Whatever is Old is New Again

"Hamas, the terrorist group controlling Gaza, endeavors to turn Israel’s military superiority to its own advantage by portraying the Israeli response to intense rocket and mortar fire as disproportionate and indiscriminate. In doing so, it hopes to turn public opinion against the Jewish state, as well as bolster its own standing at the expense of the Fatah-led Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank. 

Fatality figures provided by Hamas and other groups should be viewed with suspicion. Not only do Israeli figures cast doubt on claims that the vast majority of fatalities are non-combatants, but a careful review of Palestinian sources also raises doubts.

Analyses of the casualties listed in the daily reports published by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, a Gaza-based organization operating under Hamas rule, indicate that young males ages 17 to 30 make up a large portion of the fatalities, and a particularly noticeable spike occurs between males ages 21 to 27, a pattern consistent with the age distribution typically found among combatants and military conscripts. Palestinian sources attempt to conceal this discrepancy with their public message by labeling most of these young men as civilians. Only a minority is identified as members of armed groups.

We have seen this before. A similar dispute over casualty figures occurred during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip in January 2009. The Israelis contended that the majority of the fatalities were combatants; the Palestinians claimed they were civilians. The media and international organizations tended to side with the Palestinians."

Steven Stotsky, Time Magazine, July 29, 2014 

 Smoke rises from a building following the Israeli attacks in Gaza City on July 25, 2014.   Anadolu Agency—Getty Images

The more things change and time marches on, the more we realize that nothing has really changed. The world has been treated to the spectacle of conflict between the State of Israel and Palestinian terrorists claiming to be victims of Israeli aggression and occupation when in fact it has been made clear from the very earliest days of Israel's existence to the present, that the aggression and the violence emanates from the Palestinian contingent living next door to Israel, forcing Israel to maintain vigilance the PA characterizes as 'occupation', merely to protect its population from never-ending lethal violence.

From time to time, the suicide bombings and stabbings and vehicular homicides give way to actual combat when Israel has been provoked one time too  often. Palestinian terror groups have become quite sophisticated in manipulating Western audiences to believe their fantasy of victimhood, to take as gospel whatever slanderous allegations of 'genocidal' intent lobbed against Israel, pointing to the high death rate of children and women as a result of the Hamas propensity to use them as human shields. Placing rocket launchers in close proximity to schools, hospitals and mosques, inviting a response that will detonate in crowded civilian areas is a specialty of Hamas.

 

Their statements of civilian losses, always inflated, always geared toward building a case of 'war crimes' against Israel by claiming women and children are dying in massive droves, hide the fact that it is Hamas that is responsible for their deaths, that they instead make attributable through their media manipulation to Israel, deliberately and directly aiming at the destruction of Palestinian children and women. This strategy, as baldly manipulative as it is, is grasped as truthful by Western legacy media without question.

There is something about Israel that makes it so very special -- the the very specialness that it is a tiny country devoted to the preservation of Judaism and Jewry, surrounded by hostile neighbours who take no pleasure in a Jewish state living amongst the majority Sunni Arab population of the Middle East. At a time when finally, those neighbours are at last grudgingly coming around to accepting Israel's presence, the Palestinian terror groups are frantic to destroy any opportunities for Arab-Jewish rapprochement. 

And while it is becoming increasingly clear that the Arab Sunni states recognize and have no real wish to continue working alongside the depraved destabilization of Palestinian politics, the West continues to be fallible to the lies and slanders, accepting them at face value; giving credence to the outlandish claims of terrorist groups which they themselves list as such, against the proven credibility of proof through evidence and intelligence emanating from a reliably-lawful Democratic-liberal state whose system of justice is second to none, and whose military is known to be the most moral among its peers.

The Time Magazine article, a decade old, published during a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas, analyzes just that; the propensity of Western media (and their governments) to credit a pathological terrorist group with honestly revealing the truth, while giving short shrift to the honour-clad recounting of events and statistics arrived at by a legitimate state. 

 

"Here's the problem with this data: the numbers are not real. While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers", concluded Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at University of Pennsylvania of his study of Gaza health ministry reports, uncovering anecdotal evidence of Hamas exploiting Western credulity.

The article cited at the top, published ten years ago, is well worth the read to verify how gullible Western media is to the cynical and totally out of whack statistics fed to them by the 'media arm' of Palestinian terrorists: https://time.com/3035937/gaza-israel-hamas-palestinian-casualties/   Steven Stotsky is a senior analyst with The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a U.S.-based group that monitors the news media for what it considers to be anti-Israel bias.

"The military leader of Hamas has said he believes he has gained the upper hand over Israel and that the spiralling civilian death toll in Gaza would work in the militant group’s favor, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing leaked messages the newspaper said it had seen."

"“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Yahya Sinwar told other Hamas leaders recently, according to one of the messages, the WSJ reported Monday. In another, Sinwar is said to have described civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices” while citing past independence-related conflicts in "countries like Algeria."

The WSJ said it reviewed dozens of messages sent to ceasefire negotiators from Sinwar, who has not been seen in public since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel left 1,200 people dead and another 250 taken hostage. The ensuing Israeli assault aimed at eliminating the group has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians in the strip, according to health authorities there."

 Mostafa Salem and Kylie Atwood, CNN

Hamas' Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar.

Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images