Israel, Hamas Defy Calls For Cease-Fire

Fighting Friday Amoung Heaviest In Two-Week Conflict; Death Toll Approximatedly 780

(CBS/ AP)  Israeli jets and ground troops hammered at Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip and Islamic militants fired barrages of rockets at southern Israeli cities Friday, ignoring a U.N. resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire after two weeks of combat.

The Israeli prime minister's office said the U.N. action was not practical, and senior Cabinet ministers decided to press on with the offensive. Israel will stop only when it succeeds in ending rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled territory, the government said.

Quoting from a communiqué by the Israeli government, CBS News correspondent Richard Roth said, "The Israeli defense forces will continue operations in order to defend Israeli citizens and will carry out the mission with which it has been assigned."

"Is it really logical to expect Israel to hold both hands behind our back and do nothing?" Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman told CBS News. "We will act to protect our people."

Hopes that Thursday night's U.N. Security Council resolution would end Gaza's worst fighting in decades were further tempered by dismissive remarks from Hamas, angry that it was not consulted during exhaustive diplomatic efforts at the world body.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called on the Palestinian resistance to continue to fight, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.

Both sides have rejected the cease fire because neither side has the result it wants from this conflict. Israel is not only demanding the rocket fire stop, but that Hamas be kept from re-arming itself. And Hamas keeps fighting because it wants the Israeli blockade that is strangling Gaza, lifted, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips from the Israel-Gaza border.

Israel launched a heavy air bombardment Dec. 27 in response to intensified rocket fire that has disrupted life in southern Israel. A week later, ground troops moved in, with artillery and tank fire that has contributed to a surge in civilian casualties that continued Friday on Gaza's ruined streets.

Seven members of the Salha family were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their house overnight, militants said. On Friday, crowds in neat rows bowed in prayer in front of their bodies, wrapped in funeral shrouds and flags.

In a hospital in Beit Lahiya, a northern Gaza town that has been particularly hard-hit, doctors treated a young girl whose left arm was torn off at the shoulder. She lay on a stretcher with a terrified expression on her face.

Such scenes have triggered anger throughout the Islamic world and elsewhere. There have been daily protests in the Middle East and in Europe, where there also has been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

Allegations -- some of them supported by U.N. officials in Gaza -- continue to be made of Israel targeting of civilians, Phillips reports.

One woman told CBS News that 20 members of her family were herded into a house by the Israelis, that her husband was shot and that tank fire badly injured her children. Israel denies these accounts.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it is difficult to protect civilians in a place as densely populated as Gaza.

"It's also an area in which Hamas participates in activities like human shields and using buildings that are not designated as military buildings to hide their fighters," she told reporters. "So it's hard."

In Geneva, the top U.N. human rights official called for an independent investigation of possible war crimes in Gaza for an incident in which Palestinians said Israeli forces shelled a house, killing 30 people. Israel's military said it was not aware of the specific incident but would not have deliberately targeted the building.

By Friday evening, more than 20 Palestinians had been reported killed during the day, pushing the death toll for the two-week conflict to around 780, according to Gaza health officials who said at least half of those killed were civilians.

Thirteen Israelis have been killed - four of them by militant rockets, the rest in battle in Gaza.

The Security Council resolution called for an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

While the call was tantamount to a demand on Israel and Hamas to stop fighting, it did not require that Israel's troops withdraw until there was a durable cease-fire. The resolution also urged U.N. member states to intensify efforts to provide guarantees in Gaza to sustain a lasting truce, including prevention of arms smuggling - a key Israeli concern.

A six-month truce unraveled in November, and Israeli officials have said that lull allowed Hamas to bring in more advanced weaponry through hundreds of smuggling tunnels snaking beneath the Gaza border from Egypt's Sinai Desert.

In Israel's first official response to the U.N. resolution, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said more Hamas rockets fired Friday "only prove that the U.N.'s decision is not practical and will not be kept in practice by the Palestinian murder organizations."

Senior Cabinet ministers issued a statement saying the military offensive would continue to protect Israeli citizens.

Hamas also dismissed the resolution, and spokesmen expressed annoyance they were not consulted.

"Nobody consulted Hamas or talked to Hamas. Nobody put Hamas in the picture and yet Hamas is required to accept it. This is unacceptable," Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas official based in Syria, told Al-Arabiya television.

Hamas has said it won't accept any cease-fire deal that does not include the full opening of Gaza's border crossings. The U.N. resolution emphasized the need to open all crossings, which Israel and Egypt have kept sealed since Hamas militants forcibly seized control of the territory 18 months ago.

Israeli leaders oppose that step because it would allow Hamas to strengthen its hold on Gaza.

In Lebanon, Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Al-Arabiya that the group "is not interested in it (the U.N. resolution) because it does not meet the demands of the movement."

Seven Hamas officials crossed into Egypt on Friday through the Gaza border crossing at Rafah, on their way to Cairo for Egyptian-hosted negotiations on a truce with Israel.

The Islamic militant group, which was behind suicide bombings that killed hundreds of Israelis in past years, has been largely shunned by Western powers since coming to political power in 2006 Palestinian elections.

That isolation has only deepened since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 in five days of fighting with the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Moderate Arab governments as well as the U.S. and its allies in Europe have supported Abbas' government, which controls only the West Bank.

The division has complicated efforts to advance peace efforts and reach a cease-fire in the latest fighting.

Despite the cool reception to the Security Council vote, the foreign ministers of Germany and Spain planned to visit the region to promote the U.N. resolution.

Israeli military operations showed no signs of abating Friday, despite a three-hour lull in fighting that has been instituted for three days running to allow aid to reach Gaza's distressed people.

The Israelis say that they will continue to fight, but they have not yet decided whether to move to a threatened third phase of their action and push into the urban areas of Gaza, an action virtually guaranteed to raise the death toll on both sides, Phillips reports.

One Israeli airstrike killed two Hamas militants and another unidentified man, while another flattened a five-story building in northern Gaza, killing the seven members of the Salha family, including an infant, Hamas officials said.

Two Israeli missiles clipped the roof of a building housing the offices of Iran's English-language Press TV and a sister Arabic-language network, slightly injuring one person, the channel's correspondent, Ashraf Shannon, said. The military said it had no knowledge of any attacks in that area.

Heavy clashes were reported northeast of Gaza City as Israeli soldiers advanced under the cover of Apache helicopters firing machine guns.

Fares Alwan, 49, said he was eating with his family when their house came under fire.

"I took my kids and wife and started running away for cover," Alwan said. "We saw wounded people in the street while we were running."

Later Friday, some residents received recorded phone messages said to be from Israel's military warning of a planned escalation. A military spokesman said he had no knowledge of the calls.

Hamas rockets hit in and around two of the largest southern cities in Israel, Beersheba and Ashkelon, but no casualties were reported.

In Gaza's rubble-strewn streets, there was concern of a worsening humanitarian situation on the second day of a U.N. suspension of aid deliveries and the Red Cross restricted its medical operations to Gaza City, where it has a team assisting surgeons at the main Shifa hospital.

The decisions by the two organizations came after they said Israeli fire killed two contractors delivering aid for the U.N. and injured the driver of a Red Cross truck in separate incidents Thursday.

With just over half the territory's population of 1.4 million relying on the U.N. for food, U.N. officials said Friday that they planned to resume aid operations "as soon as practical," based on Israeli assurances that aid workers would be better protected.

Gaza's people have become increasingly desperate for food, water, fuel and medical assistance. One million people are without electricity and 750,000 are without running water, according to the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency.

In related news:

President-elect Barack Obama's team is likely to seek a back-channel, clandestine dialogue with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, according to a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The Guardian report says Obama's likely Mideast-envoy-to-be, Richard Haass, is in favor of creating a dialogue with the group.

"This is going to be an administration that is committed to negotiating with critical parties on critical issues," another source with knowledge of recent discussions among Obama's foreign policy team told the newspaper.

Israeli troops evacuated Palestinian civilians to a house in Gaza City and then shelled the building 24 hours later, killing 30 people inside, according to a U.N. agency report based on witness testimony.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report released Thursday added details to an incident previously reported by The Associated Press and an Israeli human rights group.

The Israeli military had no comment on the report Friday.

There were 110 people in the house when it was shelled, the agency said. The 30 people reported killed is a far higher figure than in other accounts.

The U.N. agency said a Red Cross medical team was blocked from reaching the area until three days later. Rescuers were allowed in on foot, without ambulances.

The U.N.'s top human rights official has called for an independent investigation of possible war crimes in Gaza and Israel.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says the harm to civilians in Israel caused by Hamas rockets is unacceptable. But she says Israel must abide by international humanitarian law regardless of Hamas' actions.

Pillay says both parties must care for the wounded and avoid targeting health workers, hospitals and ambulances.

The Gaza conflict continues to spark reaction from around the world.

In France, a juvenile court judge filed preliminary charges against four French teenagers accused of attacking a Jewish girl, a judicial official said Friday, amid tensions around Europe over the fighting in Gaza.

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is headed to the Middle East on Friday in support of international attempts to reach a lasting cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.

And in Malaysia, some 3,000 mostly Muslim protesters burned Israeli flags and effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush in demonstration against Israel's invasion of Gaza.

© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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by gaye5 January 10, 2009 11:02 AM EST

Wanton disregard for the rights and safety of civilians. The world will, of course, ignore this. "Muslim separatists burn Christian homes in Philippines," from Radio Australia News, January 8.

Muslim separatists have torched the houses of 30 Christian families in an attack on a southern Philippines village.
"Dr. Khan, a fervent nationalist, has said, ''All Western countries,'' he was once quoted as saying, ''are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam.''

Reply to this comment

by gaye5 January 10, 2009 10:20 AM EST

Oh come on n8yvn29, do you mean to tell me that the people here who can see that Israel should be able to protect themselves are actually paid and sponsored by Israel''''s secret service? You have to be joking..
I am an Australian and am lucky enough to get more news than you do in America, simply because we are a smaller country with less news of our own so we have to have outside news, and we have been watching the rockets being fired into Israel for years and wondered how long Israel would keep taking it before they retaliated.
Israel gave the GAza to Palastine for peace which didnt happen, they even left the green houses behind costing Israel 14 million when they could have taken them into israel for themselves and what did the Palastines do to all this food and employment that they would have had, they leveled it to the ground, yep 14 million dollars worth.. sure sounds like this tiny little country which is surrounded by millions of Muslims is the problem eh...

Reply to this comment

by voidmaster-2009 January 10, 2009 8:38 AM EST

patriot9, you have your history a little mixed up. You say that Israel should have been established in Germany, since it was there that Hitler killed six million Jews.

Posted by one4gipper
***
Actually, the vast majority of Jews killed during the Holocaust were killed in Poland.

Reply to this comment

by voidmaster-2009 January 10, 2009 8:36 AM EST

A question for all who think that Israel is the villain here: Just what, in your mind, would be a legitimate response from Israel to rockets being fired across its border into its territory, killing its citizens?

Reply to this comment

by emperorlotku January 10, 2009 8:01 AM EST

Why should Hamas heed the UN call for a cease fire. That would stop their ability to profit from weapons, drugs, alcohol and prostitution running. The tunnels are not used to move food and medicine. They are for illegal black market goods that Hamas gets their cut of the profits. That money goes into offshore accounts just like Yassir Arafat and his henchmen did. Needless to say, Hamas will never keep a peace because there is no profit in peace. The suffering of the Palestinians is directly related to the corruption of the Hamas leadership. The warmongers don''t know how to work legally for a living.

Reply to this comment

by one4gipper January 10, 2009 7:54 AM EST

n8yvn29, define "RIGHTFULLY AND HISTORICALLY." The fact is that Palentine was occupied by the British in WWI because the Islamic Caliphate joined the Second Reich in against Britain, France, Russia and, later, the United States. There was no grievance on the part of the Ottomans against Britain or France. Their Empire was crumbling and it was a war of pure expansionism. The Ottomans were trying to regain land that they had lost to the Russians in the prior century. It was the British that allowed Jewish immigration into the land of the vanquished Muslims. However, the Muslims brought the event upon themselves. One may argue that Britain should not have allowed European Jews into Palestine. But the fact is that they did and the UN sanctioned the creation of Israel three decades later.

Reply to this comment

by n8yvn29 January 10, 2009 7:43 AM EST

I just wonder how many of the posts on this blog are paid and sponsored by Israel''s secret service? It''s obvious the Israelis have a lot to lose (obscene amounts of hard-earned American tax dollars) should American public opinion turn against them for their butchery of women and children. Just when will the Palestinian side get a fair shake in the media %u2013 especially since they are fighting for land which is RIGHTFULLY AND HISTORICALLY THEIRS!

Reply to this comment

by one4gipper January 10, 2009 7:34 AM EST

Salah-el-din, yes, and the video of the Hamas gunmen shooting the wedding guests for singing and playing music -- that was all staged so the the world would believe that Hamas is a barbaric, murdering organization. It is a Muslim maxim that war is deceit, not a western maxim. Throwing acid in the faces of shool girls did not happen. The honor killings of two teenage Muslim girls in Texas for dating Kaffr was planted in the press to disparage Islam. It is all a big lie. Islam really is a peaceful religion that does not behead journalists on video and publish the gruesome event on the internet. No bombs were really set off in the subways of Madrid or the streets of Bali. And, the World Trade Center has been camouflaged so that we cannot see it anymore. Here is my advice to you. Get your Haj in now before Mecca is turned into a sea of glass, because the event is inevitable.

Reply to this comment

by one4gipper January 10, 2009 7:17 AM EST

patriot9, you have your history a little mixed up. You say that Israel should have been established in Germany, since it was there that Hitler killed six million Jews. First, at certainly not most important, is that one division of Hitler''s Waffen SS were Muslims provided by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. They were complicit in the killing of Jews.

However, more important is the fact that Jewish immigration into Palestine was sanctioned by the British, beginning with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It was WWI and not WWII that planted the seed for the Zionist state. Note also that the Ottoman army was made up of two-thirds Turks and one-third Arabs and others from the Ottoman Empire, including Palestinians. The icing on the cake is that in 1915 the Ottomans massacred up to 1.5 million non-Muslim Armenians, including Christians and Jews, in cold blood.

Reply to this comment

by salah-el-din January 10, 2009 7:00 AM EST

The Pope never said that a concentration camp is a bad thing for the Palies. - azirine

ARE YOU REALLY THAT STUPID? I BET YOU VOTED FOR BUSH - TWICE!

Reply to this comment

by salah-el-din January 10, 2009 6:56 AM EST

one4gipper: an easily manipulated moron

Ever since Hamas was ELECTED in Gaza the Zionists and Bush neocons have been trying to overthrow them. They concocted a Fatah "uprising" that failed miserably. The Fatah members who have been killed are nothing but "Quislings". Just as in WWII, the only good "Quisling" is a "dead Quisling"!

Reply to this comment

by one4gipper January 10, 2009 6:37 AM EST

For over a year Hamas has been rounding up and killing Fatah members in Gaza. It is responsibile for more Palestinians'' deaths than the entire Israeli operation. Where was the western press? There is a video on Atlas Shrugged of truck loads of Hamas gunmen pulling up to an Islamic wedding and indiscriminately shooting the wedding guests. The groom was beaten to death. The crime? Singing and playing music. Hamas just enacted laws which legalize the cruxification of Christians. Just who are these people that the press is now caterwauling over? Is the fixation of the press on Israel just a resurgence of antisemitism?

Reply to this comment

by salah-el-din January 10, 2009 6:24 AM EST

OK Western Christians, here''s what the Pope had to say a few days ago:

"Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp."

Reply to this comment

by salah-el-din January 10, 2009 6:22 AM EST

OK Western Christians, here''s what the Pope had to say a few days ago:

"Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp."

Reply to this comment

by patriotic9 January 10, 2009 5:16 AM EST

Posted by Gaye5 at 01:53 AM : Jan 10, 2009

It''s good to know that you are not a religious person and hence can not use any religious text to justify racism and injustice.
It must be very easy for you to understand that if Concentration Camps were in Germany, Israel should have been founded in Germany, not in Palestine.
If Hitler was responsible for the killing of innocent people in Europe, price should not have been paid by those Palestinians who can''t even speak the language spoked by Hitler.
You also must understand that both of the above are live example of worst injustice in the history of mankind.
I don''t care about the religious belief of either Palestinians or the European invaders in Palestine.
If you have any problem with muslims in your country, you should deal with that your self, instead of using US Tax dollars and support, and I hope you do exactly what I am saying. That''s not the case with the European invaders in Palestine though. They snatch more then $3 billion a year from our tax money so that we can buy HATRED, TERRORISM and 9/11 for a NON-AMERICAN CAUSE, NON-AMERICAN PEOPLE and a NON-AMERICAN LAND.
You must also understand that the ideology of human beings not being born equal but born as GOD-CHOSEN or GOD-NEGLECETD based on their RACE or FAMILY and hence either being promised a land in the Middle East or not being promised a single penny is nothing but RACISM.

Reply to this comment

by patriotic9 January 10, 2009 5:16 AM EST

Posted by Gaye5 at 01:53 AM : Jan 10, 2009

It''s good to know that you are not a religious person and hence can not use any religious text to justify racism and injustice.
It must be very easy for you to understand that if Concentration Camps were in Germany, Israel should have been founded in Germany, not in Palestine.
If Hitler was responsible for the killing of innocent people in Europe, price should not have been paid by those Palestinians who can''t even speak the language spoked by Hitler.
You also must understand that both of the above are live example of worst injustice in the history of mankind.
I don''t care about the religious belief of either Palestinians or the European invaders in Palestine.
If you have any problem with muslims in your country, you should deal with that your self, instead of using US Tax dollars and support, and I hope you do exactly what I am saying. That''s not the case with the European invaders in Palestine though. They snatch more then $3 billion a year from our tax money so that we can buy HATRED, TERRORISM and 9/11 for a NON-AMERICAN CAUSE, NON-AMERICAN PEOPLE and a NON-AMERICAN LAND.
You must also understand that the ideology of human beings not being born equal but born as GOD-CHOSEN or GOD-NEGLECETD based on their RACE or FAMILY and hence either being promised a land in the Middle East or not being promised a single penny is nothing but RACISM.

Reply to this comment

by salah-el-din January 10, 2009 5:02 AM EST

DO NOT BELIEVE THE ZIONIST-BUSHITE LIES!
The fact is that HAMAS WAS ELECTED IN GAZA. The Bush
administration and Israel have done everything in their power to overthrow the LEGITIMATE government in Gaza,including a blockade, cutting off utilities, promoting a staged uprising by Fatah against Hamas, and of course, the continuing "targeted assassinations" (i.e. MURDERS) of Hamas officials. All of these were ACTS OF WAR perpetrated by Israel and the U.S. against the LEGITIMATELY elected Hamas government, so they had a right to defend themselves!

Reply to this comment

by gaye5 January 10, 2009 4:53 AM EST

patriotic9, you said... You are a live example of what I said few minutes ago, I quote, "Their unconditional support to racism and injustice.
Well, I am sure that many on here would say the same of you, your unconditional support to racism and injustice against tiny little Israel.
There is non stop world wide Muslim violence and out of about 22 big conflicts in the world today 20 of them are Muslims and someone else, they cant seem to get along with their neighbours no matter where they live..
In my country we brought them in to help them get away from the oppression and they rewarded us by forming gangs, killing and gang raping our girls, now there are areas where once we could stroll along at night, but now no one can go because of Muslim gangs, the police are being called all the time.. sure helps us to like Muslims eh.. They demand their sharia be introduced, they demand we don''t have Christmas, or Christmas carols, grace before meals in kindergartens and schools, they demand that we don''t have naivety scenes in shopping malls as all this and much more offends them. They demand that we have rooms for them to pray in in hospitals and airports, they demand that their beds are facing the right way in hospitals, in fact they demand everything.. IN OUR COUNTRY...

Reply to this comment

by patriotic9 January 10, 2009 4:45 AM EST

It is a shame that you said nothing all the time that Hamas was sending rockets into Israel, and now that Israel has decided to protect its own children that you think it is criminal that they do so.. It is not Israels fault if Hamas makes sure that they put their weapons in highly densely populated areas, no normal people do this..

Posted by Gaye5 at 01:33 AM : Jan 10, 2009

Hamas is justified in killing those people who were brought into Palestine after WWII to occupy the land of those Palestinians by force who can''t even speak the language spoken by Hitler.
Concentration Camps were in Germany and Israel was founded in Palestine!
What type of joke is that?
If people from any other continent even try to occupy American land in the name of any religious belief, every single American has the right to either expel or kill those invaders.
People like you have been justifying killing of Palestinians for so long and have been lying while the whole world is watching the images of those children killed by those Rasict who think that they are CHOSEN people of god, not because of anything great with their actions but because of being born in a race or family. I don''t want to see another 9/11 because of people like you!

Reply to this comment

by gaye5 January 10, 2009 4:42 AM EST

Oh come on patriotic9, please dont show your ignorance that everyone on here who likes to see balanced media reporting is a religious person.. surely you have more brains than that.. Trying to belittle others into silence is being a bully.. many on here who have the brains to look things up for themselves instead of taking what the media says as truth are not Christians or Jews.. I am not religious, I am not a Jew and I am not even American..

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[gaye5]

Wanton disregard for the rights and safety of civilians. The world will, of course, ignore this. "Muslim separatists burn Christian homes in Philippines," from Radio Australia News, January 8.

Muslim separatists have torched the houses of 30 Christian families in an attack on a southern Philippines village.
"Dr. Khan, a fervent nationalist, has said, ''All Western countries,'' he was once quoted as saying, ''are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam.''

[gaye5]

Oh come on n8yvn29, do you mean to tell me that the people here who can see that Israel should be able to protect themselves are actually paid and sponsored by Israel''''s secret service? You have to be joking..
I am an Australian and am lucky enough to get more news than you do in America, simply because we are a smaller country with less news of our own so we have to have outside news, and we have been watching the rockets being fired into Israel for years and wondered how long Israel would keep taking it before they retaliated.
Israel gave the GAza to Palastine for peace which didnt happen, they even left the green houses behind costing Israel 14 million when they could have taken them into israel for themselves and what did the Palastines do to all this food and employment that they would have had, they leveled it to the ground, yep 14 million dollars worth.. sure sounds like this tiny little country which is surrounded by millions of Muslims is the problem eh...

[voidmaster-2009]

patriot9, you have your history a little mixed up. You say that Israel should have been established in Germany, since it was there that Hitler killed six million Jews.

Posted by one4gipper
***
Actually, the vast majority of Jews killed during the Holocaust were killed in Poland.

[voidmaster-2009]

A question for all who think that Israel is the villain here: Just what, in your mind, would be a legitimate response from Israel to rockets being fired across its border into its territory, killing its citizens?

[emperorlotku]

Why should Hamas heed the UN call for a cease fire. That would stop their ability to profit from weapons, drugs, alcohol and prostitution running. The tunnels are not used to move food and medicine. They are for illegal black market goods that Hamas gets their cut of the profits. That money goes into offshore accounts just like Yassir Arafat and his henchmen did. Needless to say, Hamas will never keep a peace because there is no profit in peace. The suffering of the Palestinians is directly related to the corruption of the Hamas leadership. The warmongers don''t know how to work legally for a living.

[one4gipper]

n8yvn29, define "RIGHTFULLY AND HISTORICALLY." The fact is that Palentine was occupied by the British in WWI because the Islamic Caliphate joined the Second Reich in against Britain, France, Russia and, later, the United States. There was no grievance on the part of the Ottomans against Britain or France. Their Empire was crumbling and it was a war of pure expansionism. The Ottomans were trying to regain land that they had lost to the Russians in the prior century. It was the British that allowed Jewish immigration into the land of the vanquished Muslims. However, the Muslims brought the event upon themselves. One may argue that Britain should not have allowed European Jews into Palestine. But the fact is that they did and the UN sanctioned the creation of Israel three decades later.

[n8yvn29]

I just wonder how many of the posts on this blog are paid and sponsored by Israel''s secret service? It''s obvious the Israelis have a lot to lose (obscene amounts of hard-earned American tax dollars) should American public opinion turn against them for their butchery of women and children. Just when will the Palestinian side get a fair shake in the media %u2013 especially since they are fighting for land which is RIGHTFULLY AND HISTORICALLY THEIRS!

[one4gipper]

Salah-el-din, yes, and the video of the Hamas gunmen shooting the wedding guests for singing and playing music -- that was all staged so the the world would believe that Hamas is a barbaric, murdering organization. It is a Muslim maxim that war is deceit, not a western maxim. Throwing acid in the faces of shool girls did not happen. The honor killings of two teenage Muslim girls in Texas for dating Kaffr was planted in the press to disparage Islam. It is all a big lie. Islam really is a peaceful religion that does not behead journalists on video and publish the gruesome event on the internet. No bombs were really set off in the subways of Madrid or the streets of Bali. And, the World Trade Center has been camouflaged so that we cannot see it anymore. Here is my advice to you. Get your Haj in now before Mecca is turned into a sea of glass, because the event is inevitable.

[one4gipper]

patriot9, you have your history a little mixed up. You say that Israel should have been established in Germany, since it was there that Hitler killed six million Jews. First, at certainly not most important, is that one division of Hitler''s Waffen SS were Muslims provided by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. They were complicit in the killing of Jews.

However, more important is the fact that Jewish immigration into Palestine was sanctioned by the British, beginning with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It was WWI and not WWII that planted the seed for the Zionist state. Note also that the Ottoman army was made up of two-thirds Turks and one-third Arabs and others from the Ottoman Empire, including Palestinians. The icing on the cake is that in 1915 the Ottomans massacred up to 1.5 million non-Muslim Armenians, including Christians and Jews, in cold blood.

[salah-el-din]

The Pope never said that a concentration camp is a bad thing for the Palies. - azirine

ARE YOU REALLY THAT STUPID? I BET YOU VOTED FOR BUSH - TWICE!

[salah-el-din]

one4gipper: an easily manipulated moron

Ever since Hamas was ELECTED in Gaza the Zionists and Bush neocons have been trying to overthrow them. They concocted a Fatah "uprising" that failed miserably. The Fatah members who have been killed are nothing but "Quislings". Just as in WWII, the only good "Quisling" is a "dead Quisling"!

[one4gipper]

For over a year Hamas has been rounding up and killing Fatah members in Gaza. It is responsibile for more Palestinians'' deaths than the entire Israeli operation. Where was the western press? There is a video on Atlas Shrugged of truck loads of Hamas gunmen pulling up to an Islamic wedding and indiscriminately shooting the wedding guests. The groom was beaten to death. The crime? Singing and playing music. Hamas just enacted laws which legalize the cruxification of Christians. Just who are these people that the press is now caterwauling over? Is the fixation of the press on Israel just a resurgence of antisemitism?

[salah-el-din]

OK Western Christians, here''s what the Pope had to say a few days ago:

"Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp."

[salah-el-din]

OK Western Christians, here''s what the Pope had to say a few days ago:

"Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp."

[patriotic9]

Posted by Gaye5 at 01:53 AM : Jan 10, 2009

It''s good to know that you are not a religious person and hence can not use any religious text to justify racism and injustice.
It must be very easy for you to understand that if Concentration Camps were in Germany, Israel should have been founded in Germany, not in Palestine.
If Hitler was responsible for the killing of innocent people in Europe, price should not have been paid by those Palestinians who can''t even speak the language spoked by Hitler.
You also must understand that both of the above are live example of worst injustice in the history of mankind.
I don''t care about the religious belief of either Palestinians or the European invaders in Palestine.
If you have any problem with muslims in your country, you should deal with that your self, instead of using US Tax dollars and support, and I hope you do exactly what I am saying. That''s not the case with the European invaders in Palestine though. They snatch more then $3 billion a year from our tax money so that we can buy HATRED, TERRORISM and 9/11 for a NON-AMERICAN CAUSE, NON-AMERICAN PEOPLE and a NON-AMERICAN LAND.
You must also understand that the ideology of human beings not being born equal but born as GOD-CHOSEN or GOD-NEGLECETD based on their RACE or FAMILY and hence either being promised a land in the Middle East or not being promised a single penny is nothing but RACISM.

[patriotic9]

Posted by Gaye5 at 01:53 AM : Jan 10, 2009

It''s good to know that you are not a religious person and hence can not use any religious text to justify racism and injustice.
It must be very easy for you to understand that if Concentration Camps were in Germany, Israel should have been founded in Germany, not in Palestine.
If Hitler was responsible for the killing of innocent people in Europe, price should not have been paid by those Palestinians who can''t even speak the language spoked by Hitler.
You also must understand that both of the above are live example of worst injustice in the history of mankind.
I don''t care about the religious belief of either Palestinians or the European invaders in Palestine.
If you have any problem with muslims in your country, you should deal with that your self, instead of using US Tax dollars and support, and I hope you do exactly what I am saying. That''s not the case with the European invaders in Palestine though. They snatch more then $3 billion a year from our tax money so that we can buy HATRED, TERRORISM and 9/11 for a NON-AMERICAN CAUSE, NON-AMERICAN PEOPLE and a NON-AMERICAN LAND.
You must also understand that the ideology of human beings not being born equal but born as GOD-CHOSEN or GOD-NEGLECETD based on their RACE or FAMILY and hence either being promised a land in the Middle East or not being promised a single penny is nothing but RACISM.

[salah-el-din]

DO NOT BELIEVE THE ZIONIST-BUSHITE LIES!
The fact is that HAMAS WAS ELECTED IN GAZA. The Bush
administration and Israel have done everything in their power to overthrow the LEGITIMATE government in Gaza,including a blockade, cutting off utilities, promoting a staged uprising by Fatah against Hamas, and of course, the continuing "targeted assassinations" (i.e. MURDERS) of Hamas officials. All of these were ACTS OF WAR perpetrated by Israel and the U.S. against the LEGITIMATELY elected Hamas government, so they had a right to defend themselves!

[gaye5]

patriotic9, you said... You are a live example of what I said few minutes ago, I quote, "Their unconditional support to racism and injustice.
Well, I am sure that many on here would say the same of you, your unconditional support to racism and injustice against tiny little Israel.
There is non stop world wide Muslim violence and out of about 22 big conflicts in the world today 20 of them are Muslims and someone else, they cant seem to get along with their neighbours no matter where they live..
In my country we brought them in to help them get away from the oppression and they rewarded us by forming gangs, killing and gang raping our girls, now there are areas where once we could stroll along at night, but now no one can go because of Muslim gangs, the police are being called all the time.. sure helps us to like Muslims eh.. They demand their sharia be introduced, they demand we don''t have Christmas, or Christmas carols, grace before meals in kindergartens and schools, they demand that we don''t have naivety scenes in shopping malls as all this and much more offends them. They demand that we have rooms for them to pray in in hospitals and airports, they demand that their beds are facing the right way in hospitals, in fact they demand everything.. IN OUR COUNTRY...

[patriotic9]

It is a shame that you said nothing all the time that Hamas was sending rockets into Israel, and now that Israel has decided to protect its own children that you think it is criminal that they do so.. It is not Israels fault if Hamas makes sure that they put their weapons in highly densely populated areas, no normal people do this..

Posted by Gaye5 at 01:33 AM : Jan 10, 2009

Hamas is justified in killing those people who were brought into Palestine after WWII to occupy the land of those Palestinians by force who can''t even speak the language spoken by Hitler.
Concentration Camps were in Germany and Israel was founded in Palestine!
What type of joke is that?
If people from any other continent even try to occupy American land in the name of any religious belief, every single American has the right to either expel or kill those invaders.
People like you have been justifying killing of Palestinians for so long and have been lying while the whole world is watching the images of those children killed by those Rasict who think that they are CHOSEN people of god, not because of anything great with their actions but because of being born in a race or family. I don''t want to see another 9/11 because of people like you!

[gaye5]

Oh come on patriotic9, please dont show your ignorance that everyone on here who likes to see balanced media reporting is a religious person.. surely you have more brains than that.. Trying to belittle others into silence is being a bully.. many on here who have the brains to look things up for themselves instead of taking what the media says as truth are not Christians or Jews.. I am not religious, I am not a Jew and I am not even American..