Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Tag: Gaza (Page 2 of 13)

This is Israel

29/07/2014 / / 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 / / 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 6th 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 14th in 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.

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

22/11/2012 / / 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)

Another low for the BBC News website

25/10/2012 / / 2 Comments

Since the beginning of the week dozens of rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel in a significant ramping up of the usual barely (if at all) reported regular barrage that penetrates southern Israeli cities towns and rural communities. On Tuesday an IDF officer was critically wounded in attack near the Gaza border.

On Twitter and in Israeli newspapers and other online media and websites this barrage was big news. Israel employed its Iron Dome defence system which is only partially effective in protecting large conurbations far enough away from launch sites. Typically Israelis have 15 seconds to get to shelters once the sirens sound.

Then two farm workers near Kissufim were badly injured by rocket fire.

On the BBC and its website what was the reaction for at least two days? We are talking about the world’s most respected news service, allegedly.

Nothing. Zip, Nada. Goor nisht.

I and friends online came to the conclusion that the BBC would not report this until Israel responded and that the headline would imply that Israel was the aggressor.

Sure enough, yesterday, Israel did respond and the BBC’s own response was immediate; there it was on the website’s World and Middle East pages with “Militants killed in Gaza strike’.

BBCWatch have been assiduously reporting this timeline and you can see their reports at BBCwatch.org

That report seems to have disappeared (actually buried and changed here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20054554) and been replaced with a more balanced one ‘Israel and Hamas ‘negotiate unofficial truce’ in Gaza’

I’m sure the original is somewhere in the BBC archive but I would hazard a guess they had several complaints about it and updated it. This is typical. A piece appears with a headline reversing cause and effect; the body of the piece often contradicts the headline and draws some moral equivalence between unprovoked attacks on civilian targets by Hamas or Gaza-based ‘militants’ and Israel’s response to prevent further attacks by targeting those about to fire or those who it knows have already done so.

Today we now have two very different pieces from the BBC. The one about the truce at last puts the horse before the cart:

Five have been injured in Israel since rocket attacks began on Monday.

Israel retaliated with air strikes on Gaza City, killing at least six militants.

…..

On Wednesday, more than 70 rockets were launched into southern Israel, injuring five people, two critically, according to the Israeli military.

In response, Israeli aircraft and tanks targeted rocket-launching sites in northern Gaza.

Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades, confirmed it had been involved in firing dozens of rockets and mortars into Israel.

In a statement, the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades and a smaller Gaza-based militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), said: “These holy missions come in response to the repeated, continuous crimes of the enemy against our people.”

But should we not have a headline at some point during this timeline which says ‘Five Israelis critically injured by rockets from Gaza‘ or ‘Israel responds to escalation of attacks in the South‘?

I’m sure we could all write a better, more balanced headline than the ones being spewed out from the BBC Mid-East  desk.

Now, if you have any doubts about the level of moral degradation that the BBC’s reporting of this conflict has now reached you only have to look at the report by Jon Donnison who appears to be following in the illustrious footsteps of Jeremy Bowen and Barbara Plett reaching new heights of ignorance and moral bankruptcy.

Please be careful. This reports contains graphic examples of the BBC’s egregious attempts at what it calls ‘balance’ but is simply either bias, stupidity or moral decrepitude. (There was, apparently, an even worse report by Donnison last night which I have not been able to source yet)

Here’s the link in all its emetic glory. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20073219

The text below the video:

Mourners in the Gaza Strip have buried four Palestinian militants killed in Israeli air strikes over the past two days.

Israel said the militants were hit as they prepared to fire rockets into southern Israel.

It says at least 60 rockets and mortar shells have landed on its territory, seriously injuring three people. Schools have been closed on both sides of the border for fear of more attacks. 

Ah – ‘Israel said’ – in other words we should not believe the Israelis but swallow whole anything emanating from terrorist-occupied Gaza.

And ‘schools have been closed both sides of the border‘ just to emphasise that same old moral equivalence. If schools have been closed in Gaza then it’s a precaution not normally offered to its children when rockets are launched from them.  Or maybe it’s a good idea to close these schools to demonstrate to the BBC in particular how they protect their children. Or maybe Eid has something to do with it?

In the report Donnison does not show us hundreds of thousands of Israelis cowering in bomb shelters but the funeral of ‘militants’ killed by Israeli air strikes, and quoties Hamas. He leaves out the fact that this was after dozens of rockets hit Israel. We see mourning relatives and Gazans taking cover but absolutely nothing about Israelis.

These reports do tell us what actually happened if you care to decipher the text and remove the veneer of ‘balance’ but it certainly takes a strong solvent and an even stronger stomach.

 

Hamas reduces trade with Israel; Israel gives Gazan children free medical treatment

02/10/2012 / / 0 Comments

News this week that Hamas has halved the import of Israeli fruit, because to buy from Israel is to buy from the enemy. This move is part of the ‘resistance’. Only apples and bananas are now allowed in by Hamas. They want to cultivate their own fruit industry.

This is fine. It’s a great idea to be self-sufficient. But they are not so yet. In the meantime their own people will suffer price hikes and, presumably, as a result, many will go without this essential and important part of their diet.

Hang on a minute. Are we not being constantly told that it is Israel that is causing malnutrition because of the ‘blockade’? Is Israel not to blame for the black market in goods including foodstuffs?

But here we have Hamas punishing its own people for ideological reasons.
Of course, it will still be Israel’s fault. After all, were there no Zionist entity there would be no need for resistance and the benighted Gazans would have all the oranges and limes they could eat.

It is a shame that the Gazan authorities failed to stop the looting of millions of dollars worth of greenhouses which were actually purchased by American Jews from former Jewish settlers in Gaza. These American Jews then donated the greenhouses to the Palestinians of Gaza. They were all but destroyed in a matter of days in 2005.

And what do we now hear? Another flotilla is on its way from Europe in a further attempt to break the blockade and to keep Gaza in the news whilst Syria burns. Will they be bring fruit (not apples and bananas as they are clearly not yet ideologically tainted enough for Hamas to ban their import from Israel).

Is it not utterly extraordinary that Hamas imports anything at all from the evil Zionist entity? Is it not utterly extraordinary that the genocidal Zionist entity would want to feed the people it is trying to commit genocide against? Those Jews, eh. Anything to make a quick shekel.

But those genocidal Jews are really being outrageously cynical and hypocritical. They are actually saving the lives of Gazan children – for free! Is there no end to the lengths the Jews will go to whitewash their many crimes.

Mohamed and Hadeel (both 12), Hadeel’s brother Ahmad (15) and six-month-old Lian all suffer from kidney insufficiency and have been hospitalized for several months at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. They have been receiving lifesaving therapy while awaiting kidney transplants.

Image by Pioter Fliter courtesy of Rambam Medical Center

Mahdi Tarabia, head nurse of the Pediatric Nephrology Unit, explained that the treatment they need, peritoneal dialysis, is not available in the West Bank and Gaza, so medical authorities from these areas cooperate with Rambam to save children’s lives.

“The hemodialysis treatment that these children were given before their arrival at Rambam was associated with medical complications, resulting in a worsening of their condition and many hospitalizations,” he explained.

As opposed to hemodiaysis, where the blood is cleansed via an artificial kidney over the course of several hours a few times per week, in peritoneal dialysis the treatment is given through the abdomen overnight, not interfering with the child’s daytime activities. Each of the young patients’ families has been trained by Rambam’s staff to administer peritoneal dialysis.

The families received the equipment required for this treatment, and the solution used with it, from Teva Pharmaceuticals. The company will arrange to have supplies conveyed through the Erez checkpoint at the border of Israel and Gaza.

The three schoolchildren are soon due to be sent home, while the recently arrived baby still needs time to be stabilized.

Sometimes things are not quite as black and white the Palestinians and the media would like them to be.

So, as I was saying about valuing life, valuing death…

13/06/2012 / / 0 Comments

I recently posted a blog about the Palestinian death cult masquerading as ‘resistance’.

The very next day Challah Hu Akbar broke a story about a Palestinian Kindergarten in Gaza which promotes this particular form of resistance.

This story soon spread like wildfire across the Net invoking predictable reactions on both sides.

What was instructive was contrast between the outrage of people I would call ‘right-thinking’ and the apologists for this particular form of child abuse who, of course, blamed it on Israel and even accused Israelis and their supporters of being hypocrites because Israel teaches its children to behave the same way to Palestinians – apparently.

First, here’s the very brief article from Challah Hu Akbar:

The following photos were taken at a recent graduation ceremony at a Gaza City kindergarten.

According to the director of the kindergarten, they have this every year during the graduation ceremony.

 One of the children is quoted as saying “When I grow up I will be working in Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades, and I will resist the Zionist enemy and fire rockets at it until I die a martyr.” The same child says that he loves “the resistance” and hopes to “kill” Zionists.

Here’s just one image:

Let me remind you – this is a kindergarten.

This story was taken up by YNet News

Here’s a flavour of that article:

One child, Hamza, said “When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid and join my father in heaven.

“I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing,” he said.

During the ceremony the children “demonst


rated” how Israel treats Palestinian prisoners. In the display, handcuffed children depicting inmates were placed in cages, with an “Israeli guard” standing nearby.

Another child depicting an Israeli prison guard placed the head of a “Palestinian prisoner” in a bucket of water to demonstrate how Palestinian prisoners are “tortured” in Israel.

“At every kindergarten graduation ceremony we focus on the children to represent the role of struggling and resistance in the way of Allah so they will grow up to love the resistance and serve the cause of Palestine and Holy Jihad, as well as to make them leaders and fighters to defend the holy soil of Palestine,” one of the teachers said.   

מדמים חייל שמטביע עצור פלסטיני

Most instructive were some of the comments.  Here goes – get the sick bag ready.

Jarda from the Czech republic said:

They are right

You stole their land, you expelled them from their homes. They are right to hate you. I wish them good luck in their fight against intruders.

MO from ‘Palestine’:

What are the kids in Israel doing in their KG? how to make a pizza????
Don’t beleive that 🙂
Hee guys … you are pressing the people in Gaza like a lemon from all sites … what do expect??? 

Marwan, Tel Aviv ‘Palestine’

so how is this different from what settlers teach their kids

oh come now! who do you think you’re kidding with such reports?! we all know that hate & racism are taught in israeli schools 24/7 and everyday of the year! it’s even in every page of the curriculum! so stop trying to fool the world with such lame propaganda stunts… we won’t teach our children to love those who wanna enslave and murder them!

So you see, how hatred justifies the most appalling moral depravity. But this is not ordinary hatred; it is a perverted religious death cult so obscene that it its adherents and apologists have to invent an even greater depravity to justify it resulting in a downward spiral of unimaginable dehumanisation not just of the ‘enemy’ but the self and a society.

You cannot argue or rationalise this kind of nihilism which feeds on itself.

As I continued to read Rabbi Israel Meir Lau’s great memoir, Out of the Depths, today I came across the final words of Hitler’s will written before he committed suicide in the bunker:

Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.

Did not Hitler put uniforms on children and indoctrinate them in Jew-hatred?

 

BBC, Gaza and continued illegitimate reporting

11/03/2012 / / 7 Comments

The blatant misreporting and misrepresentation of Israel’s self-defensive action against rocket fire from Gaza continues to be a national disgrace.

There’s something very rotten in the State of the BBC’s Middle East desk on its news website.

Only today did the continuing murderous barrage of southern Israel which puts a million lives at risk, not to mention property and treasure, actually make it to the website’s home page. Although even that small mention now seems to have disappeared.

And what was the headline to direct us to this sudden escalation in rocket fire from Gaza which has seen over 200 missiles launched since Friday? Was it “Miltitants in Gaza launch rocket barrage against southern Israel’?

Not bloody likely. This is the BBC, remember and they seem only interested, for the sake of balance, of course, to highlight Israel’s response in defence of its citizens.

‘Israel launches fresh airstrikes on Gaza’

This was the disgusting headline.

“Israeli (sic) says almost 100 rockets fired from Gaza have struck Israel since the exchange of fire began.”

Subtle, no? Israel ‘says’ – after all, you take what Israel ‘says’ with a strong dose of scepticism, no? And ‘since the exchange of fire’. Thus, in a sentence, neutralising and sanitising the assault on Israel and characterising it as morally equivalent that Israel’s fire, in response to the rockets, is somehow a justification for the rocket fire from the Gaza side. So, once again,  cause and response are turned on their head.

In fact, the report lies and implies that Israel is responsible for the escalation:

“The latest flare-up began on Friday when an Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City killed militant commander Zohair al-Qaisi, secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), and two of his associates.”

What it does not mention is that al-Qaisi was plotting a terrorist attack. When the British or Americans take out terrorist leaders in Afghanistan that is justified but because the BBC is ‘neutral’ about the Israel-Palestine conflict and terrorists are ‘activists’ or ‘militants’, taking them out is an ‘escalation’ not a defensive act.

The Arab League, which has proved useless in preventing the horrors in Homs in Syria, characterised the 15 deaths of terrorists and rocket firers as a ‘massacre’. I wonder what the minimum number of Palestinians is to be called a ‘massacre’ ? 5? 10? In Syria it appears to be several hundred. Are innocent Syrian lives worth so much less than Palestinian militants in the debased arithmetic of the Arab world?

And just to show how even-handed the BBC is, what picture do they show us? The school in Beersheva hit by a rocket? No, they show us the results of an airstrike on Rafah where one person was killed.

UN spokesman Richard Miron called the situation in Gaza “very fragile and unsustainable”.

“We deplore the fact that civilians are once again paying the price,” he said.

I wonder whose civilians he means? Could it be the 1 million Israelis who are indiscriminately targeted by rockets and mortars? Or those in Gaza who are unfortunate enough to pay the price for the actions of groups who care nothing for the safety of their own fellow citizens? Maybe he means both? But I doubt it.

And whilst Israel closes its schools (and it’s lucky it did, as one rocket hit a school in Beersheva as I mentioned above) to protect its children, in Gaza, no doubt as has always been the case, schoolyards and hospitals, mosques and residential areas are used as bases for rocket launchers with the callous, deliberate and cynical hope that Israel will strike and injure or kill ‘martyrs’ and bring opprobrium on itself.

It is instructive to muse what would be the situation if Israel were Syria and Netanyahu Assad. What response would there be to hundreds of rockets aimed at civilians? Israel’s restraint is in gross contrast to Assad’s brutal massacre of his own people. Indeed, as the rockets rained down, Israel was discussing how to continue to deliver humanitarian aid through its crossings.

Assad, lays a real siege to his own people cutting off electricity and starving the populace whilst Israel feeds its enemies and provides them with the wherewithal to live.

Yet, no doubt, sooner or later, the UN will be stirring itself to condemn Israel for defending itself

 

 

Aya’s story

05/02/2012 / / 3 Comments

How often do we hear or read about how terrible Israel is preventing Palestinians in dire need of medical treatment getting through checkpoints and borders quickly enough?

How many reports have you read which characterise the massive humanitarian efforts of the Israeli medical community as somehow being part of the ‘occupation’?

I have written before about the extraordinary Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa.

I have no problem reproducing in full this story I received today which is just one example of hundreds, thousands, which are simply overlooked by the likes of the Guardian because it is a positive story which undermines all the negativity and false spin some of the media puts on anything positive which comes out of Israel.

So here is the report from the Rambam by David Ratner, Director:

Haifa, 5 February 2012

Just a Heartbeat Away…

Aya and Prof. Avraham Lorber : Photo by Pioter Filter-RHCC

When Aya Almasal, 12, left her Gaza home approximately one month ago and headed for Rambam, she didn’t know that this trip would save her life. For several years Aya had suffered from sudden bouts of unconsciousness, and her doctors couldn’t find the cause. About a month ago, Aya set out for Rambam to treat this problem, which had accompanied her since birth. Upon leaving Gaza, she felt ill and the situation steadily deteriorated. As the girl neared Rambam, in Haifa, her heart stopped working and she was, in effect, dead. After repeated attempts at resuscitation, the girl’s heart began to pump and she arrived at Rambam, artificially respirated and in serious danger. At the hospital, Aya was diagnosed as suffering from Long QT Syndrome, a disorder of the heart’s electrical system that causes irregular and rapid heart rate, and had prevented blood from reaching her brain. This had caused Aya to lose consciousness suddenly, and could have killed her.

Shortly after the diagnosis, Aya was hospitalized in Rambam’s Department of Pediatric Intensive Care, where she remained for a week. Doctors there stabilized her condition, and Dr Munder Bolus, director of the Unit of Electrophysiology implanted her with a defibrillator pacemaker. Accompanying drug treatment, the pacemaker supplies an electrical shock which ‘jump starts’ the heart during irregularities. After almost a month of hospitalization, Aya felt better, was discharged last Thursday, 2.2.12, and returned to her home in Gaza, standing on her own two feet.

According to Aya’s treating physician, Prof Avraham Lorber, who is head of Rambam’s Department of Pediatric Cardiology and Adult Congenital Heart Defects, Long QT Sydrome is a widespread heart defect that can be controlled with appropriate treatment. “Aya will need a pacemaker all her life,” said Prof Lorber. “She will be monitored to be sure the pacemaker and battery are working correctly.”

Fortunately, Aya had arrived at Rambam in time to receive life-saving treatment. But the girl did not have to die in order to live. Aya’s congenital defect should have been detected earlier. “Every year we treat a number of children with these types of problems,” says Prof Lorber. “Some patients are diagnosed when they seek treatment for their irregular heart rates, and others in regular check-ups. This early detection of life-threatening problems illustrates the far-ranging implications of preventive medicine.”

Rambam’s Department of Pediatric Cardiology and Congenital Heart Defects treats a wide range of disorders, like Aya’s. A large number of patients, some 650 children and youth, arrive from neighboring countries and are treated on a humanitarian basis. A number of Palestinian patients are currently at the department, among them a three-week old infant scheduled for heart surgery, and a 40-day old baby who needs a stent procedure. “Other Palestinian patients are now receiving treatment here or will soon be transferred to Rambam,” states Prof Lorber. Our experience in general medicine, and in cardiology, specifically, allows us to help most of these patients.”

I doubt we will see Guardian reporter Harriet Sherwood and all the others mentioning this any time soon. Unless they can find a way of making it an anti-Israel story.

BBC, the provocatilla and the manipulation of the news

06/11/2011 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday the Israeli navy intercepted two yachts trying to break the naval blockade of Gaza.

This blockade has been declared legal by the Palmer Report into the Mavi Marmara incident last year when IDF soldiers killed 9 Turkish ‘activists’ leading a convoy to bring aid to the Gaza Strip.

The two yachts were the rump of a second flotilla which tried unsuccessfully to sail from Greece earlier this year.

This time they decided to sail from Turkey.

As often happens with the BBC website, it is constantly updating its stories as events unfold.

The IDF spokesperson on Twitter Avital Leibovich created the hashtag #provocatilla and those who supported this flagrant attempt to break international law used the hashtag #freedomwaves.

Of course, those aboard the flotilla, mainly Americans and journalists, apparently, have a right to protest and even challenge international law. As long as they realise that they will have to take the consequences if they break it.

These same people are the first to condemn Israel if they are judged to have broken international law. So this was an exercise in hypocrisy. It was also a stunt which was dangerous as their boats struggled in rough seas.

There was a huge irony when the Israelis offered them medical assistance if required. I tweeted that the Israelis were “… offering humanitarian aid to those carrying ‘humanitarian aid’ ” in the full knowledge, unlike the BBC, that the boats carried no such thing.

In fact, when asked what they were carrying by the IDF, the activists told them that they were not carrying anything. So no aid. Yet this seems to have been lost on the BBC journos who characterised this as an aid flotilla thwarted by those dastardly Israelis who will stop at nothing to prevent the beleaguered Gazans from receiving that aid.

This is the first headline the BBC carried:

4 November 2011 Last updated at 14:23

Israel blocks protest boats trying to get to Gaza

Ok, so far not so bad. They were, indeed, protest boats.

The Israeli navy has intercepted and boarded two boats which were trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Exactly right.

The Irish Saoirse (Gaelic for freedom) and the Canadian Tahrir (Arabic for liberation) were travelling about 50 nautical miles from the shore when they were contacted by the Israeli navy and told to turn back, the flotilla organisers told the AFP news agency.

The navy said it “advised the vessels that they may turn back at any point, thereby not breaking the maritime security blockade” or could sail to Ashdod port in Israel or to Egypt.

“The activists refused to co-operate,” AFP quoted the navy as saying.

Nothing about the fact that the blockade is deemed legal by the UN Palmer report but illegal by other UN bodies who do not know or wish to understand international law.

There is also an interesting mention of Turkey not sending warships to accompany these boats. Could it be that the Turks were quietly taken to one side by the Americans? Or is it they already knew that no aid whatsoever was being carried on these boats?

No mention in this  article that hundreds of trucks pass everyday from Israel into Gaza (1500 this week, in fact) to feed their enemy and its captive population and to deliver medical supplies.

Then, a few hours later the headline changed to this:

Israel boards protest boats taking medical aid to Gaza

Wha!!? What ‘medical aid’? Did they not hear what I heard that there was nothing on these boats except some tins of tuna?

Immediately the headline conjures up an image of bad guys, the Israelis, stopping good guys, Gazans, from receiving medical aid – and it’s a complete lie which is still not corrected.

But it’s worse than that: the Israelis offered to escort the boats to Ashdod and, after inspection, take the aid through its regular crossing points.

Yet it still says in plain text:

They were carrying medical supplies for the coastal enclave.

Read it here.

And still no mention of the daily convoys crossing into Gaza.

You would never guess that Israel was supplying vast quantities of aid daily and that the activists had no intention of bringing anything to Gaza but themselves in an act of self-righteous self-promotion that brings peace not one iota closer.

So what image would you display to illustrate this article? A line of trucks entering Gaza from Israel? The flotilla boats? Their empty hulls? No, it was this:

People in the West Bank have staged protests in support of the Gaza flotilla

Again, the support for the flotilla is highlighted when there were apparently a mere handful of people there.

You would think that staging protests would mean a significant number. It’s another misrepresentation of facts.

So much for egregious reporting of the provocatilla.

A day earlier we were subjected to this headline:

Israeli troops ‘kill two in Gaza’

This is elaborated thus:

Israeli security forces have killed two people in a clash on the border of the Gaza Strip, local medics say.

Palestinian sources said Israeli troops had crossed over into northern Gaza.

The Israeli military said it had carried out a strike after a routine patrol came under attack. It said “hits” were confirmed, but said it had no information on casualties.

Why is the headline not:

Gaza militants attack Israeli border patrol

This would place cause and effect, attack and response in the correct chronological order. But no, the BBC always has to tell us what the Israelis did in their headlines regardless of who initiated the incident.

How about if two British soldiers were blown up by a landmine in Helmand and the perpetrators hunted down and killed; would the headline be:

Four Taliban militants killed by British troops in Helmand

I think not.

So what, then, would you expect the BBC to use by way of illustration of this incident? Maybe a picture of militants firing RPG’s? Or IDF troops firing tank rounds? Uh,uh. This is the image they used:

Thursday's clash interrupted a lull in recent cross-border violence

Huh? What the…?

What the heck has an apparently injured young Palestinian against a whitewashed wall with a motorbike nearby got to do with this story? Why is there a young boy looking on?

To me, this is a clear attempt to shift the balance of sympathy for this incident toward the Palestinians. Look, young innocents hurt by the the evil Israelis – again!

It’s a ludicrous photo to use.

The Guardian would be proud of this type of manipulation of news items under the cover of objective reporting. And that just about sums up the depths to which the BBC News website’s Middle East desk has sunk.

 

BBC News website MidEast Desk is surely beyond the Pale

01/11/2011 / / 1 Comment

This is a short blog just to demonstrate the complete one-sided and biased reporting that is being spewed from the BBC website.

This is what passes for journalism on the UK’s premier news site. A brilliant website which I use a lot, but something has to be done about this crude anti-Israel propaganda that passes for balanced comment.

Here is the headline from Sunday:

New Israeli air strike into Gaza after ‘ceasefire’

Now what to you think that implies?

It implies that Israel broke the ceasefire. LIES. There was never any ceasefire despite the vaunted Egyptian brokerage. Islamic Jihad kept firing and ignored it.

One Palestinian was killed in a new Israeli air strike in Gaza, hours after Egypt apparently brokered a ceasefire.

Those perfidious Jews are at it again – they cannot be trusted to sit by and watch rockets fired at cities of more than 200,000 people and they completely ignore the BBC’s attempts to mendaciously and cynically make its readers believe Israel is at fault.

Then there’s a picture of Israeli fire crew dousing a car. What do you think their caption should be? Maybe ‘Israeli cities under constant barrage, hundreds of thousands in bomb shelters, schools closed’?

No. This is what the caption says:

Palestinian militants fired rockets into Israel, after five militants were killed in an Israeli air strike

So what does that imply, pray tell? It implies, dear reader, that the ‘militants’ are responding to an Israeli air strike. It does not tell you that this very air strike was in response to ‘rockets’ – read missiles – being fired at Israeli cities.

The BBC turns this deadly attack on Israel into a schoolyard game of ‘he started it, miss’.

So for those of you who still are not sure, here’s the actual truth:

There would be no Israeli air strikes if there were no missiles from Gaza.

Now if you read the article I am referring to, it actually gives a reasonable account – so why do they spoil it by letting someone from Respect write the headlines and the captions? Am I contradicting myself? No. Anyone who does not know the realities of this conflict would read the headline first, have their opinion formed for them, then read the rest in the light of that headline.

And the BBC know it. The same person who wrote the article surely did not write the headline. Someone is saying ‘hmm, a balanced article, let’s see what I can do to spin it against Israel and still get away with it’.

SACK THEM!

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