Hamas leader's 14-year-old daughter killed during Israeli dawn raid

[struggle4progress]

Published Date: 27 April 2008
By Ibrahim Barzak
In Gaza City

ISRAEL forces entered a northern Gaza town yesterday and seized a local Hamas leader from his home amid heavy fighting with Palestinian gunmen, resulting in the death of his 14-year-old daughter.

The clash erupted in the town of Beit Lahiya, near the border with Israel. The Israeli army confirmed the raid.

Despite the renewed violence, Egypt is making another attempt to broker a truce between Hamas and Israel ...

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Hamas-leader39s-14yearold-daughter-killed.4024400.jp

[sharesunited]

1. Just accept Israel's right to exist and stop with the rockets and suicide shit.

Presto, no collateral damage.

[closeupready]

3. right, which is sort of what i mean in my response below yours.

n/t

[mitchtv]

5. not so simple with refugees and all

or do you really mean surrender?

[sharesunited]

6. Israel and the world are ready for a Palestinian state.

Ready to pour money and know-how into it for relief from suffering and infrastructure to build up a new member in the community of nations.

Why would anyone call that surrender unless they were simply harboring a pointless, futile grudge?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

7. Why does Israel give a shit if Hamas accepts their "right to exist?"

Does any other country ask others to accept their right to be there?

Why doesn't Israel have enough belief in its own right to not care?

What a ridiculous sentiment.

Israel is there. Palestine can't recognize Israel because there are no solid borders. Recognize Israel? What Israel? 1967 bordered israel? Apartheid Wall israel? Israel with the Golan?

Commit to a border then ask for acceptance.

They'd rather whine and complain "everybody hates us... wahhh!" and keep expanding settlements, keep encroaching on the WB...

[sharesunited]

8. Stop the rockets and buffer zone claims fade away.

Stop the suicide attacks and the perceived need for retaliatory military operations evaporates.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, Ohlmert has continued the Sharon policy against expansion by settlement. Any Jews purporting to purchase land for that purpose are sole actors without legal sanction and are not entitled to state protection.

Security is the centerpiece. Borders are much easier to honor and negotiate when the killing stops unconditionally.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

9. Nonsense. The IDF murdered, jailed, robbed and tried to destroy the community LONG before

there was violent resistance.

How about: end the tyranny and the resistance will cease?

[Vegasaurus]

10. No, wrong, wrong, wrong

Let's review the facts again.

Arabs started the war in 1948 and lost. Palestinians lived under Jordanian and Egyptian occupation for twenty years. There was no Israeli "tyranny".

Arabs started another war in 1967, which they also lost.

The wall, checkpoints, and restrictions began AFTER the violence and uprisings. Not before.

Resistance has caused the problems.

History proves this.

[azurnoir]

14. Yeah lets review your so called "facts"

The Arabs started the war and lost in 1948 and are still being punished to this day, why do the Israeli's not punish the Germans because they said "oops our bad we're sorry" or is it something else?

As far as 1967 the Arabs did not start that war Israel did out of paranoia and opportunism.

Oh yeah the Wall, check points, restrictions that did not start before violent uprising, according to your own posts that uprising started in at least the 1920's so there have been those along is that what your admitting?

[sabbat hunter]

17. in 1967

the egyptians closed the Straits of Tiran to all ships carrying israeli flags, which in of itself is an act of war. Next Egypt carrying strategic materials, and called for unified Arab action against Israel. Then Egypt, Syria and Jordan massed their troops on the borders of Israel.

So yeah, Israel was real paranoid.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

18. So then, please tell me,

if all was so great BEFORE the resistance, why did the first intifadah break out in 1987?

Look up the word TYRANNY in the dictionary.

[Vegasaurus]

19. Was there tyranny when Gaza and the WB were occupied

by Egyptian and Jordanian forces? or was that not such a "bad" occupation?

Is it only a bad occupation when Jews are doing it? (kind of reminds me why no one here gets too upset about the squalid refugee camp conditions in Lebanon, for example, or blames the Lebanese for keeping the Palestinians from having any work to speak of, but if it were Israelis doing that? You'd hear talk of genocide and apartheid and racism!)

Why was there no Palestinian nationalist movement during the time of the "other" occupations?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

20. 40 years has given Isarel plenty of time to demonstrate its intentions.

Actions speak louder than words.

[hack89]

24. Regardless, the intifada was a disaster

that has started a downward spiral for the Palestinians. There is only one proper response to suicide bombers and Israel took it - if the the Palestinians feel they can successfully wage war against Israel they need to be disabused of that idea quickly.

[Shaktimaan]

22. Because history has shown that doesn't work.

How about: end the tyranny and the resistance will cease?

After Oslo was implemented Israel did exactly that, ending checkpoints, pulled troops out of large areas of the WB, allowed the Palestinians to police themselves, began giving them tax-reciepts for their imports, built the PA, allowed autonomous elections, froze all settlement activity and many other things to improve Palestinians's lives and grant them increasing self-determination.

By all accounts it was a huge step towards peace and ending the occupation. The Palestinian response was immediate and shocking to the Israeli left who had always predicted your proposal, "end the tyranny and the resistance will cease." Instead there instantly was a huge increase in suicide bombings, terrorism and attacks against civilians. Months went by with no settlement activity at all or any kind of Israeli instigation or response against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The terrorism kept increasing, Arafat refused to police them or jail perpetrators.

Israel has made several other steps towards fomenting peace and giving Palestinians more freedom and less restrictions on their movement. The results are always the same. The more autonomy, the less restrictions they have, the more opportunity to attacks Israel they see as a result... the more they will take advantage of it by increasing terrorism. It's not like Israel's asking for very much here. A series of treaties already exist; The Oslo Accords, which Hamas has refused to honor. Israel held up their end after signing them, Hamas did everything in their power to negate them by spilling Israeli blood. And they still refuse to stop spilling Israeli blood until all of their demands are met, no matter how impossible they might be. Hamas themselves have gone on the record to specifically disagree with your assertion!

Or do you have a single scrap of evidence that your prediction will pan out?

[Vegasaurus]

25. No, this poster has no single scrap of evidence

and hasn't responded to you either, because she knows that no matter what Israel does, the Palestinians will continue with their violence.

Ending the occupation won't end the violence, because the issue is ISRAEL, not the occupation.

The religious and political leaders state their goals daily.


“It does not matter what the Jews do. We will not let them have peace,” Ibrahim Mudeiris, the imam of the Ijlin Mosque in Gaza, told me not long ago. We spoke after Friday prayers. The street outside the mosque was crowded with angry young men who had been excited by Mudeiris’s sermon, in which he identified Jews as “the sons of apes and pigs.”

“They can be nice to us or they can kill us, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “If we have a cease-fire with the Jews, it is only so that we can prepare ourselves for the final battle.”

[ProgressiveMuslim]

31. Nothing shows intentions more clearly than the bulldozers that clear trees to build settlements.

Exponential settlement expansion says it all.

No amount of propaganda, PR campaigns, birthright trips and highly paid consultants can change the reality on the ground.

All anyone has to do to understand the intentions of the gov't of Israel is open their eyes.

It's in plain view for all to see.

Exponential settlement expansion. Jews-only roads. Palestinians caged in a giant ghetto. Settler shit poisoning the groundwater.

Happy Birthday Israel.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

30. Israeli held up its end of the Oslo Accords? That's rich, Shakti.

Nice try, dude!

[Shaktimaan]

32. Yes, they did for quite a long time.

Or do you know of an aspect that they violated?
Or an aspect that the Palestinians did not?

[oberliner]

11. How about recognizing the same Israel that the UN and 160 countries around the world recognize?

How about the same Israel that the PLO recognized in 1993?

No need to mention borders or apartheid walls or Golan.

To quote Arafat's letter of that year:

"The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security."

That's it.

[sharesunited]

12. Fantastic start!

[azurnoir]

13. Arafat is dead and the PNC/PLO charter has never

changed, it still does not recognize Israel. I point this out only to highlight the falsity of the good Palesrinian=Fatah or those still living under on going occupation and bad Palestinian=Hamas those not living occupation but under siege and embargo, who have never been allowed to develop their economy or resources and were being actively prohibited from doing so both before and after Israel pulled back to it's borders and sent the Gaza "settlers" to greener pastures.

BG estimates that the project could pump revenues of $50m (£31m) a year into the Palestinian economy. According to Mr Field, the Palestinians have agreed that it would be paid into a central account audited by the international community. All foreign aid - as well as Israeli tax transfers - goes through that account. It should, therefore, be impossible for the Palestinians to siphon off the gas revenues.

Take note Israel has control over Palestinian monies also and has held those since Hamas was elected in 2006.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/sharon-vetoes-bg-group-deal-to-supply-israel-with-gas-from-gaza-536394.html

[ProgressiveMuslim]

15. That "no borders" thing has really worked great for Israel, hasn't it?

Nice try!

[LeftishBrit]

28. Good idea.

[LeftishBrit]

29. Because Hamas' policies are explicitly against a Jewish homeland in the Middle East...

not just its present borders. It's not just a matter of Israel seeking affirmation of its existence.

Personally, I think that rather than demanding that Hamas recognize 'Israel's right to exist' - a relatively abstract concept - it would be more appropriate to ask them to commit themselves to NOT seeking Israel's destruction. No, I do *not* think that *all* Hamas members or supporters wish to have Israel destroyed; but many do, and it's part of their Charter.


I believe that there should be talks involving all parties, including Hamas; but the problems will not be solved until Hamas accept that Israel can't, won't and shouldn't be destroyed. (They also won't be solved until Israel ceases its current settlement policy; but a two-state solution depends on both Israel and Palestine - not just either one of the two.)

[Violet_Crumble]

16. That's all this girl's death is to you? Collateral damage?

It's not acceptable to condone the killing of civilians, especially making out it's acceptable unless Israel's *right to exist* is recognised...

[The Magistrate]

21. Unfortunately, Ma'am, That Is The Reality Of The Thing

The published account leaves no doubt this was incidental to a fire-fight of some size between two military forces enaging one another.

It is always a matter for great regret when non-combatants, particularly juvenile non-combatants, are killed in the course of war. But it occurs in war, and will continue so long as this war does.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

26. I'm sure you are equally sanguine when Israeli kids are killed. nt

[The Magistrate]

27. My Attitude, Ma'am

Generally follows consideration of whether the act seems to be within or without the bounds of the laws of war regarding the involvement of non-combatants. An action which deliberately targets non-combatants is certainly criminal; an act which targets a combatant or combatants, in which a non-combatant is harmed, occasionally is, but generally is not, criminal. If, to take a hypothetical example, that would be somewhat parallel to this one, a Hamas team were to deliberately target a colonel in the Shin Bet, and found their best opportunity to kill him was on a family picnic, and did so, taking with him also his wife and child, my view would be that it was a reasonably clean hit.

[Shaktimaan]

23. I don't understand this question.

That's all this girl's death is to you? Collateral damage?

What else would she be? I'm not being flip, it's just that her death is the definition of collateral damage. Every single person who dies as collateral damage has a name and an age, a face, a family and a life of their own. We didn't know this girl though and the assertion that she should represent something more than collateral damage isn't fair. She is no more and no less worthy of dying by an accident of war than anyone else who has met the same fate.

Collateral damage is horrible, but it is an inevitable side effect of war. I doubt that sharesunited was condoning the killing of civilians, he said nothing to indicate that. His post accurately said that this death, and others like it, are avoidable should Hamas stop attacking Israel. Israel has never retaliated against Hamas for political reasons, never just for not recognizing Israel, but only to protect itself from terrorism.

There's a difference between stating the obvious and condoning, Violet. Also between actively condoning something and merely recognizing it as an inevitable wartime occurrence. I find collateral damage to be a regrettable, (but acceptable), side effect of defending oneself. I do not in any way "condone the killing of civilians unless Israel's *right to exist* is recognised."

You may disagree, thinking that civilian deaths are never acceptable, regardless of the situation. In that case though, you would be saying that war itself is never acceptable, as the former always follows the latter.

[closeupready]

2. There are no winners here, of course.

Those who believe in karma, though, can look at this from the angle that violence begets violence.

[msmcghee]

4. That's not karma - that's human nature. n/t