Report: Israel and 'Palestinians' reach deal over Gaza construction materials
United Nations envoy Robert Serry says that Israel and the 'Palestinians' have reached a deal over the passage of construction materials into Gaza (Hat Tip: Gershon D).
Serry told the U.N. Security Council that the United Nations had brokered the deal "to enable work at the scale required in the strip, involving the private sector in Gaza and giving a lead role to the Palestinian Authority in the reconstruction effort, while providing security assurances through U.N. monitoring that these materials will not be diverted from their entirely civilian purpose."
"Building materials and reconstruction equipment will enter the Gaza
Strip through a mechanism that Coordinator of the
Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Maj. Gen. Yoav
Mordechai is building, together the with UN envoy Robert Serry and the
Palestinian Authority," Ya'alon added.
But the defense minister warned that "if those materials are
transferred to building tunnels - the transfer will stop immediately."
Of course, the terror tunnels were built from materials that Israel allowed in after the last two Gaza operations (Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense) in 2006 and 2008-09, respectively, and either the IDF didn't pick up on it or decided that they could not stop the materials from being diverted. Why will this time be different? What could go wrong?
I think I posted this during Operation Pillar of Defense a year and a half ago, but it's worth another look.
Six years ago a kindergarten teacher wanted to do something to help the children in her class deal with the ongoing air raid sirens and rocket attacks against Israel.
This song is that much more relevant today.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Gershon D).
Have to tell my daughter-in-law and son about this. My 4-year old granddaughter has been in quite a panic every time the siren goes off.
What Hamas wants: Would you believe a 'cease fire'?
A Hamas spokesman actually asked for a 'cease fire' this evening according to a report on Israel Radio. But the request came with five conditions that Israel is very unlikely to fulfill:
1. Stop 'persecuting' Hamas in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
2. Reinstate the 'understandings' from Operation Pillar of Defens.
3. Stop flying over Gaza, including with drones (you've got to be kidding).
4. Release all the re-arrested terrorists from the terrorists for Gilad trade (fat chance).
5. Stop interfering with Hamas' unity agreements with Fatah.
Why Barack Obama shares in the blame... and so does Hillary Clinton
Yesterday, a Facebook friend in the US whom I have known since he was born (almost literally) wrote the following (I am purposely not linking it and not giving his name and I will delete any comment that names him).
Today
is a terrible day in the long history of the Jewish people confronted
by enemies committed to the age old statement of Haman seeking to
eradicate the Jewish people. But let's stay focused on who is that
enemy and who it is not. This has nothing to do with President Barack
Obama.
Sorry D, but that's dead wrong. Here's Noah Pollak in a brilliant article to explain why.
The murder of the teens and the rocket fire from
Gaza are, of course, entirely the fault of Hamas. But it would be taking
too narrow a view of the situation not to consider the way over the
past five years the Obama administration has shaped the environment in
which these events are unfolding.
A few examples: Israeli intelligence believes the Hamas cell that carried out the abduction was run by a Hamas leader who lives openly
in Turkey. The Erdogan regime has, of course, made Turkey a comfortable
haven for anti-Israel terrorists, allowing weapons smuggling to
Hezbollah, staging the terror flotilla to Gaza in 2010, hosting (and
feting) Hamas leaders, and so on. Obama's protest? None. In fact, a few
years ago Obama said that Erdogan was his favorite Middle East leader,
and Obama over the years has offered nothing but lavish public praise
for Erdogan.
Another example: The Obama administration has
consistently adopted policies whose effect is to make Hamas rule in Gaza
easier. One of the first foreign policy moves the administration
made—you can read all about it in Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices,
where she writes earnestly and proudly about her involvement—was to
pressure Israel to weaken its blockade on Gaza after Operation Cast
Lead, the short war that ended days before Obama's inauguration in 2009.
Every dollar of aid provided to Gaza is a dollar freed up for Hamas to
spend on terrorizing Israelis—and the Obama administration for five
years has been insistent on Gaza receiving substantial aid, and Israel
relaxing its blockade. Clinton and Obama pushed through another
loosening of the Gaza blockade after Operation Pillar of Defense in
2012.
Yet another example: The Obama administration,
including Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, has always insisted that the
U.S. taxpayer should continue funding the Palestinian Authority even if
it forms a "unity government" with Hamas, which after many years of
trying was finally consummated last month. The Obama administration even
coached the Palestinians on how to organize the new unity government so
that the administration would be able to claim that it does not violate
a 2006 law forbidding the funding of exactly such a PA (instead of
Hamas terrorists receiving ministerial positions in the Palestinian
Authority, there are Hamas-approved "technocrats" occupying the
ministries—i.e., cutouts who do the bidding of Hamas).
And thus, with Hamas and Fatah joined in an
Obama-approved unity government that will continue receiving hundreds of
millions of dollars a year in U.S. funding, we arrive at the events of
the past three weeks—the increased rocket fire, the abduction and murder
of the teenagers, and, of course, the administration's admonition that
Israel not respond to events the administration itself has played a role
in bringing about
And all the while the Obama administration insists
on its "unshakable commitment to Israel's security," a phrase invoked
with repetitive meaninglessness. The most important part of that
commitment is being a source of moral clarity on days like today, and
treating an ally like an ally, instead of a problem that must be
contained. The administration has failed on both counts.
Received by email (since I am not in Israel and not listening to Reshet Bet Israel Radio).
Giora Eiland - IDF Major General, former Israeli National Security Advisor, etc - was interviewed on Israel's noon-time
Reshet Bet radio show, about the overnight rocket Hamas rocket barrages
from the Gaza Strip. Short version: Israel is working very hard to
deescalate the situation, but unless things calm down in the next few
days there will be no stopping an escalation. Israel would be forced to
launch a major operation to stop the rocket fire. Quick, rough
translation:
“I assume it’s a matter of days for us to know if we
succeeded [together with other parties] to create the required calm, or
if not we will certainly be prepared to carry out a larger process than
the [current] spontaneous responses... a hard/harsh Israeli action
against Gaza would be accepted, maybe not with encouragement, but with
great understanding in Washington and most places in the world... Hamas
knows this and therefore there is a structure of deterrence... [without
deescalation] I estimate that there will be an Israeli action, or at
least there will be a call for an Israeli action that is much more
massive – like Operation Pillar of Defense maybe even bigger than it, in
order to achieve a renewed deterrence for another period of a year or
two.”
Good morning from 35,000 feet above flyover country once again. This time I am flying from Chicago to... Boston. I should have better internet access there, but also have a lot of work there....
It's been a year and a half since Operation Pillar of Defense, and for the first time this morning, Hamas is taking responsibility for 16 rockets that were fired from Gaza into Israel. Given that Hamas also kidnapped three Israeli teenagers two and a half weeks ago, Israel Radio reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu is finally considering taking action.
The security sources, who spoke on condition
of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in
revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one
person and injured three more.
A member of Hamas’s militant wing was killed in the attack, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.
While Israel has maintained it holds Hamas
responsible for all rocket attacks, officials have said that smaller
groups, such as Islamic Jihad, are usually behind the rocket attacks,
while Hamas squads generally attempt to thwart the rocket fire.
Hamas hasn’t fired rockets into Israel since
Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012, and has yet to take
responsibility for this latest barrage.
...
Officials said Monday’s rocket attacks, which
appeared to deliberately target Israeli communities close to the border
with the Gaza Strip, may have been intended to warn Israel against
targeting Hamas operatives.
The army said in a statement that the Sunday
night air raid was targeting terrorists “in the southern Gaza Strip,
during their final preparations to launch rockets at civilian
communities of southern Israel.”
“Hamas is responsible for the outrageous
attacks originating from Gaza, and will be pursued as such,” IDF
spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said.
The air force attack on Khan Younis Sunday
night came minutes after Palestinians in the coastal enclave fired a
volley of rockets at southwestern Israel. The Iron Dome defense system
shot down two of the projectiles — Grad rockets — over Netivot. There
were no reports of injury or damage in the rocket attack.
Early Sunday morning, air force planes struck
12 sites in Gaza in response to rockets fired over the weekend. Two
rockets hit the town of Sderot, close to the border with Gaza, late
Saturday, causing a massive fire that destroyed a paint factory
As far as I am concerned, one rocket per year is too many (because it means you can't go about your life totally freely), but even I didn't expect this level of success from Operation Pillar of Defense.
One of my daughters spent the Sabbath with a friend in Netivot. On the way back, her bus went through Sderot, which as you might recall is right on the Gaza border and took a lot of those 2,248 rockets. My daughter reports that Sderot is huge and rapidly growing, and that housing prices have skyrocketed (bad word, I know) there over the last year.
Before the IDF hit Hamas-operated targets, it scrutinized them to protect the safety of non-combatants.
“Our goal,” Captain O says, is to assure that “no innocent civilians are hurt.”
This objective
is complicated severely by the fact that Hamas routinely locates its
weapons among civilians, for reasons discussed below. It does so in
total violation of the Geneva Convention and some700years of the just-war tradition.
Amid these
difficulties during Pillar Defense, the IDF aimed to blast a residential
building in Gaza that it believed contained ammunition. While the IDF
simply could have bombed the joint, it took multiple steps to protect
Palestinian civilians.
First, IDF aircraftreleasedleafletsin
the area to tell people that the building would be smashed from above,
and that they should evacuate. This tactic also was employed in 2009’s
Operation Cast Lead, a similar campaign to stop Hamas’s missiles. “The
Israelis dropped a million leaflets warning the population of impending
attacks and phoned tens of thousands of Palestinian households in Gaza
urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed
weapons or be preparing to fight,” Great Britain’s Colonel Kemp said
of that operation. “Similar messages were passed on in Arabic on
Israeli radio broadcasts.” He added: “When possible, they left at least
four hours’ notice to civilians to leave areas designated for attack, an
action that handed a distinct advantage to Hamas.”
Second, in case anyone thought the Israelis were bluffing, the IDF
signaled that they were serious. Their method is called “Knock on the
Door.” It involves dropping a small, low-impact bomb on the roof of the
targeted building. This tells people the IDF is not kidding and will
return soon to take care of business.
Third, once it was empty, the IDF bombed the building, and Hamas’s weapons were rendered harmless.
Hamas, Captain O
says, gives Gazans a totally different message: Rather than encourage
these civilians to flee, Hamas tells them that it is their Islamic duty
to remain in their apartments and become martyrs. Thus, Hamas tries to
use innocent men, women, and children as human shields. If this
successfully prevents Israel from neutralizing ammunition dumps, bomb
factories, and rocket launchers, all the better for Hamas. And if Israel
bombs such facilities and wounds or kills civilians, Hamas can wheel in
the compliant and sympathetic global media to document the latest
example of “Israeli atrocities.”
...
While admirable
on many levels, such trigger shyness also seems borderline suicidal. Not
only is Israel not as reckless as her enemies claim; the IDF has likely
some terrorists live to kill another day.
Israel’s attempts to limit civilian bloodshed also contrast severely with Hamas, which heavesmissilesonto playgrounds full of Jewish schoolchildren. In the town of Sderot, Israeli kids hear alarms when rockets are en route. At one such facility, they have just 15 seconds to dash into a giant concrete caterpillar. It looks festive — but actually is a cheerfully painted bomb shelter.
In all, Hamas’s rockets can slam any of 994,000 Israelis within 60 seconds of their launch in Gaza.
Given Hamas’s
disdain for human life, why doesn’t the IDF scrap the warning flyers and
“knocks on the door” and just let its bombs rip?
“We won’t be
able to live with these people if we just butcher them,” Captain O says.
He makes a fascinating point. Putting aside for a moment America’s
benevolent occupation of Japan after World War II, the U.S. did detonate
atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It then shipped the vast
majority of its soldiers back home, all the way across the Pacific. Most
Americans gave Japan little thought until Datsuns, Mazdas, and Toyotas
arrived in the mid 1970s.
The UN fact-finding mission’s conclusions were largely based on
Al-Mezan’s fieldwork, though this is not mentioned in its report,
Suliman said. Suliman explained to me that Al-Mezan’s fieldworker
visited the Masharawi home in the wake of the strike and conducted
interviews with people in the area. Its findings at the time were that
baby Omar was most likely killed as a result of a Palestinian-fired
rocket.
Al Mezan’s findings are based on the type of damage caused to the family
home, which it says is not characteristic of an Israeli F-16, Apache
helicopter or drone strike. Meanwhile, Palestinian armed groups were
firing rockets towards Israel half a kilometer from the Masharawi home
and Israeli strikes were targeting the sites of the rocket-launchers at
the time of the incident, he said.
Elder of Ziyon comments:
Of course, Al Mezan (and EI) then try to spin this incident into saying
that baby Omar's death is really Israel's fault anyway using their usual
tortured logic and sickening spin to absolve terrorist rockets in
civilian neighborhoods. They ignore that Omar was not the only child
killed by Hamas rockets that was publicly and loudly blamed on Israel.
When looking at actual facts, however, it is increasingly clear that I
was right and the BBC was wrong - and that the BBC has been purposefully
shading the truth about this case for the past five months. So has
Human Rights Watch and other media and organizations that are
reflexively anti-Israel whenever possible, even though the evidence on
the ground from OCHA-OPT as early as late November indicated that Hamas
rockets killed civilians in Gaza including Omar.
“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me, saying that Misharawi is a
BBC video and photo editor. After spending a “few hours” with his
grieving colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ”Questioned asked here is: if
Israel can kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last
month) how did Jihad’s son get killed.”
Now we know that the BBC "team" was involved in promoting a falsehood.
Will Mackey (who is oh so fond of quoting Electronic Intifada) or Fisher
acknowledge that they were played by BBC? Will Margaret Sullivan, the
public editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post's newly
minted reader representative, Doug Feaver examine how their own
reporters and bloggers were duped by this willful deception?
Israel’s critics have long claimed that “everyone agrees” that all
“settlements” (a term referring to all Israeli activity in the West
Bank, at least that benefits Jews) clearly violates international law,
and that only Israeli apologists could believe the arguments to the
contrary. I assume the Versailles Court of Appeals won’t be accused of
being unduly sympathetic to the Jewish State.
Indeed, many might share my surprise on such a decision coming from a
European court, especially given the supposed uniformity of views on the
underlying legal issues. Perhaps two factors may explain the surprising
decision: this is not an international court, but an ordinary municipal
one, and it was an important French industrial concern, rather than
Israel, in the dock. International lawyers may have what could
positively be described as professional or scientific knowledge of the
matter, or more cynically as guild orthodoxy. Judges unversed in these
verities might see things differently. And of course, here international
law is being used against important and powerful domestic interests.
The original 2002 Arab peace initiative offered Israel peace with the
entire Arab and Muslim world in exchange for a "complete withdrawal"
from territories captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians
claim the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, all seized by
Israel in 1967, for their future state.
The initiative was revolutionary when it was introduced by Saudi
Arabia's then crown prince, King Abdullah, and endorsed by the 22-member
Arab League. The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation later
endorsed the plan as well. However, it was overshadowed by fierce
Israeli-Palestinian fighting at the time and greeted with skepticism by
Israel.
In Washington Monday, Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al
Thani tried to allay some of the Israeli concerns. Speaking on behalf of
an Arab League delegation, he reiterated the need to base an agreement
between Israel and a future Palestine on the 1967 lines, but for the
first time, he cited the possibility of "comparable," mutually agreed
and "minor" land swaps between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Then there is the list of countries involved. I have no difficulty in
believing that the governments of Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are
ready for a deal. Jordan has already made peace; Saudi Arabia proposed a
reasonable offer a decade ago (before it was sharply revised by
hardliners before becoming an official Arab League position), and
Bahrain’s regime is desperately afraid of Iran and has become a
semi-satellite of the Saudis.
But what about the other three countries? Are we to believe that the
Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, the Hizballah-dominated regime in
Lebanon, and the quirky but pro-Hamas and pro-Muslim Brotherhood regime
in Qatar have suddenly reversed everything that they have been saying in
order to seek a compromise peace with Israel? Highly doubtful to say
the least.
In other words, the reportage ignored the interesting detail about the
three most radical regimes (Qatar’s regional policy is radical; not its
domestic policies) suddenly making a concession to Israel that had been
previously unthinkable? It’s sort of like taking for granted, say,
Joseph Stalin’s supposed embrace of capitalism or France’s rulers
proclaiming that American culture is far superior to their own.
Several aspects of the Arab Peace Initiative represent significant and
positive developments in the official, collective Arab view of the
future of Israel in the Middle East. However, Israel should refrain from
accepting the initiative as a basis for peace negotiations because it
contains seriously objectionable elements. Israel should also reject the
“all or nothing” approach of the Saudis and the Arab League.
Peacemaking is the process of negotiation, not diktat.
Nothing in the current reporting suggests that this aspect of the initiative has changed.
'Human rights watch' is criticizing Hamas for failing to 'investigate' the deaths of seven collaborators who were executed by Hamas during Operation Pillar of Defense.
Ihab al-Ghusain, head of the Hamas government media office, denied the
allegation and said an inquiry headed by the prosecutor general was set
up shortly after the incidents and had made recommendations to the
cabinet. He did not elaborate.
The slain men were serving prior jail sentences for passing
information to Israel when, HRW said, gunmen pulled them from their
cells and killed them. Some of their corpses were dragged in Gaza's
streets by motorcycles to chants of "God is Great."
One of the men
was killed on November 16 and his body was left for the public to see
on a busy street. The other six were killed and mutilated four days
later.\
Following the incidents, Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu
Marzouk called the killings "unlawful" and said the perpetrators "should
be punished and it must not be repeated."
Human Rights Watch said
their convictions may have been based on evidence extracted through
torture, and that an inquiry into their deaths pledged by Hamas seems
not to have begun.
"Hamas's inability or unwillingness to
investigate the brazen murders of seven men makes a mockery of its
claims that it's upholding the rule of law in Gaza," said Sarah Leah
Whitson, Middle East director for the New York-based HRW.
"Even
before the killings, the abuses the men suffered made the criminal
justice system a travesty, regardless of their guilt or innocence," she
said.
Since when is Whitson so concerned about 'human rights'?
And what difference would it make if Hamas conducted an 'investigation' anyway? You don't really expect them to do anything, do you?
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Monday, March 11.
1) More fallout over the Samira Ibrahim selection
Robert Mackey has established himself as an anti-Israel activist.
Following last week's revelation that Egyptian activist Samira Ibrahim
had been making antisemitic and anti-American comments, Mackey was back
in business. He asked, Samuel Tadros, the scholar who had uncovered the
statements if he (Tadros) was a Copt. Since Tadros's religion was
irrelevant to the story there was not point in asking. Some found the question inappropriate. Eric Trager rebuked Mackey.
@robertmackey 1.The Samira Ibrahim case has nothing to do w/Islamism; 2.You are essentializing his perspective as Coptic, which is shameful.
— Eric Trager (@EricTrager18) March 8, 2013
Ms. Ibrahim did not respond to requests for comment, but late Thursday
she appeared to back away from the claim that she had been hacked in a
new update to her Twitter feed which read: “I refused to apologize to
the Zionist lobby in America for previous comments hostile towards
Zionism under pressure from the American government so the prize was
withdrawn.”
She did not back away from the claim. She responded once a writer for
the Times of Israel showed that her claim of being hacked was likely untrue.
After playing up Ibrahim's dual nature, the final paragraph of Mackey's report reads:
In what may have been an attempt to repair some of the damage, Ms.
Ibrahim’s most recent update on Twitter compared the plight of Egypt’s
Christian Coptic minority to that of Jews who were forced to leave the
country decades ago. “What is happening to the Copts now in Egypt
previously happened to the Jews,” she wrote. “Enough racism, enough
hatred, Egypt is for all Egyptians.”
It is unfair that the American embassy in Cairo is taking most of the
blame for the Ibrahim affair. Yes, they should’ve done a better job of
vetting her before sending her name on to Washington. To get a read on
Ibrahim’s political positions, all embassy staff had to do was check
with some of Egypt’s genuine liberal activists, like those who since the
story broke have criticized her vicious opinions, or like Samuel
Tadros, or Mina Rezkalla and Amr Bargisi, or anyone from the Egyptian
Union of Liberal Youth.
But that hardly excuses management at Foggy Bottom, who should have
smelled something fishy at the outset. Did no one question whether or
not Ibrahim was really—as her biography stated before it was scrubbed
from the State Department’s website—“arrested” in high school for
writing a paper criticizing Arab leaders’ insincere support of the
Palestinian cause? Maybe a Mubarak loyalist at the school gave her a
stern talking to, maybe her parents were called in, maybe she was
interrogated by a security official, but actually put in jail? For a
high school paper? I am trying to imagine how State Department
officials, including those in the Bureau of Near East Affairs with many
years of experience in a region full of hard-security regimes,
rationalized this: “Sure, at the infamous Tora prison there was one bloc
set aside for hardcore Islamists—and another for militant high school
essayists.” “But if the Mubarak regime’s control of Egypt was so
comprehensive, why couldn’t state security or the military stop Iranian
missiles from getting into Hamas’ hands via the Sinai?” “That’s because
they chose instead to stop teenage schoolgirls from writing that Mubarak
didn’t support Hamas.” This absurdity is not on the embassy alone but
the entire State Department.
That is certainly right, but it only scratches the surface. Something is
very rotten at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo which was, until the 2003 Iraq
War, the largest U.S. embassy in the world. “Samiragate” is the rule
rather than the exception. Remember, after an Egyptian-American posted
on YoutTube the trailer for an amateurish film mocking the Prophet
Muhammad, the embassy overruled the State Department and tweeted
apologies to the militants attacking the embassy. Public affairs officer
Larry Schwartz became the fall guy for that episode, but he merely
reflected the culture the embassy cultivated.
Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, is a career foreign
service officer who has led the embassy since 2010. She has set the tone
for the embassy’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Explaining why
Mohamed Morsi deserved American F-16 fighters, despite an increasing
disdain for the rule of law and revelations about his hateful
incitement, Patterson declared Morsi deserved the weaponry so Egypt can
“continue to serve as a force for peace, security, and leadership as the
Middle East proceeds with its challenging yet essential journey toward
democracy.”
Here’s the kicker: Guess who seems to be a finalist under Secretary of
State John Kerry for a promotion to become assistant secretary of State
for Near Eastern affairs? That’s right, Anne Patterson. If Samiragate
was truly the result of incompetence, then Patterson could use her new
position to bring that quality to the broader Middle East. Conversely,
if it really was illustrative of the cultural and political bubble that
Patterson imbued or let develop in her staff, then get ready for several
more years of self-inflicted wounds.
2) A defining image, redefined
The defining image of Israel's defensive war, Pillor of Defense, was the
picture of BBC journalist, Jihad Mishrawi holding his dead son, said to
have been killed by an Israeli missile strike. Elder of Ziyon
immediately asked a number of questions about the report.
Still, few media outlets were bothered by these questions.
Reuters also had a photographer at the Gaza City hospital where
Misharawi took his son. The story that these photos tell, of loss and
confusion, may help inform the Palestinian reactions – and, as the
photos continue to spread widely on social media, perhaps the reactions
from beyond the Palestinian territories – to the violence between Israel
and Gaza.
MaryAnne Golon, The Post’s director of photography, explained to me that
the purpose of any front-page photo, regardless of subject, is to move
the reader, whether through its beauty, sentiment or drama.
“When we looked at the selection that night of Middle East photos from
the wire services, this photo got everyone in the gut,” Golon said. “It
went straight to the heart, this sobbing man who just lost his baby
son.”
Post staff then authenticated and verified the facts behind the
Associated Press photo. The dead baby was real. The bombing was real.
Pexton, whose job it was to defend journalistic practices, apparently felt that "truth" is not absolute.
But here's the important question: If it had been known for certain at
the time of Omar Mishrawi's death that he had been killed by a Hamas
rocket, would it have been front page news? Or is it only news when
Israel, defending its citizens, makes a rare mistake?
UN 'human rights council'(!) admits Hamas killed BBC reporter's baby son
The United Nations 'human rights council' has admitted that a 'Palestinian' child who died in a rocket explosion during Operation Pillar of Defense died as a result of Hamas fire (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
In what has become typical of international media, The Washington Post and a BBC bureau
chief last November accused and convicted the Israel Defense Forces in a
heartrending, angry piece without verifying their information after a
fellow editor in Gaza lost his baby son in rocket fire that struck his
home.
The front page photo of an Arab stringer
for a world-class news network, clutching his dead baby son in his arms,
tears running down his cheeks, became a powerful icon of the tragedy of
the conflict.
It was used by Hamas as propaganda to blacken Israel’s name in the
media and politically in the international arena as it fought to defend
its southern population against Gaza’s missile fire.
But apparently very few questioned the source of the rocket fire – certainly not the grieving father, Jihad Misharawi, who at his son’s funeral blamed “the Jews” – nor did BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who came to Gaza to support his colleague, or The Washington Post, which printed the story, written by Max Fisher and "foreign staff", with photos, published on the front page.
...
“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me,” Fisher wrote, “saying that Misharawi is a BBC
video and photo editor. After spending a ‘few hours’ with his grieving
colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ‘Question asked here is: If Israel can
kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month), how
did Jihad’s son get killed.”
Answer: Jihad’s son was killed by Hamas, according to independent
investigators from the United Nations. He was murdered by the
journalist’s own neighbors, the very men who purport to be his biggest
protectors, who live in the surrounding buildings in the city where he
lives.
According to the advanced version of its report released by the U.N.
Human Rights Council released late last week, “On 14 November, a woman,
her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were
killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of
Israel.”
A footnote to the section says the case was personally investigated
by the U.N. OHCHR, and that investigators believe the attack emanated
from Hamas.
This story was actually reported last Thursday night by Elder of Ziyon, who has been all over it since the start. Read the whole thing.
For the first time since Operation Pillar of Defense concluded in November, a rocket from Gaza slammed into Ashkelon this morning. No one was hurt but there was damage to a road.
The rocket failed to trigger an air raid siren, and the IDF is investigating why one did not go off.
"An explosion was
heard in the Ashkelon region experts searched areas experts and found one rocket
that struck, damaging a road but causing no injuries," Rosenfeld
said.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility by any groups
in Gaza, where Egyptian mediators helped achieve a truce after eight days of
punishing Israeli air strikes amid rocket attacks from the coastal territory in
late November.
The attack came after the death on Saturday of a
Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody which triggered protests in the occupied
West Bank.
Note no mention of Iron Dome (which I don't believe is dependent on a Code Red warning) either. Hmmm.
CBS' 60 Minutes did a segment on Sunday night about Iron Dome. I'd like to show it to you and discuss it afterward.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Lance K).
The segment gives the impression that because we have Iron Dome, we can let the 'Palestinians' have major chunks of - if not all of - Judea and Samaria. That's not true. Most Israelis still do go to shelters, because missiles do get through and it's impossible to continue going about your business as if nothing is going on even with Iron Dome. None of you overseas would want to live the way that Israelis in Beersheva and Ashkelon and Ashdod lived during Operation Pillar of Defense.
Also, going back to the suicidal 1967 lines would assume that there will never be a threat from Syrian or Jordanian or Lebanese air space. Given the events of the last two years, can we really assume that?
Finally, I wasn't aware that Israel is expected to take orders in return for financing for Iron Dome. What Israel has done - at least until recently - was entirely in keeping with the policies of every administration up to the perfidious Obama administration, which, let's face it, needed to point to some area of cooperation with Israel and has chosen to point to Iron Dome.
And it's not like the US is getting nothing in return. The technology is going to come in very handy for the US when the rockets start flying from Mexico (What? You think they won't?) and Israel votes with the US in the UN more than any other country.
Violence and war have
long been documented on Twitter and other social networks -- typically
by journalists and by regular people on the ground (notably the
Pakistani witness to the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden).
But in November, the
Israeli military took this concept to a new level. During its conflict
with Palestinian forces in Gaza, the Israel Defense Force tweeted
updates, including the news it had "eliminated" Hamas leader Ahmed
Jabari. The military arm of Hamas responded on Twitter with its own
provocations.
The back-and-forth between the warring sides signaled a jarring evolution in how war is broadcast in real time.
The IDF Spokesperson's current Twitter page is screencapped below, but if you look at the earlier version above, you will see at least one familiar blog among their first 10 follows.
The dead 4-year old boy in a picture with Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil and Hamas 'Prime Minister' Ismail Haniyeh was killed by a misfired 'Palestinian' rocket, according to a report issued by 'Human Rights Watch.'
In the report Human Rights Watch places blame squarely on terrorists
in Gaza for the boy’s death. “Some rockets launched by Palestinian armed
groups fell short and struck inside Gaza. On November 16, a rocket
that appears to have been launched from within Gaza hit a crowded
street in the Gazan town of Jabalya, killing a man, 23, and a boy, 4,
and wounding five people.”
The 'Palestinians' are frauds through and through, rotten to the core.
As part of our collective outrage over the United Nations granting non-member observer status last month to the imaginary 'state' of 'Palestine,' Israel has announced that it is revoking the VIP status of dozens of senior 'Palestinians.' This means that 'important' 'Palestinians' like Nabil Sha'ath will now have to wait in line to go through Israeli checkpoints like every other 'Palestinian.'
One of the PA officials affected by
the new policy is Nabil Sha’ath, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and a
former negotiator with Israel.
Sha’ath’s card was revoked after he
visited the Gaza Strip to participate in Hamas’s “victory” celebrations in the
aftermath of Operation Pillar of Defense.
Sha’ath said in response that
he does not really care about the VIP card “because Palestinian unity is much
more important.”
Palestinians have regularly criticized senior PA
officials for accepting Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various
privileges denied to most of their people. The cards also allowed their holders
to pass through IDF checkpoints without delay or checking.
“Palestinian armed groups made clear in their statements that harming
civilians was their aim,” said HRW's Middle East director Sarah Leah
Whitson. “There is simply no legal justification for launching rockets
at populated areas.”
The group also found that Gazan groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad,
and the Popular Resistance Committee, justified targeting civilian
centers as reprisal for Israeli strikes, an act also banned under
international law.
Furthermore, such groups "repeatedly fired
rockets from densely populated areas, near homes, businesses, and a
hotel, unnecessarily placing civilians in the vicinity at grave risk
from Israeli counter-fire," the report said.
The detailed report
included examples of rockets being launched from densely populated areas
in Gaza, and noted that groups fired from underground tunnels with
hatches for the first time. HRW faulted Palestinian armed groups for
failing to alert civilians or urge them to evacuate prior to launching
rockets in their vicinity.
As the ruling power in the Strip, the
human rights group said, Hamas was responsible for reining in the
behavior of other groups.
“As the ruling authority in Gaza, Hamas has an obligation to stop unlawful attacks and punish those responsible,” Whitson said.
But lest you get your hopes up for a Goldstone or other style of inquiry into these human rights violations....
A week earlier, HRW reported that Israeli attacks on journalists and
media facilities during the operation also violated laws of war, saying
that Israel provided no specific information to justify claims that they
were military targets.
“Just because Israel says a journalist
was a fighter or a TV station was a command center does not make it so,”
Whitson said. “Journalists who praise Hamas and TV stations that
applaud attacks on Israel may be propagandists, but that does not make
them legitimate targets under the laws of war.”
Well yeah, except that Israel did provide evidence, and Hamas' al-Aqsa television is a designated terror organization.
We can handle the BDS'ers, and the overseas clients aren't too concerned when rockets hit Sderot, but scenes like this one - a 'Color Red' alert on the Ayalon expressway in Tel Aviv during Operation Pillar of Defense - may be causing Israel to lose some business.
A US company has ended negotiations with an Israeli firm for a large
contract because of concern over area tension, setting off fears of a
“security boycott.”
The unnamed American subsidiary of the L-3 space communications firm
has cited “concern over the situation in the Middle East,” reported Israel Defense, which added, “The message that reached the company in Israel stated that ‘we do not want to approve suppliers from Israel.’”
Last month’s massive Hamas missile bombardment, which reached Tel
Aviv, set off the alarm bells. At the time, several companies, including
Teva Pharmaceuticals, received worried phone calls from customers.
On the last day of the Pillar of Defense counterterrorist operation,
the American firm's officials sent a message to Israeli firms, according
to Israel Defense, that although “It is true that we chose
your product to answer a certain need, yet additional products were also
examined, and they had to pass an internal tender.
“Our greatest concern at this time is with the turmoil in the Middle
East, and the senior management does not want to approve more suppliers
from Israel. This is a bad timing, but we will keep you informed if
anything changes. We have the data of the products that were discussed,
should things improve and an opportunity arises."
The message could have been expected from a country in Europe, which
has an anti-Israel bias. but having come from the United States, it
triggered concerns the same conclusion could spread to other companies.
No war in human history has ever truly ended without one side soundly defeating the other. If we do not soundly and finally defeat the 'Palestinian' terror organizations - Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, the 'Palestinian Authority' - these periodic 'flare ups' will continue to disturb the peace. We keep saying that 'next time' we'll defeat them. It's time for 'next time' to come already. Otherwise, the wars will never end.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
First, IDF aircraft
