Israel Matzav

Hamas English-language propaganda about today's 'martyrs'

Here's a Hamas propaganda report from the English-language Press TV regarding the ten 'martyrs' who were killed today in the Gaza Strip. Note that there is no mention of what any of these people might have been doing other than 'resisting the occupation.' Warning - some of this is a bit gory.



Here's part of the report that accompanies the video:

The latest flare-up came as Israeli helicopter gunships fired two missiles at a van with Hamas gunmen travelling in the sand dunes near the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis.

Five members of Hamas' armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, were killed and three injured, Gaza emergency services chief Mo'aweya Hassanein said.

That airstrike came after militants in Gaza launched 17 rockets at southern Israel in the past two days, moderately injuring a 10-year- old Israeli boy who had his arm shattered by shrapnel in the town of Sderot.

But Hamas in turn responded to Wednesday morning's airstrike by unleashing a barrage of as many as 35 rockets at Sderot, just north- east of Gaza, the coastal city of Ashqelon and their surroundings in the afternoon and evening.

One rocket struck the parking lot of a college on Sderot's outskirts, killing 47-year-old Israeli and lightly injuring another. Five other people were treated for shock, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Another rocket struck an electricity cable in Ashqelon, knocking out power, while yet another also fell near the city's Barzilai hospital, where wounded from the rocket attacks in Sderot are regularly being evacuated.

A projectile also directly hit a house in a Sderot residential neighbourhood, while another penetrated the dining room of a chicken factory in an industrial zone on the town's outskirts, which was empty at the time, residents said.

Israel vowed to continue its airstrikes and ground incursions into the Gaza Strip aimed at curbing the rocket attacks, and said it would use 'whatever means necessary' to stop them.

And in the early evening, it launched two more airstrikes, one of which killed two Hamas militants busy launching rockets east of Gaza City.

The other killed three Palestinian civilians, among them two children aged 12 and 13, who stood near a rocket launcher set up and being made ready in north-western Gaza City, Hassanein said. [Why were children standing near a rocket launcher? Human shields? CiJ]

'This murderous rocket attack will be met with continuous Israeli measures to protect our citizens,' Israeli government spokesman David Baker said. 'Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip are determined to kill and maim our civilians,' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

But Hamas blamed Israel, and also accused Abbas of 'inciting the Zionist occupation to shed more blood in the Gaza Strip' by calling in Cairo Tuesday to end the daily rocket attacks.

Abbas had told a joint news conference with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak the rocket fire provided Israel with an 'excuse' for its military operations in and economic blockade of Gaza.

Ehad al-Ghussain, the spokesman of the de-facto, Hamas-led Interior Ministry in Gaza, urged Abbas to end his 'absurd negotiations' with the 'Zionist enemy.'

Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, issued a statement condemning the Israeli attacks in Gaza and Nablus, saying Israel's 'aggression' did not 'serve the peace process nor negotiations.'

I know. Let's give them a state reichlet.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:23 PM