Gaza Casualties: The NY Times Sticks By Its Story. Is There a Bigger Subtext in the Paper's Gaza Coverage?

Hamas funeral

It comes down to who you believe. The Palestinian Ma'an News Agency says  that three Gaza dead were fighters, not civilians.  The Times' reporter in Gaza, a man whose father was tragically killed by an Israeli bomb in the 2009 Cast Lead operation, appears to be the one claiming they were civilians.

Yesterday's posting raised the question of the number of Gaza civilians killed in the latest round of the Hamas-Israel war.  The Times claimed "about half" of the 18 dead were civilians.  In response, and after researching the background of each casualty, this blog concluded that only five were civilians (and at least four of them were in close proximity to rocket launches). The other 13 were fighters. [April 14: another Hamas fighter, Mahdi Jumaa Abu Azara, died of the wounds he suffered in Rafah last week, bringing the total number of fighters to 14 out of 19 killed.]

In response, the New York Times correspondent, Isabel Kershner, emailed today:

"You appear to base your assertion that four of them were Qassam fighters on a report from the Maan news agency. Our Gaza correspondent reported at the time that three of them were in fact non-combatants, but civilians collecting gravel from the old airport.There were two incidents of Israeli fire in the area that afternoon, one which killed a Hamas fighter, and another that killed the other three men."

"Our Gaza correspondent has re-checked his information and says that the three are widely regarded in Gaza as having been non-combatants. No militant group has claimed them as members, which would be highly unusual if they indeed belonged to one. I personally have checked the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Arabic website, where fallen 'resistance fighters,' or Mujahadin, are honored. Only one is honored as having been killed on April 7 -- Saleh al-Tarabin."

To reiterate yesterday's posting, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an stated they were "resistance fighters" of the Al Qassam Brigade.  The ages of the three - 18, 23, and 25 -  also suggests that they were fighters, not gravel scroungers. 

The first Ma'an article stated, "[Israeli] raids hit targets in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis. The strikes killed four, identified as resistance fighters affiliated with Hamas. A statement from the Al-Qassam Brigades identified those killed as leader Salah Tarabin, 38, Musab al-Sufi, 18, Muhammad Almanmom, 25, and Khaled Aldbari, 23."

The second Ma'an article, reporting on their funeral, stated, "In Rafah, Al-Qassam members Saleh At-Tarabeen, 38, Mus’ab As-Sufi, 18, Mohammad Al-Mahmoum, 25, and Khaled Ad-Diyari, 33, were marched from the Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, toward their homes, and then to the Ash-Shuhda Cemetery for burial."

Problematic Reporting from Gaza

Presumably, the "Gaza correspondent" Kershner has been checking with is the Gaza reporter, Fares Akram, who has been filing stories for the Times.

Writing for a western publication, particularly one as well-known at the New York Times, must be a very difficult assignment for a Palestinian reporter in Gaza.  Last month Reuters' offices in Gaza were raided by Hamas security forces, reporters were beaten and computers were smashed.  "Severe harassment by Palestinian Authority and Hamas security forces targeting Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza has had a pronounced chilling effect on freedom of expression," the Human Rights Watch warned on April 12.

NY Times' Fares Akram

Akram, writing in 2009 for the British Independent, wrote of his father's tragic death at the start of the Cast Lead operation in an article, "The death and life of my father." Here are some poignant and telling excerpts.

A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time. It was our beloved place, that farm and its two-storey white house with a red roof. ...Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48....The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either.

The Israelis may say there were militants in the area of our farm, but I'll never believe it. The most advanced point for rocket-launchers is 6km south. Up at the border, it is just open farmland with nowhere to hide. My father, Akrem al-Ghoul, was no militant. Born in Gaza and educated in Egypt, he was a lawyer and a judge who worked for the Palestinian Authority. After Hamas took over, he quit and turned to agriculture. Dad's father, Fares, who had been driven out of his home in what is now Israeli Ashkelon in 1948, had bought the land in the 1960s.

My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain. But, in truth, as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza. What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket?

After the experience of local stringers distorting news coming out of Gaza and the West Bank during hostilities, it must be asked: Is the Times' reporter in Gaza not under constant Hamas threats? Is his reporting influenced by the tragic loss of his father?

The Times had to deal with this issue last year

The New York Times was faced with a serious dilemma last year when it was revealed that its Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner had a son serving in the Israeli army.  The Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, discussed whether Bronner's coverage of Israel involved a conflict of interest and recommended that Bronner be reassigned.  The paper's executive editor, Bill Keller, rejected Hoyt's advice and kept Bronner at his post.  Here's Keller's explanation:

"My point is not that Ethan’s family connections to Israel are irrelevant. They are significant, and both he and his editors should be alert for the possibility that they would compromise his work.... I do know he has reported scrupulously and insightfully on Israelis and Palestinians for many years. And I have no doubt that if a situation arose that presented a real conflict of interest, as opposed to an imaginary or hypothetical one, we would discuss it, and he would not hesitate to recuse himself."

The Bronner-Akram predicaments could help formulate a journalistic axiom: Reporters who are critical of Arab regimes risk their lives.  It would be surprising if their reporting were not distorted.  On the other hand, Israel-based reporters who are critical of Israel and its government are admired by their colleagues and know they will never be punished by Israel. 

Was there a fraction of the sturm und drang over Akram's hiring as there was over Bronner's? Maybe there should be.

Post Script: Kershner's Criticism

Ms. Kershner was critical of yesterday's blog posting.  "I respect your and our right to dispute the figures," she wrote, "and thank you for drawing attention to an important issue, but it is unfortunate that everything was made so public before I even had a chance to check the information at our end and respond to you."

Everything made so public?  And the New York Times' goldstoning of Israel and describing the school bus attack as having taken place in Gaza are not public?  The Times' fact-checking of such a contentious issue should have been done before publication.  The response to the Times' original article was meticulously researched and sourced.  Ms. Kershner's defense of the "about half" civilian claim is based on a Gaza correspondent's impressions and on the absence of three names on a Hamas casualty list. Hardly proof, especially when a Palestinian publication states differently.

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The New York Times Goldstones Israel Again. Doubles the Number of Civilian Casualties in Gaza

There in the middle of an article about Justin Bieber's visit to Israel, The New York Times' Isabel Kershner goldstones Israel. 

"Last Thursday, a 16-year-old Israeli boy was critically wounded by an antitank missile fired by Hamas militants at a school bus in [SIC] Gaza.* That triggered days of intense exchanges of fire, during which 18 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, were killed."

So how much is "about half" of 18?  How many dead civilians? Eight? Nine? Ten?

Actually, the real number of civilians killed is five.  It's relatively easy to find out just by looking at Arab sources in English.  And according to Arab sources, four were in close proximity to terrorists firing missiles at Israel.

   ---  Late Breaking: See Ms. Kershner's response below  and a newer second response ---


A list of the 18 dead can be found below and on the site of Muslim News. Next to the names, I identified them as "fighters" or "civilians."  That determination is based on linked articles in the Muslim News, the Palestinian Maan News Agency or Human Rights Watch.

1. Mahmoud Al Manasra, 50, Al Shijaeyya. Civilian
2. Mohammad Al Mahmoum, 25, Rafah.  Fighter
3. Mosab Al Sufi, 18, Rafah.  Fighter
4. Saleh Al Tarabeen, 38, Rafah.  Fighter
5. Khaled Ad-Dabary, 23, Rafah.  Fighter
6. Mo’taz Abu Jame’, Khan Younis.  Fighter
7. Abdullah Al Qarra, Khan Younis.  Fighter
8. Nidal Qdeih, 21, Khan Younis.  Civilian
9. Najah Qdeih, 48, Khan Younis.  Civilian
10. Talal Abu Taha, 55, Khan Younis.  Civilian
11. Raed Shihada, 27, northern Gaza.  Fighter
12. Bilal Al ‘Ar’ir, 23, Al Shijaeyya.  Fighter
13. Mahmoud Al Jaro, 10, Al Shijaeyya.  Civilian
14. Ahmad Ghorab, northern Gaza.  Fighter
15. Mohammad Awaja, Rafah.  Fighter
16. Taiseer Abu Sneima, Rafah.  Fighter
17. Ahmad Al Zeitouniyya, northern Gaza.  Fighter
18. Zuheir Al Bir, Al Zeitoun neighborhood – Gaza.  Fighter

According to Human Rights Watch, "Kamal al-Manasra, a relative of Mahmoud Al Mansara (number 1), who lives next door, and Sami Harazen, said that about 3 p.m. they heard what sounded like a small rocket being launched from somewhere in or near the neighborhood.... 'Two minutes after the rocket, I heard a shell hit my uncle's [Mahmoud's] house,' said Kamal al-Manasra. 'My uncle and his son and brother went over to check on the house, and while they were returning another shell fell on my uncle and killed him.' Harazen gave a similar account, though he believed the Israeli response occurred less than one minute after the rocket launch."

In the case of Nidal (8) and Najah (9) Qdeih, Nidal's uncle Fayez Qdeiah told Human Rights Watch that "he heard three mortars fired by Palestinian armed groups from somewhere nearby."

Human Rights Watch also places another civilian next to a rocket-launching terrorist. "Residents of Shajaiya told Human Rights Watch that members of the armed wing of Islamic Jihad fired mortar rounds from a cemetery in the middle of the neighborhood.... Shortly after the mortar attack, at around 7 p.m., an Israeli strike hit the cemetery but caused no casualties, residents said. About 10 to 15 children from the area ran into the cemetery to look at the strike site. Five minutes later, residents said, a second strike hit the area, killing one of the children, Mahmoud Wael al-Jaro (13), and a member of Islamic Jihad named Bilal al-Areer (12).

View the rocket in the cemetery in this video released by the Israel Defense Forces.

I am thankful for Ms. Kirshner's rapid response:

The school bus in Gaza was obviously an editing error, and I have asked for it to be corrected.

As for the civilian casualty figures, our reporting of the numbers has been based on the information provided by our correspondent in Gaza. I can already see a discrepancy in that your list has all the men killed in Rafah as fighters, whereas he identified three of four killed there on the first day as civilians collecting gravel near the old airport, if I remember rightly.  Anyway we have asked for a thorough check and hope to have results soon.

The Times' reliance on local Palestinian stringers and reporters is a serious problem for the western press in general.  During the second Intifada, it meant that many reports and dispatches were not factual, to say the least.  I responded to The New York Times correspondent:

The listing of the four Rafah men as “fighters” is based on this Maan news report. Notice the pictures of the military funerals, as well. It appears pretty conclusive.

Thursday's Gaza dead laid to rest

Published Friday 08/04/2011 (updated) 09/04/2011 12:00

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Thousands marched in Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza City after Friday prayers, carrying the bodies of seven men killed by Israeli fire the day before. Six of the dead were Al-Qassam fighters, and a seventh a 50-year-old civilian. In Rafah, Al-Qassam members Saleh At-Tarabeen, 38, Mus’ab As-Sufi, 18, Mohammad Al-Mahmoum, 25, and Khaled Ad-Diyari, 33, were marched from the Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, toward their homes, and then to the Ash-Shuhda Cemetery for burial….

We are looking forward to the Times' "thorough check."

* The Times corrected the location of the bus attack: "Last Thursday, a 16-year-old Israeli boy was critically wounded by an antitank missile fired by Hamas militants from Gaza at a school bus in Israel. That triggered days of intense exchanges of fire, during which 18 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, were killed."

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Sayeret Hasbara: No Truth to Canard that Israel Seeks to Expel West Bankers. The Charge Hides What Arab States Are Doing to Palestinians

Another day, another anti-Israel canard.

[See Update below, Wednesday, 4.14]

The latest one claims that new Israeli regulations could lead to the "deportation of thousands of West Bank Palestinians." The Arab League is apoplectic. Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed that it's a step by Israel toward "ethnic cleansing" of the West Bank. But, those tents in the picture do not house Palestinians forced out of the West Bank. Continue reading to see what Arab country expelled them.

Actually, the new Israeli regulation updates laws that have been in place in Judea and Samaria for years. Illegal residents may be deported -- not an unheard of concept. Illegal immigrants are deported from countries all over the world.

According to the Israeli Army, which has jurisdiction in the West Bank, "The purpose of the order which was signed by the ... central command and which is scheduled to become effective on April 14th is the extradition of those residing illegally in Judea and Samaria. This is a preexisting order which has no change with regard to who is illegal or illegal. This is a correction to ensure judicial oversight of the extradition process." [Emphasis added. Can it be that the change actually serves to provide more legal rights to the illegal resident?]

Such regulations actually serve the Palestinian Authority purposes, as well, by allowing for deportation of Hamas-supporters from Gaza or foreign anarchist rabble-rousers who travel from one anti-Israel hotspot to the next. The Palestinian Ma'an news agency carries a headline today: "Hamas: PA responsible for Israeli expulsion orders."

[Update, 4.14.10: The Jerusalem Post provides more information today:

“The purpose of the [amended] orders is to IMPROVE [capital letters in the original] the current situation rather than worsen it,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor wrote. “Pursuant to the recommendations of the High Court, a joint judicial committee of Jewish and Arab judges will deliberate on each case of potential repatriation. The committee will make a decision within eight days of having a case brought before it.”

Maj. Peter Lerner, IDF Central Command spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post that the only change created by the new orders was the establishment of a clear legal procedure that gave the subject of the order the chance to appeal before a tribunal instead of, as until now, the military commander who issued the order. Lerner said that over the past three years, there had been only 30-60 expulsions per year. "There will not be an increase in the volume as a result of the new orders,” he added.]

But, meanwhile, what happens to Palestinians in the Arab world?

In recent years, Jordan began a process of revoking Jordanian citizenship from Palestinians. In a February 2010 report, Human Rights Watch said that 2,700 people in Jordan had their citizenship revoked from 2004 to 2008, and that at least another 200,000 remained vulnerable, largely those who moved abroad at some point in search of work.

According to the New York Times, the Jordanian government "says it is trying to help [sic] by requiring Jordanians of Palestinian descent who fled the West Bank or Jerusalem after the war in 1967 to keep their Israeli documents valid."

The 60-page HRW report, "Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality", details "the arbitrary manner, with no clear basis in law, in which Jordan deprives its citizens who were originally from the West Bank of their nationality, thereby denying them basic citizenship rights such as access to education and health care."

In Iraq, tens of thousands of Palestinians, once the favorites of Saddam Hussein, now find themselves living in squalor or endangered by sectarian violence. Some 400,000 Palestinians were evicted from Kuwait after the 1990 Gulf War and many settled in Iraq. Some 3,000 Palestinians are stuck in make-shift camps along the Iraqi-Syrian border, where the picture above was taken. Hundreds of Palestinians are being resettled by the UNHCR (unlike UNRWA, the UNHCR resettles refugees and doesn't perpetuate their status and squalor for three or four generations) in Romania, Scandinavia, Chile and the United States.

Human Rights Watch described the Iraqi's terrible plight several years ago: "The Iraqi government bears considerable responsibility for the plight of the country's Palestinians. Elements of the Ministry of Interior have been implicated in the arbitrary detention, torture, killing, and 'disappearance' of Palestinians. Despite their status as refugees, Iraqi Palestinians have been subjected to new and extremely burdensome registration requirements, providing a venue for bureaucratic hostility."

So Arab countries and the Arab League will continue to bray at Israel in order to mask the cries of Palestinians in their own back yards. The Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas was right in his statement to the Washington Post last year: "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life."

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ElBaradei "Outs" Himself

Mohamed Mostafa ElBaradei served as the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for 12 long years (1997-2009). He was supposed to be the UN's watchdog guarding against illegal and dangerous nuclear violations around the world.

So what did he do to stop the development of the Iranian bomb? Nothing. Nada. Bubkis. Actually, he gave cover to the Iranians by claiming that there were no nuclear violations in the Islamic republic.

ElBaradei is loved in Tehran where he declared last year that "Israel was the biggest threat to the security of the Middle East."

Lo and behold, soon after ElBaradei's retirement, the IAEA released a real, well-researched report stating that it had "extensive" and "credible" information and "concerns about the possible existence in Iran of ... current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," and "concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program.''

Since retiring, ElBaradei threw his hat into Egyptian politics, looking to replace President Hosni Mubarak. As part of his campaign, he came out of the closet this week revealing himself as the Israel-hater many observers believed him to be while he was serving at the IAEA.

First, ElBaradei denounced the deep metal barrier Egypt is building along its border with Gaza in order to block Hamas tunnels and smuggling activity. According to the Daily News of Egypt today, "He also said that Israel only understands the language of force, and that the Arabs should back their peace proposals with the language of force and defiance. 'We have been talking about peace for the past 20 years but no progress is witnessed in the Palestine cause,' he said."

ElBaradei served his Iranian buddies well for 12 years, turning a blind eye to Iran's massive efforts to build the Bomb. Now ElBaradei is apparently turning his sights on leading Egypt and the Arab world into war with Israel. He's a dangerous man.

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A Hamas Endorsement of Netanyahu and Lieberman?

The rockets and mortar shells that fall on Israel will shift votes from Kadima and Labor to Israel’s conservative parties led by Likud’s Binyamin Netanyahu and Yisrael Beitenu’s Avigdor Lieberman. Every Kassam reminds voters in the south that the Molten Lead campaign ended too quickly; every Grad shows voters Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s reluctance to knock out Hamas rockets or recapture the Philadelphi route under which Hamas smuggles weapons.

Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens decried Barak’s misfeasance in a column in Ha’aretz today, “The IDF operation was late to get started, proceeded at a leisurely pace, and then halted before the objective of eliminating the Hamas capability to rocket Israel had been accomplished.”

Bombs and Ballots

The course of several European elections have been determined by terrorism. Witness the March 2004 train explosions in Madrid which killed 191 people three days before national elections. The new Socialist government quickly withdrew Spanish troops from the Iraqi coalition.

In Germany today, six months before national elections, al Qaeda tapes have surfaced demanding that German troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan. "The Islamists apparently want to influence Germany's election year 2009," said August Henning, a senior deputy in the Interior Ministry, in Bild am Sonntag. Jörg Ziercke, who heads up the Federal Criminal Police Office, said recently, "We have observed meaningful parallels to the situation in Spain." He was referring to the March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid, according to Der Spiegel on February 2.

Terrorists have already “cast their votes” in several previous Israeli elections. U.S. News’ Morton Zuckerman provided this wrap-up several years ago:

“The terrorism of the intifada in 2000 forced Ehud Barak out as prime minister, leaving the office to Ariel Sharon. Suicide bombings in February and March 1996 knocked Shimon Peres out of the prime minister's job. Prior to that, terrorism caused Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to lose an earlier election. And in an election in 1988, Peres lost following the firebombing of a mother and her three children near Jericho.”

So don’t look for any real Hamas efforts to enforce a ceasefire soon. Nothing would thrill Hamas, Iran and Hizbullah more than to see pictures of Israeli voters scrambling for shelter as they stand in line to vote in Ashkelon or Sderot.

Why would Hamas prefer a conservative government in Israel? Maybe they have swallowed the election campaign propaganda claiming that, if elected, a Netanyahu government will inevitably clash with the Obama administration. Hamas simply cannot understand the respect two democratically-elected governments have for each other, even if they have policy differences.

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Israel, Dirty Harry and Bob Dylan

Internet surfers of the Op-Ed postings this morning (January 8) hit anti-Israel shoals in the New York Times and Washington Post. Three Op-Ed writers – Jimmy Carter, Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof – paid perfunctory lip service to Israel’s right to defend its citizens, but then they trivialized Israel’s casualties and complained that the rockets didn’t warrant Israel’s tough response.

Carter: “Although [Israeli] casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years) Sderot was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions… We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved.”

Cohen: “But what of the intolerable Hamas rockets on Sderot, the 20 Israelis killed by those rockets since 2005 (four of them in the current violence)? … Yes, there has to be a response to Hamas, but this is the wrong one…. I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions.”

Kristof: “Israel’s right to do something doesn’t mean it has the right to do anything. Since the shelling from Gaza started in 2001, 20 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets or mortars, according to a tabulation by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that has killed more than 660 people.”

Kristof has the chutzpah to tell Israel what it should have done instead. Bomb the tunnels, he suggests, or even better “would have been to ease the siege in Gaza, perhaps creating an environment in which Hamas would have extended the cease-fire.”

In other words, the war was Israel’s fault. Kristof’s call to “create an environment” for Hamas is usually called appeasement.

Herschel Cohen and Robert Zimmerman

My mind whirled: where did I hear such a spineless argument before? Where had I witnessed such a bunch of unprincipled namby-pambies? Then I remembered a frustrated Californian cop I met 25 years ago. I’m sure he was an Israeli named Herschel Cohen who had changed his name to Harry Callahan. He hated departmental paperwork and procedure. On the force he was nicknamed “Dirty Harry” because, as his partner explained, “They call him ‘Dirty’ Harry [because] he gets the shit end of the stick every time.” Isn’t that enough proof that Harry was an Israeli?

When Herschel/Harry beat to a pulp a serial rapist-murderer who was released on a technicality, he was admonished by the District Attorney:

Where the hell does it say you've got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel. Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I'm saying is, that man had rights.
Callahan: Well, I'm all "broken up" about that man's rights.
District Attorney: You should be. I've got news for you, Callahan. As soon as he's well enough to leave the hospital, he walks. ...
Callahan: And who says that?
District Attorney: It's the law.
Callahan: Well then, the law is crazy!

Today, Herschel’s bosses would probably demand that he use a Taser to subdue a perp on angel dust, and if he had to shoot he had to use a small caliber gun and shoot to wound.

But Harry would never follow those orders. He would use his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, [that could] blow your head clean off.”

Dirty Harry was certainly not loved, but he was respected in his neighborhood. Yes, he got shot and beaten up, but he survived.

Respect for the Bully

Harry Callahan probably had one atypical eight-track cassette in his car– a Bob Dylan album, Infidel. And Harry would listen to only one song on that cassette: Neighborhood Bully. It was – and is – a strong, defiant defense of Israel. Here are two stanzas:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back,
he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Click to hear Neighborhood Bully. Click here to read the lyrics.

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Hamas' Favorite Fauxtographer and Crocodile Tears for Terrorists

Khalil Hamra, the AP "fauxtographer" who provided last week's picture of a "wounded" Gaza man next to three apparently healthy toddlers in a hospital, has snapped again.

The lead picture in dozens of newspapers today, including The Washington Post, showed a teary teen and this caption: "Palestinian relatives of Hamas militant Sami Lobad, who was killed in an Israeli missile strike, react during his funeral in Beit Lahiya. (Khalil Hamra-AP)

"Hamas militant" is newspeak for a terrorist. If Sami Lobad is identified as a dead "militant" killed in the last week, then he was either firing rockets at Israel's civilian population or was a bodyguard of master terrorist Nizar Rayyan, or was a Hamas fighter dedicated to Israel's destruction.

The world would be a better place if pictures of dead terrorists' mourners were not distributed by a major news agency or reproduced in Western newspapers.

Khalil Hamra's specialty appears to be photographing keeners at funerals. Here's another one of Hamra's shots from last month, with a portrait of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin looking down upon the scene:

Caption: Palestinian relatives of Hamas militant, Mohsen Al Qedra, react during his funeral in the family house in Khan Younis, Nov. 13, 2008. Al Qedra and three other Hamas militants were killed Wednesday as Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fought with missiles and mortars. (Khalil Hamra)

On November 12, the day before the funeral, Israeli paratroopers discovered Palestinian gunmen attempting to infiltrate into Israel from Gaza. Four of the gunmen, equipped with Kalashnikov guns and grenades, were killed. Presumably Al Qedra was one of them.

The AP photographer's online portfolio indicates that he also takes portraits of Palestinian babies and little children. Dead ones, of course. This blog will not reproduce the ghoulish and inciting pictures.

Other blog postings on Gaza:

Why Hasn't Israel Used Its Artillery in Gaza Yet?
Israel Is Also Facing Iran across the Gaza Border
Here Comes the Hamas Propaganda Attack

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Why Hasn't Israel Used Its Artillery in Gaza Yet?

Claims that Israel “massacred” or “slaughtered” innocent Palestinians are bald-faced lies.

Israel takes unprecedented precautions to avoid hurting innocent civilians. Gazan civilians actually received telephone calls from the IDF last week warning of impending attacks. Even master terrorist Nizar Rayyan (pictured right), the Hamas military commander killed in Thursday's air raid on his home, received a warning to evacuate his family. He refused, preferring martyrdom for his family over life. Rayyan once dispatched one of his own sons to carry out a suicide bombing. Few tears are being shed for Rayyan, especially in the Palestinian Authority who Rayyan hated as much as he despised Israel.

All of the attacks on Hamas until now have been carried out by the Israel Air Force, but frankly, it just doesn’t make any sense. All targets within Gaza are within range of Israeli artillery or MLRS rockets. Artillery shells are much cheaper than air-delivered bombs and missiles. Artillery can be directed against targets 24/7 and are not limited by bad weather. Send up a plane to hit a Hamas target in Gaza, and the pilot and a $35 million plane are both at risk.

There is only one reason for artillery not being used: It is not as accurate as an attack from the air. Civilians could be hit.

If Israel meant to “massacre” innocent civilians, it certainly has the means. The IDF can eradicate Hamas fighters and anyone within a mile radius without jeopardizing its soldiers. But Israel has repeatedly put its soldiers in harm's way in order to protect Palestinian civilians. Evidence the 23 IDF soldiers killed in close quarter combat in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Blasting away at the alleyways of Jenin with artillery or tank fire would have spared their lives but would have killed countless civilians. The military tactics of Russia, Syria or the Palestinians simply do not exist in the IDF playbook.

To recall, during the Chechen war in the 1990s the Russians carpet-bombed Grozny. Russia allegedly fired missiles into the Grozny market and a local maternity ward. The Syrians are known for playing according to “Hama rules” -- named for a Syrian stronghold of Moslem Brotherhood supporters. Hama was pulverized by Syrian tanks and artillery for three weeks in 1982 resulting in the death of anywhere from 7,000 to 30,000 people. Don’t forget Hamas itself. The Islamic organization made suicide bombings a science, targeting buses, pizza shops and restaurants. During its war with Fatah last year, Hamas threw Fatah enemies off of hi-rise apartment buildings; others were spared when they were only "knee-capped." Last week, Hamas gunmen roamed hospital corridors in Gaza executing their enemies.

When Israel launches its ground assault against Hamas, tragically Palestinian civilians will be hurt or killed. Israel’s government, citizens and soldiers will regret each and every one of them.

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Israel Is Also Facing Iran across the Gaza Border --What's at Stake

Those 40 km missiles Hamas is unleashing against Israeli cities are certainly not the “amateur rockets…nagging the residents” of Israeli cities, as a Palestinian journalist recently wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. And Hamas may still surprise Israel with longer-range missiles.

The press calls the rockets “Grads” or “Katyushas,” the Russian name given several generations ago to the original Soviet-made surface-to-surface missiles. Today, it would be more correct to label some of the missiles by their real name, the “Arash,” the name given to them by their Iranian manufacturers. The long-range 120 mm mortars (pictured) raining down on Israel are also Iranian in origin. The mortars are equipped with auxiliary motors to increase their range from six to ten kilometers, reports the IICC think tank.

The Jerusalem Post reports today that the longest range Grads were manufactured in China and that some of them were smuggled to Hamas via Iran. Visitors to Sderot's rocket heap (like Mr. Obama above) can view Iranian-made weapons.

Earlier this year both the Iranian Arashes and mortars were fired from Gaza with deadly results. In February 2008 the mortars were fired at Kibbutz Sa’ad; in June the mortars were used against Kibbutz Nirim, killing one and wounding four, and in November, eight soldiers were wounded by such a mortar at Nahal Oz. The Arash missiles were fired against Ashkelon on several occasions during 2008.

The Long History of Palestinian-Iranian Cooperation

The Islamic Republic worked closely with Yasser Arafat for decades, particularly after the Oslo agreements granted Arafat a foothold in the Palestinian territories. Arafat’s relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini predates the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Former CIA senior officer Robert Baer details the Iranian-Palestinian relationship in See No Evil, The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. “Arafat had put his entire worldwide terrorist network at Iran’s disposal,” Baer pointed out. “Having been forced out of Beirut in 1982 by the Israelis, he had handed it over lock, stock, and barrel to the Iranians for safekeeping.”

The liaison between Arafat and Iran was maintained by none other than master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, a former member of Arafat’s Force 17, the mastermind of anti-American bombings in Lebanon, the man behind the bombings of Israeli and Jewish institutions in Argentina, and the alleged chief planner for the 2006 Hizbullah war against Israel. Mughniyeh met a just end when he was killed in his car by a bomb in a Damascus suburb in February 2008.

Iran undertook a major operation to supply weapons to the Palestinians. Click to see the massive inventory of the Santorini and Karine-A ships captured by Israel in 2001 and 2002, including dozens of Arash missiles and hundreds of 120 mm mortars. After the capture of the ships, it can be assumed that Iran dispatched new arms shipments which made their way to Gaza through the Sinai tunnels and other seaborne smuggling efforts. Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles and the anti-tank Saggers were also captured on the ships, and they too are presumably now in the Palestinian arsenal and will be used against Israeli aircraft and tanks.

Was the Islamic University in Gaza also an Iranian Base?

When Israeli air force jets bombed the Islamic University in the Gaza, the BBC declared that “a significant cultural symbol for Hamas” had been hit. It is evident that the university was also a major part of Hamas’ weapons development and storage network.

“The Islamic University was used as a base for Hamas gunmen,” a Fatah [Fatah, not Israeli!] spokesman told the New York Times in February 2008. “We didn’t attack the university because it was a university, but because gunmen were firing from there.”

A year earlier, Fatah-affiliated security officers captured an Iranian general at the school. They claimed he was “supervising the manufacturing weapons and explosives for Hamas,” according to Yediot Ahranot. “The source told Ynet that the expert was in charge of several labs in the university, mainly chemistry labs in which he trained Hamas activists, most of them women, manufacturing the explosives. At least five Iranian citizens were arrested during a raid at the Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold in Gaza City. Hundreds of weapons and a lathe for the production of Qassam rockets were seized in the raid. The Palestinian source added that at least 20 women, some of them students, were arrested in the labs supervised by the Iranian expert, who was mainly involved in developing shells and rockets, but also explosives. “

The Islamic University in Gaza was also a center for Hamas recruitment and training, according to other accounts.

If and when Israeli ground troops enter Gaza they will encounter extensive Hamas bunker and tunnel systems. Hundreds of Hamas tunnels from the Sinai keep Gaza armed and fed. Two years ago tunnels were used to attack an IDF unit and capture Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. But it should be recalled that the use of tunnels and extensive bunkers were tactics taught by Hizbullah and the Iranians. In July 2006, a garrulous officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard revealed to the Arabic publication Sharq al Awsat that Iranian diplomats smuggled North Korean experts into Lebanon under the guise of "domestic workers." They joined "hundreds of Iranian engineers and technicians… to build a 25 kilometer [!] tunnel." The officer did not reveal the location but bragged "each opening in this [tunnel] measures 12 to 18 square meters, and has a mobile floor and a semi-mobile ceiling. Each four openings are connected by a passage that allows fighters to pass easily [from one opening] to the other."

Israel is not facing a ragtag band of Palestinian thugs. (One silly analyst actually rejected the Israeli claim of “self-defense.” The Gaza war is the confrontation of “a state and a networked organization,” she wrote, “like the US Army fighting the Salvation Army.”)

No, this confrontation is yet another round of Israel versus Iran and its proxies. It is a lengthy war fought in the open in Gaza and Lebanon and fought in the shadows in attacks against Israeli and Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires, or against the weapons supply routes between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, or in the assassination of a master terrorist in Damascus. In such a war, cease-fires can only be a temporary respite, at best, not a basis for peace.

Michael Young, the editorial editor at the Beirut Daily Star, provides this perspective from his precarious perch:

"What we see developing in the Middle East is an accelerating counterattack by non-state actors such as Hamas, Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad, all backed by a rising Iran, against the majority of Arab states committed to a negotiated peace with Israel. Manipulating the emotions that the fate of the Palestinians invariably release among Arabs, Tehran above all, but also the militant Islamist groups, are attempting to redraw the regional balance of power through a normalization of the armed struggle against Israel and a delegitimization of Arab states opposed to this."

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Update on the Gaza Propaganda War -- 6 PM EST

The Washington Post's website changed its photo essay and no longer shows Khalil Hamra's fake hospital shots. It even added a picture of damage done to an Israeli apartment by a Hamas Kassam rocket.

Meanwhile, the New York Times' slide show only shows the Palestinian side of the conflict. One caption goes so far as to describe "dozens of mutilated [Palestinian] bodies," thus suggesting another atrocity committed by Israel.

Note in the New York Times' photos how many of the dead or wounded are in uniform, but the Times' captions fail to make the point that they were combatants: "Palestinians gathered around bodies [in uniform]" or "Palestinians carried an injured man [wearing camouflage trousers]."

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Israel Attacks Hamas -- Here Comes the Hamas Propaganda Attack

As late as Friday, many Israeli citizens were pulling out their hair. Hamas rockets were falling like rain on Israeli civilians. What was Israel waiting for? Why was Israel allowing the delivery of supplies into Gaza? Why were Israeli hospitals treating Palestinians hurt by errant Hamas rockets?

Now we have some answers:

• The humanitarian assistance also served to lull Hamas into believing that Israel was going soft.


• The attack on the Jewish Sabbath was also unexpected by Hamas.


• Israeli intelligence was tracking, following, and marking the Hamas leadership, terrorist camps, and rocket crews for months. Hundreds of Hamas soldiers were caught in their bases. It can be assumed that aerial surveillance was able to retrace the steps of rocket crews to observe the locations of rocket warehouses and factories. As a result the Israeli Air Force attacks were remarkably accurate.

Now the Propaganda Counterattack

The blood libels against Israel have already begun. A British defense writer, Sean Rayment, blasted Israel in a Telegraph (UK) blog today, "The attack on the Gaza strip is proof that Israel is addicted to violence. Slaughtering 155 civilians, many of whom are women and children, can not be justified."

An absolute blood libel. No military force in the world is as careful as the Israeli Defense Forces in differentiating combatants from the civilians surrounding them. Note this report from Bloomberg: "Most of the Palestinian dead were members of the Hamas security forces, including police chief Tawfiq Jaber and the head of the organization’s Security and Protection Service, Ismail al-Jabary, said Taher Noono, a spokesman for Hamas. "

Pictures from Gaza indicate this fact. Note these photos of Palestinian security forces hit in their bases. These are uniformed combatants of a force that declared war on Israel, and they are very legitimate targets according to international law.

But now comes the "fauxtography" so prominent in the Lebanon war.

A Washington Post photo essay posted the two pictures above of the Palestinian combatants along with a picture of Palestinian wounded in a Gaza hospital. The picture was accompanied by this caption: Palestinian children and a man wounded in Israeli missile strikes are seen in the emergency area at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008. Israeli warplanes demolished dozens of Hamas security compounds across Gaza on Saturday in unprecedented waves of simultaneous air strikes. Gaza medics said at least 145 people were killed and more than 310 wounded in the single deadliest day in Gaza fighting in recent memory. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra) (Khalil Hamra - AP)

The children appear healthy. Would the photographer and caption writer, Khalil Hamra, fake a picture?

Yes.

Khalil Hamra is the credited AP photographer for many of the pictures of the International Solidarity Movement activities in Gaza, including those of Rachel Corrie. To recall, Rachel Corrie was an American activist who attempted to stop an Israeli bulldozer from destroying Gazan tunnels in 2003. Corrie slipped under the bulldozer, was killed and became a shaheed of the left. Hamra's pictures include this one of Corrie burning an American flag (left).

A search of Google images shows hundreds of Hamra's pictures of grieving Palestinians as well as Palestinian dead and wounded. His many pictures of Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and military exercises suggest that Hamra could almost serve as Hamas' official photographer.

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When Israel Saves Palestinians

Over the weekend, 188 Palestinian Fatah gunmen fled from Gaza to Israel to escape Hamas execution squads. Some had to be extracted by IDF soldiers under Hamas fire.

Later, PA President Mahmoud Abbas (safely ensconced in his West Bank redoubt) ordered the non-wounded men returned to Gaza where many were arrested by Hamas.

During the Hamas coup in Gaza in June 2007, Hamas assassins prowled Gaza hospitals to kill opponents lying wounded in their beds. With Hamas death squads throwing Fatah sympathizers off of hi-rise buildings, dozens of Fatah officials and gunmen, some “knee-capped” and severely wounded, fled to Israel where they were treated. (Pictured: Gazans fleeing through the Erez crossing point in 2007.) Shadi, a 23-year-old policeman, was attacked by Hamas gunmen: "There were five of them. They stood over me and shot my legs from the knee down. One of them put his Kalashnikov to my head. Instinctively I moved the barrel aside and the bullet hit my hand," Shadi told Ha'aretz. He arrived at Ichilov Hospital with one leg amputated and the other leg crushed.

History repeats itself in the most ironic manner. In 1970 Yasser Arafat attempted an armed takeover of Jordan, and King Hussein’s troops responded viciously in September 1970 (“Black September”). No quarter was given to the Palestinian fighters and civilians. Thousands died. Seventy-two Palestinians who were afraid of the Jordanian soldiers “chose to undertake the most humiliating action possible for them,” wrote one Israeli historian. They fled to the West Bank and surrendered to IDF soldiers.

Israel is often portrayed in the Arab press or on campuses as a genocidal monster starving, torturing or massacring Palestinians. But look where Palestinians fled in these three incidents -- to Israel.

And look at the news headlines this month and ask who is killing Palestinians:

• Five Palestinians Suffocate to Death after Egypt Blows up Tunnel (Ha’aretz)


• Roadside Bomb Wounds Fatah Commander in Lebanon (Washington Post)


• Three Palestinians Killed in Lebanon Refugee Camp Brawl (AFP)

Israel’s detractors are quick to blame Israel for the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp in Beirut perpetrated by a Lebanese Christian militia (estimates of the number of dead range between 800 and 1,500).

Last year, hundreds of Palestinians were believed to have been killed during a three-month battle when the Lebanese army leveled the Nahr-el Bared camp (pictured, right), home to an estimated 30,000 Palestinian refugees.

Nahr-el Bared was no different from the Tel al Zaatar refugee camp north of Beirut that was attacked during the 1976 Lebanese civil war by Christian militias supported by the Syrian army. (2,000 – 3,000 Palestinians were killed.)

After watching Palestinian fighters seeking Israeli shelter this week it is tempting to quote Menachem Begin’s comment after the Sabra and Shatilla massacre: “Goyim (gentiles) kill goyim, and they blame the Jews.” But one can also add, “Jews save goyim, and they still blame the Jews.”

Post Script: Wikipedia’s entry on Nahr al-Bared includes this line.

The different sectors of the camp are named after areas of what is now the northern Israeli Galilee region : Safourieh, Sasa, Safad, etc. Other sectors are more commonly known by the origins of the families living there: e.g. the "Maghrebi" area where families originally from Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco who had moved to Palestine in the 1930s now live.

Re-read this item carefully; its “hasbara” significance is so great that it will probably be excised from Wikipedia as a result of this blog posting. The Wiki item, presumably written by an Arab or UNRWA source, admits that Arabs from northern Africa emigrated to Palestine only a few years before the establishment of Israel. Some analysts have long argued that not all the refugees from 1948 were “native” Palestinians and that many came to Palestine because of the increase of employment opportunities that were generated by the Jewish immigration.

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Shiite Happens in the West Bank and Gaza

Israeli forces killed four top terrorists in Bethlehem yesterday, including Mohammed Shahade (pictured), a senior leader of PIJ – the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Get this straight: While Hamas receives Iranian support, PIJ is in effect Iran’s militia among the Palestinians -- just as Hizbullah serves Iran in Lebanon.

“Muhammad Shahade and the Islamic Jihad in Bethlehem were in direct contact with the Islamic Jihad leadership in Syria from which they received operational orders,” according to the IDF spokesman.

In this case, “leadership in Syria” means Iran.

Shahade was so close to Hizbullah that he was wrapped in a Hizbullah flag at his funeral. Veteran Israeli analyst Ehud Ya’ari reports that Shahade had converted to Shiite Islam. That’s an important development.

Palestinians are traditional Sunni Muslims. For many years suicide was not a prominent factor or religious element in the PLO’s terror war against Israel.

Ironically, Israel itself helped push the Sunni fundamentalist Hamas organization to adopt the Shi’ite Hizbullah’s suicidal and homicidal methods. In 1992, Israel deported some 400 Hamas members to Lebanon. There they were welcomed by Hizbullah who shared their theology as well as their expertise in constructing car bombs and deploying suicide bombers. Under international pressure and after a UN Security Council denunciation, Israel permitted the Hamas terrorists back into the territories after several months, and the Palestinian terror campaign took a more vicious turn.

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Recommended Reading: Jihadi Jew-Hatred

Jeffrey Goldberg reviews Matthias Küntzel’s new book, Islamis, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, in today’s New York Times. It’s not PC these days to charge Muslims with anti-Semitism (specifically, anti-Jewism, because Arab spokesmen are quick to respond, “We can't be anti-Semitic; we’re also Semites.”). But both Goldberg and Kuntzel bravely swim against the stream.

Writes Goldberg: The anti-Semitic worldview, generally speaking, is fantastically stupid. … Anti-Semitic conspiracy literature not only posits crude and senseless ideas, but also tends to be riddled with typos, repetitions and gross errors of grammar, and for this and other reasons I occasionally have trouble taking it seriously.

The German scholar Matthias Küntzel tells us this is a mistake. He takes anti-Semitism, and in particular its most potent current strain, Muslim anti-Semitism, very seriously indeed. His bracing, even startling, book, “Jihad and Jew-Hatred” reminds us that it is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if these idiotic ideas are broadly, and fervently, believed. And across the Muslim world, the very worst ideas about Jews — intricate, outlandish conspiracy theories about their malevolent and absolute power over world affairs — have become scandalously ubiquitous….

Küntzel makes a bold and consequential argument: the dissemination of European models of anti-Semitism among Muslims was not haphazard, but an actual project of the Nazi Party, meant to turn Muslims against Jews and Zionism. He says that in the years before World War II, two Muslim leaders in particular willingly and knowingly carried Nazi ideology directly to the Muslim masses. They were Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem (pictured), and the Egyptian proto-Islamist Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood….

Goldberg concludes: The former Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi once told me that “the question is not what the Germans did to the Jews, but what the Jews did to the Germans.” The Jews, he said, deserved their punishment. Küntzel argues that we should see men like Rantisi for what they are: heirs to the mufti, and heirs to the Nazis.

I recently wrote an article called Hamas Jungen (pending publication) that argues that not since the Nazis formed the Hitler Jungen have masses of children been brainwashed to worship death as they are in Palestinian schools, camps and TV. De-nazification was required then for Germany’s children. De-hamasification is the order of the day in the Middle East today.

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Analysis: That’s Not Rain Falling on Ashkelon Heads Will Israeli Government Respond to Katyusha Fire from Gaza?

A 122-mm Katyusha rocket was fired from Gaza this morning and fell in a residential neighborhood north of Ashkelon some 16 kms (10 miles) from the Gaza border. While no one was hurt, the ramifications for the region on the eve of President Bush’s visit could be immense.

For seven years Israel’s governments have been insensitive and obtuse to the plight of Israeli citizens of Sderot and environs who have suffered from the terror of the smaller Qassam rockets and mortars flying out of Gaza. But when 30-kilo Katyusha warheads fall on the heads of 100,000 Ashkelon residents and strategic targets such as a critical power plant and a port, maybe even Ehud Olmert will take note.




[Google Earth provides a satellite glimpse of the proximity between Ashkelon and Gaza. A map available at the University of Texas map collection online is a good reference for current and future events in and around the Gaza Strip.]



Not long after Yasser Arafat’s arrival in Gaza in 1994, Ariel Sharon told me that the Palestinians had succeeded in smuggling Katyusha rockets into Gaza. They were held under the Palestinian Authority’s lock and key. When Gaza fell to Hamas last summer so did the rockets. Subsequently, the several dozen Katyushas were supplemented by scores more that were smuggled into Gaza from Egypt through the infamous tunnels.

Clearly, the rockets are coveted by the Palestinians. Exactly six years ago to the day the PA’s Karine A ship was intercepted with its 50 tons of Iranian-supplied weaponry, including 50 Katyushas.

Today’s Katyusha was not the first fired from Gaza. In March 2006 a Katyusha was fired and fell harmlessly near a kibbutz. But today’s Katyusha fell in a populated area, and its launch crew may have been trained in Iran. These rockets are assembly line weapons; not Qassam rockets made in some Gazan back-alley workshop. While Hamas now has tons of high quality explosives to improve the Qassam lethality, they can’t approach the Katyusha’s 22 km (14 mile) range. (Note the pictures: The Katyusha requires two men to carry; the Qassam only one.)

There are tens of thousands of Katyushas available on the black market around the world or being manufactured by “Axis of Evil” countries. A couple of years ago I photographed hundreds of the rockets stacked pell-mell at a supply base in an eastern European country. The base’s security was almost non-existent, and no inventory measures had been taken to indicate whether weapons were missing.

Hamas clearly seeks to replicate Hizbullah’s tactics and successes against Israel. Both are funded and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Long-range indiscriminate rocket fire and tunnels (see Mining for Trouble in Lebanon ) are their trademarks. Israel’s northern residents evacuated their cities and towns when they suffered Katyusha barrages in previous attacks. A large percentage of Sderot’s citizens have left because of the Qassams. Will Ashkelon be next?

No doubt, Syria and Iran want to disrupt Bush’s visit any way they can.

Lebanon, beware.

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