It is disgusting. CAIR fully accepts Hamas' lies about how many were killed.
Looking back, their press releases since the massacre on October 7 have been truly disgusting. The very first one, drafted when the first news of a huge attack on Israeli civilians were being published, was a blatant attempt to change the subject and imply that no matter what happened to the Jews, it is their own fault.
It was an obvious attempt to exonerate Hamas and blame Jews for being massacred.
The following Monday, their first statement was more of the same, "CAIR Urges Congress to Address Root Cause of Mideast Violence - Israel's Occupation of Palestinian Lands." They reluctantly said that anyone calling up their representatives should first "acknowledge the loss of lives and recognize the humanity on both sides, including Israelis and Palestinians" before urging Congress to do exactly what Hamas wants it to do: handcuff Israel.
CAIR never condemned Hamas. Not once - not even when Hamas was blowing up buses and pizza shops in the second intifada.
This is even though the only genocide in the Middle East was Hamas' attempt to murder every Jewish man, woman, senior citizen an child it could find.
Hamas is accused of deepening the crisis of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, after the criticism it has been exposed to regarding the seizure of international grant funds and aid from more than one party.
Hamas, as it controls the Gaza Strip, receives millions of dollars in support from countries and international organizations to build hospitals, schools, and roads for more than two million Palestinians stuck in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the harsh measures and siege imposed by Israel on Gaza under the pretext of preventing Hamas from arming, which further complicates the lives of Palestinians, the movement spends a lot of money to purchase and develop weapons and equip its military arm, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Hamas is accused by the Palestinian National Authority of practicing a policy of blackmail by seizing international support, as the Palestinian government said in 2018 that Hamas “steals the money of the Palestinian people and seizes all of the sector’s revenues, refuses to transfer them to the public treasury, and imposes fees and taxes on citizens for its treasury.”
It is one of the great untold stories of Gaza: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid has been diverted by Hamas into its own terror operations.
Here are some examples:
In 2009, dozens of Hamas militants attacked a charity, Cooperative Housing Foundation International (CHF), arrested its workers, and confiscated aid meant for needy families.
In February 2009, UNRWA accused Hamas of stealing over 3,500 blankets and 406 food parcels meant for UNRWA "refugees." Days later, UNRWA said Hamas stole 200 tons of wheat and 100 tons of rice.
In 2010, French aid group Help Doctors accused Hamas on Wednesday of seizing computer equipment, telephones, chairs, office equipment and medical files.
Also in 2010, Hamas was accused of stealing medicine and medical equipment provided by the PA and putting them for sale in Hamas-owned pharmacies. People talked about seeing medicine clearly labeled "in support of the Palestinian people" or "donated by Charity X."
In 2014, Hamas was again accused of stealing medicine meant to be given for free to Palestinians.
In 2019, poor Gazans accused Hamas of stealing meat sent by Saudi Arabia during Ramadan and reselling it on the black market, along with medicines and other aid.
We don't know if Hamas stole than and then sold them to stores, but clearly aid to Gaza was not reaching its intended recipients.
With this history, why would anyone believe that current aid to Gaza will not be diverted to Hamas first? That's what they do. (And so does the Palestinian Authority.)
So as terrible as this sounds, aid should not be sent if Hamas is the primary beneficiary. All the controls in the world cannot stop that theft from happening, and Hamas threats keep the witnesses mostly silent.
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Amnesty released a report on the early part of Israel's bombing campaign against Hamas.
The Israeli army claims it only attacks military targets, but in a number of cases Amnesty International found no evidence of the presence of fighters or other military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks. Amnesty International also found that the Israeli military failed to take all feasible precautions ahead of attacks including by not giving Palestinian civilians effective prior warnings – in some cases they did not warn civilians at all and in others they issued inadequate warnings.
“Our research points to damning evidence of war crimes in Israel’s bombing campaign that must be urgently investigated. Decades of impunity and injustice and the unprecedented level of death and destruction of the current offensive will only result in further violence and instability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” said Agnès Callamard.
“It is vital that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court urgently expedites its ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law by all parties. Without justice and the dismantlement of Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians, there can be no end to the horrifying civilian suffering we are witnessing.”
These three paragraphs show that culminate in the "apartheid" libel which has nothing to do with Gaza proves that Amnesty's aim is dismantling Israel, not justice for Gazans.
If Amnesty does not know the targets of the attack, then it cannot call the attacks unlawful. In the past I've documented scores of cases where Amnesty claims that only civilians were killed and weeks later terror groups published the names of their members killed in the same attacks.
The fact is that Amnesty is clueless as to what the real targets were. If the targets were senior Hamas members, then no warnings could or should have been given.
That is real international law, not the fabricated version Amnesty pretends exists.
Amnesty's methodology is to interview survivors who claim that there were no terrorists around,. Often these people are lying, and sometimes these people are themselves members of terror groups!
Moreover, when Amnesty publishes these reports, it doesn't even consider that a professional army would not shoot expensive precision weapons at civilians for no reason. No, Amnesty thinks it can read the IDF's minds, and knows that there was no possible reason for the attack. To Amnesty, the IDF - with multiple layers of checks and balances, lawyers reviewing every target and every airstrike, and approvals needed at all levels - is just randomly attacking civilians.
Amnesty's track record of investigating these types of events is beyond awful. It shows a pattern where Palestinians are believed without question without even Googling their names, and where Israeli denials are assumed to be lies.
Even worse, an Amnesty researcher has admitted that Palestinian "eyewitnesses" often lie. But they haven't changed their methodology of believing their lies implicitly.
Beyond that, Amnesty never mentions that Gazans would be punished by Hamas if they were known to be saying anything Hamas doesn't like. That is a salient fact when they quote Gazans but Amnesty doesn't want anyone to know that.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is beyond sloppiness and beyond ignorance of how modern warfare works. That is antisemitism - assuming malicious intent from Jews and nothing but the truth from those with a long track record of lying to Amnesty.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has always been the best source for information during Israel's wars in Gaza. They have connections in the IDF that the media generally do not have.
In their update from October 19, they show exactly how many terrorist rockets have been shot since October 7 - and how many have exploded in Gaza.
About 10% of rocket launches have been unsuccessful, according to their analysis. Moreover, the percentage of failed launches has been increasing in recent days: 25% on 10/14, 18% on 10/18.
By now the number must be closer to 900 failed launches.
While some of these failed launches explode on the ground, hundreds clearly get airborne and then fall inside Gaza. And as we've seen, not just from the Al Ahli hospital incident but from previous wars, Gaza civilians are often killed by these rockets.
And the media usually doesn't even consider that possibility when they discuss fatal "airstrikes" in Gaza.
The percentage of failed rocket attacks has always been in the 15-20% range in previous wars as well.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
We hear a lot about the “innocent” civilian of Gaza, and how
the “vast majority” of them are peace-loving and do not support Hamas. But what
is the basis for this pronouncement of mass Gazan innocence by world leaders,
celebrities, and other talking heads? The facts and statistics say the
opposite: there is overwhelming support for Hamas and “armed resistance” in
Gaza. Which makes a lot of right-thinking Israelis wonder why our army takes
such pains not to kill them.
If there are statistics that prove this population is
innocent, why don’t they show them to us? Instead, they offer empty words,
devoid of reality. “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza — innocent
Palestinian families and the vast majority that have nothing to do with
Hamas — they’re being used as human shields. We have to reject hate in every
form,” said President Biden.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the same thing in
not so many words. Speaking in Egypt about his trip to the region to
discuss the war, Blinken said, “What I’ve heard from virtually every partner
was a determination, a shared view that we have to do everything possible to
make sure this doesn’t spread to other places; a shared view to safeguard innocent
lives; a shared view to get assistance to Palestinians in Gaza who need it,
and we’re working very much on that.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also rushed to defend the “innocent”
civilians of Gaza. This time after an errant Islamic Jihad rocket took out a
hospital in Gaza.
“I am horrified by the images of the explosion in a hospital
in Gaza. Innocent civilians were injured and killed. Our thoughts are with the
families of the victims.”
Ich bin entsetzt über die Bilder, die uns von der Explosion in einem Krankenhaus in Gaza erreichen. Unschuldige wurden verletzt und getötet. Unsere Gedanken sind bei den Angehörigen der Opfer.
Es ist wichtig, dass dieser Vorfall sehr genau aufgeklärt wird.
Scholz, like the rest of the Israel-hating world, rushed to
judgement: the judgment he preferred: Gazans=innocent, Israelis=guilty. Soon scads
of evidence would prove him wrong. Including a recorded conversation between
Hamas operatives clearly attributing the attack to Islamic Jihad.
The hospital explosion, of course, catalyzed the entire
world to damn Israel for “killing hundreds of innocent civilians.” Which of
course, was not true. But like Scholz, none of them were waiting for confirmation
of what they wanted to believe about Israel to somehow excuse the atrocities,
while Jewish bodies are still being processed.
In the Arab world, the state news agency for Kuwait not
surprisingly, “strongly condemned and denounced the Israeli occupation forces'
barbaric airstrike on the Baptist Al-Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip, where
hundreds of innocent civilians were killed.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also rushed to blame
Israel. “Hitting a hospital containing women, children and innocent civilians
is the latest example of Israel's attacks devoid of the most basic human
values. I invite all humanity to take action to stop this unprecedented
brutality in Gaza.”
İçerisinde kadınların, çocukların, masum sivillerin olduğu bir hastaneyi vurmak, İsrail’in en temel insani değerlerden yoksun saldırılarının son örneğidir.
Gazze’de yaşanan ve tarihte benzeri olmayan bu vahşeti durdurmak için tüm insanlığı harekete geçmeye davet ediyorum.
No less than a major in the IDF reserves, Nir Avishai Cohen,
repeatedly called the Gazan people “innocent” in his emotional little leftist
self-congratulatory op-ed in the New
York Times.
For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to
oppressive military rule. In my book “Love Israel, Support Palestine,” I wrote:
“Israeli society has to ask itself very important questions about where and why
the blood of its sons and daughters was spilled. A Messianic religious minority
has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we are following them as if it were the
piper from Hamelin.” When I wrote these words last year, I didn’t realize how
deep in the mud we were, and how much more blood could be shed in so little
time.
I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want
to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are
being controlled by Islamic extremists.
Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians
who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are
not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful
and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have
been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the
intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It
doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless. The ideologies of both have
fueled this conflict, leading to the deaths of too many innocent civilians.
As a major in the reserves, it is important to me to make it
clear that in this already unstoppable new war, we cannot allow the massacre of
innocent Israelis to result in the massacre of innocent Palestinians.
Israel must remember that there are more than two million people living in the
Gaza Strip. The vast majority of them are innocent. Israel must
do everything in its power to avoid killing innocent people and to focus
on destroying the militant army of Hamas.
There is a pattern here, of making a distinction between members
of Hamas and the Gazan people. But it is also here critical to note something that people either don't know or don't like to talk about; the people of Gaza, in democratic elections, elected Hamas to rule them. From the Guardian:
Figures from Palestinian officials tonight confirmed Hamas's
shock win in the Palestinian parliamentary election over the once-dominant
Fatah party.
Polls had predicted a coalition between the two parties as
the most likely outcome of the vote, but a surprise surge in support for the
Islamists took a party that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel
into power.
The preliminary count put Hamas on 76 seats to Fatah's 43 in
the 132 seat chamber. The result could complicate hopes of a peace deal between
Israel and the Palestinians. George Bush said the United States would not deal
with a Hamas-led government unless the party recognised Israel's right to
exist.
As the scale of the Fatah defeat became apparent, its
officials conceded defeat and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, and
his cabinet submitted their resignations. "This is the choice of the
people. It should be respected," Mr Qureia told reporters . . .
. . . Mr Bush said a
party that advocated the destruction of Israel would never be partner for
peace, but also hailed the result as an example of democracy in action.
"If there are people unhappy with the status quo
they'll let you know. What was positive is that it is a wakeup call to the
leadership," he told a White House press conference.
"People are demanding honest government ... people want
services; they want to raise their children in a decent environment."
Everywhere you read about the 2006 Gaza election, you will see the word "democracy" in its various forms and usages. In 2008, Vanity Fairran
a piece about a US plot to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led
government from power with the help of Muhammad Dahlan, a Mahmoud
Abbas rival:
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since
corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert
initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a
Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with
new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to
remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The
State Department declined to comment.)
Palestinians may soon be heading to the polls for the first
time in 15 years. For some, this will be their first taste of electoral
politics and democratic participation. Yet it will not be Palestine’s first
democratic experiment. Long before the advent of the Arab uprisings,
Palestine held free and fair elections to choose a president and a
parliament. In hindsight, these elections, held in 2005 and 2006 respectively,
marked the high point of Palestinian democracy.
The European Union and the United States were initially
strong advocates of Palestinian democracy, and were a driving force
behind the last elections, urging the main political rivals – the Islamist
Hamas and the secular Fatah – to engage constructively in the process. The EU
and the US proved less comfortable when the democratic outcome went
against their interests following Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative
election and the group’s refusal to endorse international demands such as
recognising Israel. Subsequent efforts by the EU and the US to boycott and
undermine the democratically elected government led by Hamas
significantly damaged the Palestinian democratic and state-building project.
This stoked Palestinian political tensions and helped provoke a short civil war
in June 2007 that left Hamas in control of Gaza and President Mahmoud Abbas,
leader of Fatah, in control of the West Bank. These events reverberate to this
day.
Many will try to convince you that the Gazan people were coerced into voting for Hamas. But they were not. The elections were democratic. They were pleased with their choice and showed it, by celebrating when their party won. Al
Jazeerahad the story:
Hamas wins huge majority
Hamas supporters streamed into the streets to celebrate.
In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, supporters shot in the
air and handed out candy. Others honked horns and waved Hamas flags from car
windows.
The elections were, demonstrably, and by all accounts, free and fair and democratic.
So why would anyone call the “civilians” of Gaza “innocent?” All of them
supported Hamas.
A new poll released Tuesday finds a dramatic surge in
Palestinian support for Hamas following last month’s Gaza war, with around three
quarters viewing the Islamic militants as victors in a battle against Israel to
defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.
The scientific poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and
Survey Research also found plummeting support for President Mahmoud Abbas, who
was sidelined by the war but is seen internationally as a partner for reviving
the long-defunct peace process.
The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is
“most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,”
The poll found that 77% of Palestinians believe Hamas
emerged as a winner, with nearly as many saying that it fought the war to
defend Jerusalem and its holy sites, rather than as part of an internal
struggle with Abbas’ Fatah party.
Note that while President Biden, in 2023,
asserts that the “innocent people of Gaza” are somehow distinct from the party they elected, he knows they are not. In fact, after Hamas won the 2006 election, Joe
Biden led a push to cut off US aid to Hamas for winning, and
to the Palestinian Authority for losing:
After Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza, Joe
Biden called for the U.S. to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority.
When Hamas, which the U.S. government had designated a
terrorist organization, won a resounding victory in Gaza, it sent shockwaves
through Washington. Biden called the results “sobering” and declared, “Israel
cannot be expected to negotiate with a party that calls for its destruction.”
Biden said President George W. Bush was “dead right” in his denunciation of the
election results. Within days, Biden began suggesting that the U.S. and Europe
should sanction Hamas and cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority. “The fact
of the matter is, you cannot pour millions and hundreds of millions of dollars
into a group that, in fact, calls for the destruction of an ally, or for any
country, for that matter,” Biden said. As the Bush administration called on
other nations to adopt this stance, Biden said, “Unless they change their
stripes, unless they recognize Israel, unless they change their charter, I
think we do exactly what the president says.”
In a Senate hearing a month after Hamas’s victory, Biden
offered a twisted logic on the importance of elections. “Elections a
democracy don’t make,” he said, pointing specifically to Hamas’s success at the
ballot. “Democracies cannot come to fruition without elections, but you need
the infrastructure for a democracy, and we’ve not done all that well in the
elections being held.” By March, Biden had signed onto a bill that called on
Bush to “direct the United States Executive Director at each international
financial institution to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States
to prohibit assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”
Joe Biden understood, though he pretended he did not, with his
“twisted logic” that democratic elections are somehow not really democratic,
because um, other things. Biden knows that the people of Gaza are not innocent.
They voted for terror, death, and destruction. And they got it.
The innocence of the people of Gaza is in reality, a legend propagated
and perpetuated by Hamas. Hamas does not distinguish between terrorists and “innocents.”
Why should we? Why would the leaders of the world, including Joe Biden? From MEMRI:
The Hamas interior ministry website included the following
text along with its instructional video: "The Information Department of
the Ministry of the Interior and National Security has instructed activists on
social media websites, particularly Facebook, to correct some of the commonly
used terms as they cover the aggression taking place in the Gaza Strip. The
following Information Department video calls on all activists to use the proper
terminology, in order to play their part in strengthening the home front and in
properly conveying information worldwide."
Hamas Social Media Rules: Describe Terrorists as Innocent Civilians
The interior ministry’s “Be Aware – Social Media Activist
Awareness Campaign” centers around an instructional video and posters published
on the ministry’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Gazans are taught, first and
foremost, to refer to all terrorists as innocent civilians.
“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from
Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military
rank,” the guidelines state. “Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or
‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on
Gaza.”
Screenshot of Hamas Facebook post, telling Gazans to use the word "innocent" in referring to terrorists.
Bearing final mention here is the Ben Shapiro video on the
number of radical Muslims in the world. To be a radical Muslim means, of
course, to support and/or engage in terror. The “innocent civilians of Gaza”
have proven that they number themselves among the “vast majority” who share
their sentiments.
In spite of knowing all of this, President Biden took a moment
to inform us that the “overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with
Hamas’s [sic] appalling attacks.” Even when he knows damned well that no such
thing is true.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas’s appalling attacks, and are suffering as a result of them.
Joe Biden is well aware that the “innocent” people of Gaza are
the ones who put the terrorists in charge, and he knows that they like it like
that. Are their children innocent? Does it matter? The parents of the children of Gaza sacrificed them before they were born,
on the altar of their Jew-hatred. Had these children lived, they would have
been reared and educated in UNWRA schools to murder Jews and steal their land. They start them young.
There is no doubt that there is much suffering going on
right now in Gaza. The people who are suffering, are the same people who rejoiced when their leaders massacred Jews. Now they are suffering, but they are not innocent, and I for
one, will not weep. For it is a suffering of their own creation.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
A fire broke out on Friday morning in the Kissufim forest on the Gaza border according to a statement by Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), which manages the site.
Six firefighting teams were deployed to two different areas in the Ben Shemen area near the Adam IDF base in order to prevent the fire from spreading to the base, according to the Ayalon Regional Fire Brigade. Two planes were also deployed to help put out the fires.
It is suspected that incendiary balloons from Gaza started the fire. In 2018, the KKL-JNF statement said, a fire broke out in the exact same place at the outset of a string of incendiary balloon fires.
The last time incendiary balloons caused a fire in the region was in September 2021.
A group called the "Units of the Descendants of Nasser" claimed responsibility for what they called a "blast" of balloons being sent from central Gaza today.
The same group had also claimed to be behind a string of incendiary balloon attacks in 2020 and 2021, saying that "we promise you that we will not rest until the entire envelope east of our occupied territories burns."
Interestingly, in 2021, Hamas arrested members of the group for their attacks on Israeli forests. Which means that if this becomes a new wave of attacks, Hamas is allowing it to happen.
Environmental groups have been peculiarly silent about Palestinian groups deliberately setting forest fires.
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Israel haters were given a huge gift this week courtesy of anti-government protester Shira Eting.
Eting, interviewed by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes, said, "I was a combat helicopter pilot…. If you want pilots to be able to fly and shoot bombs and missiles into houses knowing they might be killing children, they must have the strongest confidence in the people making those decisions."
The modern antisemites have been having a field day with an attractive and articulate Israeli woman matter of factly saying that Israelis knowingly shoot missiles into homes that kill children. Here we have proof of how monstrous Israelis are - even leftist Israelis!
A number of years ago, I looked at a B'Tselem report on families killed in their homes during 2014's Operation Protective Edge. Even that incomplete report showed that many families were acting as human shields for the terrorists - sometimes the shields were the terrorists' own families, and sometimes the terrorists were sheltering in an innocent family home.
This is only what I could find out with open source research. But it proves the point: Israel is not going to bomb a house unless it has excellent intelligence that the house is a legitimate military target. Perhaps a senior terrorists is inside, perhaps a weapons cache is underneath, perhaps a command and control center is in the apartment next door.
As long as the military advantage outweighs the collateral damage, this is a moral decision and also legal under international law. While we are not privy to the specific calculus that Israel uses in making those decisions, it employs teams of lawyers to review every airstrike and goes to great lengths - never reported in the media - to ensure that it minimizes mistakes. Israel goes above and beyond the requirements of the Laws of Armed Conflict in its own policy decisions.
Eting caused more harm to Israel with her out of context quote than the proposed judicial reforms she is protesting could possibly do. But she wasn't wrong in what she said: in the real world, in real wars, decisions must be made that sometimes mean children would die.
In the case of Gaza, that is entirely the fault of the terrorists who deliberately choose to locate military targets in residential areas.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
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At least 1,100 Palestinian kidney patients are facing an interruption of life-saving treatment due to a lack of medicines and medical equipment in the coastal enclave, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
They include 38 children who are in danger of being denied access to dialysis sessions, Ashraf Abu Mahdi, director of the pharmacy department in the Health Ministry, said in a press conference held in Gaza.
"Patients with kidney failure are forced to live in difficult health conditions as medical supplies will be used up soon," Abu Mahdi added.
Abu Mahdi indicated that stores run by the ministry in Gaza are short of related medical supplies, and the hospitals in Gaza provide 13,000 dialysis sessions for patients per month.
He accused Israel of "banning the transport and shipment of medical supplies to the hospitals of the coastal enclave, putting the lives of thousands of kidney patients at risk."
Israel has never blocked the supplies of medicines or consumable medical supplies to Gaza. Any previous shortages were blamed on the Palestinian Authority, not Israel.
The Director of the Hospital Pharmacy Department at the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Alaa Helles, appealed to all concerned authorities “to assume their responsibilities to save the lives of kidney failure patients due to the acute shortage of the necessary medical supplies needed for dialysis sessions, which poses a threat to the lives of 1,100 kidney failure patients, including 38 children.”
Helles called on the relevant authorities to “take urgent action to provide medical consumables for the needs of kidney failure patients, which means continuing service to them and preserving their lives.”
Not a word about Israel, just "authorities." Which is not a word used to refer to Israel.
This is not adding up.
Perhaps a hint to what is really going on can be seen in this June article at ReliefWeb:
In response to the difficult health situation and a looming dialysis services halt in Gaza, Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has provided the hospitals of Palestine’s Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza with a total of 12 dialysis machines and accessories, as well as life-saving medicines and medical consumables for the patients with kidney failure.
Dr. Akram Nassar, head of QRCS’s office in Gaza, said the project of “providing dialysis departments with equipment and medicines in Gaza” was part of QRCS’s unwavering support to the health sector of Gaza. Its aim is to ensure continuing dialysis services, as well as mitigate the impact of depleted medical equipment and supplies for 1,022 patients with kidney failure.
Since 2018, QRCS has been working extensively on dialysis services in Gaza, with three projects to procure 33 dialysis machines, medications, and consumables to MOH hospitals, totaling approximately QR 4.2 million in value.
We learned this week that Qatar was reducing its aid to Gaza. Could it be that they also stopped paying for these dialysis supplies and Gaza has no one else to pay for them?
Given that it appears that Hamas is trying to pressure Israel to pressure Qatar in turn to resume payments, this sounds like it is another means by Hamas - which runs the Gaza health ministry - to make Israel look like the reason for the shortages - and, as we see, the world media won't fact-check any accusations against Israel.
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Khaled Elgindy senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, issues a dire warning at The Hill:
One wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but the next violent eruption in the Gaza Strip may be just around the corner. As most of Washington remains mired in its traditional August doldrums, yet another a potential crisis is brewing in the already isolated and impoverished Gaza Strip. For the past several months, $75 million in badly needed food assistance for Palestinians has been held up in Congress, not because of any bureaucratic or logistical impediments but for purely political reasons. Moreover, if the Biden administration does not act by the end of August, it will likely lead to a further deterioration in the already dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza — with potentially serious security implications for Jordan, Egypt and Israel.
The $75 million, approved by Congress and the State Department earlier this year, is being held up by Idaho Sen. James Risch, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He wants assurances that the funds will not go to terror groups.
Notice anything missing? Yes, the Arab nations are nowhere to be found, and in fact Arab nations provide only a tiny percentage of UNRWA's budget. The top Arab donor, Qatar, gives a mere 5% of what the USA gave in 2021.
The US already provides more aid to UNRWA than anyone else, over $300 million a year. Why is it obligated to give an additional $75 million, which is more than the entire Arab world combined gives to UNRWA? Where are the angry op-eds demanding that Saudi Arabia or China give tens of millions to UNRWA?
Is this all going to be "food aid"? While the original bill says the $75M was for "food
assistance to vulnerable Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza" it cannot be earmarked; UNRWA will simply redirect other moneys to more problematic programs like their schools that teach the beauty of "martyrdom."
A little more context: People have been warning of starving Palestinians for many years now. In 2008 Jimmy Carter said that Gazans were literally "starving to death" and in 2009 he said they were "literally starving."
Interestingly, USAID will provide direct food aid - US food products - and food vouchers to countries where cash might go to terrorists. If there is such a looming food crisis, the US can contribute....food. This would also help US farmers and food producers, and it would be more difficult for Hamas to steal the food and resell it, as it does today with UNRWA products. (Obviously there are logistics involved to set up a direct food program, and it takes months to ramp a program like that up, but it could be done for next year.)
Here is the best part of Elgindy's article:
Despite appeals from the State Department, UNRWA and several Arab governments, Risch shows no sign of budging. “The administration has all the authority they need to provide emergency food assistance to UNRWA,” observed a spokesperson for the senator, adding that Risch “will continue to hold them until his long-term concern about UNRWA are addressed.”
On this, at least, Risch is correct. Biden does indeed have the authority he needs to disburse the funds over Risch’s objections. But this will require taking a stand and expending at least some political capital on an issue—the Palestinians—that has not been a political priority for the administration thus far.
So when a Republican holds up the aid, he is responsible for a looming escalating crisis that may lead to starvation, instability and war. But when Biden chooses not to override the senator, he is merely reluctant to expend political capital.
We are at September 1. Biden didn't override Risch. Let's see if the dire warnings come true.
The reality is that UNRWA is unsustainable as it stands right now. Its unique and bizarre definition of "Palestine refugee" ensures that it will need more funds every year forever. Clearly the world is sick of paying for this: in June a pledging conference for UNRWA netted a mere $107 million of the $300 million they wanted.
The solution is simple. Take 2 million Palestinians who are Jordanian citizens off the rolls. (Provide additional funding for the Kingdom of Jordan for a few years so that government can do its job and take responsibility for its own citizens' education, medical and housing needs.) That slashes UNRWA's budget by some 35%.
Later, do the same for Palestinians who live in the area of British Mandate Palestine, who are not "refugees" by any measure. They are the proper responsibility of the Palestinian Authority which provides schooling and medical services for its citizens - except for the "refugees," an absurd discrimination that the world doesn't seem to mind. That's about 40% more of its budget.
The Palestinians who are still in real need - the ones in Lebanon and Syria - really do deserve funding even though they aren't refugees either, but they have no government on their side. However, political pressure should be put on those countries to allow the Palestinians who have lived there for seven decades to become naturalized like any other Arabs can.
People who care about Palestinians should not object to any of these ideas. But, as we know, the world doesn't care about Palestinians unless they can be used as propaganda tools - "refugees" - to damage Israel.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
It is 107 pages of tendentious and one-sided arguments all intended to declare Israeli actions since 1967 to be illegal. There are counterarguments to each of their arguments - but they don't let the readers know that.
However, the entire basis of the paper is bogus. Turn to page 18, which declares its "methodology.":
The study takes it as a starting point that the Palestinian territory – i.e., the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip – was occupied by Israel in 1967, in the course of an international armed conflict.
Setting aside Gaza for now, the question is - when did that territory become "Palestinian?"
Looking at newspaper articles in the years after the Six Day War, the West Bank was usually described as "occupied Jordan."
Here are two articles from 1972, the first about how militant Arabs threatened fellow Arabs running for office in the first elections in the West Bank after the war:
When, exactly, did the territory turn from "occupied Jordan" into "occupied Palestinian territory"?
It never happened. The world just went along with Palestinian propaganda and eventually believed it.
The question gets starker when we realize that Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1949 was illegal, and almost no nations recognized it. It was never legally Jordanian territory.
So the West Bank was never "occupied Jordan." It was part of the British Mandate of Palestine, the same mandate that promised the land to be the Jewish state. Not a Palestinian homeland - only a Jewish homeland.
This is international law, that has never been abrogated. Israel has a superior legal right to Judea and Samaria than anyone else. Israel's characterization of the territory as "disputed" was probably a mistake - it should have always claimed it all. But "disputed" is accurate, "occupied" is not.
Which is why the Mandate is never mentioned, and the "methodology" deliberately omits it, pretending that the territory is "occupied Palestinian territory" without ever saying when, legally, it became "Palestinian."
The paper spends a lot of time on the argument that the Mandate system provided a "sacred trust" for the rights of self-determination of the peoples in the territories. But as the Palestine Mandate document above shows, only the Jewish people were given that right under the Palestine Mandate. And the reason is as simple as it is unpalatable to the UN's legal "experts" - in 1920, no one considered that there existed an Arab "Palestinian people." The Arabs of Palestine who were speaking of nationalism wanted to become part of Syria, their interest in an independent state only arose (with very few exceptions) after the West drew the borders of British Mandate Palestine and unity with Syria was no longer an option.
To apply the League of Nations Mandate language to apply to the self determination of a people who didn't exist as a people at the time - who didn't even consider themselves a people - is the height of deception.
The next part of the "methodology" is even more absurd:n"The study also takes it as a starting point that Israel continues to occupy the Gaza Strip."
Before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, no legal expert had ever said that an occupation is possible without soldiers physically on the ground controlling the territory.
For example, see the definition in the 1972 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms:
Military occupiers are obligated, under international law, to set up a court system, to ensure that cities are governed and continue to run, to set up an entire bureaucracy to run the territory. That is impossible without "boots on the ground," the informal definition of occupation for over a hundred years.
Israel does not control Gaza. It cannot stop rockets or mortars, weapons manufacturing or military exercises. Israel cannot create a military court system - which is required under the rules of occupation. It cannot arrest anyone.
The second sentence makes it quite clear that Area A in the West Bank is not "occupied" even if one accepts that somehow the West Bank is "Palestinian territory."
As with all other legal analyses when it comes to Israel, this paper was intended from the outset to determine that Israel's actions and "occupation" are illegal. It set the ground rules to ensure that pesky arguments like the League of Nations Mandate or the accepted definitions of occupation pre-2005 not even be brought up. (When JFK blockaded Cuba, did the US "occupy" Cuba?)
This isn't international law. It is twisting international law against only one state - coincidentally, the only Jewish state.
And that is only the beginning of the problems with this document. But since the methodology itself is based on lies, that ensures that the rest of the document built on this foundation of lies is invalid as well.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
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.
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.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Monday, October 23, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
