Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: UN OCHA

Showing posts with label UN OCHA. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

The UN's selective reporting on the Temple Mount and Old City

Here is how the UN's OCHA described Rosh Hashanah in their biweekly Protection of Civilians report:

On 16 and 17 September, large groups of Israelis, including settlers, entered the Old City of Jerusalem during the Jewish New Year. Israeli authorities deployed police officers and restricted Palestinian movement in and out of the Old City, during which they physically assaulted and injured an elderly Palestinian man and arrested at least two others. On 17 September, Israeli forces restricted Palestinian access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, allowing entry only to those over the age of 50 for the dawn prayers. That morning, about 400 Israelis, including settlers, accessed the compound accompanied by Israeli police, who evacuated Palestinian worshippers to secure the entry of Israelis.

Let's take this apart:

large groups of Israelis, including settlers, entered the Old City of Jerusalem during the Jewish New Year.

Why is this newsworthy to begin with? It is, only if you believe Jews have no right to visit the Old City including the Kotel.

And why do they call out "settlers" specifically? What difference does that make - unless the purpose is to incite hate?

Israeli authorities deployed police officers and restricted Palestinian movement in and out of the Old City

Which is what one would expect on a national and religious holiday. What they don't mention is that numerous Palestinian groups threatened any Jews who wanted to celebrate the holiday and "desecrate Al Aqsa."

On 17 September, Israeli forces restricted Palestinian access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, allowing entry only to those over the age of 50 for the dawn prayers.

Because terror organizations called on Palestinians to go to the area en masse to block any access by Jews. For some reason, those threats aren't mentioned.

That morning, about 400 Israelis, including settlers, accessed the compound accompanied by Israeli police, who evacuated Palestinian worshippers to secure the entry of Israelis.

And how many Muslims were there that day? Thousands.

Israel schedules the Jewish visitors for times outside Muslim prayer times.

The entire subtext of the report is that Jews have no right to the Temple Mount, Jews have no right to visit the entire Old City, and Israeli attempts to protect Jewish civilians are framed as a means to harm Muslim civilians.

Also, "Israelis" is apparently used as a euphemism for "Jews."

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Another child soldier that UNICEF doesn't care about

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reports:

Today, Tuesday, a child from the town of Zababdeh, south of Jenin, was killed by bullets from the Israeli occupation.

The director of Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin, Fawaz Hammad, told Wafa that the child Othman Atef Abu Kharj (17 years old) died of injuries he sustained at dawn today, during the clashes that erupted after the storming of the town.

The description of his death by Islamic Jihad is a little different:

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, celebrated, on Tuesday morning, the highest examples of jihad and steadfastness, its fighter son, Othman Atef Abu Kharj, one of the fighters of the deterrence unit in the Al-Quds Brigades, who rose as a martyr, God willing, during his confrontation with his mujahideen brothers.

The Brigades said in a military statement: "We are in the Al-Quds Brigades and we bid farewell to a heroic mujahid knight who is witnessed by the battlefields to confirm that the blood of the martyrs will remain fuel for the continuation of the resistance approach, and that these sacrifices that our heroic mujahideen make will not be lost, and will be a motive for the continuity of engagement and fighting, and will not be lost." We meet our enemy only with bullets and more resistance.

Interestingly, they claim that Kharj was 18 years old, while all other Palestinian media quote the ministry of health saying he was 17.

Yesterday I noted that for the first time I can recall, the UN chided Palestinian terror groups for exposing children to paramilitary "summer camps" as well as for endangering Palestinian children by placing booby traps in camps for IDF vehicles. But although the UN's OCHA-OPT closely monitors every death in the territories, they have never mentioned that terror groups like Islamic Jihad actively recruit and use child soldiers.

I cannot find any mention of Palestinian child soldiers in UNICEF reports on "the state of Palestine" either. Defense for Children International - Palestine never mentions that the children killed were members of armed groups and actively fighting.

It is undeniable that Palestinian terror groups recruit and exploit children. Last week, JCPA published a report showing how terror groups in Jenin use children as "spotters" and instruct them using Telegram channels on how they should operate.

A major reason that children are recruited is in the hope that they will be killed - because they are more valuable as "child victims" than they are as fighters. To Palestinians, children are cannon fodder, and I have yet to see a single article in Arabic media that condemns Hamas and Islamic Jihad for recruiting children.

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UN reluctantly admits that terror groups put Palestinian children at risk

Every year, Lynn Hastings, the UN Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, issues a press release before the school year discussing how Israel and Jewish settlers have been awful to Palestinian children.

This year, as far as I can tell for the first time, the press release also mentions a couple of ways that Palestinian terror groups are endangering Palestinian children..

Physical barriers placed by Palestinians in refugee camps, some rigged with explosive materials, are threatening the safety of children and making it harder for them to reach their classrooms. And reports continue of children being enrolled in “summer camps” by armed groups, increasing their risk of being exposed to violence or military content.

I've mentioned that the IEDs that Palestinian terror groups have been placing on the roads of camps in order to blow up Israeli vehicles are a danger to ordinary Palestinians, but this is the first time I have seen any NGO mention the danger, even if it downplays the danger.

Similarly, even though these "summer camps" have been run by terror groups for decades, this is the first time I have seen the UN say anything negative about them. The sentence is comical: "increasing their risk of being exposed?" That is the entire purpose of the camps, and there are lots of videos and photos showing the children with real or mock weapons!

Hastings fails to mention that most of the "children" killed by Israel this year were either child soldiers recruited by terror groups or were actively engaged in attacks.

Perhaps the UN felt forced to mention Palestinian responsibility towards the children's welfare because it has had to admit that it couldn't open up schools in the Lebanese Ein el-Hilweh camp because of terror groups that have taken over the schools.

Although there is plenty wrong with this press release, it is a slight improvement over the obsessively one-sided anti-Israel propaganda of the past.

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UN-OCHA moving the goalposts to make Israel look bad

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Palestinian territories comes out with a report every month about imports, exports, entrances and exits from Gaza.

In its report on June, it says:

In June, the Israeli authorities allowed 42,220 exits of people from Gaza (in most cases, travelers exited multiple times). This is 13 per cent higher than the exits in May, and 19 per cent higher than the monthly average in 2022. However, it is 92 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2000, before the imposition of category-based restrictions by the Israeli authorities.

They are comparing the number of exits with 2000 - when thousands of Israelis still lived in Gaza and traveled freely in and out every day? Before the second intifada when checkpoints needed to be enforced? Of course the number of exits will never be nearly as high as in 2000; the borders were porous then.

If they were to compare with any previous year, they should - and normally do - compare it to the time between Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and when Israel started restrictions on Gaza after Hamas violently took over the territory in 2007. Otherwise it is comparing apples to oranges.

So let's look at previous UN charts.

Here's a UN chart from 2016 that was already deceptive: starting in 2004 when Israelis left Gaza so part of the year there were many, many more exits; and showing that in March 2006 Israel started its restrictions on Gaza workers. So if there is any year that the UN should compare against, it is 2005.

In 2005, the monthly average of exits was 31,424. Today, it is significantly higher - as mentioned, over 42,000 last month, and in fact earlier this year it surpassed 50,000 some months.

The headline should be that Israel now allows more freedom of movement for Gazans than at any time since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. But the UN cannot have a headline that makes Israel look good, can it? So instead of comparing to 2004 or 2005, as it always did before now, it makes up a new benchmark: 2000, a completely artificial and irrelevant date.

Here is UN-OCHA's new chart where they, for the first time, added the year 2000 with its "0.5 million" figure - just to minimize how much Israel is doing to make Gazan's lives easier.

This is lying with statistics.

(correction on years h/t Irene)

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The UN reluctantly admits that Gazans have more freedom of movement than before Hamas takeover

From the UN's OCHA:

The number of exit permits for [Gaza] workers and traders issued by Israeli authorities increased from just over 10,000 in January 2022 to more than 18,000 in November 2022. This has allowed more exits of people compared with any time since the early 2000s. At the same time, the Egyptian authorities allowed more exits than any time since 2014.

This is an understatement. The number of Gazans allowed to cross into and Israel and back more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, and it was by far the most since Hamas took over Gaza.

Less authorized goods were brought in through Israel and more were imported through Egypt. Goods exiting through either border increased and, for the first time, exceeded the pre-blockade annual figures.

There are more Gaza exports than there were before the Hamas takeover of Gaza!

These are the exports (ignore the caption, this is for both Erez and Rafah crossings):

Israel is clearly trying to help the Gaza economy.

When Israel acts the opposite of the narrative (which says they are starving Gazans in their open-air prison), suddenly the news media loses all interest in reporting about movement and exports from Gaza.

Remember when the UN said Gaza was going to be uninhabitable by...2020?

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Why has the media give Yair Lapid a pass when he was more aggressive against Palestinians than Bennett or Netanyahu?

For the past two months, the media has been churning out article after article on how the incoming Netanyahu government will be extremist, a disaster for Palestinians and Israelis alike. In an unprecedented move, US President Joe Biden gave a public warning to the incoming government that he will oppose policies that the US feels are against the two state solution.

For a six months, Israel has been led by a centrist politician, Yair Lapid. By nearly all measures, Lapid was more aggressive against Palestinians than his two predecessors, Naftali Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu.

The six months of Bennett and of Lapid this year makes it fairly easy to compare the two.

According to the UN's OCHA, when Lapid entered office, Israel had killed 60 Palestinians in operations in the West Bank in 2022 under Bennett. Since then, 86 more were killed. Compare with all of 2020, under Netanyahu, when the number killed was 24.

Under Bennett, about 340 Palestinian structures were destroyed this year. Under Lapid, about it was about 550. Combined, this is a modest increase over the total in 2020.

Under Bennett, there were about 1620 search and arrest operations in the West Bank this year. Under Lapid, the number was over 1800. (The total number is roughly the same as under Netanyahu in 2020.)

Lapid the centrist has been clearly more aggressive than the "settler" Bennett and the "fascist" Netanyahu.

While there may be good reasons for Israeli actions under Lapid, and it is entirely possible that under Bennett or Netanyahu the numbers for past six months would have been similar, with the data we have, Lapid has been given an enormous pass by the media, which has chosen to ignore his decision-making role in Israel's moves to root out terrorists.

Which is the point. The media does not report on objective reality: they report on the things that fit their preconceived narratives, and downplay or ignore those that do not. Netanyahu has been considered personally responsible for IDF actions under his leadership, while Lapid was not. Netanyahu is regarded as an aggressive warmonger, Lapid is not. The reporting follows the bias, not the reality.

The media and NGOs will publish and trumpet the statistics that fit the story they want to tell - and bury those that contradict it.

And similarly, even though it is not a fair comparison, the number of Israelis killed this year in attacks under the Bennett/Lapid governments is 24. In 2020, under Netanyahu, the number was 3. There are many factors in statistics like that, but Netanyahu is rarely credited in the media with reducing terror attacks in Israel which steadily decreased from 2015 to 2020.

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The UN doesn't care when Palestinians are killed by Palestinian rockets

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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Israel provides more electricity to Gaza than you think - but Egypt has been providing more fuel

The monthly UN OCHA report on Gaza for July has been released, and they added some graphics I hadn't seen before.

This one shows that Israel provides Gaza with no less than ten separate electricity feeds, three of which are split off in Gaza itself. Israel provides far more electricity to Gaza than the Gaza power plant does,

But I was surprised to see that even though Israel has built large pipelines to securely transfer fuel to Gaza at Kerem Shalom, the Hamas government prefers to obtain most of its fuel from Egypt. Industrial fuel is exclusively from Israel but everything else is mostly from Egyptian sources.

Egyptian fuel imports:

Israeli fuel imports:

My guess is that Egyptian fuel is cheaper, and perhaps Hamas can more easily tax and redirect the Egyptian fuel for their own purposes.

However, in May and June, Israeli exports of cooking gas went much higher while Egyptian exports plummeted. Apparently, the cost of Egyptian cooking gas soared (some blame Hamas, Hamas blames new regulations) and it seems Israeli gas became more affordable by contrast. Gazans were very angry at Hamas when someone published the raw costs of cooking gas from Egypt and the Gaza costs were double that amount.

As usual, what we see in the media is only a tiny portion of what open sources can tell us, and the open sources are only a tiny portion of what is really going on. So-called experts are working with very limited information yet they confidently tell everyone else their analyses as if it is based on all the information - and it never is.

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The past 8 months prove (again) that "pro-Palestinian" really means "anti-Israel"

The Palestinian Authority knowingly put thousands of Gazans' lives at risk starting in March of this year - and the world didn't care.

Even the UN knows, and buries, the truth.

From the latest OCHA (UN) Gaza Crisis paper:

A series of measures implemented by the Palestinian Authority since March 2017, following an escalation in the internal Palestinian divide, have led to a deterioration in the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. ....These measures have exacerbated Gaza’s energy crisis, resulting in increasing outages from 12-16 to 18-20 hours a day, worsened the salary crisis in the public sector, increased the shortage of essential drugs from around 33% in March to 45% in October and delayed the referral of patients for medical treatment outside Gaza. These developments have impacted the availability of essential services and the livelihoods of Gaza’s two million residents. The following indicators were identified by the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) to monitor the evolution of the crisis, trigger humanitarian action and prevent further deterioration. Despite an agreement signed in October 2017 between Fatah and Hamas, most of the measures that triggered the recent deterioration have not been reversed.

The graphs that UN-OCHA provides show a sharp deterioration of the quality of life in Gaza starting in March when the PA started cutting off electricity and medicine:

In black and white, one can see the stark results of the PA's cutting off essential services to Gaza. And these statistics were known for 8 months.

Where were the protests in the streets of London? Where were the peace activists? Where were the "human rights" NGOs? This year, Gaza plunged from a bad place to live into an impossible place to live, and it is all because of decisions made by Gaza's own fellow Palestinian Arab leaders.

The lack of media attention to this is, frankly, criminal. The only protests about Gaza are aimed at Israel. No one blames Hamas for violently splitting with the PA; no one blames the PA for collective punishment of two million people. The things that Israel is routinely blamed for are totally ignored when Arabs do much worse.

These past eight months are all the proof you need that all those protesters, all those NGOs and all those politicians who pretend to care about Gazans are full of crap.

Just like they don't care about thousands of Palestinians killed in Syria, and hundreds of thousands who became refugees. Just like they don't care about explicit discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt. Just like they don't care about legal disenfranchisement of Palestinians in every single Arab country.

If Israel isn't involved, the world's concern for Palestinians is virtually zero.

When Israel can be blamed, rightly or wrongly, the world's concern for Palestinians far outstrips its concern for every other group whose suffering is far worse.

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