Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Jenin

Showing posts with label Jenin. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 04, 2023

Amnesty and HRW won't say a word about this Jenin war crime

Times of Israel reported on Monday:

The Israel Defense Forces says troops located hidden underground storage sites with weapons and explosives inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Jenin.

After lengthy gun battles with armed Palestinians who were holed up inside the mosque, Israeli forces managed to break in, the IDF says.

The IDF says that on the ground floor, troops found two underground storage sites containing explosives, weapons, and other military equipment.

Using a mosque as a military site is a war crime.

Article 53 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I says:

Without prejudice to the provisions of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 14 May 1954, and of other relevant international instruments, it is prohibited:
…
(b) to use such objects [historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples] in support of the military effort

Additional Protocol II has identical language.

It was Hamas and Islamic Jihad that turned a mosque into a military target by firing from it and storing weapons within.

The fact that most Muslims are not upset at Palestinian terror groups for treating their mosques that way indicates that hate for Israel is more important to most Muslims than the sanctity of the mosque.

I don't see any fatwas on the topic, but my guess is that the Islamists pretend that this is a case of "defensive jihad" - defending Islam as a whole from destruction - which gives them wide latitude to even violate normative Islamic principles of war. It appears to be the justification for suicide bombings, and female suicide bombers, for example. Under that mindset, using mosques for war transforms from something reprehensible into an obligation.

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Why is there a "refugee camp" in Jenin to begin with, anyway?

Today's raid by the IDF on terror targets in Jenin is revealing a huge terrorist infrastructure, with large arms caches and command and control centers, in the heart of the Jenin "refugee camp."

Why is there a "refugee camp" in Jenin?

The city has been under Palestinian Authority control for nearly three decades. The residents live in "Palestine, so they aren't refugees or even the grandchildren of refugees. They live in the land they claim as their own, under Palestinian rule. There is no definition of "refugee" in the world that would call these people refugees.

Yet they live, rent free, in a cramped "refugee camp" and the world pays for their housing, as well as their schooling and their medical care - all services way beyond what real refugees receive.

One can see from a satellite image the clear outlines of the Jenin camp. The structures are much smaller than in the surrounding town and the roads, such as they are, are narrow.

In 2002, after the IDF went into Jenin and destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in fierce fighting with heavy casualties on both sides, the Israeli housing minister offered to rebuild the camp elsewhere where residents could have larger houses and wider roads - to live like normal people in their land.

The idea was vehemently rejected.

One of the self-appointed leaders of the camp said that the Israeli offer to rebuild everything better was really a plot "to erase the camps from existence, because these camps as a political reality constitute living testaments to the Nakba of the Palestinian people." (source, page 128)

That's exactly it. The camps are considered an important symbol of "resistance," not a place where human beings actually live. When UNRWA wanted to rebuild the camps and widen the roads, the same self-appointed leaders again opposed the plan, because wider roads meant the IDF could more easily enter. UNRWA and the committee remained at an impasse for months before the actual camp residents got their own committee together and said they wanted the UNRWA plan. The residents committee head said:

If we left it to debate we would have needed another five years. We agreed with the UNRWA plan. The families I meet now are happier and they are happy with the roads. If the Israeli army uses the road once (a day), we use it 100 times a day.

This is the way things have been since 1948. Ordinary Palestinians are stuck with leaders who actively want to use them as "symbols" of misery - by keeping them miserable.

These leaders choose to keep hundreds of thousands of people in "camps" - places that are ideal for terrorists to flourish, where the leaders can cry to the TV cameras about how Israel is bombing these densely populated areas and where they really, really hope that civilians die.

Real leaders would have demolished these camps decades ago and told UNRWA that their services are no longer needed because Palestinians are a proud people who take care of their own. Leaders whose main goal is the end of Israel would grasp any opportunity to make Israel look bad - and therefore they keep so many residents miserable in camps where terrorists build huge caches of explosives near children's bedrooms.

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Islamic Jihad leader: "We follow Iran's orders, and our only terror targets are Jews"

The secretary general of the Islamic Jihad terror group, Ziyad Al-Nakhala, gave an extensive interview to an Iranian newspaper, and he mentioned a few things that the Western media rarely reports.

While most people understand that Iran funds most of Islamic Jihad's operations, Al-Nakhala admits that Islamic Jihad essentially is part of Iran's military, and that its decisions originate in Iran.

First he praises the Iranian regime for providing the technical expertise to build weapons:

We gained from the Islamic Revolution other expertise in the level of manufacturing and arming. Today, we see the action of the resistance taking different roles from the past, and the Palestinian has more experience than before, and today the Palestinian manufactures many weapons with which he confronts the occupation and manufactures them locally, with the exception of machine guns. Missiles, anti-tank weapons, and explosives are manufactured locally. An important part of this expertise was gained by the Palestinian people from our brothers in the Islamic Republic, and this has a great impact, and what we are witnessing today of resistance action in which missiles are used to strike the occupied cities, and in particular Tel Aviv, and all the central cities of Israel. These experiences from the Islamic Republic benefited the resistance and the Palestinian people , in addition to the expertise of mortars and explosives.

But then he says that it was Iran's leader who called for local armed groups in West Bank towns like Jenin:

When His Eminence [Ayatollah Khamenei] called for the arming of the West Bank, ...everyone cooperated in order to bring about change and a qualitative shift in the Palestinian situation, and programs were developed for this, whether through smuggling of weapons or by purchasing weapons from the Israelis themselves. The important thing is that there was a lot of focus in order for the West Bank to move from a state of coexistence and calm to a state of resistance that we see today, and this, of course, was completely consistent with the directives of His Eminence the Leader on the possibility of arming the West Bank. During our visit to Iran and during the meeting with His Eminence the Leader, His Eminence confirmed once again to develop the armament of the West Bank, and the development of resistance work in the West Bank.

Interestingly, Nakhala also downplays the amount of money Iran provides for terror operations and "martyr" families, because he is aware that there is a backlash in Iran of how much it provides to Palestinians while Iranians are in severe financial straits. "I say this so that people can be reassured, because it is possible for them to think that the Palestinian people took all the money of the Islamic Republic," he says, which means that this is a very sore point and Iranian citizen anger is a threat to terror groups like Islamic Jihad.

Al-Nakhala then emphasized that the targets of terrorists are specifically Jews, and the purpose of terror attacks is to frighten Jews into fleeing:

We are optimistic and we will win even if 10 or 15 years pass. years, but we are optimistic that if we exert more effort, the Zionist project will disintegrate, because the reality of the Jews in Palestine is that they came to this country in order to live in peace, stability and an opportunity for life, but when the opportunity for life and peace is not available and when the Jew finds only the place where he is killed is Palestine, he will inevitably leave. He came to Palestine to live in safety and stability. When he does not find this stability and peace, so he returns to where he came from, because there is no Jew in the world today whose life is threatened like the Jews in Palestine. Jews in other countries live and prosper. The only Jew who is killed is in Palestine. We must work to change the conviction of the Israeli that the chance of life here is non-existent and that the only place in which the Jew is killed is Palestine, and therefore he must leave this country.

So while these terror groups claim in English that they have nothing against Jews, they freely admit that their targets are specifically Jews and the only people they want to terrorize are Jews.

Notice also that Al-Nakhala admits that the purpose of Zionism is for Jews to live in peace and security - not to steal land, as they usually tell the West and each other. (h/t kweansmom)

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Both Sides Now: When Officials Lump Terrorists Together with their Jewish Victims (Judean Rose)

On Tuesday, the US Department of State issued a statement regarding the Jews who were murdered for filling their gas tanks while Jewish:

"The United States condemns the terrorist attack against Israelis near Eli in the West Bank today. We express our deepest condolences to the families of those killed and wish the injured a speedy recovery," said Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller.

So far, so good, right? I had been gritting my teeth waiting to hear the White House do the usual both-siding of the issue: “We ask both sides to refrain from violence at this difficult time.”

I call this “both-siding it.” When you both-side a situation, you’re not pointing a finger or assigning blame, because terrorist and victim are the same. Or rather, in drawing a moral equivalence between the two, you whitewash the actions of the terrorist. The effect of this is to appease the Muslim world and its sympathizers, because of course, that world thinks that murdering Israelis is a mitzvah (l’havdil). So the terrorists are good, because they’re killing ZIONISTS.

Lucy, Maia, and Rina Dee, HY"D.

It is tragic to report this here how despite the fact that Israel and the US are allies, the US so often draws a moral equivalence between Israeli citizens and soldiers with the people who brutally murder them. This in spite of the fact that the US claims to be committed to the safety and security of Israeli citizens and says that Israel has right to defend itself.

Why does the US tell the world that there is no difference between Israelis and the people who brutally murder them? It’s simple: Because it can. US officials know that the Jews will understand and take it on the chin. We don’t REALLY mean it, they probably tell Israeli leaders behind the scenes, but hey, you know. Diplomacy. Realpolitik.

Yet Miller’s statement had thus far been free of ~~all that crap~~ this sort of rhetoric. I was rather pleased with that White House statement.

But I shouldn’t have been. I should have known there’d be more, and that it would not be nice at all—not nice to US ally Israel, and not nice to the Jews. Not respectful. Painful to hear and read. A betrayal. We wish we could leave our children forever innocent of such things, forever in love with wonderful America. We would give anything not to have our Jewish children, whether Israeli or American, or any children at all, including those who reside in Gaza and in the Occupied Jewish Territories (OJT), hear such things as Matthew Miller would now say as an official representative of the United States of America:

"We are also concerned about the continuation of violence in Israel and the West Bank in recent weeks that has killed and injured Palestinian and Israeli civilians. We will continue to work with Israel and the Palestinian Authority to promote steps towards de-escalation."

This is a very problematic statement. There is a vague mention of “violence” but not one word about terror. There is an allusion to a nonexistent “Palestinian” state “in Israel and the West Bank,” as if Israel’s Jewish heartland, Judea and Samaria, had already been swallowed whole by this nonentity, a done deal.

I take it personally. To me this is the US spitting in my face because I make my home in Judea.

Efrat

Miller speaks of violence in “recent weeks” equating the terror attack on Jewish civilians getting gas, with soldiers on missions in Jenin for the specific purpose of routing out terrorists so that they may be brought to justice, and of course, in order to protect Israeli citizens. It is not easy to be a soldier in that situation and having to enter a hostile terrorist enclave like Jenin. The violent (!) locals, bred to hate Jews, lie in wait for Jewish soldiers and drop concrete blocks on their heads, which is how Ronen Lubarsky (HY”D) was killed. And that’s the least of it.

This was not two equal warring parties, but the IDF doing the right thing—the morally correct thing—by apprehending terrorists so that they can no longer injure or murder Jews. Yet the State Department speaks of violence “that has killed and injured Palestinian and Israeli civilians,” saying “Palestinian” first, to show evenhandedness. Or rather, to say to the terrorists, “We close our eyes to what you are, because to do otherwise would not be the popular thing to do and anyway, nobody cares about the Jews.”

This is not, in actual fact, both-siding it, but one-siding it, by dint of lumping terrorists in with their victims. No matter how neutral they seem, they’re taking a side, and it ain’t the side of the Jews. Miller’s prepared remarks speak of violence as a spontaneous eruption that has no source, “violence” that kills, similar to saying that guns kill when guns don’t generally shoot themselves.

Violence doesn’t kill. Guns don’t kill. Terrorists kill. Those who murder people at a gas station are terrorists. Violent protestors who impede an IDF mission are not “civilians” but enemy combatants. Even when they are 17, rather than 26. Perhaps especially so. (Why aren’t they kept away from the “violence” by the adults?)

In not holding them guilty, you take their side. You take the side of terror. What is wrong with the United States that it excuses terror? And what is wrong with the people of Jenin?

Jenin

What is wrong with the residents of Jenin is that they see nothing wrong with killing Jews. So much so that town is now an Iranian stronghold. The US, on the other hand has no good excuse for equating victim with perpetrator, thus excusing terror, because all things being equal, it’s just violence, right?

No one’s responsible. “Palestinian” casualties are mentioned before Israeli casualties to identify for us the guilty party, as if that hadn’t already been made perfectly clear: Israel started it, because the “Palestinian” dead were mentioned first.

Miller winds up his canned remarks by stating that the US will “continue to work with Israel and the Palestinian Authority to promote steps towards de-escalation,” as if the latter two parties were equal partners, as if the PA were not sworn to murder Jews and steal their land, as if Israel had no reasonable motive for being in Jenin in the first place—and as if Jews had no right to be at a gas station near Eli.

What does it mean to speak of de-escalating when you won’t say the T word? It means, “Israel, knock it off. Back off these terrorists. We can’t and won’t take your side on this. Diplomacy. Realpolitik. (Black gold, Texas tea.)

Wait, whut??

This is, incredibly, the official position of the White House, and it is as abhorrent as it is antisemitic. But then it’s not just official US that officially hates the Jews. It’s the done thing the world over. The EU, UK, UN (here and here, for example), Canada. They all do it. Such examples are too numerous to mention. It’s certainly not the first time a spokesperson for the Biden White House has expressed this same antisemitic sentiment.

Thanks to all of these world powers, and many, many others, the “de-escalation” of “violence” will not be occurring any time soon. How can you de-escalate violence when you can’t name its source? How can you sue for peace when you excuse terror BECAUSE of the identity of the victims: “it’s only the Jews again”?

In effect, this is the world blaming Jews for all that happens to them by making them responsible for being Jewish in the first place. (Jews, ya know. Everyone hates ‘em. Totally disposable. Easy to exploit. For centuries.)

For that is the way of the world. The US et al. don’t want de-escalation. If they did, they’d support Israel in its efforts to eliminate terror, by eliminating terrorists such as those stowed away in Jenin—terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands. Innocent blood. But Jewish blood. Specifically.

Israelis are meant to take it on the chin, like good Jews.

We can almost feel the pat on the head.

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This morning, a 15 year old Palestinian girl who was shot in the head during Monday's clashes in Jenin died of her injuries. This brought the death toll of the fighting to 7.

By all accounts and videos, the fighting in Jenin was fierce. Constant gunfire is heard. We have video of terrorists firing from a mosque.

But, invariably, even though there were bullets coming from every direction, every civilian killed is blamed on Israel.

Of those killed in Jenin, two were members of terror groups and two were throwing stones at the IDF soldiers who were trapped in the camp after the IED blast that disabled their armored vehicle. Three civilians have died - a 21 year old university student, a 48 year old man and now this 15 year old girl.

While we know Palestinian gunmen fire wildly in all directions, and the IDF is far more professional in targeting and firing, "human rights groups" like PCHR - who aren't on the scene - reflexively blame the IDF for all civilian deaths. The Palestinian Ministry of Health automatically blames every death on Israel.

And the media accepts these unfounded assertions because they don't want to contradict the "narrative."

A spokesperson told Army Radio said that the chances that Israeli forces hit the girl were “low”. It takes time for the IDF to investigate each death, and by the time they do, the media has moved on to the next story.

There is no doubt that Palestinians are injured and killed from Palestinian fire. We see it happen from misfired rockets in Gaza. We see masked gunmen firing without aiming. We see trigger happy militants firing wildly in the air. And Palestinians have a lot more to gain from their own civilian casualties than Israel does.

What needs to change is the assumption that every Palestinian civilian death during firefights is killed by Israel. The IDF makes some mistakes but they are the exception, not the rule.

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Palestinian terrorists shoot at journalists, Israel blamed

Haaretz reported about the clashes in Jenin yesterday, and fully accepted the idea that unseen snipers shooting towards the journalists were Israeli and not Palestinian.

Abu Ahmed, a long-time camp resident, said he had the impression that the army was planning to undertake a large-scale operation in the city and its environs. Residents say that when the presence of Israeli forces was detected, calls went out from muezzins for armed militias to come out and confront them, which ultimately led to the heavy fire that followed.

“I was in Al-Awdah Square on the edge of the Jenin refugee camp,” said Hafez, a journalist who was covering the raid. “I was in my car. They shot at random while I was photographing the clashes and the Palestinian fighters.” At a certain point, he said, three bullets were fired at his car. “Two of them I heard flying past me, but the third hit the car door on the driver’s side.”

He claims that the shots were not fired at him accidentally. “Our car is a marked journalist’s car and I was wearing a vest identifying me as press.”

Hafez said he was shot at a second time even though he was wearing clothing indicating he was a journalist. “We were about a kilometer away, on Haifa Street, on the road that leads to the Salam army checkpoint. We were eight journalists from the international and Arab media and we came under direct fire from a sniper in one of the buildings,” he recalled. “We were trapped there for 20 minutes and could only leave when it was all over.”

Jasmin – another journalist who was with a colleague of hers who was shot – confirmed the account. “We’re journalists and we were wearing clothing that identified us as such, [even donning] helmets,” she said. “They started shooting at us. We hadn’t done anything, we were only taking pictures. We fled but they kept shooting at us.”

She said that in the area the raid occurred there were no armed Palestinians, “just civilians, children and journalists.” Like Hafez, she said she and her colleagues were fired on “more than once on the same day.”

The journalists are implying that the snipers were Israeli and the story is being reported that way in Arab media.

The Telegraph has video of journalists taking cover on a rooftop, although some are crouching opposite others, so there is no way to know from which direction the fire is coming.

There appears to be some play-acting in this video - some journalists taking cover behind a wall while others stand around where they'd be seen by snipers, apparently unconcerned. But the gunfire is real, and the journalists certainly are not in a position to identify the source.

While they are careful when speaking to The Telegraph not to claim they know the identity of the snipers, being that they are all Palestinian journalists, they of course will blame Israel when speaking to friendlier media.

What is certain is that trained, professional soldiers do not fire wildly and randomly. They might mistake a target but they fire at targets. The random fire described in the Haaretz article is far more likely from Jenin terrorists, whom we know will fire without even looking at their target.

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The Palestinian Waqf issued a statement yesterday:

The Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, Sheikh Hatem Al-Bakri, denounced the Israeli occupation forces’ raid on Al-Assir Mosque in the Al-Jabriyat area, in the vicinity of Jenin camp, on Monday morning.

Al-Bakri said in a press statement that the occupation forces blew up the door of the mosque, broke all the windows, tampered with the mosque's assets and furniture, and destroyed the devices and speakers.

He emphasized that this violation of our sanctities and mosques is rejected by heavenly laws and earthly laws, adding that this insult to our sanctities and mosques will be confronted by insisting on our adherence to our land and our right to Palestine.

Al-Bakri called on the international community to work quickly and seriously to end these daily violations that attack our sanctities and our feelings, and to end these attacks that harm our rights as Muslims and Palestinians.

There is something missing from this statement.

Terrorists were firing weapons from the mosque they had barricaded themselves in.

The Waqf doesn't seem too bothered by Palestinians using a mosque as a military position.

Which shows that Israel has more respect for Muslim holy sites than Palestinians do.

But we already knew that.

In fact, the muezzin in Jenin used mosque loudspeakers to call for terrorists to come out and battle the Israelis - meaning that many mosques in Jenin became, according to international law, military command and control centers and therefore legitimate military targets.

Of course Israel didn't attack those other mosques, but the evidence is clear that Palestinians are the ones who treat mosques as military sites - and no one from the "human rights community" nor from the mainstream Muslim community is condemning that.

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He was released from Israeli prison last month. Now he's dead. And Palestinians killed him.

Khalil Mesbah Khalil Ahmed Musa was sentenced in 2003 to 20 years in prison for a terror attack.

He was a leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Jenin, and was convicted for shooting, setting explosive devices, and attempted murder.

His 20 year sentence ended in May, and he was released, to a large celebration with his fellow Fatah terrorists.

Now, a month later, justice was served - but in an unexpected way.

43-year old Khalil Musa was killed on Saturday during a family quarrel in Jenin.

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The terrorist hanging out the window

Did you see the photo of the terrorist hanging out the window in Jenin and trying to shoot Israeli troops with one arm? He ended up being killed.

Well the moderate Fatah organization decided to memorialize him:

I'm no expert on Arab iconography, but I think they are saying that he is now burning up in the hot fires of hell, symbolized by the sun.

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Palestinian news stories you probably didn't know about

During the funeral of Abdel Fattah Kharousheh, who murdered the Yaniv brothers, Palestinian police fired tear gas and tried to take away Hamas flags. This resulted in Kharousheh's body falling to the ground.

A 37 year old Palestinian in Taffouh was shot in the head and killed during a "family dispute."

Another was killed in a dispute over a coat.

Hamas sentenced three people to death in Gaza, two of them for "collaborating" with Israel and one for drug charges.

A gang of 11 people were arrested in Jenin for threatening other people with sharp objects, and one tried to run over others with his car. A number of victims were hospitalized.

The Palestinian Supreme Fatwa Council said "our Palestinian people are facing a war of extermination, which is being carried out by the occupation authorities and herds of settlers."

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.@UNRWA makes up a new international law to @CNN @NicRobertsonCNN @VascoCNN

Since the Jenin "massacre" story started fading from the headlines, CNN has a story about the family whose apartment was used by the IDF as a firing position against the group of Jenin terrorists planning a major attack.

No doubt the family was severely affected by being invaded by IDF troops. But the story says this:

Representatives of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) visited Jenin in the days after the incident and spoke to al-Hayja and his family. "Their children were noticeably traumatized," Adam Bouloukos, director of UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank told CNN. "This kind of invasion violates not only international law but common decency."

The UNRWA official is lying about international law and, as usual, the media doesn't bother to fact check.

The main relevant section of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, Article 53, says:

Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

The ICRC commentary to Article 53 says:

The occupying forces may ...undertake the total or partial destruction of certain private or public property in the occupied territory when imperative military requirements so demand.
Furthermore, it will be for the Occupying Power to judge the importance of such military requirements. It is therefore to be feared that bad faith in the application of the reservation may render the proposed safeguard valueless; for unscrupulous recourse to the clause concerning military necessity would allow the Occupying Power to circumvent the prohibition set forth in the Convention. The Occupying Power must therefore try to interpret the clause in a reasonable manner: whenever it is felt essential to resort to destruction, the occupying authorities must try to keep a sense of proportion in comparing the military advantages to be gained with the damage done.

Israel's right to attack military targets under international law is undisputed. It must minimize damage to civilian property as much as possible while protecting its own troops. And, in this case, it did: the only alternative would have been to bomb the targeted building from the air, which would have killed far more civilians.

What about the IDF forcing the family who lived there to stay sheltered in one room while the bullets were flying? At first glance, it appears to be a violation of Article 31 of the Conventions:

No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.

The ICRC commentary shows that it is not a blanket prohibition, because otherwise it contradicts other articles of the Convention:

[T]here is no question of absolute prohibition, as might be thought at first sight. The prohibition only applies in so far as the other provisions of the Convention do not implicitly or explicitly authorize a resort to coercion. Thus, Article 31 is subject to the unspoken reservation that force is permitted whenever it is necessary to use it in the application of measures taken under the Convention. ....Thus, a party to the conflict would be entitled to use coercion with regard to protected persons in order to compel respect for his right to requisition services Articles 40 , 51 ), to ensure the supply of foodstuffs, etc. to which he is entitled (Article 55, para. 2 , Article 57 ), to carry out the necessary evacuation measures (Article 49, para. 2 ), to remove public officials in occupied territories from their posts (Article 54, para. 2 ) and in regard to everything connected with internment (Articles 79 et sqq.).

Occupying powers can force civilians to do far more than stay in one place for several hours if needed for military purposes. And whie most articles about the Jenin operation try to airbrush the facts, no one has seriously argued that there was no military necessity behind it.

CNN has every right to report on how Palestinians feel about their homes being invaded. But it does not have the right to report that Israel violated international law in doing so when it didn't.

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Disgusting @Amnesty parrots lie that IDF shot tear gas at a hospital

Amnesty International's response to Israel's raid at a terrorist nest in Jenin yesterday is yet more evidence of its anti-Israel and ultimately antisemitic bias.

Responding to the killing of at least nine Palestinians by Israeli forces during a military raid on Jenin refugee camp this morning, Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director at Amnesty International, said:

“In the space of just a few hours this morning, Israeli forces killed at least nine people and injured 20 more; blocked ambulances from accessing the wounded; and fired tear gas at a hospital, reportedly causing suffocation injuries to sick children.

The charge that Israel fired tear gas at a hospital came from PA health minister Mai Al-Kaila who absurdly claimed that the IDF "stormed" the hospital and "deliberately" fired tear gas to the children's ward.

Luther knows that she is lying, because he doesn't mention her charge about "storming" the hospital, which makes no sense.

The IDF denied the charge immediately:

Israel's army denied a Palestinian claim that soldiers deliberately fired tear gas at a hospital during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.

"No one shot tear gas on purpose at a hospital," an army spokesman told AFP. "But the activity was not far away from the hospital and it is possible some tear gar entered through an open window."

Amnesty's statement was published ten hours after Israel's emphatic denial.

Which means that Amnesty chose to parrot the obvious lies of a Palestinian minister, watering it down a little because they knew her entire statement was propaganda. Then they chose to ignore Israel's denial as not being even worth considering.

To Amnesty, Palestinians are trustworthy and Jews are simply liars whose words aren't even worth considering.

And what really happened in the hospital? Middle East Monitor published video that they claimed shows the mothers and children choking:

There's no panic, no running, no choking, no one looking like their eyes hurt, and the women aren't even covering their own or their children's faces to protect from the tear gas.

The IDF explanation makes perfect sense - the mothers and nurses smelled the tear gas and are looking for a room that didn't have an open window, and hospital staff directs them where to go.

Middle East Monitor knows this, so they caption the video with what they want you to believe, not what you are actually seeing - a time honored Pallywood propaganda technique. People are conditioned to implicitly trust captions and then view the photo or video through the lens that the propagandists helpfully provide.

But even worse than repeating obvious lies and treating Israeli rebuttals as not even worth considering, from reading Amnesty's statement one wouldn't even know that there was a three hour battle going on. Amnesty makes it sound like the IDF went into Jenin to kill a bunch of civilians because of "impunity." No one reading Amnesty's statement would know that this is what nearly all of those killed were doing at the moment of their deaths:

The statement also doesn't even hint at the reason the Israeli forces must go into Jenin to begin with - because a wave of deadly attacks in Israel last year where Jenin was the source.

While Amnesty rushes to condemn Israel going after armed terrorists, Amnesty did not condemn a single one of those attacks on Israeli civilians. Here are their press releases during the time period between March and May 2022 when there were five multiple-casualty terror attacks in Israel:

This is beyond simple bias. This is the world's leading human rights organization actively choosing to support Islamic terrorism over the Jewish state.

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Earlier this week, Francesca Albanese - the UN Special Rapporteur for the territories - tweeted out a call for issues she should write reports about.

I responded asking her to write about Palestinian terror groups recruiting children.

Of course she didn't answer. But in a way, she did.

Shortly thereafter, Albanese tweeted "As I took office 8m ago, I committed to making children & youth a priority for my mandate," then calling on Israel to release a Ahmed Mansara who, at 13, had stabbed and critically injured a 13-year old Israeli boy on a bicycle outside a candy shop.

Clearly, she doesn't consider the human rights of Jewish children to be under her mandate.

But she doesn't seem to care about many Palestinian children, either.

Joe Truzman, of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, unearthed a video made last summer from Jenin. It shows masked terrorist going around the city, followed eagerly by children. Sometimes the terrorists give the children guns.

During a parade, the terrorists - and teenagers - are firing into the air in the middle of the crowded streets with young children all over.

Between this video and the five child militants who were killed this year after being recruited and brainwashed into wanting to become martyrs, it is pretty clear that there are serious human rights violations happening against Palestinian children - by other Palestinians.

Truzman tweeted, "The amount of militants in Jenin, guns, and children walking around who are seemingly armed in this video is astounding, yet not surprising. There's a serious problem in the West Bank, especially in Jenin, and this video demonstrates it perfectly. "

In an astounding response, Albanese tweeted, "Yes there is a serious problem and not only in Jenin. It is called colonial occupation."

Yes, when children are exposed to gratuitous violence by Palestinians, Albanese blames...the Jews.

It is quite clear that Albanese's claim that she "committed to making children & youth a priority" for her mandate only applies to a specific subset of children: only Palestinian children whose situation she can blame on Jews.

All the others can go to hell because they don't advance her anti-Israel, antisemitic agenda.

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01/26 Links Pt1: Mark Levin, Eugene Kontorovich Explain Israel’s Judicial Reforms; 9 Palestinian gunmen killed as IDF foils terror cell in Jenin; The Saudis are growing sick of Palestine

From Ian:

HRC Op-Ed In The Hill Times History Doesn’t Support Giving Israel An ‘Occupier’ Label

HRC’s Op-Ed entitled: “History Doesn’t Support Giving Israel An ‘Occupier’ Label” was published in The Hill Times on Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, is not an “occupier” of its own land and of its own eternal and undivided capital, Jerusalem.

No UN resolution or political proclamation can distort these historical truths.

Furthermore, Jews have historical ties to Judea and Samaria which dates back thousands of years. Israel strenuously disputes claims that it’s an “occupier,” citing pre-existing legal, ancestral, and biblical claims to lands it acquired in a war of self-defence in 1967 against pan-Arab armies seeking its destruction and as there was no recognized sovereign of these areas at the time.

Jordan controlled the area now regarded as the “West Bank” from 1948-1967 following the War of Independence, which saw combined Arab armies try to wipe the nascent State of Israel off the map. Jordan didn’t have rightful title to the land according to international law. Same equally applies for Egypt, which controlled the Gaza Strip from 1948-1967, unlawfully, and which Israel acquired in 1967, but from which, in 2005, it unilaterally disengaged, removing 21 settlements, 8,000 settlers, and its combined armed forces in a unilateral concession for peace.

Importantly, the Palestinians have never had sovereignty and statehood, and according to Israel’s position and many leading international jurists, the laws of occupation aren’t applicable.

Melanie Phillips: Netanyahu at bay, but what about the facts?

So, how’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faring in his supposed program to smash democracy at the behest of the religious extremists in his government?

Well, as Israel’s newly-minted dictator, he’s not doing too well in that regard.

Consider: Netanyahu has demonstrated his supposed craven subjection to the ultra-nationalist Bezalel Smotrich, to whom he gave authority over civilian administration in the disputed territories, by brutally slapping Smotrich down when he attempted to overrule an IDF and Defense Ministry decision to tear down an illegal Israeli outpost.

Netanyahu has shown his allegedly despotic determination to ditch the rule of law by bowing to the Supreme Court’s ruling against his minister and long-time ally Aryeh Deri and firing him.

And Netanyahu showed himself captured, bound and gagged by the zealots in his government who want to turn Israel into a theocracy when he effectively overruled the Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar, who said he would stop funding cultural activities on Shabbat.

In other words, in every case, Netanyahu has chosen to uphold the existing order rather than overthrow it.

Undoubtedly, the fight between Smotrich and the defense establishment has further to go. Netanyahu has said he will somehow bring Deri back into his government. We have yet to see how these and other issues will turn out.

Maybe Netanyahu will yet morph into a cross between Viktor Orban, Herod and Mussolini. But so far, he has been behaving as a cautious, risk-averse prime minister determined to keep the liberal, constitutional show on the road.

Of course, this has received no acknowledgment from the “progressive” Jewish world, both in Israel and the Diaspora. To such people, Netanyahu is personally irredeemable, and because the government he has formed is committed to defending Jewish interests rather than left-wing principles, it is deemed incapable of doing anything sensible or good.

Gadi Taub: The Struggle for Israel’s Democracy

In his previous administrations Netanyahu was careful not to pick a fight with the country’s judicial oligarchy, preferring to spend his political capital on other subjects—primarily Iran and economics. He assumed, based on experience, that Israel’s judicial oligarchy would continue to abide by an unwritten rule: If a politician doesn’t try to reform the justice system, they will leave his person—though not necessarily his policies—alone. The flip side of this arrangement was, in any case, more obviously true: Try to advance a reform, and you almost always end up with a criminal investigation, often one that was fabricated, as in the cases of Yaacov Neeman and Reuven Rivlin, both of whom were among those barred from serving as justice ministers by contrived investigations that ended up with nothing. The judiciary had its own praetorian guard in the Office of the State Attorney, which cultivated a culture of promiscuous yet slow-moving investigations that made sure politicians didn’t step out of line.

After Netanyahu won his fourth term in 2015, the despair on the left reached a fever pitch, and the various centers of left-wing power began to clamor for Netanyahu’s head. The press led the way with investigative pieces accusing Netanyahu of corruption. Despite the speculative nature of these investigations, law enforcement pursued them with new vigor, leading, finally, to indictments.

The indictments had a paradoxical effect on the struggle for power between bureaucracy and democracy. First, they showed Netanyahu that the judicial oligarchy posed a direct threat to his political fortunes that could not be reasonably abated through the usual program of mutual noninterference. Second, the attacks by the judiciary on Likud’s undisputed leader had an energizing effect on his voters.

While removing a justice minister can be seen as a peripheral event, taking down a prime minster, and thus overturning the results of a national election, is a wholly different matter. It can fly, even with his supporters, when a prime minister is clearly proven to be corrupt, as was the case with Ehud Olmert, who ended up serving jail time. But when more than half the public feels its standard-bearer was framed and its ballots effectively shredded, it is unlikely to just accept that result. So both Netanyahu and his voters came to see, more clearly than before, the severity of the problem and the urgency in restoring the balance between the branches of government.

But the indictments and later trial also threatened to neutralize Netanyahu’s ability to act. It is difficult for a prime minster to reform the judicial system and put checks on politicized law enforcement when he himself is facing a trial. How would he escape the obvious suspicion that he is trying to save himself and is willing—as the left dramatically phrases this talking point—to “smash the justice system just to save his own skin”? True, judicial reform is unlikely to interfere with an ongoing trial, except maybe by making the judges more hostile. But perception is crucial here, and so Netanyahu seemed caught in a bind. The question came down to this: Will voters support a reform, or will enough of them see it as cynical, self-serving move on his part?

Last year’s election turned precisely on that question. And the voters gave a clear answer.

Palestinian Authority trying to spin today's fighting as new "Jenin Massacre"

In April 2002, Israel mounted a major military operation in Jenin that resulted in a pitched battle where 23 IDF soldiers and 52 Palestinians, mostly terrorists, were killed.

But Palestinians and their supporters claimed that between 400-500 Palestinians had been killed - and for weeks, the world's media believed them with no skepticism, and assumed that Israeli denials were lies. There were wide reports of a "massacre." An Amnesty International "forensics expert" visited the camp and said "I must say that the evidence before us at the moment doesn't lead us to believe that the allegations are anything other than truthful and that therefore there are large numbers of civilian dead underneath these bulldozed and bombed ruins that we see."

Months later, the UN and human rights groups grudgingly admitted that there was no massacre.

Yet even though the PA had lied so egregiously, they paid no price. The media continued to report their lies as fact and to regard Israeli denials as lies.

The Palestinian Authority has learned that lesson well.

Today, the IDF entered Jenin again, to stop an Islamic Jihad cell that was planning an imminent attack. As of this writing, it appears that the IDF killed eight terrorists and one civilian.

And like in 2002, the Palestinian Authority and media are again calling it a "massacre."

Palestinian Presidential Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Israeli government is committing a massacre in Jenin and its refugee camp, amidst international silence.

He added that the international silence is what encourages the occupation government to commit massacres against Palestinian people before the eyes of the world.

PA prime minister Shtayyeh "called on the United Nations and all international human rights organizations to intervene urgently to provide protection for Palestinian people and stop the bloodshed of children, youth and women."

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the United States to "intervene immediately" against what they called the "Israeli killing machine."

The Jenin-based armed groups freely admit that they attacked IDF troops and even brag that they scored direct hits but that contradicts the favored narrative of Palestinians as innocent victims, so international media doesn't bother quoting them.

Just as in 2002, Palestinians are making ludicrous allegations, including that the IDF directly shot an ambulance.

The PA's health minister claimed "the occupation stormed Jenin Governmental Hospital, and deliberately fired tear gas canisters at the children's department in the hospital" (some tear gas seems to have wafted in.) She also claimed the IDF shot bullets at the children's ward. She called these "war crimes."

Sure, in the middle of fighting highly armed Islamic Jihad terrorists, the IDF decided to break into a hospital and shoot bullets and tear gas canisters at the pediatric ward. Makes perfect sense.

The PA called a general strike, and declared three days of mourning for the terrorists.

The Palestinians are hoping that the media and NGOs will believe them implicitly. And they have every incentive to lie, because the media never reports that they have a history of lying to manipulate the media.

The Palestinians have nothing to lose with their lies.

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