17-Aug-14: Hamas sources that disclose what Hamas is hiding: available for whoever wants to find them

Illustrative image from Shijaiyah, Gaza City, of the kind that has
blanketed the global media coverage of the Hamas war
waged from Gaza: massive destruction of buildings,
and nothing but civilians in sight. Combatants dead or alive? Look
elsewhere [Image Source: APA]

It's possible the carnage and destruction that Gaza has endured under Hamas is over for now.

Or not: tonight's reports indicate the Hamas leadership - most of them based away from Gaza in luxurious accommodations - are ready, willing and very publicly anxious for more. See "Hamas rejects Egypt ceasefire terms, vows ‘continued struggle’" [Times of Israel, August 16, 2014], as a vivid illustration.

Against that background, we're still waiting for mainstream reporters and their editors at major news-industry channels to finally be upfront and open (i.e. to do what their professional code of ethics requires them to do) about what is known of the Hamas battlefield strategy, in particular as it pertains to (a) Gaza civilian casualties versus combatant casualties and (b) the appetite of the jihadists for more and more and more.

If they lack for source materials, we would like to direct their attention (as one small example among many) to Al-Monitor whose website tonight carries a revealing article translated to excellent English from the original Arabic. It's entitled "Is Hamas' tunnel network still intact?", and broadly speaking the answer is yes. The author is a Gaza based academic, the head of one of the faculties as well as something called the "Press and Information Section" at Gaza's Al Ummah University. Some direct quotes:

• [Hamas] field commander Abu Jihad told Al-Monitor, “Israel’s allegations that it destroyed the tunnel network are inaccurate and aimed at local consumption to reassure Israelis that the war was progressing well. To determine the truth, all they have to do is embark on a wide-scale ground offensive in Gaza, for we have prepared a wide array of tunnels 5-25 meters [16-82 feet] deep, which allow our fighters to move about the battleground undetected. 
• It is true that Israel destroyed a number of those tunnels, but the strategic ones are undamaged and have retained their full logistical capacity, in as far as available water supply, food, weapons, ventilation systems and electricity.”
• ...Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, demonstrated resilience against the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip in the latest war, and their officials say they still have the military capabilities to continue the fight. 
• It is interesting to note that, in this war, unlike the previous wars in 2008 and 2012, the al-Qassam Brigades [i.e. Hamas] did not divulge the names and numbers of its dead, nor did they allude to them in any way, except through unofficial activist posts and pictures on Facebook. It is well known, however, that they number in the dozens, with medical sources in Gaza confirming to Al-Monitor that corpses in uniform were brought to hospitals.
• ...Rescue workers were still removing the bodies of fighters and those who died when Israel targeted their homes in various areas of Gaza, without any mention of the approximate number of martyrs. Some fighters who went on patrol have yet to return home, because it was only logical that dozens would fall in this confrontation where Israel targeted homes.

So - a Hamas source that says Hamas is hiding its combatants, hiding its casualties, hiding the strategic tunnels (some of which are known to be underneath Al-Shifa Hospital) and ready to keep fighting irrespective of the price paid in human lives and desperation of the powerless Gazan population whose lives are controlled by the Islamists of Hamas.

Do the dots have to be joined before information of this kind [and this kind too: "Top 9 facts the media wouldn't tell you about Hamas"] appears in our major newspapers and evening news programs?

Why exactly is that?

UPDATE 12:40 am Sunday: See What Happened to the Press in Gaza?, Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary Magazine, today.

3-Aug-14: Does intimidation of news reporters work? The thugs of Hamas can answer that

Some of Al Jazeera's eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza [Image Source]

It's long been said that history is written by the victors. Perhaps Winston Churchill said it, and perhaps not, but in the on-line age of blogs, Twitter and YouTube it's plainly no longer true. Even the terrorists - among other losers - can write history, leaving the rest of us to figure out whose narrative we want to accept.

A news report this morning about Qatar - owner and operator of Al Jazeera, aspiring Middle East peace broker, provider of jet travel services to Ban Ki-Moon, and major source of finance for the terrorism of Hamas - got us thinking (and Tweeting) about the larger issues of news reporting in time of war and the influence that fear and intimidation play in what does and does not reach news consumers around the world.

"Qatar’s emir has phoned UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to express his anger that the United Nations blamed Hamas for breaking Friday’s ceasefire, Al-Jazeera reports. Speaking with Ban, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said he was astonished that the UN would blame Hamas without first verifying the facts. Al-Thani, considered a Hamas backer despite attempts to broker a ceasefire, called on the UN to come out clearly against Israel. A 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire announced by the UN and US State Department fell apart shortly after it began Friday morning, when Hamas fighters attacked a group of Israeli soldier working to dismantle a tunnel it says was built for terror attacks, killing three. At the time, Ban’s office released a statement saying he “condemns in the strongest terms the reported violation by Hamas of the mutually agreed humanitarian ceasefire which commenced this morning. He is shocked and profoundly disappointed by these developments." Source: ”Hamas threatening journalists in Gaza who expose abuse of civilians [Times of Israel, July 28, 2014]: 

We tweeted:

Then we went searching online for indications that thoughtful people see this and are troubled by it. We found Daniel Schwammenthal, head of the AJC Transatlantic Institute in Brussels and formerly a writer at the Wall Street Journal Europe, who tackled this in an article published by The Commentator ["Fear and trembling: Western media and Hamas"] on August 1, 2014. In it, he observed:

We are all aware of the wilful blindness of Western media when reporting on Hamas in Gaza. Though it's no excuse, what may not be so clear is that many of the journalists are also terrified of telling the truth... Whatever the reason is for today’s miscoverage - fear, ignorance or bias - we are not getting the true picture from Gaza... Occasionally, though, the truth slips out, often almost accidentally. 

He then offers some disturbing examples:

• A report on an earlier broken Hamas/Israel ceasefire includes the disclosure in paragraph seven that Gaza City's Shifa Hospital had “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Schwammenthal says this is reported "almost in passing, without further analysis. It seem neither the journalist nor his editors realized the enormity of this information. The leadership of one of the warring parties is hiding in a hospital, a clear war crime validating Israeli accusations. But instead of this becoming headline news, triggering further reporting by other journalists, we get nothing but silence". Source: “While Israel held its fire, the militant group Hamas did not”, Washington Post July 15, 2014.
• He brings "one of the rare instances the media bothered to detail to what extraordinary length Israel goes to protect Palestinian civilians". It's a NYTimes piece in which an ordinary Gazan by the name of Salah Kaware "tells the reporter that he received a personal call from Israel urging him to leave the building. The second paragraph contains this bombshell: “’Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,’” he said, with some even going to the roof to prevent a bombing.” Amazingly, the reporter did not take further note of this incredible admission from a Palestinian, which again validates Israeli accusations usually treated with much skepticism." Source: “Israel Warns Gaza Targets by Phone and Leaflet”, New York Times, July 8, 2014.
• On July 28, NBC News (among many others) reported on a "strike" at the Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. Quoting a Palestinian "health official" as well as a Palestinian resident of the area at length, the story describes the deaths of "at least 10 people, including children". And while it pays some minor attention to the IDF's version, the weight of the story is about children playing in a crowded street until they are tragically killed by the Israelis. "Hamas later text messaged a statement to journalists, blaming the IDF — and alleged they had proof of Israeli responsibility... Early reports from the ground had said an Israeli drone appeared responsible for the attack... "May God punish... Netanyahu," he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu." A statement by a notorious Hamas "spokesperson" is prominently featured. Then the following day, July 29, an Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati, sends out this tweet: “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.” Barbati's close-to-the-scene report corroborates the results of the Israeli investigation which found that the deaths came from yet another Palestinian Arab rocket that fell short; instead of killing their intended civilian targets in Israel, it killed still more Palestinian Arab civilians, children among them. He also tweeted, “@IDFSpokesperson said truth in communique released yesterday about Shati camp massacre. It was not #Israel behind it.”
• He brings the case of a Palestinian Arab journalist, Radjaa Abou Dagga. His article in the French newspaper Libération, published July 23, 2014, substantiates those other accounts of reporters bring cowed by Hamas intimidation. In his case, this lead the reporter to flee Gaza. He too says Hamas terrorists work from inside Gaza's Shifa Hospital, right next to the emergency room, as the Washington Post had reported. Dagga then asked that his revelatory article be removed from the Libération website, evidently because of fears for the well-being of his family still in Gaza. Source: Liberation (French), July 24, 2014
• Schwammenthal refers to other instances of Western journalists removing Hamas-critical tweets without explanation, and still others who "have been prevented by Hamas from leaving Gaza." Other observers [here, here, here, here and many other places on the web] have raised similar concerns.

We also recall the notorious matter of Ricardo Cristiano. An Italian TV crew, working for the RAI station, captured an especially gruesome attack on video in Ramallah in 2000 that resulted in two Israelis being literally torn to pieces and murdered. They sent this, the only existing visual record of the horrifying Palestinian Arab lynch mob, to Rome from where it shocked audiences throughout the world. Then the fear and intimidation kicked in. Cristiano, RAI's representative in Jerusalem, sent a groveling letter of apology to Arafat, pledging to "respect" the "rules" laid down by the Palestinian Authority, assuring the arch-terrorist that his station never again do such an act or otherwise harm the Palestinian cause, and reaffirming his personal solidarity with the Palestinians. This caused uproar in Italy, and led to his subsequent recall to Rome. But plainly (and the evidence since then confirms) there cannot have been a single journalist working the Middle East beat who failed to draw the obvious conclusions.

Schwammenthal steps back from the specific facts and asks whether journalists working "under the constant threat from Hamas" are “self-censoring” themselves, and therefore censoring the news reports and images that we get. He asks: Is this why we don’t see coverage of Hamas terrorists firing rockets from civilian areas, the use of human shields and other war crimes?

Times of Israel reported on Friday ["The images missing from the war with Hamas"] that photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances - like those of Hamas terror operatives preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, fighting in civilian clothing - were bullied and threatened by Hamas men who confiscated their equipment. An L.A. Times slideshow of more than 75 photographs from the conflict includes not a single image of a Hamas fighter [source]. An Israeli official quoted there says what might not be already obvious:

“Walking around Gaza with a camera and asking people what they think is not like walking around New York or London. People are not free to say their true opinions. It’s a bit like asking Syrians in government-controlled areas of Damascus if they like President [Bashar] Assad.”

Even so, it's disturbing that too few of the many working journalists now covering Gaza from inside seem to be asking the sorts of incisive questions we expect from their profession. 

We mean questions like those set out in an invaluable posting on the Harry's Place website two days ago: "40 questions for the international media in Gaza". And we mean the intelligent, unfiltered observations (and photos and videos) like those that show gunmen and rocketeers and some of the thousands of Hamas and PIJ fighters whose exploits they regale. 

Having those would go some way towards enabling the rest of us to reach reasonably-founded conclusions about what's really happening in that dark and dangerous place. 

For the record, at the New York Times, they now claim they don't have any pictures of Hamas fighters. It's a stance that deserves much closer scrutiny.

1-Aug-14: Reporting from a Gaza hospital, European reporter confirms what mainstream media prefer not to say about Hamas and human shields

Crowd throngs outside Al Shifa hospital, Gaza City,
November 2012 [Image Source]

When mainstream news media sites find it difficult to figure which of two sides - one, a terrorist regime with a long record of inventing, obscuring and denying facts; the other, a democratic government with a vibrant and unstoppable journalism sector and a robust and completely open political culture - is lying, something fishy is happening.

TIME Magazine's non-committal review of what happened this week at a certain medical facility in rocket-rich Gaza ["Israel and Hamas traded blame..."] is one of many fresh exemplars of this failure of common sense and of journalistic ethics. There is a long, depressing list of others.

Al-Shifa Hospital (Al-Shifa means "healing" in Arabic) is Gaza's main hospital. Originally an army barracks for the British when they ruled the area prior to 1948, it was transformed into a medical center during the Mandate, but on a limited scale as a center for the treatment of febrile diseases and for purposes of quarantine. Israel took control of Gaza in 1967 after blunting Egypt's unsuccessful aggression. During the 1980's, according to Wikipedia, it underwent major renovation as part of Israel's efforts to provide hugely improved living and medical conditions for the chronically-neglected Gazan Arabs.

Israel abandoned the Gaza Strip in 2005, and soon afterwards it fell under the jackboot of the Islamists of Hamas. Wikipedia describes what happened next:

Hamas used Al-Shifa hospital as bunker and refuge, knowing it will be spared by air-strikes. Ahmed Jabari hid there during the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict... Hamas members have taken control of wards in Shifa Hospital... using them for interrogation and imprisonment, while withholding medical care.

During mid-July 2014, after the current Gaza war had gotten underway, the reality of today's Shifa was captured in an eye-witness article published in one of the world's leading newspapers:

At the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, crowds gathered to throw shoes and eggs at the Palestinian Authority’s health minister, who represents the crumbling “unity government” in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The minister was turned away before he reached the hospital, which has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices [Washington Post, July 14, 2014]

Reinforcing the point, Nick Casey of the Wall Street Journal tweeted this photo of a Hamas official unabashedly using Shifa Hospital for his media interviews:

A reporter for Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki Times), Aishi Zidan, has now revealed on camera, and in the clearest way, that the terrorist forces of Hamas are firing rockets from the hospital. (YouTube has a sub-titles option; to see the English-language translation, make sure the option is selected on your computer.)

Brave young woman, given what we know ["Italian Reporter Reveals Hamas Cover-Up Over Misfired Rockets", Israel National News, July 30, 2014; "Trapped in Gaza: How Hamas punishes reporters for the truth", The Australian, July 31, 2014] about the tolerance of Hamas for open, honest reporting. We hope she has managed to get out of Gaza by now. (Hat tip to Aussie Dave and to Tundra Tabloids.)

UPDATE Sunday August 3, 2014: And here's a reporter who became aware of Hamas' tactics a moment too late for the story she was filling:

9-Jan-09: Quick - sit down, shake hands and make peace with these people

This ghastly vignette appears in today's New York Times. What more do outsiders need to know than this, when asking themselves and us the question: "Why not sit down and talk peace with the Hamas Gazans?"

January 9, 2009
Fighter Sees His Paradise in Gaza’s Pain
By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
GAZA CITY — The emergency room in Shifa Hospital is often a place of gore and despair. On Thursday, it was also a lesson in the way ordinary people are squeezed between suicidal fighters and a military behemoth.
Dr. Awni al-Jaru, 37, a surgeon at the hospital, rushed in from his home here, dressed in his scrubs. But he came not to work. His head was bleeding, and his daughter’s jaw was broken... A car arrived with more patients. One was a 21-year-old man with shrapnel in his left leg who demanded quick treatment. He turned out to be a militant with Islamic Jihad. He was smiling a big smile.
“Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting,” he told the doctors.
He was told that there were more serious cases than his, that he needed to wait. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.
“Why are you so happy?” this reporter asked. “Look around you.”
A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.
“Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.
“But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of armed-to-the-teeth fanatics like the "militant" of this article sit on our country's borders. Those who urge their "peace" proposals on Israel while ignoring this satanic reality are thoughtless, pointless and a dangerous diversion. This man and his opinions are the enemy of not only us in this ongoing war.

12-Mar-08: Making children, saving children - stories you don't see

The item below appears in this week's edition of Spiegel, the German news magazine. It's translated to English, and shows familiar events in a rarely-seen light. Don't pass this along to those who believe there's a Zionist plot to perform genocide on the Palestinian Arabs. Poor dears, they won't have a clue how to deal with this reality.

BORN IN ISRAEL: Palestinian Twins Under Rocket Fire from Gaza
Christoph Schult in Ashkelon

When a Palestinian woman gave birth to twins in an Israeli hospital she experienced what it is like to be the target of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

The humming noise in the sky over Beit Lahia grows slowly louder. It sounds as if the buzzing of a hornet were being amplified by loud speakers in a football stadium. Residents of the Gaza Strip call them "Sannana," or the humming ones, the small unmanned drones that the Israelis use to scan the border region for rocket commandos -- and then to liquidate them with precisely targeted missiles.

Ashraf Shafii has climbed onto the roof his house and is looking across strawberry fields toward the border wall. The smoke-belching towers of the power plant in the Israeli city of Ashkelon jut into the sky along the horizon. His wife is over there in Ashkelon today.

Shafii, a 34-year-old lab technician at the Islamic University of Gaza, glances at his six-year-old daughter. "We were so desperate to have more children," he says. For years, he waited in vain for his wife to bear a son. When she turned 30, the couple decided to get fertility treatment.
Iman Shafii finally became pregnant. During an ultrasound examination, doctors discovered four small embryos. The first died in the fifth month of pregnancy and the second died a few weeks later. Shafii was admitted to the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, but the condition of the two remaining embryos became increasingly fragile. "You have to go to Israel," the doctor told her.

Because Israel refuses to engage in any contact with the authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza, patients turn to private brokers who submit their entry applications to the Palestinian Authority of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. But it can be a lengthy process.

The Shafiis were lucky. Iman was permitted to enter Israel after only 24 hours. She took a taxi to a spot near the Erez border crossing, and then she was pushed in a wheelchair across the last 500 meters of bumpy ground. She reached the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon just in time. She gave birth on Feb. 25, by Caesarean section, to a girl, Bayan, and to the couple's long-awaited son, Faisal.

Iman Shafii, 32, wearing a headscarf and oval glasses, and speaking in a soft voice, sits on a chair between two incubators. Today is the first day she is permitted to hold her babies in her arms. A nurse brings out the boy first, then the girl. As the tears well up in her eyes, Shafii kisses her children on their foreheads. "If the children had stayed in Gaza, they would not have survived," she says.

Her only impression of Israel has been the one she gets on Palestinian television, which usually shows tanks and soldiers, and celebrates attacks, like the recent shooting inside a Talmud school in Jerusalem, as acts of heroism. But now a doctor wearing a yarmulke walks into the room, says "Shalom" and asks her in English how she is feeling.

Dr. Shmuel Zangen, the director of the hospital's neo-natal unit, doesn't care who he treats. "As a doctor, I enjoy the privilege of not having to think about it," he says. "It certainly is odd that we take care of Palestinian children while they shoot at us. It's the sort of thing that only happens in the Middle East."

'Not a Just War'
In the past, Shafii saw the Israelis exclusively as perpetrators, but in Ashkelon she is encountering, for the first time, victims of the acts of terror committed by her own people. One of them is nine-year-old Yossi, who is sitting in a wheelchair. A steel frame holds his left shoulder together. It was fractured by shrapnel from a rocket that landed in the city of Sderot. "The people in Sderot are suffering just as we are in Gaza," she says.

There was a sharp increase in the Palestinian rocket attacks after Israel cleared the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip in September 2005. The Israeli military counted 2,305 hits last year, and there have already been 1,146 in the first two months of this year. Until now, almost all of the missiles have been Qassam rockets, which are made in the Gaza Strip and have a range of about 12 kilometers (seven miles).

But the breaching of the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Egypt by Hamas in January made it possible to bring in Russian and Iranian rockets with longer ranges. This means that cities considered safe in the past are now threatened. One of them is Ashkelon. On the second day after the birth of Bayan and Faisal, a Soviet-made "Grad" rocket landed on the hospital grounds. "I heard it hit, 200 meters away from me," says Shafii. The neonatal unit was moved to a bunker the next day. "The groups that are firing the rockets are not fighting a just war," says the Palestinian mother, adding that they are not abiding by what the Prophet Muhammad said: that wars may only be waged between soldiers, but not against civilians.

The buzzing drone in the sky over Beit Lahia has flown away to the south. The sound of an Israeli missile striking its target can be heard a short time later. Within a few minutes, there are reports that a member of the group Islamic Jihad was killed.

Ashraf Shafii describes how young, masked men repeatedly set up their rocket launchers under the cover of houses in Beit Lahia. "They shoot at Israeli civilians, which is completely unacceptable," says Shafii. "And they put us Palestinian civilians in grave danger, because the Israelis shoot back."

Why doesn't he object? "They are armed," says Shafii, "and they shoot at anyone who gets in their way."

The father is holding the first photos of his newborn twins in his hands. He is worried about the rockets being fired at Ashkelon. He says that he would never have believed it possible that he could be indebted to the Israelis for anything. "What a confusing situation," he says.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan