Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 25, 2014

HRW not quite sure who is executing "collaborators" in Gaza

This HRW press release reads like a parody:

Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip should urgently act to stop executions of Palestinians accused of providing information to the Israeli military and appropriately punish those behind the executions, Human Rights Watch said today. News reports said unidentified gunmen believed to be acting on instructions from Hamas executed three people on August 21, 2014, 18 people on August 22, and four people on August 23.

Hamas officials told journalists that local courts had tried and sentenced some of the men to death for “collaborating with the enemy” but gave no details and did not release their names, ostensibly to protect their families. Gunmen carried out executions in an empty park and in a public square in Gaza City, and near a mosque in Jabalya, not at the Interior Ministry location where local regulations authorize carrying out judicial executions.

“Amid all the carnage in Gaza, it’s abhorrent that Hamas officials are adding to it by permitting, if not ordering, the summary execution of Palestinians deemed to be collaborators,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Hamas authorities need to stop these extrajudicial killings.”

Hamas and its armed wing, the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, have not officially taken responsibility for the killings. However, a statement on a Hamas-affiliated website, Al Rai, said that, “The current circumstances forced us to take such decisions.” The statement did not elaborate. Earlier on August 21, Israeli airstrikes killed three senior members of the Qassam Brigades, and targeted the home of Mohammed Deif, the leader of the armed group, whom Israel has unsuccessfully targeted in multiple attacks over the years.”

Another Hamas-affiliated website, Al Majd, reported that the “resistance” had killed three alleged collaborators and arrested seven others on August 21. Citing a “security source,” the website claimed the victims had been tried by “revolutionary procedures,” but did not provide further information.

On June 2, Hamas had formally withdrawn from its role governing Gaza with the creation of a “technocratic” unity Palestinian government, consisting largely of officials from the rival Fatah political faction. However, Hamas continues to exercise de facto authority in Gaza. Hamas’s failure to investigate or prosecute anyone for public executions in the past, including executions for which its armed wing claimed responsibility in 2012, has, at the least, created an enabling environment for such gross abuses.

On the morning of August 22, 11 people whom Hamas officials later described as alleged collaborators were executed in al-Katiba Park, near al-Azhar University in Gaza City, according to news reports. A Gaza-based journalist told Human Rights Watch that the park was empty of other people at the time. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported that two of those executed were women. Unnamed security officials in Gaza told journalists that local courts had convicted some of the 11 people, news reports said.

Several hours later, hooded gunmen in black clothing without identifiable markings executed another seven men whom the gunmen had lined up against a wall outside the Omari mosque in Gaza City, before a large crowd, a local journalist and news reports said. Accounts from witnesses reported in the media said that the names of the men executed were not given. Photographs published in the media show the victims with their heads covered and their hands tied.

Human Rights Watch viewed a printed notice stating that the “ruling of revolutionary justice was handed down” against the men killed outside the mosque. It was signed by “the Palestinian Resistance,” not by any official body, suggesting that Hamas may not have carried out these executions. However, Al Majd website said that “revolutionary military trials” had convicted the seven men. The website also stated: “The resistance has begun an operation called ‘Strangling the Necks,’ targeting collaborators who aid the [Israeli] occupation” and “kill our people.”

Hamas staged the "trials," Hamas pronounced them guilty, Hamas groups have taken responsibility in the past for executions of people in Hamas jails, all this happened after major Hamas leaders were targeted - but HRW is still not quite certain if Hamas was behind these executions. Perhaps it was a completely new group that just sprang up out of nowhere that found these alleged spies against Hamas and decided to mete out Hamas justice against people Hamas sentenced to death.

All HRW notices is that the "resistance" is taking credit.

Guess what Hamas means?

It is an acronym for Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah - which means "The Islamic Resistance Movement."

Oh, and by the way - Hamas did admit that they did the executions before this was published.

HRW is never this careful when accusing Israel of supposed human rights violations. The organization has no problem hurling accusations without caveats and without reasonable evidence against Israel all the time - for example, by saying flatly that Israel attacks civilian areas with no military value, or that everyone killed is a civilian even when they are not.

For terrorists who brag about targeting civilians, though, HRW is very, very careful not to hurt their feelings. The "human rights" organization is protective of the people who hide behind masks yet don't even give Israel an opportunity to answer accusations before rushing to publish anti-Israel reports.

Now, why would that be?

To his credit, Ken Roth did squarely blame Hamas in his tweet linking to this report.

Amid all the carnage in #Gaza, it's abhorrent that #Hamas is adding to it w/ 25 summary executions. No justification. http://t.co/oIfUBFB2Nw
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 25, 2014

To his discredit, he pretended that the "Hasbara crowd" was upset that he said something normal for once. (They weren't.)

Funny how unhappy Hasbara crowd is whenever I criticize Hamas. It upsets their narrative that criticism of #Israel reflects bias, not abuse.
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 25, 2014

Must be a "biased human rights NGO crowd" thing.

Here's the newsflash, Ken: You limit your criticism of the Hamas terror group as much as you can, only condemning what cannot possibly be denied and interpreting international humanitarian law in the most conservative way possible for them. You do the exact opposite for Israel. That's how we know you are biased.

By the way, given how many times he tweets a day, the impression one gets is that Roth's actual job is the operator at HRW's social media desk, not the person who runs the entire organization.

The terrorists who used their own families as human shields

We have been looking at B'Tselem's list of families who were killed in airstrikes. We showed that 42 people were killed when hey "hosted" terrorists in their homes.

What about families who had a terrorist member? How many were killed because the terrorists stayed with them?

B'Tselem lists:

The Hamad family (6 members, including terrorist Hafez)
The al-Batsh family (18 members, including terrorist Yazid)
The al-Ghanam family (5 killed including terrorist Mahmoud)
The a-Shaer family (4 killed including terrorist Salah),
The al-Astal family (3 killed including terrorist Ashraf)
The Hasanein family (3 killed including terrorist Salah)

To this we can add (from the Meir Amit Center list)

The al-Hayya family (5 killed including terrorist Osama)

That is 37 more civilians killed because Hamas and its partners choose to fight in civilian areas. Chances are pretty good that these homes also served as major Hamas command and control centers.

With only a little effort we have now identified 79 civilians killed because terrorists and terror infrastructure were in their houses.

I just accounted for about 5% of all Gaza deaths (79 civilians plus 12 terrorists), and probably 8% or so of civilian deaths, being a result of military targets in civilian areas, only from looking at one B'Tselem page.

Why isn't the professional media doing this sort of analysis?

Max Fisher says Hamas isn't seeking a caliphate. Hamas disagrees.

From Max Fisher at Vox.com:

While Hamas and ISIS are both rightly classified by the US as terrorist groups, both target civilians, and both espouse Islamic and Arab supremacism, that does not make them at all linked, much less identical.

The two groups are totally distinct. It's not just that there is no known connection, operational or otherwise, between Hamas and ISIS, although there isn't. They ultimately follow very different ideologies: Hamas will talk about Islamist extremism, but it is ultimately a Palestinian nationalist group first and foremost, one that is fighting to establish its vision of a Palestinian state.

...ISIS, on the other hand, comes from the same ideological strain as al-Qaeda, a jihadist movement called Salafism, which rejects the idea of nationalism and seeks a pan-Islamic caliphate.

Fathi Hammad, Hamas' interior minister, begs to differ.

We anticipate further victories, in which we shall liberate our land, Allah willing. We shall liberate our Al-Aqsa Mosque, and our cities and villages, as a prelude to the establishment of the future Islamic Caliphate. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are at the threshold of a global Islamic civilization era. The fuel and spearhead of this era will be Gaza, and its mujahideen and leaders will be from Gaza, Allah willing.

A Hamas cleric in 2008 said:

The blessing of Palestine is dependent upon the annihilation of the pit of global corruption in it. When the head of the serpent of corruption is cut off here in Palestine, and its octopus tentacles are severed throughout the world, the real blessing will come. The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God.

In 2012, Al Hayat al Jadida reported:

Head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said yesterday that the meeting held two days ago between the President of Egypt and the head of the Hamas Political Bureau was a product of the Arab Spring that 'will introduce the era of the Caliphate'.

The Hamas Charter does not list statehood in Palestine as an objective. Here is what it says:

The Islamic Resistance Movement found itself at a time when Islam has disappeared from life. Thus rules shook, concepts were upset, values changed and evil people took control, oppression and darkness prevailed, cowards became like tigers: homelands were usurped, people were scattered and were caused to wander all over the world, the state of justice disappeared and the state of falsehood replaced it. Nothing remained in its right place. Thus, when Islam is absent from the arena, everything changes. From this state of affairs the incentives are drawn.

As for the objectives: They are the fighting against the false, defeating it and vanquishing it so that justice could prevail, homelands be retrieved and from its mosques would the voice of the mu'azen emerge declaring the establishment of the state of Islam, so that people and things would return each to their right places and Allah is our helper.

As the Islamic Resistance Movement paves its way, it will back the oppressed and support the wronged with all its might. It will spare no effort to bring about justice and defeat injustice, in word and deed, in this place and everywhere it can reach and have influence therein.

Hamas' goals are explicit - for those who bother to read and listen to what they say, instead of what they want to believe.

No one is saying that Hamas and Al Qaeda and ISIS are operationally connected - that is a red herring that Fisher throws in. And as I pointed out recently, the three groups have different focuses on how to achieve their goals. But their actual goals, and violent strategies to reach those goals, are quite similar.

08/25 Links Pt1: Daniel Tragerman’s war; Ron Prosor: Qatar is Club Med for Terrorists

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Daniel Tragerman’s war

Daniel Tragerman is the inadvertent symbol of a war that has now lasted 49 days — a seven-week harvest of hatred and bloodshed, courtesy of Hamas.
His heartbroken mother Gila said, as she leant on his small-child’s coffin for support at his funeral on Sunday, that Daniel had “iron discipline” when it came to the rocket alerts. He was resolute and mature about taking shelter, because he knew that his little, loving family — parents Gila and Doron, younger sister Yuval and baby brother Uri – would be safe only once they reached that protected room.
There’s symbolism there, too, of course — in a nation reestablished too late to offer safe refuge to the Jews of Europe, and adamant about ensuring safe refuge for subsequent generations. Because when all is said and done, that’s all we want here: safe refuge. Peace and security in our historic national homeland, alongside, not instead of, the Arab peoples around us.
That’s all we want. That’s what was denied to four-year-old Daniel Tragerman. “We were the happiest family in the world,” said Gila Tragerman. Until Friday.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Will Hamas Be Held Accountable for War Crimes?

What Khaled Mashaal forgot to mention was that Hamas and the Islamic State do have at least one thing in common: they both carry out extrajudicial executions as a means of terrorizing and intimidating those who stand in their way or who dare to challenge their terrorism.
According to Hamas's logic, all members of the Palestinian Authority government are "traitors" who should be dragged to public squares to be shot by firing squads. According to the same logic, Mahmoud Abbas himself should be executed for maintaining security coordination with and talking to Israelis.
As for the two executed women, the sources said that their only fault was that they had been observed asking too many questions about Palestinians who were killed in airstrikes.

Ron Prosor: Club Med for Terrorists

Today, the petite petroleum kingdom is determined to buy its way to regional hegemony, and like other actors in the Middle East, it has used proxies to leverage influence and destabilize rivals. Qatar’s proxies of choice have been radical regimes and extremist groups.
In pursuit of this strategy, the gulf state is willing to dally with any partner, no matter how abhorrent. Qatar has provided financial aid and light weapons to Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria, and a base for leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban.
The emirate has also used the Arabic service of Al Jazeera news network to spread radical messages that have inflamed sectarian divides. In the early days of the Arab Spring, Al Jazeera’s coverage of popular uprisings earned the network millions of new followers and solidified its status as a mainstream global news network. Qatar capitalized on this popularity by advancing its own agenda — namely, using the Arabic network to promote the views of extremists who were undermining the region’s more pragmatic elements. In particular, Qatar’s open support for the Muslim Brotherhood angered its gulf state neighbors. In March, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Doha in protest.
This hasn’t stopped the Persian Gulf monarchy from serving as a Club Med for terrorists. It harbors leading Islamist radicals like the spiritual leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who issued a religious fatwa endorsing suicide attacks, and the Doha-based history professor Abdul Rahman Omeir al-Naimi, whom the United States Department of Treasury has named as a “terrorist financier” for Al Qaeda. Qatar also funds a life of luxury for Khaled Meshal, the fugitive leader of Hamas.

Why would the NY Times publish an uncorroborated allegation from the son of a top Hamas official?

Surely, it’s not an impossible story to believe, though, as Elder of Ziyon points out, some of the details don’t make much sense. Meanwhile, as the authors themselves acknowledge, (a) there is no corroborating evidence; (b) the father is a high-level Hamas official, so the family has a very obvious motive for lying. Most telling, Israeli soldiers are alleged to have beaten Abu Raida repeatedly, yet he can’t he show the Times’s reporters any evidence of his injuries, whether photographic or lingering scars/scabs/welts/wounds.
If the Times’s reporters could actually corroborate the story, more power to them in publishing it. But at this point, they are just repeating unconfirmed allegations from a dubious source, in other words, passing along wartime propaganda as news.
Richard Behar recently noted that the co-author of the story, Gaza correspondent Fares Akram, is hardly an objective observer, happily also working for Al Jazeera and taking its pro-Hamas line. But why would Jerusalem bureau Jodi Ruderon put her name on this dreck, and how did it get past the Times’s editors?

A question of intent

As we have seen, under international law, in many cases the question of intent is paramount to determine whether one is guilty of war crimes. In the two major accusations against Israel by the anti-Israel crowd, of violating the principles of distinction and proportionality, that intent is clearly not there.

On the contrary. Israel has great disincentive to kill civilians, and great incentive to keep them as safe as possible while targeting terror targets.

Hamas, however, makes no secret of its intent, at least in Arabic. It is instructing its members, and indeed all Palestinian Arabs, to kill every Jew they can.

We've seen Hamas claim that they are legally allowed to attack every Israeli:

...[W]e hurried to strike anywhere in Israel - from Dimona to Haifa - and we made you hide in shelters like mice. . .

Again, we warn you - if your government does not agree to all of our conditions, then all of Israel will legally remain open to our weapons fire.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum:

Our rockets are aimed at the Hebrews, the murderers, the Israelis, the criminals.

Barhoum again:

Anyone who has a knife, a club, a weapon, or a car, yet does not use it to run over a Jew or a settler, and does not use it to kill dozens of Zionists, does not belong to Palestine.

When one factors in the essential feature of intent, then the "scorecards" that we have been seeing for the past six weeks are proven to be deceptive. Because the only scorecard that matters is the intent of the attackers, and when that is factored in, it looks like this:

(This only counts the targets of the rockets, not the terrorism that Barham called for to attack every Jew.)

When people accuse Israel of "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" or "targeting civilians" or "indiscriminate bombing" or "war crimes" they are knowingly inverting both international law and simple morality.

Not only that, but they are proving their own bigotry, because there is no ethical difference between falsely accusing a racial or religious group of being bloodthirsty and falsely accusing a national group of the same.

Any discussion of the relative morality of Israel and Hamas that ignores intent is in itself immoral.

Look how traumatized he is

Yesterday I wrote that +972 Magazine had swallowed, without skepticism, an absurd story of a Gaza teenager, Ahmed Abu Raida, who accused the IDF of forcing him to search for and dig (!) tunnels for five days with hardly any food and without clothing.

Besides the obvious holes in the story, the more lurid details were clearly coaxed out of Abu Raida by the thoroughly discredited DCI-Palestine, a group that says outright that it will work overtime to smooth over any inconsistencies in the "testimonies" it prompts from Palestinian children. The same group has significantly inflated numbers of children killed according to other Palestinian human rights groups, and it ignores cler evidence of children acting as militants that are noted by these other groups. Moreover, it creates statistics based on the coaxed testimony it elicits, claiming that an impossible 75% of children detained by the IDF are tortured.

Today, Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram in The New York Times published the story with the same lack of skepticism as the Zionism-hating +972mag.

Not only that, but the NYT didn't even discount the additional details that further prove that this story is fantasy for any real reporter:

His assertions, of actions that would violate both international law and a 2005 Israeli Supreme Court ruling, could not be independently corroborated; Ahmed’s father, Jamal Abu Raida, who held a senior position in Gaza’s Tourism Ministry under the Hamas-controlled government, said the family forgot to take photographs documenting any abuse in its happiness over the youth’s return, and disposed of the clothing he was given upon his release.

Seriously? His father is a Hamas official and "forgot" to photograph the alleged bruises or to keep the alleged ill-fitting IDF clothes as evidence - a goldmine of anti-Israel material?

The NYT notes that the story first surfaced in a report from the equally one-sided Euro-Mid Observer, an organization that works closely with DCI in fabricating facts and statistics.

But there are significant differences between the initial report from Euro-Mid and the later, more lurid report from DCI-P:

On July 23, 17-year-old Ahmad Jamal Abu Reeda, says he was restrained by Israeli troops who threatened to kill him. After harshly interrogating and beating him, the troops ordered Abu Reeda to walk ahead of them at gun point, accompanied by police dogs, as they searched houses and other buildings. Several times, they demanded that he dig in places they suspected tunnels to exist. Abu Reeda was forced to remain with the Israeli forces for five days.

In this report, Abu Raida claims that he accompanied IDF troops while they searched for tunnels, a week later he is claiming that they sent him inside by himself to search for tunnels - because, of course, the IDF would trust a 16-year old son of a Hamas official to accurately pinpoint and report back on hidden tunnels in houses in the middle of a war zone.

The New York TImes didn't note the inconsistencies. The New York Times didn't research the record of lies and subterfuuge from DCI-P and Euro-Mid Observer. Instead of researching the history of those two groups, The New York TImes pretended that only the IDF finds DCI-P to be unreliable, making it a case of "he said, she said" instead of verifying easily found facts as real journalists would. The New York Times didn't think that the complete absence of corroborating evidence from the family was enough to cast doubt on the story, writing it as if the coaxed testimony had credibility.

To be sure, the NYT pretended to be even-handed, asking the IDF to respond and not getting an answer. But given the known biases and history of flat-out lies from DCI-P and Euro-Mid Observer, Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram went the lazy route.

Let's be clear: quoting anti-Israel propaganda organizations that masquerade as "human rights" organizations is not reporting. It is recycling propaganda. And they rely on an interview with a teenager whose own testimony is not only ridiculous on the face of it, but self-contradictory (besides the "searching for tunnels" accusation, DCI-P claimed that he was threatened sexually, one of their favorite accusations, but Abu Raida did not say that to the interviewer in two lengthy interviews.)

Real journalists would be more than skeptical with over-the-top claims that have no independent corroboration whatsoever. Certainly a real journalist wouldn't headline a story based on such meager evidence. And real journalists would know that even Amnesty International admits that Palestinian Arab testimony is often suspect.

But lazy journalists, and journalists with an agenda, are a whole different breed. Instead of ignoring or abandoning a story that has little credibility, they decide to go ahead and use little caveats to cover their behinds, caveats that the average reader will discount because the story is written in a way to give credence to the incredible.

(h/t YMedad, PreOccupied Territory, EBoZ)

Another fake "civilian" - and another family used as human shields

B'Tselem has been keeping track of entire families that have been killed in Gaza, listing all of the names of people killed in IAF raids.

In quite a few of these families, a single, fighting-age member whose last name is not the same as the family's was killed along with the families themselves.

B'Tselem noticed that in several cases, the odd-named person was in fact a terrorist.

For example, we have noted that in the Ziyadah family house - the family that was related to the Dutch "righteous gentile" who returned his award to Israel - they had a "guest" named Mohammed Mahmoud al-Maqadma who was, in fact, a terrorist.

This is a pattern.

25 members of the Abu Jame' family were killed - along with a single terrorist named Ahmad Sahmoud, according to B'Tselem.

8 members of the Abu Nijem family were hosting 2 terrorists, Daniel Mansur, 44 and Abd a-Nasser al-'Ajuri, 32.

3 members of al Al Masri family were killed while hosting terrorist Amjad Hamdan, 24.

So I wondered if any other of the anomalous names that B'Tselem didn't categorize as "military branch operatives" were indeed terrorists. Sure enough, I found one.

6 members of the Al-Bakri family were killed on August 4, along with 32-year old Ibrahim al-Misharawi.

Misharawi was an Islamic Jihad terrorist.

Of course, PCHR identified him as a civilian.

(Is he related to the BBC reporter Jihad Mishrawi?)

This means we have identified 5 families in Gaza, 42 people, who happened to be hosting non-family terrorists in their homes when they were killed. (I am not counting the families who had terrorist members.)

This cannot be a coincidence. It seems quite likely that the terrorists were using these homes as command and control centers, major weapons caches or other military targets, either with the families' permission or without. What is clear is that these homes were not randomly targeted.

Either way, the terrorists were using these families as human shields, and their deaths are squarely the fault of Hamas and the other terror groups the "guests" belonged to.

This is besides the terrorists who used their own families as human shields for their own activities.

It would be interesting to know if the IDF warned these families to leave their houses - and if their "guests" physically prevented them from doing so.

The more that the Gaza deaths are researched, the more depraved the terrorists are proven to be. Too bad that "human rights" groups aren't interested in digging up the truth about these clear examples of war crimes done by Hamas and their partners.

Dutch paper actually reports truth from Gaza

This is from Trouw, August 11. The original article is behind a paywall; it was translated by the folks at Missing Peace.

Hamas in the city: invisible, but not gone
Monique van Hoogstraten

GAZA CITY - Since the war started, one population group in Gaza has disappeared from the streets: people in uniform. Army green uniforms, blue-grey uniforms, black uniforms, they were all over the place. From one day to the next they are gone, the men and the few women (of the women police unit) with a weapon or a truncheon in their hands.

They work for Hamas and are targets of Israel, which knows reasonably well who is where via drones in the sky and spies on the ground. So they go into hiding. Only at the Shifa Hospital, the big hospital in Gaza City, are a few sitting in uniform. There, they feel protected from the Israeli bombings. In addition, that is where they monitor the international press to prevent it from doing ‘wrong’ things.

Local camera crews know this, but foreigners do not: Hamas does not want killed or wounded fighters to appear on camera footage. The reasons are twofold. Not giving the enemy Israel PR ammunition, and maintaining high morale among its own population. ‘We suffer no losses’, is the message, ‘we bring a severe blow to Israel’.

“The most casualties are civilians”, says Hamas spokesperson Ihab al Ghoessein, who speaks to the press at the hospital compound about the question how many fighters have died in the war. He is standing before a tall poster with the text ‘The targets of the Israeli bombings are the homes of civilians. Our children live in fear, horror and panic’, illustrated with photos of killed children.

Al Ghoessein: “We hide nothing, like the Israeli’s do [hide things]. As you can see most dead are children and women.” Whether that is true does not matter for Hamas. Yes, there are many civilian casualties and most of the inhabitants of Gaza live in fear, but Hamas likes to exploit this for its PR. Hamas does not present any factual information about numbers of killed fighters or developments at the front. As it also does not want to be criticized by its own population.

“He does not dare to talk to you”, says the wife of someone who has been placed under house arrest because he is known for criticizing Hamas. She too does not dare to tell his story, because ‘we are being watched’. This is the case for most people who are no friends with Hamas. When there was no war yet, they did dare to talk. Not anymore.

Over seventy members of Fatah, the party of President Abbas in the West Bank and very much hated by Hamas, supposedly have been placed under house arrest. This is what sources say in the West Bank. The Fatah supporters have been told that they ‘should stay at home for their own safety’ and that ‘every violation of this order makes you a target for punishment in the field’ - meaning: death penalty.

“The minority that criticizes Hamas that wonders whether it was wise to provoke this war with Israel”, says political analyst Mukhaimer Abu Saada, who now lives in Gaza City himself, “does not dare to say it now, because we are in the middle of the war.”

Although the uniforms might have disappeared from the streets, Hamas has not. High-ranking members monitor in civilian clothes. Whoever talks about Hamas critically on the streets is immediately spoken to. Whoever poses a critical question near security men of Hamas, but also far from them, receives the reply: “You cannot ask that question,” or “I do not want to answer that question.” In war no one is allowed to be a traitor.

What is remarkable is that Trouw does not exactly have a pro-Israel record.

+972 Mag will believe anything - as long as it is anti-Israel

Ultra-left +972 magazine has an exclusive!

An affidavit obtained exclusively by +972 reveals what appears to be the first documented case of a ‘human shield’ used by the Israeli military during its invasion of the eastern Gaza town of Khuza’a.

Ahmad Abu Raida, now 17, was separated from his family by Israeli soldiers on July 23 as he and his family were trying to flee to safety. During Abu Raida’s five-day captivity, an Israeli soldier, who insisted he be called “captain,” repeatedly asked the boy about alleged Hamas tunnels and rocket launching sites in his neighborhood.

“I told him I did not know,” Abu Raida, who was 16 years old at the time of the incident, said. “‘I’m young. I’m 17 years old. How am I supposed to know these things?’ I said to him, but he became angry and started punching and kicking me.”

Abu Raida’s case was documented by Defense for Children International-Palestine, which released a statement Thursday based on the affidavit it collected. +972 spoke with the 17-year-old earlier today.

...Abu Raida described being taken out of the house the following day, at about 1 p.m., by a soldier who “made me walk in front of him and [ordered] me in broken Arabic to [turn] ‘left and right’. He was walking about three meters behind me.”

The soldiers then took Abu Raida to two houses, ordering him to “[g]et in and see if there are tunnels or not,” according to the 17-year-old. He told them that he did not find any, which prompted the “captain” to physically assault the child.

“He started punching and kicking me. He even brought a wire and hit me with it on my back,” Abu Raida told DCI-Palestine.

Here is Abu Raida’s complete account of the abuse:

“I was crying and begging him to stop, but he did not show any mercy. He kept hitting me over and over. He poured a glass of water on my trousers. He insulted me using very dirty words that I am familiar with, and other dirty words that I have never heard of. Even soldiers who did not speak Arabic insulted me as well. They threatened to ‘shove a stick into my … bottom’ if I did not tell them where the tunnels were.”

...On July 26, according to the affidavit, Abu Raida was ordered to climb down into a hole and dig for tunnels. When he replied that the hole was the beginnings of “a sanitation well,” the captain “took off his helmet and hit me with it on my head,” said Abu Raida.

After complaining that he was feeling ill and could not dig anymore, Abu Raida was taken to a relative’s house, where soldiers again interrogated him about alleged Hamas tunnels:

“I told them I did not know anything about the tunnels, so they would slap me across the face or on my neck, or punch me or kick me whenever they wanted,” Abu Raida said.

After a night of repeated questioning and physical abuse – including being forced “to sit and stand up again more than 60 times” – Abu Raida was asked the following morning if he would “work for them as a spy.” After he refused, a soldier “pointed to the police dogs they had with them and said, ‘You see that dog, it’s better than you.’”

According to the affidavit, at around 1 p.m. on July 27, the fifth day of Abu Raida’s captivity, the soldiers allowed him to put his clothes back on and released him.

Anyone who even glances at this "testimony" objectively can see that it makes no sense. Israelis relying on a 16-year old to search for hidden tunnels? Spending 5 days with him while fighting is going on? Making him dig tunnels with his bare hands?

And yet there are no photos of injuries from his being repeatedly kicked, punched, slapped and hit with various objects like helmets and wires.

The charges are so absurd that only a crazed anti-Israel activist could believe it.

Not surprisingly, the original affidavit that +972 received "exclusively" came from DCI-Palestine.

How reliable is DCI-Palestine?

I researched that last month:

DCI-Palestine lied about the number of children killed in Operation Cast Lead, and they consistently report kids killed by Palestinian Arab rockets as being killed by Israel. Even when other NGOs confirmed that children were engaged in fighting during Cast Lead, DCI-P claimed that they couldn't find any good witnesses so they counted them as being innocents.

DCI-Palestine openly admits that it "develops its programs and acts according to Palestinian children's needs and Palestinian priorities."

In other words, its objectivity is zero.

DCI-Palestine describes its methodology here:

Initial identification of potential human rights violations
Al Mezan and DCI-Palestine identify potential violations through two main avenues: victims’ reports and field monitoring. Al Mezan is a well-known Gaza-based human rights organisation in operation since 1999 and victims of human rights violations regularly contact one of Al Mezan’s three offices located across the Gaza Strip for assistance; in addition, Al Mezan’s five experienced fieldworkers based throughout the Gaza Strip use their strong community links to identify potential cases of human rights violations. Similarly, DCI-Palestine receives reports from children and parents in any of its four West Bank offices and through Gaza-based fieldworkers; however, most investigations are initiated following ongoing and proactive field monitoring from nine fieldworkers across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This means that the way DCI (and Al-Mezan) work is that every case of "torture" that they document is either self-reported or they go out of their way to find them. And if there are inconsistencies, what do they do?

Fieldworkers frequently go back to the source in order to verify details and correct any data inconsistency.

An organization that admits up front that it is biased says that rather than discard any inconsistent testimony as being unreliable, they go back and massage the reports until they fit together better with the other "facts" that they handpicked to begin with!

This is a fancy way of admitting that they coax the "witnesses" to lie, or at the very least to shade the truth until they fit the agendas of the Israel-hating NGOs.

DCI-P claims that some 75% of under-18s arrested are tortured. But they hand-pick the people who make the most ludicrous claims to come up with this utter fantasy of a statistic.

For some reason, +972 thinks that there is something magic about an "affidavit" that makes it less likely that it is a lie. But the fact is that any kid in Gaza who seeks fame and fortune can go to the DCI-Palestine website, make up a story, and have a team of "professionals" work at making sure that it fits their explicit anti-Israel agenda. You just know they use leading questions to elicit the most insane responses.

+972, of course, eats this all up without the slightest skepticism.

It is not a mystery that the co-founder of +972 just reiterated that he believes Zionism to be racism.

Hamas jittery after leaders killed, arrests 150 more potential "collaborators" within the group

From Al Bawaba:

Informed sources from the Gaza Strip say the Izz al-Din al-Qassam, the military wing of the Hamas movement, is waging a campaign of arrests in the ranks of the movement's members involving more than 150 members, for interrogation about security leaks.

The sources said that Hamas in a state of internal confusion after the martyrdom of its three leaders Mohammed Abu Shamala, Raed Al-Attar, and Mohammad Barhoum, at dawn on Thursday, and the attempted assassination of the military commander, Mohammed Deif, who lost his wife and his son and daughter on Tuesday.

The sources indicated that the three leaders of Hamas who were killed at dawn on Thursday in Rafah were killed while meeting in a secret underground tunnel at a depth of 30 meters.

The sources said that the Israeli army used missiles and bunker buster bombs with great skill and were able to cause extensive destruction.

The sources indicated that the meeting of the leaders of Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip was in a tunnel under the house belonging to the Kileb family and that the meeting was scheduled to be attended by 9 Hamas leaders, but the raid was carried out after the arrival of the first three leaders.

(h/t Yoel)

08/24 Links: IDF Soldier Reveals Extent of Hamas Human Shields; 570 Rockets Fired in 5 Days

From Ian:

Watch: IDF Soldier Reveals Extent of Hamas 'Human Shields'

The IDF on Sunday posted an interview with Lt. Adam Landau, a combat soldier of the 188th Armored Brigade, who described the cynical manipulation of the civilian population in Gaza by Hamas and its effects on the IDF's operational ability.
Landau, in describing his experiences in the battlefield of Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, recalled a situation in which his unit was confronted with a terrorist who grabbed a child and ran to escape.
"Just because a terrorist enters into a civilian area, it does not give him immunity. On the other hand, we have to think very carefully before we act, because no one wants to injure innocent civilians," said Landau of the conundrum. "It makes it very difficult to complete your goal of eliminating a terrorist, because he is hugging a small child."

A Soldier's Account from Gaza: Hamas Used Human Shields

570 Rockets Fired on Israel in 5 Days

No fewer than 570 rockets have been fired at Israel over a five day period, the Foreign Ministry revealed Sunday, tallying the total rocket count since Hamas broke an extended ceasefire on August 19.
Of those, more than 260 rockets that were launched from schools, more than 50 rockets from medical facilities and more than 130 rockets from cemeteries, the report added.
The report also includes maps for multiple launching sites responsible for rocket fire on Israeli civilians, in yet another compendium of examples profiling Hamas's proclivity for using Palestinian Arabs as human shields. The report follows a similar expose by the IDF last week.
The MFA sites listed include the launching site located adjacent to the Jafar Ali Ibn Taleb school in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City responsible for the rocket fire which killed four year-old Daniel Tragerman Friday.

A Rocket Launched at Israel from a Gaza Medical Facility

Khaled Mashaal in an interview full of lies

I am sorry, but that is the simplest, bluntest, and most honest way that I can put it.

San Francisco State University funds hatred toward Jews.

Between December 24 of last year and June 26 of this I published ten pieces concerning racism toward Jews at San Francisco State University. These pieces concerned themselves with facts such as:

1) SFSU funds student organizations, such as the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), that calls for the murder of Jews, whom they call "colonizers."

2) In the last academic year, Muhammad Hammad, the former president of GUPS held up a blade, took a "selfie," and then published it on a social media site and talked about his desire to kill Jews.

3) The adviser to GUPS, professor Rabab Abdulhadi, a malicious anti-Israel anti-Jewish activist who specializes in some semi-academic discipline called "race and resistance studies," took a university funded trip to the Middle East for the purpose of meeting with various terrorists and their supporters including plane hijacker, Leila Khaled, whom they exalt as a "freedom fighter."

Of course, anti-Jewish malice is nothing new at San Francisco State University up to, and including, mob violence. When I was there at the end of the 1990s Jewish students often faced Arab student organizations, in coordination with the pan-African student group, that regularly demonized Jews on the SFSU campus for their support of Israel.

I will never forget walking past Malcolm X Plaza, in front of the Cesar Chavez Student Center, and seeing Arab students and Black students holding aloft an American flag with fifty little Stars of David in it. I guarantee you that almost every member of the tiny Jewish minority on that campus, who walked by that display, understood very well in a visceral way what they were being told. It was this:

You better watch your ass.

After I graduated things apparently got worse at SFSU.

Todd Gitlin, sociologist, political scientist, and former student radical, writing in Mother Jones Magazine on June 17, 2002, quotes former director of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University, Laurie Zoloth:

"I cannot fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled 'canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license,' past poster after poster calling out Zionism=racism, and Jews=Nazis."

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, December 14, 2004, Cinnamon Stillwell tells us this:

How did such a threatening environment become associated with a campus located in one of the most liberal and tolerant cities in the nation? The truth is that SFSU has a reputation for intolerance that goes back at least 10 years. In this case, Republican students, clearly a minority at SFSU, were the targets. But in the past, such animosity was directed mostly at Jewish students or those seen as supporting Israel. Jews at SFSU have been spat on, called names and physically attacked, as well as censured by the administration for defending themselves, even as their attackers went unpunished.

The case of Tatiana Menaker, a Russian Jewish emigré and former SFSU student, is an example of the latter indignity. After committing the "crime" of responding verbally to another student's anti-Semitic epithets during a 2002 rally, she found herself persecuted by the administration.

Pulled into a kangaroo court, threatened with expulsion and ordered by the university to perform 40 hours of community service (but specifically not for a Jewish organization), Menaker was later exonerated after seeking legal assistance from the Students for Academic Freedom and the local Jewish Community Relations Council. But the damage was done.

During my time as a student at SFSU (Class of 1996), I was given a preview of things to come. In 1994, the Student Union Governing Board commissioned a mural to honor the late Black Muslim revolutionary Malcolm X. Designed by members of the Pan Afrikan Student Union and painted by artist Senay Dennis (known also as Refa-1), the finished product was problematic, to say the least. Along with an image of Malcolm X, the not-so-subtle symbols of Stars of David juxtaposed with dollar signs, skulls and crossbones, and the words "African blood," had been painted. Despite the obvious allusion to anti-Semitic blood libels of old, Pan Afrikan Student Union members claimed the symbols represented Malcolm X's alleged opposition to Israel, not to Jews, as if that was some comfort.

But even as far back as the early-middle 1960s certain anti-Jewish ideologues were already establishing hatred toward Jews as part of the university atmosphere.

I recently did a little digging into the SFSU special collections archives on, what is for me, a defunct project, but came across this interesting tid-bit:

The above is an article from the SFSC Daily Gator dated March 23, 1966. The Gator reports that for three years running people painted Swastikas over an Israeli flag which San Francisco State College's chapter of the American-Israeli Cultural Organization displayed for various functions.

The writer and editors, needless to say, assume that the vandals were either random "vandalists" or Nazis.

San Francisco State College, between 1964 and 1966, did not have a whole lot of Nazis among the student population, nor was the campus conveniently accessible from the rest of the city. There were heart-felt, politically-innocent folk singers there, to be sure. There were proto-hippies beginning to experiment with psychedelics as a potential means toward an "expanded consciousness." There were young, goateed political radicals gearing up for the fight against the Vietnam War and what Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex." And there were young "negro" students such as future movie star, Danny Glover, beginning to rethink their relationship with the college and American society, as a whole.

But, Nazis? Not so much.

The bottom line is that San Francisco State University has a long history of hostility toward the Jewish people that is expressed both in student body activity, which sometimes takes the form of a violent mob, and almost always takes the form of administrative dithering and indifference.

The only real question I have is whether or not the university intends to continue funding anti-Jewish hatred going forward?

But it is not really much of a question.

I know that they will.

Just ask professor Fred Astren, the current SFSU Chair of the Department of Jewish Studies. He'll tell you, maybe.

And if he will not, I bet Tammi Benjamin of the AMCHA Initiative and the University of California, Santa Cruz, might have something to say on the matter.

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.

Ha'aretz publishes another Amira Hass piece filled with lies and slander

From Amira Hass at Ha'aretz:

On the night of August 5, Gaza’s Interior and National Security Ministry posted a comment on its Facebook page decrying the damage caused by publishing names and photographs of “resistance fighters who fell in battle” (shahids), along with information on where they died.

The Israeli military spokesman seized on this comment as a smoking gun: proof that Hamas was deliberately concealing militant fatalities to boost the apparent numbers of civilians killed.

The Israel Defense Forces cannot refute the images of dead women and children that are broadcast abroad, so instead the army is trying to construct a narrative proving that its targets — and the aftermath of its attacks — are legitimate.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is a vital partner in constructing this narrative. The center, which is checking the name of each Palestinian said killed in the Gaza fighting (it has gotten to 450 so far), estimates that some 46 percent of them are “terrorist operatives.”

... If concealing the names of fatalities is really part of Hamas’ propaganda strategy, a way of forging a counter-narrative to that of the IDF, then it contradicts the deep Palestinian and Hamas ethos of pride over those who were killed fighting the Zionist enemy.

“Even if Hamas had decided to hide the names of its fallen combatants and their numbers for a long time, the families wouldn’t agree,” a veteran Hamas activist told Haaretz.

Oh, a Hamas activist said it! It must be true!

This is of course a lie. Hamas hid the names of its "martyrs" after Cast Lead, and they were adding new ones for months on their website afterwards. In the end, the 49 that they admitted were killed during the operation ballooned up to between 600-700 that they admitted much later.

No families of the "martyrs" seemed too upset then.

The IDF and Amit center saw the Palestinian Facebook comment as a warning and an instruction not to release information, for propaganda purposes. But Palestinians saw it as an expression of concern. Releasing the casualties’ names would enable Israel to target their families as well by bombing their homes, thus turning even more civilians into “targets” or “collateral damage.”

This is not propaganda; it is the reality in which 1.8 million Palestinians have been living in the past six weeks.

“The occupation gathers this information and testimonies and uses them to excuse its crimes against the civilians and destroy the homes,” the Palestinian Facebook post says.

The IDF’s English translation of the post omits the words “against the civilians and destroy the homes.”

The Facebook post was not the only expression of Hamas being upset at revealing the names of fighters. At the very beginning of the war Hamas' Interior Ministry released a statement - on Facebook, YouTube and its own website - commanding Gazans (especially those on social networking sites) to call everyone an innocent civilian.

Hass' supposed debunking of this Facebook post does not address the explicit instructions of Hamas earlier, nor the threats against reporters who crossed the line.

Also, there is no evidence that the IDF targets families of the terrorists they kill afterwards. This is a fantasy that Hamas made up, and a slander that Hass repeats.

Not only that, but PCHR stopped identifying "members of armed groups" in their daily reports in July, before this Facebook post. They never did this in Cast Lead or Pillar of Defense. It seems fairly obvious that Hamas gave them a friendly visit telling them what they are and aren't allowed to report - and it has nothing to do with supposedly protecting Gaza families of terrorists already killed.

So far B’Tselem has documented 72 direct bombardments that have destroyed buildings and killed their inhabitants. Of the 547 people killed in these strikes, 125 were women under 60, 250 were minors and 29 were men and women aged 60 or older. B’Tselem also gives the name of an operative in Hamas’ military wing who was killed in the bombing.

While B'Tselem's methods of verifying who is a terrorist are laughable, even they found more than one case of a terrorist killed in the bombings. They found 9 "military branch operatives" hiding in the civilian homes that they could verify. The terrorists B'Tselem identified generally do not share the last names of the families in the houses, meaning that they were either using the families as human shields or the families were knowingly harboring them. That accounts for the deaths of 66 of those killed in those houses - according to B'Tselem.

Chances are very good that there were far more that B'tselem's telephone researchers did not identify - because Gazans are instructed to lie, the most important fact that Hass is trying to whitewash.

The UN team, Palestinian human rights organizations and B’Tselem are examining every fatality, seeing every body in the hospital, checking every death report and talking to eyewitnesses, family members and survivors.

Another lie. As the Meir Amit Center (that Hass hates so much) and I showed, Al Mezan and PCHR identified a 13-year old as a civilian victim among a crowd of nine civilians - yet the "13-year old" was really 26 and every single "civilian" was a terrorist member of the Abu Rish Brigades. If these NGOs had checked the bodies, as Hass falsely claims, they would have known that the 13-year old was fictional. The only explanation is that these upstanding, tireless "human rights" researchers accepted Hamas' Health Ministry lies as fact and didn't bother to check anything.

If the PCHR and Al Mezan Center were anything close to as conscientious as Hass claims, such mistakes would be impossible.

Hass then goes on to make unsubstantiated claims to explain why a lopsided number of victims are young males of fighting age. CAMERA takes that apart as well.

There is nothing credible in this article. Which makes it perfect for Haaretz.

Interestingly, unlike most of its stories, Haaretz is apparently so eager to push Hass' Hamas agitprop that it did not place it behind their paywall as they usually do within 24 hours of publication.

The Narcissistic People

Time magazine has a feature this week on narcissism, talking about how small children are necessarily narcissistic:

Small children, by their very nature, are moral monsters. They’re greedy, demanding, violent, selfish, impulsive and utterly remorseless. They fight constantly with playmates and siblings but scream in pain and indignation if they’re attacked in return. They expect to be adored but not disciplined, rewarded but never penalized, cared for and served by parents and family without caring or serving reciprocally.

All of this is psychopathology of the first order–and narcissistic pathology in particular. There is the entitlement of narcissism, the egocentrism of narcissism, the bottomless appetite for attention and rewards of narcissism. And there’s the utter narcissistic numbness to how others suffer from your behavior. But it’s also a kind of narcissism that babies need for their very survival. Psychologists’ growing understanding of the roots and reasons for this behavior–and why some people never grow out of it–is providing insights into how best to manage the healthily narcissistic baby in your life, as well as the less healthily narcissistic adults.

I have previously described Palestinian Arabs as having the emotional maturity of toddlers, but I never really connected it to narcissism before. Yet this description, modified slightly, is dead-on:

Palestinian Arab society, in its very nature, creates moral monsters. Their members are greedy, demanding, violent, selfish, impulsive and utterly remorseless. They fight constantly with internal and external enemies but scream in pain and indignation if they’re attacked in return. They expect to be adored but not disciplined, rewarded but never penalized, cared for and served by the UN and other Arab countries without caring or serving reciprocally.

All of this is psychopathology of the first order–and narcissistic pathology in particular. There is the entitlement of narcissism, the egocentrism of narcissism, the bottomless appetite for attention and rewards of narcissism. And there’s the utter narcissistic numbness to how others suffer from your behavior.

Of course, not every Palestinian Arab acts like a spoiled child. Many of the more mature and ambitious ones moved out long ago, to Gulf countries and Europe, rather than being stuck in UNRWA camps taking handouts forever. But the way that the PLO and Hamas act - along with generations who have grown up with their culture of entitlement - shows that Arab narcissism is not genetic but learned.

Take the very basic human trait of empathy. While Israelis are expected to show empathy for the innocents of Gaza - and they indeed do - no one expects Palestinian Arabs to show empathy for the suffering of anyone. Look at the violent reactions to the very idea of teaching the Holocaust in UNRWA schools a few years ago, or the sickening reactions to a professor taking students to visit Nazi death camps only this year. This utter lack of empathy was documented by famed writer Martha Gellhorn as far back as 1961.

Narcissists don't have empathy. Narcissists need to be the center of attention. Narcissists are jealous when the world turns its attention elsewhere, so they do outrageous acts to refocus attention on them. Narcissists attack others but whine when they are attacked. Narcissists don't believe that the rules that everyone else lives by apply to them.

What is remarkable is that so many people take the side of the narcissists, enabling them to not only continue to act like spoiled children but empowering them to do even more outrageous deeds, secure that their selfishness will forever be rewarded.

However, in the case of Palestinians, the support that they receive isn't the type of adoration that Hollywood stars are likely to have - it isn't out of love of their cause. If that was so, there would be far more support for Palestinian Arabs suffering in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and facing discrimination throughout the Arab world.

No, the Palestinian Arabs receive the bulk of their support not out of love but out of shared hate - seething, irrational hate of Israel.

This perfect storm of anti-Zionism and Palestinian Arab narcissism is self-enforcing. Until the world gets sick of coddling the selfishness and destructive nature of the Palestinian Arabs, there is no chance for peace.

Because you cannot reach a compromise with a party that believes that they deserve it all.

Video: IDF destroys Hamas command center in residential apartment building

From JPost:

The Israel Air Force struck a 13-story building in Gaza City on Saturday evening that housed an enormous Hamas command center, IDF sources said, adding that only combatants were inside at the time.

Gazan health officials said 17 people were wounded in the attack. Reuters cited local residents as saying that the building housed 44 families.

Before:

After:

ABC News, even after showing this video, evidently has faith that the IDF has the ability to only destroy specific floors of the building while keeping the rest of the building untouched:

Israeli military officials said the two missiles were targeting a Hamas operations room in the building, but did not explain why all 44 apartments were destroyed.

Has that level of care been demanded of any other country in the history of warfare?

(h/t Bob Knot)