Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Human rights hypocrisy (video)

07/19 Links: Hamas: We Place Civilians in the Line of Fire; Sderot Residents Kick Out 'Peace' Bus

From Ian:

Two soldiers killed by Hamas infiltrators Saturday morning

Two IDF officers were killed Saturday morning when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory via a tunnel under the border fence from the central Gaza Strip and ambushed a military vehicle patrolling on the Israeli side of the border, the IDF said Saturday evening.
The two were named as Amotz Greenberg, 45, a major in the reserves from Hod Hasharon, and Sgt. Adar Barsano, 20, from Nahariya. The information was cleared for publication after the families were informed.
The deaths were the first of soldiers killed by Hamas since Operation Protective Edge began on July 8.
The terrorist cell infiltrated Israeli territory through a tunnel, in an apparent attempt to carry out a major attack on one of the nearby communities, the army said.

Douglas MurrayThe Greatest Possible Problem for Europe

Israel, one can probably say with some confidence, can very well look after itself. Like everyone else who has spent time in the country, and admires and even loves it, I worry for it, but I can think of no nation on earth that is better equipped or better motivated to look after itself and its people. So when I see these young protestors in London, protesting against Israel, I do not worry for the country they are shouting against. They cannot touch her. But I worry for my country -- Britain. It is a country that is finding it so difficult to integrate the millions of Muslims who have come here that (in a figure that ought to be better known) there are now at least twice as many young British Muslims who have gone to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and other such groups, than there are Muslims fighting for Queen and country here in the British armed forces.
By any standards, this is a symptom of a disastrous immigration and integration problem. The people shouting outside the Israeli embassy -- the knackered and foolish old minority of Trots aside -- can do Israel no harm. But they can do great harm to the country they are in. Europe's Israel-haters are no real problem for Israel, but they are the greatest possible problem for Europe.

Charles Krauthammer: Moral clarity in Gaza

Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.
“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”
Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows the proudly self-declared raison d’etre of Hamas: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.

Hamas: We Place Civilians in the Line of Fire

While the IDF does everything that it can to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas deliberately puts Palestinian civilian lives in danger.
Hamas hides weapons and missile launchers in densely populated areas. Instead of keeping its citizens out of harm’s way, Hamas encourages and even forces Gazans to join its violent resistance against Israel. It sends men, women and children directly into the line of fire to be used as human shields for terrorists. (h/t Bob Knot)

Hamas: We Place Civilians in the Line of Fire

Jon Stewart is completely clueless about Gaza

EoZ weekly roundup and a thank you

Another crazy busy week here at EoZ Central.

The number of daily readers of the blog has pretty much doubled - on some days, tripled - compared to usual. Two posts this week were unusually popular - the "Hamas hacks Domino's Pizza" article, which received over 10,000 hits, and the "Unbelievable anti-semitic attacks in Paris," which is approaching 8000 hits.

Even more unbelievably, some people are trying to say that all the Jews who witnessed the siege of the synagogue in Paris, and the police, are lying, and in fact it is the Jews who attacked the thousands of demonstrators who were yelling "Death to the Jews."

Other posts were just as notable. "Why everyone is getting the 'Sderot Cinema' Story Wrong" struck a chord with many readers. "The REAL Statistics of Those Killed in Gaza" was one of the few places to learn about how Hamas lies about civilian casualties (no thanks to the IDF, which really needs to get its information out there quicker.) My post explaining"proportionality" was also well-received. (If you don't learn something new from each of my posts, I haven't done my job.)

Some of my old posts received much attention this week as well, as old accusations against Israel were being hurled on message boards and Facebook and people were able to point to my posts to explain the facts. Thousands of times this week people read my 2012 deconstruction of one of the most popular pieces of Pallywood, the staged photo of an "IDF soldier" stepping on a "Palestinian girl" which was really street theatre in Bahrain.

"Debunking The Map That Lies," a 2012 reposting of a 2011 article, was another very popular post this week.

As in every week, my "Apartheid?" poster series continues to get lots of attention, now having gone past the 150,000 hit mark.

Twitter has been huge as well this week. I gained hundreds of followers and I spent lots of time tweeting articles and cartoons and posters that I came across. (Ian captures all the English-language articles I tweet in the linkdumps.) Thanks for the retweets!

Last but not least, I would like to once again thank those who donated to EoZ this week. I am seeing lots of organizations - including media - trying to use the Gaza battles as a means to raise tens of thousands of dollars for their own work. I did not want to use the situation in Israel as a means to ask for donations, because it strikes me as a little opportunistic. But that makes the people who pro-actively donated very special to me, and I appreciate it.

Shabbat Shalom, in every sense of the word.

07/18 Links Pt2: How the West is complicit in Islamic Jew-hatred; Golda Meir was right

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How the West is complicit in Islamic Jew-hatred

It is astounding that neither the media nor any Western leader has sounded the alarm over this epidemic anti-Jewish madness in the Islamic world. But neither political nor cultural leaders want to join up the dots.
Partly this is due to the cultural confusion over “Islamophobia” and third world-ism. But mainly it is because anti-Semitism is now the prejudice that dare not speak its name. It’s the big one, the crime of crimes, the knockout blow. If the Muslim world is driven by anti-Semitism, all the excuses being used by Western leaders to appease that world and limit the push-back against it are invalidated.
It would mean it is being fueled by something which is utterly immune to reason or negotiation. So it would mean there could be no half-measures against it. It would have to be identified as a source of evil in the world and utterly defeated.
But of course, that hardly sits with the dominant Western narrative that says the Palestinians are entitled to a state and that Israel is to blame for the conflict. So the Jew-hatred pouring out of the Islamic world is simply ignored.
Worse, all those in the West who trumpet their progressive support for the “oppressed” Palestinians are thus tacitly supporting this frenzied anti-Semitism.

Sarah Honig: A War Against All Jews

Hardly any anti-Semites nowadays admit they hate Jews. The accepted guise for Judeophobes is to claim that they harbor no ill-will toward Jews and that they are merely anti-Zionist or oppose given Israeli policies. Yet on occasion their words and actions offer a glimpse into the sinister darkness behind the cynical politically-correct façade.
So it was last Sunday in Paris during a demonstration against Israel’s Operation Protective Edge. Some of the marchers broke off and made a beeline for two centrally located Paris synagogues.
The worst incident occurred at the Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue on the Rue de la Roquette (in the heavily Jewish 11th arrondissement of Paris). A mob donning keffiahs, waving jihadist flags and wielding clubs (and chairs grabbed from nearby sidewalk cafes), converged on the synagogue, attempted to storm the building and attack the worshippers trapped inside. They were thwarted by police and Jewish security volunteers. Injuries were reported both among the Jewish defenders and the officers.

Sarah Honig: Blackout Waiting to Happen

It was almost poetic justice – a rocket which Hamas fired at Israel Sunday night knocked out a high-voltage line that supplies electricity to some 70,000 Gazans. This was a blackout waiting to happen. Literally biting the hand that feeds it, Hamas persistently aims at the very Ashkelon power plant upon which Gaza depends for its electricity. Israel has refrained from switching the power off lest it incur censure from abroad.
Neither Gaza nor the Ramallah half of the Palestinian Authority pays for the power consumed. Gaza alone, it’s estimated, owes the Israel Electric Corporation NIS 220m (out of the staggering NIS1.5bil unpaid Palestinian debts).
The downed electricity line is one of a dozen high-tension lines with 120 megawatts per hour transmission capacity. Its loss means that the entire area between Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah has been plunged into darkness.
The damage is reparable but there’s no quick fix. In the best of times this job could take a long time. As things stand, with more rockets flying out of Gaza, no IEC employees would be willing to risk life and limb and expose themselves to Gazan predations just in order to restore electricity to Gazans. Moreover, no one asks them to.

Protesters Continue Demanding Power Cutoff to Gaza

While the government pushes for a cease-fire in the current round of fighting with Hamas, Israelis around the country took to the streets Thursday demanding a more definitive ending to Operation Protective Edge – at the very least turning off the electricity in Gaza in order to bring about a fall of Hamas control of Gaza.
“We cannot tolerate a situation where we continue to supply Gaza with electricity while they fire rockets at us,” say organizers of the protests. “It is immoral, unjust, and illogical for Israeli citizens to be paying for the electricity being used to develop and fire rockets on innocent citizens. Gaza has not paid for its electricity for a long time, and now owes Israel NIS 220 million in unpaid power bills. If you or I miss a month or two of payments, they turn off the electricity in our house, but Hamas chisels its way out of the Gaza bill with no consequences.”

Ron Prosor's speech at the UN Security Council

Text taken from Times of Israel.

Mr. President,

In the face of terrorists kidnapping our children, we were left with no choice.

In the face of rockets raining down on our citizens, we were left with no choice.

In the face of jihadists tunneling under our borders, we were left with no choice.

A few hours ago, the Israel Defense Forces entered Gaza to restore a sustained quiet to the people of Israel while degrading Hamas’s terror capabilities. We did everything in our power to avoid this. Prime Minister Netanyahu made the courageous decision to accept every cease-fire offered – even as the people of Israel were under attack. But Hamas rejected every overture to restore the quiet.

This wasn’t what we wanted. We have sent our children – our sons and our daughters – to face an enemy who lives by violence and celebrates death. I want to be clear – our forces are fighting in Gaza, but they are not fighting the people of Gaza.

For years, the citizens of Israel have been the victims of unrelenting attacks perpetrated by a murderous terrorist group. Hamas has attacked us in our homes and schools and cafes and on our buses.

Stand now with Israel to prevent the next barrage of rockets, the next kidnapping, and the next suicide attack so that we may, once and for all, remove the threat of terrorism casting its dark shadow over the people of Israel.

Mr. President,

The past month alone offers a glimpse into the unrelenting threats that Israel faces. We have been attacked on four fronts. Rockets have been launched from Syria, Lebanon, and Sinai and over 1,500 rockets have been fired by terrorists in Gaza.

Israel’s great restraint is being met with unrestrained aggression. For six hours on Tuesday, Israel held its fire. During that time, the world witnessed Hamas’s understanding of ‘cease-fires’ – Israel ceases and Hamas fires. Hamas didn’t fire one or two rockets; it battered Israel with 50 rockets. Every one sent a message loud and clear – Hamas is determined to wage war on the Jewish State.

Two days later, the UN asked for a limited humanitarian truce. Once again, Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed and proved that Israel is not interested in a war. As aid workers transferred goods to assist the people of Gaza, Hamas continued to defiantly launch rockets into Israel.

How did Hamas use the humanitarian cease-fire? It sent thirteen heavily armed terrorists through a terror tunnel towards Kibbutz Sufa with the sole purpose of committing a massacre.
This is the third time in the past two weeks that Hamas has used its tunnels to infiltrate Israel and tried to carry out attacks. And all the while, it is still launching hundreds of rockets.

Mr. President,

For 10 days, life for five million Israelis has meant having just seconds to run for a bomb shelter and save their lives. Our largest cities – Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem – are being bombarded on a daily basis.

There is no country in the world that would tolerate such an assault on its citizens – and Israel should not be expected to either. We are acting solely to defend Israelis from constant terror attacks.

Throughout Operation Protective Edge, Israel has been committed to upholding international law. Our army is a moral army like no other in the world. It does not aspire to harm any innocent person. We are operating only against terrorist targets and genuinely regret any civilian loss.

In contrast, there is no red line that Hamas will not cross. It will stop at nothing and there is no depth that they will not sink to – they are even using ambulances filled with children to move their terrorists around Gaza.

There is no site that is off limits for Hamas – it is storing its weapons in family homes, launching rockets from mosques and establishing its headquarters in the basement of a Gaza hospital.

Yesterday, UNRWA admitted that it mysteriously found 20 missiles in one of its schools. I’m sure that if UNRWA takes the time to check its other facilities, it will discover that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Hamas is using UN facilities to commit a double war crime by targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians.

From the safety of their luxury hotels in Qatar, Hamas leaders like Khaled Mashaal order room service with one hand and order Hamas to use Palestinians as human shields with the other.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. The Palestinian delegate to the UN Human Rights Council admitted as much, saying (and I quote): “The missiles that are now being launched against Israel, each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity, whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets.”

I hope the Palestinian delegate will remember this when making threats against certain UN agencies.

Mr. President,

Israel has been faced with a choice that no nation should have to make: refrain from responding and subject its civilians to rocket fire or engage with the terrorists and risk injuring civilians.

Hamas uses Palestinian casualties to fuel its propaganda machine. Hamas’s strategy is clear – it perpetuates the killing of its own people in the hope that the international community will place pressure on Israel to grant its demands.

Sadly, many people have fallen for their cynical campaign by describing the fighting as moral equivalency or a (quote unquote) “cycle of violence.”

All those who argue that both sides are equally to blame are playing into Hamas’s hand and sentencing the people of Gaza and Israel to further suffering. Ill-informed condemnations of Israel strengthen the hand of terrorists.

There is a clear difference between Israel and Hamas – the Jewish people believe in the value of life, while Hamas believes in the value of taking lives.

How many more Palestinians must fall victim before President Abbas finally breaks his partnership with Hamas?

Abbas is the president of the unity government that includes a murderous terror group. What exactly is this government united for? Obviously not for peace.

Mr. President,

Even as alarms sound throughout Israel, some members of the international community are sounding false alarms here in the United Nations. They told us that as soon as Israel retreated to 1967 lines and dismantled its settlements, there would be peace. They insisted that the conflict was fueled by the so-called occupation.

Occupation? Does no one remember anything?

When I headed Israel’s Foreign Service in 2005, Israel turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. In the process, the world watched as we uprooted thousands of families from their homes and dismantled their businesses.

When we were done, there was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left. All we left behind were greenhouses and other structures that would develop the Gaza economy and allow the Palestinian people to build a peaceful society. We opened border crossings and encouraged commerce because we wanted Gaza to succeed. We hoped that this would serve as a model for two societies to live side by side in peace.

But it didn’t. Hamas used the pretense of democracy to create a militant theocracy. First, it waged a civil war against Fatah and executed political opponents. Then it destroyed the greenhouses and businesses we left behind. Instead of using them to build economic institutions, it built a terrorist regime complete with miles of underground tunnels. And finally, it seized the funding that flowed from the international community to flood Gaza with weapons.

In each and every month for the past nine years, Hamas has fired rockets towards Israel’s towns and cities. Over time, it has expanded its arsenal of rockets from a few hundred to thousands. The weapons that they have today are more sophisticated and can reach farther into Israel than ever before.

Every few years, Hamas escalates its attacks by launching a massive offensive.

In 2008, over the course of three weeks, Hamas fired 800 rockets that could reach 1 million Israelis living in the area near Gaza.

In 2012, Hamas fired 1,200 rockets in a single week that could reach 3.5 million Israelis in southern and central Israel.

In the last two weeks, Hamas has fired 1,500 rockets that threaten 5 million Israelis – or 70% of our population – living throughout the country.

After each escalation, the international community brokers a cease-fire and Israel accepts it hoping that it will finally bring peace. After three rounds of major assaults and over 12,000 rockets in nine years, it has become clear that Hamas is not interested in bringing quiet to Gaza. It is employing the “Hudna” strategy. When Hamas finds itself on the verge of defeat, it agrees to a brief recess to rest, rearm, and resume aggressions.

Mr. President,

For years, we told you about the thousands of rockets that Hamas was smuggling into Gaza. We were met with silence. Time and again we called on the international community to condemn the rocket fire and we were met with silence.

It is time for the international community to face the consequences of its inaction. Hamas used its foothold in Gaza to trample on the Palestinian people and build a terror base in Israel’s backyard. And now it sees an opportunity to do it again.

Hamas is using the unity government to export its terrorist capabilities from Gaza to Judea and Samaria. If Hamas is not stopped, it will mean more terror for Israel and more tragedy for the Palestinians.

The international community embraced the unity agreement between Fatah and a terror organization, believing it would bring us closer to peace. Does that sound logical to you?

How could embracing a terror group whose raison d’etre is the eradication of Israel bring about peace?

By now it should be clear that Hamas is using the cover of a political agreement to gain legitimacy for its extremist objectives. Following the establishment of the unity government, Hamas Minister Fathi Hammad declared (and I quote) that: “the whistling of bullets, the sound of bombs and missiles exploding…and the capture of [Israeli] soldiers” was “music to our ears.”

The danger couldn’t be clearer. By supporting the unity agreement, you are giving Hamas the opportunity to weave incitement, violence, and terror into the basic fabric of Judea and Samaria, just as it did in Gaza.

Mr. President,

The citizens of Israel want to live in peace. We want to see our children grow up and grow old without ever running for a bomb shelter or putting on an army uniform.

I hope that someday we read about attacks on the Jewish people in history books rather than in newspapers. But that day has not yet come. For now, we are forced to wage a war against a terrorist group committed to our destruction.

Night has fallen in Israel. Rather than sleeping soundly in their beds, our sons and daughters are out there in the darkness standing guard over the people of Israel. In the Book of Psalms, King David says [in Hebrew]:

רַ֭בַּת שָֽׁכְנָה־לָּ֣הּ נַפְשִׁ֑י עִ֗ם שׂוֹנֵ֥א שָׁלֽוֹם:
אֲֽנִי־שָׁ֭לוֹם וְכִ֣י אֲדַבֵּ֑ר הֵ֗מָּה לַמִּלְחָמָֽה:

Too long have I lived among those who hate peace.
I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war.

Mr. President – Israel was left with no choice. But each of you has a choice.

Stand against terrorism and stand for the right of people to live in peace.
Stand against the use of human shields and stand for human rights.
Stand against oppression and stand for the freedoms that we hold dear.

The leaders of many governments represented in this room have already expressed their support for Israel’s right to defend itself. We thank them for standing at our side at this important hour.

I ask the rest of you to join them.

I have with me a compass. I offer it to the international community in the hopes that it will guide you towards making the right decision. Stand for moral clarity, stand for good against evil, and stand for right against wrong.

Thank you.

The Saladin Brigades of the PRC posted a story on their website about how demoralized IDF soldiers supposedly are.

Quoting an unnamed Israeli website, they write:

Citing Israeli soldiers, the Israeli army spent the entire night on the terrifying edge of the Gaza Strip, after a clash with the Palestinian resistance.

A soldier said: "It is as if we were fighting ghosts, we did not see the enemy and do not know where the bullets and rockets were coming from. It was a terrifying night by all accounts, we were looking for a military target, but we did not find anyone."

There you have it - unnamed quotes from an unnamed source that is only visible on Arab terrorist websites that coincides with how the Gaza terrorists fantasize the battle will go.

That's normally all the evidence Mondoweiss needs to report something as factual.

"Humanitarian" official accuses Israel of using sarin to kill Gazans

As soon as the IDF ground operation in Gaza was underway, the wild accusations started.

Of course, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry was the first to get on the bandwagon. From Tasnim (Iran):

Dozens of Palestinians, including children, suffered from suffocation late Thursday after inhaling "poisonous gases" released by Israeli forces during incursions into the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian health official said.

"The victims, who had been taken to hospitals in northern and southern Gaza Strip, had reported inhaling white poisonous gas emanating from shells fired by the Israeli artillery on northern and southern Gaza Strip," Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qodra said in a statement.

He called on Gazans to use nylon coats to protect their bodies and also firmly seal their doors and windows with wet pieces of clothing, Anadolu news agency reported.

The absurd story bounced around Arabic media.

Later, Haaretz reported:

Palestinian Health Ministry says reports that the IDF is using poison gas are false, and are meant to confuse civilians.

(Confirmed here, and it was Gaza's MOH, not the PA. H/t Bob K)

But the rumor then morphed to a new level - thanks to a "humanitarian."

Dr. Haitham Abu Said is the International Human Rights Commission ambassador to the Middle East.

Abu Said accused Israel of using sarin during the initial hours of the ground operation in Gaza. (Arabic media are calling him a "UN official," although he isn't.)

This adds to the previous rumors of Israel using "cancer inducing weapons" in Gaza.

It's amazing that will all these horrible and high-tech weapons, Israel can't come close to killing as many Arabs as those in countries like Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt and Libya. Maybe they should take lessons in mass murder from their neighbors.

07/18 Links Pt1: Schumer: No Moral Equivalency Between Israel and Hamas; How to win in Gaza

From Ian:

Charles Schumer: No Moral Equivalency Between Israel and Hamas

Hamas, which has won elections with the support of the population of Gaza, is a terrorist group that remains bent on the destruction of Israel and its citizens. Without provocation, the Hamas governing authority flings rockets over the border, all over Israel, without regard to civilian lives or public safety. In fact, the terrorists frequently target civilians. Their intent is to terrorize and inflict as much pain as possible.
When Israel reacts, it does so defensively, to prevent rockets from hurting its people. It targets military capabilities or terrorist leaders. What other society gives advanced warnings to those shelling it, by dropping leaflets and making cellphone calls to warn the inhabitants of impending defensive strikes, to minimize the loss of innocent lives?
These proportional steps clearly make it harder to eliminate the terrorists and rockets, and Israel is almost unique in taking them.
Again, to say that both sides are equally to blame in this recent round of violence simply lets Hamas and its leaders off the hook and naturally encourages them to continue the violence, because the condemnation of the world falls equally on Israel’s and Hamas’ shoulders – a condition they seek as effectively giving permission for future violence.

Melanie Phillips: Under fire in Israel

Every western supporter of the Palestinian war against Israel is also tacitly supporting such anti-Jewish derangement. This psychotic bigotry is the true driver of that war, as well as the Islamist war against the West. Yet astoundingly it is never, ever mentioned. The intractable problem of Gaza has been exacerbated by the meddling incomprehension of a western world that just doesn’t grasp how Islamist fanatics play by entirely different rules.
The West insists on moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians, as if the century-old conflict between the Arabs and the Jews were simply a squabble over the equitable division of land. It is not. It is a war to destroy the Jewish national homeland by people driven into frenzy by forces immune to reason.
Israeli parents are now steeling themselves for the nightmare of their sons in the Israel Defence Force being deployed in a Gazan land war to stop the rockets. Some of those boys will be killed. But it will be the Palestinian casualties, the Hamas war crime, which will be used once again to blame the Jews for their own destruction.

Sarah Honig: Hypocrisy most foul

The bamboozlers who gave us Oslo and its deformed derivative disengagement have never expressed the slightest contrition and never begged the nation’s forgiveness – not even now when Gazan rockets threaten Israel’s heartland.
The same goes for their craven accomplices, who ran with the pack and derided nonconformist compatriots who dared protest.
But while the promoters of folly bask in self-proclaimed infallibility, they’re uncannily quick to blame others for their sins.
This is hypocrisy most foul and it’s not limited to territorial surrenders and the chimera of attaining peace and acceptance by rewarding belligerence.

Caroline Glick: How to win in Gaza

While the ground operations continue, Israeli negotiators should be avidly agreeing to every ceasefire offer that denies Hamas any achievements. The IDF must continue to exercise an abundance of caution to prevent Hamas from luring our forces into a situation where we will be accused of massacring Palestinians.
None of this is easy or simple. No result is guaranteed. But in fighting Hamas today, Israel finds itself in a better position than it has faced in past fights with Hamas. For the first time, we face an enemy with a limited shelf life. Without supply lines from Egypt, Hamas cannot fight forever. Its allies at the UN can feed its forces and protect Hamas from an insurrection from a starving population. But the UN cannot rearm Hamas. It cannot reopen the smuggling tunnels from Egypt to enable materiel, money and trainers to enter Gaza.
Hamas is desperate for anything it can call a victory. By denying it one on the one hand, while taking action to force its leaders to prefer organizational humiliation to personal destruction on the other, Israel can win a decisive victory.

And now, a cartoon break

Here's a cartoon I put on Twitter yesterday after UNRWA announced that they found 20 rockets in one of their schools:

And a new one I just made:

I've been tweeting editorial cartoons from previous operations, because they are just as appropriate today as they were previously. Feel free to spread them around.

During the humanitarian truce, Gazans moved rockets into a mosque (update)

From the Washington Post, burying the lede:

The ground assault came hours after a short break in the fighting. Residents rushed outside their homes to take advantage of a five-hour “humanitarian truce” between Israel and Hamas requested by the United Nations. It was a brief respite on a day that began with mortar fire from Gaza and ended with the ground assault.

During the lull, a group of men at a mosque in northern Gaza said they had returned to clean up the green glass from windows shattered in the previous day’s bombardment. But they could be seen moving small rockets into the mosque.

Too bad we don't know the name of this mosque.

Here's an IDF video from 2009 showing how Hamas hides weapons in mosques, schools and other civilian structures.

UPDATE: The article's update in the afternoon took out the reference to the rockets: But an earlier story still has that reference.

Hamas instructs Gazans on propaganda, "Always call people 'innocent civilians'"

I had noticed that unlike in previous operations, Arab message boards and social media are not publishing lists and photos of "mujahid martyrs," making it harder to determine how many of the dead in Gaza are terrorists and how many are really civilian.

Now we know why. Hamas told them not to, and to lie and say that every victim is an "innocent civilian."

And the UN, NGOs and world media are regurgitating the Hamas lies.

From MEMRI:

In light of the recent round of fighting in Gaza, the Hamas interior ministry has issued guidelines to Gaza Strip social media users for reporting events and discussing them with outsiders.

The ministry's guidelines, which it is calling the "Be Aware – Social Media Activist Awareness Campaign," were issued via an instructional video posted on its official website and via posters published on its Twitter and Facebook pages. Both the video and the posters were also posted on the ministry's social media accounts and forums.

Following are excerpts from the guidelines:

Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don't forget to always add 'innocent civilian' or 'innocent citizen' in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase 'In response to the cruel Israeli attack,' and conclude with the phrase 'This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.' Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of 'the role of the occupation is attack, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.'

Beware of spreading rumors from Israeli spokesmen, particularly those that harm the home front. Be wary regarding accepting the occupation's version [of events]. You must always cast doubts on this [version], disprove it, and treat it as false.

Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from [Gaza] city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Do not publish or share photos or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [forces] in Gaza.

To the administrators of news pages on Facebook: Do not publish close-ups of masked men with heavy weapons, so that your page will not be shut down [by Facebook] on the claim that you are inciting violence. In your coverage, be sure that you say: 'The locally manufactured shells fired by the resistance are a natural response to the Israeli occupation that deliberately fires rockets against civilians in the West Bank and Gaza'..."

Additionally, the interior ministry prepared a series of suggestions specifically for Palestinian activists who speak to Westerners via social media. The ministry emphasizes that conversations with them should be conducted differently from conversations with other Arabs. It stated:

When speaking to the West, you must use political, rational, and persuasive discourse, and avoid emotional discourse aimed at begging for sympathy. There are elements with a conscience in the world; you must maintain contact with them and activate them for the benefit of Palestine. Their role is to shame the occupation and expose its violations.

Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel's crimes against Palestinian civilians.

The narrative of life vs. the narrative of blood: [When speaking] to an Arab friend, start with the number of martyrs. [But when speaking] to a Western friend, start with the number of wounded and dead. Be sure to humanize the Palestinian suffering. Try to paint a picture of the suffering of the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank during the occupation's operations and its bombings of cities and villages.

Do not publish photos of military commanders. Do not mention their names in public, and do not praise their achievements in conversations with foreign friends!

It is clear that most of the Arabic news media, and not just the social media, are adhering to these guidelines perfectly.

These instructions come with an implicit "or else" clause.

See also these posts on the real statistics of deaths from Gaza and how Hamas' websites in English and Arabic give completely different messages.

Why everyone is getting the "Sderot Cinema" story wrong

This photo taken last week, of Sderot residents going to a hilltop to watch IDF strikes in Gaza, has taken on a life of its own. And no one - not the original photographer/tweeter nor the "analysts" - have understood the scene pictured there.

The New York Times reported:

Explaining that he has also previously witnessed Palestinians cheering news of bombings that killed Israelis, Mr. Sorensen said that in a war, “this is what happens.” Civilians and fighters on both sides, he said, “go through a process of dehumanizing the enemy.”

This reminds me of a much older photo that was also widely misinterpreted as a paradigm for Israeli heartlessness.

In 2006, during the Lebanon war, a million Israelis in the north of the country were stuck in bomb shelters for a month as Hezbollah rockets rained down on them. They were frustrated and felt helpless and powerless. Then, someone came up with an idea of having the children, who are the most powerless of all, to write messages on missiles that were going to be shot to Lebanon. The resulting picture caused an even greater uproar:

A popular Arab blog that made the photos go viral created a fake message of what they said (originally) the kids were writing:

Dear Lebanese/Palestinian/Arab/Muslim/Christians – Kids,
Die with love.

Yours,
Israeli Kids

But that is not what the message said, even though that was what thousands on the Internet who read the article internalized.

The real message on the missile said "To Nasralah, with love, from Israel and Daniele."

The Israeli kids didn't want to kill Lebanese kids. They wanted the rockets that had been terrorizing them for a month to stop, and they hoped that decisive Israeli action against Hezbollah - not Lebanon, but Hezbollah - would accomplish that. That is what these missiles symbolized.

This is what is happening in Sderot.

An entire community has lived, off and on, under siege for over ten years. Previous Israeli operations have given them a reprieve, but every time the rockets returned.

Like the schoolchildren in the north in 2006, the residents of Sderot just want to live normal lives again. Every bomb Israel drops is, to them, a potential step towards that goal. They are most emphatically not cheering the tiny minority of those bombs - perhaps 2% of them - have accidentally killed Gaza kids. They are cheering a feeling of empowerment, the feeling of relief, the hope that this time there might be a chance that IDF actions can stop the incessant rocket fire and their lives will become normal. Each boom that they hear is a symbol of the hope that this goal is a little closer.

To say that they are "dehumanizing the enemy" is flat out wrong. I'm sure that there are a small number who are angry enough to say "Death to Arabs," which is to be condemned, but they do not represent Israeli society or even Sderot society. There are racists in every nation on Earth. Those who take a photo like this and then pretend that they know what is going through the minds of the people in the photo have no clue.

There are some people in the region who cheer rockets that are aimed directly at civilians, though:

There is no hand-wringing over that, no Arabs who feel that their people have lost their moral compass, no triumphant articles in the New York Times about how we can feel morally superior to the Arabs.. No, when Arabs cheer Jews being targeted or indeed being killed, the world yawns.

To the world, this is how Arabs are supposed to behave. But there are a lot of journalists who are uncomfortable with the idea of Israelis being on a higher moral plane than Arabs, so they feel that they must denigrate the Israelis to even the playing field. Hence, the misrepresentation of these photos.

Reporters who desperately want to draw an equivalence between Israelis who cheer missiles aimed at terrorists with Arabs who lustily cheer rockets that are aimed squarely at Jews are not only irresponsible, but they are purposefully demonizing an entire people. There is no comparison - Israelis do not as a rule cheer the deaths of innocent Arabs. Their visceral revulsion to the murder of Mohammed Khdeir proves that. There has never been a similar, across-the-board, Arab reaction to the death of any Jew, ever.

The reporters and Israel haters who try to make such a comparison are at best lazy - and at worst, antisemites. Because the only way that it makes any sense to represent Israelis as cheering bombs that kill kids is to make the assumption - a priori - that Israeli Jews are bloodthirsty monsters.

That is not reporting. That is revealing your own hatred.

07/17 Links Pt2: Guardian editor defends Hamas’s right to kill Israelis; Brandeis’s Anti-Israel Listserv

From Ian:

Guardian editor defends Hamas’s right to kill Israelis, AGAIN.

Now, here is the relevant passage from Milne’s latest op-ed, published today (Gaza: this shameful injustice will only end if the cost of it rises, July 16th) at the Guardian:

So the Palestinians of Gaza are an occupied people, like those in the West Bank, who have the right to resist, by force if they choose – though not deliberately to target civilians. But Israel does not have a right of self-defence over territories it illegally occupies – it has an obligation to withdraw.
However, Milne is consistent in both op-eds with regard to one thing: Israel has no right to defend itself from Hamas terror.
While Milne’s justification for the intentional killing of Israelis is not surprising given his history of praising anti-imperialist “resistance movements” across the globe, the mere fact that his latest polemic is consistent with his broader political orientation certainly doesn’t make it any less morally repulsive.

Andrew Bolt: ABC [TV Australia] still blind to the savagery of terrorist group Hamas

In fact, Israel drops leaflets in targeted areas warning civilians to get out. At times it also gives a knock at the door — a rocket that just makes a loud noise as a warning before the real missiles come.
But Hamas hides its missiles among civilians it conscripts as a human shield — and as propaganda props if they die.
Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV station on July 13 even broadcast a command to residents “to remain in their homes and disregard the demands to leave, however serious the threat may be”.
Then there’s the ABC’s naive belief that Israel is dealing with a rational enemy. Here’s Ferguson again, telling the Israeli spokesman, “you’re going to have to sit down with Hamas in order to secure that solution”.
In fact, Israel can’t talk peace with Hamas when it wants Jews dead and Israel destroyed.
The Hamas charter even declares the time of peace “will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them) ...”
Why does the ABC not recognise a true enemy not just of Jews but of the values of the West?

Bloodguilt Over Jews Leads to Blood Libels Against Jews

The Europeans, it seems, are becoming increasingly comfortable with old-fashioned Jew hatred in their midst, whether homegrown or imported.
There's a reason for that. In much of Europe, bloodguilt over the Holocaust still hangs over the heads of the population. According to a 2012 Anti-Defamation League survey of European countries, 45 percent of Austrians, 35 percent of French, 43 percent of Germans, 63 percent of Hungarians and 53 percent of Polish citizens felt that it was "probably true" that "Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust." Many of those who wish to move beyond the Holocaust, therefore, look for a rationale to relieve national guilt -- and what better way to relieve national guilt than to label the Jewish State an aggressor? After all, if the Jews have become the villains, then why spend too much time thinking about their victimization?
Of course, the labeling of Jews as bloodthirsty villains led to the Holocaust in the first place. Adolf Hitler saw the Jews as bloodsuckers driven by greed and dual loyalty. So did much of the rest of Europe. In the minds of those who murdered Jews en masse, Jews had it coming, because, in the words of Hitler: "The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us -- between Germans and Jews. All else is facade and illusion."

Hamas released a video meant to scare Israeli soldiers, showing actors pretending to be soldiers standing at the top of a hill without any cover and getting shot by Hamas snipers, or "soldiers" carrying a large Israeli flag into battle and getting attacked and running away.

It is wonderful that Hamas not only employs dozens of Gaza actors, but it goes out of its way to hire really bad actors. When the economy is so bad, this is clearly a growth industry in Gaza. Kudos!

I just wonder if that Israeli flag in the video was imported through the Kerem Shalom crossing or if it was locally manufactured in Gaza.

Turkish newspaper close to govt threatens Jews

From YNet:

A Turkish daily affiliated with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the country's Jewish community to apologize for the Palestinian casualties of the Israeli operation in Gaza.

"You came here after being banished from Spain," Yeni Akit correspondent Faruk Köse wrote Wednesday in an open letter to Hakham Bashi, the chief rabbi of Turkey's Jewish community. "You have lived comfortably among us for 500 years and gotten rich at our expense. Is this your gratitude – killing Muslims? Erdogan, demand that the community leader apologize!"

Apparently, even after being citizens for 500 years, Jews in Turkey are still not considered Turkish.

A quick look at the newspaper, Yeni Akit, shows lots of naked Jew-hatred that doesn't even pretend to be only anti-Zionist. They openly support the Turkish singer's tweets last week saying "May God bless Hitler," they show a photo of Israeli "Na-Nachs" dancing and they caption it as if they are celebrating the killing of Arab civilians, they title an article about Israelis going into bomb shelters as "Jews have once again proven their cowardice," and they have openly accused the Jewish community in Turkey of "treachery."

The writer Faruk Kose has an article called "Is it permissible to kill Zionists?" that mentions Jews 21 times, including many accusations of a "Zionist/Jewish terrorist base."

No wonder Jews in Turkey are ready to flee for their lives:

Meanwhile, on the backdrop of the fighting in Gaza, Turkish initiatives to boycott Israeli goods and Jewish-owned businesses are gaining momentum on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Under the hashtag #zulmesessizkalamam ("I will not keep quiet in light of the persecution"), Turkey's residents are urged to boycott products such as Coca-Cola (as one of its owners, Warren Buffett, supports Israel by investing in companies like Iscar) and are provided with explanations on how to spot Israeli products in local supermarkets.

"I have never felt as threatened as I have in the past year," says Linet, a textile importer. "The government is inflaming the hatred and anti-Semitism and we are simply living in fear.

"Many of those who have not left yet – and the vast majority of Jews immigrated to Europe and Israel a long time ago – are weighing their options," she adds.