Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: dam lies

Showing posts with label dam lies. Show all posts

Monday, June 19, 2023

To @AmnestyUK, swimming pools in the West Bank are apartheid. But only the ones owned by Jews.

Amnesty-UK tweeted:

Amnesty-UK is saying that thirsty Palestinians are upset by the massive amounts of water that are clearly available for their Jewish neighbors, as they stare longingly at the waste that the Jewish pools symbolize. Clearly they should be angry at the contrast between their own inability to drink a refreshing glass of water to avoid dying of thirst while the Jews frolic in wasteful swimming pools.

So Amnesty must really be upset when those thirsty Palestinians are mocked by extravagant displays of frivolous swimming pools that they see in, for example, Hebron, decorated with a Palestinian flag to twist the knife of their poverty:

Certainly Amnesty is condemning the huge waste of water there, right?

Other pools in the West Bank also include very patriotic flags:

And this one in Birzeit looks like it holds a great deal of water, too.

According to Amnesty-UK, even the smaller pools are a giant waste of water that hurts thirsty Palestinians' feelings and must be condemned:

How dare these heartless people enjoy the water when their neighbors have none!

Obviously a human rights group cannot be accused of antisemitism for treating pools owned by Jews differently from those owned by Palestinians. Perhaps Amnesty-UK is upset over Jews owning private pools while Palestinians next door are deprived of their basic water needs.

We will just have to ignore the Palestinian company Blue Blue Palestine which installs private pools for well-to-do Palestinians every day, in-ground and above ground, from small 600-shekel pools to ones costing tens of thousands of dollars.

I'm sure Amnesty is preparing a 150 page report on Palestinian waste of precious water in their many swimming pools. After all, it is the pools they are upset over, and not the religion of the owners, right? If they treat pools differently because some are owned by Jews, that is pretty blatant antisemitism - and how could that possibly be?

To Amnesty, Jewish pools are apartheid. Palestinian pools are nonexistent. And Amnesty International isn't a hypocritical, Jew-hating organization hiding its bigotry behind the fig leaf of pretending to care about human rights.

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!

Artificial intelligence a danger to Israel advocacy, part 2

I recently wrote about the danger that automated chatbots could have for Israel advocacy, as they can generate lies that cannot be traced back - but people will believe them.

AI-generated photos are not yet good enough to fool most eople as being real, but it will only take a year or two before they are. While photo manipulation is as old as photography, and Photoshopping has been around for years, in the not-too-distant future anyone will be able to generate a photo that could be used as "proof" of "Israeli crimes" that no one has ever captured in a real photo.

I created a few using the AI art tools that are out there.

Jews don't raise wild boars in the West Bank to attack Palestinians? Well, now they do.

Ever wonder what "Jewish settlers storming Al Aqsa" might look like?

(Notice that the AI mistakes the Dome of the Rock for Al Aqsa, as many Arabs themselves do.)

You know those nonexistent dams in the Negev that Israeli supposedly open to flood Gaza? Here's what AI thinks they look like:

Are you sure that Israel bombed a school in Gaza but you can't find any photos? Just make them up - there's an infinite supply!

This is coming sooner than you think. And it won't be only photos, but faked videos too.

We need to be educating people now that they cannot believe anything they see without knowing where it came from.

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!

12/27 Links Pt1: The World Has Forgotten Two Israelis Held by Palestinian Terrorists; ISIS-inspired terrorist arrested for deadly Jerusalem bombings

From Ian:

The World Has Forgotten Two Israelis Held by Palestinian Terrorists

Where is Hisham? Where is Avera? It has been more than 3,000 days since Avera Mengistu, an Israeli citizen and member of the Ashkelon Ethiopian community, climbed over the border fence in Gaza and was captured by Hamas. His family has had zero contact with him since.

Roughly six months later, the same fate befell a 34-year-old who is part of Israel’s Bedouin community, Hisham al-Sayed, who crossed over into the terrorist-controlled enclave.What was the reason these young men ended up in the Gaza Strip? They have a long history of suffering from mental illness, and often wandered hundreds of kilometers from their homes.

On September 7, 2014, Avera was highly agitated; his mental well-being had begun to deteriorate after the tragic death of his brother. As a result, Avera left home and began to wander. Video surveillance showed that he took off and walked approximately 10 kilometers, where he was eventually spotted, unusually close to the Gaza border fence, by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers tried to get his attention; instead, he was startled and climbed over the border fence and disappeared into Gaza.

Hisham has a similar story. In the past, he had entered Jordan, the West Bank, and even Gaza, but he was always returned by security personnel who were aware of his mental status and vulnerability. In 2015, however, he was taken hostage by Hamas. Fast forward to now, and Hamas only released a video clip this year, which appears to show Hisham lying in a bed, looking dazed, and wearing an oxygen mask — the first sighting of him since he disappeared seven years ago.

The holding of Hisham and Avera is a human rights violation on several counts.

Firstly, they are civilians who have no part in the war between Israel and Hamas, and cannot be held or treated as enemy combatants.

Secondly, withholding information about captives, as Hamas has done, amounts to an “Enforced Disappearance” and is illegal under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been signed by the Palestinians. It also goes against another piece of international law they signed, called The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which provides protections for people with psycho-social, or mental health disabilities, including freedom from inhuman treatment and equal access to justice.

Finally, any detainees have the right to contact their families and receive visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross. All of these international rights are violated each moment that Hamas continues to hold Hisham and Avera hostage. Even the likes of Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, a fierce critic of Israel, has said that “Hamas’s refusal to confirm its apparent prolonged detention of men with mental health conditions and no connection to the hostilities is cruel and indefensible.”

David Singer: Israel set to uncork Hashemite Kingdom genie at UN

The UN stands to become totally irrelevant if it continues to refuse to discuss the Saudi Solution following Danny Danon - Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations – claiming at the first Abraham Accords Global Leadership Summit - that Saudi Arabia may be one of the next nations to normalize relations with Israel.

Danon stated:
“We have been in contact with the Saudis for years. I worked personally with them at the United Nations on matters of regional stability and security. It’s just a matter of time before courageous leaders step out of the shadows and full peace is achieved between all the children of Abraham. .. I expect we’ll see an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia this year”

This was good news for those seeking an end to the 100 years-old Jewish/Arab conflict – but bad news for the UN which continues to stubbornly support the two-state solution whilst refusing to even acknowledge the existence of the game-changing Saudi Solution since its publication six months ago.

It beggars belief that on 30 November the UN General Assembly adopted five resolutions on the questions of 'Palestine' and the Middle East without one speaker uttering the words. “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine Solution” - whose successful implementation would see the Arab populations in Gaza, part of the 'West Bank' and the wretched UNRWA camps in Lebanon and Syria becoming citizens of that newly-created territorial entity.

Cheikh Niang (Senegal) - Chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People - introduced its annual report containing developments relating to the question of Palestine between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022 – which contained not one reference to the Saudi Solution in its 27 pages.

Israeli Prime Minister designate Bibi Netanyahu has made his intentions crystal-clear:
“I think the big prize is peace with Saudi Arabia, which I intend to achieve if I go back into office… The rise of Israeli power facilitated the Abraham Accords, and the continual nurturing of Israeli power will also nurture a broader peace with Saudi Arabia and nearly all of the rest of the Arab world. I intend to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a close.”

The 2022 Saudi Solution offers Israel:
sole sovereignty in Jerusalem,
sovereignty in part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and
abandonment of the 74 years-old Arab claim to return to Israel
The UN must respond to the hope of peace offered by the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine genie.

Abdullah in the middle

Millions of Jordanian citizens descend from families who lived in eastern Palestine when it was ruled by the British Empire or, before that, the Ottoman Empire. Others moved to Jordan, fleeing wars launched by Israel’s Arab neighbors—Jordan among them—in 1948 and 1967. In other words, millions of Jordanians identify as Palestinians.

“While Jordanian officials may not say so explicitly,” Dr. Schanzer writes, “the animosity harbored by Jordan’s Palestinian population toward Israel has a significant influence on the kingdom’s foreign policies.”

A chapter of history Israeli leaders seldom discuss publicly: When the first Arab-Israeli war came to a halt in 1949, Jordanian forces had conquered the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria (quickly renamed “the West Bank”), from which they expelled the Jewish population. Even Jews living in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem were driven out, and their homes and synagogues destroyed.

Upon taking east Jerusalem in the defensive war of 1967, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan decided to award a Jordanian waqf (a government-controlled religious entity) authority over the two important Muslim sites—Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock—that stand atop the Temple Mount, the holiest of all Jewish sites. This profound gesture of conciliation has never been fully appreciated, much less reciprocated.

Nor do Jordanians express gratitude for the essential goods Israel currently provides, for example, water (Israel is a world leader in desalination technology) and energy (40 percent of Jordan’s electricity comes from Israeli gas). Israel also cooperates closely with Jordan on “a wide range of security-related issues.”

Dr. Schanzer notes that King Abdullah, in a conversation with former U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster last May, “voiced concerns that Iranian forces in Syria could soon destabilize his country…Jordan also faces a threat from Iran-backed militias in Iraq to the north. Additional threats loom in the south, with Iranian assets reportedly operating in the Red Sea.”

Though the enemy of Jordan’s enemy should be Jordan’s friend, Dr. Schanzer expects relations with Israel to deteriorate further. He notes the king’s “unabashed distaste” for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now forming a new government.

Netanyahu, for his part, is undoubtedly reading with distress “reports that Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has been spending more time in Jordan with the approval of the Hashemite Kingdom.”

The king of Jordan is a moderate, modern and savvy sovereign. But without Israeli support, his future and that of his country will be precarious.

And if there is to be peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Jordan will need to join the pragmatic Arab states advocating for a new regional order, one based on stability and prosperity.

For King Abdullah to explain all this to his subjects—penetrating the fog of Palestinian irredentism and rejectionism—will not be easy. But that is his job.

Lying is part and parcel of Palestinian NGOs

The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights called on the international community and humanitarian organizations to intervene immediately to stop Israel from opening up nonexistent dams that are being blamed for flooding Gaza during torrential rains.

It would be easy to dismiss the hysterical lies of a tiny NGO in Gaza. Like many Palestinian NGOs, ICSPR is essentially a one man operation meant to attract funding.

Its chairman is Salah Abdel Ati, a "human rights lawyer" who is involved in a lot of other Palestinian NGOs. He is on the Board of Trustees of Law Palestine, and his bio there says that he is also "member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Middle East Studies, Canada, former director of the Palestinian Center for Policy Research & Strategic (Masarat) in the Gaza Strip (2015-2019), and former director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Gaza (2004-2015), Director of Programs and Training at Canaan Educational Development Institute (1997-2004). Besides, Abdel Ati is a researcher and writer who has published many books, studies, research papers, and articles in the fields of politics, law, human rights, and society. He has worked with the United Nations agencies and international, Arab and Palestinian organizations and has trained thousands of lawyers and human rights activists, judges, workers in civil society organizations, and he is the founder and a board member in several Palestinian, Arab and international NGOs and institutions."

So now we can link an obvious liar to numerous other NGOs and, according to him, "thousands of lawyers and human rights activists, judges, workers in civil society organizations" who he helped train.

There is an almost incestuous relationship between Palestinian NGOs and international NGOs who work in Gaza and the West Bank. They all build on each others' "research" and compete in who will innovate the latest anti-Israel libel.

Their funding - and salaries - depend on it.

Lying is not a disqualification from being an honored member of this cabal - it is a prerequisite.

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 still repeating the "flood libel"

In 2015, mainstream media did what it does best - parrot ridiculous Palestinian claims without checking - and reported that Israel opened dams to flood Gaza. Social media user made fun of AFP for being so stupid, and for once, AFP actually checked the facts and retracted its story, acknowledging that there were no "dams" in the Negev that Israel could open up to flood Gaza.

AFP said that its reporting was "shattering a long-held Palestinian myth."

Someone should tell the Palestinians that.

The mayor of Zawaida in Gaza, Sami Abu Muhaisen, said that "the occupation" deliberately flooded the eastern regions in the center of Gaza by opening dams and opening water and sewage culverts, which caused the flooding of agricultural lands, damage to crops, and the accumulation of water in large quantities in Salah al-Din Street.

There was also heavy flooding in Mecca this weekend, but Israel has not been blamed for that.

Yet.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Francesca Albanese's "Jewish lobby" Facebook post also includes a blood libel (UPDATE)

There has been a lot of coverage of UNHRC Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese's antisemitic posts on social media, including one post where she said, "America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed — the Palestinians — who defend themselves with the only means they have."

But in that same post, Albanese also engaged in a blood libel - falsely accusing Israel of killing a baby.

She wrote (translated):

Meanwhile, Gaza needs help, medicine, food, water. Everything we can give is a small but essential help to save more innocent lives. Like that of little Shayman, who after being born by her dying mother due to bombings, was rescued and kept in an incubator by medical staff in Gaza. The miracle of his life went off when Israel bombed Gaza’s only power supply source, and the Shayman’s incubator stopped working.

I cannot find any mention of any child dying from an incubator losing power in 2014.

Human Rights Watch wrote about the effects of Israel's (unintentional) bombing of Gaza's power plant fuel supply after Albanese's post. Here is everything it said about how the power plant going offline affected hospitals in Gaza:

The shutdown of the Gaza Power Plant ...caused hospitals, already straining to handle the surge of war casualties, to increase their reliance on precarious generators.

Mahmoud Daher, head of the Gaza office of the UN World Health Organization, said that hospitals have been given priority for scarce electricity, with Shifa, the territory’s largest hospital, getting the most, at 16 hours a day. If the fuel required to run generators were to run out, or a generator to fail, a hospital could lose power.

An official at al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City told Human Rights Watch on August 7 that because of electricity interruptions:

We use a large generator for six to eight hours per day, then have to rely on three smaller ones, because the large one cannot be run full-time. If the large one goes, we don’t know how we would repair it, because of the lack of spare parts. It powers the oxygen station, the hospital’s two elevators, and the air conditioners – this amounts to 80 percent of the hospital’s total electricity consumption. When we use the smaller generators, they can only power one elevator, and none of the air conditioners, which makes it difficult for staff to work long hours in the August heat, and dangerous for patients.

If the power outages had shut down incubators, HRW would have mentioned it. If anyone died as a result of such power outages, HRW would have made that the headline. So would have every media outlet.

Albanese's story about "Shayman" and his "dying mother" is a lie. It never happened. It is a blood libel.

Not only that, her relating that story that was not mentioned in any mainstream media proves that Albanese reads and trusts the most fringe, anti-Israel and antisemitic Arab media, and believes even the most outrageous lies about Jews and Israelis implicitly.

So this pattern holds: Francesca Albanese is an antisemite.

UPDATE: GnasherJew found the story that I couldn't find. There was a baby on a respirator, not an incubator. Other news stories say the doctors were watching her closely, and it seems unlikely to me that the oxygen wouldn't be a top priority for generators in a hospital.

The six-day-old baby was born by emergency Caesarean section Friday after doctors at Deir al-Balah hospital in central Gaza managed to save her from the womb of her mother, who died when an Israeli tank shell hit her home.

The mother, 23-year-old Shayma al-Sheikh Qanan, had been eight months pregnant, and the baby was named after her.

But the baby was deprived of oxygen between her mother’s death and doctors being able to operate, which meant she had to be hooked up to a respirator at the maternity ward in Khan Yunis hospital in southern Gaza.

“The baby suffered an oxygen deficiency in the womb after her mother’s heart stopped,” Dr Abdel Karem al-Bawab, head of the maternity ward at Nasser hospital, told AFP Thursday.

“This deficiency caused the baby to asphyxiate unexpectedly, rendering her brain dead,” he said of the tragedy, which occurred Wednesday.

“The ongoing electricity shortages played a role because her oxygen tubes did not work properly and we had to resuscitate her more than once manually.”

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 "flood libel" returns for this year's rainy season in Gaza

It's been raining heavily in the Levant, causing some localized flooding throughout the region.

And, like every year, Gaza officials are blaming their own flooding on Israel opening up non-existent dams.

The Nusseirat Municipality in the central Gaza Strip "confirmed" that the "Israeli occupation" opened the dams around of Wadi Beit Hanoun, threatening an environmental catastrophe, as the opening of dams leads to the flooding of the stream and the flooding of neighboring areas and houses.

The head of Hamas's Winter Emergency Committee, Zuhdi Al-Ghariz, also said that "the Israeli occupation opened dams in the east and north of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, which threatens to cause a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe for the people of the Strip."

Back in 2015, after AFP parroted the absurd claims to widespread derision, the French press agency belatedly went to the Negev to see if any dams existed and found that it was a Palestinian conspiracy theory with no basis in reality.

In fact, some of the responsibility for the flooding from Wadi Gaza comes from Gazans themselves.

"Wadi Gaza is liable to flood in an area which is about 70-100 metres wide but in some of these places, there has been illegal construction and cultivation, which has reduced this area to 15 or 20 metres," Munther Shoblak, a senior official in Gaza's water utility, told AFP at the time.

Notice that this year the libelers are emphasizing blaming Israel for the "environmental catastrophe" aspect. Only last week, the anti-Israel graphic designers at Visualizing Palestine (favored by Human Rights Watch) accused Israel of - get this - "climate apartheid." Because, you know, the Jews control the weather.

They also threw in "green colonialism," "greenwashing" and "environmental racism."

Throw them in a blender and pour them out and the letters all spell out "Antisemitism."

The Flood Libel returns - with a new twist

From Middle East Monitor:

Israel yesterday opened one of the gates of its rainwater stores east of Gaza, allowing rainwater to flood large swathes of Palestinian land, Ma’an reported.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement that the water drowned “hundreds of dunams of agricultural lands and damaged barley and wheat crops.”

According to the statement, the water storage area was located in the east of Shuja’iyya neighbourhood in the east of Gaza city.

This absurd accusation was popular a few years ago. In 2015 AFP even published the accusations. Juan Cole and HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson doubled down. But when the truth was pointed out, AFP didn't just issue a correction, but it published a full debunking of the libel and made an accompanying video showing it was a complete lie.

The accusation of Israel opening floodgates has since died down - until now.

(The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture referred to is the Hamas version, not the PA version. )

But then Middle East Monitor goes even further

Israel builds a number of reservoirs to stop rainwater from running through the Gaza valleys in winter. These prevent Palestinians in the enclave from storing rainwater to irrigate their crops and to fill underground wells.

Israel builds reservoirs in the desert just to deprive Palestinians of rainwater??

Just more lies about Israel being reported and retweeted by the usual crowd of Israel haters.

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AFP publishes a detailed retraction of #FloodLibel (UPDATE: Video)

Even though it is days too late, it is the best demolition of the "flood libel" that the mainstream media has published yet:

Tzeelim (Israel) (AFP) - Once again this winter, following days of very heavy rainfall across the region, the banks of a riverbed running through central Gaza were breached, flooding dozens of Palestinian homes.

For the residents, there was no doubt: Israel was responsible after deliberately opening "a dam" to flood the enclave.

But an examination of the facts on the Israeli side tells another story, shattering a long-held Palestinian myth.

People living in Wadi Gaza say flooding happens every year after heavy rain, creating yet another challenge for those struggling to survive in the tiny coastal territory.

Residents of the Gaza Strip have lived through three wars in the past six years and are unable to leave due to an Israeli blockade.

That Israel, the invisible enemy on the other side of the fence, would flood Gaza in a bid to make life even worse is therefore accepted as fact -- as is the alleged existence of one or more dams upstream controlled by the Jewish state.

Following the latest flood at the weekend, the local authorities in Gaza on Sunday published an "urgent" statement which reiterated the claim that Israel was to blame.

AFP reported these allegations on Sunday February 22, in the form of a video and photos showing the flooding in the village of Al-Mughraqa in central Gaza.

The script of the video and the photo captions said Israel had opened the sluice gates of a dam. And the video included interviews with residents openly accusing the Jewish state.

The AFP images, in particular the video, unleashed a scathing response on social networks.

The Israeli authorities denied the information and said they had allowed four high-power water pumps into Gaza ahead of the storm in order to cope with any potential flooding.

The criticism was even more acute because Israel itself had suffered from flooding in the south.

Al-Mughraqa is located on the edge of Wadi Gaza, a river which is dry most of the year and that has its source in the southern West Bank. The watercourse then runs through the Negev desert and Gaza before reaching the Mediterranean.

In Israel, the section which links up with Gaza is known as Nahal Besor.

"In Nahal Besor, there are no dams that can be opened or closed, meaning that there is nothing that can cause or prevent a flood," said Nehemia Shahaf, head of the Drainage and Rivers Authority in the Negev area.

"To my knowledge there is no dam on the Israeli side and terrain is not suited to the construction of a dam," she told AFP.

Trottier believes that due to the heavy rains, "the waters gathered naturally and it flooded."

She said there were "a lot of myths about the question of water in the Palestinian territories and Israel."

Israeli experts say that the volume of water which flooded the river last week was unusually large due to the heavy rainfall, with an estimated five million cubic metres passing through Nahal Besor. The last time it happened was in 2010.

"It was a lot for one storm," explained Boaz Kretschmer, head of strategy at Eshkol Regional Council, the local authority in an area of Israel flanking central and southern Gaza.

"We had 30-40mm of rain across the whole region, in the Negev, in Hebron, across the whole drainage basin and of course, the water ended up in Gaza."

What does exist here is a low stone structure, barely a metre high, next to a shallow concrete channel, which is sometimes referred to as a "diversion dam" -- whose purpose is to slow the flow of water so some of it can be diverted into a nearby reservoir for irrigation purposes, Kretschmer explained.

It has no gates, nor openings, and when the flood waters hit, they simply glide over it as if it did not exist.

"If it does anything, it actually reduces the quantity of water flowing towards Gaza, and not the opposite," Shahaf said.

"We don't try and stop the flow of water. That would be impossible -- it has incredible power," explained Kretschmer.

"There have been many dreams and plans in the past about how to stop the water because it comes in such a quantity that it could save the Negev. But all attempts to channel the floodwaters have failed. It's just not possible."

Experts believe that the flooding in the impoverished Gaza Strip, which is home to 1.8 million people and has been languishing under an Israel blockade since 2006, was likely exacerbated by chronic infrastructure problems and a flurry of illegal construction close to the riverbed.

But Munther Shoblak, a senior official in Gaza's water utility, said the Israelis "are not free from responsibility".

"They know people live on the other side of the border and they could have informed us that the water was coming.

"As usual, they didn't."

But he also acknowledged "some Palestinian responsibility" for the flooding.

"Wadi Gaza is liable to flood in an area which is about 70-100 metres wide but in some of these places, there has been illegal construction and cultivation, which has reduced this area to 15 or 20 metres," he told AFP.

I added a comment, which is not visible as of this writing:

Better late than never.

AFP might want to add that the Palestinian Authority, not only Hamas, also blamed Israel for the floods, even releasing a statement that they could not believe that the international community wasn't condemning Israel for opening the mythical dams.

(h/t Michaloush)

UPDATE:

(h/t Rudi)

PA doubles down on flood libel

The PA and Hamas might disagree on everything, and insult each other regularly, but if a Hamas agency declares that Israel is opening up dams without evidence, then by Allah the PA is going to believe them!

The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned on Monday Israel’s act of pumping large amounts of rainwater into the Gaza Strip, which flooded dozens of homes and caused injuries among Palestinians.

On February 21, the Israeli army opened the floodgates of a canal leading to central Gaza, which resulted in the removal of sand mounds along the border with Israel, said Gaza's Civil Defense Directorate said in a statement.

Civil Defense said about 50 homes sank in the floods, while a number of local residents in eastern Gaza areas were reported injured. There were also reports of deaths of livestock and poultry.

The ministry considered this Israeli action as ‘arbitrary’ and a continuation of Israel’s aggression against the people of Gaza, stressing that this action is a crime against humanity and in violation of all norms and standards.

It expressed surprise at the international community’s silence over this ‘crime’, demanding a prompt move to stop the Israeli siege imposed on the strip, to provide the people of Gaza with the necessary protection, and to prosecute the perpetrators at international courts.

I have a fantasy that in some back rooms at the UN, when the PLO representative starts babbling bizarre accusations to real diplomats, they just tell him to shut the hell up.

Meanwhile, the list of people who are willing to repeat the lie about Israel opening nonexistent dams grows to include fifth-rate academic Juan Cole and Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson.

In a sane world, the list of people and news organizations that repeated this lie would instantly lose all credibility. Too bad we live in an insane world.

(h/t Judge Dan)

Flood libel, part 2

Yesterday, I pointed out a false Ma'an story claiming that Israel deliberately opened up "dams" to flood Gaza with excess rainwater. As I pointed out, there are no dams near Gaza; there are some reservoirs but no evidence that they released any water.

This is one of those obvious lies that start getting believed by being repeated year after year, and even AFP ended up reporting that Israel opened up dams without doing a modicum of fact checking. ("Journalist" Max Blumenthal repeated the lie as well, as did Radio France International.)

Today, the claims were proven to be lies, as CAMERA reports:

Regarding the claim that Israel opened dams, thereby flooding Gaza, a spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told CAMERA:

The claim is entirely false, and southern Israel does not have any dams. Due to the recent rain, streams were flooded throughout the region with no connection to actions taken by the State of Israel.

Prior to the storm, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories allowed the transfer of four water pumps belonging to the Palestinian Water Authority from Israel into Gaza to supplement the 13 pumps already in the Gaza Strip in dealing with any potential flooding throughout the area.
In addition, Nechemia Shahaf, the head of the Drainage Authority for the Shakma-Besor Region, confirmed to CAMERA that there are no dams which can be opened and closed in southern Israel. Shahaf said, "There is a diverting dam one meter high which directs water to reservoirs. This is a low dam which cannot be opened or closed." He also noted that the singular dam, which cannot be opened, is next to Kibbutz Gvulot, and approximately 20 kilometers away from Gaza.

But that was only one of the false stories claiming that Israel floods Palestinians.

IMEMC and Palestine News Network claimed that somehow Israel managed to flood a "refugee" camp by opening "barrages":

Aida refugee camp north Bethlehem city has drowned after Gilo Israeli settlement opened its barrages, throwing all excess rain and melted snow water onto the camp.

Aida camp is adjacent to the Israeli apartheid wall, which is backed by the Gilo settlement northwest, that opened the barrages to flood the homes of refugees.

The head of water pumps in the camp, Sami Hmedan, said that Israeli occupation authorities opens the barrage water with disregard to the Palestinians and without any official concerns.

Gilo as seen from Aida. Where are the "barrages"?

The only "barrage" between Gilo and Aida is the security barrier. If anything, that protected Aida from excessive flooding.

Or are they saying that those devious Israelis removed the "apartheid wall" to flood Arabs and then quickly put it back?

Who knows what crazy slander they will come up with next. But we do know that a percentage of those lies will end up in AFP and other mainstream media, because if there is something that Palestinian Arabs have learned over the years, it is that repeating their lies gets results.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Judge Dan, Bob Knot, Nurit Baytch, Rudi Roth)