The New York Times has a backgrounder on the Gaza protests and the fence, which it claims is the source of the unrest.
The article briefly touches on the word "return" but downplays that as well:
Why is the conflict flaring up now? The “March of Return,” as Palestinians are calling the protest campaign that began in March, was intended by its creators to publicize global awareness that about two-thirds of Gaza residents are considered Palestinian refugees.
I've covered the planned march since February. It is always exactly what it claimed: to overrun the border with Israel and force it to deal with thousands of people at once, aimed at forcing Israel to allow them to "return" - and destroy the Jewish state.
To call that "publicizing the refugees" is not close to the truth.
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I attended a lecture on Monday by Moti Toledo, who participated in Operation Solomon, the 36-hour airlift of about 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel while Ethiopia was in the throes of revolution.
Religious people can be excused for believing that miracles occurred during the operation. An El Al 747 with all its seats removed set the world record for number of people on a commercial aircraft, carrying 1088 passengers (two or three of them were babies born on the flight to Israel). According to the secular Toledo, the runway at that time was not considered long enough for even a normally-loaded 747, and the plane struggled to get airborne before it ran out of runway. An unexpected gust of wind came along from precisely the right direction, just in time. Make of this what you will.
This was after several covert operations had brought thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, including the fascinating “Operation Brothers,” a Mossad-operated diving resort in Sudan (a country as hostile to Israel as any you can think of) which operated during 1981-5, and succeeded in rescuing some 12,000Jews.
The efforts to get the Ethiopian Jews to Israel began after then Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wrote a letter to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Supposedly, Begin then called the head of the Mossad, and told him “Bring me my brothers, the Jews of Ethiopia.”
Toledo said that the story of the Ethiopian Jews illustrates the connection between the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Israel is and will always be a place of refuge and a protector of Jews everywhere. I can’t think of another country that has this kind of relationship with its people (and I am using “people” in its tribal sense). Perhaps if there will be an independent Kurdistan, there could be one more.
He also mentioned that when he gave a presentation in Europe, a non-Jewish person said to him that they too wished they had a place of refuge, the way Jews did. It reminded me of what an African-American Muslim said to my wife and I when we were about to make aliyah in 1979: “I wish we knew where our home was.”
Israel today is experiencing what Ofir Haivry called a “demographic miracle.” Everyone knows that when economic well-being and educational level increase, fertility goes down. This is true in Europe, North America, East and Southwest Asia, and the Middle East, including Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. But not among Jewish Israelis, where each woman has an average of 3.1 children (and this number is rising, despite Israel’s economic success). Haivry notes that this is not mostly because of a high birthrate among Haredim, but because the majority of secular and non-Haredi observant Jews are having more children. I can attest to this anecdotally – the streets and parks here are full of Jewish children and pregnant women.
Haivry attributes this to the strong family orientation of Jewish Israelis. He writes,
Throughout Israeli society, the educational and moral welfare of children as well as the continuity of the family remains at the center of parents’ (and grandparents’) lives, not only emotionally but as a matter of almost day-to-day practice.
But this is only part of it – and I think it is a small part, because close family ties characterize many countries in which there is nevertheless an inverse correlation between development and birthrate. He continues – and here I think he hits the nail on its head:
This peculiarly strong culture draws sustenance from and in turn informs the equally strong sense of national solidarity. Thanks to that strongly shared national identity, Israeli Jews are unusually willing to make personal sacrifices when it comes to welcoming new Jewish immigrants into the state and into their homes—and also when it comes to stoically enduring protracted periods of violence and bloodshed perpetrated by intractable enemies. As traditional communities of origin have receded in importance elsewhere in the world, the shared sense of an Israeli nation-family underlies the habitual instinct of most Israeli Jews to regard other Jews, and especially those in Israel itself, primarily as family members rather than merely as fellow citizens.
In a word, the secret is Zionism.
This is precisely why Menachem Begin asked the Mossad to bring him his Ethiopian brothers. This is why, when my own son told me that his wife was going to have a fourth child, he said – only half-jokingly – “I did it for the demographic struggle of the Jewish people.”
Having children is a joy, especially when one gets older. But in the beginning it means that parents have to sacrifice some of their own well-being for the sake of the children. There are adventures that they will not have, and pleasures that they will have to forgo. In highly self-centered societies, people often prefer not to make such sacrifices. They choose travel, extended education or careers over children. If they do have children, they have them later in life, so they have fewer of them.
This is why the highly developed native cultures of Europe, for example, are phasing themselves out of history with fertility rates far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. And worries about their shrinking work force which must support an increasingly aged population have led them to welcome the immigration that will ultimately put an end to those cultures.
And this is why liberal Jews will soon be disappearing as a distinct group in American society: their affluence together with a lack of national feeling – which is also the reason they are attracted to anti-Israel politics – leads them to put their personal gratification before any Jewish consciousness that they may have. They have fewer children, and don’t see a downside to intermarriage.
This also applies to the bitter anti-Zionist Left in Israel, the ones that advise their (few) children to refuse to be serve in the IDF. But for this very reason – they too will be gone soon – I don’t see them as a major threat to Israel’s national consciousness.
Someone said to me at Toledo’s lecture that while the immigration of the Ethiopians was a big success, their absorption has been less so. I disagree. We are just beginning to see the first generation of Ethiopian Jews born in Israel, and they are Israeli in every way. The usual problems of immigrants – prejudice, crime, poverty – are fading away, and in another generation or two will be gone. Jews from Ethiopia are finding their places in our society, including having plenty of children of their own.
Today Israel is militarily the most powerful nation in the region – we’ve just demonstrated that to the Iranian regime – and an economic powerhouse, but we are also vulnerable due to our small size. Begin realized that we need more than military strength to survive – we need to care about each other and our nation.
And despite the sometimes deafening disagreements, we do.
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The press coverage on Monday was a major Hamas success in a war whose battlefield isn’t really Gaza, but the brains of foreign audiences.
Israeli soldiers facing Gaza have no good choices. They can warn people off with tear gas or rubber bullets, which are often inaccurate and ineffective, and if that doesn’t work, they can use live fire. Or they can hold their fire to spare lives and allow a breach, in which case thousands of people will surge into Israel, some of whom — the soldiers won’t know which — will be armed fighters. (On Wednesday a Hamas leader, Salah Bardawil, told a Hamas TV station that 50 of the dead were Hamas members. The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed three others.) If such a breach occurs, the death toll will be higher. And Hamas’s tactic, having proved itself, would likely be repeated by Israel’s enemies on its borders with Syria and Lebanon.
Knowledgeable people can debate the best way to deal with this threat. Could a different response have reduced the death toll? Or would a more aggressive response deter further actions of this kind and save lives in the long run? What are the open-fire orders on the India-Pakistan border, for example? Is there something Israel could have done to defuse things beforehand?
These are good questions. But anyone following the response abroad saw that this wasn’t what was being discussed. As is often the case where Israel is concerned, things quickly became hysterical and divorced from the events themselves. Turkey’s president called it “genocide.” A writer for The New Yorker took the opportunity to tweet some of her thoughts about “whiteness and Zionism,” part of an odd trend that reads America’s racial and social problems into a Middle Eastern society 6,000 miles away. The sicknesses of the social media age — the disdain for expertise and the idea that other people are not just wrong but villainous — have crept into the worldview of people who should know better.
For someone looking out from here, that’s the real split-screen effect: On one side, a complicated human tragedy in a corner of a region spinning out of control. On the other, a venomous and simplistic story, a symptom of these venomous and simplistic times.
Notice, also, the old pattern at work: Avow and pursue Israel’s destruction, then plead for pity and aid when your plans lead to ruin.
The world now demands that Jerusalem account for every bullet fired at the demonstrators, without offering a single practical alternative for dealing with the crisis.
But where is the outrage that Hamas kept urging Palestinians to move toward the fence, having been amply forewarned by Israel of the mortal risk? Or that protest organizers encouraged women to lead the charges on the fence because, as The Times’s Declan Walsh reported, “Israeli soldiers might be less likely to fire on women”? Or that Palestinian children as young as 7 were dispatched to try to breach the fence? Or that the protests ended after Israel warned Hamas’s leaders, whose preferred hide-outs include Gaza’s hospital, that their own lives were at risk?
Elsewhere in the world, this sort of behavior would be called reckless endangerment. It would be condemned as self-destructive, cowardly and almost bottomlessly cynical.
The mystery of Middle East politics is why Palestinians have so long been exempted from these ordinary moral judgments. How do so many so-called progressives now find themselves in objective sympathy with the murderers, misogynists and homophobes of Hamas? Why don’t they note that, by Hamas’s own admission, some 50 of the 62 protesters killed on Monday were members of Hamas? Why do they begrudge Israel the right to defend itself behind the very borders they’ve been clamoring for years for Israelis to get behind?
Why is nothing expected of Palestinians, and everything forgiven, while everything is expected of Israelis, and nothing forgiven?
That’s a question to which one can easily guess the answer. In the meantime, it’s worth considering the harm Western indulgence has done to Palestinian aspirations.
No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood, violence and fatalism symbolized by these protests. No worthy Palestinian government can emerge if the international community continues to indulge the corrupt, anti-Semitic autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction the despotic killers of Hamas. And no Palestinian economy will ever flourish through repeated acts of self-harm and destructive provocation.
If Palestinians want to build a worthy, proud and prosperous nation, they could do worse than try to learn from the one next door. That begins by forswearing forever their attempts to destroy it.
Many have condemned Israel for using excessive and disproportionate force. I cannot assess every incident, but I can say for sure that this is not the case. The IDF has strict rules of engagement, similar to our own, which conform to the laws of war and, when appropriate, to human rights law. IDF commanders exercise tight control over use of force, and I stood beside a battalion commander on the border as he directed operations in his sector.
Those who say it would be no big deal if the crowds reached the border fail to understand the potentially catastrophic implications. If they succeeded in breaking down the fence, thousands would pour through, intent on violence against Israeli civilians. Among them would be armed terrorists with orders to reach border communities and carry out mass murder. Some villages are just a few minutes’ dash from the border. Hamas social media provided Google maps marked with routes from the border to the communities they intended to attack. Had that horrendous scenario occurred, the IDF would have defended these communities with lethal force and many more people would have died.
All of this is no doubt hard to fully understand, especially if you are conditioned to see Israel in a bad light. But those who wrongly accuse Israel of using too much force play into the hands of Hamas.
I am in no doubt that the international reaction to conflict in Gaza has validated Hamas’s human shield tactics and encouraged them to step up their violence. This has contributed to the death toll. Anyone who is genuinely interested in human rights and concerned to improve the wretched lives of the people of Gaza should support Israel’s lawful efforts to defend its sovereign territory and condemn Hamas, which so malevolently oppresses its people and throws away the lives of innocent men, women and children.
Earlier today, Kerem Shalom Crossing was opened and COGAT coordinated the entry of humanitarian aid, despite the recent riots by the security fence.
The aid included:
4 trucks carrying medical supplies from the PA
2 trucks carrying medical supplies donated by the IDF
2 trucks carrying medical supplies donated by UNICEF
119 tons of medical supplies
COGAT will continue to work with the international community to ensure the fast and efficient coordination of humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip.
Yes, the IDF itself donated 25% of the medical supplies.
In middle of the night, trucks loaded with Israeli medical supplies were returned from the Gaza Strip to Israel.
Why? Because the humanitarian aid came from Israel. The Hamas terrorist organization prefers that Gazans die from lack of proper medical care, rather than to receive equipment from Israel.
Israel, despite the riots and terrorist activities on the security fence, had sent medical aid, which is now being returned in its entirety, because Hamas does not care for the lives of Gazans.
The aid included IV fluids, bandages, pediatric equipment and disinfectants, as well as fuel for hospital generators.
The Hamas-led organizers of the Palestinian protests along the Gaza border confirmed that they would not accept medicine “from the murderers of our people,” despite the widespread shortages of medical supplies in the coastal enclave.
The terrorist group accused Israel of “trying to improve its black image” by sending the humanitarian aid.
This is again a manifestation of the Arab honor/shame mentality, where appearances are more important than reality, and "honor" is more important than life itself.
On the flip side, Arabs will make a big deal about how much they are helping their brethren in Gaza - and do little.
The most glaring example is Egypt, whose president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi publicly instructed his country to accept injured people from Gaza for treatment.
Appearance are everything. People are worth more dead than alive, as long as their deaths can be blamed on Israel. This is the mentality of the Gaza and Arab leadership. It is reprehensible - and it works.
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The story of the eight month old girl who was supposedly killed by Israeli teargas was quickly questioned when reporters, looking for more details on the story, found that there was more to it than Hamas propaganda indicated:
On Tuesday, a Gaza doctor told the Associated Press health official that the Hamas claim that an 8-month-old baby died from Israeli tear gas was inaccurate. He attested that the baby, Layla Ghandour, had a preexisting medical condition which caused her death.
The baby was literally at the border fence at the time, taken by her 12-year old nephew towards his grandmother who was there.
Reliefweb is a UN-run website that says, "We provide reliable and timely information, enabling humanitarian workers to make informed decisions and to plan effective response. We collect and deliver key information, including the latest reports, maps and infographics from trusted sources."
One of their "trusted sources" is Islamic Relief, a UK-based NGO, which issued this statement reproduced on the UN site:
Over 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli gunfire over the past few days, including an eight-month-old baby, and more than 2,700 people have been injured. The victims have been involved in largely peaceful protests near the Israeli border which have come under fire.
No one on the planet claims that the girl was shot - except a UK-based NGO with links to Hamas.
This is what the UN considers to be "reliable and timely information."
The idea that an NGO might also be an anti-Israel propaganda outlet is, apparently, a bonus for the UN.
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Several homes in the Israeli city of Sderot were hit by machine gun fire, apparently fired by terrorists in the Gaza Strip, causing damage but no injuries, in one of three cross-border exchanges on Wednesday, the army said.
According to the city of Sderot, the shots were aimed at an army aircraft that had been flying overhead, and the bullets struck the homes as they fell back down to earth.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the "military wing" of Fatah which is headed by Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas, takes credit for this - and doesn't mention anything about targeting aircraft. They claim that they shot at an Israeli patrol as well as the town of Sderot directly, calling it "an initial response to the massacre committed by the occupation against peaceful demonstrators in the eastern Gaza Strip."
They claim that they inflicted injuries on "soldiers" and that they will release a video of their operation.
Fatah is of course jealous of Hamas for taking the initiative for the "Great Return March" and wants to be perceived as being just as active as its rival.
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But the media didn't think that Arabs dying is an interesting story. Those people had the misfortune of being killed by other Arabs. If they had been killed by Jews, then suddenly there would be interest.
Instead, the news agencies sent hundreds of reporters to "report" on something that they already decided would be a massacre of innocent, unarmed civilians before a single shot was fired.
The reporters were busy falsely accusing Israel of shooting randomly into crowds of innocent unarmed civilians who were simply protesting the "blockade." Or the US embassy. Or their frustration. (Most reporters pretended that the protests, named the Great return March, had anything to do with "return" to overrun Israel based on its having the audacity to exist since 1948.)
If it was, say, Egypt killing Hamas members at the border, the media would have cheered them. But when Jews act in self-defense, they are the ones who are vilified.
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Media coverage of Hamas's attacks on the Israeli border have been, as usual, a dumpster fire of idiocy and ignorance. Hamas itself now admits that "50 of the 62 martyrs" were card-carrying terrorists. One of the heads of Hamas just boasted to an interviewer: "This is not peaceful resistance." No facts or admissions will intrude on the media narrative, which is that Israel is diabolically slaughtering civilians because Israelis enjoy killing people.
One of the tropes that is being repeated everywhere is this one, promoted here with complete credulity by the New York Times: International law allowed for the use of lethal force only as a last resort in the face of an immediate threat to life or serious injury, Mr. Colville noted. Those laws "appear to have been ignored again and again," he added.
"An attempt to approach, or crossing or damaging the green line fence do not amount to a threat to life or serious injury and are not sufficient grounds for the use of live ammunition," he said.
This farcical claim originates with "human rights" groups such as Human Rights Watch (whose Israel director, Omar Shakir, is a BDS activist) and Amnesty International (which calls for an arms embargo on Israel).
The problem is this alleged requirement of "international law" doesn't exist. It is made-up, an example of the new trend of human rights groups claiming "international law" that doesn't actually exist in, say, the Geneva Conventions, but is merely what these groups wish was enshrined in international law because it gives their hatred of Israel a sheen of moral high-mindedness and impartiality.
The Palestinian Authority’s main daily newspaper launched a vitriolic attack on the United States this week, following the opening on Monday of the new American Embassy in the Israeli capital, Jerusalem.
In language reminiscent of Palestinian propaganda targeting the legitimacy of Zionism and Israel, an official editorial in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on May 15 portrayed the US as a nation bereft of moral principles, and a creature of colonialism.
“None of the American administrations were noted for nobility of spirit or for human traits such as compassion, tolerance and understanding of the other,” the editorial — translated by analysts at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — stated. “America has always employed brutal policies towards small and poor nations. That is how it behaved toward the Native Americans, whom it called ‘Indians,’ during the violent and blood-soaked period of its birth.”
The editorial went on to strongly recommend the writings of Munir Akash — a Syrian-born American academic who has previously accused the US of promoting the mass sterilization of women in the developing world.
The editorial brandished “The Ugly American” — a factually-based political novel about US diplomacy in Southeast Asia that caused a sensation in the late 1950s when it was first published, but is a less-familiar cultural reference today — as the main evidence of US malign intent throughout its 242-year history.
“It would be difficult to continue relating all the stories that appear in The Ugly American, which are full of bloodshed, systematic violence, a culture of brutality and attacks on small nations,” the editorial asserted — listing alleged traits of the US that are routinely associated with Israel and Jews in the Palestinian media
"The civilization born of Judeo-Christian values, ancient Greek philosophy and the discoveries of the Enlightenment is staring at the abyss, brought there by its own hand," says Douglas Murray, author of "The Strange Death of Europe," in a new PragerU video. "To put it starkly: Europe is committing suicide."
"How did this happen?" asks Murray. "It’s a complicated story, but there are two major causes. The first is the mass movement of peoples into Europe. This has been going on steadily since the end of World War II but sped up massively in the migration crisis of 2015, when more than a million migrants poured into Europe from the Middle East, North Africa and East Asia."
The second cause, argues Murray, is that "Europe lost faith in itself — its beliefs, its traditions and even its very legitimacy."
Kialo advertises itself as, “The only platform designed specifically
for rational debates,” but based on its recent, sponsored tweet, it is anything
but. Instead, Kialo is just one more vehicle for far-left Big Brothering ala
Facebook. The tweet in question reads:
“Is it ok to physically modify yourself as a symbol of a
religious bond? What if your parents do it while you're still an infant? Join
the Kialo debate on banning infant male circumcision!”
Is it ok to physically modify yourself as a symbol of a religious bond? What if your parents do it while you're still an infant? Join the Kialo debate on banning infant male circumcision! https://t.co/67deCOBx5n
Kialo pretends
that it offers a way to have balanced debate “with clear, concise arguments
from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without all that
editorial noise.”
But here
we have a very leading few sentences in a sponsored tweet. Kialo is telling the
Twitterverse what to think about circumcision. They are putting doubt in your
minds just by asking the question of whether people have any right to “modify”
themselves as a symbol of a religious bond.
And in
fact, the question itself is antisemitic. The only people who “modify”
themselves as a symbol of a religious bond are the Jews. Muslims circumcise for
other reasons.
Notice,
as well, that you don’t see anyone complaining about the lip-stretching or
scarification practices of some African tribes, or the tooth-sharpening
practice of the Mayans and Balinese. How about the neck-accentuation practices of some
Thai women in which they wear up to 25 coils, each weighing four and a
half pounds, beginning at age 5, to elongate their necks?
No. You don’t hear anyone
complaining about any of that. But if you did, it would not be framed as
"mutilation" but as diversity. Woe to anyone who dares to cringe or shudder
at the nature of these practices, lest he be accused of closed-mindedness and
prejudice.
Of course, if you really wanted
to address religious mutilation, it would not be circumcision, with its proven
health benefits, but female genital mutilation (FGM). Female genital
mutilation is known to cause "recurrent
infections, difficulty urinating and passing menstrual flow, chronic pain, the
development of cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth,
and fatal bleeding. There are no known health benefits."
Only when it comes to the Jews,
it seems, do people think they are justified in saying we have no right to
practice our religion. That our beliefs are wrong, our Torah is wrong, our God wrong. That our age old rite is "mutilation."
But here’s the thing: Jews are obligated to circumcise sons. Banning
circumcision effectively bans Judaism. Think how it was in Soviet Russia, how Jews risked
death to have their sons circumcised in secret, in the middle of the night. Think
how the Romans outlawed Jewish rites like circumcision and how, when Rabbi Shimon
Bar Yochai criticized them, he and his son were forced into hiding for 13 years
in order to evade certain execution. We did not risk death to
arrive at the point where our religion and fate can still be debated by
outsiders.
And yet, Kialo dares to ask, “What
if your parents do it while you’re still an infant?”
With this question, Kialo is
making a statement, telling the world to doubt the morality of something that
Jews have done for thousands of years. And judging by the responses, Kialo’s
implied message has been received, loud and clear.
If a male child is born with a foreskin, then its there for a good reason.
Its a JEWISH thing to cut it out. Pretty sick concept too.
How, by the way, is it even a
debate if Kialo has prejudiced you from the get go? Take a look at the way the “debate” is framed. The question is: “should circumcision be banned” and it’s
offered as a choice, pro or con.
But it’s natural for people to
choose arguments in favor of things. People like to be positive. They like to
be for, and not against things. This is why, for instance, the pro-abortion
crowd frames its position as “pro-choice” while telling the world that anyone
who disagrees with them is “anti-choice.” And so, given the choice of being pro or anti a ban on circumcision, people are going to take the bait, and choose pro.
Was there a choice about the wording? Of course. Instead framing the
question in terms of a ban, Kialo might have written, for instance: “should
circumcision be permitted?” and made that
as a pro/con choice. It’s clear that the chosen phrasing employing the word "ban"was meant to prejudice
participants against Jewish ritual. And at that point, we have to wonder: why should
a basic Jewish practice be the subject of “debate?” Why should it even be
discussed by people not Jewish?
Can anyone really tell us that
we have no right to observe our religion, as mandated by God since Father
Abraham was himself circumcised?
Kialo claims it makes it easy
to weigh the pros and cons of an argument by giving you “clear, concise
arguments from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without
all that editorial noise.”
But here we have a sponsored
tweet, issued just as the right to circumcision for non-medical reasons is
being debated in Iceland. And the sponsored tweet suggests that the practice of
an ancient Jewish rite abrogates an infant’s human rights. How is that NOT
editorial noise?
And of course, people
responding to the tweet take the bait and run with it. Read the responses. The
word “mutilation” crops up numerous times.
Editorial silence, or bias
by selective omission, by the way, also provides a kind of “editorial
noise” by filtering what it is readers are allowed to see and hear. if you
click the link in the tweet, and read the backgrounder for
the debate, one paragraph out of five is given over to a detailed explanation of
why Muslims perform circumcision. There is, on the other hand, not one word, let alone a paragraph
on the reasons Jews perform circumcision. This, though clearly the Muslim rite
is based on the Jewish rite, the Jewish rite of circumcision having begun
thousands of years before Mohammed was born, the Jewish people having been the first to
practice this ritual.
So effectively, Kialo’s tweet
tells you to question the Jewish practice of Brit Milah, the Jewish circumcision rite, but tells you absolutely
nothing about why Jews perform this ritual. No one should be surprised. Bias by selective
omission is a classic tactic of the left. What they keep you from hearing is
just as important as what they whisper into your adorable little subconscious.
Which is why this,
is utter garbage:
“With Kialo, you can easily
visualize every aspect of a complex debate, so you can be more thoughtful about
the issues that matter to you and the world.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Here's a video taken by a child at the Gaza border on Monday. He screams "Allah hu Akbar" as people approach the fence (and he follows), and then he cries with joy as (according to the articles) he witnesses Gazans cutting the barbed wire.
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.
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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
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:
Not surprisingly, journalists and the media in general continue to take their cue from Hamas terrorists and insist on describing attacks on Israel's border and attempts to infiltrate as peaceful demonstrations.
At the start of the organized riots, NBC informed us that
The sit-in demonstration is set to culminate on May 15 — the day after Israeli independence NBC News, April 5, 2018
Sit in?
If you listen closely, the voices you will hear are definitely not singing kumbaya.
Still, after 6 weeks, the media has begun to notice a thing or two, interspersed among the required proclamation of peaceful demonstrations.
For example, there is some reporting on the fact that what is happening is not spontaneous and that Hamas is behind it. Not only is Hamas pulling the strings, but some newspapers have pointed out that the terrorist group manipulates Gazans by lying to them and deliberately putting civilians in danger.
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]
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]
Just as the media has begrudgingly mentioned the hand of Hamas in encouraging the riots, journalists have been a bit more forthcoming -- even if they cannot quite bring themselves to admit to the weapons that are being brought and used:
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
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.
“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.
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'.
Whoever it is that was calling for peaceful demonstrations, it sure wasn't this guy:
Since Hamas is doing everything it can to encourage violence and death, it really is difficult to understand who the Washington Post thinks it is referring to:
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
Hamas is literally drawing Gazans a map on how to infiltrate and invade Israel:
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
And when some Gazans were successful in infiltrating across the border, they made it very clear they got Hamas's message:
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.
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:
Of course, sometimes while talking to journalists, there is always a possibility of getting your lines wrong, as a correspondent for AFP reported:
Me: So why are you protesting tomorrow?
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.
“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.”
But despite it all --
With all the evidence of premeditation and advanced planning,
Despite statements in Arabic that are easily available online in translation,
Contrary to statements made to the media by the rioters themselves,
And even with video of infiltration into Israel, of kites setting fields on fire and of calls for death to Jews,
The media still insists on writing about peaceful protests, bewildered by how Israel uses live ammunition to prevent Gazans from doing what they proclaim to the world they want to do and eagerly accepting whatever explanation Hamas terrorists tell them.
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Elder of Ziyon
