Hamas Makes Islamic Jihad Vow Not To Fire Rockets

From: Agence France-Presse
Yesterday, 12:53 pm
(Monday 9th, March 2009)
Courtesy Of Yahoo News (UK)

Security forces of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza detained several Islamic Jihad activists and made them sign an agreement not to fire rockets at Israel, a Jihad leader said on Monday.

"At least 10 activists from the Al-Quds Brigades were arrested by the Hamas interior security," he said in reference to the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad.

"They were tortured and interrogated about the identities of those who fire rockets," he told AFP by telephone under condition of anonymity.

"Before they were released they had to sign an agreement not to fire rockets at the occupied territory," he said in reference to Israel whose existence both Hamas and its smaller Islamist rivals in Jihad oppose.

A Hamas police spokesman in Gaza City, Islam Shahwan, declined to comment on the report.

Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, is involved in Egyptian-mediated negotiations with Israel to try to consolidate a January 18 truce which ended a 22-day Israeli military offensive in Gaza.

The stated aim of the offensive, which killed more than 1,300 people, almost all Palestinians, was to significantly reduce the number of rockets fired at southern Israel, many of them by Islamic Jihad.

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If The Hamas Rockets Are So Lethal, Why Doesn't Israel Swap An F-16 For Some?

Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent

The worrying part about whether the ceasefire in Gaza can hold together will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms to the terrorists. Because Israel's getting their planes and tanks and missiles from somewhere and until this supply is cut off there's every chance it could start up again.

The disregard for life from these terrorists and their supporters is shocking. For example Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, wrote that the purpose of the Israeli attack must be to "inflict a heavy death toll and heavy pain on the Gaza population".

Replace "Gaza" with "western", and that could have been written by al-Qa'ida. Maybe this is the problem: the Israelis are writing their policies by downloading statements from an Islamic Jihad website and just changing the place names. Also, if the Israelis think the Hamas rockets are as lethal as they say, why don't they swap their F-16 fighters and Apachehelicopters for a few of them?

These things are capable of terrorising a whole nation for years apparently, yet the Israelis have neglected to buy any, wasting their money on gunboats and stuff. Given that their annual arms budget is $7.2bn plus $2.2 bn in "aid", they'd save enough to buy a selection of banks in every country in the world.

The military advantages would be enormous because the Israelis' complaint about Hamas is the use of tunnels to smuggle arms. But if Israel gave Hamas a few planes and tanks and helicopters, they could probably be persuaded to shut down those tunnels that seem to be the cause of such bad feeling.

Whatever you say about Israel, at least it moves its weapons about legally – except for when it secretly built a nuclear arsenal against an array of international agreements. But they did it above ground and not in a tunnel and that's the main thing.

Watching the reports from Gaza, another reason why the ceasefire may break down becomes apparent. The Israelis might claim that their satellite pictures now show Palestinians in possession of huge mounds of rubble – lethal if thrown over the border. Luckily these weapons are easy to spot. Most of them are next to women howling, "Look what they've done to my house," but perhaps the airforce should bomb them again – just in case. The Israelis say they fear Hamas will once again break the ceasefire by sending over those rockets. But the whole point of the operation was to make that impossible. Because they must have asked themselves the question, "If we slaughter 1,300 people, including 300 children, is that likely to make people: A. less cross or B. more cross?" And presumably they concluded it will make them much less likely to grow up full of hatred and determination to retaliate. Perhaps they saw medical research that shows when someone is suffering from anxiety and bouts of irascible ill-tempered behaviour, the best treatment is to pen them in with no food or medicine and then kill some of them, and that calms them down a treat.

Another way to allay their worries about Hamas breaking the ceasefire is to read the report from their government's own Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre. This states that during the ceasefire "Hamas did not take part in any rocket fire and sometimes prevented other organisations from attacking." Still, with all that's been going on I suppose they haven't had time for reading.

Despite all this there might be one cheery sign, which is that never before have so many people seen through the Israeli government's excuses for handing out mass destruction. The demonstrations in support of Palestinians have been bigger than ever before, and even the United Nations and the Wall Street Journal have suggestedIsrael has committed war crimes. One poll in America suggested that 60 per cent of people opposed the bombardment, and the change of opinion reached the point that an Israeli diplomat has admitted that "The harm to civilians in Gaza is causing us huge damage."

Maybe, best of all, was genetics expert Steven Rose who appeared on Radio 4's Today programme to talk about a new study that's located "morality spots", the part of the brain that deals with our morality. Asked how we could know whether this was true, he said in a marvellously posh academic Radio 4 voice "Well we could test the brains of the Israeli cabinet and see if they've got no morality spots whatsoever."

And the most immoral part of all is the perfectly cynical timing, as if three weeks ago Bush shouted: "Last orders please. Any last bombing, before time's up? Come along now, haven't you got homes to demolish?"

Qassams Are Road Flares

By: Peter Chamberlin
Courtesy Of There Are No SunGlasses

The Zionist (American and Israeli) governments are no longer afraid for the world to see their true natures, that of heartless inhuman beasts, who treat Gaza not only as a prison-state, but also as the world’s largest closed laboratory. It is here that America’s newest technological toys can be tested on real human flesh. Maintaining Israel’s image no longer seems to matter to the world masters, as they test their new product lines on infants and children, right there for all the world to see.

Only governments that are totally indifferent to human suffering could carry-out the Israeli operation in Palestine. Only a government with the ability to move world opinion by bribe and extortion the way that the Jewish/Israel lobby does could stay the hand of justice, while they openly carried-on their butchery in an efficient Nazi-like manner, despite prevailing world opinion. The truth is, the world stands still in horror at the sight of the cruel tiny little state that has created for itself the ability to manipulate countless world governments.

The free citizens of this planet reel in horror at the escaping images of stacks of mutilated little corpses wrapped in green blankets. The political powerhouse of Jewish money that enables Israel to freely carry-out this public massacre is the same powerhouse that gives life to the myths that the Western media has created about the ominous Qassam rockets. Thanks to media pretensions to “fair play” principles, the glorified road flares wrapped in lightweight metal, built by brigades of Palestinian boys, are equated with the real weapons used by Israel.

I challenge the Western press to produce one picture of a Qassam “crater” that is bigger than a pothole.

Compare this to an Israeli missile strike; the first crater is from one of the new bunker-busters we gave them:

This next photo is from a conventional Israeli/American aerial bomb:

I also extend the challenge to the “legitimate press” to produce one photo of a dead Israeli child from this most recent Israeli blitzkrieg, in comparison to the hundreds of murdered Palestinian children.

There is absolutely no legitimate comparison to be made between the weapons Hamas uses in self-defense and the offensive weaponry being used against this civilian population.

peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com