Propaganda Masquerading As News

On June 28, The New Yorker posted an article with the following headline:

Many Gazan Women Are No Longer Able to Enter Israel for Cancer Treatment

Horrible if true. Thankfully it is not true.

The article cites claims by patients Amani Abu Taema and Dena Mekhael, stating:

In 2012, Israel approved ninety-two per cent of medical permits for Gazans. In 2014, a year of deadly conflict, eighty-two per cent of patients were allowed in. But, since the beginning of 2018, with no announcement of a change in policy, more than half of applications for medical permits from Gaza have been turned down or left unanswered, according to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, or P.H.R.I., a nonprofit organization that represents many of these patients. A 2017 directive from the Defense Ministry gave Israel twenty-three working days to process requests for medical permits, an increase from the previous ten-day processing time. (The extension, according to the ministry, was due to a backlog of some sixteen thousand travel-permit requests, the result of an overwhelming number of applications and the time needed to run proper security checks.) The average case now takes months—if it’s approved at all.

Since Mekhael’s last checkup in Tel Aviv, a year ago, she has found a new lump, this time in her right breast. She applied for a medical permit last December (the permits are only valid for a few weeks) but has not been approved to cross the border. “I never got a refusal, but they keep saying it’s ‘under review,’ ” she told me. Her options in Gaza are dismal: its public hospitals provide very limited and sporadic access to functional MRI and mammogram machines, so she has no way of receiving a diagnosis, let alone treatment.

This is shenanigans. According to reliable sources:

• Had reporter Ruth Margalit bothered to check Dena Mekhael’s account with the Israeli authorities, she would have learned that it is the Palestinian side which is holding up her permit approval; she has valid security clearance from Israel but the Palestinian committee has failed to provide the needed updated hospital appointment information necessary for her request to be approved.

• It is not true that Israel “turned down or left unanswered” over half of the applications for medical permits from Gaza in 2018. According to figures from the World Health Organization and Israel’s COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories), Israel approved more than half of the applications this year.

…Regarding Amani Abu Taema, Margalit had reported, “In January, she was allowed into Israel for an MRI and radiation therapy, but since then her application for a permit has been declined four times without explanation.” According to the Israeli spokesman, Abu Taema did indeed enter Israel in January for medical treatment, but since then has not reapplied for an additional entry. The Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee has likewise not received any requests from Abu Taema since her January visit. Thus, Abu Taema’s claim that her application permit was declined four times was flatly rejected and refuted by the Israeli authority, with whom New Yorker never consulted.  

In addition, the claim that there are no MRI machines in Gaza is also false:

…according to the United Nations, a scientific  journal, Palestinian sources, and the European Gaza Hospital (a public institution), along with mainstream media, there are indeed MRI machines in Gaza. Notably, a 2017 report in The Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences (“Evaluation of advanced medical imaging services at Governmental Hospitals – Gaza Governorates, Palestine“), noted there are two MRI machines in the Gaza Strip per one million inhabitants. This compares to four MRI machines in Israel per one million inhabitants. Both Israel and the Gaza Strip lag significantly behind other countries, including Turkey, France, Australia, and especially Germany.

There are a few things that are noteworthy in this article. First of all, the women were able to get treatment for cancer in Israel. After all the money the world has poured into Gaza, why aren’t the medical facilities there adequate? Where is the money going? With all the rockets, etc., Gaza has aimed at Israel, Israel is still treating patients from Gaza. It seems to me that Israel is the humanitarian force here–not Gaza.

The story in The New Yorker is an example of misstating facts in order to achieve a specific goal–anti-Israel sentiment. Nowhere does the writer question the lack of infrastructure in Gaza after all the money poured in there. Nowhere does the writer note that Israel routine helps with medical needs in Gaza. Nowhere does the writer mention the terrorist activities against Israel that originate in Gaza–the rockets, the tunnels, the suicide bombers, etc.

This is a blatant example of fake news with the purpose of stirring up anti-Israel sentiment while Gaza continues its terrorist activities with no repercussions.

The State Department Announces

The New York Post is reporting today that the State Department has announced that America with be withdrawing from UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) because of UNESCO’s anti-Israel bias. This is long overdue.

In June 2012, I posted an article illustrating how some of UNESCO’s money is spent. The article featured a cartoon teaching Palestinian children that Jews are killing them. That is not a recipe for peace.

The article at the New York Post concludes:

But the Israel-Palestinian issue has been a major point of contention.

Last year, Israel removed its UNESCO ambassador after the agnecy stated that one of Jerusalem’s holy sites is specifically a “Muslim holy site of worship,” according to Reuters.

Senior American officials, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, have repeatedly denounced UNESCO, which the US also withdrew from during the Cold War under then-President Reagan.

Washington, which viewed the agency as mismanaged and used for political reasons, rejoined it in 2003.

Until the people who now live in the Gaza Strip do something other than to send rockets into Israel, I see no reason to recognize Palestine as a nation. The world does not need another terrorist state. In recent years we have seen rockets from the Gaza Strip aimed at civilian targets in Israel and tunnels dug to facilitate attacks on Israeli children. Western countries have funded these activities in the name of humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, very little of the humanitarian aid has gone to humans–it has been used to buy weapons and create tunnels to attack Israel. If the United Nations continues to support these activities, we will have no choice but to withdraw from the United Nations completely.

Changing Alliances In The Middle East

The Washington Post is reporting today that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain have announced that they will cut air, sea and land links with Qatar, which hosts a forward base for the U.S. military’s Central Command and is home to the widely watched Al Jazeera network.

The article reports:

Some other countries later joined the four-nation bloc in cutting ties with Qatar, which is also the venue for the 2022 World Cup.

The feud — the most serious in decades among some the region’s most key Western allies — has been simmering for years as Qatar increasingly flexed its political muscle across the region, including backing the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar’s outreach often raised conflict with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of whom have sought to exert their own influence across the Arab world.

CBN News reported today:

“[Qatar] embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and al Qaeda, and promotes the message and schemes of these groups through their media constantly,” Saudi’s state news agency SPA wrote.

…For years, Doha has been a strong backer of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood ruling the Gaza Strip, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Ismailia, Egypt, is often referred to as the “father” of today’s Islamic terror movements.

In 2014, after a turbulent year under long-time Muslim Brotherhood devotee Mohammed Morsi, Egyptians overwhelmingly elected former military chief Fattah Abdel el-Sisi as president.

Slowly, el-Sisi began to address Egypt’s dire economic straits while simultaneously routing Islamic terror cells embedded in the Sinai Peninsula, which had flourished during Morsi’s short-lived term in office.

Egypt, the Arab’s world’s largest country, is 80 percent Muslim, but the population rejected the Morsi administration’s efforts to impose stricter Islamic lifestyle on the country.

There is a certain amount of irony here. Evidently, Qatar has backed the wrong group of terrorists. Saudi Arabia is the home of Wahhabism, a militant form of Islam that gave us the men who attacked America on 9/11. However, our alliance with Saudi Arabia is based on the fact that they are willing to fight ISIS and that they have supported the trading of oil in American dollars. The Saudis are also very actively working behind the scenes to prevent America from becoming energy independent and ruining the monopoly that OPEC has held for so long. If you look at the funding of some of the environmental groups that have opposed drilling in various places and various pipelines, you will find Saudi money.

At any rate, President Trump has had a major impact on relationships in the Middle East. It will be interesting to see in the future is these new alliances work to curtail the funding and activities of terrorists.

A Short History Lesson

The idea that Israel belongs to anyone except the Jews does not hold water historically. The British named the area of Israel Palestine as an insult to the Jewish people who lived there–it had nothing to do with there being a state of Palestine. Such a state never existed.

This is the picture of the land given to Israel in 1920:

The majority of that land that was originally given to Israel was given to Jordan. After the war in 1948, the Armistice Agreements left Jordan in control of the West Bank. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank and gave all residents Jordanian citizenship. Until the 1967 War, the people living in the West Bank were considered Jordanian citizens. As I have noted in previous posts, Walid Shoebat stated, “One day during the 1960s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim.”

So where am I going with this? Pamela Geller posted an article on her website on January 12 about a court case in the Court of Appeal of Versailles France.

The article reports:

…the Court of Appeal of Versailles ruled that West bank settlements and occupation of Judea Samaria by Israel is unequivocally legal under international law, in a suit brought by the Palestinian Authority against Jerusalem’s light rail built by French companies Alstom and Veolia…

Somehow the major media did not report this ruling.

The article includes a detailed analysis of the case and the reasons for the decision. I will try to summarize the highlights here:

In order to rule whether the light rail construction was legal or not, the court had to to seek the texts of international law, to examine international treaties, in order to establish the respective rights of the Palestinians and the Israelis.

And to my knowledge, this is the first time that a non-Israeli court has been led to rule on the status of the West Bank.

…Keep in mind though, that the Court’s findings have no effect in international law. What they do, and it’s of the utmost importance, they are clarify the legal reality.

The Versailles Court of Appeal conclusions are as resounding as the silence in which they were received in the media: Israel has real rights in the territories, its decision to build a light rail in the West Bank or anything else in the area is legal, and the judges have rejected all the arguments presented by the Palestinians.

The article lists the Palestinian arguments:

  • The PLO denounces the deportation of the Palestinian population, and the destruction of properties in violation of international regulations. Relying on the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the UN resolutions, it considers that the State of Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory and is pursuing illegal Jewish colonization. Thus, construction of the light rail is itself illegal (1).
  • The PLO adds that the light rail construction has resulted in the destruction of Palestinian buildings and houses, the almost total destruction of Highway 60, which is vital for Palestinians and their goods, and has conducted many illegal dispossessions. Therefore, several clauses from the annexed Regulations to the October 18, 1907 Fourth Hague Convention were violated (2).
  • Finally, the PLO alleges that Israel violates the provisions relating to the « protection of cultural property » provided for in Article 4 of the Hague Convention of 14 May 1954, Article 27 of the Hague Regulations of 1907, Article 5 of the Hague Convention IX of 1907, and Article 53 of Additional Protocol No. 1 to the Geneva Conventions.

The article explains why these are not valid arguments:

The Court explains that the Palestinian Authority misinterprets the texts and they do not apply to the occupation:

  • First of all, all the international instruments put forward by the PLO are acts signed between States, and the obligations or prohibitions contained therein are relevant to States. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor the PLO are States, therefore, none of these legal documents apply.
  • Secondly, said the Court, these texts are binding only on those who signed them, namely the « contracting parties ». But neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority have ever signed these texts.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The 1967 lines were not borders–they were lines drawn in an armistice. Remember also what has happened in the Gaza Strip since Israel gave it up–it has become a launching pad for sending rockets into civilian areas, and all of the income-producing greenhouses were destroyed because they had been owned by Jews. That kind of hatred is not anything the world needs to encourage.

It will be interesting to see what the implications of this court case will be. First of all, will any of the major media report it? Second of all, will this impact any decisions made at the United Nations regarding a ‘two-state solution.’ Again, I would like to note that until the people involved in the ‘two-state solution’ are willing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, the ‘two-state solution’ is not a recipe for peace, but only an excuse for more war.

Of Course They Do

Breitbart.com posted an article today citing a Times of Israel report stating that Arab leaders support John Kerry’s proposals for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of course they do. The 1967 borders are indefensible. Kerry’s peace plan is the blueprint for the Arab dream of driving the Israelis into the sea.

The article reports:

Saudi Arabia issued a statement Thursday via an official news agency saying that the kingdom “welcomed the proposals” set forth by Kerry and that they were in accordance “with the majority of the resolutions of international legality and most of the elements of the Arab Peace Initiative” adopted by the Arab League in 2002.

Kerry’s proposals represent “an appropriate basis for achieving a final settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” the Saudi Press Agency reported, citing an unnamed source in the Saudi Foreign Ministry.

This is amazing. If you remember, the concept is called ‘land for peace.’ Israel gave the ‘Palestinians‘ the Gaza Strip in exchange for peace. The Palestinians promptly destroyed all the greenhouses that could have provided income for them and then used the land as a staging area to fire rockets at Israeli civilians. The Palestinians also used the Gaza Strip to build underground tunnels to move troops through to attack Israeli civilians. The Palestinians got the land, but Israel did not get the peace. Shouldn’t we learn from history?

Israel is being asked to give up the Wailing Wall and part of the Golan Heights. The Wailing Wall is Jewish–it doesn’t in any way belong to the Arabs. The Golan Heights is strategic–it is a great place to lob rockets at innocent Israeli civilians–it was used for that purpose before the 1967 War. The 1967 boundaries were never actually boundaries–they were cease-fire lines drawn until a solution could be worked out. They were indefensible at the time, and they are indefensible now. Forcing Israel to give up more land for an illusive peace will only create more war. It is truly a shame that the Obama Administration chooses not to understand this. I am sure Israel, along with those who sincerely want peace in the Middle East, is looking forward to the Trump Administration.

A Really Disgraceful Legacy

There are no words to describe fully what the Obama Administration did at the United Nations this week.

Tablet Magazine posted the following statement by the Prime Minister’s Office in Israel:

“Israel rejects this shameful anti-Israel resolution at the UN and will not abide by its terms. At a time when the Security Council does nothing to stop the slaughter of half a million people in Syria, it disgracefully gangs up on the one true democracy in the Middle East, Israel, and calls the Western Wall “occupied territory.” The Obama administration not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN, it colluded with it behind the scenes. Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.”

The article further reports:

The resolution was authored by Egypt, which shelved the draft after the Netanyahu government reached out to the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump, which then pressured Cairo to drop the resolution. Venezuela, Malaysia, Senegal, and New Zealand say that if Egypt doesn’t push forward, they will. The resolution will permanently enshrine as a matter of international law that the Western Wall is “occupied Palestinian territory,” and that Jews building homes in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is illegal. One prominent member of the pro-Israel community in Washington called the resolution “a nuclear bomb.”

The Obama Administration is already briefing friendly press organizations that they’re showing no animus toward the Jewish state in refusing to veto the resolution. Rather, it’s “tough love”: for an Israel that seems not to have the will or vision to take chances for peace.

That’s not how Israel sees it. As a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem told Tablet: “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory. President Obama could declare his willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it. This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the prospects of working with the next administration of advancing peace.”

What really concerns me about this resolution is the idea that building homes in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is illegal. This resolution will not bring peace–it will encourage more violence on the part of those who want to see Israel destroyed. For evidence of the success of ‘land for peace’ all you have to do is look at the Gaza Strip, now a launching pad for launching rockets at civilians in Israel.

Article 1 of the United Nations Charter states:

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

  1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
  2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
  3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
  4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

In my opinion they have not lived up to their charter and need to be disbanded. Where is the outcry about the killing of Christians in the Middle East and Africa? Where is the outcry against the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia? Where is the outcry against the killing of homosexuals in Iran? It is truly time for the United Nations to go away.

Meanwhile, I hope the Trump Administration will either undo what has just been done or else simply defund the United Nations.

The President-Elect Is Already Making A Difference

One of the main differences between President Obama and President-elect Trump is their attitude toward Israel. President Obama supported a two-state peace solution involving the United Nations; Donald Trump seems to be moving in a different direction

Yahoo News is reporting today that the UN Security postponed a vote on a draft resolution demanding that Israel halt its settlement activities as President-elect Donald Trump weighed in and said the United States should veto the measure.

I would like to say a few things about the two-state peace solution. Israel dragged its citizens out of the Gaza Strip in 2005 and gave the land to the Palestinians (there actually are no Palestinians–that term was invented after the six day war. As Walid Shoebat stated, “One day during the 1960s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim.”). At the time it was turned over, the Gaza Strip had greenhouses and infrastructure that supported its citizens economically. The new residents promptly destroyed those greenhouses–taking away their route to prosperity. They then used money given to them by generous (but mislead) countries to buy rockets to lob into Israel. Why in the world should we create another terrorist state? It is obvious that those claiming to be Palestinians have no intentions of making peace with Israel–the charter of the PLO states that Israel has no right to exist. It is time to ask the other Arabs in the Middle East to set aside some of their large acreage of land for the Palestinians. However, that will never happen because the Palestinians are useful tools in the fight to destroy Israel. President-elect Trump has promised to support Israel. I believe that will be a blessing to Israel and to America. Israel has been our only true friend in the Middle East.

The United Nations is not a friend of Israel. It never has been. That was recently admitted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (story here). We really need to look at the direction the U.N. has taken in recent years and think about whether or not we choose to be part of it.

The Future Of Israel If Hillary Clinton Wins The American Election

Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East. Turkey was a secular state in the general area, but that is rapidly changing, so Israel stands alone as the only place where Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all free to worship and practice their religion. Isn’t it ironic that the state the Islamic countries want to wipe out is the only state in the area that actually provides freedom for its Muslim population.

So what would the election of Hillary Clinton mean for Israel? Her leaked emails and her choice of associates give us some clues. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article yesterday providing some insight into how Mrs. Clinton would treat Israel.

The article reminds us of the beliefs of some of Mrs. Clinton’s associates:

Sid Blumenthal, one of Hillary’s most trusted advisers, sent Clinton dozens of anti-Israel articles written by Sid’s rabidly anti-Israel son Max. Hillary responded favorably to them.

…[In] September 2010 [Berger] (Sandy Berger) sent Ms. Clinton ideas on how to pressure Israel to make concessions for peace. Mr. Berger acknowledged “how fragile Abbas’ political position [is],” and how “Palestinians are in disarray” and that “[f]ailure is a real possibility.” Mr. Berger was well aware, and informed Ms. Clinton, of the very real possibility that Israel would be placing its national security at grave risk in a deal that would very likely fail and lead to a Hamas takeover. But Mr. Berger felt the risks to Israeli lives were worth it. He advised making Mr. Netanyahu feel “uneasy about incurring our displeasure.”. . .

Astoundingly, Mr. Berger seemed to accuse the Jews in America of racism toward Obama. “At a political level, the past year has clearly demonstrated the degree to which the U.S. has been hamstrung by its low ratings in Israel and among important segments of the domestic Jewish constituency,” he writes. “Domestically, he faces a reservoir of skepticism on this issue which reflects many factors, including inexcusable prejudice.”

From Anne Marie Slaughter, Clinton’s director of policy planning from 2009 to 2011:

…She wrote Ms. Clinton in September 2010, devising a scheme to encourage wealthy philanthropists to pledge millions to the Palestinians (which no doubt would have been embezzled by Abbas and his cronies, as were other funds). Ms. Slaughter writes, “This may be a crazy idea… Suppose we launched a ‘Pledge for Palestine’ campaign… Such a campaign among billionaires/multimillionaires around the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in the building of a Palestinian state.”

She adds, “There would also be a certain shaming effect re Israelis, who would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace.”

Here’s how Clinton responded to this call for aiding “Palestine” and “shaming Israelis”: “I am very interested-pls flesh out. Thx.”

Pressuring Israel to give more land to a terrorist entity is not a recipe for peace in the Middle East. When Israel turned over the Gaza Strip in August 2004, the new residents immediately destroyed all of the greenhouses and infrastructure that could have provided a source of income for the area. Since that time the Gaza Strip has become a base for rocket attacks and terrorist tunnels to be used against Israel. It is also worth remembering that the Arabs in the Middle East have consistently refused to sign anything saying that Israel has the right to exist. Again, Israel is not the problem.

A Hillary Clinton presidency would probably destroy our long-standing alliance with Israel.

 

Israel Is Still Under Attack

On Friday, CBN News posted an article about a recent Israel Defense Force action in southern Israel.

The article reports:

The Israel Defense Forces, in tandem with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), discovered and neutralized an infiltration tunnel dug under the border with the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.

IDF Col. (res.) Atai Shelach, former commander of Yahalom, an elite combat engineering unit that destroys the attack tunnels, told journalists in a phone interview that Hamas has acquired “more ability and capabilities than in past years.”

“They’ve proven their ability [and are] using more technologies,” he said. “This is one of the main tools the terror organizations have in their hands.”

Shelach said the terrorists “could do almost anything with this technology, from kidnapping citizens and soldiers to penetrating Israel with ammunition, booby traps and so on.”

A IDF statement said it was the first tunnel discovered since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.

The article comments on where the terrorists obtained the money to build the tunnel:

IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said the discovery points to Hamas’ cynical use of funds and material donated to refurbish homes damaged in the IDF’s military response to Hamas rocket fire in the summer of 2014.

“The ugly truth is that Hamas continues to invest millions of dollars to build tunnels of terror and death,” Lerner said in a statement. “The tunnel uncovered in Israel demonstrates once more Hamas’ warped priorities and continued commitment and investment in tools of violence. This tunnel exposes Hamas’ abhorrent intentions to attack men, women and children in southern Israel.”

This is a glaring example of why America and other western countries need to rethink their policies of aid to the Gaza Strip. The money given to the Gaza Strip does not go where America and other countries want it to go–it goes to fund terrorism and build tunnels for terrorists. If we continue funding these activities (knowingly or unknowingly), then we are partially responsible for funding the attacks on Israel. That is not something we want to encourage.

 

Things That Make Middle East Peace Difficult

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday about the collapse of an underground tunnel going into Israel that was being repaired. The article reminds us that in the last Israeli war, Israel destroyed thirty or more tunnels built by Hamas for terror attacks into Israel. The collapse of the tunnel as it was being repaired killed seven Hamas members.

The article reports what was said at the funeral of these Hamas members. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s deputy chief, said:

There are heroes east of Gaza City, digging the rocks and building tunnels. And west of Gaza, heroes are testing rockets every morning and every day and it is all preparations.

Under the ground and above the ground, in tunnels and above the ground and into the sky, with rockets and in the sea and everywhere, it is the permanent preparation for the sake of Jerusalem and Palestine, and for the sake of the intifada of Jerusalem and the sake of our people.

If the people who are supposed to negotiate peace are celebrating people who were killed repairing a tunnel to be used for terrorism, the chances of actually negotiating anything that would result in peace are slim to none.

Just as a side note, the crowds for the funeral of the Hamas members were so large that people were standing on a roof to see the funeral procession. The roof collapsed.

Until Hamas terrorists are no longer celebrated, there is no reason Israel should even consider making peace with the ‘Palestinians.’ Thus far, giving up land for peace has only provided Hamas with more places to launch rockets against Israel and build terrorist tunnels. Why in the world should they be given more land in the name of peace?

The Pictures Tell The Story

The map below shows the land originally given for the State of Israel in 1920:

The map below shows the changes made to that land in 1922:

As you can see, land was taken away from the land originally promised to Israel and given to the Arabs to form Trans-Jordan. The Jews were left with 23% of the land they were originally promised. They were willing to accept that–the Arabs were not.

The map below appeared on MSNBC this week:

MSNBC maps

This is totally misleading. There never was a country of Palestine–Palestine was the name given by the British to the Jewish land they occupied after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The Washington Free Beacon posted a story yesterday about the MSNBC map.

The article states:

MSNBC has admitted that highly controversial graphics aired on the network that depicted Israel as stealing land from the Palestinians were “factually wrong” and that the broadcast would be corrected on Monday, according to a network spokesperson.

The cable news network has been fighting off criticism after it aired the graphics and analysis, including a map linked to conspiracy groups branded as anti-Semitic, that portrayed Israel as existing on territory expropriated from Palestine.

The graphics garnered criticism from pro-Israel advocates and has now prompted the network to acknowledge that the graphics were highly misleading.

“In an attempt to shed light on the geographic context of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, we aired a map that was factually wrong,” the spokesperson said on Sunday.

Two MSNBC broadcasters, Kate Snow and Martin Fletcher, “will address the map in a segmentMonday about agendas and disinformation on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the spokesperson said.

Fletcher, a Middle East analyst, said on Sunday that the map and analyses were “dead wrong.”

If you don’t understand the history of Israel, it is easy to conclude that Israel is in some way responsible for the current wave of violence against Israel. Nothing is further from the truth. The violence is being agitated from the Gaza Strip and probably rooted in orders from Iran. Right now, Iran is pulling the strings in the Arab world. They are quite capable of causing all sorts of distractions from the nuclear agreement that is in the process of going into effect. The nuclear agreement Iran agreed to is not the same nuclear agreement that was signed in Vienna (rightwinggranny). It is quite possible that what is happening in Israel is being done to create a military response from Israel in order to give the Arab world an excuse to attack Israel. Remember, wars in the Middle East are as much about propaganda as they are about the military. That is what makes the showing of the erroneous map by MSNBC so egregious.

In Case You Were Wondering About The Source Of The Recent Violence In Israel

The Jerusalem Post is reporting today that the army will be helping protect Israelis from the recent wave of attacks by Palestinians.

The article reports:

Israel will instruct its military to bolster police forces currently patrolling cities that have been rocked by Palestinian attacks against Jewish passersby, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday.

The IDF will enlist soldiers to aid police in city centers throughout Israel, the security cabinet resolved on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened senior government officials and defense chiefs to discuss possible steps to take after another day in which three Israelis were killed and over 20 were injured by Palestinian assailants.

If you would like to know why there is this sudden outpouring of violence against Israelis, The Middle East Media Research Institute has posted a transcript of a recent sermon preached in Gaza.

This is the transcript:

Rafah Cleric Brandishes Knife in Friday Sermon, Calls upon Palestinians to Stab Jews

In an October 9 Friday sermon delivered at the Al-Abrar Mosque in Rafah, the Gaza Strip, Sheikh Muhammad Sallah “Abu Rajab” brandished a knife, calling upon his brothers in the West Bank: “Stab!” “Oh young men of the West Bank: Attack in threes and fours,” he said, and “cut them into body parts.”

Following are excerpts:

Muhammad Salah “Abu Rajab”: Brothers, we must constantly remind the world, and everyone who has forgotten… The world must hear, via these cameras and via the Internet: This is Gaza! This is the place of trenches and guns! This is the West Bank! This is the place of bombs and daggers! This is Jerusalem… Jerusalem is the code word… This is Jerusalem… Much can be told about Jerusalem. This is where the soldiers of the Prophet Muhammad are. This is the grace of Allah. The soldiers of the Prophet Muhammad are here. Brothers, this is why we recall today what Allah did to the Jews. We recall what He did to them in Khaybar.

[…]

Today, we realize why the [Jews] build walls. They do not do this to stop missiles, but to prevent the slitting of their throats.

[…]

“Abu Rajab” brandishes a dagger and makes stabbing motions

My brother in the West Bank: Stab! My brother is the West Bank: Stab the myths of the Talmud in their minds! My brother in the West Bank: Stab the myths about the temple in their hearts!

[…]

Today, we have declared a curfew [in Israel]. Listen to what the Jews are saying to one another: Stay at home, or go outside to your death. They have no alternative. Oh men of the West Bank, the first phase of the operation requires stabbing in order to bring about a curfew.

[…]

Now, we are imposing a curfew with daggers, and in the next phase, which is Allah willing, about to be realized… We shall not send you back to Russia, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, or Poland. We shall not send you back there. You have come here… The Islamic military court has ruled… This court, presided over by the Prophet’s Companion Sad Ibn Mu’adh, has ruled… Sa’d Ibn Mu’adh has reappeared – in the West Bank. Sa’d Ibn Mu’adh is now in the streets of Jerusalem, Afula, Tel Aviv, and the Negev. The Islamic military court has made the divined ruling: You will get nothing in our land except for slaughtering or stabbing. Why? The world will say that we are terrorists, that we incite. Yes! “Oh Prophet, sufficient for you and for whoever follows you of the believers is Allah. Oh Prophet of Allah, incite the believers to fight.” Why? Oh America, oh Crusader aggressors, oh Arab Zionists, oh Zionists from among the criminal Jews: Are we aggressors? You have come of your own volition to be slaughtered on our land.

[…]

“When the promise of the Hereafter comes, We shall gather you from various nation.” Allah has brought the Jews, His enemies and the enemies of humanity, who have destroyed our homes in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and everywhere.

[…]

Oh people of Al-Abrar Mosque and the people of Rafah – from this mosque of yours, you have the honor of delivering these messages to the men of the West Bank: Form stabbing quads. We don’t want just a single stabber. Oh young men of the West Bank: Attack in threes and fours. Some should restrain the victim, while others attack him with axes and butcher knives.

[…]

Do not fear what will be said about you. Oh men of the West Bank, next time, attack in a group of three, four, or five. Attack them in groups. Cut them into body parts.

I may be naive, but somehow I don’t see this as a recipe for peace.

Some Middle East Perspective

If you read a lot of the mainstream media, they will tell you that the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East is the lack of a Palestinian State. They will conveniently forget to remind you that kindergarten children in the Gaza Strip are being trained as martyrs (see kindergarten graduation photo below):

kindergartengraduation2Would America sponsor a terrorist state on its border?

When you look at the statistics on the various conflicts in the Middle East, you see a very different picture of Israel and its Arab neighbors.

In October 2007, Front Page Magazine reported the following:

This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 numbering about 85,000,000. Of that sum, the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.

These figures mean that deaths Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.

(Adding the 11,000 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.)

In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.

Comments: (1) Despite the relative non-lethality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its renown, notoriety, complexity, and diplomatic centrality will probably give it continued out-sized importance in the global imagination. And Israel’s reputation will continue to pay the price. (2) Still, it helps to point out the 1-in-1,700 statistic as a corrective, in the hope that one day, this reality will register, permitting the Arab-Israeli conflict to subside to its rightful, lesser place in world politics.

Admittedly, this is not up-to-date information, but considering ISIS, the civil war in Syria, and the mischief being done by Iran, I suspect the percentage of Muslim deaths at the hands of Muslims has increased–not decreased. Unfortunately, there is now added to that number a large number of Christians being killed by Muslims in the Middle East. In recent years it has become very obvious that Israel is NOT the problem.

 

This Isn’t Anything New

From the time of the Iranian revolution in 1978, the goal of Iran has been to restore the Islamic caliphate that vanished with the end of the Turkish Empire. We need to remember that the caliphate existed about a hundred years ago–it is not ancient history. Therefore, the book that has been published by Iran on how to outsmart the United States and destroy Israel should not come as a surprise to anyone. What should come as a surprise is why would the United States negotiate with a country whose goal is to destroy one of our allies and eventually destroy us.

Meanwhile, yesterday The New York Post posted a story about a book called “Palestine,” published by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This charming masterpiece is described in the article:

Khamenei makes his position clear from the start: Israel has no right to exist as a state.

He uses three words. One is “nabudi” which means “annihilation.” The other is “imha” which means “fading out,” and, finally, there is “zaval” meaning “effacement.”

Khamenei claims that his strategy for the destruction of Israel is not based on anti-Semitism, which he describes as a European phenomenon. His position is instead based on “well-established Islamic principles.”

One such principle is that a land that falls under Muslim rule, even briefly, can never again be ceded to non-Muslims. What matters in Islam is ownership of a land’s government, even if the majority of inhabitants are non-Muslims.

Khomeinists are not alone in this belief.

Dozens of maps circulate in the Muslim world showing the extent of Muslim territories lost to the Infidel that must be recovered.

There is a tenet in Islam that says all land controlled by Muslims at any time must be regained to form the caliphate. That tenet has a lot to do with Iran’s desire to have a nuclear bomb.

The article also reminds us that Khamenei plans to eliminate Israel through making life so unpleasant there that the Jews leave and the land goes to the Arabs as a result of demographics.

The article concludes:

Khamenei boasts about the success of his plans to make life impossible for Israelis through terror attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. His latest scheme is to recruit “fighters” in the West Bank to set up Hezbollah-style units.

“We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 and in the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip,” he boasts.

Khamenei describes Israel as “a cancerous tumor” whose elimination would mean that “the West’s hegemony and threats will be discredited” in the Middle East. In its place, he boasts, “the hegemony of Iran will be promoted.”

Khamenei’s book also deals with the Holocaust which he regards either as “a propaganda ploy” or a disputed claim. “If there was such a thing,” he writes, “we don’t know why it happened and how.”

This is what Iran’s leaders are preaching to their people and their allies in the Middle East. Do we really want to give succor?

In looking at the nuclear agreement with Iran, one has to consider the Islamic principle of taqiyya, loosely explained as “lying for the sake of Islam.” Taqiyya allows Muslims to issue two statements on any one issue–one to Muslims and one to non-Muslims. I have no doubt that what Iran is telling America about the nuclear deal is very different from what is being told to the Iranians. I pray that the Senate has the courage to turn down the nuclear deal with Iran.

Human Rights?

On Friday, Yahoo News posted a story about  resolution by the United Nation‘s Human Rights Council calling for those responsible for war crimes during last summer’s Gaza conflict to be brought to trial.

Yesterday The Times of India posted an article about the vote. That article reports:

While 41 countries (including most of the European Union) voted in favour of adopting the report, five, including India, abstained. The US was the only country to vote against it. Four other countries who abstained were Kenya, Ethiopia, Paraguay and Macedonia.

Normally I would be in favor of putting anyone on trial who had committed war crimes, but in this case, I think you have to look at the matter carefully.

This is a chart (from Wikipedia) showing the rocket attacks on Israel in 2014 that originated in the Gaza Strip:

rocketattacksonIsrael2014These rockets were not aimed at military targets, they were aimed at civilians. It is also known that Hamas houses rockets in hospitals and other buildings known to house civilians. Hamas is also know to use human shields. I can almost guarantee that the United Nations report will overlook much of this part of the story.

The thing to remember here is that the conflict between Israel and Hamas has more than one dimension. One dimension that should always be considered when listening to stories from the Middle East is the propaganda aspect. In May 2013, I posted a story about the staged death of Muhammad al-Dura, an 11-year old who was used for propaganda purposed after a film was released claiming he had been killed by the Israelis. More details can be found here. Often the propaganda war is more important than actual events on the ground.

Unfortunately, it is very likely that the U.N. investigation will be a sham. The track record on the United Nations in regard to Israel is not good. As of 2015, Israel has been condemned in 62 resolutions by the Council since its creation in 2006—the Council has resolved more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined.

We need to stand by Israel. I don’t know why Europe voted for this, but I am glad to see India abstain.

 

Facts Are Very Inconvenient Things

The basis for this article is the recent statement by former Presidential advisor David Axelrod that President Obama considers himself “the closet thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.” The statement is quoted in a Breitbart.com article dated June 2. If that is true, then he is a Jew that has no understanding of who he is or what Israel is about.

Let’s look at some of President Obama’s recent and past actions.

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported:

In an interview with an Israeli television station, Obama noted that his administration has “up until this point” quashed such efforts at the U.N. while insisting that the Israelis and Palestinians must negotiate a resolution. But he said it is a challenge for the U.S. to keep demanding that the Palestinians negotiate in good faith if no one believes the Israelis are doing the same.

The Israelis have not been the ones launching rockets at civilian targets or building terrorists tunnels with money given to them to help their people. Why does the President want to create another terrorist state?

In May of 2011, the New York Times reported:

A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank — should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama’s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution.

President Obama, you need a history lesson.  There is no 1967 border–there is only an armistice line created after all of Israel’s neighbors invaded her as soon as she became a nation.  The 1949 armistice line was never internationally recognized as a border.  I have posted this before, but it bears repeating. This is the map of the land given to Israel in the original British Mandate:

Palestine was the name given to Israel at that time.  Transjordan was originally to be given to the Jewish state, but Britain reneged on its promise and gave the land to the Arabs instead.  In 1921, the Arab representative responsible for the above division of the land, Emir Feisal, agreed to abandon all claim of his father to Western Palelstine if he secured Iraq and Eastern Palestine as Arab terrorities.  We saw how well he kept this agreement. These are the borders set up for the nation of Israel.  The 1949 borders were simply an armistice.

After the nation of Israel was declared, the Arabs invaded and took control of the Old City of Jerusalem. During the time the Arabs controlled the Old City, Jews were barred from their holiest sites. Unfortunately, past behavior is often an indication of future behavior.

The Gaza Strip is now a terrorist haven. To cede more land to the Arabs would create additional terrorist havens. Mr. President, either you are misinformed or you do not support the survival of Israel.

The Middle East Gets More Complicated

Yesterday the Center for Security Policy posted an article about the recent alliance between Iran and Hamas. This is an interesting alliance as Iran represents the Shiite branch of Islam and Hamas represents the Sunni branch of Islam. So why are they working together–their common purpose is the destruction of Israel.

The article reports:

Earlier on Free Fire we spoke about continuing Iranian support for Hezbollah as well as Hamas. Reports state that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have resumed transferring tens of millions of dollars to the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing. The funds were transferred under direct orders of Qasem Soleimani, the head commander of the elite Quds Force, who also created an annual budget devoted to funding Hamas.

Allegedly the funds are primarily to fund the rebuilding of Hamas’ tunnel network that was severely damaged in the Israeli counterstrike to Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israeli cities, as well as purchase more missiles for future attacks. Despite the sectarian differences between Iran and Hamas, both organizations are dedicated to the destruction of the Israeli state.

…In response to Iran’s closer ties with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority has urged Saudi Arabia to take a more active and stronger stance against Hamas, even going so far as to request the Saudis launch an attack on the Gaza Strip – despite Hamas condemning Israel for committing war crimes when Israel did the same last year. With Hamas terminating the unity government with the PA back in November, relations between the two organizations are at an all time low. Perhaps Iran and Saudi Arabia will expand their proxy war from Yemen to Israel next.

This is an example of what happens in the world when America has a weak President–Iran is running wild and Israel is at risk.

People Co-exist Very Well When Governments Get Out Of The Way

CBN News posted a story today about Ariel University. It is one of the success stories of Israeli-Arab relations, and has been boycotted by European governments and the U.S. State Department. Why?

The article explains:

The university’s home is Ariel, what some call a “West Bank settlement” in territory Palestinians want for a future state. It’s also part of the land promised to the Jewish people in the Bible as an eternal inheritance.

That has led to boycotts of the university by European governments and the U.S. State Department, Friedman said.

Oddly enough, despite the politics, the university represnets a model for co-existence. Some 15,000 Israeli Jewish and Arab students study here together in Hebrew — without a problem.

The article further explains:

Chancellor Yigal Cohen Orgad credits the university’s success to creating an informal atmosphere in which students see each other eye-to-eye.

He thanked God there are no conflicts at the university. 

“We passed in Israel two intifadas, this university,” Orgad said. “There was [not] one evening or one day of tension between Jews and Arabs that study here.”

Despite its cutting-edge research, pastoral setting, and quiet campus life, some in the international community see Ariel University as a controversial place.

“We don’t have problems with other universities and research institutes,” Orgad said. “We have real problems with many governments. First of all in Europe and part of the American government, i.e., the State Department, that tries to boycott us formally or informally.”

Why? “Because they think we don’t have the right as Jews to live here in Samaria,” Orgad told CBN News.

Practically speaking, the boycott makes it difficult to obtain grants and actually hinders things like helping neighboring Arab villages improve their quality of life.

It seems very obvious that the University has managed to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs who study there. If there is peace there, the governments in Europe and America need to stop complaining.

What Does This Accomplish?

Yesterday Israel Today posted a story about Swiss aid that will be sent to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas remains on the terrorist list of the European Union of which Switzerland is not a member.

The article reports:

Switzerland has put together a generous financial package to prop up the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after billions in promised foreign donations following last summer’s Gaza war failed to materialize.

That according to Palestinian officials who spoke to Israel’s NRG news portal, which reported that as part of the deal, the Swiss government would pay the salaries of thousands of Hamas members – many of whom are known terrorists – thereby propping up Hamas rule.

We saw last summer what Hamas does with foreign aid–weapons, tunnels into Israel, planned terror attacks, etc. What is to be gained by sending them more money? We have all seen pictures of children in the Gaza Strip being trained to hate and kill Jews. We have all seen pictures of civilians used as human shields after Hamas attacks Israel. Hamas is not a group that should be receiving money from anyone.

We need to remember that much of the Arab world (Hamas included) does not want a two-state solution–they want a one-state solution where Israel does not exist and all of the Jews are dead. Until someone is in charge of the ‘Palestinians‘ who is willing to accept the existence of Israel, there will be no peace in that region. Even then, it would have to be a leader that people would be willing to follow–to put aside their hatred and be willing to co-exist in peace. That would be wonderful, but I am not sure it is possible.

Meanwhile, funding Hamas will only lead to more war.

Who We Help And Who We Don’t Help

Yahoo News posted an article today about U.S. military aid to Egypt. The U.S. suspended aid to Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood government was ousted by the Egyptian military.

The article reports:

“With respect to aid and assistance, I really expect a decision very soon,” Kerry told reporters in response to a question on when Washington planned to release the $650 million in military aid it froze after Morsi’s overthrow.

Washington annually offers about $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt, including $1.3 billion in military aid.

A part of it was frozen at the height of a deadly crackdown on Morsi’s followers after his overthrow and arrest.

Think about this for a minute. We give money to Saudi Arabia–one of the richest Gulf States and one of the least free. We give foreign aid to the Gaza Strip, which routinely burns and stomps on American flags and pays tribute to terrorists. So why are we setting another standard for Egypt?

The article reports:

Mubarak was toppled after an 18-day uprising in early 2011, leading to years of unrest. Islamists revile Sisi, but he is popular among Egyptians who say the country needs a firm hand.

Washington like several Western capitals remains critical of the crackdown, but realises that Sisi, who leads the biggest Arab military force, cannot be ignored in the fight against the Islamic State group.

Sisi has called for a unified Arab military force to fight the jihadists who are also present in the Egypt’s Sinai, and he ordered air strikes against the militants in Libya last month.

We need to remember that America encouraged the fall of Mubarak. The ‘revolution’ was to be part of an ‘Arab Spring’ that would bring democracy to the Middle East. This was part of President Obama’s foreign policy. Instead, in Egypt, the revolution brought in the Muslim Brotherhood and an attempt to institute Sharia Law.

We have not been on the side of the everyday people in the Middle East who have wanted freedom. In Iraq we left the country and diluted our influence so that the old sectarianism could take hold and allow Iraq to become a satellite state of Iran. This encouraged the rise of ISIS. We have intentionally or otherwise taken the side of the Muslim Brotherhood and allowed Iran to become a major player in the area. Had we supported the changes in Egypt after the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government, we might have had a chance for peace in the region. The Egyptians are willing to fight terrorists, but they are not inclined to take over the whole region. Unfortunately, President Obama has put his money on the wrong horse.

A Department Of Misinformation

The United States State Department has become a department of misinformation. As reported at red flag news, this is one of their recent statements (Marie Harf was appointed Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State in June 2013.):

MATTHEWS: How do we stop this? I don’t see it. I see the Shia militias coming out of Baghdad who are all Shia. The Sunnis hate them. The Sunnis are loyal to ISIS rather than going in with the Shia. You’ve got the Kurds, the Jordanian air force and now the Egyptian air force. But i don’t see any — If i were ISIS, I wouldn’t be afraid right now. I can figure there is no existential threat to these people. They can keep finding places where they can hold executions and putting the camera work together, getting their props ready and killing people for show. And nothing we do right now seems to be directed at stopping this.

HARF: Well, I think there’s a few stages here. Right now what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. That’s really where they flourish.

MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them?

HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether —

MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?

HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people…

Note to Ms. Harf–the 9/11 hijackers were not poor. Osama bin Laden was not poor, Yasser Arafat was not poor. This is not about economics, it is about being trained to hate. In the Gaza Strip, children are graduating from kindergarten in camo clothes carrying wooden guns, and saying that they want to kill Jews. This is the problem. If all of the Arab countries disarmed, there would be peace in the Middle East. If Israel disarmed, there would be no Israel. That tells you all you need to know.

 

 

An Attempt At Lopsided Justice

MyWay News reported yesterday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is seeking Palestinian admission to the International Criminal Court. The intention is for Palestine to charge Israel with war crimes.

The article reports:

Abbas made the announcement in the West Bank on Wednesday, a day after the U.N. Security Council failed to pass a resolution that had aimed to set a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of territories sought by the Palestinians.

Abbas had warned that if the resolution failed, he would resume a Palestinian campaign to join international organizations to put pressure on Israel.

Abbas’ decision is expected to trigger a harsh response from Israel.

Israel says all disputes should be resolved through peace talks, and such actions are aimed at bypassing negotiations.

This is a very interesting move.

This is a chart showing rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip since 2001. It is from the Israeli Defense Forces blog:

graph

The fact that the originators of these rocket attacks on civilian targets want to charge Israel with war crimes would be laughable except that the International Criminal Court is so anti-Semitic the charges would probably be taken seriously.

As the Palestinians seek to charge Israel with war crimes, we might also remember the tunnels discovered in their recent war with Israel. In July 2014, I reported (rightwinggranny.com) that the Palestinians plan to use the tunnels to hide until schools and kindergartens were occupied. The terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible.  This plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

Israel is not the one who should be charged with war crimes.

 

There Are Numbers And There Are Numbers

This graph is from an article in Tuesday’s New York Times. It has to do with the reporting of civilian casualties in Gaza.

aaaapalestinian1aaaapalestinain2

The New York Times reminds us that all civilian casualties reported in Gaza are not civilians:

But the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the Israeli group that analyzed the first Palestinian deaths, accused the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry of “concealment and deception” in order “to create an ostensibly factual infrastructure for a political, propaganda and legal campaign against Israel.”

The Times analysis, looking at 1,431 names, shows that the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll: They are 9 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34 percent of those killed whose ages were provided. At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71 percent of the population and 33 percent of the known-age casualties.

We need to remember that Hamas soldiers do not always wear uniforms. Those infiltrating Israel through the tunnels wore IDF uniforms. As has been previously stated, Hamas routinely puts rocket launchers in heavily populated civilian areas. That is part of their strategy in the propaganda war. Now that the journalists are leaving Gaza, they are reporting rockets being fired from directly under their hotel rooms and in civilians areas. The world needs to understand the propaganda war being waged by Hamas and not fall prey to the misinformation that is being reported.

A website called Israellycool reports:

Tyler Hicks, the New York Times photographer, begins by telling us that Hamas fighters are hiding in civilian areas, embedded within the civilian population and firing rockets from residential neighborhoods:

I was stationed in Gaza, and covered the Palestinian side of the war where you saw most of the casualties.  One of the reasons for that is because the Hamas fighters are living among the civilian population. . . .  This is a situation where the fighters fire rockets from all over the Gaza Strip, from neighborhoods to cemeteries, from parking lots, from any number of places.

And no, the reason they do this is not because “Gaza is pretty small.”  Hicks next tells us that the fighters seek safety at the expense of the civilian population:

Hamas fighters are not able to expose themselves.  If they were to even step a foot on the street they would be spotted by an Israeli drone and immediately blown up.  We don’t see those fighters.  They are operating out of buildings and homes and at night.

Israel is fighting a terrorist neighbor. The world has a choice. They need to understand that this is a fight against terrorism and for democracy. They can choose to help Israel or they can ignore what is going on. The problem with ignoring what is going on is that the terrorists in Gaza are not a unique entity. They are linked (at least in philosophy) with Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, etc. We allow them to continue ruling Gaza at our own peril.

Missing The Forest For The Trees

Yesterday I posted an article at rightwinggranny.com about the plans Hamas had for the tunnel system it had built into Israel. The plans included explosions under kindergartens and the slaughter of kindergarten school children. After thinking about that for a while, I realized that in spite of all I have written about the war between Israel and Hamas, there are some very basic things that I did not understand.

The article I posted included Hamas’ plans for the tunnel system:

Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.  Waiting then in hiding until schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible.  The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

Think about that for a minute. This is not a war about territory. Hamas wants the land, but more than that they want to kill all of the people in the land—children included. Their intention is to eliminate the Jewish people in Israel. This is genocide. This is what Hitler intended. After Hitler, the world said, “Never again.” Did we mean it?

This is not an ordinary war. This is a war in which the people of Israel are fighting to live. Hamas in Gaza needs to be dealt with the same way that Hitler was dealt with—they need to be taken out of power, tried for war crimes, and their supporters put in jail. Hamas was elected—the people in Gaza knew what Hamas was and voted for them anyway. I don’t trust the United Nations to set up a neutral government in Gaza, but control of Gaza has to be taken away from Hamas and other similar terrorist groups.

The criticism of Israel’s military action in Gaza needs to stop. The criticism is coming from people who either don’t understand what is actually going on or have a political agenda. The amount of propaganda coming from Hamas makes it very difficult to realize that Israel is fighting for the lives of its people. Israel did not begin this war, but in the interests of the people in Israel, it has to end the war with the total defeat of Hamas.

The Plan Behind The Tunnels

On Sunday, the Daily Caller posted an article about the battle plan related to the tunnels between Gaza and Israel. The article contained a map of the tunnels:

Gaza1

The article explains the plan:

Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.  Waiting then in hiding until schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible.  The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

…Israeli military officials reported that the tunnels are stocked with tranquilizers, handcuffs, syringes, ropes and other materials used for subduing abductees, civilians and soldiers.  The tunnels also had fantastic quantities of explosives and additional military materiel meant to be used in the up-coming mega attack.  Much of these explosives had already been placed underneath Israeli kindergartens.  Some of these tunnels were as deep as 30 meters underground.

The italics are mine. We are not dealing with civilized people. The really bad news here is that the technology and strategy connected to these tunnels is also appearing at the United States’ southern border. This is not Israel’s war–this is the war for Western Civilization.