Slashdot Mirror

From my perspective it's Israel's opponents in the region who are out routinely killing journalists but you are not allowed to say such things.

Your perspective includes blinders. And these latest killings are just part of a long tradition.

Contrary to what one might imagine, I'm not a big fan of Palestine. I'm just not a fan of Israel, either. I have little use for religious "logic", or anyone's justifications for genocide. What am I a fan of? Facts. And it's a fact that Israel kills a lot of journalists.

Sovereign trolls in online comments are wasting their resources. The high stakes strategic target for sovereign trolls is Wikipedia's administrative structure.

illegal immigrants have a lower rate of crime than the average population

This statement — unsupported by any citations, BTW — is irrelevant to my point. Even if they are less crime-prone on average, they are a source of crime anyway.

We can not get rid of native criminals by deporting them anywhere, but we can deport the folks, who have entered this country illegally (and already have this "original sin" to their name).

But yeah sure, a wall will stop that.

It may not stop that entirely, but it will reduce it, that's for sure. 15 years ago, when Israel was building its much derided wall, similar predictions of failure were made.

But the walls work:

The number of fatalities from terror attacks within Israel dropped from more than 130 in 2003 to fewer than 25 in 2005.

According to a 2006 estimate cited by Slate (the article itself is hardly sympathetic to the idea, BTW), an Israel-kind of wall stretching for 2000 miles would cost $6.4 bln (or about 1/3rd the annual cost of NASA). And we may not even need it that high and sophisticated — because, unlike Israel, we aren't facing an enemy bent on our destruction... Nor are there any border-disputes with Mexico — the other complication of their project.

Only an eight year old would ...

My eight year old would already recognize this rhetorical trick as one used only by crooks and liars. Your parents should not have allowed you access to the Internet until you've read up on classic literature...

I'd say 99% of people I've met in my life can tell what hate speech is when they read it.

This is the "appeal to the reasonable man" approach. It's quite common in law. Basically punts the decision to a randomly selected judge who is just trusted to be reasonable.

The problem is that the people deciding what reasonable means are of course never a perfect cross section of society at large. In the UK there have been cases where e.g. someone posted to Facebook that he hated British soldiers and he hoped they would go to die and go to hell because of all the muslims they killed.

This was interpreted as being literal hate speech. He was arrested, charged with "a racially aggravated public order offense" and then found guilty of sending a "grossly offensive communication" and sentenced to community service. The police explained, "he didn’t make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother".

Most likely this post would violate Twitters policies (if Twitter allowed such a long tweet).

Now what about posts like these? What about tweets that threaten "the terrorists" with death? Do you seriously think Twitter, an American company, is going to start shutting down these sorts of accounts? What about movie studios tweeting quotes from American Sniper to promote it?

I am seriously skeptical. Most likely it will be like every other attempt to do this I've seen - what is or isn't threatening or abusive will depend entirely on the world view of the people doing the moderation and how famous/politically connected the tweeters are. It won't ever attempt to be even handed.

Israel has less than 760 kilometers of fence

That's one hell of a fence.

Or, conversely, it's not the fence that's the problem, it's the giant concrete wall that it's built on top of. Bonus spiderman in picture because why the fuck not.

It works in Israel because a majority of the population has no qualms with embracing apartheid. Israel, where hypocrisy is the national dish.

So, Israel's justification for attack was an act of war by Egypt? Brilliant!!

So you're admitting that since blockades are an act of war, attacks in response to the blockades of Gaza (and now Iran) are totally justified by Israeli rules?

Brilliant!

Wrong again. First, it isn't a total blockade.

Of course it's a total blockade. Nothing gets in without Israel's approval - that's why they murdered people on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla for daring to bring in food and supplies.

the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza would not have been able to build a new shopping center

Ooo! A shopping mall! Have they rebuilt all the homes destroyed in Cast Lead? If you are shot by an IDF sniper for shits and giggles can you get a wheelchair promptly? How fast will your recovery be while you're being starved, I mean put "on a diet"?

Second, Gaza is not a nation state, but a territory. It shouldn't be attacking anyone. Any attacks coming from there are either direct aggression by the Hamas government, or terrorism

See, this is the problem with trying to justify the unjustifiable - you end up using ad hoc bullshit that will have you squawking with butthurt the second it's turned on you.

So:

If Arabs had done to Jewish settlers in 1947 what Israel has spent the last decades doing to the Palestinians, you would have been just fine with that because there was no Jewish nation-state at the time. You would have been okay with ethnic cleansing, Apartheid, periodic bombings, and fucking starving the Jews. Because there was no Jewish nation-state.

Squawk.

Then there's your other problem: your canard is out of date, since the U.N. voted to give Palestinians status as a non-member state. If you argue that vote changes nothing, then you're also arguing that Israel is not a legitimate state, just because settlers went before the U.N. in the late 40's to ask for nation status.

Squawk.

the Non Proliferation Treaty

Is batshit irrelevant to America's and Israel's illegal threats against Iran, as both the U.S. and Israel admit that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

and its possession of nuclear weapons is unproven

Who do you think you're even trying to kid here? Mordechai Vanunu?

. Note that the issue between Israel and Iran is totally Iran's fault. Israel and Iran were allies when the Shah governed Iran. It was only after the Islamic revolution that the new Iranian government declared Israel an enemy to be destroyed. Israel did nothing to warrant that.

Even you know you're in outer space here. There's Israel - maker of dozens of first strikes and wars of choice - making constant threats against Iran - who hasn't attacked another country in two centuries. And you're citing the Shah, seriously? The brutal, torture loving dictator?

So, you continue to side with would-be genocidal aggressors and repeatedly condemn the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, often on specious grounds.

You mean the liberal democracy Iran had until it was destroyed by Israel's sugar daddies, the U.S. and Britain? Outer. Space. And calling Israel a "liberal democracy" is laughable on it's face when it's dependent on Apartheid to stay in power.

For some reason this comes to mind:

More bullshit canards, you mean? Uganda has never been friendly to gays, therefore there was nothin

Sure the Palestinians are not nice people, I already stated that. This is a giant case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Say
that
to
their
faces

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization

>There's no apartheid beyond what the media is telling you there is.

So there is apartheid, and only what the media is telling us? There isn't any further apartheid than what the media has already exposed?

Apartheid, according to the Rome statute is

inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."

While Palestinians have done nasty things to the Israelis just like Africans did to the Boers, that doesn't negate the fact that there is indeed a legal and institutional mechanism to keep Palestinians apart from Israelis.

The differentiation is entirely based on race, not on other factors like education, income, etc.
A Palestinian cannot buy into an Israeli (Jewish) area even if he had the money to.

There are separate roads for Jews vs. aboriginals. There are separate residential colonies for Jews, no aboriginals allowed.

Much land in Israel is owned by the Jewish National Fund, which, after acquiring land by one means or another, leases it back to only Jews:

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is a multi-national corporation with offices in about dozen countries world-wide. It receives millions of dollars from wealthy and ordinary Jews around the world and other donors, most of which are tax-exempt contributions. JNF aim is to acquire and develop lands exclusively for the benefit of Jews residing in Israel.

The fact is that JNF, in its operations in Israel, had expropriated illegally most of the land of 372 Palestinian villages which had been ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. The owners of this land are over half the UN registered Palestinian refugees. JNF had actively participated in the physical destruction of many villages, in evacuating these villages of their inhabitants and in military operations to conquer these villages. Today JNF controls over 2500 sq. km of Palestinian land which it leases to Jews only. It also planted 100 parks on Palestinian land.

The government of Israel wants to make the citizenship of Arab Israelis dependent upon loyalty oaths to the "Jewish character" of Israel. What would people say about asking Africans to take an oath to the "Boer character of South Africa"? Or the "white character of Alabama"?

Similar to the way the Ku Klux Klan operated as a quasi-citizens council, the Rabbinical councils pass decrees about not renting to aboriginals, which are enforced through threats of violence.

If the state has no intention of discriminating on the basis of race, why do Israeli ID cards note race?

Infrastructure (water, roads, etc.) is allocated on a preferential basis to Jewish settlements. The wall (which exceeds the limits of the 1968 line) cuts aboriginals off from their farmlands and orchards. In order to go from one place to another, they must travel a circuitous network of paths, often by foot. Humans who differ from the aboriginals by accident of birth can travel on wide, new highways.

Israel can grow crops with water amounts that makes everybody else blush with embarrassment.

Have they started using Palestinian blood then?

Israeli propaganda aside, you have to remember that Israel makes a practice of annexing orchards, houses, farms, etc.. and that's hardly a model for self-sufficiency. Not every nation in the world can demand lebensraum.

Israel diverts all of Palestinian Jordan River water and 87% of Palestinian ground water to the state of Israel proper and the illegal Jewish settlers. The remaining 13% of Palestinian ground water is distributed back to 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Israel cuts off Palestinian access to water by destroying wells (Between 2000 and mid-2006, Israel destroyed 244 of Gaza's wells and destroyed 6.2 miles of culinary water lines); destroying all Palestinian pumps and ditches accessing the Jordan River; destroying cisterns and irrigation systems; preventing the construction of new water infrastructure; preventing the repair of out-dated infrastructure; preventing Palestinians from drilling new wells; and hindering access through 'security measures' such as roadblocks, closures, checkpoints, and the wall.

The route of Israel's security wall delineates the eastern boundary of high groundwater production from the Western Aquifer. The wall fences those areas of high water production into Israel, closing off Palestinian access to more than 95% of their groundwater resources, over 630 million cubic meters of water per year.

Since 1967, not one permit has been granted for the drilling of new Palestinian controlled wells in the largest and most productive of all the aquifer basins, the Western Aquifer.

Palestinians pay from four to twenty times more for water than Jewish settlers pay, but are restricted to 10 to 60 liters of water per day, less than the 100 liters-per-day minimum standard set by the World Health Organization. Jewish settlers enjoy from 274 to 450 liters of water per day.

Five thousand Jewish settlers living in the Jordan Valley consume the equivalent of 75% of the water used by the entire West Bank population of over 2.5 million Palestinians.

Crops grown in the fertile Jordan Valley of the West Bank, are grown in Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.
http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/519

The Israeli military shoots unarmed farmers
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/06/12759/

30% of Gaza's arable farmland, and some of it's most fertile, lies within the 'buffer zone'.
Farmers attempting to cultivate land in the 'buffer zone' are routinely met with barrages of live ammunition and occasional artillery shells.

Since 2007 Israel has also banned Gazan farmers from selling their crops abroad, where they might compete with Israeli produce
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11414.shtml
They are also facing further restrictions on the types and amounts of products they can grow.

Palestinians must obtain permits from Israel to grow crops. Permits are granted based on whether Palestinian crops compete with Israeli agricultural production.
http://icahdusa.org/download/10

Camera is being dishonest and you're blowing up the caricature. I found the full interview here. CAMERA is trying to turn Pappe's argument around to make it the opposite of what it means. Pappe points out that there is always a subjective element and a dose of case making in his approach. And there are those who don't want to admit that.
I call that honest. CAMERA turns signs of honesty into signs of dishonesty. I would call Pappe a very good source.

Ain't that the truth. Between this, going back on his promise to accept public campaign funding and his flip-flopping on Israel/Palestine to get that big Jewish donor money, I've lost a great deal of respect for the man.

What a sorry individual.

Chooses TO NOT CHARGE THE TAXPAYERS FOR HIS CAMPAIGN while John McCain does exactly that.

How can he be forgiven...

---
The proceeding was sarcasm, this warning placed for those who cannot tell the difference.

Ain't that the truth. Between this, going back on his promise to accept public campaign funding and his flip-flopping on Israel/Palestine to get that big Jewish donor money, I've lost a great deal of respect for the man.

Oh No! Zionist Propaganda on Slashdot?

Inform yourself first, get another perspective, here are some links for you:

http://www.sandersresearch.com/

http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/105200

http://crossfirewar.com/

http://www.voltairenet.org/en

http://www.intifada.com/

http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/

http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/index.html

At least 10 phone calls were made to Israeli commanders over a period of six hours warning that artillery and aerial bombardments were either dangerously close to or hitting the monitors' building.

The UN post, in Khaim just inside south Lebanon, was clearly marked and well-known to the army, but nonetheless it was hit directly four times in the last hour before an Israeli helicopter fired a precision-guided missile that tore through the roof of an underground shelter, killing the monitors inside. A UN convoy that arrived too late to rescue the peacekeepers was also fired on.

Source: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5299.shtml

If I were working in Israel now I would have terminate any contract/project and leave that fascist country. No wonder if Jini is angry and shocked with it.

I'm afraid to link to my blog entry on this topic but there are a few articles I think you should read. I'll post links for you.

First of all, millions have protested the cartoons and only a very small minority of hoodlums have gone through and committed acts of violence. When we in the United States try to focus on these minorities, we further alienate Muslims around the world. Why? Muslims are forced onto their heels to defend themselves against a rampaging minority much like what we had to do post-9/11 with terrorism. It hits squarely on the idea that Muslims are guilty until proven innocent wherever they are. I think the right course of action is to recognize the millions who protested peacefully around the world and understand our grievances. The best analogy I can give you is that after Hurricane Katrina there was severe lawlessness in New Orleans but it was a minority of people. Some took advantage of the situation but that didn't make the plight of the people dealing with the aftermath any less important. Trying to smear all Muslim protests with the they-are-evil-and-violent brush is just like neglecting to give aide to the thousands in New Orleans because of a few idiots. I hope that makes some sense.

In terms of the Taliban, they support a minor interpretation of Islam. It is akin to what Christian nutcases like Pat Robertson sound like when they say Prime Minister Sharon deserves what he gets because he gave up land to the Palestinians. I doubt any sane majority in the US would ever think that and you don't see Muslims labeling all Christians as fanatics.

By the way, I believe that many ancient Greek and Roman texts were translated into Arabic and then re-translated to English during the Renaissance.

This video from "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" provides a great explanation on this topic. Focus on what Ali Abunimah says. His viewpoint is right in line with 95% of Muslims worldwide.

1. EI on PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" (Flash based video player)

Here are the articles:

1. Conscience or commerce: that is the question By Roy Greenslade
2. These cartoons don't defend free speech, they threaten it by Simon Jenkins

Let me know if you want to continue.

Meanwhile, there are also persistent claims of systematic pro-Israeli bias.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2402.shtml

Seems to me, they've got the balance pretty right.

According to CBS _60 Minutes_ and the IMF, Arafat diverted over L560M from 1995 to 2000 from the PA to his personal fortune, and over L176M has been documented in a single Swiss account. That diversion count was current half its lifetime ago, before Arafat completed his totalitarian control of the PA, before he became the central propaganda figure for the global jihad. And that's just the documented tip of the iceberg, a couple of successful investigations.

None of this is secret anymore - you can easily find out more of the easy answers for yourself. You might also question how it is that you aren't aware of these facts - your Swedish and British mediasphere is protecting you from them. It's an easy story to equate Sharon's tyranny and fearmongering with the Nazis, and up the ante to the Israeli nation as a whole. In fact, given recent developments in the US, it's easier (though not easy) to sympathize with the German people exploited by Nazi propaganda and tyranny, and see how it can be performed elsewhere. But you're doing yourself, truth, and the chances for peace a disservice by defending Arafat with only his propaganda machine to support.

Saddam did have ties to al Qaeda. He is well documented as a supporter of Palestinian terrorists. He has not, however, been shown to have a connection to 9/11... But who said he did?

Saddam didn't support al Qaeda. Your own congress couldn't find any link. Do you have the faintest idea how antagonistic Ba'athism and Islamic Fundementalism is (here's a clue: take a look at current day Syria)

As to Palestine, you do realize that *the* main breeding ground for Arab terrorism is the American support for (from an Arab perspective) Israeli Terrorism. See www.electronicintifada.net
and try and understand how it looks from the other side.

The situation in Israel is of course not black and white - apart from anything else Israel is a relatively liberal democracy with respect for the individual and it's neighbours are not, but such complexities seem beyond the understanding of Americans and you keep making the situation worse with your stupid ideological gung-ho attitudes.

Ever read Graham Green's "The Quiet American"?

> Rachel Corrie was a pro-intifada terror activist. She was "protesting" for Yasser Arafat.

Corrie was a member of a non-violent solidarity group and was killed when she stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer going for a palestinian doctor's home. The dozer driver decided to kill her and continue his work. Some "terrorist activist." No wonder you posted anon.

The house was being torn down to build the apartheid, err, security wall.

Excuse my politically oriented remark, but now that Israelis have invented something that can peek through walls, I suggest Tsahal use it before destroying houses with bulldozers and bury alive everybody around

Makes sense, because Israel has already been caught doing this by secretly selling the apartheid government of South Africa nuclear arms.

Ironically, with Israel's bans on inter-racial marriages, work permits for palestinians, and their new security wall they arguably are implementing apartheid on their own.

Selling arms to another country makes economic and diplomatic sense as they're only real ally is the US and depend on US aid for both their economy and military. By selling arms, even illegally,they have an chance to make money and make new friends. With already 65 UN resolutions against Israel, another really isn't going to hurt especially if the US steps in and vetos.

Mod this as you wish, but those are the facts.

I wonder which one we should belive?

Israeli or Palestinian.

Thanks for the links. I can find many criticisms of Allende in there, but nowhere can I find evidence that he cancelled or suspended elections.

No, I would not have proposed invading Chile to affect political change: I am not a neocon. I propose that Carter and his successors ought to have not only ceased all weapons sales, but also stopped the CIA from providing covert aid, publicly cut ties with Chile, introduce resolutions aginst the Pinochet regime in the UN and other international bodies where the US holds sway, and introduced economic and other sanctions.

As for my evidence that the US helped to put Pinochet there, well, I'm sorry you're not convinced by it. I think it's far more damning than any evidence that US administrations have put forward against Iraq, Iran, Syria, Panama, Vietnam, etc. You seem happy for our military to take up cudgels against these on receipt of the slimmest of evidence, but then turn around and insist on the most rigorous standards of evidence for other countries.

And while we're at it, perhaps you can provide a source for your claims of `tens of thousands' killed under Pinochet's rule? Most credible reports which I've seen put the number of deaths at around 1,000 or 2,000, and even the site remember-chile.org which you link to puts the number of deaths at 3,197 (957 of those being `disappearances'). This is still too many, of course, but it raises questions about the credibility of your claims that you report numbers five to ten times higher thananyone else does...

Since he was very good at disposing of the bodies, it is indeed very difficult to prove an exact number of deaths. But I actually said "the torture and murder of tens of thousands". I am only sure of 3,197 dead so far, but many thousands more were tortured, and many still live with the physical and mental agony. On a personal note, I would prefer death to having my eyes slowly gouged out in front of my children.

Of course, your comparison of Israel, a free and open democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens, to either Allende's or Pinochet's dictatorships suggests that you're not really interested in reasoned debate anyway. Please take such nonsense to another thread...

I believe it to be a directly relevant analogy. Israel is not "a free and open democracy with equal rights for all its citizens": Israeli Arabs do not have the democratic freedoms that the majority of its citizens do. Similarly, those Arabs who would not or could not agree to forced citizenship, and their descendants, regularly have their human rights trampled in the worst ways. People were tortured and killed by the US client state Chile while the White House under GOP and Dems did almost nothing, and sometimes actually assisted this vile regime. The same is true for Israel, presently ruled by a war criminal no better than Pinochet, whom Bush describes as "a man of peace".

Well, let's see. Allende

* cancelled elections
* disbanded the Supreme Court of Chile
* actively encouraged mutinies within the Chilean navy, out of fear that officers might obey their oath to uphold the Chilean constitution
* ordered tear gas and even live ammunition fired into crowds of unarmed protestors, including a delegation of wives of military officers
* called for and received three hundred Cuban guerillas to act as a personal bodyguard


You repeat these allegations, yet have still offered no evidence to support them, only essays alleging them with no evidence in support. In particular, the link you provide right after the above quote does not support them anywhere as far as I can see. I would be interested to see some evidence please.

Even if you could prove all of the above, it would in no way prove that he would not have stepped down had the US failed to support the Pinochet coup. The future is unproveable, and I wouldn't dream of asking you to prov

(keep clicking the "response" links to see the story unfold)

Some days I just love Slashdot...

Ramallah, Occupied Palestine
My name is Tzaporah Ryter. Iam an American student from the University of Minnesota. Icurrently am in Ramallah. We are under a terrible siege and people are being massacred by both the Israeli army and armed militia groups of Israeli settlers. They are shooting outside at anything that moves.

I am urgently pleading for as much outside help as possible to help save lives here.

I arrived in Ramallah last Thursday. I had come back for a visit to the Palestinian city where I had been previously living and studying. On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army began sealing off each entrance to Ramallah and there were rumors that they planned to invade.

People were rushing back home from across checkpoints and also people were trying to flee. People were not allowed to go out and many working people -- with homes and children to return to -- were not allowed in, everyone was trying to take cover. Those traveling in began desperately searching for alternative ways and traveling in groups, but the Israelis were firing upon them and everyone was running and screaming.

Women carrying their children were trying desperately to flee from Ramallah, carrying infants and toddlers, and their young children were running along in the rain through the fields, slipping and falling on the rocks, trying to reach safety. Israeli jeeps were speeding across the terrain pulling up from every direction and shooting at the women and children, and also at me, as we ran in opposite directions. They were chasing down people, hunting them like that in the fields.

When I reached Ramallah, people were panicking and trying to buy bread, rice and milk from corner stores, but most supplies were already gone. We bought what we could and went inside to wait for what was coming.

When night fell, Israeli tanks began to invade and also we saw Israeli troops coming on foot from the valley, and surrounding our house. I could hear them calling to each other in Hebrew. They were against our door and all around. They were firing everywhere a barrage of bullets and there was tank fire. We had to lay on the floor and keep silent. We stayed there, on the floor, for nearly four days in the darkness.

Nobody can go outside. We knew that our circumstances were better than others because old people or infants or people with medical emergency needs had no help. It was very cold, with most families packed all in one room. Some people are without life sustaining medicines like insulin, and they are altering their doses dangerously if they have any medicine left to take. People are becoming dangerously sick from lack of food and water and heat. The fear and terror only makes things worse, but it cannot be avoided.

In the daytime, we heard them shooting people in the streets, and could hear them screaming and screaming. No ambulance was allowed through. Then their screams stopped and there was just silence.

We had a telephone and would receive calls from all over telling us what was happening. Everyone is in grave danger and Israeli soldiers were killing people everywhere. They are arresting medics and ambulance drivers, including foreign volunteer medical workers.

They keep taking doctors and medics, just now another call. Again, this time the wife of a doctor telling us her husband has been taken from the ambulance.

Groups of people have been found in rooms, shot dead, there are blood marks where they have lined people up on their knees and shot them, and there are photos of them on the news with their ID cards laying on top of them. There have been reports that the Israelis are taking people from their homes, blindfolding them, removing their clothes, taking them away or lining them up and shooting them against the wall. There is no way of verifying this.

People are making phone calls and saying that these soldiers and militia have come in and are shooting people and then the line cuts off. This could be because the Israelis are hanging the phone up but this is the point, we just don't know. The fear is bad enough.

The numbers of these killings I fear are much greater than the numbers confirmed in the press, because the human rights offices and the media centers have been stormed, and everything is shut down. No one can move without almost certain chance of being shot by the Isreali snipers, who are everywhere.

The Israelis are demanding that all journalists leave Ramallah and today another foreign journalist was shot. They do not want any more internationals here and are deporting people. It seems quite clear that they do not want eyewitnesses which is only heightening my own fears.

The hospitals have also been surrounded and invaded and Israeli troops are taking the injured people and interrogating them. Today a woman, a patient, tried to walk out from hospital. The Israelis shot her in the neck and killed her.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health is saying that they fear the spread of diseases because of the number of unburied corpses.

The numbers are only growing in reports of the mass killings here and Israeli troops continue to round up people. People are calling frantically, missing a relative and we do not know where they have been taken, including children.

The numbers of detainees we know about exceeds 600, and we are estimating between 700 and 800 Palestinians have been taken away. All human rights groups and legal advocates are being denied any information of where the detained are being held. The people we have spoken to confirm that 10% of those detained so far have been children under age 18.

On the fourth day I decided to try to move. People were running out of supplies and I also was so worried about people, and had to check to see if they were okay. If I didn't, I feared panic would overtake me so badly that I really had no other choice but to try and go.

It was not safe where I was in any case and at least if I left I would still have my sanity. It was really terrifying as there are some internationals here, usually traveling in groups, and the Israelis are saying on the radio that they will arrest or shoot the internationals. They did shoot some yesterday and regardless, it's not as if snipers differentiate and they are everywhere.

My friends told me not to go, and were really scared for me, but I had to go. When I went outside, there were cars all shot up and hit by multiple bullets and shells in the middle of the road, unparked. There must have been people in them but I don't know where their bodies are. There are no reports of them, but they must exist.

I got to the corner trying to go to the bakery for bread and food for people. Some people were calling and calling with only one cup of rice left. I made it to the corner but they opened fire on my first try, and shot at me, so I had to turn back.

After that I tried again and it took me one day to make it a block because I had to start over again and again. I had to climb through the valley, and as I passed house by house, people were warning me and pointing out what path seemed safest for these two minutes. In the next two minutes, it would be something different. They really helped to keep my path safe.

Today is Day Five and they are still rounding up people like this and we hear them shooting all day long.

This afternoon the Israelis suddenly lifted the curfew, suddenly announcing that everyone had two hours to go out to get food. However, the Israeli soldiers also took food from many of the stores, looted, and there is no bread or things. People went to get whatever they could.

Even though the Israeli army said it had lifted the closure for two hours -- in which we still were not able to transfer medical supplies and still was not long enough to get everything that was badly needed -- the Israelis continued shooting people in the streets indiscriminately on their way, so people were running around trying to make it to the store or find a safe route only to have to run back home again. It was an added cruelty and terror tactic in this macabre situation, a sick joke: starve people and then shoot them when they try to find food with your permission.

In an apartment building in Beitunia neighborhood where I used to live, they took 60 people who were my neighbors, including several familes, and pushed them into one room since last night. The Israelis told them that they are to be used as "human shields", as the apartment building is across from a building that they were invading.

One child needs to go to the hospital since last night and, initially, the families were able to call outside. Now, the Israelis have taken their phones.

There are reports that they are rounding up men between the ages of 14 and 45 in that neighborhood, and these civilians, from these same Palestinian families trapped in that building, were just used to walk in front of an Israeli tank as it invaded the Preventative Security Compound.

Reports also have alleged that the Israelis were saying that some could leave but shot them when they attempted to leave. The buildings there are burning, and people are trapped inside.

We keep calling to try to find people but there has been no electricity and most people's phones are dead now. I do not know what is happening to many people. The only solution to this is to try to brave the deadly streets in order to check, but it's almost impossible and terrifying to leave the house at all.

Each place I come to, I am afraid to leave not only for myself but for everyone else in this horrifying position. I hear only shooting and shooting, with no return fire. This suggest that unarmed civilians are being gunned down mercilessly everywhere and I am so scared for everyone. I feel like maybe if I leave one place, one area or neighborhood that I will never see people alive again.

There are more explosions outside now and more shooting. Another explosion. More firing, it just doesn't stop.

This is a massacre. The foreign delegations tried to get in but were turned back, the International Committee of the Red Cross is trying to help but they are being ignored. Please help.

I am not only scared for myself and for people here, but if this cannot be stopped, I am truly scared for all of humanity, for a world in which we send men to the moon but cannot stop ethnic cleansing.

On the news in America, we see hardly anything of demonstrations. What are you doing over there?

There do not seem to be any reports of what is happening. In truth, it's got to stop. Please go out to the streets, please demand a response from your representatives. Be loud, march up to the capitals, refuse to leave until the Israelis withdraw. Act now! Tell them the Israelis are murdering innocent people whose only crime is being born in their own homeland, a Palestinian under a military occupation.

Demand international protection for the Palestinian people, scream that this is an affront to humanity and that it is time that the US not only stop supporting Israel, but that the US stop its abuse of human rights within its own borders. This is about all of our struggles. For the love of God, please stop this slaughter. Please help.

The text of this page has been copied from
http://electronicintifada.net/diaries/archives/000 00032.shtml
(and published on Serendipity on 2002-04-06).

Additional eyewittness reports of current (April2002)
Israeli military action against Palestinian civilians
in the West Bank may be found at
http://www.electronicintifada.org/diaries/index.ht ml.

At the risk of incurring the usual racial slurs, let me set the record straight on one point.

Katz had to make his usual thinly veiled references to the muslim world. The posts were full of the ignorant anti-arab jabber of people whose idea of independent media is CNN and the bloody Drudge Report.

I'm half arab, and I live in the middle east. I am sitting here right now with street demonstrations outside well into their 5th straight hour chanting anti-government, anti-military, and anti-US slogans.

Yes, the people on the street here have an axe to grind with the US, and to a lesser extent the rest of the West. That axe is Israel/Palestine.

What I'm trying to say here is that the reason people her don't like youy folks is because you don't bother to check whether your government's foreign policy is in any way related to justice.

I"m not going to look for good guys and bad guys here; bombing civilians is bad, just as using military force against a civilian population is.

But the US foreign policy is just way off. Get your facts straight before flaming me.

Stop going on about how the 'islamic orient feels inferior and therefore hates the west'. It's getting old. Start understanding the mistakes made at the beginning of the century by Lord Balfour and subsequently by the US government.

Oh, and Katz? Go away please. You're superficial. That's a quality that has hampered the west from dealing adequately till this day with the issues in the middle east. Media whoring is the last thing this issue needs.

Farewell karma, you have served me well.

And as for Israelis slaughtering Palestinians, I'd call the last, oh, 96 hours or so in Israel a pretty good indication of who the aggressors are. While one side attempts to negotiate in good faith, the other side is setting of suicide bombs in public places. Who's the good guy to you?

Let me join you in karma burning. I think this post is worth the trouble.

First, my bias to give you something to guage by: I'm half Arab half Scandinavian; lived half my life in the middle east, and I do now.

A few points:

1. You have no grasp of the facts on the ground. I do. Please read up on history first and seek the other side's bias first to better draw your own conclusions.

2. Your world view is a little too simplistic to be constructive. There are only good guys and bad guys in elementary school and Hollywood. The peace process gets derailed every time someone starts looking for 'good guys' and 'bad guys'.

3. Slashdot works better when we keep the politics out of it. Or, at least, the misinformed politics. Your post surprised me because I was under the impression that most shashdotters take the trouble to verify what the mainstream media has to say about issues.

Sayonara karma; you have served me well.

I thought he said intifada.