Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 13, 2014

07/13 Links: PA Envoy: Israel Follows International Law, We Don't; Iron Dome more popular than hummus

From Ian:

Israel says cease-fire possible only if it ensures long-term quiet

Israel is not ruling out a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip if it results in a significant change in the situation inside Gaza and a restoration of quiet to the South, diplomatic officials said Saturday night.
Israeli officials were not speaking of the conditions they would demand for a cease-fire, but among the ideas that have been discussed are the dismantling of the rocket capabilities inside Gaza, similar to the manner in which the chemical weapons were dismantled in Syria; developing a mechanism to enforce the cease-fire; and a restoration of Palestinian Authority – not Hamas – control over the area.

Hamas rejected Egyptian proposal to hold fire

As part of Egypt’s efforts to halt the fighting between Hamas and Israel, Cairo proposed to the Palestinian organization’s leadership and to the Israeli government that they mutually stop the fire for 40 hours, after which a broader ceasefire agreement would be discussed — but Hamas rejected the offer, The Times of Israel learned from Israeli and Hamas sources.
The offer was presented to the deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouk, by Egyptian intelligence officers last week. Abu Marzouk rejected it after a brief consultation with the terror group’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, the sources said.

What Stands Behind the IDF's Targets in Gaza?

Our Mission: Stop Hamas Terrorism

The sickness of the "Israelis lied to start a war" meme

JJ Goldberg in The Forward last week asserted a truly reprehensible and false conspiracy theory:

... Once the boys’ disappearance was known, troops began a massive, 18-day search-and-rescue operation, entering thousands of homes, arresting and interrogating hundreds of individuals, racing against the clock. Only on July 1, after the boys’ bodies were found, did the truth come out: The government had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead. It maintained the fiction that it hoped to find them alive as a pretext to dismantle Hamas’ West Bank operations.

The initial evidence was the recording of victim Gilad Shaer’s desperate cellphone call to Moked 100, Israel’s 911. When the tape reached the security services the next morning — neglected for hours by Moked 100 staff — the teen was heard whispering “They’ve kidnapped me” (“hatfu oti”) followed by shouts of “Heads down,” then gunfire, two groans, more shots, then singing in Arabic. That evening searchers found the kidnappers’ abandoned, torched Hyundai, with eight bullet holes and the boys’ DNA. There was no doubt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately placed a gag order on the deaths. Journalists who heard rumors were told the Shin Bet wanted the gag order to aid the search. For public consumption, the official word was that Israel was “acting on the assumption that they’re alive.” It was, simply put, a lie.

Nor was that the only fib. It was clear from the beginning that the kidnappers weren’t acting on orders from Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus. Hamas’ Hebron branch — more a crime family than a clandestine organization — had a history of acting without the leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests. Yet Netanyahu repeatedly insisted Hamas was responsible for the crime and would pay for it.
...
The kidnapping and crackdown upset the balance. In Israel, grief and anger over the boys’ disappearance grew steadily as the fabricated mystery stretched into a second and third week. Rallies and prayer meetings were held across the country and in Jewish communities around the world. The mothers were constantly on television. One addressed the United Nations in Geneva to plead for her son’s return. Jews everywhere were in anguish over the unceasing threat of barbaric Arab terror plaguing Israel.

This, too, was misleading. The last seven years have been the most tranquil in Israel’s history. Terror attacks are a fraction of the level during the nightmare intifada years — just six deaths in all of 2013. But few notice. The staged agony of the kidnap search created, probably unintentionally, what amounts to a mass, worldwide attack of post-traumatic stress flashback.

Goldberg hangs his thesis on the supposed fact that the IDF was lying and it knew that the boys were dead.

Unless Goldberg has access to information that is different from what everyone else does, this is quite false.

The army knew that there were shots in the phone call. They knew that the boys were shot in the recovered, burned out car. But while they might have suspected that they were all murdered, they didn't know.

Because they also knew some other facts that Goldberg ignores. They knew that two Hamas-linked figures were missing since the night of the abduction. They knew that Hamas was been planning, and publicly calling, to kidnap Israelis for years. They knew that the entire Palestinian Arab populace was upset that the last batch of terrorists were not released in April when the peace talks fell apart and that they would support any kidnapping of soldiers of "settlers" making such an operation more feasible in the West Bank. They knew that the boys had been abducted, not shot and left by the side of the road, almost certainly for the initial purpose of kidnapping to bargain for prisoners.

There was a significant chance that at least one boy was kept alive - perhaps injured - for this bargaining. What purpose would have been served to tell the public, and the parents, that probably two of your boys are dead? There is no reason to extinguish that hope under these circumstances.

And if the IDF didn't know for certain that all the boys were dead, they would have acted exactly the same as they did. No pretext is needed to arrest and question major Hamas figures in the West Bank - that is what investigators do.

As far as whether the Hamas family was acting on orders from Gaza or not, again, Goldberg doesn't know any more than anyone else. Hamas was at the time supposedly part of the "unity" government and the idea that they would be anxious to make their presence felt on the West Bank is not so far fetched. A successful kidnapping would have boosted Hamas' popularity tremendously. Moreover, Palestinian Arab leaders are masters at using "rogue groups" to do what they want and give them plausible deniability. Arafat did it numerous times, and Hamas does it when it turns a blind eye to rockets from other Islamist groups in Gaza.

Goldberg pretends that he has brilliantly put these pieces together, but he ignores the pieces that don't fit his theory. That's what makes it a conspiracy theory,and not responsible analysis.

Now that Goldberg opened the floodgates of this sick quasi-conspiracy theory, others are joining in: The antisemites cannot be far behind, and they will be happy to point to the Jews who floated this to begin with for support.

Yet the basis of the theory - unless Goldberg has inside information about the investigation that no one else has - is clearly false.

See also Gil Lainer's response.

Hamas hackers take over Israeli Domino's Pizza Facebook page, hilarity ensues

Earlier today, Hamas managed to take over a major Israeli website.

Domino's Pizza's Facebook page.

For an hour or so, the page looked like this:

The hackers put up statuses such as "Today will strike deep in Israel, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Ashdod more than 2000 rockets. We'll start at 7. Counting back towards the end of Israel ... Be warned!"

Responses included "Hey, please reserve a missile for me with jalapenos, green olives, extra cheese, and mushrooms. You have my address. Tell the delivery boy to activate the alarm when it is arriving, so I know to put my pants on."

Another photo the hackers placed showed Israelis sheltering from rockets in a sewer pipe, with the caption "The right place for every Israel - the sewer pipe, hahaha!"

An Israeli answered back, "You know who lives in sewers? And what they eat?" with a cartoon of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their favorite food - pizza.

After Domino's took the page back, they posted this photo:

The words say "You cannot defeat....The Israeli hunger for pizza!"

There are lots of funny posters in response to the incident on the page.

In another spectacular Hamas psy-ops failure, they released this music video, in Hebrew:

Attack! Carry out bombings! Shock them!
Annihilate all the Zionists! Rock Israel's security!
Strive to engage the Zionists in combat.
Burn their camps and their soldiers.
Rock Israel's security, and expose it to flames and volcanos.
Strive to engage the Zionists in combat.
Burn their camps and their soldiers.
Rock Israel's security, and expose it to flames and volcanos… Volcanos!
Attack! Carry out bombings! Shock them!
Annihilate all the Zionists! Rock Israel's security!
Attack! Carry out bombings! Shock them!
Annihilate all the Zionists! Rock Israel's security!
It is a feeble state, built on illusions. They cannot endure war. They turn out to be like cobwebs, when they encounter knights.
It is a feeble state, built on illusions. They cannot endure war. They turn out to be like cobwebs, when they encounter knights.
Rock Israel's security! Light furnaces in its heart. Raze it to the ground, exterminate the cockroaches' nest, and banish all the Zionists.
Attack! Carry out bombings! Shock them!
Annihilate all the Zionists! Rock Israel's security!
The Zionists' hearts turn in different ways. They are terrified of dying, so they hide behind walls.
The Zionists' hearts turn in different ways. They are terrified of dying, so they hide behind walls.
Rock Israel's security! Light furnaces in its heart. Raze it to the ground, exterminate the cockroaches' nest, and banish all the Zionists.
Attack! Carry out bombings! Shock them!
Annihilate all the Zionists! Rock Israel's security!
Their illusion of an army is incompetent. It is a thing of the past. Their soldiers are like mice in a dry field, draw them near and open fire.
Their illusion of an army is incompetent. It is a thing of the past. Their soldiers are like mice in a dry field, draw them near and open fire.

While the song is kind of catchy, the lyrics are not geared towards Israelis but towards Arabs - yet it is in Hebrew.

That's a lot of effort to release a video with no audience.

Somehow, for Israelis who are relatively unscathed after hundreds of rockets, I don't think this will scare them.

Proportionality - Number of Israeli airstrikes about the same as number of Gaza rockets

According to the Gaza NGO Safety Office, there have been nearly 1100 Israeli airstrikes so far in Operation Protective Edge. (Some of the airstrikes included multiple missiles, perhaps 1.5 missiles per strike.)

According to the same source, about 1220 rockets have been fired from Gaza so far. (As we have seen, a high percentage of these are falling onto Gazans as well.)

Of course most IAF missiles are more powerful than most Gaza terror missiles, but it is interesting that the numbers are so close, especially for people who falsely claim a "proportional response" means an equivalent response.

It is also noteworthy that even if you falsely assume that every person killed in Gaza was killed by Israel and not errant Hamas rockets, which is clearly not true, only one Gazan has been killed per 10 missiles.

Anyone who has seen the damage caused by a single Israeli missile would realize immediately that Israel cannot be accused of either indiscriminate bombing or (as some haters claim) of targeting civilians, because in either case the number of people killed would be much, much higher.

Here is one of the best "roof-knocking" videos I've seen so far - "roof-knock" at 0:04, and devastating damage from missiles at 1:10.

Clearly there would be many hundreds more people dead if Israel was not warning the residents with leaflets, phone calls and finally "roof knocks". Any accusations of purposeful or wanton Israeli bombing are from people who have an agenda - or who are innumerate.

Back to the topic of probable Gaza casualties from Hamas or other terror group rockets, here is the front-page image that the UN is using to show damage in Gaza on their OCHA-OPT page.

Without more photos it is hard to know for sure, but the almost perfectly round shape of the hole in the wall together with the fact that the curtains have not been blown off and burned indicates that this is from a Hamas rocket, not an Israeli airstrike. Yet UN-OCHA does not mention even the idea of Hamas rockets falling short in their report.

The descriptions of how some of the children in Gaza were killed also seems to me to be inconsistent with IAF missiles and more probably the work of terror rockets. Unfortunately, the reporters in Gaza aren't skeptical enough of what they see and hear, nor savvy enough with military forensics, to know to research and verify the claims that they are mindlessly parroting from known liars in the Gaza health ministry or some "human rights" NGOs.

The rule is: if you cannot confirm the charges, don't repeat them. Seems like basic Journalism 101, yet we see that rule violated every hour of every day.

(h/t Yoel)

Arabs celebrate rockets in Amman, Hebron - and Israel (videos)

Here are Arabs in Hebron wildly celebrating the sight of Gaza terror rockets hurtling towards Israeli cities:

In Amman, Jordan, sweets were handed out on Saturday night at the news that some rockets had fallen on Tel Aviv (so far all rockets aimed at Tel Aviv have been intercepted):

Most shockingly, Israeli Arabs have been celebrating rockets as well. This video was taken in Jaffa as air raid sirens sounded:

And here is an Arab driving through Israel during an air raid, repeating "Allah hu Akbar," while passing Israelis who stopped to take cover:

Rockets have already been shot towards Muslim population centers in the West Bank like Bethlehem and Ramallah, and Jaffa is right next to Tel Aviv. Here is a video of a rocket landing in the Arab village of Beitunia:

But the idea of a single Jew getting hurt is far more important to these Arabs than any possibility that they might be killed, too.

Which, if you think about it, nicely sums up the hate towards Jews throughout the Arab world.

(h/t Israel Muse @Israellycool, Bob Knot and Sophie44)

Fatah responds to Hamas criticism by saying "We shoot rockets and have martyrs too!"

From the Wall Street Journal:

There were also signs Saturday that a unity government meant to bring Hamas into the Palestinian Authority had all but crumbled amid the fighting. The two sides had been trying to form a unity government in a step toward ending a seven-year-old Palestinian political split between Hamas and Fatah.

Samy Abu Zohry, a Hamas spokesman, said in an online statement that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wasn't supporting Hamas's fight against Israel and was a "war traitor." He added that Mr. Abbas "serves the hostile positions against our citizens and against our resistance."

Fatah Spokesman Ziad Abu Ein said the description wasn't fair, adding that Fatah fighters were "participating in the rocket fire toward Israel" and that two Fatah members had already died in the fighting. "Fatah in the West Bank is leading the struggle against the Israeli occupation," he said.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah has taken credit for at least 18 rockets on Saturday. They also brag about how they assisted Hamas in fighting in Gaza, showing that the only unity between Hamas and Fatah are in violence.

Here is a video of a member of the Fatah terror group, in civilian clothes, in the middle of a city, shooting two rockets that were hidden in a cart. If the IDF would have bombed him he would be counted as a "civilian."

Notice also how close the first rocket comes to hitting the building.

This isn't Hamas. This is Fatah, the group that the West is banking on to make peace with Israel.

07/12 Links: IAF Aborts Strike After Spotting Children Near Target; Chloe Valdary assaulted in Boston

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Gaza conflict proves Israel can’t relinquish control of West Bank

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday vowed to fight Hamas and other Gaza terror groups until Israel was safe from the threat of missile attack, and then launched a highly unusual and extremely bitter verbal assault on would-be peace-brokers, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, who have been urging Israel to relinquish security control of the West Bank to a Palestinian state.
Speaking to the Israeli public on the fourth day of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, which he said has seen Israel attack “over 1,000″ terror targets while sustaining hundreds of rocket attacks from Gaza, Netanyahu vowed that the IDF campaign “will continue until we are sure that Israel’s residents have quiet.” He said that no terrorist target was off-limits, and accused Hamas’s leaders and gunmen of “hiding behind Gaza’s residents” — using them as human shields — and thus being responsible “for any harm that comes to them.”
While Israel did everything to protect its citizens, he said, and had “spent billions to protect the homefront” in recent years, Gaza’s terror groups deliberately put Gazans “in harm’s way.” Israel does its utmost not to harm Gaza’s civilians while targeting the terrorists, whereas Hamas targets Israel’s civilians, he said.

Israel acting disproportionately? Think again

The fact that Israeli fatalities are low in this conflict does not reduce the military necessity of attacking Hamas. As famed jurist Alan Dershowitz points out: “Proportion must be defined by reference to the threat posed by the enemy and not by the harm it has produced”.
The accusation of targeting civilians, a violation of the rule of distinction, is equally baseless. At the moment, the Israeli Air Force is carrying out precision raids on Hamas' terrorist infrastructure, including arms dumps, rocket launchers, command and control centres and the homes of terrorist figures.
Where houses have been turned into military targets, the IDF has provided advance warnings to Palestinian residents (so called roof knocking) to leave their houses prior to an attack. This is designed to minimise civilian casualties, rather than maximise them. In any case, targeting civilians would be futile. It would achieve nothing in military terms and hand a massive propaganda victory to Hamas.

Israel activist Chloe Valdary assaulted in Boston

This is the face of hate
A Palestinian "peace " activist has physically assaulted Israel activist Chloe Valdary at a Boston solidarity rally for Israel. Shrieking that the Jews would go to hell while the Christians and the Muslims took over Jerusalem, she knocked Chloe's phone out of her hand.
The unidentified woman was not arrested..
For those of you attending Israel solidarity rallies this weekend, be careful out there. Its never been about peace for the anti-Israel crowd. In the unforgettable words of International ANSWER organizer Dick Becker, this isn't about peace. Its about the "victory of the resistance"

Anti Israel Woman attacks me at Hate Fest

Israel Air Force Aborts Gaza Airstrike After Spotting Children Near Target (VIDEO)

The Israel Air Force called of an airstrike on a “terror activity site” on Thursday after spotting children in the vicinity of the target, a recently released video shows.
“There are people close to our target,” the pilot carrying out the mission is heard saying in the clip. “It looks like there are people, possibly children in our targeted area.”
An operator responds: “We are not going to strike this target now, let’s move on.”

IDF Pilot Calls Off Airstrike After Children Spotted Near Target

Turkish singer tweets "May God bless Hitler," yearns for Muslims to "bring the end of those Jews" (plus administrivia)

From Hurriyet:

On the night of July 10, Yıldız Tilbe, who has been making folk-influenced hit pop albums since the 1990s, appeared to praise Hitler in the tweets and say the end of the Jews was near.

“If God allows, it will be again Muslims who will bring the end of those Jews, it is near, near,” she tweeted on her official account @YildizzTilbee.

“They (Jews) are hostile to Allah and all prophets including their own prophet Moses.”

In another tweet she appeared to praise Hitler for the mass extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, writing “May God bless Hitler.”

Tilbe wrote after the criticism that she was not racist.

“There is oppression against Muslims everywhere in the world. Is there any single American or Jew being massacred, whose country is bombed or whose people are killed?”

While Tilbe is yet to issue an apology, she has received support from the mayor of Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, Melih Gökçek.

Gökçek, a senior member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), backed the singer’s Gaza tweets, retweeting most of her comments except the one on Hitler, calling them “full of intelligence.”

“I applaud you Yıldız Tilbe for the messages you deliver to many of your colleagues and especially to the Turkish nation,” he wrote.

Things have been crazy busy as you can imagine (and I am busy at work as well.)

I just got my 7500th Twitter follower and blog traffic is up around 70% this week as people look for news they don't see elsewhere. Ian continues to do stellar work in his linkdumps.

I had a few very popular posts this week. It already seems a long time ago that I wrote my open condemnation for the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Over 120 bloggers and pundits signed on.

Other important and popular posts were the What Reporters Need to Know story and the Fatah shooting rockets story. Not to mention the evergreen Amnesty hypocrisy story.

I wish I had more time because there are a lot of newsworthy angles to research and report on, even far away from Israel.

I also want to thank the people who decided (without prompting) to donate to EoZ this week. I really appreciate it!

07/11 Links Pt2: How the Liberal West Turned on Israel; The NYTs Wretched Anti-Israel Bias

From Ian:

Sarah Honig: Eerily déjà vu

Directly below is an op-ed I wrote in 1990, right after the murder in Rishon Lezion of seven Arab itinerant laborers by Ami Popper (who’s still doing life and who unlike homicidal Arabs hasn’t been released to ransom hostages or to win a presumed peace-partner’s goodwill).
"Unlike our own, Arab society is unbothered by the pluralistic niceties of moral-relativism. Allah is exclusively on their side and they are the only interpreters of his will. The murder of Jews is divinely decreed and this isn’t only Hamas ideology.
By this precept, Jews must die and have no right to resist. That’s their lot. Not only do they possess no right to avenge, they posses no right to self-defense, to at all fight. Their very existence is a provocation, a casus belli.
This is key to understanding today’s Mideast. It’s axiomatic that Arabs have the right to inflict incalculable harm on all Jews – and to do so in the most sadistically inventive ways – but the Jews’ attempts to deflect such blows are evil, outrageous and deserving of merciless punishment.
Failure to admit how selective Arab rules of warfare are precludes making sense of anything in our region and dooms to failure any so-called peace drives and mediation initiatives. The tragedy is that not only is the fundamental asymmetry between Jewish and Arab mindsets not comprehended abroad, but there’s no inclination to even consider it. Worse yet – one-sided ferocious Arab indignation inevitably arouses empathy overseas."

Getting the law right on the Israel-Hamas conflict

International law has quite a lot to say about the latest violence that has flared up between Israel and Hamas. So do the media. Unfortunately, they rarely match, leading to unfortunate — and sometimes egregious — misrepresentations. In an age when both real and perceived violations of international law have a substantial effect on the legitimacy of state action, getting it wrong is way more than just bad journalism.
The core purpose of the law of war — a centuries-old framework regulating conduct during wartime — is to protect civilians and minimize suffering during wartime. In any conflict, all parties — states, rebel groups, terrorist organizations — have obligations to minimize harm to civilians. For each party, these obligations take two primary forms: protecting civilians in the areas where it is attacking, and protecting its own civilians from the consequences of attacks by the enemy party. Attacking parties must 1) attack only enemy personnel and objects; 2) refrain from any indiscriminate attacks; 3) refrain from attacks in which the expected civilian casualties will be excessive in light of the military value of the target; and 4) provide warnings for civilians of attacks where feasible. In their own territory, militaries and armed groups must refrain from locating military objectives in densely populated areas and take other steps to keep civilians out of harm's way. Specifically, the law also criminalizes the use of civilians as human shields.

How the Liberal West Turned on Israel

The Middle East is exploding in mayhem and savagery. The region’s system of nation states is disappearing before our eyes, perhaps to be replaced by one or more jihadist movements pledged to the destruction of Western civilization. In the upheavals to come, only one civilizational force, one stable democracy, has the will and the means to fight back and to defend the values of the liberal West. It is the tiny nation state of Israel.
A key moment in this development occurred at a private dinner party in 2001, when Daniel Bernard, France’s ambassador to England, was overheard remarking that “All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?” That ugly episode is, in turn, the starting point of a slim ebook by Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, published last January under the title Liberal Oasis: The Truth about Israel. An important contribution in its own right, Liberal Oasis is also an indispensable companion piece to Muravchik’s newly released Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. Together, the two add up to a powerful indictment of the West’s serial moral failures regarding Israel and the Middle East conflict.

The difference between a society that sanctifies life and one that worships death

Almost a hundred years ago, as the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey was staring out of the windows of the London Foreign Office on a hot summer’s day, he remarked “the lamps are going out all over Europe, we may not see them lit again in our lifetime.” The occasion was of course the eve of the First World War – Grey’s worrying prediction was to be proven unnervingly accurate.
Today there is no need for such terrible prophecies. In the maelstrom that is the modern Middle East, the lamps have already gone out. Spring has skipped two seasons and beckoned a dark and cold Winter that has lasted three years. Aggressive Iranian designs have left the beleaguered people of Lebanon and Syria stricken by bloodshed and continued strife, leading to one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our time. Radical Sunni extremists have poured into the deserts of Syria and Iraq to take advantage of the vacuum left by weak and discredited governments.
ISIS’s declaration of a ‘Caliphate’ in Iraq has been celebrated with mass summary public executions. ISIS also poses the single greatest threat to the heroic Kurdish people who have long deserved an independent sovereign territory of their own. As Douglas Murray of the Spectator has put it, it is as if the collective Islamic world has declared a ’30 Years War’ on itself.

How dare Israel attack priceless Gaza folk art rockets?

A good comment from L. King deserves its own post. I expanded it.

I would like to add my voice to condemn the senseless slaughter of innocent Palestinian rocket launchers and projectiles in Gaza. These priceless home made artifacts representing the finest of locally produced folk art, with contributions by similar artists in Syria and Iran, are the heart and soul of Palestinian culture, and it breaks our hearts to see them destroyed in so callous and wanton a manner. The firing of mortars and missiles represents the apogee and perigee of indigenous performance art, cruelly interrupted by the criminal operators of the Iron Dome system who daily prevent these national treasures from reaching their target audience.

These priceless folk-art objects, which include such historic variants as the venerable Qassam, the M-75, the K-130 and others, are protected by the 1954 Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed conflict, which states "The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect cultural property situated within their own territory as well as within the territory of other High Contracting Parties by refraining from any use of the property and its immediate surroundings or of the appliances in use for its protection for purposes which are likely to expose it to destruction or damage in the event of armed conflict; and by refraining from any act of hostility, directed against such property." Clearly these objects, lovingly crafted by artists often in their own homes, are immune from being attacked, and any attempts to deliberately destroy them violate international law.

Beyond the invaluable art objects, the world must protect the performance art that Gaza artisans have created. Some of these show an object being hurled through space and time, eventually and beautifully destroying itself together with much of the target audience. This is a powerful symbolic statement of hope and friendship, reaching out across borders to show our shared humanity. Stopping it deprives both the artist and the audience of this unique experience. The Israeli system ("Iron Dome") that intercepts the objects midway through their performance is abhorrent and must be condemned.

This performance art is the penultimate example of Palestinian Arab expression, second only to our world-famous martyrdom operations that we are continuing to refine and improve to reach the largest audience possible, as our brothers did in spectacular performances in New York, Washington, London and Madrid.

Even beyond that, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage protects important monuments and buildings. The Zionist aggressor has been targeting our unique, intricate tunnel and bunker system underneath Gaza and extending to Egypt and Israel itself, a gesture of fraternal love. These monuments to Palestinian determination and artistry cannot and must not be attacked,

Please contact your congressman or elected representative (in Gaza and most countries in the Arab world select the nearest possible facsimile) to make your feelings known on this horrible crime which violates untold numbers of UN resolutions and the Geneva Conventions which protects innocent munitions from what clearly is an unprovoked attack on the rights of Palestinians to resist negotiating peace with their Israeli neighbours.

In Solidarity, Umm Fouhl U.

On Thursday, over 150 Gaza rockets fell in Gaza. How many people did they kill?

The Gaza NGO Safety Office counts rockets fired from Gaza towards Israel. They have been sending out updates every two hours or so during daytime.

On Thursday, they counted:

0000 - 0700 - 95 rockets
0700 - 0800 - 3
0800 - 1000 - 31
1000 - 1200 - 34
1200 - 1400 - 43
1400 - 1600 - data missing
1600 - 1800 - 30
1800 - 2030 - 71
2030 - 2200 - 33

Although some of the time periods are missing, this adds up to at least 340 rockets shot from Gaza in one day.

According to the IDF, which doesn't have any incentive to downplay the number of rocket attacks, only 185 rockets crossed the Green Line of which 44 were intercepted by Iron Dome. (The IDF only counted 192 total rockets, meaning only 7 falling in Gaza, but GANSO is on the ground in Gaza and this failure rate is far more in line with historical trends than only 4%. Chances are that the IDF is simply not prioritizing counting rockets that don't make it into Israel.)

If these numbers are accurate, then over 150 rockets that were fired from Gaza either exploded on the ground or fell short.

Given the number of deaths and injuries this year already in Gaza from rocket misfires when they were being fired at a much lower rate, it is a reasonable assumption that many of the civilians who are dying in Gaza are being killed by terrorist rockets.

It is a certainty that none of them will be reported as such by the Gaza media or medical authorities.

UPDATE: The IDF tweeted this:

A rocket fired from Gaza today fell short and crashed into UNRWA warehouses. Now there is a massive fire. pic.twitter.com/wHmMIuzATQ
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 12, 2014

(h/t MtTB)

07/11 Links Pt1: UN: Gaza Casualties Were Warned by IDF; Dershowitz, current conflict shatters myths

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Hamas’s (and Iran’s) fail-safe strategy

Peace can only come to Israel and its neighbors when the Muslim world liberates itself from its hatred of Jews.
What is Hamas doing? Hamas isn’t going to defeat Israel.
It isn’t going to gain any territory. Israel isn’t going to withdraw from Ashkelon or Sderot under a hail of rockets.
So if Hamas can’t win, why is it fighting? Why rain down destruction and misery on millions of Israelis with your Iranian missiles and your Syrian rockets and invite a counter-assault on your headquarters and weapons warehouses, which you have conveniently placed in the middle of the Palestinian people on whose behalf you are allegedly fighting? Hamas is in a precarious position. When the terror group took over Gaza seven years ago, things were different.

Alan Dershowitz: The current conflict between Israel and Hamas shatters myths

The current warfare between Hamas and Israel shatters several myths that have been accepted as gospel by many in the international community and the media.
MYTH 1: The primary cause of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s settlement policy.
MYTH 2: What is being experienced now is a “cycle of violence”, with equal blame on both sides.
MYTH 3: Muhammad Abbas is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

United Nations: Most Gaza Casualties Were Warned by IDF to Leave Targeted Buildings in Advance

A new United Nations document says that in most cases where Palestinians have been killed or injured during Israel’s ongoing Gaza campaign, the Israeli army alerted civilians ahead of time who were occupying buildings, that they planned to bomb in Gaza, to leave the premises.
“At least 35 residential buildings were reportedly targeted and destroyed, resulting in the majority of the civilian casualties recorded so far, including an attack on 8 July in Khan Younis that killed seven civilians, including three children, and injured another 25,” according to the Occupied Palestinian Territory: Hostilities in Gaza and Israel Situation Report. “In most cases, prior to the attacks, residents have been warned to leave, either via phone calls by the Israel military or by the firing of warning missiles.”
The document was released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at 15:00 on July, 9, 2014.

The Gaza Rules

According to many critics, Israel is slaughtering civilians in Gaza. It’s “purposefully wiping out entire families,” says an Arab member of Israel’s parliament. It’s committing “genocide—the murder of entire families,” says Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Iran says Israel has committed “massacres against the defenseless Palestinians.”
The charges are false. By the standards of war, Israel’s efforts to spare civilians have been exemplary.
Israel didn’t choose this fight. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the terrorist organizations that dominate Gaza, claim that Israel provoked the conflict by arresting Hamas members in the
West Bank. But arrests in one territory don’t justify aerial bombardment from another. Israel didn’t hit Gaza until terrorists had fired more than 150 rockets into Israel and had rejected a cease-fire.
Some of the pictures that purport to show devastation from the Israeli strikes are fakes borrowed from other wars. As of Wednesday afternoon, the death count ranged from 30 to 50 or more, depending on where you mark the onset of the conflict. Every death is tragic, and the longer the assault goes on, the higher the toll will go. Still, given that Israel has launched more than 500 airstrikes, you’d have to conclude that either Israel is failing miserably to kill people or, more plausibly, it’s largely trying not to kill them.

CNN’s Jake Tapper Demolishes PLO Spokeswoman

CNN’s Jake Tapper thoroughly demolished and exposed as a liar one of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s foremost purveyors of propaganda Thursday during a tense interview.
Tapper invited former PLO spokeswoman and legal advisor Diana Buttu to explain why Hamas is launching terror rockets and trying to kill Israeli citizens.
Buttu attempted to push several lies about the conflict, but was quickly shot down by Tapper.
“Why is Hamas launching rockets into Israeli population centers and are any other Palestinians trying to stop them from doing so?” Tapper asked.

CNN's Jake Tapper Destroys Fmr PLO Spox

Videodump: "Roof-knocking," Ashdod petrol station, people under attack, human shields, more

Here are two videos showing Israel's "roof knocking" - shooting a small projectile at the roof of a house as a final warning (after phone calls) for residents to flee, before the big bombs are dropped.

Here are videos showing the Ashdod petrol station at the moment it got struck by a rocket, and the aftermath of the huge fire that resulted:

Here is a video of ordinary people caught in a rocket attack:

Here is video of the IDF precisely blowing up a terrorist car:

This 2009 video showing how Hamas usues human shields, and brags about it, it very worthwhile viewing:

Here is a cartoon I tweeted a couple of days ago:

(h/t Israel Muse, Josh K)

"Primitive rockets" (video)

While Palestinian propagandists go on TV and say that Gaza rockets are "primitive," Gaza terror groups brag about how powerful they are.

Who's lying?

Videos from the Islamic Jihad website.

IDF tells West Bank Arabs how to remain safe during Gaza rocket attacks

Reshet Bet reports:

The Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria (COGAT) passed on the Home Front Command guidelines in Arabic for Palestinians (in the territories,) and explained to them how to act when the (Code Red) alarm is heard or when rockets are falling.

The Civil Administration guidelines were designed in recent days together with PA officials in all sectors, at their request, following concerns within the territories of the escalation of Gaza rockets.

In most homes in the West Benk there is no safe room.

COGAT is part of the IDF.

Yesterday, two rockets went past the Green Line, one landing near Ramallah.

Here is a video of Arabs celebrating rocket attacks from the Temple Mount on Tuesday

(h/t Yoel)