Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Latest Amnesty report shows ignorance, bias and excuses Hamas war crimes

Here's the crux of Amnesty's latest hit job on Israel:

Families under the Rubble: Israeli attacks on inhabited homes details eight cases where residential family homes in Gaza were attacked by Israeli forces without warning during Operation Protective Edge in July and August 2014, causing the deaths of at least 104 civilians including 62 children. The report reveals a pattern of frequent Israeli attacks using large aerial bombs to level civilian homes, sometimes killing entire families.

“Israeli forces have brazenly flouted the laws of war by carrying out a series of attacks on civilian homes, displaying callous indifference to the carnage caused,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.

“The report exposes a pattern of attacks on civilian homes by Israeli forces which have shown a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, who were given no warning and had no chance to flee.”
The report contains numerous accounts from survivors who describe the horror of frantically digging through the rubble and dust of their destroyed homes in search of the bodies of children and loved ones.

In several of the cases documented in the report, possible military targets were identified by Amnesty International. However the devastation to civilian lives and property caused in all cases was clearly disproportionate to the military advantages gained by launching the attacks.

“Even if a fighter had been present in one of these residential homes, it would not absolve Israel of its obligation to take every feasible precaution to protect the lives of civilians caught up in the fighting. The repeated, disproportionate attacks on homes indicate that Israel’s current military tactics are deeply flawed and fundamentally at odds with the principles of international humanitarian law,” said Philip Luther.

I have discussed in detail the real definition of "disproportionate" under international law, and it is clear that Amnesty is more interested in damning Israel with war crimes charges than with the truth.

As we saw from the case of NATO in Yugoslavia, the lives of 15 civilians are not considered a disproportionate price to pay for taking out a communications system for a couple of hours under international law.

In this case, Amnesty allows that there were terrorists in many of the houses whose bombing they researched. I found the same.

But Amnesty stops it analysis there.

In February, Amnesty’s Secretary General Salil Shetty admitted, “We are not an expert on military matters. So we don’t want to, kind of, pontificate on issues we don’t really understand.” (source here, the original quote does not seem to be at the Al Jazeera website anymore, video of the interview is not available in the US.)

What might Amnesty not understand about what happened in Gaza last summer?

Amnesty admits that terrorists, usually only one or two, were sprinkled among many family homes in Gaza. It also seems to admit that the IDF was not bombing Gaza houses randomly, because given the number of militants in Gaza and the number of buildings, you would not expect the average building to have a terrorist.

In a normal war, the combatants don't spread out like that. This was not a normal war. So why would Gaza combatants be in so many houses?

Because, as we now know, houses were sitting on top of tunnel entrances. And on top of command and control centers. And on top of weapons caches. And it makes sense to have one person to be located at military objects like these.

In the entire 50-page Amnesty report, the word "tunnels" isn't mentioned once. Neither are the phrases "weapons caches" or "command and control" or "rocket launcher." It never even occurred to Amnesty that Israel had any physical military objectives in Gaza!

Israeli officials from Netanyahu down the line said explicitly and repeatedly that they were targeting tunnels and underground bunkers. Yet Amnesty, whose main charge of Israeli war crimes depends on knowledge of the military value of the targets (as well as what IDF commanders knew when they chose their targets,) cannot even fathom that tunnels were being targeted to begin with.

How can Amnesty pretend to be able to make a blanket statement that Israel acted with disproportionate force when Amnesty has no clue what the military targets were -and makes no attempt to investigate that question? Their field workers went to Gaza not to investigate the targets of Israel's attacks, but rather to interview surviving family members who all give utterly irrelevant facts like that there was no fighting in the area at the time of the strikes. They make the bizarre assumption that the combatants themselves were the targets - but they do not have the slightest military knowledge to even ask the question of what the militants were doing in these houses to begin with!

Amnesty is making a statement about international law without knowing the bare minimum of information needed to make that determination, namely what the military objective was. Given that Israel's attacks weren't indiscriminate by Amnesty's own admission, then it seems obvious that the IDF felt there were military targets within those houses. Amnesty doesn't even know enough to ask the question, and makes bizarre assumptions based on nothing but its researchers' own ignorance of military matters combined with their clear anti-Israel bias.

It gets worse, though.

Amnesty is going out of its way to excuse Hamas' use of the people in these houses as human shields.

It writes:

Warring parties have obligations to take precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects under their control against the effects of attacks by the adversary. As with precautions in attack, these rules are particularly important when fighting is taking place in areas with large numbers of civilians.

Each party to the conflict must, to the extent feasible, avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas.67 The authoritative commentary of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on this provision explains that the use of the term “feasible” is used to illustrate “the fact that no one can be required to do the impossible. In this case it is clear that precautions should not go beyond the point where the life of the population would become difficult or even impossible.” And it notes: “Moreover, a Party to the conflict cannot be expected to arrange its armed forces and installations in such a way as to make them conspicuous to the benefit of the adversary.”

The only reason Amnesty would choose to quote these parts of the ICRC manuals (which are not under the "human shield" section) is to exonerate Hamas for purposefully placing military objectives directly next to and under civilian objects. They want to make it look like Hamas has no choice - that it really wants to take precautions to protect civilians, but, by golly, they can't because Gaza is too darn crowded. This is absurd, given that we know that Hamas deliberately built not only tunnels under civilian homes but also booby-trapped homes and fake military clinics, plus it shot rockets from civilian areas and in some cases told civilians not to evacuate from areas that were about to come under fire. In no way is this permitted under international law, but Amnesty is taking Hamas off the hook - for the very thing that caused so many civilians to die. (Indeed, the ICRC specifically instructs combatants to remove civilians from military targets as much as possible, and Hamas did the opposite - another Hamas war crime which Amnesty ignores.)

Not to mention that it didn't choose to quote parts of the ICRC documents such as "State practice indicates that an attacker is not prevented from attacking military objectives if the defender fails to take appropriate precautions or deliberately uses civilians to shield military operations." No, it only quotes the parts of the laws that it can use to damn Israel, and only the parts that excuse the terrorists.

Isn't it interesting that a supposed "human rights" organization goes out of its way to ignore Hamas violations of the human rights of Gazans?

Amnesty's report once again proves not that Israel violated international law. It proves that Amnesty International again twists international law and again ignores evidence that contradicts its predetermined agenda. Amnesty's anti-Israel bias is so strong that it spills over into a pro-terrorist bias.

Facebook takes down Rabbi Yehuda Glick's page (update x2)

Here is what Rabbi Yehuda Glick's Facebook page used to look like:

See how utterly offensive it is?

Well, apparently Facebook thinks so. Because it now looks like this:

Apparently, sometime after Rabbi Glick was shot multiple times, Israel-haters have been complaining to Facebook about a page belonging to a man who did not seek to take away any Muslim rights to pray on the Temple Mount - but only to give Jews the same rights the Muslims have.

Of course, they just told Facebook that Glick's (Hebrew!) page was offensive. And Facebook drones assumed it must be true -because so many complained!

Meanwhile, Rabbi Glick's condition is slightly but steadily improving.

(h/t NRG via Bob K and Yenta P)

UPDATE 11/5: It has been restored.

UPDATE 11/6: It has been removed, again.

11/04 Link Pt2: Jerusalem passport case divides justices; Abbas adding fuel to fire in Jerusalem

From Ian:

An open letter to Nobel Prize Laureate Ms. Malal Yousafza

UNRWA operates in the shadow of Hamas, which has threatened UN staff in Gaza, firebombed mixed-gender summer camps hosted by UNRWA for Palestinian children and attempted to assassinate the former UNRWA chief in Gaza, John Ging, twice.
Gaza’s education system is essentially controlled by Hamas, which has dominated UNRWA’s workers’ union for years. In the last union elections on September 2012, the “Professional List,” led by Hamas operative Suhail al-Hindi, won all 11 of the seats that were allocated to the teachers’ sector.
You are probably aware that Article 43 Hamas’ Education Law, passed in April of 2013, spells out Hamas’s educational philosophy – which specifically prohibits private schools and internationally run ones (such as those under UNRWA) from “receiving donations or aid aimed at normalization with the Zionist occupation or propagating any Zionist activity.” This prohibition precludes any curriculum containing Holocaust Studies or educating Palestinian students about peaceful coexistence with Israeli Jews or mention of the many productive collaborations that already exist between Israelis and Palestinians in environmental and other areas.
Hamas has not only subverted any hope instituting a peaceful curriculum in Gaza schools; it has systematically commandeered UNRWA school facilities and turned many into military installations – and targets.

‘Born in Jerusalem’ passport case divides justices

Middle Eastern politics infused the Supreme Court’s arguments Monday over a disputed law that would allow Americans born in Jerusalem to list their birthplace as Israel on their US passports.
The justices appeared divided over whether the law should be struck down as unconstitutional, as the Obama administration wants, or put into effect as a result of a lawsuit filed by the parents of Jerusalem-born Menachem Zivotofsky.
Twelve-year-old Menachem, a baby when the case began in 2003, and his parents sat through the hour-long argument that saw justices wrestle with questions of the president’s primacy in matters of foreign affairs and the effect the court’s eventual decision could have on simmering tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. (h/t Jewess)

Eugene Kontorovich: Zivotofsky is not about recognition (II)
Oral Arguments in Zivotofsky v. Kerry: ‘Core Powers’ Analysis And Text
Permalink to Two Quick Thoughts on Today’s Argument in Zivotofsky
SCOTUS Blog
Obama 2008: Israel can keep its undivided capital of Jerusalem, if it likes it

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis Rejects IDF-Terror Group Equivalence

In the recent episode of ABC’s Q&A, Australian Attorney-General George Brandis responds to the question of a Muslim audience member trying to equate the IDF with ISIS.
Let’s just say the audience was not thrilled with his response.

Hamas workers go on strike in Gaza

From AFP:

About 20,000 civil servants in the Gaza Strip went on strike Tuesday to protest the Palestinian unity government’s refusal to pay military and security employees of the Islamist movement Hamas.

All ministries and other institutions run by Hamas in Gaza were shut and gated, except for schools, after the walkout by mostly administrative workers, an AFP correspondent said.

Thousands of military and security workers caught up in a row between Palestinian rival factions Hamas and Fatah in the war-ravaged territory have not been paid for several months.

Hamas hired more than 40,000 people after it seized Gaza in 2007 following deadly clashes with militants of Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

But after a reconciliation deal with Abbas that led to the formation of a West Bank-based national unity government in June this year, Hamas relinquished responsibility for paying salaries.

Hamas has technically handed power to the unity government but it remains in de facto control of Gaza.

Abbas’s West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) initially refused to pay the workers, but on Wednesday about 24,000 civilian Hamas employees received their salary from the unity government.

Roughly 16,000 more -- all holding jobs in the military and security services -- have still not been paid.

Just a hunch, but I have a feeling that terrorists in the Hamas Al Aqsa Brigades are continuing to draw their full salaries.

UNRWA school logos erase Israel

This is the logo of the UNRWA Nuseirat Preparatory School A for Boys in Gaza:

Notice the UN logo - and the flag of "Palestine" where a UN member state is erased.

And here's another, from the Bureij Preparatory School for Boys:

The UN garland on the bottom, Israel's erasure in the middle.

And another:

This one also appears to be a UNRWA boys middle school logo that denies Israel's existence.

And another, Rimal Boys Prep A;

And yet another, Jabalya Boys Prep C:

It is not exactly anomalous. This is apparently UNRWA's official view of Israel - that it doesn't exist. It is not a big leap to go from that position to the idea that rockets and terror are justifiable means to gain that which UNRWA obviously thinks was stolen by an illegitimate entity.

Do UNRWA's European donors know this?

This is yet more proof that UNRWA does not subscribe to the UN's principles and that the institution is a massive waste of money that is dedicated not to peace but to hate.

I'm not done yet.

11/04 Link Pt1: Obama’s Campaign Against Israel; Hamas opposes UN role in Gaza reconstruction

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Why is the Obama Administration Provoking Israel?

Beyond the damage done with regard to Iran, is the damage done to United States-Israel relations by the insulting and demeaning words used by senior Obama administration officials to describe the Prime Minister of a close ally. Benjamin Netanyahu fought bravely for his country in one of Israel’s most elite and dangerous military units. He has rescued hostages, defended his country against terrorists and lost a brother at Entebbe. To call him a “chickenshit” or a “coward” is beneath contempt. Having seen the heavy cost of warfare, he has always been cautious and prudent about committing Israeli troops to battle. For this he should be praised rather than condemned.
Netanyahu may soon have to make an existential decision about whether to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons that might be used against Israeli citizens or to authorize a dangerous military attack designed to destroy and delay Iran’s capacity to develop such weapons of mass destruction. This decision would be difficult for any leader, and it is even more difficult for a leader of a tiny country surrounded by enemies and isolated by much of the international community. To trivialize and reduce this decision to name-calling words like “chickenshit” and “coward” demonstrates extraordinary bad judgment on the part of those who used the words and those who may have authorized their use.
There are legitimate and important differences between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations over issues such as building in Jerusalem and the stalled peace negotiations. Each side has criticized the others position on their merits and demerits. But scatological name-calling on the record has no place in an alliance between friends. Those responsible for these provocative and dangerous ad hominems and for the unwarranted disclosure of classified intelligence assessments must be held accountable by the American public and by all those who care about peace in the Middle East.

Caroline Glick: Obama and the definition of 'Islamic'

Moreover, Obama had befriended radical Islamic leaders who openly support terrorism, including Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
And of course, as we see more and more clearly each day, the centerpiece of Obama’s foreign policy has been appeasing the Islamic Republic of Iran in the hope of achieving détente with the nuclear weapons pursuing state sponsor of terrorism.
The likes of IS, with its love of the video camera, discredit Obama’s narrative that radical, terror- supporting Muslims are peaceful. Since IS is openly evil, it is un-Islamic.
On the other hand, despite the fact that it is nearly as barbaric as IS, the Iranian regime is Islamic, because as far as Obama is concerned, it is good. And it is good because he wants to make a deal with the mullahs.
In other words, Obama is neither an expert on Islam, nor a man moved by moral indignation.
He opposes IS because IS makes it hard for him to defend Islam from bad public relations. And he coos about the “Islamic Republic of Iran” because he is dedicated to his mission of whitewashing and mainstreaming the regime born of an Islamic revolution.

Hamas opposes UN involvement in Gaza reconstruction

Hamas is opposed to UN involvement in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following Operation Protective Edge and has requested that the Palestinian unity government, rather than the international organization, carry out building projects, a Hamas official said late Sunday night.
Deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau Moussa Abu Marzouk claimed that Hamas was never shown the “Serry plan,” named for United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry, insisting that reconstruction work estimated at billions of dollars remain in Palestinian hands.
“A number of officials have claimed that Abu Marzouk agreed to the plan, which is a bald-faced lie, so I say the following: during the indirect negotiations in Cairo we rejected the UN as a recognized party to construction,” Abu Marzouk wrote on his Facebook page, referring to the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in August. “Everyone insisted that the Palestinian Authority, through the national unity government, is to be responsible for construction.”
“The international envoy’s plan was never presented to us,” he added.

Deafwashing: IDF women "sing" Hatikva in sign language (video)

You just know that stuff like this makes anti-Israel "progressives'" heads explode.

This apparently happened at a graduation ceremony. Original here.

מי כעמך ישראל

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

From Al Arabiya:

U.S. actress Angelina Jolie, along with Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, backed the United Nation’s global campaign to end statelessness, a situation at least 10 million people around the world suffer from, according to the Reuters Thomson Foundation.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates that a child is born stateless every 10 minutes, and has launched the “I Belong” campaign in an effort to end the plight of those without citizenship.

“Statelessness makes people feel like their very existence is a crime,” UNHCR head António Guterres said. “We have a historic opportunity to end the scourge of statelessness within 10 years, and give back hope to millions of people.”

Jolie, Guterres, and Tutu are leading the campaign calling for “10 million signatures to change 10 million lives” on an open letter.

Stateless people are denied the rights and benefits most people take for granted. These “legal ghosts” often live in destitution and are at high risk of detention and exploitation, including slavery.

“This is absolutely unacceptable. It is ... an anomaly in the 21st century,” Guterres said.

Statelessness exacerbates poverty, creates social tensions, breaks up families and can even fuel conflict.

The largest stateless population is in Myanmar where more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya are refused nationality.

Other countries with high numbers of stateless people include Ivory Coast, Thailand, Nepal, Latvia and Dominican Republic.

Isn't it fascinating that this high-profile initiative is being launched - and it is ignoring at least 1.5 million Palestinians who live stateless, by law, in the Arab world!

UNRWA claims that there are over 450,000 stateless Palestinians in Lebanon (actually, it is about half that number.) There were 472,000 stateless Palestinians in Syria before the war. About 240,000 live in Saudi Arabia without citizenship rights. About 150,000 live in Jordan without citizenship (those that fled from Gaza in 1967 and their descendants.) As many as 50,000 Palestinians are without any rights in Egypt. There may be as many as 100,000 in Dubai. More are living in other Gulf countries, as well as tens of thousands in Tunisia and Libya.

The only Palestinian Arabs who aren't stateless are those who live in Israel and most of those who live in Jordan. Besides that, the few times that some were offered citizenship in Egypt and Lebanon tens of thousands applied. (The ones who live in the West Bank and Gaza have some benefits of citizenship in the PA, and cannot be considered refugees by any real definition. )

Clearly, a large percentage of these stateless people would be eager to become citizens of the countries that they are living in and were often born in.

But the UN is not including them in this initiative.

This is because this project is from UNHCR - the only UN organization that actually is tasked with helping settle refugees. Palestinian Arabs (except for a tiny number) do not fit under UNHCR's domain, but under UNRWA's, and UNRWA is actively interested in increasing the number of stateless Palestinians and prolonging their statelessness, not solving the problem.

Someone should tell Angelina Jolie that some 1.5 million stateless people are being purposefully excluded from her humanitarian initiative. If she would prioritize pressuring Arab nations to treat Palestinian Arabs with equal rights and to offer citizenship to those born on their soil, it could help bring peace to the Middle East - because the "refugee" issue has been kept purposefully alive, and millions of Arabs kept in misery, simply to cynically use them as a weapon against Israel.

Arab nations have been systematically discriminating against Palestinians since 1948, and their primary means of discrimination has been to ensure that they remain stateless and miserable.

UNRWA and other NGOs claim that Palestinians in Arab countries do not want citizenship. History proves that this is a lie. But don't believe me - no one is saying that they should be forced to become citizens, only that they be given the choice. UNRWA and Arab leaders know very well what they would choose and that freedom is what they want to take away from the Palestinians they pretend to love.

If Jolie would have the guts to publicly speak out against UNRWA's and Arab leaders' sickening agenda to promote statelessness, she could do more for peace than any politician or diplomat could.

2010:

US Vice-President Joe Biden has condemned Israel's approval of 1,600 new homes for ultra-Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem (Ramat Shlomo).

2012:

Israel is continuing to take retaliatory measures in wake of the United Nations decision last week to accept Palestine as a non-member observer state. In two weeks the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee will discuss a controversial plan to build 1,700 homes in the East Jerusalem Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, in the north of the capital.

2013:

Seeking to provide a counterbalance to the release of 26 terrorist murderers under US pressure, official sources said that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Minister of Interior, Gideon Saar, have agreed to immediately approve four housing plans in different parts of Jerusalem.

One of the plans involves the immediate approval for construction of 1,500 new housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. In addition, residents of Ramat Shlomo will be allowed to add rooms of up to 50 square meters to existing housing units.

June 2014:

Ministry of Housing and Construction issued today tenders for 1466 new housing units at the West Bank (1066) ...The 400 new housing units at East Jerusalem are located at Ramat Shlomo neighbourhood.

Yesterday:

An Israeli government committee has advanced plans for 500 settler homes in East Jerusalem, an official says, in the face of disapproval from the United States at construction on occupied Palestinian land.

Each of these events have something in common:
1. They provoke incredible international outcry over "Israeli settlements" and the death of a two state solution.
2. None of them have resulted in a single house being built.

From the NYT today:

But for all the international outrage that Ramat Shlomo has engendered, not a single new home has been built there in a decade.

The NYT article also mentions how incredibly crowded the neighborhood is, and how it is impossible to get building permits to even expand houses - the exact same problem that causes headlines when Arabs cannot get approvals.

No one seriously thinks that Ramat Shlomo will become part of a Palestinian Arab state. All of these news stories cause huge amounts of angst, and give the impression of ever-expanding Israeli encroachment on Arab areas - and it simply isn't so.

It is obvious that most reporters have no interest in reporting the truth about how incredibly little Israeli settlements have expanded in the past 30 years.

It is equally obvious that the successive Israeli administrations have done an incredibly poor job of telling the world what has been going on, instead letting Peace Now send press releases to the media as many as eight times for each new apartment planned as if it is a huge new terrible development that puts the peace process in crisis.

ISIS now on another border of Israel

From Reuters:

Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, Egypt's most active militant group, has sworn allegiance to Islamic State, a statement from Ansar said Monday night.

Ansar had previously told Reuters that it sought inspiration and advice from Islamic State, the radical Al-Qaeda offshoot that has taken over swathes of Iraq and Syria, drawing US-led airstrikes as it tries to remake the map of the Middle East.

"After entrusting God we decided to swear allegiance to the emir of the faithful Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, caliph of the Muslims in Syria and Iraq and in other countries," the statement said.

It could be that they are trying to gain more support with the Egyptian army going after them. They don't seem to have the charisma to attract a wide range of Muslims like ISIS does. One can only imagine that Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is jealous of the publicity and worldwide recruiting expertise of the Islamists in Iraq and Syria when it can't get large numbers of Egyptians to be interested in their cause.

11/03 Links Pt2: Muslim-German students threaten to kill Jewish spokesman; US Army Buys Iron Dome

From Ian:

After Gaza war, Muslim-German students threaten to kill Jewish student spokesman

The student spokesman for the city of Offenbach’s school system, Max Moses Bonifer, resigned his post because German Arab and Turkish students attacked him and threatened to kill him.
The German daily FAZ reported on Wednesday that Bonifer said young Muslims have threatened him over the last few weeks because he wore a kippa with a Star of David and yelled at him: “We spit on your people. We’ll find you and kill you.”
Bonifer told the weekly German Jewish paper Jüdische Allgemeine that “since the Gaza conflict in the summer, youths of Arab and Turkish origin have regularly insulted me, spat at me and attacked me.”
Bonifer said he could no longer represent students who wish death for him and the Jewish people.
Offenbach is a small city in the state of Hesse, with a population of roughly 122,000, and borders the financial capital Frankfurt am Main. More than 16,000 German Muslims live in Offenbach. (h/t Gastwirt)

If Not You, Then Who?: An Open Letter to the Pro-Israel Campus Community

Earlier this semester, my international affairs professor referred to Israel (in the context of its relationship with the United States) as “the tail that wags the dog.” Little did she know; a dog depends on its tail for balance. A dog without its tail could not stand steadily.
In the next lecture, we were presented with maps of Gaza prior to the 2005 withdrawal and told that these settlements remain in place to this day. We spent nearly a quarter of another lecture watching a Mearsheimer and Walt interview that echoed anti-Semitic undertones and narrow-minded bias. There has been no mention in class of a pro-Israel narrative or anything that resembles it.
The course is titled, “Intro to International Affairs: A Washington Perspective”. Considering a recent 401-1 congressional vote on the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act with overwhelming bipartisan support, I can confidently say that the information presented in class did not reflect a Washington perspective.

Dachau’s ‘Work sets you free’ sign stolen

Part of a wrought-iron gate, bearing the Nazis’ cynical slogan “Arbeit macht frei” or “Work sets you free,” was stolen from the former Dachau concentration camp, police said Sunday.
Security officials noticed early Sunday morning that the gate section measuring 190 x 95 centimeters (75 x 37 inches) was missing, police said in a statement. Whoever stole it during the night would have had to climb over another gate to reach it, they added.
Police said they found nothing in the immediate vicinity of the camp and appealed to anyone who noticed any suspicious people or vehicles to come forward.
Dachau, near Munich, was the first concentration camp set up by the Nazis in 1933. More than 200,000 people from across Europe were held there and over 40,000 prisoners died before it was liberated by US forces on April 29, 1945. The camp is now a memorial.

UNRWA school deputy principal is a fan of Hamas terrorists

Last week, I noted that the last Arabic UNRWA school website that was taken down (rdus.sch.unrwa.ps) after I discovered it contained antisemitism had been partially resurrected. Naturally, I found another damning article there, about how UNRWA teaches first graders to call for Israel's destruction.

After that post, it has been taken down again.

Meanwhile, Facebook is a great place to find UNRWA school teachers and administrators who espouse views that the UN - and UNRWA's own standards - supposedly disagree with.

Earlier, I found an UNRWA teacher who embraced terrorists and encourages children to take up weapons.

Now we have an UNRWA deputy school principal namded Jehan Muhammad who includes these tributes to Hamas terrorism on her photo stream:

So tolerant!

I'm getting quite a portfolio showing UNRWA support for terrorists and support for destroying Israel. How many more are needed before the world takes notice?

Don't rest easy tonight, Chris Gunness. More coming tomorrow.

Reason #6901 why peace is impossible

A companion piece to yesterday's post on this topic. From NPR:

When the Israelis and the Palestinians were trying to make peace back in the 1990s, one of the buzzwords was "normalization," the attempt by both sides to learn to live together.

But in these days of ceaseless friction, normalization has become something of a dirty word, particularly for Palestinians. [Only for Palestinians - EoZ] Nearly 50 Palestinians from the West Bank encountered these bitter sentiments when they went to Israel for an unusual one-day trip last week.

Their itinerary included visits to Israeli-controlled crossings into Gaza and conversations with Israelis who live nearby. Mustafa Hbub, a Palestinian living in Israel who dreamed up the trip, says he wanted West Bank Palestinians to visit Israeli communities and take home this message of peace.

"The war caused destruction for both Israelis and Arabs. Let's stop this. Peace is done by people, not leaders," says Hbub, referring to the seven weeks of fighting this summer between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza.

Hbub doesn't equate the damage in Israel to the vast destruction in Gaza. But he wanted Palestinians get a peek into the experience of ordinary Israelis. Hbub got help from Buma Inbar, a Jewish Israeli involved in all sorts of efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together.

Inbar says he knew this effort would fail the moment he saw Israeli TV cameras out the bus window at their first stop.

"Something like 10, 12 cameras of TV stopped there. And I see the Palestinians. I say, 'You want it or no?' They cry, 'No, no, no,'" Inbar says.

It turns out that a different Israeli involved in planning the trip had tipped off the Israeli media.

But why would that be an unpleasant surprise for the Palestinian visitors?

"Honestly, it's complicated. Even in Palestine, it's complicated," says Alin, a young Palestinian woman on the trip who only gave her first name. "People don't want anyone to understand something in the wrong way, that's it. And also maybe people are afraid."

Afraid exactly of what, she wasn't sure. But she knew she didn't want to find out.

"When you say Israelis and Palestinian are together, it's not nice and it's not acceptable. I don't know what's going to happen, but for me, no, I will not put myself in that situation, OK?" she says.

Normalization sounds kind of nice, but actually, it's a real insult. [Only for one side - EoZ] Many Palestinians see playing soccer or even doing business with Israelis as a betrayal — accepting Israeli dominance by acting like everything is normal. This is problem for peace groups.

American Donna Stefano directs the Mideast office of Seeds of Peace, which brings Palestinian and Israeli youth together for summer camp. She says anti-normalization pressure has a real impact on Palestinians.

"When they return from camp, and they try to explain the powerful personal transformation that they've had, it just gets thrown back in their face that, 'It's normalization, it's normalization. You're a traitor talking to Israelis, you shouldn't be talking to Israelis,'" she says.

A trip conceived of, and organized by, the Arab side is very rare indeed. Practically all of these initiatives usually come from the Israeli peace camp. But as long as ordinary Palestinian Arabs are threatened for even thinking of Israelis as human beings, peace cannot happen.

And even Western-funded Palestinian Arab NGOs like Miftah are against any real peace programs that involve coexistence.

Palestinian Arab society as a whole is against real peace, and Arabs who want to make a difference are demonized and threatened if they say anything publicly. This hate is encouraged by Mahmoud Abbas' supposedly moderate government.

Nothing on the horizon suggests that things will ever get better. Without a sea change in Palestinian Arab attitudes towards Israeli Jews, there is no chance that any real peace could ever happen.

(h/t Alexi)

11/03 Links Pt1: Abbas: Glick's shooter is a martyr; UNRWA teaches Rachel’s tomb is an Islamic shrine

From Ian:

Daphne Anson: "We Are Not Occupiers & We Are Not Settlers .... ": Israel's UN Ambassador Prosor

I am here to convey one simple truth. The people of Israel are not occupiers and we are not settlers. Israel is our home and Jerusalem is the eternal capital of our sovereign state.
There are many threats in the Middle East, but the presence of Jewish homes in the Jewish homeland has never been one of them.
It says a great deal that the international community is outraged when Jews build homes in Jerusalem, but doesn’t say a word when Jews are murdered for living in Jerusalem. The hypocrisy is appalling.
Throughout history, Jerusalem has been the capital for one people and only one people – the Jewish People.

Ambassador Prosor Addresses the Emergency Security Council Session on Jerusalem

Palestinian 'Narrative'? Their Own Covenant Refutes It

In recent years, the Palestinian Arabs, broadly conceived to include the Palestinian Authority, the various political and militant factions, and their supporters abroad, have been pushing a narrative in which a flourishing Palestinian Arab national society of ancient origin was brutally attacked and overrun by an imperialist Zionist invasion intent on stealing what had been their "Palestine" since time immemorial.
Curiously, the Covenant of the Palestine Liberation Organization, initially adopted in 1964 and revised in 1968, contains an article that refutes this claim.
Article 6 of the Covenant reads: "Jews who were living permanently in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinian." That "invasion" is usually identified with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, so this article acknowledges that there were Jews in the Land before then.
Let us leave aside that Abbas's insistence that his Palestinian state be Judenrein violates this provision of the supposedly sacred Covenant and address the question: Who were these Jews?
Conceptually, they potentially fall into three categories, any one of which establishes that the Palestinian narrative is false.(h/t Alexi)

Khaled Abu Toameh: Egypt's War on Terrorism: World's Double Standards

The Egyptians have finally realized that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has become one of the region's main exporters of terrorism. Israel reached this conclusion several years ago, when Hamas and other terror groups began firing rockets and missiles at Israeli communities.
The Egyptians have also come to learn that the smuggling tunnels along their shared border with the Gaza Strip work in both directions. In the past, the Egyptians believed that the tunnels were being used only to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip. Now, however, they are convinced that these tunnels are also being used to smuggle weapons and terrorists out of the Gaza Strip.
Now that the Egyptians have chosen completely to seal off their border with the Gaza Strip, the chances of another military confrontation between Hamas and Israel have increased. Hamas will undoubtedly try to break out of its increased isolation by initiating another war with Israel.
The Egyptians, for their part, are not going to mind if another war breaks out between the Palestinians and Israel -- as long as the military confrontation is taking place on the other side of the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt.
And of course, the international community will once again rush to accuse Israel of "genocide" against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Needless to say, the international community will continue to ignore Egypt's bulldozing hundreds of homes and the forcible eviction of thousands of people in Sinai.
If anything, the Egyptian security crackdown in Sinai has once again exposed the double standards of the international community toward the war on terrorism. While it is fine for Egypt to demolish hundreds of houses and forcibly transfer thousands of people in the name of the war on terrorism, Israel is not allowed to fire back at those who launch rockets and missiles at its civilians.

UNRWA teacher fervently supports terror on Facebook (UPDATES)

Zuhair Hindi is a teacher at the UNRWA Jabalya Prep School for Boys.

He is also a terror supporter.

His profile picture on Facebook is of Qassam Brigades terrorist Hassan Mohammed al-Hindi, who might be a brother of his or perhaps another relative, who was killed when trying to attack Israel from the sea early in the summer war.

But even before the war he showed how much he loved terrorism - and Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades:

In this cartoon on his page we get an impression of how well he adheres to supposed UNRWA standards of tolerance, peace and coexistence:

How about his opinion of the children that he teaches?

Here is a photo that reveals his view of children:

His caption is "The next generation of the elite."

Is that enough to get him fired? Come on, who are we kidding?

For those who are not offended by any of this, you have my sympathies. But maybe you are the type of person for whom this photo, that he also posted, is considered worse than incitement to murder:

Now, when Chris Gunness and UNRWA head Pierre Krähenbühl read this - and believe me, they will - what do you think runs through their minds?

1. Hindi must be dismissed immediately for violating UNRWA principles!
2. I see nothing wrong with any of this.
3. As long as the media doesn't pick up on this, we can safely ignore it.
4. If we are forced to fire Hindi because of his Facebook posts, then the other UNRWA teachers will probably go on strike and cause a much bigger problem for us.
5. I really, really hope that no reporter who is going to interview me sees this first.

UPDATE: The al-Hindi family are prominent pro-Hamas members of UNRWA. UNRWA fired one of them once and indeed relented when the other teaches threatened to strike (see 4. above.)

In 2011, the UNRWA management sacked Sohail al-Hindi, who headed the winning bloc, for his popular activities connected to Hamas. He was reinstated after protests, including strike action, by unions at UNRWA.

Al-Hindi said that his new term of office will be to the advantage of UNRWA's work and its employees in the Gaza Strip. He promised to respect the guidelines of the international agency, which is dedicated to provide vital services for Palestinian refugees.

(h/t @WarpedMirrorPMB)

UPDATE 2 (11/4) : At least some of these photos have been taken down.

UPDATE 3 (11/5): The entire page has been taken down. (h/t @YNKutner)