Love of the Land: Egypt Not Serious About Stopping Smuggling?

Egypt Not Serious About Stopping Smuggling?

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
06 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

Time and again both analysts and officials have claimed the Egypt genuinely wants to stop the smuggling into Gaza. Yet after close to two years the much touted American tunnel detecting gizmos haven’t put a dent in the smuggling between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. And today BBC News correspondent Jon Donnison revealed that Gazans are already cutting through Egypt’s multi-million dollar steel barrier at the affordable cost of $1,000 a tunnel hole.

Related: Gazans cut through Egypt's border barrier using high-powered oxygen fuelled blow torches

So what’s the real story? Is Egypt serious about stopping the smuggling or just going through the motions?

One thing is certain: if Egypt wanted to it could readily detect and stop the tremendous flow of material reaching the miniscule Egypt-Gaza border. After all, we aren’t talking about a few sacks of contraband being whisked through the desert in the middle of the night on the backs of camels. We are talking about literally hundreds of truckloads making their way to within at most a few hundred yards from the border. A fleet of trucks that can be detected, stopped, inspected and seized.

There is no question about it. If instead of investing in gizmos and steel walls the Egyptians bulldozed a sterile border zone running a few thousand meters in from the Gaza border the remaining tunneling operations would require a magnitude of activity that any serious Egyptian intelligence operation could readily detect.

So is Egypt serious about stopping the smuggling or just going through the motions? And if Egypt isn’t serious about stopping the smuggling, why is Israel essentially silent on the matter?

Love of the Land: Egypt Not Serious About Stopping Smuggling?

Love of the Land: Khan Younis man killed by misfired projectile

Khan Younis man killed by misfired projectile

Maan News Agency
03 May '10

(Any guess as to how many times this happens?)

Gaza – Ma'an – Palestinian resistance fighters from an unknown faction (because someone makes a mistake, should we also embarrass them?) misfired a projectile Sunday night, hitting a Khan Younis home and critically injuring one man who later died in hospital, sources in Gaza said.

Eighteen-year-old Ibrahim Sulaiman Malalha was taken to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis then transferred to the European Hospital in Gaza City for treatment of injuries described as critical. He was announced dead on Monday morning, medical sources said.

Two others were taken to the Khan Younis hospital for treatment, medics confirmed.

Sources said resistance fighters were training in a field outside the city, when a projectile was misfired.

Love of the Land: Khan Younis man killed by misfired projectile

Love of the Land: Journalists Buy Falsehoods on Gaza Shipments

Journalists Buy Falsehoods on Gaza Shipments

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA Media Analysis
21 April '10

Raed Fattouh, a coordinator for the Palestinian Authority's Economy Ministry, is selling the falsehood that certain products -- wood, aluminum and commercial shipments of shoes and clothing -- are entering the Gaza Strip from Israel for the first time since the blockade began in 2007, and journalists are buying in bulk.

Wood and Aluminum

The New York Times' Fares Akram reported April 16, "Also Thursday, Israel allowed some wood and aluminum into Gaza for the first time since it blockaded the area in 2007, a Palestinian official said" (emphasis added). The International Herald Tribune, published by the New York Times, also ran a version of the Akram article including the error.

Similarly, the Agence France Presse reported April 15, in an article erroneously entitled "Israel allows first building shipment into Gaza in 3 years":

Israel allowed a shipment of construction material into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for the first time in three years, according to a Palestinian official.

The six truckloads of wood and aluminum entered the coastal territory via the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south, Palestinian customs official Raed Fattuh told AFP. . .

In actuality, Palestinian sources such as the Palestine Trade Center (PalTrade), the Palestinian Al-Ayyam newspaper, and the Ma'an News Agency document that tens of thousands of tons of construction material including wood and construction metal entered the Gaza Strip during the "hudna" (truce) period from June 19, 2008 to Dec. 19, 2008. Thus, the Dec. 09-Jan. 10 Gaza Strip Crossings Bi-Monthly Monitoring Report states:

During the truce or "hudna" period, that started on June 19, 2008 and ended on December 19, 2008, commercial goods were allowed to enter Gaza Strip including aggregates, cement, construction metal, wood, car tires, clothes, shoes and fruit juice.

(Read full report)

Love of the Land: Journalists Buy Falsehoods on Gaza Shipments

Love of the Land: A Shocking Secret in Plain Sight: U.S. Policy Sabotages U.S. Policy

A Shocking Secret in Plain Sight: U.S. Policy Sabotages U.S. Policy

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
15 April '10

U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff made a fairly good speech in the Security Council. But it contained the following remarkable section:

“The Palestinian Authority is, in effect, a lifeline to more than half a million people in Gaza, making sure that PA salaries are paid and social welfare payments are made on time. The PA plans to devote roughly half of its $3.9 billion budget to Gaza in 2010.”

Now it isn't my job to correct factual mistakes in official speeches made by U.S. government officials. Is half the money the Palestinian Authority (PA) spends, which largely comes from Western donors, going to Gaza where—whatever humanitarian intentions exist—it shores up the Hamas regime? No, that would be around $2 billion. The correct figure in total PA aid is $500 million.

Still, it is the equivalent of sending massive economic assistance to the Taliban government in Afghanistan on the rationale that it is helping poor Afghans. And that this were done while the Taliban was making possible the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Oh yes, and it also means that in per capita terms the Hamas domain is one of the largest recipients of Western aid on a per capita basis in the world. Even when corrected to a half-billion dollars that means that Gaza Strip residents get more Western aid per capita than Israel. Israel's aid all comes from the United States. Most of the money is tied to buying weapons from U.S. companies. In comparison, the money going into Gaza has no strings attached. Of course, it goes to individuals but bolsters the local economy and a lot of it ends up in the pockets of Hamas and its institutions.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: A Shocking Secret in Plain Sight: U.S. Policy Sabotages U.S. Policy

Love of the Land: Ashton in Gaza: When the "experts" are clueless

Ashton in Gaza: When the "experts" are clueless

Elder of Ziyon
22 March '10

One of the more frustrating parts of watching the Middle East is when one sees that people who should have some basic knowledge, who present themselves as experts, and who urge actions based on their experience and expertise, are completely clueless.

Meet Catherine Ashton.

Lady Ashton is the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice president of the European Commission. She visited Gaza last week, and, armed with the latest on-the-ground intelligence, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times describing exactly what needs to be done to make the Middle East a happy place again.

Here is her first paragraph:

It is the process of entering the Gaza Strip that strikes you most. At the Erez checkpoint you go into what looks like a modern airport terminal. Leaving it you move through a winding maze of gates and walls and emerge, like a time-traveler transported backwards, on a dirt track. This is where the industrial center of Gaza used to be, before the shelling just over a year ago. Now, people with donkeys and carts carry stones from the rubble.

Ashton is stating as fact that the heartless Israelis, for no discernible reason, reduced the Erez area to rubble during Operation Cast Lead and bombed the formerly prosperous industrial area to the stone age.

Love of the Land: Ashton in Gaza: When the "experts" are clueless

Love of the Land: Gazans Again Committing War Crimes, Killing Israeli Civilians In Rocket Attacks

Gazans Again Committing War Crimes, Killing Israeli Civilians In Rocket Attacks

Omri
Mere Rhetoric
20 March '10

The first, tragic casualty of the Obama Intifada?

Thursday's brief afternoon rain could not wash the blood out of a small pile of sand, where hours earlier the body of Thai worker Mane Singauephon had lain. He was killed around 11 a.m., when a rocket fell through the roof of a hothouse where he worked on the border with Gaza... He had come to the small community of Netiv Ha'asara more than three years ago to support his wife and child back home. "Ten workers witnessed the death of their friend," said Yair Farjun, head of the Ashkelon Coast Regional Council... Singauephon had been hit in several parts of the body, including his head, back and left arm.

The geopolitical upshot is that the post-Cast Lead deterrent which had kept peace in the south of Israel is breaking down. Emboldened by - achem - international anti-Israel diplomacy, and knowing that Israel's options are constrained by a potential Goldstone II, Hamas is back to genocidal incitement against Israeli civilians:

As noted, the IDF has thus far shown relative restraint in its response to attacks directed at our territory. One of the important reasons for this is the criticism leveled at Israel internationally because of the Goldstone Report and Gaza blockade.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Gazans Again Committing War Crimes, Killing Israeli Civilians In Rocket Attacks

Love of the Land: The Gaza siege myth

The Gaza siege myth

Jacob Shrybman
Israel Opinion/Ynet
18 March '10

(Note:The fifth rocket attack from Gaza in the past 48 hours, killed a 23-year old Thai foreign worker, Monny, late Thursday morning, March 18. The Qassam rocket struck the greenhouses area in Netiv Ha’asara located just north of the Gaza Strip. Medics at the scene said there wasn't much they could do to save him.Over 325 rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel during the third Hamas-Israel ceasefire that began on January 18, 2009 following Operation Cast Lead.)

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to arrive in Israel to visit the Gaza Strip amidst demands to end a so-called siege on the terrorist-controlled territory. Yet one has to ask what siege, or blockade, he is referring to, with 738,576 tons of humanitarian aid being transferred into the Gaza Strip in 2009.

Moreover, the UN has provided $200 million in Gaza Strip aid following a military operation that reportedly claimed 1,300 fatalities amongst a population of less than 1.5 million – meanwhile, notwithstanding plans to raise more funds, it has provided only $10 million to natural disaster victims in Haiti as of the end of January, an earthquake that claimed the lives of over 230,000 people and affected over 3 million. Of course, that is without mentioning that Haitians have not been attacking an innocent nearby civilian population for a near decade.

The international community has bought into a bold-faced lie about an Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip while ignoring the facts on the ground. International humanitarian aid has been flowing rapidly into the Gaza Strip for years and in no way stopped after Operation Cast Lead, as 30,576 aid trucks entered the territory in 2009. In 2009, 4,883 tons of medical equipment entered the Gaza Strip. Just last month, a new CAT scan machine was brought into the Strip.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: The Gaza siege myth

Love of the Land: Safe -- but where's the bunting?

Safe -- but where's the bunting?

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
12 March '10

Good news: it appears that the BBC journalist Paul Martin, who was kidnapped by Hamas four weeks ago, has been released.

What’s that – you didn’t even know a BBC journalist had been kidnapped by Hamas? This isn’t surprising. Virtually nothing has been written about this. And even now that Martin has been released, I can’t see any domestic coverage of this at time of writing -- not even on the BBC website home page, although it does appear on the BBC World Service page. Compare and contrast with the tsunami of coverage over the previous BBC journalist who was kidnapped in Gaza, Alan Johnston, and the enormous razmatazz over his release. At NRO, Tom Gross makes this key point:

One of Hamas’ aims in detaining Martin was, of course, to further deter any brave foreign journalist on assignment in Gaza who might dare report the truth about the Hamas regime.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Safe -- but where's the bunting?

Love of the Land: New report shows Hamas used more than 100 mosques and hospitals to fire rockets during Cast Lead

New report shows Hamas used more than 100 mosques and hospitals to fire rockets during Cast Lead

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
15 March '10

The Jerusalem Post carries an exclusive today detailing a new report from Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (Malam) showing that Hamas used more than 100 mosques and hospitals as well as areas they knew to be populated with children as shields from which to fire rockets at Israel during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

According to the paper: “The IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) cooperated with the report’s authors and declassified hundreds of photographs, videos, prisoner interrogations and Hamas-drawn sketches as part of an effort to counter the criticism leveled at Israel in the UN-sponsored Goldstone Report.”

The research group was led by Col. Reuven Erlich, a former Intelligence officer. Erlich was quoted as saying: “By placing all of their weaponry next to homes, by operating out of homes, mosques and hospitals, by firing rockets next to schools and by using human shields, Hamas is the one responsible for the civilian deaths during the operation”.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: New report shows Hamas used more than 100 mosques and hospitals to fire rockets during Cast Lead

Love of the Land: What has Gaza gained since Hamas won four years ago?

What has Gaza gained since Hamas won four years ago?

Michael Young
The National (UAE)
11 March '10

As Israel and the Palestinian Authority prepare to resume indirect talks, through American mediation, some are insisting that the Islamist movement Hamas must be brought into the process. Hamas, the argument goes, is capable of obstructing progress in negotiations, so that only by engaging the group can the United States and the international community avoid such an outcome. The rationale is naive.

It is naive, above all, because it overlooks the extent to which Hamas has undermined the core principle guiding the regional strategy of the Palestinians until the death of Yasser Arafat. Under its late leader, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation defended what was known as the “independent Palestinian decision”, which meant ensuring the Palestinian cause would not fall under the control of individual Arab regimes. Among Mr Arafat’s bitterest rivals was Syria’s President Hafez al Assad, who repeatedly sought, and failed, to bring the PLO under Syrian authority.

Hamas has been far less successful than Mr Arafat in exploiting Arab contradictions. Where the one-time PLO chairman was able during the 1970s to play Arab regimes off against one another, and even blackmail states for concessions, Hamas evolved in a very different environment. The movement opposed the Oslo process during the 1990s, and when it failed and Israel reoccupied the West Bank in 2002, Hamas was able to take advantage of the renewed tension, and the growing discredit of Mr Arafat and his Fatah movement, to gain politically in Palestinian areas.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: What has Gaza gained since Hamas won four years ago?

Love of the Land: NY Times and the Law of Unintended Consequences

NY Times and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Honest Reporting/Backspin
09 March '10

The dust hasn't settled from Electronic Intifada's snit over Ethan Bronner. A few months ago, they accused the NY Times' Jerusalem bureau chief of having a conflict of interest because his son serves in the IDF. They sought to have Bronner re-assigned to another post.

But the fallout instead has forced out the Gray Lady's Gaza reporter, Taghreed El-Khodary. Not only can she no longer work from Gaza, it may no longer be safe for her to even return to the strip.

According to Daoud Kuttab:

When this controversy became public, Taghreed was away in the US on a training program and then a well deserved vacation, friends say. Her colleagues in Gaza have said that she decided not to return since because of obvious worry that her network of contacts would disappear and that she would have trouble writing or even moving around in Hamas controlled Gaza.

Anyone familiar with violent conflicts, like the one in Gaza, know how easy things can turn bad for a local journalists working for a publication who suddenly is in the limelight in a very negative way. El Khodary, who doesn't wear the traditional Islamic head dress even while covering events in Gaza, could have easily been the target of any hot headed Islamists who would use this case to score some points using her as a punching bag.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: NY Times and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Love of the Land: Gaza Q&A: Palestinians answer

Gaza Q&A: Palestinians answer

Martin Kramer
martinkramer.org
09 March '10

Q: Martin Kramer spoke of Gaza’s “superfluous young men.” Is anyone in Gaza “superfluous”?

A: “I don’t mind if Gazans continue producing babies, but they will have to move somewhere else. They simply will not fit into their current geography—forgetting about feeding and employing them, too.” (Dr. Hassan Abu Libdeh, president, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2000.)

Q: Okay… Well, if that’s the situation, wouldn’t it make sense for Gaza’s government to promote family planning?

A: “Unlike the West that practices family planning, we encourage having children for political reasons.” (Dr. Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, co-founder of Hamas in Gaza, 2003.)

Q: Political reasons? For couples having children?

A: “Marriage is the same as jihad. With marriage, you are producing another generation that believes in resistance.” (Muhammad Yousef, member of the Qassam Brigades in Gaza, the Hamas underground, 2008.)

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Gaza Q&A: Palestinians answer

Love of the Land: A beginner's guide to Israel Apartheid Week

A beginner's guide to Israel Apartheid Week

Based on the realities of the situation, it is clear that the apartheid label cannot be justified by the conditions faced by Arab citizens of Israel.


Jon Hollander
Columbia Spectator
07 March '10

Last Monday marked the beginning of what has become a yearly tradition on Western college campuses: Israeli Apartheid Week. If you have walked by the competing pro- and anti-Israel protests on College Walk, you can appreciate that labeling Israel as an apartheid state is a hotly contested issue. Who is right here? The only way to properly address this question is to look at the facts that underlie claims of Israeli apartheid, and to judge both their validity, and whether or not the apartheid label constitutes an unfair demonization of the Jewish State of Israel.

Before examining the claim that Israel is an apartheid state, it is important to make the critical distinction between Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians. In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to adopt the U.N. Partition Plan for the former British Mandate of Palestine, dividing the land into two states–one Jewish and the other Arab. The Jewish Agency (the de facto government for Jews in Palestine) accepted the plan, while the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq rejected the proposal and invaded Israel. By 1949, Israel had managed to defeat the Arab armies and signed an armistice that set the borders of what are today the West Bank and Gaza. Those territories that Israel conquered, other than the West Bank and Gaza, have been incorporated into the internationally accepted boundaries of Israel. The Arabs who resided in these areas are known as Israeli-Arabs.

Israeli-Arabs are citizens of Israel, and have full political rights. There are Arab political parties in Israel’s Parliament, high-ranking Arab bureaucrats and cabinet ministers, and Arab members of the Israeli Supreme Court. Moreover, Druze-Arabs are conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces just like Israeli Jews, and several top IDF commanders are Druze-Arabs. More important than this small list of examples, however, is the fact that, unlike the blacks of South Africa, Israeli-Arabs are not denied basic political or economic rights. Economic, social, and political disparities between Arabs and Jews continue to exist in Israel, but these are more along the lines of those that exist here in the United States, not in pre-1994 South Africa.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: A beginner's guide to Israel Apartheid Week

Love of the Land: Irish eyes not smiling on Israel

Irish eyes not smiling on Israel

Soccer Dad
07 March '10

Micheal Martin the Irish foreign minister writes of his recent visit to Gaza in Gaza a year later:

What I witnessed in Gaza, amidst all the rubble and devastation still so evident from last year's conflict, was a population traumatized and reduced to poverty by an unjust and completely counterproductive blockade. All that is being achieved through the imposition of the blockade is to enrich Hamas and marginalize even further the voices of moderation.
I view the current conditions prevailing for the ordinary population as inhumane and utterly unacceptable, in terms of accepted international standards of human rights.

Of course, as a guest of Hamas and someone who clearly wanted to see the worst he only saw what his hosts wanted him to see.

A couple of weeks ago Omri showed the effects of the blockade on Gaza. Like Judge Goldstone, Mr. Martin had no interest in seeing the bigger picture and was only interested in convicting Israel.

There is a blockade of Gaza, in order to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its offensive capabilities. It may not have worked, but it was a legitimate effort to prevent a terrorist organization from regaining its capacity to cause terror.

And here's the summary of the latest week's summary of humanitarian aid Israel allowed into Gaza (apart from what's smuggled in via the tunnels).

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Irish eyes not smiling on Israel

Love of the Land: The Deafening Silence Over Paul Martin

The Deafening Silence Over Paul Martin

Honest Reporting/Backspin
02 March '10

Hamas extended the detention of British journalist Paul Martin by 15 days.

Unfortunate news, but hardly suprising. Hamas is waging a war on press freedom, to the point of dictating throwaway lines.

What is surprising is the media's silence on the affair. Martin's not a high-profile personality like Alan Johnston. But you'd think the UK news services that have used Martin's work over the years -- particularly the BBC -- would be more vociferous.

Tom Gross points out:

Paul Martin, who formerly lived in Cairo, has worked for a number of media over the years, including BBC TV and radio. Indeed he was last in Gaza six weeks ago on assignment for the BBC, and yet the almost complete silence of the BBC now on his fate is deafening. Contrast this to the near hourly mentions, day after day, week after week, by the BBC of their former Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston while he was held in Gaza in 2007.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: The Deafening Silence Over Paul Martin

Love of the Land: Gaza and Afghanistan: 'War Crimes' versus 'Hearts and Minds'

Gaza and Afghanistan: 'War Crimes' versus 'Hearts and Minds'

Just Journalism
26 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former British Army commander in Afghanistan, described on Monday what he regarded as the different responses in the international media to the military actions of British and Israeli forces. Speaking at an event in London, and quoted the next day by the BBC, Col Kemp argued that Israel faces greater and more instinctive criticism of its military operations than Britain does.

‘When we go into battle we do not get the same knee-jerk, almost Pavlovian response from many, many elements of the international media and international groups, humanitarian groups and other international groups such as the United Nations which should know better... of utter automatic condemnation. We don't have to put up with that.’

Reports from Afghanistan this week make a good test case for Col Kemp’s assertion. At least 27 civilians were killed in a NATO air strike in the Afghanistan province of Uruzgan on Sunday 21 February. Airborne units opened fire on what was believed to be a group of insurgents, but which was actually a travelling party of civilian ethnic Hazaras, prompting a personal apology from General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Separately, 12 civilians and three Taliban were killed in a strike in Marja as part of Operation Moshtarak – NATO’s latest offensive in neighboring Helmand province.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Gaza and Afghanistan: 'War Crimes' versus 'Hearts and Minds'

Love of the Land: Should Israel's conduct in Gaza have provoked this mad-dog fury?

Should Israel's conduct in Gaza have provoked this mad-dog fury?

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
07 February '10

(Good question, good answer. Y.)

Or is there, as the psychologists would say, “something else going on”?
Look, I love Daniel Hannan and would like him to come over and run for president of the United States in 2012 but I was disturbed by something in his recent post about the motivations for anti-Semitism. I don’t want to be confused with one of those nags who’s always ready to find some tiny ideological misstep and consign would-be friends to an enemies list. No, I think what I’m doing here is making a different point. I think Daniel and a number of intelligent, well-informed people are missing an important part of the picture about anti-Semitism in Britain, Europe or wherever and its relationship to the Gaza invasion.

Daniel wrote:

Anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in Britain and (hat-tip Mark Steyn) in the rest of Europe. Many of the perpetrators are reported as having been provoked by the invasion of Gaza… [But] why should British Jews be held answerable for the actions of the Israeli government? The most bellicose critics of Israel are forever telling us that their quarrel is with Zionism, not with Jews. If so, it seems perverse in the extreme to attack those Jews who have declined to migrate to Zion.

What hangs in the air here is the notion that it is not odd to get so incensed about Israel’s conduct that you would feel moved to do something extreme, and that the odd part is blaming it on British Jews. Reasonable people would ask themselves, as Daniel put it, “why should British Jews be held answerable for the actions of the Israeli government?” and then they would not, say, throw the rock and then we could still call them reasonable people.

And I too would congratulate them for their reasonableness – for not throwing the rock is a big deal – but then I would like them to take the next step on the road to sanity. I would like them to see how the intensity of the reaction, the fact that we can even think of Israel’s conduct in Gaza as understandable provocation, is itself a symptom of the madness. In other words, no, “Israel’s rampage in Gaza” does not “provide a convenient cover story”, to paraphrase Julian Kossoff. The interesting part that so many of you are missing is that the conduct is used to provide a cover story for people who are looking for a convenient cover story.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Should Israel's conduct in Gaza have provoked this mad-dog fury?

Love of the Land: Gaza Power: Haaretz More Anti-Israel Than Ma'an

Gaza Power: Haaretz More Anti-Israel Than Ma'an

Solomon
Solomonia.com
13 February '10

No surprise. Here's how Ha'aretz headlines the story about the imminent fuel problem at the Gaza power plant: Gaza sources: Sole power plant to halt over Israel fuel blockade.

There's one major problem. The Ma'an story they use as a source is here: Authorities: Gaza Power Plant to cease functioning within hours.

(Read full post)

Related: Power Struggle Means Lights Out For Gaza

Love of the Land: Gaza Power: Haaretz More Anti-Israel Than Ma'an

Love of the Land: An Anti-Israel Extremist Seeks Revenge Through Goldstone Report

An Anti-Israel Extremist Seeks Revenge Through Goldstone Report

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
12 February '10

When Irish Colonel Travers eagerly accepted an appointment to the Goldstone Commission, he was hell bent on revenge against Israel based on paranoid fantasies and hard left anti-Israel propaganda. He actually believed, as he put it in a recent interview, that “so many Irish soldiers had been killed by Israelis,” with “a significant number who were taken out deliberately and shot (in southern Lebanon.)” This is of course complete and utter fantasy, but it was obviously part of Colonel Travers bigoted reality.

Travers came to the job having already made up his mind not to believe anything Israel said and to accept everything Hamas put forward. For example, Israel produced hard photographic evidence that Gaza mosques were used to store rockets and other weapons. Other photographs taken by journalists, also proved what everybody now acknowledges to be true: namely that Hamas, as its leaders frequently boasted, routinely use mosques as military munitions depots. When confronted with this photographic evidence, Travers said “I don’t believe the photographs.” Of course he doesn’t since they don’t comport with his politically correct and ideologically skewed world view. This is what he had previously said about why he didn’t believe that Hamas used the mosques to store weapons:

“We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion….If I were a Hamas operative the last place I’d store munitions would be in a mosque. It’s not secure, is very visible, and would probably be pre-targeted by Israeli surveillance. There are a [sic] many better places to store munitions.”

But that is exactly what Hamas did, despite Travers insistence on paraphrasing Groucho Mark’s famous quip, “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?”

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: An Anti-Israel Extremist Seeks Revenge Through Goldstone Report

Love of the Land: The Human-Rights Organizations That Cried Wolf

The Human-Rights Organizations That Cried Wolf

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
12 February '10

An appeal filed to Israel’s Supreme Court this week provides a good example of just how morally warped some Israeli human-rights groups have become — and why those who truly need them are suffering as a result.

The appeal was filed on behalf of Gaza resident Atsem Hamdan, who sought permission to enter Israel for medical treatment unavailable in Gaza. The relevant Israeli authorities refused, and a district court upheld this decision. Hamdan, it said, could seek treatment in another country; Israel is not obliged to provide medical care for every resident of a hostile entity, which Hamas-led Gaza certainly is.

In their appeal, Haaretz reports, Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel argue that in fact, Israel is “obligated to see to the welfare and health of residents of the Gaza Strip. … This obligation is a result of the state of warfare, Israel’s control of the border crossings, and the Gaza Strip’s dependence on Israel due to the long years of occupation.”

The sheer absurdity of these claims is mind-boggling. First, if Israel retains responsibility for Gaza’s residents even after having withdrawn every last soldier and settler, merely because it used to occupy the Strip, what incentive would it ever have to quit any “occupied” territory? If Israel is going to be held responsible for the residents’ welfare whether it goes or stays, it may as well stay and at least enjoy the benefits of occupation — like being able to crack down on Hamas’s rocket-manufacturing industry.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: The Human-Rights Organizations That Cried Wolf