What's New

Resources updated between Monday, August 18, 2014 and Sunday, August 24, 2014

August 23, 2014

Daniel Tregerman

"A four-year-old Israeli boy was killed by a mortar shell fired from the Gaza Strip on Friday afternoon. The boy, named late Friday as Daniel Tragerman, was at home with his parents and siblings at Kibbutz Nahal Oz in the Sha'ar Hanegev Region, close to the border with Gaza, when the attack took place. An Israeli army spokesperson said the fatal shell was fired from near a school used as a shelter for Palestinian refugees. Earlier Israeli officials had said it was fired from an UNRWA school - an assertion the IDF later corrected. Sirens wailed only very shortly before the mortar shell struck outside the Tragerman family home at the kibbutz, and his parents - Doron and Gila - were unable to get their son Daniel into their protected room in time. He was killed by shrapnel from the explosion that smashed into the house. Daniel is the first Israeli child to die in the current Israel-Hamas conflict. His death brought the Israeli death toll since Operation Protective Edge began on July 8 to 68."

Israeli Toddler Murdered by Hamas Rocket fired from near Gaza civilian shelter Document

It is believed that this is a photo from the Friday afternoon execution outside a Gazan mosque.

"The Islamic terror organization, Hamas, publicly executed 11 Gazans in Gaza City on Friday morning at 10am.

7 more Gazans were executed on Friday afternoon. We just learned that 3 Gazans were executed yesterday. for a total of 21 Gazans executed by Hamas in the past 24 hours...

Hamas accused them of trying to overthrow Hamas by collaborating with Israel.

Hamas has warned Gazans to not publicize the names of the executed, as presumably they want to include them in the list of people killed in Operation Protective Edge."

Hamas Executes 21 Arabs in Gaza Document

August 21, 2014

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay

On August 20, 2014, the outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay compared the United States to apartheid South Africa. This was her response to a question about clashes between police and protesters in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson:

"[L]et me say that coming from apartheid South Africa, I have long experience of how racism and racial discrimination breeds conflict and violence...These scenes are familiar to me, and privately I was thinking that there are many parts of the United States where apartheid is flourishing."

Pillay was an extremist who spent her six-year tenure, which ends in August, constantly condemning the U.S. and Israel. She questioned the legality of killing Osama bin Laden and championing the slanderous Durban declaration that suggests Israel is a racist state. She leaves behind a record of perverting the meaning and power of the international human rights system.

U.N. human rights chief Pillay compares U.S. to apartheid South Africa Article

August 20, 2014

James Foley

"Islamic State insurgents released a video on Tuesday purportedly showing the beheading of US journalist James Foley, who had gone missing in Syria nearly two years ago, and images of another US journalist whose life they said depended on US action in Iraq.

The video, titled 'A Message To America,' was posted on social media sites...

Foley, who has reported in the Middle East for five years, was kidnapped on Nov. 22, 2012, by unidentified gunmen. Steven Sotloff, who appeared at the end of the video, went missing in northern Syria while he was reporting in July 2013."

Islamic State beheads U.S. journalist James Foley, holds another Document

"When Hamas fires its last rocket and Israel drops its last bomb, the extent of Gaza's devastation will become clear. An early estimate is that some $5 billion will be necessary to rebuild residences and infrastructure destroyed in the recent conflict. The first step is to take United Nations Relief and Works Agency out of the equation... On three occasions rockets were found in UNRWA schools, closed for the summer, and at least once they were returned to Hamas. On another occasion, the UNRWA accused Israel of targeting civilians sheltering in a school when in fact those deaths were caused by a Hamas rocket that fell short. And on another occasion it accused Israel of targeting a shelter and civilians when in reality terrorists outside the facility were hit and civilian bodies possibly planted at the scene... As it is, UNRWA is effectively a branch of Hamas. The overwhelming majority of its employees in Gaza belong to the Hamas-linked trade union. An unknown number of employees are actual Hamas fighters (or at least know UNRWA employees with keys to the schools so that rockets can be stored in classrooms over the summer). The curriculum taught in UNRWA schools is shaped by Hamas, which earlier this year rejected textbooks that failed to tout 'armed resistance' as too 'peaceful'... Dismantling UNRWA requires the approval of the United Nations General Assembly, making it unlikely. But if donor countries were to reprogram their funds, first by demanding that the PA take over UNRWA's employees and responsibilities, the effect would be the same...Clear and forthright diplomatic pressure, led by the U.S., will be required to get European donors in line."

STOP GIVING MONEY TO THE U.N.'s AGENCY FOR PALESTINIANS Article

On August 15, 2014 the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) issued its daily "Situation Report" on the "Gaza Emergency". The UN is now routinely listing terrorists killed by Israel in an inflated count of Palestinian casualties because the UN thinks Hamas genocidal killers are not terrorists. The number of dead chickens is now also filling out UN reports on Israeli horrors.

On the other hand, the report devoted only 2 sentences to Israeli sufferings: "Since 8 July, three civilians in Israel have been killed, including one foreign national, and dozens directly injured by rockets or shrapnel. The total number of Israeli military fatalities stands at 64."

Hamas is mentioned only in the "Background to the crisis" section which blames Israel for the collapse of the November 2012 cease-fire and alleges that Hamas rockets were fired in response to an intensification of Israeli airstrikes. In its words: "Background to the crisis... The latest escalation round started in early June, characterized by an intensification of Israeli airstrikes and rockets launched from Gaza at southern Israel." The OCHA situation reports count Hamas as an "armed group" not a terrorist organization.

U.N. issues report listing dead chickens as casualty of Israeli "crimes" Article

August 19, 2014

File photo of Yazidi women

"When word reached Hanifa and her family that the fighters of the so-called Islamic State were approaching their village, they knew they would have to flee, and fast. The fanatics were coming on like a storm sweeping through the desert, and Yazidis like Hanifa's family were the special targets of their hateful fury. But Hanifa's father is partially paralyzed, unable to walk, and diabetic. She and her mother and young brother rushed to get him in the car and drive him to the uncertain refuge of the mountain that looms above the town of Sinjar. Hanifa's five younger sisters, aged 10 to 22, would follow as soon as they could gather their documents-their Iraqi IDs and ration cards. When Hanifa reached what seemed a safe place on the mountainside, she called her sisters. But they were not behind her. They were not coming. 'They said they've been taken by Daash,' as Arabic speakers call the group formerly known in English by the acronym ISIS. 'They said not to come back,' Hanifa told me. As President Barack Obama continues to ratchet up support for Kurdish fighters battling against the Islamic State in northern Iraq, hopes are raised that somehow the depredations wrought over the last few weeks can be reversed. But conversations with Hanifa and others like her among the refugees suggest there's little chance they will return home again, or ever restore their families to the way they once were. Hanifa and her father and mother and brother spent 10 days on the mountain, fearing for the girls, but powerless to help them. One of the sisters had managed to hide her cellphone, and for the first few days they were able to communicate sporadically. They said they were being held in a mosque in Tel Afar, and the men of the self-proclaimed caliphate were ordering them to forget their Yazidi faith, which dates back before Islam and Christianity to the teachings of Zoroaster..."

Hanifa's Story: Five Sisters Taken by ISIS to Be Sold or Worse Document

Left: Ibrahim Jamal Nasr of the Ahmed Abu al-Rish Battalions. Right: Ibrahim Jamal Nasr, Fatah/Abu al-Rish Battalions operative

The findings to date

1. This document is the third in a series of publications of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), as part of a project examining the names of the Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge. The project's goal is to ascertain the identity of terrorist operatives and non-involved citizens, and to examine the ratio between them. The number of names of those killed, examined by the Information Center to date, is 450. The examinations carried out by the Information Center are based on the lists issued by the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Health Ministry, despite the reliability problems and deficiencies found in them. To these basic lists we have added terrorist operatives who do not appear on them, both for technical reasons and as a result of Hamas's policy of concealment and deception.

2. Weighting the findings of the current examination and the findings of the two previous examinations (detailed in the two previous documents) yields the following results:

  • A. 208 of those killed were terrorist operatives(66 + 71 + 71).

  • B. 240 of those killed were non-involved civilians (93 + 66 + 81).

  • C. The identity of 44 people who were killed is unknown at this stage (26 + 15 + 3). Therefore, it is not possible to determine whether they were terrorist operatives or non-involved civilians.

  • D. Of the 448 dead who could be identified based on the three lists that were examined, terrorist operatives constitute approximately 46% of the names. Non-involved civilians constitute approximately 54% of the names. This ratio may vary as the ITIC continues to examine the names of those killed.

  • Examination of the names of Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge - Part Three* Article

    "Two photographers in Iran have been sentenced to a total of 75 lashes after criticising an illustrated book published by a local official. Both men, who are from Qazvin province, were put on trial when Mohammad-Ali Hazrati, the head of the local cultural heritage organisation, felt insulted by the negative reviews the pair had written in separate posts online about his photography book, 'Qazvin, the Land of Times Past'. The photographers, Khalil Imami and Abbas Alipour, had criticised the official for using public money in publishing a book they felt lacked artistic merit. Hazrati's book is sponsored by Qazvin's municipality and reportedly distributed for free. He is also cultural adviser to Qazvin's governor. Imami wrote a review in a weekly publication called Taban, saying that for a book of 216 pages published on expensive coated paper, it had little artistic value. Imami went into technical details to explain why he felt many of the book's 230 photographs had poor lighting, bad framing and distortions. Hazrati retaliated by apparently using a pseudonym to publish a response in the same publication, branding Imami's review 'insulting' and 'partial'. Alipour came to Imami's defence, questioning the official's photography credentials and exposing the identity behind the pseudonym. Hazrati then filed a suit against the two men. A Qazvin court found them guilty of insulting the official and sentenced them to be lashed, local media reported."

    Iranian Photographers Face the Lash After Criticising Official's Book

    August 18, 2014

    Slaughtered men from al-Sheitaat tribe

    "The Islamic State militant group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, a human rights monitoring group and activists said on Saturday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked violence on all sides of the three-year-old conflict, said reliable sources reported beheadings were used to execute many of the al-Sheitaat tribe, which is from Deir al-Zor province. The conflict between Islamic State and the al-Sheitaat tribe, who number about 70,000, flared after the militants took over two oil fields in July. 'Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat,' Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman said by telephone from Britain. 'Some were arrested, judged and killed.'..."

    Islamic State Executed 700 People From Syrian Tribe Document

    Saudi Arabia religious police

    "A Saudi Arabian judge has upheld a sentence of a month in prison and 50 lashes for a businesswoman convicted of insulting members of the morality police during an argument, the local al-Medina newspaper reported on Sunday... The appeals court in Mecca upheld the sentence, passed by a district court in Jeddah, after the woman was found guilty of "cursing the morality police" and calling them 'liars', the Arabic-language daily reported. It said the patrol had entered her cafe to check there were no breaches of morality or other laws in the conservative Muslim kingdom, and that some of her employees had then run away because they were breaking immigration rules..."

    Lashes for Saudi woman who called morality police liars Document

    The Karoon Prison in Ahwaz, Iran

    The Iranian regime's judiciary in south-western city of Ahvaz has handed down heavy sentences to four Arab Iranian activist who had already spent 31 months in prison under torture.

    The branch of Revolutionary Court in Iran has sentenced Hassan Abayat, 56, to life prison, Idan Bet-Sayyah, 37, to 10 years imprisonment and Jassem Swaaedi, 30, and Khaled Obeidavi, 29, each to 5 years imprisonment for "waging war against god" and forming an organization in opposition to the regime.

    The four had been forced to make a TV confession admitting injuring a regime's security agent in 2012, but later the charges were dropped. It is reported that injury signs on bodies of the activists shows the extent of physical torture by the Iranian regime's henchmen.

    The National Council of Resistance of Iran, recently in a report titled "Human rights in Iran during first year of Hassan Rouhani's 'moderate' presidency" reported, "of the 38 political prisoners hanged in the first year of Rouhani's Presidency, twenty-four were Baluchi activists, eight were Ahvazi Arabs, and five were Kurds.

    "Moderate" Iranian regime tortures, hands life sentence to activists for "waging war against God" Document

    "Hamas and Islamic Jihad have effectively captured the United Nations agency to care for Palestinian refugees, a report said.

    The Center for Near East Policy Research asserted that Hamas and Jihad controlled the UN Refugee and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip. In a report, the U.S.-based center said Hamas operatives were in control of UNRWA's labor union and that refugee camps served as a recruiting ground for Islamist fighters...

    Author Jonathan Halevi, a leading Israeli analyst on Palestinian affairs, cited the discovery of rocket caches in several UNRWA schools during the Hamas war with Israel in July and August 2014. Halevi also said Hamas built an attack tunnel from a UN health clinic and boobytrapped the facility.

    The report said the UNRWA union has been under control of Hamas operative Suheil Al Hindi, who won a landslide victory in elections in 2012. The 11,500 employees gave Hamas all 11 seats in UNRWA's teachers' union and 14 out of 16 seats in the employees and service sectors."

    Hamas Jihad fully controls UN agency for Palestinian refugees Article