Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 27, 2014

HRW's definition of "human shields" changes when Israel is involved

We previously discussed how Human Rights Watch was claiming a very restrictive definition of "human shields" contrary to the clear definition given by the ICRC, to clear Hamas of that charge.

A little further research shows that not only does HRW often use the correct definition of human shielding for other conflicts, but it has tightened up its definition over the years for Israel's enemies.

Here is Human Rights Watch, February 19, 2014, discussing a reported drone attack by US forces against a wedding in Yemen:

The legality of the December 12 attack hinges on both the applicable body of international law and the facts on the ground. If international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, applies to the December 12, 2013 attack, only valid military objectives such as AQAP leaders or fighters could have been lawfully targeted. The burden is on the attacker to take all feasible precautions to ensure that a target is a combatant before conducting an attack and to minimize civilian harm.

Had AQAP members deliberately joined the wedding procession to avoid attack they would have been committing the laws-of-war violation of using “human shields.”

In this case, HRW says that the terrorists merely need to purposefully place themselves around civilians. When Israel is the enemy, HRW says that the civilians must be coerced.

That wasn't always the case. HRW tried very hard to excuse Hezbollah from the accusation of human shielding in Lebanon in 2006, but the excuses they used - feeble as they were - do not apply to Hamas in 2014:

A key element of the humanitarian law violation of shielding is intention: the purposeful use of civilians to render military objectives immune from attack.

As noted above, we documented cases where Hezbollah stored weapons inside civilian homes or fired rockets from inside populated civilian areas. At minimum, that violated the legal duty to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians the hazards of armed conflict, and in some cases it suggests the intentional use of civilians to shield against attack. However, these cases were far less numerous than Israeli officials have suggested. The handful of cases of probable shielding that we did find does not begin to account for the civilian death toll in Lebanon. (The related issue of Hezbollah's illegally using several UN posts near the Lebanon-Israel border as shields is discussed in the next section.)

In addition to its own research, Human Rights Watch carefully reviewed local and international press accounts, IDF and Israeli government statements, and the work of various independent think tanks to evaluate allegations of human shielding by Hezbollah. While the Israeli government and certain commentators have described Hezbollah shielding as widespread, they have not provided convincing evidence to support such allegations.[111] The Israeli government provided some video footage taken from drones showing Hezbollah fighters firing rockets from what appear to be civilian structures, or entering such structures, but the footage gives no indication whether these structures were inhabited by civilians or located in then-populated areas.

The Israeli government's allegations seem to stem from an unwillingness to distinguish the prohibition against human shielding-the intentional use of civilians to shield a military objective from attack-from that against endangering the civilian population by failing to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm, and even from instances where Hezbollah conducted operations in residential areas empty of civilians. Individuals responsible for shielding can be prosecuted for war crimes; failing to fully minimize harm to civilians is not considered a violation prosecutable as a war crime.[112]

To constitute shielding, there needs to be a specific intent to use civilians to deter an attack....

HRW disingenuously gives examples of Hezbollah firing rockets from fields nearby villages and of only taking over uninhabited homes, in order to protect Hezbollah from the charge of war crimes:

While failing to take precautions to protect civilians violates humanitarian law, intentionally making use of civilians to render military forces or a place immune from attack is considered to be the more serious violation of "shielding." Because the definition of shielding incorporates the concept of intent, any individual ordering shielding would almost invariably be committing a war crime.

Well, guess what: Hamas explicitly instructed Gazans to not evacuate their homes (and UNRWA schools) in Hamas-stronghold neighborhoods when Israel warned them to. Here is the webpage of the Ministry of the Interior where they tell Gazans to ignore Israeli warnings and stay in their homes.

HRW, instead of condemning what are clearly cases of human shielding under international law and under their own definitions, is going out of its way to excuse Hamas, downplay their war crimes - and endanger Gazans. In this case we see that twice HRW changed their definition deliberately to excuse first Hezbollah and then Hamas - moving the goalposts as each terror group gets more depraved.

What kind of a "human rights" group tries so hard to excuse violations of human rights?

(NGO Monitor has documented many other examples of HRW's fluid definitions of "human shielding" to defend terrorists from the charge when Israel is involved.)

The hand grenade that saved a life

Israeli media reported on an unusual incident last week where an IDF soldier was shot by a Gaza sniper with a Kalashnikov.

The bullet was blocked - by the soldier's hand grenade.

Gaza casualties by age and gender

In the comments, Vandoren pointed to tabulated data of Gaza casualties based on the Hamas ministry of health numbers as of a day or two ago.

Here is the demographic breakdown by age and gender, showing a rough bell curve heavily favoring males in their late teens, 20s and 30s.

Here is the total casualties compared with Gaza's demographics.

If IDF actions were "indiscriminate," these two sets of data would track closely together. As you can see...they don't.

Keep in mind that these statistics include many people who were killed by Hamas rockets that fell short or secondary explosions from booby trapped houses and the like. The victims of those are far more likely to reflect a distribution in line with the demographics, so a very high percentage of those killed by Hamas actions would be children.

If anyone actually objectively researched the actual number of deaths that can be attributed to the IDF - a highly unlikely scenario in Gaza - then the difference between the demographics and actual dead in Gaza would be even more striking.

UNRWA supplies found in terror tunnel

IDF troops discovered a massive terror tunnel underneath Gaza, that was dug 25 meters deep and had entire underground rooms built to withstand airstrikes.

In these bunkers they found large bags of UNRWA aid.

Clearly UNRWA doesn't hand out these large sacks of rice and other goods directly to Gazans, these sacks could only be obtained from UNRWA employees themselves - who are clearly part of the Hamas tunnel digging teams.

(h/t Yenta)

07/26 Links: Paris's Kristallnacht; Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Terror Tunnels

From Ian:

Paris's Kristallnacht

This was the first time since World War II that an anti-Semitic pogrom took place in France.
Almost all French politicians adopt an attitude of appeasement toward the enemies of Israel and Jews. They act as if they did not see that the hate speech that France finances in the Middle East is now spreading throughout France itself.
No major French television report speaks of Hamas's genocidal Jew-hatred or of the use of Arab women and children as human shields. Criticizing radical Islam on public television is now almost impossible. Members of the Israeli government are never interviewed on French television.
French politicians know that 70% of all the inmates in French prisons are Muslims, and that these prisons have been transformed into recruiting centers for jihadists.

Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Terror Tunnels

As the death toll of Operation Protective Edge rises, the deaths of children are firmly in the spotlight—and rightly so. It pains all reasonable people to hear of children dying as the consequence of war. Hamas and its supporters display gruesome pictures of dead and wounded children in order to gain sympathy for their portrait of Israel as the villain intent on killing Palestinians. In response, Israel cites the need to stop Hamas from firing thousands of rockets at its own children, who are being forced to live in bomb shelters, as well as the need to eliminate the tunnels that Hamas dug into Israel in order to carry out terror attacks against Israelis. One tunnel opening was found underneath an Israeli kindergarten.
But who built those tunnels? The answer is Hamas, of course—using some of the same children who are now trapped under fire in Gaza.
The Institute for Palestine Studies published a detailed report on Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon in the summer of 2012. It reported that tunnel construction in Gaza has resulted in a large number of child deaths.
“At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials”
The author, Nicolas Pelham, explains that Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, “much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies”. (h/t Yenta Press)

"Among the Palestinians, they tell you straight out, 'I want to get rich.'"

Another source of wealth for Hamas leaders was taking over land. "They took over land mainly near the sea in good areas, such as the former Gush Katif, then sold it. In effect, they are the cat guarding the cream - the land - so they were able to take over land and loot it for themselves," Elad explains.
In addition, there is a system in the Gaza Strip of fictitious recruitment of workers for Hamas for the purpose of obtaining pay slips from people overseas paying for it. "They get the payments from overseas according to the workers' names. It has recently been discovered that there are hundreds of fictitious names of soldiers and officials supposedly in Hamas. Actually, the leaders and officials put the money in their own pockets," Elad asserts.
According to various sources, some of Mashaal's money came from the "Syrian fund." Elad explains: "According to these accusations, following an investigation by the US federal authorities, Mashaal was accused of embezzling the entire Syrian fund. There was a separate fund in Syria for Hamas; Mashaal controlled all the movements in the fund when he lived there. As soon as he left Damascus, he took the Syrian fund, which was worth several billion dollars, and distributed it to himself and others. It is believed that Hamas had $1.5-2.5 billion in assets in Syria, which Mashaal took." (h/t Yenta Press)

Times of Israel Live Blog: IDF toll rises to 42 with 2 more deaths; Hamas breaches truce, resumes rocket fire

Kerry meets int’l counterparts in Paris to push for long-term ceasefire after Jerusalem rejects his previous proposal; Gaza death toll said to climb to 1,000 — including Hamas gunmen — as Gazans stock up, recover bodies during lull

The essential EoZ articles from the war so far

Here are the notable articles I have written since the current fighting began, with lots of information and scoops that the mainstream media have been reluctant to report.

For anyone who donates over $180 to the blog over the next week, I'll send all of these articles formatted as an e-book (PDF).

7/8: WHAT REPORTERS NEED TO KNOW during Operation Protective Edge

7/9: Will the State Department condemn Abbas for his own group's rocket fire?

7/9: Who started the fighting?

7/10: A second Fatah terror group is now shooting rockets at Israelis

7/10: Hamas engages in nuclear terrorism as media yawns

7/10: Amazingly, Hamas has no "martyrs!"

7/10: Genocidal math and Mahmoud Abbas' Jew-hatred

7/11: On Thursday, over 150 Gaza rockets fell in Gaza. How many people did they kill?

7/13: Hamas hackers take over Israeli Domino's Pizza Facebook page, hilarity ensues

7/13: The sickness of the "Israelis lied to start a war" meme

7/14: Hamas' message is a bit different in English and Arabic

7/14: Arab writer justifies Palestinian terrorism as mere "anti-colonialist counter-discourse"

7/15: What "proportionality" means

7/16: The REAL statistics of those killed in Gaza

7/16: Media treats Gaza war as a sporting event

7/17: Why I think the IDF is undercounting rockets launched from Gaza

7/18: During the humanitarian truce, Gazans moved rockets into a mosque

7/18: Hamas instructs Gazans on propaganda, "Always call people 'innocent civilians'"

7/20: Did the UNRWA school rockets go to terrorists? Almost certainly - just like their cement

7/20: Dead child porn: Reporters allow emotions to override facts

7/21: Oh, by the way, Hamas' de facto headquarters is in Shifa Hospital

7/21: Media doesn't challenge Norwegian doctor's lies

7/22: HRW's Ken Roth proves his anti-Israel bias in tweet meant to do the opposite

7/22: If only the IDF had Mujahadeen Magical Munitions®

7/22: Half of the dead in Gaza are terrorists

7/23: How the UN counts terrorists as civilians

7/23: UNRWA praised the smuggling of cement into Gaza in 2011. What did they know then?

7/23: Hamas shells field hospital set up to help Gazans

7/24: Hamas Al Qassam offices are next to the emergency room at Shifa Hospital

7/24: Assuming that Israel is less moral than Hamas is pure bigotry

7/24: Poor Yaseen Al Kilani. Hamas says he was killed three times.

7/25: Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth goes to bat for Hamas war crimes

07/25 Links Pt2: Joan Rivers Defends Israel In Epic Rant; Himmelman's Maximum Restraint; #TeamIsrael

From Ian:

Jewish rocker sings Israel support

Los Angeles-based Jewish rocker Peter Himmelman has released a new song in support of Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas terror from Gaza. “Maximum Restraint” challenges claims Israel is responding disproportionately in the current conflict.
According to Himmelman, people “sitting in Santa Monica sipping lattes” are in no place to judge Israel’s response to Hamas rockets.
“It’s a disingenuous fantasy to think that Jews should just turn the other cheek. For Jews, turning the other cheek is a sin,” he says.

Maximum Restraint (written and performed by Peter Himmelman)

Joan Rivers -- GOES OFF on Epic Israel/Palestine Rant

Christians are being forced out of Bethlehem - by Muslims

You know how Israel haters love to claim that Israel's "occupation" is somehow targeting Christians and forcing them to leave Bethlehem, not explaining why Muslims keep moving into that town?

From Standpoint:

While Bethlehem remains the most populous Christian city in the West Bank, its Christian population, as in the West Bank generally, is shrinking dramatically. Only 50 years ago, Christians constituted 70 per cent of Bethlehem's population. Today they make up just 15 per cent. Christians number approximately 38,000 people in the West Bank, representing 2 per cent of the population.

"We used to be many. Now there are so few of us left. Everyone is trying to leave," says Samir, another salesman in a neighbouring shop selling Orthodox icons. Worrying about the consequences of complaining about the situation, Samir declined to use his real name.

"My mother doesn't like to walk in the street at night because her hair is uncovered, and people come up behind her and make rude comments," he tells me. During Christmas celebrations last December, women in their twenties on a visit from London with their parents and siblings complained of being harassed by a gang of male youths as they stood watching a festive performance in Manger Square. The gang did not desist until some local women came to stand nearby and told the boys to stop.

Everyone agrees that economic hardship and the low birthrate of the Christian community are the primary causes for decline. Yet in recent years Christians in Bethlehem also complain of a growing climate of intimidation from Islamic extremists.

"We announce to the nation joyously that with the grace of God the ideology of global jihad has attained a foothold in the West Bank, after everyone had tried to abort every seed planted there," stated the message from the Mujahideen Shura Council, an al-Qaeda-linked group as it declared its presence in the West Bank last December. Three of its members were killed by the Israeli Shin Bet (security service) after they were suspected of planning a terror attack.

Members of the Salafi movement — an ultra-conservative current within the Sunni branch of Islam — have been based in the Gaza Strip for the past decade or so, but in recent months their presence has spread to the West Bank. While most Salafis are non-violent, the extremist fringes have a strong jihadist element that borrows from al-Qaeda's ideology, as can be witnessed in Gaza, Syria and the Sinai, where in recent years such groups have thrived. The stated endgame of the extremists is to establish an Islamic caliphate — and Christians, Jews and others are considered infidels.

In Bethlehem, residents talk about an increasingly antagonistic climate between faiths. Just weeks prior to the Pope's visit, a proselytising group of Muslims stood near the entrance of the Church of the Nativity, handing out copies of the Koran in multiple languages, and telling people on their way to the church to pray to Allah instead. "It was insulting. I feel like I don't live in a Christian place any more," says Samir, adding that such events are happening more and more often.

A few days after the incident outside the Church of the Nativity, he describes celebrating the feast of St George in another church a few miles outside Bethlehem when a violent brawl between Christian and Muslim worshippers broke out. Stones were thrown, and a video of the event shows people running away in fear. Samir said the event was terrifying. "They will throw us out of our own country."

The rest of the article is interesting, too, and the Israeli leadership doesn't get off scot free (gangs that intimidate Christians in Nazareth are reportedly ignored by Israeli police, for example) but it also deals with army service for Israeli Christians and how they are reacting to the idea, as well as a nascent movement to redefine themselves as Arameans and not Arab.

"Death to the Jews!" at The Hague (video), plus (UPDATE)

Apparently from Thursday at The Hague, Netherlands::

Here are some interesting parts:

At 1:35, a person shouts "Those who do not jump are Jews!" followed by ten seconds of Muslims jumping to avoid being tagged with that horrible title.

At 2:27 a chant starts, "Al Maut, Al Maut, Al Maut al Yahud" - "Kill, Kill, Kill the Jews." That goes on for 30 seconds, and then comes the chant of "Beware, Oh Jews, the army of Mohammed is coming!"

According to a YouTube commenter, at one point there is a call to forcefully undress a female journalist/blogger who was recording the hatefest.

UPDATE: The authorities had a lukewarm reaction, saying that they needed to translate the Arabic to determine if any laws had been broken,

While we are at it, here's some bonus Jew-hatred from an Islamic Jihad spokesman, where the ever popular blood libel is thrown around:

(h/t Eugene)

07/25 Links Pt1: Israel and the Burden of Being Right; Depravity at the UN Human Rights Council

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: UN probe of Israel will only encourage Hamas war crimes

There you go again," as Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter. Once again the United Nations Human Rights Council has voted – with the United States dissenting – to conduct a so-called "investigation" of Israel's military responses to Hamas's double war crimes. Once again Israel will have to decide whether to feed the kangaroos that make up this court by cooperating with yet another phony investigation whose outcome is predetermined. Yet again Israel is presented with a Hobson's choice: If it refuses to cooperate, it will blamed for denying the investigatory commission relevant information; if it cooperates it will lend credibility to a conclusion that has already been reached.
This Hamas-inspired investigation is an important part of Hamas's double war crime strategy: By firing its rockets from civilian areas and buildings – even Ban Ki-moon acknowledges that it does – Hamas seeks to have Israel kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. This Hamas-designed body count, and the accompanying photographs, inevitably leads to the kind of one-sided investigation in which the UNHRC specializes. The resulting one-sided condemnation, which Hamas can always count on, then helps it win support in Europe, South America and other parts of the world, as well as in the media and universities.
By joining in this Hamas strategy, indeed becoming a central part of it, the UNHRC encourages Hamas to repeat its rocket fire against Israeli civilians, its tunneling into Israel to kill and kidnap Israelis and its placement of rockets and tunnel entrances in civilian areas. The countries voting for this investigation are fully aware of what they are encouraging. They have the blood of future innocent Palestinians and Israelis on their hands.

Anne Bayefsky: Depravity at the UN Human Rights Council

The UN Human Rights Council held a special session in Geneva on July 23, 2014 to declare effectively that Israelis do not have human rights.
The session ended with a resolution that launched an "investigation" into what the Council decided in advance were Israel's violations of Palestinian rights. The vote was 29 in favor, 1 against and 17 abstentions.
The Obama administration voted against – after joining and legitimizing the virulently anti-Jewish Council for the past five years, and now feigning disappointment for American cameras.
The Europeans abstained because they did not want to upset their violent Muslim minorities, and with their sordid past, the resolution's message wasn't too foreign in any case. A few cowardly countries that Israelis have magnanimously befriended over the years also abstained.

Israel and the Burden of Being Right

Generally when someone says they “hate to say I told you so,” it’s fair to doubt they really hate saying it. But in Israel’s case it’s believable. The current conflict with Gaza is proving Israel correct about its various claims with regard to Hamas, and the result is the treacherous urban warfare the world is currently witnessing.
As Evelyn Gordon wrote earlier, the vast tunnel networks prove Israel was right about letting in dual-use items that Hamas would only appropriate for its terror war against Israeli civilians. The West should, in fact, be embarrassed by its enabling of those tunnels: pressuring Israel to let in those materials was the international community’s way of using Israeli civilians as guinea pigs in a grand experiment. They didn’t believe Israeli predictions, and wanted the premises tested. Now they have been, and innocents are paying the price.

Hamas Mega-Attack Planned through Gaza Terror Tunnels

Hamas had apparently been preparing a murderous assault on Israeli civilian targets for the coming Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which begins on September 24, according anonymous sources in the Israeli security services, as reported today by the Israeli daily Maariv.
The Hamas plan consisted of what was to be a surprise attack in which 200 fighters would be dispatched through each of dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel, and seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians.
Israeli soldiers already frustrated a surprise assault by Hamas through one tunnel from Gaza into the Eshkol district of Israel on July 19. The Hamas fighters escaped back into the tunnel, but the clash cost the lives of two Israel Defense Force [IDF] troops.

Has Fatah officially declared a third intifada?

The Fatah Facebook page published this today:

The caption says "The decision came from Fatah for revolt, revolution, O free."

This comes after an announcement from the same group claiming that they carried out a shooting attack against the IDF south of Hebron last night.

And the Al Aqsa Brigades claimed that during the massive demonstration/riot at Kalandia yesterday that they shot weapons at the checkpoint.

Khaled Abu Toameh tweeted this:

Fatah's armed wing, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, says its men carried out 3 shooting attacks in West Bank in past 48 hours.
— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) July 25, 2014

Putting this all together, plus the march itself which was clearly organized and hardly "spontaneous," it appears that Fatah - not Hamas, but the "moderate" Fatah - is trying to start a third intifada. Explicitly.

Fatah, of course, has a leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the darling of the West for his peaceful ways. And he is not stopping his own people from declaring a new violent uprising.On the contrary - he is essentially supporting Hamas rockets, as we've seen.

I'd be surprised if Abbas explicitly lends support for a new uprising. More likely he is encouraging it more quietly to use as leverage to threaten Israel to get his demands.

That's what his hero Yasir Arafat would have done.

Is Human Rights Watch really biased against Israel, or is it merely that they are zealous about protecting everyone's human rights and Zionists are sensitive to their criticisms of Israel?

HRW chief Ken Roth clearly wants the world to believe that it is the latter. As he wrote a couple of days ago in this sarcastic tweet:

People accept @HRW reporting as fair & accurate around globe but when it comes to poor, helpless, defenseless #Israel we're suddenly biased.
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 22, 2014

If what he says is true, then we would expect HRW to be just as energetic in uncovering human rights abuses from Gaza terror groups as it is for attacking Israel.

Yet here is what he tweeted last night:

#Hamas is putting civilians at risk but "no evidence" it forces them to stay--definition of human shields: @NYTimes. http://t.co/9yvh1cRSer
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 25, 2014

Roth chooses to refer to a NYT article in order to defend Hamas.

What exactly did The New York Times write that Ken Roth finds so wonderful as to defend Hamas?

Nothing is ever so clear in the complex and often brutal calculus of urban warfare. There is no evidence that Hamas and other militants force civilians to stay in areas that are under attack — the legal definition of a human shield under international law. But it is indisputable that Gaza militants operate in civilian areas, draw return fire to civilian structures, and on some level benefit in the diplomatic arena from the rising casualties. They also have at times encouraged residents not to flee their homes when alerted by Israel to a pending strike and, having prepared extensively for war, did not build civilian bomb shelters.

Guess what? The New York Times is wrong.

The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols do not use the words "human shields" anywhere. But the ICRC article on customary international humanitarian law has a fairly comprehensive description:

Rule 97. The use of human shields is prohibited.

State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts.
International and non-international armed conflicts

In the context of international armed conflicts, this rule is set forth in the Third Geneva Convention (with respect to prisoners of war), the Fourth Geneva Convention (with respect to protected civilians) and Additional Protocol I (with respect to civilians in general).[1] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.[2]

...The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations.[18]

...It can be concluded that the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.

While various military manuals do have specific prohibitions against forcing civilians to act as human shields, international law considers any situation where military targets (weapons tunnels, caches, rockets launchers) are deliberately placed near civilians to be cases of human shielding.

Under international law, even if Hamas doesn't force civilians to be in a certain area, they are considered human shields according to the ICRC. Israel is right, and the NYT is wrong.

Ken Roth could have chosen to attack the New York Times for narrowing the definition in such a way as to downplay Hamas culpability for this war crime - which is what a zealous human rights defender would be expected to do. Instead, he went to bat for Hamas against the civilians of Gaza he supposedly cares so much about. Even the Times article says explicitly that "Experts in international law say that...Hamas is legally obligated to minimize its operations near civilians" yet Roth doesn't want to highlight how bad Hamas is, but to emphasize Hamas is not really that bad. Roth is giving a terror group the benefit of the doubt that Israel has never received.

The New York Times article was written before yesterday's events at the UNRWA school, but Roth's tweet was written after details already were being published. And already at that time it was known that Hamas did force civilians to stay in the UNRWA shelter even as Israel was trying to get the civilians evacuated. As Washington Free Beacon recounts the events:

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness had similarly accused the IDF of preventing a civilian evacuation.

“Over the course of the day UNRWA tried 2 coodinate [sic] with the Israeli Army a window for civilians 2 leave & it was never granted,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted, following the strike.

However, in an unusual move late Thursday, multiple IDF sources rejected UNRWA’s claims and characterized them as outright falsehoods when reached by the Washington Free Beacon.

“For two days we were trying to move people out of that school in particular and the Beit Hanoun area in general,” said an IDF official who was involved in the interactions between the IDF, UNRWA, and International Red Cross (ICRC) leading up to the incident.

The official continued: “This morning we sought a cease-fire in the area and a humanitarian evacuation of civilians, but Hamas refused—because they wanted to keep civilians in the area to protect their fighters who were firing on the IDF,” the source said. The claim by Gunness and UNRWA that the IDF did not respond to their request to evacuate civilians, the source said, is “a flat-out complete and total lie.”

Who is telling the truth? I see no reason to doubt the IDF version of events. But the issue is that Ken Roth, whose very job is to prevent war crimes against civilians, chooses to ignore any evidence of Hamas war crimes - in this case, of using human shields even according to the falsely restrictive definition in the New York Times!

If Roth's only bias was towards human rights, then why does he go out of his way to excuse and minimize Hamas war crimes - war crimes under any interpretation of the Geneva Conventions?

The only explanation is that Roth is biased, all right - but not for defending Gaza civilians' human rights from Hamas.

Which tells you volumes about Ken Roth.

(h/t Seth Miller)

This war may have prevented a huge planned terror attack

I've been seeing unsourced rumors like this one (via email):

From the 48 Hamas prisoners that have been captured, the intelligence have been interrogating them and the most terrifying, and horrific picture is being built.

They are being investigated about the many tunnels that have been found and dug under many kibbutzim that surround Gaza. The most terrifying detail is being uncovered that Hamas had a plan to attack all the settlements and kibbutzim in the area this year on Rosh Hashanah with an invasion of over 200 terrorists into almost all the settlements in the area. The tunnels went under the kibbutzim under the kindergartens and dining rooms and other areas within the kibbutz perimeters. They planned to occupy the whole area and kill as many Israelis as possible.

This could have been the worst terror attack in the history of terrorism. Thousands of people, including women and children would have been slaughtered in this planned attack.

Could this be true?

According to NRG, Bibi said something like this in a cabinet meeting yesterday, although without some of the more specific details like the "Rosh Hashahah" timeframe::

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed yesterday (Thursday) that the intent of the organization (Hamas) was to use dozens of tunnels simultaneously.

In the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu told ministers that "these tunnels were meant to allow the enemy to attack simultaneously and perform mass attacks on Israeli citizens."

Security sources stress that if the political leadership wants to eliminate the problem of the tunnels, the IDF needed more time because we are not even halfway done. They say this unplanned war with Hamas prevented a disaster on the order of the Yom Kippur War, which would reduce the State of Israel to its knees.

(UPDATE: A later article did mention the Rosh Hashanah scenario.)

Bibi also alluded to such a mass attack in a speech a few days ago:

"More tunnels were discovered during last night's action, tunnels that are added to the many others we have found, some of which had already reached Israeli territory. Hamas invested years of work and vast capital in them in order to perpetrate large-scale terrorist attacks and carry out abductions. We found handcuffs and sedatives. There is no question here. This was a strategic network for Hamas in which it had installed fortifications, electricity, cables, all in order to infiltrate, carry out large-scale attacks and kidnap [Israelis]."

We do know that there were several tunnels into Israel that were in close proximity to Israeli communities, or on their way, possibly with multiple exits on the Israel side that would facilitate such an attack:

The size (both length and height/width) and sophistication of the tunnels suggest a larger operation than just snatching a person.

The idea of simultaneous attacks by Islamists against civilians is not exactly novel.

(h/t Yerushalimey, YMedad, Josh Korn)

As Gaza sends rockets to Israel, Israel sends food and fuel to Gaza

Major media still refers to Israel's "siege" of Gaza.

Yet not only hasn't there been any sort of "siege" by any definition, there isn't even a siege today during wartime.

In the entire history of warfare, never has a nation given so much aid to the enemy as Israel does right now.

Israel, so vilified in so many demonstrations and articles and clueless newscasts, is providing food, fuel, medicines, setting up a field hospital, allowing patients to go to hospitals in Israel, and even helping fix the infrastructure that is being damaged by Hamas rockets!

The IDF's COGAT is even giving instructions on how people around the world can get their own humanitarian supplies into Gaza.

Here is their summary as of Thursday morning:

Usually, the Kerem Shalom crossing is closed on Friday - but the IDF is opening it for industrial fuel, diesel and cooking gas.

This is, of course, all but ignored by the media intent to paint Israel as targeting children.

It's amazing how so many reporters in the region can miss so many stories.

Yesterday, Israellycool made the interesting discovery that many of the names of the Gaza casualties listed by Al Jazeera (which gets its names from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry) were listed more than once.

He counted about 33 names that were listed twice, out of less than 600 listed with known names.

I just looked at the list myself, and I count even more - some 42 names out of 592 are listed more than once! They usually have different spellings but it is clear they are the same names.

Even worse, two people are listed as being killed three times! And by sheer coincidence - they are both children!

8 or 9 year old Yaseen Ibrahim Dib al-Kilani was also listed as Yaseen Ibrahim Dieb Alkilani and Yaser Ibrahim Dib al-Kilani.

13 or 14 year old Hiba Hamed Mohammed Alshiekh Khalil/Hiba Hamid Alsheikh Khalil was also listed three times, the second spelling done twice and noted as a duplicate in the list, but still there and counted separately.

This means 7% of the names being solemnly offered to the world media are double or triple counted.

By contrast, I only counted 5 duplicates in the PCHR list of the over 1400 names listed after Cast Lead.

Of course, this list doesn't list the other lies - people who were killed by Hamas rockets, people who were executed as "collaborators" (reportedly 9 of those,) and those who may have died of natural causes that are being counted as casualties. Hamas doesn't exactly have a great track record of being honest.

My only question for the many reporters still using Hamas numbers: Once it is proven that a source is a liar, is it standard practice to continue to trust it?

You know, I'm not a professional journalist, only a mere blogger. Perhaps I don't understand the rules as well as the guys who get paid to do this. I'm willing to learn. After all, if I start loosening my standards, blogging the news will become a whole lot easier.