Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Palestinians flip their allegiances: Gaza prefers Fatah, WB prefers Hamas

A new poll by the Arab World for Research and Development shows that support for Hamas is evaporating in Gaza - but strengthening in the West Bank. And support for the PA-led "unity government" that the world is pretending will save the Palestinian Arabs is disappearing in the West Bank.

The West Bank-Gaza divide on internal political issues is deepening. The present poll confirms a trend that has emerged over the past five years. The Gaza public appears to be growing increasingly disillusioned and unhappy with the Hamas administration; while in the West Bank the public is becoming similarly disillusioned and unhappy with the Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas and Fatah. Over the past several years, AWRAD’s public opinion data has been confirming these developments in what appears to be a classic case of ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ mentality. The following results are indicative of this situation:

1) If a unified Fatah list runs for election in Gaza, it would win in a landslide:

Hamas is less trusted than Fatah by 53 percent among Gazans. 33 percent of Gazans hold the opposite view.

The present poll shows that Fatah’s support in Gaza is at 42 percent, compared to Hamas support of 27 percent.

Only 21 percent of Gazans are undecided or will not vote, indicating that the results of a future election are less vulnerable to the voting patterns of independent and ambivalent constituencies.

2) If Hamas runs in the West Bank, it could seriously challenge Fatah:

Fatah is less trusted than Hamas among 40 percent of West Bank respondents, while Hamas is less trusted than Fatah among 28 percent of West Bank respondents.

The present poll shows that Hamas’ popularity in the West Bank is 27 percent, equal to that of Fatah.

38 percent of West Bank respondents are undecided or will not vote, indicating that the results of a future election are highly vulnerable to the voting patterns of independent and ambivalent constituencies.

3) Abbas is more popular in Gaza while Haniyeh polls better in the West Bank:

Abbas receives the support of 49 percent of Gazans, while Haniyeh receives 26 percent.

Abbas receives the support of 31 percent of the West Bank, while Haniyeh receives 33 percent

In a hypothetical Abbas-Haniyeh contest, 25 percent of Gazans and 36 percent of West Bank respondents are undecided or will not vote, making President Abbas even more vulnerable in the West Bank in a race with Haniyeh.

4) A majority in Gaza want a Hamdallah-led government; much less support in the West Bank:

50 percent of Gazans prefer a Hamdallah-led government and only 24 percent prefer a Haniyeh-led government to run their region.

The pattern is the opposite in the West Bank where 35 percent prefer a Haniyeh-led government and 29 percent prefer a Hamdallah-led government.

More amazing footage of Muslims attacking Israeli police on Temple Mount

I showed a brief clip Monday morning of Muslims shooting small rockets at Israeli forces from inside the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Here's video from the Israeli side, showing a huge number of incendiary devices and rocks - clearly stockpiled in the "holy site" - being shot and hurled at the police.

At the end, you can see the wild-eyed violent Jewish settlers storming the Mount and intimidating Muslims with their Talmudic rituals.

Oh, sorry - it looks more like a few peaceful Jews taking a stroll. But Arab media uses the other terminology consistently, so much so that the obvious lies are widely believed throughout the Muslim world.

10/13 Links Pt2: Syrian Jewish family smuggled to Israel; Rashid Khalidi Bashes J Street's Activism

From Ian:

Syrian Jewish family said smuggled to Israel

A Jewish family from Syria was secretly smuggled into Israel several months ago with the aid of a network of Israeli businesspeople and has begun a new life in the Jewish state, according to a Monday report.
The family, one of the few remaining Jewish families in Syria, arrived in Israel “with nothing,” according to a Netanya businessman who helped them immigrate, Army Radio reported.
“In the first stage, the mother and daughter arrived, then the whole family came,” the businessman, identified only as David, told the station. The family arrived with no possessions, so “we donated to help them with everything they needed… we did our best to help them in their acclimation to Israel,” David added.
The businessman is part of a network of Israelis of Syrian origin who helped the family. MK Yisrael Hason of Kadima, who was born in Damascus and came to Israel at age seven, is part of the group. MK Shaul Mofaz of Kadima, who was born in Iran, hosted the Syrian family in his sukkah on Sunday.

Israelis and Palestinians join forces to combat Ebola

Israeli and Palestinian officials met at the weekend to draw up an action plan to prevent the Ebola epidemic from spreading to the territories they control, the Israeli military said Sunday.
"During the meeting (on Saturday evening), updates were exchanged between the parties, and transfer of information was agreed upon by way of additional meetings to take place in order to further track the issue," said COGAT, the defence ministry unit responsible for Palestinian civilian coordination.
One proposal to combat the disease was for Israel to provide courses in advanced epidemiology for Palestinian and Jordanian medical staff, a health ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Rashid Khalidi Bashes J Street's Activism

Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, well-known for his anti-Israel rhetoric, slammed J Street, an organization which claims to be pro-Israel, for failing to adequately oppose Israel's military actions in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
Speaking at the "Open Hillel" conference, Khalidi said that J Street "needs more radical critique...if it wants real change,"Jeremy Pressman wrote on Twitter. One Jewish Voice for Peace activist noted that Khalidi stated to J Street that "if u [sic] call Israel's attacks on Gaza 'self defense' you can't be agents of change." Khalidi's remarks were met with strong applause.
Over the summer, Israel was forced to defend itself from over 3,000 rockets fired by Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, which has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007.
According to one attendee, J Street U members in attendance huddled together at the conclusion of the speech, were "visibly upset" and could be overheard reassuring each other not to worry about Khalidi's demands. (h/t MtTB)

Hamas newspaper Felesteen has an article by Professor Saleh Alrqub, a senior Hamas figure as well as a Muslim Brotherhood leader, where he explains exactly why Jews are so evil.

Some highlights:

The destruction in Gaza was the worst the world has seen since World War II.

Any researcher of Jewish psychology will easily realize that the culture and education of the Biblical racism created the aggressiveness of the Jewish character of Israel towards others, including Palestinians and Arabs, it is religious heritage (Jewish Torah and Talmud) that inspires the aggressive spirit that leads them to commit massacres.

The Jewish Bible in Samuel I says that God commanded Jews to kill Amalek, and all Palestinians.

To Jews, war means the brutal extermination and murder of children and infants, women and men, and killing animals and burning crops and vineyards.

Well, he didn't say that Jews drink children's blood, so he must be one of those moderates we've been hearing about.

I found this document, titled "The historical development of human rights throughout history," at an UNRWA Arabic website dedicated to human rights.

It goes through the human rights postures of a number of civilizations, from ancient times to today. It is dated June 2014.

Here is what it says about human rights in Judaism:

Judaism is a heavenly religion revealed to the Prophet of Allah Musa [Moses], peace be upon him, included human rights through its focus on the goal of liberating the individual and the community. The right to freedom from oppression is a supreme value highlighted in Jewish holy books (Rashidi: 2005: 60). The commandments of Moses, peace be upon him, include prohibiting murder, adultery and theft.

But if we look around us at communities supposedly protecting human rights and at well-known oases of democracy we do not see [human rights] but instead charges that the victim was a terrorist or supporter of terrorism, and also pornography justified freely as rights. We see monopoly and fraud justified by the right of ownership and earnings in any form (Mokbel: 2005: 5) All of this happened as a result of distortion and misinformation by the Jewish clergy. The Jews in the sixth and seventh centuries promoted social corruption (1981: 39), and the claim that they are God's chosen people demonstrates that the Jews did not know anything about human rights.

Of course, it has nothing bad to say about human rights in Islam.

I cannot tell if this is an official UNRWA curriculum or if it is merely considered good enough to be posted on the UNRWA human rights website as reference material. The author appears to be an UNRWA human rights instructor, so it seem likely that this is being taught, today, in UNRWA schools.

The last time I pointed out that UNRWA Arabic websites included things that were clearly against UN principles, the sites were quietly removed without UNRWA admitting anything. On the contrary; UNRWA still insists that it is a liberal organization that supports human rights and does not teach hate.

Let's see what happens this time.

10/13 Links Pt1: Rebuilding Gaza is rebuilding terrorism; The defender of the beheaders

From Ian:

Rebuilding Gaza is rebuilding terrorism

If someone could promise us that the money would help the citizens of Gaza, I might even have sent over my own modest donation. After all, "Far better a neighbor that is near than a brother far off" (Proverbs 27:10). But with Hamas still in the picture, and Abbas competing with Haniyeh over who is more extreme in his policies on Israel in order to win the hearts of Gazan voters, it is clear that the donor conference is not going to build a new Middle East, or even a new Gaza.
It is difficult for the world to grasp that Israel has its own sizeable interest in Gazans having good lives, because we are close by, and when a Gazan sneezes, we have to blow our noses, and vice versa. This is not the case with the British, the Russians, the French or the Koreans.
$4 billion for the residents of Gaza? Yes. $4 billion for Hamas terrorists? No. If only naivete could be bought with money. What will we do when we run out of that commodity?

Ben-Dror Yemini: The defender of the beheaders

To get to the crux of the matter in just a few words: Rimon-Or bases her support for the Islamic State murderers on the claim that they are only responding to the misdeeds of the Americans, who are killing a lot more people with their tools of destruction – and "the more primitive and vulgar means" of the Jihad are nothing compared to that.
Before any of her students adopt this pseudo-sophisticated nonsense, one should remind them that the thousands who are being murdered in the name of Jihad in general, and the Islamic States' victims in particular, are in fact Muslims and Arabs. Only a handful are Westerners. But that's enough for her. Because the postcolonial school of thought is essentially racist.
It absolves "the others" of any responsibility. It rants and raves about the fact that two or three Westerners have been murdered. It turns the Jihad into an entity concerned with protest or the righting of social wrongs. It disregards the mass-murder festival. It ignores the fact that girls and women are being turned into sex slaves.
Whether any of that is of interest to her is doubtful. Rimon-Or, like many of her fellow followers of the same school of thought, is stuck like a scratched record in an anti-colonial model that has long since lost touch with reality. And the truth of the matter is that all the Jihad offshoots, from Boko Haram and through to the Taliban, operate with the same degree of barbarity, with or without Americans or Zionists in the vicinity. The Jihad groups perpetrate massacres against blacks and Muslims after all.

Palestinian Al-Aksa Mosque preacher to NATO’s Arab partners: Kill the Jews instead.

It is sentiments like these that persist not just throughout Hamas but throughout the more respected Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.
Here is a clip that was broadcast on Palestinian Authority television in which the PA Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Hussein urges his followers to kill Jews.
So are our own Parliamentarians really going to vote to recognise “a state of Palestine” that has religious leaders and an official television network that propagates the message that Jews should be murdered?
If that is today’s outcome then Britain’s Parliament should hang its head in shame.

Palestinian Preacher Criticizes Int'l Coalition against ISIS in Impromptu Al-Aqsa Mosque Address

Jordan warns that allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount can lead to a "religious war"

Here's the sequence of events on any random day:

Jews want to peacefully visit their holiest site.
Muslims start riots to stop Jews from visiting their holiest site.
Israeli police stop the Muslim rioters and protect the Jews.
The Muslims attack the police.
The police ban Muslims of fighting age from going to the site.
Muslims complain to the international community that they are being banned from their holy sites.
The media reports that there are "clashes" at the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Never, and I mean never, does anyone suggest that if Muslims simply allow Jews to visit the site - and even to say some quiet prayers - that there would be no police, no disruptions, no riots, no reactions and no limits on who can go there.

Instead, the Muslim world rushes to defend their supreme intolerance for the Jewish religion, and there isn't the slightest amount of shame for them doing so publicly. even worse, not a single "human rights" organization defends the Jews' right to their holy spots.

Today's example from Jordanian English-language media:

Jordan affirmed on Monday that it will take prompt action against any Israeli escalation against the holy place in occupied Jerusalem, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications Mohammed Al Momani said.

Momani, who is also the government spokesman, affirmed that the "Jordan will take the needed political and legal measures to end the seizure against Al Aqsa Mosque and push Israel to commit to the peace agreement." The alternative, Momani warned, "will be more extremism and seditions that could trigger a religious war in the region." Further, the minister condemned the ongoing Israeli aggressions against Arab Jeruselmites and the Al Aqsa Mosque. "These aggressions constitute a flagrant violation against Jordan and a breach of heavenly religions and international norms," the minister affirmed.

The spokesman deplored the Israeli occupation forces' attacks against worshippers, mostly elderly people, at the Al Aqsa Mosque, and their action of arresting some of them. Momani also denounced the storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque's yards earlier today and use of force to vacate the mosque of the worshippers to allow settlers to break into the holy place.

The minister, meanwhile, condemned the Israeli forces' use of stun grenades and tearbombs against worshippers as well as they action of smashing the windows of the mosque in order to ensure that the shrine is vacated.

Here are the "elderly" people shooting small rockets at Israelis from inside the mosque today.

NPR's "On the Media" hosted a discussion of media coverage of Israel:

On the heels of this summer's war in Gaza, Jerusalem-based journalist Matti Friedman published an essay in Tablet magazine titled “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth.” Drawing from his experience as a reporter and editor for the AP’s Jerusalem bureau from 2006 to 2011, Matti argues that the western press is far too focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that its framing distorts our perceptions of Israel. New York Timesdeputy national editor Ethan Bronner, who covered Israel-Palestine in the eighties for Reuters, in the nineties for theBoston Globe, and for the Times as Jerusalem bureau chief from 2008 to 2012, sees the coverage of the conflict in notably different ways. Brooke moderates a debate between Ethan and Matti.

You can hear it here.

Some highlights:

MATTI FRIEDMAN: As for the America's friendship with Israel, it's undeniable of course. But, for example, America has 30,000 servicemen in South Korea, and those are American citizens who are supposed to die to protect a foreign country from attack and I would argue that is a commitment exponentially more significant than the US commitment to Israel, and yet if there has been obsessive South Korea coverage, I've missed it. I think the friendship argument is true in part but it's not enough to explain the phenomenon. There's certainly a huge amount of interest in this place because of its historical connotations, but the kind of coverage we're seeing here is not massive coverage of Biblical archeology or religion. What we're seeing is extremely critical of the actions of the Israeli government and I would argue that this interest in the Holy Land I think that there's a very thin line between that and the development of a hostile obsession with the moral failings of Jews which as we know is a very deep thought pattern in the West.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You have both made a distinction between the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the European press and the American press. Ethan, how would you describe the difference? And then Matty.

ETHAN BRONNER: Broadly speaking, I would say that in the United States, coverage of Israel takes as a given that it is a legitimate country, that it has problems, that it has issues, that relations with its neighbors and Palestinians need to be written about, but the core question of whether Israel is a legitimate country is not asked over and over. I would say that much of European coverage gets to the question of the legitimacy of Israel as a project from the beginning and questions it. I also would say that American media coverage of Israel tends to explore Israeli society not necessarily all in a bad way, and take it seriously as a culture and as a society and that's much less true in Europe.

MATTI FRIEDMAN: I think Ethan's right. I think there's more poisonous press coverage in Europe. But I think that the difference between American and European coverage has eroded, that's been my experience. I think that you have a press corps here and it's a social group, people know each other, people move between the organizations. If we look at the Gaza coverage from the last summer, I don't think you'll see a lot of difference between coverage in the States, in the mainstream media organization and in Europe.

ETHAN BRONNER: The truth is that the coverage I've seen most closely is that of the New York Times, I haven't examined that of others, but I would say, that the New York Times coverage of whether the victims were civilians or fighters quite seriously. The notion that Hamas operates from among civilian buildings and organizations was repeated frequently in the coverage so it may be true that the locals who move between Reuters and AP are not very different, but I do think that the outlook of the organization is different. A colleague of mine from Britain who came through who wanted to write a story of the evolution of the Hebrew language told me that his newspaper said, we have no interest in this at all, you're there to cover the conflict. And that is never something that an editor would tell a reporter in Israel.

MATTI FRIEDMAN: I think the New York Times's coverage of Gaza this summer was one-sided. We saw photographs of Israeli soldiers and Israeli tanks and dead Palestinian civilians. The story that Hamas wants to be told out of Gaza is that there are no Hamas fighters. That there is no Hamas strategy and that all the dead are civilians and that is the story that media organizations including the New York Times told this summer.

ETHAN BRONNER: With regard to pictures of fighters in Gaza, first of all I don't think it's true that Hamas would like the world to think that it doesn't have fighters. I'm certain that that's not the message that they want to get out. What did happen in this war, as happened in '08-'09 and in '12 is that when the war begins, Hamas goes underground, and they're actually impossible to find. When the journalists were crossing the border from Israel, there weren't even Hamas guys to stamp their passports as there typically are. The idea that journalists in Gaza were not taking pictures because they either didn't want to send the message that there were fighters or they were afraid of the fighters I think is a misunderstanding of what happens when you operate underground in Gaza in a conflict.

MATTI FRIEDMAN: I think that would be true if we didn't have examples of reporters who did.

ETHAN BRONNER: We have very few Matty we have like four, four moments because they're rare to find, it's not because everybody else is turning away from it.

MATTI FRIEDMAN: I think one of the most striking images that came out of Gaza this summer was shot by a Indian TV crew and you can find it on YouTube. They saw in the middle of the day, Hamas crew setting up a rocket outside of their hotel. So how did these intrepid Indian journalists get this great footage?

ETHAN BRONNER: They weren't intrepid they were lucky.

MATTI FRIEDMAN: If some of the 700 reporters I think who arrived in Gaza to cover the conflict had their eyes perhaps a bit more open we would've seen more images like that. But of course the reporters in Gaza are there to report a very simple story, they're reporting a story of Israeli aggression against civilians. So they won't show things that contradict the story and they will accept the Hamas death toll and pass it on to their readers as fact, which the New York Times did too.

Friedman is, of course, correct - and the Indian reporter who broke that story says it explicitly:The reporters in the area witnessed a rocket being shot from that exact same spot, in the middle of the hotels that they were staying in, a few days earlier. They knew quite well that it was going to happen again. But they self-censored out of fear of Hamas. (Even the NDTV reporter waited until he was out of Gaza to release the video.)

Bronner is engaging in CYA journalism, not in objectively looking at how his fellow reporters do their jobs.

To see the devastating truth about how skewed the NYT coverage was of Gaza, just re-read this scathing piece by Richard Behar. Friedman's great but he didn't analyze the NYT coverage the way Behar did, and no one can refute what Behar wrote.

(h/t EBoZ)

Video of Muslims shooting incendiary devices from Al Aqsa Mosque

Ma'an reports:

Hundreds of Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Monday, leading to clashes with Palestinian worshipers, witnesses said.

Israeli forces fired stun grenades, tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinians in the holy site during the clashes.

Israeli media reported that Palestinian youths threw rocks and fireworks at police officers.

Here is a short video showing the "worshipers" literally shooting small rockets from within the "third holiest place in Islam" showing no Israeli soldiers inside. They cover their faces and use the mosque's pillars for cover after shooting.

Interestingly, the similar video I found last week has been removed from YouTube. But here is another version:

Can't you feel how much they respect their holy site?

Hamas and Abbas the big winners in the Gaza donor sweepstakes, now watch them fight

From AP:

Donors at an international conference Sunday promised $2.7 billion to rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, but all of the key participants said their efforts would be futile without a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

U.S.-mediated talks broke down this summer before the 50-day war between Hamas and Israel began — the third since 2008 — and it remains unclear how peace can come about.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende, who co-chaired the one-day meeting with Egypt, said pledges of $5.4 billion have been made, but that only half of that money would be "dedicated" to the reconstruction of the coastal strip.

Brende did not say what the other half of the funds would be spent on. Other delegates have spoken of budgetary support, boosting economic activity, emergency relief and other projects.

From the WSJ:

The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, also agreed to take control of Gaza, which has been run independently for the past 7 years by Hamas after the Islamists ousted the authority in 2007.

“Gaza remains a tinderbox,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking to donors. “Yet we must not lose sight of the root causes of the recent hostilities,” which he blamed on blockades on Gaza by neighboring Israel and Egypt as they try to isolate Hamas.

Israel has faulted Hamas militant activity for the hostilities, including cross-border tunnels and rocket fire.

Qatar, long a supporter of Islamists throughout the region, including Hamas in Gaza, led the contributors with a $1 billion pledge. Other big Arab contributors included Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, with each pledging $200 million, and Saudi Arabia, which had promised $500 million before the conference began. The U.S. agreed to donate $212 million to Gaza.

The total exceeded the $4 billion estimate the Palestinians had said was needed to recover from a 50-day summer conflict between Hamas and Israel which left many neighborhoods in Gaza destroyed, along with much of the territory’s infrastructure.

Ahead of the conference, hosted in Cairo with Norway’s help, other Gulf states and the U.S. had seen donations as a chance to “remove Qatar and the political factions within Hamas that are tied to Doha,” from control of postwar Gaza, said Theodore Karasik, head of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai.

But the large Qatari contribution, larger than that of the three largest other donors combined, reduces that possibility. Before the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas began on July 8, Qatar was already Gaza’s largest foreign benefactor.

...Ziad Abu Amr, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy prime minister, said Qatar “wants to be there” in Gaza. But he acknowledged that the reconstruction would have to take place under a modified political setup that excludes Hamas because Western donors including the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union can’t legally give money directly to Hamas, which they deem a terrorist group.

Qatar’s close ties to Hamas and other Islamists—including the main al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Nusra Front—has caused friction with its Gulf neighbors since the onset of the Arab Spring three years ago. Qatar’s regional profile has grown through its backing of Islamist movements during this period.

If only half the $5.4 billion is earmarked for reconstruction, and the PA is the main recipient of the funds, that means that there is plenty of cash for the PA to use for its own purposes - its budget has been in very bad shape for years, and it seems likely that it will use much of the funds for its own purposes.

But Qatar's $1 billion is going straight to Hamas, to pay salaries, build housing, pay terrorist families - and to buy weapons and build terror tunnels.

It is important to remember that Arab Gulf countries have traditionally been very bad at paying their pledged to the Palestinians. Qatar has been steadfast in funding Hamas and other Sunni terror groups, though.

It seems very doubtful that Hamas will give up on day to day power in Gaza. It is likely that the PA will take over the administration of the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings, which doesn't hurt Hamas much. There is already infighting over who will control the Rafah crossing to Egypt; Hamas knows that its insistence on controlling it is what prompts Egypt to keep it mostly closed but Hamas will suffer a great loss of honor if it gives up its only international border with an Arab state.

The chances that the PA will dismantle Gaza terror groups, or that it will replace Hamas control over the police and interior ministry in Gaza, are quite low indeed.

Qatar has given Hamas a lifeline. The other donor countries have given the PA more excuses for their own questionable budgetary practices, such as prioritizing payments to terrorists.

The infighting is inevitable.

War tourism is only "ghoulish" when it is Israeli

Remember the "Sderot Cinema" story from the summer? Sderot residents who had been under constant rocket fire were made to look like monsters for watching Israeli warplanes fight back against those who who had been making their lives hell. The reporters got the story exactly wrong.

To get an idea of how much of a double standard there is in how Israel is treated in the media, check out this Daily Mail story that describes "war tourists" in Turkey and in the Golan, both looking at the civil war in Syria.

Dressed in casual T-shirts with their arms around each other, the men posing for photographs could be documenting a visit to any tourist attraction in the world.

But these Turkish daytrippers aren't admiring a famous painting or well-known monument - they are taking pictures of U.S. airstrikes against brutal Islamic State terrorists in the Syrian city of Kobane.

With explosions taking place behind them in a city where ISIS have butchered hundreds of Kurds over the last few weeks, the carefree men seem more interested in documenting the moment on digital cameras and mobile phones than coming to terms with the horrific reality of the situation.

...This morning, almost as if they were watching a fireworks display, the spectators took photographs of explosion after explosion as warplanes from the U.S. Air Force hammered terrorist targets in the east and south west of the city.

They are not alone in their fascination with watching a conflict unfold; just weeks ago a fierce three-way battle between Syrian government forces, Al Qaeda-linked rebels and fighters from the Islamic State drew large crowds in neighbouring Israel.

Residents in Golan Heights took took to the mountains in T-shirts, shorts and sunglasses to watch a bloody battle unfold in the town of Quneitra, across the Syrian border beneath them.

War tourism has a long history, dating back millennia when accounts of great battles would be written and told by individuals who claim to have witnessed them first hand.

By the 1600s Dutch painter Willem van de Velde was travelling on war ships in order to sketch fighting with English vessels - while the battles of Waterloo and Gettysburg in the 1800s both had spectators who had journeyed deliberately to the conflict zone in order to watch events unfold.

In the 1860s Thomas Cook organised holidays for British tourists on American Civil War battlefields, and similar guided tours were organised available for those interested in locations associated with the Crimean War.

In fact during the Battle of Alma in 1854 - considered the first battle of the Crimean War - Prince Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov is said to have invited women from the nearby town of Sevastopol to take up positions on a nearby mountainside to watch his men fight.

When the main story is about Turkish war tourists who are directly photographing atrocities against civilians, then the media puts it in context of a long history of war tourism. The Sderot residents got no such slack.

But even within this story, look at the captions of the photos showing the Turks versus the Israelis:

The Israelis are "ghoulish," while the Turks are merely photographers.

The Sderot story was widely circulated as an example of how heartless Israelis are. This story? No one cares, because, hey, they are only Turks and cannot possibly be expected to have the expected and exceptional moral standards of Israelis.

(h/t Bob Knot)

5000 Gazans to work in Israel?

A PA official has announced that negotiations are ongoing for Israel to allow some 5000 Gazans to work in areas of Israel adjacent to the Gaza Strip.

The Director General of the PA General Administration of border crossings Nazmi Muhanna said that the Ministry of Civil Affairs will provide names to the Israeli side from which to choose the five thousand workers to work in Israel, adding that the number will be increased after the success of the first phase.

Mehanna said that they would work adjacent to the Gaza Strip and will be in the areas of agriculture, construction and similar jobs.

If true, this sounds like a spectacularly bad idea.