Ken Roth: bigoted humanitarian tweeted to death?

Ken Roth is head of the NGO Human Rights Watch. He is supposed to be a ‘Humanitarian’, one who respects humanity. Instead, he might be an anti-Semite.

He accepts as gospel all casualty figures published by Hamas. For example, if Hamas says that eighty-two per cent of casualties in this latest Gaza-Israel war were civilians, that is, apparently, fine with him. If Israel objects and says that a preliminary analysis of the dead suggests that 40-50 per cent of the dead were fighters, Roth rejects such statements as lies and propaganda.

He supports almost everything that the terror organization Hamas says. He rejects virtually everything the democracy Israel says. Despite his claim to be a humanitarian, he seems clearly to support terrorists who reject human rights. Just as clearly, he seems to reject a democracy which protects Arab human rights more than any country in the Middle East.

Now, serious questions have surfaced about Gaza’s casualty numbers. Important news outlets (The New York Times and the BBC) wonder if perhaps those numbers were cooked by Hamas for propaganda purposes. What does the pro-Hamas humanitarian Ken Roth have to say about that? Well, He isn’t sure why Gazan fatalities are so overwhelmingly male. He has tweeted, “Young men over-represented among Gaza dead: unclear if Hamas won't acknowledge fighters or Israel targets young men”, (“Human Rights Watch head not sure why young men ‘over-represented among Gaza dead’”, Twitchy, August 9, 2014).

Since Mr Roth said this in a tweet, he got tweeted responses.  Here are a few of those responses (and follow-up comments):

-Give us an educated guess, Ken

- Yes, Israel targets young men with guns and rocket launchers.

- bc u know those incidious [sic] Jews have special weapons that only target males #dumbass

- so just to clarify, is it your suspicion that during combat, Israeli soldiers want to kill innocent bystanders, but only males?

- Oh, I get it. You're upset they're not targeting old men and women who are Hamas fighters. Makes sense.

- Gosh so confusing. "Young men" in civilian clothes, with rocket burns on their hands. Must be civilians. Must be.

- Reminder, @KenRoth: Hamas first said 49 of its men were killed in Cast Lead, later admitting the number was 600-700 [This appears to be true. See, “Seemingly Sisyphean Quest”, Sarah Honig’s Blog, August 11, 2014]   

- Another reminder, @KenRoth: Ridiculous statements like this only strengthen the perception that @HRW is a joke.

- It's worse than a joke. Under @KenRoth, @hrw is the useful idiot, accepting terrorists' lies & undermining enlightened democracies

Then, there were these Reader Comments to the tweets above:

- Oh.... He's shocked... But but but but..... Hamas said, the BBC said... Only women and chill'rens were killed.....how could the actual count show [that] a much larger number were conscription age men? Gasp.... Hamas is being less than forthcoming... You cannot tell me this guy is that friggin stupid.. That dumb a post.... So from here it smells like HRW is just another Israel hating, Jew hating mouthpiece.. When their leaders are this thundering stupid online.... We're supposed to trust HRW numbers on anything?  I wouldn't trust these dimwits to wash my car.... Let alone parse hamas statements with ANY sense of reality. Hamas they trust... It's that damned legitimate Israel they feel who can't be trusted...Another human rights group exposed as a terrorist shill

- I'm beyond trying to comprehend how [people like Roth] come up with such idiocy. And these people are in charge!

-The sneaky Israelis developed ordinance that seeks young people, identifies their manliness, then strikes them dead. Awesome.

- "Unclear if Hamas won't acknowledge fighters....." Ken, Ken, Ken. You don't think terrorists actually lie, do you?

- Human Rights Watch has no credibility on the issue of Israel. They were publicly denounced by their own founder [Robert Bernstein] on this issue [see Robert Bernstein, "Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast", The NY Times, October 19, 2009]. [They] were found soliciting money in return for anti-Israel propaganda. It reflects the corruption of the entire human rights establishment as human rights advocacy. [Such advocacy] should be neutral, detached and objective. [It] has degenerated into Orwellian doublespeak and ideological bigotry.

- I love it when HRW posts blatantly biased tweets like this. Whenever anyone reads this nonsense the bigotry and dishonesty just leaps out.

-Every so-called report from HRW drips with the same sort of stupid anti-Israeli dishonesty. All anyone can do about it is encourage them to go to Gaza and live above a Hamas command post or ammo dump.

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Perhaps Mr Roth should look for another line of work. His reputation as a ‘humanitarian’ could now be dead.

Could this be the first instance where a reputation has been killed by instant tweets?

The new UN logo: terror over democracy

Once upon a time, the United Nations (UN) stood as the standard-bearer for a free world dedicated to peace, not war. The UN Charter told us that this august institution would “unite our strength to maintain international peace and security” (Preamble).  It would promote better standards of life, and freedom (ibid). It would work “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” (ibid).

After World War Two, the UN had high hopes for a New World Order. Today, the UN has changed. We have seen this change during the 2014 Gaza-Israel fighting. The UN now, it seems, has a new goal: to promote terror over democracy in the name of peace.

Beware the United Nations. Its humanitarianism could get you murdered—in the name of peace.

Until recently, the UN had a proud record. It stood at the center of Humanitarian law for over sixty years. It has fostered and midwifed most Humanitarian law since the close of World War Two. In the name of peace and human dignity, it has created new legal code for Man to live by. It has defined and refined a New World Belief in the dignity of humanity.

But the dignity of humanity is a Man-made construct. It’s artificial. It’s based upon a modern Humanitarian ideology that’s less than seventy years old. It is, in other words, based upon laws created by Man.

By contrast, G-d’s Law is eternal. It’s been with us, so far, over 3,300 years. It hasn’t changed. It teaches us to distinguish right from wrong. It teaches us what is justice.

Man’s law is different from G-d’s law. Man’s law changes like a new season’s fashion. It does not support or promote G-d’s Law. It competes with G-d’s Law. It seeks to replace G-d’s Law.

In the short term, it has succeeded. G-d’s Law means nothing to this United Nations.  Man’s law now reigns supreme—and it is Man’s law that criminalizes a democracy under attack by those who swear in public to exterminate it. Today, Man’s law empowers terror. Man’s law vilifies democracy. Man’s law is being used to destroy freedom, peace and security. Man’s law is being used to empower those who deny human rights.

It is being used to empower terrorism.

Martin Luther King, Jr is reported to have said that, until Man’s law becomes consistent with G-d’s law, there will be no justice in this world. Today, Man’s law rejects G-d’s Law. Therefore, there is no justice in this world.

In fact, there can be no justice when terror is elevated over democracy. There can be no justice when humanitarians protect the killers of Jews over Jews. There can be no justice when terrorists are immunized against war crimes by the one institution that should condemn those war crimes but won’t. There will never be justice when terror is airbrushed and democracy is criminalized. Indeed, world history has repeatedly taught a simple-but-cruel lesson: there is never peace when the killing of Jews is condoned and protected.

Given the way the UN has treated Israel and Hamas in this latest round of Gaza-Israel fighting, every terror organization has reason to celebrate. Every sovereign state has reason to tremble.

If you are a terrorist, the 2014 Gaza-Israel war has shown you how the UN itself allows human shields to protect terrorists. This war has shown you how the use of human shields can transform a sovereign enemy into an international criminal.

If you are a terrorist, the UN has now taught you the formula for success: use human shields, especially women and children. Make sure those human shields die. Make sure you video the dead. Show the horror of their deaths.

Then, the sovereign state you wish to destroy will be criminalized. You, in turn, will be ennobled, airbrushed and protected.

This is how the UN treats the terrorist and the democracy in this latest war between Hamas and Israel. This is how the UN gives hope to all anarchists, Jihadists and killers who wish to bring chaos to the Western world.

This is what the UN promotes today. From its treatment of the Parties in this Gaza-Israel conflict, the UN reveals an ugly truth. Man’s law is not G-d’s Law. Man’s law is despicable. It does not support peace, freedom or security. It promotes injustice, murder and chaos.

This New World Order is being brought to you by the humanitarians of the world, most especially those at the United Nations. It is a New World Order that can bring Islamic terror to you, not just Gaza.

Watch Gaza on your TV. What you see is not some far-away war. What you see is the consequence of placing Man’s humanitarian law above G-d’s law. 

What you see is the UN’s new logo: terror over democracy.

The Gaza casualty story, con’t

Last week, I published an essay about Gazan casualties (“Gaza: the myth of civilian casualties”, Tuvia Brodie blog, August 6, 2014). The essay I wrote referred to reports that had begun to appear on The Times of Israel, the Canada Free Press and the website for the Gatestone Institute. At that time, the New York Times and the BBC had also begun to wonder if Gazan civilian casualty numbers were not accurate.

Here’s an update. It comes from an essay written by David Bernstein in the Washington Post (“Volokh Conspiracy scoops the Times on phony Gaza casualty stats UPDATE: The BBC catches on, too”, August 7, 2014).

This update begins with the reminder from Bernstein that he had already accused reporters of ‘journalistic malpractice’ as early as July 26, 2014, several days before anyone else had begun to question the accuracy of those casualty figures. Specifically, he had accused reporters of accepting as gospel all casualty figures that came from what he called the totalitarian-Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.

Bernstein may now be concerned about the United Nations, not just reporters. He begins this new look at the Gazan casualty numbers by highlighting statements made by The New York Times and the BBC. He begins with comments made by the Times: “The Times analysis, looking at 1,431 names, shows that the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll: They are 9 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34 percent of those killed whose ages were provided. At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71 percent of the population [but just] 33 percent of the casualties [whose ages were listed].”

Then Bernstein added what might be his most important observation: The Times article stated that news reports “generally rely on the United Nations’ estimate of civilians killed”.

Here, embedded in Bernstein’s update, is the real concern—the UN. Yes, foreign reporters are responsible for much of the world’s condemnation of Israel. But that condemnation doesn’t grow out of the numbers published by Hamas. The condemnation results from the UN’s validation of Hamas’s numbers.

The problem is, as Bernstein has already pointed out, the UN is not an independent arbiter. It relies exclusively on the Gazan Ministry of Health for its numbers. That Ministry is controlled by Hamas.

The UN claims it is careful. For example, Matthias Behnke, a United Nations official, says that UN numbers come from cross-referencing research by several human rights groups” (The Times, ibid).

That sounds good. But the UN doesn’t say how many human rights groups it uses to collect numbers. The UN doesn’t disclose which human rights groups it uses. The UN won’t reveal what data-collection methods those human rights groups used. In truth, Bernstein says, UN officials in Gaza are utterly dependent on Hamas for their well-being and security, and tend in any event to be hostile to Israel, which limits their objectivity.

The UN, in other words, has been less than careful about the accuracy of the numbers it gets from Gaza. It has certainly been less than candid about those numbers.

The BBC, meanwhile, has typically accepted without comment all Gazan numbers. But now, the BBC has declared that, “if the Israeli attacks have been as ‘indiscriminate’ as the UN Human Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women….In conclusion, we do not yet know for sure how many of the dead in Gaza are civilians and how many were fighters.”

Bernstein’s article appeared four days ago. The UN as had four days to acknowledge--as did the BBC-- the possibility that its casualty numbers may have been cooked by Hamas for propaganda purposes. So far, the only thing the UN has done regarding Gaza is to appoint an anti-Israel law professor as chairperson of a commission to investigate Israel for war crimes in Gaza. It has said nothing about Hamas.

Yesterday, the UN dug its heels into the ground (“UN Not Rushing to Correct Gaza Casualty Tally”, Arutz Sheva, August 10, 2014). Apparently, Hamas’s number-fudging doesn’t bother the UN. The UN sees no reason to change its position.  

Bernstein’s update raises an interesting question. The UN characterizes Israel’s bombing of Gaza as ‘indiscriminate’. Israel dropped over 4,600 bombs on Gaza-- and thousands of artillery shells (which no one has reported, so far as I can tell). If Israel’s bombing (and shelling) had truly been ‘indiscriminate’ against civilians in Gaza’s densely populated areas, why are there only app 1,970 casualties? Indiscriminate shelling of such a densely packed population should have caused closer to 19,000 casualties.  Why were there only app 1,970?

The UN will not ask that question. It’s too busy rushing to condemn Israel. It’s too busy protecting the terrorist Hamas.

 

 

Fatah-Hamas must be held accountable for Gaza war

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) proves yet again that it supports terror over democracy as part of its agenda for ‘peace’. It has announced that a known anti-Israel law professor will chair a UN ‘investigation’ into Israel’s having committed war crimes in Gaza (“Israel, U.S. Reject UN's Gaza Panel”, Arutz Sheva, August 12, 2014). The UNHRC ignores completely the crimes of the terror organization Hamas. It chooses instead to criminalize the democratic state of Israel.

If the UNHRC will investigate Israel for war crimes, perhaps the UN Security Council (UNSC) should call for an immediate and credible investigation into the Fatah-Hamas Unity government for its role in waging a war of aggression against a sovereign state.  Through its Charter, the UN is committed to uphold the rule of peace. Therefore, the UN must hold the Fatah-Hamas Unity government accountable for initiating war. The UN must also hold the Fatah-Hamas government accountable for adopting criminal policies against both Jews and its own Arab citizens.  

As part of this investigation, the UNSC must label the Fatah-Hamas government as a criminal enterprise, one that has been founded and organized for the purpose of committing crimes against the state of Israel. Specifically, the UNSC must investigate the Fatah-Hamas government for organizing its policies around the criminal intent to destroy Israel.

We all know that the Fatah-Hamas government is a criminal enterprise. We see it in its founding Charters. Those Charters advocate the crime of destroying a sovereign state--Israel.

The Fatah-Hamas government creates government policies that institutionalize crimes against Jews. It encourages systematic attacks that (1) dehumanize the Jews of Israel, (2) advocate the extermination of the Jews of Israel, (3) encourage the kidnapping of Jewish civilians, (4) promote racial and religious persecution of the Jews of Israel, and (5) advocate the killing of Jewish civilians.

Most of these crimes are advocated explicitly in the Hamas Charter. All of these crimes are part of the on-going declarations of Unity government officials. Each of these crimes is advocated by that government. All of these crimes are encouraged, condoned or tolerated by that government.

By initiating a war against Israel, the Fatah-Hamas unity government has committed crimes against peace (Kochavi, Arieh J, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1998, p. 225). ‘Crimes against peace’ is an old-fashioned concept. It’s not in vogue. But it helps to understand the crimes Fatah-Hamas has committed.

For example, the Fatah-Hamas government has planned, prepared and initiated a war of aggression against a sovereign state (Israel) (ibid, p. 225). It has furthermore conspired to violate the customary rules of war in the following ways: it has fired more than 12,000 rockets over nine years at a civilian population (Israel).  It has abused the sanctity of mosques, hospitals, schools and UN facilities by using each of these structures for war purposes.  It sends fighters into battle with no identifiable military uniform.

These are crimes for which the Fatah-Hamas government must be held accountable.

The Fatah-Hamas unity government must also be held accountable for inhumane criminal acts it has perpetrated against its own civilian population. This government, with malice aforethought, has committed the following crimes against its own citizens: (1) it fires rockets (at Israel) from within densely populated residential areas, (2) it stores weapons inside personal homes of civilians, (3) it builds entrances to terror tunnels inside private residences, (4) it uses ambulances for the transportation of weapons and terrorists, (5) it uses its own citizens as human shields to attempt to immunize legitimate military targets against attack and (6) it has murdered its own civilians, killing those accused of ‘collaboration’—and committing those murders with no due process given to the victim. In addition, the Fatah-Hamas government has promoted, publicized, advocated and demanded that its own civilians volunteer to become human shields.

The Fatah-Hamas unity government has a record of criminal inhumanity. Its very existence is founded upon two criminal intents—to destroy the sovereign state of Israel, and to kill and/or ethnically cleanse Jews.

The Fatah-Hamas government is a criminal enterprise. It must be held accountable.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), through the Rome Statutes, has defined a ‘crime against humanity’ as including the following activities that Fatah-Hamas undertakes as part of its systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel: the murder, imprisonment and kidnapping of Jews in/from Israel; and the discrimination against Jews for racial and religious reasons.

If the Fatah-Hamas government is not held accountable for these crimes, there will be no peace.  There will be only war. Indeed, there can never be peace with those who, without repentance, wage a war of aggression against another.

The UNSC must investigate the Fatah-Hamas government for its crimes.

 

 

Gematria: Obama and the Arabs?

This is a far-fetched essay. It suggests an unusual, perhaps startling connection between certain names. The essay may shock you. It may make you laugh—because it appears so ridiculous.

I present it to you for only one reason: your private entertainment.

Within the Jewish religion, there is something called, gematria. Gematria is a study of numbers that purports to show connections between ideas. Gematria compares the total numerical value of the letters within one word (or phrase) with the total value of the letters of another word (or phrase).

We’ll get to gematria in a moment. But first, you should understand that not everyone values this pursuit. Not everyone sees meaning in it. Some say it has the same value as an intellectual parlour game: its insights entertain, but have no lasting meaning. Others say, there might be value, but too often people try (to paraphrase a saying) to push a round idea into a square word.

Others say that the connections revealed by this approach indeed reveal a deeper reality, one not visible on the surface. We would be wise, they argue, to be sensitive to the realities revealed by gematria.

Does gematria contain hidden truths? You’ll have to decide for yourself.

Let’s try an exercise. The following derives loosely from an essay on the blog, Tomer Devorah. It’s titled, “Obama and the Evil at the End of Days”. It was posted on July 24, 2014. However, it was originally posted in 2008, before Barack Obama took office for the first time as President of the United States.

The essay begins with a short exercise ‘lesson’. It looks at the total numerical value of the letters of the words (in Hebrew) for the phrase, ‘one heart’ (referring specifically to national unity), and compares that number with the total value of the letters that spell the Hebrew word for ‘Redemption’. The value of both is the same: 45.

A ‘gematria’ lesson from this similarity might be that there is a connection between being united (having ‘one heart’) and reaching Redemption. That is, perhaps this gematria similarity tells us that we can hasten our Redemption if the Jewish people are united; we cannot hasten Redemption if we are dis-united. The gematria similarity between the two concepts (unity and Redemption) simply reinforces the ‘reality’ that we need the one (unity) before we can hasten the other (Redemption).

Now, let’s look at a challenge: is there a connection between President Obama and Yishmaelim, Arab nations who seek ill for Israel and the Jewish people?

The essayist here makes a connection between Obama and the Arab nations in the following way. First, consider the Jewish Passover Seder. At the Seder, we read the story of the Exodus from Egypt. We read about the ten plagues inflicted upon Egypt by G-d in the months leading up to that First Redemption. As we read of these plagues, we do two things. First, we name each plague individually. Then, we read an acrostic—in this case, three words made up of letters from the ten plagues.

An example of such an acrostic at work would be to identify individual plagues called Frogs, Wind, Boils, Locusts, Hail and Darkness; the acrostic might be, ‘fwb’ and ‘lhd’--by using the first letters of each plague.

The plagues were horrible. They were destructive. They seem a punishment that befell Egypt for the tyranny it had inflicted upon the Jewish nation.

The three acrostic words of the Seder story were established thousands of years ago. We repeat them every year. The numerical value of the letters in that three-word acrostic is 501. That’s what those horrible plagues were—501.

Yishmaelim are Arabs. We all know how Arabs feel about Israel. For example, we know that Hamas has just announced its desire to kill all Jews of Israel (“Hamas Spells it Out: Our Aim is the Extermination of the Jews”, Arutz Sheva, July 29, 2014).

The numerical value of the word, ‘Yishmaelim’ (Arabs) is 501.

This numerical similarity suggests a connection between the Arabs of today who hate Israel and the ancient Egyptians who had enslaved the Jews. Could the gematria similarity suggest that the fate of the Arab nations who hate Israel will be similar to fate of those ancient Egyptians who had tyrannized ancient Jews?

Gematria doesn’t give you an answer. You’ll have to figure that out yourself.

The essayist then looks at the numerical value of the name, Barack Hussein Obama, when written in Hebrew. The gematria of that name is also 501.

The plagues which befell the Egypt that tormented us, the Arabs who want to kill us and the US President Obama who seems not to want to support Israel all share the same total numerical (gematria) value—501.

Does that similarity suggest anything to you?

Gematria: it’s either a game, fakery or a way to uncover hidden truths. If these examples above represent how gematria works, what do you think it is?

 

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.