Saturday 3 January 2009

Israel Starts Ground Invasion Of Gaza

In New Delhi, Indians walked over the Israeli flag

Israeli troops began moving into Gaza on Saturday night, intent on taking out Hamas rocket-launching sites.

For the first time since the start of Operation Cast Lead, IDF ground troops entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday evening, exchanging fire with Hamas gunmen.
The IDF said that a large amount of troops from the Armored Corps, Engineering Corps and Infantry Corps entered the territory with the purpose of destroying Hamas infrastructure and preventing rocket fire by taking control of launching pads “in order to greatly reduce the quantity of rockets fired at Israel and Israeli civilians.”

Demonstrators hurl shoes at Downing Street in day of global protest against Israeli attacks

Demonstrators demanding an end to Israeli airstrikes on Gaza hurled their shoes at the gates of Downing Street today during a wave of global protests.

Around 75,000 people took to the streets of the London, including singer Annie Lennox, former model Bianca Jagger and former mayor Ken Livingstone.

Elsewhere in Britain, 2,000 demonstrators marched through Manchester and 500 braved the cold in Edinburgh.

Paris held the world’s biggest protest, with 25,000 people showing up to condemn the Israeli offensive, which has killed at least 436 Palestinians since December 27th.

The death toll includes 75 children, according to Gaza medics. And almost 2,300 people have been wounded inside the territory.

Four Israelis have been killed by rocket attacks by Hamas, Islamist militants who took over Gaza three years ago.

In Britain, many people were angry at Gordon Brown refusal to condemn Israel’s attacks.

Hundreds of protesters threw shoes at the iron gates of Downing Street residence, in the spirit of an Iraqi journalist who hurled his footware President George Bush with his shoes last year.

Source: reuters.com

2 comments:

William deB. Mills said...

You have a critical factual error. It is deceptive, if not outright erroneous, to describe Hamas as a militant group that "took over Gaza three years ago." The fact is that Hamas accepted an Israeli invitation to participate in democratic elections in January 2006 and won them. But Israel refused to accept the electoral results and proceded to subvert the new regime, driving Hamas back to violence, one result of which was its takeover of Gaza. The current invasion flows directly from Israel's subversion of the January 2006 election results.

Philip said...

Hi William. I am aware of this. The articles on the blog are taken from the main propaganda arm of the BBC and CNN.

I forgot to add the source at the bottom of the post.

Regards,
Phil