Category: Israel and Gaza (Page 2 of 14)

Israel Report Day 4: One Wedding and almost Three RTA’s

08/08/2014 / Ray Cook / 1 Comment

Yesterday, Thursday, was a day where normality was overshadowed by my expectation that rocket fire would recommence the following morning.

As I write, Friday morning, that fear has been realised with reports of rocket fire in the area in the immediate vicinity of Gaza. The Iron Dome is back to its work.

Yesterday, we returned to central Tel Aviv and visited Bialik Street. Here there are some fine old buildings and the atmosphere reminded me of Jerusalem.

Beit Bialik was the house of Israel’s national poet Haim Nachman Bialik. It is now a museum dedicated to his life and work. It is a very beautiful house both externally and internally. You can read about it here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialik_House

We also visited Beit Ha’Ir the former City Hall. So we learned a lot more about the first Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff. There is little else of interest in the building. It has an imposing facade.

Outside, in the beautiful square, we saw a recently married couple and their friends posing for wedding photos. Life and love goes on. My wife wished them mazal tov.

We made our way to the beach. Not exactly heaving. It was like Brighton before the First World War.

We had dinner at the Sheraton with my son and watched the sun setting on the last day of the ceasefire.

I was rather annoyed that the credit card I had specifically got to avoid currency charges was not, apparently, accepted and I had to use a second card. The waiter was apologetic. I continued to be British and told them it was not their fault.

The taxi driver who took us home was determined to have an accident; driving in excess of the speed limit he almost rear-ended one car, just avoided a side impact with another car that pulled across him to park and had to brake hard to avoid another which pulled over leaving a few centimetre clearance.

Back home, I received a call from the manager of the restaurant. He apologised profusely for the earlier credit card incident and revealed that the first card had actually worked but did not produce a slip. In all, they had debited my cards four times! He said it would be reveresed on Sunday. We could have free coffee and cake next time we were passing by.

Sleep was hard in expectation of what the morning would bring.

Israel Report Day 3

07/08/2014 / Ray Cook / 2 Comments

Our third day in Israel and the second day of the three day ceasefire period. We decided to go into central Tel Aviv with our son to do a bit of tourism and take the opportunity for some shopping.

I thought I’d have little of any interest to write about, but in Israel, unless you spend your time hermetically sealed in a safe room, there is always a story.

Today was no exception.

I had never been to Beit Ha’Atzma’ut – Independence Hall, where Israel’s Declaration of Independence took place in 1948. So we decided to take a taxi to Rehov Rothschild and make our way there.

Outside, on the central pedestrian area, which divides this wide boulevard, stands a statue of Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv. I wondered why his statue stands here and not on Tel Aviv’s most famous street, which is named after him. I was about to find out.

Meanwhile, about that central pedestrian area. Well, it’s not just for pedestrians. You share with cyclists who pedal like car drivers drive in Israel. The best policy is to just ignore them, stick to the marked pedestrian areas, and let them cycle round you. This can be unnerving as they all seem to be participants in the Tour de France who have taken a wrong turn and are desperate to rejoin the peleton.

The central area is clearly demarcated with symbols of bicycles and people. It makes little difference to either group who, with typical Israeli anarchy, choose whichever lane best suits their immediate inclination.

Another typical Israeli touch of humour uses, for the pedestrian ‘lane’, the silhouetted symbol of a clearly orthodox Jewish man, complete with shtreiml and peyot, holding a child’s hand. That reminder of the religious element in the country appears somewhat forlorn, as female cyclists, in skimpy shorts and revealing tops, run over those same symbols in a demonstration of the secular-religious divide.

Back at Beit Ha’Atzma’ut, we enter. I see a group of four elderly people seated on the right. On the left, the desk, with a young lady behind it, and to her right, slouched in a low chair, a young man in a kippah appears to be reading from a religious text.

The young lady takes our money and explains that a ‘seniors’ group is currently in the Hall, and the next guided tour is not for some time. She will first take us into another room and play us a short film. The room which can accommodate about 100 people is completely empty. We sit near the front on hard plastic chairs. Being British, we don’t sit on the front row.

The young lady explains that this building was the house of Dizengoff, first mayor of the city, which he built on the plot of land that was allocated to him in the lottery which established the new town of Tel Aviv in 1909. Hence, his statue outside. On the death of his wife, he converted it to an art gallery in her memory.

In 1948 the building was chosen, and prepared hastily for the Declaration.

The twelve minute film begins. It tells the history of the house, the city and its role in Israel’s independence. Not expecting to be moved, we nevertheless are. My wife is weeping buckets and I wipe away a covert tear and exit back into the entrance, where the young lady informs us that the seniors are almost done. We are ushered through the glass doors and stand respectfully at the top of the small flight of stairs waiting for the guide in the hall to complete his presentation.

Almost as soon as we arrive in position the Hatikvah begins to play, Israel’s poignant national anthem. We stand to attention looking down at the scene of the birth of the State of Israel, listening to Hatikvah. It is a very emotional moment. The tears are not so covert this time.

The seniors make their way out. We smile as they pass and replace them in the now empty hall. Before us the famous portrait of Theodor Herzl, who began the modern political Zionist movement. Either side, four meter high vertical flags of Israel, just as it was in ’48.

Brass plaques sit on the desk behind which the founding fathers sat. Each plaque with the name of those who sat there on that day, and in front of the desk, a set of wooden chairs, also with the names of that day’s participants.

We move around, take photographs and imagine the scene in this place, so familar from the black and white newsreel that we have watched countless times since our youth.

As we leave, the young lady enquires where we are from. She seems surprised. This is the peak season. So many bookings have been cancelled. She thanks us for coming. We should come again in better times, we say. She places her hand on her heart in agreement.

We exit, blinking, into the heat and light of the day. It’s about 30c and humidity is high.

After some shopping and a light snack in the Dizengoff Centre, it’s time to return ‘home’.

Hailing a taxi in Israel you often wonder who you will get. There is a wide range of characters. This time our driver is one of the more garrulous types. He has little English, but engages my son in conversation in Ivrit. I listen and try to understand.

He learns we are English. This precipitates a demonstration of his skills in mimicry as he performs a cockney accent which Dick van Dyke would be proud of:

‘Ooh yeah, Ars’nal, Chelsea, don’t you know…’ moving from the East End to Kensington as Mr Bean.

I tell him that, although I am from London, we are from Manchester. Undeterred he continues:

‘Manchester United, Man City, Liverpool, ooh yeah, don’t you know’.

I attempt to correct his rather poor grasp of Northern English accents and inform him that I am a follower of Tottenham Hotspur. I make several attempts to teach him how a Londoner would pronounce it as ‘Totn’m’. He gives it a go, but is more Ossie Ardiles than Glenn Hoddle.

In exasperation, and with a hint of mischief, I teach him to say ‘Come on you Spurs’ if ever he should find an Arsenal fan sitting in the back of his taxi.

The conversation soon shifts to the conflict in Gaza. We tell him the many places where our family lives, including those close to Gaza.

He tells us that he has a farm and rides horses. He is not far from Arik Sharon’s hacienda. He is from Netivot, a frequent target of rockets. Many people from the kibbutzim around Gaza come there to shop, he says.

As distracted drivers go, he is one of the most distracted. His hands frequently leave the wheel. with expansive gestures. He weaves in and out of the heavy rush hour traffic. He seems to notice the current status of traffic lights more my divination than observation, and the distance to the car in front is calculated by an uncanny sixth sense that operates even when his head is turned to me in the back.

He informs us, with gestures, that the Scots and their national culture bemuse him. He asks the English for ‘kilt’ and ‘bagpipes’. He suggests that anyone wearing a kilt in Israel would soon have an inquisitve local lifting it to see what lies below.

From comedy often comes tragedy. I am a little concerned that, as he drives at speeds which, to a Brit, would seem a little reckless, seeing that the stationary traffic ahead is only 10 metres away and the speedometer indicates 50. Added to this, he has produced a newspaper and is opening it, resting it on the steering-wheel, at the centrefold.

There, I can see pictures of the sixty-four Israeli soldiers who lost their lives in Operation Protective Edge. Our driver points to one of the boys:

‘I know his father. I went to the funeral. Twenty years old. From Netivot. My town.’

The mood has changed. He points to another native of his city. I know his story already as the driver informs us that his wife gave birth to their son two days after he was killed.

He rants about Gaza. We should never have left. Oslo, Shmoslo. Rabin. Sharon. You cannot trust foreigners to protect Israel. They stab you in the back as soon as look at you.

I am not comfortable with his xenophobia.

In the evening my wife’s second cousin comes to visit. She tells us that in the Soroka hospital in Beersheva there were 67 births this week, the highest since 1948: exactly the same number of Israelis killed in the conflict.

Coincidence?

Israel Report Day 2

06/08/2014 / Ray Cook / 0 Comments

As I reported in yesterday’s blog, posted this morning, I woke with the knowledge that the ceasefire was to begin at 8.00 am.

I woke some time before 8. Then I heard a boom which sounded 5-10 miles away and another more distant one. Apparently a major barrage across central Israel and the Negev. One rocket hit near Bethlehem seriously damaging a Palestinian house. Fortunately, no-one was injured.

This rather contradicts Hamas’s claim that thir rockets only target Jews. But what would the world have said if that rocket hit the Church of the Nativity?

So far, the ceasefire has held all day.

We decided to rest for most of the morning then set off for Tel Aviv. My main impression here was the number of flags hanging from buildings and flying from cars. Not huge flags, but small statements of patriotism and solidarity.

We visited the port of Tel Aviv and Hayaarkon Park where the river runs through and under a sequence of road and pedestrian bridges and widens into a park with a zoo and other facilities.

We watched people canoeing and rowing, and generally messing about in boats. In the distance the towering downtown skyline, so recently streaked with rocket trails and Iron Dome interceptions. I could not help but wonder what the people of Gaza would have made of that scene. I had thoughts of 1st and 3rd world countries butted up against each other and thought of the accusations of Apartheid. But the faces I met on my walk – black, brown, white, Asian, Oriental, Arab and Jew – gave the lie to that. What we have are two peoples living in disturbingly different worlds in the same small space.

One part of haYaarkon Park is given over to collections of black obelisks, flanking plantations of palm trees, each obelisk engraved with the names of Israelis who died in its various wars and from terror attacks.

On one, relatives of the deceased had stuck small ‘yizkor’ or annual remembrace notes attached to now dried and faded flowers, some flanked by the Israeli flag; very poignant in the early evening heat of a Tel Aviv summer rush hour.

Back ‘home’, Israel’s Channel 10 was presenting, as far as I could make out, my Hebrew being rather primitive, a balanced view of the Gaza aftermath; scenes of devastion in Gaza, interviews with Gazans, discussions in the studio, without the haranguing, sarcasm and naked partisan aggression of the British television interviewer whose default manner is to present a tone and facial expression which can only be described as revulsion, reserved exclusively for representatives of the Israeli government.

Other news stories from the UK shown today were the resignation of Baroness Warsi due to her disagreeing with her government’s policy on Gaza, David Miliband’s defence of her, and the Tricycle’s theatre’s hypocritical cancelling of its eight year hosting of the Jewish Film Festival because it is part-funded by the Israeli Embassy.

Being away from the UK certainly gives a different perspective on your own country’s news output. I feel calmer here, not being constantly bombarded by skewed news coverage of Gaza.

There’s no triumphalism in Israel. Too many died.

Israel Report Day 1

05/08/2014 / Ray Cook / 2 Comments

Over the next few days, depending on whether this war continues, I’ll be blogging my experiences here in Israel on what I see, hear, feel and discuss.

Maybe, if calm returns, I and my wife can actually have a holiday and not spend our time as close to the nearest air raid shelter as possible.

Monday 4th August.

Manchester airport was relatively quiet. I was surprised. Maybe everyone is already on holiday.

I’m not sure why but our tickets indicated we had the privilege of rapid boarding. Maybe the fact that our original flight had been cancelled, or maybe just a mistake.

We sailed through security and into the maze which is the airport duty free area, designed to force you past every bottle of booze and every perfume sampler.

A very short wait and by no means a full planeload of passengers ensured we were sitting in our seats in record time. We were delayed for an hour due to air traffic control in Greece. Not a great start.

I was very impressed by EasyJet. To help with the kids’ boredom the captain opened the cabin door and invited them to come and look at the cockpit. An orderly queue formed. Brilliant PR.

The passengers were very calm and chatty. No indication that we were flying to a war zone. We found it inexplicable that anyone would want to take children on holiday to Israel at this time. I don’t think people understand what it is like. We don’t understand. But at least we have some idea, some sense of trepidation.

Well before the usual time, the pilot informed us that due to the security situation we should return to our seats and make ready to land. The request we should sit in our allocated seat was a reminder that if the unthinkable happened, we could be identified by seat number.

As we crossed the coastline, not the usual euphoria. I looked south toward Gaza trying to imagine the unimaginable suffering and mayhem just a few miles away. But there were no signs of warfare. Just some unexpected cloud cover.

The pot-faced immigration man – and usually they remain so – even managed a smile as he asked us if we had family in Israel and where they were as we reeled of a list of cities and kibbutzim.

My wife’s cousins picked us up from the airport , which was not empty, but certainly well below its usual bustle. It had taken us no more than 15 minutes from leaving the plane and walking through an eerily quiet airport.

Signs for shelters at every turn reminded us of the reality we had just entered.

I could immediately see the strain on our cousins’ faces. As we drove out of the airport, ‘Z’ turned to me and said he had to tell me something. ‘You are immature and irresponsible to come. There is a war. Everyone is in trauma.’

A typical forthright Israeli statement. ‘So you are pleased to see us, then’ I said. ‘Look, we haven’t seen our son for 18 months. We could not know if he would be called up for reserve duty. We had to see him’. The unspoken implication was ‘and what if then something were to happen to him, and we never saw him again’. But such thoughts remain floating in the air without articulation. But they are, nevertheless, understood.

We learned of a second serious incident in Jerusalem that morning, a shooting following the fatality of a man run over by a tractor which turned over a bus.

Later we discovered the driver of the bus was an Arab who wished his fellow Arab attacker should burn in Hell.

On arriving at our cousins’ home, their son told us that yet another truce was agreed starting tomorrow, Tuesday, morning, and this time Hamas had agreed to it and it could be permanent.

We soon found out what we already knew. Our cousins were not among the 90 something percent of Israelis that supported the government’s efforts in Gaza.

‘I don’t like what they are doing to Hamas’. This was a surprise. I was too tired to discuss. They thought that the way Hamas had been treated, the blockade and the economic pressure on Gaza was similar to how Arafat had been isolated in Ramallah. They should have negotiated.

Their son believed Hamas had shown signs of a gradual realisation that they had to make compromises and forgo their fanatical adherence to a genocidal policy. ‘They can see that they have gained nothing and the way they think is that Allah is not giving them any victory here. So they rationalise that to make concessions and convince themselves that it is His will.’

I had the distinct feeling that it was they who were rationalising their own beliefs that you can negotiate with an enemy that is ideologically hell bent on your annihilation.

‘The Egyptians will open up the border. They will be able to export via El Arish and not have to rely on Israel for their economic welfare. Fatah will come and supervise the crossing. Fatah have been doing a lot to stop terrorism in the Est Bank. But a 3rd Intifada is still possible .’

‘Gaza is like a prison. They need to be able to breathe’.

I write this Tuesday morning. It is 8.00 am. There is supposed to be a truce. I just heard my first explosion, I think. Some way off. No sirens. Dogs barked. Was that a second even further off?

Internet is down. I’ll post this later.

It’s back.

This is Israel

29/07/2014 / Ray Cook / 0 Comments

[This is the text of a speech I made yesterday at meeting of my synagogue to offer prayers for peace, and support for Israel]

Dear friends – thank you. Thank you for coming to show your support and love for the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

I shouldn’t be here tonight. I should be in Israel with my wife visiting our son who lives in Tel Aviv, and our family across Israel. But President Obama tried a little BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) of his own, and our flight was cancelled. So it is beshert that I am here to address you this evening. Im yirtzeh hashem we shall be flying out in the near future.

I want to tell what I and my wife have been doing for the last few weeks every waking moment available to us.

My wife with her phone, I with my iPad have followed every heartbreak, every attack on Israel and the Jewish people, every act of unspeakable evil and every act of unimaginable bravery.

We wept with the families of the fallen, we woke every morning wondering how many more of our beautiful young boys were gone, and how many more families would lose a son, a husband, father a brother.

We watched in awe as 30,000 people braved sirens and rockets to attend the levaya (funeral) of a lone soldier who had no family in Israel. I followed on Twitter calls for people to attend shiva houses (of mourning) of the fallen chayalim bodedim – lone soldiers. It was truly amazing to see. Many of the people I follow on Twitter in Israel actually attended these funerals.

This is Israel. This is the Israel we know and love.

And all through these long weeks we have been phoning relatives in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Netanya, Gan Yavne, Kiryat Ono to ask how they are coping. Did they have to run to a shelter? Are they OK?

You know at that this time more than 2500 rockets have been fired into Israel from Eilat in the South to Rosh Hanikrah in the North. In the last decade at least 12,000 have been fired at Israel.

For weeks, we have sat wondering to ourselves: will our son be called up as a reservist. Would he have to fight? So far, he has not baruch hashem, thank G-d. Very few of us here are completely unaffected by events in Israel; I’m sure many of you have children or grandchildren, relatives and friends in Israel.

I downloaded an app called Red Alert. Every time a rocket is fired into Israel it will sound an alarm that you can configure – you can chose whether it is a wailing siren or a woman saying ‘Tzeva adom tzeva adom’ – Red alert. This so freaked out my wife as my iPad was telling us every few minutes that a rocket was fired at somewhere in Israel that I had to change the noise to be like an email alert. Each time my wife asked – where was that one? Was it Tel Aviv? Was anyone hurt?

This is how we have lived these last few weeks – can you imagine what it is like over there? I’m sure some of you have been and can tell us your own experiences.

We have had to face the surreal knowledge that in a few days we would be entering a war zone ourselves.

As someone who for years now has been involved in hasbara and has used social media to counter lies and distortions and to get the truth about Israel out there, I have been just one of an international network of people who are active on Twitter, on blogs, Facebook and even on the Television and radio here in the UK, Israel, the United States and across the world.

So, what have I learned, then, these last few weeks. Here are some highlights and lowlights.

Well, guess what! Those who say anti-zionism is not anti-semitism have been shown to be seriously deluded. Although criticism of the policies of the Israeli government is a perfectly legitimate exercise, and one mostly performed in Israel itself, the vast majority of anti-Israel bashing is clearly antisemitic.

In France a traumatised Jewish community numbering more than 350,000 has been subjected to what can only be called pogroms. After a so-called pro-Palestinian demo in Paris, congregants in a shul – ironically called ‘de la Roquette’ – were besieged by a baying mob of stone-throwing and knife-wielding Muslims. Only the police saved them from a lynching. Nine synagogues in France have been attacked, even fire bombed. Jewish shops and businesses burned to the ground. Hundreds of French Jews have made aliyah (emigrated) to Israel, where one said he would rather sit in a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv than walk on a street in Paris wearing a kippah.

On Facebook they created a page with the photos and names of French Jews so that they can be attacked. In Paris a Jew was recognised and attacked by fifteen thugs as people looked on.

In Belfast the shul had its windows smashed – twice.

In Manchester, after the pro-Palestinian rally, a convoy of Blackburn Muslims, who had probably never spoken to a Jew in their life, terrorised Jews in Broughton Park, throwing eggs and insults and shouting ‘Heil Hitler’. Indeed, Hitler’s popularity is at its highest for about 70 years.

On Shabbos, a member of this congregation told us how the Kedem shop in King Street has been besieged for a week, and he urged all of us to support the pro-Israel contingent against an aggressive mob of hardline left-wing activists and Muslims who had tried to block the entrance to the shop and had terrorised staff.

In London and Paris, in Berlin and in Belgium and Holland and even in Cardiff violent pro-Palestinian demonstrators held banners which compared Israel and the Jews to the Nazis, called for ‘death to the Jews’, or chanted ‘Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas’ and other unspeakable horrors, unchallenged by police, or the public. The Hamas, Hizbollah and ISIS flags were freely carried without hindrance. In Bradford and Preston the Town Halls took down the Union Flag, our national flag, and raised the Palestinian in an act of solidarity; something they failed to do for the thousands of Palestinians killed in Syria for the last three years.

In Paris, those ever ready to associate Zionism with Nazism gleefully made the antisemitic quenelle salute, a version of the Nazi salute, and called for another Holocaust – the one they all deny ever happened, of course; yet it is Israelis who are the Nazis?

A Turkish shop in Liège in Belgium bore a sign in the window saying ‘Dogs are welcome, but not Jews’.

The Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayib Erdogan said what the Israelis are doing in Gaza is 100 times worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews.

And the United States is not immune with violent rallies against Israel across the country, even in Miami.

Meanwhile, in the UK the Liberal Democrat MP, David Ward, tweeted ‘Ich bin ein Palestinian’ and that if he were in Gaza, would he fire a rocket? yes, I probably would, he said. In other words, he would be prepared to commit a war crime by firing a rocket indiscriminately at Israeli civilians, presumably as form of ‘collective punishment’.

After a storm of protests on Twitter, in which I took part, his colleague, ex MEP Edward McMillan-Scott, stood up for Mr Ward and called the Board of Deputies (so that includes me) a ‘ frightful bag of disputatious Jews’ .

Talking of ‘frightful bags’, on BBC Newsnight that evening, Baroness Jenny Tonge thought Israelis are so despicable that she would also be prepared to commit a war crime against Israel were she to be in Gaza. This is the same woman who once said she could empathise with suicide bombers.

The media and social media talk endlessly of ‘proportionality’ without the slightest idea of the actual definition of this term in international law, in the hope that, it seems, more Israelis will be killed to satisfy their desire for some obscene arithmetic idea of ‘fair play’, as if war were a Sunday afternoon cricket match, not about justice and righteousness or self-preservation in the face of a pathological and suicidal enemy.

Without the Iron Dome, can you imagine how many more Gazans would have died, let alone Israelis. I say that because without the Iron Dome Israel would have to have acted with far, far greater force.

Yet they mock the rockets as harmless homemade fireworks – even though many are provided by Iran – in order to accuse Israel of disproportionality. Because Israel protects its citizens with this technology, they expect Israel to sit back and just allow rockets to rain down on them because, unlike any other nation, they don’t believe Israel has a right to protect itself. And these rockets can, and have killed, and wrought destruction, fear and trauma especially to young children. And, if they are so harmless, how come airlines decided it was too dangerous to land at Ben Gurion?

And yet these same pedlars of semantic mendacity are not concerned that in Syria 170,000 people have died, including thousands in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, Millions are refugees. Did you see any demos in London or Paris about that?

In Iraq, the most evil gang of criminals since the Nazis, ISIS or ISIL, or whatever acronym of evil they now use, are trying to outdo them, killing thousands, ending 1800 years of Christian life in Mosul in Iraq, spreading terror, destroying mosques and churches and precious historical artifacts, the tombs of saints and prophets. And all in the name of the same god that inspires Hamas and their criminal allies. Where are the mass demonstrations? Where are pogroms against Muslims? Where the outrage? Where are the Methodists? Where the Quakers? All we get is a shrug and a soon-forgotten op-ed in one of the dailies.

Yet, if the State of Israel dares to defend itself against a decade during which barely a day has passed without a rocket, an attempted infiltration to kidnap or murder, or a mortar attack against a school bus, the UNHRC ( a mockery of the words ‘human’ and ‘rights’ but definitely ‘united’ against one state – Israel) the UNHRC, a bunch of gangster states that would make the Mafia blush, is falling over itself to launch a war crimes investigation, whilst completely ignoring the Hamas rockets and terror. There have been 32 UNHRC resolutions, 26 of them against Israel and no more than one or even none at all for Syria, Sudan, Russia, China, Nigeria, Mexico, Sri Lanka or Iran.

Ironically, in the 2014 UN Human Development index, Israel came 19th. France was 20th. Not one of Israel’s neighbours came in the top 50, and the ‘State of Palestine’ has a higher index than most other Arab or even Muslim states. So much for genocide..

This is the world we live in.

But it is at times like this when we should take great pride in Israel which shines like a beacon of hope and goodness; yet much of the world is blind to it. Their ignorance of history, their political ideologies, their religion, yes, their prejudice and culturally acceptable thinly-disguised antisemitism, fuels hatred, violence and death, stoked by the media, politicians, and the Internet.

Israelis, and we who support them, we who have morals and scruples, we who abhor death and embrace life, are forced to witness death and destruction and human suffering visited on the people of Gaza, who are as much the victims of Hamas terror – maybe more so – as the people of Israel.

We take no joy or satisfaction in the death of a single innocent, yet they cheer and jeer the death of an Israeli soldier or a civilian, whilst their apologists toss ancient blood libels at Jews like the sweets the Palestinians hand out to their children to celebrate their cult of death.

Today the famous words of Prime Minister Golda Meir are still true: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

They use their people as human shields, preventing them from leaving their homes when Israel warns of imminent attack, physically intimidating and beating them so that they will be killed to provide a photo-op for the gullible press, who would rather believe the representative of a terror organisation than a member of the Israeli government.

They hide weapons in schools, mosques and hospitals, they booby trap homes and fire from those same homes and from protected buildings.

But Jeremy Bowen ‘sees no evidence of human shields’.

Did you know that 5 years ago Hamas itself and other observers revealed that 160 children, who they used to build the tunnels, were killed in those tunnels? Yet it is Israel and the Jews that are the child-killers, the baby murderers.

I’m sure many of you would have seen the graphics on social media and heard the words of Bibi Netanyahu – ‘we protect our civilians with our missiles, they protect their missiles with their civilians’.

$100m at least spent on several kilometres of terror tunnels, and not a single bomb shelter in Gaza, except the ones in the basements of hospitals where their cowardly leaders hide. Did you know that Hamas have a command centre in an office next to the emergency room in Shifa hospital?

Another aspect of the anti-Israel hatred, which for so long has permeated the media, is the corruption of the language of the Holocaust and our national suffering, referring to Gaza as a ‘concentration camp’ or the ‘Warsaw ghetto’. The Arab population of both Gaza and the Territories has grown steadily, yet Israel is committing ‘genocide’ a word never used in reference to Syria or Iraq.

Even our own political leaders, even Jewish ones, have characterised Gaza in terms of the Holocaust; Gaza where life expectancy is higher than parts of Glasgow.

Meanwhile, Israel sends through its crossings hundreds of truckloads of medical equipment and aid every single week, and even the cement used to build the terror tunnels. Whilst at other crossings, hundreds of Palestinians are taken for free medical care to the Rambam hospital in Haifa or the Soroka in Beersheva – even wounded terrorists!

This is Israel.

Only Israel would build a field hospital to treat the civilians of their enemy, and only Israel would have it shelled deliberately by that same enemy, who try to prevent their own people from using it.

Only Israel would have utility workers ready to risk their lives to repair pylons and infrastructure damaged by their enemy so that the innocent could watch Hamas TV courtesy of an Israeli technician, and so that terrorists could continue to use that same power for their malign purposes. Electricity which, by the way, Israel provides for free, anyway.

This is Israel.

Dear friends, sometimes I feel that the darkness is closing in on us. We are relatively safe here in the UK, but it can change quickly. Who would have thought that the 1930’s would return in the second decade of the 21st century. My mother a’h used to tell me that she was often told to ‘Go back to Palestine’ now they are telling Israelis to ‘go back to Poland’.

Yet, this is not the 1930’s. Today we have, b’h the State of Israel and every pogrom, every UN resolution, every rocket, every attack on a Jew proves how necessary it is for us to have our own state where we can be the masters of our own destiny. By attacking Israel and calling for its destruction and the murder of every Jew, they strengthen our will and our determination to survive and prosper as a people and to be a light unto the nations.

They spew hate, we generate love. They tear down, we build. They bring death and destruction, we bring life, medical breakthroughs, technology to feed the world. Israel sends water technologists to Africa, rescue and medical teams to Haiti and Japan when disasters strike. Israelis and Jews win Nobel prizes ‘disproportionately’ to their numbers.

The lovers of death are the absolute antithesis of what we are as a people.

So my message to you tonight is this: stand firm and stand tall and proud of what we are and what we do. Support Israel. Buy Israeli goods, go to Israel for a holiday, tell your colleagues about Israeli achievements. Tell them what they don’t see on the TV or hear on the radio or read in the newspapers. Learn history. Read about Israel. Arm yourself with knowledge, and don’t believe the lies and distortions fed to you by the BBC or SKY News. Write to the media. Write to your MP. Sign petitions. Respond to calls for action from the Board of Deputies or the Rep Council.

Let me finish with a final story from my online life.

Today, one of the biggest heroes in Israel is the Colonel of the Golani Brigade, which has taken many casualties in Gaza. He led his men from the front rather than from a luxury hotel in Qatar. He was wounded and hospitalised. He begged the doctors to allow him to go back and lead his men. He did just that with the scars still livid on his handsome face. He is a lion of Israel. His name is Ghassan Alian. He is not a Jew, but a Druze.

This is Israel.

Kol haKavod lo. May Hashem bless all the good works of his hands and those of his men and all the IDF.

Chazak ve’amatz

Am Yisrael Chai

Hélas in Gaza and other stories

10/03/2013 / Ray Cook / 1 Comment

You may have though not much has been going on in Gaza recently. That is, if you stick to the mainstream media.

When it comes to the BBC, my headline could have been ‘Clueless in Gaza’. Apologies to both John Milton and Aldous Huxley.

BBCWatch is running with a story which perfectly illustrates how propaganda against Israel works. First the lie, then the apology, or the short footnote hidden away on a page of a daily newspaper, or Goldstone saying if he knew then what he knows now, or a cartoonist saying ‘but I didn’t realise it was offensive’, or Ha’aretz issuing a ‘correction’.

The story I am referring to is about Omar Mashrawi. I’m sure you recall the heart-rending scenes as Jihad Mashrawi, a BBC employee at the time, paraded the dead body of his son Omar through Gaza City during Operation Pillar of Cloud, Israel’s operation to stop rocket fire from Gaza.

John Donnison, the BBC correspondent on the ground wrote how the boy had been killed by a shell fired by the Israelis. Despite the evidence at the scene appearing to contradict this claim, or at least causing severe doubt, nevertheless, yet another Palestinian dead baby story was attributed to the Israelis.

Three months later we find the probable truth via no less than the UN HRC as the BBCWatch article tells us, and I quote extensively because I cannot improve on it:

On March 6^th 2013 the UN HRC issued an advance version of its report on the November 2012 hostilities and blogger Elder of Ziyon bothered to read the whole thing. The report states on page 14 that a UN investigation found that:

“On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.” [emphasis added]

A footnote adds that the UN investigated the incident itself.

Omar Masharawi was the only 11 month-old infant killed on November 14^thin the Zaitoun neighbourhood (although the woman killed at the same time was not in fact his mother as the UN report states, but his father’s brother’s wife; Hiba).

The BBC used the story of Omar Masharawi to advance the narrative of Israel as a ruthless killer of innocent children. It did so in unusually gory detail which etched the story in audiences’ minds, but without checking the facts, and with no regard whatsoever for its obligations to accuracy and impartiality. BBC reporters and editors – including Jon Donnison, Paul Danahar and the many others who distributed the story via Twitter – rushed to spread as far and wide as possible a story they could not validate, but which fit in with their own narrative.

It is impossible to undo the extensive damage done by the BBC with this story. No apology or correction can now erase it from the internet or from the memories of the countless people who read it or heard it. Nevertheless, the people responsible for the fact that the unverified story was allowed to run – and that it was deliberately given such exceptionally extensive coverage – must be held accountable for their failure to even try to uphold the standards to which the BBC professes to adhere.

Thus, Israel is demonised. And it is not only western journalists who do it, but Israeli ones too.

Ha’aretz published a story about how Ethiopian women entering Israel were given contraceptive injections. The point being that Israel, which insists it is not a racist, apartheid state, is trying to limit the birth rate of Africans because it is racist. Even at the time the story was rebutted by many sources.The explanation was that these were not long-lasting contraceptive jabs but reversible short-term ones and made at the request of the women for whom more conventional forms of contraception are taboo.

As a result the practice was stopped as being inappropriate.

Nevertheless, what do we find? yes, a plethora of reports telling the world how nasty those Israelis are to let black people into the country and then limit their fertility. The whole idea is nonsense anyway. If Israel were that racist, why spend so much time and effort bringing Ethiopian Jews into Israel in the first place?

And now Ha’aretz has not only given context to its story but has highlighted how its own journalism was hijacked by those with anti-Israel agendas.

But the story has taken on a life of its own internationally. The words “forced” and “coercion” are being thrown around in the international coverage. Images of Mengele-level persecution of clueless, helpless victims being marched by force from camps to clinics to receive their injections have been conjured up, as the story has travelled from the Israeli media to the national mainstream media, to international and niche publications. The headlines run from the oversimplified to deliberately twisted:

Israel admits forcing birth control shots on Ethiopian women

Israel: Discrimination against Ethiopian Jews

Israel coerced Ethiopian women into taking contraceptive jabs

Israel Admits “Shameful” Birth Control Drug Injected in “Unaware” Ethiopian Jews

The most hostile coverage refers inaccurately to “sterilization” – conveniently ignoring the fact that Depo-Provera is a three-month birth control injection, for which women must voluntarily go to a clinic to receive the shots. It is insulting to the intelligence of Ethiopian women to believe that they did this for years at a time against their will. Certainly, if there was a nefarious plot to stop them from having babies, there would have been a more efficient way to do it.

Back in Gaza, if you recall, our blessed Prime Minister, David Cameron, once characterised Gaza as a prison camp whilst he was endearing himself to Turkish Islamist leader Recep Erdogan.

William Hague, our Foreign Secretary called on Israel to end the blockade.

So, no doubt they will both be much affected by the following facts:

COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) regularly reports on the number of truckloads of goods entering Gaza which continued even under rocket fire. http://www.cogat.idf.il/894-en/Matpash.aspx?Sad Our noble leaders will see that the Gaza prison camp received 400 truckloads of goods and 170 tons of gas this Thursday alone.

On Tuesday 144,310 flowers were exported from Gaza through Israel.

The people of Gaza should be reaping the reward of the quiet which has descended since their government stopped bombarding Israel. Yet, Messrs Hague and Cameron should also note the following:

On the 4th March the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, a major route for goods, was closed, not by Israel but by Hamas. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/HumanitarianAid/Palestinians/Hamas_closes_Kerem_Shalom_crossing_4-Mar-2013.htm

Over 70 trucks laden with food and other goods are currently waiting on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing for their Palestinian counterparts.

The crossing is currently not operating, as the Palestinian contractor responsible for the Palestinian side decided not to open the crossing today.

His decision stems from attempts by Hamas to replace the current contractor with one of their choosing. Hamas has been actively trying to push the Palestinian Authority out and take charge of the management of Kerem Shalom so that they may collect revenue from goods that enter Gaza.

These actions by Hamas endanger the current security arrangements and threaten the operability of the crossing.

If Gaza were so desperate for goods, why would Hamas close one of its lifelines in attempt to take control of the crossing replacing the Palestinian Authority contractor? Answer? it wants a kick-back for Hamas by operating it.

And there’s more bad news for those who find Israel solely responsible for the welfare of Palestinians whose government is determined to destroy the country that is most responsible for sustaining it. Egypt is destroying smuggling tunnels.

Yes, Islamist, revolutionary, Hamas-loving, Jew-hating Egypt is destroying the tunnels used for years by Gazans to smuggle everything from couscous to Mercedes and missiles.

The smuggling tunnels linking the Gaza Strip to Egypt are a security threat and must be destroyed, a Cairo court ruled on Tuesday, responding to a petition brought by a group of lawyers and activists in the wake of a cross-border attack that killed 16 Egyptian border guards in August.

The Egyptians even flooded the tunnels recently.

So Messrs Cameron and Hague, where are your complaints to the Egyptians and to Hamas about the way they are turning Gaza into a prison camp, cutting off its routes for import and export?

No, we must only hear about what measures Israel takes to feed and sustain its enemies. All countries do that, don’t they? Supply their sworn enemies with food and power? Assad does it in Syria, yes? What? He doesn’t? Oh. So other countries across the world sustain the non-combatant populations of enemy countries and entities like the Sri Lankans looked after the Tamils in areas controlled by the Tigers?

Oh, I see, only Israelis have to be so generous or else it is a war crime and collective punishment. I understand.

I understand completely.

Why David Ward’s remarks about Israel and the Holocaust are mainstream

26/01/2013 / Ray Cook / 5 Comments

David Ward MP is in a spot of bother with the Liberal Democrats.

On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK he chose to make the following slanderous comparison between Israeli Jews and Nazi Germany:

” [he was] “saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza”.

Even to rebut this piece of trash is like trying to respond to a ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ question, but here goes.

There are about a hundred things wrong with this statement so let’s dissect it.

Firstly he makes the telling conflation of Jews and Israelis. Is he really saying that, given his statement that ‘atrocities’ are and have been visited upon Palestinians that the Jews are responsible wherever they are in the world? Israel may be the nation state of the Jews but not all Jews live there or even identify with it.

Second: he uses that trick which others have used before; to be ever so sorry about the Holocaust and to tell us how awfully the Jews were treated and then go on to accuse them of ‘not learning the lesson’ of the Holocaust as if it’s the victims who have a lesson to learn and not the perpetrators. it also conveniently avoids the fact that it is Israel’s and the Jews’ enemies who daily proclaim their wish to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people: Hamas, Hizbollah and the Iranian regime.

Third: He says ‘within a few years’ of the lesson that the world taught the Jews, they were themselves perpetrating atrocities. Oh, really. In the 19 years between the declaration of the State of Israel when it was attacked by armies of the Arab League intending to finish Hitler’s work, until 1967 when the same Arab League lost a war in 6 days and had to concede territory after attacking Israel once again, all the ‘atrocities’ were against the Jews.

Fourth: He says that these atrocities were perpetrated IN the new State of Israel. Is he referring to the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who fled or were forced out as a result of the attack on Israel by the Arab League? Did atrocities occur? Of course they did; war always produces atrocities whether it be in Afghanistan, World War II or Vietnam. Israeli atrocities as regrettable as they were were certainly no greater than those of their enemies and, in my view, considerably less. However, an atrocity is an atrocity. But is Mr Ward, therefore, holding Israeli Jews to a higher standard than the rest of the world? If so, than this is actually a marker for anti-Semitism – not that I would accuser Mr Ward of that, that would be too simple. it’s far deeper than a irrational hatred, it’s a pathology.

Fifth: ‘continue to do so on a daily basis’. So Mr Ward is saying that Jews (presumably those in Israel) are daily committing atrocities. Like what? No doubt there is much Israel can be criticised for. No doubt that innocents die. But there is a context for this, whether you agree with Israel being in the West Bank, for example, or not what atrocities are here? Maybe he means settlers allegedly taking Palestinian land? Or, maybe some settlers have shot and even killed Palestinians. Is he referring to the awful ‘Price Tag’ actions which target Mosques and farmers’ crops. These may all be crimes, but are they atrocities like the Nazis committed atrocities? Do they deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence? If so, half the countries of the world should have learned these lessons – why pick on Israel, of all countries, or rather ‘Jews’ as examples of atrocity perpetrators when he could have mentioned: Cambodia, Rwanda, Tibet, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Nigeria, Congo. This is not an exhaustive list. Every one of those conflicts exhibit truly awful atrocities on a large scale of both genocide, and ethnic-cleansing as well as internecine and tribal warfare.

Even the USA and the UK have not been atrocity free in recent years. And this is to say nothing of Islamist atrocities, including those against Israel, which have been a part of everyday life for over a decade.

He also mentioned Gaza which was ethnically cleansed of Jews by the, er, Israelis eight years ago, since which time its inhabitants have set a course of suicide bombings and rocket fire against Israel. Its government, Hamas, has a charter which clearly sets out its mission to destroy Israel and the Jews. Nice. Clearly THEY didn’t learn the lesson of the Holocaust; or maybe they did, and the lesson was that if you threaten to wipe out the Jews no-one will believe you. Meanwhile Israel continues to provide them with water, electricity, hundreds of truckloads of goods daily and treats thousands of Gazans every year for free in Israeli hospitals.

So Mr Ward, the British provided the Germans with all that was necessary to sustain life whilst the Luftwaffe blitzed England, is that right, Mr Ward?

Yet it is Israel who has to learn the lesson of its own intended destruction.

Sixth: Mr Ward’s words imply strongly, and please read them very carefully, that Israel’s actions are, somehow, comparable to the actions of the Nazis. This is in itself actually an anti-Semitic marker, but let’s again exonerate Mr Ward from that accusation; I’m sure many of his constituents in Bradford would never countenance, let alone elect anyone with such views.

So let’s look at what characterised the Nazi’s atrocities against Jews (and here I also have to mention Roma, Gays and the mentally ill etc. who, it is presumed, have indeed learned the lessons of their experiences in the Holocaust and would never commit a single atrocity against anyone, ever again, as a result, their all being very special super-human people who inherited the no-atrocity gene from their forbears, whereas the benighted Jews did not).

Please, Mr Ward, show me the death camps, the labour camps; show me the ghettos (and, no, Gaza is not a ghetto, it’s a political entity which happens to be an outclave of the Palestinian Authority thanks to Egypt cutting it loose some time ago). Show me the starving millions; the cattle trucks; the gas chambers; the denial of paid work; the laws. Show me the death pits, the disease, the torture, the summary executions of innocents – show me the genocide, Mr Ward.

So, Mr Ward has knee-jerked his anti-Semitic trope, inspired as he was by Holocaust Remembrance Day which sticks in the throat of certain people on the Left in British political classes, because their favourite victims, the Palestinians, engineers of their own fate, and themselves as anti-Semitic as they come, don’t figure in this national breast-beating for the wrongs done to the Jews and others. They cannot abide that the Jews should garner a single drop of sympathy or that maybe some people might just begin to figure out why the Jews need their own country and justify defending it against those who are themselves inspired not by Holocaust Remembrance Day but by the perpetrators of the Shoah, the Nazis, to whom Mr Ward so egregiously compares the Jews.

Some have said that Mr Ward is playing to his Muslim constituents gallery. If this were true it would be a calumnious attitude towards them in that it implies that Muslims in his constituency would be more likely to vote for him because he accuses Jews of behaving like Nazis. After all, Mr Ward is not George Galloway.

All this goes to show that, in the UK today, you can get away with (give or take a reprimand) slandering Israel – even on the eve of a day intended to remind us what such attitudes can lead to. Such views are now mainstream because the public has bought into the anti-Israel narrative to such a degree that they will even believe that Israelis behave like Nazis thus demonstrating not only ignorance of Nazis but also Israelis.

Dead wrong: counting the cost of war in the Gaza conflict

22/11/2012 / Ray Cook / 4 Comments

… or the obscenity of arithmetica in bello.

I’ve lost count of the number of times in the last few days that the anti-Israel lobby on Twitter and on blogs have condemned Israel as the clear aggressor because 150 people in Gaza have died and only 5 in Israel.

Clearly, the argument goes, if more people die on one side than the other, then one side must be the evil aggressor using disproportionate force.

The fact that you are predisposed to hate Israel or at least have a negative view, and have been fed images of poor benighted Gazans starved, besieged, blockaded, denied medical treatment and so on, will, of course, reinforce the view that 150:5 is an obscene ratio and, QED, Israel is guilty of heinous crimes.

An overwhelmingly powerful country is pounding and bombarding the towns and residential areas of a small outclave of 1.5 million people.

It seems blindingly obvious, doesn’t it? Who’s guilty and who’s not.

Except, why did every western nation either support or, at least, not condemn Israel’s actions? How could they take such a stance? 150:5 and they still won’t condemn Israel.

Thanks to the complete abrogation of journalistic duty in the lead up to targetted killing of a senior Hamas figure in Gaza, most of the western world, which does not follow events in Israel, were blissfully unaware of an acute escalation in rocket fire over southern Israel in the days before, a tank round fired at a jeep and a huge underground explosion attacking IDF personnel within Israel but planted across the border.

I say ‘escalation’ because rocket fire had for years been a constant fact of life for communities in Israel which lie in approximately a 35 mile radius of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people in this area lived in constant threat of rocket fire. The sound of sirens was an almost daily event, often occurring as children set out for or returned from school as the terrorists tried to kill children, their preferred prey. Websites and Twitter feeds were created dedicated to counting these rockets and mortar attacks.

12,000 rockets since 2000. In fact, it was rocket fire that precipitated Cast Lead in 2008-9.

If you are a Hamas apologist, this fact has to be dealt with. Any rocket fired that indiscriminately targets civilians is a war crime and potentially a crime against humanity. A rocket fired from within an urban area is also a war crime. Rockets are fired from or near schools, hospitals, UN facilities, media centres and mosques.

The apologists know that these are crimes. They have, somehow, to make a mental accommodation for these crimes so that their confirmed view of the world and Israeli evil can remain unchallenged and their hero-worship of antisemitic, misogynist, homophobic, terrorists can remain intact.

This mental gymnastic exercise thus has to decide that the rockets are ‘home made’ or ‘fireworks’ and even ‘harmless’. These crimes are ‘forced’ upon these people as their only recourse against injustice and oppression. And so the justification for war crimes and terrorism is constructed lie by lie.

But even the premise of the grievance is false. In 2005 Israel unilaterally disengaged and pulled out of Gaza. Gaza became free of Jews. Here was an opportunity to create a mini Palestine, to show the world what the Palestinian people could achieve without occupation.

But they threw that opportunity away because they allowed Islamist Hamas to take power, and as soon as they did the attacks on Israel were ramped up: rockets, suicide bombings, mortar and rocket attacks.

Why? There was no blockade, no siege. But Hamas’ objective, indeed their whole raison d’être was and still is, to destroy Israel and establish an Islamist state in Palestine.

Hamas are not interested in land or border disputes or one or two-state solutions. Their aim, as expressed in their charter, is to kill every Jew on the planet.

Now it is perfectly valid to criticise Israel’s methods to restrain Hamas in order to cut off weapons supply and to protect its citizens from suicide bombers. That is not what is being argued here. None of Israel’s actions would have been necessary if Hamas were not determined to immiserate the lives of Israelis, whilst, as it happens, immiserating the lives of its own citizen by imposing draconian Islamist laws.

No rockets = no targetted killings, no air strikes , no blockade. No suicide bombers = no embargoes and other restrictions.

Whatever opinion you may have of Israel’s policies, allowing free access to terrorists to bomb and murder your citizens is not a reasonable expectation of any country. You can’t ask a country to strip itself bare of defences because you happen to have a grievance against it, and demand it allow open season on the people it is legally obliged to protect.

No other country that I know, whether western democracy or tyrannical state, and certainly no other country in the region would allow hundreds of rockets to rain down on its citizenry just because world opinion says its policies are wrong. When a missile from Syria struck a town in Turkey a few weeks ago, just one missile, Turkey did not sit on its hands, it retaliated.

Imagine thousands of rockets being fired from Syria into Turkey. How would Mr Erdoğan react? If that fire came from within Syrian cities would he spare his neighbours? Would he make an arithmetic calculation or move to save his citizens? And would the world agree?

And what about Turkey’s ongoing battle with its own terrorists, the PKK. Turkey is a member of NATO with overwhelming military and air superiority attacking and killing Kurds almost daily. Who says this is disproportionate or that more Kurds than Turks are being killed, so Turkey must, QED, be the bad guy? No-one. The Kurds, who have a far better and prior claim to their own state than the Palestinians, just do not figure in any deliberations in a UN monopolised by Israel-haters obsessed with the fact that Jews have a country and are prepared to defend it.

But, oh, the moral mathematicians opine, Israel attacks civilians in urban and built up areas.

So,they are saying that because Hamas commits a war crime by embedding itself amongst the people it is supposed to protect and fires rockets and stockpiles weapons, illegally, in schools and mosques, that Israel cannot defend itself? Well it can according to international law, as long as it does so proportionately.

1500 targets were hit by Israel. 150 people died in Gaza. No-one in the media has yet, to my knowledge, distinguished how many of that 150 were combatants. It is at least half. See this article in Daled Amos for why that estimate is probably accurate.

Let’s say 75 civilians killed in densely populated areas in 1500 attacks and we are back to the obscenity of one civilian for every 20 attacks. Is that indiscriminate?

But wait. We learn that many rockets land short. They actually fall in Gaza and as there is no warning, they kill.
The IDF spokesperson reported, much to the disbelief of the haters, that 99 rockets had fallen short in 4 days. The final figure I have seen is 152 out of 1506 (which, incidentally means Israel dropped as many bombs as Hamas fired rockets = proportionality?) Even this morning the Iron Dome twitter feed reported that they had taken no action against a rocket fired toward Ashkelon (reported as a false alarm several hours after the ceasefire) because it had fallen short.

The disbelievers might like to consider that there are several factions in Gaza who do have a homemade rocket industry rather than the more sophisticated weapons of Hamas, and these are prone to failure, often with deadly consequence for the civilians in Gaza and which are then covered up as Israeli crimes. It might be sobering to note that ‘celebratory gunfire’ after the ceasefire caused the death of one person and injury to three others. This shows how much the authorities care for their own people.

If we make a ‘guesstimate’ of 1 in 10 casualties as being victims of friendly fire (and it may be greater), the ratio of deaths per attack is even less. And if we then account for Hamas’ well-documented use of human shields, deliberately putting people in harm’s way to increase casualty figures so they can make these very claims of disproportionate force, then the figures become truly remarkable. They show that Israel really does try to avoid civilian casualties at the same time Hamas seeks to maximise them.

Yes, I know the horrendous story of the family that was wiped out; 10 members in one attack which Israel needs to account for and explain. But the obscenity of arithmetic means that the putative 75 or even 50 civilian dead becomes 65 or 40 in 1499 attacks. That is almost impossible and unprecedented. Remember Iraq and the air attack on Baghdad? Think of the thousands killed in Homs and other Syrian towns and cities. I suggest you cast your mind back to 2003 and look at an article in the Guardian and compare notes between what the forces of the US and the UK do when they bomb cities. How about this BBC report – 50 dead in one air raid.

How many Israelis would have died without the Iron Dome missile defence system, without safe rooms and without early warning sirens, (if you can call 15 seconds and early warning for the people in Sderot and other towns near to the Gaza border)? Would it have been 1 for every 20 rockets? Possibly. But there we go down the road of justification by arithmetic again.

Bottom line is: if you are constantly firing rockets at me, and I respond only by targetting those who fire them rather than the stockpiles and the infrastructure that supports them, sooner or later I am going to go for a more radical solution.

So the math, as they say in America, is a clear demonstration that contrary to what the innumerate pro-Hamasniks want you to think, and with a couple of provisos, Israel acted impeccably, whilst Hamas behaved the way a bunch of evil terrorists in control of a mini state would behave: illegally, mercilessly, mendaciously and pervertedly.

In other words, no words can describe the depths of inhumanity that these people can stoop to. And yet, so many westerners love and adore them and hold rallies for them and say they are All Hamas and send delegations to them. Yes, they are All wannabee genocides, terrorists, torturers, war criminals and antisemites. What a wonderful world we live in.

So please, Israel haters everywhere, contrary to what someone tweeted to me, the numbers DO lie because although they are important they do not even begin to tell the whole story.

To quote numbers only is an admission that you have lost the moral argument. Go figure.

Update: IDF official figure 177 casualties, 57 uninvolved – so my math was pretty good – if you trust the IDF, that is, which you won’t if you chose to believe terrorists who have been shown to lie and falsify evidence. Your choice.

Update: Whoa! Mishal Hussein BBC news anchor joins in the numbers game and shows her own prejudices

And Peter Tatchell, clueless on Gaza in the Huff Post “Israel launched more than 1,500 airstrikes on Gaza, while Islamists fired over 1,000 rockets into Israel. At least 160 Palestinians were killed, including dozens of civilians, and five Israelis died too. A rather one-sided death toll. Nevertheless, I mourn all these deaths.” Otherwise, despite ignorance, not bad from Tatchell – at least he calls out Hamas for what they are. (my emphasis)

Hamas in context

18/11/2012 / Ray Cook / 0 Comments

I haven’t posted during the current conflict between Israel and Hamas because, to be honest, I have been seriously concerned about the safety all friends and family there which has somewhat paralysed my interest in writing.

The other problem has been that I just have not had the time to make any considered assessment when so many others are doing such a good job.

The situation changes so fast that the best medium to follow has been Twitter and that has been an invaluable and fascinating resource which, at times, made me feel that I was almost there. Except I do not have to run to a shelter every few minutes and have my life made a misery for years.

As I travel toward London where I hope to take part in the annual AJEX (Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen) parade for the first time, it brought home to me the experiences of my mother during the London Blitz. She knows well what it is like to be under constant threat of being bombed or at the receiving end of a V1 or V2. Although what has been happening to Israelis in the south for years is not the Blitz, there are certain similarities.

Can you remember the last country to be subject to a constant rain of rockets? I don’t think it has happened since the V2 attacks on England in the 1940’s.

So I thought I’d try to put some context into this conflict, a context which is sadly missing from almost all news reports.

If you are a regular reader I probably don’t have to convince you of what I am about to write, but please disseminate widely if you agree. There are still many out there who simply, and understandably, accept everything the media, and especially the TV and Internet news media tell them.

What has been particularly striking over the past week is the reporting behaviour of the television and Internet media of the major news outlets and newspapers.

The BBC, in particular, has developed a culture of what it would consider to be good news reporting. This is an attempt NOT to be biased but to simply report what it sees and to deal with both sides ln the conflict evenhandedly.

This is an admirable approach, except when it comes to dealing with a terrorist group it amounts to naivety, ignorance and moral equivalence on a scale that undermines the entire reporting enterprise. By falling over itself to be ‘fair’ it often involves accepting the lies of Hamas and its supporters, treating a genocidal, fanatical, Islamist fascist regime as being trustworthy and distorting history and chronology as well as misinterpreting the root causes of this particular conflict.

The extent of the moral blindness this attitude can imbue is starkly revealed by a report
on the BBC news website which actually challenges both the main Twitter account of Hamas and the IDF spokesperson and postulating that both are guilty of a breach of Twitter’s rules by encouraging violence.

On Thursday, [the Al Qassam Brigade] posted a YouTube video purportedly showing the launch of a Fajr 5 missile towards Tel Aviv for the first time.

In its turn, the IDF tweeted a link to a video purportedly showing an Israeli air force attack on a “rocket warehouse in #Gaza”, on day two of its “Pillar of Defense” operation.

Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has also been using Twitter to get its message across.

The use of social media to announce and comment on military operations, almost in real time, is a significant departure for the social networking platform.

And it potentially brings the warring parties into conflict with Twitter’s own rules, which state: “Violence and Threats: You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.”

This is frankly ridiculous on two counts: firstly, once again, there is the moral equivalence between a terror organisation committing a war crime every time it launches a rocket, and the target of those rockets. Secondly, the IDF spokesperson is providing what could be life-saving information to Israelis as well as propaganda. The Hamas account belongs to a terror group and should be banned for that reason alone. It’s also telling lies.

So now for the context which makes this moral equivalence so reprehensible.

All too many commentators and, indeed, those who are disposed to be against Israel, consider and describe the conflict as if it were between two nations in a dispute over territory. I am talking specifically about Gaza, not the Palestinian controlled areas of the West Bank.

These same observers are also too easily duped by the lie that Israel ‘occupies’ Gaza and assume it does so for some malign reason to suppress and punish the people of Gaza for the perceived crimes of Hamas.

Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005 even before which rockets or mortars were being fired into Israel.
Prime Minister Sharon took the painful step of forcibly evicting Israelis and abandoning towns and synagogues and even exhuming the dead and repatriating to Israel.

The Israelis left behind billions of dollars worth of agricultural equipment which could have kick-started the Gazan economy. This resource was vandalised by locals more interested in using it for spare parts and other resources than creating a viable economy.

The Israeli largesse was soon repaid.

When Israel left there were no blockades, no embargoes on goods allowed through, no drones, no army, no closures. Gaza was free as its supporters now wish it to be, as they shout it at rallies across the world.

Then in 2006 after a vicious internecine war with Fatah where Hamas executed dozens of its political opponents by summary firing squads or throwing off tall buildings, Hamas won a ‘democratic’ election.

Hamas apologists are keen to point out that Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the people of Gaza. During the London riots I was tweeting about Hamas, can’t remember why, when none other than Yvonne Ridley, doyenne of the pro-Palestine movement in the UK, tweeted to me claiming just this, that Hamas were the democratically elected government of Gaza. When I challenged her as to when their next elections would be, she got rather evasive and said it would be as soon as they had dealt with the Israelis, or something similar.

So Hamas are not democrats. Their election would not meet the standards of the civilised world or even the uncivilised. They allow no opposition, no free press. free speech, freedom of association. They kill gays, repress women, murder opponents without trial. They are, in fact, the incarnation of evil.

So don’t confuse a democratic election with democracy. Hitler was democratically elected, as I told Yvonne. She said she did not deny this without conceding the point.

Soon after their ‘election’ Hamas began a campaign of firing rockets into Israel. Since 2000, well before they came to power, they have fired about 12,000. This rocket fire has been intermittent. Sometimes several in a day, sometimes none for several days. It was rocket fire which precipitated Cast Lead in 2008.

Hamas have also sent suicide bombers into Israel, fired artillery shells at school buses, fired at IDF soldiers across the border, packed tunnels under the border with explosives and IEDs and, notoriously, took Gilad Shalt hostage for 5 years.

Israel’s forbearance did not last. Hamas were importing and manufacturing a huge cache of arms after 2006. Why? There was no occupation. They were free. Israel allowed in all that was necessary. Israel provided gas and electricity, as it still does.

So why the rockets?

Hamas’s charter clearly states their goals. They are an extreme jihadi, Islamist organisation whose raison d’être is to ‘end the occupation’. This is not the occupation of Gaza or even the occupation of the West Bank, but all Israel. They consider Israel to be illegitimate and that all the land, from the river to the sea, is Arab Muslim. Their role is to liberate it using any means possible.

But their aims don’t stop there. They are a virulently anti-Semitic group. They do not want a one state solution with Jews living harmoniously with Arabs and Muslims, they want to kill every last Jew in Israel – AND THE WORLD.

Don’t believe me? Read their charter Do read it. This is an absolutist, rejectionist movement which is a death cult.
Hamas have no regard for international law, although it puts up a vague pretence in front of Western cameras. It has no regard for human rights. It has no regard for human life. It abuses its children dressing them in jihadi ninja outfits replete with suicide belts and assault rifles and rocket launchers.
It indoctrinates its children into hatred and the need to shed Jewish blood.

This is the organisation in support of which demonstrators will often say, ‘We are all Hamas now’.

Hamas have been pounding southern Israel for years. Leading up to the targetted killing of a senior Hamas figure last year, I had been tweeting for days and written an article about the online #stoptherockets hashtag. The rockets did not come as a result of the killing, the killing and subsequent offensive was after many years of intolerable rocket fire from Gaza. Rocket fire which had escalated to an extent before the killing which forced Israel to act.

When those commenting on Israel’s actions caution restraint, where were they when the rockets were falling like rain on Ashkelon, Beersheva, Ashdod, Sderot and other towns and cities in southern Israel? How would you like to live under that barrage delivered by an implacable enemy not defending itself but carrying out the objectives of its own charter. A charter which seeks the destruction of Israel.

Hamas, affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, supplied by Iran, financed by – well, partly by you and me if you are in the EU.

So how can anyone fail to see that it is Israel,who are the victims of aggression, not the other way round. the blockade, the embargo, the fence around Gaza, the controlled crossings are all of Hamas’s making.

Yet, despite this, Israel continues to provide power, humanitarian aid, treatment in Israeli hospitals for the people of Gaza who are also victims of the obscene and vicious death cult named Hamas.

I say nothing of the lies and falsely reported images coming from Hamas during the conflict. I say nothing of their evasive interviews which never answer direct questions.

Remember. Hamas fire from schools, hospitals, residential area. They stockpile munitions in mosques and bedrooms. Every time they fire a rocket from a residential area towards Israel they commit two patent war crimes. Yet no-one calls them out for this. The opposite; they receive support from national governments and organisations across the world.

NGO’s which say nothing about rockets fired at Israel are always apoplectic as soon as Israel responds.

Yet I detect things are changing. The UK, many European countries, the USA and even Ban Ki Moon himself seem to realise that Hamas are the aggressors. Whilst asking Israel to show restraint, something they never asked Hamas to do, they nevertheless clearly recognise the sequence of cause and effect here and they know that to ask Israel not to react would be utter hypocrisy.

Maybe you can now understand the background a little better.

My train is about to pull in to London.
See you later.

#Stoptherockets

12/11/2012 / Ray Cook / 2 Comments

#StopTheRockets is the Twitter hashtag promoted today by the incomparable @avimayer.

Avi has relentlessly been using this hashtag with his own barrage of tweets to get it ‘trending’.

Avi’s tweets point out that rockets fired indiscriminately from Gaza into Israel which illicit a response from the IDF do harm to both sides, especially children.

The context for this is more than 100 rockets fired from Gaza in the last 2 days. Some of these rockets have hit towns, cities and kibbutzim in Israel causing damage to buildings, shock but no casualties.

As is often the case Hamas and its allies in Gaza say that this is all in response to Israeli aggression. A 13 year old boy was killed and there are reports that a funeral cortege was hit by the IDF.

These in turn were in response to a prior attack on the border fence where a large explosive device was detonated injuring Israeli soldiers and later an anti-tank round was fired at an IDF vehicle seriously injuring two soldiers.

The scale of the rocket attacks is unprecedented of late and Israel is in the usual place between a rock and something hard because it’s damned if it responds and it’s damned if it does not.

What has been significant on Twitter is that the Hamas apologists are out in force. For them, anything is justified as ‘resistance’. The argument is that Israel is strong and is oppressing Gaza whereas they are weak and desperate. Therefore – all is justified.

The tortuous moral knots that these apologists tie themselves up in was exposed by a tweet to me after I asked everyone to agree that firing rockets indiscriminately at civilian targets is a war crime. At least a dozen people retweeted me.

One person chose to respond as follows:

“@RayPCook how many civilians have been killed from the rockets fired from Gaza?”

My response was:

“what a ridiculous question which completely exposes the bankruptcy of your moral position”

The response back:

“@RayPCook can you tell me why it us ridiculous? Or is this also a morally bankrupt question?”

And this conversation continues.

Does anyone else out there understand why the question is morally bankrupt?

Ok. In case not, here goes.

As no Israelis have been killed, the implication is that either it’s not a crime to fire at them or that these rockets are just a few squibs put up by the poor defenceless Islamist Jew-haters in Gaza. In other words, regardless of the intention of the rockets, if no-one is hurt, then it’s ok.

The corollary is that if someone were killed, would it then suddenly not be ok?

The ridiculous question avoids the moral and legal aspect of indiscriminate fire at civilians. This same person, no doubt, would be bleating about Israeli war crimes if Israel were to launch a two day barrage against Gazan civilians.

He/she may believe this is exactly what Israel has done. So if he/she and other like minds believe it’s wrong for Israel to do it (and I don’t believe they do) then how can they justify it if Gazans do it.

Let’s say Israel launched 100 rockets at Khan Younis and no-one was killed – that would be ok, would it?

This is the logic of the cesspit where Hamas apologists spend their pitiful lives swilling around in moral equivalence, hypocrisy and bigotry.

The sad thing is, they don’t see it. And when it’s pointed out to them, they have no good, that is, moral answers. That’s because when it comes to Israel they are immoral. Their ideology or their twisted world-view or their Jew-hatred taints their thinking.

Update: in my eagerness I failed to mention that people have been injured by this rocket fire and that could easily have been fatal.

Also, one of the reasons why Israelis suffer few casualties in these attacks is because every Israeli either has or has access to a bomb-proof room and air-raid warnings sound, often giving people a matter of seconds to take cover.

In addition, during barrages, schools close, life is curtailed for hundreds of thousands of people in the range of these rockets. Unlike their jihadi adversaries, Israelis value life not death. They don’t hide behind human shields, schools, religious buildings or hospitals.

Category: Israel and Gaza (Page 2 of 14)

Israel Report Day 4: One Wedding and almost Three RTA’s

Israel Report Day 3

Israel Report Day 2

Israel Report Day 1

This is Israel

Hélas in Gaza and other stories

Why David Ward’s remarks about Israel and the Holocaust are mainstream

Dead wrong: counting the cost of war in the Gaza conflict

Hamas in context

#Stoptherockets

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