Israel’s “Operation Summer Rain” is not specifically intended to win the release of prisoner of war corporal Gilad Shalit so much as continue the nearly sixty year aggression against the Palestinian people. “According to some Western analysts, the military action, rather than being aimed at rescuing the captured Israeli soldier, is aimed at preempting the consequences of a recent agreement [to recognize Israel] reached by the Fatah block and Hamas,” notes the Arab Monitor.

Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees, responsible for taking Shalit, want to use him as a “bargaining chip” to gain the release of women and children held in Israel’s dungeons in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It should be noted, although this will not be mentioned in the corporate media, that Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that abducting Arabs and holding them hostage is entirely legal according to the laws of the tiny outlaw state. As well, the Israeli government has attempted to codify GSS (General Security Services) torture during “interrogation.” According to Amnesty International official, “Israel is the only country in the world known to have effectively legalized torture by officially allowing such methods,” namely beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, forcing prisoners to remain in painful positions, violent shaking, hooding, confinement in tiny spaces, exposure to temperature extremes, prolonged toilet and hygiene deprivation, degrading treatment, and other methods, which have in cases led to the death of the detainees.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official, put the capture of Gilad Shalit into perspective. “He’s an Israeli soldier, a prisoner of war, taken in a battle and falls under a legal category,” Hamdan told the Associated Press. “What happened yesterday [the abduction of elected Palestinians] were hostage-takings and acts of terrorism.” Israel, however, has nothing but contempt for such legal categories, as the systematic murder and maiming of more than 24,500 Palestinians since the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada reveals.

“On Wednesday, the crisis seemed to be tipping toward escalation as Israeli tanks hunkered down inside southern Gaza at the airport after warplanes had knocked out half of Gaza’s electricity and pounded sonic booms over houses,” reports the New York Times. “Also on Wednesday, Israel battered northern Gazan towns with artillery and sent warplanes over the house of the Syrian president, who is influential with the Palestinian leader believed to have ordered the kidnapping.”

In other words, the Israelis violated Syrian airspace and terrorized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, basically an act of war. “In a predawn operation Wednesday morning, Israel Air Force warplanes carried out a low-altitude flight over Assad’s palace in the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria,” explains Haaretz. [Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin] said it was ‘absolutely unacceptable’ to breach the border or air space of any country,” a fact lost on the neocon, pro-Jabotinsky, AIPAC seduced government of the United States.

Ehud Olmert, who got his start in the Arab-hating revisionist Zionist youth movement Betar (founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky), declares Israel has “no interest to harm the Palestinian people, and in the operation we carried out tonight, civilians were not harmed. The Hamas Government and its sources in Syria are directly responsible for the reality we’ve fallen into,” according to a translation provided by the World Today.

Granted, according to news reports, the IOF has yet to slaughter Palestinians outright, although it is disingenuous for Olmert to claim “civilians were not harmed,” considering the IOF has bombed electrical facilities and “destroyed the main water pipe feeding Nuseirat and El-Bureij refugee camps,” according to an by Electronic Intifada press release posted last night.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights “strongly condemns IOF retaliatory measures targeting Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, including the destruction of properties that are not classified as a legitimate military targets. The Center calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to force IOF to respect the convention, which prohibits reprisals against protected persons, as stipulated in article 33. In addition, the convention prohibits the destruction of private properties belonging to individuals, groups, organizations or official bodies. The Center calls upon the High Contracting Parties to enforce article 3 regarding adherence to the convention and respect of its stipulations, and to take appropriate sanctions against the serious violations currently being perpetrated.”

Of course, this will be ignored, both in Israel and the United States, where the dutiful corporate media portrays the invasion of the Gaza Strip and West Bank as a defensive move against terrorists.

In effect, Israel is attempting to break any agreement between Fatah and Hamas in regard to recognizing Israel’s “right” to exist, a “right” predicated on more than sixty years of violence and ethnic cleansing.

Olmert and the Jabotinsky Likudites are engaged in a long-term plan to deny not only Palestinian statehood, but the most basic of human rights. “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces,” Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote.

As well, it stands or falls on the ability to use such armed forces to terrorize Palestinians, run them off the land, bomb their civilian infrastructure, abduct their elected representatives, throw their women and children in torture dungeons, dynamite their homes, plow under their olive groves, shoot peace activists in the head (or run them over with military bulldozers), and engage in other crimes, illegal and shameful in more civilized places in the world.

_______________________________

Israel's attack against Gaza pre-planned

by qrswave
The Truth Will Set You Free

Amid sonic booms that shattered windows, Israeli planes hit the three bridges and Apache helicopters targeted all six of the transformers at the power plant - an attack Israeli officials said was necessary to make any transfer of Gilad more difficult.

"Nobody understands the logic," Rafik Maliha, the plant's manager, said as firefighters worked to keep down smoke that still rose hours after the attacks. "They want to keep people in the dark so kidnappers don't move? What's the relationship?"

He added: "If there is no electricity, THERE IS NO WATER. It is more than collective punishment."

Both Palestinian and Israeli officials said the plant, built by Norway and run by oil subsidized by the European Union, provided 42 percent of the power to Gaza's 1.3 million residents, and now Gaza is completely dependent on Israel for its power.

Maliha said it would take as long as a year to replace the transformers, at a cost of more than $1 million each.

If Israel's reasoning sounds illogical, it's because it's just an excuse - a pretext to implement a pre-planned effort to decimate whatever's left of Gaza and leave Palestinians entirely dependent on Israelis.

"I don't believe at this point we'll be able to save Gilad Shalit, but we have to go in anyway," says Eliraz - conscripted troops can only give their first names.

Yvgeny, from the elite Givati Brigade, nods. "They'll know next time that they can't just go and kidnap our soldiers and expect to get away with it."

Israel's goal in Gaza is to make Palestinians uncomfort- able enough to think twice about committing more kidnappings, or in the language floating around the camp here, to teach them a lesson.

The real question is what lesson will the world learn from this fiasco?

__________________________

The language of the Middle East
by Eli Stephens

left i on the news

According to the Western corporate media, an Israeli soldier was recently "kidnapped" (not "captured"). And what follows? This:

Israeli forces arrested the Palestinian deputy prime minister and dozens of other Hamas officials early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza, responding to the abduction of one of its soldiers.

"Arrested"? On what charge? "Resisting while Palestinian"?

Surely the correct term for this action is "kidnapped." But you won't be seeing that one in the corporate media. Of that I'm certain.

________________________________

Israel Kidnaps Palestinian Government.

by lenin
Lenin's Tomb

Jews Sans Frontieres has some coverage of this breaktakingly arrogant assault by Israel. Aside from hardly having time to follow this issue, I am utterly at a loss for words to describe these bastards.

John Game posts a press release from the Palestine Centre for Human Rights:

PCHR
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

Press Release
Ref: 56/2006

Date: 29 June 2006

Time: 08:00 GMT

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Carry Out Reprisals against Palestinian Civilians in the West Bank

PCHR strongly condemns the IOF detention of Palestinian Cabinet Ministers, including the Deputy Prime Minister, and legislative council members from the “Change and Reform” party, affiliated with Hamas. The Centre views these detentions as a form of reprisal against Palestinian civilians and a form of collective punishment prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Centre calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to force IOF to respect the convention, which bars reprisals against protected persons, as stipulated in Article 33. The Centre calls upon the High Contracting Parties to enforce Article 3, regarding adherence to the convention and respecting its stipulations, and to take appropriate actions against the serious violations being perpetrated.

PCHR’s preliminary investigation indicates that in the early morning hours of Thursday, 29 June 2006, IOF conducted a number of incursions throughout the West Bank, excluding Jericho however. IOF surrounded the places of residence of a number of Palestinian Cabinet Ministers and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) from the Change and Reform Party. These forces detained nine cabinet ministers, twenty-one PLC members and a number of Hamas political leaders.

The detained Cabinet Ministers are:

- Naser El-Deen El-Sha’er, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education

- Omar Abdel Raziq, Minister of Finance;

- Samir Abu Eisha, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation;

- Khaled Abu Arafa, Minister of Jerusalem Affairs;

- Wasfi Qabha, Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs;

- Issa El-Ja’bari, Minister of Local Government;

- Fakhri Torokman, Minister of Social Affairs;

- Nayef El-Rajoub, Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs; and

- Mohammad El-Barghouthi, Minister of Labor.

The detained PLC members are:

- Hebron: Basem Ahmad Moussa Za’arir, Khalil Moussa Khalil Beb’ei, Samir Saleh Ibrahim El-Qadi, Mohammad Ismail Othman El-Tal, Mohammad Motlaq Abdel Mahdi abu J’heisha, and Mohammad Maher Yousef Bader.

- Bethlehem: Anwar Mohammad Abdel Rahman El-Zoboun and Mahmoud Dawood Mahmoud El-Khatib.

- Jerusalem: Wa’el Mohammad Abdel Fattah Abdel Rahman (El-Husseini), Mohammad Mahmoud Abu Tir, and Ahmad Mohammad Ahmad Attoun.

- Nablus: Hosni Mohammad Ahmad Bourini, Reyad Ali Mostafa Amli, and Yser Suliman Dawoud Mansour. IOF raided the house of PLC member Ahmad Ali Ahmad in Ein El-Ma’ refugee camp, but did not find him there.

- Jenin: Ibrahim Mohammad Saleh Dahbour, Khalek Suliman Fayez Abu Hasan, and Khaled (Sa’id) Abed Abdallah Yehya.

- Tulkarm: Reyad Mahmoud Sa’id Radad and Fathi Mohammad Ali Qarawi.

- Qalqilya: Imad Mahmoud Rajeh Nofal

- Salfit: Naser Abdallah Odeh Abdel Jawwad.

PCHR condemns these detentions, which came following the Israeli government’s threat to assassinate and detain Hamas political leaders, after the military operation against the Israeli military outpost in Kerem Shalom on Sunday, 25 June 2006. PCHR:

- Affirms that these detentions are a form of reprisal and collective punishment;

- Affirms that these detentions are part of a plan to undermine the democratically elected government and PLC;

- Reiterates the position that Israel is intent on implementing unilateral steps to complete the construction of the Annexation Wall and confiscate more than half the area of the West Bank. Targeting the new Palestinian government underlines the intention of Israel to continue to disregard and undermine the Palestinian leadership;

- Reiterates the call to the International Community to take immediate steps to provide protection to the civilian population, in accordance with International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law, and to work to prevent further deterioration in the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.