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A senior IDF officer estimated Saturday that roughly 300 Hamas men have been killed since the army launched its ground incursion in the Gaza Strip. The military official said IDF troops were able to wipe out whole battalions belonging to the Gaza terror group.

"Hundreds of people were killed in the various combat sectors," the officer said. "Some Hamas companies and battalions were simply wiped out. We also see cases of desertions and unauthorized leaves, while some terror activists are scared to undertake moves that would jeopardize them vis-à-vis IDF troops."

Earlier Saturday, the IDF killed Hamas' rocket chief in the Gaza City area, Amir Mansi. The senior officer said that shortly before his death Mansi clashed with his subordinates, who refused to come out of their hideouts. The rocket chief was left with no choice but to launch mortar shells himself, and was killed after being identified by the army.

Force Lord wrote:I'm rather pessimistic of Israel's chances of achieving anything in Gaza. Sure, Hamas is getting hit, but so are many civilians. In fact, I'll expect to see even more radical groups such as Islamic Jihad (if it's still around) to grow more prominent.

That's my inner skeptic talking, at any rate.

P.S.: Are there any other groups in Gaza besides Hamas?

JERUSALEM – Israel said Saturday it was shocked and distressed by a senior Vatican cardinal's likening of Gaza under Israel's military offensive to a concentration camp.

A spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry said the cardinal, whose remarks appeared in an interview Wednesday, adopted the kind of language that Hamas and other Islamic militant groups have used to demonize Israel and equate it with Nazi Germany.

"It was shocking to hear the same kind of terminology from such a high-ranking member of the church," Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor said Saturday.

Cardinal Renato Martino, a former Vatican envoy to the United Nations and now Pope Benedict XVI's top official on issues of peace and justice, said in the interview that Gaza now resembles a "big concentration camp."

Commenting on Israel's two-week military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Martino told the online newspaper Il Sussidiario.net that both sides were concerned only with their own interests.

"But the consequences of this selfishness is hatred, poverty, injustice. It is always the defenseless populations that pay," he was quoted as saying. "Look at the conditions in Gaza: It looks more and more like a big concentration camp."

Vatican spokesmen have declined to comment on the remarks, saying instead that it was more important to note an appeal by the pope on Thursday for a cease-fire.

Martino, an influential prelate who heads the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, seemed to want to balance his remarks in another interview published Thursday in Rome daily La Repubblica in which he condemned the Hamas rocket attacks that prompted the Israeli offensive.

But he did not back away from his earlier comparison and said, "Look at the conditions the people are living in."

A man who answered the phone at the cardinal's residence on Friday and identified himself as his private secretary said the prelate would not comment further on the Gaza remark.

"Using this excessive language is not doing justice and is not bringing peace any nearer and he should know better," Palmor said. "This kind of speech is deeply distressing."

Palmor said, however, that the cardinal's remarks would not harm relations with the Vatican or disrupt plans for a visit sometime this year by Benedict.

"These declarations by Cardinal Martino have nothing to do with our overall relations with the Holy See. The pope is still very welcome in Israel," Palmor said.

The Vatican and Israel have had a delicate relationship since establishing diplomatic ties in 1993.

Most recently, they have clashed over the legacy of Pope Pius XII, who some historians say did not do everything in his power to prevent Jews from being deported to concentration camps during World War II.

That dispute centers on a caption of a photo of Pius at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem that says Pius did not protest the Nazi genocide of Jews and maintained a largely "neutral position."

The Vatican says Pius made every effort to help Jews and other victims through quiet diplomacy and wants Yad Vashem to change the caption.

There are also unresolved differences over the status of expropriated church property in Israel and tax exemptions for the church. The Vatican has also protested Israeli restrictions on the movement of Arab Christian clergy to and around the West Bank.

Darth Yoshi wrote:Ray, got a link?

I don't see how the Israeli gov't can object to someone calling like it is. Regardless of personal stance on the whole issue, the fact remains that the IDF contributes a great deal towards the Palestinian territories remaining a third-world shithole.

Darth Yoshi wrote:Ray, got a link?

I don't see how the Israeli gov't can object to someone calling like it is. Regardless of personal stance on the whole issue, the fact remains that the IDF contributes a great deal towards the Palestinian territories remaining a third-world shithole.

MagnusTheReD wrote: Consider this: the ceasefire went into effect on July 19.

On 4 November 2008, Israeli troops raided a border area of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military claimed Hamas had built a tunnel which they claimed Hamas was planning to use to capture Israeli soldiers. Six members of Hamas were killed.[102] Hamas considered this attack a "massive breach of the truce,"[103] and Hamas rocket attacks increased sharply in November 2008, approaching the pre-truce levels.[104]

On 13 December 2008, Israel announced that it was in favor of extending the cease-fire, provided Hamas adhered to its conditions.[105] The conditions posed by a Hamas delegation in Cairo on December 14, were that the parties return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement. Hamas would undertake to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would lift the siege of Gaza by opening up the border crossings, not reduce thereafter commercial traffic, and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza. At an Israeli Cabinet meeting on December 21, Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security agency, confirmed the seriousness of Hamas’s interest in maintaining the truce. Israel rejected these terms.[106]

hongi wrote: Hamas wanted the border crossings open and Israel to not attack Gaza, which were the original conditions of the broken ceasefire. Israel probably thought that though the ceasefire had brought much lower levels of rocketfire, Hamas still didn't cut it all off, and suspected that Hamas was using that time to build their strength.

Darth Yoshi wrote:I don't see how the Israeli gov't can object to someone calling like it is. Regardless of personal stance on the whole issue, the fact remains that the IDF contributes a great deal towards the Palestinian territories remaining a third-world shithole.

ray245 wrote: wonder if Israel realize they have lost this PR war by now. In previous conflict, they get a favorable public relation support. However, in this conflict, from what I have read all over the internet, more and more news outlet is taking a stance against Israel.

hongi wrote:Rocket attacks continued apparently, but at a vastly lowered level. So Hamas breaks the ceasefire first, by not cracking down completely on the rocket attacks.

Coyote wrote:

ray245 wrote: wonder if Israel realize they have lost this PR war by now. In previous conflict, they get a favorable public relation support. However, in this conflict, from what I have read all over the internet, more and more news outlet is taking a stance against Israel.

Unfortunately, Ray, Israel always loses the PR war, every time. They haven't had favorable PR for some time; certainly not in the 2006 Lebanon War, or in 1982. In the media, any time you have a powerful, well-trained and professional mechanized army fighting rag-tag guerrillas, there is a weird wellspring of sympathy for the guerrillas because, even if their cause is questionable, they appear brave, gritty and determined. Plus, there's the suspicion that any government that would send in tanks or troops against civilians is automatically in the wrong.

A preliminary investigation into the fatal shooting by the Israel Defense Forces into a United Nations building in northern Gaza on Tuesday reveals the Israeli troops firing on the building missed their targets by some 30 meters.

Hamas is claiming the mortar fire killed 42 people and left dozens wounded, but senior IDF officers say the figures are dubious and that Hamas is inflating the numbers.

The probe, which was conducted by the Paratrooper Brigade whose troops were responsible for the area, found that the army's location system to pinpoint launch sites indicated that militants had launched a Qassam rocket into Israel from within a yard adjacent to the courtyard of the UN building.
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The troops had intended to launch a smart missile to take out the Palestinian launch team but a technical malfunction made this impossible, according to the probe. The commanders of the force instead decided to fire on the Qassam team with mortar shells equipped with a Global Positioning System for accurate fire.

However, the GPS element has an error margin of 30 meters and one of the three rounds fired by the paratrooper force slammed into the building owned by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA.

Two of the rounds hit the yard used to launch rockets into Israel, killing two members of Hamas' military wing who probably belonged to the squad that fired the rockets.

Nonetheless, in discussing the incident with Haaretz, some IDF officers say the force should have refrained from using mortar rounds and relied instead on more accurate fire. Military sources said the UNRWA building was marked on the maps of forces operating in the area.

Other officers said they found the death toll published by Hamas grossly exaggerated, pointing out that a week ago only three IDF soldiers were killed when a tank fired two rounds - which have a much larger impact than mortar rounds - into a building which was occupied by 50 IDF soldiers.

Officers interviewed for this article pointed out that Hezbollah resorted to similar inflation tactics after an IDF bomb landed on a UN post in Qana in southern Lebanon in 2006.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- At least nine protesters were arrested in a pro-Palestinian rally Sunday afternoon in New York that injured seven police officers, authorities said.

The extent of injuries varied from minor to serious, New York police said. Two officers sustained head injuries.

Detective Cheryl Crispin said the protesters taken into custody faced charges ranging from disorderly conduct to reckless endangerment.

In a statement, the NYPD said the officers were injured when trying to break up a fight between two demonstrators.

"While attempting to separate the males, several others joined in and began to assault the officers," the statement said.

The demonstrators had gathered on Manhattan's West Side on Sunday afternoon to protest the Israeli incursion in Gaza. The rally began peacefully, but skirmishes between police and demonstrators eventually broke out, witnesses said. iReport.com: Hundreds march, shout at rally

Steve Sherman, coordinator of security for United for Peace and Justice and a demonstrator at the rally, said police maced demonstrators.

"The police pushed us out onto the avenue, and as we were walking down the avenue ... they charged with horses on the sidewalks and they charged with their own bodies and pushed in, and a riot started," he said.

Mike Eilenfeldt, another demonstrator, said confrontations between the police and protesters appeared to escalate after a police officer had fallen to the ground.

"He's laying on the street, and from that point on it's a police riot where they start attacking the young people," Eilenfeldt told CNN.

Police denied the allegations of mace being used on protesters

Coyote wrote:Unfortunately, Ray, Israel always loses the PR war, every time. They haven't had favorable PR for some time; certainly not in the 2006 Lebanon War, or in 1982. In the media, any time you have a powerful, well-trained and professional mechanized army fighting rag-tag guerrillas, there is a weird wellspring of sympathy for the guerrillas because, even if their cause is questionable, they appear brave, gritty and determined. Plus, there's the suspicion that any government that would send in tanks or troops against civilians is automatically in the wrong.

Broomstick wrote:

Police denied the allegations of mace being used on protesters

You know, whenever we get one of these "the police used mace"/"no we didn't" bits going I always wonder if someone in the crowd used mace or pepper spray which was then blamed on the police...

Master of Ossus wrote:Not really any big ones. Hamas wiped out or drove out most of the other militant groups after it was elected. I'm sure there are still some Fatah-aligned fighters around, but after their shooting war I'm not sure they're going to jump in against the Israelis, particularly since their movement is largely directed at NOT shooting at Israel.

SiegeTank wrote:I haven't seen many people sympathize with the "brave, gritty and determined" Hamas recruits who get killed en masse. Rather, people seem to sympathize with Joe Gaza and his family who have to -again- camp out in a warzone marked by rapidly dwindling supplies of food, water and medicine.

If there is a reason Israel is losing the PR war it isn't because of people's innate sympathy for underdog Hamas: it's because all the other Palestinians who are killed or are otherwise affected during the hunt for Hamas. I know all about collateral damage, the repulsive human shield tactics employed by Hamas, and how Israel does a lot to avoid civilian casualties, but it's kind of hard not to feel sympathy for the average citizen of Gaza City right now.