Stories of Wounded Hamas Fighter

Two broken legs and a dead brother are not enough to give Abdullah cause to think twice about his line of work: a fighter in the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
A fresh-faced 23-year-old, Abdullah – as he asks to be called – lies on sheets speckled with blood, his two legs stretched before him in casts with pins at Kamal Edwan Hospital, north of Gaza City.

“There is no need for an answer,” Abdullah tells the FT when asked whether he will fight again. “For sure I will fight again. And when I recover, I want to get married and have babies so that they can become Palestinian fighters like me and continue down the same track,” he says, adding that he joined the Brigades when he was still a child.

“We are fighting those people who are occupying our land. We want to send them a message that we will never forget the Al-Aqsa mosque,” he says, referring to the Jerusalem shrine, the third most revered by Muslims. “Those Palestinian women and children who were killed, they were not killed in vain.”

Abdullah is one of the foot soldiers that make up Hamas’s military brigade, believed to contain up to 15,000 fighters. Abdullah was injured while helping Hamas fighters launch rockets – only helping, he insists – from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, when he was hit by a missile from an Israeli drone.

Another Hamas fighter, who calls himself Abu Mohammad, is similarly defiant. “Israel did not achieve any of its goals. Israel did not weaken the power of Hamas,” he says. “Israel did not hurt Hamas much because most of the people they killed were civilians,” he says.

He explains that he works as a state policeman by day, and as a Hamas fighter by night. After five years of training, he says he knows how to do “everything” from run-of-the mill rocket launching to sniper shooting and organising ambushes.

Admitting that the price is high – his brother and several friends were killed – Abu Mohammad nevertheless says this is the price of Palestine.

“Hamas is an Islamic organisation planning for an Islamic renaissance,” he says, still wearing his police fatigues. “We are raising the flag that there is no god but Allah and that there is one holy land, and it is Hamas that will liberate it.”

Tunnel War History That Inspired Hamas

Afghanistan

Tora Bora Tunnel

Financed by the CIA and created by the mujahideen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Tora Bora complex contains miles of tunnels, bunkers and fortified caves. Close to the White Mountain range near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, the complex is where Osama bin Laden is believed to have hidden with 1,000 Taliban fighters. The caves and passages apparently have ventilation and power systems running on electric generators.

Gibraltar

The galleries

Inside the Rock of Gibraltar is a honeycomb of tunnels known as the galleries. The first passages were built during the great siege in 1779-1783, when Spanish troops attacked the Rock. Soldiers from the garrison dug through the stone to a promontory on the north face, which allowed them to fire on the Spanish below. In total, 304m of halls, passages and openings were created. More tunnels were added during the second world war when the British feared Gibraltar would be attacked. The tunnel system was expanded and the rock became a keystone in the defence of shipping routes to the Mediterranean.

Bosnia

Sarajevo tunnel

In 1993, citizens in Sarajevo began constructing a 1.5m high, 800m long underground passage. Their city was under siege from Serbian forces and the tunnel led to the UN-designated neutral area of Sarajevo airport. Bosnian volunteers worked in eight-hour shifts using picks and shovels to create a way for food, aid and weapons to come into the city, and people to escape. The tunnel was most famously used to transport the former Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic in his wheelchair out of the city.


Vietnam

Cu Chi and Vinh Moc tunnels

During the Vietnam war American soldiers came up against the Viet Cong's Cu Chi tunnels. This huge system of underground passages stretched from the Cambodian border in the west to the outskirts of Saigon, running below the jungles of Vietnam. Used to mount surprise attacks against US troops, the tiny tunnels led to subterranean rooms, some of which were big enough to be used as hospitals, arms stores and even theatres. The first passages were built during the 1948 war of independence with France to link villages. Later, the Viet Cong painstakingly expanded them by hand until they covered 250km. To attack the tunnels, the US created a volunteer force made up of soldiers small enough to fit down the passages. After negotiating hidden traps of sharpened bamboo spikes, they had to fight their enemy in the tunnels. The complex has now become a war memorial park.
Under the former demilitarised zone that ran between the communist north and capitalist south, lie the Vinh Moc tunnels. They were built to shelter people from the intense bombing of the area and included wells, kitchens, rooms for each family and spaces for healthcare. Around 60 families lived in them - and as many as 17 children were born inside.

Jersey

War tunnels

Created during the German occupation of the island in the second world war, these tunnels were built by more than 5,000 slave labourers brought to Jersey. Many of the Russians, Poles, Frenchmen and Spaniards died of malnutrition or disease. Originally constructed as an ammunition store and artillery barracks, the tunnels were later converted to a casualty clearing station as D-Day drew nearer.

Poland

Stalag Luft III

Immortalised in the film the Great Escape, Tom, Dick and Harry were the tunnels created by the prisoners of the Stalag Luft III camp in Poland. Work on the tunnels began in 1942 and during the night of March 24, 1944, 76 inmates managed to escape down a 101m tunnel. All but three of the men were recaptured; the Gestapo shot 50 and returned the remainder to captivity.

France

Catacombs

Organised in a section of Paris's vast network of subterranean tunnels, the catacombs were a tourist attraction in the early 19th century. This cemetery covers a portion of Paris' former mines near the Left Bank's Place Denfert-Rochereau. During the second world war, both Parisian members of the French resistance and German soldiers used the tunnels.

full article in guardian.co.uk images from tripandom.com

Working or Training

Last week my big boss held an review meeting for presenting the data about 2008 achievement and employee performance. The presentation involved all the group member under IT in big meeting room. As you all know that my big boss is senior person in IT, especially in Telecommunication IT in Indonesia. He's career is started in 1980 until now, that makes him almost 30 years experienced in IT.

There are several thing that being highlighted in the meeting, one of them is training man days. He presented the overall man days for training in IT group, then break down to get the average man days for training and the last thing is to preview who's the training man (the man with longest training man days) in last year. The normal training man days for a year is about 5 to 7 man days per year.

Last year I attended several training both in IT technical and non-technical training. Several non-technical training that I have joined were training for trainers and Making Attractive Visualization training.

The technical training that I have join is, Siebel CRM System and Billing Mediation and Rating training. Several training is just an free lunch session with vendor, such as Over The Air Provisioning and Oracle. :)

BTW, some of Siebel CRM training materials could be found in siebelcrmmaterials.com or it.toolbox.com.

Komentar Artis Hollywood Terhadap Pembantaian di Palestina

“Orang Arab adalah sumber terorisme di dunia yang ada sekarang ini. Mereka menyerang orang tanpa menyisakan satu orang pun. Saya harap Israel mengancurkan mereka.”

TOM CRUISE - (Mission Impossible, The Last Samurai)

“Keduanya, baik Palestina ataupun Israel, salah. Mereka harus menghentikan perang ini.”

WILL SMITH - (Ali, Men In Black)

“Bush, Sharon, Blair, dan Rice adalah nama-nama yang akan dikutuk sejarah sepanjang masa.”

GEORGE CLOONEY - (Ocean's Eleven, Batman & Robin)

“Bangsa Arab dan orang Islam bukan teroris. Dunia harus bersatu melawan Israel.”

ANGELINA JOLIE - (Lara Croft)

“Bangsa Arab hanya parasit untuk dunia ini, dan mereka harus ditumpas habis.”

RICHARD GERE - (Pretty Woman)

“Kita selama ini hanya berkata dari sudut pandang yang mempunyai kekuatan, bagaimana kalau kita ada di posisi yang lemah?”

SEAN CONNERY - (James Bond)

“Zionis adalah sumber kehancuran. Saya berharap saya bisa melawan mereka.”

MELL GIBSON - (Lethal Weapon, Brave Heart)

“Coba pelajari sejenak sejarah Yahudi, maka Anda akan tahu, siapa yang sebenarnya teroris.”

AL PACINO - (The Godfather)

“Kemanusiaan akan bisa ditegakan di dunia jika negara Israel sudah berdiri.”

DUSTIN HOFMAN - (Tootsie)

“Kita sekarang hidup di zaman di mana yang kuat memakan yang lemah. Kita tak lebih baik daripada bangsa Arab.”

RALPH FIENNES (Shakespeare In Love)

“Jika bangsa Arab kuat, mereka akan menghancurkan dunia. Maka sekarang, kita harus menghancurkan mereka.”

KEANU REEVES - (Speed, Matrix)

“Bangsa Arab lebih hina daripada binatang, dan kita Yahudi adalah bangsa terpilih. Tak ada lagi pertanyaan mengenai hal itu…”

HARRISON FORD - (Indiana Jones, Air Force One)

dari eramuslim.com

Demonstrasi Kami Didengar

Hari ini mendapat berita tentang tanggapan Dubes Israel di Singapura terkait dengan unjuk rasa besar-besaran di Indonesia, berita itu dibuat di vivanews.com. Dubes Israel untuk Singapura sampai memuat sebuah halaman di Web kementerian luar negeri Israel yang dibuat dalam bahasa Indonesia dan ditujuan khusus untuk warga Indonesia.

Dalam situs tersebut pihak Israel mengemukakan argumennya bahwa yang dilakukannya saat ini di Gaza adalah operasi militer untuk para pemberontak. Pihak Israel menyalahkan Hamas yang selalu menyerang Israel dengan roket dan serangan bom bunuh diri, serta berargumen bahwa jika hamas tidak melawan maka negara Palestina sudah berdiri sejak lama.

Jujur saja, saya teringat foto seorang gadis kecil Palestina yang rumahnya dibom beberapa hari yang lalu di Jalur Gaza, berikut fotonya...

Silakan Israel mau berkata apapun di media apapun. Walaupun setiap media massa di Amerika dan Eropa mendukung Israel, media Indonesia tetap tampil dengan luar biasa, bahkan TVOne memberangkatkan reporternya di Palestina dan bekerjasama dengan Al Jazeera untuk menyiarkan apa yang terjadi di Jalur Gaza (Selamat untuk Ust. Sarwat dan rekan-rekan warnaislam.com atas prestasinya, selangkah lagi menuju media Internasional).

Rekan-rekan di media sudah berikan apa yang mereka bisa, warga Indonesia sudah berikan apa yang kami bisa lewat kecaman dan demonstrasi damai besar-besaran yang kami selenggarakan. Semoga rakyat Palestina bisa mendapatkan kemenangan dan kemerdekaan layaknya pejuang Indonesia di Surabaya yang berjuang sampai titik darah penghabisan.

Saya akan berikan keadilan
(Khalifah Umar bin Abdul Aziz 3 hari sebelum mengakhiri masa pemerintahannya)