Are you even aware how many children has been killed in Israeli attacks? Help me see your understanding on the subject please.
How did the baby Omar Mishrawi die?
One of the most iconic - and tragic - photos from the current fighting in Gaza is surely this one, showing BBC Arabic journalist Jihad Mishrawi mourning his dead son:
PCHR described the incident this way:
[At 16:15] an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a house belonging to Ali Nemer al-Masharawi in al-Zaytoun neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. Two members of the family (a woman and a toddler) were killed: Hiba Aadel Fadel al-Masharawi, 19, and Omar Jihad al-Masharawi, 11 months.
Electronic Intifada reported this as a "missile strike" but described it this way:
According to neighbors and witnesses, a mass of fire hit the roof of the Masharawi family home in a densely packed area in southern Gaza City.
Our area is void of any suspicious activity and I can assure you there are no armed persons here and the area is always calm and inhabitants know each other, Jihad said, showing the missiles damage to his home. I never imagined that my home would be an Israeli target. Why has it been hit?
The Washington Post looked deeper into the story:
An Israeli round hit Misharawis four-room home in Gaza Wednesday, killing his son, according to BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who arrived in Gaza earlier Thursday. Misharawis sister-in-law was also killed, and his brother wounded. Misharawi told Danahar that, when the round landed, there was no fighting in his residential neighborhood.
Were all one team in Gaza, Danahar told me, saying that Misharawi is a BBC video and photo editor. After spending a few hours with his grieving colleague, he wrote on Twitter, Questioned asked here is: if Israel can kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month) how did Jihads son get killed.
Danahar also shared the following photos of Misharawis small Gaza home, which appears to have been heavily damaged. The place where the round punctured his ceiling is clearly visible.
In the first picture, doesn't the hole in the ceiling look a lot like what Qassam rocket damage looks like when they hit homes in Israel?
I am far from a munitions expert, but these photos look nothing like the damage to Gaza buildings from purposeful Israeli airstrikes that we've seen over the past week.
On Wednesday, when Omar was killed, the media was not attuned to the idea that Hamas rockets sometimes fall short. As the comments above show, even the Arabs living there were wondering how Israel with its pinpoint accuracy could have failed so badly - yet no one considered that this could have been because of Hamas rockets falling short, as was the case with Mahmoud Sadallah.
I received an email from someone with serious military experience. Here is the analysis:
First of all, Israel isnt using incendiary weapons, and wont, so any mass of fire that hits anyone is going to be a secondary effect from the original high-explosive effect, and will involve something like a propane container, chemical container, etc. Israeli bombs and air-to-surface missiles dont produce masses of fire hitting peoples roofs.
Second, if the round of an Israeli weapon had literally come through the roof where the hole is visible in the photo, thered be no house to take pictures of now. Compare the photos of the Masharawi house with the photos of the wreckage of the Al-Dalu (Doula) house. Then compare the Masharawi photos with photos of the Israeli homes hit by Hamas rockets.
Dalu home
Qassam damage in Israel
This isn't definitive, of course, and there are other things to consider, like whether Hamas rockets were flying at the time. [Which they most definitely were on the first day of the operation - EoZ].
OK, now Im looking at the second photo of damage. If the blast from an Israeli weapon had occurred inside this home, the wood on the windows would be entirely gone. No trace left. The walls wouldnt be intact. Their top portions, at least, would be a pile of rubble around the base of the wall. The iron grilles on the windows would probably be lying on the ground somewhere.
The story doesnt hang together. An Israeli bomb could not have penetrated the roof of this structure, then exploded, and have left the structure looking as it does: charred on some surfaces, but still intact.
I note that a Hamas rocket could have done exactly this damage, including the projectile-through-the-roof feature. There are other conceivable scenarios in which secondary damage could have been done by an Israeli hit nearby, but in no case would it have been possible for an Israeli weapon to penetrate the roof as described, and then do nothing more than char the surfaces and rearrange the furniture.
I want to stress that I am not nearly as certain about this as I was about Mahmoud Sadallah. But to my mind, this appears far more consistent with a Hamas rocket that then ignited something highly flammable inside the house. Most Gaza homes rely on propane heaters and gasoline-powered generators, and they have to keep the fuel somewhere - in fact, unless I'm mistaken, there appears to be a damaged fuel can on the top shelf of the first photo from inside the house above.
A lot has happened since then and it seems doubtful that anyone is going to revisit this on the ground, but someone should at least ask Paul Danahar from the BBC whether he even considered that this could have been the work of an errant Gaza rocket.
And if not - why does he rule it out?
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Thursday, November 22, 2012
The first fake PCHR "civilian"
As EoZ readers know, after Cast Lead I led a team that identified hundreds of people who were called "civilians" by the Palestinian Center of Human Rights - but were in fact terrorists.
We scoured through official jihadist websites and forums to see which of these "civilians" were called "mujahadeen." We crosschecked obituaries published on Hamas and other terror group websites, often months later, against the PCHR list.
In short, we showed that PCHR was happy to lie in order to make it appear that the IDF was targeting civilians.
Looks like we have our work cut out for us again:
According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 17:45 on Tuesday, 20 November 2012, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at Hussam Mohammed Salama, 30, and Mahmoud Ali al-Koumi, 29, cameramen of the Gaza-based al-Aqsa Satellite Channel, while they were traveling in a civilian car clearly marked with TV
.
Luckily, I just made a poster about Mr. Salama, along with a photo of the car where he had crudely spray-painted "TV."
As the IDF says:
A senior Hamas operative was targeted while driving a press vehicle. Muhammed Shamalah, commander of Hamas forces in the southern Strip and head of the Hamas militant training programs, was targeted by an Israeli air strike while driving a car clearly labelled TV, indicating it to be a press vehicle, abusing the protection afforded to journalists.
PCHR no doubt knows all of this, and they choose not to mention it. Even if they want to make the argument that Salama was not actively involved in combat - their normal argument when asked about the high number of terrorists that they call civilian - they show their dishonesty by not revealing the entire story, and instead saying as a fact:
These crimes are aimed to silence and the press and prevent journalists from reporting on crimes committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians.
In other words, PCHR is not just withholding information - it is knowingly lying.
This is why so-called "human rights" organizations cannot be assumed to tell the entire story. They have an agenda just like everyone else does, and they will hide information that does not fit that agenda. PCHR is just one very sorry example of this.
Over and over, civilian deaths in Gaza instantly blamed on Israel can be traced as human shields, own goals, misrepresentations, or outright fakes. You can't give the Palestinians the benefit of the doubt, graphican: it's the Israelis who are going after military targets and Hamas and the Palestinians who celebrate killing Israeli civilians. I know you are used to demonizing Jews. You need to learn how wrong you are, how the truth has been inverted, and how you have been manipulated for evil ends - and, perhaps, read more of my posts for some insight about how anti-Zionism is connected to Pakistan's slide into militarism, terrorism, and anarchy.
