Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 24, 2015

NYT whitewashes Gaza jihadist groups

An op-ed in the New York Times today by Mohammed Omer is filled with the usual half-truths, but one section is particularly deceptive.

One way to effectively lie in an op-ed is by using lies as secondary information, rather than highlighting them. Even when the reader knows that the writer is biased, the subconscious assumption is that he is twisting real facts to make his point - and those "facts" can easily be believed.

Here is what Omar said:

Radical groups like the Islamic State target the vulnerable and alienated. While some in Gaza are attracted to the jihadist ideology, their numbers are extremely low. The failure of the Islamic State to take root here is partly because of nationalist sentiment and the focus of Palestinian demands for freedom from this remote-control occupation and endless siege.

Omer is distinguishing betweee the Islamic State and other Gaza groups, calling only IS "jihadist."

Which means he is pretending that Hamas and Islamic Jihad< are not jihadist groups!

No matter that Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades attracted 26,000 youths to its summer camps this summer to learn - jihad. The head of military training in these camps calls himself "Abu Jihad." Press releases from the Qassam Brigades end off with "JIhad victory or martyrdom."

Not to mention that the idea that Islamic Jihad isn't a jihadist group would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that the NYT accepts this propaganda as legitimate. (Here's their Saraya Brigades webpage banner.)

By accepting Omer's whitewashing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the New York Times is pushing the idea that these groups are somehow "moderate" because there are groups that are more extreme. This downplaying of extremist groups because others are worse is a path towards acceptance of some forms of jihad as somehow justified as long as the enemy is the "extremists" of Israel.

Hamas is an extremist jihadist terror group by any objective measure - their actions, their words, their goals. The fact that the media is unwilling to say that in recent years shows the effectiveness of propaganda pieces like this one.

(h/t Ronald)

08/24 Links Pt1: Rivlin: Our Right to Judea & Samaria a Basic Fact; Iran Deal Will Trigger ME War

From Ian:

Rivlin: Our Right to Judea and Samaria is a Basic Fact

President Reuven Rivlin hosted this morning, (Monday,) the regional and municipal heads of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, including chairman of the Judea and Samaria Council, Avi Roeh.
President Rivlin welcomed the delegation to his residence and spoke of the recent wave of terror attacks in Judea and Samaria.
“This house is your house, the house of all the citizens of Israel," he began. "Over the past months, and especially over the last few days, the communities of Judea and Samaria have faced very serious terror attacks. And so especially at this time, this meeting is more crucial than ever."
"As always, the pioneers go before the camp," he continued. "It is they who encounter the most opposition and pay, along with the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, the heaviest price."
"The settlements are at the forefront of the struggle, and the price paid by the settlers, is a painful price indeed."
Rivlin then encouraged the IDF to continue its work protecting the people of Israel.

Iran Deal Will Trigger Major War in Middle East

If someone had asked you a year ago what would be the most efficient way to cause a major war in the Middle East, you might well have said: Giving the mullahs in Iran the opportunity to get advanced conventional weapons, ICBMs, nuclear weapons and tens of billion of dollars to fund terrorist organizations and destabilize other countries in the region. You might have argued that a regime that does not hesitate to attack targets in Washington or Berlin might not be the most prudent one to shower with gigantic quantities of money and the deadliest weapons.
If one knows anything about the regime in Iran, it is difficult to understand how U.S. President Barack Obama's agreement with Iran could create anything other than chaos and war in the Middle East.
The content of the Iran nuclear agreement creates the perfect conditions for a major war in the Middle East -- one that could spread and start a major regional conflict.
Despite what President Obama likes to say, it is not true that the agreement "permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" or "cuts off all of Iran's pathways to a bomb". The agreement means that the U.S. has accepted that after 15 years, or sooner, Iran may build as many bombs as it likes.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, since its founding in 1979, has had an ideology that seeks to "export the Islamic revolution." The phrase is not just a catchword for the mullahs. They have done it in practice, if necessary by force. After coming to power in 1979, the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called on the Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq to revolt and establish an Islamic republic. The mullahs' effort to export the Islamic revolution to Iraq was one of the causes of the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted eight years and resulted in possibly a million deaths. Despite intense resistance from Arab countries, Khomeini's Islamic revolution has been successfully exported to Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

A warning to Tehran

The swift Israeli reaction on Thursday and Friday to the launching of four rockets from Syria at the Galilee and Golan shows how deep is the Israeli intelligence penetration of Iran’s military. It was not the first time that precise and updated intelligence data enabled Israel to prevent terrorist attacks from Syria sponsored by Iran, or to execute attacks against Bashar Assad’s regime, or whatever is left of it.
The rocket launchings – which caused no casualties or damage to property, except sparking fires in open fields – didn’t surprise IDF Intelligence.
They were expecting some sort of an attack against Israel from the Syrian Golan and prepared themselves for the eventuality.
Israel’s response was gradual but fierce. First, Syrian Army positions were attacked with artillery and missiles. Later, a senior Israeli officer revealed sensitive intelligence information by naming a senior Iranian officer and holding him responsible for ordering the rocket attacks. He is Saad Ezadi, in charge of the Israeli desk in the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The military source also said that, although the rockets were fired by members of the pro-Iranian Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, those who ordered it were the commanders of the Quds Force.
Revealing the name of such an important operative is unusual and is aimed at signaling to the Iranians that we know a great deal about them, so they had better watch out.
It was also good intelligence work that enabled the Israel Air Force on Friday to strike the car carrying four or five Islamic Jihad operatives who took part in firing the rockets the night before, hitting them some 15 kilometers inside Syria.
The Quds Force, led by the charismatic Maj.-Gen. Qassen Sulimanie, one of the most influential officials in Iran, already has a forward command post on the Syria side of the Golan. Its goal is to recruit local agents and terrorists who in return for cash would be ready to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel.

"Jews are the demons of the earth"

More "anti-Zionism" from Israel's peace partners. From Amad.ps, in a column entitled "Jews are Jews" we are told:

Jews betray a friend before betraying their enemies
Jews are demons of the earth
Jews believe that Allah is poor and they are rich;
"Is there a human who is uglier than them?"
Jews are global terror leaders, and professors of sedition, and senior criminals.
Jews are scientists in the art of torturing humans and killing them and burning them;
Jews are Zionist settlers, prostitutes, tyrants and dissolute infidels;
Their hearts are harsher than rock
Jew lie and slander and engage in calumny against God Almighty
They take your money and heavy taxes paid by US citizen for the benefit of the Jews
Jews consider the entire world to be their slaves
God Almighty is witness that they are the killers

Good to know!

Amnesty shows its ignorance of international law again

This one-year anniversary tweet came from Amnesty-USA-Israel/OPT/PA as well as from Amnesty-USA-MENA:

21 Aug: Air strike on 3 militants kills/injures many civilians, including kids. Proportionate? http://t.co/zqdLq72LVC http://t.co/4DnCCSAaDN
— AIUSA Israel/OPT/PA (@IOTPA) August 21, 2015

It sounds like Israel killed and injured many people just to strike three ordinary run-of-the-mill militants,

But if you look up the incident, here are the targets, as described by Al Akhbar:

Hamas suffered a severe blow on Thursday when Israeli warplanes managed to assassinate three of its top commanders. They were: Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, Mohammed Barhoum, and Raed al-Attar, who commanded Rafah's military brigade and had been one of the top figures on the occupation army's hit list for a quarter of a century.

According to Israeli intelligence reports, Attar – born in 1974 and a father of two – heads al-Qassam's commando unit and is in charge of smuggling weapons from the Sinai into Gaza. According to Yediot Ahronot, Attar was one of the most powerful Hamas leaders and was in charge of the Rafah region on the Egyptian border. The area is where Hamas built the tunnels, which provided them with the necessary equipment and supplies to build their military capacity.

Informed sources from al-Qassam's leadership told Al-Akhbar that Attar was one of the Brigades’ security masterminds. He was behind dozens of operations, in addition to Shalit's capture. The sources maintained that he supervised and ran the Rafah battle without fear, especially in al-Zanna area to the east, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy.

The sources explained that targeting Attar and two other al-Qassam commanders in Rafah meant that Hamas suffered a serious blow in southern Gaza, due to the military status of the three leaders.

Israel succeeded in eliminating one of the most wanted people on its intelligence lists since 1991. He was 41-year-old martyr Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, aka Abu Khalil; a member of Hamas’s supreme military council, head of the al-Qassam Brigades in South Gaza and one of the founders of the Brigades in the city of Rafah.

...According to Israeli sources, Abu Shamaleh was the most important among those it murdered yesterday. He had been involved in several attacks against the occupation and supervised several operations in Barakin al-Ghadab, Mahfouza, Jardoun, Tarmid, and al-Wahm al-Mutabaddid in which Shalit was captured. He was also a prominent commander in al-Furqan, Hijarat al-Sijjil, and al-Asf al-Makoul battles.

...As soon as the martyrdom of 45-year-old Mohammed Barhoum, aka Abu Osama – one of the most influential al-Qassam Brigades founders in Rafah – was announced, al-Qassam Brigades issued a statement eulogizing him as one of the leaders of the first generation of Brigade members.

..He also planned and organized several suicide operations inside the 1948-occupied territories, until Israel announced its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

The withdrawal allowed Barhoum to assist the Brigades leadership in southern Gaza to design and develop locally-made missiles. According to sources, the martyred commander had a profound impact on the development of the Brigades’ missiles system. This was in addition to his supervision of several tunnels in the far south of Rafah, on the borders with Sinai.

All three were top leaders. They are the very definition of valid targets. (Interestingly, Al Akhbar doesn't say a word about the civilians killed.)

Any military leader would agree that the unfortunate deaths of civilians is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of hitting such high value targets. International law does not intend to handcuff armies from doing their jobs. But the standard of what is appropriate both for the principle of distinction and the principle of proportion is what a reasonable military commander would do given all available information at the time.

Amnesty is suggesting jettisoning real international law. It has a skewed idea of what international law is, seemingly with the goal of making it literally impossible for Israel to defend itself.

One other piece of hypocrisy. Amnesty is pretending with this tweet to care so much about the lives of the civilians killed in this attack. But it has nothing negative to say about Hamas commanders - all of which had been previously targeted for assassination, and who therefore know that they were high-value targets - choosing to hide in a house filled with civilians and children.

Isn't that against international law also? Indeed it is. But amnesty will not say anything negative about them.

When a "human rights' organization sides with known, proven terrorists against a modern state with lots of checks and balances in its army, it has no right to call itself a "human rights" organization.

Sequence of news stories in new Dawabashe home burning in Duma

At first the Arabic headlines said:

The house of the Rashid Munawar Dawabsheh in Duma village, south of Nablus was set on fire after midnight last night.

Spokesman Samir Dawabsheh Dawabsheh said a little while ago that the house caught fire as a result of throwing a Molotov cocktail and that it was caused by arson.

He guessed that the culprit is the invisible hands of the occupation authorities and intelligence.

He added that the fire broke out empty room, with no injuries, only one case had been suffocation.

Then came this:

Local Palestinian sources reported on Monday at dawn the burning of the house in the town Duma southeast of Nablus, without causing any loss of life, while there were suspicions about the settlers.

Official settlements monitr in the northern West Bank Ghassan Daghlas said in a press statement that the burning of the house of Rashid Munawar Dawabsheh was caused by arson, which led to the burning of one of the rooms with a family member injured taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

Palestinian police began an investigation into the circumstances of the incident.

Dahglas pointed out that this incident was similar to that of the incident of the burning house of the family of the martyr Saad Dawabsheh in the same town at the hands of settlers, four weeks ago, where in both incidents it involved throwing burning materials through the house window, but this time the actors did not write on the walls to show their identity .

Dahglas said it was too early to confirm the identity of the perpetrators, calling for caution from rushing to charge the settlers so the occupation cannot take advantage of the incident to acquit settlers for the earlier crime if it is proven they have no connection with the new incident.

Then:

Zakaria al-Sadda, official fieldworker for Rabbis for Human Rights, said in a statement, "According to my experience and my follow ups on settler attacks, we can rule out the possibility that they caused the burning of this house, and that the most likely cause is due to an electrical fault."

Al-Sadda didn't say that he inspected the house and found evidence for an electrical fire, he said that it is unlikely that settlers did it and therefore it must have been an electrical fire - and not arson.

This is the source of news reports claiming an electrical fire.

What would you do if you were a Duma official, faced with a possible family feud arson that might cast doubt on the earlier incident, that you wanted to cover up, and then this new theory gets floated?

Here's the new version:

Chairman of the Duma village Abdul Salam Dawabsheh said that the fire, which broke out in the house of the village at dawn Monday, is likely to be due to an electrical fault, not the settlers as reported in some news.

And Dawabsheh told Raya News "that one room of a house belonging to Munawar Dawabsheh burned and is unlikely that settlers were behind it due to the presence of guards," denying injuries.

There are photos of children in the hospital so this official who so confidently says that it was an electrical fire is already shown to be lying:

Here is a photo that seems to be of this incident, it was not labeled as a file photo:

Arutz-7 reports " Israeli security sources claimed it was more likely an internal dispute in the village."

(h/t Bob K)

UPDATE: Israel Fire Services says an electrical fire is most likely. (H/t Lahav Harkov)

Omri Ceren on how bad the #IranDeal is (video)

About as good and complete an argument as you are going to see on video:

Malaysian party uses antisemitism to defend large Arab donation

From Free Malaysia Today:

Online catcalls and jeers erupted today after Umno members in Johor were given the latest reason for a RM2.6 billion “donation” to Najib Razak’s personal bank accounts. It was to fight the DAP, “which is funded by Jews”, at the 2013 elections, they were told.

The new explanation came soon after Umno vice-president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had told members of Sri Gading Umno that the Middle Eastern donor had wanted to ensure Malaysia remained a Sunni country through an election victory for the Barisan Nasional and Umno in 2013.

After Zahid’s speech, division leader Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said the donor had feared that Jewish influences would permeate the country through the DAP and destroy the “Islamic government” led by Barisan Nasional and because Najib was seen to be a great Muslim leader in the region.

“If we had lost, DAP would be in power. DAP with its Jewish funding would control this country. Based on that, our Muslim friends in the Middle East could see the Jewish threat through DAP,” said Aziz, who is deputy transport minister in Najib’s cabinet.

“The Islamic government would be overthrown, and that would harm the struggle to promote Islam throughout the world,” Aziz said, according to Malaysian Insider.

He said Umno was the only party that could stop the Jews from taking over the country through the DAP. “Believe me, if the foreigners succeed in splitting us apart, there will be no more Malay party strong enough to fight DAP, which is based on and funded by the Jews,” Aziz was quoted as saying.

This op-ed makes it clear that the large donation came from Arabs, but isn't sure whethere the Jewish claim is correct or not.

08/23 Links: How BDS is the Face of Modern Anti-Semitism; JPost Apologizes for NIF OpEd

From Ian:

Faced With Sea of Palestinian Flags at Spanish Reggae Festival, Matisyahu Belts Out ‘Jerusalem’

After failing in an attempt to have Jewish-American singer Matisyahu banned from a Spanish music festival, the BDS bigots had yet another trick to unveil as the star ascended to the stage on Saturday night.
Not to be cowed however, it was the spirited Matisyahu who had the last laugh.
Far from boycotting the reggae artist’s gig, the “hate Israel” crowd showed up en masse. And they came bearing flags, immense Palestinian flags, which they waved with gusto from every corner of the 20,000-strong crowd.
As Matisyahu took the mike and looked out to the audience, he was presented with an unmistakably hostile message. It was clear that those who sought to have him banished stood before him in protest. Then the catcalls started, with some chanting, “out, out.” It might easily have been unnerving, disorienting.
But then he began to sing about Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem, if I forget you, fire not gonna come from me tongue. Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand forget what it’s supposed to do.”
And then, as he bounced and twirled around the stage, the most defiant lyrics of all: “3, 000 years with no place to be, and they want me to give up my milk and honey.”
“Tonight was difficult but special,” he later posted on Facebook, along with a clip of the performance.
What courage. Not to be intimidated when the concert organizers demanded he pacify the BDSers, and then to return to the festival’s schedule in defiance of the opposition, and chant Jerusalem on stage with such gusto.
What courage.

Matisyahu Sings Jerusalem At Sunsplash Festival

'BDS seen in the Spanish press as a violent organization' after Matisyahu uproar

Rogel said that in the Spanish media Matisyahu's performance was seen as a “victory of pluralism and music against pressure.” She explained that much of the Spanish media was looking at the affair from a particular Spanish context, and likened the BDS tactics to those used by Basque separatists, which are very unpopular in Spain.
She said opposition to the threatening tactics used against the festival spawned criticism on both the left and the right of the Spanish political spectrum.
Rogel, summing up the entire affair, said there were two primary points to keep in mind: the first, she said, was that “there is no doubt that this was a huge victory over BDS.
“BDS tried to present itself up until now as a human rights organization, but over the last week was seen in the Spanish press as a violent organization,” she said, noting that this was a significant public opinion victory.
On the negative side of the ledger, however, she said that if very few people in Spain knew about BDS until last week, this has changed because of the front page headlines this story created. Rogel also expressed concern that the attention paid this story may scare off organizers of other music and film festivals who may not have anything against Israel, or want to boycott it, but will simply weigh whether or not it is worth the headache of inviting Israeli artists or films.
“This is the quiet BDS which it is difficult to measure,” she said. “What goes on behind the scenes before the invitations are sent out.”
El Pais reported that one act, the local band La Gossa Sorda (The Deaf Dogs) pulled out of the festival because Matisyahu performed. In the days before Matisyahu was re-invited, there were no reports of any of the 250 performers at the festival who stood with him in solidarity and said they would not perform if he was not allowed to play.

The Game is Up: How BDS is the Face of Modern Anti-Semitism

Whereas other nations are free, even encouraged and supported, to struggle for their national rights, Jews are actively discouraged and maligned for doing so. Whereas in any other context, an indigenous people seeking to both physically liberate its ancestral homeland while reclaiming place-names changed by conquering imperialist powers - no matter how long after it was taken from them and colonized - would garner sympathy, Jews who do so are ridiculed and condemned, accused of "harping on about ancient history."
Astonishingly enough, we Jews are simultaneously accused of oppressing the "ancient" Palestinian nation - whose supposedly "ancient" history is inexplicably more relevant and less absurd to evoke than our own - via our modern nation-state. This bare-faced logical inconsistency serves as a graphic illustration of the slipperiness of anti-Semitism, and its ability to change its stripes even within a contemporary context - sometimes even the same breath.
That is why boycotting Matisyahu was entirely in-line with BDS's positions. It doesn't matter that he isn't Israeli, the point is he is a Jewish "troublemaker," because - while never making political statements on stage - he is clearly pro-Israel, and not ashamed of it.

JPost Apologizes for NIF Op-ed

Friday’s JPost included a shocking and insulting op-ed penned by the New Israel Fund's vice president in charge of public relations. It was written in response to an article in that paper by Mr. Ronn Torossian, public relations CEO and a frequent Arutz Sheva op-ed writer.
In his article, Torossian had publicized the fact that the New Israel Fund supports boycotts of Israel and that prominent American Jews continue to donate significant sums to it - information that is available to the public and that Arutz Sheva has given prominent exposure.
In the NIF response, incredibly called "Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel," Torossian was termed "disreputable", and Jeffrey Goldberg's description of what he considers "the lunatic fringe" was applied to him, among other insults and inaccuracies.
Naturally, Torossian's lawyers contacted the JPost immediately.(h/t Bob Knot)

I was on the number 7 bus heading up Haight Street in San Francisco talking to one of my more interesting and edgy students from City College of SF a few years ago.

For reasons that elude me, now, I mentioned the great American Jewish Reggae musician, Matisyahu.

We were sitting opposite one another on a loud and bouncy MUNI bus and I said something like, "Matisyahu is an absolutely terrific Jewish performer who is merging Chasidic Judaism with Reggae music. The man is unique."

At that moment, just as the bus was easing into my stop, at the corner of Haight and Broderick, some stranger, a black man, spit me straight in the face.

I have no idea what offended him other than the fact that a Jew was doing Reggae and, apparently, he did not appreciate it.

It was a very weird moment. The bus came to a halt, the guy spit on me, and cursed me, as I was rising to depart, and then my student, a young non-Jewish man in his twenties, arose to confront my assaulter. I thought that he was going to slug him. I stood up, wiping the phlegm from my face, and put myself between my student and the hideous schmuck. I told him to not get into a fight and then I simply hopped off of the bus, heading home.

I probably should have slugged the racist in the face, myself, but G-d only knows what happened after that and we never spoke of it, afterward.

But I will remember that moment for the rest of my life.

I have no idea what upset that individual other than the fact that a Jewish man, Matisyahu, was excelling at a traditional black musical art-form. Normally that kind of thing upsets no one but the racists. Plus, of course, Matisyahu was not merely a Jew, but a hard-core practicing Jew dressed in black, although I understand that he has in recent years gone to a more secular style and has left the Chassids.

On the day that I write this, in the middle of last week, we learn from Douglas Murray that Matisyahu has been disinvited to the Rototom Sunsplash Reggae festival in Spain because he refused to endorse a political point-of-view concerning the Arab-Israel conflict.

The Spanish seem to be among the least friendly European people toward the Jewish people and polling data bares this out.

Murray writes:

This week the news came in that a Spanish music festival had cancelled a planned performance by Matisyahu, an American reggae star. Matisyahu became famous as the "hassidic reggae star," although he left Orthodox Judaism in 2011. He no longer has a beard of wears a skullcap, but he does remain proud of his Jewish identity. Next weekend, on August 22, he was due to perform at the Rototom Sunsplash festival in Benicassim, north of Valencia.
Unfortunately for anyone simply interested in music, a group of local Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists found out about Matisyahu's upcoming performance. They claimed that Matisyahu is a supporter of "an apartheid state that practices ethnic cleansing," and demanded that the festival cancel the performance.

If this was the US I would call them up and scream my bloody head off. I harassed the Met over the The Death of Klinghoffer, so why not these guys?

Matisyahu is of course not the first Jew to suffer this type of pressure. In Europe, and increasingly in America too, any and all performers who come from Israel can be abused and vilified in the name of "progressive" values. In London, the Jerusalem String Quartet and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra have been the targets of attempts to cancel their performances. When the performances have gone ahead, they have had to suffer obscene and threatening performance interruptions by protesters.
The ironic thing is that Matisyahu is a deeply caring humanitarian. This video, King Without A Crown, demonstrates that quite clearly, does it not?

Matisyahu is an American Jew who grew up in White Plains, New York, a stone's throw from my parents' house in Bardonia, New York, when I was a kid.

It is obvious that what we are seeing now - via BDS and western-left anti-Zionism - is an attack on Jewry, in general.

The good thing, of course, was that by overreaching BDS invited significant push-back which resulted in the music festival capitulating and re-inviting Matisyahu. As Jared Samilow writes in the Jewish Journal:

Looking back, the whole episode seems dryly amusing. Spain’s BDS coterie should have known better, really. Discretion is the better part of valor. It was entirely predictable that openly discriminating against an American Jew would not fly in front of a broad public. Such garish anti-Semitism might cut it among certain benighted precincts, but was bound to get the cold shoulder from ordinary concert-goers and the political elite.

Well, I don't how amusing it is.

The Spanish Reggae festival spit Matisyahu straight in the face. Unlike with my little encounter with flat-out physically hostile anti-Jewish racism on a bus in San Francisco, we know how this one ended up.

The good guy won.

{And I'm guessing that this may be the last we hear of this story. Maybe. In any case, I am bringing up the rear.}

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.

UNRWA school encourages running over Jews with cars

An UNRWA school in Syria has featured posters encouraging Arabs to kill Jews with cars.

The Rameh school in Damascus has included this poster, which translates to "car intifada - run over"

And also this antisemitic cartoon with the frightened religious Jew running away from a toy car controlled by the happy Palestinian Arab:

This is from the official Facebook page of an UNRWA school, not of individual UNRWA teachers.

Last week UNRWA announced that it had managed to scare a number of nations into paying some $79 million to allow it to open its schools on time this year.

But it looks like its Gaza schools won't open on time.

UNRWA teachers are upset that they have to make some compromises, like larger class sizes. So the Gaza UNRWA teachers' union announced that they will go on strike on the first day of school, scheduled for Monday.

The same union organized large protests last week in the face of the possibility of the school year being delayed four months.

The head of the union for Gaza UNRWA teachers is Suhail Hindi. He is a known Hamas member. In 2011, UNRWA - under Western pressure -said that it dismissed Hindi, causing large protests and teacher strikes in Gaza. UNRWA then caved, and he is still the head of the union and still an UNRWA principal (with an UNRWA.org email address.)

As far as I know, no one has asked Chris Gunness why they still employ a known Hamas member as a school principal, against all UNRWA rules.

Rats in Hamas hospital - how long before Israel is blamed?

Here's a video of a mouse or rat running around the equipment at Al Aqsa Hospital, in Deir al Balah, Gaza.

The hospital director blames the cleaning crews, saying that they were responsible for keeping the hospital rat-free. That's taking responsibility for you.

Oh, and he also said that if it is found that a hospital employee too the video, there will be punishment.

I figure it will take a couple of hours before Israel is blamed for this.

But it can also explain why Hamas sends its own people outside Gaza for medical care, something that others have been complaining about.