Via HonestReporting:

Despite widespread charges leveled against Israel in the international media, some journalists have, to their credit, made the effort to dig deeper amidst the rubble to find out what really went on in Gaza and the crimes committed by Hamas against its own people. Here are a couple of stories that you may not have seen in your local media.

Hamas hijacking ambulances:

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Palestinian civilians living in Gaza during the three-week war with Israel have spoken of the challenge of being caught between Hamas and Israeli soldiers as the radical Islamic movement that controls the Gaza strip attempted to hijack ambulances.

Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

His first day of work in the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war. “Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected,” Mr Shriteh told the Herald. “We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names, and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us.”

Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety.

Hamas’s human shields:

Der Spiegel reveals the abuse of Palestinian civilian homes by Hamas:

Hail’s house is just a few streets away and only suffered light damage. There are a few bullet holes in the living room walls and all of the window panes are broken. Hail also found out after the cease-fire that the militants had used his house as a base for their operations. The door to his house stood open and there were electric cables lying in the hallway. When Hail followed them they led to his neighbor’s house which it seems Hamas had mined.

As Hail, in his mid-30s, sat on his porch and thought about what to do a man came by: He was from Hamas and had left something in Hail’s home. He let him in and the man then emerged with a bullet proof vest, a rocket launcher and an ammunitions belt. An hour later a fighter with Islamic Jihad called to the door, then disappeared onto the roof and reappeared with a box of ammunition. “The abused civilians’ homes for their own purposes. That is not right,” Hail says with disgust while trying to remain polite.

IDF INVESTIGATES CASUALTY FIGURES

YNet News reports:

A continuing IDF investigation into the number of civilian Palestinian casualties during the Israeli offensive in Gaza indicated that only 250 of the fatalities were civilians.

The military estimates that between 1,100 and 1,200 people were killed during the offensive. Some 700 of are believed to be militants and most are believed to be Hamas operatives.

The IDF is still trying to ascertain the identity of the remaining fatalities, but security sources said many would probably turn out to be militants as well. “Hamas is familiar with the numbers and is doing everything it can to concealed them,” said an IDF source….

Many of the fatalities were considered to be civilians at first, because there were no weapons found with them, said a military source, “But that method of operation is consistent with the way Hamas was hiding in the midst of civilians, moving between their strongholds with no weapons. In many cases someone thought to be a civilian casualty turned out to be a Hamas operative after we ran our checks.”

CBS SMEARS ISRAEL

We wonder where Bob Simon of CBS’s 60 Minutes has been for the past few weeks. Hamas’s actions in the Gaza Strip, which Israel evacuated in 2005, have led to divisions within the Palestinian people and Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. Hamas is still intent on destroying the State of Israel through terror. Yet, according to Simon, the sole “obstacle to peace” is West Bank settlements. Whether one agrees or disagrees with settlements, Simon has produced a shocking piece of journalism that amounts to a smear against Israel.

• According to Simon, Palestinians “have to submit to humiliating delays at checkpoints and roadblocks.” Simon fails to mention the Palestinian terror that has plagued Israel, necessitating such security measures.
• In an incredibly loaded narrative, Simon claims that Israel has three options: “They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid – have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don’t have a very long life.”
• Intentionally pandering to Palestinian propaganda, Simon immediately follows this up by associating Israel’s security barrier with apartheid: “Apartheid? Israel is building what it calls a security wall between the West Bank and Israel.” As the barrier is mostly a fence, Israel certainly does not refer to it as a “wall” and Simon makes no reference as to why the barrier was constructed nor to its effectiveness at preventing terror. Instead, viewers are treated to one side of the story.
• It appears that Simon is attempting to misrepresent the majority of Israelis. He claims that “Moderate Israelis who deplore the occupation used to believe passionately in a two-state solution.” Yet, to illustrate this point, he interviews Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli who has long advocated a one-state solution and considers Israel to be worse than apartheid South Africa. Is this representative of the Israeli mainstream?
• Likewise, Simon’s focus on settler Daniella Weiss is not representative following Weiss’s rejection by the mainstream settler movement.

Presenting a one-sided picture of perceived Palestinian grievances, unrepresentative Israeli viewpoints, and completely ignoring the Palestinian role in the conflict, Bob Simon’s report deserves a response.

Please send your considered comments to CBS through its Feedback Form – http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/feedback/fb_news_form.shtml. Select 60 Minutes from the drop down menu and register your complaint.

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Click here for Backspin to comment on this communique and the articles above.

Via Sydney Morning Herald:

No way has yet been found to conduct even the most justified war without causing harm to innocent civilians.

During World War II, Royal Air Force bombers flattened entire German cities in response to Nazi bombing and rocket attacks against civilian targets in London and elsewhere. Most of the German dead, numbering in their tens of thousands, were civilians.

Australian troops fighting in Vietnam, East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan have also sometimes caused more casualties among civilians than among the enemy. Yet nobody would have the right to call Australian troops murderers.

To apply different, and much harsher, standards to Israeli forces engaged in putting an end to more than 8,000 Hamas rocket attacks deliberately aimed at killing and maiming Israeli civilians, and which constitute a war crime, is therefore the height of hypocrisy.

Israel is the only democracy in the world ever accused of war crimes when it fights a defensive war to protect its civilians.  Via Huffington Post:

Every time Israel seeks to defend its civilians against terrorist attacks, it is accused of war crimes by various UN agencies, academics and some in the media. It is a totally phony charge concocted as part of Hamas’ strategy to delegitimate and demonize the Jewish state. Israel is the only democracy in the world ever accused of war crimes when it fights a defensive war to protect its civilians. This is remarkable, especially in light of the fact that Israel has killed far fewer civilians than any other country in the world that has faced comparable threats. Those who cry “war crime” against Israel don’t generally care about war crimes, as such; they often support them when engaged in by countries they like.

Any discussion of war crimes must be comparative and contextual. If Russia did not commit war crimes when its soldiers massacred tens of thousands of Chechnyans (not even in a defensive war), then on what basis could Israel be accused of accidentally killing a far fewer number of human shields in an effort to protect its civilians? If Israel alone were ever to be charged with “war crimes,” that would mark the end of international human rights law as a neutral arbitrator of conduct. If the laws of war and international human rights are to endure, they must be applied to nations in order of the seriousness of the violations, not in order of the political unpopularity of the nations.

The violence in Gaza did not start with the air strikes on Saturday.

HonestReporting looks at how the arab-loving media distorts the story and ignores the context.

Hamas is a cockroach group of baby killers that have reaped what they have sown.  Let Israel with all its might clean out the cockroaches once and for all time.  And just like cockroaches, as People’s Cube wrote of the growing trend at Reuters, BBC, and other progressive media to doctor photographs, stage events, and use choreographed footage in the best Pallywood traditions of “poor palestinians”, you should expect to see photos of “Fatima” splattered all over by the Arab-loving mainstream media.

No, I don’t mean this murderer below named Fatima who wants to kill Jews:

I mean the fake Fatima below that the mainstream media plastered all over their pages in various backgrounds so that you would feel empathy for the “poor palestinians” instead of seeing them as the savages that they are.

From Hugh at JihadWatch:

A summing-up, from an article by Nidra Poller:

“A Metulla News Agency (www.menapress.com for those who read French) release reports that 50 targets were hit simultaneously in the first wave of bombing, scoring 97% of direct hits in the space of 3 minutes. 50 additional targets were hit in the second wave.

Most of the command posts, military bases, arms factories, and arsenals were damaged or destroyed. Tunnel personnel came scurrying out of their underground enterprises near the Egyptian border as the bombings shook the earth.

Noting that Hamas spokesman Fawzi Baroum gave shooting orders—over the radio– to rocket launchers near the Israeli border, the Metulla reporter supposes that the military communications network was destroyed.

An airstrike against a building where Hamas military and political personnel had just gathered for an emergency meeting indicates, according to the same source, information gathered from human intelligence on the ground.

The Metulla News Agency release concludes that Hamas, caught by surprise by “the timing, the scope, and the precision of the attack,” is desperately searching for some civilian victims to display as proof of an Israeli massacre.”

This is indeed a sad story but it should be noted that this British rag of a paper, the Independent/UK,  never uses the word “sad” when Jews are killed by Muslim savages.  Via British rag:

“It is a sad fact, but it remains a fact, that a lot of Christians are leaving,” says Victor Batarseh, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem. One charge is that Muslims have been taking over Christian lands with the Palestinian authorities turning a blind eye. Yusuf Nassir, 57, is looking for a way to emigrate. “My house was attacked [by Muslims] over nothing. There was a dispute between a Muslim and a Christian boy, this turned into a communal fight and then around 70 men turned on us.” Nicola Lolas, 38, says: “What we are seeing now is organized extortion from some Muslims….In each case they have been forced to pay compensation even though they have done nothing wrong.” Mrs. Lolas says: “As an uncovered Christian woman I get insulted a lot more by Muslim men than I used to.”

The LA times is as detestable as the BBC in its anti-Israel bias.  Via CAMERA:

In a news article about the origins of uranium particles found at the Syrian site bombed by Israel in September 2007, Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times severely distorts the report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The article states: “‘The only explanation for the presence of these modified uranium particles is that they were contained in the missiles dropped from the Israeli planes,’ the [IAEA] report said.”

Yet the IAEA report did not make this statement.

Rather, as a matter of record, the IAEA report quotes word for word a Syrian letter which included this statement. But nowhere does the IAEA report confirm the Syrian claim.

Unh-unh.  Via WND:

Barack Obama’s campaign cries of “change” mimic those of Jimmy Carter’s campaign rhetoric in the 1970s. Carter chose the shah of Iran, one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East, as his scapegoat for change. I can only stand and wonder which American ally will take the brunt of Obama’s presidential aspirations. Our only real ally in the Middle East is Israel; if elected, would Obama sell Israel down the river just as Carter did the shah of Iran?

Early in his presidential campaign, Barack Obama added former Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to his own list of “advisers.” Brzezinski, of course, got himself into trouble early in his role as adviser when he published an essay in the summer issue of the journal Foreign Policy, defending a controversial new book about the power of the “Israel Lobby” in American politics. One of Brzezinski’s first jobs as adviser was to defend Obama’s plan, if elected, to meet with Iran and Syria: “What’s the hand-up about negotiating with the Syrians or Iranians?” asked Brzezinski. “What it in effect means is that you only talk to people who agree with you.” People who agree with you? I, for one, would like to know just why Obama would want to talk with Iran’s president who denies the Holocaust, has called Israel a “stinking corpse” and vowed to wipe it off the map.

Another man from whom Obama sought advice was Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund. Cirincione is said to have decidedly anti-Israel leanings. Ed Lasky, writer for American Thinker, wrote that Cirincione was “another in a disconcertingly long line of Obama advisers, who seemingly have an anti-Israel bias and who would be very willing to apply American pressure on our tiny ally to disarm itself in the face of its mortal enemies.”

I might also add here that Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef seemed delighted with Mr. Obama: “We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections.” Obama also drew a pseudo-endorsement from Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani during a stop-over in Bahrain. Larijani purported that “Iran would prefer Democrat Barack Obama in the White House next year.” Larijani also dismissed any idea that the U.S. would attack Iran. “We are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is more flexible and rational, even though we know American policy will not change that much.”

h/t Daily Alert. The Muhammad Al-Dura Blood Libel: A Case Analysis:

After eight years the Muhammad al-Dura affair will be independently investigated in France starting next month. Analyzing the eight-year process shows the impact of the media on soiling Israel’s image. This goes much farther than the extremely negative impact of the affair itself. Falsely accusing the IDF of murdering a defenseless Palestinian boy led to mass demonstrations against Israel and the Jews around the world. It also contributed to riots by Arabs in Israel in October 2000. It also opened the door to the mainstreaming of comparing Israelis to Nazis.

See also Expose the Muhammad al-Dura Hoax

HonestReporting isn’t very popular with Independent columnist Johann Hari who prefers to attack us rather than address his one-sided opinion pieces. At the risk of being accused again by Hari of attempting to shut down his freedom of speech, we take a look at his latest efforts to smear Israel in an article full of shortcomings:

• Hari is adept at employing inappropriate or inaccurate imagery and almost immediately mentions the ”military’s blockade of Gaza – reducing it to rubble just a short drive from hi-tech Tel Aviv“. In reality, with or without the current ceasefire, Israel has certainly not been reducing Gaza to “rubble”. Israel also has no apologies to make for building a state that includes “hi-tech” Tel Aviv and other highly developed cities in stark contrast to Palestinian mismanagement of their own resources.
• With no context and the implication that Israel acts aggressively out of sheer malice, Hari refers to “how desensitised Israel has become to the violence committed in its name” and how “the potential indictment for war crimes of Livni’s main rival, Shaul Mofaz, was barely an issue.” There is a simple reason why this was barely an issue – this apparent “story” as reported by The Independent itself, refers to one letter from an Israeli professor urging the Attorney General to investigate Mofaz based on allegations published by journalists in a book. Hari (and The Independent at the time) have simply embellished a non-story.
• Employing guilt by association, Hari smears Livni as a supporter of terrorism: “In theory, the winner Livni should be in a strong position to understand nationalist “terrorists” who have planted bombs on buses and in cafיs – because she was raised by them.” This, despite the fact that Livni is intimately involved in current peace talks with the Palestinian Authority and is a leading proponent of a two-state solution. Can Hari not see the absurdity of his smear at the same time as a generation of Palestinian children have been and are actively being brought up on an education of hatred and violence towards Israel?
• In seeking to smear Tzipi Livni, Hari also leaves himself open to the charge that he does not believe that Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians is terrorism. Hari places the word “terrorism” in quotation marks in the following thus not making it entirely clear whether or not planting bombs on buses and in cafes is terrorism, whoever carries out such an act. He does, however, refer to “Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel“. In Israel’s War of Independence, those Arabs who “were trying to prevent” Israel’s creation were engaged in acts of violence and terror against Israeli civilians and were certainly not the benign “Arab civilians” that Hari seeks to portray.
• After referring to Livni’s family as “terrorists”, Hari reveals a hidden admiration for Palestinian violence. While implying that Livni’s upbringing was marred by “tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafיs and hotels,” Hari suddenly reverses gears and defends these same types of actions – when carried out by the Palestinians against Israel. “How would Livni’s parents have responded to mass punishment – blockades, checkpoints, bullets? Would they shrug and surrender?” he asks, apparently defending blowing up civilians in suicide bombings and firing rockets indiscriminately at civilian residential areas. For Hari, there is no limit to his finger pointing at Israel. He blames Israel both for being terrorist and for fighting terrorism.
• A theme running through many of Hari’s opinion pieces is the placing of blame solely on Israel’s shoulders. Palestinians bear no responsibility for their situation in Hari’s eyes. Hari refers to blockades, checkpoints and bullets as “mass punishment”, while omitting any mention of Palestinian terrorism and the need for Israeli measures to defend her civilians. Likewise, according to Hari, the Oslo process was “rigged in Israel’s favour”, despite the fact that Oslo was a bilateral process that the Palestinians were also responsible for.
• Hari’s limited understanding of the conflict is apparent when he claims that “Stripped of a state, they [Palestinian nationalists] are fighting for one – and every Israeli attack makes them more radical and enraged.” Putting aside the fact that Palestinians were never stripped of a state (a sovereign Palestinian state has never existed and the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected those opportunities to create one such as the Arab rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan), how can Hari ignore the priorities of the radical Islamist Hamas, which aims at the destruction of Israel ahead of any aspirations to Palestinian statehood?

Yet again, Johann Hari has written an op-ed full of holes and open to criticism. Hari has previously demonstrated that he is rather sensitive to such criticism. Despite Hari’s protestations, it is your right to use the information above and send your considered comments to The Independent – letters@independent.co.uk