JERUSALEM — An Israeli soldier seized by Palestinian militants more than three years ago described his captivity as an "intolerable and inhumane nightmare" in a handwritten 2006 letter to his parents made public on Wednesday.
In carefully printed script, Sgt. Gilad Schalit reported deteriorating health and deep depression, and makes an anguished appeal to the Israeli government to release him from his "closed and solitary prison."
Schalit, now 23, wrote the 14-line letter three months after gunmen affiliated with the Gaza Strip's Islamic Hamas rulers captured him in a cross-border raid.
The existence of the letter had been known, but his parents had not published its contents.
It was leaked to the Israeli media ahead of the publication of a new book that purports through militant sources to chronicle his captivity and Israel's unsuccessful efforts to trade him for Palestinian prisoners it holds.
Schalit's captors have not allowed anyone to see him. Three letters and an audio tape relayed to his parents have been the only signs of life from him since he was seized.
blah blah blah @ AP
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jsx1I4iHOAx7-hwB0M4hfnVvskmQD9AJRRCG0
excerpt from Israel fakes a provocation (the 'kidnapping' of gilad schalit):
The following passages in italics are from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/26/wmid26.xml&sSheet=/
news/2006/06/26/ixnews.html
Last night two Israeli soldiers were killed and another kidnapped in a dawn attack by Palestinian militants who tunnelled under Gazas heavily protected border.
The attackers, believed to number seven or eight, surprised Israeli forces when they appeared at first light through a tunnel on open ground 300 yards inside Israel near a kibbutz.
Gaza is built on old semi-consolidated sand dunes. It is extremely unlikely that anyone could tunnel 500, or more, yards in the sandy ground of Gaza (300 yards into Israel plus 200 yards of no-mans land plus more to the tunnel entrance), without the tunnel collapsing at some point.
They split into three groups before launching simultaneous attacks on three Israeli defensive positions - a look-out tower, plus a tank and an armoured personnel carrier, both dug in, facing Gaza.
If you were only seven or eight, would you split into three groups? If you were only two, or three, would you attack a tank over flat ground, manned by four soldiers waiting inside to kill you?
They blew open the tanks rear doors with a missile fired from point-blank range before tossing grenades inside. Two of the tank crew died and another was severely wounded but the final crew member, the gunner, was forced out of the wreckage at gunpoint.
The rear doors are blown off and a few grenades popped inside. Tanks are not made to fall apart. Blowing off the rear doors would have taken a blast sufficient to seriously hurt those inside. The grenades would have then made mincemeat of them. One wonders if it is standard practice to wear a bulletproof vest inside a hot tank. One would think that the tank would be bulletproof enough not to require such a vest. Can Israeli tanks stop bullets, or not?
[SNIP]
If you are not already convinced that the whole story is a fabrication, ask yourself; What were the four Israeli soldiers doing in the tiny confines of that dug-in tank? Ask your self; How long were they going to continue sitting in that tank? All day perhaps, or till they roasted in the desert sun? Or, till another group of four took over on the next shift? And of course, having four soldiers in just one tank, wont provide a defense, so there will have to be hundreds of tanks and hundreds of soldiers all sitting in these tanks,...
all waiting,... all waiting,... all waiting,.... for exactly what?
Waiting for Palestinian children to throw stones at them, perhaps? Perhaps, waiting attentively for militants to dig a half mile tunnel through sandy soil, pop up, and rush them over flat ground, but not attentively enough to see them approach? Perhaps, they were waiting for the Egyptian army to materialize, Star Trek like, from their bases hundreds of miles away on the other side of the Suez canal? I don't know ... you tell me why?
Yes, the story is a total fabrication. A fake provocation to start a war.
No comments:
Post a Comment