The Zionist Extermination Squads In Beit Hanun;“

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The Zionist Extermination Squads In Beit Hanun;
“They Fired On Everyone. Children, Women, The Elderly”


November 08, 2006 Mehdi Lebouachera (AFP)

BEIT HANUN, Gaza Strip:

"Everything's destroyed. Like an earthquake," sighed Khaled al-Kafarna, his eyes wild with shock as he returned to his ruined home as Israeli armor rumbled out of Beit Hanun.

Israel's six-day operation, in which more than 60 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded, has reduced the northern Gaza Strip town to a wasteland.

Roads were left gouged out, homes, two mosques and a school destroyed, the historic old town pockmarked with bullet holes and shell craters, electricity pylons ripped from the ground and sewage spewing freely in the streets.

Local residents, picking their way through the wreckage, mourned their "martyrs," eyes red with fatigue, and filled with hate and tears.

"Like all the men in town, the Israelis arrested me at the beginning. This is the first time I've come home but I have nothing left," said Khaled.

The front of his home has collapsed. Walls have been ripped apart.

"They committed a war crime in Beit Hanun," he cried, his voice cracking, his hands gesticulating toward the heavens.

Around 40 Palestinians once made their home in the three-story building in the old town of Beit Hanun.

"We've lost everything," weighed in Khaled's sister-in-law, Aida Ali Yasji. "The only thing I have are these clothes lent to me by the neighbors where I was staying."

In the same spot, a lone minaret that withstood Israeli bulldozer teeth and shell fire is all that remains of one of the oldest mosques in Gaza, the Nasser Mosque. Singed copies of the Koran were being gathered up by children.

"This mosque is more than 800 years old. It is part of our heritage and thousands of people visited it every year," lamented Akram Abdel-Jawd Qassam, whose family have been caretakers of the holy site for half a century.

"They said there were fighters in the mosque but they are liars. I have the keys and it was closed. They occupied my house for two days and never asked me to open the doors to show them that it was empty," he said.

Like the faces of all local residents, there is anger etched across his heavily lined face. "Why did they destroy the houses? Did the houses fire rockets? And the electricity network and drinking water? Did they fire rockets as well?"

Fathiyya Abu Zareq, whose house is next to the mosque, interrupted him.

"They are crazy. They fired on everyone. Children, women, the elderly. Afterward they say the Palestinians are terrorists but it's not these people who are the real terrorists," he said.

Moin Abu Arbid received condolence calls from relatives who solemnly line up in their dozens to pay their respects over the death of his 48-year-old brother Marwan, killed when his home collapsed following an Israeli bombardment.

"They bombed blindly," he sighs, his eyes red.

But pain takes a back seat when recounting the humiliations suffered when Israeli soldiers rounded up all the local men aged between 16 and 45.

"They penned us like dogs in a field of the agricultural college," he said. "They were perhaps 5,000 people. For six days, the Israelis turned Beit Hanun into a giant Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib prison."

Palestinians said they were stripped down to their underwear upon arrival, fed only bread and tomatoes during a three-day detention in the field while they were brought one-by-one for questioning at the college.

The Savages Celebrate The Slaughter

November 06, 2006 By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Excerpts]

A brigade commander tells his soldiers, who killed 12 people in one day: "You've won 12:0," and the soldiers grin broadly.

This is the moral nadir we have reached, following a long slide down a slippery slope: Human life has become cheap.

Proof of this came at the end of the week from the big mouth of Major General Elazar Stern, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, who occasionally says true things.

"The IDF's excessive sensitivity to human life led to some of the failures in the Lebanon war - and this should not happen," Stern told Channel 7.

Stern should be praised for these forthright words: Those who embark with unbearable lightness on a futile war of choice cannot allow themselves the luxury of showing sensitivity for the lives of their soldiers. In war, soldiers not only kill, but are also killed. This should have been stated in advance.

No one asked who these fatalities were, whether they all deserved to die, and what benefit Israel derives from this wholesale killing.

The IDF has been operating in the town of Beit Hanun for several days now. Operation Autumn Clouds is ostensibly intended to target Qassam launchers, but meanwhile it has only brought more Qassams on Sderot - besides the killing, destruction and terror it sows in the heart of the 30,000-resident town.

I was at the Beit Hanun home of the Abu Ouda family twice recently. The first time was when a shell destroyed the family's home. The second time was when soldiers killed the father, his son and his daughter, who were innocent of any crime. And this was before Operation Autumn Clouds.

The statement by Yedioth Ahronoth's military commentator, Alex Fishman, that one of the operation's goals is drilling the troops for the "big operation," does not stir any protest.

That the IDF is embarking on a "training operation" in a dense population center, sowing death and destruction - does this not show a frightening contempt for human life?

These futile operations will not stop the Qassams, which are aimed at giving us and the rest of the world a painful reminder of the imprisoned and boycotted Gaza residents' distress, which no one would notice if it were not for the Qassams.

I live in the US.I have the "news" on constantly because it's my boyfriends obsession.In the past week I have heard endless repetitive commentary about the elections and only one brief mention of this horrific incident.When will people understand that this kind of "terror" creates more terrorists then it will ever get rid of.Then more innocent lives are lost on both"sides".Mans "inhumanity" never ceases to terrify and disgust me.I wont get into the politics about this situation or Iraq,Sudan.....it convinces me that this world is hell for to many people.The cycle of hate and destruction continues.

So who are you manalitwist? Only 45 posts, but you are not a newbee.

Are you using a new name after being banned?

Your first post was an anti jew political statement and most of all others are making political statements. All newbees start tentatively, usually in "getting to know each other", but not you.