Thirteen years later, firing Qassam rockets at a civilian population is still a war crime

For many years the State of Israel and its security forces have found themselves in a constant battle with the NGO B'Tselem, concerning the protecting of Israeli citizens from terrorism and terrorist entities. The widely held belief that B'Tselem's approach endangers the lives of both Israeli civilians as well its security personnel is held by many, so even in the best of cases B'Tselem's opinions are quite often rejected out of hand. However, this piece written in 2006, does clearly raise and address the rocket fire from Gaza, and label it for what it is. Interesting sidepoint that back in 2006 the Palestinian Authority was considered to be the entity to be held accountable. Today, this would include Hamas or any other terrorist entities that proudly proclaim responsibility for rocket launches.

Firing Qassam rockets at a civilian population is a war crime

B'Tselem
17 April 2006
Link: https://www.btselem.org/israeli_civilians/20060417_qassam_missiles

From June 2004 to the end of March 2006, thirteen civilians, five of them minors, were killed by Qassam rockets that Palestinians fired into Israel and at Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. Eight of the victims were Israeli, four were Palestinian, and one a Chinese national. The rocket attacks also caused substantial property damage.

The Palestinian organizations responsible for the rocket-fire state openly that one of their aims is to kill Israeli civilians. Deliberate attacks on civilians are both immoral and illegal. The willful killing of civilians is classified as a grave breach in the Fourth Geneva Convention and as a war crime that is unjustifiable under any circumstances. Furthermore, Qassam rockets are themselves illegal, even when aimed at military objects, because the rockets are so imprecise, and thus endanger civilians situated in the area in which the rockets are fired or where they land. Therefore, the persons involved in firing the rockets violate the requirements of distinction and proportionality, which are fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

To aggravate matters, many of the rockets are fired from, or near, areas in which civilians live. International humanitarian law prohibits attacks from inside or near the homes of civilians, and from using civilians as human shields. IHL's objective is to reduce to a minimum injury to civilians during an anticipated military response by the other side. The Palestinian organizations that carry out the attacks against Israel from within or near a populated area breach this rule; in doing so, the organizations show their indifference to the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives.

Once Again: Friday night rocket barrages from Gaza - by Arnold Roth

Spokesthugs for Hamas are quoted tonight saying the Israeli airstrikes that followed shortly after the Gazan rocket barrages are a “dangerous escalation” and that the “Zionist enemy bears responsibility for its consequences and ramifications.”

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
19 November '19..

As the Sabbath ends here in Jerusalem, we - like many of the families living around us - go as soon as we can to our Internet devices to see what we didn't hear about during the past 25 hours. And it turns out to have been an especially violent weekend.

Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired 10 rockets into Israel in two separate barrages on Friday night, the army said... Warning sirens had gone off in the town of Sderot and in other Israeli communities along the Gaza border as many families were eating Friday night Shabbat dinner... One projectile slammed into a house in the town of Sderot, while the Iron Dome system intercepted eight and the tenth fell in open ground. The army responded several hours later with strikes on several terror targets in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
Palestinian media reported that several airstrikes targeted training sites and outposts affiliated with Hamas and other groups. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said three men sustained moderate or serious shrapnel wounds from one of the airstrikes.
In the early hours of Saturday, sirens again sounded in Sderot and the village of Ibim. The IDF later attributed the sirens to “non-rocket fire” from Gaza into Israel.
During the earlier barrage, a 65-year-old woman was lightly hurt when she fell while running toward a shelter, medics said. Five people were treated for anxiety.
The attack was one of the largest in recent months...
The rocket barrages came a day after a rocket fired from Gaza landed in an open field. There were no reports of injuries or damage in Thursday’s attack. ["Rocket fired from Gaza hits home in Sderot as Iron Dome intercepts 8 others", Times of Israel, November 1, 2019]

Deploying the Iron Dome anti-missile system is expensive, as the news media here frequently remind us. As a general matter, the system rapidly informs its operators if a specific Israel-bound attack is on a trajectory likely to cause damage or injury. Then and (usually) only then, the IDF shoots to intercept.

There were eight intercepts on Friday night.

Here's how a crash-landing Gazan rocket, fired off in the general direction of anything Israeli, looks when it strikes your home.

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Dance Under Fire: The rhythms of life on the Israeli side of Gaza border - by David E. Kaplan

...While dance instructors anywhere else in the world might be concerned over issues of students facing personal problems or being ill, Dror is anxious: “Will we be able to rehearse? Will we get to finish that rehearsal or will the rocket sirens go off? After all, it’s my responsibility to put on a show even under rocket fire.”

David E. Kaplan..
Lay of the Land..
23 October '19..

A planned dance performance on the Gazan border reminds me of the Gulf War of 1991 when Iraq were raining Scud missiles down on Israel and maestro Zubin Mehta raced back from New York to conduct concerts. “I had many obligations in New York that should have prevented me from coming, but I couldn’t imagine not being here,” he said at the time, while he was director of the New York Philharmonic. He conducted full-house concerts keeping his gas mask nearly as close to him as his baton, “just in case!”

“Can you imagine,” he told this writer in an exclusive interview on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2016 in Tel Aviv, “Scuds where dropping out of the sky, possibly with chemicals but this did not deter Israelis from wanting to hear classical music.”

It sent a powerful and poignant message not to the likes of Saddam Hussein – a waste of time – but to the people of Israel who were asserting, despite the dire situation, their grit and love of culture.

Fast forward to the present and again that characteristic is being expressed by Liat Dror‘s Sderot-based dance company which is staging a performance on the Gazan border to express “our humanity” in the face of living under constant attack. “It’s my responsibility to put on a show even under rocket fire,” says a proud and defiant Liat, artistic director at the Sderot Adama Dance Company.

So, what is daily life like, living “Under Fire”?

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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. 

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How do Israelis Near Gaza Cope With the Gaza Rocket Threat? - by Tracy Alexander

So, who are the people living on Israel’s most active military front; where ordinary life goes hand in hand with conditions unimaginable to those in the West? How do these residents contend with the reality of witnessing the carnage of the ongoing conflict up close?

Tracy Alexander..
Honest Reporting..
24 September '19..

Walking through the streets of any southern Israeli neighborhood, the untrained eye could be led to believe that life there is no different to any other city or community in the country. In fact, one might need to be alerted to the pieces of infrastructure unique to a region which, for almost two decades, has endured the threat of rockets being fired from Gaza, compelling residents to run for cover.

In Kibbutz Alumim, less than three kilometers from the coastal enclave, Israel’s well-known air defense system, the Iron Dome, can be seen sitting up on a hill pointing towards the sky, in full view, as residents mosey through their neighborhood.

Meantime, underground, Israel’s military is building a defensive wall against Hamas attack tunnels.

Life in the Sha’ar HaNegev region is anything but ordinary.

A thin barbed wire fence is all that blocks the view from Israel into Gaza, where now a thick cloud of smoke is all but permanent since those Great March of Return protests began in 2016.

One could mistakenly believe an Israeli child had neglected their kite in the garden, looking at it laying torn and deteriorating in a family’s back yard. In reality, this is the remnant of an arson device flown over the border fence into Israeli territory from Gaza.

While the first Palestinian rocket was fired from Gaza in 2001, the launches have increased after Israel withdrew from the Strip in 2005.

Since the disengagement, more than 13,000 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel.

In the most intense barrage, Palestinians fired more than 600 rockets in one weekend in May 2019.

So, who are the people living on Israel’s most active military front; where ordinary life goes hand in hand with conditions unimaginable to those in the West?

How do these residents contend with the reality of witnessing the carnage of the ongoing conflict up close?

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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. 

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Surprise? Despite Striving to Avoid War, The Independent Calls Netanyahu “Warmongering” - by Emmanuel Miller

...From beginning to end, this analysis is riddled with mistakes, misunderstandings, contradictions and a paucity of context. One can only hope that Trew will properly research her articles in future.

Emmanuel Miller..
Honest Reporting..
19 November '18..

With events in Israel and Gaza moving rapidly, many column inches have been dedicated to analysis of developments. While pieces frequently lean one way or another, few in the mainstream media have been as poorly written as this one, by The Independent’s Middle East correspondent Bel Trew, describing Benjamin Netanyahu as “a once-warmongering prime minister”.

From the very beginning, this confused jumble of an analysis piece misunderstands events in Israel, what Israelis think, and what their motivations are. That Trew is actually an experienced, knowledgeable former reporter for The Times of London, makes it all the more bewildering.

The article opens with Trew accusing Israelis of not thinking straight about how to react to a massive onslaught of rockets from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ): “The logic doesn’t seem right: the very people fed up of living under a barrage of rockets from Gaza rejecting a ceasefire between their government in Israel and the fighters that are firing at them.”

Such a statement may be excusable coming from an opinionated college student, but is less in keeping with Trew’s credentials as a seasoned reporter.

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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. 

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Hamas praises both Human Rights Watch as well as shooting rockets to Israel. No contradiction there. - by Elder of Ziyon

Human Rights Watch proved to Hamas that it has little to lose by escalating things, because major western "human rights" organizations will support Arab violence against Jews but not Israelis defending themselves.

Elder of Ziyon..
20 June '18..

On Sunday, Hamas issued a press release praising Human Rights Watch's latest report blaming Israel for responding to violent Gaza riots:

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) received great satisfaction and high appreciation of Human Rights Watch's report regarding the violations of the occupation against the residents of the Gaza Strip and the demand for the protection of the Palestinians, which revealed the facts that confirm the involvement of the Israeli occupation in what appeared to be war crimes against Palestinian demonstrators As well as the use by the occupation of policies, laws, arguments and pretexts to justify and cover their deliberate killing and harm to Palestinians by using live and lethal bullets.

The findings of the report reflect a part of the reality of the suffering and injustice inflicted on the Palestinians by the unjust siege imposed on Gaza and its inhabitants twelve years ago. The suffering continues and escalates. As a flagrant form of Israeli violence threatening Palestinian life and rights through a long series of killings, sniping, starvation and siege, which constitute a flagrant and serious violation of international law and international humanitarian law that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Today, it issued another statement, supporting the barrage of rockets into Israel last night:

All praise for the valiant resistance that responded to the Israeli shelling of its positions in Gaza. This is a legitimate right. The message of shelling is to confirm that the resistance is the one who determines the rules of engagement in its own way and will not allow the enemy to unite our people or impose any new equations .

On the one hand, Hamas pretends to care about humanitarian issues and to be against violence that targets civilians. On the other, Hamas praises shooting rockets at civilians.

And there is no contradiction. Because Human Rights Watch, like Hamas, doesn't really care about human rights of Jews.

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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. 

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Turning Rocket-Fire into Fibs, Fabrication and Fraud at Reuters

...Reuters creates the false impression that the Israeli victims of this terror are somehow partly to blame, that the terrorism isn’t really terrorism, and that Israel’s highly restrained response was somehow heavy-handed or provocative. This kind of irresponsible journalism emboldens terrorists, giving them an impression that the world will not notice, or care, about their aggression. The end result of this irresponsible journalism is a greater risk of even more human tragedy: for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
22 August '16..

Yesterday, terrorists in Gaza fired rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot. By a tremendous stroke of luck there were no injuries, but at least one rocket landed in a residential area, exploding next to a house. The terror organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took responsibility, as did a Salafist group with ties to Islamic State (ISIS).

Reuters then wrote an absurd story: misstating facts, covering up context, and even changing attributed statements from the Israeli military.

Reuters fabricated statements by the Israeli military to make it look like the IDF had shelled a town.

The Reuters story begins,

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched a rocket that landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot on Sunday and Israeli aircraft and tanks responded by shelling the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the army and police said.(emphasis added)

The IDF said nothing of the kind.

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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. 

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Little-reported and most of the damage is inside Gaza - by Arnold Roth

...It's a very rare thing for news reporters to challenge that news ban. So there's very little understanding outside of Israel and Gaza about the death, injuries and damage caused to Gazans by the flourishing rocket-firing industry based there.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 January '15..






Since they are so rarely reported, Friday night's rocket volley on southern Israel is something we feel the need to mention here:

Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip exploded in Israel on Friday night, in the south's Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council. No one was injured and there were no reports of damage. A further two rockets at least were thought to have fallen short and landed inside the Gaza Strip. The number of rockets fired in one volley is unusual in the relative quiet that has persisted since the end of Operation Protective Edge. Several explosions were heard after a rocket alert sounded at 11:07pm in Sderot and communities in Sha'ar HaNegev... [Ynet, Friday January 01, 2016]

Other Friday night reports indicated that the volley consisted of five rockets. Two crashed into Israel, as Ynet reported, and three are "Fell Shorts", meaning they failed to get as far as Israel and fell and exploded onto the heads and homes of Palestinian Arabs living in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip.

The outcomes of these Fell Shorts, which represent a large proportion of all the Israel-bound rockets despatched by Gaza's rocket-rich terrorists, are almost always shrouded in Hamas-imposed secrecy.
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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.

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Really can't make this kind of shot up

...as Mr Dabour demonstrates so eloquently, that there is almost literally nothing hostile to Israel - no matter how ludicrous, no matter how totally lacking in evidence - that cannot be said by opinion-warriors like him.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 July '15..

A few hours ago, we wrote here about the rocket attack that emanated from the Gaza Strip last night, seeking in the traditional way more Israeli victims.

Several Israeli reports said there were two rockets in total, and that they came crashing down somewhere more or less on the border fence separating Israel from the Islamist regime's territory. Then when we went looking, we found a credible Gazan source that said there were in fact four rockets in the overnight barrage. And that all four crash-landed on the Gazan side.

Naturally (since Arab-on-Arab violence in the dark recesses of the Hamas regime's fiefdom has close-to-zero news value in the eyes of the mainstream media) there is not a word published anywhere about Gazan casualties resulting from this latest Gazan Fell Short (that's the name we give to Palestinian Arab rockets that misfire and hit something Gazan instead of something Israeli - they are very, very common). Sad, but nothing new. But worth knowing if you are trying to make sense out of the highly partisan way in which news is and is not reported from the violent margins of the great country in which we live.

Now we see this:

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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, 

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UN complicity in Palestinian war crimes: A troubling picture

...There is no doubt that UN officials and employees turned a blind eye to these blatant violations as they were taking place, and possibly were involved in facilitating such attacks. It is apparent that several UN officials were more interested in disseminating propaganda during the war than acknowledging the reality of what was taking place on the ground. If the UN wishes to secure its installations and avoid future death and injury, the onus is on the institution to enforce the law it preaches to others and end its highly damaging role in enabling Palestinian war crimes.

UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun. 'It is
apparent that several UN officials were
 more interested in disseminating propaganda
during the war than acknowledging the
reality of what was taking place on
the ground' (Photo: AP)

Anne Herzberg..
Ynet/Israel Opinion..
04 May '15..

Last week, the United Nations Office of the Secretary General issued a summary of its long-awaited Board of Inquiry (BOI) report on the 2014 Gaza War. The BOI was tasked with investigating incidents affecting UN premises during the two-month conflict.

The BOI’s mandate was generally even-handed, did not declare Israel guilty in advance, and was comprised of individuals who appeared to be free of bias. As a result, the Israeli government fully cooperated with the mission.

The BOI’s formation and origins stand in marked contrast to the UN Human Rights Council inquiry currently underway. The HRC mission has been tarred by a biased mandate, pre-determined conclusions of Israeli violations, and highly prejudiced staffing. Moreover, it is conducted within the HRC framework, controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and many of the other world’s worst human rights abusers.

While we are still awaiting the results of the HRC’s Gaza inquiry, based on past experience, it is highly likely that it will not address in any serious way how Palestinians exploit UN facilities as part of their human shielding combat strategy.

The BOI summary, on the other hand, paints a picture of intense urban combat between Israel and Palestinian terror groups, use of UN facilities by Palestinians to launch attacks and to store weapons, and uncertainty as to whether buildings were hit by IDF or Hamas. It also reveals, at best, gross incompetence by UNRWA, which apparently had no policies in place aimed at preventing these illegal activities.

According to the report, the organization essentially handed over rockets found hidden in UNRWA schools to unknown local authorities during the war, with no apparent concern for Hamas’ involvement.

There are other troubling details regarding the BOI primarily relating to the lack of transparency and methodology of work.

The main report itself is secret, so it is generally unknown what material was used by the BOI in drawing its conclusions. The public summary, however, indicates that the BOI relied heavily on witness interviews with UNRWA and other UN personnel.

BTW, Those Gaza Casualties? Fault Hamas and UNRWA

...There’s little doubt that a breakdown of each individual incident would be portrayed in a far less negative light in a document prepared by a more neutral party. After all, the UN was largely dependent on UNRWA for the report. But if we were to accept these findings as definitive, what can’t be forgotten is that the only reason there was any firing anywhere near UN facilities is that Hamas routinely used them and other buildings such as schools and hospitals to shield their efforts to shoot at Israelis. The people of Gaza as a whole, and not just those at UN buildings, were used as human shields by the terrorist movement that governs the strip, itself a war crime.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
29 April '15..

On Monday the United Nations issued a report about attacks on their facilities in Gaza during last summer’s fighting between Hamas and Israel. The report’s conclusion was widely reported as finding that the deaths of 44 civilians were the fault of the Israeli military. Strictly speaking that’s true, as there’s little doubt that the casualties at some of their facilities were killed or wounded by Israeli fire. But before the anti-Israel propaganda machine starts cranking up to denounce the Israelis as war criminals—as the Palestinians are preparing to do at the International Criminal Court—a close reading of a document that was prepared by a hostile UN reveals a far more nuanced picture of what happened in Gaza. While some of the shelters in question might have been struck in error in the heat of battle in a confusing environment, even the UN was prepared to admit that many of their institutions in Gaza were being used as arms depots by Hamas and that armed fighters were shooting at Israel in the vicinity of many of the places that were attacked. While Israel’s military can’t be said to be perfect, the real fault for what happened belongs to both the Hamas terrorist overlords of Gaza and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that operated the facilities.

Using their new perch as a member of UN agencies, it’s likely that the Palestinian Authority will seek to get the International Criminal Court to investigate and indict Israel for war crimes in Gaza. This is a dangerous gambit for the PA because even though the UN body is biased against the Jewish state, the evidence of criminal intent or behavior is lacking. Moreover, there is ample proof of Palestinian war crimes. Indeed, every one of the thousands of Hamas missiles fired at Israeli cities and towns was a crime. As were the attempts by the Islamist group to use tunnels dug underneath the international border between Gaza and Israel to commit acts of murder and kidnapping.

The story told in the UN report is not one of callous Israeli behavior. Rather, even this indictment shows that the Israel Defense Forces sought to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible and didn’t fire indiscriminately.

The problem for those wanting to use this document to bash Israel is that it confirms much of what the Israelis said about the use of UNRWA facilities, and specifically the schools designated as shelters. The report admits that several such schools were used for storing Hamas weaponry. Others were, as Israel insists, used as observation posts for Hamas military action. Many were the sites of firing of rockets at Israel and Israeli forces. While UNRWA sought to deflect blame for the use of their buildings for terrorism, even the UN report notes that their security measures to avoid this were inadequate and the agency needs to take the problem more seriously.

As Gaza Closes Out the Year

...There are many newspaper stories about the awful situation in Gaza, but very few point out what Politico did: that Israel is playing a positive and humane role in Gaza reconstruction, while the top Palestinian “leaders” in both the PA and Hamas jockey for money, power, and advantage and don’t seem to care much about the people they claim to represent. And as the Europeans debate BDS resolutions and recognition of a Palestinian state, the actual facts about Gaza never even cross their minds. For all too many politicians in Europe, Palestine and Palestinians aren’t a real cause anyway: their real motivation is to attack Israel. Facts that get in the way are easily ignored.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
23 December '14..

At the end of last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas, all sorts of pledges were made about rebuilding Gaza. Hamas in particular claimed victory because it had broken the “siege of Gaza” and now all Gazans would benefit.

This was nonsense, and clearly so back then. It was obvious from previous experience that goods would not flow easily into Hamas-controlled territory, especially with Egypt smashing the network of smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Sinai.

What is the reality at year end? This is from the Saudi Gazette:

Two months after donors pledged $5.4 billion to help rebuild Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas, Palestinian, UN and other officials say barely 2 percent of the money has been transferred. The conference in Cairo had been hailed as a success, with Qatar promising $1 billion, Saudi Arabia $500 million and the United States and the European Union a combined $780 million in various forms of assistance. Half was expected to go to rebuilding houses and infrastructure in Gaza destroyed during seven weeks of fighting, and the rest to support the Palestinian budget. But of the total, only $100 million or so has been received, according to UN and other officials. While the EU and the United States have accelerated some funding that was already in the pipeline, very few new pledges have come to fruition.

Who is to blame? Donors who have not met their pledges, to start.

Then add the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, fighting over power and uninterested in the actual welfare of the people of Gaza. This is from Politico:

Rebuilding Gaza and its terror-war capabilities

...For Arab audiences, revelations of this kind are considered heroic. So too are claims by Hamas that the massive destruction suffered by their people during the summer are a 'victory' worth protecting and guarding. There is zero prospect of getting to a state of peace with people who hold to views like these, no matter how much our side wants to.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 December '14..

A rocket, fired from the rocket-rich environs of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, was fired into southern Israel on Friday morning. It landed in the Eshkol region which covers part of Israel's Western Negev desert and is home to 15 kibbutzim, 13 moshavim, and a handful of non-collective communities, with a total population of roughly 6,000 people. The attack received little coverage by news media outside Israel. It was the third such rocket attack on Israel since a ceasefire temporarily ended the last intensive round of fighting, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge, in August.

During the early hours of this morning (Saturday), the IDF launched an airborne mission into Gaza:

The Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas training facility in the area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday night in retaliation for a rocket fired at southern Israel earlier in the day. The attack marks the first time Israel carried out an air strike in the Gaza Strip since Operation Protective Edge ended in August. No injuries were reported. [Ynet, today]

A later report clarified that it was not a Hamas training facility but rather "a cement factory intended to rehabilitate the [Hamaa] group's terror tunnels".

The Israeli measure, consistent with how these things go in the news media, was reported. So was a serious-sounding call by the arch-terrorist Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas (the one who has hypocritically sent multiple members of his family into Israeli hospitals when they needed serious and professional medical care, as recently as a few weeks ago). He is quoted saying Israel's actions, coming hours after the explosive landing of the Gazan rocket, amount to

"a grave violation of the ceasefire agreement... We will protect and guard the resistance’s victory in the last conflict... We call on Egypt as the guarantor of the agreement to act and stop the violations by the enemy." [Hamas threatens retaliation following Israeli airstrikes | Times of Israel, today]

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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, 
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Surprise! UNRWA Gives Rockets to Hamas; Why is U.S. Still Funding It?

...In reality, UNRWA should have been defunded long ago, given both its role in perpetuating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the fact that its enormous budget comes at the expense of other refugees, like the Syrians, whose need is far greater. But by turning rockets over to Hamas, UNRWA has lost its last shred of pretense to being a “humanitarian” agency. It’s high time for Congress to pull the financial plug.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
20 July '14..

Last week, the UN refugee agency dedicated exclusively to Palestinians admitted that 20 rockets had mysteriously turned up in one of its schools in Gaza, thereby confirming a claim Israel has made for years: that UNRWA facilities are frequently utilized by terrorists. This week, the organization announced that it has turned the rockets over to “the local authorities” in Gaza, aka Hamas. In other words, a UN agency funded almost entirely by American and European taxpayers handed rockets over to a terrorist organization that is shooting them at Israel. And that isn’t even the most outrageous part of the story.

The truly outrageous part was a Western diplomat’s response, as reported by the Times of Israel:

A Western diplomat familiar with the incident said there is “absolutely no evidence” that UNRWA handed the rockets to Hamas. Rather, the diplomat suggested, the authorities who collected the rockets are under the direct authority of the Palestinian unity government, “which Hamas has left and which many in Hamas are openly hostile to. The key point is that the weapons were handed over to people who are not answerable to Hamas,” the diplomat said, referring to the fact that the unity government, not Hamas, is officially the ruling power in Gaza.

​The idea that the Palestinian Authority, rather than Hamas, is the ruling power in Gaza is risible. True, that’s the ostensible implication of the unity government it recently formed with Hamas, but in reality, the PA doesn’t have a single soldier or policeman in Gaza. When PA Health Minister Jawad Awwad tried to exercise his nominal authority by inspecting Gaza’s hospitals last week, his vehicle was stoned. PA President Mahmoud Abbas hasn’t even dared set foot in Gaza. Egypt has repeatedly said it will reopen its border crossing with Gaza only if Hamas allows the PA to resume control of the crossing–surely a superfluous demand if the PA were already in control of Gaza. And we haven’t even mentioned the glaring internal contradiction in the diplomat’s own words: If Hamas has “left” the unity government, how can the unity government even exist, much less be in control of Gaza?

You can continue building your army if you stop shooting?

...So please accept our "quiet for quiet" offer and let us continue to indefinitely postpone our actually addressing the situation.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
03 July '14..

Observation: Israel's Message to Hamas: You can continue building your army if you stop shooting

"Now we are preparing for two possibilities in the south: The first is that the firing at our communities will stop and then our operations will stop as well and the quiet that prevailed in the south after Operation Pillar of Defense will continue. The second possibility is that the firing at our communities in the south will continue and then the reinforcement forces that are located in the field will act forcefully. The security of our citizens comes first."
PM Netanyahu's Remarks at the US Embassy Fourth of July Celebration 3 July 2014

Let me spell out what this message to Hamas is actually saying:

Dear Hamas leadership,

If you stop shooting - at least stop shooting much - then we will leave you alone so that you can continue to build up your offensive capabilities.

We call this our "quiet for quiet" policy.

And we don't have to tell you just how much the "quiet for quiet" policy has been a gift for Hamas until now.

When we first began the "quiet for quiet policy" there were only very primitive launching devices in the Gaza Strip with extremely limited range and payload.

At the time we adopted the "quiet for quiet" policy because we didn't want to invest the military effort required to clear out the Gaza Strip of the terror threat as we did in the massive operation we carried out in the West Bank and we wanted to keep life bearable within the area that was within range of attacks from the Gaza Strip.

Thanks to Israel's "quiet for quiet", there are now weapons factories in the Gaza Strip producing rockets and missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and beyond.

The presence of rockets in Gaza does matter

...When Mahmoud Abbas assured various diplomats that the unified PA would honor its commitments Abbas knew that these commitments prohibit the presence of rockets inside the area of the PA and that his unified PA partner, Hamas, had rockets. If Abbas fails to address this issue with his Hamas partner now as details of the unified PA are being hammered out, then he isn't a victim of Hamas, he is a conspirator. And the last thing we should do is let him off the hook by limiting ourselves to demanding that the illegal rockets in Gaza aren't fired.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
15 May '14..

It is anyone's guess if indeed the Fatah-Hamas unified PA will actually go through, but it would be irresponsible not to prepare for such a possibility.

A unified PA would mean that the Gaza Strip would be under the authority of the unified PA.

And that would mean, first and foremost, that the PA would be responsible for the huge number of rockets now deployed in the Gaza Strip in gross violation of the agreements that the PA is ostensibly committed to.

With the notable exception of Minister Uzi Landau, I am not aware of any Israeli official who has cited the obligation of the PA, if and when it controls the Gaza Strip, to get rid of these rockets.

Here is what PM Netanyahu said when he met this Tuesday with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida: "If President Abbas goes ahead with this national unity with Hamas...then we'll have to hold him accountable for every rocket that is fired from Gaza, to Israel."

That's right. This comment implies that the issue is not if the rockets are in Gaza but instead only if they are fired.

Unfortunately, experience has taught us that this is not a viable position.

Dear Ms. Saskia Ramming - About those rockets, a couple of questions?

...Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process has issued a statement that during his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Mr. Serry was assured that the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal "will be implemented under the leadership of the President and on the basis of the PLO commitments....President Abbas emphasized that these commitments include recognition of Israel, non-violence, and adherence to previous agreements."

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
24 April '14..




Question to spokesperson relating to statement by Robert Serry regarding assurances he received from President Abbas

Dear Ms. Saskia Ramming, Spokesperson, Office of the United Nations Special
Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process,

According to the UN News Centre report of 24 April 2014
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47649#.U1mW2rmKC00

Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process has issued a statement that during his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Mr. Serry was assured that the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal "will be implemented under the leadership of the President and on the basis of the PLO commitments....President Abbas emphasized that these commitments include recognition of Israel, non-violence, and adherence to previous agreements."

Question: Given that Hamas boasts that it has deployed large numbers of missiles in the Gaza Strip and keeping in mind that this is most certainly in clear violation of "PLO commitments" and "previous agreements":

(a) Does Mr. Serry expect that implementation of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal will include the removal and/or destruction of these missiles from the Gaza Strip?

Twenty fired from Gaza: ten land in Israel. What the remaining ten teach us.

...Not to diminish the existential threat all of this poses to Israelis, in terms of the numbers, Gazan Arabs continue to pay a steep and largely unexamined price in terms of people maimed and killed at the hands of the barbarians in their own midst.

Gaza terrorists laying explosives:
Their neighbors' children serve
as human shields and unseen victims

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 April '14..

A brief report on the Long War Journal website discloses, thanks to their very useful research and media monitoring, that the ten rockets fired on southern Israel this past Monday [see "21-Apr-14: Rocket barrage seeks Israeli victims in Monday morning attack from Gaza"] came from a specific source in the Gazan vipers' nest. Also, that the published numbers conceal - yet again - something that sharp reporters and their editors ought to have focused on long ago, but keep ignoring.

Here's part of what David Barnett's LWJ report says:

In a series of tweets, the Yahya Ayyash Brigades took credit for rocket fire today from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The jihadist group, which has been promoted by Abdullah Azzam Brigades official Sirajuddin Zurayqat, said its fighters launched more than 20 rockets... The Yahya Ayyash Brigades, named after a deceased Hamas bomb maker, first appeared in mid-January 2014 when it took credit for rocket fire during the funeral of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Last month, the group took responsibility for some of the rocket and mortar fire from Gaza during a mini flare-up between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in Gaza.

The IDF's assessment of the Monday barrage from Gaza is, as the Times of Israel said, that ten rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip in all. Seven fell in open areas in the Sha’ar Hanegev region and outside the city of Sderot. One exploded in Sderot's city limits, causing damage. Another exploded in the Eshkol region.

The terror practitioners who did the indiscriminate firing say the number was double the Israeli total, making it fairly likely any additional rockets fell short, landing on the heads or homes of the hapless Palestinian Arabs who live under Hamas domination in that jihadist enclave.

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Someone exploded something in Gaza this morning, killing some people. See any coverage?

...The truth is relatively little is known about what actually happens day to day, and especially the very bad things done to Gazans by the dark forces of Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, as today's explosion report highlights. It's hardly a free and open society. Yet we rarely hear the experts of the mainstream news media owning up to this, even while they bemoan a failed peace process. Perhaps it's time to hold them to a higher standard.

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

It's always a tricky thing to base news reports on Palestinian Arab sources, so a grain of salt if not more is needed when processing this report from Maan, the European-funded Palestinian Arab news agency.

Maan reported at 11:15 this morning (Wednesday) that there has been "an explosion" this morning in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, in or near Khan Younis (population: 350,000). It quotes Ashraf al-Qidra whom we have mentioned here in the past, speaking on behalf of the Hamas regime's Ministry of Health, saying "the circumstances behind the explosion were not clear". What is evidently less unclear is that three Palestinian Arab men are dead and four others are injured with shrapnel wounds and in "stable" condition. The Maan report has been picked up by several other news outlets, most of them Israeli, this morning.

For people who follow events in the Hamas-run enclave, it's commonplace for news of failed terror attacks and self-inflicted injuries from mishandled explosives (such as the one that killed three Gazan men a month ago) to be reported via Hamas' Ministry of Health.

(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! 
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Were 3 more rockets fired at Israel today, fell short, and went unreported?

..."Fell shorts", as we have noted here several times, are never news, not even when - as certainly happens - Gazan children or jihadist rocket men end up being injured or killed by them. And if these events are not reported, then in the realpolitik of international relations they simply never happened.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
17 February '14

We have not heard of any rocket assaults on southern Israel today but over in Gaza they seem to believe they happened.

Here below is a screenshot we captured in the last few minutes (it's now 10 at night on Monday) from the website of GANSO, the Gaza NGO Safety Office. It calls itself

a project of CARE International, funded by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) with the aim of providing the information and analysis the NGO community needs in order to implement humanitarian projects safely.

As you might be able to see from the image below

at GANSO they say that at 10 this morning,

"Pal. ops. fired 3 rockets from E. of KY toward the Green Line. Updates to follow as received."

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