And , for me , you do the best that you take your job seriously , i dont …
and about the sandwich it could be a gremlin 
:lol:
That sums me up. Israel has and continues to play on the holocaust to justify all and every action. The Palestinians have and continue to play on their injustices to justify their actions.
At the end of the day they are all occupying the same small space and the only people who suffer are those not in power.
They can either live together or kill each other as far as Im concerned right now and I dont really care which they choose, they are both as bad as each other and I dont see why we should waste either time or money on them as they have nothing to offer us or the world in general.
The whole fucking lot of them could make billions from tourism if they all only realised that their sitting in the holy land and have hundreds of nice tourist spots for Arabs, Muslims and Christians to visit.
Bloody idiots!
The ground incursion has begun…
Israeli ground forces launch Gaza invasion
500 Palestinians killed in just over a week; Hamas rockets slay 4 Israelis
The Associated Press
updated 7:02 a.m. ET, Sun., Jan. 4, 2009
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, bisecting the coastal territory and surrounding its biggest city as the new phase of a devastating offensive against Hamas gained momentum.
Thousands of soldiers in three brigade-size formations pushed into Gaza after nightfall Saturday, beginning a long-awaited ground offensive after a week of intense aerial bombardment. Black smoke billowed over Gaza City at first light and bursts of machine gun fire rang out.
TV footage showed Israeli troops with night-vision goggles and camouflage face paint marching in single file. Artillery barrages preceded their advance, and they moved through fields and orchards following bomb-sniffing dogs ensuring their routes had not been booby-trapped.
The military said troops killed or wounded dozens of militant fighters, but Palestinian medical teams in Gaza, unable to move because of the fighting, could not provide accurate casualty figures.
Hamas said only four fighters had been killed. Gaza health officials said around 20 civilians had also died in airstrikes and shelling. They included a 12-year-old girl, five members of the same family and another eight civilians killed by a tank shell in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.
500 Palestinians killed
The new deaths brought the toll in the Gaza Strip since Saturday to more than 500. Palestinian and U.N. officials say at least 100 civilians are among the dead.
Army ambulances were seen bringing Israeli wounded to a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. The military reported 30 Israeli troops were wounded, two seriously, in the opening hours of the offensive.
In his first public comments since the ground operation was launched, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet on Sunday that Israel could not allow its civilians to continue to be targeted by rockets from Gaza.
“This morning I can look every one you in the eyes and say the government did everything before deciding to go ahead with the operation,” he said.
A senior military officer said Hamas was well-prepared for the Israeli incursion into Gaza, a densely populated territory of 1.4 million where militants operate and easily hide in the crowded urban landscape. He said the operation was “not a rapid one that would end in hours or a few days.”
Still, he said, “We have no intention of staying in the Gaza Strip for the long term.” He spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with army regulations.
Israel says the objective is to restore quiet to Israel’s south, not to topple Hamas or reoccupy Gaza.
‘Graveyard’ for Israeli forces
Hamas threatened to turn Gaza into a “graveyard” for Israeli forces.
“You entered like rats,” Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan told Israeli soldiers in a statement on Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV. “Gaza will be a graveyard for you, God willing.”
The ground operation is the second phase in an offensive that began as a weeklong aerial onslaught aimed at halting Hamas rocket fire that has reached deeper and deeper into Israel, threatening major cities and one-eighth of Israel’s population.
Rocket fire has persisted, however, and several rockets fell in Israel on Sunday morning, causing no casualties. In much of southern Israel school has been canceled and life has been largely paralyzed.
While the air offensive presented little risk for Israel’s army, sending in ground troops is a much more dangerous proposition. Hamas is believed to have some 20,000 gunman who know the dense urban landscape intimately. For months, Israeli leaders had resisted a ground invasion, fearing heavy casualties.
Israel also has called up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers, which defense officials said could enable a far broader ground offensive as the operation’s third phase. The troops could also be used in the event Palestinian militants in the West Bank or Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon decide to launch attacks. Hezbollah opened a war against Israel in 2006 when it was in the midst of a large operation in Gaza.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the military’s preparations are classified.
Cut-off northern Gaza
An armored force south of Gaza City penetrated as deep as the abandoned settlement of Netzarim, which Israel left along with other Israeli communities when it pulled out of Gaza in 2005, both military officials and Palestinian witnesses said.
That move effectively cut off Gaza City, the territory’s largest population center with about 400,000 people, from the rest of the territory to the south.
The offensive focused on northern Gaza, where most of the rockets are fired into Israel, but at least one incursion was reported in the southern part of the strip. Hamas uses smuggling tunnels along the southern border with Egypt to bring in weapons.
Ground forces had not entered major Gaza towns and cities by Sunday morning, instead fighting in rural communities and open areas militants often use to launch rockets and mortar rounds. Militants also fire from heavily populated neighborhoods.
Beit Lahiya was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting. An artillery shell killed eight civilians there as they were fleeing their homes to seek refuge at a nearby school, according to paramedics and Dr. Said Judeh, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in town.
The home of a farmer in the Beit Lahiya area was hit twice by artillery, killing a five members of one family, Judeh said.
An airstrike hit an ambulance and three medics were reported in critical condition, officials said.
Residents of the small northern Gaza community of al-Attatra said soldiers moved from house to house by blowing holes through walls. Most of the houses were unoccupied, their residents already having fled.
Hamas fires mortars, RPGs
Hamas militants fired mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades. Field commanders communicated over walkie talkies, updating gunmen on the location of Israeli forces. Commanders told gunmen in the streets not to gather in groups and not to use cell phones.
Israel launched the air campaign against Gaza on Dec. 27 with the aim of halting militant rocket attacks on its south. The operation appears to have slowed, but not halted the rocket fire. Israeli police said 13 rockets landed Sunday, lightly wounding one person.
Hundreds of rockets have hit Israel so far, and four Israelis have been killed. Warning sirens give residents notice of incoming militant rockets and allow them to take cover.
The decision to send ground troops into Gaza was taken after Hamas kept up its rocket fire despite the aerial assault, government officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because discussions leading up to wartime decisions are confidential.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed his “extreme concern and disappointment” to Olmert and called for an immediate end to the operation, according to a U.N. statement Sunday.
Denunciations also came from the French government, which unsuccessfully proposed a two-day truce earlier this week, and from Egypt, which brokered the six-month truce whose breakdown preceded the Israeli offensive.
But the U.S. has put the blame squarely on Hamas. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said U.S. officials have been in regular contact with the Israelis as well as officials from countries in the region and Europe.
At an emergency consultation of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday night, the U.S. blocked approval of a statement demanded by Arab countries that would have called for an immediate cease-fire. U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the U.S. believed that such a statement “would not be adhered to and would have no underpinning for success, (and) would not do credit to the council.”
Hamas began to emerge as Gaza’s main power broker when it won Palestinian parliamentary elections three years ago. It has ruled the impoverished territory since seizing control from forces loyal to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007.
© 2009 The Associated Press.
A pity the Western press didn’t devote the same space to the aggressive incursions into Palestinian territory of the rabid Israeli settlers for decades and the more recent economic stranglehold placed on Gaza by Israel by controlling everything that goes in and out, both of which are significant conntributors to the current situation.
Not so many years ago I found this attitude highly offensive, and indeed had some difficult moments with a local lefty who espoused this view, but lately I’m beginning to think that the time is coming to push the Israelis back into the sea.
Whether that will change anything in a region which has become acclimatised to violence, and violence based on various religious, ethnic, tribal and gender bases long unrelated to the present situation is highly debatable, but at least it will be a conflict free of the absurd importance Western powers attach to the survival of the bullying mongrel state known as Israel which has spent the past sixty years demanding everything from everyone and shitting on everyone who gives it what it demands while giving nothing in return.
While it has to be recognised that there has long been an element of domestic and international opposition by Israelis and Jews to the aggressive policies of the Israeli government and its military forces, it should also be recognised that there is a disturbing element of rabid hostilty by some Israeli and Jewish extremists (notably the settlers) to everyone not like them. This produces a form of worship of evil acts and the people who perfomed them, such as http://www.geocities.com/dr_b_goldstein/kever.htm ,which makes the Japanese memorials and ceremonies honouring their war criminals seem rather tame.
I voted that it’s Hamas fault that there is war now in the East but i think now the mistakes are from the side of israel . They now bombed a UN school . What did they thing that hamas has hidden missiles in there ???
all i know is that i support my countries allies which israel is one
So it’s like saying , that if Nazi Germany was your country’s ally you would support them too ???
I don’t know what country you’re in, but, first, identify the alliance treaty between Israel and your country; second, tell us when Israeli troops have gone outside Israel to stand with your troops in battle; third, name three positive things Israel has done for your country; and, fourth, for any other country
As far as I’m aware all Israel has ever done is take, take, take, and whinge, whinge, whinge, and give nothing back except intransigence and resultant endless international conflict and problems.
Israel could wipe out the arabs in gaza in no time, so comparing them to the nazis is still nothing more than badly disguised antisemitism.
RS, your observations about the whining etc are right on target, but they apply to the muslim world in general and the palestineans in particular as well.
so what you’re asying about the wiping out is not any nazi thing ???
No, he’s saying that the Israelis have easily got the capability of exterminating the population of the Gaza Strip, and had they been behaving like Nazis they would have done so.
Oh ok . So , if they are able to destroy gaza they do it . Well what you think , is
this conflict able to unite all the units of the arab world such like Hesbolah , Hamas , Al Qaida and any other unknown ???
Not flaming likely - if they did so, most of these organisations would be running and hiding if they really thought Israel would do to them what Rome did to Carthage.
Fair point, but so far as Israel and the Palestinians are concerned, Israel is the only party which can do something to rectify the dispossession of the Palestinians, but it has long been Israeli policy that it will never do so.
Conversely, so far as Israel, the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world are concerned, it’s Israel and the rest of the Arab world who can do something to correct the situation. But it suits the Arabs’ anti-Israel purposes to keep the Palestinians in limbo in the so-called refugee camps, which are rather more substantial than some of the housing in other parts of the Arab world. So it will just go on forever, with the Israelis and Arabs as bad as each other, and the poor bloody Palestinians sandwiched in the middle.
It will go on for a long time, that’s for sure. The big thing is that many Arab governments need Israel in order for themselves to stay in power. As long as they have a visible ‘foe’ they can rally their people against, they can stay in power, and religious fury will keep reasonable thinkers at bay.
In other words, I sometimes wonder if that entire debacle isn’t a single catch 22… If you want to support Israel, you’ll have to live with the fact that extremist governments will be able to stay in power in other Arab countries and keep rallying against Israel, even though they might not actually do anything.
If you want a moderate Middle East, you’d need to either get rid of Israel, which would be outrageous, no matter how young the country is, or create a compromise all parties can live with - something politicians all over the world have tried and failed at for over 60 years…
Anybody agree?
Yeah, it’ll probably go on for some time to come. But I think the issue will resolve itself in this century, one way or another. You have the triarchy of a human population overshoot, peak everything which is non regenerative ressource related and the massive stress we already put on the biosphere, which will certainly come back to haunt us, though we are good at ignoring it.
Things like topsoil erosion, loss of biodiversity and biomass and general pollution just spell disaster in the long run, you can even ignore climate change for that. We have pushed basically all edible fish close to the inflection point where it will suddenly seem disappear from one year to another and take a decade to recover to fishable levels.
A good analogy is a computer cluster. We have a load on all systems close to capacity. When (not if) one system breaks down it’ll take all the others with them in a cascade and my guess is that’s what’s going to happen rather sooner than later.
Thus my prediction of the unfortunatly not so distant future, 2 decades maybe:
The political or religious quarrels all over this planet will be resolved quickly and bloody once the situation gets bad enough for everyone.
Hey guys , what you think ??? Last phase of the operations in the war ???
No, just another phase in a war which so far has lasted for about sixty years, or more if you include the guerrilla war, and shows no sign of ending in the foreseeable future.
Not pretending to be anti-jewish here but looking at CNN is shocking the amount of White phosphorous ammunition used by the IDF over Gaza.
Why limit it to that?
The Israelis have cordoned the people in Gaza and are bombarding them when they have no means of escape (after previously being screwed by the Israelis economically and otherwise by being cordoned in Gaza).
If the IDF troops go in, it’s not much different to the Warsaw ghetto in principle, even if it might be in degree. Not that the self-centred, arrogant, and perpetually whingeing Israeli leadership could ever see that, despite basing the whole of Israel’s justification for existence on such events which occurred outside and had nothing to do with Palestine but which somehow justified dispossessing the Palestinians to compensate the Zionists / Jews for centuries of oppression and slaughter in Europe. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
It’s just all part of the broad spectrum of political bullshit anyway, like most wars.
Q. Why has Israel suddenly decided to get tough about the Hamas rockets which it has tolerated for years?
A. Because an election is looming, accelerated to February 2009 by some unexpected internal Israeli political events instead of the scheduled 2010. And: Lo and Behold! All of a sudden Hamas has to be dealt with.
It’s no different to Western politicians suddenly declaring a war on crime or drugs or whatever when they’ve done bugger all about it for the preceding years while in government and then beating the biggest drum they can find to get them back in for another term of bugger all.
A pox on the lot of them.
And pity for the poor bloody Palestinians, who are in the Middle East now as Jews were in Europe from time to time long before Hitler arrived.