eyecatching_photo.jpg
That was my attention-grabbing headline.

On the right is an eye catching photo to add additional interest and variety to the post. By the way, that swimsuit is available for sale at Newport News for a very reasonable $29-$32. I get no reward for driving traffic their way and just hope they don’t get upset at my borrowing their image.

Here’s the original prose: Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Int’l have both criticized Israel’s conduct in this war using the terms “war crimes.” Unfortunately, both of these organizations with long-standing and overt bias against Israel (how did they vote at Durban? That’s right, inexcusably) have taken their campaign against Israel to its logical conclusion which is that no matter how Israel fights a war, it is doing so inappropriately and in violation of war crimes laws. In fact, according to these two groups, there really is no way for Israel to fight against its enemies. Period.

Here’s a link to an article where Alan Dershowitz speaks to this issue at some length: sexy article.

Here’s the enticing quote to encourage you, dear reader, to visit the article, even if I and Jewlicious get no reward of any kind from the J Post for driving traffic their way:

The two principal “human rights” organizations are in a race to the bottom to see which group can demonize Israel with the most absurd legal arguments and most blatant factual mis-statements. Until last week, Human Rights Watch enjoyed a prodigious lead, having “found” – contrary to what every newspaper in the world had reported and what everyone saw with their own eyes on television – “no cases in which Hizbullah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.”

Those of us familiar with Amnesty International’s nefarious anti-Israel agenda and notoriously “suggestible” investigative methodology wondered how it could possibly match such a breathtaking lie.

And here’s the pithy conclusion by The Middle: Folks, just because it seems these days that some of us are attacking numerous news outlets, politicians, diplomats, diplomatic institutions, and NGOs for their bias towards Israel does not mean that we are wrong and they are right. Despite some mistakes and even some actions that are reprehensible, Israel fought this war for the most part with positive moral and ethical judgement, especially considering the enemy’s strategic use of civilian areas.

Pithier tag line: Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

Thank you for reading,
The Middle

About the author

themiddle

19 Comments

  • “(CNN) — Amnesty International Thursday released a scathing report accusing Hezbollah of war crimes, during a month-long war with Israel.”

  • Oh yes. I don’t know if Finnish looks at Little Green Footballs blog but they have a lot of documentation about “faux-tography”, faking, doctored pictures, baloney and assorted lies and disinformation about the war – making the Israelis look like very bad puppies. But they’re not.

  • Finnish, I’m not discounting or dismissing the environmental damage. I love clean oceans, beaches and happy birds just as much as people from Finland and other fine, refined countries in Europe. My point is that nobody can tell you the size of the spill, comparing it to Valdez is intended to make points not to make a valid comparison and the clean-up cost is actually a good indicator in this case because Exxon has had to spend over a billion dollars so far and they’re still not done with the clean-up. That $50 million reveals the lie of comparing it to the Valdez accident. But we agree that it’s terrible and we agree that it would have been better had it not happened. I just want to remind you that Israel was entirely out of Lebanon, as agreed to and approved by the UN.

    With respect to the cluster bombs, let’s see what we learn. There were no “matching records” and it’s doubtful they’ve had a chance to survey all of the bombs out there already. I’ve also read reports of high levels of unexploded Israeli ordinances but don’t understand how reporters could possibly know the percentages. It just seems to me that a lot of misinformation is coming out and it will take time to learn more.

    With respect to Jenin, what happened was that in March of 2002, the Palestinian suicide bombing orgy reached its apogee with 128 Israelis killed and hundreds murdered in that month. In April, the IDF re-entered Areas A which had been under PA control. By the way, these areas included 97-98% of the Palestinian population in the territories. One of the first places the IDF attacked was Jenin which had long been a center of terror activity against Israel. They first circled the town and sent out warning to civilians to evacuate. Of course, this gave time to the terrorists to prepare for the fight which is what they did. Most civilians did leave the area but Israel opted not to use artillery or air cover. Instead, they sent in ground troops. Over the next several days, there were pitched battles in which 30 Palestinian militants were killed, 20 Palestinian civilians were killed and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed. A dozen of those soldiers were killed in one attack that made the IDF understand that their attempt to act gingerly with Palestinian property had actuallly cost them lives. After that, they brought in bulldozers and simply cleared the area of houses which is how they won the battle and stopped losing soldiers’ lives.

    Throughout the fighting, the PA (at the time it was Arafat’s PA) was telling the media that Israel was massacring large numbers of Palestinian civilians and this was reported by the international press which had no access into this area of Jenin. Of course, once the fighting ended, immediately after Jenin was re-opened, the press showed images of…destroyed buildings. The press went nuts, comparing it to Dresden, quoting Palestinian officials claiming that 3000 civilians had been killed (Arafat) or 500 (Erakat) had been killed. The Palestinians set up a sideshow of funerals, only it became apparent many of these were faked when an Israeli drone captured video footage of a “dead” person falling off a stretcher on the way to burial and then climbing back on quickly.

    UN officials, NGOs and the press were waiting to get into the area of Jenin that was destroyed – and by the way, it was a small part of the town but was represented in the media as THE town (shades of Beirut in 2006, no?)- and once they entered, immediately announced that it had been a terrible massacre.

    Here’s a BBC article covering the story.
    Note the comments made by Amnesty’s international expert – a professor, no less – and the type of inflammatory language used by Terje Road-Larsen of the UN. Compare that to what is happening now in Lebanon as well as during the war. Then recognize that after all of this imagery, aggressive language and claims against Israel, the claim of massacres and unwarranted destruction, it came out that Israel killed more militants than civilians, that it lost half as many people as Palestinians were killed, that it had provided warnings to the detriment of its own soldiers AND STILL was vilified in terms likening the IDF to war criminals.

    Thursday, 18 April, 2002, 20:01 GMT 21:01 UK
    Jenin camp ‘horrific beyond belief’

    A United Nations envoy has said that the devastation left by Israeli forces in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank is “horrific beyond belief”.

    I think I can speak for all in the UN delegation in saying that we are shocked

    Terje Roed-Larsen, who toured the Jenin refugee camp on Thursday, said it was “morally repugnant” that Israel had not allowed emergency workers in for 11 days to provide humanitarian relief.

    The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked the Security Council to consider sending an armed multinational force to the region, under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter which authorises military force to impose council decisions.

    Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat called Mr Bush’s comments “a gift, a reward for Sharon’s policy of state terrorism and war crimes”.

    The BBC’s correspondent said Mr Roed-Larsen was highly regarded in the region and his criticism would put more pressure on the Israelis to fully withdraw.

    Palestinians claim hundreds of bodies are buried beneath the rubble, but Israel says the numbers of dead are far fewer. An independent forensic expert says evidence suggests that a massacre has taken place.

    Mr Roed-Larsen said the top priority was to bring in search-and-rescue teams. The only rescue efforts currently under way are residents digging though the ruins looking for survivors.

    “It is totally destroyed, it looks like an earthquake has hit it,” he said.

    “I am watching two brothers pull their father from the ruins, the stench of death is horrible. We are seeing a 12-year-old boy being dug out, totally burned,” he said.

    “We have expert people here who have been in war zones and earthquakes and they say they have never seen anything like it,” he added.

    Mr Roed-Larsen, who is the UN’s Special Co-ordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, was visiting the camp with Red Cross and UN workers.

    He added: “It is totally unacceptable that the government of Israel for 11 days did not allow search and rescue teams to come.”

    Kofi Annan made his appeal for armed intervention at a closed session of the Security Council. Israeli spokesmen swiftly rejected it while Mr Erekat said it was the “right way to start fighting Israeli aggression”

    Mr Annan said there was a need for a force large enough to take “decisive action” to end the deadly cycle of attacks.

    The multinational force should be assembled by countries willing to supply troops and should have “a robust mandate,” he said, adding later, “I expect the United States to play an important role.”


    Israel invaded the Jenin camp on 3 April, saying it was a hotbed of Palestinian militancy and declaring it a closed military zone.

    Palestinian claims of an Israeli massacre in the camp have been denied, although British forensic expert Prof Derrick Pounder has said that the evidence points to large numbers of civilian dead.

    Prof Pounder is part of an Amnesty International team granted access to Jenin.

    Amazing, huh? Israel gets attacked brutally, decides to fight back, does so in a moral way even at the cost of lives and limbs of its soldiers, and then you get the BBC, the UN, Annan, the need for an international force under Title VII, Amnesty International and the Red Cross appearing in a story – with a picture of Dresden-like ruins – all suggesting very strongly that Israel has committed unbelievable and unacceptable atrocities. AND IT’S ALL A LIE!

    Forgive my cynicism, but it seems to me that Hizbullah is simply using tactics that were already effectively used by the Palestinians some years ago. The international press, the UN and these NGOs should be ashamed of themselves.

  • Barbara E., but the long comments are often insightful (no I’m not talking about my comments in particular).

  • Oh my. Look at all the comments. Imagine that. But no need to exagerate next time.

  • My mother lives by that tagline. That aside, J’licious mgmt, comment length is out of control. Please consider instituting a word limit. Brevity is the soul of wit, folks. If you can’t say in it in 2 short paragraphs, it’s time for your own blog.

  • The Exxon Valdez comparison refers to the size of the spill. Also, lawyer fees are unfortunately a totally unusable tool for the purpose of cleaning up beaches and damage to the environment or to even measuring the extent of damage. A dollar spent to clean-up is not directly proportionate to the amount of environmental damage (I’m thinking of damage to animal and plantlife, to tourism, fishing and so on).

    Even if the power station were a strategic target, there is now a really big oil spill to take care of. Clean-up attempts should be helped and not hindered.

    Have you considered that the IDF hasn’t come out with any report regarding these bombs.

    Yeah, I have. And I’ve also noticed that in news articles directly and officially nothing has been said, but indirectly it has been said by IDF spokespeople that the use of cluster bombs does not violate laws of war. While this is not an acknowledgement of usage, it’s quite close to it.

    How then do Amnesty or the UN know when these bombs were released?

    By looking at the serial numbers in the unexploded bomblets and matching them against known records?

    I seriously doubt that these cluster bomblets are somehow the remnants of the cluster bombings which took place in South Lebanon in the 1980s.

    As for Jenin 2002, I was not familiar with it, and did a quick look at it – I’ll read up more. Got some déja vù vibes out of it. And yes, agreed, we’ll have to wait for the truth about the cluster bombs to come up.

  • Bombing a power station is not only legitimate in this instance but is done as a normal course of action in war. Yes, there is an oil spill and the post-war estimates for cleaning it up stand at about $50 million. With all due respect to the journalist or his Lebanese PR interlocutor who provided the comparison of the Valdez so that the layperson on the street would vilify Israel for this as well, the fucking attorney fees Exxon has paid on the litigation following the Valdez accident have cost them far more than $50 million. This was a strategic target.

    I remind you regarding the term “civilian areas” that Hizbullah eliminated that concept altogether. It wasn’t Israel that eliminated the civilian designation of any areas that were attacked, it was Hizbullah. These “gardens, roofs, roads, schools, hospitals, etc.” were deadly sites of warfare manned by Hizbullah as part of a long-standing strategy just a couple of weeks ago.

    Second, we’ve seen other outrage and accusations from plenty of sources about Israeli actions that then turn out to be false, justified or nowhere near as bad as described. And yes, very often these accusations come from senior diplomats at the UN or from the so-called unbiased experts at Amnesty. Remember what happened when Israeli forces left Jenin in 2002? Until the story with the cluster bombs is cleared up, I suggest both of us wait on it. Have you considered that the IDF hasn’t come out with any report regarding these bombs. How then do Amnesty or the UN know when these bombs were released? Oh wait, let me guess, Lebanese “civilian” witnesses must have told them…

  • Maybe not war crimes defined by some stature, but equally wrong things have been done in this war. I bet many people are pissed about the Jiyeh power station bombing and like to single it out because it left behind a huge oil spill (huge as in Exxon Valdez -huge) which is threatening a large area on the eastern Mediterranean.

    And some people might consider it also wrong to use cluster bombs in civilian areas. In my opinion, it’s just as wrong like putting small metal pellets into rockets fired to Israel. First of all, it’s totally inaccurate and second, it leaves behind unexploded cluster bomblets, having the de facto effect of installing a number of small mines in the civilian area. So the bomblets are sitting idly out there on roofs, on streets, on roads, in gardens, on yards waiting for some kid to kill or adult to maim.

    What’s odd is that most of the cluster bombs were dropped in the three last days of this war, when the end of the war was visible. Was it deliberate strategy, or was the IAF running out of bombs…?

  • This is one of the reasons why the ADL is becoming my preferred human rights organization. They focus on the issues that matter most. Like others, they are sometimes a bit alarmist, but what would a human rights organization be without being alarmist?

  • Middle, I solemnly assure you: having beheld him from extremely close range, under rather unusual leisure-time circumstances which I will not detail (being mindful of modesty)– AD is NOT sexy. Uh, no. Not at all.