The @UN @OCHAOPT knows Hamas is lying - but repeats their Gaza statistics anyway

This is from the latest daily UN-OCHA report on Gaza casualties:

"GMO" is the Gaza Media Office, meaning Hamas.

OCHA claims the 33,797 figure comes from the ministry of health. The MoH does parrot the Hamas figures every day.  But it also releases detailed reports every few days of deaths they consider to be verified, which include breakdowns of women, children and elderly, 

It is literally impossible for both sets of numbers reported by OCHA to be correct.

The detailed MoH reports say that they have verified 22,397 deaths, of which 11,847 are women and children (4,642+7,205.) According to Hamas and the UN, there are a total of 24,000 women and children killed. 

The difference between the number of women and children counted between the two sources (12,153)  is higher than the total difference of all deaths between the two sources (11,400.) 

Hamas is provably lying - and the UN happily repeats their lies and gives them credibility. The UN reports then get repeated by other UN agencies, media and NGOs as authoritative, notwithstanding the small text on the bottom of the OCHA reports saying "The UN has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures; the current numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza and await further verification." That isn't good enough: once we know the Hamas GMO is lying, it is irresponsible and libelous to give them any further credibility. 

And this has been going on for a long time. The MoH had divided up its "martyrs" into two categories for months - the ones it could confirm and the ones it repeated from Hamas. Both sets have been inconsistent with each other and with Hamas claims of total women and children casualties, but OCHA still always used to unreliable numbers in their headlines.

But, hey, this is the UN we are talking about, where the most outlandish anti-Israel lies are treated as gospel.

---

---

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!

 

Read More

The @WashingtonPost's investigation about Shifa Hospital misses the real story

On Thursday, the Washington Post published an investigation  casting doubt on whether Shifa Hospital in Gaza was being used as a Hamas command center.

Its top major finding: "The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas."

The key to the story is the word "immediate:"

“The law is about what was in the mind of the attacker at the time the attacker planned and executed the mission with respect to both what they expected the collateral damage they expected to cause and the military advantage they anticipated gaining,” said Michael Schmitt, an emeritus professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

The IDF would not comment on the military advantage sought or achieved.

“What was the urgency? This is not yet being demonstrated,” said Yousuf Syed Khan, a senior lawyer with Global Rights Compliance, a law firm, who has drafted U.N. reports on siege warfare.

While the underground tunnel uncovered by Israeli forces after the raid does point to a possible militant presence underneath the hospital at some point, it does not prove that a command node was operating there during the war.

“We’re getting more of a granular, three-dimensional understanding of al-Shifa Hospital, the tunnels underneath it,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department and now a senior adviser at Crisis Group.

“What we’re really lacking here is a confident understanding of the fourth dimension, which is time. When were various elements of the hospital being used in certain ways? When were the tunnels beneath the hospital complex being used in certain ways?”

The Washington Post has its doubts:

The bare, white-tiled rooms showed no immediate evidence of use — for command and control or otherwise. There are no signs of recent habitation, including litter, food containers, clothing or other personal items.  

Let's look at the context.

Hamas' use of the hospital for military purposes was well known as early as 2006. Even the Washington Post itself wrote in 2014 that it  “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” 

Israel had built bunkers under the hospital when Gaza was under Israeli control, but bunkers aren't tunnels. However, we know that there were tunnels under Gaza's Al Wehda Street that were bombed in the 2014 war, and that street leads directly to the hospital compound. Given that Hamas built hundreds of tunnel shafts underneath their offices and leaders' homes, it is apparent that there were connections between Hamas offices in the hospital basement and the tunnels under Al Wehda Street.

Israel might not have revealed the specific locations of each shaft, and that is hardly important considering that there is no doubt that these tunnels existed directly underneath a hospital.

Just as there is no doubt that the only purpose of these tunnels, underground rooms and bathrooms is military. They aren't hotels or summer camps.

The IDF first laid out a specific series of accusations about the Shifa Hospital on October 27, nearly three weeks before the raid, before the ground war even began. There were unofficial discussions of Shifa Hospital before that. It didn't show "urgency" - it showed unheard-of patience before moving in.

Hamas knew the IDF was coming for them. And they had weeks to clear out and clean up the evidence from the tunnels (even though they left behind plenty of weapons on the hospital grounds themselves, which were harder to clean up since there were so many people around.)

Here's the part that no one is talking about: The IDF knew quite well that they were giving Hamas a heads up that they were coming. They knew Hamas would not stay and it would hide evidence of explicit military use. So why give the warning at all? Why not surprise Hamas? What army tells the enemy where they will be going?

The warning was meant to force Hamas commanders to move to other areas. 

This achieves three military aims. Firstly, it  disrupts their operations temporarily. Secondly,  it allows the IDF to go there, gather evidence and valuable intelligence like footage from cameras, and destroy the military infrastructure beneath Shifa without a firefight and endangering patients and civilians taking shelter. And thirdly, Hamas leaders moving to other areas allows Israel to attack them without worrying about the complexity of protecting hospital patients during a battle.

Israel has now released evidence that Hamas brought hostages to Shifa. The tunnels had electricity and plumbing that were attached to Shifa's infrastructure. Weapons were found in the radiology ward and in a garage on Shifa's grounds. We know that employees and even directors at other hospitals were also Hamas terrorists. The Gaza health ministry is Hamas and it admits its officials have Hamas military rank. While there might not be direct evidence of Hamas using those tunnels underneath Shifa in mid-November as their main headquarters, no one can seriously doubt that Hamas used the hospital for military purposes and that the reason was to use the patients as human shields. 

Israel managed to clear Hamas out of the hospital it was using for military purposes with a minimum of fighting and a minimum of physical destruction. That is not violating international law - it is adhering to it in ways far beyond the limited imaginations of those whose entire worldview is poisoned by always assuming malevolence from Israel.

---

---

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!

 

Read More

Gaza health ministry claims hospital director was tortured - but sort of admits he's right

The Hamas ministry of health released a statement this morning in response to the video of Kamal Adwan Hospital director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot admitting that Hamas militants control the hospital, uses their ambulances and offices for military activity.

They claim that Kahlot's statement was given after he was tortured, writing on Facebook: 

In the face of a new chapter of ongoing crimes targeting the health sector, the occupation forces destroyed large parts of Kamal Adwan Hospital and arrested the hospital director, intimidating and coercing him to give the story of the occupation under the force of beating and torture, we would like to clarify the following:

Their explanation pretty much admits a great deal that Kahlot said!

1. Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot works within the cadres of the Military Medical Services, which is an official body affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior and within the approved components of the Palestinian National Authority.

 So the hospital is run by the Hamas military. 

2. The rank of brigadier general is a job rank in the medical services apparatus affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, and it is a known and applicable rank throughout the world.

They admit giving Al-Kahlot a military rank within Hamas.

3. The presence of official components and bodies inside the hospital, such as medical investigations and official agencies affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, came as a result of the destruction of the infrastructure of these agencies and the search for a place that provides the necessary work requirements, and they are approved agencies within the structure of the Ministry of Interior.

So the Hamas Ministry of Interior - which is responsible for police and other security services - really did have offices in the hospital. (They don't say what everyone knows: the Hamas police are also largely members of the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades.)

4. What was stated by Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot was under the force of oppression, torture and intimidation, and we call on all human rights institutions to denounce this criminal behavior practiced by the occupation against our people in general and against health work crews in particular to extract a story consistent with the occupation’s demand, and to extract this testimony under threat. Publishing it in audio and video is a war crime in itself.

There you have it. Using hospitals as military sites isn't the war crime  - posting video of the hospital director admitting it is the real war crime!

We call on human rights institutions to open an urgent investigation into the Kamal Adwan Hospital massacre, where children were besieged without water, without food, without electricity, and without water for extended days, which ended with the bombing of the hospital, the killing of two women and two children among the patients, and the injury of dozens. This was followed by storming the hospital and arresting dozens. Of the displaced, the sick, the health personnel, the brutal assault against them, the digging up of graves, the demolition of the hospital, the crushing of bodies under the tracks of tanks, and other horrific details.

Translation: We have to get the narrative back!

The problem is, they probably will. The media is always willing to give Hamas the benefit of the doubt while casting aspersions on everything the IDF says. Which is, really, a form of antisemitism, to say that Jews are suspected of lying with everything they say, even when compared to terrorists who celebrate murdering women and children.

---

---

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!

 

Read More

Hospital head is a Hamas lieutenant colonel. His lies were widely quoted by the media for months.

Times of Israel reports:

The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabaliya has revealed in a Shin Bet interrogation that his northern Gaza hospital was turned into a military facility under Hamas’s control and that at one point, it had housed a kidnapped soldier.

In footage published on Tuesday by the Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces, hospital director Ahmed Kahlot could be seen telling an Israeli interrogator that Hamas had offices inside the hospital and used it as a base for operational activity.

According to Kahlot, who said he has been a lieutenant colonel in Hamas since 2010, some 16 members of the hospital’s staff — including doctors, nurses and paramedics — were Hamas operatives serving in the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the terror organization.

He added that several members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades were also employed in the hospital.

Here is his statement:

 Kahlout was widely quoted by the media for two months. Now that we know he is Hamas, we can assume that a large percentage of his statements that helped shape world opinion were propaganda.

So what has the media quoted a Hamas official as if he was a dedicated medical professional?

AP quoted him November 7 defending how casualty numbers from Hamas' health ministry are trustworthy.  

“Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent,” said Ahmed al-Kahlot, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. “More than anything, we are medical professionals.”

The Guardian, November 12:

 The head of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital has told Al Jazeera that the hospital has run out of fuel.

“Ahmed al-Kahlout, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the facility’s main generator has run out of fuel, forcing the hospital to shut its operation,” the news organisation reports.

More than 5,000 people are sheltering at the hospital in addition to patients, al-Kahlout said.

The Guardian, November 22, quoted him again:

The hospital had received more than 60 bodies with over 200 injured since last night, he added. “The medical teams are very tired. We don’t have a single drop of fuel. We work in the dark using handheld searchlights,” he said

In another message distributed by the health ministry, Kahlout said the hospital was using cooking oil rather than diesel to run the hospital’s generators, and an ambulance targeting the wounded had been struck near the hospital grounds.

CNN, December 11, quoted him as saying that the maternity ward was hit by tank shelling, killing two women and leaving two more so badly wounded their legs required amputation.

Pravda, December 12:

"Israeli drones target anyone entering or leaving the hospital. ...The IOF targeted the hospital's water system, and we had to rely on groundwater. No electricity, water, or food in the hospital. The IOF shelled the maternity ward. Three children in the hospital lost their lives in the last three days due to a shortage of oxygen. "

Every quote from every medical professional in Gaza since October 7 is as suspect as Al-Kahlout's. But there was no skepticism about his accusations - until now. 

Now that he is telling everyone that Hamas controls the hospitals and ambulances, the Times of London has lots of reservations about  his statements:

Israel has sought to justify arresting scores of medical staff in Gaza by posting a video that purports to show a hospital manager confessing to working for Hamas.

Ahmed Kahlot, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained last week along with 70 other medical staff.

The release of the video was condemned by pro-Palestinian groups, who said there was no justification for publishing interrogation evidence obtained under unclear conditions without the presence of a lawyer.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks earlier in the conflict working in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals, said the Israelis were taking these actions because their attempts to show al-Shifa had been used as a command centre had failed.

“The Israelis plan to have show trials to justify the attacks on hospitals, because the whole narrative on al-Shifa was so ludicrous,” he said.

---

---

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!

 

Read More

More EoZ cartoons

---

---

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!

 

Read More

Antisemites framing the discussion so Israel can't win

Israel-haters/antisemites often use an exceptionally effective method to win in the court of public opinion, known a "framing." When one sets the ground rules of what is and is not up for debate, they can create a playing field where the Zionist or Jewish side cannot win. Forcing Jews to argue within those parameters gives them a huge handicap.

One classic example is to pretend that the history of Israel starts with modern Zionism. If you exclude any talk about the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel before the 19th century, they look just like the foreign colonialists that the haters claim we are. 

With Operation Iron Swords, the framing has been elaborate and very effective.

The false framework goes like this:

* Telling civilians to move, whether within or without their territory,  is a war crime.

* Neighboring countries have no obligation to accept refugees.

* Killing lots of civilians is a war crime by definition. 

* Limiting humanitarian aid to a war zone is a war crime.

All discussions of the war on TV is bound by this framework. These four "rules" are not always explicit, which makes it harder to go against them. Who wants to see dead civilians? 

The framing statements are incorrect.  But the framework is carefully created to ensure that Israel cannot achieve its military objective of destroying Hamas.

* In fact, in a war zone, the attacker is obligated to tell civilians to move out of the war zone - which Israel has done and Hamas has tried to stop. 

* While I don't think that Egypt is legally obligated to open its border, it never had a problem with taking in hundreds of thousands of other refugees from elsewhere. It certainly has a moral obligation to do so.

* Targeting civilians is a war crime. Knowing that civilians will die during an attack on a legitimate military target is acceptable as long as the casualties are not excessive, and international law has a much more liberal view of what is excessive than what Israel does.

* Israel has every right to inspect and limit aid to ensure that Hamas does not get it. 

But the first four rules are accepted as the framework on CNN and Al Jazeera. Most news shows don't bother explaining the truth about international law because nuance is not TV-friendly. 

Spokespeople on TV must break the framework by saying that they do not accept these parameters and creating their own, accurate framework:

* Hamas started this war with an unprecedented, horrific attack on Israel.

* Hamss has made it clear that they will never change or reform. This is who they are.

* The only moral choice is to utterly destroy them.

* Hamas has turned the entire Gaza Strip into a huge human shield for its army and vast subterranean military complex.  

* Israel scrupulously follows international law even under these difficult constraints.

* Therefore, while Israel tries to minimize casualties, every civilian death is purely Hamas' fault.

How many TV shows or newspaper articles have you read that accepts these accurate statements as their framework? 

It's going to be a long war, and Israel needs to reframe the discussion. 

---

---

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!

 

Read More

Arab writer admits that Arab leaders only pretend to care about Palestinians for their own purposes

Writing in Alaraby, Hulmi al-Asmar writes that normalization maybe isn't so bad - that perhaps if Arab nations act nicely to Israel, Israel will implode from infighting since it is dependent on aggression.

Setting aside his main argument, al-Asmar gives a brief description of how Arab leaders have used the Palestinian issue for their own benefit, and how they have actually hurt the Palestinians with this cynical pretense.

For years, official Arab discourse used to murmur a heavy [Palestinian] "nationalist" sentiment, to the effect that "Palestine is the Arabs' top issue." From this slogan, a series of canned phrases emerged that affirmed standing by the Palestinian people and calling for their victory. Preachers filled the space with resonant speech in forums all over the world, and printed millions of pages with them. Books, poems, and commentaries were written about it, and they pulled their voices and roared their throats with enthusiastic songs. Millions of statements, and thousands of conferences and summits were also held, all of which threatened the enemy, or at least “confirmed its position in support of the Palestinian people, and their right to establish their independent state and defeat the occupation.” More than that, under the heading of “confronting the Zionist threat,” billions were spent on arming their armies, while morsels of bread were withheld from the mouths of the hungry, in preparation for the decisive battle with the “enemy” to build what they called “Arab national security,” and for that purpose legislation, emergency laws, and martial law were enacted. How can it not, when the nation is in a state of war and on constant alert? Therefore, there is no time for the luxury of “democracy,” nor for the “mockery” of elections, social justice, and other rights. This is not the time (!), as the nation is passing through a “delicate circumstance” and a “turning point.” It is a "dangerous time in history" and a "sensitive stage" that requires not paying attention to these "trivialities", and focusing effort on confronting "the enemy's plans" aimed at tearing apart the Arab ranks, and undermining "national dignity and nationalism!", etc., to the end of this series of great lies that may have passed on the minds of the "masses"... So what was the result?

Israel is expanding and strengthening every day, while Palestine is withering, and its nakba has been “Arabized” and reproduced. It was not limited to the Palestinian people, but the Arab regime produced other versions and more and revised versions of the Arab catastrophes, so that almost every Arab country has its own nakba. 

This is stuff we've been saying for many years.  It is rare indeed to see these words in Arabic:

---

---

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!

 

Read More