Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Hamas broadcast calls for human shields

From the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center:

The following are examples of calls in the Palestinian media for Palestinians civilians to serve as human shields:

1) Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV and PalMedia Website called upon civilians to form a human shield at the home of Abu al-Hatal in the Sajaiya neighborhood (in Al-Sha'af according to other version) because the IDF had threatened to blow it up (March 1).

The inscription reads: “Hamas calls upon on [the Palestinian] public to come
to the house of Abu al-Hatal in al-Sha'af [neighborhood] to act
as human shields” (Al-Aqsa TV, March 1).

2) Al-Aqsa TV called upon the Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to the house of shaheed Othman al-Ruziana to protect it because the IDF was threatening to blow it up (February 29).

3) Al-Aqsa TV called upon the residents of Khan Yunis to gather at the house of Ma'amoun Abu ‘Amer because the IDF was threatening to blow it up (February 28). An hour later dozens of Palestinians from Khan Yunis were reported to have gathered on the roof of Abu ‘Amer's house to serve as human shields to prevent the house from being hit (Pal-today Website, February 28) .

4) Al-Aqsa TV called upon Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to the house of shaheed Musab al-Ja'abir to protect it because Israel was threatening to blow it up (February 29).

5) The PIJ's Radio Sawt al-Quds called upon civilian to gather around the house of Fawzi Abu al-Hamed in the Absan al-Kabira region to prevent it from being blown up by the IDF (March 1).
Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya boasted to Al-Jazeera TV of the “firm stance” of the Palestinians. As an example he said that the “occupation” had threatened to blow up buildings but nevertheless hundreds and thousands of Palestinians had left their homes “in the middle of the night” and gone up on the roofs of the houses the Israelis had threatened to blow up (Al-Jazeera TV, February 29).

I will restate what I wrote in 2006 for a similar story:

The use of human shields is the use of Israel's morality as a weapon against Israel.

It is interesting that while the PalArabs never tire of telling the world that Israel is practicing "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and "daily massacres" and "indiscriminate attacks," - and now they are adding "holocaust" to that list - they know that it is all a bunch of crap. Because they know that Israel will not purposefully attack civilians.

And they know it so well, they are willing to risk their own lives, banking on the morality of this supposedly genocidal army.

If the Palestinian Jews were one-tenth as bad as the Palestinian Arabs claim they are, why would they hesitate to kill the hundreds of human shields? Hell, if Israel is interested in ethnic cleansing as we are being told daily, having this big fat target would make the job so much easier, right?

Contrast this with the PalArab philosophy, where victories are measured in the number of dead Palestinian Jewish civilians and bombing of pizza shops is a "victory." Qassams that manage to hit Jews are celebrated. Deep down, everyone on the planet knows that there is no comparison between the morality of the IDF and that of the PalArab terror groups. Everyone knows that Jewish women and children are the intended targets of suicide bombs and Qassam rockets. Everyone knows that the vast majority of Israelis grieve over the accidental deaths of Palestinian Arab civilians while the PalArabs hand out candy at the deaths of large numbers of Jews.

And the proof is easy: how effective would "human shields" be in Sderot or Ashkelon? When the intended targets are civilians, the idea of human shields is ludicrous. They only work when the opponent is moral.

But despite these blindingly obvious facts, the world is still willing to condemn Israel and give the Palestinian Arabs a free pass.

Sharia vs. the tea pot

A Malaysian woman has been jailed for two years for belonging to a cult that worships a giant tea pot.

From the Telegraph (UK):

Kamariah Ali, a 57 year old former teacher, was arrested in 2005 when the government of the Muslim majority country demolished the two storey high sacred tea pot and other infrastructure of the "heretical" Sky Kingdom cult.
For the eccentric sect, which emphasised ecumenical dialogue between religions, the tea pot symbolized the purity of water and "love pouring from heaven".
But in Malaysia, despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of worship, born Muslims such as Mrs Ali are forbidden from converting to other religions.
Passing sentence, the Sharia judge Mohammed Abdullah said: "The court is not convinced that the accused has repented and is willing to abandon any teachings contrary to Islam. I pray God will open the doors of your heart, Kamariah."
Mrs Ali has already been jailed once for apostasy, for 20 months in 1992.
"This has to stop. They can’t be sending her again and again to prison for this," her lawyer, Sa'adiah Din, told reporters.
"She informed the court that she is not a Muslim. She doesn't come under Sharia court anymore."

AsiaNews adds more details on the teapot cult:

Born in the mid ‘80’s, the community grew outside state control until 1998, when its followers set up a Disneyland style games park – with buildings in the form of umbrellas, colourful boats, Greek and roman columns – at the centre of which they placed a gigantic teapot and equally massive blue vase. By this means they began proselytising among villagers and foreigners.
In August of 2005, Islamic fundamentalists destroyed their deity and the structures where they gathered.

Can't we all discuss this civilly over a cup of...oh, sorry, didn't mean to offend.

Sorry, but the old one-week records still stand

The Arab News, in its never-ending quest to put the most falsehoods possible in their anti-Israel op-eds, added another one today:

[O]nce again Palestinian suffering and death tolls continue to break records in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967.

It appears that the Arab News is considering the roughly 110 Palestinian Arabs killed since last Wednesday to be some sort of a record of deaths in a week.

Of course, they don't want to remember that this particular record belongs to Palestinian Arabs themselves, who managed in the seven days between June 10 and June 16, 2007 to kill 148 of each other.

So if Israel's actions are a "holocaust" - which is now the word being used universally in Arabic media to describe the events of the past week - then Hamas and Fatah must really be guilty of self-genocide.

Even the Arab News knows enough to limit the idea of PalArab suffering to "in the territories" which allows them to not compare the current Israeli actions with, say, Black September, 1970 when 3400 Palestinian Arabs were killed by Jordanians in an eleven day period. Or even January 18, 1976 when Lebanese Christians killed 1000 Lebanese and Palestinian Muslims in a single day.

Is the death of some 75 terrorists and 35 civilians over seven days (my estimate based on PCHR listings of the circumstances of death) worse than the expulsion of 400,000 Palestinian Arabs from Kuwait in 1991 - also in a single week? After all, if expulsion is considered "ethnic cleansing" and tantamount to genocide - which is the Arab definition when applied to Israel - then Kuwait might win the prize.

It's so tough to compare which has been the worst week in Palestinian Arab history, but what seems clear is that however you slice it, this week doesn't come close.

Not that the Arab media would ever admit it.

Magic bullet

al-Aretz headlines:

IDF kills infant, top Islamic Jihad militant in southern Gaza

And in the details we learn:

A two-week-old Palestinian infant was killed after nightfall on Tuesday in a brief Israel Defense Forces ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said, just a day after Israel ended a bloody offensive in northern Gaza against Palestinian rocket squads.

A senior Islamic Jihad operative, Yussuf Samiri, was also killed. Israeli defense officials said that Samiri had been the intended target of the operation.

...Witnesses said IDF tanks fired shells and fighter helicopters fired missiles. A 1-month-old baby girl, Amira Abu-Assar, was killed by a ricocheting bullet, medical officials said.

How exactly do the Palestinian Arab "medical officials" always know that Israeli bullets are the ones that invariably kill civilians whenever there is a firefight? One would expect to see some Palestinian Arab casualties from "friendly fire," but for some reason those incidents are never reported.
Palestine Today (Arabic) reports that "fighters from the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, fought in violent armed clashes with automatic weapons and anti-tank missiles" during this battle. So clearly there were bullets flying from both sides.

Do Gaza police have forensics labs that can identify bullet fragments, perform some metallurgical and chemical tests, look at the trajectories and ricochet angles, and definitively identify their source within minutes of the fatality?

Every single incident, Israel is blamed, and so-called "news" organizations - including Israel's major pro-Arab newspaper - report the Palestinian Arab claims without skepticism or question.

Mishloach Manot for Sderot families

Purim is coming, and Sderot is the most appropriate place to send gift baskets:

This Purim, Connections Israel plans to deliver a holiday gift basket to every family in Sderot (10,000 families in total) with a letter of support from a Jewish family overseas. This project will connect families and communities in a major expression of Jewish unity.
Every Diaspora community’s name and contribution will be marked in a major exhibit that will take place in Sderot after before Purim and will show the support, care and solidarity from the Jews around the world.

Contact your community leader to promote this event.

Urge other caring families to join this project !!!

Write a warm greeting card to a family in Sderot - make it personal! add a picture and a blessing for the holiday and mail it to us.

If you like you can donate a holiday gift basket ($36) and your letter will be included.

160 trucks of aid scheduled today

From YNet:

The Kerem Shalom terminal in the southern Gaza Strip was expected to reopen Tuesday after being closed for six weeks for security reasons.

Some 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinians were expected to pass through the terminal, while 60 additional trucks containing equipment and medications were to cross the border at the Suffa crossing.

The Kerem Shalom crossing was used as an alternative terminal after the Karni crossing in the northern Strip was shut down. The terminal was shut down, however, after the defense establishment received warnings on terror organization's plans to carry out attacks at the area, and after mortar shells were fired at the terminal while goods were passing through it.

On Tuesday, the IDF was instructed to reopen the crossing, allowing a limited number of trucks to enter Gaza while following the developments in the area on a daily basis.

Sixty trucks were expected to pass through the Suffa crossing with medications, as well as equipment and food from the United Nations and donations from Jordan and Turkey. In addition, 80 trucks carrying grains were to enter the Strip through the Karni crossing.

Meanwhile, three Qassams landed in Israel so far today, to correspond with the three crossings that goods will be shipped through.

Video of near-lynching in Jerusalem

Here is the Channel 10 story from yesterday of two Jerusalem municipal workers being nearly lynched by peaceful Palestinian Arab protesters using stones and metal bars.

Defending against terror impossible in international law

Human rights organizations have two main problems with Israel defending itself: the "principle of distinction" and "the principle of proportionality." These are not what the Geneva Conventions calls them but they are the shorthand for the following rules.

The principle of distinction refers to Article 48 of Protocol 1, which states:

In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.

And the principle of proportionality comes from article 51, paragraph 5(b) (bolded):

1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
...
4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: (a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or (c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;

and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects;

and

(b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
...

7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.

You will notice that Hamas often violates paragraph 7 above by telling citizens to act as human shields, as they did in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in 2006. And, of course, Qassam and Grad rockets by their very nature violate the Geneva Conventions multiple times by targeting civilians, by not distinguishing between civilians and military targets, by punishing the civilian population for perceived crimes of the military, and many others. Beyond that, Hamas routinely violates other aspects of Geneva, such as by placing military objects in civilian areas, by taking medicines and fuel from hospitals, by placing Fatah prisoners in areas where they are in danger and many, many others.

But Hamas can do all of this with impunity, because of Paragraph 8:

8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.

So no matter how much Hamas violates the Geneva Conventions, Israel must respect the laws with regard to civilian lives. Only Israel is under international pressure to adhere to Geneva; no Arab nation is similarly pressuring Hamas to follow international law.

Hamas has the means and the history of violating dozens of provisions of international humanitarian law and can do so with no fear of sanctions or serious condemnation, and not even the fear of Israel doing the same. There is no way that Israel can attack rocket launchers without some civilians being killed as long as Hamas places them in schools and sends teenage boys out to retrieve the launchers.

In recent days we have seen people representing the EU and UN and human rights organizations who say, in all seriousness, that "Israel has the right to defend itself" - but they cannot say how it is possible without violating Geneva in one way or another. This is because it isn't possible.

It is literally impossible for a nation, hamstrung by international law, to fight against a terrorist foe that flouts that same law.

The only alternatives for Israel are:

* to ignore international law and accept the consequences.

* to be a sitting duck and let Israeli citizens die

* to adhere to the law as much as possible - a slippery slope because there will inevitably be violations in defensive actions and double-standard pressure for Israel to adhere 100%.

What needs to be done is to modify Geneva's Article 51 paragraph 8 to lay the responsibility for civilian injuries and deaths squarely on the parties that ignore the law. If the world blames Hamas for not properly separating civilians from military targets, and therefore blames Hamas for any civilians killed, there would be a short-term loss of lives but over time Hamas will be forced to abandon its policy of hiding military targets in civilian areas - thus saving many, many more lives in the long run.

We need to change the calculus for the terrorists, to force them to consider the death of their own civilians as a loss rather than a positive. And the way to do that is to place the blame for their civilian deaths squarely on them. Only when they start adhering to Geneva will it make sense to expect their enemies to do the same.

The fifth column

From JPost:

Hundreds of Arab teens pelted Israeli cars, police and passersby with stones and rocks in east Jerusalem on Monday, as rioting over the violence in Gaza continued in the Arab sections of Jerusalem for the second straight day.

In the most serious incident, two Jerusalem Municipality city inspectors felt in danger of being lynched on a central east Jerusalem thoroughfare that was blocked by burning garbage bins after their car was pelted with dozens of stones and rocks by half a dozen teens, one of whom jumped on the vehicle and beat the window with a metal bar.

The two city workers, who were inside their vehicle when they came under attack, eventually managed to bypass a burning garbage bin that was overturned on the road by driving on the sidewalk and escape to safety.

"I was afraid we were going to be lynched," said city inspector Chaya Elihan.

The two city workers were in telephone contact the whole time of the attack with their boss, Elihan said.

"Our instructions were just to get out of the there as quickly as possible without paying any attention to the damage done to the car," city inspector Moshe Ephraim said.

But thats not all...

Meanwhile, a group of 150 Arab students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem held a boisterous protest Monday against the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip.

The Arab students who took part in the afternoon protest just outside the main entrance to the university's Mount Scopus campus were met by dozens of Jewish students in a counterprotest opposite the street, with police separating between the two sides.

Carrying Palestinian flags and dressed in keffiyehs, the Arab students chanted the Palestinian liberation slogan: "With our blood and soul we shall liberate Palestine."

"We are part of the Palestinian people and it is impossible to separate us from them," said protester Ali Behar, 23, a third-year student who heads the Arab Students Committee.

"We are protesting against the Zionist terror against the Palestinian people," Behar said, "or as [Deputy Defense Minister Matan] Vilna'i called it, 'the Holocaust.'" Vilna'i has said that he used the Hebrew word Shoah in a radio interview which took place Friday only to mean disaster, ruin or destruction and was not referring to its primary definition as Holocaust.

Israeli student protesters, who supported the army's actions in Gaza, expressed their dismay that the university and police allowed such radical Islamic activity on campus.

"We are talking about a group of students who live in the dorms, who study at the expense of the state and in exchange call for the murder of Israelis and support terror," said Erez Tadmor, 28, head of the right-wing student group If You Will It, referring to the words of Theodor Herzl.

"Regretfully and shamefully, the incitement of the Islamic groups on campus are ignored by both the police and the university administration," he said.

Israeli Arabs have the right to protest, of course, but if they want to see the state get destroyed it is reasonable to ask that they no longer get the benefits of that same state.

Shaytan likes when you eat with your left hand

From a link on LGF...a Lebanese TV commercial.

From the comments, it appears that this rule applies even if the person eating is left-handed.

There is an entire series of these sorts of commercials, showing the evil Shaytan convincing a woman to wear makeup, or asking a man not to get up to pray.

Reuters loves Hamas

Unbelievable bias from Reuters:

Hamas fighters battle on inspired by God

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Abu Mohammed picked up his rifle, said farewell to his wife and six children and went out to face the Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships and missile-firing airborne drones.

"Being unable to defeat Israel is no reason to surrender," the Hamas fighter said with a smile as he headed to the Gaza Strip's front line last Saturday, ignoring pleas from his family to stay.

"My children and wife are very dear to me," he said. "But reward in Heaven and the homeland are dearer."

The 38-year-old furniture salesman says he is not afraid to die for the cause of destroying Israel and forging a Palestinian state on all Israel's territory, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

To Israel and its allies, Abu Mohammed and his comrades are Jew-hating terrorists. But Abu Mohammed sees himself on a mission from God to rescue his people from 60 years of misery as refugees since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Though that conviction may, in some, mingle with bravado and self-interest, it does make Hamas an enemy to be reckoned with, for all that Israel's hi-tech army easily outguns their rifles, home-made rockets and, if they choose, their suicide bomb belts.

Abu Mohammed survived, though he broke a bone in his hand diving for cover. The rocket fire resumed and Hamas and its fellow Islamist allies vowed to battle on, despite losing close to 60 fighters. Estimates vary but there may be 20,000 or more Abu Mohammeds left to continue the war in Gaza alone.

Islam forbids suicide, but rewards "martyrdom" with glory in this world and paradise in the next. For the 1.5 million Palestinians in the slums and refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, the question of why one of their compatriots would sacrifice his or her life to kill Israelis needs little soul-searching.

"An Islamist fighter has two motives: a religious motive -- God's reward; and a social motive -- appreciation from the people he is defending," explained Fadel Abu Heen, a prominent Gaza psychiatrist.

And religion was the stronger motivation for Islamist fighters. "That is what makes them braver and more aggressive fighters than others," he said.

Older than most of his fellow combatants, Abu Mohammed said his family had fled to Gaza from a village nearby in 1948.

"We have the right to all of Palestine," he said in his three-room, one-storey house in Gaza City.

"If we are dead before we can liberate our land, then we did not give up. We have to set an example to our children that weakness is not an excuse for not putting up a fight."

Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem -- terms Israel is unwilling to accept, preferring to negotiate with Hamas's secular enemies in the Fatah faction, which dominates the larger West Bank.

Reuters has outdone itself in lionizing Hamas terrorists. Anti-religion when that religion happens to be Judaism or Christianity, Reuters is all of a sudden quite objective when reporting on the Islamic beliefs of destroying the Jewish dhimmis.

The headline didn't even have scare quotes, as Reuters is reporting an established fact - that Hamas is inspired by God.

Unreal.

(h/t Callie)

Do the Palestinian Arabs want an independent state?

The world media often portray Palestinian Arab terror as a manifestation of their desire for "independence." It is perhaps natural that, in the Western world, such calls are met with sympathy, as independence is often used as a synonym for "freedom."

The only problem is that the desire for independence is not very strong among Palestinian Arabs.

In the 2006 PA elections, Hamas won a plurality of the vote and a majority of the seats in the PA parliament. Hamas, like all Islamist movements, does not call for Palestinian Arab independence, rather it calls for a pan-Arab Islamic 'ummah. Israel's existence on what Hamas considers holy Muslim land is the biggest obstacle to such unified Muslim nation; as such its first job is to eliminate Israel. But the point isn't to establish a state there except as perhaps an interim step; its goal, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, is to overthrow all secularist Arab governments to create a large Islamic nation. This is what it calls "nationalism" in its charter.

On the other side of the spectrum, the recent death of George Habash gave us all a reminder that the goal of his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was, for most of its existence, dedicated to socialist pan-Arabism, not to Palestinian Arab nationalism.

As recently as two weeks ago, the perennial threat of Palestinian Arabs unilaterally declaring independence was brought up by DFLP head Yasser Abd Rabbo, but Abbas' reaction to the idea is instructive:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruled out on Wednesday any unilateral declaration of statehood in the near future, responding to an aide's call to take the step if peace talks with Israel continued to falter.
"We will pursue negotiations in order to reach a peace agreement during 2008 that includes the settlement of all final status issues including Jerusalem," Abbas said in a statement.
"But if we cannot achieve that, and we reach a deadlock, we will go back to our Arab nation to take the necessary decision at the highest level," he said, without mentioning any options.

It will be remembered that the PLO at its inception was not interested in an independent Palestinian Arab state either, and of course during the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank there was essentially no interest in an independent Palestinian Arab state on Arab territory (except for the factions that advocated the overthrow of Jordan.) The 1968 Palestinian National Charter pointedly did not call for an independent state, rather "self-determination." Abbas is continuing on in that tradition by saying that even a unilateral declaration of independence can only be taken with approval of the larger "Arab nation," a mythical construct that most Arab nations pretend allegiance to in their own constitutions, and his words today are echoes of those in that 1968 Charter.

While the tactics have changed, it is hard to escape the conclusion that even current calls for an independent Palestinian Arab state are not so much for the ideals of freedom and independence as for a stage towards the destruction of Israel. And if you add together the votes tallied for various parties in the 2006 PA elections, it appears that a majority of Palestinian Arabs themselves voted for parties that do not advocate - or only recently pretend to advocate - an independent Palestinian Arab state.

And even those who would disagree with this analysis must admit that Gazans have overwhelmingly supported the anti-nationalist goals of Hamas, and the current escalation of hostilities from Gaza are purely meant to hurt Israel, not to advance the cause of Palestinian Arab independence nor to build an independent state.

Arab media feeding inciteful lies

The Palestine Press Agency reported two interesting items today:

UNRWA commissioner general "Karen Abu Zayd" demands effective international intervention to put a stop to "bloody violence" in Gaza

Pope calls for an unconditional cessation of military operations in Gaza

By saying "in Gaza", the "news" agency is making it sound like the Pope and Abu-Zayd condemned Israel only, thereby justifying Qassam and Grad rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. (Of course, both the pope and Abu-Zayd condemned both sides equally.)

Similarly, even English-language Arab media tends to overlook condemnations of public figures of Qassam and Grad rockets and only mention condemnations of Israel. From Bahrain's Gulf Daily News:

European Union president Slovenia condemned Israel's attacks as disproportionate and violating international law.

(Of course, even Reuters gets in on the act, headlining only condemnations of Israel and burying the same people condemning rocket attacks in the text of the article.)

Another example of absurd media bias in Arab sources is this article from Ma'an:

A Palestinian student was killed on Monday morning after Israeli forces opened fire on a peaceful demonstration in the West Bank against the Israeli mass killings in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, the "peaceful" demonstration included hundreds of peaceful rock throwers and a Jewish citizen felt so threatened that he first fired in the air, then at the legs of his attackers.

Sderot mayor injured by Qassam?

Both Ma'an (Arabic) and Palestine Press Agency are quoting Israeli sources that Sderot mayor Eli Moyal was slightly injured by a Qassam rocket Sunday night.

Palestine Press reader comments are praising Allah, and Hamas, for this news. Nothing yet in the Israeli English press yet.