Civilians

In her op-ed, Laila El-Haddad ("Palestinians betrayed by Judge Goldstone," April 18) displays the mind-set of someone who believes that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, is blameless in its purposeful attacks on Israeli civilians. While Judge Goldstone recently noted "that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy by Israel," he cannot say the same for Hamas. He states, "That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

With the city retirement system short hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, officials say they are likely to begin requiring municipal employees to contribute to their pensions. "Pretty much everyone is in agreement that it's fair," said Carl Stokes, chairman of the City Council's finance committee. "Those who are benefiting from the pensions should be contributing to them. " The finance committee is scheduled to hear testimony Thursday on a proposal by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to require thousands of civilian employees to begin making contributions.

The Hamas government in Gaza backtracked Saturday on its apology earlier in the week in which it expressed regret for harming Israeli civilians in rocket attacks. The apology had signaled a rare deviation from Hamas' violent ideology, and the subsequent zigzag reflects the Islamic militants' conflicting objectives. Hamas, which seized Gaza by force in 2007, is trying to reach out to the West in hopes of winning recognition and getting Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza. However, Hamas is also reluctant to discard its violent ideology for fear of losing credibility at home.

Rep. Donna F. Edwards slipped into the F-35 cockpit - a stationary demonstration model - and gave the jet a simulated spin, trying out the controls, shooting down enemy aircraft over the Chesapeake Bay and executing a celebratory roll. "This feels so cool ," said Edwards, a Prince George's County Democrat. "OK, let's land this thing - give somebody else a chance. " This hands-on version of show and tell, held in Linthicum on Thursday, is part of a public-relations campaign for the most expensive weapons program in the nation's history.

The Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the University of Delaware have entered into a cooperative research and development agreement to collaborate on an orthopedic rehabilitation project that will improve rehabilitative care for wounded warriors and civilians. Entitled "Enhanced Locomotion for Limb Salvage Patients: Optimal Dorsiflexion Resistance Ankle-Foot Orthoses," the joint project will generate personalized rehabilitation devices (orthopedic braces) for wounded warriors who receive treatment at Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs medical treatment facilities, as well as civilians.

How is it really going in Afghanistan? In his recent testimony before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus reported substantial if fragile progress and conveyed a can-do attitude reflecting confidence about our prospects. Yet press reports and other organizations and individuals on the ground seem to grow more dispirited by the month. Are they looking at the same war? They are. But they apply very different standards, and so they reach very different conclusions. Soldiers are trained and equipped to fight.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO forces said yesterday that they were investigating reports that 25 Afghan civilians were killed in overnight airstrikes in southern Afghanistan. The mounting civilian casualty toll in Afghanistan is eroding public support for the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. After the report of the latest deaths, Karzai told the BBC that accidental killings and injuries of civilians at the hands of coalition forces are "difficult for us to accept or understand."

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has enlarged its ever-swelling roster of Desert Storm heroes by more than 4,000 civilians -- and potentially many more than that.The list includes comedians Jay Leno, Steve Martin and Bob Hope, and even Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams.According to an announcement yesterday, medals will be awarded to thousands of civilians for supporting the Persian Gulf war effort. They include entertainers and others who supported troops through the United Service Organizations, Red Cross and civil reserve air fleet, and Defense Department civilians who spent "any time" in the Persian Gulf through April 11.Officials said this includes Mr. Williams, who toured the region four times with his boss, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, but otherwise spent the war fighting reporters at the Pentagon.

ACRE, Israel -- The last mourners were saying goodbye to Shimon Zribi and his young daughter, Mazal, their shrouded bodies buried side by side in dirt the color of henna. A few feet away, down a rocky hillside, women were already sobbing over another dead man, Albert Ben-Abu. One funeral hadn't even ended when another began. Israel yesterday buried its dead, killed a day earlier in the Jewish state's single bloodiest day in more than three weeks of fighting. Five of the dead were residents of this northern coastal city who had emerged from bomb shelters, thinking the coast was clear, only to be cut down by Hezbollah rocket fire; the other three were Israeli Arab youths who had leapt from their car for safety, only to take the direct hit that left not a scratch on their vehicle.

MOSCOW -- After weeks of trying to persuade civilians to flee Grozny, Russian officials said yesterday that residents had missed their chance to leave and should hide in their shelters until Russian forces have secured the Chechen capital. Yesterday's warning was a fresh indication that the climactic battle for the city is finally at hand. It was also a somber reminder that Russian forces are determined to quickly subdue Grozny even if it means fighting in a city still occupied by tens of thousands of civilians.

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, we heard strong proclamations from the president that "justice will be served. " It should be. Our spirit of justice is based on the principle that punishment should outweigh any benefit derived from perpetrating crime - a premise that has guided our nation since its earliest days. However, we expect more. The punishment should be harsh enough to send a strong message to others that they, too, will suffer if they attempt to hurt the American people.

A 19-year-old naturalized American citizen is accused of committing a crime of violence in the United States, and a gaggle of elected officials are urging for him to be treated as an enemy combatant and placed in the hands of the military. Not just the usual right-wing suspects but Rep. Peter King, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. John McCain are leading the chorus. Thankfully, President Barack Obama did not listen, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged in his hospital bed today by federal officials with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property.

Fort Meade announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with the union representing Department of Defense employees on how proposed civilian furloughs will be handled. Civilian employees face up to 22 days of furlough - about a 20 percent pay reduction - after lawmakers failed to reach a budget deal to stop $85 billion in automatic spending cuts this year called the sequester. Furlough notices to civilians could be issued sometime between Thursday and Monday, according to Fort Meade.

When city school police officer Joseph Baribeault attempted to arrest two combative students at the old Greenspring Middle School, he ended up injured at the bottom of two flights of concrete stairs. Even though the city has acknowledged his disabilities from the incident, he has been left without pay and benefits for being injured in the line of duty — all because members of the School Police Force are classified as civilians in Baltimore's pension system "In July, I got a life-saving award, and months later, I'm on food stamps," said Baribeault, 36, who retired this year because of his injuries after seven years on the force.

The vast majority of civilian defense employees face a 20 percent pay cut from April through September if looming federal budget reductions aren't averted, a move that will hit Maryland harder than almost every other state, the Pentagon warned Wednesday. The Department of Defense notified Congress that affected employees would be furloughed without pay one day a week for 22 weeks. The agency estimated a $359 million hit to the paychecks of those working in Maryland - trailing only Virginia and California.

Janice Jackson remembers being a 20-something flirting with the young men who worked at the Baltimore rehabilitation center where she visited her brother as he was recovering from a car accident that left him paralyzed. Three years later, they would be the same attendants responsible for bathing her after she was hit by a car and paralyzed. The men hadn't done anything wrong, said Jackson, now 53, but she felt humiliated by a loss of dignity. That experience, Jackson said, revealed her life's purpose and led her to the White House on Friday, where President Barack Obama recognized her with the nation's second-highest civilian honor, the Citizens Medal, for the network she built to help hundreds of disabled women in Maryland feel empowered, beautiful and capable of dreaming.

Army officials at Fort Meade say they will lay off about 40 permanent employees and 10 temporary workers late this year because of restructuring and budget cuts.The layoffs will be part of an overall force reduction that will cut 136 civilian Army positions at the base. In addition to the layoffs, the other jobs will be eliminated by moving workers to new positions or leaving vacancies unfilled, Fort Meade spokesman Don McClow said.The cuts are expected to save approximately $7 million a year.

HERAT, Afghanistan -- The number of civilians killed in bombing by foreign forces Tuesday night was much higher than the official figure of 21 and might rise as high as 80, residents reached by telephone said yesterday. The residents' tally differed from that given by Ezatullah, a government administrator of the Sangin region who uses one name. He said he had spent four to five hours in the village of Sarwan Qala yesterday and that the civilian death toll remained 21. The U.S. military has stood by its original statement, in which it said it called in the airstrikes on Taliban insurgents after a 16-hour battle and destroyed three militant compounds.

As many as 240 AmeriCorps members will relocate to East Baltimore's Graceland Park neighborhood in the coming months, as the domestic version of the Peace Corps establishes an urban campus, the first of its kind. The classrooms at the former Sacred Heart of Mary School will be transformed into dormitories that will house the National Civilian Community Corps, an AmeriCorps unit that deploys teams of 18- to 24-year-olds to work with community groups and individuals in schools and parks as well as disaster areas.

Op-ed contributor G. Jefferson Price recently quoted the "prominent" Israeli journalist Gideon Levy to support his argument that an Israeli invasion of Gaza would be unwise ("For Israel, it's different this time," Nov. 20). Mr. Levy is better described as a vocal, radical journalist who represents a small group of radical Israeli leftists. He views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a very narrow, one-sided, biased prism. For him, the ultimate truth is that Israel is always the aggressor and the Palestinians are always the victims.