Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Goldstone then and now

From Ma'an, June 9:

There were also problems in collecting information in Gaza, [Goldstone] said, explaining that Hamas-allied security forces accompanied his 15-member team during their five-day working visit to Gaza last week, potentially inhibiting the ability of witnesses to speak freely, according to AP.

Ma'an, September 16:

Goldstone insisted that "Hamas didn't follow us at all," much less "at every stage" of the visit. "They were nowhere near any of the interviews we held, and there was just no question; there was no issue."

He added, "Had they attempted in any way to do that, I would have found that objectionable and I would not have accepted it - but it just didn't happen."

Here's a link to the original AP article. It is a little less clear whether AP was quoting Goldstone or not:

A veteran U.N. war crimes investigator acknowledged his probe of possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas - which included interviewing dozens of victims and poring through the files of human rights groups - is unlikely to lead to prosecutions.

Israel has refused to cooperate, depriving his team access to military sources and victims of Hamas rockets. And Hamas security often accompanied his team during their five-day trip to Gaza last week, raising questions about the ability of witnesses to freely describe the militant group's actions.

Middle East Mickey Mouse Moments

Yesterday, Palestinian Arab prime minister Salim Fayyad said that Palestinian Arabs will not accept a state where they would not have essentially 100% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and a full military. He referred to a state that doesn't meet these demands as a "Mickey Mouse state."

Also yesterday:

During the session of the UN Security Council devoted to discuss the situation in the Middle East, Al-Malki said the Palestinian Authority was ready to look into violations of human rights and possible war crimes committed by the Palestinians side.

“We take the charges seriously,” he said, “We stress our willingness to abide by the rule of law and affirm our commitment to conduct investigations through local legal mechanisms to handle this important issue.”

De facto government forces in the Gaza Strip [Hamas] have also indicated their willingness to investigate allegations outlined in the Goldstone report, in an effort to ensure the document’s allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel during last winter’s war on Gaza are fully investigated.

In fact, Hamas leader Haniyeh said “We are for a serious, national effort ahead of dealing with this document and implementing its recommendations.”

Don't you dare refer to these nascent PA and Hamas probes as "Mickey Mouse investigations." I'm sure that they will be done with the utmost concern for legal process, not to mention the human rights of Israeli victims of rocket and other terror attacks.

Why would anyone think otherwise?

The antagonizing dance

Those Jews keep coming up with innovative criminal acts.

From Ma'an:

Last week a group of extremist Jews attempted to gain access to the compound housing the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but were prevented from doing so by Israeli police. The group performed religious rituals in the streets adjacent to the site, using dance ceremonies to antagonize local shop owners...

I hope that this is placed front and center on the special UNHRC session today as the severe human rights violation it must be. Dancing by Jews in the area of the Temple Mount should be criminalized, of course, because (like their walking, prayer, meditation and breathing) it antagonizes a billion Muslims.

By definition, anything that Arabs or Muslims find offensive must be, in fact, illegal. That is certainly the premise behind the UNHRC, which seems dedicated to the elimination of just one such instance of this offensiveness.

Daily Goldstone 10/14

Alan Dershowitz notices what I noticed:

With so much (though not all) of the civilized world justly condemning (or ignoring) the Goldstone report for its distortion of the facts and its one-sided condemnation of Israel, Richard Goldstone himself now seems to be backing away from the report’s conclusions—at least when he speaks to his Jewish audiences.

In an interview with Jewish Forward, Goldstone denied that his group had conducted “an investigation.” Instead, it was what he called a “fact-finding mission” based largely on the limited “material we had.” Since this “material” was cherry-picked by Hamas guides and spokesmen, Goldstone acknowledged that “if this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.” He emphasized to the Forward that the report was no more than “a road map” for real investigators and that it contained no actual “evidence,” of wrongdoing by Israel.

“Nothing proven!” No “evidence!” Only “a road map!” You wouldn’t know any of that, of course, by reading the report itself or its accompanying media release. In the text of the report itself, Goldstone neither sought to clarify nor explain what he now claims is the limited scope and legal implications of the report. The language of the report reads like a judicial decision, making findings of fact (nearly all wrong), stating conclusions of law (nearly all questionable) and making specific recommendations (nearly all one-sided). According to the Forward:

“…the report itself is replete with bold and declarative legal conclusions seemingly at odds with the cautious and conditional explanations of its author. The report repeatedly refers, without qualification, to specific violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed by Israel and other breaches of international law. Citing particular cases, the report determines unequivocally that Israel “violated the prohibition under customary international law” against targeting civilians. These violations, it declares, ‘constitute a grave breach’ of the convention.”

It is as if there were two entirely different “Goldstone Reports.” The first submitted to the United Nations and the second to the Jewish community. In speaking so differently to different “audiences,” Goldstone is reminiscent of Yassir Arafat, who perfected the art of double-speak, by using bellicose language when addressing Arab audiences and more accommodating language when addressing western audiences.

Goldstone apparently lacked the courage to stand up to the other members and staffers of his commission and to insist that his clarifying language be included in the report itself. Nor did he have the courage to file a dissenting or concurring statement. Instead, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth, sending one message to those who read the actual report and a very different message to those who read his words in the Jewish Forward (and the New York Times for whom he wrote a more ameliorative op-ed on the day after the release of the Report). In doing so, he is trying to have it both ways.

Goldstone went so far as to tell the Forward that he himself “wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.” This is total nonsense. Goldstone has put his imprimatur—and his reputation—behind the reports’ conclusions. The only reason anyone is paying any attention to yet another of the serial condemnatory reports by the United Nations Human Rights Council is because Richard Goldstone—a “distinguished” Jew—allegedly wrote it and signed on to its conclusions. If he really doesn’t stand by its conclusions—if he doesn’t care one way or another whether they are true or false, proven or unproven—then no extra weight should be given to its findings or conclusions because of the “distinguished” reputation of its Jewish chairman.

But weight is being given by some to its “unproven” and uninvestigated allegations which Goldstone admits may be wrong. There have been calls for boycotts, divestments, war crime prosecutions and other forms of condemnation based on the conclusions reached (or not reached, depending on which side of Goldstone’s mouth one is listening to) by the Report.

If Goldstone stands behind what he told the Forward, then he must come forward and condemn those who are treating his report as if the allegations were based on “evidence” and “proven.” Don’t hold your breath, because such a statement would be heard by both of Goldstone’s audiences at the same time.

Even PalArabs are sick of their leaders

The Arab World Research and Development group (AWRAD) just released a surprising poll of Palestinian arabs that shows that when Hamas and Fatah fought over how to handle the Goldstone Report, they both lost support.

Some findings:

Only 21% are closely following the Goldstone report arguments between Fatah and Hamas, and only 3.5% say they are familiar with the actual contents of the report.

They were fairly evenly split over whether the report was "fair" (presumably to them.)

The surprising part, considering the huge amount of vitriol directed at Mahmoud abbas over the past couple of weeks, is that more PalArabs (33%) feel that the PA is handling the report issue well than the 22% who feel that Hamas is handling it well politically. The majority were very turned off by how Hamas and al-Jazeera were slamming Abbas and the PA over the report.

As a result of the public spat between the two, support for Fatah has decreased from 45% to 39%, while support for Hamas went down from 17.5% to 13.5%.

Even Palestinian Arabs are getting sick of their leaders.

Evolution of IDF on Hamas KidTV

Someone is posting a lot of Hamas' kid TV shows on YouTube (not translated.) It is interesting to compare how Hamas characterized the IDF during Cast Lead and how it does it now.

During the operation, Hamas showed IDF soldiers as hapless, bumbling and incompetent, as this clip shows of a fearful soldier who gets killed as he realizes he ran out of ammunition:

The only blood in that videoclip was Israeli, as opposed to how Hamas now shows the war to Gaza children.

Now, Hamas is changing its kiddie propaganda focus towards a heartless but very efficient IDF that targets hospitals, UNRWA schools and civilians. (The fighting starts at the two minute mark; I'd love to know the translation of the "Olmert" and "Livni" characters.)

Hamas member has a prophecy of doom

Firas Press reports that a Hamas member had a dream:

A member of the Qassam Brigades told those close to him the details of the vision he saw in a dream, that soon there will be a fierce battle with the occupation in which thousands of martyrs will fall, and thousands of homes destroyed, and that the [Hamas] army will be bulldozed and there will be destruction of entire regions off the face of the earth.

This vision has spread among the elements of the Qassam Brigades like wildfire, and became a hot topic at their meetings and gatherings. The vision has had a clear negative impact on the morale of al-Qassam Brigades and Hamas members, prompting their leaders to discuss the vision at the highest levels.

They are forming a commission of inquiry to uncover the circumstances of the vision, considering that it may have security implications, and that Israeli intelligence may be behind the promotion of this vision.

The group has also distributed several internal memos on this matter, demanding that the elements of al-Qassam to not spread such stories, and saying there was no signs on the horizon of the next war, and Israel has learned a hard lesson after the recent war in Gaza.

A new avenue for psy-ops! The Mossad should create a video of this dream and upload it to Arabic sites immediately; it would magnify the impact tremendously.

The latest Hamas martyr wasn't killed by Israel

From Ma'an:

The brother of senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri has died in an Egyptian prison as a result of torture, Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa television announced on Tuesday.

According to Sami Abu Zuhri, his brother Yousef Hamdan Abu Zuhri died of internal bleeding after being tortured during interrogation by Egyptian security forces.

Abu Zuhri said his brother was held in the Egyptian port city of Al-Arish in April on his way to Cairo from Gaza. Sami claims his brother was subjected to intense torture in an attempt by Egyptian authorities to extract information about Hamas in Gaza.

Egyptian sources said that Yousef was originally detained after he entered Egypt through a smuggling tunnel, and was taken by the security forces to Al-Arish.

Most interesting is that the Al Qassam Brigades website has already set up a (so far incomplete) page adding Abu Zuhri to their list of "martyrs." As far as I can tell, this is the first martyr who was killed by Egypt on that Hamas list.

Video of Hezbollah hiding weapons

From Israel's MFA:

On the evening of October 12, 2009 a large explosion took place in the house of a senior Hizbullah member which was being used as an arms cache in Tayr Filsay, a village approximately 15 km east of the coastal city of Tyre and south of the Litani River. During the explosion, a number of people were injured, including the home's owner, Said Issa.

Following the explosion, Hizbullah began to remove the remaining weapons from the cache, isolating the scene and preventing UNIFIL or LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) access.
Pictures taken by an UAV of the Israeli Air Force after the explosion of a Hizbullah weaponry warehouse on Monday (Oct. 12) in Tyre in southern Lebanon, show Hizbullah operatives smuggling Katyusha rockets and other weaponry out of the destroyed warehouse into another one in southern Lebanon.
The video filmed by the UAV that was directed to the location of the incident after the explosion, clearly shows a large number of people arriving at the scene and loading Katyusha rockets and other weaponry onto trucks. Afterwards they cover the weaponry in order to hide it and drive with it to another weaponry storage in the village of Dir Kanun A-Nahar, where they unload the weaponry. Later Lebanese army and UNIFIL forces are seen arriving at the site of the explosion.

UNIFIL=Useless.

UNHRC will meet on Goldstone this week

From Reuters:

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an extraordinary meeting this week on the occupied Palestinian territories, providing another chance for Israel's critics to discuss a Gaza war crimes report.

"The holding of the special session is at the request of Palestine," the United Nations said in a statement circulated on Tuesday in Geneva, where the 47-member body is based.

AP helpfully adds:

It will be the sixth time that Israel has been the subject of a special session by the Geneva-based council. Each previous session has resulted in a resolution critical of Israel.

Is there any chance the debate would say anything negative about Hamas? After all, the report does condemn Hamas rockets, right?

Of course not. Look at the UNHRC press release about the session:

The Human Rights Council will hold a Special Session on the "human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and East Jerusalem" on Thursday, 15 October 2009, starting 3 p.m. in Room XX of the Palais des Nations.

The holding of the Special Session comes at the request of Palestine. The request is co-sponsored by the following 18 Member States of the Human Rights Council, namely Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

The session is only about the human rights of Palestinian Arabs, not the human rights of Jews who had been subject to years of terrorist and rocket attacks before Israel decided to put a stop to them.

For all of Goldstone's claims that he had the right to expand the mandate of the commission to cover all human rights abuses by all sides, it is obvious that the UNHRC is only interested in the parts that castigate Israel. This is why Hamas, the PA and their panoply of like-minded abusers of human rights are so keen on getting the Goldstone Report on the agenda of the UNHRC: because they know that this sham of an organization has as little interest in real human rights as they do.

Does anyone think that Goldstone will raise his voice to mention that Hamas violated human rights, too?

Syria's saber-rattling anti-Israel conference

There was a conference in Syria over the weekend called the Arab-International Golan Forum. Its purpose was pretty much to insult and incite against Israel as much as possible in a 48 hour period.

Among the charges leveled:

For his part, the liberated captive Medhat al-Saleh said that the Israeli occupation forces are applying a systematic killing policy against all the Arab prisoners through neglecting their health conditions.

"All Arab prisoners are subjected to solitary confinement and all forms of torture in the complete absence of the basic and minimum health and human conditions," said the liberated captive Amaal Mahmoud.

Head of the Mine Victim Rehabilitation Committee in the occupied Golan Omar al-Heebi pointed out to the high risk of the mines Israel planted in Quneitra before it was liberated, which caused lots of injuries and claimed many lives.

Israel steals around 800 million cubic meters of the occupied Golan water annually, and it has so far constructed 10 dams to transfer water to al-Naqab desert and Dimona reactor, thus making the amount of the stolen water exceed 31 billion cubic meters since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, said Arsan Arsan, director of Water Resources Department in Quneitra.

He also pointed out to the danger posed by the dams Israel has built on the rivers running towards the liberated part of the occupied Golan, particularly Ein al-Hamra dam and al-Mansoura dam 1 km to the west of Quneitra city.

They also accused Israel of contaminating Syria with nuclear waste, and the final resolution called on Syria to "liberate" the Golan via all means of resistance, meaning this Syrian sponsored conference called for war with Israel.

Needless to say, the world media ignored this.

One of the more interesting charges leveled against Israel was that it displaced a half a million Syrians since 1967. Given that the Golan had less than 200,000 people in 1967, this is a pretty amazing feat.

Perhaps more interesting is that these displaced people and their descendants are living in Syrian "refugee" camps over forty years later. Of course, displaced persons are not legally refugees, and there is nothing stopping Syria from building new towns for these people to live in.

Syria, like the other Arab nations, prefer to use people as political cannon fodder against Israel rather than helping them rebuild their lives. Syria's practice against this group is even more egregious and cynical, as these people are full citizens of Syria and should have equal rights. Syria chooses to let them fester so that they can whine about Israeli "ethnic cleansing" decades later.

It is instructive to compare the daily lives of these Syrian citizens with those of the Arabs who stayed in the Golan and now "suffer" under "occupation."

Abbas: Hamas leaders escaped Gaza in ambulances

Mahmoud Abbas, in a speech at the American University today, accused Hamas leaders of escaping Gaza in ambulances and hiding in the Sinai during Operation Cast Lead, according to Palestine Press Agency.

Abbas also said that the PA warned Hamas in Gaza a week before the operation that Israel was serious and that Hamas should extend the truce, and that Hamas ignored these warnings. Abbas says he then appealed to Hamas leadership in Damascus and was similarly rebuffed.

During the war there were a number of reports that at least one Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, had escaped to Egypt via an ambulance. Even two weeks after the war people were wondering where he had disappeared to.

The Goldstone Report, not very convincingly, says it found no evidence that Hamas used ambulances illegally during the war.

The journalist who is trying to start an intifada

Throughout the events on the Temple Mount over the past couple of weeks, there was plenty of incitement by Palestinian Arab clerics like Sheikh Tamimi and Sheikh Raed Salah, who publicly claim daily that Israel is planning to divide and destroy the Temple Mount.

However, carefully reading the Arab news media, none of them were able to point to anything that the Israelis actually did that upset the Temple Mount's status quo. All news accounts showed that the Jewish (or foreign) visitors did nothing disrespectful and that the fighting began when Arab worshipers attacked the visitors after being whipped up with rumors from the previous week that extremist Jews were planning to "storm" the Al Aqsa Mosque. As Ma'an reported initially:

On Thursday, the Al-Aqsa Foundation had warned of an impending incursion. Officials in Jerusalem said extremists were preparing to break into the holy Muslim area, and accurately predicted that the break-in would occur on Sunday under the pretext of celebrating a religious holiday.

Confrontations erupted after groups of Israelis broke into the compound, reportedly under the guard of Israeli police. Palestinians hurled stones, chairs, and shoes at the Israelis, while police tried to disperse the Palestinians by force, injuring nine people right away, and four more throughout the morning.

Ma'an later changed the story but even now it is clear that the violence was started by the Arabs:

According to witnesses, clashes broke out after a group of about 150 Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa compound on Sunday morning, reportedly under the guard of local authorities who also escorted the group away from the area when worshipers began to protest.

It turns out though that Khalid Amayreh, an Arab journalist who has a long history of insane hate against Israel, specifically lied about what happened at the time - to the Islamic world as a whole, at Islamonline.net:

Dozens of Palestinians were hurt, two seriously, on Sunday, September 27, when crack Israeli policemen attacked worshipers who had just repulsed an attempt by Jewish extremists to hold Talmudic rituals at al-Haram al-Sharif.
“When the zealots were repulsed rather peacefully, the police became very outraged,” Mahmoud Abu Atta, an eyewitness, told IslamOnline.net.

“As many as 70 policemen attacked us indiscriminately, young and old, with full force, using rubber-coated bullets, truncheons, tear gas and even poisonous gas.”
Eyewitnesses said tension began when dozens of Jewish religious zealots, disguised as tourists, stealthily entered Aqsa esplanade through its western gate, known as Bab el-Majles.

The intruders soon began, under police protection, performing Talmudic rites and making slogans calling for the destruction of the Islamic holy shrine.

Muslim guards as well as ordinary worshipers chased the Jewish zealots out.

“The police chased worshipers inside Aqsa Mosque, where the soldiers fired heavily into the holy place, causing many people to suffocate as a result of gas inhalation,” said Atta.

“I saw the police gang up on young people, beating them mercilessly. The police were not out to maintain law and order. They just wanted to retaliate and punish us for repulsing the fanatical settlers.”

Atta said the worshipers sought desperately to defend themselves against police brutality, using little stones, shoes and chairs.
“Hence it is the responsibility of the entire Umma to protect and safeguard this holy place from Zionist plots and evil designs,” Sheikh Sabri told IOL.
Israeli religious leaders, including Knesset members, are making no secret of their schemes regarding Al-Aqsa.

Amayreh, using the time honored journalistic method of finding an "eyewitness" willing to lie to fit his agenda, helped stoke the hatred throughout the Muslim world.

He, and other Islam Online reporters, regularly expose dastardly Zionist schemes to destroy Al Aqsa, doing everything they can to push Arabs to violence.

Amayreh followed up with a "man in the street" interview specifically asking Arabs if they want to see a third intifada in the face of these Zionist plots to have Jews visit their holiest site:

"There is no question that we need a huge uprising in order to extricate ourselves out of the present predicament.
"We need an intifada not only in occupied Palestine but all over the Arab world. We need an intifada against the Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority and the corrupt Arab regimes."
"In physics, excessive pressure leads to explosion or implosion. I think the frustration level in occupied Palestine has reached the explosive point."
"I think a religious intifada can be expected if Israel continues to provoke Muslims as it has been doing of late.
"If the cause of Al-Aqsa Mosque won’t provoke Muslims, then what would provoke them?

"However, we need more than just a willingness to die as martyrs for Al-Aqsa. We also need to carefully plan the outcome of any prospective intifada. We must carefully and thoroughly study the first two intifadas and make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes."
"I think if Israel goes too far in its efforts to take over parts of Al-Aqsa Mosque, an intifada, even a big one, will be inevitable.
"After all, Muslims, especially Palestinians, wouldn’t just sit idle while their holiest place is desecrated and raped by the herds of Zionism.

"But, let me be frank about his. The Palestinians alone can’t defeat Israel. We need to have meaningful and tangible Arab-Muslim support in order to be able to wrest our rights from Israeli hands."

Amayreh is also very much against the PA, moderate Arab governments and any peace with Israel, so he makes sure that the seemingly random interviewees adhere to his own politics and radicalism.

In short, Khalid Amayreh is waging a campaign to start a new wave of terror against Israel under guise of his being a "journalist."

Hamas loves Goldstone

From Ma'an:

A children's mock court in Gaza sentenced President Mahmoud Abbas to life in prison and removed him from office for the crime of delaying international action on a United Nations report on war crimes.

This latest expression of public outrage at Abbas was staged by the Palestinian Child Parliament, an organization said to be linked to Hamas.

In early October Abbas’ envoy withdrew a motion from the UN Human Rights Council calling for further action on Judge Richard Goldstone’s report on Israel’s winter assault on Gaza which left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead. Palestinians have been outraged over the decision.

During the mock trial a child acting as “prosecutor” in the trial said Abbas was charged under Palestinian law with the crime of “high treason to the Palestinian people’s interests” under the Palestinian Basic Law and the Penal Code.

“Abbas insisted on withdrawing the resolution, despite support from 33 countries for report and this would clearly condemn Israel," the prosecutor said.

The judge then heard arguments from human rights organizations who explained their efforts to compile and propose the report, and their shock when it was withdrawn from the Human Rights Council.

This Hamas version of a show trial is of course meant for Hamas to score political points against Fatah, but it also shows clearly that Hamas is not frightened at all about any repercussions that it might suffer from the Goldstone Report.

Because it would not suffer any.

Hamas initially criticized the Goldstone Commission because it was led by a "Zionist" and it felt that the cards were stacked against it. Now that the report was released, Hamas is secure in the knowledge that the report is one-sided against Israel, despite Goldstone's insistence that he looked at Hamas crimes as carefully as he looked at alleged Israeli crimes.