Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 20, 2014

07/20 Links P1: IDF toll rises to 18; The Fallen Soldiers of Operation Protective Edge

From Ian:

Times of Israel Live Blog: IDF toll rises to 18 with deaths of 13 Golani soldiers in Gaza

News of Golani Brigade fatalities was delayed while families were informed; heavy fighting since Saturday has focused on Hamas stronghold of Shejaiya, where Palestinians report 80 killed; battles raging in other Gaza areas

IDF Blog: Fallen Soldiers of Operation Protective Edge

Throughout Israel’s history, IDF soldiers have fallen in defense of their country and families. This reality continues as the IDF operates in Gaza to defend Israel from Hamas rocket fire and the threat of terrorist infiltration by tunnels.
The following brave soldiers fell in the fight to protect Israeli civilians. May their memory be blessed.

Douglas Murray: London’s pro-Palestine rally was a disgusting anti-Semitic spectacle

Thousands of anti-Semites have today succeeded in bringing central London to an almost total standstill.
They marched though the centre of the city before congregating to scream outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington. It was interesting to watch this rather non-diverse crowd pass. Most of the women seem to be wearing headscarves or the burka, while their men-folk were naturally more appropriately dressed for a sweltering summer day.
But what a picture. These are the people who stayed at home throughout the Syrian civil war, stayed at home when ISIS rampaged across Iraq, stayed at home when Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab carried out their atrocities across central Africa and showed no concern whatsoever when the Muslim Brotherhood was running Egypt into the ground. Yet they pretend to care about Muslims.
And here they all are, coming out to scream because Israel is carrying out the most specific and targeted campaign in the history of warfare in order to stop Hamas – a group dedicated to the annihilation of all Jews – from firing thousands of rockets into the Jewish homeland.

MEMRI: Why Did Hamas Launch Its Current Rocket Offensive Against Israel?

Apparently, Hamas' decision to launch a rocket offensive against Israel was made on the local level by Hamas' military arm, the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, perhaps without consulting with the movement's political wing either within or outside the Gaza Strip – and this for local and immediate reasons to be detailed below, alongside additional motives linked to the deteriorating status of the movement in the internal Palestinian arena as well as in the inter-Arab arena.
1. The Immediate Motive For Hamas' Rocket Offensive: Israel's Discovery And Targeting Of A Strategic Hamas Project
On July 5, two days before Hamas fired its first heavy barrage of rockets into Israel, Israel struck one of Hamas' dozens of long tunnels leading out of the Gaza Strip into Israel. The tunnel was one of several that were built in recent years as a strategic project to surprise Israel in future conflicts, enabling Hamas to move armed activists[?] deep into Israel to carry out terror attacks in densely populated areas.

Audience on Bill Maher Show Applauds Defense of Israel

This is remarkable if you know anything about Bill Maher and his audience. You would have to switch channels to MSNBC or the Daily Show to find a more progressive crowd.
I’ve never been a fan of Bill Maher but to his credit, he did anger many progressives on Twitter this week by standing up for Israel.
Jamie Weinstein is a senior editor at the Daily Caller. I met him at CPAC in March and he’s a very smart guy. Last night he was a member of the panel on Maher’s show and his defense of Israel drew applause from the audience. (h/t fizziks)

Rare: TV Talk Show Host Rips Into Hamas for Attacking Israel
Panel L-R, Jamie Weinstein Dailly Caller, Nate Silver (statistician, says nothing), Congresswoman Jane Harman (D)

Hamas rockets don't distinguish between Arab and Jew

Last week, Hamas promised Israeli Arabs that their rockets would not hurt them, and were only targeting the "Hebrews:"

We say to [Israeli Arabs], living in Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Lod, Ramla, and the Negev: The rockets fired by the Al-Qassam Brigades will not hit you. We know those parts. We are familiar with the geography and with the history. Not a single Arab Palestinian child will be hit by one of our missiles. Our rockets are aimed at the Hebrews, the murderers, the Israelis, the criminals. Don't be afraid. Go on with your everyday life, and celebrate our victory, just like we will celebrate it here, in Gaza....We say to our people in Haifa: The missiles of Al-Qassam will not hit any Arab home. Rest assured, our missiles accurately target the homes of the Israelis and the Zionists. As Arabs, Muslms and Christians, you must support Gaza in the streets, by demonstrations, with slogans. You must besiege consulates of European countries supporting the occupation.

Hamas lied to the people it pretends to care about.

The first Israeli fatality from a Hamas rocket attack was a Bedouin.

A 32-year-old man was killed Saturday when a rocket fired by Gaza terrorists hit a small Bedouin community near the city of Dimona.

The man has been identified as Alouj Ouda. His wife, son, daughter, and sister-in-law were wounded in the attack.

Ouda’s wife suffered shrapnel injuries to several parts of her body, and is in moderate condition. The couple’s four-month-old daughter is in serious condition with a head injury. Their four-year-old son suffered multiple shrapnel injuries as well, but is in light condition.

The four surviving family members are being treated in Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheva.

Previously, two young sisters were badly injured when a rocket fired by Gaza terrorists hit a Bedouin community near Be’er Sheva. One of the girls was left fighting for her life after suffering shrapnel injuries to her stomach.

An elderly man was seriously injured in the same attack.

The tragedy is undeniable, and the relative lack of attention to this death is unconscionable.

There is another story here, as Times of Israel notes:

The Supreme Court ruled on Sunday that the state is under no obligation to immediately provide additional protection against rockets to Bedouin communities in the Negev Desert, but called on authorities to formulate and publish criteria for civilian protection in the south within 30 days.

The court was responding to an urgent appeal by a group of Israeli human rights NGOs on Thursday, following the injury of two Bedouin girls in the unrecognized village of Awajan, Maram and Athir al-Wagili, by a rocket fired from Gaza on July 14. On Saturday, as the court was deliberating the issue, a Bedouin man was killed and his three-month-old daughter seriously injured near the city of Dimona, also as a result of a rocket originating from Gaza.

Judges Zvi Zylbertal, Yoram Danziger and Noam Sohlberg said they found no flaw in the state’s allocation of outdoor protective concrete structures, known as miguniot, that would justify an intervention.

“There is no argument that the state has a supreme obligation to defend the lives and bodily integrity of its citizens,” they wrote in the ruling. “But the state’s obligation to defend the lives of its residents and citizens in times of emergency can be fulfilled through a wide range of means.”

Israel has no more than 150-200 miguniot (free standing shelters) it can distribute, the state argued in court, and has decided to prioritize areas within a 20-kilometer (13-mile) radius of the Gaza Strip, which have sustained 80 percent of the rocket fire emanating from Gaza. Lying on the ground and taking cover reduces the chance of injury from rocket shrapnel by 80 percent, Israel’s Home Front Command told the court.

The Supreme Court said it rarely intervenes in the operational discretion of the IDF during fighting.

“We have found no flaw in the defendants’ decision regarding miguniot to justify our intervention,” the judges wrote. “The array of current means of defense is too limited to cover all areas within rocket range. Pulling the blanket over one area would expose another.”

It is a matter of triage. There are only so many Iron Domes and shelters, and naturally the priority goes to towns that are closer to Gaza and that are more densely populated.

The Bedouin are living in very spread out areas over the Negev, it is very difficult to give them everything they need under the best of circumstances - and here they choose to live in illegal villages on stolen land. Attempts to fix the problem have been stymied by most of the Bedouin themselves.

I don't know how long it takes to manufacture shelters, and of course if it can be done more quickly to protect everyone, it should be prioritized.

Don't believe the lies about how the Bedouin are being purposefully ignored by or targeted by Israel, though. There is enough blame to go around and there are plenty of people who want to take what is truly a tragic situation and turn it into a propaganda weapon against Israel.

The truth is far more complicated and rarely reported, as I show in this video made last year:

Alouj Ouda didn't deserve to die. No Arabs will be wringing their hands over his death. And Israel needs to ensure that it gives the same priority to saving its Arab citizens as its Jewish citizens.

From what I can tell...they are.

Did the UNRWA school rockets go to terrorists? Almost certainly - just like their cement

This cartoon of mine from last week has proven to be prophetic:

Arutz-7 reports:

The UN agency for Palestinian Arab “refugees,” UNRWA, has caused outrage by apparently giving rockets to Hamas.

On Thursday, UNRWA confirmed that 20 rockets had been found in one of its vacant schools in Gaza.

UNRWA staff said last week that they had “informed the relevant parties and successfully took all necessary measures for the removal of the objects.”

However, Channel 2 reports Sunday that - rather than destroying the rockets - UNRWA workers called Hamas to come remove them.

An EoZ reader wrote to UNRWA to ask them about this story. Their denial is not exactly satisfying:

Of course we did not hand the rockets over to Hamas.

The authorities who came and collected the weapons are under the direct authority of the government of national consensus which Hamas has left and which many in Hamas are openly hostile to. The key point is that the weapons were handed over to people who are not answerable to Hamas.

Their denial is laughable.

There is no real presence of the PA "technocratic" government in Gaza. Everything is under control of Hamas. Certainly there is no independent Palestinian Arab institution in Gaza with the ability or expertise to properly dispose of terrorist rockets. Whoever UNRWA handed the rockets to, no matter who, is almost certain to have in turn handed them to a terror group.

And that terror group might not have been Hamas. After all, the PA is dominated by Fatah, and Fatah groups have been firing rockets towards Israel non-stop since the beginning.

UNRWA's denial is so disingenuous as to border on the criminal.

Then again, UNRWA has a history of such attempts to cover their tracks while winking at terror groups. Last December I visited the Kerem Shalom crossing and spoke to the person who runs it. He told me that he knows, personally, the middlemen who transport cement and other items earmarked for "international projects" such as for UNRWA - and he knows for sure that some of it gets diverted to being purchased or given to Hamas, presumably for the terror tunnels that we are seeing in Gaza today. It isn't UNRWA officials who personally go to the crossing to get cement; they hire the same people who everyone else uses and who are on the take.

UNRWA doesn't care about the reality of how they enable terrorists to kill Israelis as long as they have deniability. And that is exactly what the letter above tells us, quite clearly.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Berlin imam prays for Allah to kill Jews "to the very last one"

From MEMRI - the imam is at the Al Nur Mosque in Berlin.

Oh Allah, destroy the Zionist Jews. They are no challenge to you. Count them and kill them to the very last one. Don't spare a single one of them. Shake the ground beneath their feet. Make them suffer terribly. Deflect their bullets. Disperse them. They behave tyrannically all over the world and spread corruption. Oh Lord, bring torment upon them.

I wonder if Germany's anti hate speech laws apply to Muslims, or if they get off the hook.

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.