Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

08/19 Links Pt1: Rockets resume, Israeli envoys leave Cairo; Britain’s anti-Semitic whiff of Weimar

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Don’t set a double standard for Israel on norms of war

The pictures of destruction and mourning in Gaza that have filled media around the world for the past several weeks have been very painful and sad to view. One would be hard-pressed to find an Israeli who does not sympathize with the suffering of Gaza’s victims.
Yet there are also few Israelis who feel we are responsible for this suffering. For us, the tragedy of Gaza is inseparable from the tragedy of the entire Middle East. Over the past three years, in countries around our tiny state, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed in the most horrific ways. This wave of terror recognizes no official borders. The only border at which the savagery stops is Israel’s.
Hamas and Hezbollah are doing their best to change this. So what protects us? The United Nations or human rights groups? No. Only the military power of the Israel Defense Forces. In response to our enemies’ relentless campaigns, the army is constantly developing new ways to defend us. One new weapon, Iron Dome, has in the past few weeks protected civilians from almost 3,000 missiles.
But while Israelis have developed missile shields to protect children, Hamas has been using children as shields to protect missiles. This perverse strategy is the brainchild of a society that hails death. For Hamas, using living shields serves the double function of increasing the number of martyrs and galvanizing a free world that values life to pressure Israel to stop fighting.

Decorated Army Chief Accuses Hamas of War Crimes, Praises Israeli Restraint

A highly respected and decorated Army chief, Col. Richard Kemp, has accused Hamas of multiple war crimes including the targeting of Israeli civilians and the use of Palestinian children as human shields and suicide bombers.
Speaking at the National Rally for Israel and Peace in Brighton yesterday, Col. Kemp gave a comprehensive account of the conflict in Gaza, drawing from first-hand experience to accuse Hamas of war crimes whilst praising Israeli restraint and desire for peace.
He said: “I’ve been there [in Israel and Gaza] for four weeks. I’ve watched closely what’s happening [in this conflict]. Hamas have used the two weapons at their disposal, and they have only two weapons. Those weapons are not rockets and are not attack tunnels ... they could not hope to defeat the might of the state of Israel with her allies around the world using rockets and attack tunnels. They did not intend to defeat the State of Israel, they know they couldn’t. So what were their weapons? Human shields – their own old men, women, babies and children to be sacrificed for their own purposes. And lies and propaganda. Those two weapons combined are what they used to try to exert international pressure on Israel to get concessions for them as part of their ongoing campaign to ultimately exterminate the state of Israel and to annihilate every Jew around the world as called for by their charter. … Their agenda is an agenda of genocide. That’s all it is.

UN Watch: Col. Richard Kemp on the 2014 Hamas-Israel War

Douglas Murray: Britain’s anti-Semitic whiff of Weimar

There is a whiff of Weimar in the air in Britain. Barely a week now passes without some further denigration caused by anti-Semitic, sorry, pro-Palestine demonstrators targeting businesses run by Jews/stores selling products produced by the Jewish state. You know, like Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Marks and Spencer, Starbucks and so on. Most of this fairly random targeting of whatever business sounds a bit Jewish goes unnoticed. Sometimes protestors manage to get the business closed – as with the Ahava store in liberal, enlightened Brighton. Generally they just succeed in intimidating shoppers and making it easier for people to shop elsewhere in some non-Semitic store.
Sometimes the protestors, like this young man in Manchester, are open about their feelings and taunt any nearby Jews by telling them, for instance, how highly they think of Hitler (‘I love Hitler. I’m big on my boy Hitler’ says this nicely integrated young man):

The Letter From A Jewish Londoner That Went Viral

I work in an office. I go to football. I like eating out. I enjoy the arts. I am a proud family man. I give up time for charity work. I try to be a decent contributing member of society. I pay my taxes honestly. But there appears to be something that sets me and my kind apart.
At park gates in East London a friend of mine gets told to f**k off for photographing a flag. At a pub in Bath my wife gets called scum when she mentions her background. In a student hall in Manchester a friend’s son is asked to leave as the specially prepared food he chose to eat is not permitted because it carries a label written in a language used by a country that is “banned” by the student union.
In Belfast a historic blue plaque is removed to deny part of my history. In theatres in Edinburgh and London I am told to denounce my opinions or lose the right to perform. A sportsman in Ireland tweets if he sees my kind he’ll punch us in the face and recommends others follow suit.
Protesters across the country show no shame in shouting that my historical persecutors were right and social media is rife with vitriol towards me (even from so-called friends). And in Bradford I’m told that I am not even permitted to enter the city.
What is this? Racism. Where is this? Britain and Ireland. When is this? Now. Who am I? I am a Jew.
Never again, we say, never again.

The Yemen Economist has a scoop!

Apparently, they have infiltrated Jewish schools worldwide to find out their curricula!

All from a country that has only a handful of Jews remaining.

According to the article:

Jewish teachers instill a hate of every non-Jew in their children.
Jews teach children that there is no choice but to always use violence.
Scandalously, Jews teach they they have the right to live in Israel.
Teaching that Jews are superior, the Chosen People.
Teaching fanatical concepts of Zionism based on the Talmud and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Falsifying history to achieve their goals.
Teaching kids to hate Arabs, saying that they are "savage and cutthroat and bloodthirsty and terrorist and aggressive by nature."

Good thing they ethnically cleansed those disgusting, lying Jews, isn't it?

The article goes on to berate (I think) Israel's curriculum for Arab students that teaches the Arabs that they are second-class citizens and that downplays how terrible Jews are.

The same newspaper has an article saying that Israel is worse than ebola.

Corrupt, pro-Hamas UN offers to "monitor" cement imports into Gaza

AFP reports:

UNRWA aid bag found in tunnel

The United Nations is ready to check imports of construction material sent to Gaza in order to ease Israel's concerns that supplies could be used to rebuild cross-border tunnels, a UN envoy said Monday.

UN Mideast envoy Robert Serry told the UN Security Council that reconstruction of Gaza remained the main priority once a durable ceasefire is agreed between Palestinian factions and Israel.

"Construction material must be allowed into Gaza to this effect -- aggregate, bar, and cement. And their access to Gaza must be facilitated in such a way that fulfills Israel's security concerns," Serry said.

"The United Nations stands ready to lend its support in this regard."

That's really funny.

Because UNRWA couldn't even monitor its own cement being imported into Gaza that was earmarked for only their projects.

UNRWA praised illegal smuggling of cement into Gaza back in 2011, after Hamas had already made it clear that it was prioritizing terrorism over building Gaza, a fact that UNRWA officials could not have been ignorant of.

UNRWA refused to condemn Hamas using scarce building materials, quite openly, for its own propaganda. In fact, UNRWA refuses to condemn Hamas even for putting Gazans' lives directly at risk.

UNRWA doesn't have its own drivers to bring cement from Kerem Shalom; it hires Gaza truck drivers who happily divert part of their cement to Hamas or the black market.

Hamas' redirecting cement donated by international aid was known back in 2010.

Most importantly, the union leaders representing UNRWA workers in Gaza are overwhelmingly associated with Hamas.

In Gaza, Hamas controls UNRWA.

The UN offer to keep track of the building materials entering Gaza is a complete joke.

Good luck finding a reporter who is willing to actually do research on the ignoble history of the UN empowering Hamas and helping enable its terror infrastructure, though.

Why is paralyzed Maha still in a Gaza hospital? (update)

We have been following the story of Maha Sheikh Khalil, the paralyzed 7-year old girl in Gaza who has been the subject of many articles.

The last we heard (see update), Israel had approved her being transferred out of Gaza for treatment overseas on July 26, but for some reason her family and the hospital administration were unaware of the approval. Israeli authorities urged the hospital to resubmit the paperwork and said that she would be approved immediately.

That was on August 12.

On August 15, in a Facebook post, it was reported that Maha was on her way to treatment in Turkey.

That is clearly not true.

Yesterday, Maha celebrated her eighth birthday at the same Gaza hospital, room 526:

The stories about Israeli cruelty at preventing her from leaving Gaza have dried up now that Israel showed that it approved her traveling once and was quite ready to do it again. We don't know if that second request was ever sent. even if the first one disappeared in a bureaucratic snafu; it seems unlikely that the hospital administrators wouldn't be making hourly phone calls to ensure that a new request would be approved quickly.

Yet she is still in Gaza.

Perhaps her condition deteriorated making it harder to safely move her. Perhaps there wasn't any hospital in Turkey willing to take her and that story was made up to avoid her being treated in Israel. Perhaps the PA lost her paperwork again.

Or just maybe, she is worth more to Hamas leaders, who are holed up in the basement of that same hospital, as a living martyr who attracts headlines than she would be if she wasn't in Gaza.

While this may be a cultural thing, it sure seems strange that a hospital, with oxygen equipment, would allow a birthday cake with sparklers, let alone candles.

(h/t Bob Knot)

UPDATE: Apparently, Maha was transported to Turkey on Wednesday.

Hamas leader said in 2009 that terror infrastructure was higher priority than houses

The Meir Amit Terrorism Info Center has documented over the years a statement that Hamas leader Khaled Meshal gave in 2009:

On November 12, 2009, Khaled Mashaal met with several senior figures at a meeting of Arab parties in Damascus. One of his main themes was that Hamas would continue the path of "resistance" [i.e., terrorism], and therefore most of Hamas' money and efforts in the Gaza Strip were invested in military preparations. His main talking points were the following (Paltimes.net):

Most of Hamas’ efforts in the Gaza Strip are invested in military preparations: “On the surface, [statements in the Gaza Strip] refer to reconciliation [between Hamas and Fatah] and rebuilding, however, what is not revealed is that most of Hamas’ funds and efforts are invested in the resistance and military preparations... We are intent on the resistance.”

This was after almost a year of international aid to rebuild Gaza after Cast Lead. It is now apparent that Hamas diverted much of the aid meant to rebuild houses and instead used it to build a terror infrastructure.

If all the protesters truly cared about the lives of Gazans, such news should prompt them to have mass rallies against Hamas, which is clearly the enemy of ordinary Gaza civilians.

But we aren't seeing that. On the contrary, we are seeing the supposed leaders of the "pro-Gaza" movement doing everything they can to strengthen Hamas and to allow Hamas to continue to steal aid from Gazans.

Many of the supposed pro-Gaza leaders, in fact, actively work against the PA and for Hamas - so that the next round of aid will go once again to build rockets and tunnels instead of schools and hospitals and apartments.

It is almost as if those who donate money to Gaza want to fund Hamas' terrorist infrastructure.

08/18 Links Pt2: Sainsbury's acquiescence to anti-Semitism; UK Consul Wears anti-Israel Keffiyeh

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Jordan Doesn't Want More Palestinians

When Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon move against Palestinians, however, foreign journalists choose to bury their heads in the sand. Such has been the case with Jordan and its mistreatment of the kingdom's Palestinian majority.
Jordan's dilemma is that if it allows more Palestinians into the country, the kingdom, which already has a Palestinian majority, would be transformed into a Palestinian state. But by mistreating the Palestinians and depriving them of basic rights, Jordan and other Arab countries are driving them into the open arms of extremists, especially Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
The Jordanians have clearly chosen to follow the second option, which means keeping as many Palestinians as possible out of the kingdom. As far as King Abdullah is concerned, it is better to have radicalized Palestinians outside the kingdom than to let them into the kingdom, where they would cause him more trouble. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Brendan O'Neill: The kosher controversy at Sainsbury's speaks to a profound problem: acquiescence to anti-Semitism

Were you outraged by a Sainsbury's store's decision over the weekend to hide away its kosher foods in an attempt to placate anti-Israel protesters? You should have been. For this incident, though seemingly a one-off, speaks to a profound problem in Europe today – the respectable classes' acquiescence to anti-Semitism; their willingness to accept anti-Semitic sentiment as a fact of life and to shrug it off or, worse, kowtow to it.
The kosher incident took place at the Sainsbury's in Holborn in London. When a mob of anti-Israel protesters gathered outside the store, the manager took the extraordinary decision to take all kosher products off the shelves lest the protesters target them and smash them up. Kosher foods, of course, are Jewish not Israeli; they are part of the Jewish dietary requirement, not part of any kind of Israeli food corporatism. To shamefacedly hide away such foodstuffs in order to appease a gang of hot-headed Israel-haters is an attack on a religious people and their rights, not on the Israeli state. That in Britain in 2014 we have store managers taking kosher foods off public display should be of concern to anyone who hates prejudice and racism.

UK Consul General Wears Arab Keffiyeh Branding Israel as 'Free Palestine', MP Calls for Heads to Roll

A picture has emerged of the British Consul General to Jerusalem wearing an Arab Keffiyeh (scarf) with the Palestinian flag draped over the entirety of the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories. The image depicted on the scarf is the one used by protesters and belligerents in the region who wish to see the State of Israel wiped off the map.
The picture of Dr Alastair McPhail is from the Islamic Relief Palestine website, and depicts the inauguration of the Health Professions Lab at Al-Azhar University, a facility which was co-funded by Islamic Relief and the British Consulate.
Member of Parliament Bob Blackman implied that McPhail's position was untenable. He told Breitbart London: "Someone who is expressing such views has no place in supporting the government or civil service of the day. The whole purpose behind the peaceful solution is to promote two states side by side. Wiping one state off the face of the map hardly fits with this aspiration".

Zionist Muslim doctor, and others, spank Lancet for publishing anti-Israel article

A few weeks ago a bunch of anti-Israel doctors - people who are already involved in anti-Israel activism, like Mads Gilbert - published an article in The Lancet that had little to do with medicine and a lot to do with politics.

To give you an idea of how offensive and unbalanced the article was, here is the last paragraph:

We register with dismay that only 5% of our Israeli academic colleagues signed an appeal to their government to stop the military operation against Gaza. We are tempted to conclude that with the exception of this 5%, the rest of the Israeli academics are complicit in the massacre and destruction of Gaza. We also see the complicity of our countries in Europe and North America in this massacre and the impotence once again of the international institutions and organisations to stop this massacre.

There have been lots of responses, from the reasoned to the slightly hysterical. But this response published on Friday is well-written, comprehensive, and has just the right amount of anger beneath the surface.

And one of the writers is a Zionist Muslim physician Qanta Ahmed.

We, like you, are doctors and scientists who have devoted our lives to serving others, restoring health, and protecting the vulnerable. We are also informed, and also safeguard ethics in every sphere of our influence. Among us are those who have long collaborated in the advancement of medicine, science, and health with our colleagues, including those in Gaza. Many of us writing today are either members of Israeli academia, or formally or informally engaged with Israeli academia.

As ethical, apolitical, and professional members of the academic community,we find the open letter for the people in Gaza an outrageous diatribe lacking context and a deliberate vilification of the sovereign state of Israel and, by extension, every Israeli. In publishing such invective, The Lancet has allowed itself to become a platform for distorted political activism, as has been previously noted by others. Because we are scientists and physicians who are accustomed to incorporating all data into the formation of educated opinions (even public commentary), we are obliged to redress the imbalance.

Although the letter implies that we are devoid of feeling, let us first assert that each of us shares the sorrow at the loss of human life in the present Israel–Hamas war in Gaza. Our loss is equal, whether lives lost are Israeli or Palestinian. For some of us, these losses are deeply personal, realised as direct bereavements; for others, this loss represents the loss of ideals, the interruption, and perhaps even the termination of long struggled for collaboration or the pain in realising a deep assault to our private ideals.But the portrait the authors paint of wanton “Israeli aggression” by the mythically identified “largest and most sophisticated modern military machines” triggered by “perverse propaganda” fuelling “a ruthless assault of unlimited duration” is not only inaccurate, but outright histrionic, a dramatisation that can only serve unethical, non-scientific motives.

Exaggerations aside, we are further surprised to see the above assessments without any reference whatsoever to the well documented actions of Hamas, which speak to its militant intentions in no uncertain terms, realities that our colleagues obscure for reasons unknown. Allow us to rectify the deficit.

Since this particular conflict, Israel has been subject to thousands of rockets—at the time of writing, exceeding 2927 individual strikes—launched indiscriminately at its entire population, imperilling more than 7·9 million Israelis, among whom 19% are Muslim. Israelis as far away as 120 km north of Gaza have been targeted not with makeshift primitive weaponry but Syrian-made M-302 Khaibar missiles armed with 175 kg warheads that were first used in Haifa in the 2006 Israel–Lebanon war, courtesy of Hezbollah. Since Israel’s independence, the Israeli aggression the authors so readily condemn is in fact the exercise of the right of a legitimate state to protect its citizens and residents—many of whom identify themselves as Palestinians—from assault, an assault that Hamas has demonstrated itself to be deeply committed to irrespective of the sequelae befalling either its targets or its own host community.

Absent also from mention is the extraordinary network of tunnels Hamas has developed—presently numbered at 66 with more than 23 points of egress—from which attacks are launched and within which weapons are transported. These are concrete tunnels of remarkable sophistication, often electrified with illumination and telephone wires, and certainly constructed at the expense of the direct needs to repair the schools, homes, or hospitals of Gaza’s citizens. Lest anyone be mistaken, these tunnels are not perverse propaganda as Manduca and colleagues would claim, but verified by international media, identified by neighbouring Egypt as a menace to security, and forming an established route for Islamist terrorism assaults in Egyptian Sinai.

Certainly, we agree that a blockade has been imposed upon Gaza since 2006, but it is important to record why. The blockade, deliberately described falsely by Manduca and colleagues as a siege, is in response to the declared positions and explicit actions of Hamas, and positions and actions that Hamas refuses to relinquish because they are in line with their founding charter.

We accept that Manduca and colleagues, like us, aspire to regional peace. Hamas has no such aspirations. Seeing itself as the spearhead in the war against World Zionism—article 32 of Hamas’ founding charter—Hamas expressly seeks the extinction of the Jewish state, the Jewish people, and also of the Muslims among us who would dare collaborate or engage with any Jewish entity. The Hamas charter expressly outlaws all Muslim actions to ease tensions, let alone make peace with Israel, condemning any efforts to work towards peaceful resolution of the conflict as violation of sharia law. Muslims refusing to desist from peaceful collaboration or interaction with Israeli people are accused of “Khiyana Uzma”—a great treason. This would encompass the Muslim coauthor of this document.

Although Hamas certainly marries Palestinian nationalism with Islamism and we agree that Palestinians, including those in Gaza, seek statehood, Hamas seeks to claim all land, Israel included, for Palestine. It is with these sentiments that Hamas has launched this war on Israel, commencing with an unending barrage of rockets and missiles, now engaging the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in intense ground combat. Under assault in this theatre of war, the IDF established a sophisticated field hospital for the Palestinians of Gaza at one of the entry points into Gaza, equipped with delivery rooms, an outpatient clinic, and operating theatres—Hamas promptly banned Palestinians in Gaza from accessing it.

Hamas’ actions are explicitly manifest with Islamist anti-semitism, which demands denial of the right of Jews to exist, let alone to a nationhood, and is an anti-semitism, political scientists agree, that is far more virulent than Nazi anti-semitism, which lacked the added and very compelling appeal of impostor religious legitimacy.

Embracing religionist war as a sacrament, Hamas has no dilemmas even as the Palestinians of Gaza bear extraordinary loss of life. Denying them access to the aforementioned fiel hospital underlines both Hamas’ identication of Jews as the cosmic enemy and the source of all evil (article 22 of the Hamas charter) and that a wounded or martyred Palestinian has more value to the Hamas mission.

Islamist jihad has been central to Hamas’ mission since its 1987 inception, a mission many liberal democracies are currently confronting. Although the post-9-11 era has escalated the Islamist assault on secular democracies, engaging the USA, UK, and western Europe in military confrontation with Islamist terrorism as well as many Muslim nations (some of which, such as Pakistan, are currently pursuing domestic military operations to counter these attacks), Israel remains the only country denied the right to defend itself from Islamist assault. Manduca and colleagues would do well to recall that Hamas explicitly rejects western intellectual ideas—citing them to be “an intellectual invasion”—and thereby rejects the humanist agenda of the 21st century, among which one of the pillars is the commitment to never again repeat the European Holocaust. In abandoning humanism, the gateway to genocidal thinking is once more flung open.

Ironically, even though Hamas denies the Holocaust, it revels in describing Israel’s actions on Gaza (including in this theatre of war) as Nazi and themselves as the new Jews, a hypocrisy rarely exposed. Furthermore, Hamas has been, in this particular conflict, little short of masterful at engendering extraordinary displays of anti-semitism around the world in its support.

We unequivocally agree that children and women most often sustain the greatest losses, and in this conflict, the losses have been extremely high for the Gazans, but it still remains legitimate to identify the civilians in Gaza as captive to Hamas policy, a captivity that is imposed independently of physical and political barriers imposed by Israel and Egypt. Under Hamas’ leadership in the past 8 years, religious and personal freedoms in Gaza continue to shrink, and the movement and activity of women is becoming increasingly confined. According to the International Religious Freedom Report for 2012 published by the US Department of State, the de-facto Hamas authorities in Gaza have continued to restrict religious freedom in both law and
practice.

Children in Gaza, like those surrounded by other Islamist ideologies, are regularly recruited and enmeshed in the Hamas apparatus from the earliest years of their education. Congressional briefings, in which some of us have taken part, have documented the diversion of aid to service child radicalisation. Evidence of radicalisation in the school curricula is widely available, as is the social value placed on jihadist martyrdom imposed on Palestinians in early life. All this is the work of Hamas, the political leadership that Manduca and colleagues claims seeks normality for its people while persistently ensuring quite the opposite. To claim that the Hamas leadership have moved to resolve their conflict with Israel “without arms and harm” via the short-lived Unity Government is extremely naive. While paying such lip-service, Hamas was in fact shoring up armaments, fortifying subterranean positions, and amassing militant operatives in the service of radical Islamist ideology, as the present conflict has revealed. Hamas’ commitment to subterranean networks above the sanctity of its people is self-evident and speaks louder than calculated diplomatic words.

Over and above all of these observations that were deliberately excluded, what shakes us to our core is the dehumanisation and bigotry exercised by Manduca and colleagues, who stand in accusation, claiming each Israeli Arab and Israeli Jew among us as bloody-handed genocidaires “complicit in the massacre and destruction of Gaza”.Furthermore, we find the authors’ call for sanctions of the severest kind on Israel, a state that enshrines the religious, academic, and political freedoms of its citizens irrespective of faith, ethnicity, gender, or race, morally bankrupt. This, in the era of an unfolding Syrian genocide that has triggered nothing in the way of an international response, and 3·5 years later has yet to yield penalties for perpetrators of the 21st century’s most egregious warmongering to date. This is absolutely not to equate Israel with Syria, but to reveal the depth of prejudice in the sentiments levelled wholesale at an academic community to satisfy extreme bias.

We fear The Lancet has crossed the line and lost credibility among its readership.

For The Lancet and its editors to avoid any further embarrassment in associating this prestigious journal with such a vituperative betrayal of its scientific mission, we recommend The Lancet retract the authors’ letter on the basis of favouritism for anti-Israeli political positions, the victimisation of Israeli academia, and the competing interests of a lead author known to be a political activist with anti-Israeli stances. At the very least, the letter, such as it is, should have been balanced by an article offering a rebuttal, or an editorial providing context, but should never have been allowed to be published in this fashion, which explicitly empowers polemicist politics above measured academic discourse. We believe it prudent for The Lancet, as a valued and still-respected academic authority, to reassess its practice of biased publishing in the service of polarising political interests of one group.

In closing, we note Manduca and colleagues’ “disgust” at the events in Gaza, the “wounds to the body and soul” of the Gazan people, and their “temptation to conclude” that, “with the exception of this 5%, the rest of the Israeli academics” bear responsibility for the death, displacement, and deliberate dismemberment of Palestinians in Gaza. We too wish to register our own feelings, reach the conclusions we are now tempted to make, and identify the wounds that have resulted.

We find abhorrent that academic authors would, without evidence or data, accuse an entire academic community of crimes against humanity by association of national identity or professional affiliation, an accusation that is not only a rank dehumanisation of an entire state, but explicitly seditious in propagating virulent anti-semitic sentiments to the detriment of whole academies. Although our feelings will undoubtedly recover, the authors, through their reckless words, have inflicted a deep wound to the body and soul of global scientific and medical academia at the very moment opportunities for apolitical engagement, collaboration, and bridge-building are most needed. This is a victory only for Hamas, and a shameful one at that, emerging as it does from among our distinguished ranks.

We declare no competing interests.

*Qanta Ahmed, Alon Y Avidan, Aaron Ciechanover, Daniel Shechtman, Daniel Zajfman, Uriel Reichman, Roger Kornberg, Avram Hershko, Peretz Lavie

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.