July-August, 2014: How the Press presents Gaza

The view you get of Gaza is determined by the reporters who send you news. Who are these reporters?

More important, how reliable is their reporting?

Here is an essay from a site called, The Tower Magazine. I cannot endorse this site. I know nothing about it. 

The essay is from ‘Issue 17’, dated August, 2014. It’s written by Mark Lavie. Here are excerpts. I have done some editing:

“Why Everything Reported from Gaza is Crazy Twisted”

 

You see civilians dying and suffering in Gaza. You see the destruction Israel’s military operation against Hamas has caused. You hear from Israel that Hamas is firing rockets from crowded neighborhoods, using helpless Gaza civilians as human shields, forcing them to stay in their neighborhoods in defiance of Israeli warnings to leave.

Why aren’t you hearing that from Gaza? Often, it’s because reporters are afraid to tell you.

True, in some cases, it’s anti-Israel bias. In others, it’s bad journalism. This is part of the scourge of 21st century “journalism,” with its instant deadlines, the demands to tweet and blog constantly, the need to get something out there that’s more spectacular than the competition, and check the facts later, if at all. Add to that the cruel cutbacks by news organizations around the world. It all means that fewer and fewer reporters have to file more and more stories, and file partial reports while they’re working. It’s impossible.

These elements are part of the reason you’re not getting the whole story from Gaza. But the most important element is intimidation of reporters on the ground.

It’s nothing new. I’ve experienced it for decades. Autocratic regimes threaten, attack and jail reporters who write anything critical of those in power. Other reporters get the message and just don’t do it.

Bringing this element of the Gaza situation to light entails some real dangers. It’s a saga that can’t be told directly in detail. If it is, and if specific reporters can be identified, people will be harmed. Not just the reporters, but their families, too.

News organizations make the safety of their reporters their top priority. Whatever it takes to keep them out of harm’s way — that’s what is done. I applaud that and I support that, though everyone understands that the policy can be and is exploited by tyrannical regimes to your detriment.

For example, in 2001, a news agency refused to release video it had of Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks because Palestinian militants threatened the photographer and his family with murder.

A typical news report from Gaza a few days ago described the destruction, interviewed Gaza civilians who related in heart-breaking detail the deaths of their relatives and loss of their belongings, and listed the hardships and travail the people are facing because of the Israeli military operation. Halfway through the long story was a single paragraph that said that Israel claims Hamas fires rockets from civilian areas. This is how journalists protect themselves from charges that they didn’t tell “the other side.”

But in fact, they didn’t. They didn’t report from Gaza about where the Hamas rocket launchers were, where the ammunition is stored, where the openings of the tunnels are—if they mention the tunnels at all, which in this case, they didn’t.

A reporter for a European news outlet told a friend that he saw Hamas gunmen firing rockets from outside his hotel, but he didn’t take pictures, certain that if he had, they would have killed him. He told the tale only after he was safely out of Gaza. Apparently, his news outlet did not have a permanent local stringer there, or he would not have been able to speak even from the relative safety of Tel Aviv without endangering his stringer.

News agencies, newspapers and TV networks use local Palestinian stringers to do most of the work on the ground. In this era of cutbacks in my industry, there aren’t enough reporters, and those they send in are not fluent in Arabic and don’t know their way around.

Besides the budgetary limitations, news organizations often hesitate to send reporters into Gaza at all because of the constant danger, and not from Israeli airstrikes. In 2007, BBC reporter Alan Johnston was kidnapped by Palestinian militants and held for more than three months. Many other foreign journalists were kidnapped there and held for a day or two around that time. There have been no kidnappings recently, but the message was clear—foreigners are fair game. The message was heard and understood. For lack of an alternative, news organizations rely more and more on local stringers, giving the regime considerable leverage through intimidation.

On many occasions, frightened stringers have pleaded to have their bylines taken off stories. Some have been “evacuated” from Gaza for a time for their own safety, after an article critical of the regime was published or broadcast. Families have been spirited out for a while.

The West Bank, run by the relatively moderate Fatah, is no better than Gaza’s Hamas in this regard.

Back in 2000, two Israeli reserve soldiers bumbled their way into Ramallah, where they were lynched and murdered by a mob. The grisly photo of a Palestinian holding up his blood-stained hands proudly from a second-story window after the bodies of the soldiers were thrown out is seared into the memories of Israelis. Yet, an Italian TV network felt the need to apologize in public for the fact that there was video of the horrendous event — explaining pitifully that a rival network was responsible, and that they would never do anything that could reflect badly on the Palestinian Authority. That’s how “journalism” works in such places.

Also in the West Bank, a Palestinian reporter relayed an official Palestinian story from an Israeli army roadblock near Ramallah, where a pregnant woman had died after “heartless Israeli soldiers” refused to let her go through to the hospital. The reporter went to the hospital, where an Arab doctor confirmed the report. Uneasy, the reporter climbed on foot to the primitive encampment where the woman lived, and there, her husband refuted the whole story. The delay, he said, was getting her to the main road and finding a taxi. Once they got to the roadblock, he said, the soldiers cleared everyone else out of the way and sped them through to the hospital—but it was too late. The reporter then confronted the doctor, who admitted that he lied, “for the cause.”

Clearly, the abuse of reporters and perversion of journalism is not unique to Gaza or the West Bank. This is the situation all over the region, save Israel. During my two years in Egypt, I saw some of my colleagues beaten, harassed and arrested. Last December, the military-backed Egyptian regime jailed reporters for Al-Jazeera, charging them with belonging to or assisting a terrorist organization.

Some moves against journalists are quieter. A news outlet once pulled its photographer out of Saudi Arabia because the regime would not allow him to take pictures of anything. Local reporters know to steer very clear of controversial subjects.

Both Syria’s government and some rebel groups operating there kidnap and kill journalists in the worst case, and severely restrict their movements in the best case. Much of the “news” coming out of Syria is in the form of video clips made by one side or the other. Some are so clearly faked that they are almost humorous. Needless to say, local Syrian stringers walk a very careful line.

All we can do is keep this in mind: the world does not operate according to our [or Israel’s] democratic standards of freedom of the press. What we see in news from Gaza may not be the whole truth. In fact, you can be sure it isn’t.

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The next time you see a reporter on TV declare that only a liar would tell you that reporters in Gaza are intimidated, remember this essay. It might help you understand how news really gets reported from Gaza.

 

 

Hamas chooses war. Humanitarians choose Hamas

 Three days ago, on August 5, 2014, the current Gaza-Israel war looked as if it might be about to peter out. Hamas and Israel agreed to abide by a seventh cease-fire agreement (or was this the sixth cease-fire?). It was to be a 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire. It was to last until 8am Israel time today, August 8, 2014.

Many around the world hoped this cease-fire would be extended. Many hoped it would be the end of hostilities.

Talks in Cairo unfolded to achieve that end. Israel was reported to have accepted an extension as early as Wednesday (two days ago) (“Report: Israel Accepts Ceasefire Extension-- Hamas Rejects It”, Arutz Sheva), August 6, 2014).  Hamas was reported to have said, no.

The talks continued.

Early this morning, Hamas announced its final decision about extending the cease-fire: It would extend nothing. Even before the 8am end-time, a headline in Haaretz told us, “Rocket fire resumes as cease-fire ends”.

Within an hour of the end of the cease-fire, Israelis received a geography lesson. We learned the names of many of the small Jewish communities that dotted the landscape near Gaza. News bulletins popped up every few minutes as a barrage of rockets was launched from Gaza at Israel.  

Air raid sirens sounded in Ashkelon, Kerem Shalom, Be'er Ganim, the Ashkelon Industrial Area, Zikim, Karmia, Holit, Nir Yitzhak, Sufa, Netiv Ha'asara, Yad Mordechai, Mivtahim, Yesha, Ami'oz, Ohad, Tzohar, Nitzan, Talmei Eliyahu, Barhia, Kfar Silver, Nir Yisrael, Re'im, Hodiya, Mash'en and Nahal Oz.

In all, some twenty-four communities (and additional residential clusters surrounding those twenty-four communities) once again returned to life inside bomb shelters. They were instructed to go no farther than 15 seconds away from a shelter.

During this same post-cease-fire hour, Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted two missiles over Ashkelon (the Iron Dome doesn’t intercept every rocket; it is used primarily against rockets headed into more heavily populated areas).

Eleven minutes before the cease-fire ended, Amnesty International (AI), a humanitarian NGO that has not been friendly to Israel, published a new statement about fighting in this Gaza-Israel war. Just minutes before new Hamas rockets poured down into Southern Israel’s civilian population, AI declared that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza. By inference, Hamas had committed in Gaza no war crimes worth mentioning. Those rockets pouring into Israel made such an inference laughable: each one was a war crime. Couldn’t humanitarians count?

Less than a minute after the cease-fire ended, those air raid sirens listed above began to wail. The absurdity of the AI message was highlighted by the new rocket-fire: with an obviousness few could overlook, Amnesty International seemed to be telling us that it had a humanitarian duty to protect terror against democracy.

The one-hour barrage of rockets launched by Hamas this morning at the civilian communities listed above meant nothing to the humanitarians of the world. They didn’t care that each rocket fired was a war crime because it had been launched against a civilian population. They had clearly chosen to ignore those crimes.

You might have noticed that when this morning’s barrage of Hamas rockets was fired at Israel’s civilians, no one condemned Hamas. The only condemnation was of Israel, by the ‘humanitarian’ Amnesty International.

Do we now conclude from humanitarian behaviour towards Israel that any rocket fired at a Jewish civilian is not a war crime? That would seem a reasonable conclusion, don’t you think? How else would you explain all that humanitarian silence every time Hamas fires rockets at Israel’s civilians?

Perhaps we should also conclude from humanitarian behaviour towards Israel that these defenders of human life and human dignity have now adopted the terrorist claim that because Jews are subhuman, humanitarian law doesn’t apply to Jews. How else would you explain the humanitarian’s blindness to Hamas war crimes against Israel?

Behaviour often reveals inner thought. Does humanitarian behaviour towards Israel tell us that humanitarians now choose terror over Jews—or terror over democracy?

Humanitarian of the world, including the United Nations, have voted with their feet and mouths: they choose terror over democracy. They choose killers over Jews. Indeed, they choose killers of Jews over Jews.

Humanitarians choose to protect the terrorist, not the sovereign state that fights to defend itself against those who would destroy and annihilate it. Humanitarians may indeed speak of humanity and peace. But their behaviour promotes terror and murder.

The G-d of Israel punishes measure-for-measure: what you would visit upon Israel, will be visited upon you, measure-for-measure. You don’t have to be a legal Einstein to understand what humanitarian support of terror against democracy could mean for you.

You might want to pray to the G-d of Israel that He Judge these humanitarians with Mercy, not Justice.

 

The dead baby strategy: defend terror, not democracy

In this 2014 Gaza-Israel war, the world rises to defend an ‘innocent’ Gaza against a ‘brutal’ Israel. Look at the news stories below. They are from August 1-6, 2014. Their message is clear. Hamas is victim. Israel is brutal; Israel-the-baby-killer must be stopped. Please, the stories seem to say, we beg you: defend Hamas-the-terror-organization against Israel–the-brutal-democracy.

For example, British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond, in “Foreign Secretary condemns 'intolerable suffering' in Gaza”, The Daily Telegraph, August 3, 2014, reports that he is “shocked by the extent of the violence and destruction” in Gaza. That violence and destruction is, of course, created exclusively by Israel. Hamas plays no role in that violence. Hamas is innocent.

Read the news: terrorists are innocent. Israel-the-democracy is evil.

The Daily Telegraph looks at this war—and airbrushes the terrorist Hamas. In “UN: Nearly 300 Palestinian children killed”, The Daily Telegraph, August 3, 2014, we see how a terror organization uses a ‘dead baby’ strategy. It uses children as human shields. It seeks more, not less, civilian deaths. It does that to enrage the world against Israel.

It’s a strategy that’s perfectly aligned with how a terror organization thinks. The Daily Telegraph, however, doesn’t understand the difference between a democracy and a terror organization. It doesn’t look at how Hamas deliberately positions civilians, especially women and children, to be killed by attacking Israelis. It doesn’t ask why Hamas won’t let civilians leave targets after Israel notifies those civilians to evacuate because a strike is coming at them. It cares only about one thing: Palestinian children have been killed by Israel-the-democracy.

Read the news: Israel-the-democracy kills children. Look at those dead babies. What do you expect from a democracy? It brutalizes a terror organization. It must be stopped.

The BBC loves to hate Israel-the-democracy. In “Deadly strike 'on UN school in Gaza'”, BBC News, August 3, 2014, we learn that Israel-the-brutal democracy has—yet again--killed civilians during an air strike on a UN-run school housing Palestinians displaced by the Gaza conflict. How do we know the dead were civilians? Hamas terror officials said so. How do we know the site was a non-combatant site? Hamas terror officials said so.

Therefore, the world is outraged by Israel-the-brutal-democracy. The world is compassionate towards the terrorist Hamas. Is the world just a little too content to accept--without comment or question--the picture of Israel-the-democracy as baby-killers and Hamas-the-terrorist as innocent victim?

The world’s anger towards Israel-the-brutal-democracy grows. In “Gaza crisis 'intolerable'”, BBC News, August 3, 2014, gave us a second look at British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond. In this BBC story, he tells us that he finds the situation in Gaza "simply intolerable, and must be addressed". He is particularly concerned because he has heard from the British public. That public has ‘bought’ the ‘dead baby’ strategy. That public is “deeply, deeply disturbed by what it is seeing on its television screens coming out of Gaza".

Yes, the ‘dead baby’ strategy works. Hammond feels the compassion of his public: Hamas-the-terror-organization is victim. Israel-the-democracy kills babies.

In England, [British Labour Leader] Ed “Miliband opens fire on PM over Israel” Times of London, August 3, 2014. Miliband sees those dead babies. He is repulsed. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Hamas. They’re innocent, aren’t they? Aren’t all terrorists innocent? Miliband finds it “inexplicable” that Britain’s PM David Cameron has failed to condemn Israeli attacks that have killed Palestinian children.

British politicians are angry. They seem to want to know, why won’t Cameron vilify Israel-the-democracy and protect Hamas-the-terror organization? Is Cameron insane?

In the United States, a White House official joins in the chorus against Israel-the-baby killer. In “Senior Obama Adviser: You Can't Condone Killing of Children”, Arutz Sheva, August 4, 2014, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett is quoted as saying that you “can't condone [Israel’s] killing of all of these innocent children".

She’s right to say one cannot condone the killing of innocent children. But, according to international law, she is wrong to blame Israel for those deaths; she should be denouncing Hamas’ use of human shields for those deaths.

It doesn’t matter. The White has chosen to place Hamas-the-terrorist above Israel-the-democracy.

The United Nations agrees. Since the beginning of this war on July 8, 2014, it has, essentially, airbrushed Hamas-the-terror-organization and has attempted instead to criminalize Israel-the-brutal-democracy. In “UN Rep: Attacks against Civilians May Constitute War Crimes”, Arutz Sheva, August 6, 2014, the UN did it again. It ignored Hamas’s war crimes and turned on Israel. Navi Pilay, the UN’s Human Rights guardian, declared that any attack against homes, schools and hospitals must be condemned and may constitute war crimes [emphasis mine].

The dead baby strategy works. It motivates the world to defend terrorism. It provokes the world to criminalize democracy.

The G-d of Israel watches. He sees how the world supports terror over Israel.

In the name of peace and law, the world sows seeds of perversion and hate. Its harvest will be neither justice nor love.

Gaza and journalist coercion. Will we hear the truth?

Everyone seems to agree that this latest war between Gaza and Israel is ‘over’. That means that journalists who have been in Gaza can return home. Will they go home now?

Some of us want to know. We want to hear what they have to say about Hamas.

We are interested in their post-Gaza analysis because Israel has been vilified and criminalized by their reporting. We are particularly intrigued by what they might have to say because of what we have already heard.

We have heard that journalists working in Gaza cannot report the truth. They have been harassed, threatened and intimidated. We have heard that Hamas tracks much if not all of what journalists write—and if Hamas discovers a journalist writing something negative about it, it threatens the writer.

In virtually every case, we have heard, the threatened journalist has deleted or retracted his report. That has meant that virtually every report we have seen from Gaza has painted Israel as a brutal killing machine and war criminal.

On July 24, 2014, The Jerusalem Post reported that foreign journalists receive death threats for negative reports. For example, when several journalists from around the world reported seeing rockets fired from civilian areas in Gaza, they received threatening tweets accusing them of “informing” the IDF.   Specifically, Peter Stefanovic of Australia’s Channel Nine News tweeted: “Hamas rockets just launched over our hotel from a site about two hundred metres away. So a missile launch site is basically next door.”  Quickly, an account called @ThisIsGaza, said this was Stefanovic’s fourth time “passing and fabricating information to Israel... from GAZA”. It threatened to sue him.   Another account, @longitude0 wrote: “You are a cretin. Are you working for the IDF” and “in WWII spies got shot.” 

Financial Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief John Reed reported seeing “two rockets fired toward Israel from near al-Shifa hospital, even as more bombing victims were brought in.”  Shifa, in Gaza City, is the main medical facility in the Strip. Israel had said it was a Hamas headquarters (a war crime).

In response to Reed’s report, @Saritah_91 tweeted: “We’ll hold you responsible if Israel uses your tweet to bomb the hospital & then justify it.”  Another twitter user, @ Faysal_FreeGaza, said he’s “subtly justifying and encouraging IDF attacks on hospitals,” and @Maysara_ ara wrote: “Get out of Gaza u informant.”

Four days later, on July 28, 2014, The Times of Israel reported that reporters are bullied, have equipment confiscated, and are barred from sensitive sites.  As a result, they have become too frightened to file accurate reports.

The Times of Israel confirmed several incidents in which journalists were interrogated and threatened. These included cases involving photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances — gunmen preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, and/or fighting in civilian clothing — and who were then approached by Hamas men, bullied and had their equipment taken away. A correspondent for the local Ouest France daily newspaper told Libération, another French daily, about how he was interrogated and intimidated by Hamas officials in what appeared to be their office in Shifa, a hospital that Hamas had been using as a command headquarters (against International law). An article he had written, which had prompted the threats, was later removed from Libération’s website. The site says this was done at the request of the reporter, whom it named.

Two days after that report, on July 30, Arutz Sheva reported that an Italian journalist no longer in Gaza was now reporting that a missile strike on a school playground, universally attributed to Israel, was actually a Hamas rocket that went astray. Another Italian journalist, who had also left Gaza, now backed the IDF's account of another rocket strike on a school playground in central Gaza's Shati refugee camp.  Palestinian sources had blamed Israel for the deaths there, claiming that Israel had deliberately fired at the playground.  That’s how everyone reported it: Israel had done it, not the Arabs.

As a result, the civilian death count attributed to Israel, went up.

In a different case, Nick Casey, a journalist from America’s prestigious Wall Street Journal, tweeted evidence--and veiled criticism--of Hamas's leadership's use of Shifa Hospital in Gaza as a command center. This tweet served a news purpose, for it helped to shed light on the group's use of human shields. Hamas reacted furiously. A Hamas-affiliated twitter account blacklisted him as a journalist "who lies for Israel"--a potentially deadly accusation for anyone in Gaza, let alone a foreigner. Shortly afterwards, the tweet was removed by Casey.  

In a second case, another WSJ journalist tweeted evidence of a Hamas rocket misfire which damaged Gaza's main hospital. Again, shortly after tweeting it, the reporter, Tamer El-Ghobashi, removed it.

The use of human shields by Gazan terrorist groups during the current conflict has been repeatedly documented. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have stored and fired rockets from within densely-populated civilian areas. Hamas has also openly encouraged civilians to act as human shields, glorifying their actions as heroism. Terrorists have also used hospitals and schools as command centers and military bases.

Few, if any, reporters in Gaza sent out word that civilian deaths were being caused by Hamas, not Israel. As a result, the world—following the lead of the UN—has condemned Israel for deaths and war crimes committed by Hamas.

Will casualty figures now be amended? Will we now hear the truth?

Don’t hold your breath.

The world will reap what it sows.

Gaza: the myth of civilian casualties

The world is outraged by the number of ‘Palestinians’ who have died during the 2014 Gaza-Israel war. According to the latest UN numbers, as of August 5, 2014, some 1,777 ‘Palestinians’ have been killed (“As Gaza ceasefire begins, UN Chief urges parties to commence peace talks in Cairo”, UN News Centre, August 5, 2014).

Israel is blamed for almost all those deaths. The UN claims that 85 per cent of those deaths are civilian (ibid).

The world, following the UN’s lead, has immunized Hamas against the war crimes it has committed during this war. Everyone agrees: Hamas’s responsibility for those deaths is zero. Israel, on the other hand, is guilty of war crimes.

 The world, following the UN’s lead, has reached a verdict: if a terror organization uses a war crime (human shields) to attack a democracy, that democracy has no right to defend itself if those human shields die.

But the ‘excessive’ death numbers that have so outraged the world may not even be real. First of all, those casualty figures come exclusively from Hamas sources (“Why doesn’t Israel publish figures and details of Gaza casualties?”, Times of Israel, July 15, 2014). There is no independent source in Gaza to verify Hamas number. The UN claims that its numbers have been verified. But who verifies the numbers? Hamas.

Second, when the Gazan Health Ministry announces death numbers, its identification of combatant and civilian is completely arbitrary. Neither the UN nor world media has questioned how those identifications have been done.   

The world media has been playing a propaganda game with casualty numbers. Their game airbrushes Hamas and criminalizes Israel. For too few, the Gazan numbers aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on (ibid). Hamas has too much invested in publishing higher, not lower, civilian deaths numbers (ibid) to be honest. To paraphrase a Canada Free Press story, you’ve got as much chance for Hamas to be honest with its casualty reports as you would have the chance to be successful asking a priest to convert to Judaism (“Time Runs Out on Counting Casualties in Gaza”, Canada Free Press, July 29, 2014).

Third, there is the question of the basic accuracy of Hamas reports. For example, if you look at the readily-available Mortality rate for Gaza, you will learn that, on average, 16.9 Gazans die on any given day. This means that, after 27 days of fighting, we can expect that 456 Gazan civilians would have died anyway (that’s what Mortality tables tell you--16.9 dead on each of 27 days equals 456 dead). How many of the supposedly 1,777 dead were not war casualties, but normal deaths?

Hamas says, none. All were killed by Israel.

The UN accepts that without question or comment. The world follows the lead of the UN.

How many of the dead died from Hamas rockets that misfired and landed among Gazans? According to Hamas, none.

The UN accepts that. The world follows the UN.

How many of the dead were executed by Hamas as collaborators with Israel? Some sources say at least thirty. Hamas says, none.

The UN accepts that. So does world media.

How many of the deaths were Gazan Fatah members executed by Hamas under cover of war? Hamas says, none.

The UN doesn’t question Hamas. Neither does the world.

A story surfaced in Israel that at least 20 Gazans were killed by Hamas during an anti-Hamas demonstration less than two weeks ago. Hamas denies it. The UN and the world believe Hamas.

What per cent of that 1,777 death toll is pure fabrication? Hamas—along with the UN—says, zero per cent. The number is perfectly correct.

To understand how Hamas could be cooking the death numbers, the Canada Free Press story (above) made the following statement: A citizen blogger went through Al Jazeera’s list of names of the deceased, and found that approximately 82 percent were male, and a plurality were in their 20s.

In case you missed the point, that’s not a normal demographic statistic. It suggests that the majority of dead were combatants, not civilians.

But for Hamas, they were almost all civilians. So far as the UN and world media were concerned, only a handful of total deaths were combatants. Yet Israel today claims that perhaps 900 of the 1,777 deaths were combatants (“900 operatives killed over Gaza campaign, IDF says”, Times of Israel, August 5, 2014).

It doesn’t matter. No one believes the IDF (Israel Defense Force). Everyone believes Hamas.

The inference is, we cannot believe a democracy over a terror organization.  Terror organizations are open and honest; democracies are corrupt, closed and dishonest, right?

The world blindly accepts the Hamas casualty numbers without a single comment, even though we know from past experience that Hamas lies about casualty figures (Gaza's Civilian Casualties: The Truth Is Very Different”, Gatestone Institute, August 3, 2014).

The mainstream media’s reporting of this war, particularly the Gazan death toll, has been despicable (Canada Free Press, ibid). If you listen to the UN and world media, you can only draw one conclusion: the IDF is commanded and manned from top-to-bottom by psychopathic baby-killing thugs (Gatestone Institute, above, ibid).

The world has chosen to defend terror. It has chosen to vilify a democracy.

The world will reap what it has sown.  

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(I aim to post a second essay later today)

Gaza, Tisha B’Av, measure-for-measure

Today is Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month called, Av. It is a day of national mourning. It is a fast day.

Right now, it’s about 9:00 pm in Israel, August, 5, 2014. Our Tisha B’Av has just ended. Our fast is over. Americans, on the other hand, can’t eat for another7-10 hours, depending upon where in America they live.

Our Talmud (Taanit, 26b) tells us that five national Jewish tragedies occurred in ancient times on this day. This is the day leaders of the Jewish people returned from a reconnaissance mission just as the Jewish people were about to enter the land of Israel for the first time. It was on the ninth of Av that these men persuaded the Jewish people that the land could not be conquered. As a consequence of this failure to trust G-d’s Promise, no one from that generation (except two men) was allowed to enter the land. G-d decreed that they would die in the desert.

On this day, both of our ancient Temples were destroyed. They were destroyed some 630+ years apart.

On this day, 52 years after the second Temple had been destroyed, the Romans ploughed under the Temple Mount.

On this day, 65 years after the second Temple was destroyed, Roman soldiers massacred all the inhabitants of the Jewish city Beitar.

 Since then, the ninth of Av—and the three weeks leading up to it—have been marked with tragedy for the Jewish people. Even today, our current ninth of Av began with a threat: just minutes before a scheduled cease-fire was set to begin between Hamas and Israel, Hamas fired a salvo of rockets into Israel. In our city, two air raid sirens sounded, one after the other. We had to drop everything to go to our bomb shelter.

We’re lucky. We have a bomb shelter. We also have a full sixty seconds to get there, not fifteen seconds.

Later in the day, two friends called to tell us, separately, to alert us: a local police officer had just been stabbed by an Arab.

Nevertheless, as dangerous as all that sounds, we don’t feel the danger. We live on holy land. That’s what we feel: the holiness of the place.

Yesterday, we saw what it meant to live on holy land. There’s a video-tape making the rounds on the internet. It showed a recent interview on Al Jazeera English TV. The Israeli interviewed was Yishai Fleisher, a known Israel advocate who lives in the Jerusalem area. One of his responses explained how some of us feel about Israel. He said (I paraphrase), as every Muslim knows, G-d gave Israel to the Jews. It says so in the Quran. G-d protects the Jewish people. That’s why Gazan rockets haven’t hit anything.

It’s true. G-d protects us. If you watch TV, you have already seen one aspect of that protection—the destruction of Gaza.

That destruction doesn’t just come from the Israeli army. It has another source. That source is today’s morning HafTorah portion from the prophet Yirmiyahu (8:13- 9:23).

G-d punishes measure-for-measure, which means that you can sense the punishment of Gaza in that HafTorah portion. In that reading, the prophet had warned Israel not to sin. Israel didn’t listen. G-d punished Israel. The prophet describes the results of that punishment.

Hamas is being punished in the same way we had been punished.  Here is an updated paraphrase of the prophet, as it applies to Gaza:

Hamas curses Israel—and now it is itself cursed. The destruction Hamas has sought for Israel has become Gaza’s destruction.

Hamas wishes to lead Jewish children to slaughter; instead, they make their own children human shields—and lead them to slaughter.

Hamas has led Gaza to hate the G-d of Israel. For that, they sin against G-d. As a result, the land Gazans walk upon trembles from the impact of Israel’s answer to Gazan rocket attacks.

Hamas has taught Gazans to want to devour Israel. Their own homes are devoured instead.

Gaza has become an assembly of treacherous men. They bend their tongues to falsehoods. They proceed from evil to evil. They deceive everyone. They have created a habitat of deceit. They curse Israel and the G-d of Israel.

“Therefore, thus says the Lord of Hosts. I will smelt them…Shall I not punish them for these things?” (The Koren Kinot, The Lookstein Edition, Koren Publications, Jerusalem, 2010, p, 186).

These are the words of the prophet. The other words above come, to a large extent, from the same text. But today, they do not apply to Israel. They apply to Gaza.

Our own past punishments serve a purpose. They warn others. Our G-d punishes measure-for-measure. What you would visit upon us will be visited upon you.

That’s what you see in Gaza on your TV: measure-for-measure.  What you see is horrific. But then, that’s what measure-for-measure looks like when you deal with Hamas.

 

 

War, Israel, robbery—and emanations

Living with war focuses your attention. Living with the knowledge that someone you know could be killed in combat reminds you that survival is not a guarantee.

Israel is a Holy gift G-d gave to His Chosen. Living with war in this Holy Land teaches you that this unique Jewish place has not been free of cost. It has been acquired through the blood of His Chosen.

We are at war. This war will determine whose god will rule on this Land—the god of Islam or the G-d of Israel. If you doubt that, then you haven’t read the Hamas Charter.

The war with Hamas is only part of the war we fight. Hamas aims to exterminate us (“Hamas Spells it Out: Our Aim is the Extermination of the Jews”, Arutz Sheva, July 29, 2014). Fatah has the same goal.

If you doubt that, take a look at the logo Fatah uses: it does not show its new ‘Palestine’ sitting side-by-side with Israel. It shows ‘Palestine’ replacing Israel.

What does that tell you?

Living with this kind of war so close to home can affect how you look at the world. For example, here’s is a news story about a city near America’s heart-land. It has nothing to do with our war against those who hate us. But…

Here’s the story. It’s dated, August 2, 2014.

“Woman charged with trying to steal unmarked police car with officers inside”

A woman was arrested early this morning on charges that she tried to steal an idling unmarked police car — with two officers inside.

Three Pittsburgh police officers were sitting in an unmarked car just after 2 a.m. in front of Club Xtaza on Smallman Street in the Strip District, where a 2,500-person after-party for Friday night’s Wiz Khalifa concert was taking place.

The officer sitting in the driver’s seat had stepped out of the car to make a phone call while Officer Garrett Spory, sitting in the passenger seat, “was observing a crowd of five to six people in front of our vehicle who had clearly noticed our undercover vehicle.”

One of the women in the group, Ria Buford, 32, of Highland Park, walked over and sat down in the driver’s seat of the car. Officer Spory tried to push her out, yelling “Pittsburgh police, get out of the vehicle now! You’re under arrest!”

Ms. Buford informed the officers that she would be taking the car to drive it to her car, at which point the officer in the backseat also started to yell at her to get out of the vehicle.

“We were both terrified that she was going to attempt to drive away with both of us in the vehicle,” wrote Officer Spory in the complaint.

Officer Spory then got out of the car and ran around to the driver’s side to try to pull Ms. Buford out of the vehicle. At that point, a man identified only as John Doe grabbed Officer Spory’s shirt and yelled not to touch Ms. Buford.

Still concerned that Ms. Buford was trying to steal the car, Officer Spory and other officers tackled the man, who was ignoring commands to place his hands behind his back. Another officer came over and “delivered two knee strikes to his back area” before handcuffing the man.

Both Ms. Buford and the man, who refused to provide his name and birth date, were arrested. Ms. Buford had “an overwhelming odour of alcoholic beverage emanating from her person,” wrote Officer Spory.

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Yes, it’s true. Her ‘person’ was ‘emanating’. The police report said so.

Of course, this story has nothing to do with our Gaza-Israel war. But then, it certainly sounds familiar. It sounds exactly like what Hamas is trying to do to Israel. Like this drunken woman, Hamas wants to grab control of Israel even as Jews reside on the land. It doesn’t care if armed Jews (the ‘police’) are sitting right there. They want to get into the driver’s seat and hijack the property. 

The differences between Hamas and the woman in this news story reveal the truth about Hamas. For example, what emanates from the woman is alcohol. But what emanates from Hamas is far more toxic: Jew-hate.

The woman of this news story is simply drunk. Hamas is fanatical, homicidal and insane.

The woman will spend a night in jail. Hamas will kill every Jew it finds. The drunken woman will annoy her neighbours. Hamas will terrify the world.

Living with war so close can distort how you see the world. It can make you aware that a drunken woman in the USA can teach you something about a terror organization.

The drunken woman teaches us a lesson. Her story reminds us that you must never, ever allow a drunk of any kind to get control of your property.