Friday, November 3, 2006
So many war crimes, so little time... Out of uniform (check) terrorists fire rockets at Israeli towns (check), take cover in a mosque (check), Hamas calls for human shields (check)...
Hamas "militants" holed-up in a mosque, whereupon Hamas radio put out a call for women to come and serve as human shields to try to get them out. Watch how AFP gushes over these Palestinian actions among their description of the usual activity of Palestinian use of civilian human shields for political gain:
Women act as human shields to free gunmen from Gaza mosque
BEIT HANUN, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Palestinian mothers and wives braved [you gotta be kidding] Israeli helicopter gunships to rescue 15 fighters besieged in a northern Gaza mosque, using their heavily veiled bodies as human shields.
"We risked our lives to free our sons," said Um Mohammed, a woman in her 40s, after the daring rescue that followed protests against a bloody Israeli operation in the northern Gaza Strip that has killed 24 Palestinians.
Militants from various armed groups, including Hamas, had been besieged in the al-Nasr mosque since Thursday, seeking protection from Operation Autumn Clouds, one of the biggest Israeli incursions in Gaza for the past four months.
Braving gunfire and tanks, around 400 women and other demonstrators gathered to protest [this is a protest? Protests usually involve carrying placards, not rescuing terrorists.] against the Israelis at one of the entrances to the town. Three of them, one a woman, were killed and another 25 people were wounded, medics said.
Around 200 women then left the main protest to march on and enter the mosque around 700 metres (yards) away to collect the gunmen, before walking out again, cloaking the fighters in the middle of their heavily veiled ranks. [They are now what's colloquially known as "targets".]
None of the gunmen could be seen amid the dozens of women, who were dressed for the most part from head to toe in black in the religiously conservative Gaza Strip.
Throughout the rescue bid, Israeli helicopter gunships opened fire -- not specifically at the women, but intending to scare them and separate their ranks, but without success. Two women were wounded, medics said.
A source in Hamas confirmed that its armed wing had orchestrated what he called a "complex security operation" to secure the release of the besieged fighters.
The women and fighters they were protecting ran as far as Izbat Beit Hanun, an area northwest of the town not being occupied by Israeli army.
"Hundreds of us entered the mosque and surrounded the resistance fighters to protect them," said one of the women, 21-year-old Nidaa al-Radih.
One rescued fighter was triumphant. "We are free, we are free!" he shouted before running off to safety...
Nice job, oh brave Hamas fighter. Women were killed and injured, but you managed to run away. Be proud.
Also see YNet: Palestinians: Gunmen flee besieged mosque
...Some 60 gunmen were reported to have fortified themselves inside the mosque late Thursday after the IDF began encircling the town as part of the operation to stop the launching of Qassam rockets from the area. Palestinian sources reported that the gunmen fired at the troops from within the windows of the mosque and that the IDF responded with stun grenades and teargas to try to force the gunmen to surrender...
...Military sources say that there were large amounts of arms inside the mosque, and that among the gunmen were several senior wanted Palestinians who headed the Qassam rocket infrastructure in northern Gaza...
And BBC: Gaza women 'die in mosque siege'
...Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said: "We saw crowds of women. Behind the women hid some of the militants. Some of them were even dressed up as women: we have footage. [Which happens to be how Arafat escaped Beirut way back when.]
"Unfortunately because the militants shot at our forces, sometimes we had to respond."...
This is the nature of the enemy...where the civilian population makes themselves willing accomplices in active gunbattles.
Update: At It Shines For All: Worse Than Human Shields, They're Terrorist Helpers
...Those women were not innocent bystanders nor human shields caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Human shields implies that they were reluctanly dragged in. They were willing terrorist helpers. They ran to protect terrorists in order that these terrorists could commit more killings. Those women are no different to those who help transport terrorists or those who hide terrorists in their home. They're responsible for any death and destruction the terrorists cause.
That the terrorists were willing to disguise themselves as women to escape, knowing full well if Israeli troops spotted them all the women would be endagered, shows just how much the terrorists care about their "civilians."
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Those women should have known better. IDF is very well know to brutally open fire on civilians (and journalists, for that matter: Laurent van Der Stockt got shot in the knee).
Don't get me wrong: Militants/military using ANY civilans as shields is equally vicious.
Why should this day be any more different than others i Gaza?
No danger of getting you wrong, I assure you.
Very odd, I wonder why there weren't more casualties. Sounds as though the IDF was typically restrained.
I'm hardly an apologist for every Israeli military action, but my jaw dropped while reading that BBC piece, and the AFP bit you have is even more outrageous. Is there not the slightest sense that this sort of thing is, shall we say, inappropriate?
Regarding Konrad's statement: I didn't think that Israeli troops are known for willingly shooting at civilians. Quite the contrary. As for shooting journalists, I seem to recall from Stephanie Gutmann's book, The Other War, that journalists often put themselves in danger gratuitously, and think that soldiers are shooting directly at them when they are not. But they apparently want good war stories to tell.
I am currently in Morocco, and I get few tv stations at my budget hotel here. But one station I do get is Al-Jazeera. It's in Arabic, but sometimes one can get the sense of what's going on. I hadn't heard of the incident with the female human shields when I saw the report on Al-Jazeera last night, but I can tell you this: They kept replaying the same scene over and over again. That scene was one of dozens of women, all clad identically in black, all screaming and running in the same direction. Over and over again. I think there were shots heard in the background.
The only other images shown were a few seconds of a tank coming up a road and a helicopter hovering above, both presumably Israeli. Maybe more context was provided verbally, but I doubt it. They just kept showing those scenes over and over again.
Now I hear that Hamas actually recruited those women to be human shields. When you consider how Al-Jazeera just played it as an atrocity against women by the Israeli army, it seems as if Al-Jazeera is working in tandem with Pallywood.
I wish I could've had a translation of what the reporters said, but from the looks of things, I don't think that the reportage questioned what those women were doing there in the first place.
What is especially creepy about Al-Jazeera, by the way, is how professional and how slick it is. From the sophisticated graphics and theme music to the seriousness of the reporters and anchors, Al-Jazeera seems a perfect clone of the top US news programs. The reporters and anchors seem totally professional in demeanor, and even imitate the exact tones in which American (and European) tv journalists tend to speak. Yet what they're broadcasting is pure propaganda. I know that the US media, especially Fox, can be biased. But I suspect that Al-Jazeera is a bit over the top.
Konrad, Israelis don't cut off the head of journalists as the Muslims who cut off the head of Wallstret Journal Daniel Pearl.
Muslims kidnapped and threatened to murder journalist Jill Carrol of the Christian Science Monitor - who was later released unharmed - but she was convinced she would be killed.
Paleswinians kidnapped Fox reporters Steve Centanni and Olaf Wigg.
Ayatollah kohmeni of the Islamofascist Republic of iran placed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for writing a book of fiction.
Muslims have great respect for journalists and writers of fiction, don't they?