the livers of their children, why should Israel? They elected HAMAS to run their shithole, now they can live, or die, with the consequences - and if you don't like it, I suggest you can go Rachel Corrie yourself.

I can only hope that HAMAS will do something spectacularly stupid on Tuesday to ruin Obama's coronation.

cryptical said...

Wrong white phosphorus, Alpha. Isreal has been using shells that produce smoke, which are completely legal. If WP so offends you, are you condemning the use by Hamas a few days ago?

As to the "massacre", Israel has been willing to stop since day one if Hamas would stop the rockets. The real crime is by Hamas using civilian structures such as schools and hospitals as weapons caches and launch sites to draw fire for propaganda purposes.

Hamas gambled that the UN and it's fellow travelers would raise a ruckus and make Israel stop the attacks so they could declare victory.

AlphaLiberal said...

Obviously, I think that Hamas firing rockets and blowing up buses is wrong and should be stopped. I expect everybody does.

Dropping white phosphorus on people is not comparable to lobbing shitty rockets. Over 1,000 Palestinians killed, about 1/3 children. That's wrong and indefensible.

This is the first I've heard of claims that Hamas has used white phosphorus. I'll keep an eye open for those reports. But I wonder if they even have the delivery systems.

But we now have so many different reports of Israel using WP, it's becoming undeniable. PArt of Olmert's "iron fist" (his words).

AND, isn't it funny how the Israeli blockade of Gaza gets so little press? Barely a mention.

Anonymous said...

Oh goody, the paleostinians have lied about ceasing their attacks on Israel. Again.

Yawn. Wake me up when it's been five years since the paleostinians have attacked Israel.

Buford Gooch said...

Alpha, you are such a dupe. Israel has not used WP as a weapon. They have only used it to provide smoke screens. No matter how many people report a lie, it's still a lie.

TosaGuy said...

If Hamas would quit firing rockets then Israel will quit bombing.

If Israel were to quit bombing, Hamas will continue to fire rockets.

If Hamas would not hide in schools and hospitals then Israel would not bomb schools and hospitals.

Hamas simply aims its rockets in Israel's general direction, not caring where they hit as long as it hits an Israeli....any Israeli.

Don't see why some people cannot understand these things.

From Inwood said...

I see two possible scenarios.

(1) A PC political pause to show that Israel is really, really the good guy before it administers the coup de grace.

(2) Or just one more failure on the part of Israeli pols to finish the cleanup.

So far, I wouldn’t bet against the latter scenario.

Of course, like the Aesopian scorpion on the frog, by its self-destructive nature, Hamas may still save the day for Israel by its (Hamas’, that is) natural madness: It may not stop shelling Israel.

OK. But what about Americans?
I would suggest that, if it is the latter scenario, that is, one more Israeli politicians’ grasping of defeat from the jaws of victory, Americans, despite the global implications of such action, might just ask “why should we want to help Israelis who won’t take the necessary steps to help themselves?

And despite the lazy Tom Friedmans of the world with their invented “Arab Street”, to whose inner mind they alone have the secret decoder ring, I don’t believe that anyone on the Arab Street would be unhappy if Hamas were really destroyed.

And no, I don’t think that Fattah’s alleged hatred of Hamas is anything more than the Tattaglias toward the Corleones. Both of these, er, organizations are just media-romanticized gangsters.

And, yes I realize that if Fatah takes over “The Business”, it will be an Iranian or Syrian surrogate & it may just be “business as usual”. But nothing is easy. Not even dealing with Gov. Blago.

Michael Haz said...

"Cease fire" is an Islamic phrase that means "re-supply".

Diamondhead said...

Maybe now the UN can investigate the Palestinian war cimes?

Cedarford said...

AlphaLiberal said...
Obviously, I think that Hamas firing rockets and blowing up buses is wrong and should be stopped. I expect everybody does.

Dropping white phosphorus on people is not comparable to lobbing shitty rockets. Over 1,000 Palestinians killed, about 1/3 children. That's wrong and indefensible.


1. Just saying "it is wrong" to use rocket artillery against cities, yet demand Israel do nothing but "talk things over with Hamas" - is morally indefensible.

2. No evidence that Israelis are using WP smoke for anything but marking sites for aiding troop safety or AVOIDING hitting high concentrations of civilians with the truly deadly bomb, shell, and mortar HE munitions.

3. Liberals who never served fetishize "proportionality" in war. No, liberals, the object if some enemy shoots 3 shots at you and misses is not to fire 3 shots back of equal or lesser power, taking care to miss. It is to stop the enemy, then defeat it. Proportionality only applies to a "goal" in Geneva to limit those civilian casualties to a "reasonable number" - and those goals shift if the enemy fights in a way that they have primary culpability for endangering their own civilians.

4. Again the liberal obsession with only death tally sheets. As if other casualties or the mass fear and disruption of almost 100,000civilians living peaceful lives under seige of thousands of rocket delivered HE shrapnel warheads on their towns and cities in the last year.

5. (Stopping the enemy by what force is necessary to end them firing indiscrimately on your cities) - Is "Wrong and Indefensible?"
You're an idiot, Alpha. I am a frequent critic of the Zionists, but in this case, Israel is 100% correct in exercising their right of self-defense.

New York said...

AlphaLiberal is a quintissential liberal ie. both ignorant and sanctimonious. Here's what the Red Cross says:

GENEVA – The international Red Cross said Tuesday that Israel has fired white phosphorus shells in its offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has no evidence to suggest it is being used improperly or illegally.

The comments came after a human rights organization accused the Jewish state of using the incendiary agent, which ignites when it strikes the skin and burns straight through or until it is cut off from oxygen. It can cause horrific injuries.

The International Committee of the Red Cross urged Israel to exercise “extreme caution” in using the incendiary agent, which is used to illuminate targets at night or create a smoke screen for day attacks, said Peter Herby, the head of the organization’s mines-arms unit.

“In some of the strikes in Gaza it’s pretty clear that phosphorus was used,” Herby told The Associated Press. “But it’s not very unusual to use phosphorus to create smoke or illuminate a target. We have no evidence to suggest it’s being used in any other way.”

From Inwood said...

As some wag said about "proportionality:

After some antiquated Palestinian missile fired by non-professional Palestinians hits an Israeli school & the Israelis respond with a state-of the-art missile, “the international community will say ‘Not fair! Israeli weapons are more powerful than Palestinian missiles! This is disproportionate!’ So Israel will then have to create its own kassams, and beg the Palestinians to tell them exactly how much TNT, ball bearings, and strychnine they put in their missiles. The Israelis will also have to get non-professional rocketeers to launch them.
“This proportionality business can get pretty complicated.”

Anonymous said...

LBJ went to war in Vietnam to prevent Barry Goldwater from casting his as soft on communism. Olmert waged war on Gaza to prevent Likud from winning the next election.

Israel's defenders always ask what the United States would do if terrorists were firing missiles at us from Mexico. The answer is easy. The US woulds never treat Mexico so badly that it would elect a terrorist government who wanted to fire missiles at us. Livi calls Hamas a bunch of terrorists but doesn't seem to realize that's what her dad was too in Israel's earloy dads.

dick said...

Israel announced last night that it was calling a cease fire but would not remove its troops from Gaza until Hamas proved it was also going along with the cease fire. Now Hamas says it will not agree with the cease fire until Israel removes its troops. Result will be no cease fire or at least not one that will last.

As was said earlier in the thread, if Hamas stops the rockets, Israel will stop the attacks. If Israel stops the attacks, Hamas will fire the rockets. Again the result will be no cease fire or at least not one that will last.

What is Bambi gonna do about this now.

Nichevo said...

Duscany: Israel's defenders always ask what the United States would do if terrorists were firing missiles at us from Mexico. The answer is easy. The US woulds never treat Mexico so badly that it would elect a terrorist government who wanted to fire missiles at us.


I believe I just soiled myself.

Can you read, Duscany?

Oh please. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Anyone want to pick up the ball here? I ain't got the heart...

traditionalguy said...

Duscany.... The truth is a bitch. In 1945-1947 the Irgun did wage a war by guerrila attacks on The British who had commited to the Arabs to keep Jewish refugees from joining the old Settlers from 1900-1939 who had purchased land from absentee Turkish "owners" in a deserted back water called Palestine. No war was fought against any Palestinian resident who were welcome people in Jewish areas. Then in 1947 the UN Partition Plan allowed a Jewish State in 18% of palestine, and the next day after that act became official, the 5 surrounding Arab armies, with Modern British supplied weapons, launched their carefully planned War to exterminate every Jew in Palestine, much less in the 18% set aside area. This war plan told all Arabs to leave the 18% of palestine until the extermination there was finished for their own safety. Trouble is that down to today the warplan timing of the Return of the Arab Palestinians has been stalled by the Sabras who didn't get the message that they were supposed to die and have actually dared to fight back. Next year in Jerusalem has come at last and the Arabs want our sympathy or they promise to kill all Christians next. Come to think of it, they already included our slaughter as Phase Two of their War Plan. No thanks.

Anonymous said...

Tradirional Guy:

Not only is the truth a bitch, when Israelis get a hold of it it's fatal to kids. Israel got 350 or so this time out. Except for Israel apologists no one believes the IDF had to blow up for schools to stop snipers. This was a war of vengeance, to show that Israel hadn't lost its balls and to beat Likud in the next election. None of the justifications had anything to do with justice, morality or even self-defense.