Mark Perry writes: The cease-fire announced Tuesday between Israel and Palestinian factions — if it holds — will end seven weeks of fighting that killed more than 2,200 Gazans and 69 Israelis. But as the rival camps seek to put their spin on the outcome, one assessment of Israel’s Gaza operation that won’t be publicized is the U.S. military’s. Though the Pentagon shies from publicly expressing judgments that might fall afoul of a decidedly pro-Israel Congress, senior U.S. military sources speaking on condition of anonymity offered scathing assessments of Israeli tactics, particularly in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City.
One of the more curious moments in Israel’s Operation Protective Edge came on July 20, when a live microphone at Fox News caught U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry commenting sarcastically on Israel’s military action. “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation,” Kerry said. “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.”
Rain of high-explosive shellsKerry’s comment followed the heaviest bombardment of the war to that point, as Israeli artillery rained thousands of high-explosive shells on Shujaiya, a residential area on the eastern edge of Gaza City. A high-ranking U.S. military officer said that the source of Kerry’s apparent consternation was almost certainly a Pentagon summary report assessing the Israeli barrage on which he had been briefed by an aide moments earlier.
According to this senior U.S. officer, who had access to the July 21 Pentagon summary of the previous 24 hours of Israeli operations, the internal report showed that 11 Israeli artillery battalions — a minimum of 258 artillery pieces, according to the officer’s estimate — pumped at least 7,000 high explosive shells into the Gaza neighborhood, which included a barrage of some 4,800 shells during a seven-hour period at the height of the operation. Senior U.S. officers were stunned by the report. [Continue reading…]
The stories that have emerged from eyewitness accounts of hundreds of children being killed by Israel’s indiscriminate destructiveness highlights to the world an Israel that is rivaling some of the most oppressive and brutal regimes in the contemporary world. Not only the Pentagon. One might easily challenge the religious spirituality of Netanyahu, his party, the youths of the IDF and most of people of Israel but the myth of Gods admonitions to slaughter their enemies certainly is quite familiar.
. The folks that were to be slaughtered in the OT were done so because the worshiped the wrong God. The Palestinians and Gazans were slaughtered because they occupied the land given to them by that same God.
“Jewish law permits destruction of Gaza to bring safety to Israel; Jewish law permits destroying the entire Gaza Strip to bring peace to the south of the country.”NB: ( that includes the people as well).
“You don’t know what it is to have one’s collective security constantly threatened and compromised; we expect little sympathy and give less…”. They are out to kill us, so we must – according to another ancient Jewish injunction – kill them first.” Uni Avnery God says so…..