Can anyone read this article and not wonder why what is seen and heard in the news reports, on tv and on the nightly newscasts, is SO DIFFERENT from what is reported here in this editorial from the Signs page.
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Signs Editorial:
Dispatch from Palestine - Nablus: "It is our life"
by: Silvia Cattori
Our friend Silvia Cattori sends this report from Nablus:
Every night the city of Nablus is shaken by the sounds of war, sounds that drive away sleep. One awakens with a start, not knowing if one has slept, not slept, or if we are in a waking nightmare. There is shooting, nearby explosions resonate, go off in the distance, and return as an echo.
You don't know what is happening or where it is happening. At first, you are very worried, then you stop thinking about it. One waits for daybreak with resignation.
The people around tell you it is like that every day of the year here in the district of Nablus, that nothing has changed since 2000, that it is simply part of the panoply of the war of terror waged by Israel, added on top of the countless other repressive measures.
Soldiers regularly penetrate the small alleys of Nablus or its villages at night. They break down doors, throw grenades. House by house they search for men they say are "wanted", are "suspects". They force families out on the street, then they search, breaking everything, and if they don't find what they are looking for, they order mothers to call their sons to hand themselves in via the loud speakers. If the "suspect" doesn't appear, they may arrest the father, the brothers, or blow up the house. They leave before dawn.
The shooting ceased after midnight.
But the fiercest fighting started at 4:00 this morning when the city was shaken by a strong explosion. Then intense shooting. The sound of the shooting was twice drowned out by the voices of the muezzin, voices going far, returning as an echo as we held our breath.
What happened tonight during the raid was not the usual. Israeli troops arrived around 4 am without making a sound, by surprise. Generally, the soldiers don't come face to face with combatants because the wanted men hide. They know they are hunted and, with their poor rifles, are no match. But this morning, the lookouts resisted. The fighting lasted several hours. The Israeli army lost one dead and six others wounded, several very seriously.
Four young Palestinians were captured and taken away by the soldiers. They are undergoing interrogation by Shen Bet. The information that they will manage to extort will serve to justify the next round of raids and punitive actions. We are waiting for the army to return at any moment and know that the repression will be all the more severe as the dead soldier is the son of the commander in charge of the region.
The people are at the end of their ropes. Israel has humiliated them, starved them, taken away all of their rights. They live here as prisoners. When people present themselves at the checkpoints - which are military zones where the soldiers amuse themselves by installing a reign of terror - they are humiliated, arrested, beaten. The young - those between 14 and 30 years old - are not allowed to pass. They must take, at great risk, the mountain paths.
A student at An-Najah University was arrested at the checkpoint one year and one-half ago and is still being held for having slapped a soldier who gave him a body search.
After six years of deprivation and massacres, one senses the people are all the more revolted and on edge that, beyond the persecutions of Israel, that they will also undergo the strangulation by Europe. A scandalous Europe that punishes and starves an entire people for having voted for Hamas. It only reinforces their spirit of resistance. To rebel is the only thing that remains for them to protect their battered dignity. Because of this, one senses they are determined, ready to hold out against the entire world until that moment when the latter finally feels the full shame of having committed such a horrendous crime, until it understands that demanding the respect of their stolen rights is the legitimate right of the Palestinians.
It remains that what happened tonight will not be without serious consequences for them. The Israeli army will return to punish them all the more ferociously. But they continue on with their work, proceed as if nothing had happened. They look at you with the calm regard of those who know they have humanity on their side. It is their strength. "It is our life," they let calmly answer when you worry for them.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
HELL
This isn't heaven on earth. It is truly hell-on-earth.
I sit here in my home, drinking a glass of wine, reading and watching the massacre of men, women and children and am horrified to the depths of my soul. I feel guilty that I sit here seemingly safe. I feel guilty. What can one do??????????
This article was taken from an alternative news website:
http:///sott.net/signs/editorials/signs2006718_Hell.php
Signs of the Times for Tue, 18 Jul 2006
Signs Editorial:
"Hell"
by: Henry See
What do you do when the entire world is siding with murder? When the life of one Israeli soldier is worth more than the lives of an entire civilian population? Make that two civilian populations - Gaza and Lebanon. What do you do when the deliberate gunning down and bombing of villagers evacuating their town calls forth no shouts of protest, when the premeditated massacre of women and children is called "defence"?
Israel is given free reign to kill as many Arabs as its blood lust demands while the world looks on in silence, or worse, by suggesting those crazed Arab terrorists should calm down, implying "they deserve it".
Israeli psychopath in chief Olmert lets it be known in no uncertain terms that the bombing of Lebanon will continue until the two captured Israeli soldiers are returned. The headlines in the west read "Israeli foreign minister lays out conditions for ceasefire with Hezbollah". They're joking, right? Olmert's violence is played out as an offer for peace!
But it's no joke. It is simply business as usual in a media that is owned and operated as a subsidiary of the Zionist state. The media turns everything upside down: revenge murders carried out with a powerful military armed by US money are 'defence', while people fighting for their lives with homemade rockets and old rifles are 'terrorists'.
Welcome to the pathocracy.
Robert Fisk reported last week on a village in Lebanon whose occupants were ordered by the Israelis to evacuate before their village was to be bombed. As the villagers left, the Israeli's targeted not their homes and businesses, but the fleeing villagers themselves. They were killed. All of them, men women and at least 9 children.
Then John Bolton has the gall the step up and say "I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he added, while defending as "self-defense" Israel's military action, which has had "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths".
"It's simply not the same thing to say that it's the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense."
Did you catch that? The willing and knowing slaughter of over 200 Lebanese civilians by Israel in the past 5 days is only the "sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense"?!
Can you see how far down in the muck of psychopathic values we have become mired? Can you see that there is no humanity in Bolton's words? That it is a sound bite meant to reassure the American public that the Palestinians and the Lebanese are no better than animals, that it is OK to slaughter them wholescale in the name of "defence"? That it is meant to put you back to sleep so that all the noise of those bombs is disturbing your rest?
And this just in: "Race to Rescue 20,000 Brits Trapped in Lebanon Hell". It wasn't hell a week ago. You know, before Israel started bombing it back to the stone age.
But it's their own damn fault, right?
We read today as well that "UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has accused Hezbollah militants of 'pouring petrol on the bonfire'"! You mean the fire ignited in Gaza when Israel launched the invasion? Or maybe the fire ignited when the great, Western democracies decided the Palestinians needed to be collectively punished for voting for Hamas? Or could it be the fire that started to burn when Palestine was taken away from the people that had been living there for thousands of years and given to the Jews?
Of course not! It is simply because Arabs are different than "you and me". They don't value life the way "we" do. After all, anyone else on the globe would have been happy to turn over their ancestral land to the Jews after WW2, right? And when the new residents started demanding more and more and more, anyone but the Arabs would have been happy to continue giving them everything they demanded. Wouldn't you? If only those unreasonable Arabs were as unattached to their land as Americans...
Let's be honest here, if soldiers were to come and break down the doors of your home at night, you would welcome them in, offer them a smoke and a drink, wouldn't you? "Hey, just make yourselves comfortable. What's mine is yours. It's just those damn Arabs, be they Palestinian or Lebanese or Iraqi who go and make a fuss about searches that destroy all their belongings and heirlooms, or "accidents" that kill their children, or bulldozers that raze their houses. Anyone else in the world would have been happy to do any of this after all that the Jews suffered in WW2. Wouldn't they?
I suppose it's just bad luck that the Zionists had to choose the one place on the planet where they weren't going to be welcome.
I sit here in my home, drinking a glass of wine, reading and watching the massacre of men, women and children and am horrified to the depths of my soul. I feel guilty that I sit here seemingly safe. I feel guilty. What can one do??????????
This article was taken from an alternative news website:
http:///sott.net/signs/editorials/signs2006718_Hell.php
Signs of the Times for Tue, 18 Jul 2006
Signs Editorial:
"Hell"
by: Henry See
What do you do when the entire world is siding with murder? When the life of one Israeli soldier is worth more than the lives of an entire civilian population? Make that two civilian populations - Gaza and Lebanon. What do you do when the deliberate gunning down and bombing of villagers evacuating their town calls forth no shouts of protest, when the premeditated massacre of women and children is called "defence"?
Israel is given free reign to kill as many Arabs as its blood lust demands while the world looks on in silence, or worse, by suggesting those crazed Arab terrorists should calm down, implying "they deserve it".
Israeli psychopath in chief Olmert lets it be known in no uncertain terms that the bombing of Lebanon will continue until the two captured Israeli soldiers are returned. The headlines in the west read "Israeli foreign minister lays out conditions for ceasefire with Hezbollah". They're joking, right? Olmert's violence is played out as an offer for peace!
But it's no joke. It is simply business as usual in a media that is owned and operated as a subsidiary of the Zionist state. The media turns everything upside down: revenge murders carried out with a powerful military armed by US money are 'defence', while people fighting for their lives with homemade rockets and old rifles are 'terrorists'.
Welcome to the pathocracy.
Robert Fisk reported last week on a village in Lebanon whose occupants were ordered by the Israelis to evacuate before their village was to be bombed. As the villagers left, the Israeli's targeted not their homes and businesses, but the fleeing villagers themselves. They were killed. All of them, men women and at least 9 children.
Then John Bolton has the gall the step up and say "I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he added, while defending as "self-defense" Israel's military action, which has had "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths".
"It's simply not the same thing to say that it's the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense."
Did you catch that? The willing and knowing slaughter of over 200 Lebanese civilians by Israel in the past 5 days is only the "sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense"?!
Can you see how far down in the muck of psychopathic values we have become mired? Can you see that there is no humanity in Bolton's words? That it is a sound bite meant to reassure the American public that the Palestinians and the Lebanese are no better than animals, that it is OK to slaughter them wholescale in the name of "defence"? That it is meant to put you back to sleep so that all the noise of those bombs is disturbing your rest?
And this just in: "Race to Rescue 20,000 Brits Trapped in Lebanon Hell". It wasn't hell a week ago. You know, before Israel started bombing it back to the stone age.
But it's their own damn fault, right?
We read today as well that "UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has accused Hezbollah militants of 'pouring petrol on the bonfire'"! You mean the fire ignited in Gaza when Israel launched the invasion? Or maybe the fire ignited when the great, Western democracies decided the Palestinians needed to be collectively punished for voting for Hamas? Or could it be the fire that started to burn when Palestine was taken away from the people that had been living there for thousands of years and given to the Jews?
Of course not! It is simply because Arabs are different than "you and me". They don't value life the way "we" do. After all, anyone else on the globe would have been happy to turn over their ancestral land to the Jews after WW2, right? And when the new residents started demanding more and more and more, anyone but the Arabs would have been happy to continue giving them everything they demanded. Wouldn't you? If only those unreasonable Arabs were as unattached to their land as Americans...
Let's be honest here, if soldiers were to come and break down the doors of your home at night, you would welcome them in, offer them a smoke and a drink, wouldn't you? "Hey, just make yourselves comfortable. What's mine is yours. It's just those damn Arabs, be they Palestinian or Lebanese or Iraqi who go and make a fuss about searches that destroy all their belongings and heirlooms, or "accidents" that kill their children, or bulldozers that raze their houses. Anyone else in the world would have been happy to do any of this after all that the Jews suffered in WW2. Wouldn't they?
I suppose it's just bad luck that the Zionists had to choose the one place on the planet where they weren't going to be welcome.
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