ISRAEL INITIATED CURRENT CRISIS:

According to Noam Chomsky, Israel's "kidnapping" of Osama and Mustafa Muamar (the sons of an Hamas activist) initiated the current crisis. I am not pointing the finger at Israel. Why is it, however, that this issue (coming a day prior to the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers) is not discussed by the media?

Noam Chomsky: "...Recall the facts. On June 25, Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured, eliciting huge cries of outrage worldwide, continuing daily at a high pitch, and a sharp escalation in Israeli attacks in Gaza, supported on the grounds that capture of a soldier is a grave crime for which the population must be punished.

One day before, on June 24, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, Osama and Mustafa Muamar, by any standards a far more severe crime than capture of a soldier. The Muamar kidnappings were certainly known to the major world media. They were reported at once in the English-language Israeli press, basically IDF handouts. And there were a few brief, scattered and dismissive reports in several newspapers around the US.

Very revealingly, there was no comment, no follow-up, and no call for military or terrorist attacks against Israel. A Google search will quickly reveal the relative significance in the West of the kidnapping of civilians by the IDF and the capture of an Israeli soldier a day later...".

Noam Chomsky, "Apocalypse Near", Noam Chomsky interviewed by Merav Yudilovitch, ZNet Commentary, 8 August 2006.

Additional information:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5112846.stm?ls

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muamar_...ntion_incident

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11601

This is quite interesting. No doubt some noble justification was produced to defend the allegation? Or did the Israeli's just ignore it completley?

Okie dokie!