Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 21, 2014

For most reporters, there are no dead terrorists in Gaza

From Patrick Martin at The Globe and Mail:

As we arrived, we came upon the funeral of nine men, all in their 20s or early 30s, killed about 2 a.m. Saturday morning by a single missile apparently fired by an Israeli drone. The deaths helped put the total number of Gazans killed in this war well above 300.

The oration was pretty standard fare for Hamas or Islamic Jihad funerals. But what surprised us as we turned into the courtyard of Nasser Hospital where the event was taking place was that this was a funeral mainly conducted by Fatah, the party led by Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Abbas, known popularly as Abu Mazen, opposes the rockets being fired against Israel and is trying to de-escalate this conflict not intensify it.

But it was definitely the yellow flag of Fatah that flew above the crowd of 300 or so – flying upside down, by the way, whether by design or accident, I couldn’t find out.

And it was the flag of Palestine that was bloodied and wrapped as a shroud around the bodies of seven of the nine men – the other two were wrapped in the green flag of Hamas.
...

While Khan Younis might be called the original home of Hamas, it also has been a centre of the Fatah movement in Gaza. In the 2006 Palestinian election, the people of this city elected three Hamas representatives and two from Fatah, one of whom was Mohammed Dahlan, who led the party in Gaza and denounced Hamas’s election as a disaster. He even attempted to overthrow Hamas in 2007, but lost in the street battles between the two sides and left the Strip in Hamas’s control.

Yet, despite the bloody history between the two movements, today they stand allied.

A senior Fatah official told me earlier this week in Ramallah that Fatah has felt obliged to fire some rockets against Israel, lest it be seen as collaborating with the Jewish state.

Oh, so the scores of rockets Fatah groups have fired into Israel aren't meant to actually kill anyone. They are symbolic! Just like these Fatah rockets, fired from buildings!

The Israeli civilians who are under fire can breathe easy. It isn't personal, just politics.

Notice also that while the IDF has killed many terrorists like the ones mentioned here, practically all the reporters in Gaza have ignored them completely, implying that all of the dead are civilians. There are no photos of any victims who are not civilian, no reports from terrorist funerals (that would identify which terror group the dead belonged to) - nothing.

All those firefights don't result in a single dead Hamas or Islamic Jihad member. Of course, their webpages avoid any mention - except for a token "martyr" once every couple of days - of the names of their members killed by the IDF. The Hamas Interior Ministry and Health Ministry avoid mentioning how many dead are from terror groups that they admit they support. And reporters ignore all of this, willingly going along with Hamas' sham.

This article is the exception that proves the rule.

It is as if the world media is following Hamas' published guidelines on how to report from Gaza.

This is possibly the biggest scandal of the current fighting. It is because of irresponsible and one-sided reporting from Gaza that criticism of Israel is being hurled by the UN and other diplomats and pundits, people who have no idea of the realities of conflict in an urban area where terrorists are hiding among the general population.

Oh, by the way, Hamas' de facto headquarters is in Shifa Hospital

I had missed this in the Washington Post last week:

At the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, crowds gathered to throw shoes and eggs at the Palestinian Authority’s health minister, who represents the crumbling “unity government” in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The minister was turned away before he reached the hospital, which has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.

Isn't that special?

Gaza interior ministry denies any rockets were hidden at UNRWA facility (update)

The Interior Ministry of Gaza has denied that any rockets were found in a UNRWA school, something that UNRWA admitted last week.

Their statement reveals a lot about the Gaza ministries that they perhaps do not want Western media to notice.

The ministry said in a statement on its website that it had asked the security agency to provide proof to the police at the school referred to, to make sure of the validity of the claim or not, but they apologized for it, and failed to cooperate with them.

The ministry confirmed the absence of any proof of the declaration of UNRWA, and they denounced the organization, saying they are doing their job to achieve security for all citizens and all institutions and headquarters of local and international organizations in addition to their role in protecting the resistance.

The ministry emphasized that it has to communicate with all the resistance factions in Gaza, which confirmed its categorical rejection of the use of schools and civic institutions and that they cannot do so.

The Gaza Interior Ministry considers this claim as a means to justify the targeting of civilians and to prepare in advance to find a cover for the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation today in the Gaza Strip.

It pointed out that all UNRWA schools are guarded by the agency around the clock, and wonders how they were storing weapons and entered the school without the knowledge of school guards, stressing that Palestinian resistance does not need to use the schools for the storage of weapons and gear.

Who is more credible - UNRWA or the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry? Since they both are run by accomplished liars, you need to look at who has the most incentive to lie, and in this case UNRWA had no incentive to lie about rockets that makes it look bad to allow them to be placed on their grounds to begin with. (The charge that UNRWA is in cahoots with the IDF is one of the funnier things I've seen today.)

Notice also that the Interior Ministry admits that its job is to protect terrorists, and that it is in constant contact with all Gaza terror groups.

Once we have established that the Gaza ministries lie, then the question is why the media takes their statements about civilian casualties without any skepticism?

UPDATE: Their statement is in English.

The bad blood between Hamas and Egypt is affecting people's lives - but none of the reporters in Gaza seem to care.

Al Ahram reports:

Egyptian troops in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula barred an aid convoy of activists and medical volunteers from reaching the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip on Saturday, as a deadly conflict with Israeli forces intensified.

The convoy, which left Cairo in the early hours of Saturday, was stopped at the North Sinai Balooza checkpoint when forces said that the supplies but not humans could pass into the embattled enclave, citing security concerns.

"Despite carrying complete permits, we were blackmailed, [being told] that only supplies, not medical volunteers, could be allowed to move ahead," said Mohamed El-Baqer, of the Popular Committee to Support the Palestinians’ Uprising, at a press conference late on Saturday outside the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo.

The authorities have not issued any statements on the incident.

But Hamas doesn't want some aid, as their mouthpiece Middle East Monitor says:

Forty members of the UAE "aid convoy" which entered the Gaza Strip last week have been revealed as intelligence agents. They were, it is believed, trying to collect information about Hamas and its infrastructure in the besieged territory.

According to one informed source, a local Palestinian recognised one of the agents as a soldier in the UAE armed forces. He contacted the security forces in Gaza who took the agent in for questioning.

Other members of the "aid convoy" then made contact with officials in the United Arab Emirates. In turn, they asked disgraced Fatah official Mohamed Dahlan, who now lives in and is sponsored by the UAE government, to try to secure a safe and swift exit for the agents.

"Dahlan called one of his followers from Fatah who spoke with Hamas officials and they agreed to let the convoy leave immediately," the source said.

Palestinians in Gaza were surprised by the sudden exit of the UAE personnel on Saturday. The field hospital that they had ostensibly arrived to set-up was left uncompleted.

Commentators say that suspicions should have been aroused when the convoy was allowed by the Egyptians to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, as no other convoys have been allowed to enter since the start of the Israeli attack and invasion. Media reports on Saturday said that the Egyptian army has banned and attacked three international aid convoys trying to enter the enclave.

Egypt has closed Rafah and does not allow wounded Palestinians to travel abroad for treatment or let much-needed medicine and medical equipment to be taken into Gaza.

Well, Egypt did allow a few patients to cross Rafah, but Hamas isn't exactly being very honest in its press releases.

Arabs are quite willing to sacrifice other Arab lives for even nebulous political gain, but the Western media can't wrap their heads around the idea. Much easier to blame everything on "Goliath" Israel.

Dead child porn: Reporters allow emotions to override facts

The photos and videos from Shuja'iya are horrific in every sense of the word. Innocent women and children have been killed. One cannot look at the carnage and not feel empathy.

The problem is that empathy must not trump facts.'

As horrible as the scenes of the dead are, they do not reveal the reasons nor the circumstances for their deaths - and it is unlikely in the politically charged atmosphere of Gaza that the real reasons of any of their deaths can be determined.

It was recognized days ago that the crowded civilian neighborhood of Shuja'iya was a major center of Hamas' military operations. As Times of Israel reported at the time:

During the morning (Wednesday), the Israel Air Force dropped flyers while recorded phone calls and SMS messages to residents warned a series of military strikes was imminent, the military said.

The flyers said the military would carry out air strikes against targets in Zeitoun and Shuja’iya, two flashpoint districts east of Gaza City, noting that “a high volume of rocket fire” had been directed from there. Residents were advised to evacuate to Gaza City by 8.00 a.m. local time.

“In spite of the ceasefire, Hamas and other terror organizations continued to fire rockets, therefore it is the intention of the IDF to carry out aerial strikes against terror sites and operatives in Shuja’iya and Zeitoun,” the leaflets read. “A high volume of rocket fire at Israel has originated in this area.”

“For your own safety, you are requested to vacate from your residence immediately and head towards Gaza City by Wednesday morning, July 16, 2014, at 08:00 AM. The IDF does not want to harm you, and your families. The evacuation is for your own safety. You should not return to the premises until further notice. Whoever disregards these instructions and fails to evacuate immediately, endangers their own lives, as well as those of their families.”

However, residents of Shuja’iya and Zeitoun were not evacuating their homes, in spite of the Israeli ultimatum issued, Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip told The Times of Israel.

As on Sunday, Hamas urged residents to ignore the warnings, dismissing it as “psychological warfare”.

“There is no need to worry about these (warnings), or deal with them. Do not respond to them in any way,” a Hamas interior ministry statement said. “This is part of the psychological war, intended to disrupt the domestic front.”

Now, what happened when the IDF troops entered Shuja'iya?

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said that Israeli forces had been moving toward Shuja'iya, which he called a "Hamas stronghold" from which about 140 rockets had been fired at Israel since the start of the Israeli offensive.

The forces were "on the way to deal with tunnels they have in Shuja'iya and to deal with rocket launching from there," Lerner said. "We met extensive resistance from Hamas terrorists shooting at forces from houses in the neighborhood, firing rocket-propelled grenades from several directions. Artillery was fired in support, to address that challenge."

And, as we now know, 13 IDF soldiers were killed.

How can any reporter know which of the dead children were killed by Israeli fire and which were killed by Hamas RPGs? How many were killed by IDF bombers and how many from Hamas weapons caches that were detonated by those bombs? Hamas made no secret that it is booby-trapping civilian areas and attempting to lure IDF soldiers and vehicles into deadly ambushes - how many civilians were killed through Hamas' extensive efforts to kill or capture IDF soldiers?

These are questions that most journalists in Gaza are ill-equipped to answer. And they are unlikely to emphasize how much effort the IDF placed in trying to empty the area from civilians while Hamas used implicit threats to keep the same people in their houses that are on top of Hamas tunnels and bunkers. In a medium driven by imagery, photos and video of dead children are going to override the desire for sober analysis.

In this Sky News interview, Naftali Bennett does a fair but not great job defending the IDF as the (blurred) scenes shown in the video above are shown:

Notice how the Sky News anchor takes it as a given that every death is the result of Israeli actions. He says explicitly, without any knowledge of reality, that Israel is "indiscriminately kill[ing] women and children."

He is clueless and he is making accusations based on emotions rather than facts.

When they see dead kids, most reporters reflexively assume they were killed by the "enemy," not their own side - but they have a hard time internalizing that Hamas is the enemy of these children, and the IDF is not.

Bennett should have emphasized that under international law, Israel's actions in Shuja'iya were entirely legitimate. Since Wednesday, the IDF did everything possible to ensure that innocents would not be harmed, and Hamas did everything they could to keep them in place as human shields - nearly explicitly, in their own statements. It is even possible that the Hamas edicts were being backed up by force.

The IDF's actions in trying to save civilians, in all probability, made the operation far more complex and dangerous for their own soldiers, which is not at all mandated in international law. Nowhere does the Geneva Conventions say that armies must place their own soldiers at risk to avoid civilian casualties. Israel, and Israel alone, is expected to adhere to superhuman standards and is castigated even when it does so.

The existence of civilians in the area during what is being described by all observers as a fierce firefight does not make the area immune from being a target in any reasonable interpretation of international law.

Bennett should similarly have challenged the anchorman as to whose munitions actually killed so many civilians, and why the anti-Israel anchor assumes that Israel alone is responsible. He doesn't know and his asking loaded questions based on his ignorance should have been fiercely countered.

The sad fact is that with every dead child, Hamas wins and Israel loses. For all the effort Israel expends to minimize innocent lives lost (on both sides of the battlefield), Hamas does the opposite. This is clear from both IDF and Hamas official statements.

That simple fact should be what every reporter thinks of when they see sickening scenes of dead civilians.

Only Hamas benefits from their deaths.

07/20 Links P2: Peace? Not at this street protest; Russell Brand Justifies Hamas Terrorism

From Ian:

Watchdog Group’s Massive Billboard Equates New York Times With Terror Group Hamas

A pro-Israel watchdog group equated The New York Times with terror group Hamas on a massive billboard banner which went up outside the famed newspaper’s newsroom on Friday.
“Hamas attacks Israel: Not Surprising”, the banner reads, above a picture of a missile. Underneath it says: “The New York Times attacks Israel: Also not surprising”, on top of an image of a pen.
“Stop skewing facts. Stop the key omissions. Stop the Anti-Israeli Bias”, the billboard concludes.

Michael Coren: Peace? Not at this street protest

“The Jews control the media, control the banks, control governments, control everything,” shouted the man in front of me, cheered on by a mob of men and women who quickly assembled around him.
“Will I condemn the murder of the three Israeli teens? Speak sense! They were killed in a car accident two weeks earlier and used by the Zionists to justify the holocaust on Gaza. Their families were part of the plot.” More cheering.
Welcome to the wonderful world of a Toronto protest against the Israeli response to Hamas and its killing of Jewish kids and firing of thousands of rockets into Israel.

Russell Brand Legitimizes Hamas Terrorism

Unlike those celebrities who are tweeting Free Palestine without explanation- add singer Selena Gomez to the list – Russell Brand – an English “comedian” most notable for being Katy Perry’s ex husband - has decided to put out a video explaining his thoughts in depth.
More like out of his depth.
4:22: Brand claiming news of the death of the three Israeli boys was deliberately held back and used to build up tension and conflict.
4:57: Brand again denying Hamas are a terrorist group and then speaking of those “powerful lobbying groups” representing Israel’s interests in American politics.

They honestly think that Jewish people are monsters.

It is the only final explanation that I can come to.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and other such affable neighbors blanket Israel in bombs - thousands and thousands of bombs over the course of years - ruining the lives of tens of thousands of young people throughout that part of the country - and the western-left, which claims to care about human rights, simply does not care about those human rights.

They honestly, sincerely do not care and, thus, have never minded Arab-on-Jewish violence... or, really, anybody on Jewish violence.

Israel is both one of the smallest countries in the world and the single most bombed country in the world for its size and the very people who claim to stand for human rights and social justice, could not care less.

On the contrary, they honestly believe that we deserve it. They believe, that despite our history, that, yet again, Jews deserve a good ass-kicking, apparently for not being respectful enough to our former masters.

That is why as soon as the Jewish people stand up for ourselves, against a much larger majority population, western-leftists leap to their feet and call us "Nazis" and murderers and claim that we have sacrificed our very souls out of some irrational, racist fear of the harmless, indigenous "other."

They mock and demean our efforts to protect ourselves and our children out of some shallow, vaguely understood, but emotionally-satisfying political ideology. They portray, in exceedingly caustic terms, our efforts at self-defense as an unjust form of aggression against those who hand out candy at the joyous news of the killing of Jewish teenagers.

The Jews of the Middle East are six million people swimming in a very small bay within a much larger ocean containing between 350 and 400 million Arabs who, for the most part, do not want us there and are not the least bit shy about letting us know it.

And sometimes they do so in exceedingly direct terms, such as nearly chopping the head off of a three month old Jewish baby girl.

Throughout the Arab-Muslim Middle East imams and ayatollahs stand before their people, raise their fists, and cry to the heavens for anti-Jewish violence. They spread the blood libel. They tell the world that the Jewish people are monsters who must be confronted, if not killed, wherever we may be found.

Sometimes they claim that we send Zionist sharks into the waters of the Mediterranean for the purposes of ruining Egyptian tourism or that we send vultures into Saudi air space as Zionist spies. Or that we breed diseased Zionist rats to be let loose into Arab villages in Judea or Samaria.

So, who is this "they" that I speak of? Generally speaking, it is the Arab-Muslim world within the Middle East, but it is not only the gracious neighbors of Israel who contribute to this irrational racism and hatred toward us.

The Arab Middle East has its allies.

The First Horrible Ring of Hatred

Think of the conflict as comprised of concentric Rings of Hatred around the Jews of the Middle East.

The innermost ring is the most intense. At the innermost ring are Arabs willing to sacrifice their own children for the Holy Sport of killing Jews in the name of Allah and the Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Unto Him).

These are the people that are currently getting their asses whooped, and for very good reason, in the Gaza Strip, and they are also the same people who generally believe that Jews are fair-game for violence and murder.

I honestly do not know what to say to the local Arabs beyond, "Stop inciting hatred and endeavoring to kill Jews." If they would kindly follow that advice they would find the Jewish people to be their very best friends in the world. Jews would certainly be far better friends to them than their Arab-Muslim brothers who locked them up in refugee camps throughout the Middle East since 1948 to be used as weapons against us for religious reasons.

The Second Horrible Ring of Hatred

Beyond them, of course, is the larger Arab-Muslim Middle East wherein the most blood-curdling forms of outright Jew hatred are perfectly acceptable in day-to-day discourse. And this, in truth, is where the battle will eventually be won or lost. The day may come when the Arab accepts the Jew, but until that day comes the violent pressure from the great Arab majority against the small Jewish minority will continue and the conflict will go on and the western-left, which was practically invented by Jews, will continue to blame the Jewish people for the violence against us.

This, needless to say, brings me to the next Ring of Hatred.

The Third Horrible Ring of Hatred

The United Nations, the EU, and the Western Left.

The UN hardly even needs to be considered. We all understand that the UN is dominated by the Arab / Muslim bloc and that while they spend considerable time and resources seeking to undermine Israel's ability to function as a fellow member of the community of nations, it almost never condemns the far worse human rights violations of other members in good standing.

As for the EU and the western-left, they need to be considered as one. They hold the same values and their organizations from the biggest, such as the EU, itself, to the smallest, tend to represent those values. And, it should be noted, that in theory these are highly commendable values. They include the values of social justice and universal human rights as they emerged in the twentieth-century following the great conflagrations of that century and following nineteenth-century industrial abuses of labor.

It was these classically liberal values that led to something approaching full equality for black people in the United States. It was these values that eventually allowed women to gain a voice and a vote and a share of the public square. I grew up with such values in a Democratic home. We were pro-Civil Rights, pro-Women's Rights, anti-war, pro-environmentalism, and pro-Israel. None of that seemed the least bit contradictory.

Sadly, however, the western-left is no longer a friend to the Jewish people. On the contrary. They, instead, provide a seat at the progressive-left table for anti-Semitic anti-Zionists who would see the Jewish people robbed of autonomy and self-defense.

Times have changed.

At the long-term prodding of Arab and old Soviet propaganda the western left increasingly sees the Jews of the Middle East as villains. The left has constructed a "narrative" of Jewish imperial racism in conflict with indigenous rights. This narrative has nothing to do with history and almost nothing to do with the current Arab-Muslim war against the Jews of the Middle East.

They have invented a morality play in which the Jewish victims are portrayed as aggressors against the innocent, indigenous population who lived idyllic, pastoral lives, tending their Sacred Olive Groves in pastoral tranquility until those vicious, European Jewish marauders rode through in the twentieth-century and stole their land and refused to rape their women out of clear and obvious Zionist-Jewish racism.

That, in a nutshell, is the way much of the western-left views the Jews who live in our ancestral homeland and if that is what they think of them, just what do they think of us?

They think that the Jews are thieves who stole Judea and Samaria from the "native" Arab population. And not only are we told that we stole the land of our ancestors, the land where Jewish people have lived since before recorded history, but we stole it from the "indigenous" conquerors of the 7th century who immediately placed the Jewish people under the conditions of dhimmitude where we lived for 13 long centuries before freeing ourselves with the Movement for Jewish Liberation known as Zionism.

Of course, upon freeing ourselves from persecution under the imperial system of dhimmitude, with the fall of the Ottomans upon the completion of World War I, our former oppressors launched a war against us that continues to this day.

And, yet, western-leftists, who claim to believe in "universal human rights" and "social justice," side with the hostile majority Arab-Muslim population against the besieged Jewish minority in the Middle East and do so within living memory of the Holocaust.

All I can say at this point, with, as I write, the bombs now dropping on Gaza - as well as on S'derot, Ashkelon, and throughout the rest of the country - is G-d Bless the IDF and may it keep the Jewish people in the Middle East, and all Israelis, safe from harm.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

07/20 Links P1: IDF toll rises to 18; The Fallen Soldiers of Operation Protective Edge

From Ian:

Times of Israel Live Blog: IDF toll rises to 18 with deaths of 13 Golani soldiers in Gaza

News of Golani Brigade fatalities was delayed while families were informed; heavy fighting since Saturday has focused on Hamas stronghold of Shejaiya, where Palestinians report 80 killed; battles raging in other Gaza areas

IDF Blog: Fallen Soldiers of Operation Protective Edge

Throughout Israel’s history, IDF soldiers have fallen in defense of their country and families. This reality continues as the IDF operates in Gaza to defend Israel from Hamas rocket fire and the threat of terrorist infiltration by tunnels.
The following brave soldiers fell in the fight to protect Israeli civilians. May their memory be blessed.

Douglas Murray: London’s pro-Palestine rally was a disgusting anti-Semitic spectacle

Thousands of anti-Semites have today succeeded in bringing central London to an almost total standstill.
They marched though the centre of the city before congregating to scream outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington. It was interesting to watch this rather non-diverse crowd pass. Most of the women seem to be wearing headscarves or the burka, while their men-folk were naturally more appropriately dressed for a sweltering summer day.
But what a picture. These are the people who stayed at home throughout the Syrian civil war, stayed at home when ISIS rampaged across Iraq, stayed at home when Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab carried out their atrocities across central Africa and showed no concern whatsoever when the Muslim Brotherhood was running Egypt into the ground. Yet they pretend to care about Muslims.
And here they all are, coming out to scream because Israel is carrying out the most specific and targeted campaign in the history of warfare in order to stop Hamas – a group dedicated to the annihilation of all Jews – from firing thousands of rockets into the Jewish homeland.

MEMRI: Why Did Hamas Launch Its Current Rocket Offensive Against Israel?

Apparently, Hamas' decision to launch a rocket offensive against Israel was made on the local level by Hamas' military arm, the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, perhaps without consulting with the movement's political wing either within or outside the Gaza Strip – and this for local and immediate reasons to be detailed below, alongside additional motives linked to the deteriorating status of the movement in the internal Palestinian arena as well as in the inter-Arab arena.
1. The Immediate Motive For Hamas' Rocket Offensive: Israel's Discovery And Targeting Of A Strategic Hamas Project
On July 5, two days before Hamas fired its first heavy barrage of rockets into Israel, Israel struck one of Hamas' dozens of long tunnels leading out of the Gaza Strip into Israel. The tunnel was one of several that were built in recent years as a strategic project to surprise Israel in future conflicts, enabling Hamas to move armed activists[?] deep into Israel to carry out terror attacks in densely populated areas.

Audience on Bill Maher Show Applauds Defense of Israel

This is remarkable if you know anything about Bill Maher and his audience. You would have to switch channels to MSNBC or the Daily Show to find a more progressive crowd.
I’ve never been a fan of Bill Maher but to his credit, he did anger many progressives on Twitter this week by standing up for Israel.
Jamie Weinstein is a senior editor at the Daily Caller. I met him at CPAC in March and he’s a very smart guy. Last night he was a member of the panel on Maher’s show and his defense of Israel drew applause from the audience. (h/t fizziks)

Rare: TV Talk Show Host Rips Into Hamas for Attacking Israel
Panel L-R, Jamie Weinstein Dailly Caller, Nate Silver (statistician, says nothing), Congresswoman Jane Harman (D)

Hamas rockets don't distinguish between Arab and Jew

Last week, Hamas promised Israeli Arabs that their rockets would not hurt them, and were only targeting the "Hebrews:"

We say to [Israeli Arabs], living in Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, Lod, Ramla, and the Negev: The rockets fired by the Al-Qassam Brigades will not hit you. We know those parts. We are familiar with the geography and with the history. Not a single Arab Palestinian child will be hit by one of our missiles. Our rockets are aimed at the Hebrews, the murderers, the Israelis, the criminals. Don't be afraid. Go on with your everyday life, and celebrate our victory, just like we will celebrate it here, in Gaza....We say to our people in Haifa: The missiles of Al-Qassam will not hit any Arab home. Rest assured, our missiles accurately target the homes of the Israelis and the Zionists. As Arabs, Muslms and Christians, you must support Gaza in the streets, by demonstrations, with slogans. You must besiege consulates of European countries supporting the occupation.

Hamas lied to the people it pretends to care about.

The first Israeli fatality from a Hamas rocket attack was a Bedouin.

A 32-year-old man was killed Saturday when a rocket fired by Gaza terrorists hit a small Bedouin community near the city of Dimona.

The man has been identified as Alouj Ouda. His wife, son, daughter, and sister-in-law were wounded in the attack.

Ouda’s wife suffered shrapnel injuries to several parts of her body, and is in moderate condition. The couple’s four-month-old daughter is in serious condition with a head injury. Their four-year-old son suffered multiple shrapnel injuries as well, but is in light condition.

The four surviving family members are being treated in Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheva.

Previously, two young sisters were badly injured when a rocket fired by Gaza terrorists hit a Bedouin community near Be’er Sheva. One of the girls was left fighting for her life after suffering shrapnel injuries to her stomach.

An elderly man was seriously injured in the same attack.

The tragedy is undeniable, and the relative lack of attention to this death is unconscionable.

There is another story here, as Times of Israel notes:

The Supreme Court ruled on Sunday that the state is under no obligation to immediately provide additional protection against rockets to Bedouin communities in the Negev Desert, but called on authorities to formulate and publish criteria for civilian protection in the south within 30 days.

The court was responding to an urgent appeal by a group of Israeli human rights NGOs on Thursday, following the injury of two Bedouin girls in the unrecognized village of Awajan, Maram and Athir al-Wagili, by a rocket fired from Gaza on July 14. On Saturday, as the court was deliberating the issue, a Bedouin man was killed and his three-month-old daughter seriously injured near the city of Dimona, also as a result of a rocket originating from Gaza.

Judges Zvi Zylbertal, Yoram Danziger and Noam Sohlberg said they found no flaw in the state’s allocation of outdoor protective concrete structures, known as miguniot, that would justify an intervention.

“There is no argument that the state has a supreme obligation to defend the lives and bodily integrity of its citizens,” they wrote in the ruling. “But the state’s obligation to defend the lives of its residents and citizens in times of emergency can be fulfilled through a wide range of means.”

Israel has no more than 150-200 miguniot (free standing shelters) it can distribute, the state argued in court, and has decided to prioritize areas within a 20-kilometer (13-mile) radius of the Gaza Strip, which have sustained 80 percent of the rocket fire emanating from Gaza. Lying on the ground and taking cover reduces the chance of injury from rocket shrapnel by 80 percent, Israel’s Home Front Command told the court.

The Supreme Court said it rarely intervenes in the operational discretion of the IDF during fighting.

“We have found no flaw in the defendants’ decision regarding miguniot to justify our intervention,” the judges wrote. “The array of current means of defense is too limited to cover all areas within rocket range. Pulling the blanket over one area would expose another.”

It is a matter of triage. There are only so many Iron Domes and shelters, and naturally the priority goes to towns that are closer to Gaza and that are more densely populated.

The Bedouin are living in very spread out areas over the Negev, it is very difficult to give them everything they need under the best of circumstances - and here they choose to live in illegal villages on stolen land. Attempts to fix the problem have been stymied by most of the Bedouin themselves.

I don't know how long it takes to manufacture shelters, and of course if it can be done more quickly to protect everyone, it should be prioritized.

Don't believe the lies about how the Bedouin are being purposefully ignored by or targeted by Israel, though. There is enough blame to go around and there are plenty of people who want to take what is truly a tragic situation and turn it into a propaganda weapon against Israel.

The truth is far more complicated and rarely reported, as I show in this video made last year:

Alouj Ouda didn't deserve to die. No Arabs will be wringing their hands over his death. And Israel needs to ensure that it gives the same priority to saving its Arab citizens as its Jewish citizens.

From what I can tell...they are.

Did the UNRWA school rockets go to terrorists? Almost certainly - just like their cement

This cartoon of mine from last week has proven to be prophetic:

Arutz-7 reports:

The UN agency for Palestinian Arab “refugees,” UNRWA, has caused outrage by apparently giving rockets to Hamas.

On Thursday, UNRWA confirmed that 20 rockets had been found in one of its vacant schools in Gaza.

UNRWA staff said last week that they had “informed the relevant parties and successfully took all necessary measures for the removal of the objects.”

However, Channel 2 reports Sunday that - rather than destroying the rockets - UNRWA workers called Hamas to come remove them.

An EoZ reader wrote to UNRWA to ask them about this story. Their denial is not exactly satisfying:

Of course we did not hand the rockets over to Hamas.

The authorities who came and collected the weapons are under the direct authority of the government of national consensus which Hamas has left and which many in Hamas are openly hostile to. The key point is that the weapons were handed over to people who are not answerable to Hamas.

Their denial is laughable.

There is no real presence of the PA "technocratic" government in Gaza. Everything is under control of Hamas. Certainly there is no independent Palestinian Arab institution in Gaza with the ability or expertise to properly dispose of terrorist rockets. Whoever UNRWA handed the rockets to, no matter who, is almost certain to have in turn handed them to a terror group.

And that terror group might not have been Hamas. After all, the PA is dominated by Fatah, and Fatah groups have been firing rockets towards Israel non-stop since the beginning.

UNRWA's denial is so disingenuous as to border on the criminal.

Then again, UNRWA has a history of such attempts to cover their tracks while winking at terror groups. Last December I visited the Kerem Shalom crossing and spoke to the person who runs it. He told me that he knows, personally, the middlemen who transport cement and other items earmarked for "international projects" such as for UNRWA - and he knows for sure that some of it gets diverted to being purchased or given to Hamas, presumably for the terror tunnels that we are seeing in Gaza today. It isn't UNRWA officials who personally go to the crossing to get cement; they hire the same people who everyone else uses and who are on the take.

UNRWA doesn't care about the reality of how they enable terrorists to kill Israelis as long as they have deniability. And that is exactly what the letter above tells us, quite clearly.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Berlin imam prays for Allah to kill Jews "to the very last one"

From MEMRI - the imam is at the Al Nur Mosque in Berlin.

Oh Allah, destroy the Zionist Jews. They are no challenge to you. Count them and kill them to the very last one. Don't spare a single one of them. Shake the ground beneath their feet. Make them suffer terribly. Deflect their bullets. Disperse them. They behave tyrannically all over the world and spread corruption. Oh Lord, bring torment upon them.

I wonder if Germany's anti hate speech laws apply to Muslims, or if they get off the hook.