Gaza: Qassam attacks had to be answered

By Seth Freedman FIRST POST DECEMBER 31, 2008

The weakest weapon in the arsenal of those condemning Israel for attacking Gaza is the 'Qassams are harmless' canard. Granted, thousands of incoming rockets have only caused a handful of deaths since they began falling, but the psychological impact of the barrage has left an entire region paralysed with fear.

Israel's citizens demand - rightly - that their elected officials take care of their security, as in any other country. Whilst Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians is reprehensible at best, and criminal at worst, in the context of the here-and-now the collapsing ceasefire and resumption of Qassam attacks left Israel's government with little choice than to act, and act swiftly.

No sane or rational Israeli wishes to see Gazans suffer any more than they wish harm on the residents of Sderot. But, given Hamas's predilection for using Gaza's civilians as human shields, launching rockets from heavily populated towns and cities, taking action to stem the flow of Qassam fire was inevitably going to lead to civilians being caught in the crossfire.
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Gaza: Don’t be fooled by Israel’s shocking crime

Matthew Carr
FIRST POST DECEMBER 31, 2008

Even by its own dismal standards, Israel's blitz of the Gaza Strip represents a new threshold of savage and reckless militarism. The fourth strongest military power in the world has subjected an essentially defenceless and impoverished population of 1.5m Palestinians to a brutal aerial bombardment, claiming at least 350 victims and more than a thousand injured.

As always, Israeli propaganda has presented the assault as a reluctant response to "terror" ­ specifically Hamas's mortar and Qassam rocket attacks on southern Israel.

There is no doubt that Hamas's military wing should not be firing rockets anywhere near civilian populations, but Qassam rockets are a negligible military weapon compared to the vast firepower that Israel has unleashed on Gaza since its unilateral withdrawal from the strip in 2005. According to the UN, 11 Israeli civilians died from Qassam rocket attacks between 2004 and 2007. In Gaza, by contrast, more than 300 Palestinians died in 2006 alone, a year in which the IDF fired 14,000 artillery shells into the strip. More:


Instead of engaging Hamas politically and allowing it to fulfill its democratic mandate, Israel declared it would not negotiate with "terrorists" and set out to undermine Hamas financially and make it impossible for it to govern.

Western governments have generally limited themselves to hypocritical calls for "restraint" and sanctimonious cant about "unacceptable" civilian casualties, while leader writers and media pundits wring their hands at Israel's vulnerability or engage in "blaming the victim" sophistry. As always, Israeli spokesmen insist on the restraint and humanity of its armed forces and express regret at the loss of "innocent" lives.

For too many Israelis ­ and too many of their supporters ­ Palestinians and Arabs can never be fully "innocent". Even less so when they have had the temerity to elect a "terrorist" government.

Such satisfaction will not last long. Hamas will undoubtedly take its revenge, and Israel will carry out further acts of futile "counter-terrorism". Even as it exposes the fraudulent "peace process" of the last few years, the assault on Gaza will resonate across the Muslim world for decades to come, providing carte blanche to those who believe that if Israel and its supporters can kill with impunity, then so can they.

Hamas : 4 - Israel : 374

Israel's cabinet is meeting to discuss proposals for an immediate suspension of air operations against Gaza.
Calls have come from Middle East peace-brokers including the US and EU foreign ministers. But Israeli leaders are reported to be split on the issue.
A foreign ministry spokesman said a unilateral 48-hour halt was "unrealistic", as long as Hamas continued to fire at Israel.

Palestinian officials say about 374 Palestinians have died in Israeli air strikes since Saturday;
4 Israelis have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza. BBC:

In my opinion, the only reason a unilateral 48-hour halt is "unrealistic" is because it doesn't suit their intention to wipe out the Palestinian population. The Israeli air strikes began less than a week after the expiry of a six-month-long ceasefire deal with Hamas.... which says to me that the Israelis were just waiting for an excuse to start hostilities again - that may well be a very simplistic view of the situation but as far as I can see that is the Israeli's main objective.

If the Israeli's really wanted to rid themselves of the Hamas they could move troops in and weed them out instead of indiscriminately bombing.

But, while condemning the Israeli action I really think that the Hamas should also be criticized for carrying out their action from within Gaza: by using civilians as cover for their operations and putting them at risk from the inevitable military retaliation they are also showing a total disregard for their lives.

Israeli air strike kills five daughters from one family as Gaza death toll passes 300.
Six months of secret planning - then Israel moves against Hamas
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Pilot: 'I'm not qualified to land'

A pilot flew 80 passengers from Cardiff to Paris then told them: "We have to turn back - I'm not qualified to land."

The pilot took the decision after thick fog cut visibility to 700 metres at Charles de Gaulle airport and he told passengers he was not trained to land the aircraft in such conditions.

So, they flew the 300 miles back to Cardiff airport - having left just hours earlier.

Ananova:

So, let me get this right - he's not qualified to land in Paris but he is qualified to land in Cardiff !? Strikes me as very odd. Anyhow, were there no other airports closer than Cardiff where he could have landed? Sounds to me like he shouldn't be flying at all.

Christmas Batman to the rescue

A mystery businessman dressed up as Batman is bringing seasonal cheer to Sheffield.
The caped Christmas crusader has been spotted lending a hand at a soup kitchen and in a charity shop at a children's hospice.
But despite his good works and charitable donations totalling £10,000, the Yorkshire Batman's identity is still unknown.
He is known to be a local entrepreneur, but wears a mask at all times and speaks with a fake American accent.
"I don't want to reveal my identity because it's more important to highlight the charities," he told the Daily Express.
"I don't care if some people think I'm bonkers. If I inspire others to give their time and money to good causes this Christmas, it's been worth it.
"My message is that you don't need to be a superhero, or super wealthy, to give to deserving causes. If you can give cash, or toys, that's fantastic. The most precious gift of all is your time."
Batman helped stack shelves and man the tills at Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice charity shop in the city, where staff said that his presence sent takings through the roof.
"At first we thought he was a joker, but he turned out to be a true superhero," said one shop worker. "We're thinking of getting a Bat light installed so we can send him a signal whenever business is slow." Ananova:

Spanish fake kidnap mother jailed

A Spanish woman has been found guilty of staging the fake kidnapping of her two children seven times in order to obtain ransom money from her husband.

Over five years, Josefa Sanchez Vargas conned her estranged husband out of more than 600,000 euros (£535,000), saying she had to pay the kidnappers.

But he eventually became suspicious, and hired a detective to investigate. BBC News:

He eventually became suspicious - after SEVEN fake kidnappings. What an idiot! Wouldn't you have thought he would have become suspicious after the second or third kidnapping but seven? He has to be lacking a few brain cells.

Santa demands toy ransom

A mystery Santa demanded a toy ransom for an orphanage after pinching a builder's £3,000 digger.

Jaroslaw Kryzwonos was ordered to buy £200 of toys for the children's home in Lublin, Poland, in a phone call from a man identifying himself as Father Christmas.

After dropping off the sackloads of toys, the builder found his digger parked back where it had been stolen from.

A local police spokesman said: "This must be a very tough time for the economy if even Santa is trying his hand at kidnapping."

Sweet 'n' sour

Here is a very interesting article from yesterday's First Post (sorry I only found it today)

Lemons that taste like sugared meringues? Vinegar that tastes like cool-aid? Sweet cheese? It's true - I've tasted them all. It just needed a small berry popped into my mouth, rolled around for about a minute, and my taste buds went into reverse. Anything sour tasted sweet. No wonder they call it the Miracle Berry. And believe me, it's much much more than a party trick.
The story begins thirty years ago with Robert Harvey, an American entrepreneur who rediscovered Synsepalum dulcificum, a wild berry grown in West Africa, which, when properly processed, turns sour food and drink sweet, and, even more significantly, high-calorie sweetened junk foods into zero-calorie tasty treats.

It was Harvey, working away in his New England laboratories in the early Seventies, who first realised that here was something which had the potential to be a safe non-fattening sugar substitute and an alternative to the (then) new artificial sweeteners, those chemical mixes just beginning to make their mark on the food and drink industry.
Harvey and his colleagues were able to process the berry's 'miracle' ingredient to make it marketable. So his company conducted their first practical miracle berry trial. They coated some sugarless ice lollies with the berry process. Then they took sugar-coated ice lollies, mixed the two brands up and handed them out to schoolchildren in a Boston playground. Result ? All the kids preferred the Miracle Berry lollies to the sugared ones, not only making the key marketing point but also showing that the berry is a taste enhancer.

Harvey was ecstatic: "The kids licked the outside of the lolly thus making the unsugared inside taste sweet. It didn't rot the teeth and there were no calories. It was junk food without the junk."
Harvey was sitting on a billion dollar project - one that could have had profound implications not only for the epidemic of obesity in the US, but the pandemic throughout the developed Western world.
Reynolds Metal (who make the aluminium wrappings for lollies and ice creams) came on board, Barclays Bank came on board, so did the mighty Prudential. Harvey had hundreds of thousands of miracle berry plants growing in Jamaica. The American Federal Drugs Administration took a benign view of the product
And then it got nasty. In the autumn of 1973 Harvey's offices were burgled and the precious files ransacked.

"This was a professional job." Harvey recalls. "When the police arrived we discovered that
none of the building's locks had been smashed or broken."

Then the real bombshell. In 1974, the FDA changed its mind about the Miracle Berry product on the very eve of the product launch in drug stores across the whole of the Eastern seaboard. In the most brutal way, the FDA ordered all the products to be withdrawn at once. In a complete headstand, the FDA, which had indicated it would clear the product for use, now reclassified the berry as an additive, and like any artificial ingredient, it would now have to submit to years of testing for safety and efficacy.

Who was behind all that? We may never know, but suspicions abound. Harvey's project ended in near bankruptcy. And today, the Miracle Berry remains a mere party trick for those who can buy it mail order.

Tom Mangold presents The Miracle Berry on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 28 April at 9pm
FIRST POSTED APRIL 28, 2008