è di ieri notte la strage. condanna ONU, silenzio USA.

sono almeno undci i morti e cento i feriti rimasti vittime di un attacco aereo dell'esercito israeliano avvenuto ieri notta a GAZA. per colpire Saleh el-Shehade, presunto leader di Hamas, "l'esercito della stella di david" ha fatto piovere bombe dal cielo compiendo una vera e propria strage.
Un missile lanciato da un F16 ha distrutto sette negozi palestinesi tra cui una piccola azienda di carpenteria ed un deposito. Circa trecento sono le persone costrette ad abbandonare le abitazioni pericolanti, molti fra questi sono bambini.
il segretario generale ONU Kofi Annan ha condannato l'attacco. Fred Exkhard, portavoce ONU, ha dichiarato: "Israele ha la responsabilità legale e morale di intrapendere iniziative opportune ad evitare la perdita di vite innocenti, quello che non deve fare è lanciare missili contro case e baracche, è evidente".
latita, invece, una qualunque condanna da parte della casa bianca.

At the United Nations, chief spokesperson Fred Eckhard said Israel has a legal and moral responsibility to take all measures to avoid the loss of innocent life.

"It clearly failed to do so in using a missile against an apartment building," he said. "The Secretary-General (Kofi Annan) calls on the government of Israel to halt such actions and to conduct itself in a manner that is fully consistent with international humanitarian law."

Asked about the statement, Gideon Meir, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson, noted that Israeli children have been killed in Palestinian attacks.

"I do expect the Secretary-General to understand that Israel's actions come out of self-defence," he said. "This was a precise Israeli air strike against a known terrorist responsible for hundreds of attacks on innocent Israelis in the past few years."

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the attack was a "despicable" war crime that dealt a blow to peacemaking.

"In my opinion this is Sharon's effort to torpedo any effort to revive the peace process," he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Protests in Gaza

Hundreds of Hamas supporters took to the street in Gaza City, firing in the air and chanting: "Where is the revenge of Qassam?"

They hugged when speakers told them Shehada was still alive.

Angry Palestinian crowds also held rallies in the Gazan towns of Rafah and Khan Younis.

Israel's army has killed dozens of militants in attacks, which Palestinians call assassinations, since the start of the uprising.

Its killing, with a booby-trapped cellular phone, of top Hamas bomb-maker Yehiya Ayyash in 1996, triggered a wave of revenge suicide bombings in the Jewish state.

"Hamas's retaliation will come very soon, and there won't be only just one (attack)... After this crime, even Israelis in their homes will be the target of our operations," Rantissi said of Tuesday's attack.

Palestinian security sources said Shehada was at the top of Israel's most-wanted list. Israeli security sources said he was a founder of Hamas's military wing and a main strategist of its attacks against Israelis.

At least 1 458 Palestinians and 559 Israelis have been killed in the violence which erupted after US-brokered talks on Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza stalled.

Israeli troops have reoccupied seven of eight West Bank cities after suicide attacks last month killed 26 people.

Hamas vows to avenge assassination of its military wing leader
by Amos Harel 9:52am Tue Jul 23 '02

The Hamas vowed to avenge the assassination of its
military wing leader in the Gaza Strip, killed
when an Israeli warplane blew up his house in Gaza
in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in what
military sources called one of the most
significant strikes since the start of the
intifada 20 months ago.

Salah Shehada was the No. 1 man on the Israel
Defense Force's wanted list in the last two years.


According to Shifa Hospital reports, a total of 11
Palestinians were killed in the strike, including
Shehada's wife and three children. Doctors said
more than 100 people were wounded.

Eye-witnesses said an F-16 warplane fired a
missile that levelled five houses in a Gaza City
neighbourhood.

Israeli sources confirmed the airstrike in Gaza
and the fact that Shehada had been killed. An
early Hamas statement said that Sheheda was alive,
but later the group confirmed the death of its
military wing commander.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Haniyeh vowed Tuesday that
the movement would "take revenge for the martyrs.
All the Palestinian people will unify to take
revenge for the blood of the martyrs," he told
reporters at Gaza's Shifa hospital, where the dead
and wounded were taken.

"Anyone who dreams of so-called peace is mistaken.
There is nothing called 'peace with Israel," the
statement said.

Shifa Hospital in Gaza City released a list of 11
dead, but it did not include Shehadeh or any
members of his family, contributing to the
confusion over the exact number of dead.

The hospital list of the dead included two babies,
ages 18 and 2 months, five children ages 3-5, an
11-year-old and three adults.

A statement from the Palestinian Authority
denounced the Israeli strike and called for
international intervention to "stop these
massacres." The statement charged that the aim was
to "sabotage the international efforts to pressure
the Israeli government to withdraw troops ... and
to get back to negotiations."

Foreign ministry official Gideon Meir said the
attack was a "strike against a known terrorist who
is responsible for hundreds of attacks on Israeli
civilians in recent years." He expressed regret
for the loss of life. "To our great sorrow, in
these operations, sometimes, and in military
operations, civilians are also killed," he said.


Shehada, 40, was the commander of Izz a-Din
el-Kassam, the military wing of Hamas, and served
as a close personal aide to the movement's
spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In addition
to his extensive involvement in terror activity,
he had gradually developed his reputation as a
leader with religious authority and was seen as a
possible future heir to Yassin.

Shehada's involvement in Hamas stretched back to
the beginning of the first intifada, which erupted
at the end of 1987, and he spent time in Israeli
jails.

Shin Bet officials say he orchestrated the attack
on a pre-army training course in the settlement of
Atzmona in which five students were killed, and
the infiltration into the "Africa" outpost near
Kibbutz Kerem-Shalom in which four IDF soldiers
were killed. He was also involved in the
production of the "Kassam" rockets which have been
fired at Gaza settlements and into Israel.

Shehada cooperated closely with two other men high
on Israel's wanted list in the Strip - Mohammed
Deif and Adnan el Roul. In recent months the
security establishment received information that
Shehada was making contact with Hamas members in
the West Bank, despite the physical separation
between the two areas, and that movement members
in Nablus were receiving orders from him.

According to Shin Bet officials, Shehada was one
of the movement's most extreme members and
rejected any talk of limiting suicide attacks. He
was in contact with Hamas officials abroad.
According to military sources, he challenged
Yassin's leadership on several occasions, and was
considered more radical than the movement's
spiritual leader.

Israel tried to kill Shehada on several occasions
but he always managed to escape. Aware that the
IDF was hunting him, Shehada spent long periods
underground.

When the IDF was considering a major operation in
Gaza in May earlier this year, Shehada's capture
or elimination was considered a major objective.


Israeli military sources estimated Tuesday that
Hamas would make "every effort" to hit back as
quickly and as hard as possible in an attempt to
exact revenge for Shehada's assassination.

comment: poor israelian people thar are following
their leaders to their grave and to the grave of
the palestinian people. When will they understand
that there is no life after dead....
Poor palestinian people that are going on the same
dead end street...


http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.j...

Sharons perception of success
by * 10:02am Tue Jul 23 '02

Some seven or eight children and three adults were killed last night by the IDF. Sharon congratulated his troops with the result, and "regretted" that civilian lives were lost.

How can he congratulate them on a successful strike and kill seven children among them two toddlers? How can he call it a targeted assasination when F-16 dropped bombs and destroyed six houses? How can he order his troops to kill Palestinian children? Up untill last night 20% of the Palestinian casualties were children......it has now increased.

Congratuations IDF, congratulations Sharon.....you have just killed many more Palestinian children and Israeli children will most likely die as a result of your actions.

You should be really proud of yourselves.

A man of peace.........he does not know what it means. All his life he has been fed on destruction, degregation and murder. A trail of blood follows him whereever he goes, and it started more than fifty years ago.

www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=33434

Si tratta dell'ennesima testimonianza dell'eccidio di un popolo perpetrato dal criminale Sharon, ennesima strage che passa nell'ndifferenza totale della comunità internazionale. A nulla serve la condanna verbale dell'ONU se a questa non fanno seguito azioni reali volte a difendere un popolo inerme. L'arroganza degli israeliani e degli americani è al limite della sopportazione e della dignità umana. Ma vorrei soffermarmi su come hanno reagityo i nostri TG all'evento. La notizia nella sua eccezionale, anzi ormai ricorrente gravità è stata demandata al centro dei nostri TG sia in media set che in media rai. Solo la scorsa settimana con grande clamore è stata data quella della profanazione del cimitero ebraico, gesto ignobile, ma a quanto pare nulla a che fare con l'antisemitismo. Ancora quando c'è stato l'attentato ultimo contro il bus di coloni ebrei a Gaza notizia in prima pagina e condanna totale. Giusto! Ma adesso che a morire sono cittadini inermi, bambini e donne soprattutto, sotto le bombe "anti-terroristiche" dell'esercito di Sharon, allora lo sdegno è misurato, quasi impalbabile, notizia da 4 pagina insomma per i nostri tg. Quello che accade nei territori occupati ormai trova risalto solo quando ci sono gli attentati di hamas. Attentati che si nutrono dell'odio verso gli occupanti che a sua volta si nutre di episodi come quello di ieri notte. Quale sarà la risposta di hamas e dei martiri di Al-Aqsa è abbastanza prevedibile. Altro sangue innocente versato. Ma questo avrà una dignità superiore, statene certi, per i nostri tg. Il sangue chiamerà altro sangue fintanto che non sarà garantità l'esistenza dello stato palestinese. quello israeliano già c'è. Preciso che non approvo in alcun modo gli attentati contro obiettivi civili da parte della guerriglia palestinese perché pagano sempre persone innocenti ma chi semina vento raccoglie tempesta e finora la risposta di Hamas c'è sempre stata. E ancora altro sangue innocente ricoprirà di vergogna la comunità internazionale.

Personalmente vedo molto nero il futuro dei due popoli nel Medio Oriente.
A me mancano parole, faccio parlare la poesia [in inglese] preso da "cactus48.com"
[The following is an excerpt from a poem that caused a sensation when it was read at a Tel Aviv marking the first year of the Intifada. The poet is an Israeli professor of Hebrew literature and he is famous throughout Occupied Palestine as a lyricist and TV show host. He was commissioned by the Israeli government to write many of its military songs]

We Shoot Children Too, Don't We
by Dan Almagor


Most of these people truly desire

To harvest their olive trees

As they have for hundreds of years.

Most of these people truly desire to raise their kids

Not to throw stones

Or Molotov cocktails,

But to study in peace,

To play in peace,

And to raise a flag.

Their own flag.

And facing that flag, to cry

As we did, that night, then, excited as we were.

And we have no, have no, have no

Right in the world

To rob them of this desire.

This flag,

These tears.

These tears, which always, always

Come after all the others.



Let us start preparing our defense.

We will need it soon enough.

All those who actually did it,

And those who still do.

And those who hushed it up,

And those who still do.

And those who said nothing,

And those who clucked their tongues, saying

"Something must be done, really;

(But not tonight. I have a concert,

A gala,

A birthday!)"

Yes, we'll all get our summons one day

For the Colonels' trials.

The Colonel's trials are coming,

Their time will come, it must be so.

The trials of the Generals, the Colonels,

The division, the battalion,

And the platoon commanders.

There is no escaping it.

This is how history works.

What shall we say?

What will the Colonels, the Captains, the

Corporals say?

What will they say

Of those terrible beatings,

The brutality,

Of houses blown up,

And most of all, the humiliation.

That humiliation.

Of patients forced to wipe the writing

off the walls.

Of old men forced to take down a flag

From an electric pole,

Who were electrocuted, or fell

And broke their legs.

Of the old water carrier

Whom soldiers ordered off his donkey

And rode on his back, just for fun.



Mean, arrogant, and dumb.

Who do we think we are?

Who gave us the right

To be so deaf, so dumb?

Ignoring the obvious: They are as human

As we are, as we are.

At least as human as we used to be

Only forty-one years ago.

No less diligent, no less smart.

As sensitive, as full of hope.

They love their wives and children

As we do, no less.

And our children now shoot theirs

With lead, plastic bullets, and gas.



The Palestinian state will come to pass.

It will.

Not a poet wrote this.

History will.

And seasons may come, and seasons may go,

And life goes on as we very well know.

Weddings, and births, and deaths all the same-

But just the shame of it. The shame.