Posted on 06/12/2006 10:04:19 AM PDT by The Lion Roars
India on Monday condemned the killing of innocent civilians in an "unprovoked attack" by Israeli forces in Gaza on Friday and said the escalation of tension triggered by the incident could have "negative implications" on the already volatile and fragile situation in the region.
New Delhi urged all sides to desist from starting a new spiral of violence and counter-violence.
"India condemns the killing of innocent civilians, including women and children, in Gaza by Israeli defence forces in an unprovoked attack on Friday," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said in New Delhi.
"The end of the ceasefire and the escalation of tensions that this tragic incident has triggered could have negative implications on the already volatile and fragile situation in the region," he said.
The spokesman emphasised India's firm conviction that there can only be a peaceful negotiated resolution to the Palestinian problem that results in the establishment of a sovereign, viable, independent state of Palestine living in peace and prosperity within secure borders in peaceful co-existence with Israel.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1544231,0008.htm
Israel has decided to launch its next spy satellite aboard India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rather than its own indigenous Shavit rocket, according to a report in Spacenews, a Washington-based authoritative weekly on global space business.
The report quoting Israeli officials in Tel Aviv said that Israel's Ministry of Defence and state-owned satellite producer Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd (IAI) are nearing conclusion with their Indian counterparts of all political and contractual agreements required for the planned October 2006 launch of the TechSAR, Israel's first synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite.
"On the government-to-government level, a pre-existing bilateral accord on strategic cooperation (between India and Israel) already covers most aspects of the mission," the report said.
The estimated 260-kilogram TechSAR is slated as the exclusive payload aboard the PSLV, which will be launched from the Indian Space Research Organisation's Satish Dhawan Space Center, the report said.
If all agreements are finalised in the coming months, as expected, IAI will ship the satellite to the Indian launch site by summer, it said.
India and Israel had signed an umbrella agreement for space collaboration a few months after the visit of Shimon Peres, the then deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Israel to ISRO on January 9, 2002.
Under a separate agreement signed on December 25, 2003, ISRO is expected to launch Israel's "TAUVEX" telescope that will image the sky in the Ultra-Violet (UV) spectrum. The date for this launch is not fixed yet.
The proposed launch of spy satellite is the second contract for ISRO from Israel. According to the Spacenews report the PSLV launch cost was estimated "at no more than $15 million."
Really!! Then why doesnt India support Israel in international fora??
If that really happened then there's no other civilized way than condemn such attack.
Realpolitik.
India is on ME oil life-support. India is not stupid to cut those lines. But India won't hurt Israel either. In fact, it was Israel that saw the need to get close with India, than the vice-versa.
India plays India's game.
I don't believe that you have not read all the news that points to Israel having nothing to do with what happened on the beach.
But giving you the benefit of the doubt that you haven't- lets suppose Israel misfired. Or lets even suppose it didn't, that Israeli fire was directed at a target from which daily rockets are being fired on Israel.
Why should Israel be condemned?
How should Israel respond to having rockets ran daily on schools, as happened yesterday? After Israel left Gaza, why are the Arabs firing from there on Israel?
Would you condemn the US if an innocent died with Zarqawi?
Hmmmmm. So if Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir were raining rockets on Indian civilians in Indian territory, the Indian government wouldn't consider that "provocative"?
Oh, yeah. How could I forget? It's only provocative when JEWS defend themselves.
A legitimate question.
An innocent did die, Mr. Z's second wife of only two years. A babe of 15. No known connections to terror. Left behind an infant.
That's as stupid and misinformed as anyone can get. HEre's why:
1) India knows where the terrorist camps are located (PoK, Lahore, Karachi), but should they fire rockets at them, even if only terrorists are killed, the USA will condemn such an unprovoked attack. Double standards or not?
2) If like someone else says, Israel should have the right to fire rockets at another "state" in pursuit of terrorists, you cannot equate such a right to the act of terrorism itself. When Zarqawi did it, we termed him a terrorist and you bombed the hell out of his lair and served him with just desserts. Israel is not a terrorist state. It is expected to behave within such parameters (although in private, Indians laud the Israelies for not taking shit from any terrorists).
3) Given this, its only real-politik and its about doing the politically correct thing to do. Trust me, if Israel was an oil supplier and could satisfy India's thirst for oil, we'll start with bombing Pakistan the next day and over-run all those Muzzie terrorist holes for free.
Sorry, that post was meant for Lion Roars.
India and Israel are comrades in the fight against islamic terrorism It needs to beseen that both of us are democracies and have been surviving in a sea of hostility, surrounded by implacable enemies and a heavily militarized environment. No other two countries in the world have suffered so much at the hands of state-sponsored Islamic Jehadi terrorism as India and Israel.
The dissatisfaction of the government must be seen as the fossiled remains of Nehruvian non alignment policy and sometimes as CAS and some others said realpolitiks
we can pray that the Indian political leadership cut such crappy fossilled views as irrelevant to India’s national security interests.Well if it is for the ME oil and in secret we remain commited to israel then it is ok.
The untold story of Gaza (and Haditha?)
Jun 16, 2006
by Mona Charen ( bio | archive | contact )
Email to a friend Print this page Text size: A A The story was everywhere and was everywhere the same. On June 9, Israel had fired a rocket onto a Gaza beach killing seven picnicking Palestinian civilians. The New York Times carried a huge, front-page picture of a 12-year-old girl weeping as she searched for her father's body in the sand (the photo was excerpted from video that has been broadcast around the world). CBS News reported, "The ruling Hamas group fired a barrage of homemade rockets at Israel on Saturday, hours after calling off a truce with Israel in anger over an artillery attack that killed seven civilians in Gaza." The New York Times characterized it this way: "Hamas fired at least 15 Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel on Saturday, ending a tattered 16-month truce with Israel, a day after eight Palestinians were killed on a Gaza beach, apparently by an errant Israeli shell." CNN went even further, explaining that "Hamas' rocket attacks were prompted by a string of Israeli attacks, including an artillery shell blast that killed at least seven Palestinians picnicking on a northern Gaza beach on Friday."
Just another brutal attack on civilians by the Israel Defense Forces? So we are invited to conclude. But the IDF, after initially apologizing and offering assistance to the families of those killed, has now investigated and concluded that the explosion was not caused by an Israeli shell. Full stop.
First, consider this elemental difference between Israel and the Palestinians: Israel apologizes and tries to make amends if its missiles go astray and kill civilians. The Palestinians, by contrast, aim at civilians and dance in the streets when they are killed.
The Israelis say the explosion on the beach may have been caused by a land mine placed there by Palestinians to thwart any Israeli assault, or possibly by unexploded ordnance from an earlier skirmish. According to the Israelis, shrapnel taken from the bodies of victims did not match Israeli shells but looked more like bomb fragments.
Another glaring missing ingredient to the media coverage is what happened before Israel fired on Gaza (Israel acknowledges aiming at terrorists in a different area of Gaza that day). In the 10 months since Israel withdrew from Gaza, some 1,000 missiles have been fired at Israel from Gaza. More than 800 have hit the country. Just in the month of May, more than 30 Qassam rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip. On May 21, a Qassam slammed into a classroom in Sderot -- it was empty as the children were at synagogue. On May 16, a Katyusha landed in a farm. On May 31, four Qassams struck Sderot (Hamas has vowed to make that town of 20,000 into a graveyard). One hit an apartment building wounding two. On April 17, a suicide bomber killed 11 and wounded more than 70 when he exploded his bombs in a Tel Aviv cafe.
The world press, very much including the mainstream U.S. media, tends to take the word of Palestinian spokesmen about civilian deaths, although experience should have taught them by now to be more guarded. In 2005, a 10-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by gunfire. U.N. and Palestinian officials blamed her death on Israel until it was determined that a bullet fired by Palestinians shooting into the air to celebrate their pilgrimage to Mecca hit her. Muhammad al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy supposedly shot by Israelis has become a worldwide symbol of Israeli brutality, though it has since been firmly established that Israelis could not and did not kill him. And, of course, the "Jenin Massacre" proclaimed by Palestinians high and low (5,000 innocents were slaughtered, they claimed) and condemned by the United Nations, turned out to be a complete lie (only 52 were killed, along with 23 Israeli soldiers who went house to house to avoid civilian casualties).
In the aftermath of the Gaza incident, Prime Minister Olmert spoke by phone with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan demanded an explanation for the Gaza deaths. When Olmert asked why Annan had not shown similar concern about the scores of missiles hitting Israel, Annan was nonplussed. "What missiles?" he asked.
Two weeks ago, I was critical of those who leaped to conclusions about what happened at Haditha. It now looks as though news from Haditha may have been manipulated -- just as news from the Palestinian territories routinely is. The western press falls for these scams again and again. Their credulity betrays their partiality and it dishonors them.
Obviously It's possible that the whole story is a fraud but let's be honest - some here would be happy even If "picnicking Palestinian civilians" really were killed and that's not how normal humans should react to this kind of news.
I believe the Israelis when they say it couldn't have been their missile.
even If "picnicking Palestinian civilians" really were killed and that's not how normal humans should react to this kind of news.
No, you are right, "normal humans" wouldn't be happy. Only Palestinians or other Jihadists would celebrate the death of civilians. I've never seen a Freeper celebrate the death of Palestinian civilians.
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