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GAZA CITY (AFP) – A radical sheikh was among 24 people killed and 130 wounded after Hamas police stormed a Gaza mosque when he declared an Islamic emirate in the Palestinian enclave, medics said on Saturday. The shooting erupted on Friday afternoon following weekly prayers in Rafah, on the Egyptian border, and continued until dawn on Saturday. "Clashes... between Hamas and an extremist group in the southern Gaza Strip left 24 people dead and at least 130 wounded," a spokesman for the Palestinian emergency services told AFP. Four of the wounded were considered to be "clinically dead" and many more...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Islamic radicals from an al-Qaida-inspired group battled Hamas security in the Gaza Strip Friday in a shootout that killed at least seven people. The fighting began when Hamas forces surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were holed up, including some armed with suicide belts and rifles, according to residents of the area. The confrontation was triggered when the leader of the group defied Gaza's Hamas rulers by declaring in a Friday prayer sermon that the...

At least six people have been killed and dozens injured in a fierce gun battle in Gaza, emergency services say. Eyewitnesses say hundreds of Hamas fighters and policemen have surrounded a mosque where followers of a radical Islamist cleric have been hiding. They have been firing rocket-propelled grenades at the mosque in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, witnesses say. It is thought that at least 100 supporters of the al-Qaeda-linked group Warriors of God are inside. Hamas says a grenade fired from the mosque has killed one of its fighters. Earlier, during Friday prayers, hundreds of worshippers declared Gaza an...

Days after her release from an Israeli prison, Cynthia McKinney joined British Member of Parliament George Galloway and his aid convoy Viva Palestina attempting to break the blockade into Gaza through Egypt. Surmounting interminable obstacles, Cynthia wrote on July 15, "I made it to Gaza!" The fact that among over 200 people in the delegation, the only three beside Galloway who are well known - McKinney, NY City Councilman Charles Barron and M-1 of dead prez - are Black made this triumph all the moe significant. The SF Bay View newspaper and Block Report Radio are proud and excited to...

The International NGO, Human Rights Watch (HRW) is once again proving once again why its top banana Ken Roth is a perennial nominee for the Self Hating Jew Awards. They have a simple strategy, Advocacy not Accuracy. HRW is famous for inventing and/or twisting facts to slander Israel. They tend to use Palestinian sources only, without bothering to verify. HRW refuses to recognize terrorist attacks against Israel as provocative. For example, a year before the Gaza war they objected to Israel's limited response to the rocket attacks on Sedrot. In Jan 2008, Joe Stork of HRW wrote a 34 paragraph...

Most of us wanted to believe in that Disengagement of four years ago. Led by Arik Sharon, “the General,” the no-nonsense strategist, we trusted he had already planned the next steps, like a master chess player. We expected benefits we will reap for years to come for the deep wound Israel would self-inflict. There might have been a plan, but God thought otherwise. Prime Minister Sharon is still in a coma of sorts, and there is not a single soul who was privy to his Grand Plan. Some of us opposed unilateral Disengagement. The most vocal opposition included the residents...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked on the four-year anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. At the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that "Israel uprooted 10,000 of its citizens from their homes and Gaza has turned into a terror base under the control of Hamas, and sponsored by Iran." "I want to stress the fact that we are committed to the full rehabilitation of those uprooted, and the cabinet will discuss the matter next week," Netanyahu added. "We will not put up with rocket fire [from Gaza] into our communities. We will decisively respond to every attack," the prime minister went...

Emotions ran high at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival over the showing of Rachel, a film that looks at the International Solidarity Movement activist Rachel Corrie and her death in Gaza in March 2003. The controversy had been brewing for some time, concerning both the showing of the film and the invitation to Rachel's mother, Cindy Corrie, to speak at the festival. In the wake of protests against the showing of the film last Saturday, Peter Stein, the festival's executive director, invited Dr. Mike Harris, one of the leaders of the local Stand With Us chapter, to speak in...

In early 2006, shortly before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, an Israeli intelligence officer predicted the future. “Missile war will replace terrorist war,” he told me when I spoke with him at the Ministry of Defense. He was right. Just a few months later, Hizballah launched thousands of Katyusha rockets into Northern Israel and forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee south toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. South Lebanon was punished much more thoroughly than Northern Israel, but the Palestinians in Gaza nevertheless took Hizballah’s Baghdad Bob–style boasts of “divine victory” seriously.

Note: The following text is a quote: Seven Charged with Terrorism Violations in North Carolina RALEIGH, NC—Seven individuals have been charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, maim, and injure persons abroad, David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division; George E.B. Holding, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina; and Owen D. Harris, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Charlotte Field Division, announced today. On Wednesday, July 22, 2009, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned a sealed seven-count indictment against the...

Gaza City/Cairo (dpa) -- Emergency response crews on Monday found the burnt bodies of six Palestinians missing in the aftermath of an explosion in a tunnel used for smuggling between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, medics said. "Paramedics and civil defence officers have pulled out six additional bodies today, and one was pulled out yesterday," Mo'aweya Hassanein, the chief of the Gaza Strip's emergency services team told reporters. The discovery of the bodies at the scene in the divided border town of Rafah brought to seven the number of people killed in the blast. Emergency workers found nine survivors, Hassanein...

War is painful, war is horrific. It should be avoided as long as possible and only when everything has fully failed should it reluctantly be adapted as the means to a solution. There will always be innocents who suffer in any conflagration, but when news from a war zone are reported how much gets ignored because does not fit into the reporter’s or his/her organization’s agenda, how much gets distorted?!?!? [...]You still wonder, gentle reader, why Israel was fighting? Read it here, here or here. As you will see, none of those quoted are Jooz, none are Zioniss, none even...

We knew it would come to this. Over the weekend, the Obama administration showed just how radical the shift in U.S. policy toward Israel has been. It has demanded that the Israeli government withdraw the municipal approval of a building project in the Eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The land that houses the old, run-down Shepherd Hotel, which is to be replaced by an apartment building, was lawfully purchased by Jews. No matter: That part of town is seen by Washington as a “settlement.”

A few days ago an article appeared in which human rights organizations responded to the question of why they did not demand the launch of an investigation regarding human rights violations by Hamas. The answer that they provided was that the firing of rockets constituted such a clear violation that it left nothing to investigate. On the other hand, Israel's actions are more subject to interpretation. If the objective of the organizations is to promote taking responsibility for unsavory actions, they should focus on clear violations and not on cases that can provoke scholarly research at the universities.

Gaza's 'Hamaswood' Premieres Feature Film About Murdered Militant GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Gaza movie premiere drew an exclusive crowd with local celebrities posing for jostling photographers — and that's pretty much where the similarities end between Hollywood and the fledgling film industry of Gaza's Hamas rulers. The Islamic militants' first feature film — an action-packed homage to a top Hamas militant — cost only $200,000 to make and is being shown to segregated audiences of bearded men and veiled women. "It's Hamaswood instead of Hollywood," Fathi Hamad, Gaza's Hamas interior minister, said after the film's first showing Friday...

The first feature film produced by Hamas made its debut this weekend, complete with an exclusive crowd of local celebrities posing for photographers at the movie premier screening in Gaza.

By Jean Cohen · July 12, 2009 ATHENS (JTA) -- A campaign in Greece to raise money to rebuild a Christian Palestinian hospital in Gaza allegedly destroyed by Israel appears to be a scam, JTA has learned. The hospital that was the focus of a campaign, which included the participation of Greece’s president and foreign minister, never actually existed. For nearly a week in February, Greece’s official state television network inundated viewers with news about a telethon that would take place Feb. 9 to raise money to “rebuild the Christian hospital in Gaza that Israelis destroyed with their bombs” during...

JERUSALEM (AP) — An attempt by Hamas police to detain a young woman walking with a man along the Gaza beach has raised alarms that the Islamic militant group is seeking to match its political control of the coastal territory with a strict enforcement of Islamic law. The man she walked with and two of his peers were detained, beaten and ordered to sign statements promising not to engage in immoral activities, said the woman and one of the men. The incident was the first known case of Hamas openly trying to punish a woman for behaving in a way...

This is Cynthia McKinney and I'm speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people...

Col. Richard Kemp Formerly commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp told a conference in Jerusalem on June 18, 2009: "Hamas' military capability was deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population. They also ordered, forced when necessary, men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF. Israel was fighting an enemy that is deliberately trying to sacrifice their own people, deliberately trying to lure you into killing their own innocent civilians." Click here to read the full presentation. Click here to...

Israel deports Gaza boat activists, including former US congresswoman, Nobel laureatePublished Monday July 6th, 2009 Matti Friedman, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JERUSALEM - Israel has deported a former U.S. congresswoman, a Nobel peace prize laureate and other activists who were arrested trying to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israeli officials said Monday. The Israeli navy commandeered the boat last week as it tried to sail from Cyprus to Gaza. It was the latest in a series of trips by activists trying to bring attention to the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the territory after the Islamic...

Please, bid in shekels or dollars. Ms. McKinney may learn to appreciate her United States citizenship after this experience, and stop envying Castro, Chavez, and every other country. Here is a capsulized summary of Ms McKinney's history: Cynthia McKinney - one busy woman June 19, 2006 by chrisgraham augustafreepress.com Column by Max Friedman: Cynthia McKinney - One Busy womanIn between hitting cops and and playing the race card, wacko Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., keeps busy with the left on a number of subjects. Just pulling her file is a full day’s work, but it is worthwhile keeping track of her...

Former congresswoman and current crazywoman Cynthia McKinney is spending a little time in an Israeli hoosegow this week. Only a matter of time, you say? Well, she isn't there because of the time her father blamed her electoral defeat on the "J-E-W-S." Nor, as far as we can tell, is it due to her habit of roughing up cops—although there's no official word about her demeanor when her Greek-flagged Gaza-blockade runner was boarded by the aforementioned J-E-W-S in uniform. McKinney found herself in dangerous waters as part of her new affiliation with the Green Party (she was their presidential nominee...

Cynthia McKinney to Appear in Israeli Court After Gaza-Bound Boat Is SeizedFormer U.S. lawmaker Cynthia McKinney is due to appear in an Israeli court Sunday after she and 20 other activists were taken into custody this week when their relief boat was seized by an Israeli naval ship. FOXNews.com Saturday, July 04, 2009 Former U.S. lawmaker Cynthia McKinney is due to appear in an Israeli court Sunday after she and 20 other activists were taken into custody this week when their relief boat was seized by an Israeli naval ship. The 2008 Green Party presidential candidate says the group, "Free...

Former U.S. lawmaker and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and several other activists remained in an Israeli prison Thursday after refusing to sign a deportation form that they claim is self-incriminating. In a press release from the Green Party, McKinney said the form states that the Spirit of Humanity, a Greek-flagged relief boat carrying 21 activists, medical supplies, cement, olive trees and children's toys en route to Gaza, was violating the Israeli blockade and trespassing the country's territorial waters.

American engineers who serve as consultants for the Egyptian military have recently informed Israel that Hamas has succeeded in digging 60-meter deep smuggling tunnels to avoid detection and destruction by the IDF, defense officials said on Thursday. The American engineers, deployed as consultants along the Philadelphi Corridor in Egyptian Rafah, have been using technology that can detect seismic movements to uncover tunnels. But it is more difficult to detect them once they have reached the 60-meter depth, the engineers told their Israeli counterparts. According to IDF assessments, Hamas now has several hundred active tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor, even though...

HELD AL-QUDS: The Israeli navy on Tuesday boarded and seized a ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists that was heading to the Gaza Strip in defiance of Israel's blockade, a military spokesman said. "In the last hour an Israeli navy force intercepted, boarded and took control of the cargo boat 'Arion' ... as it was illegally attempting to enter the Gaza Strip," the spokesman said late in the afternoon. The military said the ship, which was sailing under a Greek flag, was the same vessel known as the "Spirit of Humanity", which was sailing to Gaza to protest the Israeli blockade on...

One of the craziest moonbat politicians in the US, Cynthia McKinney, has been arrested again for trying to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas: Israel navy intercepts boat with ex-U.S. Rep. McKinney. JERUSALEM (CNN) — The Israeli navy took control of a boat that violated an Israeli blockade and crossed into Gazan waters Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said, while a Gaza group said the ship was carrying humanitarian aid, a former U.S. congresswoman and a Nobel laureate. The boat’s crew included former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, according to the Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group that sent the boat...

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- The Israeli navy took control of a boat that violated an Israeli blockade and crossed into Gazan waters Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said, while a Gaza group said the ship was carrying humanitarian aid, a former U.S. congresswoman and a Nobel laureate. The boat's crew included former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, according to the Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group that sent the boat it calls "Spirit of Humanity" from Cyprus. Along with McKinney, who served six terms in the House of Representatives from Georgia and was the Green Party's presidential nominee in 2008, Israeli...

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. --Albert Einstein Former Congresswoman, and professional nut job Cynthia McKinney fits Einstein's definition perfectly. This past December McKinney, who was once arrested for slapping a US Capitol Policeman who asked her for ID, decided to get on a boat in an attempt to get around Israel's blockade and dock the vessel in a war zone so she could help and resupply the terrorist group Hamas. McKinney was on the boat as it was damaged by an Israeli navy vessel which rammed it three times before it was...

Cynthia McKinney Demands Immediate Release After Her Gaza-Bound Boat is Seized by Israeli Navy Former U.S. lawmaker and Green Party leader Cynthia McKinney, a longtime activist for the Palestinians, says her boat, the Spirit of Humanity, was carrying medical supplies, cement, olive trees and children's toys to Gaza when it was seized by an Israeli navy ship. FOXNews.com Tuesday, June 30, 2009 Former U.S. lawmaker and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, whose relief boat was seized by an Israeli naval ship Tuesday for the second time in a year, is demanding the immediate release of her and 20 other...

The Israel Navy intercepted a boat carrying international activists attempting to break a blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday and forced it to sail to the southern port city of Ashdon, the army said. Earlier Tuesday, the navy surrounded the vessel, which was also carrying humanitarian aid, and told the activists to turn back because of security risks in the area and the blockade, according to the army. But the boat later entered Gaza's coastal waters, the Israel Defense Forces Spokespersons' Office said in a statement, after which a naval force boarded it. No shots were fired during...

Small ferry carrying medical supplies that set sail from Cyprus Monday with 21 peace activists, medical supplies intercepted off Strip's shore; passengers say army jammed boat's radio signals. At around noon Tuesday the Israeli Navy intercepted and took control of a boat that had set sail for the Gaza Strip with three tons of medical supplies, Palestinian sources said, adding that the Navy jammed the boat's radio signals. The IDF Spokesperson's Office confirmed the report. Israeli military sources said there was no violence after the small ferry, sailing from Cyprus with activists from the US-based Free Gaza Movement, was intercepted...

Several IDF navy boats intercepted, boarded and took control of a boat of pro-Arab activists trying to break Israeli sovereignty over coastal waters Tuesday afternoon. No one was injured, and an IDF spokesman told Israel National News that no shots were fired. It was the first time the IDF has boarded one of the boats since the pro-Arab “Free Gaza” movement began sending ships to Gaza last August.

It’s difficult to make sense out of the foreign policy coming out of the White House under Barack Obama.  On the one hand, Obama insisted that he could not interfere with the internal politics of the “sovereign government of Iran,” refusing for days to even condemn Iran for its flagrantly violent repression of dissent.  When Honduras’ military staged a coup, though, Obama apparently had no such reticence in involving the US on behalf of deposed President Manuel Zelaya — a close ally of Hugo Chavez: In an unusual concurrence of views, the Obama administration and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said...

Twenty-one human rights and solidarity workers, representing eleven different countries, set sail from Cyprus Monday morning for the Gaza Strip in yet another attempt to break the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory, the Free Gaza Group announced. The small ferry "Spirit of Humanity" is carrying three tons of medical aid, children's toys, and rehabilitation and reconstruction kits for 20 family homes. It was expected to reach Gaza on Tuesday afternoon. Passengers on board include former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maquire. Free Gaza Group organizer Ramzi Kysia said that each passenger was also...

European diplomatic sources said Thursday that kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit will be transferred to Egypt in the coming hours or coming days. This information has yet to be confirmed by Israeli officials. According to the European sources, Shalit's transfer is the first stage of an agreement between the various Palestinian factions, assisted by Egyptian mediation and done in coordination with the United States and with the support of Syria. Shalit will be used as a "deposit" toward the completion of a prisoner exchange between the Palestinian factions, the sources said. The agreement will include the exchange of...

President Barack Obama’s refusal to take a stand on protests in Iran stands in sharp contrast to demands he has made on Israel, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, says in a Newsmax interview. “I think he should take a strong stand to support the protesters in Iran who want to transform that society into one that promotes democracy and human rights,” Klein says. ”But while meddling in Israel’s affairs and making specific demands, he explicitly states he refuses to meddle in Iran’s policies and has said almost nothing.” Klein says leaders of Jewish organizations are rethinking...

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner and I will join 34 others taking medical, school, and building supplies to Gaza. I'd like to thank Nadira Kaili and Erin Connors of Atlantic Television News for donating dollars to help in my purchase of school supplies for Gaza's children. And I want to thank Jay Winter Nightwolf for the turquoise good luck ring that he gave me for this journey. On Tuesday, June 16, President Carter visited Gaza and said that he was almost brought to tears by what he saw. He said that he felt partly responsible because the...

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell has advised Israel to relax restrictions at the Gaza crossings without demanding that Hamas free kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, according to foreign and Israeli media. An American Embassy spokesman told Israel National News, “Mitchell will have to speak for himself. These are very sensitive issues.”

ATLANTA (ABP) -- Former President Jimmy Carter is calling Israel's 2-year-old blockade of Gaza an "atrocity" and saying people there are being treated like animals. "Tragically, the international community largely ignores the cries for help, while the citizens of Gaza are being treated more like animals than human beings," Carter said in a June 16 speech in Gaza. Carter's remarks came during visits to Syria, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza following the Carter Center's observation of Lebanese elections June 7. Speaking earlier at Cairo University, Carter said Palestinians in Gaza are being "starved to death" and are receiving fewer...

Palestinian sources reported Tuesday that former US president Jimmy Carter was the target of a thwarted assassination attempt, according to Israel Radio. Reportedly, there was a cluster of explosive devices stashed near a road he was scheduled to travel during a visit to the Gaza Strip.

never thought I would say this, but in when I heard the coverage of the most recent interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, I thought that the virulently anti-Semitic pastor got some things right. He just got the verb tense wrong. He said, "Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing [by] the Zionist is a sin against humanity." Ethic cleansing surely is a sin. The Nazis employed this nefarious technique to rid the world street by street, town by town of all the Jews. Surely Gaza and ethnic cleansing belong in the same sentence. However, ethnic cleansing is not...

Rosie O'Donnell, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and James von Brunn have a lot more in common than not. All have a problem with "Neocons" and two of the three are clear that they have a fear of the power of Jews ... and believe that 9/11/2001 was not the result of jetliners being hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. Imagine that! An odd observation and investigation shows intersections of thought and philosophy shared by these three people and it begins to suggest that they all were reading from the same prayer book. The issues in...

Under the cover of morning fog, some 10 gunmen staged a failed assault at the Karni cargo crossing into Gaza on Monday, in which horses laden with explosives were used, a security source told The Jerusalem Post. At least four terrorists and a number of their horses were killed in the ensuing exchange of fire with the IDF. No soldiers were wounded. "A very big terrorist attack was thwarted," the security source told the Post. "These terrorists were armed with a huge quantity of explosives. They launched a combined attack, using mortars, and attempted to approach the border fence with...

Ten homicide bombers riding booby trapped horses were repelled today as they tried to get into Israel to conduct a massive terror attack. This is the first time the terrorists have used horses as booby traps though other animals have been used as weapons. In 2001, a booby-trapped donkey cart exploded near troops in Gaza, and in 2003 Palestinian's sent an explosives-laden donkey toward troops near the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The donkeys were the only fatalities in both incidents.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – At 29, Tahani is considered a spinster by the standards of deeply conservative Gaza. So in her search for a husband, she turned for help to the best in the marriage business: the Islamic militant group Hamas. "I gaze at all the men on the street and think, 'Oh God, isn't there just one for me?'" said the young woman with dark skin and honey-colored eyes, set off by a maroon headscarf. Her application is among 287 from single women in the files of the Tayseer Association for Marriage and Development in Gaza. Photographs stapled...

WASHINGTON - A small band of determined women raised their voices against America's most powerful political lobby—the Israel lobby—and they got their point across. When Israeli Pres. Shimon Peres began speaking to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference at the Washington Convention Center May 4 six members of CODEPINK Women for Peace raised banners saying “Want Peace? End the Occupation,” “What About Gaza?” and “No Money for War Crimes.” The next day, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden began addressing the AIPAC meeting, another pair of CODEPINK members disrupted his speech. Each day, as the activists—some...

Politicians across the political spectrum reacted with both praise and condemnation to the speech delivered by US President Barack Obama, in which the American leader reached out to the Muslim world and spelled out the challenges he aims to tackle in the Middle East. Obama addresses the Muslim world in a speech from Cairo University, Thursday. Photo: AP "Obama ignored the fact that the Palestinians have not abandoned terror," Habayit Hayehudi chairman Daniel Herschkowitz said during a tour of settlements south of Hebron. "The government of Israel is not America's lackey. The relations with the Americans are based on friendship...

Apropos of absolutely nothing, there was a story in last week’s New York Times about how wretched and miserable Gazans are due the Israeli boycott. Is Gaza in the news? No, but The New York Times has periodic withdrawal symptoms when it isn’t shedding copious tears for its favorite people of the terrorist persuasion.