"They Aren't Human Shields, They Are Human Sacrifices ... There Is No Moral Equivalence Between Hamas & The IDF" (video)

This video was posted to the internet well over a year ago, in August 2014.  But I've only just got around to viewing it.  It really is outstanding.  And in view of such nastyness as trotted out last week by a not-so-Nice guy at London's Gresham College (and this lecture coming up there soon) it's as relevant as ever it was.

The brief description by the uploaders, which I've copied and pasted below, simply cannot adequately convey how fine a speaker Britain's Colonel Richard Kemp is, how firm his grasp of military history, how compelling his expertise, and how absolutely justified his contention that the IDF's behaviour is exemplary among armed forces anywhere in the world.

The talk, which includes a pertinent description of bombing raids on a German armaments facility undertaken on Churchill's orders by the RAF to protect the lives of British civilians during the Second World War,  and an explanation of what the military concept of "proportionality" actually entails, proves clearly, as he says, that Israel has not committed "war crimes".

Stressing that, from personal experience of the force and its members, he knows that the IDF's actions are rooted in Judaic values and a citizen-army's abhorrence at harming innocent civilians, he laments the international media's acceptance of casualty figures known to be falsified by Hamas and given out by the UN.

He also laments the cynical effrontery of Obama, Cameron and Ban-Ki Moon in observing that Israel should do more to minimise casualties when they know full well that Israel is already doing everything possible that can be done in that regard.

As for "human shields" they should in fact be termed "human sacrifices" since that is what they are, all part of that war for public opinion, for that propaganda victory, which is Hamas's aim.

Address hosted by StandWithUs and Shivtei Yisrael synagogue in Ra'anana, Israel. Former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp has a distinguished military career and is an expert in counter-terrorism. Col. Kemp spent significant time in Israel during the IDF's defensive campaign against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, "Protective Edge".

The Colonel & The Council (video)

See http://rt.com/news/270541-israel-un-human-rights/

In the wake of the recently issued outrageous Israel-demonising UN Report on last year's Gaza conflict which has made Israel contemplate leaving the UN Human Rights Council  (for recent relevant short reports see here and here) here's a man who's a true hero in more senses than one.  In this footage by the intrepid Hillel Neuer's UN Watch, Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, tells the UN Human Rights Council a few home truths about Hamas.

Transcript here
More here

Bibi below:

"A Script Written By Hamas": Media Manipulation and Mendacity (includes video)

The BBC's Donnison showing his bias and ignorance yet again

By Professor  Phyllis Chesler, inter alia, here;

'Monday night, on the upper east side of New York City, a gang of anti-Semitic "thugs" attacked a peaceful but visibly Jewish man – he was wearing a skullcap (a yarmulke or kippa). They also attacked his wife.

Two cars "flying Palestinian flags and multiple motorcycles" pulled up to the couple at 8:00 p.m. while it was still daylight. They began yelling "anti-Jewish statements." Then, they threw a water bottle that hit his wife, and, when her husband came to her defense, they "punched him in the head."

The suspects fled. No arrests have been made. The 27-year-old man refused medical attention at the scene.

This is my neighborhood, my home town. This incident took place about a mile away from where I live and work. So far, I have found only one brief article about this in the New York Post.

Are there more such incidents that are not being covered?

There are so many synagogues on the upper east side of New York City and so many visibly Jewish men and women. New York City's largest mosque is also on the upper east side. What are Jews supposed to do? Hide our faith – even as more and more Muslims in this very neighborhood proudly proclaim theirs by wearing hijab, burqas, Islamic skullcaps, and Islamic dress? Something is very wrong with this picture.

Jews do not attack Muslims or Christians – or anyone for that matter – for wearing religiously identifiable clothing or jewelry. Only ​some ​Muslims ​appear ​do that – ​some ​Muslims or pro-Muslim sympathizers.

Jews and Christians are not allowed to openly and visibly practice their religion in most Muslim countries, and yet Muslims in America and Europe expect to be able to practice their faith, often in very aggressive ways, in both America and Europe....

Now, Jews everywhere are being held responsible for and hostage to Israeli acts of self-defense, which, alas, have been touted in the media as aggressive and genocidal acts. The media, the professoriate, international bodies, religious and political leaders have followed this lethal narrative for so long and so intensely that people really believe that Jews and Jewish Israel are evil and must be attacked on sight.

What we are seeing is this: The decades of Big Lies in the media, inflammatory sermons in mosques, churches, and synagogues, which falsely present Israel and Jews as genocidal Nazis, have finally empowered the latent hatred among Arab Muslims and their sympathizers in the diaspora to freely attack individual Jewish civilians as targets and symbols – nay, as collaborators – with the Israeli regime....'

By Australian Jewish News publisher Robert Magid in the latest issue, out today, a excellent op-ed entitled "The Media's True Lies" prompted by his recent visit to Britain, and the high levels of indignation at Israel's actions in Operation Protective Shield among the public there, prompting disturbances and discomfort for Jews. 

 '.... For a whole month the visual media has been bombarding us with what Hamas wants us to see ....

The conclusion we are to draw: "Israel bombs – innocent people die".

What we have witnessed this month is [sic] the most slavish, most egregious examples of media manipulation which can only be described as propaganda: a Hollywood show, produced and directed by Hamas and performed by the corps of media producers, directors, journalists, freelancers and stringers presented verbatim from a script written by Hamas.

Forgotten is the cause of the war: deadly barrages of rockets directed at Israel unprovoked and the construction of tunnels intended for a massive attack on civilians in the South.  Rather than Netanyahu rushing to war, in Israel the main criticism of him is that he held back so long despite ample evidence  that Hamas was building tunnels under Israel....'

 He goes on:

'.... Why aren't we told about the manipulation of information such as the rearrangement of bodies for the cameras. Why do they keep repeating ... that according to the UN the overwhelming majority of the casualties are civilians?

They know thatthe dubious information is provided by Hamas and the UN has no independent means of verifying it.  According to Israel's checks of the dead, a majority are combatants.

We are not told that journalists are regularly physically threatened if they deviate from the script.  Why haven't journalists reported even after they left Gaza that they operated under coercion?....'

I can only suggest that the answer to the last question might be that the journalists fear that the media outlets for which they work might on a future occasion send them back there ...

For more on this subject of intimidation of journalists be sure to read David Gerstman's article here  and Daniel Greenfield's article here 

Three cheers for this leading American Reform rabbi!

As for media bias in Britain, please don't neglect to look at the latest posts by blogger and activist Edgar Davidson here and here

See also Harry's Place here

"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."

Reminders Of The Death Culture (includes videos)

Israeli columnist Dror Eytan was obviously seeking no kudos from the Ha'aretz set or the Obama administration when he wrote inter alia  last week:

 'What has the death culture that surrounds us sought to sell in the past hundred years? Look around: there are no Jews in Iraq and no “territories” in Syria, and nevertheless the angels of death gleefully slaughter each other. No science and no industry and no inventions that will benefit humanity. Just death, and it’s wrapped in a thick layer of damned political correctness that has distorted our thought process....

If we don’t realize that the executioners who pack the condemned into cattle trucks and lay them by the dozens or hundreds in ditches and put them to death amid devilish ululations, and if we don’t get that this bunch is operating on our borders, and that its successes encourage our own local death culture, we will have to pay heavier prices in the future.

We must employ full force against the emissaries of the death culture, those who aid them, their military and civilian infrastructure, their sources of funding, their families, their clans, and anyone who knows something but just nods his head and keeps quiet. We know the argument that keeps us emasculated: “It will only increase tension and give an incentive to terror and strengthen the cycle of bloodshed.” Not at all. The culture of death doesn’t need incentives—it kills and murders and kidnaps, because that's what it is....

.... In the eyes of our neighbors and some parts of the world we are all people who stole a land that wasn’t theirs. This blood libel is spread every day by anti-Semites and haters of Israel, as well as by useful idiots among us....

Various conquerors and nomads from the four ends of the earth have arrived in this country. But since we Jews were exiled, no other sovereign entity has sprung up in this land. What would this country be if it weren't for the Jews? What would Jerusalem be without the Jews? The groups of strangers never wanted to compromise with the Jews who survived extermination and came home after a long exile. Even today they refuse to compromise and seek to oust us from the entire country. From Tel Aviv, too.... The fight for Israel is our fight for life....'

American Jewish leaders have expressed firm support for Operation Protective Edge, Israel's current initiative against that antisemitic genocidal Hamas.  As they observe:

'....Millions of Israelis are spending a sleepless night as sirens go off across the country in response to the constant barrage of missiles fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza, targeting the civilian population. No country would or should tolerate such a horrific onslaught as the one emanating from Gaza, which is controlled by the terrorist Hamas organization. The government of Prime Minister Netanyahu has shown great restraint seeking to avoid an all-out war and the civilian casualties that would entail. They have engaged in limited strikes against missile-launchers, storage facilities and manufacturing locations. Hamas has exploited this to expand the scope and range of its rocket attacks.  This puts the lie to the assertion that Hamas has changed and it remains a bloodthirsty terrorist entity. If there is to be any hope of a peaceful resolution of the conflict, it is imperative that President Abbas end the so-called unity government and disassociate in every respect from Hamas....'

The evil that characterises Hamas is seen in the following Palestine Media Watch video, which appeared on Al-Aqsa TV yesterday (9 July, and begins

'Zionists, wait and see stabbing attacks everywhere.
Wait for suicide attacks on every bus, café and street':

And then there is this footage showing how Hamas rockets are fired from civilian areas in Gaza, deliberately putting Gazan civilians in danger from Israeli fire:

And here's how Hamas targets its own people by encouraging Gazans to make themselves into human shields, knowing that despite the IDF's best intentions some will inevitably become casualties, and that much of the international community will condemn Israel for a "disproportionate response":

But even as the conflict between Israel and Hamas rages, another threat continues to loom.

Analysts Ali Alfoneh and Reuel Marc Gerecht, at the end of a  most useful pen portrait of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, have this to say:

'Those who argue that Rouhani has abandoned the nuclear ambitions that he has so proudly defended and advanced would be well advised to consider more closely the cleric’s words, deeds, associations, and pride. Most probably Rouhani wants the nuke as much as any officer in the Revolutionary Guard or Saeed Jalili, the one-legged, shrine-loving war veteran who so enjoyed ignoring and belittling European and American diplomats as Ahmadinejad’s nuclear negotiator. Rouhani just wants to be cleverer about how the regime becomes a nuclear state. The deal that he has likely cut with the supreme leader is a variation on what Rouhani believes he tried with the West after the clandestine nuclear program was revealed by an opposition group in 2002: temporary concessions on those things that no longer need further research, no concessions at all in areas requiring further work. To get the sanctions lifted—and Rouhani is convinced that once they start coming down, they are unlikely to go back up—the Islamic Republic should slow its nuclear program without diminishing its capacity to produce a bomb and the ballistic missiles to deliver it. 

This time round, this approach may work with the West. It may not work at home. Although Khamenei has solidly backed Rouhani’s diplomatic offensive, referring to the need for “heroic flexibility” when confronting the enemy, his support is undoubtedly conditional. The supreme leader is surely aware that Rouhani’s nuclear memoir is, among other things, a criticism of his preferred confrontational approach during Ahmadinejad’s presidency. And Khamenei today doesn’t give the impression that he considers 2005-2013 wasted time. For cause: The nuclear program’s greatest technical and industrial advances have been made in the last eight years. True, sanctions have mounted; the supreme leader may believe they were unavoidable. And Rouhani has to worry that the Guard Corps’s longstanding distaste for him and small appetite for concessions may derail his diplomatic efforts to test Western resolve and unity. In addition, the Corps has grown enormously powerful under the sanctions regime because its resources are vast and privileged: As private Iranian businesses have withered and foreign firms have fled, the Guard Corps has moved in. Khamenei has approved or acquiesced to the Guard’s economic expansionism because it is, as it proved in smashing the massive pro-democracy Green Movement in 2009, indispensable to his rule. 

Western observers of Iran often see the antagonism between Rouhani and the Revolutionary Guard Corps primarily as a test of wills over the nuclear program; it isn’t. It’s a struggle about the nature of the regime and the revolution. Rouhani’s politics aren’t reformist; they are revanchist. He wants his class—the first-generation, upper-tier revolutionary managers who made the republic under Rafsanjani—to again have the high ground. He wants educated civilians—primarily clerics—to determine the destiny of the Islamic Revolution, not coarse militiamen who, in his eyes, lost the great war against Saddam Hussein. Rouhani has conspicuously dumped guardsmen from his cabinet and provincial governments. He and his men have publicly attacked the Corps for trying to destroy private enterprise and exposed “private” firms that are really Revolutionary Guard front companies feeding on public finances. It’s unclear, however, whether Rouhani will have any better luck this time confronting the Guard than he did earlier. He may if the supreme leader believes that his praetorians have gone too far. But the odds aren’t in Rouhani’s favor. Khamenei knows—because his praetorians keep publicly reminding him—that the Corps is the guarantor of his rule and the revolution. 

President Obama is in a peculiar situation: He has hooked his diplomacy onto a cleric who can claim to have been a founding father of Iran’s theocracy and its nuclear-weapons program. Rouhani has arduously and vengefully worked to see the revolution succeed. He treated with the devil (the Reagan administration) to get what the republic desperately needed during the Iran-Iraq war. He appears willing to do so again to ensure the regime’s continuing dominion. Whether or not Rouhani has any intention of trading away his nuclear legacy for a better economy, he’s clearly shown that he was an attentive student to his mentors. President Obama may not appreciate the fact that his Iranian “moderate” is the same “moderate” Oliver North dealt with. Rouhani surely does. Persian humor is built on irony and a mordant appreciation for an unpleasant Middle Eastern truth: Nice guys finish last—if they even finish at all.'

AIPAC has not forgotten what's at stake, issuing this stark warning:

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.