Love of the Land: When Dedicating a Synagogue Is a War Crime

When Dedicating a Synagogue Is a War Crime

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
17 March '10

Yes, really. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights — one of a myriad of NGOs waging a war of delegitimization against Israel — has issued a press release declaring that:

The inauguration of a Jewish synagogue in East Jerusalem [sic] is considered a form of settlement activity, and thus constitutes a war crime under international humanitarian law.

Of course, this was not the inauguration of a synagogue — it was the rededication of a synagogue that dates to the Ottoman empire and was destroyed by the Jordanians during their occupation of Jerusalem. The Hurva synagogue was built in the 1860’s (even then on the ruins of a synagogue that had been built during the previous century) and demolished intentionally by the Arab Legion in 1948, during the War of Independence. Oh, and I almost forgot: it’s not in “East Jerusalem” — it’s in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Just a stroll away from the Western Wall, whose existence by this logic is also a war crime.

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Love of the Land: When Dedicating a Synagogue Is a War Crime

Love of the Land: More Gaza "civilians" and more PCHR lies

More Gaza "civilians" and more PCHR lies

Elder of Ziyon
22 January '10

Even though I haven't been spending too much time lately on looking for more dead Gaza "civilians" who were actually terrorists, other people (notably PTWatch) has been diligently digging through Arabic websites and we keep adding to the list.

As of right now, we have identified 358 terrorists who were categorized as "civilians" by the PCHR. Add together the rest of the police and the "militants" that PCHR counted, and we have 667 dead Gazans who were legitimate targets, quickly closing in on half of the dead not being civilians.

Many of the civilians were clearly being used as cover or were unavoidably killed in a legitimate operation. The latest "martyr" PTWatch found is a case in point.

#901, Usama Sa’id Mohammed Lubbad, was a recruiter for Islamic Jihad (who also evidently taught Islamic Jihad tenets to the terrorist equivalent of Cub Scouts in a mosque) and he was killed on January 9th. His obituary mentions that he was killed with a few of his Islamic Jihad friends - mentioned in PCHR as #897, 899, 900 and 909. That's five Islamic Jihad members in one shot, a legitimate target by any measure.

However, during the attack two other people were killed. One was a seven year old boy, the other a 55-year old man. Their deaths were unavoidable by the IDF, and very justified under international law.

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Love of the Land: More Gaza "civilians" and more PCHR lies

Love of the Land: How many Gaza civilians were killed by Hamas rockets?

How many Gaza civilians were killed by Hamas rockets?

Elder of Ziyon
18 January '10

Palestine Press Agency reports that the house of Ibrahim Naji Sumairi was damaged by a Qassam rocket that fell short in the southern Gaza town of Qarara, and that his family was saved from a "certain death" by sheer luck. The rocket sprayed shrapnel all around the home.

Which brings up a question that the PCHR and B'Tselem and Goldstone did not try to answer: How many of the civilians killed in Gaza were actually killed by fire from Palestinian Arab armed groups? In the days before Cast Lead, two girls were killed in Gaza, and others were injured in separate rocket attacks.

These were not isolated incidents. In fact, in the month before Cast Lead began about 6% of the rockets fired landed in Gaza itself. During Cast Lead, some 800 Qassams were fired towards Israel, and the percentage that landed in Gaza itself is unknown, but we can safely assume that the number would have been even greater than 6% as the people launching the rockets were in a greater hurry than usual.

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Love of the Land: How many Gaza civilians were killed by Hamas rockets?

Love of the Land: You’re Not Going to Believe This, But…

You’re Not Going to Believe This, But…

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
12 January '10

Yet another “human rights” NGO has been caught trafficking in made-up statistics. As Yaacov Lozowick and Elder of Ziyon report, Addameer, a Palestinian “prisoners’ rights” NGO, has been inflating the number of Palestinians it claims have been arrested by Israel to a point of total absurdity:

For Addameer’s numbers to be accurate, Israel would be arresting some 10,000 people a month. Yet the PCHR [Palestinian Centre for Human Rights -- no PR operation for Israel by any stretch of the imagination] says that the number of arrests was 23 last week, 26 the previous week, 23 the week before and 17 the week before that – for a total of less than 100 people a month.

And B’Tselem says that “about 6,831 Palestinians were held in Israel as of the end of December ‘09.” How could only 6,800 Palestinians be held in Israel if the IDF is arresting 10,000 Palestinians per month?

Addameer not only made up the initial numbers but they keep grossly inflating them, confident that their anti-Israel audience will lap them up without question.

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Love of the Land: You’re Not Going to Believe This, But…

Love of the Land: PR fails again

PR fails again

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi
Israel Opinion/Ynet
04 January '10

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) published in its weekly summary a report on an incident in which three Palestinians were killed by IDF fire: “On Saturday, December 26, 2009 at around 00:30 Israeli forces opened fire on a number of Palestinians who approached the border. As a result, three of them were killed. They were unarmed and apparently trying to infiltrate Israel in order to look for work.”

The organization thus accuses the IDF of killing three innocent Palestinian civilians. In order to further exacerbate the Israeli “crime”, the organization added details in the service of Palestinian propaganda in relation to the economic distress in the Gaza Strip, which it claims is the reason that the group of Palestinians attempted to enter Israel to find work.

Stories of this kind, about young people who were killed in an attempt to cross the border to find work in Israel, can be found in abundance in reports issued by Palestinian human rights groups as well as in reports on Palestinian victims issued by B’Tselem.

This case allows one to learn about the conduct of terror organizations, Palestinian propaganda (sometimes with the assistance of Israeli human rights organizations) and the ineffectiveness of Israeli public relations. In this relation it should be clarified that not a single Palestinian terror organization claimed responsibility for the incident. Does this mean that these were civilians and not terrorists? Not necessarily.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Office issued a statement on December 29, 2009, which sheds some light on the incident:

“On Friday night an IDF force identified four terrorists approaching the border fence in northern Gaza in a military crawl, apparently in order to carry out an attack in Israel. The force fired at them using the ‘see and fire’ system, with the help of Air Force jets and forces from the Golani Brigade. The fire killed three terrorists and an additional terrorist was injured… In patrols held after the incident soldiers discovered a rope ladder and three explosive devices, among them a powerful device.”

The story of the incident, as it is revealed by the IDF’s version, is totally different from the report published by the Palestinian human rights group. The four Palestinian youths, three of whom were killed by IDF fire, were not trying to find work in Israel due to economic distress, but were sent either by a Palestinian terror organization or the Hamas government’s security forces on a mission – to plant powerful explosive devices on the border with Israel.

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Jonathan Dahoah Halevi is a senior researcher and fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Director of Research at the Orient Research Group

Love of the Land: PR fails again

Love of the Land: NGOs claimed Nizar Rayan was a civilian

NGOs claimed Nizar Rayan was a civilian

NGO Monitor
01 January '10

Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas military commander, and members of his family were killed in an IDF airstrike on January 1, 2009. Rayan was involved in the planning of many deadly suicide attacks on Israel and was an architect of the Hamas take-over of Gaza in 2007. He sent his own son out on a suicide bombing mission in 2001 that killed two and wounded many. Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg called Rayan, “one of the more bellicose Hamas leaders I have known”. Rayan told him in a 2007 interview that the “only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle . . . Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God."

Rayan’s home was part of a complex that served as a weapons storage site and command center for Hamas. Prior to the attack, the IDF issued several alerts that the buildings would be targeted including specific telephone calls and warning shots “13 minutes and 9 minutes before the strike.” Other residents heeded the warnings, but Rayan and his family decided to stay. After the strike, secondary explosions were observed, confirming the presence of a weapons cache in Rayan’s home. It is not known whether the initial IDF attack or the secondary explosions caused the resulting casualties.

Despite Rayan’s status as a leader in Hamas’ Qassam brigades and the weapons stockpile in his building, the European-government funded Palestinian Center for Human Rights(PCHR) called Rayan’s death a “heinous crime” and that its “perpetrators and their military and political leaders must be prosecuted.”

As the logistical organizer for the Arab League’s Gaza “Fact Finding” mission, PCHR also facilitated an interview with two of Rayan’s sons, one of whom dubiously claimed, “My father couldn’t imagine he would be targeted like this.” Even the Guardian noted, however, that “Rayan appeared to believe himself invincible. He refused to leave or allow his enormous family to leave their home in the Jabalia camp.”

PCHR continues to list Rayan as a “civilian” and “university professor” in its casualty statistics from the war – calling further into question the organization’s credibility.

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Love of the Land: NGOs claimed Nizar Rayan was a civilian

Love of the Land: Palestinian Group Blasts Hamas; Washington Post Misses News

Palestinian Group Blasts Hamas; Washington Post Misses News

CAMERA/Snapshots
09 December 09

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned “external travel restrictions imposed on the population” by the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers. It said Palestinian police on December 7 “prevented 37 patients and their companions from heading towards the [Erez] crossing to travel to hospitals” in the West Bank and Israel.

PCHR called on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip government to cancel Interior Ministry provisions announced on November 25. Lengthy forms, multiple identification, photocopies of Israeli permits and a requirement that individuals obtain permission to travel abroad three days in advance “have obstructed their travel to hospital, raising concerns regarding their health,” the organization charged.

The Washington Post did not cover the story. In a letter to Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli, retired McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau chief and CAMERA member Leo Rennert noted that the newspaper “has devoted extensive space to Palestinians discomforted by Israeli travel restrictions .... while ignoring or paying at best minimal attention to Palestinian abuses of Palestinian human rights.”

It should be noted that PCHR, funded by the European Union, Norway, Denmark, the Ford Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Fund, among others, routinely refers to Jerusalem a part of the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces as the Israel Occupation Forces, and falsely claims that “a very limited number of [Palestinian Arab] patients” have been permitted to cross at Erez for treatment in Israel when thousand do annually. That would seem to make its criticism of Hamas’ regulations as “illegal measures violat[ing] international human rights standards” and medical threats especially newsworthy.

Love of the Land: Palestinian Group Blasts Hamas; Washington Post Misses News