Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 24, 2014

13 Questions for Stephen Walt (guest post)

From Online Maccabee, responding to another of Stephen Walt's unhinged anti-Israel diatribes, this one in the Huffington Post:

13 Questions for Stephen Walt

Stephen Walt is at it again: ascribing nefarious policies to Jews that allegedly are against the best interests of the US and international communities. This time, in a piece for the Huffington Post, he insists Netanyahu is killing Palestinians for political reasons. Walt claims the Israeli government is trying to keep Hamas out of a Palestinian unity government so that Israel won’t have to face up to peacemaking. According to him, a Palestinian unity government with Hamas in it would be focused on peace whereas Israel ultimately wants “colonization.”

Walt obviously thinks he knows better than the Israeli experts on the ground. He hasn’t consulted with them as far as we know; he has not revealed any access to intelligence reports; nor has he shown us the minutes of even one meeting he has attended with Israeli officials. He just knows. How they are. Greedy, land grabbing colonists who are ready to kill innocents and manipulate the good American public in order to avoid peace.

Forget that Israel is the only country in the Middle East, and probably the world, whose territory has willingly shrunk by considerable proportions over the years. Forget that Hamas has a history of lying, and that they do not keep their agreements whereas Israel does. Forget that Hamas has spent all of its military budget on offense and zero on defense, whereas Israel has spent billions on defense. It’s Israel who doesn’t want peace.

But even more than that, let’s forget the importance of legal agreements, and the desire to keep the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The reason why Israel and Egypt blockaded Gaza when Hamas violently took over the territory after winning elections is because the two countries had an agreement with the Palestinian Authority for the safe transfer of goods through the border crossings. Egypt told Hamas to return the border crossings to the PA if they wanted Rafah reopened, but Hamas refused, and in the name of human rights, Israel and Egypt were largely blamed for a siege.

Walt also says that Palestinians have the right to resist occupation. OK, but Israel pulled out of Gaza nine years ago, and gave two years notice before it did so. Where were the blueprints for territorial development to alleviate Palestinian living conditions? Where were the donor conferences to stimulate growth? Where were the attempts to create a demilitarized zone that would become a haven for Palestinians to have self determination? Where was Walt? Or should I ask, where is he now? He’s telling Israel no again. But is putting the onus of responsibility singularly upon Jews really how to help Arabs?

Clearly, sociopolitical responsibility is neither his purview, nor that of Israel bashers who conveniently ignore all the proof that too many Palestinian powerbrokers have chosen war against Jews rather than the development of their own people; and have done so in concert with the willful negligence of the international community to the extreme detriment of the Palestinian populace. When Israel left Gaza with plenty of notice, it was the perfect opportunity for the world to show how much they care about uplifting the Palestinian condition. They failed, and blamed Israel for responding to rockets, which were imported simply as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s desire to repress the only indigenous minority in the Middle East that has gained self-determination, rather than to maximize all they were given for the benefit of their own people. What Hamas is doing is not resisting occupation. It’s warmongering. Resisting occupation would mean building underground bunkers for civilians like Israel does, not attack tunnels directed at civilians, which Israel doesn’t. But, according to Walt, it’s Israel who prefers war over peace.

None of that matters, according to Walt, as to why the US public and government support Israel. It’s AIPAC’s fault for allegedly manipulating Americans against their best interests. But is that really true? Does Walt’s “smells like The Lobby” meme really pass the test of logic and evidence regarding support for Israel? Or could it be that the US supports Israel through shared cultural values about living in an open and accountable government that is threatened by repressive regimes? Is AIPAC manipulating Americans, or is the US public actually demonstrating moral consistency by supporting outposts of democracy?

Let’s ask him some questions to find out:

13 Questions for Stephen Walt

If the “Israel Lobby” is in control of the US Government, why is Jonathan Pollard still in prison? In your answer, I would appreciate it if you would explain how an interest group can conscript an entire government to have a foreign policy that is against its own best interests more readily than they can spring just one guy out of lock up.
You have claimed in the past that American support for Israel is responsible for generating mass consternation toward the USA throughout the Middle East. Please explain where else US support for an ally creates hatred.

In your answer, please explain:

-- Why isn’t there wide-spread hatred toward the USA by Kurds (not even the PKK) over our support and alliance (political and military) with Turkey, which has wrought suffering upon that population?

-- Why isn’t there wide-spread hatred toward the USA by Western Saharans and their refugees in Tindouf (not even by the Polisario) over our support and alliance (political and military) with Morocco which refuses to recognize Saharawi sovereignty over Western Sahara?

-- Why isn’t there wide-spread hatred toward the USA by Serbs over our support, recognition, and alliance (political and military) with Kosovo?

-- Why haven’t there been any uprisings by Tibetans against the US providing China with economic power that translates into military hardware?

All of these peoples have been denied sovereignty over (substantial parts or all of) their lands due to US relations with their rivals, but grassroots level hatred toward the USA among them is not nearly as widespread as it is among Palestinians and their allies. What makes the case of Palestine different in ways that justify their anger beyond that of any other suffering people, and put the onus squarely upon the “Israel Lobby” for blame?
If anti-Zionism is legitimate international outrage toward “western colonialism,” and has not been purposely crafted by agenda-driven propaganda, how do you explain the claims that Israel as an illegitimate “western, colonialist outpost” on Arab/Muslim lands, but not any international discussion of substance whatsoever (not even on a much smaller scale) about other modern colonialist outposts in the Muslim world with their own recent histories of abuse toward Muslims, such as the Spanish exclaves, Ceuta and Melilla? Is it the act of colonialism that creates resentment, or the identity of the one accused of doing it? Please explain.
If it is true that the “Israel Lobby” is the driving force behind US governmental support of Israel to the detriment of American foreign relations with (nondemocratic) regimes in the Middle East, then who is responsible for US governmental support of Taiwan and South Korea to the detriment of American foreign relations with nondemocratic regimes in East Asia (e.g. China and North Korea), which are already nuclear and somewhat hostile toward the USA for reasons that have nothing to do with Israel?
How can you discount that US support for Israel is directly related to US support for Taiwan and South Korea because they are all democracies threatened by nondemocracies? If there is a significant difference in American motivation to lend threatened democracies in East Asia our support from our (supposedly AIPAC-manipulated) support of a threatened democracy in West Asia, explain it.
As a realist, why do you spend so much more time writing warnings about US support of Israel, which antagonizes Middle Eastern regimes instead of US support for Taiwan, which antagonizes the Peoples Republic of China? Do you think Middle Eastern regimes pose a more dire threat to US security than China? Please explain.
Please support your claim that Jews are colonialists in Israel, Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, using stringent academic and (nonpoliticized) international criteria rather than populist lingo.

In your answer, please explain how it is irrelevant to claims of colonialism that the land in question is ancestral to the (ethnic) Jewish people, that the identity of the Jewish people has been inseparable from it for millennia, and that the only people in both ancient and modern times to have self-determination on those lands are Jews.
Embedded in your claims of Israeli (Jewish) colonialism and an end to the occupation is a call for the enfranchisement of a Palestinian state that today makes no accommodation for Jews to live among them. Currently, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Libya, and Jordan make it illegal for Jews to live there. Explain the morality behind the construction of a 7th Arab country that is de jure Judenrein, especially one formed on the ancestral lands of the Jewish people; and why resistance to that happening is colonialism.
Please explain how it is possible, and logical, that the “Israel Lobby” is responsible for generating hatred toward the USA among populations in Middle Eastern countries that have a strong history of abuse and violence toward Palestinians.
Please provide us with all the facts you have – basically a balance sheet -- to prove that antagonistic US foreign policy toward Iran is predominantly generated by the “Israel Lobby” and not by other “real politik” and special interest groups, such as those on behalf of American energy interests in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions.
It is well known that many hundreds of thousands of indigenous Middle Eastern Jews were turned into refugees by Arab regimes in the years following 1948 (even though they did not participate in war) and then subsequently absorbed by Israel. Explain how this does not constitute a legitimate population transfer, which was de facto initiated by Arab regimes similar to other population transfers in recent history, and how those Jews living in Judea are colonialists.
Leaders and students of the national liberation movements of indigenous minorities throughout the Middle East, including Kurds, Baloch, Kabylians, Berbers, Assyrians, and others, have been very vocal in their support for Israel. Why is their narrative less relevant than the narrative of the majority ethnic groups in the region? Is it resource control, or morality?
When and where has your work brought tangible results resulting in improved public safety, trade relations, and/or US international influence so we can better understand why we should listen to you?

Hamas shells field hospital set up to help Gazans (UPDATE)

On Sunday we saw this story:

The IDF announced on Sunday that it was setting up a field hospital at the Erez border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The field hospital was set to begin functioning at 8 p.m. on Sunday.

The IDF said that it will serve mainly women and children and will include a delivery room.

So how is this working out?

Walla reports that Hamas has actively prevented injured Gazans from going to the hospital to be treated by Israel. Even worse, on Wednesday Hamas shot ten mortars at the hospital!

Yes, Hamas is targeting a hospital, something that the "human rights" community seems not to care much about in this case.

UPDATE: Yes, the hospital is live and treating Gazans who manage to get there.

Our field hospital outside the Erez Crossing continues to treat Palestinian civilians. pic.twitter.com/GgvLCmrdH8
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 23, 2014

During Cast Lead, the IDF set up a similar field hospital but Hamas didn't allow patients to go then either.

I explained why back in 2009, and the same reasons apply today, perhaps more so:

Why are Gazans not coming to the clinic? One would think that with thousands of injured civilians, including women and children, people would want to have the best care possible. No one would have any doubt that the Israeli doctors would do an excellent job and would have higher medical standards than those in Gaza. So why is it a failure so far?

The major reason is clearly Hamas. As the WHO official said, Hamas leaders would simply not allow Gazans to be treated there. A little thought would show why.

First of all, Hamas engineered the entire battle to maximize the number of Gazans who would die or be injured. Every day there are new deaths from injuries suffered during the fighting, and each time the number of dead tick up, Hamas has a new propaganda victory. It is not cynical to notice that Hamas values PR more than human lives; it is merely recognizing the cynicism of the terrorists.

The second reason is the flip-side of the first: Hamas does not want any news media to report that Israelis are selflessly treating Gazans. The contrast with the selfishness of Hamas, where they confiscated medical aid to treat terrorists at the expense of Gaza civilians, would not be flattering. Hamas needs to be looked upon as caring more about civilians than Israel is, and will go to any lengths to ensure that Israel does not appear humane.

Thirdly, there are more terrorists injured than Hamas is willing to admit, and they cannot go to Israel to risk capture.

The fourth reason is more insidious. Hamas has now enlisted an army of doctors who are willing to testify - really lie - about alleged Israeli use of white phosphorus, depleted uranium and DIME weapons. These doctors are happy to do so in order to be part of Hamas' jihad against Israel (or, in the case of the European doctors, to simply demonize Israel.)

Israeli doctors treating the same patients would see that these doctors are lying, and would have the physical proof.

A related thought is behind the fifth reason Hamas would never allow Israeli doctors to treat Gazans: because a percentage of Gazan civilian injuries are the direct result of Hamas and its allies' rockets, mortars and guns, as well as secondary explosions. We will never know how many of the innocent civilians who died or were injured were hurt from Hamas fire, but it is reasonable to assume that the numbers are significant.

There were reports from Israel that the tragic death of three daughters and a niece of a Palestinian doctor came not from Israel but from a Grad rocket, as determined by shrapnel removed by Israeli doctors who treated them.

We know that a percentage of mortars and Grad rockets fall short, and we know that these have sometimes fatal results. Shooting rockets hurriedly would increase the number of misfires. There was also at least one IDF video of the bombing of a weapons depot where a rocket shot out of the targeted area and flew a few hundred feet before landing.

In addition, there were some firefights in Gaza between the IDF and various groups, and one would not expect the terror groups to be as careful as the IDF in where they were firing.

How many civilians were killed by Hamas, or by secondary explosions of Hamas ordnance? We will never know. Most of the evidence is buried. But we can be sure that the number is higher than zero, and that Hamas will do everything necessary - including forcing Gazans to forego quality medical care - to ensure that this information never sees the light of day.

From a UNRWA press release, December 7, 2011:

The UNRWA report finds a “surge in private employment” as a result of “expanded importation of much-needed building materials and other productive inputs”.

UN estimates show that for the month of September, 46,500 tonnes of aggregate came through the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into Gaza, whereas 90,000 tonnes came through the tunnels; 9,195 tonnes of cement came through Kerem Shalom, while there were 90,000 tonnes of cement through the tunnels, and 1,418 tonnes of steel bars came through Kerem Shalom, whereas 15,000 tonnes came through the tunnels.

“Despite the easing of restrictions on the Israeli-imposed blockade, tight controls of the crossings from Israel into Gaza are a significant factor behind the growth in the tunnel economy,” said UNRWA spokesman, Chris Gunness. “The facts speak for themselves. Construction jobs grew by more than 9,400, increasing by 3.5 times relative to first half 2010. This accounted for 27.7 per cent of all job growth in the year-on-year period. This is still significantly lower than pre-blockade levels. But despite significant gains, broad unemployment in Gaza, at nearly 33 per cent, remains among the most severe in the world. Under such circumstances, the reversal of deepening poverty and aid dependency among ordinary people in Gaza is unlikely.”

OK, you might be thinking, UNRWA surely didn't know that the cement it was praising was being used for building terror tunnels, right?

But as Israel Behind the News reported last year, UNRWA's administrators union is dominated by - Hamas:

[T]he "administrators union" in UNRWA fell into the hands of Hamas in the union elections which were held in UNRWA facilities in 1999, 2003, 2006, 2009 and later again in 2012.

In other words, Hamas controls funds and supplies that are dispatched to UNRWA in Gaza.

So, as I had reported recently, lots of the cement that was supposedly earmarked for UNRWA projects was being diverted to Hamas tunnels - and now we see that in all probability, some UNRWA officials were complicit with this crime.

(h/t Canadian Otter)

07/23 Links Pt2: Anti-Israel Protests Make the Case for Israel; Democrats losing moral clarity on Israel

From Ian:

Anti-Israel Protests Make the Case for Israel

The case for Israel is now playing out on the streets of Paris.
Over the weekend, pro-Palestinian rioters marched into a Jewish suburb in the French capital to break Jewish things. They torched cars, lobbed firebombs into a synagogue, and burnt Jewish-owned stores to the ground. One group of men reportedly spoke loudly of “hunting Jews and killing them.” That followed last weekend’s attempt to storm two other Parisian synagogues to a chorus of “Death to Jews!” and “Hitler was right!” They were only held in check by Jewish vigilantes who took up arms to defend those trapped inside.
The case for Israel is now unfolding in the heart of Berlin.
This past Friday, an imam was filmed delivering a Friday sermon beseeching Allah to destroy the Zionist Jews. “Count them and kill them to the very last one,” he prayed. A day before, an angry mob gathered to demand the same thing. “Jude, Jude feiges Schwein! Komm heraus und kampf allein!” it bellowed in unison—“Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!”
The case for Israel is now parading through London.
British Jews have experienced a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents over the last several weeks, from verbal abuse to attacks on buildings and people. One woman was reportedly assaulted by a breakaway group of 50 pro-Palestinian protesters who heard her discussing the Gaza conflict on her cell phone. They cried out “get her” and surrounded her, pushing and calling her a Jew, Zionist, murderer, and thief.

Poll: 73% say Israel more successful than Hamas in Gaza op

When asked if they supported or opposed Israel's ground incursion into Gaza, 80 percent of respondents replied that they supported it, 12 percent said they opposed it and 8 percent said they didn't know. When asked if Israel should expand its current ground operation, 71 percent of respondents said yes, 17 percent said no and 12 percent were undecided.
An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the Israel Defense Forces' performance thus far into the operation, with only 3 percent saying they were dissatisfied with how the army was handing the mission.
To the question "Should Israel make toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza a goal of Operation Protective Edge?" 65 percent of people polled replied yes, 22 percent said no and 13 percent said they didn't know. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Democrats losing moral clarity on Israel

The Pew Research Center last week released a new survey of American attitudes in the Middle East. The results weren’t surprising. In the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, 51 percent of Americans say they sympathize more with Israel. Only 14 percent feel greater affinity for the Palestinians.
Pew’s findings demonstrate the strength of pro-Israel feeling in the United States. The poll was conducted amid the current fighting with Hamas, but the bottom line hardly changed from Pew’s last survey in April, when it reported that in the 36 years it has been sampling public opinion, “sympathy toward Israel has never been higher.”
But below the surface, America’s Israel-friendly consensus is splitting along the same left-vs.-right fault line that has polarized so many other issues. While support for Israel is overwhelming among Republicans and conservatives, it has been shrinking among Democrats and liberals. “The partisan gap in Mideast sympathies has never been wider,” reports Pew, with 73 percent of Republicans sympathetic to Israel in the ongoing conflict, but just 44 percent of Democrats. Respondents identifying as liberal Democrats were five times as likely as conservative Republicans to sympathize more with the Palestinians.
Thus is the Democratic Party losing its way on one of the great moral issues of our time.

This week's humor column from PreOccupied Territory:

Paris, July 22 - Members of Paris's Jewish community voiced relief today, following a riot by pro-Palestinian demonstrators who ransacked Jewish-owned businesses and threatened Jews, that Jew-hatred in Europe no longer exists.

It has long been claimed that a sovereign Jewish state is unnecessary as a refuge for Jews, since, with the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, antisemitism ceased to be. The Jews of Paris have welcomed the new era of tolerance and acceptance, as they walk the streets only in groups of four or more, and attempt to conceal any outward sign of their Jewishness when in public.

Throngs of demonstrators shouting slogans such as, "Death to the Jews!" and "Hitler was right!" marched through the capital's Sarcelles suburb ostensibly to protest Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip, but the protest quickly turned violent as the activists vented their rage at local symbols of Jewish life. Multiple rioters were arrested and the Minister of the Interior harshly condemned the violence, which proves that Jews no longer need fear being targeted for racially motivated violence.

France boasts the continent's largest Muslim and Jewish populations, and in recent years, rage over the plight of Palestinians has exploded into violence by Muslims in France against Jews, most notably the murder of a Toulouse father and several of his children two years ago. Jews in France are grateful for the feeling that they are at home there, and that there are no Nazi-like rioters spouting rhetoric that calls for Jewish extermination.

Record numbers of French Jews have been buying property in Israel or moving there in response to the rise of violence against Jews, an oddity considering the tranquility and peaceful coexistence that characterizes the Jewish French existence, now that they no one ever blames them for causing all of the world's problems anymore.

"I feel safe here," said Emanuel Levi, sweeping up the shards of shattered glass from his fashion shop display window. "As long as I have a police escort. It's a fine life. We get to experience living in one of the world's capitals of culture, with the occasional splash of color from North African migrants hurling firebombs at my family."

This morning, the IDF destroyed the Wafa Hospital - the same hospital that international "human shields" were defending last week because they thought that the IDF had no reason to attack it.

The IDF has been repeatedly contacting the hospital administrators since last week insisting, and ensuring, that it be evacuated because of intelligence that indicated terror activity.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch tweeted that four injured people were left inside when Israel shelled it after a final warning last week. He lied. One of the anti-Israel "internationals" confirmed that the hospital was empty, but HRW's care about the truth was not as important as its anti-Israel agenda.

Even though it was widely reported that the IDF destroyed the hospital last week, this video shows not only that it was still standing, but that the IDF checked as thoroughly as it could that there were still no patients inside as troops came under fire from the hospital.

Hamas has used positions in the Al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza to fire automatic weapons and anti-tank missiles on soldiers, and the IDF fired back in recent minutes, the army said Wednesday.

"The hospital was used for activating war rooms and command and control centers by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad," the army said.

The IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has issued repeated and direct warnings to the hospital's manager, and to other Palestinians involved in running the hospital, the army said.

"Firing on our soldiers has grown in recent hours and endangered forces. As a result, the IDF has decided to strike terrorists operating in the hospital complex," it added.

And when the complex was destroyed, secondary explosions are clear. There were explosives inside the hospital.

In no way, shape or form can what the IDF did here be considered a "war crime." It was a military target, they went out of their way to ensure that it was empty of innocent civilians, and their intelligence about it being a place where Hamas was hiding weapons was accurate.

The only war crime was from Hamas - but the UN is silent about that.

Yesterday was another day of insane, hate filled, anti-Israel vitriol at the UN Human Right Council, in a special meeting convened purely for the purpose of slandering Israel.

Forgetting the one-sided, slanderous accusations of many of the members of the UNHRC, let's look at what Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - someone who has an obligation to be fair - had to say.

While she gave lip service to being against Hamas rockets towards Israeli civilians, it is clear who she wanted to attack.

She "expressed concern about a significant rise in incitement to violence against Palestinians, including through social media."

Yes, really. Even though the Arabs openly celebrate every Israeli death, hand out candies for apparent kidnappings, are fed a steady diet of antisemitism in their mainstream media, are taught that Jews must be destroyed under Muslim beliefs, shout "Death to the Jews" and similar invective in every demonstration, and whose favorite hashtag along with their supporters over the past couple of weeks has been "#HitlerWasRight" - she is concerned about Israeli incitement of a few Israeli idiots on Facebook?

Israelis as a whole were disgusted by the brutal murder of a single Arab last month by one of their own. That was abundantly clear from their actions and from the Israeli media across the board. There has never, in history, been a comparable revulsion by a significant group of Arabs - let alone an entire nation - about the deaths of any Israeli or Jew.

For Pillay to single out Israeli incitement is perverse.

"Israel held obligations as an Occupying Power, and both Palestinians and Israelis deserved better than a life of chronic insecurity and recurring escalation in hostilities."

Is there any better proof that Israel doesn't legally occupy Gaza than this inane statement? She is saying that Israel has obligations as an occupier to help stop hostilities, seemingly on both sides.

But Israel couldn't stop Hamas from building tunnels and rockets and importing anti-tank rockets unless they really were occupying Gaza.

Yes, if Israel controlled Gaza, this bloodshed would not have occurred, and the fact that Hamas has built such an extensive terror tunnel network is because Israel isn't occupying Gaza! Even the UN, when pressed, cannot find a coherent reason to consider Gaza "occupied" - yet they maintain that fiction.

07/23 Links Pt1: Glick: Obama to the rescue – of Hamas; Dershowitz: Hamas ends 2 State Solution

From Ian:

The terrible cost of thwarting Hamas

Israel’s mood at the start of this war with Hamas was one of confident assurance. We wouldn’t be deterred by the rocket threat, and Hamas would be contained.
That’s utterly changed. The rockets turned out to be the least of our concerns. And the national mood now is a mixture of anguish at the growing toll of IDF dead, anger at the feckless response of parts of the international community — notably the US — and confidence in the troops and (atypically) the political leadership.
To lose the lives of 30 Israelis to terrorism is, appallingly, nothing new in a country that survived the suicide bombing onslaught of the second intifada. As the former Shin Bet intelligence chief Avi Dichter pointed out on Tuesday, 30 Israelis were killed in a single Hamas suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover Eve March 27, 2002. That was the worst, but still only one of dozens upon dozens of bombings that battered Israel’s buses, restaurants and shopping malls a decade ago.
But to lose 30 soldiers battling vicious Islamic extremists in Gaza produces anguish of a different nature. Our soldiers are our future. They’re the youngsters among us, who have been required because of Israel’s unique geographic and geostrategic peril to place themselves on the front line for years of service before their young lives have really begun. We feel guilty that we’ve pitched them into war. We, the safe civilians, draw our strength from the sky-high level of their determination and motivation to protect us. We wish it were us, the grownups, who were on the front line. We’d have much preferred for the rockets, targeting all of us, to have been the chief threat.

Caroline Glick: Obama to the rescue – of Hamas

While Israel had killed 183 terrorists, it appeared that most of the terrorists killed were in the low to middle ranks of Hamas’s leadership hierarchy.
Hamas’s senior commanders, as well as its political leadership have hunkered down in hidden tunnel complexes.
In other words, Israel is making good progress.
But it hasn’t completed its missions. It needs several more days of hard fighting.
Recognizing this, Israel’s newfound Muslim allies have not been pushing for a cease-fire.
In contrast, the Obama administration is insisting on concluding a cease-fire immediately.
As Israel has uncovered the scope of Hamas’s infrastructure of murder and terror, the US has acted with the UN, Turkey and Qatar to pressure Israel (and Egypt) to agree to a cease-fire and so end IDF operations against Hamas before the mission is completed.
To advance this goal, US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cairo on Monday night with an aggressive plan to force on Israel a cease-fire Hamas and its state sponsors will accept.

Alan Dershowitz: Has Hamas ended the prospects for a two state solution?

The new reality caused by Hamas' shutting down of international air travel to and from Israel would plainly justify an Israeli demand that it maintain military control over the West Bank in any two-state deal. The Israeli public would never accept a deal that did not include a continued Israeli military presence in the West Bank. They have learned the tragic lesson of Gaza and they will not allow it to be repeated in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, however, is unlikely to accept such a condition, though it should. This will simply make it far more difficult for an agreement to be reached.
It was precisely one of the goals of the Hamas rocket and tunnel assaults to scuttle any two-state agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The Hamas Charter categorically rejects the two-state solution, as does the military wing of Hamas. In this tragic respect, Hamas has already succeeded. By aiming its rockets in the direction of Ben Gurion Airport, Hamas may well have scuttled any realistic prospects for a two-state solution. It cannot be allowed to succeed.
The international community, which has a significant stake in protecting international air traffic from terrorist rocket attacks, must support Israel's efforts to stop these attacks—permanently. If Hamas is allowed to shut down Israel's major airport, every terrorist group in the world will begin to target airports throughout the world. The shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine will be but one of many such tragedies, if Hamas is allowed to succeed. An attack on the safety on Israel's airport is an attack on the safety of all international aviation. Israel is the canary in the mine. What Hamas has done to Israeli aviation is a warning to the world. In its efforts to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Ben Gurion Airport, Israel is fighting for the entire civilized world against those who would shoot down civilian airliners. The world should support Israel in this noble fight.

Egyptian makes pro-Israel video

StandWithUs has been asking people around the world to show that they stand for Israel.

Here is a response from an unlikely place: Egypt.

The guy has guts.

(h/t Yoel)

From UNRWA yesterday:

Today, in the course of the regular inspection of its premises, UNRWA discovered rockets hidden in a vacant school in the Gaza Strip. As soon as the rockets were discovered, UNRWA staff were withdrawn from the premises, and so we are unable to confirm the precise number of rockets. The school is situated between two other UNRWA schools that currently each accommodate 1,500 internally displaced persons.

UNRWA strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.

The Agency immediately informed the relevant parties and is pursuing all possible measures for the removal of the objects in order to preserve the safety and security of the school. UNRWA will launch a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident.

It is fascinating that UNRWA couldn't count the rockets, or take photos.

It is equally fascinating that the guards that they presumably deploy to guard the schools don't notice things like this.

When the first set of rockets were found a few days ago, Gaza's interior ministry (which is Hamas) called UNRWA a bunch of liars. They spoke to all the terror groups and all of them said they had no idea about how rockets could have ended up in a school, or indeed any civilian facility.

So we have one set of liars accusing another set of liars of lying.

For all its faults, UNRWA does have incentive to keep rockets out of its schools. But its workers are often members of terror groups themselves - and almost certainly their guards are terrorists - so this sort of thing is inevitable.

UNRWA doesn't want to release photos because it is afraid that they will be used against it. And they have a history of downplaying their problems with Palestinian Arabs who regularly protest UNRWA and violently shut down their facilities when they have grievances, Even though UNRWA employees are about 95% Palestinian, it is still regarded as an enemy when it doesn't provide all the free services the Palestinian Arabs demand.

It is to UNRWA's credit that they issued this press release to begin with. Of course, they still tried to bury it.

You see, immediately after this press release, they issued another press release accusing Israel of shelling one of their schools - the previous day. So they made sure that the top press release in UNRWA's website, and the only one visible from their home page, is anti-Israel, not anti-terrorist.

Even that press release makes what are almost certainly false accusations:

UNRWA condemns in the strongest possible terms the shelling of one of its schools in the central area of Gaza which was sheltering hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the current fighting. At approximately 1655 hours yesterday, UNRWA’s Maghazi Preparatory Girls School, in the Maghazi refugee camp, where approximately 300 internally displaced people had sought refuge was struck by explosive ordnance believed to have been fired by Israeli forces. One person, a child, was injured in the shelling incident. We have raised this shelling incident with the Israeli authorities.

This morning when UNRWA officials went back to investigate the incident, there was further shelling of the school, seriously endangering the lives of UN humanitarian workers and displaced civilians. This second incident took place at approximately 1029 hours this morning and was 30 minutes inside the 0900 to 1100 hours window of time that had been coordinated with Israeli authorities and the UN to allow freedom of movement for the relevant UN personnel through the Maghazi Camp area.

Do they have any proof that they were being shelled by Israel? Of course not. Indeed, no one I have seen besides terrorist groups have accused Israel of violating the cease fire. UNRWA makes the accusation because they want to ensure that world anger is directed only at Israel and that terrorist war crimes are downplayed and ignored.

Even though UNRWA facilities have been hit by Qassam rockets in the past. And UNRWA didn't report that at all.

UPDATE: Those missiles have now "gone missing"!

How the UN counts terrorists as civilians

The UN doesn't count he casualties in Gaza directly. They get the data from a consortium of "human rights" groups: the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Mezan, and B'Tselem, which they call the "Protection Cluster." Based on the data they receive from these groups they publish their statistics of whether the dead in Gaza are civilian or "members of armed groups."

I've already shown in great detail how PCHR (and, indirectly, Al Mezan) classified hundreds of members of Hamas and other terror groups as "civilian."

What about B'Tselem, an Israeli group? How do they determine who is a terrorist and who is a civilian?

Clare Malone from FiveThirtyEight Politics has an interview with a B'Tselem spokesperson, Sarit Michaeli, and this question comes up. The answer is revealing as to how the world is getting fooled by "human rights" groups with an agenda:

CM: Palestinians could stand to gain sympathy if they lied about how many civilians are killed. Do you think witnesses ever try to obfuscate the type of person who was killed?

SM: I think it’s not unheard of. I don’t think it’s as big of an issue as the Israeli government would present it to be. For Palestinians, being involved in legitimate — in their minds — resistance against Israelis isn’t a thing to be ashamed of. They’re proud of it, and the fighters are certainly proud of it. There are also stipends and payments to Palestinians who were killed while resisting the Israeli occupation. (Again, I’m using intra-Palestinian language.) So there are also some conflicting interests, and I think for many Palestinians they would gladly admit that their relative who was killed was involved as a fighter.

That's it: the way B'Tselem determines if a dead Gaza is a civilian is by asking their families and assuming that they are telling the truth.

While they admit that this might not be the most accurate method, and some people might lie, they are basing their assumption that they are being told the truth on the assumption that the families are proud of their dead relative's terrorist ties.

What B'Tselem completely ignores is that Hamas, though the Gaza Interior Ministry, has instructed Gazans to identify every dead person as an "innocent civilian."

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.

There are some terrorists who cannot be denied that status - if they are wearing uniforms, or they were killed in a terror tunnel or in a firefight. But many, many of the dead males between 16 and 40 are terrorists whose families will not admit to any NGO as to their status.

B'Tselem's assumption that families want to identify their relatives as terrorists to gain financial benefit is at best naive and at worst deceptive. The Hamas and PA governments won't determine a person's status as a "mujahid martyr" based on what the families tell NGOs, but on their claims to the governments and from the martyr's lists that will be published over the next several months - well after the propaganda advantages of lying today about hundreds of "civilians" have been pocketed.

B'Tselem is either knowingly lying to inflate the number of civilians to fulfill its anti-Israel agenda or they are willingly being duped to inflate those numbers. This interview proves that there is no real research being done by these NGOs to determine the truth.

And keep in mind that these NGOs are funded based on how bad they make Israel look. B'Tselem has zero incentive to try to debunk lies about civilians because the more dead civilians they identify, the more they get attention and European cash. Even if the group is entirely righteous and truly trying to do the best they can, which is highly doubtful, this subconscious bias would pollute their statistics. And no one is going to fund an independent, transparent audit of the methods NGOs use to count casualties.

The IDF's statistics, which show that about half of the Gazans killed in this current engagement are actually terrorists, are being dismissed out of hand as biased (also, the IDF isn't doing nearly enough to publicize them.) But historically the IDF statistics have been proven to be the correct ones - once the fog of war is lifted and the terror organizations start celebrating their "martyrs."

The faulty statistics from B'Tselem (and the much worse PCHR and Al Mezan) then get swallowed happily by the UN, whom the world media can feel righteous about quoting.

The truth is the real casualty.

(h/t DF)

Any pretense that J Street is a pro-Israel organization has been destroyed by that organization’s refusal to participate in a solidarity rally for Israel during the recent crisis in Gaza.
The Boston Jewish Federation worked hard to create a rally that included all elements of its diverse community. Its goal was to send a single and simple message: at a time when so many in the world are united against Israel’s efforts at defending itself from Hamas rockets and terrorist tunnels, the Boston Jewish community stands in solidarity with the nation state of the Jewish people. In order to assure that this message of unity was sent, no signs were permitted except for the unity message that was intended to be sent. That message was: Stand With Israel. Simple and straight forward.
Speakers were limited to those who were part of the broad Jewish consensus including Rabbis, political and business leaders and the highly regarded head of the Federation, Barry Shrage, whose commitment to peace and the two state solution is well known.
Initially J Street agreed to be a co-sponsor of this unity event, but then—presumably after receiving pressure from its hard left constituency, which is always looking to bash Israel and never to support it—J Street was forced to withdraw its sponsorship. The phony excuse it offered was that the rally offered “no voice for [J Street] concerns about the loss of human life on both sides” and no recognition of the “complexity” of the issues or the need for a “political solution.”

AMP Official Defends Hamas, Praises Israeli Casualties

The group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) does not shy away from its support for the terrorist organization Hamas. The group's National Campus Coordinator, Taher Herzallah, recently posted Palestine TV photos of injured Israeli soldiers and a destroyed tank to his personal Facebook page. The caption for both photos read: "The most beautiful site in my eyes." It appears that this post has been removed.
Herzallah proudly lists being part of the 'Irvine 11', a group of students arrested after orchestrating a plan to shut down a speech by then-Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's 2010 speech at UC Irvine, in his biography.

Israeli Christian Leader: 'We Must Unite Against Terror'

On Monday, The Jewish Press reported on Father Gabriel Nadaf, a leader in Israel's Greek-Orthodox Church, who wrote a letter to various ambassadors stationed in Israel asking they support the IDF during Operation Protective Edge and unite against terrorists to "safeguard the Holy Land."
"Edmond Burke, the 18th century Irish philosopher and political theorist, said, ‘The only thing necessary for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.’ Therefore, we are all brothers in the face of evil, with no regard to religion, race, and faith. The outcry about the atrocities we are crying out together. As the spiritual father of the Israeli Christians Forum, who encourages the recruitment of Israel Christians to the IDF and full integration of Christians into the Israeli society, I would like to turn to you with a plea to support and back Israel, our Holy land, and its defense forces. The country is under fire and our soldiers are fighting against terrorist organizations, whose sole purpose and goal is to destroy the State of Israel."