'Most pro-Israel administration evah' refused to assist Israel in locating body of missing IDF soldier
I'm sure that many of you recall the incident from this past summer in which the body of IDF soldier Oron Shaul was snatched from a burnt out APC in Gaza City's Shujaiyya neighborhood. It now turns out that the IDF requested assistance from the FBI in finding Oron's body and was turned down. Why the FBI? Because Hammas hacked into Shaul's Facebook page and Facebook's servers are located in the United States. The IDF hoped that it could find out where Hamas was located using the IP address from which Hamas was posting to the Facebook page. Walla.com (via Israel Hayom) explains.
On July 22, as international
news reports carried Hamas' claim of Shaul's capture, the IDF really had
no idea whatsoever what happened to the Israeli soldier. The only
statement made by the IDF at that point was that Shaul was missing in
action. Even two days later, the IDF still did not know if Shaul had
been kidnapped by Hamas or whether he was dead.
Kidnapping an Israeli soldier is one of the
highest priorities for Hamas, since Israel has in the past proven
willing to trade large numbers of imprisoned terrorists to get back just
one soldier, as happened in the case of Gilad Schalit. The news of
Hamas' alleged kidnapping triggered wild celebrations in Gaza.
The IDF and Israeli intelligence agencies
initiated a massive man hunt for Shaul, but to no avail. "We simply did
not know whether he was alive or not," an Israeli military official told
me, "or whether Hamas had killed him or whether Hamas had simply
kidnapped his body. But we had immediately set up a dragnet around the
entire area to encircle the terrorists and prevent them from leaving the
general area. We knew we did not have much time."
The dragnet proved porous, as Hamas terrorists
had many ways of escaping especially through the network of underground
tunnels they had built.
But in hacking Shaul's Facebook page, Hamas
may have inadvertently given away the location of the terrorists who had
Shaul or his body. That's because whenever a Facebook account is
accessed, Facebook's servers would automatically keep a record of the
Internet Protocol address where the account was accessed. IP addresses
are leased, which then can provide a geographic location of the IP
address where the Facebook account was hacked. In addition, there was
also a remote possibility that Shaul had been carrying his cell phone
although Israeli soldiers are not supposed to take their cell phones
into battle. But if he had done so, then it was also theoretically be
possible that Hamas had hacked into the mobile Facebook application on
Shaul's phone. If the Israelis could obtain the Facebook server data as
soon as possible, they thought they might have had a chance to find the
whereabouts of the Hamas terrorists who took Shaul.
Israel made an urgent appeal to the FBI for
help in trying to determine the remote source or information that would
be stored on Facebook servers indicating the location where Shaul's page
had been hacked. Upon receiving the request from Israel in Washington
on July 21, the FBI immediately issued a "preservation letter" to
Facebook ordering them to preserve all data saved on their server
pertaining to the Shaul's account.
At 4:25 p.m. on July 21, the FBI contacted a
United States Attorney's Office in a nearby district to initiate the
legal process to get a court order to serve Facebook for server
information on the account belonging to Israeli soldier Oron Shaul.
"Due to HAMAS status as a Designated Terrorist
Organization (DTO), there is a great effort to locate those who
kidnapped and/or killed ORON," read an FBI email to the U.S. Attorney's
Office, "HAMAS is already using the kidnapping as propaganda, which is
material support to a DTO."
In the email, the FBI noted there was unusual
activity on Shaul's Facebook account after the time of his kidnapping
and said it needed more information from Facebook that it could only
obtain with a court order to be able to fully determine what "HAMAS was
doing with Oron's Facebook account and possibly his phone." Was the U.S.
Attorney's Office in a position, the FBI wanted to know, to immediately
obtain a court order for the FBI to deliver to Facebook?
Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Attorney's Office
thought it was near ready to be able to immediately obtain a court
order. But before it could obtain such an order, it needed specific
information on Shaul's Facebook account that it could present to the
judge.
...
But the next day, July 22, the
U.S. Attorney's Office received a startling response from the FBI:
"Thank You for your effort, input and assistance. I regret to inform you
we have been denied approval to move forward with legal process. We
were told by our management we need a MLAT [Mutual Legal Assistance
Treaty] in order to continue to assist our partner with the request in
question." Those words put an immediate halt to the Israeli request.
An MLAT is a standardized legal agreement
between the United States and other countries that spells out the legal
and diplomatic protocols in processing requests for legal information
pertaining to court cases in either the United States or in another
country. MLATs go through various bureaucratic channels, usually take
weeks to process and would generally be used for non-pressing legal
matters in which the United States or another country was carrying out a
legal process such as a prosecution involving a citizen of another
country.
Prosecutors familiar with their use say that
an MLAT would definitely not be used in an urgent life-or-death
intelligence or counter-terrorist incident, especially with a close ally
such as Israel. "In a pressing court matter, there is no way the USG
would invoke an MLAT with a close ally," said a veteran prosecutor who
has worked on international counter-terrorism cases.
Law enforcement officials knowledgeable about
this incident say both prosecutors and FBI were shocked at the sudden
turn of events. "This sudden reversal was devastating," said one law
enforcement official who was intimately familiar with this incident.
"For those working this case, they felt this decision was tantamount to a
death sentence. Nothing less."
And thus, the FBI was never able to supply
Israel with any information on Shaul's Facebook account that might have
led to the location of the soldier or his remains that had been seized
by Hamas.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold answers critics who claim that Israel's handling of Shejaiya was 'disproportionate.' If your country were confronted like this, what do you think it would do? (Hint: Think NATO in Yugoslavia in 1999 - not pretty).
Finally, there was the decision that Israel ultimately made: Separate,
as much as possible, the civilian population from the Hamas fighters and
arms in their midst. This required getting the Palestinian population
to evacuate potential target areas by multiple means: dropping leaflets
with evacuation routes, breaking into Hamas radio broadcasts with
warnings about specific areas, Arabic-language telephone calls to homes
and text messages to cellphones. While the notification process was
underway, an Israeli drone would hover over the area that was to be
cleared to ensure that residents had left.
Against this Israeli effort, Hamas employed a counter-strategy of
trying to prevent civilians from heeding Israeli warnings. On July 8,
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri appeared on local television and called
on Gazans to serve as human shields against Israeli air attacks. Hamas
enforcers sought to dissuade civilians from fleeing. And, anticipating a
ground incursion into neighborhoods like Shajaiya, Hamas booby-trapped
whole rows of homes, hoping to collapse them on Israeli soldiers. This
only magnified the scale of the destruction.
It should be recalled
that proportionality in international law has a very specific meaning:
It is the calculation a military commander must make as to whether the
military advantage to be gained by the use of force is greater than the
probable harm that may be inflicted on the surrounding civilian
population. Anyone who complains about “disproportionality” must explain
exactly what the IDF should have done to neutralize the terrorist
threat from Shajaiya while causing less destruction than what occurred.
War
between an embattled democracy, like Israel, and a terrorist
organization, like Hamas, inevitably produces certain asymmetries.
Israel heavily invested in the defense of its population, including air
raid shelters as well as a missile defense system, known as Iron Dome.
Where did Hamas put the billions of dollars it obtained from supporters
like Qatar? It built the system of attack tunnels and an arsenal of
missiles. Yet there are those who wrongly infer Israeli intent to cause
civilian casualties from the greater damage suffered by Hamas, which
resulted from a war Hamas imposed, and from its readiness to sacrifice
the lives of its people to advance its extremist goals.
First-person footage from the field of IDF special forces storming a
terrorist building in Shuja'iya. They seize a stockpile of weapons and
uncover a tunnel opening.
Let's go to the videotape.
For those who have forgotten, it's a war crime to use a home, or any building that's in civilian areas, for the storage of weapons or as a military installation. But Hamas does that all the time. They are looking to cause civilian casualties.
Israel's Channel 10 reports that during a lull in the fighting in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighborhood on Monday, 20 'Palestinians' went out to demonstrate against Hamas and the war. Hamas surrounded them and shot them as 'collaborators' (link in Hebrew).
And you think that what you see reported from Gaza is objective?
"A short while ago, phonecalls were made and text messages were sent
out to the civilian population of Shejaiya, Zeitun and eastern Jabaliya
calling them to evacuate immediately towards central Gaza City," a
statement from the IDF said, referring to three areas to the north,
south and east of Gaza City.
Such phonecalls are usually a prelude to an IDF attack on a region, and are meant to reduce civilian casualties.
Shortly afterward, the IDF began striking areas of Gaza that had not been attacked before, including Zeitun and Jabaliya.
Israel had appeared to be winding down its attack operations in Gaza
Monday and contenting itself with blowing up the remaining tunnels from
Gaza into Israel. However, a serious incident in which at least four
Israelis were killed by a Hamas mortar changed all that.
At least four, possibly five, people were killed when the mortar
shell scored a direct hit on a home in the Eshkol region Monday
afternoon. Four other people were seriously injured. The injured were
taken to hospitals in Beersheva and Ashkelon, Voice of Israel public radio said.
In another serious incident, five Hamas terrorists were eliminated
near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. They appear to have infiltrated via an attack
tunnel.
The house was hit in a major round of rocket firing Monday afternoon,
as the last vestiges of what was supposed to be a 24-hour truce
evaporated. By 6 p.m., Hamas had fired nearly two dozen rockets at
Israel, most of them in the late afternoon. Iron Dome missiles shot down
two rockets, one over Ashkelon and one over Sderot. At 7:30, rockets
were fired at the Hadera and Binyamina region, not far south from Haifa.
I give any 'official' Gazan source about as much credibility as Baghdad Bob, but....
גורם רפואה רשמי ברצועה: בתקיפת צהל בגבליה שבצפון הרצועה - 3 הרוגים ו-40 פצועים
— Gal Berger (@galberger) July 28, 2014
Official medical sources in Gaza say that in the IDF attack on Jabalya in the norther Strip, three people are dead and 40 wounded.
Video: IDF destroys terror tunnel from which 7 were killed last Sunday
Seven soldiers from the Golani Brigade were killed on July 20 when Hamas
terrorists emerged from an attack tunnel in Gaza and fired an anti-tank missile at their armored vehicle. The IDF found the tunnel, and on July 26, they destroyed it.
The IDF has released a map of at least some of the tunnels discovered in Sejaiya, a neighborhood in Gaza City. Note that one of the tunnels shown comes from the al-Wafa Hospital.
Video and more: Hamas terrorists at Al-Wafa hospital (Gaza City)
This write up came from the IDF spokesperson's office and was posted here.
Background Information – Al-Wafa Hospital
Al-Wafa hospital, located near Shajuayia in Gaza City, is a Hamas military
compound.
The hospital housed a Hamas command and control center, and was utilized to
direct and supervise the ongoing battles in the area. Among the hospital
grounds, there was a lookout post, used to gather intelligence and monitor
IDF forces activities in order to carry out attacks.
In addition, there were several access shafts to the Hamas tunnel network from within
the
hospital.
On July 22, 2014, at the request of the IDF, the hospital was evacuated from
patients and staff, and continued to be occupied by Hamas gunmen, that
continued to fire at the IDF forces.
On July 21, 2014, the head of the Israeli Coordination and Liaison
Administration (CLA) with Gaza confirmed with the Head of the WHO (World
Health Organization) in Gaza that he has informed the hospital manager three
times, that the premises should be vacated. The head of the WHO stated that
the hospital manager declared there were no patients or staff in the
hospital, and that the building is empty. This was confirmed by the Gaza CLA
on July 23, 2014.
Attached is footage of the IAF strike carried out earlier today [July 23] at terror
targets in the site. Secondary explosions are visible in the footage,
indicating an extensive amount of weaponry stored.
Well, here we go. The IDF has just asked the 'Palestinians' to evacuate Shifa Hospital, which is being used as a military command and control center, and where the Hamas leadership is hiding in a bunker (link in Hebrew).
I'm embedding a live broadcast from Israel's Channel 2 below, and then I will go back and update with a summary in English on the post linked above.
The article is about the fighting at the neighboring al-Wafa Hospital (see previous post which went up two minutes before this one). The report says that over the past few days, the patients were removed from the hospital, and that it had become completely a military installation.
According to the article, the takeover of Shejaiya is nearly complete. More than 120 military targets embedded among the civilian population have been destroyed.
The last part of the story is about John Kerry's arrival (covered in a post that's queued for a little while from now).
I invite you to continue watching the broadcast above. If it stops, an arrow should pop up and just click on the arrow to continue.
US Secretary of State John FN Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon are in the area today. Anne Bayefsky explains why they're not welcome right now.
It is hard to imagine two more unwelcome, uninvited visitors to Israel
in the middle of a war against Palestinian terrorists than UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry. But
even more unwelcome is that they are working together.
Their common cause is that although Israel has a right of self-defense
in theory, Israel ought to be prevented from exercising this right in
practice.
...
On July 16, 2014, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA) issued a report stating: “the Israeli military delivered
text messages to virtually all the residents of Ash Shuja’iyya and Az
Zaitun neighborhoods in eastern Gaza city, approximately 100,000 people,
warning them to leave their homes by 8 am today (16 July), ahead of
attacks to be launched in the area.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
also made phone calls and distributed leaflets.
OCHA then describes what came next: “Subsequently, the Palestinian
Ministry of Interior in Gaza reportedly instructed the residents to…not
flee the area.” As a result, OCHA admits: “the vast majority decided to
stay.”
This story tells us both that Israel adhered to the Geneva Convention
demand of providing “effective advance warning” to civilians and that
Hamas violated the rule forbidding parties to “direct the movement of
…civilians in order to shield military objectives from attack.”
What was Hamas trying to protect when it used Palestinians as human shields in Shuja’iyya?
The IDF refers to Shuja’iyya as the Hamas’ “terror fortress” in the Gaza
Strip. The IDF has found more than ten openings to tunnels in
Shuja’iyya and since July 8, Hamas has fired over 140 rockets at Israel
from this neighborhood alone. As IDF Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz
put it: “Hamas has built a war machine in residential areas.”
This is another violation of the laws of armed conflict. By deliberately
locating its terrorist infrastructure in the midst of Shuja’iyya’s
civilian population, Hamas violates the prohibition on “locating
legitimate military targets within or near densely populated areas."
Following the warnings, the IDF went into the Shuja’iyya neighborhood –
and is still there – for the purpose of destroying the tunnels that have
been designed and used to attack Israeli civilians. This is Hamas’
most basic war crime of all. In the words of the Geneva Conventions,
civilians “shall not be the object of attack.”
...
What is clear is the outrageous reaction of UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon. On July 20, 2014 he said: “dozens more civilians, including
children, have been killed in Israeli military strikes in the Shuja’iyya
neighborhood in Gaza. I condemn this atrocious action. Israel must
exercise maximum restraint and do far more to protect civilians.”
Ban Ki-moon said nothing about Hamas having failed to protect
Palestinian civilians. He said nothing about Hamas having put
Palestinian civilians directly in harm’s way. In fact he said nothing
about any “atrocious action” by Hamas. He also made no demand that
Hamas “restrain” itself from fulfilling its stated goal, namely, that
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will
obliterate it.”
For the UN, no move that Israel makes short of surrender to the Palestinian mob, will ever be sufficient.
When Palestinian civilians did heed Israel’s warnings and did not die,
on July 16, 2014 OCHA complained “the relocation experience has
been…traumatic…Women have reported stress due to their inability to
maintain…modesty norms…[in] overcrowded spaces...”
Five million Israelis have just seconds to run for a bomb shelter and
save their lives. Older people have died from heart failure when the
sirens go off. Small children flee rockets raining down on their
kindergartens and spend hours trapped between four walls day after day.
Let alone the parents and brothers and sisters of the 50,000 plus heroic
young men and women on the front lines who spend every waking minute
dreading a phone call, haunted by the prospect of kidnapping by very
real monsters.
The truth is the UN doesn’t give a damn about the suffering of Israelis.
...
When Ban Ki-moon comes knocking, therefore, his bona fides are non-existent. So why is Secretary Kerry by his side?
IDF identifies soldier missing in Gaza as Oron Shaul
The IDF has named the soldier who is missing from Sunday's APC incident in Shejaiya. He is Oron Shaul, the soldier whom Hamas claims to have. The IDF does not know if he is alive or dead. The Facebook page to which I linked on Monday morning has been taken down. The other six soldiers in the APC were all found dead. This is from the first link.
An IDF soldier who was in an infantry APC targeted in a Hamas attack in Gaza on Sunday is missing, the army said Tuesday.
Six
bodies of soldiers who were on board the ACP when it was hit were
identified, the army said, but a seventh soldier who was also on board
remains unaccounted for. His fate remains unknown, and the IDF is
working intensively to find answers.
The announcement came after Hamas claimed to have kidnapped an Israeli
soldier on Sunday, not clarifying if he was alive or dead.
I'm going to share with you a couple of the images I found while searching for the one above.
I'm going to tell you flat out that I believe that the soldier is dead and that Hamas is holding a body. The body is probably being hidden somewhere in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. I'm sick over this. I'm even sicker over it because of this sentence that appeared in the Times of London on Monday (sorry - I don't have a link. I received it by email), which has also appeared in Israeli media, but will likely not be addressed until the current war is over.
"However, in a development that may lead to criticism of Israel’s political
elite, it emerged that seven of the soldiers were in an ageing 1960s’
armoured personnel carrier when they were killed by a rocket-propelled
grenade. All were from the elite Golani Brigade."
Oh my... Egypt refuses to add Hamas' 'ridiculous' conditions to cease fire arrangement
The number in the picture is surely incorrect by now but you get the idea.
With a 'humanitarian cease fire' rumored (unconfirmed) to be going into effect from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm today, Hamas is holding up a real ease fire by demands that are far beyond what's been reported in the media and that are so 'ridiculous' that Egypt refuses to put them in the agreement.
Hamas, which has rejected not one, but three separate ceasefire
attempts, called on Israel over the past week to submit to a number of
'conditions' - or demands - in return for an end to the violence against
Israelis. The calls were accompanied by threats against the Israeli
people, made through a series of weakly-worded text messages.
These 'conditions' include, among other things, greater access to
international waters, reopening of border crossings, and relaxation of
trade restrictions; release of terrorists who were re-arrested during
and after Operation Brother's Keeper earlier this month; and the
possibility of constructing an international airport from Gaza. Israel
rejects these demands for their potential to re-arm Hamas and enable it
to make stronger ties with its Iranian and Arabian contacts.
According to Tuesday's report, Palestinian Authority (PA)
"Intelligence Chief" General Majid Faraj and representatives of Egypt
met late Monday night to discuss a possible deal. Faraj, who attended the meeting in Qatar between the head of
the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshaal and PA Chairman Mahmoud
Abbas, left hastily after the Cairo meeting.
Sources close to the negotiations claimed to the Israeli daily
that Hamas's demands are even more than what was leaked to the media
last week, and are so pretentious that even Egypt has balked at adding
them to terms of the deal.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports continue to circulate Tuesday morning
that yet another "humanitarian ceasefire" has been called for a
five-hour period, between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm.
It should be noted that Israel has denied these rumors, and has not
admitted to being in cease-fire talks with Hamas in any event. However,
the existence of indirect contacts, through mediators, is undeniable.
This has been the Arabs' problem since the War of Independence. They have lost every war, and then they expect to be treated as if they were a victor making conditions of surrender. Yes, they've lost again. But we're happy to keep going until their entire terror infrastructure is destroyed and the Hamas leadership is killed. And no one can say that we kept the war going.
Arabic television videos (with translation) of Hamas terror tunnels
This is a compilation of television reports on Hamas' terror tunnels, mostly from Qatar's al-Jazeera Arabic and Lebanon's al-Quds television. Note the reference to Shejaiya at the 3:50 mark.
Let's go to the videotape.
What they're not mentioning there is the tunnels that lead into Israel, although that's clearly implied at the end when they talk about freeing prisoners... obviously in exchange for kidnapped Israelis, God Forbid.
The 'Palestinians' are claiming that they kidnapped an IDF soldier during Sunday's battle in Shejaiya, prompting celebrations all over the 'Palestinian Authority,' but the IDF is denying the report, saying that the soldier who was supposedly 'kidnapped' was among Sunday's dead.
"There is no kidnapped Israeli soldier and those rumors are untrue," said Ambassador Ron Prosor when asked about the kidnapping.
The armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas group claimed late Sunday
that it had kidnapped an Israeli soldier, prompting celebrations in the
streets of Gaza City.
"The Israeli soldier Shaul Aaron is in the hands of the Qassam
Brigades," a spokesman using the nom-de-guerre Abu Obeida said in a
televised address. He provided the supposed soldier's name and ID.
"He is a prisoner, and if Zionists lie about the dead and wounded, then
the fate of this soldier is their responsibility," the spokesman said.
The Facebook page of Oron Shaul, a Golani soldier, has been defaced
overnight with Arabic messages claiming he has been taken hostage.
There have been celebrations in the Arab neighborhoods in and around
Jerusalem overnight following news of the soldier's capture.
Let's go to the videotape.
For those who have nothing better to do with their time, there are more such videos here.
There are actually two separate Facebook pages for Oron Shaul (in fact, there are more than two, all with the same profile picture), one which I did not bother to opens which is in Arabic and labels him 'comedian,' and another in Hebrew, which says he is from Golani and is here. Although his name is not among those that have been officially released, it is clear from the writing on the wall on his Facebook page that he was killed on Sunday. May God Avenge his blood. My guess is that Hamas managed to grab his dog tag.
I saw something on Facebook from Akiva Novick - who writes for Yedioth - that Golani soldiers fought extremely hard on Sunday to make sure that Hamas was not able to grab any of the bodies.
The military cleared for publication the names of: Maj. Tzafrir Bar-Or,
32, from Holon; Capt. Tzvika Kaplan, 28, from Kdomim; Sgt. Gilad
Ya'akovi, 21, from Kiryat Ono; Sgt. Oz Mandelovich, from Avtalion; and
Sgt. Sean Carmeli, 21, from Ra'anana.
May God Avenge their blood.
Carmeli is a lone soldier - a soldier whose family lives abroad - from South Padre Island, Texas, and is one of two dual American-Israeli citizens who was killed yesterday. The picture above is the profile picture from his Facebook page.
As to how the 13 were killed, the IDF is not releasing a whole lot of details.
In one incident, in the early hours of Sunday morning, an APC
carrying soldiers from Golani's 13th Battalion drove over an explosive
device and caught fire, killing seven who were onboard.
Shortly
afterward, soldiers from the battalion engaged terrorists in a gun
battle, and one soldier was killed in the exchange of fire.
Hours later, two soldiers were killed in a firefight with a terrorist cell in Gaza.
Three
members of the Golani Reconnaissance Brigade were killed when a fire
tore through the building they were in, shortly before 9 a.m.
Cleared for publication: 13 Israeli soldiers killed in Shajaieh.
— Daniel Nisman (@DannyNis) July 20, 2014
From what I have heard, there was a transporter that was ambushed.
May God Avenge their blood.
UPDATE 6:29 PM
More details:
Israeli forces encountered stiff resistance from Hamas fighters entrenched among the civilian population in Shajaieh, suffered 13 casualties
— Daniel Nisman (@DannyNis) July 20, 2014
#Shajaieh represents the most costly battle for IDF since 2006 Lebanon War, where over a dozen troops (also Golani) killed in Bint Jbeil.
— Daniel Nisman (@DannyNis) July 20, 2014
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
