Meet Ayman al-Sharawneh, released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal. And now...

...It is not the first time that a terrorist released from an Israeli jail has gone back to terrorism. According to the Israel Security Agency (ISA), released terrorists (including those released in the Gilad Shalit swap) are frequently involved in terrorist activity and recruitment of operatives for terrorist attacks.

Meir Amit ITIC..
11 June '13..

Overview

1. Ayman al-Sharawneh is a Hamas operative from the Hebron region who was sentenced to 38 years in Israeli prison for several terrorist attacks, such as an IED bombing in Beersheba which injured 19 people. He was released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal and redetained after having gone back to terrorist activity. He was on a hunger strike for 53 days, during which time there were demonstrations for his release in the West Bank as part of the “prisoners’ protest”. Eventually he was allowed to go to the Gaza Strip for ten years instead of coming back to jail and serving his sentence (March 2013). In a recent interview to a Lebanese TV channel, he said that he went back to military activity in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing.

2. Ayman al-Sharawneh’s return to terrorism reflects a broader trend of terrorists released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal going back to the circle of terrorism. This past year the Israeli security forces have exposed a number of networks in Judea and Samaria some of whose members are terrorists released in the Shalit deal, as well as networks handled by released terrorists from the Gaza Strip and from Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar. Many of those terrorists and their handlers belong to Hamas (see Appendix for details).

3. The released terrorists’ re-involvement in terrorism is a blatant violation of the Egyptian-brokered release agreement.

Al-Sharawneh’s return to military activity

4. Ahmed Shaldan, the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV’s reporter in Gaza City, has recently produced a story about the released terrorist Ayman al-Sharawneh going back to terrorist activity in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing. The reporter interviewed Al-Sharawneh in his Gaza home and accompanied him on military activity in the east of the Gaza Strip, near the border with Israel. According to the reporter, every Thursday night Al-Sharawneh puts on his uniform, takes his weapon, and goes out on a night operational activity. The report went on to say that Al-Sharawneh was unaffected by the many years he had spent in Israeli jail, and that he still considered taking part in jihad a necessity. Al-Sharawneh said that the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades exist to protect their land and liberate the West Bank, Temple Mount, “all of Palestine from the river to the sea”, and the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel (Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV, May 27, 2013).

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The Wire - BBC fails to clarify Gaza air strikes targeted militants

Just Journalism
The Wire
Tues. 16 Aug. 2011 @ 13.45 –



http://justjournalism.com/bbc-focus/bbc-fails-to-clarify-gaza-air-strikes-targeted-militants/

Coverage of air strikes into Gaza does not clarify that Israel specifically hit military targets, nor mentions that casualty is confirmed Hamas member.

In response to several rockets that were fired at the Israeli town of Beersheva, Israel last night struck several targets in Gaza. According to Haaretz, Hamas medical sources confirmed that a group of gunmen had been hit, resulting in one casualty and several injuries:

‘Hamas sources said three gunmen involved in firing rockets at Israel were hit in the first air strike, east of Gaza City. One of the gunmen later died of his injuries, they said.’

The Reuters news service also reported on the death:

‘Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday killed one gunman and wounded five other Palestinians, medical sources said, after militants in the Hamas-controlled territory fired rockets into southern Israel.’

The information centre of the Al Qassam Brigades – the official military wing of Hamas – have released a press release confirming that the casualty was a member of the Islamist militant group.

The only British outlet to report this was the BBC News website. However, ‘Israeli air strikes on Gaza after rocket hits Beersheba’ did not explain that Israel struck military targets and is highly ambiguous about the background of those injured.

Opening by stating that ‘Israel has carried out a series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip’, the article’s citation of medical sources gives none of the information that the other news outlets included:

‘One Palestinian was killed and at least five others were wounded, Palestinian health officials said.’

There is no suggestion that any of those injured were militants targeted specifically due to their involvement in rocket fire. Instead, the article continues by again citing a medical source who simply describes the ‘martyrdom’ of a ‘youth’ – without mentioning he was a confirmed Hamas militant.

‘”We learned of the martyrdom of the youth Musa Shtawe, 29, who died of his injuries after a strike east of Gaza City,” Adham Abu Selmiya, spokesman for the Hamas-run emergency services in the Gaza Strip, is quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.’

Additionally, the inclusion of a photo showing a woman being rushed to hospital and the reference to a child being injured in a strike near the Rafah border crossing suggests that while no clarification was provided about the militants, the BBC saw fit to include details about civilians injured.

The impression that Israel had struck civilian targets in arbitrary retaliation for rockets from Gaza was furthered by the absence of information about the sites that had been hit:

‘Some of the pre-dawn strikes targeted an area east of Gaza City, [medical officials] said. […] Further south, two more raids were carried out east of Khan Yunis and on a tunnel under the border with Egypt near Rafah, Palestinian sources said.’

Al Jazeera’s reporting of the same strikes notes that two of these locations were Hamas training grounds:

‘The warplanes also targeted two Hamas training camps, one east of Gaza City and another west of Khan Younis city.’

The BBC also failed to mention that the Rafah tunnels are Hamas’ main source of weapons and that militant training camps are often built near civilian areas, endangering the lives of ordinary Gazans.

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Between $250M and $600M of PA budget seems to go to Hamas terrorists

Elder of Ziyon
19 September '10

In Time magazine, a telling paragraph:

And there is a third security force that Gazans fear: Hamas' highly secretive Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the movement's armed resistance wing, which carries out violent attacks on Israel and whose members have a reputation for being some of Hamas' most steadfast adherents. Referring to both the uniformed police and the plainclothes Internal Security, one civilian says, "They're all Qassam." The government does little to deny it. "Many of the Qassam operate within both the Qassam brigades and the Internal Security," Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab al-Ghossain tells TIME. "In our laws, we do not prevent any resistance fighter from joining the police or a security service, provided that he is committed to the rules and regulations of the department he belongs to ... We make sure that their activities, outside of their official jobs, remain separate."

The research team that I put together last year (with Suzanne, t34zakat and PTwatch) had already determined that some 75% of the policemen killed in Gaza during Cast Lead were also members of terror groups, so this is hardly surprising to readers of this blog.

However, it made me wonder: who pays the salaries of the security forces in Gaza?

(Read full post)

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NGOs Claimed Hamas Police Were “Human Rights” Trainees

NGO Monitor

27 December 09

On December 27, 2008, the IDF attacked the Gaza City police headquarters and five police stations. Prior to the war, it had been documented that “members of the police force and the other security services were supposed to be widely integrated into Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades forces at the expense of their internal security tasks,” and Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan admitted that “police forces had been clearly instructed by the leadership to fight against IDF forces.”

Several studies compiled after the war confirmed that more than 75% of those killed in these strikes were indeed active fighters in Hamas’ al-Qassam brigades, making them combatants and legal targets under the laws of war.

Nevertheless, several NGOs, including B’Tselem, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan, and others issued numerous condemnations of this legal strike. Based on no evidence, they accused Israel of directly targeting civilians and committing “war crimes.” Although many NGOs backtracked after examining the facts, the damage of their reckless accusations of war crimes had already been done.

(Read full post)

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