Palestine: French Blogger Weighs In On Gaza

French blogger Jeremie Berrebi, writing from Israel, posted yesterday a long blog post “Gaza/Israel : Why it is starting again” on the Gaza attacks seen from Israel and his analysis of the reasons behind the Israeli air strikes:

Depuis [la rupture de la trêve], ce sont plusieurs centaines de missiles qui sont tombés sur des villes israéliennes (on parle ici de cibles civiles) au cours des derniers jours. Des missiles plus sophistiqués qu'il y a 6 mois ont même été lancées sur des villes qu'ils n'avaient pas la possibilité de toucher avant. Oui, vous avez bien lu….des centaines de roquettes Qassam ont été tirées sur de VRAIES VILLES qui ne font même pas partie des territoires soi disant “disputés” par les Palestiniens modérés.

Since the truce ended, several hundred missiles have fallen on Israeli towns [we are talking about civilians here] during the past days. Those missiles are much more sophisticated than six month ago, and have been aimed at town that were not within their reach before. Yes, you are reading that hundreds of Qassam missiles have been fired at REAL TOWNS, that are not even located on the so called “disputed territories” by moderate Palestinians.

8 comments

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  • ZorbaDGeek

    Israel should stop the bombing after the missile attacks stop for a week or the Hamas government folds. Until then maybe the increasing number of casualties will cause the terrorists who call themselves Palestinians to come to their senses or the civilian population in Gaza will decide they had enough of their leaders.

  • Annette

    Granted – if they can get money for missiles, why not get food for the people??
    Yet, the embargo is internationally sanctioned, basically, and keeping the Palestinians in basically a ghetto.
    The Israelis decide what goes in and out of the ‘country’.
    Basically – the Gaza strip is occupied, and regular people are suffering badly.
    Who would not want to fight and try to get out of the embargo????
    The US (well, Bush for now) tells Israel to limit civilian deaths, they tell Hamas to stop bombing. Ha!
    What authority does the US have at this point, after bombing thousands of civilian Iraqis to death, and still also keep funding Israel??!!?? Tell me, what influence does the effing Bush administration have? None. Well, quite a bit, but none that they seem to want to exert.

  • Annette:
    Hamas is a known extreme-Islam terrorist group listed by the international community’s countries.

    The siege on Gaza started when Hamas went to power (not without bloody clashes in Gaza).

    When it rose to power in Gaza, after very bloody clashes that were actually civil war, Israel, US and the Europeans give it 3 conditions in order for it’s governments to be recognized:

    Denouncing violence, recognizing Israel and honoring past agreements as signed by previous government.

    Hamas rejected these and launched attacks on Israel (rockets, sniper fire on farmers working in fields near the borders etc).

    As a result, Israel, the US and the EU stopped passing aid and money to Gaza and the siege had began.

    Still, as the situation in Gaza became hard, Israel did let in thousands of support aid – more than 17,000 trucks the past year, even under rockets fire. Israel keep sending in trucks with food and medical aid even now, during fighting.

    The siege was completely cause of Hamas refusal to talk. Israel (same Israel!) have relatively calm talks with the PA in the West Bank. The siege, suffering and current situation in Gaza – it’s all Hamas’ fault.

  • Manus

    1. To say that Hamas broke the ceasefire is simply an outright lie and a flagrant distortion of the truth. Many months ago there was a debate about the Israeli blockade of Gaza on “Global Voices” and our friends from Israel were nowhere to be seen.
    Israel is a nuclear power and the military super-power in the region. Also, Israel is the 6th undeclared permanent member of the United Nations. The Israeli use of sophisticated weapons against occupied civilian highly populated urban concentrations is nothing but a war crime. After the strangulation of the Palestinian population for many years, and starving them, these glorified fireworks were a scream for help. The cynical Israeli response was to open the crosses for 2 days then unleash these coward barbaric attacks on people that cannot respond with anything but these very inaccurate primitive home-made fire-crackers. Whereas western media reports these events as a response to Palestinian rocket attacks, they fail to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people and represent the sequence of events leading to these desperate rocket attacks. Also, the use of words like “missiles” is not only misleading but seems to me a misrepresentation of the inexistent treat they truly represent. This is propaganda at its best. The situation is created by Israel not just responding to it and if the Israelis wanted peace as they claim the solution is very simple. The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel’s demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State. It is that simple. This Israeli ethnocratic theocracy with Universal Suffrage will stop at nothing to realise their biblical aspirations of full land judaisation dreams and the total inhalation of any real Palestinian authority. The question that remains is what will Israel deem necessary to eradicate a militarily inexistent treat?!!

  • Jon C

    Propaganda is everything that has been written in the post above. Propaganda is all about trying to hide the real issues and focus on the periphery where one can be misled. Israel left Gaza in 2005. They gave over to the Palestinian people the infrastructure of Gush Katif which included a multi-million dollar export program of produce and goods. The Paletinians, led by Hamas terrorists, destroyed this infrastructure and burnt it to the ground. Israel has no interest in taking over Gaza since Gaza is the modern-day equivolent of Sodom and Gemorrah, led by a Hamas government that could care less about it’s civilians and more about killing Israelis.
    Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas has called for the destruction of the state of israel. This has been their cause since before the gaza scenario even existed.
    Hamas has been stockpiling arms that they have smuggled into Gaza from Egypt that they have received from Iran, Syria, and other Middle-East territories to be used to destroy Israel. And has nothing to do with whether there is free movement into and out of Gaza.
    Hamas has been responsible for the firing of over 5,000 mortars and kassam rockets at Israel since 2001, whether the borders have been open or not – just to kill israel. Hamas has no interest in making peace with Israel. And it’s irrelevent what the situation is in Gaza, Hamas is devoted to killing and destroying as many Israelis as it can, and they don’t even care about their own people. They use Gaza civilians as human shields, fire their home-made rockets from schools and mosques, and turn hospitals into military bases relying on the morals of peace-loving civilizations who would not bomb a hospital to protect their terrorists. The Palestinian people suffer at the hands of their own leaders who love death and destruction and will stop at nothing, even the destruction of their own people – men, women, and even children – to destroy Israel. Those who rally to support Hamas are protectors of terrorists and their values, who would love for others to look at them as sophisticated and intelligent people.
    The battle in Gaza is a reflection of the true battle in the world right now: those who support and sympathize with terror and islamic fundamentalism, and those who realize that islamic terrorists are a blight on the world and need to be wiped out, before they wipe us all out. They are the ones who call for the death of the Jews and lead violent protests calling for Israel’s destruction. Choose a side: you’re either with the terrorists against israel, or against them and for israel, or held hostage by the former and lack the courage or the moral sophistication (and the intelligence) to tell the difference.

  • Manus

    Left Gaza??!! According to the Neo-Zionist maybe.
    Nobody masters the art of sophism and rhetoric like our friends from Israel. However, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”. There is no need to get into “The Politics of Anti-Semitism” again. Change that record as people can see trough this masquerade. Israel as the occupying power under article 55 of the Geneva Convention “has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate”. Israel failed to do so and used it as a bargaining political instrument for oppression. In fact, 1.5 million inhabitants are effectively prisoners. Israel strategy is to cut the blood supply to create an environment of chaos and destabilise the Hamas regime in Gaza. Israeli internal politics struggles also had a major influence on how the military campaign will be directed. Kadima and Avodah would have lost the elections handsomely if they have not shown that they are tough and a successful campaign in Gaza seriously improves the leftists’ chances in the elections. Also, a political readjustment with the arrival of a new American administration in few weeks was necessary. This kind of cynicism is nothing new to Israeli politicians and their miserable calculations.

  • Manus

    Israel is not and should not be a state above criticism and International law.
    Moreover, the Jewish Diaspora and lobbies have always tried gagging anybody that dares criticising Israel. The fact that there was a historical precedent for cruelty and genocide does not give Israel a carte blanche to do the same. What you have been doing is recycling the usual war propaganda of every Israeli government for home consumption. What most Israelis were trained to forget: that despite the Israeli withdrawal, Gaza is still occupied. Even before the Hamas takeover, Israel retained all the measures to ensure its effective control of the Strip: from direct control of all the border crossings to Gaza, both for goods and for persons, to Israeli control of Gaza’s population registry. The only apparent exception – the Rafah checkpoint – is restricted to entry into Gaza of Gaza inhabitants only, as defined by the Israeli registry, and even this is under Israeli supervision. But for most Israelis, Gaza is an independent, sovereign empire, which was occupied by Israel ages ago, and now, for no reason at all, poses an existential threat to its benevolent Jewish neighbour.
    Once the war started, Maj.-Gen. (Reserve) Giora Island – former head of the Israeli National Security Council – spelled it all out on television, without a shade of shame: Israel should not confine its attacks to military facilities, he said, but must hit civilian targets as well. The damage to the civil population should be maximized, because the worse the humanitarian crisis is, the better and the sooner the operation would end. It’s the same major-general, by the way, who just a year ago caused outrage by urging the Israeli government to negotiate directly with Hamas. Do not need to look for consistency, integrity, or intelligence where war criminals are involved.

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