Israel arrested 64 Hamas ministers and parliamentarians last night, in an operation that was planned weeks ago. What justifies these kidnaps? What sovereign nation would tolerate any adversary issuing warrants then arresting members of their governments in the dead of night? How is it that safeguarding the right of occupied people to self-determination is deemed less important than rallying to the defence of the brutes who deny it to them?
Air raids begun at 5am delivering sonic booms, the destruction of three bridges and Gaza’s only power plant that’s left “hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s people without power and others without water,” the destruction of a water main that served two refugee camps; if this is not collective punishment, then the term is meaningless. If the world remains silent in the face of it, and refuses to condemn Israel for this grotesque abuse of its power, not only is yet another great injustice being done to the Palestinians, but vulnerable people elsewhere who suffer similar treatment will more easily be ignored, and the atrocious crimes of their abusers will be more readily excused, because the bar has been sunk into the slime.
Probe: IDF knew militants planned abduction via tunnel
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
27 June 2006 Haaretz
The IDF and Shin Bet are in disagreement over the nature of the warning the army received: The Shin Bet said it was a focused and precise warning, while the IDF is trying to play down its significance.
But IDF soldier Ro’i Amitai, a member of the tank crew hit in the attack, enforced the probe findings when he said his unit had received an intelligence warning just a day earlier, indicating Palestinians were digging a tunnel in order to carry out an attack.
It appears that the US via their puppet Israel is provoking Syria and the Palestinians into all out war in which the US will conquer the middle east with weapons of mass destruction.
And our troops will be greeted with flowers, right?