Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: border controls

Showing posts with label border controls. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Blaming Israel alone for Gaza mental health problems is just another kind of Jew-hatred. Here's why.

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.

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!

The new wave of terror may be hurting the Palestinian economy

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics published its labor report for the second quarter, and it shows that the number of Palestinians working in Israel and the settlements increased to 164,000 from 153,000 in the first quarter.

However, this is not the highest number for Palestinians working for Israelis. It reversed a year-long trend of fewer Palestinians working for Israelis.

In the second quarter last year, some 211,000 Palestinians worked for Israelis - 182,000 in the Green Line and 29,000 in the settlements. That number decreased by 13,000 between the second and third quarters.

A drop from 211,000 to 153,000 in less than a year is a dramatic change, before the modest rebound this quarter.

The Israeli GDP has continued to steadily increase during this time period so this drop doesn't seem to be a reflection of more general economic trends.

It seems likely that as terror attacks increased over the past 18 months that Israeli employers are getting more skittish about hiring Palestinians, worried that some workers might go on a murder spree.

Obviously, only a tiny percentage of Palestinian workers are potential terrorists. But there have been enough incidents of Palestinian workers in Israel who either instigated or facilitated terror attacks in Israel to make Israeli employers think twice before hiring.

Given that Israeli employers pay far higher salaries than Palestinian employers - this quarter the average daily wage increased to NIS 289, far more than double the Palestinian average - the "heroic Palestinian youth" of Jenin and Nablus appear to be making the lives of ordinary Palestinians worse.

But there are no true brave Palestinian who are willing to say that out loud.

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!

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)

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!

Palestinians again falsely blaming Israel for delays at Allenby Bridge returning from Hajj

Palestinian media is reporting:

Pilgrims stuck in the Jordanian city of pilgrims said that hundreds of pilgrims are still stuck on the Jordanian side since 3 am.

The pilgrims told Safa news agency on Sunday that hundreds are still stranded due to the departure of 140 buses from Saudi Arabia yesterday, which caused overcrowding and a major crisis in the Jordanian city of pilgrims.

They indicated that the reason for the crisis was the occupation's closure of the crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan due to the Saturday holiday for the occupation, and this coincided with the arrival of pilgrims' buses.

They pointed out that the occupation's procedures in the inspection and audit process cause obstacles and a slow entry process for pilgrims to the Palestinian territories.

Last year they falsely blamed Israel for delays in returning from Jordan during the summer. They lied then and they seem to be lying now.

The Israeli side is open on Saturdays from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM. It appears that the buses arrived to the Jordanian terminal in the middle of the night. I doubt that the Jordanian terminal was even open then.

At any rate, the Israeli side is certainly open today from 7:00 AM, and won't close until 10:30 PM, yet the photos of the crowds in Jordan are being published within the past couple of hours (I'm writing this at 7:30 PM Israel time.) So it certainly isn't the Israeli side that is causing the delays. (Reportedly, from Sunday through Thursday the Israeli side is now open 24 hours but the Israeli borders webpage does not reflect that.)

The Arabic Facebook page covering the crossing does not say a word about problems on the Israeli side, which is recognized by travelers as being far more professional than the Jordanian side.

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!

Kuwaiti journalist who has denounced Hezbollah is barred from entering Lebanon

From Arab News:

There was uproar in Lebanon on Thursday after Kuwaiti media writer and producer Fajer Al-Saeed was prevented from entering the country.

Al-Saeed was stopped at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport on Wednesday evening, with Lebanon’s General Security rejecting a request from Kuwaiti Embassy officials to allow her to spend the night there before leaving on the first flight to Kuwait.

Instead, she was deported back to her country on Thursday morning after spending the night at the airport.

Joseph Al-Kosseifi, head of the Lebanese Press Editors’ Syndicate, told Arab News: “We are against obstructing the work of any journalist in Lebanon — whether Lebanese or visiting from abroad.

“What happened requires clarification. Some claim that Al-Saeed was prevented from entering Lebanon due to an Israeli stamp on her passport, while others argue that her bold stance against Hezbollah was the reason...."

Ya Libnan also blamed Hezbollah:

One analyst who did not want to be named for fear on his life told Ya Libnan, "There is always a Hezbollah official at the airport who decides if a person can enter Lebanon or not , because the General Security is controlled by Hezbollah."

Hezbollah itself (via Al Akhbar) claimed that the reason she was barred was because there was an Israeli stamp on her passport.

But Fajer Al-Saeed herself said that was a lie - she has visited the West Bank more than once at the invitation of the PA, but she doesn't have an Israeli stamp. Which is almost certainly true since Israel doesn't generally stamp passports but inserts a piece of paper to allow visitors avoid exactly these sorts of situations.

Al Saeed has also been a guest on Israeli social media and has publicly called for peace between Arab states and Israel.

So there were plenty of reasons that Hezbollah would not want Al-Saeed to enter the country. And apparently they make the real decisions in some aspects of Lebanese life.

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!

Jordan is officially antisemitic, confiscating any Jewish objects at the borders with Israel

From Arutz-7:

Members of an Israeli delegation were denied entry into Jordan Tuesday, after border guards refused to allow those wearing Jewish garb from entering the country.

The incident occurred at the Rabin border crossing in Eilat, on the border with the Jordanian port city of Aqaba, when a delegation of Israeli municipal leaders tried to enter the Hashemite kingdom for an educational tour.

Jordanian border officials ordered the delegation members to lift up their shirts, so that the guards could see if they were wearing any religious Jewish garments underneath.

Tour participants who were not wearing identifiably Jewish garb, such as kippot (yarmulkes) or tzitzit (a four-cornered, fringed traditional Jewish garment) were permitted to cross the border, while those who were wearing religious garments were refused entry.

One participant told Israel Hayom that a Jordanian border guard took his kippah and threw it in the trash.

These are not the actions of an overzealous security guard. Stories like this pop up every few months. Official Jordanian policy is to confiscate any object that is remotely Jewish at the border with Israel, even if they are hidden within luggage.

Even non-Jews who cross from Israel to Jordan have their Jewish-themed souvenirs confiscated.

The official reason? This is done for the visitors' own safety.

That excuse is itself fascinating. Jews have traveled to other Muslim-majority countries, even those with no diplomatic relations with Israel, with their kipot and tallitot and tefillin with no issues. Only Jordan claims that the mere whiff of Judaism could whip its citizens into a murderous frenzy. And only Jordan blames the Jews for upsetting their Muslim residents by merely existing as Jews.

The blatantly antisemitic policy has been in place since at least 2015. Jordanians have complained bitterly when they see photos of religious Jews praying at the "Tomb of Aaron":

However, it appears that some Hasidic groups have managed to arrange trips specifically to visit and pray at that spot - on the Breslov Hasidic website they have a poster for a planned three day trip last summer, and they claim they have visited every year without incident, although they admit to having had to curtail some of their activities due to Jordanian concerns. But their annual trip originates from Israel.

So there is a little more to this story; perhaps organized tour groups arranged through some Jordanian travel agents are allowed.

Also, I have not seen anyone mention that Jews flying to Amman being harassed for wearing kipot or tzitzit.

But the official stated policy remains one of explicit antisemitism.

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!

Amnesty's latest anti-Israel report's scope and methodology proves its bias was intended from the outset (update)

Amnesty just released its latest anti-Israel report, "Automated Apartheid: How facial recognition fragments, segregates and controls Palestinians in the OPT."

The 82 page report was conceived from the start to be biased against Israel. This can be seen from just the introduction.

By Checkpoint 56 in H2, a towering barrier features two turnstiles, and at least 24 cameras on the outside. Palestinians rely on passage through the checkpoint to access most, if not all, of goods and services, work, education, family life, and healthcare. It is here where witnesses described coming face to face with a new facial recognition system, Red Wolf, in 2022.

Palestinians are the only racial group of residents in H2 required to use these checkpoints, and the system relies on databases consisting exclusively of Palestinian individuals’ data.

Palestinians are not a racial group. Here Amnesty is apparently again using a definition of "racial discrimination" based on the ICERD definition which explicitly says that its definition does not apply to treating citizens and non-citizens differently. Amnesty's use of the word "racial" here has only one purpose: to assume that Israel's racism as a basis for the report itself.

Similarly:

In Hebron City and East Jerusalem the rights of Palestinians are violated through a range of legal and military measures that help maintain Israel’s system of apartheid over Palestinians.

Amnesty lied about "apartheid" in its earlier reports, and those definitions have been thoroughly debunked. But since Amnesty is more interested in propaganda than accuracy, it now uses the term as if it was a fact and this report is meant to build on that assumption. As a result, any alternative explanations for its findings are discounted or ignored - everything must support the lie that Israel engages in "apartheid" against non-citizens, which is nonsensical, since by that definition every country in the world practices apartheid.

The constant surveillance Palestinians face means they not only live in a state of insecurity, but they are also at risk of arbitrary arrest, interrogation, and detention.

If Palestinians are being arrested or detained based on being identified by surveillance, then by definition the arrests are not arbitrary. Israel is only arresting those people it is looking for; the vast majority of Palestinians pass through the checkpoints with no problem. This is the opposite of arbitrary.

But "arbitrary arrest" sounds so much worse, so Amnesty lies.

Neda, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, spoke of the impact this oppressive technology has on her daily life: “I’m being watched the whole time…[it] gives me a really bad feeling everywhere in the street. Every time I see a camera, I feel anxious. Like you are always being treated as if you are a target.”

For better or worse, residents of every urban area on Earth have cameras pointing at them all the time. Police can request the video footage from private security cameras, too. There is no fundamental difference between what Neda is describing and what everyone in every city experiences.

This report establishes that facial recognition technologies are providing the Israeli authorities with powerful new tools for curbing freedom of movement – a pre-requisite for the realization of basic rights – adding further layers of technological sophistication to the system of apartheid that Israel is imposing on Palestinians in the OPT. This is achieved via:

• The establishment of compounding technological infrastructure to expand the reach of Israeli authorities’ control. As checkpoints govern the ability of Palestinians in H2––the area of Hebron under military rule by the Israeli Civil Administration––to travel outside their homes, Israel is able to contain Palestinians geographically, using domination by way of military force and surveillance tools such as Red Wolf and Blue Wolf to deter resistance.

Even if you call Israel's presence "occupation," the Geneva Conventions allows great latitude in allowing the occupier to maintain security of both civilians and soldiers. Checkpoints are not illegal. As we will see, the only people that the new technology stops are those who are already wanted.

Palestinians define attacking Jews as "resistance." Deterring resistance is not only legal but an obligation, to normal moral people.

• Surveillance as part of a coercive environment aimed at forcing Palestinians to leave areas of strategic interest to Israeli authorities, by making their ordinary lives unbearable.

Really? Cameras make their lives unbearable? Has a single Palestinian ever moved his family to avoid cameras? This is just another example of how Amnesty makes things up and knows that no one will look too closely at how their supposedly factual assertions are simple lies.

This report is based on field visits to Hebron and East Jerusalem, involving observations, interviews, and the collection of visual evidence, as well as on open-source intelligence and previous reporting. Between May and June 2022, Amnesty International met with Palestinian families, activists, students and experts from across Hebron and East Jerusalem, who were routinely exposed to daily surveillance. In doing so, Amnesty International researchers gathered testimonies and experiences related to the human rights harms associated with the deployment of invasive and wide-reaching remote biometric surveillance technologies, in particular facial recognition.

Given the sensitive nature of the research, risk of leaks, and risks posed to Amnesty researchers, a decision was made from the beginning of the research not to engage directly with Israeli officials.

Meaning, all of Amnesty's "research" involved looking at only one side of the issue. And this was a deliberate decision, not only not to include Israeli officials but not to include any Israelis who might contradict the premise of the report that Israeli is racist.

How can Amnesty claim to be objective when its decides, at the outset, to only look at sources biased in one direction?

Amnesty International issued a right of response letter to the state of Israel on 19 April 2023 but had not received a response at the date of publication.

Amnesty has been working on this report since 2021 - but gives Israel less than two weeks to respond to an 82 page report. One of those weeks includes Remembrance Day and Yom Haatzmaut. Yeah, that's real objective.

Amnesty International has found that facial recognition technology is used extensively by the Israeli authorities to support their continued domination and oppression of Palestinians in the OPT. With a record of discriminatory and inhuman acts that maintain a system of apartheid, the Israeli authorities are able to use facial recognition software – in particular at checkpoints – to consolidate existing practices of discriminatory policing and segregation, violating Palestinians’ basic rights.

Amnesty International is not convinced that the security justifications which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians – including restricting their freedom of movement – justify the severe restrictions that the Israeli authorities have imposed. While some of Israel’s policies may have been designed to promote legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate. This includes differential treatment in the occupied territories, supporting the settlement of Jewish Israelis in the OPT, the designation of closed military zones, and the imposition of certain restrictions on movement such as travel bans. Examined in the context of systematic discrimination and oppression, and in the light of the mass human rights violations these policies have entailed, it becomes clear that genuine security considerations, including in the context of the deployment of facial recognition, are not the driving force behind these measures.

There is no way for Amnesty to know any of this without mind-reading capabilities. These aren't conclusions - they are assumptions. Given that the number of terror attacks against Jews has increased dramatically during the time period that Amnesty researched and wrote this report, plus the rise of new terror infrastructure like Lion's Den, these two paragraphs are Amnesty's way of saying Jewish lives don't matter.

Amnesty's position is that any technology to save the lives of Jews and soldiers is disproportionate.

Their "Methodology" section shows more intentional bias by Amnesty:

To design the research project, Amnesty International established an advisory committee in early 2022 consisting of half a dozen researchers at the forefront of research on surveillance in the context of the OPT, with proven track records of scholarship and human rights advocacy in relation to the topic. They included academics, lawyers, campaigners and activists. The advisory committee was crucial in informing the research project, including but not limited to formulating the research questions, identifying potential witnesses and research partners, and addressing ethical and security-related concerns associated with the project.

So the advisory committee included only people who hate Israel. And no distinction was made between the supposed experts and "campaigners and activists." There is not even the pretense of objectivity.

Here is one perfect example of Amnesty's bias. The report relies heavily on testimony from Breaking the Silence, but ignores when their testimony proves that the facial recognition actually makes the lives of Palestinians at checkpoints easier. One BtS report quoted four times says:

You have this system called Red Wolf.

Okay, give more details.
A person arrives and goes through a security check. He gives me his ID. I put it into [the system]. If it goes green on the computer, he goes through a security check and moves on. If it goes yellow, I have to call... Yellow is unidentified, unknown, something like that. There’s this number you call, the division, the DCL (District Coordination and Liaison office, a regional unit of the Civil Administration), and they tell you what to do. And if it’s red, there’s the protocol. You lock down the whole turnstile [at the checkpoint], call to have him picked up because he’s wanted for arrest.

And they come to get him?
Yes.

Would that happen a lot?
No. It never happened. They (the Palestinians) are not idiots. In the end, there are openings that aren’t this checkpoint.

And usually, when there’s a yellow, what would actually happen?
It’s a computer bug. I never really had a yellow. For the most part, they’re all green, or they have no ID, and then you turn them around.

Can this system identify them even without putting in the ID [number]?
Yes. There’s something like ten cameras. Once they arrive and pass through inside, it essentially takes photos, identifies them, to help you as the soldier standing there. It catches the face before [they enter], and it displays the face for you on the computer. If it’s someone who’s been coming through there a lot, the computer already knows them. It takes photos of everyone who passes there essentially. And you, as a soldier, a commander, standing there, can match the face to the IDs until the system learns [to recognize] the face. It recognizes him, and then he comes, and he’s already lit green for me even before he showed me an ID, and so it makes the process shorter for him, in theory.

And then, after you see green?
He can go through the turnstile with no problem.

So the system allows Palestinians who live in Hebron to zip through checkpoints without having to show their ID each time.

Amnesty doesn't even consider that the systems could be used to ease Palestinians' lives, nor does it allow that the security gains and lives saved by these systems have any value at all.

Amnesty's scope for this report deliberately omits the high tech checkpoint at Qalandiya that speeds Palestinian workers through and saves them the hours that they used to spend there. It also uses facial recognition to help make things go much faster. There is no way that someone with any intellectual honesty can look at Qalandiya and conclude that the facial recognition is hurting them in any way.

But Amnesty chose not to include that in this report, because it would contradict the anti-Israel message that Amnesty intended this report to be all along. If report readers knew about Qalandiya, they might think that checkpoints in Hebron that use facial recognition also are better then the old system of checking IDs.

Similarly, Amnesty quotes an IDF report about the surveillance system in Hebron, but doesn't quote the part that explains why it is necessary: "The main challenge in Hebron is the friction between the Jewish residents and the Palestinians, who live right next to each other - so when a security incident breaks out, the force has to react within seconds. The new cameras which give us a clearer picture of what is happening in the field, and thus solve the timing problem."

Amnesty doesn't mention, or airily dismisses, the actual security reasons for surveillance. Which is the entire problem. There are alternative explanations for this technology that make far more sense than Amnesty's assertion that these systems are "clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate." How exactly that oppression and domination would help Israel in any way is not defined. In fact, such a deliberate mistreatment as Amnesty describes would make life worse for Israelis as well. But according to Amnesty, Jewish supremacists just love to harass Palestinians for no reason, and even spend millions of dollars to create high tech methods to make their lives miserable.

Those are Amnesty's "facts" before they wrote one word of this report.

The report was conceived, researched, scoped and written with assumptions of unmitigated Israeli evil If you never encountered Amnesty's bias beforehand, this report alone is enough to show that the entire organization is a joke.

Yet the New York Times wrote essentially a press release for this anti-Israel report, without reporting any bias at all.

Because people who share a bias cannot notice it in others.

UPDATE: NGO Monitor adds lots more.

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!

Another absurd anti-Israel report from HRW submitted to the UN

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch submitted a memorandum to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities about the problems of Palestinians with disabilities.

Not surprisingly, it places most of the blame for Palestinian leaders not adhering to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on - Israel.

Here is a section about how Israel restricts movement in and out of Gaza:

Human Rights Watch found that sweeping Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods, at times exacerbated by restrictive policies by Palestinian authorities, curb access to assistive devices, health care, and electricity essential to many people with disabilities.

For more than 15 years, Israeli authorities have blocked most of Gaza’s population from traveling through the Erez Crossing, the only passenger crossing from Gaza into Israel through which Palestinians can travel to the West Bank and abroad. Israeli authorities often justify the closure, which came after Hamas seized political control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in June 2007, on security grounds. The closure policy, though, is not based on an individualized assessment of security risk; a generalized travel ban applies to all, except those whom Israeli authorities deem as presenting “exceptional humanitarian circumstances,” mostly people needing vital medical treatment and their companions, as well as prominent businesspeople.

Israeli authorities also significantly restrict the entry and exit of goods into Gaza. While there are no restrictions on the import of assistive devices, policies regarding “dual-use” items have restricted the entry of spare parts and batteries for hearing aids and other devices, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha.[7] Medical Aid for Palestinians has documented that Israel has restricted as “dual-use” items carbon fiber components used to stabilize and treat limb injuries, and carbon fiber and epoxy resins used to produce artificial limbs, resulting in patients being fitted with heavier, more uncomfortable alternatives.

....Hamas authorities in Gaza and humanitarian organizations have sought to provide assistive devices to those in need of them, but their efforts often fall short. Gaza’s Social Development Ministry reported on its website in September 2017 that it had allocated US $500,000 in its 2018-2020 plan for assistive devices, but it is unclear what devices it secured and distributed, and what standards it relies on to assess need.[14]

....Under the CRPD, States Parties should take effective measures to ensure personal mobility, including by facilitating access to assistive technology and by promoting the availability, knowledge, and use of assistive devices and technologies.[16] International humanitarian law obliges occupying powers to ensure the safety and welfare of civilians living in the occupied territory.[17]

Israel’s sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods, at times exacerbated by restrictive policies by Palestinian authorities, restrict the right of people with disabilities to freedom of movement and access to assistive devices, as set out under articles 20 and 14 of the CPRD.

Here's how HRW's bias works:

It mentions a couple of times that Palestinian authorities also restrict Gazans from leaving the territory. But while it goes into some detail on Israeli restrictions, it doesn't say anything about the Palestinian restrictions. Is it Hamas or the PA? (The answer is both.)

This memorandum is meant as a submission to the CPRD review of Palestinian policies, as they are signatories to the CPRD and have specific obligations under that convention. Israel's policies on allowing Gazans into Israel are not a part of Palestinian responsibilities under the CPRD. HRW is using this as another excuse to bash Israel.

Notice also that the word "Egypt" is not mentioned once in this memo. It is another border through which people and goods can pass, but only Israel is responsible for restrictions, not Egypt.

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92.5% of Palestinians killed this year were members of terror groups or actively involved in attacks

As he did last year, Adin Haykin is documenting every single Palestinian killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year, and explaining the circumstances.

I put his current thread on a Twitter Thread Reader post.

Out of 80 killed this year, I count six who were uninvolved civilians. (I'm counting a father who was shot while trying to stop his son's arrest as a civilian.)

That means that 92.5% of those killed were actively part of hostilities, or members of armed groups. And that includes every single minor who was killed this year.

It is also entirely possible that some of the civilians listed were killed by Palestinian fire, which as we've seen has been quite wild.

A far as I can tell, never in the history of urban fighting has the percentage of innocent civilians killed been this low.

In contrast, over 50% of those killed in Operation Banner in Northern Ireland by the British Army were uninvolved civilians.

Western troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have never achieved anything close to this record.

The mainstream media emphasizes the uninvolved, as they should. But they do not contextualize their deaths with these facts that the IDF is far exceeding what is considered acceptable by any other army in history, especially when it often operates in an extremely challenging environment when there stone throwers and firebombs coming from attackers on all sides.

If any other army went under the same microscope that the IDF does, they would look horrible by comparison.

For example, the New York Times reported in 2021 about an attack by US forces five years earlier that no one knew about:

Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.

Do you remember reading about this incident, or the dozens of others that were uncovered in that story using Pentagon records? No, the story disappeared from the news media radar in no time.

Now, imagine the tsunami of coverage from multiple news outlets, the UN resolutions and condemnations from every nation on the planet, that would result if Israel killed 120 civilians in an air strike and claimed it was a successful strike on dozens of fighters.

That is not just a double standard. That is treating Israel as uniquely evil and ignoring far, far worse things done by "the good guys."

And that is the entire point. Israel's critics do not want you to know this context when they accuse Israel of war crimes. They do not want you to see how Israel compares to other armies. They never make 3D models of US bombing of wedding parties.

There is only one possible explanation for putting Israel under an electron microscope for doing an amazing job targeting terrorists while virtually ignoring the horrible mistakes that every other professional western army does. It isn't "concern over taxpayer dollars" or "humanitarian concerns" or any of the dozens of other excuses used to justify this obsession with how Israel fights terror. None of the Western armies who wantonly bombed dozens of innocents had to worry about an immediate threat of someone slipping through a porous border and attacking their own citizens who live only a few kilometers away.

The only explanation is antisemitism.

Maybe not the explicit, neo-Nazi kind, but this crazed obsession with finding everything wrong with Israel defending itself from real, imminent threats while ignoring everyday Palestinian terror cannot be logically explained any other way except to say that a Jewish state is assumed to be automatically criminal the way Jews have lived under that assumption for thousands of years.

The truly remarkable thing is that the IDF, like the Jews throughout history, don't respond by saying that they might as well act the way they are being accused of acting. Instead, they continue to improve their methods and work towards a 100% record of only killing those who are actively trying to kill them first. (In attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, they are very close to that 100%.)

The IDF is truly the most moral army in the world. It isn't even close.

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World Council of Churches is upset when Israel makes life EASIER for Palestinians

In 2018, the World Council of Churches website wrote about how arduous the journey through checkpoints was for Palestinians going to Israel to work or find jobs:

At 4.45, the Qalandiya checkpoint is already crowded, as thousands upon thousands of Palestinians try to make their way to Jerusalem each day.

Qalandiya is the main checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem, and ecumenical accompaniers (EAs) from the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (WCC-EAPPI) visit regularly in the early mornings.

“If you live in East Jerusalem outside the wall, or in Ramallah for example, and you work in Jerusalem, you need to be at the checkpoint early if you want to get to work on time. Getting through the checkpoint can take anything between one and several hours,” one of the EAs explains.

It was definitely not an enjoyable experience to go through the checkpoint then, and the WCC wanted to make sure the whole world knew it.

Now in 2023, the WCC revisited the checkpoints, and found things are quite different:

Machsom Watch was founded in January 2001 by three Jewish Jerusalemite women who saw military checkpoints around Jerusalem and in the West Bank and decided to do something about it. Now 88, Barag pursues human rights as energetically as ever.

Over the past five to ten years, she has noticed big changes at checkpoints: there are no more long lines of people. In fact, thousands of people come, they cross quickly, and the whole process is computerized.

This sounds great, right? Israel has cut the wait time for the Palestinian workers by hours every day. What could be wrong with that?

When your job is to demonize Israel - plenty!

“The Israeli military will tell you: look what we have done to make life easier for Palestinians, but in reality, the system is much more difficult and complicated, but you cannot see it,” says Barag. “There are over 100 types of permits.”

“As human rights people, we must do something about this inhumane system of control,” she says. “We do not want to make the situation easier.”

She realizes this seems like a contradiction—but what she is saying, is that the occupation should not become easier to administer because humans are increasingly less visible in the process. “Let us not open the space for soldiers to operate a machine—one that is bureaucratic—and where the gates open and close remotely,” she says. “We do not want to make the occupation more palatable; we want to see an end to the occupation.”

If the "occupation" would end and there would be two states - there would still be a border crossing between the two states! It would probably be harder for Palestinians to go to work in Israel than it is today.

And the World Council of Churches will be there to condemn that, too.

Because the problem isn't that Israel is unfair to Palestinians. The problem is that Israel exists, and the WCC is doing everything they can to remedy that situation.

(h/t Simon Wiesenthal Center)

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St. Louis @KSDKNews promotes false propaganda about an American girl detained for no reason by Israel

The top story on St. Louis KSDK news last night was about a dual citizen Palestinian American who was detained by the Israeli army as she tried to go through a checkpoint to Jerusalem:

Israeli Defense Forces detained a St. Louis college student on Friday and held her over the weekend after she attempted to cross the border from Ramallah into Jerusalem to visit revered holy sites with her family.

Hala Kasim Salameh, a 22-year-old Palestinian-American woman from St. Louis, was visiting the West Bank with her mother, sister, aunt and cousin.

According to her family, Salameh is an American citizen who had proper documentation, a travel permit, a U.S. passport and her Palestinian I.D. card when she approached the first checkpoint but was turned away.

"Sometimes it doesn't really go how you want, and they can refuse your entry for no reason at all, and that's exactly what happened to my sister," her younger sister Yumna Salameh told 5 On Your Side in a video call on Sunday night.

"She tried to ask them twice to go in, and they still refused her entry," she said. "They kind of got aggressive with her, too."

After being separated from her family at the first checkpoint, Salameh tried again to reconnect with them in a taxi cab. She managed to make one final phone call to her family before she was arrested.

Neveen Ayesh, a St. Louis advocate with the Missouri chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, is working with Salameh's family to get her legal representation.

"To begin with, she was not wrong because she did have a permit to enter," Ayesh said. "The soldier just decided he didn't want to let her in."

The story is very strange. Why would the soldiers let her family through and not her? Why would she be put into jail for something so minor - why not just release her?

If you listen carefully, the video of the story answers both questions, with two buried details that are not in the written story.

At 2:23, after the video report, the news anchor mentions as an aside, "The family tells us that she did have the proper documentation, but did not have it on her when she was detained."

Suddenly, things are starting to make sense. The family and lawyer in the news story were lying when they said she had all her documentation, and then - perhaps upon further questioning from a skeptical reporter - the family changed their story. But that detail didn't make it into the print and video story, which still quotes the AMP lawyer as saying she had her permit on her.

Now look at the video at 1:00: "Now, separated from her family, she tried to enter a third time, in a taxicab." Her sister then says, "Oh, the third time they said, 'you disobeyed us, and now we catch you.'"

Meaning, they let her go twice, but she still tried to sneak into Israel a third time by hoping that they wouldn't check her papers from a taxicab.

This isn't a story of an American girl being abused by the IDF. It is the story of a person trying, three times, to cross a border without documentation - and the third time, knowingly trying to sneak past the border guards.

This is what would happen at any border crossing worldwide.

The family turned to pro-terror American Muslims for Palestine for help. AMP saw an opportunity for a propaganda bonanza, so they immediately contacted the media and concocted a story about a forlorn American girl of Palestinian ancestry who was arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned for no other reason except that Israelis hate Palestinians.

And KSDK happily runs with the story as their top story of the evening. Not only that, they illustrate the part where she gets arrested with this photo of Israeli police detaining a violent protester, as if this was how Hala was treated:

This is not news reporting. This is anti-Israel propaganda.

A proper news organization would have reported this the way they would report anyone trying to bypass security at an airport - as a potential terrorist trying to illicitly cross an international border.

(h/t RealJerusalemStreets)

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Hamas starts to blame Egypt for dead babies (UPDATE)

The Hamas-oriented Felesteen news site reports on Ahmed Amar Abu Nahale, a three month old boy with an enlarged liver and heart who was supposed to be treated in Turkey, but who died waiting for the Rafah crossing with Egypt to open.

This is, according to the article, the second death during the current closure. Rafah was open for two days this week for pilgrims but possibly not for patients.

There is an interesting dynamic going on. Most so-called "pro-Palestinian" groups, and NGOs, downplay Egypt's closure of Gaza and emphasize Israel's "blockade" on travel and goods. Of course, Hamas and the other terror groups would lend their support for the cause of inciting against Israel.

Now, Hamas - stung by Egypt's treatment of the terror group - has made a decision to treat Egypt the same way it treats Israel, as an antagonist. It is trying to use the same tactics Palestinian Arabs traditionally used against Israel.

The result is that Israel's perceived evil is becoming diluted, as the fact that Arabs treat Palestinians worse that Israel does becomes more common knowledge.

The people caught in the middle are the so called "pro-Palestinian" activists, who reluctant to blame Lebanon and Egypt and Jordan for how badly those countries treat PalArabs. They want to keep Israel as the only bogeyman who is responsible for the deaths of cute innocent babies, because if the truth comes out, the entire house of cards falls - people will start to place the proper blame on Arab leaders as well as Palestinian Arab leaders who have used millions of people as pawns for 65 years.

No child has died waiting to get a permit to cross into Israel, as far as I know, even when Hamas was shooting rockets Two deaths of children in only a few weeks because of Egypt is the sort of story that would hurt the Israel haters' cause.

Which is one reason why even the Arab media will not be publishing these sorts of stories in English anytime soon.

The cracks in the anti-Israel narrative - which always depended on never, ever placing things in context or comparison with any other country - are starting to show, even among the most die-hard Israel haters.

UPDATE: There is actually video of the baby while he is dying, and a professionally made video of the family mourning him.

The episode was planned ahead of time. Not that the baby wasn't dying anyway, but someone in Gaza saw an opportunity to make news with the dying baby and his family as props.

(also corrected baby's age)

PFLP-GC claims 23,000 Syrian Palestinians have fled to Sweden

The PFLP-GC claims that some 23,000 Palestinian Arabs from the Yarmouk camp in Syria have fled to Sweden during the civil war.

Yarmouk camp

The group, which supports the Syrian regime, blames the opposition for setting up their forces in the camp.

I couldn't find verification of the numbers, but they are not unrealistic. In 2012 there were over 2000 Palestinian Arabs along with some 8000 Syrians who sought asylum in Sweden, and things have gotten far worse this year.

There is of course one additional factor: Arab nations have been treating the Palestinian Arab refugees from Syria like garbage, either turning them back at the border (Jordan, Egypt) or putting inhuman restrictions on them (Lebanon.) (I have been unable to determine if Iraq is letting any Palestinian Arab refugees into its camps.)

Oil-rich Gulf countries don't want any of them, either.

It is not surprising that the ones that make it successfully to Sweden will communicate with their relatives and friends and tell them that Europe is far more friendly to Palestinians than their Arab brothers are.

For some reason, "pro-Palestinian" groups are silent as to how their pets are being treated by Arab countries. No rallies, flotillas, or other campaigns against Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon. And the last time there was a Palestinian Arab refugee crisis - when they were expelled from Iraq by the thousands - Arab leaders were dead-set against them becoming naturalized in the West, because happy European Palestinian Arabs are no longer useful as cannon fodder against Israel.

It is remarkable how much the very people who pretend to love the Palestinian Arabs the most are the ones who care about them the least. Even more remarkable is that the Western media and "human rights" organizations all but ignore the discrimination and hate by Arabs for their own.

Five more Palestinian Arabs killed without the media noticing

On Wednesday, five more Palestinian Arabs were killed in Syria.

A rocket shot at the Yarmouk camp killed three, including a mother expecting her sixth child.

Another was killed in Jobar and one in Homs.

Of course, "pro-Palestinian" groups have been silent.

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army warned Hezbollah to stop interfering in Syria or else they might attack Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And Reuters has a story on the increased numbers of refugees streaming into Jordan from Syria - but doesn't mention that Jordan still turns Palestinian Arabs back at the Syrian border, another small fact that "pro-Palestinian" groups are ignoring.