WarSclerotic

Metaphors for Israel and Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, July 24, 2014
The media, which have favorites and enemies, report accordingly. The UN Human Rights Council is much the same.

Introduction

This is a re-posting of a satirical article from May 23, 2012. It mocked media coverage of the death of Trayvon Martin (the Religion of Peace personified) at the hands of George Zimmerman (Zionism personified). It also mocked and compared media coverage of Israel and “Palestine” as of that date. With few exceptions, the media coverage of Israel, particularly in connection with her current operations in Gaza, has not substantially improved since then.

Mr. Zimmerman was tried and convicted in the media. However, when relevant and admissible evidence was presented in a court of law (even with a judge biased against him), he was properly acquitted of all charges. Unfortunately, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) which is about to “investigate” Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza, is not a court of law. It is, instead, as PM Netanyahu characterized it, a “kangaroo court.” Perhaps it is also an extension of the media. According to this article, it’s even worse than that, if possible:

The UN Human Rights Council held a special session in Geneva on July 23, 2014 to declare effectively that Israelis do not have human rights.  The vote was 29 in favor, 1 against and 17 abstentions.

The Obama administration voted against – after joining and legitimizing the virulently anti-Jewish Council for the past five years, and now feigning disappointment for American cameras.

The Europeans abstained because they did not want to upset their violent Muslim minorities, and because their sordid past didn’t leave the resolution’s message too foreign in any case.  A few cowardly countries that Israelis have magnanimously befriended over the years also abstained.

But the majority of the UN world cheered – literally.  Speakers during the procession of hatemongers at the Council were greeted with applause.

As is their wont, CNN, The New York Times and company derived from this spectacle the lesson that Israel is pathetic, isolated and doomed.

For those might no longer remember much about the Zimmerman – Martin affair, here’s a Bill Whittle video about it.

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The 2012 article

Warning: attempted media satire below.

Zimmerman is a blood thirsty White racist who murdered a defenseless little Black child who would not relinquish his Skittles. He should have avoided conflict by staying at home and minding his own business. Israelis murder defenseless little Palestinian children who lack even Skittles, daily.  They should also go home (where ever that is) and mind their own business.

Racist red-neck Zimmerman

All should have learned from the principled media early on that George Zimmerman is a violent neerdowell White racist from a gated fat cat townhouse community in Florida and that justice can be had only by promptly convicting him of murder.  These facts should have been, and it is to be hoped were, burned into our very souls well before extreme right-wing racists descended, locust like, to interfere (they continue to do so remorselessly) by scrounging up shreds of irrelevant and falsified information to sully the sterling reputation of little Trayvon Martin. Here is a brief restatement for anyone who was paying insufficient attention.

A self-appointed community organizer watch Kapitän (his name even sounds German), Herr Zimmerman goose-stepped in cowardly fashion from his mansion on February 26th to seek a non-threatening little person of color to murder.  He chanced upon Mr. Martin, a skinny seventy-eight pound weakling who looked a lot like the son our enlightened post-racial President Obama needs.  Because Herr Zimmerman is a right wing nut who hates President Obama and was offended by Mr. Martin’s skin pigmentation, Herr Zimmerman chased him like a rabid dog. In an absurd effort to prepare an alibi, he called a police dispatcher on 911. Unfortunately for his alibi, he was ordered in no uncertain terms to cease molesting the harmless little child and to leave the scene. Overwhelmed with anger and yelling racist epithets, Herr Zimmerman disobeyed the police order and continued to follow little Mr. Martin — not just to steal his Skittles but to murder him.

Mr. Martin refused to give up his Skittles and Herr Zimmerman attacked him brutally. Soon he was lying on the ground beneath Mr. Martin. Humiliated, Herr Zimmerman pulled out his pistol and murdered the defenseless little child as he had always intended.  Despite specious claims that Herr Zimmerman suffered a bloody nose and minor scratches to the back of his head, he was in no danger of significant bodily harm as claimed. Instead, he did it simply because he was humiliated by being pinned on the ground by a weak and harmless little Black child.

Herr Zimmerman should have remained calm and stayed where he lay to reflect upon the monstrous harms he and others before him did over thousands of years to little Black children who probably looked a lot like Mr. Martin.  Had he known how to read, Herr. Zimmerman might have learned that a disgraceful half of our murders have been of Blacks; they are victims rather than criminals. Between 1976 and 2011, only ninety-four percent of all Blacks killed in the United States were killed by other Blacks. Yet as is typical of our primitive racist society, the percentage of Blacks in prison is far out of proportion to the percentage of Blacks in the population as a whole. If only we had stringent gun control laws like civilized countries, all would now be well and there would be one less racist right wing nut. the world would be a better place for all.

True, extremist right wing racists may have met with minor undeserved success in trashing the memory of Mr. Martin in their demented quests to rehabilitate their Fuhrer, Kapitän Zimmerman. Their temporary success does not detract in the least from the brave and unselfish efforts of The Reverend Mr. Sharpton and his stalwart colleagues to put the travesty into proper perspective. They, along with all right thinking people everywhere, know full well what caused it: years of hatred against persons of color and associated fears that, due to the exemplary moral fortitude and work ethic of all, they will rise from poverty to surpass red-neck right wing White racists who still cling to their pitiful little guns and Bibles.  Such hatred is not only despicable, it is pernicious. Because of that hatred, Trayvon’s™ Trail of Tears must continue its expensively benign fund raising educational work, despite vile racist opposition, to enlighten us all.

Murdering Racist Israelis

Israelis are senseless, brutal Zimmermans writ large. Like Herr Zimmerman, rich and powerful but morally depraved, Israelis with neither legal nor moral justification occupy lands not rightfully theirs as they deprive peaceful Palestinians children of their human rights out of sheer meanness and to drive them from their only homeland. They even hoard for themselves, and block entry into the rest of Palestine of, the bare necessities little Palestinian children need to shore up the senses of self-worth of which the Israelis have for so long deprived them.

Last week, from May 13-19, the IDF coordinated the transfer of [a patently inadequate] 1,147 trucks with 31,736 tons of goods and gas into the Gaza Strip. (Bracketed insert added.)

So what if a few errant missiles from Gaza may occasionally land in occupied Palestine (sometimes referred to by the unenlightened as Israel)? The number is insignificant: there have been only about three hundred so far this year, and even those few were obviously intended as peaceful fireworks displays to demonstrate the deep but sadly unrequited Palestinian love for the occupying Israelis. All attempts to report alleged Islamic violence, as well as alleged Black violence, are wicked because that just makes them look bad and further diminished their already atrophied self esteem. As noted in this rightly respected blog,

Israeli and Jewish hypocrisy is so brazen that it probably has no match under the sun. Jewish and Zionist circles never stop accusing other countries of harboring “hate” against Jews.

. . . .

Israel is inherently and absolutely unfit to lecture other countries and other peoples on the evils of racism as Israel itself is probably the ugliest and most brazen of embodiment of racism on earth.

The photo on the right shows one of the five Fogel terrorists, humanely sacrificed in accord with sacred Islamic tradition, in a small farming community in the West Bank portion of Palestine.  Rather than heap condemnation upon the virtuous  heroes who bravely performed the heart-warming deed, as Israelis have done, they need to praise them in order to restore their self-images.  As I noted here, the sacrifices were way cool.

Israeli terrorist

That’s what heroes do when fighting against oppression, for freedom, democracy and other humanitarian good stuff.  The surviving [Fogel] family members deserve to be taunted. And for all we know, the heroes who dealt with them did not urinate on their corpses as would have savages from the U.S. who deserve to be tarred, feathered and convicted of war crimes at the very least.  Since the Palestinian heroes apparently did not desecrate the bodies, they are our kind of guys!  Three cheers for Palestine and three yucks for the wicked Israelis who irritate them so maliciously. Peace is at hand, if only Israelis would negotiate in good faith. (Bracketed insert added.)

Whatever they may falsely claim happened to them in the past, Israelis should forget it because now it is up to them finally to submit and yield their own love to their unjustly maligned neighbors who desire only peace.  As noted here,

We are informed that after ethnically cleansing Jews from Jerusalem in 1948, Arab East Jerusalem was magically created for all time.

Times Magazine informs us that with his new coalition, it is now up to Netanyahu to make peace–an odd statement only because the media has always assumed that it is Israel’s obligation to make unilateral concessions for peace.

Now McClatchy’s Frida Ghitis writes Netanyahu’s move changes landscape, and that (once again) the ball is in Israel’s court because Israel’s national unity coalition “creates a world of tantalizing opportunities” for peace with the Palestinians–and heaven forbid that Abbas have to take a stand for peace without another Israeli concession

Israelis have nothing to fear from the Religion of Peace and it is beyond rational dispute that the Israelis are incorrigible. Perhaps they, like all non-Muslims, are demented. Although they have nothing to fear but themselves, they even bark belligerently that they may attack peaceful little Iran, a state that continues to lead the way for human rights and hopes merely to refine small quantities of Uranium to provide modest amounts of clean green energy so that all of her free peoples — men, women and even blood sucking Jews — can live in modest comfort. Because of their desperation, obvious penchant for deception and their lack of reliable evidence, Israelis have attempted to rely upon the antics of a few insignificant Iranian clerics comedians and others to bring naive sympathizers to their warmongering side. Those who have joked that Israelis must be wiped from the face of the earth clearly did not mean it. Israelis combine their hatred with their very atrophied senses of humor.  They should be wiped off the earth the sooner the better; but that’s beside the point.

Despite the consistently honorable efforts of our principled media to convince us of Israeli treachery, Zionist right wing fanatics (the few racist apostate Muslims who have attempted to mislead us about the non-existent evils of Islam must be allied with them) have tried in vain to show that Arabs are the aggressors while “humanitarian” Israelis peacefully attempt to deal with them in ways finely honed to promote regional harmony. As Herr Zimmerman should have done, the Israelis must now lie calmly on the ground to reflect maturely on the harm Jews have done to everyone over thousands of years and thereby submit to peace loving Islam; then there will be peace in the valley and all will be well. The Israelis and all of their neighbors will then live with perpetual happiness in a prosperous unified land of limitless milk and honey.

The time has finally come. We must have, in our time, peace on earth and good will for all. Self-criticism and reflection on their own evils by aggressors such as the Israelis and Herr Zimmerman are the proven keys that have stood the test of time. Only if the racist Israelis promptly cease their unprovoked hate-filled retaliations against the peaceful Palestinians, Iranians and other neighbors and reciprocate their valiant efforts to achieve peace can a viable peace process continue. Otherwise, there will never be peace until all Israelis vanish. Racist White people like Herr Zimmerman (the name even sounds Jewish) must do the same. It is the will of Allah, may his Holy Name be praised by all throughout eternity.  Bismi-llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi (بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم).

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Depravity at the UN Human Rights Council | JPost | Israel News.

( “The UN is lost. It is not too late for America.” – JW )

By ANNE BAYEFSKY

 07/24/2014 20:42

The light years between the UN “human rights” machinery and genuine human rights is pretty obvious.

The UN Human Rights Council held a special session in Geneva on July 23, 2014 to declare effectively that Israelis do not have human rights.  The vote was 29 in favor, 1 against and 17 abstentions.

The Obama administration voted against – after joining and legitimizing the virulently anti-Jewish Council for the past five years, and now feigning disappointment for American cameras.

The Europeans abstained because they did not want to upset their violent Muslim minorities, and because their sordid past didn’t leave the resolution’s message too foreign in any case.  A few cowardly countries that Israelis have magnanimously befriended over the years also abstained.

But the majority of the UN world cheered – literally.  Speakers during the procession of hatemongers at the Council were greeted with applause.

As is their wont, CNN, The New York Times and company derived from this spectacle the lesson that Israel is pathetic, isolated and doomed.

But the real takeaway is the polar opposite.

Israel really is a light unto the nations.

The light years between the UN “human rights” machinery and genuine human rights is actually pretty obvious. At least to folks without years of foreign policy wonking, diplomatic double-talk language schooling, or blinkered war correspondence training.

Here is how it went down.

The “Human Rights” Council session on Gaza was presided over by President Baudelaire Ndong Ella of Gabon, a member of the Islamic bloc of states (OIC), and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

Pillay retires in August after six years dedicated to the demonization of Israel. A native of Durban, South Africa, Pillay spent her time in office championing the racist anti-racism conference that took place in her hometown in 2001 (after Durban’s mayor requested that she resurrect the city’s good name).  She choreographed the second and third UN Durban conferences in 2009 and 2011 that “reaffirmed” the Israel-is-racist canard.

Pillay also initiated, and subsequently became the lead spokesperson for, the 2009 slanderous UN Goldstone report.  Though Goldstone himself later recanted the charge, the report accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians the last time Israel had the audacity to mount a sustained response to the Hamas killing machine in Gaza.

In short, Pillay was bent on leaving office with a bang. Along with Durban II and III, Goldstone I and II would be her anti-human rights legacy.

Pillay opened the Council session on July 23, 2014. For her, “suffering” was a description applicable only to Palestinians. She carefully presented the charge of “crimes against humanity” – knowing full well that the image projected was one of Israelis as the new Nazis. She simultaneously called for an investigation to discern the facts and recounted a list of supposed Israeli-driven horrors, like killing little children while their pious parents prepared for Muslim rituals. She summed up Israeli operations in Gaza as having “inflicted” “unimaginable death, destruction, terror and life-long consequences.”

The feeding frenzy that followed her at the UN’s highest human rights body was raw unadulterated antisemitism.  It was a verbal blitz timed to coincide with the blitz of Hamas rocket attacks that Israelis were experiencing from the skies. The Council session revealed – for the umpteenth time – that these offensives are a continuation of the rejection of a Jewish state, period. Or in the words of Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Maliki himself at the Council, first came the “Israeli atrocities of 1948.”  Maliki went on to charge Israel with having “exterminated” Palestinians. His language included: “the smell of death is pursuing Palestinian children because of Israel…who have transformed children into shreds…while they tried to escape the machinery of death.”

Over and over again the despicable antisemitic analogy of Israelis to Nazis was repeated, along with maniacal claims from a parade of human rights abusers. Algeria said “Gaza is a concentration camp.” Sudan said Israel had a “policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide.” Iran claimed Israel was engaged in “massacres and crimes against humanity.” Venezuela said “Israel seeks to exterminate the Palestinian people.”  Tunisia said “Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism and is acting in Gaza like the Nazis.” And then there were charges of “barbaric, inhuman acts,” “heinous massacres,” and “crimes unparalleled in recent history.”

In the end, the Human Rights Council’s resolution “deplores” and “condemns in the strongest terms” Israel’s “grave,” “widespread, systematic, and gross” “violations of human rights.” The word “Hamas” is never mentioned.

And the UN launched what might be  called Goldstone II – another so-called “human rights” investigation into “violations of law in the occupied Palestinian territory” – not Israeli territory of course.

Goldstone II joins the voluminous UN anti-Israel mechanisms already in operation, such as: the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People; the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People; the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories; the UN Division for Palestinian Rights, and the UN Information System on the Question of Palestine.

On top of that, Goldstone I is still alive and kicking.  It generates annual reports by the UN human rights commissioner, produced as recently as January 13, 2014.  And it spawns annual resolutions by the Human Rights Council calling for its implementation, adopted as recently as March 28, 2014.

Before the vote on the resolution, the UN staff announced that the initial price tag for Goldstone II will be $2,321,500 – twenty-two percent of which will come from the American taxpayer, thanks to Obama’s ownership of the Council. Just on June 19, 2014, Keith Harper, U.S. Ambassador to the Council gushed: “The Obama Administration decided to seek membership because the United States believes the Council can make a difference.  And on July 3, 2014 he claimed: “the most powerful tool we wield at the Human Rights Council is information – the ability to bring into stark focus the realities of injustice and abuse in the world…[T]he United Nations Human Rights Council is making a difference.”

What difference is it making?

There have been twice as many urgent debates and special sessions of the Council on Israel in its entire eight-year lifespan than there have been on Syria with upwards of 200,000 dead.

There has never been a single special session on a place like Iran or China or Russia.

One-third of all the resolutions and decisions critical of a single state – for all 193 UN members – have been directed at Israel alone.

There has never been a single resolution on a place like Saudi Arabia or Cuba.

So the difference the UN’s top human rights body is making is the perversion and defeat of human rights – the human rights of Israelis and the human rights of the Jewish people.

We are witnessing a terrible acquiescence to the suffering of the nation of Israel, a nation dedicated to life, freedom and equality. A nation committed to profound spirituality and compassion for all humankind.

Abandon Israel at the peril of all human decency.

The UN is lost. It is not too late for America.

Iran Supreme Leader: The Only Solution For Crisis Is Israel’s Destruction
Reza Kahlili
9:52 PM 07/23/2014

(Iran claims to have a solution to save the Middle East through it’s alleged superiority and sheer will.-LS)

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated on Wednesday that the only solution for the region is the destruction of Israel, and that the armed confrontation must expand beyond Gaza.

Meanwhile, revolutionary guards announced new missiles which could destroy Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

Fars News Agency, a media outlet run by the Iranian state, reported today that Khamenei addressed the conflict in Gaza in a meeting with Iranian college students.

“These crimes which are beyond imagination and show the true nature of the wolfish and child killer regime, which the only solution is its destruction,” the ayatollah declared to his audience. “However, until that time, the expansion of the armed resistance of the Palestinians of the West Bank is the only way to confront this wild regime.”

Khamenei then criticized America, claiming its defense of Israel is “shameful,” and suggested that its support affects Iran’s behavior towards America.

“The anti-American and anti-West view in Iran is a logical view based on experience and a righteous calculation,” he said.

Referring to Israel, Khamenei added, “This event is a sample of the ‘violent policies with iron fist’ which the fake and illegitimate regime [Israel] in its 66 years of existence has repeatedly and proudly conducted.”

He then emphasized, “As said by Imam Khomeini [the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran] Israel must be destroyed…However, until that time with the help of God for this cruel and murderous regime to be destroyed, strong confrontation with steadfast armed resistance is the only solution against this destructive regime.”

Khamenei then mocked Israel for looking for a ceasefire agreement, stating that Israel is powerless against the resistance of Hamas, and once again, strongly attacked America for supporting Israel.

“We believe that the West Bank needs to be armed just like Gaza and those interested in the future of Palestine must become active in this field [guerrilla warfare] so that the suffering of the Palestinian people through their strength and their weakness due to the Zionist regime is reduced,” he said. “Some Western countries including America and filthy England defend with clarity the crimes that no ordinary person would. The President of America in the face of these child killings, destruction, torture and suffering of the people in Gaza, with a comical logic states that Israel has the right to defend itself! Don’t the Palestinians have the right to defend their lives and security?”

The Islamic regime has long trained and armed Hezbollah and Palestinian forces for attacks against Israel. In reference to further arming Palestinians, the speaker of the regime’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, said in a statement Wednesday, “The clear need of Palestine is its need to weapons and basic necessities and Iran plays an important role in meeting the clear needs of the Palestinian people.”

In related news, the revolutionary guard revealed that they have made missiles capable of penetrating Israel’s Iron Dome.

The missile, named “Hormoz 1,” is claimed to be the first anti-radar ballistic missile to be able to penetrate and destroy missile defense systems such as the Iron Dome and America’s Patriot missile system. The missile has a speed of Mach 5 and can pinpoint a target from a very long-distance. The guards claim the missile can now destroy the Iron Dome, as well as any patriot missile defense system, and that the missile could be used to attack the radar systems of U.S. vessels and carriers in the Persian Gulf.

In continuation of negotiations in Geneva between the P5+1 and Iran, a four month extension to the original agreement was agreed upon to find a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear program. In return for the agreement on the extension, the Islamic regime will receive $2.8 Billion dollars in six installments. The Islamic regime had received $7 Billion after the negotiated agreement in November 2013 with a six month deadline to finalize the agreement, but has so far refused to back down from its demand to continue developing its nuclear program.

A recent report suggests that the Islamic Republic has yet to address the concerns of the International Atomic Agency on work developing detonators used as an explosive device for atomic bombs. The regime, which originally denied such work, has stated the experiment as for civilian purposes.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI)

Netanyahu: Gaza Operation to Continue ‘At Full Strength’, Israel National News, Ari Soffer and Shlomo Pitriokovski, July 24, 2014

(Was his statement that the “operation” is presently at “full strength” intended to suggest that no further strengthening is contemplated?  — DM)

Prime Minister says IDF has struck a ‘significant blow’ to Hamas; more than 30 ‘terror tunnels’ located since ground op. began.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Flash 90

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opened a special cabinet meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem Thursday by vowing that the IDF’s defensive operation in Gaza would continue “at full strength”.

“The IDF has struck a significant blow to Hamas,” the prime minister said, adding that “we will continue at full strength in both the air campaign and land campaign.”

Netanyahu said that the main emphasis of the IDF operation was to locate and destroy the vast network of “terror tunnels” dug by Hamas from Gaza into Israel in order to facilitate attacks against Israeli security forces and civilians.

Since the start of the ground phase of Operation Protective Edge, Israeli forces have located 31 such tunnels, 11 of which were in active use at the time. Terrorists have attempted to utilize the tunnels to attack Israeli communities near Gaza since the ground operation began, but were intercepted each time by IDF soldiers.

Last night, soldiers from the Paratroopers Brigade apprehended two terrorists as they emerged from one such tunnel inside Gaza. The two were detained and handed over for interrogation.

In another incident, soldiers opened fire on a terrorist wearing an explosives belt. After identifying that he had been hit, forces closed in on the target – and discovered two separate tunnels in the vicinity.

In all, IDF forces hit 90 terrorist targets overnight, including tunnels, concealed rocket launchers, observation posts and command centers. Soldiers identified hits on several terrorists during exchanges of fire.

Netanyahu also addressed the decision by the US Federal Administration Agency to lift its two-day flight ban to Israel, as well as similar decisions by European airlines, saying Israel’s efforts to convince them intoreversing their decisions had “borne fruit”.

The prime minister also thanked the Defense Minister, IDF Chief of Staff and soldiers on the ground for the ongoing operation to protect Israeli civilians from Gazan terrorists, and paid tribute to those who had lost their lives in the operation.

“In the name of the entire nation I wish to convey my condolences to the… bereaved families; to the fathers and mothers of our mighty soldiers who gave up their lives for the protection of the people of Israel,” he said.

“I want to thank the citizens of Israel who revealed so much support and love for the soldiers of the IDF. Our strength is in our unity.”

Israel’s Morally Impossible Self-Defense, Front Page Magazine, Richard L. Cravatts, July 24, 2014

Seeming to give credence to Orwell’s observation that “Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence,” the world’s attention has turned once again to the clash between Hamas and Israel, as the Jewish state launches its ground incursion into Gaza in what is being called Operation Protective Edge. And predictably, as the body count rises on the Palestinian side, the moral arbiters of acceptable political behavior have begun condemning the Jewish state for its perceived abuses in executing its national self-defense.

Forgetting that Israel’s current campaign was necessitated by ceaseless rocket and mortar assaults on its southern towns from Hamas-controlled Gaza, international leaders and diplomats have initiated their moral hectoring of Israel as it attempts to shield its citizens from harm. Britain’s deputy Prime Minister, Nicolas Clegg, was adamant that Israel cease its self-defense. “I really would now call on the Israeli government to stop,” he said. “They have proved their point,” and had done so, in his opinion, through a deliberately “disproportionate form of collective punishment.”

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who presides over a morally bankrupt group comprised largely of despotic, authoritarian regimes, was quick to decide that “Too many” Palestinian civilians have been killed, and that he “feels a sense of responsibility for the Palestinians who, especially in the Gaza Strip, have long been denied the sense of freedom and dignity that they deserve,” presumably overlooking those same human rights being denied to Israelis who have lived under a rain of rockets since 2005.

But the most insidious refrain, one uttered only when Israel’s enemies are killed (certainly not when Jews are murdered), is that Israel’s military response is too aggressive, that the force and effect of the excursion into Gaza are beyond what is permitted under human rights law and the rules of war. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, for instance, brushed aside any talk of justifiable self-defense, asserting that “. . . Israel is not defending itself, it is defending settlements, its main project.” Moreover, the deaths so far of some 200 Palestinians in the latest incursion is, according to Mr. Abbas, tantamount to “. . . genocide—the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people,” indicating both an ignorance of what that term actually signifies and a blindness to actual genocides occurring presently at the hand of his co-religionists elsewhere in the world.

The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, James Rawley, had thoughts only for the Palestinian victims of the conflict, sanctimoniously announcing that the Israeli response must be “proportionate” to the threats posed by Hamas attacks, and that “Our thoughts must first be with those many [Palestinian] civilians who have already lost their lives, and the even greater number of who have suffered physical or psychological injuries.”

The remonstrations of its many and far-flung critics aside, Israel is not the international outlaw here, but a victim now involved in a defensive countermeasure to terrorism against its citizenry. In fact, in a 2008 report, Justus Reid Weiner and Dr. Avi Bell, two legal scholars at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, noted that Hamas’s shelling of civilian targets within Israel’s borders—the direct cause of the current conflict—clearly violates international law and requires a military response from Israel, even though world observers have been oddly silent on the Palestinian incitement that is the cause of the present clashes.

“The Palestinian attacks,” they wrote, “violate one of the most basic rules of international humanitarian law, the rule of distinction, which requires combatants to aim all their attacks at legitimate targets – enemy combatants or objects that contribute to enemy military actions. Violations of the rule of distinction – attacks deliberately aimed at civilians or protected objects as such – are war crimes,” exactly what Hamas has been committing with its relentless rocket assaults. Hamas militants not only commit a war crime each time they lob a rocket or mortar into Israel from Gaza by virtue of the fact that the targets of those attacks are specifically and purposely civilian, not military, assets—a violation of the “distinction” rule—but also, in not wearing military uniforms and often posing as civilians, Hamas terrorists are also committing another crime, that of perfidy.

Article 48 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 is very clear about this prohibited behavior of combatants, stating that “[i]n order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” Since the rockets Hamas aims at southern Israeli towns are launched randomly into civilian enclaves, and lack the technical sophistication to reliably be aimed at military targets even if that was Hamas’s actual intention, each of the 12,000 or so rockets that have come into Israel from Gaza since 2005 (including over 1000 this month alone) represents both ancausis belli and a war crime.

“It is a central principle of just war theory,” observed Dr. Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, “that the self-defense of a people or a country cannot be made morally impossible.” Israel faces that precise dilemma every time it is forced to suppress Palestinian aggression and protect its populace from unending rocket assaults, particularly since its actions are widely and almost immediately denounced as excessive, disproportionate, and in violation of international law. Perceived as having unjustly dispossessed the Palestinians and accused of still occupying both the West Bank but also Gaza (and holding the latter under siege), and collectively punishing the Palestinian Arabs living there, Israel has been stripped of its moral standing in the community of nations and so its attempts at self-defense are at best tolerated.

Rather than serving as a deterrent against attacks of terrorists, Israel’s military strength and capabilities are instead looked at as an unfair advantage in the asymmetrical war in which it finds itself. Few leaders in the West and none in the Arab world ever condemn Hamas for its chronic, unlawful terroristic behavior toward Israel, but the moment Israel undertakes military action it receives strict warnings for restraint, censure for its success in neutralizing Hamas strongholds, and eventual condemnation for the inevitable deaths of civilians—the collateral damage that is the tragic byproduct of conflicts fought in neighborhoods rather than battlefields.

Israel, which is promiscuously condemned for committing “crimes against humanity” and human rights violations, not only waited years before responding to Palestinian terrorism, but then, in one of the most populous areas on earth, scrupulously followed the rule of distinction by precisely targeting Hamas terrorists and infrastructure, with minimal, though still unfortunate, collateral damage to the Gaza civilian population – a feat made all the more difficult by Hamas’s insidious tactic of embedding rocket launchers and armament stores within homes, apartment buildings, schools, and mosques in residential neighborhoods.

Combat in the crowded streets and alleys of Gaza obviously makes warfare more difficult for Israel, especially in its attempt to minimize civilian casualties while maximizing the suppression of enemy fire and attempting to neutralize Hamas’s ability to continue to pose a threat in the future. Since, as mentioned, Hamas militants do not wear identifying uniforms, and embed themselves within civilian environments, Israel’s effort to maintain “distinction”— that is, scrupulously determining who is a legitimate military target and who is a civilian— is normally challenging and dangerous. And, knowing that the world community is apt to be harsh about any civilian deaths that result from Israel’s offensive—even though it Hamas who has created the circumstances by which those civilians will and have perished—Israel has resorted to extraordinary measures to avoid the death of non-combatants, including “knocking” on roofs to warm of imminent bombardment, distributing flyers, and using other warning techniques, all of which compromise Israel’s strategic advantage while helping to minimize civilian deaths. Even so, when the inevitable Palestinian civilian deaths occur (which seem to be a welcomed part of Hamas’s cognitive war against Israel), Israel is accused of violating the rule of “proportionality,” the other aspect of warfare which international law requires that prohibits a military response that causes more civilian deaths than would be considered necessary in achieving a set military objective.

In fact, collateral damage – the accidental killing of civilians during military conflicts – is itself allowed by international law, provided the actions that caused the civilian deaths are not, according to Weiner and Bell, excessive in relation to the military need. But the fact that deaths occur in civilian populations – even what might be perceived as excessive deaths – are not in and of themselves indicative of violations of international law, and, says Weiner and Bell, “if a state, like Israel, is facing aggression, then proportionality addresses whether force was specifically used by Israel to bring an end to the armed attack against it.”

The practice of Hamas of using human shields, as well as storing munitions and weaponry in civilian neighborhoods and non-military buildings, also absolves Israel from some of the proportionality requirements, since the use of human shields and the perfidy of Hamas in the first place puts the fault for civilian deaths on it, rather than Israel. Israel indiscriminately pummeling Gaza with bombardment from the air—with many resulting civilian deaths—would violate the rule of proportionality and could be considered a war crime; Israel responding to rocket fire from an apartment building and, in the process, killing civilians (even a large number of them) who were in the building with Hamas combatants is allowed, as long as Israel’s intent was to achieve a military objective and not just to exact revenge or capriciously murder civilians. Even errors which lead to the death of civilians are acceptable, as long as the military purpose was the motivating factor in the assault, since, as Jonathan F. Keiler,former captain in the Army’s Judge-Advocate General Corps, noted,“we do not determine criminality based on outcome, but intent.”

Proportionality also does not require that the number of deaths—either of Hamas militants or Palestinian civilians—be equal to the number of deaths suffered by Israel, or to damage done to Israeli infrastructure or military targets. One moral challenge in asymmetrical war is that observers in the world community intuitively feel that Israel’s disproportionate military strength makes the conflict fundamentally “unfair,” that because it is technologically and logistically able to exact more harm on the Palestinians, Israel should restrain itself to minimize enemy casualties. That may be a compelling emotional response, but it is, of course, not a legal or moral argument with any weight. In fact, it is precisely because of Israel’s military superiority that a rational adversary would have been deterred from attacking in the first place.

The fact that Hamas chose to challenge an adversary with disproportionate military capability indicates that the decision was either irrational or some type of collective death wish; in either instance, the Palestinians, and the world at large, cannot now expect Israel not to use every means possible to protect its citizenry from both immediate and future assaults by genocidal terrorists who wish to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish state. No nation is required to enter a suicide pact with its enemies, and no nation can be expected to wait until enemy rockets successfully reach an apartment building or school, forcing Israel to play, in the words of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, “Russian roulette with its children.”

The Terrorists of Gaza, Front Page Magazine, Amanda Botfeld, July 24, 2014

Hamas is firing rockets. Islamic Jihad is firing rockets. Even factions of Fatah are firing rockets. With the attacks all happening at the same time, it is getting harder to tell one terrorist organization from the next.

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is the name of the organization that governs the Gaza strip. It is a violent group that conducts suicide bombings and launches rockets at Israel. It distributes anti-Semitic propaganda and denies Israel’s right to exist. In 1997, the U.S. officially recognized the group as a terrorist organization.

Like Hamas, the Islamic Jihad Movement in the Palestinian-controlled areas is a splinter organization of the Muslim Brotherhood. It made a name for itself in 1987 during the first intifada – a time of violent uprising against Israel. It has carried out bombings and suicide attacks. It has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia, and Israel.

Hamas is firing rockets. Islamic Jihad is firing rockets. Even factions of Fatah are firing rockets. With the attacks all happening at the same time, it is getting harder to tell one terrorist organization from the next.

Yet there is one actor that seems to be slipping under the radar: Iran.

Iran is asserting itself as a major financier. According to the Economist, “Iran now seems to be providing Islamic Jihad with dollops of aid, plus weaponry,” allowing it to amass “at least 20,000 fighters under its command.”[1]

That does not mean Hamas is out of the picture. While the Hamas-Iran alliance has been strained due to differences over the conflict in Syria, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has taken strides to rekindle their friendship.

I conducted a phone interview with terrorism expert and Fox News analyst Ryan Mauro, who thinks Iran’s dual involvement is no coincidence. “The idea that the Islamic Jihad – which is tied to Iran – is working with Hamas [that] is now getting closer to Iran completely makes sense.”

It all comes back to Iran.

But Islamist groups are known competitors. Can Iran really puppeteer dueling terrorist organizations?

It doesn’t have to. For the Islamic Jihad to gain ground, Hamas needs to be in some sort of cahoots. Hamas governs Gaza with an “iron fist” – brutally cracking down on any opposing groups.

“If you wanted to hold an anti-Hamas demonstration,” says Mauro, “within a second Hamas would come and throw you in jail, violently disperse you, and make you pay a price.”

“I think that it would be foolish to believe that Islamic jihad or any other terrorist group could now [hold] operations from the Gaza strip without at least Hamas knowing about it and allowing it,” he adds.

Is Hamas’s tolerance of outside Islamists an endorsement? It’s very likely. But on whether they actually cooperate together or not, Mauro insists that the West is missing the big picture: shared ideology.

“They have the same core issue,” he says. “They follow a version of radical Islam that says it’s okay to kill civilians for the sake of implementing Sharia law[2] and defeating Western influence.”

As a matter of fact, Mauro reveals that “the root problem [in Gaza] isn’t Hamas. You can wipe out all of Hamas and another will take its place … Groups like Hamas and their associated terrorists are products of an ideology, and until that ideology – and everything that sustains it – is dismantled, you’re just going to keep dealing with one group after another.”

That does not mean Mauro believes military action is ineffective – far from it. While he acknowledges that it is a short-term fix rather than a long-term solution, he asserts that military action provides both relief and protection.

He even thinks military action against Hamas helps Palestinian Arabs in general. This is because Hamas rockets misfire and injure Palestinian Arabs. More broadly, Hamas has created a terrorism economy: taxing underground tunnels, paying salaries to imprisoned murderers, and stealing aid money that should be going to the Palestinian people.

Only 35% of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza strip view Hamas favorably.[3]

So actions that hurt Hamas help both the Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs. Admittedly, it is a band-aid over a cancerous ideology.

But the true fault of the West is not a matter of short or long-term solutions. It is the failure to recognize the problems in the first place.

The West has consistently ignored the behavior of the Palestinian Authority – dominated by its leading party Fatah – pretending not to notice when its President Mahmoud Abbas double-speaks to the English and Arabic media. In English he wants peace. In Arabic he wants martyrs.

This is what Mauro calls the West’s “core problem.” The West focuses on the tactics – the actual events that happen – rather than the culture one implements. “So the argument goes, ‘well, if Fatah supposedly isn’t killing civilians, well then they’re moderates,’” he laments. “But they’re still contributing to the environment that results in terrorism by doing things like glorifying martyrs and promoting anti-Semitism.”

The Palestinian Authority cultivates terrorism – goading its people into murder – yet it is somehow exempt of any consequences. Where is the line? At what point does the Palestinian Authority get branded as a terrorist organization?

“That would require a flashy attack against Israeli civilians that no one can deny,” Mauro answers. “As long as Fatah can claim – by some stretch of the imagination – that they’re not responsible for attacks on civilians, then there are going to be those in the West that are willing to go along with that because they view Fatah as their great hope for some kind of breakout for peace.”

This is dangerous logic. It allows violent ideology to spread and takes advantage of the goodwill of the West. Ultimately, Mauro calls for a “broader, more grand strategy” that addresses the real issue: terrorism culture.

Otherwise, he warns, we will continue to make the same mistakes.

[1] http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21599826-decline-hamas-may-result-new-wave-chaos-whos-charge

[2] Islamic law. Some of the mandates include: criticizing or denying any part of the Quran is punishable by death; thieves have their hands chopped off; women must be circumcised and her testimony in court is only half as much as a man’s

[3] http://www.timesofisrael.com/pew-support-for-hamas-hezbollah-collapsing-in-region/

Egyptian army thwarts two attacks against Israel, Jerusalem Post, Ariel Ben Solomon, July 24, 2014

Egyptian military sources stated that the army shot and killed a suicide bomber on his way to Israel, destroyed vehicle carrying rocket launcher.

Egyptian soldiers keep guard in Sinai Photo: REUTERS

The sources also said that the army destroyed a vehicle loaded with Grad rockets before they were fired at Israel.

The Egyptian army thwarted an attack against Israel on Wednesday night, killing a suicide bomber who ran towards the border near Kerem Shalom, Egyptian military sources said.

The Egyptian sources told the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency in a report published Thursday that the suicide bomber carried an explosive device in addition to wearing an explosive belt on his body.

The sources also said that the army destroyed a vehicle loaded with Grad rockets before they were fired at Israel.

The attack on the vehicle killed two individuals, taking place in the north Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, in tandem with Israel’s ongoing operations in Gaza, the Egyptian army continued its ongoing operations against terrorist elements in Sinai. The army killed three terrorists, injured two others, and arrested 16 on Wednesday night, the army spokesman announced on Facebook.

Anti-Tank Missiles Deflected by New Israeli Defense System, Washington Free Beacon, Abraham Rabinovich, July 24, 2014

Gaza tunnels remain major threat to Israeli security.

An Israeli tank moves through the morning mist near the Israel and Gaza border / AP

Installed on Israel’s most-advanced tank, the Merkava 1V, the system’s sensors instantly identify a rocket or RPG heading toward it. Without intervention of the crew, the system fires pellets that detonate the rocket at a safe distance from the tank. It also informs the crew of the location from which the incoming rocket was launched, permitting counter-fire.

JERUSALEM–At least five times in the past week in Gaza, Israeli tanks equipped with a revolutionary defense system have deflected anti-tank missiles fired at them by Hamas fighters, according to the Israeli army.

The success of the Windbreaker system, as it is called in Israel, augments on the ground the technological achievement in the air of the Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system which Israel credits with neutralizing the intensive rocketing from Gaza of the past two weeks.

An urgent need for yet another technological breakthrough—this one underground—emerged last week when Israeli troops entering the Gaza Strip uncovered dozens of attack tunnels leading to, or under, the border fence separating Gaza from Israel. Even Israeli security personnel who were aware of the existence of tunnels were astonished at their numbers, their proximity (in one case, only 200 yards from a kibbutz), and their sophistication, with ventilation, lighting, and communication systems.

Israelis living near Gaza are demanding assurances from the government that Hamas commandos will not be able to emerge in the future from under the ground in their back yard. Officials say that no technology exists at present to detect the excavation, or existence, of tunnels at the depth Hamas is digging them—more than 60 feet below the surface. The only action that can be taken now is the destruction of existing tunnels, which the army is currently carrying out. New tunnels would take a year or two to build.

Intensive research, much of it top secret, is already underway in Israel to find a technological solution. One proposal was publicly aired this week by Haim Siboni, founder of Magna BSP, which he describes as “a security provider company, which specializes in automatic detection systems”. Siboni toldGlobes, an Israeli business newspaper, that existing technology, with some software and hardware adjustments, could provide the answer.

He proposed that Israel dig a 45-mile-long tunnel—the length of the border with Gaza—on the Israeli side of the line, and install in it every half mile an underground radar station, at a cost of $150,000 for each site. “It would provide real-time alerts of any tunnel, whether above or below,” he says. “The army will know exactly where the attack tunnel is, how many people are in it, and can monitor the progress of digging.”

Officials, who presumably are aware of Siboni’s proposal, say that research is continuing.

The Windbreaker system (known abroad as Trophy), which became operational in 2009, has since been successfully tested by live fire twice when Israeli tank patrols on the periphery of Gaza were fired on two years ago. The current Gaza campaign is the first time the system is being tested in a face-to-face war against advanced Russian anti-tank rockets. In the 2006 Lebanon War against Hezbollah, missiles penetrated 22 Israeli tanks, destroying several.

Installed on Israel’s most-advanced tank, the Merkava 1V, the system’s sensors instantly identify a rocket or RPG heading toward it. Without intervention of the crew, the system fires pellets that detonate the rocket at a safe distance from the tank. It also informs the crew of the location from which the incoming rocket was launched, permitting counter-fire.

The system has also been mounted on Israel’s more advanced personnel carriers built on the frame of the Merkava 1V. Unfortunately for the Israelis, an older personnel carrier was hit and destroyed last week in Gaza, killing the seven infantrymen inside.

US gives weapons to Israel to attack Gaza: Iran

Thursday Jul 24, 2014 02:52 PM GMT

​(Of course, Iran would never do such a thing with Hamas. – LS)

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the Israeli regime is using the US weapons to attack innocent Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

“We know that all the weapons that are used by Israel in order to attack civilians in Gaza have been provided by the United States,” Zarif said in an interview with NBC’S Meet that Press.

However, the United Nations has not taken any action to condemn the US move and to use the Security Council in order to put an end to it, he added.

He called for an “immediate end” to the Israeli regime’s airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

“The United States and the rest of the members of the Security Council have a moral and legal responsibility to put an end to this,” Zarif pointed out.

“We call for an immediate end to all of these activities,” he added.

Asked if he condemns Hamas for launching rockets into Israel, Zarif said, “We do not condemn people who are defending themselves.”

“We believe that actions that are putting civilians in jeopardy in Gaza, that have placed restrictions on civilians to get access to medicine and to food…need to be vehemently condemned by the international community ,” he added.

The death toll from the five days of Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip has risen to at least 125.

More than 800 people were injured in the latest round of Israeli attacks on Gaza since July 8. Most of the victims have been women and children.