Getting an earful ... loudspeakers held up near the Nativity Church pump out the noise. Photo: AFP,
Posted on 04/16/2002 1:49:54 PM PDT by history_matters
By Alan Philps in Jerusalem
April 16 2002
Daily Telegraph, London
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Getting an earful ... loudspeakers held up near the Nativity Church pump out the noise. Photo: AFP, |
The Israeli Army is broadcasting ear-splitting screeches and wails at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, traditional site of Jesus' birth, to force out 200 Palestinians besieged there.
Troops brought in a crane to hoist loudspeakers over the ancient basilica, one of the holiest shrines in Christendom, as part of what one person inside called "psycho terror". One of the noises sounds like a car alarm.
Camped outside the church, the army estimates there are about 50 wanted Palestinian militants inside, with clergy and civilians.
The Israeli Government offered a deal on Sunday under which the wanted men would be given a choice between permanent exile and trial before a military court. "If they leave, it's for good but, if they stay, then they will have to stand trial in Israel," said a spokesman for the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. The offer was put by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, during talks on Sunday.
Palestinian negotiators immediately rejected it, saying the men would not accept exile, and if they were to be judged it should be before a Palestinian court. But they would accept any deal that Mr Arafat approved.
In an appeal on Friday the trapped Palestinians called for United Nations intervention to save them from "a slow death".
They have been deprived of food for almost two weeks, and the army has shot at Palestinian youths lobbing bags of bread into the compound.
"We are hearing loud whistles and screeches in the daytime and now at night," said the Governor of Bethlehem, Mahmoud Madani, who is inside the church. "They want to destroy our morale, but the only solution is a negotiated settlement."
The church has responded to the caterwauling by ringing its bells.
In a major blow to the Palestinian resistance, Israel last night arrested Marwan Barghouthi, a leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in the West Bank and regarded by Israel as the top militant in the area, Israeli security sources said.
Barghouthi, sought by Israel since it launched a West Bank offensive on March 29, was arrested in the city of Ramallah, the sources said.
Herald Sun
April 16, 2002, Tuesday
SECTION: WORLD; Pg. 25
LENGTH: 312 words
HEADLINE: Snipers trade shots around church;
More wounded in siege
SOURCE: REUTERS, AFP
BODY:
BETHLEHEM -- Gunfire erupted around Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity yesterday, with Palestinians and Israelis accusing each other of opening fire and both sides suffering wounded.
Bethlehem Governor Mohammed Al Madani, trapped along with other civilians and some clergy with 200 gunmen in the church marking Jesus Christ's birthplace, said one Palestinian was shot in the leg by Israeli sniper fire. Israeli military officials said two Israeli soldiers had been slightly wounded.
Both sides accused the other of opening fire in the area, declared a closed military zone by the army and forbidden to journalists.
A TV crew reported ex plosions and flashes just after midnight from the West Bank city's centre, Nativity Square.
Earlier, Abu Youssef, a Palestinian who described himself as a civilian, said the surrounding troops had opened fire unprovoked.
"Israelis fired on the church heavily and threw sound (stun) grenades at the church," he said.
He said that the gunmen in the church did not shoot back.
Israel has said it would not violate the sanctity of the church, which was stormed by Palestinian gunmen seeking refuge from the Israeli army's West Bank offensive, launched on March 29 after a wave of suicide bombings against Israelis.
Since then, two Palestinians have been killed, and an Armenian priest and two Israeli soldiers wounded, in clashes around Nativity Square.
The Israeli army says the gunmen have fired from within the church compound.
On Sunday, Israel gave visiting US Secretary of State Colin Powell a proposal for ending the stand-off, whereby the gunmen in the church could surrender and be tried in an Israeli military court or go into exile for ever.
The proposal was rejected outright. Governor Al Madani said the Palestinians would abide by any solution endorsed by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
LOAD-DATE: April 16, 2002
Your post is otherwise incoherent.
I would think a couple of Brittney Spears albums might do the trick. By the way, flush is certainly the appropriate term.
Does that mean one would be pro-catholic if you support criminals by being silent about their activities and giving refuge?
Read Aske15s' posts and you cannot truthfully deny it!
and
While it may be one thing to rationalize Andrew Jackson's campaign to eradicate the Indian or our ill-conceived perpetuation of slavery (until it was good business to free the South's, if not the North's, slaves upon secession), it's clear that this bent was extant during World War II.
Anyone who's got any worries about whether or not the US as opposed to Pius XII was terribly worried about Hitler's reduction of Jews, Catholics, disabled, mentally deficient or otherwise Unwanted should listen up to the words of President Roosevelt. He and his "Healthy Babies ONLY" March of Dimes buddies being the US's smiley face eugenicists par excellence and far more cuddly than their blueblood brethren at Yale or Cold Springs Harbor.
President Roosevelt made his contribution to the on-going dialogue concerning Puerto Rico's "population problem" by jokingly telling Charles Taussig, his advisor on Caribbean affairs, "I guess the only solution is to use the methods which Hitler used effectively." It is all very simple and painless Roosevelt said--"you have people pass through a narrow passage and then there is the brrrr of an electrical apparatus. They stay there for twenty seconds and from then on they are sterile."
So ... given the ill-thinking already pervading our government in earnest, given our weariness at the close of the war ... I don't think it was exactly a giant step to succumb to certain pressures to just eradicate the Japs and -- like Saddam and his Soviet buddies in the Gulf War -- get a little bang for your "hopeful research" buck by testing your nukes, if not your bio-weapons -- in the meantime.
A pity the world couldn't come bomb or bulldoze the crap out of the US in revenge for the Evil Clinton's acts and then tell us we should have done something about him.
Given the profile of the United States' coercion globally -- using aid as leverage to get folks to off themselves -- would it be fair for them to hold US responsible for the actions of our leadership and/or their lackeys?
Is there any chance at all the MEDIA is lying in many respects? Or does their globalist lackey leftist mentality suddenly disappear the moment we want to believe what they're saying?
How is it some poor Palestinians who have NOTHING are to be held responsible for every act of Arafat or his fellow commies whilst we sit fat and happy as our government enriches the Chicoms, appeases and sustains murderers and spreads our Culture of Death around the planet?
Why do we hold the Palestinians to a standard we ourselves are incapable of reaching?
We are culpable for Arafat's being "leader" of the Palestinians. We've perpetuated it, in fact. Just the notion Powell would consider meeting with him should speak volumes.
It does not. Why? Because -- once again -- we don't want to admit how responsible WE and OUR MONEY and our GREED are for this horrific state of affairs.
This is where the illogic jumps out at you. There are hundreds - thousands - of suicide bombers and gunmen to replace the ones in the Church of the Nativity. If Israel was interested in their own real security and long-term diplomatic interests, they would pull back and let the Palestinian gunmen in the Church leave without incident.
Your post was so concise and on target I thought it should be posted again.
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