http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060705/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_battleground_hospital_1

Excerpt:

RAMADI, Iraq - Hundreds of U.S. Marines stormed through dimly lit hallways of the largest hospital in western Iraq on Wednesday, taking control of a facility allegedly used by insurgents — and encountering a regional health infrastructure in serious decay.

Members of al-Qaida in Iraq had been using the Ramadi General Hospital, a seven-story building with some 250 beds, to treat their wounded and fire on U.S. troops in the area, the Marines said.

They said wounded Iraqi police officers who had been taken to the hospital were later found beheaded. ...

Hospitals are considered off-limits in traditional warfare. In western Ramadi, however, insurgents have fired on Marines from the rooftop of a women and children's hospital so often that patients were moved to a wing with fewer exposed windows.

 "They don't play by the same rules that we do," said Pfc. Gilberto Rodriguez, 20, of Alexandria, Va., as he stood guard in a hallway. "Insurgents have free rein here. They can do whatever they want. They use whatever tactics are most effective."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1209965,00.html

Excerpt:

How do the Palestinians respond? What have they done with Gaza, the first Palestinian territory in history to be independent, something neither the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, all of whom ruled Palestinians before the Israelis, ever permitted? On the very day of Israel's final pullout, the Palestinians began firing rockets out of Gaza into Israeli towns on the other side of the border. And remember: those are attacks not on settlers but on civilians in Israel proper, the pre-1967 Israel that the international community recognizes as legitimately part of sovereign Israel, a member state of the U.N. A thousand rockets have fallen since.

 For what possible reason? Before the withdrawal, attacks across the border could have been rationalized with the usual Palestinian mantra of occupation, settlements and so on. But what can one say after the withdrawal?

The logic for those continued attacks is to be found in the so-called phase plan adopted in 1974 by the Palestine National Council in Cairo. Realizing that they would never be able to destroy Israel in one fell swoop, the Palestinians adopted a graduated plan to wipe out Israel. First, accept any territory given to them in any part of historic Palestine. Then, use that sanctuary to wage war until Israel is destroyed.

So in 2005 the Palestinians are given Gaza, free of any Jews. Do they begin building the state they say they want, constructing schools and roads and hospitals? No. They launch rockets at civilians and dig a 300-yard tunnel under the border to attack Israeli soldiers and bring back a hostage.

What kind of a depraved society does this to their own children? http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885912208&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Excerpt:

As Israel enters the northern Gaza Strip, there are signs that the Palestinian Authority plans to renew the tactic of sending children to the front lines as human shields to obstruct the IDF.

PA TV is again broadcasting music videos designed to brainwash young children into seeking death as shahids - martyrs for Allah. Shahada-promoting music videos were first broadcast thousands of times on Palestinian TV from 2000 through 2004.

One of the most sinister of these clips was broadcast twice last week, according to our research after a three-year absence. The clip features a child actor playing the most famous Palestinian child martyr, Muhammad al-Dura - whose death in a crossfire was broadcast to the entire world - calling to other Palestinian children to literally follow him to Child Martyrs' Heaven.

"I am waving not to part but to say, 'Follow me,'" is Dura's invitation on the TV screen.

The children watching this video are then shown what awaits them if they join Dura in death. The video follows the child actor - "Dura" - joyously frolicking in heaven. He romps on the beach, plays with a kite and runs toward a Ferris wheel.

The children are being told that death in conflict with Israel will bring them into a child's paradise. Muhammad al-Dura is already in this paradise, tranquil and fun-filled.

This call to children to seek death, coming from the child who has turned into a Palestinian hero, and broadcast to their children by PA TV, is one of the most odious examples of exploitation of children witnessed on PA TV.

I'm sorry, but "the left" is just not this crazy.

There's a quantifiable difference. Am I wrong?

[Update: Rummy gave the Times permission to run the photos. Silly right-wingers.] 

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3269352,00.html

Excerpt:

 Now that they've got a Jewish-free Gaza, why are the Palestinians doing everything in their power to bring back the IDF? Andrew Friedman

Immediately following the withdrawal of all Israeli civilian and military personnel last summer, Palestinian spokespeople around the world set out on a strange (and largely unsuccessful) PR campaign to convince the world that Gaza was somehow still occupied.

To be sure, Palestinian history is full of strange claims about Israel (such as charges that Israeli soldiers pass out poison candy to Palestinian children), but this was surely one of the strangest. How could Gaza be "occupied" with no Jews? What is the nature of this claim?

Another question: Since the disengagement, Palestinians have done everything in their power to force Israel to re-enter Gaza. As Bethlehem-based human rights lawyer Shawqi Issa wrote , "the Palestinians must force Israel to re-occupy Gaza."