Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 18, 2014

Hamas was planning mega-attacks from both Gaza and the West Bank

JPost reports:

A large-scale Hamas terrorist formation in the West Bank and Jerusalem planned to destabilize the region through a series of deadly terror attacks in Israel and then topple the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority, the Shin Bet said Monday.

The Turkey-based Hamas overseas headquarters orchestrated the plot which centered on a string of mass casualty terror attacks on Israeli targets, the Shin Bet added.

The end goal was to destabilize the Palestinian territories and use the instability to carry out a military coup, overthrowing the government of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Hamas infrastructure relied on support from cells in neighboring Jordan, and on couriers who delivered terrorist finances, totaling at least two million shekels, which were used to purchase weapons and homes that were used as hideouts, according to the investigation.

Ninety three Hamas members are in Israeli custody, and the Shin Bet has questioned 46 so far. Security forces plan to indict some 70 suspects. The investigation began in May, and is ongoing, security sources said.

The Shin Bet has seized some 600,000 shekels as well as 30 firearms, seven rocket launchers, and large amounts of ammunition. Security sources stressed that the plot was uncovered at an early stage.

The Shin Bet named senior Hamas leader Salah Al-Aruri, who is currently based in Turkey, as the mastermind behind the terrorist infrastructure.
...
"This infrastructure stretched from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south. It is one the biggest we've seen in Judea and Samaria since Hamas's formation in 1987," a senior Shin Bet source, responsible for securing the Jerusalem district, told reporters on Monday. "They planned to carry out a coup and topple the Palestinian Authority," he added.

A second Shin Bet source said the investigation serves as a warning over Hamas's designs to replace the Palestinian Authority.

The infrastructure's local nerve center was in Ramallah, where the PA is based, but cells branched out throughout 46 Palestinian cities, towns and villages.

Khaled Mashaal, Hamas's overseas wing leader in Qatar, was aware of the plot, the sources said, though there was no involvement from Hamas in Gaza.

"The terrorists planned to undermine security, and launch a third intifada. They planned disturbances in the Temple Mount to rile the Palestinian masses. They were waiting for talks between the Israel and PA to collapse," the source said.

During questioning, Riad Nasser allegedly said all of the operatives worked according to a plan devised by Al-Aruri designed to lead to a collapse of the PA's rule.

According to Al-Ariri's plan, a number of major terror attacks in Israel cause sufficient instability to facilitate a Hamas coup.

...
Additional suspects in custody include Majdi Mafarja, from the Palestinian town of Bet Likia , who holds a doctorate in computing. Security sources described Mafarja as representative of "a new generation of Hamas members," adding that he is "highly intelligent" and fluent in computer programming.

Hamas sent Mafarja to Malaysia, where he trained in message encryption and computer hacking, the Shin Bet said. He was arrested on May 22.

Saleh Brakat, an Israeli citizen from Bet Safafa in east Jerusalem, was arrested on July 1 for allegedly transferring operational messages from Hamas in Jerusalem to members of the terror organization who are overseas. Brakat is active in Hamas's Da'wa system, a civilian outreach network that offers social services to Palestinians.

Mahmoud Abu Daoud, of Hebron, was arrested on July 1 on suspicion of setting up terror cells that specialized in various attacks. He allegedly set up cells for for kidnappings, others for bombings, and shooting attack cells.

Muhammad Kafia, a resident of Beitunia, near Ramallah, heads a Hamas student cell at Abu Dis University. He was arrested on June 27, and turned over 19 automatic rifles and five handguns, security forces said.

It is unclear if the same network was responsible for the kidnappings and murders of the three Israeli teens, or if that was part of this initiative. My guess has been that it wss a botched kidnapping - that they only wanted one "settler"- and that if Hamas had succeeded, it would have increased Hamas' popularity in the West Bank tremendously.

Avi Issacharoff's investigation indicates that the kidnappings were planned and funded in Gaza, headed by Mahmoud Kawasme, who was released in the Shalit deal.

If Khaled Meshal was aware of the West Bank plan, it seems unlikely that he was unaware of Hamas plans in Gaza to perform its own mega-attack against Israeli civilians in the south.

Despite the idiotic bleatings of terror supporters at Mondoweiss, the extensive tunnel system across the Negev shows that a major series of terror attacks against civilians was being planned, either in coordination with or separate from the planned West Bank attacks. If the tunnels were merely to kidnap a single soldier, there is no explanation for how many there are, their size, how far they reach into Israel, or their proximity to kibbutzim. A massive, simultaneous attack involving killings plus kidnappings of civilians would make an Israeli military response very difficult.

In planning these multiple attacks, Hamas resembles Al Qaeda in the terror aspects and ISIS in its political calculations, to create an Islamist political entity and catapult itself back from its severe setback when Egyptians ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power. But Hamas doesn't behead its opponents - it just shoots them - so Western "experts" feel comfortable making artificial distinctions between Islamists who target Muslims and Westerners, and Islamists who target Jews.

Too many observers have been assuming that major Hamas terror attacks are a thing of the past, that they only shoot some rockets and attack soldiers.

While the Shin Bet says that it was working to dismantle the Hamas cells in May, it seems likely that the kidnapping of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali accelerated the operation to find and neutralize these cells. And similarly the events that happened afterwards allowed the IDF to find and neutralize the threat from the tunnels.

In a very real sense, their tragic deaths may have saved countless lives.

08/18 Links Pt1: David Draiman: Why I Support Israel; PMW report on PA Holocaust desecration

From Ian:

David Draiman: Why I Support Israel

I have lost too many friends and loved ones to these inhuman monsters already, and cannot tolerate another, single, one. A friend of mine was widowed when her husband was killed in a bus bombing in the second Intifada, and she lost her leg from the "harmless rocket fire" that started the last Gaza/Israeli conflict. She now has to care for her two children as a cripple.
Before the stage is set for a new Holocaust, I implore each and every one of you, Jew and non-Jew, to make your voices heard, and do what you can to spread this, and your own personal messages of truth.
People have been trying to exterminate the Jewish people for thousands of years (the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Persian and Ottoman Empires, the Holocaust, and now Hamas). They will not succeed. The Nation of Israel lives and the Jewish people will endure, with or without your blessing.
NEVER AGAIN
I can now at the very least look my son in the eyes when he is old enough to understand and tell him... I tried.
I wish to thank the United States of America for all the support they have shown Israel through the years.
I pray that a true and lasting peace finally comes one day.

Arab doctor saves Jewish soldier hit by Arab bullets. No big deal?

Hadassah’s Prof. Ahmed Eid gets a little irritated when people ask him questions about being an Arab surgeon in Jewish Israel. ‘There’s no drama here,’ he insists. Oh, but there is…
On Sunday August 4, a gunman on a motorbike opened fire on an Israeli soldier, Chen Schwartz, near Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, hitting him twice at close range. Critically injured in what police said was almost certainly a Palestinian terror attack, Schwartz, 19, was rushed to the nearby Hadassah Hospital.
Professor Ahmed Eid, Hadassah’s head of surgery, was called to the operating theater and scrubbed in. “Without going into the specifics, it was clear there was major loss of blood,” Eid recalls in an interview. Eid called for another doctor with particular expertise to come from Hadassah’s other hospital across town at Ein Karem, and she was given a police motorcycle escort when she got stuck in traffic.
Understated about the extraordinary skills of the team that saved Schwartz’s life, Eid says simply: “He had what would have been fatal wounds, and would certainly have died without very careful surgery.”

JPost: PMW special report exposes PA Holocaust desecration during Gaza war

The Palestinian Authority and the Fatah Party constantly used Nazi and Holocaust analogies to demonize Israel during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, according to a forthcoming report by Palestinian Media Watch titled "Holocaust desecration by the Palestinian Authority during the 2014 Gaza operation." [PDF]
The following are examples of Holocaust comparisons used by PA and Fatah leaders and official news outlets:
* Israel's operation was a "Holocaust unlike any that has been recorded in history"
* The incursion in Gaza was "reenacting the Holocaust"
* Binyamin Netanyahu is a "descendant of the Nazis"
* Israel is "the new Nazis"
* "Nazi Israeli mentality"
* "Israel, the rogue state, which is still blackmailing Germany, Europe, and humanity with the Holocaust"
Fatah MP and former PA minister of prisoners Issa Karake was quoted by the Palestinian news agency Ma'an on July 25 as saying, "[Israel] did more evil and more horrifying things than what happened in the Nazi crematoria."
"Binyamin Netanyahu is a descendant of the Nazis, worships Hitler's ways, and imitates him in all the Holocausts he has perpetrated," said Yahya Rabah, a Fatah leader and columnist for the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, on August 3.

Yaacov Lozowick summarizes an important article from Yediot Acharonot (not available online and only in Hebrew) about the depth of commitment the IDF has to international law on all levels.

The IDF takes international law very seriously. Over the past decade it has considerably expanded the part of the military prosecution which deals with the laws of war, and there is now an entire team of officers, many at the colonel level, whose entire profession is to ensure the IDF functions within the law. I'll stray from the Yedioth article for a moment to add that I've come across these folks in recent years, in professional discussions, and they're knowledgeable, committed and professional. I expect that they know more about the laws of war than just about any media type or pundit who pontificates on the matter, except of course the other professionals. It seems safe to me to say that if anyone who doesn't have a full and updated education in the laws of war informs you about how what the IDF does is illegal etc, they are probably talking through their hat comfortable that you, too, don't know enough to call them out. The laws of war, like any branch of law, is a professional field, and it takes training and practice to be good at it.

That's the first stage.

The second stage is that these officers spend a significant chunk of their time training other IDF troops in the basics. Clearly a corporal in the infantry won't go through a full course of training, but the higher the officer, the more exposure they will have had to the principles and concepts of the laws of war, and the more occasions on which they'll have been required to think about applying them. The training of an IDF soldier includes the understanding that the IDF respects the laws of war; the training of an officer includes applying these laws.

The third stage is that the legal types participate in the planning of all operations. I'm not going to detai the many levels of preparation an IDF operation goes through from conception to execution, but there are lots of them; the legal experts are part of the process. According to Yedioth, this results in some operations never being authorized in the first place, and others are adapted to stay within the law.

The fourth stage of preparation is that there's a legal expert in every division, and there are channels of communication down to at least the level of battalions; since companies and platoons don't generally execute their own operations, that more or less covers everyone.

Fifth stage: Aeriel and artillery actions. Aeriel and artillery actions are not necessarily susceptible to heat of battle situations. Both pilots and artillery officers are less likely than infantry, tank or engineering soldiers to need to respond immediately to fire from an unidentified source in the confusion of a battlefield. The article in Yedioth claimed that every single shell shot by those two branches was thought about in advance, and targets were vetted in advance, after they were visually identified by one or more of the layers of eyes the IDF had over Gaza - drones, other drones, radar and other stuff.

Read the whole thing.

What this means is that every IDF officer has more formal training on international law than practically every reporter, every columnist and every pundit that screams "War crimes!"

So when a major New York Times columnist badly misstates international law, it is because he is ignorant. When the head of a major human rights organization justifies it, it is because he is malicious. (Even under the "just war" definition of proportionality, it applies to the decisions to embark on an operation, not to the death-count afterwards. And Ken Roth knows that.)

The IDF had an entire website dedicated to international law. Here is what goes into every single decision to drop a bomb, every single time:

Given the complexity, sensitivity and potential consequences of aerial strikes against terrorists, decisions in this regard are made through highly regulated operational processes. These operational processes are set out in clear orders and procedures, which are classified by nature. Among other things, these orders and procedures define the various stages of the process of planning an aerial strike, thus identifying the entities whose input the military commander must receive before conducting the attack.

The process whereby decisions on aerial strikes are made reflects the full implementation of relevant aspects of international law. First and foremost, the decision to strike is subject to criteria and conditions specified in the orders and procedures, which are designed to ensure that the attack will be consistent with international law. These criteria and conditions have been formulated on the basis of preliminary legal advice and they are implemented by the commanders in each and every aerial strike. Furthermore, although not legally required, in certain cases advice is provided in respect of the legality of a specific target. Obviously this type of advice is generally unfeasible during "real time" aerial strikes conducted in response to immediate threats, when the decision to attack a target is required to be reached in fractions of a second.

The implementation of principles of international law in procedures surrounding aerial strikes is also reflected in the intensive training that those involved in the decision-making process undergo. As an inseparable part of these training programmes, the relevant operational entities - from intelligence officers to operational commanders - learn and internalize the laws of armed conflict that apply to attacks, under the guidance of skilled legal advisers with expertise in the subject.

Within the decision-making process, significant emphasis is placed on the input from intelligence officers, which factor in all the relevant information available about the target, the anticipated military advantage and the collateral damage expected. For example, the intelligence input considers factors that may establish the legality of the target and the anticipated military advantage, such as the nature of the terrorist activity in which the terrorist target is involved (for example, participating in rocket attacks directed at Israeli civilians) and their role within the enemy's military operations. The intelligence insight will also consider, to the extent possible in the given circumstances, information that can be used to assess the extent of the anticipated collateral damage to civilians or civilian objects.

Based on this information, along with the insight of additional professionals such as damage assessment experts, the military commander may properly apply the principles of distinction, proportionality and the obligation to undertake precautionary measures – both in deciding on the attack itself and the manner in which it will be conducted (for example, the timing of the attack, the type of munitions to be used, etc.)

Almost certainly, not a single international journalist who reported on Gaza ever heard of this website, or even ever consulted an expert on international law, before throwing around terms like "war crime" and "proportionality."

Abbas sends flowers to Kim Jong Un

From North Korean news agency Rodong:

Supreme leader Kim Jong Un received a floral basket from Mahmoud Abbas, president of the State of Palestine, on the occasion of the 69th anniversary of Korea's liberation.

The floral basket was handed over to an official concerned on Aug.13 by Ismail Ahmed Mohamed Hasan, Palestinian ambassador to the DPRK.

This is confirmed by the official Palestinian Arab news agency Wafa, which said that Abbas sent this message:

The ties of friendship that bind our two countries will continue to be of mutual interest, for the good of our peoples and our countries, valuing your country's unwavering support of our people and their struggle, in order to gain their freedom and self-determination and establish their independent state with its capital in East Jerusalem, which will be an oasis of security, peace and coexistence.

ــــــ

Kim wasn't the only bloodthirsty dictator receiving love from that much-vaunted man of peace.

In June, Mahmoud Abbas sent a hand-written letter to Syrian president Bashar Assad, congratulating him on his victory in the "elections" and wishing him luck in confronting terrorists.

Well over 2000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria so far, yet Abbas' letter did not receive any negative coverage in the Arab press as far as I could tell.

(h/t Isi)

IDF buying bottled water from a Turkish company

YNet Hebrew revealed recently that some of the rations that IDF soldiers have been using have come from Turkey.

Here is a water bottle giving the URL of the Turkish company Elmacik.

Hey - at least it's kosher!

Apparently at least one other product hat IDF soldiers had - grape leaves - also was sourced in Turkey.

Soldiers, correctly, wondered why Israel is buying products from a country whose anti-Israel rhetoric is off the charts. There are Israeli bottled water companies that one would think could supply the IDF.

Arab media, meanwhile, are calling this a scandal from the other side, asking why Turkey is selling goods to the IDF. That's got to be a #BDSFail.

There was a similar mini-scandal in 2011 when it was discovered that IDF soldiers were drinking another brand of water from Turkey, Saka. Saka also sells to Qatar - and Iran. It is unclear if Saka is still being sold to the IDF.

Heartwarming video of Japanese singing and rallying for Israel in Tokyo (update)

I received this via email, and it looks like it was taken earlier this month in Tokyo.

It is really beautiful, especially in contrast with the violent and sickening anti-Israel protests worldwide.

It is easy to see who acts out of love and who acts out of hate.

I can't wait for someone to say that this is proof that Jews own the Japanese media!

I think these Japanese Zionists know more Hebrew songs (and more Hebrew) than any of the "as-a-Jews" who use the religion they were accidentally born into - and know nothing about - as a weapon.

(h/t Sam L)

UPDATE: It was on July 31. (h/t Bob K)

From the Simon Wiesenthal Center:

August 14, 2014

At yesterday's meeting at the United Nations, senior officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center presented United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a document (read letter and document here) expressing concerns about Hamas' campaign of terror against Israel, and a review of the terrorist group's multiple violations of International Law, including the willful use of Gaza civilians as human shields resulting in massive casualties and the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals and even UN facilities.

Despite these violations by Hamas, the officials said that Israel still receives the brunt of international condemnation even from within the UN community, contributing to an alarming increase of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel throughout the world.

The document that they attached looked mighty familiar...

It was copied from my list of 19 ways Hamas has violated international law.

While I would have preferred that they checked with a real international law scholar first, I'm reasonably confident that everything mentioned is accurate.

Plus, there is no downside. The UN cannot exactly respond by saying that "Oh, Hamas is only violating 14 of the 19 laws you are mentioning!"

The fact is that the UN and every major NGO will only condemn Hamas rocket attacks, and none of their other violations of international law. That way they pretend to be "even-handed" when they are really looking for an excuse to spend 99% of their time bashing Israel, which isn't violating international law!

The easy lies of a far left anti-Israel "journalist"

According to her bio at Electronic Intifada,

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and editor with The Electronic Intifada, and has contributed to Al-Jazeera English, Inter Press Service, Truthout.org, Left Turn magazine, and various other international media outlets. From 2003-2010, she was the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints, an award-winning investigative newsmagazine operating out of KPFA/Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California. Nora has been regularly reporting from Palestine since 2004.

So how much does she care about accuracy?

In an article last week about the Gaza bomb squad that got blown up along with an AP reporter, she wrote:

Because of the Israeli-Egyptian siege and blockade on Gaza, these munitions experts have been prevented from accessing necessary protective gear and robotic equipment that their counterparts in other countries rely on to do this critical but dangerous work.

Really? Because I cannot find "bomb protective gear," "robotic equipment for bomb disposal" or anything remotely like that on the official list of things that Israel does not allow to be imported into Gaza through Kerem Shalom.

The only question I wasn't sure about was "carbon fibers" but a quick check shows that bomb disposal suits do not use carbon fibers, but Kevlar and foam.

In all likelihood, Hamas never even tried to order or acquire through Egypt any bomb suits or other specialized bomb disposal equipment. Because they really don't care about the lives of their people.

If Barrows-Friedman has some other information that shows I'm wrong, I welcome it.

Somehow I doubt that she will give me the same courtesy. Because she is not a journalist, but a propagandist.

08/17 Links: Gaza war seems to be ending, but who won?; Arguing against dead Gazan kids

From Ian:

Arguing against dead Gazan kids

This is not an “Israeli Palestinian” conflict this is a conflict between extremists and everyone else. This truth is something journalists ignore every time.
The demands being made by Hamas right now are the perfect example of this divide. There is nothing extreme about going to war demand freedom of movement for your populace or the free flow of trade and goods into Gaza. But when you take into account the fact that these measures were only imposed after Hamas murdered the members of the ruling Fatah they overthrew and turned Gaza into a giant playground for terrorists you understand their necessity. Israel is dealing with Hamas and has no reason to believe that their demands are coming from anything other than a desire to get as many guns into the Strip as possible.
So while the world has been watching dead Palestinians being brought into the hospital which doubles as Hamas military HQ they are in no mood to hear the rational Israeli worries about a rearmed, re-equipped Hamas shooting into Israel once again in two years time.
The truth is that the extremists have won this round. Rationality has been swept aside. All thoughts for the majority of Israelis and Palestinians who are being dragged along for the Hamas ride are gone, replaced by an image of a dead kid and a hole in a roof.

What my visit to Israel has taught me about the war in Gaza

Israelis have been there before. This is deeply embedded in the national psyche. Sadly I think some of the one-sided nature of the reporting in Europe and the US has strengthened the feeling that they are in this alone.
My visit to Israel was fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. Britain and Conservative MPs have a choice. We can either defend the right of a democratic nation to defend itself as our Prime Minister has done so well or we can align ourselves with people who pick this conflict, perhaps because of more sinister reasons, while ignoring other conflicts in Iraq or Syria where more people are dying.
Of course we must question Israel, review our arms deals with it and push them to develop a strategy for peace that will relieve them of the horrors of their current existence. What we must not do is yield to those who conveniently forget that it is the terror organisation Hamas that seeks the destruction of an entire people and that uses its own children as shields.
Balance in this debate seems to have been lost. A terrorist network has been made to look like the victim with some asking incredibly why Hamas isn’t allowed a missile defence shield! While Jewish people get attacked in the streets of Western Europe for simply being Jewish, Hamas terrorists are relieved of the responsibility for the plight of their own people.

In a hospital under fire from Gaza, we see the best of Israel

A general surgeon, Dr. Darawasha has been intimately involved in saving many Israeli soldiers throughout the conflict. “Everyone sees you as a doctor,” says Dr. Darawasha. “But when the war started, I thought soldiers would look at me strangely — that they would be angry with me. But they were so kind and understanding.”
Dr. Darawasha is open about his views. I asked him if treating Israeli soldiers was difficult for him. He replied, “The Hamas do not represent me. The soldiers represent me. I feel like I did something for this country as a doctor.” He added, “Gaza does not represent me. This is my country; my family is here.”
Israel has been good to Dr. Darawasha and his family. He comes from Iksal Village, in the Northern part of Israel. His father and uncle, he says, have always had positive interactions with the Jewish people — both socially and professionally. As an Arab, he has never felt discriminated against or treated as a second-class citizen by Israel.
In fact, he feels he owes his country a great debt. When he graduated from medical school in Romania and returned to Israel, it was Israel that embraced him, gave him money to continue his studies and gave him job opportunities. He has always felt at home in Israel.

David Harris-Gershon's, What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife? is a fascinating read.

Harris-Gershon is a progressive-left American Jew who supports the anti-Semitic BDS movement and spends much of his time bashing Israel before a non-Jewish left-leaning audience.

I, as a matter of public disclosure, have been highly critical of his writings in the past.

Nonetheless, I would say that the first one hundred pages of Harris-Gershon's book are terrific. There is no question but that the man can write and that this is a quirky and sad and heart-felt page-turner.

In 2002 Harris-Gershon's wife, Jaime, sat in the cafeteria of Hebrew University atop Mount Scopus in northeastern Jerusalem, speaking with fellow students, when Mohammad Odeh ignited a bomb killing nine people and injuring Jaime, among numerous others.

This, needless to say, was a cause for celebration in Gaza City, where they presumably handed out cakes and candies to children in joy upon this great victory over the "Zionist entity."

Harris-Gershon's book was written, therefore, as part of a healing process. It is deeply personal and demonstrates a braveness of character. It is not everyone, after all, who has the strength to bare oneself to the world in the way that Harris-Gershon does, as he tries to understand the motivation of the killer and what that means not only to himself and his wife, but to the State of Israel, if not the Jewish people, as a whole.

As someone familiar with Harris-Gershon's writings on Israel I expected an anti-Israel narrative in his book and, through the first third, was pleasantly surprised to find none of the usual malicious insinuations, self-righteousness chest-beating, acidic implications of Jewish-Israeli racism, or the kind of general contempt one usually finds within a Harris-Gershon Daily Kos "diary."

Slowly, however, mid-way through the book, the narrative becomes increasingly negative not toward the people responsible for nurturing a culture of hatred toward their Jewish neighbors over the course of fourteen centuries, but toward the Jews, themselves. For reasons that he never makes entirely clear, at least not to my satisfaction, Harris-Gershon comes to relate to the Palestinian narrative of pristine victim-hood while blaming his fellow Jews, or at least those in the Israeli government, for the bombing at Hebrew University and the conflict with Arabs, more generally.

Harris-Gershon's turn against Israel, a country that he claimed to love, begins with an apology.

Apparently after his capture Mohammad Odeh apologized for the lives he destroyed and that apology loomed large for Harris-Gershon.

He writes:

“But those words – he was sorry – backlit everything, threw shadows upon the walls which the darkness had concealed. I saw myself. I saw Mohammad. I saw the destruction. And for the first time, I felt an intense need to speak with Mohammad, to understand him.”

For some reason it does not occur to Harris-Gershon that perhaps Odeh apologized in order to help ease his situation as much as possible. While it is true that good Jihadi ideologues are not likely to apologize for anything, it is also true that good Jihadi ideologues are human beings many of whom, under duress, will say almost anything to keep their interrogators at bay.

Due to this apology, genuine or not, Harris-Gershon contacts the Israeli government out of a desire to meet with the murderer. In my estimation, there is nothing particularly unusual about Harris-Gershon wanting to meet the man who injured his life and almost killed his wife. Had I been in his situation I might have wanted to meet Odeh as well... although, perhaps not to have a heart-to-heart conversation.

Harris-Gershon writes:

“I had no interest in reconciliation, had no interest in some granola-caked forgiveness trek toward Mohammad. I just wanted to square the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘sorry’ so that I might be able to, once again, sleep through the night.”

That seems more than fair, although I have to wonder why throughout the book he refers to the Jihadi murderer by the familiar first name? This may sound like a rather strange criticism, I suppose, but imagine that Charles Manson almost killed your husband or wife. In reference to the guy would you likely call him "Charles" or "Manson"? I am pretty sure that most people would not use the familiar and friendly term "Charles" under such circumstances, yet throughout the book Harris-Gershon refers to Odeh as "Mohammad."

It was just one of those little things that raised an eyebrow for me as I read. It is clear that Harris-Gershon sought to humanize the murderer in order to understand his motivation and that is, I suppose, an admirable inclination.

There were, however, two other little eyebrow raisers toward the middle of the book.

The first is concerned with a discussion of apartheid South Africa seemingly out of nowhere. What Harris-Gershon claims is that in his Google investigations into the experiences of others who have faced "perpetrators" the term "reconciliation" kept coming up. This, allegedly, led him to the example of apartheid South Africa which he therefore felt a need to discuss in the middle of the book.

There is no reason to include a discussion of apartheid South Africa in this book unless one wishes to plant into the mind of the reader a highly unjust, malicious, and dangerous comparison.

Yet another eyebrow raiser was Harris-Gershon's assumption that because Israel turned down his request to visit with Odeh in prison, on the grounds that Odeh did not want to see him, that the Israelis were obviously up to no good.

“I began to suspect that the Israeli government might not have given my request any consideration, that Ruti Koren, Bureau Manager, Ministry of Public Secrurity, might have used Mohammad’s refusal as easy cover.”

Easy cover for what is entirely unclear.

At this point Harris-Gershon turns to left-wing anti-Israel activists who are willing to help him meet with Odeh and it is among them that he discovers his true soul-mates.

“As I sought the assistance of these peace activists, I began to sympathize with their mission: working for the human rights of both Palestinians and Israelis. Things were not black and white, as I had been led to believe. It was not good versus evil.”

Just who it was that deceived Harris-Gershon is entirely unclear. Was it his parents? His teachers? The Israeli government? His rabbis? Random Jews on the street? Someone apparently led him to believe that Arabs are "evil" and Jews are "good" and he was rather shocked to discover, as a full-grown adult, that others disagree. This led to a great opening of the soul to such an extent that he wrote the following to the family of the murderer.

“If you can find it in your heart, I ask that you speak with Mohammad and let him know why I would like to speak with him. And if you find my motivations pure, I humbly ask that you encourage him to agree to speak with me.”

I have to say, it is not everyone who is quite so pious as to grovel before the family of the man who hospitalized and almost murdered his wife.

{As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am not nearly so holy... you can be sure.}

The final third of the book is essentially a repetition of Arab complaints concerning Jewish malfeasance in that part of the world and Harris-Gershon's success in bringing presents to the children of the murderer.

It took professor Mordechai Kedar from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv to make that happen through his sympathy with Harris-Gershon's desire to meet with the killer. It should also be noted that Dr. Kedar has recently been defamed by people on Harris-Gershon's own Daily Kos blog who shamelessly and falsely claim that he favors rape as a tactic in war.

One would think that since this allegation is absolutely outrageous nonsense meant to undermine the integrity and reputation of the Jewish Israeli scholar that helped Harris-Gershon, he might come to his patron's defense in the defamatory "diaires" published at his home blog.

He did not, however, neither here nor here nor here..

At the end of the day, I feel bad for Harris-Gershon. There is no doubt that he and his wife, Jaime, went through a traumatic experience that altered their lives and his book is a well-written testament to that fact. I find nothing the least bit dishonest in Harris-Gershon's memoir. On the contrary, I have little doubt that he means every word that he says.

Where he fails to convince, however, is in his explanation for his transition from pro-Israel ideologue to anti-Israel ideologue. There is little in his story that accounts for this beyond the fact that the Israeli government refused to give the man permission to visit a murderer in prison.

Certainly, his brief dipping of the toes into Israeli history for a few pages toward the end of the book is little more than a repetition of the so-called "Palestinian narrative," which is actually a negation of Jewish history in the sense that it refuses to acknowledge thirteen hundred years of Jewish subjugation under Arab-Muslim imperial rule within the system of dhimmitude.

That Harris-Gershon is an anti-Israel ideologue is beyond doubt. Even pro-Israel people who despise my own contribution to the discussion, and who are familiar with the man's blogging, would agree that Harris-Gershon is a toxic individual when it comes to Israel.

He even casts a gimlet eye upon the Balfour Declaration which he considers unjust toward the local Arabs.

There is no doubt that he and his wife went through something horrific and life-altering.

In my opinion, however, he would have done better to spend that money on a gift for his own kid, rather than the kid of the guy who tried to murder his wife.

I know where my loyalties lie, but not all of us can be - or should be - quite so saintly as David Harris-Gershon.

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.

The terrorist in the "righteous gentile" family house

This story was on the front page of the New York Times and has been reported all over. The irony of a person who saved Jews during the Holocaust now accusing Israel of war crimes is too rich to ignore:

In 1943, Henk Zanoli took a dangerous train trip, slipping past Nazi guards and checkpoints to smuggle a Jewish boy from Amsterdam to the Dutch village of Eemnes. There, the Zanoli family, already under suspicion for resisting the Nazi occupation, hid the boy in their home for two years. The boy would be the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.

Seventy-one years later, on July 20, an Israeli airstrike flattened a house in the Gaza Strip, killing six of Mr. Zanoli’s relatives by marriage. His grandniece, a Dutch diplomat, is married to a Palestinian economist, Ismail Ziadah, who lost three brothers, a sister-in-law, a nephew and his father’s first wife in the attack.

On Thursday, Mr. Zanoli, 91, whose father died in a Nazi camp, went to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague and returned a medal he received honoring him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations — non-Jews honored by Israel for saving Jews during the Holocaust. In an anguished letter to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, he described the terrible price his family had paid for opposing Nazi tyranny.

...Dr. Zeyada (older brother) said last month that none of his family members were militants. Israel says that it takes precautions to avoid killing civilians, and that Hamas purposely increases civilian casualties by operating in residential neighborhoods. It has offered no information on whether the Zeyada family home was hit purposely, and if so, what the target was and whether it justified a strike that killed six civilians. The military told the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which first reported Mr. Zanoli’s decision, only that it was investigating “all irregular incidents.”

Once can understand why the IDF is unwilling to discuss details that could reveal its intelligence assets during a war. But there is information that is freely available out there - information that the media like the NYT hasn't bothered to check - that indicates that there was a valid military target in that house.

Here is the list of people killed in the July 20th attack, from PCHR:

At approximately 14:00, an Israeli warplane launched a missile at a 3-storey house belonging to Jameel Sha’ban Ziada, in which 20 people live, in al-Boreij refugee camp. The house was destroyed and 6 members of the family, including 2 women and a child, and a guest were killed: Jameel Sha’ban Ziada, 53; Yousef Sh’aban Ziada, 43; ‘Omar Sha’ban Ziada, 32; Sha’ban Jameel Ziada, 12; Muftiya Mohammed Ziada, 70; Bayan ‘Abdul Latif Ziada, 39; and Mohammed Mahmoud al-Maqadma, 30.

Hmmm...one of those names is a bit different.

What do we know about Mohammed Mahmoud al-Maqadma?

Well, you can ask B'Tselem. When they list the people killed in the house, they laconically mention that Maqadama was a "military branch operative."

He was a member of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades.

Haaretz reported that he was a "militant" ...but only in Hebrew.

Here is his Al Qassam Brigades martyr poster:

Suddenly, it looks like there might have been a valid military target at the Ziyada house.

I don't know if Maqadameh was the target, or if his presence there indicated that this house was on top of a weapons cache or a bunker. I don't know if the family was purposefully protecting their "guest" or if they were being used as human shields. My guess is that during battles, Hamas members were going to their command and control centers and not hiding among families, which would indicate that either the Ziyada house was a valid military target or it was on top of one.

The point is - this information is available. The New York Times first discussed the bombing of that same house on August 4, and by then the identity of the "guest" was known to NGOs. The anomalous name among the victims is a point that a decent reporter should have checked out.

This is really the proof of media bias against Israel. Any thinking person knows that Israel has an active interest in minimizing civilian deaths, and every knowledgeable reporter knows that Israel has good intelligence in Gaza.

The same research that people can do on the Internet is available - along with much more - to the staffs of major media outlets like the NYT.

Yet the media report, without skepticism, every claim that there were no military targets in each flattened home. The information that contradicts this claim is out there - if they would bother to look for it.

They don't.

They would rather believe that Israel is indiscriminately bombing civilians than take the extra hour or two to do some basic research - the type of research that the public relies on the media to do to begin with.

I don't know what really happened at the Ziyada home. But there is enough information to indicate that this is not the open-and-shut case that the media is characterizing it as. Their refusal to go the extra mile - their willingness to accept Palestinian Arab lies without question and to assume Israeli maliciousness without question - is indeed a clear bias, especially since in the past the IDF has managed to explain details of the circumstances months later - explanations that have never been debunked.

There was a terrorist at the Ziyada house. A decent reporter would ask, why?

A biased reporter would cover it up.

(h/t Bob Knot, EBoZ, EoL)

Report: Hamas received millions in aid but gave it to its leaders

Egypt's Youm7 reports "from a senior Palestinian source" that the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey sent millions of dollars to Hamas to help rebuild Gaza.

According to the report, Hamas' financial officer Essam Da'las received the money, but instead of distributing it to the families in Gaza who have lost their homes, the money is going to fighters and Hamas leaders. 3 leaders of the Qassam Brigades are listed specifically.

While the story is quite believable, as Hamas has a history of taking the lion's share of international aid, most Egyptian media hates Hamas and will sometimes make up stories.

Here is Essam Da'las with Hamas leader Haniyeh in January:

And Da'las' house was bombed on July 12:

08/16 Links: Britain's "Murky Anti-Semitic Subculture"; Occupation hypocrisy: Gaza vs. Cyprus

From Ian:

Britain's "Murky Anti-Semitic Subculture"

Recent anti-Israel protests have been attended by thousands across Europe. These protests come in opposition to attempts by Israeli forces to quell the rocket fire aimed at Israeli citizens by the Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In Britain, the protests in support of Hamas have been chiefly organized by a mixture of Sunni Islamist groups and groups aligned with the Socialist Workers Party. The attending protestors, though, seem to come from across the political and religious spectrums.
European hatred for the small Jewish state, or Jews in general, apparently continues to transcend all ideological differences to the point where pro-Assad activists can march alongside Sunni Islamists, while neo-Nazis stand shoulder to shoulder with Marxists.
Parliamentarians such as Andy Slaughter MP and George Galloway MP walked next to Islamist activists such as Ismail Patel, a supporter of the late French Holocaust Denier Roger Garaudy. Patel advocates the killing of adulterous women and has previously stated: "Hamas is no terrorist organization…we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel." Marching between Andy Slaughter and Ismail Patel was Hafiz al-Karmi, an official from the Palestinian Forum of Britain, one of the UK's leading pro-Hamas organizations.

The Muslim Colonists: Forgotten Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The current Palestinian narrative is that all Muslims in Palestine are natives and all Jews are settlers. This narrative is false. There has been a small but almost continuous Jewish presence in Palestine since the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome two thousand years ago, and, as we will see, most of the Muslims living in Palestine when the state of Israel was declared in 1948 were Muslim colonists from other parts of the Ottoman Empire who had been resettled and living in Palestine for fewer than 60 years.
There are two important historical events usually overlooked in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
One is the use that Muslim rulers made of the jizya (a discriminatory tax imposed only on non-Muslims, to "protect" them from being killed or having their property destroyed) to reduce the quantity of Jews living in Palestine before the British Mandate was instituted in 1922. The second were the incentives by the Ottoman government to relocate displaced Muslim populations from other parts of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine.

Occupation hypocrisy: Gaza vs. Cyprus

Cyprus is a beautiful island, but it has never recovered from the Turkish invasion of 1974. Turkish troops still control nearly 40 percent of the island — the most fertile and formerly the richest portion.
Some 200,000 Greek refugees never returned home after being expelled from their homes and farms in Northern Cyprus.
The capital of Nicosia remains divided. A 112-mile demilitarized “green line” runs right through the city across the entire island.
Thousands of settlers from Anatolia were shipped in by the Turkish government to occupy former Greek villages and to change Cypriot demography — in the same manner the occupying Ottoman Empire once did in the 16th century. Not a single nation recognizes the legitimacy of the Turkish Cypriot state. In contrast, Greek Cyprus is a member of the European Union.
Why, then, is the world not outraged at an occupied Cyprus the way it is at, say, Israel?

Weekly EoZ roundup 8/15

By far the most popular post of the week was the story about the antisemitic posters in Rome, apparently put up by a right-wing group, listing Jewish-owned shops to be boycotted. This blog was the first to report this in English.

Yet for some reason the similar ultimatum by South Africa's trade unions to boycott Jewish stores did not get the same coverage - even when the author of that demand went further and called for "an eye of an eye" against South African Zionist Jews when any child is hurt in Gaza.

Other notable posts:

Shabbat Shalom!

08/15 Links Pt2: My Jewish Family’s Incredible Shrinking World; 4 Types Of Anti-Israel Leftists

From Ian:

4 Types Of Anti-Israel Leftists

In recent weeks, debates have been flaring up on social media about who is to blame for the Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza. Even celebrities such as Joan Rivers and Selena Gomez have gotten involved, dividing friends and fans. As someone who leans pretty left myself, I have always been baffled at how people who have rational, intelligent viewpoints that I agree with on every other issue somehow lose their minds when it comes to this conflict. The scientist that I am, I have investigated the reason for this discrepancy, and have noticed some patterns. The four categories displayed below seem to follow their own distinct flavour of anti-Zionism. They all have common threads in that they love to cite the heavily-biased UN for “evidence” of Israeli war crimes, to argue that criticizing Israel or even being anti-Zionist doesn’t make them anti-Semitic, and to nitpick at even the smallest of Israel’s faults, while obscuring the far more egregious faults of Hamas, to use as reasons for its nonexistence – something I never see done about any other country. However, the four schools of anti-Zionist thought are distinctive in their approach.
4. The Leftie Who Is Actually A Right-Winger
Common Giveaways:
-Mention of the “AIPAC lobby” or other implications that Jews control the government through their pockets.
-Accusing you of being paid to be pro-Israel by the Israeli government or Hasbara.
-“Jews love to accuse anyone who is anti-Zionist or has legitimate criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic in order to invalidate any opposition” – all four types of anti-Israel leftists use this line, but this wolf in sheep’s clothing has a particular affinity for it, as they are quick to try to hide that they are anti-Semitic knowing full well know that if their anti-Semitism was revealed, it would invalidate their claims.

Tunnels as war crime

The tunnels built by Hamas in Gaza, in particular, present novel issues for international law. Gaza’s tunnels are different from traditional military objectives like army bases or weapons depots. In their design, the tunnels burrow under an internationally recognized border, they traverse civilian areas, and their primary objective and effect – contrary to international law – is to harm and endanger civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian.
While being constructed, Gaza’s tunnels pose a substantial risk to those building them – often children – and to the civilian structures under which they are dug. The last few weeks have shown us that most tunnel digging begins within homes, hospitals, mosques and other “protected objects”. Filled with explosives and weapons, tunnels can detonate at any time, risking not only the lives of the diggers and operatives who use them, but also the civilians living above them. And this is only on the Palestinian side of the border.
Equally challenging are the conditions in which these tunnels may be eliminated. In Gaza, which does not have the open spaces found in Vietcong-controlled Vietnam or al Qaeda-controlled Afghanistan, the destruction of a tunnel inevitably results in the destruction of civilian structures above the subterranean passage, and in many cases the loss of civilian lives.

My Jewish Family’s Incredible Shrinking World

The Middle East is even more fraught, of course. “You can go to United Arab Emirates, certainly to Dubai,” people say. Can I? “Don’t be too open about being Jewish but they don’t care there. They’re very modern.” My husband was born in Israel and it says so on his American passport. They don’t allow Israelis into the United Arab Emirates, at least that’s the official policy of this “modern” country. Even if he wasn’t marked for exclusion, I’m not keeping my Jewishness a secret. If Saudi Arabia opened its doors to me tomorrow, I still wouldn’t go. I’m not covering my head. I’m a woman of the free world, I have spent my life being grateful for this, knowing that a twist of fate gave me freedom I could have so easily not have had.
I wore a Star of David around my neck the entire time I lived in Scotland. I think I’d be uncomfortable doing the same now. The rage emanating from Europe toward Jews is white hot. A synagogue in Surrey was defaced. Another synagogue was vandalized in Miami of all places. But what’s lacking when it happens in Europe is any sense of outrage from the Europeans. In Miami the atmosphere was “how could this happen here?” In Europe there is no such question. Of course it happens there. In France, when synagogues get firebombed, as they do with alarming frequency, there isn’t a national movement to say they won’t stand for it. They very much stand for it. French Jews are the scapegoats for the real problems in France, between the French and those the French call “the Arabs,” even though “the Arabs” have lived there for decades and should just be French by now. Forget Turkey, a country I once enjoyed visiting. They went off the rails years ago. It’s an election year in Turkey now, so obviously Israel is the top issue in a country with 9% unemployment.
Israeli performers get disinvited from a festival in Edinburgh as if disinviting artists from countries whose politics you don’t like is a normal thing to do. Where is the outrage? They pretend it’s because of Israel, not because they’re Jews. Then the Jewish Film Festival gets canceled in London. An embarrassment. Britain should hang its head in shame. It doesn’t. A crowd in Germany (in Germany!) shouts “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.” Where is Germany’s soul-searching that this goes on within its borders? Forget Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem signing an anti-Israel letter in a Spanish newspaper. No big deal when the second-biggest newspaper in Spain prints a piece arguing Jews “are not made to co-exist,” with references to how good they are with money, how they deserved expulsion, wondering how they still exist (“persist”) at all.(h/t Phil)