Monday, January 5, 2009
CAMERA debunks another claim made all too often in recent days (including by Nancy Murray in Graham's audio below) -- that Israel broke the ceasefire by launching an attack on Hamas in November. This is not true:
...how does CNN deal with articles like this one from the Associated Press published on June 25, just after the truce started, and headlined Palestinian rockets threaten truce? The AP article in its lead paragraphs reported that:
Palestinian militants fired three homemade rockets into southern Israel yesterday, threatening to unravel a cease-fire days after it began, and Israel responded by closing vital border crossings into Gaza.Despite what it called a "gross violation" of the truce, Israel refrained from military action and said it would send an envoy soon to Egypt to work on the next stage of a broader cease-fire agreement: a prisoner swap that would bring home an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for more than two years.
The answer is CNN deals with such articles and facts by ignoring them.
And Rick Sanchez, his co-anchor Jim Clancy, and the CNN fact-checkers ignored much more - there were many such violations, including dozens of rockets and mortars fired into Israel during the so-called ceasefire. And there was also sniper fire against Israeli farmers, anti-tank rockets and rifle shots fired at soldiers in Israel, and not one but two attempts to abduct Israeli soldiers and bring them into Gaza. Here are some of the details:...
The rest is here.
Maybe CAMERA, er, missed this one:
UN: Israel violated truce 7 times in one week
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3560972,00.html
06.27.08, 00:31 / Israel News
UN records 7 incidents of IDF soldiers attempting to drive Palestinian farmers away from border fence by shooting at them. Only one offence marked against Palestinians for firing on Sderot; report does not include most recent rocket fire
Roi Mandel
Since it went into effect last week, at least eight violations of the new ceasefire agreement with Hamas and the Palestinian factions have been recorded, a UN source told Ynet on Thursday. According to the source, seven violations were committed by the IDF, while the Palestinians are responsible for just one.
However the UN report does not include the Qassam fire launched towards the Negev during the day. "It is important that both sides honor the ceasefire, in order for it to be the first constructive step towards a wider and more extensive peace process between the sides," the source said.
Most of the offences committed by the IDF include shots fired by soldiers at Palestinian farmers attempting to reach their land near the border security fence. According to the UN, on June 20 an IDF patrol shot at Palestinian farmers near the fence east of Rafah. The soldiers fired for ten minutes in order to drive the farmers away, but no injuries were reported.
During the evening of the same day a similar incident was recorded, in which IDF forces shot at Palestinian farmers near the Maghazi refugee camp. Soldiers reportedly fired for five minutes, and no injuries were reported. An hour later soldiers fired towards fisherman near the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya in an attempt to drive them away.
Early on June 21 Navy forces opened fire in the same area, and later the same morning forces fired towards Palestinians near the Maghazi refugee camp. No injuries were reported in either case.
70-year old Jamil al-Gahoul was injured from IDF fire two days later, when an army patrol opened fire on a group of Palestinians reportedly gathering wood near Beit Lahiya at 7 am.
Only one Palestinian offence
The first violation committed by the Palestinians was recorded a day later, on June 24, when Islamic Jihad fired three rockets at Sderot from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.
On Wednesday morning IDF forces opened fire towards Palestinian farmers near the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis. An 82-year old man was seriously injured from the fire, which lasted a few minutes.
Regarding the accusations against Israel the IDF stated that no attacks had been carried out in the Gaza Strip during the past few days, but that some incidents had occurred in which IDF soldiers had carried out operations.
Border control, not offensive operations. Who cares what the UN calls it?
or this one:
Hamas fires rockets after Israel kills six in Gaza
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians-egypt
Hamas militants fired more than 35 rockets into Israel today, hours after the Israeli army killed six people in the Gaza Strip in the first major exchange of fire since a truce took effect in June.
The violence came after the Israeli army said its forces had uncovered a tunnel 250 metres inside Gaza that it said militants planned to use to abduct Israeli soldiers.
Israel launched airstrikes that killed five people and shot dead a gunman during an incursion into the enclave yesterday, saying it had done so after militants attacked soldiers who had gone to destroy the tunnel.
Israeli rescue services called the rocket barrage that followed, for which Hamas claimed responsibility, "massive".
An Israeli police spokesman told Reuters the rockets had landed in southern Israel, causing no damage or injuries. The army said its operation did not violate the truce, but was a legitimate move to remove an immediate threat to Israel from Gaza.
A senior military official said the tunnel had been dug from inside a Gaza home, illustrating that Hamas was using civilians for cover.
"We don't have any intention of breaking the truce, we are working to isolate this threat," the official said.
Hamas also insisted it had not broken the truce and was acting to prevent an Israeli incursion. Taher Nunu, a Hamas government spokesman, said the organisation considered the airstrike a violation of the truce.
"This is a serious breach of the truce understandings reached through Egyptian mediation," he said in an email to reporters, according to Reuters. "We consider this the most serious in a string of breaches."
Hamas' claim of responsibility for the attacks is the first such announcement by the Islamist group since an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Israel came into effect on June 19.
There has been sporadic mortar and rocket fire since, but nothing on the scale of today's salvo.
Palestinian officials said they had been informed by Israel that all commercial border crossings with the Gaza Strip would remain closed today in response to the rocket attacks.
"The violence came after the Israeli army said its forces had uncovered a tunnel 250 metres inside Gaza that it said militants planned to use to abduct Israeli soldiers.
Israel launched airstrikes that killed five people and shot dead a gunman during an incursion into the enclave yesterday, saying it had done so after militants attacked soldiers who had gone to destroy the tunnel."
Cease fires aren't for rearming and building more abduction tunnels. Logic dictates they were building the tunnel BEFORE the soldiers went to get it. Y'know?
Love the fauxtography with the ubiquitous pristine stuffed animal "pulled out of the rubble.:
Disinformation, secrecy, deception: How the Gaza offensive came about
31/12/2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.
The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.
Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.
[...]
Jeffrey Klein, read the Hamas Charter, easy to find.
http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html
The racist Hamas Charter of 1988, same year when Pan Am 103 was bombed inflight.
"For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave"
The racist Hamas Charter that quotes their Prophet Muhammed from their Koran.
"The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim)."
"The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility."
"Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims."
"Within the circle of the conflict with world Zionism, the Hamas regards itself the spearhead and the avant-garde."
Jeffrey, doesn't the above "world Zionism", sounds like "International Jewery" of the 1930's?
"using as their intermediaries their craftsmen who are part of the various Zionist Organizations which take on all sorts of names and shapes such as: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, gangs of spies and the like."
Jeffrey, in case you didn't know, the nazis didn't like Freemasons too.
"Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
Jeffrey Klein, what benefit do you derive from being a dhimmi?
What benefit? of course money, fame. Islamo-Nazis are powerful and they love Klein.
Hey, thanks for the "fame" (at least on Solomonia!) and for the flattering photos by Stavis). I'm still waiting for "the money."
This exchange was simply about the "truce" and who broke it. CAMERA and its ilk (here!) pretend to set the facts straight -- and then when the facts don't fit to say they don't matter. Or change the subject.
The Israel Foreign Ministry wrote (before the massive attack on Gaza):
"In the six months the arrangement was in force, 329 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel, most of them during the month and a half after November 4. That was significantly fewer than the rockets and mortar shells fired during the six months preceding the lull, during which 2,278 rockets and mortar shells were launched
(an average of 380 a month)...
"Between June 19 and November 4... The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations, in some instance in defiance of Hamas (especially by Fatah and Al-Qaeda supporters). Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire."
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/hamas_e017.pdf