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Thursday, May 13, 2021

Gaza War Theatre: We've seen this show before:



The Western media never learns from previous Gaza wars.

A large percentage of Gaza rockets fall in Gaza, and many Gazans are killed because of them. I've documented this for years. I've shown how Hamas' own videos show rockets falling short. 

When a family is killed in Gaza, it is very rare that it is an IDF mistake. Most of the time it is because a terrorist operative is in the house - either because he is a member of the family, sometimes it seems because he is using them as human shields. Other times it is because of Hamas rockets falling short. Sometimes it is because the IDF targeted a legitimate target that had a larger cache of explosives than was thought and it caused far more collateral damage than expected.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad is hiding the names of most of those killed. While Hamas admitted that one of its senior leaders, Bassem Issa, was killed in an Israeli attack, they don't mention the names of the other people with him at the time who were also killed. They do this to make it look like a larger percentage of the dead are civilians - and they did it in previous wars, too.

Speaking of, the Gaza Health Ministry and the "human rights" NGOs in Gaza (PCHR and Al Mezan) downplay any mention of terrorist casualties and often call terrorists "civilians" when they report the circumstances of those who have died. (Amnesty's obscenely dishonest "Gaza Platform" with statistics from the 2014 war relied on PCHR's initial reports, and as a result it lists more "civilians" than even the UN does. They know they are lying, I've let them know enough times, and they refuse to correct it.)

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch  is back to what he has done so many times in the past - tweeting against Israel incessantly, often with lies, and only reluctantly saying anything bad about Hamas once in a while. So far this time he is doing exactly he same thing - a huge number of anti-Israel tweets and a token tweet or two mentioning that Hamas rockets are a war crime, too.

The media still has no idea what "proportionality" means in the context of international law. They make scorecards of how many have been killed on both sides as if the results are supposed to be "fair," implying that if only more Jews would be killed, then they can all be happy.

Then again, the media is also part of the problem. Hamas has almost complete control over the media in Gaza. Citizens who speak freely to media know that they will be punished. Everyone sticks to the Hamas-approved script. International reporters know that they will be kicked out if they say anything not to Hamas' liking. Yet the media hardly ever mentions this, giving a false impression that their reporting is objective.

The media will also ignore most of Hamas' war crimes. Using ambulances or "press" credentials to transport weapons, using Gazans as human shields, using mosques as weapons depots, shooting from schools- - I once counted 19 different war crimes that Hamas has done in the Gaza wars, but "human rights groups" somehow only notice and denounce one.

People don't learn. 

Then again, most people don't want to learn.