Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 13, 2022




From CBS News:

The FBI released its 2021 hate crime statistics, but the data falls short of providing a complete picture of targeted violence in the U.S. Despite rising concerns about targeted violence and domestic terrorism, less than two-thirds of law enforcement agencies reported data on hate crimes to the FBI, last year, marking a significant drop-off. 

Agency participation for hate crime statistics fell dramatically from 93% in 2020 to 65% in 2021. That drop comes as the FBI and the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics transition to a more detailed and comprehensive crime-reporting system, known as the "National Incident-Based Reporting System" or NIBRS. The new data collection method offers a more complete picture of crime in the nation, with additional information gathered about victims, offenders, and those arrested — including age, sex, and race, as well as a description of any relationship between victim and offender. 

Incidents of hate crimes are not decreasing, according to the FBI. But until participation in the FBI's new data collection programs increases, the bureau will not be able to make a meaningful comparison of the number of hate crimes with years past.  

For reporting on anti-Jewish crimes, the inaccuracy is much worse - because the cities with the highest Jewish populations are not represented at all:

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, noted 35 major U.S. cities reported zero hate crimes in 2021. "The report provides a woefully inadequate assessment of the reality and extent of hate crimes targeting Jews in the United States," he said in a statement.

Major cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Miami, did not provide data to the bureau. Others, including Chicago and Phoenix, reported zero hate crimes in 2021, according to the FBI's report.

The FBI reports that anti-Jewish hate crimes decreased from 963 in 2019, to 683 in 2020, to only 324 in 2021. 

Yet in New York City alone, there were 196 anti-Jewish incidents recorded in 2021. (And 195 this year through September only.)

In Los Angeles, there were over 80 anti-Jewish crimes in 2021.

Chicago reported only 8 antisemitic crimes last year but over 25 this year.




None of them are recorded in the FBI statistics. Even though these statistics are publicly reported, the FBI chooses to ignore them because they are not using the FBI's official system. 

The FBI has always had a problem with many cities not reporting their statistics, but this is far worse than ever before. And now we cannot tell how much worse antisemitic crimes are getting.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, August 25, 2016

  • Thursday, August 25, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon


During the Gaza war in 2014, media reported that Israel bombed the Gaza power plant, multiple times. For example, this Daily Beast article said "on Tuesday {June 22], the Israelis hit the Gaza power plant." JJ Goldberg of The Forward also said, on June 23, that Israel bombed the power plant.

And then, on July 29, many media outlets reported that Israel targeted and destroyed the Gaza power plant. The Guardian reported it by saying "Flames and clouds of black smoke billowed over Gaza's only power plant on after it was destroyed during the most relentless and widespread Israeli bombardment of the current conflict." and "Israel's attack on the Gaza power plant on Tuesday is likely to fuel speculation that the enclave's civilian infrastructure is being deliberately targeted in the continuing war against Hamas."

Ken Roth of HRW also accused Israel of deliberately attacking the power plant.

As we reported soon after, the power plant was not destroyed - it went back online two months later.

Now with the release of the IDF's latest investigation on incidents from the war, we can see what really happened.

The factual findings, collated by the FFA Mechanism, and presented to the MAG, indicated that the power plant in Nusseirat was designated as a "sensitive site" on the relevant operational systems of the IDF. In accordance with the IDF's operational instructions, any military operation to be conducted in the vicinity of such sites requires the adoption of special precautions. The findings further indicated that, in the course of the military activity taking place in the area, the power plant was struck four times over the course of the period from 22-29 July 2014 (the difficulty in specifying the precise dates of the strikes results from differences between the various reports, which provide different dates for the same strikes).

In regard to the first three incidents of damage to the power plant, it was found that the damage did not occur as the result of any direct or intentional attack, aerial or otherwise, by IDF forces. The FFA Mechanism could not rule out the possibility that the power plant facilities may have been damaged by shrapnel, or artillery fire that went off course during the combat. This, in light of the considerable military activity that took place in the vicinity of the plant, between IDF forces and squads affiliated with terror organizations. As well as in light of the fact that terror organizations located a large number of terror assets adjacent to the power plant – at times at a distance of mere tens of meters (such assets included launching pits in which rockets and mortars were stored, medium range rocket launchers, the openings of combat tunnels, weapons caches and more). Evidence has also been obtained which indicates that a portion of the damage may have been caused as the result of rocket fire by Palestinian terror organizations.

After reviewing the factual findings and the material collated by the FFA Mechanism in regard to the three incidents of damage referred to above, the MAG found that the damage to the power plant in Nusseirat had not occurred as a result of a direct or intentional attack by IDF forces operating in the area. In light of the above, and since all avenues for the further examination of these incidents had been exhausted, the MAG ordered these cases to be closed without opening a criminal investigation, in the absence of a reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct by IDF forces.
Hamas and its terrorist comrades deliberately placed military target adjacent to the power plant specifically to discourage Israel from firing. And there is evidence that they damaged the plant themselves!

And what about the major airstrike that was widely reported to have "destroyed" the power plant?

As regards the fourth incident of damage, which occurred on 29 July 2014, the FFA Mechanism found that on the day of the incident, an IDF armored force operating in the area identified a squad of terror operatives, bearing anti-tank weaponry ("anti-tank squad"). The anti-tank squad was identified while it was close to what would later turn out to be the fuel tanks of the power plant. In light of the imminent threat posed by the squad to the armored force, the force fired, in a measured and direct manner, at the anti-tank squad, using the most precise munition the force had at its disposal. It appears, that as a result of this fire, one of the power plant's fuel tanks was damaged (the power plant itself was not hit).
In war, when a tank unit becomes aware of an anti-tank squad, the obvious response is to fire immediately before being fired upon. But Israel is asked to do much, much more.

More astoundingly, it tries to.
The fire which was carried out by the IDF force over the course of the incident was aimed at a military object – an anti-tank squad of the terror organizations, which posed an immediate threat to the force. The attack on the squad complied with the principle of proportionality, as at the time the decision to attack was taken, it was considered that the collateral damage expected to arise as a result of the attack would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from it. This estimation was not unreasonable under the circumstances, when taking into consideration the immediacy of the threat posed to the force by the anti-tank squad, and in light of the fact that the force was not aware of the nature of the facilities in proximity to which they identified the squad.

Moreover, the attack was carried out in conjunction with various precautionary measures, including the selection of the munition used (taking into account the distance between the force and the anti-tank squad, and the weaponry that was at the force's disposal), and the way in which the fire was carried out. These measures were carried out in order to minimize, to the extent possible under the circumstances, the collateral damage expected to result to structures and facilities in the vicinity of the target. In light of the immediacy of the threat, and the danger which was posed to the IDF force, the force did not have any latency in which to enquire into the nature of the facilities in proximity to which it had identified the squad, and the potential consequences, immediate, or long term, of collateral damage thereto.

In light of the above, the MAG did not find that the actions of IDF forces raised grounds for a reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct. As a result, the MAG ordered the case to be closed, without opening a criminal investigation.

At the same time, the MAG made a recommendation to the relevant operational authorities that they review the processes for the integration of the operational instructions concerning operations carried out in proximity to "sensitive sites", as well as the ways in which IDF forces' ability to locate and identify such sites might be improved.
Imagine being in a gunfight where the other person can shoot you whenever they want to, but you have to make sure that you adhere to lots of rules and regulations about how you can shoot, and with what weapon that would neutralize your opponent with the minimal force possible. You must spend months before the gunfight determining and mapping out every possible place that your bullet can ricochet just in case you get into a battle at this very location. Also, you must get permission from supervisors and lawyers to ensure that you are cleared to fire with the weapon and ammunition you chose before every engagement.

That is what the world demands of the IDF.

More amazingly, it is what is what the IDF nearly always does.

Not surprisingly, these facts are not part of normal reporting that the media and NGOs engage in. It is easier for them to airily and ignorantly accuse Israel of randomly firing weapons in the general direction of the enemy out of a sense of vengeance and anger rather than act like a professional army must.

HRW stated, flatly, "Damaging or destroying a power plant, even if it also served a military purpose, would be an unlawful disproportionate attack under the laws of war, causing far greater civilian harm than military gain."

Amnesty stated, “The strike on the power plant, which cut off electricity and running water to Gaza’s 1.8 million residents and numerous hospitals, has catastrophic humanitarian implications and is very likely to amount to a war crime. There can be no justification for targeting a civilian structure that provides crucial services to so many civilians. The scale of the consequences of this attack are devastating and could amount to collective punishment of Gaza’s population."

Both Amnesty and HRW assume both that the power plant itself was destroyed, and that Israel targeted it deliberately.

The idea that a Hamas anti-tank unit was next to the power plant about to fire is not even on the radar of their "military experts." Or, perhaps, they believe - against the laws of armed conflict - that Israeli tank gunners must voluntarily allow themselves to be killed rather than defend themselves.

Either way, it points out how ignorant, biased and hateful these NGOs are. Comparing their pseudo- and instant analysis with the painstaking findings of real military experts reveals that these NGOs are like schoolkids confidently explaining physics to Einstein.

Their gross ignorance is not reported by the equally clueless media, which eagerly publishes  their lies and accusations that are based on pre-determined conclusions rather than facts and real research.



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Monday, August 22, 2016

  • Monday, August 22, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
People are up in arms over Israel's largely symbolic airstrikes in northern Gaza yesterday - a reported 50 strikes that resulted in one minor injury.

Amnesty, for example, tweeted:

Most of the bombs, however, hit completely empty areas. Big bombs, targeting - desert.



It was symbolic. The entire point was to give a message that Israel holds Hamas responsible for rocket fire. It wasn't meant as an escalation - it was meant to preserve the status quo.

Hamas got the message loud and clear.

And the proof comes from one major target that would have been very easy for Israel to hit.

In southern Gaza Sunday evening, at the same time that Israel was bombing sand, Hamas held a major military parade celebrating the deaths of several major leaders killed two years ago during Protective Edge.

If Israel wanted to inflict damage, this would have been the place to do it:





Also, notice the UN vehicle passing by the Hamas parade.








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Sunday, August 21, 2016

A great catch from the Tayara Herzl blog based on a story I posted earlier:

Holocaust-denying articles have been popping up on El Badil, an Egyptian news site. But, as Elder of Ziyon notes:

Part one denies that Jews are a people altogether, claims that Ashkenazic Jews are Khazars,

Part two says that the Jews use the myth of being called “the chosen people” to manipulate the world to do their bidding.

Part three denies that Israel is the Promised Land, and says Jews have no particular historic attachment to the land.

Part four, published yesterday, denies the Holocaust, quoting famous Holocaust deniers like Fred Leuchter, David Irving and Ernst Zundel. It claims that “experts” like Leuchter proved that there couldn’t have been any gas chambers and that there were only 3 million Jews in Europe before World War II.

Wattan News, a Palestinian TV network, has been republishing these articles.
That last sentence is a real shocker. Wattan News, for those who don’t know, was just revealed to be one of the sites George Soros’s Arab Regional Office funds. In a March 2014 portfolio review, it was revealed that $405,000 was given to Wattan TV between 2012-2014 by Soros. That was over 15 percent of Wattan TV’s budget.

We can’t know for sure if Soros is still funding Wattan TV, as he did from 2012-2014, because that is when the last document regarding funding ends. But it is possible that Soros is funding a Holocaust-denying Palestinian news website, which would only further prove that he cares more about demonizing Israel than spreading facts.

Sure enough, Wattan is listed in the Open Society Foundation DCLeaks document as "an independent, non-profit Palestinian TV station that was established in 1996 by Palestinian civil society organizations. It is owned and operated by a consortium of NGOs- Medical Relief Society, Palestinian Hydrology Group, and Palestinian Relief Committee-and is governed by a board of directors in a transparent manner. " Its purpose is described as "to provide quality, public interest news and programming to Palestinian communities in the West Bank, Gaza, and in the Diaspora through TV and online platforms."

And we now know that this news and programming includes the worst kind of antisemitism including Holocaust denial.




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Thursday, August 18, 2016

  • Thursday, August 18, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
Here are the first paragraphs of a section on terrorism written in the textbook  World Regional Geography (with Subregions), 4th edition by Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher, Alex Pulsipher, and Conrad M. Goodwin, published by Macmillan:

This section seems to be gone from the 6th edition. 


Seriously? The first modern terrorist attack in the Middle East was done by Jews? Whether the King David bombing - targeting a military headquarters - was terror is debatable, but it was by no means the first terror attack in the region. What was the 1929 massacres of Jewish civilians if not terrorism? What about the many terror attacks perpetrated by the Black Hand, the terror group founded by Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in the late 1920s to kill Jews and the British in Palestine? (Outside the region, there were many terror groups in the 19th century, including in the Ottoman Empire and the US.)

But this passage is much worse than that. It justifies Palestinian terrorism and Arab aggression (saying that Israel provoked each war - yes, I guess that if breathing is provocation, this may be true.)

It says that Israel was created on "Palestinian lands," a falsehood that is seen throughout the textbook as the headline on this page shows:


They were "Palestinian" lands? What contemporaneous source from before 1948 ever referred them to them that way?  (The book makes the same claim in several other places, like page 49, and most egregiously on page 38 where the claim is that the land "belonged to Palestinians," which is false in every sense.) (These claims don't seem to be in the 6th edition. Instead, the newer edition refers to the territories Israel gained in 1967 as "Palestinian lands" rather than lands controlled by Jordan and Egypt.)



The outrageous lies don't end there. The caption beneath the maps on page above says that it was the "Jewish settlers" who didn't agree to the 1947 UN partition plan, and they started a war themselves - exactly 180 degrees from the truth.  (The 6th edition has the identical caption under the map, although the text is more accurate.)

Another section, filled with the usual anti-Israel propaganda,  claims that "thousands of Palestinians have been displaced" by Jewish settlements. This is another absolute lie, the vast majority of Jewish communities did not displace a single person, and in the rare cases that they did, it was because the land belongs to Jews either to begin with or via purchase.

There is plenty of other bias to be seen in that page, such as the bizarre opinion that Israel "negated" its withdrawal from Gaza by imposing a blockade - without mentioning Hamas or rockets.

This section is verbatim in the 6th edition as well.
The separation barrier's purpose to stop terror attacks isn't mentioned, the authors make it appear that the barrier was built to grab land (without mentioning the any settlements that are on the east side of the fence.)

Also, as far as I can tell, the figure of 30,000 farmers separated from their land is fiction. The best number I can glean is that there are a total of about 120,000 Palestinians who work in agriculture in both the West Bank and Gaza, the idea that such a high percentage happen to farm on lands that happen to be divided by a fence is simply incredible. I would love to know the source for this.

What is clear is that the authors have an anti-Israel bias in this textbook, and that many of the facts that they are teaching students are simply lies.

The main author is roundly criticized by her students for her intolerance for other opinions and her liberal/socialist, anti-American stance.

The book was published by WH Freeman which is owned by Macmillan. You can contact Macmillan Education at this webpage.

(h/t @nevillechmbrln)

UPDATE: I got a copy of the 6th edition, which removed some of the examples here but kept others, annotated in the post.

UPDATE 2: See my detailed discussion of the 6th edition.


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Wednesday, August 17, 2016


Diaa Hadid in the New York Times has written some surprisingly good articles in recent weeks. Earlier this week she wrote one about how Israeli doctors, through the Save a Child's Heart program, saved the life of an Afghan boy in Pakistan with a heart defect.

I've written about SACH in the past and even visited them. It is a great organization that is happy to help whenever it can. It is not political and does only good.

For the most part, Hadid's article is positive, describing how the child, Yehia, managed to get to Israel and be helped. She give background on the organization:
Yehia — whose father spoke on the condition that the family name not be published for fear of a backlash if it became known he had taken the boy to Israel for treatment — is the first Afghan treated by Save a Child’s Heart in its 20 years of operations. About half the charity’s 4,000 patients have been Palestinian; 200 others were children from Iraq and Syria, and the roster includes patients from Tanzania, Ethiopia and Moldova.

But she cannot resist finding someone to accuse the dedicated doctors of SACH of "med-washing:"

Tony Laurance, head of a group called Medical Aid for Palestine, said that while providing children “world-class surgery” was “an unequivocal good,” it should not obscure the broader impact of Israeli policies on medical care for Palestinians. Gaza hospitals are perennially short of medicine, equipment and well-trained staff because of Israeli restrictions on travel and trade, and many Gaza residents struggle to get exit permits for care outside the territory.

What gets up my nose,” Mr. Laurance said, “is that it presents an image of Israel that betrays the reality.”
Israeli doctors saving Muslim lives "gets up his nose" because it "betrays reality"? Laurance is saying that positive articles about Israel must not be published because they blunt the impact of the unrelenting anti-Israel propaganda that he and his organization pushes.

Laurance's idea of "reality" is that Gaza suffers shortages of medicine and equipment because of Israeli policies, a statement that Hadid does not check. It is unequivocally false. While a tiny percentage of medical equipment going into Gaza may be delayed because it could be considered dual-use, if it is legitimate it gets through. And there are no restrictions on medicines altogether. Teh medicine restrictions are because of infighting between Hamas and Fatah, plus Hamas stealing aid. It has nothing to do with Israel.

Laurance lied, and Hadid allowed the lie to be published unchallenged in the New York Times.

Even his statement about "many Gaza residents struggle to get exit permits " is skewed. I have no doubt that there is paperwork to complete and approvals involved, but they are traveling to another country - the restrictions are not any worse than with most international travel. Beyond that, Mr. Laurance conveniently decides not to say a word about that other country that borders Gaza, an Arab country, that refuses virtually all patients from entering. Which calls into question the true interest he has in Medical Aid for Palestinians (the actual name of the organization) - how much of it is altruistic and how much is political?

There was no reason to include his mini-diatribe in the article, and in fact it is a jarring departure from the tone of the rest of the article. But what is worse is that the casual reader would think that the NYT agrees that Israel restricts medical aid to Gaza.

(h/t EBoZ)



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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

  • Tuesday, August 16, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon

Here is another major finding from the recent JMCC poll I mentioned earlier also didn't get any attention in the media either.

The survey asked, "There has been a debate recently on the issue of freedom of expression in the Palestinian society. In your opinion to what extent is the freedom of expression permissible in the PA-controlled territories?"

The answers are telling. 21.2% said that there was freedom of expression "to a very great extent" (2.2%) or "to a great extent" (19.0%).

However, a total of 74.3% said that freedom of expression was "low" (32.8%), "very low" (18.1 %) or "not permissible at all" (23.4%).

There are ramifications to this news.

If Palestinians themselves agree that there is little or no freedom of expression, then that means that their newspapers, TV stations and even social media are not accurate barometers of reality. The news that is published is the news that is allowed to be published by the governments of Fatah and Hamas.

It also means that Palestinian stringers for major networks and wire services have no more freedom of expression than any other Palestinian. This naturally implies that any reporting from areas under Palestinian control is ab initio suspect .

None of this is a surprise, but it shows that the news media that operates in the territories is not being honest by default. If they cared about accuracy, they should say that the reporters and news services are under pressure - sometimes overt, often covert - that shades the coverage towards the story that the authorities want the world to hear. If news services valued accuracy, they they must inform their readers of any factors that could be coloring their stories, and let the readers decide what the truth is.

There is another ramification. If the Palestinians widely believe that they have no freedom of expression, then one would expect NGOs to pressure their leadership on this issue. Amnesty and other NGOs have elaborate programs to defend freedom of expression worldwide.

Yet I have not seen any initiative of any consequence targeting Palestinian territories. The topic is mentioned briefly in the annual Amnesty report, but the last time I can find that there was a report specifically on the topic of freedom of expression under the PA was in 2000. HRW is somewhat better, but often feels it must "balance" its reports by throwing in gratuitous anti-Israel accusations for no reason.

What it also means for the NGOs is that they must adhere to known fact-finding standards in order to ensure that what people tell them reflects reality, not what people think that their local security services want them to say. Palestinian Arabs have made up anti-Israel accusations without any support many times - a phenomenon that Amnesty itself has noted. But as long as the NGOs refuse to use published standards that can eliminate bias, their reports themselves will continue to suffer from the same bias that Palestinian Arabs see in their media every day.



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Sunday, August 14, 2016




Mondoweiss pretends to do some reporting:
Last month we interviewed Mary al Atrash, a 22-year-old swimmer from Beit Sahour in the West Bank who was part of the largest delegation Palestine has ever sent to the Olympic Games.

She told us about her difficulties to train in a swimming pool that does not match the Olympic standards, and explained that although she technically lives close to Jerusalem, where such swimming pools, exist, she could not go there to train.

After our story was published, a controversy started: Israeli authorities explained that Mary never applied for a permit to train in Jerusalem.

After COGAT –the Israeli Ministry of Defense organization coordinating civil affairs between Palestinians and Israelis in the Palestinian territories- published a statement saying Mary al Atrash never applied for a permit to train in Jerusalem, we contacted Mary and the organizations that supervise her training such as the Palestinian Swimming Federation and the Palestine Olympic Committee.

Indeed, it seems that Mary never applied for a permit, and neither did a lot of other Palestinian athletes. They explain this situation by emphasizing their movement restrictions. They say they can be stopped at any point while going from one place to another and therefore don’t feel safe moving from one city to another. They also mention that roads or checkpoints are sometimes closed which implies a chance of wasting time that they could use to train.

The Palestinian Swimming Federation stressed “the difficulties, that all the athletes face, to enter Jerusalem for training” and that “permits are for a limited time” and that athletes still have to go “through checkpoints” even if they have a permit to train in Jerusalem which makes their situation unstable and puts them at risk of wasting their training time.
So that is the new narrative - that Palestinian athletes all decided that it is too risky to train in Israel because of the chance that they will be delayed?

Somehow, tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs manage to enter Israel every day, work for an average of 7 hours, and go home. But if you are to believe this article, Palestinian Olympic hopefuls don't have the same drive to succeed as the average construction worker.

Too bad that Mondoweiss didn't bother reading, or actively ignored, the tweet from Reuters' Luke Baker where he said explicitly that Palestinian (leaders) oppose letting athletes train in Israel.



I would point to the tweet itself, but it has been deleted. Apparently the narrative of the Palestinians as only victims and without any responsibility for their own destinies was too strong for a Reuters reporter to admit otherwise, even though that admission was to defend a story that implied that Israel had banned the al-Atrash, not her own people.

However, looking at the Palsport.com webpage for all Palestinian sports news, one can see that the idea of "normalization" with Israel is a very big taboo. For example, this article rails against any attempts by Israeli sports federations to work together with Palestinians. There are no articles that argue that Palestinian athletes should cooperate with Israelis in any form.

Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, has said himself that "there will be no normalization - will not normalize with Israel because we are under occupation and the Israelis do not recognize the Palestinian sports entity ....We defend our national cause and will not relent...The occupation is the enemy number one of Palestinian sport....the occupation seeks to besiege our people including by preventing movement of the athletes..."

How can Rajoub keep saying that if Israel allows his athletes to train in Israel? Much easier to ban his athletes from training and then blaming Israel for it!

To Rajoub, Mondoweiss is a reliable propaganda outlet that will parrot, without any skepticism, the idea that Israel is the reason why Palestinians cannot train in Israel. It is simply not true. Reuters knows it, Rajoub knows it, and Mary al Atrash knows it. But that narrative simply doesn't fit the agenda of Reuters, the PLO and Mondoweiss.

The deleted Reuters tweet also says volumes about how Reuters prefers narratives to truth.



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Thursday, August 11, 2016

I continued my Twitter conversation with Reuters' Luke Baker about the Palestinian swimmer story.

He said that I was wrong in my assertion that Reuters blamed Israel for her being unable to train in Jerusalem, because the actual Reuters quote said "Use of superior Israeli facilities and training partners in nearby Jerusalem where there are several Olympic-sized pools and many swimmers, has not been possible due to the long-standing conflict with Israel."

When I asked how that doesn't blame Israel, he responded:



This is disingenuous. Reuters has written hundreds of stories about Israel supposedly oppressing Palestinians, and less than a handful on Palestinian opposition to normalization with Israel. The only possible interpretation that a Reuters reader could get from the story is that Israel is responsible for al-Atrash not being allowed to train. It certainly didn't say that Palestinians were against such training.

Taking the two Reuters statements together - that use of the Jerusalem facilities "has not been possible" and that Palestinians oppose letting athletes train in Israel, together with the IDF's statement that they would have been happy to allow Mary al-Atrash to train in Israel if she had only applied for a permit, we come to a conclusion: Reuters seems to be saying that the Palestinian leadership bans their athletes from training in Israel.

This would be an astonishing piece of news.

I asked Baker to confirm that this was what he was saying:




Unfortunately, he apparently did not feel comfortable answering this tweet.

Upon reflection, I don't think that there is an actual ban from the PA. I cannot find anything written that indicates that. Tens of thousands of Arabs enter Israel daily to go to work; if the PA specifically banned athletes it would be a big deal.

However, it is entirely possible that Baker was hinting that Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, has told athletes that they cannot go to the Olympics  if they train in Israel, effectively handicapping their own athletes in the name of "anti-normalization." Rajoub regards sports as an important piece in the propaganda war against Israel and he would not want any story to ever be published about how Israel cooperates with Palestinian athletes to help them go to the Olympics. Any cooperation with Israel would deflate Rajoub's entire reason from moving from terrorism to "sports."

This is the man, after all, who said that a moment of silence for Israeli athletes murdered in Munich would be "racism."

This is why the author of the article, Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh, didn't bother to ask the IDF if they didn't allow athletes to train. He knew that it wasn't Israel's fault to begin with so he just implied it by blaming the "conflict." No reader would even consider the idea that the Palestinians themselves would purposefully use their athletes as pawns in such a way.

Whatever the specifics, Baker is saying that Palestinians are not allowing their own athletes to get the best possible training for political reasons. This is a huge story - a story that Reuters knows about and yet is not willing to report, clarify, confirm or deny.

Which is, when you think of it, also a huge story.



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Monday, August 08, 2016

Mahmoud Abbas has said many times, including in front of the EU, "I assure you that we are not in favor turning the political conflict into a religious conflict." Other PA officials parrot that line in English to Western audiences as well.

In Arabic, things are a bit different. The entire "knife intifada" from last autumn was sparked by Abbas calling on his people to use any means to "defend Jerusalem" which was clearly heard by his people as a call to violence. PA officials explicitly have called for "jihad".

Today, the PA issued another statement in Arabic inciting Muslims to fight Jews.

The Israel Antiquities Authority started taking baby steps towards doing its job last week (many years too late) by stopping some illegal Waqf renovations on the most sacred spot on the planet. Today the IAI returned and filmed what the Waqf was apparently doing anyway.

The reaction by the Palestinian Authority  was to say that the very existence of the Israel Antiquities Authority on the site is "a rabid campaign being waged by the Israeli occupation forces against the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque" and "contrary to religious laws, and moral values, and humanity."

Government spokesman Yusuf Mahmoud also said "This attack is part of the attacks, and intrusions, and desecration daily suffered by Haram al-Sharif which is one of the most sacred sanctities of Muslims" done by Israel to "plant illusions and myths around Al-Aqsa."

He said that daily visits by "herds of settlers" to the Temple Mount "shows the size of extremism and racism which dominate the mind and thinking of the Israeli government."

He concluded by saying "This assault is an attack on 1.7 billion Muslims" and he called on the whole world to "immediately intervene to deter the occupation attacks."

This is incitement. And as we have seen in the past, this incitement often directly leads to violence.



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Friday, August 05, 2016

  • Friday, August 05, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
As has been reported, Israel arrested a senior member of the Christian charity World Vision on charges of diverting tens of millions of dollars meant to help Gaza civilians towards Hamas terrorists.

Israel has been careful so far not to blame World Vision itself, implying that the actions of Mohammad El Halabi were done without the knowledge of the organization.

But World Vision's statement about the incident reveals that it is not the most truthful organization:

World Vision subscribes to the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality and therefore rejects any involvement in any political, military or terrorist activities and maintains its independence as a humanitarian aid agency committed to serving the poor, especially children.

it rejects any involvement in political activities?

World Vision has published a pamphlet that describes campaigns that can only be described as political.


They claim that they are not political, but their advocacy only goes in one direction:

This is a political position.

Worse, they use the term "resistance" in their work, and they describe their partnership with undeniably political organizations like Breaking the Silence and ICAHD as "co-resistance":


Indeed, there are other reasons to blame World Vision besides its apparent shocking lack of oversight on how its donors' money is spent. But this statement alone, where they claim to be apolitical, is enough to prove that the organization is not telling the truth, today.

And once you know that they lie about their very goals, it is hard to believe them about anything.

By the way, Israel says that Halabi was recruited by Hamas in 2005. This means that he was working for the UNDP at the time.


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Monday, August 01, 2016

From Reuters:
Palestinian swimmer Mary al-Atrash can't wait to make a splash at the Rio Olympics in August...

The 22-year-old university graduate's preparations have been hampered because she does not have an Olympic-sized pool to train in. There are none in the Palestinian territories and she has to settle for a 25-meter pool.

Use of superior Israeli facilities and training partners in nearby Jerusalem where there are several Olympic-sized pools and many swimmers, has not been possible due to the long-standing conflict with Israel.

Unfortunately, Reuters did not bother to do any fact checks.

Israel's COGAT showed that the story was a lie on July 20, using a Mondoweiss version of the story.

FACT CHECK: Mary al-Atrash CAN train for the Olympics in Jerusalem, if she ever applied for a permit.

The Olympic candidate, Mary al-Atrash, claimed she cannot train for the Rio Olympics due to “Israeli Restrictions”. However, we found Mary never applied for a permit to train in Jerusalem in the first place.

Rather than investigate the truth, it's a shame that media outlets such as Mondoweiss use these stories to paint Israel in a negative light.

We wish Mary the best of luck at the 2016 Rio Olympics and hope she will come train in Jerusalem upon her return.
Reuters wrote its story without asking Israel whether it was true, and it  didn't correct it. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about Reuters' lack of objectivity.

(CORRECTION: I originally wrote this thinking that Mondoweiss story was written first and Reuters had copied it, but it was the other way around; the Reuters story was June 28, not July 28 as I had mistakenly thought. H/T Simon.)


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Sunday, July 31, 2016


I put subtitles on this video that has been going around. I'm not sure when it was originally shot.

It reveals the depths of immorality in parts of Palestinian Arab society as a father urges soldiers to kill his son, whom he is demanding to throw stones.



The father clearly wants his son to be killed on video, with his Palestinian flag. He wants to create another Mohammed Al Dura for his "cause."

This child abuse and desire to use children's lives for cynical public relations purposes is sickness that is simply not reported.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

UPDATE: The subtitles are a bit off in timing, apologies.

UPDATE 2: It was recorded from a different angle and posted top an Arab site on Facebook, where the "high five" that the boy gave the soldier was edited out while the caption says that the boy refused to shake the soldier's hand.


(h/t Bob Knot)

UPDATE 3: IBA asked Amnesty and Human Rights Watch to comment. They didn't.






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Friday, July 29, 2016

  • Friday, July 29, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,


Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, is the only sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court, on five counts of crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape.)

This week, the government of Mahmoud Abbas, in its weekly cabinet meeting, announced:
The Council welcomed the agreement between Mr. President, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir, on the establishment of a joint ministerial committee between the two countries. Four agreements were signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs with Sudanese officials: a political consultation agreement, a convention on the Joint Ministerial Committee, a protocol of political consultation and the Convention on General Education and the Convention on Cultural and Academic Cooperation in the field of higher education between the two countries, stressing that these signed agreements will lead to the strengthening of relations and increasing cooperation between the two countries for the benefit of the two brotherly peoples.

For some reason this wasn't considered to be newsworthy.

Even the "human rights" NGOs who are agitating to have Bashir arrested have nothing bad to say about Mahmoud Abbas treating him like  a respected head of state.


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Law professor Peter Margulies has written a detailed explanation, based on his own interviews with relevant Israeli officials, on the quality of IDF investigations of incidents that occur during war. He concludes that the IDF is doing quite a good job at maintaining the independence and quality of investigations, which is opposite of the constant charges hurled at Israel by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

It is a long and somewhat technical paper, but it is instructive to compare the quality and detail of his observations with the amateurish and simplistic attacks by Amnesty and other NGOs on Israel's military judicial process.

Excerpts:
Critics of state investigations of alleged violations of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) often accuse those inquiries of being insufficiently independent from the chain of command. Medicins Sans (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders) raised this argument about the recently completed—and exhaustive—U.S. investigation into the October 2015 bombing of a MSF facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan. And earlier in July, Amnesty International leveled a similar charge against Israel’s efforts to investigate LOAC violations during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. But a careful review of LOAC suggests that the situation is more complex than Amnesty’s rhetoric reveals.

Israel has taken substantial structural steps toward independence in LOAC investigations. Independence in investigations is not an end itself—its primary purpose under LOAC is the promotion of effective, timely, and accurate investigation of war crimes allegations.

To assess the independence of an investigation, it is necessary to define independence. Mike Schmitt has suggested that, under LOAC, independence is narrowly defined as standing outside a particular operation’s chain of command. The principle of independence under LOAC does not disqualify a state from reviewing allegations about the misconduct of that state’s forces. In the Kunduz case, MSF argued that the U.S. should have relinquished control to a little-known, never used transnational mechanism, the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. However, international law assumes that states are competent to investigate alleged abuses involving their own forces. The principle of complementarity holds that states, which after all make international law, should have the authority to address their own LOAC violations unless such states default in their duties. That authority is an incident of state sovereignty. Moreover, a contrary view would let states off the hook, inhibiting the development of robust state investigatory capabilities. The world has turned to ad hoc tribunals like the Nuremberg Tribunals and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) when the volume and scale of widely acknowledged atrocities and the absence of a state response called out for such a forum. And the International Criminal Court (ICC) can step in today to prosecute matters when a state brought within the ambit of the ICC’s governing Rome Statute has failed to fulfill its own responsibilities. However, state investigations are the default setting for LOAC violations.

As Schmitt observes, the LOAC principle of independence also does not require civilian investigations of alleged military abuses. Civilian conduct of investigations may hinder their efficiency and accuracy, since civilians lack a firm background in tactics, munitions, personnel, and the exigencies of combat. Rather, LOAC merely requires that an investigative team is free from the operational chain of command for the action at issue.

Contrary to the recent Amnesty International report, Israel reinforces independence far more concretely than most other states. Israel has repeatedly welcomed outside scrutiny, including the Turkel Commission, a group of prominent Israeli jurists and scholars including a former Supreme Court justice, aided by international experts such as Australia’s Tim McCormack and Canada’s Ken Watkin. Israel invited this group to study its investigative process after the ill-fated Gaza flotilla raid of 2010. The Turkel Commission found that in most material respects, Israel’s process met the independence criterion. For example, as Israel’s 2014 report indicated, the investigative decisions made by the IDF’s Military Advocate General (MAG) are reviewable by the Attorney General (AG), a cabinet official outside the chain of command. Moreover, the AG’s decisions are in turn reviewable by the Israeli Supreme Court, a vigorous body that has forthrightly stated that “the combat operations of the IDF do not take place in a normative vacuum.” (Physicians for Human Rights v. Prime Minister, Para. 11 (2009)). Israel’s Supreme Court has followed up on this observation with concrete interventions that would be unthinkable under the U.S. Supreme Court’s far more deferential regime. For example, Israel’s Supreme Court has imposed constraints on the IDF’s criteria for targeting suspected terrorists (see Schmitt and John Merriam on IDF extensive targeting protocols). The prospect of the Israeli Supreme Court’s robust review, facilitated by the Court’s broad grants of standing to residents of the West Bank or Gaza as well as Israel proper, acts as an additional ex ante check on military discretion.

Following publication of the Turkel Report, an Israeli interagency team, headed by Dr. Joseph Ciechanover (who had served as General Counsel to the Ministry of Defense and Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and comprised of representatives from the IDF and Ministry of Justice, recommended further safeguards. All of the Ciechanover team’s recommendations were approved by Israel’s cabinet earlier in July. A central change was provision for a Fact-Finding Assessment (FFA) of “exceptional incidents” involving alleged loss of civilian life. (See the interagency report here.) The IDF started using the FFA Mechanism during the 2014 Gaza campaign, before issuance of the Ciechanover report. Teams of active duty and reserve military personnel from a variety of disciplines, including law, conduct the FFA. Each FFA works outside the chain of command for the operation under review.

Critics of military LOAC investigations seriously underestimate the difficulties inherent in investigating alleged war crimes. Preserving evidence under battlefield conditions is an arduous task, while witnesses in locations such as Gaza may be subject to intimidation by Hamas and other terrorist groups. Outside observers have a troubled track record when it comes to Israel’s Gaza campaigns. For example, the notoriously flawed Goldstone Commission investigation has drawn much critical commentary. All too often, these outside reports, such as the McGowan Davis report for the U.N. Human Rights Council, have failed to adequately acknowledge the challenges that Israel faces in fighting terrorist entities such as Hamas.

Israel’s critics are right on one point. Given the sheer number of military decisions in the 2014 Gaza campaign, common sense strongly suggests that the IDF’s performance was not perfect. As human beings, IDF personnel are not immune from the pull of anger, fear, and haste.

However, neither imperfections nor grievous mistakes such as the U.S. Kunduz attack necessarily translate into war crimes. For commission of a war crime, a culpable state of mind is an essential element. Article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute requires a showing of either intent to harm civilians or recklessness: ordering an attack with the knowledge that the resulting harm to civilians would be “clearly excessive in relation to the … military advantage anticipated.” The high threshold for proof of a culpable state of mind is no accident. Rather, it is a recognition that a less demanding test would not adequately acknowledge the risk of harm that inevitably flows from the fog of war.

Because of the exigencies of armed conflict, assessing the adequacy of a state’s efforts to investigate alleged LOAC violations cannot be reduced to a mere statistical compilation of indictments. A responsible, professional military organization such as the IDF has a range of remedies available for its soldiers’ mistakes, including the promulgation of “lessons learned” from wartime tragedies. A case in point: the MAG’s acknowledgment of the need to improve technological and intelligence capabilities to avoid a repetition of the deaths of four boys on the beach during the 2014 Gaza campaign. One hopes that the U.S. will similarly refine its own systems to avoid a recurrence of the catastrophic Kunduz attack. Any balanced assessment of Israel’s compliance with its international obligations should also take into account its readiness to prosecute IDF personnel serving in the West Bank (for example in this manslaughter prosecution based on killing of a wounded Palestinian). That willingness and reforms such as the FFA process that safeguard the MAG’s independence furnish strong evidence of Israel’s adherence to LOAC norms.

One of the referenced articles is a hugely detailed overview by two American military law experts on Israel's targeting practices in law. Again, the quality of this paper is in marked contrast to NGOs' simplistic and ignorant attacks on the IDF based on nothing more than a predetermined verdict.

Here are excerpts of the conclusion from that paper:

The central finding of this project is that the unique Israeli operational context described in Part I exerts an almost tyrannical influence over the IDF’s legal organization and Israel’s understanding and application of the LOAC. The driving forces in this context are 1) the risk of direct attack faced by the Israeli civilian population due to geography and enemy strategy and 2) the extremely high value Israel places on the safety of its soldiers. Israel’s enemies clearly understand the extent to which these two factors loom large for Israel and exploit them to offset the qualitative and technical advantages that Israel enjoys in conventional warfare. They do this by directly targeting the Israeli population, seeking to capture individual Israeli soldiers and engaging in lawfare tactics. IDF operations are clearly well-regulated and subject to the rule of law. The IDF has extremely robust systems of examination and investigation of operational incidents, and there is significant civilian oversight, both by the Attorney General and the Supreme Court. With respect to the MAG Corps, the Authors found its officers to be exceptionally competent, highly professional, and well-trained. The extent to which MAG officers are independent of commanders, especially when providing legal advice during ongoing operations, is striking.

The operational context in which Israel finds itself also drives the IDF's approach to targeting. Given the geography of Israel and the multiple potential enemies it faces, centralizing air targeting and decentralizing ground attacks makes sense. Moreover, the operational tempo of the operations merits close legal supervision, which the Operational Law Apparatus is designed to provide. It is clear that the deliberate targeting cycle process employed by the Israeli Air Force is constructed so as to identify legal issues as they crop up and to facilitate compliance with LOAC as operations are being planned, approved and executed. Doing so is, as discussed, essential to countering the specific tactics employed by Israel's opponents.

Although the Israeli positions on the LOAC principles and rules governing targeting are rather orthodox, the unique operational environment in which Israel finds itself clearly affects interpretation and application. As an example, given the propensity of Israel’s enemies to use human shields, it is unsurprising that Israel has taken the position that individuals voluntarily acting in this manner are to be treated as direct participants in hostilities. In light of its enemies’ frequent failure to distinguish itself from the civilian population, it is equally unsurprising that Israel has embraced the principle of reasonableness with respect to target identification. Perhaps most noteworthy is the high value Israel places on the safety of its soldiers and its civilian population. Although impossible to quantify, both Authors were convinced these concerns significantly influenced the value judgments made by Israeli commanders as they plan and execute military operations, value judgments that often come into play in the application of such LOAC concepts as proportionality.

In the Authors’ opinion, use of lawfare by Israel’s enemies likewise shapes, whether consciously or not, Israel’s interpretation and application of the LOAC. In particular, Israel has adopted an inclusive approach to the entitlement to protected status, particularly civilian status. Examples include Israel’s positions on doubt, its treatment of involuntary shields as civilians who are not directly participating and its view that individuals who ignore warnings retain their civilian status. Although these positions might seem counterintuitive for a State that faces foes who exploit protected status for military and other gain, such positions are well suited to counter the enemy’s reliance on lawfare. In this regard, Israel’s LOAC interpretations actually enhance its operational and strategic level position despite any tactical loss. Along the same lines, in many cases, the IDF imposes policy restrictions that go above and beyond the requirements of LOAC.
Actual military law experts agree that Israel is meeting and exceeding its legal requirements in how it conducts war. The disagreements that these authors show to specific IDF operational details proves that these papers aren't cheerleading, but sober and detailed analyses based on the specific military (and political) environment that Israel finds itself in. The contrast in quality between these papers written by experts and the armchair pseudo-analysis in NGO reports is obvious to anyone who cares to look.

Predictably, Amnesty's Jacob Burns responded to Peter Margulies' paper on Twitter with its characteristic inability to counter any specific point but rather to engage in handwaving and pointing out that the research trip was sponsored by Israel (which Margulies freely admitted in his disclaimer):


That is Amnesty's argument in a nutshell. We can't find anything wrong with what Israel is doing but we feel that it is wrong because there are relatively few successful prosecutions. The actual reason is because most IDF soldiers know the laws of armed conflict far better than Amnesty's "experts."

Jacob Burns makes one good point, that indirectly damns his own organization:


He didn't ask that Margulies talk to Amnesty's own "experts" on the laws of armed conflict, because he knows quite well that a real law expert would expose Amnesty as hopelessly naive in its analysis.

And I, for one, would welcome legal experts like Margulies to interview B'Tselem experts about their opinion of the deficiencies of Israel's military justice system. In the end, the IDF must adhere to the laws of war, and if B'Tselem knows something that the IDF doesn't about those laws, then by all means, enlighten us.

In the end, it would expose the truth that the arguments from Amnesty and B'Tselem and HRW are not based on international law but on a different, unstated standard that is not reproducible in other contexts and designed to damn Israel ab initio and only then try to justify it.  The laws of armed conflict are meant not only to protect civilians on the opposing side but also soldiers and civilians on the same side. That means that there is far more latitude in interpretation than these NGOs are willing to admit.

In many ways these NGOs are trying to rip apart international law in order to give the side that employs human shields a military advantage. That is neither international law, nor is it even "human rights."



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