Posted on 02/19/2009 1:45:35 PM PST by presidio9
US Senator John Kerry made a rare visit to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip on Thursday, but stressed this did not reflect a change of policy towards the territory's Islamist rulers listed by Washington as a terror group.
The visit "does not indicate any shift whatsoever with respect to Hamas," said Kerry, who heads the Senate's powerful foreign relations committee.
His first stop in the impoverished Palestinian enclave was the American school left in ruins by the deadly 22-day Israeli offensive that ended on January 18.
Talking to a Palestinian lawyer amid the dust and rubble, Kerry defended Israel for responding to almost daily rocket attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.
"Your political leadership needs to understand that any nation that has rockets coming into it over many years, threatening its citizens, is going to respond," Kerry told Shar Habeel al-Zaim.
Kerry briefly toured Izzbet Abed Rabbo, a northern Gaza community ravaged by the Israeli offensive and held talks with UN officials in Gaza City.
His visit coincided with a similar trip by Democratic US representatives Brian Baird and Keith Ellison, who expressed dismay at the plight of the overpopulated coastal strip.
"The amount of physical destruction and the depth of human suffering here is staggering," Baird said in a statement issued jointly with Ellison.
The visits were the first by US officials in more than three years.
None of the congressmen met with Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June 2007 and which Washington blacklists as a terrorist organisation.
"There is nothing in a visit that changes anything," said Kerry, who is also scheduled to visit Syria as part of a regional tour.
"What has to change is behaviour. What has to change obviously is Hamas's consistent resort to instruments of terror,"
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The letter was received by the U.N., addressed to John Effen Kerry, and was delivered to him. The letter is from Hamas. So far, no one’s talking about the contents of the letter or how the U.N. came to be in possession of it.
Another POS that is fit only to be indicted and tried for treason.
Probably. However, most American Jews did not care about Israel when they voted. They voted based on the economy and their sniveling substitution of liberalism for Judaism.
That is a dark, hideous, completely philosophically consistent suggestion.
I am always in favor of those who promote "survival of the fittest" as the explanation for life on Earth to live by their own credo, and kill off the weaker members of their tribe (or at least stop feeding off the successful for the benefit of the inferior).
Somehow, they always discover Christian charity when it comes time to apply Darwinism to their particular power base.
Who’s the woman to the right of Kerry in the picture? (post #10)
I sure hope she is not American. I cannot tolerate liberal American women who espouse pro-choice feminism in the US of A, yet when they go over to to the radical Islamic world, they race for the towels like they’re running to the going out of business sale at Linens and Things. I just want them to be consistent, if you’re a feminist here, be one there.
He does a lot of sitting on those slugs of rice.
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