Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Gen, Dempsey refutes idea of "Iran deal or war" (video)

President Obama’s claim that Congress must either back his deal with Iran or plan for war does not square with the advice he has received from his top general, Senate lawmakers learned on Wednesday.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, never presented Obama with such a binary choice. “At no time did that come up in our conversation nor did I make that comment,” Dempsey told Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) during a Senate hearing on the Iran deal. “I can tell you that we have a range of options and I always present them.”

Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that Obama was not misrepresenting the situation. “It’s not a choice the president wants to make, but it’s the inevitable consequence of them moving to assert what they believe is their right in the furtherance of their program,” he said.

Dempsey also acknowledged that he advised the president not to agree to the lifting of sanctions pertaining to Iran’s ballistic missile program and other arms. “Yes, and I used the phrase ‘as long as possible’ and then that was the point at which the negotiation continued — but yes, that was my military advice,” he told Senator Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.). In the event the new deal goes into effect, the arms embargoes will expire over the next several years.

Citing chapter and verse of the deal, Ayotte pointed out that the “plain language” of the bargain requires the United States “to help strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against sabotage of its nuclear program” — even to the point of warning Iran if Israel tries to launch cyberattacks against the program.

Dempsey seemed caught off guard when asked about that provision. “I hadn’t thought about that, senator, and I would like to have the opportunity to do so,” he told Ayotte.

That false choice is also a key talking point from J-Street, who incidentally is hosting a conference call with President Obama this evening to help him sell his disastrous nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, the President's willingness to oppose Congress even if he couldn't override his veto unnerved at least one member.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who has been one of the more skeptical Democrats on the agreement, said that Obama appeared ready to ignore Congress, even if lawmakers vote to kill the deal and then marshal the two-thirds majorities to override a White House veto.

“The main meat of what he said is, ‘If Congress overrides my veto, you do not get a U.S. foreign policy that reflects that vote. What you get is you pass this law and I, as president, will do everything possible to go in the other direction,’” Sherman told reporters off the House floor after the meeting.

“He’s with the deal — he’s not with Congress,” Sherman added. “At least to the fullest extent allowed by law, and possibly beyond what’s allowed by law.”

Sherman suggested that Obama could refuse to enforce the law and could actively seek to undermine congressional action in other countries, if Capitol Hill insists on stymieing the plan.

(h/t Mike, Yenta)

If Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is in anyone's gunsights, right now might be a very good time to pull the trigger.

Hezbollah, of course, is Iran's client. Lately Iran has been outsourcing Hezbollah terror leaders not only to fight in Syria but also to train and lead Shiite forces in Iraq and Yemen. As Foreign Affairs noted recently,

Hezbollah’s involvement in the war in Syria may have originally focused on supporting the Assad regime, but it now considers that war an existential battle for the future of the region, and for Hezbollah’s place in it. As a result, the group’s regional focus will likely continue for the foreseeable future. Together with other Iranian-backed militias, Hezbollah will continue to head an emerging Shiite foreign legion working both to defend Shiite communities and to expand Iranian influence across the region.

However, Hezbollah's base in Lebanon is weakening as it is expanding its footprint across the Middle East. Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters are reportedly refusing to go to battle. Lebanese media are uniformly critical of Hezbollah's adventurism in Syria and holding the government hostage.

If Nasrallah was assassinated now, it could deal a major blow not only to Hezbollah but to Iran.

Such an event would embolden rival Lebanese parties to push Hezbollah out of the way. Iran would not dare to directly interfere militarily in Lebanon as countries debate the Iran nuclear deal. Iran is now dependent on Hezbollah for outsourcing its influence across the region (as well as terror) but without a leader Hezbollah's influence in Yemen, Iraq and Syria would be blunted and perhaps eliminated - dealing a great blow to Iran's regional aspirations. Without its Lebanese base, Hezbollah would have no anchor and would lose a great deal of influence.

On the other hand, if (and when) the world acquiesces to the Iranian nuclear deal, Iran would be emboldened to increase its aid to Hezbollah and increase its influence, an influence that within a short time will include nuclear bullying.

This is the perfect time for an espionage agency to pull out the stops and find the basement Nasrallah is hiding in.

07/29 Links Pt2: Corrosive Atmosphere on Campus Harming Young Jews; Bensouda Saves the ICC

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Dr. Jonathan Spyer Makes Sense of the Middle East

With the rise of the so-called Islamic State, multiple groups fighting each other in the disintegrating states of Syria and Iraq, the bitter Sunni-Shia conflict and the competing interests of state actors and their proxies, the Middle East has never been more confusing for the casual observer. Not to mention the recent Iranian nuclear deal that has the potential to alter the balance of power within the region.
To make sense of it all, over 90 people joined HonestReporting to hear Dr. Jonathan Spyer, the Director of the Rubin Center, IDC Herzliya and a fellow at the Middle East Forum on July 23 in Jerusalem.
Using his experiences traveling to some of the Mideast hot spots, including most recently Iraq, Dr. Spyer expertly wove together the various threads that link the multiple conflicts affecting the region as well as addressing the impact of the Iran’s nefarious influence and the effects on Israeli security and diplomacy. He addressed how those Arab states that lacked a unified national identity or national institutions have imploded over the course of the past five years, for example Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, while others that did have strong national identities and institutions such as Egypt or Tunisia, have avoided this scenario.
Dr. Spyer explained how with the collapse of states, older sub-state, primordial identities have resurfaced forming the basis of the various political and military groups battling over the remains of those collapsed states. He traced the beginning of the process to Syria in the summer of 2012 when the Assad regime took a strategic decision to pull back from a very large swathe of territory in the country’s north and east in the belief at that time that he could reconquer the area in the future. Instead, what is clear is that this ushered in the creation of separate entities – a Sunni rebel entity, a Kurdish entity. The Sunni rebel entity has further splintered into other entities including Islamic State and Al-Nusra. Dr. Spyer also outlined how Iraq had also split into separate entities.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer: HonestReporting Speaker Series

Elliott Abrams: Bensouda Saves the ICC

In a recent blog post, I noted the 2-to-1 decision by a “pre-trial chamber” to overturn the decision of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda not to proceed against Israel in the Mavi Marmara case. This was the first time such a decision of the ICC Prosecutor had been overturned.
As several people who wrote in comments added, the chamber didn’t force Bensouda to prosecute–just to look at the case again. So she did. Last week she said she was “carefully studying the decision and will decide on the next steps in due course. The decision on whether to open an investigation depends on the facts and circumstances of each situation.”
Having looked again at the facts and circumstances, she has stuck with her decision. In a very quick reply to the judges, she told them that their decision failed to consider “the unique context of violent resistance aboard the Mavi Marmara.” She’s absolutely right.
And she has done the ICC a great favor. As my original blog post noted, there has always been political pressure on the ICC to become–like the U.N. Human Rights Council–an Israel-bashing enterprise. That would destroy whatever chance the tribunal has of gaining legitimacy. The first ICC Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina, avoided that trap, and now Bensouda is doing the same. She has saved the ICC from driving into a dead end where only politics and bias could be found.

Israel rejects ‘flawed’ war crime claim by rights group

Israel accused Amnesty of “a false narrative – claiming that four days of military operations by the IDF were in direct response to the killing and kidnapping of one IDF soldier,” the foreign ministry said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
“It seems that Amnesty forgot that there was an ongoing conflict – during which the IDF was operating to stop rocket fire and neutralize cross-border assault tunnels, and Palestinian terrorist organizations were actively engaging in intensive conflict against the IDF from within the civilian environment.”
Last summer’s 50-day war took a heavy toll on Gaza, killing 2,251 Palestinians, including more than 500 children according to Palestinian tallies. Israel claimed as many as 1,000 of the casualties were fighters.
Seventy-three people were killed on the Israeli side, including 67 soldiers.
Israel officially blames Hamas for Palestinian civilian casualties, noting that the group, which rules Gaza, often launched attacks from within residential areas.

One more "martyr"

From Ma'an:

The body of an al-Qassam Brigades fighter killed during last summer's Israeli military offensive on Gaza was found beneath the rubble of a destroyed home in Gaza City on Wednesday.

Medical crews pulled the body of Mumen al-Batsh from under the rubble of a damaged home that workers were leveling in the al-Tuffah neighborhood.

That means that there were at least seven terrorists in the building when the IDF attacked it - a house that Amnesty International tells the world was not a military target.

Now, is it possible that Hamas is delaying the removal of rubble for so long because it would reveal the military targets inside the house?

Riyadh Ballet Stymied By Burqa Requirement (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, July 29 - Attempts to promote Saudi Arabia and its capital as a forward-looking, culture-rich destination have hit a snag as a flagship project, the Royal Saud Ballet Company, remains unable to recruit top-flight dancers because of a law mandating a shapeless, full-body dress for all females. Ballerinas fear the garment will interfere with the dancing.

King Salman has tried to continue the modernization of the kingdom begun by his predecessors while maintaining strict enforcement of traditional religious behavior. This has resulted in ultra-modern trappings jarringly juxtaposed with ancient mores, such as fleets of luxury cars that only men are allowed to drive, or the latest technology used to broadcast the beheadings of homosexuals. In the case of the would-be ballet, simply finding experienced instructors has proved next to impossible, threatening a pet modernization project with closure even before it gets off the ground.

Consultants helped place ads in European, American, and Asian publications, seeking both dancers and teachers to participate in, and train ballerinas for, the nascent company. The ads promised lucrative returns and the exciting opportunity to help birth what Salman hopes will become a leading cultural institution in the region and beyond. However, few, if any, interested applicants proceeded past the first set of inquiries, after discovering that all performances, or even rehearsals in the presence of men, would have to take place in full burkhas, which would impede the dancers' movements and possibly put them at risk of injury while performing certain textbook ballet moves.

Additionally, the candidates discovered, there would be no simultaneous dancing of men and women, a public modesty requirement that automatically rules out almost all classical ballets. Officials have repeatedly insisted they seek to make Riyadh a cultural powerhouse, not an experimental, avant-garde venue for productions of marginal impact, a desire that conflicts with the availability of popular ballets involving unisex ballet productions.

With no credible applicants for teaching positions, and barely a handful of potential dancers - mostly relatives of the royal family who already trained in Europe - the managing director of the ballet company announced a delay last month in the scheduled debut performance. Planners had hoped to make a splash on the regional cultural stage with a modified, a version of Balanchine's choreography for The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky, adapted for local tastes both to enhance modesty and to remove any possible references to non-Islamic cultural touchstones. Opening night was initially scheduled to grace a newly opened Royal Saud Ballet Hall, slated to begin operations next May. But now ballet officials are considering indefinite postponement, unless the lack of seasoned, willing talent can be addressed soon.

If in fact the ballet does not come to fruition, Minister of Culture Ahaf Bin Toqin has already developed preliminary plans to repurpose the ballet hall for a different, more popular spectacle: the beheading of homosexuals. "Our first crop of subjects will probably come from the cohort of applicants for the male roles," he predicted.

07/29 Links Pt1: Report: Child-Killer Kuntar 'Killed in IAF Airstrike'; Iran’s Rhetoric and Arafat’s ‘Jihad’ Speech

From Ian:

Child-Killer Samir Kuntar 'Killed in Syria Airstrike'

Reports are coming out that Israel targeted and killed the notorious child murderer Samir Kuntar today (Wednesday).
According to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Israel Air Force struck a vehicle carrying five fighters loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad. Three of the passengers were from the Syrian People's Committees, while Kuntar and the fifth person belonged to Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.
Kuntar was born in Lebanon to a Druze family. In 1978 he and three other terrorists from the now-defunct Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) snuck into Israel by boat and attempted to kidnap the Haran family from their home in Nahariya. The wife managed to hide in a crawlspace with the two-year-old daughter, but the husband and four-year-old were taken.
Kuntar and his associates took their hostages to the nearby beach, where Israeli soldiers and police officers encountered them. According to the official account, Kuntar shot the father in the back, then beat the daughter to death.

JPost Editorial: Pollard and Iran

Former US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross admitted in his 2004 book, The Missing Peace, that he advised then-president Bill Clinton against releasing Pollard in the framework of the 1998 Wye Accords negotiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term (this despite Ross’s belief Pollard’s life sentence was disproportionate and that he deserved to go free unconditionally).
Ross argued that Pollard was simply far too valuable as a bargaining chip vis-à-vis Israel to be released cheaply. Ross thus furnished us with the definitive explanation for Pollard’s inexcusably drawn-out agony.
Pollard has long suspected as much and had urged that he not be used as a “sweetener” to persuade Israel to agree to dangerous unilateral concessions. Despite his prolonged plight, Pollard has repeatedly pleaded not to be traded in return for the release of Arab murderers and terrorists, whose crimes bear no relation to his case and are morally incomparable to it.
The very thought that Pollard would now be exploited to “sweeten” both Israeli opinion and that of American Jews on the Iran issue is morally repugnant in the extreme.
It is instructive to recall that Pollard’s sin was passing information to a friendly country on such matters as Iraqi and Syrian WMDs, Soviet arms shipments to Damascus and Libyan air defenses. Indeed, this was largely data withheld by the Pentagon in violation of the 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Israel.
The departure from all punitive precedents in Pollard’s case smells foul. Iran’s nukes constitute an existential danger to the Jewish state. Hence, it is unthinkable that anyone should consider Pollard’s release as rendering the Iran deal more palatable to Israelis.
This is an insult to our intelligence that condescendingly belittles the gravity of our predicament.

Jonathan Pollard on forthcoming release: 'I'm looking forward to being reunited with my wife'

Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard will be released from prison after serving 30 years of a life sentence on November 20, the US Parole Commission announced Tuesday.
The Parole Commission relayed the decision to Pollard's lawyers, Elliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was also told and broke the news on Twitter.
"I am looking forward to being reunited with my beloved wife Esther," Pollard said through his attorneys. "I would like to thank the many thousands of well-wishers in the United States, in Israel, and throughout the world, who provided grass roots support by attending rallies, sending letters, making phone calls to elected officials, and saying prayers for my welfare. I am deeply appreciative of every gesture, large or small."
Pollard's lawyers said that they are grateful and delighted that their client will be released soon. "The decision to grant parole was made unanimously by the three members of the Parole Commission, who make their decisions independently of any other US government agency. The decision is not connected to recent developments in the Middle East."

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah whose loyalty to Iran is total, gave yet another speech about how "Palestine" is the most important issue in the Muslim world.

Parts of the speech reveals what bothers him:

Sayyed Nasrallah said that the resistance project was inflicted by major losses in the past year, due to the events taking place in the region.

“The most major loss is the fact that Palestine is now out of the international and popular concerns, something which gave the enemy a historical chance in order to implement its scheme,” his eminence said.

What is that scheme? Ethnic cleansing? Expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates?

Not quite:

Sayyed Nasrallah noted that the Zionist enemy has been seeking to normalize ties with several Arab states, adding that Tel Aviv is taking advantage of the losses inflicted upon the resistance project.

However, he stressed that despite “the regrettable events taking place in the region, there are strength elements within our Ummah that the enemy still fears.”

And one more thing he fears from Israel:

Meanwhile, Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out that the existential struggle which minorities have been engaged in has made from Israel a minor threat.
“We warn against considering Israel as the “protector” of some minorities in the region, we may reach this situation someday.”

He seems to be referring to the Druze.

One other thing: While Iran tells people in English that it never starts wars with other countries, Nasrallah explains what they do engage in:

The resistance leader said that both Iran and Hezbollah stand with whoever raises the flag of the resistance, regardless his sectarian or political belongings.

He called on any Muslim or Arab country to bear its responsibilities towards Palestine.

“We guarantee that Iran will pave the way for any Muslim or Arab country to lead the resistance project if they bear the responsibility of defending Palestine,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.

Iran is willing to risk the lives of every Arab to fight Israel. Very big of them.

Right after I posted my last article on Amnesty's latest report based on its executive summary, the actual Amnesty report about the fighting in Rafah last year was released. It took me about two minutes to identify the first lie.

An engineer corps soldier who took part in the incursion told Breaking the Silence that his orders were “to make a big boom before the ceasefire”, without being given any specific targets

The Breaking the Silence quote shows that this soldier was not in Rafah to begin with! He was talking about a completely different battle in northern Gaza.

And even his testimony shows the exact opposite of Amnesty's thesis of a bloodthirsty, vengeful IDF:

Before the first ceasefire they told us we were going in [to the Gaza Strip] to take down a house. We went down quick and got the gear we needed ready and then we asked, “Which house are we taking down?” And they said, “We want to make a big boom before the ceasefire.” Like that, those were the words the officer used, and it made everyone mad. I mean, whose house? They hadn’t picked a specific one – just ‘a’ house. That’s when everyone got uneasy. At that moment we decided pretty unanimously that we would go speak with the team commander and tell him we simply aren’t going to do it, that we aren’t willing to put ourselves at risk for no reason. He chose the most inappropriate words to describe to us what we were being asked to do. I guess that’s how it was conveyed to him. “We’re not willing to do it,” we told him. It was a very difficult conversation. Him being an officer, he said, “First of all, so it’s clear to everyone, we will be carrying this thing out tonight, and second, I’m going to go find out more details about the mission for you.” He returned a few hours later and said, “It’s an ‘active house' (being used by combatants for military purposes) and it’s necessary you take it down, and not someone else, because we can’t do it with jets – that would endanger other houses in the area, and that’s why you’re needed.” In the end the mission was miraculously transferred to a battalion with which we were supposed to go in, and we were let off the hook. After the ceasefire a bulldozer and emulsion trucks (transporting the explosive liquid) and the driller (a drilling system for identifying tunnels) came to our area, and work started on the tunnels in our zone.

All Amnesty wants you to get out of this is that some IDF officer said he wanted to make a big boom on a random house, and it is clear that this was not the mission at all. And the very idea of such a mission is so anomalous and disgusting to IDF soldiers that even when they think their commander is ordering them to do so, they refuse!

Amnesty, of course, has no problem lying and claiming that this is proof of Israeli war crimes miles away.

Meanwhile, I am looking in the full report for quotes to support Amnesty's claim in their executive summary that

Public statements by Israeli army commanders and soldiers after the conflict provide compelling reasons to conclude that some attacks that killed civilians and destroyed homes and property were intentionally carried out and motivated by a desire for revenge – to teach a lesson to, or punish, the population of Rafah for the capture of Lieutenant Goldin.

What public statements support that conclusion? Amnesty's full report supplies exactly one that does no such thing:

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said Israel’s assaults were mostly aimed at convincing Hamas never to try it again: “When they come out of their bunkers and they look around, they are going to have to make a serious estimation of whether what they have done was worth it.” These statements indicate an intention to generate material damage as a deterrent.

Lerner's statement does not in any way indicate that the IDF intended to inflict damage as a deterrent. He was talking about damage that occurs during the course of a war where Hamas chooses to hide among civilians, necessitating the destruction of civilian buildings that Hamas turned into military targets. Amnesty has no shred of evidence that the IDF chose a single target for non-military reasons.

And this is the quote that Amnesty is using as proof of Israeli war crimes. It betrays not only their willingness to twist the facts to reach their pre-conceived notions, but also a willful ignorance of how modern armies make their decisions.

Amnesty chooses to anthropomorphize the IDF as a vindictive person, not as an organization with multiple layers of checks and balances - and there is plenty of documentation that shows every step that goes into IDF decision making that contradicts Amnesty's blanket statements.

The organization is beneath contempt.

Amnesty International today is releasing yet another report that tries to prove Israel committed war crimes in last year's Gaza war, this time regarding the events surrounding the kidnapping of Lt. Hadar Goldin in Rafah - who was abducted during a ceasefire.

Just like the Gaza Platform, the upcoming report uses the services of the anti-Zionist "Forensics Architecture" team to take one-sided evidence and twist it to make it look like an impartial investigation.

At the moment, only the executive summary is available. Yet even its use of sources proves its bias.

It quotes two IDF soldiers who were interviewed by "Breaking the Silence" to prove purposeful Israeli fire into civilian areas.

An Israeli infantry officer described to Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence the events that
ensued after the Hannibal Directive was announced on the radio:

“The minute ‘Hannibal Directive’ is declared on the radio, there are consequences. There’s a fire procedure called the ‘Hannibal fire procedure’ – you fire at every suspicious place that merges with a central route. You don’t spare any means.”

Here's the entire testimony:

So I heard that the reconnaissance platoon got into a confrontation, and that it looked like we were talking about two [IDF soldiers] dead and one captured. That’s when the mess got started. The minute ‘Hannibal Directive’ is declared on the radio, there are consequences. There’s a fire procedure called the ‘Hannibal fire procedure’ – you fire at every suspicious place that merges with a central route. You don’t spare any means. A thousand shells were fired that Friday morning, at all the central intersections. The entire Tancher [Route] (the continuation of Highway 4 in Gaza) was bombed. The air force attacked places inside Rafah City, places in which we knew there were Hamas militants. Was there collateral damage to houses? I’m sure there was. It was very intense, that incident. After the area was hit by 1,000 shells that Friday morning, I saw Tancher in ruins. Everything totally wrecked.

Even the BtS soldier says that there was no intent to hurt civilians and that no civilian structures were directly targeted..

Here's Amnesty's second quote:

An artillery soldier said his battery was “firing at a maximum fire rate” right into inhabited areas.

The full testimony:

During occasions when there was a significant amount of fire [directed at our forces], or during the ground incursion to Gaza – to Shuja’iyya – I know my unit fired a lot. One of the senior officers in my unit talked about how we had fired [at targets] that were in very close proximity to our forces, how we had really saved them. He said it was an important mission and that apparently during it we had also killed a number of civilians. They said that tragically, some uninvolved civilians were apparently hit, but that it was a situation where it would either be our troops or civilians [being harmed]. He said that it wasn’t even a question, that it was obvious that our troops [came first]. They emphasized the fact that that was obviously not done on purpose.

Did he say what the mission itself was, what the role of the [artillery] battery was?

To assist them with artillery fire. If they need flare shells, or if they need smoke to conceal themselves, or, of course, if they need explosive shells to evacuate [forces from the field]. The battery fired 900 shells [that night], and the battalion fired about 1,200 or 1,500, I think. There were certain stages during which we were firing at a maximum fire rate – after Goldin was kidnapped, (an IDF soldier captured near Rafah) and in Shuja’iyya.

Keep in mind that breaking the Silence itself cherry picks IDF soldiers' testimonies already to make the IDF look as bad as possible. Amnesty is further taking the BtS quotes out of context as evidence of war crimes.

It is not a war crime, or a violation of international law, to prioritize soldier's lives higher than unintended civilian casualties. On the contrary - it is what a normal military commander is supposed to do in every army on Earth. But Amnesty does not like to tel its readers what actual international law is.

Other quotes that Amnesty supposedly claims as evidence of "war crimes" are not directly quoted in the executive summary - we just have to trust Amnesty that these quotes exist and mean what they claim they mean:

Public statements by Israeli army commanders and soldiers after the conflict provide compelling reasons to conclude that some attacks that killed civilians and destroyed homes and property were intentionally carried out and motivated by a desire for revenge – to teach a lesson to, or punish, the population of Rafah for the capture of Lieutenant Goldin.

There is consequently strong evidence that many such attacks in Rafah between 1 and 4 August were serious violations of international humanitarian law and constituted grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention or other war crimes.

If they have quotes like that, why not use them in this summary? Because the quotes are not nearly as clear-cut as Amnesty wants the world to believe, and they know that reporters will trust their analysis of the quotes rather than evaluate them directly.

Interestingly, the executive summary doesn't mention the number of civilians killed in this operation. BtS said "between 41-150 Palestinians were killed, many of them civilians." That is a very imprecise number. It will be interesting to see if the Forensics Architecture team, supposedly committed to unbiased research, bothered during the past year to determine exactly how many civilians were actually killed during these three days of unbridled firepower in an urban battlefield where Hamas is purposefully hiding among civilians.

Civilians were killed in Rafah. It was tragic. Amnesty wants the world to believe that it was deliberate and they are willing to spend lots of money and effort to twist the truth to reach their pre-determined conclusions.

UPDATE: The final report does not contain a single quote that indicates that IDF soldiers intended to "take revenge." The only quote from a soldier that mentions "revenge" says the exact opposite: '“Anyone who abducts should know that he will pay a price. This was not revenge. "

Amnesty is lying.

Two Overnight Eldertoons

I had tweeted this a couple of days ago but might as well post it here too:

And I tweeted this joke on Wednesday, thanks to Yerushalimey for coming up with it:

07/28 Links Pt2: Pollard will be freed Nov 20; Latest Blood Libel: The Case Of Mohammed Abu Latifa

From Ian:

Pollard will be freed November 20, Israel's justice minister announces

Jonathan Pollard, the former civilian analyst for the US Navy convicted of spying for Israel, will be released from US jail on November 20 after serving 30 years of a life sentence.
“The decision to grant parole was made unanimously by the three members of the [US] Parole Commission, who make their decisions independently of any other US government agency,” Pollard’s lawyers said in a statement. “The decision is not connected to recent developments in the Middle East.”
In a statement Tuesday evening, Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked also confirmed Pollard’s impending release.
Pollard was formally eligible for parole on November 21, but will be freed a day earlier — Friday the 20th — as the 21st is a Saturday, Channel 2 television said.
Under the terms of his parole, Pollard will not be able to leave the US for five years, Channel 2 said, although President Barack Obama can overrule this condition.
His lawyers, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, have asked Obama to intervene and allow Pollard to leave the country and relocate to Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported. (h/t Yenta Press)

How to Treat Jonathan Pollard in the Age of Edward Snowden

What Pollard did was bad enough; I have no desire to sugarcoat it. But the constitutional fact of the matter is that it stopped well short of treason. The government poisoned the very proceeding in which it had promised not to seek a life term. So Pollard went away for a longer stretch than America has ever given anyone for a similar crime. No one need feel shy about calling it an injustice.
Williams himself likened the government to the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He ended his opinion by quoting the famous curse against them — “And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d, / That palter with us in a double sense; / That keep the word of promise to our ear, / And break it to our hope.” In all my years covering the courts, I don’t think I’ve read an opinion quite like it.
How ironic it is that Pollard, who went away before the rise of the World Wide Web, will emerge from prison — if he does emerge — into the age of Wikileaks. Today our university campuses are lionizing those who have disclosed our secrets in a protest against what they see as abuses by the government. They fear the very government from which Pollard purloined his packets.
So what are all those who rode the high horse against Pollard going to do when Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are put in the dock? Pollard passed his secrets to an American friend. Assange ran a Web site that made our secrets available not only to friends but to enemies. Snowden did something similar, passing secrets to the press. They claim to be acting on high-minded principles. So did Jonathan Pollard.

NGO Monitor: Questions for Amnesty on the Rafah Report and Pseudo-Fact-Finding

At a press conference tomorrow (July 29) in Jerusalem, officials from Amnesty International will market a new report, building on its error-filled and blatantly biased “Gaza Platform,” and promote claims that it can “shed[]s new light on violations of international law committed” during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Amnesty is repackaging the pseudo-research of other non-credible political advocacy NGOs, and masking the absence of substance with the illusion of “forensic” work, according to Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor.
Any journalists, diplomats, and others who might be in attendance, having cleared Amnesty’s selection process used to block potential critics, should avoid taking these “research” claims at face value. Amnesty has been shown to lack any credible research methodology, as well as military and legal expertise.
Here are 10 questions that Amnesty should answer about its Rafah report, “Gaza Platform” (which forms the basis for Amnesty’s Rafah publication), and partnership with other anti-Israel political advocacy NGOs:

We've already seen how Dave Zirin, "sports writer" for The Nation who has a special obsession with Israel, disregards facts that get in the way of his hate. And how The Nation has no interest in correcting his egregious and provable lies.

He's at it again. This time he is so incensed that some NBA players are visiting Israel that he is telling them that Israel is responsible for every time a black person is assaulted or killed by an American cop.

Yes, really.

On December 12, you were one of several Sacramento Kings players to wear an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt during warm-ups. The shirts were worn to commemorate the last words of Staten Island’s Eric Garner and protest his death at the hands of the New York Police Department. It was a brave act, a link in a chain, which aligned some of the NBA’s biggest stars with the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Of course, lethal police brutality has been directed at black Americans for as long as there have been police. But the #BlackLivesMatter movement has emerged out of a dramatic spike in this violence. Roughly 400 people were shot and killed by police over the first five months of 2015, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the average of the past decade. Those killed are primarily black and brown, as police departments have outfitted themselves in military fashion. Finding justice for those killed has proven to be a near impossible task.

This epidemic of killings has been aggravated by the influence of Israeli police practices on US policing. Since 9/11, police chiefs and high-ranking officers from across the United States—from Ferguson to New York City—have traveled to Israel for training in the arts of suppression. As Ali Winston reported, “[a]t least 300” chiefs from across the country have gone to Israel for these workshops. Former US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer called Israel “the Harvard of antiterrorism” after one all-expenses-paid trip. The NYPD, which took the life of Eric Garner and broke the leg of NBA player Thabo Sefolosha, now has an office in Tel Aviv.

Since 9/11, Israel has turned its repressive capabilities into an exportable commodity. It instructs on surveillance, crowd control tactics, and psychological operations like keeping lights on police cars at all times.

Zirin is not the first idiot to make this argument. Rania Khalek did the same in May, and I demolished it then:

First of all, the programs that Khalek highlights are not for riot control. One of them mentions a demonstration of "crowd control" during a terror attack - not a training session - but most of the training was for counterterrorism techniques such as intelligence gathering and operations to capture terrorists before they begin their operations; border security, mechanisms to delay terrorists on their way to a target such as checkpoints; and site security - the protection of the restaurants, shopping malls and buses that are the preferred terrorist targets, preventing bombings, securing airports and border crossings and performing mass rescue operations.

Secondly, even if Israel did offer training in riot control, it is up to individual police departments to decide on their techniques. They wouldn't photocopy Israel's manual for riot control. They take the lessons that they like and incorporate them into their own programs. One has to be thoroughly consumed with hate in order to blame Japan if someone kills another with a karate kick. (In fact, I am very surprised that Khalek didn't notice that the Baltimore police offers krav maga seminars. )

(For those interested, here is a blog post from someone who took Baltimore cop riot training in 2000, with a comment from someone who took it in 2008. Nothing about Israel, of course. )

According to Khalek's moronic logic, there is another organization responsible for Baltimore police actions:

The United Nations.

Yes, the UN offers police commander training, and one of the sessions was attended by a major in the Baltimore Police Department. Clearly the UN is culpable for the Baltimore riots.

Do you hear how stupid that sounds?

That is how stupid Rania Khalek's argument, the same argument used by other Israel haters, is.

But it isn't stupidity that animates Khalek's half-baked theories. It is pure hate.

The Electronic Intifada readers who buy this argument, however, are truly stupid.

The same goes for readers of The Nation who buy this garbage.

Zirin also mentions that Israeli police used tear gas against Ethiopian protesters, not mentioning that the response was only to those who were throwing bottles and bricks while trying to storm a police headquarters. He of course didn't mention that subsequent rallies by Ethiopian Jews who were rightly protesting discrimination were successful and changes are being made including Israeli police promising to hire more Ethiopian Jews. But that doesn't fit Zirin's narrative of racist Israelis.

The only person filled with hate here is Zirin. But blind, irrational, hate against Israelis is perfectly OK for people who pretend they are against blind, irrational hate.