FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

This report has been extensively revised on Aug. 15, for clarity.

News item:

A Human Rights Watch report claiming IDF soldiers killed 11 Palestinian civilians holding white flags in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead is “based on unreliable witness reports,” the IDF said in a statement released Thursday.

“Moreover,” the statement continued, the international human rights organization “didn’t bother to give the report to the IDF before releasing it to the public via the media, to allow for in-depth investigation.”

The army stressed that soldiers were under orders to “honor the ‘white flag’ as a sign of surrender… and to avoid harming” anyone raising such a flag.

HRW presented its report at a press conference on Thursday morning, alleging that most of the 11 were women and children and that they were killed in seven separate incidents during Operation Cast Lead.

“In each case, the victims were standing, walking, or in a slow-moving vehicle with other unarmed civilians who were trying to convey their non-combatant status by waving a white flag,” the 61-page report entitled “White Flags Death,” said.

The allegations in the report are truly shocking. According to “eyewitness testimony” which is “corroborated” by “ballistic evidence” and “forensic medical examinations”, Israeli soldiers shot and killed unarmed Palestinian civilians, including children, while they waved white flags.

Most people don’t read beyond the executive summaries which present the conclusions of such reports. And they are truly horrific. But if you read the presentation of the details of specific incidents, another picture emerges. Large amounts of scientific-sounding ‘evidence’ are presented, but much of it is totally irrelevant to the conclusions drawn.

Careful reading shows that the case rests entirely on the testimony of Palestinian ‘witnesses’, to whom the investigators are led by Palestinian organizations, whose personnel also provide translators. Sometimes the interviews were even done in the presence of Hamas operatives!

HRW did not have staff on the ground in Gaza during the war. All investigations were done after the fact, and they also relied on medical reports from Physicians for Human Rights–Israel.

Of course not only is it in the interest of Palestinians to lie and exaggerate, there is a history of them doing so, in those cases in which the stories can be checked. By then the damage is done, and anyway nobody pays attention to the later reports calling attention to the fraud.

In response to criticism, HRW is now going to great pains to present what they do as actual investigation. Let’s look at one claim in the HRW report, chosen almost at random:

In one case documented in the report, on January 7 in eastern Jabalya, two women and three children from the ‘Abd Rabbo family were standing for a few minutes outside their home—at least three of them holding pieces of white cloth—when an Israeli soldier opened fire, killing two girls, aged two and seven, and wounding the grandmother and third girl.  “We spent seven to nine minutes waving the flags and our faces were looking at them [the soldiers],” said the girls’ grandmother, who was shot twice.  “And suddenly they opened fire and the girls fell to the ground.”

Eyewitness accounts, tank tracks, an ammunition box and bullet casings found at the scene, and an examination of the grandmother by forensic experts indicate that an Israeli soldier fired upon identifiable and unarmed women and children. [my italics]

This is what one reads in the summary portion of the report, and it sounds damning. “forensic experts” tell us that the Israelis have committed what appears to be a war crime, or a least a case of callous disregard, etc.

Now let’s look at the details, later in the report:

In the early afternoon of January 7, 2009, four days after the start of Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza, Israeli tanks stopped at the house of Khalid ‘Abd Rabbo, who lives at the eastern end of al-Quds Street in Jabalya’s ‘Abd Rabbo neighborhood.[9]  According to three family members who witnessed the incident, an Israeli soldier fired on two women and three young girls who had come out of the house holding makeshift white flags.  Two of the girls died; the grandmother and the third girl were wounded, the girl seriously.  Ballistic evidence found at the scene, medical records of the victims, and examinations by foreign doctors of the two wounded survivors corroborate the witnesses’ account… [my italics]

“Ballistic evidence” usually means that a bullet found at a crime scene can be matched to a weapon which can be tied to the alleged perpetrator; and there are all kinds of medical examinations that can bear on the determination of how and by whom a crime was committed. But neither of the above is the case here. When you read the rest, ask yourself if anything is proven by the ‘evidence’ presented except two things:

1. Some Palestinians suffered gunshot wounds, two of whom allegedly died, and
2. The survivors and family members claim that they were shot by Israeli soldiers.

According to Khalid, his brother, and his mother, on January 7 at least one IDF tank pulled up to the western side of the house.  When visiting the house on January 25, 2009, Human Rights Watch saw the tread marks of what appeared to be more than one tank, probably the IDF’s Merkava, in an area about 10 meters from the house’s western side.  About one dozen spent 7.62 x 51 millimeter bullet casings littered the ground, as did an empty ammunition box with Hebrew writing for 230 7.62mm bullets.  The 7.62 x 51 bullet is fired from the FN MAG 58, a machine gun used by Israeli infantry troops and also mounted on tanks and armored personnel carriers.

This detailed ‘evidence’ is irrelevant. We know that at some time a tank or other treaded vehicle was present.  We do not know that the cartridge cases or the ammunition box had anything to do with the tank or the incident — it is after all, a war zone — or even if they were placed there later.

According to all three family members, around noon the family heard the tank outside their house and then a soldier on a megaphone calling on them to come outside.  Afraid to send out any men, two women and three female children gathered at the door, at least three of them holding pieces of white cloth.  They stepped outside and saw an Israeli tank about 10 meters away with its turret pointed at the house.  On the front steps stood Khalid’s mother, Su’ad, 54, his wife, Kawthar, 26, and their three girls, Su’ad, 7, Samar, 4, and Amal, 2.  Khalid’s mother Su’ad explained what happened next:

We saw one tank and we saw others behind.  We were with the white flags in order to make them see that we were civilians.  We spent seven to nine minutes waving the flags and our faces were looking at them.  And suddenly they opened fire and the girls fell to the ground.  Su’ad fell and when I saw her I turned to my right and when I turned I got hit… The shooting came from where the tank was but I don’t know who shot.  Su’ad was wounded in the neck and chest.  Amal was hit in the chest and abdomen and her intestines came out.  Su’ad died immediately.  We took Amal inside and she died in there because the ambulance could not come.  Samar was injured in the chest and the shots exited her back, leaving large holes and damaging the spine.  She is now paralyzed….

Interviewed separately, Khalid and his brother, who had both remained inside the house, confirmed this version of events.  According to Khalid, the women and girls were outside for about five minutes when an Israeli soldier emerged from the top of the tank and without warning opened fire with automatic gunfire.  The women and girls managed to scramble back inside the house, some of them bleeding badly, he said.

The suggestion is that the firing was done by Israeli soldiers with their personal weapons, or possibly from a machine gun mounted on the tank.

The statement that they were “interviewed separately” is irrelevant, since the handpicked “witnesses” had plenty of time to discuss their stories beforehand. One wonders also about the translators, as well.

Now we get to the “forensic experts”:

On February 2, Human Rights Watch brought two forensic pathologists, Dr. Jørgen Lange Thomsen from Denmark and Dr. Shabbir Ahmed Wadee from South Africa, to examine Su’ad ‘Abd Rabbo, who was recovering at her relative’s home in Jabalya.[18]  The doctors told Human Rights Watch that Su’ad’s wounds were consistent with having been shot twice, once in the left arm and once in the left buttock.  The bullets were not large caliber, they said, based on the absence of extensive internal injuries.  According to Drs. Thomsen and Wadee, who gave their assessments in each other’s presence, the entry and exit wounds on Su’ad’s left arm were indistinguishable due to the healing.  The other bullet, they said, had entered the left buttock and exited the front of the left flank.  This was consistent with Su’ad’s claim that she turned to her right towards the house when the shooting began.

They state that “the bullets were not large caliber” as though this establishes something about the circumstances of the shooting. Since the Kalashnikov rifle commonly used by Hamas also fires a 7.62mm bullet (although it is shorter than the MAG ammunition), what exactly would this prove? Since the spent bullets themselves were not recovered, it is not possible to tell if they were IDF MAG or Hamas AK47 ammunition.

And there is no way to correlate them with  cartridge cases or ammunition boxes found around the house. Real forensic ballistics would involve matching a spent bullet to the barrel of the weapon that fired it. HRW is simply talking nonsense. There is no “ballistic evidence” here!

These ‘findings’ only prove that these people got shot somehow, in the middle of a war. They also may prove that they were not shot by Wyatt Earp, who carried a .45.

But there’s more:  had the Palestinians been shot by an Israeli wielding the standard issue M-16 rifle — which uses an even smaller 5.56mm bullet — there probably would have been severe internal injuries and a large exit wound, because of the tumbling effect characteristic of this type of ammunition. So we do know that they were probably not shot by an IDF soldier with his personal weapon. We also can conclude that these “forensic experts” lack expertise with gunshot wounds from military weapons.

The HRW report continues,

Human Rights Watch also spoke by telephone with the doctor treating Samar in Brussels, Dr. Said Hachimi Idrissi.  He said that, as of March 6, Samar had undergone three surgeries, one in Gaza and two in Brussels.[19]  The first surgery in Gaza removed the bullets, so Dr. Idrissi could not comment on the caliber of bullets that had hit her.  The two subsequent surgeries in Brussels were to clean up a serious infection that Samar had developed around her spinal cord.  A July 22 television report on Samar by the BBC said the girl was paralyzed from the waist down due to her spinal injury.[20]

Which proves… that the girl was shot.

The whole business about the caliber of the bullets is a red herring. It has no bearing at all on who shot the victims, although it is presented as if it does. The HRW report is profoundly dishonest.

The only actual ‘evidence’ that these people were shot in cold blood by Israeli soldiers is the testimony of the Palestinian family members.

HRW and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, who reported this incident have few if any staff that speak Arabic. The PHR report in which the “forensic” medical examinations are reported  states that

It was agreed after negotiation with the [Palestinian] Ministry of Health that the team should be enabled free and undisturbed work in order not to compromise its mission as an independent fact-finding team. The team therefore relied heavily on the fieldworkers of NGOs AlMezan (a Gaza-based human rights organization) and PMRS [Palestinian Medical Relief Society] in order to reach witnesses and sites [and for translation — ed.]. It should be noted that in some parts of the tour a representative of the de facto government (Hamas) accompanied some members of the team and observed their work.

Is it not possible — even likely –  that testimony from interested parties obtained under such conditions would be untrue in a large proportion of cases?

HRW and similar organizations are going to greater lengths to make their blood libels sound like real investigative reports, but they still have a way to go before they are convincing.

Technorati Tags: Human Rights Watch, blood libel, IDF, Gaza

On Monday an article appeared in the New York Times by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley entitled “The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything“.

The article expresses some highly tendentious ideas, especially that Hamas in some sense might ‘accept’ a Palestinian state which did not stretch from the river to the sea as anything other than a temporary expedient, and the (unspoken, because it is demonstrably false) suggestion that this implies that Hamas’ goals do not include genocide. It also appears to take for granted that the Palestinian Arab ‘refugees’ were “dispossessed” and have “rights” [to live in Israel] which ought to be “respected”.

But — and maybe this is a case of extremist positions wrapping around and meeting — much of what they say makes sense, with some minor modifications. For example,

Few Israelis quarrel with the insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state. It encapsulates their profound aspiration, rooted in the history of the Jewish people, for a fully accepted presence in the land of their forebears — for an end to Arab questioning of Israel’s legitimacy, the specter of the Palestinian refugees’ return and any irredentist sentiment among Israel’s Arab citizens.

Even fewer Palestinians take issue with the categorical rebuff of that demand, as the recent Fatah congress in Bethlehem confirmed. In their eyes, to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst criminal. [my emphasis]

Indeed. I lean toward ‘criminal’ when I consider the multiple rejections of any sharing of the land which took place over the last hundred years or so, a land which easily could have supported Jews and Arabs had the Arabs not always turned toward murder and violence in their racist obsession to have it free of Jews.

It’s also instructive to note how the Palestinians — and assuredly Agha and Malley — are so certain that it was the Zionist enterprise that “brought about their tragedy”, and not a combination of stupid decisions, really bad leadership, and reliance on Arab nations who don’t care about Palestinians any more than they do for Jews.

They continue,

[Palestinian] firmness on the principle of their right of return flows from the belief that the 1948 war led to unjust displacement and that, whether or not refugees choose or are allowed to return to their homes, they can never be deprived of that natural right.

I’m grateful to the authors for such a clear presentation. They are of course only reporting the Palestinian position, not necessarily endorsing it. But just in case anyone is thinking “that sounds reasonable enough”, let me point out that

• The Palestinian Arabs started the war in 1947 and they were joined by their Arab allies in 1948.
• Displacement of populations is normal in war, and much of it was not due to the actions of the Zionists.
• There is no ‘natural right’ for repatriation of refugees, and certainly not for their descendants.

I also can’t disagree when they write,

To be sustainable, [a solution] will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.

Two worldviews:

One is based in historical fact and supported by any rational reading of international law under which Israel is a sovereign state, a member of the UN which ought not to be required to choose between constant military and terrorist pressure from Arabs — ‘Palestinians’ and others — until it agrees to be colonized by some 4.5 million hostiles who claim an imaginary right;

and the other is based in myth and fantasy, maintained by cynical Arab leaders, nurtured by big-power conflict and oil politics, evolving into a philosophy in which death is more important than life; a worldview that has been directly responsible — as the Zionists are not — for a huge amount of misery among Palestinian Arabs since 1948.

Agha and Malley conclude thus:

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees’ rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

The Arabs have indeed never gotten past this. For a hundred years they have violently rejected the idea that there might be a Jewish state of any size anywhere in Palestine, far more even than they were bothered by the rule of the Ottoman Turks.

Malley and Agha, too, seem to find it problematic, although they do not ask whether the ‘Palestinian people’ — a tenuous concept — have a right to a ‘Palestinian State’, in which Jews may not live, nor do they question the ‘rights’ of the ‘refugees’ — two more tenuous concepts.

There is only the question of whether the Jewish people may have a state, and if they live in one, can it be defined as belonging to them. Of course I believe that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, the place where this people — recognized as such for thousands of years –  can exercise their right of self-determination.

We know what Agha and Malley’s answer is.

Update:
Rob Malley is a member of the Advisory Council of ‘J Street’, an organization which declares itself “pro-Israel”.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Jewish state, two-state solution

News item:

Residents of towns along the Gaza border have been instructed to remain vigilant in case Hamas tries to infiltrate the communities to carry out terrorist and kidnapping attacks…

The warnings collected by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) focus mainly on terrorist threats along the security fence, as well as infiltrations into Gaza-belt communities…

In June, a major terrorist attack that included 10 gunmen and explosives-laden horses was thwarted by the IDF near the Karni crossing. The attack was carried out by a group affiliated with al-Qaida.

On Monday, a mortar shell struck near a group of IDF engineers working on the security fence. The day before, two mortar shells and a Kassam rocket were fired into Israel. The shells hit near the Erez crossing, meters away from ambulances that were transferring a Palestinian heart patient to Israel for treatment…

According to a senior officer in the IDF Southern Command, troops deployed along the Gaza border have also been facing an increased spate of sniper attacks. In addition, there has been an increase in the number of bombs planted along the security fence.

Besides to the threat of infiltration by tunnel or over the fence, there is also growing concern in the army that terrorists will try to enter Israel by sea, either by swimming or in rubber boats.

This is what many predicted would happen because Operation Cast Lead was aborted before real damage was done to Hamas’ fighting ability and its leadership. The enemy will now continue to ratchet up the level of terrorism, until…? Who knows.

Lots of reasons were given for not finishing the job: it was too dangerous for IDF soldiers, the new American president wouldn’t like it, the world wouldn’t accept further Palestinian civilian casualties, etc.

But even so, Israel suffered — in addition to the soldiers lost and wounded — a massive beating in the information arena in which every imaginable ‘human rights’ NGO, every ‘progressive’ outlet, the UN, European foreign ministries and the mainstream media bashed Israel for ‘disproportionate’ use of force, callous disregard for civilian damage, violations of international law and even war crimes. As usual, left-wing Israeli groups led the charge.

Israel’s name was blackened so that in some circles it ranks with — or below — that of Nazi Germany.

And yet, it was all a bunch of crap. Rubbish. Lies. Bullshit. But the process of delegitimization which has been started years before had prepared the ground for the sowing of lies and the harvest of hatred that immediately burgeoned forth.

Now (to change the metaphor), the truth has finally got its pants on, and Israel’s Foreign Ministry has released an exhaustive 164-page report which argues that Israel had a right to do what it did under international law, that what it did was not callous, disproportionate or criminal, and — of course — that much of what it was accused of it didn’t do.

Those who need to, like Judge Richard Goldstone of the UN Fact-Finding team, will (I hope) read the whole thing. But for the rest of us there is a 20-page analysis of it written by Yaakov Lozowick, here. I highly recommend this.

Lozowick, a historian and former Director of Archives at Yad Vashem, argues that Israel’s critics couch their condemnations in the language of international law, without actually understanding it. The way to oppose this, says Lozowick, is not to attack the legitimacy of international law:

There is an unfortunate reaction to this posturing. The centrality of international law and institutions in international affairs is largely a response to the atrocities of Nazism and the murder of Jews which was its core. If the world’s response to the Shoah is to formulate principles which forbid the Jews from defending their political sovereignty and their very lives, many of us say, then a pox on the international order. The cards cannot always be stacked against the Jews with the Jews never responding – that’s our lesson from the Shoah.

The Foreign Ministry, he says, has done exactly the right thing in showing that Israel did indeed act in accordance with international law — and in fact had no choice but to act as it did.

Read Lozowick’s paper, because there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the days of military confrontation between Israel and Hamas are far from over.

Technorati Tags: Gaza war, Operation Cast Lead, Israel, international law, war crimes