Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

06/23 Links Pt1: Another Outrageously Flawed Gaza Report; Prosor: UNHRC are 'Soldiers of Hamas'

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Another Outrageously Flawed Gaza Report

The UN Human Rights Council, many of whose state members are world champions in violating the moral principles the Council is obligated to protect, issued its Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on the 2014 Gaza War today. The eighth such attempt since 2002 to single out Israel as guilty of war crimes, this was the first replay since the discredited Goldstone document in 2009. This time, some lessons were learned, but any serious analysis of the COI would find it seriously flawed. At best, it is Goldstone lite, with little lasing impact; but at worst, it will accelerate the dirty political war begun at Durban 2001, seeking the “total international isolation of Israel.”
The COI is clearly written in two voices: the harsh ideological accusations of William Schabas, interspersed with the more reasonable caution of Mary McGowan Davis. This was expected—Schabas, the anti-Israel warrior originally selected by the UNHRC’s Islamic bloc majority, neglected to mention his paid job with the PLO, and was replaced after the research was completed by Judge Davis. But instead of throwing out the draft, she added and revised the original sporadically, leaving a fundamentally flawed document, drafted by the same UN-based staffers.
As a result, the report is premised on the immoral and absurd equivalence and parallelism between a terrorist group (Hamas) and a democratic state under attack (Israel). The recommendations at the end, which call for investigations, enforcement of international legal principles, cooperation with the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and other measures, are ostensibly addressed to Israel and to Hamas. This can be compared to placing the police and mafia on an equal moral plain.

NGO Monitor: UN Report on Gaza: Improvement over Goldstone, but NGO Reliance Hurts Credibility

The report of the Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza War is different both substantially and methodologically than its predecessors, including the 2009 Goldstone Report, according to NGO Monitor. However, it still quotes extensively from biased and unreliable political advocacy NGOs. By repeating the unverified and non-expert factual and legal allegations of groups such as Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Al Mezan, the UN investigation is irrevocably tarnished.
“The UNHRC report would be entirely different without the baseless and unverifiable allegations of non-governmental organizations,” said Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor at NGO Monitor. “Despite efforts to consult a wider array of sources, the report produced by McGowan Davis and her team lacks credibility as a result of NGO influence.”
NGO Monitor’s initial review of the Commission of Inquiry’s “detailed findings” shows that NGOs were referenced, cited, and quoted at a high volume: B’Tselem was the most referenced NGO with 69 citations, followed by Amnesty International (53), Palestinian Center for Human Rights (50), and Al Mezan (29). UNWRA and UN-OCHA were also featured throughout the report. As repeatedly demonstrated by NGO Monitor, these groups are not appropriate for professional fact-finding.

Soldier from Operation Protective Edge responds to UN report: 'We have paid for morality in blood'

I served in the Shejaiya rescue force. Certain rules of engagement were made clear for our six days there. The night before the ground incursion, a Shin Bet officer came to us and explained that there was a large civilian population in the direction that we were headed. Because of this, we did not enter Shejaiya at that time, although that was what we had practiced and it was the correct tactical maneuver.
After consideration, we went the following day in the anticipated direction, where Hamas gunmen were awaiting our arrival. Hamas understood our strategies, and how each of our operations had humanitarian and moral considerations, and because of this they were ready to receive us. They had set up observation posts in the surrounding areas, and they anticipated our arrival because of the previous decision not to enter into a civilian population.
On the first night we went in, we were attacked. Five of our soldiers were killed and 20 others were injured. In spite of the claims made against the IDF that they have gone against international law, in this instance it is understood that our morality cost us our lives.

Amazing how no one ever has a cell phone when "settlers chop down trees"

From Ma'an:

Israeli settlers chopped down more than 70 olive trees between the towns of Yasuf and Jammain in the northern West Bank districts of Salfit and Nablus on Monday.

Palestinian farmers said the trees, which lay close to the illegal Israeli settlements of Ariel and Taffuh, had been cut down using chainsaws.

A local, Khalid Maali, said that because the land lay close to settler roads near the Zaatara checkpoint it had been easy for the settlers to flee afterwards.

Yet again, there is not a single photograph of these trees.

70 trees chopped down with chainsaws would take an enormous amount of effort - and leave lots of evidence. Israellycool recently showed how long it takes to chop down just one part of an olive tree with a chainsaw:

How easy is it to cut down an olive tree?
Brian here. Every year Jews are accused of chopping down thousands of olive trees maliciously: watch just how hard it is to saw off a small, dead part of a healthy olive tree. And realise how necessary this is to keeping these trees healthy.
Posted by Israellycool on Monday, June 8, 2015

But, in an unbelievable coincidence, no one who witnesses this devastation which is reported weekly ever has a cell phone with them to snap some photos!

However, the media does manage to find completely spontaneous file photos of Arab women crying next to their olive trees.

UNHRC Gaza report didn't mention how Hamas used Shifa Hospital as headquarters

Further research into the UNHRC report issued yesterday shows plenty of omissions about Hamas crimes.

Two in particular stand out as far as Hamas using medical facilities for terror.

The report does not mention, even once, that Hamas - and Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades - used Shifa Hospital as a military headquarters, thereby endangering patients. The fact was confirmed by newspaper reports at the time, and one detailed report was removed by a French news site after Hamas threats:

After four blocked attempts to leave Gaza without explanation over weeks, the Palestinian journalist was summoned by the security services of Hamas on Sunday. "I received a call from a private number. They summoned me to Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza City center, " explains Radjaa. He carried with him his two phones, his press card and a small camera.

A few meters from the emergency room where the injured from bombings are constantly flowing, in the outpatient department, he was received in "a small section of the hospital used as administration" by a band of young fighters. They were all well dressed, which surprised Radjaa, "in civilian clothing with a gun under one's shirt and some had walkie-talkies " . He was ordered to empty his pockets, removing his shoes and his belt then was taken to a hospital room "which served that day as the command office of three people."

We even have a photo (that was also removed after Hamas threats:)

Also, Hamas fired rockets from next to Shifa Hospital:

The UNHRC report also says:

[S]everal allegations were made concerning the alleged use by Palestinian armed groups of ambulances to conduct military operations. However, only one specific allegation was provided in the documentation available from Israel and this lacked a date or location for the incident. The commission has received no additional allegations concerning the improper use of ambulances.

The footnote they used was from Israel, "The 2014 Gaza Conflict: Factual and Legal Aspects," but in fact the IDF released at least two videos showing Hamas terrorists using ambulances.

The same paragraph that UNHRC used to mention the "allegation" of Hamas using ambulances was the one that mentioned that they used Shifa Hospital as headquarters.

Which means that the Schabas/Davis report purposefully ignored a major violation of international law by Hamas that they were clearly aware of. Commandeering a hospital for military purposes is certainly more serious than using ambulances. Both of them are war crimes.

This is just one indication that the UNHRC report is just as biased as Goldstone was - but it worked harder to give the appearance of objectivity.

How DARE anyone psychoanalyze a national leader! (Hypocrisy alert)

Lisa Goldman, who normally writes for +972 magazine, is incensed at Michael Oren's analysis of Barack Obama's mindset he did while he was Israel's ambassador to the US:

How dare he!

Goldman indignantly writes:

[It is... difficult to believe that a man who has a PhD in history from Princeton University, and who spent years in the diplomatic arena, would think it remotely appropriate to indulge in cheap anti-intellectual speculation about a president’s relationship with his daddy as a means of explaining his foreign policy.

It's awful!

Except that Lisa's +972 magazine did exactly that to...drumroll, please....Binyamin Netanyahu!

Yes, the leftist magazine gave a rave review to a self-published e-book by amateur psychologists to analyze Bibi.

The review includes this:

The thesis is that there’s a psychological triumvirate or holy national-political-security trinity in his mind, comprised of Netanyahu the elder, Bibi’s legendary father, and his slain brother Yonatan, a fallen mythical hero if there ever was one. It is Bibi’s trapped-animal status between these two that compels him to seek his own defeat, in the authors’ view.

They observe that Benzion Netanyahu made no secret of his preference for his eldest son, Yoni, or of his hopes that Yoni would lead the country to fulfill the father’s grandiose mighty-man dreams for Israel. Bibi of course has awe and respect for both his father and his brother. His ambitions would lead him to the top offices, his insecurities meant that when he got there, his inner will not to steal his dead brother’s birthright meant that he never wanted to be too good, too successful, too loved – his deep anger against his father, but also at himself for disappointing his father by not being his brother, leads to self-fulfilling prophecy of permanent failure.

Saying Bibi has daddy issues is valuable analysis, based on...not much.

But saying that Obama has daddy issues - based on the only autobiography that Obama has written - is crude and disrespectful.

This is the consistency of the anti-Zionist Left.

(h/t EBoZ)

06/22 Links Pt2: Netanyahu Warns Jewish World: The Threat is Growing; Code Words for Genocide

From Ian:

Netanyahu Warns Jewish World: The Threat is Growing

Speaking at a conference of the Jewish Agency in Tel Aviv on Monday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu described the largest dangers to the Jewish people.
The prime minister said the number one threat against the Jewish people is a nuclear armed Iran, warning that the Iran deal being discussed becomes "worse by the day," even walking away from previous interim agreements including inspections on military nuclear sites.
He also spoke about the terrorist proxies of Iran acting throughout the Middle East, as well as the Islamic regime's brazenness regarding their goals to destroy Israel.
Other threats against the Jewish state discussed by Netanyahu included the BDS movement, pushing to boycott and economically attack the Jewish state.

War of words poses real threat

The main reason international forums are used as the primary arena against Israel, however, is that they provide anti-Israel groups an opportunity to present their vision of an Israel-free world to all, which is the way they believe is should be.
This is why those who truly want to fight for a peace based on the right of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples to self-determination in their homelands should be the ones leading the fight against the BDS movement.
If the world supports the notion that Zionism and Israel are the epitome of evil, then clearly the Palestinians cannot be expected to negotiate with it. After all, evil must be eradicated, not accepted in the name of peaceful coexistence.
Moreover, if justice for the Palestinians justifies the ethnic cleansing of Jews, and if the vision of global redemption includes an Israel-free world, then surely the Palestinians cannot be expected to agree to a permanent resolution of the conflict that would include recognizing Israel's right to exist as the Jewish homeland.
Peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will be possible only when both parties realize the other side cannot be defeated, and therefore they must reluctantly compromise and accept each other's independent existence. Those fostering the Palestinians' illusion that Israel and its Jewish sovereignty can be defeated, if not through an Arab boycott and terrorism then by global isolation and public diplomacy onslaughts, only push peace farther away.
The fight for peace is one of many facets and stages. At this time, the fight for peace requires fighting the BDS movement.

Anti-Israel Activists Harass Israeli TV Presenter in London, Interrupt Live Broadcast (VIDEO)

Anti-Israel activists interrupted a live television broadcast from London with chants calling for the destruction of the Jewish state as Channel 10 correspondent Miri Michaeli attempted to report on a conference late last week.
While Michaeli updated viewers on a speech from Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog at the London School of Economics (LSE) on Friday, two protesters stood up close alongside her holding up large Palestinian flags and aggressively chanting “free free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.”
An LSE student who uploaded footage of the incident on Facebook applauded the journalist for standing her ground.
“So following Isaac Herzog’s excellent speech at LSE, this poor but admittedly tough news anchor from Channel 10 withstood disgraceful intimidation from two men surrounding her without even flinching,” the student wrote. “Israeli women are not to be messed with. Respect.”

UNHCR vs. UNRWA (poster)

Earlier today I saw this at the UNHCR site:

What a difference from UNRWA, which literally has no cessation clauses in its literature - it is literally impossible to stop being a refugee under UNRWA's rules.

So I made a handy-dandy chart to explain the differences between UNHCR and UNRWA.

From Arrigoni's Facebook page

Vittorio Arrigoni was a fake Italian "peace activist" and darling of the anti-Israel crowd who was murdered in 2011 in Gaza by a Salafist group.

Al Quds quotes "informed sources" saying one of his killers, Mahmoud Salfiti, was given a family leave by Hamas for Ramadan. Salfiti then promptly disappeared, apparently escaping Gaza to join ISIS.

Despite Egyptian restrictions on movement from Gaza, Salfiti either managed to find a tunnel that still works or somehow used the Rafah crossing last week, according to the report.

There have been several Gazans who have been killed while fighting for ISIS, at least four this month alone.

06/22 Links Pt1: Israel slams ‘politically motivated and morally flawed’ UN Gaza report

From Ian:

Israel slams ‘politically motivated and morally flawed’ UN Gaza report

Israel on Monday said it would “seriously” evaluate the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry on the Gaza conflict, while politicians from left and right slammed the international body for bias and declared that the international investigators lacked access to evidence.
The report, released in Geneva on Monday afternoon, said both Israel and Hamas may have committed war crimes during the 50-day war last summer. The UN Human Rights Council report placed blame on both parties but focused more on Israel’s role.
It also accepted the Palestinian death count, which has Israel killing 1,462 civilians out of a total of 2,251 Palestinians who died — a 65 percent ratio.
“The report is biased,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response. “Israel is not perpetrating war crimes but rather protecting itself from an organization that carries out war crimes. We won’t sit back with our arms crossed as our citizens are attacked by thousands of missiles.”
The Human Rights Council “in practice does everything but worry about human rights,” the prime minister charged. “The commission spends more time condemning Israel than Iran, Syria and North Korea put together.”
The Foreign Ministry in an official statement said the report “was commissioned by a notoriously biased institution, given an obviously biased mandate, and initially headed by a grossly biased chairperson, William Schabas,” in reference to the original chairman of the probe who resigned in February amid Israeli allegations of bias over consulting work he once did for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
With Schabas’s appointment, the commission of inquiry “was politically motivated and morally flawed from the outset,” it said.
Still, the Foreign Ministry said it would investigate the claims of the report.

Jeff Robbins (fmr U.S. delegate to UNHRC): U.N. beats familiar anti-Israel drum

Naturally, the U.N., owned for all practical purposes by the powerful Organization of Islamic Conference and the enviable petrodollars that Arab states bring to bear, is expected to issue another report condemning Israel. Its report, originally set to be released in March, was delayed after its lead investigator, William Schabas, was forced to resign amidst disclosures that not only had he declared Israeli leaders “criminals” before he asked to be hired to investigate them, but that he had recently been paid by the PLO for advocating on its behalf. After denying for months that there was anything about any of this that faintly resembled a conflict of interest, he stepped down just before the report was to be released, announcing that his work had been completed anyway.
The predictable chorus of those signed up to blame Israel regardless of the circumstances charges Israel, which struggled to stop the rockets and prevent the tunnel attacks, with deliberately killing Palestinian civilians. Streams of military experts who examined the evidence have pronounced these charges utter nonsense.
One recent study, authored by a team that included the former chief of staff of the U.S. Central Command and the former deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, found that the Israel Defense Forces “executed a number of extraordinary methods to mitigate civilian risks.” It concluded: “It is our assessment as military professionals that IDF operations in Gaza exercised considerable restraint and exceeded the requirements of [international law].”
Another group of experts that included the former chiefs of staff of the German, Spanish and Italian militaries found: “Each of our own armies is of course committed to protecting civilian life during combat. But none of us is aware of an army that takes such extensive measures as did the IDF last summer to protect the lives of the civilian populations.”
And the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, concluded that “Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit civilian casualties” during the Gaza war, and sent American officers to Israel to learn from its example.
Condemnations of Israel that are nonsense are the U.N.’s specialty, and the forthcoming report is unlikely to be any different. The experts who have debunked these condemnations are military professionals who deal in facts, not in agendas. When it comes to Israel, the U.N. carries on imitating  Alice-in-Wonderland, devoid of any credibility and displaying no sign of caring.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians' Real Strategy

Marzouk's remarks refute claims by some in the Arab and Western media that Hamas is moving toward pragmatism and moderation, and that it is now willing, for the first time, to recognize Israel's right to exist. Many in the West often fail to understand Hamas's true position because they do not follow what Hamas says in Arabic -- to its own people. In Arabic, Hamas makes no secret of its call for the destruction of Israel.
The current strategy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is to negotiate with the international community, and not with Israel, about achieving peace in the Middle East. The ultimate goal of the PA is to force Israel to its knees. For the PA, rallying the international community and Europe is about punishing and weakening Israel, not making peace with it.
Their strategy is no longer about a two-state solution so much as it is about inflicting pain and suffering on Israel. It is more about seeking revenge on Israel than living in a state next to it.
Hamas's terrorism also helps the PA's anti-Israel campaign in the international community. Each terrorist attack provides the PA with an opportunity to point out the "urgent" need to force Israel to submit to Palestinian demands as a way of "containing the radicals."

UNHRC explicitly lies on legal basis for calling Gaza "occupied"

The new UNHRC report on the Gaza war says:

27. International law does not require the continuous presence of troops of the occupying forces in all areas of a territory, in order for it to be considered as being occupied. In the Naletelic case, the ICTY held that the law of occupation also applies in areas where a state possesses the “capacity to send troops within a reasonable time to make its power felt.” The size of Gaza and the fact that it is almost completely surrounded by Israel facilitates the ability for Israel to make its presence felt.

What exactly does the Naletelic case say?

217. To determine whether the authority of the occupying power has been actually established, the following guidelines provide some assistance:

- the occupying power must be in a position to substitute its own authority for that of the occupied authorities, which must have been rendered incapable of functioning publicly;

- the enemy’s forces have surrendered, been defeated or withdrawn. In this respect, battle areas may not be considered as occupied territory. However, sporadic local resistance, even successful, does not affect the reality of occupation;

- the occupying power has a sufficient force present, or the capacity to send troops within a reasonable time to make the authority of the occupying power felt;*

- a temporary administration has been established over the territory;

- the occupying power has issued and enforced directions to the civilian population;

The footnote to the part about "capacity to send troops within a reasonable time" links to the “The Law of Land Warfare”, Field Manual No. 27-10, US Department of the Army, 18 July 1956, chapter 6, para 356." among others. I didn't check the others but here is what the US Army manual says:

356. Effectiveness of Occupation
It follows from the definition that belligerent occupation must be both actual and effective, that is, the organized resistance must have been overcome and the force in possession must have taken measures to establish its authority. It is sufficient that the occupying force can, within a reasonable time, send detachments of troops to make its authority felt within the occupied district.

The UNHRC didn't bother to actually read the context of the source material, since there is no way you can say that the Gaza resistance has been overcome - they run Gaza's day to day affairs! Any legal scholar who quotes another case without looking at the parameters of that statement would be laughed out of the room.

The next paragraph of the UNHRC report directly contradicts the next paragraph of the Naletelic decision:

This analysis also applies to the Occupied Palestinian Territory which is considered a single territorial unit by the international community, and by Israel in the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza, which recognized the West Bank and Gaza as a single territorial unit.

But the definition of occupation is not all or nothing over an entire territory, as Naletelic says explicitly:

218. The law of occupation only applies to those areas actually controlled by the occupying power and ceases to apply where the occupying power no longer exercises an actual authority over the occupied area.589 As a result, the Chamber finds that it must determine on a case by case basis whether this degree of control was established at the relevant times and in the relevant places. There is no requirement that an entire territory be occupied, provided that the isolated areas in which the authority of the occupied power is still functioning “are effectively cut off from the rest of the occupied territory”.590

Once again, international law is applied to Israel differently than everywhere else.

Palestine Today is a media outlet for Gaza's Islamic Jihad terror group. Its journalistic standards are higher than most Palestinian Arab media but that doesn't make it any less of a terror organ.

For the past several weeks, it has featured an ad for Pepsi Cola, most recently wishing everyone a "Ramadan kareem" - right on top of a large photo of terrorist Khader Adnan, who is on a 48-day hunger strike that has not elicited much interest from the world.

Clicking on the ad take you to a Facebook page that no longer exists for Pepsi Palestine.

This is not the first time Pepsi Palestine has shown affinity with terror. The Yazegi Group, Pepsi's bottling company in the territories, has sponsored Hamas football teams and tournaments using the Pepsi logo.

In 2013, on their Facebook page, they wrote "Pepsi defies the occupation" - meaning Israel itself. My findings were reported in other media.

The featured photo of a Pepsi Palestine billboard on the webpage and Facebook page of the Yazegi Group is a horrendous photoshop that even misspells "Palestine."

Interestingly, there are reports that the Palestine Today satellite channel was closed down when Iran cut off funds to Islamic Jihad last month over their refusal to fully support the Shiites fighting in Yemen.

"Goldstone II" released, bad but not nearly as bad as Goldstone I

An advance version of the UNHRC report on last summer's war (and surrounding events) has been published.

On first glance, the (formerly Schabas) commission has done a far better job than the Goldstone commission, which was provably biased throughout its investigation from evidence gathering through report completion, only accepting facts that supported its foregone conclusion and consciously ignoring everything else. This commission is clearly cognizant of Goldstone's critics and has done much more to show that it understands Israel's position.

So for example, after printing a chart of buildings attacked by Israel and saying that some of the buildings did not appear to have a valid military objective, it adds this paragraph:

In many of the cases examined by the commission, as well as in incidents reported by local and international organizations, there is little or no information as to how residential buildings, which are prima facie civilian objects immune from attack, came to be regarded as legitimate military objectives. The commission recognizes the dilemma Israel faces in releasing information that would disclose the precise target of military strikes, as this information might be classified and jeopardize intelligence sources. In relation to “evidence of military use”, official Israeli sources indicated that: “In the context of wide-scale military operations, it is often extremely difficult to provide evidence demonstrating exactly why certain structures were damaged. While the IDF targets only military objectives, forensic evidence that a particular site was used for military purposes is rarely available after an attack. Such evidence is usually destroyed in the attack or, if time allows, removed by the terrorist organisations who exploited the site in the first place. It is therefore unsurprising that forensic evidence of military use cannot usually be traced following attacks. As is the case with most militaries, the IDF unfortunately cannot publicize detailed reasoning behind every attack without endangering intelligence sources and methods. The Law of Armed Conflict does not include any requirement or obligation to publicize such information.” However, in the commission’s view, accepting that logic would undermine any efforts to ensure accountability. The key concept of international humanitarian law is the principle of distinction. Only once it has been established whether a specific attack distinguished between legitimate military objectives on the one hand, and civilians and civilian objects on the other hand, can compliance with the other principles, of proportionality and of precautions, be considered.

While I disagree with the commission's conclusion - the tension between security and accountability does not always have to favor the latter - it is to the commission's credit that they went out of their way to quote the Israeli side of the story even when Isrsel didn't cooperate with the commission.

Indeed, the report quotes from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center liberally in attempting to determine that the objects of attack may have been terrorists.

Another difference between Goldstone and this report are that this report mentions Hamas rockets and tunnels before going into the details of Israel's response.

This is not to say that the report was good. It isn't. For example, it parrots the absurd story of Ahmed Abu Reda, the 16 year old who claimed that the IDF forced him to look for tunnels, digging with his bare hands, for five days. This is the boy for whom the family "forgot" to take photos of his injuries and "disposed" of the evidence that would corroborate this completely fictional accusation. This was only one unverified report where the commission accused Israel of using human shields.

It did mention at least one case of potential Hamas use of human shields as well.

The conclusions, of course, slam Israel. The UNHRC cannot be expected to act in any other way. But at least they take into account Israel's position, again a far cry from Goldstone. They do not make sweeping judgments as to IDF intent as Goldstone did.

669. With regard to Israel, the commission examined carefully the circumstances of each case, including the account given by the State, where available. Israel has, however, released insufficient information regarding the specific military objectives of its attacks. The commission recognizes the dilemma that Israel faces in releasing information that would disclose in detail the targets of military strikes, given that such information may be classified and jeopardize intelligence sources. Be that as it may, security considerations do not relieve the authorities of their obligations under international law. The onus remains on Israel to provide sufficient details on its targeting decisions to allow an independent assessment of the legality of the attacks conducted by the Israel Defense Forces and to assist victims in their quest for the truth.

670. The commission is concerned that impunity prevails across the board for violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law allegedly committed by Israeli forces, whether it be in the context of active hostilities in Gaza or killings, torture and ill-treatment in the West Bank. Israel must break with its recent lamentable track record in holding wrongdoers accountable, not only as a means to secure justice for victims but also to ensure the necessary guarantees for non-repetition.

671. Questions arise regarding the role of senior officials who set military policy in several areas examined by the commission, such as in the attacks of the Israel Defense Forces on residential buildings; the use of artillery and other explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas; the destruction of entire neighbourhoods in Gaza; and the regular resort to live ammunition by the Israel Defense Forces, notably in crowd-control situations, in the West Bank. In many cases, individual soldiers may have been following agreed military policy, but it may be that the policy itself violates the laws of war.

672. The commission’s investigations also raise the issue of why the Israeli authorities failed to revise their policies in Gaza and the West Bank during the period under review by the commission. Indeed, the fact that the political and military leadership did not change its course of action, despite considerable information regarding the massive degree of death and destruction in Gaza, raises questions about potential violations of international humanitarian law by these officials, which may amount to war crimes. Current accountability mechanisms may not be adequate to address this issue.

These conclusions simply ignore the fact that the determination of whether an army violates the principles of proportionality (too much firepower) and distinction (not distinguishing between military and civilian targets) rely in the end on how a reasonable military commander can act given the information available at the time on the battlefield, not with the luxury of hindsight.

The report slams Hamas and the PA as well, but is also reluctant to make too many categorical statements against them. For example:

673. With regard to Palestinian armed groups, the commission has serious concerns with regard to the inherently indiscriminate nature of most of the projectiles directed towards Israel by these groups and to the targeting of Israeli civilians, which violate international humanitarian law and may amount to a war crime. The increased level of fear among Israeli civilians resulting from the use of tunnels was palpable. The commission also condemns the extrajudicial executions of alleged “collaborators”, which amount to a war crime.

There are more recommendations for Israel than for its enemies, again to be expected. Many of them are for Israel to improve its own internal mechanisms for investigations, which isn't a bad thing and something that Israel generally does anyway. It also recommends that Israel accept the Rome Statute which was deliberately written to be anti-Israel.

Altogether, the report is no Goldstone but it is hardly as objective as it pretends to be.

"Ally," Michael Oren's new book in the headlines, is not the book you expect it to be.

Especially if you have been reading Michael Oren's daily articles to promote his book - most notably his article in the Wall Street Journal last week, that began:

‘Nobody has a monopoly on making mistakes.” When I was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to the end of 2013, that was my standard response to reporters asking who bore the greatest responsibility—President Barack Obama or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.

I never felt like I was lying when I said it. But, in truth, while neither leader monopolized mistakes, only one leader made them deliberately.

I read his book with this sentence in mind. How did he back up his statement? I'd like to know the inside story of how President Obama purposefully distanced himself from supporting Israel.

Oren mentions plenty of events that showed that President Obama wanted to kowtow to the Muslim world. He mentions that Obama chose to call Mahmoud Abbas before then prime minister Ehud Olmert upon entering office. He talked about how Obama's much heralded speech in Cairo tied Israel to the Holocaust rather than thousands of years of history in the land, and then chose not to visit Israel but went to Buchenwald instead as if to underscore the point. He talks about how Obama ignored the Bush/Sharon letter of understanding that Israel would hold onto major settlement blocs and instead steamrolled his way to declaring that the "1967 lines" were the basis for negotiations - and how that emboldened the Palestinian negotiators to be more intransigent and less likely to seek a negotiated agreement. But none of this is a smoking gun. On the contrary, Oren describes Obama's later speeches to AIPAC and his later visit to Israel in glowing terms, filled with optimism that Obama had finally understood what had eluded him about Israel in his early years in office - and that he had something to do with it.

Then, in the last chapter, with Oren leaving his position, things turn for the worse again. Netanyahu speaks in front of Congress and Iran fools American negotiators. Without Oren, we are led to believe, things are going to pot again.

In fact, and I hate to say this, "Ally" is not so much a description of how Obama betrayed the US-Israel relationship as much as how Michael Oren has transformed from an esteemed historian who is scrupulous in his dedication to truth...to a diplomat who reluctantly understands that he sometimes has to bend the truth...to a politician who disregards the truth to reach his goals...to a salesman trying to pump up his book to a potential audience by deceiving the public as to what the book is about.

I am profoundly disappointed.

A small anecdote towards the end of the book, when Oren has decided to run for Knesset in the Kulanu party, is what disillusioned me most. He talks about Netanyahu's supposedly racist rant on the day of the election - and takes it at face value, so much so that he says he was proud that his party denounced it. Even though, he says, he had never heard Bibi say anything that could be construed as prejudiced in the slightest.

Oren, the former historian, and who only a few months earlier would have checked out the context and defended Bibi, had turned into a politician who didn't even bother to read the other Facebook posts that were written that day on Netanyahu's page that explained what he meant, and that were more consistent with the Bibi that Oren knew so well.

But now he was Michael Oren, politician and rival to the Likud, so his former dedication to the truth became a casualty to politics.

The bulk of the book, of course, describes Oren's experiences as ambassador, and the difficulty of the job (and it is indeed a superhuman position.) Oren is self-deprecating and it is mostly an enjoyable read. While the best anecdotes have already been published in the media, there are still some choice stories. Oren knows he has to mention his family to make it more personal but he generally keeps their stories at arm's length, even though his wife suffered both breast cancer and a burst appendix while he was ambassador.

What about his insights into Obama? He certainly believes that Obama is naive about the Middle East. He even quotes, ironically, three separate Obama speeches where the president said "I'm not naive."

In fact, the best way to describe the impression that Oren has of President Obama's views of Israel comes from a more recent statement of Obama himself, speaking to Jeffrey Goldberg:

And I care deeply about preserving that Jewish democracy, because when I think about how I came to know Israel, it was based on images of … kibbutzim, and Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir, and the sense that not only are we creating a safe Jewish homeland, but also we are remaking the world. We’re repairing it. We are going to do it the right way.

This is like saying that Americans are nostalgic for the version of America shown on Ozzie and Harriet. An idealized world where black people could only hope to get jobs as Pullman porters, where women who went to work were considered a little abnormal, where mental health issues were causes of great shame. Wasn't that great?

Israel in the 1950s and 1960s is no less idealized, and was no less flawed. It was a nation with a second class Sephardic community. It was also a time when Israel's Arab population were indeed discriminated against by law (until 1966, they were under martial law.) Moshe Dayan happily stole priceless archaeological treasures. And, of course, Israel was under constant threat to its very existence.

Nostalgia for the Israel of yesteryear reflects nothing less than sheer naivete - a naivete that much of the liberal Jewish population in America seems to share today.

This is the best description I can give for how Michael Oren thinks of Obama in this book, quite a difference from how he described him last week in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. The book most emphatically says that Obama is not anti-Israel, especially the Obama towards the end of Oren's time as ambassador. Oren describes an Obama who didn't hesitate to help his idealized Israel in danger - from the raging Carmel forest fire or the crisis in the Egyptian embassy. But Obama would not show interest in the real Israel - the Israel that voted for Netanyahu so many times.

Oren himself notes early on that Obama's positive gestures towards Israel were received as "chibbuk," a hug that was not meant to show affection but was rather meant to immobilize. That explains the money Obama throws at Israel for defense as well as the leaks from the White House on Israel bombing Syria - the administration spent more energy in blocking an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities than it did on stopping Iran from getting a bomb.

In the end, extreme naivete is arguably just as dangerous as malice, especially when coupled with egoism. I don't see Obama having learned anything from his years in office concerning Israel except for optics (he no longer ties Israel to the Holocaust in speeches, for example.)

Oren's book does have value. Although he is more centrist than Netanyahu he offers a pretty good defense for Israel keeping settlement blocs, and he describes countless examples of how he defended Israel from clueless media and other diplomats. He offers a rare glimpse into the world of diplomacy which is certainly valuable. But it is still a disappointment to me.

Wikileaks memo shows quid pro quo between Saudis and Russia on UNHRC

From Wikileaks, one of the new Saudi cables released this weekend:

The UNHRC ounds like a really ethical organization, doesn't it?

UN Watch has lots <a href="http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2015/06/21/leaked-cables-saudi-arabia-russia-traded-votes-for-unhrc-seats/">more. </a>

(h/t Hillel Neuer)

How Jews are portrayed in Ramadan miniseries "Jewish Quarter"

From episode 3 of Egyptian Ramadan miniseries "Jewish Quarter":

The prayers and blessings sound about 60% gibberish.

06/21 Links: Who was Danny Ganon?; Border policeman stabbed outside Jerusalem’s Old City

From Ian:

Who was Danny Ganon?

Such is the routine we have fallen into in the Holy Land. The media were all over this latest terror attack. They reported what happened and a couple of sound bite heavy statements made by politicians.
But they said little about Danny.
I didn’t know Danny. The first I heard of him was when his life was taken so cruelly.
I know he was from Lod, one of five brothers. His uncle was reported as saying the following about him:
Danny was the best kid in the world. A flower. He was the family’s support column,”
I’d like to know more about him. I’d like to know more than how he died. I’d like to know how he lived.
It’s too easy for a life lost to become a statistic. Israel has lost over two dozen sons and daughters to terror in the last year alone. Who were they? What were their dreams and aspirations? What did their world look like? Who loved them, who did they love? What did they love?
We should do more to talk about the way victims of terror lived and not just about the way they died.

Israeli killed in West Bank shooting attack laid to rest

About one thousand people were attendance when Gonen was laid to rest, among them a friend of his, Netanel Hadad, who was wounded in the attack.
In her eulogy, his mother, Devora Gonen, praised her son’s integrity and his love of the land.
“Danny, my dear, beloved son,” she said. “I cannot believe that we’re standing here now and talking about you in the past tense. You were a source of immense pride for me, a pillar to your brother and sisters. You were a devoted son to me, and when I needed it, a friend too. And you supported me in everything. You lived your life as a free Jew in your country. You loved the land and you loved the truth. The truth was your banner and you lived by it.”
Gonen, 25, was an electrical engineering student and the eldest of five siblings.

Murdered Hiker's Mother Rejects Fear Mongering

Devorah Gonen, the mother of slain 25 year-old hiker Danny Gonen who was murdered in cold blood on Friday, has rejected all statements calling to avoid the region where her son was killed.
"This is the land of Israel - what do I have to fear?" Gonen's mother said in an interview with Army Radio. "We should not be afraid, those who need to be afraid are those who will be taken care of by security forces and the people."
Gonen had been hiking in the Dolev area, in Judea and Samaria - but Devorah insisted that last Friday was the same as any other Friday hike.
"So this Friday it was in Dolev - last Friday he hiked in place A and the Friday before that in place B," she said.
"Does that mean I have to be afraid living in Lod, as well as afraid visiting my in-laws in Beit El? No, we have nothing to be afraid of."

Danny Gonen’s Family to Donate Organs

The family of terror victim Danny Gonen who was murdered on Friday afternoon by Arab terrorists near Dolev — has donated some of his organs for transplant recipients in Israel.
Gonen had signed the “ADI” organ donation card (which also allows for transplant after coordination with a religious authority) and his family complied with his wishes for his organs to be donated.
May his memory be a blessing… and may G-d avenge his death.