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Wolf Blitzer delivers the most important breaking news and political, international, and national security stories of the day. Tune to The Situation Room weekdays 5-7pm ET on CNN.
Wolf Blitzer delivers the most important breaking news and political, international, and national security stories of the day. Tune to The Situation Room weekdays 5-7pm ET on CNN.
July 30th, 2014
07:09 PM ET
Israeli Jews: Time to crush Hamas
Polls show Israeli Jews do not want a cease-fire. Instead, as CNN's Sara sidner reports, they want Hamas crushed.
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The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer is the command center for breaking news, politics and extraordinary reports from around the world. Tune in weeknights from 5-7pm ET on CNN.
The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and one civilian), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.
Israel apologized for the attack, saying that the USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship.[6] Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity, though others, including survivors of the attack, have rejected these conclusions and maintain that the attack was deliberate. The ship was flying the American flag so there could have been no doubt. Sometime later it came out that the ship was located near a position where captured Egyptian soldiers were massacred and buried in a mass grave. The Israelis were afraid that the American ship had intercepted messages between Israeli commander on the site and the Israeli government.
My point, Israeli government will do whatever it takes including attacking allies if the means justify the ends.
Italian Journalist Defies Hamas: ‘Out of Gaza Far From Hamas Retaliation: Misfired Rocket Killed Children in Shati’
JULY 30, 2014 9:53 AM
Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati said he was able to speak freely about witnessing a Hamas misfire that killed nine children at the Shati camp, confirming the Israel Defense Forces version of events, but only after leaving Gaza, “far from Hamas retaliation.”
On Twitter, Barbati, Jerusalem Correspondent for Radio Popolare Milano, and a former reporter for Sky Italia, in Beijing, said, “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday [yesterday] in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.”
He said, “@IDFSpokesperson said truth in communique released yesterday about Shati camp massacre. It was not #Israel behind it.”
On Tuesday, the IDF released aerial photos showing how a rocket from Gaza targeting Israel hit the Shati camp, run by the UNRWA, and Al Shifa Hospital, which has become a de-facto Hamas headquarters, against international rules of war.
Barbati said he was unable to speak about the Al Shifa hit, but he was certain that it was a Hamas rocket that hit the Shati camp, and a witness saw militants rushing to clean the debris.
Blogger Elder of Ziyon, who praised Barbati for telling the truth in a war where many journalists have been intimidated by Hamas, noted that “When Hamas made the area off limits to reporters, it was cleaning the area from any debris that could show the truth.”
An IDF diagram showing how four rockets from Gaza hit the sea, Israel, Shati and Al Shifa Hospital. Photo: IDF.
On Tuesday, CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, called out two correspondents from The Wall Street Journal for deleting photographs that would implicate Hamas in the war crime of using the Al Shifa hospital as a military headquarters. Other journalists, including a Gazan reporter for French media recounted to France’s Libération how Hamas had interrogated him in the same hospital, but later asked the newspaper to take down the story.
Elder of Ziyon said, “Every single report on TV from Gaza should have this disclaimer: ‘Our reporters have been threatened, implicitly and perhaps explicitly, by Hamas to only report one side of the story.Viewers must not trust anything they are saying.’”
“There is an assumption of fairness in journalism, a contract between the media and the viewers,” the influential blogger said. “This contract has been broken, as far as I can tell, by nearly every single reporter in Gaza in nearly every report, with a couple of rare exceptions.”