Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 03, 2014

Fatah terrorists brag (falsely) to have killed 3 Jews in Judea/Samaria

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is part of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, claim to have killed three Jewish "settlers" in the Halamish (Neve Tzuf) settlement.

The military wing of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah

Our belief in the right and the legitimacy of the resistance and to defend the soil of Palestine... thank God Almighty managed the Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - Palestine from storming usurped Halamish near the city of Ramallah promptly at 5:49 pm on Sunday, 03.08.2014 AD. Fighters clashed with a group of Zionist settlers directly resulting in the death of 3 of the settlers and our fighters return to their bases safely.

We of the Al Aqsa Brigades warn the enemy we will hit them more painfully.

Fire with fire.... murder with murder by bombing and shelling

God is great and God praise

Resistance will continue until victory or martyrdom

Al -Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Palestine

08.03.2014 AD

Here's what really happened:

A home in the Jewish village of Neve Tzuf in the West Bank was broken into by two men, allegedly Palestinians, on Sunday afternoon, police said.

The owner was lightly injured in a confrontation with the burglars before they escaped.

Security forces were combing the area for the perpetrators. The incident was categorized as criminal, although nationalist motives for the break-in were also being investigated.

I think we can rule out "criminal."

As we've noted before:

If Abbas controls his own groups, then he is a terrorist.

If he can't control even his own Fatah groups, then how can you expect that he can be trusted with a peace agreement?

Israel is not violating international law in Gaza - part 1: Principle of Distinction

I have described how Hamas is violating at least 19 principles of international law in the current fighting.

Now, is Israel?

The criticism most often given of Israel's actions is that it is violating the "principle of distinction." The Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol 1, article 52, states it this way:

1. Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals. Civilian objects are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 2.

2. Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.

3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.

Many countries, when they ratified this article, clarified it to ensure that collateral damage is not covered by the first sentence of paragraph 2. So, for example, Canada wrote:

It is the understanding of the Government of Canada in relation to Article 52 that ...the first sentence of paragraph 2 of the Article is not intended to, nor does it,deal with the question of incidental or collateral damage resulting from an attack directed against a military objective.

Italy, Australia, the UK, France and New Zealand added similar language (CIHL II para. 83-91)

Logic dictates that it cannot be otherwise. If these caveats aren't in place, then anyone can make any military target immune from attack placing a civilian there, or placing the target in a house or church or hospital that is still used as such. So, for example, Australia's Defence Force Manual states:

The presence of noncombatants in or around a military objective does not change its nature as a military objective. Noncombatants in the vicinity of a military objective must share the danger to which the military objective is exposed.

Note that we are not saying that the existence of civilians at a military target can be ignored; that is part of the Proportionality discussion that will be forthcoming. But clearly international law allows the attack on military targets even if there are some civilians there.

Who determines whether something is a military target or not?

It is not reporters, or eyewitnesses, or residents of nearby houses, or human rights organizations. That decision is given to the military commander, based on the best available information at the time.

So, for example, The Military Manual of the Netherlands says that “the definition of ‘military objectives’ implies that it depends on the circumstances of the moment whether an object is a military objective. The definition leaves the necessary freedom of judgement to the commander on the spot."

Sweden's IHL manual states "it is up to the attacker to decide whether the nature, location, purpose or use of the property can admit of its being classified as a military objective and thus as a permissible object of attack. This formulation undeniably gives the military commander great latitude in deciding, but he must also take account of the unintentional damage that may occur. The proportionality rule must always enter into the assessment even though this is not directly stated in the text of Article 52." (para. 335, 338)

The military commander is not only concerned with the safety of the civilians in the area. The commander is also concerned with the safety of his or her own troops. The US Naval Handbook says "Military advantage may involve a variety of considerations, including the security of the attacking force." (para. 339)

Civilian sites can become valid military objectives. So, for example, Australia’s Defence Force Manual lists among military objectives “objects, normally dedicated to civilian purposes, but which are being used for military purposes, e.g. a school house or home which is being used temporarily as a battalion headquarters”. The manual specifies that "For this purpose, 'use' does not necessarily mean occupation. For example, if enemy soldiers use a school building as shelter from attack by direct fire, then they are clearly gaining a military advantage from the school. This means the school becomes a military objective and can be attacked." (para. 687)

Israel's Manual on the Laws of War goes even further to protect civilians: (para 694)

A situation may arise where the target changes its appearance from civilian to military or vice versa. For instance, if anti-aircraft batteries are stationed on a school roof or a sniper is positioned in a mosque’s minaret, the protection imparted to the facility by its being a civilian object will be removed, and the attacking party will be allowed to hit it . . . A reverse situation may also occur in which an originally military objective becomes a civilian object, as for instance, a large military base that is converted to a collection point for the wounded, and is thus rendered immune to attack.

However, attacks may not be indiscriminate.

It is ultimately up to the commander to determine the nature of the specific, fluid situation. Everything hinges on his or her intent - not on the judgment of other observers and not on finding out better information in hindsight. As stated by Rüdiger Wolfrum and Dieter Fleck in The Handbook of International Humanitarian Law, "The prerequisite for a grave breach (of IHL) is intent; the attack must be intentionally directed at the civilian population or individual civilians, and the intent must embrace physical consequences."

In order to find that the commander has committed a war crime, the bar is set quite high. ICRC commentary on art 85 of the Additional Protocol states:

The accused must have acted consciously and with intent, i.e., with his mind on the act and its consequences, and willing the ("criminal intent" or "malice aforethought"); this encompasses the concepts of "wrongful intent" or "recklessness"....

As long as the IDF did not deliberately attack civilians, and the local commander had a military purpose for each target based on the best information available at the time, there is no violation of the principle of distinction.

Clearly, the observers on the ground and around the world who are looking at the results through the distorted lens of TV cameras cannot possibly know what the intent of the IDF commanders are. They don't know the specific intelligence available, the real-time situation on the ground, the danger to IDF troops or Israeli civilians (in the case of targeting rocket launchers,) the topography of the area (when, for example, the IDF needs to take hgh ground in order to protect its troops) - none of that is available to the armchair analysts who breezily and ignorantly say that IDF actions could amount to war crimes. The bar to determine that is incredibly high, and is not decided by people at Human Rights Watch who change international law at will for their purposes.

The argument that Israel is deliberately attacking civilians has another fatal flaw: if the policy was to attack civilians, then is it difficult to explain how thousands of air strikes and thousands more artillery strikes have killed so few. If the objective is civilian, then there would be tens of thousands of civilian victims. One cannot claim that the IDF is both a uniquely bloodthirsty army using precision weapons to target civilians and at the same time maintain that the IDF is so poor at targeting. Anyone claiming that the IDF is deliberately targeting civilians is either grossly ignorant of how wars are waged, or they are willfully slandering the army.

Caveat - I am not a lawyer. I am getting much of this from the IDF initial response to the Goldstone Report, and as of yet I have not seen a single scholarly rebuttal to the legal aspects mentioned in that report. If someone has written such a rebuttal, please let me know.

08/03 Links Pt2: Defund the UNRWA; Prof on MSNBC: No Anti-Semitism in Middle East before '67

From Ian:

Defund the UNRWA

The UNRWA has become the mask that Hamas wears.
It’s a tactical asset for a terrorist group that empowers its human shield strategy. The UNRWA is not only endangering Israeli civilians, but it is also endangering Gazans who are exploited as human shields by members of a terrorist group masquerading as the staff of an international humanitarian organization.
This issue has come up before and the UNRWA’s long record of evasions and denials, admitting the substance of the claims about the Hamas takeover of the UNRWA, while insisting that its Hamas members are neutral and that all the rocket stores and rocket attacks around UNRWA facilities are unrelated to the Hamas members on its staff, are not good enough anymore.
The United States should not be in the business of funding the corruption of young minds. Money should not be taken from American schools to fund the spread of hatred and terrorism.
It’s time to defund the UNRWA.

Kenneth Meshoe [MP]: The moral obligation to support Israel

Therefore, the political organization in South Africa of which I am the president, the African Christian Democratic Party, supports the right of Israel to exist within safe and secure borders, and to enjoy the inalienable right to self-defense. We reject attempts by some nations and international organizations to question Israel's right to defend itself against terrorist attacks, including rockets and missiles that continue to be fired by Hamas into Israel.
The ACDP believes that Israel has a moral obligation to protect all its citizens, particularly the elderly, women and children, from danger and all forms of external threats to their existence. We further believe that Israel's right to self-defense is in accordance with commonly accepted principles of international law.
War is a terrible thing and the ACDP is grieved by the loss of life and terrible anguish families on both sides of the conflict are facing at this time. We regret the fact that some nations have chosen to condemn Israel only, conveniently ignoring the fact that Israel responded with air raids only after enduring a week of constant firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel.
Kenneth Meshoe is a member of the South African parliament representing the African Christian Democratic Party

12000+ Rally In Johannesburg For Israel

Today in Huddle Park, Johannesburg, South Africa, more than 12000 Pro-Israel supporters gathered to show their solidarity with Israel.
I received some feedback from one of the participants and she said that she is “so proud to have been a part of this incredible Rally for Israel.” Included with the large amount of Jews who attended was also many Africans, Lemba’s, Christians & more.

Prof on MSNBC: There is No Anti-Semitism in Middle East

In the segment, Harris-Perry seemed troubled over the idea that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is "ancient" and "visceral." If only she could grasp that this conflict is "relatively recent," then she would be more "optimistic" about the future.
Luckily for Harris-Perry, Professor Leverett was there to guide her with this "well informed" commentary:

"If you look at Jewish communities in other places around the Middle East, there certainly was after the creation of the State of Israel and especially after the '67 war, an immigration of Jews from many of these Arab countries to Israel -- but there still are Jewish communities. For example, there is a thriving Jewish community in Iran. And when I've talked about that people say, 'Oh, that's so terrible. How could you say that? Of course they're suffering.' No, I've actually been there. I've been to the Kosher restaurants, I've been to the Jewish hospital in Iran.
There is not this deep-seated Arab/Jewish, or Muslim/Jewish, animosity. There's not an anti-Semitism in the Middle East the way that there was in Europe, which is based on race, which is based on color, which is based on genes and biology. That doesn't exist in the Middle East. There's no history of that in the Middle East."

R U SRSLY MSNBC?! Middle East Wasn't Anti-Semitic Until America Sided with Jews

The purpose of the medieval blood-libel was to justify political violence against Jews through the claim that Jews kill children.

Typically it was said that Jews use the blood of Christian babies for use in the making of matzoh... however anti-intuitive that may sound. The blood-libel is an exceedingly primal defamation in that it pits the targeted group, in this case the Jews, against the natural desire of the majority population to defend innocent children, particularly their own. This is why the blood-libel is so heinous. It morally obligates the majority population to take harsh measures, even deadly measures, against the accused minority population.

Therefore those who spread the blood-libel - by suggesting or insinuating that Jews or Zionists or Israel target children for violence - are actually targeting Jews for violence.

Just as anti-Semitism evolves and adapts itself according to contemporary political circumstances, so aspects of anti-Semitism, such as the blood-libel, likewise adapt themselves to current circumstances as they are articulated by those infected with this particular disease.

Those who follow Israel Thrives know that I come out of the progressive-left and was, until recently, a "lifelong" Democrat. The progressive-left, in the United States and Europe, represents the foremost political movement today in the west and is exemplified in the United States by the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic Party.

It is also the foremost racist political movement in the west today with the sole exception of political Islam.

If one wishes to understand the nature of the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic Party and, therefore, the potential future of the Democratic Party as it relates to Israel, it is a good idea to look at venues that the grassroots and netroots engage in. One of those venues, needless to say, is Daily Kos and whatever anyone might think of that blog, it offers a glimpse into the thinking of the base of the party, as does examining the Huffington Post, for example, or any number of other similar venues.

Ever since Ariel Sharon pulled Israel out of the Gaza Strip the area has become a launching pad for Arab attacks against the Jewish minority in the Middle East. Southern Israel has experienced something close to continuous rocket fire on its kibbutzim and townships, such as S'derot and Ashkelon, for well over a decade. While it is true that very few people have died from this rocket fire, it nonetheless remains the case that southern Israel can simply not function under this constant harassment.

Those "liberals" who compare the rockets shot at southern Israel to children's bottle rockets display a callousness toward the Jewish people, and the Jewish predicament in the Middle East, that is nothing short of hateful. Those rockets ruin lives. They ruin the economy of the southern part of the country. They spawn children who are practically born with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And just how are old people supposed to get into a shelter, when the sirens go off, in just fifteen seconds?

With this in mind, let us take a gander at one "diary" recently written by a "Kossack" entitled, Today Israel Shells Another UN School Housing Refugees, 19+ Killed.

The writer quotes UNRWA Commissioner-General, Pierre Krähenbühl as saying:

Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.

There is no reference in the diary to the fact that Hamas places its weaponry and rocketry in schools and hospitals precisely so that useful idiots, of the type that publish in progressive-left venues like Daily Kos, can defame the Jews when we dare to eliminate that weaponry and rocketry.

In this way Daily Kos serves Hamas because it does precisely what Hamas wants it to do in terms of its media strategy. Hamas is responsible for the death of over 1,000 Gazans because it kept bombing Israel until Israel was forced to respond in defense of its own citizenry and now they whine and bitch and moan and complain that the Jews are vicious barbarians who love to kill children and they encourage western-liberals to do likewise.

That is the whole point of this insidious exercise in blood and stupidity. The whole point from the beginning was to get soft-hearted and soft-minded "progressives" to raise their fists and shout hatred toward the Jewish State of Israel. It is a propaganda war and as far as Hamas is concerned Gazans, and particularly Gazan children, are expendable props in their media-driven, Koranically-based, racist aggression against the Jewish people.

But, let's see what the Kossacks have to say in this popular "diary" with 275 comments.

At this point, it is clear the IDF views (11+ / 0-)

Palestinian children as weapons. We already know this is the opinion of some MKs and essentially all of the Orthodox community in Israel.

Everything good a man can be, a dog already is.

by pajoly on Wed Jul 30, 2014 at 07:30:54 AM PDT

This is an example of the contemporary blood-libel. The commenter "knows" that the Jews of the Middle East, via the Israeli Defense Forces, views "Palestinian children as weapons." This is, of course, entirely false, but it helps create hatred towards Jews, which is the point of the comment to begin with.

so yesterday. today they are celebrating (11+ / 0-)

the deaths of civilians and children! its party time!

pinpoint accuracy and all!

by live1 on Wed Jul 30, 2014 at 06:32:03 AM PDT

Notice the enthusiasm within which this commenter hates on Jews who he considers to not only be child-murderers, but exceedingly joyous child-murderers.

Notice, also, that these people almost never castigate "Jews" specifically. Instead they rely on words like "Zionists" or "Israelis," but the fact of the matter is that we know we very well that they are talking about the small Jewish minority fighting back from Fortress Israel.

jfromga writes:

f Israel wants the Palestinian population to turn on Hamas, killing Hamas won't effect a change. Stopping the carnage of their children just might.

This commenter thinks that Arabs voted for Hamas because Jews kill Arab children. That is essentially his message, no? Thus the initial assumption from this particular "liberal" is that the Jews are guilty. Apparently all Israel needs to do to eliminate Hamas is not respond to their rocket fire.

The argument seems to be that if Israel allows its southern population to be terrorized by rocket fire for a long enough period of time without responding then, perhaps, Hamas will get bored and take up some other hobby.

dallasdunlap says this:

This is "mowing the grass." IOW, deliberately slaughtering civilians. In an overcrowded region in which the average age is seventeen, they know that anytime they target civilian housing, they'll be killing and hurting children.

That's the point. They want to kill Palestinians and reduce them to abject desperation.

This kind of comment, in its implication of Jewish malice, could practically come out Der Stürmer. There is zero recognition of the fact that southern Israel endured thousands of rocket attacks over the course of about fifteen years and that, in fact, its response has been exceedingly restrained. If anything Israel's response has been too restrained given the fact that the Gazan rocketeers keep doing their thing.

It is as if they do not consider violence against Jews to be violence at all and therefore the Jews of the Middle East must simply put up with continual kicks to the head unless they wish to be considered immoral barbarians by the self-righteous and hypocritical western left.

No more slaughter of the innocents. We are respnsibile for the safety of the children and innocents no matter what country or ethnic or religious background one maintains. This about ethnic cleansing, ad crime that was halted by the world perpetrated upon the others in WWII.

WE ARE OUR BROTHERS KEEPER. It is incumbent that we as a world live up to our responsibilities of doing so.

"Never Forget" now more than ever applies here to this genocide of a people and culture.

One of the favorite tactics of western anti-Semitic anti-Zionists is to accuse Jews of committing a genocide. They absolutely love this kind of mind-rending and malicious historical reversal for the purpose of cudgeling Jews with the worst catastrophe that has befallen us in our long history.

Within living memory of the Holocaust they use it as a club against us.

it's the children who are always targeted (27+ / 0-)

it's the fear of Palestinian demographics...

Bibi the Baby Killer has gone berserk in the killing fields of Gaza

We're shocked by a naked nipple, but not by naked aggression.

by Lepanto on Wed Jul 30, 2014 at 06:32:25 AM PDT

"it's the children who are always targeted" and this comment has 27 "uprates."

In other words, this person, and all those people who "uprated" it, honestly believe that the Israeli government specifically targets Arab children. There is no other description of this other than the blood-libel. And if that is what they think of the Israelis, just what can we expect that they think of diaspora Jewish supporters of Israel?

Not much, I am afraid.

The hatred toward Jews is so intense within "Lepanto" that he believes that the Jewish people are monsters and he is willing to help create an atmosphere of hatred, and thus potential violence, in order to stop our nefarious ways.

live1 writes:

israel is committing war crimes.

any one who tries to justify killing children is beneath contempt

Precisely. That is the entire point of this focus on "the children." The truth is that if these people honestly cared about children they might have something to say about the fact that Hamas, and much of the local Arab population, train their children to despise Jews which is why they have this kind of grief to begin with. If the local Arabs do not want the Jews to hit them back, perhaps they should consider not hitting the Jewish population to begin with.

The Day of the Dhimmi Done, after all, and the Jewish people simply no longer need to put up with it.

Tchrldy says this:

Or perhaps you are saying that the children killed by the IDF are complicit with Hamas and deserve what they get? Placing blame on Hamas would be understandable if the civilians had someplace to go. They do not. They are bound by the Mediterranean on one side and Israeli territory on the other. The IDF, Bibi, and their apologists have no one to blame but themselves for the deaths of the Innocent children.

In other words, you, my dear reader, you IDF apologists, are to blame for the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza.

That about sums up my point, I would say.

Bombing shelters and schools... (18+ / 0-)

Killing children playing soccer on a beach is what terrorists do.

by fl1972 on Wed Jul 30, 2014 at 07:19:39 AM PDT

In this example not only is the blood-libel evoked, but it is a twofer. We not only have the blood-libel, but the inversion of Israeli Jews into "terrorists."

"Hamas this, Hamas that" (0+ / 0-)

Pathetic.

Nothing Hamas does excuses the IDF's mass-murder of children.

by nosleep4u on Wed Jul 30, 2014 at 08:29:33 AM PDT

Now it is not just a matter of the idea that Jews like to kill children for no reason whatsoever, but it is the "mass-murder" of children that we are said to be engaged in for no reason whatsoever. Notice, obviously, the complete indifference to the nature of Hamas as a genocidal organization that not only calls specifically for the genocide of the Jews directly in its charter, but has sought on a daily basis to make good on that claim.

I suppose that nosleep4u considers it unjust that the Jews of the Middle East have successfully defended themselves from their Arab-Muslim aggressors.

At the end of the day, many will claim that none of this has anything to do with Jews, but merely with the allegedly atrocious behavior of the Israeli government. They will allow the Jewish people a moral excuse - a sort-of moral "get out of jail free" card - so long as we join them in their condemnation of the Jewish State.

So long as we separate ourselves from Israel, and point the trembling finger of blame at our own brothers and sisters in the Middle East, then maybe leftists will consider us to be acceptable righteous Jews.

Unless we do that - unless we betray our own within an entirely unjust and dangerous propaganda campaign against the Jewish people - the left will never accept us as anything other than apologists for Israeli terror, if not downright ZioNazis.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

08/03 Links Pt1: The Truth about Gaza's Civilian Casualties; How Gaza became one big suicide bomb

From Ian:

Richard Kemp: Gaza's Civilian Casualties: The Truth Is Very Different

With few exceptions, reporters, commentators, and analysts unquestioningly accept the casualty statistics given by Gaza's Hamas-controlled medical authorities, who ascribe all deaths to the IDF. We have never seen so much as a glimpse of killed or wounded fighters.
Analysis of casualty details released by Qatar-based Al Jazeera indicate that so far most of those killed in Gaza have been young men of fighting age, not women, children or old people.
All Palestinian civilian casualties in this conflict result ultimately from Gaza terrorists' aggression against Israel, and Hamas's use of human shields — the most important plank of Hamas's war-fighting policy.

How Gaza became one big suicide bomb

Gaza is a suicide bomb. It is rigged by its leaders to explode.
This is not a metaphor. It is a war crime. It makes the calculus of proportionality in the use of armed force by the Israeli Defence Forces complex and uncertain.
The Hamas use of suicide bombings is well-developed. A decade ago, it involved the leadership preparing vulnerable Arab individuals to end their lives by blowing up Jews in Israeli cities. The use of Hamas towns and local populations in their entirety as huge suicide bombs to kill Israeli soldiers drawn into them by repeated Hamas provocations is an innovation.
There is clear and abundant evidence of this strategy in leadership declarations of it and in the use of civilian shields, booby traps, refusal of humanitarian ceasefires and lack of civilian protections. In a single street last week, 19 of 28 buildings were found to be booby-trapped. More than 1000 improvised explosive devices have been used by Hamas in Gazan cities so far.

Hamas's Blood-Drenched Cynicism

If, however, there is silver lining to the dark clouds hanging above Israel and Gaza it is the belated recognition – by Palestinians, other Arabs and credulous Westerners – that Hamas has nothing to offer Palestinians, Israelis and the region but death and destruction. Already blacklisted as a terror group by the UK, US and EU (for starters), Hamas has now lost its main backer in Iran (the terror group having sided against the Syrian government against Tehran’s wishes), and its Muslim Brotherhood ally that briefly ruled Egypt. Indeed, Egyptian media now denounce Hamas with vitriol once reserved only for Israel.
Even among Gazans themselves support for Hamas is plummeting. A new survey by a credible Palestinian pollster shows just 15% support Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal, while an overwhelming 88% want the PA to take over administration of their enclave. Most striking, 70% believe Hamas should maintain a ceasefire with Israel in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Hamas has fired more than 2,000 rockets at Israel, sending millions of Israelis into bomb shelters, and is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Gazans. As the Gaza fighting enters its third week, it should be clear that Hamas offers neither ‘resistance’ nor national liberation, but blood-drenched cynicism and despair.

Times of Israel Live Blog Ahead of funeral, PM calls Goldin ‘a great hero’; rockets fired at Tel Aviv

The IDF late Saturday night confirmed that Givati Brigade officer Hadar Goldin, who according to initially assessments had been captured in Gaza on Friday morning in a Hamas attack, had been killed, and IDF Chief Rabbi Rafi Peretz and other officials broke the news to the family. Prime Minister Netanyahu announced earlier Saturday that the IDF would redeploy when it completes demolishing Hamas tunnels, but that the operation in Gaza would continue for as long as needed to ensure sustained calm for Israel. He indicated that Israel would not seek ceasefire agreements with Hamas, which he said deliberately breached a truce on Friday morning with the “pre-planned” attack in which Goldin and two other soldiers were killed. The deaths in Rafah brought the IDF toll to 64; three civilians have also been killed on the Israeli side. Gazan health officials put the death toll there at some 1,600. Israel says hundreds of those are Hamas fighters.

The Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today is bragging that Gaza has won the media war - thanks to all those photos of dead babies. Yay!

There is a noticeable change in the attitudes of the mainstream media, and condemnation on Israel's targeting of civilians in the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of children, and this is due to the resistance not targeting civilians as the resistance has done previously.' said one Palestinian media analyst.

Hamas and resistance factions began to realize the tools of the battle, in light of the explosion of news and information, and the proliferation of social networking sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter, and it dispensed with the suicide bombings it had used previously.

The resistance in Gaza has tools that enable them to manage the battle ethically, and more realistic, as directed as a battle against the Israeli soldiers.

Recently there have been dozens of articles published in the major British and American newspapers critical of Israel, and its war on the Gaza Strip... U.S. and British newspapers have accused Israel of bombing Palestinian civilians and kill their children, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article by writer Yuli Novak (Breaking the Silence) criticizing the actions of the Israeli army during the war on Gaza, particularly in relation to the behavior of the Air Force , and said that Israeli aircraft bombed civilians in Gaza unabated.

Hani Habib, political writer in Palestinian Al-Ayyam in Ramallah in the West Bank said in an interview with Anatolia News Agency: 'The image is now different, obviously that the resistance triumphed in this battle. This time it differs, both in terms of articles published in the Israeli press, and in articles carries in Europe and the West, which carry pictures of the children of Gaza who are dead, in their bedroom, carrying their toys.'

Abdel-Sattar Qassem, writer and Palestinian political analyst, said that the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip has benefited from their previous experiences at both the military and the media levels.

He told Anatolia: "The resistance benefited from the experiences of previous wars with Israel, and it learned the lesson well, that they can direct painful blows to Israel by targeting its army, without the need to touch the civilians. "

He added, "The tone of condemnation by the media, and academics, in European countries, is evidence of the triumph of a message of resistance."

Perhaps the most absurd part of the statements is the idea that the terror groups did not target civilians with the 3000 rockets they fired on Israeli cities.

But Iron Dome did intercept most of them, so they are now claiming that they never even aimed at civilians to begin with. This is more of that honor/shame mentality - since their rockets aimed at civilians mostly failed, they must claim that they never aimed to kill them to begin with!

They are right about one thing - too many Western reporters confuse results with intent. The absurd claim that Gaza terror groups are not aiming at Israeli civilians might resonate with clueless reporters since there are relatively few casualties. After all, these same clueless reporters conclude that Israel must be targeting civilians because hundreds of them were killed.

It is also notable how the "Zionists" of "Breaking the Silence," who claim they are only trying to improve the IDF's morals, are giving aid and comfort to terror groups via the pages of The Guardian. How moral that is!

UNRWA school déjà vu - again, the media uncritically reports lies

On January 6, 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, the BBC (and every other news outlet) reported:

At least 40 people were killed and 55 injured when Israeli artillery shells landed outside a United Nations-run school in Gaza, UN officials have said.
A number of children were among those who died when the al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp was hit, doctors at nearby hospitals said.

Some media said at the time that as many as 46 were killed. The UN was in the forefront of telling those number to the media.

By the time the Goldstone Report came around to the issue, the claims were downsized a bit, to 24 people killed, and he admitted that the school wasn't hit, but that Israeli fire hit outside the school. And Goldstone even admitted that he didn't verify the figure of 24, but just accepted it from testimonies - testimonies that included known Hamas members.

Of course, at this point, people only remembered the initial lurid headlines.

The Goldstone report wasn't accurate either. From combing through the casualties listed by PCHR, the dates and locations, double checking the names of the victims with known terrorists, and reports from witnesses who Goldstone didn't bother to find, it is certain that there was serious mortar fire originating from the street outside the school and that at least 3 and possibly as many as 10 terrorists were killed in the Israeli retaliation.

That is much different from the initial, lurid, and utterly false headlines. But the truth didn't get reported by any major media outlet.

Now, fast forward to today:

10 Palestinians were killed on Sunday after Israeli shells hit a UN school in Rafah where thousands of people were sheltering from the ongoing Israeli offensive.

At least 30 were injured in the strike, according to Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra.

The Washington Post agrees:

A United Nations school was attacked in southern Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 10 and injuring more than 30, as Israeli shells continued to bombard southern Gaza, hours after President Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Hamas would pay “an intolerable price” for its assaults.

Was a school hit?

As Israel Matzav reports, some media are mentioning a slightly different story. From ITV:

A deadly air strike near a United Nations-run school in Gaza was targeting a vehicle outside the front gate of the school, a witness has told ITV News.

Well, that's a little different, isn't it?

Most of the most recent reports are already walking back from the charge that the school was hit, since it wasn't. It remains to be seen if the reporters at the scene will actually try to ferret out the truth. Given the false initial reports, the chances for that are pretty small.

It will take some time to find out the facts, but as usual, reporters are rushing into quote known liars like UNRWA spokespeople and the Gaza Ministry of Health without any mention of their unreliable record - just as they did in 2009.

If the IDF targeted a car, and knowing that the IDF usually uses fairly small missiles to hit cars, it seems quite possible that the car was carrying explosives or rockets that went off and ended up hurting and killing people outside the school.

This doesn't stop UNRWA officials from saying that Israel is targeting UN facilities deliberately.

The media laps it up, knowing that the IDF takes hours to investigate and make a statement because of the complexity of researching real facts rather than the ease of parroting ridiculous charges from known liars.

As we see the face of Hanan Ashrawi all over the news channels defending Hamas terror, it is worth reminding people about what the NGO that she founded, Miftah, has done:

They published an article that says Jews drink Christian blood for Passover, then attacked me for noticing it, before taking it down days later under international donor pressure- but they never apologized in Arabic, the language of the article.
They censored every single post on their Facebook page questioning how they could publish the blood libel
They published another article praising female terrorists (it was silently removed after I exposed it).
They attacked Judaism, claiming that any Jew saying that the Temple Mount was the site of the Temple is only saying that for political reasons.
Their "media monitoring unit" that supposedly looked for bias on both sides deliberately ignored all antisemitic incitement in Arabic media.
It tried to politicize a UN resolution meant to politically empower women into an anti-Israel springboard.
Against the wishes of its funders, Miftah is explicitly against any sort of co-existence and dialogue with Israelis.

Does this sound like a moderate?

Since my exposures of Miftah's excesses last year, it has kept a decidedly lower profile, no longer commenting on the news with vicious anti-Israel screeds. But that doesn't mean that Miftah has changed - just that it is scared of losing its funding.

So why is Ashrawi such a favored guest on major news outlets? Why hasn't anyone investigated her a little more?

The truth is that her views, and the toxic viewpoints of Miftah, are not anomalous in Palestinian Arab society, but mainstream. Since she speaks English well, and the news media doesn't want to point out the huge disconnect between her smooth sounding words and her actual opinions, all of this gets papered over.

Assabeel reports that Jordanians are snapping up Israeli flags - in order to be able to burn them.

Ramiz Ali, who works in a shop in central Jordan, said that with the events in Gaza the number of customers who buy the Zionist flag has increased. They are forking over between 5 and 10 dinars (between $7 and $14,) and possibly more depending on the quality of the cloth.

Not long ago buying the Israeli flag was considered a disgrace, but the demand for it has been booming from activist movements, political parties, and trade unions, to burn in rallies and demonstrations and national festivals or put it in front of homes to walk over.

In the city of Maan the municipal council put the Israeli flag on the floor of the entrance to the building so everyone who enters the building would step on it.

Political activist and union leader Mahmoud Amin Hiari said that that Jordanians are snapping up the Zionist flag in order to burn it, part of a campaign of solidarity with the Gaza Strip.

Hiari explained the significance of the symbols on the Israeli flag. He noted that the Israeli flag bears the Star of David with a hexagon; which is formed from two triangles of equal sides, one representing the tribe of Judah, and the other represents the tribe of Benjamin. Jews this star the shield of King David. But it is not only political, but it has other dimensions; signs of Freemasonry, which attracts negative energy and concentration, and if you look at the back of a dollar bill atop a pyramid, and above an eye that sees everything, and this eye symbolizes the one-eyed Antichrist, who Jews believe is the Savior.

The two blue lines, of course, represent the River Nile and the Euphrates River; referring to the desired boundaries of Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile.

(If anyone reading this believes any of that nonsense, besides feeling sorry for you, Wikipedia has a more accurate description.)

Of course, I have to repost this classic video:

Malaysian couple decides to burn Israeli flag on their wedding day

From Astro Awani (Malaysia):

A couple decided to create something memorable on their wedding day: stepping on and burning the Israeli flag as a sign of protest against the regime's violence towards the Palestinians in Gaza.

Mohd Hilmi Muslim and his bride Norfadhilah Mohd Badroldin, both 27-year-old architects, did it because they felt very sad in seeing Muslims suffer, especially the women and children who were victims of the Zionist regime.

Mohd Hilmi said as a Muslim, he strongly objects to such inhumane acts carried by the Israelis.

"Alhamdulillah, I am thankful that the wedding ceremony went smoothly and we get to express our disappointment and grief towards the violence at the hands of Israel in Gaza. As Muslims, we strongly object and condemn the act," he said.

The wedding ceremony began around 2pm where both the bride and groom were paraded to their house in Kampung Umbai, Jasin.

The couple then trampled on the Israeli flag and burned it before entering the house.

The flag was placed in front of the entrance so that 3,000 guests who attended the wedding could also take turns stepping on it.

Isn't it great that they decided to begin their marriage with such an act of love?

08/02 Links: Netanyahu to Shapiro: US must ‘never second-guess me again’ on Hamas

From Ian:

Michael Oren: In Defense of Zionism

They come from every corner of the country—investment bankers, farmers, computer geeks, jazz drummers, botany professors, car mechanics—leaving their jobs and their families. They put on uniforms that are invariably too tight or too baggy, sign out their gear and guns. Then, scrambling onto military vehicles, 70,000 reservists—women and men—join the young conscripts of what is proportionally the world's largest citizen army. They all know that some of them will return maimed or not at all. And yet, without hesitation or (for the most part) complaint, proudly responding to the call-up, Israelis stand ready to defend their nation. They risk their lives for an idea.
The idea is Zionism. It is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel. Though founded less than 150 years ago, the Zionist movement sprung from a 4,000-year-long bond between the Jewish people and its historic homeland, an attachment sustained throughout 20 centuries of exile. This is why Zionism achieved its goals and remains relevant and rigorous today. It is why citizens of Israel—the state that Zionism created—willingly take up arms. They believe their idea is worth fighting for.
Yet Zionism, arguably more than any other contemporary ideology, is demonized. "All Zionists are legitimate targets everywhere in the world!" declared a banner recently paraded by anti-Israel protesters in Denmark. "Dogs are allowed in this establishment but Zionists are not under any circumstances," warned a sign in the window of a Belgian cafe. A Jewish demonstrator in Iceland was accosted and told, "You Zionist pig, I'm going to behead you." (h/t Jewess)

Piers Akerman: All we are saying, is give war a chance

THE real message coming from the Gazan conflict is give war a chance. That’s right. All peace-loving people should be demonstrating in the streets and singing, “All we are saying, is give war a chance”.
If, as the Left says, the Palestinians want peace, then let Israel smash the terrorist group Hamas, which runs Gaza and uses Palestinian children as human shields. Get the terrorists out of the hospitals, get their rockets out of the schools (a third stockpile was found in a UN school earlier this week), get them out of their rat-run tunnels and away from the civilian population.
On the other hand, if the Left wants the terrorists to smash Israel, and that is the clear message from the Greens and Labor MPs who attend rallies where the flags of Hezbollah, Hamas and the jihadists fly, there will be no holding back terrorism around the world.
Strip away the Al Jazeera propaganda that the ABC broadcasts and Fairfax media supports in its commentaries by erratic penny-a-line scribblers like Mike Carlton, and there is no other way to view the conflict. There is no moral equivalency argument to be had. Loss of civilian life is of course abhorrent. But in this conflict there is only one side which is going to great lengths in its attempt to avoid killing civilians. No, not Hamas, which enjoys the support of the anti-Israeli rallies staged by so-called peace groups and some deluded Christian churches here and elsewhere in the West, but Israel.

Jeffrey Goldberg: The Most Dangerous Moment in Gaza

There is near-unanimity in Israel already that Hamas represents an unbearable threat. Add in the perfidy of a raid conducted after a ceasefire went into effect and near-unanimity becomes total unanimity. The most interesting article I've read in the past 24 hours is an interview with the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, the father of his country's peace-and-compromise movement, who opened the interview with Deutsche Welle in this manner:

Amoz Oz: I would like to begin the interview in a very unusual way: by presenting one or two questions to your readers and listeners. May I do that?
Deutsche Welle: Go ahead!
Question 1: What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?
Question 2: What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?
With these two questions I pass the interview to you.
The point is, if Amos Oz, a severe critic of his country's policies toward the Palestinians, sounds no different on the subject of the Hamas threat than the right-most ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet, then there will be a national consensus that it is not enough to manage the Hamas rocket-and-tunnel threat, but that it must be eliminated if at all possible. This doesn't mean that the Israeli government wants to see the Hamas government in Gaza replaced. What it could mean is that the Israeli public demands that its leaders ensure them that the tunnel threat, in particular, is neutralized in a decisive way. (h/t Jewess)

White House ‘Champion of Change’ Goes After Black Pro-Israel Activist

An Obama administration-endorsed “champion of change” has lashed out at an African American pro-Israel activist, accusing her of forgetting “where she came from” and implying that she is being manipulated by the pro-Israel community.
Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American Muslim activist who has been honored by the White House as a “champion of change,” upbraided pro-Israel activist Chloe Simone Valdary Thursday on Twitter after she criticized the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has come under fire for engaging in anti-Semitic rhetoric.
The heated exchange between Valdary (@Cvaldary on Twitter) and Sarsour (@lsarsour on Twitter) elicited multiple responses from observers who accused Sarsour of engaging in racist and anti-Semitic stereotypes. (h/t MtTB)

Weekly round-up

July saw the highest readership at EoZ by far - over double my average number of hits. And things keep increasing; these past seven days were also a record with over 125,000 hits to my webpage alone (including RSS feeds, emails and the like, perhaps double that number.)

The most popular posts were the ones that tore off the mask of journalists covering the war: the Spanish journalist who admitted that reporters in Gaza were under threat, the Italian journalist who said that the massacre at the Shati camp was from Hamas, and the videos of reporters being scared by nearby rocket fire.

Here's another one where a reporter admits that rockets are fired from the Shifa hospital parking lot.

The posts I liked most were:

And these are only a selection of the 60 stories I posted this week!

Thank G-d for Shabbat! I would be completely burned out if I didn't take off one day a week.

I need to thank again those who donated to the blog and who paid for the e-book of my major stories from the first three weeks of the war. You guys are the best.

08/01 Links Pt2: Goebbels on the BBC; Beinart's The ‘Myths’ Of Gaza; Obama's Gaza Game

From Ian:

Sarah Honig: Another tack: Goebbels on the BBC

Imagine Josef Goebbels invited to speak his mind on the BBC, smack dab during the Battle of Britain and the blitz. Sound absurd? Sure, but only in the context of normal nations. No sane Briton would have tolerated the notion of the BBC broadcasting German propaganda to Londoners as they ran for shelter from German bombs.
Abetting Nazi belligerence would have been a nonstarter even under the guise of a detached reporter’s interview, part of an evenhanded approach, a sporting consideration for the aggressor’s point of view.
But not so in Israel. Here we operate in an alternative universe. Nothing that would be unthinkable anywhere else is out of bounds for our broadcasters.

The ‘Myths’ Of Gaza

In Haaretz, Peter Beinart imparts readers with some hard truths about the recent history of Gaza. “Much of what we’ve been told about Israel’s ‘withdrawal’ from Gaza,” he contends, is simply not true. The mythology created by Jewish-American leaders, he writes, builds a narrative that does does little more but rationalize Israel’s “wrong” war.
Now, there are a number of problems with Beinart’s predictably distorted version of this conflict’s history—which could use a thorough debunking—but the most obvious glitch is that most of the myths Beinart claims to dispel aren’t ever actually uttered by Jewish leaders, or anyone else, for that matter.
There are three distortions Beinart believes gullible Jewish American use to justify their “skepticism of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.”

Former UN official charged with anti-Semitism, now California academic, takes on Israel in Gaza

Richard Falk, the notorious former United Nations human rights official who was widely castigated for his anti-Semitic statements and aggressively anti-Israeli stance before finally leaving office in May, is at it again.
Falk, formerly the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of the Palestinian people, is orchestrating a new manifesto accusing Israel of making war against “the people of Gaza as a whole,” calling on the U.N and “in particular the United States of America” to hold Israeli political leaders and military commanders accountable for war crimes, and demanding that the U.N. Security Council refer the entire situation in Palestine to the International Criminal Court.
The manifesto is signed by Falk, who is now at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and 124 other legal academics around the world, including a handful in the U.S. The most prominent signatory aside from Falk is John Dugard, a South African legal scholar who was also widely condemned for anti-Semitic findings as the U.N.’s human rights special rapporteur on Palestine — until Falk took his place.

Where does Hamas get the money for the tunnels and weapons? From you!

Here's a partial answer: from you.

I just updated a chart I did a couple of years ago: (Source of figures)

There are the top recipients of international aid, sorted by aid per capita.

The PA spends over half its budget on Gaza - even when they are not controlling Gaza. Which means that Hamas has money to buy weapons and build tunnels instead of helping Gazans and building infrastructure.

As we've seen, UNRWA projects and other international projects that were allowed to import cement recently are run by corrupt people who will ensure that some of the dual-use material ends up in Hamas' hands. But the tunnels were clearly being built when Israel allowed cement to be imported, as well as when Egypt did.

So, yes, our tax dollars - which pay the Palestinians more per capita than any country every single year - went a long way towards helping build the terror infrastructure Israel faces today.

Where are the experts in ballistics and urban warfare on TV?

One of the most striking omissions in the wall-to-wall coverage of Gaza is the complete absence, as far as I can tell, of any real military experts.

You would think that with all the talking heads on TV they could dig up someone who actually knows what it is like to be in an urban battlefield, or even in a war itself.

To most Westerners, the army is an abstract, monolithic entity and people are clueless about how the chain of command works, about any checks and balances, about realtime battlefield conditions and decisions, about the rules of engagement.

All we are seeing are videos and photos of dead children and wailing mothers.

To put it mildly, this is irresponsible. Especially because news organizations, by their very names, have access to real experts and not just two token loudmouths from either side who yell at each other.

Journalists are making assumptions about the situation, based on very incomplete information. The IDF, in the middle of a war, cannot explain in real time the reasons for its decisions. But it is not a bunch of rogue cells - it has rules, it has a command structure, it plans how to react to scenarios in as effective yet safe a way as possible.

How do I know? Because I'm one of the few people who read the responses the IDF gave to critics after the 2009 Gaza war that I reproduced here.. The same kinds of incidents, with the same kinds of horrific civilian deaths, are investigated and described. Mistakes are frankly admitted. But there is an entirely different dimension to the fighting that reporters who are a few miles away in their hotels, away from the action, cannot see for themselves unless they want to put themselves in extreme personal danger.

If you want to say that all those reports on all those incidents are a whitewash by the IDF, then there should still be no objection to the media including real experts on their panels about a war. Let the viewers see inside the heads of soldiers, not only victims.

That would be journalism.

If anyone knows any real experts in these areas that would be willing to talk to me on the record, I would love to ask them questions. I would love to ask about photos of damage and injuries and what weapons were most likely to cause it. I would love to ask about the fear that soldiers face in a new, unknown situation.

And a lot of people besides me would love to hear the answers.