Heard the one about how Hamas keeps its Gaza headquarters in the basement of Shifa Hospital? Not unless you read WaPo Jerusalem reporter William Booth’s latest to the last sentence of the eighth paragraph.
Talk about burying the lede. We know you didn’t learn that here, Billy, when you worked for the Austin daily. Or maybe we just hardly knew ye? Gotta keep those terrorists happy, eh?
Well, in fairness to Billy, he and the WaPo (which is notorious for rewriting its reporters) must cooperate in pushing Hamas propaganda the way the terrorists like it—including the latest wrenching and probably staged pix from Pallywood—or they’ll kidnap him for ransom like they did BBC reporter Alan Johnson back in 2007.
Just don’t let the WaPo convince you that Billy’s an objective reporter on the fighting in Gaza or the doings of Hamas. No one is.
“In recent days alone, we’ve heard the account of Gabriele Barbati, an Italian journalist who, once leaving Gaza, tweeted: “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.” We’ve also heard from Radjaa Abou Dagga, a former correspondent for France’s Liberation whose attempts at practicing honest journalism got him summoned by Hamas thugs, accused of collaborating with Israel, and told to stop working as a reporter and leave the strip at once.”
Indeed, as one of my favorite bloggers, Elder of Ziyon, puts it: “Every single report on TV from Gaza should have this disclaimer: ‘Our reporters have been threatened, implicitly and perhaps explicitly, by Hamas to only report one side of the story. Viewers must not trust anything they are saying.’”
Works for newspaper reporters and editors, too. And their Internet clones.
Via The Algemeiner.
Posted in Israel, The Culture, The War
Tagged Hamas headquarters in a Gaza hospital, WaPo correspondents, William Booth
Wonder why the IDF is concentrating on hitting Hamas command and control centers, most of which are located under schools, hospitals and mosques?
Qatar, the oil-rich sheikdom to whom the White House recently gave $11-$14 billion in American arms, has provided Hamas with sophisticated computer-controlled equipment. Sensors embedded in the attack tunnels to remotely monitor incursions and set off booby-traps. And remote-firing systems for their rockets. All done from those command and control centers tucked into a Palestinian kindergarten or UN medical clinic.
We sure know how to pick ’em when it comes to foreign aid, eh? That $47 million check Wormtongue recently gave Hamas was just icing on the Qatari cake. Sure, Qatar may been of some help in getting Hamas to the negotiating table, little as that was worth. But billions in arms as a reward? Arms that will only wind up in terrorist hands?
Do we have a genius in the White House? Or what? How about his co-genius in the House of Representatives?
Via Times of Israel, Allen B. West, and Arutz Sheva.
Comments Off on Our taxes at work: From Qatar to Hamas
Posted in Israel, Science/Engineering, The War, Troops
Tagged Allen West, Artuz Sheva, Our tax money work: Qatar to Hamas, remote control of rockets, Times of Israel, tunnel sensors
Hard enough to fight a war against Islamic terrorism in July-August and in the Gazan desert. But especially for the IDF’s beleagured boys. The enemy is not only trying to kill them but to capture them for bargaining chips.
“Every Hamas squad that ventured into Israeli territory through underground tunnels to carry out an attack was accompanied by a second squad with orders to capture, armed with anesthetics, syringes and handcuffs.”
May the Guardian of Israel bless them all, the living and the fallen.
Via Haaretz.
UPDATE: Two touching funerals stand for all of the fallen.
Comments Off on The IDF’s beleagured boys
Posted in Israel, The War, Troops
Tagged fighting Islamic terrorism, Haaretz, the boys of the IDF, The Guardian of Israel
The Obamalamadingdong administration and the Democrat news media in general solemnly intone the figure of the day-week-month, now over 1,000 and counting and usually adds that 75 percent or more are Palestinian civilians. How do they know they’re civilians? Hamas tells them so.
The IDF, by contrast, only says it knows that “hundreds” of them are Hamas soldiers.
“How does the [NY]Times keep such an accurate count of Palestinian deaths? A footnote discloses ‘Palestinian death tallies are provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.’
“OK. So who runs the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza? Hamas does. As for the U.N., it gets its data mainly from two Palestinian agitprop NGOs, one of which, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, offers the remarkably precise statistic that, as of July 27, exactly 82% of deaths in Gaza have been civilians. Curiously, during the 2008-09 Gaza war, the center also reported an 82% civilian casualty rate.”
Leave it to CAMERA to vet these suspect figures. CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (good luck with that), analyzed the ages and genders of fatalities reported by the Palestinians in Gaza during the Israeli military operation from July 7 through July 26.
Their findings: the largest portion were young males between 17 and 30 years old...”and a particularly noticeable spike occurs between males ages 21 to 27, a pattern consistent with the age distribution typically found among combatants and military conscripts… adult female fatalities were less than 10% of total fatalities for a group that comprises a quarter of the total population.”
Remember that the next time you see a talking head pull a face and intone the latest Hamas-provided figures.
UPDATE: Reminds me of the old Nightline’s intoning: “Day [a number], America Held Hostage” which brought down the Carter administration. This time it encourages Hamas’ use of human shields.
MORE: As always, The Truth Is Very Different, from what you hear & read.
Posted in Israel, Obsessions, The War, War Without End
Tagged Bad Blue, Brett Stephens, CAMERA, those civilian death totals
One hundred sixty of them died, according to a 2012 study by the Institute for Palestinian Studies, as forced labor—child labor—in building the attack tunnels Israel is now trying to find and destroy.
“The author, Nicolas Pelham, explains that Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, ‘much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies’. Human rights groups operating in Gaza raised concerns about child labor in the tunnels as far back as 2008. Hamas responded by saying it was ‘considering curbs.’”
Much as it is now “considering” a ceasefire which never seems to arrive or stay for long. While Hamas policy once again forces Palestinian children to face death.
When are we going to hear the White House and the UN call that “horrifying” and “criminal”? Ever?
Via Tablet Magazine.
German astronaut Alexander Gerst, with the European Space Agency, “who is in orbit around the earth, posted a tweet that read ‘My saddest photo yet. From the International Space Station we can actually see explosions and rockets flying over Gaza and Israel.'”
Gerst’s little bit of politics (he tweeted no similar photo of fighting in Syria, for instance) backfired when Utah Valley University professor Michael Harper tweeted a reply, with a link to a pre-war nighttime space photo whose details and contours match Gerst’s.
Harper said they showed “the lights mainly of Tel Aviv, and as far away as Beersheba in Israel’s south.”
“Speaking to The Times of Israel, Harper said that it wasn’t necessarily the politics of the thing that bothered him – but the inaccuracy and ignorance it highlighted.”
No kidding. Next time, NASA, how about sending up an astronaut who can interpret space photos correctly. That would seem to be a minimum requirement.
Via Times of Israel.
Posted in Israel, Science/Engineering, Space, The War
Tagged Alexander Gerst, Michael Harper, photo from space is a sham
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 