Toronto Star Retracts Bogus Claim That Most Of Gaza Dead Are Women And Children

 

The Toronto Star finally published a retraction to as bogus claim in one of its articles that the majority of dead in Gaza were women and children.

The article in question was written by Canadian 'Palestine' shill  Dr. Izzeldine Abuelaish on July 30th who wrote, ”At the moment of writing this article, some 1,359 Palestinians have lost their lives in the current conflict with Israel, mostly women and children, and some 7,677 have been severely wounded.”

Watchdog group Honest Reporting Canada called out this nonsense and also questioned Abuelaish’s credibility, after which The Star added the following notice to the column on its website:

“Clarification: Aug. 5, 2015: This article was edited from a previous version that said the Palestinians killed in Gaza were ‘mostly’ women and children. In fact, as now stated, it was ‘many’ women and children killed. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, as of July 31, 2014, a reported 345 children and 186 women were among 1,432 dead, 85 per cent of them civilians. Among the civilian casualties, 43.5 per cent were women and children. Among the total number of Palestinians killed, 39.5 per cent were women and children.”

Of course, those figures (from the so-called Palestinian Centre for Human Rights) are inflated as well. Something like 20-30 people per day die in Gaza of natural causes like old age, or maybe getting on the wrong side of a Hamas leader, but those will be included as 'war casualties'. And the percentage of civilians? Some other news sources have had something to say about that, even the BBC.

 

Al Jazeera, quoted the Hamas controlled Gaza Health Ministry on July 26 that 315 children and 166 females were among 1,361 dead and 6,780 injured in the Gaza Strip. The New York Times quoting the same Hamas controlled source reported on Aug. 5 that, “According to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 34 percent of those killed in Gaza from July 6-31 were children, women, elderly or female victims of an unknown age… since July 6: 429 under age 18, 79 over 60, 243 women.”

Meanwhile, the BBC cited a report from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that said that as of Aug. 6, 1,843 Palestinians had been killed since the start of Operation Protective Edge. Among the civilians, more than three times as many men were killed as women, according to the UN report.

Considering that Hamas don't exactly wear uniforms, how exactly does one tell combatants from civilians? And where exactly in the UN HCHR getting it's data? From that same Gaza Health Ministry? From UNRWA? And how many of these people were forced human shields, forbidden to leave an area by Hamas after the Israelis dropped leaflets and warned people to evacuate?

At any rate, I'm glad to see that the Star maintains at least a semblance of journalistic integrity.

 

Hamas Rockets Fall Short And Hit A School - So They Blame Israel!

 

Today an UNRWA school was hit in southern Gaza, killing at least 15 and wounding dozens of others.

The immediate reaction from the Arabs whom identify themselves as Palestinains and their various groupies was to bring out the bleeders and say 'look what those horrible Zionazi Jews did!'

Unfortunately for them, the IDF, which is doing a superb job of handling the media war this time was right on top of it. The school is in the Beit Hanoun area, where the IDF is engaged in combat with Hamas fighters. Here's the IDF spokesperson:

“During the afternoon a battle took place between Hamas terrorists and IDF forces in the Beit Hanoun area. Besides that, we indeed have indications that rockets fell in the vicinity, fired by Hamas from within Gaza in the Beit Hanoun vicinity,” the spokesman said.

The Israel Defense Forces has counted at least 100 rockets fired by Hamas as striking within Gaza.

“Have you heard? #Hamas are launching rockets at…..#Gaza over 100 times in 9 days,” IDF Spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, said last week.

Hamas rockets falling on Gaza are not at all an unknown occurrence:

 

An analysis by the always astute Elder of Ziyon showed that of the 192 rockets fired last Tuesday by Hamas and counted by the Gaza NGO Safety Office, the IDF said 122 rockets struck Israel and 26 were intercepted by the Iron Dome, leaving 44 Hamas rockets striking within Gaza.

 “Of course, 44 rockets can do a lot of damage and kill a lot of people. Reporters on the scene in Gaza have yet to talk about this or even admit the possibility that some of the casualties they are highlighting may have been killed quite directly by Hamas or other terror groups.”

Another possibility not being discussed by the UN for obvious reasons is the rockets setting off Hamas rockets and armaments stored within the school itself.  UNRWA has been caught several times storing Hamas rockets and arms within these schools during the conflict, a gross violation of international law.

Another reason journalists in Gaza aren't discussing this or any other information that deviates from what Hamas wants reported  is direct threats of violence  from Hamas. Even Palestinian reporters aren't necessarily protected if they work for anyone but the Pals own propaganda mills and don't parrot the party line. Link in French but here's a partial translation:

Correspondent Radjaa Abu Dagga for years divided his time between Paris, where his wife and son live, and Gaza, where his parents live and where he works. On 18 June, when he wanted to cross the Rafah border, an officer banned his way and took his passport like all Palestinians trying to cross into Egypt that day.

After four blocked attempts to leave Gaza without explanation over weeks, the Palestinian journalist was summoned by the security services of Hamas on Sunday. "I received a call from a private number. They summoned me to Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza City center, " explains Radjaa. He carried with him his two phones, his press card and a small camera.

A few meters from the emergency room where the injured from bombings are constantly flowing, in the outpatient department, he was received in "a small section of the hospital used as administration" by a band of young fighters. They were all well dressed, which surprised Radjaa, "in civilian clothing with a gun under one's shirt and some had walkie-talkies " . He was ordered to empty his pockets, removing his shoes and his belt then was taken to a hospital room "which served that day as the command office of three people."

A man begins his interrogation: "Who are you? Who do you call? What are you doing?" "I was very surprised by the procedure," admits Radjaa, who showed him his press card in response. Questions came. They asked if he speaks Hebrew, he has relations with Ramallah. Young Hamas supporters insistently ask the question: "Are you a correspondent for Israel?" Radjaa repeated that only works for French media and a chain of Algerian radio.

It was then that the three men delivered this message: "This is yours to choose. We are an executive administration. We will carry the message of Qassams. You have to stay at home and give us your papers. " Stunned to be covered by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, Radjaa tried to defend himself and especially to understand why such a decision was taken against him. In vain. "It is impossible to communicate with these people," laments the journalist.

He is not the first to undergo this kind of pressure and combatants in front of him did not hide. "They are enraged against the presidency and accused me of collaborating with Mahmoud Abbas," he says. Reporters Without Borders confirms that this is not an isolated case. The organization has indeed been alerted by the threats of Hamas against Palestinian and foreign journalists for their professional activities.

The parts emphasized show a little detail worth mentioning, caught by the Elder of Ziyon. The headquarters of Hamas' Izz-e-Dine-al-Qassam Brigades is located right next to the emergency room in Gaza City's Shifa hospital.

That's no accident. As I've mentioned earlier, Shifa Hospital is the main Hamas headquarters,rocket launching base  and weapons depot, and sits above the huge Hamas underground 'city where the tunnels terminate.

The UN has had nothing to say about this whatsoever, even though they just accepted Hamas/Fatah's application to join the Geneva Convention. They're busy, you see, condemning and investigating Israel.Nor will you see this in the New York Times, the openly anti-semitic Guardian, in the Washington Post or most other media outlets.

2013 World Press Photo of the Year Exposed As A Pallywood Fraud

The World Press Photo of the Year is the largest and most prestigious press photography award out there. This year, it was won by Paul Hansen, a Swedish staff photographer for the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter with the above entry, entitled 'Gaza Burial', supposedly taken November 20, 2012 by Hansen when he was in Gaza City when Israeli forces retaliated in response to Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli civilians.

Except the 'photo' itself is a product of major photoshop fraud, exposed by Neal Krawetz, a seasoned computer scientist and forensic image expert.

What Hansen did was to take a series of existing photos taken indifferent regions, times and places and splice in various parts of them to create the single shot shown above...and then 'enhance' them to clean up the obvious splicing and dicing:

There were two main stages to the analysis: First an interrogation of the JPEG’s XMP block, which details the file’s Photoshop save history, and then pixel-level error level analysis (ELA). To begin with, the XMP data shows that the original, base image was converted from Raw format and opened in Photoshop on November 20, 2012 (the same date that it was taken). Then, on January 4, 2013, the XMP block shows that a second Raw image was opened and added to the original. An hour later, a third image was spliced in. Finally, 30 minutes later the photo chimera was actually saved to disk. The January 4 date is interesting because it shows that the final photo was only edited a couple of weeks before the January 17 submission deadline, not soon after original photo was taken in Gaza — in other words, it was edited specifically for the contest.

The next step is error level analysis. ELA basically compares the error level of pixels that have been modified by the JPEG compression algorithm (low amounts of change), and pixels that have been modified with photo manipulation (higher change). In the image above, which has been subjected to ELA, we see clear markers that are consistent with the photo’s spliced-and-manipulated history. Regions that have only been subjected to normal JPEG compression should have faint red/blue patches, while white patches show areas that have been subject to other forces. The bright white edges are caused by Photoshop’s sharpening algorithm — but the other bright white regions are likely due to extensive manipulation. Take a look at the man on the far left, carrying the child’s feet — his magically, digitally illuminated face is clearly shown on the ELA map. In fact, almost every face in the picture has been brightened, as have the children’s shrouds.

The final nail in the coffin is good ol’ shadow analysis. At the time the photo was taken — 10:40am, in the winter — the sun should be fairly low in the sky. The shadows on the left wall are consistent with a sun location (shown below) that should cast deep, dark shadows on the mourners’ right sides — but, as you can see, those magical light rays seem to be at work again.

For some reason best known to themselves, the World Press Photo judges didn't subject Hanson's photo to any kind of forensic analysis. I have a feeling Israel Derangement Syndrome played a part here.

Not only that, but since this hit the fan, Hansen was supposed to provide the Raw file for his winning photo, as proof that he didn’t significantly modify it, but so far, he hasn’t.

Hansen hasn't been stripped of his award yet, and I have a feeling the World Press Photo people will do their very best to avoid doing so, out of embarrassment if nothing else.

None of this, by the way, means children weren't killed in Gaza. That tends to happen when the heroic Palestinian fighters use them for human shields to hide behind when they do their very best to deliberately target and kill Israeli children and civilians.

But 'Gaza Burial' is out and out Pallywood fakery, and certainly by no means the first one used to make propaganda to demonize Israel.They've been caught at it repeatedly.

By the way, Hansen's e-mail should you wish to express yourself to him directly is paul.hansen@dn.se

(H/T Hube at The Colossus of Rhodey)

UPDATE: The World Press Photo judges have predictably circled the wagons around Hansen to avoid embarrassment. They quickly released their own assessment with their own experts headed by an American scientist of Arab extraction who could, perhaps, be said to have an interest in the proceedings.

The verdict, of course is that while they admit that Hansen substantially edited the photos for what they call 'tone and color', the photo is 'mostly correct'. In other words, they're fake but accurate, in the immortal words of Dan Rather!

They further claim that Hansen submitted the raw file to them, something he's been unwilling to do to any independent experts.

Ah, well.Not unexpected.

Israel Could Avoid Mistakes With Security Prisoners That Help Its Enemies

As a country that has been uniquely targeted by terrorism, Israel (which has no capital punishment) has ended up with a fair amount of what are termed 'security prisoners' on its hands. Almost all of them have been tried and convicted in Israeli criminal courts and all been represented by counsel and given rights they could expect nowhere else in the Middle East.

Many of them have been convicted of terrorist assaults on civilians that turn the stomach with their brutality and callousness. Yet the Palestinian Authority continues to insist that these 'holy martyrs' ( PA leader Mahmoud Abbas' term for them) be freed as part of any peace settlement, and the PA ups the ante by demonstrating its support for terrorism by continuing to pay salaries to these men and their families.

The latest one to hit the news is one Arafat Jaradat. He was a 30-year-old member of the Al-Aksa Brigade awaiting trial after being arrested for throwing stones at Israeli civilians and security personnel during a riot.He had apparently sustained an injury from being hit by rubber bullets and had received treatment by Israeli medics.

Arafat Jaradat passed away while being held in Meggido Prison. The Israelis say his death was due to heart failure, and invited the Palestinians to examine the body themselves. Needless to say, the Palestinians used this opportunity to claim that Jaradat had been 'tortured to death', make a martyr out of him and give him a full heroes' funeral to gin up further violence directed against Israel.

Of course, the UN, which has done nothing about actual rape, torture and even extrajudicial killings in places like Egypt,the Sudan, Iran and yes, Gaza and the Palestinian Authority was on this like flies on dog droppings, calling for 'an independent inquiry' into the death at the Palestinian's instigation. This, of course lends a miasma of authenticity to stories from the usual suspects claiming that Jaradat 'died under Israeli torture.'

One could mention a number of logical reasons why this is sheer Arab fantasy. Jaradat was, in terms of the sort of people usually jailed by Israel a small fish, so there was no need to interrogate him at all, let alone allow the Palestinians to examine the body if the Israelis had tortured him.

The Israelis did it, yet again, out of a totally misplaced inclination of fair play and transparency that never fails to get them into trouble with these particular actors.

There's a much better way to deal with these situations.

When Israel was faced with trying to get back the remains of two IDF soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev who had been abducted by Hezbollah, the UN, which supposedly was conducting a peacekeeping operation did nothing and said nothing. The bodies weren't returned to Israel, they were swapped for the freedom of terrorist killers, including Samir Kuntar, who murdered Israeli civilian Danny Haran in front of his four-year-old daughter Einat so that was the last thing she ever saw and then smashed her skull in with his rifle butt. Kuntar, by the way, was feted by the Palestinian Authority upon his release, and has been made an Honorary Palestinian Citizen.

After Kuntar was released and the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers were opened, both of them showed obvious signs of torture and had been mutilated.

There is something here for the Israelis to learn.

First, the Israelis need to understand that no matter what, the Arabs are going to be willing to lie, fabricate, dissemble and perpetuate fraud in order to score victories with the already committed enemies of the Jewish State and their gullible dupes. Remember the Jenin 'massacre'? Gaza Beach Blanket Bingo? Mohammed al-Doura? I could cite literally dozens of others.

The Israelis should have known what was going to happen the minute they allowed the Palestinians to examine Jaradat's body and how the PA was going to make use of it the Israelis released it to them.

It would have been far, far better if they had simply done their own in depth, videotaped autopsy, filed it away somewhere and then treated the body to a nice quiet and anonymous burial.

They would thus have denied the PA a 'martyr'. And if the UN decided to intervene, the Israelis could simply allow them examine and view (but not remove) the records of the autopsy.

If the PA wanted the remains back that badly, the Israelis should bargain hard and make them give up major concessions for it.

The PA and Hamas shouldn't be given the tools to make propaganda. And as for the convicted murderers already in Israeli prisons, the monthly salaries the PA sends them and the tax monies Israel collects on the PA's behalf ought to be expropriated by Israel to pay for these prisoner's room and board.

Getting hit in the wallet might actually provide an incentive for the PA to end its support of terrorism against Israelis.

A Mosque Burns - Or Did It?

A rather large story in the Middle East concerns a mosque that was vandalized in the village of Yasuf, south of Nablus.

Apparently there was Hebrew graffiti scribbled on the mosque designed to point the finger at nearby Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria...namely Jews in the nearby community of Tapuah.

As you can imagine, this turned into a major Islamo-seethe fest, with widespread condemnations and threats. The Organization of Islamic Conference(OIC) called for 'international intervention' to protect the poor peaceful Palestinians from those wicked Joos. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas and their sympathizers in the West, who constantly sob about Israeli retaliations for terrorist attacks on Israel's civilians as 'collective punishment' called on the UN to punish Israel for what Mahmoud Abbas called 'a disgraceful crime'. And Islamic organizations and clergy went predictably berserk.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and most of the rest of the Israeli leadership fell right in line and also condemned the mosque attack. The Israeli government instructed the authorities to act swiftly in order to catch the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

And a number of Rabbis donated Qu'rans, met with the village elders of Yasuf and pledged to help rebuild the burned mosque...although their reception was somewhat less than cordial, which says a great deal. In fact, the whole tone of the villagers to this peaceful gesture was to reiterate how they need all the Jews - AKA "settlers"- gone and out of the way. So much for living peacefully together.

While I understand the Israeli's reaction, I think they were a little bit too quick to buy into the Arab narrative - and not for the first time.

Any factual proof that it was Jews that did this and that it’s not just another in a long line of Pallywood Productions?

Uh..no.

And it's also highly suspicious that there are no leads at all four days later, that the building itself was merely vandalized just enough to garner publicity and was easily restored to use, that the only things damaged were Qu'rans and prayer rugs and that the Palestinian Authority moved in almost as soon as the all important pictures were taken to clean things up. And incidentally, destroy any evidence that might have been found by Israel's Shin Bet.

Those silly Jews! They can't even do a mosque destruction properly and are in serious need of lessons in desecrating religious shrines from people who know what they're doing..like the Palestinians.

This mosque incident may be a mystery, but we know very well beyond a shadow of a doubt who burnt the synagogues in Gaza to the ground after the Jews left,who destroyed 28 historic Synagogues in Jerusalem and used the tombstones of the historic Jewish cometary as pavement during the Jordanian Arab occupation, who desecrated the tomb of Joshua, Rachel's tomb and Joseph's tomb, the Yeshiva in Homesh and the Cave of the Patriarchs.

For that matter, we know who invaded and trashed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and is disinterring Christian bodies wholesale in Gaza too.

Some things are better left to experts.

Ever see the OIC, the PA or any other Arab/ Muslim group say anything about these little items, let alone try to investigate to see who did it and bring them to justice as Israel is? Absolutely not.

And this is hardly unique to the Palestinians. Violence towards non-Muslims and the destruction and desecration of their religious books and shrines is characteristic of virtually every area controlled by Islam or situated on Islam's aptly named 'bloody borders.' From Mumbai to Beslan, from Nigeria to Pakistan to Indonesia, non-Muslims, their religious edifices, their relics and their Holy books are a target.

For all the constant Muslim whining about intolerance and Islamophobia, it is overwhelmingly Islam and many of its adherents that are the major culprits when it comes to religious bigotry and violence..because for the most part, Islam simply doesn't play well with others. And based on their responses to these atrocities, most organized Muslim groups and religious leaders apparently couldn't care less.

I don't know who did this and I don't advocate torching mosques or any other religious shrines. But given the Palestinian track record on such matters, I'm reserving judgment until I see proof this wasn't done by the Arabs themselves. It's exactly the sort of scam they've pulled in the past.

I think there's a very good chance this is what amounts to politically motivated arson. But even if it wasn't, It's difficult for me to get too worked up about an empty mosque getting vandalized, although I don't condone it in the least. Since a significant number of Palestinians appear to glory in violence and have no respect for other people's religions or holy places, I don't think they have much of a claim on anyone's sympathy if they were on the receiving end for a change instead doing it to others.

There's a useful lesson to be learned here. Tolerance is as tolerance does, after all.