Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

07/23 Links Pt1: Glick: Obama to the rescue – of Hamas; Dershowitz: Hamas ends 2 State Solution

From Ian:

Israel’s mood at the start of this war with Hamas was one of confident assurance. We wouldn’t be deterred by the rocket threat, and Hamas would be contained.
That’s utterly changed. The rockets turned out to be the least of our concerns. And the national mood now is a mixture of anguish at the growing toll of IDF dead, anger at the feckless response of parts of the international community — notably the US — and confidence in the troops and (atypically) the political leadership.
To lose the lives of 30 Israelis to terrorism is, appallingly, nothing new in a country that survived the suicide bombing onslaught of the second intifada. As the former Shin Bet intelligence chief Avi Dichter pointed out on Tuesday, 30 Israelis were killed in a single Hamas suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover Eve March 27, 2002. That was the worst, but still only one of dozens upon dozens of bombings that battered Israel’s buses, restaurants and shopping malls a decade ago.
But to lose 30 soldiers battling vicious Islamic extremists in Gaza produces anguish of a different nature. Our soldiers are our future. They’re the youngsters among us, who have been required because of Israel’s unique geographic and geostrategic peril to place themselves on the front line for years of service before their young lives have really begun. We feel guilty that we’ve pitched them into war. We, the safe civilians, draw our strength from the sky-high level of their determination and motivation to protect us. We wish it were us, the grownups, who were on the front line. We’d have much preferred for the rockets, targeting all of us, to have been the chief threat.

Caroline Glick: Obama to the rescue – of Hamas

While Israel had killed 183 terrorists, it appeared that most of the terrorists killed were in the low to middle ranks of Hamas’s leadership hierarchy.
Hamas’s senior commanders, as well as its political leadership have hunkered down in hidden tunnel complexes.
In other words, Israel is making good progress.
But it hasn’t completed its missions. It needs several more days of hard fighting.
Recognizing this, Israel’s newfound Muslim allies have not been pushing for a cease-fire.
In contrast, the Obama administration is insisting on concluding a cease-fire immediately.
As Israel has uncovered the scope of Hamas’s infrastructure of murder and terror, the US has acted with the UN, Turkey and Qatar to pressure Israel (and Egypt) to agree to a cease-fire and so end IDF operations against Hamas before the mission is completed.
To advance this goal, US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cairo on Monday night with an aggressive plan to force on Israel a cease-fire Hamas and its state sponsors will accept.

Alan Dershowitz: Has Hamas ended the prospects for a two state solution?

The new reality caused by Hamas' shutting down of international air travel to and from Israel would plainly justify an Israeli demand that it maintain military control over the West Bank in any two-state deal. The Israeli public would never accept a deal that did not include a continued Israeli military presence in the West Bank. They have learned the tragic lesson of Gaza and they will not allow it to be repeated in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, however, is unlikely to accept such a condition, though it should. This will simply make it far more difficult for an agreement to be reached.
It was precisely one of the goals of the Hamas rocket and tunnel assaults to scuttle any two-state agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The Hamas Charter categorically rejects the two-state solution, as does the military wing of Hamas. In this tragic respect, Hamas has already succeeded. By aiming its rockets in the direction of Ben Gurion Airport, Hamas may well have scuttled any realistic prospects for a two-state solution. It cannot be allowed to succeed.
The international community, which has a significant stake in protecting international air traffic from terrorist rocket attacks, must support Israel's efforts to stop these attacks—permanently. If Hamas is allowed to shut down Israel's major airport, every terrorist group in the world will begin to target airports throughout the world. The shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine will be but one of many such tragedies, if Hamas is allowed to succeed. An attack on the safety on Israel's airport is an attack on the safety of all international aviation. Israel is the canary in the mine. What Hamas has done to Israeli aviation is a warning to the world. In its efforts to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Ben Gurion Airport, Israel is fighting for the entire civilized world against those who would shoot down civilian airliners. The world should support Israel in this noble fight.

Egyptian makes pro-Israel video

StandWithUs has been asking people around the world to show that they stand for Israel.

Here is a response from an unlikely place: Egypt.

The guy has guts.

(h/t Yoel)

From UNRWA yesterday:

Today, in the course of the regular inspection of its premises, UNRWA discovered rockets hidden in a vacant school in the Gaza Strip. As soon as the rockets were discovered, UNRWA staff were withdrawn from the premises, and so we are unable to confirm the precise number of rockets. The school is situated between two other UNRWA schools that currently each accommodate 1,500 internally displaced persons.

UNRWA strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.

The Agency immediately informed the relevant parties and is pursuing all possible measures for the removal of the objects in order to preserve the safety and security of the school. UNRWA will launch a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident.

It is fascinating that UNRWA couldn't count the rockets, or take photos.

It is equally fascinating that the guards that they presumably deploy to guard the schools don't notice things like this.

When the first set of rockets were found a few days ago, Gaza's interior ministry (which is Hamas) called UNRWA a bunch of liars. They spoke to all the terror groups and all of them said they had no idea about how rockets could have ended up in a school, or indeed any civilian facility.

So we have one set of liars accusing another set of liars of lying.

For all its faults, UNRWA does have incentive to keep rockets out of its schools. But its workers are often members of terror groups themselves - and almost certainly their guards are terrorists - so this sort of thing is inevitable.

UNRWA doesn't want to release photos because it is afraid that they will be used against it. And they have a history of downplaying their problems with Palestinian Arabs who regularly protest UNRWA and violently shut down their facilities when they have grievances, Even though UNRWA employees are about 95% Palestinian, it is still regarded as an enemy when it doesn't provide all the free services the Palestinian Arabs demand.

It is to UNRWA's credit that they issued this press release to begin with. Of course, they still tried to bury it.

You see, immediately after this press release, they issued another press release accusing Israel of shelling one of their schools - the previous day. So they made sure that the top press release in UNRWA's website, and the only one visible from their home page, is anti-Israel, not anti-terrorist.

Even that press release makes what are almost certainly false accusations:

UNRWA condemns in the strongest possible terms the shelling of one of its schools in the central area of Gaza which was sheltering hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the current fighting. At approximately 1655 hours yesterday, UNRWA’s Maghazi Preparatory Girls School, in the Maghazi refugee camp, where approximately 300 internally displaced people had sought refuge was struck by explosive ordnance believed to have been fired by Israeli forces. One person, a child, was injured in the shelling incident. We have raised this shelling incident with the Israeli authorities.

This morning when UNRWA officials went back to investigate the incident, there was further shelling of the school, seriously endangering the lives of UN humanitarian workers and displaced civilians. This second incident took place at approximately 1029 hours this morning and was 30 minutes inside the 0900 to 1100 hours window of time that had been coordinated with Israeli authorities and the UN to allow freedom of movement for the relevant UN personnel through the Maghazi Camp area.

Do they have any proof that they were being shelled by Israel? Of course not. Indeed, no one I have seen besides terrorist groups have accused Israel of violating the cease fire. UNRWA makes the accusation because they want to ensure that world anger is directed only at Israel and that terrorist war crimes are downplayed and ignored.

Even though UNRWA facilities have been hit by Qassam rockets in the past. And UNRWA didn't report that at all.

UPDATE: Those missiles have now "gone missing"!

How the UN counts terrorists as civilians

The UN doesn't count he casualties in Gaza directly. They get the data from a consortium of "human rights" groups: the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al Mezan, and B'Tselem, which they call the "Protection Cluster." Based on the data they receive from these groups they publish their statistics of whether the dead in Gaza are civilian or "members of armed groups."

I've already shown in great detail how PCHR (and, indirectly, Al Mezan) classified hundreds of members of Hamas and other terror groups as "civilian."

What about B'Tselem, an Israeli group? How do they determine who is a terrorist and who is a civilian?

Clare Malone from FiveThirtyEight Politics has an interview with a B'Tselem spokesperson, Sarit Michaeli, and this question comes up. The answer is revealing as to how the world is getting fooled by "human rights" groups with an agenda:

CM: Palestinians could stand to gain sympathy if they lied about how many civilians are killed. Do you think witnesses ever try to obfuscate the type of person who was killed?

SM: I think it’s not unheard of. I don’t think it’s as big of an issue as the Israeli government would present it to be. For Palestinians, being involved in legitimate — in their minds — resistance against Israelis isn’t a thing to be ashamed of. They’re proud of it, and the fighters are certainly proud of it. There are also stipends and payments to Palestinians who were killed while resisting the Israeli occupation. (Again, I’m using intra-Palestinian language.) So there are also some conflicting interests, and I think for many Palestinians they would gladly admit that their relative who was killed was involved as a fighter.

That's it: the way B'Tselem determines if a dead Gaza is a civilian is by asking their families and assuming that they are telling the truth.

While they admit that this might not be the most accurate method, and some people might lie, they are basing their assumption that they are being told the truth on the assumption that the families are proud of their dead relative's terrorist ties.

What B'Tselem completely ignores is that Hamas, though the Gaza Interior Ministry, has instructed Gazans to identify every dead person as an "innocent civilian."

Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don't forget to always add 'innocent civilian' or 'innocent citizen' in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

There are some terrorists who cannot be denied that status - if they are wearing uniforms, or they were killed in a terror tunnel or in a firefight. But many, many of the dead males between 16 and 40 are terrorists whose families will not admit to any NGO as to their status.

B'Tselem's assumption that families want to identify their relatives as terrorists to gain financial benefit is at best naive and at worst deceptive. The Hamas and PA governments won't determine a person's status as a "mujahid martyr" based on what the families tell NGOs, but on their claims to the governments and from the martyr's lists that will be published over the next several months - well after the propaganda advantages of lying today about hundreds of "civilians" have been pocketed.

B'Tselem is either knowingly lying to inflate the number of civilians to fulfill its anti-Israel agenda or they are willingly being duped to inflate those numbers. This interview proves that there is no real research being done by these NGOs to determine the truth.

And keep in mind that these NGOs are funded based on how bad they make Israel look. B'Tselem has zero incentive to try to debunk lies about civilians because the more dead civilians they identify, the more they get attention and European cash. Even if the group is entirely righteous and truly trying to do the best they can, which is highly doubtful, this subconscious bias would pollute their statistics. And no one is going to fund an independent, transparent audit of the methods NGOs use to count casualties.

The IDF's statistics, which show that about half of the Gazans killed in this current engagement are actually terrorists, are being dismissed out of hand as biased (also, the IDF isn't doing nearly enough to publicize them.) But historically the IDF statistics have been proven to be the correct ones - once the fog of war is lifted and the terror organizations start celebrating their "martyrs."

The faulty statistics from B'Tselem (and the much worse PCHR and Al Mezan) then get swallowed happily by the UN, whom the world media can feel righteous about quoting.

The truth is the real casualty.

(h/t DF)

Amazing video of Hamas terror tunnels from the inside

From Al Jazeera, seemingly from 2013.

(h/t WoOBoZ)

Hamas spokesman compares Netanyahu to Hitler (video)

Once the spokesman succumbed to Godwin's Law, I felt duty bound to do the same.

But in a funnier way.

The Gaza Underground Map (Israel HaYom)

From Israel Hayom:

07/22 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Death knell for J Street; Another "Death to the Jews" Weekend

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Death knell for J Street

Any pretense that J Street is a pro-Israel organization has been destroyed by that organization’s refusal to participate in a solidarity rally for Israel during the recent crisis in Gaza.
The Boston Jewish Federation worked hard to create a rally that included all elements of its diverse community. Its goal was to send a single and simple message: at a time when so many in the world are united against Israel’s efforts at defending itself from Hamas rockets and terrorist tunnels, the Boston Jewish community stands in solidarity with the nation state of the Jewish people. In order to assure that this message of unity was sent, no signs were permitted except for the unity message that was intended to be sent. That message was: Stand With Israel. Simple and straight forward.
Speakers were limited to those who were part of the broad Jewish consensus including Rabbis, political and business leaders and the highly regarded head of the Federation, Barry Shrage, whose commitment to peace and the two state solution is well known.
Initially J Street agreed to be a co-sponsor of this unity event, but then—presumably after receiving pressure from its hard left constituency, which is always looking to bash Israel and never to support it—J Street was forced to withdraw its sponsorship. The phony excuse it offered was that the rally offered “no voice for [J Street] concerns about the loss of human life on both sides” and no recognition of the “complexity” of the issues or the need for a “political solution.”

AMP Official Defends Hamas, Praises Israeli Casualties

The group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) does not shy away from its support for the terrorist organization Hamas. The group's National Campus Coordinator, Taher Herzallah, recently posted Palestine TV photos of injured Israeli soldiers and a destroyed tank to his personal Facebook page. The caption for both photos read: "The most beautiful site in my eyes." It appears that this post has been removed.
Herzallah proudly lists being part of the 'Irvine 11', a group of students arrested after orchestrating a plan to shut down a speech by then-Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's 2010 speech at UC Irvine, in his biography.

Israeli Christian Leader: 'We Must Unite Against Terror'

On Monday, The Jewish Press reported on Father Gabriel Nadaf, a leader in Israel's Greek-Orthodox Church, who wrote a letter to various ambassadors stationed in Israel asking they support the IDF during Operation Protective Edge and unite against terrorists to "safeguard the Holy Land."
"Edmond Burke, the 18th century Irish philosopher and political theorist, said, ‘The only thing necessary for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.’ Therefore, we are all brothers in the face of evil, with no regard to religion, race, and faith. The outcry about the atrocities we are crying out together. As the spiritual father of the Israeli Christians Forum, who encourages the recruitment of Israel Christians to the IDF and full integration of Christians into the Israeli society, I would like to turn to you with a plea to support and back Israel, our Holy land, and its defense forces. The country is under fire and our soldiers are fighting against terrorist organizations, whose sole purpose and goal is to destroy the State of Israel."

Reuters shows its bias against Israel again

The headline says it all:

But it doesn't get any better:

(Reuters) - Israel pounded targets across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, saying no ceasefire was near as top U.S. and U.N. diplomats pursued talks on halting fighting that has claimed more than 600 lives.

..."A ceasefire is not near," said Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, viewed as the most dovish member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inner security cabinet.

"I see no light at the end of the tunnel," she told Israel's Army Radio.

Dispatched by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Middle East to seek a ceasefire, Kerry held talks on Tuesday in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri.

"There is a framework ... to end the violence and that framework is the Egyptian initiative," Kerry said at a joint news conference with Shukri.

"For the sake of thousands of innocent families whose lives have been shaken and destroyed by this conflict, on all sides, we hope we can get there as soon as possible," he said.

The Reuters dispatch does not say a word about Israel accepting the Egyptian framework for a ceasefire, and Hamas rejecting it. And while it does mention Hamas rockets, in no way are they characterized as somehow being against the concept of a ceasefire.

The entire article is meant to give the exact opposite impression from the truth.

Not surprisingly, one of the reporters is Noah Browning (@SheikhNB on Twitter), who I have shown to be a liar more than once.

And this is the most pervasive source of news in the world.

Despite everything that is claimed by anti-Israel NGOs, the IDF has maintained a ratio of about 1:1 civilians to terrorists killed.

We can calculate this from adding together two sources and a little extrapolation.

Last week, as I reported, out of the first 193 killed in Gaza, 72 were known to be terrorists, 80 were civilians and 41 were unclear.

That is as of Tuesday, July 15, at noon.

Today:

Israel said it has killed 183 militants in its ground operation over the last four days.

That adds up to 255 terrorists from before July 15 and since (presumably) July 18.

Add the three missing days of casualties (roughly 40 total, assume 20 terrorists), plus some percentage of the 41 who were undetermined last week, and it is clear that roughly half of the dead in Gaza are in fact terrorist - despite the horrific reports of entire buildings collapsing on families that seem to indicate otherwise.

For those who claim that the IDF is lying, in the past the IDF estimates have turned out to be true - even Hamas admitted that roughly half of those killed during Cast Lead were terrorists, months after the fact.

There's another salient fact as well.

Some percentage of the dead were killed by terrorist actions, whether rockets that fell short, mortars and bullets aimed at Israelis, "work accidents" and weapons caches exploding. No NGO in Gaza is checking up on those, because they have a vested interest in making Israel look as bad as possible. The new "Goldstone Report" is being planned already. So indeed the ratio of civilians to terrorists killed by Israel may be even less than 1:1.

To have a ratio of only one civilian per terrorist killed, in an environment where Hamas purposefully hides among civilians and tells civilians to stay where the terrorists are, is nothing short of miraculous.

The people who are accusing Israel of indiscriminate targeting of civilians are engaged in slander, not in reporting nor research. Israel's numbers stack up against any conflict in history, including the Western-led armies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

As Col. Richard Kemp said after Cast Lead:

No one has been able to tell me which other army in history has ever done more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone.

In fact, my judgments about the steps taken in that conflict by the IDF to avoid civilian deaths are inadvertently borne out by a study published by the United Nations itself, a study which shows that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.

The UN estimate that there has been an average three-to one ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide. Three civilians for every combatant killed.

That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan: three to one.

In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia.

In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.

This extremely low rate of civilian casualties flatly contradicts many of Goldstone’s original allegations, and the bleating insistence of various human rights groups about Israel’s alleged crimes against humanity.

Don't believe the lies. The IDF is as moral an army as has ever existed in history.

(h/t JH)

07/22 Links Pt1: Hamas is Gaza’s worst enemy; 20,000 attend funeral; 21 ways you can help Israel today

From Ian:

Golani soldier Oron Shaul caught in Gaza ambush is MIA

The IDF has identified only six of the seven soldiers caught in a deadly ambush in Gaza City’s Shejaiya area earlier this week, the army announced Tuesday. The seventh soldier, named Tuesday afternoon as Oron Shaul, would appear to be missing in action. There is no definitive evidence of whether he is alive or dead.
“The identification process of six of the soldiers killed has been completed and confirmed,” the army said in a statement. “The efforts to identify the seventh soldier are ongoing and have yet to be determined.”
The announcement came several days after Hamas announced that it had abducted a soldier. “The Israeli soldier [name deleted] is in the hands of the Qassam Brigades,” a Hamas spokesman said more than 12 hours after the battle.

Times of Israel Live Blog: Soldier killed Tuesday morning; Kerry calls for immediate ceasefire

Netanyahu says Israel will continue to defend itself; army names Oron Shaul as missing soldier presumed killed in Gaza fighting; Hamas claims it kidnapped soldier; IDF death toll rises to 28; over 600 Gazans said killed so far

Hamas is Gaza’s worst enemy

Amid their grief, Palestinians must begin to look beyond the immediate conflict to question why their leaders, especially Hamas, have delivered them little but poverty, chaos and destruction. The answer, as US commentator Alan Dershowitz wrote in Saturday’s Inquirer, is the real enemies of the Palestinian people are Hamas leaders who love Palestinian children less than they hate Israel: “That’s why they are prepared to use these children as human sacrifices in their efforts to destroy the nation-state of the Jewish people.’’
Without a credible ceasefire, the toll will rise, especially as Hamas refuses to allow civilians to shelter in Gaza’s many tunnels, which are the preserve of its fighters. Despite the naivety of much of the Western media in seeking to blame Israel alone for the high casualty rate, some Palestinians realise Hamas is putting their lives at risk. For years, it has also shown scant concern for their quality of life, heavily arming itself while ignoring the local economy and food production. Any legitimate ceasefire must acknowledge Hamas’s culpability in starting the conflict with its kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers last month. Long term, Gaza residents must understand they are on a hiding to nothing with Hamas.

21 ways you can help Israel today

Israel is at war, and over the last few weeks, I have received requests from across the Globe from friends, family, friends of friends and friends of family, asking me if I know any ways that they can help Israel in her time of need. There are so many ways to help, and particularly for those not in Israel and who are therefore not able to send physical items through local collections, here are some of the many reputable websites through which you can donate:
Please note, before you send food or pizza to places, it is worth checking if it is needed or even wanted. I have been in touch with a number of bases that are overflowing with unwanted toiletries and junk food. Some bases, on the other hand, are far out and would really appreciate some decent food and some cans of deodorant! If you are sending food, please don’t send fresh goods that spoil, or chocolate that melts. High on the food request list are energy bars, dried fruit and black coffee, but a lot of soldiers would prefer fresh underwear, socks, towels, undershirts (black or olive colored), toothpaste, toothbrushes, shaving cream, razors, deodorant, wipes and mosquito repellent.
Thank you, and may all of our soldiers come home to us speedily, safely, and having completed their mission.

Israel treating injured 16 year old terrorist. Also witnesses see 13 year olds with suicide belts.

Unreal.

From Times of Israel liveblog:

A 16-year-old Palestinian terrorist is being treated in an Israeli hospital after being captured during a pre-dawn Monday terror attack on southern Israel when he emerged from one of Hamas’s cross-border tunnels.

The 16-year-old Hamas assailant is being treated in Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital and is described as being in moderate condition, Israel Radio reports on Tuesday afternoon.

He was unconscious when hospitalized, the report says.

The teenager was captured after emerging from a tunnel dug from Gaza into southern Israel along with several other terrorists. In the pre-dawn attack, two groups of Hamas terrorists emerged from two tunnel exits, one inside the Israeli border near Kibbutz Nir Am, and the other near Erez, also on Israeli territory, several kilometers northeast of the Gaza city of Beit Hanoun.

It is unclear which squad the teen belonged to.

A second Hamas terrorist is also in an Israeli hospital, Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital, the report says.

The report adds that IDF soldiers being treated in Israeli hospitals for injuries sustained while fighting in Gaza said they encountered 13- and 14-year-old Palestinian children running at them wearing explosives-laden suicide-bomber belts.

OK, so now we have children being used as suicide bombers and terrorists.

And Israel treating their injuries.

More details and other incidents:

Wounded soldiers have given shocking testimony regarding Hamas’ use of young children as human shields.

Parents of wounded soldiers spoke to Kol Yisrael on Tuesday and shared some of the disturbing stories they had heard from their sons. They said soldiers have repeatedly seen young children in Sheijaya, Gaza, be sent out into the streets with guns to try to attack IDF troops.

One parent reported that terrorists had run at IDF soldiers with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other, apparently in hopes that the soldiers would see the child and hold their fire. If soldiers fired, the parent added, the child’s death could be used as propaganda against Israel.

“They’re continuing the same trick of using children as human shields, just as they did in Operation Cast Lead,” one father said. Women are used as human shields as well, he added.

He expressed frustration at figures on the Israeli far-left who have accused IDF soldiers of committing war crimes. Israel’s soldiers do everything they can to avoid hurting innocent people, he said.

But let's not let that cloud the thinking of those who want to characterize Israel as a Nazi state and Hamas as liberal freedom fighters. They want to be outraged, and they don't want their outrage to be diluted by facts.

(h/t Harold)