Posted on 07/24/2002 9:07:19 AM PDT by dead
WE found them in the morgue, the victims of Israel's air strike on Gaza, tiny bodies lying on slabs that were too big for them.
The Palestinians opened the refrigerators to show us the bodies. They were the bodies of children.
They pulled back the covers over one to show the tiny head of a baby, eyes screwed up as if in sleep. Part of the back of its head was missing.
In the next refrigerator lay Mohammed al-Hwiti. They said he was 4 years old. He too could have been asleep. He was still dressed in a bright blue top.
In the refrigerator below was his brother, Subhi. He was 3.
Nine children died when an Israeli missile ploughed into the packed residential neighbourhood around midnight Monday.
On the floor of the morgue, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, lay the target of the missile, Sheik Salah Shehada. The morgue staff pulled back the flag. Inside were fragments of raw flesh. The body had been torn apart.
In a second flag beside him, lay a bundle of the body parts of his wife, Leileh, and their 14-year-old daughter.
Shehada was a man with the blood of children as young as these on his hands. He was the head of the military wing of Hamas, the militant group which has been behind more suicide attacks than any other.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday described the air strike that killed him as "one of our biggest successes" because it "hit perhaps the most senior Hamas figure on the operational side".
It was an unavoidable step to protect its citizens from suicide bombers, Israel said.
More than 140 people were wounded, and at least 14 died. All but Shehada and one other of them were civilians, we were told.
"Are these terrorists?" one of the morgue staff asked angrily, pointing to the bodies of the children.
Pushing our way out of the morgue, we had to struggle through a growing crowd that was getting angrier by the minute. Hundreds of young men, their faces hidden under black hoods, fired guns in the air.
"Are you prepared for revenge?" someone screamed through a loudspeaker, and they roared back in answer.
They formed a funeral procession for the dead, thousands of them kept coming in - a great sea of people. They brought the bodies out of the morgue, and one young man held the body of a baby aloft above his head, swaddled in a Palestinian flag and keffikah.
The din was deafening. Above their heads, flew the green banner of Hamas, the black of Islamic Jihad, the red of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the yellow of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
The message was clear - all the militant groups, Islamists and secularists were united in their anger, and in their determination for revenge.
They draped the coffin of Shehada under a green Hamas banner and paraded him slowly through the streets.
We found the father of the two dead brothers, Mahmoud al-Hwiti, in the hospital. His face was badly torn apart and he found it difficult to speak.
His brother, Mohammed, told his story. Mahmoud's two tiny sons were killed, and his wife. Four children survived.
The two brothers, Mohammed and Mahmoud, lived with their families in the houses next door to each other. All Mohammed's family escaped alive.
When we went to find their homes all that remained was rubble. The houses where the missile struck had been flattened, reduced to piles of dust and stones.
Just before midnight on Monday, this was a packed residential neighbourhood, full of people trying to sleep in the intense summer heat.
Gaza City is teeming with Palestinians who have nowhere else to go. The locals said about 20 people were living in each house.
"We had no idea we lived next to a guy from Hamas," Mohammed said.
It seems Shehada, who knew he was at the top of the Israelis' hit list, was living here in secret. The Israelis will say that Shehada deliberately targeted Israeli civilians, that their air strike was directed against a militant with blood on his hands.
But there was no way Israel could fire a missile into this warren of houses without terrible civilian casualties. They must have known that.
(Independent News Service)
Because Israel, being a western-style democracy/republic, MUST be held to a higher standard than the barbarian Arab hordes.
At least, that seems to be the racist attitude of Pali sympathizers.
No it is not. Israel has more Thai, Romanian, Chinese and Filipino foreign workers than it knows what to do with.
The last time I checked it wasn't the jews who started the homicide bombing trend that targets innocent women and children.
About as disturbing as the attitude of those people who hate Jews and Westerners and want them dead. I think any person who teaches his children to grow up to hate Jews and/or infidels is uncivilized and subhuman. (That goes for the Nazis who murdered not only millions of Jews, but anyone who wasn't part of their ideology.) The majority of Palestinians and Muslims today who revere and follow leaders like Arafat, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and want to conquer the world and subject it to Sharia Law are barbarians, IMHO. (As were the leaders and followers of the Nazi, Japanese and Soviet Empires no matter what the Holocaust-deniers and pro-communists may tout.) They don't deserve my respect or trust. Nor do I consider them part of humanity since they have little if any regard for civilized behavior.
Sure, I'll teach my son to respect others if they respect him. I'll also teach him to watch his back especially when he is around people whose religion and culture teaches and exhorts him/her to DECEIVE, loot, cheat, rape, enslave or murder those who aren't like them.(I've read the Koran and Hadith...well before 9/11. Same goes for My Life by Adolph Hitler--a best seller in the West Bank and Arab world.)
Until I see a majority of Palestinians and their Muslim and totalitarian (Marxist, National Socialists, etc.) supporters behave like civilized human beings and sincerely condemn the PA-sponsored school textbooks and kiddie TV shows that deny the state of Israel and glorify murdering and getting rid of Dirty Jews, the constant breaking of treaties, murders of Israeli civilians and broken promises of living in peace with Israel, etc. that has become the central theme of Palestinian "resistance" then, maybe, just maybe I won't consider them subhuman and undeserving of living in a civilized society.
My thoughts exactly. And the fact that these kids were living in the same house with the leader of Hamas pretty much gaurantees that they would grow up to be suicide bombers. Maybe they will find a photo of these poor children posed next to an automatic weapon dressed in camo among the rubble . . .
 THOSE WHO LIVE BY THE SWORD...Salah Shehada and his stylish wife didn't stand a chance when a 1-ton "smart bomb" slammed their house. - Getty Images |
Thanks for the heads up on the article, MI.
The last time I checked it wasn't the jews who started the homicide bombing trend that targets innocent women and children.Ironically, by using the politically correct expression, you destroy your argument. Certainly the July 6, 1938 Irgun bombing of an Arab market in Haifa that killed 21-39 people qualifies as a "homicide bombing".
It may not have been a "suicide bombing", but does that really matter to the victims? Incidentally, David Ben Gurion tolerated the various Zionist terrorist groups until Israel had a state (i.e. something concrete to lose). Then he cracked down on them....hard.
-Eric
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Let's be fair and balanced here.
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