"Hamas Has Been Playing Double Jeopardy With My People": Jordanian-Palestinian Opposition Leader

Here's Mudar Zahran again, telling Sean Hannity how evil Hamas is, and how unpopular among Gazans:

Hamas/ISIS: The Blind & The Unblinkered

From the lefty Frontline Club's website: http://www.frontlineclub.com/first-wednesday-16/

We are informed by BBC Watch:

'On September 3rd the Frontline Club – with which the BBC frequently collaborates – will be hosting an event titled “Reporting the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict – Emotion, Bias and Objectivity” which we are informed is already fully booked.

The topic of discussion is promoted as follows:

“The latest chapter in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has again highlighted the difficulties of covering this complex and deep-rooted conflict that provokes such a strong emotional response from the general public.

The BBC has faced accusation that it is not critical enough of Israel’s actions and that its reporting is one-sided, whereas Channel 4 News has been accused of crossing the line between journalism and campaigning. Is there a middle ground?

In the face of such devastation should we expect correspondents to offer an objective view devoid of emotion? If we encourage correspondents to show more emotion do we risk compromising the credibility and standard of journalism in this country?

Join us as we take a view of the coverage we have seen, talk to the journalists that have produced it and ask what we can learn.”

On the panel selected to provide answers to those questions are Jeremy ‘I see no human shields’ Bowen and Channel 4’s Jon Snow.

 The discussion would doubtless be enhanced were Bowen  (along with his colleague Orla Guerin) to take the trouble to brush up beforehand on the topic of Hamas’ use of human shields and that policy’s role in causing so many of the civilian casualties which he graphically reported during his recent stint in the Gaza strip....' 

But it is not only regarding the existence of human shields in Gaza that the BBC has turned a blind eye.  Beeboids (as the BiasedBBC website has long termed the Corporation's employees) have also chosen to ignore Hamas's similarities to Isis.

The incorrigibly biased Jon Donnison (pictured) might well practise an Orla Guerin-like scowl. For Al Beeb's erstwhile correspondent in Gaza, who's now their man in Australia but who was flown back to his old stomping ground during the present crisis, where he proved just as one-sided as before, has received many a thoroughly deserved, humiliating thrashing from BBCWatch's Hadar Sela.

That highly intelligent Israeli,with her thorough grounding in Israeli history and affairs, her sound knowledge of regional geopolitics, her gift for the written world, and her astuteness, has shown up Donnison's mediocrity, ignorance, and prejudice many times.

See, for example, here and here and here and here

And, not unnaturally, Donnison doesn't like the besting one bit: witness the recent spiteful trying-to-put-a-brave-face-on-things sour grapes tweet below:

Not that being shown up prevents Donnison from persisting in his offences against the BBC Charter and producers' guidelines or motivates his employer to rein him in.  Nor did his egregious bias prevent him from winning a Radio Academy Silver Sony Award for radio journalism of the year for his coverage of the 2012 Gaza/Israel War.

His bias is so overt and so pervasive that it is hardly surprising that some Israel supporters wonder whether this former reporter for BBC Radio Sheffield, who studied French and politics at the University of Edinburgh, was once a member of or influenced in some way by a Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch. 

And like the BBC's biased Jerusalem Bureau chief Paul Danaher, Donnison, who does nothing to conceal his disdain for the Israeli prime minister, on Twitter has pooh-pooed Netanyahu's analogy between Hamas and Isis, and mocked aspects of Netanyahu's postings.  Here's a taste:

Here's a man who could teach Danahar and Donnison much, the exiled Jordanian Palestinian leader Mudar Zahran, who's been visiting Bethlehem at some risk to himself.

This brave pro-Israel figure (if you're on Facebook and/or Twitter please consider following him, for he deserves a wide audience) is a practising Muslim who pulls no punches in condemning the evil that Islamic extremists do.

Moreover, CiF Watch, who reponded to this insolent peevish tweet by Donnison

by pointing out that the true disrespect is Donnison's anti-Israel bias, has many graphic examples that validate the Hamas/ISIS analogy:

Novelist Noah Beck shows that  

'Hamas and ISIS are birds of a feather, but the Western political class and media have very different approaches to them. Here, Hamas offers some friendly advice to ISIS on how to wrap the West around their little finger'

which is a follow-up to his previous piece here

As  distinguished American political scientist Michael Curtis has written:

'The clue to the intentions of Hamas is given in the Hamas Charter of 1988, a mixture of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Using the Avalon Project translation of the Charter or Covenant, one can discern the stated objectives of Hamas. Only a few selections, sometimes in oblique language, are necessary to understand this.

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine. The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, "There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him."

The Hamas Charter gives an answer to all the well-meaning groups and individuals who call for a peace conference. It declares that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. Rejecting calls for an international conference to solve the “Palestinian” question, it declares that there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.

Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and are vain endeavors.

The mass media will perhaps be surprised to learn from the Charter that Jews have taken control of the world media, news agencies, publishing houses, and broadcasting stations. Objective historians may be surprised that Jews have stirred revolutions in various parts of the world and were behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution, and most others. All this for “sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

The Charter informs us of future developments. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. The Islamic Resistance Movement must prevent this, and to leave the “circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason.”

The question arises: can members of Hamas, who believe that the “Jews are behind each and every catastrophe on the face of the earth,” be genuinely interested in any possible reconciliation with Israel when destruction of the Jewish state is at the core of their concern?'

 Nevertheless, despite the equally bloodthirsty approach of both Hamas and Isis, their priorities, according to this article by Iranian Ali Mamouri, differ with regard to the Zionist Entity:

 ....'Salafists believe that jihad must be performed under legitimate leadership.... Given that there is neither a legitimate leader nor a Salafist-approved declaration of jihad in Palestine, fighting there is forbidden.

In addition, for Salafists, if non-Muslims control Islamic countries and apostates exist in the Islamic world, the Islamic world must be cleansed of them before all else. In short, the purification of Islamic society takes priority over combat against non-Islamic societies. On this basis, Salafists see conflict with an allegedly illegitimate Hamas government as a first step toward confrontation with Israel. Should the opportunity for military action present itself in the Palestinian territories, Salafists would fight Hamas and other factions deemed in need of “cleansing” from the land and engage Israel afterward....

Salafists today see that their priority as fighting Shiites, “munafiqin” (dissemblers, or false Muslims) and apostates, whom they call the “close enemy.” During the current war in Gaza, a number of IS fighters have burned the Palestinian flag because they consider it a symbol of the decline of the Islamic world, which succumbed to national divisions through the creation of independent political states. In Salafist doctrine, the entire Islamic world must be united under a single state, an Islamic caliphate, which IS declared in late June.

Salafist groups active in Gaza have engaged in various rivalries with Hamas there, but they have not succeeded in establishing a foothold of any significance. Some groups have posted video clips acknowledging their support for IS following the group’s recent victories in Iraq and Syria. The main dispute between Hamas and Salafist groups rests on their disparate principles. Hamas is more realistic and pragmatic than the jihadist Salafists. The former has political priorities in liberating Palestinian land, whereas the latter has religious priorities in the establishment of a totalitarian Islamic caliphate and considers the Israeli issue secondary to this central goal.'

 But to quote from another fine piece by Michael Curtis:

'....Along with the Muslim Brotherhood, [ISIS and Hamas] are Islamic extremist groups, violent in their ruthless pursuit of objectives – ISIS to create a caliphate empire, and Hamas to eliminate the State of Israel.

The brutality of ISIS, now transformed into an Islamic state with a caliph, is apparent after its conquest of about a third of Syria, including the oil-rich eastern part, and much of north and central Iraq. Its ruthlessness and brutality are well-documented. That ruthlessness includes making decapitation an art form, executing dozens of Iraqi security forces, and cutting heads of Syrians.

It has imposed sharia law, banned music, separated boys and girls in school, and forced women to wear the niqab, or full veil....

Though the Obama administration has not proposed this, the present conflict provides the opportunity for the existing semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, set up in 2005, to be transformed into a Kurdish state, long overdue since promised by Britain and France in 1920.

 If the Western democracies appeared for too long to be unaware of the scale of the danger of Islamist ISIS, many, especially those in the mainstream media and the churches, seem equally oblivious to the real nature and danger of Hamas.  

They have not accepted that the real contemporary struggle is between an extreme and regressive Islamist group, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and interested in the killing of Jews and the creation of a caliphate state, and the existence and survival of democratic Israel....

There is now little doubt that much of the hostility against Israel has been transformed into prejudicial anti-Semitism. The level of violence and the number of attacks on individual Jews and Jewish institutions, synagogues, school, stores, Holocaust memorials, and cultural events has made those institutions resemble armed fortresses. A crowd mentality of hatred has made decent individuals afraid to speak out....

Western public opinion, the media, and the academic world should recognize the existing struggle between an Islamist threat that would end the tolerance and civil liberties in the societies its forces might control, and democratic countries, with all their faults and problems, trying to resist that threat.

The choice should not be difficult, even for the New York Times.  It certainly should not be suicide. '

 Read the entire article here

 As for Aussie Muslims who support ISIS, and the attitude to such goings-on by certain leftists, read Andrew Bolt here

"Hamas Is Isis, Isis Is Hamas"

 "They are branches of the same tree .... They are the enemies of the Palestinians themselves ...":

Bibi is right, of course.

Good article by Mark Steyn here
And another by Daniel Greenfield here

David Singer: Evil Hamas Must Be Defeated

Here's the latest article, entitled "Gaza – Hamas Evil Must Be Confronted And Defeated", by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.
 
He writes:

One month of fierce fighting between Israel and Hamas has resulted in an enormous propaganda victory for Hamas as horrific pictures of dead and wounded Gazan children and civilians, their destroyed homes and other buildings have appeared daily in social media and newspapers around the world.

Why these tragedies need never have occurred has been lost – as racial incitement is fuelled by articles sensationally headlined “South Africa Compares Gaza Operation to Nazis' Actions”, "The Nazis are in Gaza", "Turkey’s Erdogan Compares Israel Gaza Offensive to Hitler", and "Letter from America: Israel’s Nazi-like criminal campaign in Gaza".

Israelis have been represented as Nazis inflicting war crimes on Gazan Arabs – just as war crimes were inflicted on Jews by the Nazis.

Jews have been attacked in Paris, London, Sydney, Rome, Frankfurt and Austria.

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies has been told by a leading trade union official:

 “If the Jewish Board of Deputies wants to advance a Zionist agenda, they should leave South Africa and go advance their agenda elsewhere”

Hamas is attempting to gain continuing success in its campaign to denigrate and demonize Israel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosab_Hassan_Yousef

Hamas rejected the continuation of a 72-hour ceasefire that ended at 8.00 am on 8 August – hoping to again induce Israel into retaliating against Hamas and the myriad other terrorist groups embedded in Gaza as they continue their indiscriminate firing of more than 3300 rockets so far into Israeli population centres from rocket launchers positioned in Gazan civilian population centres.

Gazan civilians have unwillingly become the sacrificial lambs in Hamas’s evil objective of eliminating the only Jewish State in the world.

Gregory Baskin summarises how the propaganda war is so far removed from the reality:

“In the current foray into the Gaza Strip, Israelis have killed approximately 1,200 Palestinians. To be clear, Hitler and his army of hypnotized worshippers not only killed millions of people but murdered them, meaning that lives were terminated and family lines severed on purpose. Anyone not consumed with their own anti-Semitism understands the distinction

Many Arab civilians have died in the Gaza Strip. At the least, Israel has made attempts to avoid this by warning civilians ahead of its bombing strikes with the use of dummy bombs, text messages and telephone calls. (Perhaps it is true, as has been reported, that the human shields Hamas puts in harm’s way are not allowed freedom of movement, thus generously contributing to the death toll.) Even the United States and Commander-in-Chief President Obama do less than this when U.S. drones kill terrorists in far off lands. Like so many guerrilla armies before it, Hamas fighters hide amongst the people it purports to protect and represent.

Again, yes, the deaths in the Gaza Strip have been undeniable and horrific. But by no means is what has, and is happening, there a Holocaust. What it is, most unfortunately, is a moment for anti-Semites to express their hatred. Logic is pushed aside as bigotry converts to delirium and then inevitably inflates in magnitude. Again: 1,200 killed compared with 6 million-plus murdered.”

Hamas is openly honest about its intentions – as these three extracts from its Covenant make very clear:

 1.      “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.”

2.       “The basic structure of the Islamic Resistance Movement consists of Moslems who have given their allegiance to Allah whom they truly worship, – "I have created the jinn and humans only for the purpose of worshipping" - who know their duty towards themselves, their families and country. In all that, they fear Allah and raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.”

3.      “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.” 

The London Times has refused to run an advertisement featuring Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaking out against Hamas’s use of children as human shields – because:

“the opinion being expressed is too strong and too forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers” 

This advertisement has run in the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, among other U.S. newspapers

Wiesel’s message is clear and unequivocal:

“What we are suffering through today is not a battle of Jew versus Arab or Israeli versus Palestinian. Rather, it is a battle between those who celebrate life and those who champion death. It is a battle of civilization versus barbarism.”

The events in Gaza over the past month would have been avoided if Hamas had accepted the ceasefire proposed by Egypt on 16 July.

Hamas is evil – it must be confronted – and defeated. 

"Hamas Is Playing Double Jeopardy With My People" (video)

 Here's the estimable Mudar Zahran again:

"Risking Death For The Sake Of Martyrdom ... Has Become A Religious Obligation For Many Gazans"

Notwithstanding the hideous culpability of Hamas for the heart-wrenching plight of the population under its control, Israel is self-evidently bearing the brunt of the blame, and (as my last post – please look at it – shows all too clearly), the kind of antisemitic images once restricted to the Arab and Soviet press in the decades following the Shoah, and in grubby gutter publications elsewhere, has now entered sections of the mainstream press, even here in Australia.  And as seen on various sites around the Web, antisemitic incidents, some violent, have occurred in many parts of the world in recent weeks.

This situation is of course exacerbated by the large and growing Muslim populations that now inhabit major and indeed not so major western cities in both the Old and New Worlds (regarding this photo of a shop sign in Belgium welcoming dogs but barring "Zionists" see here; and see what happened in Preston, Lancashire; incidentally, "Children of the Ghetto"? Is that a take-off of Israel Zangwill's work by the same name?), and by the distortions inherent in the reportage and commentary of leftist news channels such as the BBC (see my last post but one, regarding the odious Jeremy Bowen), CNN, and (in Australia) the ABC and SBS (both of which were particularly biased this evening, Aussie time, with barely a nod towards balanced reporting, and for the most part not even that.

Here's Mark Regev, doing his best to present the Israeli case regarding civilian casualties in Gaza on Al Beeb, but being hectored judge-and-jury style by an all-too-obviously emotional Emily Maitlis (the granddaughter, incidentally, of Jacob Maitlis, a well-known Polish-born Yiddishist cultural figure who from 1958-67 was director of the UK Zionist Federation's Educational Trust):

Hamas's reponsibility for the terrible suffering befalling the population under its control is the focus of the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer; it's entitled "Gaza – Hamas Exploits Death Over Life".

Writes David Singer:

The failure of many Gazans to leave their homes and seek safer shelter after ignoring Israeli leaflet drops, mobile phone calls and even the firing of harmless warning shots as a last resort has been a major contributor to the increasing number of civilian deaths and casualties in Gaza.

This phenomenon has presented a perplexing problem for Israel as it continues its determined drive to destroy the Hamas arsenal of rockets, rocket launchers, weapons caches and extensive network of tunnels located in, under or in the vicinity of densely populated housing areas of Gaza.

Former US President Bill Clinton hit the nail squarely on the head with this prescient statement on 17 July:

"Hamas was perfectly well aware what would happen if they started raining rockets on Israel. They fired a thousand of them, and they have a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them…

… In the short to medium term, Hamas can inflict terrible public relations damage on Israel by forcing it to kill Palestinian civilians to counter Hamas."

The strategy was given expression by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad in 2008:

“[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: "We desire death like you desire life."

The execution of the strategy rests on two platforms – the religious and the psychological.

The religious platform has been articulated by Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs - Mahmoud Al-Habbash – who declared in his televised Friday sermon from the Al-Yarmouk Mosque in Ramallah on 20 December 2013:

“Pay attention, it is Allah who says: ‘They will not harm you except for [some] annoyance’ (Quran, Sura 3:111, translation Sahih International) – it is possible that they will harm you. I say to you, it is possible that they will kill us, it is possible that Allah will sentence us to Martyrdom. It is possible that we will be wounded, it is possible that terrorism will be laid on us – ‘They will not harm you except for [some] annoyance’ – but in the end, ‘and if they fight you, they will show you their backs’ and the conclusion – ‘then they will not be aided’ (Quran, Sura, 3:111, translation, Sahih International). We ask for victory more than we ask for life. We ask for the strengthening of our people in this good and blessed land.”

 Shlomi Eldar summarises this exhortation to martyrdom:

“The entire Hamas system worked to promote and advance the theme of martyrdom. It emerged as its greatest weapon and, unfortunately, the most effective and destructive weapon that the movement had, too. Preachers in mosques used their sermons to speak about the importance of martyrdom (fi sabil Allah, “in accordance with Allah’s will”), until many people throughout the West Bank and Gaza sincerely believed that Allah wanted to be sanctified through the sacrifice of believers’ lives, and that only through martyrdom could they prove their loyalty and their faith.”

Risking death for the sake of martyrdom – rather than leaving a declared danger zone for safer waters – has become a religious obligation for many Gazans.

The psychological platform is evidenced by Hamas's Ministry of Interior spokesman Iyad Al-Buzum calling on its civilian population on 12 July to ignore Israel's warnings and remain in their homes in spite of the danger:

 

 “The [Hamas] Ministry of the Interior and National Security calls on our honorable people in all parts of the [Gaza] Strip to ignore the warnings [to vacate areas near rocket launching sites before Israel bombs them] that are being disseminated by the Israeli occupation through manifestos and phone messages, as these are part of a psychological war meant to sow confusion on the [Palestinian] home front, in light of the [Israeli] enemy's security failure and its confusion and bewilderment." 

 One day later the same spokesman issued another similar warning:

"Answering the occupation's calls will merely aid it in carrying out its plans to weaken the [Palestinian] home front and to destroy property and homes as soon as you leave them. We call on all our people who have left their homes to return to them immediately."

 Kim Sengupta concludes:

“Hamas can, however, be accused of making people complacent, repeatedly stating in the media that the Israeli warnings were psychological games and asking the population to ignore them. Some mentioned this as a reason for staying behind; returning home having initially left.”

The counter-argument to that was the need to prevent panic spreading. The discovery of the extensive network of cement-strengthened tunnels throughout Gaza (video here) – with many already located snaking into Israel and in and under thousands of residential dwellings – has posed a major problem for Israel in completing its military objectives.

Staying in their homes risking possible death to achieve martyrdom or alternatively succumbing to propaganda falsely promoting a fools paradise on earth has been spectacularly exploited by Hamas.

Respect for life has become the real victim.

The Ongoing Disgrace That Is The BBC's Jeremy Bowen

As this blog has not infrequently noted, the BBC's utterly pedestrian and sometimes frankly absurd "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen has made many reports from the Middle East over the years in which his own opinions intrude and which make a mockery of the BBC's obligations, under the terms its Charter, to maintain objectivity in reporting.

Particularly since the unfortunate car explosion in which his Arab driver/stringer was killed a number of years ago at the hands of what Bowen once described in a subsequent interview with the London Daily Telegraph as "trigger-happy Israeli soldiers", Bowen's prejudice against Israel has been all too apparent.

The death of his Arab colleague in an explosion that took place berfore his eyes, shortly after he himself had left the vehicle, was an event that evidently traumatised Bowen, who has referred to the incident bitterly countless times since (as in this video).

In those circumstances, as soon as his emotional involvement became clear, the BBC should have transferred Bowen to some other part of the world.

But it did not, and to add salt to the wounds of aggrieved pro-Israel complainants it inexplicably went on to reward him, despite the banal nature of his "analysis" of regional politics and despite the fact that a complaint against him had been partially upheld, with the post of Middle East editor!

Hadar Sela of BBCWatch (who's certainly having her work cut out for her during the present crisis) has drawn attention here to the fact that Bowen "tries to persuade TV audiences that Hamas does not use human shields".

And now Bowen, in a further thumbing of his nose to the objectivity incumbent upon him and his employer by the terms of the BBC's Charter, has written in that uncompromisingly leftwing journal of opinion, the New Statesman:

"I saw Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, giving an interview to the BBC after Israel had killed more than 60 people in the Gaza district of Shejaiya. He said he regretted the civilian casualties in Gaza but they were the fault of Hamas. Netanyahu said Israel had warned people to get out. Some had taken the advice; others had been prevented from leaving by Hamas.

 I was back in London for my son’s 11th birthday party by the time all those people were killed in Shejaiya. But my impression of Hamas is different from Netanyahu’s. I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields...."

To quote Craig, of the IstheBBCbiased? blog:

'This comes despite Hamas publicly advocating the use of civilians as human shields (something Jeremy Bowen fails to acknowledge). The Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, was caught (by MEMRI) speaking on a local station recently, saying: 

This attests to the character of our noble, jihad-loving people – who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood.

The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation… we in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy in order to protect the Palestinian homes.

And yet Jeremy Bowen dismisses it all, even after UNRWA found Hamas rockets in two of its Gazan schools, and despite credible reports that some civilians are deliberating ignoring Israel's warnings and that groups of civilians have actually gathered at targeted buildings in order to serve as human shields [see Channel 4's FactCheck blog].

A week in Gaza, and yet Jeremy Bowen "saw no evidence...of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields".

Presumably, the blinkers he was wearing at the time didn't help.'

 And as Hadar Sela has observed (link above):

"BBC licence fee payers pay a lot of money in order to be informed of facts. Hamas’ use of human shields is one of many important facts audiences need to know about in order to be able to reach an understanding of this particular international issue as they are promised in the BBC’s constitutional document. It is bad enough that in over a week of reporting from the Gaza Strip, not one BBC journalist has explained the human shields issue properly to BBC audiences. It is beyond grave when the man in charge of Middle East reporting – not some junior journalist – not only fails to inform, but actively seeks to deny and refute the issue.

Bowen’s inaccurate and partial reports – which increasingly give the impression that he has self-conscripted to the Hamas media campaign – are coming in thick and fast. As long as the BBC continues to allow that, it breaches the public purpose remit which obliges it to “[b]uild a global understanding of international issues” and that is a problem which BBC management should not be allowed to ignore."

Stop The Abuse Of Palestinian Children (video)

Speaks for itself really, doesn't it?

Facilitating & Thwarting Hamas's "Dead Baby Strategy"

"I'm not pro-Israel, I'm not pro-Palestinian, and I'm not pro-American.  But as a journalist I'm pro the facts and pro the truth."

Little wonder that the Jerusalem Post's West Bank and Gaza correspondent, Khaled Abu Toameh, the man whose journalistic integrity bears out that assertion of his, is being recognised for his fair and courageous reporting about Israel at a gala function in New York next month under the auspices of CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, (at which Douglas Murray will be the keynote speaker).

It's safe to say that the BBC's West Bank and Gaza correspondent, Jon Donnison, who is bound not only by moral and professional but by his employer's obligation to report in a neutral, objective manner, will not be so honoured any time soon.

One of the most egregious of Donnison's outrages upon facts and truth concerned, of course, the tragic death during Operation Pillar of Cloud [aka Defence] in November of infant Omar Masharawi, the son of their BBC colleague Jihad (or, as they soon decided to style him, Jehad) Masharawi.  And Donnison wasn't the sole BBC journalist who hastened, despite the likelihood that a misfired Hamas rocket was in fact culpable (as is now known to have been the case), to lay the blame for the baby's death squarely at Israel's door.

As BBC Watch observes:

"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." (Read the rest here, as well as Adam Levick's piece here)

And as Alan Dershowitz observes in a must-read article:

"....The errant rocket that killed Omar Misharawi was fired by Hamas terrorists from a densely populated civilian area adjacent to the home of the BBC reporter Jihad Misharawi. Hamas selects such locations for firing its rockets precisely so that Israel will respond by firing into civilian areas and killing Palestinian civilians. They regard such dead civilians as “shahids”, or martyrs for the cause. It is better for Hamas’ publicity campaign if the rocket that kills the Palestinian baby was fired by the Israeli Defense Forces, but even if the rocket was fired by Hamas terrorists, Hamas will claim, as they do regarding this death, that the lethal rocket was fired by Israel. Often the evidence is inconclusive, though the forensic evidence in this case points clearly to a Hamas rocket.

The important point is that it doesn’t really matter who actually fired the rocket that killed the baby. The baby was killed by Hamas as part of a calculated strategy designed to point the emotional finger of moral blame at the IDF for doing what every democracy would do: namely, defend its civilians from rocket attacks by targeting those who are firing the rockets, even if they are firing them from civilian areas....

Babies like Omar Misharawi will continue to die in Gaza and in Israel so long as the world media continues to serve as facilitators of Hamas’ dead baby strategy. [Emphasis added] Every time a picture of a dead Palestinian baby being held by his grieving parents appears on television or on the front pages of newspapers around the world, Hamas wins. And when Hamas wins, they continue with their deadly strategy. The media, therefore, is complicit in the death of Omar Misharawi as it is in the deaths of other civilians who are victims of Hamas’ dead baby strategy. Pictures of dead babies in the arms of their grieving fathers are irresistible to the media. That won’t change. What should change is the caption. Every time a dead Palestinian baby is shown, the caption should explain the strategy that led to his or her death: namely that Hamas deliberately fires its rockets from areas in which babies live and into which Israel must fire if it is to stop its own babies from being killed...."

Read all of Dershowitz's article here 

"The People Of Gaza Are Oppressed By Hamas" (video)

Here's the latest video from StandWithUs (hat tip: reader Shirlee) telling the truth about Gaza in a way a four-year-old might be expected to comprehend:

British Muslim Qanta Ahmed, a doctor of Pakistani heritage, has also been showing up Hamas for the wicked force it is:

'To Hamas, a Palestinian life is worth more when “martyred,” a dead child more of a blessing than one living. “The children of the kindergarten are the shaheeds [martyrs] of tomorrow,” reads a sign displayed at a Hamas-run kindergarten. The martyrdom mantra is their anthem.

While observers speculate Hamas will shortly usurp the crumbling Fatah leadership and ideologically annex the West Bank, we must remember Hamas’ raison d’etre: Islamist nihilism, a totalitarian ideology, jet-fueled on the language and images stolen from mighty Islam. Israeli negotiators who must engage with this opponent are walking on the sharp-edged sword of Damocles and unlike Muslims, the Israelis certainly know it.

Coloring their fascism with Islam, Hamas claims religious legitimacy to openly seek destruction of the Jewish state and eradication of the Jewish people. By grafting themselves onto Into Islamic ideals – the vertebral column of that which is most sacred to Muslims – they render Islam itself heinous, representing their true ruthlessness: theirs is a willingness to sacrifice anything –including Islam – to portray Israel as evil.

This ethos was captured in a single unprecedented obscenity: Hamas’ morbid motorcade. Cocksure thugs, defiantly cruising on motorcycles trailed exposed cadavers of Palestinians – Muslim men – trousers pooled at dead ankles. To chants of ‘Allah-hu-Akbar’ as dozens of Palestinian onlookers silently watched, Hamas took its ghoulish victory lap explicitly to show Gazans how they execute ‘suspected informers to Israel’. This is the Islam of Hamas.'

Read her full article here

"A Taste Of Modern Life Under The Shadow Of Terror" (an apposite video)

Check out these Apps, "Essential Apps When Under Fire":

Want to see a robust pro-Israel speech from an Aussie federal politician?  Then look here (hat tip: reader Shirlee) for the remarks of Tony Smith MHR, which condemn Hamas, leftist hypocrisy, and Australia's abstention regarding that UN Palestine vote.

"Killing [Israelis] Is Worship That Allah Made Into Law": Hamas's Blood Lust (plus video)

Be sure to read this new report, with accompanying footage, of how Hamas idealises the killers of Jews and Israelis.

Examples (given in the above report) during Israel's counter-terrorist Operation Pillar of Cloud:

"Bless [Hamas'] Al-Qassam men, guardians of Palestine...
Oh pride of Salah Shahada, oh wisdom of Immad [Aqel]
(i.e., Hamas leaders killed by Israel)
[Oh] the explosives of [Yahya] Ayyash (i.e., Hamas bomb maker killed by Israel),
Martyrdom,
[Oh] lovers of the trigger:
Killing the occupiers [Israelis] is worship that Allah made into law...
Arabic text on sign:
'Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah'
Arise, oh determined men. The color of [the Martyr's] blood protects the land.
Oh masked one wearing a keffiyeh (i.e., Arab head scarf), terrifying the Jews...
call out in Zionism's face: 'Muhammad's army has begun to return.'"
[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Nov. 15, 2012]

"We are [Hamas' Al-Qassam] Brigades
Brigades - we kidnap soldiers
Brigades - we kill Jews
Brigades - we watch the borders
Brigades - we ride at night
Brigades - on horseback
Brigades - we are not afraid of death
Brigades - gear up your weapon
Gear up, gear up
Prepare the force
Prepare, prepare
Prepare the force and get ready
Destroy the usurper's dens and set fire to the oppressors
Through training and preparations, you roar, oh lion of Qassam
It's in your hands to get [our] country back and then we will raise the banner of Islam."
[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Nov. 21, 2012]

 Hat tip to reader Ian for alerting me to this new StandWithUs video:

And hat tip to a commenter on BBCWatch's latest post regarding Jon Donnison for this:

"It's Hamas Who Turned Gaza Into A War Zone Recently ..." (video)

Here's Pat Condell telling some home truths about Hamas and its intentions, gullible western journalists, and Israel's longing for peace:

Hat tip: reader Ian

Hamas Hasn't Changed Its Spots, Only Camouflaged Them

In a hot-off-the-press scathing denunciation of Ehud Olmert's intention to be the keynote speaker at J Street's Gala Dinner later this month, that prophet for our time, Isi Leibler, reminds us of J Street's  shameful and unconscionable record:

'....in the midst of the Gaza conflict - orchestrated by Olmert – when all sections of the Israeli political spectrum,including the far leftwing Meretz,were united in support of the war, J Street refused to back Israel. Applying moral equivalence to Israel and Hamas it claimed “that there are many who recognize elements of truth on both sides of this gaping divide” and reproached Israel for launching “a disproportionate response”.  J Street stated that “we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have monopoly of right and wrong” and accused the Israelis of “lacking sanity and moderation” in their attitude towards Hamas.

Only last week as hundreds of missiles were being launched against Israeli civilians, J Street, again applying moral equivalence, expressed “concern” on attacks on Israel and IDF “airstrikes on Gaza that killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians”. They were subsequently obliged to retract and apologize as all but two of those killed were terrorists.

For Olmert to be so desperate as to appear before such a discredited body which had even maligned him, reflects his pathetic desperation for a platform in order to fabricate a contrived historical legacy. One would feel sorry for him were it not for the anti-Israeli propaganda that, as a former prime minister, he provides to our adversaries.'

Forget J Street's dangerous attitude regarding Hamas.  Forget Al Beeb's blinkered foolishness.

 Here's a man who knows a thing or two: Dr Mordechai Kedar, an Arabic specialist at Bar-Ilan University who for 25 years served with IDF Military Intelligence.  (He became something of a cult figure with a memorable, belligerent appearance on Al-Jazeera concerning Jerusalem; the clip is shown in the video below, in which Dr Kedar amplifies his views.)

Now, in a most incisive article, he explains how, appearances to the contrary, Hamas is as dedicated to Israel's ultimate destruction as ever it was:

'Ever since the Hamas movement took control of Gaza trip in 2007, it has transformed itself from a gang of jihadists into a ruling organization which has a state, government, advisory council, legal system, police, military and economic bodies. Thus, Hamas has turned into a standard Arab state, which is attempting to impose its agenda upon the tribes and the clans that live in the Strip. The State of Hamas serves the interests of the group that leads it, and therefore it is in constant conflict with the tribes and the clans and must reach agreements with them.

The minor movements – Islamic Jihad, the PRC (Popular Resistance Committees), the Salah-a-Din Division, the Army of the Nation, the Army of Islam and others – function like tribes, challenging the authority of the state, which is in the hands of Hamas. Today, these groups are doing to Hamas what Hamas did to the PLO twenty years ago when the PLO was in power. The widespread corruption among the top echelons of Hamas strengthen the influence of the small organizations that oppose Hamas. What encourages these organizations is the fact that Hamas has “hung up the gloves” and is trying to reach a calm with Israel. Hamas has not become a Zionist organization, and has not changed its covenant or its sole goal: to eliminate Israel and bring an end to the “occupation” of Jaffa and Acre, not only Hebron and Nablus. However, in the present historic phase it is suspending its battle against Israel in order to establish a state which, when the time comes, will be the basis from which the war of the destruction of Israel will be waged. The small organizations do not accept this suspension of jihad and call Hamas derogatory names such as “The Israeli Border Guard” and the “South Lebanese Army”.

From a practical point of view, Hamas is capable of eliminating the organizations, just as it dealt with the Army of Islam, of the Dughmush clan in August of 2008, and as it eliminated Sheikh Abd Al-Latif Moussa’s Islamic Emirate of Jerusalem in cold blood in August of 2009 in a mosque in Rafah, murdering him, his wives and children and 24 followers. As of today, in the year 2012, Hamas refrains from imposing itself on the small organizations by force of arms so that it will not become the “Israeli Border Guard”in the eyes of Gazans, and prefers to come to an agreement with them; to compromise with them and to calm them down.'

Read the entire article here

Hamas: The Terror Elite (video)

A great new video from the David Horowitz Freedom Center (hat tip: reader Shirlee)

And how about this for double standards on Facebook? (Hat tip: yes, that girl again!)

Hamas's War On Israel & The Mufti's War On The Palestinian Jews (videos)

Here's an action-packed video that conveys in brisk fashion something of Hamas's aggression against Israel, aggression that is not always as well-reported as it should be, certainly by the left-liberal MSM.  Among the snippets featured are the views of that steady friend of Israel, Jon Voigt:

And here, thanks to the same uploader, is a look at the Mufti of Jerusalem's links with National Socialism.  Such celebrated historians as Robert Wistrich and Sir Martin Gilbert are among the experts who appear in this video between the segments of historical footage:

Hat tip for both videos: islamatoon

Jihad For The Siblings Of Apes & Pigs (video)

As a kind of postscript to my last, here's a Hamas bigwig sounding like a cross between a fire-and-brimstone preacher and the infamous star of the Nuremberg rallies as he indulges in some blood-curdling antisemitism:

Hat tip: Shirl in Oz

Mark Regev On The "Human Rights Activists" Who Support Hamas (video)

Here's Mark Regev, talking tough about the flotilla activists.  He's never been better!

Women and Children First: Bin Laden and Hamas - Two of a Kind

So, far from facing the brave American Navy Seals like the courageous "man" he purported to be, Osama Bin Laden used an expendable chattel - one of his wives, the mother of his children - as a human shield.

What an example of cowardice at its most ignominious

What a graphic, despicable reminder of the utter inferiority of women in the eyes of Islamists.

How very like the Islamists in Gaza, and how totally unlike the IDF.



Media Cover Up: The Gaza Savagery That Does Not Meet Our Gaze

Beaten and tortured by Hamas: Asma Al-Ghoul

Remember how days elapsed before the violent sexual assault on Lara Logan, reporting for an American television station from Tahrir Square, was brought (and then only reluctantly) to public attention by Al Beeb and the rest of the we-love-to-pick-on-Israel gang?  Well, it seems that despicable acts of savagery by Hamas towards female Palestinian journalists in Gaza have gone largely unreported in the mainstream media.

You'd think that some of those outlets, being so politically correct in general, would be chomping at the bit to report abuses against women. But there are two very good reasons for the veil of silence - an exclusivist fixation with demonising Israel and a paralysing fear of Hamas reprisal.

Professor Phyllis Chesler notes that in recent weeks

"at least eight Muslim Palestinian female journalists were physically beaten with clubs, iron chairs, and fists, stabbed and tortured with electric shocks by male Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip.  Their cell phones, laptops, documents and cameras were confiscated.  They were also arrested.  Some were forced to sign a document "pledging not to cover such events [the Facebook-arranged pro-unity rallies demanding an end to factional in-fighting between Hamas and Fatah] again"'.

Although this does not bode well for women's rights in what Professor Chesler terms "the increasingly well-organized Islamist Middle East" her main point in drawing attention to this "male-on-female atrocity in Gaza" is that only a few journalists, who happen to include two Israelis, reported it.

'The mainstream media does not really care about what happens to Arabs, Muslims, or Palestinians," she continues,

'not even when they are fellow or sister journalists, women, and feminists.  The media only cares when and if Israelis are allegedly the perpetrators, the murderers, the checkpoint "humiliators."  Even when Israelis kill an armed Iranian-backed Palestinian member of Hamas in self-defense, even when the Israelis accidentally, with no malice aforethought, kill a British journalist or an Amrican "activist," the Israelis are not only blamed - films, plays, and documentaries are made about the "martyred" American Rachel Corrie or the "martyred" British filmmaker James Miller or British "anti-war" activist Tom Hurndall.  Countless demonstrations have been held.  In Miller's case the British government insisted on an investigation, and his family brought a civil lawsuit against an Israeli soldier.

The media was all over this even though an investigation strongly suggested that James Miller was killed by Palestinians "from the direction of the populated Rafah."  Although people know that Palestinians routinely hide behind civilian hostages, deliberately target Israeli civilians, especially children, create their own "martyrs" (the Muhammad al-Dura case as well as the Rachel Corrie case immediately come to mind) - nevertheless, the media refuses to hold Palestinians accountable and refuses to believe that Israelis are innocent. The media knows full well that they will be killed or not allowed to "report" in Palestinian areas if they publish anything negative, anything true.  By now, this habit is ingrained.'

To read more:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/04/01/arab-spring-male-on-female-atrocity-in-gaza-disappeared-by-the-western-media/