Death toll in Gaza tops 1,000
The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza conflict climbed to more than 1,000 today after nearly three weeks of intensive Israeli bombing and ground fighting.So far 1,010 Palestinians have been killed, among them 315 children and 95 women, Dr Moawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza’s medical emergency services, told the Guardian. The number of injured after 19 days of fighting stood at 4,700, he said.
With Israeli troops fighting on the outskirts of Gaza City after another night of heavy bombing and shelling, the new death toll came as the secretary-general of the UN was in Cairo for urgent talks to end the conflict.
One-third are children! Wow, the Israeli military is doing a fantastic job of targeting just Hamas people and avoiding casualties! Or maybe they just don’t care, and all this rubbish about trying to avoid civilian casualties isn’t really a policy, as their own minister admitted.
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Bloodthirsty bastards.
I really don’t think the Israeli’s are vampires.
One-third are children! Wow, the Israeli military is doing a fantastic job of targeting just Hamas people and avoiding casualties! Or maybe they just don’t care, and all this rubbish about trying to avoid civilian casualties isn’t really a policy
When an Israeli spokesperson was asked about the deaths of children, at one point she droped her cover, and replied I qote ‘Palestinina mothers bring up their children to be Jihadis’ now what does this meam?
If you guys are seeking bit of conpassionate from the Israelis forget it, you probaly have more chance of seeing God.
And yet the world still just sits back and does nothing – or rather, people who have the ability to stop Israel do nothing whilst good, ordinary citizens go out to the streets protesting despite knowing it will have little or no impact.
My blood boils when I think of these repulsive Zionists and, let’s not forget, their “spine” aka the American government.
As the Guardian said, swap the word Arab/Palestinian for Jew and there would be uproar at the number of deaths.
The injustic is incredible.
I bet to those Israelis, their excuse will be:
“Those dead children were probably gonna become suicide bombers anyway”
what do you mean going to be suicide bombers…didn’t you know they already were? they come out like that.
i love reasoned debate, don’t you?
b’shalom
bananabrain
BB there’s only so much you can debate the death of over 200 children. some things are past debate and just invite disgust
How would you like to reasonably debate the murder of so many people BB?
The israelis are exposing themselves completely and utterly. Sooner or later it has to sink in, in most people… right?
They should have seen it by now. They must, soon.
To call for a “reasoned” debate in this matter is… inhuman.
i love reasoned debate, don’t you?
well here’s reasonalable debate from the Israelis
‘We the Israelis blame Hamas for the death of civilians’ THE END!
Surely the point is the deaths of innocents Sunny, not the deaths of people per se, including murderous scum bags who booby trap schools with explosives ready for the ‘zionist’ enemy?
How would you like to reasonably debate the murder of so many people BB?
In the same way you debate any conflict or war between groups surely? How many were killed in Iran/Iraq war? Is that beyond comprehension? How many were killed by Saddam’s Anfal compagaign? What is the difference. They are all valid questions and not beyond reasoned debate….
you didn’t seem to be up for a reasonable debate after 7/7 eh marvin… then you just wanted revenge. Funny how your tune changes.
7/7 were 100% civilian causalities. Here there is only 25% civilian casualties. Do you see difference? Israel does not want civilians and children to die. Each one of these deaths works against Israel. And they work for the Palestinian cause. Israel just wants peace with it’s neighbours. Hamas’ charter is a charter for war.
It’s tragic that Hamas have such low regard for their fellow countrymen that they operate from densely populated civilian areas, and try to maximise civilian casualties. Do you argue this point? “We love death”. Why are there no air-raid shelters provided by Hamas for civilians?
I am going from the last UN estimates. The figures presented in the news as fact are released by Hamas run authorities. Another reason to get the foreign journalists in asap, even if they are mostly hopelessly biased.
Biased, Marvin? That’s a good one. Israel has been given the benefit of the doubt for decades, until even the pro-israel journalists got fed up and stopped lying.
Do you see difference? Israel does not want civilians and children to die.
Yeah, they don’t want civilian casualties, but it doesn’t bother them much when they’re a by product of their actions anyway. How is that any different?
So in other words, if a terrorist group seeks out military targets in retaliation, then any civilian casualties that take place are to be regretted, but not too much of an issue?
Good to see you’re shedding some tears over the 300+ children who’ve died. A man of principle.
Hamas’ charter is a charter for war.
Also, I like the way you’re OK with all Palestinians being blamed and bombed for what Hamas does.
I think the biggest topic that needs to be debated is what is reality.
They are at WAR!
Not the first, not the only, and sadly I doubt the last we will ever see in our history of the world.
As I stated in the very beginning of all this… for war to end there needs to be either a winner or a desire to stop fighting on both sides, forgive past actions and move on with life!
Some thing I don’t understand is it has been agreed by everyone Israels actions will only increase support for Hamas … how does constantly screaming out the crimes of Israel in all this not just make you another pawn in the strengthening of hamas game?
There are children dying all over the world!
There are millions of children suffering from abuse and neglect falling through the cracks …even inside our own “civilized” countries!
Do I think this war is the one that sits so high above every other in it’s cause… it deserves to lead the world straight into WWIII.
NO! I don’t!
Do I feel I have a right to “demand!” my government do something immediately?
I’m sorry but all the leaders of the world are trying to work together already to end this!
Short of someone stepping in and taking total control as an occupational force, I don’t see how it will end if they don’t just fight it out?
and who would do that?
Really, anytime someone tries to do that they become the new enemy bent on world domination with some hidden agenda.
So, the sign said ..no hamas, no IDF ..free palestine..
Israel stops …
no hamas, no IDF …ok
who then?
The question of whether or not the Israelis are doing enough to avoid civilian casualties is complicated by the fact that Hamas appear to be actively seeking them.
The Israeli govt and military don’t care whether they’re doing a good job. They don’t care if they murder civilians (almost like saying we murdered only 25% innocent civilians and we have to kill more to get the percentages decreased) They have had a 3 week killing spree massacre, have continuously broke international laws and still the world dithers in wondering about the proportionality of condemning Israel in equal measure to Hamas.
Emotional attachment means that we in the west are fed the lie that poor old Israel is the ONLY democracy in the middle east surrounded by blood thirsty Arabs who are out to exterminate them. What a charade!!!
7/7 were 100% civilian causalities. Here there is only 25% civilian casualties.
This is anther lie, there are 360 children dead, aprox. 150 women, this alone is 50 percent, lets just say the men are 50 percent Hamas and 50 percent civilians, this works out to 75 percent civilian. The Massod has turned the figures upside down.
and also, why are we making the statement that the men who are dying are expendable stats because there seems to be a feeling that dead men = Hamas supporters and so we don’t care if they die. That is discrimination.
sigh,
I don’t know whats more depressing, watching the actual news or people discussing it.
If I have learned anything from blogging is that people simply must enjoy fighting, and talking is pointless.
I realize no one forces me to read this blog … honestly I don’t know why I do anymore. It makes me cry, literally.
I can not figure out what the point is, nor how any of it is progressive or productive or leads to peace anywhere anytime soon.
I can’t rationalize how this is not spreading hate?
or how you can’t recognize every word you say is a seed planted in fertile soil .. that will only yield a crop of violence.
Go on … keep screaming against Israel, keep calling them blood thirsty ..etc… stack up all the crimes
continue to take sides and make clear who the real terrorists are, all the while assuming ever person listening is responsible enough to hear.
Ignore all the work being done …
just focus on the killing and oppression and lies that are Israel and it’s people.
Spend more time pointing out radicals at your protest are the nutter minority …. but stack up evidence against the other rally … they ALL want blood!
When the fire continues to spread who will you blame?
not only will I shed tears for the dead children of gaza …. but for the living. I will cry for the children of Israel as well and the millions of others who live in this world full of grownups who can’t learn to keep their mouths shut … or at least try to chose their words more carefully.
I don’t know what to do anymore … no one listens, no one
My name is Leanna. I am a survivor living in New York City. I am broadcasting on all blog frequencies. I will be at the South Street Seaport everyday at mid-day, when the sun is highest in the sky. If you are out there… if anyone is out there… I can provide food, I can provide shelter, I can provide security. If there’s anybody out there… anybody… please. You are not alone…… but fear I am ………
Fuck off Bananabrain @7: What reasoned debate do you need to excuse the bastard Zionists flattening a slum full of some of the poorest people in the world. You idiot apologist!
The Queen of Fiddlesticks @ 24,
I’ve argued until I’m blue in the face that the issue here is one of frustration and impotence. I think that analysis stands. Frustration breeds aggression, and alienation, and that is what you are seeing.
It is incredibly frustrating to see people I respect rationalise the death of children. It is unbelievable that Hamas refuses to discuss peace. It would be good if sensible voices prevailed, but they do not. And they rarely do. The blood bath that has been Iraq is a prime example of how low we can go.
Folk retreat into stereotyping the ‘other’.
Just one example to illustrate the point. Western commentators say that there is something alien about the chant ‘You love life, we love death’. How is that different from “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” which was a battle cry of the American Revolution. They are both inviting annihilation rather than submission.
There are probably only a handful of people on this whole planet that could stop this. And they are certainly not listening to the likes of thee or me.
I think to see the defeat of the Zionist you first need to see the total victory of the Zionist. Israel needs to succeed in the creation of the greater Israel state, from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only then once, arab governments are over thrown and their people enslaved, with the arab world stop making excuses for itself and it will fight Israel.
The entire world has tried diplomacy, it has not worked, the only other way to stop the massacre is a military intervention yet the people who should be getting involved are sitting back and allowing Israel to get away with it.
Israel is not blaming all of the Palestinians for Hamas, even though they did vote the Nazi party in.
#22 comrade, we do not know the true figures. ‘Palestinian sources’ always, without fail, um ‘overestimate’ their figures. Still, every innocent life lost is a tragedy, and could have been prevented. Hamas has ensured that Israeli maximises civilian casualties.
Fuck off Bananabrain @7: What reasoned debate do you need to excuse the bastard Zionists flattening a slum full of some of the poorest people in the world. You idiot apologist!
Oh, the irony. The primary reason for Palestinian poverty is irresponsible Palestinian leadership, their embezzlement, diversion of funds to terror, and failure to invest in infrastructure.
Donor disbursements to the Palestinians currently amount to approximately $1 billion per year or $310 per person ― one of the highest per capita rates in the history of foreign assistance according to The World Bank.
Here
You love life, we love death’. How is that different from “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”
Yeah same thing! ‘Freedom or death’ is just the same as saying we enjoy death! We don’t care, we’ll kill you AND us to get our paradise! Same!
The blood bath that has been Iraq is a prime example of how low we can go.
Indeed. In two weeks, Saddam gassed around 200,000 Kurds. Now they have a chance of democracy. How terrible of ‘us’.
Military intervention? HAHAHA You lot are *always* against military intervention. You’re always against nationalism too. Except when it comes to the Palestinians.
I’m a strong supporter of nationalism, and local government too. I think power to the people is key. The downfall of the Islamic empire even at it’s height was it’s inability to keep everyone happy due to improper governance.
Also nobody stopped anyone from intervening in Somalia, or Rawanda, or the balkans or Iraq (the first time round) and you were welcome to intervene in the Iran Iraq war, and the soviet invasion of Afghanistan, even in Kashmir please.
You lot… interesting choice of words. The PR mask is slipping, take some time to re-arrange it.
You lot. Liberal-lefties. Stop the War. Etc. Always against war. Well, always against the West launching war, anyhow. Always against Israel launching military response. Except at Stop the War marches you get very pro-war people, just for the other side, i.e. Hamas, Hizbollah or the ‘iraqi resistance’ etc.
marvin,
“Yeah same thing! ‘Freedom or death’ is just the same as saying we enjoy death! We don’t care, we’ll kill you AND us to get our paradise! Same!”
Yes, it is the same.
What the heck do you expect an unarmed – and lets face it undefended population – to do when they are having phosphour and cluster bombs dropped on them from F16s at 16,000 feet? And you have nowhere to go?
They can either wail and cry or they can stick a finger up at their killers. For ordinance is not that accurate, we know that. There is a fair to reasonable chance it will miss.
If I was under that hail of death I’d like to think I’d be that brave. Though I probably wouldn’t.
I am no apologist for Saddam Hussein, however I am no apologist for G W Bush either. On Bush’s watch circa one million Iraqis have died and four million displaced. What is it about ‘They made a Wasteland and called it Peace’ that you don’t understand?
And I am a nationalist, of the pacifist, lefty, liberal sort, right enough.
They have nowhere to go. Indeed. The Israelis have provided their population with early warning systems and bomb shelters. The Palestinian authorities have made no attempt to shield their population from inevitable onslaught. The only ones who have shelter are the Hamas thugs. And why wont their Egyptian brothers open the border?
(Can I just come back one point, there is no evidence that one million Iraqis have died (this is wild conjecture by those vehemently against toppling Saddam). Iraq body count says 90,329 – 98,605 have been documented. You’ve only exaggerated by 10 times so not too far out. Also the vast majority of these deaths have been due to jihadis, militias and criminals killing innocent people.)
marvin,
Just because you could shoot fish in a barrel, do you think you would be morally justified in doing so?
Please feel free to argue against the million dead. We’ll need to get a separate room. I’ll just say that even the Iraq Body Count doesn’t claim it’s captured all deaths and that the statistics of three, repeat three surveys all support the one million figure and not your ridiculously low one.
As Colin Powell said, ‘if you break it, you own it’, meaning that the Coalition was responsible for peace and security and didn’t deliver.
Marvin,
You might want to consider this:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/01/orb_revises_estimate_of_iraqi.php#more
before you take your arguement about death tolls in Iraq any further. Although the comment thread will give you some thin gruel to play with.
Oh forget it Douglas. You have quoted the highest possible estimate by “independent polling agency located in London”.
This is the wrong thread.
About 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in bomb attacks and other violence in Iraq in the first three years after the invasion, according to the most comprehensive study yet into the number of fatalities.
The World Health Organisation (a bit more credible than some unheard of agency) (WHO) based its estimate on a survey of nearly 10,000 households, conducted jointly with the Iraqi Government. It said that the actual figure of violent deaths between March 2003 and June 2006 could be as high as 223,000 or as low as 104,000.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3165549.ece
You were, like George Galloway, vehemently opposed to toppling Saddam, and like Galloway, quoting the highest possible figure provided by an organisation to ‘prove’ how right you were to oppose it.
Forget it this is going nowhere
You believe what you want.
Sorry Marvin,
You are not getting away with that. What I pointed to was three seperate surveys, not one, and none of them were done by sitting in an office in London.
There are three surveys listed there.
1. Lancet 1 and 2 – Undertaken by medical folk on the ground in Iraq supervised by John Hopkins Universities epidemiology department.
2. Opinion Research Business – Undertaken by IAACSS (Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies) is a polling/ research company established in Iraq in 2003 and which has a network of interviewers covering all regions of the country.)
3. IFHS – which is the Iraq Family Health Survey conducted for the WHO which shows circa 700,000 excess deaths as of Jan 2008. This is a derived figure by Tim Lambert.
—————————————————–
Eh! No I wasn’t. Although I did think it would end up a complete utter mess. And that the timing was all wrong, what with having to sort out Afghanistan first. Etc, etc. You’ll be claiming I was shaking Saddam by the hand and saluting his indefatigability next!
i think marvin and the queen of fiddlesticks are making the point here pretty effectively, although i don’t always agree with everything they say on this subject. the worst thing you can really say about the israelis that is true is that they don’t care enough about hurting civilians in the drive to get at hamas. the best thing you can say is that they don’t actively seek to harm civilians, nor do they use their own civilians as human shields, unlike hamas. you can argue these points until you’re blue in the face but if you’re not getting this simple difference, all the debate in the world is useless.
go on, call me an apologist. tell me to feck off. that’ll help.
b’shalom
bananabrain
bananabrain,
If I were the UN, I’d be starting to wonder who the IDF were actually fighting.
There is no way that either you or I have the faintest idea what is going on. Folk will make up their own minds, based on their pre-existing prejudices, as to the truth of this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7828536.stm
Who knows? And so on, and so on.
Every day another talking point. Every day another day away from a resolution.
perhaps asking those questions might actually be a good idea. the things i have read and from what i know from talking to people involved in the situation i know the soldiers are well aware and under orders to avoid civilian casualties if at all possible. i certainly think the IDF should be letting journalists into gaza.
b’shalom
bananabrain
bananabrain,
I meant that the UN seemed to be getting quite a bit of the incoming!
#40 and 41. Surely you must know what Israel is up to. Let me quote a well known Israeli writer and activist, Uri Avnery who wrote a agreat piece entitled
(Jan 12, 2009)
The real aim is to end the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas movement won the eminently democratic elections that took place in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 2006. Hamas is deeply rooted in the population – not only as a resistance movement fighting the foreign occupier, like the Irgun and the Stern Group in the past – but also as a political and religious body that provides social, educational and medical services.
Barak cannot imagine how decent people around the world react to actions like the killing of whole extended families, the destruction of houses over the heads of their inhabitants, the rows of boys and girls in white shrouds ready for burial, the reports about people bleeding to death over days because ambulances are not allowed to reach them, the killing of doctors and medics on their way to save lives, the killing of UN drivers bringing in food. The pictures of the hospitals, with the dead, the dying and the injured lying together on the floor for lack of space, have shocked the world. No argument has any force next to an image of a wounded little girl lying on the floor, twisting with pain and crying out: “Mama! Mama!”
Not only is Israel unable to win the war, Hamas cannot lose it. Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.