Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

09/10 Links Pt1: Facing reality after Protective Edge; Had Israel given up the Golan ...

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: Facing reality after Protective Edge

Most of us were bitterly frustrated that the Hamas terrorist regime was not removed in ‎the course of Operation Protective Edge. Although defeated, it remains in power, and ‎unless there is a diplomatic breakthrough, we must be prepared for the likelihood of a ‎future conflict.‎
Despite this, the reality is that the Israel Defense Forces performed superbly and ‎achieved the declared objectives. It successfully neutralized the immediate threats by ‎destroying the tunnels, and dramatically eroded the ability of Hamas to launch ‎sophisticated missiles. Hamas failed to realize any of its demands, and was ultimately ‎forced to accept the terms of the cease-fire as initially proposed by Egypt at the outset, ‎which they had consistently rejected.‎
Israel can also be proud of the proven success of Iron Dome, the miraculous Israeli ‎technological creation that undoubtedly saved countless lives.‎
In this context, those Israeli politicians and commentators who lament that we lost the ‎war are not merely denigrating the achievements of the IDF and undermining the morale ‎of the nation, they are also providing Hamas with credibility in their pathetic efforts to ‎portray themselves as the victors.‎

Had Israel given up the Golan ...

It was because of the politicians on the Left and the various advocacy groups that supported them that Israel signed the Oslo Accords some 20 years ago and carried out the disengagement plan from Gaza and northern Samaria in 2005. But the Left, which was aided by pundits who essentially served as its mouthpiece, was unable to push through a Golan withdrawal; luckily, we were spared from what would have been a train wreck of unimaginable proportions.
You would think that the Left would own up to its mistake. But no, rather than stop and think, the very same people have stayed the course, galloping toward the abyss. They have embraced Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas despite his lethal hold; they keep talking about withdrawing form Judea and Samaria; they keep insisting that more withdrawals would produce more security. It's hard to think of anything more reckless to say.

Elliott Abrams: Palestine in Sinai?

Several days ago news reports "revealed" a proposal by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to extend the territory of Gaza south into Sinai. According to the story, as Israel Army Radio carried it, the area to be added to Gaza is five times the size of the current Gaza. The idea is that this area would accommodate all the Palestinian "refugees," thus satisfying the demand for a "right of return." Palestine would consist of this new area and the current Gaza Strip, giving the Palestinians more territory than if the 1967 "borders" were restored.
The idea of expanding Gaza is not crazy, given how overcrowded the place is. In 2004, Israeli Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, then national security adviser under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, proposed that Gaza be enlarged. This would require taking land from Egypt, and Israel (under the Eiland plan) would have compensated Egypt with lands further east that would have permitted an automobile tunnel linking Egypt and Jordan. The Eiland plan never went anywhere in part because the Egyptians would not consider parting with one square inch of sovereign territory.

Britain's Hamas Appeal

Although the Disasters Emergency Committee claims that its member bodies only work with "carefully vetted" local partners, it does not oversee these partnerships, and could not even provide a list of those "local partners" that will benefit from the money raised and transferred through Islamic Relief.
One of the "partners" in Gaza used by Islamic Relief's branches appears to be the Al-Falah Benevolent Society, which, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, is one of "Hamas's charitable societies."
Al-Falah is run by Ramadan Tamboura, whom the Ha'aretz newspaper describes as a "well-known Hamas figure".

PART 5

(Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4)

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

August 8 Young men over-represented among Gaza dead: unclear if Hamas won't acknowledge fighters or Israel targets young men. http://trib.al/UkKu8z4

Truth: Nowhere in the article was there mentioned a possibility that Israel "targets young men." (A later version of the article than the one Roth linked to on August 8 added some theories as to why young men may be more at risk but it still never accused Israel of targeting them.)

Roth simply could not abide by the idea that Hamas was lying to inflate apparent civilian casualties, even though Hamas has done that in the past and it instructed Gazans to do exactly that. So since the emerging statistics from Gaza showed that his earlier memes of indiscriminate Israeli fire were clearly not true, Roth created a new Israeli war crime out of thin air without the tiniest bit of evidence.

(Retweet - August 14) Trita Parsi @tparsi ·Wondering why the excessive police violence? Here's a guess: #Ferguson police chief got training in Israel... #Gaza

Truth: The fact that Ken Roth felt that this was worth retweeting is, by itself, the most damning piece of evidence of his hate towards Israel.

Twitter is an interesting medium because it's very ease of use makes it a window into one's subconscious. Tweets you believe are true are easily retweeted, tweets from an opposing perspective would not be.

This tweet is ridiculously wrong on many levels:

Counter-terrorism training is completely different from training on how to handle civil unrest and riots. They aren't even close.
The responsibility for killing someone rests with the person who did the killing, not the people who supposedly once gave a course to his or her boss.
The Ferguson police chief that took the training retired from the force months before this incident!

Roth wouldn't dream of retweeting anything that is pro-Israel. Yet Roth believed - without any fact-checking, without any hesitation -an absurd and completely false conspiracy theory that was only circulated by the far left fringe and anti-Israel activists. And he decided that this was worth retweeting to his followers.

This is from the $400,000+ salaried executive director of an organization that claims to be objective.

To tie Ferguson to Israel prima facie proof of bias against Israel There is no other way to interpret this retweet. (Of course, Roth never apologized or clarified his position on this matter.)

August 19 Because of Iron Dome & indiscriminate #Israel attacks, 5% of Israelis killed were civilians versus 50-82% of Gazans. http://trib.al/4nxVtE9

Once again, Roth takes a tangential part of an article and adds his own bizarre additions while ignoring the bulk of the article.

The article, in a relatively obscure blog but written by a research fellow at National Defense University, discusses how Hamas can use new, cheap technology to change its current tactics of targeting Israeli civilians to targeting military targets. He discusses how Israel would be hampered in its responses to purely miliary targeting (although it is implied that Hamas would continue to mount attacks from civilian areas.) Nowhere does the author accuse Israel of indiscriminate attacks, although he does quote some pundits saying that the civilian toll is unacceptably high.

Roth is again showing his bias by editorializing, with no expertise whatsoever, beyond what the article he links to actually says.

Iranian media: "9/11 a false flag op," New (Islamic) World Order, support for terror

Remember Iran? Our new ally in the war against terror?

Here are some English-language stories from today's government-run Iranian media:

9/11: The Ultimate False Flag Operation

In his top-selling book, “Solving 9/11: The Deception That Changed the World”, Christopher Bollyn states that a small gang of high-level Zionist extremists carried out the 9/11 attacks on the US soil.
According to the American investigative journalist, this group centers on Shimon Peres, who is currently president of Israel, as well as other Zionist leaders, such as the former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The gang also includes the former minister of defense, Ehud Barak, and other less known members of Israel’s military intelligence establishment. Former Mossad officers, especially people like Arnon Milchan, who have been involved in building Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal with Shimon Peres, are also included.

In his superb book, which caused him serious troubles with the government and forced him to move his family to Europe, Bollyn notes that the crime of September 11 is still very much at the center of the political stage: “It is the real reason why the Zionist-controlled Barack Obama is president of the United States and why the 91-year-old Shimon Peres is still president of Israel.”

Leader's Aide: Arrogant Powers Unable to Block New World Order

Supreme Leaders' senior advisor Ali Akbar Velayati referred to the recent developments in the Middle-East and North Africa, and said the arrogant powers can no more stand against the new world order being shaped by the Islamic Awakening.

"The world is witnessing a change and tilt in power equations towards the Muslim world with the rapid growth of developments in West Asia and North Africa and this important event has basically created the new regional order, and the world of arrogance is and will no more be able to confront this new order," Velayati told FNA on Tuesday.

His remarks came after Ayatollah Khamenei said on Thursday that the West lacked the might and awe it enjoyed in the past as its representative, the Zionist regime of Israel, lost the battle against the small population of the Muslims in Gaza.

"The current world order cannot continue and a new order is emerging," Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with members of the Assembly of Experts in Tehran.

Iran hosts intl. confab on Palestinian resistance

On Monday, Iran hosted an international conference on the Palestinian resistance in Tehran.

The conference brought together over 400 religious scholars from across the globe. The conference came after Palestinians bravely resisted the Zionist regime’s 51-day war on Gaza.

Addressing the conference, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior foreign policy advisor to the Supreme Leader, said ...that Muslims are duty bound to support the Palestinian resistance and express disgust at the “illegitimate and child-killer Zionist regime”.

Now that the Zionist regime’s “illegitimate and dangerous” nature has been exposed to the entire world, Muslims should make efforts in arming the Palestinian resistance “because their ability to defend themselves is the only thing that alleviates the Palestinians’ pain”.

But, remember: they don't like extremist Sunni Islamists (who aren't shooting at Israel) and we don't like extremist Sunni Islamists.

So besides their rabid daily attacks on Western civilization and explicit support for terror groups, we really have a lot in common.

William Schabas (the new "Goldstone") admits bias but pretends he can be objective (update)

In this interview on CNN, William Schabas freely admits he is biased against Israel and Binyamin Netanyahu.

Yet he claims (without any pushback from the interviewer) that he can set that aside, and be unbiased when he does his "investigation."

No juror in the world would be allowed to be on a case where they admit such strong bias. Any honest judge would recuse him or herself.

But to the UN, the lack of impartiality is in fact the best qualification for a commission like this, since its conclusions are determined ahead of time.

UPDATE: In case you are wondering what Schabas was talking about when he claims that Netanyahu said that Richard Goldstone was the greatest threat to Israel...

Netanyahu didn't say that.

What he said, in December 2009, was:

There are three primary threats facing us today: the nuclear threat, the missile threat and what I call the Goldstone threat. This is all on top of our mission to resume and then accelerate the peace process with the Palestinians, with the goal of reaching a settlement. These are our main tasks. I want to discuss each of them briefly and then say a few words to the Opposition.

...Goldstone has become code for a much broader phenomenon: the attempt to negate the legitimacy of our right to self-defense. It didn't just start now. The international campaign against Israel has gone on since the Durban Conference in 2000 and since the attempt in 2003 to condemn the security fence that has protected Israeli children – but is condemned just the same – in The Hague.

...The fence hasn't been finished yet. But in 2003, it came before The Hague. Israel built a fence – only one small section was an actual wall – and was brought before The Hague to answer for this terrible, international crime. Later, in 2005, General Doron Almog couldn’t even travel to London because he would have been arrested for war crimes. This was in 2005, even before the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and Operation Cast Lead in 2008, which I'll talk about in a minute. We all have a real problem here.

Ehud Olmert speaks on campuses in the United States, and he's denounced as a war criminal. Defense Minister Ehud Barak – they want to arrest him in London. And there's a warrant out against Tzipi Livni, the Opposition leader. This is the sequence. You all know the truth in your hearts. This is an all-out offensive, not just against one Israeli government or another. And we are taking action to confront it.

Bibi didn't say that Goldstone or the report was the threat, but what the report represented as a continuum of attacking Israel's right to defend herself.

I suppose this is the level of accuracy we can expect from Schabas' report.

Today's Fake Palestinian "Civilian"

PCHR listed Ayman Akram Ismail al-Ghalban, 22, as being a civilian on July 27.

Here he is:

He comes from a proud family of Qassam Brigade "martyrs." The Ghalban family has a Facebook page where they celebrate all of them.

PCHR did identify Mohammed Khamis al-Ghalban and Ahmed Hassan Saleh al-Ghalban as members of armed groups. I could not find any mention of Bilal or Mohammed Fathi Ghalban, also listed there as Al Qassam martyrs. It is interesting that of this terrorist family, PCHR still identified Ayman as a "civilian." (UPDATE: Mohammed Fathi was listed as a member of an armed group in PCHR, h/t Bob Knot)

Also the family has a photo of another of their members who was injured, Mohamed Raafat Ghalban, who is almost certainly a terrorist himself, being treated at a Turkish hospital and being visited by Turkish president Erdogan.

In other news, Ma'an reports:

A young Palestinian man died on Monday of wounds he sustained during the Israeli offensive on Gaza, a Ma'an reporter said.

Muhammad Ibrahim al-Riyati, 22, was critically injured on July 18 when Israeli forces shelled the al-Tanur neighborhood of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

Al-Riyati was taken to an Egyptian hospital, where he was pronounced dead on Monday.

What Ma'an didn't mention is that he was a terrorist in the Al Quds Brigades.

Just an oversight, no doubt.

(h/t Johnny)

09/09 Links Pt2: The media’s tragic obsession with Israel; Chloe Valdary: Christian, black and pro-Israel

From Ian:

The media’s tragic obsession with Israel

The irony of all the extra scrutiny of Israel, of course, is that no country in the region already engages in more internal scrutiny and self-criticism than Israel.
When Israel goes to war to defend itself, it’s surrounded by a mini army of lawyers and watchdogs to make sure it doesn’t commit war crimes. And when mistakes are made, as inevitably happens in war, it has its own media breathing down its neck. No media is more ruthless than Israel’s, and few countries have more internal investigations.
The swarm of foreign reporters who focus mostly on Israel’s mistakes and who pile on the attacks think they’re being courageous. They’re not. There’s no courage in beating up someone who’s already beating himself up. You want courage? Report on Hamas.
But as annoying as all the extra media scrutiny might be for Israel’s supporters, those who pay the highest price are surely the millions of persecuted people throughout the Middle East and elsewhere.
“The real victims of the media’s obsession with Israel and the Palestinian conflict,” author Yossi Klein Halevi wrote in an email from Jerusalem, “are the dispossessed of the world whose case almost never gets heard because the Palestinians have sucked up most of the air.”
Given the terrifying Islamic violence currently spreading throughout the region, it’s ludicrous that the media is so obsessed with scrutinizing the one civil society that allows freedom of speech and freedom to dissent.
If the media wanted to chase a really big story in the Middle East, it would be this one: The 22 countries of the region will never build stable, decent societies until they start emulating the democratic ways of the Jewish state. Now that would be a worthy media obsession.

Chloe Valdary: Christian, black, rising star of pro-Israel campus activism

Growing up in New Orleans, Chloe Valdary kept kosher, studied the Jewish Bible and celebrated Jewish holidays with festive meals. In recent years she has become an outspoken pro-Israel campus activist, contributing regularly to the Jewish press, and speaking and posting widely about the merits of the Jewish state on social media.
But the senior at the University of New Orleans is not Jewish. She is Christian — a member of the Intercontinental Church of God, whose adherents revere the Hebrew Bible and follow the Jewish calendar — and she is black.
In July, Valdary, 21, garnered widespread attention for a Tablet piece in which she accused pro-Palestinian activists of misappropriating the rhetoric of the black civil rights movement. In the piece, titled “To the Students for Justice in Palestine, a Letter From an Angry Black Woman,” Valdary addressed the campus group.
“You do not have the right to invoke my people’s struggle for your shoddy purposes, and you do not get to feign victimhood in our name,” she wrote.

Who Killed the Israeli Left?

A month ago, former diplomat Alon Liel wrote that “while me and my friends, the shattered remnants of the Israeli peace camp, put our trust in President Obama, it now turns out that he’s banking on us for a solution.”
Mr. Liel and his friends made the mistake of thinking that outside forces would force Israel to act as they wished – instead of realizing that in a democracy like Israel the primary mission of any political camp is to rally fellow citizens to its cause.
Mr. Obama and like-minded world leaders made the mistake of thinking that the best way to sway Israelis was to pressure their government – instead of realizing that Israelis respond better to policy proposals of outside leaders if they have a measure of trust in those leaders (Israel’s close and respectful relations with former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are the best proof that Israelis only listen to you if they trust you).
International encouragement of Israel’s left was instrumental in killing it. The outside world promoted the unpopular views of an Israeli political minority, giving the left an inflated sense of its own importance domestically. This illusion led to despair, and then to alienation from mainstream Israeli society – all resulting in a further reduction of the left’s political allure.
Israelis can listen to the views of dissenters. They are used to it. But they also want to trust that their dissenters are still a part of the family.

Video: Anne Bayefsky, at the UN, says that the UN is ‘the leading global purveyor of anti-semitism’

From the Washington Free Beacon:

A leading human rights advocate accused the United Nations and its member nations of being “the leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism” and “inciting murderous intolerance towards” Jewish people during an unprecedented speech Monday at the international body’s headquarters in New York City.

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust (IHRH), stood before the U.N. and lambasted it for fanning the flames of global anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, according to a copy of her remarks.

Bayefsky delivered her rebuke during an informal briefing on the threat anti-Semitism poses to international peace and security that was organized on the sidelines of the U.N. by the permanent mission of Palau.

While the briefing took place within the U.N.’s walls—and was attended mainly by members of the public and outside organizations—it was not formally sponsored by the international organization, leading Bayefsky to launch a scathing criticism.

“The U.N. is not having a conference on the threat that global anti-Semitism poses to international peace and security,” she said. “This is lunch-time. The courageous organizer, assisted by the principled representatives of the small state of Palau, is independent of the U.N. The facilities are not free.”

“But why couldn’t the U.N., founded on the ashes of the Jewish people, and presently witnessing a widespread resurgence in anti-Semitism, sponsor a conference on combating global anti-Semitism?” Bayefsky asked. “The answer is clear: Because the United Nations itself is the leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism.”

A very solid speech.

I did a Google News search for mentions of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" during the past month.

In English, it was mentioned about 25 times, with one op-ed that took it seriously - in Pravda.

Another article about a local school board issue mentioned, without comment, that an outsider at the meeting urged members to research the Protocols.

All other mentions noted that the work was an antisemitic forgery.

I could find no French media to say that the Protocols were legitimate. However, this Spanish article clearly believes in them while pretending to be objective about it and asking people to do their own research.

In Arabic, however, things are quite different.

Out of 25 articles that mentioned the book, only 3 said that it was a forgery. One quoted an analyst saying that the same mentality that goes into saying that the US is behind ISIS is the one that keeps pushing the Protocols. Two others were book reviews of Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery, which was recently translated to Arabic, where the Protocols is a major plot point.

Most of the rest were just crazy antisemitism.

An article in Egypt's Al Ahram said that an idea of teaching Egyptian girls how to belly dance via a satellite TV channel is essentially a fulfillment of a Jewish plot foreseen in the Protocols.

This Saudi writer described how the Protocols are being implemented now, in detail.

An Al Hayat column mentioned the Protocols while saying that Allah promised the inevitable destruction of Israel.

This Al Ahram column is critical of conspiracy theories but seems to accept the legitimacy of the Protocols, even if he is skeptical that they can be implemented.

This article invokes the protocols to explain why ISIS (which is, naturally, Jewish) is targeting Christians.

Al Ayam "quotes" Henry Kissinger to prove how Jews are hellbent on taking over the entire Middle East.

Jordan's Addustour says that the Protocols prove the Jewish desire to control the entire world.

Rassd creates a plan of action to help defeat the imperialistic and Zionist forces. They include studying antisemitic sections of the Koran, the Protocols and various antisemitic Arab books.

09/09 Links Pt1: President Sisi’s gift; "Hamas" by Ari lesser; India warns of terror attacks on Israelis

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: President Sisi’s gift

Sisi’s offer, even with Abbas’s rejection of it is a gift to Israel. And Israel’s challenge in the weeks and months ahead is to make the most of it.
If the Americans force Abbas to accept Sisi’s offer, Israel and the Palestinian people will benefit.
And if Abbas successfully scuttles it, Sisi’s offer will show that Israel is correct that it cannot satisfy Palestinian demands on its own, and indeed, it demonstrates how unreasonable those demands are.
Sisi’s offer demonstrates that for non-jihadist Sunnis, not only is Israel not the problem in the Middle East, a strong Israel is a prerequisite for solving the region’s troubles. Here is a major Arab leader willing to stand with Israel even if it means discrediting the PLO .
As a consequence, Sisi’s offer is a challenge to the US and Europe.
Sisi’s offer shows Washington and Brussels that to solve the Palestinian conflict with Israel, they need to stand with Israel, even if this means abandoning Abbas.
If they do so, they can take credit for achieving their beloved two-state solution. If they fail to do so, they will signal that their primary goal is not peace, but something far less constructive.

JPost Editorial: The Sisi solution

Of course, Sisi’s motives are not altruistic. Egypt has been battling Salafist forces in the Sinai for years. The breakdown of law and order on the peninsula is a major strategic threat to Egypt. The creation of a stable sovereign state in this anarchic region could be a stabilizing factor. Ensuring that the PA controls the enlarged Gaza Strip would neutralize Hamas, whose connections with the Muslim Brotherhood make it an enemy of the present Egyptian government.
We must not delude ourselves. Egyptian society remains deeply antagonistic to Israel. And an enlarged Gaza will not solve the underlying cause of the conflict: Palestinians’ refusal to reconcile themselves to the existence of a Jewish state. Nevertheless, Egypt and Israel share common interests which include a desire to weaken Hamas, stabilize Sinai and see Egypt and other “moderate” Sunni nations take a more active role in confronting Islamic extremism. Sisi’s Gaza initiative could lead to a major breakthrough in what has become an atrophied Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process, provided the Palestinian political leadership gives it a chance.

"Hamas" by Ari lesser

PART 4

(Part 1, part 2, part 3)

Continuing our series of Ken Roth's many lies he tweeted during Operation Protective Edge.

August 4 Do you want to know what "human shields" really are beyond ritualistic sloganeering? Read @HRW's Q&A on the law: http://trib.al/l8wdv4t

Truth: This is sort of amazing. Here are Roth's previous tweets defining human shields:

Jul 19 Much confusion about "human shields" which generally require coercion. Different from unnecessarily endangering civilians, tho both illegal.
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
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

Yet when you read the official HRW Q&A that Roth tweeted here, you see a completely different definition - one that is actually accurate!

Forces deployed in populated areas must avoid locating military objectives – including fighters, ammunition and weapons -- in or near densely populated areas, and endeavor to remove civilians from the vicinity of military objectives. Belligerents are prohibited from using civilians to shield military objectives or operations from attack. "Shielding" refers to purposefully using the presence of civilians to render military forces or areas immune from attack.

There is nothing here about coercion.

HRW's definition is completely at odds with the definition their own executive director gave three separate times! The HRW definition simply says that using civilians to shield military objectives is what makes one a human shield.

Roth's tweet, by invoking "ritualistic sloganeering," of his critics, gave the impression that HRW's definition was agreeing with his multiple tweets, but amazingly it proves him wrong.

Roth never corrected his earlier tweets, though, nor did he acknowledge that his critics were correct all along.

August 4 Family homes of Hamas officials are not legitimate military targets; familes are not human shields: Michael Walzer. http://trib.al/wfhnrBC

Truth: Roth completely and knowingly misrepresents this article. Here is what Walzer said, in context:

Except when they are being used for some military purpose, houses where people live are not legitimate targets—even if the people who live there include Hamas officials. These attacks are wrong because the officials live with their families, who can't be called human shields.

Walzer adds the caveat "Except when they are being used for some military purpose" which Roth ignores.

Now, Walzer's statement is arguable, because Hamas terrorists are not policemen who work in shifts - they are always acting as militants during a war and are probably always considered legitimate targets. But even if you don't believe that, Walzer's caveat is true in most cases of senior Hamas officials: Hamas family homes are where meetings are held, command centers are built, tunnel entrances are hidden and weapons are stashed, and where that is the case they are valid military targets. Roth assumes that their family homes are completely free of military activity, which is naive to the extreme if not knowingly deceptive.

But this was not the point of Walzer's article. While Walzer urges Israeli soldiers to take risks to their own lives to ensure that civilian casualties are at a minimum - something that is not at all written in international law - he makes clear that the ultimate responsibility for civilian casualties rests with the terrorists who place them at risk to begin with:

Along with many others, I have argued for another rule: that the attacking forces must make positive efforts, including asking their own soldiers to take risks, in order to minimize the risks they impose on enemy civilians. How much risk has to be accepted? There is no precise answer to that question. But some risk is necessary, and if it is taken, then I think that the major responsibility for civilian deaths falls on the insurgents who are fighting from homes and schools and crowded streets. And if responsibility is understood and assigned in that way by the global public, it will be possible to fight and win an asymmetric war....

It is always necessary to figure out who is there, in the house, in the school, in the yard, before an attack begins—and that will often require the attacking soldiers to take risks. I suspect that some Israeli soldiers are doing that, and some are not. That's the way it is in every war; a lot depends on the intelligence and moral competence of the junior officers who make the most critical decisions on the ground. Judging these issues from a distance is especially difficult. But I would strongly advise anyone contemplating the loss of life in Gaza to think carefully about who is responsible, or primarily responsible, for putting civilians at risk. The high-tech army, for all its claims to precision, is often callous and clumsy. But it is the insurgents who decide that the death of civilians will advance their cause. We should do what we can to ensure that it doesn't.

Roth ignores Walzer's main assignment of responsibility to Hamas for civilian deaths and implies that Israel is the only party responsible.

This is pure mendacity.

I have not been closely following the problems of illegal African migrants to Israel. But the very first paragraph of HRW's press release touting a new report slamming Israel's treatment of them shows bias:

Israeli authorities have unlawfully coerced almost 7,000 Eritrean and Sudanese nationals into returning to their home countries where they risk serious abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Some returning Sudanese have faced torture, arbitrary detention, and treason charges in Sudan for setting foot in Israel, while returning Eritreans also face a serious risk of abuse.

Sudan and Israel are enemies. HRW expects Israel to roll out the welcome mat for thousands of members of enemy states.

But when Israel pays them to return to their home country, HRW blames Israel for putting them in danger because Sudan treats them as if they came from an enemy country.

In the entire Human Rights Watch site, while there is plenty of criticism of Sudan's human rights abuses, not one word is said about how Sudan tortures people who sought refuge in Israel.

Why is HRW more concerned over Israel's paying people $1500 to return to their homeland than they are over the torture that they may receive merely for having set foot in Israel?

By the bizarre logic of HRW, once anyone enters Israel from a country that considers it an enemy, Israel must give them asylum because the very fact that they illegally entered Israel puts them in danger back home. The home country has no responsibility to end the torture itself, judging from HRW's website's lack of condemnation of the practice.

If this is the bias in the very first paragraph of the press release, one can only imagine how absurd the entire report is.

Just for a little perspective, this report about how terribly Israel treats African migrants is 83 pages long. The last two HRW reports on the Sudan, detailing how government murdered people and raped women, are both less than 50 pages long.

From AFP:

Leaving home for the first time in weeks, Abu Jihad was hit by a hail of bullets. His crime? Breaking the house arrest order imposed on him by Hamas.

Abu Jihad is a 27-year-old member of Fatah, the Palestinian nationalist movement headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, whose power base is in the West Bank.

But he lives in the Gaza Strip, which is under the de facto control of Hamas, Fatah’s Islamist rival.

After nine bullets raked his leg, Abu Jihad was transferred for medical treatment to the West Bank and it was from his hospital bed there that he told his story, using a pseudonym to conceal his identity.

“Never in my life did I think I would be attacked by Hamas or by any other Palestinian group,” he said. “I never thought I would be attacked just because I belong to Fatah.”

Back in Gaza, which Hamas began running in 2007 after ousting its Fatah rivals, he and others would never have dared to speak out.

From people on the streets to senior officials, no one allied with Fatah will agree to speak on the record, fearing the consequences after 300 of their number were placed under house arrest by Hamas.

Dozens who failed to respect the order were shot and wounded, among them Abu Jihad.

Such is the fear that many Fatah members have even sought to protect themselves by signing up to become members of Islamic Jihad, Hamas’s smaller, armed rival.

“To avoid being attacked by Hamas, a large number of party members have joined Islamic Jihad,” said a man calling himself Abu Iyyad, explaining that Hamas would never attack an Islamic Jihad member.

On the second day of the 50-day war with Israel, July 9, four armed men dressed in black, their faces masked, turned up at Ibrahim’s house. “My 12-year-old daughter was terrified. She wet herself because she was so panicked when the fighters came in,” he recalled, visibly upset.

Refusing to identify themselves, the men handed over a paper bearing the official emblem of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, on which was written: “For your own security, you are asked not to leave your home for the duration of the war.”

There was no other allegation or explanation. “Our only crime is belonging to Fatah,” he snapped.

Abu Ahmed, 23, also believes he was targeted because of his membership of Fatah.

He was shot 19 times in the legs.

“They held me up against a wall, started shooting and shouted: ‘This is our present to Fatah,’” he told AFP from his hospital bed in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

...But the threats have gone beyond individuals, creating a culture of fear which has affected entire families living in the Gaza Strip.

“In our society, where reputation counts for everything, entire families are now living in fear,” said a senior Fatah official in Gaza who also refused to use his real name.

“ Hamas is undermining the dignity and the patriotism of our activists, some of whom were involved in the fighting, and lost family members in the war,” he said, clearly furious.

Questioned by AFP, Hamas insisted the house arrest orders had “no political significance,” saying they were legal procedures aimed at certain people, “some of whom happened to belong to Fatah.”

AFP doesn't mention that by putting hundreds of its political rivals under "house arrest" during a war, Hamas was also forcing them to be human shields.

Do you think any of this will be mentioned in the UNHRC "fact finding" mission report?

The children of Gaza (photos)

Abdullah Murtaja was a journalist for Hamas TV when he was killed in an airstrike.

Here he is striking a pose:

While I don't think he was an actual fighter for Hamas, he certainly was no journalist. His Facebook page was pure Hamas propaganda.

His cousin Suhaib also works at Al Aqsa TV. One of his favorite subjects for photos is children.

Here are some of the children of Gaza, as captured by Suhaib Murtaja:

(Correction: I originally wrote that Suhaib was killed, not his cousin Abdullah.)

(h/t Bob Knot)

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.