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A Qassam rocket struck the Ashkelon beach early Tuesday, exploding in an open field near a kindergarten and lightly wounded a girl on her way to school.

The girl was treated on the spot by Magen David Adom paramedics; two other people were suffering from shock. A number of buildings in the area sustained light damage.

There were about 10 children in the kindergarten when the rocket struck about seven meters away, said a teacher. “I quickly got out of my car, ignoring the siren to help the children. I gathered them together and kept them busy.”

Residents of the area had felt that a strike could be imminent recently, she said. “The doors are always open and the children are not allowed to leave the area,” she said. “We are very strict about that.”

This brings the number of rockets striking Israel over the last two days to 13.

The time to go medieval on these guys is way passed. But better late than never.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

5:18PM: Those pro palestinian cartoonists might want to consider updating their “poor palestinian with a mere stone against an IDF tank” theme.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi admitted Tuesday that a Kornet missile had been fired at an Israeli tank earlier this month.

Ashkenazi told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the missile penetrated the tank’s outer shell but failed to explode inside it. There were no injuries in the incident.
 
“On December 6, a Kornet anti-tank missile fired for the first time in Gaza hit an IDF tank and penetrated its outer shell. Luckily, the missile did not explode inside the tank. We are talking about a massive missile, one of the most dangerous in the battlefield, which has already been used against the IDF in the Lebanon War.”

12:52PM: CNN’s Richard Quest came to Israel where he annoyed met with Channel 2 News anchor Yonit Levi.

11:45AM: There are at least two things Elder of Moron Jimmy Carter should keep to himself: the lust in his heart…and his opinions.

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Monday told Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo he is happy Brazil recognized Palestinian statehood, adding, “We cannot count on the United States alone to bring peace, since it agrees with almost everything Israel does,” The Telegraph reported.

Carter explained the role he envisioned for Brazil, saying it “can help because it has a lot of influence among developing countries. Brazil can be one of the leaders in this process,” according to the report.

Referring to Brazil’s decision to recognize the “state of Palestine,” Carter told Folha, “I am very happy to see that Brazil recognized the Palestinian state with the 1967 borders.”

11:16AM: A palestinian terror group called Jaish Al-Islam (Army of Islam) has claimed responsibility for this morning’s Qassam attack.

According to Ma’an, they are the group who once threatened to “kill U.S. President George Bush and his Christian allies.”

AP

Israel and the Palestinians are at odds over which subjects will open their next round of peace talks, set to start Tuesday in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to begin with security arrangements, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and a Palestinian willingness to declare an end to the conflict when an agreement is signed.

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders want to begin by defining the borders of the Palestinian state. They adamantly refuse to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

—-

In an apparent hardening of the Palestinian position ahead of the Sharm el-Sheikh talks, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team who is also a member of the Fatah Central Committee, Nabil Shaath, said the Palestinians would never recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

And there’s some good old fashioned infighting.

The Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reported yesterday that according to Palestinian sources, a crisis had erupted between Shaath and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. The paper said Shaath is sparring with Erekat in a bid to lead the negotiations with Israel.

The strained relations between the two reached a peak a day after the Washington summit when Shaath told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam that the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams would be meeting in Jericho last Monday, although Israel and the PA had agreed to keep the meeting a secret.

Erekat said Shaath was wrong, although Erekat and Netanyahu’s negotiator Isaac Molho apparently did meet to prepare for this week’s talks.

Needless to say, these talks are not going well!

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

5:25PM: Fascinating article on Emanuel Morano, perhaps the world’s best soldier.

12:15PM: 2 Qassam rockets were fired into Israel this morning.

11:48AM: This is the kind of report that makes me want to root for the bull.

A new poll by the Spanish government released on the eve of Rosh Hashanah in Madrid shows that one in three Spaniards is anti-Semitic, maintaining negative opinions about Jews. Another 46 percent had favorable views of Jews.

One in nine Spaniards, the survey found, supports the statement that “Israel should disappear because it was established on Arab land.” Another 77 percent disagree with the statement. The results of the study indicate that the major cause of the rise in anti-Semitic feelings is Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians in the territories.

The study follows poll results from 2008 and 2009 conducted by the Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center showing that close to half of all Spaniards at the time held anti-Semitic views. The two polls designated Spain an anti-Semitic country after finding that more than 35 percent of its citizens held anti-Jewish views. Ironically, however, in the most recent poll, 34.6 percent of respondents expressed anti-Semitic views, thereby barely escaping the anti-Semitic label according to that criterion. At an event at which the new findings were released, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos said the poll showed Spanish society is not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.

The new poll, in which about 1,000 Spanish residents were questioned by phone, was conducted by the Madrid-based Casa Sefarad-Israel (Spain-Israel House ), which is affiliated with the Spanish Foreign Ministry and promotes ties between Spain and Israel and world Jewry. The survey was conducted in April, before the Israel Navy’s confrontation at the end of May with the Gaza-bound flotilla.

Anti-Semitic sentiment exists in Spain despite the absence of a sizable Jewish community in the country since the Spanish Inquisition at the end of the 15th century. Some 40,000 Jews currently live in the county of 40 million.

Senior Spanish government officials sought to soften the impact of the poll results, noting that 54 percent of respondents hold negative views toward Muslims. About 1.5 million Muslims live in Spain. .

Only Iran was viewed less favorably than Israel in the poll results. Moratinos and leaders of the Spanish Jewish community attributed the rise in anti-Semitic sentiment in Spain to the anti-Israel stance of most of the Spanish media. In contrast, however, 67 percent of respondents equally blamed Israel and the Palestinians for the conflict between them, and about 83 percent said Jews are entitled to live in peace and security in Israel once its borders are recognized by the international community.

5:48AM: I’m beginning to notice a pattern.

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REUTERS/Amir Cohen

IAF jets have struck two smuggling tunnels in southern Gaza in response to a Qassam which hit the roof of a building in an educational institution located in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council, outside of Sderot.

This follows the IAF striking a Hamas-linked terror activity site in northern Gaza, a weapons-manufacturing warehouse in central Gaza, and a weapons-smuggling tunnel in southern Gaza, in response to the grad rocket fired at Israel on Friday morning, which hit the city of Ashkelon (pop. 125,000).

As the IDF Spokesperson blog notes, more than 100 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israeli territory since the beginning of 2010, and over 400 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel since the end of operation Cast Lead.

Meanwhile, Ha’aretz refers to this latest violence as “tit-for-tat”, as if there is some kind of equivalency between the initial attack (aimed to kill civilians) and Israel’s response in self defense. I would suggest the only “tit” here is the Ha’aretz reporter.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

8:25PM: The palestinian police trainee yearbook makes a return after a five-year absence!

7:14PM: In his latest piece, the detestable Robert Fisk admits he can’t possibly compare Israel with Hamas.

Because Israel is so much worse (hat tip: EoZ via CiF Watch).

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline.

There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that’s OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We’d still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I’m not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot each other by mistake).

Read more if you have the stomach for more of this bile, include accusations Israel helped kill Afghans!

It’s no wonder this poor excuse for a journalist and even poorer excuse for a human being triggered a new verb.

6:42PM: Hamas: The Next Generation

4:28PM: The educational institution hit by the Qassam last night was a children’s hydrotherapy rehabilitation center in the heart of Sderot’s Sapir College.

The silence is deafening.

3:54PM: Mandatory reading of the day: Demonizing Israel is bad for the Palestinians (written by a Jordanian of palestinian heritage).

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the international media have been unhesitant in criticizing the Jewish state on almost everything. This has evolved into a media culture by itself, to the point that many internationally renowned newspapers would have a button labelled “Israel” or “Israeli-Arab conflict” on their Web sites including very little positive content about Israel. Media hostility toward Israel has been mainly focused on its military operations and, in more quiet times, on the living conditions of the Palestinians in Israel.

Amazingly enough, the international media, and particularly the Western ones, pay very little attention to the conditions of the Palestinians living in Arab countries, despite the extreme oppression they have been enduring for decades in most Arab countries.

These Palestinians do not have someone to speak for them in the global media, possibly because a news story about countries other than Israel is less interesting or “sexy” by media standards. This tendency to blame Israel for everything has lead to the development of numerous myths about the situation of the Palestinian there that have provided an excuse to purposely ignore and compromise the human rights of the Palestinian in many Arab countries.

THE EXAMPLES for that are plentiful and sometimes cross the line into tragic comedy. While the world is crying over the Israel-imposed blockade on Gaza, the media, for some unknown reason, choose to deliberately ignore the conditions of the Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon.

Lebanon, a country with some of the most hostile forces to Israel, has been holing up Palestinians inside camps for almost 30 years. Those camps do not have any foundations of livelihood or even sanitation and the Palestinians living there are not allowed access to basics such as buying cement to enlarge or repair homes for their growing families. Furthermore, it is difficult for them to work legally, and are even restricted from going out of their camps at certain hours. Compare this to the fact that Palestinian laborers were still able to go to work every day in Israel while Hamas was carrying out an average of one suicide bombing per week a few years ago, and until recently launching missiles daily on southern Israel. Not to mention the fact that Israel allows food items and medications into Gaza if handled through the Palestinian Authority.

The Lebanese atrocities toward the Palestinians have been tolerated by the international community, not only by the media. Today, while some Israeli military commanders have to think twice, in fear of legal consequences, before they visit London or Brussels, well-known Lebanese leaders who had directly participated in mass killings of Palestinian civilians, during and after the Lebanese civil war, are becoming world-respected political figures – Nabih Berri, for example, the leader of Amal Shi’ite militia who enforced a multi-year siege on Palestinian camps, cutting water access and food supplies to them. The Palestinians underBerri’s siege were reported to be consuming rats and dogs to survive. Nonetheless, he has been the undisputed speaker of the Lebanese parliament for a long time. He travels frequently to Europe and criticizes Israel for its “crimes against the Palestinians” on every occasion.

MANY OTHER Arab countries are no different than Lebanon in their ill-treatment and discrimination against the Palestinians. Why do the media choose to ignore those and focus only on Israel? While the security wall being built by Israel has become a symbol of “apartheid” in the global media, they almost never address the actual walls and separation barriers that have been isolating Palestinian refugee camps in Arab countries for decades.

While Palestinians targeted by the IDF are mostly fighters pledging war on Israel, the world swiftly overlooked the Sabra and Shatila massacre in which Lebanese Christian and Shi’ite militiamen butchered thousands of Palestinian women and children. Unsurprisingly, the international media accused Israel of being responsible for the massacre, despite the fact that live testimonies aired by Al-Jazeera satellite television a few years ago show massacre survivors confirming that IDF commanders and soldiers had nothing to do with the killing.

The demonization of Israel by the global media has greatly harmed the Palestinians’ interests for decades and covered up Arab atrocities against them. Furthermore, demonizing Israel has been well-exploited by several Arab dictatorships to direct citizens’ rage against Israel instead of their regimes and also to justify any atrocities they commit in the name of protecting their nations from “the evil Zionists.”

This game has served some of the most notorious Arab dictatorships, and still does today, as any opposition is immediately labelled “a Zionist plot.”

This model had served Gamal Abdel Nasser in ruling Egypt with an iron fist until he died, and was the main line for Saddam Hussein, who was promoting that “Iraq and Palestine are one identical case” in his last years in power.

The global media must be fair in addressing the Palestinians’ suffering in Arab countries and must stop demonizing Israel. It should start focusing on the broader conditions of the Palestinians in the Middle East region.

There is much to see.

2:52PM: I’ve posted this incredible interactive map on Middle Eastern Strategic Threats designed to show the global range of Iran, Syria, and Lebanon‘s missile capabilities (via JCPA).

11:56AM: Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat claims the PA has submitted a far-reaching peace proposal to the Obama administration that is more generous to Israel than the demands presented by Mahmoud Abbas to former prime minister Ehud Olmert, and will end the conflict with Israel and resolve all palestinian claims.

“I presented Senator George Mitchell with a series of official documents,” Erekat said, referring to the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East. “We gave him maps and papers that clearly state our positions on all the final-status issues: borders, Jerusalem, refugees, water and security. Thus far we have not received any answer from the Israeli side.”

When asked if the Palestinian positions were similar to those presented during talks with Olmert, Erekat replied: “It’s more than that. I cannot go into details on what exactly was proposed, but Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] offered more in these documents than what he proposed to Olmert in the past. Abu Mazen took bigger steps to reach peace.”

Earlier this year Erekat distributed a document to European diplomats saying the PA had offered Olmert a swap that would let Israel annex 1.9 percent of the West Bank. The document also claimed that the PA had expressed a willingness to accept an Israeli proposal to allow 15,000 Palestinian refugees to return to the country every year over 10 years.

International media outlets reported earlier this year that the PA had agreed to land swaps equaling 2.3 percent, while another report said it had accepted a swap of 3.8 percent. Erekat confirmed to Haaretz that the Palestinians have become more flexible on this issue.

Meanwhile, Erekat has also denied reports that the Obama administration had threatened sanctions against the PA if Abbas did not agree to enter direct talks with Israel over a final-status agreement.

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian lawmaker and a member of the PLO central committee, told the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi that Washington “applied tremendous pressures on the Palestinian Authority so that it would move to direct talks.”

Ashrawi said the United States threatened to downgrade or even sever ties with Ramallah.

Another Arab language newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported that Obama had sent a special communique to Abbas last month that said Washington would not work to extend the Israeli construction freeze in West Bank settlements if the Palestinian leader continued to oppose direct negotiations. According to the report, Obama made clear to Abbas that the United States would reject any Palestinian efforts to appeal to the Security Council in lieu of direct talks with Israel.

During an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Thursday, Abbas said he had been subject to intense pressure to agree to direct talks. Erekat confirmed that many Arab leaders sought to persuade the Palestinian leader to reconsider his position, but he denied any suggestions that Washington had threatened the PA.

“[The communique] stated that if the Palestinians do not enter direct discussions, reaching a two-state solution will be even more difficult and the Americans’ ability to help in that regard will be even more limited,” Erekat said. “There were no threats.”

I have yet to hear Erekat speak the truth, so treat everything he says with extreme caution.

8:56AM: Israeli President Shimon Peres has gone on the offensive against the English, accusing them of antisemitism.

Shimon Peres said England was “deeply pro-Arab … and anti-Israeli”, adding: “They always worked against us.”

He added: “There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary.”

His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had “got it wrong”.

But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.

The controversy follows the furore last week over David Cameron’s remark that Gaza was a “prison camp”, as he urged Israel to allow aid and people to move freely in and out of the Palestinian territory.

Mr Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is three years into his seven-year term as president and was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen in 2008, said that England’s attitude towards Jews was Israel’s “next big problem”.

“There are several million Muslim voters, and for many members of parliament, that’s the difference between getting elected and not getting elected,” he said.

“And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment.

“They abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 UN partition resolution … They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s … They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs.”

By contrast, relations with Germany, France and Italy were “pretty good”, he added.

He made the comments in an interview with the historian Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published last week in Tablet, a Jewish news website.

The wide-ranging interview covered Mr Peres’ role as one of Israel’s longest-serving political leaders – an MP for 48 years, twice prime minister, and holder of other ministerial posts over the decades. He is firmly on the Israeli Left.

He was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 jointly with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for his part as foreign minister in the peace talks which produced the landmark Oslo Accords.

But following his comments, James Clappison, the Conservative MP for Hertsmere and vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, said: “Mr Peres has got this wrong.

“There are pro- and anti-Israel views in all European countries. Things are certainly no worse, as far as Israel is concerned, in this country than other European countries.”

The MP added that he could “understand the frustration” that people in Israel felt with “certain elements of the British broadcast media” which present an unbalanced view of Israel.

He said: “I can understand Mr Peres’ concerns, but I don’t recognise what he is saying about England.”

Yet in Israel, Mr Peres is far from alone in holding such views, which have gained a wider following, particularly on the Right, since the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over accusations that Mossad sent agents using British passports to assassinate a Hamas commander in Dubai.

Aryeh Eldad, a right-wing member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, accused Britain of working against Israeli interests for decades – ever since it “betrayed” its promises to build a Jewish homeland when it governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

“Both governments from the right and the left prefer Arab interests over Israeli interests,” said Mr Eldad, whose father Israel was a leading figure in the Stern Gang, the most radical of the Jewish terror groups that fought British mandatory rule.

“The other layer is an ongoing, subtle form of anti-semitism. It is not as overt as it was in Germany, it is a quiet, polite form.”

Some leading Jewish commentators in Britain disagreed. Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, minister of Maidenhead synagogue and a writer and broadcaster, said: “I am surprised at Peres. It is a sweeping statement that is far too one-sided.

“Britain has supported both Israel and Arab causes at different periods over the last 50 years. There are elements of anti-semitism but it is not endemic to British society.

“The tolerance and pluralism here make Britain one of the best countries in the world in which to live.”

Mr Peres found support, however, from other pro-Israeli groups. Jacob Vince, the director of Christian Friends of Israel, said there was anti-semitism in the UK although many people had a positive view of Israel but were unwilling to express it publicly.

Mr Vince said it was “difficult to see how many MPs would not be influenced by the number of Muslim voters in their constituencies”.

The Government was not treating Arabs as the underdogs but rather was trying to appease them, he said. “The question is how well they understand those with whom they are seeking conciliation.”

Mr Peres is “measured and moderate,” he added.

He said: “His comments have serious connotations and I am sure would not be said lightly.”

One Israeli politician expressed disbelief that the doveish Mr Peres had launched such a broadside against the British.

Benny Begin, a cabinet minister whose father Menachem was prime minister and before that leader of Irgun, the group that killed 91 people in an attack on Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946, said: “Peres? I simply can’t believe he said that.”

I wonder if this means Peres’ will be handing back his honorary knighthood.

6:20AM: ITN News report on Friday night’s IAF strike, which refers to Gaza as “occupied” – which is only true if they are referring to Hamas’ occupation (hat tip: Anon)

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In other news, there is an airport named after Yasser Arafat, the father of airline hijackings.

Just saying.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:46PM: If it wasn’t already evident to you that the Goldstone Report is seriously flawed, it should be after reading about Desmond Travers, the senior figure responsible for the military analysis in the report.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010
New Revelations About the UN Goldstone Report that Seriously Undermine its Credibility

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the UN Fact Finding Mission that produced what is widely called the Goldstone Report. The Mission investigated Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009. Travers joined the Irish Defense Forces in 1961 and retired after forty years. As the only former officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone’s team, he was the senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis for condemning Israel for war crimes.

After following his repeated public appearances with the other mission members in July 2009, and especially in light of his most recent interviews, serious flaws have now become evident in the methodology he followed, in his collection and processing of data, and in the conclusions he draws. In the past, the flaws in the Goldstone report, and especially its lack of balance, have been criticized by the London Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, but the fundamental problems of its military analysis have not been fully addressed. In the material presented here, this becomes evident in four specific ways:

1. A Fundamental Bias against the Israel Defense Forces

During the Mission’s collection of testimonies from Palestinian psychologists in the Gaza Strip, Travers asked them straight out to explain how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their parents. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, on February 2, 2010, he asserted that in the past Israeli soldiers had “taken out and deliberately shot” Irish peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Both of these statements by Travers are completely false. It should be stressed that one of the most vicious and unsubstantiated conclusions in the Goldstone Report is the suggestion that Israel deliberately killed Palestinian civilians.

While Travers assumes the worst of intentions on the part of the Israel Defense Forces, he praises Hamas for their cooperation with the Mission. When he was asked about Hamas intimidation that affected the Mission’s inquiries, he replied that that there was “none whatsoever.” Yet the Goldstone Report itself noted in Paragraph 440 that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of Palestinian armed groups because of a “fear of reprisals.” He rejects the notion that Hamas shielded its forces in the civilian population and does not accept the idea that Israel faced asymmetric warfare.

2. False Information Reported About Weapons Systems

Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) that could obtain a “thermal signature” on a Gaza house and detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then suggests that with this information that certain houses were “packed with people,” the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory is that Israel does not have UAV’s that can see though houses and pick up a thermal
signature. More importantly, Israel used UAV’s to monitor that Palestinian civilians left houses that had received multiple warnings, precisely because Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties, a fact that Travers could not fathom, because of his own clear biases.

3. Completely Inaccurate Data

Travers rejects that Israel began military operations against the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008 as an act of self-defense in response to Hamas rockets. He bases this idea on a “fact” that he presents that in the month prior to start of the war, there were only “something like two” rockets that fell on Israel. Israeli military sources found that there were in fact 32 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel over three days alone–between December 16 and 18, 2008. He adds to his analysis that at this time Hamas sought to extend the tahdiya, or lull arrangement–which he called a cease-fire. Yet the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas announced on December 17 that the lull would come to an end two days later and would not be renewed. The head of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, announced the end of the lull on December 14. To say that Hamas wanted to continue the lull is a
complete distortion of events.

In his Middle East Monitor interview, Travers states that he “only came across two incidents of where there was an actual combat situation” – the exchange of fire between Israel and Hamas. Because he minimizes the possibility that Israel was engaged in real combat in the Gaza Strip, it follows that he naturally conclude that Israel was essentially attacking non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead.

4. Lack of Professionalism in Conducting Thorough Investigations

Travers relies on his own prejudices when he looks into the question of whether Gazan Mosques had been militarized by Hamas and turned into weapons depots. In an interview with Harpers, published on October 29, 2009, Travers makes a sweeping generalization: “We found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions.” He then dismissed those who suggested that was the case by saying: “Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion.” How many mosques did Travers investigate? He admits that the Mission only checked two mosques.

Of course, Israel produced photographic proof that large amounts of weapons were stored in mosques, like the Zaytun Mosque. In a subsequent interview, Travers rejected the Israeli proof: “I do not believe the photographs.” He described the photographs as “spurious.” Travers appears to be bothered by proof that contradicts the conclusions he reaches on the basis of a very limited investigation. In early 2010, Colonel Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War, visited Gaza for BBC Newsnight (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8470100.stm , 20 January 2010) and inspected the ruins of a mosque that Israel had destroyed because it had been a weapons depot. He found that there was evidence of secondary explosions cause by explosives stored in the mosque cellar. Travers clearly did not make the effort that Collins made.

In his questioning of Palestinian witnesses in the Gaza Strip, Travers does not ask the questions that a military advisor should raise. He did not ask those giving testimony if they were member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam units of Hamas and were combatants. He also failed to ask them straight out if their homes had been used to store munitions, like Grad rockets. Instead, his questions reflected his ideological bias.

Travers most recent interview also had a disturbing additional element. When addressing the role of British officers in defending Israel’s claims, Travers suddenly adds: “Britain’s foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists.” Travers implies that British Jews have interests that differ from Britain’s own national interests and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government is influenced by these considerations. This statement, unless corrected, places Travers is a position in which his views are suspect of being motivated by anti-Semitic prejudices. Even without this last statement, he clearly emerges as an individual who is not qualified to take part in any serious fact-finding mission and the U.N. should not seek his services in the future. Given his statements, Justice Richard Goldstone should repudiate Col. Travers and completely reject the conclusions that he reached as a result of his work.

10:20PM: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has condemned today’s “stabbing incident.”

Which was not as much an “incident” as a terrorist attack committed by a senior officer of his own security forces.

“Such an incident,” the Palestinian prime minister said, “undermines national Palestinian objectives, and the Palestinian Authority’s commitments.”

And is MURDER, Fayyad.

Meanwhile, the family of the murdered Druze Arab IDF soldier, 28-year-old Ihab Khatib, has pledged to continue enlisting in the army and contributing to the state of Israel.

Many residents arrived at the Khatib family home to comfort the parents.

“Our village has sadly ‘contributed’ many soldiers to the security of the State of Israel,” one of the visitors said.

“Even if there are disagreements among us, and despite the instances of discrimination and oppression, we will all continue to enlist and contribute to the country in which we live, and for whose continued existence we pray.”

6:20PM: An Israeli is set to replace Simon Cowell on American Idol.

Which would mean we retain some Zionist control on the panel.

6:15PM: The IDF officer murdered earlier today was an Arab – Ihab Khatib from Kfar Maghar.

The terrorist was PA officer Mahmoud al-Khatib.

A SENIOR officer in the PA security forces, that is.

6:10PM: Shame on Reuters who are even worse than the AP when it comes to media bias.

Case in point: the captions for these photos capturing yesterday’s riots at the Shuafat refugee camp.

An undercover Israeli police officer (R) scuffles with a Palestinian youth suspected of throwing stones while trying to detain him during clashes in the Shuafat refugee camp in the West Bank near Jerusalem February 9, 2010. Clashes erupted between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli police that entered the refugee camp, a Reuters witness said on Tuesday.
REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)

Looks like the Israeli police officer initiated the rough stuff with a palestinian “youth,” who does not look too youthful to me. That is, until you read the AP caption from the same incident.

A Palestinian rioter tries to grab a weapon from a plain-clothes Israeli police officer, right, during clashes in Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010. Palestinians scuffled with Israeli security forces, after an arrest operation triggered clashes in the camp the day before. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Here it becomes clearer that this was not a case of Israeli aggression against a palestinian, but a matter of life of death for the police officer, who would surely have been killed with his own weapon had the palestinian succeeded in grabbing it. Furthermore, the palestinian is not described as a youth, which seems to be accurate.

5:55PM: The Israeli murdered earlier this afternoon was an IDF soldier.

3:52PM: TERROR ATTACK: Almost two hours ago, an Israeli was killed after being stabbed by a palestinian while sitting in his jeep near the Tapuach Junction.

Judea and Samaria District Police officers apprehended the terrorist. The knife used in the attack was found at the scene. Israeli security officials said the terrorist acted alone.

The incident occurred at around 1:50 pm, when the Israeli vehicle was stuck in a traffic jam. The Palestinian terrorist stabbed the Israeli twice in the chest through the open car window.

The Israeli tried to flee the scene, but his jeep overturned into a ditch.

A security officer from the nearby Jewish settlement Rachelim, who happened to be at the scene, ran the terrorist over with his car. The Palestinian sustained very mild injuries.

“I was in my car when I saw a man approach another vehicle and stab the person inside. I realized I was witnessing a terror attack. The terrorist began running away, but I kept my cool, drove after him and managed to hit him with my car,” the security officer, Yossi Margalit, told Ynet.

“I stepped out of my car, apprehended the terrorist and turned him over to the security forces,” he recounted.

Prediction: we will not hear any condemnation of this attack by the palestinians and their supporters, but we will hear complaints about the palestinian being run over.

Meanwhile, the Ha’aretz report includes this interesting fact.

Yossi Margalit, a security officer from a nearby settlement who arrived the scene ran over the attacker, lightly wounding him. He was then arrested, and given medical attention on the spot.

Wow, we are so bad at genocide and ethnic cleansing that we ensure even their terrorists are alive.

2:16PM: Lebanese Prime Minister Saad “Stark” Hariri has confirmed that Lebanon=Hizbullah.

Hariri added that Lebanon was united, and that his government would stand by Hezbollah – the Lebanese terror group which fought Israel in 2006.

“I think they’re (Israel) betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us,” he said, “Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people.”

Which means that Israel’s agreement to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which demands, inter alia, that Hizbullah be disarmed and full control of Lebanon by the government of Lebanon, was a really rotten idea.

But we already knew that.

1:05PM: PA sex and corruption scandal? Naaaa, just an Israeli conspiracy of course!

The Palestinian Authority expressed their outrage on Wednesday at Israel’s Channel 10 report of a video found depicting one of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ senior advisors in compromising positions with a woman candidate applying to work in his office. According to a PA official, the report was merely an Israeli smear campaign meant to embarrass Abbas.

The report also aired claims made by former General Intelligence chief Fahmi Shabana that officials close to Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat were entangled in corruption scandals amounting to millions of shekels stolen from public coffers.

Shabana, who was in charge of the PA’s anti-corruption campaign, claimed in interviews with the media that he placed before Abbas evidence of widespread economic corruption around him, but that the president declined doing anything about it. According to him, senior Fatah officials during Arafat’s rule stole millions of shekels from PA coffers, a large amount of which originated from Arab states, Europe, and the US as donations.

The Fatah officials allegedly requested inflated sums for purchasing land, which was valued far lower than the numbers they presented, and the proceeded to pocket the difference. Shabana hinted that even Abbas’ family members were involved in the corruption, but has yet to prove so.

Shabana also revealed an embarrassing video from 2008 depicting the head of Abbas’ office, Rafik al-Husseini, rubbing his body against his secretary and apparently trying to convince a woman seeking employment in the office to have sexual relations with him.

Shabana was suspended from his position. When Abbas sought to reinstate him, he was arrested by Israel for holding membership in a foreign security body in light of the fact that he is a resident of east Jerusalem and holds an Israeli identity card. Shabana claims, however, that he was arrested at the behest of the Palestinian Authority.

A high-ranking PA official said Wednesday to Ynet that the video revealed by Shabana is a personal issue known for quite some time and that his staff are not rattled by the corruption claims. According to the official, the PA maintains transparency with donor countries and operates a strict oversight mechanism on their payments.

The source said that publishing such a report along with the video is nothing but an Israeli conspiracy aimed at tarnishing the credibility and status of Abbas in light of his refusal to return to the negotiation table under the conditions stipulated by Israel.

Here’s the report (see from 1:15 onwards). Those of you who do not understand Hebrew can skip to 4:47 onwards, which features some shots from the aforementioned “embarrassing video.”

The video must have been doctored by crafty Zionists, since PA officials never act corruptly.

6:00AM: Ashkelon Municipality and the city’s Parents’ Association yesterday filed a petition with the High Court of Justice demanding the court order the government to finish fortifying its schools, in accordance with the Homefront Command’s recommendations.

The petition says that after nine kindergartens were fortified in March of last year the Defense Ministry halted all work, and that 13 kindergartens and 10 elementary schools still remain vulnerable to rocket threats.

The children studying in these facilities are currently instructed to hide underneath their desks in case of a Color Red alert.

The petition says the parents of these children are “incredibly worried and anxious”, and asks the court to remedy the situation.

I wonder if Richard Goldstone or others who have come out against Operation Cast Lead ever had a child who had to experience something like this.

The Iron Dome is supposed to be capable of intercepting all of the short-range rockets in fired by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon, by using an advanced radar that locates and tracks the rocket that is then intercepted by a kinetic missile interceptor.

During the test, the radar succeeded in detecting which rockets were headed towards coordinates that were designated as open fields and therefore did not launch an interceptor to destroy them.

The IDF has already established a new battalion that will be part of the IAF’s Air Defense Division and will operate the Iron Dome. Prototypes of the Iron Dome have already been supplied to the new battalion which has commenced training with the systems.

The IDF has also located positions along the Gaza border that will be used as bases for the system, which includes a launcher and radar system. After it completes the deployment of the system along the Gaza border, the IDF will begin deploying the system along the northern border with Lebanon.

MOD Dir.-Gen. Pinhas Buchris said that the system would eventually “transform” security for residents of southern and northern Israel.

“The defense establishment continues to be committed to do everything it can to provide all residents of Israel a multi-layered defense against missiles and rockets,” he said.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:36PM: How I wish for a Hizbullah vs Hamas clash.

Hizbullah communicated “deep disappointment” to Hamas leadership over the discovery that the party was conducting military drills in a residential building in Lebanon without the party’s knowledge, the country’s An-Nahar newspaper reported Wednesday.

Information around the training was uncovered during the course of an investigation into an explosion in Haret Treik that killed two Hamas members last week, the paper said. Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Al-Murr said the blast targeted Hamas Representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan.

According to the London-based Arabic daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, the attack was carried out as Hamas members received live ammunition training in the basement of the building under Hamas control.

The daily said Hezbollah told Hamas it would not intervene, and that Hamas “would have to resolve the problem on its own.”

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat also reported that Hamas decided to close its office in Haret Hreik until the situation was resolved.

Note Hamas were conducting their drills in a residential building, and Hizbullah was not disappointed about that, but rather that Hamas did so without their knowledge.

And please remember these details next time Israel responds to terrorist fire, and civilians are hurt or killed (especially you, Mr Goldstone).

10:28PM: The Jerusalem Post has reported it was a Katushya rocket that landed near Ashkelon, and not a Qassam as reported by the likes of Ha’aretz and Ynet.

Why can’t we get some reliable reporting?

8:50PM: And for their next trick – a Qassam.

And Ynet, get your facts right. It has been 10 mortar shells today, not 7.

8:02PM: Someone please tell me this is a joke.

Israel will pay US $10m in compensation for damage caused to United Nations buildings in Gaza during the assault a year ago, officials have said.

This will be the first compensation paid by Israel for damage caused during the Gaza offensive.

UN storehouses, school buildings, offices and vehicles were damaged or destroyed during the conflict.

Israel insists UN sites were not targeted during the offensive and says the payout is for collateral damage.

Israel also says that Hamas fighters operated in or near UN-protected buildings during the offensive.

The payout is a result of several months negotiation. A UN inquiry in May last year found that Israeli forces had, on seven occasions, “breached the inviolability of United Nations premises” and were responsible for deaths and injuries.

At the time UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he would seek more than $11m compensation from Israel for damage to UN property.

Israeli officials say that the settlement should be viewed as a good-will gesture and says it has a good working relationship with the UN.

The UN is beyond being openly hostile towards Israel; it also employs terrorists (admitting doing so) including one of the schools hit during Operation Cast Lead and for which Israel is now paying compensation. Not only that, but the terrorists were actually using UN buildings to launch their terrorist attacks.

So as far as I’m concerned, the UN should be paying us.

6:14PM: Meet the anti-Semitic..err anti-Zionist palestinian sheikh who states the Jews are a cancer. And like AIDS.

And that’s some of his more mild claims.

Notice how he says Islam will one day rule the world again. And that belief, my friends, is the root cause of Islamic terrorism.

6:08PM: Not content with firing 10 mortar shells at Israel, Gaza-based terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at IDF troops earlier this afternoon.

5:50PM: Zionist Muslim Sheikh Abdul Palazzi on his recent visit to Jerusalem.

4:32PM:  Honest Reporting looks at 10 significant articles, blog posts, cartoons and videos from the past decade.

1:12PM:When it comes to palestinian/pro-palestinian protesters, there seems to be no shortage of potential future Darwin Award winners.

This tool protesting against Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer during a New Zealand tennis tournament (because Peer shows disproportionate force against her opponents?) is the latest in this long line of those who might just improve humanity’s gene pool by removing themselves from it.

1:00PM: Palestinian terrorists have already fired 7 at least 10 mortar shells from the Gaza Strip today. There have been no reports of injuries or damage, so once again I expect the world to collectively yawn.

It should be noted that the terrorists are also causing their people to suffer.

In the wake of the mortar fire, the Defense Ministry closed the Kerem Shalom crossing until further notice. Dozens of aid trucks that were prepared to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza were waiting at the crossing Thursday morning, Israel Radio reported.

Now compare the terrorists utter disregard for the lives of civilians with Israel’s.

Palestinians said the Israel Air Force dropped thousands of fliers in Gaza morning, warning residents there to stay away from the border with Israel and to avoid involvement in smuggling, Ma’an reported.

One of the fliers featured a map, and warns Gazans that anyone within 300 meters of the security fence is endangering himself.

Another flier urges Gazans not to sit idly by as smugglers put them and their communities in harm’s way. It includes a phone number and E-mail address for anyone willing to provide information about the smuggling tunnels.

When it comes to genocide, we are huge failures.

12:54PM: The White House has denied Rahm Emanuel said he is fed up with Israel and the palestinians.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel denied reports that said he is fed up with Israel and the Palestinians, a White House aide told Haaretz on Wednesday.

The White House aide emphasized that Emanuel’s statements were distorted. “He expressed frustration with the lack of progress with the peace process, but he certainly didn’t threaten to walk away from it. The allegations are completely ridiculous,” the aide said.

The White House doth protest too much, methinks.

10:25AM: Interesting article on the plight of palestinian Christians.

6:12AM: Still on the subject of Hizbullah,it is the Lebanese government’s refusal to reach any understanding with Israel over security arrangements in the north, apparently under pressure from Hizbullah, which is holding up an Israeli withdrawal from the northern part of Ghajar.

The Lebanese government, apparently under pressure from Hizbullah, is not willing to provide any kind of commitments that would allow this plan to be put into practice, The Post has learned, “fearful” that this would be seen as giving Israel legitimacy.

Needless to say, I’m not optimistic about the Lebanese government ever arriving at a peace agreement with Israel.

6:06AM: It has been reported that UNIFIL forces last week discovered a large number of buried explosive devices in southern Lebanon about a kilometer from the border with Israel, apparently planted by Hizbullah.

The well-made bombs, approximately 10 in number, believed to be made either in Iran or Syria, contained a total of about 300 kilograms of explosives. According to sources in Israel, it is believed the devices were placed at the site by Hezbollah to strike at an Israel Defense Forces patrol that might try to enter Lebanon at the site, near the northern Israel town of Metula.

—-

The UNIFIL statement said placing the explosives was a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which prohibits possession or use of weapons south of the Litani River by unauthorized persons, meaning other than the Lebanese army or UNIFIL forces.

Senior government officials in Jerusalem said that following the incident Israel approached UNIFIL officials as well as UN Headquarters in New York to make clear that it believes that Hezbollah is behind the incident, rather than World Jihad, which had fired rockets into Israel in recent months.

In other news, there is a group who fired rockets into Israel called World Jihad. I suppose the root cause of their terrorism is Israeli “occupation”?

12:10AM: Hamas is blaming Israel for yesterday’s Galloway “aid convoy” inspired riot.

Clashes on Egypt’s border that left at least one Egyptian soldier dead and dozens of Palestinians hurt are related to the construction of an Egyptian underground barrier, Hamas admitted Wednesday.

Ehab Ghussein, the spokesman for Gaza’s Interior Minister, linked the day’s events to Egypt’s construction of the underground barrier along its border with Gaza. He called the protest “a natural reaction to the iron wall and against the policy of cutting the veins of life that is taking place there.”

Ghussein said 35 Palestinians were injured, including five who are brain dead. His tally could not be reconciled with that of local doctors.

Cry of the hungry

Meanwhile, Hamas parliamentarian Mushir al Masri said that the “iron fence would not be able to defeat the Palestinian people, just like Operation Cast Lead did not defeat us.” He also stressed that Hamas will continue to view Israel as its main enemy, noting that “the occupation is dangerous for Egyptian security just like for Palestinian and Arab security.

Another Hamas member, Fauzi Barhoum, said that Wednesday’s protests marked “the cry of the hungry.”

Cry of the hungry, eh?

You mean, like this?

“Hey waiter, pleasssssse bring some more desert to our table?”

One of the things that grabbed my attention while at the hospital were the mezuzot (sacred parchments inscribed by hand with two portions of the Torah, which are stored in protective cases and hung on the doorposts of Jewish buildings), which looked like this:

Maybe I’ve been here too long, but to me they look like someone holding a Qassam rocket.

An insight you won’t get from the mainstream news media coverage of events here in Israel.

Dear Granny and Grandpa,

I wanted to thank you so much for the beautiful card you sent me for my 18th birthday. I love getting birthday cards from you, they’re always so unique.

I’m really excited this year, I finally feel a little grown up, living in an apartment in Sderot with 7 other girls. I live in a very nice neighborhood with both religious and secular families and a lot of cute kids. (It’s great to earn some extra money babysitting).

As you probably know already, I’m teaching about Judaism to secular kids in kindergardens, elemantry schools, junior highs, and in nearby kibbutzim. The job is tiring. We work about 11 hours a day. In the mornings we’re teaching and in the afternoons and nights preparing for our next classes. We’re only four girls in this program, so it’s really hard work, but very enjoyable and satisfying. The girls I’m working with are all fun and very dedicated. Even though it’s only been a couple of months, we’ve been through so much together that it seems like we’ve always known one another. They’re really nice girls (one girl, I discovered, was with me in kindergarden- it was very funny).

We all pitch in to keep the apartment at least a little clean and try hard to eat proper meals, though it’s really hard. For one thing, food is so expensive and we get paid so little. We mostly eat bread and pasta. A lot of pasta. Pasta, past, pasta…

In Sderot itself, we’re all together twenty four girls doing national service. Some girls are counselors in high schools, some are the heads of the youth group that I used to be in, called “B’nei Akiva”.  Some are tour guides, some work in soup kitchens. I recently decided to spend some of the little free-time we have, volunteering as a counselor in a youth group for girls called “Ariel”. I’m in charge of about twenty-five screeching little munchkins. It’s weird being a counselor again (remember when I was a counselor in Beer Sheva two years ago for two years, for boys and girls around the same age as these munchkins), but I love kids! and these girls are so sweet!

Sderot is a very special city, not only because it gets bombed so often, but because so many of the people who live there are so amazing. For one thing, they’re always inviting us over for meals, and despite everything they’re going through, the fear for their houses and constant worry for their children – when they’re at school and when they’re at home, the lack of customers at their stores & restaurants, they smile and talk to you on the street.  People in Sderot are happy to share what they have. They have this special warmth in them, which helps you have courage.

About the “kassamim”. Technically, there is a cease fire, and before last week only once in a while they still shot a rocket or two just to remind us that they don’t mean it… Last year there were days when sixty rockets would fall. This week the IDF found a tunnel that the terrorists had dug next to the border in order to kidnap and kill more soldiers. When our soldiers went in to destroy the tunnel, there was a battle and they killed six of the terrorists. As revenge, they fired forty rockets towards the settlements around Gaza, including Sderot. I’ve been in Sderot when a “kassam” fell, but the experience I had the other day was a little different. At four-thirty in the morning the siren that gives us 17 seconds to find shelter went off: A voice on a loudspeaker blaring “tzeva adome” “tzeva adome” (“color red, color red”), telling us that a rocket had just been fired. My friends and I jumped out of our beds and ran to our protective room and shut the door. A second later we realized we had forgotten to wake two of the girls. Somehow they didn’t hear the siren and were still sleeping. We felt so bad that we didn’t wake them, but we all went back to bed thanking G-d that no one was injured from that rocket and that we were all! safe.

The next day, at school, we asked the kids how they felt. One little boy answered that he was tired, because like all of us (well, most of us) he woke up in the midle of the night from the siren and couldn’t fall back to sleep. This is how people have been living for the last 7 years!  I hope we won’t need to experience anymore of this running and hiding, it’s pretty annoying I can tell you. Unfortunately, everyone knows it is far from over.

I’m so glad I finally found time to write to you. I love you so much and so want to hear about how you’re doing. So, are you happy about Obama’s win?

I miss you. Do you know when you’re coming yet? I can’t wait to see you guys.

Write when you get a chance.

Have a great Shabbat, I love you guys so much!
Tzippora

Israeli children gather at the site where a rocket, allegedly fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza, landed in the southern town of Sderot Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008. Police say a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza has exploded in an Israeli town just across the border fence. They say the rocket hit an open area in the town of Sderot. It set a fire, but no one was hurt. It was the first rocket attack in nearly three weeks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket attack.(AP Photo / Tsafrir Abayov)

“Allegedly fired by Palestinian militants“? Does this mean that AP is leaving open the possibility that Israelis are firing rockets at each other and blaming it on Arabs from Gaza, which only the looniest of the loonies claim? Or perhaps they don’t consider people who shoot potentially fatal rockets targeting civilains to be “militant” enough to be called militants?

It’s not like AP can see where the rocket landed; they can only claim that the Israeli police say that the rocket landed in Sderot. It is of course possible that those notoriously unreliable Israeli police are lying and they just took one of the old rockets out of inventory and placed it there for the benefit of the AP photographer – you can never be sure! And the person who suffered from shock and was hospitalized – could be fake. You never know.

And the fact that Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for this attack? Well, that didn’t make the deadline, and only when Palestinian Arab terrorists say something can you report it as fact.

Islamic Hamas movement said in a statement that Sunday’s rocket attack from Gaza at southern Israel “is an Israeli untrue claim to justify closing Gaza border crossing points.”

The Hamas statement came after Israel Radio’s Arabic service reported that unknown Gaza militants fired a homemade rocket from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip at southern Israel, causing no damages or injuries. No one claimed responsibility for the rocket attack.

The radio quoted Israeli army officials as saying that Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, is fully responsible for Sunday’s rocket attack on southern Israel and might face adverse consequences.

“Announcing from time to time that rockets are still fired from Gaza at Israel, is just an untrue claim to justify keeping Gaza Strip border crossing points with Israel closed,” Hamas said in the statement sent to reporters.

Coming soon: Hamas claims the IDF is firing Qassams at Sderot.