The Iranian Threat?

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

don't think this one will backfire...this is an onslaught of shock and awe...hamas yes...is now grown up and aye am sure it is time for the military wing to be amputated...back from... delusion now reality sets in for the hamas leaders...and jerusalem...on sunday...and bush is supporting it...obama will follow bush lead and policy on this...for sure...play ball stv.

Israeli assault on Gaza risks emboldening radicals

Analysts say operation could backfire, much like Lebanon incursion
By Liz Sly | Tribune correspondent

December 30, 2008
 
BEIRUT — Israel's assault on Gaza is a gamble that may succeed in irrevocably weakening the Palestinian Hamas movement — but it also could backfire by strengthening Hamas and other radicals in the way that the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah ended up emboldening Lebanon's militant Shiite movement.

The longer Hamas holds out against the Israeli offensive, the greater the likelihood of comparisons with the Lebanon war, in which Hezbollah stood firm against intensive Israeli airstrikes and earned the widespread adulation of the Arab world, according to experts in the Middle East.

Hezbollah later leveraged its enhanced prestige to push for greater political power within the Lebanese government — thereby increasing the influence of its patrons, Iran and Syria, in the region.

A similar scenario could unfold in Gaza, where Hamas, also backed by Iran and Syria, will need only to survive in order to claim a victory of sorts, said Hilal Khashan, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut.



Related links
Israel: 'War to the bitter end' with Hamas "As long as Hamas holds on, Hamas can always say it held its ground," he said. "No matter how this ends, the position of the so-called Arab moderates will deteriorate and Iran will get stronger."

Already, regional peace efforts have been hurt by the halting of indirect talks between Israel and Syria: Turkey, a majority Muslim nation that has relations with Israel, said Monday it could no longer serve as a broker in the talks given the ferocity of Israel's onslaught. Syria suspended its participation the previous day.

In Tehran, more than 3,500 people signed up to a Web site launched by a group of conservative clerics soliciting volunteers to fight Israel. The Combatant Clergy Society offered recruits the choice of three ways to fight: militarily, financially and via propaganda, The Associated Press reported.

And in the southern suburbs of Beirut, tens of thousands of supporters of Hezbollah staged the biggest Arab rally yet against Israel's attacks on Gaza, braving drizzling rain to wave yellow Hezbollah flags and chant "Death to Israel, Death to America."

"We hope Hezbollah attacks Israel," said high school student Noha Maha, 17, who was among those attending the rally. "We have lived through so much war, we can accept one more for the sake of Palestine."

Addressing the crowd via a video link, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah refrained from threatening direct intervention on behalf of the Palestinians. And with the region's authoritarian regimes firmly in control of their police states, a spillover of the violence seems unlikely.

But the fact that Hamas is Sunni, and ideologically affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the region's most influential Islamist movement, enhances the appeal of the movement's plight to ordinary Arabs, said Diaa Rashwan of the Cairo-based Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Much of the wrath of the Arab world has been directed toward Egypt, which has refused to open its borders with Gaza to refugees and to allow supplies to reach stricken Palestinians. Nasrallah accused Egypt's government of "complicity" in the attacks on Gaza.

The Brotherhood is also Egypt's biggest opposition movement, and about 3,000 of its supporters staged a demonstration Monday in Cairo. Egyptian police are out in force on the streets of the capital, underlining the regime's nervousness, Rashwan said.

"The Israelis are making the same mistake the Americans made in Iraq and the Israelis themselves made in Lebanon in 2006," he said. "Aggressive actions such as these only increase the popularity of Islamists in the Arab world and widen the gap between many Arab regimes and the people, with the result of a further destabilization of the region."

Hamas' association with Iran is viewed with suspicion by many Arabs, and a successful Israeli offensive could significantly reduce Iran's influence in the region, said Riad Kahwaji of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

"If Hamas was out of the equation, then Iran will have lost one of its bargaining cards with the West," he said.

Analysts note that Israel already appears to have made greater inroads against Hamas in the first days of its offensive than it did against Hezbollah, which triggered the 2006 war by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and was well prepared for Israel's retaliation, evacuating its headquarters and other key infrastructure before Israeli warplanes struck.

However, Hamas showed defiance Monday, firing off rockets and mortars that killed three Israeli citizens. Its senior leaders reportedly have gone into hiding.

With footage of the bloodied child victims of the Gaza airstrikes swamping Arab TV screens around the clock, Israel can't afford a long campaign, Kahwaji said.

"This is going to radicalize a lot of elements in the region," he said. "The longer it lasts, the smaller the political gains Israel will make and the more the radicals will gain."

[Julie Fern]

yes, killing palestinians certainly has worked so far.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

yes, killing palestinians certainly has worked so far.

ridding earth of hamas is the issue, bigot...

no rocket fire...no suicide bombers...no israelis killed...then no palestinians killed...hamas only hurts palastinians in the end and holds them back...see how west bank approach is going...



understand? dipshite? putz?

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

...bringing hamas to its knees...lets hope palestinians see how hamas has hurt them and reject them once and for all...west bank is moving forward...perhaps gaza will wake up...


ASHDOD, Israel — A piercing shriek went up and a young woman fainted as the body, wrapped in a white shroud, was brought into the packed funeral hall.

On Tuesday, this fast-developing, modern port city about halfway between Gaza and Tel Aviv buried its first victim of a rocket attack: Irit Sheetrit, a 39-year-old mother of four.

The Katyusha-type rocket that killed her was fired Monday night by Palestinian militants from Gaza. It was the first to have hit this city of more than 200,000, about 18 miles north of the Palestinian territory, and underscored how rockets from Gaza were reaching farther into the country with each passing day.

As the sun set on Tuesday, rockets flying out of Gaza were landing in new places, like Kiryat Malachi, to the northeast, and Beersheba, a major city in Israel’s south.

Over the weekend, Israel began its devastating aerial bombardment of Hamas targets in Gaza with the stated goal of stopping the incessant rocket fire that has plagued Israeli towns and villages close to the border for years.

More than 370 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault so far, Palestinian officials said. Among the dead were at least 62 women and children, according to the United Nations, and an unknown number of civilian men. The militants have responded by firing increasingly advanced rockets with longer ranges into Israel.

Yet here, amid the sobbing of the mourners, many of them in a state of shock and disbelief, support for a sustained Israeli military campaign remained strong.

“Of course we support it,” said Rosette Alalouf, a former colleague of Ms. Sheetrit, at the funeral. “Do we have a choice?”

In his eulogy, Yehiel Lasri, the mayor of Ashdod, conveyed the prevailing spirit of resolve here. “Has not the time come to use full force and all the means at our disposal?”

Mr. Lasri added that he had watched as Sderot first came under rocket fire, then Ashkelon, a city on the coast. “We hoped they would not get to Ashdod, but we did not delude ourselves,” he said, noting that the authorities had been preparing for such a situation for two years.

The ability of civilians to withstand heavy rocket fire, which Israel fully expected in the wake of its campaign, is a crucial part of the military equation. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel put it at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, “The patience, determination and stamina of the residents of the home front will, in the end, determine the ability” of Israel to attain its military and diplomatic goals.

Israeli officials say the preparations in that home front — which now includes hundreds of thousands of citizens in southern Israel — have saved many lives. Though four Israelis have been killed in rocket attacks since the start of the military operation, three of them on Monday, officials say the hundreds of rockets that have been fired could have exacted a much heavier toll.

All communities within 25 miles of Gaza have sirens that serve as alerts for incoming rockets, and while the Hanukkah vacation officially ended on Tuesday, schools within the range of the rockets remained closed.

Television and radio stations repeatedly broadcast instructions on how to behave during an alert. Those driving, for example, are told to get out of their cars and lie on the ground.

Ms. Sheetrit had been on her way home from the gym with her sister when the siren wailed. She managed to get out of the car and tried to take shelter in a bus station, but the rocket slammed down too quickly, too close.

The impact site has turned into something of a local destination. Curious residents came by on Tuesday, some taking photographs on their cellphones. A group of children from a nearby apartment building searched a grassy verge for tiny metal balls and other bits of shrapnel that had scattered all around.

Two more rockets hit Ashdod in the evening, this time falling in open areas and causing no harm.

The center of town was unusually quiet on Tuesday, though stores remained open in an attempt to maintain a sense of normality. Many of the adults seemed reconciled to the new situation, but they said that the children were very afraid.

Zion Ben Abu, 45, the owner of a falafel shop, said he used to run a factory in an industrial zone on the Gaza border where dozens of Palestinians worked. He said he felt some sympathy for average Gazans, who “mostly want to send their kids to school and live quietly, like us.”

The problem, he said, is the Hamas leaders, who had left Israel no choice but to fight.

Oren Idelman, 33, an investment adviser at a nearby bank, said, “I’m prepared to live like this for months, as long as the army continues this aggressive line.” The Gazans “have to understand that if we get hit, they get hit,” he said.

In Netivot, an Israeli town east of Gaza, clusters of people waited at bus stops with small suitcases when the Sabbath ended on Saturday evening, hours after a local man was killed in a rocket attack.

But nobody seemed to be speaking of leaving Ashdod, perhaps because of the shrinking number of places where it was safe to go.

“I’ve been here since 1976,” said Avraham Ohana, an older resident. “We are used to wars. But they always used to happen somewhere else, far away.”

As Mr. Ohana spoke, his brother called on his cellphone and urged him to come and stay with him in Haifa, about 80 miles to the north.

“I said, ‘What for? To be within range of Nasrallah’s rockets?’ ” he joked bleakly, referring to Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese group that fired thousands of Katyusha-type rockets into northern Israel in 2006 when they fought a 34-day war.

[Julie Fern]

yes, killing palestinians certainly has worked so far.

ridding earth of hamas is the issue, bigot...

no rocket fire...no suicide bombers...no israelis killed...then no palestinians killed...hamas only hurts palastinians in the end and holds them back...see how west bank approach is going...



understand? dipshite? putz?

you always find excuse for killing.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

yes, killing palestinians certainly has worked so far.

you didn't think much about killing kurds...that's okay to you? 

how long you been hypocrite, archie?

[Julie Fern]

julie wish only best for kurds.  what julie has said is that kurds not now "safe" because u.s. killed other iraqis;  all of this blood going be for naught.

and when kurds get attacked, you be first one say u.s. should intervene.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

julie wish only best for kurds.  what julie has said is that kurds not now "safe" because u.s. killed other iraqis;  all of this blood going be for naught.

and when kurds get attacked, you be first one say u.s. should intervene.

this has nothing at all to do with the kurds being "safe"...nothing whatsoever a-hole...

now kurds can take care of themselves because they live within a democratic environment...they have empowerment over their own land...they don't live in fear...they are even making headway within turkey...big difference than having a genocidal dictator ruling them...and digging graves for them...understand? dipshite?...

and you are so full of *&^% it is smelling up new jersey {where you have recently been} the excrement you believe is stuck to your back...it is green and disgusting and smells like a rotting corpse or lower abdominal fistulae...because of the hypocrisy and bigotry in your heart; you are one of the worse kinds of hypocrites...you crawl out from under your rock whenever someone fights back and there is bloodshed on "The other side"  "hamas" hates the state of israel and doesn't want israel to even exist...those are not just words..."wipe israel off the map"...that is a BELIEF...the quran is full of passages of "hatred" for "judah"...this has nothing to do with building a nation for the palestinians...you *&^% for brains...you mark certain groups out because you are a fuching bigot...you would prefer that the kurds are better off suffering and living under oppression of hussein..which they most assuredly would still be suffering through without us intervention...you would prefer that israel sit back and take it...when along the way...the west bank palestinians are making progress...without a militarized wing...

hey "john" julie fern, muthafucher...sometimes people have to die...especially "jealous misguided guerrillas" and that is what the militarized wing of hamas is...nothing but bottom dwelling eels...

you are one of those who bend over and sell "doves from your ass"...jesus kicked lowlifes like you out of the temple...and aye am sorry that people die...it is a part of life...there is punishment for selfishness and jealousy and when people "hate" because of bigotry...

genocide is one of the greatest evils facing humanity today...and there is an undercurrented spirited financially powerful movement to hunt down and destroy those who "dig mass graves"...believe it...

bigotry!  is your crime too.....you are a spineless bigot...

don't even pretend for a reflex second that you care about the kurds or the palestinians or israelis...

you only care that people do not fight back when they are having their brains beaten in...

well fighting back is how humans still walk this planet...life is a gift...a gift not to be selfishly taken...and defending oneself is preservation of that gift...and it is demanded...

preservation of life comes before petty transgression...

your bigotry will be punished as well...you are simply a scared little petty coward..and your punishment will probably make you cry from something like a paper cut...

px.o. rsta...

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

Israel-Hamas Clashes Enter 2nd Week, Casualties Climb (Update1)
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By Calev Ben-David and Saud Abu Ramadan

Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Israeli fighters and ships pounded tunnels, camps and houses in the Gaza Strip as the military operation against Hamas entered its second week, and a leader of the Islamist group warned of a “black destiny” if a ground invasion follows.

An Israeli air strike overnight killed a second senior Hamas leader, Abu Zakaria al-Jamal, a commander of their armed wing, the daily Haaretz reported on its Web site.

President George W. Bush blamed Hamas for instigating the fighting, describing the Islamist movement’s rocket attacks on Israel as an “act of terror” and saying that any “one-way ceasefire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable.”

Israeli jets and naval vessels hit 35 Hamas targets yesterday, including training camps, five tunnels dug under the Egyptian border, a mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp where weapons were kept and the homes of senior Hamas military operatives Muhammed Madhun and Imad Akel, the army said in an e- mailed statement. Neither was reported injured.

Palestinian militants fired at least 31 rockets into southern Israel throughout the day, seven striking the coastal city of Ashkelon, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. There were no serious injuries.

‘Black Destiny’

“If you commit the stupidity of launching a ground offensive, then a black destiny awaits you,” Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said to Israel last night on Al- Jazeera television, according to Agence France-Presse. The Associated Press quoted Mashaal as saying the group, which controls Gaza, is prepared to cooperate with “any effort leading to” an end to the offensive.

In his weekly radio address, Bush vowed that his administration will “stay closely engaged” in multinational efforts to end the conflict. He called for “monitoring mechanisms” to prevent the smuggling of rockets and other weapons into the Gaza Strip.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington yesterday that the U.S. is seeking a “durable and sustainable” cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

The U.S. is seeking a third-party to mediate between it and Hamas, Israel’s Channel 2 news said last night without citing sources. Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union.

Ground Offensive

Israel massed infantry and tank divisions on the Gaza border after its Cabinet cleared the way Dec. 28 for the army to draft as many as 7,000 reserves and the military on Dec. 29 declared a swath of Israel just north of the southern coastal region to be a closed zone.

“The Israeli military is already in place, ready and on alert,” said army spokeswoman Major Avital Leibovitz. “But currently the operation is aircraft and navy only.”

In Gaza, the death toll has reached 430, with around 2,200 wounded, according to the Palestinian emergency services office in Gaza City. Four Israelis have been killed by rockets since the fighting began.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak met yesterday to review the security and diplomatic situation, said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office, in a telephone interview.

“Israel seeks a sustainable and durable cease-fire in the south that will free the people of southern Israel from the daily terror of Hamas rockets,” said Regev.

Rockets Barrage

Livni met in Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Jan. 1 after Israel rejected a proposal by his government for a 48-hour cease-fire. Sarkozy is scheduled to visit the region next week to help “establish peace” he said in a televised address.

A six-month cease-fire with Hamas expired Dec. 19, after the Islamic movement said Israel must end what it called a blockade of Gaza’s border crossings and launched a barrage of rockets at southern Israeli towns a day before the truce ended.

The funeral of Nizar Rayyan was held yesterday in Gaza after the top Hamas leader was killed by an Israeli air strike on his home.

“Israel is mistaken if it thinks that by killing Hamas leaders it will put an end to the group,” Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said in a telephone interview. “Hamas is a movement that has the support of 35 to 40 percent of the Palestinian people.”

Hamas seized control of Gaza, vanquishing the Fatah forces of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in June 2007. This brought to an end a power-sharing agreement, which began after the Islamic movement won parliamentary elections in January 2006.

To contact the reporters on this story: Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem at phirschberg@bloomberg.net; Saud Abu Ramadan in Gaza City through the Tel Aviv newsroomt .

Last Updated: January 3, 2009 02:39 EST

[Julie Fern]

julie wish only best for kurds. what julie has said is that kurds not now "safe" because u.s. killed other iraqis; all of this blood going be for naught.

and when kurds get attacked, you be first one say u.s. should intervene.

this has nothing at all to do with the kurds being "safe"...nothing whatsoever a-hole...

now kurds can take care of themselves because they live within a democratic environment...they have empowerment over their own land...they don't live in fear...they are even making headway within turkey...big difference than having a genocidal dictator ruling them...and digging graves for them...understand? dipshite?...

and when turks or non-kurd iraqis fight them, you be first say u.s. should intervene.