Why You Cannot Trust the Media on Israel -- A Veteran Reporter Explains

Is there anybody who still trusts the media, especially but not only concerning Israel?

Mati Friedman, a veteran reporter for the Associated Press (AP), has not only demonstrated the bias of the AP, where he worked, but of the media generally. What you have probably sensed long ago, is now confirmed by Friedman, who goes on to explain some of the mechanisms and rules governing media anti-Jewish, anti-Israel bias. It is also likely that there is media bias on other issues and against other countries. Knowing the methods and biases of the media generally can help the informed reader better understand what he is reading or watching on TV.

Here is an example of media bias and method of bias, as reported by Friedman:

A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described the summer’s events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors in Nigeria and Ukraine, four sentences to the crazed génocidaires of ISIS, and the rest of the article—30 sentences—to Israel and Gaza.

Friedman makes clear that worldwide hate atmosphere against Israel derives not simply from events but from how those events are presented by malice aforethought in the media:

While global mania about Israeli actions has come to be taken for granted, it is actually the result of decisions made by individual human beings in positions of responsibility—in this case, journalists and editors. The world is not responding to events in this country, but rather to the description of these events by news organizations. The key to understanding the strange nature of the response is thus to be found in the practice of journalism, and specifically in a severe malfunction that is occurring in that profession

According to the rules of most international media, what is important is what Israel does, not what the Arabs called "palestinians" do. They are seen, by the rules, as always passive victims:

A reporter working in the international press corps here understands quickly that what is important in the Israel-Palestinian story is Israel. If you follow mainstream coverage, you will find nearly no real analysis of Palestinian society or ideologies, profiles of armed Palestinian groups, or investigation of Palestinian government. Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents of their own fate. The West has decided that Palestinians should want a state alongside Israel, so that opinion is attributed to them as fact, though anyone who has spent time with actual Palestinians understands that things are (understandably, in my opinion) more complicated. Who they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that they exist as passive victims of the party that matters

He goes on to discuss the reality of Hamas intimidation of journalists, and its effects and reach:

There has been much discussion recently of Hamas attempts to intimidate reporters. Any veteran of the press corps here knows the intimidation is real, and I saw it in action myself as an editor on the AP news desk. During the 2008-2009 Gaza fighting I personally erased a key detail—that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll—because of a threat to our reporter in Gaza

The aversion to the truth of Western media organizations is so strong that they even forego scoops if the information contained in the scoop contradicts the pro-Arab narrative:

 In early 2009, for example, two colleagues of mine obtained information that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had made a significant peace offer to the Palestinian Authority several months earlier, and that the Palestinians had deemed it insufficient. This had not been reported yet and it was—or should have been—one of the biggest stories of the year. The reporters obtained confirmation from both sides and one even saw a map, but the top editors at the bureau decided that they would not publish the story

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide

You have been warned. Don't trust the media on Israel.

Hamas, Qatar and the "Left"

Updated as of 9-22-2014 re Tariq Ramadan & the Left, & article on Qatar-see at the Bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools
Eliyahu m'Tsiyon

Once upon a time, children, the "Left" prided itself on defending the workers, the honest workingman, the toilers in the factories, mills and mines of capitalism, etc etc. Those days are long gone. Stalinist and Trotskyist Communists claimed to always be guided by the class interest. that is, the interest of the working class.  Nowadays, most of the "Left" gets most passionate when hating Israel. Various Communist factions [such as the New Anti-Capitalist Party] and the Communist trade union, the CGT, were sponsors and organizers of the pro-Hamas demonstrations in Paris. "Death to Jews" [not Zionists but Jews --mort aux Juifs!] was chanted at some or all of these demonstrations, among other hateful slogans. Some of these demonstrations split up into the non-combatants who went home and the more "militant" element who rushed to make pogroms against Jews in Paris.

The French government led by Francois Hollande and Manuel Valls realized the danger of letting these marches and demonstrations take place near Jewish neighborhoods, and forbid them to take place or come near to synagogues and areas with many Jewish residents, often Jews who had fled Arab lands like Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. In other words, the organizers, both Islamist militants and Communists, wanted to march from Republic Square to Bastille Square, near many Jewish residents. One of the first pro-Hamas marches did go that route and gangs of thugs broke off to raid  synagogues near the Bastille on the Rue des Tournelles and on the Rue de la Roquette, where a street brawl took place between Jewish defenders and Muslim thugs, until police reinforcements arrived. Another would-be pogrom took place in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles where many North African Jews live, close to many North Africa Arabs, as well as Assyrian Christians from Iraq, now the target of Islamist fanaticism in their homeland. There is a lot more to say about these demonstrations/riots/pogroms but our object is to point out the "leftists"  fighting for Hamas. The Hamas charter of course calls for genocide against Jews [especially Article 7].

In Oakland, California, certain "leftist" led workers groups organized to stop unloading of Israeli ships. We can go on with examples of "leftists" and even workers unions joining in the lynch mob trying to hang Israel for defending itself.

Now we won't go into how Hamas sacrifices its own civilian population in Gaza in order to charge Israel with war crimes. We have done several previous posts on the subject of Hamas' strategy and the riots in Paris. We have not yet mentioned how some Hamas leaders have become billionaires as have some Fatah leaders. Interesting that so much of the "left" believes or may believe that it is in the interest of the working class to support a mass murder movement led by very rich people.

Let us now ask where Hamas gets its money. Is Hamas funded by the pennies of the poor?
. . .  . the money came from two directions: "Legacies from the deceased; money from charity funds; a donation called zaka, one of the six pillars of Islam; and donations from various countries. It started with Syria and Saudi Arabia, with Iran added later and becoming one of Hamas's biggest supporters, and ended with Qatar, which has now taken Iran's place."   [Globes English, 24 July 2014]

So now Qatar is Hamas' major benefactor. And Qatar also has one of highest per capita incomes in the world. So the major part of the global "Left" supports a mass murder movement funded by a very rich country. Indeed, one of the leading muddled brains of today's academic world, one Judith Butler, openly declared that Hamas and Hizbullah were parts of "the global left."

Well, if Qatar is rich, then maybe it is still somehow anti-imperialist, which might still be enough to justify "leftist" support for its projects, since anti-imperialism was always supposed to be in the working class interest and in favor of revolution, objectively at least, for the true blue reds. Now, for a very long time, anti-imperialist has been interpreted to mean anti-American, anti-Western, by the true blue Communists. Yet if Qatar is anti-American, it surely has a strange way of expressing that stance. Qatar hosts the Middle Eastern headquarters of CENTCOM, the United States armed forces Central Command. Qatar also owns the Al-Jazeera TV network which agitates anti-Jewish propaganda throughout the Arab world by means of Shaykh Qaradawi. The latter was a leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who took refuge in Qatar from the Egyptian government that he and the Brotherhood were long trying to undermine. Now he is a regular on Al-Jazeera. The network also stirs up hatred of Israel and tries to undermine several Arab governments through broadcasting agitprop hate propaganda. Its "reporting" is highly tendentious and partisan. And that includes its "reporting" on the Gaza war.

Well, what is the connection between Al-Jazeera and CENTCOM? I honestly don't know. But at least a visual connection exists. Journalists have reported that the CENTCOM HQ is within eyesight of the al-Jazeera offices. Now, if the "Left" wants to associate --indirectly at least-- with CENTCOM while declaring opposition to US foreign policy, and with Al-Jazeera while claiming to oppose racism and religious bigotry, they certainly can do what they like. And they may not be capable of  understanding what they are doing anyway.

Now, let's take up how workers are treated in Qatar, yes, there are workers there. However, most of the workers there are foreigners who do not share the privileges of native subjects of the al-Thani family, the princely family that runs Qatar. Indeed, the many many foreign workers in Qatar are treated horribly. They are not merely  subject to exploitation but they work under very harsh and dangerous conditions and they are forced to do jobs that they may want to refuse but their passports are typically confiscated by employers and labor recruiters.  And their pay is often withheld. Without their passports they cannot leave the country and if they have not been paid they are working for nothing, that is, they are slaves.

Is that all that we can point to about Qatar that is negative from what used to be considered a leftist, class-conscious viewpoint?

The biggest project in Qatar now is building facilities for the 2022 Mondiale world soccer championships. Of course, thousands of foreign workers have been brought in to do the actual building work, which is made all the more difficult by the summer heat. Indeed Qatar is warm most of the year. In the summer the temperature may go over 50 degrees centigrade/Celsius. The harsh working conditions plus the extreme heat in summer make it a danger to life to work on constructing the soccer stadiums for the Mondiale. Just in the past couple of years hundreds, literally hundreds, of foreign building workers have died building for the 2022 Mondiale. Have we heard of any "leftist" or workers union protests in the West against the horrid working conditions in Qatar, whether the unsafe physical conditions or the conditions of exploitation and oppression of the foreign workers, many of them from Nepal and India, by the way? Has the "Left" protested the near slavery conditions? Any street demonstrations in Paris or New York or Oakland or London or Brussels?  Yet, demonstrations and marches, often turning into anti-Jewish pogroms and riots have taken place in those cities against Israel's war of self-defense against a mass murderous jihad movement funded by Qatar, a clear enemy of the working class one would think.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
postscript: before we forget, Qatar won the right from the world soccer federation, FIFA, to host the Mondiale in 2022, because it bribed many of the representatives on the FIFA board.
Qatar also is a big advertiser on CNN, hosting its program on the Middle East. Maybe that helps  ensure that news coverage of Qatar will be favorable. The coverage is directly paid for by the Qatar Foundation that claims to do all sorts of good works. Judge for yourself:

Inside the Middle East is a 30 minute monthly feature program on CNN that seeks to capture the dynamism and broad range of cultural diversity in countries across the Middle East. Together with exclusive online articles and galleries it gives a fresh perspective on life in the region that goes beyond the news headlines. It is broadcast in association with Qatar Foundation.

Robert Fulford on slavery in the Persian Gulf and Arabia [here]
8-25-2014 Salem ben Ammar writes on the Eurabia blog that the Emir of Qatar funds Tariq Ramadan and bought him his university chair at Oxford (Oriental Institute, St Antony's College) [ici]. "Adoubé et sponsorisé par l’Emir du Qatar qui lui a acheté sa chaire d’islamologie . . . .  Tarak Ramadan est le premier agent de propagande de l’islam ou islamisme modéré."

9-2-2014 Fergus Downie on Tariq Ramadan and the "Left" -- Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. He is now popular among progressive circles in France and elsewhere as the authentic voice of Moderate Islam. The only problem is that he is not really moderate, more like the subtlest slithery snake north of the Mediterranean. [here]
9-13-2014 Gil Mihaely of Causeur.fr gives some background and analysis of Qatar's success and policy -- À quoi joue le Qatar? [ici] -- " un pays . . . .  peuplé de deux millions d’habitants dont moins de 300 000 nationaux (les statuts subalternes du reste de la population s’apparentent parfois à une forme d’esclavage)" [emphasis added].
9-22-2014 UN "human rights council" praises Qatar's human rights record -- you have to see it to believe it!!! [here] -- UN Watch says foreign workers in Qatar die at the rate of one per day [same as previous link].

Hamas Strategy: Provoke Deaths of Its Own Civilians in order to Have Israel Condemned as a Lawbreaker -- Law Prof & Ex-General

Hamas is practicing a "lawfare strategy", according to Prof Charles Dunlap, jr. He sees, as I do, that Hamas wants to get many of its people, its own civilians, killed, in order to charge Israel with warcrimes and thereby achieve political goals. One might say, in order to achieve military goals through the means of international law or its interpretation. Hamas' charter makes clear that its political goals are also military goals. Its charter calls in article 7 for the mass murder of Jews. This mass murder is depicted in a medieval Muslim hadith fable  --reproduced in Art. 7 of the Charter-- as occurring at Judgment Day. But it is obvious that such a story encourages Muslims to murder Jews in the here and now.

Here is Dunlap's article on Hamas strategy:

Guest Post: Has Hamas Overplayed Its Lawfare Strategy?

By Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014 at 2:03 PM

 

In the current Gaza conflict, the adversaries are employing very different strategies to achieve their operational objectives. Israel is executing a robust military strategy. By striking rocket launch capabilities, as well as tunnel complexes, Israel is conducting what the generals calls a “strategy of denial,” that is, operations that aim to “deny” its adversary the physical capability to wage war.
Hamas’ strategy is, however, quite different. Lobbing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli population centers along with engaging in a few firefights in an effort to kill at least some Israelis is not, militarily speaking, a meaningful warfighting effort.
Rather, Hamas is employing a “lawfare” strategy. A lawfare strategy uses (or misuses) law essentially as a substitute for traditional military means; it is employing law much like any “weapon” to create effects or obtain results in an armed conflict that can be indistinguishable from those typically produced by kinetic methods.
There are many versions of lawfare, but in this case Hamas is attempting to use the fact of Palestinian civilian casualties to cast Israelis as war criminals. In doing so it seems that Hamas is hoping to achieve their aims not by defeating Israelis on a Gaza battlefield, but rather by delegitimizing Israel in the eyes of the world community by establishing them as lawbreakers in an era when adherence to the rule of law is so important to democracies.
According to an Associated Press report, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights believes that since the previous conflict with the Israelis in 2009, they have become “more efficient in touring sites of destruction, taking photos and collecting witness accounts.”
And Hamas has enjoyed some real success.  Many, perhaps most, governments and nongovernmental organizations are accusing Israel of excessive use of force in Gaza.  Disturbingly, however, some of the opposition in Europe even appears to be morphing into anti-Semitism, which must be pleasing to Hamas operatives.
Regardless, Hamas won an important lawfare victory when a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council denounced Israel for “widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms” during its military operations in Gaza (even though the “independent” investigation also called for by the resolution has not yet gotten underway).
As successful as Hamas has been thus far, its lawfare offensive may be slowing down. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli government has been insisting all along that Hamas violations of international law are primarily responsible for the tragic loss of life in the Gaza conflict. What is different now is that more balanced renditions of the law of war are emerging, and a few legal experts are even beginning to speak out in an affirmative defense of Israeli operations.  These may begin to counter to a degree at least what has been characterized as a Hamas strategy that actually “relies on the deaths of civilians.”
To be sure there are still plenty of legal scholars critical of Israel’s Gaza offensive. A few even decry its high-tech efforts to warn civilians as somehow being a cynical form of lawfare itself. For its part, the Israeli Defense Forces are countering with a state-of-the-art public information campaign heavy with videos and charts designed to illustrate what it does to minimize civilian casualties. And it does seem that at least for some audiences the more facts they get the less likely they are to be supportive of Hamas.
For example, a late July Gallup poll shows that 71% of Americans who are following the news “very closely” believe that Israel’s actions are justified as opposed to just 18% who do not follow very closely who hold that view. Additionally, the poll also shows that those with more education support the Israeli actions. All of this might suggest that as people become more familiar with the facts they are less likely to support Hamas, and this could mean that time is not on Hamas’ side.
Most problematic may be a growing belief that, as already suggested, Hamas is deliberately jeopardizing lives of Palestinians in order to pursue its lawfare strategy. Indeed, Hamas seems to be admitting as much. USA Today quotes a Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri using the word “strategy,” in commending people for “ignoring Israeli warnings” to evacuate before a bombing: “The fact that people are willing to sacrifice themselves against Israeli warplanes in order to protect their homes, I believe this strategy is proving itself.”
To many observers Hamas’s lawfare strategy is obvious. CNN analyst Michael Oren quotes former President Bill Clinton as saying that Hamas “has a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own [Palestinian] civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them.”
Of even more significance may be the claim in Algemeiner Journal that Turki al Faisal, who once headed Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services, said “Hamas is responsible for the slaughter in the Gaza Strip.” This is especially damaging given other reports that many Arab leaders are now assessing Hamas as “worse than Israel.”
The bloodshed and destruction may be weakening support even among suffering Palestinians themselves. Moreover, the New York Times reports that Hamas, perhaps “feeling pressure over the mounting deaths,” altered its message to Palestinians from telling them to ignore Israeli warnings to telling Palestinians to “avoid hot areas” and to “stay inside after 11 p.m.” Furthermore, the overwhelming support Israelis have shown for their offensive seems to remain undiminished.”
Still, the situation remains sufficiently in flux that the outcome of Hamas’s lawfare strategies and Israeli counter-lawfare efforts is still uncertain. Though the legal concept of “proportionality” has been often misunderstood in the press despite expert efforts at clarification, at some point the sheer numbers of Palestinian deaths, however legally justifiable, may cause even those who support Israel to insist upon an end to the fighting at almost any price.
The lesson here may be that sophisticated counter-lawfare techniques such as those Israel has employed cannot replace a reasoned dialogue about how much military force is truly essential to the nation’s strategic interests. Law professors Michael Reisman and Chris Antoniou presciently warned in 1994 that the public support that democracies need for even a limited armed conflict can “erode or even reverse itself rapidly, no matter how worthy the political objective, if people believe that the war is being conducted in an unfair, inhumane, or iniquitous way.”
In its unadulterated form lawfare, as a manifestation of the rule of law itself, could help a party to a conflict achieve success – even enduring success – in the complex pol-mil milieu of 21^st century conflicts. To do so, however, lawfare – to include counter-lawfare efforts – must be more than simply a shrewd and aggressive public relations campaign. It must be supported by facts that demonstrate actual adherence to the law, an axiom both Hamas and Israel may want to note.

 

---

About the Author

Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. is currently a Professor of the Practice of Law and Executive Director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, at Duke Law School. He retired from the Air Force in 2010 as a Major General.

Link: http://justsecurity.org/13781/charles-dunlap-lawfare-hamas-gaza/
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

8-23-2014 Lee Smith describes Hamas' strategy to get its own people killed [here]
 

Hamas' Strategy & France's Betrayal

How she sits forlorn.
The  City teeming with people
Became like a widow; . . . .
She  weeps and wails at night
With a tear on her cheek.
She has no comforter
Out of all her lovers.
All her friends betrayed her,
They became her enemies
Book of Lamentations, chap 1
ספר איכה א

Prime Minister Netanyahu thought that French president Hollande was his friend and Israel's friend. Compared to some earlier presidents of France like De Gaulle, Chirac and Giscard d'Estaing, that may be true. But Muslims, most of them considering themselves Arabs, make up around 20 % of France's population. In the years since the Oslo War (also called the Second Intifada) was instigated by Arafat, French Arabs and other French Muslims, have performed several murders of Jews in supposed retaliation for the hoax "killing" of young Muhammad al-Durah by Israeli forces at Netzarim Junction in Gaza on 30 September 2000. This hoax was produced by French and Palestinian Arab journalists working for France2, the French state TV network. The al-Durah hoax has never been officially repudiated or apologized for by France. President Hollande is not responsible for that hoax but he has not acted to alleviate its effect on public opinion, which has been mainly to agitate the French Muslims into more hatred of Jews than they had before.  And it incited them to act out their hatreds by burning synagogues, attacking and murdering Jewish individuals, etc.

How does this connect with Hamas and its strategy?

Hamas has felt emboldened since the US Government accepted and approved the Hamas-PLO-PA-Fatah unity government for the Palestinian Authority several months ago. It intensified its agitation for Arabs in Judea-Samaria and elsewhere to attack Jews and kidnap Jews. It also intensified the shooting of rockets and mortars at Israel. The first five months of 2014 saw more rockets and mortars shot at Israel than all of 2013.  In March, when talk began of a unity government for the Palestinian Authority between the PLO/Fatah and Hamas, the numbers went up to 64 rockets and one mortar, close to the number of 78 for all 2013. The numbers went down in April and May, perhaps not to disrupt American approval of the  unity govt, but shot up again in June, the month when Hamas members from the Hebron area kidnapped and murdered three Jewish teenagers, an act approved by Hamas although it disclaimed responsibility for it. The agitation by Hamas leaders and Muslim clerics associated with Hamas for such kidnappings is not cited often enough. In June the number of rockets shot up again to 62 and the mortars numbered 3. [numbers are from Maqor Rishon, 18 July 2014]

Hamas wanted to provoke Israel into a war. Hamas wanted to make it impossible for Israel to avoid a war. That is part of the strategy. In the war, Hamas' leaders would be safe in their underground tunnels and bunkers, while their rank and file subjects would be subject to legitimate Israeli military action to stop the firing of rockets aimed at Israel's civilian population. Hamas built a vast network of tunnels and bunkers crisscrossing throughout the Gaza Strip and going under the frontier under Israeli communities, under their fields, courtyards, schools and homes. Hamas used the tunnels and bunkers to store its vast arsenal of rockets and for attack purposes (intending to send terrorists to pop up out of the ground and kill and kidnap Israeli civilians and soldiers which has several times occurred) and as shelters for its leadership.

Ordinary Gaza Arabs could not use the tunnels as bomb shelters. They did not have bomb shelters. Hamas did not build bomb shelters for civilians. So in the kind of war that Hamas provoked Israel into, many of their own Gaza civilians would die. Which Hamas surely knew in advance. But that was a strategy. The deaths of civilians would be filmed and photographed and shown around the world. And Israel would have a terrible image from all that. Indeed Hamas would see to it that foreign news photographers, reporters and film cameramen would not film rocket launchers set up in civilian locations, such as next to hospitals and schools, including UNRWA schools, and in homes and apartments, nor the storage of rockets in UNRWA schools, in mosques and other civilian locations.

The cameramen and photographers were intimidated by Hamas into not filming or photographing these violations of the laws of war. Some who violated Hamas' rules for news coverage have been forced to leave Gaza. Oddly, although forbidding filming of rocket launchers in civilian locations, Hamas also shot rockets from near journalists during live broadcasts, leading to the reporter fleeing in fear. Such events have been seen several times on TV, although the rocket launchers themselves did not appear on screen. For instance, Hamas shot rockets from near France24 reporter Gallagher Fenwick during a live broadcast, which I and other TV viewers saw. Fenwick fled in fear and then told what had happened. But the rockets and the launcher were not seen. Other examples have been broadcast too, one involving a woman reporter for an Arab network. These shootings invited Israeli retaliation, thus they endangered the journalists. But in general journalists toe the Hamas line and present scene after scene of civilian suffering in Gaza. The numbers of civilian deaths are supplied by Hamas government  agencies, such as the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as by international bodies known to be hostile to Israel, such as UNRWA and the Red Cross [international committee of the Red Cross, a Swiss govt agency] which in any event get their numbers from Hamas.

 This picture of the war deliberately produced by Hamas and its media collaborators and psywar advisors has been shown worldwide leading to numerous demonstrations and riots, as in Paris and other places in France. In France, Islamist fanatics have been joined by so-called anti-capitalists, self-styled true blue Marxists. The Bolsheviks showed their fondness for aggressive Muslims as far back as 1917.   France has seen several cases where supposed protest demonstrations against the Gaza War have turned into anti-Jewish riots, attacking synagogues in Paris, Sarcelles and elsewhere, or have turned into plain riots, and where Islamist demonstrators have attacked and tried to disrupt pro-Israel demonstrations.

These riots could  not have failed to make an impact on French policy. Curiously,  in cases where demonstrations had been banned by the legal and police authorities, the organizers who called for going ahead with the demonstrations despite the ban have not been arrested. And the so-called New Anti-Capitalist Party was  guilty of calling for violation of the law in that way, which is also called sedition. But the party leaders were not arrested as far as I know. Since Hollande's govt has failed to solve France's economic problems, which are probably not solvable without drastic reforms in the labor laws, among other reforms, which would be opposed by the trade unions, part of his political base and constituency, he does not want to lose any more popular or institutional support, and certainly not from the "Left." Therefore he does not enforce the law against the "New Anti-Capitalist Party."

Now the Hamas strategy was to have large numbers of its own people killed in legitimate Israeli acts of self-defense. And the scenes of death and destruction would be seen worldwide and produce anger against Israel and pressure for foreign intervention of various sorts, especially intervention by great powers, the UN, etc. Meanwhile, Hamas was committing the double war crime of attacking Israeli civilians while using its own civilians as human shields.

Hamas' strategy has succeeded. Today, August 4, France capitulated to the Islamist-cum-"marxist" mobs and pro-Hamas agitprop. Hollande himself called Israel's actions in Gaza a "massacre", comparing Israel's war of self-defense to massacres in Iraq and Syria. And his foreign minister, Fabius, advocated imposing a settlement on Israel and the Arabs, despite what either side may want. Actually, several state members of the EU and EU functionaries have been speaking of an imposed settlement for a long time. They really mean a settlement or "peace" imposed on Israel because many of the Euro politicians and foreign ministries and the EU's own foreign affairs commission in Brussels hate Israel which represents their own bad conscience over the Holocaust, and would like to turn the moral tables on the Jews by showing that the Jews/Zionists are really Nazis. And then their own consciences would be clean and they would have validated the Nazi genocide of the Jews ex post facto. This is important not only to Germany but to many EU states, almost all of which took part in the Holocaust directly or indirectly.

Hamas itself has a Nazi-like ideology aimed at mass murder of the Jews. But somehow the oh so clever Europeans, and some Americans too, can't read the Hamas charter, several times translated into English and other languages. Or they have read it and they like what it has to say.

UPDATINGS 5 August 2014
Interesting article on Hamas strategy by Prof Gregory Rose [here]

Film by Indian NDTV news crew shows rocket being assembled and fired near residential buildings and hotels in Gaza [here].
I hope that the fellows who made the film stay safe and are not harassed for having told the truth which sometimes seems so elusive for the Western press.
I just found out that the Indian news team left Gaza. Here is a report from them after leaving.

8 August 2014
Statement by Colonel Richard Kemp on Hamas tactics of sacrificing its own civilians and on the IDF's efforts to spare civilian life [here ]. Statement delivered at the UN Human Rights Commission  in Geneva.
11 August 2014
Hamas training manual explains the importance of  using human shields [here]&[here]&[here]