Why does the media encourage Hamas violence against Israel?

The Washington Examiner - By Alan Dershowitz – 16-5-2018

For the full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/y8mttfyr

If this were the first time that Hamas deliberately provoked Israel into self-defense actions that resulted in the unintended deaths of Gaza civilians, the media could be excused for playing into the hands of Hamas.

The most recent Hamas provocations — having 40,000 Gazans try to tear down the border fence and enter Israel with Molotov cocktails and other improvised weapons — are part of a repeated Hamas tactic that I have called the “dead baby strategy.” The goal of Hamas is to have Israel kill as many Gazans as possible so that the headlines always begin, and often end, with the body count. Hamas deliberately sends women and children to the front line, while their own fighters hide behind these human shields.

Hamas leaders have long acknowledged this tactic. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, stated as far back as 2008, “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy, ‘We desire death like you desire life.’”

Hamas used this tactic to provoke two wars with Israel in which their fighters fired rockets from civilian areas, including hospitals, schools, and mosques. When Israel responded, it tried its best to avoid civilian casualties, dropping warning leaflets, calling residents of potential targets and dropping nonlethal noise bombs on the roofs of houses that were being used to launch rockets and store explosives. Inevitably, some civilians were killed, and the media blamed Israel for these deaths, despite the precautions it had taken.

The same was true when Hamas built terror tunnels used to kidnap Israeli civilians. The entrances to these tunnels were in civilian areas as well, including mosques and schools. Using their own civilians as human shields, while targeting Israeli civilians, is a double war crime. Yet, the media generally focuses on the reaction of Israel to these war crimes, rather than the war crimes of Hamas.

The cruel reality is that every time Israel accidentally kills a Gaza civilian, Israel loses. And every time Israel kills a Gaza civilian, Hamas wins. Israelis grieve every civilian death its army accidentally causes. Hamas benefits from every death Israel accidentally causes. That is why it encourages its women and children to become martyrs.

Calling this the “dead baby strategy” may seem cruel because it is cruel. But don’t blame the messenger for accurately describing this tactic. Blame those who cynically use it. Blame the media for playing into the hands of those who use it by reporting only the body count and not the deliberate Hamas tactic that leads to one-sided body counts.

It is true that Gaza is in a desperate situation and that it is wounded. But the wound itself is self-inflicted. When Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, removing every single soldier and settler, the territory could have become the Singapore on the Mediterranean Sea. It is a beautiful area with a large seacoast. It received infusions of cash and other help from Europe. Israel left behind agricultural equipment and hot houses.

But instead of using these resources to feed, house, and educate its citizens, Hamas built rockets, terror tunnels, and Molotov cocktails. It threw dissenters off the roof and murdered members of the Palestinian Authority who were willing to recognize Israel and negotiate with it. Hamas rejects the two-state solution or any solution that leaves Israel intact. The only solution for it is violence, and the events at the fence these past days are a manifestation of that violence.

Would any country in the world allow 40,000 people, sworn to its destruction, to knock down a border fence and attack its citizens living peacefully near the border? Of course not. Could Israel have done more to reduce casualties among those trying to breach the border fence? I don’t know, and neither do the legions of armchair generals who are criticizing Israel for the steps it took to prevent a catastrophe among the residents of Kibbutzim and towns that are proximate to the border fence.

One thing is crystal clear: Hamas will continue to use the ”dead baby strategy” as long as the media continues to report the deaths in the manner in which it has reported them in recent weeks. Many in the media are complicit in these deaths because their one-sided reporting encourages Hamas to send innocent women and children to the front line. Perhaps Israel could do a better job of defending its civilians but it is certain that the media can do a better job of accurately reporting the Hamas strategy that results in so many innocent deaths.

There is a marvelous cartoon that illustrates the difference between Hamas and Israel. It shows an Israeli soldier standing in front of a stroller with a baby in it, shielding the baby. Then it shows a Hamas terrorist standing behind a stroller with the baby in it, using the baby to shield him. This cartoon better illustrates the reality that is occurring at the Gaza fence than most of the “objective” reporting by the media.

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WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE GAZA DEATHS?

Video Of The Week - USA Embassy Opens in Jerusalem - https://tinyurl.com/ybze7yyf

By Melanie Philips 14-5-2018

For the full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/y866lqze

The toll in today’s Gaza riots (according to the Hamas) currently stands at around 55 Arabs dead (amongst whom, say the Israelis, are at least ten Hamas terrorists); that toll may well rise with further riots threatened tomorrow and the day after.

The people who caused these deaths are the Hamas themselves. But the people at whose door these dead Arabs should also be laid are the BBC and those in the rest of the British and other media who have acted their part in the script the Hamas has written: to cause as many Gazans to lose their lives as possible, the younger the better, so that the western media will portray Israel as wanton and disproportionate killers.

The media has duly obliged by calling what’s been happening at Gaza’s border with Israel, today and previously, “unarmed” demonstrations or “protests against the US embassy move”. It was nothing of the kind. As I wrote here yesterday, by the Hamas’s own lights this is an attempt by tens of thousands of Arabs to storm the border in order to invade and destroy Israel.

If they do break through, no-one can be in the slightest doubt that they will massacre the Israelis. In the words of the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar: “Tear their hearts out”. This is not a metaphor.

Facebook pages affiliated with Hamas are uploading maps that show the proximity of the riots to Israeli communities. “There’s no other way to understand these pictures than as a threat against these communities,” says the IDF spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis.

That’s why Israel has built extraordinary defences to protect its most vulnerable citizens who live close to the border. And it is a lie to say, as the media continue falsely to report, that this great mob is unarmed. They are using petrol bombs, IEDs, flaming kites.

Their tactics have been described by Israel’s security service, the Shin Bet. Captured Gazans have told them that Hamas has warned its members to stay away from the security fence during the riots lest they get shot, while actively encouraging Palestinian civilians — particularly children and teens — to approach the border. “There is a prohibition for Hamas operatives to approach the border from a fear that they will be killed or captured by IDF troops, unless the security fence falls; and then they must enter, armed, into Israel under the cover of the masses and carry out terror attacks”.

And surprise surprise, Iran (which has been funding and training Hamas for some time) is behind this:

“From the information we have, it appears Hamas is encouraging and sending protesters to the border fence in order to carry out violent acts and damage security infrastructure. In addition, it was found that Iran is providing funding to Hamas in order for it to carry out these violent activities along the Gaza Strip’s border fence,” the Shin Bet said.

For the media to portray this as a protest – moreover an unarmed protest – is to perpetrate a lie that is beyond wicked. Those 55 dead Arabs, and however many more will be sacrificed tomorrow and the next day as cannon fodder on the basis that the western media will report this as “unarmed protest”, are therefore being killed for the BBC and other media who have been dutifully playing their role in this infernal propaganda charade.

The British government is scarcely any better with its morally obtuse behaviour. “We are concerned by the reports of violence and loss of life in Gaza’, said a spokesman. “We urge calm and restraint to avoid actions destructive to peace efforts”.

Oh really. When did the British government voice its concern at the threatened invasion of Israel and slaughter of its citizens? I must have missed it. The British government has a moral duty not only to support Israel against this invasion but also to tell the British people the truth about what is happening and why Israel is being forced to take such action. It has not done so.

Instead, Mrs May’s government continues to help the Arabs weaponise the issue of Jerusalem – and therefore delegitimise Israel’s existence – by refusing to accept today’s game-changing US embassy move to Jerusalem; and furthermore is opposing and undermining the US-led attempt to neutralise the Iranian regime that daily threatens Israel with genocide.

Now also we can see the profound antisemitism of Amnesty International and others. Amnesty tweeted today: “We are witnessing an abhorrent violation of international law and human rights in Gaza… This must end immediately”.

What Amnesty means is that Israel’s self-defence must end immediately. We must therefore conclude that Amnesty would be unmoved by the inevitable consequence: the invasion of Israel and slaughter of Israelis. For Amnesty, it seems, Jewish lives don’t matter.

And that goes for everyone else demanding that Israel now desists from doing what every other country on earth would do if facing a potential mob of 250,000 invaders bent on conquest and mass murder: defending itself as best it can.

Not a word of condemnation of the Hamas for attempting a violent invasion. Instead, Amnesty screams that Israel is breaking international law. Israel is breaking no law by defending itself. It is Hamas which is guilty of multiple war crimes in using unarmed Arab civilians as cannon fodder behind whom it hides its weapons.

An estimated 40,000 Arabs took apart in today’s riots. It’s being claimed that Israel killed a disproportionate number. All deaths are to be regretted, especially of the young who are being so cynically used; but 55 dead out of an attack force of 40,000? That’s a disproportionate number, all right: disproportionately low.

But here’s the really revolting thing about the west’s Israel-bashers. What really gets them is that no Jews have been killed today. They think it’s outrageous that 55 Arabs were killed and not one Israeli. So just how many Jews need to be killed in order to even up this debauched notion of equivalent worth?

Jews have died in their millions over the centuries at the hands of those who simply hate Jews. Hamas are the latest manifestation of this evil. But in Israel, the Jewish people now has the means to defend itself; and it goes to enormous lengths to guard every life because so many have been lost.

Yet these Israel-bashers complain that this is somehow not cricket, that the Jews need to die – because it’s not fair that they are killing their would-be killers instead. So they portray the Jews as the killers and their genocidal Arab attackers as their victims. Just how disgusting is this?

At times like this we can see how these parts of the west are signing their own death warrant. Well guess what – in Israel, the Jewish people said “never again”. This is what that looks like.

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The Iran Deal Is a Lie

Video Of The Week- Netanyahu Reveals the Iranian Secret Atomic Archive
https://tinyurl.com/y7ejj4nd

By Bret Stephens NewYork Times.

“The sanctions lifting will only occur as Iran takes the steps agreed, including addressing possible military dimensions.”

That was State Department spokesman John Kirby in June 2015, speaking just as negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal were wrapping up. But Tehran did not “take the steps agreed.” The deal was founded on a lie.

Two lies, actually. The first was Iran’s declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency, prior to the implementation of the deal, of the full extent of its past nuclear work. This was essential, both as a test of Tehran’s sincerity and as a benchmark for understanding just how close it was to being able to assemble and deliver a nuclear warhead.

The second lie was the Obama administration’s promise that it was serious about getting answers from Tehran. In a moment of candor, then-Secretary of State John Kerry admitted “we are not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another” — but then he promised Congress that Iran would provide the accounting.

`That was when the White House still feared that Congress might block the deal. When it failed to do so, thanks to a Democratic filibuster, the administration contented itself with a make-believe process in which Iran pretended to make a full declaration and the rest of the world pretended to believe it.

“Iran’s answers and explanations for many of the I.A.E.A.’s concerns were, at best, partial, but over all, obfuscating and stonewalling,” David Albright and his colleagues at the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security wrote in December 2015. “Needed access to sites was either denied or tightly controlled as to preclude adequate inspections.”

So much, then, for all the palaver about the deal providing an unprecedented level of transparency for monitoring Iranian compliance. So much, also, for the notion that Iran has honored its end of the bargain. It didn’t. This should render the agreement null and void.

That’s the significance of Benjamin Netanyahu’s show and tell on Monday of what appears to be a gigantic cache of pilfered Iranian documents detailing Tehran’s nuclear work. The deal’s defenders have dismissed the Israeli prime minister’s presentation as a bunch of old news — just further proof that Iran once had a robust covert program to build a bomb. They also insist Iran has complied with the terms of the agreement since it came into force in January 2016.

Yet it’s difficult to imagine that the I.A.E.A. can now square Iran’s 2015 declaration with what the Israelis have uncovered. Iran’s mendacity is no longer the informed supposition of proliferation experts such as Mr. Albright. It is — assuming the documents are authentic, as the U.S. has confirmed — a matter of fact that the I.A.E.A. chose to ignore when it gave Iran a free pass under political pressure to move to implement the deal. If the agency cares for its own credibility as a nuclear watchdog, it should decide that Iran’s past declaration was false and that Iran’s retention of the documents obtained by Israel, with all the nuclear know-how they contain, put it in likely breach of the agreement.

As for Iran’s current compliance, of course it’s complying. The deal gave Iran the best of all worlds. It weakened U.N. restrictions on its right to develop, test and field ballistic missiles — a critical component for a nuclear weapons capability that the Iranians haven’t fully mastered. It lifted restrictions on Iran’s oil exports and eased other sanctions, pumping billions of dollars into a previously moribund economy. And it allows Iran to produce all the nuclear fuel it wants come the end of the next decade.

Yes, Iran is permanently enjoined from building a nuclear weapon, even after the limitations on uranium enrichment expire. But why believe this regime will be faithful to the deal at its end when it was faithless to it at its beginning?

Netanyahu’s revelations were plainly timed to influence Donald Trump’s decision, expected later this month, on whether to stay in the Iran deal. Trump is under pressure from the French, British and Germans to stay in it, on the view that, if nothing else, the agreement has kept Iran from racing toward a bomb.

But the deal now in place allows Iran to amble toward a bomb, even as it uses the financial benefits of the agreement to fund (in the face of domestic upheaval and at a steep cost to its own economy) its militancy in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and especially in Syria. And Iran’s own nuclear history suggests the country’s leaders have always been cautious in the face of credible American threats, which is one reason they shelved much of their nuclear program in 2003 after the U.S. invaded Iraq.

“When the Iranians fear American power, they either back down or they stall,” says Mark Dubowitz, an expert on Iran sanctions at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “When they don’t fear American power, they push forward. With Trump, the question is: Are they going to feel American power, or American mush?”

I opposed the Iran deal, but immediately after it came into effect, I believed that we should honor it scrupulously and enforce it unsparingly. Monday’s news is that Iran didn’t honor its end of the bargain and neither need the United States now. Punitive sanctions combined with a credible threat of military force should follow.

Jewish Power at 70 Years

 New York Times, by Bret Stephens - https://tinyurl.com/y99w9pc3

Video Of The Week – Israel at 70 - https://tinyurl.com/y9p33qwy

Adam Armoush is a 21-year-old Israeli Arab who, on a recent outing in Berlin, donned a yarmulke to test a friend’s contention that it was unsafe to do so in Germany. On Tuesday he was assaulted in broad daylight by a Syrian asylum-seeker who whipped him with a belt for being “yahudi” — Arabic for Jew.

The episode was caught on video and has caused a national uproar. Heiko Maas, the foreign minister, tweeted, “Jews shall never again feel threatened here.”

It’s a vow not likely to be fulfilled. There were nearly 1,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin alone last year. A neo-fascist party, Alternative for Germany, has 94 seats in the Bundestag. Last Thursday, a pair of German rappers won a prestigious music award, given largely on the basis of sales, for an album in which they boast of having bodies “more defined than Auschwitz prisoners.” The award ceremony coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

To be Jewish — at least visibly Jewish — in Europe is to live on borrowed time. That’s not to doubt the sincerity and good will of Maas or other European leaders who recommit to combating anti-Semitism every time a European Jew is murdered or a Jewish institution attacked. It’s only to doubt their capacity.

There’s a limit to how many armed guards can be deployed indefinitely to protect synagogues or stop Holocaust memorials from being vandalized. There’s a limit, also, to trying to cure bigotry with earnest appeals to tolerance. The German government is mulling a proposal to require recent arrivals in the country to tour Nazi concentration camps as a way of engendering a feeling of empathy for Jews. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that, to the virulent anti-Semite, Buchenwald is a source of inspiration, not shame.

All this comes to mind as Israel this week marks (in the Hebrew calendar) the 70th anniversary of its independence. There are many reasons to celebrate the date, many of them lofty: a renaissance for Jewish civilization; the creation of a feisty liberal democracy in a despotic neighborhood; the ecological rescue of a once-barren land; the end of 1,878 years of exile.

But there’s a more basic reason. Jews cannot rely for their safety on the kindness of strangers, least of all French or German politicians. Theodor Herzl saw this with the Dreyfus Affair and founded modern Zionism. Post-Hitler Europe still has far to fall when it comes to its attitudes toward Jews, but the trend is clear. The question is the pace.

Hence Israel: its army, bomb, and robust willingness to use force to defend itself. Israel did not come into existence to serve as another showcase of the victimization of Jews. It exists to end the victimization of Jews.

That’s a point that Israel’s restless critics could stand to learn. On Friday, Palestinians in Gaza returned for the fourth time to the border fence with Israel, in protests promoted by Hamas. The explicit purpose of Hamas leaders is to breach the fence and march on Jerusalem. Israel cannot possibly allow this — doing so would create a precedent that would encourage similar protests, and more death, along all of Israel’s borders — and has repeatedly used deadly force to counter it.

The armchair corporals of Western punditry think this is excessive. It would be helpful if they could suggest alternative military tactics to an Israeli government dealing with an urgent crisis against an adversary sworn to its destruction. They don’t.

It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t. If the armchair corporals want to persist in demands for withdrawals that for 25 years have led to more Palestinian violence, not less, the least they can do is be ferocious in defense of Israel’s inarguable sovereignty. Somehow they almost never are.

Israel’s 70th anniversary has occasioned a fresh round of anxious, if not exactly new, commentary about the rifts between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry. Some Diaspora complaints, especially with respect to religion and refugees, are valid and should be heeded by Jerusalem.

But to the extent that the Diaspora’s objections are prompted by the nonchalance of the supposedly non-vulnerable when it comes to Israel’s security choices, then the complaints are worse than feckless. They provide moral sustenance for Hamas in its efforts to win sympathy for its strategy of wanton aggression and reckless endangerment. And they foster the illusion that there’s some easy and morally stainless way by which Jews can exercise the responsibilities of political power.

Though not Jewish, Adam Armoush was once one of the nonchalant when it came to what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. Presumably no longer. For Jews, it’s a painful, useful reminder that Israel is not their vanity. It’s their safeguard.

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Dublin City Council backs BDS

By MEMO, April 10, 2018

For the full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/ycwcrc6u

Dublin City Councillors yesterday voted to back the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and also urged the Irish government to expel Israel’s ambassador over the recent killings of Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip.

According to reports, “the Sinn Féin motion was passed at a monthly council meeting as the party’s first Lord Mayor Mícheál Mac Donncha prepares to travel to a conference in Jerusalem at the invitation of the Palestinian Authority.”

Councillors also passed a motion from People Before Profit Councillor John Lyons “calling on the city council to boycott Hewlett Packard goods and services with the company’s contract with the council due to expire in September”, on the basis that HP is complicit in Israel’s occupation.

Meanwhile, Lord Mayor Mac Donncha said in a statement that he was travelling as Lord Mayor of the capital city of Ireland to acknowledge East Jerusalem is the designated capital of Palestine.

#BDS

“I am also here to express solidarity with the people of Palestine who are suffering violence from Israeli forces, as witnessed in Gaza most recently with the shooting down of protesters,” he said.

The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) warmly welcomed the support of Dublin City Council for the BDS campaign.

“Speaking as a Palestinian and a Dubliner I’m so proud that the local government of my adoptive the city has voted to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom, justice and equality,” said IPSC Chairperson Fatin Al Tamimi.

“It is wonderful that Dublin City Council will now become part of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement called for by Palestinian civil society. It is particularly welcome that the council chose to focus on Hewlett-Packard and its spin-off DXC, as these companies have been profiteering from the violent oppression of Palestinians and illegal colonisation of their land.”

READ: Thousands desert HP over links to Israeli occupation

Al Tamimi added: “BDS is the most effective way for international supporters of Palestinians rights to put pressure on the Israeli state to end its decades of colonial oppression of my people.”

The full text of the BDS-related motion is as follows:

“Since its violent establishment in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than half of the indigenous people of Palestine, the state of Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights and has refused to comply with international law; noting also that Israel continues to illegally occupy and colonise Palestinian land, discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, imposes an inhumane blockade and siege of Gaza and denies Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes, this City Council fully supports and endorses the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for freedom, equality and justice and commits itself to discontinue all business contracts it has with Hewlett-Packard, both HP  Inc. (PCs and printers), and Hewlett Packard Enterprise for business and government services, as well as the HP spin-off DXC Technology as HP and DXC provide and operate much of the technology infrastructure that Israel uses to maintain its system of apartheid and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people.”

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Lock, Stock and Blame Israel

Video of the week -Gaza "Peaceful" Demo 2018- https://tinyurl.com/ya2qj9yw

MiDA, By Daniel Krygier 02/04/2018

For the full article go to – https://tinyurl.com/yctmrn99

The international community that demanded Israel retreat from Gaza, now attacks Israel for defending its border against Hamas, whose assault on Israel they qualify as “freedom of expression.”

International reactions to the recent Hamas-organized Gaza border aggression against Israel follow the predictable script.

The purpose of Hamas’s “March of Return” was to erase the border and to flood Israel with Gaza Arabs. Israel did what it had to do to defend its border and its citizens. The international community though, turns reality upside down, portraying Israel as the “villain” and the Islamist attackers as “victims.”

The attack on Israel’s border also destroyed whatever remained of the cherished leftist fairytale of “extremists on both sides undermining peace”.

The EU especially once again found itself on the wrong side of history. EU’s Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini summarized the endemic international hypocrisy against Israel with the Orwellian words, “Freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are fundamental rights that must be respected.”

Threatening Israel’s internationally recognized border and attacking Israeli soldiers with machine guns and Molotov cocktails hardly qualifies as “freedom of expression.” The only “freedom of assembly” that Gaza’s terrorist-regime permits is violent incitement against Israel and Jews. By contrast, the EU and most of the world ignore the Kurdish people’s freedom of expression and national freedom as well as countless other oppressed nations worldwide.

Once again, Mogherini emphasized EU’s long-adopted anti-Israel policy of “do as we say, not as we do”.

“The EU mourns the loss of life. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims. The use of live ammunition should, in particular, be part of an independent and transparent investigation. While Israel has the right to protect its borders, the use of force must be proportionate at all times.”

What is the “proportionate” response to Islamist machine guns, Molotov cocktails and rocks according to the EU? In the case of the EU itself, the answer is obvious. Nine terrorists were killed during and after the Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. France also bombed Islamist targets in Syria.

The same year, Danish police killed an Islamist radical who murdered a Jewish security guard and another civilian in Copenhagen. In July 2016, German police killed a 17-year old Afghan Muslim who attacked train passengers in Würzburg with an axe and a knife. During the London Bridge attack in June 2017, British security forces killed three Islamist terrorists. In March 2018, French police killed an Islamist extremist that attacked a supermarket in the French town Trèbes. The list goes on and so does the hypocrisy.

Neither the UN nor the EU called for an “independent and transparent investigation” in any of these cases. Only Israel is accused of “disproportionate” force, despite facing far more serious and frequent threats than any other Western democracy.

The same international community that demanded that Israel retreat from Gaza, now hypocritically attacks Israel for defending its border with Gaza against Hamas, an Islamist enemy openly seeking Israel’s destruction. Israeli civilian lives in border communities would have been seriously threatened, even if only a small number of armed terrorists would have managed to penetrate Israel’s border with Gaza.

Israel does not only have the right but a duty to defend its citizens like any country in the world.

The Pope joined the international linguistic pogrom against Israel by claiming that “defenseless” Arabs are killed in the Holy Land.

In reality, at least ten of the 17 killed Gazans were armed Islamist terrorists. However, in the international “Blame the Jews” game, there is little demand for verifiable facts.

Hamas systematically and cynically exploits it to the limit. Gaza’s Islamist rulers reportedly sent a 7-year-old Arab girl to the border with the hope that Israeli soldiers would unintentionally kill her and cause international condemnations of Israel. Thankfully, Israeli soldiers discovered the girl in time and took her out of harm’s way.

While extremists exist in all societies, their respective status differs dramatically. In 1994, the Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron. An overwhelming majority of world Jewry condemned this heinous terror attack. On January 29 2017, the Christian white supremacist Alexandre Bissonnette murdered six Muslim worshippers in Quebec. The overwhelming majority in Canada and the free world condemned this heinous terror attack.

While extremists like Goldstein and Bissonnette are despised fringe elements in the Jewish and Christian worlds, extremists are in power in much of the Islamic world and looked upon as role models by millions of Muslims. There are no city squares or streets in Israel named after Baruch Goldstein. By contrast, “moderate” PLO names city squares and streets after terrorists who murder Jews.

Israeli children are taught in a spirit of mutual respect and coexistence. By contrast, Hamas and PLO brainwash their children that Jews are “sons of apes and pigs” and that Israel must be destroyed.

In Israel, children dream about becoming pilots, sport stars or entrepreneurs. In the territories ruled by PLO and Hamas, terrorists who murder Jews are praised as “heroes” and their families receive cash stipends.

It is therefore hardly surprising that many brainwashed Muslim children dream about becoming shahids or “martyrs” who die while murdering Jews.

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Violence At The Security Fence

Video Of The Week - 'Israel is simply defending itself'- https://tinyurl.com/y9uhswwf

The Israeli military on Saturday night identified 10 of the 15 people 

reported killed during violent protests along the Gaza security fence 

as members of Palestinian terrorist groups, and published a list 

of their names and positions in the organizations.

On Friday, some 30,000 Palestinians took part in demonstrations along the Gaza border, during which rioters threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli troops on the other side of the fence, burned tires and scrap wood, sought to breach and damage the security fence, and in one case opened fire at Israeli soldiers.

The army said that its sharpshooters targeted only those taking explicit violent action against Israeli troops or trying to break through or damage the security fence. Video footage showed that in one case a rioter, whom the army included in its list of Hamas members, appeared to be shot while running away from the border. The army in response accused Hamas of editing and/or fabricating its videos.

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According to the Israel Defense Forces (Arabic link), eight of the men killed were members of Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. One served in the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and another was affiliated with “global jihad,” it said, apparently referring to one of the Salafist groups in Gaza.

Earlier on Saturday, Hamas publicly acknowledged that five members of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were among the fatalities.

The army did not provide evidence for its identifications. Most could be independently verified with photographic evidence of the operatives wearing uniforms or receiving a military-style funeral from the terror group in question. Others could not be immediately substantiated. At least one appears to be partially incorrect.

The IDF identified Hamdan Abu Amsha as belonging to Hamas, yet in his funeral he was wrapped in a flag belonging to a different terrorist group, Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and a Fatah-affiliated Twitter account claimed him as “our martyr.”

Palestinians carry the body of Hamdan Abu Amsha, said killed a day earlier by Israeli fire during a mass border protest along the security fence, in Beit Hanoun in the northern of Gaza Strip, on March 31, 2018. (AFP/ MAHMUD HAMS)

The army said that at least one of the Hamas members, Sari Abu Odeh, was part of the group’s elite Nukhba force and that another, Muhammad Abu Amro, served in its tunnel operations. (The IDF’s Arabic spokesman provided more details in Arabic via Twitter.)

The IDF identified one of the two Hamas members who shot at Israeli soldiers on Friday evening and attempted to breach the security fence, before they were shot dead, as 23-year-old Mussa’b al-Saloul.

Gaza’s Hamas terrorist rulers released these images of members of its military wing who it acknowledged were among 15 Gazans it said were killed by Israeli fire during clashes along the security fence on Friday, March 30, 2018.

Palestinian media reported that the bodies of the two gunmen were captured by Israeli soldiers. The IDF would not officially comment on this claim.

The oldest operative identified was Jihad Farina, 35, a company commander in Hamas’s military wing; the youngest was 19-year-old Ahmad Odeh, who served in the terror group’s Shati Battalion, the army said.

Palestinians hurl stones toward Israeli soldiers during a protest near the Gaza Strip border with Israel, in eastern Gaza City, Saturday, March 31, 2018. (AP/ Khalil Hamra)

Hamas claimed those killed were taking part “in popular events side-by-side with their people.”

Thousands attended funerals in Gaza Saturday for 14 of those killed — two were buried on Friday — with mourners holding Palestinian flags and some chanting “revenge” and firing into the air.

“Where are you, Arabs? Where are you, Muslims?” mourners chanted at one funeral, calling on the Arab and Muslim world to intervene. A general strike was held in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis said on Saturday that all those killed were engaged in violence, adding that Gaza health officials exaggerated the number of those wounded and that several dozen at most were injured by live fire while the rest were merely shaken up by tear gas and other riot dispersal means.

Manelis said on Friday evening that the army had faced “a violent, terrorist demonstration at six points” along the fence. He said the IDF used “pinpoint fire” wherever there were attempts to breach or damage the security fence. “All the fatalities were aged 18-30, several of the fatalities were known to us, and at least two of them were members of Hamas commando forces,” he said.

The Palestinians’ march to Gaza’s border with Israel on Friday was the largest such demonstration in recent memory, calling for Palestinians to be allowed to return to land that their ancestors fled from in the 1948 War of Independence. It was dubbed the “March of Return.”

A picture taken on March 30, 2018 shows Palestinians taking part in a demonstration commemorating Land Day near the border with Israel east of Gaza City. (AFP/Mahmud Hams)

The death toll from Friday’s protest was provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which also added that some 1,400 Palestinians were injured during the protests, over half by live rounds. Israeli authorities have no way to independently confirm the casualty reports.

Manelis warned Saturday that if violence drags on along the Gaza border, Israel will expand its reaction to strike the terrorists behind it. The military has thus far restricted its response to those trying to breach its border, but if attacks continue it will go after terrorists “in other places, too,” he said.

Manelis reiterated that Israel “will not allow a massive breach of the fence into Israeli territory.”

He said that Hamas and other Gaza terror groups were using protests as a cover for staging attacks. If violence continues, “we will not be able to continue limiting our activity to the fence area and will act against these terror organizations in other places too,” he said.

Hamas is an Islamist terror group that seeks to destroy Israel. It seized control of Gaza from Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah in a violent coup in 2007.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (C) shouts slogans and flashes the victory gesture as he takes part in a tent city protest near the Gaza border on March 30, 2018 to commemorate Land Day. (AFP PHOTO / Mohammed ABED)

The army has remained on high alert even as the violence appeared to abate Friday evening, amid fears of persisting attacks, including infiltration attempts and rocket fire.

Protest organizers have said mass marches would continue until May 15, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. Palestinians mark that date as their “nakba,” or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands left or were forced to leave during the 1948 War of Independence. The vast majority of Gaza’s two million people are their descendants.

At previous peace talks, the Palestinians have always demanded, along with sovereignty in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Old City, a “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian refugees who left or were forced out of Israel when it was established. The Palestinians demand this right not only for those of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who are still alive — a figure estimated in the low tens of thousands — but also for their descendants, who number in the millions.

No Israeli government would ever be likely to accept this demand, since it would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Israel’s position is that Palestinian refugees and their descendants would become citizens of a Palestinian state at the culmination of the peace process, just as Jews who fled or were forced out of Middle Eastern countries by hostile governments became citizens of Israel.

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