India launches Israeli spy satellite

[outsider]

This was sent to me by Southasia Forum. I tried to find it on the Times of India site, so I could post a direct link, but what do you know!!!! they appear to have pulled it! (Maybe they've taken a leaf out of Larry Silverstein's book) -

Palestinians dismayed by India's launching of Israeli spy satellite.
From fake non-alignment to naked US boot licking by India.

ASIAN AGE
By Seema Mustafa
New Delhi, Jan. 24: The Palestinian reaction to the UPA government’s decision to launch Israel’s spy satellite is one of "deep dismay and disappointment". The coordinator of Ittijah, a network of Palestinian non-governmental groups based at Haifa, Israel, Mr Ameer Makhoul, told this newspaper over the telephone that the Palestinians "are very very disappointed from the Indian government that has launched this satellite of Israel. India used to be supporting the Palestinians, the victims, and not Israel, the aggressor. We are very unhappy the Indian government has forgotten its relations with us. This scares us."
Mr Makhoul said that the news of India’s help in launching the spy satellite was all over the Arab and Israeli media. He said it had come as a major shock to the Palestinians who had always counted India as its friends in the world. "Israel is using India now, and we are very scared about that as Palestinians," he said. Mr Makhoul said that he was sure that the people of India were still supporting them, adding that now Israel "has the satellite sent up from India but they cannot break the Palestinians, we will never give up".
He said there was deep disappointment about the Indian government’s silence about the Israeli blockade of Gaza. "They have placed us in a concentration camp, to starve and die without food and medicines," he said. Mr Makhoul said that the breaking of the wall between Egypt and Gaza was a "people’s movement" and that no force could stop them.
He regretted, however, the complete silence from governments like India, who "we had always considered to be our friends". He said that the silence in itself was in fact "encouragement for Israel to continue its crimes". The Palestinians, he added, had always seen India "in a different place, and never in the same space as the aggressors, it used to be supporting the people, not the forces occupying our land". The government, he added, should remember that.
Ittijah was set up in 1995 and has acquired a high inter-Palestinian profile since then as it has played a major role in bringing Palestinian civil society groups together in the region. Mr Makhoul is a well-respected Palestinian whose voice carries weight among the Palestinians. His is just one of the many voices from the region questioning the role of the Indian government in the recent crisis. "We just could not believe that India had helped Israel to launch its spy satellite," Mr Makhoul said, pointing out that the Palestinian leaders and activists will soon come out with a statement calling on the international community to speak up for the victims, and not the aggressors as they are doing at the moment.
The Stop the Wall campaign, that has been working relentlessly to highlight efforts to "ghetto-ise" the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza through this wall, has linked the current blockade of Gaza to the Annapolis negotiations and the visit of US President George W. Bush to the region. The silence of the world, and particularly "friends" like India, has come in for sharp comment by Palestinians individually and collectively, maintaining, "While the world sits by in silent complicity, Palestinians will nor surrender and allow themselves to be abused, but will break down the wall with their own hands." They point out that the heads of government "are having to twist and turn ever more frantically to avoid confronting the truth that is obvious to everyone: the Israeli occupation is committing a war crime in Gaza with the complicity of the US". The Indian government, for the first time, is being included by the Palestinians in their list of those who are supporting Israel.
Meanwhile, in a statement made available here by its mission, the Egyptian ministry of foreign affairs, referring to the Rafah crossing, said that the government had sent 40 lorries of food and medicines into Gaza Strip to "ease the humanitarian situation faced by the Palestinian brothers resulting from the Israeli attacks and measures". It urged the Palestinians not to "pressure Egypt" and said it will reiterate its "absolute rejection of the punitive Israeli measures against the population of Gaza as being contrary to international law" at the emergency session of the UN Security Council.

[TonyGosling]

Yer quite right Outsider. Under current pre-war conditions the Iranians have every right to blow it out of the sky.