JERUSALEM – New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed solidarity with Israelis threatened by Hamas rockets on Sunday in a daylong trip to Israel that included visits to two towns targeted by the Islamic militant movement in recent weeks.
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(Photo: AP Images / Office of Mayor Bloomberg)In this photo provided by the Office of Mayor Bloomberg, Asaf Shariv, left, Israel's Consul General to New York, shows New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg a rocket Shariv says was fired at the city of Sderot, Israel, from the Gaza Strip, during a meeting in the mayor's office Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008. On the same day the two met, Muslim and Palestinian groups planned to hold a demonstration outside the Israeli Consulate in New York to protest Israel's bombings in Gaza.
During the visit to the embattled town of Sderot, Bloomberg and his party, which included Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, were briefly hustled to a bomb shelter when a missile warning went off.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Bloomberg said he fully understood Israel's actions. "You should rest assured, if anyone in New York was being threatened, my instruction to the NYPD (New York police) would be to use all the resources at their disposal to protect civilians," Bloomberg said.
"I think as a New Yorker, we've been attacked twice by al-Qaida itself," said the mayor, who is Jewish. "We've seen enormous devastation and courage and after that you sort of feel you have a bond, if you will, for those who live in a dangerous world and subject to someone trying to kill them."
Israel is in the ninth day of its strikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have killed more than 500 Palestinians. Ground forces pushed into Gaza Saturday night amid widespread world condemnation.
Bloomberg blamed the current situation entirely on the militant Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip and began launching rockets against Israeli towns in the south after its six-month truce with Israel lapsed last month.
"All Hamas has to do is stop sending rockets over to kill people and agree on the accords that were negotiated earlier and come to an agreement that is verifiable, durable and effective to stop people from being killed," he added.
Ghazi Khankan, a spokesman for the New York chapter of the American Muslim Alliance, said Bloomberg "was elected as mayor of New York City and not of Tel Aviv. He should represent all New Yorkers, not one segment of the population."
Khankan added, "He should call for peace negotiations, not for supporting the Israeli side against the Palestinian side. He should be wise enough to realize that there is no military solution. There must be a political solution."
International criticism of Israel has centered on the civilian deaths that have accompanied the attacks on Hamas and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where food, water and electricity are in short supply.
Ackerman, who accompanied Bloomberg to the southern Israeli towns of Ashkelon and Sderot, said the onus of the civilian deaths was on Hamas for using them as human shields.
"They have been the main victimizers of the innocent Palestinian people by inviting these kinds of attacks," said Ackerman, who chairs the House subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.
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Associated Press writer Karen Mattews in New York contributed to the report.
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No, because most of the Gaza civilians who have been tortured are our Palestinian brothers and sisters of the Orthodox church.
That is the reason why the western media do not pick up on the story. For fear of inciting the atheist and agnostic.
Please check on the numbers of Christian living in Gaza before and AFTER Hamas take over in 2007
Because it's none of our business. (sarcasm intended)
Having read of the many cold-blooded murders that Hamas is responsible for against its own people...Palestinian Gazans (stemming from fears that these do not agree with its ideology)...leads me to wonder...really wonder and shudder at the indifference from Western Media on this very subject. Why on earh do they not report on this?!
Hangings, cold-blooded torture, hangings and murder in animal slaughterhouses! dragging of corpses (living or dead) in the streets...etc.
How can western media not report on this, and how can they live with themselves...when hiding the reality that is Hamas!
Both the Nazis and the Stalinists are known for the cruelty that they perpetrated on their own civilians...and yet our Western media remains silent on the methods of Hamas against its own population!
How ghastly and truly horrible for westerners to live in such ignorance, perpetrated by their own media.
What is our media hoping to gain from this silence?! Is this not utter blasphemy against our own western values?
Is this not betrayal of our societies as well?
Having read of the many cold blooded murders that Hamas is responsible for against its own people…Palestinian Gazans(stemming from fears that these do not agree with its ideology)..
….makes me wonder …really wonder and shudder at the indifference from Western media on this very subject. Why on earth do they not report this!
Hangings,cold blooded torture in slaughterhouses! dragging of corpses in the streets..etc.
How can western media reporters live with themselves!
Both the Nazis and the Stalinists are known for the cruelty that they perpetrated on their own civilians…and yet our Western media remains silent on Hamass methods against its own population! How ghastly and truly horrible for westerners to live in such ignorance, perpetrated by their own media.
What are they hoping to gain from this silence?! Is this not utter blasphemy to our own Western values…
Khankan added, "He should call for peace negotiations, not for supporting the Israeli side against the Palestinian side.
The Paletinian's danced in the streets as the twin towers in New York fell.
I understand why Mr. Bloomberg feels he has the right to side with Israel.