Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 18, 2009

Shana Tova!

I wish my readers a Shana Tova U'Metuka, a happy and sweet new year!

I will be offline until Sunday night for Rosh Hashanah. K'tiva v'chatimah tovah!

Israeli spoof Scandanavian video a hit

From JPost:

An Israeli satirical video posted on the Internet became a hit in the very countries it criticizes.

The video was produced and posted by latma, a Website criticizing Israeli and international media outlets.

It was produced in the wake of a report by the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet which alleged that the IDF harvests organs of Palestinians killed in conflict for transplant in Israeli patients. The writer of the report has since admitted he had no way of ascertaining its veracity. Israel called the Aftonbladet report a "new blood libel."

Last week, Norway announced its divestment from Elbit, an Israeli Hi Tech manufacturer which is a world leader in the defense industry. Norway announced it would divest from Elbit because of the company's work on the security barrier in the West Bank.

After only two days on the air, the above clip was picked up by the leading newspaper in Sweden, DN.se, and by Swedish and Norwegian bloggers.

The clip has over 10,000 views and 500 comments, and Shlomo Blass, who runs the latma Web site it was initially posted on, said the success is overwhelming.

"We were surprised by how quickly the clip took-off, we must have hit a sensitive nerve," he said.

Many of the some 500 comments on the blog are anti-Israel and there are more than a handful of anti-Semitic and Neo-Nazi comments as well.

It is hilarious, and catchy to boot:

(h/t t34zakat)

The world is looking for a sweet new year

The last 500 hits on my blog included these entries from people typing in these phrases in search engines:

54	31.95%	shana tova u metuka

8	4.73%	שנה טובה ומתוקה
6	3.55%	shana tova u'metuka
3	1.78%	shana tova umetuka
3	1.78%	shana tova u'metuka!
2	1.18%	g'mar chatima tova new year 2009
2	1.18%	l'shana tova u'metuka
2	1.18%	shana tova u metuka!
2	1.18%	shana tova u metuka meaning
2	1.18%	shana tova ve metuka translation
1	0.59%	shana tova umetuka english translation
1	0.59%	chag sameach
1	0.59%	elderofziyon.blogspot
1	0.59%	shana tova u’metuka
1	0.59%	g'mar chatima tova
1	0.59%	l'shanah tovah umetuka
1	0.59%	meaning of שנה טובה ומתוקה
1	0.59%	שנה טובה ומתוקה!! translation
1	0.59%	shana tova umetuka meaning
1	0.59%	שנה טובה ומתוקה ל
1	0.59%	shana tova ??? ???? ??????
1	0.59%	shana tova u?metuka!
1	0.59%	mazel tov l’chaim translation
1	0.59%	lechaim mazel tov black eyed peas
1	0.59%	l'shana tova umetucha
1	0.59%	shana tove umetukah
1	0.59%	l'shana tova u'metouka
1	0.59%	shana tova vmetuka
1	0.59%	meaning of shana tova u'metuka!
1	0.59%	shana tovah u'metuka
1	0.59%	shana tova u metukah
1	0.59%	לשנה טובה ומתוקה
1	0.59%	перевод שנה טובה ומתוקה
1	0.59%	shanah tovah u-metuka
1	0.59%	shana tova u'metuka
1	0.59%	l'shana tova umetuka
1	0.59%	shan tov u metuk
1	0.59%	shana tova ve metuka
1	0.59%	u metuka definition
1	0.59%	ומתוקה שנה טובה
1	0.59%	shana tova u' metuka in hebrew
1	0.59%	shanah tovah umetuka
1	0.59%	shana tova msm
1	0.59%	shana tova. g'mar chatimah tovah
1	0.59%	shana tova u' metuka!!
1	0.59%	what does shana tova u'metuka!

So I think we have to work harder to give it to them, no?

Today is the last Friday of Ramadan, a day declared by the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran to be "Qods Day," where a city that Islam essentially ignored for most of the first twelve centuries of its existence is suddenly considered vitally important - only after Jews recovered control of Jerusalem.

I made a video last year on this topic, that summarizes a number of previous Al Quds posts I've written.

Here is a roundup of posts I've made to celebrate Qods Day over the years:

Introduction - An overview of how Muslims have ignored Jerusalem when they had control over the city.

The originator of Qods Day: A brief snippet of another, rather disgusting, legal ruling by the late Ayatollah.

A 1910 article showing the tremendous growth of Jerusalem in the few decades since mass Jewish return to the city, including how much land values increased and how much money Arabs were getting for selling land to Jews.

Jerusalem in Islamic art: A survey of the (non)-existence of Jerusalem in any Islamic art that pre-dates Zionism, compared to some ancient Jewish pictures of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem in Islamic poetry: A very similar posting showing every ancient Islamic poem I could find that mentions Islam's "third holiest city," plus a 12th century Jewish poem about the city.

Jerusalem in Islamic coins: Another post comparing the number of times Jerusalem was depicted in historic Islamic coins compared to ancient Jewish currency.

Jerusalem in Islamic prayer: Jerusalem, for some strange reason, is not mentioned once in Islamic prayer, but it is a central motif of Jewish prayer.

Goldstone report inaccuracies part 10 (updated)

723. The Mission considers, however, that the testimonies of the witnesses strongly suggest
that already before daybreak on 4 January 2009 the Israeli armed forces were in full control of
the al-Samouni neighbourhood. The Israeli soldiers had taken up position on the roofs of the
houses in the area. According to several witnesses, the soldiers on the street spoke to residents
who had ventured out of their houses.410 In some cases (for instance, at the house of Saleh al-
Samouni and at the house Iyad al-Samouni was in, see below), they entered the houses nonviolently
after knocking on the door. According to Saleh al-Samouni, the prolonged
identification of all the persons present in his house (his father identifying each family member
in Hebrew for the soldiers) took place outside. The soldiers appear to have been confident that
they were not at immediate risk of being attacked.

724. The Mission also reviewed the submission it received from an Israeli researcher, arguing
generally that statements from Palestinian residents claiming that no fighting took place in their
neighbourhood are disproved by the accounts Palestinian armed groups give of the armed
operations. The Mission notes that, as far as the al-Samouni neighbourhood is concerned, this
report would appear to support the statements of the witnesses that there was no combat.411

Note 411: “The hidden dimension of Palestinian war casualties…”. Only 4 of the more than 100 entries in the submission refer to combat action in Zeytoun, the much larger part of Gaza City of which al-Samouni neighbourhood is a part. The incidents in Zeytoun that are mentioned reportedly occurred on 6, 7, 11 and 13 January 2009, and consist of Palestinian combatants opening fire against Israeli troops with rocket-propelled grenades, a mortar (in one case) and detonating an explosive device.

It is difficult for me to say that there was or was not military activity in the Samounis' neighborhood on January 4th. However, Goldstone takes the absence of any mention of incidents in the Al Zaytoun neighborhood (in which the Samounis lived) in an Israeli report as evidence that there was no significant fighting there on January 4th. Goldstone's other evidence is indeed Palestinian Arab witnesses.

I do not know how big Al Zaytoun is either. However, it seems pretty clear that there was still fighting in Al Zaytoun on January 4th. PCHR names:

495 Mustafa Zuhdi Mustafa Erhayem

498 Mohammed Fou’ad Mahmoud al-He

515 Mohammed Bassam Mohammed ‘Anan

530 Hassan ‘Isam Hassan al-Jammasi

580 ‘Ateya Rushdi Khalil Aal-Khuli (16 years old!)

all as militants, actively fighting Israeli forces as they were killed in Al-Zaytoun on January 4th.

In addition, (576) Ayman Mohammed Mohammed ‘Afana (policeman) was an Al Qassam Brigades member killed in that neighborhood on that day.

And the fighting continued in Al-Zaytoun on January 5th:.

639 Mohammed Mohammed Nabih al-Ghazali (PCHR)

641 Rashad Helmi Mahmoud al-Samouni (see below) (PCHR)

681 Ahmed Hassan Abdul Karim Abu Zour listed as "resister" on PMoH site (#226)

Again, this doesn't mean that Goldstone is incorrect concerning the immediate area of the Samouni house, but it does indicate that the commission ignored easily-available data that could indicate that their implication that no fighting was taking place in Al-Zaytoun is wrong.

In para. 713 and footnote 404, they list the names of every member of the al-Samouni extended family that was killed. One of them is Rashad Helmi al Samouni (male, aged 42), whom the PCHR lists as being killed a militant. (Not only that, but another al-Samouni is listed as having been killed on January 5th: Mohammed Ibrahim Helmi al-Samouni, listed in PCHR as a civilian but who was a member of Islamic Jihad.)

So one of the civlians Goldstone lists as being killed was in fact a terrorist.

At the very least, a small amount of fact checking would have uncovered these inconsistencies. Yet Goldstone says without reservation:

721. The Mission found the foregoing witnesses to be credible and reliable. It has no reason to doubt their testimony.

I think there is more than enough reason to doubt their testimony.

(UPDATE: I misread Goldstone and thought that the commission was saying that the al-Samouni deaths were on Jan. 4th. One person with that name was killed on Jan. 4 in al-Zaytoun, but as far as I can tell he was a civilian. I corrected the post above.)

Hamas seizes charity organization in Gaza

From Ma'an:

Head of Ishraqa, a Gazan charitable society, Wasfi Naser, urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to freeze the society’s accounts following what he described as a takeover by the de facto Hamas run Ministry of the Interior.

Naser said he received a phone call from representatives of the de facto Ministry of the Interior last week telling him that they had appointed a new board of directors for the society.

Ishraqa currently supports approximately 250 orphaned children in northern Gaza by raising funds from charities in the EU, US, and Canada.

Naser asked that the Ministry of Interior restore control of the charity to the original board of directors who were elected, and always send their financial reports to the ministry.

He said he hopes there can be a swift resolution of the seizure.

I wonder if it was seized by Hamas' military or charity wing?

Must read: Richard Landes fisking Goldstone's NYT piece

Professor Richard Landes does a superlative job fisking Judge Richard Goldstone's op-ed in the New York Times today. And while I have been spending what time I have on the minutae of the large Goldstone Report, Landes' post goes to the very heart of the topic, and shows exactly what is problematic about the entire enterprise. It casts great doubt on Goldstone's honesty, at least with regards to this topic.

It is a must-read, as are the links Landes uses to support his arguments.

Islamic Jihad also has a "political wing"

Jihad organizations rarely have a purely military focus. They always have used charities and created Islamist schools to recruit new members, and those "wings" require their own procedures and people. Similarly, the larger ones also need to speak to the media and negotiate with other groups, and those people become the "political wings" of the organizations.

The critical point is that the political and social-service wings are not separate - their entire existence is to support the terrorist goals of the organization. They are subservient to the military goals, not independent of them.

For example, here are some pictures from Palestine Today showing a leader of the "political wing" of Islamic Jihad, Sheikh Nafez Azzam, greeting the backbone of the terror organization:

He reiterated that armed "resistance" is the only way to "defend" their people.

Hamas' non-military wings have grown the same way; out of a necessity to do some non-military tasks as necessary to continue the major focus, which remains jihad. For example, Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan's role was to bridge the military and non-military wings of Hamas - a purely practical role that indicates the primacy of jihad in Hamas.

Westerners stricken with a particularly extreme case of wishful thinking disease like to seize on these different "wings" as evidence that there is a huge separation of duties and goals between them. In Hamas' case. the fact that separate "security forces" report to the same "ministry" indicates that the separation is practical, not doctrinal. Add this to the fact that a majority of Palestinian Arab police killed in Gaza also belonged to Hamas' armed wing and it is clear that no real distinction can be made between the two, just as no practical distinction can be made between the fighters and the people who procure weapons within the Al Aqsa Brigades who are not directly involved.

Bostrom expands blood libel against Israel

Donald Bostrom, the "journalist" who wrote the infamous blood libel for Swedish magazine Aftonbladet claiming that Israel kills Palestinian Arabs for their organs, expanded his charges in a press conference in Algeria held by invitation of the National Federation of Algerian Journalists. They awarded him with an "Excellence in Journalism" award; it does not appear to be in th "fiction" category.

Palestine Press Agency reports that Bostrom has gone way beyond his initial feverish fantasies of Jewish evil and fills in the lies with additional details:

* The organ thefts started in 1960.
* Israel didn't only steal Palestinian Arab organs but also those of "martyrs of other nationalities."
* More than a thousand bodies were harvested.

Bostrom also called for "serious international action by competent international bodies to consider these inhumane practices against a defenseless people."

As far as I can tell, he provided not an iota of evidence for these additional charges, as he didn't for the initial ones (outside pointing to stitches on a body.)

PalPress goes on to say that Bostrom met with major Algerian ministers and a representative of the Algerian president, who praised him for his courage in the face of the all-powerful Zionist lobby.

UPDATE: English report here. And Al Arabiya reports that Bostrom's award included a payment of $5000.

Egypt sends aid through Rafah!!!!

Palestine Today reports that Egypt sent humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing on Wednesday. 11 trucks filled with 135 tons of aid were sent through.

It is very nice that Egyptians have decided to help their Palestinian Arab brethren, and it deserves to be reported.

Lesser known is that Israel sends through ten to twenty times those amounts of aid every weekday. For example, last week Israel sent though 563 truckloads -14,562 tons -of humanitarian aid.

All of a sudden, 135 tons sent as a one-off doesn't sound quite as impressive. Yet for some reason, when the people who Gazans consider to be their enemies give huge amounts of aid, Palestine Today doesn't mention it. Perhaps Jews helping Arabs is a dog-bites-man story while Arabs helping PalArabs is a bit more unusual.

Or there is a more likely explanation for PalToday's omission....

PalArabs: Zionist Pigs now protected by Israelis

Palestine Today has another article about the hordes of wild boars that sometimes descend on PalArab villages, We have already seen many of these articles, where villagers invariably accuse Israeli settlers of raising these boars and letting them loose to devour, exclusively, Palestinian Arab-own crops.

This story adds an interesting twist, though. According to "experts" interviewed, Israel introduced a new law to fine and imprison any Palestinian Arab who kills these animals, with a prison sentence of 1.5 years. (Of course we also have the PalArab fears of catching swine flu from the boars.)

How evil the Israelis are! Imagine, a fine and a prison sentence! The only thing that could make the Israelis look worse would be if the story had a shred of truth!

Never a dull moment open thread

I will be on the web only intermittently between now and Rosh Hashanah, so that means it's time for everyone's favorite game show: Open Thread!

To start things going, I need to mention this amazing article at Arutz-7 that says that Judge Goldstone fell asleep during a video presentation on Sderot rockets.

Goldstone report inaccuracies part 9: Gaza Police

The Goldstone report spends a lot of space (paragraphs 414-421) trying to justify its contention that the Hamas police force was a civilian force, and that Israel was not justified in attacking it. I believe that this analysis is flawed and that the conflicting evidence is weighted with a clear bias towards declaring the policemen to be civilian.

410. In order to shed some light on where the truth might lie between these two conflicting descriptions of the police, the Mission finds it necessary to examine the development of the security forces linked to Hamas after its election victory in January 2006. When Mr. Said Seyam, a senior Hamas representative,269 took office as the Palestinian Authority’s Minister of Interior in April 2006, he found that he had little or no control over the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, which were put under the control of the President of the Palestinian Authority and of officials loyal to him.270 On 20 April 2006, he announced the formation of a new security force
reporting directly to him. This was the Security Forces Support Unit, also known as the Executive Force (al-Quwwa al-Tanfiziyya). The new security force appears to have had a double function as both a law-enforcement agency and, at least potentially, a military force. It was officially charged with enforcing public security and protecting property. At the same time, he appointed Mr. Jamal Abu Samhadana, commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, as the head of the Executive Force271 and announced that it would be composed of 3,000 new recruits from various Palestinian armed groups, including al-Qassam Brigades.272 The newly appointed commander reportedly declared: “[The Executive Force] will be the nucleus of the future Palestinian army. The resistance must continue. We have only one enemy. … I will continue to carry the rifle and pull the trigger whenever required to defend my people. We are also a force against corruption. We are against thieves, corrupt officials and law breakers.” 273

This paragraph seems to set the tone that, at least originally, Hamas did not distinguish between civil and military functions for its Executive Force.

411. In August 2007, following the June 2007 Hamas seizure of full control over Gaza, the current Director of the Gaza authorities’ civil police, then head of the Executive Force, Gen. Abu Obeidah, described the planned reorganization of the security services in Gaza. Executive Force members were to be integrated into the civil police. He reportedly stated that Hamas was “working hard to retrain Executive Force members to perform police duties” and that the “Force will be in charge of chasing drug dealers and lawless residents”. At the same time, he stated that
“members of the Force are religious, and are resistance fighters.”274

At this point, when Hamas took over Gaza, it was obvious to all that Hamas would need to take over the police duties. Fatah clearly was not going to be tolerated in that role. The question is, did Hamas intend that the police would be a purely civil police force, or simply that they had to fulfill that role in order to maintain law and order but they would still be considered resistance fighters (and moonlight as such)? At this point, as of 2007, the answer seems to be the latter, according to Goldstone's evidence.

412. In October 2007, the security services operating in Gaza were reorganized. The previous Palestinian Authority’s police agencies in Gaza were merged with the Executive Force.275 The security forces under the control of the Ministry of Interior emerging from this reorganization comprise the Civil Police, the Civil Defence, the Internal Security (an intelligence agency) and the National Security. Their mandates, according to the Gaza authorities’ Ministry of Interior’s website,276 are differentiated.

413. The National Security force is given specific military tasks, such as “the protection of the State from any foreign aggression” and “responsibility for the defence of the Palestinian homeland in the face of external and internal threats”. It is thus plainly a military force whose members are, under international humanitarian law, combatants.277 The functions of the police have been outlined above.

The website shows that there are six security services under the Interior Ministry: Police, Civil Defense, Security and Protection, Homeland Security, National Security Forces and Military Medical Services. Keep in mind that they all report to the same ministry, meaning that they are much closer related than traditional military and police duties are in most nations.

I maintain that there is essentially no distinction between these groups.

To give an example, the "Security and Protection" group lists 12 "martyrs" from the Gaza war on its website. It is not the police division; it seems to be mostly serving a function of bodyguards. However, of the 12 killed, PCHR listed 2 of them as "militants" and 9 of them as "police." (One I could not find.) Of the 9 "police," 6 of them were listed as Al Qassam Brigades members on the Al Qassam website itself, and two were listed as Al Qassam Brigades members in other sources.

414. On 1 January 2009, during the Israeli military operations in Gaza, the police
spokesperson, Mr. Islam Shahwan, informed the media that the police commanders had managed to hold three meetings at secret locations since the beginning of the armed operations. He added that “an action plan has been put forward, and we have conducted an assessment of the situation and a general alert has been declared by the police and among the security forces in case of any emergency or a ground invasion. Police officers received clear orders from the leadership to face the enemy, if the Gaza Strip were to be invaded.”278 Confirming to the Mission that he had been correctly quoted, Mr. Shahwan stated that the instructions given at that meeting were to the effect that in the event of a ground invasion, and particularly if the Israeli armed forces were to enter urban settlements in Gaza, the police was to continue its work of ensuring that basic food stuffs reached the population, of directing the population to safe places, and of upholding public order in the face of the invasion. Mr. Shahwan further stated that not a single policeman had been killed in combat during the armed operations, proving that the instructions had been strictly obeyed by the policemen.

This is a critical paragraph, and it highlights Goldstone's credulity. There is a clear statement from the police spokesman saying that the police were instructed to face the enemy, which is not a very ambiguous statement. Months later, when he is reached by commission members to explain this problematic statement, he seizes the opportunity to "clarify" that he only meant that they should be doing normal police duties.

And Goldstone believes him.

Not only that, his "proof" is an absurd statement that no policemen were killed in combat (presumably during the ground invasion.) This is a lie. According to PCHR and my research, 16 policemen were killed from January 4th and on, 34 policemen were killed, and my research indicates that at least 16 of them were members of terror organizations.

Here is a most obvious case where Goldstone's members are willing to believe what they are told by Hamas without any followup.

415. The Mission notes that there are no allegations that the police as an organized force took
part in combat during the armed operations. On the basis of the information provided by the
Gaza authorities and of the above-mentioned study of the Orient Research Group Ltd., it would
appear that 75 per cent of its members killed in the course of the military operations died as a
result of the air strikes carried out during the first minutes of the Israeli attack. These men had
not engaged in combat with the Israeli armed forces.279

If one assumes that the commission is accurate in defining the police as a separate, purely civil institution, this would seem to be the case. If one believes that it is a facade to make human rights organizations happy, then it is a bit less clear.

416. The Mission also notes that while the then commander of the Executive Forces and now
Director of Police did reportedly say in August 2007 that members of the Executive Force were
“resistance fighters”, he stressed in the same interview the authorities’ intention to develop it into
a law enforcement force. The Mission notes that a situation in which a recently constituted
civilian police force integrates former members of armed groups would not be unique to Gaza.
That prior membership in itself would not be sufficient to establish that the police in Gaza is a
part of al-Qassam Brigades or other armed groups.

Nor does it disprove it. However, other evidence might cause one to tilt that way. For example, if the vast majority of Gaza's police force were also members of terror organizations, wouldn't that indicate that Hamas is quite happy with freely mixing the civil and militant duties of its members?

417. Except for the statements of the police spokesperson, the Israel Government has
presented no other basis on which a presumption can be made against the overall civilian nature
of the police in Gaza. It is true that the police and the security forces created by Hamas in Gaza
may have their origins in the Executive Force. However, while the Mission would not rule out
the possibility that there might be individuals in the police force who retain their links to the
armed groups, it believes that the assertion on the part of the Government of Israel that “an
overwhelming majority of the police forces were also members of the Hamas military wing or
activists of Hamas or other terrorist organizations”,280 appears to be an overstatement that has
led to prejudicial presumptions against the nature of the police force that may not be justified.

While we have established that Goldstone believes, without reservation, the assertions of the Hamas police spokesman, it gives no such credit to the IDF. Where does it gain its skepticism from? Skipping a little...

420. The Mission further notes that the study conducted by the Orient Research Group Ltd.
names policemen killed during the attack, whom it identifies as members of Hamas, al-Qassam
Brigades, other armed Palestinian groups or “terror operatives” whose affiliation is not known.
In 78 out of 178 cases the policemen are alleged to be members of al-Qassam Brigades on the
sole basis that they were allegedly Hamas members.

I do not know the methodology of the Halevi report referenced here, but my research (using similar methods) has determined that at least 206 of the 242 policemen killed in Gaza were members of terrorist organizations or "military" groups. That is about 74%.

At least 83 of them were explicitly listed as members on the official Al Qassam Brigades website. Many others were listed as "militants" by Al Mezan, in Al Qassam Brigades forums, and in PFLP and Islamic Jihad websites. And ten of them were recognized as militants by the PCHR.

(About 15 of my count came from ICT and I have not corroborated yet on any militant website. Even so, it still leaves a vast majority of Palestinian Arab police as being actively affiliated with terror groups.

This is the key fact: a police force that (at the very least) tolerates its members as also being terrorists loses its status as being worthy of protection. Perhaps not according to a strict interpretation of international law, but for all practical purposes the fact that the police also did traffic duties does not make them any less militant, any more than an army doing police duties would be immune from attack.

Goldstone however copies an argument against this logic from the Al Mezan Center:

421. Furthermore, it appears from the response to the Mission from the Orient Research Group
Ltd. describing its methodology that its information on police members’ alleged affiliation with
armed groups was based to a large extent on the websites of the armed groups. In this respect,
the Mission is mindful of a recent report by a Palestinian human rights NGO drawing attention to
the “issue of the ‘adoption’ of killed persons by resistance groups; i.e. declaration by a political
or armed group that the person killed was one of their members. Often, when persons, including
children, are killed by actions of the Israeli armed forces , political and/or armed groups ‘adopt’
them as ‘martyrs’ placing their photographs on their websites and commending their contribution
to resisting occupation. This does not mean that those persons killed were involved in resistance
activities in any way. The families accept this ‘adoption’ of deceased family members for
various reasons including the willingness of resistance groups to provide financial support to the
families and pay for funeral costs of the persons killed.” As the NGO concludes, “these cases
require in-depth investigation on a case-by-case basis in order to determine every person’s status
according to his actual affiliation”.283

It is true that some websites use the word "martyrs" when referring to women and children. However, my group's original research was careful to ignore any sources that did this practice. I did not see a single women or child (less than 16 years old) being mentioned as a member of any armed group. Moreover, we were careful not to count people listed only as "shahids" and made sure that those we counted were called "mujahid" or similar terms, if not explicitly members of specific brigades.

In other words, Goldstone accepted the poor argument of Al Mezan without checking it against the specific entries mentioned. It also ignored my email to the Commission that listed my data and methodology. Its logic of throwing out any evidence that proved the police to be a sham front for terrorists, and accepting any evidence that claimed otherwise, is problematic indeed.

Gazans smuggle a Volkswagen through a tunnel

Palestine Press Agency reports that a 2009 Volkswagen was smuggled through a Rafah tunnel into Gaza. It was divided into four pieces and is being welded together on the Gaza side.

Unfortunately, no photos yet.

Goldstone Commission problems, part 8

This is not an inaccuracy per se, but it is more than troubling.

One of the major sources that the Goldstone Commission heavily relied on in testimonies was TAWTHEQ. TAWTHEQ is quoted in the context of the Gaza war more often than HRW and seems to be mentioned in the report body about as often as PCHR (although PCHR is mentioned more in footnotes.) In other words, it seems that Goldstone put a lot of emphasis on TAWTHEQ's direct testimony to the Commission.

Who is TAWTHEQ? It is not an NGO - it is Hamas!

The organization is an Arabic acronym for the "Central Commission for Documentation and Pursuit of Israeli War Criminals." The possible objectivity of such an organization seems remote. Its webpage describes it as

TAWTHEQ " The Central Commission for documentation and pursuit of Israeli war criminals" is an independent governmental organization dedicated to monitoring and documenting the Israeli aggression crimes that targeted individuals, buildings, private and public property by the Israeli occupation forces, and particularly crimes that occurred during the last aggression on the Gaza Strip on 27 / 12/2008 until 19/1/2009 and pursuit war criminals and follow-up submitting lawsuits against them via the national and the international courts without any political affiliation to any party.

TWATHEQ [sic] is considered the only official commission to deal with the files of documenting aggressions and criminal acts of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, and follow-up submitting lawsuits against the Israeli officials.

It was established by the Gaza Ministry of Justice, which is Hamas.

While there are serious problems with relying on biased NGOs like PCHR (who refuses to call the Israeli army the IDF, instead using the term IOF consistently,) TAWTHEQ is single-mindedly created by Hamas not to be objective at all. Its mandate isn't to determine the existence of war crimes - it is to maximize the number of such "crimes."

So, for example, Goldstone quotes TAWTHEQ as saying that "341 of those killed were children. " It also quotes the PCHR and B'Tselem (314 and 320, respectively.) It is probable that TAWTHEQ (as well as DCI) is including children who were combatants in their list of victims.

The entire purpose of TAWTHEQ is to accuse Israel of war crimes and provide "evidence" to credulous NGOs. The fact that Goldstone gave it as much weight as it did seems to be a reflection of Goldstone's general bias towards those who testified in person, something that appears to be consistent throughout the report. As in the case of Addameer, Goldstone seems far less likely to question Gazan facts and figures than Israel's, even when the Arab organizations themselves have an explicitly anti-Israel mandate.