Thursday, October 27, 2022
- Thursday, October 27, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- 2021, civilian casualties, gaza, hamas, Hamas war crimes, human shields, legitimate military target, Muhammad Ouda Yousef, Operation Guardian of the Walls, pchr, The Laws of Armed Conflict
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
- Tuesday, October 25, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- AI, Amnesty, blame Israel, censorship, counterterrorism, fact check, human shields, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad war crimes, legitimate military target, NGO lies, PIJ, The Laws of Armed Conflict
Amnesty International has examined in detail two Israeli attacks that must be investigated as possible war crimes because they appear either to have deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects or to have been indiscriminate attacks. On 5 August 2022, an Israeli tank round struck the house of the alAmour family in Khan Yunis, where 11 civilians were staying, killing Duniana al-Amour, aged 22, and wounding her mother and her sister. Based on its identification of the projectile that struck the house as a “highly accurate” 120mm M339 tank round, and its calculation of the distance between the house and the closest military objects using satellite imagery, Amnesty International believes that the al-Amour family’s house was the intended target of the attack. The killing of Duniana al-Amour and the apparently deliberate targeting of her house must therefore be investigated as a possible war crime.
It does appear that Israel targeted a house. Amnesty says it "found no evidence that any members of the al-Amour family could reasonably be believed to be involved in armed combat. "
This is true. But Amnesty is hiding something - something that they certainly reviewed before writing this report. They are hiding what the ITIC wrote about this attack, that one of the "civilians" in the house was Islamic Jihad's commander of the southern Gaza Strip.
The ITIC is close to the Israeli military. It said that the fatal attack on the Falluja cemetery was from the IDF when even Haaretz assumed it was an errant Islamic Jihad rocket, so it cannot be accused of lying. It is the closest thing we have to an official IDF comment on the incident.
If a senior commander was in the house, it was a valid military target. It is a tragedy but certainly not a war crime.
Amnesty doesn't want you to know that, so they simply don't report it.
In another instance, on 7 August 2022, a missile apparently fired from a drone hit Al-Falluja cemetery in Jabalia, killing five children and seriously injuring another. Based on a review of pictures of the weapon’s remnants, Amnesty International determined that they were consistent with an Israeli guided missile. Unnamed sources from the Israeli army told an Israeli newspaper that a preliminary internal probe conducted by the army into the attack showed that neither Palestinian Islamic Jihad nor the AlQuds Brigades were firing rockets at the time of the attack and that Israel was carrying out attacks on “targets” near the area. Satellite imagery showed that there were no military targets visible in the area 10 days before the attack and residents interviewed by Amnesty International said that none appeared in the intervening period. There are strong indications that the strike on Al-Falluja cemetery was either a direct attack on civilians or an indiscriminate attack where Israel failed to comply with the obligation to take all feasible precautions to distinguish between civilians and fighters.Notice how Amnesty assumes that the Israeli sources are simply lying when they say there were targets in the area. A "target" is likely a member or leader of Islamic Jihad. 10-day old satellite imagery will not find such a target, and residents being interviewed sure as hell will not admit they saw a militant even if they did. Amnesty simply assumes Israel either targeted kids for fun, or didn't check for civilians. It does not even consider that the laws of war say that a military commander can act based on the best intelligence information available at the time - he or she does not have to wait for 100% accuracy. Sometimes, as in this case, the information was not accurate enough and there is a tragedy.
Sunday, August 14, 2022
- Sunday, August 14, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- +972 Magazine, ICRC, international law, Islamic Jihad, legal combatants, Operation Breaking Dawn, PIJ, The Laws of Armed Conflict, Ynet
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.
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.”
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.”
Friday, August 12, 2022
- Friday, August 12, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, blood libel, civilian casualties, DCI-P, double standards, failed rockets, gaza, human shields, Islamic Jihad, pchr, PIJ, The Laws of Armed Conflict, UNHCR
The Fallujah cemetery in Jabalya, where 5 children were killed by an Islamic Jihad rocket. Note the spray pattern of tiny holes from the shrapnel that PIJ uses to maximize death and damage. |
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 47 Palestinians were killed during the offensive, including 16 children and four women, and 360 others were injured, including 151 children and 58 women. Eighteen residential units were destroyed, while dozens of others were partially damaged.Al Mezan’s fieldwork team works to document and investigate every single act of hostilities that occurred in the Gaza Strip and has so far verified the killing of 27 Palestinians and the complete destruction of 12 homes by Israeli forces. Al Mezan continues to conduct its own independent field investigations and collect information on all incidents of killing and damaging or destruction of houses, property, and other civilian objects in Gaza.
UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet today expressed alarm at the high number of Palestinians, including children, killed and injured in the occupied Palestinian territory this year, including in intense hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza last weekend.The civilian cost of the latest escalation in Gaza from 5-7 August was heavy. The UN Human Rights Office has verified that among the 48 Palestinians killed, there were at least 22 civilians, including 17 children and four women. The status of 22 fatalities remains undetermined....In violation of international humanitarian law, Palestinian armed groups also launched hundreds of rockets and mortars in indiscriminate attacks, causing civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects in Israel as well as in Gaza.
Thursday, August 11, 2022
- Thursday, August 11, 2022
- Ian
- Caroline Glick, freedom of press palestinian style, Freedom of the Press, hamas, Honest Reporting, iran, Islamic Jihad, Linkdump, media bias, memri, PIJ, The Laws of Armed Conflict, two-state solution, WSJ
Honest Reporting: The ‘Fix’ Is In: How Hitler-Praising Palestinians Are Warping Gaza Conflict Coverage
New York Times’ Fady Hanona Urges Missile Attacks on IsraelBrendan O'Neill: Progressives for jihad
Out of the eight articles produced by The New York Times during the three-day PIJ-initiated conflict, six credit Fady Hanona as having contributed from Gaza City (see here, here, here, here, here, and here).
Hanona, a freelance producer and fixer who has also been hired by the BBC, The Guardian, and VICE News, appears to be working to further the anti-Israel narrative promoted by Palestinian terror organizations that seek the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.
For one, he supports arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, having backed him repeatedly on Facebook (here, here, and here). Prior to his incarceration, Barghouti co-founded and headed the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, an organization that murdered dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and shooting attacks during the Second Intifada (2000-2005).
Hanona moreover made light of the escape from prison of members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in September of last year (see here and here). Most of the escapees were serving life sentences for their roles in attacks on Israeli citizens. Ayham Kamamji, for example, was convicted of kidnapping and murdering teenager Eliyahu Asheri.
Indeed, Hanona makes no attempt to hide his desire that Israel be removed from the map, referring to the country’s sovereign territory as the “[19]48 lands,” while putting “Israel” in scare quotes.
During 2014’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza, the New York Times freelancer took to social media to threaten the murder of Ghassan Alian, an Israeli Druze who commanded the IDF’s Golani Brigade at the time.
Then, on August 18, 2014 — days before a ceasefire took effect between Israel and Hamas — Hanona urged the Palestinian “resistance” to reject a truce and continue its missile attacks on Tel Aviv, which had at that point already cost the lives of five civilians.
In another online post from the same month, he went as far as invoking Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to support his point about the strength of Gazan fighters. “As Hitler said, give me a Palestinian soldier and a German weapon, and I will make Europe crawl on its fingertips,” Hanona’s post read, citing an unconfirmed quote attributed to the man responsible for the murder of six million Jews.
Furthermore, the NYT fixer shared a now-deleted propaganda video of terrorist groups in Jenin on Facebook, telling his followers that Palestinians should return to “the culture of fighting and killing Israelis.”
“I don’t accept a Jew, Israeli or Zionist, or anyone else who speaks Hebrew. I’m with killing them wherever they are: children, elderly people, and soldiers,” Hanona asserted, adding: “The Jews are sons of the dogs… I am in favor of killing them and burning them like Hitler did. I will be so happy.” According to his Twitter feed, Israel’s security services subsequently flagged his name when he applied for a permit to travel to Jerusalem.
Remember when progressives were opposed to hardline religious movements that use violence to try to destroy democratic states? Islamic Jihad is a thoroughly regressive movement that says it will settle for nothing less than the obliteration of Israel. It wants to create an Islamic State of Palestine in which Sharia would rule and all who fall foul of it - uppity women, homosexuals, atheists - would suffer.A look back at the first disastrous ‘Two-State Solution
Islamic Jihad is not a national liberation movement. It is a violent and extremist religious organization generously funded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. It rejects the political process and has executed numerous acts of indiscriminate slaughter in Israel in recent years, massacring hundreds of Israeli citizens in restaurants, at supermarkets, on buses.
Name me one nation on Earth that would turn a blind eye to such existential threats? If there was a well-armed group of religious fundamentalists a few miles from Britain that had sent suicide bombers to slaughter British men, women and children, we would act, no? And yet Israel is always condemned for acting.
Islamic Jihad is not good for the Palestinian people. Its activities in recent years have in part been designed to weaken the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Mahmoud Abbas-led government of the West Bank. It wants to dislodge the PA. That will help the Palestinian people, will it?
To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.
In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the ending of the 400-year-old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.
The League of Nations created several articles in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: Article 25.
It became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921-22 to tear away all the vast Mandatory territory east of the river Jordan and give it away to the Arab Hashemite tribe: The territory to become Trans-Jordan, led by the emir Abdullah.
British officials claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, T.S. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as “a side show of a side show.”
Ironically, Britain was aided far more by the Nili underground movement in defeating the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had ruled geographical Palestine for 400 years.
This was the first partition of the non-state geographical territory known as Palestine and the first two-state solution. It created a new Arab entity some 100 years ago called Trans-Jordan, covering some 35,000 square miles, or nearly four fifths of the erstwhile Palestine Mandate. Immediately,
Jewish residence in this new Arab territory was forbidden in an act of Islamic apartheid (which no one protested on US college campuses...), and it is thus historically correct to state that Jordan is Palestine. Note too that Jordan’s population is comprised of well over 75% Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
In 1923, the British and French colonial powers also divided up the northern part of the Palestine Mandate. Britain stripped away the Golan Heights (with its ancient Biblical Jewish roots) and gave it to French-occupied Syria.
The Balfour Declaration issued by Lord Balfour, British foreign secretary, never envisaged that the Jordan River would be the eastern boundary of the reconstituted Jewish homeland.
As early as September 19, 1919, the London Times newspaper had thundered in an editorial: “The Jordan will not do as the eastern frontier of Palestine … Palestine must have a good military frontier east of the river Jordan … Our duty as Mandatory is to make Jewish Palestine not a struggling state but one that is capable of vigorous and independent life.”
During its administration of the remaining Palestine Mandate’s tiny territory, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, (a mere forty miles in width) Britain severely restricted Jewish immigration and purchases of land while turning a blind eye to massive illegal Arab immigration into the territory from neighboring stagnant Arab territories. This had been Britain’s policy since it was given the Mandate from 1921/22 up until 1947 and Israel’s subsequent independence in 1948.
Britain’s sorry record of appeasement of the Arabs, at the expense of Jewish destiny in the remaining tiny territory, culminated in the infamous 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to a total of just 75,000 souls over the next five years. This draconian policy, coming as it did on the eve of the outbreak of World War 2 and the Holocaust, was a deathblow to millions of Jews attempting to flee extermination by Nazi Germany.
- Thursday, August 11, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- Bassem Saadi, gaza, international law, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad war crimes, Israel, Mehdi Hasan, Muhammad Hamid, Operation Breaking Dawn, PIJ, The Laws of Armed Conflict
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 .
Friday, August 05, 2022
- Friday, August 05, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- analysis, double standards, failed rockets, Fake Civilians 2022, hamas, Hamas war crimes, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad war crimes, media bias, Operation Breaking Dawn, The Laws of Armed Conflict
Thursday, June 09, 2022
- Thursday, June 09, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- @airwars, @DigFind_, AI, Amnesty, Chris Woods, civilian casualties, Fake Civilians 2021, Forensic Architecture, Gaza Platform, human shields, Mohammed Barham Abu Draz, NGO, NGO monitor, The Laws of Armed Conflict
Airwars' interactive map project detailing the "civilian casualties" in Gaza was nominated for @amnesty media awards 2022.
gazaplatform.amnesty.org/#1528
Same for Alaa’ Jamal Barda (علاء جمال بردع). He was a field commander with the same terror group.
@NGOmonitor background information on the two:
ngo-monitor.org/amnesty-usas-n…
Ezz El-Din Mohamed Helles (عز الدين محمد حلس) - member Al Qassam Brigades
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! |
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Sunday, November 14, 2021
- Sunday, November 14, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- civilian casualties, Fake Civilians 2021, hamas, Hamas war crimes, IDF, Jewish Institute for National Security in America, JINSA, LOAC, media bias, NGO, NGO lies, propaganda, The Laws of Armed Conflict
LTG Robert Ashley, USA (ret.), Former Director of the Defense Intelligence AgencyLTG John M. Bednarek, USA (ret.), Former Senior Defense Official in Iraq; former Chief of Office of Security Cooperation in BaghdadLTC Geoffrey S. Corn, USA (ret.) Former Chief International Law for U.S. Army EuropeLt Gen Jon Davis, USMC (ret.) Former Deputy Commandant for AviationLTG Karen Gibson, USA (ret.) Former Deputy Director for National Intelligence for National Security PartnershipsLTG Stephen Lanza, USA (ret.) Former Commanding General of I Corps and Joint Base Lewis McChordRADM Brian Losey, USN (ret.) Former Commander of Naval Special Warfare CommandLt Gen Richard Natonski, USMC (ret.) Former Commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces CommandLTG Raymond Palumbo, USA (ret.) Former Deputy Commander of U.S. Army Special Operations CommandGEN David Rodriguez, USA (ret.) Former Commander of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM)Lt Gen Thomas Trask, USAF (ret.) Former Vice Commander of United States Special Operations CommandGen Charles Wald, USAF (ret.) Former Deputy Commander of United States European Command (EUCOM)
Trevor Noah, The Daily Show
On May 11, 2021, Trevor Noah did a segment on The Daily Show in which he argued that, because Israel is more militarily capable, it should refrain from defending itself: “If you were in a fight where the other person cannot beat you, how hard should you retaliate when they try to hurt you?”
John Oliver, Last Week TonightOliver’s viral May 16, 2021, segment about Israeli actions included the unfounded accusation that it “targeted the al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan,” and that the IDF’s strike on a multi-story building in Gaza used by Hamas “sure seems like war crime, regardless of whether you send a courtesy heads-up text.” Oliver dismissed Hamas' firing of rockets at Israeli civilian population centers because “most of the rockets aimed toward Israeli citizens this week were intercepted.”
In its conflict with Hamas in May, Israel endured a barrage of rockets — as well as war-crime accusations. Iron Dome intercepted most of the former. The latter are more dangerous, for Israel and even the United States.After reviewing the Israeli Defense Forces’ operations during the Gaza conflict as retired senior US military officers, we find these accusations spurious — fed by Hamas’ disinformation and a widespread misunderstanding of the Law of Armed Conflict, or LOAC. These dynamics could soon feature in conflicts involving the US military.Delegitimizing Israeli operations — not military victory — was one of Hamas’ main objectives in this conflict. “The real crimes,” Hamas’ spokesperson told the media, “were committed by [Israel] targeting civilians … killing more than 100 children and women and demolishing buildings.”With such false claims, Hamas casts any civilian casualty as illegal. Unfortunately, many in the media and public embraced this false narrative.“Destroying a civilian residence sure seems like a war crime,” comedian John Oliver opined on his show. Seeming like a war crime and being one are quite different.LOAC requires militaries to distinguish between — and only attack — military, not civilian, targets. Commanders are obliged to make a good-faith effort to take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian risk.These rules do not preclude unavoidable civilian casualties. It is a sad but undeniable reality of war that international law tolerates harm to civilians if it’s not deliberately inflicted, caused by indiscriminate attacks and avoidable with feasible precautions.In our professional opinion, Israeli actions in Gaza reflected a consistent and good-faith commitment to respect and implement these LOAC principles.