Showing posts with label blame Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blame Israel. Show all posts

Sunday, October 22, 2023

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has always been the best source for information during Israel's wars in Gaza. They have connections in the IDF that the media generally do not have.

In their update from October 19, they show exactly how many terrorist rockets have been shot since October 7 - and how many have exploded in Gaza.




About 10% of rocket launches have been unsuccessful, according to their analysis. Moreover, the percentage of failed launches has been increasing in recent days: 25% on 10/14, 18% on 10/18. 

By now the number must be closer to 900 failed launches. 

While some of these failed launches explode on the ground, hundreds clearly get airborne and then fall inside Gaza. And as we've seen, not just from the Al Ahli hospital incident but from previous wars, Gaza civilians are often killed by these rockets. 

And the media usually doesn't even consider that possibility when they discuss fatal "airstrikes" in Gaza. 

The percentage of failed rocket attacks has always been in the 15-20% range in previous wars as well. 






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Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Rabbi Yehuda Glick posted on his Facebook this photo and caption:


On the evening of Yom Kippur we prayed at the Temple Mount together.
Muslim Christian and Jew
We prayed for not one God that peace will come
About us and all mankind
May this place be a house of prayer for all nations.


In practically no time, the story spread and the woman - who is apparently Tunisian but traveling with a European passport - was refused entry to Al Aqsa when she tried to enter the site again on Tuesday.

In this video, a Palestinian man berates the Muslim woman woman who just wanted to pray. He tells her “Go outside, please. Oh, go outside. You walk with the Jews. You walk with Yehuda Glick. I never want to see you here again!"


The woman weakly protests but remains perfectly calm and while being berated.

Some angry Arabic sites identify her as Moroccan, which adds an extra layer of hate since Morocco had normalized relations with Israel.

The woman asked Glick to hide her face in his Facebook post, which he did. But it was too late; the original photo had already been published and spread. 

Yet Glick's attempt to minimize the damage shows that he cares more about the welfare of this Muslim woman than Palestinian Muslims do. 

Palestinians are cheering the man who forced a Muslim woman to leave the holy site. 

(h/t Ibn Boutros)



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

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Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Israeli medics at the scene of a fatal Palestinian car crash in 2017



From The New York Review of Books:

Heading Toward a Second Nakba
David Shulman
Nathan Thrall argues that the accident in which Abed Salama’s son died was a predictable, even inevitable, outcome of the Israeli occupation in its quotidian forms.

On a stormy winter day in February 2012, a Palestinian bus carrying schoolchildren on an outing collided with an Israeli trailer truck on the notoriously dangerous Jaba‘ Road near the West Bank village of A-Ram, not far from Ramallah. The bus burst into flames; six young children and one teacher were killed and others were seriously injured. Among the dead was Milad, the five-year-old son of Abed Salama, from the town of Anata. Nathan Thrall has made the story of that accident and that family the thread that binds together A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, a penetrating, wide-ranging, heart-wrenching exploration of life in Palestine under Israeli occupation. I know of no other writing on Israel and Palestine that reaches this depth of perception and understanding.

There is indeed something emblematic about the accident. The Jaba‘ Road is entirely within Area C, the 62 percent of the occupied West Bank that is under full Israeli control, where today there are close to two hundred settlements and settler outposts. Because of the nightmarish maze of roads in the Ramallah area—some of them closed altogether to Palestinians, others blocked by army checkpoints to keep Palestinians without special permits from entering Israel—rescuers were slow in reaching the site of the accident. They were also slow in evacuating the injured, many of them badly burned, to hospitals in Ramallah or inside Israel. Fire trucks, army medics, and ambulances were only a mile or two away in nearby Jewish settlements but failed to arrive quickly. Israeli ambulances coming from Jerusalem were held up for critical minutes at the checkpoints. Moreover, Palestinian neighborhoods in the vicinity of the Separation Barrier had (and some still have) almost no emergency or police services. As one of the Palestinian rescuers at the site of the accident later formulated what had happened: “If it had been two Palestinian children throwing stones on the road, the army would have been there in no time. When Jews are in danger, Israel sends helicopters. But a burning bus full of Palestinian children….”

...No one wanted to kill those children along with one of their teachers. Israeli rescuers and soldiers who finally reached the accident site did their best to save the injured. But the central point of Thrall’s narrative is that this disaster, like today’s ongoing violence in the Palestinian territories in general, was a predictable, even inevitable, outcome of the occupation system in its quotidian forms. It is a regime of state terror whose raison d’être is the theft of Palestinian land and, whenever possible, the expulsion of its Palestinian owners. I have seen this system in operation over the course of the past twenty-odd years.
I did not read the book, and probably won't. But this review already shows the incredible bias and the desire by Thrall to bend any evidence towards his foregone conclusion.

First of all, the driver of the Israeli truck was an Arab

An average of two to three Palestinian Arabs are killed every week in road accidents. In 2022, there were 144 fatalities in over 16,000 accidents. 

Palestinians acknowledge the epidemic of car accidents, and when they are not speaking to Westerners they blame themselves, not Israel, for these deaths. Ten reasons for Palestinian car crashes are listed in this article:

1- Narrow roads
2- Drivers who ignore traffic laws and basic safety, tailgating, passing vehicles on the opposite side of the road.
3- Not maintaining their cars.
4- Using a mobile phone while driving .
5- Low traffic awareness .
6- Young people and teenagers driving vehicles .
7- Drivers showing off.
8- Buildings being built right up to the roads.
9- Drug users who park their cars on the roads away from home.
10-  Vehicles from Israel, often that would not pass Israeli inspections, being sold or stolen and used.

Even in Israel, the majority of car accidents involve young Arab drivers. 

But what about the supposed delay of help for Milad and the other children? Wasn't that Israel's fault?

It doesn't seem to be true. News reports from the time say:

Following the accident, Palestinian health minister Fathi Abu Mughli accused Israeli rescue services of failing to provide timely assistance, resulting in more casualties. Ma’ariv reported that eyewitness report contradict Abu Mughli’s claim.

Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams transferred at least 30 casualties to hospitals in Ramallah, Petah Tikva and Jerusalem, Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Israel Radio reported that it took rescue forces seven minutes to reach the scene of the accident
Thrall believed the Palestinian health ministry, which has a track record of lying, over the Israeli authorities. Which tells you all you need to know about his interest in the facts. 

In other accidents involving Arabs in Area C, Israeli and "settler" ambulances rush to the scene to help, indicating who is telling the truth.. 

Earlier this year a 12-year old Palestinian Arab boy in the West Bank was internally decapitated when he was hit by an Arab car, and doctors in Israel performed an extremely rare and delicate surgery to save his life. 

A similar horrific accident as Milad's from 2017 where there was a 3-way collision between an armored Israeli bus, a Palestinian minibus and a Palestinian car saw a swarm of Magen David Adom ambulances and an IDF doctor on the scene within minutes trying to save lives. 

In 2017, in another fatal West Bank car accident, a nine month old Arab baby survived while his father was killed and his mother unconscious. The baby refused to drink from a bottle so the Israeli Jewish nurse volunteered to breastfeed him. She put out a call on Facebook asking for other volunteers and Jewish women from as far away as Haifa wanted to help.

The "Jewish supremacy" and "racism" that Thrall takes as a given is an anti-Israel paranoid fantasy. Jews, even "settlers," help Palestinian Arabs in trouble, all the time. 

In other words, the very basis of Nathan Thrall's book is built on lies. And that is how anti-Israel writers like Thrall and the reviewer work: not only will they only look at selected evidence that supports their thesis - they will twist counter-evidence to pretend it is evidence. 

This supposed microcosm of Israeli evil is anything but. The only malicious actors in this little drama are Nathan Thrall and David Shulman.



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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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Thursday, September 21, 2023



MPower Change, the Muslim advocacy group co-founded by Linda Sarsour, just sent out an action alert to its email list with the title "Take Action: No autonomous drones from Israel:"

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) just approved a request by Airobotics, an Israeli government-funded company,¹ to fly “autonomous” drones over U.S. neighborhoods.²

We don’t want unaccountable, autonomous “crime-fighting” drones snooping on us, filling our skies, and making life-or-death decisions.

Tell the FAA: We need safety where we live, not spy drones funded by apartheid Israel.
Airobotics is not funded by the Israeli government. It received a specific grant at the end of August of $540,000 from the Israel Innovation Authority, which is funded by but independent of the Israeli government. The grant has nothing to do with the drone that the FAA approved. The Muslim group is stretching to find any connection, no matter how tenuous, to associate Israel with a myth of drones meant to spy on Muslims and people of color in cities. 

But what does Airobotics' Israel connections have to do with what the drone does? The email pretends that it is trying to protect civil rights of people of color who they imagine will be surveilled disproportionately by these autonomous drones - but if that was really MPower Change's concern, what difference does it make whether they were manufactured or even funded by Israel?  It is up to the people who actually purchase and deploy the drones to determine how they will be used, whether for good or evil purposes. The source has nothing to do with it. 

This is hatemongering, not a concern for human rights. And the implication that a drone company is especially pernicious because it is Israeli is simple bigotry.  

Notably, while the email mentions Israel eight times to whip up their subscribers into a frenzy, their auto-email to the FAA doesn't mention Israel once. Telling the FAA not to approve a drone because it is Israeli would be obvious bigotry. The advocacy group only tells that to fellow Muslims. MPower Change knows that Israel has nothing to do with the issue, but they also know that their email list is filled with people who hate Israel and Jews - and they want to leverage that hate to get them to take action (and raise their own profile.)

This email shows that the word "Israel" is now a dog-whistle for modern antisemites. They use "Israel" the way "Jew" used to be used, as a means to make people angry. 



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

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Wednesday, September 20, 2023



From Xinhua:
At least 1,100 Palestinian kidney patients are facing an interruption of life-saving treatment due to a lack of medicines and medical equipment in the coastal enclave, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

They include 38 children who are in danger of being denied access to dialysis sessions, Ashraf Abu Mahdi, director of the pharmacy department in the Health Ministry, said in a press conference held in Gaza.

"Patients with kidney failure are forced to live in difficult health conditions as medical supplies will be used up soon," Abu Mahdi added.

Abu Mahdi indicated that stores run by the ministry in Gaza are short of related medical supplies, and the hospitals in Gaza provide 13,000 dialysis sessions for patients per month.

He accused Israel of "banning the transport and shipment of medical supplies to the hospitals of the coastal enclave, putting the lives of thousands of kidney patients at risk."
Israel has never blocked the supplies of medicines or consumable medical supplies to Gaza. Any previous shortages were blamed on the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. 

And interestingly, when Gaza health authorities first raised this alarm on Saturday, they didn't blame Israel either:
The Director of the Hospital Pharmacy Department at the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Alaa Helles, appealed to all concerned authorities “to assume their responsibilities to save the lives of kidney failure patients due to the acute shortage of the necessary medical supplies needed for dialysis sessions, which poses a threat to the lives of 1,100 kidney failure patients, including 38 children.”

Helles called on the relevant authorities to “take urgent action to provide medical consumables for the needs of kidney failure patients, which means continuing service to them and preserving their lives.”
Not a word about Israel, just "authorities." Which is not a word used to refer to Israel. 

This is not adding up.

Perhaps a hint to what is really going on can be seen in this June article at ReliefWeb:

In response to the difficult health situation and a looming dialysis services halt in Gaza, Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has provided the hospitals of Palestine’s Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza with a total of 12 dialysis machines and accessories, as well as life-saving medicines and medical consumables for the patients with kidney failure.

Dr. Akram Nassar, head of QRCS’s office in Gaza, said the project of “providing dialysis departments with equipment and medicines in Gaza” was part of QRCS’s unwavering support to the health sector of Gaza. Its aim is to ensure continuing dialysis services, as well as mitigate the impact of depleted medical equipment and supplies for 1,022 patients with kidney failure.

Since 2018, QRCS has been working extensively on dialysis services in Gaza, with three projects to procure 33 dialysis machines, medications, and consumables to MOH hospitals, totaling approximately QR 4.2 million in value.

We learned this week that Qatar was reducing its aid to Gaza. Could it be that they also stopped paying for these dialysis supplies and Gaza has no one else to pay for them?

Given that it appears that Hamas is trying to pressure Israel to pressure Qatar in turn to resume payments, this sounds like it is another means by Hamas - which runs the Gaza health ministry - to make Israel look like the reason for the shortages - and, as we see, the world media won't fact-check any accusations against Israel. 


 



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Tuesday, September 12, 2023

The head of Hezbollah’s Sharia Committee, Sheikh Muhammad Yazbek, came up with a convoluted logic to explain how Palestinians fighting other Palestinians in the Ein al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon is really Israel's fault. 

Al-Ahed News reports that "He said the only beneficiary of the Palestinian fighting, in the Ain al-Hilweh camp, is the Zionist enemy, which is working in various ways to end the Palestinian issue and eliminate the right of the Palestinians to return to their lands and Islamic and Christian sanctities, pointing out that what is happening inside the camp and in Syria in terms of fighting, siege, security threats and displacement is an American-Israeli decision, implemented with local tools aimed at weakening the axis of resistance and confusing it security-wise and economically to discourage it from confronting the American-Zionist project."

I think he is saying that the Fatah faction in Lebanon is a tool of Israel and the US. 

But the Association of Muslim Scholars had a much better conspiracy theory blaming Israel for the infighting - one that they don't even realize shows how little they care about Palestinians.

VDLNews reports this insanity that the group issued a statement saying that what the Zionists want for the Ein al-Hilweh camp "is to destroy this camp as a prelude to displacing its people and then settling them either in Lebanon or in a country to which they emigrate, through enticement and intimidation, which leads to the complete cancellation of the right of return, which necessarily means an end to the Palestinian issue."

What this Islamic group is saying is that the worst thing for Palestinians is to become normal citizens of Arab countries. The best thing for them is to remain stuck in an overcrowded, dangerous tinderbox surrounded by a huge wall where they are not allowed to build, not allowed many jobs, not allowed to own land and at the mercy of terrorists who are trying to take over the camp.

And while the "right of return" is fiction, Palestinians in Jordan are citizens and still claim that right. Why can't Lebanese Palestinians?

No one hates Palestinians more than the Lebanese. Not the Israelis, not the Saudis...no one. And no one treats them as badly as the Lebanese do. But where the Lebanese really outdo themselves is in insisting that their maltreatment of Palestinians is for their own good. And the Palestinians themselves cannot publicly complain about their being treated like dirt, because they are at the mercy of those same Lebanese.

This is why about two thirds of all of Lebanon's "registered Palestine refugees" have left Lebanon and gone anywhere else they could. 

Yet the media and human rights organizations remain largely silent. Funny how that works. 

It's almost like they don't really care about Palestinians.





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Tuesday, August 29, 2023

From Harvard University's FXB Center:

The Institute of Community and Public Health (ICPH) at Birzeit University, the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, and the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territory have launched the Palestine Social Medicine course. This intensive course is part of the activities of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, a partnership between ICPH at Birzeit University and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, United States. The course is supported through Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation funding to WHO occupied Palestinian territory Right to Health programme.
Birzeit University is a center of antisemitic, pro-Jihadist terror.

Last December, it hosted a PFLP march where they exhorted students to "blow up the settler's head!"



Also last year, Birzeit's Hamas group hosted a reception for new students where they celebrated a famous Hamas bombmaker, Yahya Ayyash, who was a graduate of Birzeit U:


This display of Nazi-style salutes, a model of a rocket and of a suicide belt was not in Gaza, but in Birzeit University:


Does it sound like Birzeit is a center of "health and human rights?" Is it appropriate for Harvard to partner with a university that is a center for incitement of violence against Jews?

Actually, maybe it is. Because Harvard's own recent record is one of sacrificing academic integrity for "social justice" causes such as hating Israel.

The entire Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights appears to be far more concerned with bashing Israel than in actually helping promote Palestinian health.

The FXB Center's Health and Human Rights Journal recently dedicated an issue to Palestinian health. The entire thrust of the journal was to call Israel "racist" and "apartheid" and "settler colonialist":


Its studies pre-suppose that Israeli policies are fatally hurting Palestinian health and work. And when biased people look for evidence of their thesis, they can invariably find it - as long as they ignore any counter-evidence.

Similarly, Harvard's School of Public Health offers a course that looks at Palestinian health through the lens of Israeli "settler colonialism" making the initial assumption that health services are drastically impacted by Israeli policies.

Yes, a Harvard University course actually highlights "The Map that Lies" that has been thoroughly debunked and retracted by numerous organizations. 




Yet in real life, Palestinian healthcare - and indeed, Palestinians' general quality of life - is better than that of neighboring Jordan which does not suffer from "settler colonialism" or "Israeli apartheid:"



In fact, it is difficult to find studies that look at and evaluate Palestinian healthcare on its own merits, or that compares it with the rest of the Arab Middle East - something that is basic in studying the healthcare of every nation on the planet.  One rare example that does is this obscure paper, "Experiences of Palestinian patients with hospital services: a mixed-methods study" which employs a standardized survey used throughout the world to evaluate patient experiences in Palestinian hospitals. They aren't great, they aren't terrible, and the study makes recommendations on how to improve them. 

Palestinians themselves blame their governments, not Israel, for healthcare shortfalls. A recent survey says that one third of Palestinians say they do not have enough hospitals, 24% complained of scarcity of supplies, 20% said the lack of skilled medical professionals was the biggest problem, and 10% said it
was the high costs of care or the lack of medical insurance. 

But looking at the real issues is not how Palestinian health is studied in the West. Instead of caring about how to improve Palestinian healthcare, these seminars and courses and studies are all designed to sacrifice Palestinian healthcare on the much more important altar of using every possible social means to demonize Israel. By viewing everything Palestinian through a "settler colonialist apartheid structural racist" lens, actual daily Palestinian healthcare is neglected and ignored. 

Demonizing Israel is a higher "human rights" imperative than improving the lives of Palestinians. 

So perhaps it is appropriate that Harvard, which has already hijacked Palestinian healthcare as  ammunition to be used against Israel, partners with Birzeit University, which glorifies those who use actual ammunition against Israel. 



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

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Thursday, August 24, 2023



There has been a horrific wave of murders in Israel's Arab sector this year, about 150 Arab citizens killed. Israel has been trying different things to fight the phenomenon and nothing has worked so far - in fact, the murder rate is accelerating. 

No one disputes that this is a major problem that must be prioritized. But according to Palestinian media, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is accusing Israel of being complicit in these murders. (This is not on their webpage as of this writing.) 

They don't even pretend to have any proof of this slander. They just say "the recurrence of murders and the analysis of their facts and their unprecedented rise indicate the existence of an Israeli policy that perpetuates impunity and encourages the commission of these crimes."

Their main evidence of this is that Israel manages to determine who is behind terror attacks, so why can't it do the same for Arabs internally? The answer is obvious: it took decades to build an excellent intelligence infrastructure that can now be leveraged. It would take time to do the same for Israeli Arabs, but there are additional obstacles - citizens cannot be treated as presumed enemies. Imagine the backlash if Israeli police put spies in Israeli mosques. It requires a completely different skill set to attack this problem, and Euro-Med almost certainly knows this.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor doesn't seem to care about human rights of Israeli Arabs nearly as much as they want to use them as yet another excuse to bash Israel. 





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Wednesday, August 23, 2023



The Israeli Gisha NGO concentrates on freedom of movement of people and goods between Israel and the territories, and it issues reports and statistics to that end.

It just released a graphics-heavy online report about the impact of Israel's closure of Gaza on the mental health of Gazans:

In Their Words: Mental Health Professionals in Gaza on Treating the Effects of Closure

“There’s a clear link between the Israeli closure and the grave state of mental health in Gaza. The closure is like a drop of ink in a pool of water, spreading everywhere, touching everything.”
Nedaa Murtaja, psychologist, Gaza

For decades, Israel has enforced restrictions on movement to and from the Gaza Strip, which it tightened to the point of closure in 2007.

....
In late 2021, Gisha and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) convened a group of mental health professionals and representatives of organizations working in the field in the Strip. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the effects of Israel’s closure on mental health, as well as the challenges therapists and care specialists face as residents living under closure in Gaza themselves.

What follows is a summary of the observations made by participants in the discussion.

The number of Palestinians in need of psychological care or assistance in Gaza has climbed dramatically in recent years. According to various studies, between 15% and 30% of individuals living in Gaza develop post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD).

“This means there are at least 300,000 people in Gaza living with PTSD, and likely many more,” says Qusai Abuodah, director of resource development and public relations at GCMHP.

A central outcome of the closure enforced by Israel has been a high prevalence of poverty and unemployment in the Strip. Economic hardship elevates stress levels among the general population.

Khitam Abu Shwareb, a social worker at GCMHP, emphasizes the inextricable link between people’s economic reality and their mental health. “Restrictions imposed by Israel on entry of goods and raw materials into Gaza not only disrupt entire economic sectors, they also lead to price hikes inside the Strip, with direct impact on our mental stability.”

“Long-term mental stress leads to severe anxiety disorders and further undermines quality of life, which, in Gaza, is already far from meeting accepted international standards,” Osama Frina, a psychologist at GCMHP, explains. “Anxiety sometimes transforms into physical pain and suffering. The physical suffering, added to frustration and despair, often leads people to experience deep depression, which, unfortunately, also manifests in an increasing suicide rate.”

“The depression experienced by residents of Gaza is not depression in its classic, conventional sense,” says Hassan Zeyada, a psychologist at GCMHP.

“Palestinian depression is different. Gaza’s entire society is in a constant state of high level of chronic stress and ongoing trauma. The Israeli closure and travel restrictions on Gaza affect everyone, without exception. The prevailing feeling among Gaza’s population is one of helplessness and hopelessness. This situation did not appear out of thin air: It is the result of a deliberate process designed to induce a state of helplessness to weaken the resilience of both individuals and society in Gaza.”
Where is the bias in this report?

Everywhere.

The "research" was not meant to determine why Gazan mental health is poor. It determined at the outset, before a word was written, that it is all Israel's fault. Then the mental health professionals in Gaza were asked to confirm and support that lie.

Israel doesn't limit goods and travel in Gaza to "induce a state of helplessness to weaken the resilience of both individuals and society in Gaza." It does it to save the lives of Israeli citizens. In any other context, this is called human rights. Israel allows exports; it allows unlimited medicine and food and fuel; it allows thousands of workers to enter Israel every day and is trying to increase that amount. 

I'm not saying that bombings and the restrictions on goods and travel do not affect Gazans - of course they do. But the story doesn't come close to ending there.

The Gisha report does not mention Egypt's own strict restrictions on Gazans being able to cross their border, or Egypt's own severe limitations on imports and exports - all of which have nothing to do with Israel. 

But that is only a small part of the bias. This report, and hundreds like it, actually hurt Gazans far more than it helps them. And it does it for reasons that can only be described as antisemitic.

By blaming all of Gaza's woes on Israel alone, it gives a free pass to the many other factors that can and do cause severe mental health problems in Gaza - problems that have little or nothing to do with Israel.

By far, the biggest mental health risk in Gaza (and the West Bank) is from men who abuse their wives and children:

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, one in three women who have ever been married are subjected to physical violence by their husbands and one in seven of never married women by a household member.

UNICEF adds: 

 Domestic violence levels are also high in 2014 MICSs (PCBS) study, confirming that 93 per cent of children aged 2 to 14 years experienced violent disciplining at home, and 23 per cent of children experienced severe physical punishment.  Pervasive and harmful social norms including child marriage, child labour, sexual violence and gender-based violence are issues of great concern.  

The Israel-hating crowd loves to claim that the Gaza closure is the reason for these statistics, but the numbers are similar in the West Bank, where there is no closure.

Meaning that domestic violence is widespread among Palestinians and it has nothing to do with Israel. The only people responsible for beating their wives and children are the husbands. Women in Gaza fear for their lives - not from Israeli missiles but from their husbands. The victims have to live with this abuse, with fear and mistrust of the people who should unconditionally love them, every day of their lives. 

It is interesting to note that there are lots of articles and academic papers about how the "patriarchy" damages the mental health of women and children in the West - and even about how it damages men's mental health as well.. Yet there are practically no scholarly reports about the psychological effects and dangers of living in the highly patriarchal Palestinian society. 

Palestinian laws explicitly discriminate against women. Abortion is illegal except in extreme cases. A high percentage of women are pressured into marrying while still children. Polygamy is allowed.  Access  to contraception is limited by the husbands in Gaza, and Palestinian women are taught that the should never abort because having children is a form of "resistance."  

Palestinian children are also scarred by Gaza social mores. They are indoctrinated at birth into a culture of violence and celebrating death. They are taught to cheer when Israeli civilians are killed - but also to celebrate the "ascension to Paradise" of terrorists killed by Israel. Tens of thousands attend summer camps where they are taught nothing but hate and militancy. 

Children in Gaza in particular are taught in their classrooms  to seek martyrdom - including in UNRWA schools. The adults in their lives are teaching them that their greatest value to the nation is is to be killed.

Do you think that being told that they are nothing more than cannon fodder might affect the mental health of children? 

There are other factors that affect the Palestinian psyche. The registered UNRWA "refugees"  have been taught for generations that they deserve to have have free housing and schooling paid for by the world, and even the Palestinian government relies on the EU and Arab world to do the work that they should have been doing in funding and building their own institutions. It is a welfare state and they have convinced themselves - and much of the world - that this is normal, that Palestinians do not have to compromise for peace, that they are eternal victims and should sit back and wait for the world to give them everything they demand. 

Put it all together and you have a recipe for a society that is deeply dysfunctional. 

But NGOs like Gisha don't want you to know this. They are part of the problem. They want to hide the real problems in Gaza and blame only Israel. This helps their bottom line - funders want them to blame Israel for everything  - but these kinds of superficial, one-sided analyses end up hurting the Palestinians they pretend to care about because it solidifies the idea that they are not responsible for any of their own problems. .

In the end, blaming all of  the mental health issues of Gazans on Israel alone is not serious analysis. It is whitewashing the real issue because of an overriding desire to blame Jews, and Jews alone, for any and every problem.  It is a much more sophisticated form of antisemitism than the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Mein Kampf or the medieval lie that Jews poison wells -  but in the end, just like the classic cases, it is still using Jews as the scapegoat for every problem. 



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Wednesday, August 09, 2023


The official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency reports:

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh today received in his Ramallah office the new head of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Kerstin Gerling, in the presence of its former head, Alexander Tieman, and IMF Resident Representative Thomas Laursen, during which they discussed the impact of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinian economy.

"The Israeli occupation is the main obstacle to the development process in Palestine. Israel has employed many tools to control us, whether through direct military occupation of our lands, and control of the borders, crossings, the labor market, and infrastructure," said the Prime Minister.
Let's look at the list of how Shtayyeh claims Israel is controlling the Palestinian economy and development - and compare it to how Jews existed in British Mandate Palestine:

The British military occupied the entire land.
The British controlled the borders.
The British controlled the crossings.
The British controlled the labor market.
The British controlled the infrastructure.

Yet , somehow, the Zionist Jews managed to build an economy, develop industry, create an entire export industry, innovate in farming techniques, drain the swamps to rid the country of malaria, and at the same time build universities, newspapers, cultural institutions, sports teams and everything else to be ready for independence.

And the Jews did it all in 26 years, from 1922 to 1948.

The Palestinians have essentially complete control of all of Area A and administrative control of Area B for 28 years now, since Oslo II in 1995. They have control over their own labor market. They have control over their own infrastructure. By nearly every metric, they have more autonomy than Jews did under British rule.

But what do they have to show for it? Whining about how the Jews are stopping them from building an economy!

Unlike Jews in the 1920s, Palestinians can build an economy providing services worldwide via networking. Residents can program, translate, do legal service work, artwork - anything that can be done remotely. Unlike the Jews in the British Mandate, the Palestinians are surrounded by fellow Arabs who would happily buy goods from them if they were competitive on price and quality. 

Where are the initiatives to build such an economy? 

As far as I can tell, every major plan to improve the Palestinian economy comes from non-Palestinians - from the UN, or the Quartet. The Palestinians outsource their own future to others - and then blame Israel when they don't accomplish anything. 

The Jews in the mandate period didn't have international organizations falling over themselves to build a Jewish state - but almost every nation in the world claims to support building an independent Palestinian state. 

Even with the billions of aid, the automatic majority in the UN, countless NGOs willing to fully support the Palestinian cause, and a history of hundreds of millions of petrodollars invested in Palestinian governance, the Palestinians still have next to nothing to show for it. 

But they do have someone to blame - Israel.

And the world believes the obvious lie.




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Tuesday, August 08, 2023

Last month, Save the Children issued a press release:

 Palestinian children in the Israel military detention system face physical and emotional abuse, with four out of five (86%) of them being beaten, and 69% strip-searched, according to new research by Save the Children. Nearly half (42%) are injured at the point of arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones. Some report violence of a sexual nature and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages, the child rights organisation said.

Save the Children’s new consultation showed that: 

During arrest, 42% of children were injured, including gunshot wounds and broken bones, and 65% of children were arrested during the night, mostly between midnight and dawn. Half of all arrests took place in the children’s home.
The majority of children experienced appalling levels of physical and emotional abuse, including being beaten (86%), being threatened with harm (70%), and hit with sticks or guns (60%). 
Some children reported violence and abuse of a sexual nature, including being hit or touched on the genitals and 69% reported being strip searched. 
60% of children experienced solitary confinement with the length of time varying from one 1 day to as long as 48 days.  
Children were denied access to basic services, 70% said they suffered from hunger and 68% said they didn’t receive any healthcare.   
58% of children were denied visits or communication with their family while detained. 

Wow! The vast majority of Palestinian kids arrested are beaten, nearly half are physically injured, and more than half are placed in solitary confinement!

Then, Save the Children describes its methodology. 

In total, 228 former child detainees participated in this study by Save the Children and YMCA. This includes 177 children who responded to surveys and 51 who took part in focus group discussions. A further two focus group discussions were held with parents whose children had been detained. ...

A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, including surveys and focus groups, was applied, to ensure that the perspectives and experiences of Palestinian children who experienced arrest and detention were at the core of the study

This is an embarrassing methodology that would shame any credible researcher.

The surveys have, by their very nature, self-selection bias. Only children and parents with a desire to tell their stories will choose to answer the questions, anyone who had an uneventful arrest won't bother answering a survey that is meant to prove Israel tortures kids. 

Save the Children does not publish the methodology of how they determined who to send the surveys to, or the survey questions, which were probably leading questions based on what we know from previous Save the Children reports.  

The focus groups are even worse. The biases seen in focus groups are well known. The moderator can ask leading questions. Those who spin lurid stories of torture would tend to monopolize the discussion, influencing the other kids in the group to want to embellish their own stories. 

Save the Children says nothing about any professional training or expertise their moderators and facilitators have to minimize bias in their responses. 

And when they say they use "qualitative approaches" you know that means that they will weight whatever the kids say towards the worst possible interpretation for Israel. 

The names of the researchers are not mentioned, nor is the author of the press release.  It is completely opaque - and this is not an accident. 

The full report shows how absurd the interviews are. B'Tselem statistics show that the number of children under 14 held in prison is almost always zero, and it is difficult to find one or more children at that age in prison for two consecutive months. But somehow Save the Children finds several 13-year olds who claim they were in horrible conditions in prison:

“Sometimes they broke into our prison cells and made us stand in the cold air outside. They didn’t allow us to sleep. One night, they broke the roof and we had to spend the night with the rain pouring into our room....They hit me with their hands and rifles, everywhere, especially on my private parts.”” Yousef*, detained when he was 13

 “For me, the transfer bus was the worst. There is a tiny box inside that barely fits one person; what they would do is put two of us together in that box handcuffed to each other and driven around all day. They would drive us for hours, from early in the morning to late at night, just locked in that box....I used to have nightmares about my time in prison all the time, especially about the officer who interrogated me. He told me, ‘I promise you that you will dream about me’. And he was right.” Khalil*, detained when he was 13

None of this rings true. But Save the Children wants to issue a report that will make a splash, so they are not interested in the truth. 

In fact, it quotes even less reliable reports as fact - such as the  PLO's Commission for Prisoners and Freed Prisoners which claimed minors "became victims of the sexual lust of their jailers from the Nahshon forces without consideration for their age."

Perhaps this is why this survey did not get any publicity outside of outlets like Al Jazeera and Palestine Chronicle. It is obvious even to anti-Israel media that the results of the "survey" are so out of whack with reality that their publicizing it would hurt their own credibility. 

Save the Children deliberately does everything possible to get the most lurid results for publication - and then quote these "statistics" as if they are scientifically valid. 

After all, if there is no torture, they can't raise funds. 




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Here is a list of attacks on journalists by Hamas, the PA and Palestinian protesters in just the past two weeks by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA).

August 1:

The Palestinian General Intelligence Service had kidnapped the freelance journalist SAMI SAEED ALSAAI (43 years old) at around 12:00PM yesterday, Monday, in Nablus, and took him to an unknown place. According to the journalist’s wife, four masked men dressed in black came to the journalist’s workplace in two cars, one of which had yellow license plates, and kidnapped him at gunpoint.

MADA also strongly condemns the attack by members of the internal security of Hamas government in Gaza Strip against journalists in Gaza Strip while covering the peaceful demonstrations that took place therein, calling for an improvement in the living conditions of citizens. Individuals in civilian clothes - identifying themselves as members of the Internal Security Service - assaulted Palestine TV and Abu Dhabi TV reporter, journalist WALID ABDEL RAHMAN, while covering the peaceful event in Jabalia Camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, last Sunday. They insulted him and forced him to stop the coverage.

In the same context, the freelance journalist EHAB AL-FASFOUS was threatened by the investigation and internal security members while covering the same event in Khan Younes, southern Gaza Strip.

The security services of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and the Internal Security Forces in Gaza Strip, have increased their aggression against journalists in a violent manner that threatens the professional work of journalists, which is a bad indicator of the reality of media freedoms that is witnessing bloody violations. For instance, the reporter, ALI AL-SAMOUDI, was injured by shrapnel in the head as a result of the shooting in Jenin camp yard, while the citizens were celebrating the shooting attack that took place in "Tel Aviv" yesterday, Saturday. The security personnel also targeted the reporter of "Quds News Network" MOHAMMED ABED with a gas bomb directly at the event.

This was preceded by a group of Al-Shabibah members assaulting a group of journalists at Hebron University a few days ago, during which journalist NIDAL AL-NATSHEH was flagrantly assaulted.

The situation in Gaza Strip is not any better than this, as the attacks of the Internal Security Service affected many journalists yesterday, Saturday, as the security services of Hamas Authority arrested a number of journalists, namely, MOHAMMED AL-BABA, the cameraman of the French Agency, and the journalist, BASHAR TALIB, for about 45 minutes inside Jabalia police station, north of Gaza City, before they were released after their cameras and mobile phones were searched.

The security members also arrested journalist MOHAMMED FAYEZ ABU AOUN, journalist YAHYA HASSOUNA, journalist MOHAMMED AL-HADDAD, and journalist IHAB AL-FASFOUS, who was attacked, and his phone was confiscated before it was returned to him. As for the journalist, MOHAMMED ISMAIL AL-HADDAD, he was threatened by a person in civilian clothes who identified himself as a member of the Investigation Department, as soon as he was filming, and informed him that "there is a decision to ban filming and asked him to stay away from the place”.

Meanwhile, journalist FOUAD JARADA and his colleague MUAMMAR ABU TABIKH were threatened via phone of a special number “not to engage in any journalistic work on the "We Want to Live" movement in Gaza”.
At least two of these journalists have received major media coverage when they were injured by Israeli forces.

Ali al-Samoudi was injured last year in the incident that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, and he was interviewed extensively at the time. This time, Palestinian and world media have not written a word about his being injured in the head by a bullet.

AFP cameraman Mohammed al-Baba was injured at a Gaza rally in 2018 by a gunshot blamed on Israel and that story was covered by wire services.  But when Hamas arrests the same AFP journalist and confiscates his equipment, even AFP doesn't report it.

Perhaps even more shocking is that even though all these attacks and far more are documented by MADA, including in their monthly reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists has not said a word about Palestinian repression of press freedoms since February 2022. In that same time period they have issued dozens of alerts against Israel.

 CPJ routinely reports on journalists injured and arrested worldwide - but ignores when it is done by Palestinian authorities. This means that even the major international NGO whose mission is to protect press freedoms is actively suppressing news of Palestinian violations of those freedoms.


(h/t GnasherJew)



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

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Sunday, August 06, 2023



The World Assembly for Islamic Awakening, an Iranian-based group, issued a statement about the deadly clashes in the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon.

Of course, they blame Israel.

The armed clashes in the Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilweh, located in southern Lebanon, are considered a bitter event, behind which the seditious hand of the criminal Zionist entity is clearly evident.

Today, the Zionist terrorist entity is going through the most critical stages of its life, and the depth and scope of its existential and identity crises are increasing every day. It has been ravaged by internal tensions and divisions of the army, intelligence and security, and political tendencies, and so that its weakness has intensified even against the Palestinian resistance factions equipped with the least military capabilities.

 During the battles of the past two years, this entity's machine of war, terrorism and violence has been paralyzed and defeated, despite its advanced weapons and powerful missile and defense systems, so that it cannot achieve victory even in a war with the smallest factions of the Palestinian resistance.

The field and political results of the aforementioned circumstances clearly show that the Zionist apartheid entity is now in a state of destruction and collapse.

In order to escape from the dilemma experienced by the Zionist occupation entity, the leaders of this entity resorted, with the support of America, to create discord within the Palestinian resistance factions, among which are the recent events in Ain al-Hilweh camp, which is one of its dimensions.

By fueling the clashes in Ain al-Hilweh, the Zionist occupation seeks to achieve three main goals, firstly diverting public opinion from the critical situation of this entity at home, and as a result gaining time to get out of the existing crisis, and secondly creating conflict within the Palestinian Islamic resistance factions and focusing them on internal tensions and war sectarianism, and thirdly, the escalation of the internal situation in Lebanon, as a result of which it prevented the formation of the government and tarnished the image and reputation of Hezbollah.
Palestinians kill Palestinians, and they blame the Jews. 






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