Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: HRW

Showing posts with label HRW. Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2023

Ein al-Hilweh camp: Terrorists still control schools, 200-400 homes destroyed - and human rights groups silent

On Friday, UNRWA issued a situation report on the Lebanese Ein el-Hilweh camp where there had been fierce fighting at the start of the month.

While the media has largely lost interest as the cease fire took hold, the camp is still largely controlled by terror groups:

Reports indicate that armed fighters are allegedly still deployed in some areas and continue to be intermittently present in UNRWA schools in the northern schools compound, along with the nearby UNRWA camp services office – a serious violation of the neutrality of UNRWA installations. The reported presence of fighters in areas around the school compound has prevented UNRWA staff from accessing these installations. Reports indicate that the ongoing presence of armed fighters in some areas is also preventing the return of some residents to their homes.

At a Thursday press conference, Director of UNRWA affairs in Lebanon Dorothee Klaus added more information, saying that between 200-400 houses were completely destroyed. A UNRWA school complex for over 3,000 children had been “violated" and other schools and a health center were also damaged.

She noted that “it is s not safe for any UN personnel to access (some) areas currently, we’re also not having clearance from the Lebanese military to go inside those areas on the Lebanese military being in control of access to the Ein El-Hilweh camp.”

Far more houses were destroyed by the fighters in Ein el Hilweh than were destroyed by Israel in Gaza in May - but unlike for Gaza, there are no news articles about these destroyed homes with interviews of distraught homeless Palestinians.

Amnesty has not issued a single press release about the fighting and damage. Neither has Human Rights Watch.

If they cared so much about the welfare of Palestinians, then why haven't they condemned the fighting and ongoing militant control of large swaths of the camp?

This is again more proof that human rights is not what drives obsessive NGO and media coverage of Israeli actions, but old fashioned antisemitism.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Here's an interesting coincidence.

The UN in 1994:

An estimate made by Abu Lughod indicated that the average number of indigenous Palestinians was about 420,000 in the West Bank and about 80,000 in the Gaza Strip by the end of 1948.

News wires, March 2004:

Schools and virtually every shop were closed in this city {Gaza City], where 420,000 people live.

Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, 2007:

Estimates of IDPs in Israel vary widely. There is no government or United Nations estimate. Sources for estimates are accademics, Palestinian NGOs and Israeli papers. The lowest estimate is 150,000 and the highest is 420,000, which includes the children and grandchildren of Arab villagers displaced in 1948, as well as Bedouin communities displaced later on.

Human Rights Watch, 2010:

Israel’s differential treatment in law, regulations, and administrative practice directly affect the roughly 490,000 Jewish settlers and 420,000 Palestinians in areas under its exclusive control in the West Bank (including in Area C and East Jerusalem).

Daily Sabah, 2018:

The 420,000 Palestinians who currently reside in East Jerusalem possess permanent residency ID cards and are treated as foreign immigrants by the Israeli government. (The article predicted that Israel would take away the residency permits of all those Palestinians, a prediction that, like all of them, never came close to being true.)

Eurasia Review, 2018, headline:

What’s Behind The ‘Disappearance’ Of 420,000 Palestinians In Lebanon?

WASH Cluster, State of Palestine, 2020:

WEST BANK: 482,509 of people suffering limited access to water; 420,000 persons consume less than 50 l/c/d.

OpenDemocracy, April 2020:

Palestinians in East Jerusalem: living under a deadly virus and a violent occupation: "There is inescapable and particular on-going acute anxiety about the future of these 420,000 Palestinians."

World Food Programme, August 2020:

In support of the MoSD’s response plan, which estimated that 70,000 families (420,000 people) have been affected by the spike in COVID-19 in Gaza...

UNRWA, 2021:

UNRWA is a lifeline to nearly 420,000 of the most vulnerable Palestine refugees in Syria.

Jeff Halper in Arena, June 2021:

Of the 150,000 Palestinians who remained in the country, the war displaced 30,000 to 40,000. Not allowed to return to their homes (which were either demolished or turned over to Jewish Israelis) and wanting to remain sumud (steadfast) near their lands, this population of internally displaced Palestinians has today grown to 420,000.

Middle East Monitor, July 2022:

The Nakba resulted in 750,000 Palestinians being driven from their homes; the 1967 Naksa saw another 420,000 forced to leave.

Al Jazeera, October 2022:

Since the attack, Israeli forces have imposed a continuing blockade on the area around Nablus, restricting the movement of about 420,000 Palestinians, including patients, elderly people and children, who must wait for hours before being able to cross.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, July 2023: (Video, 2:04:33)

“This year, actually over, since the beginning of my mandate [May 1, 2022], I have borne witness to a series of deeply distressing events. 420,000 Palestinians, including 91 children, and 56 Israelis, including five children, have been killed. ”

(She later walked this back, saying the number was 426.)

That's 14 separate times, in different contexts, that "expert" quoted a figure of 420,000 Palestinians.

I am not saying this is a conspiracy or anything like that. It is just a very strange coincidence for that number to pop up in such disparate ways.

420,000 seems like a more realistic, solid estimate than "400,000" or "450,000."

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Horrifying: Palestinian terror groups use children to build and plant their explosives

PCHR reported on July 3 that Israeli forces shot Ali Hani Al-Ghoul in the chest, killing him. It admitted that he was a member of an armed group and said he was 20 years old.

Later, the Israel/Palestine Timeline site said that al-Ghoul was shot in the head, and that he was 17 years old.

His mother was interviewed:

His mother brought back some of her memories with her little Ali, which she will never forget; She says, "About two years ago, Ali used to come home at night, with his clothes dusty and his eyes red, and he was suffering from severe pain, which was caused by the explosive materials he was using."

"Ali was one of the resistance fighters who made explosive devices in the Jenin camp from primitive materials, but their impact was great and effective by damaging many Israeli military vehicles," according to his mother, who expressed her pride in what her son did and what his friends say about his actions that are beyond his age.

That means that Ali al-Ghoul had been building bombs since he was 15 years old.

Now, the Jenin Brigades division of Islamic Jihad have issued a video celebrating Al-Ghoul's "martyrdom" - showing him building IEDs together with other children.

It doesn't show anyone else's faces, but you can see that the hands that are stuffing explosive powder into IEDs are not those of full grown adults.

Jenin's bomb-makers are children.

Ali's mother continues: “Before Ali left the house, he carried a sack full of explosive devices on his shoulder, and later he planted them in the streets and alleys of Jenin camp with the help of his friends, who confirmed that Ali participated with them in a confrontation with the occupation from zero distance."

Palestinian terror groups recruit children to build bombs.

They encourage kids to turn their homes into bomb depots.

They instruct children to plant these bombs in the roads of Jenin where they can kill not only the children but anyone who happens to come by.

And they freely and proudly admit this.

This is not just child abuse: this is systemic and widespread child abuse that is a source of pride to Palestinians.

Now listen to the silence from UNICEF, the UN Human Rights Council, Defense for Children-International, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

No, Israel is not hamstrung to only using a "law enforcement" paradigm in Jenin under international law

Call the police!

Last week, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk condemned the Jenin operation, saying that some of the methods and weapons used “are more generally associated with the conduct of hostilities in armed conflict, rather than law enforcement."

“The use of airstrikes is inconsistent with rules applicable to the conduct of law enforcement operations. In a context of occupation, the deaths resulting from such airstrikes may also amount to willful killings,” he said.

What Turk is saying, and what many "human rights" NGOs believe, is that an belligerent occupier must adhere strictly to human rights law which means that any activity done must be police-type law enforcement operations.

Nations at war, on the other hand, must adhere to international humanitarian law (IHL), which govern wars. The Geneva Conventions are the source for much of IHL.

Turk is wrong. When Israel faces an armed militant group, it not only can but should apply the laws of war. It is absurd to pretend that police actions are adequate to maintain the peace when an armed group has taken over a town. When there are civilians protesting, that calls for law enforcement; when there are heavily armed militants with machine guns and IEDs, that calls for the army and the laws of armed conflict.

The line between the two is not so clear. This was recognized in a 45-page article published in the International Review of the Red Cross in 2012, "Use of force during occupation: law enforcement and conduct of hostilities."

Once it becomes evident that the threat is emanating from a member of an organized armed group or a civilian taking a direct part in hostilities, such as by means of a vehicle-borne IED, then the conduct of hostilities framework would apply at law. In that situation, the use of force is not limited by law enforcement, although such norms would continue to govern the use of force against civilians who are not direct participants in hostilities. ... [T]he force permitted, at law, to counter an IED or suicide bomb by members of organized armed groups or a civilian taking a direct part in hostilities is governed by conduct of hostilities norms. For example, the soldier may be aware from information provided by aerial surveillance, human intelligence, other observation posts and checkpoints, or perhaps even the observation of certain tactics and procedures, that an attack is about to take place. That soldier does not have to wait until the attack is imminent, or the attacker is physically in close proximity and ready to set off explosives, before taking action to remove the threat. In addressing that threat, the soldier can use force governed by conduct of hostilities norms.

In reality, the situation in Jenin is even more tilted towards actual warfare because there is a law enforcement vacuum there. The PA police aren't going into Jenin. If Israel is the legal occupier, then it would be obligated to have forces in Jenin 24/7 - because law enforcement is the responsibility of the occupier!

Obviously, none of the people who insist that Israel is occupying Jenin want to see Israeli police or soldiers opening up police stations there and maintaining order for the civilian citizens. But if Israel is the occupier, that is exactly what Israel is obligated to do!

Which proves that Jenin, and Area A altogether, is not occupied under international law. It is a town with a law enforcement vacuum. By the time Israeli forces must enter, it has turned into a full blown military conflict with armed militias "defending" no one but themselves.

Even with this, Israel attempts to apply law enforcement paradigms as much as possible when going into towns are trying to arrest militants. This puts Israeli troops and police at extra risk.

I wrote a satirical thread, somewhat exaggerating the position of "human rights" groups that try to apply a strict law enforcement paradigm to Israel in the territories:

Here is how Amnesty and HRW insist that Israel go after terrorists:

1. Best to not do anything. They are probably innocent and it should be handled by the PA.

2. If absolutely necessary to stop an imminent act of resistance that will definitely kill Israeli civilians, do not enter the town with force. This scares some children and could damage roads or houses. Just send one policeman to arrest the suspect.

3. Give the suspect, and the entire town, advanced notice that Israel plans to arrest them. That way there are no surprises.

4. In the unlikely event that the suspect or other people decide to shoot or blow up the policeman, only then is he or she allowed to respond with gunfire.

5. When the suspect gives himself up voluntarily, do not frisk or handcuff him. These are painful procedures, and if the suspect is trans, it could be embarrassing, and it is a terrible thing to shame a Palestinian.

6. In the unlikely event that an entire battalion of heavily armed militants respond to the arrest by killing the Israeli policeman and dismembering him or her, send in another and try again. Use more polite words when requesting his surrender.

7. After several rounds of this with many Israeli policemen dead, then the IDF may enter with a single unarmed Jeep. Soldiers may wear helmets. Try again until successful.

8. Under no circumstances may a bulldozer be used. Under no circumstances may drones be used. Under no circumstances may anything beyond a pistol be used. These are all prohibited as potentially hurting innocent civilians.

9. Under no circumstances may the suspect be injured or killed. He is by definition a civilian since he is not wearing a uniform. Being aggressive is a violation of the Geneva Conventions and a bunch of other international laws that Amnesty has not read.

10. The assumption that a suspect is a civilian also applies to anyone who allegedly attacks Israelis in Israel itself. They must be peacefully arrested.

I hope this clears up the NGO ruling on how Israelis may defend themselves. In short - they may not.

Luckily, real international law is not as restrictive as the fairy tale versions pushed by Amnesty, HRW and the UN.

(Made a correction thanks to Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Percentage of Israeli Arab women with academic degrees doubles, number with jobs jumps too

More indication of how absurd the "apartheid" libel is. From Globes:

According to the Labor Market Report for 2022 released today by the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services, over a decade, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of Arab women acquiring higher education, which has translated into greater participation in the labor market.

In 2020, the report states, a quarter of Arab women aged 30-34 held academic degrees, double the proportion in 2010, when just 13% of Arab women in this age group held degrees. In the 29-31 age group, the proportion of those with degrees reached 27% in 2020.

The figures are in line with those of the Council for Higher Education in Israel, which also show a substantial rise in the number of female Arab students. The proportion of women among Arabs studying for a first degree has remained steady in recent years at about 69%, but the proportion of Arabs in the undergraduate student body as a whole has risen from 16% in 2014 to 20% today, almost the same as their proportion in Israel’s population.

There is a correlation between higher education, participation in the workforce, and level of pay for those in work. People with academic degrees are found to earn more than those without, even after control for variables such as occupation, industry, gender, ethnic group, and location. ...

The general level of participation in the workforce by Arab women, which historically has been very low in comparison with women in other sections of the population, has also risen significantly. According to the Labor Market Report, in 2014, the rate of participation in the workforce by Arab women was just 33%....By 2022, the rate of participation among Arab women jumped to 42%.

This is a direct result from increased investment by the government into the Arab sector, a story that hardly gets any coverage in world media.

Needless to say, this is the diametric opposite of what one would expect to see in an apartheid regime. So you will never read about this in Amnesty or HRW reports, because when their lies are contradicted by facts, they try to bury the facts.

(h/t Yoel)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Israel's position on artificial intelligence in battle is more moral than that of Human Rights Watch (update)

Human Rights Watch issued a dispatch by an associate in its arms division, Susan Aboeid, "Palestinian Forum Highlights Threats of Autonomous Weapons:"

In late May, I addressed a panel on the militarization of digital spaces – specifically on how Israeli authorities use surveillance technologies to deepen systemic discrimination against Palestinians. I warned that the use of autonomy in weapons systems was a dangerous part of this trend and highlighted the urgent need for an international legal response. ...

...Israeli authorities are also developing autonomous weapons systems. These trends, globally reflect a slide towards digital dehumanization, and in the case of Israel this means of Palestinians. ... A senior Israeli defense official said recently that authorities are looking at “the ability of platforms to strike in swarms, or of combat systems to operate independently, of data fusion and of assistance in fast decision-making, on a scale greater than we have ever seen.”

Incorporating artificial intelligence and emerging technologies into weapons systems raises a host of ethical, humanitarian, and legal concerns for all people, including Palestinians. Campaigners have called for the adoption of a treaty containing prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapons systems, which many countries, including Palestine, have joined.

Autonomous weapons systems could help automate Israel’s uses of force. These uses of force are frequently unlawful and help entrench Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians. Without new international law to subvert the dangers this technology poses, the autonomous weapon systems Israel is developing today could contribute to their proliferation worldwide and harm the most vulnerable.

That last paragraph assumes that Israel is inherently immoral and therefore any AI-assisted weapons it develops must also likely be immoral by design.

This is the opposite of the truth.

There is no doubt that there are many potential dangers of AI. Any decision that an AI makes independently could easily be a wrong decision, and malicious actors could use AI deliberately to violate the laws of war.

In the end, though, AI is just another tool that could be used for good or bad. HRW's assumption that Israel's use of AI would only be for violating international law shows how biased the organization is.

Israel has been exploring AI in warfare for years. Its position mirrors that of the US, UK, Australia and others that AI could actually save lives in combat.

Israel's position a decade ago shows that it has given far more thought about the moral implications of this issue than HRW ever did when it launched its own shallow campaign against "killer robots." At a conference on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) in 2013, the Israeli delegate made it crystal clear that Israel is only planning to use AI as a tool where a human is the one who makes all of the important decisions:

In order to ensure the legal use of a lethal autonomous weapon system, the characteristics and capabilities of each system must be adapted to the complexity of its intended environment of use. Where deemed necessary, the warfare environment could be simplified for the system by, for example, limiting the system's operation to a specific territory, during a limited timeframe, against specific types of targets, to conduct specific kinds of tasks, or other such limitations which are all set by a human, or, for example, if. _ necessary, it could. be programmed to refrain from action, or require and wait for input from human decision-makers when the legality of a specific action is unclear. Indeed, appropriate human judgment is injected throughout the various phases of development, testing, review, approval, and decision to employ a weapon system. The end goal would be for the system's capabilities to be adapted to the operational complexities that it is expected to encounter, in a manner ensuring compliance with the Laws of Armed Conflict. In this regard, LAWS are not different from many other weapon systems which do exist today, including weapons whose legal use is already regulated under the CCW.

The HRW quote above of an Israeli official mirrors this: the systems are meant to assist in decision making, not to make decisions itself.

Utterly absent in HRW's one-sided, biased screed is the potential that AI can save people's lives and enhance compliance with the laws of armed conflict:

In our view, there is even a good reason to believe that LAWS might ensure better compliance with the Laws of Armed Conflict in comparison to human soldiers. In many ways, LAWS could be more predictable than humans on the battlefield. They are not influenced by feelings of pressure, fear or vengeance, and may be capable of processing information more quickly and precisely than a person. Experience shows that whenever sophisticated and precise weapons have been employed on the battlefield, they have led to increased protection of both civilians and military. forces. Thus, Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems may serve to uphold in an improved manner, the ideals of both military necessity and humanitarian concern - the two pillars upon which the Laws of Armed Conflict rest.

Israel's history in incorporating human rights laws and protecting civilians in its development of weapons is unparalleled, with the possible exception of the US - and therefore not something that HRW wants anyone to know about.

Self-driving cars, while not perfect, have been shown to be much less likely to be involved in fatal accidents than humans. There is no reason to assume that weapons systems would be any different. It is clear that Israel's position is to develop such systems that will minimize the dangers to innocent people, all with appropriate oversight by human experts. There are still some areas that need to be worked out, like who is responsible for mistakes made by such systems, but these issues all mirror similar issues in complex wartime environments today.

Israel intends to use AI to minimize collateral damage, save lives and adhere to the laws of armed conflict better than humans can alone. These are positions that real human rights advocates should fully support. But because it is Israel, they instead assume that whatever the Jews invent must be to oppress Palestinian victims and they reflexively oppose it.

Which means that Human Rights Watch cares less about Palestinian lives than Israel does.

UPDATE: I coincidentally just came across an article by Marc Andreesen, legendary computer expert most responsible for creating the first popular web browsers Mosaic and Netscape, on his optimistic predictions for AI. He writes:

I even think AI is going to improve warfare, when it has to happen, by reducing wartime death rates dramatically. Every war is characterized by terrible decisions made under intense pressure and with sharply limited information by very limited human leaders. Now, military commanders and political leaders will have AI advisors that will help them make much better strategic and tactical decisions, minimizing risk, error, and unnecessary bloodshed.

No surprise that Israel and the experts are on the same page, while HRW tries to scare everyone by referring to any smart weapons system as "killer robots."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Mahmoud Abbas congratulated Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Tuesday, on the election of Algeria as a member of the UN Security Council.

Let's take a quick look at what life is like in Algeria today.

- A law was passed in 1962 that ensured that anyone without a Muslim grandparent couldn't be a citizen. Some 140,000 Jews had to leave, and the laws, while changed, ensure that they cannot become citizens today.

- Algeria routinely arrests human rights activists.

- There are credible reports of torture in prisons.

- The judiciary is not independent and effectively controlled by the president.

- There are laws that restrict women's rights.

- Men who beat women can be pardoned if the woman is pressured to marry him.

- There are laws that criminalize many forms of speech, both in mainstream and social media. Some journalists were harassed and intimidated.

- Laws restrict activities of any religion besides Sunni Islam.

- Gays can be imprisoned under the law for homosexual acts.

- Movies and books must be approved before being allowed into the country.

- Protests in Algiers are essentially illegal.

- Black Algerians, Black migrants and non-Muslims are widely discriminated against.

So Algeria is a racist, homophobic, misogynist, apartheid dictatorship whose citizens have no freedom and limited rights.

One reason you don't hear much about countries like Algeria in the news is because if the media and human rights groups would judge all countries with the same standards and campaign against all abuses with the same energy, criticism of Israel would be invisible in the tsunami of actual serious human rights abuses worldwide. And they don't want to live in a world like that.

A set at the Security Council is a very high honor. Outside of groups like UN Watch, who is protesting giving this honor to a country as contemptuous of human rights as Algeria is?

No one cares.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!