BBC News once again ignores abuse of Israeli humanitarian aid to Gaza - by Hadar Sela

...With its audiences being repeatedly steered towards the inaccurate belief that all the economic and humanitarian problems in the Gaza Strip are attributable to Israeli counter-terrorism measures, it is significant that once again the BBC has shown no interest in reporting a story which clarifies why such measures are necessary.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
25 November '18..

On November 22nd the Israel Security Agency announced that it had uncovered attempts by Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip to establish a terror network in Judea and Samaria. The plot included exploitation of Israel’s humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip.

“The Hamas operation was uncovered with the arrest of Oweis Rajoub, 25, an alleged member of the terrorist group from the Palestinian village of Dura, near Hebron, on September 23, the Shin Bet said.

The goal of the West Bank cells was to conduct large terror attacks against Israeli military and civilians targets at the same time as rockets and mortar shells were being fired from the Gaza Strip, in order to challenge Israel on two fronts simultaneously, the internal security service said. […]

The coordination and planning between the operatives in the West Bank and Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip were conducted, in part, by Palestinians travelling from the coastal enclave to hospitals in Israel. Gazan businessmen with permits allowing them to travel to the West Bank were also reportedly found to have passed messages between the two groups. […]

In August, Rajoub received a cellphone from his Hamas handlers. A few days later, he was told to go to Bethlehem to meet with a woman who gave him “trousers into which a cloth strip had been sewn on which instructions for using his phone had been written,” the Shin Bet said.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Will Humanitarian Concessions Reduce Hamas Violence? No, and Here is the Evidence - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

...Israeli Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman appears to be accepting the argument that humanitarian gestures towards Hamas will buy quiet. The evidence provided by UN agencies in an effort to advocate for humanitarian gestures ironically proves that there is in fact no correlation between such gestures and a reduction in Hamas violence.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 952..
18 September '18..

Politicians, commentators, diplomats, citizens, international fora, the Knesset, EU institutions, and – above all – Israel’s major media sites endlessly debate Gaza’s alleged humanitarian plight and the virtue of humanitarian gestures as a means to mitigate it.

Even Israel’s hardline Minister of Defense, Avigdor Lieberman, appears to be buying into this argument. The Kerem Shalom border crossing is to be reopened after having been closed in reaction to the launching by Hamas of nearly 200 missiles over the space of two days. The fishing rights of Gaza fishermen will be widened to 12 kilometers in the hope that Hamas will stop the launches. Hamas will be free to continue sending off incendiary balloon bombs and to violently challenge Israeli troops at the security fence every Friday. Needless to say, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar told the Egyptians brokering the deal that Hamas cannot possibly desist from these forms of “resistance.”

The hope to buy off Hamas with humanitarian gestures is in vain.

There is overwhelming evidence that humanitarian gestures do not reduce Hamas-orchestrated violence. Ironically, the best evidence of the futility of the humanitarian argument is to be found in figures and graphs compiled by UN agencies and other pro-Palestinian fora that strenuously champion the humanitarian argument.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Surprise? Rejecting shipments of medicines, Hamas Gaza health ministry complains of lack of medicines - by Elder of Ziyon

Propaganda once again wins over reality, and the world is eager to believe the lies.

Elder of Ziyon..
23 May '18..

The Gaza Health Ministry, run by Hamas, is complaining that its pharmacies are suffering from a severe shortage of medicines.

The director of the ministry said that there is significant depletion in their stocks of drugs, especially some antibiotics and blood dilution drugs such as Heparin and Clyxan.

"Despite the arrival of quantities of drugs donated to the ministry, but in light of the huge number of casualties and the great depletion from them these medicines do not fill the deficit," he said.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Actually the stats defy the BBC’s repeated portrayal of a ‘siege’ on Gaza - by Hadar Sela

...in 2017 there was a rise of 15% in the amount of goods transported and in the number of people using the various crossings to the Gaza Strip and Judea & Samaria administered by the authority, with 15 million crossings by Palestinians recorded. Obviously a media organisation seriously committed to accurate and impartial reporting would not portray, or facilitate portrayal of, 160,000 truckloads of supplies in one year as a “siege”. The BBC, however, continues to do just that.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
25 January '18..

When, in the summer of 2014, the BBC began describing the counter-terrorism measures employed by Israel along its border with the Gaza Strip as a “siege” we noted that the definition of that term is “a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling those inside to surrender” and commented:

“A besieging army does not ensure and facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid including food and medical supplies to those it surrounds. It does not supply them with 50% of their electricity supply, with oil and diesel or with cooking gas. It does not help them export their produce and give their farmers agricultural training. It does not evacuate their sick and treat them […] in its own hospitals.”

The use of that inaccurate terminology is however still evident in BBC content – both by unchallenged interviewees and by BBC journalists. For example:

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

BBC reporting (or lack of), the Gaza Strip and medical supplies - by Hadar Sela

...Although just last month BBC audiences were told that “life in Gaza is reaching its limits”, they have to date not seen any reporting on that donation of medical supplies or about the PA’s recent threats to cut off financial support to the Gaza Strip.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
22 August '17..

In the past BBC audiences have often been led to inaccurate conclusions concerning the reason for the chronic shortage of medical supplies in the Gaza Strip.

BBC gives one-dimensional view of shortages in Gaza hospitals

BBC’s Knell inaccurately attributes shortage of medical supplies in Gaza to Israel

BBC Radio 5 live broadcasts inaccurate claim on shortage of medicines in Gaza

BBC WS amplifies former ISM activist’s falsehoods about Gaza blockade

BBC News passes up the chance to set the record straight on Gaza shortages

BBC reporting on the ongoing dispute between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that has resulted in reduced electricity supplies to Gaza residents has not informed audiences that the PA has also cut medical supplies to the Gaza Strip.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Truly Eyeless in Gaza - by Michael Danby

Isn’t it ironic that aid from a Christian charity, or at least their reckless support for Palestinians in Gaza, is used for attack tunnels against Israel, the only place Christians feel safe from persecution in the entire Middle East.

Michael Danby..
Times of Israel..
22 August '16..
Link: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/world-vision-eyeless-in-gaza/

The Reverend Tim Costello is the very image of the muscular, “socially concerned” Church Man. For all his righteous self-confidence he and World Vision have long suffered from a lack of imagination as to good and evil in the Middle East. It should surprise no one that World Vision’s director in Gaza, Mohamed Halabi has been accused of being a double agent for Hamas and indicted in an Israeli court for diverting the bulk of World Vision aid for the Palestinians to that notorious terrorist group. The internal Israeli security service, Shin Bet has a very detailed list of charges against Halabi. Isn’t it ironic that aid from a Christian charity, or at least their reckless support for Palestinians in Gaza, is used for attack tunnels against Israel, the only place Christians feel safe from persecution in the entire Middle East. Only in Israel, in all of the Middle East is the number of Christians increasing as the fighting Jihadist program has chased most of the ancient Christian communities out of the Arab World.

World Vision, a Christian charity “doing good” amongst the heathen Palestinian Muslims, is in fact not an aid organisation, it is constituted as a church. Irony of irony that a church would unwittingly support a Jihadist organisation like Hamas. Hamas’s military organisation has long been designated by the Australian Parliament as a terrorist organisation, as it is in most Western Countries.

Rev Costello is not a neophyte when it comes to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict and has a long record of getting things wrong on this volatile area. Some years ago he wrote a commentary for Melbourne’s Age which ignored suicide bombings and condemned Israel for building a security fence.

As my friend Professor Gerald Steinberg argued in the Wall Street Journal “For years, World Vision promoted the Palestinian cause, developed alliances and provided funds to some of the nongovernmental organizations active in demonizing Israel and promoting boycotts. In publications designed to bring in donations, the brutality of Palestinian terrorism is erased while images of victimization are highlighted. Children are depicted as harassed by “soldiers and settlers,” and “suffer from lack of adequate education facilities” due to “demolitions,” as World Vision’s website puts it. Palestinian corruption is whitewashed, as is the fact that Israel has been out of Gaza for more than a decade.”

Germany too has decided to bar financing World Vision. Volker Beck the German Green Party MP and head of the German- Israel Parliamentary Group said: “World Vision massively damages the trust necessary for aid work for the people in Gaza,” adding that “Hamas is a terrorist organization, which should not be financed with tax-payer funds.”

Now World Vision have as the result of this scandal suspended its operations in Gaza. Wise thing to do.

Who actually cares that foreign aid is diverted from needy Gazans to terror? - by Arnold Roth

"...Hamas stole this money and passed it to its military wing to build bases, provide salary bonuses and dig the tunnels of death that have brought destruction upon you and the Gaza Strip... Hamas is burying you and your hope of living a normal life....

A Hamas/Gaza tunnel under construction,
October 2013 [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
14 August '16..

Audit firms, governments and Christian aid groups are sorting out their post-exposé strategies following the arrests of several Palestinian Arabs on charges of illegally and surreptitiously siphoning vast sums into Palestinian Arab terror.

But strangely those who are most identified with doing humanitarian good for the Palestinian Arabs don't appear to be in the front lines of those expressing deep concern at the harm such diversions have caused. And that's an understatement.

One of the most visible signs of where the cash goes (that's present tense - no one believes the scandal has been stopped) is the tunnels of Gaza. The latest news from there - just this month and just from Palestinian Arab sources indicates this vast engineering project is not going smoothly:

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Want to beat your wife? Move to Gaza - by Stephen M. Flatow

Homes and jobs and international donations will not make a whit of difference until Palestinian culture enters the modern world. Until then, Palestinian violence –against women, against political dissidents, and most of all against Israel– will continue to be a way of life. No peace process or international peace conference or Israeli concessions will change that cruel reality.

Stephen M. Flatow..
Times of Israel..
22 February '16..

Gaza news - Palestinian values

Three news stories came out of Gaza this past week, and at first glance, they might appear to be unconnected. But taken together, they reveal important truths about Israel and the dangerous neighborhood around it.

The first news item, courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch, concerns a prominent Muslim religious authority in Gaza encouraging men to beat their wives.

Hassan al-Laham, a leading mufti in Gaza, declared that when Muslim men find their wives to be troublesome, they should first “warn them politely.” But if the problem continues, then “Allah created a solution for this…hitting—hitting that does not make her ugly.” The mufti continued: “The Prophet [Muhammad] said: ‘Do not hit the face and do not make her ugly,’” he continued. “In other words, not hitting that will bring the police and break her hand and cause bleeding, or hitting that makes the face ugly. No….The hitting is not meant to disfigure, harm, or degrade. The hitting will be like a joke. He will hit her jokingly.”



It should be noted that Mufti al-Laham’s endorsement of wife-beating was not broadcast on some obscure Hamas or Islamic Jihad television station, but on official Palestinian Authority TV (on February 8, 2016).

The second news item from Gaza, reported by the Associated Press on February 16, concerns the United Nations’ Mideast envoy, Nikolay Mladenov. While touring Gaza, Mladenov complained that “only a third of funds pledged by international donors” after the 2014 Gaza war has actually been received.

The third piece of Gaza news comes from the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, General Gadi Eizenkot. He held a press conference to reveal that Hamas is actively building new tunnels from Gaza to Israel, in order to stage kidnappings and other terrorist attacks. He said that Hamas’ tunnel-digging is so extensive and dangerous that the Israeli army has re-enforced to “concentrate considerable engineering and intelligence efforts to combat this threat.”

What do wife-beating, international stinginess, and new tunnel-digging have to do with each other? Everything.

Who Would've Thought? Gaza Flotilla Activists Brought Hate, Not Aid

...You don’t need to bring actual aid if your goal is waging war on the existence of the sole Jewish state in the world. For that, you only need to be immersed in the anti-Semitic zeitgeist of a movement that thinks helping Hamas is a humanitarian gesture.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
02 July "15..

We all knew that the latest Gaza flotilla that attempted to land on the coast was a publicity stunt rather than an actual effort to bring assistance to the Palestinians. After all, international organizations can ship genuine humanitarian aid into Gaza via the Israeli land route. But instead they chose to try and run the naval blockade put in place to ensure that shiploads of non-humanitarian supplies like Iranian-supplied weapons don’t reach the terrorist Hamas government. But it turns out that all these so-called human rights advocates were bringing to Gaza was moral support for the right of the Islamist regime there to oppress Palestinians and wage war on Israel. After the Swedish-registered ship Marianne was detained and brought to Israel, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon dismissed the effort by revealing that the Navy discovered “there was no aid on the board” after examining the vessel. When queried about this by the Washington Post, members of the so-called Freedom Flotilla Coalition claimed Yaalon was wrong and sent a photograph to prove it. What did they bring? Two cardboard boxes.

According to one member of the group, the two boxes contained a solar panel and a nebulizer. I’m sure Gazans appreciate the gesture and, it’s likely that, as they’ve done before, the Israelis will ensure that any genuine aid packages will reach Gaza. After all, even on days when Hamas is shooting rockets at Israeli cities, convoys of up to 500 trucks pass through the border bringing food and medicine to the Palestinians. Israel also supplies the water and electricity that Palestinians in Gaza use.

That’s why talk of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a lie. There is no shortage of supplies needed to keep Palestinians in Gaza alive. What Hamas wants, and what these faux human rights activists want to give it, is a shot in the arm for a propaganda war against Israel that will reinforce the legitimacy of the Islamist regime that brutally oppresses its own people and uses them as human shields in order to conduct terrorist operations.

But it is no more of a lie than the claim that the point of this flotilla was humanitarian aid. That’s not just because the activists didn’t actually bring much, if any, aid material with them. It’s because the whole point of the exercise is to claim that efforts of both Israel and Egypt to isolate the Hamas terrorists that run Gaza are illegitimate.

(Update) Gaza cement being diverted to black market - and taxed by Hamas

...These articles also make clear that cement that is supposed to be earmarked for specific projects have already been diverted, as they talk about cement traders and private buyers who are selling and buying cement. The UN mechanism to control the distribution of cement is clearly failing.

Elder of Ziyon..
03 December '14..

You know how all the cement that is being imported to Gaza is supposed to be used only for specific international projects? How the UN says it created a mechanism ensuring that the cement will not be diverted?

Yesterday, Gaza journalist Hazem Balousha tweeted this:

Yesterday, 600 tons of cement were sent into Gaza. Assuming that Balousha is telling the truth, here's where some of it ended up.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
.

Saved and Emboldened, How the Donors Saved Hamas

...The decisions made at the Cairo donor conference constitute a big victory for Hamas. Hamas can now go back to digging new tunnels and obtaining new weapons, instead of helping the Palestinians whose lives and homes were destroyed as a result of its actions. The biggest mistake the donor states made was failing to demand the disarmament of Hamas as a precondition for funnelling aid to the Gaza Strip. The donors have not only saved Hamas; they have emboldened it, allowing it to stay around for many more years.

Who decides whose aid money is used
for terror tunnels and weapons, and
whose aid money towards humanitarian aid?
Above, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
shakes hands with Qatari Foreign Minister
Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiyah at the
Gaza Donors Conference in Cairo, Oct. 12, 2014.
(Image source: U.S. State Department)

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
14 October '14..

It would be naïve to think that Hamas would not benefit from the billions of dollars that have just been promised to help with the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, during a donor conference in Cairo.

The Palestinians were hoping for $4 billion, but the donor states pledged $5.4 billion, half of which will be "dedicated" to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, according to Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende.

It is not yet clear how the second half will be spent.

Qatar, a longtime supporter and funder of Hamas, promised $1 billion, while US Secretary of State John Kerry announced immediate American aid of $212 million. The European Union, for its part, pledged $568 million.

Donor states said they would funnel the aid only through the Palestinian Authority [PA]. But this does not mean that Hamas, which continues to maintain a tight grip on the Gaza Strip, would fail to benefit from the financial aid.

In fact, any funds earmarked for the Gaza Strip will strengthen Hamas, even if the money is coming through the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas has agreed to put aside its differences with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his ruling Fatah faction in order to pave the way for the international community to allocate billions of dollars towards the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas even welcomed the PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah when he visited the Gaza Strip last week.

In recent weeks, Hamas had accused Hamdallah and his government of failing to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in wake of Israel's Operation Protective Edge. Hamas had also accused the Hamdallah government and Mahmoud Abbas of ordering a security crackdown on Hamas supporters in the West Bank.

Hamdallah's visit to the Gaza Strip came on the eve of the Cairo donor conference; that is why Hamas was prepared to receive him and his ministers in the Gaza Strip. Hamas did not want the donor states to withhold the funds under the pretext that the Palestinians were still fighting among each other and unable to get their act together.

Hamas knew that this was the only way to persuade the donor states to approve billions of dollars in aid to the Gaza Strip. The show of "unity" between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was mainly intended to show the donors that they should not worry about their money ending up in the wrong hands.

After all, Hamas also knows that every dollar invested in the Gaza Strip will serve the interests of the Islamist movement. Of course, this is excellent news for Hamas.

Any Question That Billions to Rebuild Gaza Will Go to Waste Yet Again?

...In short, no international monitoring system can keep Hamas from rebuilding its war machine as long as it remains the dominant force in Gaza. And since the international community is vehemently opposed to letting Israel wage the kind of military operation needed to destroy Hamas, that means the billions it will soon spend to rebuild Gaza will be as wasted as all the previous billions were: All the gleaming new buildings will be destroyed again in another few years, when the next war erupts.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
23 August '14..

Though the fighting in Gaza shows no sign of ending, much of the world is already focusing on the next step–pouring billions of international aid dollars, for the umpteenth time, into repairing the damages caused by Hamas’s aggression. Germany, France, and Britain are working on a UN Security Council resolution dictating the terms of a cease-fire and reconstruction, while UN special envoy Robert Serry briefed the council on Gaza’s reconstruction needs earlier this week. All the international players agree that some form of international monitoring is needed to keep Hamas from diverting reconstruction aid into rebuilding its war machine. But that raises the question of who can provide this monitoring.

Serry, who apparently inhabits a parallel universe, blithely asserted that the UN has successfully monitored projects in Gaza in the past and can do so today as well. This, of course, is the same UN that was shocked to discover Hamas rockets stored in three UNRWA schools in Gaza–and then promptly handed the rockets back to Hamas. It’s the same UN that allowed Hamas to booby-trap a UN clinic, resulting in its destruction when Hamas blew it up to kill nearby Israeli soldiers. It’s the same UN whose Gaza teacher’s union–i.e., the people who educate students at UNRWA schools–is run by Hamas, which controls all 11 seats on the union’s board, and whose “educators” include prominent members of Hamas’s military wing. And it’s the same UN whose own auditor recently released a damning report on the UN Development Program’s procurement in Gaza.

Inter alia, this report found that contract employees performed “core” procurement tasks that only regular staffers are supposed to perform, including for “significant” construction projects; that the UN wasn’t “monitoring and recording actual work” performed by contract employees handling “core” functions; that at least $8 million in construction spending was falsely recorded at far lower prices, thereby shielding it from scrutiny by higher-level officials who must approve major outlays; that many payments and receipts weren’t recorded; and that UNDP didn’t use an electronic fund transfer system that would let it monitor bank transactions and detect those “not made by UNDP.” In short, contrary to Serry’s assertion that “UN construction materials were not used for the [Hamas] tunnels,” the UN has no clue what was happening at its construction programs in Gaza.

Thus believing the UN could effectively monitor Gaza’s reconstruction is like believing cats can guard cream. Yet the main alternative–entrusting this task to the Palestinian Authority, bolstered by some unspecified “international monitoring and verification mission,” as the EU-3 proposes–is equally unrealistic.

Can Hamas Hoodwink Its Way to Victory?

...The only way in which Hamas can conceivably wrest an achievement from its rout on the battlefield is by hoodwinking the global aggregate of gullible governments and the far-from-impartial hodgepodge of self-professed humanitarians eager to further current agendas while preparing the ground for future calamities.

JPost Editorial..
09 August '14..

As it wails piteously, Hamas also crows victoriously. This evident incongruity may bewilder us but Gaza honcho Ismail Haniyeh connects the dots thus: “The military victory by the resistance and the legendary strength of our people will lead us to a lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip.”

Gaza, he avers, “has turned itself into a graveyard for Israel” and had sown death and destruction in Tel Aviv. On the flipside, it is precisely Gaza’s own devastation that “will make it impossible for the world to ignore the Strip.”

“Gaza’s sacrifices” mandate acquiescence to its demands, foremost the elimination of what Haniyeh calls “the siege.”

To hear him, the blockade was born of arbitrary malice toward hapless civilians and not as Israel’s unavoidable response to ceaseless rocketing, tunnel construction and gunrunning at the expense of the very civilians whom Haniyeh purports to champion.

To be sure, for years Hamas managed quite well with the blockade. Iran and Syria supplied money and rockets via a variety of smuggling conduits, but the Syrian civil war and the Iranian involvement in it reduced the generosity of the Tehran-Damascus axis.

As long as the Muslim Brotherhood ruled Cairo’s roost, Hamas virtually reduced the blockade to irrelevance, but that came to an end a year ago. Now Hamas demands the opening of the Rafah crossing to Sinai, a seaport, an airport and extended fishing rights – all of which would fling open the floodgates to military reinforcements.

Additionally, Hamas aims to raise $6 billion in foreign contributions, to which end the piteous wailing is indispensable.

The danger is that foreign philanthropy will be mobilized on a grand scale for ostensibly charitable ends only.

What is seen as a purely do-good venture can easily be turned into the same travesty that for years allowed largesse from abroad to be invested in attack tunnels, while the population’s subsistence and other imperative needs were ignored. The cement that was to go to housing construction, hospitals and schools, ended up buttressing tunnels under Israel’s border.

It is more than probable that whatever is donated to Gaza now will be used to reconstruct the Hamas upper echelons’ mansions and the lower ranks’ comfortable quarters.

Unconnected individuals are unlikely to see a penny.

Two conflicts and trading places

Bottom line question: How quickly do you think most Syrians would trade places with the Gazan Palestinian Arabs if they could?

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
07 October '13..

How you interpret the news of the past few days will be influenced to a degree by where you stand on such issues as man's inhumanity to man and the constant obligation to try to improve the world. Also, on how safe and remote from the conflicts you see yourself being.

Consider two news snapshots, both from this past week.

A Palestinian Press Agency report, in Arabic (tweeted by the indispensable Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh) today (Monday) says some 440 trucks laden with commercial and agricultural goods, among them cement, gravel, gasoline, diesel, cooking gas and assorted construction materials, are due to enter the Gaza Strip from Israel today (yes, the Arabic-language report says "from Israel" according to the Google Translate translation).

The data for deliveries into Hamas-controlled Gaza during the month of September were published yesterday (hat tip: Israel National News). Close to six thousand truck-loads were admitted by Israel via the Kerem Shalom Crossing. These brought more than 150,000 tons of goods for the Palestinian Arabs living in that alleged "concentration camp" called the Gaza Strip and were made up of

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
.

Kidney Care in Gaza and NPR's Ailing Coverage

The main reason for the worsening shortages of essential drugs and medical supplies in the Gaza Strip is that the Palestinian Authority ministry of health in the West Bank has not delivered enough drugs and medical supplies to Gaza, according to the World Health Organization, international aid organizations and Gaza health ministry officials.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA Media Analysis..
19 March '13..

In a March 12 broadcast, NPR's Larry Abramson asserts that, in Gaza, "the reasons for the [medical] supply shortages are many," so why does he identify only one of the alleged reasons? Completely ignoring the political infighting between the Fatah-Hamas rivalry, the factor that the World Health Organization has identified as the primary cause of medical shortages in Gaza, Abramson names only Israel as a culprit.

Covering the first successful transplant, Abramson reports ("Can Kidney Transplants Ease Strain on Gaza's Health System?"):

ABRAMSON: Thanks to a host of factors, Shifa Hospital faces supply shortages of medications that kidney patients need to manage nausea and other symptoms, and those dialysis machines are in constant use, so they require lots of maintenance. Dr. Ayman al Sahbeni says it's very tough to get the parts needed to keep those machines in working order.

DR. AYMAN AL SAHBENI: We have machines, 35, from different country, and every machine needs special spare parts, and you can imagine.

ABRAMSON: The reasons for the supply shortages are many. Israel restricts what can come in and out of Gaza. Humanitarian relief is supposed to get top priority, but the process still causes delays. The bottom line is that dialysis patients often have trouble scheduling appointments.

Thus, while Abramson asserts that "the reasons for the supply shortages are many," he deems only one of those reasons worthy of mention: alleged Israeli restrictions. But the biggest cause for the shortages has nothing at all to do with Israel, and everything to do with the Hamas-Fatah rivalry. Fatah controls the Ramallah Health Ministry, while Hamas runs the Gaza ministry. As the International Business Times News reported on April 24, 2012:

Gaza hospitals are running out of medicine and supplies after months of unanswered calls for help.

Dr Munir al-Barsh, director general of the pharmaceutical department at Gaza's ministry of health, confirmed that a lot of supplies have run out completely, including bandages, syringes and plaster for casts, as well as 186 types of medicine.

Ashraf al-Qafer, director of public relations and information at the health ministry, had warned in March that the scarcity of medical supplies had reached crisis point.

He said hospitals were in dire need of "infant incubators, dialysis machines, cardiac catheterisation units and medicine".

The intensive care units at hospitals have been particularly affected by the shortage, prompting fears that patients will be unable to receive the treatment or surgery that they so desperately need.

Barsh blamed the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah for not sending Gaza's share of medical supplies and equipment, which accounts for about 40 percent of the World Bank's aid to Gaza and the West Bank. (Emphasis added.)

Likewise, the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency reported Jan. 10, 2012:

Supplying Gaza. Why?

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
25 November '12..

Few are aware that just as the intense rocketing of Israel’s metropolitan areas was ramped up, the Kerem Shalom crossing to the Gaza Strip was reopened early last week. Trucks laden with foodstuffs and supplies were allowed through to those who were lobbing missiles at Israeli civilians.

Undoubtedly, these consignments didn’t only serve noncombatants but were seized by the combatants and allocated as they saw fit.

Now that a cease-fire is in place, this travesty surely should prompt a comprehensive collective rethink among Israelis.

Nowhere else in the history of armed conflict was there ever a situation in which a combatant side looked after its mortal enemy’s welfare, fed it, supplied it with essentials and powered it with electricity.

Invariably, the reverse is true. Combatants besiege enemies, seek to starve them into submission and to disable their ability to fight. That is the norm of warfare – most especially vis-à-vis aggressive antagonists who persistently stoke the furnaces of hostility and relentlessly make civilians their primary targets.

But despite a dozen years of assorted barrages from Gaza – punctuated by particularly severe episodes, as we witnessed only days ago – Israel makes sure that Gazans are well fed and lack nothing vital.

The bizarre outcome is that we sustain and reinforce, at the expense of Israeli taxpayers, the very terrorists who aim to wipe out these Israeli taxpayers.

This is counter-intuitive in the extreme. Moreover, the world does not acknowledge our peculiar largesse, one that forcefully grates against our fundamental interests. Despite shipments of basic commodities to Gaza, we are pilloried as imposers of blockades and creators of humanitarian crises –nonexistent though they are – in the Strip.

Millions of dollars into Gaza - Metal components to the Hamas military wing. Hmmm...

Lilach Shoval..
Israel Hayom..
01 November '12..

(Reminds one that there was a purpose for the demand to inspect all materials entering Gaza. Particularly those that are periodically returned to Israel by air. Y)

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), in cooperation with the Israel Police, recently arrested a Gaza metal merchant involved in transferring millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip and to Hamas. In addition, the man reportedly sold metal components to the Hamas military wing, used to build tunnels, military posts and bunkers.

The merchant, Mahr Attiah Abed Abu Gabba, 41, was in possession of legal authorization to enter Israel, thanks to his profession. Abu Gabba was arrested at the Erez border crossing on the Gaza border, with 114,000 shekels in cash. The indictment filed against him later that month at a Beersheba district court included charges of funding terror and providing services to an illegal organization. The indictment was accompanied by a request to seize his assets, under the law prohibiting the funding of terror organizations.

During his interrogation, the suspect confessed to ongoing activity including transfer of funds to Hamas and selling massive amounts of metal to Hamas' military wing. He said that since Hamas faced obstacles in bringing money into the Gaza Strip it took advantage of the nature of his business to transfer millions of dollars into the Hamas-ruled territory.

“Flotilla” Ship Estelle Given a Free Ride

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
21 October '12..






The Finnish-registered Estelle, whose passengers and crew included activists and members of parliament from Greece, Sweden, the US, Canada, Norway and Israel, was intercepted by the IDF on Saturday and brought to Ashdod port after attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

In a video accompanying its online coverage of the story, Sky News gives a platform to a spokeswoman for the organization that sent the ship. She claims, unchallenged:

The blockade is illegal, it’s not accepted by the international community

She also claims that the blockade has nothing to do with Israel’s security. This despite the fact that rockets continue to be fired from Gaza on to Israeli towns and cities and despite the fact that Gaza is ruled by the Hamas terrorist organization.

As for the claim that the Israeli blockade is illegal, this is patently not the case. The UN Secretary General himself created a panel of inquiry to examine the events surrounding the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident. The subsequent 2011 report by the Palmer Commission concluded that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is legal and Israel has the right to enforce the blockade, including in international waters.

Roth - Strategically, what is the most striking aspect of Israel's response to the ceaseless rocket attacks from that nest of terrorist vipers, the Gaza Strip?

Goods vehicles lined up to deliver
supplies to the Gaza Strip
[Source: IDF] 

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 February '12..

We had rockets raining down on the heads of Israelis living in southern Israel in the cold dark hours of this past night, and before that on Saturday night. The previous rocket attacks from the same source were a few days before that. And the rocket attack before them was a few days earlier.

There have been so many rocket attacks, entirely of a terrorist nature and with not the slightest connection to a military assault (they don't even claim to be firing on our army, and even if they did claim it, it would be a complete nonsense) that even the most concerned resident of the Israeli communities under bombardment will have a hard time recalling one attack from another.

We keep track of the numbers in the box on the right side of this page (Challah Hu Akbar's Counter of rocket attacks on Israel). But anyone who has had to face up to terror knows it is not the numbers that change lives. What really impacts on you is the daily (and nightly) fear that accompanies the raising of children, living constructive lives and building a community worthy of the name, while just over the fence are people ready to give up their own children if only they can inflict pain on you. Becoming aware of this does change your life.

But while it's not the numbers, today we do want to share some numeric data.

CiF Watch - The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood gambles with Palestinian lives.

Phoebe Greenwood

Israelinurse..
CiF Watch..
29 December '11..

About 90 minutes before the Guardian put up Phoebe Greenwood’s latest screed on its ‘World News – Gaza’ section on December 28th another barrage of Kassam rockets rudely awoke the sleeping Israeli civilians living in the region surrounding the Gaza Strip. Eight hours later, a second barrage targeted the same area, endangering children setting out to school at that time and bringing the total number of rockets fired from Gaza this month alone to 46 and this year to 682.

Predictably however, dedicated follower of fashion Phoebe Greenwood deftly airbrushed out the decade-long ongoing war crimes against Israeli civilians by the plethora of terror organisations based in Gaza, ignoring the rockets completely and suggesting that suicide bombings are a thing of the past. Her story concentrates purely on hearsay accounts of Palestinian suffering as recounted to her by a representative of a politically motivated NGO and fails even to afford the accused the right of reply.

There is, of course, nothing surprising about that. Greenwood’s polemic would be considerably less effective both as a tear-jerker for Western audiences and a public relations exercise for PHR were she to provide her readers with the context of the challenges of providing humanitarian assistance to the population of a region in which terrorists trying to infiltrate Israel’s borders mingle indistinguishably with civilians and have a history of exploiting medical permits to facilitate attacks.

(Read full "The Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood gambles with Palestinian lives.")

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.