Thursday, July 21, 2016



B'Tselem just released its own slick website to show detailed statistics behind every single death during Operation Protective Edge two years ago.

This mirrors Amnesty International's similar website which is filled with absolute lies, as I've documented exhaustively.

To its credit, and in contrast with Amnesty, B'Tselem actually made attempts to be accurate. There was serious research behind this initiative.

The research was still biased. For example, many or all of those  who were killed in a beach cafe bombing were members of the Abu Rish Brigades of Fatah, but B'Tselem identifies them all as "did not participate in hostilities," which implies that they were civilian without B'Tselem saying so.

The bottom line is that B'Tselem identifies about one third of those killed as having participated in hostilities, with another 46 of those killed not having been determined if they were or not.

The Meir Amit Intelligence Center had identified (at last count) about 48% of those that they counted as being militants, but they had a lot more that had not been determined as of their last report.

The statistic I would like to see is the percentage of those killed who were either terrorists or who were killed during the targeting of legitimate military targets. That number would show how many were killed for no apparent reason which is really what the "human rights" NGOs are trying to imply was the case with the majority. But as we have seen, many of those killed were being used as human shields by Hamas or other groups.

B'Tselem's data should be enough to get a good idea of that number; unfortunately it isn't visible in database format so such a task would be arduous. (Anyone who wants to volunteer to work on that, please contact me!)

I looked at the death of a two-year old child, the first infant to be killed during the war:
Muhammad Khalaf 'Awad a-Nawasrah. 2 years old, resident of al-Maghazi R.C., Deir al-Balah district. Killed on 09 Jul 2014, in al-Maghazi R.C., Deir al-Balah district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed at home with his family.

And who was his uncle?

Salah 'Awad Hussein a-Nawasrah. 22 years old, resident of al-Maghazi R.C., Deir al-Balah district. Killed on 09 Jul 2014, in al-Maghazi R.C., Deir al-Balah district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Participated in hostilities, member of the military wing of Hamas. Additional information: Killed at home with his wife and his two nephews.
So a woman and two children were killed because they were effectively used as human shields by a Hamas terrorist. Their deaths are regrettable - but fully justified under the Geneva Conventions assuming that he was an important enough target. That is a judgment call based on what a reasonable military commander would choose based on the best information he or she has at the time.

Even if B'Tselem's statistics were 100% correct, and I don't think they are, I believe that a little digging would show that the vast majority of civilians killed in Gaza died because they were in proximity to terrorist targets - the victim of Hamas' policy of using the civilians of Gaza as human shields.

That is not a statistic that B'Tselem would want to publicize because their goal is to demonize Israel, not to show that it wages war against terrorists in a way that is compliant with international law.



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  • Thursday, July 21, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon


16-year old Ranan Steiger goes to the Fuchs Mizrahi School in Cleveland. He likes the Cleveland Cavaliers and Pokemon Go.

And he likes to make idiots out of the antisemitic protesters at the Republican National Convention

As the Buffalo News reports,
At 5 o’clock, five members of the Westboro Baptist Church – a small and well-known hate group – took the stage. During their half-hour time slot, Ranan said, one of the Westboro speakers saw his kippah and said, “You’re going to hell. You’re a Jew. You’re going to hell!”

Ranan then took the hand of a Muslim woman and they together raised their arms into the air.

“We said, ‘There’s bad people everywhere. There’s bad Jews. There’s bad blacks. There’s bad Muslims. There’s bad Asians. There’s bad everybody,’ ” Ranan said. “There’s bad people in every single religion, every single ethnicity. There are some people that are bad. But you have to look at the positive. That’s all I want. I want peace.”

A half-hour later, Westboro’s time was up. But behind the stage, there was another small group of men carrying signs with similarly hateful messages. The leader of the group, a man of about 40 with a salt-and-pepper buzz and beard, was speaking into a headset microphone attached to a speaker wrapped in camouflage.

As Ranan heard the words, he walked up to the man and started staring him down. He held up the sign, and as the man kept talking – including comments on Judaism – Ranan started yelling back: “I don’t care. Go away! Lose your voice! Lose your voice!”

And later: “Go back to your mother’s basement!”

Ranan was loud, but his voice isn’t deep or gravely. He sounds and looks slightly younger than his 16 years. A pair of young women approached Ranan, almost protectively. One of them asked, “Can you come here for a second?”

He shook his head. “I have to do this.”

Minutes later, a man and woman passed by behind the protesters Ranan was facing. The couple held signs that read “No bigotry. No racism. No sexism. No Trump” and “Trump is a Egomaniacal Opportunist Who Does Not Deserve to Be President.”

Ranan’s eyes widened and he beckoned the couple. “Over here!” he said. “Come teach them a lesson.”

It wasn’t working, so he repeated himself: “Teach them a lesson. Teach them a lesson!”

The man finally walked over and told Ranan, “Ignore them!”

Ranan wasn’t having it. “They’re idiots, though!” he said.

The man told him again: Walk away.

Ranan stayed. “Somebody has to do it!” he said.

And so he did. And will again. Afterward Ranan told me, “Tomorrow, I’ll 100 percent be back.”



This kid reminds me of the very first Hasby Award runner-up, 16 year old Elad Daniel Peleg, who confronted an anti-Israel crowd in Los Angeles with an IDF T-shirt and Israeli flag.

(h/t Jewish Insider)



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Wednesday, July 20, 2016

  • Wednesday, July 20, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
The British Campaign Against Antisemitism highlights a very interesting section of an analysis by the BBC on the terror attacks in Europe:

Through the last 18 months of jihadist terror in France, a simple pattern is emerging: it keeps getting worse.

If the January 2015 attacks were aimed at specific groups - Jews and blasphemers - the November follow-up was more indiscriminate.

At the Bataclan and at the cafes the Islamists killed young adults, out being European hedonists.

This time, it's gone a step further.

In Nice, it is the people at large - families and groups of friends - doing nothing more provocative than attending a national celebration. Ten children were among the dead.
In the mind of the BBC's Hugh Schofield, terror attacks aren't so bad when they target people who aren't Hugh Schofield. In his mind, jihadists have some sort of logical reason to attack Jews, cartoonists and kids dancing. Targeting them is not nearly as bad as targeting random people that he might feel more empathy for.

But even then, Schofield manages to distance himself and his readers from the recent attacks by saying that the terrorists in France had "a hatred for France, for its symbols, and for all it stands for." Not the West, not non-Muslims - just the French.

It is as if Schofield completely forgot what happened on July 7. 2005, in London.

This is not analysis: this is a BBC employee who is completely clueless about what the jihadists are about, and who does not feel that Jews being murdered while shopping is as bad as French people being murdered while celebrating a holiday.

(h/t Ronald)



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From Ian:

Foreign min. chief challenges Abbas: Tear down terror monument
The Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, has released a video slamming the Palestinian Authority for building a monument to honor the terrorist who planted a bomb which killed 15 Israeli civilians in the center of Jerusalem.
The monument to Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukkar, who masterminded the 1976 attack, was unveiled at an official PA ceremony earlier this month.
In the video, Gold - who was shopping nearby when the bomb went off, described what he saw that day.
"It was a Friday and I was doing my shopping innocently, until all of a sudden I heard this incredibly loud explosion. I turned around and I saw bodies strewn everywhere."
In the attack, a refrigerator filled with explosives was detonated in the heart of Jerusalem. 15 people were killed and over 60 people were wounded. Abu Sukkar was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years, but was released from prison after 28 years as part of a "goodwill gesture" from Israel to the PA in 2003.
He was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and an adviser to the PA Chairman Yasser Arafat on prisoners' affairs. He died of a heart attack in 2013.
The decision by the PA to honor the terrorist proves Abbas is not serious about wanting peace, Gold contended.
"That's the education the Palestinian Authority wants to give to its children," he said.
"The way it is now, we're not gong to be able to get very far in any kind of negotiation, because negotiation requires a culture of peace and not a culture of death.
"So I'm hoping that Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority - who heads the Fatah movement - will tear down that monument."
Palestinian monument honoring murderer of 15 Israelis must be torn down


Top Trump advisor to ‘Post’: Settlement annexation legitimate if PA continues to avoid real peace
Israeli annexation of settlements in the West Bank could be viewed by a Trump administration as a legitimate way for Israel to move forward if the Palestinians continue to avoid a real and genuine peace deal, David Friedman, a senior advisor to Donald Trump, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
Speaking as the Republican Party convention entered its second day in Cleveland, Friedman, who advises Trump on matters related to Israel, said that in his view, settlements in the West Bank were not illegal and were not the real impediment to peace with the Palestinians.
“The impediment to peace is very clear in both of our minds and that is the failure of the Palestinians to renounce hatred and renounce violence,” Friedman said. “Everything else is barely important.”
Friedman, a Manhattan-based attorney and president of the American Friends of Bet El Institutions who serves as an Israel advisor to Trump alongside Jason Greenblatt, told the Post that in his view annexation of the settlements would be a legitimate way for Israel to move forward.
“If there is no agreement with the Palestinians, Israel has to move forward and maybe there is another path and a better path that is not a two-state solution and obviously under those circumstances that [annexation D.Z.] is certainly an option,” he said “I don’t know when or if that would be implemented but it’s certainly not a third rail in terms of options. It is certainly a legitimate possibility.”

  • Wednesday, July 20, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) released the findings of a poll last month in which they highlighted that Palestinian support for knife attacks had been decreasing:
Findings show a continued and significant drop, particularly in the West Bank, in support for stabbing attacks. The highest percentage of support for such attacks was registered six months ago before it considerably declined three months ago. ....Findings show that support for use of knives in the current confrontations with Israel continues to decline in this poll, dropping from 58% three months ago to 51%. Support for knifing attacks in the Gaza Strip stands at 75% and in the West Bank at 36%. Three months ago, support among West Bankers for knifing attacks stood at 44% and among Gazans at 82%.

Great news, right? Only half of Palestinians support stabbing random Jews! Perhaps we should reward them with a few billion dollars for such a wonderful moderation.

But buried in the results came the answer to another survey question:
Nonetheless, support for the Jerusalem bus bombing attack which took place in mid-April and cause more than 20 Israeli injuries stands at 65%; only 31% say they oppose this bombing attack. Support for the bus bombing attack is higher in the Gaza Strip (75%) compared to the West Bank (59%), among residents of refugee camps and residents of cities (72% and 67% respectively) compared to residents of villages and towns (54%), among those whose age is between 18 and 22 years (76%) compared to those whose age is 50 years and above (55%), among voters of Hamas and third parties (82% and 62% respectively) compared to Fatah voters (53%), among those who are opposed to the peace process (80%) compared to supporters of the peace process (57%), among refugees (70%) compared to non-refugees (62%), among holders of BA degree (70%) compared to illiterates (49%), among merchants and students (73% and 72% respectively) compared to the retired, laborers, and farmers (34%, 57%, and 60% respectively), among the unmarried (70%) compared to the married (65%).
Here we see the fruits of education in Palestinian schools. Palestinians who are educated are more radical than the illiterate!

Also, younger people are more likely to support human bombs than those old enough to have grown up under Israeli-approved school curricula.

This direct correlation between education and support for terror is damning to the Palestinian educational system. It is significant evidence that Palestinian schools teach hate and support for terrorism.



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Meretz_LogoTel Aviv, July 20 - Leaders of the left-wing party Meretz launched a new membership drive today to bolster the movement's stagnant rolls, promising to exempt from the payment of dues any new members who were alive when the party last sat in a government.

Party chairwoman Zehava Gal-On made the announcement to inaugurate the drive, which will run through the rest of the month. Meretz hopes to attract at least a thousand new members during that time, and has focused especially on senior citizens. That demographic, says Gal-On, represents what she called the country's last best hope of thwarting right-wing dominance of the affairs of state that has characterized most of the last twenty years in Israeli politics.

"I see this drive as a metaphor for our situation and our aspirations," Gal-On told a group of activists who had assembled at the party's headquarters to kick off the campaign. "Withdrawal behind the Green Line is a fading dream under continued premierships of Bibi and the Likud. In just a few years a realistic peace agreement will be forever out of reach, a dead idea. Appropriately, then, we are focusing our efforts on Israelis in the seventh, eighth, and ninth decades of their lives who know the feeling of being likely to drop dead anytime now."

Meretz last held seats in a government under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and since then has seen a decline in parliamentary representation. The party currently holds five seats in the Knesset, a far cry from its twelve in the waning decade of the previous millennium. Party leaders hope to tap into some of the memories the elderly may have of that distant time before the land-for-peace formula blew up in the form of suicide bombings, Hamas rockets, stabbings, and vehicular terrorism.

"We're offering incentives to people who were around back then and might still remember what it's like to be optimistic that we'd hit upon a successful formula," said MK Ilan Gilon. "It also helps that people who are old enough to have been alive the last time our party had power are also quite likely to be suffering from some sort of dementia, and won't necessarily realize we're not in the same situation now as we were then."

"Some parties look to the youth as their future, but we don't have that luxury," continued Gilon. "Our core demographic doesn't reproduce at a rate that could guarantee holding on to the seats we have in Knesset, let alone increasing our share. Add to that the way so many of our voters vow to leave every time Bibi is reelected - we're bleeding voters. Our only hope, really, is to rope in as many voters now before it's too late."

Not everyone in Meretz is happy with the initiative. "Meretz may once have been suited to sit in a government, but that's no longer the case," argued former MK Haim Oron. "These decades in Opposition have stripped the party of any sense of what it takes to formulate actual policy and implement it, actions that necessitate compromise with real-world phenomena and people. Meretz has become so devoted to perfect ideology that it wouldn't be able to come to terms with the nitty-gritty, less-than-perfect world that doesn't behave as ideologues insist it should."

Oron conceded the point is academic as long as Palestinian leaders and policymakers keep undermining every argument Meretz can muster about the possibility of peace.



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From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Who speaks for America’s Jews?
Last Friday, Peter Beinart and a few dozen Jewish anti-Zionists had a marvelous time in Hebron.
They wore funny blue T-shirts and sang about “tikkun olam” (repairing the world) in two languages.
They pretended they were civil rights activists.
They videotaped themselves being brave. They got shown to the door by security forces after wrecking a Palestinian farmer’s grazing land while supposedly defending him.
Five dual Israeli-American citizens got arrested.
And the rest ate a late lunch.
All in all, it was a great experience.
The sight of Beinart and his comrades locking hands and singing Debbie Friedman songs in Hebron was so absurd it was funny. But there was a menacing aspect to their solipsistic showmanship.
Beinart told the JTA reporter who joined them for the protest party, “I feel like I’m seeing the emergence of a new leadership.... People will try to write these guys off as lefties that don’t have any connection to the Jewish community. But... these kids actually come from the bosom of the Jewish community.
A lot of them are affiliated.”
No doubt they are. But to what? According to JTA, “Many belong to left-wing Israel advocacy groups such as J Street and the New Israel Fund, and others to groups that more deeply divide the pro-Israel community, including Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and IfNotNow, which holds its own sit-ins at US Jewish groups.”

Daniel Pipes: I rooted for the Turkish coup
Every major government condemned the coup attempt in Turkey, as did all four of the parties with representatives in the Turkish parliament. So did even Fethullah Gulen, the religious figure accused of being behind the would-be takeover. All this condemnation leaves me feeling a little lonely, having tweeted on Friday, just after the revolt began: "#Erdogan stole the most recent election in #Turkey and rules despotically. He deserves to ousted by a military coup. I hope it succeeds."
Having this nearly minority-of-one stance suggests that an explanation longer than 140 characters is in order. Three reasons account for my supporting the ouster of the apparently democratically elected and democratically ruling president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by what are apparently the forces of reaction:
1. Erdogan stole the election. Erdogan is an Islamist who initially made his mark, both as mayor of Istanbul and as prime minister of Turkey, by playing by the rules. As time wore on, however, he grew disdainful of those rules, specifically the electoral ones. He monopolized state media, tacitly encouraged physical attacks on opposition members and stole votes. In particular, the most recent national election, held on Nov. 1, 2015, showed many signs of manipulation.
2. Erdogan rules despotically. Erdogan has taken control of one institution after another, even in the two years since he became president, a constitutionally and historically nonpolitical position. The result? An ever-growing portion of Turks are working directly under his control or that of his minions: the prime minister, the cabinet, judges, police, educators, bankers, media owners and business leaders, among others. The military leadership acquiesces to Erdogan's will, but, as the weekend's coup attempt confirmed, the officer corps has remained the one institution still outside his direct control.
Erdogan uses his despotic powers to sinister ends, waging what amounts to a civil war against the Kurds of southeastern Turkey, helping the Islamic State group, aggressing against neighbors and promoting Sunni Islamism.
Why doesn't anyone take up my offer?
The Palestinian Authority (PA) which is an extension of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has now decided to convert their use of the words in Article Two of their 1968 amended 1964 Charter: "Palestine, with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit."
Palestine has now become an Islamic "Waqf." It is forbidden to relinquish a single grain of soil (of it)" (an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law).
I suggest that Secretary of State Kerry, the Prime Ministers of Europe, and J Street, et al, ask Abbas to comment on the Waqf assertions, and ask how could the PA negotiate with Israel, if Israel is not entitled to one grain of soil?
I have stated on many occasions that not one word of the 1968 amended 1964 Charter to destroy Israel has ever been specifically changed. Article 33 of the 1968 Charter clearly states that no changes can occur in the charter unless two-thirds of the PNC membership votes for a change.
I repeat my offer of a $250,000 Wells Fargo check to the first person who comes forth with a two-thirds PNC membership voted resolution which annuls the twelve Arafat alleged charter annulments, and the new language of the sixteen partially annulled Arafat charter articles.

The final section of the Hasby Awards.






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I spoke recently with Middle East scholar and expert on Islam, Harold Rhode. The entire interview is fascinating but this section particularly so.



Rhode describes how Jerusalem was not important in early Islam, and relates a story of Ka'ab al Ahbar, an early Jewish convert to Islam, and Caliph Umar who conquered Jerusalem.

Ka'ab al Ahbar accompanied Umar to the Temple Mount, which was a trash heap, and the question came up of where would be the best place to pray from. Al Ahbar suggested the north side of the Mount, because that way they could be praying in the directions of both the Jewish temple and Mecca.

Umar bristled at this suggestion, saying that Ahbar is still acting like a Jew and accusing him of trying to Judaize Islam. Instead, Umar said, the proper place for prayer would be the southern end, where when they bow down they would deliberately show their backsides to Judaism's holiest spot.


Rhode goes on to say that one of the most important early Islamic scholars (who is particularly important to Wahhabi Islam today) Ibn Taymiyyah, who lived in the 12th century, considered Jerusalem to be Jewish and not Muslim at all, and hated Jerusalem for what it represented, saying that Muslims who venerated Jerusalem were following a corrupt, Judaized version of Islam.

So why do the Saudis, who are Wahhabis, consider Jerusalem important today? Because, as a Saudi diplomat told a friend of Rhode, they are frightened of Palestinian terrorism themselves.




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  • Wednesday, July 20, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon

Haaretz reported last week:
Israel is working secretly to obtain the return of Jewish property in Arab countries, Social Equality Ministry Director-General Avi Cohen said Wednesday, adding that millions of shekels have been allocated to the process.

Speaking to a Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee hearing on restitution, Cohen said, “There is classified activity in conjunction with the Foreign Ministry in which we will invest millions to restore property belonging to Arab and Iranian Jewry, which will come to fruition within a month to a month-and-half. I cannot elaborate further.”

Though numbers aren't exact, it is believed that nearly a million Jews resided in Arab countries and in Iran on the eve of the War of Independence in 1948. After Israel was established, around 600,000 of them immigrated to Israel over the next three decades in waves that continued in 1956 and 1967 and after the Iranian revolution in 1979. A State Comptroller report published 2014 blasted the state for neglecting the issue, and put the combined value of the lost assets at “a few billion dollars.”
There has been great interest, and anger, in Arab media about this story.

Al-Ain says that Jewish refugees from Arab countries are a myth, just like the historic Land of Israel and the Jewish people altogether. One of his "proofs" is that UN resolution 181 does not mention Jewish refugees. They meant UN resolution 194, not 181, and it does not mention Arab refugees either - it just talks about "refugees."

Dr. Ahmed Hammad, Professor of Israel Studies at Ain Shams University, described the initiative as "a joke," saying that Israel knows very well that they have no rights to property in Egypt or the Arab states. He says that since the Jews who lived in Egypt were not Israeli citizens then Israel has no rights to claim any compensation on their behalf.

Hammad added that Egyptians can demand compensation from Israel because, he says, the Torah says that Jews "robbed the Egyptians of their gold" during the Exodus from Egypt. (It says no such thing.)




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Tuesday, July 19, 2016

From Ian:

Exposed: Years-long effort to blame Israel for U.S. police shootings of blacks
A group calling itself Atlanta is Ready (#ATLisREADY), aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, recently issued a set of demands to the Mayor of Atlanta, including:
We demand a termination to APD’s involvement in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program, that trains our officers in Apartheid Israel
The Mayor rejected the demand, finding that counter-terrorism training benefits the Atlanta Police Department’s ability to protect Americans:
You could chalk this incident up to just some isolated ploy by local activists, but that would be a mistake.
Rather, there has been a multi-year effort by left-wing and Islamist anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and openly anti-Semitic activists to hijack racial tensions in the United States and redirect that anger towards Israel.
That effort has been on overdrive since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and is accomplished through a combination of false and misleading statements regarding the militarization of domestic U.S. police departments and U.S. police training in Israel.
The intellectual rubric is “intersectionality,” by which anti-Israel activists try to forge links with minority (particularly black) activists by holding out Israel as the key link to oppression around the globe.
Sometimes the results are truly twisted, such as at Columbia University, How student activists turned anti-rape group into an anti-Israel group.
Atlanta mayor shuts down Israel boycotters
Responding at a press conference to a journalist who asked why he rejected the list of demands, Reed said bluntly:
"There was a demand that I stop allowing the Atlanta Police Department to train with the Israeli police department.
"I'm not going to do that; I happen to believe that the Israeli police department has some of the best counterterrorism techniques in the world, and it benefits our police department from that longstanding relationship."
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement met with Mayor Reed for two hours on Sunday.
The city has seen a number of protests over the killings of black Americans by police in the US, though the Atlanta rallies have been largely peaceful.


Barry Shaw: Fighting anti-Israel hate
There is room for stating Israel’s historic and legal rights to a Jewish homeland in a reasonable manner, but this does not seem to be making much progress in projecting Israel as a normal country with the same system and values of regular democratic countries.
Indeed, it is these democratic countries that outrageous demonstrations based on lies and intimidation are being allowed to be perpetrated with increasingly hostile actions against Israel.
The reason we are not making headway is because we have considered it impolite to be as rude and forceful in our arguments as our detractors are. We don’t want to appear as aggressive as the intimidators that trash us 24/7. And so we lose the fight for the broad middle ground by conceding without a fight or, even worse, by adopting parts of our enemy’s narrative just to appear reasonable.
It’s time for a change.
The streets, the campuses and the media have become the battlegrounds that are under the control of the radical anti-Israel voice posing as human rights activists on behalf of the Palestinian people. This high moral tone perfumes the stench of the lies and hypocrisy of their tainted message. There real intent, admitted in rare moments of honesty, is to see an end to Israel and they justify this aim by drowning out the Israeli voice under a choking tsunami of disproportionate accusations and imagery.
It’s time to take to the streets and the campuses by adopting the same tactics the anti-Israel provocateurs are using so successfully. It’s working for them. It will work for us.
Enough already! The soft reasoning approach is losing us the ability to state our case against their shrill hatred that closes down our message.



The New York Times has a "Room for Debate" section where different people give brief arguments on a topic. The topic earlier this week was "Can we just 'live with' terrorism?"

Academic fraud Noura Erakat, whom I have proven has no problem with lying and then justifying her lies for the sake of her "narrative," spends a few paragraphs pretending that there is no difference between Western armies and terrorists killing civilians, and makes sure (as a person of Palestinian ancestry) that Israel is exhibit A:

To eradicate terrorism, we need a much more honest discussion about what terrorism actually is. If it means the use of force against civilians to achieve a political goal, than that should include all such attacks on civilians, and not merely the ones launched by nonstate actors. In practice, we limit the term to include only nonstate actors.

The victims of state-led attacks are considered collateral damage, or unfortunate but necessary killings. This framework effectively diminishes the value of their lives making it much easier for the world to tolerate excruciatingly high death tolls and absolve the states that caused them.

This paradox is not lost on most of the thinking world, especially where those losses are highest, on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, in southern Yemen and in the Gaza Strip.
Erakat is saying that Western armies and Israel attack civilians to achieve political goals - meaning that they purposefully attack civilians. Then after stating her slander as fact, she implies that the idea that the civilian deaths are collateral damage is simply a cover-up for the real desire to murder civilians.

There is a glaring omission in her "highest losses" list is what proves that her polemic is meant to deceive, not enlighten.

Syria.

Everyone sees quite clearly that Syria has been using its state armed forces to directly attack civilians. No one is justifying it. And the loss of life from the Syrian civil war dwarfs that of Yemen or Gaza.

Erakat's definition of terrorism is absolutely correct. Her assertion that the word "terrorism" does not apply to state actors such as Syria is a straw man, because it is obvious that Syria is targeting civilians and is therefore guilty of state terrorism. Practically every Arab state has been equally guilty of directly attacking civilians in recent decades.

Yet Erakat wants to make the reader think that there is no difference between how Western armies act - with clear and specific rules of engagement that are compliant with the Geneva Conventions - and how her fellow Arabs act, state and non-state actors alike.

There is a huge difference. The difference is the target. Terrorists target civilians, moral armies target military targets and sometimes civilians unfortunately die, often because the targets purposefully hide among the civilians themselves.

And while Erakat and Amnesty and HRW and other "human rights" frauds like to claim that Israel and the US and European armies target Arabs, the simplest counterproof to that is the fact that the casualties are not in the tens of millions. In fact, if Erakat knew the least amount about modern Western militaries, she would know that more money and time is spent on avoiding killing civilians than on targeting valid military targets.

That is certainly not the case with her own Palestinian brethren, nor with her fellow Arabs.

Erakat knows very well that international law depends on intent, specifically how a reasonable military expert would react given available information, before labeling an action to be a war crime. She wants to hide that basic fact.

That is why Noura Erakat is an academic fraud, preferring advocacy to the truth.


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