Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: News

Showing posts with label News. Show all posts

Thursday, July 28, 2016

The Guardian calls Abbas' threat to sue over Balfour "a cry of despair" (UPDATE: So does Haaretz)

No one who follows the Palestinian issue will be very surprised to hear of the call by Mahmoud Abbas to sue the British government over the Balfour declaration of November 1917. That was the famous letter which pledged to support the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine and is seen as a key milestone for the Zionist movement.

The promise by Arthur Balfour, then foreign secretary, led to the British mandate, mass Jewish immigration and eventually to the creation of Israel in the wake of the second world war and the Holocaust, and to the Palestinian “Nakba” (catastrophe).

All roads lead to 'nakba."

Not that while the Guardian is careful to note that the Holocaust was a factor in the creation of Israel, it wouldn't say that Arab rejectionism, antisemitism and the desire to throw the Jews into the sea along with Arab leaders' using Palestinians as pawns were factors to the "nakba."

Threatening legal action over a 99-year-old document is certainly a stretch, and it attracted more ridicule than serious analysis. It has in any case long been superseded by other decisions including UN resolutions. Still, the statement may be seen as a symptom of desperation about the Palestinian cause at a time when the peace process is non-existent and hopes for an end to occupation and a two-state solution to the conflict appear moribund.

“I regard what Abbas said as as a cry of anger and despair rather than a statement of intent,” said Sir Vincent Fean, former British consul-general in Jerusalem and effectively ambassador to the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. “I don’t see how he can do what he has undertaken to do. But the problem is that the two-state solution that he has advocated and argued for for so long is rapidly drifting away.”

UPDATE: Very similar language from Haaretz:

The Palestinian gambit is clearly a symbolic PR move calculated to remind the world of the plight of the Palestinians. But it is also a cry of despair. It is no surprise that Abbas made his move at the Arab League Summit. The Palestinians are clearly worried about an apparent warming of ties between the moderate Arab states and Israel, and they do not want to be abandoned. Malki called on the Arab states not to normalize relations with Israel before the establishment of a Palestinian State.

Yes, it is despair. Not despair to create a Palestinian state, but despair at finding allies to help destroy Israel using the fiction of wanting a Palestinian state.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

I had the opportunity to speak with acclaimed film maker Pierre Rehov in a French cafe in Tel Aviv. He is a very colorful character, and prone to lots of expletives.

Rehov described how his family was chased out of Algeria when he was a child. He knew nothing about Judaism and didn't even understand that he was Jewish, but antisemitism was growing there. One night a Muslim man who was a patient of Rehov's dentist father knocked on his door. The father thought it was a dental emergency, but the man said, no, he had come to buy the apartment. He warned him that in the coming week his cousins were planning to come, rape his wife, kill his children and they will take the apartment. So it was better to sell it to the man now and flee for their lives.

Pierre described how he started getting into creating films after seeing how antisemitism in France was being increased by incidents like the Al Dura hoax.

Rehov is very angry at official French anti-Israelism. After he achieved some level of fame, Rehov says, the French government went after him. The French IRS auditors disallowed every deduction from expenses that he spent in Israel. In the end, he had to declare bankruptcy.

Rehov says that once in Gaza, around 2003, he saw people selling figurine ashtrays. The top seller was Osama bin Laden, and the second best seller was Saddam Hussein. he said that you would expect the third best seller to be Yasir Arafat, but no - it was Jacques Chirac.

At the same time, Rehov says, "When I went to visit the headquarters of Hamas in Gaza City, on the same floor - here you have a door, a small corridor, and here you have another door - the other door was the AFP, Agence France-Presse. In the middle, [between the two offices,] was a water cooler, and they were sharing the same water cooler. So you had the journalists of fucking AFP drinking the same water as the fucking terrorists from Hamas. And this is how information would go to France from Gaza."

"When I was doing my investigation in Jenin, I was obviously posing as a French journalist, because when you are a French journalist, they love you. So with my French passport I could see everything I wanted.

"[Using a hidden camera] I was able to record an amazing scene of Palestinian doctors, Palestinian journalists, around a woman who they claimed that she had given birth at a checkpoint because the Israelis wouldn't let her through. The woman said, 'No! It didn't happen like that! The ambulance was late...' But they told her, "No. You have to say that the tanks were pointing their cannons to you.' The guy who was with her, the poor husband, who was also trying to play the game, says, 'Yeah, and I helped her give birth while I was driving...'

"This guy was my fixer, He thought I was a French journalist... I was giving compliments to Talal Abu Rahma, who was the guy who filmed the story of Mohammed al-Dura. I was saying how it was so great for Palestine what he did, and also for himself, 'Everybody's talking about him, he's so famous, and he got awards...' My fixer said 'Are you interested?' I said 'What do you mean? Am I interested in what?' He said, "The easiest thing is to kill a kid. That's so simple. ' I asked 'What do you mean?' He said, 'Listen. Every family has some kid that they are ready to sacrifice. Are you ready to pay $10,000?'"

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

International Olympic Committee violates its own ethics guidelines, backs terror supporter Jibril Rajoub

Yesterday, Palestinian Media Watch released a comprehensive dossier of terror-supporting statements by Jibril Rajoub, Chairman of the Palestine Olympic Committee.

For example, on January 2, Rajoub said on PA TV:

“Yesterday in Hebron, they escorted 17 Martyrs, (among them murderers of civilians –Ed.) to burial. This is of course a source of pride for all of us. I say that whoever carried out individual acts of heroism, we in the Fatah movement bless and encourage them. We consider them heroes and a crown on the head of every Palestinian. At this point, when there is weakening and frustration, there is a group of people, beginning with our brother Muhannad Halabi (who murdered 2 – Ed.) and ending with the last Martyr... There is a competition between individuals. This is one of the issues we need to address - are we for or against it? I say that we in the [Fatah] Central Committee have discussed this matter, and we are in favor."
[Official PA TV, Jan. 2, 2016]

This is only one of many statements officially supporting and promoting terror documented by PMW.

In addition, Rajoub is also explicitly against competing against or working with Israeli sports:

The response by the IOC to similar complaints by Hillel Appelbaum shows that they have no intention to take any of this seriously.

From: Pâquerette Girard Zappelli
Date: 2016-05-31
Subject: RE: Complaint – Ethics in the matter of Jibril Rajoub
Dear Mr Applebaum,

After a thorough read of all the documents you provided, it clearly appears that the words of Mr Jibril Rajoub are not recent (2012 and 2014) and were spoken in his political capacity and not as an NOC official.

Our understanding is that the two National Olympic Committees are doing their best to improve relations between the two countries through sport. Owing to this, the competitors of the two organisations will together participate peacefully in the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Your sincerely,
Pâquerette Girard Zappelli
Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer
International Olympic Committee

These are miserable excuses for explicit support of terror by the PA's top Olympic official. And they directly contradict the Olympic Committee's own Code of Ethics.

The first three paragraphs of the Code say:

1.1 Respect for the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play;
1.2 Respect of the principle of the universality and political neutrality of the Olympic Movement;
1.3 Maintaining harmonious relations with state authorities, while respecting the principle of autonomy as set out in the Olympic Charter;

And it doesn't apply only to when officials are acting in their official capacity. The code explicitly applies to "the International Olympic Committee (IOC), each of its members and its administration, and the National Olympic Committees (NOC) and their officials, at all times and in all circumstances.

Zappelli is ignoring her own organization's published standards to allow a terror supporter and antithesis to Olympics ideals to keep his job.

She is the only person who can refer cases to the Ethics Commission, so by her ignoring the evidence she is personally subverting the entire ethics complaint process and making it clear that the supposed Olympics dedication to ethics is a joke.

If the IOC does not suspend Jibril Rajoub based on the copious evidence of his explicit support for terror and his attempts to stop any sports cooperation with Israel, it proves that the IOC is a corrupt institution.

(h/t Josh)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

I found the interview that Hamas leader Khaled Meshal gave to some reporters from India where the media reported it as if he was "moderate."

In the interview, Meshal stressed that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but that it was a group of freedom fighters.

We are a national resistance movement, not a terrorist organisation. We have the right to resist occupation. We have gained legitimacy because of our election victory. We are not random killing machines like terrorists....These labels don’t bother us. Our history shows that we had never engaged in random killing sprees of either occupiers or settlers....We are not resisting Israel because they are Jewish, or that they are ethnically different from us. We lived side by side with Jews in Jerusalem for centuries. .... Our people are attacked and our land is occupied. We have a right to resist and fight back, and it is not terrorism.

Hamas has been attacking Jews since 1993. It bombed a Passover seder with many old people. They were responsible for many bombing attacks on buses, cafes, hotels, public squares, universities, restaurants, markets, and medical centers. Hamas bombed a bus only this year, aiming to kill as many "random" Jews as possible. As always.

This interview shows that - surprise - besides murdering people, terrorists also lie. This seems to be a concept that reporters cannot quite grasp. As a result, the interviewers were too ill-informed to call Meshal out on his blatant attempts to rewrite history..

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Belgian school supports teacher who won Iran Holocaust cartoon contest

From The New Antisemite:

Luc Descheemaeker (aka O-Sekoer) of Belgium was awarded a special prize ("honorable mention") at the infamous Holocaust cartoon contest organised by the Iranians. He also received $ 1,000 cash prize.

Luc Descheemaeker teaches art and "culture" at the Sint-Jozefsinstituut at Torhout, a Catholic school in Flanders. Regards, a Belgian Jewish magazine, (July 2016 issue) contacted the school and was told that they were immensely proud ("très fière") that one of their teachers had been awarded the prize.

Belgian media proudly reports on their award-winning cartoonist without mentioning what he received the award for.

Antisemitism is mainstream.

(h/t Rudi)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Over the past couple of days I have documented some clear errors and missing context in B'Tselem's new, supposedly exhaustive report on casualties Operation Protective Edge. I have other examples of B'Tselem's inaccuracy, for example claiming that four of the nine people killed in a July 19 airstrike were civilians, when the Abu Rish Brigades claimed all of them - including a 15 and 16 year old - as members:

Never have any NGOs spent as much time and effort to document a single war - a war whose casualties are far fewer than most wars - as Amnesty and B'Tselem are spending on Protective Edge, even two years afterwards. What are they trying to accomplish and why are they trying to claim that so many terrorists were civilian?

The answer perhaps may be seen in the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor Strategic Plan for 2016-2018.

The ICC now looks at NGOs as partners in determining whether war crimes were committed - and some NGOs are salivating at the idea of prosecuting Israel.

The Office of the Prosecutor (OPT) writes:

[T]here are also the first responders—international forces, human rights organisations, non-governmental organisations (“NGOs”), media, etc.—who deploy into areas where the OTP has not been able to be present (e.g. due to jurisdiction, required agreements, or security implications for staff or witnesses). While respecting each other’s mandate and independence, the Office has begun to discuss with the NGO community how first responders could support the Office in its work and what support could be expected from the Office.

In relation to investigations, the Office will continue to implement the present strategy. It will focus, in particular, on the following priority areas:
 Closing the time gap between events on the ground and the Office’s investigations by creating partnerships with first responders, creating a gateway for crime reporting and working with partners to preserve relevant information on the internet.
 Increasing its ability to collect different forms of evidence other than witness statements through continually enhancing its scientific and technology-related capabilities. Additionally, it will develop further partnerships to support this strategic need, so that in-house capacity is only developed where it is justified.
 Continuing to strengthen the Office’s analysis function through the further roll-out of the Factual Analytical Database, the upgrade of analytical software, the roll-out of the Gender Analysis, and through strengthening the use of analytical products in investigative decision-making for planning, case selection and case review.

[T]echnology is evolving so rapidly that it will be impossible for the Office to keep current if it does not combine investing in its own expertise with developing strategic partnerships for the purposes of outsourcing, when needed, and for understanding and shaping how future technology can assist it to execute its mandate. The Office has been working with the law enforcement community, NGOs and academic institutions to explore new possibilities to support the identification, collection and presentation of evidence through technology.

The ICC is overwhelmed and need help to determine what to prosecute. But the fatal mistake it is making is that it is appearing to assume that the NGOs it chooses to partner with are unbiased.

In these cases, nothing could be further from the truth. In respect to Israel, we have documented exhaustively how each of these NGOs are advocates against the State of Israel, not objective gatherers of data that can be trusted.

But the ICC OTP document indicates that there have been talks for a while between the ICC and NGOs regarding the "help" they can give. Amnesty and B'Tselem are putting together very professional websites where their ability to present data in new and attractive ways mask the fundamental problem, known to all computer science students: garbage in, garbage out.

The ICC prosecutor, who freely admits that she does not have adequate technical expertise, can easily be fooled into mistaking flash for accuracy. Just because the B'Tselem and Amnesty sites have lots of information does not mean that the information is accurate. Their methodologies range from flawed to outright dishonesty and flagrant malice. They are hiring people to gather statistics who are themselves biased, or basing their information on questionable sources. They do not use any known methodology for fact-finding that can eliminate bias. And their data shows that they are ignoring any facts that do not conform to their pre-existing biases.

In short, biased and anti-Israel NGOs are taking advantage of an overworked, under-teched ICC to "help" it come to the conclusions that they have already decided on before they started their Gaza projects: that Israel is guilty of war crimes. Both Amnesty and B'Tselem say this or broadly imply this in their literature.

Dead children are not evidence of war crimes. Without knowing the targets and what the commanders knew at the time of the strikes, one cannot come to that conclusion. That is what international law says. But the Amnesty and B'Tselem websites hide or mis-state relevant information that could exonerate Israel. They cynically parade an army of dead Palestinian children to overwhelm the person looking at the data while purposefully hiding evidence that shows that it is Hamas, not Israel, that is responsible for their deaths. These NGOs are representing themselves as honest fact-finders to the ICC at the same time that they are falsely telling the world that Israel is guilty.

They should not be trusted partners to an organization that is dedicated to impartiality.

This is a cynical attempt to twist international law into a weapon against Israel. And the ICC prosecutor does not seem to realize - indeed, she simply does not have the tools to understand - that her "partners" are biased as hell. They are respected, they are praised, and one has to dig to see that there is rot in the foundation of their beautiful castles.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

For many years, reporters have been fooling themselves into interpreting Hamas statements as if the group is willing to accept Israel under specific circumstances, and every time Hamas explicitly denies any such report.

The initial reports falsely attributing peaceful intentions to Hamas by overlaying wishful thinking on top of actual Hamas statements get remembered by the anti-Israel "peace activist" crowd and the explicit denials don't even get reported.

The most famous example happened in 2011 when Ethan Bronner of the New York Times flatly asserted that Khaled Meshal accepts a two state solution, without being able to actually quote him saying it. The NYT followed with an editorial that continued with that false assertion.

Haaretz had a similar story in 2013, followed by Hamas' explicit denial.

NPR followed in 2014 with another report of Hamas' supposed moderation, again ignoring Hamas; explicit pro-terror statements released every day.

In these cases and more, Meshal said was that he was willing to accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines (plus flooding Israel with millions of Arabs) as a stage in the destruction of Israel, which is not negotiable.

Now YNet is jumping on the "Hamas is moderate" bandwagon:

Chief of Hamas Political Bureau Khaled Mashal has once again made relatively moderate statements about his organization's involvement in any future peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians in a conversation with Indian journalists on Tuesday.

Mashal said, speaking in English, "Hamas believes that we have full rights over the whole land and we don’t recognize occupation. Our fathers and grandfathers lived there. Hamas is also very much keen on a unified Palestine front. That is why we have accepted a joint Arab and Palestine program, based on 1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital, with the right of return of Palestinians expelled during years by successive Israeli governments."

Asked about the apparent contradiction in his position, Meshal answered, "We are facing apartheid. Nobody can force us to treat Israel as friendly nation or a legitimate entity. All of this also doesn't mean that at a certain moment or at a proper moment, we will not negotiate with the enemy. Given the political circumstances, we are positive of achieving our national goal through political means.

Once again, reporter are injecting their own wishful thinking on Meshal's words.

And once again, Hamas is clarifying that Meshal meant no such thing. Palestine News Network writes:

The Islamic Resistance Movement "Hamas" denied alleged statements attributed to politburo chief Khaled Meshaal about the issue of recognition of the occupation.

Hamas said in a statement Tuesday evening "the issue of whether to recognize the occupation are lies attributed to him, alleging that he began to spin [the idea] in the Israeli press statements."

It stressed that these fabricated allegations are "aimed at distorting the image of the movement its leadership," asserting that the movement and its leadership has well-known, unchanged positions to refuse to recognize the Israeli occupation.

The Hamas movement called on the media to investigate the accuracy and objectivity in dealing with the positions of the movement and the statements of its leaders.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

At the NYT, Jews are not victims in European jihadist spree

From the New York Times coverage of the latest terror attack in France:

France has had three major terrorist attacks in the space of 19 months: an assault on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and other locations around Paris in January 2015, which killed 17 people; coordinated attackson a soccer stadium, the Bataclan concert hall, and cafes and restaurants in and around Paris on Nov. 13, which killed 130 people; and a rampage on July 14 in the southern city of Nice by a man who rammed a cargo truck into a Bastille Day crowd and shot at the police with a handgun, killing 84 people.

"And other locations"? The other location was the Hypercacher kosher grocery store where 4 Jews were mowed down.

Was this just a simple oversight not to mention it even in passing since "only" four were killed and it was related to the Charlie Hebdo attack?

The link given is only for Charlie Hebdo so that doesn't tell us about the Hypercacher attack. The "other locations" isn't hyperlinked to Hypercacher.

But again, this could just be a simple oversight, right?

However, elsewhere in the article there is this paragraph:

President François Hollande blamed the Islamic State for the attack — the latest in a series of assaults that have left Europe stunned, fearful and angry — and soon after the terrorist group claimed responsibility, calling the attackers its “soldiers.”

The hyperlink for "series of assaults" goes to an article that also doesn't mention Hypercacher. And that article in turn has links to two more articles about attacks over the past two years that doesn't mention Hypercacher, or any background that would link to the Toulouse school murders of 2012 or the Brussels Jewish museum murders of 2014.

For a news source with such a large data store of stories on terrorist attacks in Europe, it is disconcerting that the current articles cannot be used by a curious reader to find links, even indirectly, to any terror attacks on Jews in Europe in recent years.

This is more that a coincidence. The subconscious thinking by editors at the New York Times, and elsewhere, is that attacks on Jews by Islamists are in a different category than attacks by Islamists on everyone else. Attacks on non-Jews are regarded as more outrageous than attacks on Jews. In a small way, antisemitic attacks are sort of understood. Not condoned, of course; not acceptable and terrible, but in a small way they are not quite as bad as attacks on, well, let's call them "normal people."

(H/t Richard)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

B'Tselem's Gaza application lists one outrageous case:

'Aliyyah Hussein Muhammad Qanan. 112 years old, resident of Khuza'a, Khan Yunis district. Injured on 29 Jul 2014, in Khuza'ah, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft, and died on 02 Aug 2014. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Injured while searching for his brother how [sic] had been injured earlier. Died of his wounds on 10 October 2014.

112 years old? Looking for his brother?

If he was 112, he was one of the top three oldest men in the world. Such a death would have been all over the Palestinian - and Israeli - media.

Yet independent information about the late Mr. Qanan is hard to find. He is listed as having died on a list compiled on July 23 here. At the very least B'Tselem has the date wrong.

This list says that "he" is a woman. Nothing about her age.

Someone with that name apparently died. That's all we know. Certaainly B'Tselem is wrong on the date, and probably on the gender. Which means that the details about how "he" was injured while searching for "his" brother came only from quite unreliable Palestinian sources - the same sources that now claim, two years later, that this person was 112 years old.

The specifics are important, because B'Tselem is telling the world that it has the detailed circumstances on every death in the Gaza war, based on that information it is claiming that a certain number of people were uninvolved in hostilities, another number was over 70, and so on. If the details are shown to be wrong then how can we trust anything that B'Tselem is saying?

If it wanted to be accurate it would add the proper caveats both in each individual case and in the aggregate numbers. It doesn't. That lack of transparency indicates that the purpose of this data gathering is not to uncover truth, but to push anti-Israel propaganda.

And tomorrow I will give a possible reason why.

(h/t Bob Knot)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Looking further at how B'Tselem reported on some specific incidents that it covered in its new website dedicated to exhaustively documenting the 2014 Gaza war, we see a curious omission.

B'Tselem's goal is to make it look like the IDF was guilty of war crimes. It does this by documenting civilians killed with no apparent militants in the area.

In the tragic case of the Abu Itta family, B'Tselem seems to be going out of its way to say that the IDF is lying.

The IDF writes:

Allegation Concerning the Deaths of Members of the Abu Itta Family in Tel Al-Za'atar (24 July 2014) –

In media reports, as well as complaints received by the MAG Corps from NGOs, it was alleged that on 24 July 2014, as a result of an air strike on the house of the Al-Ajrami family in Tel Al-Za'atar, five members of the Abu Itta family who were in an adjoining building were killed. Subsequently, and in accordance with the MAG's investigation policy, the incident was referred to the FFA Mechanism for examination.

According to the factual findings collated by the FFA Mechanism and presented to the MAG, at the time in question, a weapons cache was struck that was located in the house of a senior military operative in Hamas, Ahmad Al-Ajrami. Prior to the strike on the cache, the IDF issued a number of detailed warnings over the telephone, wherein the residents of the building in which the weapons cache was located, and the residents of a number of surrounding buildings that were expected to be damaged as a result of the strike, were asked to vacate the premises. Additionally, a warning strike was executed on the roof of the building in which the weapons cache was located, as well as on the roof of the adjoining building which was expected to be significantly impacted as a result of the strike, as part of the "knock on the roof" procedure. During this time, many people were seen leaving these buildings. The strike was carried out after it was assessed that it was possible to conclude that civilians were not expected to be harmed in the building targeted and the adjoining buildings, as a result of the strike.

After the event, it appears that as a result of the strike, five civilians, members of the Abu Itta family, were killed, and others were injured. It was not fully determined whether those deceased had been present in an adjoining building whose evacuation was specifically asked for, or whether they were in another adjoining building that had been damaged more significantly than had been expected.

After reviewing the factual findings and the material collated by the FFA Mechanism, the MAG found that the targeting process in question accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements. The decision to strike was taken by the competent authorities, and was aimed at a military objective – a weapons cache. The strike complied with the principle of proportionality, as at the time the decision was taken, it was considered that the collateral damage expected from the strike would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from it, and it appears that this estimation was not unreasonable under the circumstances. Moreover, the strike was carried out while undertaking a series of precautionary measures which aimed to minimize civilian harm. Inter alia, a specific warning was provided to the residents of the buildings which were expected to be impacted as a result of the strike, and ongoing visual surveillance of the event was used to confirm their evacuation.

B'Tselem reports on each of the family members killed in this way:

Ahmad Ibrahim 'Abdallah Abu 'Aytah. 31 years old, resident of Jabalya R.C., North Gaza district. Killed on 24 Jul 2014, in Jabalya R.C., North Gaza district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed together with his parents, son, and brother in their home in a strike on the neighboring house, which was empty.

B'Tselem seems to be saying that it is quite aware of the IDF report that there was a weapons cache in the house of the Hamas operative next door, and instead of reporting about it - which is what an ethical fact-finding organization should do - it chooses to pretend that there is no counter-evidence to its conclusions.

UPDATE: B'Tselem, in an earlier report, actually mentioned a legitimate military target in this case that it ignored in the application: (h/t Bob Knot)

At around 1:30 A.M. on 24 July 2014, the air force attacked a house in Jabaliya R.C. in the northern Gaza Strip. One of the sons of the man who owned the targeted building is a member of Hamas’ military branch.

There is a reason why Amnesty and B'Tselem are choosing to do these exhaustive and misleading or false investigations into Protective Edge. I hope to discuss this tomorrow.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

TOI reports:

The Palestinian Authority is preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the issuing of the 1917 Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.

The PA’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told Arab League leaders gathered in Mauritania Monday that London is responsible for all “Israeli crimes” committed since the end of the British mandate in 1948.

Signed by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour in 1917, the declaration was seen as giving the Zionist movement official recognition and backing on the part of a major power, on the eve of the British conquest of the then-Ottoman territory of Palestine.

The decision, al-Malki said, “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.”

Interestingly, Hamas had called for Great Britain to apologize for Balfour back in 2010.

Similarly, the "Palestine Return Center" started a petition to the UK Parliament to apologize for Balfour and compensate all Arabs of Palestinian descent. It compared the "nakba" with the Holocaust. It received 1,278 signatures in six months, far short of the 10,000 required for the UK Parliament to respond and the 100,000 required for Parliament to debate the issue.

This is Abbas' latest gimmick. He wants to make it appear to his people as if he is actually doing something but everything he does is symbolic.

For an honor/shame society, where appearances are more important than facts, this can play well. But the rest of the world is more and more impatient with Abbas' adamant refusal to do anything positive for the peace process or for his people.

Of course, two can play at this game.

I started an online petition demanding that the PLO and PA apologize for over a century of terror attacks aimed at Jews.

The Palestinian Authority, as the self-appointed leader of the Palestinian Arab people, must assume responsibility for the historic crimes done against Jews in the region known as Palestine in the 1800s and 1900s.
These include attacks in Rishon LeTzion in the 1880s, the Nebi Musa riots in 1920, the Jaffa and Jerusalem attacks in 1921, the massacres of 1929, the violent riots between 1936-39, the many attacks in 1947 and 1948, as well as the terror attacks that have occurred nearly continuously since 1948 including the Munich massacre that was financed by Mahmoud Abbas and the wave of suicide bombings in the 21st century. Constant antisemitic incitement from Palestinian leaders and official media since the 1920s must be apologized for as well.
Only by the Palestinians accepting responsibility for its part of the conflict can the conflict be solved.

Sign it and show that both sides can do useless gimmicks as PR stunts.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

So what's the difference between Gaza terror groups and ISIS again?

Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades announces their latest "martyr."

Bassem Fawzi Al -Lihama, 38, suffered a "mistaken" fatal gunshot wound "during the performance of a task of jihad," according to the Islamic Jihad military website.

"We call on Allah Almighty to grant the soul of the martyr Mujahid al-Lihama His mercy and eternal peace, accompanied by the prophets and the saints and martyrs and the Companions, and that he inspires his family and his comrades in his path of beautiful patience and fortitude." the statement read.

"The Al-Quds Brigades confirmed that the blood of the martyrs will remain the fuel for the lamp illuminating the Mujahideen on the trail of pride and dignity to press ahead with the resistance until the liberation of the entire beloved Palestine," the statement added.

Hamas' "martyr notices" are essentially the same flowery language extolling jihad in the name of Allah and the destruction of Israel.

Someone much smarter than I needs to explain once again how the philosophy of groups that write these words are significantly different from that of ISIS. They both employ terrorists, they both target civilians, they both use Islam to justify their attacks, they are both murdering in the name of jihad, they both say they want to create an Islamic state they both glorify death.

I mean, they must be different, because the West considers only ISIS to be terrorist while Islamic Jihad and Hamas are "terrorist" Europeans are victims of terror attacks while Israeli Jews are victims of "what Israel considers 'terror attacks'."

I know there must be some reason why the supremacist Islamic jihadist ideology of a group literally called Islamic Jihad is considered somehow by the world to be more legitimate than the supremacist Islamic jihadist ideology of Al Qaeda or Boku Haram or ISIS.

It couldn't have anything to do with the victims, could it?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Looking a little closer at the B'Tselem website that claims to catalogue the civilian status of all people killed in Gaza two years ago, we see this:

'Issam Muhammad 'Ata a-Najar. 23 years old, resident of Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district. Killed on 29 Jul 2014, in Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed in his home together with 15 other members of his family in a strike on the homes of the a-Najar extended family. The strike destroyed two of the family's homes, in each of which eight people were killed. Other houses were damaged.

Ata Muhammad 'Ata a-Najar. 28 years old, resident of Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district. Killed on 29 Jul 2014, in Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities.

The IDF, in a report released last year, disagrees in a couple of aspects of this categorization:

According to the factual findings collated by the FFA Mechanism and presented to the MAG, at the time in question the IDF had attacked a Hamas military command and control center located in a building in Khan Younis, as well as senior Hamas operatives who were manning the center at that time. During the attack planning process, it was assessed that there might be a number of civilians present in the building, but that the potential harm to them would not be excessive in relation to the significant military advantage anticipated to result from the attack. The attack on the building was planned for execution by means of a precise munition, and in a manner that would allow the operational purpose of the attack to be achieved, whilst minimizing the potential harm to the surrounding buildings. As a result of the attack, eight individuals were killed, among them two Hamas operatives, Asam Mohammad Ata Al Najjar and Ata Mohammad Ata Al Najjar.

After reviewing the factual findings and the material collated by the FFA Mechanism, the MAG found that the targeting process in question accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements. The decision to attack was taken by the competent authorities, and was aimed at lawful targets. The attack complied with the principle of proportionality, as at the time the decision to attack was made, it was considered that the collateral damage expected from the attack would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from it, and this estimation was not unreasonable under the circumstances. Moreover, the attack was carried out after a number of precautionary measures had been undertaken, which aimed to minimize the potential for civilian harm, particularly with regard to any civilians present in adjoining buildings. It was also found that the provision of a specific warning prior to the attack, to the persons present in the structure, was not required by law and would have been expected to result in the frustration of the attack's objective.

In light of these findings, the MAG did not find that the actions of IDF forces gave rise to reasonable grounds for suspicion of criminal misconduct. As a result, the MAG ordered the case to be closed, without opening a criminal investigation or ordering further action against those involved in the incident. Nonetheless, the MAG found it appropriate to recommend to the command authorities that a number of aspects relating to the implementation of the relevant operational instructions be clarified, with an emphasis on improving the documentation of planning procedures for attacks on targets of this type.

Interestingly, the Meir Amit center identified both Issam and Ata as members of Hamas, but could not identify them as militants.

(UPDATE): However, amazing researcher Bob Knot could. Here is Issam:

Here is Ata:

Were they legitimate targets?

The IDF says it was not only targeting the two Hamas members, but also their command and control center that they were running in their house, effectively making their civilian family members human shields. There is no way B'Tselem (or any other NGO) could know whether the house was a command center. Nevertheless, the IDF clearly was targeting Ata and Issam, or else they could not say that a warning "would have been expected to result in the frustration of the attack's objective."

It sure seems like the IDF is correct and B'Tselem is wrong in identifying whether this was a legitimate target.

This is one of the cases where NGOs who confidently publish what seem to be exact figures could easily be wrong, since they cannot possibly know all the details. The media reports the NGO figures without question. Of course any survivors would claim that the victims were all innocent, but interviews seem to be B'Tselem's main method of determining whether a target was legitimate or not.

What is clear is that B'Tselem had read the IDF account of the incident from a full year ago and chose not to even mention it as a possibility when they were writing up their data claiming that Ata and Issam were certainly civilians. B'Tselem simply decided that the IDF account is wrong and their investigation, almost certainly based on interviews, is more accurate.

It is unethical to not even mention the results of the IDF investigation into the incident. If this is B'Tselem's methodology, then the methodology is proven to be flawed from just this case. It should at the very least put these two Hamas members in their "Unknown" category for those that they were unsure about.

There is another major discrepancy between the IDF and B'Tselem accounts: the number of victims. It is possible that both are telling the truth; the IDF only referring to the specific family home that the two Najjar Hamas operatives were in, and B'Tselem including the neighboring home that was also destroyed. Yet there is a third possibility - that B'Tselem is wrong about the number of victims, since it seems to be at the mercy of Palestinian records, and we have seen exaggerations (even with names) of the number of victims of previous attacks.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Just a reminder of what Arabs mean when they say "occupied territories"

Quds News has a triumphant article, quoting Israel's Channel 10, that says that the number of French immigrants to Israel has not reached expectations this year because of the recent wave of stabbing, car ramming and shooting attacks against Jews.

Arabs consider every Jew who doesn't immigrate to Israel a victory, because they want to make Israel free of Jews.

But one sentence is interesting:

Some Jewish immigrants now prefer to emigrate to London or Montreal instead of "Israel", which did not assimilate them well and they have suffered bad economic conditions during the period of their stay in the occupied territories.

The French immigrants moved to the "occupied territories"? I thought that they mostly concentrated in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netanya, Tel Aviv and Raanana.

A similar article last week at Erem News is entitled "Israel encourages Jews to emigrate to the occupied territories, taking advantage of the deteriorating security and economic situation around the world." Yet the article says nothing about immigrant Jews being encouraged to move across the Green Line.

The answer is obvious: to the Arab world, the entire state of Israel is "occupied Palestinian territory."

Once that basic fact is understood, then the entire idea of peace in the Middle East being dependent on Israel ceding more land to Arabs for a Palestinian state is shown to be absurd. On the contrary, ceding more land would result in greater demands for yet more land. See Hezbollah in Lebanon and Gaza as exhibits A and B.

Unfortunately, the "experts" who make such confident claims that a Palestinian state would bring peace don't seem to have the ability to look at what Arab newspapers say every day.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

There is another Quartet.

The Arab Quartet consists of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. It met on the eve of the Arab Summit to be held this week in Nouakchott, Mauritania.

The Ministerial Committee issued a statement after their third meeting, which was chaired by UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Anwar Gargash, saying that they "noted an escalation of dangerous Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries recently, including the intensification of hostilities and inflammatory and provocative statements issued by Iranian officials towards the Arab countries. "

They called for Iran to stop incitement to violence and support for terror groups. Which is what the other Quartet did recently, to much criticism by Palestinians.

Their statement o Iran sounds a great deal like Israel's statements towards the Palestinian Authority.

Apparently, Arabs are against incitement and support for terrorism - sometimes.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Proven liar Gary Spedding resurfaces - and Haaretz publishes him

A couple of years ago I blogged a long Twitter conversation between myself and a "peace activist" named Gary Spedding, as well as exchanges between him and Gilead Ini of CAMERA.

The text proves beyond any doubt that Spedding is a liar who enjoys scrubbing evidence of his hate. (He tried to say the Fogels were murdered by a domestic worker, not an Arab terrorist, for example. He then deleted the post, denied ever writing it, and when confronted with screen-shot evidence kept denying it.)

Later it was shown that Spedding had been involved in a violent anti-Israel demonstration in Belfast. As the Israeli embassy in London said then, “Mr Spedding’s entry into Israel was denied due to his involvement in organising a violent protest in Queens University, Belfast, in which an Israeli representative was attacked, and others were forced to take shelter to prevent being hurt. No country has an obligation to allow foreigners who have been involved in violent activities targeting its nationals to enter its territory.”

Spedding lied about this incident as well, claiming falsely that he was given a "ten year ban" to go to Israel merely for "lying" and being an unspecified "security threat."

You cannot grant Spedding any credibility after reading those posts of mine, or this other series.

But Haaretz can.

Spedding wrote an article about how he witnesses too much antisemitism on the pro-Palestinian side, and he is upset. Not so much because antisemitism is evil, but because the existence of antisemitism gives credence to the idea that most anti-Zionists are, deep down, antisemitic, which Spedding disputes. He says that "Israel advocacy groups weaponize anti-Semitism to stifle and shut down debate and legitimate criticism of Israel" and "activists will sometimes inadvertently share anti-Semitic or deeply offensive posts. This is the product of ignorance as opposed to malicious intent towards Jews."

The most hilarious part is where Spedding, who went to great lengths to delete his offensive writings from the Internet, self-righteously says "Whatever the motivation, it's the words that matter; this is what makes the public record."

The bulk of the op-ed isn't that terrible; Spedding does call out a real problem. But the entire op-ed is a pathetic way for Spedding to try to rehabilitate himself, and Haaretz is all too happy to allow this violent anti-Israel activist to use its platform to try to make him sound like a peacemaker.

Haaretz and Spedding belong together.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Palestinian writer angry at Bibi's message to Abbas

Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu sent this message to Mahmoud Abbas:

I hadn't noticed any reaction until today.

Al Quds al Arabi, a pan-Arab site, said that Bibi had the ultimate impudence and Zionist arrogance to mention how Abbas' people support terror. After all, the author says, Israel is a fascist terrorist state that is so racist that it is now "post-fascist" and "beyond racist."

Then he gives us a history lesson, where we learn that the Palestinians aren't Canaanites or Jebusites at all:

Palestinian Arabs live Palestine for thousands of years, and particularly since the third century BC, when they came from the island of Crete in and founded the cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod , and Ekron.

He is saying that they are Philistines, and he says the Jewish scripture proves it!

Of course, if they are from Crete, they aren't Arab....

The we learn something even more amazing. The first Jews only came to the land in the 19th century, when 1500 came to a Jew-free land in 1840! They have no relationship to the Jews of the Bible, of course - they are Khazars. He helpfully tells the readers to check out Israel Shahak and Roger Garaudy for juicy details.

He then quotes some supposed Israeli archaeologists who say that they have dug for years and still not found any evidence of Jews in Jerusalem. I guess that this artifact I photographed last week from the Second Temple in Hebrew was fake:

The author ends off with, "In the end, I demand you take your things, and get out of our land. Conditions have changed and you'll have to implement our demands."

I am always amazed how people suffering from genocide and torture and land theft and oppression have the ability to demand things from the oppressing party. Aren't they afraid that they will be wiped out by the immoral torturers for their insolence?

Apparently not.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Barely reported earlier this month:

United Nations Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk will undertake his first official mission from 10 to 15 July to gather first-hand information on the current human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. He will visit Amman, Jordan, due to Israel’s lack of response to his request to travel to the OPT.

Mr. Lynk is the new independent expert designated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

“I am very much looking forward to meeting with the many representatives of civil society, government officials and UN officers to learn more about recent developments in the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory,” he said. “Their work is invaluable, and it will shape my understanding of what is happening on the ground.”

Israel doesn't let the UNHRC enter because of its extreme anti-Israel bias. So Lynk had to come to his conclusions without stepping foot in the Palestinian territories.

Which wasn't hard, because the conclusions are foregone.

Ma'an Arabic quotes him as saying exactly the same memes that the UN has been spouting for years:

"The people who live in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are suffering more and more from feelings of despair, especially among young people. It is clear that the continued occupation has become more entrenched than ever, and that this had a significant impact on a large segment on the path of development in the occupied Palestinian territory for human rights issues."

He called the Israeli authorities conduct a thorough investigation of excessive use of force and extrajudicial killings.

He expressed particular concern about recently published police procedures which state that the Israeli police forces can use live ammunition in response to stone throwing. The use of lethal ammunition should only be done in limited cases and only when facing a life-threatening risk to law enforcement.

Said Link, "The existence and the spread of Israeli settlements amounts to a serious violation of international law , which results in a host of other violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

The 50 years anniversary of this occupation in 2017 makes it obligatory for the world to pay more attention to the situation which is the heart of this seemingly intractable situation.

His other memes that he regurgitated from his predecessors based on talking to professional propagandists in Jordan included the "kids can't go to schools" meme, the "patients can't reach hospitals" meme, the "NGO law is awful" meme, and "Israel really should let me in so I can lie about them with more impunity" meme.

The lack of any coverage to this visit and his statements (at least so far) seem to indicate that the world is really fatigued with this disproportionate attention given to Israel from a human rights body that all but ignores 99.5% of the world in its zeal to zero in on one nation.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

American Studies Association sued for discrimination

I mentioned that New York attorney David Abrams filed a lawsuit against the National Lawyers Guild for discrimination, under the legal theory that an Israeli organization is considered a "person" under New York anti-discrimination laws.

He has filed a similar lawsuit against the American Studies Association on behalf of the same Israeli organization, Athenaeum Blue & White. As the lawsuit says,

In late 2013, ASA announced a boycott of Israeli organizations. Thus, because of its citizenship and origin, Plaintiff is barred from joining ASA or NYMASA; barred from sending a representative to events put on by these organizations; barred from applying for grants offered by these organizations, and barred from enjoying any other benefits offered by these organizations.
At the time the boycott resolution was enacted, ASA's president admitted that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable, but stated, "one has to start somewhere."
In the two and a half years since that statement, ASA has not boycotted any other nation besides Israel and not even put any such other boycott up to a vote of its membership. In other words, the ASA started and finished with Israel.
Athenaeum was recently formed; has an interest in American Studies, and as part of its intended activities would like to join the ASA (and therefore NYMASA); send a representative to activities in New York; and otherwise enjoy the benefits of membership in ASA and NYMASA.

The lawsuit only asks for $100,000 - and for the ASA to overturn its anti-Israel rules.

Why sue the ASA and not one of the other groups that proudly support BDS?

Well, one has to start somewhere.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Official Palestinian news agency Wafa reports:

Torching a Palestinian house by suspected Israeli Jewish arsonists in the Nablus village of Duma in the northern West Bank hit the front page headlines in Palestinian daily newspapers.

Al-Quds said a Palestinian family survived an arson attack against their house in Duma village and that ]Israeli[ settlers are suspected of perpetrating the attack.

Al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida said settlers torched a house belonging to the Dawabsha family in a fresh arson attack.

Al-Ayyam reported Palestinian Cabinet Spokesperson Yousef al-Mahmoud slamming the arson attack as a “cowardly and brutal act”.

However, it was done by locals:

An Israel Police representative told The Jerusalem Post that an initial investigation indicated that the incident did not appear to be a nationalistically motivated, but rather the result of a local village conflict. The representative later added that a deeper investigation confirmed the results of the initial investigation.

The previous day, Wafa's news roundup showed very similar behavior:

Killing a 12-year-old Palestinian boy by Israeli forces during clashes in the Jerusalem town of al-Ram hit the front page headlines in Palestinian dailies.

The three dailies said Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian by in the Jerusalem town of al-Ram.

Yet once again, the truth is much different:

Israel police spokeswoman Luba Samri said Israeli forces never opened fire. Israeli border police officers were in Al-Ram to return the body of a suspected Palestinian attacker who was killed in an incident approximately a week ago, she said.

According to Samri, protesters threw Molotov cocktails at the forces, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

The Palestinian media, of course, doesn't report the truth. They purposefully hide the facts in order to keep their readers good and angry at Israel.

A legitimate media organization should at least mention that there is another side to the story. But Arab media has no journalistic standards and their primary purpose is propaganda and incitement, not reporting the truth.

Which means that any legitimate news organization that quotes Palestinian Arab media without mentioning the caveat that they do not have any journalistic standards are themselves betraying the trust of their readers.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.