FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Last week (“Secrets of Palestinian Arab propaganda“) I wrote about the way particular anti-Israel messages are targeted at  specific audiences. For example, I talked about

An anti-racist message aimed primarily at the US, where the white population is suffused with guilt for the institution of slavery followed by institutional discrimination against African-Americans. Palestinian Arabs are (nonsensically) presented as discriminated against because of their ‘race’, comparisons are made to apartheid South Africa, and violent terrorism is compared to the civil rights movement of the 1960′s. This argument is epitomized by a recent article by Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.

Today I want to look at another dimension of these various messages, the way they are characterized by an inversion of reality. Let’s look at some of the most absurd anti-Israel claims and see how they are actually inversions of Arab actions or objectives:

1. The IDF deliberately targets civilians (Goldstone Report). Not only did Goldstone himself repudiate this conclusion, it has been conclusively shown that

[T]he Goldstone Report’s anti-Israel charges were just unproven partisan allegations masquerading as investigative conclusions.

But Palestinian Arab terrorism against Jews, which has been going on for at least 100 years, primarily targets civilians. They are soft targets, and best fit the goals of terrorism — to attract attention and to demoralize a population.

2. Children are especially victimized. If there ever was an inversion, this is it. No better example can be given than the recent murder of five members of the Fogel family, where one of the perpetrators returned to the house to kill a crying baby, and one said that they would have killed two other children if they had known they were present. There was the recent murder of a child when an antitank missile was fired directly at a yellow school bus.  And there have been any number of ‘actions’ like the Ma’alot massacre, the Bus of Blood, the attack on the nursery at Misgav Am, etc., in which the victims were primarily children.

3. The conflict arises from Israeli racism. There is no doubt that many Israeli Jews strongly dislike Arabs. You would too, given 1. and 2. above. But going all the way back to the beginnings of Zionism, there is documentation of a Jewish desire to coexist with Arabs in the land. On the other hand, the founding documents of both Hamas and the PLO (Fatah) are explicitly antisemitic, as are the messages broadcast by Palestinian Arab media, taught in schools, etc.

4. Israel tries to deny self-determination to Arabs. Of  course the whole point of the anti-Zionist movement is that the only Jewish state in the world is illegitimate, and should never have been created. Self-determination, they argue, is fine for ‘Palestinians’ — but not for Jews.

5. IDF actions are intended to terrorize the Palestinian population. No, they are designed to stop Arab terrorism, which is designed to … you get the idea.

6. Israel wants to displace Arabs from their land, on both sides of the Green Line. Both major branches of the Palestinian movement are quite clear that the problem is Jewish ‘occupation’, which refers to all of Israel, “from the river to the sea,” in the words of former PLO official Feisal Husseini.

7. Israel is a regional power oppressing the weak Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs are just a small part of the complex of the entire Arab world plus Iran, which is prosecuting its war to eliminate Israel. Can 40,000 (a conservative estimate) rockets aimed at Israel from Lebanon, long-range missiles in Syria, the increasingly unfriendly but massively armed Egypt, the Iranian nuclear program, etc. be left out of the equation?

8. Israel is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian Arabs. This is the most vile accusation of all. The Palestinian Arab population in the territories and within Israel has more than tripled since 1970. Does this look like genocide? Not to me. But Hamas explicitly espouses murdering Jews in its charter, and Fatah has killed more Jews than anyone since Hitler.

I could go on. But I want to present one last example of the absolutely insane lengths to which anti-Israel propaganda has been taken.

One of the panelists at a recent University of California’s Hastings College of the Law conference (“Litigating Palestine: Can Courts Secure Palestinian Rights?“) was Noura Erakat, niece of Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erakat.  Here is how Stephen Schwartz reported some of her remarks:

In a weird attempt to contrast the present-day view of Israel held by the majority in the U.S. with official attitudes toward ethnic Japanese living in America during WWII, Erakat argued incoherently that “Israel [sic] enjoys citizenship and full status in the U.S.”  Answering a question from the audience, Erakat claimed that “criticism of Israel is seen as criticism of the U.S.” by the American populace and that U.S. laws against assisting Palestinian terrorists are comparable to Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding racial segregation based on the maintenance of “separate but equal” facilities.  She advised her audience that changes in the public outlook about Arab opposition to Israel would eventually arise, just as in 1954 the Supreme Court issued its decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education finding segregation of schools to be illegal.  After the panel, Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and keynote speaker for the session, explicitly identified the Jewish state and its relation to Palestinians with American slavery.

The closest parallel that I can find to slavery and discrimination against African-Americans in the US is to compare the terrorism of the hooded Klan to that of masked Arab terrorists:

Hamas members with young recruit

Klan members with young recruits

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, propaganda, racism

The ADL is shocked — shocked, I tell you — that Hamas is antisemitic:

New York, NY, January 6, 2011 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today condemned the remarks of a senior Hamas official who claimed that the Holocaust was “a lie that has crumbled” and suggested that Zionists had committed “countless Holocausts” on the Palestinian people.

The League called his statements “a disturbing reminder of the virulent anti-Semitism promoted by Hamas and the ongoing threat the group poses to Israel.”

Mahmud Zahar, a senior leader of the Gaza-based terrorist group, made the remarks during a memorial ceremony for 43 Palestinians killed at a U.N. school in the Jabaliya refugee camp during Israel’s military incursion into Gaza in December 2008.  — ADL press release

I can’t help but remark that the press release itself is misleading. It fails to mention that IDF shells did not hit the school, and that all the fatalities were in the street outside the school where a Hamas mortar team had set up and fired at IDF troops. Five Hamas fighters were killed there, and an undetermined number of civilians who were next to them (certainly fewer than 43). Even the ADL has accepted the Palestinian version of the event!

It’s important to understand the difference between what happened in Gaza and what happened in Treblinka, as the ADL suggests. So here is the official IDF account:

336     In this incident, which occurred on 6 January 2009, IDF mortar shells landed outside a school being used as a UNRWA shelter.  No mortar rounds hit the school itself, but landed in the road outside the school and at a nearby compound, resulting in flying shrapnel that reportedly injured several people inside the school, and killed or injured others nearby.

337     The IDF’s ’investigation of the incident found that, on 6 January 2009, an IDF force operating in the El-Attatra-Jabaliya area came under an effective barrage of 120mm mortars launched from a site about 3.5 km. from the force.(263)  The launching site was situated only 80 metres west of the UNRWA school.  The mortar attack lasted for almost an hour, with one mortar being fired every few minutes.  As reported in the media, local residents later confirmed that mortar fire was coming from the vicinity of the school.(264)

338     Soon after the source of fire was detected, a scouting unit was dispatched to confirm the location.  Approximately 50 minutes after the mortar attack had begun, two independent sources cross-verified the location of the mortars.  Only subsequent to this, and after verification of a safety margin of at least 50 metres between the target (i.e., the identified source of mortar fire) and the UNRWA school, did the force respond to the ongoing barrage, by using the most accurate weapon available to it — 120mm mortars.

339     The IDF force that was under attack fired four mortars, about 5-10 minutes after the cross-checked identification of the source of fire, and while Hamas mortars were still being fired towards the forces.  The IDF response succeeded in stopping the Hamas mortar attack.  Indeed, as a result of the response, five Hamas operatives were killed.  The effectiveness of the mission in achieving its military objective is thus indisputable.

340     The IDF acted to defend the lives of soldiers under fire, in order to stop continuing mortar attack.  The defensive action targeted an identified source of mortar fire which represented a concrete and immediate threat to the force.  The IDF executed the responsive fire with as much precision as possible, given the available munitions.  Indeed, the fact that all the Israeli shells landed outside the school grounds demonstrates the care Israel took not to hit the school itself, consistent with its obligations under the Law of Armed Conflict.(265)

What we need to note here is that the IDF used the minimum practical amount of force needed to achieve its objective, which happened to be defensive. This is a textbook illustration of proportionate use of force in wartime.

Perhaps to the surprise of some of the NGOs that contributed to the Goldstone Report, an army at war is not required to fight an enemy without hurting noncombatants, nor is it required to suffer as many casualties as the other side. ‘Proportionate use of force’ simply means not using a sledgehammer to kill a enemy mosquito when that sledgehammer might also kill noncombatant gnats. Many recent examples can be found in which armies have ignored this principle. Israel’s conformity to it is probably greater than that of the US or NATO, for example.

Of course it’s simply crazy to compare accidental deaths of noncombatants in war to deliberate murder during commission of genocide, which is what the Holocaust was and which is what Hamas explicitly promises for the Jews in what it regards as “Islamic land”.

In a distressingly familiar way, Zahar inverts reality by accusing the “Zionists” of precisely what he intends to do to them.

In the same vein, there is now a sort of virtual Yad vaShem to memorialize the “Gaza Holocaust”. The Ibdaa Institute for Research and Training site (ironically and correctly called ‘creativity’ in English) presents the usual blood libels for consumption by Arabic readers. Although it is not certain exactly who is paying for it, NGO Monitor writes,

On the site, Ibdaa thanks EU- and Europe-funded groups including the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al-Mezan, and Al-Dameer. Additionally, in the summer of 2010, officials from Ibdaa met with representatives from IHH, the Turkish NGO and designated terror group from the “Free Gaza” flotilla.  Funding information for Ibdaa is not available.

In addition, the site also lists several Palestinian Authority ministries, which are funded by the US and EU. So, as usual, the supposed civilized world is helping the barbarians prepare the ground for their truly genocidal program.

Technorati Tags: Hamas, ADL, genocide, Holocaust

News item:

The Prime Minister’s office on Saturday called the resolution adopted by the NPT Review Conference on a nuclear free Middle East in 2012 “deeply flawed and hypocritical,” saying it “ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region and the entire world.”

The resolution singles out Israel, calling on it to accede to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to allow inspection of its nuclear sites…

“As a non-signatory state of the NPT, Israel is not obligated by the decisions of this Conference, which has no authority over Israel. Given the distorted nature of this resolution, Israel will not be able to take part in its implementation,” the statement concluded.

The double standard is truly breathtaking. India and Pakistan, also non-signatories to the treaty, are not mentioned, despite having come close to nuclear war on at least one occasion. And Iran — which has signed the treaty and is presently violating it with impunity — was not named either. Yet Iran (and Syria, which recently had to have its non-nuclear status enforced by Israeli F-15’s) both signed the resolution!

I wrote about the relationship of Israel to the NPT a few weeks ago (“Israeli nukes are legal and pro-peace“). One commenter on that article suggested that Israel should sign the NPT — but as a legitimate nuclear power like the US, Russia, Great Britain, France and China. Fat chance.

Technorati Tags: Israel, NPT, Iran