A Law Whose Time Has Come

 

Imagine for a moment that a group of nations in Europe and the European Union itself had decided, more or less as a loosely defined group, that they were going to finance and direct a group of NGOs in Israel with the intent of besmirching the image of Jordan throughout the world and work to degrade the Israeli military and drag its military and civilian leadership and soldiers before the world courts on charges of crimes against humanity. Imagine they also worked to collapse Israel as a nation and replace it with an Arab nation using spurious claims that there exists a group who have a deeper and more legitimate claim on the land and whose history was the exact history the Jews were claiming only older and thus more valid than the Jewish claims despite known facts to the contrary. Finally, imagine these same NGOs claiming to be indigenous and demanding government funding from the Israeli government and were influencing the courts and attempting to assist candidates in elections who would be more in line with the designs of the European financed NGOs in granting the Arab claims on the land and might even cripple their own nation before the spurious claims and yet lobbied the government to prevent a law making it that NGOs who received over half their financing from outside Israel to have to report all of their financing while still allowing their right to operate and claim to be actual representatives of the majority of Israelis despite all evidence to the contrary. If you were able of imagining such a ridiculous plot against Israel, then you have just successfully reached an understanding of exactly what is occurring in Israel right now.

 

This is not even a new issue as it has been going on for well over a decade by groups such as Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, Adalah, Yesh Din, Machsom Watch, Hamoked, Rabbis for Human Rights and far too many others. All of these groups support the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement which singles Israel out claiming their laws make Israel an Apartheid state. One spurious claim made constantly despite full knowledge that the complaint is unwarranted is that Israel has not permitted the Arab Palestinians to hold an election for over a decade. Is it true that the Arabs living in the semiautonomous regions under the administration of the Palestinian Authority headed by Chairman Mahmoud Abbas who was elevated to the position after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 have yet to vote since 2005; yes, that is a valid statement which is what makes the charge appear to be valid. The fly in that ointment is the fact that the Palestinian Authority is semiautonomous and thus has political control and governs the area in question and Mahmoud Abbas has refused to permit election where he would necessarily stand for reelection and knows he would most likely lose such an election, thus, no elections. Israel has no power to force elections in the areas under Palestinian Authority political control any more than any government in Europe can force elections in another country. Such a claim is like so many others, containing a kernel of truth which makes it believable and appear valid but the rest of the charge is false and known to be using false links and logic. The election libel is similar to the libel that the IDF (Israeli Defense Force, the Israeli military) is guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocidal crimes against the Arab Palestinians and other atrocities. Has the IDF ever had a soldier or commander of a unit commit war crimes? Unfortunately that is true as it is of any army which fights in a combat area and for proof one need not look any further than at the case against Colonel West formerly of the United States Military. His case was covered by the New York Times in an article titled THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: INTERROGATIONS; How Colonel Risked His Career by Menacing Detainee and Lost which gives the essentials and the situation facing commanders in the combat zones.

 

Just as colonel West came forth and faced military trial but took an early retirement from what had before one act to protect his troops by insinuating he was about to do the unthinkable to a detainee, IDF had soldiers who have crossed lines but Breaking the Silence has been found to be using testimonies from soldiers who were forced from the IDF and are bitter about their experience and even using known activists who were never in the IDF as witness or the ones who committed such war crimes to get false testimonies which they then market to a receptive media and other manner of shaming the IDF. If Breaking the Silence were really interested in policing and improving the morality and legal restrictions being obeyed they would not seek publicity and attempt to shame the IDF and besmirch their reputation in media around the world but would rather bring their evidence before the IDF and assist in the prosecution or fact finding such that these IDF soldiers could be brought before a trial and new guidelines could be made known within the IDF preventing another such disgrace which the IDF has proven time and again to investigate every accusation of wrongdoing and does so in complete view of the public. The IDF has had its actions in the last Gaza offensive and every military engagement under the scrutiny of a military panel made up of senior officers and experts on military and international laws of warfare wherever such inquiries were warranted. The United Nations report was largely assisted by Israeli NGOs who, without exception, rely on European funding largely from individual governments, the European Union itself with a guiding purpose of defaming and disrupting the IDF and its efforts to protect Israelis from Arab aggressors including numerous terror entities such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others operating in Gaza as well as Judea and Samaria (West Bank). Below are three videos of experts on the laws of war and International Law, the first two are separate testimonies before the United Nations as an individual expert and as part of the panel of review both emphasizing the good and deficits of their review by Lieutenant Colonel Jeffery Corn, U. S. Army Law of War Expert, and the third is Colonel Kemp who was an observer during the Gaza War as is also an expert on the laws of war and International Law as well as the makeup and slanted objective of the United Nations panel looking to equate IDF actions with those of Hamas or possibly dirty the IDF sufficiently so as to exonerate all actions taken by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, Islamic State and other terror actions in the Gaza war and before the war with the firing rockets by the hundreds and even thousands per day which was the real cause of the conflict. Please give each approximately two minutes of your time as they are worth hearing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The law being considered and about to be presented to the Knesset for actual debate and voting will be more revealing and honest than the efforts to make this legislation out to be an assault on the rights of individuals, minorities, all Palestinians and the free expression of NGOs and other elements which may at times appear critical of Israel, as the possible to be effected NGOs have claimed. The so-called “Transparency Bill” would require NGOs who receive over 50% of their funding from foreign states to reveal the precise sources of their funds. The aim is to curb the current practice of primarily European states who seek to undermine Israeli government policy by pouring millions into extreme-left and radical Arab Israeli NGOs, according to reports and comments of its supporters. European Union Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen said the Bill was more suited to a “despotic” country and added, “The Bill is explicitly intended to harm organizations critical of government policy. It will have a negative impact on the image of Israel and its standing in Europe as an open and democratic society.” Of course his comments that this legislation would impact Israeli relations with the very governments financing these foreign sourced NGOs and will now require the European busybodies who ignore the serious and potentially fatal economic and immigration positions of their own actions and spend inordinate amounts of their funds taken by taxation and other revenue sources such as tariffs and fees all to spend on financing NGOs in order to influence and destroy both politically and physically the state of Israel and only the state of Israel which just happened to be the only state of the Jews as well as the sole true democracy in the Middle East. These actions say more about these nations and the European Union and their resorting to their oldest hatreds which they have been and apparently always will be as a whole anti-Semites who firmly hold the identical view as the Arabs and too much of the Islamic world that the Jews and their state must be destroyed and brought down to be trodden on by their betters, which is defined as any bipedal lifeform free of feathers and warm blooded. These actions are claimed to be warranted as only by the destruction of Israel will peace and human rights break out in the Middle East; like the Syrian civil war turned Sunni-Shiite war will end if Israel ceases to exist, RIGHT, now tell me another European act so pathetic that even laughter gives more credence and attention than it deserves. Below is an example and translation of the fliers dropped on one location of concentrated terrorist resistance and rocket fire and these were dropped before any IDF action by approximately thirty minutes giving the Arab citizens time to relocate. The real and obvious side-effect of these warnings is it both reveals the next area targeted and allows the terrorists time to relocate as well. The advantage is that by relocating the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terror units will be in the open and not surrounded by civilians and thus their choices from bad to worse are they can relocate and present easy targets for airstrikes free of civilian casualties or remain in place and be eradicated free of civilian casualties.

 

 

Pamphlet and Translated Version of Pamphlet Dropped
by IDF Command Before Calling Airstrikes or Deploying
Ground Troops Whichever is Less Likely to Harm Civilian Lives

 

 

The reality is that these NGOs do not serve the majority or even a plurality of Israeli citizens almost all of whom realize their lives are dependent upon the skill and sacrifices of the IDF and know they are owed a debt of gratitude beyond anything we can offer other than our support, thanks and love. We Israelis cannot begin to find sufficient respect for our IDF young men and women as they are by leaps and bounds the most moral and honorable military in the world ever. What also sets them apart from all other militaries, the Islamic State fears any conflict and especially a front where they would be facing the IDF on their borders. The British and Americans they claim they would welcome, though we all know they really do not want to see the entire force which the United States and Britain to a somewhat lesser extent, but as the IDF has proven repeatedly that size or lack thereof does not mean less fierce or efficient on the battlefield. The Islamic State facing a determined NATO front would last about three hours after the civilians let loose the full force as was utilized during World War II or even a single front, either the Japanese or the European front’s forces. There is another problem on the ground in an area which presents such a plethora of such challenges and where we can be glad that Egypt is no longer in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood or that too would present some difficulties.

 

One has to wonder why Israel presents such an interest and desire to do harm where no such attitude exists on the Israeli side and only desires to run their nation free of foreign entangling and mischief working to their detriment. This “Transparency Bill” only seeks to present an honest assessment and accounting before the public and provide honesty and open examinations of any outside entities seeking to hide behind highly placed charges and other mischief all tailored to bring Israel down. This blood libel of Israel as presented by Breaking the Silence before the world is simply evidentiary proof that these NGOs are nothing more than appendages of European anti-Semitism seeking to destroy Israel by setting a completely different standard and though knowing of these NGOs perfidious acts and missions statements as they are funded by their European government and the European Union who direct them to provide the exact information and take whatever stand is required for the moment and dance for their masters in Europe. The Jews who work with these groups knowing their intent and origins are nothing more than the fools, and all too many were Jews, who assisted Lenin into power who never hid his hatred for Jews but that has never bothered the leftist Jews who will grease the wheels instead of the tracks at some crucial location as the train will not take them until they are the last or the war turns poorly but the one thing they are guaranteed, in the end they will be murdered as such is the way of the tyrants. In the meantime as Europe itself has chosen a slow suicide by allowing open immigration and are receiving largely untrained people seeking the European baskets of support and not opportunity which will pay off once the requirement of hard work has been met. These immigrants are setting up areas where their laws are applied and their nation and its laws are kept quite distant beyond the jagged line upon which Europe will be breaking themselves against these jagged edges long before Israel can come to their rescue; especially should these very same Europeans continue their pogroms attempting to tear Israel down before her enemies.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Life, Iran, ISIS, Our Fates, and an Unknown Future

 

One need remember that Iran and Iraq went at each other for a period just short of eight years starting on September 22, 1980 and lasting until August 20, 1988 and was initiated by Saddam Hussein and was largely considered to have been a failure by Iraq as Iran stopped the initial surge dead in its tracks and slowly but inexorably backed the Iraqi troops back and they eventually returned to their initial borders. This was just a part of the history of animosities between Iraq and Iran and was seemingly inevitable that they would go after one another. The fact that it was Saddam Hussein who began the hostilities was not so surprising and he may have even been nudged in that direction by the United States who still harbored great animosity towards the Iranians for the hostage crisis which was yet to have concluded. The United States hostages were not released until after the November Presidential elections on the very hour that President Reagan was sworn in to office. One might be able to claim that the hostage release coinciding with the swearing in of Ronald Reagan might make their release his very first accomplishment as President as few would even think to claim they were released as a sign of respect and a parting gift for President Jimmy Carter. The fact that the war between the secular dictatorial forces of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Shiite Muslim Sharia Iranian State of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought to a virtual standstill exchanging the same patches of ground as the fates ebbed and flowed neither capable of delivering a decisive blow that might make the other reel and collapse before a superior force. This was, in many ways, a conflict where despite governments picking sides, some places such as Israel was simply glad that the war kept both nations occupied and facing some fire situation which left them so preoccupied that they had little time to think about harming Israel, something else where these two nations might have also competed to see which could injure Israel the most.

 

Two years, less a mere eighteen days, Iraq decided to invade another neighbor, this time Kuwait. Starting on August 2, 1990 it took a mere two days to August 4, 1990 for Saddam Hussein’s army to sweep across Kuwait. This not only caused Iran to worry that another attack might be in the cards from their nemesis, it also made Saudi Arabia extremely nervous about the possibility that Saddam Hussein might have them in his sights as his next victim. Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz called his good and close friend, President George Herbert Walker Bush and the wheels were put in motion to ride to the rescue. The United States formed a coalition which included a number of Arab and Muslim States which worked under United Nations approval and removed Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait destroying a huge number of the Iraqi armored vehicles including numerous Russian supplied tanks and armored personnel carriers plus scores of trucks and other vehicles. The Iraqi troops caused an unmitigated ecological disaster by setting virtually, if not every, oil well in the Kuwaiti vast oil fields. It took months to extinguish and recap every well and then proceed to put them back into service. Things actually appeared to have settled down in the threats between nations, but that did not mean all was well in the Middle East. Acting on what was interpreted to be United States urgings the Iraqi Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the North made an attempt to dethrone Saddam Hussein expecting the United States to provide some level of assistance. Well, United States assistance was never considered being sent as they had refused to even chase the Iraqi troops back to Baghdad after chasing them from Kuwait. The closest the United States manpower came to Iran was protecting the Americans working in the Kuwaiti oil fields putting out well fires and recapping wells before returning them to service, a task that took several years.

 

After the 9/11 terror attacks on the twin Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and another target foiled by the passengers of Flight 93 which they brought down at the cost of their own lives before it could reach its intended target which was believed to have been either the Capital building or the White House and the beginning of the war on terror with the invasions of Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, President George W. Bush requested further authorization to take military action against Saddam Hussein in order to prevent his further manufacture of chemical weapons and to terminate his reputed nuclear weapons program. The alleged nuclear weapons program had been backed by all evidence gathered by the British, the United States, France and the rest of Europe all indicated that Saddam Hussein an advanced nuclear weapons program which could have been completed except for the Israeli attack destroying the French built Osirak Reactor before it could be fueled and used to produce plutonium for a weapon. There is the common misconception that there was none of the precursors for a nuclear weapons program to be found in Iraq during the Second Gulf War. There was a large amount of Yellowcake, a form of raw uranium used for safe transport and storage and can be transformed into uranium hexafluoride which is what is fed into the centrifuges in order to enrich the uranium. Whereas these approximately five-hundred-fifty-tons of yellowcake, that is over one-million-pounds, were from the stores logged back in 1991 and was under the watchful eyes of the IAEA, that does not mean it was impossible for those stores to be utilized to jumpstart Saddam’s dream to attain nuclear weapons had he decided to demand that the IAEA inspectors leave Iraq and then gone full speed ahead in a mad dash towards making a weapon. North Korea has stores of yellowcake which under IAEA guards until it was not under IAEA guards. Granted it might have been difficult to get the yellowcake into production before the world arrived, as they arrived despite Saddam not touching those provisions as there were suspicions backed by faulty intelligence.

 

Now Saddam Hussein is long gone and Iran has all but annexed the southern third of Iraq, the Shiite controlled area that includes the capital city of Baghdad. The Kurdish has become an entity unto themselves and definitely has autonomy if not complete independence. The Iraqi government, which appears to be weak and feckless with Iran holding the real power but only in the southern third of the nation even partially cemented under their control, has thus far refused to provide any weapons or other provisions to reach either the Kurdish militias or the Sunni tribesmen thus leaving both to their own devices in fighting against such forces such as ISIS which has been marauding and murdering anybody who does not meet their high standards for Islamic purity. This fighting has mostly taken place in the Sunni central area of what has been Iraq and that has left the Sunni stuck between two murderous powers. The Shiite military from the south performs ethnic cleansing whenever they gain sufficient areas to conduct sweeps. It appears that the main people targeted are Sunni males of fighting age. When ISIS takes control of these same areas they too pick the same group and demand that they prove their devotion to Islam by joining the new Caliphate or else suffer the wrath of the true believers. They also threaten the families of these young and middle aged men most of whom just want to be left alone to tend to making a living and caring for their families. ISIS does not care if they are fathers raising a family with young children as they are true warriors for the faith and because their cause is pure, they themselves are pure as are their acts, thus their cause is righteous. This makes their courts just, their drafting of all able-bodied men of fighting age, willingly or not, righteous, their taking of supplies such as food, even if it deprives the people of proper means, is just and all they do and how they go about performing their actions are righteous. Their being holy warriors make anybody opposing their cause or placing themselves contrary to their demands acts of blasphemy. This is why they have been holding public executions and quick trials followed by swift execution of their judgement and the sentence. ISIS has been proving to be a force on the ground with which to contend. Should they ever manage to procure an air force of any size and with even the barest minimum of competence, then ISIS will have the potential to have become at the least an entity possessing the barest minimum for being a nation in the Middle East, at least as a replacement in some ways for Syria.

 

What will add significantly to the range and broaden the abilities of ISIS would be their gaining the backing of al-Qaeda, something they appear to have been doing piecemeal thus far as one former entity which had sworn their fealty to al-Qaeda are now switching and swearing fealty to ISIS such as Boko Haram. The recent threats made by ISIS may end up spelling their demise as they may be biting off more than they can chew. Their threats to replace the Arab Palestinian Authority actually make complete sense as they are two opposing sides of the forces against Israel. Where ISIS are Islamists who follow a strict interpretation of the Quran which defines their form of the Sharia, the Arab Palestinian Authority are secularist, socialist with a small semblance of democratic principles as long as such does not threaten those in the highest places. The Arab Palestinian Authority represent the most vile and far removed form of Islamic governance that one can find, they are oil and water, or more likely pure sodium and water. Hamas, on the other hand, has a very similar charter stand for the same world conquest and placing all of the world’s people under the banner of Sunni Islam by whatever means necessary. As Hamas and Islamic Jihad might have a better than average probability of joining ISIS as a whole entity and thus giving ISIS additional manpower which has already been tested in combat. The statement made by ISIS which could prove their taking on a nut they are unable to crack was their threat to also tackle Israel. The IDF would not need to hold back fighting ISIS as they habitually have been forced into doing with every possible entity watching their every move just waiting to pounce should Israel operate without the strictest of restraints almost requesting permission to return fire when her troops come under fire. The probability that ISIS will open up a new front within its current operating theater would be tactical suicide. Currently ISIS has three fronts, their borders with the Kurdish Peshmerga Militias who are well trained and disciplined holding the northern front in Iraq and the northeastern front in Syria, the Alawites are holed up with their backs against the Mediterranean Sea in the northwest rim of Syria, IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the remnants of the Iraqi Army in the south of Iraq and the entirety of their eastern front is the rest of the Iranian armed forces should they push in an eastern and there have been hints dropped this week that President Erdogan has made intonations that Turkey is considering moving down into Syria to scoop up as much of the lands as they are able and that would place another front for ISIS to face off against and of course ISIS has mentioned their desire to take control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina which would involve a war with Saudi Arabia which would also bring the Egyptians into the fray. ISIS has one service they are providing the world at this stage, they are breaking apart the Iranian crescent by destroying Bashir al-Assad and breaking the direct link from Tehran through Baghdad on through Damascus and through to Beirut or Latakia, Baniyas, Sidon, Tartus, or Tyre and then out into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. ISIS is a horrific and barbaric entity on the order of something like a Saddam Hussein who gassed thousands of his own countrymen. Saddam Hussein rivaled Hafez al-Assad, the man who had murdered more Syrian people than any enemy until his son, Bashir al-Assad, became what appears to be the last president who may have set the bar to such a height for percentage of one’s nation either murdered, rendered without shelter, made into refugees, fled the nation or been imprisoned or simply disappeared without a trace. For the sake of the Western World it would be to their advantage for ISIS to engage fully with Iran preventing them the peaceful times which would allow them to pursue their nuclear weapons program to its completion including the ICBM missiles which could easily reach anywhere on earth. Maybe it is the fate of ISIS to foil the plans and progresses of the Iranians as United States President evidently will not go so. So, once again we find that silver lining within one of our darkest of clouds. Still, how long will we live with a world where we have to rely on scoundrels to do the work of an elected charlatan?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

United Nations Demonization of Israel Backfires

 

United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has released its self-declared, in-depth, revealing, factual, unbiased, principled and unprejudiced report equating the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) tactics during Operation Protective Edge with the terror-motivated acts by Hamas. Initially the Canadian Jurist William Schabas had been appointed to head the UNHRC committee tasked with investigating Operation Protective Edge to assure that the ensuing report would be transparent, factual and above reproach but was forced to resign that post as he was found to have a long history of anti-Israel invective and had done contract work with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terror group among other damning inferences. When interviewed about his feelings over the entire matter of his possibly biased and anti-Israel invectives, part of his response gave particular insight to the validity of the claim that had so referred those shortcomings and to Israeli officials’ denunciations of his appointment, he was quoted to declare, “I wasn’t insulted. To be insulted you need to respect the people who criticize you, and I don’t have respect for them.” Answering the accusations equating his appointment by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) claiming, This appointment simply “serves to show that even the biggest hypocrites in the international organs cannot ignore the fact that Schabas’ appointment to investigate Israel was akin to the appointment of Cain to investigate the murder of Abel,” William Schabas shot back, “That isn’t worthy of a response. I didn’t murder anyone. Is legal counsel to the PLO a mistake? Is criticizing Netanyahu a crime?”

 

Further research at the time had revealed more transgressions and focused on Prof. William Schabas statements when speaking in a 2013 panel revealed his great eagerness to hold such a position enabling him to prosecute Israel for war crimes stated he holds a “profound belief, that international law can be used to demonstrate and underscore the violations committed by the state of Israel, and moreover can be used to hold accountable individuals who have perpetrated international crimes against the people of Palestine.” He added even if that involved “Years ago there were no courts at all,” he noted (at minute 25:15 in the video embedded below). “When (the charge of) ‘genocide’ was invented there was no court at all. There was no court for crimes against humanity, but we have them now. And with a bit of luck and by twisting things and maneuvering we can get them before the courts.” He also has stated that should he ever have been granted such an opportunity to prosecute Israel, “I would have been inclined to talk about crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression, all of which I think can be shown have been perpetrated at various times during the history of the state of Israel. These are all crimes that have become increasingly robust in their definition in recent decades and for which we now have international institutions capable of prosecuting the crimes.”

William Schabas – Russell Tribunal on Palestine – New York Published on Jan 7, 2013
From Vow to Law: How can Prohibition of Sociocide Become an International Norm?

 

Replacing Jurist William Schabas was, what some, ourselves included, might perceive as an equitable replacement holding many of the same deficiencies as Schabas, Judge Mary McGowan Davis of the 2009 Goldstone Committee fame as she sat in that ‘august and impartial’ tribunal as well which Judge Richard Goldstone who chaired that investigatory inquisition later retracted the report Judge Richard Goldstone wrote on Friday in the Washington Post, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” Further in his confessitorial article Judge Goldstone wrote, “While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” Judge Mary McGowan Davis has never shown a single iota of regret nor expressed her feeling that there may have been a motivational bias to the findings of the Goldstone Report committee’s inquiries.

 

This excuse for a report basically goes to whatever extremes that were necessary to denounce Israel, her leadership, and most insulting of all, the IDF of crimes equal or greater than those of the arch terrorists of Hamas whose charter calls for the annihilation of every last Jew on planet earth and the conquest of the planet forcing every inhabitant to not merely believe in Islam, but to do so with the same convictions, hatreds and depravations as do the leadership of Hamas or to die by their sword. Such degrading and damning accusations not only need be refuted and fought with every fiber of muscle and brain available to Israel and her friends but also by those who cherish and honor truth and equality. It is one thing to investigate every conceivable angle as a method of assuring that no stone is left unturned and that every ill intent becomes revealed and a completely different thing to list every imagined criminal act simply to equate those acting purely in defense of their nation and its people with a terrorist groups whose aim is not only to inflict as much harm, structural damage and loss of life on the other side but to also assure that the result is of equal or greater harm, structural damage and loss of life on those who they are presumably defending simply so that it can be claimed that both sides are equally guilty before the courts and committees tasked with the enforcement of international law. The audacity and cold-blooded calculations of Hamas and their allies such as Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda was revealed during Operation Protective Edge when they reported that the IDF forces had targeted and caused grievous damage to a Gazan hospital when they knew and the IDF had tracked a rocket fired from Gaza, one of four with other three striking in the Mediterranean Sea, the Shati Refugee Camp and Ashkelon in addition to the one striking the Shifa Hospital which was alleged to have been an Israeli strike. We reported this in our article titled How to Spell Hypocrite, US or UN? published on April 28, 2015, along with the tracking picture below depicting the tracks of the four rockets fired from within Gaza by Hamas, Islamic Jihad or another of the other terror groups operating with the blessings of Hamas Security Forces, the so-to-speak law in Gaza.

 

 

Radar Trajectory of barrage launched from within Gaza depicting strike points including the short round strike on the Shifa Hospital which Israel blamed by Hamas and Media accepted Hamas talking point unchecked

 

Perhaps this would be a good time to recall our recent recounting of the report from Professor Stern of Vanderbilt Law School’s content which we had quoted just the other day on June 20, 2015, in our article Coddling Barbarians While Condemning the Civilized
“It was abundantly clear that IDF commanders had gone beyond any mandates that international law requires to avoid civilian casualties. The IDF’s warnings certainly go beyond what the law requires, but they also sometimes go beyond what would be operational good sense elsewhere. People are going to start thinking that the United States and other Western democracies should follow the same examples in different types of conflict. That’s a real risk.” A further conclusion from the report added that the IDF, “is setting an unreasonable precedent for other democratic countries of the world who may also be fighting in asymmetric wars against brutal non-state actors who abuse these laws.” Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) concurred with the report adding her assessment stating legal advisers from other militaries around the world confront her with “recurring claims” that the IDF “is going too far in its self-imposed restrictions intended to protect civilians, and that this may cause trouble down the line for other democratic nations fighting organized armed groups.”

 

The report from above painted an entirely different picture of the IDF actions than that of the United Nations, not much of a surprise there. Perhaps weighing the targeted aim of the two articles might provide further insight as to which report was objective and which report was objectionable. The report by Professor Stern of Vanderbilt Law School was commissioned and performed to show what was the level of the IDF during Operation Protective Edge and how their standards would impact other Western Nation’s forces when operating in anti-terror interventions under conditions of a similar nature to those of Israel operating against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even some ISIS and al-Qaeda forces which are rumored to also operate out of Gaza along with Fatah, the political party which Mahmoud Abbas holds the chairmanship, and where the terrorists are hiding amongst innocent civilians and even going to the extreme of using them as human shields, especially using children to guard rocket launchers and mortar launch sites. The United Nations Human Rights Council was investigating and writing a report to satisfy the one-hundred-ninety-three nations voting in the General Assembly where the Arab League is allied with the Non-Aligned National Movement (NAM) which combines to over one-hundred of the General Assembly votes and almost always unite on any article for discussions and vote which either criticizes Israel or elevates the Arab/Muslim countries in return for support for all items viewed favorable by the nations in NAM. The motivations speak for themselves as one side sought only to vilify Israel even at the expense of the terror groups in Gaza who honestly could not care less about what the United Nations may say or do, they are already considered as a terrorist entity so what additional harm could come to them, and the other study wanted to know exactly how stringently the Israeli troops were restricted in their actions against those very same terrorist groups and what they found was fairly frightening for the Western military elite military commanders knowing that much of the same cautionary restrictions utilized by the IDF very well could be expected to define their actions. Imagine the Pentagon having to send a drone to drop leaflets on an intended site ten minutes before using a second drone to launch the attack on the command tent in the midst of the camp and expecting to remove an al-Qaeda commander in the process? I do not recall ever reading that such was their procedure nor do I expect it ever will be. Even when it comes to restrictions that are self-imposed a double standard exists and is imposed by the IDF on the IDF without expecting any other military in the world to have to emulate their precautions.

 

Meanwhile, the usual culprits will laud over the results of this predictably slanted and abusive report which equates the IDF and their tactics and precautions to protect innocents and civilians from harm simply by being in a targeted location at the wrong time with Hamas who regularly all but drapes young children over their rocket launchers. It is exactly as Prime Minister Netanyahu stated on NBC’s Meet the Press, “The difference between us, we are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.” There is no comparison between the IDF and Hamas and company beyond the simple reality that both are on the same battleground. Equating these opposites is the ultimate in hypocrisy and the culmination of what was the intent when it was decided to open the United Nations from its original membership which included only those nations who were actually capable of enforcing order and principles of civilized behavior and governance to simply any nation caring to apply thus turning the General Assembly into the voice for dictators and terrorists. Who cannot remember Yasser Arafat walking onto the stage before the gathered nations of the General Assembly wearing his usual green fatigues and with his decorative handgun strapped to his side looking like he was recovering from a weekend binge and coming straight there without the comfort of a shower and a shave. That in and of itself speaks to the respect deserved by most of the United Nations agencies, the ever present agencies who have been investigated and almost regularly found to be distributing the food supplies under their care in exchange for sexual pleasures and other equally offensive acts. The United Nations has become such a disgrace that people would be well-advised to hide their daughters and wives when the United Nations is coming to their aid otherwise who knows what depravities will result. Yet these are the people who claim the moral righteousness to sit in judgement of the IDF and United States Armed Forces. Are these two institutions above the occasional but rare misdeeds? Yes, every military, every group has a few bad apples in their barrel, but these two armed services also police their own and honestly investigate charges and have recorded evidence of placing such soldiers found guilty of improprieties in prison and other punishments and their receiving less than honorable discharge from their service, a mark that is inerasable and will follow and dog one for the remainder of their lives. Such a discharge speaks loudly and will prevent such a person from ever receiving the trust of the people in the nation. Perhaps partly it is knowing that if found out one faces such dire results which adds that one extra threat making such misbehavior that rare though I prefer to believe that their military members are that honorable simply because it is the right way to act and to treat others with the same respect they wish to receive.

 

Beyond the Cusp