Remember, Gaza schools - including UNRWA schools - were closed on Monday to allow as many children as possible to go to the riots.
And, as Hamas intensively hoped, for some of these children to be shot.
A Hamas official on Wednesday acknowledged that 50 of the 62 Palestinians reported killed during Gaza border riots on Monday and Tuesday were members of the Islamist terrorist group, bringing the total number of known members of terror groups among the fatalities up to 53.
“In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas,” said Hamas official Salah Bardawil in an interview with the Palestinian Baladna news outlet.
The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad had said on Tuesday that three members of its Saraya al-Quds military wing were killed by Israeli forces in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military shared a portion of Bardawil’s interview with an Arabic news outlet, accompanied by English captions.
“This proves what so many have tried to ignore: Hamas is behind these riots, and the branding of the riots as ‘peaceful protests’ could not be further from the truth,” said IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, 62 people in total were killed during border clashes on Monday and Tuesday.
Hamas Political Bureau Member Salah Al-Bardawil: 50 of the Martyrs Killed in Gaza were from Hamas, 12 Regular People pic.twitter.com/etPPGrsQo7
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 16, 2018
Former Hamas Political Bureau Chief Khaled Mash'al: We Are Ready for All Types of Armed and Popular Resistance pic.twitter.com/3u8knDofxA
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 16, 2018
Two Palestinian Facebook pages and a forum directing rioters in Gaza gave explicit instructions to murder and kidnap Israelis on May 14, the day the US embassy opened in Jerusalem, as well as suggestions on how to accomplish this goal. It is not clear if Hamas itself was the group sending these messages. What is critical is that Gazans were encouraged to bring weapons to the demonstrations and use these weapons to either murder or capture Israelis. Israeli soldiers may have been facing Palestinians who were using the cover of demonstrating civilians to attempt to break through the border with the goal of murdering and kidnapping Israelis.
The following are the instructions to bring weapons, murder "soldiers and settlers," and kidnap Israeli citizens for use as bargaining chips to impose conditions on Israel:
"Rebelling young people, Treat seriously and do not take lightly the requests to bring a knife, dagger, or handgun, if you have one, and to leave them under your clothes and not use them or show them, except if you identify one of the [Israeli] soldiers or settlers. Do not kill Israeli civilians, instead hand them over to the resistance immediately, because this is the point that Israel fears, as it knows that the capturer can set any condition he wants."
[Independent Palestinian Facebook page "The Great March of Return", May 14, 2018]
The instructions also described how masses of Palestinians would "collectively" breach the security fence aided by bulldozers:
The sit-in demonstration is set to culminate on May 15 — the day after Israeli independenceSit in?
NBC News, April 5, 2018
But the protests appeared to have a more violent edge than in previous weeks. Some young men brought knives and fence cutters. At a gathering point east of Gaza City, organizers urged protesters over loudspeakers to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them. [emphasis added]Similarly, The New York Times reported
The atmosphere grew more charged after midday prayers, when more than 1,000 men gathered under a large blue awning. Officials from Hamas and other militant factions addressed the worshipers, urging them into the fray and claiming — falsely, to all appearances — that the fence had been breached and that Palestinians were flooding into Israel. [emphasis added]With all the trouble Hamas is going through, they are very determined. When Israel tried to impede the riots by warning bus companies in Gaza not to bring people to the border, Hamas threatened to imprison the drivers - leaving them no choice.
MSNBC reporter Matt Bradley falsey [sic] claims Palestinian rioters in the Gaza Strip were "unarmed," then admits they "had some light weapons." pic.twitter.com/V3o3chQwnL— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) May 14, 2018
While some said they would abide by official calls to keep the demonstrations peaceful, others talked about their enthusiasm to break into Israel and wreak havoc.Since this is from the same article that notes how Gazans were lied to in order to get them to the border, it is not actually clear where these "official calls to keep the demonstrations peaceful" came from -- but it is typical of the media's schizophrenic approach, or what they like to think of as 'balanced reporting'.
“We are excited to storm and get inside,” said 23-year-old Mohammed Mansoura. When asked what he would do inside Israel, he said, “Whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones.”
Two other young men carried large knives and said they wanted to kill Jews on the other side of the fence.
We are just chiming in to let you know the above Facebook post, literally telling its millions of followers to invade armed with knives and guns into Israeli towns and kidnap people, is still up. pic.twitter.com/UfaakgTcea— The Mossad (@TheMossadIL) May 15, 2018
The official Facebook page of the riots in Gaza published these photos, directing rioters to breach the fence and infiltrate nearby Israeli communities pic.twitter.com/PSHEmmustX— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) May 13, 2018
This is what a border infiltration from #Gaza into #Israel looks like. See the man (0:30) clutching a meat cleaver? Imagine hundreds like him coming into Israeli territory, hoping to murder as many Israelis as possible.— Emanuel Miller (@emanumiller) May 14, 2018
This is what Israel is up against. pic.twitter.com/97c9jvEWOT
A young Palestinian man boasted to National Public Radio on Tuesday about putting swastikas on incendiary kites and flying them into Israel, saying that "Jews go crazy" when they see it and "we want to burn them."And of course, there is always a terrorist video to make the point. This one is from Islamic Jihad:
Me: So why are you protesting tomorrow?— Joe (@joedyke) May 13, 2018
Naseem (14): For the right to return
Naseem's friend (giggling): But you are a Gazan (meaning unlike most Gazans his family weren't refugees)
Naseem: Ok. So for Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/e1XtzquwmB
Hamas has warned its own members to stay away from the security fence during Gaza’s mass protests, lest they get shot, while actively encouraging Palestinian civilians — particularly children and teens — to approach the border, the Shin Bet added, citing findings from a number of interrogations. If the fence is breached, however, armed Hamas gunmen are poised to enter Israel to carry out attacks.But despite it all --
“There is a prohibition for Hamas operatives to approach the border, from a fear that they will be killed or captured by IDF troops, unless the security fence falls and then they must enter, armed, into Israel under the cover of the masses and carry out terror attacks,” the Shin Bet said in a statement.
...Yahya Ijlah, a 19-year-old Hamas member who entered Israel on April 29, told Shin Bet interrogators that he had been sent to the border in order to steal a security camera along the fence.
According to the Shin Bet, Ijlah said Hamas “is working to make its activities look like a popular uprising in the media, and not a violent operation by its members.”
According to UNESCO, the Palestinians, and the Muslim States, Israel, and the Jewish People have no right to Jerusalem. It is this fake belief that until Donald Trump became president, kept the U.S. from recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the Jewish world. Most of the world outside America continues to believe the Palestinian/Muslim propaganda that ignores that the ancient Greeks, Romans, Christians, and even the ancient Muslims, reported Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were the property of the Jewish people.John Podhoretz: The Embassy Moves
Let’s start out with the basics. Jerusalem was NEVER part of a Palestinian State because there was never an independent state of Palestine. After the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, the Romans punished the Judeans (Jews) for revolting for the second time in sixty years. They changed the name of their country from Judea to Syria Palaestina (after the ancient enemy of the Jews, the Philistines who were destroyed a thousand years earlier). At the same time, they changed the name of the holy city from Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina (literally Capitoline Hill of the House of Aelius). After the Romans threw out many of the Jews, the holy land was ruled by the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and finally, the British mandate before it once again became a Jewish State in 1948. During all that time, the holy land including Jerusalem had a very large population of Jews.
During the period of 135 CE through 1948, which was when Jordan began to occupy Jerusalem, there were large populations of Jews in Jerusalem. In fact, beginning with the earliest information available (1844), there were more Jews in Jerusalem than any other faith.
To the ancient Muslim, Greek, and Roman pagan authors, Jerusalem was a Jewish city. Their text indicates the unanimous agreement that Jerusalem was Jewish by virtue of the fact that its inhabitants were Jews, it was founded by Jews, and the Temple located in Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish religion.
So it has happened. The American embassy in Israel is now in Jerusalem, moving from Tel Aviv 70 years to the day the Jewish state came into being and 22 years since U.S. law declared it would move.Ben Shapiro: Why Democrats Missed the Boat in Jerusalem
Richard Haass, who runs the Council on Foreign Relations, this morning tweeted that the Embassy move was an iatrogenic mistake—iatrogenesis meaning a disease you catch from treating another. Well, that’s fast. There’s no evidence whatever there is any new disease. In fact, there is evidence of diseases healing all over the place.
Last week Arab states expressed support for Israel’s bombing raids on Iranian positions in Syria. I doubt Haass expected to see such a thing before the creation of a Palestinian state. Instead, what we’re seeing is Arab states apparently abandoning their insistence on a Palestinian state as the sine qua non for any relationship with Israel.
Yes, there are staged riots in Gaza right now, but in what sense is that new? Gazans have launched wars with Israel thrice in the past decade. If Haass truly thinks this is about the embassy and not about deeper and longer trends, I have a bridge from Gaza to the West Bank to sell him. The Gazans are goading Israeli forces into firing on them, and Europeans and American Leftists are screaming murder. And, again, what else is new.
Intersectionality posits that Western civilization has victimized particular groups, and that those groups therefore must have the leading role in discussing politics.
Thus, Israel’s success has actually cut against Democratic support: by becoming more prosperous and powerful, Israel now becomes a perpetuator of the “system” intersectionality wishes to attack. Thus, gay Jews waving rainbow flags with stars of David have been barred from Dyke Marches in Chicago on behalf of Palestinian sympathizers – even though rainbow flags likely end with beatings under Palestinian rule. Thus, Linda Sarsour, an openly anti-Semitic fellow traveler of Louis Farrakhan, continues to maintain her popularity with the Women’s March, even as she tweets hatred about Israel.
Israel has become too successful to maintain its appeal to the coalition of victimhood promulgated and celebrated by the intersectional Left. And so Israel must be denied legitimacy.
The problem for Democrats is that in order to deny Israel legitimacy – especially at a time when Palestinians are ruled by terrorist groups Hamas, Palestinian Authority, and Islamic Jihad – Israel’s historical ties to the land of Israel must be soft-pedaled. These terrorist governments have no moral claims to the land – not when they are busily pursuing murder and repression and impoverishment of their own people. So they must make historical claims that deny the Jewish connection with Israel. This, they do with alacrity. At the very least, then, intersectionality dictates that Democrats soft-pedal Israel’s Jewish roots in Jerusalem.
Never has there been less of a case for Democrats to split with Republicans on Israel – not in the face of Iran’s genocidal aspirations, Syria’s horrors, and the rise of terrorist groups on all of Israel’s borders. Yet the split grows wider, not narrower. Until Democrats throw aside victimhood ideology in favor of the morality that used to govern their party, it will continue to widen.
A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other designated sector of society. According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a hate group's "primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization."
The media coverage of terror group Hamas’ deliberately-crafted border assault on Israel has been egregious: from CNN to MSNBC to The New York Times, mainstream outlets have acted as propaganda vehicles for one of the worst regimes on the planet. Hamas has spent weeks ginning up attacks on the border with the Gaza Strip — an area completely controlled by Hamas, which was elected to power in 2006 after Israel’s withdrawal from the area — and yet the media treat Israel as the aggressor.
That’s insane.
Here’s the proof.
First, meet senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar.
He explains openly on Al Jazeera (translation via MEMRI):
When you are in possession of weapons that were able to withstand the occupation in the wars of 2006, 2008, 2012, and 2014, when you have weapons that are being wielded by men who were able to prevent the strongest army in the region from entering the Gaza Strip for 51 days, and were able to capture or kill soldiers of that army is this really ‘peaceful resistance’? This is not peaceful resistance. Has the option [of armed struggle] diminished? No. On the contrary, it is growing and developing. … So when we talk about peaceful resistance, we are deceiving the public. This is peaceful resistance bolstered by a military force and by security agencies and enjoying tremendous popular support. … This deception does not fool the Palestinian public.
Senior Hamas Official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar on Gaza Protests: This Is Not Peaceful Resistance, It Is Supported by Our Weapons pic.twitter.com/aut0Q7SPD9
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 15, 2018
On Tuesday, the New York Daily News ran with another of its desperate appeals for circulation. This time, it blamed Ivanka Trump for Hamas-generated violence in the Gaza Strip.Col. Kemp: "IDF is defending border as UK or any other soldiers would"
The cover featured a grinning Ivanka, dressed to the nines, at the inauguration of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. But instead of her gesturing to the placard featured on the new embassy, the Daily News photoshopped in a photo of a wounded Palestinian on the Gaza border — so now Ivanka was gesturing at Palestinian suffering, a smile spread broadly across her face. The headline: “DADDY’S LITTLE GHOUL.”
This is absolutely abhorrent. It’s also reflective of the media coverage of both the Trump administration and Israel overall. The media have been repeating Hamas propaganda — and, presumably, they know it. They’ve been claiming that Israel is killing “protesters,” even though these are Hamas-led riots. They’ve been claiming that Israel has been targeting civilians, when it is clear this is not the case. And now they’re claiming that the Trump administration is to blame. The Washington Post headlined, “Israelis kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza protesting U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem.”
The violence in the Gaza Strip has been ongoing for weeks, and has been entirely orchestrated by Hamas. Palestinians, including Hamas terrorists, have been throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli troops, as well as explosive devices and stones; they’ve been burning tires and attempting to cut through the border fence with wirecutters. The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Ronen Manelis, says Hamas is paying families to protest, and that they have intelligence that Hamas seeks to kidnap an Israeli soldier.
The media is a knowing accomplice in helping a terrorist group push out its propaganda.
Here is a delightful video of one of those peaceful Palestinians caught on camera walking with crutches to the Israeli border fence. Miracle of miracles, he suddenly walks just fine.
There are lots of people accusing the media of falling for Hamas propaganda. Obviously, several dozen people lost their lives as they tried to storm through the Israeli border with the stated purpose of making their way to Jerusalem to disrupt the opening of the American embassy. And obviously they died because Israeli soldiers shot them. And obviously the media is making a big deal of this.
But no, the media is not falling for propaganda. The media has gone into this as a willful, knowing accomplice with Hamas, a terrorist group. The media has gotten played so much, the media knows exactly what is happening and the media is allowing it to happen. Many of those killed turned out to be directly working with Hamas, a terrorist group. It was that terrorist group that organized the storming of the border knowing people would get killed. It is the media passing by this story suggesting Israel has no other choice but to let people storm its border and oppose an embassy the media itself has a subtle editorial bias against.
There is no campaign to fool the media here. The campaign was waged long ago to get the media on the side of the Palestinians and their terrorist allies. Ever since, the media has just been doing their bidding.
A miracle in Gaza. The man with the crutches suddenly started running pic.twitter.com/53l5bb3zV1
— Yanki יענקי פרבר (@Farberyanki) May 14, 2018
Hamas isn’t merely a terrorist organization committed to murdering Jews, it’s a terrorist organization that urges its own people to become cannon fodder as a means of appealing to Western journalists and intellectuals. The higher the death toll, the happier Hamas will be. And few things have more of a detrimental effect on the Palestinian cause than the media’s asymmetrical coverage of this conflict with the Jews.
Until Palestinians shed their hatred, turn from the Israeli fences, and march towards their own governments, they will remain pawns and saps in a decades-long suicide mission. That’s because no amount of bad press about Israel’s efforts to stop violence coming from Gaza will impel that nation to create a terror state on its borders. It’s untenable, not to mention immoral. We would never contemplate such a thing. Nor would any rational country.
Despite what you’ve heard, the 35,000 Palestinian “demonstrators” massed along the security fence between Israel and Gaza — the ones throwing firebombs and other explosives, burning tires, chucking rocks (if you think these are aren’t deadly, you should see one landing; I have), and those attempting to light fires to burn crops and vegetation — are only ostensibly protesting the United States moving its embassy to Israel’s capital. I know this because Hamas doesn’t accept a U.S. embassy anywhere in Israel, as it doesn’t recognize Israel at all.
Hamas has openly asserted that it’s attempting to create incursions into Israel, and that has absolutely nothing to do with East or West or North or South Jerusalem. For Palestinians this is about the 70th anniversary of Israel — or, as they see it, Nakba. It’s about an ongoing historic effort — an intermittently theocratic or nationalistic effort, depending on the trends — to play victim.
Amid Antisemitic and "Death to Israel" Chants, Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh Vows: We Shall Never Recognize Israel - Scenes from Gaza "Return March" pic.twitter.com/4D8Ko06CVA
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 15, 2018
What precipitated the current wave of protests in Gaza?
To promote a better understanding of the situation in Gaza, one that goes beyond the provocative, but reductive explanations making headlines in recent weeks, we have compiled key elements of Gisha’s research and professional analysis so as to provide answers to some frequently asked questions about the Gaza Strip.The weekly demonstrations are called by their organizers the "Great Return March." They make it explicitly clear that the point of the riots is to storm the Gaza fence and enter Israel en masse, in an attempt to publicize the Palestinian "Right of Return" and flood Israel with millions of Palestinians, destroying the Jewish state.
For more than 10 years, residents of Gaza have lived under excessively harsh restrictions on movement implemented through Israel’s closure of the Strip’s land, sea and air space.Gisha answers the question of "What precipitated the current wave of protests in Gaza?" by taking pains not to mention what the protests are about. The explicit demands of the organizers, and of their Hamas sponsors, are not mentioned:
Regardless of the political affiliation of the protestors, who organized the protest, or the agenda they wish to promote, international law prohibits the use of lethal force against civilians unless they participate directly in acts of hostility or pose a concrete risk to life, and even then, only as a last resort and only to the extent necessary to alleviate the risk
Hamas, as the de facto government and also as a party to conflict, is subject to international humanitarian and human rights law as well. Its violations of these do not relieve Israel of its obligations.Which means that this is another question that Gisha raises and does not answer in its own FAQ. If they know that Hamas has the legal obligation towards its own people, then why doesn't Gisha write anything negative about Hamas (unless shamed into it?)
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!