Showing posts with label rockets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rockets. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 05, 2023


One of the Hamas terrorists arrested by Israeli forces in Jenin on Monday was Abdallah Hassan Muhammad Zubah. He is known to be one of the major forces behind the nascent West Bank rocket firing attempts.

There have been several attempts to fire rockets over the past few months into Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. They've so far either misfired or landed away from the Jewish targets. 

The luck won't hold out forever. The genie is out of the bottle and Hamas and other terror groups have plenty of experience building rockets which they are anxious to transfer to the West Bank. 

As unacceptable as it is to have large arsenals of rockets in Gaza (and Lebanon) aimed at Jewish communities, in some ways rockets in the West Bank would be worse. Their targets are often very close by, and unlike with Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel has no government to pressure to stop the rockets from being fired - just as with in the West Bank can easily get M16s, they will soon be able to put together crude rockets. 

Right now, Israeli forces can arrive on the scene of a terror attack within minutes in Judea and Samaria. It can pro-actively stop rocket launchers being setup if it has proper intelligence.  But if Israel would unilaterally withdraw from areas of those territories, each incident becomes an invasion.

This is reason by itself that unilateral withdrawals, or a Palestinian state even on provisional borders, is a supremely bad idea. 

But the rocket fire will come, sooner rather than later. Jewish communities will be threatened. The same "primitive" rockets with a two-mile range that reach Sderot from Gaza can also reach the suburbs of Netanya from Tulkarm. 

Not enough people are considering the dangers of West Bank rockets - and the media won't care until they kill someone. If even then. 

Now is the time that Israel needs to pro-actively let the media and world leaders know that any rocket that injures or kills an Israeli will prompt a massive response that can cause unpredictable results. The PA needs to be pressured by its international  friends to step up its presence in the "refugee camps" and other areas it has effectively ceded to Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups. 

Because otherwise, as always, the world will be fixated on the "disproportionate" response more than the rockets themselves. 



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

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Wednesday, May 17, 2023


Gazan rocket attacks may not seem to kill many Jews, with notable, tragic exceptions such as 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman, 16-year-old Daniel Viflic, and most recently, 80-year-old Inga Avramyan. But Gazan terror rockets may be killing Jews in other, more insidious ways. Since 2012, for example, researchers have known that rocket attacks are a significant risk factor for preterm delivery (PTD), the leading cause of infant mortality among Jewish Israelis. In effect, one might say that rockets are killing Israeli Jews even before they are born.

Tamar Wainstock, PhD, School of Public Health; Faculty of Health Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, has done groundbreaking work on the effect of rocket attacks on pregnancy outcomes for women in Southern Israel. I reached out to Wainstock who sent me the 2012 study, Was the military operation “cast lead” a risk factor for preterm deliveries?, along with three related studies that she, personally led.

Pregnancy and Delivery Outcomes: Operation Cast Lead

In the 2012 study, pregnancy and delivery outcomes of women who gave birth during Operation Cast Lead are compared to those of women who gave birth during the same time period of 1 and 2 years before and after the war. Women exposed to the stress of the military campaign were found to have significantly more preterm deliveries at gestational age 32-34 weeks (1.6% vs. 0.8%). 

The researchers introduce the subject of the study as follows (emphasis added):

Gestational age is one of the most important predictors of an infant’s subsequent health and survival. Preterm infants are at an increased risk of death or short-term and long-term disability than those born at term. Preterm delivery (PTD) refers to birth that begins after 20 weeks gestation and before 37 completed weeks of gestation.

The 2012 study authors explain that stress is recognized as a risk factor for PTD, offering examples of other stress-producing attacks and conflicts in various parts of the world that have affected pregnancy outcomes. At that time (2012), the data was sparse, as the researchers note:

Studies on the influence of war related acute stress on fertility and pregnancy outcomes are limited and very controversial. The Persian Gulf War at 1990–1991 which presented Israel with a threat of chemical attacks on civilian localities have been studied and examined for the effect of environmental stress on health. After the Gulf War a significant rise of spontaneous abortions has been observed – starting from 1992, reaching a peak in 1994, which then began to decline in 1996.

The NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 included widespread bombing [affecting] civilians for a period of four month. Krstić et al. examined the influence of stress on duration of pregnancy and prenatal outcomes during the NATO operation. They found a significant shortening of the last trimester under the influence of stress but no significant difference in the incidence of PTD. Spandorfer et al. examined women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles over 13 weeks that included September 11th, the terrorist attack on New York. Although conception rates were similar before and after the terrorist attacks, patients who became pregnant in the weeks after September 11th had a pregnancy loss rate of 47.9% compared with 28.6% among women pregnant in the weeks before this period.

[Aside from these] few studies, there is not enough evidence of the impact of war and terrorism on gestational duration.

The researchers write of the need for national resilience in times of emergency:

Emergency national resilience is the physical and mental ability of the country’s civilian economy and government authorities to ensure the continued functioning of routine life, in light of the ongoing emergency. This strength is measured by the ability to effectively manage the event, and to return to a functional community thereafter. Treatment of populations with special needs at the time of emergency reflects the society’s resilience. Preliminary mapping of special populations by the local and national authorities has a great influence on the ability to handle effectively these populations during an emergency. Historically special attention was given to special populations at times of war.

During World War II in the “London Blitz” the government decided on preventive evacuation beginning with children and elders from the city centers. They also [devised] a special maternity care plan for pregnant women and sent them to maternity homes established far from [cities under attack]. At Israel’s independence war (1948) an organized evacuation of children was carried out. The “Second Lebanon War” between the terrorist organization Hezbollah and Israel (2006) [lacked any] organized national evacuation program.

In their conclusion, the Operation Cast Lead-related study researchers find that the period of the military operation “was adversely associated with an increase in the rate of early PTD (<34 weeks gestation). From a public health perspective, pregnant women should be considered a special population and should be taken into account in a preparedness program for an emergency crisis and must be an important part of the public agenda and the state’s infrastructure.”

Preemies are rushed to shelters at Barzilai Hospital

Rockets, Preterm Delivery, and Low Birth Weight

Wainstock’s 2014 study, Exposure to life-threatening stressful situations and the risk of preterm birth and low birth weight, evaluated the association between exposure to life-threatening rocket attacks and the risks of preterm birth (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW). The rates of PTB and LBW were found to be higher among the exposed women as compared to those in other parts of the country (PTB: 9.1% versus 6.8%, P=0.004; LBW: 7.6% versus 5.8%, P=0.02). The paper offers the following context for this research:

The unfortunate situation in southern Israel presents an opportunity to study this association. The southern Israeli town of Sderot (population of approximately 20 000) has been a constant target of rocket-firing from the Gaza Strip (4 km away) since 2001. These rocket attacks are preceded by a warning alarm, informing residents to seek shelter. The alarms are loud, sudden, and stress-inducing because they are sounded only a few seconds before rockets hit the town. Between April 2001 and December 2008, over 1000 alarms were sounded around the town. Numerous rockets fell and exploded, causing damage to property and human lives.

Stress and Fetal Sex 

Wainstock led a further study on maternal stress and pregnancy outcomes that same year, Fetal sex modifies effects of prenatal stress exposure and adverse birth outcomes, with the aim of discovering whether the sex of the fetus makes a difference in “the association between continuous exposure to life-threatening rocket attack alarms and adverse pregnancy outcomes.” Wainstock and her team found that male fetuses may handle stress better than their female counterparts. “Regarding all adverse outcomes, the male-to-female ratio was higher in the exposed group than in the unexposed group. The findings support the hypothesis that male and female fetuses respond differentially to chronic maternal stress.”

The introduction explains:

Male-to-female ratio at birth, defined as secondary sex ratio (SSR), is usually greater than 1.0, and has been shown to vary with exposure to stressful conditions experienced by pregnant women either pre-conception or during pregnancy. Under circumstances including terror attacks, earthquakes, periods of economic insecurity and unemployment, a decreased SSR has been observed (Catalano et al., 2005, 2006; Hansen et al., 1999; Navara, 2010; Obel et al., 2007).

It is suggested that female fetuses adapt to poor intrauterine environment by decreasing growth rate, while fetal male response may be less adaptive, and may be expressed as IUGR stillbirth or early pregnancy loss, often referred to as the ‘‘male culling effect’’ (Clifton, 2010; Torche & Kleinhaus, 2012).

Here the focus is on stress produced in relation to the sirens that warn of impending rocket-fire:

Since 2001, the Israeli southern city of Sderot (population 20,000) has been constantly exposed to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip (distance 4 km), creating extremely stressful conditions. These rocket attacks are preceded by warning alarms, informing residents to seek shelter. The alarms are loud, sudden and stress-inducing, as they are sounded only a few seconds before the rocket hit the town and residents have 15 [seconds] to run for cover.

This study looked at the data on deliveries from years 2002 to 2008. While we are now somewhat better prepared, for example with Iron Dome, things have not much changed since that time. The pregnant women of Sderot are still hearing alarms, and running for cover. Quite possibly to the detriment of the female population.

Premature babies being moved to safety at Barzilai Hospital

Objective and Perceived Stress

The final study shared with me by Dr. Wainstock, The association between prenatal maternal objective stress, perceived stress, preterm birth and low birthweight, involved a smaller sample and self-reporting, but was, in some way, even more striking: “Women exposed to rocket attacks during the second trimester of pregnancy were more likely to deliver LBW infants than were unexposed women (14.9% versus 3.3%, p = 0.03).”

Note that according to the World Health Organization (emphasis added), “Low birth weight infants are about 20 times more likely to die than heavier infants."

Two groups of women were studied this time around:

[The] women residing in Sderot were considered the Exposed Group. Women residing in Kiryat Gat, located 20 km from Gaza strip, which at the time was not a target for rocket attacks, were considered as the ‘‘unexposed group’’. Kiryat Gat was chosen for comparison since it has the same socioeconomic ranking as does Sderot and is located at the same distance from Barzilai Medical Center.

The study population composed of 267 women who resided in Sderot at the time of delivery and 403 women who resided in Kiryat Gat, all of whom delivered singletons at Barzilai Medical Center during 2008. During that year the rate of rocket-attacks and alarms intensified, with 500 alarms sounded in and around Sderot (versus 239 during 2007 and 125 during 2006).

The paper concludes:

Although sample size was limited, the present findings suggest that the use of objective measure of stress might adequately identify women at risk for adverse birth outcomes, whether or not the extent of the stress is perceived.

Most of us realize that stress and trauma lead to anxiety, depression, and PTSD. All of these ill effects have been found to be more extensive in residents of the Gaza envelope who suffer from hundreds of rocket attacks each year. But how many of us realize the impact of rocket attacks on infant mortality and consequently on the overall population of Israel?

Media consumers look for a body count. When they don’t see reports of large numbers of Jewish dead, they tell us that it’s the people of Gaza who are suffering—that for Jews, the rockets have only nuisance value. What they don’t see (and aren’t looking for) is the number of babies who just don’t make it due to maternal stress—the kind of stress that is due to alarms, rocket-fire, and living under constant threat of death.

That’s a body count that has yet to be tallied and you’ll likely never see it in the news.

A special thank you to Dr. Tamar Wainstock, who gave so generously of her time to share the research cited here. Any and all errors here are my sole responsibility.



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!

 

 

Friday, November 04, 2022

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Israel’s right to sideline the Left
The emerging landslide victory for the camp headed by Israeli opposition leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is causing more than the average stir. Though there’s nothing unusual about a losing side feeling disappointed by an unwanted result at the ballot box, the outcome of Tuesday’s Knesset elections – the fifth round in three-and-a-half years – is generating a level of disgruntlement not seen in the country since 1977.

That was the year when Menachem Begin, founder of the Likud Party now chaired by Netanyahu, became premier. The upheaval ended three decades of Labor Party dominance.

Panic on the Left was palpable and shrill, with detractors calling him a terrorist, likening him to Mussolini and bemoaning Israel’s inevitable downfall at his hands. Not only was the frenzy unwarranted but in retrospect, it was laughable.

Today’s equally undue apoplexy surrounds two phenomena: Netanyahu’s smashing comeback, which his foes had been doing everything to quash, and the meteoric rise to mega-popularity of Otzma Yehudit MK Itamar Ben-Gvir.

At Netanyahu’s behest prior to the election, Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionist MK Bezalel Smotrich merged their factions so as to prevent the possibility of split and wasted ballots. The move turned out to be a brilliant one, as together they garnered a large number of seats.

The haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism also increased their mandates. The upshot is a strong majority for the Right with Netanyahu at the helm. In other words, for the first time in its history, Israel will have an exclusively nationalist and religious governing coalition.
Jonathan Tobin: The panic in the US surrounding Israel’s next government is about politics, not values
As far as many American Jews are concerned, this time the Israelis have gone too far. After more than four decades of tolerating, with decreasing patience and growing disdain, Israeli governments that were led by the Likud Party, the results of this week’s Knesset election go beyond the pale for a lot of liberals.

Their angst is not so much focused on the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu for his third stint as the Jewish state’s prime minister, even though he is widely viewed by many Jewish Democrats as the moral equivalent of a red-state Republican. The panic about the election results is caused by the fact that the Religious Zionist Party and its leaders, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, will play a leading role in the next governing coalition. The party won 14 seats, making it the third largest in the Knesset and an indispensable part of the majority that Netanyahu is about to assemble.

The prospect of Smotrich, and especially Ben-Gvir, sitting in Netanyahu’s Cabinet has not just set off a bout of pearl-clutching on the part of liberal Jewish groups. It’s also led to the sort of ominous rhetoric describing a crack-up of the relationship between American and Israeli Jews that goes beyond the usual rumblings about the growing distance between the two communities.

There are legitimate questions to be posed about Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Time will tell whether they are up to the challenge of their new responsibilities and act in a manner that helps, rather than hurts, Netanyahu’s efforts to consolidate support for his government at home and abroad. But what no one seems to be considering is whether the rush to judgment about them says more about Diaspora Jewry’s obsessions than it does about the embrace of nationalist and religious parties by Israel’s voters.

The pair are the embodiment of everything that most American Jews don’t like about the Jewish state. Their unapologetic nationalism and perceived hostility to Arabs, gays and non-Orthodox Judaism are anathema to liberal Americans.

But the interesting thing about the statements coming out of groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and more unabashedly leftist organizations is the way they highlight their worries about the new Israeli government by pointing to the supposed threat that the Religious Zionist Party poses to Israeli democracy.
The Return of Bibi Netanyahu
In Israel, just as in the U.S., the Right typically tends to perform better when the public votes on issues pertaining to the economy and, above everything else, crime, public safety, and national security. Israel has generally been in a shakier place, from a public safety perspective, ever since the Jewish state's last full-scale war with Gaza-based Hamas in May 2021. There have been a number of terrorist attacks and shootings, not merely in Judea and Samaria but even in the liberal/secular heart of Israel, Tel Aviv, that have shocked the national conscience. Israeli-Arab violence, and even the occasional vandalism of synagogues, has at times escalated in mixed Jewish/Arab cities. The Israel Defense Forces has also been forced to step up its counterterrorism operations to thwart the now-ascendant jihad waged by the "Lions' Den" militant group, which is based in Nablus.

At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is still dealing with the domestic fallout of its state-sponsored murder of protester Mahsa Amini, inches ever closer to the bomb. Iran poses a significant threat to the West and to the U.S., but it poses an existential threat to Israel. In fact, it is, at this time, Israel's only true existential threat. And there is no one Israelis trust more to handle the Iran portfolio than Netanyahu, who gave a tremendous speech to the U.S. Congress in March 2015 excoriating the then-ongoing Iran nuclear deal negotiations, oversaw the daredevil Mossad operation to expose and airlift out Iran's nuclear secrets a few years later, and who helped achieve the 2020 Abraham Accords peace with the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Morocco, which is best understood as an anti-Iran regional containment coalition.

Put simply, Israelis finally sobered up and (correctly) realized that Netanyahu is the best person to steward the Jewish state on issues pertaining to law and order, public safety, national security, and even Israel's international diplomacy. Israelis should be applauded for this decision. The so-called international community will undoubtedly blanch at the inclusion of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in Netanyahu's governing coalition, but, frankly: Who the hell cares? The Israeli people, and only the Israeli people, can deem what is best for them and their country. The Biden administration, and other Western actors, should respect their judgment.

Tuesday, June 14, 2022



It is the 15th anniversary of the Hamas terror group taking over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in a bloody mini-war. For 15 years, Gazans have lived under a dictatorial Islamist terror regime, that kills suspected "collaborators," gives perks to Hamas members, and steals international aid meant for the people.

So naturally, Human Rights Watch decided to use the occasion to issue yet another anti-Israel report, calling Gaza an "open-air prison." 
Israel’s closure policy blocks most Gaza residents from going to the West Bank, preventing professionals, artists, athletes, students, and others from pursuing opportunities within Palestine and from traveling abroad via Israel, restricting their rights to work and an education. Restrictive Egyptian policies at its Rafah crossing with Gaza, including unnecessary delays and mistreatment of travelers, have exacerbated the closure’s harm to human rights.  
To HRW, allowing terrorists to enter Israel freely so they can kill Israeli humans is the epitome of "human rights." 

The report adds nothing new to HRW's long list of anti-Israel reports. In fact, it could have been written five years ago with little change. Even though Israel has given thousands of work permits to Gazans to work in Israel in the past year, this little fact is not mentioned in a report that is almost entirely about the restrictions on Gazans' freedom of movement. 

That isn't the only omission. To HRW, Israel has no reason to treat Hamas as anything less thasn law-abiding moral citizens. 

The report does not mention the word "rockets" once.

It also doesn't mention the arson kites, the balloons with incendiary devices meant to start fires in Israel, or the regular arms fire that reaches Israeli communities. It doesn't mention the attacks from Gazans who have entered Israel for medical reasons. 

This is a report about Israeli restrictions on Gaza movement with barely a word as to why Israel might not want to allow Gazans to enter.

This is yet another reason why HRW cannot and should not be taken seriously.




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!

 

 

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Tonight, Dr. Richard Landes spoke at Rutgers University. He is the author of The Augean Stables blog, The Second Draft blog documenting media manipulation by Palestinian Arabs and their supporters, and the driving force behind the Understanding the Goldstone Report blog. Somehow, he also manages to be a professor of history at Boston University and the author of numerous books and articles on topics I cannot begin to understand. 

 His topics tonight were wide-ranging but centered on the media and the Middle East conflict. He brought up numerous videos showing how the media reported on Gaza and how they purposefully ignored facts that would make Hamas look bad. Landes also spent a bit of time on the Goldstone report and on the Mohammed al-Dura Pallywood case. I hadn't told him one way or the other whether I would attend, and tried to keep a low profile, but when he mentioned my blog I admitted who I was. (I am not utterly without ego, but I am working on it.) 

So this was a rare public appearance by The Elder. Landes ascribes much of the anti-Israel bias of the media to the media's fear of Hamas (and Hezbollah.) There is no doubt that this is a strong contributor - terrorists make no secret of the fact that if they are displeased with you, they will make your life unpleasant. And they watch the news. We saw it happen in Lebanon with Hezbollah, and we saw it in Gaza with Hamas and the other terror groups, especially a few years ago when journalists were regularly kidnapped. 

 After Western reporters all fled Gaza, all that were left were Palestinian reporters who have an inherent anti-Israel bias. But more importantly, they are scared witless of Hamas. Hamas has attacked press agencies numerous times. Here is an incident last year when Hamas attacked a mosque, beat people there and trashed it before taking it over. Not one mainstream media outlet published this story. The reason is clearly because of Hamas' threats against Gaza reporters. (Hezbollah also carefully managed news media access to the Lebanon war in 2006, a lot more subtly than Hamas but very effectively.) The New York Times did run a story once on how Gaza reporters censor themselves out of fear. One can pinpoint the exact date that Gaza journalism died. It was mid-June, 2007, and it is detailed in this article from Ma'an - possibly the last objective article Ma'an has ever written about Hamas:
Local Palestinian radio stations in the Gaza Strip were launched in quick succession over recent years. As many as eleven radio stations were counted operating in Gaza Strip in a short space of time. Many of the stations had been closed and looted during the recent conflict in the strip. Ash Sha'b station, affiliated to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was looted, whilst Al Hurriya and Ash Shabab, affiliated to Fatah, chose to cease transmission. The spokesperson of the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubayda, vehemently denied that the brigades had threatened any of the local stations. Abu Ubayda told Ma'an that the radio stations halted transmission willingly because they were working within a certain framework and their coverage of events in Gaza was partial, rather than objective. He added that the employees and owners of the radio stations closed them out of fear, rather than any direct threats from the Qassam Brigades. Abu Ubayda also said that some of the radio stations were affiliated to well-known Fatah figures, or directly owned by Fatah. Palestine radio stopped transmission from the Gaza Strip during the recent events. A statement was issued accusing the Al Qassam Brigades of torching the station's headquarters and a local transmission tower in Khan Younis. Palestine satellite and terrestrial TV stopped transmission last Friday in Gaza City and began transmitting from Ramallah, in the central West Bank. The director of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Basim Abu Sumayya, ascribed the stoppage to Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip, which prevented employees from accessing the company's buildings in order to work. Abu Sumayya accused Hamas of taking control of every property that belongs to the PBC, in addition to the live transmission vehicle and the satellite frequency, which the PBC changed immediately. ...As for the radio stations, which stopped their transmission, Abu Zuhri said they did so voluntarily because they were involved in inciting and they committed criminal acts when they were fuelling disputes in the Palestinian arena. He asserted that the Al-Qassam Brigades and Executive Force never attacked or robbed any radio station. The Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa satellite TV station, which many accuse of lacking professionalism and fuelling dispute, was the sole TV station that continued broadcasting during the conflict in the Gaza Strip. They transmitted special photos of the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Executive Force, while they were storming the security HQs. They also conducted exclusive interviews with Hamas leaders. The most criticism-provoking act of Al-Aqsa TV was the transmission of the execution of Samih Al-Madhoun. The chief editor of Ma'an News Agency threatened to close the agency's Gaza office as a result of the pressure exerted on him and the agency's correspondents and photojournalists. The Al-Qassam Brigades visited the office, but did not harm any employee or property. Meanwhile, Hamas and their Fatah allies criticised Ma'an's reports and some issued threats.
Things only got worse after that. I agree with Richard that fear is a factor in the loss of objectivity in journalism. He mentioned other factors as well, such as the fact that liberal reporters are (perhaps subconsciously) advocates of the simplistic idea that the absence of war is always a desirable objective and that their role is to help that to happen. Therefore you will see a large number of stories about Israel's use of "disproportionate" force and of Arab civilian victims, but very few giving context of everything Israel tried to do over eight years to stop rocket attacks before resorting to the battlefield. I think that a lot can be ascribed to ignorance. Arabs have hammered the West with consistent, simple-minded memes ("occupation," "intransigence," "illegal settlements," "Likud=far right hawks," "Fatah is moderate") that have become ingrained in the very psyche of the media personalities themselves. This is how we see situations like I mentioned today of Fox misrepresenting their own interview with Obama, after it was colored through the glass of Middle East conventional wisdom. 

 Another factor that I mentioned in the Q&A, and that Dr. Landes expanded on, is that Israeli self-criticism, which is part of what makes it strong, is perceived by the media as proof of its being immoral. As Richard noted, when the media interviews 100% of Arabs who say that Israel is completely wrong, and 50% of Israelis interviewed agree with the Arabs, then the impression one gets is that Israel is 75% wrong. All in all, it was an interesting evening, and as you can imagine, Richard is a really nice fellow. The turnout might have been better had this not also been the night that Rutgers held a meeting to discuss contributing leftover meal-plan money to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a charity that has uncomfortably close connections to terrorism.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

264. On 22 December 2008, a 24-hour ceasefire was declared at Egypt’s request. Three rockets and one mortar were launched from Gaza that day. Israel opened the border to allow a limited amount of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.149 

265. By 23 December 2008, rocket and mortar fire was again increasing significantly; 30 rockets and 30 mortars were fired into Israel on 24 December 2008. 150 The Israeli armed forces continued to conduct air strikes on positions inside Gaza and the crossings into Israel remained closed. On 26 December 2008, a rocket launched from Gaza fell short and hit a house in northern Gaza killing two girls, aged 5 and 12.151 

266. The intensified closure regime on the Gaza crossings which began in November continued in December, with imports restricted to very basic food items and limited amounts of fuel, animal feed and medical supplies. According to OCHA, many basic food items were no longer available and negligible amounts of fuel were allowed to enter Gaza. This resulted in the health sector in Gaza deteriorating further into a critical condition, with hospitals continuing to face problems as a result of power cuts, low stocks of fuel to operate back-up generators, lack of spare parts for medical equipment and shortages of consumables and medical supplies.152 On 18 December 2008, UNRWA once again suspended its food distribution programme for the rest of the month, owing to shortages.153 

267. On 27 December 2008, Israel started its military operations in Gaza.154 

 The report goes into great detail on everything that happened between the beginning of the truce and Israel's response, but it skips an important fact: that the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades declared "Operation Oil Stain" on December 24th concurrent with their huge increase of rocket attacks. The Brigades continued to boast about this operation until well after Israel's response. In a very real sense, they declared the war. Also, Goldstone spends much space on the humanitarian situation in Gaza at that time. From reading the report one would get the impression that Gazans were to the point of starvation. Yet as this video shows, they didn't seem to be in such bad shape: Although my version is satirical, the video is real, and was taken during this exact time period of December 2008. It isn't a place one might choose to live but it is a far cry from many places - including much poorer areas of Egypt right across the border.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

HRW just came out with a report claiming multiple cases where IDF soldiers killed, in cold blood, innocent civilians holding white flags. I cannot speak to all the details of the report right now, but one part is clear: HRW fully believes the "eyewitness" accounts of liars. They interviewed the Abed Rabbo family, whose previous statements to reporters were found to be incredibly inconsistent. The fact that HRW is so credulous when many have noted the inconsistencies shows that their research is pretty shoddy. At the very least they should have addressed the issue, but of course that is not HRW's aim. One simple example: HRW says that
Seven neighborhood residents who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that major fighting in the area had stopped by the morning of January 7, although sporadic exchanges of fire may have continued after that.
Time magazine's report mentions a salient fact that HRW chose to ignore:
Most residents of Jebel al-Kashif claim there were no Hamas fighters in the area at the time of the alleged incident, but a middle-aged farmer in a battered army jacket took me aside and said, in a near whisper, that Hamas had been firing rockets from the vicinity of where the episode took place.
Now, who is more credible? The farmer has nothing to gain by lying, but the Abed Rabbo family - who are members of Fatah and who had earlier told a PA newspaper that Hamas was using them as human shields - just might not want to antagonize their tormenters. Why are none of these facts mentioned by HRW when it relates the story of the Abed Rabbo sisters told by a family with very shaky credibility? The reason is, of course, that HRW wants to find human rights abuses and "war crimes," and will ignore evidence to the contrary. NGO Monitor's critique of the report can be found here. UPDATE: Here's video of a terrorist trying to get away from the IDF by using a white flag, something HRW seems to not have known about during the past seven months. (h/t Richard Landes of Augean Stables via email)

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