Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 17, 2018

05/17 Links Pt1: I was at the Gaza border, we did all we could to avoid killing; Matti Friedman: Falling for Hamas’s Split-Screen Fallacy; Bret Stephens: Gaza’s Miseries Have Palestinian Authors

From Ian:

Matti Friedman (NYTs): Falling for Hamas’s Split-Screen Fallacy

The press coverage on Monday was a major Hamas success in a war whose battlefield isn’t really Gaza, but the brains of foreign audiences.

Israeli soldiers facing Gaza have no good choices. They can warn people off with tear gas or rubber bullets, which are often inaccurate and ineffective, and if that doesn’t work, they can use live fire. Or they can hold their fire to spare lives and allow a breach, in which case thousands of people will surge into Israel, some of whom — the soldiers won’t know which — will be armed fighters. (On Wednesday a Hamas leader, Salah Bardawil, told a Hamas TV station that 50 of the dead were Hamas members. The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed three others.) If such a breach occurs, the death toll will be higher. And Hamas’s tactic, having proved itself, would likely be repeated by Israel’s enemies on its borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Knowledgeable people can debate the best way to deal with this threat. Could a different response have reduced the death toll? Or would a more aggressive response deter further actions of this kind and save lives in the long run? What are the open-fire orders on the India-Pakistan border, for example? Is there something Israel could have done to defuse things beforehand?

These are good questions. But anyone following the response abroad saw that this wasn’t what was being discussed. As is often the case where Israel is concerned, things quickly became hysterical and divorced from the events themselves. Turkey’s president called it “genocide.” A writer for The New Yorker took the opportunity to tweet some of her thoughts about “whiteness and Zionism,” part of an odd trend that reads America’s racial and social problems into a Middle Eastern society 6,000 miles away. The sicknesses of the social media age — the disdain for expertise and the idea that other people are not just wrong but villainous — have crept into the worldview of people who should know better.

For someone looking out from here, that’s the real split-screen effect: On one side, a complicated human tragedy in a corner of a region spinning out of control. On the other, a venomous and simplistic story, a symptom of these venomous and simplistic times.

Bret Stephens (NYTs): Gaza’s Miseries Have Palestinian Authors

Notice, also, the old pattern at work: Avow and pursue Israel’s destruction, then plead for pity and aid when your plans lead to ruin.

The world now demands that Jerusalem account for every bullet fired at the demonstrators, without offering a single practical alternative for dealing with the crisis.

But where is the outrage that Hamas kept urging Palestinians to move toward the fence, having been amply forewarned by Israel of the mortal risk? Or that protest organizers encouraged women to lead the charges on the fence because, as The Times’s Declan Walsh reported, “Israeli soldiers might be less likely to fire on women”? Or that Palestinian children as young as 7 were dispatched to try to breach the fence? Or that the protests ended after Israel warned Hamas’s leaders, whose preferred hide-outs include Gaza’s hospital, that their own lives were at risk?

Elsewhere in the world, this sort of behavior would be called reckless endangerment. It would be condemned as self-destructive, cowardly and almost bottomlessly cynical.

The mystery of Middle East politics is why Palestinians have so long been exempted from these ordinary moral judgments. How do so many so-called progressives now find themselves in objective sympathy with the murderers, misogynists and homophobes of Hamas? Why don’t they note that, by Hamas’s own admission, some 50 of the 62 protesters killed on Monday were members of Hamas? Why do they begrudge Israel the right to defend itself behind the very borders they’ve been clamoring for years for Israelis to get behind?

Why is nothing expected of Palestinians, and everything forgiven, while everything is expected of Israelis, and nothing forgiven?

That’s a question to which one can easily guess the answer. In the meantime, it’s worth considering the harm Western indulgence has done to Palestinian aspirations.

No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood, violence and fatalism symbolized by these protests. No worthy Palestinian government can emerge if the international community continues to indulge the corrupt, anti-Semitic autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction the despotic killers of Hamas. And no Palestinian economy will ever flourish through repeated acts of self-harm and destructive provocation.

If Palestinians want to build a worthy, proud and prosperous nation, they could do worse than try to learn from the one next door. That begins by forswearing forever their attempts to destroy it.

Col Kemp: Hamas are using their own people as expendable tools. Don’t fall for their games

Many have condemned Israel for using excessive and disproportionate force. I cannot assess every incident, but I can say for sure that this is not the case. The IDF has strict rules of engagement, similar to our own, which conform to the laws of war and, when appropriate, to human rights law. IDF commanders exercise tight control over use of force, and I stood beside a battalion commander on the border as he directed operations in his sector.

Those who say it would be no big deal if the crowds reached the border fail to understand the potentially catastrophic implications. If they succeeded in breaking down the fence, thousands would pour through, intent on violence against Israeli civilians. Among them would be armed terrorists with orders to reach border communities and carry out mass murder. Some villages are just a few minutes’ dash from the border. Hamas social media provided Google maps marked with routes from the border to the communities they intended to attack. Had that horrendous scenario occurred, the IDF would have defended these communities with lethal force and many more people would have died.

All of this is no doubt hard to fully understand, especially if you are conditioned to see Israel in a bad light. But those who wrongly accuse Israel of using too much force play into the hands of Hamas.

I am in no doubt that the international reaction to conflict in Gaza has validated Hamas’s human shield tactics and encouraged them to step up their violence. This has contributed to the death toll. Anyone who is genuinely interested in human rights and concerned to improve the wretched lives of the people of Gaza should support Israel’s lawful efforts to defend its sovereign territory and condemn Hamas, which so malevolently oppresses its people and throws away the lives of innocent men, women and children.

On Tuesday, COGAT reported:

Earlier today, Kerem Shalom Crossing was opened and COGAT coordinated the entry of humanitarian aid, despite the recent riots by the security fence.

The aid included:
4 trucks carrying medical supplies from the PA
2 trucks carrying medical supplies donated by the IDF
2 trucks carrying medical supplies donated by UNICEF
119 tons of medical supplies

COGAT will continue to work with the international community to ensure the fast and efficient coordination of humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip.

Yes, the IDF itself donated 25% of the medical supplies.

Hamas responded this way:

In middle of the night, trucks loaded with Israeli medical supplies were returned from the Gaza Strip to Israel.

Why? Because the humanitarian aid came from Israel. The Hamas terrorist organization prefers that Gazans die from lack of proper medical care, rather than to receive equipment from Israel.

Israel, despite the riots and terrorist activities on the security fence, had sent medical aid, which is now being returned in its entirety, because Hamas does not care for the lives of Gazans.

The aid included IV fluids, bandages, pediatric equipment and disinfectants, as well as fuel for hospital generators.

The Hamas-led organizers of the Palestinian protests along the Gaza border confirmed that they would not accept medicine “from the murderers of our people,” despite the widespread shortages of medical supplies in the coastal enclave.

The terrorist group accused Israel of “trying to improve its black image” by sending the humanitarian aid.

This is again a manifestation of the Arab honor/shame mentality, where appearances are more important than reality, and "honor" is more important than life itself.

On the flip side, Arabs will make a big deal about how much they are helping their brethren in Gaza - and do little.

The most glaring example is Egypt, whose president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi publicly instructed his country to accept injured people from Gaza for treatment.

Even though the Gaza Health Ministry claims 2700 people were injured, 1360 by gunfire, so far Egypt has accepted only three people for medical treatment.

Appearance are everything. People are worth more dead than alive, as long as their deaths can be blamed on Israel. This is the mentality of the Gaza and Arab leadership. It is reprehensible - and it works.

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The story of the eight month old girl who was supposedly killed by Israeli teargas was quickly questioned when reporters, looking for more details on the story, found that there was more to it than Hamas propaganda indicated:

On Tuesday, a Gaza doctor told the Associated Press health official that the Hamas claim that an 8-month-old baby died from Israeli tear gas was inaccurate. He attested that the baby, Layla Ghandour, had a preexisting medical condition which caused her death.

The baby was literally at the border fence at the time, taken by her 12-year old nephew towards his grandmother who was there.

Reliefweb is a UN-run website that says, "We provide reliable and timely information, enabling humanitarian workers to make informed decisions and to plan effective response. We collect and deliver key information, including the latest reports, maps and infographics from trusted sources."

One of their "trusted sources" is Islamic Relief, a UK-based NGO, which issued this statement reproduced on the UN site:

Over 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli gunfire over the past few days, including an eight-month-old baby, and more than 2,700 people have been injured. The victims have been involved in largely peaceful protests near the Israeli border which have come under fire.

No one on the planet claims that the girl was shot - except a UK-based NGO with links to Hamas.

This is what the UN considers to be "reliable and timely information."

The idea that an NGO might also be an anti-Israel propaganda outlet is, apparently, a bonus for the UN.

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TOI reports:

Several homes in the Israeli city of Sderot were hit by machine gun fire, apparently fired by terrorists in the Gaza Strip, causing damage but no injuries, in one of three cross-border exchanges on Wednesday, the army said.

According to the city of Sderot, the shots were aimed at an army aircraft that had been flying overhead, and the bullets struck the homes as they fell back down to earth.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the "military wing" of Fatah which is headed by Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas, takes credit for this - and doesn't mention anything about targeting aircraft. They claim that they shot at an Israeli patrol as well as the town of Sderot directly, calling it "an initial response to the massacre committed by the occupation against peaceful demonstrators in the eastern Gaza Strip."

They claim that they inflicted injuries on "soldiers" and that they will release a video of their operation.

Fatah is of course jealous of Hamas for taking the initiative for the "Great Return March" and wants to be perceived as being just as active as its rival.

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170 killed in Syria the first three days of this week. No one bothered to report about THOSE dead Arabs.

On Sunday, 114 Arabs were killed.

On Monday, 30 more.

On Tuesday, 26 more.

But the media didn't think that Arabs dying is an interesting story. Those people had the misfortune of being killed by other Arabs. If they had been killed by Jews, then suddenly there would be interest.

Instead, the news agencies sent hundreds of reporters to "report" on something that they already decided would be a massacre of innocent, unarmed civilians before a single shot was fired.

The reporters were busy falsely accusing Israel of shooting randomly into crowds of innocent unarmed civilians who were simply protesting the "blockade." Or the US embassy. Or their frustration. (Most reporters pretended that the protests, named the Great return March, had anything to do with "return" to overrun Israel based on its having the audacity to exist since 1948.)

If it was, say, Egypt killing Hamas members at the border, the media would have cheered them. But when Jews act in self-defense, they are the ones who are vilified.

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05/16 Links Pt2: Making Up International Law For Fun and Sport; Western celebrities, Israel and inferiority complexes

From Ian:

Noah Pollak: Making Up International Law For Fun and Sport

Media coverage of Hamas's attacks on the Israeli border have been, as usual, a dumpster fire of idiocy and ignorance. Hamas itself now admits that "50 of the 62 martyrs" were card-carrying terrorists. One of the heads of Hamas just boasted to an interviewer: "This is not peaceful resistance." No facts or admissions will intrude on the media narrative, which is that Israel is diabolically slaughtering civilians because Israelis enjoy killing people.

One of the tropes that is being repeated everywhere is this one, promoted here with complete credulity by the New York Times:
International law allowed for the use of lethal force only as a last resort in the face of an immediate threat to life or serious injury, Mr. Colville noted. Those laws "appear to have been ignored again and again," he added.

"An attempt to approach, or crossing or damaging the green line fence do not amount to a threat to life or serious injury and are not sufficient grounds for the use of live ammunition," he said.

This farcical claim originates with "human rights" groups such as Human Rights Watch (whose Israel director, Omar Shakir, is a BDS activist) and Amnesty International (which calls for an arms embargo on Israel).

The problem is this alleged requirement of "international law" doesn't exist. It is made-up, an example of the new trend of human rights groups claiming "international law" that doesn't actually exist in, say, the Geneva Conventions, but is merely what these groups wish was enshrined in international law because it gives their hatred of Israel a sheen of moral high-mindedness and impartiality.

‘The Ugly American’: Official Palestinian Authority Daily Demonizes US History and Politics in Attack on Jerusalem Embassy Move

The Palestinian Authority’s main daily newspaper launched a vitriolic attack on the United States this week, following the opening on Monday of the new American Embassy in the Israeli capital, Jerusalem.

In language reminiscent of Palestinian propaganda targeting the legitimacy of Zionism and Israel, an official editorial in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on May 15 portrayed the US as a nation bereft of moral principles, and a creature of colonialism.

“None of the American administrations were noted for nobility of spirit or for human traits such as compassion, tolerance and understanding of the other,” the editorial — translated by analysts at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — stated. “America has always employed brutal policies towards small and poor nations. That is how it behaved toward the Native Americans, whom it called ‘Indians,’ during the violent and blood-soaked period of its birth.”

The editorial went on to strongly recommend the writings of Munir Akash — a Syrian-born American academic who has previously accused the US of promoting the mass sterilization of women in the developing world.

The editorial brandished “The Ugly American” — a factually-based political novel about US diplomacy in Southeast Asia that caused a sensation in the late 1950s when it was first published, but is a less-familiar cultural reference today — as the main evidence of US malign intent throughout its 242-year history.

“It would be difficult to continue relating all the stories that appear in The Ugly American, which are full of bloodshed, systematic violence, a culture of brutality and attacks on small nations,” the editorial asserted — listing alleged traits of the US that are routinely associated with Israel and Jews in the Palestinian media

Douglas Murray: The Suicide Of Europe

"The civilization born of Judeo-Christian values, ancient Greek philosophy and the discoveries of the Enlightenment is staring at the abyss, brought there by its own hand," says Douglas Murray, author of "The Strange Death of Europe," in a new PragerU video. "To put it starkly: Europe is committing suicide."

"How did this happen?" asks Murray. "It’s a complicated story, but there are two major causes. The first is the mass movement of peoples into Europe. This has been going on steadily since the end of World War II but sped up massively in the migration crisis of 2015, when more than a million migrants poured into Europe from the Middle East, North Africa and East Asia."

The second cause, argues Murray, is that "Europe lost faith in itself — its beliefs, its traditions and even its very legitimacy."

Kialo advertises itself as, “The only platform designed specifically for rational debates,” but based on its recent, sponsored tweet, it is anything but. Instead, Kialo is just one more vehicle for far-left Big Brothering ala Facebook. The tweet in question reads:

“Is it ok to physically modify yourself as a symbol of a religious bond? What if your parents do it while you're still an infant? Join the Kialo debate on banning infant male circumcision!”

Is it ok to physically modify yourself as a symbol of a religious bond? What if your parents do it while you're still an infant? Join the Kialo debate on banning infant male circumcision! https://t.co/67deCOBx5n
— Kialo (@KialoHQ) May 5, 2018

Kialo pretends that it offers a way to have balanced debate “with clear, concise arguments from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without all that editorial noise.”

But here we have a very leading few sentences in a sponsored tweet. Kialo is telling the Twitterverse what to think about circumcision. They are putting doubt in your minds just by asking the question of whether people have any right to “modify” themselves as a symbol of a religious bond.

And in fact, the question itself is antisemitic. The only people who “modify” themselves as a symbol of a religious bond are the Jews. Muslims circumcise for other reasons.

Notice, as well, that you don’t see anyone complaining about the lip-stretching or scarification practices of some African tribes, or the tooth-sharpening practice of the Mayans and Balinese. How about the neck-accentuation practices of some Thai women in which they wear up to 25 coils, each weighing four and a half pounds, beginning at age 5, to elongate their necks?

No. You don’t hear anyone complaining about any of that. But if you did, it would not be framed as "mutilation" but as diversity. Woe to anyone who dares to cringe or shudder at the nature of these practices, lest he be accused of closed-mindedness and prejudice.

Of course, if you really wanted to address religious mutilation, it would not be circumcision, with its proven health benefits, but female genital mutilation (FGM). Female genital mutilation is known to cause "recurrent infections, difficulty urinating and passing menstrual flow, chronic pain, the development of cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth, and fatal bleeding. There are no known health benefits."

Only when it comes to the Jews, it seems, do people think they are justified in saying we have no right to practice our religion. That our beliefs are wrong, our Torah is wrong, our God wrong. That our age old rite is "mutilation."

But here’s the thing: Jews are obligated to circumcise sons. Banning circumcision effectively bans Judaism. Think how it was in Soviet Russia, how Jews risked death to have their sons circumcised in secret, in the middle of the night. Think how the Romans outlawed Jewish rites like circumcision and how, when Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai criticized them, he and his son were forced into hiding for 13 years in order to evade certain execution. We did not risk death to arrive at the point where our religion and fate can still be debated by outsiders.

And yet, Kialo dares to ask, “What if your parents do it while you’re still an infant?”

With this question, Kialo is making a statement, telling the world to doubt the morality of something that Jews have done for thousands of years. And judging by the responses, Kialo’s implied message has been received, loud and clear.

If a male child is born with a foreskin, then its there for a good reason.
Its a JEWISH thing to cut it out. Pretty sick concept too.
— NecktopPC (@NecktopP) May 5, 2018

How, by the way, is it even a debate if Kialo has prejudiced you from the get go? Take a look at the way the “debate” is framed. The question is: “should circumcision be banned” and it’s offered as a choice, pro or con.

But it’s natural for people to choose arguments in favor of things. People like to be positive. They like to be for, and not against things. This is why, for instance, the pro-abortion crowd frames its position as “pro-choice” while telling the world that anyone who disagrees with them is “anti-choice.” And so, given the choice of being pro or anti a ban on circumcision, people are going to take the bait, and choose pro.

Was there a choice about the wording? Of course. Instead framing the question in terms of a ban, Kialo might have written, for instance: “should circumcision be permitted?” and made that as a pro/con choice. It’s clear that the chosen phrasing employing the word "ban"was meant to prejudice participants against Jewish ritual. And at that point, we have to wonder: why should a basic Jewish practice be the subject of “debate?” Why should it even be discussed by people not Jewish?

Can anyone really tell us that we have no right to observe our religion, as mandated by God since Father Abraham was himself circumcised?

Kialo claims it makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons of an argument by giving you “clear, concise arguments from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without all that editorial noise.”

But here we have a sponsored tweet, issued just as the right to circumcision for non-medical reasons is being debated in Iceland. And the sponsored tweet suggests that the practice of an ancient Jewish rite abrogates an infant’s human rights. How is that NOT editorial noise?

And of course, people responding to the tweet take the bait and run with it. Read the responses. The word “mutilation” crops up numerous times.

Editorial silence, or bias by selective omission, by the way, also provides a kind of “editorial noise” by filtering what it is readers are allowed to see and hear. if you click the link in the tweet, and read the backgrounder for the debate, one paragraph out of five is given over to a detailed explanation of why Muslims perform circumcision. There is, on the other hand, not one word, let alone a paragraph on the reasons Jews perform circumcision. This, though clearly the Muslim rite is based on the Jewish rite, the Jewish rite of circumcision having begun thousands of years before Mohammed was born, the Jewish people having been the first to practice this ritual.

So effectively, Kialo’s tweet tells you to question the Jewish practice of Brit Milah, the Jewish circumcision rite, but tells you absolutely nothing about why Jews perform this ritual. No one should be surprised. Bias by selective omission is a classic tactic of the left. What they keep you from hearing is just as important as what they whisper into your adorable little subconscious.

Which is why this, is utter garbage:

“With Kialo, you can easily visualize every aspect of a complex debate, so you can be more thoughtful about the issues that matter to you and the world.

“Empowering reason.

“Kialo.”

No wait:

via GIPHY

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A child at the Gaza border

Here's a video taken by a child at the Gaza border on Monday. He screams "Allah hu Akbar" as people approach the fence (and he follows), and then he cries with joy as (according to the articles) he witnesses Gazans cutting the barbed wire.

Remember, Gaza schools - including UNRWA schools - were closed on Monday to allow as many children as possible to go to the riots.

And, as Hamas intensively hoped, for some of these children to be shot.

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05/16 Links Pt1: Palestinians in Gaza Are Dying for a Photo Op; Dershowitz: Media 'Incentivizes & Encourages' Hamas With Biased Coverage

From Ian:

Hamas official: 50 of the 62 Gazans killed in border violence were our members

A Hamas official on Wednesday acknowledged that 50 of the 62 Palestinians reported killed during Gaza border riots on Monday and Tuesday were members of the Islamist terrorist group, bringing the total number of known members of terror groups among the fatalities up to 53.

“In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas,” said Hamas official Salah Bardawil in an interview with the Palestinian Baladna news outlet.

The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad had said on Tuesday that three members of its Saraya al-Quds military wing were killed by Israeli forces in Khan Younis.

The Israeli military shared a portion of Bardawil’s interview with an Arabic news outlet, accompanied by English captions.

“This proves what so many have tried to ignore: Hamas is behind these riots, and the branding of the riots as ‘peaceful protests’ could not be further from the truth,” said IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, 62 people in total were killed during border clashes on Monday and Tuesday.

Hamas Political Bureau Member Salah Al-Bardawil: 50 of the Martyrs Killed in Gaza were from Hamas, 12 Regular People pic.twitter.com/etPPGrsQo7
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 16, 2018

Former Hamas Political Bureau Chief Khaled Mash'al: We Are Ready for All Types of Armed and Popular Resistance pic.twitter.com/3u8knDofxA
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 16, 2018

PMW: “Bring a knife, dagger, or handgun,” kidnap Israeli civilians, and murder soldiers and settlers - Instructions on Facebook to Gazans for “March of Return”

Two Palestinian Facebook pages and a forum directing rioters in Gaza gave explicit instructions to murder and kidnap Israelis on May 14, the day the US embassy opened in Jerusalem, as well as suggestions on how to accomplish this goal. It is not clear if Hamas itself was the group sending these messages. What is critical is that Gazans were encouraged to bring weapons to the demonstrations and use these weapons to either murder or capture Israelis. Israeli soldiers may have been facing Palestinians who were using the cover of demonstrating civilians to attempt to break through the border with the goal of murdering and kidnapping Israelis.

The following are the instructions to bring weapons, murder "soldiers and settlers," and kidnap Israeli citizens for use as bargaining chips to impose conditions on Israel:

"Rebelling young people, Treat seriously and do not take lightly the requests to bring a knife, dagger, or handgun, if you have one, and to leave them under your clothes and not use them or show them, except if you identify one of the [Israeli] soldiers or settlers. Do not kill Israeli civilians, instead hand them over to the resistance immediately, because this is the point that Israel fears, as it knows that the capturer can set any condition he wants."
[Independent Palestinian Facebook page "The Great March of Return", May 14, 2018]

The instructions also described how masses of Palestinians would "collectively" breach the security fence aided by bulldozers:

Not surprisingly, journalists and the media in general continue to take their cue from Hamas terrorists and insist on describing attacks on Israel's border and attempts to infiltrate as peaceful demonstrations.

At the start of the organized riots, NBC informed us that

The sit-in demonstration is set to culminate on May 15 — the day after Israeli independence
NBC News, April 5, 2018

Sit in?

If you listen closely, the voices you will hear are definitely not singing kumbaya.

Still, after 6 weeks, the media has begun to notice a thing or two, interspersed among the required proclamation of peaceful demonstrations.

For example, there is some reporting on the fact that what is happening is not spontaneous and that Hamas is behind it. Not only is Hamas pulling the strings, but some newspapers have pointed out that the terrorist group manipulates Gazans by lying to them and deliberately putting civilians in danger.

The Washington Post has noted how the leaders of the riots deliberately endanger lives:

But the protests appeared to have a more violent edge than in previous weeks. Some young men brought knives and fence cutters. At a gathering point east of Gaza City, organizers urged protesters over loudspeakers to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them. [emphasis added]

Similarly, The New York Times reported

The atmosphere grew more charged after midday prayers, when more than 1,000 men gathered under a large blue awning. Officials from Hamas and other militant factions addressed the worshipers, urging them into the fray and claiming — falsely, to all appearances — that the fence had been breached and that Palestinians were flooding into Israel. [emphasis added]

With all the trouble Hamas is going through, they are very determined. When Israel tried to impede the riots by warning bus companies in Gaza not to bring people to the border, Hamas threatened to imprison the drivers - leaving them no choice.

Similarly, in order to encourage the largest possible of participants in what was supposed to be the last day of the riots, Hamas declared a general strike and even UNRWA complied and closed down.

Just as the media has begrudgingly mentioned the hand of Hamas in encouraging the riots, journalists have been a bit more forthcoming -- even if they cannot quite bring themselves to admit to the weapons that are being brought and used:

MSNBC reporter Matt Bradley falsey [sic] claims Palestinian rioters in the Gaza Strip were "unarmed," then admits they "had some light weapons." pic.twitter.com/V3o3chQwnL
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) May 14, 2018

Apparently, not all journalists have bothered to pay attention to what Hamas leaders have been saying from the very beginning:

The fact is, not all that much encouragement by Hamas seems to have been necessary:

While some said they would abide by official calls to keep the demonstrations peaceful, others talked about their enthusiasm to break into Israel and wreak havoc.

“We are excited to storm and get inside,” said 23-year-old Mohammed Mansoura. When asked what he would do inside Israel, he said, “Whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones.”

Two other young men carried large knives and said they wanted to kill Jews on the other side of the fence.

Since this is from the same article that notes how Gazans were lied to in order to get them to the border, it is not actually clear where these "official calls to keep the demonstrations peaceful" came from -- but it is typical of the media's schizophrenic approach, or what they like to think of as 'balanced reporting'.

Whoever it is that was calling for peaceful demonstrations, it sure wasn't this guy:

Since Hamas is doing everything it can to encourage violence and death, it really is difficult to understand who the Washington Post thinks it is referring to:

We are just chiming in to let you know the above Facebook post, literally telling its millions of followers to invade armed with knives and guns into Israeli towns and kidnap people, is still up. pic.twitter.com/UfaakgTcea
— The Mossad (@TheMossadIL) May 15, 2018

Hamas is literally drawing Gazans a map on how to infiltrate and invade Israel:

The official Facebook page of the riots in Gaza published these photos, directing rioters to breach the fence and infiltrate nearby Israeli communities pic.twitter.com/PSHEmmustX
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) May 13, 2018

And when some Gazans were successful in infiltrating across the border, they made it very clear they got Hamas's message:

This is what a border infiltration from #Gaza into #Israel looks like. See the man (0:30) clutching a meat cleaver? Imagine hundreds like him coming into Israeli territory, hoping to murder as many Israelis as possible.

This is what Israel is up against. pic.twitter.com/97c9jvEWOT
— Emanuel Miller (@emanumiller) May 14, 2018

This is not just about people being caught incidentally on film.
The rioters are more than happy to tell journalists what they intend to do:

A young Palestinian man boasted to National Public Radio on Tuesday about putting swastikas on incendiary kites and flying them into Israel, saying that "Jews go crazy" when they see it and "we want to burn them."

And of course, there is always a terrorist video to make the point. This one is from Islamic Jihad:

Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon

Of course, sometimes while talking to journalists, there is always a possibility of getting your lines wrong, as a correspondent for AFP reported:

Me: So why are you protesting tomorrow?
Naseem (14): For the right to return
Naseem's friend (giggling): But you are a Gazan (meaning unlike most Gazans his family weren't refugees)
Naseem: Ok. So for Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/e1XtzquwmB
— Joe (@joedyke) May 13, 2018

A bigger problem is coordinating civilians so they can be used as human shields to effectively cover for the Hamas terrorists among them:

Hamas has warned its own members to stay away from the security fence during Gaza’s mass protests, lest they get shot, while actively encouraging Palestinian civilians — particularly children and teens — to approach the border, the Shin Bet added, citing findings from a number of interrogations. If the fence is breached, however, armed Hamas gunmen are poised to enter Israel to carry out attacks.

“There is a prohibition for Hamas operatives to approach the border, from a fear that they will be killed or captured by IDF troops, unless the security fence falls and then they must enter, armed, into Israel under the cover of the masses and carry out terror attacks,” the Shin Bet said in a statement.

...Yahya Ijlah, a 19-year-old Hamas member who entered Israel on April 29, told Shin Bet interrogators that he had been sent to the border in order to steal a security camera along the fence.

According to the Shin Bet, Ijlah said Hamas “is working to make its activities look like a popular uprising in the media, and not a violent operation by its members.”

But despite it all --

With all the evidence of premeditation and advanced planning,

Despite statements in Arabic that are easily available online in translation,

Contrary to statements made to the media by the rioters themselves,

And even with video of infiltration into Israel, of kites setting fields on fire and of calls for death to Jews,

The media still insists on writing about peaceful protests, bewildered by how Israel uses live ammunition to prevent Gazans from doing what they proclaim to the world they want to do and eagerly accepting whatever explanation Hamas terrorists tell them.

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Al Aqsa Voice quotes Hamas official Dr. Salah Bardawil as saying "50 Hamas martyrs rose [to paradise] during the million man march of return on 14/05/2018."

This sounds pretty damning.

Hopefully some reporters will follow up on this. Oh, sorry - the meme of innocent civilians is already set in stone, and no reporter wants to admit that they were wrong.

That would damage their credibility!

(h/t Yoel)

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Hamas and Islamic Jihad media are celebrating the death of 19-year old Mu'tasim Bellah Fawzi Abu Luli, who was shot by Israeli forces on Monday.

They are most happy about the smile on his face in death.

The articles about him prove that Abu Luli planned to be "martyred."

On Saturday night, his family says, he was singing songs about how he wants to be a martyr. His mother, when asked about his smile, says that he always talked about his desire for martyrdom, and therefore he was obviously happy.

He wrote shortly before he went to protest about the beauty of Paradise: ""It is difficult to live in the world, there is a more beautiful paradise than here. The evening is full of the blood of heroic martyrs who continue to work day and night. The goal is paradise, God willing."

His older brother Mohammed reported that he prepared for the Monday riots by preparing his bag that contained wire cutters so he could cut the fence with Israel.

He said, "His friends told us that he advanced towards the fence only a few meters from the occupation soldiers and managed to cut [the fence] at 11:30 am. His friends told him: 'Go back, ' but he refused to return and insisted on staying until he broke through the fence.".

He continued: "After half an hour, the youths came to him under the cover of thick smoke emitted from rubber tires and found him lying in his blood, he was sniped by Israeli soldiers in his head."

The article also notes that Abu Luli closed his Facebook account shortly before the Monday riots.

Mu'tasim may not have been a member of Hamas, but he was just as much a terrorist. He was manipulated by Hamas and other incitement to want to be killed - and he was going to keep going until he got his wish.

The Western media is not going to bother to tell the story of Mu'tasim Abu Lili. But the Arabic media is anxious to. Because they want to encourage more people to act like him.

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