Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 26, 2009

Hamas official: Hamas preparing for war since summer

Early in the Gaza operation, Israel-bashers pointed to the fact that the IDF had prepared for the war as evidence that Israel was not interested in peace.

Dr. Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas in Damascus, just said that Hamas was preparing for war since the truce began last summer. How much will this bother those "peace" advocates?

Marzouk also said that, while it is true that Gaza lost 1500 people, not to worry: the good Muslim sisters in Gaza gave birth to more than 3500 children in the meanwhile.

Which sort of demolishes the idea that the IDF engages in "genocide." Not that his audience would understand that.

Rachel story makes Muslims nervous

There have been some rumors that the Matriarch Rachel appeared to Israeli soldiers in Gaza and helped steer them away from danger. Some prominent rabbis in Israel are supporting the story, others are a bit more skeptical.

Perhaps the best summation comes from David Hazony at Commentary:

For weeks now, we have been hearing rumors about a mysterious woman who appeared before Israeli troops in the thick of the Gaza battles. Not just any woman, mind you, but the biblical Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob, matriarch of Israel. (My nine-year-old daughter gave me an excellent speech about the pluses and minuses of believing these rumors.) Israel’s former chief rabbi, Mordechai Eliyahu, announced that he himself had sent her. And now another former chief rabbi and Shas spiritual leader, Ovadiah Yosef, has confirmed these reports.
This is the point where I’m supposed to say how ridiculous it is. A hoax, or a superstition, or something. But I’m not gonna’ do it.

I don’t care if you call the appearance of Rachel a metaphor or a miracle. There is a point in rabbinic discourse where miracles and metaphors all mingle together, where the word “literally” loses its meaning, making room for midrash — the art of saying something illiteral and literary. To say that Rachel was with our soldiers, that our matriarch was protecting her boys, is a deeper statement than anything that can be made by a professional reporter with a camera.
Let’s give the religious spinmasters the benefit of the doubt. Of course she wasn’t there. But, of course, she was.

It is most interesting to see how this story is being reported in the Muslim world. Usually, Muslims are the ones who publicly ascribe their actions to supernatural or divine influences, and they also believe that their religious values are what will help them to ultimately destroy the mostly infidel, secular Jews.

But now they are seeing that the IDF soldiers who entered Gaza did have a greater public spirituality than in previous operations. They are talking about miracles, about prayer, about their increased desire to wear tefillin and tzitzit.

And when Jews talk about G-d, Muslims get nervous. Their entire worldview of Jews is based on Jews having fallen from grace because they angered Allah by not doing their commandments and by not listening to their prophets. Even anecdotal stories about Jewish spirituality on the battlefield get lots of attention in the Arab and Muslim media.

Now, Islam Online is quoting "experts" on Judaism to try to debunk the Rachel story (in Arabic only, of course.)

Commenting on this story in history, a Palestinian professor, an expert on the Jewish history spoke to "Islam Online. Net," saying: "It does not have a scientific basis; Rachel, the wife of Prophet Abraham, Prophet Yusuf's mother, is not known to have participated in the fighting having sanctioned the extermination of children and women."

It goes without saying that this "expert" cannot get even the basic outlines of Rachel's life correct.

Dr. Zakaria Sinwar, a professor of history at the Islamic University in Gaza, and an expert on the Jewish issue, he said: "The Torah did not mention in their books that Rachel was a woman fighter, or participated in the fighting in one day, or sanctioned the extermination of children and women. "

According to Dr. Sinwar in an interview with "Islam Online. Net," "Israel has tried from the outset to show that this is a religious war .. their scrutiny of religious reading of the Torah reveal a dimension of ordering the bloody killing of the young."

He said that the "repetition of the talk about the emergence of Rachel during the war demonstrates that the Israeli soldiers lack the sense of the military .. Are they waiting for Rachel to show them on the whereabouts of the resistance and mines?!. Is Rachel a better means of spying then their advanced technology?!".

He added: "After their failure, the soldiers tried to give an aura of holiness and a religious dimension. Their talk about Rachel is not linked to any historical or religious facts, only naive attempts to imitate what is spoken by the people of Gaza from the verses of Allah and victory in the battle against Israel .. The soldiers say that the angels of Gaza also have fought with us. "

The Palestinian resistance has emphasized the "Islam Online.Net," that God directly supported them, bringing a dense fog, which enabled them to plant and detonate improvised explosive devices in the mechanisms of military occupation.

During the war in Gaza the Israeli media showed images of a soldier on the tank reading the Talmud, and the second leading some religious ceremonies before the launch of missiles, and the third wearing a Jewish skullcap religious symbol.

One only tries to debunk stories that one's audience might otherwise believe.

The terrorists that pray that their Qassam rockets kill Jewish children seem to be getting a bit uneasy that the Jews are praying at the same time to help kill the terrorists. It is almost as if they realize, deep down, that G-d might prefer to be on the Jews' side, as He appears to have been for other wars between Jews and Arabs.

The difference between NGOs and soldiers

A great article in the Spectator by a British soldier about Gaza (h/t Backspin twitter):

Having completed numerous combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I watched the television footage of Israeli soldiers deploying on Operation Cast Lead with a jolt of familiarity. I saw the emotions that I have felt in the past. I was eager to do my job properly, I had confidence in my abilities and those of my comrades, but I was also apprehensive. That apprehension was not just the fear of what harm may have come to me or my mates, but also the worry that my judgment would fail if I was called upon to make the snap decision to take another’s life. The pressure of these conflicting emotions coupled with the stress of battle is immense. The majority of us called upon to withstand them are young men, some as young as 18.
That is why the casual bandying around of terms like ‘war crimes’ so enraged me when I heard it directed at British soldiers during protest in London. I feel no different when it is levelled at Israeli soldiers. I accept that soldiers enjoy no immunity from the law and that our actions must be scrutinised but that judgement must be a measured weighing of factors, not a knee jerk emotive statement such as that made by Ban Ki-Moon nor a trial by media. I believe that I and other soldiers understand the stress, friction and confusion that combat brings in a way that media commentators and UN bureaucrats never can.
Urban warfare is complicated, disorientating and utterly confusing even in conventional operations. When an enemy, such as Hamas, is willing to dress in civilian clothing, attack from legally protected sites and use civilians as human shields it becomes fiendishly difficult.
The destruction of the UN School, cited by Ban Ki-Moon, is a case in point. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) maintains that its soldiers came under fire from that position. They returned fire; that is what soldiers under contact do. It would appear that light artillery guns or mortars were used. These are emphatically not the ‘smart’ weapons that civilians fondly imagine all war to be fought with. It is commonplace fact of war that such munitions do not always land were they are supposed to.
The urban environment can seriously hinder even the most sophisticated of radio communications, leading to command and control becoming fractured. The assertion by the UN that they provided the IDF with the grid references of their locations is valid. However, it is a fact that often information is not always passed down the chain of command, this is more likely to occur due to the fog of war rather than any malicious intent.
The IDF have also faced accusations that they have attacked ambulances. Again, I cannot speak for the veracity of these claims nor do I seek to diminish the serious nature of such attacks. The British Army’s enemy in Iraq, Jaish Al Mahdi routinely used vehicles marked as ambulances to transport arms, ammunition and fighters around Basra. Like Hamas, Jaish Al Mahdi received training and equipment from Iran.
During the course of Israeli operations in Gaza the whole of the media seems to have become expert in the use of white phosphorous. Most commentators either do not know, or have refused to acknowledge, that the use of white phosphorous is not illegal. The Geneva conventions do restrict the use of white phosphorous in certain circumstances, but it is used almost daily by British forces in Afghanistan.
White phosphorous is used because it provides an instant smokescreen, other munitions can provide a smokescreen but the effect is not instant. Faced with overwhelming enemy fire and wounded comrades, every commander would choose to screen his men instantly, to do otherwise would be negligent.
Much has been made of Israel’s ‘disproportionate and excessive’ use of force in Gaza. Footage of Gaza released today does show devastating damage to individual buildings, but this is no Stalingrad. A fact often unappreciated by those with no military experience is that the selective use of overwhelming force, aimed at key targets, actually shortens conflict and saves lives....
I do not argue that any soldier should be outside of the law, any army that allows such a thing is not worthy of the name. I do believe, however, that the least the world can do for young men returning from combat is to offer them the basic right to have their actions considered on the basis of events and the context in which they occurred.

This is exactly the problem with all who airily accuse Israel of "war crimes". Their hypocrisy is evident when they do not mention Hamas' obvious war crimes, but it is doubly hypocritical when they do not even consider that the vast majority of civilians killed in Gaza are dead because of Hamas' blatant strategy of hiding behind civilians, using civilian buildings to fire from, holding civilians as hostages and pretending to be civilians themselves. To blame Israel - which from all accounts did more than any army in history has ever done to minimize civilian casualties - for "war crimes" without taking this context into account betrays the most sickening kind of prejudice and ignorance about war.

As is often the case, criticism is easy, but none of the critics ever offer any viable alternatives on how to fight a war with fewer civilian casualties without putting one's own soldiers at an unacceptable risk.

Proof that Hamas threatened ambulances

As the dust is clearing, we find that Israel's accusations against Hamas have been extraordinarily accurate.

Here's one more example(h/t Backspin on Twitter):

Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
His first day of work at the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war.

"Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected," Mr Shriteh told The Age. "We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us."

Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety. He claims Hamas made several attempts to hijack the al-Quds Hospital's fleet of ambulances during the war.

"After the first week, at night time, there was a call for a house in Jabaliya (a heavily built-up area north-east of Gaza City)," he said. "I got to the house and there was lots of shooting and explosions all around."

Because of the urgency of the call, Mr Shriteh said there was no time to arrange his movements with the Israel Defence Forces. "I knew the Israelis were watching me because I could see the red laser beam in the ambulance and on me, on my body," he said.

After getting out of the ambulance and entering the house, he found three Hamas fighters taking cover inside. One half of the building had already been destroyed.

"They were very scared, and very nervous … They dropped their weapons and ordered me to get them out, to put them in the ambulance and take them away. I refused because if the IDF sees me doing this I am finished, I cannot pick up any more wounded people.

"And then one of the fighters picked up a gun and held it to my head, to force me. I still refused, and then they allowed me to leave."

How many ambulance drivers weren't as brave?

Oh well, just another Hamas war crime.

World press ignores Hamas' media intimidation

From the International Federation of Journalists website, posted last Thursday:

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today led a multinational delegation of journalists' unions from Europe and the Arab world into Gaza, only hours before Israel finally opened the area to the world press

The aim of the mission, says the IFJ, is to support local journalists and to investigate the problems facing media during the conflict.

The IFJ, which has condemned vigorously Israeli targeting of media and the blockade on journalists entering Gaza over the last month, today also condemned Hamas for its threats and intimidation of journalists.

"The last month has been hell for journalists working in Gaza, "said Aidan White. "It is impossible to properly investigate the media situation in Gaza without considering the difficulties facing journalists, particularly because of the Hamas regime. It is clear that Hamas are no friends of media freedom and have been ruthless in their intimidation and manipulation of the media. The situation of journalists in Gaza was already intolerable without military activity and this latest conflict has not made it any better. The IFJ is particularly concerned by Hamas' attempts to interfere in the work of Palestinian journalists. Now that the violence has stopped, it is time for all sides, including Hamas, to allow journalists to work freely."

We have seen plenty of stories about supposed Israeli violations of journalists' rights; how come the media doesn't bother to cover Hamas' overt and endemic intimidation of the press? This story was almost invisible until Hamas reacted angrily today:

De facto government’s information office on Sunday expressed astonishment about declarations made by Secretary General of the international federation of journalists Aiden White after he visited the Gaza Strip.

The statement says White accused the de facto government of suppressing freedom of press, which officials say is “completely null and false.”

White’s report on his return from the area says that “In Gaza we found evidence of intimidation by Hamas. This is completely unacceptable. We understand that humanitarian help to media including safety vests for journalists in danger have been seized and confiscated. This is intolerable.”

The de facto government called the comparison between Israel violations of human rights in Gaza, which the IFJ delegation had set out to identify in Gaza, with de facto government actions “inappropriate,” and said it was “like comparing the victim to the executioner.”

The de facto government does not interfere with the media in Gaza, said the official response, and affirmed that Arab and foreign journalists move freely in the Strip and “interview whoever they want without any impediments.”

Of course, the number of arrests and threats by Hamas (and Fatah) towards journalists is long and detailed, for anyone who bothers to research it, something the Western media is reluctant to do.

A recent example is detailed in this NYT piece by Ethan Bronner:

Because Israel barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza until the war ended, The New York Times relied on my Palestinian colleague here, Taghreed el-Khodary, for on-the-ground coverage of the fighting.

We would speak several times a day as she cautiously went out. Her first stop was usually Shifa Hospital to get a sense of civilian casualties. Early in the war, at the hospital, she witnessed the murder of an alleged Israeli collaborator by Hamas gunmen. They shot him in the skull more or less in front of her. One of the gunmen told Taghreed that she should never mention what she saw to anyone. She told him there was not a chance she would stay silent, then made some calls to find out about other such events and sent me the information, which we published the next day.

From all accounts Taghreed is the exception. The only journalists that report negatively about Hamas in Gaza work anonymously for Fatah-aligned news agencies or for the Israeli media. The world media, always anxious to jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon, is scared to death of crossing Hamas when they are in Gaza. Their claims that they report objectively from Gaza are laughable.

And nothing proves this more than the fact that none of them reported on the IFJ condemnation of Hamas to begin with. The only mention was at Menassat, a Lebanese site dedicated to covering Arab media.

If journalists were so concerned about freedom of expression and objectivity, why did they all ignore this story from an organization that is dedicated to protecting them?

Two years ago

I was just reminded of a post I wrote two years ago right after Hamas' election victory, called Why Hamas Won, from a thread at Jihad Watch. It was a bit optimistic towards the immediate future but I believe that the reasons I gave still hold true. (Later that week I wrote a much more pessimistic scenario.)

As I looked at that old post I saw other posts I wrote that week that stand up quite well after two years. So, for those interested, here are some oldies, all from the week after Hamas won their election:

The cult of the "Peace Process" - why the "Peace Process" has nothing to do with peace
The Arafatization of Hamas - on a Hamas op-ed in Newsweek
The Democracy Pandora's Box - The prerequisite for democracy is freedom
The Arafatization of Hamas II - comparing Hamas Arabic statements with the PLO in 1974
Your crazy Uncle Ned - how the West treats nutty Islamists
The Arafatization of Hamas III - on a Hamas op-ed in the Washington Post
Poor Hamas schizophrenics - comparing "moderate" statements of Hamas to their charter

"Happy Together" - latest EoZ video

Enjoy:

Palestinian Arab press roundup 1-24-09

Fatah supporters are reporting that Hamas has set up detention and torture centers in mosques and kindergartens. One mosque was mentioned specifically, Imam El-Shafei, and the kindergarten was called al-Tahir in Beit Hanoun. Hamas also continues to attack Fatah members, blowing a wall in the house of one and shooting the legs of two brothers.

One Fatah member was tortured to death last week. The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 38.

There are reports that Hamas is asking Egypt to arrange an 18-month truce with Israel. Which is exactly what one would expect terrorists to do if they won a war, right?

Hamas is supposedly going to appoint Khalil Al-Hayya as the "Interior Minister" to replace the dear, departed Said Siam. This scoop came courtesy of the Iranian media, who must have some really good investigative reporters - or friends in Hamas. Remember how pundits claim that Sunnis and Shiites hate each other so much that they would never cooperate? Brilliant analysis, as usual.

PalPress reports of another case of Hamas confiscating aid to Gaza and distributing it to their own sympathizers.

PalPress also reprints an Israeli report about a soldier who says that the IDF were very close to the Shifa hospital where the Hamas leaders were holed up but they didn't go in; also that he saw how Hamas hid behind the women and children while shooting from mosques and schools. One commenter, who claims to be from Gaza, agreed:

With great regret that I am one of the Gaza Strip who have lived a war from beginning to end and talk with regret that the Zionist true

Hamas has taken the peaceful citizens and children as human shields and were firing rockets from among them and escape and hide among children and also the launch of rockets from crowded places and people's enthusiasm was in line with Israel to kill the largest possible number of people of Palestine in Gaza

Suffice God yes agent

I don't know how to translate that last phrase but I often see it in the context of sadness at tragedy, making this comment seem more likely to be legitimate.

Richard Falk lies again

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Richard Falk, who has repeatedly compared Israeli actions in Gaza to Nazi Germany, has been saying that Hamas has repeatedly offered a truce extension to Israel that Israel spurned. His latest claim was made at a symposium at UCLA on "Human Rights and Gaza" (that curiously completely ignored Hamas' own violations of Gazan's human rights:)

Hamas, he pointed out, consistently urged the continuation of its July 2008 Egypt-sponsored ceasefire with Israel and even its extension for up to 10 years. According to the respected British newsweekly, The Economist, Falk noted, Hamas proposed an extension of up to 20 years. “What is so revealing is the Israeli refusal to even acknowledge that this was a diplomatic initiative that would have probably ended any violence.”

I already showed that Falk is, quite simply, a liar. At that time, I wasn't aware of any specific Hamas truce offer that he was referring to, so I couldn't prove that he was lying on that specific point, but this repetition over here spurred me to research this supposed truce extension.

I could not find any mention of this in The Economist (although I did find an article that called Falk's obscene comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany "absurd.") But I did find some articles about Hamas' offer of a twenty year truce, and as I thought, it was not an "extension" of the existing six month calm period that Falk claims. It was a fake offer that Hamas had made years ago whose terms were that after Israel withdraws completely from all lands captured in 1967, then Hamas would offer a ten or twenty year truce without recognizing Israel's existence.

Falk explicitly calls this a "continuation of its July 2008 Egypt-sponsored ceasefire" and he knows very well that it was nothing of the sort. And when Hamas was given the chance to continue the truce, it rejected it.

Falk knows this - and he lies anyway.

Normally, if a moonbat professor wants to lie like this, it is no big deal, because there is no shortage of people with letters after their names willing to lie for their pet political causes. Falk, however, has the gravitas of being a UN representative and as a result his speeches get coverage. And his speeches are consistently oriented towards demonizing Israel for doing things that are often, as we see, fiction.

Falk has no credibility and it is way past time for him to be called to the carpet for his consistent, sickening and verifiable lies.

PalToday "finds" the missing "IDF fatalities"

Hamas and the other terror gangs have been claiming that they killed scores of IDF soldiers; the latest number I saw was 48 although I have seen higher claims as well.

The problem, of course, is how can an open society cover up so many deaths? How could Israel cover up the funerals and the publicity that would come with all those dead soldiers?

The Islamic Jihad-oriented Palestine Today figured it out!

An intrepid PalToday journalist saw a news story that 13 Israelis have been killed in traffic accidents this month, and many others critically injured. Obviously, these deaths were really soldiers who were killed by the brave mujahadeen, and Israel only pretended that they were killed in traffic accidents in order to boost the morale of their soldiers.

Because we all know that Israeli drivers are incredibly careful and never get into accidents.

This only explains less than half of the supposed IDF losses, so we can be sure that more equally compelling theories will be forthcoming. I mean, if Hamas said they killed so many soldiers, it must be true.

Egypt claims that Hamas weapons come from Israel

From Firas Press:

Ambassador Mukhlis Qutb, the Secretary-General of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights, says that Egypt has documents and evidence and confessions that the arms of the Palestinians within the occupied territories come mostly from individuals who hold Israeli citizenship, and that all sales, procurement and trade occurs in secret places inside Israel, in addition to the sale and smuggling of weapons stores by some of the members of the occupying forces.

He said that Egypt had not allowed under any circumstance to use its border for arms smuggling, and rejected U.S. and Israeli attempts to sign security agreements for electronic or human surveillance close to its borders, because that does not conform with the requirements of Arab national security and Egypt.

Obviously, Chinese and Iranian Grad rockets must come from Israeli weapons collectors who bring them back on their commercial flights from their vacations in the Far East.

How could we even consider that the hundreds of Rafah tunnels would be used for anything besides candy and cows?

Has the UN ever accused Hamas of "war crimes"?

The UN has been busy accusing Israel of "war crimes."

Yesterday, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, said "I believe that there is the prima facie case" that Israel committed "systematic war crimes" in Gaza, and defined every one of Gaza's 1.5 million residents as casualties because of their "psychological trauma. " He made this determination from his home in California.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for a probe into alleged Israeli "war crimes," and the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza has also said he was "concerned" about possible war crimes. Today, the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs is expected to give a press conference about his concerns as well. Earlier, the UN Human Rights Council voted to investigate "grave human rights violations" done by Israel.

This is a lot of energy and time that the UN is using to accuse one side of war crimes and human rights obligations. By any objective measure, however, Hamas' war crimes are much more obvious, widespread and numerous than the worst that UN officials incessantly accuse Israel of.

Here is a list of war crimes and grave violations of humanitarian law that are not only well known but many of which Hamas openly admits to and brags about:

Deliberately targeting civilians
Attacking from within civilian areas and civilian structures, including hospitals and mosques
Using humanitarian symbols for attacks, such as by transporting terrorists in ambulances
Direct and public incitement to genocide
The systematic attacks against civilians upgrades that war crime into a crime against humanity
The recruitment of children into the conflict
Firing at the enemy while wearing civilian clothes
Wearing the uniforms of the enemy
Shooting rockets with phosphorus payloads deliberately at civilians
Not adhering to international standards on the treatment of prisoners of war
Immediate execution of alleged "collaborators" without a trial
Deliberately placing military targets, such as weapons caches and rocket launchers, among civilians

The worst I could find that the UN has said about Hamas was that rocket attacks against civilian targets are "unlawful." Usually the word "Hamas" is barely mentioned in these statements. No, the rocket attacks against civilians are "unlawful," sort of like jaywalking, and they happen by themselves being mentioned in a passive voice.

When will we be seeing the UN accusing Hamas of the obvious war crimes they have committed? When will we see UN officials call numerous press conferences that accuse Palestinian Arab groups of war crimes without mentioning Israel? When will we see committees set up for the purpose of investigating exposing Arab terror alone?

Only when the UN does so can we possibly entertain the idea that the UN is an honest, evenhanded organization that is truly concerned with violations of war crimes. Not by them mentioning as an aside that Hamas also does some not-so-nice things which do not justify Israel's actions, but when they focus on the many Arab terrorist war crimes exclusively as they have focused on Israel.

As it is, the UN in this context is simply a hate organization with a single-minded goal on vilifying the Jewish state alone.

"No Hamas tunnels here!" "What about that one?"

From Newsweek:

Najah Abd Rabo shook her head and said Israeli actions were beyond comprehension. "They were claiming there are tunnels under here," she said. "There aren't any tunnels around here, we are not resistance," she said. Yet not more than 20 feet away from Najah, there was just such a tunnel, which Israeli troops had unearthed. Right in the middle of the road, it had a convincingly camouflaged roof that matched the rest of the road. Inside it was shored up with timbers and concrete.

A case of "eyewitness" lying, or a case of Hamas knowingly putting civilians at risk?

Probably both. It is hard to be completely ignorant of "civilians" popping up out of the street in front of your home.

How many dead in Gaza? Hard to say.

An Italian reporter is claiming that there were no more than 500-600 deaths, total, in Gaza: (h/t Backspin)

The number of Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead did not exceed five or six hundred, Lorenzo Cremonesi, a correspondent for Italy's Corriere della sera reported on Thursday.
Cremonesi based his report on tours of hospitals in the Gaza Strip and on interviews with families of casualties. He also assessed the number of wounded to be far lower than 5,000, the number quoted by Hamas and repeated by the UN and the Red Cross in Gaza.
"It is sufficient to visit several hospitals [in the Gaza Strip] to understand that the numbers don't add up," he wrote.
In the European hospital in Rafah, one of the facilities which would presumably be filled with wounded from the "war of the tunnels," many beds were empty, according to Cremonesi. A similar situation was noted in the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and in the privately-run Amal Hospital Cremonesi reported that only five out 150 beds were occupied.
Cremonesi interviewed Gazans who echoed Israel's insistence of how Hamas gunmen used civilians as human shields. One Gazan recalled civilians in Gaza shouting at Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, "Go away, go away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill us all? Do you want our children to die under their bombs? Take your guns and missiles with you."
"Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?" the religious fanatics of Hamas reportedly responded.
Other Palestinians told Cremonesi of Hamas operatives donning paramedic uniforms and commandeering ambulances. A woman identified as Um Abdullah, 48, spoke of Hamas using UN buildings as launch pads for rockets.
Cremonesi reported that he had difficultly gathering evidence as the local population was terrified of Hamas.

YNet reports this a bit more cautiously:

Despite the claims, the IDF stood behind its estimate that between 1,100 to 1,200 people were killed in the Strip during the fighting, more than two-thirds of them Hamas members.

The army initially believed that the number of civilian casualties was higher, as many Hamas men walked outside their houses dressed in civilian clothes, leaving their weapons at home.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, who is in change of the emergency department at the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, denied the figures presented by the Italian paper.

Hassanain told Ynet that the Palestinian figures were issued cautiously, without any political considerations, and that several casualties may not have been reported as their bodies are still under the rubble or have not been handed over to the rescue forces and authorized medical officials.

A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes."

The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"

These same reporters mentioned that the truth that will come out is likely to be similar to what occurred in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. "Then, there was first talk of 1,500 deaths. But then it turned out that there were only 54, 45 of which were armed men," the Palestinian reporters told the Italian newspaper.

These new figures must be treated with caution especially in light of the fact that various official sources in the Gaza Strip, including United Nations and Red Cross officials, have reported that more than 1,300 people were killed and some 5,000 wounded during the three weeks of fighting in the coastal strip. Palestinian sources claim that three-quarters of the dead were unarmed civilians.

I have no doubts about the anecdotes, but it is very hard to know how many were killed, and Cremonesi's methods of counting do not seem too rigorous.

The PCHR makes a point of listing the names of the dead when it can, and they count 1284 dead. (The site is unavailable at the moment.) I don't think that they are lying about the total, but they do count civilians in ways that I would not agree with. For example, they count Hamas leaders Said Siam and Nizar Rayan as civilians.

They also count the Hamas police as civilians.

Here are some raw numbers of claims from the Gaza side of militants/terrorists killed during the operation:

Hamas - 48 (an absurdly low number)

Gaza "civil defense" - 11

Islamic Jihad - 39

Gaza "police force" - 230

Fatah's Al-Mujahideen Brigades - 5

Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades -3

PRC - unknown, at least 3 I know of

DFLP - 13

PFLP - unknown, at least 1 I know of

Fatah members killed by Hamas - at least 16

All terror groups according to PCHR: 223 (not including the Gaza police, civil defense, infighting, public Hamas figures)

The PCHR certainly doe not distinguish between Gaza civilians killed by Israel and those killed by Hamas, in "friendly fire" or misfires.

I don't have a solid idea of the real numbers, so this is just to throw some data out there.

News briefs

A liberal Arab wrote an op-ed describing how Hamas' ideology results in their disregard of the value of human life. He sarcastically stated "This is a wonderful ideal to say that the steadfastness of the resistance or simply the survival of their leaders underground or in exile, or simply the survival of the ideology, is in itself a victory or a defeat for the enemy!"

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about a joint Jewish-Muslim women's group in France, where they get together once a month to make and eat baklava. The secret to their success? They don't allow political discussions.

The Arab Times of Kuwait has a truly nonsensical op-ed, where the author pretty much calls all Arabs collaborators with Israel, including the late Yasir Arafat and the later Saddam Hussein. He ends up by saying:

The bitter fact which Israel - the entity which has stolen our land – is aware of is that a day will come when the stones and the trees will begin to speak: ‘There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’ Only then the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be liberated just like it was liberated by Salah-ud-Din, whose origin was Kurdish not Arab, because the Arabs of today are conspirators hiding behind the logo of a ‘Comprehensive and Just Peace.’

I personally can't wait for that day when the stones and trees speak; I'll take a video and make a fortune!

Fatah is calling for mass demonstrations in Gaza today. Hamas is saying that the rally is illegal and that Fatah is trying to cause political problems. Things might get interesting in Gaza.

Palestine Today is quoting a UNRWA spokesman (not the one that I have been corresponding with) as denying that any aid trucks were hijacked. He admits there was one "incident" but seems to say it was all a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, Arutz-7 has more details.