Category: News

US policy toward Israel is not expected to shift dramatically if Democrats take control of Congress. While Republican leaders have made efforts to overtly back Israel in recent years, analysts point to historic support for Israel among Democrats. In recent weeks, Democrats have been working to counter concerns they would balance support for Israel and the Palestinians or that Democrats would name committee chairmen who are seen as traditionally unsupportive of the Jewish state.

"There will be some Democratic chairmen who may not share all my views or have as clear a perspective on Israel as I do," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California), a Jewish lawmaker, said in a recent on-line chat with Jewish voters, sponsored by the House Democratic caucus. "But they will not be chairing committees dealing with Israel and the Middle East."
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We reject with disgust the lame apologies offered by government speakers. Even if there had been no explicit intention to perpetrate a massacre and kill civilians and children sleeping quietly in their beds, this massacre was the inevitable result of the army’s uncontrolled rampage in the Gaza Strip, fully authorized by the government.

In supposed “retaliation” for the shooting of missiles which killed nobody in Israel during the entire past year, the army killed nearly a hundred Palestinians in just the past week. We call upon the government to end the carnage and enter immediate talks with the elected Palestinian government in order to achieve a complete cease- fire and prisoner release, on the way to full negotiations for peace and an end to the occupation.

We further call upon all who care for peace and human decency everywhere – including, and especially, those who consider themselves friends of Israel – to raise their voice in protest at the war madness which seized those who hold power in Israel, and to hold protest vigils outside all Israeli embassies and consulates.
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This street in Beit Hanoun is very, very quiet indeed.

It's just a matter of hours since a number of Israeli shells fell on houses in this area, killing 18 people, including six children and two women.

We counted about eight impacts. The shells appear to have landed roughly in a straight line, starting in the fields at the end of the street and hitting houses on either side of it.

A pen for livestock was struck by one of the explosions and the animals are lying dead on the ground.

There are pools of bloodstained water outside one of the houses, which has had a hole blown through the roof and there are shrapnel marks everywhere from the explosion.
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Beit Hanoun residents pick their way past a puddle of blood-stained water Water stained with blood filled the street where the shells landed At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 40 wounded by Israeli tank fire in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, Palestinian sources have said.

Palestinian officials said a barrage of tank shells hit civilian homes, and women and children were among the dead.
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Hours after the Israeli military pulled out of the town of Beit Hanoun yesterday morning, Talal Nasr was at the cemetery to search for a spot to bury the body of his 13-year-old daughter.

It was the first time for six days that any of the town's residents had been allowed out of their homes, the duration of Israel's biggest military operation in the Gaza Strip for months. The streets quickly filled and many headed out to mourn and bury their dead.
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A third of unarmed Palestinians killed during IDF operations in the Gaza
Strip since the abduction of Gilad Shalit have been minors, according to a new report prepared by Physicians for Human Rights, to be published Wednesday.

Between June 27 and October 28, 247 Palestinians, including 155 civilians (63 percent) were killed by the IDF. Among the civilians killed, 57 were minors. This figure does not include minors who were armed.

The report also claims that of the 996 Palestinians injured during the past four months, about a third, 337, are children.
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An Israeli Cabinet minister called for the Jewish state and West Bank to be partitioned according to ethnicity.

Avigdor Lieberman of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party said in an interview Sunday that rather than evacuating Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Israel should keep them while ceding Israeli Arab communities to a future Palestinian state.

“I think separation between two nations is the best solution,” Lieberman told Britain’s Sunday Times.

“I want to provide an Israel that is a Jewish, Zionist country.”
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GENEVA – The international Red Cross yesterday deplored the killing by the Israel Defense Forces of two "clearly marked" ambulance workers removing a Palestinian body from an earlier Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip.

The paramedics of the Palestine Red Crescent Society were wearing clearly marked fluorescent jackets and the flashing lights of their ambulance were visible from a great distance when they were hit by Israeli fire after dark on Friday evening, said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"The International Committee of the Red Cross is appalled by this failure to protect personnel engaged in emergency medical duties," a statement said.
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IN ITS original German form – Lieberman – the name means “lovable man”. It is hard to imagine a name less appropriate for the new Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.

He is not lovable, neither in his personality nor in his views – and that is the understatement of the year.

His personal lovability can be judged by the fact that he was once arrested for beating up a boy who had quarrelled with his son.

This week, the arrival of Lieberman at the center of the political system marks the start of a new chapter in the annals of the State of Israel.
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“Bein Hanoun, with 30,000 inhabitants, has been the target of daily aggressions and air strikes since June 25. It is now besieged by Israeli troops. We have seen the tanks advance and take up their positions. We are now encircled by about 70 tanks and at least 450 soldiers who announce that the city is a “closed military zone”. That means that no one can leave. No one can flee. It is an offensive based on those carried out in the West Bank in 2002.
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