I recently wrote a post about an IAF targetting of a Hamas cell responsible for shooting rockets into Israel which lightly injured the French consul to Gaza. I commented on the ridiculous hypocrisy, and the ridiculous nature of the French government. The post can be viewed here.
According to Israel’s clarification regarding Monday’s airstrike, the windows of the home of Majdi Shakoura, a Gaza resident who holds a French passport, were shattered by the blast, and he and another family member were lightly hurt by flying shards.
“We are obviously sorry for the light injuries incurred by the family, but the target of the attack, quite far away from their home, was a Hamas cell responsible for shooting rockets on Israeli civilians who suffer much more serious injuries – and even death – when Hamas rockets are fired,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
One Israeli official wondered aloud about the “disproportional nature” of the French response.
“Thousands of Israelis suffer injuries that are similar or much worse during rocket attacks from Gaza, and they don’t draw the same sympathetic remarks from the French that were elicited by this single family, who suffered very light injuries,” the official said.
In October, 52 rockets and six mortar shells were fired into Israel. The IDF said it would not tolerate continued rocket fire against Israeli cities and that Hamas would be held responsible for such attacks.
It is true. When has France - or any other country in the world - condemned each rocket launched into Israel? When have they condemned the murder of Israelis, whether it was by rocket or by bomb? Oh, but a French consul in Gaza is lightly injured in response to a Hamas cell firing rockets at Israel immediately gets condemnation.
Old sentiments from the Dreyfuss Affair still haven't faded out? That's unfortunate. Although without the Dreyfuss Affair, modern-day Zionism would not exist.
This just in... From the most radical Muslim country, France, where citizens completely swarm their mosque, the Eifel Tower, to answer the call to prayer, comes this interesting news story.
The French consul in Gaza has been injured after an Israel Air Foce strike on Gazan terrorists.
This is just a few days after Sarkozy called Netanyahu a "liar," expressing his frustration that his fantasy peace process hasn't worked yet, and as such can't take part and receive glory (Egypt-Israel peace and Jordan-Israel peace was established in secret, without foreign intervention, the international community only harms the Israel-Palestinian peace process), and baselessly accusing the "rightist, hawkish" Netanyahu, who fulfilled the international community's demand with a 10 month unprecedented settlement freeze, and has built less settlements (which are about 1-2% of the West Bank) than any previou sgovernment. Check out this great review about scapegoating Netanyahu here and about the French government's policies here.
What is interesting is that Sarkozy tried to do "damage control" by sending a letter to Netanyahu stating his support for Israel and declaring himself a friend of Israel. He also said he would take actions against Iran. One wonders how he can be a friend of Netanyahu and call him a "liar" at the same time - that's stabbing him in the back while shaking his hand. It is also interesting what type of actions against Iran Sarkozy is talking about, as France has recently announced that they do not support a military strike on Iran. This leads us to the conclusion that it is not Bibi Netanyahu that is the liar, but rather Sarkozy himself.
This is just a few weeks after Sarkozy ordered that school textbooks avoid the use of the word “Shoah” to describe the Holocaust, preferring the term “anéantissement”, a word that merely means annihilation.
And just a few days after France welcomed Palestinian culture of terrorism and bombings into UNESCO, which has already been put to use through the restriction of freedom of speech for Jews only, jumping at the chance to bash a Ha'aretz cartoon about UNESCO, when in reality, the cartoon was bashing Netanyahu and not UNESCO. Check out my post about this here.
France's consul to the Gaza Strip, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were injured during an Israeli air strike on Sunday night, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said on Tuesday.
Valero told reporters the three were were hit by shrapnel at their Gaza residence , which is located 200 meters from the site of the IAF missile attack. "France condemns the consequences of the raid," he said. "While we are all for Israeli security, France recalls the utmost necessity to avoid civilian harm," Valero said, without specifying the nature of their injuries.
The IDF was looking into reports.
The air strikes killed one Palestinian and wounded four others after terrorists from the coastal territory fired a rocket into southern Israel.
This is most interesting! It is interesting that France has a consul to the Gaza Strip, who is ruled by the Hamas government, which is declared a terrorist organization by much of the international community (and the European Union), who oppresses Gazans, whose charter calls for the genocide of Israel (aka no "two state solution," which has always been supported by Israeli governments), and who routinely launches rockets at Israel or takes no care to stop other organizations from launching rockets at Israel.
Why would a French consul actually place his entire family in the Gaza Strip? Besides for the fact that he's stealing homes from innocent, poor Gazans, he is knowingly placing his life in danger.
He was 200 meters from a terrorist activity hub. Did he really think that Israel would accept the rockets with open arms and not take measures against those terrorists? Israel has done all they could to avoid civilian harm, and the past few weeks of fighting has seen no civilian deaths, which is incredibly tough in the Gaza Strip.
Blaming Israel for an injury in Gaza is equivalent to blaming any country for causing casualties (or as in this case, injuries) during wartime - and especially in response to attacks on that country.
Perhaps the international community needs to do some thinking and imagine that Hamas was situated right next to them. Place themselves in Israel's shoes. Who would they blame? Would they blame Israel for defending themselves and attacking terrorists who were launching rockets? Or would they blame Hamas for launching these rockets (or taking no measures from preventing others from launching rockets, such as Islamic Jihad), in conjunction with a partial blame on themselves for setting up a consul next to a terrorist activity hub in an area ruled by a terrorist entity who calls for the genocide of its neighbor?
Personally, I wouldn't blame Israel. But hey, that's just me.
Chris Gunness is a high ranking member of the notorious UNRWA - the only special refugee committee to deal with Palestinian refugees instead of handing them over to UNHCR like every refugee, and the committee which seeks to perpetuate the problem of Palestiniain refugees instead of solving it/resettling them/assimillating them into Arab countries.
A day ago, the Elder of Ziyon stumbled upon pictures from the Palestinian media website "Safa." It showed Hamas constructing a 10,000 square foot stage. The Elder of Ziyon mentioned that apparently Hamas can find building materials to honor terrorists and cold-blooded murderers who blew up pizza stores and cafes. But they can't find building materials for the homeless Palestinians who everyone shouts about, "Look at the cruelty of Israel! 5 gazillion Gazans homeless due to Operation Cast Lead!"
These pictures show Hamas building a massive stage in support of the terrorists that are to be coming home to Gaza tomorrow.
According to this story, the stage will be 1000 square meters (over 10,000 square feet) and is being built with some 1200 iron poles. 10 people have been working 18 hour days since Thursday to build this, which will include electric generators in case the power goes out.
Imagine how many houses Hamas could build if it wanted to. You know, for all those people that we hear are still homeless since the Gaza war.
A while back, Israel agreed to allow Gazans to export palm trees for the festival of Sukkott (and the Palmer Report states that the Gaza blockade is legal). This would allow millions of dollars to flow into the Gaza Strip. Hamas banned allowing to export them.
Will UNRWA mention this – that Hamas has enough building materials to build plenty of homes, but refuses to use them? Will you urge Hamas to use it for the greater good?
Or will you condemn Israel for not allowing enough building materials into Gaza?
Thank you,
His response is a very interesting one (thankfully, unlike many pro-Palestinians, it is not a rant of "ISRAEL SHALL BURN IN THE ETERNAL FIRES OF HELL WAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!" aka Ahmadinejad):
Thank you for your mail.
There’s no doubt that right now we all need to redouble our efforts to ease the suffering of the ordinary people of Gaza and to think again about the blockade policy. To take your ideas in order:
I would imagine that the stage is built with materials which came in to Gaza through the tunnels. Because of the blockade policy the tunnels trade from which Hamas takes a fifteen per cent tax is booming. The Israeli blockade policy has empowered Hamas. Another reason you might think to lift the blockade.
I agree that we need to build houses for people who are homeless from the war and since their homes were bulldozed by the Israeli authorities ten years ago in the south. To do that, the UN needs to bring in thousands of trucks from Israel and to do that, the blockade needs to be lifted.
The Palmer report only declared the NAVAL blockade legitimate, not the entire blockade which would include the land blockade, which remains an illegal collective punishment.
We have a humanitarian mandate to work in Gaza to improve the lot of ordinary people and under that mandate we already urge all parties to work “for the greater good”.
While doing all the above, I will continue to advocate that all parties including Israel cease any actions that punish ordinary innocent people just as I condemn the rockets that come out of Gaza as a violation of international law.
In other words, we're not going to condemn Hamas for choosing to build a 10,000 square foot stage over homes of the civilians who are victims of, to put it in his words, "collective punishment" (although they did indeed elect the Hamas government).
Chris Gunness is politely asking for Israel to committ national suicide by removing their blockade, which the Palmer Report upholds, in order that there won't be "collective punishment" on a few innocent civilians who are anti-Hamas and pro-peace (and I would like to know how many are these numbers).
Does Chris know about the following?
Does he know that the IDF does more to safeguard civilians than any other military?
UN Watch Statement, delivered by Col. Richard Kemp, October 16, 2009, UN Human Rights Council Special Session on Goldstone Report
Thank you, Mr. President.
I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Governments Joint Intelligence Committee.
Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.
Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.
The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.
The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.
Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.
More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.
Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.
And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Does Mr. Gunness not realize that if Hamas didn't launch 5,000 rockets at Israel since Israel uprooted their own citizens from Gaza, there would be no need for Operation Cast Lead? No need for a blockade? I'm sure Israel would be more than happy to use the manpower and money spent on the blockade someplace else. But in reality, even if you think it is an evil, then it is a necessary evil, to ensure the protection of the citizens of the soverign state of Israel.
Mind you, they don't get phone calls from Hamas when Hamas intentionally launches a rocket at a civilian, schoolbus, or hospital. As opposed to Israel, which in response to 5000 rockets, launched Operation Cast Lead, and prior to doing so, distributed 2 million leaflets of warning, and before airstrikes, phone calls, text messages, sound bombs, etc.
Mr. Guness - and UNRWA as a whole - reverts to a 3000 year old tactic of, "When something goes wrong, blame the Jews." It's much easier than blaming the person responsible for it.
From what I can tell, Gunness is saying that while Hamas is the de facto government in Gaza, they are not responsible for the well-being of their citizens. Only UNRWA builds houses, leaving Hamas without that responsibility.
So, UNRWA's position is that Hamas is perfectly entitled to use building materials that could be used to build houses for people that have been homeless for ten years (way before the Gaza closure, by the way) for whatever it wants - terror rallies, weapons bunkers, tunnels to kidnap Israelis, whatever. Hamas has no fear that UNRWA will say anything remotely critical of it, and it equally has no fear that it will ever have to actually take responsibility for its people the way every other government in the world is expected to (besides the PA.)
One Palestinian man was injured on Sunday and two others were reported missing after Egyptian authorities pumped sewage inside a Rafah smuggling tunnel running underneath the border with the Gaza Strip, medics said.
Normally, if Israel did this, this would get international attention, and the U.N. would hold a few emergency meetings to condemn Israel and to state that this is the obstacle to peace, and not the Hamas charter which calls for Israel's destruction. But since it's Egypt doing it, Egypt gets immunity from the international community - all in good faith.
Palestinian medical sources told Ma’an that a tunnel worker was hurt and two others went missing inside the Rafah tunnel as a result of sewage pumped in from the Egyptian side.
Two Palestinians were killed and three others injured on Saturday after a gas canister exploded in a smuggling tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, medics said.
Egyptian security officials said in early September that they were cracking down on the network of tunnels used by smugglers from the coastal enclave.
Once again, if Israel would do such an outrageous act and crack down on tunnels which help smuggle weapons into Gaza, the international community would condemn Israel for this outrageous act. But as long as Egypt is doing it, it's all good.
Medics say over 160 Palestinians have died in the network of underground tunnels since Israel imposed a siege on the Gaza Strip in 2006, which was deemed legal by the U.N. Palmer Report as a result of Hamas' attempts at destroying Israel and constant barrage of missile attacks into Israel. Still, it is a shame that Israel would dare to cripple their beautiful culture - this is clear racism and Apartheid.
Under Israel's crippling blockade, the tunnels have provided a lifeline for residents of the coastal enclave. Of course, if Hamas and Gazans choose to reject terrorism and live in peace with Israel, then there'd be no need for a blockade. That's what is so awesome about blockades and security fences and checkpoints - when the need is gone, they can be removed!
Egypt's reopening of the Rafah border eased the impact of the siege for some residents, who were able to leave Gaza freely for the first time in years. Still, it is important to note, that all the years Egypt did not have the Rafah border open, the international community would not dare to condemn Egypt for this, but rather talk only about Israel.
U.N. To do list:
Condemn Israel: Check Condemn Israel: Check Condemn Israel: Check Condemn Israel: To do Condemn Israel: To do Condemn Israel: To do Condemn Israel: To do
Well, now we know, if Israel wants to get rid of terrorists, just dump sewage on them.
Oh wait no, I forgot, Israel would just get condemned for doing that. Instead, Israel should secretly tell Egpyt to do that - I'm sure that after their latest embassy attack they'd be more than willing to do that!
