Operation Protective Edge: Six Insights, Six Recommendations

by Amos Yadlin

 

In contrast to the clichéd statement that there is no military solution to terrorism, Israel has proven it can solve systemic terrorist threats against it militarily. Nonetheless, the political solution is always to be preferred. The long term political solution for Gaza is the continued weakening of Hamas – economically, politically, and militarily – and the creation of better political alternatives for both the Palestinians and Israel. Over the last two years, Hamas has been politically and financially weakened. If, after Operation Protective Edge, it is militarily weakened as well, it will be possible – together with Egypt, the moderate Arab states, and the international community – to bring the PA back to Gaza, ensure economic development there, and gradually lift the blockade. This, plus the prevention of force buildup and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, will be key factors in stabilizing Gaza and steering it toward favorable development.

Six Insights on the Situation

 

Asymmetrical strategic equilibrium: After nearly three weeks of confrontation between Israel and terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, during which some 1,500 rockets have been fired at Israeli cities and towns and Israel has undertaken some 3,500 aerial strikes on Gaza, there is a strategic equilibrium, albeit essentially asymmetrical, between Israel and Hamas. The “asymmetric draw” is an important concept that likewise depicts some of Israel’s past strategic situations. The current asymmetry stems first of all from the fact that Hamas operates by the rules of a terrorist organization firing indiscriminately at civilians, whereas Israel, governed by international law, restricts itself to strike only military targets and labors to avoid harming innocent bystanders. 

Israeli tanks along the Gaza Strip border, 

July 24, 2014; Image Bank/Getty Images

 

A second point of asymmetry has to do with the objective of the confrontation and the definition of victory. Hamas can claim that it disrupted the civilian routine throughout Israel and damaged Israel’s economy and its foreign relations without being defeated. Given the asymmetry of military means, a non-defeat is, from Hamas’ perspective, a victory. Therefore, projecting a picture of victory is easy: it is enough to show Israelis lying down on the side of the road when sirens warn of incoming rockets and the pictures of soldiers killed in battle on the front pages of the country’s newspapers. Israel, by contrast, must deal Hamas a truly heavy blow in order to achieve its strategic objectives.

On the other hand, Israel enjoys an immeasurable qualitative advantage in terms of the power of its weapon systems compared to those available to Hamas and hence also the ability to escalate the campaign – a prerogative Hamas has already lost. This aspect of asymmetry has grown even more pronounced, because Hamas has resumed operating like a resistance terrorist group, having handed responsibility for the Gaza Strip back to the PA and the government of technocrats convened following the reconciliation agreement with Fatah. Hamas’ internal balance of power has shifted in favor of the military wing, which has bolstered its status as the major element of power in the organization.

Defensive strategy: Both sides have excelled in their defensive strategies. Israel astounded Hamas and the world at large with its ability to provide an almost hermetic response to Hamas’ rocket attacks, which have hit the proverbial brick wall in the form of Israel’s Iron Dome. Thanks to good intelligence and effective, rapid operational activity, Israel has foiled most of Hamas’ surprises, especially mass-casualty terrorist attacks and abductions via tunnels dug into Israel. Hamas has concentrated on defending its military wing and political leadership, which have disappeared underground into reinforced bunkers beneath civilian installations. Ironically, the “iron dome” protecting Hamas’ military wing is Gaza’s civilian population – the very population that Hamas places on rooftops and – contrary to international law – in close proximity to firepower activity and the hideouts of its command structure.

Preparedness for the confrontation: Hamas prepared well for this round of fighting. It seems to have studied the IDF strategy and operational tools of the 2009 and 2012 operations and devised a systemic response to them. The IDF, which did not initiate the current confrontation, was dragged into it without an up-to-date strategy, an effective opening strike, new operational ideas, and sufficient understanding of the enemy’s rationale. Israel seems to have assumed that Hamas would be pressured by the increased scope and intensity of the attacks and would therefore be forced to end the confrontation in similar fashion to the way it ended previous rounds. However, relinquishing responsibility on the civic and political fronts freed Hamas up to ignore Israel’s attacks on “the State of Gaza” and concentrate instead on the military wing. This change in Hamas’ approach did not penetrate IDF thinking, which tallied airstrikes instead of concentrating on targeting the military wing’s commanders and capabilities. The IDF clung to the concept of “another round” and the graduated use of force, instead of changing its paradigm and treating this as a confrontation unlike those of the past.

Attainment of goals: At the time of this writing, the strategic goals of the operations have not been achieved. Israel has not yet formulated a systemic approach and the appropriate offensive operational tools to achieve its strategic goals. Ten days ago Israel was forced to act to upset the strategic stalemate in light of the understanding that even the modest goals of the operation presented by the Prime Minister – restoring the calm, rehabilitating Israel’s deterrence, and dealing the military wing of Hamas a harsh blow – were not achieved by the aerial phase alone. However, the limited ground maneuver Israel has undertaken, designed to destroy the tunnels, has likewise not changed the situation dramatically. This phase, which neutralizes a significant Hamas strategic capability and thereby denies Hamas the opportunity to escalate the situation, is very important, but is by no means enough. The survival of Hamas’ military wing is an achievement for Hamas, along with its ability to continue launching rockets at Israel’s civilian front throughout the fighting and even to disrupt civilian air traffic to Israel. The ground incursion as it has unfolded to date is far from maximizing IDF power, is focused primarily on defensive activity, and is not marked by the requisite creativity – whereas Hamas has clearly internalized lessons from previous rounds. Is the inadequate damage to Hamas’ military wing the result of intelligence flaws? Or, if the inadequate damage is intentional, does it stem from the justified concern not to harm innocent bystanders? Or is the operating assumption – that Hamas should be preserved as responsible for Gaza – simply incorrect?

The importance of legitimacy: Israel enjoys a relatively high degree of legitimacy, among its allies and even in the Arab world, stemming from Hamas’ refusal to accept the Prime Minister’s “calm for calm” proposal in the initial days of the operation, its refusal to accept the Egyptian ceasefire proposal, and the blatancy with which it violated the humanitarian ceasefire. Not only President Obama and Chancellor Merkel support Israel’s right to defend itself against rockets aimed at civilians; the Egyptian Foreign Minister held Hamas responsible for the civilians killed in Gaza due to its refusal to endorse the ceasefire accepted by Israel. At the same time, while Israel may have the understanding of Western leaders, it does not enjoy the support of international public opinion affected by the graphic photographs of civilian death and destruction coming from Gaza. With the dissemination of photographs taken during the humanitarian ceasefire, the pressure of public opinion has risen and become a subject of consideration for Israeli decision makers, although not to the same degree as in previous confrontations

The regional aspect – risks and opportunities: Thus far, concerns and forecasts of a regional escalation have proven unfounded. Demonstrations by Arabs in Israel and the West Bank in the first two weeks of the operation did not exceed the scope of demonstrations prior to the operation. With the third week of the operation, initial signs of greater unrest surfaced, along with fatalities on the West Bank. Nonetheless, the assumption remains that a violent third intifada is not the option preferred by President Abbas and PA leaders in Ramallah. Its cost is understood and represents a serious deterrent. The few rockets fired from Lebanon and Syria were not the opening volleys of a second front, and Israel contained these isolated events well. The rockets were launched by small, fringe Palestinian organizations incapable of setting another front ablaze. Neither Hizbollah, enmeshed in fighting jihadists in Syria, nor Assad will open a military front on behalf of Hamas, which two years ago abandoned the radical pro-Iranian axis. The nuclear talks with Iran, which were extended last week, also did not end in a crisis or a “bad deal,” thus diverting Israel’s attention. Additionally, the crisis exposed the regional set of alliances and overlapping interests. The fact that Israel, Egypt, the PA, and the Arab Gulf states (excluding Qatar) are aligned against Hamas and its allies represents opportunities for diplomatic and financial activity against Hamas and the channeling of other issues in a positive direction in the wider Palestinian arena.

Six Recommended Action Items

Changing the basic assumption that Hamas must be preserved as the entity responsible for Gaza: This assumption causes multiple damage: it prevents extremely harsh damage to Hamas lest it fall; it makes Hamas think it can extend the fighting without paying for it with its own demise; and it prevents the possibility in the long term of restoring the PA as Gaza’s dominant power. The assumption that if Hamas falls it will be succeeded by more radical groups requires closer analysis. What organization can threaten Israel more than Hamas and shoot rockets farther than Haifa? What element can dig dozens of terrorist tunnels? It is time to rethink the doomsday forecasts of “a global jihad tsunami” that haven’t materialized in the past – neither from Afghanistan to Iraq, nor from Sinai to the Golan. Any radical organization that seizes control of Gaza should Hamas collapse (and it is not at all clear that every Hamas substitute would be radical) would have to spend years building the terrorist infrastructure Hamas has already constructed.

Continued military pressure – from both the ground and air – to inflict severe damage on Hamas’ military wing: Once we shake off the assumption that Hamas must be preserved as the responsible party in Gaza, attention must focus on expanding the military move to deal a severe blow to Hamas’ military wing. The military wing is preventing the ceasefire and must therefore be pummeled and weakened. The entrance of ground troops has already resulted in some achievements: the discovery and destruction of tunnels, limited damage to the military wing, and engagement that has yielded new, high quality intelligence. Still, the current ground campaign is not a maneuver that unsettles the enemy’s equilibrium. Thus the campaign should continue, and Gaza should be sectioned into different units. This would generate pressure on specific areas from which Hamas is firing and in which it has a significant military presence. Surprise maneuvers, encirclement, the destruction of rocket launch sites, evacuation of civilians, and intelligence and operational efforts to reach Hamas’ manufacturing, launch, and command and control centers are all necessary moves. The leadership of Hamas must decide that a ceasefire is preferable to continued fighting. It must feel that the noose is tightening and the IDF is closing in. 

Working toward an unequivocal balance favoring Israel: Ending the campaign against Hamas with a strategic deadlock would project Israeli weakness elsewhere as well. Hamas is Israel’s weakest enemy. Hizbollah has many more missiles and rockets and many more warheads of much greater accuracy. Damascus and Tehran too will study the results of the current campaign. To be sure, every arena has its particular features and Israel’s deterrence against states is much more effective than against terrorist organizations. However, a drawn-out campaign without a clear-cut decision – the fourth in a row – in which Israel undertakes a limited ground maneuver while leaving its enemy with strategic military capabilities because it is protected by civilians, and failure to destroy Hamas’ military and civilian leaderships are only some of the factors constituting the final balance liable to erode Israel’s deterrence and lead to other confrontations in arenas much more complex than Gaza. The systemic rationale driving the IDF must be that Hamas must pay an immeasurably high price, not only in infrastructures but primarily in its key force components, the leadership and senior military command, and the ability to attack the State of Israel.

Preventing future force buildup is essential for a long period of calm: Neither Operation Cast Lead nor Operation Pillar of Defense created effective mechanisms for preventing Hamas’ subsequent force buildup. When examining the arrangement that will be reached at the end of the operation, it is critical to understand that without dealing with force buildup, the next round will be postponed only because of deterrence. Israel’s deterrence vis-à-vis Hizbollah is extremely strong (thanks to several factors: the blow Hizbollah was dealt in 2006, which far exceeded what it expected; its responsibility for the Lebanese state; intra-ethnic sensitivities in Lebanon; and the fact that it has no legitimacy for attacking Israel). Against Hamas, Israel’s deterrence was not effective enough and did not ensure a long period of calm. It is therefore important to ensure that Hamas force rehabilitation be very slow to nonexistent. The fact that Egypt is currently effective in preventing smuggling, the understandings with other Arab nations opposed to Hamas about joint activity against Hamas’ force buildup, and Israel’s right to act against the domestic manufacture of strategic weapons and rockets must all be part of any arrangement at the end of Operation Protective Edge.

Ending the economic blockade: Part of Hamas’ ongoing endurance is explained by its spokesmen: “We have nothing to lose; the situation in Gaza is so dire that we’re not afraid of military blows or the Israeli occupation.” This is propaganda that will not survive the test of more pressure on Hamas. Nonetheless, in any future arrangement, it behooves Israel to distinguish between the economic blockade, which must be relaxed, and the military siege, which must be strictly enforced. Wherever there is tension between economic development in Gaza and possible force buildup, the prevention of any force buildup must be paramount. Economic development of Gaza, which will turn the Gazan population to a more positive channel, reduce support for terrorism based on despair, and underscore the cost Gazans will have to pay in another round of violence, is a vested Israeli interest. Therefore, Israel must enlist the international community and moderate Arab nations in an economic development project for Gaza.

A political horizon: In contrast to the clichéd statement that there is no military solution to terrorism, Israel has proven it can solve systemic terrorist threats against it militarily. Nonetheless, the political solution is always to be preferred. That said, a political solution without a militarily advantageous position and the other side’s understanding that a military confrontation will not promote its political goal can only fail. The long term political solution for Gaza is the continued weakening of Hamas – economically, politically, and militarily – and the creation of better political alternatives for both the Palestinians and Israel. Over the last two years, Hamas has been politically and financially weakened. If, after Operation Protective Edge, it is militarily weakened as well, it will be possible – together with Egypt, the moderate Arab states, and the international community – to bring the PA back to Gaza, ensure economic development there, and gradually lift the blockade. This, plus the prevention of force buildup and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, will be key factors in stabilizing Gaza and steering it toward favorable development.

Amos Yadlin

Source: http://www.inss.org.il/index.aspx?id=4538&articleid=7319

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

North Korea, Iran Held Responsible for Hezbollah Rocket Fire

by Uzi Baruch

Landmark victory for Israel in US court, as Shurat Hadin case results in loss for Hezbollah and its sponsors.

 

 

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner

Shurat HaDin

 

Legal rights group Shurat HaDin has won a landmark legal victory this week, in a lawsuit filed in the US against Hezbollah, North Korea, and Iran. 

Shurat HaDin, which specializes in claims against international terrorist organizations and their sponsors, secured a victory for Israel last week, in which a US court found North Korea and Iran liable for damages caused to Israel by a series of rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon in 2006. 

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed in 2009 by Shurat HaDin in the name of Chaim Kaplan, and on behalf of the survivors and families of victims hit by Hezbollah's rockets. 

"The two countries have provided material support and assistance to terrorists from Hezbollah, which fired rockets at Israel," concluded U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth.

The court will now appoint an expert specially designated for the task of determining the amount of financial compensation to be paid to victims of the rocket fire. 

The judge declared that North Korea has provided critical assistance to Hezbollah in building an extensive network of tunnels near the Israeli border, and focused heavily on its role in Hezbollah terror against Israel.

"The models and parameters of these tunnels bear a very close resemblance to a network of tunnels in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas," the judge wrote in his ruling. 

That statement echoes reports on Saturday that North Korea had provided crucial support to Hamas in constructing its vast network of "terror tunnels" from Gaza into Israel. Hamas has also reportedly signed a deal with the authoritarian state to help it replenish its depleted rocket arsenal after an exhausting battle with Israel over the past few weeks.

Pyongyang has a long history of supporting Islamist and other anti-western terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere, and Iran has traditionally been the primary backer of both the Shia Islamist Hezbollah and Sunni Islamist Hamas - although recent years have seen a distinct cooling of relations between Tehran and Hamas.

In a decision spanning 18 pages, Judge Lamberth argued "there is no doubt that North Korea and Iran provided material support to Hezbollah." 

"North Korea has supplied Hezbollah with advanced weaponry, professional advice and assistance in building, concealing these weapons in underground bunkers, and training in use of weapons and bunkers to allow rocket terror on the civilian population in Israel," Lamberth wrote. "Iran helped with finance, North Korea helped with aid and providing more accurate weapons to Hezbollah."

"North Korea has supplied Hezbollah with a wide range of support materials and resources, including professional military knowledge, training, intelligence and assistance in building a massive network of military facilities, tunnels, bunkers, underground warehouses and storage facilities in southern Lebanon," the judge continued.  

"North Korea has acted in coordination with Iran and Syria to provide components of missiles and rockets to Hezbollah," he declared. "North Korea sent components of rockets and missiles to Iran, which were collected and sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon via Syria."

"Components of rockets and missiles are intended for use by Hezbollah to carry out rockets and missiles against civilian targets in Israel," he added. 

Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who heads Shurat HaDin, noted the ruling's relevant timing.

"Today, as Israel is again under rocket attack by Islamist extremists - this time in the south - the judgment of the District Court Administration we received shows that the wheels of justice eventually turn and locate the offenders, and that the responsibility indeed lies with them," Darshan-Leitner stated. "We continue to work to ensure that terrorism and financial patrons will not be able to evade the rule of law and civil claims for criminal actions."

"This historic decision now states that both North Korea and Iran provided material support to Hezbollah - including missiles, training, and funding - to carry out deadly terrorist attacks against Israel in 2006," she continued. "We are convinced that the court eventually will rule on the compensation of millions of dollars in compensation for the victims, whose lives were destroyed due to the Hezbollah attacks."


Uzi Baruch

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183391#.U9Tw8WMYjLM

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Academic Lies in the Cognitive War Against Israel

by Dr. Richard L. Cravatts

The entire so-called “occupation” has also become a target for scientists who attempt to link the general oppression by Israel with a host of pathologies in Palestinian Arab society.

Jews have been accused of harming and murdering non-Jews since the twelfth century in England, when Jewish convert to Catholicism, Theobald of Cambridge, mendaciously announced that European Jews ritually slaughtered Christian children each year and drank their blood during Passover season.

That medieval blood libel, largely abandoned in the contemporary West, does, however, still appear as part of Arab world’s vilification of Jews—now transmogrified into a slander against Israel, the Jew of nations. But in the regular chorus of defamation against Israel by a world infected with Palestinianism, a new, more odious trend has begun to show itself: the blood libel has been revivified; however, to position Israel (and by extension Jews) as demonic agents in the community of nations, the primitive fantasies of the blood libel are now masked with a veneer of academic scholarship and published as politicized scientific study.

Just this month, for example, the British medical journal Lancet further degraded its academic respectability and credibility by publishing something entitled “An open letter for the people in Gaza,” signed by 24 doctors and scientists. In the language of propaganda and politics—as opposed to the reasoned language of science and academically-based inquiry—the signers had as their purpose “denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.”

These doctors and scientists, none of whom has had to live under an unceasing barrage of more than 10,000 rockets and mortars launched from Gaza into Israel, nevertheless denounced what they see as “the perversity of [Israel’s] propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called ‘defensive aggression.’” Instead, the signers believe there is no basis for Israel’s self-defense, that it is actually no more than “a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity” and an “unacceptable pretext of Israel eradicating political parties and resistance to the occupation and siege they impose.”

“The massacre in Gaza spares no one,” the letter continued in its hyperbolic, not factual, tones, and, according to the signers, “these attacks aim to terrorise [sic], wound the soul and the body of the people, and make their life impossible in the future, as well as also demolishing their homes and prohibiting the means to rebuild.”

Of course, there is no mention of the Palestinian’s complicity in their own situation, no reference to the nine years of genocidal aggression by Hamas since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, no examination of the failure of Palestinian Arab leadership to even attempt to start building a civil society and functioning government. Every pathology and failure, including the health and well-being of the entire Gazan society, is the fault of Israel—as a result of its siege, its blockade, its oppression, and its current incursion to suppress Hamas rocket attacks.

“In Gaza,” the letter continued, “people suffer from hunger, thirst, pollution, shortage of medicines, electricity, and any means to get an income, not only by being bombed and shelled.” And inverting cause and effect, the signers then make the breathtaking claim that Hamas terrorism is a tool for creating a viable Palestinian state, that Hamas rejected a truce not because they are dedicated to extirpating Israel and murdering Jews, but simply because “People in Gaza are resisting this aggression because they want a better and normal life and, even while crying in sorrow, pain, and terror, they reject a temporary truce that does not provide a real chance for a better future.”

This is not a scientific report at all, but a politicized, subjective screed designed to demonize Israel and assign total blame for a very complex political and military conflict that is well beyond the expertise of these particular individuals. That it was written by intellectuals in the West in the thralls of Palestinianism is not surprising or particularly unusual, especially in the wake of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge to protect its citizens from being murdered. What is troubling, however, is that a formerly-reputable journal such as Lancet is now being exploited as vehicle for flabby research and specious science in the pursuit of political ends.

This is not the first time that Lancet has strayed in this pseudo-academic manner. The entire so-called “occupation” has also become a target for scientists who attempt to link the general oppression by Israel with a host of pathologies in Palestinian Arab society.

Several years ago, feminist scholar Phyllis Chesler critiqued a particularly egregious example of politicized scholarship in a paper published in Lancet. Chesler noted that the article, with the biased title of “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study,” revealed “that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli ‘occupation’— and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are ‘directly’ as opposed to ‘indirectly’ exposed to political violence.”

The study, of course, never chose to examine the effect of the conflict on Israeli husbands and wives, who may well share similar emotional stresses to their Palestinian counterparts as a result of the genocidal aggression against them from various jihadist foes, and instead, according to Chesler, attempted “to present Palestinian men as victims even when (or precisely because) those men are battering their wives,” defining “Palestinian cultural barbarism, which includes severe child abuse, as also related to the alleged Israeli occupation.”

The cultural traditions in the Middle East which enable men to totally dominate family members, treat women as property, and even commit “honor” killings when women shame male family members—all of these, of course, are not included in the emotional equation which might logically lead or contribute to spousal abuse. It is the Israeli occupation, and that alone, that causes such deleterious mental health conditions, “intimate partner violence,” in Palestinian marriages. Perhaps a better title for the specious article would have been, “The occupation made me beat my wife.”

In 2010, to cite another instance of this trend, the findings of a study conducted by the New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), a team of scientists based in Italy, were announced on “the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas,” in this case Gaza after Israel’s “Cast Lead” incursion in 2008-09. “Many Palestinian children still living in precarious situations at ground level in Gaza after Israeli bombing,” the study found, “have unusually high concentrations of metals in the hair, indicating environmental contamination, which can cause health and growth damages due to chronic exposure,” and these high levels were the direct result of Israeli bombs.

Moreover, suggested Professor Paola Manduca, spokesperson for this study and another principal signer of the Gaza open letter, the presence of metals in children’s hair “presents serious problems in the current situation in Gaza, where the construction and removal of damaged structures is difficult or impossible, and,” in case anyone does not know who to blame, “certainly represents the major responsibility of those who should remedy the damage to the civilian population under international law.”

Environmental contamination of children is certainly a critical issue to address and identify, but questions arise from this particular study due to the shabby way the controls and research were conducted. Was it actually Israeli weaponry that contributed to high metal levels in the hair of the studied group? Are those levels significantly different in Gaza, or do they parallel other high-density cities with refineries, smelters, and other form of pollutants that arise from other, non-military sources? Was the same group of subjects tested prior to Operation Cast Lead to see changes in the incidence of metals in hair after the incursion? Were groups in other towns, which had not been bombed, tested as well, and how do those levels compare with the test group?

Another principal signer of the Gaza letter, and frequent contributor to Lancet, is Iain Chalmers, a medical researcher and member of the Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance (LPHA), an initiative between the journal and the group Medical Aid for Palestinians. Not surprisingly, the 2013 Lancet edition had a one-sided feature focusing on “the direct and indirect health effects of the Israeli occupation and conflict.” Chalmers is a defamer of Israel, who was gleeful about a Lancet cover that used the term Palestine, saying, “ . . . it’s one way in which the Zionists have failed. They have not stopped the use of the word ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian.’ They have control in so many different domains. This is one that they cannot suppress.”

A third signer of the Gaza open letter was Derek Summerfield, a vitriolic maligner of Israel who has supported efforts to boycott Israeli physicians from attending medical conferences. In a 2008 interview in Al Ahram he described the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict as “the most awful crime has been played out down there by a colonial power that considered itself part of Europe. They were grabbing Palestinians' land and torturing them in ways that were reminiscent of South Africa but, as it turns out, far, far worse than South Africa.”

Summerfield has also suggested, as he did in the British Medical Journal in an article entitled “Palestine: The Assault on Health and Other War Crimes,” that Israel is a morally malignant regime which capriciously murders Arabs with no justification. Like other haters of the Jewish state, he also has suggested that Israelis exploit the Holocaust as a means of distracting their misdeeds towards the Palestinian Arabs, that, as Summerfield sardonically put it, “Israel continues to play the Holocaust story and anti-Semitism as a way of blocking the truth.”

The principal signer of the Gaza open letter is Norwegian anesthesiologist and perennial Israel-hater, Mads Gilbert. A political activist and member of the fringe Norwegian Maoist ‘Red’ party, Gilbert is also a supporter of the Palestinian solidarity movement. While not giving biased medical commentary to the media during the various Gaza incursions, he also has apologized for and gave tacit approval to the 9/11 attacks in New York, saying in an interview that “The attack on New York did not come as a surprise after the policy that the West has led during the last decades . . . The oppressed also have a moral right to attack the USA with any weapon they can come up with,” and that while “terror is a bad weapon,” he supported a terror attack against the United States “within the context which I [had] mentioned.”

Interviewed by Iran’s Press TV in 2009, Gilbert announced, without conclusive proof, that, “We have clear evidence that the Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosives which is made out of a Tungsten alloy. These weapons have an enormous power to explode.” Though he moderated his opinion somewhat in the absence of any proof that his opinion about Israel’s use of weapons was even valid, he did use Lancet to repeat the calumny. “These are scenes out of Dante’s Inferno,” he said. “Many arrive with extreme amputations, with both legs crushed, [and what] I suspect are wounds inflicted by very powerful explosives called Dime [Dense Inert Metal Explosive].” Once again, a scientific journal published unsubstantiated and highly-biased articles, whose principal purpose seems to be to further malign Israel.

When brutal military assaults and Israel’s use of weaponry cannot be blamed for causing health damage to non-Jews, Israel-haters are quick to condemn the general oppression of Zionist occupation and brutality as detriments to Arab health and happiness. In 2005, Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) took it upon themselves to “condemn the Israeli Army's use of psychological warfare against the Gaza population.” Through the use of Israeli F-16 jet plane-generated “sonic booms” that, according to PsySR, are a “particularly pernicious form of psychological warfare.”

While they begrudgingly admit that the reason jet soirees were initiated against the Gazan population in the first place was the hundreds of rockets that had been raining down on Israeli neighborhoods in southern Israel, the psychologists’ concern never seemed to extend to Jewish children (75-94 percent of whom, living in Sderot and between the ages of 4-18, as one example, exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder), nor did they call for an end to the terrorism that Israeli military operations were attempting to curtail. But the sonic booms, nevertheless, were unacceptable.

Other scholarly publications have been intellectually hijacked with spurious studies that have a fundamental bias to them that discredits the validity of any research. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, for example, ran an article entitled “The prevalence of psychological morbidity in West Bank Palestinian children,” written, oddly enough, by a junior surgical resident and a microbiologist.

When members of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), an organization of academics seeking balance in discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, became aware of this bit of defective scholarship, they analyzed the paper themselves and found that it was an example of “weak science, which included the lack of evidence or references, the lack of appropriate scientific design, the choice of nonstandardized test instruments and the inaccurate citing of the psychological literature.” What is more, the authors’ original thesis, “that ‘settlement encroachment’ was responsible for the problems of Palestinian children,” had relied on the psychiatric “expertise” of linguist Noam Chomsky, whose loathing of Israel is widely known, to help draw the study’s conclusions.

Supporters of the Palestinian cause have come to accept the fact that Israel will not be defeated through the use of traditional tools of warfare. Instead, the Jewish state’s enemies in the Middle East, abetted by their supporters in the West, have begun to use different, but equally dangerous, tactics to delegitimize and eventually destroy Israel in a cognitive war. By dressing up old hatreds against Jews, combined with a loathing of Israel, and repackaging them as seemingly pure scholarship, Israel’s ideological foes have found an effective, but odious, way to insure that the Jew of nations, Israel, is still accused of fostering social chaos and bringing harm to non-Jews—in the bright “lights of perverted science” Winston Churchill feared might well be unleashed by a Nazi victory in the Second World War.


Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., is President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the author of Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel & Jews.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15402#.U9Tx2GMYjLM

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

House of Worship or Palestinian Arsenal?

by Danielle Avel





While salvaging Qurans from the rubble of the Al-Farouq Mosque in Gaza, junior imam Muhammad Hamad told the New York Times, ‘This is a house of God” – as though this proved the mosque is a peaceful place of worship.  He said this after Al-Farouq had been targeted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on July 12.  According to IDF spokesperson, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, intelligence indicated the mosque was used as “a Hamas rocket cache and gathering point for militants.” According to Hamad, “That charge is baseless.”

This debate conjures striking visuals – the military against the mosque, the Qurans amidst the rubble, and the young imam invoking the term “house of God.”  Media outlets eagerly perpetuate this narrative however incomplete or inaccurate.  The problem, however, starts at the very root of the story, with the mosque.  Let’s explore what a “house of God” might look like to an average person living in a Palestinian-controlled neighborhood.

Caliph Abu Bakr Mosque in Aida. Photo credit: Danielle Avel

The above picture shows the Caliph Abu Bakr Mosque in Aida in “Area A” on the West Bank. Area A means Israel maintains control over external security, so Palestinians there are limited in the weapons they can amass, unlike in Hamas-controlled Gaza where Israel relinquished control of the border.  Though Israel prevents missiles from entering the West Bank, Area A is otherwise similar to Gaza in that Palestinians are responsible for their own neighborhoods – central to those neighborhoods are mosques.

The Aida mosque entryway is festooned with violent messaging that celebrates terrorists, that show all of Israel gone from the map, and advertisements for conferences that promote the caliphate (i.e., radical Islam taking over the world).

Caliph Abu Bakr Mosque main entrance in Aida.  Photo credit: Danielle Avel

Note at least 7 specific examples of politicized imagery in the above photo:
1. Drawing of the word “Fatah,” the quasi-political party that rules the Palestinian Authority
2. Stylized drawing in Arabic depicting a map of Israel as “Palestine” as the final letter
3. “Fatah” graffiti
4. Remnants of an advertisement for the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir’s 2012 Caliphate Conference
5. Poster celebrating a released terrorist with common Palestinian imagery featuring a map of Israel as “Palestine”
6. Remnants of a poster celebrating a terrorist
7. Poster advertising the 2013 Hizb ut-Tahrir of Palestine Caliphate Conference

Aida mosque side entrance. Photo credit: Danielle Avel

The photo above shows a child walking by the side entrance of the same mosque.  Directly above his head is a poster celebrating 2 terrorists with a common slogan “throw off your chains.”  On either side of the terrorist poster are advertisements for a caliphate conference.  The wall is splattered with graffiti: “Fatah” appears frequently alongside the terms “struggle” and “Phalanxes of Martyrdom” which are calls to war.

Mosques like Aida’s are commonplace in Palestinian-controlled neighborhoods of Gaza and the West Bank: radical Islam is the norm, terrorists are celebrated, and the messaging reiterates the goal of destroying the Jewish State.

These messages, openly celebrated even on the exterior walls of “houses of God” make it is easy to comprehend how Palestinian mosques become part of their terrorist infrastructure.
Further, Palestinians have a documented history of using mosques as bases for terrorism.  A few examples:

•In 2003, Israeli police thwarted a suicide attack and located the explosives belt in a mosque in Taibeh.
•In 2003, Hamas terrorists in Hebron used their mosque’s football team as cover while they carried out a series of suicide attacks that killed 34 Israelis.
•In 2003, Ra’ed Misk, an imam of a mosque in Hebron, carried out a suicide attack that killed 23 civilians.  He was dressed in the explosives belt at a mosque in eastern Jerusalem.
•In 2008, the IDF bombed a mosque in Gaza City that was used to store missiles and explosives and was used as a launching ground for rocket attacks.
•In 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, IDF forces uncovered weapons caches in mosques throughout Gaza including ones in Jabaliya, Al-Atatra, and the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City.

As for the Al-Farouq Mosque recently targeted in Gaza for being a “rocket cache” and meeting place for terrorists, it broadcasts publicly its affiliation with Hamas and its promotion of jihad on the mosque’s Facebook page.

Screenshots from the Al-Farouq mosque Facebook page. Credit: The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

As the IDF targets terrorist sites in the Gaza Strip, more mosques will likely be destroyed.   Waiting near the rubble will be Palestinians claiming these are merely “houses of God.”  It is clear that as long as it is beneficial to use mosques as bases of terrorism, Palestinians will continue to do so – and to lie about it.  Media outlets may continue to gloss over this reality, but how long will their audiences be fooled?


Danielle Avel is a photojournalist and investigative researcher.  She can be reached through her website www.DanielleAvel.com, Twitter @DanielleAvel, and on Facebook.  © 2014 All rights reserved by Danielle Avel.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/danielle-avel/house-of-worship-or-palestinian-arsenal/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Paris's Kristallnacht

by Guy Millière

This was the first time since World War II that an anti-Semitic pogrom took place in France.
Almost all French politicians adopt an attitude of appeasement toward the enemies of Israel and Jews. They act as if they did not see that the hate speech that France finances in the Middle East is now spreading throughout France itself.
No major French television report speaks of Hamas's genocidal Jew-hatred or of the use of Arab women and children as human shields. Criticizing radical Islam on public television is now almost impossible. Members of the Israeli government are never interviewed on French television.
French politicians know that 70% of all the inmates in French prisons are Muslims, and that these prisons have been transformed into recruiting centers for jihadists.

Whenever Israel is attacked by terrorist movements and needs to defend itself, "leftist" and Islamist organizations organize anti-Israel protests in Paris. One of the latest took place on July 13.

The event brought together between 10,000 and 30,000 people -- not surprising in a country where "leftist" and Islamist organizations are strong.

The demonstrators shouted hateful and violent slogans against Israel and held Israeli flags on which swastikas replaced the Star of David -- also not surprising. Events organized by "leftists" and by Islamists usually carry such gear.

The demonstrators also shouted purely anti-Semitic slogans; the call for "Death to Jews" was picked up by the crowd. This was the first time since the end of World War II that explicitly anti-Semitic chants were shouted by a large crowd in Paris (During a demonstration in January, protesters shouted, "Jews, France does not belong to you").

Demonstrators shouted, "Hamas will win," in support of the jihadist terrorist organization. This was also the first time that slogans openly favoring a jihadist terrorist organization were shouted by a large crowd in Paris (During earlier demonstrations, protesters shouted "Palestine will win," but did not point to Hamas).

Demonstrators also shouted slogans in favor of a man who had murdered Jewish children: "We are all Mohamed Merah." Merah shot and killed a rabbi and three Jewish children at close range in a schoolyard in Toulouse in 2012; it was the one of the most serious anti-Semitic acts committed in France since the Vichy regime. This was the first time in France that a large crowd proudly identified with a murderer of Jewish children.

The demonstration started in the 18th Arrondissement of Paris (metro station Barbès Rochechouart), close to where Islamic preachers organized street prayers a few months ago; it ended near Place de la Bastille. Dozens of windows of Jewish shops and restaurants along the route were broken and covered with yellow labels saying, "boycott Israel". This was the first time that so many Jewish shops and restaurants were attacked during a demonstration in Paris.

In addition, several hundred protesters armed with iron bars, machetes, axes and firebombs, arriving Place de la Bastille, marched to the nearby Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue on rue de la Roquette. They shouted, "Let's slay the Jews," "Hitler was right," and "Allahu Akbar".

Only six police officers were on hand, who were quickly overwhelmed. Members of Jewish defense organizations protected the 200 Jews present inside the synagogue. Even after police reinforcements arrived, the synagogue was besieged for nearly two hours. The Jews, prisoners of a potentially lethal horde, were locked inside.

A crowd in front of the Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue in Paris during the "anti-Israel" riot of July 13, 2014.

At another nearby synagogue on rue des Tournelles, rioters threw Molotov cocktails and looted the place. When the vandals continued their looting to rue des Rosiers, the heart of the Jewish quarter of Paris, the police struggled to stop them.

This was the first time since World War II that an anti-Semitic pogrom took place in France.
In an attempt to address the distress of the Jewish community, the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, denounced anti-Semitism in general terms. He said he would strengthen the protection of "places of worship," synagogues and mosques -- although no mosque was attacked.

Although the government banned the next demonstration, scheduled for July 19, it took place anyway, and soon turned into a riot.

When thousands of protesters gathered again at the Barbès Rochechouart metro station, the presence of significant police forces prevented protesters from crossing Paris. Organized groups then attacked the police by throwing stones, Molotov cocktails and by using iron bars. Shops were looted. Garbage cans were burned. Bus stations, dozens of them, and billboards were destroyed. Protesters came with pickaxes and ripped the pavement on several streets to throw chunks of asphalt.

Demonstrators tried to burn down the largest textile store in Paris, near Barbès Rochechouart, because it carries a Jewish name, Dreyfus-Marché Saint Pierre. Clashes with police near this store were particularly violent.

Witnesses spoke of the atmosphere of a civil war, and photographers spoke of a "French intifada".

The slogans shouted by the rioters were the same as the previous week: "Death to Jews" mingled with "Death to Israel" and "Long live Hamas." Many who threw stones and Molotov cocktails shouted, "Allahu Akbar," just as the attackers of the synagogue on July 13 had done.

Even though there were no synagogues or Jews nearby, and no protester shouted, "Let's slay the Jews" or "Hitler was right," what happened in Paris on July 19 was as frightful as what had happened the week before.

This was also not the first time that a district of a French city was immersed in an atmosphere of civil war. In October 2005, entire neighborhoods in the suburbs of several major cities were set on fire. In 2010, two districts of Grenoble, in southeast France, were on fire for several days. In May 2013, the Trocadéro area in Paris was ransacked, and two months later, the city of Trappes, near Versailles, experienced hours of insurrection. Dozens of cars and shops were burned. The police precinct was attacked and under siege for hours.

The riots this month were, however, the first time that demonstrations resembling a civil war were carried by people who showed an explicit hatred of Jews and who said they identified with jihadi terrorists. This was the first time that riots in France looked like an Islamic uprising.

Although the events of July 13 and 19 had the support of "leftists" organizations, the vast majority of demonstrators and rioters were Muslims. The majority of the women wore Islamic headscarves. Most men wore a keffiyeh, the checkered Arab scarf, and used it to hide their faces the way Islamists do in the Middle East.

Many protesters on July 13 and 19 came with Palestinian flags, but the flags of Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda and Islamic State [IS], also present, were proudly waved.

The day after the riots, July 20, Prime Minister Manuel Valls again denounced the "danger of anti-Semitism". July 20th was also the anniversary of the "Vel d'Hiv Round-up" -- the mass arrest of Jews in Paris in 1942 by the French police under the supervision of the Nazis. But Valls said nothing about the anti-Semitic and jihadist dimension of the riots. Some conservative politicians criticized the lack of firmness of the government. Leaders of the rightist National Front said that the government was responsible for the violence and had undermined "freedom of expression."

At the exact moment Manuel Valls spoke, rioters started to ransack the suburb with the largest Jewish population on the outskirts of Paris: Sarcelles. All the Jewish stores and many cars were wrecked or set on fire. A group shouting "Allahu Akbar" again tried to burn the town's synagogue. Again, most rioters were Muslim. Again, most shouted, "Death to the Jews."

All French politicians are ready to condemn anti-Semitism in general terms (except members of the National Front); none are ready to call the anti-Semitism that is exploding in France today by its name: Islamic anti-Semitism.

All French politicians, left or right (except members of the National Front), have the same attitude about what happened on July 13, 19 and 20. This attitude can be summed up in one sentence, used by the French President, François Hollande: "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot import itself into France." No French politician would dare say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is already present in France, and that, among Muslim populations, Islamic anti-Semitism is inextricably mixed with an absolute hatred of Israel and Jews.

Almost all French politicians adopt an attitude of appeasement toward the enemies of Israel and Jews. They never define Hamas as an Islamic terrorist organization. They close their eyes to the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish hate speech disseminated by the enemies of Israel in the Middle East, and to the irony that France finances that speech. They act as if they did not see that the hate speech France finances in the Middle East is now spreading throughout France.

The major French media have not said a word about the anti-Semitism and jihadism that permeated the protest of July 13 and the riots of July 19 and 20. All major French television reports of these events presented the protesters and rioters as people who had just wanted to support the "liberation of the Palestinian people". All reports major French television reports on Israel's war against Hamas are made ​​from the point of view of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. No report speaks of Hamas's genocidal Jew hatred or of the use of Arab women and children as human shields. Journalists from major French media outlets act as if they did not know that by adopting a watered-down vision of the protesters and rioters in France, and by describing the war from the point of view of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, they are playing a dangerous game that could lead to more pogroms and even civil war.

The attitude of French politicians reflects the sorry state of French society. All the riots that erupted in France during the last decade were the result of minor incidents, but showed that France is on the verge of a large-scale explosion. French politicians want to avoid a large-scale explosion. They are scared and paralyzed.

French politicians also know that France's Muslim population now amounts to 15% of its total population and that radical Islamist organizations are particularly well established. The Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is the main French Muslim organization; it attracts tens of thousands of people in each of its annual meetings and openly lends political support to Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. French politicians do not want a confrontation with the UOIF.

French politicians also know that more than 750 neighborhoods in France are considered "no go zones" by the police, and that the authorities have lost control of them.

They also know that 70% of all inmates in the French prison system are Muslim , and that self-proclaimed imams and gang leaders have taken over many prisons. They know that these prisons have been transformed into recruiting centers for jihadists, and that regaining control of these prisons is an almost impossible task. Mohamed Merah and Mehdi Nemmouche, the Brussels Jewish Museum killer, became jihadists while in French prisons.

French politicians know, as well, that more than 800 French Muslims are being trained in the Islamic State, in Iraq and Syria.

They know that Muslims vote. Eight million Muslims clearly have greater political weight than do four hundred thousand Jews.

The major French media are also scared and paralyzed. Criticizing radical Islam on French television is now almost impossible. Organizations fighting "Islamophobia" are extremely vigilant and extremely well funded.

Defending Israel on French television is also almost impossible. Members of the Israeli government are never interviewed on French television. Representatives of Palestinian and "pro-Palestinian" organizations are regularly invited and can lie without ever being contradicted.

Reports on right-wing anti-Semitism are abundant. Reports on Islamic Jew-hatred are non-existent.

The Global Anti-Semitism Index recently published by the Anti Defamation League shows that 37% of the French population can be considered anti-Semitic. It is likely that the proportion of anti-Semites among French Muslims is far higher.

A poll for the BBC in 2012 showed that 75% of the French have a negative view of Israel. It is likely that the proportion among French Muslims is, again, far higher.

The prevalent sentiment among French Jews is that a page has been turned. The French Jewish philosopher Shmuel Trigano wrote on July 16th that what is happening is a sign that Jews must leave France, fast. "Recent events are likely to play the role that such events have played in the past for the Jews in many countries: a strong symbolic event gives the signal that the Jews have no future in the country that was theirs".

The prevalent sentiment among French people in general was described by a survey published in January 2014: 74% of the French declared themselves "pessimistic" or "very pessimistic" about the future of the country. 63% said they believe that Islam is "not compatible with the values ​​of a democratic society." 78% said they "distrust" all politicians. 77% said they consider that the information provided by the media is "unreliable."

The words of most of the French politicians could not have strengthened the confidence the French have in their politicians.

The behavior of most French journalists could not have increased the credibility the French have in their media.

And the events that took place in Paris on July 13, 19 and 20 could not have made the French less pessimistic and more confident about the compatibility of Islam with the values of democracy.

Most recently, on July 23, an anti-Israeli protest was organized in Paris. This time, the protest was not banned. It brought together 10,000-20,000 people. 15,000 police officers were present. Thirty socialist MPs were present among the protesters. The media said it was a "peaceful protest." People shouted, "Hamas, Jihad, Resistance." Nazi-era anti-Semitic cartoons appeared on large panels. Again, groups of protesters finished their day at the rue des Rosiers and attacked Jewish shops. Some "peaceful protest".

On July 21, Meyer Habib, a MP representing French citizens living in Israel, said that "an atmosphere of Kristallnacht" spreads over the country. Many French Jews agree.


Guy Millière

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4515/paris-kristallnacht

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.