At least 30,000 demonstrators from the communities close to the Gaza Strip and sympathizers from across Israel filled Rabin Sq. in Tel Aviv Thursday night in support of the demand for the government to put an end to the rockets raining down on them year after year. “All we want is to live normally,” they said. Their leaders first met with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who promised not to end Operation Defensive Edge until it achieved its goal of long-term quiet.
Some 10-15,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Thursday night in a show of support for the rocket-ravaged southern communities and to call for an end to the constant interruptions to their daily lives.
The event was organized by the mayors and municipal leaders of towns and communities living near the Gaza border, together with the Tel Aviv municipality.
Under the title “Don’t stay quiet on a red,” a reference to a similarly worded road safety campaign slogan and the Color Red missile warning system, the mayors expressed their frustration with living under persistent mortar and rocket attacks.
Before the gathering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with the municipal leaders to give his support and made it clear that the government is working to neutralize the threat from Gaza.
“We will not end Operation Protective Edge before we have achieved our goals: the restoration of quiet and security for a prolonged period for the citizens of Israel, together with a significant strike against the terror infrastructures,” he said.
Alon Davidi, the mayor of Sderot, a town that has suffered thousands of rocket attacks for more than a decade and where warning systems give residents just 15 seconds to run for cover, addressed the crowd.
“We, the residents of the Gaza border communities, will not accept the situation in which they shoot rockets at us and dig tunnels under our feet,” he said referring to tunnels, dug by Hamas under the border with Israel, that have been used by terrorists to infiltrate the country and carry out deadly ambushes. “We are fed up with the assurances and declarations. Our blood is not worthless.”
“I have full confidence in the government and in the army, but at the same time I ask as mayor of Sderot that they put an end to this situation once and for all,” Davidi says.
“Finish the job!” he added. “This is a universal principle. We want to live in peace,” he added.
Members of the crowd waved Israeli flags. Some held up banners calling for peace with the Palestinians, others were scrawled with the words: “Occupy Gaza now!”
“We all came here to send the message that rocket fire on the south is not only a problem for the south but a problem for the rest of the country,” says Haim Yelin, head of the Eshkol regional council.
The US-based Anti-Defamation League recorded a “dramatic surge” in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, the group said Wednesday.
In a report released Wednesday, the ADL listed dozens of incidents internationally, which include physical assaults on Jews, threats and intimidation, damage to synagogues, public hate speech, declarations invoking blood libels and Nazi atrocities, and anti-Semitic political cartoons.
The majority of the incidents occurred throughout Europe, but others were reported in South Africa, Australia, Turkey, Canada, Morocco and several Latin American countries.
“There was a dramatic surge in violence against Jews and Jewish institutions around the world during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge. From France to the Argentina, from Canada to Chile, synagogues were attacked, Jewish cultural centers were vandalized, Jewish shops were threatened and identifiably Jewish individuals beaten on the street. Anti-Semitism was in the air, and in the streets,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said.
Most incidents were tenuously tied to the Israeli operation, but in the cases cited, the hatred quickly spiraled into general anti-Jewish rhetoric. At various anti-Israel demonstrations, for example, the anti-Semitism was rampant, it reports.
As Russia's 300-strong 'humanitarian' convoy of white trucks slithered towards the Ukraine border, it appears,according to The Guardian, that, in spite of the market's exuberance at this morning's comments of "avoiding conflict," Vladimir Putin sent a real 'green' military Russian convoy across the Ukraine border late Thursday evening.
While the white trucks came to a halt well short of Ukraine's border, a different Russian convoy did cross into Ukrainian territory late on Thursday evening.
The Guardian saw a column of 23 armoured personnel carriers, supported by fuel trucks and other logistics vehicles with official Russian military plates, travelling towards the border near the Russian town of Donetsk.
...the convoy crossed into Ukrainian territory, using a rough dirt track and clearly crossing through a gap in a barbed wire fence that demarcates the border. Armed men were visible in the gloom by the border fence as the column moved into Ukraine.
Kiev has lost control of its side of the border in this area.
The trucks are unlikely to represent a full-scale official Russian invasion, and it was unclear how far they planned to travel inside Ukrainian territory and how long they would stay. But it was incontrovertible evidence of what Ukraine has long claimed – that Russian troops are active inside its borders.
A column of armoured vehicles and military trucks crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine on Thursday night, in the first confirmed sighting of such an incident by Western journalists.The Telegraph witnessed a column of vehicles including both armoured personal carriers and soft-skinned lorries crossing into Ukraine at an obscure border crossing near the Russian town of Donetsk shortly before 10pm local time.
Did you know that a major event just happened in the financial markets that we have not seen since the financial crisis of 2008? If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, you probably didn't even hear about it. Just prior to the last stock market crash, a massive amount of money was pulled out of junk bonds. Now it is happening again. In fact, as you will read about below, the market for high yield bonds just experienced "a 6-sigma event". But this is not the only indication that the U.S. economy could be on the verge of very hard times. Retail sales are extremely disappointing, mortgage applications are at a 14 year low and growing geopolitical storms around the world have investors spooked. For a long time now, we have been enjoying a period of relative economic stability even though our underlying economic fundamentals continue to get even worse. Unfortunately, there are now a bunch of signs that this period of relative stability is about to end. The following are 14 reasons why the U.S. economy's bubble of false prosperity may be about to burst...
The U.S. junk bond market just experienced "a 6-sigma event" earlier this month. In other words, it is an event that is only supposed to have a chance of 1 in 500 million of happening. Billions of dollars are being pulled out of junk bonds right now, and that has some analysts wondering if a financial crash is right around the corner.
The last time that we saw a junk bond rout of this magnitude was back during the financial crash of 2008. In fact, as the Telegraphrecently explained, bonds usually crash before stocks do...
No comments:
Post a Comment