Dear BBC, Hamas is not ‘seen’ as a terrorist group, it is a terrorist group. - by Karen Harradine

The BBC is out of step with what many know to be true – that Hamas is a terrorist organisation which is happy to sacrifice its own people in its genocidal attempts to destroy Israel. Should war happen, we can count on the BBC to blame Israel for any loss of life while making excuses for the jihadists who terrorise not only Israelis but their own people. Most of the Arab world, and indeed the Gazans, are furious with Hamas. Yet the BBC would have us believe they’re freedom fighters.

Karen Harradine..
Conservativewoman.co.uk..
27 March '19..

THE people of Gaza have had enough. They are tired of having their homes, schools and hospitals used as launch pads for Hamas’s endless war against Israel, and tired of subsisting in abject poverty while their leaders live in luxury.

Since seizing power from Fatah in 2007, Hamas has controlled the Gaza strip. It uses Gazans as human shields in its attempts to destroy Israel and turn it into another Islamist state. Hamas leaders are millionaires, grown rich on stealing from their own people billions of pounds in donations from the UN and Western governments.

Two weeks ago Gaza residents took to the streets shouting the slogan ‘We want to live’. Their protests were ignited by Hamas’s planned tax increases which will increase hardship for most Palestinians already dealing with exorbitant living costs, poverty, high unemployment rates and poor infrastructure. The protesters put the blame for their plight solely on Hamas. In response, Hamas security forces beat and arrested dozens of demonstrators, including students and human right activists, and in some instances used live fire on them.

According to reports by the Fatah media, Hamas targeted 17 journalists during the protests and arrested seven. Several were beaten and had their phones confiscated. Hamas is also suspected of breaking the fingers of a Palestinian writer and beating him so badly that he had to be hospitalised.

Almost a week later (19 March) the BBC finally decided to report on the uprising against Hamas. Trying her best to blame Israel and downplay Hamas culpability, the reporter, at 20.30 minutes in, describes Hamas as ‘widely seen as a terrorist group’. But Hamas is not ‘seen’ as a terrorist group, it is a terrorist group.

(Continue to Full Column)

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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Israels' Strategic Balagan - by Victor Rosenthal

Balagan: chaos, total disorder, huge mess. Borrowed from Russian.

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
08 March '19..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2019/03/our-strategic-balagan/

The incendiary and explosive balloons continue to be sent across our southern border, and the Hamas special “night unit” continues to burn tires and throw explosives over the fence, as well as to cross over into Israel, attack soldiers, and try to get at civilians. We continue to “respond” by bombing or shelling empty installations.

We are careful not to kill them, because we are told that if we kill them, their honor will require that they kill us in return; this will lead to an escalation. They want that, we are told, because there is humanitarian crisis in Gaza, primarily because their rivals in the Palestinian Authority have been cutting salary payments to PA officials in Gaza who either work for Hamas or don’t do anything. If there is an escalation, the crisis will get worse and the UN or other outside forces will step in and give them money, which they will spend on weapons or tunnels anyway.

Until recently, Israel has allowed Qatar to send millions in cash to Hamas, because nothing makes them madder than running out of money.

If there is an escalation, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and even Iranian forces in Syria will coordinate their efforts, there will be a two- or three- front war, and we would suffer a lot of casualties although we would “win.” That would be giving them what they want, we are told.

There is a news report that is emblematic of the insanity surrounding our relations with our Palestinian Arab enemies. It seems that the Israel Prison Service has been unable to stop the smuggling of cellular phones into facilities where Hamas terrorists have been imprisoned, so they are installing jamming devices. But – get ready for this – the IDF has asked them to suspend the work because of “its possible impact on the situation in the territories.”

At the same time the Iranian regime is trying to upgrade Hezbollah’s rockets with precision guidance kits. We are acting against it, insofar as the Russians allow, but likely we are simply slowing it down, not stopping it. Iran is also working to establish Shiite militia forces in Syria and Iraq, and of course proceeding with its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. We are certainly taking action, overt and covert, in these areas too, but again these operations are only capable of slowing the process, not stopping it.

Abbas, Shooting a Pregnant Woman and Lying - by Bassam Tawil

...According to the logic of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Ministry of Information, Israeli soldiers searching for terrorists is an "act of terrorism," but not the shooting of a pregnant woman and six other Israeli civilians standing at a bus stop.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
17 December '18..

Three Israelis have been killed in the latest wave of Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank in the past week. The victims are two soldiers and a four-day-old baby who was prematurely born after his mother was shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting attack carried out by Palestinian terrorists.

The terrorist attacks took place near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority (PA), where President Mahmoud Abbas and most of his senior officials live and work. The car used in the drive-by shooting, which took place outside Ofra settlement, was later discovered by the Israeli army in the Ain Musbah neighbourhood of Ramallah, a few hundred meters from the private residence and headquarters of Abbas.

No one is suggesting that Abbas knew in advance of the terrorist attacks. However, the response of Abbas and his top officials to the attacks raises serious doubts about their purported commitment to peace with Israel.

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The Hamas Plan to Take Control of the West Bank - by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas and its allies are openly working and encouraging the eruption of a new anti-Israel uprising in the West Bank, and they have been emboldened by the recent failure of the UN General Assembly to adopt a US-sponsored resolution condemning Hamas and other Palestinian groups for firing rockets at Israel and inciting violence.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
13 December '18..

It is clear by now that Hamas is behind some of the recent terror attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. These attacks serve the interests of Hamas and its friends and sponsors, especially the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization -- and Iran.

Hamas and its allies have a plan, and they are not even keeping it a secret -- to export their "armed struggle" against Israel beyond the Gaza Strip and ultimately to take control of the West Bank.

The latest terrorist attack took place on December 9 outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra, east of Ramallah. An Israeli-Canadian citizen, Amichai Ish-Ran, and this pregnant wife, Shira, were among seven people wounded in a drive-by shooting attack. The baby born prematurely as a result of the terrorist attack died on December 12, after doctors fought to save his life for close to 72 hours.

Hamas, which later claimed responsibility for the attack, was the first Palestinian faction to commend the terrorists. So far, not a single Palestinian faction has come out against the attack, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction.

Describing the shooting attack as a "heroic and qualitative operation," representatives of Hamas and several Palestinian factions said that it demonstrated that the Palestinian "resistance was still alive in the West Bank." They also called on Palestinians to "step up the intifada (uprising) against Israel, specifically settlers and Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

"The West Bank has taken the initiative of resisting the occupation," Hamas said in a statement published in the Gaza Strip shortly after the terrorist attack.

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Two States and Hamas Rockets - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The latest clash with Hamas shows just how irrelevant the ongoing effort to force more Israeli territorial withdrawals is to the reality the Jewish state faces.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
13 November '18..

Does it really matter what started the shooting at the border between Israel and Hamas-run Gaza? To outward appearances, it looks like it was something of an accident when a routine security operation inside Gaza went awry and Israeli troops were fired upon, leading to bomb strikes to extricate them. That was followed by the largest barrage of rockets fired at Israel since the war that took place in the summer of 2014.

Hamas’s decision to launch hundreds of rockets, which has resulted in the death of one man (a Palestinian working inside Israel) and the wounding of more than two dozen Israelis so far, is being discussed in the international media as just one more episode in an endless “cycle of violence,” in which the Jewish state is as guilty as the Islamist terror groups that rule Gaza.

But whether this episode leads to a further escalation of fighting or a return to relative quiet—as the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly hopes by agreeing to a cease-fire on Tuesday—the ongoing violence demonstrates that it would be utter folly for the Trump administration to push for a new round of peace negotiations with the Palestinians anytime soon.

The problem isn’t a lack of negotiations, it’s the lack of conditions that could possibly lead to a comprehensive peace that dictates that Trump’s foreign-policy team will be wasting its time—and perhaps raise expectations in a way that could lead to more bloodshed—if it pushes ahead with plans to foster what U.S. President Donald Trump has called the “deal of the century.”

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Israel's reluctance to finish Hamas with a decisive operation - by Dr. Hanan Shai

...Once free from the trap it has fallen into, and with universal morality on its side, Israel needs to declare loudly and clearly that the lives of Israelis are more important to it than the lives of its enemies...

Dr. Hanan Shai
Israel Hayom..
17 October '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/their-lives-or-ours/

The Israel Defense Forces were planned and built to win short and "cheap" wars.

However, in its earliest years, the IDF was also forced to wage lengthy wars of attrition. It eventually put an end to these, beating the enemy and destroying its fighting capability to secure quiet that would last as long as possible.

Such periods of quiet were reached after Operation Kadesh in 1956, which ended the war of attrition waged by the fedayeen; after the War for Peace in the Galilee or First Lebanon War of 1982, which put an end to the Katyusha missile threat from Lebanon; and after Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which seriously checked the momentum of the Second Intifada.

Today, too, Israel is waging a war of attrition, this time against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

But this particular war of attrition has turned into the longest in Israel's history because of Israel's reluctance to finish it with a decisive operation.

Hamas and its women take center-stage again in Hevron - by Arnold Roth

...Those calls (here for instance, and here and here and here and all over the social media) from widely-varied Arab sources, and not only Arab, for Israel to free the females being held in its prisons for terror offences come from a deep and cynical appreciation of the strategic value of women's roles in jihad. It's a fatal mistake for us to fall victim to their blandishments. As for the gang, we think there are some more disclosures not yet made.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
29 August '18..

The uncovering of a significant Hamas terror cell based in the Hevron area, and the central role in it taken by females, was cleared for publication in a Shin Bet announcement yesterday (Tuesday). Ynet says initial indictments have been filed in the Judea Military Court.

Some of the key disclosures:

- A special focus on women - dozens of them from the Hevron area are reported to have been recruited into Hamas via this initiative.

- Cell leaders received "money, messages, and instructions" from Hamas terror leaders based outside Israel - including (according to Haaretz) Haroun Nasser Adin, another of several Shalit Deal beneficiaries now operating from Turkey. (See "29-Jan-18: Freeing unrepentant terrorists and the horrors it has brought" for some commentary on the scale of the ongoing Shalit Deal catastrophe.)

- The cell, made up of dozens of Palestinian Arabs, "promoted" Hamas activity in the area including recruiting new members for its work; coordinating via mosques; gathering intelligence; engaging in incitement via sermons and the social media; giving support to prisoners' families; transferring messages and instructions; moving funds around to finance terror.

- An attempt, in the words of an Israel National News report, "to take control of the Hevron municipality and various charities in the city".

- The establishment of a local committee to be the Hevron operational arm of Hamas' headquarters.

That committee is said to be headed by a woman named Dina al-Karmi. Who is she?

Ynet gives her name as Dina al-Said. An Arab source calls her Donya Sa'id and fleshes out the description in this nauseatingly disingenuous way: "the wife a Palestinian man who was killed by the army several years ago". An unfortunate accident?

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Appalled by ADL’s mourning Hamas deaths as ‘horrific tragedy’ - by Morton Klein/Liz Berney

No one should mourn the deaths of Nazis, Al-Qaeda terrorists, ISIS terrorists—or Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists who were killed while trying to breach Israel’s security fence to murder Jews.

Morton Klein/Liz Berney..
JNS.org..
25 May '18..

It’s painfully shocking that Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt recently wrote on ADL’s website: “It is a horrific tragedy that so many people have been killed and wounded at the Gaza border.” This broad statement was not limited to the tiny minority who were not members of a terrorist group. (And even that minority joined violent riots whose goal was to breach Israel’s border fence and descend upon nearby Jewish communities, schools and day-care centers—and all of Israel—to murder innocent Jews.) Thus, we must ask: How is the death of mostly Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists a “horrific tragedy?”

In fact, the deaths of these terrorists prevented a real “horrific tragedy”—the murder of thousands of innocent Jews who would have been slain if Hamas’s violent rioters had succeeded.

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Like to guess whose forgiveness Qatar is seeking for its latest steps on Islamist terror - by Arnold Roth

...The man is a monster. And the aristocratic nobility - a key American strategic ally - have just begged forgiveness for having moved him along to another safe haven. They must be praying hard that Hamas don't hold a grudge.

Al-Arouri

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
04 July '17..





Given

1. how widely Qatar's captive, fabulously-well-funded Aljazeera satellite news channels are watched, how massively influential they are on public opinion in places that get very little uncontrolled access to news and views and how extraordinarily well-resourced they are (with "more than 4,000 staff around the world" and 70 globally-dispersed bureaux - only the monstrously large and powerful BBC has more)
2. the utter hideousness of Hamas' terror-centric actions, ideology, history, views, plans and ethics; and
3. that Qatar is soon - unless stopped - going to be the host of the world's most watched sporting tournament, the 2022 FIFA World Cup

it's a shame the news report below is getting so little coverage.

But first a little background:

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The Jerusalem bus bombing is claimed by Hamas jihadists as one of their own - by Arnold Roth

...How young men and women with unlived lives and unattained achievements ahead of them choose unfathomable hatred as their path and endanger their own lives for the prospect of killing or maiming Jews doesn't get the attention it ought to. There is a process at work, as we wrote yesterday

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

When a Jerusalem bus went up in flames on Monday, causing serious injuries to passengers and damage to several vehicles, there was some question at first about whether to call it an accident, or - this being Jerusalem - to look for a terrorist behind the injuries and harm. The conclusions took time to emerge ["18-Apr-16: A Jerusalem bus has exploded"] as the security people gathered evidence and waited to interview some of the injured from the bus. But we now know.

A Palestinian militant from the occupied West Bank who was wounded when his bomb exploded on an Israeli commuter bus in Jerusalem on Monday has died, an Israeli hospital spokeswoman and a pro-Hamas website said on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Jerusalem hospital where the wounded man was treated confirmed he had succumbed to his injuries. Israeli authorities have placed a gag order on the investigation and declined to release any details. The pro-Hamas Palestinian Information Centre identified him as Abdel-Hamid Abu Srour from the Ayda refugee camp near Bethlehem and said he was a member of the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas militant Islamist group... Israeli medical sources said six people wounded by the blast were still being treated in hospital, the rest had been released by late Wednesday... ["Palestinian wounded in Jerusalem bus bombing dies, Hamas claims him", Reuters, April 20, 2016]

The "militant" is reported to be 19 and has permanently ceased to be an "activist". He will however remain a terrorist and, given the theological orientation implied by the Hamas connection, a jihadist. In Palestinian Arab society, he is now upgraded to "martyr".

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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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Jerusalem explosives lab not newsworthy for the BBC - by Hadar Sela

...This recent discovery of a Hamas-run terror cell in Jerusalem clearly does not fit into that narrative either and so – like the many previous stories concerning Hamas’ attempts to strengthen its infrastructure outside the Gaza Strip – it has not made BBC headlines.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
28 December '15..

Had the British security services uncovered an explosives laboratory in the suburban apartment of a man recruited by a designated terrorist organisation, it is difficult to imagine that the BBC would have ignored the story.



The Times of Israel reports:

“The Shin Bet uncovered a large Hamas terror cell, among whose members were Israeli citizens, which planned to carry out suicide bombings and other terror attacks in Israel, the security service revealed on Wednesday.

The Shin Bet, alongside the IDF and Israel Police, have thus far arrested 25 Hamas operatives, the majority of them Al-Quds University in Abu Dis students, who they suspect were preparing to attack Israeli targets, the agency said in a statement. The arrests were carried out over the past few weeks.

The service also uncovered a makeshift laboratory in Abu Dis, in east Jerusalem, which was being used to create the explosives necessary for bombing attacks. It said the cell was controlled by Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip.”

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More on the perpetrators of the Henkin killings

...Haaretz is reporting tonight that four additional Israel Defense Forces battalions have now been sent in to Nablus which is now locked down to facilitate the ongoing search for the terrorists responsible for the attack.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
05 October '15..

Information is emerging in stages. And both Hamas and Nablus take a starring role.

The text of an official statement made by the Government Press Office tonight includes some key pieces of information for those, like us, concerned to spotlight the role of Hamas in ongoing terrorism warfare against Israelis. These are all verbatim quotes from that report:
The ISA [better known as the Shin Bet], IDF and Israel Police have arrested members of the cell that perpetrated the attack. The detainees have been transferred for investigation by the ISA and have admitted their involvement in the murder of the Henkins.

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Excuse me. You there with the knife. What are you waiting for?

...Terrorism always depends on people with money to allow it to go on. Identifying and exposing those people - naming them, shaming them - is critically important to blunting the attacks of the men, women and children with the knives and other implements of destruction.

Slogan at the close of the
Arab "how-to" video

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

The slogan at the end of a viral video doing the rounds the last couple of days in the Arabic-speaking world is "What are you waiting for? Rise up and stab." It's an instructional video clip that tries to show how to kill or at minimum cause grievous injuries by attacking an unsuspecting victim with a knife. And it's aimed at Israeli victims.

According to a syndicated JTA report today

"The video shows two masked men wearing black-and-white checkered keffiyahs demonstrating the different stab positions. The video demonstrates how to turn the knife after stabbing and how to stab someone quickly and walk away. It ends with the statement, “What are you waiting for? Rise up and stab.”

If only this were a sick joke. But it's not. Knifings are a favored form of terrorism among jihad-minded Palestinian Arabs. On Friday, two Israel Police officers were attacked by a hit-and-run assailant on foot who stabbed them both in an alleyway of Jerusalem’s Old City, near Lion’s Gate. A security video camera captured the frenzy and horror.

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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! Guardian Tweet on Jerusalem terror attack: Israel police shoot dead driver…

...However, as most people who share tweets don’t actually read through the attached article, it’s reasonable to assume that most Guardian followers reading their tweet would be left with a completely false impression about what occurred today in Jerusalem. A Guardian tweet at its finest: So much deception in so few words.

Adam Levick..
CiF Watch..
05 November '14..

A couple of hours ago, a Palestinian from east Jerusalem affiliated with Hamas plowed his vehicle into a crowd of people at a light rail station along the seam-line between the east and west sections of the city, killing one and injuring 14, in what was clearly a terror attack.

Here’s a video showing some of the deadly attack.



After crashing into the pedestrians, the car eventually hit the train platform, then rammed into cars – after which the driver tried to run away. The terrorist (48-year-old Ibrahim al-Akary) then attacked a group of policemen (video) with a crowbar before he was shot and killed by police.

To recap:

A Palestinian terrorist, reportedly affiliated with Hamas, drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing one and injuring over a dozen.

The terrorist then fled his vehicle and began attacking police officers with a crowbar.

Police then shot and killed the terrorist.

Yet, here’s how the Guardian framed the story in a tweet to its 2.86 million followers:


A couple of observations:

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Sanctifying Martyrs and Monsters

...Heroes they will inevitably be, and thousands may be moving on their path as Mashaal says. But unlike others elevated by Palestinian Arab society to that status, they are not going to take part in any future extortion-driven release deals. They will not study for a university degree at the expense of Israeli taxpayers like us. They won't be walking free again as media cameramen snap and flash around them. Above all, their arms are never going to be raised high by two-faced politicians playing to impassioned crowds braying for more killings, more revenge, more martyrs.

The street scene outside the burnt-out
hide-away in Hebron after the elimination 
of the fugitives in a firefight [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
01 October '14..

The kidnapping and cold-blooded murder of three unarmed teen-age Israeli boys in June 2014 horrified and to a great extent united the Israeli public. The names and fates of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, implanted in the Israeli collective consciousness since the events of three months ago, make concrete the terrorist passions animating the Islamist savages just across Israel's border with the Gaza Strip and the murder-addicted Hamas regime dug in there.

Rarely have Israelis had a clearer sense of what we stand for, what they stand for, and the unbridgeable gulf that separates us from them.

An audio record of the frantic call to an emergency number by one of the ways is part of that collective experience. In it, we hear a whispered call for help, followed by shouting and shots. Right after that, Marwan Al-Qawasmi and Amer Abu Aisheh, the killers, are heard laughing and rejoicing.

Others involved in the plot were arrested fairly quickly. But the two principal terrorists evaded capture from the time of the kidnap and murder until their demise on Tuesday September 23, 2014. The two fugitives were located shortly before that, and the Hebron residence in which they were hiding was surrounded by Israeli security forces. What happened next, according to Reuters:

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Rewriting the History of the Gaza Conflict at the New York Times

...It is amazing how quickly the media can rewrite history.

Yarden Frankl..
Honest Reporting..
23 September '14..

According to the New York Times, the conflict in Gaza came about when three Israelis “disappeared,” Jewish extremists “snatched” and killed an Arab youth, and Israel launched a military campaign that left thousands of Palestinians dead or homeless.

However, this reporting leaves out certain key events and uses questionable language to describe the way the conflict actually began.

The June 12 disappearance of Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, as they hitchhiked home from their West Bank yeshivas, and the subsequent Israeli campaign in Hebron and surrounding areas, helped set off an escalation of tension and violence that culminated in a seven-week battle between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

Did Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach “disappear?” By the time the story first broke, it was clear that the boys had been kidnapped. It was later learned that they had been murdered and their bodies dumped in a field. They had not simply “disappeared” as if they had vanished into thin air. (Later on in the article more specifics are given, but that does not excuse the way the abductions are first described.)

Compare this with the language used to describe the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir:

Jewish extremists snatched a Palestinian 16-year-old old, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, in his East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, beat him and burned him alive as an act of revenge.

All four murders were despicable, criminal acts. But why the difference in language? Did the killing of the Jewish teens not merit the same journalistic treatment?

However, that error pales in comparison with the inaccuracy that comes next, as the Times continues its own take on how the conflict started. After referring to the murder of Abu Khdeir, the Times tells its readers:

We promised we would hunt them down...

...There is no more we can do for the three boys, other than to hold on to the love and the unity that in their deaths was born. But in their memory, our government can pledge that no one will ever think Jewish blood is cheap again. We promised we would hunt them down...and we did. For this ending, there is a new beginning - a new year.

Paula R. Stern..
A Soldier's Mother..
23 September '14..

On June 30th, Israel learned the news it had been dreading. For 18 days we were consumed...please God, bring them home...at least two...at least one. Please God, don't let us lose all three. We can't bear to see the families suffer more; those precious mothers and fathers who continue to offer us hope and courage and faith; who demand that we hold on and be optimistic.

And then, on that day, word began to leak out...it's bad. Very bad...as bad and as horrible as it gets. The next day, there were the funerals...and shortly after that...the war began.

We are waiting now - waiting to see what happens on Rosh Hashana. The boys' deaths helped uncover a plan to launch a massive attack on Rosh Hashana - hundreds likely would have died, been injured...we can only imagine the damage that could have taken place as Jews gathered in synagogues across the country.

Instead, the tunnels have been destroyed - it not all, than most. Hundreds of Hamas operatives (terrorists and killers) are dead and we enter this new year with hope and faith. And as we do, the news comes that our soldiers have tracked down the killers of the three boys. Justice has been done.

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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. Check-it out!
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Perhaps New York Magazine Learned Its Lesson Not to Rely on Biased Reporters?

...Now that she has egg on her face for relying on the two biased journalists, will Zavadski continue to rely on Frankel and Donnison? Or will she buck the pressure to slant stories against Israel and get her information from reliable correspondents who don't inject their anti-Israel agenda into their reports.

Steven Stotsky..
CAMERA Snapshots..
21 August '14..

On July 25, New York Magazine published an article by Katie Zavadski casting doubt on Israeli assertions that Hamas was responsible for the kidnapping and murders of three Israeli teens, Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach, in June, 2014. Now that Hamas has publicly come out and admitted they did it, Zavadski has had to backtrack, repeating the statement issued by Hamas itself on Aug. 21, 2014,

"The popular will was exercised throughout our occupied land, and culminated in the heroic operation by the Qassam Brigades in imprisoning the three settlers in Hebron," al-Arouri said at a conference in Istanbul. "This was an operation from your brothers in Qassam undertaken to aid their brothers on hunger strike in (Israeli) prisons."

Zavadski placed the responsibility for her initial misinformed piece on the sources she relied upon, Sheera Frankel of Buzzfeed and Jon Donnison of the BBC, writing on Aug. 21,

The circumstances of the incident, which sparked Israel's Operation Protective Edge, have been subject to much debate. Israel immediately blamed the militant group, which controls the Gaza strip, but Qatar-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal denied that the group's involvement. Veteran correspondents Jon Donnison and Sheera Frenkel both reported that Israeli intelligence had no concrete links between Hamas and the kidnappers, who are said to belong to a clan that frequently operates outside of Hamas control. Yet later, Israeli officials said they had concrete evidence of the link between the group and the kidnapping.

It is to Zavadski's credit that she posted the Hamas admission and did not try to brush over her initial article. She had already begun to walk back her July 25 piece in an update on Aug. 7, 2014 discussing proof offered by Israel. Zavadski has written some of the more insightful pieces for the New York Magazine on the conflict. Her article on why so many of the casualties in Gaza are children offered the important point that those under 18 represent nearly half the population and that if Israel was firing indiscriminately they would account for half the casualties, which they clearly don't.

Any serious doubts about Hamas?

...In general, the trains had been running through most of this period in spite of the possibility that a barrage of rockets could potentially land in close proximity, if not hit one of the trains. The concern here though is a bit more than that,...

LOTL..
18 August '14..






Some may have viewed Hamas rocket attacks as a case of I fired a rocket in the air and where it lands I do not care, but as most are now aware, a great deal of attention is given to how to inflict maximum casualties and terror on Israel's population, irrespective of age, gender, religion or nationality.

Bearing this in mind, we find the following in the Times of Israel, 18 August '14:

Israel Railways said Sunday it would close its train line between Sderot and Ashkelon until further notice, due to fears that trains could be targeted with anti-tank missiles from the Gaza Strip.

The move was ordered by the Defense Ministry following the recent conflict in Gaza and came following fears of renewed violence there, as a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas was set to end with no signs of a ceasefire deal being reached.

The special role that the murder of children has always had and has in the Hamas outlook on life

In accordance with the Hebrew calendar, Shabbat - the twentieth day of the month of Av - we remember our daughter Malki's life and its tragic and cruel end. On that date, thirteen years ago - August 9, 2001 - she was one of fifteen innocent people murdered in a Hamas human-bomb attack directed, after careful planning and research, at a pizza shop located at one of the capital of Israel's busiest intersections. Frimet Roth honours our daughter's memory with this op-ed published today by the Times of Israel.

Our Malki, June 2001

Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
15 August '14..

When children are the target:   Defeating the terrorists and remembering their victims    [Times of Israel]

In the wake of Operation Protective Edge, Israel is enduring an unprecedented deluge of condemnation. This is trying for the entire nation but is especially infuriating for families like mine.

The crux of the vitriol is the large number of Gazan casualties in this latest conflict who were children. The blame for this is planted squarely at the feet of the Israel Defense Forces for firing at an enemy that attacks from positions in close proximity to those children.

Most Israelis are aware that our army was forced to do so in order to protect its own civilians.

In contrast, scores of Jewish children were targeted and murdered in cold blood by that same enemy during the Second Intifada. Yet few remember them; their stories have been virtually erased from the Palestinian-Israeli narrative. But we have not forgotten and we never will because our precious fifteen year old, Malki, was one of them.

In those pre-security-fence days between 2001 and 2003, when Israel was shockingly lax about enemy infiltration, Hamas was able to invade our borders practically unimpeded. It executed a series of bloody terror attacks against us without any missiles or tunnels. On a near-weekly basis, innocent Israeli men, women and children perished at their hands.

Neither the United Nations Human Rights Council nor its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights, ordered an inquiry into those violations of our human rights. If challenged about that apathy, the UN would probably have pointed out that Hamas was a mere rag-tag terror group and as such lay outside their purview. But since 2007, Hamas has been Gaza's democratically elected government operating under the same principles which guided it previously.

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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. Check-it out!
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