Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 05, 2014

09/05 Links Pt2: Glick: The dilemma of the Jewish leftist; Will Fact Ever Displace Anti-Israel Fiction?

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The dilemma of the Jewish leftist

Freedland argued that as the two-state solution becomes more and more remote, liberal Zionists “will have to decide which of their political identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist.”
But this is of course absurd. The only way a person can uphold liberal values is by being a Zionist. Israel is the only country in the region that is a human rights-respecting liberal democracy that is governed by the rule of law.
What is becoming more and more difficult is being a Zionist while being a leftist. As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics, anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist dogma. And that anti-Semitism will express itself first and foremost as a virulent rejection of Israel and of Jews who refuse to disavow and condemn the Jewish state.
Sotloff reportedly maintained faith with his Judaism in secret while in captivity. He refused food on Yom Kippur and secretly prayed toward Jerusalem.
In so doing, he showed that the evil that controlled him physically, could not penetrate his soul. For this he died a Jewish hero.

Is the Boycott Movement Anti-Semitic?

Ever since Lawrence Summers asserted that the divestment movement proposals were “anti-Semitic in their effect, if not in their intent,” we have had a model to use in examining the prejudicial implications of BDS in a more thoughtful way. That does not mean that every divestment proposal is anti-Semitic, but it does help us see why people who advocate the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state are promoting a goal that has anti-Semitic effects.
Arguments that Jews have no ancient connection to the land, that Israelites and Hebrews never existed — positions that some academic BDS advocates promote — also have an anti-Semitic component. The demand that the citizens of Israel give up their right to political self-determination and the unsupportable assertion that the Israeli government is an exceptionally egregious human rights violator are also consciously or unconsciously underwritten by the long-term history of anti-Semitism and the history of efforts to isolate and “other” the Jewish people.

Elliott Abrams: What Now for Israel?

“The status quo is unsustainable,” President Obama said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon after taking office in 2009. “The status quo is unsustainable,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told AIPAC in March 2010. “The status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon averred in 2013. This year, Secretary of State John Kerry, with his customary light touch, informed the Munich Security Conference: “Today’s status quo absolutely, to a certainty, I promise you 100-percent, cannot be maintained. It’s not sustainable.”
What is usually meant by this assertion is something quite specific: that in the “occupied territories” of Gaza and the West Bank, a Palestinian state must very soon be erected—or else. “It is critical for us to advance a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in their own states in peace and security,” Obama added in that 2009 statement. He has repeated the line endlessly, and so has every world leader except for Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (who has a rather different objective in mind).
But 66 years after the founding of the state of Israel, and 47 years after Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the status quo has once again confirmed its (relative) merits, while a history of repeated efforts to upend it precipitously has once again exposed an often reckless folly. The status quo has outlasted the cold war, the Oslo-fed dreams of a “new Middle East,” and the hopes for an Arab Spring; it has endured decades of war and intifada, and has proved more durable than many of the leaders and regimes who have insisted that it cannot and must not be sustained. Israelis who spent this past summer dodging Hamas rockets and sending their sons to fight in Gaza must wonder, not for the first time, why it is “critical” to implement Obama’s solution to their problems rather than to defeat terrorism and more broadly the ceaseless Arab and Muslim assaults on the Jewish state. Why are these not the status quo that the whole world agrees is unsustainable?

Melanie Phillips: The false equation of Jew-hatred and Islamophobia

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main representative body of the Jewish community in the UK, managed last week to get itself into a terrible mess.
It issued a joint statement with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which not only stated that the Middle East conflict must not poison community relations but also condemned “the targeting of civilians” which was “against our religious traditions.”
This unspecific formulation implied the Board was condemning Israel as well as Hamas for having targeted civilians in Operation Protective Edge. In the row that then erupted, the Board protested that the phrase could only relate to Hamas since Israel never targeted civilians.
But the MCB claimed the Board had agreed the phrase covered both sides. So the Board enabled the MCB to crow – falsely but plausibly – that the Jews had condemned Israel for war crimes.
People were left scratching their heads at how the Board could have been quite so foolish; indeed, how it could have collaborated at all with the MCB which, along with its affiliates, has links to Islamic extremists, a history of support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and whose past leaders have described Israel as “the Zionist terrorist state.”
The explanation lies at root in the UK Jewish leadership’s misguided and dangerous strategy for dealing with Britain’s Muslims.

Jordanians rally: "We are all Hamas" (update)

There was a demonstration in Irbid, Jordan, to celebrate Hamas' "victory" in Gaza.

Organized by the Islamic Movement, thousands attended. They chanted "We are all Hamas! We are all resistance!"

There were "fireworks, cheers and demands for the resistance to prepare for the next chapter in battle with the Zionist enemy to liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque from the clutches of the Jews."

One speaker, Dr. Hammam Said, saluted the Qassam terror brigades, criticizing what he said was "a conspiracy of Arab rulers against our people in Gaza."

UPDATE: From the comments.

We call on this blog to observe accuracy and not to buy into Jordan's king's propaganda games. The rally above was held under the supervision, facilitation and encouragement of the Jordanian king's intelligence. The purpose of such rallies is to play the boogieman game against Israel and play on Israel’s fear factor, and this tactic has worked with well-intended people, such as many from AIPAC for example, who blindly believe that the minute "the king goes, the Islamist will take over". This is not true, the rally above was held in a Bedouin-dominated area, no Palestinians in Irbid, the rally was attended by less than a thousand people, and such rallies in Amman almost failed and the Jordanian media even reported it. Get the facts, the fact here is: the Palestinian majority in Jordan still hates Israel, nonetheless, it hates Jordan's king even more and hates the Islamists because they are his shameless ally in the open, he himself said: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a part of my regime". Also, worth noting, why does Jordan king ban any secular rally or protests in Jordan, yet allows and facilities all Islamist rallies in Jordan?

Sincerely

Mudar Zahran
Secretary General
The Jordanian Opposition Coalition.

As I went through over 400 of Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth's tweets, I couldn't help but notice that dozens of them were flat-out false, and others were knowingly deceptive - virtually always against Israel.

Here are are some:

July 6: After days of near silence on kidnap-killing of Palestinian boy, #Israel PM Netanyahu condemns a "horrific crime." http://trib.al/iwoM2EG

Truth: Netanyahu called the murder "reprehensible" immediately after it occurred.

July 9: Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, indiscriminate; Israeli targeting of Gaza homes, collective punishment: @HRW. http://trib.al/AOo4Web

Truth: Without knowing what was in those homes, Roth cannot make that flat statement. In many if not most of the cases, Hamas members used their homes as weapons caches, entrances to tunnels, meeting areas or command and control centers - all of which are valid military targets.

July 13: Unlike Hamas, #Israel says it spares no effort to prevent civilian harm, but UN says 77% of Gaza dead are civilians. http://trib.al/qWcSMy7

Truth: Besides the fact that the percentage of civilians killed in the first days of the war have already been shown to be vastly exaggerated, even the UN report said "Data on fatalities and destruction of property is consolidated by the Protection and Shelter clusters based on preliminary information, and is subject to change based on further verifications." Anyone who reported these figures as flat facts, which Roth did numerous times, without the UN's caveat, was lying.

July 14: If Israel uses precision bombing & 133 of 168 of Gazans killed were civilians, what does that say of its intentions? http://trib.al/fkWCvSo

Truth: Again, besides the inaccuracies of civilian casualties reported, Roth is saying that Israel's intentions must have been to target civilians. Of course, if Israel wanted to target civilians there would have been thousands killed every single day. So what does it say when Roth takes false data and applies it falsely to come up with a preconceived conclusion?

July 15: Even if militant is legit military target, attacking family home likely to cause disproportionate civilian casualties http://trib.al/9oA5bXg

Truth: According to international law, that is not a decision for Roth to make, but a decision that a "reasonable military commander" must make based on the data he has in the field, based on the value of the target and the knowledge about what civilian casualties are likely. That is the reality of international law, not the fantasy that Roth spins. We will see other examples of international law that Roth twists - always against Israel and, unbelievably, for Hamas.

July 16: #Israel warns eastern #Gaza city residents to evacuate, suggesting (contrary to law) that anything goes if they don't pic.twitter.com/QbxDxADySQ

Truth: Nowhere did Israel imply anything like that - this is only in Roth's sick imagination. Warnings demonstrate that due care is being taken to minimize civilian casualties, which means that Israel was adhering to (or going beyond) international law. Civilians do not make military objectives immune to attack; if the target is a valid military target then international law accepts that civilians can die as long as their deaths are not disproportionate to the military value. As the ICTY case shows, after a warning is given the responsibility for civilian lives shifts, to an extent, to the authorities that have the ability to evacuate the citizens.

The rest of the series after the break.

09/05 Links Pt1: Glick: The Unfinished War; Dershowitz: The world rewards terrorism

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Unfinished War

The war with Hamas is not over. What we are experiencing today is a temporary cease-fire.
The most basic reason the war is not over is because Hamas has no existence outside its war against the Jewish state. Hamas exists to obliterate Israel. The goal of each round of fighting is to soften Israel up for the next round.
Hamas will only stop fighting when it is defeated. And Israel did not defeat Hamas.
Not only did Israel not defeat Hamas, according to Haaretz, senior IDF commanders are now lobbying the government to enable Hamas to credibly claim victory.
According to Amos Harel, senior IDF commanders want Israel to bow to Hamas’s demands for open borders with Israel and for the steady transfer of funds to Hamas’s treasury.
Harel quoted a senior IDF source who said that if Israel doesn’t give in to Hamas’s demands for open borders, Hamas will renew its attacks at the end of September.

Sarah Honig: Mideastern Mirror Mania

The Arab world’s favorite looking-glass is the crazy mirror – a.k.a. the carnival mirror – that lowbrow staple of old-time funfairs. No use expecting verisimilitude here. It’s not sought and it is not welcome. The idea isn’t to reflect reality but to invent its deceptive alternative.
Curved mirrors, both convex and concave, distort shapes weirdly and wickedly and render the factual and the imaginary indistinguishable.
These mirrors are further adroitly shifted and retracted. With a bit of smoke, conjurers can altogether cunningly both obscure and embellish the truth in a spellbinding, hallucinatory extravaganza.
This is why Israelis emerged somewhat downhearted from the latest conflict with Gaza while Hamastan lustily celebrated the triumph it proclaimed absurdly among the ruins.
Both sides here are decidedly loony, but in significantly different ways, and that difference encapsulates the whole story. It reminds us that we don’t share anything close to the same logic and that we don’t think or communicate on the same wavelength. It accounts for why there can never be a meeting of the minds between the self-flagellating objectivity of Jews and the illusory subjectivity of Arabs.

Alan Dershowitz: No one should be surprised at ISIS' brutality because the world rewards terrorism

World leaders, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, demand that we treat Hamas, which is indistinguishable in its overall brutality from ISIS, as a legitimate political organization. The United Nations General Assembly grants statehood to a group that began as a terrorist organization and continues to honor terrorists who murdered children. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee honors Yassir Arafat, the Godfather of terrorism, who persisted in this tactic until the day he died. European countries pay ransom to terrorists. Any many European nations—Italy, Germany, Great Britain and others—have freed terrorists, including mass murderers, who have returned to lives of terror. Even Israel has engaged in prisoner exchanges with terrorist groups.
It is one thing to negotiate—directly or indirectly—with terrorists who hold innocent people as hostages. Such negotiation may be a necessary evil. Democratic nations are sometimes forced to negotiate with the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan and other criminal gangs. But we should never honor or legitimate them, as we have done with Palestinian terrorists. Nor should the world condemn and place on trial democracies that fight against terrorist organizations which use their own civilians as human shields. The current misguided approach to terrorism is a prescription for emulation and repetition of terrorism as the tactic of choice.
So let’s not be surprised when a group like ISIS learns the tragic lesson of history and emulates success and visibility rather than failure and invisibility. ISIS is doing exactly what the immoral consulting firm would advise it to do. So we shouldn’t be surprised. Instead we should reverse course and develop responses to terrorism that never allow this tactic to succeed. Terrorists must never be allowed to win, as they are, unfortunately, doing today.

UNICEF says that they refused to clear Gaza neighborhoods that were under threat

From Mark Langfan's blog at A7:

On August 21,2014, Ms. Pernille Ironside, the Chief of the UNICEF Gaza Field Office, held a press conference at the United Nations in New York City “on the impact on children from the conflict in Gaza.”

...In response to a question of how she, and the entire UN Gaza staff, remained “neutral” in the face of Gaza children’s and civilian hardships, Ms. Ironside stated that, “There have been attempts to instrumentalize the UN in Gaza in this conflict. Including, there have been attempts [by Israel] to try to facilitate military operations against the [Palestinian] civilian population by facilitating the clearance of certain neighborhoods. The UN has refused to be a party to that.”

Notice the Orwellian language being used here: the UN is saying that Israel wanted to make it easier to attack the civilian population of Gaza by urging the civilian population of Gaza to leave!

But the major issue here is that the UN had the opportunity to help Gazans get out of the way of imminent fighting in their neighborhoods, and the UN considered such an action to be "instrumentalizing" it and therefore it refused to help.

If Israel wanted to target civilians, as the UN claims, then why would they urge them to leave?

And if UNICEF is tasked with helping children - why did they follow Hamas instructions to have them stay in the line of fire?

Who really cares about the civilians of Gaza?

UNRWA similarly was urged by Israel to evacuate Gazans staying in a school in Beit Hanoun for three days, and UNRWA refused to facilitate the evacuation - and then blamed Israel for not giving them the chance to leave.

(h/t Gary)

Arabic media are buzzing about the disappearance of Hamas interior minister Fathi Hammad.

A week ago there were rumors of Hammad being an Israeli "collaborator" and that he had fled to Israel, and Hamas denied those rumors.

Yet he has not been seen since then, and the rumors are growing stronger.

The Gaza interior ministry is responsible for all internal security, and most of the police in Gaza are also members of terror groups.

The current rumor is that the Qassam Brigades are engaging in a purge of the "old guard" of Hamas, having already executed former Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha fr being a spy for Egypt. Supposedly, they have detained Hammad after they arrested a female relative of his, Fahima Hammad. Fathi may have fled to avoid being targeted.

Hamas' chief bombmaker in the 1990s, Yahya Ayyash ("The Engineer"), was killed by Israel while at the home of another Hammad relative, Osama Hammad, causing more suspicion.

Apparently, Hamas has been very spooked by intelligence leaks, especially the one that led to the bombing of the home where the family of Qassam Brigades head Mohammed Deif were hiding. One rumor says that Hamas political bureau member Imad al-Alami was severely beaten and thrown out a second-story window by fellow Hamas members who suspected him of espionage.

Another rumor says that Hamas was displeased with Hammad for giving the orders to fire rockets during the cease-fire, causing Israeli retaliation and targeting of Deif, whose fate is still unknown.

Muslims saying Jews planting Gharqad trees to protect railroad

As you probably know, there is an Islamic hadith that says:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

This is quoted in Hamas' charter.

Yediot Aharonot reports that Israel is planting trees to protect the railroad between Ashkelon and Sderot from rocket fire and especially from anti-tank missiles. Residents were concerned after a couple of Hamas missile attacks on vehicles near Gaza, and Israelis decides that a "green" solution was the best.

Now, Egyptian newspaper Youm7 - and many others - are seizing on this story as proof that the prophecy being revealed in the hadith is coming true!

The newspaper is claiming that Israel is deliberately planting gharqad trees to protect the trains. Most commentators associate the gharqud tree with the boxtree, which is much shorter than the ones pictured here.

Then again, since Allah's word is true, whatever tree the Jews plant must be the gharqad!

For another great example of how Jews used a different type of tree to their advantage - the eucalyptus - check out the famous story of Eli Cohen.

Fake Palestinian "Civilian" - and "Child" - of the Day. And another.

The Al Mezan Center - which the UN relies on for its statistics - wrote on July 25 that Ashraf Ibrahim Al Najjar, a 22-year old civilian, had been killed by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis.

PCHR identified him as a civilian as well on the same date.

Hamas' Health Ministry, however, said that the Ashraf Ibrahim Al Najjar that had been killed in Khan Younis was only 13 years old. Which means he is one of the "children" being counted by many reporters.

Here is this possibly 13-year old "civilian.":

Most of the rest of the al-Najjar family were buried while wrapped in terrorist flags, but it is not clear how many if any were actually members of the groups.

(h/t Johnny, Ibn Boutros, IronyDome, Bob K)

UPDATE: A bonus "civilian."

PCHR says that ‘Aadel Mohammed Abu Hwaishel, 38, killed on July 22, was a civilian. (Al Mezan doesn't say either way.)

Here are photos of this beloved "civilian" who happened to be a commander in the Qassam Brigades - a fact that was known the same day as the reports, but that PCHR decided to hide.

09/04 Links Pt2: Israel is the Safest Place in the Middle East for Arabs; Joan Rivers dies at 81

From Ian:

Richard Landes: The Biggest Winner in the Lose-Lose “Operation Protective Edge”

After weeks of following the combat in Gaza, pundits are now turning to the question, “Who won?” Hamas claims points just for surviving, despite the massive hammering its leadership and its constituents endured, and some say Israel, whatever its battlefield gains, lost the “cognitive war”—big time. In the topsy-turvy universe of Middle East politics, nothing succeeds like failure on the battlefield and nothing fails like military success.
Among the ancillary players, there are losers all around. Journalists’ credibility has been dangerously damaged. The UN Human Rights Council and Rights [sic. Relief] and Works Agency were embarrassingly partisan; Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama, astonishingly clueless and blundering; the intellectual Left, shamefully right-wing in its embrace of anti-Semitic discourse. Many analysts agree that Operation Protective Edge (OPE) has produced only losers and bigger losers.
Yet one group did emerge from OPE a winner: European jihadis. As Israel pounded an enemy that hid behind civilians, demonstrators spilled out into the streets of Western and Muslim cities the world over to protest the “Israeli genocide of the Palestinians,” even as they shouted “Death to Jews!” and “Jews to the ovens!” and used the Twitter hashtag #Hitlerwasright. Shops were ransacked, and Jews were refused medical services and attacked in riots. Jewish businesses were boycotted. In Germany, the cry was heard: “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the Gas!” In France, it was “Death to Jews! Slit Jews’ Throats!” While the news media downplay the violence and hatred, and the police and judiciary resist it half-heartedly, European Jews are packing their bags.
So Jihadis get a quadruple win. They depict Israel as the Dajjal (Antichrist) to Western audiences; roam freely through the streets of Western cities, carrying metal bars and yelling jihadi slogans; accelerate the expulsion of Jews from Europe; and keep post-Christian Europeans thinking this violence only targets Jews, and only because of Israel. For jihadis, these past weeks confirm what they have long believed: that this is the Muslim century in which, among others, Europe joins Dar al Islam.

Australian Universities hit by antisemitism by Christopher Pyne, Education Minister

In our universities, free speech is to be encouraged, but it does not extend to threats and physical harassment. I am not surprised that the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in Australia last year was the second highest on record. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement has made anti-Semitism fashionable on the far Left.
Last week some University of Sydney students ‘‘occupied’’ a nearby Max Brenner chocolate shop. Chanting phrases such as “Max Brenner, come off it! There’s blood in your hot chocolate!” at customers in Australia is disgusting and targeting a shop because the owners are Jewish is racist. Students at the University of NSW spread false news about a similar protest at Max Brenner UNSW. This month, the student association at the University of Western Australia sought to bring Uthman Badar, spokesman for Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which claims “honour killings are morally justified”, to the university to discuss the Gaza conflict. Hizb-ut-Tahrir calls for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a global caliphate, so one suspects the purpose is not to provide a balanced discussion — but it will fuel anti-Israel hate on campus. I applaud the university for condemning the speaker as inconsistent with university values, which led the association to cancel it.
Anti-Semitism has no place in Australia and our universities must act quickly to condemn it. University administrations should be very careful not to invoke freedom of speech to allow speech that vilifies students.
Most Australians are horrified at the wave of anti-Semitism that has washed anew over Europe recently. Riots outside synagogues, chants of “gas the Jews” and the smashing of windows in Jewish restaurants evoke terrible memories of pre-war Europe. Political leaders across the continent have condemned these actions, rightly.
We must not let that old hatred grip us in Australia. It is our obligation to each other in a multicultural and diverse society to call out extremism.

UN Watch: Watchdog demands Schabas quit UN Gaza inquiry over anti-Israel bias

Schabas in 2012 expressed the wish to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried at the International Criminal Court, which clearly indicates that he is biased and thus unqualified to lead the investigation, UN Watch’s executive director Hillel Neuer said. “That statement alone is sufficient to disqualify Prof. Schabas on the question of whether he can impartially sit on this panel.”
Schabas voiced his opinions about Israeli policies vis-à-vis Gaza as recently as this summer, Neuer said. In one interview Schabas gave during the early days of Operation Protective Edge, he suggested Israel’s military response to fire emanating from Gaza was disproportionate and therefore could not be considered legitimate self-defense.
“We are filing the first formal legal request to Professor Schabas at the Human Rights Council, calling on him to recuse himself,” Neuer said at a press conference in Jerusalem. In any situation where a judge or the head of a fact-finding mission has been proven to be biased, or even if there is merely “the appearance of bias, the individual is obliged to step down,” he said.
Schabas remaining in place and leading the fact-finding mission “would have a potentially deleterious impact on the international rule of law,” Neuer writes in the request.

William Schabas already made up his mind: "prima facie, there is EVIDENCE OF DISPROPORTIONALITY"

Those oh-so-moral peace activists

An Israeli theatre company called Incubator Theatre was forced to cancel its performances of its hip-hop story The City at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in late July because of threats and protests.

I just saw some details of what happened at the protests:

On July 30 I watched as members of the public arrived to attend the performance of The City at the Underbelly Cow Barn and witnessed at first hand a level of menace, intimidation and coercion that I had previously thought impossible to witness on the streets of Edinburgh. A 14-year-old girl was yelled at so loudly and at such close quarters that the transfer of spittle from a protestor was evident. Nice.

Charlie Wood, director of the Underbelly, said..."The demonstrations pushed the meaning of 'peaceful', they were screaming at children walking past to see another show, saying 'you've got blood on your ticket.'

"We just couldn't make the show work in that venue and we tried very hard to find venues elsewhere but for several reasons it proved impossible.

In the end, the show was performed to sell-out crowds in Glasgow, London and Leeds, thanks to the efforts of the Zionist Federation. There were withering attacks on the protesters in the media, who forced the first ever show cancellation at the festival due to protests.

The Incubator sent the ZF a thank-you letter:

NGO Monitor put together an online document that lists every tweet by Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth about Israel and Gaza from July 5-September 2.

According to that document, Roth tweeted on those topics 413 times in that time period out of 1192 total tweets - 35%. of his total Twitter output. (There seems to be a few duplicates but the percentage is pretty close.)

I did my own further analysis on just the tweets that were negative to Israel, Hamas or both. I found that of 374 relevant tweets, 293 were anti-Israel, 35 anti-Hamas and 46 mentioned both parties.

(This includes 4 tweets that blamed Israel and Egypt equally.)

That is only part of the story.

62 of Roth's anti-Israel tweets were often suffused with either sarcasm or snarkiness, while I could only find a single sarcastic anti-Hamas tweet.

So for example, there are plenty of condescending tweets about Israel and Zionists,often using biased sources:

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 18 Now I understand why #Israel killed the kids on the roof. They were feeding ducks. Clearly future food for fighters. http://trib.al/wOn9Wbi

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 19 Another day, another Gaza toll of kids killed by #Israel "precision" fire: 3 in bedroom, 4 at home w/ family, 4 more. http://trib.al/qdkgKdB

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 23 In face of @HRW's detailed evidence of attacks on civilians, #Israel ambassador just blathers about "kangaroo court." http://trib.al/BnQ3m5o

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 28 Why does #Israel condemn #Hamas for firing from a cemetery? Duty is not to endanger living civilians, not dead ones. http://trib.al/6wdsvjy

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 29 #Israel would never massively destroy civilian property w/o military justification. Except it did in 2009. Not again! http://trib.al/uXum2aI

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 31 1, 2, 3, 4...1389, 1390 Palestinians killed in #Gaza, 3/4 of them civilians, thanks to #Israel's "precision" attacks. http://trib.al/Md5Mcoy

The only sarcastic Hamas tweet was this one:

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 29 Incredibly, #Hamas says it's "targeting Israeli soldiers only...not..civilians"! Except those indiscriminate rockets. http://trib.al/yzKKCTU

On the other side, six of the anti-Hamas tweets sought to minimize Hamas war crimes, usually by employing a very narrow definition of international humanitarian law that is not supported by the source texts. Here are three of them:

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 24 #Hamas is putting civilians at risk but "no evidence" it forces them to stay--definition of human shields: @NYTimes. http://trib.al/61iwSoM

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 25 Hamas must as feasible not fight in populated areas http://trib.al/CA94avT but no human shield unless coerced to stay http://trib.al/YQwIIau

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 29 Tunnels used to attack or capture civilians is a rights violation. Tunnels used to attack or capture soldiers isn't. http://trib.al/v8CCCj6

Compare Roth's snarky tweeting that Hamas was innocent of kidnapping and murdering the three Israeli teenagers with how he acknowledged the reports of Hamas admitting they did do it:

Kenneth Roth ‏@KenRoth Jul 26 Remember when #Israel insisted Hamas was behind kidnap-murder of three West Bank teens. Oops, turns out it wasn't. http://trib.al/BcbP0s8

He tweets a definitive statement that Hamas wasn't responsible. Then:

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth · Aug 12 FWIW, a Palestinian man reportedly says during Shin Bet interrogation that Hamas financed kidnap-murder of 3 teens. http://trib.al/3E8kBk7

"For what its worth" and "reportedly" indicating that Roth doesn't quite believe it.

Then:

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth · Aug 20 #Hamas official reportedly says Qassam brigade was behind West Bank kidnapping & murder of 3 #Israel teens. http://trib.al/FVOfOkN

Again, the pro-Hamas claims are tweeted as fact and the anti-Hamas claims are given caveats or are minimized.

This pattern is consistent. The only real anti-Hamas tweets were for things Roth had no wriggle room for, namely rockets aimed at civilians and executions of Hamas' enemies in the streets.

More indication of Roth's bias comes from how he reported the 4-year old Israeli child killed by a Hamas rocket. His first mention was anti-Hamas:

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth · Aug 22 #Hamas's indiscriminate attacks take a civilian toll today, including a 4-year-old killed, others injured. http://trib.al/7B2IMzZ

But the next mentions of the dead child were anti-Israel!

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth · Aug 22 IDF claimed Hamas mortar that killed 4yo came from "near an UNRWA school" http://trib.al/2sPTlls Turns out it didn't. http://trib.al/OjAw5Ci

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth · Aug 24 Little #Israel concern shown for (1st) 478 #Gaza kids killed, but when one of their own... @Levy_Haaretz. All tragic. http://trib.al/EBe1oCI

The bias is unmistakable, and combined with the feedback Roth gets from the thousands of people who retweet his anti-Israel tweets, it is self-enforcing. Who doesn't want to be popular? Roth's anti-Israel tweets get far more readers than any other categories.

Other posts about Roth's Twitter obsession with demonizing Israel here, here, here , here and here.

(h/t Adam Levick)

09/04 Links Pt1: Hamas's War Crimes and Crimes against Islam; Hamas is the biggest barrier to peace

From Ian:

Family of 4-year-old killed by Gaza mortar fire slams UN hypocrisy in letter to Ban Ki-moon

Gila and Doron Tragerman, who lost their 4-year-old son Daniel in a mortar strike from the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge, have called on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to speak out against Hamas's crimes.
In a letter sent to the UN chief on Thursday, Gila Tragerman describes the death of their son and the experience of living under constant rocket threat in recent years at their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz. In addition, she slammed the UN's decision to open an investigation into Israel's actions during Operation Protective Edge.
"I am an Israeli citizen, a resident of Kibbutz Nahal Oz which borders Gaza. A week ago we lost our oldest son, four-and-a-half year old Daniel, who was killed by a mortar shell fired from Gaza at the kibbutz. I am turning to you as a result of your announcement to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about your decision to form an international committee to investigate 'Israel's crimes' during the recent fighting in Gaza."
She explained that the family had learned of Ban's decision to probe Israel's actions during the operation in Gaza while the family was sitting shiva, the customary Jewish period of mourning.
"You sent the announcement to Prime Minsiter Netanyahu - we learned - exactly a half hour after our Daniel was killed...you informed the prime minister that the committee would probe 'Israel's crimes.' The investigative committee will not be asked to probe how it is possible that terrorists fire weapons from inside UN buildings and from schools," she charged.
"The committee also will not be checking how it can be that, inside UN buildings and inside hospitals in Gaza thrives a terror infrastructure, precisely planned over a long period, or how murderers exit those same buildings to perpetrate terror attacks against innocent people."

Hamas's War Crimes and Crimes against Islam

There is no horror more appalling than forcing the Gazan population to endure the stockpiling of rockets in mosques, the construction of tunnels under their kitchens, the situating of terrorist headquarters under their hospitals and the perverted use made of UNRWA facilities (some of whose personnel collaborated with Hamas and willingly concealed weapons). The West must disband UNRWA.
The tragedy is that the Gazans, in fear of their lives from Hamas terrorists, are afraid to protest.
Hamas leaders should be tried for war crimes, and Abbas should remember that since he heads the national consensus government with Hamas, he himself is liable to be tried in the Hague for the war crimes Hamas has committed against the Israelis.
Why is the Oslo II Agreement of 1995, assuring the complete disarmament of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, even being renegotiated, and why was it not implemented in the first place?
As Qatar is a country without a people and the Palestinians are a people without a country, Qatar should be turned into the national home for the Palestinians, "Palestine."

PA: Hamas shot Fatah members in the legs during Gaza war

WSJ: Palestine Needs Better Friends: Defenders of Hamas practice the bigotry of low expectations

There is a term for describing the Middle East in a cartoonishly inaccurate but politically self-serving manner that reduces local populations to passive actors in a morality play meant to reinforce prejudices: "Orientalism." The coinage belongs to the late Columbia professor and pro-Palestinian activist Edward Said, who believed that modern Western commentary on the East was simplistic and racist. "Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life," he wrote in 1980, "has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world."
So it is today, but not in the way that Said identified. The custom now is a pro-Palestinian neo-Orientalism that glosses over the real conditions of Palestinian life, focusing instead on condemning Israel. Yet the effect of this neo-Orientalism isn't pro-Palestinian. By ignoring the pathologies of Palestinian politics, it condemns Palestinians to live under leaders who would rather impoverish and endanger their own people than compromise with Israel.
Whatever their intent, neo-Orientalists provide cover for a political structure in Palestine that they would never accept for themselves—which is a form of bigotry. Countless articles are written about intricate details of Israeli coalition politics, typically with hand-wringing conclusions about the election of this or that hard-liner. Seldom do you read about Palestinian politics, where hard-liners throw their rivals from rooftops or shoot them in the street. Perhaps journalists consider such savagery the unremarkable fate of Palestinians who aren't entitled to politics as Westerners are. Textbook Orientalism.
Neo-Orientalist thinking treats both Israelis and Palestinians unfairly. A better approach would expose and reject the terrorist thugs claiming the mantle of a nationalist movement that deserves accountability and sobriety from its leaders. Then popular discussion of the Middle East may regain some humane sense of right and wrong—and the Palestinians may finally achieve security, prosperity and statehood.

Hamas shot rockets at its own people

The IDF held a briefing for reporters on Tuesday giving new details about Operation Protective Edge. The briefing was wide-ranging, covering Hamas' professionalism, its rocket fire, the number of militants likely killed, and many other topics.

The New York Times highlighted this part:

A senior Israeli military intelligence official acknowledged on Tuesday that only several hundred Hamas operatives out of a total that he put at 16,000 were killed during this summer’s 50-day war in Gaza, leaving the group’s fighting force largely intact.

The official, briefing reporters at military headquarters here on the condition of anonymity, in line with army protocol, added that the militant groups in Gaza were believed to have held on to 2,500 to 3,000 rockets, about a third of the stock they had before the fighting began on July 8. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and some smaller groups launched about 4,000 rockets, and the Israeli military estimates that it destroyed another 3,000 before a cease-fire halted the fighting a week ago.

Although Hamas leaders have presented the struggle as a victory for their organization, Israel has “good evidence” that Hamas and Islamic Jihad “suffered a huge, even dramatic hit,” the intelligence official said, arguing that success cannot be measured in numbers. He said that senior commanders were killed, probably thousands of operatives were wounded and significant damage was done to the groups’ military infrastructure.

Then comes something interesting but not elaborated on:

Of the rockets fired by Hamas, 875 fell inside Gaza, according to the official — some of them fired at Israeli ground forces who had entered the Palestinian coastal territory, some that were aimed at Israeli territory but misfired. The official said he believed that still others were fired intentionally at the local Palestinian population, “from what I saw in the systems.”

Hamas is firing rockets at its own population and the NYT thinks that the big story is that Israel didn't hurt them that badly?

Die Welt headlined their article "Hamas apparently shelled its own population" and went into more detail:

Not only Israel was said to have been in the crosshairs of Hamas [rockets]: A total of 875 [rockets] fired during the war and an unknown number of mortar shells fell in Gaza itself down. Many of them were duds - the weapons are chronically inaccurate.

Others were aimed at Israeli troop concentrations in Gaza itself. But a large part "were in my opinion deliberately fired by Hamas on densely populated areas in Gaza," said the Israeli officer. Otherwise he could not explain their trajectory.

The English-language media is reluctant to highlight any evidence that Hamas would shoot at its own people. Yet we know that it shot its political enemies during the fighting, we know that it used human shields, we know that it purposefully placed weapons caches in schools and hospitals and mosques. If the purpose is to gain propaganda points by showing off dead civilians - something that Hamas itself told Gazans to emphasize at the beginning of the fighting - why is it so unbelievable that Hamas would shoot rockets at its own people as well? Hamas knows very well that not a single NGO in Gaza would bother to check out whether deaths and damage were done by Israeli or Islamist fire - Israel would be blamed reflexively.

The IDF sees the source, trajectory and future destination of every rocket fired from Gaza. Look at the trajectories of these rockets:

The terrorists who fired the rockets were not aiming at Israel or at Israeli forces. (IDF ground troops never went that far into Gaza.) Rockets aren't that inaccurate.

The same briefing also showed evidence of purposeful Hamas fire from schools:

The intelligence official presented more evidence to bolster Israel’s assertions that Hamas waged its campaign largely by hiding behind its own civilians. An aerial photograph appeared to show a rocket firing site in the yard of a school in Shejaiya. In before and after pictures, a fabric canopy believed to be hiding the rockets appeared intact, then ripped. Another previously unpublished photograph showed a schoolyard in Beit Lahiya that was empty by day. By night, it was dotted with what looked like several rockets laid out on the ground and boxes that the official said contained more rockets.

If Western reporters and NGOs manage to wrap their heads around the simple fact that an Islamist terror group is wiling to endanger and kill their own people to score cheap propaganda points, then many of the deaths of civilians in Gaza may be seen in a new light. Too bad that the reporters and NGOs on the ground in Gaza don't have the ability to think objectively.

(h/t EBoZ, Gastwirt)

Abbas brags about how little he cares for Palestinian "refugees"

From Times of Israel:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected an Egyptian proposal to resettle Palestinian refugees in a large tract of land in the Sinai Peninsula to be annexed to the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to a gathering of his Fatah party in Ramallah Sunday, Abbas said that an unnamed senior Egyptian official recently approached him and suggested settling Palestinians in an area 1,600 square kilometers (618 square miles) large adjacent to Gaza, reviving an idea originally proposed by former Israeli national security adviser Giora Eiland.

“They [the Egyptians] are prepared to receive all the refugees, [saying] ‘let’s end the refugee story’,” Abbas was quoted by Ma’an news agency as saying.

The Palestinian leader noted that the idea was first proposed to the Egyptian government in 1956, but was furiously rejected by Palestinian leaders such as PLO militant Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar and poet Muin Bseiso who “understood the danger of this.”

“Now this is being proposed once again. A senior leader in Egypt said: ‘a refuge must be found for the Palestinians and we have all this open land.’ This was said to me personally. But it’s illogical for the problem to be solved at Egypt’s expense. We won’t have it,” Abbas said.

1600 square kilometers is over four times the size of the Gaza Strip today, perhaps the annexed part would look like something like this:

I have no idea if any Egyptian official really floated this idea to Abbas. Countries generally don't offer their land for free (with the glaring exception of Israel,) even if that land has a major terrorist problem.

But the important part of the story isn't whether the offer is real or fictional. The important part is that Abbas is bragging about rejecting a solution to the "refugee" problem.

Which proves that Abbas doesn't care about the "refugees" but only about destroying Israel.

When the PLO talks about the fictional "right of return" the West usually scoffs and says that they aren't being serious and that they really want a two-state solution. But the idea of flooding Israel with Arabs and making it into another Arab state is the keystone of Fatah's plan to destroy Israel in stages, and it has never changed.

We've seen PLO officials say that any "refugees" that come from Arab countries to "Palestine" would not become citizens. We've seen Abbas reject saving the lives of Syrian Palestinians unless they keep their "right" to move to Israel. We've seen Abbas insist that Lebanese Palestinians must not become citizens of the country they were born in, but must remain stateless instead.

And now Abbas is bragging about rejecting free land to house these poor, stateless "refugees." (Without consulting them, of course.)

Abbas' position is clear: The "refugees" only exist in order to ultimately destroy Israel. They must remain stateless and miserable or else they are useless to him. Actually helping the "refugees" is his lowest priority; cynically using them for political ends is his highest priority.

The point of a Palestinian Arab state is not to alleviate the suffering of stateless Palestinians. If it was, Abbas would embrace all of these plans - to naturalize them in Arab countries if they want, to bring them in to areas under his control to be protected, and certainly to provide them with land he doesn't have so they have room to live.

Yet Abbas consistently chooses to increase the misery of the people he supposedly leads rather than help them.

Mahmoud Abbas' position is clear: any solution to the so-called "refugee' problem must come at the expense of Israel. The Palestinian Arab leadership priorities have not changed in the slightest since Yasir Arafat founded Fatah in the 1950s: destroying Israel is far, far more important than helping Palestinian Arabs, the everlasting pawns of the Middle East.

(h/t Ian)

The Fatah-oriented Palestine Press Agency has a scathing article about how Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar denies that Hamas attacked Fatah members during Operation Protective Edge.

The newspaper lists the names of 11 Fatah members who were beaten, had bones broken or were shot in the legs.

It also lists 59 Fatah members in Gaza who were placed under house arrest by Hamas.

Fatah also accuses Hamas of confiscating food aid that was shipped in during the war and prioritizing the delivery to its own people as well as Islamic Jihad and unaffiliated Gazans in order to gain support.

In addition, Fatah accuses Hamas of physically enforcing an 11 PM curfew, not allowing cars or even ambulances to travel while under Israeli fire, although Hamas vehicles traveled freely overnights.

Moreover, the newspaper says that Hamas militants opened fire on civilians during the Israeli bombardment and forced them not to leave their homes, according to witnesses.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch said repeatedly and wrongly that "human shields' are only considered such when the people are forced to stay in an area that they want to leave. Here we see accusations that Hamas used human shields even according to the narrow definition of HRW. (Why a "human rights" organization tries so hard to minimize human rights culpability for Israel's enemies is anyone's guess.)

But if history is any guide, Roth will do what he can to reduce Hamas' culpability as much as he can, even as he repeats false reports that condemn Israel.