Showing posts with label Operation Breaking Dawn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operation Breaking Dawn. Show all posts

Thursday, September 07, 2023



Here is the abstract of a paper by Walaa Alqaisiya,  published in Political Geography, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier: 

Beyond the contours of Zionist sovereignty: Decolonisation in Palestine's Unity Intifada
This article takes the May 2021 uprising in Palestine, known as the Unity Intifada, as a prism to map old and new political geographies between coloniser and freedom-fighter, whose significance extends beyond the temporal limits of the May event. The first part of the paper investigates the role of identity and cultural geographies in re-enforcing Jewish claims to sovereignty. It shows how the Zionist production of pink (sexed/gendered), red (racializing/indigenising) and green (environmental) markers, is used to draw the contours of settler legitimacy and intensifies when faced by growing indigenous rebellion. The second part addresses the decolonising possibilities engulfing the Unity Intifada. It examines the role of youth, including women and queer collectives, and how their actions invoke new political and material taxonomies beyond the liberal peace structure to which Palestine has succumbed since the Oslo agreements. Overall, the article advances the political geographies of decolonisation by challenging the maintenance of settler colonial violence within the popular, political, and intellectual imaginary of ‘Israel/Palestine.’ It does so by tracing the spatial and epistemic value of decolonisation theories that extend from interactions across indigenous, queer feminist, critical race, and eco-materialist debates.  
That is a lot of obfuscation to give a message that Palestinian violence is wonderful and must be encouraged.

As with most such academic papers, the author "talks past the sale:" she takes lies like Israel's "colonialism" or terrorists as "freedom fighters" as being so obvious that they need no proof or citations and uses them as building blocks to selectively chose whatever evidence they claim supports their propaganda. She has no need to explain how, exactly, shooting rockets into civilian population areas or ambushing and shooting drivers on the road is "freedom fighting."

In the first paragraph, Alqaisiya asserts "Nakba is a structure not an event (Wolfe, 2006)." But the Wolfe paper says "Invasion is a structure not an event." The author redefines "nakba" for her own purposes from the standard Palestinian line that it means the (fictional) expulsion of 700,000 Arabs in 1948 - now it means the arrival of Jews to the region decades earlier, framing it as an "invasion."

Her assumption is that Jews had no right to migrate to Palestine to escape persecution in Europe or the Middle East throughout the centuries. The right for persecuted minorities to seek refuge is unchallenged - unless they are Jews returning to their ancestral homeland, the exact opposite of colonialism. 

She knows what she is doing. The peer reviewers of Political Geography are not experts in the history of the region, and they are also probably reluctant to challenge a Palestinian's narrative of her "truth." She, and many other academics, take advantage of these factors, plus the general anti-Israel atmosphere in academic circles,  to spread lies and agitprop without fear of being exposed.

And just in case a reviewer might notice Alqaisiya is not exactly objective, she says in her "Methodology" section that her hatred of Israel is a strength, not a weakness: 
[G]iven the role played by social media in circulating activist online campaigns and commentary about the Uprising, a digital ethnographic component shaped the methodological approach of the article. Not only did this method help direct the selection of primary sources that ‘capture how self-identity is formed, structured and expressed on digitally based platforms,’ (Kaur-Gill and Dutta, 2017: 3) but it also aligns with the epistemic base of decolonising research (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012), recognising the author's own positionality as Palestinian. Indeed, the majority of the discussion across the two sections emerges from the author's political and scholarly engagement within decolonial feminist and activist online spaces, in Palestine and beyond, which responded to the Unity Intifada's plight. The aim of advancing the sovereignty of indigenous knowledge, therefore, is at the heart of this article's methodological approach (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012).
In English: "I am a Palestinian, therefore my anti-Israel activism and opinions are worth more than any objective source. My obvious bias is the core of this research, and I then choose my secondary sources to fit my bias. And if you object to that methodology, you are oppressing me."

Here is a key paragraph:
It was as the bombs were dropping on besieged Gaza, devastating entire families and amounting to war crimes, that Israel took part in the annual international song competition, Eurovision. Israeli participation in such events unveils a cultural site for Zionist pinkwashing, delineating a sexed/gendered self that reifies the logic of settler colonial domination. The country's 2021 representation through the figure of a Jewish Ethiopian woman, Eden Alene, reveals how race plays a defining role in settlers' (subjects and state) efforts at indigenising colonial settlement. I read Alene's 2021 Eurovision contest participation as an attempt to neutralise Zionism's mounting crisis during times of growing confrontation with the indigene's resistance via the crafting of ‘an alternate (hi)story.’ This Zionist self-indigenising narrative, which also activates forms of cultural exchange with Indigenous nations and their plight elsewhere, further intertwines redwashing and greenwashing efforts.
It hardly needs to be mentioned that Israel didn't choose the dates of Eurovision, and that the contestants were chosen way before the May mini-war in Gaza. But Alqaisiya "reads" the two events coinciding as a Zionist response to the bad publicity of defending itself from rockets. The author then doubles down and spends several paragraphs railing against previous Israeli entries in Eurovision as symbolizing "pinkwashing."

To anti-Zionist fanatics, Israel is by definition an illiberal state. Therefore, any counter-evidence - like  transsexual, gay-friendly and Black contestants for Eurovision being fully embraced by most of Israeli society - must be interpreted as a cynical attempt by Israel to hide its hate for LGBTQ and people of color. The contestants' own Zionism is further proof of Israeli illiberalism and attempts to obscure its "apartheid." In short, any facts that decisively disprove the assertion of Israeli evil are themselves further proof of Israeli evil. 

Occam's Razor is shredded in favor of conspiracy theories. 

Again, the peer reviewers might not be expected to understand the history of the scurrilous "pinkwashing" and "redwashing" and "greenwashing" accusations throughout this paper. But they should at least click on the references to see if they say what Alqaisiya claims. In this same paragraph, the link to her saying that the Gaza war in 2021 amounts to war crimes goes to an Al Jazeera article which says "The United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has said Israel’s recent attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip that killed more than 200 Palestinians may constitute “war crimes” if they are shown to be disproportionate." This is a deliberate misquote, one of dozens, and that minor example should have been enough to raise flags for any reviewer at Political Geography. 

So many of her other footnotes link to articles that do not say what she claims. Another example: 
Predating Alene's participation was Netta Barzilai's win of the 2018 Eurovision contest with the song ‘Toy,’ whose feminist LGBTQ vibes (Cook, 2019) invoked the celebration of Israel as a place that shares the progressive liberal values of Europe. Israel has been at the core of embodying attributes of ‘European identity’ (Ayoub and Paternotte, 2014) as they link to feminist and LGBTQ issues. 
The link says that LGBT rights are emblematic of European identity, but that has nothing to do with Israel actively claiming to be European. This is Alqaisiya's way to tell readers that Israel is a foreign European outpost in the Middle East that doesn't belong, and that Jews are really European converts and not descended from the Children of Israel. 

Yet another example: A footnote about the organization StandWithUs says "The Israeli government heavily funds this US-based organisation to disseminate hasbara (public diplomacy for the Israeli government) through ‘citizen activism,’ whose goal is to mobilise young people in Israel, the US and Britain to stand up for Israel and Jewish people. (See Bazz, 2015; StandWithUs, 2022). " "Bazz" in 2015 reported that Israel planned to pay StandWithUs about $250,000 for a specific one year project, but it fell through and as far as I can tell, SWU does not get any funding from the Israeli government.

It would take a month to show the many such inaccuracies in this paper - and this is all what Political Geography should have done, and failed to do.

The entire paper is online, so you can see for yourself how Alqaisiya has little regard for truth.  Every paragraph includes lies (including the Depo-Provera slander I mentioned that are spread in multiple academic papers). 

I don't know what kind of peer review Political Geography engages in, but it is apparent that not only do they not do basic fact checking, they don't even flag a paper like this that all but brags that it is intended to be Palestinian propaganda.



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Monday, October 03, 2022


Islamic Jihad (PIJ) mouthpiece Palestine Today has several recent articles about how the May fighting was a great victory for them.

They quote a Lebanese "expert" who describes how they achieved their goals in the fighting. A delegation from Islamic Jihad went to Syria and described their "victory,' saying the war never ended.

One reason for these articles is that PIJ is celebrating its 35th anniversary. 

But another reason may be because the Palestinian public does not consider Islamic Jihad to have won anything in May.

The PCPSR poll I mentioned yesterday asked Palestinians who won the armed confrontations. 
42%  think that neither Israel nor Islamic Jihad won . But 27% (33% in the Gaza Strip and 24% in the West Bank) think Israel came out a winner while only 12% think Islamic Jihad came out a winner. Surprisingly, 11% think Hamas, who did not participate in the confrontation, came out a winner. 

Half of the public (50%) says that Hamas’ decision not to become directly involved in the armed exchange between Islamic Jihad and the Israeli army was the correct decision while 37% say it was the wrong decision.  The view that Hamas did the right thing is more widespread in the Gaza Strip (68%) compared to the West Bank (38%).

Gazans, who have to live with these battles, are pretty much against Islamic Jihad for instigating the conflict, and they are happy that Hamas didn't join - which PIJ clearly wanted to occur.

Islamic Jihad is not very popular in Gaza right now. Its 35th anniversary activities and articles are partially meant to shore up its reputation. 




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Tuesday, September 06, 2022

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the territories, OCHA-OPT, issues biweekly reports on civilian casualties and other issues.

After Operation Breaking Dawn, it summarized:
During the escalation, 49 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, of whom at least 22 were civilians, including 17 children and four women, according to OHCHR.
The report implies that all the Palestinians were killed by Israel, but in its statistics section showing the cumulative casualties during the year (there were no deaths in Gaza before August) it adds a footnote:



The report itself says nothing about Palestinian rockets that fell short; you need to read between the lines of the statistics to find out that the UN was still investigating how these 13 - or, if you do the math of 49-35, 14 - were killed. 

So what happened to this footnote in the latest bulletin

It disappeared, yet the number of those killed in Gaza - 35 - remained the same.

This means that between August 15 and August 29,  the UN determined with certainty that 14 Palestinians - including many children - were killed by Gaza rockets.

But they never reported that fact. 

Even though their entire purpose is to protect civilians, when Gaza civilians are killed by Palestinian militants, they go out of their way to not report it - and instead, their report text still implies that Israel killed them.

This isn't a mistake or an oversight. The UN consciously counted the casualties, determined that 14 were killed by Islamic Jihad and their allies, and chose not to report those civilian deaths instead of reporting to the world that Gaza terrorists kill their own people.

Sometimes, the bias can be seen in the details. And once you see it here, there is no other way to interpret the text of these two reports outside of a desire to maximize blame to Israel and minimize it for Islamic Jihad.





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Thursday, August 25, 2022


Islamic Jihad is holding a large rally today to celebrate its great victory in the Gaza fighting earlier this month. Here's a video featuring victory music and children with the same kinds of rockets that killed many of their friends:


There's only one problem: Islamic Jihad lost. Badly.

Their military leaders were killed. They didn't convince Hamas to join the fighting. Most Gazans didn't support the fighting, which they understood correctly to be risking Gaza lives only for Islamic Jihad's glory.  The prisoners that they claimed Israel would release are still in custody. 

Islamic Jihad cannot credibly point to a single accomplishment.

But they don't have to. They just declare victory!  And the worse you lose, the louder you claim to have won.

We see a similar dynamic with the recent examples of Arabs withdrawing from sports competitions, or even purposefully losing matches, when they would otherwise be competing with Israelis.

Forfeiting a match is about as far from victory as possible. Quitting instead of competing is the most cowardly thing imaginable.  But look how this columnist in Al-Binaa spins it:

There are resistance heroes who did not carry a rifle, did not fire a bullet, and did not undergo military courses, who were able to defeat the arrogant Zionist entity with all its techniques, tools, military arsenals...Youths in sport defeated the Zionist enemy by refusing to confront its representatives, so they became lions and resistance heroes. They may have lost medals , but they won the medal of the nation that crowned them fighters and liberators. With their blows, they brought down the legitimacy of the occupying Zionist entity of Palestine.
No, they just lost. 

There is a simple reason for this bizarre twisting of total defeat into massive victory: the Arab honor/shame culture. 

Losing is shameful. Losing to weak, dhimmi Jews is unforgivable. Living with this shame is unbearable. Better to fool yourself and claim you won, and try to confidently convince everyone else of your "victory."

There is a secondary benefit of declaring victory after a loss. It is difficult to recruit people to your cause when you are viewed as a loser, but Gaza terror groups never admit defeat. On the contrary, their media is filled with stories about how inevitable and total their ultimate victory over  the Jews will be. 

As long as Palestinians and their supporters twist reality, and refuse to learn from their mistakes that they deny ever making, Israel has little to worry about.




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Monday, August 22, 2022

From Ian:

Half of Fatalities from IDF Strikes in Gaza Fighting Were Terrorist Operatives
During the three days of Operation Breaking Dawn (August 5-7, 2022), 1,175 rockets were fired at Israel, with around 990 landing in Israeli territory. The Iron Dome aerial defense system intercepted about 450 rockets with a 97% rate of success. Around 200 rockets fell in the Gaza Strip or in the Mediterranean Sea. During the operation, the IDF, using precision weaponry, carried out 170 attacks against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist targets. The PIJ commanders of the northern and southern sectors were eliminated in targeted killings and several other senior officials were killed. The IDF airstrike targets included a tunnel, rocket and mortar launching pads, squads that were en route to launch rockets, weapons depots, facilities for manufacturing weapons, a military compound that was used by the PIJ’s naval force (Israeli media based on an Israel Air Force briefing; Maariv; Walla; Yedioth Ahronoth, August 9, 2022)

During the operation in the Gaza Strip, 49 Palestinians were killed in IDF airstrikes and as a result of PIJ rocket misfires.

The ITIC examination into the identity of the 49 fatalities distinguished between 38 fatalities resulting from IDF strikes and 11 resulting from rocket misfires. Of the 38 fatalities from IDF strikes, 20 (52%) were identified as terrorist operatives, 12 (31%) were identified as operatives of the PIJ’s military wing, including the two senior operatives who were eliminated in targeted killings, one Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) operative, four Hamas operatives and three Fatah operatives (it is unclear how involved the Hamas and Fatah operatives were involved in the military activity).

A total of 18 women and children under the age of 16 were killed in the operation. Four women and 10 children were killed in IDF airstrikes, and four children were killed as a result of misfires. Full document in PDF format
Gantz: Jerusalem is Israel's; can't be the Palestinians', too
Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Monday morning as he pushed back at former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attacked him on social media over the past day for his previously announced stance.

“Jerusalem is the united capital of the State of Israel – so it has been, and so it will be,” Gantz told Radio 103 FM.

Gantz, Netanyahu, a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem and the Trump peace plan

Netanyahu on Sunday tweeted the headline of an interview Gantz gave to a Saudi paper in 2020 in which he said there was room for a Palestinian capital in a united Jerusalem.

“The answer is no,” Netanyahu tweeted. The issue of a united Jerusalem is one he often campaigns on and has in the past warned that his opposition would give it away to the Palestinians. He famously did so when he campaigned against former Labor Party leader Shimon Peres.

Gantz clarified in his radio interview on Monday that he had made those comments around the time former US president Donald Trump had unveiled his peace plan, which called for a Palestinian capital in Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem that were on the opposite side of the security barrier. Netanyahu also supported that plan.

Trump’s plan also called for a two-state resolution to the conflict. Gantz in his public comments since then has spoken of a resolution that involves two entities.
David Singer: Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine – Netanyahu breaks silence
“If I’m elected now I’m going to have peace with Saudi Arabia. They trust me. They trust me to be the bulwark against Iran. And if we have peace with Saudi Arabia effectively the Arab-Israeli conflict is over. Yes – we don’t have Yemen. Yes we don’t have Iraq, Syria –that’s not important”

Netanyahu committed:
“To do the things against Iran’s nuclear program, and we did many things, I can’t talk about them, but I can say I sent the Mossad into the heart of Teheran to pluck the secret atomic archives that Iran had and they brought it back”

Netanyahu has not publicly commented specifically on Shihabi’s peace plan since its release on June 8th - despite its implementation being the game-changer that could end the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict.

Shihabi’s plan to merge Jordan, Gaza and part of the 'West Bank' into one territorial entity called The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine – promises the following outcomes that Israel certainly wants:
- It would supersede two previous Saudi peace proposals in 1981 and 2002 calling for Israel to withdraw completely from the 'West Bank'
- The two-state solution – the creation of a separate Palestinian Arab State between Jordan and Israel – promoted unsuccessfully by the United Nations for the last 29 years – is consigned to the diplomatic graveyard
- Amman – not Jerusalem – will be the capital of The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine
- The right of return to Israel is abandoned.
- Palestinian Arabs in the 'West Bank', Gaza and stateless refugees get full citizenship in the merged Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine with all the elements of sovereignty applicable to those Territories that belonging to a fully recognized state in the UN entail.

Netanyahu however wants one further outcome in the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine west of the Jordan River – telling Shapiro: “They can have all the powers to govern themselves but not to threaten us ... they can have their Parliament representatives, Executives, have their flag and their national anthem...

“...West of the Jordan River ... Israel and Israel alone controls security. We control the airspace, we control the ground security, underground security in case they want to do tunnels... We’re not going to commit suicide for a favourable op-ed in the New York Times”

Tuesday, August 16, 2022


Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is really, really trying hard to spin Operation Breaking Dawn as a victory. 

The latest delusional logic comes from a Palestine Today  interview of PIJ political bureau member Dr. Walid al-Qatati.

 “The loss of the martyrs, especially the great leaders, saddens and pains us and leaves a great void for their families and their movement, but this does not affect the course of jihad, but rather increases it strength and vitality. vitality on the march of jihad and resistance until victory," al-Qatati stated.

If killing PIJ leaders strengthens the movement, then by all means, let's continue!

Al Qatati says that Israel tried to drive a wedge between Islamic Jihad, Hamas and ordinary Gazans, but it failed to do so. He doesn't really explain why Hamas didn't join the battle, though, or why even Islamic Jihad never claimed to be acting on behalf of Gazans. 

He also claims that Israel is hiding the extent of damage and injuries from Islamic Jihad rockets, because - apparently - Israel controls its media so well.

And what about the accomplishments that Islamic Jihad claimed when the fighting stopped, that Israel agreed to release two prisoners who have not been released? He brushes that  aside, saying that Israel is procrastinating, but the battle has achieved the most important goals of hurting Israeli security,  the continuation of the flame of jihad and resistance, and the affirmation of the unity of all the battlefields of national struggle in Palestine.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Islamic Jihad officials privately admit that the deaths of their leaders was a major blow to them. 

One senior Islamic Jihad leader told AFP that the commanders killed were replaced “within minutes,” but Ahmed al-Mudallal, from the group’s political bureau, acknowledged the impact.

“This round was difficult,” he told AFP. “We lost many major military leaders that were important to us.”

Mudallal’s son Ziad — an Islamic Jihad officer — was killed alongside senior commander Khaled Mansour in a strike in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.
That AFP article also notes that, unlike the wars waged by Hamas, Gazans gained nothing from this mini-war - no concessions from Israel on loosening the closure, for example. Islamic Jihad's reputation in Gaza is in tatters between the selfish goals of the war to get Israel to release one of their leaders, to the rockets that PIJ shot into Gaza killing many civilians, to not extracting any concessions from Israel to stop the fighting. 



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Monday, August 15, 2022

During Operation Breaking Dawn, the amount of damage Israel inflicted on Gaza was very limited. As far as I can tell, in only two cases did we see an entire building leveled in an urban area as the IDF successfully targeted top Islamic Jihad figures.

But Gaza photographers need to make the most of these incidents. They must find ways to frame their photos to make the damage look far more devastating than it is. 

Here you can see the area of the airstrike. Although there was some damage in the buildings surrounding the strike, for the most part this is the entire area with large amounts of rubble.




The Rafah airstrike that killed Khaled Mansour has become the favored area for Gaza news photographers to stage scenes that they hope to sell to Western agencies. 

And nothing sells like sad looking children.




The photographer, Omar Ashtawy, hedged his bets - in case no one wanted to buy photos of sad children, he also wanted to stage photos of the same children "playing" in the rubble, showing how resilient they are.



Hey, if one meme doesn't work, maybe another one will.

The same photographer has some shots of the cemetery where four kids were killed by an Islamic Jihad rocket - but his caption says it was an Israeli airstrike. He gain staged it with a child. Yet his photo shows the damage that Gaza rockets, deliberately filled with nails and sharp shrapnel are designed to inflict as they pockmarked cement gravestones.







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Sunday, August 14, 2022




Amira Hass in Haaretz published a detailed account of the Gazans who died in Operation Breaking Dawn and the circumstances of each death. I disagree with several of her conclusions, and she doesn't identify all of their affiliations with terror groups, but on the whole it is a reasonably fair article that squarely blames Islamic Jihad for the deaths of 19 civilians including 12 children, far more than were killed in Israeli attacks that were targeting terrorists and military targets.
Despite Palestinian media attributing all deaths to Israeli attacks, Gazans know well that a very high number of victims stemmed from failed rocket launches by Islamic Jihad.

The high number of fatalities from so-called internal fire has embittered Palestinians, some Gazans told Haaretz. 
Amira Hass is a reliably anti-Israel reporter for Haaretz, often quoted by anti-Zionist activists and faux "human rights" professionals. 

Which is why this article is being nearly universally ignored by the anti-Israel crowd who have insisted that every dead child was "murdered" by Israel - and fundraised based on that lie.

The only exception I could find was James Zogby, prominent Arab American and pollster, who took advantage of the fact that the Haaretz article is only visible to subscribers - so he misrepresented the article as saying that all the civilians were "murdered " by Israel. 


Mainstream media journalists, who follow Haaretz religiously, have also ignored this story that damns Islamic Jihad for its responsibility for the bulk of the civilians killed. At best they have maintained a "he said, she said" narrative where Israel tells the truth and the Palestinians deny it. 

It is essentially a conspiracy of silence to make sure that the world doesn't learn the truth, outside of the one failed rocket attack Israel documented in Jabalia.

But Arabic-language media has no such qualms. 

Arabic sites, including the influential UK-based Al Quds, have translated and published the Haaretz article. It was also translated in the popular NABD news aggregator. The article is even in one Palestinian media outlet that regularly translates Hebrew articles into Arabic, as well as in "Palestine Forum." 

The Arab world, including Palestinians, is being more honest about Islamic Jihad's culpability in the deaths of children than the Western mainstream media has been. 

The worst of all in attempting to hide these deaths are the very "human rights groups" whose job is to protect these civilians. They know the truth very well but have done everything they can to hide it



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+972 Magazine has an article about how awful and immoral the IDF is.

The Israeli news site Ynet quoted army officials boasting that the ratio between “non-combatants” and combatants killed was “the best of all the operations.” And yet, Israel admits that it killed at least 11 people who had nothing to do with militant activities, including a five-year-old girl. 
Yes, a five year old girl who was near a top Islamic Jihad target was killed.  She was not the target. If there was a way to attack the target without killing the girl, the IDF would have. (Indeed, during Breaking Dawn, Israel did abort attacks on legitimate targets when civilians were around - as long as they could wait and attack the same target later without the civilians.) Since it couldn't attack the legitimate  target without killing the girl, she was unfortunately killed as well. 

These are the laws of armed conflict. The presence of civilians do not make a military target immune from attack. The fact that there was a five year old girl near the Islamic Jihad commander does not, under any interpretation of international law, mean that Israel must not attack the commander.

The laws of armed conflict are designed to protect civilians without impeding military efficiency in any way. Those words come from the International Committee of the Red Cross, no tme.

And it has to be that way, because otherwise terrorist groups can just ensure that they are well embedded with civilians and can then act with impunity.

That appears to be what +972 wants:
Dana — who asked to use a pseudonym, like all the former soldiers interviewed for this article — is a kindergarten teacher who lives in a wood-furnished apartment full of philosophy books in central Tel Aviv. During her military service, she took part in an assassination operation in which a five-year-old boy was killed in Gaza.

“When I served in the Gaza Division, we were following someone from Hamas, because [the army] knew he was hiding rockets,” she said. “They made a decision to eliminate him.”

Dana served as a signal traffic analysis officer in the operations room, where her job was to confirm that the missile had hit the right person. “We sent out a UAV to follow the man to kill him,” she said, “but we saw that he was with his son. A boy who was five or six years old, I think.

“....They killed the Hamas military operative, and the little boy who was next to him.”
Unless they had a way that they could kill the Hamas operative without killing the boy, this is not only a legal but also a moral decision, albeit tragic. It is a decision any army would make. 

But to some, Israel must be held to much higher standards that every other nation. A single civilian killed among a hundred terrorists makes the entire operation immoral, according to them. 

And endangering Israeli civilians as a result because of the resultant attacks that would or could happen by not attacking the terrorists? That is not part of the anti-Israel crowd's moral calculus.

That's not the only way this article demands Israel go beyond international law:
The army also admitted that it shoots unarmed people, according to a female officer who gave an interview to Ynet after the latest onslaught. “The [PIJ] operative came down from the position as he was unarmed, and I opened fire,” she said. “When he fell, I fired more.” 
Legal combatants are any member of the armed forces (outside medical and religious personnel.) These include those who aid the fighting, not only those with literal weapons. A lookout, a messenger between combat forces, a radio operator helping aim mortars - all are considered combatants under international law, even when unarmed. 

It is easy for Israel-hating propagandists to take an incident of collateral damage and frame it as a war crime. It doesn't make it true. From all indications, this operation was as moral as possible in warfare.

That is not good enough for inveterate inciters against Israel. 

(The article mentions some other issues that are morally problematic if true. But they aren't publishing them to force the IDF to improve its policies - they are publishing them to incite more hatred against Israel.) 




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Friday, August 12, 2022

Al Resalah's headline is, "Palestinians enjoying their time on the seashore of Gaza City after life returned to normal and the Israeli aggression stopped."

Nearly all of Gaza was untouched by Israeli weapons, and the Gazans know it, even though the Israel haters (in Western and Arab media) try to pretend that there was massive devastation and permanent psychological damage.





I had seen lots of photos of horses on Gaza beaches, but never a camel before now.




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Here is my latest database of those killed in Gaza. I will keep this one updated. Some of the circumstances are still unclear but this is the best information I have. I'm belatedly adding some links to show where I get my information from.

1- Imad Abd al-Rahim Shallah, 50 Gaza.

With PIJ
2- Youssef Salman Qaddoum 24 Gaza. PIJ
3- Tayseer Mahmoud Al-Jabari, 50 Gaza City. PIJ
4- Salama Muharib Abed 41 Gaza. PIJ
5- Alaa Abdullah Qaddoum, 5 Gaza City. With PIJ
6- Donyana Adnan Attia Al-Amour 22 Gaza. Likely tank fire ("artillery shell"), see below
7- Mohamed Ahmed Abdel-Fattah Al-Madhoun, 26 Al-Nada Towers. PIJ
8- Fadl Mustafa Zorob 30 Khan Younis. PIJ
 9- Muhammad Hassan Al-Bayouk, 35, Khan Younis. PIJ
10- Ahmed Mazen Azzam, 25 Gaza Strip. PIJ
11- Tamim Ghassan Abdullah Hijazi, 23 Al-Zana. PIJ
12- Osama Abdul Rahman Al-Suri, 27, Bani Suhaila. PIJ
13- Hassan Mohamed Mansour, 26, Jabalia.  PIJ/DFLP
14- Naama Muhammad Abu Qaida 62 Jabalia. Unclear, IDF may have targeted a car nearby
15- Nour El-Din Ali Al-Zubaidi 19 Jabalia Likely IDF (Qassam Brigades)
16- Hazem Muhammad Salem 12 Jabalia. Jabalia rocket
17- Ahmad Muhammad Al-Nayrab 13 Jabalia. Jabalia rocket
18- Moamen Muhammad Al-Nairab 4 Jabalia. Jabalia rocket
19 - Khalil Iyad Abu Hamadeh, 19, Jabalia. Jabalia rocket
20- Ahmed Walid Al-Fram, 18 Jabalia. Jabalia rocket
21- Misbah al-Khatib 50 Jabalia agreed. Jabalia rocket
22- Muhammad Muhammad Ibrahim Zaqout 19 Jabalia. Jabalia rocket
23- Ziad Ahmed Al Mudallal, 36 Rafah. PIJ
24- Muhammad Iyad Hassouna, 14 Rafah. With PIJ in Rafah
25- Ismail Abdel Hamid Mohamed Salameh, 30 Rafah. With PIJ in Rafah
26- Hana Ismail Ali Salameh, 51, Rafah. With PIJ in Rafah
27- Rafat Saleh Ibrahim Al-Zamili, 45, Rafah. PIJ
28- Khaled Saeed Mansour 47 Rafah. With PIJ in Rafah
29- Alaa Saleh Al-Tahrawi, 30, Rafah. With PIJ in Rafah
30- Ahmad Muhammad Afana, 31, Jabalia. Hamas, killed by falling wall after PIJ rocket attack
31- Dia Zuhair Al-Borai, 30 Jabalia. Rocket (House in Jabalia)
32- Jamil Ehab Najm 15 Jabalia. Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
33- Jamil Najm Najm 6 Jabalia. Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
34- Nazmi Fayez Abu Karsh 16 Jabalia. Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
35- Hamed Haider Najm 17 Jabalia. Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
36-Mohamed Salah Najm 17 Jabalia. Rocket (Fallujah cemetery)*
37- Muhammad Yasser Nimr Al-Nabahin 13  Rocket (Al Bureij)
38- Ahmed Yasser Nimr Al Nabahin 9 Al-Bureij. Rocket (Al Bureij)
39- Dalia Yasser Nimr Al Nabaheen 13 Al Bureij. Rocket (Al Bureij)
40 - Yasser Nimr Mahmoud Al Nabahin 45 Al-Bureij. Rocket (Al Bureij), Hamas police
41 - Khaled Ayman Yassin, 27 ZaytounIDF attack - Fatah operative
42- Shady Emad Nimr Kahil, 27 Zaytoun IDF attack - Hamas municipal worker with #41
43- Abd al-Rahman Jum’ah al-Silk 19 al-Shuja’iyya.Apparent IDF attack
44- Mahmoud Daoud in Gaza Apparent IDF attack, Hamas policeman
45- Haneen Walid Abu Qaida, 10 Unclear, see #14
46- Fatima Obaid, 15 Rocket (Beit Hanoun)
47-  Ibrahim Shehda Abu Salah, Beit Hanoun Apparently killed with #15
48- Lian Al-Shaer, 10 Attack that killed PIJ members 8 and 9 above.
49- Anas Khaled Anshasi Member of Salafist group, probably targeted by IDF

#6, Donyana Adnan Attia Al-Amour, seems to me to have been possibly killed by a PIJ rocket. A projectile went through her window and killed her in her room. There is a spray pattern but not as intense as most PIJ rockets.  Her death was reported as coming from an "artillery shell" but I had not heard of the IDF using artillery towards houses and not for attempts to kill a terror leader.  Haaretz says that Israel used artillery towards fixed military positions, and this house does not look like that at all. 

Amnesty says that it identified the shell as a120mm M339 tank round.

 ITIC says  a PIJ commander was in her house. 




*ITIC thinks that the cemetery attack was from the IDF. I am mystified by that, the pictures and video show no crater and a definite spray pattern from PIJ rockets, and none of the anti-Israel "human rights" NGOs on the ground in Gaza (UN OHCHR, DCI-P, PCHR, Al Mezan)  have counted this was an IDF airstrike after investigating. Haaretz also counted it as a definite rocket misfire. Only children were killed. I'm still counting it as a PIJ rocket strike and hoping to get clarification from ITIC.

Haaretz now reports that unnamed Israeli officials admit that the attack was from the IDF. Nothing official. 







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Thursday, August 11, 2022

Defence for Children-Palestine is a rabidly anti-Israel NGO that uses the deaths of children as a means to attack Israel. 

To give an idea of how little context they give their stories, they are counting 16-year old terrorist Hussein Taha, being mourned as a jihadi fighter, as a "child" killed by Israel. 

In an article about the children killed over the weekend in Gaza, their headline is written to imply Israel was responsible for 16 children being killed:


But when you read the article, you see that they really only know about three - and the other 13 are still being "investigated."

Israeli forces killed three Palestinian children in three separate airstrikes between August 5–7, according to information collected by DCIP, while DCIP field researchers continue to investigate four other incidents where 13 Palestinian children were killed. 

Which means they know very well that the 13 were killed by Islamic Jihad rockets in four separate incidents: 
DCIP is still investigating the source of four explosions across the Gaza Strip that killed another 13 Palestinian children. Each explosion coincided with Israeli drones flying over the areas as well as the launches of rockets from Palestinian armed groups
Four children killed (plus three adults) from a rocket in front of a supermarket in Jabalya.
Five children killed from a rocket at the Fallujah Cemetery in Jabalya.
Three child siblings and their father killed in a rocket that hit their home in te Bureij camp.
One child killed and her sister injured from a rocket in Beit Hanoun. There is video of this out of control rocket corkscrewing to the ground and its massive explosion:


What about the other three (now four) children? They were either human shields or they were unfortunately killed when Israel targeted major terrorists.

One killed during the strike on Taysir al Jabari.
One killed when Israel killed southern PIJ leader Khaled Mansour in Rafah.
One killed when Israel apparently targeted a car in Jabalia (I'm still not sure if this was Israel or a PIJ rocket.)
One killed when Israel targeted two PIJ terrorists in Khan Younis.

This is not irresponsible. This is how wars are fought - do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties but civilians cannot shield legitimate military targets of great value.

Defence for Children Palestine, despite trying to spin these deaths as being from Israeli airstrikes, knows quite well they were killed by Islamic Jihad. And they are not defending those children.




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One of the dumber memes that came out during Operation Breaking Dawn was that "Palestinians have the right to defend themselves." 



Given that virtually the only military actions by Gaza militants were shooting rockets into Israeli civilian communities (each one a war crime,) it is unclear how that defends Palestinians. Yet that is what these people are justifying: war crimes.

But there is a more fundamental issue: The idea that Islamic Jihad was "defending Gaza" is completely made up.

Islamic Jihad never claimed that this micro-war was about defending Gaza. It was all about...Islamic Jihad.

Their name for the fighting was "Unity of the Arenas," meaning that the message they wanted to give to Israel is that any Israeli actions against their terrorists and allies in the West Bank will result in responses from Gaza.

This article in the Islamic Jihad military wing website that declares that the battle was a success describes the goals and accomplishments from Islamic Jihad's perspective. And the safety and defense of Gazans is not even on their radar.

On the land of Palestine, no voice is louder than the voice of the resistance.. Once again, Gaza returns to the fore and the Mujahideen of Saraya al-Quds lead the stage of clashing with the Zionist enemy in the battle of unity of the arenas in order to keep the flame of the conflict burning with the usurping entity, and to confirm that Gaza is like Jenin, Nablus and Jerusalem, and that any aggression on the land  and people are crossing all red lines and that all arenas will remain present to respond to the Zionist arrogance in all the cities of the occupied West Bank, and that all the desperate attempts of the occupation to eliminate Islamic jihad and resistance and break the rules of engagement that have been established by blood and fire will be broken on the rock of defiance and violence among the children of the school of (PIJ founder) Dr. Fathi Al-Shaqaqi .
The article is about a speech by Muhammad Hamid, a member of Islamic Jihad's political bureau, where he praised the fighting and described its goals.

Not once does he use the word "defend." Not once does he even mention the security or safety of Gazans. He does say, "the battle for the unity of the arenas is clear in purpose. There are no exceptions in the struggle of our Palestinian people, and there is no distinction between the blood spilled in the occupied West Bank and the blood spilled in Gaza, and therefore this battle has been of great strategic importance in the history of our Palestinian people."

Hamid gave two reasons for shooting the rockets at Israel. The first and primary one was as a response to Israeli arrests and  attacks against terror cells in the West Bank, and the second was the assassination of terrorist Taysir al-Jabari on Friday. he was proud that they responded with hundreds of rockets within hours of the airstrike. 

Notably, Hamid does not claim victory based on Israel's supposed agreement to release a couple of Islamic Jihad prisoners. In fact, Israel today said the opposite, that the Islamic Jihad terrorist leader Bassem Saadi will remain in custody for some more time. 

Also, his words seem to lend support for Israel's charge that Islamic Jihad was planning a major attack in response to Saadi's arrest. Hamid is confirming that Islamic Jihad planned a major response to Saadi's arrest in order to "unify the arenas."

But defending Gaza? That is the least concern for Islamic Jihad. And the people of Gaza know this very well. 

The Mehdi Hasans of the world who go on about "the right of Gazans to defend themselves" are doing nothing but defending terror. Just ask Islamic Jihad.



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