"Mistakes Are Not War Crimes": The truth about the IDF (video)

Nobody says it better than Colonel Richard Kemp.  And nobody is more qualified to do so.

A short, snappy, superb video in the Prager University series.

Aussie journalist compares Aussies in IDF to Aussies in ISIS

Stalwart pro-Israel MP Danby reacts

Phillip Adams is a very prominent Aussie journalist and radio broadcaster who's been around for decades.

In yesterday's copy of The Australian newspaper he wrote this, inter alia:

"... It’s not new for Australian security agencies to keep an eye on radicalised teenagers... 

Serious point here. The young have always been susceptible to the clarion call. Australian boys understated their age to fight in World War I. And young lefties from all over the world joined the International Brigades to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. More recently, countless young Australian Jews have headed to Israel and joined the IDF to fight Palestinians. Seems our increasingly worried, watchful spooks [he's talking about ASIO] have no probs with this.

The process of “radicalisation”, of signing up for distant conflicts, may involve religious and/or ideological fervour for Zionists and ISIS recruits...."

[Emphasis added]

For shame.

As one well-known (left-leaning) Zionist academic comments on Facebook:

"So Phillip Adams seriously compares all Australian Jews who go on aliyah and join the Israeli army with Australians who volunteer for Isis. So yes Phillip - all those young men and women who spent years at left-wing Zionist youth groups such as Habonim and Hashomer Hatzair learning about socialism, secularism and the brotherhood of man are identical to nutty brain-washed religious extremists going off to slaughter and rape men, women and children"

An Aussie Academic Regarding BtS: "What is the Jewish value of vilifying one's own nation to the delight of its enemies? "

"There is a well-funded and powerful cottage industry of NGOs, journalists, academics and activists who are crystal clear about their unabashed anti-Israel ideology. The goal of their openly declared war is to damage Israel’s standing in the court of world opinion and to bring about its collapse."

That's the opening paragraph of a typically hard-hitting article written for his regular op-ed column in  Australian Jewish News last month by Dr Dvir Abramovich, a prominent Jewish Studies academic at the University of Melbourne, who's also chair of the local B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission.

Later in the article Abramovich justifiably declared:

'Billions of people are manipulated by a tsunami of malicious op-eds, dishonest news items, scurrilous caricatures and disparaging articles that are awash with crude fabrications. Too many adopt the skewed narrative, lock, stock and barrel.... 

Which brings us to Breaking The Silence (BtS) a radical Israeli NGO, with a budget of nearly four million shekels. Bankrolled mainly by European countries, and foreign entities, it is made up of former Israeli soldiers who are paid to collect anonymous testimonies and evidences of “crimes” so as to prove that Israel is guilty of “intimidation, instilling of fear, and indiscriminate punishment of the Palestinian population.”

In 2009, BtS accepted 75,000 shekels from Oxfam on the condition that it will interview as many soldiers as possible who will confirm the IDF’s “immoral actions”.

Last week, BtS published a new report relating to Operation Protective Edge which accuses the IDF of “indiscriminate fire on civilian targets” and “deliberate mass destruction”.

It has been reported that The Arab Human Rights Fund, which has links to Global jihad and the PFLP, provided BtS with US$300,000 to craft the report. Now Hamas is calling for Israeli “war criminals” to be brought to trial in the International Criminal Court.

Here are some BtS quotes, “Israeli self-defence measures are pretexts for ‘terrorising’ Palestinians”, and “We are the oppressors … we are creating the terror against us basically”. Got it? It’s the fault of terrorist Israel.

Unsurprisingly, reports from BtS (produced in English only for overseas consumption) which depict the IDF as dehumanising, unethical and as the worst serial violator around, are splashed across the international headlines, chipping away at Israel’s image.

BtS is a convenient pipeline, a weapon in the hands of Israel’s assorted haters. By its own admission, BtS is not a “normal human rights organisation”, or as Haaretz correspondent Amos Harel noted, “They have a clear political agenda, which is no longer really covered under the term ‘human rights organisation’.”

BtS deliberately withholds context, and uses misleading headlines and hearsay. There’s no description of the complex situation of fighting armed terrorists hiding in houses, or that the IDF sends leaflets to warn civilians, or that Hamas fired rockets from schools and hospitals, dug tunnels to launch mega-attacks, and used children as human shields.

The infamous Goldstone Report, referenced and thanked a BtS report 27 times, since it aided Goldstone to reach his discredited findings that the IDF “repeatedly opened fire on civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities and who posed no threat to them.”

The distorted accusations contained in BtS reports are impossible to verify because the group refuses to hand over their documents, or disclose the identity of those making the complaints, or provide the date or military unit detailed in their accounts, thereby preventing the IDF from investigating the “allegations”.

 As part of its propaganda warfare, BtS does global speaking tours, helping to fan the flames of rabid anti-Zionism, and denying Israel the legitimate right to protect its citizens from murder.

 For the real story, as told by Israeli soldiers, go to the Facebook page #my_truth.'

http://www.jspacenews.com/israel-soldiers-fighting-back-claims-abused-gaza-citizens/

The following week, under the title "Breaking my Silence," a squalid defence of BtS appeared in the same paper.  It was written by a Tel Aviv-based former student of Dr Abramovich, a young woman named Kate Rosenberg who in Melbourne attended a Jewish day school and Habonim Dror.  Inter alia, she fumed:

"Dr Abramovich's words smack of a frightening growing trend in Israel which likens democratic values to being anti-Israel or to suggest that believing in the human rights of African refugees or Palestinians to [sic] being anti-Jewish."

In the current issue of the paper, a leftist in supporting her and BtS shows his naivety in the face of current reality in commending their work "in trying to bring Israel closer to the ideals of the 1948 Declaration of Independence."   But then, as another correspondent notes, BtS

"disqualifies itself from acting as an agent for change ... because its work is infested with an ideology that insists, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that only Israel and the occupation are blocking peace, not Palestinian extremism.

Hence, BtS is always quick to defend the rights of Palestinians, but never supports the right of Israel to defend itself from rocket and terror attack....

By highlighting and often inflating out of all proportion a few unfortunate incidents of the sort which are inevitable in any large-scale conflict, BtS sets out to delegitimise the entire IDF and its matters of fighting as inherently immoral in order to further its explicitly political ends...."

That the IDF behaved with commendable restraint in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge has been confirmed by such respected observers as Martin Dempsey (chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff), Michael Shmitt and John Merriam (US military law experts), Colonel Richard Kemp (former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan), and Australian general Jim Molan.  The fact that the ratio of civilians to combatants killed was 1:1 (compared to the norm of 3:1 in similar conflicts) underlines that.

http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/IsraelGaza2014/Pages/2014-Gaza-Conflict-Factual-and-Legal-Aspects.aspx

 In a  splendid refutation of Kate Rosenberg's "grossly simplistic, Israel-bashing" piece, Dvir Abramovich writes inter alia:

"Rosenberg knows very well that BtS, which has close to zero electoral and public support in Israel, sends its "star recruits" to tour campuses around the world, unafraid unafraid to spread their animus-filled venom about the IDF.  There, they are free to brainwash impressionable students and to contribute to the chilling festival of demonisation....

Campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Semitism [I do wish the Aussie Jewish press would adopt the "antisemitism" spelling - D.A.] and anti-Zionism, and BtS adds dangerous fuel to the spreading fire of intimidation and hostility directed at Jewish students.

Irresponsibly, Rosenberg recycles the libellous Goldstone slander that the IDF indiscriminately fires on highly populated areas in Gaza....

The same soldiers who stand guard at night and risk their lives to ensure that Rosenberg can sleep comfortably, safe and sound, in her bed, are depicted as part of a vicious, murderous military machine....

BtS hurts Israel, empowers the BDS gang, and gives credence to those who want to put Israel on a list, as a recent UN draft report recommended, alongside ISIS, al-Quaeda, the Taliban, Syria and Sudan as an entity that systematically harms children....

Rosenberg speaks of the value of Achvat Amim.  Perhaps it's time to show a little solidarity towards her own country.  After all, what is the Jewish value of vilifying one's own nation to the delight of its enemies? ...."

Update: Excellent video here

Two Interesting Videos

This video shows the IDF treating wounded Syrian fighters, proof yet again of the essential humanity of Israel:

This American video might strike some people as over-strong, but it's undeniably pertinent to current events:

Hashtag Warfare: A soldier writes ...

 A Malaysia Airlines plane goes down over the eastern Ukraine, apparently shot down by rebel separatists, and inevitably some of the more pernicious of the antisemites on social media and elsewhere attribute the disaster to Israel, just as they accuse Israel as being complicit in 9/11.

Inevitable, really, this new canard, a contemporary updating of the medieval "The Jews have poisoned the wells" obscenity during the Middle Ages, and of that centuries-old "blood accusation" that historian Norman Cohn termed a "warrant for genocide", given that Israel has long been cast as"the Jew among the nations".

And Hamas fired 50 during the 6-hour ceasefire

Inevitable, too, since one of the consequences of the air disaster has been to push the situation in Gaza out of the "top story" spot in news bulletins just as Israel begins a ground invasion.

Writes a young female IDF soldier in the current Australian Jewish News:

'The #gazaunderattack hashtag on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is flourishing - filled with horrible, heart-wrenching pictures of women and children wounded from Israeli airstrikes.  What is missing, however, is [sic] the videos of Hamas leaders calling on Gazans to "love death like rhe Israelis live life".  Of their appeals to citizens to form a human shield around the martyrs and their bombs.  Of their pride in their peoples' [sic] united industry of terror....

Hamas is well-versed in propaganda.  I couldn't help but laugh at the preposterousness when I saw a screen shot from the horror movie Final Destination 2 of a blown apart corpse declared as a photo of a Gazan civilian killed by the Israeli retaliation strikes.  And yet, there are those gullible enough not to see through the lies....

My appeal is to all Israel's supporters living outside the blue and white borders.  You can help Israel fight this online war.

Post the truth through hashtags such as #freegaza, #gazaunderattack, #freegaza, #freepalestine ..."

Here's a new video that deserves publicity; the barbaric sentiments expressed by this gentleman were aired on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV on 11 July:

See, incidentally, a British blogger's excellent, compelling post that describes the propaganda encountered at a recent fair in Richmond, South London, at which the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) branch was out in force (there is a video of the event by rabid anti-Israel activist Alex Seymour aka Seymour Alexander here ; The Bilateralist's post really is a corker, and concludes of the mendacious malignant mischief spread by Israel's foes:

"It is that evil which we must confront if we are to be saved from an escalation of a magnitude similar to events that have arisen over the last few days in Toronto, Paris and Antwerp.  In Toronto the police stood by while a man was beaten up by Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, the same righteous souls who threatened an old and frail woman.  In Paris hundreds of demonstrators rioted outside Synagogues, trapping Jewish worshippers inside their buildings.  In Antwerp dozens of men shouted slogans about slaughtering Jews while three local (socialist, labour and green) politicians blissfully looked on.

In World War II, the Nazis set fire to synagogues with the local Jewish population trapped inside. In Africa, Muslims have done the same to Christian communities.

Immigration officers, governments run by elected officials who are more concerned with the powerful Muslim vote than with making a moral choice, and the police: They are all inactive.  This is where populist democracy fails.

This is Nazism – it does not matter whether it is inspired by the Right, by the Left, by the Liberal Democrats in Britain, or the Greens; by the Islamic faithful or by frustrated Arabs.

The propaganda war is violent; its intent from the Palestinian camp is terminal.

Wake up."

"Operation Brother's Keeper": The IDF's humanity (video)

As reported here, IDF commander-in-chief Lieutenant-General Binjyamin (Benny) Gantz, on a visit this week to an army base involved in “Operation Brother’s Keeper”, which is searching for the three abducted West Bank Jewish teenage boys,

'told the soldiers that every terror attack is a serious event, but the abduction of three high school students is especially severe, “Beyond the severity of an attack, it has the potential for ramifications that we are not prepared for from a strategic perspective.”

Gantz emphasized that every soldier participating in the operation must feel “As if each one of the boys was a member of his family, a member of his staff and his military company.” '

In this brief footage, Gantz also stresses something else:

See also here

Singing To The Beat Of A Coffee Cup (video)

Just as I head off to a nearby coffee place (there's an Israeli one in my immediate locality) I discover the charming sound of an IDF soldier:

"All That Intensive Training And They Run Like Little Girls" (video)

Here's how members of the IDF responded last week to provocation by Arab youths in the disputed territories throwing bricks and stones and yelling "Allahu Akbar".  They raised their shields to protect themselves from the relentless barrage of missiles and then fled for cover.

Although the missiles hurled at them had the potential to kill, they did not raise, let alone fire, their weapons.

"All that intensive training and they run like little girls; I'd be ashamed to be in the IDF after that," grumbles a commenter called Pesach on YouTube after watching the clip.

But it's that reaction on the part of the soldiers that bears out Colonel Richard Kemp's assertion that the IDF is an exemplary force: it's that army which, he testified following Operation Cast Lead, "did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare".

"Do these Islamist fighting groups ignore the international laws of armed conflict?" he has written.

"They do not.  It would be a grave mistake to conclude that they do.  Instead, they study it carefully and they understand it well.

They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it.  They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy’s main weaknesses."

Not that the soldiers' forbearance in the above video is appreciated by Israel's enemies: "Hitler 4 ever" is a recent comment beneath it on YouTube, for example.

Reports the Arutz Sheva news outlet:

'The incident in the video took place in recent days in Shechem. Three IDF soldiers were injured in the incident, with one sustaining an injury to his hand, and another a wound to his head. A third soldier was injured when a smoke grenade he was about to throw blew up in his hand. The three were being treated at a hospital in Petach Tikvah.

The incident was similar to another one that took place in Hevron last week, when IDF soldiers battled Palestinian Authority police and rioting Arabs. IDF officials said they considered the incident “serious,” and that an investigation had been opened.

Officials said that the level of Arab rioting in Judea and Samaria has climbed significantly since Operation Pillar of Defense ended, and that there were more reports of rock throwing and other terror incidents. Officials said that they had also been prepared for an increase in violence after last week's UN General Assembly vote raising the status of the PA in the world body. Many of the rioters are new Hamas sympathizers, the officials said, who have become supporters of the terror group in the wake of Operation Pillar of Defense.

Commenting on the Shechem video, the IDF said that the incident was being investigated. “This riot occurred during an illegal gathering last Friday in Kaddum, one of the most violent towns in Judea and Samaria. In the wake of the riot the IDF has updated its instructions for riot control by soldiers, using select, but moral, means to dispel riots but without using excessive force."

Viewers of the video expressed shock at the images, and many demanded that the IDF adjust its policies to enable soldiers to respond more effectively to situations like the one portrayed.... Commenting on the video, one viewer said that "the government is playing with fire. There is only so much patience that these soldiers can have in the fact of provocations like this. When a soldier picks up his weapon to defend himself and the hand-wringers all of the sudden ask why, they can watch this video to get their answer."'

Read more here

Countering The Lie Of Wanton Israeli Brutality (video)

The IDF is one of the most civilised armies in the world, yet, as evidenced at Israel-delegitimising demos in the West, the usual suspects scream "genocide!"  This short video sets out the facts.

(Hat tip: reader Shirlee)

In Praise of Israeli Justice: A Riposte to the Boycotters

In the wake of the reprehensible Boycott of Israeli goods that forms part of the platform of the Green Party in New South Wales, and in the wake too of Richard Goldstone's recent mea culpa in the Washington Post, political scientist Raffe Gold has written the following hard-hitting piece,  Entitled "Israel's Record of Self-Investigation: Obvious to Anyone Who Looked," it comes via the antipodean J-Wire service:

'With the NSW Greens so busy demanding a boycott of Israel for various crimes against humanity it appears that they have failed to keep up to date with the news. Richard Goldstone, lead investigator of the UN inquiry into the 2008 Gaza conflict, recanted some of the reports most incendiary findings and praised Israel for her ability to investigate herself and ensure that those few Israeli soldiers who violated the laws of war are brought to justice.

The far-left is hoping that Goldstone’s OpEd article was simply an aberration of history brought on by social pressures. This mea culpa, however, is par for the course in Israel’s long war of fighting not just its Arab neighbors, but the persistent tide of Western left-wing opinion that erroneously believe that the Zionist nation is fundamentally racist, amoral and colonist.


Over the course of her sixty-year history Israel has been forced to fight a number of wars for her survival or to ensure that her citizens remain free from the threat of suicide bombers, sniper attacks or rockets on kindergartens. During this time she has constantly evaluated her actions and taken appropriate measures to ensure that mistakes are learnt from and civilian harm is minimised.


In the aftermath of every conflict with her neighbors there is a major government investigation free from interference. In the aftermath of the 1982 War in Lebanon the Kahan Commission was established in order to investigate the events surrounding the Sabra and Shatilla massacres and found both the military and political echelons guilty to a varying degree.


Israel has consistently been willing to assess and evaluate the conduct of both her military actions and her political imperatives, yet the IDF’s self-investigatory measures pales in comparison to the role that the Supreme Court plays in deciding security policy. Time and again Palestinians have brought cases before Israeli jurists and time and again they have had their petitions to alter certain policies granted. The Supreme Court outlawed physical interrogation despite its proven record, it outlawed the use of the ‘neighbor policy’ despite the fact that it saved lives, and it ordered the IDF to change significant sections of the West Bank security barrier to ensure that it does not unnecessarily impede Palestinian daily life.


In short, Israel has a well-deserved record of self-assessment and investigation, yet more often than not this record is dismissed or maligned in favor of a good media story or scoring political points. The initial accusations made against Israel are usually shouted, yet when the accusers should recant they often do so in a whisper.


Israel’s enemies regularly accuse her of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or massacres. The infamous Jenin Massacre in 2002 occurred when Israel, tired of multiple suicide bombers against her citizens, launched a military operation into the Jenin Refugee Camp which had been a primary base of terror groups. When the IDF finally withdrew there were claims of ‘thousands dead’ being propagated by the Palestinian Authority and greedily being published by a willing media hoping to spin a David vs Goliath story with the Jewish state as the Philistinian giant.


Throughout the few days of combat the rumors of the massacre reached a crescendo before multiple investigations agreed with the IDF assessments that only 52 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed. To this day, the ‘Jenin Massacre’ is still quoted amongst Israel’s list of ‘war crimes’ by her enemies and despite independent verifications that no massacre had taken place the myth refuses to die.


During Operation Cast Lead, Israel was accused of shelling a UN run school in Gaza and causing more than 40 deaths. Eventually, when the smoke cleared, the truth emerged that the IDF had never fired directly on the school, the total number of dead lay at 12 and a number of eyewitnesses testified that Hamas terrorists had fired from the street outside the school. This led to the UN admitting, after a vicious media campaign slandering the Israeli army, that a ‘clerical error’ was to blame for falsely accusing Israel firing on them.


During the heat of Operation Cast Lead, Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan stated unequivocally “the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”. His call for understanding of Israel’s positions fell on deaf ears with Goldstone failing to heed his testimony. However, even with Goldstone’s recantation, Kemp’s words will not change the course of the anti-Israel mantra of ‘denounce first and ask questions later’ that has become the norm for both the international community and the media.


Far too often Israel’s actions, whilst at times deserving of criticism, are condemned prior to any evidence being demanded. The inevitable television shot of a destroyed building is more than enough for people of the world to accuse Israel of crimes that it never committed. Boarding the Gaza Flotilla IDF soldiers were equipped with paint ball guns to defend themselves. With the world too quick to assign Israel blame it seems we must go one step further and arm our soldiers with pillows. Maybe then Israel will get a fair trial in the court of public opinion.'