GAZA- FAQS.

1. HAMAS REALITY

This video was made not by Israelis, but by an Arab, a Palestinian
who shows you who and what Hamas really is!
Israel has been telling this to the world for years , but
the world prefers to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the
sad truth ! Hamas against the Palestinians ! This is how they
succeeded in being elected - by force !
Please watch the video , if you don't have 10 minutes
to spend on it it's OK - the first 2-3 minutes are enough
to understand .
I am still shocked from what I've seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_OGhj43GAE

Like the coalition forces trying to free the Afghanis from the grip of
the Taliban and the Iraqis from Saddam and now AlQueda,
the Gazan Palestinians may yet be grateful to be freed from Hamas.
The Lebanese would have loved to get free from the Hitzbullah.
Israel was stopped short of doing it. The soft West hasn't the stomach
to fight them for " freedom and democracy (!) ".
I SHUDDER TO THINK WHAT THEIR POOR WOMEN ARE SUFFERING.


2.Questions about Operation Cast Lead
Why did Israel start this war?

Israel did not start this war.
They were provoked into responding to attacks over 8 years.

This war was started by Palestinian terrorists, who in 2008 alone have launched over 3000 missiles from Gaza into Israel, targeting civilian centres.
In June 08, a temporary calm was brokered by Egypt. This so called truce had a six month expiry date. Despite the “truce”, rockets continued to be fired across the Israeli border, sending the people of Sderot and other southern Israeli towns running several times daily to bomb shelters.

On December 19 2008, the truce expired. Israel wanted to continue it, and Egypt was prepared to broker its renewal. Hamas rejected this and commenced increased bombardment of Israeli towns and villages.

Israel has a responsibility and an obligation to protect and defend her citizens. No other country would allow such provocation without a response.

Ultimately, Israel has engaged in this war to show Hamas that continued attacks on Israeli citizens can’t and won’t be tolerated.

Israel wants peace. Israel wants to see the creation of a sustainable and flourishing Palestinian state alongside it, with peaceful borders, hence it withdrew totally and completely from Gaza in 2005. When the Palestinians cease attacks and commit to negotiation, peace in the region will be that much closer.
Click here to view the website of Palestinian Media Watch, which has great resources and articles on this topic.

Why did Hamas send rockets into Israel, knowing full well that ultimately Israel would respond?

Hamas has a very clear objective – to annihilate the state of Israel. It’s in their charter. See Article 31,
http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html,

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation, and their actions are designed to continually terrorise the Israeli civilian population and keep them under constant threat.

Hamas has had an unrelenting strategy of launching missiles from Gaza into Israeli population centres since 2001. Over a quarter of a million Israelis live in terror and fear of the next attack. The fact that the 8200 missiles launched have not killed or injured more people is because:

(a) Israel has taken responsibility for the safety of her citizens and ensured that bomb shelters were built and detection and evacuation procedures are in place; and
(b) The inaccuracy of the Palestinian missiles.

Yet the damage caused by these attacks has been terrible. Dozens have been killed and hundreds injured. Communities have been destroyed. Sirens sound off day and night, requiring everyone to run to the shelters within 15 seconds.
15 Seconds
Hamas well knew that escalating these attacks would provoke a response from Israel. They anticipated the media’s response, and the likelihood of media picking up on inevitable instances of civilian fatalities and casualties. They maximise the possibilities by locating military targets and operations within their own civilian centres, putting their own people at grave risk.

Why are there so many Palestinian deaths and so few Israeli deaths?

Israeli citizens are protected by their government, by ensuring adequate shelter protection for all. Palestinian leaders hide, while leaving their civilian brethren exposed to danger.

Israel has scrupulously and meticulously targeted military and strategic locations in Gaza. They try to warn the population by leaflet-drops, even phoning the targeted militants to send their families out before their homes will be blown up!

Even the UNRWA has estimated that 15% of the Palestinian deaths, are civilian and over 85% are Hamas militants (terrorists). Sadly too many of the civilian deaths are children.
The unfortunate consequence of any war is the inevitable loss of innocent lives.

Israel has attempted to limit such fatalities by:
(a) Specifically targeting military sites;
(b) Telephoning and flyer dropping to warn civilians to leave their homes, where they are located close to Hamas targets, even though this detracts from strategic surprise elements;

Hamas, on the other hand, has a defined strategy of placing its installations amongst civilian population centres, putting its own people at grave risk. As was written in the Boston Globe on 30/12:

“In direct contravention of international law, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, utilizing homes, schools and community centers as launching pads, content in the knowledge that if innocent Palestinian civilians are caught in the cross-fire, it will be Israel that is criticized. This amounts to a sort of Daily Double of human rights violations: the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields for the infliction of violence upon innocent Israelis.” While Israel regrets the loss of innocent lives and does everything possible to limit it, Hamas specifically targets civilians in Israel. http://www.aish.com/movies/15seconds.asp

During the eight years of sustained attacks by Hamas, Israel has built shelters for the people in the south, fortified community, school and kindergarten buildings and ensured that people know the procedures when the “code red” siren sounds.

Conversely, Hamas has built tunnels for smuggling weapons, developed its weapons infrastructure and built its weapons stores within civilian population centres.

Why is Israel’s response so disproportionate?

The Australian (31/12) ran an article which goes a way to explaining what disproportionate is – or is not. Here’s an excerpt:

“LET'S have a pointless discussion about Gaza and begin it by talking about
whether Israel's bombing is "disproportionate".

To illustrate the meaninglessness of such a debate, let us attempt to agree what "proportionate" would look like.

Would it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City?

There is a chance, though, that since Gaza is more densely packed than Israel, casualties might be much the same as they are now, so although the ordnance would be proportionate, the deaths would not.

Of course, if one of Gaza's rockets did manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending on how you look at it), then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion. Would you be happy then? “ (From “Sound and Fury… and it still signifies nothing” David Aaronovitch, The Australian; 31/12/08).

Since when is war a mathematical equation? The basic objective of any warring party is to inflict maximal damage on the enemy while minimizing its own casualties. Was there anything proportional about the US war in Iraq? Or about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for that matter? Or about Russia's recent war against Georgia? Israel is doing exactly what any other country has done in the past. This is how war works.

Would an Australian citizen complain that "too few" Australian soldiers are being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan? Probably not.

And on a more elementary note: Palestinian military inferiority is not an indication of moral superiority. Palestinian insistence on resorting to violence despite this military weakness is an indication of poor judgment perhaps - yet it is by no means an indication of moral virtue. Being militarily weak does not make the Palestinians right. It makes them indifferent to the possible repercussion of their actions towards their own civilians.

Is there a relationship between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran?
YES – a resounding yes.

They share a dedication to Israel’s destruction – Hezbollah’s Nasrallah and Iran’s Ahmadinejad have notoriously declared their goal to wipe Israel off the map.

Hamas belongs to the school of extremist elements espousing violence, such as Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the World Jihad, and others. This is manifested in instructions to carry out terror, training and drills, smuggling means of warfare, supplying monies, etc. In an interview with the Sunday Times published on March 9, 2008, a Hamas official related, “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been training Hamas operatives in Tehran ever since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip…in field warfare tactics and weaponry. The operatives come into the Strip with skills they have acquired in advanced technologies, rocket firing, setting off charges, sharpshooting and other tactics similar to those used by Hezbollah.”



For more information: visit the Zionist Council of Victoria’s website
www.zcv.org.au