Israel at war after surprise attack

[mrsukyankee]

Oct 8, 2023 8:03:04 GMT -5 @villainv said:

Oct 8, 2023 7:54:35 GMT -5 mcppalmbeach said:

Heartbreaking for the suffering of innocent people this will cause. I was reading about the young woman who was taken hostage from the music festival and was videoed being spit upon and paraded around the streets naked. It just makes me ill.

I can’t help but think the world could be a much better place if women were in charge of everything.

Depends on the women - think Le Pen. There are horrible people of both genders.

And this is horrible for all the innocent people who are going to get killed.

[fryjack2]

I think most people on this board know that I am Palestinian. What I haven’t shared (PDQ section removed) I have family still in the West Bank.

I grew up hearing all my Palestinian family members (those that were refugees and those still in Palestine) talk about our homeland and their dreams of one day being able to return. My dad dreams of being buried by his father on their land. He’s in his 80s and he realized it will never happen, but he has not admitted tom giving up all hope.

Never have I ever heard them disparage Jewish people. Governments and their actions? Yes.

The media’s blatant continued racist portrayal of every Arab and Palestinian as a terrorists, the refusal to acknowledge the atrocities Israel continues to impose on those living in the occupied territories, and the world’s tendencies to call anything that condemns Israel’s actions as anti-Semitic is soul crushing.

I have almost zero hope that there will ever be peace. But I know that there definitely will not be if Israel continues to demolish Palestine and build settlements and expand on Palestinian land and subject Palestinians to the inhumane conditions that they do- the majority of people are very ignorant of the Israel imposed living conditions of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. And as long as Hamas exists.

Right now is especially scary because this attack was somehow not thwarted by other country’s intelligence agencies and the vocal support of Hamas from other countries such as Iran. No one wants Iran winning any wars.

[Saudade]

fryjack2, I assumed your family went through something from your previous posts. I’m so sorry. I want to “like” your post for support and because of the latter commentary but that seems wrong.

[Michelle]

I don't have a side in this except for the innocent people who are victimized by the power hungry.

This is a very worrisome situation for all involved. I have been reading reports that Hezbollah has been gathering in Lebanon to prepare to assist Hamas but from that side.
www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-lebanons-hezbollah-2023-10-08/

The Taliban have allegedly asked for safe passage through Iran, Iraq and Jordan so they can conquer Jerusalem.
www.express.co.uk/news/world/1821152/taliban-israel-palestine-jerusalem

The world's leaders seem mostly divided along Judeo-Christian vs. Muslim lines, with a few parties trying to have diplomacy with both. www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/7/we-are-at-war-reactions-to-palestinian-hamas-surprise-attack-in-israel

Given most of those siding with Israel are also siding with Ukraine, Putin could see this as an opportunity to start WWIII with Russia aligned with Muslim nations, waging a mostly religious war.

And given all the intelligence leaks Trump made to people all over the world, certainly including Russia and Saudi Arabia, combined with absolutely zero heads up to U.S. and Israeli intelligence about this attack - this could be the beginning of a terrible situation.

Don't go googling Nostradamus 2023 predictions.

[fryjack2]

michelle, Jordan will never allow that. When I lived there, during the gulf war, we had air raid drills every couple of days where we had to go to our bomb shelter (our house had one) or to the designated area if I was at school because of proximity to the war zone and the threat to Jordan because of its stance. Jordan does not support Hamas or Hezballah.

[Susie]

Oct 8, 2023 9:37:02 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

Oct 8, 2023 9:08:57 GMT -5 StrawberryBlondie said:

This was also the headline in my WaPo news alert this AM.

I’m really curious, that was the EXACT wording? Not Israel declares war on Hamas? Or just Israel declares war?

I’m surprised because I haven’t seen any English-language Western media saying Israel declared war “on Palestine.” On Hamas, yes. Or they’re calling it the Israel-Gaza conflict.

ETA: I don’t get news alerts from WaPo but their main story categorizes it as a declaration of war on Hamas.

"Israel formally declares war against Hamas as more than 1,000 killed on both sides"

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/08/israel-hamas-war-gaza/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most. 

I work with a law firm in Israel who sent out a message to international colleagues on their operational status.  They similarly characterized it as a war against Hamas:  

"Dear Friends, Clients, and Colleagues,

As you probably know, Israel is at war after the barbaric attack on its civilian population by Iran’s proxy, Hamas, which left more than 600 dead and thousands wounded. As the rocket attacks on our civilian population continue, those numbers are unfortunately expected to grow. ..."

The whole situation is awful and I feel for everyone directly and indirectly affected.

[imimahoney]

Can anyone share the Wall Street Journal article that just came down saying Iran gave the go ahead?

I'm not surprised in the least but holy shit. This is going to spiral very fucking fast.

[sonrisa]

Oct 8, 2023 16:11:38 GMT -5 Michelle said:

Don't go googling Nostradamus 2023 predictions.

What is happening is awful. We don't need to minimize it with 500 year old vaguely written astrology. 

[Michelle]

Oct 8, 2023 16:47:12 GMT -5 sonrisa said:

Oct 8, 2023 16:11:38 GMT -5 Michelle said:

Don't go googling Nostradamus 2023 predictions.

What is happening is awful. We don't need to minimize it with 500 year old vaguely written astrology. 

I wasn't minimizing at all. 

[Michelle]

Oct 8, 2023 16:20:18 GMT -5 fryjack2 said:

michelle , Jordan will never allow that. When I lived there, during the gulf war, we had air raid drills every couple of days where we had to go to our bomb shelter (our house had one) or to the designated area if I was at school because of proximity to the war zone and the threat to Jordan because of its stance. Jordan does not support Hamas or Hezballah.

God I'm sorry you lived through that, and that people still do.

[Michelle]

Oct 8, 2023 16:33:58 GMT -5 imimahoney said:

Can anyone share the Wall Street Journal article that just came down saying Iran gave the go ahead?

I'm not surprised in the least but holy shit. This is going to spiral very fucking fast.

I don't seem able to give a gift link, so i'll copy and paste here, assuming this is the article you wanted?

Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut
by

Summer Said, Benoit Faucon, and Stephen Kalin

Updated Oct. 8, 2023 5:15 pm ET


DUBAI—Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.



Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.



Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.



U.S. officials say they haven’t seen evidence of Tehran’s involvement. In an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.”



“We don’t have any information at this time to corroborate this account,” said a U.S. official of the meetings.


A European official and an adviser to the Syrian government, however, gave the same account of Iran’s involvement in the lead-up to the attack as the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members.



Asked about the meetings, Mahmoud Mirdawi, a senior Hamas official, said the group planned the attacks on its own. “This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision,” he said.



The Iranian delegation at the United Nations in New York didn’t respond to a request for comment. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has praised the attacks, saying in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the “Zionist regime will be eradicated at the hands of the Palestinian people and the Resistance forces throughout the region.”



A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.



The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides—Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official.

At least 700 Israelis are confirmed dead, and Saturday’s assault has punctured the country’s aura of invincibility and left Israelis questioning how their vaunted security forces could let this happen.



Israel has blamed Iran, saying it is behind the attacks, if indirectly. ​​ “We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel so obviously it’s easy to understand that they tried to coordinate. The proxies of Iran in our region, they tried to be coordinated as much as possible with Iran,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Sunday.



Hamas has publicly acknowledged receiving support from Iran. And on Sunday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi talked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.



Iran has been setting aside other regional conflicts, such as its open feud with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, to devote the IRGC’s foreign resources toward coordinating, financing and arming militias antagonistic to Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.

The U.S. and Israel have designated Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.



“We are now free to focus on the Zionist entity,” the Iranian official said. “They are now very isolated.”



The strike was intended to hit Israel while it appeared distracted by internal political divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It was also aimed at disrupting accelerating U.S.-brokered talks to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that Iran saw as threatening, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.


Building on peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, expanding Israeli ties with Gulf Arab states could create a chain of American allies linking three key choke points of global trade—the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab Al Mandeb connecting the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, said Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.



“That’s very bad news for Iran,” Ibish said. “If they could do this, the strategic map changes dramatically to Iran’s detriment.”



Leading the effort to wrangle Iran’s foreign proxies under a unified command has been Ismail Qaani, the leader of the IRGC’s international military arm, the Quds Force.



Qaani launched coordination among several militias surrounding Israel in April during a meeting in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal has reported, where Hamas began working more closely with other groups such as Hezbollah for the first time.



Around that time, Palestinian groups staged a rare set of limited strikes on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza, under the direction of Iran, said the Iranian official. “It was a roaring success,” the official said.



Iran has long backed Hamas but, as a Sunni Muslim group, it had been an outsider among Tehran’s Shia proxies until recent months, when cooperation among the groups accelerated.



Representatives of these groups have met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August to discuss this weekend’s attack on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani has attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s military chief, the militant-group members said.



Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended at least two of the meetings, they said.



“An attack of such scope could only have happened after months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London. “Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not single-handedly make decisions to engage in war without prior explicit agreement from Iran.”



The Palestinian and Lebanese militias’ ability to coordinate with Iran will be tested in the coming days as Israel’s response comes into focus.



Egypt, which is trying to mediate in the conflict, has warned Israeli officials that a ground invasion into Gaza would trigger a military response from Hezbollah, opening up a second battlefront, people familiar with the matter said. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire briefly on Sunday.



Hamas has called on Palestinians in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel to take up arms and join the fight. There have been limited clashes in the West Bank, but no reports of clashes between Arabs and Jews inside Israel, as happened in May 2021 when Israel and Gaza last engaged in extended combat.



The Iranian official said that if Iran were attacked, it would respond with missile strikes on Israel from Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, and send Iranian fighters into Israel from Syria to attack cities in the north and east of Israel.



Iran’s backing of a coordinated group of Arab militias is ominous for Israel. In previous conflicts, the Soviet Union was the ultimate patron of Israel’s Arab enemies and was always able to pressure them to reach some type of accommodation or recognize a red line, said Bernard Hudson, a former counterterrorism chief for the Central Intelligence Agency.



“The Soviets never considered Israel a permanent foe,” he said. “Iran’s leadership clearly does.”



Corrections & Amplifications

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions. A photo caption in an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the group as Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. Also, a photo of Ismail Qaani, the leader of the IRGC’s international military arm, was incorrectly identified in a caption in an earlier version of this article as Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Corrected on Oct. 8)

[pixy0stix]

Meanwhile, Republicans begin to realize how their dysfunction is going to hurt not just the US, but others.

McCarthy Allies Criticize Far Right for Leaderless House as Israel Is Attacked

www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/us/politics/house-speaker-israel-jordan-scalise.html?unlocked_article_code=G3HcIPmFJnvXf7qX7RmJgj4hVl2aGDGLf_E_6NerURJl8iJtRBqLF0V2OxQ5_cABAngGNKrg2Hy7ymbQWDya2y04oIp5iYlrW0Go21GnMSIA6C2NgVhoNdbY_KnTPUErqSHNox9YKtaXxGLSC3jDrDuGK3xFdKPpdsAUazRqVUTHmy_7cGTs4x1vqLrWRTDHxpoR-veH6qPpM8yhN-NcoHgI1xzVlvGnbyRkxDNJtmPZ45BtGhdIF-FCEM9y9HL-iJ6uNXCymymuyyCAVgTwJGnQKdwPbqa1EpNCt1Pytp-cNufc23-JW9byQY3BgFpxWwMv8QAcHlBsO58McTMXdZiTSBNjMVuVkimOgF4KW7Xf&smid=nytcore-android-share

[underwaterrhymes]

Sharon Astyk shared this on Facebook. I think it’s probably the best response I’ve read.

Hi Folks. I just want to set down rules for any discussion of Isreal/Palestine/ProtoWWIII. Today is a Jewish religious holiday for me and I have family visiting. I'm going to be offline a lot. I truly expect you to behave yourself, and will shut down my whole page if I am needed to supervise you, rather than give up my family time.

Here are the rules.

1. MORE THAN ONE THING CAN BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME, INCLUDING BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY:

Jews were mass murdered over and over again and have a justifiable fear of being murdered again AND that fear has made us do horrifying things to the Palestinians over and over again that are not justified in any way.

Jews have lived in Israel for thousands of years, and have a historic claim to it AND we use religious language and assumptions that may be mythological to most. AND real Palestinian people lost their homes unfairly. More than one people can have a historic claim to the same place.

The Palestinians were cruelly displaced AND the Arab countries around declined to take them in even though they had kicked out hundreds of thousands Jews into Israel. Everyone was a fucking refugee, and refugees don't have good choices.

Gaza is a monstrous construction, a huge open air prison with horrific mistreatment of the Palestinians that is absolutely evil and wrong AND Palestinians keep choosing leadership that wants to murder all Jews.

Y'all live on stolen land, and have no intention of giving it back, but you want the Israelis to give back the land they stole and have lived on. AND When America is attacked we go on to conquer countries that weren't even involved, but when Israeli is attacked they should show more restraint. AND Israeli disproportionism in attacking civilians is reprehensible.

Israelis were attacked shamefully by Hamas during a religious holiday causing mass death, AND Israelis have engaged in colonial provocation and colonization is generally overthrown by violence.

Europe offloaded its "Jewish problem" to the Middle East rather than give up Bavaria for a Jewish homeland, which should have happened, and translated its profound and loathsome historic antisemitism into anti-Zionism (which are not the same things, but can be hard to sort out), AND Jews then created a situation so horrifying that many leftist Jews became anti-Zionist too.

This is a proxy conflict for a number of countries (and has been since before Israel existed - actually, pretty much for the entire history of the area for thousands of years) and is being played out in part in the lives of people who do not deserve it on both sides. And it should scare us all - not just for the victims, but for how this could light a larger fire.

You don't have to agree with me on any of these things, but I will not put up with any behavior here. Absolute rules.

1. If it is antisemitic or antimuslim or anti-Palestinian or racist in any way, you get banned. Yes, anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-semitism, but it is a fine fucking line, and if you aren't good at walking it, do it carefully. And if you want to make historic statements, get them right. With citations.

2. I don't care how justified you think Palestinian or Israeli violence is in the circumstances, if you argue that the sexual abuse of women, torture, parading naked corpses through the streets or mass bombing civilians BY ANYONE is an acceptable response, you have crossed the line. Those are war crimes.

3. This has more actors than just the Israelis and the Palestinians and has throughout everything. The technology for those drone strikes came from somewhere. The Israeli intelligence failures came from somewhere. Nations are choosing up sides in a proxy conflict, and that's dangerous as hell. Remember that - no one is acting alone here, so if you ascribe everything to one party, you are missing important stuff.

4. This is a climate change problem as well. There is a very good chance we are starting a global war over a place where NEITHER national group will be able to live in 50 years due to extreme heat and lack of water.

5. This is just fucking sad and awful and horrible. And the people who suffer the most will be the ones with the fewest choices and least power. And most of the people involved have no safe place to retreat to. This will be a long nightmare. It is fine to be sad and angry here. It is not fine to blanket blame any people, who all pretty much feel about their governments much the way we do about ours, and often don't have a lot of good choices.

Play nice or go bye bye.

[goldengirlz]

TW and @@

I’m not okay today. I finally stopped doom-scrolling a few hours ago but the videos/images/reports of women being brutalized and raped, children being taken hostage, bodies desecrated … it’s all just so much.

Of course it feels personal. The Jewish community, at the end of the day, is not that big. Many American Jews know Israeli or Israeli-American Jews. But I will say that the conversation on the left has been very nuanced. I asked my kid what they learned in Hebrew school today, and they said, “I hope this ends with the people in Gaza getting more rights.” It was not rah-rah Israel in our synagogue by any means. But we’re still hurting today.

It also looks like several American citizens are thought to be among the hostages. The U.S. is always involved when it comes to Israel, but I wonder whether holding American prisoners raises the stakes for us.

[mcppalmbeach]

underwaterrhymes can you please tell me where that was shared? I’d like to read more. Thank you.

[underwaterrhymes]

Oct 9, 2023 4:56:10 GMT -5 mcppalmbeach said:

underwaterrhymes can you please tell me where that was shared? I’d like to read more. Thank you.

Here is the link:

/?mibextid=cr9u03


I started following her relatively early in COVID times because she shared good and updated information.. She’s an environmentalist and raises chickens; keeps a garden.

She’s also a reasonable prepper. (Not the kind who stockpiles guns.) She believes community-mindedness is essential to surviving the global catastrophes that are happening and increasing with climate change. She shares a lot of Twitter links and links to news articles, though, that aren’t necessarily the most reliable if you decide to start following. (Just a heads up.)

[bee20]

I'm concerned about this blockade being imposed on the Gaza strip. Quotes from Netanyahu include "No food, no water, no fuel, no electricity" and "we have only just begun". Gaza of course has been under blockade for years, but this sounds like a huge increase in the suffering of the people living there.

[fryjack2]

Oct 9, 2023 14:55:42 GMT -5 bee20 said:

I'm concerned about this blockade being imposed on the Gaza strip. Quotes from Netanyahu include "No food, no water, no fuel, no electricity" and "we have only just begun". Gaza of course has been under blockade for years, but this sounds like a huge increase in the suffering of the people living there.

This is not new.  Happens all the time.  Electricity is turned off at random.  Water is cut off and then clean water is an issue. Fuel is not allowed past the checkpoints.  Food is not either.  Medical care is restricted-either medical crews are not allowed into Gaza, those who are ill are not allowed to travel to hospitals elsewhere, ambulances are not allowed in our out, supplies are not allowed in, hospitals are demolished or bulldozed, schools are demolished or bulldozed, roads are not allowed to be traveled on if you are Palestinian, you can't come and go from Gaza if you are Palestinian and the process to get approval to leave is asinine and the whim of the guard on.  Even if you are going to work.  You can wait hours just to be told no, you can't leave that day.  The list of inhumane, racist, colonizing practices goes on and on. 

And the world repeatedly turns a blind eye. 

Yet, Palestinians are told that we are the ones causing our own suffering.  People in Gaza have almost zero ability to improve their lives because they can't even get basic supplies. They are not free. They are not allowed access to normal basic human rights.  And the rationale Israel uses is "it may be a terrorist wanting to go to the hospital." or "we heard there might be some terrorist wanting to do something so we are shutting off electricity."

Videos from inside the occupied territories of the treatment of Palestinians are not great. But the world doesn't see those. 

When your people and community is treated the way it is, your children are killed ( more have been killed by Israel in Gaza this year, and even in this conflict than Hamas has killed. Not that either justifies the other, but neither is innocent here), your family members murdered, your already crappy living conditions routinely bombed, and your hope of a better life is basically nonexistent, you can see how and why uprisings occur.  

[fryjack2]

My Palestinian friends in Palestine who have posted video of murdered Palestinian children and destroyed homes are being called awful things for daring to show what Israel has done. Being told they are trying to justify what Hamas did when they are sharing that the horror is happening on both sides and innocent people in both places are suffering.

Yet, I know that the vast majority of you and the world are only hearing about and seeing images of Israel and that the narrative is very heavily skewed. Israel is far far from innocent in this but knows it can say its the victim all the time and the world condemns what they do but doesn't actually do anything to truly enforce anything to punish Israel for its actions. Its been happening the 4 decades I've been alive. I see it and my family in Palestine live it.

***I am not endorsing Hamas or their actions. I am calling out both sides for their actions and the media for its racism and controlling the narrative.

[fryjack2]

goldengirlz. I cried reading your last post. I don’t want to quote you in case you don’t want me to. Learning that there are Jewish people advocating for human rights for those in Gaza, even when it may not be the popular opinion is not something I hear often.

[Deleted]

[mention]fryjack2 [/mention] thanks for sharing your experiences and your viewpoint. I agree that the US media is only showing one side, and it’s frustrating.

The US response, especially the military response, is making me very nervous.

[aurora]

fryjack2 and goldengirlz, I'm thinking of you both today. The news is terrifying and not getting better, it feels.

[wildrice]

fryjack2, thank you for sharing the experiences of your friends and family. I've seen passing mentions of the suffering of the people of Gaza in the media, but you are absolutely right that the media is mostly focused on the suffering of the people of Israel. Although I wish your people were not impacted, I appreciate you sharing this important side of the story.

goldengirlz, I am also sorry this is impacting you emotionally, and same goes for any other people of the Jewish faith here.

My heart aches for the people who are caught in the middle of all of this. Nobody deserves what is happening in that region right now.

[basilosaurus]

And I just got a prayers and thoughts for people of Israel. From an American military friend.

Sure, yes, but also include all civilian victims!

[icedcoffee]

fryjack2, Thank you for sharing your experiences. Prayers for all the victims. <3

[shauni27]

I just feel so upset by the civilians being harmed. I wish everyone could stop pointing at who did what first or what retaliation is appropriate and just have peace. It breaks my heart for everyone involved.

[hermione]

I have a former co-worker in Jerusalem. She's been planning this trip for as long as I've known her - about 10 years. Her posts, while calm, are scary. They are going to try to get to Jordan today to come home.

[mcsangel2]

Oct 10, 2023 9:06:47 GMT -5 hermione said:

I have a former co-worker in Jerusalem. She's been planning this trip for as long as I've known her - about 10 years. Her posts, while calm, are scary. They are going to try to get to Jordan today to come home.

I thought the borders were closed? Are they letting tourists out?

[dcrunnergirl52]

Oct 10, 2023 10:02:14 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

Oct 10, 2023 9:06:47 GMT -5 hermione said:

I have a former co-worker in Jerusalem. She's been planning this trip for as long as I've known her - about 10 years. Her posts, while calm, are scary. They are going to try to get to Jordan today to come home.

I thought the borders were closed? Are they letting tourists out?

Yes, they are letting tourists out. A friend's teenage daughter was in Israel on a birthright trip with a group. She got on a plane today to fly to Istanbul, then London and then home to the US.

[jamaicam]

fryjack2, thank you so much for sharing. I am thinking of you and all of the other posters who are affected by this on a personal level. I hate the innocent civilians on both sides are being targeted.

There is a lot of sympathy in my country for the Palestinians, and recognition that the world's media is not balanced. It is such a complicated situation and the media likes to try and simplify it as good versus evil.