Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Arab world not happy with Hamas

Ahmed Abdel Rahman, official spokesman of the Fatah movement, slammed the Damascus leader of Hamas Khaled Meshaal for his bravado in claiming that Hamas is winning the Gaza war. Rahman said that to listen to Meshaal, "one would think that Hamas tanks are surrounding Tel Aviv." He said that Meshaal is speaking as if he has no idea what is going on in Gaza, and by his rejection of any negotiations he is selfishly sacrificing Palestinian Arab interests for narrow Hamas political interest.

Egyptian Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel-Hadi, who is also in charge of stopping illegal immigration, has accused Hamas of "terrorism and corruption" and said the leaders of the movement are espousing "an extremist and terrorist ideology." She also tried to forestall the possibility of Egypt allowing Gazans to enter and become citizens, pointing out that Arafat himself was against Palestinian Arabs having citizenship in any other countries.

Qatar's leadership dismissed Arab pressure to close the Israeli trade office in Doha, saying that “they only want Qatar to make a sacrifice (while) they continue to deal with the Jewish state,” referring to Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, which have diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Palestine Press' El Maamoun harshly criticizes Hamas, asking what they have done since taking over Gaza that has helped Gazan lives.He writes that Gaza had a chance to be a significant port territory like Singapore or Bahrain, but Hamas instead to emulate the model of Tora Bora, the caved areas where Al Qaeda hid. He said that Hamas has failed to go beyond its "adolescent" revolutionary thinking into making responsible decisions for Gazans.

This is not to say that the Arab world is not very concerned about Gazans, nor that they have any love of Israel. But the governments are not nearly the fans of Hamas that one might think.

Outright anti-semitism in Denmark "peace" rallies

EoZ friend Henrik emails about rallies in Denmark:

The first video is of the pro-Israeli rally held by Dansk Zionist Forbund (Danish Zionist Society). I'm not going to speak much about that, since the pictures show how peaceful and happy a gathering it was (I had multiple friends attend, but couldn't make it myself). About 3-400 people came out.

The other video is of the Palestinian counter-demonstration, fielding about 100, maybe 150 people. After their demo ended, they marched around creating havoc, throwing...Im not sure of the word - its called a kanonslag (thunder-blow), it's fireworks and explodes, but more powerful than a firecracker - into a McDonalds and stopping a car, pulling out a woman and her child that were sitting inside, before the police intervened and arrested about 75 of them.

Most of what they shout is self-explanatory, if you want I can explain, though. At the 0:44 mark, we have one of them Heiling in the typical Nazi fashion. At the 1:10-mark, the leader switches into Danish, and he says "Hamas will never be eradicated, on the contrary we would very much like to eradicate Israel from the world map. We want to kill all Jews around the world. All Jews have to be exterminated. That's obvious, there is no reason for them to exist".

On the 9th, there was a "peace" demonstration in the city of Århus. The attendance was divided in three: Muslim men at the front, Muslim women and children in the middle and the communists at the back. Note what the Muslim men are chanting (in Arabic) : "Takbir, Allah hu akbar" = "Conquest, Allah is the greatest". When the demo wound up where it was supposed to end, there were speeches. When a representative of the centre-left Radical Party ended her speech, the Arabs attending began shouting (in Danish) "Vi vil ha´ krig, Vi vil ha´krig" = "We want war, We want war".

So which ones are the "peace" demonstrators again?

Knock, knock - another example of Free Gaza/Hamas propaganda

The Free Gaza Movement is trying hard to be the premier place to go to get unfettered pro-terrorist propaganda. Here is part of a recent email meant to stir up rage against Israel:

1. Israel has begun a new policy in Gaza in the past two days called the "roof knock". This is when a "small" rocket is fired from Israeli military aircraft that is strong enough to blast open the roof of a targeted building. It is sent as a "warning message" to the building's inhabitants giving them between 2 and 3 minutes to evacuate before the building is completely destroyed. A number of cases of this new technique have been reported recently.

And what is the truth? From the New York Times:

A new Israeli weapon, meanwhile, is tailored to the Hamas tactic of asking civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb. The Israelis are countering with a missile designed, paradoxically, not to explode. They aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents into leaving the buildings, a tactic called “a knock on the roof.”

The evil-sounding IDF method is, yet again, a way to save the lives of Gazans that Hamas is purposefully putting into danger. And the FGM just happens to leave out the part about Hamas using human shields. This shows yet again that Israel spends time, effort and thought into how to save Gazans' lives while going after terrorists, and Hamas spends time and effort on how to endanger Gazans' lives in order to save their own. Hamas' and Islamic Jihad's tactics of purposefully hiding behind civilians is the evil here, and no amount of pro-terrorist "human rights' spin can make it otherwise. Plus, we once again see that Free Gaza is simply a Hamas PR front organization who cares little about real Palestinian Arab lives and much about whitewashing Hamas' crimes against the people they pretend to care about. Just like many of the "pro-Palestinian" protesters.

Another great post by Yaacov Lozowick

It's tough to keep writing good blog posts when others keep raising the bar.

OK. Here I am: a supporter of this war. The proud and fearful father of a soldier fighting this war. A man who hates violence, and shudders with horror at the sight of murdered children. I take upon myself responsibility for the deaths of those Palestinian children to the full extent a voting citizen is responsible for the actions of his government, his army: the ultimate responsibility, since I'm part of the sovereign. It's my country. I'm not a passerby, or a detached observer: I'm an actor in the events.

My justification is that it is a greater injustice to allow the evil to act unchecked, than to check them. Of course, we must take all reasonable measures that we not become equally evil ourselves; but once we've done so, and so long as we continue to do so, it is better to kill would-be murderers than allow them to kill.

This doesn't mean we must spend our days hunting down whoever might potentially be willing to kill us. I'm making a conceptual statement, not a political one. Of course using violence must be an act of last resource, and it must be calibrated to achieve its goals, and it must be done with the greatest of care, and so on. All those conditions must be met, and repeatedly questioned lest what was true earlier is no longer true now, and so on. Once those conditions exist, however, it is legitimate to go to war, even with the certainty that some number of innocents will die, because not going to war will create a greater injustice.

Read the whole thing. Hell, read his whole blog.

Hamas "no longer protecting Shalit" and other news

Firas Press quotes an interview with Hamas spokesman Abu Marzouk where he states that he no longer knows if Gilad Shalit is alive and that his safety is no longer a concern for Hamas.

In other news, Marzouk also claims that Hamas has kiilled dozens of soldiers and that Israel is hiding their deaths, in one of the many examples of Elder's First Rule of Arab Projection that is very relevant today.

This rule states that "Arabs will project their own crimes and worldviews on everyone else." The corollary is that if Arabs accuse Israel of a crime, they are invariably far more guilty of that same crime.

To give another example, Palestine Today accuses the IDF of using "human shields" in Gaza. This is laughable, as Hamas would have no compunctions about firing on its own civilians in order to hurt IDF soldiers.

In this same vein of lies for the sake of propaganda, as YNet reported,

We come across a local family in one of the buildings. Grandparents, a few young parents, some children and a few toddlers. Sitting on a rug, their legs are covered in blankets and two soldiers are standing guard nearby. "What about them?" I ask. "They're free to go if they want to, but they don't want to," said Eilon Perry, Givati's operations officer. "They informed us they would be staying in the house and we have no choice but to accept that."

The family suddenly notices the cameras, and immediately, the expression on their faces changes. "We have no food," they say in Arabic, as one of the youngsters suggests we interview him in English about their plight. Givati troops are extremely concerned about being portrayed as abusing innocent civilians. Perry points to a stack of canned goods, water bottles and other provisions. "We provided some of that and they cook and eat quite well," he said. The Palestinians seem to understand him and one of them smiles. It's a war – they had to try.

The citizens and "witnesses" themselves that are relied upon by the media are in on the game, and will anxiously seek out the media to repeat whatever the current propaganda line is. If an "eyewitness" is being quoted by name, you can be certain that they are making sure that they don't say anything that would make Hamas angry.

Back to Shalit's case, the loudest claims about Israel is that the IDF is breaking international laws in Gaza. Well, besides the laws we've already proven that Hamas is breaking constantly, there's another little one about how to treat prisoners of war, and Hamas now admits that it is ignoring that one, too.

PaHamas Pajamas! [new EoZ video]

The official sleepwear of the Al Qassam Martyrs Brigades!

The myth of the "pro-Palestinian" rallies

The media loves to cover demonstrations, the more colorful and loud the better. And there has been ample opportunity to show lots of demonstrations about Gaza these past couple of weeks. The only problem is that the vast majority of the protesters don't really care about "Palestinians." When thousands of Palestinian Arabs were killed during Black September in 1971, there were no crowds at Jordanian embassies. When hundreds of Palestinian Arab civlians were killed in a single day in Lebanon in1975, no one protested. When thousands of Palestinian Arab civilians were murdered by Syrian-backed militia in Lebanese camps in 1985-86 (including Sabra and Shatila!), there were no demonstrations. When hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were expelled from Kuwait in a single week in 1991, there were no rallies. When Hamas and Fatah fought only two summers ago, killing hundreds in a month, the so-called "peace camp" was silent. Only when Israel gets involved in a conflict do these "activists" come out of the woodwork. Ignoring the many conflicts around the world, their fake indignation is ignited at the thought of Israel defending itself. Muslims who barely go "tsk, tsk" when Arabs kill each other are driven to a frenzy when Israelis finally decide to act after years of provocation. International ANSWER, the Communist party behind a large number of Western anti-Israel demonstrations, has nothing that is "pro-Palestinian" on its website; only diatribes against Israel and the United States. The current rallies aren't pro-Palestinian or even anti-war - they are purely anti-Israel, with more than a little anti-semitism. They are not crying over civilian deaths, they are gleefully calling Zionists "Nazis." They aren't demanding human rights; they are demanding Israel's destruction. The media is part of the problem when they refer to these demonstrations as being "pro-Palestinian." They don't give a damn about Palestinian Arabs, they never have and they never will.

The advantages of craziness

I once had a co-worker - a really nice guy, actually - who was a master manipulator of other people. He would set up office politics in ways that would benefit himself, without anyone really realizing that he was calling the shots.

One way he manipulated the boss was to give an aura of unpredictability and scariness. Once every couple of months, he would (quite purposefully) get into an argument with the boss at a staff meeting, and it would degrade into a shouting match. This was meant to keep the management a little leery of him, and the boss would give him a wide swath to avoid these embarrassing confrontations. The net result was that management felt that he was a good worker as long as his superiors didn't cross any of his "irrational" lines.

In other words, he would use craziness as a tool to keep himself on top.

I am reminded of this by this posting on Power Line, quoting JCPA analyst Dan Diker:

Israel may have reached a deterrent moment in its war in Gaza against Iranian-backed Hamas. I spoke with a senior Arab diplomat last night. He told me that the Arab street is afraid that "the Jews have gone crazy."
Yes, it's true. He noted, "Israel has begun to restore its deterrence" in the Arab world. "Hamas miscalculated," he added. They had thought Israel would not attack, but would merely accede to tougher Hamas demands for an improved "Tahdiya," their version of a temporary calm.

This is perhaps one of the more optimistic assessments I have heard from Arab colleagues recently. There is supporting documentation. Hizbullah's immediate public denial yesterday of the Katusha rocket attack from Southern Lebanon against Israel's North and the reports on Lebanese TV of convoys of Lebanese (read: Hizbullah) vehicles moving north in expectation of a major Israeli reprisal strengthens this sense.

It's also notable that Al Jazeera's reportage yesterday avoided interviewing ordinary Gazans. Arab sources in Gaza confided that the public anger is not directed at Israel any more than it is at Hamas. Al Jazeera, doing a superb job as PR agents for Iran's proxies, likely wanted to avoid risking those types of reactions from the battlefield.

The Arabs thought they had the Jews figured out. They thought they knew just how far to push them and still get concession after concession; they thought they knew that Israelis would inevitably bow to public pressure, they thought that Israel couldn't stomach the civilian deaths that Hamas was orchestrating.

But once they get the idea that they miscalculated, things change - not only for this war but for the next couple of decades.

And you can only make predictions about someone else's behavior when they act consistently and rationally. Once they start acting crazy, you have to be afraid, because you simply can no longer guess what is coming next.

I don't think that Israel is feigning craziness like my friend used to. Israelis clearly had enough of the Qassams over the past seven years and are not going to let them go on, world pressure notwithstanding. But from the Arab perspective they have crossed a line that Arabs felt comfortable would never be crossed. The Hamas strategy of using human shields and putting Gazans in grave danger in order to pressure Israel is backfiring - because Israel is not being daunted by the civilian deaths this time. From Israel' s perspective, it is clear that all civilian deaths are Hamas' fault; from the Arab perspective, it looks like Israel really is indiscriminately killing civilians this time.

It is not so much that the Arabs are afraid that the Jews have gone crazy - they are afraid that the Jews are starting to act like Arabs.

And if Israel is fighting a war with the same rulebook that the Arabs have used forever, that is something to be scared of.

Today's "craziness" could end up saving many, many lives in the future. Because in the end, it is not concessions or land or handshakes that will protect Israel; it is deterrence.

Hamas shoots mortars at aid convoys, no one cares

While the UNRWA gets its collective panties bunched up over supposed Israeli violations of humanitarian law, they are completely, absolutely silent over Hamas' direct attacks on Gazan aid.

We have already seen that Hamas confiscates aid at gunpoint once it gets into Gaza, takes the lion's share, then sells the rest to Gazans and takes profit, before any other agency gets their part.

Not a word from UNRWA.

Today, we see that Hamas broke the three-hour truce by firing at the Kerem Shalom crossing while humanitarian aid was being delivered.

Not a word from UNRWA.

I know this sounds crazy, but it is almost as if the UNRWA is solidly on the side of the terrorists!

Ha'aretz (Hebrew only so far) has news of some outstanding archaeological finds in the City of David in Jerusalem. When the English version comes out I'll reproduce it, but the most stunning find is the one pictured here, of a 2 cm high pomegranate.

The reason this is interesting is because the description of the building of Solomon's Temple in I Kings 7 includes:

40 And Hiram made the pots, and the shovels, and the basins. So Hiram made an end of doing all the work that he wrought for king Solomon in the house of the LORD: 41 the two pillars, and the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars; and the two networks to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars; 42 and the four hundred pomegranates for the two networks, two rows of pomegranates for each network, to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were upon the top of the pillars; 43 and the ten bases, and the ten lavers on the bases; 44 and the one sea, and the twelve oxen under the sea; 45 and the pots, and the shovels, and the basins; even all these vessels, which Hiram made for king Solomon, in the house of the LORD, were of burnished brass.

h/t My Right Word

Al Aqsa's late night pr0n

EoZ friend Henrik emails me:

Danish press says that al-Aqsa TV by accident switched to showing Polish po-rn tonight. Apparently a technician switched the source for image to Polish station Patio TV, that was at the time showing a po-rn movie featuring a nude blonde playing around with a veil.

To make it even funnier, the soundtrack wasnt changed, so for six minutes, Gaza residents were watching Polish po-rn with a soundtrack of Arab war-songs :-)

The clip, which is hilarious and absolutely not suitable for work, can be seen at The Jawa Report The ubiquitous green Arabic news crawl continues underneath the woman and her veil and Arabic music plays, turning the entire thing into a Arabic po-rn music video.

Syrian pilots stopped from attacking Israel?

According to a couple of Palestinian Arab newspapers, quoting the Hebrew Omedia site (I could not find the original,) seven Syrian pilots were conspiring to fly over and bomb Israel a few days ago. Syria found out about the plot and arrested them, and also told their pilots that if anyone goes on such an adventure, Syria would kill their families.

It added that Syria is keeping a tight lid on any pro-Hamas demonstrations.

A UN resolution that Hamas can love (updated)

The UN passed a cease-fire resolution that Hamas can wholeheartedly support, according to its own twisted logic. Itis a shame that the US couldn't see through the diplo-speak to understand this enough to block it.

Let's look at how Hamas will interpret UN Security Council Resolution 1860:

1. The Security Council stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Hamas: Which will indicate that we drove the Zionists out of Gaza.

2. The Security Council calls for the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment.

3. The Security Council welcomes the initiatives aimed at creating and opening humanitarian corridors and other mechanisms for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid.

4. The Security Council calls on member states to support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza, including through urgently needed additional contributions to UNWRA and through the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee.

Hamas: Perfect. We have never bothered to set up any infrastructure for humanitarian aid since we took control of Gaza, leaving all normal functions of government to NGOs and, when not a danger, Fatah members who continue to get paid by the PA. This way we can continue to work on our primary mission as the leaders of Gaza - building a terror infrastructure.

5. The Security Council condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorist.

Hamas: We agree. The Zionist entity is purely terrorist, targeting our civilians. We are against attacking civilians and only shoot rockets at military targets.

6. The Security Council calls upon member states to intensify efforts to provide arrangements and guarantees in Gaza in order to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the sustained reopening of crossing points on the basis of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the Palestinian Authority; and in this regard, welcomes the Egyptian initative, and other regional and international efforts that are underway.

Hamas: We are not a member state so this doesn't apply to us. The member states have already tried to stop smuggling and failed, so we are fine with that part of the paragraph.

As far as the Egyptian border is concerned, we call on Egypt to work with us directly to open Rafah fully and bypass international and Israeli involvement, which is consistent with the EUBAM agreement and will give us international recognition as the legitimate rulers of Gaza.

7. The Security Council encourages tangible steps towards intra-Palestinian reconciliation including in support of mediation efforts of Egypt and the League of Arab States as expressed in the 26 November 2008 resolution, and consistent with Security Council Resolution 1850 (2008) and other relevant resolutions.

Hamas: We agree that the Palestinian people should be united under their democratically elected leaders, Hamas.

8. The Security Council calls for renewed and urgent efforts by the parties and the international community to achieve a comprehensive peace based on the vision of a region where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace with secure and recognized borders, as envisaged in Security Council Resolution 1850 (2008), and recalls also the important of the Arab Peace Initiative.

Hamas: This is so watered down as to be meaningless, so, sure, why not, as long as the international community considers tactical truces to be "peace."

9. The Security Council welcomes the Quartet's consideration, in consultation with the parties, of an international meeting in Moscow in 2009.

Hamas: Keep on talking while we keep on firing in legitimate self-defense at Israeli schools that we call "military bases."

While at first glance it appears to be "balanced," in fact only Israel has any obligations under this resolution - to give Hamas a symbolic victory, which is the only kind that Arabs recognize. Hamas is not mentioned once. Hamas has no obligations under this resolution. The word "rockets" is not mentioned specifically, and Gilad Shalit is not mentioned at all.

Under these terms, Hamas gains immense prestige and bragging rights, Gazans continue to live in misery, and Israeli residents will still be subject to regular rocket fire that the UN is powerless to stop.

UPDATE: Even so, Hamas rejected the resolution:

Hamas rejected the resolution, with spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri telling Arabic news channel al-Jazeera from Yemen, 'We are not concerned by the decision because Hamas was not consulted and it did not take into consideration the interest and demands of our people in Gaza.'
The Islamic Jihad also said in a statement the council's decision was not acceptable.

A Hamas spokesman from Damascus put it this way:

Abu Marzouq: We have three conditions for any peace initiative coming from any state.

First, the aggression of the Israelis should stop. All of the gates should be opened, including the gate of Rafah between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Finally, Israel has to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

We are not saying we will stop firing rockets from the Gaza Strip to Israel - we are only talking about stopping the aggression from the Israelis against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

When others talk about a ceasefire, they are saying all military operations should stop.

But we are sending a message [by firing rockets]: "We will not surrender. We have to fight the Israelis and we will win this battle."

We know we are going to lose a lot of people from our side, but we are going to win, inshallah.

Iran urges assassinations worldwide

From the National Council of Resistance to Iran website:

A one-million-dollar reward for the assassination of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s President, has been set up, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) front organization has announced. Sadegh Shahbazi, secretary of the so-called “Student Justice-seeking movement,” announced the reward.
Shahbazi, the IRGC front organization’s secretary, announced the news of a million dollar prize for assassinating the Egyptian President at the sit-in in Mehrabad airport. He added: Just as we have a bounty for the assassinations of the Zionist army commander, head of Mossad, and War Minister, we also have a reward for the assassination of Hosni Mubarak.
Shariatmadari, Khamenei’s representative in Kayhan daily, in a January 5, 2009 editorial, entitled “Mourning Sacred Ghassem,” issued a command to start carrying out assassinations in various countries.
In the editorial, Shariatmadari recounted a story from a 13 year old teenager who had gone to the front lines during the Iran-Iraq war with the permission of the mullahs’ current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamanei, and was later killed. Shariatmadari compared him and other teenagers who were sent to mine fields by the regime, to “Ghassem,” a young man who fought alongside the revered Shiite Imam Hussein in 680 and died. The editorial goes on to say:
“In Gaza, all of Islam has come head-to-head with all of infidelity. Bush is not Christian, Olmert is not Jewish, and Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah are not Muslims. This is a war of opposing parties, just like the forced war [with Iraq] and the 33 day war [in 2006 in Lebanon]. Today, this war is in Gaza. As the Imam [mullah regime’s founder Khomeini] used to say, with the revitalization of true Islam of Prophet Muhammad, the Great Satan roared and issued a call to all the other big and small devils. … Now that the war in Gaza is the point of conflict for all of Islam against all infidels, why should the act of confronting the Zionists only be limited to the borders of occupied Palestine? Are the people of Gaza not representing the entire Muslim world in their fight with the Zionists? Therefore, offering broad support, including military support, to them is the duty of all Muslims and all Islamic countries. Today, the people of Gaza are on the front lines, but the war front is much larger than the internal confines of occupied Palestine. As such, attacking the backers of the Israeli military, i.e. its global and regional supporters, is an inalienable right of all Muslim people. Outside of occupied Palestine, the latter are easily accessible. Can one not easily attack some Arab leaders and US-imposed governments? The interests of the US, Britain, Germany, and other supporters of Israel, are easily accessible – or, we should say, they are “within range.” … The time to take revenge against the violent Zionists, these corrupt and destructive forms of disease, has finally come. … Therefore, the talk of a cease-fire only serves to grant an opportunity to carry out future crimes and has no other rationale.”

Nah, this is only hyperbole, and probably a mistranslation. There's nothing to be concerned with here.

Today's UNRWA hypocrisy

A week ago, the UNRWA slammed Israel for not allowing enough humanitarian aid into Gaza, implying that the security concerns of Israel were meaningless compared to the needs of the Gazans:

[UNRWA Commissioner Karen Abu Zayd] said Israel has closed down the Karni crossing, the main gateway for cargo into Gaza where it is normally delivered, for security reasons.
She said UNRWA was told by the Israeli humanitarian coordinator that all other crossings aren't open because "there is intelligence about serious preparations for security operations."
"We wonder if it's serious enough to really keep things completely closed and to keep people on their edge of subsistence," she said.

She of course knows very well that mortar fire on the crossings is very common, and sometimes fatal. Yet she airily downplayed Israel's security concerns as not being nearly important enough to stop giving aid to Gazans.

Today, the UN is singing a different tune, in the wake of the death of a UN driver under unclear circumstances:

As a result of the incident, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said it was suspending operations relating to the collection and distribution of humanitarian aid.

But here, too, there seemed to be confusion.

Richard Miron, the chief UN spokesman in Israel, told the Post that UNRWA was not suspending all of its operations, but just those relating to humanitarian aid.

"It's too dangerous and our staff are not safe," he said, adding that UNRWA would still be operating its schools and other centers in Gaza.

You mean, the possibility of being shot at can cause the UNRWA to stop delivering all humanitarian aid? What about the starving, bleeding, imprisoned Gazans that the UNRWA wants Israelis to give their lives for? Aren't they more important?

Of course not. To the UNRWA, the value of Israeli lives is literally zero, the value of Gazans is somewhat higher, and the value of UNRWA personnel is at the peak, according to their own statements.

(h/t L. King)