Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 31, 2014

07/31 Links Pt2: B-H Levy: The ugly tide washing across Europe; Obama's Walter Cronkite Moment

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Levy: The ugly tide washing across Europe - WSJ

The double standard is odious. And it has become increasingly evident across Europe in the past month. Bluntly anti-Semitic slogans have marred most European demonstrations "in support of the people of Gaza." Residents of Frankfurt and Dortmund were horrified in mid-July to see neo-Nazi groups join hands with left-wing Islamists in a grim chant: "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas." The center of London was blocked on July 19 by thousands who gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Kensington to shout their hatred for Jews.
Not to mention Amsterdam, the city of Spinoza, Europe's capital of tolerance, where in certain neighborhoods it has become practically impossible to wear a yarmulke in public without running the risk of being insulted or assaulted.
For someone who has advocated, as I have, for nearly half a century the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a fully recognized Israel, this is truly discouraging. That there are sincere men and women among the demonstrators I do not doubt. But I would urge them to think twice before letting themselves be manipulated by those whose motive is not solidarity but hate, and whose true agenda is not peace in Palestine but death to Israel—and, as often as not, alas, death to Jews.

The Left Hate Israel Because It Is Everything They Despise: Capitalist, Conservative and Patriotic

Israel is a distillation of everything leftists hate about Western nations: capitalist, conservative and fiercely patriotic. It is a projection of their own prejudices about the supposed injustices of societies that cherish the ‘wrong’ values and the ‘wrong’ people. They don't share the Palestinians' spiritual beliefs, but they share a common enemy. Indeed, if Israel was removed from the equation, its critics would have little good to say about Gaza or Hamas. Theirs is a marriage of convenience.
The Left’s use of the Israeli-Arab situation as a platform for moral preening, and as a metaphor for its own hang-ups, blinds it to the evils of Hamas and the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood. It seems oblivious to the ideological conflict between Islamic fundamentalists and Western progressives, because it persists in regarding the former as pet victims of the latter. It may discover the hard way that it is giving comfort to an enemy that makes no distinction between liberal hand-wringers and any other infidels.

Hey, Liberals Who Oppose Israel: You’re All Right-Wingers Now

These, dear liberals, are the values you claim to espouse. Before you say one more thing about this conflict, ask yourself which side is fighting for a society most like the one in which you’re likely to want to live, and then support that side passionately and vigorously. And understand, please, that we’re at war, and that philosophical inquiries, existential ponderings, and musings about identity are all welcomed and valued in free societies, but that to entertain such soulful pursuits said free societies must first survive the attacks of their enemies. Unless you’re willing to embrace everything you claim to despise, we’d love to see you joining us in this war; Lord knows we could use all the help we can get.

The combat ethos is alive and well

An outsider observing the Israel Defense Forces' fighting during Operation Protective Edge will notice right away that brigade, battalion and company commanders make up a large proportion of the wounded and casualties. The Golani Brigade alone has lost a deputy battalion commander, and among its wounded are three platoon commanders and a brigade commander. Three officers are now vying to succeed the fallen commander. This is true not only in the regular army, but also -- maybe even more so in light of their stronger connection to civilian life -- among the reservists.
Even those who oppose the scope of the operation cannot ignore the obvious "IDF spirit" of it. This is the spirit that leads the IDF in its best moments. The battles of the 1948 War of Independence established the norm of "Corporals, retreat -- the commanders will cover you!" During reprisal operations carried out by the paratroopers in the 1950s, the officers' command "After me!" became the guide for IDF fighters and commanders. For the first time, general ideas like professionalism, personal example, confronting obstacles, and the rule that "We don't go back until we get it done" became iron-clad rules of thumb.

Flemish doctor refuses to treat 90-year old Jewish woman: "Go to Gaza"

From Joods Actueel:

A Flemish doctor, who was manning the telephones Wednesday night for a group of physicians, refused to provide a 90-year-old Jewish woman who had suffered a rib fracture with medical help. "I will not! Send her to Gaza for a few hours, then she will not feel pain anymore," was his reply.

The son of the 90-year-old Bertha Klein called the doctor hotline around 11:00 PM yesterday. His mother was in agonizing pain after she had suffered a rib fracture. The doctor knew very quickly that it was a Jewish patient, her name and address in Antwerp betrayed all that, as well as the accent (Klein is American).

When the family asked if the doctor could come to help with her terrible pain, he replied bluntly, "I will not," and hung up the phone. The family called back immediately, and the doctor said, "Send her to the Gaza Strip for several hours, she will not feel pain then."

The family was in shock and meanwhile phoned a friend, Samuel Markowitz, a district councilor in Antwerp for the Open VLD. Markowitz is also an EMT and knows that a physician should never refuse a patient. He called th hotline himself and confronted the doctor with his statements (the conversation was also recorded for later proof).

The doctor admitted the facts and said that he said this in "a fit of emotion." Markowitz complained to the head of the Department of Health for the Antwerp region, while the grandson of the 90-year-old woman, Hershy Taffel, registered a complaint with the police for racism and xenophobia.

Mr. Taffel tells how his grandmother burst into tears. "This reminds me of what we underwent in Europe 70 years ago, I never thought that day would ever be repeated."

There have been a series of antisemitic incidents in Belgium lately:

Michael Freilich, the editor-in-chief of Joods Actueel, said the incident is particularly alarming because it comes amid a string of incidents that have occurred since the start of Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza on July 8 and that involve boycotts against Jews in Belgium.

Among the other incidents: an Orthodox Jewish woman was refused service at a clothes store in Antwerp, and police removed a sign in French and Turkish from a café near Liege that said dogs were allowed but Zionists and Jews were not.

A little about Hamas' RPG-29

Times of Israel reports:

Very little face-to-face fighting is taking place in Gaza. Mimicking the tactics used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas heavily relies on two types of weaponry: anti-tank missiles and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The anti-tank weapon of choice is the Russian shoulder-launched RPG-29, and is used against infantry troops and armored vehicles.

If the RPG-29 is Hamas' main method of targeting IDF troops, what sort of damage does it do if it hits a building?

The Strategy Page says:

The RPG-29 is the most common recent development of the RPG line. It entered production just before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It is available through legitimate, or black market, arms dealers and is more expensive than the RPG-7 (which is manufactured by many countries.) RPG-29 launchers cost over $500 each, and the rockets go for about $300 each.

With a ten pound launcher firing a 14.7 pound 105mm rocket, the RPG-29 warhead is designed to get past some forms of reactive armor (ERA). The larger weapon (3.3 feet long when carried out, six feet long when ready to fire and 65 percent heavier than the 85mm RPG-7) is more difficult to carry around and fire, but has an effective range of 500 meters. The warhead can also penetrate five feet of reinforced concrete.

This is amplified bythe World Guns website in Russia:

When used against buildings or entrenchments, the PG-29V can penetrate more than 1,5 meter(5ft) of concrete or brick wall and then cause significant damage to troops beyond the wall.

If this weapon can pulverize 1.5 meters of reinforced concrete, imagine what it can do to civilian houses and buildings in Gaza - and the people inside them - when their walls are probably less than one tenth that thickness.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Only IDF weapons cause damage and casualties in Gaza. Hamas weapons magically only hit Jews.

Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel by Joshua Muravchik is a wonderful overview of the history of how Israel went from being the darling of the left in 1967 to becoming the victim of the UN's infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution in 1975.

Muravchik expertly identifies, and dissects, the factors that turned the Left against Israel in such a short time.

It isn't pretty.

Muravchik identifies a number of key factors that caused this stunning public relations victory for the anti-Israel crowd. The first is Yasir Arafat, who brilliantly modeled the PLO after the anti-colonialist movement of Algeria and then cultivated, and took advantage, of relations with communist China and the Soviet Union, which crucially provided the PLO with extensive propaganda support that started bleeding into Western leftist journalist writings. Suddenly, the Arab cause turned from one explicitly geared towards destroying Israel into a "Palestinian" struggle against colonialism and imperialism. These "progressive" codewords were eagerly taken up by Western socialists and leftists, especially in Europe.

The second factor in giving the PLO legitimacy was, ironically, terrorism. Muravchik enumerates every airline hijacking and airport attack in the late 1960s and early 1970s, exposing how easily European leaders caved to the hijackers' demands, in the hope that they would be left alone next time.

The twin to that strategy was the Arab oil embargo that started in 1973. The EEC (precursor to the EU) responded with a pro-Arab position on the Middle East: calling on unconditional full Israeli withdrawal from lands gained in 1967 without negotiations or border adjustments envisioned in UNSC 242 and did not call on Arabs to make peace with Israel.

In other words, during these two crucial tests of European nations to either stick to their principles or to cave to blackmail, the European nations caved.

Psychologically, one does not want to think of oneself as a craven hypocrite who knuckles under to threats.So the only way to not fall into self-loathing is to find "human rights" justifications for cowardice.

Muravchik also details how the Non-Aligned Movement took over the UN, and brought the Palestinian issue as the single biggest agenda item in that body. He also highlights how Jewish born antisemite Bruno Kreisky, chancellor of Austria and vice president of the Socialist International, singlehandedly turned that body from pro-Israel to anti-Israel.

Finally, Muravchik details how the academic Left fell under the spell of a fraud: Edward Said. Said managed with his one work, Orientalism, to seduce generations of students into the romantic ideal of the East as being ruthlessly exploited and subjugated by the West. Said later admitted was really meant specifically to help Palestinian nationalism.

The remaining favor that the Left held towards Israel disappeared when it elected its first non-Labor government, led by Menachem Begin, a figure that most on the Left disliked viscerally. Even after the peace agreement with Egypt they didn't warm up to him, and the Lebanon war solidified the direction that they were already going in.

The book then goes on to describe how Israeli post-Zionism started to affect both Israeli and international views of the Jewish state. he goes into detail on how B'Tselem was founded and how it tried to be both a human rights organization and an political advocacy group - which is contradictory. Muravchik describes the importance of Israel's "New Historians" on Israel's self-image as well as how the world looked at the state. And he shows how Ha'aretz is complicit in demonizing Israel from the inside.

The author then masterfully takes apart the hypocrisy of the new Left's organizations that have taken on their anti-Israel cause. He dismantles the ISM, exposes HRW's insane anti-Israel stance (pointing out how their MENA head Sarah Leah Whitson went out of her way to praise Moammar Qaddafi,) and destroys Walt and Mearsheimer and their ideological cousins from Richard Falk to J-Street.

The remarkable penultimate chapter lays out the best liberal pro-Israel arguments against its critics, going from the outbreak of the second Intifada through the building of the separation barrier (and the bias of the ICJ,) the Lebanon war, Operation Cast Lead, Goldstone and beyond. The very arguments raging today against Israel in Gaza are all discussed and masterfully defeated.

Making David into Goliath is one of the best liberal defenses of Israel ever written.

07/31 Links P1: Richard Kemp: Double standards, moral cowardice; Joan Rivers Strikes Again

From Ian:

Richard Kemp: Double standards, moral cowardice

Protecting his people, U.S. President Barack Obama sends drones to kill Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, causing civilian casualties, while castigating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for defending his own people. The failure of EU nations to reject last week's UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning Israel for war crimes was shameful.
Such double standards and moral cowardice validate Hamas' use of human shields, encourage other terrorist groups to follow suit and incite anti-Israel violence and the sort of vile anti-Semitic protests we see in European capitals.
If Western leaders will not support Israel's fight against terror, how will they fight the same terrorists when they reach their own shores?

Col. Richard Kemp: Israeli Pilot Aborted Gaza Strike 17 Times to Protect Civilians; Jewish People Should be Proud of the State of Israel (INTERVIEW)

DD: Finally, do you have a message to the Jewish People?
RK: I would say that the Jewish people should be extremely proud of the state of Israel, they should try their best to disregard the terrible anti-Israeli propaganda that is designed solely to contribute to the conspiracy to exterminate the state of Israel – I myself, am personally outraged by the shocking anti-Semitic violence and verbal attacks that have been triggered by this conflict against Jews, especially in Paris and Germany, but also in Britain and other countries – it’s absolutely despicable and should be fought by authorities as vigorously as possible.
Israel is the one country in the western world today that is standing up for its morality and for its values against the onslaught of international jihad.

Andrew Bolt: Trapped in Gaza How Hamas punishes reporters for the truth

HAMAS is not just targeting Israeli civilians, threatening Gazans and using them as humans shields.
It has another terror tactic: intimidating foreign journalists…
Reporter Peter Stefanovic, of the Nine Network’s news, stationed in Gaza, received a surge of abuse and threats when he tweeted that he had seen rockets fired into Israel from near his hotel, in a civilian area…
John Reed, a reporter for Britain’s Financial Times, tweeted about seeing “two rockets fired toward Israel from near al-Shifa hospital (the largest in Gaza), even as more bombing victims were brought in”. He was also subject to threats and abuse.
The Wall Street Journal’s reporter Nick Casey fell foul of Hamas by reporting that Shifa hospital was Hamas’s control centre. On July 21, Casey posted a photo on Twitter of a chief Hamas spokesman being interviewed from a room in Shifa hospital in front of a makeshift backdrop of a photo of a destroyed house… Almost immediately, Casey received a flood of online threats. Two days later, the tweet was deleted…

Melanie Phillips: What our leaders would say if they really cared about defending Britain's Jews

Even more appalling is the silence in the face of all this of the political class.
Sure, the occasional Lib Dem is slapped down for blurting out some ripe anti-Jewish canard. But no politician has addressed this for what it is: a fundamental crisis of decency, which is a knife through the moral heart of Britain.
Anti-Semitism singles out Jews for treatment applied to no other people: the application of double standards, false claims they are committing crimes of which they are instead the victims, and demonic conspiratorial powers. This is precisely the treatment applied to Israel.
Anti-Semitism can never be eradicated. Yet much could be done to push it back under its stone if both the Prime Minister and leader of the opposition were to display moral leadership and state a number of home truths. This is what David Cameron should say: ‘I am utterly appalled by the attacks on the Jewish people on the streets of Britain and in our public discourse. This hatred and bigotry is being fuelled by warped and distorted reporting about the Gaza war.

Douglas Murray - Anti-Semitism and Israel

In this week’s Spectator, Melanie Phillips suggests that anti-Semitism is on the rise, fueled by the events in the Middle East. Douglas Murray and Ben Soffa, Secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, discuss whether this is the case...

From i24News:

Israel's Shin Bet discovered the existence of a Hamas air commando unit. In 2010, ten Hamas commandos were sent to Malaysia to participate in paragliding training, with the end goal being to use it to carry out terror attacks on Israel.

This information came to light during the investigation of a Hamas fighter arrested by the IDF a few days ago and investigated by the Shin Bet. According to the Shin Bet, overnight on July 20th, the IDF arrested a Hamas military man apparently in charge of a terror cell in the area of Karara in Kahn Yunis in the Gaza Strip.

During the man's investigation, his involvement in the paragliding training came to light as well as the intention of Hamas to use this training to kidnap Israeli soldiers. In addition, the suspect revealed preparatory plans for an anti-tank ambush and revealed a sniper position on the tenth floor of the Palestinian Red Crescent building in Kahn Yunis.

I wonder that the International Committee of the Red Cross thinks about that?

The paraglider story seems incomplete to me; I don't see how a paraglider can help kidnap soldiers...although it could distract soldiers while a second group comes out of tunnels. The story ends with

The final detail that came to light during the investigation as that Hamas was striving to carry out a "quality" terror attack that would be singular in nature and important, hence the plan to use paragliders.

There was another interesting detail:

In the middle of June 2014, he went through refresher course that included training on other weapons, among them rifles, Kalashnikovs, m-16 PKCs, RPGs, and the use of explosive material. He also learned different methods for kidnapping soldiers and how to stay in tunnels for long periods of time. The suspect was set to finish the course by the end of Ramadan at the end of July 2014.

The timing of a refresher course seems to lend credence to the story, now disputed, that there was a plan for a major attack around Rosh Hashanah.

I don't know about the timing but clearly the huge number of tunnels weren't built just for a single kidnapping.

Times of Israel reports:

Hamas has executed more than 30 suspected collaborators in the Gaza Strip over the past few days, a Palestinian news agency reported on Monday.

Unnamed Palestinian security sources in Gaza told Palestine Press News Agency that Hamas has managed to apprehend dozens of suspected spies in the northern neighborhood of Shejaiya — which saw heavy fighting with the IDF last week — and summarily executed them following a short investigation. The sources said that many of the suspects were caught with weapons, telephones, and SIM cards from the Israeli cell provider Orange.

Hamas has undertaken numerous anti-collaboration campaigns in the Gaza Strip over the past years, offering amnesty to repentant Israeli spies. In May, the Hamas government executed two condemned collaborators for divulging information which Israel used to kill two Palestinians.

In November 2012, Hamas men on motorcycles were filmed dragging bodies of accused collaborators through the streets of Gaza.

Last week, the Palestinian daily Al-Quds reported that collaborators in Gaza were using “special signals” to communicate with Israeli aircraft. They were firing tracer bullets near homes that were subsequently targeted by the Israeli Air Force.

This may be in addition to four "collaborators" executed in the early days of the war.

Wattan TV last week gave details. An unnamed Qassam Brigades terrorist told Arabic media that Wartime is not a time for trials which will only end up with the suspect being executed anyway. So Hamas is executing the suspects immediately in order to be sensitive to the families' honor.

Some suspects are merely shot in the feet and placed under house arrest. Others are executed immediately.

The source said, "The death penalty is no longer done as it was in the past, Our approach has changed, for several reasons, both internal and to preserve the names of families who no doubt have the resistance fighters and activists; we will not let the weak ones distort the reputation and the reputation of their children over their lifetimes."

He continued, "The implementation team to execute the spy is then transfers him to a hospital and places him in the morgue, and so he takes his punishment alone without his family being involved, and the same time be a message to the Zionists that their eyes are gouged."

Of course, once he is in the morgue, he is counted as one of those civilians killed by Israel.

The Hamas Ministry of the Interior warned potential spies in the early days of the war about consequences for their actions.

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE: There have also been reports in Hebrew media of Hamas killing five people protesting the situation on Sunday night. I have not been able to verify that in Arabic media reports yet.

Spanish journalist - off the record - says Hamas would kill Gaza reporters if they filmed rocket fire

I have been on a bit of a rant about Gaza reporters giving only one side of the story.

This post by Israeli media figure Michael Grynszpan helps explain why:

I met today with a Spanish journalist who just came back from Gaza. We talked about the situation there. He was very friendly. I asked him how comes we never see on television channels reporting from Gaza any Hamas people, no gunmen, no rocket launcher, no policemen.. We only see civilians on these reports, mostly women and children.
He answered me frankly: "It's very simple, we did see Hamas people there launching rockets, they were close to our hotel, but if ever we dared pointing our camera on them they would simply shoot at us and kill us."

Wooh, impressive. Then I asked him "would you mind saying that on camera? I can film you explaining this..."

For some reason I cannot really understand he refused and almost ran away. I guess my camera is as dangerous as Hamas threats...

So just for you to know, the truth will never appear on the images you see on television.

While this can - to some extent - excuse the reporting directly from Gaza, it does not excuse the media organizations that employ them. In fact, it makes them more culpable.

It is worth reminding people about how reporters in southern Lebanon dealt with Hezbollah intimidation in 2006.

CNN's Nic Robertson dutifully accompanied Hezbollah on a planned tour of a bombed out building, repeating Hezbollah's talking points about not seeing any military targets there and not telling viewers that it was staged entirely by Hezbollah. Only when he was safely back in the US, and challenged on TV about his report, >did he admit the truth, as reported by Newsbusters

Hezbollah has “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations,” that the terrorist group “had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath,” and he even contradicted Hezbollah’s self-serving spin: “There's no doubt that the [Israeli] bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”

To his credit, Anderson Cooper was the only one of scores of journalists who exposed the facade of impartiality while he was in Lebanon:

As the video showed a group reporters and photographers interviewing a single woman on a blanket, Cooper explained, “Civilian casualties are clearly what Hezbollah wants foreign reporters to focus on. It keeps the attention off them — and questions about why Hezbollah should still be allowed to have weapons when all the other militias in Lebanon have already disarmed.

“After letting us take pictures of a few damaged buildings, they take us to another location, where there are ambulances waiting.

“This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians. That's the story that Hezbollah wants people to know about.

“These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.”

CNN knew this and yet allowed its other reporters to act as if they were doing real reporting instead of being actors in Hezbollah's play.

This was eight years ago, and the media continues to do the bidding of terrorists without informing their viewers.

What can responsible media organizations do to counter the threats by Gaza terror groups?

If they were responsible, for every report from Gaza, the anchor introducing the segment should say:

"Our viewers should be aware that the Hamas leadership in Gaza and terror groups operating there threaten journalists both implicitly and explicitly. We care for the safety of our reporters and staff and are not requiring that their reports be as even-handed as we would like."

They would also take pains to have their reporters in Gaza be replaced with new ones every week or so, and have the old ones go in front of the cameras and then report what they really saw, and how they were intimidated and manipulated.

Because without doing that, the media is losing what little trust they still have in their reporting.

(h/t pm)

The questions that Paul Mason (Channel 4 UK) refuses to answer

Paul Mason of Channel 4 (UK) tweets that anyone can ask him anything from Gaza.

Okay this #askMason thing whereby I am answering questions from Gaza, will happen tomorrow... fire questions - I'll draw on experts here
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) July 29, 2014

He'll answer questions! He'll draw on "experts!" Finally, we can discover things that we didn't know!

So I asked a few questions, with zero expectation of any answers.

Here are my questions along with some good ones from CiFWatch.

#askMason We know historically that Hamas rockets often fall short, hurting Gaza civilians. Why don't reporters in Gaza talk about that?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason It is obvious that there has been heavy fighting in Gaza. Why do reporters assume all damage/casualties are from IDF?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason The Gaza Interior Ministry has instructed Gazans not discuss certain things with reporters. How do you find out the truth?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason There have been stories about Gazans intimidating reporters who report Hamas rocket fire, for example. Does that affect reporting?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason Israeli media reports that Hamas has executed a number of protesters. Can you or any reporter confirm? Heard anything?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason Palestinian media reports about 30 collaborators killed by Hamas so far. Have you or any reporters on the scene heard this?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason When reporters use absurd phrases like "indiscriminate" shooting by Israel, a clear lie, are there any consequences?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason Why has the mainstream media been uncritically citing Mads Gilbert, a known 9/11 conspiracy theorist? #Gaza
— CiF Watch (@CiFWatch) July 29, 2014

#AskMason Do any of the reporters in Gaza have any military experience? Actual combat experience? If not, do you think that is a problem?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason All else being equal, do reporters in Gaza believe Hamas statements more than IDF statements?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason Has any reporter in Gaza asked UNRWA any questions about how its material ends up in tunnels or how rockets end up in schools?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 29, 2014

#AskMason Why have journalists ignored statistical evidence that contradict Hamas claims re. # of civilians killed? http://t.co/YheFBdPo5t
— CiF Watch (@CiFWatch) July 29, 2014

#AskMason Have you personally seen any #Hamas personnel present in Al Shifa hospital or any other hospital? #Gaza
— CiF Watch (@CiFWatch) July 29, 2014

Surprise! Even though the questions we asked were a very high percentage of the ones he received, Paul Mason refused to answer every single one.

Instead he answered softball questions from people anguished over Gaza deaths and asking about how the electricity is there.

What a joke these Gaza "journalists" are. They are more interested in making reports that make Hamas happy than in doing any serious journalism.

I think I have more story scoops from Gaza than the reporters on the ground have - combined.

When a part time unpaid blogger uncovers more facts than the professionals do, perhaps it is time for some self-reflection by the media. I wish someone would ask an editor of a major media outlet why my stories are less newsworthy, by any decent definition of news, than the things we are seeing from these clowns.

By the way, looking over my posts from the 2009 war - a war which I doubt most of these journalists covered - I discovered that Hamas intimidated reporters then as well. But no reporter mentioned it at the time (except one case by the New York Times.)

The media coverage in this war is not just bad, it is scandalous. It is a product of groupthink, political correctness, laziness and intimidation that seems to be welcomed rather than resisted.

07/30 Links Pt2: 14 Ways Hamas Weaponizes Women, Children, Animals, Against Israel

From Ian:

14 Ways Hamas Weaponizes Women, Children, Animals, Against Israel

Although in 2005 Israel gave up Gaza to the Palestinians in a naive "land for peace" unilateral withdrawal, the result was not peace but rather over 10,000 rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli civilian communities. Here we show how Hamas and other groups weaponize Palestinian civilians and institutions to attack Israel.
The Hamas Charter of 1988 - Defines the Hamas Mission Against Israel and Jews
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it. (h/t Canadian Otter)

Andrew Bolt: Hatred of Jews is fuelling protests across the Western world

Yes, these pictures of dead Palestinian children are horrifying. They are meant to be, which is why Hamas shoots from among its civilians and orders them to ignore Israeli warnings to move clear of targets.
That is also why the United Nations has found missiles hidden in at least three schools it runs in Gaza and why Hamas so pointlessly launches them at Israeli cities — to provoke Israel into exactly this self-defence against an enemy whose stated aim is to destroy it.
Then when Israel does shoot back, cue protests and riots around the world to exhaust the West’s willingness to defend not just Israel but Jews generally.
Don’t tell me these protests are about Israel’s “blockade” of Gaza, which actually has a border with Egypt porous enough to let Hamas smuggle in thousands of rockets.
Don’t tell me they’re about Israel’s “occupation” when Israel does not occupy an inch of Gaza.
And especially don’t tell me these protests are about Israel’s “war crimes” or “murders”.
No, if these protests are really against killing Muslims — and not against Jews — then where are the protests over the 2000 Syrians killed by other Muslims in the past two weeks?
Or is killing a Muslim only an international outrage when a Jew does it in self-defence?
Is the only good Jew one who let himself be killed?

JPost Editorial: Europe’s moral failure

In any case, European leaders have a moral obligation to fight anti-Semitism. Mass immigration cannot be the only answer.
Unfortunately, in a United Nations Human Rights Council vote last week, leaders of the EU failed their moral duty. The council’s member countries were asked to support a one-sided resolution condemning “in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations.”
Nothing was said of Hamas’s strategy of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, placing its rocket launchers in the midst of civilian populations, firing at IDF troops from hospitals and schools and denying Gazans access to bomb shelters to maximize civilian deaths.
Instead of taking a decisive and principled stand against Hamas’s aggression and supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, every EU country on the council chose to abstain.
The US was the only member state that voted against the resolution.
By abstaining, EU leaders remained silent in the face of the Human Rights Council drawing a moral equivalence between a terrorist organization motivated by a violent, reactionary interpretation of Islam and a liberal, democratic state. If European leaders are unable to make this distinction, why should we expect more of Europe’s masses?

Richard Millet: Channel 4 News Is Doing Hamas' Propaganda Work for Them

It would be comforting to think Snow was reporting out of real concern for Palestinian children. If that was true then why didn't he report that up to 160 Palestinian children may have died while being forced to dig Hamas's attack tunnels?
Jon Snow is an ever present on the anti-Israel circuit when not reading the news. At LSE last April he chaired a panel of the anti-Israel polemicists Ilan Pappe, Karma Nabulsi, Rosemary Hollis and The Promise writer Peter Kosminsky. During the event Snow referred to America's "Jewish lobby" and afterwards became very aggressive while I pressed him over his use of this phrase.
The news is too important left to those who express a strong ideological bent. It can be deadly also. Witness Mohammed Merah who murdered Jews outside a Jewish school in Toulouse after reportedly being spurred on by footage similar to Snow's.
Maybe Snow sees this this war as his final chance to get across his message that the Israeli army are a bunch of child killers before following Jeremy Paxman into a well-earned retirement.
Let's hope so, for all our sakes.

More from the humor site PreOccupied Territory:

That "If NJ Fired Missiles At NY" Argument Gives Me An Idea

: We had to shrink this image more than usual.

By Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey

We in the Garden State are strong supporters of Israel. That's especially the case when Republicans, such as me, are in charge. So we don't need much convincing of Israel's right to defend herself, and we're kind of tickled by the argument that if New Jersey launched rockets at New York, New York would of course not take it lying down. But why leave that to the realm of the rhetorical? It's actually a compelling idea.

Think about it: like Israel, New York has a lot of Jews. Like Israel, New York enjoys prosperity, history, and success that make everyone else resentful. And like Israel, New York is bordered by an entity that doesn't really have an economy of its own, stinks to high heaven, and is always looking to claim territory from New York as its own. That's us! And we're going to give the whole missile thing a try.

Like Hamas, we certainly have a lot less to lose from such a provocation than our adversary. And we have a lot less at our disposal than they do, economically, socially, culturally, and in terms of resources. And just as in the case of Israel and Hamas, guess who will step in and demand that our demands be given equal footing with those of the state we attacked, regardless of who's right and who's wrong? That's right: President Obama.

I'm telling you, this is a win-win situation. If we make some extreme demands and New York capitulates in the interest of shutting us up, all we have to do is keep doing it - because it works. And if they resist by whatever means, our strategy should mirror Hamas: broadcast only the images of poor, innocent New Jerseyans suffering at the hands of that big neighborhood bully, New York. Let me tell you, I know all about bullying. Everyone outside New York already hates New York, so success on that front is guaranteed.

I realize some people don't buy that argument, because they're in favor of the Mexico-US analogy, and I respect that. There's enough of a similarity between our illegal immigration troubles and Israel's challenges with terrorism tunnels from Gaza. But remember, the lesson we can learn from this conflict is that the correctness of a position has no bearing on how the world treats it. So who cares that there's a closer analog? People want to see New York get taken down. Mexico will always be down.

Anyone know where we can get our hands on some Fajr-5s?

He might occasionally grudgingly admit that Hamas rockets aren't exactly wonderful, but for any area where one can argue to be stricter or less strict on human rights, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch always chooses the anti-Israel side.

Here's something he tweeted yesterday:

Tunnels used to attack or capture civilians is a rights violation. Tunnels used to attack or capture soldiers isn't. http://t.co/gPPScdrYDO
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 29, 2014

Well, Islamic Jihad's legal team might agree that tunnelling into the territory of a sovereign state to kidnap a soldier and hold him hostage is fine, but it isn't true.

I don't need to quote the IDF on this, either. Even B'Tselem calls it a war crime:

On the one-year anniversary of the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories , states that he must be released immediately. The organization says that the circumstances of his capture and the behavior of his captors clearly indicate that he is a hostage.

International humanitarian law absolutely prohibits taking and holding a person by force in order to compel the enemy to meet certain demands, while threatening to harm or kill the person if the demands are not met. Furthermore, hostage-taking is considered a war crime and all those involved bear individual criminal liability.

Hamas, which de-facto controls the security apparatus in the Gaza Strip, bears the responsibility to act to release Shalit immediately and unconditionally. Until he is released, those holding him must grant him humane treatment and allow representatives of the ICRC to visit him. The fact that Shalit's right to these visits has been denied constitutes a blatant violation of international law, says B'Tselem.

Shalit was a soldier, wasn't he?

How does the Fourth Geneva Convention word the prohibition of taking hostages?

The taking of hostages is prohibited.

That is the entire Article 34.

No mention of "civilians" or anything. No exception for soldiers. A flat out, explicit prohibition. (Yes, soldiers are covered in Article 4 of the same Convention.)

This isn't the first time Roth defines examples of international law in an artificially - and incorrectly - narrow way in order to exonerate Israel's enemies. But it sure does establish a pattern.

And that pattern is always against the human rights of Israelis.

(h/t @neontaster)

PCHR "human rights" group follows Hamas instructions

PCHR is one of the three "human rights" groups that the UN relies on to give statistics on the dead and wounded in Gaza.

A week ago, their reports would mention the names of some of the dead who were clearly members of terrorist groups. For example, in this dispatch from July 22:

At approximately 21:00, medical sources at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City declared that Mohammed ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Eshtaiwi, 27, a member of Palestinian armed group, from Um al-Nasser village, died of wounds he had sustained on Saturday, 19 July 2014, during an armed clash with Israeli forces.

At approximately 12:30, an Israeli drone fired a missile at Saleh Mohammed Saleh Badawi, 29, a member of a Palestinian armed group, in al-Zaytoun neighborhood. He was instantly killed.

At approximately 13:30, an Israeli drone fired a missile at Mohammed Khamis al-Ghalban, 23, a member of a Palestinian armed group, in al-Sha’af neighborhood, killing him.

At approximately 00:35, an Israeli drone fired a missile at Ahmed Ameen Abu Hassira, 30, a member of a Palestinian armed group. He was instantly killed.

But since then, PCHR counts the terrorists - but no longer names them.

So for example, in today's report:

On Sunday evening, 27 July 2014, 5 members of Palestinian armed groups whose bodies were recovered on the previous day from various areas in the northern Gaza Strip were identified.

At approximately 12:30, an Israeli drone fired a missile at members of a Palestinian armed group in the east of Jabalya killing one of them.

At approximately 14:00, medical crews recovered the body of a member of a Palestinian armed group from Beit Hanoun.

Over the past week, dozens of known terrorists were identified, sometimes with their ages, but none of them were named. The ones that PCHR says are civilian are all named.

Hamas,of course, has instructed Gazans not to identify any of those killed in Gaza as being members of terror groups. PCHR, a supposedly "independent legal body," is now doing Hamas' bidding.

The only explanation for their change in policy - a policy that goes back at least to 2008 - is that Hamas told them to. So they did it.

This means that one of the "human rights" groups that the UN relies on for its statistics is purposefully withholding information about casualties to benefit Hamas.

Which also means that when the UN releases its statistics of percentage of civilians killed in Gaza, it is not acting independently, but it is relying on the research by a "human rights" group that is not independent at all - but one that is effectively controlled by a terror group.

And the world media (not to mention HRW and Amnesty) that trumpet these statistics are, knowingly or not, also acting as mouthpieces for Hamas.

Real journalists and human rights officials would be very bothered by this. And PCHR's research should be considered suspect by all fair-minded people. You can check the facts for yourself. I've already shown one person that PCHR considered a "civilian" that was a member of a terror group.

As we've seen, B'Tselem's methods of deciding if someone is a militant is also very flawed.

Amazingly, this clear obedience to Hamas desires has been going on for a week. None of the hundreds of journalists, analysts, pundits, tweeters, or activists noticed it - or considered it newsworthy.

07/30 Links Pt1: With Israel, the world is blaming the victim; Netanyahu's Popularity Soars to 82%

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel, Hamas and Obama’s foreign policy

When US President Barack Obama phoned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night, in the middle of a security cabinet meeting, he ended any remaining doubt regarding his policy toward Israel and Hamas.
Obama called Netanyahu while the premier was conferring with his senior ministers about how to proceed in Gaza. Some ministers counseled that Israel should continue to limit our forces to specific pinpoint operations aimed at destroying the tunnels of death that Hamas has dug throughout Gaza and into Israeli territory.
Others argued that the only way to truly destroy the tunnels, and keep them destroyed, is for Israel to retake control over the Gaza Strip.
No ministers were recommending that Israel end its operations in Gaza completely. The longer our soldiers fight, the more we learn about the vast dimensions of the Hamas’s terror arsenal, and about the Muslim Brotherhood group’s plans and strategy for using it to destabilize, demoralize and ultimately destroy Israeli society.

Alan Dershowitz: The 'occupation of Gaza' canard

Enemies of Israel, who are seeking to justify Hamas rocket and tunnel attacks against Israeli civilians, are mendaciously claiming that Israel has continued to occupy the Gaza Strip, even after its soldiers and settlers left the Strip in 2005. They claim that because Gaza was unlawfully still occupied, despite the absence of Israeli soldiers, resistance to the occupation - including the murder of Israeli civilians - is justified as a matter of international law. This claim is wrong for several independent reasons.
First, it is never justified to target and murder enemy civilians. Even if Israel did have a military occupation, as it does on the West Bank, it would still be a double war crime to fire rockets at Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields. It would also be a war crime to use terrorist tunnels to murder or kidnap Israeli civilians. The only legitimate resistance to occupation is to target the soldiers who enforce the occupation.
Second, a military occupation of Gaza - as distinguished from civilian settlements - would be entirely justified, both as a matter of law and common sense, because Hamas, which controls Gaza, is at war with Israel and has repeatedly refused to make peace with the nation-state of the Jewish people. A military occupation is proper as long as a state of war exists.
Third, and even more important for any future peace, is the indisputable fact that Israel, in fact, ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005.

ToI Live Blog: Hamas rejects humanitarian lull; UN condemns shelling of school

Timeout to last four hours; UN calls for accountability after UNRWA school hit, killing at least 15; army says it was returning fire; rockets shot at Israel after quiet night; cabinet ministers debates next step in war
Tunnel found in UNRWA health clinic:

An Israeli elite squad searching for tunnels near Khan Younis uncovers a booby-trapped opening in a small UNRWA health clinic.
The troops send in sniffing dogs and a small robot to minimize damage to the structure, but despite the precautionary measures, the explosives rigged to the tunnel are detonated, demolishing the building on top of the soldiers.
Earlier reports indicated that a number of soldiers were injured.Brig. Gen. Micky Edelstein says militants have used more than a thousand IEDs so far, destroying thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip.
For instance, he says, in sweeps of a single street of 28 buildings last night, 19 were found to be booby-trapped.

More on the importance of Arab honor in understanding the conflict

On Monday I wrote an article about how crucial it is to understand the importance Arabs give to honor in order to understand the conflict altogether.

While Westerners like to look for win-win solutions to problems, Arabs look at everything as a zero-sum game - because when the other side gains, their honor of defeating the enemy is taken away.

The Federalist has an article about the same phenomenon:

To understand why Hamas would pursue such a strategy, one has to go back more nearly 70 years, to the founding of Israel in 1947-48 and the collective Arab response. In the late summer of 1947, Abba Eban, who would later become Israel’s first representative to the United Nations and serve as foreign minister during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, met with Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League. Eban hoped to secure Azzam’s support for a partition of Palestine and a two-state solution. He reasoned with Azzam that, “if there is a war, there will have to be a negotiation after it. Why not negotiate before and instead of the war?”

Eban records Azzam’s telling response in his memoirs. The speech, Eban wrote, “has never been canonized as one of the major signposts in Jewish and Zionist history.” It should be. Azzam said:

If you win the war, you will get your state. If you do not win the war, then you will not get it. We Arabs once ruled Iran and once ruled Spain. We no longer have Iran or Spain. If you establish your state the Arabs might one day have to accept it, although even that is not certain. But do you really think that we have the option of not trying to prevent you from achieving something that violates our emotion and our interest? It is a question of historic pride. There is no shame in being compelled by force to accept an unjust and unwanted situation. What would be shameful would be to accept this without attempting to prevent it. No, there will have to be a decision, and the decision will have to be by force.
Eban knew that Azzam was being realistic, that Jews would only win their state in the crucible of war, regardless of whether they secured U.N. recognition. During U.N. deliberations in 1947, the Arab states refused to consider either of the two options put forth by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The majority UNSCOP report urged partition, which the Arabs flatly rejected. (After the General Assembly voted in favor of partition, Azzam stormed out of the Assembly hall and declared to the press that “any line of partition drawn in Palestine will be a line of fire and blood.”)

But the minority UNSCOP report called for a federal state in which the Arab province would have veto over immigration to the Jewish province, essentially allowing the Arabs to secure permanent domination over a Jewish minority. The Arabs rejected this option, too. Eban understood the Arabs’ intransigence for what it was: “The only solution they would consider would be the establishment of an Arab state in which the existence of a separate Jewish minority would be ignored.”

Fast-forward to the current crisis in Gaza: Hamas’ leaders are stuck in 1947. For them, nothing has changed since Azzam proclaimed a line of “fire and blood.” The intransigence of Arab leaders nearly 70 years ago is the present-day inheritance of Hamas.

Notice what Azzam said: "There is no shame in being compelled by force to accept an unjust and unwanted situation."

While is seems counterintuitive to Western sensibilities, Israel's continued attempts for 66 years to find a path to peace that would involve compromise on Israel's part is what keeps Arab hopes alive that Israel is weak and can be defeated. This is why Israel's existence is not accepted as an unwanted but permanent fact, and this is what fuels terror. (There is another factor: the value that Israel places on every Israeli life means that Arab terrorists can claim victory for every Israeli they kill, making "victories" much easier.)

For more on the Arab insistence on a zero-sum game, see here and here.