Showing posts with label Operation Guardian of the Walls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operation Guardian of the Walls. Show all posts

Monday, January 02, 2023

Leaders of Palestinian terror groups, and the PA government, are making threats in response to Itamar Ben-Gvir's plan to visit the Temple Mount.

Islamic Jihad leader Daoud Shehab said such a visit would be a "declaration of war."

 Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Hussein Al-Sheikh, called for a "Palestinian, Arab and international" response.

Hamas said that Ben Gvir was "adding fuel to the fire" and holding Israel responsible for any violence. And there are reports that Hamas sent a message though Egypt to Israel that they would shoot rockets at Ben Gurion Airport if such a visit occurs.

Should Palestinian threats affect Israeli actions?

It is easy to flatly say "no." But if there was a credible threat of a thousand rockets being shot into Israel, is it worth it?

I'm no expert on game theory, but we have a history of threats and violence that can help shed light on what the reality is and what these threats are meant to accomplish.

Nearly every Palestinian threat of violence does not turn into anything. Look at the empty threats of war if the US opened an embassy in Jerusalem as a prime example. Even last March, Hamas threatened violence ahead of the last time Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount. Nothing happened.

And on the other side of the coin, nearly every case of real Palestinian violence had little to do with reacting to specific Israeli actions, although they would use Israeli actions as an excuse after the fact. The terror spree in 2022 was not preceded by specific threats. 

The Second Intifada was supposedly sparked by Ariel Sharon's similar visit to the Temple Mount, but we know now that it was only an excuse - Arafat had planned the intifada beforehand, and the visit provided the pretext to implement the plan. If it wouldn't have happened then, it would have happened a week or month later. 

When Hamas tells Egypt to warn Israel and the threat is leaked, that is not a real threat - that is trying to manipulate Israeli public opinion while providing Hamas with  deniability when the war does not break out. 

In this case, the 2021 Gaza war is instructive. In that case, Hamas gave a very specific warning and threat: Israel must remove its forces from the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarrah by 6 PM on May 10 or else face a rocket barrage. Indeed, they started shooting rockets right at the deadline. But in that case, just as with the PLO in 2000, Hamas already planned the attack; it knew very well that Israel was not going to accede to their demands. It was a way to blame Israel for a Hamas-initiated war. Hamas wanted the war regardless, it had a specific goal to tie the actions happening in the West Bank with those in Gaza. At any rate, it wasn't a threat meant to change Israeli behavior, it was an excuse for a war they chose to start. 

If you define terrorism as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation against civilians in the pursuit of political aims, Palestinian threats are simply a form of terrorism. Their occasional outbreaks of violence give credibility to the threats, but that actual violence has its own logic divorced from Israeli actions. 

If Israel would cave to these threats, however - as some in the Israeli opposition demand - then the threats will have accomplished a great deal. The terrorists would learn that their threats can force Israel to do what they want without them firing a single bullet. That's about as successful a terror attack as is possible. 

The armed groups in Gaza and the terror supporters in Ramallah generally don't want war. They would much rather have Europe and the US and the Knesset opposition pressure Israel to do what they want. That's the logic behind the threats.

Perhaps one can argue whether Ben Gvir should visit the holy site to begin with. But once he announced his intent, he must go through with it, because the downside of caving to Arab threats is far, far worse than the minuscule chances that it would spark a new war or a new intifada. 





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Thursday, October 27, 2022

Last year, during the May 2021 fighting in Gaza, an IAF missile destroyed an apartment in Gaza City, killing a mother and two of her children - Rima Telbani(31), Zeid(4) and Maryam(2).

Israel was blamed for targeting civilians. The New York Times published a  photo of the children

Today, another victim of that attack succumbed to his wounds. His name is Muhammad Ouda Yousef Al-Telbani.



In fact, in the building at the same time were two other senior Hamas terrorists who were killed - who were not mentioned by PCHR.

Which means that the building was almost certainly a command and control center - and the cute Telbani kids were human shields for Hamas, including for their father. 

That changes the story a bit, doesn't it?




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Wednesday, September 14, 2022

From Ian:

What Happens If Operation Guardian of the Walls Recurs?
During the twelve-day conflict between the IDF and Hamas in the spring of last year, Arabs in usually peaceful Israeli cities with multiethnic populations rioted, deeply shaking the country’s general sense of safety. Yagil Henkin considers the possibility that, in the event of a larger war between Israel and, for instance, Hizballah, the latter could work with Palestinian groups to foment similar riots within Israel’s borders:
It is incorrect to regard the May 2021 events as civic disturbances or a series of individual episodes. As in any war, the enemy learns and searches for weaknesses to exploit. As a result, Israel should brace itself for a worst-case scenario in which ethnic and religious tensions are used to incite unrest and riots, disrupt army movements and reserve mobilization, cut off supply routes and access to military bases, inflict damage on military convoys, and use threats, propaganda, and possibly assassinations to force Arab and Muslim soldiers and policemen to leave the military and law enforcement. Following [the 2021 conflict], Hizballah escalated its efforts to transfer weaponry and ammunition to Israeli Arabs for use in a future conflict.

Notably, from the perspective of Iran and Hizballah, Israeli Arabs assaulting Jews and the reverse would be welcomed outcomes. Such attacks would force the police to disperse their forces and assign some of them to suppress Jewish riots rather than supporting Israeli offensive moves, limiting Israel’s freedom of action. The suspicion and tensions would undermine citizens’ sense of security and trust in government agencies, leading to further escalation and inter-communal strife. Therefore, Israel’s opponents may view any outcome as advantageous and work hard to bring about such outcomes through financial backing, disinformation, arming radicals, radicalizing youth, etc.
Israel gives CIA intelligence on alleged terror-linked Palestinian NGOs
The Shin Bet has provided the CIA with new intelligence regarding Palestinian civil society NGOs that Israel has accused of involvement in terror.

The agency provided the new information to the CIA last week, though it is not discussing the issue publicly and was first reported by Walla.

Israel is hoping to finally flip the US in its favor on the issue after Washington has been highly critical, along with the EU and UN, of Jerusalem's moves regarding the civil society groups.

It appeared that the latest try to convince the Biden administration that the groups have ties to terror came after Israel upped the ante last month when it closed down several organizations which it had previously declared to be illegal in October 2021.

The organizations have said that Israel merely wants to silence them and their activities which often involve political criticism and activism, including protests, against Israeli control of the Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israel has said that the organizations wear two hats, one actually helping with human rights issues, and the other aiding the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Maj. Bar Falah identified as IDF officer killed overnight near Jenin
An IDF officer was killed in an exchange of fire with two armed Palestinian gunmen near the village of Jalma, north of the West Bank city of Jenin.

He was identified as 30-year-old Maj. Bar Falach, deputy commander of the Nahal Brigade’s Reconnaissance Battalion, from the coastal city of Netanya. He was buried in the city’s military cemetery on Wednesday evening.

The incident began around 11:30 p.m. when IDF observation soldiers identified two suspects approaching the fence along the seam line near a military post. The suspects, who were not identified as being armed, reached within 15 meters of the fence and lay down.

Forces, including Falah and the commander of the IDF’s Menashe Brigade, Col. Arik Moyal, were deployed to the area where the suspects had been identified. A Zik drone was scrambled to the area but was not used.

The forces split into two, one led by Falah and the other by Moyal, in an attempt to surprise the gunmen, who then opened fire on the troops who had approached within several meters.

According to Judea and Samaria Division Commander Brig.-Gen. Avi Bluth, the troops did not know that the suspects were armed until they opened fire on the force around 2:30 a.m., hitting Falah and fatally injuring him.

The two gunmen were identified by Palestinian media as Ahmed Abed, an intelligence officer in the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, and Abdul Rahman Abed, from the village of Kafr Dan near Jenin. One of them was an intelligence officer of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades took responsibility for the attack, saying both the shooters were members of the terrorist organization.

"Unfortunately, last night we lost an officer who fought Palestinian terrorists in the field," said IDF Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, "This is yet another expression of the challenges the IDF faces in all arenas and the security it provides for Israel's citizens, sometimes at a heavy price. I convey my deepest condolences to the family, and to his partner."




PreOccupiedTerritory: Palestinian Technology Posthumously Turns Adult Fighters Into Children (satire)
The Before-Interment Alteration System, or BIAS.

Muhammed SabaanehTel Aviv, September 12 – Israeli military and Defense Ministry officials voiced concern today over a device that various terrorist factions appear to have in their possession, one that takes any corpse of a gun-wielding, bomb-planting, firebomb-throwing, or knife-brandishing Arab and transforms it into a “youth” or “child,” as reflected in mainstream news coverage of recent conflict episodes.

Officials pointed to articles and video reports surrounding the violence over the last several months in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian-governed city of Jenin, cases in which the IDF documented its actions against armed Palestinian men, often killing them – only to discover that such reliable, objective sources as CNN, the Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, and the British Broadcasting Corporation quoted Palestinian media and officials in calling the militant a child. Israeli military intelligence concluded that the Palestinians possess something that somehow changes an adult fighter into a child whose death Israel caused.

“As a placeholder name, we’re calling it a Before-Interment Alteration System,” disclosed one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We know of at least twenty cases in the last year in which BIAS has been deployed to create a propaganda effect, with varying degrees of success. But other evidence points to the use of BIAS for the same purpose going back decades, to the first Intifada in 1987. Its deployment helps explain hundreds of instances in which the IDF neutralized an armed terrorist, only to find that some unexplained technology has altered the corpse so that it now resembles that of a playful youth whose innocent photographs now grace the pages and social media accounts of Western journalists and government institutions. BIAS is clearly a weapon to be reckoned with.”

Monday, September 05, 2022

This morning, angry protesters burned tires at the entrance of UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, upset at the lack of compensation for the 2014 Gaza war.


As of this writing, no Western media has even mentioned this. The main UN agency that provides aid to Palestinians is shut down by Palestinians themselves, potentially affecting tens of thousands, but it doesn't fit the narrative so it doesn't get covered. 

The last such protest in Gaza was in April. But other protests against UNRWA happen often, especially in Lebanon. And they are equally underrerported.

Notice the amount of security that UNRWA uses in Gaza. Heavy metal gates, with spikes on top, and barbed wire atop that. 


This is to protect UNRWA from the people it serves!





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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, May 30, 2022

From The Guardian:
An Israeli airstrike on an agrochemical warehouse during last year’s war in Gaza amounted to the “indirect deploying of chemical weapons”, according to a report analysing the attack and its impact.

Incendiary artillery shells fired by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) hit the large Khudair Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Tools warehouse in the north of the Gaza Strip on 15 May last year, setting fire to hundreds of tonnes of pesticides, fertilisers, plastics and nylons. The strike created a toxic plume, which engulfed an area of 5.7 sq km and has left local residents struggling with health issues, including two reports of miscarriages, and indications of environmental damage.

The extensive investigation, which involved analysing mobile phone and drone footage and CCTV, dozens of interviews with residents, and analysis from munitions and fluid dynamics experts, used 3D modelling of the warehouse to determine the circumstances of the attack.

It is the first publication by Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq’s newly established forensic architecture investigation unit, a first-of-its-kind collaboration in the Middle East with Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which carries out spatial and media analysis for NGOs and in international human rights cases.

We've seen just a few months ago how Forensic Architecture suggests Israeli crimes by backing up nonsense assertions with the illusion of comprehensive research filled with impressive 3D modeling that doesn't prove anything. To the average observer, the sheer amount of "research" and effort seem to give support for their charges, but when you look at it carefully, it is simply smoke and mirrors.

In short, Forensic Architecture and Al Haq say that Israel fired the Elbit Systems M-150 smoke projectile several times towards the Khudair Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Tools warehouse. They show video that shows that the projectiles are indeed smoke projectiles, and they seem to come from artillery to the southeast.

Those are reasonable assumptions, backed by their evidence.

Then they go off the rails. They claim that this was a deliberate attempt to burn down the factory to cause an environmental disaster and ruin the lives of Gazans. 

That is, of course, nonsense.

I am the first to admit that I have no idea why the IDF would use smoke munitions, usually used as a smokescreen for ground forces, in this attack. I do not know what was in the mind of the commander who decided to launch this attack, or what tactical advantage smoke munitions would provide.

One thing is clear, though: If Israel wanted to destroy the factory and cause an ecological disaster, this is the worst possible munition to use!

It took 8-9 minutes after two of the shells landed before a fire was started from materials igniting nearby. For most of the shells, no fire was started at all. If Israel wanted to blow up the factory, this is not the way any military commander would do it. 




A firecracker would be more likely to ignite the chemicals than a smoke bomb. 

The choice of munitions seems to indicate the opposite: that Israel wanted smoke, but no fire, in the factory. Perhaps it had intelligence that Hamas was building explosives with the factory's fertilizer, and wanted to stop the manufacturing while minimizing chances to burn down the factory. 

The report quotes their go-to "expert" - the same one that CNN used to "prove" Israel shot Shireen Abu Akleh - Chris Cobb-Smith, to say that there is no military reason to use the smoke bomb. 

Why would the army use it, then? The "expert" is silent. But his quote is framed to make it appear like it was a deliberate attempt to burn down the factory, which is absurd.

Of course, the anti-Israel Al Haq and Forensics Architecture did not look to investigate any alternative theory to the one that makes Israel look as bad as possible - a deliberate act of WMD against Gaza. They don't bother to explain the inexplicable of why Israel would choose the worst means to accomplish its nefarious goal.

Because they don't care about the truth. The entire report is meant to be make a completely ridiculous accusation, and assume that the audience's antisemitism is higher than their bullshit meter. Which it almost invariably is - because of reports like this being treated respectfully in outlets like The Guardian.


(h/t Adam Levick)




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, May 30, 2021




In the early days of the Gaza operation, Refaat Alareer wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about how hard it is to be a good parent during wartime.

He mentioned that the lost his brother in the 2014 war along with many relatives:
In 2014, during the last war, Israel killed my brother Hamada; it destroyed my apartment when it brought down the family home that housed 40 people. It killed my wife’s grandfather, her brother, her sister and her sister’s three kids. 
Why would Israel target his apartment?

Well, because Refaat Alareer's brother was a Hamas operative, and he was holed up in the apartment with a fellow Hamas terrorist - effectively holding the family hostage as human shields. 

Here is Mohammed (Hamada) Alareer, still memorialized on Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades website:


He was killed along with Musab al-Ajlah, another Hamas terrorist.

If Refaat owned the apartment, as he implies, that means that he was knowingly shielding two Hamas terrorists and his own family members. If anyone is responsible for the deaths of his wife’s grandfather, her brother, her sister and her sister’s three kids, it may be Refaat himself!

Hamada also played the Nahoul the Bee character on a Hamas kid's show, telling children to shoot Jews and smash them.



I don't know if Refaat himself is a Hamas member, but he certainly is a fan. His now-suspended Twitter account included this:



Now he is pretending to be an upright, moral dad who values human lives. But he clearly teaches his daughter to lionize terrorists as well. This is from her Facebook page a few years ago - the photo on top is Refaat posing in front of a cannon in Turkey, and her profile picture is of a masked Al Qassam Brigades terrorist:


Lots more details about this family here.

This is who the New York Times promotes.

On Friday, the same New York Times had a front page photo essay highlighting the photos of children killed in Gaza, a truly grotesque demonization of Israel that is unprecedented. 


Of course every child killed is tragic. But only those that can be blamed on Israel are front-page news for the New York Times. Kids killed by gunfire, in Afghanistan, in Syria - none of them are named, let alone plastered on the front page of the leading newspaper in the West.

In response to this, I tweeted 

I just gave $64 to Friends of the IDF, one dollar for every kid in the @nytimes front page that (despite denials) paints Israel as a child killing entity. 

The IDF does more to save children's lives on BOTH sides than any media, NGO or "pro-Palestinian" group ever has - or will.

My point, which was clear, is that the IDF saves more Gaza kids' lives while defending Israeli kids than the New York Times, or PCHR, or Amnesty, or any of the others whodemonize Israel - combined.  

Refaat is a terrorist fan who teaches his daughter to love Hamas and that Hamas is legally allowed to blow up Jews.   And he writes how wonderful a father he is for the New York Times. Then, today, he called me a fascist who celebrates dead kids - the exact opposite of my post:


He throws in a little antisemitism for good measure, saying that me, a child of Holocaust survivors, is a Nazi. 

 Yes, this Hamas propagandist who fully supports murdering Jewish children in Israel, who supports the antisemitic Hamas charter, who says that suicide bombs are "legitimate resistance" and moral - is calling me a fascist and someone who celebrates killing children.

This isn't even psychological projection: this is a terrorist supporter who is gaslighting the Western world into thinking that Israel is the monster and Hamas is only defending poor Gaza children, the exact opposite of the truth. He knows this and he chooses to propagandize for a terror group.

Refaat Alareer cannot hide his true allegiance for antisemitic, genocidal Hamas. 






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