Israeli ground forces enter Gaza in escalation of War

A CNN reporter on the Gaza/Israeli border is right now reporting that this has happened and is still going on.  I will keep updates going.

There is also NowPublic coverage of this story here.

I'm watching the BBC News right now with one of their reporters on the Israeli border talking about armoured columns moving into Gaza. It is a terrible and scary situation.

The US has told the Israeli government the their military action must be 'mindful' of the potential consequences to civilians, according to Reuters.

They are showing infra red images of infantry crossing the border.

This could become very bloody and even more destructive.  We can only hope it inds quickly.

Thank you.  It was posted after mine but there is room for more than one coverage on this.

Israel will have more terror attacks then ever before to deal with and the wall will not help any longer because now the Terror will come from with in it own racks. As well as from out side. This may very well be the beginning of the end for the state of Israel and caused by its own arrogance and disregard for Human rights, like all great states before this one fail for the same reasons. Sad that we can not seem to be able to learn from History.

I want to be clear in this.  I am not a supporter of Israel and I say outright Israel should have years ago recognized and aided an independent Palestine state.  They did not. They have failed to do other needed things to resolce this.

BUT Hamas is far worse than Israel and Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, just to provoke Israel to do just what it is now doing.

HAMAS IS TO BLAME for this war and the Gaza deaths. This is fact and does not mean the palestinian cause is wrong. Anyone who compares Israelis to Nazis needs a history lesson. Anyone who praises Hamas for firing missiles at Israeli women and children is spreading anti semitic propaganda.

Neither side are angels and neither are devils. Please try to avoid propaganda labels and don't be cheerleaders for either side.

Even though comprehensible, NAZI is a bad analogy and Fascist would be more in that line. If Iran or the UAE are wrong in with their regimes so is Israel then since it is the same type of regime.

Is that why the Roman called them Palestinian and Palestine 2050 years ago? An why the Greek referent to them as Palestinian 2400 years ago? If they are the youngest people on Earth as you say what does that make Israel? Non existent? An illusion? 

You may want to check the facts with the UN rather then your propaganda web page.

is not the intended result the same, the extermination of people and its culture? Murder is murder.

~ you've got it wrong, the oppressors of the Palestinians are the terrorists of Hamas -it is they who hide behind and target innocent civilians, not the Israelis!!

 Hamas fires bombs from schools, mosques, hostpitals and ambulances, not the Israelis.

–The Hamas founding covenant explicitly calls for the extermination of all Jews. Hitler never made total extermination an official plank of the the Nazi party platform. (see Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov’s article in the February 2, 2004 issue of The New Republic. He points to the extermiationist 7th article of the founding Hamas covenanat which cites the Hadith (saying of the prophet). Here is a translation of the Hadith in a deeply disturbing summary of Hamas’ exterminationist anti-semitism by the Brown University scholar Andrew Bostom:

“The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)

In other words, Hamas is not committed merely to the political goal of expelling Jews from the land of Israel but to what they believe is a sacred religious goal of exterminating all Jews everywhere behind every tree in creation. (I’m not pinning any hopes on “the Gharqad tree”). I’d suggest those who deceive themselves into believing Hamas is just another Palestinian rights group, maybe a little on the extreme side, read the whole Bostom article. The exterminationist anti-semitism of Hamas is more excessive than Hitler’s.

So that’s one difference.

–Hitler made efforts to conceal the purpose of the death camps and distanced himself from them, avoided written as opposed to oral orders for the Final Solution. Not because he felt any shame about them, but because he felt knowledge of the death camps might be counter-productive to the Nazis political goals. Hamas makes no effort to conceal the fact that it wants to kill Jewish civilians, not just combatants, but women and children–all Jews (it’s in the charter, remember)—because Hamas feels this will make them more popular.

Those who point to the inefficiency of Hamas rocket attacks act as if they wouldn’t be happy to have more efficient or deadly rockets or that they regret the ones that fall on kindergartens and hospitals.

So Hamas’ open pride in its mass murder goal–that’s another difference between Hamas and Hitler.

–Hitler’s party came to power in part because of the claim Germany’s lands had been stolen from it and it would reclaim them. Hitler did not (inititally) call for the murder of all those who had lived on the land long before World War I. (he didn’t for instance, want to murder all the Czechs in the Sudetenland, just return it to its pre-war German identity). Hamas came to power with the claim that the Palestinian lands had been stolen from them and that it would murder all Jews living there however long they or their families had been there. So there’s another difference.

–Hamas calls for a system of law in which women are mutilated and murdered (sometimes beheaded) if they dare to transgress their inferior status under sharia law (and approves crucifixion as a method of punishment for both sexes. And of course Hamas suports stoning gays to death). Hitler consigned women to a subordinate “breeder” role for the most part but did not mandate their mutilation and murder as women if they sought an independent existence. Unless of course they were Jews.

–FDR called for the “unconditional surrender” of Hitler and the Nazis. The UN, and international human rights organizations call for “proportionality” in the treatment of the Nazi-like murderers of Hamas which translates, apparently to using only enough force so that Hamas can keep on firing rockets at Jews at the same rate as before, a situation they found acceptable as testified to by their silence and inaction.

–The Allies in World War II did not care about causing civilian casualties in the course of seeking the defeat of the Nazi empire. In fact they thought the Nazi regime, busily engaged in genocide and the German people who supported him did not deserve especially “humane” or “proportional” treatment. The Israelis today go to great, even self-destructive lengths to avoid civilian casualties in trying to combat those who seek their extermination, despite the fact that Hamas is a self-proclaimed genocidal organization.

Israel has a responsibility to remove the terrorists along its border.  To do otherwise would encourage terrorists everywhere.

Do Hamas rockets have swastikas on them?  Did the Russian tanks that invaded Georgia have swastikas?  Does the Sri Lankan army responsible for killing thousands of Tamils wear swastikas on their uniforms?  Does the Sudanese janjaweed who have killed hundred of thousands of people in Darfur have swastikas pinned on their horses?

Matte, you only used the word swastika because this involves Israel (in other words -- Jews).  If you want to criticize Israel fine, but as soon as you and those who support your comments use words like this, you lose all credibility.  Now go wrangle some news, you new wrangler.

Hamas should have learned from the Georgia/Russia war.

You poke a bear's cubs with a stick she bites your head off and who is right is irrelevant.

You need a history lesson.

If it was the same no one in Gaza would be alive.

Do you seriously contend killing 400 people, 80% of them military,  is equal to gassing 6 million Jews??

Some comments here are starting to violate our code of conduct. Please rememeber that when responding to each other - thanks!

Call it fascism if you like, but saying nazi is comprehensible is incomprehensible.  You wouldn't use that word about the Sudanese regime, the Russians (Georgia and Chechnya anyone).

I am amazed at how things get turned around. 

Hamas, the Palistinian Arabs, and the other political organizations, including the former PLO, have no interest in peace but the complete eradication of Jews from the land of Palistine.  They have stated even now that the Israelis are settlers from all over the world with no rights to the land.  They intend to continue bombing and will not cease until every Jew is driven from the land or killed.  When they are driven from the land they will then persue them to the countries into which they flee.

Who are the people known as Palistinian anyway?

http://www.amazinggroups.com/en/content/true-identity-palestinians

Matte:

uncalled for and not appropriate in this forum. Take those kinds of remarks and put it in the sewer where it came from. You have a right to disagree with policy but it stops with the name you disgustingly reference : Nazis.

This region doesn't support your premise.

new wrangler - I think not.

The world for decades has been asked to cry for Jews. But now it seems nothing has been learnt from history.

Israeli Terrorism — Cause & Effect
A Radical Jewish Perspective
by Marvin Ratner

In the fall of 1971 I visited Israel for two months, in search of home on my spiritual odyssey towards self. I was a seeker born of Judaism, having grown up in Brooklyn, New York within an orthodox Jewish family. My first month in Israel was spent at Kibbutz Hanita on an Ulpan program, where I learned Hebrew, fed the chickens, played chess with the gardener and participated in the daily life of the community. Living at the kibbutz was relaxed and the lifestyle peaceful, but I was restless, in search of adventure. I had just finished a two-year position as a university teacher of Computer Science, and it didn’t take long to realize that feeding chickens was not quite my calling. So I left the Ulpan program and spent the next month touring Israel to explore my Jewish roots.

In October I was walking thru the Old City of Jerusalem with some friends. Without warning, a hand grenade exploded nearby, causing panic and terror in the ancient street. Fortunately for me, I was about ten feet outside of the blast zone, but my friend Jack was not so lucky and suffered a severe stomach injury from shrapnel. We loaded Jack onto a door, into a jeep, and were at the hospital emergency room within 20 minutes. When I asked the nurse how many people were hurt, she replied, “13 Jews”. I then asked if anyone else was hurt. “Three Arabs,” she replied.

Though I was sickened by the bloody injury and pain of my close friend, the nurse’s answer sickened me more. Clearly this attitude, that the Arabs are not people, was the foundation of hatred that created the environment of terror and loathing that produced the ‘terrorist’ who threw the grenade with intent to kill and maim his perceived enemy.

The recent violence in Lebanon and Gaza similarly leaves me with a sickening disquietude, a deep sadness and anger towards the Israeli government. That government continues to engage in a reign of terror in which the well being of innocent civilians has been entirely disregarded. Daily, people are killed, injured and displaced thru these ruthless exercises of military force. It has been a reckless and reactionary retribution leveled against an innocent collective populace in response to the actions of “terrorists” who, for their part, believe that they are justified freedom fighters acting to rid their people of an oppressive occupier who has taken away their land and methodically destroyed the livelihood and culture of the Palestinian People. These terrorists also randomly attack innocent people, and so the cycle of violence expands and intensifies, both parties self-righteous in their cause. Both sides protect what they perceive as self-interest yet jeopardize their very survival through hatred and violence, precluding the very peace and just solution that is so desperately needed.

The bombing of power plants in Gaza, and the ruthless destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon have only caused human misery, displacing a million people, injuring and killing thousands of innocents, and creating impoverished refugees. Predictably, the resultant culture of hatred will produce a new wave of so-called terrorists willing to fight, kill and die for what they understand to be their own dignity and survival. The numbers of willing recruits are now ten times what they were before this current wave of wanton violence.

The Israeli government claims that it fights for the survival of the State of Israel, but their over-reaction and the magnitude of the violence against innocent life is in fact a root cause of the hatred being directed against them. These acts are only the latest in a barbaric tradition of escalating reciprocity. They are only matched in craziness by Israel’s claim that to be a good Jew requires supporting the acts of Israel, right or wrong. I reject this linkage because these actions are both wrong and abhorrent. In the sixties, I spoke out against our country’s involvement in Vietnam because we were waging an immoral war. I now urge all Jews and people of conscience to speak out on this subject.

Hatred begets hatred. War, death and destruction are the inevitable result of distrust, prejudice and the self-righteous attitude that “we” are superior to “them”, that “our” needs must be met, while “their” needs are irrelevant. For this era of war to end, there must emerge a call for justice leading to attitudes of forgiveness, mutual respect and compromise, for both the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples. There will never be Victory, unless it be a Victory through Peace and Understanding.

Trust in God, but tether your camels. Namaste.

Marvin Ratner is a spiritual seeker and world traveler. He recently returned to Ashland, Oregon after 10 years overseas. Currently semi-retired, he has taught university, imported handcrafts from Asia, and enjoys nature, massage, personal growth, meeting interesting people and forming new relationships. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eyes.” Email Marvin at marvinratner@msn.com

It is not. The 99% majority of the people in Israel want peace and quiet. No one wants to exterminate anybody. The thought is disgusting and says more about your mentality then the truth.