Elder of Ziyon Daily News

WaPo, while not perfect, much fairer than NYT in Gaza article
"What I saw during Pillar of Defense" - must read
Tuesday links
The Abbas bus (video)
Follow the energy
"Thank Iran" billboards in Gaza
Today's fake PCHR "civilian"
NYT journalist has a laughable defense of his anti-Israel libel
Hamas' "proof" that they shot down an IDF plane

WaPo, while not perfect, much fairer than NYT in Gaza article

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 07:05 PM PST

The Washington Post has a feature article about some innocent victims in Gaza.

Even though the reader is naturally empathetic with the stories of those killed and injured, the article did note that Israel takes pains to avoid civilian injury - a critical point that is too often ignored in articles like these. It also notes that Hamas benefits from every civilian death, although it falls short on reporting the fact that Hamas intentionally places military targets in crowded neighborhoods.

The Israel Defense Forces often calls the militants in Gaza whose homes it intends to strike minutes before doing so, a way of minimizing the deaths of any women and children who might be inside.

For Israel, the warnings have a logic that is both moral and strategic: Even a successful operation against a senior militant can be overshadowed by the outrage — among Palestinians and around the world — that can ensue over civilian deaths.

But the phone calls are no guarantee that innocents will be spared. No single event galvanizes support for Gaza's armed groups like mass civilian killings by Israel's military, and despite what Israel describes as exceptional caution, the recent conflict featured several of them.

On the night of the 19th, [PIJ member] Azzam did not answer his phone, according to several family members who recounted the incident this week. Moments later, when the buzz of an Israeli drone sounded above his family home in the Zeitun neighborhood, Azzam gathered the dozen people who were inside and fled into the street.

Within minutes, a drone strike, followed by an Israeli military jet's bombing run, demolished the Azzam home and at least four others around it. Among them were two that belonged to the Abu Zor family, whose members say they had no affiliation with Gaza's armed groups, chief among them Hamas. Two young mothers, Sahar and Nisma Abu Zor, and a 3-year-old named Mohammed perished in a blast meant to kill someone else.

"We were blown into the streets," said Hana Abu Zor, Mohammed's grandmother. "The house just came down around us."

The details and aftermath of the airstrikes in Zeitun show how Israel, even while attempting to avoid civilian casualties, plays into the hands of its enemies in the cramped conflict here. Although there is lingering anger toward the Azzams, who say they did not have enough time to warn their neighbors before the attack, the survivors ultimately blame Israel.

Meanwhile, Hamas, which faced rising public discontent before the eight-day confrontation with Israel, has reaped the benefit of such attacks and has emerged in perhaps its strongest political position since taking full control of the Mediterranean enclave five years ago.

One major problem with the article, though, is that they rely on the lying Hamas health ministry for statistics of how many women and children were killed:

Of the 174 Palestinians killed in the conflict, 43 percent were women, children and seniors, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. More than half of the 1,400 people wounded fall into the same categories.

This is easily disproven. Ma'an, among others, has a tally of victims, and the real percentage of women, seniors and children killed is 31% - 54 out of 174. And Ma'an is including at least one child who was killed by an errant Qassam rocket. (Ma'an also includes two terrorists as journalists, and does not even note who the militants are.)

In other words, the Gaza health minister is converting 21 male adults into women and children, which is hardly a rounding error.

It is a shame that journalists who cover the region don't have the basic knowledge, proven during Cast Lead, that some purveyors of statistics are not to be trusted.

(h/t EBoZ)

"What I saw during Pillar of Defense" - must read

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 03:00 PM PST

From American Thinker, by Nira Lee (excerpts):

...When I moved to Israel and enlisted, I joined a unit called the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which is devoted to civilian and humanitarian issues.

As an International Liaison Officer in the Gaza office, my job primarily entails coordinating transfers of goods, aid, and delegations into Gaza. I work closely with representatives of the international community, and although our perspectives may differ, we maintain relationships of mutual respect born of a common goal; I am here to help them succeed in their work improving the quality of life in Gaza.

...Had you told me four years ago that there were IDF officers who stayed up all night under a hail of rockets, brainstorming ways to import medical supplies and food to the people of Gaza, I am not sure I would have believed you. But I can tell you it is true because I did it every night.

What amazed me the most was the singular sense of purpose that drove everyone from the base commander to the lowest ranking soldier. We were all focused completely on our mission: to help our forces accomplish their goals without causing unnecessary harm to civilian lives or infrastructure.

It is harder to explain the emotional roller-coaster -- how proud and relieved I felt every time a truck I coordinated entered Gaza, and how enraging it was when we had to shut down the crossing into Gaza after Hamas repeatedly targeted it. Or how invigorating it was help evacuate two injured Palestinians from the border area, only to be informed minutes later that a terrorist had detonated a bomb on a bus near my apartment in Tel Aviv.

...In my position, I see the surgical airstrikes, and spend many hours with the UN, ICRC, and NGO officers reviewing maps to help identify, and avoid, striking civilian sites. One of our pilots who saw a rocket aimed at Israel aborted his mission when he saw children nearby -- putting his own civilians at risk to save Gazans. At the end of the day, what these "disproportionate numbers" show is how we in Israel protect our children with elaborate shelters and missile defense systems, whereas the terror groups in Gaza hide behind theirs, using them as human shields in order to win a cynical media war.

What's really behind the headlines and that picture on the front page? Every day, I coordinate goods with a young Gazan woman who works for an international aid organization. Last month we forged a bond when we had to run for cover together when Hamas [or Islamic Jihad -EoZ] targeted Kerem Shalom Crossing -- attacking the very aid provided to its own people. During the eight days of Operation "Pillar of Defense", not one passed without a phone call, just to check in. "Are you ok?" I would ask. "I heard they fired at your base. Please stay safe", she would reply. And every night I made her promise to call me if she needed anything. These are the things that the media fails to show the world, just as they underplay how Hamas deliberately endangers civilians on both sides of the border -- by firing indiscriminately at Israel from Gaza neighborhoods.

Maybe stories such as these make for less exciting headlines, but if they received more attention there would perhaps be more moral clarity, and thus more peace in the Middle East.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Omri)

Tuesday links

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 01:30 PM PST

From Ian:

Stand with Us: So, you think you know a lot about HAMAS?

Israel was planning to hit Haniyeh, went for Jabari instead, Kuwaiti report says

[Sorry, but Kuwaiti media simply make things up. All the time. I have never once seen a Kuwaiti "scoop" pan out. I cannot believe they still get any attention in YNet or TOI. - EoZ]

How the World Saved Hamas 20 Years Ago

"The expulsion of top Hamas leaders from Israel would have made it difficult for the terrorist group to continue its operations in Gaza and the West Bank. It would have dampened their strategic use of terrorism and made it easier to implement a peace plan. Only a madman would have objected to it.
Or so one might think."

Satire: 2016: Palestinian Diary

"Sometimes—even most of the time—being a leader means having to pretend. I had many differences with Raouf, but when he became "Arafat" he showed me and others just how far you could get by talking out of both sides one's mouth. He was invited to the UN, and he got a Nobel Peace Prize for tricking the Zionists into thinking he actually wanted to make friends with them. He was a genius, that Raouf. And he was never even coached and trained the way the Russian KGB taught me. He was a natural dissimulator. Perhaps that is the reason he took the nickname "Abu 'Amaar," recalling 'Amaar, the first Muslim to practice taqiyya, the art of Islamic deception."

Shame on Anyone Who Ever Thought Mohammad Morsi Was a Moderate

"Washington ought to have known by now that "democratic dialogue" is virtually impossible with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now mobilizing throughout Egypt to defend Morsi's edict. The reason is that it is not a "democratic party" at all. Rather, it is a cultish organization that was never likely to moderate once it had grasped power."

Egypt's top Islamist expects assassination of liberal figures

"A senior member of Egypt's former militant Islamist group al-Gamaa al-Islamiya has warned that liberal politicians and intellectuals who oppose President Mohammed Mursi's latest constitutional declaration could face a campaign of targeted assassinations starting from December."

Americans in Israel Sue Clinton for US Funding of Arab Terror
Two dozen Americans in Israel are suing Hillary Clinton for negligence in allowing the US to fund the PA, which used money for terror.

BBC's Donnison May Lose Press Credentials After Blaming Israel for Syrian Child Victim in Tweet

"Walla news reports that Israel's Information Ministry is exploring the possibility of denying Jon Donnison press credentials. According to the report Donnison has been invited to a hearing on Wednesday at the Government Press Office."

[This was verified by BBCWatch.]

CAMERA: PBS Gaza Coverage Partisan, Shoddy, Unbalanced

Huffington Post Falsely Claims More Than Half of All Gaza Victims in Recent Conflict Were Children

BBC Watch: Examining the BBC's portrayal of Operation 'Pillar of Cloud' as Israeli electioneering

"In other words, the BBC's 'it's all because of the Israeli elections' theme was clearly based on its promoters' personal perceptions of specific Israeli politicians rather than on fact-based analysis and an understanding of the Israeli political scene."

BBC Radio 4 dances with the 'apartheid' trope

"Instead – as we have seen happen on various BBC outlets with increasing frequency of late – it provided a platform for an anti-Israel activist, supporting what is ultimately a racist cause, to spout factually incorrect propaganda posing as an 'opinion' – unchallenged. "

Operation Pillar of Defense Brings Out the Crazy
Jewish communities across the globe see protests, vitriolic chants

Vienna protesters call for 'death to Jews'

Following Gaza's Ceasefire, Cleveland Rally Calls For the Destruction of Israel

Montreal radio host suspended over caller's anti-Semitic statements
Jacques Fabi didn't correct remark that Holocaust was a 'beautiful thing'

Italy's Jewish leaders denounce mounting anti-Semitism
Unusually assertive public statement takes on soaring increases in vandalism, hate speech
and outright violence

Top English soccer team investigated for anti-Semitism
West Ham fans heard hissing — imitating the sound of gas chambers — at a match against Tottenham, which draws a large Jewish fan base

Dutch TV spoofs Netanyahu speech about targeting Gaza civilians
Satirical video shows prime minister bragging to Hillary Clinton about killing innocents

Exposé: the Vatican Welcomes Iran
"Hizbullah's officials, the Shiite terrorist group based in Lebanon, were hosted in Rome by the Vatican during the recent ceremony for the election of six new cardinals. Among the new cardinals is the Lebanese Patriarch, Bechara Boutros Rai."

'Russia supplying arms to Syria under old contracts'
Medvedev says Moscow is neutral on Syrian conflict; Russia also printed banknotes for Syria, dispatched via Iranian airspace.

French consulate hosts terrorist who planned to kill top Israeli rabbi
Salah Hamouri, who spent seven years in prison for his part in a plot to assassinate Ovadia Yosef, was a guest of honor at Jerusalem function

Seventy years after the Donau, what has Norway learned?
On the anniversary of the country's largest transport of Jews to Auschwitz, a Norwegian journalist ponders the history and future of a tiny, endangered minority

French Writer-Filmmaker Explores Region Where Chinese and Korean Children Learn Yiddish (VIDEO)

Cracking a codebreaker's birthday code
Three Israeli kids — one of them just 9 — sifted through a half billion 0′s and 1′s, and came up with a birthday present that would have made master cryptanalyst Alan Turing proud

Sesame synchrotron is a flash of unity in Middle East
"The plan is for a multi-million-pound synchrotron particle accelerator, known as Sesame.
It has backing from several Arab nations, together with Turkey, Pakistan, Cyprus, Iran and - astonishingly - Israel as well."

Israel in the frame (II)
Ten of the world's top Instagramers take on the Holy Land

The Abbas bus (video)

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 12:00 PM PST

Posted, surprisingly, on the Israeli Embassy US YouTube account:

The video has already made it to Al Arabiya.

Follow the energy

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 10:30 AM PST

Some intriguing news items:

Egypt would consider importing natural gas from Oman and Equitorial Guinea, Petroleum Minister Osama Kamal said on Monday.

Egypt imports gas to meet developmental need targets as established by the government, Kamal said, adding that there is a growing need for gas in Egyptian power stations.

But Egypt also exports gas - to Jordan (and formerly to Israel.) The supply has been disrupted both because of Islamists bombing the pipeline to Israel and because of Egypt's own shortages. As a result, Jordan also suffers a gas shortage.

That shortage, and Jordan's decision to end subsidies on fuel, helped spark the deadly riots that Jordan has been suffering from.

And Iran might be trying to leverage this to its advantage:

The Iranian ambassador to Amman Mostafa Moslehzadeh declined the rumors about Iran's readiness to supply Jordan with free energy resources for 30 years, the Mehr News Agency reported.

The Jordanian newspaper Ammon News on November 22 quoted Moslehzadeh as saying that Iran is ready to supply free crude oil and other energy resources to Jordan for 30 years in exchange for some products which are in demand in Iran, as well as for expansion of religious tourism in Jordan.

Moslehzadeh has reportedly made the remarks during a televised interview with a local TV station. Later, the Iranian ambassador said that Jordanian media has misquoted him.

During his interview, Moslehzadeh said that Iran is seeking to strengthen relations with Jordan in the fields of economy, energy and diplomacy and will consider exporting oil to Jordan in exchange for some items.

Earlier Moslehzadeh had told reporters that Iran is interested in exporting gas to Jordan and to this end Tehran will soon send a formal proposal to the country.

In turn, previously the official representative of the Jordan Energy Ministry Mahmoud Al-Ees told Trend that Jordan is seeking to diversify its gas sources and is therefore interested in the purchase of Iranian gas.

"The Jordanian side has not yet received an official offer from Iran for gas supply to the country, but if the proposal is made, Jordan will consider this option," Al-Ees said.

The two "moderate" Arab states that made peace with Israel are both suffering gas shortages that threaten their economies.

Israel, of course, is sitting on hundreds of billions of cubic feet of natural gas in the Mediterranean.

While the fields are not yet operational, Israel could be providing gas to its neighbors.

Yet, as I discovered recently, Israel did offer to provide gas for Jordan - and it was considered politically unfeasible for Jordan to have a gas pipeline from Israel.

Egypt would be at least as bad.

And Iran is waiting in the wings, ready to rescue their Muslim brothers both from fuel shortages and from the ignominy of buying fuel from Jews (all while easing their own isolation.)

The energy story is going to be the real driver behind Middle East politics for the coming decades. Israel has to play it smart, and if it does, natural gas can do more for peace than any politician could ever hope to do.

"Thank Iran" billboards in Gaza

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 08:45 AM PST

Palestine Today reports that billboards to "Thank Iran" for Gaza's "victory" have been popping up all over Gaza.

An analyst interviewed about these billboards (almost certainly paid for by pro-Iranian terror groups like Islamic Jihad) pretends that these are somehow spontaneous expressions of thankfulness by Gazans of Iran.

Specifically, Iran created "Quds Day," an annual bashfest against Israel; they provided Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets to the terrorists, most of which were shot down but which they still claim is the source of their faux victory; and Iran provided training for the terrorists of Gaza.

The analyst noted that Arab countries were not nearly as helpful as Iran, and hoped that they would start actively funding Gaza's militants.

Today's fake PCHR "civilian"

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 07:00 AM PST

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights wrote:

At approximately 09:00, an Israeli drone fired a missile in the vicinity of Dabbour farmland in Jabalya. As a result, Mustafa Awadh Mustafa Abu Hmaidan, 23, was killed.

They did not identify him as a member of an "armed group," meaning they assumed he is a civilian and apparently counted him as such.

Here is a photo of Mr. Hmaidan:

And here is his obituary from Hamas, where his Jihadist life is displayed and he is revealed to have been killed while in an act of "jihad." Interestingly, he joined the Al Qassam brigades while attending a UNRWA school in Jabalia.

This is the first obituary on the Al Qassam website from Pillar of Defense. Hamas does not want the world to know how many of the "civilians" were terrorists, and (as with Cast Lead) they will only reveal them in a trickle over the next few months. Their assumption is that by the time the numbers are added up and we can prove that the majority of those killed were terrorists, the damage from the lies by PCHR, the Gaza health minister and others will have already been done.

NYT journalist has a laughable defense of his anti-Israel libel

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 05:00 AM PST

After I wrote my critique of David Carr's slimy article claiming that Israel targets journalists yesterday, other media outlets cited the evidence I used to show that the "journalists" were in fact terrorists. Among them were Tablet and Commentary.

Now Carr - a journalist, mind you - is using proof by assertion to double down that the people targeted were nothing but innocent journalists themselves:

New York Times media reporter David Carr defended his Monday column accusing Israel of killing journalists in Gaza on Monday, after Israeli officials and their allies accused him of conflating Hamas operatives and reporters.

"The three men who died in missile strikes in cars on Nov. 20 were identified by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Washington Post and many other news outlets as journalists," Carr told BuzzFeed in an email. "The Committee to Protect Journalists, which I treat as a reliable, primary source in these matters, identified them as journalists. (as did Reporters without Borders.)"

"I ran my column by reporters and editors at our shop familiar with current events in the region before I printed it," Carr said. "And I don't believe that an ID made by the IDF is dispostive or obviates what the others said. Doesn't mean that I could not have gotten it wrong, only that the evidence so far suggests that they were journalists, however partisan."

Now, I posted a photograph of one of these "journalists" - Mohamed Abu Aisha - in uniform, clearly showing the logo of Islamic Jihad on his beret, from the Al Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad website, where he is described as a member of their military.

I also showed that another one was described in a Hamas forum as a "mujahid." (I am not certain that he is the one the IDF said was the leader of Hamas in southern Gaza. He might be, but Hamas is not yet releasing the names of their "martyrs" the way Islamic Jihad is. Since IDF statements are not believable according to Carr, I am sticking with evidence from jihadist sources only.)

Carr is asserting that that the IDF is making up their accusations that these people were militants out of thin air. I show incontrovertible proof that one of them is a terrorist and evidence of a second.

Here we have a journalist whose idea of "evidence" is to cite other journalists, and willfully ignore real evidence!

Is this how a journalist acts? To ignore anything that proves him wrong and to cling to the authority of people in his profession as infallible?

How many of these other journalists even spent five minutes to research the lives of those the IDF targeted?

After all, they were on the ground in Gaza. If they had attended the funeral of their fellow "journalists" they would have heard the leader of the Al Quds Brigades praising Aisha as a jihadist and burying him next to his brother, Imad, who was also an Islamic Jihad terrorist.

There is also the complete blindness to the fact that terrorists have day jobs. After all, 75% of Gaza policemen killed in Cast Lead were also members of terror groups. The same lack of logic that caused Goldstone to call them civilians is the one we are seeing here. One can argue that the IDF doesn't have the legal right to target them when they are not in uniform, but Carr isn't making that argument - he is saying that the IDF targeted them because they are anti-Israel journalists.

Real journalists are supposed to be skeptical. They are supposed to be spending their time uncovering the truth. They are supposed to be honest enough to admit when they are wrong, to revisit the story when facts indicate they are mistaken, because the real story should be more important than their egos.

This is not just an indictment of Carr. This is a systemic problem in the entire profession. The smugness that they are infallible, and the groupthink that they can rely on others' work without double-checking it, all indicate that there is some significant daylight between how many journalists do their work and what the truth really is.

But what do I know? After all, I am not a journalist, and real journalists apparently know that all they have to do is cite their fellow journalists' lack of research as proof and ignore what mere bloggers say.

Because we are not - journalists.

Hamas' "proof" that they shot down an IDF plane

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 02:12 AM PST

Palestine Today has video of the "wreckage of a plane shot down by Palestinian resistance:"

In fact, these are external fuel tanks that are routinely dropped from F-16s for various reasons. This one was obviously dropped in the Mediterranean. (They come in various sizes.)