Friday, September 25, 2009

Goldstone Report inaccuracies, part 15 (updated)

The Goldstone Report pretends to investigate whether Hamas used Gazans as human shields. As it does so, it bends over backwards to give the impression that Hamas is innocent even as the evidence it brings shows the opposite.

Goldstone starts off with the issue with allegations that Hamas forced civilians to act as human shields. Paragraph 473 states, not surprisingly, that none of the Gaza witnesses they called to testify claimed that Hamas forced them to stay in areas from where Hamas was attacking. Para. 474 mentions a 2007 incident where Hamas calls on civilians to voluntarily protect an area that israel was planning to bomb, but notes that this didn't occur during the war. Para. 475 mentions a video on YouTube where Hamas brags that Gazan women, children and the elderly act to protect areas from Israeli attack.

The report calls this "morally repugnant" but says it does not show that Hamas forced civilians to act as shields. (Interestingly, even though the video is crystal clear, Goldstone writes that "Mr. Hammad reportedly stated that...", the qualifier an indication of how the Goldstone report consistently valued evidence against Israel more than evidence against Hamas.)

At this point the impression that one gets from Goldstone is that the definition of human shields is where a group of civilians are forced to act to protect a military objective, and the report writes (accurately) that based on what they had seen, there was no evidence that this occurred. Of course, there is at least one video that indicates that Hamas did try to force civilians to act as human shields, but it is not clear that Goldstone was aware of it:

In addition, there are the published reports in Arab media from January that Goldstone should have been aware of, saying that Hamas did force the Abd Rabbo family to stay where they were so that rockets could be fired from their neighborhood:

The Abd Rabbo family kept quiet while Hamas fighters turned their farm in the Gaza strip into a fortress. Right now they are waiting for the aid promised by the [Hamas] movement after Israel bombed the farm and turned it into ruins...
The hill on which the Abd Rabbo family lives overlooks the Israeli town Sderot, a fact that turned it into an ideal military position for the Palestinian fighters, from which they have launched hundreds of rockets into southern Israel during the last few years. Several of the Abd Rabbo family members described how the fighters dug tunnels under their houses, stored arms in the fields and launched rockets from the yard of their farm during the nights.
The Abd Rabbo family members emphasize that they are not [Hamas] activists and that they are still loyal to the Fatah movement, but that they were unable to prevent the armed squads from entering their neighborhood at night. One family member, Hadi (age 22) said: "You can't say anything to the resistance [fighters], or they will accuse you of collaborating [with Israel] and shoot you in the legs."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 27, 2009]

The next section of Goldstone talks about militants mingling with the civilian population in order to shield them from attack. Incredibly, Goldstone writes (para. 477) that "only one of the incidents it investigated clearly involved the presence of Palestinian combatants" - because that was the only incident where the Palestinian Arab combatants were wearing fatigues! Goldstone goes on to admit that there are reports that militants did abandon wearing military uniforms, but goes on to quote an NGO that "there is no evidence that they did so with the intent of shielding themselves" (para. 478.)

What other explanation could there be? Goldstone doesn't even hazard a guess.

Goldstone continues in his attempt to find ways to explain clear Hamas actions in ways that exonerate the group:

480. On the basis of the information it gathered, the Mission finds that there are indications that Palestinian armed groups launched rockets from urban areas. The Mission has not been able to obtain any direct evidence that this was done with the specific intent of shielding the rocket launchers from counterstrokes by the Israeli armed forces. The Mission also notes, however, that Palestinian armed groups do not appear to have given Gaza residents sufficient warning of their intention to launch rockets from their neighbourhoods to allow them to leave and protect themselves against Israeli strikes at the rocket launching sites. The Mission notes that, in any event, given the densely populated character of the northern half of the Gaza Strip, once Israeli forces gained control of the more open or outlying areas during the first days of the ground invasion, most -- if not all -- locations still accessible to Palestinian armed groups were in urban areas.

The bar that Goldstone creates of determining "specific intent" is much higher for Hamas than for the IDF, which it declares multiple times "deliberately" targeted civilians.

And notice how Goldstone excuses Hamas' using civilian neighborhoods, claiming that Hamas had no choice - as if there were no rocket attacks from civilian neighborhoods before the Israeli ground invasion. Again, Goldstone is doing everything possible to exonerate Hamas from war crimes.

The same logic continues on in para. 481:

While reports reviewed by the Mission credibly indicate that members of Palestinian armed groups were not always dressed in a way that distinguished them from civilians, the Mission found no evidence that Palestinian combatants mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack.

Finally, ten paragraphs later, Goldstone talks about the legal definition of human shields:

491. The Mission finds it useful to clarify what is meant, from a legal perspective, by using civilians or a civilian population as a human shield. Parties to a conflict are not permitted to use a civilian population or individual civilians in order to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. It is not in dispute that both Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces were fighting within an area populated by civilians. Fighting within civilian areas is not, by itself, sufficient for a finding that a party is using the civilian population living in the area of the fighting as a human shield. As the words of article 57 (1) show (“shall not be used to render”, “in order to attempt to shield”), an intention to use the civilian population in order to shield an area from military attack is required.

Even though Goldstone started off the discussion as to whether Hamas forced civilians to stay in areas of fighting, at this point - 18 paragraphs later - he mentions that the legal requirement has nothing to do with someone being forced to act that way. The video of Hamas' "Mr. Hammad" that says explicitly that Gaza civilians were used to shield militants from attack is very relevant now, but Goldstone dismissed it above in context of whether civilians were forced to act that way - which is irrelevant for the purposes of this law.

In fact, there is video evidence that backs up Hammad's claims:

In other words, Goldstone organized the report structure itself in a way to make Hamas look as innocent as possible. Had he started off with the legal definition of human shield and then referred to the video above, the evidence is overwhelming that Hamas encourages this blatantly illegal action.

Yet in the very next paragraph, Goldstone goes back to his implied initial definition: 492. From the information available to it, the Mission found no evidence to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks.But there is abundant evidence that they located their rockets in civilian areas to shield themselves from retaliation, which is the legal standard!

As to the bigger question of whether Goldstone had material available to it which would have indicated that Hamas purposefully located rockets and mortars from residential neighborhoods, this video from ITN shown on CNN makes that very clear:

Not to mention published reports in Arab media of Hamas using people as human shields.

On this topic, where the truth is as clear as can be based on hard evidence, Goldstone twists the facts to try to make Hamas seem as innocent as he can. The difference between what he considers compelling evidence to accuse Hamas of war crimes and what he accepts vis a vis Israel's alleged war crimes could not be starker.

(UPDATE: Made some things a little clearer and added links to the Abed Rabbo human shield story.)

Glow-in-the-dark gefilte fish!

From TheJC (h/t Vicious Babushka):

Student Jessica Taylor was shocked to see her late-night gefilte fish snack light up the kitchen of her north London family home by glowing bright green and yellow. Her mother had bought the Hoffman’s product the previous day at Moshe’s Deli in Temple Fortune.

Joff Taylor, Jessica’s father, said: “My daughter came home at two or three in the morning and was starving. She did not put on the kitchen light, took out the fish and closed the fridge.

“The fish was glowing very brightly so she took it out of the pack and held it in her hands. When she put it down, her hands were glowing.”

Suspicious of Jessica’s claim, Mr Taylor and his wife asked her to recreate the scene the following evening. “We turned off the lights and she brought the fish out. We all stood there amazed. It was brighter than a glow-stick.”

The Taylors opted not to eat the fluorescent fish, which was not beyond its use-by date, and threw it away.

A Moshe’s spokesman said: “Sometimes the fish eat some phosphorus and it glows. It’s good for you. We’re not the manufacturer, we just sell it.” Geeta Cohli, a consultant to Hoffman’s Foods, said the company had received no complaints from customers. “The family should have kept the fish as evidence. We would have done some tests. I’m a qualified micro-biologist and I have never heard of this. I think it was an act of God.”

A Food Standards Agency spokeswoman attributed the glowing fish to luminescent bacteria which occur naturally in sea water. “Most luminescent bacteria are harmless but their presence may indicate that other, harmful bacteria are also present through cross-contamination with other uncooked products. We would advise that the fish should not be consumed.”

This of course helps fulfill the Biblical verse in Esther 8:16:

ליהודים היתה אורה

Today's PalArab news (9/25/09)

The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation has put out this week's warnings about Jewish plans to "storm" the Temple Mount, saying that Israeli explosives experts visited the site on Thursday, that Jews are planning to "storm" the Mount on Sunday ahead of Yom Kippur, that 130 have "stormed" it this week, that Jews are having lectures about the Third Temple, and that Jews are praying for the destruction of the "Al-Aqsa" mosque. They claim that this is all on the website of the Temple Mount Faithful movement, although it hasn't been updated in months.

Al Quds reports about a book written last year by Nina Burleigh about people who fake biblical archaeological artifacts in Israel. Al Quds is claiming that this proves that every archaeological find that indicates that there was ever a Temple in Israel is fake. (I wonder who faked the Kotel?)

One more killed in a smuggling tunnel collapse.

86 PalArab kids were injured, some 24 seriously, during 'Eid celebrations by firecrackers and BB guns they received for the holiday.

A conspiracy theorist called Jane Burgermeister has a bunch of theories about how the world's bankers have concocted swine flu in order to get everyone under their control. Although she doesn't say it explicitly, Arab media (starting in Algeria) is interpreting this as proof that Jews are behind the flu pandemic.

In the "well, this was inevitable" department, every birth defect in Gaza over the past nine months is being blamed on Israeli weaponry during Operation Cast Lead.

A Saudi fatwa allows girls to restore their hymens in order to save themselves from possible "honor killings" right after they are married.

(h/t Mustafa)

UNRWA decries the crisis it perpetuates

Unreal:

No current world refugee crisis has gone unresolved longer than the Palestinian exodus, said the UN Relief and Works Agency's commissioner-general, Karen Abu Zayd, in New York on Thursday.

"The Palestinians make up the world's largest refugee group, and their plight has gone on longer than any other," the AP quoted Abu Zayd as saying during an event marking 60 years since UNRWA was established.

The UN's relief agency for Palestine refugees was founded in 1949, although its original mandate was temporary. Now deeply interwoven within Palestinian society itself, it still provides essential services to millions of refugees in camps throughout the Middle East.

"The protracted exile of Palestine refugees and the dire conditions they endure, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territory, cannot be reconciled with state obligations under the UN charter," Abu Zayd added at the UN General Assembly meeting.

What Abu Zayd didn't bother mentioning is some other salient facts about Palestinian Arab "refugees" that make them so unique.

Like, for example, they are the only "refugees" in the history of the planet whose children and grandchildren are also considered refugees, in perpetuity.

They are the only "refugee" group whose numbers continue to go up year after year.

They are the only "refugee" group that is guaranteed to continue to grow forever.

And they are the only "refugee" group to have a UN agency dedicated only to them. All the other world refugees have to share a different UN agency.

All of these facts, ensuring that Palestinian Arab "refugees" remain stateless until Israel is destroyed, have their source in the very agency that is now crying about their endless plight. It is UNRWA which uniquely defines all descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees as being refugees themselves. All other children of refugees become citizens of the countries they are born in, but not so for Palestinian arab refugees. No, they remain stateless, in a limbo enforced by law in the Arab world where every Arab can become a naturalized citizen of any other Arab country - except for Palestinian Arabs.

UNRWA doesn't try to fix this problem, of course. As the article states, UNRWA is now a part of Palestinian Arab culture, providing them with free schools and housing that surpass those of other Arab states. And generations of Arabs whose ancestors happened to live in Palestine in 1947 now feel that these benefits are rightfully theirs. UNRWA has raised generations of whining welfare cases, who grow up to hate not the Arabs who leave them in misery, not UNRWA which perpetuates it, but...Israel.

Notice also how Abu Zayd says that Palestinian Arab "refugees" in the territories somehow have worse lives than those who live in Arab nations. This is an absolute lie. The ones in Lebanon are in much worse shape, both because of governmental discrimination that limits their ability to take certain jobs and own land, as well as because of the fact that these UNRWA camps have turned into terrorist training camps (witness the mini-war that happened last year at Nahr el-Bared, displacing 27,000 people.) Even UNRWA says on their website that "The Lebanon Field has the highest percentage of Palestine refugees who are living in abject poverty and who are registered with the Agency's 'special hardship' programme" ...but you will never hear Karen Abu Zayd say that to the press!

There is another important fact about UNRWA camps that Abu Zayd will never tell the media. In the aftermath of the 1948 war, Israel ended up with some 48,000 refugees, of whom 31,000 were Arab. UNRWA helped the young state with its Arab refugees, but by 1952, Israel informed UNRWA that their services would no longer be needed, and that Israel considered the idea taking handouts for its Jewish and Arab citizens to be "repugnant," as the UN described it.

Today, those 31,000 refugees would have been considered hundreds of thousands of "refugees" by UNRWA's definition. Instead, they are citizens of Israel. Their "brethren," in contrast, are not citizens of any country, because the Arab nations refused to naturalize them (with the exception of Jordan and a very small amount in Lebanon.) The stark contrast between how Arabs treat their refugees and how the Jews treat theirs in more recent times can be seen here.

These facts are not things that UNRWA proudly mentions in their history. Neither does UNRWA mention what happened back in the 1950s, when it actually tried to resettle PalArabs in Arab lands and was rebuffed by the Arab League. UNRWA doesn't mention when Israel tried to build permanent housing for Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to get them out of the miserable camps - and the UN castigated Israel for such a horrendous act:

No, these facts are not being mentioned in UNRWA's celebrations of 60 years of prolonging the misery of millions of people. Only the ones that they claim make Israel look bad.

A fantastic article that I reproduced about UNRWA in the early days of the blog, by Arlene Kushner, can be seen here.

thursday open thread

I'm away from my trusty computer much of the day, so here's an open thread. Have fun.

Hosny, Egyptians blame Jews for losing UNESCO election

From AP:

Egypt's culture minister on Wednesday blamed a conspiracy "cooked up in New York" by the world's Jews for keeping him from becoming the next head of the U.N.'s agency for culture and education.
Farouk Hosny was defeated on Tuesday by Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova in a tight race for the position of UNESCO chair.
"It was clear by the end of the competition that there was a conspiracy against me," Hosny told reporters at the airport upon his return from Paris.
"There are a group of the world's Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position," he said.
Hosny's candidacy raised an outcry because of a threat he made in the Egyptian parliament last year to personally burn any Israeli book he found in Egypt's famed Library of Alexandria. While he later apologized and Israel said it had withdrawn its opposition to his candidacy, several prominent Jewish activists spoke out against him in the runup to the vote.
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann wrote a protest letter listing comments they took issue with, including Hosni's 2001 description of Israeli culture as "inhumane" and "racist."
Opposition came from other quarters as well. International human rights activists, as well as some Egyptian artists and intellectuals, expressed concerns over his role in the Egyptian government's restrictions on freedom of expression.
The tight UNESCO race was closely watched, with a flurry of secretive diplomatic efforts between each round.
While Hosni was cited as a favorite for months before the election, Bokova gained ground at the last minute as other candidates dropped out, partly amid attempts to consolidate support for a strong challenger to the Egyptian candidate.

Sounds like he would have been an appropriate representative of the UN!

The Egyptian press also all agreed that the evil Jews pulled the strings:

In a long rant in the state-run Al-Gomhuria, Mohamed Abu Kraisha begins by describing the Jewish love of “bargaining” and the fact that “they want everything brought to them, like ‘home delivery.’”
Abu Kraisha then goes on to say that “Israel, ruled by the Jewish nature since the time of Moussa [Moses], is never patient for one meal, even if it is a strategic choice. It wants more meals, and more Arab concessions, and more negotiations to amuse itself with, and more dancing of Arab monkeys on tables.”
“Israel will never give up it’s strategy, which is war and aggression towards Arabs…It is for this reason that they waged war against the Arabs in UNESCO, and fought viciously in order to bring down the Arabs’ candidate, Farouk Hosni.”
Writing in Al-Ahram Ahmed Moussa laments the fact that “some people in Egypt stood against Hosni and attacked and criticized him. In so doing they lent support to the Israeli and American positions.”
The US, Moussa says, rallied “all its forces” against Hosni “with the support of the Jewish lobby.”
Moussa also criticizes Egyptians who did not support Hosni’s UNESCO bid.
He asks, “why is there a group of people living side by side with us in our nation who have no sense of loyalty to the country and its people, and who are in alliance with the Americans and the Jews? Are these people really Egyptian?”

It's nice to see that Abu Kraisha agrees that Israel has been a Jewish nation since Biblical times.

Iranian religious police get turned on by mannequins

Maktoob reports:

Iran police have banned the display of women's underwear in shop windows across the Islamic republic, Tehran dailies said on Wednesday.
There have been reports of the use of inappropriate and shocking mannequins in shop windows in a bid to draw in customers, which has been the source of public dissatisfaction," the Arman newspaper quoted a police statement as saying.

The statement said it was an offence to "display women's underwear in shop windows".

The police also took issue with displays of "Western brands of clothing, immoral photographs or ties and bow-ties, and the use of manneqins with a revealing body shape or with the head and face on show without a headscarf".

The statement also barred male shop assistants from selling women's lingerie.

One can imagine the kinds of art in Iranian museums (from Iran Politics Club)

Ahmadinejad has me pegged

Part of Ahmadinejad's rambling speech at the UN contained this gem, aimed squarely at yours truly:

It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery, and harm the reputation of other nations, even European nations and the U.S., to attain its racist ambitions.

Of course, 'Mad-e-jad knew about me a couple of years ago. But since then I have graduated from merely trying to stop him from attending soccer games to enslaving the entire world through my complicated networks.

Well, the Internet is pretty complex.

Crashed Iranian jet was an AWACS

It turns out that the Iranian plane lost during a military show was not just an ordinary plane....

From Defense News:

TEHRAN - Iran's sole Simorgh AWACS aircraft was lost during a military parade Sept. 22, one of two Iranian military aircraft that crashed in Tehran while participating in a display to mark the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force operated a single Simorgh, a former Iraqi Air Force Adnan. The Adnan AWACS was in turn a modification of a Soviet-built Ilyushin Il-76 transport.

The Simorgh collided with one of the Air Force's Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighters over the area of the Imam Khomeyni Shrine, southern Tehran. According to eyewitnesses, the crash occurred immediately after the parade. Apparently, no mayday call was issued.

Both aircraft crashed in flames. Initial reports indicate that seven crewmembers were killed in the crash.

In total, Iraq built three AWACS aircraft, one Baghdad, and two Baghdad-2s, the latter later renamed Adnans. One Adnan and the Baghdad were evacuated to Iran during the 1991 Gulf War, while the second Adnan was destroyed on the ground by a coalition air strike in January 1991.

The exact status of the Iranian Simorgh and its onboard systems was long uncertain. However, photographs suggest that the aircraft was equipped with a newly fitted functioning radar suite.

I like how it gets destroyed on top of Ayatollah Khomeini's shrine. Nice poetic touch. Kudos to whoever - or Whoever - is responsible.

(h/t Israel Matzav)

Goldstone report inaccuracies, part 14

One of the most-exaggerated events of the Gaza war was the accusation that Israel had bombed an UNRWA school, killing some 46 people according to some reports.

As time went on, it became clear that the school itself was not hit except from shrapnel, and that the numbers claimed to have been killed were vastly exaggerated.

The Goldstone report, however, claims that 24 were killed near the school - in multiple paragraphs:

41. The Mission examined the mortar shelling of al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to a UNRWA school which at the time was used as a shelter housing more than 1,300 people (Chapter X). The Israeli forces launched at least four mortar shells. One landed in the courtyard of a family home, killing eleven people assembled there. Three other shells landed on al-Fakhura Street, killing at least a further 24 people and injuring as many as 40.

687. Three other shells landed on al-Fakhura Street, which was busy at the time, killing at least a further 24 people and injuring as many as 40.

In a few other paragraphs it refers to at least 35 people killed both near the Fakhoura school and the al-Deeb family (which indeed appears to have been a tragic accident.)

The question is, how did Goldstone get the idea that 24 were killed on al-Fakhoura Street?

The answer is here:

661. The three other shells that the Mission could identify as having landed at different places on al-Fakhura Street killed at least 24 people. The witnesses estimate that up to another 40 were injured by the blasts. The Mission has not been able to verify those figures, but having inspected the site and viewed the footage, it does not consider these numbers to be exaggerated.

In other words, the Goldstone Commission did not even attempt to enumerate the people allegedly killed on al-Fakhoura street, taking Palestinian Arab witnesses at their word!

How could the esteemed Commission have verified these numbers? Well, for one thing, they could have simply looked at the PCHR report of those killed in Gaza and counted the number of people said to have been killed near the al-Fakoura school.

PCHR uses two different characterizations of those killed in the area. The al-Deeb family is invariably described as living "Opposite to al-Fakhoura School/ Jabalia Refugee Camp/ Northern Gaza" and of being killed simply in "Jabalia Refugee Camp/ Northern
Gaza." The others seem to always be described as either having lived or having been killed "Near al-Fakhoura School/ Jabalia Refugee Camp/Northern Gaza."

There are only 12 people who are described that way.

They include:

#783 Belal Hamza Ali ‘Ubeid (17 years old) Member of al-Qassam Brigades
#771 ‘Ateya Hassan Mustafa al-Madhoun DFLP National Resistance Brigades
#773 Zeyad ‘Ateya Hassan al-Madhoun DFLP National Resistance Brigades

It is possible that PCHR was not consistent in its definitions, but this maps with the number of victims that the IDF claimed to have been killed outside the school.

The IDF and the JCPA list different victims for the school than PCHR does, and it is possible that there were more victims. However, it seems to be unlikely to be too many more. The Goldstone Commission claims that there were three mortars in the area, and generally mortars do not kill that many people.

JCPA says that other terrorist victims include:

Khaled Mohammed Fuoad Abu Askar (Abu al-‘Izz), an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative, was born on December 12, 1989, in Jabaliya. At the age of 15 he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and was active in the Hamas student organization, which serves as a recruiting agency for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. In 2006 he was accepted into fighting groups posted in front-line positions. He underwent an advanced military training course and was posted to a special unit of the north Gaza battalion where he participated in dozens of ambushes and fought against IDF forces. He served as a military instructor in the Imad Aqel battalion and supervised the ambush and suicide unit.
Raafat Abu Askar, a military-terrorist operative in the security services with the rank of warrant officer, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.
Osama Jemal Obeid, an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.¹⁷
Iyad Jaber Aman, an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operative, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.¹⁸
Abd Muhammad Abd Qudas, a Fatah operative active in Palestinian Military Intelligence, killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.¹⁹
Atia Hassan al-Madhoun and his son, Ziyad al-Madhoun, operatives in the Brigades of National Resistance, the military-terrorist wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Atia was regional commander for Jabaliya. The two were the father and brother of Hassan al-Madhoun, one of the senior commanders of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who was lynched by Hamas in the summer of 2006. The two were killed in the attack near the Al-Fakhura school.²⁰

If we accept the PCHR placement of victims, then 3 out of 12 victims were terrorists. If we accept JCPA's list, then some 10 terrorists out of (let's use Goldstone's) 24 people were killed. Either way, the number of terrorists killed is not consistent with the characterization that Goldstone gives; in fact Goldstone does not admit that any terrorists were killed in the incident at all.

Goldstone admits that there were some reports that there was mortar firing from Gaza militants, bringing two news reports from AP and British Channel 4 in footnotes (391), and also mentions that nine witnesses deny any firing from the area (para. 672.) Goldstone does not use this inconsistency to indicate that witnesses may be unreliable; instead the report says "the Mission accepts, for the purposes of this report, that some firing may have occurred that gave rise to the Israeli armed forces’ response."

Godlstone spends a bit of time pointing out inconsistencies between the initial Israeli reaction to the attack and subsequent reports. In fact, Goldstone uses these inconsistencies as proof that the Israeli version of events is not reliable. There indeed were inconsistencies between israel's initial reaction to the flawed reports of up to 50 victims in the school and the final report issued months later. However, there were also inconsistencies between how the UN initially characterized the attacks (saying over 40 were killed and that the school itself was attacked) and how it changed its tune afterwards, yet Goldstone does not question the UN witnesses' veracity in the face of these inconsistencies.

Even worse, one of the witnesses that Goldstone relies on heavily is Muhammed Fouad Abu Askar, whom it admits is a Hamas member in the footnotes (para 652) and whose son was a member of the al-Qassam Brigades (PCHR #782.)

Another relevant fact that Goldstone ignores was mentioned in the IDF report, footnote 263:

The IDF internal investigation provided important context for this incident. It revealed that Hamas often used 120mm mortars to attack Israeli towns and villages near the border of Gaza. Hamas terrorists had acquired significant expertise with these weapons and improved the accuracy of their technique; this tactic was central to Hamas‘ method of fighting the IDF in urban areas. Hamas‘ use of 120mm mortars posed a serious threat to IDF ground forces. Only a day before the incident in question, Hamas mortar fire had injured 30 IDF soldiers.

Goldstone describes the legal issues this way:

42. In drawing its legal conclusions on the attack against al-Fakhura junction, the Mission recognizes that for all armies proportionality decisions, weighing the military advantage to be gained against the risk of killing civilians, will present very genuine dilemmas in certain cases. The Mission does not consider this to be such a case. The firing of at least four mortar shells to attempt to kill a small number of specified individuals in a setting where large numbers of civilians were going about their daily business and 1,368 people were sheltering nearby cannot meet the test of what a reasonable commander would have determined to be an acceptable loss of civilian life for the military advantage sought. The Mission considers thus the attack to have been indiscriminate in violation of international law, and to have violated the right to life of the Palestinian civilians killed in these incidents.

In either of the two possible scenarios I mention, where either 3 out of 12 or 10 out of 24 killed were terrorists, it is far from clear that Goldstone's analysis holds water.

Given the facts that al-Qassam and DFLP terrorists were in the area, that mortar fire was coming from that area (according to reporters who interviewed witnesses), that the IDF responded without hitting the school itself, and that IDF return fire did indeed kill a number of terrorists far out of proportion to the report's characterization of a busy street with 150 civilians randomly scattered about (para. 698, using the Hamas witness again as their primary source,) it seems that Goldstone's legal analysis as to the military advantage of IDF returning fire is incorrect.

Moonbat facts

This item by Jeff Gates has been winding its way around the far left "news" sites:

Online reports of a study by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency cast doubt over the survival of Israel beyond the next two decades. Regardless of the validity of the report, with what is now known about the costs in blood and treasure that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has imposed on the U.S., its key ally, Israel could fall within five years.

Gates, a rabid Israel basher, hangs his latest article on this bizarre "report" that he admits he doesn't know the validity of.

So where did these "online reports" originate?

Why, from Iran's PressTV, the same people that just reported on Iran's shooting down a UFO! It was then gleefully picked up by MPACUK . It resurfaced a few days ago here and then Gates wrote his piece.

It is always fun to see how lies spread among the anti-Israel elite.

Iran joins War of the Worlds

From Iran's Press TV (h/t Judeopundit):

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has targeted and downed an unidentified shining object after sighting it over Persian Gulf waters.

"Glowing objects were sighted over the Persian Gulf. IRGC air defense targeted one of the objects successfully, forcing it to plummet and sink in the seas off Boushehr (Province)," said top regional commander, Brigadier Ali Razmjou.

"The three bright objects were detected by our radars when flying over the Persian Gulf Islands of Khark and Khargou," he added, according to a Monday report posted on IRNA.

Brig. Razmjou explained that when the radars indicated that they were not Iranian aircrafts, the IRGC fired at the three objects. He also added that the fallen objects' remains have not been found yet.

The exact time and location of the sighting and downing of the weird aircraft has not been announced.

Which brings up the question: are Martians also part of the arrogant Big Satan/Little Satan Zionist alliance?

They must be! Iran says that they would negotiate with anyone except the Zionist entity, and clearly Iran didn't negotiate with the UFO, so logic dictates that ET is a Zionist!

Hamas upping the ante for Shalit?

Palestine Press Agency and Palestine Today report that Hamas is adding completely new demands to the Shalit negotiations.

The newspapers claim that Hamas has new confidence in its negotiating position, seeing that Germany, Norway, the US and France are involved in talks.

The absurd new demands include the right to have a port in Gaza where Hamas can import all the weapons they want without restrictions, to have Israel release all prisoners with Israeli identity cards as well as a pledge from Israel to never attack Gaza in any way.

I don't know how accurate the anonymous sources that they quote are. However, this report does seem to be consistent with Hamas thinking.

Computer burnout/NY summit open thread

I spend waaaaay too much time in front of keyboards and screens. Here's an open thread to prevent burnout...

For discussion:

"Simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward. It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that's necessary to achieve our goals. Permanent status negotiations must begin and begin soon. And more importantly, we must give those negotiations the opportunity to succeed." - Barack Obama

Is Obama short-circuiting the roadmap?

The Palestinian presidency clarified in a statement that Abbas' acceptance of the U.S. invitation to join the summit at the UN General Assembly "does not mean that the Palestinian leadership accepted the resumption of the peace talks without Israel's freeze of settlement activities."

Face-saving from Abbas.

And the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about...

Haniyeh spoke during a conference titled, "The al-Aqsa Victory." According to the Hamas leader, Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque would be freed by "those holding a gun in one hand and the Koran book in their other hand."

Jonathan Tobin
Noah Pollak
Jennifer Rubin

A Palestinian boy shows his skills as a horse rider in front of a Ferris Wheel at the Al-Bashir amusement park on the outskirts of Gaza City on September 21, 2009 on the second day of Eid al-Fitr.

A Palestinian boy points his toy pistol towards the camera while playing at a recreational event organized by the radical Islamic movement Hamas in a school in Gaza City on September 21, 2009 during the second day of Eid al-Fitr.

High-end Gaza spa doing well

From AFP:

GAZA CITY — High above the pot-holed streets, donkey carts and militant graffiti that have come to define the besieged Gaza Strip sits Rosy, the territory's only spa and a refuge for its unlikely upper crust.
"We have the highest quality services in the region," says Mohammed Faris, who launched the spa with his British wife in 1999.
The spa is a sign of how, despite a two-year blockade maintained by Israel and Egypt, a reasonably well-off minority has found a way to endure amid Gaza's bleak landscape of toxic politics and economic paralysis.
A handful of upscale restaurants and hotels still serve lavish meals and fragrant waterpipes to businessmen, landowners, aid workers, journalists and even the occasional senior Hamas official.
The spa offers a full range of amenities -- a steam room, a sauna, a small gym and a beauty parlour. There used to be a Jacuzzi, but Faris had to drain it in 2006 because he could not import the right filters.
A facial runs from 20 to 75 dollars (15 to 50 euros), a one-hour massage is around 40 dollars and a monthly gym membership is around 35 dollars -- small fortunes in a place where most people make less than 15 dollars a day.
Rosy's client base, like Gaza's middle and upper class as a whole, is largely an outgrowth of the political conflicts gripping the territory.
At the top of the pyramid are the international and local staff of UN agencies, aid organisations and human rights groups, and the journalists who cross in and out through Israel's Erez crossing on a daily basis.
Then there are the civil servants who work for the Hamas-run government -- around 20,000 doctors, teachers and other government workers who get regular monthly wages.
And there are the 70,000 employees of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank who -- because of the internal political rivalry -- are paid to stay home and boycott Hamas.
"When they told us to stop going to work, I had a lot more free time, so I decided to spend some of it on sports," says Dana Khaled, 26, who is employed by the finance ministry, during a recent workout.
It may seem wasteful, but the PA salaries -- mostly funded by international donors -- provide a vital lifeline to Gaza's besieged economy.
"Without those wages they would be dead," Faris says. "It's a little straw in our throats that they use to feed us."

More than half of the PA's budget that comes from Western tax dollars goes to pay Gazans for an extended vacation to enjoy spa treatments and expensive restaurants.

Morning news roundup

Arab humorists in the territories are starting to make fun of the division between Gaza and the West Bank, both in cartoons and on TV. A popular Ramadan program's theme song satirically said "we have spoken of one people, we have spoken of two peoples." A cartoon showed young boys from each area asking how 'Eid is celebrated in the other one.

A bomb exploded in front of a beauty salon in Gaza a couple of days ago.

An Egyptian op-ed ridicules the idea of Egyptian Farouk Hosni as the next head of UNESCO:

His multiple terms as culture minister was also marred by book censorships and an overall decline in the quality of Egypt’s cultural output whether in the world of literature, art or cinema. According to UNESCO statistics, in 1974, Egypt published 1,765 books, which went up to 3,108 in 1993, then down to 2,215 in 1995. A little over 10 years later and the number could not have gone higher by more than just 500 books at the most, which puts Egypt far below Israel for example at 7,414 new titles in 2008, according to the Legal Deposit Department’s Israeli Book Statistics.
In fact, it’s shameful that in 2009 no such information about how many books are published in Egypt annually is available online. If it proves anything, it’s how little attention the culture minister has given the Egyptian General Book Organization.
What small steps achieved in theater, art and cinema have also been the fruit of the great efforts of dedicated individuals like Mohamed El Sawy, who has revolutionized the dynamic of cultural access both for the creative artists and audience through El Sawy Culture Wheel – all with very little help from the ministry. The numerous visual art spaces that have cropped up and gained a devoted following over the past decade or so have also been privately-funded and managed.

Egypt censored some episodes of a Ramadan drama for mentioning things like Viagra and drugs.

Ahmadinejad gave a speech at a military show, saying how Iran would cut off the hands of anyone on the planet who wants to attack Iran before they even squeeze the trigger. He then insisted that Iran's military was purely defensive. And then a plane in the show crashed, which was reported by IRNA before the story disappeared.

Eton's "Middle East" scholarship

Eton College, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in England, offers something called the "Horizon Foundation" scholarship. Here are its criteria:

Eton offers an annual scholarship made possible by the generosity of a benefactor who is funding a Sixth Form Scholarship which is designated to benefit a boy coming from the Middle East, preferably the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Jordan or Syria.

Do you think that any Israelis would have a chance if they applied? Or is the definition of "Middle East" a bit more restrictive than mere geography?

(h/t MM)

Goldstone report inaccuracies, part 13

In two separate but virtually identical paragraphs, the Goldstone Commission report says:

1582. Insofar that movement and access restrictions, the settlements and their infrastructure, demographic policies with regards to Jerusalem and Area C, and the separation of Gaza from the West Bank prevent a viable, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian State from being created, they are in violation of the jus cogens right to self-determination.

1744. Insofar as movement and access restrictions, the settlements and their infrastructure, demographic policies vis-à-vis Jerusalem and Area C of the West bank, as well as the separation of Gaza from the West Bank, prevent a viable, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian state from arising, they are in violation of the ius cogens [sic] right to self-determination.

(Jus cogens means a "higher law" that must be followed by all countries.)

I am not a lawyer and have no legal training. Even so, I believe that this is an astonishing statement from a number of legal perspectives.

First of all, the right of self-determination is defined by the UN in this way:

The two important United Nations studies on the right to self-determination set out factors of a people that give rise to possession of right to self-determination: a history of independence or self-rule in an identifiable territory, a distinct culture, and a will and capability to regain self-governance.

The first factor simply does not exist for Palestinian Arabs. The second is arguable; I believe that a distinct Palestinian Arab culture is a relatively new phenomenon that coincides with (at the earliest) 1948, and that the cultural differences between Palestinian Arabs and other Arabs is no different in scope than the cultural differences that exist within any country. And the third factor is specious, given the history of Palestinian Arab politics from the 1920s up until today. Even if you argue points 2 and 3, point 1 is demonstrably false and therefore the entire idea is wrong.

Even though the UN seems to have redefined "self-determination" in order to accommodate its pet Palestinian project, this does not make these factors automatically disappear.

Secondly, if you accept that there is a people called "Palestinians," the concept of "self-determination" does not automatically mean "the right to a state." The ICJ seems to define this as the right of a people to govern their own affairs free from outside interference - emphatically not statehood, a right that the world community would never accept for fear of every minority suddenly demanding the right of independence.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the UN Charter forbids nations from interfering with the territorial integrity of other nations. The idea that a Gaza and West Bank Palestine must be contiguous necessarily means that Israel's territory would be divided. (A bridge between the two could hardly be considered creating a "contiguous Palestinian state.")

Goldstone is not trying to give legal sanction to a Palestinian Arab state with free passage between two territories; he is not trying to innovate by saying that virtual contiguity via video and computer networks could be an alternative to physical contiguity. He is advocating that Israel cut itself in two and he is trying to say that the rights of Palestinian Arabs trump those of Israelis.

It may be politically incorrect to question Palestinian Arab peoplehood or to muse whether a state is the necessary means to achieve their self-determination. This does not make that opinion factually incorrect. Goldstone's sacrifice of legal definitions to the altar of political correctness is saddening, but not surprising.

However, the idea that somehow Palestinian Arab nationhood can rightfully impact Israeli national rights, as enshrined in the UN itself, is past sloppy interpretation of the law - it is illegal itself.

UPDATE: An email correspondent with real legal credentials told me that the idea that "self determination" falls under jus cogens is laughable.

Goldstone report inaccuracies, part 12 (updated)

The Goldstone report talks about the bombing of the al-Maqadmah mosque on January 3rd:

820. The al-Maqadmah mosque is situated near the north-west outskirts of Jabaliyah camp, close to Beit Lahia. It is located less than 100 metres from the Kamal Idwan hospital, in the al-Alami housing project. At least 15 people were killed and around 40 injured – many seriously – when the Israeli armed forces struck the entrance of the mosque with a missile.

The report goes into some detail that the mosque was indeed bombed by Israel, and the IDF responses to the charges seem to be very inadequate:

829. The Israeli armed forces’ response to the allegations states:
...relating to a strike against the “Maqadme” mosque in Beit-Lahiya on January 3rd, 2009, it was discovered that as opposed to the claims, the mosque was not attacked at all. Furthermore, it was found that the supposed uninvolved civilians who were the casualties of the attack were in fact Hamas operatives killed while fighting against the IDF.

830. Apart from the apparent contradictions it contains, the Mission notes that the statement does not indicate in any way the nature of the inquiry, the source of its information or the reliability and credibility of such sources.

831. In July 2009 the Israeli Government repeated the same position.463

I have no indication that the mosque was not hit by IDF forces, and I have no reason to doubt Goldstone concerning the matter; they appear to have found forensic evidence that indicates it was an Israeli strike rather than a Hamas bomb.

There are a couple of inconsistencies, however. The claim that at least 15 were killed seems to have come from the initial PCHR report of the incident, which lists 12 people killed and claims that three more died in the following days. However, PCHR only lists 11 to have died in the Jabalya refugee camp on January 3rd; and additional 3 died in Beit Lahiya on that date (one of whom was listed in the initial PCHR report), and I found one who died later, so it is possible that 15 were killed if all of the Beit Lahiya victims were in the mosque as well, but the PCHR report indicated that three of them died at a later date and that is not reflected in the final list.

More importantly, Goldstone doesn't bother to point out that 6 of the dead were actually terrorists: (numbers are PCHR list numbers)

458 ‘Umar Abdul Hafez Mousa al-Silawi Al Qassam Brigades
459 Ra’ed Abdul Rahman Mohammed al-Msamha (pictured, unclear of affiliation)
462 Sa’id Salah Sa’id Battah Al Qassam Brigades
478 Muhannad Ibrahim ‘Ata al-Tannani Al Quds Brigades member
484 Ibrahim Mousa Issa al-Silawi Al Qassam Brigades
987 Ahmed Hamed Hassan Abu ‘Eita Al Qassam Brigades

It seems to be very unlikely that 6 of the 15 known dead in a mosque crowded with hundreds of civilians would be terrorists. Either the mosque itself had a hundred terrorists or so, or something else is going on. (Jonathan D. Halevi counts 7 dead terrorists).

Could there have been an attack from the area of the mosque? Could an informant have given the IDF information of the whereabouts of known terrorists? I don't know, and unfortunately the IDF isn't giving out any verifiable information about the incident, but this does not seem to be the "slam-dunk" that Goldstone represents it as.

And where exactly did the blast hit? Apparently, it hit outside the mosque, not inside as Goldstone implies. So it seems more likely that the IDF hit a gathering of terrorists outside the mosque rather than a few hundred worshipers. (h/t Suzanne)

At the very least, these avenues should have been pursued, using any means that Goldstone had at their disposal - the same means I and my team has had to verify the militant status of many civilians. Unfortunately, fairness does not seem to have been a part of the Goldstone mandate, and when the evidence supports the commissions preconceived notions of the truth, they have had little incentive to look beyond the biased testimonies they eagerly accepted.

Testimony from people like the sheikh of the mosque - who happens to share the same last name as two of the Al Qassam Brigades members listed above.

(UPDATE: Added one more I missed. And added about the blast hitting outside the mosque.)

Goldstone report inaccuracies, part 11

While we have already looked at some of Goldstone's inaccuracies concerning the civilian status of Gaza police, the report makes more specific mention of the police killed at the areas they visited in Gaza, mainly the Arafat police compound and the Al-Abbas police station.

435. From the facts available to it, the Mission finds that the deliberate killing of 99 members of the police at the police headquarters and three police stations during the first minutes of the military operations, while they were engaged in civilian tasks inside civilian police facilities, constitutes an attack which failed to strike an acceptable balance between the direct military advantage anticipated (i.e. the killing of those policemen who may have been members of Palestinian armed groups) and the loss of civilian life (i.e. the other policemen killed and members of the public who would inevitably have been present or in the vicinity). The attacks on the Arafat City police headquarters and the Abbas Street police station, al-Tuffah police station and the Deir al-Balah investigative police station constituted disproportionate attacks in violation of customary international humanitarian law.

436. From the facts available to it, the Mission further believes that there has been a violation of the inherent right to life of those members of the police killed in the attacks of 27 December 2007 who were not members of armed groups by depriving them arbitrarily of their life in violation of article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

From the analysis here, Goldstone takes the facts that it was aware of, where the commission believed the Palestinian Arab NGOs as to which policemen were members of terror groups and discounting Israeli sources, and says that given that information, the direct military advantage of killing members of armed groups is not great enough to justify attacking the police stations knowing that many people who were not members of such groups would be killed.

Goldstone is more explicit in the conclusion:

1720. The Mission also concludes that Israel, by deliberately attacking police stations and killing large numbers of policemen (99 in the incidents investigated by the Mission) during the first minutes of the military operations, failed to respect the principle of proportionality between the military advantage anticipated by killing some policemen who might have been members of Palestinian armed groups and the loss of civilian life (the majority of policemen and members of the public present in the police stations or nearby during the attack). Therefore, these were
disproportionate attacks in violation of customary international law. The Mission finds a violation of the right to life (Article 6 ICCPR) of the policemen killed in these attacks who were not members of Palestinian armed groups.

The implication is that if the majority of the 99 policemen killed in these specific attacks were members of armed groups, then Israel may have been justified in those attacks.

Well, guess what? The majority of the policemen they refer to were members of terror groups.

I'm not 100% sure where the number 99 came from, but according to PCHR there were 91 police killed at Arafat Police City and 9 killed at the al-Abbas police station on December 27th. Based on those 100 people, we have evidence that 65 of them were militants, or 65% - nearly two-thirds. Goldstone's flat-out statement that a majority were not members of armed groups is not true.

Beyond that, Goldstone implies that many non-police civilians would have been in the area at the times of attack and therefore Israel should have not attacked for fear of hitting them. It gives no numbers of civilian casualties in those police stations, however. At Arafat Police City, 90 out of the 91 killed were police, and one was a "driver" who was also a member of the al-Qasaam Brigades. So 100% of those killed at that police station were, according to Goldstone's criteria, legitimate targets, as well over half were members of armed groups.

At the al-Abbas police station, 7 of the 9 killed were policemen, and 7 of the 9 killed were members of terror groups. (One "jobless" civilian was a member, one policeman we found no evidence of being a member.)

It is ridiculous to say that group of terrorists who outnumber civilians by nearly 2-1 would be immune from legitimate attack under international law. While Goldstone's earlier analysis was more concerning the roles that the police were playing at the time of the attack, his conclusion seems to imply that if they were known to be members of terror groups then the attack would be legitimate.

Which is exactly the case.

It is worthwhile to mention that the Goldstone report chooses deliberately to concentrate only of specific events that would demonize Israel. Instead of looking at the total numbers of killed and the circumstances, the Commission cherry-picked specific events and looked in more detail at those events. Therefore, they chose the initial Israeli attacks on police stations on December 27th because those attacks appeared to be the most egregious attacks on civilians (in their minds.) Yet even in this case, they are wrong.

Online Monopoly game eliminates Israel

There is an online game called Monopoly City Streets where people apparently claim and trade streets worldwide.

One interesting part of the game, though, makes it very difficult to claim streets in Israel.

Because Israel doesn't exist:

There are streets in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, but Israel (as well as the territories) are a blank slate.

The map data comes from a company called Orion Middle East which shows its coverage area like this:

(The lighter pink areas mean "coming in 2009.")

Israel is apparently not part of what Orion maps, and Monopoly took its Middle East data from Orion, which has offices in Lebanon and the UAE.

Monopoly City Streets FAQ says that the data comes from Google Maps, but Israel is well represented in Google.

At this point it looks like Orion provided the map data and Hasbro took it without looking too carefully. I'm not going to accuse Hasbro of being malicious at this point, but you might want to politely email them or comment on their blog and ask what is going on.

(h/t Daniel)

Shana Tova!

I wish my readers a Shana Tova U'Metuka, a happy and sweet new year!

I will be offline until Sunday night for Rosh Hashanah. K'tiva v'chatimah tovah!

Israeli spoof Scandanavian video a hit

From JPost:

An Israeli satirical video posted on the Internet became a hit in the very countries it criticizes.

The video was produced and posted by latma, a Website criticizing Israeli and international media outlets.

It was produced in the wake of a report by the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet which alleged that the IDF harvests organs of Palestinians killed in conflict for transplant in Israeli patients. The writer of the report has since admitted he had no way of ascertaining its veracity. Israel called the Aftonbladet report a "new blood libel."

Last week, Norway announced its divestment from Elbit, an Israeli Hi Tech manufacturer which is a world leader in the defense industry. Norway announced it would divest from Elbit because of the company's work on the security barrier in the West Bank.

After only two days on the air, the above clip was picked up by the leading newspaper in Sweden, DN.se, and by Swedish and Norwegian bloggers.

The clip has over 10,000 views and 500 comments, and Shlomo Blass, who runs the latma Web site it was initially posted on, said the success is overwhelming.

"We were surprised by how quickly the clip took-off, we must have hit a sensitive nerve," he said.

Many of the some 500 comments on the blog are anti-Israel and there are more than a handful of anti-Semitic and Neo-Nazi comments as well.

It is hilarious, and catchy to boot:

(h/t t34zakat)

The world is looking for a sweet new year

The last 500 hits on my blog included these entries from people typing in these phrases in search engines:

54	31.95%	shana tova u metuka

8	4.73%	שנה טובה ומתוקה
6	3.55%	shana tova u'metuka
3	1.78%	shana tova umetuka
3	1.78%	shana tova u'metuka!
2	1.18%	g'mar chatima tova new year 2009
2	1.18%	l'shana tova u'metuka
2	1.18%	shana tova u metuka!
2	1.18%	shana tova u metuka meaning
2	1.18%	shana tova ve metuka translation
1	0.59%	shana tova umetuka english translation
1	0.59%	chag sameach
1	0.59%	elderofziyon.blogspot
1	0.59%	shana tova u’metuka
1	0.59%	g'mar chatima tova
1	0.59%	l'shanah tovah umetuka
1	0.59%	meaning of שנה טובה ומתוקה
1	0.59%	שנה טובה ומתוקה!! translation
1	0.59%	shana tova umetuka meaning
1	0.59%	שנה טובה ומתוקה ל
1	0.59%	shana tova ??? ???? ??????
1	0.59%	shana tova u?metuka!
1	0.59%	mazel tov l’chaim translation
1	0.59%	lechaim mazel tov black eyed peas
1	0.59%	l'shana tova umetucha
1	0.59%	shana tove umetukah
1	0.59%	l'shana tova u'metouka
1	0.59%	shana tova vmetuka
1	0.59%	meaning of shana tova u'metuka!
1	0.59%	shana tovah u'metuka
1	0.59%	shana tova u metukah
1	0.59%	לשנה טובה ומתוקה
1	0.59%	перевод שנה טובה ומתוקה
1	0.59%	shanah tovah u-metuka
1	0.59%	shana tova u'metuka
1	0.59%	l'shana tova umetuka
1	0.59%	shan tov u metuk
1	0.59%	shana tova ve metuka
1	0.59%	u metuka definition
1	0.59%	ומתוקה שנה טובה
1	0.59%	shana tova u' metuka in hebrew
1	0.59%	shanah tovah umetuka
1	0.59%	shana tova msm
1	0.59%	shana tova. g'mar chatimah tovah
1	0.59%	shana tova u' metuka!!
1	0.59%	what does shana tova u'metuka!

So I think we have to work harder to give it to them, no?

Happy Qods Day!

Today is the last Friday of Ramadan, a day declared by the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran to be "Qods Day," where a city that Islam essentially ignored for most of the first twelve centuries of its existence is suddenly considered vitally important - only after Jews recovered control of Jerusalem.

I made a video last year on this topic, that summarizes a number of previous Al Quds posts I've written.

Here is a roundup of posts I've made to celebrate Qods Day over the years:

Introduction - An overview of how Muslims have ignored Jerusalem when they had control over the city.

The originator of Qods Day: A brief snippet of another, rather disgusting, legal ruling by the late Ayatollah.

A 1910 article showing the tremendous growth of Jerusalem in the few decades since mass Jewish return to the city, including how much land values increased and how much money Arabs were getting for selling land to Jews.

Jerusalem in Islamic art: A survey of the (non)-existence of Jerusalem in any Islamic art that pre-dates Zionism, compared to some ancient Jewish pictures of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem in Islamic poetry: A very similar posting showing every ancient Islamic poem I could find that mentions Islam's "third holiest city," plus a 12th century Jewish poem about the city.

Jerusalem in Islamic coins: Another post comparing the number of times Jerusalem was depicted in historic Islamic coins compared to ancient Jewish currency.

Jerusalem in Islamic prayer: Jerusalem, for some strange reason, is not mentioned once in Islamic prayer, but it is a central motif of Jewish prayer.

Goldstone report inaccuracies part 10 (updated)

723. The Mission considers, however, that the testimonies of the witnesses strongly suggest
that already before daybreak on 4 January 2009 the Israeli armed forces were in full control of
the al-Samouni neighbourhood. The Israeli soldiers had taken up position on the roofs of the
houses in the area. According to several witnesses, the soldiers on the street spoke to residents
who had ventured out of their houses.410 In some cases (for instance, at the house of Saleh al-
Samouni and at the house Iyad al-Samouni was in, see below), they entered the houses nonviolently
after knocking on the door. According to Saleh al-Samouni, the prolonged
identification of all the persons present in his house (his father identifying each family member
in Hebrew for the soldiers) took place outside. The soldiers appear to have been confident that
they were not at immediate risk of being attacked.

724. The Mission also reviewed the submission it received from an Israeli researcher, arguing
generally that statements from Palestinian residents claiming that no fighting took place in their
neighbourhood are disproved by the accounts Palestinian armed groups give of the armed
operations. The Mission notes that, as far as the al-Samouni neighbourhood is concerned, this
report would appear to support the statements of the witnesses that there was no combat.411

Note 411: “The hidden dimension of Palestinian war casualties…”. Only 4 of the more than 100 entries in the submission refer to combat action in Zeytoun, the much larger part of Gaza City of which al-Samouni neighbourhood is a part. The incidents in Zeytoun that are mentioned reportedly occurred on 6, 7, 11 and 13 January 2009, and consist of Palestinian combatants opening fire against Israeli troops with rocket-propelled grenades, a mortar (in one case) and detonating an explosive device.

It is difficult for me to say that there was or was not military activity in the Samounis' neighborhood on January 4th. However, Goldstone takes the absence of any mention of incidents in the Al Zaytoun neighborhood (in which the Samounis lived) in an Israeli report as evidence that there was no significant fighting there on January 4th. Goldstone's other evidence is indeed Palestinian Arab witnesses.

I do not know how big Al Zaytoun is either. However, it seems pretty clear that there was still fighting in Al Zaytoun on January 4th. PCHR names:

495 Mustafa Zuhdi Mustafa Erhayem

498 Mohammed Fou’ad Mahmoud al-He

515 Mohammed Bassam Mohammed ‘Anan

530 Hassan ‘Isam Hassan al-Jammasi

580 ‘Ateya Rushdi Khalil Aal-Khuli (16 years old!)

all as militants, actively fighting Israeli forces as they were killed in Al-Zaytoun on January 4th.

In addition, (576) Ayman Mohammed Mohammed ‘Afana (policeman) was an Al Qassam Brigades member killed in that neighborhood on that day.

And the fighting continued in Al-Zaytoun on January 5th:.

639 Mohammed Mohammed Nabih al-Ghazali (PCHR)

641 Rashad Helmi Mahmoud al-Samouni (see below) (PCHR)

681 Ahmed Hassan Abdul Karim Abu Zour listed as "resister" on PMoH site (#226)

Again, this doesn't mean that Goldstone is incorrect concerning the immediate area of the Samouni house, but it does indicate that the commission ignored easily-available data that could indicate that their implication that no fighting was taking place in Al-Zaytoun is wrong.

In para. 713 and footnote 404, they list the names of every member of the al-Samouni extended family that was killed. One of them is Rashad Helmi al Samouni (male, aged 42), whom the PCHR lists as being killed a militant. (Not only that, but another al-Samouni is listed as having been killed on January 5th: Mohammed Ibrahim Helmi al-Samouni, listed in PCHR as a civilian but who was a member of Islamic Jihad.)

So one of the civlians Goldstone lists as being killed was in fact a terrorist.

At the very least, a small amount of fact checking would have uncovered these inconsistencies. Yet Goldstone says without reservation:

721. The Mission found the foregoing witnesses to be credible and reliable. It has no reason to doubt their testimony.

I think there is more than enough reason to doubt their testimony.

(UPDATE: I misread Goldstone and thought that the commission was saying that the al-Samouni deaths were on Jan. 4th. One person with that name was killed on Jan. 4 in al-Zaytoun, but as far as I can tell he was a civilian. I corrected the post above.)

Hamas seizes charity organization in Gaza

From Ma'an:

Head of Ishraqa, a Gazan charitable society, Wasfi Naser, urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to freeze the society’s accounts following what he described as a takeover by the de facto Hamas run Ministry of the Interior.

Naser said he received a phone call from representatives of the de facto Ministry of the Interior last week telling him that they had appointed a new board of directors for the society.

Ishraqa currently supports approximately 250 orphaned children in northern Gaza by raising funds from charities in the EU, US, and Canada.

Naser asked that the Ministry of Interior restore control of the charity to the original board of directors who were elected, and always send their financial reports to the ministry.

He said he hopes there can be a swift resolution of the seizure.

I wonder if it was seized by Hamas' military or charity wing?

Must read: Richard Landes fisking Goldstone's NYT piece

Professor Richard Landes does a superlative job fisking Judge Richard Goldstone's op-ed in the New York Times today. And while I have been spending what time I have on the minutae of the large Goldstone Report, Landes' post goes to the very heart of the topic, and shows exactly what is problematic about the entire enterprise. It casts great doubt on Goldstone's honesty, at least with regards to this topic.

It is a must-read, as are the links Landes uses to support his arguments.