For those of you who donate money to the
New Israel Fund (NIF) (how long have you been reading this blog anyway?), B'Tselem is one of the largest beneficiaries of your donations, to the tune of
$255,477.23 in 2012. And the
New Israel Fund is getting its money's worth: B'Tselem acts as
Hamas' Israeli propaganda arm.
B'Tselem published 8 updates on casualties during Protective Edge. Under
the deniability cover of an "initial investigation," every report
compared the number of dead on the Israeli side and the number of
Palestinian side. This information was published on B'Tselem's website,
in their press releases and on social media.
Naturally, B'Tselem emphasized the number of children, minors, women
and elderly among those killed in Gaza, backed by visual aids. If
B'Tselem took care to note the number of combatants killed (by its own
definitions) in its first 6 releases, this category disappeared in the
last two releases, turning all Palestinian casualties into civilians until proven otherwise. B'Tselem explained the sudden change thus:
"the data is very initial and partial, and still being checked […] over
the next few months B'Tselem will continue to look into the events and
in this framework confirm the identity of those killed and figure out
who participated in the fighting." Why did B'Tselem repeatedly publish
partial, unconfirmed data? Didn't they care that this would serve solely
to bash Israel? Probably not. Meanwhile, while B'Tselem was coy about
identifying members of Palestinian terrorist groups among the dead, they
were consistent and clear about dividing between Israeli 'soldiers' and
'civilians'. In addition, these reports were padded with lachrymose
visual aids, of the kind meant to bypass the reader's critical
faculties, among them "tear-jerking" testimonies of Gazans,
who talk of being unable to sleep at night for fear of IDF bombardment,
how their life isn't a life and an impassioned appeal to the world not
to "stand aside." We should note that B'Tselem did indeed publish
testimonies of residents of the south of Israel who live under constant
rocket fire. But as B'Tselem itself admitted, symmetry is more important than nationality for them:
"We report more on Palestinians who are harmed because many, many more
Palestinians were harmed during the operation. This in spite of the fact
that most of the casualties did not take any part in the fighting
[note: such a categorical statement based on what they themselves call
"initial and partial data"! – A.W.] […] reporting needs to reflect
reality and reality is not symmetrical when it comes to the extent of
damage in Gaza and Israel and therefore it is presented before you in
this manner." B'Tselem even tried to launch a campaign of reading the
names of dead Palestinian children on the radio, which was banned by the
Broadcasting Authority and rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court. B'Tselem also released photo albums and video clips of the destruction in the Gaza Strip. After all, property destruction is ipso facto
against international law. Who cares if the building served as a
command or combat post? B'Tselem certainly couldn't be bothered to find
out if they were.
Your charity dollars at work.... What could go wrong?
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