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)
Since 9/11, Islam's ultimate goals and hatreds became more transparent to us. Our naivete, ignorance and optimism that it was just a small segment of Islam that actually followed this violent road were no less than many people who are deceived even today by the media and politicians into believing that true Islam is "the religion of peace." Hah! Not if it is carried out to the letter as is the case of the murder martyrs and judging from the massive support from the Muslim world for terrorist leaders/acts, the Palestinians and hatred towards the West that is encouraged by the corrupt, politically-cynical, power-hungry Islamic leaders.
And if you're going to bring up the Irgun then you're going to have to be honest about the reason that the group came into existence in the first place. As a splinter group of a larger organization fromed to respond to arab terrorists who were killing Jews.
Heck, I missed that until I went back to reread another reply....
Sadly, you are right.
Just late last week, Hamas was threatening 'bloody revenge' if Israel simply DEPORTED the families of terrorists. Looks, from some of the posts I see here (but never on ones like the link above) like Ariel Sharon and the IDF walked into the same type of intelligence trap that the US has walked into a couple of times in Afghanistan.
Now we have the spinners out en force, telling that Israel is horrible...and Hamas is threatening bloody revenge...same old propaganda trap...different day.
It takes a lotta gall to get all morally superior and insist to people who mourn the deaths of babies ALMOST EVERY SINGLE DAY that we don't feel sorry enough for the family of the lead terrorist of Hamas.
It reminds me of the way they tied the hands of our military during the Korean war and in Viet Nam, they could kill us any time, any where and any way that they wanted to but if they were across a certain river, or in certain cities or in certain areas we couldn't even shoot at them.
Israel is in a war and in a war all is fair.
Have you noticed that every time there's about to be a US envoy going to the ME, or when ever some peace talks are announced, the palestinan terrorists ratchet up their attacks? Do you wonder why? The last thing that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and all the other groups want is a peaceful solution, and they're prompted by their leaders in Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They was all the Jews DEAD. No, I don't mean just Israeli Jews, but ALL Jews dead. And they're willing to sacrifice every last palestinian to do it! I wonder how happy they will be when they realize that they've been nothing but cannon fodder for the Iranians, Iraqis, and the Syrians.
Mark
Note the kid on the left... He's got an Uzi. I wonder if someone took it off of a dead IDF soldier or settler?
Mark
and, The Israelis will say that Shehada deliberately targeted Israeli civilians, that their air strike was directed against a militant with blood on his hands. The Israelis were right and should not back-track on this since thanks to BL's excellent post we know about:
the 4th Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Part 3, Article 1, Section 28: "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations"
It's a terrible thing when children and innocent civilians are killed, but war is a terrible thing, and thank goodness there's a Free Republic to turn to when you need a little perspective on the latest dreadful events!
It does look like an Uzi...mayby stolen in that IDF armory heist last year...I don't think they recovered many of the weapons.
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