Ahmad Jabari killed after recent rocket fire into Israel from Hamas-ruled territory
Israel killed the commander of the Hamas military wing in one of some 20 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip Wednesday, the worst barrage on the Palestinian territory in four years in retaliation for renewed rocket fire on southern Israel.
Gaza's health minister said 10 people were killed, two of them young children.
The Israeli military said it was the beginning of a major offensive and warned that it could escalate with a ground attack.
"All options are on the table. If necessary, the is ready to initiate a ground operation in Gaza," it said.
The killing of Ahmad Jabari marked a dramatic resumption of Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian militant leaders. He was the most senior Hamas official to be killed since the last war in Gaza ended in early 2009. He has long topped Israel's most-wanted list, blamed for a string of deadly attacks, including the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit in 2006.
The offensive followed a weekend exchange of rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel and Israeli airstrikes. Seven Palestinians were killed and several Israelis were wounded.
Canada backs Israel's actions
The Canadian government said following Wednesday's rocket attacks that it will continue to support Israel.
"We fundamentally believe that Israel has the right to defend itself and its citizens from terrorist threats," Rick Roth, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, said in a statement.
"Far too often, the Jewish people find themselves on the front lines in the struggle against terrorism," Roth said.
The military said its aircraft targeted more than 20 facilities that served as storage or launching sites for rockets. Among the weapons destroyed were rockets that could hit as far as 40 kilometres into Israel.
Plumes of black smoke wafted into Gaza City's skies following at least five airstrikes there. Sirens blared as people ran in panic in the streets and militants fired angrily into the air. Hamas police cordoned off the area around a hospital where at least one body from the strike was taken. It was draped in a white sheet, with a burnt leg poking out.
Gaza Health Minister Dr. Mufeed Mkhallalati said a total of 10 people were killed, including Jabari, and 45 wounded, 10 of them in critical condition. Among the dead were three civilians, including an 11-month-old and a six-year-old.
Demand for retaliation
Palestinians called for harsh retaliation. Hamas, which rules Gaza, announced a state of emergency in the territory. It evacuated all its security buildings.
Outside the hospital where Jabari's body was taken, Hamas official Khalil al-Haya eulogized the commander and threatened Israel.
"The battle between us and the occupation is open and it will end only with the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem," he said.
Thousands of angry Gazans chanted "Retaliation" and "We want you to hit Tel Aviv tonight."
Ahmad Jabari, the head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza City, was killed in this vehicle Wednesday, Ahmad Jabari, the head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza City, was killed in this vehicle Wednesday, (Adel Hana/Associated Press)
Witnesses said Jabari was travelling in a vehicle in Gaza City when the car exploded. Crowds of people and security personnel rushed to the scene of the strike, trying to put out the fire that had engulfed the car and left it a charred shell. The Israeli military released a grainy, black-and-white video of the airstrike. It shows a sedan moving slowly along a road before exploding in a powerful blast that sent a large piece of the car flying into the air.
Rush to buy supplies
Fearing a long war in Gaza, Palestinians rushed to buy fuel, bread and other food supplies.
"We are working under fire to protect our people and to back the resistance," said Islam Shahwan, a Hamas interior ministry spokesman. "We have a full emergency plan that we are adopting now."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting with his senior Security Cabinet after sundown, officials said.
The chief military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said "at this stage" there are no plans for a ground offensive. "We're focusing on an air operation," he said.
The military said the assassination was just the beginning of an operation codenamed "Pillar of Defence."
"After a couple of days of on ongoing rocket attacks toward Israeli civilians, the chief of staff has authorized to open an operation against terror targets in the Gaza Strip," military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitch said.
She said Jabari had "a lot of blood of his hands" and that the military chief "authorized different targets" as well.
Advocates say targeted killings are an effective deterrent without the complications associated with a ground operation, chiefly civilian and Israeli troop casualties. Proponents argue they also prevent future attacks by removing their masterminds.
Critics say the killings invite retaliation by militants and encourage them to try to assassinate Israeli leaders. They complain that the strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
Dovish Israeli lawmaker Dov Hanin condemned the killing.
"Assassinating leaders is never the solution. In place of the leaders killed, other will grow, and we will only get another cycle of fire and blood," he said.
During a wave of suicide bombings against Israel a decade ago, the country employed the tactic to eliminate the upper echelon of Hamas leadership. During that period, Israeli aircraft assassinated the previous commander of Hamas' military wing, Salah Shehadeh, the movement's founder and spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and dozens of other Hamas military commanders.
That set off a wave of criticism from rights groups and foreign governments, particularly the strike that killed Shehadeh — a bomb that killed 14 other people, most of them children.
Israeli opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, a former chief of staff who has supported targeted killings, welcomed the strike.
"We need to continue this policy, to find them in every place," he told Israel's Army Radio. "Israel needs to determine the agenda, not Jabari."
Mofaz warned that Israelis should expect an escalation of violence in the coming days following the assassination.
Ahmad Jabar survived four previous attempts by Israel to kill him before he died Wednesday in an airstrike. Ahmad Jabar survived four previous attempts by Israel to kill him before he died Wednesday in an airstrike. (Hamas Office/Reuters)
Jabari was known in Israel as the man who accompanied Schalit when the high-profile prisoner swap took place last October. Schalit, who was captured in a cross-border raid from Gaza that killed two other soldiers, was swapped for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including more than 300 convicted killers.
Jabari, nicknamed Abu Mohammed, was born in 1960 in the eastern Gaza neighbourhood of Shejaiya. In 2006, he became the acting commander of the military wing of Hamas after his predecessor, Muhammad Deif, was seriously wounded in an Israeli attack.
Jabari began as a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, but switched his allegiance to Hamas after serving 13 years in an Israeli prison.
He survived four previous attempts by Israel to kill him. In one attempt in 2004, his eldest son, his brother and three other relatives were killed.
He was said to have led the bloody 2007 takeover of Gaza from Fatah forces, developing Hamas's military arsenal and its networks in Iran, Sudan and Lebanon and for his planning of the Schalit kidnapping. Hamas has ruled Gaza with an iron grip since then, and repeated attempts to reconcile with Fatah have failed.
The assassination threatened to further damage Israel's relations with Egypt, which is governed by Hamas' ideological counterpart, the Muslim Brotherhood.
On its official Facebook page, the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, called the assassination a "crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres against the besieged Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip."
It accused Israel of trying to "drag the region toward instability."
Israel and Egypt signed a peace accord in 1979. Relations, never warm, have deteriorated since longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising last year.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/11/14/israel-hamas-airstrike-.html
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
i know not what weapons world war iii will be fought with, but world war iv will be fought with twitter and fb
gaza's population in 2012: 1,710,257
israel must be pretty bad at 'genocide'
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
#YOHGY
libelous_slander posted:Christians: lollin'
there was a great photo displayed in the war photography exhibition at MFAH during veteran's day with the caption something like: "Lebanese Christian militia taunt the dead body of a Palestinian girl"
getfiscal posted:is there some way i could get zioncash for posting pro-IDF stuff on facebook or something. i'm thinking about career options and being a shill for zionism seems like a good option.
Damn thats funny being a bad person. Thats some good shit
getfiscal posted:Crow posted:getfiscal posted:is there some way i could get zioncash for posting pro-IDF stuff on facebook or something. i'm thinking about career options and being a shill for zionism seems like a good option.
Damn thats funny being a bad person. Thats some good shit
yeah maybe you should man up and be a good person like that guy or like this guy 
getfiscal posted:is there some way i could get zioncash for posting pro-IDF stuff on facebook or something. i'm thinking about career options and being a shill for zionism seems like a good option.
look into a mirror and say "ben gurion" three times
getfiscal posted:you're right, i shouldn't make light of the suffering of any peoples. i will try my best to be a good person, crow.
All kinds of peoples have been screwed worse. When was the last time Jewish militants blew up a pizzeria in Berlin? A Mexican suicide bomber blew up a bar in San Diego? The Palestinians and their Arab manipulators attempted to annihilate Jews in the Levant several times, and lost. Do you get equally excised about Germans' expulsion from Koenigsburg?
Goethestein posted:getfiscal posted:
is there some way i could get zioncash for posting pro-IDF stuff on facebook or something. i'm thinking about career options and being a shill for zionism seems like a good option.
look into a mirror and say "ben gurion" three times
I'm not following this reasoning. Because you government supports Israel arguably more than it should, you need to disregard principle and oppose it? And I'm unsure how Israel is shielded from international censure. Has any nation been the object of more finger-wagging resolutions from the UN?
You slander the East Timorese and later ANC causes by mentioning them in the same sentence as that of today's Palestinian one. I can't think of a national movement with as much merit that has degraded and discredited itself so completely. If they'd had a leader kf the stature of Gandhi or even Mandela instead of the runted thug Ararat, they'd have a state with 1967 boundaries long ago.
Crow posted:getfiscal posted:
Crow posted:
getfiscal posted:
is there some way i could get zioncash for posting pro-IDF stuff on facebook or something. i'm thinking about career options and being a shill for zionism seems like a good option.
Damn thats funny being a bad person. Thats some good shit
yeah maybe you should man up and be a good person like that guy or like this guy
No, I argue against the smugly self-congratulatory chorus that insinuates, but for Israeli intransigence, everyone in the Middle East would be eating sweet raisins from Shakira's pussy. I acknowledge that Israel often behaves unconscionably, but for fucks sake, this debate here approaches Fox News levels of echo-chamber reverberance.
gyrofry posted:lol @ teh impotence of oppressed ppl
this
Ironicwarcriminal posted:Goethestein posted:getfiscal posted:
is there some way i could get zioncash for posting pro-IDF stuff on facebook or something. i'm thinking about career options and being a shill for zionism seems like a good option.
look into a mirror and say "ben gurion" three timesI'm not following this reasoning. Because you government supports Israel arguably more than it should, you need to disregard principle and oppose it? And I'm unsure how Israel is shielded from international censure. Has any nation been the object of more finger-wagging resolutions from the UN?
You slander the East Timorese and later ANC causes by mentioning them in the same sentence as that of today's Palestinian one. I can't think of a national movement with as much merit that has degraded and discredited itself so completely. If they'd had a leader kf the stature of Gandhi or even Mandela instead of the runted thug Ararat, they'd have a state with 1967 boundaries long ago.
-end monologue, crocodile dundee
IDF @IDFSpokesperson
Reminder of Hamas' strategy: Fire rockets & mortars from Palestinian schools & hope they land on Israeli schools. http://youtu.be/zmXXUOs27lI
gyrofry posted:om nom nom
Name for me an Arab nation with a system for which you'd renounce your presumably safe citizenship. I can't think of one. There's nothing biologically defective about Arabs. They do better than the average Americans in the US, but the governments of the Arab ME countries suck.
getfiscal posted:the alqassam brigades always talk big and everyone talks a lot about 'resistance to Israeli aggression' and shit but then they end up launching a few firecrackers at dogs in sderot. at least back in the day they could kill some israeli teens in pizza shops or whatever awesome important targets they hit.
Subjected to the worst indignity, dying in a Sbarro's
hey posted:Looks like the IDF are using some LF techniques for rhetoric
IDF @IDFSpokesperson
Reminder of Hamas' strategy: Fire rockets & mortars from Palestinian schools & hope they land on Israeli schools. http://youtu.be/zmXXUOs27lI
Hey palistinailures, lol if you protested
animedad posted:
so slick........amazing