| UN admits that more than half of those killed in Gaza were terroristsnoreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 30 May 04:45 AM The UN OCHA-OPT summarized the c | | The UN OCHA-OPT summarized the casualties from the Gaza operation: According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), up to 27 May, 256 Palestinians, including 66 children and 40 women were killed, of whom 128 were believed to be civilians. Around 245, including 63 children, were seemingly killed by Israeli Defense Forces. While these numbers are still quite suspect, it reveals two things that the UN does not want to say explicitly. One is that they admit that at least 11 Gazans were killed by Hamas rockets. There is practically no one in Gaza actually investigating the sources of each incident; as we've seen, hundreds of Hamas and other terror group rockets landed in Gaza but since the first couple of days no one wants to admit that any of them caused damage. Evidence shows that there was indeed plenty of damage from terrorist group rockets falling short. The other is that out of the 245 "seemingly" killed by Israeli airstrikes, 117 (128-11) are believed to be civilians, meaning that at least 128 were terrorists. (This is a higher number than the totals admitted by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.) This means that the UN, hardly an objective source when it comes to Israel, is admitting that Israeli airstrikes were startlingly effective, given...Read More |
From Ian: Alan Dershowitz: The International Community is Encouraging Hamas to Attack Israel Again — and Again The role of the international community, and its institutions, is to discourage just the kinds of attacks Hamas routinely engages in. Yet its recent statements and actions clearly incentivize Hamas to repeat its attacks with the assurance that it will win on the court of public opinion even if it loses on the battlefield. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." What the international community is now doing clearly fits that definition. By that definition, if it persists in blaming only Israel or in creating the moral equivalence between morally very different actions, it will become complicit in Hamas' crimes. It will become responsible for the inevitable civilian deaths that occur when Hamas uses its own human shields to fire rockets at Israeli civilians. The goal of Hamas is to increase civilian casualties. The goal of Israel is to reduce them. Israel makes enormous efforts to warn civilians who are in and around Hamas rockets, but inevitably there will be civilian casualties. The world is outraged when Israel kills Hamas civilians in an effort to protect its civilians. But it said and did little when 4,000 Palestinians — including thousands of children — were...Read More |
From Ian: Rabbi David Wolpe (NYTs): The Jewish History of Israel Is Over 3,000 Years Old. That's Why It's Complicated. My first visit to Israel was when I was 12 years old. The group was led by my father, a rabbi from Philadelphia. We had been invited to participate in an archaeological dig near the city of Beit Shean, in the country's north, near the Jordan River Valley. Soon after we arrived, one of my friends happened upon a pottery shard, really an ostracon, a fragment with writing on it. The archaeologist on site said something to him in Hebrew. My father translated: "He said you are the first person to hold that in over 2,000 years." Such shocks of antiquity are not rare in Israel. In 1880, archaeologists discovered a Hebrew text carved in stone in a tunnel under Jerusalem. It recounted how workers had chiseled from opposite ends of the ancient city; as they grew closer the sounds of stone cutting grew louder until they met in the middle. The tunnel is believed to be dated from the time of Hezekiah, a king who reigned 715-687 B.C., almost 3,000 years ago and 100 years before the Temple was razed, and Jews were sent into the Babylonian exile. Hezekiah ordered the tunnel's construction to bring water from outside the city walls into the city. Jerusalem may be a city of sanctity and reverence, but its citizens needed water as much as they did God. That intersection of the holy and mundane...Read More |
This is truly a horrifying story of how easily liberals get bullied by Israel hating antisemites. The chancellor of Rutgers University issued a statement against antisemitism. But of course, it "All Lives Mattered" Jews, and it ended up being a statement against any discrimination, past or present, and Jews are just one tiny example.
Excerpts: Dear Rutgers–New Brunswick Community, We are saddened by and greatly concerned about the sharp rise in hostile sentiments and anti-Semitic violence in the United States. Recent incidents of hate directed toward Jewish members of our community again remind us of what history has to teach us. Tragically, in the last century alone, acts of prejudice and hatred left unaddressed have served as the foundation for many atrocities against targeted groups around the world. Last year's murder of George Floyd brought into sharp focus the racial injustices that continue to plague our country, and over the past year there has been attacks on our Asian American Pacific Islander citizens, the spaces of Indigenous peoples defiled, and targeted oppression and other assaults against Hindus and Muslims. Although it has been nearly two decades since the U.S. Congress approved the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, the upward trend of anti-Semitism continues. We have also been witnesses to the increasing violence between Israeli forces and Hamas in the Middle East...Read More |
From Ian: The People of Israel Live! Now that Hamas and Israel have entered into a ceasefire, everyone seems obsessed with who won and who lost. The Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy has just emailed me telling me that, "Since war is about inflicting pain, winning can be evaluated by two separate pain parameters" and claiming that Israel won on that basis. I'm not convinced that this description of war passes muster. It wouldn't with Carl von Clausewitz, the soldier whose book On War defined the study of warfare from 1832 right up to today. He calls war "an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will". A more philosophical ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu, claimed that, "to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." But what if life is war and enemies are eternal? What if your life consists of constant struggle against adversity to succeed in your own goals? By what measure can we decide whether an individual skirmish is a success? This makes the articles I'm seeing about who "won" the latest round of violence rather galling. No one won. There was no war and there is no peace. The latest flare up between the two sides is almost perfect as a metaphor for the Jewish experience. After having no peace, we fought. The fighting finished and now Jews, within Israel...Read More |
Felesteen reports that a Palestinian woman sent all of her money and jewelry to Mohammed Dief, the head of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades.
She attached a letter, where she wrote that this was her contribution to the manufacture of rockets that crush Israel, or, as she put it, the "plundering entity."
(h/t Ibn Boutros) * * * * * *
...Read More |
This notice was distributed to the Jewish community of Luton, UK, warning Jews to stay away from a "pro-Palestine" demonstration (h/t Sharpy58) It says that the Jewish community of Luton has been advised by the local police that the Luton Council of Mosques will hold a demonstration on Shabbat, and Jews should be aware of where the protest will be to keep safe. The community says Jews should stay away from the area. Why should Jews be concerned? After all, Muslims aren't antisemitic, and anti-Israel demonstrations are legitimate criticism of Israel with no animosity towards Jews, right? That is the message that we have been told thousands of times from Muslims and non-Muslim officials alike. Why should local police warn Jews? They should be able to stroll right past the protesters in their Shabbat clothes and yarmulkes and be treated with utmost respect, from what we are told. It makes no sense! Could it be that Muslims are, by and large, antisemitic? That Jews walking in the midst of a bunch of angry Muslims are in danger of being attacked because they are Jewish? That everyone knows that Muslims, incited by inflammatory speeches and a diet of lies, are likely to attack the first Jew they see? The fear of angering Muslims brings us to this point where everyone knows the truth but no one wants to say it out loud. I couldn't find the poster for this rally, but a similar one being held in Bradford...Read More |
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