Brave good soldiers! They used children as human shields

Israel's judicial and military system yet again shows how appalling it is - despite all the chest-beating and boasting about the IDF being the most moral army in the world, Israel being a democracy and applying the Rule of Law.

Abby Zimmet explains in CommonDreams:

"Though the Goldstone Report cited them for committing war crimes, two Israeli soldiers who used a nine-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield - forcing him to open bags they thought held explosives during the assault on Gaza - each got three-month suspended sentences today, and slight demotions. Israeli lawmakers promptly appealed for a pardon, even though the practice is said to be common. Noted the boy, Majed Rabah, now 11, "If an Israeli child was exposed to the same thing, the whole world would have turned against us. But when it's a Palestinian child, nothing happens." Wise child.

''It's over!'' shouted the soldiers after the sentence was handed down. ''Now all we want is to get plane tickets and to join our friends, who are waiting for us abroad. We've gone through something terrible and we just want to forget about it all."

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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