GAZA, March 12 (Reuters) - Israel's 22-day offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip killed 1,434 people, including 960 civilians, 239 police officers and 235 fighters, a Palestinian human rights group said on Thursday.

Israel carried out attacks by air, land and sea from Dec. 27 to Jan. 18 in a bid, it said, to force Hamas and other militant Islamist groups to stop firing rockets and mortars at southern Israeli towns across their border.

"The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights' investigations reveal that throughout the course of the assault, Israeli Occupation Forces used excessive, indiscriminate force, in violation of the principle of distinction," the group said in a report (www.pchrgaza.org).

The principle of distinction "obliges all parties to the conflict to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants".

An Israeli military spokesman said the army had "made every effort to minimise harm to the civilian population" during the fighting.

The army said it telephoned warnings in advance to urge residents to leave combat zones. The army statement rejected the charges it had set out to intentionally harm civilians calling the allegations "absurd and false".

The group said it would publish a list of the identities of those killed next week and would post them on its website in Arabic, with an English version to follow.

It said the "disproportionately high rate of death amongst the civilian population, when compared to that of resistance fighters" was evidence that Israeli forces had not respected this principle.

The rights group said 288 children and 121 women were among civilians killed in the bombing and shelling.

"The Ministry of Health have also confirmed that a total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the assault, including 1,606 children and 828 women," it said.

It called for an international investigation into "crimes committed by the Israeli forces and Israel's conduct of hostilities" and "prosecution of all political and military officials" accused.

The Israeli military statement questioned why the rights group had not made references to Israeli charges that Hamas had used civilians as human shields.

During the offensive, 13 Israelis were killed, including 3 by rockets fired into Israel.

Israeli media have quoted officers as saying there was far less resistance from Islamist gunmen than they had expected. A Palestinian opinion poll this week showed Hamas had gained significantly in popularity since the war. (Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Matthew Jones)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKLC458176._CH_.2420

It is true that the violent, agressive culture in Israel is prevelant. There is widespread support for this type of murder, transfer of Arab Israeils, etc.

Yet many Jews object to what is being done in their name by the Jewish state. They abhor the mindset that has taken over much of their religion and hope that can somehow be changed. Hatred of Arabs and Muslims will only return hatred. The well being of Jews worldwide is served by a more peaceful and inclusive approach, and many Jews hope and pray their fellow Jews worldwide will someday recognize this and turn away from this self destructive path and toward the true essence of their religion.

And it's not really all that 'sub', either. They're thick with misogyny, dominionist fables, Masters Of The Universe fantasies, and other kinds of testosterone-run-amok craziness. Just to look at them, you'd swear they must have been invented by a bunch of 14yo boys.

I find that the morons who did not understand their religious heros,
that these persons can be violent or even moronic, or even stupidly fucked in the head.
.. and that this quality is personal - for many many persons.

But i see all these religions as the same. They are all about enlightenment, and each
religion is founded by an enlightened person - and in some - not. These make all religions
essentially the esoteric teachings of several masters across time who's devotees in
various cultures practice timely methods of breaking the spell of ego identity,
and revealing a deep profundity in underground mystical living-traditions of
the enlightened underground.

All of history is a case of pearls before swine - and the fucked up pigs are about
to root up the whole goddam earth rather than trust their self realisation.
All the religions are genetic systems designed to preserve enlightenment on earth
after the death of the profound awakened master who was able to transmit it freely.

Yet now we live in an age when multiple living masters can transmit that very
realisation - but to know it involves being willing to drop the spell - the matrix
has to go, and then you are not part of the fake world, however tragic that dispelling can be.
But in every moment resides the choice to choose light and truth,
but nobody gives a fuck - they just want to watch TV, get drugnk and whack off to porn.

If you look at Jewish scripture, it's stiff with misogynist, xenophobic, dominionist awfulness. There are a few - damned few - sages, such as Moses ben Maimon and Hillel the Babylonian, whose teachings seem able to pass pretty much any sniff test, but the rest of them? Only someone terminally naive would turn their back on those buggers.

The so-called "Christians" are the same. Their one sage was killed, and today's whole boiling -again misogynist, xenophobic, and screamingly dominionist- was developed from the misogynist writings of a guy who was certainly diagnosable. Hell, he's diagnosable even at a 2000-year-and-12000-mile remove: a genuine, testosterone-maddened neurotic with psychopathic features.

Islam had the benefit of those two as don't-do-this examples, and a sage who by all accounts was a genuinely decent, humane man despite his small-town origins and hick accent. An *amazingly* decent, humane, intelligent man, really, given his origins - one could almost think there was actually something supernatural going on.

But their scripture doesn't look much if at all better (from the little I've bothered to read - I'm more impressed by the Hadith), and I think we have to look at the scripture since that's, literally, the canonical definition of how it's all 'spozed to' work.


Buddhism, on the other hand, or most of it (I exclude Nansen) doesn't have that awfulness. Nor does the Dao or a number of other Asian religions. They all seem characterized by the lack of a Big Beard In The Sky, and I have to find that significant.

Isn't baptism samadhi? Isn't it the same metaphor as intended in buddhism when one
experiences profound illumination by the grace of a profound master's darshan.
Arn't the acts of jesus consistent with an enlightened man who recalled his occult
enlightenment and brought back powers from atlantis-time like the power to raise
the dead, or to transmute consciousness in to other bodies, and such - all of these
things well documented in thousands years old buddhism, egyptian religion and in
the vedas of the subcontinent.

Though i do not believe that the founders of islam were enlightened, i do believe that
in the subsequent thousands of years of that civilisation on earth, that it has
sponsored enlightenment and a dynasty of saints in certain traditions.. sufi?

I notice in your comment something - that buddhism has in a thanka with a male and a
female shagging as the symbol of a balanced universe. Then, in these beardintheskye
religions - i better not grow a beard on skye ;) - the lack of feminine balance with
the mother mysterious which is well represented in taoism and hindu and buddhist
mythology and teachings - where being totally feminine (meditation) and being totally
passive and aware are considered preferable states of consciousness to discover..
and value.. and these patriarchal religious cultures do not value the feminie
(outside of porn'ing to it).. and this degredation demeans the whole experiment,
however equal "women" are, in substantive economic terms, the feminine is stompped
out systemically of the lives of humankind.

Its like if anyone actually discovered jesus and went ballistic in love with jesus
and shared it with everyone around them that the kingdom is here on earth, here
now, and all you need do is lay down all before that... to surrender all, and only
then is jesus alive and able to walk with thee. All of these are lovely metaphors
for enlightenment - king james has such lovely script even. But here in later
days, jesus is too much of a communist to be tolerated - back to rome.

But you are absolutely right - in travelling to the patriarchal states of the world,
where wormen are literally supressed out of society by a pervasive abrasiveness
and the stink of stupid violent testosterone and the tolerance of rape.. and its
all the big man in the sky assholes - consistently - the book bangers who are
behind the systemic reduction indeed.

given the high population density and the tactics used I would suspect that these are the numbers that are allowed to be seen by the powers behind the media and the truth is much different.