The “proof-of-life” video statement by Gilad Shalit. The price for the video information: twenty terrorist women swapped for Gilad. The hope: his return home to his family in Israel as soon as possible .
Here is the full text of the video statement of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured and held hostage by the Hamas since June 2006.
…”Hi, I am Gilad Shalit, son of Aviva and Noam Shalit, brother of Hadas and Yoel, from Mitzpe Hilla, ID number 300097029. Today is Monday 14 September 2009.
As you can see, I’m holding in my hand today’s Palestine newspaper, 14th September 2009, which is published in Gaza.
I’m reading the newspaper in order to find information about myself, and I hope to find information about my release and return home soon.
I have been waiting and yearning a long time for the day I will be released.
I hope the current government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu will not waste this opportunity to finalise the deal and that as a result I will finally be able to realise my dream and be released.
I want to send my regards to my family, to tell them that I love them and miss them a lot, and yearn for the day that I will see them.
Father, Yoel and Hadas, do you remember the day when you arrived at my base in Ramat Ha-Golan, on the 31st December 2005, which, if I’m not mistaken, is called Revia Bet? We did a tour around the base. You took a picture of me on top of the Merkava tank, and on top of one of the old tanks at the entrance to the base.
Afterwards, we drove to a restaurant in one of the Druze villages, and on the way we took a picture on the side of the road with the snow-covered Mount Hermon.
I want to tell you that I am well in terms of my health. The mujahideen of the Izzeddine al-Qassam Brigades are treating me fine.
A few days ago Sky News reported a couple of news mentioning the name Goldstone. The first was about an outbreak of the e-coli disease in the Goldstone pet farm ( Surrey, UK), and the second was the Goldstone commission report about the Cast Lead war between Israel and the Hamas. . I was almost temped to say: perhaps another sort of disease, breed in the Universal Human Rights laboratories specifically targeting Israel.
Well, no, the report is not a disease. Ex judge Richard Goldstone is an honorable men. His credentials as a Zionist and Israel lover are beyond doubts. He is a first rate jurist with overwhelming experience in war crimes jurisdiction.
So this Zionist Israel lover is the men accusing Israel of war crimes, putting her in the same league as the Nazi criminals in the Nirenberg Trials. He is not drawing a demarcation lines between the premeditated Wannsee plan of exterminating the Jews and in fact exterminating 6 million of them, and between Israel’s self defence war, causing 1300 war casualties mostly Hamas men.
Let me remind to myself: the Cast Lead war was only the final result of a 7 year shelling of more than 8000 qassam rockets targeting half a million of civilians living in south Israel by the Hamas ,
So where is the catch? what is going wrong?
Well to say it frankly. Nothing is going wrong, there is no catch at all. Ex judge Goldstone report is viewing and judging the today terrorist warfare trough the codex of WW2 war crimes .
He has taken a snapshot named the “Cast Lead” war, a war whose causes are fossilized deep into the report as not fitting directly in the overall schema of what he sees as war crimes . Israel’s attempt to stop the rocket launching on his southern civilian population is, in his view, well fitting in his scheme of war crimes:
…”Israel is currently fighting under, and being judged by, the laws of World War II, which are suitable for conventional wars between two or more armies in open fields, where it is easier to define proportionality.
But what do you do when terrorists hide under homes, or when they don’t wear uniforms? What do you do when the enemy high command runs its operations from under a hospital located in a crowded neighborhood, as Hamas did during Cast Lead, using the basement of Shifa Hospital as a command and control center? It is clear that the existing laws of war are incompatible with the current and evolving nature of war”…, see here.
This is a situation of incompatibilities where hypothetical soldiers will be forced to ask in the middle of battle who is a civilian and who is a terrorist and meanwhile be killed and perhaps loosing a self defense war..
Ex judge Goldstone’s report does not provide much help to solve such incompatibilities or ‘minor’ problems. But on the other hand his report is a panacea for the terrorist who can now rely on his WW2 codex jurisdiction to continue without fear, from within any civilian population, be it in Afghanistan, Iraq or any other country or European capital, and perpetuate any crimes, and if civilians may be killed in the attempt of the local forces to stop them, the blame of war crimes will fall on the defenders.
What conclusions, if any, can be drawn from the encounter of ex judge Goldstone, Hamas terrorism and Israel defending her citizens. In the short run all are shouting in one great cacophony. Right wing speakers blame the world for his hypocrisy. See Obama in Afghanistan, Putin in Tchetchenia… etc. Leftists and fringe speakers accuse Israel for all the vicissitudes of the world, see the boycotters from the UK, Toronto …etc.
But in the long run, and in our days the long run is relatively short, each of the belligerent parties will readjust himself to the new Goldstone conditions or fight them , fine tuning his intelligence capacities and improving his high-tech weaponry. The smarter will do the hack better. But if the Jihadist mentality against Israel will prevail, then de facto, nothing will radically change for both sides. Israel and the Hamas will continue their clashes.
This is the world today, a ‘Rashomon‘ movie, telling a 21 century story staged in the high-tech third millennium under the auspice of the Goldstone report as a metaphor.
There are many ways to laughing at ourselves. One of them is dark humor: if your life is in hell or if you feel miserable have a good laugh and perhaps you feel better.
The dark humor of ”Ahmed and Salim“, a South Park-style cartoon that makes fun of Palestinian terrorists, is supposed to mock terrorists without ridiculing Muslims, and may provoke your uproarious burst of laughter, boosting your blood stream to such a degree that your health will only benefit from it.
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The Israeli team Tom Trager and Or Paz create this provocative humoristic animated web series, describing the life of an Arab arch-terrorist and his two sons ‘Ahmed and Salim’. Their web sitcom is becoming increasingly popular with surfers, while at same time stirring much controversy, see here.
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Well the United Arab Emirates officials have blocked the Israeli-based cartoon Ahmed and Salim from showing on YouTube in that country. Nothing new about that, seehere. They blocks anything from Israel, a true Pavlov reflex.
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Tania Tabar’s article “Israeli ‘South-Park’ style cartoon mocks Arabs” was published by Menassat, a Lebanese site. The verb ” to mock” is a trap of pejorative meanings. And indeed, the author in his indirect way, quickly take advantage of that , to show us that dark humor, despite being directed only against Arab terrorism, is synonym of global racism against all the Arabs in the world…Nothing new about that either, seehere. I hope that the learned author didn’t mean that all the Arabs are terrorists..?
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But if we want to delve into carton dark humor, then the omnipresent Google search provides us with his statistical insight about the verb “to mock”. The phrase “Cartoons mocks anyone” in Google’s search, outputs, that mocking Arab terrorism is not only their privilege but that anyone mocks anyone and anything… not a great surprise.
So the Israeli team’s contribution is only a drop in the sea of mocking cartoons. A Palestine blogger, Sameh Akram Habeeb, suffering from a mysterious blindness about what dark humor is declare “These videos are dangerous and full of lies”…”I’ve never met someone like the cartoon character of Ahmed and Salim’s father. And of course, the authors never once mention the existence of thousands of Palestinian prisoners. “…seehere.
To this can only be said that I too didn’t met such a real character. They live only in the realm of dark humor, made in Israel by Tom Trager and Or Paz. Only there you met them, ridiculous… or as they said.. ” if you can take a good look at them without being afraid. Ahmed and Salim are just two nice naive kids who are just trying to make their terrorist father happy. “ see here.
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Their real counterpart, a relative small group of Palestinian terrorist live in our real live, hiding in their own natural darkness. To perpetuate their terroristic goals they dond’ need any sense of humor. …, and as to the Palestinian prisoners: don’t do terrorism and there will be no need to imprison them, mister Habeeb.
In those days where the media war is sometimes just as important than the real war on the ground, Israel opened a channel on You Tube where IDF footage shows how the Hamas hide his rockets in and around civilian’s houses and mosques .
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To face this Hamas purposely brutal kidnapping of his own people, to be used as shields against Israeli defence attacks when they launch rocket on civilians in Israel, the IDF adopted several preventive ways to minimize the Gazan casualties.
Sderot, Hamas rockets attack on civilians.
To illustrate one of those ways I quote a few excerpts from the article by Noah Shachtman on Wired. The article called “Robot Planes, Life-and-Death Choices Over Gaza”:
…”The man, Gil’s superior officers told him, was a known Hamas terrorist. The neighborhood, a militant haven. So when the black blotch of a man stepped out into the alley, and began to fiddle with dark strings that looked suspiciously like wires, Gil’s Colonel gave the order to a second aircraft, flying nearby: Take this man out. He’s setting up a booby trap for our soldiers.
Weapons in Gaza Mosque Struck by Israel Air Force 1 Jan. 2009
The double-tailed, 40 foot-long Heron spy drone banked over the Gaza rooftops, and zoomed in on the man, to get a better look at the now-designated target. The man was tying the wire at about eye-level, from one home to another. It was an odd location for a booby trap. But a perfect place to hang clothes. Gil, his voice rising, told everyone to stop. ‘Don’t attack! Don’t attack’ he yelled. ‘The man, he’s doing laundry.’
Robot planes
Looking back, Gil is pretty sure he made the right decision. But he can’t be certain. ‘I prefer this kind of mistake,’ he says in a voice, soft as tissue,’than to have the innocent on my conscience.’ “,
Hamas, rockets on civilian in Ashkelon
….”That’s different from the American system, where decisions are often made by the commander on the ground, or by a network of legal and intelligence analysts. It means means ‘a lot of moral dilemmas’ for the pale father of two. ‘You see a Qassam [rocket] launcher with children around it. Now, what do you prefer: Let them fire the rocket, and have it fall on a kid in [the Israeli town of] Sderot? Or drop the bomb, and risk Palestinian children?’ he asks.”…seehere for the whole article.
And what did the Hamas doe to defend his people, knowing that shelling Sderot for 8 years and finally not renewing the truce with Israel may have some harsh consequences?…The Hamas did nothing. Miscalculating the Israeli response to their terrorist aggression, they didn’t bother to prepare their own people for the war they instigate.
Weapons Horde in Gazan Mosque 13 Jan. 2009
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida columnist ‘Omar Hilmi Al-Ghul, arrive at the same conclusion I quote…”In response to Mash’al’s call to Gaza residents to stand firm, he wrote: “[Mash'al] does not take into account the interests of the [Gaza] residents, who are being sacrificed, while the commanders, who have abandoned the fighting, hide in the tunnels they prepared in advance – although they should be courageously leading the fighters in battle.”
Precision Airstrikes on Hamas Terror Targets 7 Jan. 2009
Referring to Mash’al’s statement that the resistance is still alive and that it has not been defeated, Al-Ghul wrote: “Where is the victory that Mash’al is speaking about, allegedly from the battlefield. Can [Israel's] renewed occupation of Gaza, its division, and the destruction of its infrastructure and its residents’ homes [be considered victory]? Can the [fact that] thousands of Palestinians have been killed or wounded, as opposed to [only a few] dozen occupying Israeli soldiers [be considered victory]?…”
And more here, …”"Hamas does not care if a destructive war is waged against Gaza – such as the one that is going on today. For Hamas, realizing an historic vision for which it has been yearning over many years justifies a heavy toll – as long as what is gained is a land crossing that will enable Hamas members to [transport] the goods and money that they have been hiding. It sees a crossing as the only opening to the outside world, as an umbilical cord [connecting it with the world]… see more here.
Israeli Air Force Strikes Rockets in Transit 28 Dec. 2008
Hamas rockets on Sderot
Louis Michel, the European Commissioner and humanitarian aid commissioner , who was not always a great supporter of Israel, visiting Israel he said, I quote:
…”, [he] has ruled out Monday during a visit to Gaza any dialogue between the EU and Hamas, describing it as “terrorist movement” that killed “innocent civilians”.
“Hamas is a terrorist movement. He missed an opportunity to be an interlocutor of the international community and was thus clearly an element of the division of the Palestinian people,” said Michel in the press in Gaza.
‘You can not talk to a terrorist movement that uses terrorism as a means. We can not accept how Hamas behaves be confused with resistance. When you kill innocent civilians, it is not the resistance is terrorism, ‘he added.”, see more here (in French) and here.
What more can be said on the Hamas? .. Well, there is more to be said and with their own voices. Look at the following clip:
A month ago I came across the Egyptian newspaper “Daily News” and discovered the daily strip ‘Al Khan’ created by Tarek Shahin a young Egyptian cartoonist.I was stricken by the fact that in a country were theHesba lawsuits and other calamities my intimidate cartoonists to punch with their satiric fist in the face of the Egyptian society, ’Al Khan’ his satirical cartoons, appeared in the newspaper without harming the cartoonist.
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To day I found on Menassat an article about Tarek Shahin’s work. Being asked by the interviewer if he is being censored Tarek Shahin says, I quote,
…” ’No’, he says decisively. ‘I have never been subjected to intimidation.
‘Could it be that his choice of English makes him a lesser target than his colleagues writing in Arabic?
‘No, I don’t think it will protect me more than other journalists.’ “…
Many times seeing the difficulties of Egyptian and Arab creators in their respective countries I find their perseverance and dedication to bridge between the possible and the dangerous a remarkable achievement:
…” ‘But the goal of Al Khan is not only to give its readers a good laugh over their morning coffee,’ Shahin says. Al Khan will come to serve as a ‘bridge between cultures,’ connecting readers from across the world with Egypt.”…
….”Through his fictional newspaper, Al Khan, and his personal blog, Cairo Freeze , Egyptian cartoonist Tarek Shahin offers a clever take on life, politics and social taboos in modern-day Egypt. MENASSAT spoke with the young cartoonist about challenging the clichés about Egypt, and telling Egypt’s story to the world at large.”, see here on MENASSAT…..
Putting nasty events into a context where we forget their nastiness and stupidity and remember only their nonsense made me laugh. My laughing ouburst are triggered by Tarek Shahin who sees and feel the hiding world of laughter and translated it in my every day language with his cartoons.
Now in Israel the situation is much easier. There are no Hesba lawsuits and satirical cartoonists shoot their empoisoned laughing arrows in every direction and everyone feel good with that, even the targeted politicians, celebrities and events.
One of the best Israeli cartoonist is Dry Bones Cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen. Looking at his cartoons I undestand Tarek (Al Khan) Shahin’s common traits with Yaakov (Bones) Kirschen: the Egyptian and the Israeli cartoonists cooperate in the invisible space of laughter, far away from the earthly vissitudes of censorship… but only for the people who wants to laugh.
I open those few lines with a ‘from the press’ quotation:
….”Iranian-born Abi Nathan passes away at Tel Aviv after long illness. He served in Israel’s first air force squadron, founded the ‘Voice of Peace’ radio station and fought relentlessly for peace – flying solo to Egypt and serving jail time for meeting with Arafat”…see here.
Abie Natan
I remember his flying peace adventure to Egypt (1967).The upstir in right wing parties and his enjailling in Israel for collaboration with Egypt, then the dreadful enemy. Today this is all forgotten matter and if not for his dead, whoever would have pay attention to his heroic personal battle for peace.
The term peace, which for him was unambiguous and clear as spring water, is today full of ambiguity and fuzzy meaning. When in Georgia the Russians are considering themselves as peace makers by invading a neighbour country and Iran’s strive for nuclear power for “peacefully goals” is considered by most Arabian countries as a threat to their very existence, then ‘peace’ is a not secure place.
Now with this perspective in mind, Abi Natan, the Iranian born Israeli ‘peace activist’, interfered, in what he saw as the Israeli incompetence and inability to talk to Egypt. Flying with his Cessna plane to meet Abdel Nasser was a revolt and a start , if not talks then at last a gesture of hand shaking.This was the deed of a lonely man in midst’s of a sea of disbelievers. In essence it was naive peace activism at his best.
From this narrow point of view of a lonely crusader, the today term ’peace activist’ is almost an insult to Abi Natan, because a great part of today activism is part of the media warfare, done by well funded individuals and groups with a strategy and a tactic complementing real physical warfare of the state, terrorist’s groups, economic and cultural boycott, pointed to overcome the other side, not to make a bona fide peace.
Abie Natam Peace 1
The coincidence that Abie Natan was born in Iran and that Iran’s attitude towards Israel is not one of great friendship, does not exclude the hope to find an Iranian ‘Abi Natan’ flying a Cessna plane to visit Israel in a gesture of peace…
This is surely a crazy idea. But in Iran there is a man like Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, Ahmadinejad VP I quote …”Speaking at a tourism convention in Tehran, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei said: ‘No nation in the world is our enemy, Iran is a friend of the nation in the United States and in Israel, and this is an honor. We view the American nation as one with the greatest nations of the world’ “, seehere
This is perhaps not a Cessna flying act of peace a la Abi Natan and on a first scrutiny it is nice to see and hear such a statement. But on a second scrutiny this is a fake peace: how to use pseudo peace rhetoric on July 19 and on August 20, 2008 to hear a top Iranian general sayng:
….” ’ Any attack against us will lead to world war. The unbridled greediness of the American and Zionist leadership is pushing the world to the edge of the cliff,’ Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said in relation to the crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Georgia, ‘should such a (conflict) erupt, the phony and artificial regimes will be annihilated.’
Brigadier General Jazayeri, the deputy head of Iran’s Armed Forces Headquarters, did not specifically mention Israel, but the Jewish state is often referred to by Iranian officials as a “phony regime”,see here.
What we have here is the good cop and the bad cop. But is anyone willing to attack Iran? The simple naive answer is: don’t simultaneously threat to wipe out Israel, and perhaps other neighbouring countries, and shouting every fresh morning that you enrich plutonium to made nuclear weapons,.. then nobody will attack you.
Anwar Sadat
In the same way there are the pseudo activist, their inverse image beingMother Theresa and Albert Schweitzerwho dedicated their life for a great cause and succeeded. Abie Natan is not to be compared with those great figures. But on the Israeli-Arab conflict scene he is unique, his great follower is Egyptian President Anwar Sadat flying to Jerusalem on November 7, 1977, 30 years after Abie Natan’s flying to Port Said. Abie Natan was the peace forerunner and Anwar Sadat signed the Peace traity with Israel.
And what is the great achievement of the hot pseudo peace activist: the Gaza blockade breakers. They bring 5000 balloons, cooperating with the Hamas propaganda machine, not adding a tidbit of real help to the Gaza population, but promising to come back..perhaps with another 5000 balloons, see here.
A talkbacker on the site resume very well the feelings of many he Palestinians in Gaza ..”"Sounds like the Gazans will have to feed the activists while they’re on tour.”.. see here.
