Hey Yassir Stinky Arafat, coming to an Hamas terrorist near you VERY SOON:
Posted on 09/27/2002 1:43:45 AM PDT by Movemout
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israel confirmed Friday that a top Hamas bombmaker survived an Israeli airstrike aimed at killing him, an operation that wounded 35 bystanders, including 15 children, and drew international criticism.
Mohammed Deif, the intended target, was wounded when two missiles fired by Israeli helicopters in a crowded Gaza City neighborhood obliterated his green Mercedes, blowing apart two of his bodyguards.
"The reports that I'm getting from our people are that he was indeed wounded, not an injury that he won't recover from," Israeli Science Minister Matan Vilnai, a former deputy military chief of staff, told Israel Army Radio.
Hamas, an Islamic militant group responsible for scores of suicide attacks in Israel, said it would avenge the airstrike.
At first, Israeli officials were quoted as saying that they believed Deif had been killed.
Hamas leaders insisted from the outset that Deif was alive. Palestinian security officials later said Deif was moderately wounded.
The attack was the latest example of what the Israeli military calls "targeted killings," a practice the United States has criticized. At least 78 wanted Palestinians and 52 bystanders have been killed in dozens of such attacks in the past two years of fighting.
Human rights groups have condemned the killings , many of which have been carried out from the air, often in crowded Palestinian neighborhoods. Palestinians say targeted killings are nothing less than assassinations.
The most controversial occurred July 23, when an Israeli warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of Hamas military leader Salah Shehadeh, killing him along with an aide and 13 civilians, including nine children.
The practice has set off an internal Israeli debate about targeting militants in civilian areas.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he deplored the strike and called on the government of Israel "to halt such actions and conduct itself in a manner that is fully consistent with international humanitarian law, under which Israel has a clear responsibility to protect the lives of civilians."
The Israeli government says the targeted attacks are necessary to deter attacks on Israelis, while critics say it is unacceptable to put civilians at risk. Others say the strikes are counterproductive and trigger more terror attacks.
Samieh Mouhsen, of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights, said the attack "is another example that shows clearly that the Israeli army doesn't care about the life of the innocent Palestinian victims."
Israeli opposition leader Yossi Sarid said that while there is a need to fight terror, "a proper country simply doesn't do these things."
Vilnai said the military could have used a bomb big enough to ensure that Deif was killed, but dozens of civilians would have died. "There should be absolutely no harming of civilians, and sometimes we'll pay a price for that," he said.
However, lawmaker Shaul Yahalom of the hawkish National Religious Party, a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's ruling coalition, said a larger explosive should have been dropped to make sure that Deif was killed, despite civilian casualties. "When Israel strikes at a despicable and cruel target like that, side effects are inevitable," he told Israel Radio.
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader, said the group would avenge the strike. "We will hit Tel Aviv. We will hit everywhere." Last week, Hamas carried out a suicide bombing on a Tel Aviv bus that killed six people.
On Thursday night, about 3,000 people, waving flags and shouting, marched through Gaza City to the spot of the airstrike.
"We thank God for the safety of the hero, the leader Mohammed Deif, who succeeded in misleading the occupation collaborators and the occupation intelligence," shouted one Hamas member through a loudspeaker. "Thank God for his safety."
Hamas identified the two dead men as Abdel Rahim Hamdan, 27, and Issa Abu Ajra, 29. Rantisi said they were Deif's bodyguards.
Israel accuses Deif, a secretive man known as a master of disguise, of a role in dozens of suicide attacks over the past six years. He had survived another Israeli airstrike earlier this year.
Earlier strikes on top Hamas figures have led to increased violence and reprisals. When Israel killed Deif's mentor, Yehiyeh Ayyash, in 1996, Hamas responded with four suicide bombings that killed dozens of Israelis. Israel says Deif masterminded the attacks.
An Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Deif was the head of Hamas military wing since the killing of Ayyash, until the more charismatic and ideological Shehadeh was released from a Palestinian jail in mid-2000. Deif took over Hamas "military operations" three days after Shehadeh's killing, he said.
Israel has long pressed Palestinians to seize Deif, and accused Arafat of sheltering him. Hamas, however, has also often been at odds with Arafat, accusing him of treason in 1998.
Palestinian officials arrested and locked up Deif for several months before December 2000. The Palestinians said he escaped. Israeli officials said his jailers set him free.
In other developments, in a pre-dawn raid Friday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed an armed Hamas militant, Mohammed Yarmour, 21, in the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said. The army said troops shot him after he opened fire on them with a pistol as they were approaching his house.
At least they got the other two. Issa Abu Abajram was a leader of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Atiya abu Jabbar was a well-known Hamas activist in the Gaza Strip, according to this story yesterday: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/757696/posts
Me thinks that killing the intended target among his supporters is a common practice of war, and when at war as Israel has so stated that they are in a state of war, you kill as many as necessary to make the enemy grateful for a cessation of hostilities; in other words, they must want to stop the horror as both the Germans and Japanese did in WWII (A war Isarli's are all too familar).
I defy Muslim apologists to justify this wanton disregard of the lives of mothers and children. If the Americans or British deigned to use these tactics they would find themselves in front of the World Kangaroo Court and condemned for war crimes. It is hard to live with daily disgust for our liberal politicians who refuse to acknowledge what is occuring on the ground in front of their very eyes. They bring dishonor to our nation.
I don't wonder, I'm sure they do. That and homicide bombing teenagers are the Islamic version of "For The Children" propoganda.
You betcha! FNC had some footage purported to be pics of Deif being pulled out of the obliterated Mercedes. Wow. "Dazed and Confused" had nuttin' on THAT guy!
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander in Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the architect of the Pearl Harbor raid met his demise in one such "targeted killing" carried out by P-38's of the U.S Army 13th Air Force.
Before the ambush of Yamamoto was carried out, FDR sought out advice from both military and religious leaders about whether such an attack would be an "assasination". The consensus was that Yamamoto was actively waging war against the United States and was therefore a legitimate military target.
The idea that, in war, you can kill the enemy equivalent of E-Zeros but must hold your fire when you identify someone high enough in the enemy's pecking order to be famous is ridiculous.
Israel should NOT call them targeted killings as that cedes the moral argument to the Palis. They are in a state of war and should attack the enemy.
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