Genocide of Jews: the declared goal of Hamas

 Ironies, paradoxes and hypocrisy abound in politics and war. At the recent pro-Hamas anti-Israel demonstrations around the world the charge is often made that Israel is perpetrating genocide against Palestinian Arabs [for the demo in Washington, DC, see here]. And this charge is not new as shown by a poster in the US Library of Congress collection.

Ironically, or perhaps as one would expect, the Hamas Charter eagerly looks forward to genocide of the Jews, cast in Islamic terms to be sure. We read in Article 7 [seven] of the Hamas Charter, the following:

... the Prophet of Allah (saas) says: The Last Hour would not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them, and until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say. Muslim or Servant of Allah there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree of Gharqad would not say it, for it is the tree of the Jews (Bukhari and Muslim).3 [this passage is quoted from the translation published by the University of California Press on behalf of the so-called Institute of Palestine Studies]. 

The translation of Prof Raphael Israeli of the Truman Institute for Peace of the Hebrew University has this passage as follows:

The time [= Judgement Day] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: 0 Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad(17), which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim 18)

[Bukhari and Muslim were medieval compilers of collections of Islamis hadiths]

Prof Israeli points out that "the Egyptian troops who launched the assault on

the Bar-Lev Line in October 1973, were equipped with "booklets of guidance" which included, inter alia, this same quotation."

This passage is preceded in the Charter by this line:

"Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion"

The translation of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is as follows:

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem [O Slave of Allah- unexplicably omitted in this translation], there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)

Ironic is it not that those who accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinian Arabs, not only practice it against Jews, as on October 7, but openly declare that as their goal? Now translations of the Hamas charter have been available for many years but it seems that the general public is unaware of what it says about murdering Jews. The press, the media and the academic world, and the Western foreign ministries pretend not to know of it. Otherwise, could Emanuel Macron, president of France, have distorted what was happening on the ground in the battle of Gaza as he did?

Capitalists Finance Anti-Israel "Leftists"

The funds contributed to anti-Israel organizations by the Ford Foundation is old news. Indeed, at the monstruous Durban I conference in 2001, which was supposedly opposed to racism, Israel and Jews came under intense hatred. As researcher Edwin Black discovered, many of the so-called "civil society" bodies and  "non-governmental organizations" attending and voting against Israel at the conference turned out to have been financed by the Ford Foundation, which was founded with the wealth of automobile mogul Henry Ford, who was one of the most notable Judeophobes in American history and gave encouragement to Hitler.

Not to be outdone by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund turns out to be funding at least two noxious anti-Israel bodies, the campus-based "Jewish Voice for Peace" and the American Friends Service Committee, an offshoot of the Society of Friends, a religious group usually known as the Quaker church which ordinarily takes pride in preaching a pure pacifism in line with Jesus' supposed call on his followers to "turn the other cheek".

Some of the stunts performed by the "Jewish Voice for Peace"  cost a fairly large amount of money. Consider:

On February 2, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Israel organization that seeks to “drive a wedge” in the Jewish community over support for the Jewish State, distributed 10,000 copies of a propaganda pamphlet masquerading as The New York Times. Claiming to be a special edition of the paper, the publication featured “articles” praising BDS and blaming Israel for the latest round of Palestinian terrorism over the past four months.The high production value of the lookalike—described by the Times as “deliberately designed to trade on our name and mislead users”—should direct focus towards those that provided the funds required to make such a stunt possible. Aside from the cost of printing thousands of copies of the multi-page fake, JVP and its partners devoted resources towards launching a faux Times website and Twitter account to accompany the handouts.
While JVP does not publish information on its financial backers, some of their supporters proudly announce their bankrolling of this group. In 2015, JVP received a two-year, $140,000 grant from the New York-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF). The private fund made the allocation through its “Peacebuilding” program, which claims to “advance just and durable peace by supporting innovative and collaborative approaches and policies for conflict prevention, management, and transformation.” It is unclear how financing groups that demonize Israel, promote discriminatory boycotts, and aim to silence its advocates can be considered a “collaborative approach” that will advance peace.

Here is some info on the American Friends Service Committee and its tie to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF):

JVP is far from the only hostile and offensive group to receive RBF’s blessing. In 2015, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—a group that regularly refers to “Israeli apartheid” and Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians—received $50,000 for its “Israel Program.” The Quaker group is a close ally of JVP, andpromotes BDS initiatives throughout the United States, including on university campuses. AFSC’s Dalit Baum authored a 2014 divestment resolution at Loyola University and has spoken numerous times with the pro-BDS group Students for Justice in Palestine. Similarly, JVP and AFSC have partnered to host “BDS summer camps” to train college activists. [full article by Yona Schiffmiller here]

According to the article that I have quoted, the AFSC received only $50,000 from the RBF. But don't worry about the AFSC. It is a very well funded body and has many sources of funding, some of them government-connected. It maintains offices in Ramallah, Jerusalem and many other places throughout the world. All that takes money.

Now, getting away from the specific details, is it not curious that groups conventionally identified as "Left" enjoy generous funding from capitalist bodies, foundations representing super rich capitalist families and founded with money from the profits --in some cases-- of inhuman exploitation of poor working men and women? When the smug and self-righteous and "do-gooder" recipients of Ford Foundation funds receive their thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions, do they think of how the money was made upon which the Ford Foundation was founded?

Many of these "do-gooder" and pro-"peace" and pro-"human rights" bodies support Hamas, the branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that has established a statelet in Gaza. One addled mind who teaches, if you please, in an American university, one Judith Butler, informed the benighted world that Hamas, as well as Hizbullah, was part of what she called "the Global Left." Are these bien pensant "do-gooders" and "progressives" and "leftists" aware that the main financial support of their dear Hamas, their "leftist Hamas," is the super wealthy sheikdom of Qatar on the Persian Gulf? If they are so aware, does it bother them that slavery is practiced in Qatar under very cruel conditions which have led to the deaths of hundreds of foreign slave laborers in Qatar over the past few years as they build facilities for the 2022 world soccer championships, the Mondiale? And that Qatar contributed to the corruption of the highly corrupt FIFA, the international soccer/football/ body? If Qatar did not hand out huge bribes to FIFA board members to vote to award the sheikdom with the Mondiale for 2022, why would anybody have thought for a moment that the Persian Gulf sheikdom with its 50 degrees centigrade temperatures in the summer, would be suitable for hosting a soccer championship?
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UPDATES
3-27-2016 Ziva Dahl tells more on funding by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund [here] from New York Daily News.

Ambassador Michael Oren: Obama Wants Israel to Placate Erdogan

This is an amazing revelation. It was long obvious that Obama wanted Israel to placate Erdogan. After all, it was when Obama was here in Israel (early 2013) that Netanyahu offered Erdogan his best non-apology for resisting the pro-Hamas efforts of Turkish jihadis and other jihadis on the Mavi Marmara. Nine of hese jihadis were killed when they were on their way to Gaza, declaring that their purpose was to break Israel's justified blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Hamas, let us not forget, openly advocates genocide of the Jews in its charter (Article 7), as well as promoting the forged and plagiarized Protocols of the Elders of Zion in that charter. Obama hardly disguised his sympathies for Hamas and for Erdogan's Turkey, now becoming more and more Islamist because of him. Obama also directly intervened with Israel on behalf of the prisoners taken on the Mavi Marmara and other boats taking part in the pro-Hamas convoy that was falsely named "the Free Gaza Flotilla."

We knew all that. But now, Michael Oren, formerly Israel's ambassador to the USA, reveals that Israel's cooperation in a triangular alliance with the USA and Turkey was a paramount US interest, in Obama's eyes. However, Erdogan is a Judeophobic Islamist provocateur. Israel should not apologize to Turkey or Erdogan in any way for resisting Erdogan's provocation by sponsoring the Mavi Marmara, which enjoyed Obama's support too. This support for Erdogan is another sign of Obama's basic Judeophobia.

Here are Oren's words [JPost, 12-19-2015]:
“The reason that apology took place was that in every single meeting we had with the president of the United States, Obama, he made it clear that his first priority was the reconciliation between Israel and Turkey,” Oren said. “He viewed the Israeli-Turkish-American triangle as a-close-to-paramount American strategic interest.” [see JPost here]. 

Obama has had a pro-Islamist policy from the beginning. And we have pointed this out before. He is seven-fold more dangerous because he is the president of the USA, the most powerful country in the world. This policy can be seen in his and his flunkeys indulgence of Islamists in Turkey (erdogan), Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood, called the Ikhwan) and various and sundry Arab terrorist factions such as Fatah and Hamas (the Palestinian Arab branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood). Obama knowingly tolerated these Islamists, including the jihadists on the Mavi Marmara.

The recent agreement to placate Erdogan is undesirable and unjustified but is understandable given Obama's pressure for it. Avigdor Lieberman's criticism of the accord is basically sound. Obama shows his own hypocrisy, his own false "humanitarianism" and faux "righteousness"  by overlooking Turkey's own embargo of Armenia starting about 1992 which was put in place by the previous government of Turkey but which  Erdogan has continued, while hypocritically denouncing Israel's justified blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Qatar denies that any workers have died working on sites for the 2022 soccer World Cup

Of course, we would expect a government accused in a situation like this to deny or minimize the loss of life that it may be  responsible for. Here Qatar engages in a brazen lie. The Guardian has followed this story and we have previously used the Guardian's material at Emet m'Tsiyon. What is interesting and what the Guardian still conceals or works to disconnect from other facts, from the wider context of Qatar, is Qatar's role as the leading funder of Hamas, the ones who made it possible for Hamas to shoot thousands of missiles at Israeli civilian locations last summer. Also missing is the efforts of US secretary of state John Kerry to force Israel to use Qatar's "mediation" to end the war with Hamas, whereas Qatar was clearly a major or the major ally of Hamas along with Iran and Turkey. In other words, the US as a great power or superpower or imperialist power worked to favor Hamas over Israel. When the Guardian talks about Qatar's oppression of foreign workers, it does not make a connection with Hamas or the USA. If you find something to the contrary, a Guardian webpage that I am not familiar with, let me know and post it here as a comment. [Guardian June 3, 2015 at 6:59 British time].

Qatar: 'Not a single worker's life has been lost'

The state-run Qatar News Agency has published a denial by the Government Communication Office of claims surrounding the deaths of migrant workers working on World Cup sites. (Read the Guardian’s investigation into these deaths here and here.)

The Qatari rebuttal tackles a blog published by the Washington Post, which said 1,200 migrant workers are estimated to have died during the construction of World Cup sites, and a further 4,000 could die by 2022:

This is completely untrue. In fact, after almost five million work-hours on World Cup construction sites, not a single worker’s life has been lost. Not one …

Qatar has more than a million migrant workers. The Global Burden of Disease study, published in the Lancet in 2012, states that more than 400 deaths might be expected annually from cardiovascular disease alone among Qatar’s migrant population, even had they remained in their home countries.

It is unfortunate that any worker should die overseas, but it is wrong to distort statistics to suggest, as the Post’s article did, that all deaths in such a large population are the result of workplace conditions.

The Post’s article was accompanied by a dramatic graphic, which purports to compare the imagined fatalities in Qatar with the number of lives lost in the construction of other international sports venues, including the London Olympics, where just one worker was reported to have died.

A more accurate comparison according to the Post’s analysis would have also suggested that every migrant worker in the United Kingdom who died between 2005 and 2012 – whatever the job and whatever the cause of death – was killed in the construction of the 2012 London Olympics. [Guardian June 3, 2015 at 6:59 British time]

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How Hamas leaders got rich, with the help of Qatar and others [Globes 24 July 2014].
Hamas is led by very rich people [Egyptian TV]
Qatar funds the so-called "Free Gaza Movement"
Qatar and other super-rich Arab powers help finance American "higher education."

Business Insider comments on the numbers of dead workers [here]

Hypocrisy in Higher Education

The moral corruption of the American academic world is well underway. We now have academic departments, especially those devoted to Middle Eastern, Arabic and Islamic studies, that are funded by oil-rich Arab governments. We also have today branches of once prestigious American universities that operate in the Persian Gulf sheikdoms. Yale, once highly prestigious as one of the top schools of the prestige-encrusted Ivy League, kowtowed  to real or anticipated pressure from wealthy Arab patrons. This became notorious in August 2009 when the Yale University Press was about to publish a book about the Muhammad Cartoons controversy. After the Yale administration "consulted with experts" (according to the NY Times), the Yale Press decided not to publish any of the Muhammad cartoons nor any of the old and classic artistic representations of Muhammad that were to be in the book.

Now, it just so happens that in April 2009, Yale had appointed a woman who served as an academic operative for Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to a prestigious, if temporary post.

"In April, Yale named Muna AbuSulayman a “Yale World Fellow” for 2009. This isn’t some honorific, and she’ll reside from August through December in New Haven. (Her Facebook fan page, August 16: “I need help locating a Town House/condo for short term leasing near Yale University… Anyone familiar with that area?”) Can you imagine a better way to set the stage for a major Alwaleed gift? Hosting for a semester the very person who structured the Harvard and Georgetown gifts, and who now directs Alwaleed’s charitable foundation? A stroke of genius." [Martin Kramer, emph. added]

Now, we see that  Madame Abu Sulayman had already been instrumental in bringing some of Prince Al-Waleed's generosity to Harvard and Georgetown. Could it be that Yale too was hoping to share in some of Prince Al-Walid's largesse? Maybe Yale was only acting  like those prestigious professors of mathematics who lent their names in exchange for money to the Mathematics Dept at King Abdulaziz University in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. Does this matter? Yes, it does, if academic integrity and honesty have any worth anymore. Yes, if the academic world is to have any more claim to the  respect of decent and informed people.

In this vein, Jonathan Marks has discovered another reason not to honor the academy. He tells a story involving the fanatical bds movement, the movement to boycott Israel which began with funding in part from the well-connected and well-established Ford Foundation.

. . . . this year’s award for higher education hypocrisy surely must go to eight signatories of the latest anti-Israel petition to emerge from our universities. The petition itself, signed by members of the faculty of New York University, is the standard call to punish corporations that can be connected in some way to Israel’s activities in the West Bank or Gaza. What’s striking about this one is that eight of the signatories, more than ten percent of the present total, are affiliated with NYU’s satellite campus in Abu Dhabi. NYU’s Abu Dhabi outpost, “wholly bankrolled by the oil-rich Abu Dhabi government,” opened in 2010, and its permanent campus, located alongside an “idyllic resort” under development on Saadiyat Island, was completed in 2014. So I wonder when these eight faculty members, who pompously stand on NYU’s “long and proud tradition of demanding that the university live up to its professed values,” will be renouncing their affiliation with the government of the United Arab Emirates. As Freedom House observes in its 2014 report, the UAE bans political parties, and “criticism of the government, allies [and] religion” is prohibited by law.
The UAE also has a labor problem. UAE’s mostly foreign workers do not have the right to organize, bargain collectively, or strike. Expatriate workers can be banned from working in the UAE if they try to leave their employer prior to at least two years of service. NYU responded to this difficulty by issuing a statement concerning labor values they expected to be adhered to in the building of the campus. Nonetheless, some of the workers who built the campus “lived in squalor, 15 men to a room.” Almost all had to pay a recruitment fee, consisting of about a year’s wages, for the privilege of getting the job, then worked 11 to 12 hours per day. Workers with the temerity to strike were arrested, beaten, and deported. But it’s a lovely campus, and I am sure the faculty members who want NYU to live up to its values are enjoying it. Who can begrudge brave and hardworking anti-Israeli petition signers their day at the beach? Besides as the signatories of this letter—who include three of the faculty members who signed the anti-Israel position—explain, “our partners are trying to do their best.” Moreover, many of the NYUAD faculty discuss “the complexities of labor in the Gulf” with their students, which is undoubtedly a comfort to the workers, who, because they were not allowed to hold onto their passports and sometimes not even to have their own bank cards, had little hope of escaping their employers, much less bettering their conditions.
It’s nice, though, that NYU’s Abu Dhabi faculty feels able to discuss labor “complexities” since, according to Freedom House, faculties at Western universities typically “take care to not criticize the UAE government or its policies out of fear of losing funding.” There are other incentives for silence as well: “in 2012, several academics critical of UAE government policies were dismissed from their positions and either arrested or expelled from the country.”
But it is commendable that these faculty members, busy enjoying a campus built by indentured servants, and the hospitality of a government that honors neither academic nor political freedom, have found time away from kayaking in Saadiyat Island’s lovely mangrove lagoons, to demand that NYU break with Israel and live up to its values. Some would call this breathtaking hypocrisy. I call it the quintessence of the academic anti-Israel movement.

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Talking about the conditions of indentured servitude in Abu Dhabi, reminds us that the working conditions and shameful treatment of workers in Abu Dhabi are similar to those in Qatar, although the situation in Qatar may actually be worse. The hypocrites and self-righteous Judeophobes who sign petitions to boycott Israel and who praise and justify Hamas, conveniently omit from their concerns the oppressed, exploited and humiliated foreign workers in Qatar who often die under the burden of their harsh working conditions. Qatar is of course a major funder of Hamas, which declares its genocidal goal regarding Jews in its Charter (Article 7).

While we're talking about the nefarious influence of Muslim money, of Islamic filthy lucre, on Western intellectual life, we may recall that more than 200 years ago the French playwright Beaumarchais put into his famous play, The Marriage of Figaro, how a play was censored because of the pressure of Muslim potentates on a European monarch. This was brought to light by the columnist Ivan Rioufol writing in Le Figaro, the newspaper precisely named after the hero of Beaumarchais' play.

How Hamas Talks out of Three Sides of Their Mouth

Hamas sends a different message to each of three different groups, to three bodies of public opinion or audiences that it wants to influence. It tells the Arabs and the Muslim world that it won the war, that it was victorious and triumphant, that it caused great losses to Israel, great losses among both Israeli soldiers and civilians, that it is a movement of mighty heroes.
It tells the West, the self-styled "Left", the Liberals and the would-be humanitarians that the victims on its side in the war were nearly all civilians, that its martyrs were women and children, that Israel targeted civilians, woman and children, as well as UN facilities. It pretended to be weak and helpless and innocuous and innocent. This was of course in direct contradiction and contrast to its messages to the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Lastly, in youtube messages to Israelis it  threatened that it would slaughter them. It was trying to terrorize them with pix of death and destruction in Israel and threats in Hebrew, usually poor Hebrew, that they were going to be killed, slaughtered, massacred. When Israelis were aware of this terror propaganda they usually laughed at it.

It's a three-way media/propaganda strategy. Aaron Magid spells it out on Tablet:

. . . .  on Aug. 26, hours before the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire in Gaza began, Hamas’ military wing—Al-Qassam Brigades—launched its final attacks on Israel. In addition to the dozens of rockets shot by Al-Qassam Brigades, @qassam_Arabic1, Al-Qassam’s official Arabic Twitter account, defiantly posted dozens of tweets declaring unconditional triumph. Sprinkling religious messaging on their Arabic Twitter page, Al-Qassam frequently utilized Quranic language to inspire its followers.

At the same time, in English, Al-Qassam was posting online messages employing terms such as “human rights” to attract a Western audience while emphasizing Palestinian suffering . . . . [emphasis added]

But the message sent to Israelis was altogether different from the other two:

 . . . . . While Al-Qassam’s English messaging was designed to show Hamas as the moral underdogs, the organization’s Hebrew social media team focused primarily on intimidating the Israeli public. One Tweet included an Al-Qassam fighter inside a tunnel aiming a rifle at the viewer with “see you later!” written in Hebrew. [emphasis added]

Intimidating is too mild a term for the Hamas message to Israelis. They were trying to terrorize  us with pictures of death and destruction inside Israeli cities. However, one of the videos was taken over by Israelis who used it to ridicule the Hamas. It featured mighty Hamas warriors --at least in their own eyes-- in battle on land, sea and air, and featured headlines coming out of the screen such as Mavet l'Yisrael [death to Israel]. It also featured films and still pix from Hamas mass murder terrorist attacks on Israelis from the past 15 years, like the neon sign outside Café Moment in Jerusalem where a dozen Israelis were murdered about 13 years ago and ambulances at scenes of terrorist attacks. Nevertheless, the Hebrew language  facet of Hamas propaganda did not work as well as the distinct  messages aimed at the Arab & Muslim worlds and at the West/the Liberals/would-be humanitarians, etc.

Speaking to a Western audience, Khalid Mesh`al was at his oily, hypocritical best:

When Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal was interviewed by Western media outlets, as happened repeatedly throughout and after the war, he shifted Hamas’ messaging away from Hamas’ more combative Arabic tweets toward the kind of language that Western audiences would receive as more moderate and reasonable. On BBC, Meshal twice mentioned that “our Palestinian people have a right to their own state in the West Bank and Gaza”—as though Hamas was fighting for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Yet, Hamas TV consistently called all Israelis, including those who lived in pre-1967 Israel, “settlers,” in consonance with the organization’s charter and repeated public declarations laying claim to “all of Palestine.” In a separate interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose, Meshal stated that “we do not fight the Jews because they are Jews per se. We fight the occupiers. I’m ready to coexist with the Jews”—again suggesting, to Western listeners who were willing or eager to hear him talk that way, a potential willingness to recognize an Israeli state within the 1967 lines. At the same time in Arabic, Al-Qassam was celebrating the death of a 4-year-old Israeli “settler” from Nahal Oz, who lived far away from any West Bank settlement.

. The Hamas whining about its own Gaza civilians being killed was especially hypocritical since it was trying to get its own civilians killed by firing from civilian areas, including UN compounds, including even areas where the foreign press was staying, In this vein, it built underground bunkers to protect its leadership and its rockets but not bomb shelters to protect its civilians. Under international law, Israel would be in its rights to shoot at a military target, such as a rocket launcher, located in a civilian area and surrounded by civilians.

[Geneva Convention, adopted 12 August 1949,
Article 28 The presence of a protected person {= civilian} may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations]

However, Hamas would use the civilian deaths from such an Israeli counterattack as an illustration of its claim that Israel commits war crimes, whereas one of Hamas' purposes stated purposes in its charter is the genocide of Jews [see especially Article 7 of the Hamas charter]. Furthermore, Hamas has made clear that it does not believe that Israeli civilians can be truly civilians. In fact it described a  four-year old Israeli boy killed by a Hamas mortar as a violator [see Magid's article http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/186373/hamas-twitter-messaging]. Hamas and other Arab terrorist factions and parties argue that there are no Israeli civilians, only settlers and soldiers and occupiers and what Hamas calls violators, even if they are only four-years old.

What is important to bear in mind is that skillful propaganda aims different messages at different groups. Thus the message has to be tailored to fit the preexisting beliefs and attitudes of the target audience. Hamas failed to intimidate Israelis, however its propaganda focused on Western/liberal/would-be humanitarian/ audiences was a tremendous hit, highly effective, although obviously deceitful and fraudulent.

See Magid's article here.

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.
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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.

 

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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/
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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]

Why Are Ukrainian Officials & Bashar Assad Allowed to Call Enemies "Terrorists" but the Western Press Won't Use the Word?

Forty years ago in the 1970s, the Irish Republican Army Provisional faction was performing acts of terrorism and sometimes mass murder in Northern Ireland. And the BBC called them "terrorists." In the same years, the Fatah --meaning conquest of a city in Arabic-- was acting as a mass murderous terrorist group. Neither Fatah nor its partners in mass murder terrorism against Israelis and Jews, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,  the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine plus half a dozen smaller murder factions, was called "terrorist" by the BBC. Who can reckon why this discrepancy? Why were IRA Provos called "terrorists" but not Fatah or the PFLP or the PDFLP?

Maybe the BBC thought that British blood was redder than Jewish-Israeli blood. I can only speculate.

In recent years it is not only the BBC that refuses to call terrorists what they are. Now it is a well-established widespread practice in Western press and media outlets that terrorists are called "militants." In earlier years, a militant was a guy who came out to walk the picket line during a strike, a guy who came to the picket line every day, even in bad weather when most people would be more comfortable at home. A militant for a revolutionary faction was somebody who would pick up a thousand leaflets printed by his faction and stand on a street corner all day giving them out. But nobody in those far off days  would call somebody who planted a bomb in a school playground a "militant."

But the word "terrorist" is still  used these days. Bashar Assad called his domestic enemies "terrorists" in 2011 even before allies and cothinkers of al-Qa`ida had joined the struggle against Assad, or what is now a struggle  to determine the future of Syria.
When Assad started calling the rebels against him "terrorists" before it was  true, back in 2011, he was wrong. But he knew very well what and who were terrorists. He himself and his father before him had funded and trained Arab terrorists attacking Israel. The Assad regime in Syria had funded and trained several of the smaller PLO factions since the 1960s, and Hamas & Hizbullah, since the 1980s. After the  US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Assad regime armed and trained terrorists who operated in Iraq against the foreign occupation troops, including Americans of course. These Syrian-trained terrorists especially took to using bombs to slaughter the Shiite population in Iraq. Surely the Assad regime knew that these were terrorists. By the way, today Assad is allied with Shiites warriors against Sunni Muslim rebels against him.

Now we know that Assad's regime is greatly aided by the Russian government. The Russian govt also supports rebels and insurgents in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. These rebels and insurgents who favor Russian rule over their home areas in Eastern Ukraine, in the Don Basin, and so on, are rough and abusive and often thuggish. But they are hardly terrorists in the sense of Hamas or Hizbullah or al-Qa`ida. Yet officials of the Ukrainian government, Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko and so on, call these rebels/insurgents "terrorists." This is one of the things that keeps the new Ukrainian govt from having any credibility,

Now the new Ukrainian govt is supported by Western powers including the EU & USA. So Russia's ally in Syria, Assad, called his opponents "terrorists"  even when the rebels fighting him were not terrorists.
Today, Ukrainian officials supported by the EU & USA call the rebels that Russia supports "terrorists" when they are not.

Meanwhile, Western news outlets like BBC, France24, the New York Times and so many others, call the real terrorists mere "militants."

Hence the word terrorist has become an ill-treated orphan. Can't somebody sort out the meanings and  usages of the words "terrorist" & "militant"? Where is Orwell when we need him?

Hizbullah Hiding Weapons under Buildings in South Lebanon

The Hizbullah hides weapons and ammunition underneath homes in south Lebanon. This was one of the reasons for Hizbullah's relative success against Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war. Israel warned residents of south Lebanon to evacuate the area in view of coming Israeli attacks in an effort to win the release of Israeli soldiers taken captive by the Hizb and to destroy as much as possible of the Hizb's weapons stores. Most residents did evacuate and a number of houses were struck by Israel, with resulting secondary explosions indicating the presence of ammunition/weapons stores. However, the evidence of such stores was widely denied, especially by the anti-Israel media in the West and by "leftist" groups --sometimes in the guise of "human rights" & "peace"-- and by a number of Western governments. Neither Israel's assertions of weapons stored in homes illegally according to international law, nor the photos and other evidence provided by Israel could convince those who fanatically wanted to believe in Israel's inherent evil. To be frank, all this international criticism, albeit ignorant, unjust and hypocritical, does have a restraining effect on Israel's exercise of military power, which obviously helped Hizbullah in the 2006 war. Now a report in Il Sole-24 Ore tells us that again today the Hizb is illegally storing weapons in buildings in southern Lebanon.

The UN Security Council assigned the UNIFIL [UN interim Force in Lebanon] to supervise the cease-fire after the Lebanon War of the summer of 2006. This was in addition to previous assignments, in all of which UNIFIL had failed.

Following the July/August 2006 crisis, the Council enhanced the Force and decided that in addition to the original mandate, it would, among other things, monitor the cessation of hostilities; accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the south of Lebanon; and extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons. [here. This official UN site links to Sec. Council res 1701; in it see paragraphs 8, 11,14,15]

UNIFIL was also supposed [paragraphs 11b, 11e, 14] to help the Lebanese army take control of southern Lebanon --an area under Hizbullah control before 2006-- and to help it prevent weapons not authorized by the Lebanese govt from entering the country. In fact, the Lebanese army does not go into south Lebanon [south of the Litani River] without Hizb permission, nor does UNIFIL travel freely in the country. Nor has the Lebanese army or UNIFIL been effective in keeping Hizbullah from bringing weapons into the country. These weapons, including long distance rockets that can strike anywhere in Israel, have been brought in and many of them are stored in southern Lebanon south of the Litani, despite the assurances of SC res 1701. Again, weapons heavy and light have been stored under civilian buildings, as occurred up to and including the 2006 war. The fact that weapons are being stored under buildings now supports Israel's charge of the same during the 2006 war.

. . . in a country in which the police and regular army are in part connected with Hizbullah and Syrian secret services, there is no doubt that --especially in the southern region between the Litani River and the Israeli border (an area where the [UN] blue helmets are stationed) not even the al-Qaeda cells present in a couple of Palestinian refugee camps near Tyre could succeed in carrying out attacks and moving through the territory without the Shiite militias [Hizbullah] and Damascus' agents being informed of it. The relations between UNIFIL and Hizbullah have progressively worsened in recent years due to the numerous weapons and explosives depositories hidden by the militiamen under the buildings, which have sometimes exploded because they were stored in a faulty manner or due to sabotage attributed to the Israelis. The latest episode took place in November in the sector assigned to the Italian contingent, bringing back to the forefront the substantial failure of UNIFIL which --based on Resolution 1701-- was supposed to disarm Hizbullah.

This disarmament was never performed even if the command [of UNIFIL] at Naqoura attributes that task to the Lebanese forces that, in order to perform it, could ask for support from the blue helmets. In practice, no one has ever tried to take away weapons from the Hizbullah which --on the other hand-- has been reinforced [since 2006], restoring its rocket arsenals and even acquiring Iranian missiles capable of striking all Israeli territory, not only the Galilee. Two weeks ago, visiting Beirut, UN secretary-general Ban-Ki Moon, confirmed the need to disarm Hizbullah, asking all militias to give up their arsenals and saying that he was "concerned" by the Lebanese situation. [Il Sole-24 Ore, 28 January 2012, Gianandrea Gaiani]

In the original

. . . in un Paese nel quale polizia ed esercito regolari sono in parte legati a Hezbollah e servizi segreti siriani non c'è dubbio che, soprattutto nella regione meridionale tra il Fiume Litani e il confine israeliano (area di schieramento dei caschi blu) neppure le cellule di al Qaeda presenti in un paio di campi profughi palestinesi vicino a Tiro riuscirebbero a compiere attentati e a muoversi sul territorio senza che i miliziani sciiti e gli agenti di Damasco ne siano informati. I rapporti tra Unifil ed Hezbollah sono peggiorati progressivamente negli ultimi anni a causa dei numerosi depositi di armi ed esplosivi occultati dai miliziani sotto gli edifici, che a volte sono esplosi perché stoccati in modo errato o a causa di sabotaggi attribuiti agli israeliani. L'ultimo episodio è accaduto in novembre nel settore assegnato al contingente italiano riportando alla ribalta il sostanziale fallimento di Unifil che in base alla Risoluzione 1701 avrebbe dovuto disarmare Hezbollah.

Un disarmo mai attuato anche se il comando di Naqoura attribuisce tale compito alle forze libanesi che per espletarlo potrebbero chiedere il supporto ai caschi blu. Nella pratica nessuno ha mai cercato di sottrarre armi agli Hezbollah che invece si sono rafforzati ripristinando gli arsenali di razzi e acquisendo persino missili iraniani in grado di colpire tutto il territorio israeliano e non solo la Galilea. Due settimane or sono, in visita a Beirut, il Segretario generale dell'Onu Banki-moon ha ribadito la necessità di disarmare Hezbollah chiedendo a tutte le milizie di rinunciare al loro arsenale e dicendosi ''preoccupato'' per la situazione libanese.[Il Sole-24 Ore, 28 Gennaio 2012, Gianandrea Gaiani]

This article tells us several things:
1) The Hizbullah hides weapons and explosives in civilian buildings thereby endangering civilians --non-combatants-- and in violation of the laws of war. This supports charges that Israel made against Hizbullah during the 2006 war;
2) the Hizb has rearmed since the 2006 war, in fact with more weapons than before that war. The border with Syria has been porous since the cease fire in August 2006, enabling Iran to ship heavy weapons through Syria to the Hizb;
3) Neither the Lebanese army nor UNIFIL ever tried to disarm Hizbullah, although SC res 1701 called for disarmament of militias in Lebanon.
4) foreign states have shipped weapons, including heavy weapons into Lebanon since 2006, although this violates UN SC res. 1701. These states have principally been Iran and Syria;
5) UN Security Council res. 1701 has failed.
The Lebanese army was obviously not capable of performing such disarmament as called for, nor did it ask for help from UNIFIL for this purpose. Of course you probably knew all this but now it is confirmed by a serious journalist. Moreover, Ban-Ki Moon is "concerned." Sheikh Nasrallah, head of the Hizb, responded sarcastically, "This concern reassures us and pleases us." UN SC res. 1701 failed to stop Hizb rearmament, failed to protect Lebanese sovereignty and independence against Hizbullah and Syria, and failed to keep bring peace or advance peace between Israel and Lebanon.
Moreover, since US diplomacy [through Condoleezza Rice] was a major force in negotiating 1701, this was also a failure for US diplomacy, unless US diplomacy really wanted the results that have eventuated.

One more point. Nasrallah asserts: "We confirm that our choice is the way of resistance and the weapons of resistance." ["Confermiamo che la nostra scelta sono la via della resistenza e le armi della resistenza'']. This begs the question: What is Resistance anyway? Is Nasrallah's resistance, the Hizb's resistance, the same as that of the French Maquis in WW2 and of its leaders, such as Jean Moulin? In fact, Hizbullah opposes the independence of its own country, Lebanon, acting to assert Iranian domination over Lebanon. Furthermore, can anyone imagine Jean Moulin taking pride in murdering German civilians, including children, as Hizbullah [and Fatah and Hamas, etc] take pride in murdering Jews and Jewish children, as the Nazis did? Here we have a case of semantic subversion in which these Arab/Muslim terrorists try to steal the favorable Western view of the anti-Nazi resistance in WW2 in behalf of murderous, well-armed organizations essentially different in character from the WW2 Resistance and for purposes that are kindred to Nazi purposes.
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Quotes from Moon and Nasrallah found in the Il Sole article cited above.