" I am all for peace; but when I speak, they are for war " Psalm 120:7
Gaza 2014
Please see also the relevant pages on Gaza History, Gaza 2008/9 , Gaza 2012 & Gaza 2018
See also what Gazans say about Hamas and the 2014 conflict (when it is safe to say anything)
Jump to Rebalancing Gaza 2014
A Tale of two Gazas - Ambassador to UK, Daniel Taub writes in the Independent -
"how does Israel confront the Gaza of below, without causing unnecessary anguish to the Gaza of above?" - When the clear strategy of Hamas is to locate itself within the civilian population, it is agonising to resolve. There are two Gazas.The first Gaza is the Gaza of the Palestinian people; of men, women and children who wish to work, play and live in peace; the Gaza we see on our TV screens; today a place of genuine pain and suffering.
The second Gaza, is a subterranean Gaza. It is a web of hundreds of fortified tunnels, constructed for smuggling weapons and cross border attacks. It is a massive complex of thousands of storage basements and bunkers, below schools and mosques, filled with tens of thousands of launchers and missiles, whether short-range rockets constructed in Gaza, with electricity provided by Israel's power plant in Ashkelon, or long-range weapons shipped in from Iran on boats, like the KLOS-C intercepted by Israel earlier this year. It is a network of terrorist leaders, many trained alongside Hezbollah and other terrorists in Iran, now returned, taking up their cowardly positions in command centres within and below the heart of civilian areas, and mo st cynically of all in the basement of Shifa, Gaza's central hospital.
It is from this second Gaza, this Gaza of below, that over 1000 rockets have been fired on Israel in the past week, over 11,000 since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. As the number of missiles has risen, so has their range, so that today more than 3.5 million Israelis are within reach, and must live their lives within seconds of bomb shelters.
A third Gaza - Castles in the Air
Hamas TV:
"Perhaps all this [destruction in Gaza] is for the best... we'll build them better and more beautiful, and that will be a testimony to the victory of the Palestinian people.
Hamas is attempting to convince Palestinians that its military actions during the Gaza conflict were victorious and that the war it caused, with all its destruction, was beneficial to the Palestinians. As Palestinian Media Watch previously reported, Hamas justified the civilian deaths it caused in Gaza, claiming that it was beneficial to those killed to have died for Allah as Shahids - Martyrs. Now, Hamas is justifying the widespread destruction it caused to infrastructure and homes, saying, "Perhaps all this [destruction] is for the best":
Full palwatch.org article here - by Itamar Marcus
With whose money will they build this paradise on earth ?
Why did Israel launch operation Protective Edge?
Ambassador to the UN explains
Status report as the conflict moved from military to diplomatic
Operation Protective Edge Update – Day 30
THE ROCKET THREAT
The IDF initiated Operation Protective Edge in response to incessant, indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza directed at Israeli civilians.
Between July 8 and August 6:
- Terrorists in Gaza fired 3,360 rockets at Israel.
- 2,303 rockets hit Israel.
- 115 rockets hit populated areas in Israel.
- 584 rockets were intercepted by Iron Dome.
- 119 rocket launches failed.
- 475 rockets landed within the Gaza Strip.
Before the operation, IDF intelligence assessed that terrorists in Gaza held approximately 10,000 rockets. 1/3 of these rockets were were fired at Israel, and an additional 1/3 were destroyed by IDF forces.
THE TUNNEL THREAT
On July 17, IDF ground troops were moved into Gaza to locate and destroy the underground tunnel network used by Hamas to infiltrate and attack Israel.
Between July 17 and August 5:
- IDF forces neutralized 32 terror tunnels.
- 14 of these tunnels crossed into Israel.
- 2 tunnels had access points located 300m-500m from Israel.
HAMAS EXPLOITED CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
Hamas abuses the civilians and civilian infrastructure of Gaza for terrorist purposes. These abuses constitute severe violations of international law.
Between July 8 and August 5:
- Terrorists fired 597 rockets from civilian facilities in Gaza.
- Approximately 260 rockets were fired from schools.
- Approximately 160 rockets were fired from religious sites, including mosques.
- Approximately 127 rockets were fired from cemeteries.
- Approximately 50 rockets were fired from hospitals.
IDF STRUCK TERROR SITES THROUGHOUT GAZA
A primary objective of Operation Protective Edge was to strike a heavy blow to the military capabilities of Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza and thus eliminate the threats to Israel’s national security.
Between July 8 and August 5, IDF aerial, naval and ground forces struck 4,762 terror sites across the Gaza Strip, including:
- 1,678 rocket launching facilities.
- 977 command and control centers.
- 237 military administration facilities.
- 191 weapons storage and manufacturing facilities.
- 144 training and military compounds.
- 1,535 additional terror sites.
From July 8 to August 5, the IDF targeted terrorists in Gaza responsible for the planning and execution of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
- IDF forces targeted at least 253 Hamas terrorists.
- At least 147 Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.
- At least 65 terrorists of various smaller organizations.
- At least 603 terrorists of unknown affiliation.
In addition, 159 terrorist suspects have been questioned by Israeli security forces.
IDF TRANSFERRED SUPPLIES TO GAZA
Despite Hamas’ incessant attacks, including on the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the IDF continued to transfer thousands of supply trucks into Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
From July 8 to August 5:
- The IDF transferred 1,856 trucks carrying 40,550 tons of supplies into Gaza.
- 37,178 tons of foods.
- 1,694 tons humanitarian goods.
- 1,029 tons of medicine and medical supplies.
Operation Protective Edge succeeded in striking a heavy blow to terrorists in Gaza. Hamas’ underground terror network was knocked out, and quiet has been restored to southern Israel. All of Israel is now safer.
*The above information is taken from the IDF Blog. Please click here to read further.
The following brave soldiers fell in the fight to protect Israeli civilians. May their memory be blessed.
See soldiers names and pictures here
· Follow us on Twitter - @israelinuk
· Like us on Facebook: Israel in the UK
· If your group is interested in being briefed by a diplomat from the Embassy please be in touch to arrange such a meeting.
Worse outrages planned
But - during an uncertain cease-fire - - (Hudna?)
Had you noticed a new demand creeping into Hamas' reasons for not agreeing a ceasefire? They are demanding that the "Blockade" be lifted. See also Blockade legallity .
So Hamas will continue firing imported rockets at Israel unless they open the blockade and allow in more imported rockets to fire at Israel. Makes sense.
Former American peace negotiator Dennis Ross, intimately familiar with the issues facing Gaza said:
At times, I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built. They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right. Developing Gaza — fostering a future for its people and protecting them — was not Hamas’s goal.”
Despite accepting the five-day extension to the current ceasefire, Hamas released a new video showing that instead of working on a reconstruction plan for Gaza, it is making more of the M-75 rockets it uses for attacking large Israeli cities.
Hamas has been firing a massive number of rockets and refusing a cease fire.
This conflict has seen huge changes in the rockets used against Israel
What we don’t hear is that Israelis have also been killed or lost their homes and communities again as a result of Hamas genocidal goals.
We have been following the families and stories of one particular family from the kibbutz Kfar Aza who for the second time in two years fled their home and lived as refugees in the centre and North of Israel because Hamas have been firing rockets at them with intention of slaughtering them. For over a month now families from this small Kibbutzim situated near to the Gaza border have been away from their homes for over a month. At least two hundred have been living in a school in Afula with little support and certainly no recognition from the international community.
Honest Reporting cover many issues - here
Honest Reporting pinpoints five failings in the media coverage
Videos on the Internet - some surprising perspectives.
Arab World Hopes Israel Continues Operation and Destroys Hamas
War Crimes ?
Palestinian envoy to the UNHRC
IDF Aircraft Calls Off Strikes to Protect Gazan Civilians"
Hamas spokesman encourages use of Human Shields
Rebalancing Gaza 2014
The world at large, and the media that feeds it, gets incandescent with rage that Israel kills so many Palestinians while the Palestinians have killed so few Israelis.
There are many factors and many lies told against Israel
Factor 1.1 – The media have unreasonable expectations of Israel
The truth about Gaza’s civilian casualties:
Essay by Col. Richard Kemp and originally published by Gatestone Institute."So are you going after innocent civilians or is it incompetence Colonel Lerner?" asks the interviewer, her face contorted with a contempt apparently reserved only for Israelis. Such shrill disrespect hurled at an American or British officer would alienate viewers, and, at an Arab commander, provoke accusations of racism.
This line of questioning – repeated across the networks on a daily basis – betrays a naïve and uncomprehending willingness to believe, and encourages viewers to believe, the absurd notion that the Israel Defence Force [IDF] is commanded and manned from top to bottom by psychopathic baby-killing thugs.
To suggest that military incompetence is the only explanation for civilian deaths other than deliberate mass murder reveals a breathtaking but unsurprising ignorance of the realities of combat.
Although rarely allowed to complete so much as a single sentence, Israeli attempts to explain IDF targeting policies are inevitably dismissed as laughable fabrication.The truth is very different. The IDF has developed the most comprehensive and sophisticated measures to minimize civilian casualties during attacks against legitimate military targets.
Mandatory, multi-sensor intelligence and surveillance systems to confirm the presence or absence of civilians precede attacks on every target from the air. Text messages, phone calls and radio messages in Arabic warn occupants to leave. Air-dropped leaflets include maps showing safe areas. When warnings go unheeded, aircraft drop non-lethal explosives to warn that an attack is imminent.
Only when pilots and air controllers are sure that civilians are clear of the target will authorization be given to attack. When pilots use laser-guided munitions they must have pre-designated safe areas to which to divert the missiles in flight should civilians suddenly appear.In the last few days IDF pilots have aborted many missions because civilians remained in the target area.
Ground forces have equivalent engagement procedures, although the nature of ground combat means that these are blunter and less sophisticated. Discussions with IDF infantrymen fresh from the fight on the Gaza border confirm, however, that avoiding civilian casualties is uppermost in their minds even when under fire themselves.Meanwhile back in the safety of the studio, the interviewer's visible fury at the IDF Spokesman has got the better of any professional objectivity: "You go on endlessly about all the warnings you give but the fact is you have killed one-and-a-half thousand people, the overwhelming majority of them civilians!"
But of course the colonel is not permitted to give a proper answer that might help viewers understand the reality of the situation.With few exceptions, reporters, commentators and analysts unquestioningly accept the casualty statistics given by Gaza's Hamas-controlled medical authorities, who ascribe all deaths to the IDF. Is anyone in Gaza dying of natural causes? Mass executions of "collaborators," and civilians killed by malfunctioning Hamas rockets, are all attributed to IDF fire.
Are the "overwhelming majority" of the dead really civilians? It would seem so. We see a great deal of grotesque and heart-rending footage of dead and bleeding women and children but never so much as a glimpse of killed or wounded fighters. Nor do reporters question or comment on the complete absence of Gazan military casualties, an extraordinary phenomenon unique to this conflict. The reality of course is that Hamas make great efforts to segregate their military casualties to preserve the fiction that Israel is killing civilians only. There are also increasing indications that Hamas, through direct force or threat, are preventing journalists from filming their fighters, whether dead or alive.
We will not get to the truth until the battle is over. But we know now that Hamas have ordered their people to report all deaths as innocent civilians. We know too that Hamas has a track record of lying about casualties. After Operation Cast Lead, the 2008-09 fighting in Gaza, the IDF estimated that of 1,166 Palestinian deaths, 709 were fighters. Hamas – backed by several NGOs – claimed that only 49 of its fighters had been killed, the rest were innocent civilians. Much later they were forced to admit that the IDF had been right all along and between 600 and 700 of the casualties had in fact been fighters. But the short-memoried media are incapable of factoring this in before broadcasting their ill-founded and inflammatory assertions.
Analysis of casualty details released by Qatar-based Al Jazeera indicate that so far in the conflict most of those killed in Gaza have been young men of fighting age, not women, children or old people. According to one analyst, despite comprising around 50% of the population, the proportion of women among the dead is 21%.
Preliminary analysis by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel suggests that 71, or 46.7%, of the first 152 Palestinians killed were fighters and 81, or 53.3%, non-involved civilians.
None of this analysis is definitive. But it does cast doubt upon the accusations of indiscriminate attack against the population by the IDF and upon the UN estimates – widely trumpeted as fact by the media and the not-exactly unbiased United Nations – that between 70 and 80% of Palestinian casualties have been civilians.Nevertheless, many innocent civilians have tragically been killed. How has this happened, given the IDF's measures aimed at minimizing such deaths?
IDF commanders say they never intentionally fire at targets where uninvolved civilians are present, a policy that goes much further than the Geneva Conventions demand. This policy has been confirmed to me by foot soldiers on the ground and F16 pilots carrying out strikes into Gaza.But mistakes happen. Surveillance and intelligence can never be foolproof. There have been reports of Hamas forcing civilians back in once buildings have been evacuated. There is sometimes unexpected fallout from attacks, for example when an adjacent building containing civilians collapses, often caused by secondary explosions resulting from Hamas's own munitions.
Errors can be made in interpretation of imagery, passage of information and inputting of target data. We don't yet know what happened to the four boys tragically killed on a Gaza beach; it is not credible that they were identified as children and then deliberately killed.
Weapons guidance systems sometimes malfunction and bombs, bullets or missiles can land where they are not supposed to. Even the most hi-tech communications systems can fail at the critical moment.
Nowhere are these errors more frequent and catastrophic than in ground combat, where commanders and soldiers experience chaos, noise, smoke, fear, exhaustion, danger, shock, maiming, death and destruction that are beyond the comprehension of our interviewer in her air conditioned TV studio.
These mistakes and malfunctions happen in all fighting armies and in all conflicts. And in all conflicts, mistakes include the deaths of soldiers by friendly fire. Do those who condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians as deliberate acts by the IDF suggest that the friendly fire incidents in Gaza are also intentional?
The Israeli policy of not attacking targets where civilians are present is likely however to be deliberately waived in one specific situation. If troops are under lethal fire from an enemy position, the IDF are entitled to attack the target even with the certainty that civilians will be killed, subject to the usual rules of proportionality.
By definition Israeli soldiers' lives are placed at greater risk by restrictive rules of engagement intended to minimize civilian casualties. But commanders in the field must balance their concern for civilians with the preservation of their own men's lives and fighting effectiveness.
These realities aside, all Palestinian civilian casualties in this conflict result ultimately from Gaza terrorists' aggression against Israel, and Hamas's use of human shields – the most important plank of Hamas's war-fighting policy.
Storing and firing weapons within densely populated areas, compelling civilians to stay put when warned to leave, luring Israeli forces to attack and kill their own people, the Palestinian body count is vital to Hamas's propaganda war that aims to bring international pressure on Israel and incite anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic hatred around the world.
This sickening exploitation of their own people's suffering, and media's complicity in it, is nowhere more cynically demonstrated than in the operating theaters of the Gaza Strip. Without the slightest regard for life-saving hygiene, or for the care, privacy or dignity of the wounded, Palestinian officials enthusiastically hustle camera crews in to the emergency room as desperate surgeons battle for a bleeding and broken child's life.
Colonel Richard Kemp spent most his 30-year career in the British Army commanding front-line troops in fighting terrorism and insurgency in hotspots including Iraq, the Balkans, South Asia and Northern Ireland. He was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan in 2003. From 2002 - 2006 he heading the international terrorism team at the Joint Intelligence Committee of the British Prime Minister's Office.
And from a USA Top General : Israel Went Through “Extraordinary Lengths” to Save Lives
US General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Israel went through “extraordinary lengths” to prevent civilian casualties during the summer war in the Gaza Strip, Reuters reported.Speaking at a forum at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in New York City, Dempsey acknowledged recent reports accusing Israel of war crimes for civilian deaths during the war but said that the Israel Defense Forces “did what they could” to avoid the casualties.
“I actually think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties,” the genera stated. “In this kind of conflict, where you are held to a standard that your enemy is not held to, you’re going to be criticized for civilian casualties.”
Dempsey added that while Hamas terror tunnels “caused the IDF some significant challenges,” the military “did some extraordinary things to limit civilian casualties, to include…making it known that they were going to destroy a particular structure.”
One of the more impressive methods that Israel utilized to prevent civilian deaths was, according to the general, the “roof-knocking method.” Before a targeted strike, the Israeli Air Force would launch a dud rocket onto the roof of the structure, giving fair warning to those inside to evacuate.
Dempsey also mentioned the vast efforts of the military of dropping warning leaflets over areas in Gaza before any type of operation in order to save civilian lives.
“The IDF is not interested in creating civilian casualties,” Dempsey argued. “They’re interested in stopping the shooting of rockets and missiles out of the Gaza Strip and into Israel.”
Dempsey added that an American delegation was sent to Israel three months ago to learn important lessons from Israel on how to minimize civilian casualties during war. The general said that the US military is looking “to include the measures they [Israel] took to prevent civilian casualties and what they did with tunnelling.”
Factor 1.2 - Double Standard
The media, and even the United Nations holds Israel to an entirely different standard than the one to which it holds the Arabs / Muslims!
The man appointed to judge Israel's conduct for the UN admits this is true.
Israel is expected to meet a higher standard of morality than we can manage ourselves, while no standard of decency or morality is expected of the Arabs / Muslims. This is really a tacit admission that there is no point in asking them to abide by any civilised standard. Every atrocity they commit against Israel is excused by the fraudulent "occupation" and "resistance" narrative.
Surely this is insulting to Arabs and Muslims
Factor 1.2.1- Forgetting our own history
Denis Praeger has pointed out how different things would have been in World War II if death tolls had been compared in the same way. "More than ten times the number of German civilians were killed as were British - but did that have anything to do with the morality of the British war against Germany?"
Factor 2 The hand of the God of Israel
Here are four miracles
2.1 ) reported by Eliyokim Cohen
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system has been wildly successful during the current Gaza war, but on occasion it can and does miss incoming terrorist rockets.
One would think that the 10 percent or so of Hamas rockets predicted by Iron Dome’s radars to hit populated areas that are not intercepted would still cause significant Israeli casualties.
But somehow, they don’t.
A report from an unidentified source, floating around the Internet had a Gaza resident attributing the lack of Hamas accuracy to Israel’s God moving the rockets off-course to protect His people.
“We do aim [our rockets], but their God changes their path in mid-air,”
An Iron Dome operator whose battery failed three times to down an incoming missile headed toward Tel Aviv last week has no doubts. In remarks relayed to an Israeli news site (in Hebrew), the Iron Dome battery commander recalled:
An report from an unidentified source, floating around the Internet had a Gaza resident attributing the lack of Hamas accuracy to Israel’s God moving the rockets off-course to protect His people.
“We do aim [our rockets], but their God changes their path in mid-air,”
An Iron Dome operator whose battery failed three times to down an incoming missile headed toward Tel Aviv last week has no doubts. In remarks relayed to an Israeli news site (in Hebrew), the Iron Dome battery commander recalled:
“A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon) or [a central Tel Aviv railway station]. Hundreds could have died.“We fired the first [interceptor]. It missed. Second [interceptor]. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock. At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident.
“Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that…sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a God!’"
“I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea.”
2.2 ) Givati Commander Ofer Vinter talked about the ananei kavod protecting the soldiers. They had decided to attack the area before daybreak, so the enemy would not notice them.
“The extraction team arrived at the location on time, but the fighters arrived late. We did not know what to do, as the sky was already starting to light up and the soldiers were becoming visible, yet they needed to attack. Suddenly a cloud cover came over them and protected them. Clouds of glory (ananei kavod). Suddenly it covered us, the fighters, a heavy fog, that stayed there throughout the attack. Nobody saw us. Only after the houses targeted were destroyed and there was no longer any danger to the soldiers did the fog disperse. Exactly as it says "For Hashem will go with you to save you"."
2.3 )
"A soldier that had just returned from Gaza recounted that his army unit identified the home of a Hamas terrorist, and arrived undercover at the house early in the morning. As they were about to enter the house, they saw a dove hovering overhead and momentarily stopped to watch the dove land on a tiny little string. A second later, the entire house blew up. The house was booby-trapped, and the string was connected to the door. If the soldiers had entered the house, they would have been killed. God sends His messengers in all different shapes and sizes!"
2.4 ) Another miracle was reported by a group of religious Jews who in early July, right before the fighting broke out, travelled to southern Israel to harvest wheat in advance of the biblical sabbatical year. According to the biblical mandate, Jews are supposed to allow the land of Israel to rest during the entire final year of the seven-year agricultural cycle that begins next month and is observed on Israeli farms. That means no planting or harvesting occurs for the year. Aharon Samet told the Israeli radio show “Upside Down” that a great miracle occurred thanks to the fact that they had to harvest more wheat than usual to comply with the biblical mandate.
“This year we are before the sabbatical year, and we need to harvest wheat for two years. We plowed the land up and down looking for wheat that was sown late what with the rains that fell late this year,” Samet said. “On Kibbutz Sufa on the Gaza border we found an entire field that was sown in mid-January, which is considered very unusual.” They harvested the wheat and didn’t give it another thought. Only weeks later when the fighting between Israel and Hamas was at its peak did Samet and his friends realize the significance of their actions.On July 17, 13 Hamas militants infiltrated from Gaza via a tunnel into Israel at the exact spot near Kibbutz Sufa where the men had been farming. The terrorists were shocked to discover that their natural camouflage – the giant wheat field that they were counting on –had disappeared. The now empty field allowed IDF surveillance to spot them as they emerged from their holes and to repel their attack by dropping a bomb on them from above."
“Many lives were saved by the grace of Heaven,” the Israeli radio station Kol Hai commented.
2.5 )
"Soldiers had gone into a mosque in Gaza searching for tunnels and weapons, etc. a door opened and a female bomber walked into the room ready to explode herself near the soldiers. One of the soldiers realized that their end was near and screamed "Shema Yisrael"Those two words made the female bomber tremble and she was not able to carry out her plan.
The army was able to stop her and dismantle the bomb. They took her for questioning and discovered that she is Jewish. She married an Arab and was taken to Gaza and beaten. She has two children and they are suffering terribly. She told the army where her children were and told them about where more terror tunnels are and who sent her to bomb soldiers and other information. The army got her and her children to a safe place in Israel. The Power of Shema Yisrael..."
2.6 ) Space does not permit inclusion of all the instances of Hamas rockets that have made it through the Iron Dome and hit homes and Kindergartens, only just after the occupants have vacated the premises.
Factor 3.1– Media accepts Hamas version of events
Yesterday one of the stories thrust into the mainstream media was nearly simultaneous explosions in a Palestinian neighborhood and at al-Shifa hospital. The media immediately took the Hamas line that it was Israeli missiles. Later, the IDF stated that it had not fired on those locations, and that the explosions were misfired Hamas or Islamic Jihad missiles.
But an Italian journalist has just left Gaza and is telling the truth about what happened now that he needs not fear Hamas retaliation — Israel was right
How many more of the civilian casualties have been cause by Hamas and Islamic rockets that fell short or misfired, like Israel says happened at a U.N. school and shelter?
We likely never will know because Hamas is so fast to cover up the scene and intimidates reporters:
BBC Ten o'clock News reporter Orla Guerin did a disgraceful piece of Hamas spokesperson work.
Factor 3.2 - Broadcasters ignore survey information
In Orla Guerin's report from Gaza (07/08/14), in front of a green flag waving demo, she told us that the people were all in favour of going back to war. But contemporary surveys have found otherwise. IDC Survey finds an overwhelming 92 percent of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are in favor a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and 72% hope their leaders will work to achieve a lasting peace agreement with the Jewish state. She used a series of Hamas propaganda lines and figures and quoted misleading child death figures the same day as the BBC head of statistics was urging caution in the use of statistics.
See also below for BBC statistics chief (Factor 9)
Factor 3.3 - Media persons recycle old libels
Time magazine retracted allegations that Israeli soldiers harvested and sold Palestinian organs.
The magazine deleted the allegations from a two-minute video on its website about the Israel Defense Forces and added a correction, writing at the end, “Correction: The original version of this video cited a contested allegation in a 2009 Swedish newspaper report as fact. The allegation has been removed from the video.”
No mention of an apology or efforts to undo the damage done!
Factor 3.4 - Malicious lies on Social Media
#BBCtrending: Are #GazaUnderAttack images accurate?Graphic images are being shared on social media to show how people have been affected by the renewed tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.
Hamas has been firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, which has responded with air-strikes on Gaza. Several Palestinian militants have been killed and on Tuesday it was reported that at least 15 Palestinians had been injured.
Over the past week the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack has been used hundreds of thousands of times, often to distribute pictures claiming to show the effects the air-strikes.
Some of the images are of the current situation in Gaza, but a #BBCtrending analysis has found that some date as far back as 2009 and others are from conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
Factor 4.1 – Eyewitness accounts are unreliable
Amnesty researcher admits that Palestinian "eyewitnesses" often lie - Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty field investigator, wrote an interesting article about the challenges of fact finding in war situations.
One of her main points is that eyewitnesses are often unreliable. For example: In Gaza, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and other places I interviewed civilians who described what they thought were artillery or bomb strikes being launched by far away government forces and striking near their homes – whereas in reality the loud bangs and tremors were caused by mortars or rockets being launched by opposition fighters from their positions nearby. For the untrained ear it is virtually impossible to distinguish between incoming and outgoing fire, and all the more so for those who find themselves close to the frontlines.Another factor she mentions:
Even if they disregard it, investigators must be alert to the fact that disinformation and misinformation can contribute to shaping the perception of events, the narrative surrounding the events, and the behaviour of people who take it in good faith and internalize it, including victims, witnesses, and others potential sources.Here Rovera is referring to lies that spread quickly and then become widely believed - including by "unbiased" NGOs - before anyone has a chance to investigate. How many times have we seen that? She gives a specific example from Gaza:
Fear can lead victims and witnesses to withhold evidence or give deliberately erroneous accounts of incidents. In Gaza, I received partial or inaccurate information by relatives of civilians accidentally killed in accidental explosions or by rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that had malfunctioned and of civilians killed by Israeli strikes on nearby Palestinian armed groups’ positions. When confronted with other evidence obtained separately, some said they feared reprisals by the armed groups.
Meaning that "eyewitnesses" will often claim that there was no terrorist activity in the area of an air-strike and Israel wantonly and indiscriminately killed people for no reason. This gets wholly believed and parroted by the UN and other NGOs. The Goldstone Report has many such examples.
Unfortunately, in many cases the NGOs themselves are part of the problem. Rovera admits, a little elliptically:
Conflict situations create highly politicized and polarized environments, which may affect even individuals and organizations with a proven track record of credible and objective work. Players and interested parties go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate or manufacture “evidence” for both internal and external consumption.
It is a shame that Rovera didn't include Amnesty International itself as being guilty of this, and she ascribes the lack of objectivity almost only to fake evidence that is created by one side rather than to the ideological desire to find war crimes when none exist.They might strenuously deny it, but Amnesty and HRW have systemic biases against Israel. This article, while a step in the right direction, only scratches the surface of how NGOs themselves contribute to the culture of lies in order to issue their reports and maintain their funding without doing basic fact checks.
And while Rovera notes that some "eyewitnesses" act out of fear, she doesn't go far enough. At least in the territories, the lies about Israel are repeated so often that the witnesses will often tell Western reporters and researchers what they expect to hear rather than what happened. This isn't necessarily out of fear; it is part of their culture to ensure that Israel is always blamed no matter what. It saturates their media. I cannot count how many times "eyewitness" accounts were found to be complete fiction, and fear didn't enter into the equation. However, many of the "witnesses" happen to work for the largest employer in the West Bank - the PA - which lies constantly.
Factor 4 .2 - Running with Initial impressions
TV carried the story of ten year old Mohammed Badran in al-Shifa hospital, blinded in an IAF missile strike. But worse still "his entire family had been killed."
What did not make it to our screens was the later discovery that his family had not been killed.
However, his father was later killed - and we discover that he was a Hamas operative.
Factor 4.3 - Running unverified stories that fit the media agenda
Gaza's destroyed Power Station miraculously coming back on line after the conflict was over
The guardian's report, quite naturally, didn’t mention that Israel not only denied attacking the power plant, but explained that they didn’t bomb anything in the vicinity of the power plant that day.
They reported Amnesty International as saying that the crippling of the power station amounted to “collective punishment of Palestinians”. The strike on the plant will worsen already severe problems with Gaza’s water supply, sewage treatment and power supplies to medical facilities.
However, according to a report at Ma’an News Agency on September 14th, the plant is ready to begin running again – 46 weeks ahead of schedule! "Gaza’s only power plant is ready to begin running again as soon as a shipment of fuel arrives to the Strip", the plant’s executive manager said Saturday.
Factor 5 – Palestinians in Gaza are not free to express negative views of Hamas
Palestinians in Gaza try Anti-War Protest, Hamas Executes Them
Hamas has executed more than 30 Gazan Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel, according to Palestinian news sources.
Hamas reportedly captured dozens of suspected collaborators in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City last week during battles with Israeli soldiers. The accused collaborators were executed after a short investigation.
Factor 6.1 – Journalists are intimidated by Hamas
The Times of Israel confirmed several incidents in which journalists were questioned and threatened. These included cases involving photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances — gunmen preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, and/or fighting in civilian clothing — and who were then approached by Hamas men, bullied and had their equipment taken away.
CAMERA discovered a Wall Street Journal reporter coming to the same conclusion as the Italian reporters, but then deleting the tweet: The reporter later claimed he deleted it because it was speculative.
This is part of a pattern of western media being intimidated into not reporting all the civilian deaths cause by Hamas, and how Hamas uses locations like al-Shifa hospital.
This tweet showing Hamas using al-Shifa hospital for media interviews was deleted by a Wall Street Journal reporter:
Coincidentally after threats were made on Twitter against that reporter and other reporters: The reporter did not respond to my email seeking an explanation.
The French Liberation newspaper ran an article by a French-Palestinian journalist about how he was summoned to al-Shira Hospital for interrogation by Hamas — just yards from the operating room: Here is part of it (Google translation from French):
A few meters from the emergency room where the injured bombing tributary constantly, it is received in the outpatient department, “a small section of the hospital used as administration” by a band of young fighters. “They were all well dressed, which surprised Radjaa. In civilian with a gun under his shirt and some had walkie talkies ” . He was ordered to empty his pockets, removing his shoes and his belt then it is called in a hospital room “which served that day office of command to three people.”A man prim begins his interrogation: “Who are you? How do you call? What are you doing? ” “I was very surprised by the procedure,” admits Radjaa, who shows him his press card in response. Questions come. Then asked if he speaks Hebrew, he has relations with Ramallah. Young Hamas supporters insist the question: “Are you a correspondent for Israel?” Radjaa repeat that only works for French media and a chain of Algerian radio.
It was then that the three men he delivers this message: “This is yours to choose. We are an executive administration. We will carry the message of Qassams. You have to stay at home and give your papers. “Stunned to be covered by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, Radjaa tries to defend himself and especially to understand why such a decision was taken against him. In vain. “It is impossible to communicate with these people,” laments the journalist. It is not the first to undergo this kind of pressure and combatants in front of him did not hide. “They are enraged against the presidency and accused me of collaborating with Mahmoud Abbas,” he says.
Reporters Without Borders confirms that this is not an isolated case. The organization has indeed been alerted by the threats of Hamas against Palestinian and foreign journalists for their professional activities threats.
Now the article has been taken down at the author’s request.
Tablet Magazine has more on the cover up of the use of al-Shifa hospital as a Hamas command center.
Remember how many photos of Hamas fighters and scoops about Hamas tactics we’ve seen from reporters, just like we see with regard to the IDF? It’s as if Hamas doesn’t exist to reporters and all the dead are civilians:
Hamas rules for journalists were not listed as specifically as ISIS has done.
Factor 6.2 - Hamas rules Gaza by fear
Fear, fatalism or support: Why isn’t Gaza revolting against Hamas?
There have been sporadic reports of civil unrest directed at Hamas over the past week: the physical assault of Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri outside Shifa hospital; a small demonstration crushed by the Islamic movement, some members summarily executed. But even these relatively minor incidents could not be confirmed by independent sources.
Bassem Eid, a veteran Jerusalem-based human rights activist and political analyst, said that Gazans are reluctant to demonstrate for fear of Hamas. - “There is no doubt there’s an atmosphere of fear and terror in Gaza,” Eid told The Times of Israel, citing the killing of Hamas official Ayman Taha in Gaza last week over suspicions of corruption and collaboration with Arab intelligence agencies. “Others were executed in various gatherings under the pretext of their being collaborators with Israel.” - Eid said he is trying to investigate reports of political repression in Gaza, and estimated that the number of dissidents killed by Hamas over the course of Operation Protective Edge ranged from 10 to 35.
“Hamas has a physical presence in almost every house in Gaza and can listen to what’s being said. It’s a Stasi regime par excellence,” he continued, referring to the East German secret police notorious for its eavesdropping capabilities.
“The population is much more scared of Hamas than it is of the Israeli soldiers,” Eid said. Hamas, for its part, is more worried about the possible return of control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority than it is of an Israeli military incursion.
Factor 7 – United Nations cosy relationship with Palestinian terroist organisations
William A. Jacobson
UN Official admits Hamas firing rockets “from the vicinity of UN facilities” and residential areas. -
That we already knew, but some UNRWA officials have pretended it doesn’t happen. Puts in context how some UN facilities and civilians are hit either by misfired Hamas or Islamic Jihad rockets or Israeli return fire.
Via Hillel Neuer of UN Watch,
John Ging the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations confirmed on Radio-Canada July 30, 2014 that Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza get their rockets into Israel near shelters Palestinian civilians and since residential areas
Ging was head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip from 2006 to 2011. (including during Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza).
Three UNWRA Schools so far have been found to be being used to store terrorist rockets
Some 20 rockets were found in a school in Gaza operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the organization confirmed Thursday. They handed them back to Hamas!!
UNRWA is now known to stand for United Nations Rocket Wharehousing Authority
See also Factor 15 - Pallywood
The UN: Clueless or Complicit in Gaza? - Claudia Rosett - (2014)
If UNRWA officials knew that Hamas was building terror tunnels, but raised no public alarm, then that should be grounds for a major inquiry into UNRWA complicity with terrorists. There's also the question of whether UNRWA employs or directly supports members of Hamas. If so, that should block the agency from receiving money from the U.S.
The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 forbids funding to UNRWA unless it takes "all possible measures" to ensure that no U.S. assistance goes to any refugee who has received "military training" as a member of the Palestine Liberation Army, or any other "guerrilla-type organization," or who has "engaged in any act of terrorism." UNRWA promised to check its staff against specific UN sanctions lists. But those lists are not that relevant to Gaza: They cover al-Qaeda and the Taliban (there is no UN sanctions list for Hamas).
The writer is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (National Review)
Reveal UNRWA's Bluff - Einat Wilf - (2014)
During the fighting in Gaza, Israeli forces were fired at from UN facilities. Now that the fighting over, Israel should recognize UNRWA as a hostile Palestinian organization that perpetuates the dream of the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel - and treat it accordingly. Even if UNRWA itself does not attack the IDF directly, it ensures that there will always be someone to do so in the future. Under a thin veil of humanitarian activities, UNRWA acts with a clear political agenda, aimed at perpetuating the situation of Palestinian refugees and fostering the dream of their return to Israel.
UNRWA is directly responsible for the fact that 5 million people are registered as Palestinian refugees, a large number of whom continue to live in refugee camps. UNRWA works to inflate the number of registered refugees in two ways. First, the descendants of refugees from 1948, already the fifth generation, are automatically "entitled" to refugee status. And second, UNRWA thwarts any attempt to absorb refugees where they currently live or in third countries. If UNRWA operated the same way as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is responsible for all other refugee groups in the world, today there would be only tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees, rather than millions.
UNRWA's continued existence depends on donations totaling $1 billion per year from Western nations, including $250 million from the U.S. and more than $500 million from Europe. Why do Western taxpayers fund an organization which acts in stark contrast to the policy of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
The writer, a former member of the Knesset, is a senior fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute. (Israel Hayom)
Factor 8 – Hamas responsibility for strikes by their own rockets – and booby traps
Over 200 rockets fired by Hamas and other terrorist groups have landed inside Gaza, including at least 1 that hit the Shifa Hospital (29th July)
Three IDF soldiers were killed in a booby-trap explosion on Wednesday at UNRWA clinic.
The building was being searched by an elite IDF Maglan tunnel unit. The unit was tracing a terror tunnel and were in the process of uncovering an opening. The opening was located at an UNRWA health clinic.
As the soldiers were entering the building, the explosives suddenly detonated, causing the entire building to collapse on the soldiers. 15 soldiers were injured. IDF soldiers came under fire while evacuating the wounded back to Israeli territory.
The IDF is investigating whether terrorists stole a UN sign and placed it over the building in order to deter any strikes since the building has not been re-registered as a UNRWA building over the last three years.
Factor 9.1 – Blame by numbers of deaths - Death toll analysis
Data published by Al Jazeera shows that in its ongoing operation in Gaza Israel killed mainly combatant-age males, not women or children, according to CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, contradicting media reports that tried to paint Israel’s Operation Protective Edge as indiscriminately killing civilians.
In a study published on Monday, CAMERA said that a close read of the data “shows that, as in past hostilities, the fatalities are disproportionately [compared to the overall population] among young males, which corresponds with the characteristics of combatants. Males over 40 years old are also disproportionately represented. Some of the fatalities in those over 40 years of age likely represent senior members of terrorist organizations.” www.algemeiner.com
Even the BBC Head of Statistics urged caution with the use of casualty figures from this conflict.
Extract 1 - Nonetheless, if the Israeli attacks have been "indiscriminate", as the UN Human Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women.
Extract 2 - An analysis by the New York Times looked at the names of 1,431 casualties and found that "the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll. They are 9% of Gaza's 1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages were provided." "At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71% of the population and 33% of the known-age casualties."
Extract 3 - "Hamas also has given local residents directives to obscure militant identities," he said. "It's important to bear in mind that in Operation Cast Lead [the last Israeli ground offensive in December 2008-January 2009], Hamas and Gaza-based organisations claimed that only 50 combatants were killed, admitting years later the number was between 600-700, a figure nearly identical to the figure claimed by the IDF."
Extract 4 - In conclusion, we do not yet know for sure how many of the dead in Gaza are civilians and how many were fighters.
It is a pity this advice did not filter down to the BBC's own journalists!
Factor 9.2 - Fake civilians
From an article by Prof Alan M Dershowitz - Hamas’ Phony Statistics on Civilian Deaths
It’s a mystery why so many in the media accept as gospel Hamas-supplied figures on the number of civilians killed in the recent war. Hamas claims that of the more than 1800 Palestinians killed close to 90% were civilians. Israel, on the other hand, says that close to half of them were combatants. The objective facts support a number much closer to Israel’s than to Hamas’.
Even human rights group antagonistic to Israel acknowledge, according to a New York Times report, that Hamas probably counts among the “civilians killed by Israel” the following groups: Palestinians killed by Hamas as collaborators; Palestinians killed through domestic violence; Palestinians killed by errant Hamas rockets or mortars; and Palestinians who died naturally during the conflict. I wonder if Hamas also included the reported 162 children who died while performing child slave labor in building their terror tunnels. Hamas also defines combatants to include only armed fighters who were killed while fighting Israelis. They exclude Hamas supporters who build tunnels, who allow their homes to be used to store and fire rockets, Hamas policemen, members of the Hamas political wing and others who work hand in hand with the armed terrorists.
Several years ago I came up with a concept which I call, the “continuum of civilianality”—an inelegant phrase that is intended to convey the reality that who is a civilian and who is a combatant is often a matter of degree. Clearly every child below the age in which he or she is capable of assisting Hamas is a civilian. Clearly every Hamas fighter who fires rockets, bears arms, or operates in the tunnels is a combatant. Between these extremes lie a wide range of people, some of whom are closer to the civilian end, many of whom who are closer to the combatant end. The law of war has not established a clear line between combatants and civilians, especially in the context of urban warfare where people carry guns at night and bake bread during the day, or fire rockets during the day and go back home to sleep with their families at night.
Terrorists who died in homes of "civilian" families
B'Tselem has been keeping track of entire families that have been killed in Gaza, listing all of the names of people killed in IAF raids.
In quite a few of these families, a single, fighting-age member whose last name is not the same as the family's was killed along with the families themselves.
B'Tselem noticed that in several cases, the odd-named person was in fact a terrorist.
For example, we have noted that in the Ziyadah family house had a "guest" named Mohammed Mahmoud al-Maqadma who was, in fact, a terrorist.
This is a pattern.
25 members of the Abu Jame' family were killed - along with a single terrorist named Ahmad Sahmoud, according to B'Tselem.
8 members of the Abu Nijem family were hosting 2 terrorists, Daniel Mansur, 44 and Abd a-Nasser al-'Ajuri, 32.
3 members of al Al Masri family were killed while hosting terrorist Amjad Hamdan, 24.
So I wondered if any other of the anomalous names that B'Tselem didn't categorize as "military branch operatives" were indeed terrorists. Sure enough, I found one.
6 members of the Al-Bakri family were killed on August 4, along with 32-year old Ibrahim al-Misharawi, an Islamic Jihad terrorist.
Of course, PCHR identified him as a civilian.
This means we have identified 5 families in Gaza, 42 people, who happened to be hosting non-family terrorists in their homes when they were killed.
This cannot be a coincidence. It seems quite likely that the terrorists were using these homes as command and control centers, major weapons caches or other military targets, either with the families' permission or without. What is clear is that these homes were not randomly targeted.
Either way, the terrorists were using these families as human shields, and their deaths are squarely the fault of Hamas and the other terror groups to which the "guests" belonged.
This is not including the terrorists who used their own families as human shields for their own activities.
The more that the Gaza deaths are researched, the more depraved the terrorists are proven to be. Too bad that "human rights" groups aren't interested in digging up the truth about these clear examples of war crimes done by Hamas and their partners.
Israel's fighters wear uniforms - many of Gaza's fighters do not! Are the Palestinian fighters in tee shirts and jeans counted as civilians? (see video in Factor 10 below. Rocket launching operatives in Tees shirt and jeans)
PCHR, that “human rights” organization that the UN relies upon to determine its death statistics from Gaza, reported on July 29, that as a result of an attacks, 6 civilians were killed: Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hashash, 16; Mohammed Ahmed al-Hashash, 18; Mas’oud Ahmed al-Hashash, 20; Sa’id Ahmed al-Hashash, 20; their mother Hana’ Ali al-Hashash, 43; and Mohammed Mousa al-Hashash, 20.
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Bilal | Muhammad | Masoud | Said |
Here are the Hamas “mujahid martyr” posters for four of these family members:
Here’s the funny part: Hamas admitted that these were member of the Al Qassam Brigades on the day they were killed. It was all over pro-jihadi forums that very same day.
There is no way that PCHR didn’t know that this was a family of Hamas terrorists, but that didn’t stop them from calling them all “civilian.”
Latest tally of fake civilian casualties here
Factor 10– Hamas guilty of firing from Hospitals, mosques and schools
A television reporter from Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat, the “Helsinki Dispatch,” spent the night reporting from Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, where she saw Hamas militants launching a rocket from the hospital’s parking lot, confirming a war crime that few journalists have dared report. Their reporter, whose name is not shown in the segment uploaded to YouTube on Friday, is reporting from outside of the hospital, where she said, “Right in the back parking lot of Al Shifa Hospital, a rocket was launched, two o’clock in the morning.” “Really, it happened right in the area, the sound of it was really loud,” she said. “It’s true that rockets are launched here from the Gazan side into Israel.”
Using hospitals, schools and mosques to store weapons or as a military base is against international rules of war.
The Al Shifa Hospital, in particular, has been an area of focus after journalists reported that Hamas was using the hospital as a headquarters, but many of their reports were withdrawn, deleted on social media or actually taken off their newspaper websites because of fears for their safety and retribution from Hamas for reporting the truth.
Hamas fired anti-tank missile from UNRWA school, and the yard was empty when IDF responded.
In light of the results of the investigation, claims that people were harmed inside school grounds, as presented after the incident by some, have been ruled out, the IDF says.
The IDF said it completed an investigation into the shelling on Thursday of an UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, and found that Hamas terrorists fired at the army from within the school complex. The terrorists fired anti-tank missiles at soldiers, the army added. The IDF fired several mortar rounds in response. One IDF mortar fell in a yard near the school, which was empty, according to the military.
The army is checking Palestinian reports that IDF shelling killed 15 at UNRWA school in Gaza that had served as a shelter for internally displaced Gazans.
IDF say: Terrorists opened fire from vicinity of UN-run Gaza school. "In light of the results of the investigation, claims that people were harmed inside school grounds, as presented after the incident by some, have been ruled out. The IDF regrets every harm to civilians in combat, but stresses again that this is the sad result of Hamas' decision to use the civilian sphere as a human shield," the army said.
Terrorists fire anti-tank missile from Al-Wafa hospital in Gaza The IDF launched an investigation, and army sources said it was unclear whether the area was hit by an Israeli or Palestinian range projectile. The IDF said an initial investigation found that terrorists had opened fire from the vicinity of the school, and that the army returned fire. At the same time, Hamas fired in the general direction of the school, the army said. Civilians in the school were asked to vacate the area, but refused, the army added.
Hamas fires rockets from Civilian areas - a war crime
Factor 11 – Hamas does not care about its people's wellbeing
(Hamas supporters keep talking about the Blockade, as if Israel is strangling the Palestinians )
Hamas attacks the crossing where supplies enter Gaza.
On July 30th, 131 trucks were scheduled to cross into Gaza; only 65 trucks arrived at Kerem Shalom. Drivers on the Gaza and Israeli side are reluctant to come to the crossing due to Hamas mortar fire and the security situation.
Of the trucks that entered:
26 trucks carrying 575 tons of food.
11 trucks carrying 440 tons of agricultural supplies.
4 trucks carrying 47 tons of medicine and medical supplies.
24 trucks carrying 169 tons of humanitarian supplies.
1,387 trucks have entered Gaza via the Kerem Shalom Crossing since the start of Operation Protective Edge
Factor 12.1 – Hamas uses its people as Human Shields
Benefit 1 - The IDF / IAF will call off attacks that will result in the death of Human Shields
Benefit 2 - If the IDF fails to avoid killing human shields, the dead become martyrs and are added to the death toll to count against Israel in the public opinion war.
A Hamas manual on "Urban Warfare" found by the Israeli Defense Forces makes it unmistakably clear that Hamas desires civilian casualties amongst its own people and encourages its fighters to engage in battles in civilian populated areas in order to draw an Israeli response.
"Where is the U.N. Human Rights Council? Where is Amnesty International? Where is Human Rights Watch? Where is the international media?
From an article by Shmuley Boteach - Battling dark emotion at the Gaza border
There we met a 35-year-old Golani commander who was one of the most impressive people I’ve met in years. On the first day of the ground invasion his battalion of 600 were involved in heavy fighting against the Hamas terrorists. “On a battlefield,” he explained, “there is something called a dead zone. It’s the territory that is controlled by your enemy and open to their fire. It’s difficult to move from one point to another in a dead zone. But in this war,” But in this war,” he continued, “we saw Hamas fighters moving through dead zones holding 5-year-old children in front of them as human shields. I am a father. I cannot even begin to understand the mentality of a fighter who would use a child to protect himself. Are these even men?”
He then recounted holding a machine gun. His soldiers had spotted a Hamas rocket about to be launched. He was about to order the soldiers to open fire when suddenly children started walking toward the soldiers right in front of the rocket. “My soldiers are eighteen and they’re making life and death decisions, trying to decide, ‘Should I allow children in Sderot to be bombed today by not firing on the rocket? But if I fire I may hurt a Palestinian child.’” He told his soldiers to stand down. The rocket was fired.
From an article by IDF - Hamas Uses Hospitals and Ambulances for Military Purposes
One of the fundamental aims of the laws of armed conflict is the protection of hospitals, ambulances, and medics from attack. International law grants this group special protection from attack during active conflict.
Hamas chooses to use these protected areas for military purposes in order to shield itself from IDF strikes – and to draw international condemnation of Israel if the IDF is forced to respond.
In Hamas’ world, hospitals are command centers, ambulances are transport vehicles, and medics are human shields. Hamas’ actions in this regard are flagrant violations of international law. Hamas undermines the essential protections that enable the provision of medical services to those in need during wartime, and threatens the security of all who are carrying out legitimate medical services in dangerous conditions.
Hamas transformed Wafa Hospital, a civilian building in the Shuja’iya neighborhood of Gaza City, into a command center, rocket-launching site, observation point, sniper’s post, weapons storage facility, cover for tunnel infrastructure, and a general base for attacks against Israel and IDF forces. Hamas repeatedly opened fire from hospital windows and used anti-tank missiles from the premises. Hamas deliberately and cynically turned the hospital into a legitimate military target.
In response to threat that this posed to IDF forces, the IDF repeatedly conveyed warnings to the hospital staff, Palestinian officials, and international aid organizations, including the World Health Organization, requesting that they act in order to stop the hospital from being used for military purposes, and warning that the IDF will be forced to act if these activities continue. When Hamas’ activities did not cease, already in the first week of the operation, the IDF repeatedly spoke with all of the relevant parties and warned all civilians to leave.
Factor 12.2 - Things not mentioned
Warnings of Air Attacks
Israel notifies civilians of planned attacks with leaflet drops or 'phone calls (in Arabic) Then an attack is preceded by a “tap on the roof” (small explosive warning shot) One such attack was filmed and shown on TV, clearly showing the warning had allowed people to get clear and set up a camera. The delay of 57 seconds from “tap” to actual strike was clear to all, but quickly forgotten. The IAF released footage of people being sent back into a building after a warning, causing the pilot to abort the attack.
Israel (and Israel's supporters) provide concrete bomb shelters all over the South of Israel to protect their people. Hamas does not provide shelters but uses concrete to build terror tunnels into Israel. (Each tunnel uses at least 500 tons of concrete and other materials to the tune of $30 million per tunnel. for more than thirty tunnels)
Factor 13 - Hamas loves death while Israel loves life.
Hamas officials admit that already by December 2011, at least 160 children had been killed in the tunnels. Since then tunneling activity has increased exponentially and one can only guess at the actual number of child victims to date.
The above information is buried in a 9,000 word paper, mainly expressing admiration for the tunnel economy, titled “Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege”. (Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol 41, no. 4 – Summer 2012 – described as the oldest and most respected English language journal devoted exclusively to Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict).
Worse still - Palestinian workers, including children, are routinely murdered by Hamas terrorists who had forced them to work on the terror tunnels, according to a report by Walla news site. Hamas eliminated part of its work force apparently out of fear that they would reveal their secrets to the Israeli security forces. The report further sheds light on the extremely difficult terms under which the tunnel diggers were employed by Hamas, in many cases under coercion. Full article
Factor 14 - Israel's generosity to their enemies gets no mention
As fighting halts, IDF chief promises help to rehabilitate Gaza, "Israel and the IDF will do everything in their power in order to help rehabilitate the Gaza Strip and assist civilians in the Palestinian enclave," IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday, as four weeks of fighting appeared to grind to a halt." “We are entering a complex period of assistance and rehabilitation,” Gantz said. “We will assist [the people in Gaza] not because of a strategic consideration, but because of the humanitarian aspect,” he added.
Israel has allowed transfers of humanitarian goods into Gaza throughout the conflict, but officials in the Strip and the United Nations have warned of a humanitarian disaster, as 28 days of bombing raids have left homes destroyed and vital infrastructure crippled.
Israel transfers hurt Palestinians from Gaza to Ben-Gurion Airport for medical evacuation
Wounded Palestinians transferred from the Gaza Strip to Ben Gurion Airport. Magen David Adom (Israeli Ambulance & Medical Emergency Service) is working on an on-going basis to transfer the ill and the wounded from the Gaza Strip to hospitals in Israel for medical treatment. In the framework of the State of Israel's humanitarian activity, Magen David Adom (MDA) is working on an ongoing basis to transfer the ill and the wounded from the Gaza Strip to hospitals in Israel for medical treatment.
Factor 15 - Pallywood comes to Gaza
Falsified video material for the world's TV channels
As was the case with the "Shooting of Mohammed al Dura" there is evidence that video evidence has been faked.
The alleged bombing of the UN Scool at Rafah.
www.thomaswictor.com/two-pallywood-duds analyses this incident. The report is slightly heavy on sarcasm, but contains an assembly of evidence of falsification, media guilability (or complicity) and United Nations acquiescence. Check it out.
Even the Guardian admits that the attack happened outside the school.
 |
 |
Footage of the event shows that the victims of the strike were dragged into the grounds of the school and, apparently augmented with other dead (maybe) people. Later shots show the blood trails in through the school gates, where the two bodies were dragged in!
A reminder of how Pallywood works
The Zionist Organization of America has called upon the Obama Administration to retract its condemnation, noting that the evidence now shows that Israel did indeed, as it claimed at the time, fire at terrorists just outside the school, where a missile strike on the road outside is plainly evident; that dead bodies were moved by Hamas from outside the school to inside its courtyard to mislead people into believing that the school itself had been hit; that the body of a small girl was added to the pile of adult bodies to make it look as if all the deaths came from the school, then was later removed, leaving doubt as to whether she was in fact killed; and that the bodies of two dead men photographed outside the school were also later shown inside the school courtyard, indicating they too were moved.
The alleged killing of four lads on the beach
The Israelis took the blame even though the IDF was unable to determine how the lads died.
As for the incident above, Thomas Wictor must have put hours of work into checking and comparing all the available images and footage and found evidence of image faking and moving of bodies. It is a pity the IDF does not do this kind of work for itself. There is no disputing that the boys died, but how and where is very much open to question. Below I have extracted and arranged a few key points to inadequately summarise his findings, but please visit the Thomas Wictor page for the full story.
Here’s a French report that’s inaccurate in virtually every possible way, but this version of events has entered the collective consciousness. (Echoes of Mohammed al Dura)
We see the children running, but then there’s an edit, and we hear an explosion. A Palestinian photographer was said to have caught the moment the four children were killed. That’s not true; witnesses say he caught the moment three children were killed. One child was killed at the Hamas police post. (below)
The IDF did destroy a building but it was a Hamas police post. The press lied about this incident in too many ways to count. They said this was a fisherman’s hut, and then they said that the building next to the post was the real police post. The IDF did itself no favors by refusing to explain in detail that the boys were using a known Hamas position.
Of the runners, the boy in the green shirt was hit with fragments in the face and chest. The boy in the red shirt was hit in the back and right side, he lost most of his clothes, and he was burned. The smallest boy was terribly mutilated; his legs were broken and bent to his right, and he was thrown several yards-meters from the explosion. The boys’ wounds are exactly consistent with a fragmentation-blast munition that exploded at the red oval, relative to the boys’ positions.
However, there’s no crater. I’ve looked at every piece of film and photo available, and there’s no sign of a crater. Yet the wounds of the smallest boy could not have been caused by an airburst munition. (the type of ammunition had an IDF gunboat been responsible) None of the children appear to have been killed by a munition that exploded over their heads.
Here’s the reason there’s no crater at the “explosion” site, and why there’s no blood in the sand from those horrendous wounds. The boys were killed further up the beach, and then their bodies were moved back to the the yellow-and-blue tent to create the scene discovered by the journalists who arrived from their hotel 300 metres away. In those few minutes, the Palestinians concocted the fiction that the boys were killed on an empty, open beach while playing soccer.
In a blowup you can see how it appears that a hotel was pasted over the image of the boys.
A final embellishment: The pictures of the dead boys lying in the sand show no blood. Yet at the funeral, one child was wrapped in a bloody shroud. That’s fake blood. No question. If you doubt it, look up the photos of the bodies on the beach.
What kind of people use dead children as props to advance their totalitarian politico-religious agenda? The Palestinians. Knowing what I do about Hamas, my gut tells me that someone tossed a hand grenade. At close range that would cause all the wounds, burn the children, and tear off their clothes.
President Obama's effect on this conflict
By Bill Wilson, KIN Senior Analyst
President Barack Obama's failed foreign policy can be blamed for a significant part of the situation today in Israel. His administration's embracing of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign policy partner in the Middle East and the shift away from supporting Israel to supporting Islam has created an unstable and hostile environment throughout the Middle East.
The list of U.S.-supported Islamic efforts from Libya to Egypt to Tunisia to Syria and many places in between has emboldened terrorist agents such as the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas. American dollars have been invested in many of these organizations and their offshoots, further destabilizing the region.
The President's "New Beginnings" speech in Cairo, Egypt, on June 4, 2009, was indeed a new beginning as representatives of the banned Muslim Brotherhood were invited to the speech against the wishes of Egypt's leadership. The speech signaled the new U.S. administration's intent to embrace Islam.
Some 18 months later, revolution spread across the region. By December 2013, rulers were forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. There were civil uprisings and protests in Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Sudan, Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia and, notably, in the territories within Israel inhabited by the "Palestinians."
Today, the Hamas-controlled failure of a Palestinian state in Gaza rains missiles down on Israel by the hundreds. There is no mainstream media connecting that fateful June 2009 "New Beginnings" speech with the events in Israel today.
The Muslim Brotherhood, however, was the founder of Hamas and is deeply connected with many terrorist organizations, some of which still exist in Israel as part of the Palestinian movement. They are allied with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The support by this White House of the Muslim Brotherhood and its rampage of revolution across the Middle East has emboldened, perhaps even enabled, Hamas to attack Israel.
UNHRC Enquiry announced
William Schabas, International Canadian law expert, – known for his criticism of Israel – will head the United Nations Human Rights Council’s probe into Israel’s actions in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza. (successor to Goldstone Report on Gaza 2012)
Here he gives a rambling interview, refusing to call Hamas a terror group and admitting the UN has double standards.
Victory ?
| Israel | Gaza, Hamas, the Palestinians |
Israel claims victory because Hamas has been stopped without having gained anything. Israel has destroyed Hamas' tunnels ($3million each). Hamas rocket stockpile reduced massively with remarkably small damage to Israel, thanks in part to Iron Dome. Israel must face a huge bill for replacing armaments expended. Israel still faces massive threats, including Nuclear Iran, in an inferno of hatred in its neighbourhood and with greatly harmed sympathy around the world Hamas did not have any demands met |
Hamas claims victory because Israel has stopped pounding them. Hamas is still in power and has not altered its charter. Much of the world is (amazingly) sympathetic to Gaza, and Israel loathing and anti-Semitism have risen drastically (500% in the UK) Quatar has promised to rebuild Gaza. Charities have launched major relief efforts for Gaza. Another generation is fired up to continue the fight to destroy Israel
|
Daniel Pipes comments
Part of an overview of the Middle East dynamics
War wins support in Gaza. Hamas wants to make trouble for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. It wishes to create tensions in Israel, especially in an effort to inspire Israeli Arabs to rise up. (Remember that the current violence started with the kidnappings of three Israeli teenagers and only one day later Hamas started to send its current round of missiles on Israel.) Hamas may also wish to receive more money from Iran and to recruit more suicide bombers.
We should note that this is not a historically normal war. Traditionally, the key was military victory but that is not the case here. It's obvious that Israel will win on the battlefield. Therefore, that's not the main issue, which instead is political: Does Israel use just means? Does it use proportional force? Does it behave properly under international law? Does it follow the rules of war? The focus is no longer on winning or losing but on the perception of how the fighting takes place. This is where Hamas hopes to win: It seeks to provoke Israelis to kill innocent women and children, bystanders, and civilians, so that the criticism of Israel will grow: resolutions of the United Nations, European Union sanctions, demonstrations on Western streets, and so forth. It's all about winning the political --or, if you will, the public relations war.
The “appropriate Zionist response” to Israel's enemies is not only to overcome them in battle, but also to develop Israel, and in the current situation that means building and developing the communities in the South and near the Gaza border, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas of needlessly extending the fighting in the Gaza Strip over the past two months, causing a high death toll. Abbas told Palestine TV in remarks broadcast Friday that “it was possible for us to avoid all of that, 2,000 martyrs, 10,000 injured, 50,000 houses (damaged or destroyed).”
Lawfare
International Criminal Court: Palestine is a state, can file war crimes complaints against Israel if chooses
By YONAH JEREMY BOB - 31/08/2014
ICC Prosecutor writes in 'The Guardian' that "Palestine could join Rome Statute"; endorsement of possible Palestinian application does not mean for sure Israelis will be indicted.
Confirming officially for the first time what has been implied, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, in a highly unusual Oped on Friday in The Guardian, wrote that "Palestine" is now sufficiently a state to file war crimes complaints against Israelis if it chooses to join the ICC's Rome Statute.
Ending speculation on the issue, Bensouda explained concisely that her office had concluded that following greater UN recognition in 2012, "Palestine could now join the Rome Statute."
Bensouda's Oped, is in and of itself a highly uncharacteristic public venue for her to articulate her office's usually closely held official positions. But it appeared to be a response to the unprecedented barrage of criticism following the recent Gaza war from a range of parties that her office was artificially blocking the Palestinians from filing against Israelis.
On August 5, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki met with Bensouda to investigate in greater detail the possibility of Palestine joining the ICC's Rome Statute, which would grant it the right to file war crimes complaints with the court.............................
She said that such unilateral action was a recipe for disaster, stating such unilateralism would be "neither good law nor does it make responsible judicial action."
Bensouda's endorsement of any upcoming Palestine application (which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will file if neither the US nor the UN press Israel into setting borders with him) does not mean that the ICC would for sure indict any Israelis involved in the war. There are a number of other additional legal and diplomatic obstacles which could block such an indictment, but it does remove the primary obstacle that has been in place for the last five years.
The army has beefed up its legal staff, is conducting internal investigations of its wartime actions and has prepared a detailed PR campaign of satellite photos and video clips — hoping to persuade the world that its war against Hamas was justified. “We take our business seriously, and as such we operate within the rules and regulations under the laws of war,” said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman.
.................................
Israel argues that the heavy civilian death toll is Hamas’s fault, accusing the militant group of launching rockets — and drawing retaliation — from schoolyards, residential areas and mosques. This claim will be central to any defense of the military’s conduct. “What the military has been doing throughout the entire operation is showing Hamas as it truly is, an organization that hides behind civilians and intentionally locates its weapons in houses, schools and mosques,” Lerner said.
The argument will be weighed against the principle of proportionality — which is essentially a judgment call on whether the force applied was reasonable.
The threat of international action against Israel is real. Following a similar military operation in 2009, a UN fact-finding mission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone said he found strong evidence that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes — Israel by deliberately or recklessly targeting Gaza civilians, and Hamas by launching indiscriminate rocket attacks at Israeli cities. While Goldstone later backtracked from his main conclusions, the report was never changed.
The UN Human Rights Council, which has a long history of criticizing Israel, has already appointed a commission of inquiry to look into the latest fighting. The commission’s report is expected next March.
For the P.A. turning to the ICC will be risky: Israel could retaliate, and Abbas could lose Western support and expose Hamas — with which he has been trying to reconcile — to the same charges.
Israel has long complained that it is unfairly singled out by what it sees as biased UN institutions and international bodies. It says that if standards were applied consistently, countries like the US, Britain, or Russia would also be called to task for their actions in places like Iraq and Ukraine. Still, unlike in 2009, Israel appears to have decided not to boycott the Human Rights Council. Instead, it is vigorously mounting a defense, though it remains unclear to what extent it will cooperate with the probe. “Now that the dust has cleared, we are doing the important work to document exactly what happened,” said government spokesman Mark Regev.
Evidence collected includes video clips claiming to show rocket launches next to schools and mosques, “sensitive sites” that Israel decided not to attack and a Hamas training manual, allegedly captured in the fighting, instructing militants how to hide in civilian areas. The authenticity of the manual could not be independently verified.
Even during the fighting, the army says it had a team of legal experts reviewing operations, and often approving attacks after determining that they met international laws of war.
The military has launched an investigation into its wartime conduct headed by a major general and has brought in legal and military experts — who did not participate in the war themselves.
Full article here :timesofisrael.com/israel-bolstering-legal-team-ahead-of-un-gaza-probe
Did you notice a new demand creeping into Hamas' reasons for not agreeing a ceasefire?
They are demanding that the "Blockade" be lifted. See also Blockade legallity .
So Hamas will continue firing imported rockets at Israel
unless Israel opens the blockade and allows in more imported rockets to fire at Israel. Makes sense.
Whatever the military outcome, there remains an enormous Public Relations war -
Can Israel win it?
Do Israel's leaders know how to win?
What can Israel's Christian friends do to help?
Three commentators - worst news first
Here is a pessimistic perspective; unnecessarily harsh and disrespectful of PM Netanyahu, but a call to Israel's non-Jewish friends not to sit back because there is a "peace" deal. (Hudna)
Countdown to Israel’s Destruction
Simcha Jacobovici
a Canadian-Israeli filmmaker and journalist. He is a three-time Emmy winner for “Outstanding Investigative Journalism.”
The round of fighting with Hamas is one more stage in Israel’s strategic downward spiral.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared victory. At the same time, Gaza’s Hamas rulers are dancing in the street. Ahmed Barakat, senior member of Hezbollah, has stated that the “countdown to the disappearance of the Zionist entity [Israel] in the region has begun.” Unfortunately, Netanyahu is wrong and Barakat is right.
If you count bodies and destroyed homes, Israel won the round. But if you look at the overall strategic situation, what you see is a steady deterioration in Israel’s position, both militarily and diplomatically. After the last Intifada, Israel’s enemies realized that suicide bombing alone cannot achieve their desired goal – the destruction of the Jewish state. So what they embarked on is a three-pronged strategy that involves low-level conflict and terror, combined with the development and production of weapons of mass destruction and an unrelenting media war designed to isolate Israel and create the international atmosphere necessary for its elimination. They have succeeded on all three fronts.
With respect to low-level conflict and terror, recently, in one week alone, Israel was fired on from Gaza by Hamas, from Lebanon by Hezbollah and from Syria by a combination of rebel and Syrian army forces. Kuneitra in Syria, right on the border with Israel, has fallen to Al-Qaida-affiliated forces. If not for the Egyptian army taking over Cairo, Israel would also be facing Al-Qaida in the Sinai and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The noose is tightening.
Economically, a few relatively low-cost tunnels on the Gaza border and a few thousand cheap rockets and mortars have cost Israel billions of dollars and, for a couple of days, even shut down Ben-Gurion airport. Israel’s isolation was near total.
All this is possible because Israel is fighting with two hands tied behind its back. Its political and military leaders are so close to the trees, they can’t see the forest. They have not caught on to the idea that power is useless if you can’t wield it. Specifically, the forces lined up against Israel have spent billions of dollars in an unrelenting media war to delegitimize and isolate the Jewish state. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Today, Israel is a de-facto pariah state in the world.
Even during the worst days of South Africa’s Apartheid, no one called for the destruction of South Africa. What they were calling for is a regime change, not the annihilation of the state. With Israel, it’s different. In campuses around the world “progressive” students and faculty are openly calling for the elimination of the Jewish state. Israel’s defenders are reduced to a campaign of whining: “why do you criticize Israel and not genocidal regimes such as Sudan and Syria?” In other words, at this moment the best that Israel’s friends can do is put it in the company of mass murderers.
Death to israel
In the international media, Israel is portrayed as the enemy of peace, the disruptor of international stability and a racist, colonialist regime that targets Arab children for a pastime. The worst Nazi-type anti-Semitic stereotypes have been taken out of mothballs, dusted off and applied to the Jewish state by seemingly respectable people. Around the world, left-wing and right-wing demonstrators stand shoulder to shoulder calling for “death to Israel”.
In the suburbs of Paris, Jews have to fight street battles against a mob attacking a synagogue with its congregation inside. In South Africa, a politician calls for “eye for an eye” violence against South-Africa’s Jewish leadership in “retaliation” for the war in Gaza. In England, kosher products are taken off supermarket shelves, so as not to incite the local population.
And what is Israel doing about the media war that has made all this possible? Absolutely nothing. While billions of dollars are fuelling the anti-Israel campaign, Israel is spending zero. Israel’s leadership is fighting early Twentieth-century battles. They are spending billions on tanks and nothing on media. Its enemies are spending billions on media and almost nothing on tanks. Israel is fighting last century’s war. Its enemies are fighting the war of tomorrow, often with the low-tech, media-friendly tools of yesterday. This “Neo-Primitivism” involves decapitation on youtube and other such methods. Put differently, Israel may be at the cutting edge of High Technology, but its enemies are on the cutting edge of post-modern warfare.
Israel’s leadership still has the quaint idea that the media war is really a matter of “Hasbarah”. There are even “Hasbarah experts” in the employ of the government, and of the World Zionist Organization. “Hasbarah” is Hebrew for “explanation”. Israel’s leaders believe that the way to fight a media war is to fund a couple of civil servants whose task it is to “explain” to the world why Israel is right and its enemies are wrong. This is like fighting F-16s with slingshots. More seriously, it reveals the total bankruptcy of Israel’s strategic thinking. Basically, Israel’s leaders haven’t figured out that what is depicted on CNN and BBC is more important than what happens on the streets of Gaza. If you win the latter and lose the former, you are the big loser. You can have Hellfire missiles, but you won’t be able to use them. And if you do use them, America’s president will not replenish them – because he watches CNN, or at least his constituents do. Put simply, you cannot win a war on the ground if you don’t fight the war of the airwaves. The latter has nothing to do with “Hasbarah” and everything to do with strategic power.
But that’s not all. The fact is that the media war, even if Israel engages in it, will not be fought on a level playing field. Israeli ideology and culture creates a blind spot in its leaders’ worldview. They simply don’t have the tools to understand anti-Semitism. It’s out there, and it’s real and they can’t see it. No country surrounded by Hezbollah, Al-Qaida, Hamas and ISIS would have to engage in a media war to “explain” to the world that it lives in a tough neighborhood, except Israel. Cool progressives would not allow themselves to call for the destruction of any state on the face of the planet, except for Israel. The fact is that the present media war conducted against Israel by its enemies is aimed at a planet that is – by and large – receptive to the message. Less than 70 years after a million Jewish children were incinerated in the heart of Europe, the idea of Jewish fighters defending their children is still anathema to millions of people.
As for Israel’s “friends”, the news is not good. Most of the planet is against the Jewish state and, while ancient Jewish communities have become extinct from Yemen to Afghanistan, from Greece to Poland, anti-Israel Muslim populations have expanded exponentially. This combination of sociological factors guarantees that in the near future most states in the international community will work harder and harder to isolate the state of Israel like no state has been isolated before. Countries like Canada are an exception, but in reality Canada’s support turns on one man’s continued leadership, Stephen Harper. When he goes, so will Canada’s support. As for the United States, the so-called “Jewish lobby”, namely America’s Jewish population, is disintegrating before our eyes. America’s Jews are assimilating and intermarrying. Even if they identify as Jews, for most of them Israel is not a priority. In fact, many go out of their way to prove that they are Americans first by beating up on the Jewish state. One of the few reasons for America’s continued support – such as it is – is not the power of the Jewish constituency, but of the Evangelical Christian community. This, too, shall pass. The anti-Israel forces in the American Evangelical community – old-school Jimmy Carter types – are gaining strength. Many will desert Israel. Already, there are those who claim that the “real Jews” of the bible are the Palestinians and the Israelis are the “Romans who crucified our lord”.
If you think United States President Obama is lukewarm towards Israel, the day will come – and it’s not far – that Obama will look like a right-wing Zionist compared to the people who will sit in the White House. A new president shall come, who grew up on CNN and was educated on virulently anti-Israel campuses. He will not just hold back missiles, he will arm Israel’s enemies.
Netanyahu on CNN
This is not science fiction. This is science. If the world sees you as a genocidal state, its leaders will seek your destruction. What’s “fiction” is the world that Israel’s leaders live in. Netanyahu’s world – where anti-Semitism is not a factor, where America has Israel’s back and where Hamas is really a loser despite the mass celebrations on Gaza’s streets – is a figment of his imagination.
Netanyahu and some of his Cabinet ministers – Naphtali Bennett is a good example – believe that going on CNN and sparring with Christiane Amanpour is what good media is all about. They don’t understand that these appearances – and the “high-fives” they get from their entourage – are useless. They can’t fight a war in Gaza by parachuting a couple of cabinet ministers into the fray. Neither can they fight a media war by showing off their command of English on CNN. Put simply, if it doesn’t start fighting this war, Israel will become more vulnerable than ever before. And this will happen in the next few months – just as Iran becomes a nuclear power.
So here’s my message to Israel’s leaders and supporters: it’s not too late.
Start fighting the media war or we will go down in defeat – soon.
What is the outcome of all the lies against Israel ?
A huge surge in anti-Semitism around the world. - Latest roundup here (500% in the UK)
Melanie Philips addressing a Honest Reporting occasion, after the conflict.
Calls For New Strategy to Present Israel’s Case
Also
Hamas’s humiliation, and Israel’s looming defeat
A more upbeat article (extract here) that gives the other side of the coin, by Caroline Glick
Our world: Embracing the obvious truth
The moral and ideological divide between Israel and Hamas is so self-evident that the only way to ignore it is by embracing and cultivating ignorance.
This week Richard Behar published an in-depth investigative report in Forbes documenting how the US media is doing just that. As Behar demonstrated, the media is collaborating with Hamas in its war against Israel.
Behar cited example after example of how the US media, led by The New York Times have systematically ignored, obfuscated and downplayed Hamas’s war crimes while swallowing whole its bogus statistics and accusations against Israel.
The greatest threat to faux reporters like the New York Times Israel bureau chief Jodi Rudoren and her colleagues are people who refuse to accept their distortions and insist that the truth be told.
The most dangerous of the truth tellers are the non- Jews who stand up for Israel.
Read more. (click for full article)
Let's go out and be dangerous!
Assistance in standing up for the truth about Israel
During Operation Protective Edge we have been receiving many requests for a joined up campaign network that will send out information and calls for action. I wish to share with you a tool that we believe we can all use to achieve just that.
Please sign up for ISRAELikers using this link: http://www.israelikers.org/joinus.aspx?Grp=120
It will allow you to register for the bespoke UK ISRAELikers program.
Updated 08/11/14
Click the banner below to go to the site map and choose another page