http://www.fantasylandmedia.org
News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.
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"Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army’s conduct in Gaza.
On Thursday, the military’s chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier’s account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.
When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: 'What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn't have to be armed, you can simply shoot him.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/middleeast/20gaza.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=gaza&st=cse
---> We at Activist Radio praise the NY Times for covering a story that has gotten worldwide attention. Of course, that is one of the reasons that the NY Times may have printed it. It was too big to avoid.
But we have to contrast this story of Israeli troops revealing war crimes in Gaza with the "Winter Soldier Testimony" given by hundreds of US Iraq War veterans in DC. The event took place last March. It again received worldwide coverage, but with one important exception. It received no coverage in the mainstream US media.
So does Israel have a freer press than the US? The invasion of Gaza killed over 1,000 and stories of Israeli vets' admissions appear two months later. The US has been directly or indirectly responsible for a million deaths in Iraq. Yet US vets' stories of wartime atrocities are still taboo, and not released to the American public. Amazing the government control of the US press.
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"Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription 'Better use Durex,' next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, '1 shot, 2 kills.' A 'graduation' shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, 'No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it.'"
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html
--->This story is even more damning than the previous one. Both stories were first carried by Haaretz, Israel's leading progressive newspaper. Of course, the NY Times couldn't carry this one. There are simply limits to have much the NY Times can reveal about Israeli human rights abuses.
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"The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive against Gaza earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields, the targeting of medics and hospitals, and drone aircraft firing on civilians.
Three Guardian films based on a month-long investigation, add weight to calls this week for a full inquiry into the events surrounding Operation Cast Lead, which was aimed at Hamas but left about 1,400 Palestinians dead, including up to 300 children."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/israel-gaza-war-crimes-guardian
--->You can be sure that the NY Times will not be undertaking such a study, despite the fact that the US funded and provided the weapons used to kill Palestinians in Gaza.
