I’d like to thank you all for sticking with me these past couple of weeks. The site statistics have barely changed at all even through all the blog-hopping, changing to the old html style, and going through all the changes right here on WordPress.
I have some pretty awesome readers.
Still have a lot of posts over on my Blogspot blog that probably won’t get transferred over here, as you can get them on Soccer Dad’s and Snoopy’s blogs. Jack’s too.
I’ll be putting a few of the Blogspot posts over to here, but you’ll need to go to the above blogs to read anything that was crossposted in the last couple of weeks. In fact, I highly recommend reading my cobloggers’ blogs, as they don’t post all of their posts here.
We should be back to business as usual regarding posting. User registration is closed until further notice. Comments are open for now, but you must be registered and logged in to post a comment.
Give us a few more weeks to get back to normal. We want to make sure I don’t have to use my Blogspot blog again.
Okay, if you’re having trouble getting an RSS feed, close out your email/RSS client and restart it. I had to do that with Thunderbird, and you may have to do it with yours. We’re working on the rest of the RSS problems.
Give us a little bit of time to get things going. I’ll let you know what needs to be done once we’re ready.
Two pieces I read last night struck me as particularly worthy of passing along to my readers.
First, Phyllis Chesler:
We must understand that anti-Semitism is an illness – a madness – something evil that is not caused by Jews. We may not be able to appease those who are afflicted with it any more than we can please Hamas or al Qaeda, but we must defend ourselves against it – in every way possible.
But we also must shed our illusions – permanently. We cannot expect that conditions will always improve, or that one country or another will always be a safe haven for Jews.
Next, Yaacov Lozowick:
They’re not good days, these ones. Sure, our descendants will dance on the graves of these hate mongers, if they can find them in the dust, unless they’re distracted by the antisemites of their own generation, but knowing your enemies will fail doesn’t make them more palatable.
One of the things I am often asked is how I can keep on writing this blog in the face of such overwhelming anti-Semitism that seems to just grow and grow and grow again. I started writing about Israel and Jewish issues in the spring of 2002. That’s seven years of reading the hate and the bile. Seven years of watching anti-Semitism go from the fringe to the mainstream. Seven years of blogging uphill, both ways. Phyllis and Yaacov and I all have the same thing, however: Faith. We have faith in the survival of the Jewish people. We have faith in God’s promise to us. In a very short time, Jews all over the world will be reading the same words: “In every generation, they rise against us. But the Holy One, Blessed be He, saves us from their hands.”
Am Yisrael chai.
Time to relax with some cat pictures.
First, Miss Gracie in the sun:
Gracie spends the morning following the sun from my office to my bedroom. She is even more beautiful when highlighted by Sol.
Next, Tig in a venture onto the deck.
He really likes it out there now and wants to go out every time I open the door. (I really do have to post those movies I took of him in the snow, too.) By the way, although he is a bit chubby, the bottom two inches is all fur. His fur is much longer than Tig 2’s.
And now, let us relax the rest of the day.
In an editorial, the New York Times questions whether Binyamin Netanyahu can be trusted to make peace. There is so much wrong with “Being a partner for peace“, I could spend all day critiquing it. But one point stood out:
If Mr. Netanyahu is serious about being a partner for peace, he will not get in the way of the militant group Hamas entering a Palestinian unity government with the rival Fatah faction — as long as that government is committed to preventing terrorism and accepts past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. He will recognize that the United States has its own interests in diplomacy with Syria, Iran and the Palestinians — and allow the Obama administration the freedom to pursue them. He also will not start a preventive war with Iran.
So that’s it, in order to prove that he’s committed to peace, according to the Times, Netanyahu must trust a terrorist organization committed in word and deed to Israel’s destruction to join a governemt with Fatah, which, at least, doesn’t openly call for Israel’s destruction. Why in there world is Hamas assumed to be a “partner for peace?” Does “qassam” mean “peace” in Arabic?
And the absurdity of the rest of the paragraph is unbelievable. Netanyahu would dictate to America? Who wrote this? Chas Freeman? And while the editors of the Times object to Israel starting a “preventive war” against Iran, they apparently don’t object to Iran launching a war of any sort against Israel.
Despite the Times portrayal of Netanyahu’s first term as Prime Minister he withdrew Israel from most of Hebron while Arafat collected foreign aid, arms, organized terror and incited his population against Israel. But somehow it’s Netanyahu who has to prove his commitment to peace?
My Right Word dismisses the editorial with:
If peace is truly the goal and not some unadulterated anti-Israel agenda, well, who cares about the sanctity of a process?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Sudan is alleging that another country struck a convoy. According to the Washington Post, “foreign” planes, suspected to be American or Israeli killed hundreds of people.
Mubarak Mabrook Saleem, Sudan’s transportation minister, told the Associated Press he believed American planes were behind the bombings, which took place about a week apart in early February, and said hundreds were killed. A Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed Saleem’s account but said there were discrepancies on casualties.
The U.S. military denied any recent airstrikes in or around Sudan.
A more recent report in the New York Times gets information from American officials claiming that it was an Israeli air strike and explains why Israel would have struck the convoy.
American officials said the airstrike took place as Israel sought to stop the flow of weapons to Gaza during the weeks it was fighting a war with Hamas there.
Two American officials who are privy to classified intelligence assessments said that Iran had been involved in the effort to smuggle weapons to Gaza. They also noted that there had been intelligence reports that an operative with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had gone to Sudan to coordinate the effort.
(Press TV hasn’t updated its account from Wednesday and still blames the U.S.)
The Lede (at the NYT) covers the genesis of the story.
There still seems to be a measure of uncertainty. The Washington Post reports that the attacks occurred in February, the New York Times refers to January. There is also uncertainty as to the death toll.
Israel Matzav (via memeorandum) has a report from Israel Radio that may clear up the contradictions about the timing of the attacks.
Israel Radio reported this morning that there was an attack on a weapons ship off the Sudanese coast in recent months and that there were three or four strikes during January and February. The strike that was reported yesterday and confirmed by the New York Times today took place in January during Operation Cast Lead.
According to Israelly Cool, Hamas denies that the convoy was carrying arms. (Elder of Ziyon finds an implicit acknowledgment of Iranina aid for Hamas.)
The Weekly Standard has more.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
In a way the rise of this subject was as inevitable as the next sunrise. After eight years of Qassam bombardment and the callous (and documented) use of Gazan population as one formidable human shield during the Cast Lead operation, Hamas propagandists have desperately looked for a way to raise some stink. With willing assistance of many Western media outfits and, of course, the Arab media hungrily lapping up any soundbite, the Hamas propaganda machine went into overdrive, producing numerous “documented reports” on IDF atrocities.
There is no special finesse to the process. To take one example:
The report said a working group had documented and verified reports of violations “too numerous to list.” For example, on January 15, in a town southwest of Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces soldiers ordered an 11-year-old boy to open Palestinians’ packages, presumably so that the soldiers would not be hurt if they turned out to contain explosives, the 43-page report said.
Yep. The violations are “too numerous to list” – so why bother, let’s give a (verbal) example that is just a mirror copy of a video clip of Hamas “freedom fighters” using a kid to move around under the eyes of IDF soldiers. The only difference is that there is no video recording in this case… Crude, but everything goes when you have an eager audience clamoring for more.
Of course, there is a legal side to the issue as well, and who better to judge IDF than a Jooish “UN rapporteur” Richard Falk (the 911 troofer, not to forget)? It is also inevitable that this expert on international law would find the following interpretation of this law:
Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Geneva Conventions required warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians. “If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law,” Falk said.
I don’t know where our professor finds the inspiration for his creative legal opinions (is it the same mind rays that cause him to look for explosives in WTC remains or the alcohol fumes that color his considerable schnozzle?). You see, Geneva conventions do not prohibit attacks when civilians are in vicinity of the military targets, they only demand that the warring forces do their best to minimize the civilian losses. In any case, the smell raising from the bovine excrement of the above quoted is awful. And it (the quote) doesn’t have a lot to do with international law, rather with Falk’s hate for Israel… but who cares?
On the other hand, there are some attempts to check and disprove some of the allegations. And Haaretz and The Guardian have indeed to answer some questions for their shoddy and tendentious “reporting”. I have no doubt that in many cases that are in the realm of hard facts, the allegations will be refuted, and they are being refuted. But many of the accusations that are based on the Hamas’ “eyewitness reports”, like the one quoted at the top of this post, will remain what they are: propaganda pieces built for the consumption by the willing, and there are no facts in the whole world to change that.
But not in all the cases, and here we come to the other side of the propaganda strife. I mean the IDF brass heads sweeping responses. Here comes our Defense Minister Ehud Barak:
I have no doubt that what needs to be probed will be probed, but I also have no doubt in my heart that the IDF is the most moral army in the world.
I cannot tell how much I resent the oxymoron “moral army” that is used by our politicos so frequently. Army is an organization that has as it chief purpose state-authorized killing of humans. As such, it is quite difficult to find a more immoral line of business.
Besides being put in almost impossible (as far the number of civilian victims is concerned) situation when fighting Hamas thugs in densely populated area, besides doing their best to minimize the number of victims, as any military expert will find, IDF is a human collective designed to kill people. For that purpose members of this collective are issued deadly weaponry. And, as in any given group of humans, there are all kinds in IDF. There are nervous novices whose fingers are light on the trigger. There are tired sleep-deprived gunners that in some cases misinterpret commands transmitted over noisy radio links (clear proof of this is that most IDF losses where from “friendly fire”). And of course, there is a small percentage of trigger-happy individuals, for whom a war is an opportunity to play out their darkest desires. It will be stupid to deny – every army in the history has their share of such characters, and the “most moral” IDF is not an exception, much as it pains me to say so.
And it is not that other armies don’t make mistakes (or intentional trigger squeezing, as it happens). Two examples from today’s on-line news:
NATO-led troops shot dead two Afghan farmers who were watering their land in east Afghanistan, a police chief told Reuters on Wednesday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said civilian casualties are the biggest cause of tension between him and his Western backers…
A missile strike believed to have been launched by a US drone aircraft killed at least four people in Pakistan’s tribal region of South Waziristan on Wednesday, intelligence officials and Taliban sources said.
But here the difference between IDF and any other army as far as the treatment by the media comes into play. Don’t expect NYT, Guardian and others to start trumpeting for a special UN rapporteur to get to Afghanistan or Pakistan in a hurry. Don’t expect any pre-recorded conclusions of “investigation committees”, pompous announcements by legal beagles and media storms.
Why, indeed? But it’s an issue for another time and another post.
P.S. Saying all that, I still cannot avoid mentioning a person that, as usual, takes the cake: the Guardian’s own Stalinist Seumas Milne, who, of all the dirty hacks, has the temerity to teach somebody about universal values, moral norms and human rights. Bleh…
Cross-posted on SimplyJews
Six years ago, on March 15th, we celebrated our first-ever Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA Day, in response to the offensive “Holocaust on Your Plate” ad campaign by PETA.
If you haven’t heard by now, PETA has started yet another offensive ad campaign. This one really reaches bottom—they are using Holocaust terminology, quotes, and pictures to liken the “slaughter” of animals to the slaughter of the Jews by the Nazis.
I’ve already received a letter from a child of Holocaust survivors who is, of course, extraordinarily offended. But here’s the thing: PETA is known for this kind of outrageous publicity stunt—and that’s what it is, an outrageous publicity stunt—and while I am also offended and outraged, there is absolutely nothing we can do that will make PETA change their ad campaign. I’m sure they knew exactly what they were doing, have a plan in mind, and, if they withdraw the campaign, will do it according to their deadlines and their decisions.
So let’s make up our own outrageous publicity stunt. Let’s designate Saturday, March 15th, as International Eat an Animal for PETA Day. Everybody set the date on your calendar, and either go out and enjoy a great steak, or cook one at home. Or cook up some chicken or fish or anything else that PETA wouldn’t want you to eat. And let’s let PETA know how their ad campaign has affected us.
Now, Germany’s highest court has agreed with us. It’s official: PETA runs offensive ad campaigns.
Germany’s highest court has ruled that a PETA ad campaign comparing animal slaughterhouses to the Holocaust is an offense against human dignity.
The 2003 campaign used eight, 60-square-foot (5.6-sq. meter) panels depicting images of factory farms next to Jewish concentration camp inmates and the slogan “Holocaust on your plate.”
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on Thursday ruled that the ad campaign was not protected under freedom of speech laws.
PETA issued a statement that sounds awfully familiar to me:
“‘Holocaust on Your Plate’ was the idea of a Jewish PETA member, was funded by a Jewish PETA member, and is supported by people who believe that the original Holocaust was an atrocity that never would have happened if members of society had realized that discrimination based on any difference between living beings is supremacism.
And here’s why it sounded so familiar: Because PETA is still lying about the ad campaign. Six years ago, they made it seem like Isaac Bashevis Singer, who had been dead for eight years, was behind the campaign.
The concept of our campaign originated with Nobel Prize-winning Yiddish author and vegetarian Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said, “In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for [them], it is an eternal Treblinka.” As you may know, Singer fled Europe as the Nazis were coming into power and lost most of his family in the Holocaust. He became a vegetarian as a result of what he lived through and what he saw. He spoke out in favor of vegetarianism until his death in 1991. His argument was that it doesn’t matter who the victims are-we must speak out against all atrocities and cruelties and help to stop them.
PETA also lied to get the rights or outright stole copyrighted Holocaust photos used in the campaign.
The Holocaust Council was doubly angered because it was the primary source of the Holocaust images used in the campaign. The PETA Web site offers a glimpse of the display; at the end, it said “Holocaust photos courtesy of USHMM.â€
But Museum officials say they never gave permission for its images to be used in such a display. PETA’s use of them “improperly and incorrectly implies that the Museum, a federal government establishment, endorses PETA’s project,†the Council’s lawyer wrote.
On Tuesday, the animal rights group responded, insisting that use of the photographs is “consistent with the Museum’s mission statement,†and claimed that an anonymous Jewish philanthropist funds the project.
The group also said it “requested, received and paid for the use of the photographsâ€â€” a claim Museum officials vehemently deny.
Arthur Berger, communications director for the Museum, said that a representative of the group sought the materials without indicating his PETA connection or how the material would be used.
“It was clearly a misrepresentation, at minimum, of what [the photographs] would be used for, he said. “There was no indication it would be used in a comparison with animals. Once we learned of this obscene connection, we sent a cease and desist letter.â€
Six years later, PETA is still lying. Well, at least they’re consistent.
Long live EATAPETA Day.
The title and subject of this post are due to Stretch, my shooting teacher.
A would-be suicide bomber has accidentally blown himself up, killing six other militants as he was bidding them farewell to leave for his intended target, the Interior Ministry said.
“The terrorist was on his way to his destination and saying goodbye to his associates and then his suicide vest exploded,” a statement from the ministry said.
If you’re puzzled as to the reference, well, go here. (And really, if you’ve never seen Achmed the Dead Terrorist before, well… now you have.)
It’s really hard not to laugh at this story. But Reuters does manage to be the buzzkill with the rest of the article. (Don’t click the link.)
The ADL has issued a statement on yesterday’s cartoon by Pat Oliphant. I think you should see the cartoon and judge for yourself.
Take a good, hard look at the cartoon. It’s a caricature of the Israeli flag. And yet, that doesn’t excuse the offense.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center didn’t like the cartoon, either.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the group founded by a famed Nazi hunter which has more than 400,000 members in the United States, says the cartoon denigrates and demonizes Israel and mimics the Nazi propaganda.
Here’s the thing: The line where criticism of Israel crosses into anti-Semitism is actually pretty clearly drawn in certain instances. Those instances include the use of Nazi imagery to depict the modern Jewish State, which came into being out of the ashes of the Holocaust, and which Holocaust survivors had a major hand in founding. In fact, next to portraying Jews in black hats, curls, and hooked noses, I’d say Nazi imagery is the major sign of anti-Semitic commentary on Israel.
By portraying victims as victimizers, Oliphant is employing the anti-Semitic tactics of a Latuff, who himself uses the same themes that the German propandists used, and who is a vicious anti-Semite only too happy to contribute to Iran’s Holocaust Denial contest.
Yahoo! News is still carrying the cartoon, as are the websites of the Los Angeles Times, the Washingto Post, and Slate. Oliphant is the most widely published cartoonist in the world.
And now he has devolved into yet another anti-Semitic Israel critic who will tell us, I’m sure, that he’s not anti-Semitic. That this was merely his thoughts on the Gaza war. The goose-stepping Nazi imagery tied to the Star of David? Well, that was artistic license. Don’t be so politically correct. Don’t be so sensitive.
Watch for it.
As for Pat Oliphant: He can kiss my shapely Jew ass.
Roger Cohen thinks that we can have peace in the Middle East, if the United States would just listen to a bunch of experts associated with the US Middle East Project. In the Fierce Urgency of Peace:
Pressure on President Obama to recast the failed American approach to Israel-Palestine is building from former senior officials whose counsel he respects.
Following up on a letter dated Nov. 6, 2008, that was handed to Obama late last year by Paul Volcker, now a senior economic adviser to the president, these foreign policy mandarins have concluded a “Bipartisan Statement on U.S. Middle East Peacemaking” that should become an essential template.
Deploring “seven years of absenteeism” under the Bush administration, they call for intense American mediation in pursuit of a two-state solution, “a more pragmatic approach toward Hamas,” and eventual U.S. leadership of a multinational force to police transitional security between Israel and Palestine.
Exactly how different this engagement would be from President Clinton’s is unclear. But despite focusing on Middle East peace, Clinton left office with Yasser Arafat leading a second “intifada” against Israel. In other words – even if one accepts the mistaken notion that the Bush administration was absent from the peace process – there’s no evidence that American engagement will bring peace.
Cohen cites Henry Siegman. Siegman’s an interesting choice of expert given that he once wrote an article claiming that Hafiz Assad wanted to make peace with Israel and that by using Hezbollah to attack Israel, Assad showed his commitment to peace.
Another of the experts that Cohen cites is James Wolfensohn. Again he’s an interesting choice, as Barry Rubin writes:
Didn’t James Wolfensohn learn from his dialogue with Hamas over those greenhouses he bought for them and they trashed to make into rockets?
Cohen can quote all the experts he likes and maybe President Obama will heed his advice. But experience shows that the approach Cohen advocates will not bring peace. Until Palestinian and Arab resistance to Israel changes, no amount of Israel concessions or American pressure will bring peace to the Middle East.
MJ Rosenberg demonstrates his discerning intellect (via memeorandum) by declaring Cohen his favorite NYT columnist:
I read today’s column in Brussels and thought, for a moment, that I was reading The Independent or The Guardian. Or Ha’aretz.
I would agree, but no one except for an anti-Israel ideologue would consider that praise.
He also noted Cohen’s brilliant analysis.
As Cohen puts it, it is time to “stop being hung up on prior Hamas recognition of Israel and watch what it does rather than what it says. If Hamas is part of, and remains part of, a Palestinian unity government that makes a peace deal with Israel, that’s workable.
What Hamas does is launch rockets against civilians. Apparently to Cohen and Rosenberg that’s a sign of their commitment to peace. If you want a proof of their intellectual irrelevance, you really don’t need to know anything else. (Unfortunately, their views may not be irrelevant politically.)
UPDATE: Israel Matzav deftly dismantles Cohen’s four point plan for Middle East peace. Daled Amos questions the assumptions and the expertise of the experts Cohen subscribes to.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Regarding Israel’s incoming Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the New York Times observes:
“I think that the Palestinians should understand that they have in our government a partner for peace, for security and for rapid development of the Palestinian economy,†said Mr. Netanyahu.
He added that peace is a â€common and enduring goal for all Israelis and Israeli governments, mine included. This means I will negotiate with the Palestinian Authority for peace.â€
His remarks were relayed on Israel Radio. It remained unclear what terms Mr. Netanyahu was offering for peace.
Similarly The Washington Post reports:
“I will negotiate with the Palestinian Authority for peace,” said Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party.
There was no mention of creating an independent state, a goal that has formed the basis of U.S. and Western-sponsored peace talks. President Obama reaffirmed U.S. support for the idea in comments in Washington on Tuesday, calling progress toward a Palestinian state “critical” to ending an “unsustainable” situation in which Palestinians live under Israeli-imposed restrictions and Israelis worry about their security.
But as Barry Rubin points out, Israel isn’t the main problem here.
Clearly, peace with Hamas is more important for Dahlan than peace with Israel. And make no mistake: these two alternatives are mutually exclusive.
Indeed, Dahlan is ready to do anything to cooperate with Hamas, as long as it accepts the PA and Fatah as leading partner. He explains the PA won’t ask Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Fatah isn’t bound either to any PA recognition of Israel and, “as a resistance organization,†can continue attacking Israel whenever it chooses.
Why, then, has the PA agreed to accept Israel’s existence? Dahlan says: only to get international aid money and support. If this is how Dahlan thinks, his comrades’ views are more extreme. The inescapable implication is that if the PA ever signs a peace treaty with Israel—though don’t hold your breath—and gets a Palestinian state whose capital is east Jerusalem this would not block Fatah or Hamas from continuing armed struggle.
This attitude fits perfectly with the fact that even today the PA does nothing to prepare its people for peace and compromise. The claim that a Palestinian state should and will some day encompass all of Israel is maintained by schools, sermons, leaders, and media. It is contained, too, in the demand for a “right of returnâ€â€”flooding Israel with several million Palestinians—as more important than getting a state where refugees can be resettled in a country of their own.
No wonder every poll shows overwhelming Palestinian support for armed attacks on Israeli civilians and little backing for a compromise peace that would end the conflict forever.
Of course the Palestinians embrace the peace process. For them it’s meant the receiving of plenty of foreign aid, the acquistion of territory and absolutely no responsibility for creating a civil society.
From 1996 to 1999, when Netanyahu was first prime minister he signed the Hebron Accords and withdrew Israeli troops from most of that city. If anyone is aware of any reciprocal action that Arafat took during that time that increased the chance of coexistence, I’d be interested in hearing it. Even now, ten years later, the myth that Netanyahu was the main obstacle to peace persists.
It makes no difference that Netanyahu’s successor, Ehud Barak went all out to make peace, only to be rebuffed at Camp David and finally faced the Arafat organized “Aqsa intifada” starting in late 2000. It makes no difference that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 led to the strengthening of Hamas and the deteriorating security situation for Israel’s southern residents. What we have seen over the past ten years is that no matter how committed an Israeli government or an American government is towards making peace in the Middle East, the Palestinian veto remains the main stumbling block to peace.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
In the next installation of “How can the world screw Israel even more?” we have Human Rights Watch issuing a report accusing the IDF of war crimes over white phosphorus use in Gaza.
CNN, for some reason, loses that famed objectivity by not presenting the Israeli side until the tenth paragraph, and not at all in the bullet points of the article.
But once again, the world is holding Israel to a higher standard of behavior than her enemies, and suggesting, once more, that the IDF fight with its hands tied behind its back:
The report said white phosphorus munitions weren’t illegal when deployed properly in open areas, but it determined that the IDF repeatedly used them “unlawfully over populated neighborhoods, killing and wounding civilians and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital. ”
“First, the repeated use of air-burst white phosphorus in populated areas until the last days of the operation reveals a pattern or policy of conduct rather than incidental or accidental usage. Second, the IDF was well aware of the effects of white phosphorus and the dangers it poses to civilians. Third, the IDF failed to use safer available alternatives for smokescreens,” the report said.
The “safer alternatives” don’t give out as thick a smokescreen, and would risk IDF soldiers’ lives. But that’s fine with HRW, I’m sure.
The AP at least presents the Israeli side in the lead.
Israel fired white phosphorous shells indiscriminately over densely populated areas of Gaza in what amounts to a war crime, Human Rights Watch said in a report Wednesday.
The New York-based group called on the United Nations to launch an investigation into alleged violations of the rules of war, both by Israel and Hamas, during the three-week Gaza war.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that the shells were used in line with international law.
“The claim that smoke shells were used indiscriminately, or to threaten the civilian population, is baseless,” the military said in a statement.
International law permits the use of phosphorous weapons as flares or to create smoke screens masking the movement of troops.
But that’s about the end of the AP’s balance.
Reuters has an interesting tidbit that it chose to place at the very end of their article on the topic:
The group gave no precise casualty figures, citing the difficulty of determining in every case which burn injuries were caused by white phosphorous.
In other words, once again, HRW is relying on hearsay, supposition, and lack of evidence to accuse Israel of war crimes. And we all know how reliable Palestinian witnesses are. Just ask Mohammed al-Dura’s father who, with France2, perpetrated the biggest lie of modern times against Jews.
