One of the objectives of the Hamas propaganda from Gaza is to paint the Israelis as child-killers. It is true that Arab children have died in the current fighting as a result of the Israeli strikes. This is deeply regrettable, but fair-minded people need to reflect on the following points:
1) Civilian or child casualties in war are always regrettable but often unavoidable, as is accepted under international law. The crucial point is whether civilians are targeted for killing or are killed inadvertently. Hamas and Fatah terrorists deliberately target Israeli civilians for attack. Israel targets terrorists, never civilians.2) As with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza deliberately situate their rocket launchers and weapons factories in the middle of civilian populations, using them purposely as human shields and exploiting the inevitable civilian casualties that result from Israel’s targeting of the terrorist infrastructure. The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre at Herzliya has put out a bulletin in which it details actual calls by Hamas for civilians to form human shields:
During the IDF activity in the Gaza Strip both Hamas and the PIJ called upon Palestinian civilians to gather in places where, they claimed, the IDF was about to attack. That was done to have them serve as human shields, exploiting the fact that the IDF avoids deliberately harming Palestinian civilians. The terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip have used the tactic before. 8
20. The following are examples of calls in the Palestinian media for Palestinians civilians to serve as human shields:
1) Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV and PalMedia Website called upon civilians to form a human shield at the home of Abu al-Hatal in the Sajaiya neighborhood (in Al-Sha'af according to other version) because the IDF had threatened to blow it up (March 1).
2) Al-Aqsa TV called upon the Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to the house of shaheed Othman al-Ruziana to protect it because the IDF was threatening to blow it up (February 29).
3) Al-Aqsa TV called upon the residents of Khan Yunis to gather at the house of Ma'amoun Abu ‘Amer because the IDF was threatening to blow it up (February 28). An hour later dozens of Palestinians from Khan Yunis were reported to have gathered on the roof of Abu ‘Amer's house to serve as human shields to prevent the house from being hit (Pal-today Website, February 28) .
4) Al-Aqsa TV called upon Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to the house of shaheed Musab al-Ja'abir to protect it because Israel was threatening to blow it up (February 29).
5) The PIJ's Radio Sawt al-Quds called upon civilian to gather around the house of Fawzi Abu al-Hamed in the Absan al-Kabira region to prevent it from being blown up by the IDF (March 1).
21. Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya boasted to Al-Jazeera TV of the “firm stance” of the Palestinians. As an example he said that the “occupation” had threatened to blow up buildings but nevertheless hundreds and thousands of Palestinians had left their homes “in the middle of the night” and gone up on the roofs of the houses the Israelis had threatened to blow up (Al-Jazeera TV, February 29).
In other words Hamas deliberately put their civilians in harm’s way — and then start screaming about ‘war crimes’!
3) The British media have been claiming that around half of the Arabs who were killed were civilians. The Israelis say the vast majority of the casualties were terrorists. The ITIC bulletin says the following:
Over the past five days, in our assessment more than 80 Palestrinians were killed. Most of them were terrorist operatives, primarily belonging to Hamas's Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who were killed in battle or in IDF attacks on terrorist targets. Among the operatives killed were the sons of two senior Hamas figures, the son of Khalil al-Hiye and the son of Muhammad Shihab, both Hamas-faction members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Civilians were accidentally killed during the fighting, since terrorist bases, positions and buildings from which the terrorist organization conduct their battles against the IDF were built close to their homes, and rockets were also fired from nearby. Among those killed were a number of children.
13. On February 29 Hamas's Palestine-info Website posted a table with data about the 34 Palestinians killed during the first two days of the escalation (February 27 and 28). Eleven of the names were of Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades operatives, eight belonging to other terrorist organizations (the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade), a policeman, a guard and 13 civilians, some of them children…
14 The propaganda machine of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations, backed up by the Palestinian Authority and Al-Jazeera's Arab TV channel, broadcast horrific picture of children who had died during the fighting and blamed Israel for deliberately targeting women and children. The propaganda, which focused on civilians, ignored the fact that most of those killed were terrorist operatives, and that the fighting took place within the terrorist infrastructure rooted in the heart of the civilian population.
15. The Palestinian propaganda machine used the expressions ‘genocide,’ ‘slaughter’ and even ‘holocaust.’ It was not the first time senior Palestinian figures and the Palestinian and Arab media issued exaggerated and false descriptionsof attacks on civilians, using pictures of civilians who had been killed and houses which had been destroyed. The tactical propaganda ploys are intended to defame Israel, garner support in the Arab world and the international community, and to tie Israel 's hands and prevent it from continuing its activities on the ground against terrorist elements. Examples of propaganda manipulation were also found in descriptions of the fighting during Operation Defensive Shield (April 2002).
4) One of the children who was said to be a casualty of the Israel air strikes, a baby, was actually killed by the Arabs when one of their rockets aimed at killing Israelis misfired:
Hamas said the baby, Malak Karfaneh, was killed and three other civilians were wounded in an Israeli strike on Beit Hanun, a northern town where Palestinians often launch rockets at Israel. But local residents said one of those rockets fell short and landed in the area of the baby's house.
Meanwhile, in the supposedly civilised world, a Paris court heard last week from an independent expert -- who has given advice on ballistic and forensic evidence in French courts for 20 years -- that the ‘death’ of the Arab child Mohammed al Durah, the iconic image of whose alleged killing by Israeli soldiers in 2000 transmitted by France 2 has directly fuelled countless terrorist attacks, could not have been the result of Israeli gunfire and may well have been a staged fabrication. (See my earlier posts on this scandal here, here, here, here and here.) Ha’aretz reported:
The ballistics expert, Jean-Claude Schlinger, presented his conclusions after reviewing the footage, which shows Dura and his father cowering by a wall after being caught in the crossfire between Palestinian gunmen and Israel Defense Forces soldiers at the Netzarim junction.
The case revolves around a libel suit brought by the France 2 television channel and its Middle East correspondent, Charles Enderlin, against Phillipe Karsenty. On November 22, 2004 Karsenty wrote on his Web site, Media Ratings, that Dura's death had been staged and that France 2's conduct ‘disgraces France and its public broadcasting system.’ A few weeks later France 2 and Enderlin sued him for libel. In October 2006 Karsenty was found guilty and was required to pay symbolic damages of 1 euro (and 3,000 euros in court costs).
Karsenty appealed. The judge asked to examine all of the film footage in the report of the shooting before rendering a verdict. On Saturday, Enderlin rejected Schlinger's findings, arguing that ‘only partial evidence was given to him for evaluation.’
In his report, Schlinger wrote, ‘If Jamal [the boy's father] and Mohammed al-Dura were indeed struck by shots, then they could not have come from the Israeli position, from a technical point of view, but only from the direction of the Palestinian position.’
He also wrote, ‘In view of the general context, and in light of many instances of staged incidents, there is no objective evidence that the child was killed and his father injured. It is very possible, therefore, that it is a case [in which the incident was] staged.’
War is always terrible; undoubtedly, some innocents are being killed in Gaza. But who should be blamed — the Israelis who are merely trying to stop the genocidal attacks on their own people (Katyushas have been hitting Ashkelon again today), or the Arabs who, carrying out those attacks, deliberately line up their own civilians as targets for Israeli counter-attack and then cynically and systematically use lies, deception and distortion to inflate their casualty figures?
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