HAMAS EXECUTES FORMER B’TSELEM FIELD WORKER

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach a number of articles on the outcome of this month’s “mini-war” between Israel and Hamas.

I have split this dispatch in two for space reasons. There are three articles below. I have prepared extracts first for those who don’t have time to read them in full, but it you do have time I would suggest you read the full version.

The first article provides some glimmers of hope for a lasting ceasefire. The other two take a sober look at reality of the kind that it is almost impossible to find in the mainstream media for all their countless hours of broadcasts and hundreds of thousands of words written on Gaza.

First, here are three other items you may have missed in the news:

(1) Hamas has now regained control of all the remaining Gaza arms-smuggling tunnels (i.e. those not destroyed before the international community forced Israel into a premature ceasefire) and as a result, cash-rich Hamas has been moving additional arms into Gaza in recent days, according to Israeli news reports.

The Jerusalem Post adds: “Some of the tunnels were not destroyed – like the one that was filmed by foreign media on Wednesday – out of humanitarian considerations. Several tunnels have pipes that transfer fuel [for rocket launchers] from Sinai to Gaza. The concern in the IDF was that if it bombed such a tunnel, a huge explosion would result – possibly also on the Egyptian side – and there would be many civilian casualties.”

(2) A Palestinian human rights activist who used to work for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has been executed by Hamas on charges of “collaboration” with Israel, Palestinians in Gaza said over the weekend.

They identified the man as Haidar Ghanem, 46, of Rafah. Ghanem, a father of two, had dared to tell Israeli human rights groups about some of the executions and torture perpetrated by Hamas and also by Fatah.

IS PRESIDENT OBAMA A WAR CRIMINAL TOO?

(3) Already under President Barack Obama, who has been in office only five days, the U.S. has reportedly killed a dozen children in airstrikes on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border (airstrikes which also killed Taliban militants) and yet this news has (with only a very few exceptions) been reduced to small paragraphs buried here and there inside newspapers, without any sensational headlines, without any angry editorials or letters, without any gut-wrenching photos. Nor has there been rioting on the streets of European capitals as there has been over Gaza – rioting accompanied in some case by vicious attacks on European Jews. Nor have there been calls to prosecute Barack Obama for “war crimes.”

Some papers didn’t even mention the children’s deaths. The New York Times, for example, just wrote: “Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama’s commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions.”

At the same time, The Times of London – to take one example of a supposedly centrist and moderate paper – has been running huge banner headlines every day this month on its front page and in its news section, such as “Israeli troops reveal ruthless Gaza tactics” and “Israel’s ‘iron fist’ strike at Hamas” and “Israel prepares a devastating ‘third phase’.”

Meanwhile 250,000 Tamil civilians remain trapped, penned in by a Sri Lankan military that shows little regard for their lives in its end game as it crushes Tamil hopes for independence. So far 60,000 have died in the Tamil-Sri Lankan conflict. Do any of those who pontificate about Israel even know what a Tamil is? How many of the dozens of deadly ongoing conflicts in Africa, Asia and elsewhere could they even name?

-- Tom Gross

ARTICLE EXTRACTS

“WE DECIDED WE’RE NOT GOING TO SPEND FIVE YEARS IN GAZA LIKE THE FIVE YEARS AMERICANS SPENT IN IRAQ”

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens says Israel scored a tactical victory but missed a chance to finish off Hamas.

Speaking to Israeli army officers on the Gaza border, he points to the positive aspects of the war from Israel’s point of view:

They think that Israel has re-established a reputation for invincibility tarnished in the 2006 war with Hizbullah; that they bloodied and humiliated Hamas while taking few casualties; that they called overdue international attention to the tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle its arsenal; and, with the unilateral cease-fire, that they put the onus to end the violence squarely back on Hamas’s shoulders.

… In a wide-ranging interview, a senior military official offers perhaps the most authoritative explanation of his government’s war aims and his interpretation of its effects. “We have no desire to go back into Gaza,” he says. “We decided we’re not going to spend five years [in Gaza] like the five years Americans spent in Iraq.”

On the contrary: Far from seeking regime change in Gaza, the official seems at ease that the Palestinians will remain bifurcated between Hamastan and Fatahland for many years more, the way Germany was divided during the Cold War. The idea is that a Hamas state in Gaza – somehow deterred from mischief – could become a kind of useful negative example to the Palestinians of the West Bank, somewhat in the way East Germany served West Germany as a monument to everything that was wrong with communism.

… Then there is Egypt. For years, it took an ambivalent view of Hamas: partly worried by the threat it poses to its own secular regime, partly delighted by the trouble it causes Israel. Now the Mubarak government at last understands that Hamas is also a strategic threat to Egypt. “An Iranian base can play against Egypt the same way it played against Israel,” says the official. Almost as an aside, he adds that the timing of Israel’s operation in Gaza was dictated in part by the assessment that Hamas was just months away from obtaining longer-range missiles that could reach Cairo as easily as Tel Aviv. Now the Israeli government is prepared to believe that the Egyptians will finally clamp down on the smuggling.

But Bret Stephens concludes by saying that although Israel has scored an impressive tactical victory, it has missed the strategic opportunity to rid itself of the menace on its doorstep. “In the Middle East, opportunities don’t always knock twice,” he says.

 

“IN TRUTH, ISRAEL SURRENDERED TO HAMAS AND ITS SUPPORTERS AT THE UN”

In the second article below, Jonathan Mark writes:

The first rule of pride is this: When they run you out of town, walk like you’re leading the parade.

I’ll give Israel this: When international pressure got to be too much, Israel left Gaza as if it was Israel’s bright idea, “a unilateral ceasefire.”

In truth, Israel surrendered. It is “surrender” if you leave with Hamas rockets still flying into Israel, and with Gilad Shalit remaining in his private Auschwitz. Imagine how Shalit was tortured these past three weeks. Imagine being his parents. If this Gaza operation even resembled a success, Israel could have said, OK Hamas, we’ll stop devastating your neighborhoods and killing your so-called civilians in exchange for two things: The rockets have to stop, and Shalit comes home.

What we see is that Hamas wasn’t all that devastated; if they were, they’d have taken the deal.

Instead, Israel quit, like Roberto Duran not coming out for the next round, “no mas,” throwing in the towel.

We know that Israel lost because Hamas set the terms: The rockets do not stop; Shalit stays where he is.

What would we be saying about Roosevelt and Churchill if they settled for a cease fire on Jan. 18, 1945, with the excuse that, hey, Hitler’s supply lines have been damaged, but yes, he can still bomb London, and yes, the Jews are still in the camps. Even if it’s only one Jew.

This war was supposed to re-establish Israel’s deterrence. That was supposed to be the lesson. Instead, the lesson is that Israel quits before the rockets do…

 

“THE MORAL CHASM THAT SEPARATES JEWS FROM THEIR ENEMIES”

In the third article below, Dennis Prager writes:

For those individuals – such as nearly all members of the world news media – who, in light of Israel’s invasion of Gaza – see moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians, here are some clarifying thoughts.

First, it would be difficult nearly to the point of impossibility, to find Israeli or other Jews who celebrate the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Jews both within and outside of Israel cringe when they see pictures of dead Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza. For thousands of years at their Passover seders, Jews have removed wine from their cups to ceremonially weep for the Egyptians – their erstwhile slave owners for 400 years – who died during the Jews exodus. Jews have never stopped weeping for enemies.”

The opposite is the case with the large majority of Palestinians. It would be quite difficult to find many Palestinians who do not celebrate the deaths of Israeli Jews or non-Israeli Jews. This is not only reflected in Palestinian polls that show majority support for terrorism – and terrorism means killing innocent Jews – it is also reflected in Palestinian media, Palestinian schools, and Palestinian mosques that routinely glorify murderers of Jews, and refer to all Jews as monkeys and the like.

Take for example, Palestinian reaction to the 2001 Palestinian terror bombing of a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria in which 15 Jews, five of whom were two sets of parents and their children, were murdered and an additional 130 people were injured, some permanently maimed. *

As reported by the Associated Press, a month later, Palestinian university students opened an exhibition that included a grisly re-enactment of that mass murder. The students built a replica of the Sbarro pizzeria, with fake blood, splattered pizza, a plastic hand dangling from the ceiling, and a fake severed leg wearing jeans and a bloody black sneaker.

… Here’s the question: Can anyone even imagine Jews, in Israel or anywhere else on earth – no matter how right-wing they are politically or religiously – doing something analogous to celebrate the death of Palestinian civilians?

… The second point to be raised is about perspective.

If during World War II, Western news media had reported German and Japanese civilian casualties in the same detail and with the same sympathy they report Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, it is doubtful that the Nazis and the Japanese militarists would have lost that war. Certainly, at the very least, the anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist war effort would have been severely compromised.

[For more on the Sbarro pizza bomb victims please see here.]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

GAZA DOCTOR: HAMAS EXAGGERATED GAZA DEATH TOLL – 500 TO 600 KILLED, MOSTLY FIGHTERS, NOT 1,250

As was the case with Lebanon in 2006, and Jenin in 2002, the international media seem to have rushed to maximize the Palestinian death count in Gaza this month to make Israel look as bad as possible, blindly basing their “facts” on pro-Hamas sources, including completely discredited pro-Hamas UN officials.

Now more moderate Palestinian doctors have a different story to tell according to Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera. The paper today quotes a Palestinian doctor at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City saying that, despite Hamas and UN claims, most of those killed in Gaza were members of the terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

“The number of deaths was between 500-600... most were young men between 17 and 23 who were recruited into the ranks of Hamas, which sent them to be slaughtered,” the doctor said.

Corriere della Sera correspondent Lorenzo Cremonesi confirmed that only 600 people were killed, and not 1,300 as was widely reported, based on hospital visits and discussions with families of the victims. (I know Lorenzo Cremonesi personally. He has been very harsh on Israel in the past but is honest and objective enough to now report the truth, unlike so many other international journalists covering the Middle East.)

“It was strange that the non-governmental organizations, including Western ones, repeated the high [1,250 death toll] number without checking, but the truth will come to light in the end,” said the Palestinian doctor.

“It’s like what happened in Jenin in 2002,” he said. “At the beginning they spoke of 500 dead; afterwards it was clear there were only 54 dead, at least 45 of them fighters.”

Corriere della Sera says they have verified the story and know the name of the doctor but are not identifying him to prevent his being killed by Hamas.

A Tal al-Hawa resident also told Corriere della Sera: “Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn’t do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired from our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes.”

 

NUMBER OF PALESTINIANS INJURED ALSO “GREATLY EXAGGERATED” BY UN OFFICIALS

Many international media have stated that 1,250 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the coastal territory without telling readers and viewers that these were completely unverifiable figures provided by pro-Hamas sources. Foreign governments then rushed to condemn Israel for the supposedly large number of civilians among the Palestinian dead, reporting that as many as half of the casualties may have been civilian. (At the same time, the media all but ignore the 132 other conflicts around the world, despite the much greater numbers of civilians deaths in many. Only today, for example, The Guardian – but not other newspapers – reports that a U.S. airstrike killed 25 civilians in Afghanistan.)

Cremonesi, who made several trips to all Gaza’s hospitals and interviewed families of casualties, assessed the number of wounded to be far lower than 5,000, the number quoted by Hamas and repeated by the UN and the Red Cross in Gaza. “It is sufficient to visit the hospitals to understand that the numbers don’t add up,” he wrote.

In the European hospital in Rafah, one of the facilities which would presumably be filled with wounded from the “war of the tunnels,” many beds were empty, according to Cremonesi. A similar situation was noted in the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and in the privately-run Amal Hospital Cremonesi reported that only five out 150 beds were occupied.

13 Israelis were also killed during the 3-week operation, which was aimed at halting rocket fire on southern Israel and destroying Hamas’ infrastructure.

The Corriere della Sera article can be read (in Italian) here.

(For my writing on Jenin in 2002, please see Jeningrad.
And on Lebanon in 2006, please see Media Missiles.)

***

The IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration said today that they believe Cremonesi’s figures may be an underestimate and as many as 900 Palestinians in total died. They believe as many as 750 are Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives (and Fatah men executed by Hamas) and 150 Palestinian civilians may have been killed in the conflict.

***

The IDF Gaza Division Commander, meanwhile, today branded Hamas’s use of women and children during the offensive in Gaza as “monstrous” and “inhumane.”

Brig. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg said the civilians were sent by Hamas to transfer weapons to gunmen during the offensive. He also accused the Islamist militant group of booby-trapping the homes of many civilians.

“Entire families in Gaza lived on top of a barrel of explosives for months without knowing,” Eisenberg said.

The officer asserted that despite international calls for investigations into alleged war crimes, Israeli soldiers adhered to the highest moral principles while fighting in Gaza.

***

INCREDIBLE PRECISION AT AVOIDING COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Unlike, for example, the shamefully biased British and French press, the leading German news magazine Der Spiegel has had good on-the-ground reporting from Gaza post-cease fire, noting the precision of Israel’s hits.

The magazine wrote: “Whole rows of houses stand in darkness. In between, precisely destroyed individual buildings can be seen again and again. There is usually a green Hamas flag lying in tatters somewhere in the rubble.”

***

NO, IT’S NOT STALINGRAD (AS SOME OTHER MEDIA SUGGESTED)

There is also the testimony of the (London) Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher. He is generally very harsh on Israel, which makes it all the more telling that this week he writes:

“I knew Gaza well before the attacks, so when Israel ended its ban on foreign journalists reaching Gaza on the day the ceasefire was announced, I was able to see for myself.

“One thing was clear. Gaza City 2009 is not Stalingrad 1944. There had been no carpet bombing of large areas, no firebombing of complete suburbs. Targets had been selected and then hit, often several times, but almost always with precision munitions. Buildings nearby had been damaged and there had been some clear mistakes, like the firebombing of the UN aid headquarters. But, in most cases, I saw the primary target had borne the brunt… For the most part, I was struck by how cosmetically unchanged Gaza appeared to be.”

***

Tom Gross adds: Here, for example, is a video of Israel changing a missile’s path and shooting into a field to avoid civilian casualties when a terrorist-filled car they were following drove into the driveway of a civilian house.

 

HAMAS FIRES FROM GAZA FOREIGN PRESS BUILDING

During the conflict Hamas didn’t only fire at Israel from hospitals and UN schools but also from the offices of Arab news media.

Here is live footage of al-Arabiya TV reporter Hannan al-Masri as she learns that a Hamas missile was being fired from her building which houses the al-Arabiya studio in Gaza.

ARABIC - www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY50cktUKbA

And with subtitles:

ENGLISH - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt_Y_3LKCGA
SPANISH - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw3j26pi2i4
RUSSIAN - www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAkL54eJPgk
GERMAN - www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7M07pvW4NU
FRENCH - www.youtube.com/watch?v=195u-HgC47c

 

HAMAS FIRING OUT OF A SCHOOL YARD

Hamas firing out of a school yard, Jan 8, 2009.

* The school is administered by UNRWA. UNRWA employs more than 24,000 staffers, 99% of whom are Palestinians. That’s more than any other UN agency, including the UNHCR, which has only a quarter the manpower of UNRWA yet has to take care of all other refugees worldwide, totaling more than 11 million. As I have pointed out in previous dispatches, the existence of UNRWA itself is one of the reasons the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not yet been solved.

* During the three-week conflict Hamas sent 852 flying bombs packed with shrapnel into Israel – all aimed at civilian targets in what is as clear a case of a war crime as you can get – killing four Israelis and injuring over 700. Many Israeli civilians remain hospitalized, including seven-year-old Orel Yelizarov, who lies gravely injured with shrapnel in the brain.

 

EUROPEAN TERRORISTS AMONG PARTICIPANTS AT BELFAST ANTI-ISRAEL RALLY

Convicted Irish and Spanish terrorists were among the 2,000 people who participated in a rally in Belfast two weeks ago that demanded an end to the conflict in Gaza.

One of those taking part was the IRA’s “Brighton Bomber” Patrick Magee, who planted a bomb at Brighton’s Grand Hotel in 1984 targeting then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet, which killed two men and three women. Magee was released from jail in 1999.

Also present was convicted ETA bomber Juan Ignacio de Juana Chaos, who is wanted in Spain.

The rally was organized by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and featured speeches by church, trade union and political representatives.

The 53-year-old ETA terrorist’s presence at the protest prompted a minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly to demand an apology from ICTU. Junior Democratic Unionist Party minister Jeffrey Donaldson called on the trade union leadership to “apologize to the people of Spain” for the sight of the ETA killer.

De Juana Chaos is on bail fighting extradition back to Spain, where he is wanted to face charges in connection with aiding acts of terrorism. He lives in Belfast where he receives social security and is currently learning English at a local college.

He served 21 years of a 3,000-year prison sentence for murdering 25 people and was arrested in Belfast last year after Spain issued an arrest warrant to the UK authorities.

 

BBC SLIPS UP: BROADCASTS BRITISH COLONEL DEFENDING IDF

Even though the BBC (which receives lavish public funding) is under a legal obligation to maintain balance, in its Mideast coverage it is notorious for the overwhelming preference it shows for inviting guests who will promote its agenda, whether they be anti-Israel non-Jews, or (the BBC’s favorites) anti-Israeli former Israelis like Professor Avi Shlaim (of Oxford university).

But here is one person who actually criticized Hamas who managed to sneak on.

Former British Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, a former UK government advisor, defends Israel on BBC. “Never, in the history of warfare has an army taken so much care to ensure the safety of civilians as the IDF,” he says.

The interviewer ends by saying perhaps he can come back to talk about the issue some other time but I’m pretty sure he’ll never get another chance on the BBC.

***

Here is a broadcast from a satirical TV program in Israel (Israel’s equivalent of “Saturday Night Live”) mimicking BBC World News. The BBC’s Middle East broadcasts are the subject of much ridicule in Israel because they are so hopelessly biased.

 

WAVE OF EXECUTIONS BY HAMAS CONTINUES

I noted in previous dispatches that many of the Palestinians killed and injured in Gaza this month were shot by Hamas operatives who continue to crack down on Fatah and against any other sign of dissent against Hamas’s one-party rule. According to Palestinian sources, it is estimated that about ten percent of Gazans killed in the recent three week war between Hamas and Israel were Palestinians executed by Hamas.

These executions have been widely reported over the last month in the Palestinian and Israeli press (as well as on this website) but not by duplicitous Western news outlets like CNN and the BBC (the world’s two biggest international news broadcasters) who are interested in falsely suggesting that all Palestinian suffering is caused by Israel.

Sources in Gaza relate that some of the bodies of those Fatah men executed by Hamas were then laid out for filming by Palestinian cameramen working for international news agencies and relayed to gullible Western news outlets, which then reported that they were victims of Israeli attacks.

 

FINALLY SOME WESTERN MEDIA REPORT ON THIS

Finally one or two mainstream media (but not, of course, organizations like the BBC) are reporting on these executions by Hamas.

For example, today The San Francisco Chronicle began its news report:

“As Israel’s last troops left the Gaza Strip Wednesday, Hamas officials conceded that they are executing Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel during the three-week invasion.

“In the West Bank, Fatah officials said at least 19 of its members have been executed and many more brutally tortured. Gaza residents say Hamas is using schools and other public buildings in Gaza City, and in the towns of Khan Younis and Rafah as detention centers to interrogate members of Fatah, their political rivals. They said three men have been blinded during questioning and more than 60 have been shot in the legs as punishment.”

The San Francisco Chronicle continues:

“…In Gaza City, Fatah activists told spine-chilling stories of retribution. Relatives of Abed al-Gharabli, a former Fatah security officer who spent 12 years in an Israeli prison, said he was kidnapped by a group of Hamas militiamen who shot him in both legs after severely torturing him.

“Ziad Abu Hayeh, an Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade commander, is reported to have been blinded after being abducted from his home in Khan Younis by Hamas gunmen.

“In other cases, Fatah supporters were simply shot in the legs – a favored Hamas tactic during the 2007 coup that drove Fatah out of Gaza.”

 

HAMAS ADMITS THE CRACKDOWN (BUT STILL THE BBC WON’T MENTION IT)

Moussa Abu Marzook, the Damascus-based deputy leader of Hamas, told reporters yesterday that senior Fatah officials had “distributed candy celebrating the Gaza offensive, sent kisses to Israeli warplanes” and “guided these planes to their targets.”

Abu Marzook said they deserved to be punished and admitted that non-Hamas supporters were being executed in Gaza. These remarks were widely reported in the Middle East – for example, in the Qatari daily A-Sharq and the Lebanese daily Al-Hayat – but not in the West.

Ihab Ghissin, a spokesman for the Hamas Ministry of Interior in Gaza, confirmed the arrest of Fatah activists. “We have managed to capture a number of collaborators who are now being questioned for their role in aiding the Zionist aggression,” he told reporters in Gaza City.

Two other Hamas officials, Salah Bardaweel and Fawzi Barhoum, confirmed that Hamas is undertaking what he called a crackdown on “Abbas’s spies” in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has fully controlled Gaza since June 2007, when it launched a coup against the Abbas government. At that time, about 400 Fatah supporters were killed and many others badly maimed.

 

“HAMAS USING UNRWA SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND HOSPITALS AS TORTURE CENTERS”

The Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh reports that hundreds of Fatah activists have been rounded up in Gaza in recent days.

Eyewitnesses said the detainees were being held in UN-run school buildings and hospitals that Hamas had turned into makeshift interrogation centers.

A Fatah official in Ramallah said that at least 100 of his men had been killed, wounded or tortured as a result of the Hamas crackdown this month.

According to the official, at least three of the detainees had their eyes gouged out by their interrogators, who accused them of providing Israel with wartime information about the location of Hamas militiamen and officials.

 

TORTURE AT CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL AND MENTAL HEALTH CENTER

Palestinian eyewitnesses said that a children’s hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Younis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into “torture centers.”

Among the victims:

Relatives of Abed al-Gharabli, a former Fatah security officer who spent 12 years in Israeli prisons, said he was kidnapped by a group of Hamas militiamen who shot him in both legs after severely torturing him. Al-Gharabli has now been released.

Ziad Abu Hayeh, one of the commanders of Fatah’s armed wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, is reported to have lost his sight after Hamas gunmen gouged out his eyes. According to Fatah activists, Abu Hayeh was kidnapped from his home in Khan Younis by Hamas militiamen.

On Saturday night, three brothers from the Subuh family were abducted by Hamas militiamen and taken to the Abdel Aziz Rantisi Mosque in Khan Younis, where they were shot in the legs.

Hamas gunmen shot and killed 80-year-old Hisham Tawfik Najjar after storming his home and beating his four sons, all Fatah activists.

***

In an editorial, Yediot Ahronot (Israel’s largest newspaper) says that, “Hamas is not a mass national liberation movement of the Palestinian people: It is tiny Islamo-Fascist organization that forcibly took control of a disheartened strip of land and turned it into a nightmare of an Islamic state.”

In an editorial, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv reminds its readers that, “The Americans battled 3,000 Hamas clones in Fallujah, Iraq. There it ended in 6,000 civilians killed and another 1,000 terrorists, as well as the destruction of a fifth of the city’s buildings.”

***

UPDATE: FATAH HIT BACK

Hamas activists say that hundreds of Hamas supporters, including journalists, university students and Muslim leaders, are being beaten, arrested and tortured across the West Bank as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas takes revenge on Hamas for its crackdown on Fatah supporters in Gaza.

This doesn’t exactly increase the chances for Palestinian unity that U.S. President Barack Obama, who named former Sen. George Mitchell yesterday as his special Middle East envoy, has said is necessary as a first step to forge a lasting peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.

 

SHIN BET CHIEF: HAMAS WILL RESUME ARMS SMUGGLING TO GAZA WITHIN A FEW MONTHS

Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin on Sunday told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas would resume smuggling arms into Gaza within a few months, despite Israel’s recent destruction of many tunnels used for this purpose.

Diskin added that despite heavy criticism of Israel, Gaza residents are “fiercely criticizing Hamas for the destruction it has brought to Gaza.”

Diskin added that Hamas suffered a strategic surprise and that it “did not expect that Israel would begin an operation in the lead up to elections, not of such a scope and magnitude and not one in which Israel would send troops deep into Gaza.”

 

… BUT AP SHOWS FILM REVEALING THE RESUMPTION OF SMUGGLING INTO GAZA HAS ALREADY BEGUN

In fact, Diskin may well be underestimating Hamas’s abilities.

Yesterday, 4 days after the ceasefire, Associated Press (AP) Television showed Palestinian smugglers filling a fuel truck with gas that had come through a tunnel from Egypt. The footage also showed workers clearing blocked tunnels, and bulldozers carrying out other repairs.

One of the stated goals of the IDF offensive was to stop the smuggling through the hundreds of tunnels under the border.

Ha’aretz also reports that Palestinians are again channeling fuel and weapons from Sinai.

Yediot Ahronot reports that the American navy raided a ship in the Red Sea and uncovered Iranian-made ammunition hidden in crates and presumably destined for Hamas.

 

HIZBULLAH BEHIND LEBANON ROCKET STRIKES IN NORTH

An Israeli investigation has concluded that Hizbullah was behind the two Katyusha rocket attacks that struck northern Israel this month. In both cases, the organization used proxy Palestinian militant groups to launch the rockets from southern Lebanon. Hizbullah supplied the group with the rockets and rocket launchers and guided them as to targets.

Several ministers in the Lebanese government have expressed anger with Hizbullah for instigating the attacks on Israel, fearful that the Iran-backed Shia militia was again risking igniting a confrontation between Hizbullah and Israel.

***

The Times of London reports that a Hizbullah plot to attack the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan was foiled last year, after it was discovered by Azeri Intelligence.

 

GAZA ROCKETS HIT ISRAEL EVEN AFTER CEASEFIRE

Palestinian terrorists in Gaza launched 18 rockets at civilians in southern Israel on Sunday even after Israel’s unilateral ceasefire. One house in the Israeli city of Ashdod took a direct hit, injuring its inhabitants. “The enemy has failed to end the rocket attacks and they are still reaching deep into the Zionist entity,” Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said.

On Tuesday night, the remainder of Israeli troops left Gaza, presumably more concerned about being out before Barack Obama took the oath of office in Washington (which was evening Israel time) than about threats from the Hamas leadership.

 

“MISSILES TO FALL ON TEL AVIV WITHIN ONE YEAR”

Several Israeli politicians are warning that Israel should not have caved in to international pressure and declared a ceasefire before they had properly damaged Hamas.

Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beitenu party, warned of the ceasefire’s consequences by saying “missiles will fall on Tel Aviv within one year.” (In the next dispatch, there will be articles that deal in more detail with the ceasefire’s aftermath.)

 

PALESTINIAN SOURCES: “IRANIAN UNIT” OF HAMAS DESTROYED

The so-called “Iranian Unit” of Hamas has been destroyed, according to Gaza sources cited by Ha’aretz. The sources said most of the unit’s 100 members were killed in fighting in the Zeytun neighborhood of Gaza City.

The terrorists had been trained in infantry tactics, the use of anti-tank missiles and the detonation of explosives, among other skills, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at Hizbullah camps in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley, as well as sites in Iran.

 

FORMER CANADIAN JUSTICE MINISTER: HAMAS IS A WAR CRIMES “CASE STUDY”

The fighting, tactics and ideology of Hamas are a “case study par excellence” of a systematic violation of international humanitarian law, according to Irwin Cotler, a leading expert in international law.

There is “almost no comparable example” anywhere in today’s world of a group that so systematically violates international agreements related to armed conflict, Cotler, who is a former Canadian justice minister, MP and law professor at Montreal’s McGill University (as well as being a longtime subscriber to this email list) told The Jerusalem Post.

Hamas is committing at least six violations of international law, Cotler explained, namely:

* The deliberate targeting of civilians
* The launching of attacks from within civilian areas and civilian structures, whether it be an apartment building, a mosque or a hospital, in order to be immune from a response from Israel
* The misuse and abuse of humanitarian symbols for purposes of launching attacks
* The direct and public incitement to genocide against an entire people (the Jews)
* The scope of the attack on civilians, which upgrades the violation to a crime against humanity
* The recruitment of children into armed conflict

[The French NGO Avocats sans frontiers, under the leadership of Maître Gillest-William Goldnadel, is moving to take the case against Hamas to the International Court in The Hague, based on the above-mentioned elements.]

 

HAMAS GUNMEN HIJACK JORDANIAN AID SHIPMENT IN THE GAZA STRIP

The Jordan government-controlled Petra News Agency reports that on Tuesday a number of armed militia in Gaza seized an aid convoy sent by the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO) after it entered the Gaza Strip via Karem Abu Salem Crossing Point.

During the recent conflict, Hamas raided over 100 aid trucks that Israel had allowed into Gaza, stole their contents and sold them to the highest bidders.

The IDF said UNRWA and the Red Cross officials had effectively allowed Hamas to seize the aid, and Israel could do nothing to prevent such raids, since it didn’t want to be seen endangering UNRWA and the Red Cross personnel.

 

WHERE HAMAS GETS ITS MONEY

Rachel Ehrenfeld reports in Forbes magazine that despite repeated promises by Western nations to cut off funds for Hamas, international aid organizations and many countries kept on sending money to Gaza. She reports that hundreds of millions of dollars are being funneled through the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, the Arab Bank PLC in Gaza and HSBC in Amman, Jordan, among other sources.

 

MCCLATCHY POLL: AMERICANS LESS SUPPORTIVE OF A PALESTINIAN STATE THAN U.S. GOVERNMENT

A new poll taken by America’s McClatchy news agency shows fewer Americans favor the creation of a Palestinian state than might have been presumed.

Although for years American government officials have reflexively uttered the mantra calling for “Israel and the Palestinians to live side by side in independent states,” only 31 percent of Americans polled favor a Palestinian state at all, while 45 percent oppose it and 24 percent have no opinion.

There are hundreds of national and ethnic groups around the world that would like their own state, and Americans (unlike Europeans) don’t see any particular reason why the Palestinians should be head of the list of nations that deserve states, especially since any likely Palestinian state may become a security threat to the U.S. and the region.

Separately, a new Pew poll found that Americans sympathize with Israel rather than the Palestinians, by a 49 percent to 11 percent margin. It also found that 41 percent of Americans think Hamas is responsible for this month’s violence as opposed to 12 percent who hold Israel responsible. 50 percent believe that Israel has responded “about right,” 7 percent said it “has not gone far enough,” and 24 percent said “Israel reacted too strongly.”

(Pew Poll here.)

 

GERMAN POLICE BAN ISRAELI FLAGS

In addition to the many fiercely anti-Israel demonstrations this month, there have also been sizeable pro-Israel demonstrations even in places not accustomed to pro-Israel rallies, such as Warsaw and Kiev where thousands of people flew Israeli flags in public squares.

But in the German cities of Duisburg and Düsseldorf, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, police officials prevented pro-Israeli supporters from displaying Israeli flags.

The move has been criticized by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Duisburg Police Chief Rolf Cebin has now posted a statement on the police website, saying “I deeply regret that feelings, especially those of our Jewish fellow citizens, were hurt. The removal of the flags was, as we see it today, the wrong decision.”

 

PRO-GAZA DEMONSTRATION IN RAMALLAH CANCELED FOR LACK OF PROTESTERS

While irate pop stars, former communists and Islamic fundamentalists protested in “pro-Hamas” rallies through Europe, the liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported (January 15):

“It’s quiet in Ramallah. At the northern entrance to the city, not far from the mall, a new fountain spouts water. Next to it lies a sign in English: ‘Gaza under fire.’ But it seems the Gaza Strip has never been so far away. Tel Aviv, meanwhile, feels closer than ever. Almost every day at 1 P.M., a demonstration leaves Manara Square in the city center, expressing support for the residents of the Gaza Strip. The number of participants has declined, however, on a daily basis, and on Wednesday the demonstration was called off for a lack of protesters.

“Dozens of men sit in cafes near the square playing cards. In the background, the television blasts the voices of Al-Jazeera reporters, who provide continual updates about the events taking place in the Strip. But even the dramatic reports do not stop the card players for a moment. Occasionally one of them glances up at the screen, but then gets back to business.

“The offices of the Al-Jazeera television network overlook Manara Square. Walid Omari, the bureau chief for the Palestinian Authority and Israel, explains that ‘the residents of Ramallah are filling the cafes, the restaurants, watching Al-Jazeera, cursing the situation, expressing anger and then continuing with their own affairs.’

“The residents of Ramallah and other West Bank cities have always looked down on their brethren in Gaza. Second, the Hamas coup in the Strip about a year and a half ago left behind quite a few scars. To see innocent Palestinian citizens killed in bombings is sad, but for quite a number of Fatah supporters, Hamas brought this upon itself. Mohammed, a 46-year-old businessman, offers another reason for the apathy: “We’re afraid to see the tanks outside the house again.”

Third Intifada? Not anytime soon

 

THE HUMANITARIAN SITUATION IN GAZA

Hamas propagandists tell many lies. Some are obvious, such as its claim at a press conference on Monday that its men destroyed 47 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, killed 80 IDF soldiers and wounded hundreds of others.

Indeed, Hamas’s claim that it has emerged victorious from Operation Cast Lead is reminiscent of the fiery statements of Ahmed Said, the famous Egyptian radio announcer who, during the Six Day War, continued to report the fictional downing of dozens of Israeli warplanes after Israel had destroyed the Arab air forces.

While there is obviously hardship in Gaza, as there is in depressed towns all over the world, the exaggeration of the so-called humanitarian crisis in Gaza is startling, as is the fact that so many are taken in by it.

A mass of international aid continues to be delivered to Gaza – if only parts of Africa or Asia were so lucky – and the standard of living there is higher than in many parts of neighboring Egypt.

Every day the Israeli government sends press releases to Middle East correspondents outlining the aid Israel is delivering but few media outlets report this.

Here is what they don’t report: Since December 27, Israel has transferred more than 450,000 gallons of fuel and over 42,000 tons of humanitarian supplies to Gaza in 1,693 trucks.

Magen David Adom (Israel’s Red Cross) set up a medical clinic on the Israeli side of the Erez check point to serve the Palestinian population. Paramedics are working with volunteer doctors, specializing in family medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, trauma, orthopedics and surgery. The clinic is equipped with laboratories, X-ray machines and a pharmacy. After diagnosis, patients may be transferred to Israeli hospitals so MDA ambulances have been sent to the clinic.

On January 19 alone, 195 trucks laden with 4,946 tons of supplies, 537,100 liters of heavy duty diesel and 206 tons of domestic gas were delivered to Gaza and 33 Palestinians left Gaza for medical treatment in Israel, including eight cancer patients en route to Augusta Victoria hospital in Jerusalem.

***

THE LIES THEY TELL

Here is a reminder from a previous dispatch of the way anti-Israeli journalists lie about Gaza:

Please see the first item here to see Lauren Booth (who is a British journalist writing for several prominent British newspapers, as well as being Mideast peace mediator Tony Blair’s sister in law) happily shopping in a packed Gaza grocery store a few days before she said that Gaza resembled a “concentration camp”.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

“THE MEDIA ARE PROTESTING TOO MUCH”

Below, in the “full articles” section, I attach a long piece from today’s Jerusalem Post about the world media’s virtually nonstop complaints on the limitations of media access to witness the fighting firsthand in Gaza. There are several people, including the chief New York Times correspondent, quoted in the article. The section in which I am quoted is as follows:

Yet, regardless of the justice of the IDF’s blockade on foreign media entry, it was not appropriate for the media to turn the issue into such a major part of its coverage of the crisis, said analyst and former Middle East correspondent for the British Sunday Telegraph Tom Gross.

Major international outlets such as the BBC, CNN and Sky News have started most reports on Gaza in recent days by stating that Israel has not given their correspondents access to Gaza, he noted.

According to Gross, “the media are protesting too much. One British TV correspondent even compared Israel to the Burmese junta. They might ask themselves why they are not complaining, for example, about the difficulties of reporting from Afghanistan, where there are tens of thousands of American, British, French and other troops, and a very high civilian death toll.”

There is more coverage just of Israel’s cordon than of entire international crises elsewhere, Gross added.

“Viewers might wonder why the media are so obsessed with everything and anything to do with Israel but don’t seem interested in covering other conflicts, like the massive assault by the Sri Lankan military on the Tamil minority in recent days, or the massacre of 500 villagers, including aid workers, some of whom were set on fire in Congo last week,” he said.

Journalists should expect “some limits imposed in wartime. This isn’t a reality TV show or an episode of Big Brother. In any case, this hasn’t stopped international networks showing near round-the-clock reports and footage by their local Palestinian correspondents in Gaza,” said Gross.

 

LEGITIMATE SECURITY CONCERNS

I might add that Israel may also have legitimate security concerns about some international journalists giving intelligence information away to Palestinian militants that could endanger lives.

(Israel also feels it cannot expose its own administrative personnel to attacks from Hamas at the crossings. Several have been shot there by Hamas in the past. They limit exposure to passage of humanitarian aid, and won’t put them in jeopardy to clear reporters.)

For an account of how the media became actors in the 2006 conflict between Hizbullah and Israel, please read my article “The media aims its missiles”.

In it, I wrote that “Large sections of the international media are not only misreporting the current conflict in Lebanon. They are also actively fanning the flames.”

For the record, the media coverage of the present conflict has, at least until now, not been nearly as partisan against Israel as it was in the 2006 conflict, although there is still much room for improvement.

 

WHY AMBULANCES SOMETIMES GET TARGETED BY THE ISRAELI AIRFORCE

This short video shows U.N. ambulances serving as personnel carriers for Hamas terrorists.

This particular video is from the West Bank in 2003. But we know that this has happened on many occasions, including in the present conflict in Gaza. Palestinian gunmen think nothing of using UN and Red Crescent ambulances. Israel doesn’t want to fire at ambulances but on the very rare occasion it does, it is doing so because they are not being using to ferry patients but to ferry killers. Most mainstream media continue to refuse to explain this, instead leaving their audience with the false impression Israel is shooting at civilians.

Even more shockingly, UN spokespeople like Chris Gunnes (UNRWA spokesperson for Gaza) who has appeared daily on international TV networks this month to defame Israel in virtually every way possible, has nothing to say about the collaboration between Palestinian terrorists and some UN personnel.

 

VIDEO: MORTAR BOMBS FIRED FROM A UN SCHOOL IN GAZA

This video of terrorists firing rockets at Israel from the yard of an UNRWA school was filmed by an unmanned drone on Oct. 29, 2007, but we also know this has happened on several occasions, including this week.

UN spokespeople are strangely silent about this, and the BBC and other broadcasters “forget” to mention this in their hundreds of hours of anti-Israeli broadcasts.

In the horrific incident two days ago when Palestinian civilians were killed at an UNRWA school, Israel has released film showing mortar bombs being fired from the school minutes before Israel responded. Hamas admit that two of its leading mortar crewmen, Immad Abu Iskar and Hassan Abu Iskar, were among the dead there.

The Israeli return fire landed outside the school, yet a series of explosions followed, indicating the probable presence of munitions and explosives in the building.

The international community – and in particular UNRWA, the UN agency that runs the school – has turned a blind eye to the storage of weapons on their facilities in violation of international humanitarian and many other laws. No one would have been killed at the school if weapons were not stored there and fired from there. UNRWA and the member states that cover up for its terror-supporting activities have blood on their hands (not that the mainstream media bother questioning them about this).

 

GAZA “KINDERGARTEN GRADUATION CEREMONY”

Here.

***

Click here to see video footage of an armed Hamas terrorist grabbing an innocent young Palestinian boy off the street to use as a human shield. (The image of the terrorist is so distressing that YouTube have moved it to their over 18 section.)

***

In this video, Hamas admits to using women and children as human shields.

 

MILITARY DOUBTS

I continue to feel uneasy (both strategically and morally) about the decision by Israel to extend the air operation into a ground campaign in Gaza. I don’t have any military expertise so I cannot tell whether the initial air operation would have been sufficient by itself to weaken Hamas to the point where in future it would actually abide by a ceasefire. The launch of a ground operation inevitably leads to the loss of Palestinian civilian life, however hard Israel is trying to avoid this – and it is trying much harder than almost any other army in history, to the point that Israelis put their own lives at risk in order to try and avoid inadvertent Palestinian civilian casualties.

Clearly, removing Hamas or forcing it to change its policies is one of the preconditions for achieving a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Yet, on balance I fear the ground campaign may be a mistake, as it may have been in Lebanon in 2006.

Since Israel almost certainly does not want to reoccupy Gaza, we shall see whether some time after the IDF leaves, the rockets start falling on Ashdod and Beersheba again. I hope I am wrong and the ground operation, which includes the destruction of more stockpiles of Hamas rockets and its arms smuggling tunnels, will bring about quiet and hence greater prosperity on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border.

 

FRENCH TV AGAIN CAUGHT USING FALSE FOOTAGE DEFAMING ISRAEL

Bloggers in France have forced the state-owned French public television channel France 2 to admit that footage it aired that allegedly showed destruction caused by the Israeli air force this week, was in fact taken from an incident in 2005 in which Gaza civilians were killed by an explosion caused by Hamas militants in the Strip.

The footage aired on France 2 on Tuesday afternoon showed dozens of dead bodies, including civilians, which the channel said were killed by an Israeli air force bombing raid on January 1st. The footage was in fact that of the devastation caused after a truck full of explosives Hamas was smuggling blew up in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in 2005.

The website of Le Figaro newspaper published the error after it was spotted by bloggers. France 2 has now admitted it “accidentally” used false footage.

France 2 is the same channel that broadcast a staged September 2000 report of the IDF allegedly showing the IDF fatally shooting a 12-year-old Palestinian boy called Mohammed al-Dura. A French court ruled last year that there was reasonable cause to claim the report and footage was staged.

The death-footage of al-Dura became a cause célèbre in the Muslim and western world. Osama bin Laden referred to al-Dura in a post-9/11 video; the killers of Wall St. Journal reporter Daniel Pearl placed a picture of him in their beheading video; streets, squares and academies have been named after al-Dura.

 

“DEATH TO PALESTINE, WAIT, I MEAN ISRAEL”

This video from Iran is doing the rounds among hundreds of anti-regime Iranian bloggers.

At first the prayer leader chants “Death to Israel,” with others repeating it after him. But then in what appears to be a sign of opposition to the regime in Tehran, he shouts “Death To Palestine,” and everyone repeats it after him.

 

WHY IS THE MEDIA QUOTING MADS GILBERT WITHOUT TELLING VIEWERS HE JUSTIFIED THE 9/11 ATTACKS?

Many media, particularly the BBC and CNN, have broadcast several interviews in recent days with a Norwegian doctor and anesthetist Mads Gilbert working in Shifa hospital in Gaza. Gilbert claims a much higher ratio of civilian casualties than even Hamas and the UN claim and, judging by their past records, the UN and Hamas statistics are almost certainly exaggerated.

(In this conflict, the UN says Palestinian fatalities are estimated at over 600 with some 2,000 wounded. 20-25% of Palestinian casualties are civilians, and 75-80% are Hamas operatives, says the UN. Israel says a smaller proportion of Palestinian casualties are civilians.)

But who is Mads Gilbert?

While I can’t comment on his ability as a doctor, the BBC and others should certainly have pointed out his long record as a political extremist. Gilbert has also appeared or been quoted on CBS, CNN, ABC, Sky News, The Times (London), The Independent, The New York Times and other media.

Gilbert has been active in “solidarity work” with Palestinian militants since the 1970s. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks on New York in 2001, he told the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet that the attacks were “morally right.” “Terror is a bad weapon, but you have to look at the context,” he said.

NGO Monitor and other groups are now questioning why media are using such a radical ideologue as Dr. Mads Gilbert, to provide blatantly one-sided criticism of Israel.

Dr. Gilbert and his colleague Dr. Erik Fosse traveled to Gaza on December 31 as members of the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC), an NGO funded by the Norwegian government ostensibly to provide health care in partnership with the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Since arriving in Gaza, Gilbert has repeatedly and falsely accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. At the same time, he has made no mention of evidence that Shifa hospital has been used for military purposes.

DR. GILBERT, LONGTIME ACTIVIST

In their interviews, Gilbert and Fosse claim that Israel and the UN are lying about the civilian casualty count and giving media their own alternative data: “50% of the casualties are women and children,” Gilbert told CBS; “children made up 25% of the deaths and 45% of the wounded,” he told the BBC. Gilbert even appeared on Iran’s Press TV alleging the Israelis had used chemical weapons against the Palestinians.

Dr. Fosse worked for the PLO in Lebanon in the 1970’s. He now leads NORWAC, the Norwegian Aid Committee.

Gilbert has even criticized the group “Doctors Without Borders” for providing medical assistance to both sides in the conflict rather than limiting it to Palestinians.

Gilbert is a former member of the fringe left Red Party in Norway, which has its roots in the Norway’s Communist Party. Gilbert stood as the party’s candidate in local elections in the town of Tromsoe in 2007.

NGO Monitor’s Director Prof. Gerald Steinberg, who is a subscriber to this email list, notes that: “By justifying terror, supporting Hamas and fueling the conflict, NORWAC and Mads Gilbert have violated the Hippocratic Oath – ‘first, do not harm’.”

 

NGO MONITOR CALLS ON HEADS OF AMNESTY, HRW AND B’TSELEM TO RESIGN OVER FAILURE TO PROTEST GAZA HUMAN SHIELDS

NGO Monitor has also called for the immediate resignation of the heads of the leading human rights organizations Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’tselem for failing to protest the use of human shields by Hamas in Gaza.

NGO Monitor said: “Hamas’ preparations for the current war, including the storage of weapons in civilian neighborhoods and schools, are violations of fundamental moral and legal principles which are now resulting in numerous tragic deaths. Although these plans have been visible for a long time, human rights organizations which claim a moral mandate, have instead used their considerable resources to promote political bias and double standards. They have chosen to distort international law, falsely accusing Israel of ‘collective punishment’ rather than focus on the core human rights violations of Hamas.

“While the Hamas leadership was smuggling and manufacturing thousands of rockets, mortars, and other weapons, declaring their intention to use them to terrorize Israel, these organizations turned a blind eye, instead repeatedly criticizing only Israel.”

 

ISLAMIST SITE “COMPILING LIST OF BRITISH JEWS TO TARGET OVER GAZA OP”

An extremist Islamic website is believed to be drawing up a list of prominent British Jews to kill over Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, The Sun newspaper reported yesterday.

According to the newspaper, targets include pop star Amy Winehouse, record producer Mark Ronson, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Tony Blair’s Middle East envoy and tennis partner Lord Levy, and presenter of “The Apprentice” TV show, Sir Alan Sugar.

The report came as a British Jewish watchdog group, the Community Security Trust, said there has been a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Britain in recent days.

 

GAZA OFFENSIVE SPURS RISE IN ANTI-SEMITIC INCIDENTS ACROSS EUROPE

Since the latest Israel-Hamas confrontation began there has been an upsurge in assaults against Jews across Europe, including arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.

Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. Unlighted gasoline bombs were also found in a car in the Toulouse synagogue’s yard. A local Jewish leader, Armand Partouche, said he believed the assailants had planned to torch the synagogue, but fled when the building’s alarm went off.

“It could have been very, very serious,” Partouche said. “There were people inside; there could have been deaths.”

A Jewish man was beaten up in the Auber RER rapid transit station in Paris on Sunday. Michael Benamou, aged 29, was attacked and punched in the mouth by about 20 young people yelling ‘‘Palestine will kill the Jews.” On the crowded metro platform, only one man with a dog intervened. He took Benamou to the hospital.

A 14-year-old junior high school student (girl) was attacked in Villiers le Bel in France by students shouting “Jews must die.”

A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who (according to police spokesman Leif Nilsson) “broke a window and threw in something that was burning,” said. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.

In Denmark, a 27-year-old Lebanese-born Dane shot two young Israelis last week, as I mentioned in a previous dispatch.

In London there was an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.

Police in the Belgian cities of Antwerp and Brussels continue to patrol Jewish districts after mobs tried to attack Jews there last week. Police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend.

Following on from my dispatch last week about the anti-Semitic rallies in Florida and elsewhere, the crowd at an anti-Israel rally in Amsterdam on Saturday repeatedly chanted, “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas.”

 

COURT RULES THAT JEWISH ISRAEL CRITIC CAN BE CALLED AN ANTI-SEMITE

A Cologne appeals court ruled on Tuesday that German-Jewish journalist Henryk Broder is allowed to describe the statements of fellow Jew Evelyn Hecht-Galinski as anti-Semitic.

“Even German courts are beginning to understand that it is not enough to be Jewish in order not to be anti-Semitic,” said Broder (who is a subscriber to this email list and is currently in Israel covering the Gaza war for Der Spiegel’s Web site).

Hecht-Galinski equated Israeli policies with Nazi Germany’s, and blamed a “Jewish-Israel lobby” for threatening the world.

There is a long history of radical, psychologically disturbed Jewish self-haters siding with anti-Semites, including during the Spanish inquisition, Stalin’s attacks on Jews, and even in 1930s Nazi Germany.

 

JOE THE PLUMBER TO BECOME WAR CORRESPONDENT

Joe the Plumber, the Ohio man who became a household name during the U.S. presidential campaign, says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the pajamas media website (pjtv.com).

Joe the Plumber, whose real name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, says he’ll spend 10 days covering the fighting.

He told WNWO-TV in Toledo, Ohio that he wants to let Israel’s “‘Average Joes’ share their story.”

Wurzelbacher gained attention during the final weeks of the campaign when he asked Barack Obama about his tax plan. He later joined Republican candidate John McCain on the campaign trail and said he was very worried about the fate of Israel under an Obama presidency.

Wurzelbacher, who is not Jewish, has expressed understanding of the need for Israel to defend itself against Hamas.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

HAMAS KILLS, KNEE-CAPS ITS POLITICAL OPPONENTS

Several papers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have reported that among the “civilian dead” in Gaza in recent days are Fatah supporters executed by Hamas in hospitals, schools and other locations. (Unsurprisingly anti-Israel media in Britain, France and elsewhere have misled readers and viewers to believe they are part of a death toll Israel is responsible for.)

HAMAS’S IDEA OF MEDICAL TREATMENT

For example, here buried in one Washington Post report from Gaza is the following: “On Sunday, doctors said, men believed to be Hamas fighters grabbed a patient, accusing him of being an Israeli collaborator. The gunmen shot him dead. ‘They took revenge,’ Khalaf said.”

And this New York Times report, for instance, mentions Hamas killed six people in one Gaza hospital alone in a 24-hour period:

“Armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roamed the halls. Asked their function, they said it was to provide security. But there was internal bloodletting under way. In the fourth-floor orthopaedic section, a woman in her late 20s asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Hajoj was carried out by young men pretending to transfer him to another ward. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head. Mr. Hajoj, like five others killed at the hospital this way in 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel.” (This is catch-all excuse Hamas uses to justify the murder of all those who dare voice public criticism of it.)

Khaled Abu Toameh, chief Palestinian correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, who is himself a Palestinian (and is a longtime subscriber to this email list), and who has excellent sources in Gaza, reports that on Saturday and Sunday alone, Hamas executed 35 Fatah activists and shot around another 75 in the legs. Others had their hands broken or were placed under house arrest.

One example is that of Wisam Abu Jalhoum, a Fatah activist from the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, who was shot in the legs by Hamas militiamen for allegedly expressing joy over Israeli air strikes on Hamas targets.

Fahmi Za’arir, a Fatah spokesman, named two of the Fatah leaders in Gaza “executed” by Hamas on Saturday as Nasser Muhana and Saher al-Silawi.

Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah forces in a bloody coup in June 2007 in which 400 Palestinians were brutally killed by Hamas, including people who were handcuffed and then thrown off Gaza high rises.

Hamas leaders fear Fatah members will exploit the current IDF operation to regain control of the Gaza Strip.

 

HAMAS ACCUSES SENIOR PALESTINIAN AIDES OF SPYING FOR ISRAELIS

In an interview broadcast on al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite television station based in Qatar, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum accused senior aides of the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, of spying for Israel. The charge of spying has also been made on Hamas’s website. It was angrily denied by Fatah leaders.

Hamas accuses Abbas of ordering members of Fatah in Gaza to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of Hamas leaders to pass to Israel and to help give the Israeli Air force pinpoint targets for them to attack in Gaza.

 

THE QUALITY OF ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE

The New York Times acknowledges that Israel has been remarkable in its accuracy.

For example, the Times writes:

Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. “If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy, it seems O.K.,” he said. “When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it.”

 

HAMAS ATTACKS THE ARAB LEAGUE STANCE AS “PATHETIC”

Egypt’s foreign minister Aboul Gheit has again criticized Hamas and said that Hamas must stop firing rockets at Israel after any truce deal.

Saudi Arabia is also becoming more openly critical of Hamas for provoking Israel by its incessant rocket fire on Israeli civilians, and for not returning to national unity talks with its rival Fatah.

“This terrible massacre would not have happened if the Palestinian people were united behind one leadership,” Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal said. “Your Arab brothers cannot extend to you the hand of real help, if you do not extend the hand of affection to each other,” he added, urging Hamas and Fatah to form a national unity government.

A furious Hamas attacked the Arab League stance as “pathetic”.

Rahman Abdul Al-Rashed, the general manager of Al-Arabiya television, has also publicly blamed Hamas for the crisis.

***

Unlike most Western TV networks who give Palestinian spokespeople free rein to spread their propaganda, some Fox News anchors actually call them on it. Watch here, for example.

 

MANY IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, ARAB WORLD QUIETLY ROOTING FOR ISRAEL

While the extreme left are becoming increasingly hysterical in their denunciations of Israel, some falling into outright anti-Semitism and Holocaust revisionism, mainstream international opinion appears not to be nearly as critical towards Israel as it has been in recent years. This is perhaps because it is becoming more widely realized that Islamic fundamentalism is a threat to many parts of the world, not just to Israel, and also because Israel did what the world wanted – remove all traces of Jewish life from Gaza – and yet this only led to a sharp increase in rocket attacks on Israeli civilians from Gaza.

Many, if not most, Arab governments are quietly supporting Israel, so fearful are they of an Islamic proxy Iranian state being set up in their midst.

Although European TV networks and news websites barely mention this in their countless hours of reporting, Fatah, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the government of Lebanon and many others are rooting for Israel to destroy Hamas, whom they loathe and fear.

Obviously they are not happy that Palestinian civilians have also died, any more than Israel is happy about it.

Israel is a liberal democracy so of course it can’t behave in a ruthless way like so many other countries have – Russia, Algeria, Burma or Syria, for example – or even in as heavy-handed a way as big powers like Britain, France and America have.

***

The Arab world’s most prominent comedian and movie star, Egyptian actor Adel Imam, has shocked many of his fans by expressing understanding for Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.

 

DUTCH PM MAKES STATEMENT SYMPATHETIC TO ISRAEL

While British and French politicians, from both government and opposition parties, continue to make ignorant statements about Israel, based largely on the misleading information they are getting about the conflict from their own media*, other European politicians are more understanding of Israel’s position.

For example, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said yesterday that Israel’s offensive against Gaza can’t be condemned as long as Hamas continues firing rockets.

“Condemning Israel is pointless because both parties have to be addressed,” he said in an interview with Dutch television. “As long as the rocket attacks continue, Israel will always say ‘we cannot accept this’, and I understand that.”

“It is always regrettable when there are civilian casualties. But at the same time, I see Hamas continuously firing rockets on Israel,” Balkenende added.

Yesterday Hamas launched another 45 rockets into Israel.

Another convoy of 80 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies was allowed by Israel to enter the Gaza Strip this morning.

***

A NOTE ON THE BRITISH MEDIA

* I should point out there are a few British correspondents, such as Tim Marshall of Sky News, who are professional, well-informed and able to explain fairly both the Israeli and Palestinian positions. But others, such as the BBC anchor who said Hamas rockets were only hitting “Israeli border villages,” and Jon Snow of Channel 4 – who I also criticized in my recent Wall Street Journal article on the Mumbai terror attacks, and who said a couple of days ago that Israel was “lucky to have Sderot to engender sympathy” – simply don’t deserve to be employed as news reporters.)

This morning’s (London) Times seems to me particularly one-sided against Israel – and I don’t just mean because they have a guest column by Rabbi Michael Lerner.

 

CZECH EU PRESIDENCY: ISRAEL GROUND OP IN GAZA “DEFENSIVE NOT OFFENSIVE”

As mentioned in the last dispatch, countries of what Donald Rumsfeld famously termed the “new Europe” – who understand the threat of the totalitarian ideology that Hamas adheres to – are much more sympathetic to Israel than the antiquated elites of Western Europe.

The Czech Republic, which assumed the European Union presidency on January 1, issued a statement on Saturday saying that the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza was a “defensive, not offensive” action.

Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg is a long time subscriber to this email list. (Following the last dispatch, some people wrote asking me if he is Jewish. He is not. His family was one of the most prominent aristocratic Catholic families of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)

France has strongly criticized the Czech-EU statement.

***

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s strong support of Israel has prompted a rising number of attacks from her coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as well as the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Left Party.

 

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: ISRAEL HAS RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF

Israel is also receiving statements of support from elsewhere. For example, California Governor (and former film star) Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday expressed support for its ground operation in Gaza.

Schwarzenegger said: “Every nation has the right to defend itself against terrorism and cold-blooded attacks on its people. Israel is no different and is right to defend itself against the unceasing violence of rocket attacks launched by Hamas.”

U.S. President George W. Bush said that there is no point in having another “one-way ceasefire” that Hamas continually violates with its rocket fire and that the citizens of Israel deserve a real ceasefire.

 

PERES: HAMAS MUST STOP USING CHILDREN AND HOSPITAL PATIENTS AS HUMAN SHIELDS

Israeli President Shimon Peres has said that Israel’s operation was fully morally justified. He also called on Hamas to stop using children and hospital patients as human shields.

Below, I attach a piece by Charles Krauthammer that takes up this theme. It is well worth reading in full, but for those with limited time, here are some extracts. Krauthammer says:

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis – 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years – deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

Krauthammer continues: For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply perverse, such as the Hamas TV children’s program in which an adorable live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to death by an Israeli (then replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to continue on Mickey’s path to martyrdom).

At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible – also on both sides.

… The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There’s only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel’s very existence.

Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the inevitable civilian casualties. Bring down the world’s opprobrium on Israel. Force it into an untenable cease-fire – exactly as happened in Lebanon. Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next round. Perpetual war. Since its raison d’etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.

 

“YOUR OPINION IS IRRELEVANT”

I also attach a piece, “Dear anti-war protestors, your opinion is irrelevant,” by Israeli writer Hanoch Daum on the English language website of Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s highest circulation newspaper.

I attach this piece not because it has any particular literary brilliance, but because it sums up the views of the vast majority in Israel.

I also attach a piece by Leonard Cole, who writes “How many missiles fired per week from Mexico into southern California are an acceptable number? Fired from North Korea into eastern Russia? From the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip into southern Israel? The answer, of course, is none. Yet for most weeks since the Israelis withdrew entirely from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian rockets kept coming.”

“… Unlike the Palestinians who cheered when their missiles hit residences or schools, Israel has tried scrupulously to avoid hitting non-belligerent sites. But as the Israelis bombed, Hamas-fired missiles continued to land in Israeli cities. Strangely, even as the rockets kept coming, critics accused Israel of using disproportionate force to try to end their firing.”

 

ANNIHILATION OF TERRORISTS; NO ONE PROTESTED (NO JEWS INVOLVED)

Prof. Steven Plaut of Haifa University, who is a subscriber to this list, emails me the following:

The jets bombed the bejeebers out of them. The ground forces invaded. They at long last suppressed the terrorists, who had conducted a long campaign of suicide bombing and planting bombs, and put an end to any notion that the terrorists and their sponsors would be granted their own state.

Many civilians were killed and wounded, yet not a single protest was made against the invasion anywhere. I am of course referring to the conquest by the army of Sri Lanka over the past few days of the last hold-out city of the Tamil independence rebels.

Kilinochchi was the last town held by the Tamil “Tiger” Rebels, considered to be a terrorist group by the United States. With it fell the last Tamil hope of setting up an independent state or even of getting autonomy inside Sri Lanka. The Tamils have their own state inside India but were not satisfied with that manifestation of “self-determination.” Kilinochchi, 579 kilometers north of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, was until recent months the center of political power for the rebels.

Meanwhile not a single Solidarity-with-the-Tamil-Tigers protest has been organized on a single Western campus or in a single downtown square. Mobs and “academics” have not taken to the streets to demand an end to the war of aggression against the Tamils. Leftist web sites have not proclaimed every injury of a Tamil civilian to be a Nazi-like war crime and an act of genocide.

Eurocrats have not pontificated about how the Sri Lankan response to the terror was out of proportion. The International Solidarity Movement has not sent in protesters from the West to try to defend the terrorists. Communists and fellow travelers have not organized flotillas of boats carrying aid to the terrorists. Israeli politicians have not lectured the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka about how the whole problem is that they are insensitive to the needs of the “Other.”

None have proposed dividing Colombo and handing over half to the Tamils. Virtually no one knows that 65,000 civilians have died in the fighting and the media have no interest in covering the story.

 

EXTREME LEFT ISRAELI ACADEMIC TELLS GERMANS: “ISRAEL MURDERED 400,000 PALESTINIANS LAST WEEK”

Organizations responsible for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism in Germany, have criticized state-owned Deutschlandradio for its interview on Friday with extreme-leftist Israeli historian and sociologist Prof. Moshe Zuckermann of Tel Aviv University. Zuckermann told a widely-heard radio program that Israel had killed 400,000 Palestinians last week.

The radio interviewer, Birgit Kolkmann, has also been criticized for failing to interrupt or counter Zuckermann.

Likewise the BBC World service has been criticized for allowing Palestinian spokespeople to claim that Israel is “starving” Palestinians and doing “exactly” what the Nazis did.

Zuckermann also writes for the extreme anti-Israel German paper Junge Welt.

I don’t understand why Tel Aviv University continues to employ Zuckermann to teach young people. He must know the deep wish of so many Germans and Austrians to hear that the Jews are no better than the Nazis.

8,000 protesters marched in Berlin and 10,000 in Frankfurt on Saturday, claiming Israel was carrying out “a second Holocaust”

Columnist Ari Shavit of Ha’aretz wrote of Zuckerman and other fellow travelers yesterday: “There is no call for hating the Israel-hating Israelis. At the end of the day, their position is a pathetic one. Their self-righteousness is not at all righteous, and their moralizing has no morality.”

 

BERNARD HENRI-LEVY AMONG JEWS “LISTED FOR ASSASSINATION” BY ISLAMIST GROUP

The leading French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy was among those on a list of leading French and Belgian Jews drawn up for assassination by a Belgium-based Islamist group, the Belgian daily La Derniere Heure reports.

According to the paper, Belgian authorities found the list during a raid on homes of local Muslim community members last November.

 

ROCKET THAT HIT BEERSHEBA SCHOOL MADE IN CHINA

An Israeli army intelligence officer said the rocket that struck a school in Beersheba on Wednesday was manufactured in China, and smuggled into Gaza after the Sinai border wall was blown up by Hamas in January. The Chinese-made weapons are heavier than the Qassam and can potentially cause much greater damage. They are even more sophisticated than the Iranian-made Grad-model Katyusha that is also in Hamas’s arsenal. The Chinese rocket contains metal pellets that can spread out across a radius of up to 100 meters (about 328 feet) from the point of impact.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) believes these Chinese-made weapons were delivered to Yemen, Eritrea and Sudan, then bought by Hamas and smuggled through Egypt into Gaza.

 

THE GUARDIAN WARNS BARACK OBAMA

The British newspaper The Guardian is warning U.S. President-elect Barack Obama that his silence regarding Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip is destroying his “chances of making a fresh start in U.S. relations with the Muslim world.” The paper claims that “evidence is mounting” that Obama is “already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences” because of his failure to speak out against Israel. (The Guardian doesn’t explain what this “evidence” is.)

His silence, the paper alleges, is being interpreted as sign of a continuation of the policies of President Bush. The paper terms the silence of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden “uncharacteristic.” The Guardian and others charge that Obama defers to Bush as the “only president” when it suits him, but has spoken out on international issues, and economic issues, “when it suits him.”

What The Guardian doesn’t seem to understand is that Obama’s Iran diplomacy needs a Hamas defeat. Obama knows (as does Bush) that for America’s intended Iran diplomacy to have any chance of working – for the U.S. to be able to press the mullahs to back down on their nuclear project without having to resort to military force – Tehran has to be shown that its regional militarism has a cost.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

“NUKE, NUKE ISRAEL… THE JEWS NEED A BIG OVEN”

Even in Fort Lauderdale, Florida…

“The Jews need a big oven” and “nuke, nuke Israel” scream pro-Hamas demonstrators.

Video here.

***

There have been many protests elsewhere, including outside the White House. For example, on New Year’s Eve, a pro-Hamas mob marched on the Jewish neighborhood in the Belgium city of Antwerp, clashing with police. Cars, trams and buses were attacked. The Jewish neighborhood of the city remains under round the clock police guard.

***

One photo from a protest in Philadelphia.

***

Celebrity Roseanne Barr offers her perspectives re Israel/Gaza.

 

IRAN SHUTS NEWSPAPER FOR BLAMING HAMAS FOR THE CONFLICT

The Iranian government on Wednesday closed a leading reformist daily, Kargozaran, for publishing a statement by a student group that blamed Hamas for provoking the current conflict with Israel.

The paper said Hamas were “terrorists who cause the deaths of children and civilians by taking up position in kindergartens and hospitals.”

(This is a truth that would never be mentioned by certain Western journalists, like the BBC’s Senior Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen and CNN’s “Senior Correspondent in Jerusalem” Ben Wedeman. Both men are more anti-Israel than the liberal Iranian media.)

Kargozaran’s publisher Morteza Sajadian confirmed the paper’s closure and said the piece in question was a statement by a pro-reform student group, the “Office to Consolidate Unity.”

Sajadian apologized to the Iranian government for printing the statement and said he hoped the ban would be only temporary. Kargozaran editor Mehran Karami said he will try to convince the authorities that his newspaper remains anti-Zionist.

More in Persian here.

 

ITALIAN FASHION STORE BENETTON ATTACKED BY PROTESTERS IN IRAN

A branch of the Italian clothing chain Benetton was set on fire in Iran on Wednesday amid angry anti-Israel protests. The government-controlled Iranian daily Jomhuri Eslami said the shop, in Dowlat Street in the north of the capital, Tehran, was “linked with the Zionist network.”

Several Benetton stores have opened in the past two years in Iran, where global brands have largely been absent since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Last year a group of prominent Iranian MPs protested against Benetton’s presence in the country, alleging that it was owned by a “Zionist millionaire” (the owner is not Jewish) and that its fashions were a bad influence on female consumers.

***

In Tehran protestors attempted to storm the Jordanian embassy yesterday, but were prevented from doing so by Iranian riot police. The Egyptian consulate in Aden, Yemen, was also attacked. Demonstrators say Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority are all aiding Israel against Hamas.

Here is American University Professor-turned Ahmadinejad advisor Hamid Mowlana stepping on the American flag yesterday.

 

DANISH POLICE ARREST MAN IN SHOOTING OF ISRAELIS

Danish police say they have arrested a Lebanese-born man on suspicion of shooting and wounding two Israelis at a shopping mall. A court yesterday ordered the suspect held for up to four weeks while police investigate.

On Wednesday, a gunman shot and wounded two young Israelis at a mall in the central Danish city of Odense. They were working at a Dead Sea Products stand in the mall when they were fired upon. A Danish daily reported that the gunman fled in a car after another Israeli emerged from a nearby barber shop and threw a chair in his direction.

One Israeli was shot in the arm and another in the leg. Both remain in hospital in stable condition.

Unsurprisingly in their countless hours of Gaza coverage, the BBC has avoided mentioning this or almost any other news that might engender sympathy for Israel.

 

BRITISH TELECOM FIRM SEVERS TIES WITH ISRAELI COUNTERPARTS

British telecommunications firm FreedomCall has terminated its cooperation with Israel’s MobileMax, citing the IDF’s operation in Gaza as the reason.

“We received an email from the British company informing us that it is severing all ties with us and any other Israeli company following Israel’s strike in Gaza,” said CEO Raanan Cohen.

Cohen called the British lack of understanding of Israel’s position “hopeless”. “I don’t intend to appeal to them or answer the letter,” he said.

MobileMax, established in 2004, produces a program providing cellular phones with inexpensive international service.

 

A READER WRITES

This email is from a subscriber to this list:

Am I the only one who has noticed that hundreds of Israeli tanks and thousands of Israeli soldiers are on Gaza’s border, but the Palestinians aren’t shooting at them? Instead they are only shooting at civilian areas in Israel. The media don’t seem to have noticed or commented on this strange fact.

That leads me to the question: Why should the Israeli air force be careful to avoid hitting civilian targets? The U.S was never so delicate. It flattened Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and dozens of other cities in WWII, North Korean cities during that war, Hanoi during the Vietnam war, and parts of Baghdad at the start of the present war.

If Israeli civilians are attacked, why should enemy civilians not suffer? Above all, why are the media silent about this strange situation?

 

CZECHS TAKE OVER EU PRESIDENCY, DEFEND ISRAELI STRIKES

The Czech Republic, which took over the European Union’s presidency yesterday, is likely to try and shift the EU away from its pro-Palestinian bias.

Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg distanced himself from some of his EU colleagues who have criticized Israel and have called for an immediate ceasefire before Israel has had an opportunity to succeed in its operation against Hamas. He said Israel had the right to defend itself.

“Why am I one of the few that have expressed understanding for Israel? It is because I enjoy the luxury of telling the truth,” Schwarzenberg told the leading Czech daily Mlada Fronta Dnes in an interview, noting that the Czech Republic doesn’t have a large Muslim minority and is not infused with phony political correctness as are West European states.

France, which handed over the EU’s rotating presidency to Prague, has condemned Israel’s strikes.

Karel Schwarzenberg is a longtime subscriber to this email list.

 

MERKEL BLASTS HAMAS FOR MIDDLE EAST VIOLENCE

The leading German news magazine Der Spiegel reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the blame for renewed violence in the Middle East can be pinned on Hamas. She said responsibility for the Israeli air offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip lies “clearly and exclusively” with Hamas, according to government spokesman Thomas Steg. A statement on the Chancellery website refers to Israel’s “legitimate right” to defend its people and territory.

Merkel has differed from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who said “I am deeply concerned by Israel’s response,” and from French President Nicolas Sarkozy who condemned Israel for using what he called “disproportionate force.” Javier Solana, chief of foreign policy for the European Union, said “the current Israeli strikes are inflicting an unacceptable toll on Palestinian civilians.”

Meanwhile moderate Arab leaders continue to blame Hamas, not Israel.

 

RUSSIA: HAMAS MUST RECOGNIZE ABBAS’S RULE

Using stronger language than usual, Russian Foreign Minister Serge Lavrov told a Russian television network on Monday that Hamas must “realize responsibility before the Palestinian people for its acts, restore reconciliation and recognize Mahmoud Abbas’ legitimate powers.”

Lavrov added Russia was “convinced that there was no alternative to direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis,” and called for Lebanon and Syria to be part of those talks.

 

SAUDI CLERIC ARRESTED FOR CALLING FOR ATTACKS ON ISRAELIS

A prominent Saudi Arabian Muslim cleric who called for worldwide attacks on Israeli civilians in retaliation for the ongoing airstrikes on Hamas has been arrested by the Saudi authorities, Saudi media reported on Wednesday.

Sheikh Awad al-Qarni issued a fatwa on Monday for the “spilling of (Israeli) blood wherever they are.”

In the past few days al-Qarni’s fatwa has been widely discussed on Islamist internet sites, the al-Rasad newspaper reports.

 

REGIONAL U.S. EDITORIALS SIDE WITH ISRAEL; SAY IT “SHOULD FINISH THE JOB”

While some in the European media (and in major North American papers) continue to severely mislead their readers and viewers about what is actually happening in Gaza and southern Israel, many regional American editors appear to be more clear-sighted.

Among the headlines of editorials in the last couple of days:

* The Blood on Hamas’ Hands – Editorial (Dallas Morning News)

* Daily Rocket Attacks by Hamas Invited Israeli Military Response – Editorial (Miami Herald)

The paper writes: Israel is fulfilling the most elementary obligation of any government: to protect the lives of its people. This was the reason for the founding of the Jewish state in the first place. Hamas was founded not to win independence for the Palestinian people but to destroy Israel. Palestinians have a legitimate right to pursue the creation of an independent state, but not to seek the destruction of another country. Any outcome that is perceived as a victory for Hamas would be a victory for terrorism.

* Hamas Has Invited Its Own Destruction – Editorial (Detroit News)

The paper writes: Calls on Israel to immediately cease its pounding of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip are misdirected. Hamas’ rockets are growing in range and sophistication, and soon will be able to strike targets deep inside Israel. That’s intolerable.

* Israel Finally Says: Enough – Editorial (Ottawa Citizen-Canada)

The paper writes: Hamas and other Islamist groups deliberately target Israeli civilians and celebrate when Jewish children die. Israel, responding in self-defense, seeks to minimize civilian casualties and grieves when Arab children get caught in the crossfire. There is no mystery to this asymmetry. Israel is a Western-style liberal democracy; Hamas is a fundamentalist, Iranian-backed Islamist group. We are in this mess because the national priority of Hamas, as always, is to hurt Jews rather than help Palestinians.

* Self-Defense – Editorial (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

The paper writes: Israel is acting in self-defense, as any country in its position would. If Gaza had not served as a launching pad for terrorism, then Israel would not have struck at the source.

* Poor Hamas? No! – Editorial (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

The paper writes: Hamas brought its woes upon itself. Now it’s paying the price.

* U.S. Should Support Israelis in Campaign Against Hamas – Editorial (The Oklahoman)

The paper writes: As Israel continues to respond to rocket attacks launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza, we offer some unsolicited advice to a fellow democracy and ally: Go all in. Finish the job.

 

LIGHT ITEM: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I occasionally include lighter items to provide some respite for the often depressing items in these dispatches.

Here, “Uncle Jay” explains the news.

ISRAEL’S CRIME

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach three articles and some other items below.

I would in particular recommend reading in full the first two pieces, both of which deal with the issue of proportionality. The first is a tongue-in-cheek analysis by historian Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford University (who is a subscriber to this email list). The second, by Jonathan Mark, explains what a proportionate response by Israel to Hamas and those Gazans who support it, would actually look like.

In the third article below, military expert and retired Army Lt Col. Ralph Peters says that “Israel may have executed the most accurate wave of airstrikes in history, with a 15-to-1 terrorist-to-civilian kill ratio.

“… Israel’s crime isn’t striking back at terror, but demonstrating, year after year, that a country in the Middle East can be governed without resort to terror. Israel’s crime hasn’t been denying Arab rights, but insisting on human rights for women and minorities.

“Israel’s crime has been making democracy work where tyranny prevailed for 5,000 years. Israel’s crime has been survival against overwhelming odds, while legions of Arab nationalists, Islamist extremists and Western leftists want every Jew dead.

“But Israel’s greatest crime was to expose the global cult of victimhood, to prove that hard work, fortitude and courage could overcome even history’s grimmest disaster.”

 

“THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL BANKRUPTCY OF SO MANY WESTERN JOURNALISTS”

Commenting on Ralph Peter’s article, Jack Kelly says: “Israel gets little credit for either its military skill or its remarkable forbearance. Nothing better illustrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of so many Western journalists than the ritual condemnation of Israel for the accidental deaths of a few Palestinian civilians, and the near total absence of condemnation of Hamas for its repeated deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians.

Writing on the website of the British magazine The Spectator, Melanie Phillips says: “Those who scream ‘disproportionate’ think – grotesquely – that not enough Israelis have been killed. If anything has been ‘disproportionate,’ it’s been Israel’s refusal to take action during the years when its southern citizens have been terrorized by rockets and other missiles raining down on them from Gaza. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands for so long in such circumstances.”

 

UPDATES

MUMBAI UPDATE: A FURTHER TRAGEDY

Updating the dispatch “No, they weren’t ‘practitioners’” (Dec. 2, 2008)

On Tuesday (December 30), the elder child of last month’s Chabad Mumbai terror victims Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg died of long-term illness exacerbated by shock at the murder of his parents.

Dov Holtzberg, 4, was not in the Chabad Mumbai Jewish center when the terror attack occurred. His 2-year-old brother Moshe was saved from the terrorists by his Indian nanny. Dov was buried in Jerusalem yesterday next to his parents.

 

UPDATE: “A SERIES OF APPALLING ANTI-SEMITIC STATEMENTS”

Updating the dispatch New low for British media: Ahmadinejad invited to address UK on Christmas (Dec. 24, 2008):

The British government has now criticized publicly-owned British Channel 4 television for broadcasting an alternative Christmas Day message by Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A spokeswoman for the British foreign office said that the broadcast had caused offence around the world.

“President Ahmadinejad has during his time in office made a series of appalling anti-Semitic statements,” she said. “The British media are rightly free to make their own editorial choices, but this invitation will cause offence and bemusement not just at home but amongst friendly countries abroad.”

Channel 4 head of news and current affairs Dorothy Byrne defended her decision to invite Ahmadinejad to give the Christmas message.

-- Tom Gross

AMOS OZ: “HAMAS’ CALCULATION IS SIMPLE, CYNICAL AND EVIL”

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach four articles below, with summaries first for those who don’t have time to read them in full.

The first article is by renowned Israeli novelist and left-wing activist Amos Oz, who (like almost all Israelis, left and right) is fully supportive of Israel’s defensive war against Hamas.

Writing for the leading Italian daily Corriere della Sera (in an article also reprinted by other outlets including the German tabloid Bild), Amos Oz says:

“The systematic bombing of the citizens in Israel’s towns and cities is a war crime and a crime against humanity. The State of Israel must defend its citizens. It is obvious to everyone that the Israeli government does not wish to enter Gaza; the government would rather continue the ceasefire that Hamas violated and finally revoked. But the suffering of the citizens surrounding Gaza cannot go on.

“… Massive pressure will be exerted on Israel to restrain itself. No such pressure will be placed on Hamas because there is no one to pressure them, and there is almost nothing left with which to pressure them. Israel is a country; Hamas is a gang.

“… Hamas’ calculation is simple, cynical and evil: If innocent Israelis are killed – good. If innocent Palestinians are killed – even better.”

 

BENNY MORRIS: THE THREATS FACING ISRAEL

In the second article below, historian Benny Morris (who is a subscriber to this email list) explains in The New York Times why Israelis feel threatened:

“Many Israelis feel that the walls – and history – are closing in on their 60-year-old state, much as they felt in early June 1967, just before Israel launched the Six-Day War and destroyed the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

“… Israelis, or rather, Israeli Jews, are beginning to feel much the way their parents did in those apocalyptic days. Israel is a much more powerful and prosperous state today. In 1967 there were only some 2 million Jews in the country – today there are about 5.5 million – and the military did not have nuclear weapons. But the bulk of the population looks to the future with deep foreboding.”

“… According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hizbullah now has an arsenal of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian-made rockets, supplied by Syria and Iran – twice the number it possessed in 2006. Some of the rockets can reach Tel Aviv and Dimona, where Israel’s nuclear production facility is located.

“… To the south, Israel faces the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip and whose charter promises to destroy Israel and bring every inch of Palestine under Islamic rule and law. Hamas today has an army of thousands. It also has a large arsenal of rockets with the Egyptians largely turning a blind eye, through tunnels from Sinai.

“… Over the past two decades, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens have been radicalized… The birth rates for Israeli Arabs are among the highest in the world, with 4 or 5 children per family (as opposed to the 2 or 3 children per family among Israeli Jews)...”

[Tom Gross adds: The New York Times has carried plenty of anti-Israel op-eds too.]

 

UN AND EU PLAYING WITH FIRE BY APPEASING HAMAS

In the third article below, Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz (who is a subscriber to this email list) says that “much of the world’s response is a false moral equivalence that simply encourages the terrorists.”

“The most dangerous of the responses,” he writes, “is not the Iranian-Hamas absurdity, which is largely ignored by thinking and moral people, but the United Nations and European Union response, which equates the willful murder of civilians with legitimate self-defense pursuant to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

“This false moral equivalence only encourages terrorists to persist in their unlawful actions against civilians. The U.S. has it exactly right by placing the blame on Hamas, while urging Israel to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.”

Dershowitz also writes: “The attacks on Israeli citizens have little to do with what Israel does or does not do. They have everything to do with an ideology that despises – and openly seeks to destroy – the Jewish state. Consider that rocket attacks increased substantially after Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, and they accelerated further after Hamas seized control last year.”

 

“EVERY CONCESSION, EVERY TERRITORY WE LEAVE IS USED FOR ATTACKS AGAINST US”

In the fourth article below, titled “Rockets make Israel rethink West Bank pullback,” the Associated Press reports that “Israeli hard-liners have warned for many years that any territory Israel vacates will be used to attack it.

“[But] Even in the midst of the war, many Israelis still argue that a peace deal with the Palestinians, which would require a withdrawal from virtually all the West Bank, is the country’s only real security guarantee.

“Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in defending the Gaza offensive in a speech to parliament Monday, said Israel remains committed to the idea of a Palestinian state alongside it.

However “the events of recent days, and especially the international criticism of Israel’s response, are likely to “compound Israelis’ reluctance” to support further withdrawals.

“The historical lesson of Oslo, of Lebanon and of Gaza proves that with every concession, every territory we leave is used for attacks against us,” said General Yaakov Amidror.

At least one-tenth of the country’s 7 million citizens and some of its largest cities are now in range of Gaza missiles, and millions more live within reach of Hizbullah rockets from Lebanon.

[Summaries above by Tom Gross]