Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 08, 2014

09/08 Links Pt2: Everything You Need to Know about International Law and the Gaza War

From Ian:

Everything You Need to Know about International Law and the Gaza War

War crimes. Disproportionate response. Collective punishment. Targeting civilians. Throughout Operation Protective Edge, these terms have been fired off at Israel with the same intensity and frequency as Hamas’ rockets. Arab government spokesmen constantly refer to Israel’s actions as “aggression.” In extreme cases, Israel is accused of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”
When politicians, pundits, or the public misuse these terms, one can only think of a quote from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” But when a respected jurist like Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, calls Israel’s military campaign “disproportionate,” claims the IDF’s “disregard for international humanitarian law and for the right to life was shockingly evident” in many of its attacks, and says that Israel is insufficiently protecting Gaza’s civilians “in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” the accusations cannot be so easily dismissed. At the same time that Israel is exercising its right to self-defense against terrorists who violate and shamelessly exploit international law, human rights lawyers and UN officials aim to manipulate the laws of war to reduce its ability to lawfully use military force.

How Hamas Destroys Its People, as Seen Through the Eyes of IDF Soldiers

Since the beginning of the Gaza War, Israelis have insisted that Hamas uses its own civilians as “human shields.” Hamas denies it, and certain international voices take their side. Now some of those who saw it with their own eyes are speaking out.
Below is a collection of personal stories gathered from soldiers who saw with their own eyes Palestinian civilians being used as strategic elements of Hamas’ fight against Israel. In some cases, only first names have been used in order to protect identities, as some were still in the midst of the operation when interviewed.
While they all served in different units, and fought different battles, some from the sky and some from the ground, all of them spoke of their painstaking efforts to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians at the risk of their own lives. Each soldier interviewed for this story had his own personal account, sometimes several accounts, of trying to avoid civilian casualties in the face of Hamas efforts to exploit them. And all of the soldiers shared the same frustration that despite all of their painstaking efforts, the world continues to view Israel’s war in Gaza as a war against humanity, when in their eyes, it is very much a war against a terrorist organization that has taken its own people hostage.

On Those "Spontaneous" Pro-Hamas Demonstrations

To what extent were Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations involved in the many, sometimes violent, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas demonstrations we saw throughout Europe during the recent war?
“Let’s look at the country which is the most important hub for all of this - the UK. There is absolutely no doubt that the Brotherhood is the prime mover behind the demonstrations, because the coalitions, they are always the same people, the same organizers. Primarily, they are the British Muslim Initiative, Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Palestine Forum in Britain - those are all Brotherhood/Hamas groups. They’ve been behind the demonstrations for years, together with far-left coalition partners such as Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Every time there’s a problem with Gaza, it’s the same sponsors, same groups, same signs. […] Some people would then say that these organizations are not the same as the Brotherhood, but they are part of the larger Global Muslim Brotherhood (GMB), that is, something more than these individual groups but less than a structured, hierarchical organization. In other words, a network. In general, the Brotherhood plays a big role in the demonstrations in Europe, but in terms of sheer political agitation and as a country serving as the command and control node.

There have been tons of faked quotes attributed to Zionist leaders over the decades.

But it is not often that you can witness the birth of a new lie.

So far, at least three Arab newspapers - the Arab Times, Al Majd and Al Watan Voice - have quoted Naftali Bennett as saying, on September 1, that "The killing of Palestinians brings life to the Jews."

Of course, Bennett never said anything like that, nor would he. The main quote he gave on September 1 was ""What we did yesterday was a display of Zionism. Building is our answer to murder."

To be sure, there are a lot of people for whom the preliminary paperwork that could maybe possibly in two decades result in Jews building houses is considered far worse than, say, an Arab blowing up ten Jews. But even if you have such a perverted view of morality, the quote is still completely bogus.

From Ma'an:

For the first time ever, Palestinian Muslims who live in Israel will be able to travel to Saudi Arabia for hajj pilgrimage by air instead of having to make the journey by bus.

Owner of the Ramla-based Milad Aviation Company Ibrahim Milad told Ma'an Sunday that flights would be organized from Ben Gurion Airport to Amman and then onward to Jeddah Airport in Saudi Arabia.

"We have contacted the Israeli and Jordanian civil aviation authorities and obtained all the needed permission to organize flights for hajj pilgrims," he said.

In the past, he said, it used to take pilgrims about 24 hours to travel from Israel to Amman due to the situation at the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge into Jordan, but the journey has now been reduced to a 20-minute plan ride.

An initial group of 766 hajj pilgrims will fly Sept. 23-26, and the flight will cost about $600.

Those Israeli Islamophobes!

Of course, this being Ma'an, it has to throw in some anti-Israel lies as background information:

Although the majority of Palestinians were expelled from their homes inside Israel during the 1948 ethnic cleansing that led to the creation of the State of Israel, some Palestinians managed to remain in their villages.

There are no credible historians who claim that the majority of Arabs in Palestine were expelled in 1948. The vast majority fled out of fear of war, the crumbling of Arab infrastructure from the initial panicked flight and some at the behest of Arab leaders.

The ones who stayed didn't "manage to remain," implying that despite Israeli efforts they managed to hang on to their homes. They simply didn't flee and no one bothered them.

But the Arabs know very well Goebbel's rule "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." It is pretty much the basis of Palestinian Arab nationalism.

PART 3

(Part 1, part 2)

Continuing my series of lies that were tweeted by Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch over the past two months.

July 29: 1st Gulf War showed devastating cascading effects on public health of attacking electricity, yet #Israel just did it. http://trib.al/sZWbwib

Truth: Israel immediately flatly denied targeting Gaza's power plant, although it allowed that it was possible that it was hit accidentally.

“The State of Israel did not attack Gaza’s power plant,” said Brig. Gen. Yaron Rosen, the commander of IAF Air Support and Helicopter Air Division.

“It has no interest (in that),” he added. “We transfer to them the electricity, we transfer in the gas, we transfer in the food in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster. So we attacked the power plant?”

The general said it was possible the plant had been hit by Israel by mistake.

Munitions, he said, can sometimes “skip,” and strike targets unintentionally, as occurred during 2008-9′s Operation Cast Lead.

“The matter is under investigation,” he added.

Later on, Israel flatly denied that it had done anything in that area that day: altogether

An Israeli military spokeswoman said after checking with ground, air and naval forces in the area of the power plant that there was "no indication that (Israel Defense Forces) were involved in the strike. ... The area surrounding the plant was also not struck in recent days."

The IDF simply doesn't lie about things like that.

Which means that the power plant was hit by a terrorist rocket, or was otherwise sabotaged from within Gaza.

It is much more likely that Hamas attacked its own power plant deliberately. Besides information that Hamas aimed rockets at its own population, it has many times created an artificial crisis around fuel shortages in order to garner world sympathy and prompt more free aid from Qatar.

A reporter who would say something this inaccurate would be forced to correct him or herself. Why should the head of a human rights organization have lower ethical standards?

July 29: More #Gaza women & kids killed (342) than militants (182). 4.5 as many civilians as militants. http://trib.al/qyLp5s5 pic.twitter.com/hfxhxP1UWX

Truth: Once again, Roth uses sources poorly. This was apparently a Haaretz infographic.

Yet on the previous day, the Meir Amit ITIC had already released the first of its findings - with names - that there were far more terrorists being killed in Gaza than was being reported.

At this point it was also well known that Hamas had instructed Gazans to call everyone an "innocent civilian" and it was clear that Hamas was not releasing the full number of its casualties.

Roth was clearly following the war not only closely, but obsessively. It seems unlikely that he was not aware of these facts. Yet even so, he had no problem using the fig leaf of selectively quoting as fact only the media he trusts, and ignoring the ones that contradict his pre-determined position.

July 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

Truth: If Hamas acted according to the rules of war and was a regular army, this would be correct in a very narrow sense. But the reality is that it is a lie and Roth knows it.

Hamas has said explicitly many times that it wants to kidnap soldiers to hold them hostage, not to hold them as POWs according to the Geneva Conventions. Hostage taking is a war crime, period. Roth is going out of his way to excuse Hamas' admitted attempts to perform a grave breach of international law.

One has to wonder why the head of a human rights organization is so callous towards the human rights of Israeli soldiers that Hamas wants to take hostage. B'Tselem calls it a war crime, but Ken Roth refuses to.

August 4: (Retweeted by Kenneth Roth) Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof · One principle of int'l law is proportionality of response. But so far, Israel has lost 3 civilians; Gaza (by UN count) 1,033 civilians.

Truth: This is not what proportionality means under international law.

There are two definitions: One is that the expected civilian casualties from a specific attack must be proportional to the military value of the target. As we've shown, the bar for passing that test is much lower than Ken Roth claims, and Israel is adhering to the principle of proportionality. This is the jus in bello definition - how to act once a war already starts.

The other definition, which is probably what Kristof is referring to since he calls it "proportionality of response," is jus ad bellum, to take proportionality into account when deciding on the right to go to war initially. It is sometimes called macro-proportionality. In brief, it says that "The anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms."

By definition, macro-proportionality can only be defined before a war starts. Given that Israel was responding to rocket attacks and was acting in self defense, the decision to go to war was clearly legal; the question is whether their initial choice of how to go about the war - how many airplanes, how many drones, how many gunships - would be proportionate to what they were trying to accomplish.

It is certain that the test of jus ad bellum proportionality cannot be taken by doing a simple count of civilian victims after the war starts. That falls under jus in bello. To violate macro-proportionality, it would have to be proven that Israel was acting in ways that were completely overkill for the original goal of stopping rockets. Given that the rockets didn't stop until the current cease fire, it is obvious that Israel's response was less than that allowed by this proportionality test. It has nothing to do with body counts.

Roth's retweet of Kristof's bad definition is especially egregious given Roth's supposed expertise in international law.

09/08 Links Pt1: Hamas: Give Us West Bank So We Can Destroy Israel; Brussels shooter planned Paris attack

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas: Give Us West Bank So We Can Destroy Israel

Abbas's initiative envisages the establishment of a Palestinian state within three years either through negotiations or by having the UN Security Council impose a solution on Israel.
Abbas's initiative, however, ignores the threat from Hamas and Iran to use the West Bank as a launching pad for destroying Israel. It also ignores that Hamas could easily seize control over a future Palestinian state by force or through the promised free and democratic elections, as assured by a recent public opinion poll published by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
Abbas is demanding a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines (including the border with Jordan). But he cannot offer any assurances that Hamas and Iran would not use this border to smuggle weapons into the West Bank.
In fact, Abbas is demanding from the Israelis and Americans something that would bring about his own demise. His only option for now is to hold onto power in the West Bank and continue to work with Israel against the common enemy – Hamas. The day Hamas agrees to lay down its weapons and abandon its dream of destroying Israel, he will then be able to go to the U.S. and Security Council and ask for an independent state next to Israel. (h/t IronyDome)

Why a Palestinian state is not the answer

Every once in a while I feel the need to write some form of this post to explain to Americans yet again why a Palestinian state is a bad idea.
This is not a big issue in Israel, despite the impression you may get from reading Ha’aretz’s English website. Most Israelis understand that a peaceful Palestinian state is not on offer, and that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would create a security nightmare. But a large number of Americans still think that the moderate answer to the Israel-Arab conflict is a “two-state solution.”
They think this because they hear it from liberal Jewish leaders, and because they hear it from the President, whom they by and large respect. And they hear it from the Israeli Left, which has a voice in the media that is far out of proportion to its numbers.
After all, Americans are not here in Israel to see for themselves, so they depend on ‘experts’. And who is a bigger expert than the head of the Union for Reform Judaism or the President of the US? Those who oppose the two-state idea are called ‘extremists’ or worse, and nobody wants to be an extremist.
So here are the reasons against creating a Palestinian state. See if you think I am an extremist.

‘Brussels shooter planned massive attack in Paris’

Mehdi Nemmouche, the man who allegedly shot up the Brussels Jewish Museum earlier this year, killing four, reportedly plotted a large attack during Paris’s Bastille Day celebrations.
Based on the testimony of four French reporters who were kidnapped by the Islamic State and held captive by Nemmouche, French daily Liberation reported Monday that the returned IS fighter planned “at least one attack in France, in the heart of Paris, which would be at least five times bigger than the attacks in Toulouse.” The attack would allegedly have taken place on Paris’s iconic Champs Elysees boulevard on July 14, the French national holiday marking the beginning of the revolution.
The March 2012 Toulouse attacks targeting Jews and soldiers in the southern French city left seven dead and five injured, and the suspected perpetrator, Mohammed Merah, killed himself after a 30-hour siege.

AFP reported on September 1:

After a traumatic summer of war and death, Israeli and Palestinian children squared off on Monday for games of football, just kilometres (miles) away from the devastated Gaza Strip.

The Israeli children came from villages surrounding the besieged Palestinian enclave while the Palestinians were bused in from Yatta in the southern West Bank.

The tournament was part of an initiative launched 12 years ago and aimed at bringing together Palestinians from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and disaffected Israeli youths.

Many of the boys had played together before at other such gatherings organised by the Peres Centre for Peace, which is run by former president Shimon Peres.

Initial apprehension was obvious on both sides, but the young players' enthusiasm for the game soon took over.

"It's great to come back here after weeks stuck at home during the war, and to have some fun," said 11-year-old Ofir from Sderot in southern Israel, one of the towns most hit by Gaza rocket fire.

"The Arab kids aren't mean, and there are some who want peace like me," said the curly-haired blond boy.

Eleven-year-old Qusay agreed.

"I like it when we play together. I hope one day there will be peace between Jews and Arabs, and no more war or death," he said.

Jibril Rajoub, head of the PA Supreme Council for Youth and Sports as well as president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and head of the Palestinian Federation of Football, called this friendly game to foster peace a "crime against humanity." He strongly condemned the young Palestinians who enthusiastically played soccer with their Israeli counterparts.

I guess, along with genocide and torture and enslavement and rape, we have to add "playing soccer with Israeli Jews" to the list of crimes against humanity.

Rajoub isn't only a marginal sports figure. He is one of the Palestinian Arabs' historic leaders and used to head the security forces under Arafat.

It is not too remarkable that officials from the "moderate" PA say such outlandish, insane and anti-peace statements. That has been happening for years.

But the lack of criticism from within the so-called "progressive" pro-Palestinian community against these sorts of moronic statements is very, very revealing. After all, anyone who truly wants peace should be the first ones to slam such a statement as being hateful and completely, absolutely wrong.

Statements like Rajoub's are taken in stride and condoned. No Palestinian NGOs will dare speak out, no European newspapers will publish an op-ed about Palestinian intransigence, no condemnations from "human rights" NGOs on what is obviously a complete rejection of any sort of actual, real peace. If the news gets out at all it will be buried with a sort of sheepish embarrassment and the knowledge that, yeah, sometimes they say stupid stuff but there is no value in publicizing it, unlike any statements by an unimportant fringe Israeli rightist whose statements would be distorted and become headlines for weeks.

To the far Left, Palestinian Arab hate must at all costs be hushed up. Because they know that they are really peaceful, and hundreds of crazed hateful statements by their leaders in Arabic must not be allowed to cause people to think otherwise.

(h/t Khaled Abu Toameh)

Hamas TV: "The Jews are the enemy of mankind, killing children brings them joy"

From MEMRI:

In an August 31, 2014 TV interview broadcast from Gaza, Palestinian preacher Bahsir Al-'Ashi said: "The Jews are the enemies of all the nations... The Jews are prepared to sow corruption in the world, and to ignite strife and wars between the nations." Al-'Ashi further said: "The killing of children brings joy to the Jews."

Following are excerpts from the interview, which aired on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV.

Bashir Al-'Ashi: The people occupying Palestine are the enemies of Mankind. The Jews are not the enemies of the Palestinians alone. If I could, I would say this in English, so that the people of the whole world would understand that the Jews are their enemies.

The Jews are the enemies of the Christians worldwide. They are the enemies of the Americans and of all the nations, not just of Palestine and of the Arab and Islamic nation. The Jews are prepared to sow corruption in the world, and to ignite strife and wars between the nations.
[...]
All the nations need to understand that the most important thing for the Jews and their leaders is to appeal to the sentiment of their people by quenching their thirst for sucking the blood of others. This is what happened [in the war].

The killing of children brings joy to the Jews. The killing of children brings joy to the Jews. The Jewish people rejoice at the killing of children, women, and the elderly, at the uprooting of trees, the plundering of money, and the burning of lands. This is true of all of the Jews, of the entire Jewish people.

All the nations of the world should know that sucking the blood of non-Jews and killing them is in the very nature of the Jews. After all, they are the slayers of the prophets. It is a war of Truth against Falsehood, and both sides have supporters.

It is sort of refreshing when they tell the truth and don't pretend that they are only talking about "Zionists."

Iran continues to hide its nuclear weapons program from the IAEA

From Reuters:

Iran has failed to address concerns about suspected atomic bomb research by an agreed deadline, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday, a setback to hopes for an end to an international stand-off over Tehran's atomic activity.

The lack of movement in an inquiry by the International Atomic Energy Agency will disappoint the West and could further complicate efforts by six world powers to negotiate a resolution to the decade-old dispute with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

An IAEA report obtained by Reuters showed that little substantive headway had so far been made in the U.N. agency's long-running investigation into what it calls the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program.

The Islamic Republic has implemented just three of five nuclear transparency steps that it was supposed to by Aug. 25 under a confidence-building deal it reached with the IAEA in November, according to the quarterly report.

Crucially, it has not provided information on the two issues that are part of the IAEA's investigation: alleged experiments on explosives that could be used for an atomic device, and studies related to calculating nuclear explosive yields.

The report said Iran, where a president seen as pragmatic took office in 2013 and revived diplomacy with the West, told the IAEA last week that most suspicions over its program were "mere allegations and do not merit consideration".

A Vienna-based diplomat called that statement "worrying".

The IAEA had also observed via satellite imagery "ongoing construction activity" at Iran's Parchin military base, the report said. Western officials believe Iran once conducted explosive tests there of relevance in developing a nuclear weapon and has sought to "cleanse" it of evidence since then. Iran has long denied U.N. nuclear inspectors access to the base.

The actual report is here, but the Reuters summary is pretty good. Here are the relevant parts:

The Agency remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. Iran is required to cooperate fully with the Agency on all outstanding issues, particularly those which give rise to concerns about the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme, including by providing access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the Agency.

The Annex to the Director General’s November 2011 report (GOV/2011/65) provided a detailed analysis of the information available to the Agency at that time, indicating that Iran has carried out activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. This information is assessed by the Agency to be, overall, credible.57 The Agency has obtained more information since November 2011 that has further corroborated the analysis contained in that Annex.

In February 2012, Iran dismissed the Agency’s concerns, largely on the grounds that Iran considered them to be based on unfounded allegations.58 In a letter to the Agency dated 28 August 2014, Iran stated that “most of the issues” in the Annex to GOV/2011/65 were “mere allegations and do not merit consideration”.

Since the Director General’s previous report, at a particular location at the Parchin site, the Agency has observed through satellite imagery ongoing construction activity that appears to show the removal/replacement or refurbishment of the site’s two main buildings’ external wall structures. One of these buildings60 has also had a section of its roof removed and replaced. Observations of deposits of material and/or debris, and equipment suggest that construction activity has expanded to two other site buildings. These activities are likely to have further undermined the Agency’s ability to conducteffective verification. It remains important for Iran to provide answers to the Agency’s questions and access to the particular location in question.

But...but...Rouhani is so moderate!

The NYT doesn't ask the basic questions about West Bank "refugees"

The New York Times has a decent story of how Palestinians in West Bank "refugee camps" are ambivalent bout something as simple as building a small town square or a soccer field. But it doesn't bother to ask some basic questions.

Public space like the plaza in Al Fawwar is mostly unheard-of in Palestinian camps across the West Bank. Architectural upgrades raise fundamental questions about the Palestinian identity, implying permanence, which refugees here have opposed for generations. The lack of normal amenities, like squares and parks in the camps, commonplace in Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank, was originally by design: Camps were conceived as temporary quarters. The absence of public space was then preserved over the years to fortify residents’ self-identification as refugees, displaced and stateless.

So construction of even a small public square is something unusual — a sign of change in a region of fierce, escalating tension, lately exacerbated by the war in Gaza and Israel’s newest claim to another nearly 1,000 acres of West Bank land near Bethlehem, a move swiftly denounced by United Nations officials and others in the international community as undermining prospects for peace.

...The square has altered the sense of being vested in the camp — a change, partly generational, that challenges core ideas among refugees about keeping Al Fawwar a way station and temporary shelter.

...That is a provocative concept in the camps — questioning an age-old strategy of dignified self-deprivation, reframing the right of return for Palestinians as something other than simply waiting to reclaim ancestral land. Mohammad Abo Sroor, a young man who grew up in Dheisheh, a camp near Bethlehem, participates in Campus in Camps, a new university devoted to investigating the life of refugees and the design of camps. He told me he had the key to the farm near Jaffa that his grandfather lost in 1948. But for him, as well, the right of return does not necessarily mean moving into that farm. It means “the right to live where I wish,” he said, which could include Dheisheh.

The NYT doesn't ask why these people, living in their own homeland under their own leaders, are considered "refugees."

The NYT doesn't bother to ask why the false hopes of "return" are being taught to generations of people, forcing them to stay in stateless limbo in what is clearly a strategy.

The BYT doesn't ask why the PA hasn't demolished these camps. After all, aren't they living in "Palestine?"

The nYT doesn't ask why Mahmoud Abbas treats some of his own people like second-class citizens.

The answer to these questions is what the Times doesn't want to say explicitly. Arab leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, are the ones who purposefully keep these people in misery. The residents are pawns who have been brainwashed over decades to believe that one day they will "return" to homes that they never lived in - after Israel is destroyed.

The answers prove that Mahmoud Abbas isn't a moderate who accepts Israel's right to exist. He subscribes to the idea that Iarael is a temporary blight in the Middle East and he is working to erase that mistake while saying what the West wants to hear.

Because if he truly wanted a two-state solution, he wouldn't be investing so much energy into keeping so many of his own people in camps.

The NYT also doesn't ask why "human rights" organizations go along with this clear discrimination and have nothing bad to say about using thousands of people as symbols instead of treating them as humans.

(h/t EBoZ)

Fake Palestinian Civilians of the Day

PCHR said on July 27 that Mohammed Mahmoud Rajab Hajjaj, 34, whose body was found in the Shuja'iya neighborhood, was a civilian.

Hamas disagrees:

Also, on July 25, PCHR said that "an Israeli warplane launched a missile at a house belonging to Nasser ‘Abdu Shurrab in al-Manara neighborhood in the south of Khan Yunis. The house was destroyed."

On July 26, it said that "civilian" Eyad Nasser ‘Abdu Shurrab was found in the rubble. And on the 27th, it added the name of his "civilian" brother, Wassim Nasser 'Abdu Shurrab, 22.

They were both members of Islamic Jihad's Saraya terror division.

The ever-expanding collection of fake Gaza civilians is here.

(h/t Bob Knot)

PART 2

(Part 1 here.)

July 22: Palestinians killed: more kids (129) than militants (86). 4.7x as many civilians as militants. http://trib.al/LJpSpe1 pic.twitter.com/NeJahDfiTh

Truth: Even his source, the Washington Post, says "These numbers are often not complete, but represent the best available data and do tend to clarify over time. Israel disputes the numbers provided by the United Nations, saying that a large number of those killed, particularly males over 18, were armed terrorists and not civilians." Roth doesn't care, he reports the numbers without caveats - but only when they make Israel look bad.

July 24: Good that the commission of inquiry launched by UN rights council is authorized to investigate both Israel & Hamas. http://trib.al/PlOQaBZ

Truth: Even the article he linked to - from The Guardian - doesn't say this. It says:

The resolution called for the urgent dispatch of "an independent, international commission of inquiry" to investigate "all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip".

Which means it is only looking for Israeli crimes in the territories, not Palestinian crimes against Israel.

Notably, the timeframe that the UNHRC chose for its inquiry does not include the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens - which is a clear violation of IHL against Israelis in the territories - but it chose to start the probe from the the day after they were kidnapped and murdered. The only possible reason is to ensure that only Israeli actions would be investigated, not those of the terrorists.

Roth completely made this up.

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

Truth: The definition of "human shield" according to IHL says nothing about the civilians being forced to stay. The official ICRC definition does not mention anything about being forced. Simply placing weapons and other military objects into a civilian area with the intent to have the civilians deter attack is the very definition of human shielding.

Beyond that, Hamas has instructed people to stay in their homes when Israeli leaflets urged them to leave; it has forced Fatah members and other enemies to stay in their homes under threat of gunfire, it has kept journalists in Gaza against their will, and it has prevented buses from evacuating people from shelters after Israeli warnings. Some of this was known at the time of the tweet. So even according to Roth's erroneous, narrow definition of human shields, Hamas is guilty - but not once did he say anything about that.

July 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

Truth: As Hamas admits now, it was. Roth reported that news skeptically, not with the cocky assurance that he reported the lie.

Roth also ignored the update that New York Magazine added two days later where the Israeli police spokesperson said he was misquoted - which was the linchpin of the entire false story. Roth didn't bother to correct his tweet then.

Because the truth is not as important as the propaganda Roth prefers to push.

09/07 Links: Everything You Know About Israeli Settlements Is Wrong; ISIS: foreign legion for losers

From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: Everything You Know About Israeli Settlements Is Wrong

So is Israel vastly increasing the pace of settlement activity, making the establishment of a future Palestinian state less and less likely?
The short answer, and the right answer, is no. Just as Israel was being denounced far and wide for settlement expansion, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics released one of its regular reports on settlement activity. What it reveals is that Israel's actual settlement construction pace has reached a historical low. Only 507 housing units were approved for construction by Netanyahu's government in the first six months of 2014, a 71.9 percent decrease from the same period in 2013, with about one-third of those being built inside the major blocks that it is understood Israel will keep in any final status agreement. For a population of over 300,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, that pace of construction does not even allow for natural population growth, much less rapid expansion.
Only in 2010 did Israel build at a slower pace -- 738 units for the whole year -- and that was the year of a nine-month construction moratorium imposed by Netanyahu at the request of the United States. This partial freeze, by the way, produced no Palestinian concessions and no progress in the "peace process" whatsoever.

Palestine –It’s Not Worth the Effort

One of the most alarming experiences as a European is to see how our politicians and the media continue to criticize Israel but not the murderous Palestinians, whose pseudo-national aspirations garner more attention than Syrian war casualties, Chinese human rights abuses and the plight of women and girls enslaved by Islamic terrorists.
It is strange that the Palestinians – who have no historical, cultural or legal rights to the land of Israel – are endowed with international and economic patronage by the US, the EU and the UN. How did the Palestinians and their Arabist-Islamist backers manage to achieve such a feat?
Firstly, the Palestinians have learnt that violence is rewarded. Acts of terror against Israelis have only strengthened the West’s belief that a Palestinian state is of paramount importance. The latest round of fighting in Gaza confirms this.
Secondly, the Palestinians have managed to convince most of the world that they are a landless and suffering people, whose plight is equal to that of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. This is has to be one of history’s biggest hoaxes. And it is a very dangerous hoax indeed. Why? Because the “Palestinian issue” has enabled Europe to reconnect with its Jew-hating past by blurring the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Yishai Fleisher with Matti Friedman

Operation Protective Edge is apparently over.

Terrific.

In a recent piece for Israel Thrives and Jews Down Under entitled, Netanyahu and the West Doom Israel to Perpetual War, I argued that US and western pressure to let up on Hamas in Gaza inclined Netanyahu to accept limited war aims in this most recently concluded spasm of hatred and blood.

In my estimation the main thing that the Netanyahu government accomplished is merely kicking the proverbial can down the proverbial road. So long as Hamas remains intact in the Gaza strip then violence and war remains inevitable. Degrading Hamas's ability to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians such as those that lived in kibbutz Nir Am, just west of S'derot, was an exceedingly important war aim that was only partially met. The destruction of dozens of terror tunnels was also an exceedingly important war aim and we can only hope that the great majority of those tunnels have been destroyed.

But we do not really know, now do we?

Something over 2,000 people were killed in this latest operation and the great majority of those dead are Arab dead. Well over 2,000 Arabs gave their lives so that Hamas could gain a PR victory over Israel. I cannot believe that their families would think it was worth it, but I also do not believe that their families are likely to blame anyone for this most recent catastrophe on anyone but the Jews.

Furthermore, according to the reports that I have read, the areas around S'derot and Ashkelon have been cleared out. The region is devastated and who knows when, or if, it will recover? Will Dana Bar-on and her family return to kibbutz Nir Am? And if they do not, who could possibly blame them?

Whatever the harm to southern Israel and the absolute devastation of parts of the Gaza Strip, the fact of the matter is that Hamas "won" this recent encounter in at least two ways.

The first is that they created true fear in the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

Not only was kibbutz Nir Am hit with rocket fire, so was Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Jewish minority in that part of the world has ensconced itself into Fortress Israel and now is obligated to constantly defend itself from the Arab-Muslim front-line troops in places like the Strip. This has the effect of forcing people, both Jewish and Muslim, who live within Israel near the Gaza border to move elsewhere, thereby making a large part of that small country essentially defunct and unlivable.

Making Jews uncomfortable on historically Jewish land has been an Arab war aim at least since the rise of Zionism in the nineteenth-century and it works. Of course, the tiny Jewish minority, despite Israel's military strength, can be made to feel exceedingly uncomfortable in their own homes. Take a moment to listen to Dana Bar-on talk about what life is like under all those "toy bottle rockets" that Leftists mock as a weak "indigenous" response to alleged Jewish atrocities. Presumably they would prefer it if more Jews were killed so that hostilities could be more "proportionate" as they sit on the sidelines and eat popcorn.

Dana Bar-on was there when these vicious Jihadis jumped out of the ground within sprinting distance of her own house. She heard the rifle fire as the IDF confronted and killed a number of these Islamist head-choppers and then she and her family subsequently moved away from the home that she was born into.

Of course, if kibbutz Nir Am had a problem from Jihadi terror, just take a gander at the devastation the IDF gave to parts of Gaza.

People look at this image, and all the thousands of similar images put out by the general media - not to mention all the photos of dead or crying children and weeping old women in black - and naturally develop feelings of loathing and disgust for Israel, if not for Jews, more generally. And that, my friends, represents Hamas's other victory in this recent upheaval of stupidity and violence.

Hamas was more than willing to sacrifice thousands of its own people for the purpose of whipping up hatred toward Jews and it worked magnificently. It worked like a charm. It worked despite the fact that many of us warned the west that they were willfully playing a roll in an anti-Jewish deception. We told them that Hamas was putting innocent women and children into harms way for the specific purpose that they would be killed by Israelis seeking to degrade Hamas rocket-fire on their own civilian population. This is not even disputed by the United Nations. We told them that the reason that Hamas does this is to create more hatred toward Israel and Jews in the West.

Nonetheless, what did Protective Edge create?

More hatred toward Israel and Jews in the West.

There was only one, real, long-standing possibility within Operation Protective Edge and that was in the possibility that Israel would finally take out Hamas entirely. Short of that, all Israel did was bolster Hamas's prestige throughout the Middle East and throughout the sensitive, soft-hearted, caring West, while allowing perhaps one-quarter of Israel to be rendered something near unlivable.

Ultimately Netanyahu caved to western pressure, or so I suspect. I do not believe that the west will ever allow a real Jewish victory over never-ending Arab aggression. The conflict will continue, year upon year and decade upon decade, because the west - in its alleged desire to be balanced and fair - throws much of its weight behind the enemies of the Jewish minorty. If the EU and the UN and the US did not fund Arab aggression against the Jews of the Middle East then that aggression would eventually dry up and blow away.

What keeps the hatred and the fear going is western funding of that hatred and fear and what keeps the blood flowing is the hatred and fear, itself.

If the West honestly cared about ending the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict then it would stop consuming the conflict, it would stop pouring money into Hamas and the PLO / Fatah and UNRWA, and it would stop hounding the Jewish minority for daring to live in Judea and Samaria, the land where Jewish people come from, and would start pressuring the hostile Arab majority to leave the Jews the hell alone.

And if you are concerned about alleged Jewish-Israeli abuse of power toward the local Arabs, perhaps you should consider speaking out against the absolutely blood-curdling messages screeching from the mosques throughout the entire region.

The Jews of the Middle East are a small people under perpetual siege in a region in flames and until you understand that then you do not begin to comprehend the problem.

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.

Gaza imam pulls out assault rifle during sermon (video)

August 29, 2014, at the Al Huda mosque in Gaza, with Sheikh Iyad Abu Mujahid Funoun:

He was imprisoned in Israel in 2003 and sentenced to 29 years but was released in a "goodwill gesture" in 2011. He was re-arrested and then deported to Gaza after a trial in 2013. He is associated with the ("secular") Popular Resistance Committees.

(h/t Bob Knot)

In 2010, the PA cabinet reclassified "honor killings" to be considered murder. It is unclear if this made any difference in the actual law.

In 2011, to much fanfare, Abbas claimed to remove the leniencies in existing PA law (based on Jordan's penal code) that would make "honor killing" a reason for a lighter sentence when killing a family member. Significantly, it still allowed leniency in sentencing if the victim had committed adultery or "other acts of sexual impropriety." It merely removed the leniency if the killer claimed he or she did it for "honor" reasons.

In other words, Palestinian Arabs who killed their sisters and daughters and wives could get shorter sentences as long as they claimed that the victims deserved it.

In 2012, it was revealed that the law that Abbas had modified was not the one that lawyers had used to get leniency for "honor killings" anyway. In fact, any attempt to repeal the real laws would have caused serious domestic problems among the people who support the barbaric law.

Now, it is proven that Abbas' PR stunt has done literally nothing to stem "honor killings" in the PA:

Despite a 2011 decision by Abbas to end the practice, the director of a major Palestinian forensic institute told Ma'an in a recent interview that killers were receiving leniency by claiming reasons of "honor" in the slaying deaths of young women.

Dr. Sabir al-Aloul, director of Al-Quds University's Institute of Forensic Medicine, said that examinations of the bodies of the vast majority of women who were slain by family members in so-called "honor crimes" showed no signs of previous sexual activity.

"It seems the killers use family honor as a pretext to benefit from an article in the Palestinian laws that suggests leniency for men who kill to protect their family honor," al-Aloul said.

In 2011, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas ordered a legal amendment to end leniency in courts for men who kill women from their families under the pretext that they "dishonored" their families, presumably through sexual activity.

Abbas' announcement was made by his secretary-general al-Tayyib Abd al-Rahim during a live talk show on satellite channel Palestine TV to discuss the murder of 20-year-old university student Ayah Barad'iyya from the southern West Bank town of Surif by her uncle.

However, legal experts say Abbas' move was not enough to prevent the killing of women over issues of so-called family "honor." They say that there are other gaps in the law through which killers have managed to gain leniency by claiming reasons of honor.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 37% of Palestinian wives - and over half of those in Gaza - had experienced physical violence by their husbands in just the year 2011. Yet NGOs, the UN and even The Lancet have placed the blame for Palestinian men beating their wives on - Israel!

As long as the irrational hate for Israel is considered mainstream, real problems in Palestinian society can be swept under the rug. And indeed they are. Which goes to show that the reflexive, and unthinking tendency by so many to blame Israel for everything is not only stupid, but it actually contributes to violence against Arab women.