Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Dutch paper actually reports truth from Gaza

This is from Trouw, August 11. The original article is behind a paywall; it was translated by the folks at Missing Peace.

Hamas in the city: invisible, but not gone
Monique van Hoogstraten

GAZA CITY - Since the war started, one population group in Gaza has disappeared from the streets: people in uniform. Army green uniforms, blue-grey uniforms, black uniforms, they were all over the place. From one day to the next they are gone, the men and the few women (of the women police unit) with a weapon or a truncheon in their hands.

They work for Hamas and are targets of Israel, which knows reasonably well who is where via drones in the sky and spies on the ground. So they go into hiding. Only at the Shifa Hospital, the big hospital in Gaza City, are a few sitting in uniform. There, they feel protected from the Israeli bombings. In addition, that is where they monitor the international press to prevent it from doing ‘wrong’ things.

Local camera crews know this, but foreigners do not: Hamas does not want killed or wounded fighters to appear on camera footage. The reasons are twofold. Not giving the enemy Israel PR ammunition, and maintaining high morale among its own population. ‘We suffer no losses’, is the message, ‘we bring a severe blow to Israel’.

“The most casualties are civilians”, says Hamas spokesperson Ihab al Ghoessein, who speaks to the press at the hospital compound about the question how many fighters have died in the war. He is standing before a tall poster with the text ‘The targets of the Israeli bombings are the homes of civilians. Our children live in fear, horror and panic’, illustrated with photos of killed children.

Al Ghoessein: “We hide nothing, like the Israeli’s do [hide things]. As you can see most dead are children and women.” Whether that is true does not matter for Hamas. Yes, there are many civilian casualties and most of the inhabitants of Gaza live in fear, but Hamas likes to exploit this for its PR. Hamas does not present any factual information about numbers of killed fighters or developments at the front. As it also does not want to be criticized by its own population.

“He does not dare to talk to you”, says the wife of someone who has been placed under house arrest because he is known for criticizing Hamas. She too does not dare to tell his story, because ‘we are being watched’. This is the case for most people who are no friends with Hamas. When there was no war yet, they did dare to talk. Not anymore.

Over seventy members of Fatah, the party of President Abbas in the West Bank and very much hated by Hamas, supposedly have been placed under house arrest. This is what sources say in the West Bank. The Fatah supporters have been told that they ‘should stay at home for their own safety’ and that ‘every violation of this order makes you a target for punishment in the field’ - meaning: death penalty.

“The minority that criticizes Hamas that wonders whether it was wise to provoke this war with Israel”, says political analyst Mukhaimer Abu Saada, who now lives in Gaza City himself, “does not dare to say it now, because we are in the middle of the war.”

Although the uniforms might have disappeared from the streets, Hamas has not. High-ranking members monitor in civilian clothes. Whoever talks about Hamas critically on the streets is immediately spoken to. Whoever poses a critical question near security men of Hamas, but also far from them, receives the reply: “You cannot ask that question,” or “I do not want to answer that question.” In war no one is allowed to be a traitor.

What is remarkable is that Trouw does not exactly have a pro-Israel record.

+972 Mag will believe anything - as long as it is anti-Israel

Ultra-left +972 magazine has an exclusive!

An affidavit obtained exclusively by +972 reveals what appears to be the first documented case of a ‘human shield’ used by the Israeli military during its invasion of the eastern Gaza town of Khuza’a.

Ahmad Abu Raida, now 17, was separated from his family by Israeli soldiers on July 23 as he and his family were trying to flee to safety. During Abu Raida’s five-day captivity, an Israeli soldier, who insisted he be called “captain,” repeatedly asked the boy about alleged Hamas tunnels and rocket launching sites in his neighborhood.

“I told him I did not know,” Abu Raida, who was 16 years old at the time of the incident, said. “‘I’m young. I’m 17 years old. How am I supposed to know these things?’ I said to him, but he became angry and started punching and kicking me.”

Abu Raida’s case was documented by Defense for Children International-Palestine, which released a statement Thursday based on the affidavit it collected. +972 spoke with the 17-year-old earlier today.

...Abu Raida described being taken out of the house the following day, at about 1 p.m., by a soldier who “made me walk in front of him and [ordered] me in broken Arabic to [turn] ‘left and right’. He was walking about three meters behind me.”

The soldiers then took Abu Raida to two houses, ordering him to “[g]et in and see if there are tunnels or not,” according to the 17-year-old. He told them that he did not find any, which prompted the “captain” to physically assault the child.

“He started punching and kicking me. He even brought a wire and hit me with it on my back,” Abu Raida told DCI-Palestine.

Here is Abu Raida’s complete account of the abuse:

“I was crying and begging him to stop, but he did not show any mercy. He kept hitting me over and over. He poured a glass of water on my trousers. He insulted me using very dirty words that I am familiar with, and other dirty words that I have never heard of. Even soldiers who did not speak Arabic insulted me as well. They threatened to ‘shove a stick into my … bottom’ if I did not tell them where the tunnels were.”

...On July 26, according to the affidavit, Abu Raida was ordered to climb down into a hole and dig for tunnels. When he replied that the hole was the beginnings of “a sanitation well,” the captain “took off his helmet and hit me with it on my head,” said Abu Raida.

After complaining that he was feeling ill and could not dig anymore, Abu Raida was taken to a relative’s house, where soldiers again interrogated him about alleged Hamas tunnels:

“I told them I did not know anything about the tunnels, so they would slap me across the face or on my neck, or punch me or kick me whenever they wanted,” Abu Raida said.

After a night of repeated questioning and physical abuse – including being forced “to sit and stand up again more than 60 times” – Abu Raida was asked the following morning if he would “work for them as a spy.” After he refused, a soldier “pointed to the police dogs they had with them and said, ‘You see that dog, it’s better than you.’”

According to the affidavit, at around 1 p.m. on July 27, the fifth day of Abu Raida’s captivity, the soldiers allowed him to put his clothes back on and released him.

Anyone who even glances at this "testimony" objectively can see that it makes no sense. Israelis relying on a 16-year old to search for hidden tunnels? Spending 5 days with him while fighting is going on? Making him dig tunnels with his bare hands?

And yet there are no photos of injuries from his being repeatedly kicked, punched, slapped and hit with various objects like helmets and wires.

The charges are so absurd that only a crazed anti-Israel activist could believe it.

Not surprisingly, the original affidavit that +972 received "exclusively" came from DCI-Palestine.

How reliable is DCI-Palestine?

I researched that last month:

DCI-Palestine lied about the number of children killed in Operation Cast Lead, and they consistently report kids killed by Palestinian Arab rockets as being killed by Israel. Even when other NGOs confirmed that children were engaged in fighting during Cast Lead, DCI-P claimed that they couldn't find any good witnesses so they counted them as being innocents.

DCI-Palestine openly admits that it "develops its programs and acts according to Palestinian children's needs and Palestinian priorities."

In other words, its objectivity is zero.

DCI-Palestine describes its methodology here:

Initial identification of potential human rights violations
Al Mezan and DCI-Palestine identify potential violations through two main avenues: victims’ reports and field monitoring. Al Mezan is a well-known Gaza-based human rights organisation in operation since 1999 and victims of human rights violations regularly contact one of Al Mezan’s three offices located across the Gaza Strip for assistance; in addition, Al Mezan’s five experienced fieldworkers based throughout the Gaza Strip use their strong community links to identify potential cases of human rights violations. Similarly, DCI-Palestine receives reports from children and parents in any of its four West Bank offices and through Gaza-based fieldworkers; however, most investigations are initiated following ongoing and proactive field monitoring from nine fieldworkers across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This means that the way DCI (and Al-Mezan) work is that every case of "torture" that they document is either self-reported or they go out of their way to find them. And if there are inconsistencies, what do they do?

Fieldworkers frequently go back to the source in order to verify details and correct any data inconsistency.

An organization that admits up front that it is biased says that rather than discard any inconsistent testimony as being unreliable, they go back and massage the reports until they fit together better with the other "facts" that they handpicked to begin with!

This is a fancy way of admitting that they coax the "witnesses" to lie, or at the very least to shade the truth until they fit the agendas of the Israel-hating NGOs.

DCI-P claims that some 75% of under-18s arrested are tortured. But they hand-pick the people who make the most ludicrous claims to come up with this utter fantasy of a statistic.

For some reason, +972 thinks that there is something magic about an "affidavit" that makes it less likely that it is a lie. But the fact is that any kid in Gaza who seeks fame and fortune can go to the DCI-Palestine website, make up a story, and have a team of "professionals" work at making sure that it fits their explicit anti-Israel agenda. You just know they use leading questions to elicit the most insane responses.

+972, of course, eats this all up without the slightest skepticism.

It is not a mystery that the co-founder of +972 just reiterated that he believes Zionism to be racism.

Hamas jittery after leaders killed, arrests 150 more potential "collaborators" within the group

From Al Bawaba:

Informed sources from the Gaza Strip say the Izz al-Din al-Qassam, the military wing of the Hamas movement, is waging a campaign of arrests in the ranks of the movement's members involving more than 150 members, for interrogation about security leaks.

The sources said that Hamas in a state of internal confusion after the martyrdom of its three leaders Mohammed Abu Shamala, Raed Al-Attar, and Mohammad Barhoum, at dawn on Thursday, and the attempted assassination of the military commander, Mohammed Deif, who lost his wife and his son and daughter on Tuesday.

The sources indicated that the three leaders of Hamas who were killed at dawn on Thursday in Rafah were killed while meeting in a secret underground tunnel at a depth of 30 meters.

The sources said that the Israeli army used missiles and bunker buster bombs with great skill and were able to cause extensive destruction.

The sources indicated that the meeting of the leaders of Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip was in a tunnel under the house belonging to the Kileb family and that the meeting was scheduled to be attended by 9 Hamas leaders, but the raid was carried out after the arrival of the first three leaders.

(h/t Yoel)

08/24 Links: IDF Soldier Reveals Extent of Hamas Human Shields; 570 Rockets Fired in 5 Days

From Ian:

Watch: IDF Soldier Reveals Extent of Hamas 'Human Shields'

The IDF on Sunday posted an interview with Lt. Adam Landau, a combat soldier of the 188th Armored Brigade, who described the cynical manipulation of the civilian population in Gaza by Hamas and its effects on the IDF's operational ability.
Landau, in describing his experiences in the battlefield of Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, recalled a situation in which his unit was confronted with a terrorist who grabbed a child and ran to escape.
"Just because a terrorist enters into a civilian area, it does not give him immunity. On the other hand, we have to think very carefully before we act, because no one wants to injure innocent civilians," said Landau of the conundrum. "It makes it very difficult to complete your goal of eliminating a terrorist, because he is hugging a small child."

A Soldier's Account from Gaza: Hamas Used Human Shields

570 Rockets Fired on Israel in 5 Days

No fewer than 570 rockets have been fired at Israel over a five day period, the Foreign Ministry revealed Sunday, tallying the total rocket count since Hamas broke an extended ceasefire on August 19.
Of those, more than 260 rockets that were launched from schools, more than 50 rockets from medical facilities and more than 130 rockets from cemeteries, the report added.
The report also includes maps for multiple launching sites responsible for rocket fire on Israeli civilians, in yet another compendium of examples profiling Hamas's proclivity for using Palestinian Arabs as human shields. The report follows a similar expose by the IDF last week.
The MFA sites listed include the launching site located adjacent to the Jafar Ali Ibn Taleb school in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City responsible for the rocket fire which killed four year-old Daniel Tragerman Friday.

A Rocket Launched at Israel from a Gaza Medical Facility

Khaled Mashaal in an interview full of lies

I am sorry, but that is the simplest, bluntest, and most honest way that I can put it.

San Francisco State University funds hatred toward Jews.

Between December 24 of last year and June 26 of this I published ten pieces concerning racism toward Jews at San Francisco State University. These pieces concerned themselves with facts such as:

1) SFSU funds student organizations, such as the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), that calls for the murder of Jews, whom they call "colonizers."

2) In the last academic year, Muhammad Hammad, the former president of GUPS held up a blade, took a "selfie," and then published it on a social media site and talked about his desire to kill Jews.

3) The adviser to GUPS, professor Rabab Abdulhadi, a malicious anti-Israel anti-Jewish activist who specializes in some semi-academic discipline called "race and resistance studies," took a university funded trip to the Middle East for the purpose of meeting with various terrorists and their supporters including plane hijacker, Leila Khaled, whom they exalt as a "freedom fighter."

Of course, anti-Jewish malice is nothing new at San Francisco State University up to, and including, mob violence. When I was there at the end of the 1990s Jewish students often faced Arab student organizations, in coordination with the pan-African student group, that regularly demonized Jews on the SFSU campus for their support of Israel.

I will never forget walking past Malcolm X Plaza, in front of the Cesar Chavez Student Center, and seeing Arab students and Black students holding aloft an American flag with fifty little Stars of David in it. I guarantee you that almost every member of the tiny Jewish minority on that campus, who walked by that display, understood very well in a visceral way what they were being told. It was this:

You better watch your ass.

After I graduated things apparently got worse at SFSU.

Todd Gitlin, sociologist, political scientist, and former student radical, writing in Mother Jones Magazine on June 17, 2002, quotes former director of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University, Laurie Zoloth:

"I cannot fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled 'canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license,' past poster after poster calling out Zionism=racism, and Jews=Nazis."

Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, December 14, 2004, Cinnamon Stillwell tells us this:

How did such a threatening environment become associated with a campus located in one of the most liberal and tolerant cities in the nation? The truth is that SFSU has a reputation for intolerance that goes back at least 10 years. In this case, Republican students, clearly a minority at SFSU, were the targets. But in the past, such animosity was directed mostly at Jewish students or those seen as supporting Israel. Jews at SFSU have been spat on, called names and physically attacked, as well as censured by the administration for defending themselves, even as their attackers went unpunished.

The case of Tatiana Menaker, a Russian Jewish emigré and former SFSU student, is an example of the latter indignity. After committing the "crime" of responding verbally to another student's anti-Semitic epithets during a 2002 rally, she found herself persecuted by the administration.

Pulled into a kangaroo court, threatened with expulsion and ordered by the university to perform 40 hours of community service (but specifically not for a Jewish organization), Menaker was later exonerated after seeking legal assistance from the Students for Academic Freedom and the local Jewish Community Relations Council. But the damage was done.

During my time as a student at SFSU (Class of 1996), I was given a preview of things to come. In 1994, the Student Union Governing Board commissioned a mural to honor the late Black Muslim revolutionary Malcolm X. Designed by members of the Pan Afrikan Student Union and painted by artist Senay Dennis (known also as Refa-1), the finished product was problematic, to say the least. Along with an image of Malcolm X, the not-so-subtle symbols of Stars of David juxtaposed with dollar signs, skulls and crossbones, and the words "African blood," had been painted. Despite the obvious allusion to anti-Semitic blood libels of old, Pan Afrikan Student Union members claimed the symbols represented Malcolm X's alleged opposition to Israel, not to Jews, as if that was some comfort.

But even as far back as the early-middle 1960s certain anti-Jewish ideologues were already establishing hatred toward Jews as part of the university atmosphere.

I recently did a little digging into the SFSU special collections archives on, what is for me, a defunct project, but came across this interesting tid-bit:

The above is an article from the SFSC Daily Gator dated March 23, 1966. The Gator reports that for three years running people painted Swastikas over an Israeli flag which San Francisco State College's chapter of the American-Israeli Cultural Organization displayed for various functions.

The writer and editors, needless to say, assume that the vandals were either random "vandalists" or Nazis.

San Francisco State College, between 1964 and 1966, did not have a whole lot of Nazis among the student population, nor was the campus conveniently accessible from the rest of the city. There were heart-felt, politically-innocent folk singers there, to be sure. There were proto-hippies beginning to experiment with psychedelics as a potential means toward an "expanded consciousness." There were young, goateed political radicals gearing up for the fight against the Vietnam War and what Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex." And there were young "negro" students such as future movie star, Danny Glover, beginning to rethink their relationship with the college and American society, as a whole.

But, Nazis? Not so much.

The bottom line is that San Francisco State University has a long history of hostility toward the Jewish people that is expressed both in student body activity, which sometimes takes the form of a violent mob, and almost always takes the form of administrative dithering and indifference.

The only real question I have is whether or not the university intends to continue funding anti-Jewish hatred going forward?

But it is not really much of a question.

I know that they will.

Just ask professor Fred Astren, the current SFSU Chair of the Department of Jewish Studies. He'll tell you, maybe.

And if he will not, I bet Tammi Benjamin of the AMCHA Initiative and the University of California, Santa Cruz, might have something to say on the matter.

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.

Ha'aretz publishes another Amira Hass piece filled with lies and slander

From Amira Hass at Ha'aretz:

On the night of August 5, Gaza’s Interior and National Security Ministry posted a comment on its Facebook page decrying the damage caused by publishing names and photographs of “resistance fighters who fell in battle” (shahids), along with information on where they died.

The Israeli military spokesman seized on this comment as a smoking gun: proof that Hamas was deliberately concealing militant fatalities to boost the apparent numbers of civilians killed.

The Israel Defense Forces cannot refute the images of dead women and children that are broadcast abroad, so instead the army is trying to construct a narrative proving that its targets — and the aftermath of its attacks — are legitimate.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is a vital partner in constructing this narrative. The center, which is checking the name of each Palestinian said killed in the Gaza fighting (it has gotten to 450 so far), estimates that some 46 percent of them are “terrorist operatives.”

... If concealing the names of fatalities is really part of Hamas’ propaganda strategy, a way of forging a counter-narrative to that of the IDF, then it contradicts the deep Palestinian and Hamas ethos of pride over those who were killed fighting the Zionist enemy.

“Even if Hamas had decided to hide the names of its fallen combatants and their numbers for a long time, the families wouldn’t agree,” a veteran Hamas activist told Haaretz.

Oh, a Hamas activist said it! It must be true!

This is of course a lie. Hamas hid the names of its "martyrs" after Cast Lead, and they were adding new ones for months on their website afterwards. In the end, the 49 that they admitted were killed during the operation ballooned up to between 600-700 that they admitted much later.

No families of the "martyrs" seemed too upset then.

The IDF and Amit center saw the Palestinian Facebook comment as a warning and an instruction not to release information, for propaganda purposes. But Palestinians saw it as an expression of concern. Releasing the casualties’ names would enable Israel to target their families as well by bombing their homes, thus turning even more civilians into “targets” or “collateral damage.”

This is not propaganda; it is the reality in which 1.8 million Palestinians have been living in the past six weeks.

“The occupation gathers this information and testimonies and uses them to excuse its crimes against the civilians and destroy the homes,” the Palestinian Facebook post says.

The IDF’s English translation of the post omits the words “against the civilians and destroy the homes.”

The Facebook post was not the only expression of Hamas being upset at revealing the names of fighters. At the very beginning of the war Hamas' Interior Ministry released a statement - on Facebook, YouTube and its own website - commanding Gazans (especially those on social networking sites) to call everyone an innocent civilian.

Hass' supposed debunking of this Facebook post does not address the explicit instructions of Hamas earlier, nor the threats against reporters who crossed the line.

Also, there is no evidence that the IDF targets families of the terrorists they kill afterwards. This is a fantasy that Hamas made up, and a slander that Hass repeats.

Not only that, but PCHR stopped identifying "members of armed groups" in their daily reports in July, before this Facebook post. They never did this in Cast Lead or Pillar of Defense. It seems fairly obvious that Hamas gave them a friendly visit telling them what they are and aren't allowed to report - and it has nothing to do with supposedly protecting Gaza families of terrorists already killed.

So far B’Tselem has documented 72 direct bombardments that have destroyed buildings and killed their inhabitants. Of the 547 people killed in these strikes, 125 were women under 60, 250 were minors and 29 were men and women aged 60 or older. B’Tselem also gives the name of an operative in Hamas’ military wing who was killed in the bombing.

While B'Tselem's methods of verifying who is a terrorist are laughable, even they found more than one case of a terrorist killed in the bombings. They found 9 "military branch operatives" hiding in the civilian homes that they could verify. The terrorists B'Tselem identified generally do not share the last names of the families in the houses, meaning that they were either using the families as human shields or the families were knowingly harboring them. That accounts for the deaths of 66 of those killed in those houses - according to B'Tselem.

Chances are very good that there were far more that B'tselem's telephone researchers did not identify - because Gazans are instructed to lie, the most important fact that Hass is trying to whitewash.

The UN team, Palestinian human rights organizations and B’Tselem are examining every fatality, seeing every body in the hospital, checking every death report and talking to eyewitnesses, family members and survivors.

Another lie. As the Meir Amit Center (that Hass hates so much) and I showed, Al Mezan and PCHR identified a 13-year old as a civilian victim among a crowd of nine civilians - yet the "13-year old" was really 26 and every single "civilian" was a terrorist member of the Abu Rish Brigades. If these NGOs had checked the bodies, as Hass falsely claims, they would have known that the 13-year old was fictional. The only explanation is that these upstanding, tireless "human rights" researchers accepted Hamas' Health Ministry lies as fact and didn't bother to check anything.

If the PCHR and Al Mezan Center were anything close to as conscientious as Hass claims, such mistakes would be impossible.

Hass then goes on to make unsubstantiated claims to explain why a lopsided number of victims are young males of fighting age. CAMERA takes that apart as well.

There is nothing credible in this article. Which makes it perfect for Haaretz.

Interestingly, unlike most of its stories, Haaretz is apparently so eager to push Hass' Hamas agitprop that it did not place it behind their paywall as they usually do within 24 hours of publication.

The Narcissistic People

Time magazine has a feature this week on narcissism, talking about how small children are necessarily narcissistic:

Small children, by their very nature, are moral monsters. They’re greedy, demanding, violent, selfish, impulsive and utterly remorseless. They fight constantly with playmates and siblings but scream in pain and indignation if they’re attacked in return. They expect to be adored but not disciplined, rewarded but never penalized, cared for and served by parents and family without caring or serving reciprocally.

All of this is psychopathology of the first order–and narcissistic pathology in particular. There is the entitlement of narcissism, the egocentrism of narcissism, the bottomless appetite for attention and rewards of narcissism. And there’s the utter narcissistic numbness to how others suffer from your behavior. But it’s also a kind of narcissism that babies need for their very survival. Psychologists’ growing understanding of the roots and reasons for this behavior–and why some people never grow out of it–is providing insights into how best to manage the healthily narcissistic baby in your life, as well as the less healthily narcissistic adults.

I have previously described Palestinian Arabs as having the emotional maturity of toddlers, but I never really connected it to narcissism before. Yet this description, modified slightly, is dead-on:

Palestinian Arab society, in its very nature, creates moral monsters. Their members are greedy, demanding, violent, selfish, impulsive and utterly remorseless. They fight constantly with internal and external enemies but scream in pain and indignation if they’re attacked in return. They expect to be adored but not disciplined, rewarded but never penalized, cared for and served by the UN and other Arab countries without caring or serving reciprocally.

All of this is psychopathology of the first order–and narcissistic pathology in particular. There is the entitlement of narcissism, the egocentrism of narcissism, the bottomless appetite for attention and rewards of narcissism. And there’s the utter narcissistic numbness to how others suffer from your behavior.

Of course, not every Palestinian Arab acts like a spoiled child. Many of the more mature and ambitious ones moved out long ago, to Gulf countries and Europe, rather than being stuck in UNRWA camps taking handouts forever. But the way that the PLO and Hamas act - along with generations who have grown up with their culture of entitlement - shows that Arab narcissism is not genetic but learned.

Take the very basic human trait of empathy. While Israelis are expected to show empathy for the innocents of Gaza - and they indeed do - no one expects Palestinian Arabs to show empathy for the suffering of anyone. Look at the violent reactions to the very idea of teaching the Holocaust in UNRWA schools a few years ago, or the sickening reactions to a professor taking students to visit Nazi death camps only this year. This utter lack of empathy was documented by famed writer Martha Gellhorn as far back as 1961.

Narcissists don't have empathy. Narcissists need to be the center of attention. Narcissists are jealous when the world turns its attention elsewhere, so they do outrageous acts to refocus attention on them. Narcissists attack others but whine when they are attacked. Narcissists don't believe that the rules that everyone else lives by apply to them.

What is remarkable is that so many people take the side of the narcissists, enabling them to not only continue to act like spoiled children but empowering them to do even more outrageous deeds, secure that their selfishness will forever be rewarded.

However, in the case of Palestinians, the support that they receive isn't the type of adoration that Hollywood stars are likely to have - it isn't out of love of their cause. If that was so, there would be far more support for Palestinian Arabs suffering in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and facing discrimination throughout the Arab world.

No, the Palestinian Arabs receive the bulk of their support not out of love but out of shared hate - seething, irrational hate of Israel.

This perfect storm of anti-Zionism and Palestinian Arab narcissism is self-enforcing. Until the world gets sick of coddling the selfishness and destructive nature of the Palestinian Arabs, there is no chance for peace.

Because you cannot reach a compromise with a party that believes that they deserve it all.

Video: IDF destroys Hamas command center in residential apartment building

From JPost:

The Israel Air Force struck a 13-story building in Gaza City on Saturday evening that housed an enormous Hamas command center, IDF sources said, adding that only combatants were inside at the time.

Gazan health officials said 17 people were wounded in the attack. Reuters cited local residents as saying that the building housed 44 families.

Before:

After:

ABC News, even after showing this video, evidently has faith that the IDF has the ability to only destroy specific floors of the building while keeping the rest of the building untouched:

Israeli military officials said the two missiles were targeting a Hamas operations room in the building, but did not explain why all 44 apartments were destroyed.

Has that level of care been demanded of any other country in the history of warfare?

(h/t Bob Knot)

08/23 Links: Daniel Tragerman’s mother: ‘We wanted to watch him grow up’

From Ian:

Daniel Tragerman’s mother: ‘We wanted to watch him grow up’

The mother of 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman, who was killed by a Gaza mortar shell on Friday, said on Saturday that the family was preparing to leave their home for safer areas when the attack came.
Gila Tragerman said a shell had exploded in their kibbutz, Nahal Oz, some time earlier, convincing the family to leave for her parents’ house in Kiryat Ono, near Tel Aviv.
“The suitcases were already packed,” she said. “A minute before the explosion I went out to take Uri’s baby carrier (her young son) from the clothesline and met the neighbor. I asked him if they were leaving and told him we were setting off now. I went inside and there was the Color Red siren.
“The children were playing in a tent inside the house, and from the moment of the siren to the explosion only three seconds passed. We didn’t have time to get the children and go into the protected room.”

Amira Hass's Flawed Analysis of Gazan Civilian Casualties

Hass's argument is fractured and falls apart under scrutiny.
1) She asserts that the high proportion of males is due to their higher propensity for public spaces, but she offers no evidence that the Israelis preferentially target public spaces where crowds of men might routinely assemble. Without offering evidence that the Israelis indiscriminately target public spaces - independent of situations in which the presence of combatants have been confirmed - her assertion has no value. In fact, there is evidence pointing to the opposite conclusion. In light of the more than 5000 targeted missiles and thousands of artillery shells fired by the Israelis and only 2,000 Gazan fatalities that resulted, the evidence strongly indicates that the Israelis make every effort to avoid firing into public spaces occupied by random people. If Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling were routinely striking public spaces in a wanton manner simply to inflict casualties, the fatality count would be much higher.
2) While she offers an explanation - unsubstantiated as it is - why there are many more male fatalities than female, her explanation fails to address the age pattern of the fatalities. There is a spike starting at the age of 17 and peaking in the early to mid 20s which then rapidly diminishes. This pattern is more credibly explained by combatants than it is by Hass's observations that males attend mosques, funerals and hang out watching the World Cup.
In conclusion, Hass's attempt to discredit Israeli claims that combatants contribute a far higher portion of the fatalities than the Palestinian groups admit is not at all convincing.

Stallone, Schwarzenegger lead Hollywood assault on Hamas

A long list of Hollywood heavyweights have put their names to a letter slamming Hamas over the “devastating loss of life endured by Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.”
The reported 187 signatories, who include Mayim Bialik, Minnie Driver, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Rogen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sarah Silverman[!], and Sylvester Stallone, condemn the “ideologies of hatred and genocide which are reflected in Hamas’ charter, Article 7 of which reads, ‘There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!’”
In their letter, set to be published on Sunday in Billboard, Variety and Hollywood Reporter, and also in leading US newspapers, they write that “Hamas cannot be allowed to rain rockets on Israeli cities, nor can it be allowed to hold its own people hostage. Hospitals are for healing, not for hiding weapons. Schools are for learning, not for launching missiles. Children are our hope, not our human shields.”
Other signatories include director Ivan Reitman, writer Aaron Sorkin[!], producers Michael Rotenberg and Avi Lerner, composer Michael Nyman, talent manager Danny Sussman and mogul Haim Saban, Ynet reported Saturday.

Weekly EoZ roundup 8/22/14

In case you missed them, here are the best EoZ stories of the week:

If I would re-do it, my Gaza war e-book would be at least three times as large today....

08/22 Links Pt2: Stop blaming Israel and wake up: The black flag of jihad is the REAL threat

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Stop blaming Israel and wake up: The black flag of jihad is the REAL threat to the world

Jews are attacked here in Britain, they are blockaded into a synagogue in Paris and the chant ‘Death to the Jews’ is heard in Germany for the first time in 70 years.
But too few people seem to want to notice this or admit what it means. They think this is just about Israel, or just about Jewish people. It isn’t. It is about all of us.
The decision last month by the Israeli government to respond to Hamas rocket-fire from Gaza is the response any government would choose if rockets were fired at its citizens. The Israeli government has the right - as does any government - to stop the bombarding of its people.
However, in recent weeks it has become plain that much of the world expects a different response from Israel. They expect Israel not to fight for the safety, security and survival of their people, but to lie down in front of the Islamic extremist enemy.

JPost Editorial: Treating terror

The beheading of American photojournalist James Foley, apparently by a British member of the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq, is yet another shocking example of the danger posed to Western countries by their own citizens who have joined the forces of jihad.
It follows several recent chilling incidents involving Western jihadis, including Twitter photos published by an Australian fighting for Islamic State holding the severed heads of two Syrian soldiers.
Estimates of the number of Western “jihad tourists” in Syria and Iraq reach as high as 3,000. Others have traveled to Yemen to join al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and to Somalia to fight with al-Shabaab. They have been involved in countless atrocities including beheadings, executions and suicide missions.
As former British foreign secretary William Hague noted in a February statement to the House of Commons, some of them “may return ideologically hardened and with experience in weapons and explosives.”
Three months later, Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-yearold Frenchman of Algerian origin, returned from a stint in Syria, where he is believed to have fought with Islamic State – in its previous incarnation, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – and shot dead four people, including two Israelis, at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
It was the first instance of a “blowback” attack by a jihadi returning from Syria.

Israel's UN Envoy: Radical Extremism Affects Us All

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, warned on Thursday that terrorism has doubled its power.
Speaking at a Security Council Debate on the subject of conflict prevention, Prosor said that radical extremism affected the entire world and not just Israel. He called for a “war against radical ideology”.
“Radical extremism has touched every part of the world from Buenos Aires to Burgas and from Bangkok to Burkina Faso,” said Prosor.
“Oppression and extremism are not bound by borders. Nowhere is this threat more obvious than in the Middle East.