Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 07, 2009

PA reduces salaries to Nativity terrorists

The Palestinian Authority, whose budget comes largely from Western countries, has been paying salaries to the Church of the Nativity terrorists for years.

For the past two months, however, they reduced the money they rewarded the terrorists with.

And the terrorists are whining about it.

From Palestine Today:

The government of Ramallah, for the second consecutive month, has cut the salaries of a number of Church of the Nativity fighters who had been deported to the Gaza Strip.

Ra'id Abayat (35 years old) is one who is affected by this: "This arbitrary decision was sudden and without warning, and it is a severe blow to the deportees, especially with the approach of the seventh anniversary of the deportation. "

Abayat criticized strongly the Government of Ramallah in a Palestinian daily newspaper, describing it as "a tool for executing the occupation's wishes..."

He added: "There was no justification for the salary cut. I am particularly dire need of money, I am the head of a family of 7 children, mostly in schools, and one of them mentally disabled. It is difficult for me to treat him which costs $100 per month. I am also suffering from back problems."

Another fighter from the Church of the Nativity, AH Hammoud (34 years old), is the breadwinner of the family of seven, described what happened as "unjust resolution", especially as it comes in the backdrop of the national dialogue to be held in Cairo.

Hammoud said: "We were expecting a reward from the government, marking the eighth anniversary if the operation in Bethlehem, and we were surprised by this sudden decision to cut our pay two months ago. I can assure you that there is no ambiguity in the subject, and that this was done deliberately."

For seven years, these people who desecrated one of Christianity's holiest shrines - including some Hamas members - have been rewarded by the Palestinian Authority. They were lauded as heroes at the time and they have been paid handsomely for their terror.

How many other terrorists are being paid by the moderate PA government out of our taxes?

Work accident!

Ma'an mentions:

One fighter from Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades died Thursday during what leaders called a “special mission” in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

A statement from the group identified the man as 23-year-old Tala’at Ismail Al-Afefi, who reportedly died while carrying out a resistance attack from Gaza’s “playground of death.”

Since the report doesn't say he was killed by the Zionist entity, that means that poor Tala'at either blew himself up or was killed by one of his brave jihadist pals.

Also, a Palestinian Arab was stabbed to death near Ramallah on Tuesday.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 74.

Someone else crunching the PCHR numbers

It looks like there are other people besides our team who are debunking the PCHR death count. From The New Republic:

If the IDF's alternate numbers are accurate, they paint a very different picture in terms of the toll on civilian life. How is there such a big disparity between the two sets of numbers? Though the IDF has refused to elaborate in any detail on how it obtained its figures, insight into its methods can be gained in the cluttered basement home office in Toronto of retired Israeli intelligence officer Jonathan Dahoah Halevi. "PCHR's list is inaccurate," he asserts. "I get the impression they intentionally tried to inflate the civilian numbers."
He begins to rattle off indictments. "Why is Said Siyam"—the de facto defense minister of Hamas—"listed as a civilian?" he asks. "Muhammad Dasouki Dasliye. Do you know who he is?" Halevi says that Dasliye was a Palestinian Resistance Committee operative and suspect in the terrorist attack against three American security guards in Gaza in October 2003. "Nizar Rayan," Halevi chuckles. "He's a civilian?" In fact, news reports describe Rayan as a militant cleric who mentored suicide bombers and sent his own son on a suicide mission in 2001, killing two Israelis.
Halevi, a pugnacious father of two, is an insider, a former IDF analyst who works days as a counterterrorism consultant but counts Gaza fatalities in his free time. "It's an intellectual challenge," says the dark-haired, 44-year old, whose parents immigrated to Israel from Yemen. It will take him six months to research all 1,400 of PCHR's names, comparing them to a database of thousands of terrorist operatives he has compiled, as well as whatever he finds on the Internet.
As of last month, Halevi has a list of 171 people the PCHR defines as civilians that he claims he can prove are actually combatants affiliated with Hamas or other terrorist groups. His contention is based on a simple principle: When fighters die, they don't just leave behind a body, a family, and eyewitnesses—they leave a paper trail. Martyrdom posters, photographs of funerals, articles celebrating heroes' exploits, lists of payments to families—these sources help Halevi disprove that a particular fatality was a civilian as opposed to a fighter. Intelligence analysts around the world are following this paper trail, and they don't just work for the Shin Bet or CIA. In fact, in the era of the Internet, vast amounts of intelligence are available to anyone with fluent Arabic, a little training, and a lot of time and patience.
Halevi's macabre hobby began during Israel's 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli incursion into six West Bank cities that targeted Hamas and other terrorist cells responsible for a number of recent suicide bombings. Halevi was perplexed. "It made no sense that on the one hand, Palestinians claimed their fighters were performing valiantly, but at the same time they said they were being massacred." So the dogged and methodical Halevi compiled his own list of fatalities in the Jenin refugee camp. "I read everything I could get my hands on—militant web sites, articles, books of fighters' memories. I found that 65 percent of [Palestinians] killed in the Jenin refugee camp were terror operatives, including some children," he says gravely. The Palestinians later independently reduced their fatality number from an estimated 500 to 56.
It was addictive. Soon Halevi found himself spending all his free time cross-checking Palestinian fatality lists. In his opinion, the best and most trusted lists belonged to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem and PCHR. "These data banks have an enormous influence," he says. "I found PCHR statistics in UN reports...The UN relies on them." So Halevi published dozens of articles on a popular Hebrew news sites, reporting his findings, always precise, never overstating his claim, but scathing nevertheless. Soon he found himself in a war of words with a B'stelem's spokeswoman, who wrote on Israel's News1 web site, "Halevi is exploiting a Palestinian family's tragedy for political gain" and "he dances on Palestinian blood." For his part, Halevi says both organizations are frequently inaccurate, and attributes their contortions to their political motives: "The former chairperson of the board of B'Tselem said in an interview that the organization's goal is a one-state solution. PCHR has the same goal. They reject Israel's existence as a Jewish state."
Halevi is already knee-deep in PCHR's latest list from Cast Lead. He has produced a spreadsheet with the names of 230 police fatalities cited by both the Gaza police department and PCHR. For 171 of these, he provides the name of the faction they fought for as well as brief biographies, such as "a munitions expert" or "arrested by Israel in 1993 for weapons acquisitions for suicide missions." Most of the 171 moonlighting policemen are listed as operatives in the Qassam Brigades, with others belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Resistance Committee.
"This information wasn't hard to find," Halevi says. Type one of the names into a Google search and up pops a web site with photos showing the Gaza cop sporting a martyr's headband and M-16. Halevi grants that many of these policemen did actually perform police duties like patrolling streets or directing traffic. "But then they get a call from their friend who says, 'Come on, it's time for a mission,'" Halevi says. "One of the police casualties was even affiliated with al-Qaeda."
Shaheen [of the PCHR] stands by his numbers. "The police force is totally civilian," he insists. While ten of the fighters on PCHR's list are described as policemen, more than 250 of those described as policemen are labeled civilians. Many Gazans enter the police force because they are poor and need the money, he explains. "I can assure you that all these people were working in police traffic or as guards."
Many of the disparities between the PCHR and IDF numbers seem to be definitional. The IDF has repeatedly stated that any member of Hamas security forces—armed or unarmed—is fair game. Shaheen has a much narrower definition of an uninvolved civilian: "According to international humanitarian law, all armed people are classified as militants and all the people who are unarmed [are civilians]," he says. So if the person was armed at the time of death—which he or his fieldworkers determine by investigating the bodies as they arrive at the hospital—he'll count them as a militant. If the person is not armed, his team will check with family members, neighbors, political parties and Palestinian armed factions to determine the deceased's status as a militant or a civilian. He also checks press releases issues by armed factions. "[The IDF] can say whatever they want," he says. "I mean, [these are] facts on the ground."
But even facts can be subjective. For example, Halevi accuses Shaheen's organization of mislabeling Hamas cleric Nizar Rayan as a civilian. Shaheen explains that Rayan was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home. There are jihadist posters of Rayan all over Gaza, and yet, "I cannot count him as a militant or fighter," Shaheen says. Rayan was unarmed with his wives and children when he was killed, Shaheen explains. "I cannot count this case as a fighter because he didn't participate as a fighter in the offensive. He was a civilian the whole time—going to the mosque, praying, coming back to his house."
Both agree, however, that the war does not end when the fighting stops. "In every war there are two components," says Halevi. "The first is the battle itself, defeating the other side, and the second is presenting the facts of what happened." If a country is not vigilant, he warns, "The other side will rewrite your history."

If anything, the PCHR's researcher is proving himself a liar. If he says that he is only counting militants who were carrying guns at the time, then why does he check websites and interview family members to see if they were militants? And if he did, why wouldn't he count them?

I pointed out as early as January 7 that the PCHR would count people on video who are launching mortars at Israel, in civilian clothing, as "civilians" if the IDF kills them while they are running away, unarmed. The Hamas strategy was specifically to make their people look like civilians, and the PCHR played along dutifully.

Now, how can I get a hold of Halevi?

10-year old Saudi girls over the hill

From the MEMRI Blog:

A Saudi sheikh has performed a wedding ceremony between a 10-year-old girl and a 26-year-old man.
The girl's father said that he married off his daughter because he feared that she would remain a spinster.

The original story says that the girl's mother, presumably to entice her into the marriage, told her that her groom will buy her anything she wants from the grocery store.

PA sentences "collaborator" for spying on Hamas

From the media, one might think that the PA and Hamas are mortal enemies and that each is happy to find ways to weaken the other side.

However, they are buddies compared to how much they both hate Israel.

From Ma'an:

The North Governorates Military court in the West Bank found a Surif man guilty of collaboration with Israel and sentenced him to ten years of prison and hard labor as his case was closed Wednesday.

“MF” was accused of collaborating following a period in the Etzion detention center where it is believed Israeli officials offered to reduce an alleged four year prison sentence in Israel down to two years if MF agreed to collaborate.

The defendant, who was affiliated with Hamas when he began collaborating, started passing information to Israeli authorities from inside the facility. MF was transferred to work in the mail room where he was able to keep track of Hamas political action particularly in Surif.

So the PA, which makes a big show of trying to keep Hamas power in check, considers it a major crime to have Israel try to keep Hamas in check - something which directly benefits the PA.

The only explanation is that, given the choice of Hamas or Israel, the "moderate" PA will always favor Hamas unless it is under tremendous pressure to behave otherwise.

Dead Qassam rocket engineer has a kid

From Ma'an:

Four months after his death, the wife of Gaza’s famed Qassam projectile engineer gave birth to his son, named for his grandfather Yousef Al-Mancy.

His father, Amir Yousef Al-Mansy, was killed on 10 January 2008 [sic.] when an Israeli warplane targeted him while walking in one of Gaza City’s streets during the latest war on the coastal area

Amir was wanted by Israel as a leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades and the developer of the Al-Qassam projectile. He is also said to have been the first to launch a Grad projectile into Israel. He lived in the At-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights called this "famed" leader of the al-Qassam Brigades a "civilian" in its list of Gaza victims (#959.) They said his job was as an "Engineer/member of the Civil Defense."

If he was a "civilian," who did they call a militant?

Iraqi "Palestinians" find refuge outside the Arab world

The plight of the thousands of people marooned for years on the Iraqi/Syrian border continues.

As we've mentioned many times previously, the Arab world is utterly indifferent to this group of fellow Arabs, refusing to resettle them.

The reason?

Because they are of Palestinian Arab descent!

Iraqis hate them because Saddam Hussein gave them preferential treatment so they were driven out of the country that they were born in and often lived there for generations. Of course, because they are considered "Palestinian," they are ineligible for becoming citizens in any Arab country by law, a bit of discrimination that is justified on the grounds of keeping them "unified" in their misery. UNRWA cannot take care of them because they are not considered "Palestinian refugees" by their standards.

So the UNHCR has been begging nations worldwide to accept as many as they can. Every once in a while, a Western nation will accept a few dozen. So far, some have been settled in Iceland, Brazil, Chile, and Canada.

Today, 56 of them will get on a plane to move to Sweden, according to Palestine Today.

The UNHCR keeps trying to get Arab nations to accept them, and they are consistently rebuffed. (Syria, Jordan and other Arab nations have taken in well over a million Iraqi refugees, but refuse to take these people. Only the Sudan has expressed interest, mostly to help their own PR.)

What do Palestinian Arab leaders think about this? Are they happy that their brethren are, very slowly, starting new lives in Western countries?

Of course not! In 2006, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority denounced the possible resettlement of these real refugees to Canada!

I once again refer to a Falasteen editorial I found in 2006 that gave the reasons why Palestinian Arabs prefer that these people stay in tents in the desert forever:

We have warned and others in more than one location and an article about the dangers to be dissipating refugee diaspora Palestinians, since this will negatively impact on the fabric of their unity and their syndicated in the areas of asylum...these will lead to migration to other European countries and therefore as a result of this disruption to the bloc refugees in Lebanon and the resulting in the end of the negative impact on their right to return to their homes and property.

Mythical Palestinian Arab"unity" is more important than the lives and happiness of their own people.

A large part of the reason that Palestinian Arabs are as miserable as they are today is because their leaders and their neighboring Arab leaders would rather see them stateless and pressuring Israel than happy as citizens of any country on Earth.

Self-deaths from PICCR

Palestine Today refers to a report by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights saying that 9 people were killed in April in the Palestinian Arab territories due to "security chaos":

Four deaths occurred against the backdrop of family quarrels or disputes, including one in the West Bank and three in the Gaza Strip, and 3 cases of death due to negligence and failure to take safety precautions and in the West Bank, and the death of one against the background of the so-called honor of the family in Gaza, the situation of one death occurred in the Gaza Strip as a result of tampering with arms, also made of the 3 cases of deaths due to accidents and tunnels in the Gaza Strip.

Unfortunately, I don't have details, but I think I have captured all of these in my counts.

The PICCR website bizarrely includes links to various small business websites in the US, and it doesn't look like it has changed for years.

Correction on Gaza policemen/militants

Commenter Zedy double-checked my classification of policemen from the PCHR list, and as I suspected, I wasn't consistent in putting that label in (especially when we were just starting.)

Anyway, at this time we have identified 159 Gaza policemen killed in Cast Lead who were also members of militant groups, out of 282 listed by PCHR, which is 56.4%.

It also means that if we use the IDF methods of calculating militants (assuming that 100% of the police were legitimate targets) we have identified 662 out of the IDF's 709.

I updated the preliminary report to reflect these numbers.

Thanks, Zedy!

Preliminary results of PCHR Gaza casualty analysis (updated)

In March, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights widely released a report detailing the people who were killed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. This report was a seemingly comprehensive list of the details about every death: the name, gender, age, location, and job of each person is detailed. Most importantly, the PCHR classified all the victims as being either "militants" or "civilians," and their counts indicated that 1180 of 1414 victims were civilians.

Meanwhile, the IDF has claimed that there were 1166 killed in Gaza, of whom 709 were known Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants.

The IDF did not release their list of casualties, so its claims cannot be independently verified at this time. On the other hand, I and other bloggers have been researching the PCHR's claims and have found serious inconsistencies with that organization's methodologies and classifications.

Our team cross-checked the names listed by PCHR with lists of "resisters" compiled by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, lists of "martyrs" published by Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and other militant groups in Gaza, as well as from the Ma'an News Agency, Palestinian Arabic discussion groups and other sources.

Our preliminary results show that at least 342 of the people killed, that PCHR classifies as "civilians," were, in fact, militants.

PCHR's criteria to determine exactly who is a "militant" is unclear. They seem to claim that they are only counting those whom they had direct evidence were engaging in hostilities at the moment of their deaths, but this is far from clear. At any rate, the term "militant" is not a legal term, and in common usage it refers to anyone who belongs to a military or paramilitary group. The PCHR's statistics are deceptive and slanted towards creating a false impression of IDF brutality.

So far, we have identified members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, the PFLP and the DFLP who are all considered "civilians" by the PCHR. The full list can be seen at http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-of-those-civilians-killed-in-gaza.html. These include the links to the original sources where the victims are associated with these various militant groups.

This is far from a comprehensive list. This is only based on the names that we have found. We are not trying to create a full count of civilians and militants; rather we are showing that the statistics given by the PCHR and publicized in the media are knowingly false.

The IDF has categorized most or all of the Hamas police force as "Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives" and therefore as legal targets. The PCHR takes strong exception to this categorization, and reveals its own definition of "combatants":

PCHR consider the IOF’s classification of police officers as combatants illegal: this classification constitutes a wilful violation of the principle of distinction, a key component of customary international law. Hamas is a multi-faceted organisation, exercising de facto governmental control of the Gaza Strip. As an organisation, it cannot be considered an armed group. Rather, a distinction must be made between Hamas’ armed and political/civil components. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades are the military wing of the Hamas organisation, they are an armed group, and are considered as combatants according to IHL. However, Hamas’ political and civil wings are comprised of civilians, who are legally entitled to the protections associated with this status, provided they do not take an active part in hostilities. Civil police, and governmental officials cannot be considered combatants. Attacks intentionally directed against these individuals constitute wilful killing, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a violation of customary international law.

If we fully accept the PCHR's definitions and interpretations of international humanitarian law (IHL) here, then they are saying that members of armed militias like the Al Qassam Brigades are legal combatants and therefore legitimate targets. By extension, it is clear that the Hamas policemen who were also members of the Al Qassam Brigades were, in fact, legitimate targets from the IDF.

Our research has detailed proof that at least 205 of the policemen listed to have been killed in Operation Cast Lead and classified as "civilian" by the PCHR were, in fact, militants. In addition, the PCHR itself classified 10 policemen as "militants."

(The PCHR has been inconsistent in its own press releases. While they claim that 255 non-combatant policemen were killed in Cast Lead, or that 255 police officers were killed in total, their English list includes some 282 people identified as "policemen," of whom 272 were considered "civilian." Their Arabic list counts some 280 policemen in total.)

By any count, over two thirds of the policemen killed in Operation Cast Lead were members of militant groups, predominantly the al-Qassam Brigades.

Certainly, the PCHR is aware of the affiliations of many of not all of the victims in Gaza. To give one example, the Popular Resistance Committees al-Nasser Salah Addin Brigades published a list of its 18 "martyrs" on January 22, 2009. Yet nine of them - including a "commander" and a "field commander" - were classified as "civilian" by the PCHR nearly two months later. It strains credulity to think that with all the effort the PCHR made in compiling the names and classifying the victims that they were unaware of their affiliations with armed groups.

Why, then, did they classify so many known militants as civilians? One can only conclude that the PCHR is not being consistent with even its own description of who is considered a "militant" - and that the reason is to deceive the readers of its reports and the media who would uncritically report the PCHR's conclusions.

Such a high number of Al Qassam members among the police that were killed indicates that Hamas itself does not distinguish between its so-called civilian and military wings. Effectively, Hamas considers its police force to be the same as its military force. If Hamas does not respect the principle of distinction in its own civilian organization, it forfeits the demand for its opponents to adhere to the principle of distinction, and the entire police force would be considered a legitimate target.

The IDF indeed defined the entire Hamas police force as a legitimate target. If we accept that definition, the total number of militants that we can identify by name using the IDF's criteria would be:

282 total police officers
226 "PCHR militants" (not counting the ten police militants according to PCHR)
148 militants identified as "civilian" by PCHR
---
656 total police and militant victims

This is not far from the 709 militants the IDF has said it is aware of.

The evidence that Hamas doesn't distinguish between its civilian and military wings is overwhelming; for more on that topic see this excerpt from Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by Matthew Levitt:

Because of the notion that Hamas has independent "wings," its political and charitable fronts are allowed to operate openly in many Western and Middle Eastern capitals. In these cities, Islamic social welfare groups tied to Hamas are often tolerated when their logistical and financial support for Hamas is conducted under the rubric ofcharitable or humanitarian assistance.
While convenient for Hamas and its supporters, this distinction is contradicted by the consistent if scattered findings of investigators, journalists, and analysts. A review ofthe evidence regarding the integration of Hamas' political activism, social services, and terrorism demonstrates the centrality of the group's overt activities to the organization's ability to recruit, indoctrinate, train, fund, and dispatch suicide bombers to attack civilian targets.
The social welfare organizations of Hamas answer to the same political leaders who play hands-on roles in Hamas terrorist attacks. In some cases, the mere existence of these institutions is invoked to classify Hamas as a social welfare rather than a terrorist organization. To debunk these specious assumptions, it is necessary to fully expose what Hamas calls the dawa (its social welfare and proselytization network). This is sometimes difficult because, as one U.S. official explained, "Hamas is loosely structured, with some elements working clandestinely and others working openly through mosques and social service institutions to recruit members, raise money, organize activities, and distribute propaganda."

Yet even without this knowledge, the PCHR is inconsistent in its definitions. Its only consistency, as evidenced by its use of the term "IOF" ("Israel Occupation Forces") instead of IDF, is a desire to make Israel look as bad as possible. This is not the function of a "human rights" organization - it betrays a political agenda rather than a humanitarian one.

The al-Fakhoura UNRWA School

An interesting finding from the PCHR report regards the al-Fakhoura UNRWA school in Jabalya. On January 6th, 2009, the IDF returned fire from nearby the school, and the initial reports from various Gaza organizations charged that between 30 and 50 people were killed there. The PCHR wrote then that the IDF killed "27 civilians instantly" (not counting the Deeb family which was not near the school and indeed appears to have been killed by an errant shell.) The IDF, on the other hand, has claimed that 12 were killed outside the school.

The PCHR report lists exactly 12 victims from near the al-Fakhoura school, although they do not line up with the names and descriptions given by the IDF. Even so, the PCHR does not seem to be interested in publicizing the discrepancy between its initial reports of a massacre and what it later admits.

Child Militants

The PCHR press releases emphasize child victims of the conflict, but they do not mention another fact of which they are aware: that children are being drafted for use by militant groups.

The PCHR list includes 7 militants who were under 18:

#580 ‘Ateya Rushdi Khalil Aal-Khuli (16)
#830 Ahmed Fawzi Hassan Lubbad (17)
#942 Ibrahim Mustafa Sa’id (17)
#1070 Mahmoud Ahmed Fares Juha (16)
#1094 Mohammed Nader Khalil Abu Sha’aban (17)
#1256 Tamer Reyad Ibrahim Faza'a (17)
#1397 Tamer ‘Umar Isma’il al-Louh (17)

We have identified another 8 children who were members of militant groups that PCHR named as civilian:

#280 Ahmed Rasmi Mohammed Abu Jazar "Mujahid" 16 years old
#405 Tareq Yaser Mohammed ‘Afana 16 years old Al Qassam Brigades member
#409 Mahmoud Majed Mahmoud Abu Nahla 16 years old "Shahid Fighter" in ICT list
#415 Ghassan Nizar Abdul Kader Rayan 16 years old (Nizar Rayyan's son) "Al Qassam shahid" (his siblings are not mentioned)
#992 Mohammed Jaber Mohammed ‘Eleyan 16 years old member of PRC/Nasser Brigades
#1156 Hammam Mohammed Hassan al-Khudary 16 years old Islamic Jihad member
#1162 Belal Jamal Isma’il Abu ‘Awwad 17 years old Al Qassam member
#1229 ‘Imad Maher Saleh Ferwana (Ammar Maher Farwana) 17 years old listed as "resister" on Al Mezan list
#1275 Samer Mohammed al-Abed Abu Aser, 17 years old, Islamic Jihad member http://www.saraya.ps/view.php?id=11327 (Saraya site down now, data from ICT)

We have yet to see the PCHR condemn Hamas or Islamic Jihad for their recruitment and use of children as fighters.

Discrepancies in total number killed

The IDF has stated that 1166 people were killed during Cast Lead, and has suggested that the difference in total killed between their count and the counts from PCHR, Palestinian Ministry of Health and Al-Mezan could possibly be because the Gazan organizations counted people who died naturally as being "martyred" by the IDF.

While we have no way to verify that claim, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has a list of all "martyrs" who died, they say, as a result of the "siege" of Gaza (typically cancer and heart disease patients, presumably because of a lack of medical care and the ability to travel to Israel for treatment.). Their monthly totals of such deaths before and after Cast Lead look like this:

November - 10
December - 14
January - 3
February - 13
March - 23

None of the December deaths occured during Cast Lead.

It is curious that the number of deaths from cancer and similar diseases would have plummeted so much during the fighting. While this is hardly proof, it does indicate that the statistics that come out of official institutions in Gaza and the PA are suspect and that there is a possibility that the total number of Cast Lead victims has been exaggerated.

Conclusion

While the results are not complete, there is overwhelming evidence that the PCHR knowingly and maliciously lied in its statistics regarding the numbers of civilians and militants killed during Operation Cast Lead. Knowing its clear biases, the most reasonable conclusion is that the PCHR was not nearly as interested in the truth as it was in demonizing the IDF. The report itself cannot be considered reliable.

Given this information, it is difficult to know whether to believe that organization in other areas.

NK "rabbi" speaks at Oxford

A Muslim group at Wolfson College at Oxford tried to book a Neturei Karta "rabbi" to speak, using underhanded means, and the college was accused of "censorship" by not going along:

A University of Oxford college has been accused of stifling free speech after it cancelled a lecture by a controversial anti-Zionist rabbi.
Rabbi Ahron Cohen was to present a paper entitled “Zionism is not Judaism, Anti-Israelism is not Anti-Semitism” at Wolfson College, a postgraduate college, on 30 April.
The lecture was part of a monthly forum organised by the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford (MECO), which booked the venue.
Taj Hargey, chairman of MECO, said the college cancelled the event on 29 April and that Wolfson’s president, Hermione Lee, told him that she had been inundated with complaints from students about the speaker.
He told Times Higher Education: “They are saying there is a booking anomaly, but that is not the real reason for the cancellation. The real reason was student pressure. We have offered to pit a Zionist in a debate against Rabbi Cohen, but that has not been accepted. Free speech has lost, and censorship has won.”
A spokeswoman for Wolfson College said the lecture booking was cancelled because it was not “made transparently”.
“Wolfson supports free speech and is happy to host speakers of all opinions,” she said. “However, where a speaker is likely to be controversial or provocative, or has the potential to cause offence to college members, it is the college’s policy to discuss among the governing body whether and how to hold the event, including whether opposing voices should be included in the event.
“As this speaker was booked under the identity of a college member who knew nothing about the booking and the real identity of the speaker became apparent only yesterday, there was no opportunity to hold these discussions. This left Wolfson with no option but to tell the organisers that the venue was no longer available.”

What is interesting is that this article didn't mention that the "rabbi" spoke anyway:

The talk had to be moved at the last minute after the management of Wolfson College, where the talk was to be held, cancelled the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford’s booking.

Its new location, St Edward’s School in Woodstock Road, was only revealed an hour before the talk took place.

MECO chairman Dr Taj Hargey said: “It went very well in the end."

Isn't it interesting that MECO chairman Taj Hargey tells the international Times Higher Education that they were "censored" without mentioning that the lecture ended up taking place?

Speaking of NK, a commenter wrote that he didn't believe that NK had been condemned by virtually every Chassidic and charedi group, as Arutz-7 had reported in 2002. I didn't find any independent confirmation of the 2002 letter that A7 mentioned, but their are many condemnations from other groups including Satmar - and even including the main Neturei Karta from which the tiny radical branch split, as this statement from the anti-Zionist larger group shows:

To clarify and to enlighten
It is now close to 60 years since the Zionists established their rule over Eretz Yisroel (the Land of Israel) by founding the impure Zionist state, which brazenly stole the name "Israel" and has waged a full and open war against God through its mere existence... And this new path, which has never been the path of our forefathers and our rabbis, to replace the study of the Jewish viewpoint regarding the exile with matters of state and political affairs, and to mingle with the peoples, and to try to bring about the dismantlement of the Zionist state by force... And because of this we have found it to be our duty to clarify:

That these actions go straight against the views of the leadership of Neturei Karta,
And it is the total opposite of the ways of Neturei Karta
We must clarify how much we have been hurt by the huge desecration of God's Name caused by these actions and it is impossible to remain silent on this issue.

And we must also mention that the tiny NK's "foreign minister" received tens of thousands of dollars from Yasir Arafat:

The first letter is a receipt in Arafat's handwriting for a payment to Moshe Hirsch for $25,000; there is a similar letter authorizing $30,000. The second letter is from Hirsch to Arafat that mentions a "misunderstanding with a messenger," presumably one that was to deliver one of his payments.

"Apart from wanting to kill all Jews, Meshal is AOK"

The New York Times shills again for a terrorist, this time Hamas' Khaled Meshal in an interview where they even admit that he is using them:

He explained why he was giving the interview, his first to an American news organization in a year, by saying: “To understand Hamas is to listen to its vision directly. Hamas is delighted when people want to hear from its leaders directly, not about the movement through others.”

That also seemed aimed at the Obama administration, which has decided to open a dialogue with Iran and Syria, but not with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognizes Israel and accepts previous Palestinian-Israeli accords.

But that is nothing compared to the Times' interpretation of Meshal's political position vis a vis Israel:

On the two-state solution sought by the Americans, he said: “We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.” Asked what “long-term” meant, he said 10 years.

Apart from the time restriction and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Meshal’s terms approximate the Arab League peace plan and what the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas says it is seeking. Israel rejects a full return to the 1967 borders, as well as a Palestinian right of return to Israel itself.

Oh, and he refuses to revoke the Hamas charter which calls on killing all Jews. But he said it is 20 years old, so the Times reporters interpret that as meaning "it doesn't apply anymore" - something he didn't say or even imply.

After all, the Quran is a bit older than that.

So Meshal wants to see Israel destroyed, he wants all Jews in the Middle East murdered, and he might be willing to offer a ten year pause for Israel to get destroyed demographically. The prestigious NYT, however, characterizes this as being virtually indistinguishable with the most moderate Arabs, and casts Israel as the intransigent party for not wanting to joyfully accept suicide.

Altogether, this was a true low for the New York Times.

(h/t EBoZ and Soccer Dad)

Anatomy of a fake Ben Gurion quote

The Pakistan Daily today "quotes" David Ben-Gurion:

“It is essential that we strike and crush Pakistanis, enemies of Jews and Zionism by all disguised and secret plans,” - David Ben Gurion, first prime minister of the Zionist entity.

Since this quote sounds absurd, I did a little research.

The full "quote" seems to have originated in an article from the anti-semitic Rense.com from April 1, 2001 (sorry, I will not link there):

If there is still any doubt as to the real intentions of Israel, then please see this statement issued by David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister. His words, as printed in the Jewish Chronicle, 9 August 1967, leave nothing to imagination:

"The world Zionist movement should not be neglectful of the dangers of Pakistan to it. And Pakistan now should be its first target, for this ideological State is a threat to our existence. And Pakistan, the whole of it, hates the Jews and loves the Arabs.

"This lover of the Arabs is more dangerous to us than the Arabs themselves. For that matter, it is most essential for the world Zionism that it should now take immediate steps against Pakistan.

"Whereas the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula are Hindus whose hearts have been full of hatred towards Muslims, therefore, India is the most important base for us to work therefrom against Pakistan.

"It is essential that we exploit this base and strike and crush Pakistanis, enemies of Jews and Zionism, by all disguised and secret plans. ____

Wow, a real date and source for this supposed quote! Now we just have to find The Jewish Chronicle.

While there are lots of small Jewish newspapers called The Jewish Chronicle, it seems unlikely that Ben Gurion granted an interview to the newspaper in Pittsburgh or Wisconsin. The only reasonable candidate would be the London Jewish Chronicle, which has been published since 1841.

Well, it has been published every Friday since 1841. Unfortunately, August 9, 1967 was a Wednesday.

The fake quote itself is all over the Internet - in literally hundreds of websites. Intrepid blogger Solomon's House noticed it last December and proceeded to demolish it, even going through the JC archives looking at every mention of Pakistan. He then went on to confront the Islamists who believe the quote, to predictable results.

One unassailable fact is that it takes seconds to make up a fake quote and it takes much effort to disprove one. Even after it is shown to be false, it will be believed by the people who want to believe it.

Fake "civilian" update

Thanks to the volunteers who are poring through various lists of Gaza victims, here are the current stats of people whom the Palestinian Center for Human Rights called "civilian" that are actually terrorists.

265 militants that the PCHR called "civilian"
139 policemen/members of terror organizations that the PCHR called "civilian"
13 terrorists under 18 years old

Known terrorists killed in Gaza so far by name
265+236 PCHR "militants" = 501

Percentage of policemen who were also known terrorists:
135/239 = 58%

Suzanne is still going through the names on the PCHR list to find references to any terror activities..and doing an amazing job.

I believe that since a preponderance of policemen were also al-Qassam Brigades members, together with the fact that Hamas' military wing is indistinguishable from its "civilian" leadership, justify Israel's bombing of the policemen - something that some human rights organizations have called illegal under international law.

The updated list, as always, is at http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-of-those-civilians-killed-in-gaza.html Our preliminary report on our findings (when the numbers were lower) available here.

I'm adding the "shahids" to the list

I've been struggling with how to categorize people who are merely called "shahids" in Hamas al-Qassam Brigades message boards and websites; whether they are likely to be militants or not.

At this time, I am going to assume they are. Here are my reasons:

1) There are no women or young children being referred to in those websites as "shahids", even though they are routinely referred to as such in Arabic newspaper reports. This indicates that the word, in the context of these sites, refers exclusively to adult males, and given that these sites celebrate "resistance," it indicates strongly that the term is referring to those who are worthy of emulation.

2) We have identified 9 plain "shahids" who we had already shown to be members of terror groups.

The main counterargument is that these names were often posted by regular readers of the site who could not be expected to use consistent labels. It is possible that some of them would assume that every policeman was an al-Qassam member (not an unreasonable assumption, given our findings.)

So I will add the five new names of plain shahids we have identified so far, and keep a record of my thinking on the blog so my decisions are as transparent as possible if anyone wants to verify these findings.