Israel abducts Nobel Laureate

Amnesty accuses Israel of using human shields in Gaza

...Israeli troops forced Palestinians to stay in one room of their home while turning the rest of the house into a base and sniper position, "effectively using the families, both adults and children, as human shields and putting them at risk," the group said.
"Intentionally using civilians to shield a military objective, often referred to as using 'human shields' is a war crime," Amnesty said.
It could not support Israeli claims that Hamas used human shields. It said it found no evidence Palestinian fighters directed civilians to shield military objectives from attacks, forced them to stay in buildings used by militants, or prevented them from leaving commandeered buildings...

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...Amnesty questions the misuse of high-precision weapons to kill children playing on rooftops or people sleeping their homes. Israel not only fired imprecise incendiary white phosphorus shells over and into densely populated residential areas, killing and wounding civilians and destroying property, but also, asserts Amnesty, denied that this substance was being used, delaying appropriate medical treatment for the injured. “Artillery in general and white phosphorus shells in particular should never be used in populated areas” and their use is unlawful, the report says. Amnesty says Israeli troops used Palestinians as “human shields” to provide protection while they occupied or searched buildings...

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Quote: Originally Posted by ironsides

Other than initial story, not much coverage at all in the U.S.. Why, because we have very little sympathy for Palestinians.

How many passenger planes were blown up by Palestinian terrorists, how many innocent's were slaughtered by their indiscriminant bombings. It is a shame that we lump them all together, but understandable since they do nothing to try and stop it.

Quote: Originally Posted by darkbeaver

You will understand then when you get no sympathy from a whole world who will enjoy watching the carnage unfold in your yard for a change. The Palestinians are amateurs, when it comes to killing the innocent, America is #1. It's understandable when we lump yall together since you've done nothing to stop it.

Quote: Originally Posted by ironsides

We don't ask for sympathy, just stay out of our way or join them in their fate.

Quote: Originally Posted by darkbeaver

You don't even understand where sympathy comes from or how it works, do you? The sympathy is a product of your wars you either harness it or you face it in battle.

Quote: Originally Posted by ironsides

Never been a problem for me.

Quote: Originally Posted by gopher

Why don't of the forum's far right wingnuts condemn Israel's socialist system?

Socialism seems to work with countries that have small populations. Also seems to work in some countries where the population seems very clingy, needy of the closeness it can bring.
Socialism is not for people who take pride in their independence and can and want to make it on their own

U.S. Military Aid and Israel




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Peace, U.S. Military Aid and Israel

Why we urge the U.S. government to suspend military aid to Israel until it ends its 37-year occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
U.S. military aid to Israel has a dramatic effect on Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. It has increasingly been used not to pay for defense but to finance the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. It keeps Israel from facing the difficult but necessary challenges of building a more democratic society, and encourages solving deep-rooted problems by military rather than peaceful and more effective means.

The U.S. funding that pays for the guns and ammunition, F-16 bombers, and Apache helicopters that are used to carry out Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and people serves neither Israelis, Palestinians, nor Americans.
In short, Israel cannot build a society based on the principles of democracy, human rights, and compliance with international law while brutally occupying another people and their land. The United States is currently paying for that occupation with its annual aid. That's why Jewish Voice for Peace urges the U.S. government to suspend military aid to Israel until Israel ends its 37-year occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.

Top Five Things You Should Know About U.S. Military Aid to Israel

1. Harm to Palestinian civilians
A large part of U.S. military aid to Israel goes to purchase tanks, helicopter gunships, machine guns, and bullets that are used against Palestinian civilians. Our tax dollars have been used to destroy homes; uproot trees and crops; seize land from its lawful owners; close all access to food, medicine, and the outside world for small towns in the West Bank and Gaza; staff checkpoints that cut off ambulances and other civilian traffic; and carry out assassinations that kill children in addition to summarily executing political leaders. When Palestinian doctors remove bullets from the bodies of Palestinian children, the bullets are typically stamped ?Made in the U.S.A.?
Israel has used its U.S.-financed arsenal against unarmed Palestinian civilians, including children. Amnesty International reports that in 2002 alone, ?At least 1,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army, most of them unlawfully. They included some 150 children and at least 35 individuals killed in targeted assassinations. Certain abuses committed by the Israeli army constituted war crimes.?[including] unlawful killings, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, extensive and wanton destruction of property, torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement and the use of "`human shields."?
?The IDF continued to demolish houses and destroy agricultural land and industrial installations throughout the Gaza Strip?.The IDF routinely used F-16 fighter jets, helicopter gunships, and tanks to bomb and shell Palestinian residential areas in response to gunfire or mortar attacks by Palestinians or in reprisal for suicide bombings and other attacks??
Go to -- for more reports on the Occupied Territories and Israel.
2. Harm to Israelis
In addition to the devastation it visits on Palestinians, the occupation threatens the democratic values Israel seeks to uphold. Massive military aid promotes militarism, which has led to a reliance on military, rather than diplomatic means to work for a solution to this ongoing conflict. More and more Israelis question the moral decay that accompanies the criminal actions of the military and the dehumanization of the Palestinian people. A peace rally at the height of Israel?s reoccupation of the main towns of the West Bank in April 2002 drew 15,000 protestors in Tel Aviv. Currently nearly 1,200 Israeli army reservists refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories because the occupation corrupts Israeli society and endangers, rather than enhances, the security of Israelis. Israeli activists support the suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel; in the words of feminist activist Rela Mazali, ?[T]he U.S. foots most of the bills run up by this siege and makes some of the most lethal weapons used to maintain it. We hope you will tell your government to stop arming the conflict.?
3. Harm to the U.S. and its citizens
Israel is required to use 75% of its military aid from the U.S. to buy arms and equipment such as Caterpillar bulldozers made in the U.S. It funnels this money to more than 1,000 U.S. arms suppliers, which in turn lobby for U.S. policies that benefit them at the expense of peace in the Middle East. As a result, the diversion of our tax dollars not only reduces funding for education and social programs but militarizes our public policy overall. U.S. military aid to Israel sets the U.S. in opposition to many Arab and European nations who recognize the horrors of the occupation. This makes U.S. citizens less safe because we are more hated. And the massive flow of arms into Israel is made even more dangerous by arms sales of lesser quality to other Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While all this business fills the coffers of arms merchants, it makes the Middle East ever more unstable. Furthermore, when our government arms proponents of massive human rights abuses, we become complicit in their crimes and hated by their victims. U.S. support of Israel?s occupation of Palestinian lands and its abuse of human rights undermines any moral authority to criticize human rights abuses in other countries. And it shreds the U.S. of any credibility in acting to promote peace in the region.

4. Violations of U.S. and international law
U.S. law prohibits the president from furnishing military aid to any country ?which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.? 22 U.S.C. ? 2304(a). The U.S. Department of State reported in March 2003 that, ?Israel's overall human rights record in the occupied territories remained poor and worsened in several areas as it continued to commit serious human rights abuses?.Israeli security units used excessive force during Palestinian demonstrations, while on patrol, pursuing suspects, and enforcing checkpoints and curfews, which resulted in many deaths.? Targeting civilians, as Israel has done, is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The fact that Palestinian groups have done the same makes it no less criminal. For more information on these human rights violations visit --, and --.
5. Aid is excessive and disproportionate
More U.S. aid goes to Israel than any other country, even though Israel?s per capita income is as high as many European countries. In fiscal year 2003 Israel received a foreign military financing grant of $3.1 billion and a $600 million grant for economic security in addition to $11 billion in commercial loan guarantees. This total aid package of nearly $15 billion makes Israel by far the largest single recipient of U.S. aid. U.S. aid is a function of politics. According to a Time/CNN poll, released April 12, 2002, 60% of Americans favor cutting aid to Israel if Israel does not immediately withdraw its troops from Palestinian areas. Further, U.S. aid to other countries is often tied to various conditions, depending on what the U.S. wants the aid recipient to do. We are asking that aid to Israel be treated in the same manner.
Pouring arms into an area of the world already plagued by violence can only increase death and destruction and render the U.S. a questionable broker for peace at best. In these hard economic days, that money can be put to use in the U.S. or it could be used to build a stable Palestinian society, out of the devastation that exists there now. The Israeli economy has been in a downward spiral for years, and foreign investment has long been directly related to the level of violence in the region. Using military aid as a lever to end the occupation will be a boon to the security and hopes for the future for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Key Facts

• <LI class=text_9>Total direct aid to Israel, 1948-2003
  $89.9 billion (uncorrected for inflation)
  <LI class=text_9>Since 1976 Israel has been the largest annual recipient of US aid. It is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II.
  <LI class=text_9>Direct U.S. aid for each Israeli citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Israel = $16,710) -- over $500
  <LI class=text_9>Direct U.S. Aid for each Ethiopian citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Ethiopia = $100) -- about $.45
  <LI class=text_9>REGULAR US GRANT AID in FY 2003
  $2.76 billion military aid grant
  $2.1 billion economic support funds
  $600 million refugee resettlement grant
  <LI class=text_9>COMMERCIAL LOAN GUARANTEES IN FY 2003
  $2 billion
  <LI class=text_9>BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST FOR FY 2003
  Military aid grant $1 billion
  Commercial loan guarantees $9 billion
  Arrow missile development $60 million
  <LI class=text_9>TOTAL AID FOR FY 2003 $14.82 billion
  <LI class=text_9>Percentage of U.S. foreign aid that goes to Israel -- 30%
  <LI class=text_9>Israel's population as a percentage of world population -- .01%
  <LI class=text_9>Section 116 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) states, "No assistance may be provided under this part to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." 22 U.S.C. 2304(a)
  <LI class=text_9>Section 4 of the Arms Export Control Act prohibits selling military equipment to countries that use them for non-self-defense purposes.
• The U.S. State Department determined in February 2001 that Israel has committed each of the acts that the law defines as "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges and trial, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, and other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person." It described Israeli army use of live ammunition against Palestinians when soldiers were not in impending danger as "excessive use of force."

SOURCES: Clyde R. Mark, ?Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance, Congressional Research Service, updated April 1, 2003; Clyde R. Mark, Middle East: U.S. Foreign Assistance, FY 2001, FY 2002, FY 2003 Congressional Research Service, March 28, 2002


Questions on JVP's Stand

Do you seek the destruction of Israel?
No. By linking the suspension of military aid to the occupation, we make clear that we are not calling for the abandonment or destruction of Israel. Israel?s ability to defend itself will not be compromised by this proposed suspension of aid. Indeed, it will be enhanced by ending the occupation. We are calling for Israel to comply with international law and the principles of democracy and human rights.
What's your position on economic aid?
While Jewish Voice for Peace does not call for the suspension of economic aid to Israel, we do believe that such aid should be based on need and that Israel should be required to comply with the same laws and standards, and be subjected to the same congressional supervision as other aid recipients.
Won't a suspension of military aid endanger Israel and increase violence against Israelis?
Ending the occupation would hasten peace between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as with Israel?s Arab neighbors. A reduction of military aid to Israel by even a small amount would create strong pressure to end the occupation. Israel?s military superiority will still be there, as will Israel?s alliance with the United States. Further, in the event the occupation ends, if Israel were attacked without provocation, it would have most of the world supporting it. As long as it continues its occupation, Israel will continue to be seen as the aggressor in this conflict by most of the world.

Quote: Originally Posted by gopher

Why don't of the forum's far right wingnuts condemn Israel's socialist system?

Quote: Originally Posted by petros

With your money and a water deal with Jordan and Lebanon who get paid with your money to buy water for Israel to grow a mango that has more subsidies than the mango is worth at market.

Quote: Originally Posted by Liberalman

I guess the guns and the bombs never made it to Gaza

Israel/Gaza: Operation ‘Cast Lead’ - 22 Days of Death and Destruction
Facts and Figures
GazaSome 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including some 300 children, and hundreds of other unarmed civilians, including more than 115 women and some 85 men aged over 50 during the 22-day Operation "Cast Lead".
Many Palestinian civilians were killed in attacks by high-precision weapons which are capable of pinpoint strikes and can hit within a meter of their targets and which have exceptionally good optics allowing those carrying out or directing the strikes to see the targets in detail.
Many other Palestinian civilians were killed in indiscriminate and reckless attacks using imprecise weapons which should never be used in densely populated civilian areas.
More Palestinians were killed and more properties were destroyed in the 22-day military campaign than in any previous Israeli offensive.
The Israeli army has put the death toll at 1200 and maintains that most of those killed were not civilians but it has failed to provide any lists or any information indicating on what they base their figures.
Thousands of Palestinian were left homeless. Hundreds of businesses and public buildings were destroyed. In most of the cases they investigated in Gaza...

Quote has been trimmed

...During Operation “Cast Lead” Israeli forces repeatedly took over Palestinian homes in the
Gaza Strip forcing families to stay in a ground-floor room while they used the rest of their
house as a military base and sniper position – effectively using the families, both adults and
children, as “human shields” and putting them at risk.72 While soldiers wore protective body
armour and helmets and shielded themselves behind sandbags as they fired from the houses,
the Palestinian inhabitants of the houses had no such protection.

In the al-Zaytoun district of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers took over several houses of the
extended al-Sammouni family when they entered the area. As’ad ‘Ali al-Sammouni told
Amnesty International: “I live in this house with my wife, my three married sons and their
wives and 11 children and my four unmarried sons. My two nephews, their wives and 15
children were also staying with us. We were some 45 people in all. In the night between 3
and 4 January we heard noises up on the roof terrace and we concluded that the soldiers
must have descended from a helicopter because the gate and the front door were locked and
no one could have entered the house from anywhere else. We heard them banging up on the
roof terrace but nobody could dare to go upstairs to see what was happening. We all stayed
on the ground floor. At about 6.30am there was banging at the front door and lots of soldiers
came in. They grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and asked about Qassams and I said we
did not have any such things. They tied and blindfolded all of us – men and boys – and put
us all in one room in the ground floor, together with the women and children. I asked them to
let me get my dentures from my room but they did not let me. After the end of the war I
found them on them on the floor, broken, like so many other things. We were kept there for a
day and a half. We only had a little bit of food for the children but not enough. Also we did
not have water. On the second day (5 January) my cousin Mousa and his wife and baby girl
came to knock at the door after they escaped from the house of my relative Wa’el across the
road, which had been shelled and many relatives had been killed. The soldiers took him too
and tied him and blindfolded him and put him and his wife and baby in the same room with
us. When Mousa told us that Wa’el’s house had been shelled and many relatives had been
killed and injured the women and children screamed and cried and the soldiers came and
asked what we wanted and we begged them to let us leave. In the end the army said we
could leave except for Mousa and my nephew ‘Imad and they said that if the Qassam fighters
found out that there were soldiers in the house and attacked them they would kill Mousa and
‘Imad. I asked again to fetch my dentures but the soldiers refused. I found them broken
when I returned the house after the army left Gaza. We left on foot and some other relatives
from nearby houses also joined us. The soldiers said we had to walk and not stop. My nephew
Iyad was walking ahead of me and I saw him fall and I thought he had tripped but then I saw
he had been shot in the left leg. I stopped to help but Israeli soldiers in the Jouha family
house shouted to continue walking or they would shoot again so we had to keep walking. Iyad
crawled for a bit and then collapsed. His wife and his five children saw him being shot and
then crawl and collapse but they and us could not help him because the soldier did not allow
anyone to stop. Further on the main Salahaddin Road we found an ambulance but they could
not go to the place where Iyad had collapsed and so he was left to die where he had
collapsed. The ambulance took Mousa’s wife and baby girl, who was injured in her hand, to
the hospital.”

Members of the Jouha family, interviewed separately by Amnesty International, corroborated
the account of events (see case of Ibrahim Jouha in Appendix 1).
Yousef Abu ‘Ida (also known as Abu ‘Abdallah), and his wife Leila and their nine children,
five daughters and four sons aged between four and 22, were in their home in Hay al-Salam
(Peace Neighbourhood), to the east of Jabalia. Israeli soldiers forcibly took over their house
and held the family as “human shields” for two days while they used the house as a military
position, then they forced the family out and later destroyed the house. Abu ‘Abdallah told
Amnesty International: “At about 10.30am on 5 January a group of soldiers entered our
home, and locked all of us in the basement while they went upstairs. They took our mobile
phone and did not allow us to move. They took all the blankets and mattresses. We had no
food and no water. The children were scared, cold, hungry and thirsty but we had nothing.
We were kept like that for two days. We heard the soldiers laughing and shooting upstairs. We
were scared. After a day the younger children were desperate for water and I took the bit of
water which remained in the cistern of the toilet to give to them; there was no other
alternative. After two days, on the morning of 7 January, the soldiers threw us out of the
house. I asked to go upstairs to fetch some clothes and shoes but they did not allow us. We
had to leave barefoot and with only what we were wearing when the soldiers first came into
the house two days earlier.” The house was later destroyed (see Chapter 3.1).
According to testimonies, in several cases Israeli forces also forced unarmed Palestinian
civilian males (mostly adults but in two cases also children) to serve as “human shields”,
including making them walk in front of armed soldiers; go into buildings to check for booby
traps or gunmen; and inspect suspicious objects for explosives. These practices are not new.
Numerous such cases have been documented in recent years and the Israeli Supreme Court
has ruled that such practices contradict international law and prohibited them in October
2005.73
Majdi Abed Rabbo, a father of five and a member of the PA security forces, told Amnesty
International: “At about 10am on Monday 5 January soldiers came to my house and took me
with them to a neighbour’s house where they were also keeping other neighbours. The
soldiers were shooting from the house but I don’t know at what because I could not see. At
about 2pm a soldier took me outside, pointed to Abu Hatem’s house and told me to go into
that house to take the weapons and the clothes of the armed men who were in that house,
whom they had killed. I refused but they told me to obey. I went into the house, and found
three armed Qassam members alive. They told me to leave and not to come back and
threatened to shoot me if I went back. I returned to the soldiers, who made me undress and
turn around, and I then told them that the three were alive. They handcuffed me; they were
shooting. Later they again sent me to check on the armed militants inside the house. I found
one wounded and the others alright, who said: ‘Tell the officer that if he is a man, he can
come up here himself.’ I went back and told the soldiers and they cursed me and handcuffed
me. I heard a helicopter approaching, followed by the sound of a missile exploding. The
soldiers said that now they were sure they had killed the armed men in the house with the
missile. But when I looked I saw that the missile had struck my house and not the house with
the gunmen inside. I told the soldiers. At about midnight, between Monday and Tuesday, I
was forced to go for a third time, to check if the gunmen were dead. I found two of the
gunmen still alive, but buried under the rubble; the third was still holding his weapon. I told
the soldier, who got angrier and didn’t believe me and sent two teenagers, Jamal Qatari and
Zidane, to take photos. The two refused but the soldiers beat them and so they went and took
photos and then the soldiers sent in a dog. By then it was about 10 or 11am.”
His neighbour and relative Akram Abed Rabbo, a father of six, also told Amnesty
International that he had been taken from his home in the early morning (about 2-3am) on 6
January by Israeli soldiers who also used him as a “human shield” and forced him to inspect
several houses in the area over a three-day period. He said: “The soldiers sent me into the
houses first and then they sent in the dog and only after that they went into the houses
themselves. I didn’t find anything in the houses I inspected, but I was afraid. Also, in the
meantime I had no idea where my wife, who is pregnant, and my children were.”
In Khuza’a, east of Khan Yunis, Mohammed al-Najjar, 16, told Amnesty International that on
13 January he was held by Israeli soldiers in a house they used as a sniper position: “The
soldiers, special forces, took me to the house. I was handcuffed and blindfolded but they
untied me when they let me go to the toilet so I could see a bit then. They didn’t interrogate
me. They just sat around on a mattress and chatted and laughed and also sang a bit. I didn’t
understand what they said because they spoke in Hebrew, but one of them spoke to me in
Arabic and told me to sing with them; I refused at first but then I had to obey. Then they shot
a couple of shots and I heard women nearby screaming ‘God is great’ and crying. Later I
knew that this is when they killed our neighbour Rawhiya.74 I was afraid but nothing else
happened; there was no other shooting. Later, before they left the house they told me to stay
in the house for a while and that when I heard a shot being fired I could leave. I did as they
said; I waited a bit and then took off the blindfold and left the house.75
According to Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “The presence of a protected
person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.”
The prohibition against the use of “human shields” is further clarified in Article 51(7) of the
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the
Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Additional Protocol I). It states:
“Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual
civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military
operations.”

Quote: Originally Posted by earth_as_one

You have no evidence to support your statement. The ship was thoroughly searched by Israel and I never heard anything about guns and bombs. Would you care to admit that you made this up (AKA lied), or can you post a supporting link?

Quote: Originally Posted by petros

With your money and a water deal with Jordan and Lebanon who get paid with your money to buy water for Israel to grow a mango that has more subsidies than the mango is worth at market.

Quote: Originally Posted by Just the Facts

At least we get a mango. What are we getting for our aid to the Arab world? Death to America parades? Yippee.