Let's Go Back A Year

Using the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, the government institution for commemorating the legacy of the Israeli intelligence community, I went back to the end of August 2023 to see and be reminded what was the situation, as regards open intelligence, of the events leading to the Hamas attack on October 7.

Aug. 30-Sept 5

The Palestinian terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip continue to develop and improve their rocket systems. An attempt to smuggle explosives from the Gaza Strip to Judea and Samaria was foiled. For the third consecutive week, Palestinians demonstrated at the border security fence. The national authority for return marches in the Gaza Strip has begun rebuilding the return camps and preparing them for the possible renewal of the marches. The leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) met in Beirut with the Iranian foreign minister and Hezbollah’s secretary general.

Sept. 6-12

On the eve of the Jewish High Holidays, the Israeli media reported that senior IDF officers warned Hamas through intermediaries not to engage in escalation. Hamas denied the reports and emphasized it would continue to fight Israel in every arena.

On September 12, 2023, the joint operations room of the military-terrorist wings of the Palestinian organizations held its fourth “military” maneuver, which included live fire, rocket launches towards the sea and a simulated attack on an Israeli position. Hamas banned protest demonstrations near the security fence after that became a condition for the resumption of activity at the Kerem Shalom Crossing, which was suspended after an attempt to smuggle weapons. The chairman of Qatar’s National Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza participated in the negotiations for reopening the crossing.

Sept. 13-20

This past week riots were renewed along the Gaza border, and Palestinians threw IEDs and hand grenades, burned tires and launched incendiary balloons. One Palestinian was killed by IDF forces in the southern Gaza Strip and five others were killed by an explosive device in the eastern Gaza Strip before it could be thrown at Israeli soldiers. The apparent cause of the riots was the breakdown of talks between Mohammed al-Emadi, chairman of Qatar’s National Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, and the Hamas leadership regarding the amount of Qatar’s financial support for the Gaza Strip, and other excuses included the arrival of Jewish worshipers at the Temple Mount compound on Rosh Hashanah and the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Following the riots the Erez Crossing remained closed to laborers and businessmen who wanted to enter Israel.

Sept. 20-27

This past week violent clashes continued along the border security fence in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians shot at IDF forces and threw IEDs. The number of incendiary balloons launched at the Israeli communities near the border rose, causing several fires. In response, the IDF attacked several Hamas positions near the Gaza border. Several boats sailed from Gaza port in a staged “protest flotilla.” Israel left the Erez crossing closed to the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel (a situation which has lasted more than 12 days). International and Arab efforts at mediation have yet to bear fruit. Reports continue about the Hamas administration’s severe financial hardship.

A meeting was held in Beirut by the deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, the secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). They expressed support and pride for the activities and attacks of the “resistance” [terrorist attacks] in Judea and Samaria and emphasized the importance of escalation and armed “resistance” [terrorism] against Israel.

Were there indications that Hamas was deterred? 

^

Being a Torah-Licensed Scoundrel

In Volume 53, Issue 1 of European Judaism, Jeremy Schonfield published Kaddish for Gaza

Some Liturgical Ground Clearing. Schonfield views the recital by young Jews of the Mourners’ Kaddish for Palestinians shot while trying to break through the border as being a misunderstanding about the different ways Kaddish is used in Traditional and Progressive contexts. Mourners’ Kaddish is, of course, for deceased relatives and he questions whether the reciting was appropriate as none of the Gaza victims were Jewish and whose intentions were uncertain.

But he has an alternative recital: an act of text study could have been used to highlight moral ambiguity, followed by Kaddish de-Rabbanan, the traditional coda to a study session. This would have avoided offence to Muslims and to Jews, and have ensured that the act of reciting Kaddish refers in this case not to the dead but to the moral problems raised by their killing. The article relates to a 2018 event and 

questions the appropriateness of reciting Mourners’ Kaddish for the Gaza victims, none of whom were Jewish and whose intentions were uncertain. Instead, an act of text study could have been used to highlight moral ambiguity, followed by Kaddish de-Rabbanan, the traditional coda to a study session. This would have avoided offence to Muslims and to Jews, and have ensured that the act of reciting Kaddish refers in this case not to the dead but to the moral problems raised by their killing.

Schonfield is a professor at Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Lecturer in Liturgy at Leo Baeck College, London and scion to an orthodox rabbinical family. He, then, would know what is is to be a scoundrel with a Torah license (or with the permission of).

He factually describes the action of the Gazan Arabs as a “march over the border to Israel”.

In other words, an invasion, akin to an act of war. And he undoubtedly is aware that those protests were distected by Hamas, with Hamas cordinators in the field, with weapons such as IEDs, other explosives, firebombs, rocks and then incendiary kites and balloons later employed. This was not in the least a non-violent demonstration.  The participants were urged to rip out the hearts of the Israelis they encounter once over the border.  The peacefulness, so-called, was admitted to be a deception. Even though this was the third time this act of Kaddish recital for dead terrorists was enacted, and even if we can find some way to excuse the young Jews, to ignore the character and purpose of the march protests two years later is truly astounding.

Moreover, even when he acknowledges that Hamas admits

that fifty of the sixty-two dead had been members of their organisation...[and] Islamic Jihad claimed three others. 

he adds

These numbers are not necessarily accurate, since the need to emphasise that Hamas is in control of Gaza would encourage the percentage to be increased,

Noting that in any case, there seemed to have been 10 innocent civilians, or rather, non-combatants, he sarcastically adds

unless one thinks that living in Gaza and therefore perhaps voting for Hamas is a capital crime

While it may not necessarily be a capital crime, it could (should?) be a crime to support a terrorist organization that almost exclusively targets Jewish civilians. That there has been no true popular revolt or any serious street protests against the Hamas rule in Gaza since 2006, surely the population at large is not wholly innocent even if only ethically.

Putting words into someone elses mouth is another trick. Schonfield writes

why shoot to kill, the media asked

But not all the victims, that day, or on other Fridays, were shot to death on purpose. A fair percentage, the majority I would think, were victims of stray bullets or got in the way or richochets. If there was a purpose involved, it was to prevent damage to the fence that would allow murderous hordes to stream through to nearby kibbutzim or to neutralize those using lethal weapons themselves.

He is sloppy when writing

invaded Gaza in 2014 to destroy tunnels that could have been located from inside Israel

But the tunnels were only discovered to exist after those hostilities began and the Hamas terrorists emerged. And as further evidence of his military expertise, he suggests in the future:

wider belts of barbed wire

which means that Israel has to withdraw further into its own terriotry as to extend the fence area into Gaza he would, I presume, term extending the occupation. 

He mentions

the Israeli army’s morality

yet applying immorality to Hamas is mssing. 

Further on, he refers a Midrash in connection to God supposedly prohibiting the angels to rejoice over the drowning Egyptians recorded in Sanhedrin 39B:

R. Samuel b. Nahman said in R. Jonathan's name: What is meant by, And one approached not the other all night? In that hour the ministering angels wished to utter the song [of praise] before the Holy One, blessed be He, but He rebuked them, saying: My handiwork [the Egyptians] is drowning in the sea; would ye utter song before me!

I cannot but assume that he ignored an alternate well-known reading, that God intended that only He as their creator could rejoice but ot them.  They had no right as they were not involved in any form of responsibility for the Egyptians but, he, Hod, surely could because he was meting out true justice. The right to sing exists but belongs only to the proper authority.

At that section he brings three examples of Biblical models dealing with the punishment of sinners - Avraham and Sodom, the drowning Egyptians and the Purim story with the killing of the Persians in large numbers. Why not mention the Seven Nations (Mishneh Torah, Sefer Shoftim, Melachim Umilchamot 5:4)?  Why not mention the very reasonable two-stage approach in the next chapter at 6:1? Has not Israel over and over attempted to negotiate with Hamas?

At the bottom of page 134, I would suggest he mixes up the din rodef with a matter of a burglar writing

Killing a burglar may thus be murder under certain circumstances in Jewish, as it is in British, law

But Rashi at the source, Exodus 22:1  indicates that a thief sneaking in to a house may be killed: The Torah teaches, ‘If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first’.”:

This is not murder for he (the intruder) is as if dead already. From this the Torah teaches us that if one comes to kill you, you should rise prior to kill him. And in this case (our verse) he (the intruder) has come with intent to kill you,

Even if Schonfield disagrees, he need deal with this general rule. Indeed, can a civil law be applied to a war situation, as is at the Gaza border? 

He also adds that minimum force must be used but that is if only possible, which in this case, it is not. There are crowds, en masse, trying to get at the fence, to damage it, or undercover of the civilians launch all sorts of weapons and attempt to get across. The soldiers plead through loudspeakers, drop leaflets, contact Hamas leadership and, by the way, the weekly protests have been going on for a long time. Anybody approaching is surely aware of the danger. But no, Schonfield is captive of his on ideology, writing, in clear dissonance of the truth, that

There is also doubt about the murderous intent of women and children who may have been told by their leaders that the way ahead was clear and that the soldiers would not harm them.

Of course, soldiers should do all possible to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. But this attack on IDF morality, employing misreadings of Biblical and Rabbinical texts is niot helpful in the least, especially as it was published to justify even a Kadissh D’Rabbanan for these terrorists.

If he had included one call to Hamas to cease this action, I could have found at least one point in his favor.

^ 

Hamas, NYT's Mark Thompson and Twitter

The New York Times' CEO Mark Thompson (who, incidentally, was a guest at my home in Shiloh for a long discussion) spoke at a June 12 event sponsored by New America’s Open Markets Institute and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and addressed a new development in the media which is tech companies closely trusting algorithms to help determine which news stories are fraudulent or misleading. 

One example he provided was indicative.

As he said:

But with some examples of apparent censorship, it’s not clear if the removal or restriction of content is due to human moderators or the automated algorithms.Twitter recently blocked a user who posted harsh criticism of Hamas, the militant and political Islamist organization regarded by much of the international community as a terrorist group. The social media company told The Daily Caller News Foundation it was an “error,” but wouldn’t clarify if the mistake was directly human, or indirectly human-induced through the way of the “hateful conduct” detection algorithm.

What the real problem in this instance, I hope, is not that the person who tweeted the criticism was reinstated, or even the original blockage even though Thompson makes the false case that Hamas is rally two organizational entities, one non-terror and the other a social welfare agency.

The real problem is that, well, Hamas itself is on Twitter, openly.

Its TV station AlQuds. 

A second TV station.

Its newspaper.

A front news agency.

Izzat Risheq is on Twitter and he's a senior Hamas leader.

Mosa Abumarzook has a Twitter account and he is a senior member of Hamas.

I could on and on.  They recruit through social media outlets.  And they punish independent-thinking Gaza social media activists.

The AlQassam Brigades had their account suspended, though.

So the real problem is why does a terror group and its members get a Twitter account?

It's not a new question.

Twitter?

^

How "Great" is That March? Greater Palestine

Arabs of Gaza are engaged in this Great March campaign.

Buit what exactly do they want?

Here's the picture, in a short version, of their territorial demands:

and here is some more explicit detail from Iqbal Jassat, Executive Member of Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa, published in the Palestine Information Center site, a Hamas-affiliated web site:

Great March of Return: a New Defiance Campaign

Palestinians have geared up to mobilize en masse in what has been dubbed as Great March of Return. Starting Friday 30th March 2018, thousands upon thousands head towards homes and lands from which they were forcibly expelled...

...Concealing the ugly reality of Zionism’s imposition of a foreign entity (Israel) and the consequences of the Nakba (catastrophe) which to date are eminently visible throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories OPT, Palestine ’48 and refugee camps...a return to an understanding of the enormity of losses suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of a racist colonial entity supported and facilitated by the British government a century ago...

The Great March of Return has the support of all the Palestinian factions – Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP and Islamic Jihad. Expected to continue until 15 May to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, it’s demands will hopefully resonate across all corners of the world: Right of Return to their pre-1948 homes!

And some people talk disparagingly of the concept of "Greater Israel".

This is Greater Palestine. Not "two states living side-by-side".

P.S.

Um Farid al-Dalais got ready to take part in the Great March of Return to the east of Al-Bureij refugee camp, wearing her traditional peasant dress (Thobe), which she cherishes.“Today I came to the border wearing my Thobe to demand my right of return to the town of Asdod

Here they come:

^ 

Haaretz Commentator Untrustworthy?

On March 18th, this headline appeared over Zvi Bar'el's column:

The column can be compared to another commentary from two days previously:

INTRA-PALESTINIAN TENSIONS RISE AFTER HAMDALLAH SURVIVES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

and to this news item of March 23:

Hamas, PA trade accusations after assassination attempt on PM

which includes this bit:

The unity government in Ramallah, however, issued a statement on the same day, rejecting Hamas’ story on the death of the main suspect, accusing the movement of making up false and misleading scenarios. The Ramallah-based government reiterated that Hamas is to be held fully responsible for Hamdallah's assassination attempt.

Can you trust Haaretz commentary?

And then there is this:

“This is targeting the national project, a Palestinian state, not just reconciliation,” said al-Dajani. As such, he suggested, Israel could also have been behind the attack, a view echoed by Omar Jaara, an Israel affairs professor at An-Najah.

“This attack reflects an Israeli vision of foiling reconciliation to deepen the separation between Gaza and West Bank to promote the American ‘deal of the century.’”

from Hamza Abu Eltarabesh, a journalist from Gaza.

^ 

Same Old Bad Hamas

From a Hamas news site:

The Hamas movement on Monday night introduced an amendment to its political program for the first time, agreeing in particular to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders without recognizing Israel's right to exist, refusing to compromise its weapons.

The following are the main points of the revised "principles and policies document" announced by the head of its political bureau Khaled Meshaal at a press conference in Doha and distributed to the media in both Arabic and English:

Actual text's first page

- "Islamic Resistance Movement" Hamas "is a liberation movement and Palestinian national resistance Islamic, aimed at the liberation of Palestine and confront the Zionist project, reference to Islam in its principles and objectives and means.

- "Palestine is an Arab Islamic land".

- "Palestine with its borders from the Jordan River eastward to the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and from the head of Naqoura to the north of Umm al-Rashrash in the south is an indivisible regional unit."

- "The Palestinians are the Arab citizens who lived in Palestine until 1947, both those who were exiled or those who remained in them. Anyone born of an Arab Palestinian father after that date, inside or outside Palestine, is a Palestinian."

- "Islam against all forms of extremism and religious, ethnic and sectarian fanaticism".

"Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine ... and all its Islamic and Christian sanctities, is a permanent right of the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nation, and no waiver thereof or any part of it."

- "Al-Aqsa Mosque is a pure right for our people and our nation, and the occupation has no right to it."

"The right of return of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons to their homes from which they were expelled or prevented from returning, both in the territories occupied in 1948 and in 1967 (ie, all of Palestine), is an inalienable right ... , Palestinian, Arab or international. "

- The Zionist project is racist, aggressive (...) and that the Israeli entity is the instrument of the Zionist project and its aggressive base.

"Hamas rejects the persecution of any person or the violation of his rights on the basis of national or religious or sectarian, and believes that the Jewish problem and anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews phenomena linked mainly to European history, not the history of Arabs and Muslims and their heirs."

- "Hamas stresses that the conflict with the Zionist project is not a conflict with the Jews because of their religion; and Hamas is not engaged in a struggle against the Jews because they are Jews, but engaged in a struggle against the Zionist occupiers aggressors.

- "There is no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity; all that happened on the land of Palestine from occupation or settlement or Judaization or change of landmarks or falsification of the facts is false;

- No concession to any part of the land of Palestine, no matter what the reasons, circumstances and pressures, and no matter how long the occupation, and Hamas rejects any alternative to the liberation of Palestine completely liberation, from the river to the sea .. However - and does not mean at all recognition of the Zionist entity, Any Palestinian rights - Hamas considers that the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty, with Jerusalem as its capital, on the lines of June 4, 1967, with the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes, is a national consensus formula. "

- "Hamas confirms that the Oslo Accords and their annexes are in violation of the rules of international law (...) and therefore the movement rejects these agreements."

- "Armed resistance (...) is a strategic option to protect the constants and restore the rights of the Palestinian people."

لا اعترافَ بالكيان الصهيوني ولا تنازلَ عن أيّ جزء من فلسطين 

(No recognition of the Zionist entity and no concession of any part of Palestine)

- "Hamas refuses to harm the resistance and its weapons, and stresses the right of our people to develop the means of resistance and mechanisms."

- "Hamas believes and insists on managing its Palestinian relations on the basis of pluralism and democratic choice."

And media reports on "moderation" is same bad old press.

Don't fall for "fake news".

_____________

From a second Arabic-language site:

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Monday evening, the new political document from the Qatari capital Doha, declaring for the first time its consent to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

The document said, "No concession to any part of the land of Palestine, whatever the reasons, circumstances and pressures, and no matter how long the occupation, and Hamas rejects any alternative to the liberation of Palestine completely liberated, from the river to its sea."

Article 20 of the document stressed, however, that "the recognition of the Zionist entity and the renunciation of any of the Palestinian rights are not the same. Hamas considers that the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty, with Jerusalem as its capital, on the lines of June 4, 1967 , With the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes from which they were expelled, is a common national consensus formula. 

^ 

Going Back to the Four Kids Killed on the Gaza Beachfront

You might remember my July 17th post on those four Gaza kids killed in a shelling incident.

My basic finding was that none of the 4-5 reports actually complemented each other but rather kept raising doubts as to the veracity of the Hamas claims of what happened.

Now we have this:

What kind of people use dead children as props to advance their totalitarian politico-religious agenda? The Palestinians.
I can’t tell you what actually happened, but the boys weren’t playing soccer, the target was legitimate, and the IDF did not deliberately kill children. Yes, the Israelis took responsibility for the deaths; however, the IDF stopped using the M825A1 smoke shell for no reason. The IDF was also unable to determine how Mustafa Tamimi and Bassem Abu Rahmeh died. From the standpoints of PR and forensic investigation, the IDF needs major reform.

And he did find a Pallywood snap:

Note the matter of shadows or lack thereof.

As to what actually caused their deaths ---  he suggests a grenade  ---- I cannot tell or even guess and I am not sure.

But the main point is that you cannot depend on Hamas.

^ 

John Kerry's "Ceasefire" (It Was A Failure)

Let's remind ourselves:

July 31 - John Kerry nails down Israel-Hamas ceasefire days after facing ridicule for failure

Finally, less than an hour after all sides signed off on the precise and technical wording for a 72-hour truce, Kerry issued a statement and called a 3:30 a.m. Friday press conference to seal the deal before any party could back out.

July 31 - Cease-Fire in Gaza Conflict Takes Effect as Talks Are Set

“During this time, the forces on the ground will remain in place,” said the announcement, which means that Israeli troops can continue destroying the labyrinth of tunnels in Gaza that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said are the prime target of the operation.

“We urge all parties to act with restraint until this humanitarian cease-fire begins, and to fully abide by their commitments during the cease-fire,” Mr. Kerry and Mr. Ban said in the statement.

August 1 -  Obama: John Kerry Facing 'Unfair Criticism' Over Israel-Hamas Ceasefire

President Obama went to bat for his secretary of state on Friday, defending John Kerry from "unfair criticism" over the failed cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

"Let me take this opportunity, by the way, to give Secretary John Kerry credit. He has been persistent. He has worked very hard. He has endured on many occasions really unfair criticism simply to try to get to the point where the killing stops and the underlying issues about Israel's security, but also the concerns of Palestinians in Gaza, can be addressed," Obama said during an afternoon news conference.

And, a month later,

September 9 - Report: US-Israeli misunderstanding led to breakdown of Gaza truce

The IDF-run radio station reported on Tuesday that the Americans mistakenly led Israel to believe that Hamas accepted an unconditional 72-hour cease-fire when in fact the Palestinian Islamist group never gave its consent to a key Israeli demand that it refrain from attacking troops already on the ground in Gaza.

Do I have a comment?

^

Slithering Silverstein

In a new post, Richard Silverstein serves as a leaker spout for an article at NTG which, he claims

IDF Killed Three of Its Own Soldiers After Declaring Hannibal Directive

He quotes, in translation, this section:

"As a result of activation of the Hannibal Directive, three IDF soldiers were killed and 120 [ed., the actual number was 160] Palestinian civilians were killed from cannon fire [as a result of IDF fire that destroyed the surrounding neighborhood]."

The original Hebrew is so:

כתוצאה מהפעלת "נוהל חניבעל" נהרגו שלושת הלוחמים, וככל הנראה כ-120 אזרחים פלסטינים מירי פגזים. 

However, later down the piece, it reads:

"הכוח נתקל בחוליה כשהיה בשטח פתוח צמוד לבתים וזיהו פיר לא רחוק משם. לשם הכניסו את הנעדר...
לאחר שנפתחה לעבר הכוח אש משמעותית ממנה נפגעו ככל הנראה כלל הלוחמים
הכוחות זיהו שמדובר בחטיפה ועל פי דיווחים הפעילו "נוהל חניבעל", במסגרתו צה"ל מפעיל אש לכיוון החוטפים. 

which, in English, is

The forces [Sayeret Givati, commanded by Benaya Sarel] encountered a group of terrorists in the open, close by some houses not far from there [where the snatch took place] and identified a tunnel opening.  There was where they dragged down the missing soldier [Hadar Goldin].  After significant fire was opened at them [the IDF], from which most of the soldiers were hit, they realized that a kidnapping was occurring and, in accordance with the "Hannibal Directive", whereby the IDF shoots in the direction of the kidnappers...

Since the other two soldiers killed, Sarel and Lial Gidoni, were not kidnapped, it seems illogical that the "Hannibal" fire was responsible for their deaths.

In any case, this conclusion of Silverstein:

It’s important to note that nowhere in this report does it say that the Hamas fighters killed the three IDF soldiers who died during this skirmish (though it does say the cell may’ve fled into the tunnel with Goldin’s body).  The entire premise is that the IDF killed them as a result of the massive amount of fire it used after the Hannibal Directive was declared.  This fact has never been reported in the Israeli media.  

is wrong as (a) it does say that the soldiers were hit with Hamas fire;  and (b) he does not deal with the very apparent contradiction or, at the least, seemingly incorrect order of events in the NRG story. 

A comment there, from 'Black Canary', notes the inconsistency of another point, that Haaretz reported the story at the time differently.

In any case, when will Silverstein learn Hebrew?
^

Where Are the Child Services?

This past week on the Temple Mount, in support of Hamas and its rockets:

Source

Not only child services but the police.

And note the smile on the face of the woman in the background.

P.S.  In Tulkarem, the Pal. Authority confiscated Hamas flags today.

^

Qatar in Our Backyard

Who is a major funder of Hamas?

Qatar:

Hamas and its backers such as Qatar have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on tunnels and rockets with one goal in mind: killing Israelis.

and

In 2010, Qatar twice offered to restore trade relations with Israel and allow the reinstatement of the Israeli mission in Doha, on condition that Israel allow Qatar to send building materials and money to Gaza to help rehabilitate infrastructure, and that Israel make a public statement expressing appreciation for Qatar's role and acknowledging its standing in the Middle East. Israel refused, on the grounds that Qatari supplies could be used by Hamas to build bunkers and reinforced positions from which to fire rockets at Israeli cities and towns, 

So, what do we make of this

A $1 billion bet on peace: Qatar funds huge Palestinian settlement in West Bank   Sunday Mar 3, 2013 

and this:

Rawabi is the first master-planned city in the heart of Palestine and truly emphasises Qatari Diar’s mission of enriching the quality of people lives. 
...Located 9 km north of Ramallah, 20 km north of Jerusalem and 25 km south of Nablus, Rawabi is being built as a modern, high-tech city with gleaming high-rise buildings, green parks and shopping areas.​​

and even more interestingly:

Qatar currently funds several large economic projects in Gaza, such as the establishment of a large hospital. It also funds the building of new infrastructure and the renovation of existing decrepit infrastructure. This includes Gaza’s crumbling sewer system, which poses a health risk to Gazans (while threatening Israel’s groundwater resources). Qatar also invested tens of millions of dollars to pave Salah al-Din Road connecting the northern Gaza Strip with the south.

Furthermore, Qatari architects, engineers and other professionals, along with some foreign experts representing Qatar, enter Gaza through the Erez Crossing with permits issued by Israel in coordination with Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Economy Ministry.

Additionally, the Qataris have committed to procuring all required raw material from Israel, not only because they have no other choice, but intentionally, out of the belief that this would soften the Israeli position. The purchases are currently valued at tens of millions of dollars, and in the coming years the total investment could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, Israeli corporations benefit from the existence of projects funded by the Qataris in the Gaza Strip.

Rawabi will overlook Israel's central section.  From there, the view --- and trajectory for rockets --- is excellent.

Think about that.

And think about this:

Israel has blocked Qatari funds, aimed at covering the cost of the salaries of former Hamas employees, from being transferred to the Palestinian Authority (PA)...Qatar pledged to pay $60 million within three months to pay the salaries of the former Hamas-run government in Gaza.

So, why can't it halt the funding of Rawabi which is just as much a threat?  And surely will be.

^

Hamas and the "Hunger Games"

From the plot of the Mockingjay, the third volume soon to hit our screens:

Katniss presses on alone towards President Snow's mansion, which has been surrounded by Capitol refugee children being used as human shields to protect Snow.

This quote from the book *

does not apply to Gaza.

There is no hope there as long as Hamas rules.

They sacrifice children to the tunnels.

They crowd civilians on to roofs.

They launch rockets from school yards and hospitals and even near journalists' hotels.

Forced human shields' use is a war crime.

But if the locals agree to their use as such, there is no hope.

Credit

____________

*

President Snow: Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained.

^

Start Counting

As this chart displays

despite hostilities and subsequent agreements, ceasefires and other halts, the rocket fire has always continued over the past 14 years from Gaza.

Can you answer these questions:


a) when will Hamas begin firing anew?


b) how many rockets/mortars will it fire until Israel resumes active defense?


c) how long until a major Israeli counter-terror operation?


d) and how many projectiles will be launched until the next ceasefire?


and last, but not least,


e) will Binyamin Netanyahu still be Prime Minister when (c) happens?


^

Can Stonehenge Help With Gaza's Tunnels?

Taking a cue from a dear friend after she read a story I sent her, I wonder if this project can assist with Israel's problem with the Hamas terror tunnels.

The details:

The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, is a four-year collaboration between a British team and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria that has produced the first detailed underground survey of the area surrounding Stonehenge, totaling more than four square miles...gathered by geophysicists and others wielding magnetometers and ground-penetrating radars that scan the ground to detect structures and objects several yards below the surface...led them to the first GPS-guided magnetometer systems. A magnetometer has sensors that allow a geophysicist to see evidence of historic building, and even ancient ditch-digging, beneath the soil by mapping variations in the earth’s magnetic field. The GPS-guided versions were able to pinpoint some of those discoveries to within one centimeter. The Gaffneys believed that Stonehenge scholarship needed a massive magnetometer- and radar-led survey of the whole site.

And perhaps we're already on the way.

True, the main difficulty Israel has experienced is that the tunnels are much deeper.  Recently, we were informed:

The Israel Defense Forces in the near future will deploy a tunnel detection system on the border of the Gaza Strip, as part of an operational experiment to examine whether a technological solution could discover the digging of tunnels. According to the military, 300 million shekels ($86.5 million) were spent on research and development in the field of tunnel detection since 2007, but so far without any results. Some 700 different projects were examined and thousands of experiments have been carried out, a senior official disclosed on Monday. Two systems failed in operational experiments conducted on the Gaza border eight years ago. The systems will be now redeployed, after improvements and upgrades have been introduced...Among proposed tunnel-detection technologies is the use of vehicle-mounted, ground-penetrating radar. However ,this solution can only detect tunnels to a depth of 10 meters and the last tunnels discovered during the Gaza operation that reached Israeli territory were as much as 25 feet below ground.  Another proposed system takes advantage of the earth’s gravitational field to detect underground voids at great depth. The most advanced method involves geo-seismic methods and buried sensors, which is the system to be used in the current trial.

All we have to do is wait.

And choose a name.

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Sophisticated Hamas (UPDATED)

"We do not target civilians, and we try most of the time to aim at military targets and Israeli bases," Meshaal said. "But we admit that we have a problem. We do not have sophisticated weapons. We do not have the weapons available to our enemy … so aiming is difficult. We do promise you, though, that we will try in the future and we will warn people … We have given warnings to Israeli civilians. We promise that if we get more precise weapons, we will only target military targets."

If you wanted to know why Israel continues a blockade and demands in negotiations that supervision be applied to all imports into the Gaza Strip, the answer is above.

Those were the words of Khaled Meshal.

If there is a negotiated arrenagement leading to peace, why would Hamas require more sophisticated, more precise weapons?

And there was this, too:

Meshaal acknowledged for the first time that Hamas members — but not the group's political leadership — were behind the slaying of three Israeli settlers on the West Bank in June. But he defended the murders as a legitimate action against Israeli "illegal" occupation.
"We were not aware of this action taken by this group of Hamas members in advance," he said. "But we understand people are frustrated under the occupation and the oppression, and they take all kinds of action."
When asked directly whether Hamas members carried out the abduction of the Israeli teens, Meshaal said: "We learned about these confessions from the Israeli investigation … Hamas political leadership was not aware of all these details. We learned about it later on …
"Our view is that soldiers and settlers on the West Bank are aggressors, and they are illegally living in this occupied and stolen land. And the right to resist is the right of Palestinians."

And do not forget that all of Israel is an "illegal settlement" and all Israelis are "settlers".


P.S.

Ilan Pappe

Q: It was reported that Israel launched its military incursion into the Gaza Strip after Hamas allegedly kidnapped and killed three young Israeli settlers. So far, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered in the month-long conflict. Do you consider this mass killing in such a broad extent, and the obliteration of the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip a logical, proportionate and justifiable response to the kidnapping of three Israeli citizens, while there isn’t still reliable evidence showing that the abduction was done by Hamas?
A: No, of course not and the destruction of Gaza is not really a retaliation to the abduction and killing of the three settlers. The incident was a pretext for implementing a policy that was formulated long time ago towards the Gaza Strip; a geopolitical area of Palestine for which Israel has no clear policy. It manages, at least in its own eyes, quite successfully, the rest – 98 percent – of Palestine. It imposes harsh restrictions on the Palestinian minority inside Israel and colonial rule in the West Bank. These policies were also tried in the Gaza Strip but it was a risk to have settlers there and it was too full of refugees for to be seriously considered part of Israel. So it was ‘ghettoized’ with the hope that it would be domiciled in such a way. But Gaza resists and the only way Israel deems possible to react to this, is to use all its military might to crash that rebellion.

_____________________

UPDATE

I hope they don't kill the translator as Hamas has released "an explanatory statement...to clarify inaccurate and incomplete media and press interpretations:-

Hamas clarifies press remarks by Mishaal on three settlers killed last June; Hamas knew who killed them only through Israeli investigations

...what happened to them as a natural and legitimate act against the illegitimate Israeli occupation.

...“We did not have prior knowledge of this act which was done by a group of Hamas members, but we do know that any distressed people living under occupation and oppression could do anything to defend themselves,” the Hamas Movement explained.

“The soldiers and settlers in the West Bank are considered ‘assailants’ and live illegally on usurped and occupied Palestinian land, so the Palestinians have the right to resist them,” the Movement reiterated some of what Mishaal said in the interview.

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She's Teaching Us Post-Zionism

I used 'teaching' since Ariana Melamed's family name means 'teacher' in Hebrew (and by extension, in Yiddish, pronounced with the emphasis on the 'la').  I used to read her in Maariv but, I guess, when that newspaper changed owners, Yedioth Ahronot picked her up (which says a lot about that daily).

What does she teach that is post-Zionist?

In the past, in a discussion over the behavior of IDF soldiers charged with preventing illegal entry of Eriteans, she called the soldeirs Judeo-Nazis.

In her latest translated op-ed, she writes:

Hamas is not a terror organization, but a state in the makingOp-ed: Whether we like it or not, Hamas is slowly but surely establishing itself with a disciplined army of paid soldiers, an education system saturated with incitement, and state institutions. And it has an unequivocal ideology that refuses to go away, just like the Jewish settlement of 1947.

The post-Zionism is not in her wrong description, or insufficiently intellectuyally honest description.  It's in the "just like" phrase.  That's the hint.

Post-Zionists seek to downdump Zionism, Jewish nationalism, Jewish moral and ethical principles so that they can say and write 'we're no better than the worst out there' and then follow it up with 'and therefore, those out there are just as good as we are'.  That tautology is intended at one at the same time to deny Jewish uniqueness and to award extremely evil forms of human naction a veneer of respect by linking it, wrongly, to we Jews.

In no way is Hamas, in its ideology and practice, "just like the Jewish settlement of 1947" (and the Hebrew term, yishuv, is not "settlement" but rather "community", another trick).  And it is not that she is blind to the reality:-

we failed to understand the deep despair that is the very basis of Islamic fundamentalism, or the ideology that sanctifies a bloody dream over human life, the willingness to suffer lengthy periods of shortage and a hard siege for faith, and the choice of the promised future in paradise over the future you could build with your own two hands in this world.

but she simply wants to see another reality so that Israel should yield and surrender to it enemies:-

Hamas is not a terror organization. It is a well-disciplined army of paid soldiers. It's an education system saturated with incitement. It is hospitals and police, creches and manufacturing, tunnels and parks, prisons and government. It has a military wing and a political wing and they're incredibly coordinated. No targeted assassination so far has been able to put a dent in Hamas' determination or in its ability to hurt us as it sees fit. Whether we like it or not, it is a state coming into being, or at least a part of one, 

What she ignores is what this portends:

it has an unequivocal ideology that refuses to go away

She assumes that it indeed will go away if we give in, and negotiate with Hamas, reconize it and ignore that it wants, desires and acts toward the goal of we Jews going away.

Terror or not, it is an organization that wants to kill Jews.

And Melamed's post-Zionism won't help.  Iindeed, it is not at all helpful and, in truth, will harm us .

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