Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

08/25 Links Pt1: Attack on Joseph's Tomb prevented; Iranian aide ‘Israel should be annihilated’

From Ian:

Shin Bet thwarts terror plot hatched in Gaza to attack Jews at Joseph's Tomb

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced Tuesday that it had busted a terror cell, thwarting a planned attack with improvised explosives and guns on Jews praying at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus.
Many Jews visit Joseph’s Tomb, surrounded by Palestinian Authority controlled areas, without coordinating with the IDF, and the cell planned to take advantage of that extra vulnerability.
Terrorists have successfully carried out attacks on such worshipers at the tomb in the past, including the 2011 attack which killed a nephew of former Likud minister Limor Livnat.
According to the Shin Bet, who arrested the cell in conjunction with the IDF, the terrorists' activities were directed and provided arms by Muhammad Darwish, an Islamic Jihad operative in the Gaza Strip.
While the cell-members had clearly carried out initial actions toward perpetrating the attack, it was unclear from the Shin Bet how imminent the attack was or the circumstances of the cell’s arrest.
Each member of the cell had a specific role in the attack, according to the Shin Bet. One of the members was responsible for supplying weapons, another gathered intelligence and two of the operatives were tasked with carrying out the attack.
One of the operatives, Nassim Muhammad Ramadan Rashid Damiri, 30 of the Tulkarm refugee camp, had previously been incarcerated several times in Israel and is known as a Tanzim-Fatah operative.

‘Israel should be annihilated,’ senior Iran aide says

A senior Iranian official on Tuesday said Israel “should be annihilated,” and that the thawing relations with the West would not translate into a shift in Tehran’s position concerning the Jewish state.
Hussein Sheikholeslam, a foreign affairs adviser to parliament speaker Ali Larijani, told Iranian media that contrary to remarks by British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, “Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all; Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan.”
Hammond was in Iran on Monday for the reopening of the UK embassy in Tehran, and said that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had indicated a “more nuanced approach” to Israel’s existence. Hammond said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “revolutionary sloganizing” should be distinguished from “what Iran actually does in the conduct of its foreign policy.”
“We’ve got to, as we do with quite a number of countries, distinguish the internal political consumption rhetoric from the reality of the way they conduct their foreign policy,” the Guardian quoted Hammond saying.

IDF ‘more ready than ever’ to strike Iran, security official says

The Israeli military is readier now than it ever has been to carry out a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities should it be instructed to do so, a senior security official told Walla news Monday.
“Every year that passes, the IDF improves,” the unnamed official said. “We never stand still. The professional level increases. In the coming year we will receive another submarine, F-35 fighter jets and other platforms. Intelligence is improving as well,” he said.
He noted that Israel’s defensive capabilities against Iranian retaliation were also constantly improving.
But the news site noted that the military option had essentially been suspended in recent years and would not be easily reinstated unless there is a fundamental change in the political landscape, or a serious development in Iran’s alleged progress towards a nuclear bomb.

Antisemitic UNRWA school page taken down - but problem remains

On Sunday, I reported that the Facebook page of an UNRWA school had posted antisemitic images and encouraged Arabs to run over Jews with cars.

On Monday, the news was reported in The Tower.

UN Watch sent an official complaint to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon

Breitbart News reported on the story as well, also referring to my earlier story of UNRWA teachers posting Nazi imagery that was covered by Channel 10 in Israel last week.

By Monday night, the entire Facebook page of the Rameh UNRWA school was gone.

But this isn't a victory. This is a cover-up, one of many that I have exposed by UNRWA over the years.

At least twenty times I have exposed UNRWA hate, antisemitic and pro-terror articles, poems and essays by UNRWA teachers and even on official UNRWA websites. Almost invariably, the website would be silently taken down or the affiliation with UNRWA was removed from the social media posts.

But not once has UNRWA admitted that its teachers encourage racism, antosemitism and jihadist terror, despite my screenshots and documents proving it.. Not once has UNRWA issued a statement condemning this behavior. Not once has UNRWA acted in the transparent manner that one would expect an organization funded by the world to act.

Instead, UNRWA - and its spokesperson Chris Gunness in particular - hides their teachers' activities and allows them to continue to act this way, just not as publicly.

An organization that really was dedicated to the principles that UNRWA espouses would proactively aim to clean house. Instead, UNRWA removes the evidence while the problem festers. There is not the slightest indication that any actual disciplining has occurred, ever. Gunness lied on Israeli TV when he said "If there is a suspected breach of neutrality on the part of employees, we will investigate and take significant steps, including dismissal." (He gave an almost identical lie when confronted by a reporter for a similar issue I found in 2013.)

It has never happened. On the contrary - when a UNRWA teachers union sent a letter to the agency officially denying the Holocaust, it was never reported and there were no repercussions.

UNRWA only acts when reporters call them. They read my tweets and instead of jumping to investigate, they do everything they can to hide the evidence.

For a while it was almost comical as I would expose UNRWA hate online and UNRWA would silently take down the websites. But this isn't a game of whack-a-mole - this is proof positive that UNRWA teachers are teaching generations of students to hate Jews, to support terror, to deny or even approve of the Holocaust.

There are no investigation into these incidents by UNRWA. There is only removing the evidence and keeping the teachers happily employed, while asking them to not be so public about their hate to protect their funding.

And pro-terror posts like this one are still to be found on Facebook pages of UNRWA teachers. (In this case the teacher is anonymous, but he lives in Khan Younis.)

UNRWA does not want to fix the problem. They never have. And this proves that UNRWA is the problem that needs to be fixed.

HRW, UN and B'Tselem demand that Israel VIOLATE international law

Human Rights Watch issued a report:

The Israeli military unlawfully demolished at least 39 structures in Bedouin Palestinian communities in the West Bank on August 17 and 18, 2015. The demolitions left 126 people homeless, 80 of them children. Four of the communities where the demolitions took place are targeted by an Israeli government plan to forcibly “relocate” 7,000 Bedouin.

Such destruction of private Palestinian property and the forcible transfer of Palestinians violate Israel’s human rights obligations and the laws of occupation. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from destroying private property or forcibly transferring the protected population unless strictly necessary for military reasons. Israel does not claim the demolitions or planned relocations are justified for military reasons.

B'Tselem also says that this is against international humanitarian law. The UN had stated that previously and I fisked that UN statement.

What does international law say?

For the purposes of this post, we will assume that Israel is occupying Area C of Judea and Samaria, which is the legal basis of Israel's Supreme Court decisions, even though it never ruled on that question specifically.

The law prohibiting confiscating private property comes from the Hague Conventon IV article 46, which states flatly "Private property cannot be confiscated."

But these buildings weren't built on private property. They were illegally built on public state lands.

What does the Hague Convention say about the legal obligations of an occupying power?

That is in article 43:

The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.

Under international law, Israel must do everything possible to respect the laws that were in place before the occupation - meaning the laws from the previous Jordanian and British and Ottoman governments.

And under none of those sets of laws would illegal building on state be considered to magically become private property and protected under the law from being demolished. That idea is nonsensical; Imagine what the New York City government would do if people built buildings in Central Park and then claimed to be homeless and forced to relocate when they were demolished.

HRW is clearly and knowingly lying when they use the "private property" argument.

B'Tselem is a bit more knowledgeable about international law than Human Rights Watch and doesn't try to use HRW's clearly incorrect legal reasoning. Instead, it only argues HRW's second reason, saying that "These expulsion plans run counter to the provisions of international humanitarian law, which prohibit the forcible transfer of protected persons, unless carried out for their own protection or for an imperative military need." But again it is absurd to say that legally demolishing buildings built without permits is "forcible transfer." On the contrary, it is enforcing the law. The alternative is to give anyone the right to squat on public lands, which is clearly absurd.

There are exceptions where the occupier may override pre-existing laws for security or other purposes, for example to strike down pre-existing laws that violate human rights or otherwise contradict the provisions of "public order and safety." The full extent of that permission is argued by various legal scholars. But as far as I can tell, no one says that Israel is mandated to change existing Ottoman/British land and zoning laws - and to do so without good reason would be a violation of international law!

Yet this is exactly what these NGOs are demanding that Israel do - to uproot or ignore pre-existing land laws.

Perhaps these organizations have a point in that Israel is not enforcing the pre-existing laws equally between Jews and Arabs in Judea and Samaria. In this particular case, however, the illegal squatters on state land never even bothered to submit applications for building permits or to submit a master plan for rezoning areas for residential use. The reason, of course, is because these structures were meant as a land grab and not as a declaration of private property rights. The Bedouin knew very well that their buildings were illegal, and Jews who would build random structures on state land would be treated the same way.

Yet even if you claim that Israel's application of zoning laws is not done evenly, "it's not fair" is not a principle of international law that is being violated.

One argument that may be made in favor of Israel's changing the zoning laws could perhaps come from an expansive reading of "public order and safety" in the Hague Conventions, a reading that Israel's Supreme Court in fact has used, translating the original French "la vie publique" as ‘civil life’ which is much more than "public order." Yet even then, that does not mean that Israel is obligated to go so far as to change existing laws. As legal scholar Marco Sasson writes:

Under the general rule, as its qualifications ‘all measures in his power’ and ‘as far as possible’ confirm, public order and civil life are not results that must be guaranteed by an occupying power, but only aims it must pursue with all available, lawful and proportionate means. One may argue that the required standard of action is below that with which human rights instruments expect states to comply in fulfilling human rights, in particular social, economic and cultural rights, since, as discussed below, the occupying power is not sovereign and its legislative powers are limited.

There is obviously a tension between the Hague provisions to ensure public order and civil life and to "respect, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country." But to demand that the latter, written in very strong language, trumps the former, and not doing so is a violation of international law, is clearly wrong.

The UN, B'Tselem and HRW are not telling the truth about international law, and they are twisting it deliberately to target Israel.

(Israel's Supreme Court does not recognize forcible transfers within occupied territory to be against the Geneva Conventions prohibition on "forcible transfer," but the ICRC does, so we will not argue that point here.)

Amnesty has no idea why Israel might have bombed this house.

Amnesty is still posting about year-ago individual events that they claim shows Israeli war crimes, and I keep debunking them.

The latest:

Israeli air strike hit Joudeh family in their garden. 4 children & mother killed. http://t.co/gcEFrcDfMc #50days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/f6FM4eG1Eo
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 24, 2015

Their proof comes from PCHR and Al Mezan, the latter of which said (#3569 on Gaza Platform):

Israeli military drones fired at least one (1) missile at approximately 16:15 on Sunday evening 24/08/2014 at the home of Isam Mustafa Gouda Goud [Joudeh], located near the Shouri Mosque in Tal al-Zaatar in Jabalya in GNG, killing his wife Rawya Ibrahim Mohamed Mohamed Gouda (43) and his children: Tasneem (14), Raghd (12), Mohamed(8) and Usamama (6) injuring a child Thae’r (13) with serious injuries to different parts of his body causing the amputation of his right leg. ... The centers researcher, Isam Gouda reported that the family were targeted as they sat in their garden, while the father was inside the house when he heard a loud whistle and saw smoke and dust filling the garden... Issam cannot find a reason as to why he and his family were targeted by the planes.

No militants killed, only women and children. Sounds pretty bad for the IDF.

Until you Google the husband/father, Éssam Mustafa Jouda.(عصام مصطفى جودة) The man who said there was no possible reason to attack his home.

Al Watan Voice talks about the deaths of his wife and four sons.

It also says that Essam is a fighter for the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades of Fatah. His nom de guerre is Abu Mustafa.

A similar article is here, with this poster commemorating the event.

Can you believe that Essam lied to Al Mezan and told them that he was not a terrorist?

Can you believe that PCHR and Al Mezan didn't report this information even though it was available only two days after the attack?

Can you believe that Electronic Intifada had an extensive interview with the militant without mentioning this fact that was published the day before their sob story?

Can you believe that Amnesty once again refuses to blame Gaza militants for using their families as human shields?

Can you believe that Amnesty's record of highlighting what they consider Israeli war crimes is so poor that for nearly every example they've tweeted that claimed or implied unnecessary Israeli attacks, I have been able to find a valid military target?

The answers are of course all "yes." It is very believable that Amnesty and PCHR and Al Mezan (and Electronic Intifada) work overtime to hide evidence of any militant activity in Gaza in their single-minded goal of demonizing Israel. My series on the Gaza Platform proves this beyond any reasonable doubt.

08/24 Links Pt2: I Saw Hamas' Cruel and Selfish Game in Gaza; The Media Discovers '5-Star Gaza'

From Ian:

I Saw Hamas' Cruel and Selfish Game in Gaza

Polish reporter Wojciech Cegielski spent a month in Gaza during last summer's war. He has no doubt Hamas used people as human shields.
I spent a month in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge. It was one of the worst and deadliest months I have seen in my life. The reality there was much more complicated than was seen from a safe distance in Europe or the United States.
Yes, Israel bombed Palestinian houses in Gaza. But Hamas is also to blame for its cruel and selfish game against its own people. I do not have hard evidence but for me, spending a month in the middle of this hell, it was obvious that they were breaking international rules of war and worst of all, were not afraid to use their own citizens as living shields.
The first incident happened late in the evening. I was in the bathroom when I’ve heard a loud rocket noise and my Spanish colleague, a journalist who was renting with me a flat near the Gaza beach, started to scream. He wanted to light a cigarette and came to one of the open windows. The moment he was using his lighter, he saw a fireball in front of his eyes and lost his hearing.
From what our neighbors told us later, a man drove up in a pickup to our tiny street. He placed a rocket launcher outside and fired. But the rocket failed to go upwards and flew along the street at ground level for a long time before destroying a building. It was a miracle that nobody was hurt or killed.
When we calmed down, we started to analyze the situation. It became obvious that the man or his supervisor wanted the Israel Defense Forces to destroy civilian houses, which our tiny street was full of. Whoever it was, Hamas, Iz al-Din al-Qassam or others, they knew that the IDF can strike back at the same place from which the rocket was fired. Fortunately for us, the rocket missed its target in Israel.

Gaza Strip’s middle class enjoys spin classes, fine dining, private beaches

Alongside the Hamas training camps and bombed-out neighborhoods, there is a parallel reality where the wafer-thin Palestinian middle class here is wooed by massage therapists, spin classes and private beach resorts.
Media images beamed from the Gaza Strip rightly focus on the territory’s abundant miseries. But rising from the rubble of last summer’s devastating war with Israel are a handful of new luxury-car dealerships, boutiques selling designer jeans and, coming soon to a hip downtown restaurant, “Sushi Nights.”
This is the Gaza outside the war photographer’s frame, where families of the small, tough, aspirational middle class will splurge on a $140 seaside villa with generator power to give their kids a 20-hour staycation with a swimming pool and palm trees.
This is the sliver of Gaza, a coastal enclave with the highest unemployment rate in the world, with personal trainers, medium-rare steaks, law school degrees and decent salaries.
The surviving bureaucrats, doctors, factory managers and traders in the middle class who haven’t abandoned Gaza often say they are squeezed between the Israeli blockade, with its tight restrictions on travel and trade, and the Palestinian leadership, including the Islamist movement Hamas, which has controlled the strip since 2007 and has fought three fruitless wars with Israel in six years.

Western Media Discovers '5-Star Gaza'

Western media has often been criticized by Israel for only on rare occasions presenting Gaza as anything other than an open-air prison suffering from Israeli blockades, but an unusual glimpse into the glamorous life of Gaza's middle class made its way to light on Sunday.
Articles such as an Economist expose in 2012 detailing golden Porsches and Hummer's cruising the streets of Gaza under corrupt Hamas rule were joined by a Washington Post report, revealing on Sunday how the "other half lives" in the terrorist enclave.
The article begins by noting how under-reported the middle class aspect of Gazan life is in Western media, commenting, "this is the Gaza outside the war photographer's frame."

Leading BDS writer courageously condemns Matisyahu ban (then post disappears)

Benjamin Norton is a leading author who favors the boycott movement (BDS) against Israel.
Norton writes for the anti-Zionist Mondoweiss website, as well as a slew of other places on the topic of how bad Israel is. While I don’t agree with most of what Norton says, he certainly is prolific and an upcoming opinion-leader in that sphere.
So when I saw Norton pen a column severely criticizing the ban on American Jewish musician Matisyahu at the behest of a Spanish branch of the BDS movement, I was, well, surprised. All the more so because leading American BDS activists like Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal were seeking to justify the ban because Matisyahu was too pro-Israel.
Norton wrote at his own website, Cancellation of Matisyahu’s Performance Blatantly Defies BDS
While I disagree with some of the characterizations — for example, in reality BDS does boycott individuals, and it is not a peaceful movement which seeks justice for all — the overall point was pretty much the point that Zionist supporters of Matisyahu are making: Keep politics out of music, and don’t single out Jews for extra political scrutiny.
Now the post, however, is gone.
That’s a shame. It was a good post.
And it stands in contrast to Norton’s subsequent post at Mondoweiss, which uncritically repeats the party-line by the leader of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, that cancellation of Matisyahu’s appearance was justified because Matisyahu allegedly is a “bigot” (i.e., he is Zionist and supports Israel):

Coinicidence alert: This was the fourth Dawabeshe fire in Duma this year

Israeli site 0404 has documented that the fire last night that damaged a home owned by the Dawabashe family in Duma was the fourth one this year.

Besides the one last month that is being blamed on "settlers" based on nonsensical Hebrew graffiti, there was another fire on February 26. There was also a car that caught on fire on June 19 belonging to a member of the same family.

What a coincidence!

Also, I have not seen any evidence that the fire this morning was an electrical fire - just various people have made that assumption but as far as I can tell no one actually examined the damage and then came to that conclusion yet.

Remember also that it is not unheard of for Arabs to spray paint Hebrew graffiti after arson attacks.

(h/t Bob Knot)

NYT whitewashes Gaza jihadist groups

An op-ed in the New York Times today by Mohammed Omer is filled with the usual half-truths, but one section is particularly deceptive.

One way to effectively lie in an op-ed is by using lies as secondary information, rather than highlighting them. Even when the reader knows that the writer is biased, the subconscious assumption is that he is twisting real facts to make his point - and those "facts" can easily be believed.

Here is what Omar said:

Radical groups like the Islamic State target the vulnerable and alienated. While some in Gaza are attracted to the jihadist ideology, their numbers are extremely low. The failure of the Islamic State to take root here is partly because of nationalist sentiment and the focus of Palestinian demands for freedom from this remote-control occupation and endless siege.

Omer is distinguishing betweee the Islamic State and other Gaza groups, calling only IS "jihadist."

Which means he is pretending that Hamas and Islamic Jihad< are not jihadist groups!

No matter that Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades attracted 26,000 youths to its summer camps this summer to learn - jihad. The head of military training in these camps calls himself "Abu Jihad." Press releases from the Qassam Brigades end off with "JIhad victory or martyrdom."

Not to mention that the idea that Islamic Jihad isn't a jihadist group would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that the NYT accepts this propaganda as legitimate. (Here's their Saraya Brigades webpage banner.)

By accepting Omer's whitewashing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the New York Times is pushing the idea that these groups are somehow "moderate" because there are groups that are more extreme. This downplaying of extremist groups because others are worse is a path towards acceptance of some forms of jihad as somehow justified as long as the enemy is the "extremists" of Israel.

Hamas is an extremist jihadist terror group by any objective measure - their actions, their words, their goals. The fact that the media is unwilling to say that in recent years shows the effectiveness of propaganda pieces like this one.

(h/t Ronald)

08/24 Links Pt1: Rivlin: Our Right to Judea & Samaria a Basic Fact; Iran Deal Will Trigger ME War

From Ian:

Rivlin: Our Right to Judea and Samaria is a Basic Fact

President Reuven Rivlin hosted this morning, (Monday,) the regional and municipal heads of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, including chairman of the Judea and Samaria Council, Avi Roeh.
President Rivlin welcomed the delegation to his residence and spoke of the recent wave of terror attacks in Judea and Samaria.
“This house is your house, the house of all the citizens of Israel," he began. "Over the past months, and especially over the last few days, the communities of Judea and Samaria have faced very serious terror attacks. And so especially at this time, this meeting is more crucial than ever."
"As always, the pioneers go before the camp," he continued. "It is they who encounter the most opposition and pay, along with the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, the heaviest price."
"The settlements are at the forefront of the struggle, and the price paid by the settlers, is a painful price indeed."
Rivlin then encouraged the IDF to continue its work protecting the people of Israel.

Iran Deal Will Trigger Major War in Middle East

If someone had asked you a year ago what would be the most efficient way to cause a major war in the Middle East, you might well have said: Giving the mullahs in Iran the opportunity to get advanced conventional weapons, ICBMs, nuclear weapons and tens of billion of dollars to fund terrorist organizations and destabilize other countries in the region. You might have argued that a regime that does not hesitate to attack targets in Washington or Berlin might not be the most prudent one to shower with gigantic quantities of money and the deadliest weapons.
If one knows anything about the regime in Iran, it is difficult to understand how U.S. President Barack Obama's agreement with Iran could create anything other than chaos and war in the Middle East.
The content of the Iran nuclear agreement creates the perfect conditions for a major war in the Middle East -- one that could spread and start a major regional conflict.
Despite what President Obama likes to say, it is not true that the agreement "permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" or "cuts off all of Iran's pathways to a bomb". The agreement means that the U.S. has accepted that after 15 years, or sooner, Iran may build as many bombs as it likes.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, since its founding in 1979, has had an ideology that seeks to "export the Islamic revolution." The phrase is not just a catchword for the mullahs. They have done it in practice, if necessary by force. After coming to power in 1979, the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called on the Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq to revolt and establish an Islamic republic. The mullahs' effort to export the Islamic revolution to Iraq was one of the causes of the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted eight years and resulted in possibly a million deaths. Despite intense resistance from Arab countries, Khomeini's Islamic revolution has been successfully exported to Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

A warning to Tehran

The swift Israeli reaction on Thursday and Friday to the launching of four rockets from Syria at the Galilee and Golan shows how deep is the Israeli intelligence penetration of Iran’s military. It was not the first time that precise and updated intelligence data enabled Israel to prevent terrorist attacks from Syria sponsored by Iran, or to execute attacks against Bashar Assad’s regime, or whatever is left of it.
The rocket launchings – which caused no casualties or damage to property, except sparking fires in open fields – didn’t surprise IDF Intelligence.
They were expecting some sort of an attack against Israel from the Syrian Golan and prepared themselves for the eventuality.
Israel’s response was gradual but fierce. First, Syrian Army positions were attacked with artillery and missiles. Later, a senior Israeli officer revealed sensitive intelligence information by naming a senior Iranian officer and holding him responsible for ordering the rocket attacks. He is Saad Ezadi, in charge of the Israeli desk in the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The military source also said that, although the rockets were fired by members of the pro-Iranian Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, those who ordered it were the commanders of the Quds Force.
Revealing the name of such an important operative is unusual and is aimed at signaling to the Iranians that we know a great deal about them, so they had better watch out.
It was also good intelligence work that enabled the Israel Air Force on Friday to strike the car carrying four or five Islamic Jihad operatives who took part in firing the rockets the night before, hitting them some 15 kilometers inside Syria.
The Quds Force, led by the charismatic Maj.-Gen. Qassen Sulimanie, one of the most influential officials in Iran, already has a forward command post on the Syria side of the Golan. Its goal is to recruit local agents and terrorists who in return for cash would be ready to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel.

"Jews are the demons of the earth"

More "anti-Zionism" from Israel's peace partners. From Amad.ps, in a column entitled "Jews are Jews" we are told:

Jews betray a friend before betraying their enemies
Jews are demons of the earth
Jews believe that Allah is poor and they are rich;
"Is there a human who is uglier than them?"
Jews are global terror leaders, and professors of sedition, and senior criminals.
Jews are scientists in the art of torturing humans and killing them and burning them;
Jews are Zionist settlers, prostitutes, tyrants and dissolute infidels;
Their hearts are harsher than rock
Jew lie and slander and engage in calumny against God Almighty
They take your money and heavy taxes paid by US citizen for the benefit of the Jews
Jews consider the entire world to be their slaves
God Almighty is witness that they are the killers

Good to know!

Amnesty shows its ignorance of international law again

This one-year anniversary tweet came from Amnesty-USA-Israel/OPT/PA as well as from Amnesty-USA-MENA:

21 Aug: Air strike on 3 militants kills/injures many civilians, including kids. Proportionate? http://t.co/zqdLq72LVC http://t.co/4DnCCSAaDN
— AIUSA Israel/OPT/PA (@IOTPA) August 21, 2015

It sounds like Israel killed and injured many people just to strike three ordinary run-of-the-mill militants,

But if you look up the incident, here are the targets, as described by Al Akhbar:

Hamas suffered a severe blow on Thursday when Israeli warplanes managed to assassinate three of its top commanders. They were: Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, Mohammed Barhoum, and Raed al-Attar, who commanded Rafah's military brigade and had been one of the top figures on the occupation army's hit list for a quarter of a century.

According to Israeli intelligence reports, Attar – born in 1974 and a father of two – heads al-Qassam's commando unit and is in charge of smuggling weapons from the Sinai into Gaza. According to Yediot Ahronot, Attar was one of the most powerful Hamas leaders and was in charge of the Rafah region on the Egyptian border. The area is where Hamas built the tunnels, which provided them with the necessary equipment and supplies to build their military capacity.

Informed sources from al-Qassam's leadership told Al-Akhbar that Attar was one of the Brigades’ security masterminds. He was behind dozens of operations, in addition to Shalit's capture. The sources maintained that he supervised and ran the Rafah battle without fear, especially in al-Zanna area to the east, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy.

The sources explained that targeting Attar and two other al-Qassam commanders in Rafah meant that Hamas suffered a serious blow in southern Gaza, due to the military status of the three leaders.

Israel succeeded in eliminating one of the most wanted people on its intelligence lists since 1991. He was 41-year-old martyr Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, aka Abu Khalil; a member of Hamas’s supreme military council, head of the al-Qassam Brigades in South Gaza and one of the founders of the Brigades in the city of Rafah.

...According to Israeli sources, Abu Shamaleh was the most important among those it murdered yesterday. He had been involved in several attacks against the occupation and supervised several operations in Barakin al-Ghadab, Mahfouza, Jardoun, Tarmid, and al-Wahm al-Mutabaddid in which Shalit was captured. He was also a prominent commander in al-Furqan, Hijarat al-Sijjil, and al-Asf al-Makoul battles.

...As soon as the martyrdom of 45-year-old Mohammed Barhoum, aka Abu Osama – one of the most influential al-Qassam Brigades founders in Rafah – was announced, al-Qassam Brigades issued a statement eulogizing him as one of the leaders of the first generation of Brigade members.

..He also planned and organized several suicide operations inside the 1948-occupied territories, until Israel announced its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

The withdrawal allowed Barhoum to assist the Brigades leadership in southern Gaza to design and develop locally-made missiles. According to sources, the martyred commander had a profound impact on the development of the Brigades’ missiles system. This was in addition to his supervision of several tunnels in the far south of Rafah, on the borders with Sinai.

All three were top leaders. They are the very definition of valid targets. (Interestingly, Al Akhbar doesn't say a word about the civilians killed.)

Any military leader would agree that the unfortunate deaths of civilians is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of hitting such high value targets. International law does not intend to handcuff armies from doing their jobs. But the standard of what is appropriate both for the principle of distinction and the principle of proportion is what a reasonable military commander would do given all available information at the time.

Amnesty is suggesting jettisoning real international law. It has a skewed idea of what international law is, seemingly with the goal of making it literally impossible for Israel to defend itself.

One other piece of hypocrisy. Amnesty is pretending with this tweet to care so much about the lives of the civilians killed in this attack. But it has nothing negative to say about Hamas commanders - all of which had been previously targeted for assassination, and who therefore know that they were high-value targets - choosing to hide in a house filled with civilians and children.

Isn't that against international law also? Indeed it is. But amnesty will not say anything negative about them.

When a "human rights' organization sides with known, proven terrorists against a modern state with lots of checks and balances in its army, it has no right to call itself a "human rights" organization.

Sequence of news stories in new Dawabashe home burning in Duma

At first the Arabic headlines said:

The house of the Rashid Munawar Dawabsheh in Duma village, south of Nablus was set on fire after midnight last night.

Spokesman Samir Dawabsheh Dawabsheh said a little while ago that the house caught fire as a result of throwing a Molotov cocktail and that it was caused by arson.

He guessed that the culprit is the invisible hands of the occupation authorities and intelligence.

He added that the fire broke out empty room, with no injuries, only one case had been suffocation.

Then came this:

Local Palestinian sources reported on Monday at dawn the burning of the house in the town Duma southeast of Nablus, without causing any loss of life, while there were suspicions about the settlers.

Official settlements monitr in the northern West Bank Ghassan Daghlas said in a press statement that the burning of the house of Rashid Munawar Dawabsheh was caused by arson, which led to the burning of one of the rooms with a family member injured taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

Palestinian police began an investigation into the circumstances of the incident.

Dahglas pointed out that this incident was similar to that of the incident of the burning house of the family of the martyr Saad Dawabsheh in the same town at the hands of settlers, four weeks ago, where in both incidents it involved throwing burning materials through the house window, but this time the actors did not write on the walls to show their identity .

Dahglas said it was too early to confirm the identity of the perpetrators, calling for caution from rushing to charge the settlers so the occupation cannot take advantage of the incident to acquit settlers for the earlier crime if it is proven they have no connection with the new incident.

Then:

Zakaria al-Sadda, official fieldworker for Rabbis for Human Rights, said in a statement, "According to my experience and my follow ups on settler attacks, we can rule out the possibility that they caused the burning of this house, and that the most likely cause is due to an electrical fault."

Al-Sadda didn't say that he inspected the house and found evidence for an electrical fire, he said that it is unlikely that settlers did it and therefore it must have been an electrical fire - and not arson.

This is the source of news reports claiming an electrical fire.

What would you do if you were a Duma official, faced with a possible family feud arson that might cast doubt on the earlier incident, that you wanted to cover up, and then this new theory gets floated?

Here's the new version:

Chairman of the Duma village Abdul Salam Dawabsheh said that the fire, which broke out in the house of the village at dawn Monday, is likely to be due to an electrical fault, not the settlers as reported in some news.

And Dawabsheh told Raya News "that one room of a house belonging to Munawar Dawabsheh burned and is unlikely that settlers were behind it due to the presence of guards," denying injuries.

There are photos of children in the hospital so this official who so confidently says that it was an electrical fire is already shown to be lying: