UPDATES
6:00 am Israel time, Saturday, February 14 2015
30 Days Until The Election
***Election updates:
–the Israel Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would decide on Tuesday whether the Election Commission disqualifications of Haneen Zoabi (on the left) and Baruch Marzel (on the right) will be allowed to stand. In your humble servant’s opinion, Zoabi deserves her disqualification, but Marzel most assuredly does not. Nevertheless, the Court will probably reverse the Commission decision and permit both of them to run.
–it is becoming increasingly clear that the Labor-Livni party is relying on undecided voters to swing the election since most polls show that they and their cohorts on the Left cannot win enough seats to form a coalition after the election. When confronted with this fact on Israeli TV Channel 2 last night, Livni could only say that “things will change by election time.”
— for its part, the Right continues to be fractious with Likud and Jewish Home going head to head yesterday over a report that Likud is trying to attract Jewish Home voters to its banner. If Baruch Marzel is allowed to run, his party (Yachad) will almost certainly gain ground at the expense of Jewish Home and Likud.
***It is quite amazing how–all over the world–Jews are often blamed for everything under the sun. This frequently happens when Jews themselves are the ones who are victimized.
For example, in the last few weeks, we have seen the unseemly spectacle of Muslim groups and others blaming Jews for the swastika attack on the AEPi fraternity house at the University of California–Davis.
Or you might remember back to the 2012 Burgas (Bulgaria) bus bombing at which time various Arab countries and Iran accused Israel’s Mossad of killing 5 Israelis.
But sometimes, there is no connection of Jews or Israelis to anything.
Yesterday, we had a Syrian TV announcer blaming Israel and the Jews for the IS burning of the Jordanian pilot last week. According to the announcer, the death of the pilot was “a clear demonstration of the barbarism of the Zionist entity and the Talmud throughout history. . . In the past they used to prepare matza with human blood and eat them. This is exactly what is happening today in Syria.”
Can you believe how crazy the world has become?
TODAY’S BLOG:
The “civilians killed” number in the July-August Israel war with Hamas continues to change, as it always does following a war between Israelis and Palestinians. They always change because during the war and just after the war, the world is eager to accuse Israel of indiscriminately killing Palestinians.
As time passes the true numbers come out, but by that time the international media has done its hatchet job on Israel, and nobody cares anymore.
In the case of the war last year, at first we only had the numbers of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry which reported that 1,617 civilians were killed.
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Then we had the United Nations OCHA report which reported that 1,483 civilians were killed.
Yesterday, we had new numbers leaked from the forthcoming Schabas Report which report that 844 civilians were killed.
Of course, the false assumption propagated by the Hamas Gaza Health Ministry, the OCHA report, and now the Schabas report is that all of these civilians were killed by Israel.
As has been pointed out in a previous israelstreet blogs, that is demonstrably untrue.
At least 25 civilians were killed by Hamas execution squads who accused them of being collaborators.
At least 30 civilians (mostly children) were killed by Hamas execution squads who worried that because they had had helped build the tunnels, they would reveal their location.
At least 20 civilians were gunned down by Hamas squads while protesting against Hamas.
Numerous civilians were killed by errant Hamas mortars and missiles that hit Palestinian homes, shelters, and random people in the street. For example, Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati admitted after leaving Gaza that he saw a Hamas misfire that killed 9 children in the Shati neighborhood on July 28th.
Numerous civilians were killed by Hamas who used them as human shields.
Numerous civilians died because Hamas would not let them seek medical care.
In sum, how many civilians were killed inadvertently by Israeli forces?
We will never know.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.