When it later turned out the he was in fact killed by Hamas, many news outlets issued a correction. Elder of Ziyon has documented the whole ordeal, with a lame excuse for a retraction issued by CNN.

In today’s video report by Sara Sidner, which I’ve already partially covered here, she did mention the case, though didn’t say who the baby is, or that she herself made a big issue with his death just half a year ago.

Skip to 5:14 for the gist:

Hamas has also been shown to have killed some its own people with rockets that misfired, including this 4 year old child that Hamas portrayed at the time as a symbol of Israeli brutality

No Sara, YOU portrayed him as said symbol.

Journalism at its worst.

A lot of people are going to criticise this dad and, yes, if he’s a local and he knows that’s a fertiliser plant and he knows exactly how explosive fertiliser is then he’s pretty dumb. So I’ll come clean, here are some of my biggest dumb moments.

From the last rocket war with Gaza:

I have an admission to make. When the alarms sounded in Tel Aviv for the very first time, I was at home, alone. My wife and kids were eating pizza nearby, and I didn’t run to our room. I hung around near the door to my balcony which has a view to the south of most of Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan. I thought maybe I’d see something. When the alarm went silent and I still hadn’t seen anything I thought for a second, false alarm. Then my home shook with an impact and I realised how stupid I had been.

From the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami:

The other dumb moment in my life saved by others: watching the sea in Sri Lanka recede by a mile and not figuring out that the greatest Tsunami in recent history is about to come flowing through my hotel. I have a PhD in Physics, I had watched every Nat Geo and Discovery channel program about the phenomenon and the only thing that saved me was the fabulous hotel staff shooing all the guests out of the garden and up the stairs to higher levels before the sea came flooding through our strong concrete hotel.

Fortunately very few of us have experienced a massive explosion far enough away not to hurt us but close enough to really know about it. Don’t mess with this stuff. Run as far away as you can and don’t give a moment’s thought to not getting it on video, especially with your kids near you.

h/t to Hugo on Facebook for showing me the video.

Jon Donnison, you may remember, uncritically re-tweeted a picture of a dead child from Syria adding the word “Heartbreaking”. He applied zero journalistic rigour, uncritically passing on terrorist lies.

But what I’m going to highlight here is the debacle over the death of a baby. Not just any baby, the 10 month old son of a BBC employee in Gaza.

The terrorists running Gaza immediately blamed Israel and Jon Donnison of the BBC immediately believed them.

Very quickly, led by Elder of Zion who is half a world away, extreme doubt was cast on the story. It looked strongly like the baby and a woman were killed by a mis-firing Hamas rocket loosely aimed at Israeli civilians. When this theory was proposed it was given almost no attention by the mainstream and dismissed by Jon Donnison and his BBC friends.

Well it turns out the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), a body known for being highly critical of Israel at every opportunity, has all but declared the baby was killed by Hamas.

Elder of Zion caught this first, of course, and now Jon Donnison has been forced to write a story because AP picked it up. He has included every caveat and doubt he could possibly muster. BBC Watch has dissected his story carefully.

I do have one nervousness about all of this: we’re all exalting the OHCHR at the UN for finally coming out with something we agree with: don’t make the mistake of thinking this excuses this and other UN bodies from their institutionalised anti-Israel bias.

So by repeating, uncritically, the lies fed to him by known Hamas sympathisers in Gaza, Jon Donnison and the BBC apparatus he represents are either acting as shills to provide aid and comfort to terrorists and enemies of humanity, or he is the most naive fool of a reporter since Walter Duranty.

And finally, the BBC story contains one oddity. The man whose son was killed is named, according to the BBC, “Jehad Masharawi”. That’s a rather odd spelling.

His first name in Arabic is spelt exactly the same way as the word Jihad: a holy war against unbelievers. Why on earth is the BBC, alone, choosing to use a very rare English transliteration when Jihad is by far the more common one?

Could it be they don’t want to admit their employee in Gaza is named after the very expression of Islamic desire to conquer the world for Allah? I think you know the answer.

Photo Credit: “Muddy Washmitt Meister”

What would you do with a NEW Mercedes?

Now, if that title doesn’t hit high on the spam charts, I don’t know what will…but stay with me.

Last week, a representative from a very large company came to our offices to discuss potential new business. As with most meetings in Israel, it was a blend of personal and professional. The contract was signed, but the discussions veered off into so many things that are Israel, including the army and the recent Operation Pillar of Defense.

I mentioned my blog and how Elie had been part of the call-up. He mentioned his brother – in the Military Police being sent there and told me how he had never seen his mother so devastated, so paralyzed, so terrified, as during those days.

And then he told us what his brother was doing – basically guarding an entry point to the “closed military zone” where the fighting would take place…if the government had chosen to send in the ground forces. Elie told the man about his mad drive with the artillery vehicles. And the man told us two stories from his brother.

The first was of a young man who drove up and demanded entry. The representative’s brother explained that it was a closed area and he couldn’t let him in.

“I’m a pilot,” said the young driver rather arrogantly.

A bit sheepishly, the rep’s brother explained that he needed to see identification, which was quickly produced and the pilot was allowed to enter. The next day, a general showed up in full uniform driving a brand new, sparkling clean Mercedes. I can’t tell you what model, but it was enough to impress the young soldier. This time, without asking, the general pulled out papers to prove he should be allowed in, though I wonder if it even crossed the mind of the young soldier to deny the general in the first place. But deny him he did.

“You can’t go in there!” he told the general.

The general hesitated for a moment and then asked the soldier, “why NOT?”

“Your car,” said the young man. “It’s new. The mud. Look. You can’t,” he stumbled as he turned to point behind him to the tanks tearing up the wet, muddy ground.

And then the general did the most extraordinary thing. He laughed and told the soldier, “I have that car because of everything this country did for me. I’ll give it all back if I have to – including the car.”

With that, he got in the Mercedes – the brand new, sparkling Mercedes, and drove it into the thick mud, covering the tires and splattering the side within seconds.

All that we have, we have been given because we are here – our safety, our lives, our freedom, our blessings.

But at least in some of the cases, it looks more like Photos of Hamas Terrorists Who Really Wanted To Get Laid.

Aaed Sabri Radi - The Brooding Romantic

Rami Abed Rabbu al-Abeed – Proponent of The “Come Hither” Look

Saadi Maher Abu Kmail – The Braggart

Come to think of it, all Islamic terrorists really want to get laid.

Shame for them it doesn’t quite turn out that way.

Reuters

A single Syrian missile strike on a bakery near Hama killed more than 60 innocent civilians last week, so how did Israel manage to fire more than 1,500 high powered missiles into densely-populated Gaza in November, with the total loss of 161 lives, of which 90 have been acknowledged by Hamas itself as active combatants? (we know there were at least 101 terrorists – Aussie Dave)

The numbers speak for themselves, but very little credit has so far been given by foreign governments, NGOs, and the international media for the care taken by the Israeli military to avoid collateral damage during its recent vicious engagement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

‘Major G,’ the chief instructing officer of the Israeli UAV (Drone) School, spoke exclusively to Foxnews.com on condition of anonymity about Israel’s hi-tech drone capabilities, his military’s terms of engaging the enemy, and aspects of his direct role in the recent Gaza conflict in which Israel strongly contends most non-combatant deaths were as a result of Palestinian civilians being routinely used as human shields by Hamas.

“Drones (UAVs – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), play a very important and essential role in the protection of the State of Israel,” ‘Major G’ explained. “The great advantage of the drone is the ability to stay in the air for up to 40 hours at a time above the relevant area to perform ISR missions – Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.”

Once a drone identifies a target, its operator is then responsible for setting in motion a sometimes dizzyingly fast chain of events that may result in a missile strike taking place.

“Using commercial apertures and video cameras, we have the ability to work with both daytime and night time infrared images. My Heron1 drone does only ISR, but I have the ability to designate a target to another aircraft. This capability is very important because I am able to stay above and investigate the target for a long time, clear it of uninvolved civilians, and only when there is a clear path of fire do I call for the F16 or Apache helicopter,” said ‘Major G.’

Critics of Israel’s actions invariably suggest a lack of concern about collateral damage when air strikes are used, but ‘Major G’ revealed in detail how a drone operator sitting somewhere in Israel can clear a target on the ground in Gaza of innocent civilians.

“In a lot of cases we have regular houses where in the basement there is a lot of ammunition, bombs and missiles. The house is populated sometimes with the families having willingly cooperated with the Hamas, and in other cases they don’t have any choice; Hamas forces this on them. In cases where there are people inside a house or building we never strike the target without prior warning. We make phone calls, send leaflet flier warnings, and sometimes use a technique called ‘Knock On the Roof,’ where we fire very, very small, very precise tiny bombs onto the edge of the roof and then they (the family) know that the attack is about to begin and everybody can go outside.”

But even the best intelligence and prior warnings cannot always prevent civilian casualties caught up in the fog of war, as happened in the widely reported case of the Dalou family in Gaza, nine of whom were killed by a single Israeli missile strike.

FoxNews.com asked the Israel Defense Force for an official explanation on the loss of life at the Dalou house and received the following statement:

“The IDF targets only terror related sites based on carefully collected intelligence. All possible precautions were taken as the civilians in Gaza were not targets in this operation. The Dalou residence was known to the IDF intelligence as a hideout of a senior militant operative in Hamas’ rocket launching infrastructure. While the IDF regrets the loss of life on both sides, the responsibility ultimately lies with terror operatives who use the civil population as human shields when using civilian buildings as hideouts, or to store weaponry.”

Read the whole thing. Then spread it far and wide.

Here are some amateur pictures of that display.

Warning! Insane amounts of spray paint and Duct tape were killed during the filming of this event, viewer discretion is advised!

The PIJ Rocket-in-the-box:

The Kornet ATGM Launcher. Mind you, PIJ do have these missiles, and this is what they actually look like.

A heavy mortar, complete with wooden bi-pod and a paper cut-out hand crank. I’ll get to the background banner soon.

A Fajr-5, with glue on fins.

A Pipe dream organ.

Here’s a wide view of the display:

If you look carefully, you can see in the left of centre a picture of an Iranian made 107 mm rocket. It’s the same picture I have already linked here, and it is from Iraq. PIJ is in such a sorry state, they can’t even use their own stock photos.

As for the banner, it sums up nicely the Arab genocidal pshyce. It reads (top to bottom):

• Palestine: no room for two peoples
• Palestine from the river to the sea

Photo: IDF Spokesperson

Human Rights Watch have released a report castigating Hamas for “violating the laws of war” by trying to harm civilians during Operation Pillar of Defense.

Armed Palestinian groups firing rockets at Israeli cities violated the laws of war during Operation Pillar of Defense, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Monday.

“Palestinian armed groups made clear in their statements that harming civilians was their aim,” said HRW’s Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson. “There is simply no legal justification for launching rockets at populated areas.”

The group also found that Gazan groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committee, justified targeting civilian centers as reprisal for Israeli strikes, an act also banned under international law.

The report also acknowledges what we have been saying for a long time: the terrorists fire rockets from densely populated neighborhoods, placing palestinian civilians in harms way. In other words, Hamas is culpable for their deaths.

Furthermore, such groups “repeatedly fired rockets from densely populated areas, near homes, businesses and a hotel, unnecessarily placing civilians in the vicinity at grave risk from Israeli counter- fire,” the report said.

The detailed report included examples of rockets being launched from densely populated areas in Gaza, and noted that groups fired from underground tunnels with hatches for the first time.

But the report contains some truly head scratch-inducing findings, like this:

HRW faulted Palestinian armed groups for failing to alert civilians or urge them to evacuate prior to launching rockets in their vicinity.

As the main political power in the Strip, the human rights group said, Hamas was responsible for reining in the behavior of other groups.

“As the ruling authority in Gaza, Hamas has an obligation to stop unlawful attacks and punish those responsible,” Whitson said.

Given Hamas is itself a terrorist organization which aims to kill as many Jews as possible, the idea they would alert Israeli civilians or urge them to evacuate prior to launching rockets, or punish other terror organizations for helping accomplish the same goal, is laughable.

And speaking of laughable, I now present to you Hamas’ response to the report.

Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, rejected the Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s claim about war crimes by Hamas, and stressed that the resistance group only targets Israeli soldiers in response to attacks on Palestinian civilians.

“Fighters of (Ezzedine) Al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas) target Israeli soldiers and bases but the Zionist enemy hides this and claims that our fighters are targeting civilians,” The spokesman of Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeideh, said on Tuesday.

Yet the very same Hamas spokesman only yesterday lauded the group’s achievements in targeting civilians!

Hamas’ armed wing on Monday hailed 2012 as the year that changed the rules of its confrontation with Israel.

“Though this distinction was not exclusive to this year, I can understand that its outcome appeared this year, namely by mid-November during the new battle as resistance made unprecedented achievements,” al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Ubayda told Ma’an

Abu Ubayda said sending rockets to populated areas of Israel was one of the group’s distinctive achievements of the year.

Update: Yosef points out that when HRW faults Palestinian armed groups for failing to alert civilians or urge them to evacuate prior to launching rockets in their vicinity, they are referring to palestinian civilians and not Israeli ones as I suggested. Duh, how did I miss that?

Update: Here is the actual report.

The report findings include:

• 178 palestinians were killed, of which 169 were identified.
• Of the 169 identified, 101 were terrorists and 68 civilians. That’s a ratio of 60% to 40% in favor of the terrorists, clearly at odds with the claims of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, well as those of the pro palestinian side.
• Of the vaporized terrorists, 71 belonged to Hamas, 17 to Islamic Jihad, 6 to the Popular Resistance Committee, 3 to our Fatah peace partners, 2 to Army of Islam, and 1 each to the PFLP and Salafists.
• 5 of the terrorists moonlighted as journalists, with 2 moonlighting as clerics
• The terrorist organizations publicized a reduced number of their own killed and inflated the number of civilians killed in order to promote the image of a glorious victory, as well as to defame Israel. Killing two birds with one stone, if you will.
• The palestinians added the names of those who died of other causes, in order to further vilify Israel

Note: Me, Judge Dan, and former Israellycool contributor Challah Hu Akhbar began the process of trying to identify the terrorists vs civilians a while back, but real life got in the way. I am really glad this report has come out, although it would have been even nicer had the IDF released a similar report way earlier.

Photo: Yaron Brener

A day after his 18th birthday, Muhammad Mafarji left a bag containing an explosive device on bus No. 142 which was traveling in Tel Aviv. About 10 minutes after the terrorist got off the bus, as it reached Shaul Hamelech Street, the device was activated.

Twenty-four people were injured in the bombing, which took place on the last day of Operation Pillar of Defense.

Mafarji was indicted Wednesday at the Tel Aviv District Court. The charges include multiple murder attempts, aiding the enemy during wartime, and conspiracy to commit a crime. The most serious charge of aiding the enemy could result in a life sentence.

According to the indictment, in the two months before the attack the culprit lived in his uncle’s house in Beit Lakiya while studying at Birzeit University near Ramallah. On the sixth day of the Israeli operation in Gaza, while shopping at a West Bank grocery shop, he expressed his desire to fight alongside Hamas activists in the Strip.

The store owner, Ahmed Mussa, asked him to come back later so he could guide him on how to fulfill his desire. He asked the young man to leave a bag on a bus as a trial.

On the eve of the attack, Mussa and Mafarji discussed the situation in Gaza and said they must stand by “the people dying there” and avenge the death of Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari. Mussa also asked Mafarji whether he knew any Israeli officials and promised to provide him with a gun to kill Israelis.

The Palestinian prepared the explosive device and handed it to the young man inside a bag with clothes. He drove him to the Kharbata checkpoint, where the culprit met with his manager at the McDonald’s restaurant in Modiin.

On the way there, Mafarji staged a phone call from his sick mother, pretended to cry and said he must get off at the Shilat Junction and go see her. After he got off the car, he took bus No. 111 to Tel Aviv.

He got off the bus in south Tel Aviv, moved to a different bus station, took a bus to north Tel Aviv and eventually got on bus No. 142 which was headed to Bat Yam. Before the bus reached its stop at the Diamond Exchange District in Ramat Gan, the terrorist pressed the button activating the explosive device and left the bag under the third seat on the right side of the bus.

Immediately after getting off the bus, he informed his operator.

When the bus reached the corner of Shaul Hamelech and Henrietta Szold streets opposite the Kirya base, Mussa activated the device through his cell phone, causing it to explode inside the bus, which was packed with dozens of passengers.

After the explosion, the culprit took a train from Tel Aviv to the city of Modiin and arrived at his workplace at 2 pm.

According to Prosecutor Hadas Forer-Gafni, “This is a very serious indictment. One of the serious charges is aiding the enemy at a time of war which could result in a life sentence, in addition to the other serious charges like attempted murder.”

A few “takeaways” from this story (yeah, pun intended):

• The terrorist who helped Mafarji was a grocery store owner (add that to the bakers, soccer players, and UNRWA teachers). Had he been killed in an Israeli operation, people would cry out “civilian.”
• McDonalds Modiin should seriously review its recruitment policy.
• Arabs have jobs in Israel! Apartheid, much?
• I call for the death sentence or, failing that, forcing him to live only off McDonalds for 5 years.