Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 30, 2015

01/30 Links Pt1: Glick: Iran - Unafraid and undeterred; Toameh: Why Is Hamas Smiling?

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Iran - Unafraid and undeterred

From the Golan Heights to Gaza, from Yemen and Iraq to Latin America to Nantanz and Arak, Iran is boldly advancing its nuclear and imperialist agenda. As Charles Krauthammer noted last Friday, the nations of the Middle East allied with the US are sounding the alarm.
Earlier this week, during Obama’s visit with the new Saudi King Salman, he got an earful from the monarch regarding the need to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But it seemed to have no impact on his nuclear diplomacy with Teheran. The administration believes that Iran and Saudi Arabia will be able to kiss and make up and bury a thousand- year rivalry between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam because they both oppose the Islamic State. This too is utter fantasy.
Israel’s January 18 strike on Iranian and Hezbollah commanders in Syria showed Israel’s strategy wisdom and independent capacity.
Israel can and will take measures to defend its critical security interests. It has the intelligence gathering capacity to identify and strike at targets in real time.
But it also showed the constraints Israel is forced to operate under in its increasingly complex and dangerous strategic environment.
Due to the US administration’s commitment to turning a blind eye to Iran’s advances and the destabilizing role it plays everywhere it gains power, Israel can do little more than carry out precision attacks against high value targets. The flipside of the administration’s refusal to see the dangers, and so enable Iran’s territorial expansion and its nuclear progress, is its determination to ensure that Israel does nothing to prevent those dangers from growing – whether along its borders or at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Is Hamas Smiling?

In 2007, Abbas lost the Gaza Strip to Hamas. Now, he seems to be losing the Gaza Strip to his rivals in Fatah.
The violent events of the past few weeks are yet another sign of Fatah's failure to get its act together, especially in the aftermath of its defeat to Hamas in the January 2006 parliamentary elections.
Over the past few years, Abbas has repeatedly declared that there will never be a Palestinian state without the Gaza Strip.
However, the internecine strife among the Fatah leadership, as well as the continued power struggle between Abbas and Hamas, mean that the chances of creating a Palestinian state while he is still in power are non-existent. If in the past Abbas was unable to visit the Gaza Strip because of Hamas, now he knows that many of his former Fatah supporters have also turned against him.
Under the current circumstances, there is not much that Abbas could do other than remain in the West Bank, where he feels safer, largely thanks to the presence of the Israel Defense Forces there.
It is time for the international community to wake up and realize that the whole idea of establishing an independent Palestinian state is nothing but a joke. The last thing the Palestinians and the international community want is another Syria or Libya or Yemen in the Middle East.
Instead of working to help each other and rebuild the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians are busy fighting and threatening each other. This is not a fight over reforms, democracy or building a better future for Palestinians. Nor is it a fight between good guys and bad guys. Rather, this is a fight between bad guys and bad guys -- and it is all over money, ego and power.

JPost Editorial: Strength in restraint

This week’s cross-border attack by Hezbollah was its expected response to an alleged Israeli attack earlier this month in the Syrian Golan that killed one of its senior operatives and an Iranian general. The nearly symmetrical assault on IDF troops by the Iranian proxy terrorist organization was a clearly calibrated retaliation designed to uphold Hezbollah’s “honor” but without escalating into a wider confrontation that might once again demonstrate Iran’s commitment to global terrorism.
But while Hezbollah is committed on the ground in Syria, fighting to uphold the regime of Bashar Assad – and reportedly not willing to risk drawing Israel into a confrontation that might endanger the stability of the shaky Lebanese government – it also strives to maintain the credibility of its threat to Israel’s civilian population; namely its stockpile of some 100,000 missiles aimed southward.
It is significant to note that Wednesday’s attack was not perpetrated as a cover operation for the abduction of soldiers, as has happened before; nor was it another assault on a bus of schoolchildren or the rocketing of a border town. Any of these hostile acts might have sparked yet another Lebanon incursion or even war.

On Tuesday I mocked an incredibly stupid BDS campaign whose backers honestly thought that Sabra hummus was named after the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

The people behind it must have gotten a lot of WTF messages, because they pulled the graphic and gave this hilarious explanation where they don't admit that they are clueless:

Ah, it was "misleading."

It turns out that there are plenty of other Israel haters who are just as stupid.. Here an angry, clueless tweet from 2013:

Here's another hater, quoting yet another, on Tumblr:

Can you feel how much they want to see a peaceful Middle East?

It is possible that this entire ridiculous meme was started by anti-Israel activist Helena Cobban, who blogged the idea in 2012:

I’m thinking that maybe this year in particular, the BDS folks might start calling the hummus brand “Sabra and Shatila hummus”, to make even clearer the connection between the hummus brand and the excesses/atrocities committed by, or under the close supervision of, the Israeli military….

But she adds a caveat:

What I would not want to do, however, is stigmatize the use of the term “Shatila” in a brand name. The Dearborn, Michigan-based Shatila Food Products bakery produces the very best baklava there is in the whole of North America…

What? American Arabs named food after a massacre???

The lesson is that the stupidity of the anti-Israel crowd is infinite. Lighting a candle might be enough to illuminate a room but it does nothing against an infinity of darkness

All we can do is point out their conscious decision to live in the blackness of their hate.

(h/t L)

"Jews are buying Libyan land, will transfer a million settlers"

The Libyan correspondent of Egypt's Albawabh reports that Jews are planning to take over Libyan land.

The article claims that Voice of Israel had a guest who was the head of the Jewish community in Libya. He made a secret trip to Triploi to start buying up large parcels of land in the Green Mountain area of eastern Libya.

The report says that the lands were originally owned by Jews and it was confiscated by Moammar Qaddafi after the Libyan revolution, taking their shops and farms and businesses.

A separate story, also supposedly from Voice of Israel, says that a Jewish businessman with investments in various countries around the world said that Libyan Jews Libyans are returning to their homeland Libya very soon, and we will see the Jewish return to Libya in 2015, along with the the resettlement of the Jews of the Arab Maghreb countries of Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.

The unnamed businessman says that the transfer of a million Jews to Libya wil occur with the help of the international community and the United Nations and human rights organizations around world, and with the help of America, Britain and France.

As always, Arab media is beyond parody.

You know how Arab claim that the blue bars of the Israeli flag represent the Nile and the Euphrates rivers? Clearly, they had it wrong. They stand for the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans!

In 2011, hundreds of Libyans protested a single Jew who returned to the country to try to re-open a synagogue that had been sealed in 1967, saying "There is no place for Jews in Libya."

Daniel Krause, a 34-year old school teacher from the town of Unna in Germany, called into a radio show on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

During the show, he said, "Personally, I'm not interested in Auschwitz at all... Even industrial livestock farming emotionally affects me more."

He was suspended from teaching, and officials are trying to get him fired. Dr. Gerd Bollermann said "I am appalled by the tasteless and dehumanizing utterances. The Arnsberg District will not tolerate anything that denigrates the memory of the murdered Jews during the Nazi era."

No doubt, Muslims will seize on this is evidence that free speech is suspended only for anti-Holocaust speech, and that anti-Muslim speech would be celebrated.

They would be wrong. Krause was suspended once before.

In 2012, during a rally for the far-right "Pro-NRW" group, Krause grabbed the microphone and declared, "As a practicing homosexual I have more fear of Islamists then, for example, [I would have at the time of] the Nazis."

Krause was suspended from teaching as a result of that little speech.

(h/t J_April)

This article shows what a joke the anti-settlement NGOs are:

The Israeli government on Friday published tenders to build 430 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank, the head of an NGO that monitors settlement activity told AFP.

"It's the opening of the settlement floodgates," said Daniel Seidemann, head of the Terrestrial Jerusalem group, adding that the announcements were the first since October 2014 and unlikely to be the last before the March 17 general election.

He said that the new homes were to be built in four existing settlements across the West Bank -- 112 in Adam, 156 in Elkana, 78 in Alfei Menashe and 84 in Kiryat Arba.

Seidemann, whose group particularly monitors settlement in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, predicted that building plans there were likely to be announced soon.

"I don't think it's over," he said. "I would be very concerned."

He linked the new tenders to the election in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud is competing with other right-wing parties for the settler vote.

"This could hardly be an accident," he said. "It could not have taken place without Netanyahu's knowledge and consent."

Seidemann is lying, and lying big time.

He is an expert in the procedures involved in building homes across the Green Line. He knows that there are multiple stages towards actually building a home - as many as eight different steps. Except for the initial plans, each stage is part of a bureaucratic process that does not involve high-level decision making. This is how governments work, and Seidemann knows this.

But Seidemann gets his funding based on publicity. And the real boring facts about how the same home can be "approved" or "promoted" many times aren't as likely to produce the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Terrestrial Jerusalem gets from the EU. So he has to make each stage sound much more dramatic than it is.

And in this case, here is what he knows and didn't bother to tell AFP:

The Housing Ministry told Israel Radio that the tenders in question had been issued in the past, and were renewed automatically since construction did not take place after its initial approval.

No high-level decision by Netanyahu to get votes. In fact, no decision whatsoever - it was all automatic.

One thing you have to give credit to the anti-settlement NGOs: They are very good at recycling. The huge outrage that occurred before over these exact same nonexistent structures are being be recycled over and over. Very green.

The whole drama a great scam for Seidemann and other groups to get more money from their donors, who don't bother to research the chasm between the tens of thousands of housing units that T-J and Peace Now breathlessly announce every few months and the few hundred that actually get built.

Of course, Seidemann and the other NGOs aren't the only ones to profit off of this highly choreographed charade.

Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian official said the measure constituted a “war crime.”

“What the Israelis announced is part of a wider war… against the Palestinian people,” Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Wassel Abu Yusef told AFP.

“This is a war crime which should push the settlements issue to the International Criminal Court.”

If we could harvest the Middle East's dramatized outrage as an energy source, the oil wells would dry up tomorrow.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard website calls for assassination of Netanyahu's sons

Mashregh News is a news website affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

An article published Thursday started off with the obligatory text about how Zionists are cowards.

It then urged terror groups like Hezbollah to target Binyamin Netanyahu's sons.

The article gives a brief biography of two of Bibi's kids, along with various things they've done that were newsworthy or controversial.

Here is the article's illustration:

Any questions?

(h/t Martin)

01/29 Links Pt2: Israeli deaths glorified at LSE on Holocaust Memorial Day; Nisman buried with AMIA victims

From Ian:

Richard Millett: Israeli deaths glorified at LSE on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Tuesday was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau but that same night at the London School of Economics at a joint Palestine Society and Feminist Society event Israelis were portrayed as rapists and those who killed Israelis were applauded.
In front of a banner that read “Towards Freedom and Independence the Uprising Continues” a panel of four women described the role Palestinian women should play in the “uprising”.
Rana B. Baker, a student at SOAS who also writes for the Electronic Intifada, said Leila Khaled‘s “hijacking of planes was amazing”. The only problem, Baker said, was that Khaled had now aligned herself with the Assad regime.
Baker reserved her highest admiration for Sana’a Mehaidli who she said “deserves a standing ovation”. She told how, in 1985 in south Lebanon, Mehaidli “drove a car full of explosives and blew it up near an Israeli convoy killing two Israeli soldiers and injuring between 10 and 12 more.”

Israel praises German prosecutor for rejecting Mavi Marmara complaint

The Israeli Embassy in Germany on Monday welcomed a decision by the federal prosecutor to dismiss a criminal complaint filed by a Left Party MP alleging illegal imprisonment and war crimes during the seizure of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara when it tried to run the Gaza blockade in 2010.
The embassy wrote in an email to The Jerusalem Post that it “takes positive note of the decision taken by the general federal attorney (Generalbundesanwalt) to reject the complaint of Ms. Inge Höger.
The same stance was reflected by the decision of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to close the preliminary examination into the Mavi Marmara incident that was opened following a referral submitted to the ICC in the name of the Union of the Comoros in May 2013.
The prosecutor decided to close the file without seeing a need to address the issue of self-defense by IDF soldiers who were attacked by activists of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), as it occurred in the context of a flotilla which the prosecutor considered as not constituting a humanitarian mission.”

Gaza flotilla lawyers ask ICC to reconsider probe

Lawyers representing the Comoros on Thursday asked International Criminal Court judges to order its chief prosecutor to reconsider her decision not to probe Israel’s deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
The Comoros, which has referred the case to the ICC, “asks the Chamber to request the Prosecutor to reconsider her decision not to open an investigation,” its lawyers said in papers filed before the Hague-based court.

HRW's anti-Israel bias, illustrated, from their annual report

Human Rights Watch has released its 2015 World Report, a 650 page document that goes through the human rights records of every country.

Here is a chart for how often some nations are named in the report:

This gives you an idea of how skewed HRW is when dealing with Israel, placing its importance as a human rights violator somewhere between Syria and Russia.

This isn't a perfect metric. For example, I didn't include the United States (83) because many of its mentions have nothing to do with human rights. "Palestine" or "Palestinians" are mentioned 98 times, but the vast majority of those mentions were regarding them as victims of human rights violations, not violators.

Even with those flaws, this chart is a fairly accurate view of HRW's thinking on who are the biggest violators of human rights, and therefore it is a good indicator of HRW's anti-Israel bias. To think that Israel's human rights posture is deserving of more attention than those of, say, the DRC or Saudi Arabia or Mexico is the height of absurdity. However, it fits in very well with the patterns we have seen in HRW reports and Ken Roth's tweets being heavily weighted to damn Israel far out of proportion to any human rights issues it has..

2015 Hasby Award - Best Own Goal

A new category this year, and definitely one of the most fun to choose.

The nominees for the Hasby for Best Own Goal are:

Max Blumenthal and David Sheen - ToiletGate

George Galloway - everything

Hamas - "Tkof Taaseh Biguim" (explanation)

UCLA Student Meltdown

Kat-Yang Stevens "colonialist whtsprmcst cisheteropatriarchy"

And the winner of the 2015 Hasby for Best Own Goal is...

01/29 Links Pt1: PLO tournament named after terrorists who killed 46; Jeffrey Goldberg's libel

From Ian:

Is Israel Guilty of War Crimes?

It seems that half the world supports demands for Israel to lift its entirely legal weapons and dual-use materials blockade of Gaza, so that Hamas can get down to seriously importing long-range missiles from Iran and its other allies, as well as large quantities of cement to build more terror tunnels. In a recent interview between a Reuters reporter and a Hamas leader, the Hamas official stated openly that "the group would press on with restocking its arsenal or [sic] rockets and other weaponry and shoring up its underground network. In peace we make preparations, and in war we use what we have readied."
Calls for an end to the blockade (which does not block the import of genuine humanitarian goods at all) amounts to a policy of arming terrorists. Hamas has already diverted billions of dollars of aid money to build concrete-lined tunnels and purchase missiles and other arms, leaving ordinary Gazans without the basic necessities of life, while the Hamas elite drives expensive cars, shops at a mall selling designer goods, and builds luxury apartments.
After the premature end Operation Protective Edge, the international community promised to pour in more billions to rebuild Gaza. If there is no blockade, those billions will build another arsenal, and with that arsenal, Hamas will start another war in which even more Gazans and Israelis will die or fall injured.
The simple solution to this is peace -- which Israel has always asked for. But Hamas, as stated in its Charter, rejects peace out of hand and for all time. What is needed is a government in power in Gaza that cares about the well-being of all its citizens, and that might see permanent peace with its neighbours as the right way forward for everyone.

Fatah and PLO tournament named after terrorists who killed 46

Earlier this month, a sports festival organized by Fatah and the PLO included a tournament named after two terrorists who planned and carried out some of the most lethal terror attacks in Israel's history:
The Martyr Raed Al-Karmi and Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Tournament
Raed Al-Karmi was responsible for the murder of 9 Israelis from 2001-2002 and Dalal Mughrabi led the killing of 37 in 1978.
PLO representative Mazen Abu Zaid said that the recent festival's purpose was to "renew our commitment and loyalty to the blood of the Martyrs, and to show support for President Mahmoud Abbas." He praised terrorists Raed Al-Karmi and Dalal Mughrabi as "Martyrs" and stated that their blood had been spilled to "draw the map of the homeland" and to deliver the message that "Palestine is one, indivisible unit":
"[PLO representative Mazen Abu Zaid] added that the blood of Martyr Raed Al-Karmi... and the blood of Martyr Dalal Mughrabi... had been absorbed into the soil of the homeland, and embraced the blood of the Gazan Martyrs, in order to draw the map of the homeland for us and to serve as a message: Palestine is one, indivisible unit." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 18, 2015]

Thousands attend funerals of IDF officer, soldier killed in Hezbollah ambush

Maj. Yochai Kalangel, 25, who was killed in Wednesday's Hezbollah attack against IDF soldiers near the Lebanese border was laid to rest at Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday.
Thousands of people arrived to honor Kalangel who was killed along with St.-Sgt. Dor Haim Nini when Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon attacked IDF vehicles traveling in the village of Ghajar in the Galilee panhandle with Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles.
Kalangel grew up in the West Bank settlement of Elazar in Gush Etzion, and leaves behind a wife, Tali, and their one-year-old child. He is one of six siblings, and on Independence Day this year he was awarded a General Staff commendation for excellence.
Tamir, Yochai’s brother, told reporters that Yochai, or “Joha” as the family knew him, “was a giant of a man, salt of the earth, a great warrior.”

Update on Wounded Soldiers’ Conditions

Ziv Hospital in Tzefat (Safed) reports that the medical condition of five of the IDF soldiers wounded in yesterday’s Hezbollah attack have improved.
All five are now listed as lightly injured.
Later today they will undergo additional medical examinations, and the hospital will decide if they need further treatment, or if they can be released.
The soldiers jumped from their vehicle after witnessing the first vehicle blown up by the long-range anti-tank rocket, and thus saved their lives.

UN outraged by Hamas (but not because of human shields or rockets or terror)

It turns out that the UN is capable of strong language against Hamas - but only when it is the victim:

The United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Process, Robert Serry, has expressed outrage by the assault on the UN premises in Gaza this morning.

“During a pre-announced demonstration, of which Hamas was well aware, a number of protestors climbed the perimeter wall and entered the compound causing damage to United Nations premises and property,” Mr. Serry said today in a statement from his office, UNSCO.

Due to precautionary measures taken, United Nations personnel working in the compound were fortunately unharmed.

The Special Coordinator noted with “deep concern” that, despite repeated assurances, the security forces in Gaza did not take the necessary and timely measures to protect UNSCO's compound.

“Pending a full transfer of security responsibilities to the legitimate Palestinian Authority, we continue to hold Hamas fully responsible for the security and safety of all United Nations personnel and operations in Gaza,” Mr. Serry said.

As this serious incident took place in the context of increasing incitement against the United Nations in Gaza, the Special Coordinator is conducting an urgent review of operations in Gaza.

It is very rare for the UN to express "outrage" explicitly at Hamas. They did express outrage over rockets being stored in UNRWA schools but didn't blame Hamas explicitly, and in 2006 they said they were outraged at Hamas police stealing supplies from a UN warehouse.

So, in Israel and the territories, the UN only seems outraged when it is the victims of attacks. Even though the UN routinely expresses outrage over terror attacks worldwide, I haven't yet found any such expressions for Hamas' explicit policies of using Gazans as human shields, or their terror attacks or rocket fire against Israel.

Hamas reacted to this statement with derision:

Hamas prominent leader Salah Bardawil stated Wednesday that the UN resolutions by Robert Serry to halt aid provided for the victims of the Israeli aggression on Gaza had led to the popular anger the world witnessed Wednesday .

Bardawil said that claims of Robert Serry that Hamas holds responsible for the angry reaction of the refugees towards the United Nations staff are just " an attempt to jump over the reality ", pointing out that the masses wanted to tell Serry they reject the United Nations to be part of the siege imposed on the Gaza people .

" It would have been better for Mr. Serry to consider the serious repercussions of the UN decisions over reconstruction and adis for the victims of the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza, rather that distribution of accusations ." Bardawil added.

B'Tselem released a report on the IDF's policy of striking houses during the Gaza war.

The first 36 pages of the report are meant to humanize the victims, in order to prime the reader to think that certainly Israel must be guilty of war crimes. Once B'Tselem greased the wheels, it tries to interpret international law in a biased and incorrect way.

The organization admits multiple times that it has no access to IDF intelligence as to why specific targets were struck, It only mentions that the IDF has not released the details of why it considered the houses targeted to have been legitimate targets. Without a single shred of evidence, B'Tselem claims that Israel was targeting people, not facilities.

Many Hamas military branch commanders – mid‐level and up – had, in effect, turned their apartments also into bases or operational headquarters where they received military intel and from which orders were issued to their subordinates, including orders for operations against our troops and for firing rockets at Israel […] During Operation Protective Edge, there was widespread use of private homes for concrete military purposes. There is no doubt that these are legitimate military targets under international law.

But that's not good enough for B'Tselem, which insists that unless the IDF tells them the specific intelligence that went behind the attacks, then B'Tselem's guesses must be more accurate:

It is possible for residences of operatives of Hamas or other organizations to be considered legitimate military targets, but to be defined as such, what they were actually used for must first be determined. IHL stipulates a twofold test for deciding whether a structure is a “military objective”: the structure must make an effective contribution to military action, and harming it must give the attacking party a clear military advantage.

In spite of this, the IDF Spokesperson did not explain the connection between any of the houses attacked as specified in his statements and any military activity. The term “operational infrastructure” proves nothing in itself about any alleged military use of the residence. Its repetition does, however, serve to unmask the attempt by policymakers to lend an air of legality to such attacks.

The explanations the IDF Spokesperson and the MAG provided for the destruction of operatives’ homes are unconvincing and appear to be no more than a cover‐up for the actual reason for the destruction – the identity of the occupants. In this sense, these strikes constitute dozens of cases of punitive house demolitions – prohibited in themselves – carried out from the air.

Somehow, the IDF's refusal to reveal sensitive military information has been transformed into B'Tselem's being able to read minds as to the real reason houses were targeted.

B'Tselem admits that it has no real information to make any determination:

The military refrains from giving the public the answers to these questions. Therefore, in the vast majority of cases, B’Tselem cannot know what considerations underpinned the attacks. Some of B’Tselem’s investigations did lead to conjectures regarding the reasons for an attack on a specific house, such as: the presence of a Hamas operative in the house at the time of the attack or several hours earlier; the fact that the homeowner’s son was an operative – at one or another level of seniority – in an armed Palestinian group; or the firing of Qasam rockets from somewhere near the house. However, in the absence of an official statement from the military, B’Tselem cannot determine with certainty why a given house was attacked, whether it met the definition of a legitimate target and if so, whether the attack may be considered proportionate.

Yet it makes its baseless charges anyway!

When it suits its purposes, B'Tselem says that Israeli intelligence in Gaza is top-notch, using that to prove that Israel should have known that civilians were likely to be killed:

[T]he military has powerful intelligence capabilities with respect to Gaza residents. Intelligence information made it possible for the military to know the precise location of people it intended to target. The Ground Forces journal mentioned above provided a detailed description of surveillance measures available to the military, including observation balloons, drones, and observation officers who analyze the findings.50 Given all this, whoever gave the orders to attack knew – or should have and could have known – about the presence of civilians at the site of the target.

However, if the IDF intelligence is so good, that implies that the IDF knows far more about the nature of the military target itself.

If the target is a legitimate military target, then the issue of likely civilian casualties is weighed against the value of the target. A reasonable military commander makes that decision under international law. B'Tselem is confusing its ignorance of what the commanders know with the idea that the commanders don't know any more than B'Tselem does about the value of the targets, and it makes up its own fiction about what they assume must have been the targets - Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants hanging out in crowded apartments, not seriously considering that they would have command and control centers hidden specifically in residential buildings.

Here is the crux of B'Tselem's conclusions:

[T]he issue at hand is what conclusions policymakers may draw from the conduct of Hamas and other armed Palestinian organizations. The above quoted statements by the prime minister and the chief of staff indicate they believe that Hamas and the military share the responsibility of taking precautions. For example, in a case in which Hamas did in fact conceal weapons in a residential building, thereby turning it into a military target that may be targeted, Israel’s interpretation would be that the military would attempt to warn the building’s occupants before striking. If the warning accomplishes its objective so the civilians are unharmed, Israel can use the incident to showcase how the military abides by IHL. If civilians are harmed, whether or not a warning was issued, Hamas will be held responsible.

Accepting this interpretation would mean that there are no restrictions whatsoever on Israeli action and that whatever method it chooses to respond to Hamas operations is legitimate, no matter how horrifying the consequences. This interpretation is unreasonable, unlawful, and renders meaningless the principle that IHL violations committed by one party do not release the other party from its obligations toward the civilian population and civilian objects.63

Yet this interpretation is designed to block, a priori, any allegations that Israel breached IHL provisions. It focuses exclusively on policymakers’ intentions, which cannot be examined as no official information is available, while completely ignoring the outcome, even when the same deadly results are seen time and again. Several days into the fighting, decision makers surely would have had no doubts about the results to be expected from continuing the policy of attacking homes.

In light of all this, the argument that the house bombing policy is lawful must be rejected.

The highlighted area is completely wrong. Israeli military commanders must, under IHL, decide on the value of the target and also decide whether civilian casualties are proportionate given the value of the target. Under IHL, as we have seen, even a relatively low value military target - destroying the ability of the enemy to communicate for only a few hours - was considered so valuable that the killing of 16 civilians during the attack was not considered disproportionate. That's IHL, B'Tselem's incorrect interpretation isn't.

There is one other salient missing piece of data that undermines B'Tselem's analysis. B'Tselem doesn't know how many targets Israel decided not to attack because of the likelihood that civilian casualties would be disproportionate to the value of the target. There might have been thousands of such targets, and the houses targeted might be a small percentage of the total possible targets in Gaza because they did have high military value. B'Tselem's accusations have a false assumption: that Israel acted in an unrestrained manner. But it cannot know that without knowing Israel's entire intelligence operations.

Anyone can make guesses. But if you are going to write a report that accuses a country of disregarding the lives of people for no good reason, you should not base this report on ignorance - ignorance that B'Tselem even admits.

To read the actual international law that underpins B'Tselem's false accusations, see my previous articles on the principle of distinction and the principle of proportionality. International law gives far more leeway to military commanders than B'Tselem is willing to admit.

To sum up: if someone told you that she bought a diamond ring for $3,000, you cannot say that she paid too much without examining the ring and knowing something about diamonds. But that is what B'Tselem is doing here: determining that Israel acted in a disproportionate manner without knowing what the actual targets were, how important they were, what international law says about proportionality and distinction - and then B'Tselem makes the assumption that its ignorance of the facts is evidence.

Ron Dermer

Why is Israel supposed to be more responsible for upholding US diplomatic protocol than the Speaker of the House?

The White House has gleefully used this latest incident as an excuse to escalate tensions with Israel rather than to downplay them. The latest NYT article - based on those famous unnamed sources - is the latest part of this anti-Bibi campaign, and there is really no other way to describe it:

The Obama administration, after days of mounting tension, signaled on Wednesday how angry it is with Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Republican leaders’ invitation to address Congress on Iran without consulting the White House.

The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.

The official who made the comments to The New York Times would not be named, and the White House declined to comment. The remarks were the latest fallout after Mr. Dermer, without the White House’s knowledge, worked with House Speaker John A. Boehner to arrange the speech, which is scheduled for March.

The remarks are likely to escalate a feud between the White House, Republicans on Capitol Hill and Mr. Netanyahu over the invitation, which has led to a new low in American-Israeli relations and threatened to mar the long tradition of bipartisan support for Israel in Congress.

Dermer says that he assumed that John Boehner would know the logistics involved when he is the one who extended the invitation:

In a telephone interview late Wednesday, Mr. Dermer said, “I have no regrets whatsoever that I have acted in a way to advance my country’s interests.” He said he never meant to slight the White House by keeping the confidence of the House speaker, who had suggested the invitation. He said he left it to Mr. Boehner to notify Mr. Obama’s team.

“My understanding was that it was the speaker’s prerogative to do, and that he would be the one to inform the administration,” Mr. Dermer said. “The prime minister feels very strongly that he has to speak on this issue. That’s why he accepted the invitation, not to wade into your political debate or make this a partisan issue, and not to be disrespectful to the president.”

Rather than investigating whether this makes sense, the NYT then takes aim at Dermer:

“He’s a political operative, he’s not really an ambassador,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former United States ambassador to Israel. “What he did was totally unacceptable from a standpoint of diplomacy. To think about going behind the back of a friendly country’s administration and working out this kind of arrangement with the parliament or the Congress — it’s unheard-of.”

Mr. Kurtzer said while it was unlikely the Obama administration would take the extraordinary step of declaring Mr. Dermer “persona non grata” — the official method for a foreign diplomat to be ousted from a country — it could request that Mr. Dermer by reprimanded or removed.

“He has soiled his pad; who’s he going to work with?” Mr. Kurtzer said.

Kurtzer is essentially calling Congress an enemy of the White House, colluding with foreign leaders against the President. Isn't that a bigger deal than how Israel acts?

But the Times is silent on this.

While I don't know if it is wiser for Bibi to keep his appointment with Congress or to apologize to Israel's best ally over this incident, it sure seems that the lack of public anger from the White House towards the person who actually extended the invitation indicates that this supposedly huge breach of protocol is more an excuse to attack Bibi than anything else.

Which also indicates that Obama is trying to use this incident to affect the Israeli elections, taking its cue from some left-wing Israeli media who have pounced on this incident. And not affecting the elections was the supposed initial excuse given for Obama not to meet with Netanyahu to begin with!

I wish some real reporter would call up the Office of the Chief of Protocol and find the written rules around visits by heads of state that are not initiated by the President. Obviously the New York Times can't think of doing something that simple to find out exactly how this should have been played out.

01/28 Links Pt2: B’Tselem Adds to the False Gaza War Allegations; Europe's Real "Resistance"

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: B’Tselem Adds to the Chorus of False Gaza War Allegations

In its report on IDF strikes during the 2014 Gaza conflict, B’Tselem presents a simplistic and distorted political narrative of Israeli guilt and Palestinian victimhood, according to Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor. B’Tselem’s publication follows those of Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and other investigation NGOs, contributing to the campaign surrounding the UN Human Rights Council by William Schabas, as well as Palestinian Authority efforts focused on the International Criminal Court.
“Once again, and regardless of the circumstances and available evidence, B’Tselem has contorted the facts in order to pronounce Israel guilty,” said Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor’s Legal Advisor. “Contrary to such claims, Hamas is morally and legally responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza: Hamas systematically conducts military operations from within civilian areas and stores its rockets in schools, mosques, and private homes.”
B’Tselem’s claims regarding international law are marked by major omissions and distortions. It notably fails to state that under the laws of war, the presence of civilians does not render military objectives immune from attack. B’Tselem also does not explain why targeting Hamas fighters or Hamas command centers did not “effectively assist military efforts” or “provide a military advantage” to Israel.
NGO Monitor notes that, as in the past, this publication fails to present definitive evidence that would justify the allegations. Indeed, it is clear that B’Tselem, like other politicized NGOs, lacks the necessary information, including military intelligence and command decisions. B’Tselem also lacked direct access to Gaza, instead presenting unverifiable “testimonies” from purported victims and eyewitnesses in Hamas-controlled territory, mixed with other data that originated with the Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza. (h/t Bob Knot)

Europe's Real "Resistance"

Europe's policies of encouraging groups such as Hamas, which constantly espouse violence, demolishes the Palestinian effort to achieve a responsible Palestinian state that finally could end the conflict with Israel.
The West has been duped. The French have naïvely taken the bait: they now associate Palestinian "Resistance" with the courageous French underground Résistance that fought the Germans in World War II. They incorrectly assume that the Palestinian "Resistance' must be a good thing, too.
But the Palestinian Resistance bears no resemblance to the French Résistance of Word War II. There is no way to compare them. The Palestinian "Resistance" is nothing more than terrorist organizations repressing their own people. They do not resist an evil force; they are an evil force.
The truth is that the Europeans do not really care about the Palestinians, only about destroying Israel.
Now the International Criminal Court is planning to investigate Israel because it had the gall to defend itself against terrorism, while what did Europe do? Europe, in the face of terrorism, invited every terrorist-sponsoring dictator to join it in a march to protest the very murders that these dictators had paid for.
There is no difference between Hamas's aspirations to be "liberated from the Zionist occupation," and radical Islam's aspirations to be liberated from the "Christian occupation" of Europe.
All "Resistance" should be against radical Islam as embodied by groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Islamic State, among others. They are the ones we should resist. They should not be allowed to rule us in some Islamist "Palestinian State."

Beinart is Wrong on Palestinian Incitement

On January 15, noted Israel critic Peter Beinart declared that Palestinians who hate Israel never claim that they were inspired by anti-Israel incitement.
Just six days later, on January 21, a Palestinian who stabbed twelve Israelis on a Tel Aviv bus said he was inspired by "radical Islamic broadcasts."
Beinart is a CNN commentator, a columnist for Haaretz, and a fellow at a liberal think think, the New America Foundation. He made a splash in 2012 in the Jewish world with his book The Crisis of Zionism, in which he called for a boycott of Israelis who reside in areas beyond the pre-1967 armistice line.
Appearing on the "Voice of Israel" radio show on January 15, Beinart attempted to explain Palestinians hatred of Israel and Jews. Here's what he said:
"I know a lot of Palestinians who hate Israel, in fact I would say almost all the Palestinians I know hate Israel, but when I ask them why they hate Israel, and I've talked many, many, many times with people about this, they don't mention textbooks, or movies, or names of streets that have terrorists on them…But what they tell me, what I hear about, again and again and again, is the personal trauma and suffering that they and people they love have experienced."

Internal Emails Show Al Jazeera English Banning Use of Terms ‘Terrorist,’ ‘Militant,’ ‘Islamist’

Shortly after news broke of a deadly January 27 attack by Islamic terrorists on a hotel in Libya’s capital, Al Jazeera English executive Carlos van Meek shot out an email to his employees.
“All: We manage our words carefully around here,” the network’s head of output wrote to staff at the Doha-based news channel’s New York and Washington, D.C. newsrooms. “So I’d like to bring to your attention some key words that have a tendency of tripping us up.”
In an email obtained by National Review Online, van Meek warned the network’s journalists against the use of terms including “terrorist,” “militant,” “Islamist” and “jihad.”
“One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” the Al Jazeera executive wrote.
The word “extremist” was labeled off-limits. “Avoid characterizing people,” van Meek said. “Often their actions do the work for the viewer.”
“Do not use,” van Meek’s said of the term “Islamist.” He described it as “a simplistic label.”

Aboud Dandachi, the Syrian activist living in Istanbul, makes an interesting point about how Europeans should respond to the rising tide of increase in anti-Jewish attacks. Excerpts:

On January 27th 2015, commemorations were held world-wide in remembrance of the Holocaust. Seventy years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, these remembrances are as necessary as ever, as evidenced by the past year’s rising tide of antisemitic attacks the world over. And while it may be impossible to stop every terrorist attack everywhere in the world, the manner in which societies and individuals react to such atrocities is just as important as “killing the bad guys”.

A case in point would be the terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in early January. In the aftermath, a massive two million strong march was held in the heart of Paris in support of freedom of expression. The phrase #JeSuisCharlie became the most widely used hashtag in Twitter’s history. To meet the increased demand from multitudes of first-time readers seemingly eager on making a statement against extremism, the publication run for the magazine’s January 12th 2015 issue was increased from 60,000 copies to three million, and increased again to five million, and yet again to seven million copies.

Marches, Twitter campaigns, and a massive surge in readership. And yet largely relegated to the background was the fact that Jews were specifically targeted during those three terrible days in Paris. Indeed, for months before the Paris terrorist atrocities, Jews in much of Europe had been subjected to a relentless wave of vicious antisemitic attacks. An atmosphere of raw, unchallenged hatred for all things Jewish preceded the events in Paris, and the warning signs were there for anyone who cared to pay attention. When Jews in Denmark trying to hold an event calling for religious coexistence are chased off the streets by “Allahu Akbar” screaming-black-banner-waving thugs, then very soon someone will get it into their head to try to kill Jews in Paris.

Marches, Twitter campaigns, and millions of new readers. Momentary, short-term reactions to a very long term problem, one that has been building up for years. In the wake of such atrocities, it is natural for individuals to feel a strong need to act. And nothing reputes terrorism as effectively as making a stand with its intended targets and victims. By making a stand with the Jewish communities of Europe and the world over.

And one effective, long term method of displaying solidarity with Jewish communities world wide is to show the same enthusiasm for their publications as the world has displayed for scooping up issues of Charlie Hebdo. To repudiate global extremism, one only needs to act on a very local level.

....Holocaust commemorations are held just once a year, and if a society feels compelled to respond to atrocities in its midst with million-person marches, by that time it is probably too late, extremism has already dug its roots deep into that society. Extremism is more effectively fought on the individual level, with small, daily acts of kindness towards those that may be vulnerable, and the ostracizing of those groups and individuals who are hateful in their speech and behavior (I’m looking at you George Galloway, you shameful carpetbagger). Global extremism is most effectively fought by very local acts of consideration.

And in this day and age, fighting extremism can be as simple as buying a newspaper. Şalom.