Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: pchr

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Monday, January 04, 2021

Amnesty and other NGOs actually want Palestinians to die - as long as Israel will be blamed. (And they consider Palestinians to be too stupid to make their own decisions.)

A couple of weeks ago, a series of NGOs including the Amnesty, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B'Tselem and even two Palestinian human rights organizations issued a press release demanding that Israel provide vaccines for Palestinians.

They use poor arguments, most of which I debunked in last night's webcast, but one of them deserves more attention - because it shows how bigoted these groups are against Palestinians.

We express grave concerns about media reports that the Russian-developed vaccine will be delivered to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA has not fully indicated which vaccines it aims to purchase and distribute, although it has made clear that it does not have sufficient funds and capabilities to purchase the necessary vaccinations. Israel cannot transfer a vaccine which is not approved for its own citizens. Such a step would violate the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations and the long-standing policy of the Israeli Ministry of Health to only allow the distribution of medicines in the OPT which have undergone the necessary scientific and regulatory procedures. Although the Paris Protocol has come under criticism in the past for, inter alia, obliging the PA to import medications that are beyond its financial reach, as long as it is binding, Israel cannot import a vaccine that it has not approved for its own population and send it to the occupied population. Israel must ensure that the vaccines delivered to Palestinians in the OPT, also meet the approvals of the Israeli health system, and that these vaccines be purchased and delivered as soon as possible.

What does the Paris Protocol say?

...Both sides will maintain the same import policy (various exceptions) and regulations including classification, valuation and other customs procedures, which are based on the principles governing international codes, and the same policies of import licensing and of standards for imported goods, all as applied by Israel with respect to its importation. Israel may from time to time introduce changes in any of the above, provided that changes in standard requirements will not constitute a non-tariff-barrier and will be based on considerations of health, safety and the protection of the environment in conformity with Article 2.2. of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to trade of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations.

So even if this paragraph applies to importing medicines (which is not at all obvious) Israel can change the policy for maintaining public health!

And what does the Agreement on Technical Barriers Article 2.2 say?

Members shall ensure that technical regulations are not prepared, adopted or applied with a view to or with the effect of creating unnecessary obstacles to international trade. For this purpose, technical regulations shall not be more trade-restrictive than necessary to fulfil a legitimate objective, taking account of the risks non-fulfilment would create. Such legitimate objectives are, inter alia: national security requirements; the prevention of deceptive practices; protection of human health or safety, animal or plant life or health, or the environment. In assessing such risks, relevant elements of consideration are, inter alia: available scientific and technical information, related processing technology or intended end-uses of products.

These very regulations referred to in the Paris Protocols say that Israel should not place any barriers in place to stop Palestinians from getting the medicines they need!

Clearly, when the Palestinians don't have ultra-cold freezers needed to stockpile the Pfizer vaccine , the Russian Sputnik vaccine seems like a viable alternative to help millions of their citizens. The Palestinian Authority has scientists and doctors that can look at the literature and see whether it makes sense to accept the Russian vaccine. Other countries like India have decided that the Russian vaccine is safe enough to rely on. One can argue about the decision, but is hardly irresponsible for leaders to choose the Russian vaccine in the interests of protecting the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.

But Amnesty and these other NGOs disagree with this. They want to take away Palestinian choice as to how to treat their own people!

If anyone else would say that Palestinians are too immature or too ignorant to decide on how their own health programs should work, they would be rightly considered to be bigots.

Beyond that, Amnesty and the other NGOs are saying that it is better for Palestinians to wait for Israel to build an entire infrastructure to distribute the Pfizer vaccine, or to wait to receive the Moderna vaccine, than to import the Sputnik vaccine today. Every day a couple of dozen Palestinians are dying of COVID-19 and Amnesty is saying that time is not of the essence to provide vaccines to them, even though the logistics of Israel providing the vaccines in Palestinian areas is enormously expensive and time consuming.

The NGOs even say it is Israel's responsibility to keep the medicines cold:

Ensuring smooth entry of vaccines and other medical equipment to the oPt, including preserving a 'cold chain’ to keep vaccines refrigerated during transit if necessary.

Ultra-cold freezers aren't exactly available at Best Buy. There are only a couple of manufacturers and they are swamped. It would take months to acquire an adequate supply of this equipment to bring into the territories, by which time there will be other vaccines available that do not require anything colder than a refrigerator.

This demand, by itself, shows how out of touch these NGOs are - and how willing they are to sacrifice Palestinians as long as they can blame Israel for their deaths.

There is only one conclusion that can be drawn: Amnesty and the other NGOs hate Israel more than they care about Palestinian lives. This demand, by itself, proves how hateful they are both towards Israel and towards Palestinians themselves.

To call these "human rights "organizations is a sick joke.

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The fake "civilians" of Gaza, 2019 edition

PCHR, the Palestine Center for Human Rights - the organization that Amnesty International relied on to claim that there were far more civilians killed in Gaza in 2014 than there actually were - says:

At approximately 22:10 on Saturday evening, 04 May 2019, Israeli drone fired a missile at a group of civilians, who were in the vicinity of the American School former site, west of Beit Lahia, killing Khalid Mohammed Selmi Abu Qaliq (24), from the city, after he was hit with shrapnel throughout his body. Moreover, another civilan was seriously injured.

Khalid Mohammed Selmi Abu Qaliq was a terrorist for the PFLP.

PCHR goes on:

At approximately 17:35 on Sunday evening, the Israeli forces fired an artillery sheel at a house belonging to Abdul Rahim Mustafa al-Madhoun (60), south of the American School, west of Beit Lahia. As a result, the house was destroyed and 4 civilians were killed, including a woman, and 9 were injured. Those killed civilians, including Abdul Rahim, were identified as: Abdul Rahim’s son Abdullah Abdul Rahim Mustafa al-Madhooun (21), Fadi Ragheb Yusuf Badran (33), Amani ‘Etfat Sha;ban al-Madhoun (36), who was pregnant at her ninth month.

This was a legitimate target. Fadi Ragheb Yusuf Badran, who already served 6 years in Israeli prisons for terror activities, was a member of the Popular Resistance Movement. Abdullah Abdul Rahim Mustafa al-Madhooun was a leader of Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades.

Abdullah Abdul Rahim Mustafa al-Madhooun

The father and pregnant woman were human shields.

PCHR goes on:

At approximately 17:45, the Israeli warplenes launched 2 missiles at the ground floor and first floor in Zu’rob’s Building near al-Shuhada’a Square (al-Nejmah), in the center of Rafah. As a result, 3 civlians were killed namely: ‘Ali Ahmed Abdul Jawad (51), who was in al-Awa’el Educational Center, Mousa Husein Lafi Mo’amer (35) and Hani Hamdan Abu Sha’ar (37), who were at al-Fakher Cofe.

Mo'amer and Sha'ar were at least associated with Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, based on the flags used as their shrouds and flags waved at their funeral.

PCHR goes on:

At approximately 19:50, the Israeli warplanes launched a missile at the fifth floor in Building no. (12) at Sheikh Zayed Buildings, north of the Gaza Strip. As a result, 6 civilians were killed namely: Ahmed Ramadan Rajab al-Ghazali (30), his wife Eman Abdullah Mousa al-Ghazali (29), their child Maria (5 months), Abdul Rahman Talal Abu al-Jedyan (12), his parents Tala ‘Atiyah Abu al-Jedyan (48) and Raghdah Mohammed Abu al-Jedyan (46), whose dead bodies were recovered todays morning from under the rubble.

This one I'm not quite as certain about, but apparently at least one of the dead- probably Ahmed - was associated with Hamas. At least two members of the family were wrapped in Hamas flags as a courtesy.

PCHR has a long history of immediately labeling terrorists as "civilian" going back to the 2009 war
when over 300 supposed "civilians" were found to be in fact members of terror groups.

PCHR says that 9 additional of Gaza's dead were indeed militants, but it only mentions the name of one from Hamas. Islamic Jihad admits 8 "martyrs" including Al Madhoun, above.

As we can see here, apparently 100% of the people killed in Gaza this weekend were either terrorists, human shields for terrorists or collateral damage as Israel targeted terrorists - legitimate targets under international law.

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Today's fake PCHR "civilian"

As I had noted already last November, Hamas drags its feet in publishing many of its "martyr" obituaries. This way, in the initial aftermath of an Israeli operation, the reports are filled with reports of "civilian" casualties, often by media relying on PCHR or the Hamas-controleld gaza Health Ministry to determine whether someone is a civilian or not.

Then, when Hamas finally admits quietly that some of these so-called "civilians" are really Hamas jihadists, no one notices.

Here are the latest examples.

From PCHR:

At approximately 15:30, Israeli warplanes fired 2 missiles at 2 cars that were traveling near the Future Club in al-Sabra neighborhood, in which 5 civilians, including a pair of twins, were traveling. As a result of this attack, 5 civilians were killed:
1- Subhi Nemer Mohammed Dughmosh, 29;
2- Salah Nember Mohammed Dughmosh, 29;
3- Ahmed Jameel Hamdan Dughmosh, 30;
4- Zaki Saeed Mohammed Qadada, 42; and
5- Mosab Mahmoud Rushdi Dughmosh, 25.

Hamas' obituary for Mosab Mahmoud Dughmosh says that he joined the al-Qassam Brigades terror group in early 2010. He participated in many "jihad missions" and that he participated in hostilities.

According to the Terrorism Info report from Israel, two of his brothers were members of the Army of Islam and two were in the PRC. Meaning that every single person in both cars targeted by Israel was a terrorist, and not one was civilian.

PCHR finds a poor person in Gaza, says it is Israel's fault to the UN

From PCHR:

On Monday, 4 February 2013, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) made a written submission, in the form of an Individual Complaint, to Ms. Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, which draws attention to the case of Ramadan Daoud Hussein Abdel Bari (51) from Gaza city, Gaza Strip (Palestine).

Ramadan Abdel Bari, who lives in Gaza together with his wife, their 8 children, and his sick mother, opened a clothing factory in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, in 1985. His business was forced to shut down in 2005 as a result of the Israeli-imposed movement restrictions inside the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000. After that Ramadan was unable to find or generate new employment, as the Israeli closure of the Gaza Strip has caused the near total collapse of Gaza’s economy, leaving many unemployed and impoverished without a chance of finding a job and generating an income for themselves and their families.

The ruining of Ramadan’s business and the subsequent impossibility to find new employment causes him and his family to live in poverty.

PCHR will be submitting either Memorandums or Individual Complaints on a regular basis to UN Working Groups and Special Rapporteurs, to draw attention to human rights issues facing the Palestinian people.

Yes, PCHR plans to send an individual complaint to the UN for every single poor person it finds in Gaza, blaming Israel for every one.

The International Poverty Line applies to people who are living on less than $1.25 a day (PPP). By that standard, the West Bank and Gaza have a rate of only 0.04% of people living below that line - one of the better ones recorded, and far better than every Arab country listed (Egypt is 1.69%, Syria 1.74%, Yemen 17.53%) while many countries have a rate of well over 50%! The number of truly poor people in Gaza is minuscule by nearly every measure.

Gaza has some 38% of people living below the national poverty line, but that number is different for every nation. For comparison, in Israel, some 23.6% of the population live below the national poverty line; in the West Bank it is 18.3%, in the US it is about 15%. In contrast, in poor sub-Saharan countries and central American nations the rates are often above 50%.

Moreover, in Gaza much of the population gets free food, free medical services and free education - because the UNRWA considers them, against all normal definitions of the term, to be "refugees."

PCHR, obviously, doesn't care about poor people in Gaza. The entire exercise, indeed their entire existence, is centered on how to use the concept of "human rights" in order not to improve the situation but to delegitimize Israel. Their legal briefing accompanying the complaint makes this crystal clear.

They even twist the fact that the UN gives free food and aid to Gazans far out of proportion to their need compared to the truly poor of the world, by saying "over 75% of the people are food aid dependent, 80% of the people receive humanitarian aid." Only about 30% of Haitians are food-aid dependent - but they are far poorer than Gazans by any yardstick with 61% below the international poverty line, compared to 0.04% of Gazans.

This is only one tiny example of how relentlessly anti-Israel NGOs are working, night and day, to demonize Israel.

PCHR receives funding for its faux "humanitarian" work from Norway, Denmark, the European Commission, the Ford Foundation and several other international NGOs. And this is where the money goes.

Today's fake PCHR "civilian"

Hamas continues to slowly release obituaries of terrorists killed during Pillar of Defense. (HRW used the absence of names on the Al Qassam website as evidence that the dead could not be terrorists!)

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights described a "civilian" death this way:

At approximately 19:50 on Saturday [November 17], an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a gathering of Palestinian civilians in Wadi al-Salqa village, killing Ali Hassan Bin Saeed, 25, and wounding 3 others.

But Hamas released Saeed's obituary today, referring to him as a "mujahid."

Saeed was born in Saudi Arabia, but went to UNRWA schools in central Gaza. He attended Palestine Technical College for management and office automation, and received his bachelors degree in business administration. He joined Hamas in 2005 and the Al Qassam Brigades in 2006. He was involved in working on several weapons smuggling tunnels and participated in Cast Lead as well as Pillar of Defense.

This is one of the people who are being identified in the media as a "civilian" killed by Israel, basing it on PCHR's bogus statistics.

(poster h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

Today's fake PCHR "civilian"

From PCHR:

At approximately 21:00 [November 16], an Israeli warplane attacked a motorcycle on which Khaled Khalil Ali al-Shaer, 25, was traveling near Saladin Street. He was killed and 2 persons were wounded.

Once again, PCHR does not identify the casualty as a "militant" as they do with some of the others. Meaning that they counted him as one of the supposed "civilians" killed in Gaza.

And once again, they are lying.

The Al Qassam Brigades website notes that Shaer joined Hamas in high school and joined the Qassam Brigades in 2006, where he was a camp leader. He also attended the "Abu Bara Military Academy" of the Qassam Brigades, taking several military courses. He also fought during Cast Lead.

Other fake civilians can be seen on this tag.

Today's fake PCHR "civilians"

From PCHR:

At approximately 08:00 (November 17th) , Israeli warplanes attacked a number of 3 young men in al-Maghazi refugee camp, killing them: Ali Abdul Halim al-Manaama, 24; Ussama Mousa Abdul Jawad, 27; and Ashraf Hassan Darwish, 22.

PCHR does not identify them as "militants," but all three were terrorists.

The obituary for Darwish explains that he joined the Qassam Brigades in 2007, after attending UNRWA schools. Here he is:

The other two have not yet been memorialized at the Qassam site, but Qassam Brigades memorial posters for them have already been published:

Manaama

Jawad

And another:

At approximately 19:50, Israeli warplanes attacked a number of young men who were sitting near a house belonging to Ahmed Mohammed Jaddou Abu Jalal, 43, a member of an armed group, in al-Maghazi refugee camp. He was killed together with 3 civilians, including his brother: Amjad Mohammed Jaddou Abu Jalal, 33 .

Amjad was no civilian. His obituary at the Al Qassam site notes he joined the terror group in 2005, where is is praised for firing Qassam rockets and mortars at "settlements," as well as for working on weapons tunnels and for fighting during Cast Lead.

Today's fake PCHR "civilians"

From PCHR:

At approximately 17:45 on Sunday, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a group of Palestinian civilians near al-Rahma Mosque in al-Nussairat refugee camp. As a result, 2 civilians were killed: Atiya Abdullah Mubarak, 56; and Hussam Hussein Abu Shawish, 37.

Hamas' Al Qassam website describes Atiya Mubarak as one of their mujahadeen, despite his age. He joined Hamas in 1998 and the Al Qassam Brigades in 2007. He participated in Cast Lead and worked on logistics behind sending terrorists to battle, "competing with the youth in jihad for the sake of Allah."

PCHR again:

At approximately 16:30, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a number of Palestinian civilians in al-Salatin Street in Beit Lahia, killing one of them, Fadi Mousa Sameer al-Qatanani, 29, and 6 others, including two children, were wounded.

The Al Qassam website says that "since Fadi was a child, he wished to carry a gun to fight the enemies of God, the Jews; constantly repeating slogans of jihad, his eyes yearning to jihad and martyrdom, and the castles of glory and honor and dignity."

He was a member of the Qassam Brigades for over ten years, working in smuggling tunnels as well as "repelling invasions" from Israel in northern Gaza.

Hamas says they are mujahadeen. PCHR says they are civilians.

Keep in mind that there are only several thousand Al Qassam Brigades members at the most, among a population of some 1.6 million in Gaza. If Israel was just randomly firing into "civilians" the odds of hitting a Qassam Brigades member is about one in 300.

Today's fake PCHR "civilian"

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights wrote:

At approximately 09:00, an Israeli drone fired a missile in the vicinity of Dabbour farmland in Jabalya. As a result, Mustafa Awadh Mustafa Abu Hmaidan, 23, was killed.

They did not identify him as a member of an "armed group," meaning they assumed he is a civilian and apparently counted him as such.

Here is a photo of Mr. Hmaidan:

And here is his obituary from Hamas, where his Jihadist life is displayed and he is revealed to have been killed while in an act of "jihad." Interestingly, he joined the Al Qassam brigades while attending a UNRWA school in Jabalia.

This is the first obituary on the Al Qassam website from Pillar of Defense. Hamas does not want the world to know how many of the "civilians" were terrorists, and (as with Cast Lead) they will only reveal them in a trickle over the next few months. Their assumption is that by the time the numbers are added up and we can prove that the majority of those killed were terrorists, the damage from the lies by PCHR, the Gaza health minister and others will have already been done.

Two more of the fake PCHR "civilians"

From PCHR:

At approximately 09:40, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a group of Palestinian civilians near Abdullah Bin Rawaha Mosque in Maan area in the east of Khan Yunis. 2 civilians were killed: Abdullah Harb Salem Abu Khater, 21; and Mahmoud Saeed Abu Khater, 34.

The PalDF Hamas forum refers to Mahmoud Saeed Abu Khater, whose day job was apparently as a teacher, as a "mujahid."

His brother, Abdullah, was a member of Hamas as well:

It looks like they were not innocent civilians just standing around, but specific targets because of their terror ties.

The first fake PCHR "civilian"

As EoZ readers know, after Cast Lead I led a team that identified hundreds of people who were called "civilians" by the Palestinian Center of Human Rights - but were in fact terrorists.

We scoured through official jihadist websites and forums to see which of these "civilians" were called "mujahadeen." We crosschecked obituaries published on Hamas and other terror group websites, often months later, against the PCHR list.

In short, we showed that PCHR was happy to lie in order to make it appear that the IDFwas targeting civilians.

Looks like we have our work cut out for us again:

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 17:45 on Tuesday, 20 November 2012, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at Hussam Mohammed Salama, 30, and Mahmoud Ali al-Koumi, 29, cameramen of the Gaza-based al-Aqsa Satellite Channel, while they were traveling in a civilian car clearly marked with ‘TV’.

Luckily, I just made a poster about Mr. Salama, along with a photo of the car where he had crudely spray-painted "TV."

As the IDF says:

A senior Hamas operative was targeted while driving a press vehicle. Muhammed Shamalah, commander of Hamas forces in the southern Strip and head of the Hamas militant training programs, was targeted by an Israeli air strike while driving a car clearly labelled “TV”, indicating it to be a press vehicle, abusing the protection afforded to journalists.

PCHR no doubt knows all of this, and they choose not to mention it. Even if they want to make the argument that Salama was not actively involved in combat - their normal argument when asked about the high number of terrorists that they call civilian - they show their dishonesty by not revealing the entire story, and instead saying as a fact:

These crimes are aimed to silence and the press and prevent journalists from reporting on crimes committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians.

In other words, PCHR is not just withholding information - it is knowingly lying.

This is why so-called "human rights" organizations cannot be assumed to tell the entire story. They have an agenda just like everyone else does, and they will hide information that does not fit that agenda. PCHR is just one very sorry example of this.

A note about "civilian" deaths in Gaza

As with Cast Lead, the media is relying on PCHR (and, worse, on the Hamas health ministry) to determine how many of the dead in Gaza are civilian and how many are terrorists.

Remember: PCHR only counts a person as a "militant" if he is, in their opinion, actively engaging in military activities at the time of his death.

So while I don't know about this person either way, PCHR says:

At approximately 14:10 on Monday, 19 November 2012, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a civilian car that was traveling in al-Saftawi Street in Jabalya, in which Hussam Fayez Hamdan Abdul Jawad, 32, was traveling. The car was destroyed and Abdul Jawad was killed.

Jawad may very well have been a member of a terror group, but PCHR is not going to say - he was just driving, not preparing to fire a rocket.

Since the first couple of days of the fighting, Hamas has refused to admit any casualties among its members. (Islamic Jihad right now says seven of its members were killed.)

This is exactly what happened during Cast Lead. Hamas hushed up every single terrorist death during the war, and only in the months afterwards did they slowly document on their websites the "martyrs" and the dates they were killed. In the end, hundreds of people that the PCHR called "civilians" were found out to have been terrorists.

When Hamas controls the security forces and, to an extent, the movements of the media, they control the truth.

Also during Cast Lead, as soon as the ground war started, Hamas and other terror group members took off their fatigues and continued to fight in civilian clothes - another breach of the Geneva Conventions. This further made it difficult to find out who the civilians are.

One thing is certain: the vast majority of those killed in Gaza so far have been males of fighting age. This in an area where men between 16-40 take up perhaps only 18% of the population (men between 15-64 are about 27%.)

It will again take months to figure out the real truth about casualties. But don't trust the initial statistics - as we've seen, they are historically skewed.

Latest "shahid" shows that Israel didn't target civilians on Saturday

On Saturday evening, after Gaza militants shot an anti-tank weapon at an Israeli jeep well within Israeli territory, Israel responded by shelling the area that the attack came from, in the Sajaiya neighborhood.

Four civilians were killed, and it looked from the outside like the IDF might have made a mistake. The PCHR even says that two of the dead were children "playing football."

But now it looks like there was no mistake.

Hamas, which claimed credit for the attack (along with other groups,) announced today the death of "mujahid" Mohammed Ziad, a member of the Al Qassam Martyrs Brigades.

Ziad died of injuries from the same Israeli retaliatory strike Saturday night against those who shot the anti-tank weapon.

While it is still sad that innocents were killed, now it seems that the "football playground" that was hit was actually the true source of the attack, just as Israel claimed, and the children playing there were human shields for Hamas.

More Gaza "civilians" and more PCHR lies

Even though I haven't been spending too much time lately on looking for more dead Gaza "civilians" who were actually terrorists, other people (notably PTWatch) has been diligently digging through Arabic websites and we keep adding to the list.

As of right now, we have identified 358 terrorists who were categorized as "civilians" by the PCHR. Add together the rest of the police and the "militants" that PCHR counted, and we have 667 dead Gazans who were legitimate targets, quickly closing in on half of the dead not being civilians.

Many of the civilians were clearly being used as cover or were unavoidably killed in a legitimate operation. The latest "martyr" PTWatch found is a case in point.

#901, Usama Sa’id Mohammed Lubbad, was a recruiter for Islamic Jihad (who also evidently taught Islamic Jihad tenets to the terrorist equivalent of Cub Scouts in a mosque) and he was killed on January 9th. His obituary mentions that he was killed with a few of his Islamic Jihad friends - mentioned in PCHR as #897, 899, 900 and 909. That's five Islamic Jihad members in one shot, a legitimate target by any measure.

However, during the attack two other people were killed. One was a seven year old boy, the other a 55-year old man. Their deaths were unavoidable by the IDF, and very justified under international law.

Looking back at how PCHR described the attacks at the time, we can see how they purposefully lie to make Israel look like it deliberately attacked civilians. In one section of the report they say

At approximately 09:40 on Thursday, an IOF aircraft fired a missile at three members of the resistance who were near al-Qassam mosque in Beit Lahia, killing all three:

1. Mohammed Nafiz al-Hindi, 25;

2. Anwar Jaber Abu Salim, 24; and

3. 'Abdul Nassar 'Abdul Gaffar 'Ouda, 23.

A couple of paragraphs later they say

At approximately 13:00, medical sources announced the death of Ussama Said Lubbad, 19, of wounds sustained earlier on the same day when IOF warplanes bombed a group of young people in Beit Lahia. Another 3 civilians were immediately killed in the same attack.

These were not two separate attacks, but the same one, as Lubbad's obituary makes clear. PCHR pretends that there were two attacks so that they can claim that the IDF deliberately targeted "a group of young people" - implying that the IDF targeted civilians, one of their memes that has been copied and repeated by HRW, Amnesty and Goldstone.

Out of the group of 7 killed, five were terrorists. PCHR must have known at the time they wrote the report that it was a single attack.

Notice also where the terrorists were - near a mosque.

PCHR's Other Lies

We've already demonstrated conclusively that literally hundreds of people that the PCHR called "civilian" casualties of Operation Cast Lead were, in fact, terrorists. (And the incredible team of t34zakat, PTWatch and Suzanne are still finding more.)

The problem is not only that PCHR was unaware of these people's affiliations. PCHR's weekly reports during Cast Lead detail a number of specific incidents that show that the organization knew quite well that the dead were terrorists - and chose to categorize them as "civilian" anyway.

For example:

#1294 in PCHR's casualty list, Naser Yusif Abdul Hadi al-Siefi, was listed in the weekly PCHR report as follows:

At approximately 17:00, the IOF artillery fired at a number of Palestinians, including a resistance activist, in the east of al-Zaytoun neighborhood. As a result, a civilian and a resistance activist were killed:

1. Hashem Rabah al-Hatu, 45, a civilian; and

2. Nasser al-Saifi, 38, a resistance activist.

Not only does this show that it is likely that al-Saifi was engaged in hostilities at the time, it also indicates that the civilian killed was probably unavoidable.

In the same report, PCHR writes:

In the evening, medical crews found the bodies of two activists of the Palestinian resistance in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in the south of Gaza City. They were killed during the IOF incursion into the area. The two were identified as:

1. Mohammed Nawaf Na'im, 24; and

2. 'Abdullah Nawaf Na'im, 19.

Two known terrorists' bodies were found, no civilians with them.

Keep in mind that the actual number of members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups were about 20,000, in a population of some 1.5 million. That means that one in every 75 Gazans were terrorists. If Israel was shooting at random groups of people, we would expect that only about 1/75 of the dead would be terrorists, or only about 19 of them (rather than the 654 terrorists and police we've identified.)

The odds are extraordinarily low (about one in 5625) that Israel bombed Gaza randomly and killed two people who happened to be terrorists with no other casualties. Yet PCHR, who spent lots of time "researching" the circumstances of the deaths of everyone in their list, referred to both of these people as "civilians" (#1216 and #1317)

Another example:

During IOF ground incursion into Tal al-Hawa neighborhood that continued until 07:00 on Friday, 16 January 2009, ten members of the Palestinian resistance were killed. The dead are: Hamdi Ibrahim al-Banna, 23; Medhat 'Abed Ali Bannar, 24; Na'im Khader Hamada, 20; Mahmoud Khader Abu Salem, 19; 'Ammar Maher Farawana, 18; Farid Hejazi al-Hilu, 23; Mu'taz Abdul Muttaleb Dahman, 21; Hussam Hassan al-'AmaSsi, 35; Rebhi Shuhaibar, 25; and Tamer Faza'a, 20.

For some reason, PCHR called Bannar a "civilian" in their casualty list (#1213) while the rest of them were "militants." Yet Al-Mezan and the Palestinian Ministry of Health also categorized Bannar as a "militant."

Even more curious is this case:

At approximately 17:10, an IOF drone fired a missile at a motorcycle in Bani Suhaila village. Ra'fat Khalil Hamdan Abu al-'Ola, 47, who was riding the motorcycle, was killed. The al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad stated that Abu al-'Ola is one of their members.

And Abu al-'Ola is also listed as a "civilian" on the PCHR casualty list (#1290.)

We are going through all the PCHR reports now and will list all of the people that the PCHR had already previously identified as "resistance activists" who they later called civilian. But these examples are enough to prove that the PCHR not only was being disingenuous by claiming that they had no evidence that these people were militants, but that they were outright lying.

(h/t PTWatch who did most of this research)

PCHR is "astonished" at Hamas terrorists

PCHR made a big deal about the "policemen" killed during Cast Lead, saying that they were "civilians." The fact that a majority of them were also members of terror groups didn't matter to this "human rights" group - to them, a fake police force that is identical to an armed terror group is still worthy of civilian protection.

So there is a little irony at PCHR's report on the unpleasantness that happened last Friday between Hamas and the Jund Ansar Allah group. One of their statements is:

[The PCHR] reiterates its astonishment by the involvement of members of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades in these incidents, emphasizing that the brigades cannot be a law enforcement body, and its very involvement in the incidents is an encroachment into the powers of law enforcement bodies.

Isn't it astonishing that Hamas doesn't distinguish between its law enforcement and its terror group? Only to PCHR, which clings onto a fiction that would allow it to consider Hamas police to be civilian to begin with, and to consider Hamas to be a normal political leadership of Gaza and not a terror group.

PCHR "civilian" update

Our team has just identified the 300th terrorist that the PCHR identified as a "civilian" victim during the Operation Cast Lead.

We have also identified that 186 out of the 282 policemen killed were also members of terrorist groups, nearly two-third of them.

We have identified 17 children under 18 who were also members of terror groups.

If we add all the police, militants identified by PCHR and "PCHR civilian" militants identified by us together, and if my math is right, we have identified 632 people killed who the IDF considers legitimate military targets, out of the 1410 victims that PCHR identified (subtracting PCHR duplicates.)

Even if we assume that the PCHR is not playing games by counting those who died natural deaths as victims, considering that Israel was fighting against groups who purposefully hid in civilian clothing among innocents, this is hardly "indiscriminate."

Hamas continues to add names of its Al Qassam Brigades "martyrs" to its website, five months later, showing that they were trying to hide the terrorist status of its dead fighters in order to fool the world into believing the idea that Israel was recklessly killing civilians and that Hamas didn't suffer severe losses.

CAMERA picks up on EoZ PCHR research

From CAMERA's blog:

Elder of Ziyon blog's investigation of a list of Palestinian dead during the Israeli military operation in December and January reveals that hundreds who were reported to be civilians were in fact militants. The list of 1417 Palestinian victims was published in March by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based organization. By cross-checking the names on the list with other Palestinian sources, including Hamas-affiliated web sites, Elder of Ziyon was able to compile the names of 286 militants who PCHR misidentified as civilians.
Media coverage of the Israeli operation in Gaza prominently featured the accusation that Israeli forces engaged in indiscriminate and excessive violence, in some cases intentionally targeting civilians. PCHR's reports of civilian fatalities were frequently cited to substantiate this accusation. As CAMERA pointed out as early as January 21, scrutiny of PCHR's own data cast serious doubts about its accuracy. The CAMERA analysis pointed out over 20 cases of mislabeling militants as civilians and noted that 75 percent of the fatalities were young males of combat age.

The recent analysis by Elder of Ziyon delves further into PCHR's data and debunks PCHR's assertion that most members of Hamas internal security forces (policemen) were civilians. It also reveals that a number of children (aged 17 or under) were Hamas combatants - a point initially suggested in the CAMERA analysis.

While these revelations come too late to impact coverage of the fighting, it can only be hoped that responsible journalists will be less inclined to accept without scrutiny the casualty statistics and claims made by PCHR and other groups that most of the casualties caused by Israeli military action are civilians.

The research has slowed down but it is not finished yet.

Small victories in publicizing PCHR lies

NGO Monitor has linked to our results along with other researchers.

The Backspin blog of Honest Reporting had also linked to our research.

Someone had posted many of my articles about the PCHR at Cleveland Indymedia.

Richard Landes at The Augean Stables republished my Casualties of Truth article.

Now I have to find the time to learn a content management system so I can create a nice looking website to show our research....and while I am computer literate, even the simple ones take hours to learn and configure.

Someone else crunching the PCHR numbers

It looks like there are other people besides our team who are debunking the PCHR death count. From The New Republic:

If the IDF's alternate numbers are accurate, they paint a very different picture in terms of the toll on civilian life. How is there such a big disparity between the two sets of numbers? Though the IDF has refused to elaborate in any detail on how it obtained its figures, insight into its methods can be gained in the cluttered basement home office in Toronto of retired Israeli intelligence officer Jonathan Dahoah Halevi. "PCHR's list is inaccurate," he asserts. "I get the impression they intentionally tried to inflate the civilian numbers."
He begins to rattle off indictments. "Why is Said Siyam"—the de facto defense minister of Hamas—"listed as a civilian?" he asks. "Muhammad Dasouki Dasliye. Do you know who he is?" Halevi says that Dasliye was a Palestinian Resistance Committee operative and suspect in the terrorist attack against three American security guards in Gaza in October 2003. "Nizar Rayan," Halevi chuckles. "He's a civilian?" In fact, news reports describe Rayan as a militant cleric who mentored suicide bombers and sent his own son on a suicide mission in 2001, killing two Israelis.
Halevi, a pugnacious father of two, is an insider, a former IDF analyst who works days as a counterterrorism consultant but counts Gaza fatalities in his free time. "It's an intellectual challenge," says the dark-haired, 44-year old, whose parents immigrated to Israel from Yemen. It will take him six months to research all 1,400 of PCHR's names, comparing them to a database of thousands of terrorist operatives he has compiled, as well as whatever he finds on the Internet.
As of last month, Halevi has a list of 171 people the PCHR defines as civilians that he claims he can prove are actually combatants affiliated with Hamas or other terrorist groups. His contention is based on a simple principle: When fighters die, they don't just leave behind a body, a family, and eyewitnesses—they leave a paper trail. Martyrdom posters, photographs of funerals, articles celebrating heroes' exploits, lists of payments to families—these sources help Halevi disprove that a particular fatality was a civilian as opposed to a fighter. Intelligence analysts around the world are following this paper trail, and they don't just work for the Shin Bet or CIA. In fact, in the era of the Internet, vast amounts of intelligence are available to anyone with fluent Arabic, a little training, and a lot of time and patience.
Halevi's macabre hobby began during Israel's 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli incursion into six West Bank cities that targeted Hamas and other terrorist cells responsible for a number of recent suicide bombings. Halevi was perplexed. "It made no sense that on the one hand, Palestinians claimed their fighters were performing valiantly, but at the same time they said they were being massacred." So the dogged and methodical Halevi compiled his own list of fatalities in the Jenin refugee camp. "I read everything I could get my hands on—militant web sites, articles, books of fighters' memories. I found that 65 percent of [Palestinians] killed in the Jenin refugee camp were terror operatives, including some children," he says gravely. The Palestinians later independently reduced their fatality number from an estimated 500 to 56.
It was addictive. Soon Halevi found himself spending all his free time cross-checking Palestinian fatality lists. In his opinion, the best and most trusted lists belonged to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem and PCHR. "These data banks have an enormous influence," he says. "I found PCHR statistics in UN reports...The UN relies on them." So Halevi published dozens of articles on a popular Hebrew news sites, reporting his findings, always precise, never overstating his claim, but scathing nevertheless. Soon he found himself in a war of words with a B'stelem's spokeswoman, who wrote on Israel's News1 web site, "Halevi is exploiting a Palestinian family's tragedy for political gain" and "he dances on Palestinian blood." For his part, Halevi says both organizations are frequently inaccurate, and attributes their contortions to their political motives: "The former chairperson of the board of B'Tselem said in an interview that the organization's goal is a one-state solution. PCHR has the same goal. They reject Israel's existence as a Jewish state."
Halevi is already knee-deep in PCHR's latest list from Cast Lead. He has produced a spreadsheet with the names of 230 police fatalities cited by both the Gaza police department and PCHR. For 171 of these, he provides the name of the faction they fought for as well as brief biographies, such as "a munitions expert" or "arrested by Israel in 1993 for weapons acquisitions for suicide missions." Most of the 171 moonlighting policemen are listed as operatives in the Qassam Brigades, with others belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Resistance Committee.
"This information wasn't hard to find," Halevi says. Type one of the names into a Google search and up pops a web site with photos showing the Gaza cop sporting a martyr's headband and M-16. Halevi grants that many of these policemen did actually perform police duties like patrolling streets or directing traffic. "But then they get a call from their friend who says, 'Come on, it's time for a mission,'" Halevi says. "One of the police casualties was even affiliated with al-Qaeda."
Shaheen [of the PCHR] stands by his numbers. "The police force is totally civilian," he insists. While ten of the fighters on PCHR's list are described as policemen, more than 250 of those described as policemen are labeled civilians. Many Gazans enter the police force because they are poor and need the money, he explains. "I can assure you that all these people were working in police traffic or as guards."
Many of the disparities between the PCHR and IDF numbers seem to be definitional. The IDF has repeatedly stated that any member of Hamas security forces—armed or unarmed—is fair game. Shaheen has a much narrower definition of an uninvolved civilian: "According to international humanitarian law, all armed people are classified as militants and all the people who are unarmed [are civilians]," he says. So if the person was armed at the time of death—which he or his fieldworkers determine by investigating the bodies as they arrive at the hospital—he'll count them as a militant. If the person is not armed, his team will check with family members, neighbors, political parties and Palestinian armed factions to determine the deceased's status as a militant or a civilian. He also checks press releases issues by armed factions. "[The IDF] can say whatever they want," he says. "I mean, [these are] facts on the ground."
But even facts can be subjective. For example, Halevi accuses Shaheen's organization of mislabeling Hamas cleric Nizar Rayan as a civilian. Shaheen explains that Rayan was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home. There are jihadist posters of Rayan all over Gaza, and yet, "I cannot count him as a militant or fighter," Shaheen says. Rayan was unarmed with his wives and children when he was killed, Shaheen explains. "I cannot count this case as a fighter because he didn't participate as a fighter in the offensive. He was a civilian the whole time—going to the mosque, praying, coming back to his house."
Both agree, however, that the war does not end when the fighting stops. "In every war there are two components," says Halevi. "The first is the battle itself, defeating the other side, and the second is presenting the facts of what happened." If a country is not vigilant, he warns, "The other side will rewrite your history."

If anything, the PCHR's researcher is proving himself a liar. If he says that he is only counting militants who were carrying guns at the time, then why does he check websites and interview family members to see if they were militants? And if he did, why wouldn't he count them?

I pointed out as early as January 7 that the PCHR would count people on video who are launching mortars at Israel, in civilian clothing, as "civilians" if the IDF kills them while they are running away, unarmed. The Hamas strategy was specifically to make their people look like civilians, and the PCHR played along dutifully.

Now, how can I get a hold of Halevi?