Mass murderers expect your support and understanding

"Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community as it confronts terror." - Tzipi Livni

Israeli air strikes in Gaza strip kill as many as 200 people

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Israeli aircraft attacked police and security installations across the Gaza Strip, killing scores of people in the deadliest raid since the occupation of the coastal region ended in 2005, security and medical officials said.

As many as 200 people were killed and 750 injured, including women and children, Mu’awia Hassanien, a Palestinian medical-services official in Gaza, said today. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called the air strike a massacre and said it would retaliate. At least 30 rockets were fired from Gaza today, Israel Radio reported, killing a woman in Netivot.

Israel’s strikes started at 11:30 a.m. and in two minutes hit more than 30 targets, most of them security compounds run by Hamas, said an official of the movement who declined to be identified. They came after a week in which dozens of Qassam rockets were fired into Israel following the expiration Dec. 19 of a six-month cease-fire with Hamas.

“Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community as it confronts terror,” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said. The government ordered the strikes on Hamas only after it saw no other way to stop rocket attacks on its southern towns. The attack comes amid an election campaign in Israel, with the ballot scheduled for Feb. 10.

Cryptogon notes how the price of gold spiked ahead of this attack and links this to other similar events.

And let's talk about those rockets, the ones used to justify this attack. Here is Sarkozy, speaking presumably for the EU, citing them obliquely. The asshole Bush cites them directly:

President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, who holds the rotating European Union presidency, said he “firmly condemns the irresponsible provocations that have led to this situation, [the rockets] as well as the disproportionate use of force,” according to an e-mailed statement.

...In Washington, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an e-mailed statement from President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, that “Hamas’s continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop.” He also urged “Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza.”

The rockets get top billing. Oh and by the way, watch that disproportionate force and try to avoid the women and children, ok? please & thanks. Love, Nick and George. We support you, because we mass murderers gotta stick together.

Here are some questions about those rockets:

The picture published at the ORF website is credited to "MOHAMED SABER/EPA". Those are two first names and no family name. Who is this person? Why does he not present himself with a family name as any Arab would do? Does he exist at all or is he a fabrication?

The rockets depicted in that picture (and on the video) look more like the fancy bengalas which can be bought in many shops all over the world before festivities than any known weapon.

These so-called "rockets" appear to not have place for fuel or an engine, but they are supposed to fly 10-15Km? How do they accomplish this miracle?

How did ORF and other western media come into possession of this video which supposedly shows "Hamas fighters" shooting rockets from between fruit trees? Was it distributed by the Israeli embassy? Neither Austrian nor other western journalists are known to go to Gaza, so they can only have received them from the Israeli government, and that is what a link to exactly there from the ORF page suggests.

If the firing of these rockets from Gaza can be doubted, from where else could they have been fired? From within Israeli territory perhaps? Could it be that the firing of these rockets is a propaganda campaign implemented by the IDF in order to "justify" a long-planned massacre against the people of Gaza?

Could it be that the IDF is using the inhabitants of Sderot, Asqelon and other places around Gaza in order to construct a justification for genocide against a people who are already half hungered to death?

Why did nobody ask these questions before showing the clip at several European TV stations? If western media are not sloppy in their research and their checking of sources but still publish material which is obvious propaganda, is it possible to say that this irresponsible and less than professional attitude, the wholesale regurgitation of Israeli propaganda, is tantamount to complicity in the genocide against the Palestinian people?

Yes.