Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 07, 2014

So, What Did We Win? (Mike Lumish)

Operation Protective Edge is apparently over.

Terrific.

In a recent piece for Israel Thrives and Jews Down Under entitled, Netanyahu and the West Doom Israel to Perpetual War, I argued that US and western pressure to let up on Hamas in Gaza inclined Netanyahu to accept limited war aims in this most recently concluded spasm of hatred and blood.

In my estimation the main thing that the Netanyahu government accomplished is merely kicking the proverbial can down the proverbial road. So long as Hamas remains intact in the Gaza strip then violence and war remains inevitable. Degrading Hamas's ability to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians such as those that lived in kibbutz Nir Am, just west of S'derot, was an exceedingly important war aim that was only partially met. The destruction of dozens of terror tunnels was also an exceedingly important war aim and we can only hope that the great majority of those tunnels have been destroyed.

But we do not really know, now do we?

Something over 2,000 people were killed in this latest operation and the great majority of those dead are Arab dead. Well over 2,000 Arabs gave their lives so that Hamas could gain a PR victory over Israel. I cannot believe that their families would think it was worth it, but I also do not believe that their families are likely to blame anyone for this most recent catastrophe on anyone but the Jews.

Furthermore, according to the reports that I have read, the areas around S'derot and Ashkelon have been cleared out. The region is devastated and who knows when, or if, it will recover? Will Dana Bar-on and her family return to kibbutz Nir Am? And if they do not, who could possibly blame them?

Whatever the harm to southern Israel and the absolute devastation of parts of the Gaza Strip, the fact of the matter is that Hamas "won" this recent encounter in at least two ways.

The first is that they created true fear in the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

Not only was kibbutz Nir Am hit with rocket fire, so was Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Jewish minority in that part of the world has ensconced itself into Fortress Israel and now is obligated to constantly defend itself from the Arab-Muslim front-line troops in places like the Strip. This has the effect of forcing people, both Jewish and Muslim, who live within Israel near the Gaza border to move elsewhere, thereby making a large part of that small country essentially defunct and unlivable.

Making Jews uncomfortable on historically Jewish land has been an Arab war aim at least since the rise of Zionism in the nineteenth-century and it works. Of course, the tiny Jewish minority, despite Israel's military strength, can be made to feel exceedingly uncomfortable in their own homes. Take a moment to listen to Dana Bar-on talk about what life is like under all those "toy bottle rockets" that Leftists mock as a weak "indigenous" response to alleged Jewish atrocities. Presumably they would prefer it if more Jews were killed so that hostilities could be more "proportionate" as they sit on the sidelines and eat popcorn.

Dana Bar-on was there when these vicious Jihadis jumped out of the ground within sprinting distance of her own house. She heard the rifle fire as the IDF confronted and killed a number of these Islamist head-choppers and then she and her family subsequently moved away from the home that she was born into.

Of course, if kibbutz Nir Am had a problem from Jihadi terror, just take a gander at the devastation the IDF gave to parts of Gaza.

People look at this image, and all the thousands of similar images put out by the general media - not to mention all the photos of dead or crying children and weeping old women in black - and naturally develop feelings of loathing and disgust for Israel, if not for Jews, more generally. And that, my friends, represents Hamas's other victory in this recent upheaval of stupidity and violence.

Hamas was more than willing to sacrifice thousands of its own people for the purpose of whipping up hatred toward Jews and it worked magnificently. It worked like a charm. It worked despite the fact that many of us warned the west that they were willfully playing a roll in an anti-Jewish deception. We told them that Hamas was putting innocent women and children into harms way for the specific purpose that they would be killed by Israelis seeking to degrade Hamas rocket-fire on their own civilian population. This is not even disputed by the United Nations. We told them that the reason that Hamas does this is to create more hatred toward Israel and Jews in the West.

Nonetheless, what did Protective Edge create?

More hatred toward Israel and Jews in the West.

There was only one, real, long-standing possibility within Operation Protective Edge and that was in the possibility that Israel would finally take out Hamas entirely. Short of that, all Israel did was bolster Hamas's prestige throughout the Middle East and throughout the sensitive, soft-hearted, caring West, while allowing perhaps one-quarter of Israel to be rendered something near unlivable.

Ultimately Netanyahu caved to western pressure, or so I suspect. I do not believe that the west will ever allow a real Jewish victory over never-ending Arab aggression. The conflict will continue, year upon year and decade upon decade, because the west - in its alleged desire to be balanced and fair - throws much of its weight behind the enemies of the Jewish minorty. If the EU and the UN and the US did not fund Arab aggression against the Jews of the Middle East then that aggression would eventually dry up and blow away.

What keeps the hatred and the fear going is western funding of that hatred and fear and what keeps the blood flowing is the hatred and fear, itself.

If the West honestly cared about ending the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict then it would stop consuming the conflict, it would stop pouring money into Hamas and the PLO / Fatah and UNRWA, and it would stop hounding the Jewish minority for daring to live in Judea and Samaria, the land where Jewish people come from, and would start pressuring the hostile Arab majority to leave the Jews the hell alone.

And if you are concerned about alleged Jewish-Israeli abuse of power toward the local Arabs, perhaps you should consider speaking out against the absolutely blood-curdling messages screeching from the mosques throughout the entire region.

The Jews of the Middle East are a small people under perpetual siege in a region in flames and until you understand that then you do not begin to comprehend the problem.

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.

Gaza imam pulls out assault rifle during sermon (video)

August 29, 2014, at the Al Huda mosque in Gaza, with Sheikh Iyad Abu Mujahid Funoun:

He was imprisoned in Israel in 2003 and sentenced to 29 years but was released in a "goodwill gesture" in 2011. He was re-arrested and then deported to Gaza after a trial in 2013. He is associated with the ("secular") Popular Resistance Committees.

(h/t Bob Knot)

In 2010, the PA cabinet reclassified "honor killings" to be considered murder. It is unclear if this made any difference in the actual law.

In 2011, to much fanfare, Abbas claimed to remove the leniencies in existing PA law (based on Jordan's penal code) that would make "honor killing" a reason for a lighter sentence when killing a family member. Significantly, it still allowed leniency in sentencing if the victim had committed adultery or "other acts of sexual impropriety." It merely removed the leniency if the killer claimed he or she did it for "honor" reasons.

In other words, Palestinian Arabs who killed their sisters and daughters and wives could get shorter sentences as long as they claimed that the victims deserved it.

In 2012, it was revealed that the law that Abbas had modified was not the one that lawyers had used to get leniency for "honor killings" anyway. In fact, any attempt to repeal the real laws would have caused serious domestic problems among the people who support the barbaric law.

Now, it is proven that Abbas' PR stunt has done literally nothing to stem "honor killings" in the PA:

Despite a 2011 decision by Abbas to end the practice, the director of a major Palestinian forensic institute told Ma'an in a recent interview that killers were receiving leniency by claiming reasons of "honor" in the slaying deaths of young women.

Dr. Sabir al-Aloul, director of Al-Quds University's Institute of Forensic Medicine, said that examinations of the bodies of the vast majority of women who were slain by family members in so-called "honor crimes" showed no signs of previous sexual activity.

"It seems the killers use family honor as a pretext to benefit from an article in the Palestinian laws that suggests leniency for men who kill to protect their family honor," al-Aloul said.

In 2011, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas ordered a legal amendment to end leniency in courts for men who kill women from their families under the pretext that they "dishonored" their families, presumably through sexual activity.

Abbas' announcement was made by his secretary-general al-Tayyib Abd al-Rahim during a live talk show on satellite channel Palestine TV to discuss the murder of 20-year-old university student Ayah Barad'iyya from the southern West Bank town of Surif by her uncle.

However, legal experts say Abbas' move was not enough to prevent the killing of women over issues of so-called family "honor." They say that there are other gaps in the law through which killers have managed to gain leniency by claiming reasons of honor.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 37% of Palestinian wives - and over half of those in Gaza - had experienced physical violence by their husbands in just the year 2011. Yet NGOs, the UN and even The Lancet have placed the blame for Palestinian men beating their wives on - Israel!

As long as the irrational hate for Israel is considered mainstream, real problems in Palestinian society can be swept under the rug. And indeed they are. Which goes to show that the reflexive, and unthinking tendency by so many to blame Israel for everything is not only stupid, but it actually contributes to violence against Arab women.

Abbas says Hamas killed 150 Gazans for "breaking curfew" and collaboration

Mahmoud Abbas, speaking to journalists in Egypt, issued a scathing attack on Hamas, blaming them for the war with Israel and for all of Gaza's casualties.

Many of his statements were a repeat of what he said in a televised interview a week ago - that Hamas lied to him about them not being involved in the kidnapping of the Israeli teens, and that Hamas ended up accepting a ceasefire that they could have accepted on the first days of the war saving 2000 lives and much property damage.

But Abbas added a new accusation. He said that Hamas committed atrocities during and after the war in which they executed many without trial, and that Hamas killed 120 youths in Gaza under the pretext of them breaking curfew, in addition to executing between 30-40 alleged "collaborators."

Abbas also claims, unconvincingly, that only 50 Hamas members were killed in Gaza during the war, as opposed to 861 Fatah members plus their families.

Abbas' claims must be taken with a large grain of salt, because there is no reason to believe that he is any more truthful talking about his Hamas enemies than he is when speaking about his Israeli enemies. We know that some Fatah members were killed as "collaborators" and it seems likely that many Fatah members were held under house arrest, and were shot in the legs if they tried to leave - making them human shields. The rest of the accusations need more corroboration.

But his statements do show that the heralded "unity" government is fictional. Abbas is clearly also feeling the heat of the immense popularity Hamas is enjoying after the "victory."

Interestingly, while his remarks are on the Arabic section of the official Wafa news agency page, they have not been translated to English, because Abbas wants to keep his criticisms of Hamas out of the Western media and to show a united front against Israel. However, at least one Jordanian report says that Abbas will publicly break with Hamas on Sunday during an Arab League meeting.

(h/t Khaled Abu Toameh)

09/06 Links: Remembering the Munich 11; Anti-Semitic French Comedian Mocks Foley Beheading

From Ian:

Remembering the Munich 11

Forty-two years ago today, the Olympic games took place in Munich, Germany. The games were meant to mark the change an an era; the transformation of Germany from the birthplace of Nazism, hatred and intolerance to a place of international unity and cooperation. Until it wasn’t.
The 1972 Olympic games in Munich, were tainted by a Massacre which went on to define the history of the Olympic games, the history of the Jewish people, and the history of the human race until the end of time.
On September 5th, two weeks into the games, while the athletes were asleep, 8 members of the Palestinian terror group Black September broke into the dormitory in which the Israeli athletes and coaches were staying. In taking hostages, the terrorists killed Moshe Weinberg and Yossef Romano, leaving them with 9 hostages, or 9 potential “bargaining chips” with which they hoped to negotiate, with Israel, the freedom of convicted Palestinian terrorists.

EU Considers Pulling the Plug on Aid to Palestine

European frustrations with the lack of progress towards a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinian territories have prompted comments from officials that EU aid to Palestine could diminish substantially within the next three to four years.
"It is clear that our policy is not sustainable in the medium-term without some form of political breakthrough and money alone has not succeeded in producing that," an EU official told EurActiv. "It was meant to accompany a political process, but that’s not really happening."
The move would be a major blow to the Palestinian Authority, as the EU is currently its biggest donor, contributing some €500 million per year. A number of Palestinian functionaries in Ramallah are paid from EU funds.
The Commission has recently completed an in depth review of aid spending in the Palestinian Territories between 2008 and 2013, interviewing some 150 stakeholders in Brussels, Israel, Palestine and Washington. Numerous documents were also scoured by the team.

Suspect in Brussels Jewish Museum shooting was IS member who tortured prisoners in Syria

Prior to the fatal attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014, the main suspect in the shooting, Mehdi Nemmouche, was an ISIS member in Syria where he tortured both Syrian and foreign captives, the French newspaper Le Point reported on Saturday
The Le Point report is based on the testimony of its journalist, Nicholas Henin who was released from IS custody in April of this year.
"When he [Nemmouche] was not singing, he was torturing. He was a member of a small group of French nationals whose arrival used to terrify about fifty Syrian prisoners in cells near ours," Henin said, adding, "I myself had been interrogated... the torture went all night long, until the dawn prayer."
"For one month and a half, we were chained up together."
Henin was among four French journalists held hostage in Syria since June of 2013 and was found by Turkish soldiers on its border with Syria in April.
The Le Point journalist, Pierre Torres, Edouard Elias and Didier Francois were found in April in Sanliurfa province in Turkey blindfolded with their hands bound.
Between July and December 2013, Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French citizen, was in charge of Western hostages then held in a former hospital in Aleppo that was converted into a prison, Le Point reported.
In the attack in Brussels an Israeli couple a French woman, and a Belgian man were shot dead.

South Africa Denies Dalai Lama Visa Again

South Africa has denied a visa to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, for the third time in five years, one of his representatives said on Thursday, intensifying speculation about the extent of Beijing's sway over Pretoria.
The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India and is at loggerheads with China over Tibet, had been hoping to join a Nobel peace conference in Cape Town next month but withdrew his visa application after being told it would be unsuccessful.
"We have informally received contact His Holiness won't get his visa," Nangsa Chodon, the Dalai Lama's South Africa-based representative, told Reuters.

09/05 Links Pt2: Glick: The dilemma of the Jewish leftist; Will Fact Ever Displace Anti-Israel Fiction?

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The dilemma of the Jewish leftist

Freedland argued that as the two-state solution becomes more and more remote, liberal Zionists “will have to decide which of their political identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist.”
But this is of course absurd. The only way a person can uphold liberal values is by being a Zionist. Israel is the only country in the region that is a human rights-respecting liberal democracy that is governed by the rule of law.
What is becoming more and more difficult is being a Zionist while being a leftist. As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics, anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist dogma. And that anti-Semitism will express itself first and foremost as a virulent rejection of Israel and of Jews who refuse to disavow and condemn the Jewish state.
Sotloff reportedly maintained faith with his Judaism in secret while in captivity. He refused food on Yom Kippur and secretly prayed toward Jerusalem.
In so doing, he showed that the evil that controlled him physically, could not penetrate his soul. For this he died a Jewish hero.

Is the Boycott Movement Anti-Semitic?

Ever since Lawrence Summers asserted that the divestment movement proposals were “anti-Semitic in their effect, if not in their intent,” we have had a model to use in examining the prejudicial implications of BDS in a more thoughtful way. That does not mean that every divestment proposal is anti-Semitic, but it does help us see why people who advocate the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state are promoting a goal that has anti-Semitic effects.
Arguments that Jews have no ancient connection to the land, that Israelites and Hebrews never existed — positions that some academic BDS advocates promote — also have an anti-Semitic component. The demand that the citizens of Israel give up their right to political self-determination and the unsupportable assertion that the Israeli government is an exceptionally egregious human rights violator are also consciously or unconsciously underwritten by the long-term history of anti-Semitism and the history of efforts to isolate and “other” the Jewish people.

Elliott Abrams: What Now for Israel?

“The status quo is unsustainable,” President Obama said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon after taking office in 2009. “The status quo is unsustainable,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told AIPAC in March 2010. “The status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon averred in 2013. This year, Secretary of State John Kerry, with his customary light touch, informed the Munich Security Conference: “Today’s status quo absolutely, to a certainty, I promise you 100-percent, cannot be maintained. It’s not sustainable.”
What is usually meant by this assertion is something quite specific: that in the “occupied territories” of Gaza and the West Bank, a Palestinian state must very soon be erected—or else. “It is critical for us to advance a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in their own states in peace and security,” Obama added in that 2009 statement. He has repeated the line endlessly, and so has every world leader except for Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (who has a rather different objective in mind).
But 66 years after the founding of the state of Israel, and 47 years after Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the status quo has once again confirmed its (relative) merits, while a history of repeated efforts to upend it precipitously has once again exposed an often reckless folly. The status quo has outlasted the cold war, the Oslo-fed dreams of a “new Middle East,” and the hopes for an Arab Spring; it has endured decades of war and intifada, and has proved more durable than many of the leaders and regimes who have insisted that it cannot and must not be sustained. Israelis who spent this past summer dodging Hamas rockets and sending their sons to fight in Gaza must wonder, not for the first time, why it is “critical” to implement Obama’s solution to their problems rather than to defeat terrorism and more broadly the ceaseless Arab and Muslim assaults on the Jewish state. Why are these not the status quo that the whole world agrees is unsustainable?

Melanie Phillips: The false equation of Jew-hatred and Islamophobia

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main representative body of the Jewish community in the UK, managed last week to get itself into a terrible mess.
It issued a joint statement with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which not only stated that the Middle East conflict must not poison community relations but also condemned “the targeting of civilians” which was “against our religious traditions.”
This unspecific formulation implied the Board was condemning Israel as well as Hamas for having targeted civilians in Operation Protective Edge. In the row that then erupted, the Board protested that the phrase could only relate to Hamas since Israel never targeted civilians.
But the MCB claimed the Board had agreed the phrase covered both sides. So the Board enabled the MCB to crow – falsely but plausibly – that the Jews had condemned Israel for war crimes.
People were left scratching their heads at how the Board could have been quite so foolish; indeed, how it could have collaborated at all with the MCB which, along with its affiliates, has links to Islamic extremists, a history of support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and whose past leaders have described Israel as “the Zionist terrorist state.”
The explanation lies at root in the UK Jewish leadership’s misguided and dangerous strategy for dealing with Britain’s Muslims.

Jordanians rally: "We are all Hamas" (update)

There was a demonstration in Irbid, Jordan, to celebrate Hamas' "victory" in Gaza.

Organized by the Islamic Movement, thousands attended. They chanted "We are all Hamas! We are all resistance!"

There were "fireworks, cheers and demands for the resistance to prepare for the next chapter in battle with the Zionist enemy to liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque from the clutches of the Jews."

One speaker, Dr. Hammam Said, saluted the Qassam terror brigades, criticizing what he said was "a conspiracy of Arab rulers against our people in Gaza."

UPDATE: From the comments.

We call on this blog to observe accuracy and not to buy into Jordan's king's propaganda games. The rally above was held under the supervision, facilitation and encouragement of the Jordanian king's intelligence. The purpose of such rallies is to play the boogieman game against Israel and play on Israel’s fear factor, and this tactic has worked with well-intended people, such as many from AIPAC for example, who blindly believe that the minute "the king goes, the Islamist will take over". This is not true, the rally above was held in a Bedouin-dominated area, no Palestinians in Irbid, the rally was attended by less than a thousand people, and such rallies in Amman almost failed and the Jordanian media even reported it. Get the facts, the fact here is: the Palestinian majority in Jordan still hates Israel, nonetheless, it hates Jordan's king even more and hates the Islamists because they are his shameless ally in the open, he himself said: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a part of my regime". Also, worth noting, why does Jordan king ban any secular rally or protests in Jordan, yet allows and facilities all Islamist rallies in Jordan?

Sincerely

Mudar Zahran
Secretary General
The Jordanian Opposition Coalition.

As I went through over 400 of Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth's tweets, I couldn't help but notice that dozens of them were flat-out false, and others were knowingly deceptive - virtually always against Israel.

Here are are some:

July 6: After days of near silence on kidnap-killing of Palestinian boy, #Israel PM Netanyahu condemns a "horrific crime." http://trib.al/iwoM2EG

Truth: Netanyahu called the murder "reprehensible" immediately after it occurred.

July 9: Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, indiscriminate; Israeli targeting of Gaza homes, collective punishment: @HRW. http://trib.al/AOo4Web

Truth: Without knowing what was in those homes, Roth cannot make that flat statement. In many if not most of the cases, Hamas members used their homes as weapons caches, entrances to tunnels, meeting areas or command and control centers - all of which are valid military targets.

July 13: Unlike Hamas, #Israel says it spares no effort to prevent civilian harm, but UN says 77% of Gaza dead are civilians. http://trib.al/qWcSMy7

Truth: Besides the fact that the percentage of civilians killed in the first days of the war have already been shown to be vastly exaggerated, even the UN report said "Data on fatalities and destruction of property is consolidated by the Protection and Shelter clusters based on preliminary information, and is subject to change based on further verifications." Anyone who reported these figures as flat facts, which Roth did numerous times, without the UN's caveat, was lying.

July 14: If Israel uses precision bombing & 133 of 168 of Gazans killed were civilians, what does that say of its intentions? http://trib.al/fkWCvSo

Truth: Again, besides the inaccuracies of civilian casualties reported, Roth is saying that Israel's intentions must have been to target civilians. Of course, if Israel wanted to target civilians there would have been thousands killed every single day. So what does it say when Roth takes false data and applies it falsely to come up with a preconceived conclusion?

July 15: Even if militant is legit military target, attacking family home likely to cause disproportionate civilian casualties http://trib.al/9oA5bXg

Truth: According to international law, that is not a decision for Roth to make, but a decision that a "reasonable military commander" must make based on the data he has in the field, based on the value of the target and the knowledge about what civilian casualties are likely. That is the reality of international law, not the fantasy that Roth spins. We will see other examples of international law that Roth twists - always against Israel and, unbelievably, for Hamas.

July 16: #Israel warns eastern #Gaza city residents to evacuate, suggesting (contrary to law) that anything goes if they don't pic.twitter.com/QbxDxADySQ

Truth: Nowhere did Israel imply anything like that - this is only in Roth's sick imagination. Warnings demonstrate that due care is being taken to minimize civilian casualties, which means that Israel was adhering to (or going beyond) international law. Civilians do not make military objectives immune to attack; if the target is a valid military target then international law accepts that civilians can die as long as their deaths are not disproportionate to the military value. As the ICTY case shows, after a warning is given the responsibility for civilian lives shifts, to an extent, to the authorities that have the ability to evacuate the citizens.

The rest of the series after the break.

09/05 Links Pt1: Glick: The Unfinished War; Dershowitz: The world rewards terrorism

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Unfinished War

The war with Hamas is not over. What we are experiencing today is a temporary cease-fire.
The most basic reason the war is not over is because Hamas has no existence outside its war against the Jewish state. Hamas exists to obliterate Israel. The goal of each round of fighting is to soften Israel up for the next round.
Hamas will only stop fighting when it is defeated. And Israel did not defeat Hamas.
Not only did Israel not defeat Hamas, according to Haaretz, senior IDF commanders are now lobbying the government to enable Hamas to credibly claim victory.
According to Amos Harel, senior IDF commanders want Israel to bow to Hamas’s demands for open borders with Israel and for the steady transfer of funds to Hamas’s treasury.
Harel quoted a senior IDF source who said that if Israel doesn’t give in to Hamas’s demands for open borders, Hamas will renew its attacks at the end of September.

Sarah Honig: Mideastern Mirror Mania

The Arab world’s favorite looking-glass is the crazy mirror – a.k.a. the carnival mirror – that lowbrow staple of old-time funfairs. No use expecting verisimilitude here. It’s not sought and it is not welcome. The idea isn’t to reflect reality but to invent its deceptive alternative.
Curved mirrors, both convex and concave, distort shapes weirdly and wickedly and render the factual and the imaginary indistinguishable.
These mirrors are further adroitly shifted and retracted. With a bit of smoke, conjurers can altogether cunningly both obscure and embellish the truth in a spellbinding, hallucinatory extravaganza.
This is why Israelis emerged somewhat downhearted from the latest conflict with Gaza while Hamastan lustily celebrated the triumph it proclaimed absurdly among the ruins.
Both sides here are decidedly loony, but in significantly different ways, and that difference encapsulates the whole story. It reminds us that we don’t share anything close to the same logic and that we don’t think or communicate on the same wavelength. It accounts for why there can never be a meeting of the minds between the self-flagellating objectivity of Jews and the illusory subjectivity of Arabs.

Alan Dershowitz: No one should be surprised at ISIS' brutality because the world rewards terrorism

World leaders, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, demand that we treat Hamas, which is indistinguishable in its overall brutality from ISIS, as a legitimate political organization. The United Nations General Assembly grants statehood to a group that began as a terrorist organization and continues to honor terrorists who murdered children. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee honors Yassir Arafat, the Godfather of terrorism, who persisted in this tactic until the day he died. European countries pay ransom to terrorists. Any many European nations—Italy, Germany, Great Britain and others—have freed terrorists, including mass murderers, who have returned to lives of terror. Even Israel has engaged in prisoner exchanges with terrorist groups.
It is one thing to negotiate—directly or indirectly—with terrorists who hold innocent people as hostages. Such negotiation may be a necessary evil. Democratic nations are sometimes forced to negotiate with the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan and other criminal gangs. But we should never honor or legitimate them, as we have done with Palestinian terrorists. Nor should the world condemn and place on trial democracies that fight against terrorist organizations which use their own civilians as human shields. The current misguided approach to terrorism is a prescription for emulation and repetition of terrorism as the tactic of choice.
So let’s not be surprised when a group like ISIS learns the tragic lesson of history and emulates success and visibility rather than failure and invisibility. ISIS is doing exactly what the immoral consulting firm would advise it to do. So we shouldn’t be surprised. Instead we should reverse course and develop responses to terrorism that never allow this tactic to succeed. Terrorists must never be allowed to win, as they are, unfortunately, doing today.

UNICEF says that they refused to clear Gaza neighborhoods that were under threat

From Mark Langfan's blog at A7:

On August 21,2014, Ms. Pernille Ironside, the Chief of the UNICEF Gaza Field Office, held a press conference at the United Nations in New York City “on the impact on children from the conflict in Gaza.”

...In response to a question of how she, and the entire UN Gaza staff, remained “neutral” in the face of Gaza children’s and civilian hardships, Ms. Ironside stated that, “There have been attempts to instrumentalize the UN in Gaza in this conflict. Including, there have been attempts [by Israel] to try to facilitate military operations against the [Palestinian] civilian population by facilitating the clearance of certain neighborhoods. The UN has refused to be a party to that.”

Notice the Orwellian language being used here: the UN is saying that Israel wanted to make it easier to attack the civilian population of Gaza by urging the civilian population of Gaza to leave!

But the major issue here is that the UN had the opportunity to help Gazans get out of the way of imminent fighting in their neighborhoods, and the UN considered such an action to be "instrumentalizing" it and therefore it refused to help.

If Israel wanted to target civilians, as the UN claims, then why would they urge them to leave?

And if UNICEF is tasked with helping children - why did they follow Hamas instructions to have them stay in the line of fire?

Who really cares about the civilians of Gaza?

UNRWA similarly was urged by Israel to evacuate Gazans staying in a school in Beit Hanoun for three days, and UNRWA refused to facilitate the evacuation - and then blamed Israel for not giving them the chance to leave.

(h/t Gary)

Arabic media are buzzing about the disappearance of Hamas interior minister Fathi Hammad.

A week ago there were rumors of Hammad being an Israeli "collaborator" and that he had fled to Israel, and Hamas denied those rumors.

Yet he has not been seen since then, and the rumors are growing stronger.

The Gaza interior ministry is responsible for all internal security, and most of the police in Gaza are also members of terror groups.

The current rumor is that the Qassam Brigades are engaging in a purge of the "old guard" of Hamas, having already executed former Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha fr being a spy for Egypt. Supposedly, they have detained Hammad after they arrested a female relative of his, Fahima Hammad. Fathi may have fled to avoid being targeted.

Hamas' chief bombmaker in the 1990s, Yahya Ayyash ("The Engineer"), was killed by Israel while at the home of another Hammad relative, Osama Hammad, causing more suspicion.

Apparently, Hamas has been very spooked by intelligence leaks, especially the one that led to the bombing of the home where the family of Qassam Brigades head Mohammed Deif were hiding. One rumor says that Hamas political bureau member Imad al-Alami was severely beaten and thrown out a second-story window by fellow Hamas members who suspected him of espionage.

Another rumor says that Hamas was displeased with Hammad for giving the orders to fire rockets during the cease-fire, causing Israeli retaliation and targeting of Deif, whose fate is still unknown.

Muslims saying Jews planting Gharqad trees to protect railroad

As you probably know, there is an Islamic hadith that says:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

This is quoted in Hamas' charter.

Yediot Aharonot reports that Israel is planting trees to protect the railroad between Ashkelon and Sderot from rocket fire and especially from anti-tank missiles. Residents were concerned after a couple of Hamas missile attacks on vehicles near Gaza, and Israelis decides that a "green" solution was the best.

Now, Egyptian newspaper Youm7 - and many others - are seizing on this story as proof that the prophecy being revealed in the hadith is coming true!

The newspaper is claiming that Israel is deliberately planting gharqad trees to protect the trains. Most commentators associate the gharqud tree with the boxtree, which is much shorter than the ones pictured here.

Then again, since Allah's word is true, whatever tree the Jews plant must be the gharqad!

For another great example of how Jews used a different type of tree to their advantage - the eucalyptus - check out the famous story of Eli Cohen.

Fake Palestinian "Civilian" - and "Child" - of the Day. And another.

The Al Mezan Center - which the UN relies on for its statistics - wrote on July 25 that Ashraf Ibrahim Al Najjar, a 22-year old civilian, had been killed by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis.

PCHR identified him as a civilian as well on the same date.

Hamas' Health Ministry, however, said that the Ashraf Ibrahim Al Najjar that had been killed in Khan Younis was only 13 years old. Which means he is one of the "children" being counted by many reporters.

Here is this possibly 13-year old "civilian.":

Most of the rest of the al-Najjar family were buried while wrapped in terrorist flags, but it is not clear how many if any were actually members of the groups.

(h/t Johnny, Ibn Boutros, IronyDome, Bob K)

UPDATE: A bonus "civilian."

PCHR says that ‘Aadel Mohammed Abu Hwaishel, 38, killed on July 22, was a civilian. (Al Mezan doesn't say either way.)

Here are photos of this beloved "civilian" who happened to be a commander in the Qassam Brigades - a fact that was known the same day as the reports, but that PCHR decided to hide.

09/04 Links Pt2: Israel is the Safest Place in the Middle East for Arabs; Joan Rivers dies at 81

From Ian:

Richard Landes: The Biggest Winner in the Lose-Lose “Operation Protective Edge”

After weeks of following the combat in Gaza, pundits are now turning to the question, “Who won?” Hamas claims points just for surviving, despite the massive hammering its leadership and its constituents endured, and some say Israel, whatever its battlefield gains, lost the “cognitive war”—big time. In the topsy-turvy universe of Middle East politics, nothing succeeds like failure on the battlefield and nothing fails like military success.
Among the ancillary players, there are losers all around. Journalists’ credibility has been dangerously damaged. The UN Human Rights Council and Rights [sic. Relief] and Works Agency were embarrassingly partisan; Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama, astonishingly clueless and blundering; the intellectual Left, shamefully right-wing in its embrace of anti-Semitic discourse. Many analysts agree that Operation Protective Edge (OPE) has produced only losers and bigger losers.
Yet one group did emerge from OPE a winner: European jihadis. As Israel pounded an enemy that hid behind civilians, demonstrators spilled out into the streets of Western and Muslim cities the world over to protest the “Israeli genocide of the Palestinians,” even as they shouted “Death to Jews!” and “Jews to the ovens!” and used the Twitter hashtag #Hitlerwasright. Shops were ransacked, and Jews were refused medical services and attacked in riots. Jewish businesses were boycotted. In Germany, the cry was heard: “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the Gas!” In France, it was “Death to Jews! Slit Jews’ Throats!” While the news media downplay the violence and hatred, and the police and judiciary resist it half-heartedly, European Jews are packing their bags.
So Jihadis get a quadruple win. They depict Israel as the Dajjal (Antichrist) to Western audiences; roam freely through the streets of Western cities, carrying metal bars and yelling jihadi slogans; accelerate the expulsion of Jews from Europe; and keep post-Christian Europeans thinking this violence only targets Jews, and only because of Israel. For jihadis, these past weeks confirm what they have long believed: that this is the Muslim century in which, among others, Europe joins Dar al Islam.

Australian Universities hit by antisemitism by Christopher Pyne, Education Minister

In our universities, free speech is to be encouraged, but it does not extend to threats and physical harassment. I am not surprised that the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported in Australia last year was the second highest on record. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement has made anti-Semitism fashionable on the far Left.
Last week some University of Sydney students ‘‘occupied’’ a nearby Max Brenner chocolate shop. Chanting phrases such as “Max Brenner, come off it! There’s blood in your hot chocolate!” at customers in Australia is disgusting and targeting a shop because the owners are Jewish is racist. Students at the University of NSW spread false news about a similar protest at Max Brenner UNSW. This month, the student association at the University of Western Australia sought to bring Uthman Badar, spokesman for Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which claims “honour killings are morally justified”, to the university to discuss the Gaza conflict. Hizb-ut-Tahrir calls for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a global caliphate, so one suspects the purpose is not to provide a balanced discussion — but it will fuel anti-Israel hate on campus. I applaud the university for condemning the speaker as inconsistent with university values, which led the association to cancel it.
Anti-Semitism has no place in Australia and our universities must act quickly to condemn it. University administrations should be very careful not to invoke freedom of speech to allow speech that vilifies students.
Most Australians are horrified at the wave of anti-Semitism that has washed anew over Europe recently. Riots outside synagogues, chants of “gas the Jews” and the smashing of windows in Jewish restaurants evoke terrible memories of pre-war Europe. Political leaders across the continent have condemned these actions, rightly.
We must not let that old hatred grip us in Australia. It is our obligation to each other in a multicultural and diverse society to call out extremism.

UN Watch: Watchdog demands Schabas quit UN Gaza inquiry over anti-Israel bias

Schabas in 2012 expressed the wish to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried at the International Criminal Court, which clearly indicates that he is biased and thus unqualified to lead the investigation, UN Watch’s executive director Hillel Neuer said. “That statement alone is sufficient to disqualify Prof. Schabas on the question of whether he can impartially sit on this panel.”
Schabas voiced his opinions about Israeli policies vis-à-vis Gaza as recently as this summer, Neuer said. In one interview Schabas gave during the early days of Operation Protective Edge, he suggested Israel’s military response to fire emanating from Gaza was disproportionate and therefore could not be considered legitimate self-defense.
“We are filing the first formal legal request to Professor Schabas at the Human Rights Council, calling on him to recuse himself,” Neuer said at a press conference in Jerusalem. In any situation where a judge or the head of a fact-finding mission has been proven to be biased, or even if there is merely “the appearance of bias, the individual is obliged to step down,” he said.
Schabas remaining in place and leading the fact-finding mission “would have a potentially deleterious impact on the international rule of law,” Neuer writes in the request.

William Schabas already made up his mind: "prima facie, there is EVIDENCE OF DISPROPORTIONALITY"

Those oh-so-moral peace activists

An Israeli theatre company called Incubator Theatre was forced to cancel its performances of its hip-hop story The City at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in late July because of threats and protests.

I just saw some details of what happened at the protests:

On July 30 I watched as members of the public arrived to attend the performance of The City at the Underbelly Cow Barn and witnessed at first hand a level of menace, intimidation and coercion that I had previously thought impossible to witness on the streets of Edinburgh. A 14-year-old girl was yelled at so loudly and at such close quarters that the transfer of spittle from a protestor was evident. Nice.

Charlie Wood, director of the Underbelly, said..."The demonstrations pushed the meaning of 'peaceful', they were screaming at children walking past to see another show, saying 'you've got blood on your ticket.'

"We just couldn't make the show work in that venue and we tried very hard to find venues elsewhere but for several reasons it proved impossible.

In the end, the show was performed to sell-out crowds in Glasgow, London and Leeds, thanks to the efforts of the Zionist Federation. There were withering attacks on the protesters in the media, who forced the first ever show cancellation at the festival due to protests.

The Incubator sent the ZF a thank-you letter: