Terror Laundering in the Israeli-Hamas War
Summary
Members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the de facto government of Gaza, exert total or near-total control over every aspect of Gazans' lives, including medical infrastructure and journalism. The internationally-designated terrorist group has, from its inception, made a policy of systematically crushing dissenting voices. Hamas's media manipulation has contributed to a widespread but false belief that, in the current conflict (beginning October 7th, 2023), the Israeli military and government have systematically targeted civilians with munitions (or fired indiscriminately) and have engaged in attempted mass starvation. This manipulation is possible because casualty information flows from Hamas-controlled medical infrastructure to the UN and various humanitarian organizations, which, intentionally or not, support Hamas's use of lawfare (the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent) against Israel. This strategy would not be as successful if not for large segments of international press who are all too eager to comply with Hamas's manipulation of the narrative.
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How Hamas Count the Dead
On June 6, 2024, Human Rights Watch co-founder and Holocaust survivor Aryeh Neier wrote that he felt that Israel was engaged in genocide. Two weeks later, he wrote that, in his previous article, he had "cited numbers of the dead and wounded in Gaza, including the number of women and children killed, as reported by the United Nations." Having read this, one might then wonder where the UN gets their numbers. On May 6, 2024, the UN said that 69% of reported fatalities in the Gaza war were women and children; two days later, it said this figure was 52%. Why the change? The UN had switched data sources from the Hamas-run Government Media Office (GMO) to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. On June 7, 2024, the AP reported, "As recently as March, the ministry claimed over several days that 72% of the dead were women and children, even as underlying data showed the percentage was well below that."
The Gaza Ministry of Health is the same organization that claimed 500 were killed in an Israeli raid on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza on Oct 17, 2023. After initially relaying the Gaza Ministry of Health claim, The New York Times would note a few weeks later that, not only was the death toll believed to be one-fifth of what was initially reported (~100), the source of the explosion was likely a misfired rocket from Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Further, in April 2024, the Israeli military released an interrogation video of Tarek Abu Shaluf where he says that the rocket was "a local rocket. We said it was Israeli."
Despite this, one might claim that the Gaza Ministry of Health's data are generally reliable in this war because the UN has deemed them reliable in past conflicts. But have they been reliable in past conflicts? During 2008's conflict (called Operation Cast Lead by the Israeli military), five groups produced widely varying casualty data:
As shown in the above table, all five groups produced different total numbers of deaths ranging from 1,166 by Israel to 1,417 by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), a 19% difference. However, the difference between civilian and combatant portions of those casualties varies even more. PCHR gave a figure of 236 combatants killed while Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem gave a figure of 330, and Israel gave a figure of 709-871 (with 162 being possible combatants). Initially, Hamas claimed that only 48 of the total killed were combatants.
However, in a November 2011 interview, Hamas interior minister Fathi Hamad told the newspaper Al Hayat that 600 to 700 of the dead were fighters: "[o]n the first day of the war, Israel targeted police headquarters and 250 martyrs fell, and these were from Hamas and the various factions, in addition to about 200 to 300 members who were martyred from the Qassam Brigades and 150 security members and the rest from the people."
The fact that most killed during that conflict were combatants is further supported by a Palestinian doctor working in Gaza's Shifa hospital as reported in Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in January 2009:
Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter." [...] We have already reported it to the leaders of Hamas. Why do they insist on inflating the numbers of victims? Strange, among other things, that non-governmental organizations, even Western ones, report them without verification. In the end, the truth could come out. And it could be like Jenin in 2002. Initially, there was talk of 1,500 dead. Then it turned out that there were only 54, of which at least 45 guerrillas who fell fighting."
For the 2014 conflict, we again see different figures reported for total deaths with a range of 2,125 by Israel and 2,310 by the Gaza Ministry of Health (MOH), an 8% difference. We also see that the portion of civilians killed between analyses varies substantially - 761 at the lowest (Israel) to 1,640 (MOH), a 73% difference.
Two things worth noting about the above table: one, the UN and Gaza Ministry of Health figures align very closely, which is not accidental. In their notes for the figures, the UN directly cites the MOH:
Two, one might assume that Israeli organization B'Tselem's imprimatur lends credence to the MOH/UN data. However, in July 2014, B'Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli told news analysis outlet FiveThirtyEight that they do not do direct analysis in Gaza, instead relying on locals or other organizations such as the Ministry of Health:
CM: What has a typical day on the ground in Gaza for B’Tselem workers looked like over the past couple of weeks?
SM: We have two field workers in Gaza; we just hired a third person to kind of stock up during the fighting, and we have an additional eight or nine field workers in the West Bank. These are Palestinians who live in their own communities who are quite in tune with the information and data flowing in.[...]CM: During times like this do you release a fatality count every day?
SM: We rely on lists provided by other organizations and by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
It is potentially significant that they rely on locals, as those locals might have been intimidated by Hamas or might be Hamas supporters. Why should B'Tselem be concerned about Hamas intimidation? Because in their own report, they note that Hamas members summarily executed 21 Palestinians during the conflict.
Returning back to the current conflict, on June 7, 2024, the AP reported on a case of hospital staff possibly intentionally miscounting the dead. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital initially reported that 9 women, 14 children, and 10 men were among 33 people killed in a strike on a school 10. However, the hospital morgue later amended those records to show that the dead included 3 women, 9 children, and 21 men. The AP noted that "It was not immediately clear what caused the discrepancy."
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital Initial vs Revised Casualties
It is perhaps not a coincidence that the number initially reported likely would have helped maintain the impression of a 70% civilian casualty rate. Wharton School statistics professor Abraham Wyner wrote for Tablet Magazine in March 2024, "Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day."
Hamas's Military Use of Hospitals 🔝
The Israeli military has been criticized for attacking hospitals which can constitute a war crime if the hospital is not being used for military purposes during the attack. However, on December 9th, 2023, the IDF released a video of Ahmed al-Kahlout, the director of Gaza's Kamal Adnan Hospital telling an interrogator that he joined Hamas in 2010 at the equivalent rank of a brigadier general. He also stated that many hospital staff members, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and others served as members of Hamas's al-Qassam brigades. According to Kahlout, Hamas concealed weapons within the hospital and integrated its operations into hospital functions.
In May 2024, a doctor who spent weeks in different hospitals in Gaza noted to the Iraqi news outlet Rudaw that "'Hamas, as a political and military organization, needed to exploit everywhere to shelter them in their strategic positions... I have seen it with my eyes that the hospitals have been used for hiding Hamas leaders. Yes, yes, we saw them and even spoke with them including one of the founders of Hamas, Mr. Munir Albursh.'"
In June 2007, the British Medical Journal reported that "About 120 people have been killed and hundreds more injured as a result of the violent confrontations between the Hamas and Fatah factions in the Gaza Strip. Some of the fighting has taken place inside Gaza City and in the vicinity of hospitals. Witnesses have said that some injured people coming for hospital treatment have been shot by Hamas militants inside hospitals."
In February 2009, the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health accused Hamas of turning some of its medical facilities in Gaza into detention centers. The ministry also claimed that Hamas sacked tens of employees who were loyal to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.
Al-Shifa Hospital perhaps deserves additional scrutiny in the current conflict. The Israeli military raided the hospital on November 15, 2023 citing its use as a Hamas military headquarters. The Washington Post published a report December 21, 2023 noting that "the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center."
However, the same Washington Post had, in June 2014, described al-Shifa as "the de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices." That same year, a Finnish reporter noted that a rocket was fired from the "backyard" of the hospital.
Going back to the Hamas-Fatah civil war, a documentary filmed in the summer of 2006 for PBS Wide Angle showed armed militants walking casually around the halls of the hospital with assault rifles and, in one instance, attempting to pressure a doctor for preferential treatment.
In June 2014, French-Palestinian journalist Radjaa Abou Dagga faced direct intimidation inside Shifa. From the report in French newspaper Libération:
A few meters from the emergency room where the wounded from the bombings are constantly streaming in, he is received in the outpatient department, "a small section of the hospital used as an administration" by a group of young fighters. "They were all well dressed," Radjaa is surprised. "In civilian clothes, with a pistol under their shirt and some had walkie-talkies ." He is ordered to empty his pockets, take off his shoes and his belt, then he is called to a hospital room "which was serving that day as a command office for three people."
In July 2014, Wall Street Journal reporter Nick Casey shared a photo on Twitter of Hamas spokesman Mushir Al Masri being interviewed on camera inside the hospital:
Two days later, Financial Times reporter John Reed shared on Twitter that Hamas was firing from a rocket launch site adjacent to Shifa:
In March 2024, the Israeli military again raided Shifa, resulting in a battle that lasted two weeks. The Gaza Media Office reported 400 killed. The Israeli military reported 200 militants killed and 500 prisoners taken. Palestinian journalist Linah Alsaafin wrote in April 2024 that this was a "massacre" in which the Israeli military targeted 25,000+ civilians. However, Alsaafin does not explain who was shooting back at Israeli forces nor why, if the Israelis intended to destroy the hospital, they did not simply bomb it.
Hamas Operatives Kill and Intentionally Endanger Palestinians 🔝
In June 2019, NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence reported the following:
Hamas, an Islamist militant group and the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip, has been using human shields in conflicts with Israel since 2007. According to the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the war crime of using human shields encompasses "utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas, or military forces immune from military operations." Hamas has launched rockets, positioned military-related infrastructure-hubs and routes, and engaged the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) from, or in proximity to, residential and commercial areas.
The strategic logic of human shields has two components. It is based on an awareness of Israel's desire to minimise collateral damage, and of Western public opinion's sensitivity towards civilian casualties. If the IDF uses lethal force and causes an increase in civilian casualties, Hamas can utilise that as a lawfare tool: it can accuse Israel of committing war crimes, which could result in the imposition of a wide array of sanctions. Alternatively, if the IDF limits its use of military force in Gaza to avoid collateral damage, Hamas will be less susceptible to Israeli attacks, and thereby able to protect its assets while continuing to fight. Moreover, despite the Israeli public's high level of support for the Israeli political and military leadership during operations, civilian casualties are one of the friction points between Israeli left-wing and right-wing supporters, with the former questioning the outcomes of the operation.
In February 2009, The Guardian reported,
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said today it has halted all aid shipments into the Gaza Strip after the Hamas government seized thousands of tonnes of food and other provisions.
The UN Relief and Works agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel intercepted an aid shipment for the second time this week.
In a statement, the agency said 10 truckloads of flour and rice delivered into Gaza yesterday were taken away by trucks affiliated with the Hamas-run social affairs ministry. Earlier this week, Hamas police took away thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
In April 2009, Human Rights Watch reported,
After Israel began its major military offensive in Gaza on December 27, 2008, Hamas authorities in the territory took extraordinary steps to control, intimidate, punish, and at times eliminate their internal political rivals and those suspected of collaboration with Israel. The attacks continued throughout Israel's campaign, and have slowed but not stopped since major hostilities ceased on January 18, 2009.[...]
Hamas security forces or masked gunmen believed to be with Hamas extra-judicially executed 18 people, mainly those accused of collaborating with Israel. Masked gunmen also beat and maimed by shooting dozens of Hamas's political opponents, especially members and supporters of its main political rival, Fatah.
The internal violence in Gaza has continued since Israel withdrew its forces. Palestinian human rights groups in Gaza have reported 14 more killings between January 18 and March 31, 2009.
The majority of Palestinians executed by other Palestinians during Israel's military operations were men accused of collaboration with Israel. Along with others, they had escaped from Gaza's main prison compound after Israel bombed the facility on December 28. In addition to the 32 killings mentioned above, the relatives of one suspected collaborator shot him to death "to restore the family's honor" while Hamas forces failed to intervene.
Hamas security forces have also used violence against known Fatah members, especially those who had worked in the Fatah-run security services of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Of particular concern is the widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs, which Hamas first used in June 2007, when it seized control inside Gaza from Fatah. According to the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), the human rights ombudsman organization of the Palestinian Authority, unidentified gunmen in masks deliberately inflicted bullet wounds to the legs of at least 49 people between December 28, 2008 and January 31, 2009.
In January and February 2009 Human Rights Watch interviewed three men who had been shot in the legs, apparently by Hamas security forces, as described below. Two of them were Fatah supporters; one was a former member of the Fatah-led Preventive Security force of the PA. The third man had been overheard on the street criticizing Hamas.
Abductions and severe beatings are another major concern. According to ICHR, unidentified perpetrators physically abused 73 Gazan men from December 28 to January 31, causing broken legs and arms. Human Rights Watch documented three such cases of Fatah supporters assaulted during and after the Israeli offensive, as well as one case of what appeared to be a politically motivated house arrest.
In a speech he delivered at the Arab American University in Jenin on October 13, 2009, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas noted that, "The Hamas movement was hiding under the domes [of mosques]. The Hamas leaders - and I say this for the first time - fled to the Sinai in ambulances, leaving their people behind to be slaughtered. Then they say: 'We put up resistance.'"
In July 2014, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri had the following exchange on Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV:
Interviewer: "Are people still going up to the rooftops?"
Ayad Abu Rida (Reporter) : "Witnesses told us that there is a large gathering, and people are still going to the Kawari family house, in order to prevent the Zionist occupation's warplanes from targeting it."
Interviewer: "What is your comment about this? People are reverting to the (human-shield) method, which proved very successful in the days of martyr Nizar Riyan…"
Sami Abu Zuhri: "This attests to the character of our noble, Jihad-fighting people, who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood. The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation. Also, this policy reflects the character of our brave, courageous people. We in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy, in order to protect the Palestinian homes."
In an August 2014 story for the Christian Broadcasting Network, George Thomas reported that Archbishop Alexios of Tiberias "showed us how militants reportedly use the church compound to launch rockets into Israel. He refused to discuss details on camera for security reasons."
Also in August 2014, Indian news network NDTV's Sreenivasan Jain published a video showing militants in Gaza assembling a rocket under a tent in view of his hotel. Jain noted, "If the camera zooms out a little more, you'll see that this is an area very heavily built up, a lot of residential and hotel buildings all around." He then notes that the three individuals - all dressed in civilian clothes - conceal their work under a bush. The following day, Jain's crew film smoke from rocket fire coming from the same location. A day after that, Jain would ask Mohammed Ishtayeh (who would be appointed prime minister of Palestine in 2019) why Hamas did not take the battle away from civilian areas. Ishtayeh responded that "the whole of Gaza is a civilian area." Jain responds that he and his crew drove from north to south Gaza and found many open areas for military use by Hamas.
In a November 2018 interview on Russia Today, Amjad Taha, a regional director at the British Middle East Center for Studies and Research (BMCSR), said,
What is happening in Gaza now is that Hamas, at the order of Qatar - from which it has just received funds - and in coordination with Iran, is firing missiles from the roofs of schools and hospitals, and then the other side is retaliating against them. They are blood merchants who follow the orders of Iran.
In an October 13, 2020 interview, Dirar Belhoul Al-Falasi, a member of the UAE's Federal National Council, said on Kuwait's Diwan Al-Mulla Online TV:
People from the Red Crescent told us that they built a hospital [in Gaza]... This hospital was for treating Palestinians. People from Hamas fired a rocket from the hospital's roof, so that Israel would bomb this hospital. Just see how low they can go…
In the current conflict, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have posted many videos of themselves engaging in combat while dressed in civilian clothes, blurring the line between civilian and combatant.
Brainwashing, Martyrdom, and Child Soldiers 🔝
To the extent that children under 18 have been killed in Israel-Palestine conflicts, it is worth noting that a portion of those child deaths is probably due to those children being recruited into combat. Given that Hamas (and ally Islamic Jihad and frequent rival Fatah) have actively trained teenage soldiers for years, there is good reason to believe that many child casualties may be due to those children actively engaging in combat. If those under 18 then participate in battle and are killed (or "martyred"), they would be classified as children in Hamas's death tallies which do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Compounding the difficulty of avoiding killing children in Gaza is the concept of martyrdom. Hamas MP Fathi Hammad said the following in a speech he gave February 29, 2008 which aired on Al-Aqsa TV:
For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: "We desire death like you desire life."
Hammad uses the term "دروعا بشريه" (literally "human shields")
On May 4, 2009, National Geographic published a video on YouTube titled "Mother of a Martyr." Journalist Lisa Ling tells us that
a martyr is someone who dies for his or her faith, but here it means anyone killed in the fight with the Israelis. Everywhere you go in the city, you see massive posters of martyrs - it's like they're celebrities, and many of them look very young. The glorification of the fallen is so pervasive, even mothers seem to embrace it. [Mariam Farhat (aka Umm Nidal) a mother who says of her sons:] "I brought them up to be martyrs, to become martyrs for the name of Allah."
In their 2013 obituary for Farhat, The New York Times wrote,
Ms. Farhat was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006. Four years earlier, her 17-year-old son, Mohammad, was shot to death after he stormed an Israeli settlement with an automatic rifle and explosives, killing five students. Shortly before the attack, Ms. Farhat made a video in which she appeared with Mohammad to show support for what he was about to do. "I wish I had 100 boys like Mohammad," she once said. "I'd sacrifice them for the sake of God." Two more of Ms. Farhat's sons, Nidal and Rawad, were later killed in clashes with Israel.
In July 2010, The Guardian reported on camps run by various organizations in Gaza, summarizing the camps as follows:
Gaza summer camps
Islamic Jihad
10,000 children
51 camps
Themes: resistance; freedom for Palestinian prisoners; loyalty to the land and JerusalemHamas
100,000 children
500 camps
Themes: Jerusalem, prisoners, occupation, commitment to prayer
In a May 2011 report, Pew Research found that 70% of Gazans and 66% of West Bankers thought suicide bombings can be justified.
In October 2012, Palestinian Media Watch obtained this image from Fatah-Lebanon's Facebook page:
The text in Arabic translates as follows:
"My mother dressed me in a strange belt
I asked her: 'What is this, mother?'
She said: 'I will put it on you and you will go to your death!'
I said to her: 'Mother, what have I done that you want me to die?'
She shed a tear that hurt my heart and said: 'The homeland needs you, son. Go and blow up the Sons of Zion.'
I said to her: 'Why me and not you?'
She said: 'I will stay in order to give birth to more children for the sake of Palestine.'
I kissed her hand and said to her: 'Keep it up, mother, for you and for Palestine I will kill the impure and the damned.'"
In a May 2, 2014 episode of the "Pioneers of Tomorrow" children's show broadcast from Gaza by Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV, giant bee Nahoul encourages a boy from Jenin to beat up his Jewish neighbors. "If his neighbors are Jewish or Zionist, that goes without saying," says Rawan, the girl host.
ITV News's Geraint Vincent reported in July 2016 that Hamas were training thousands of teenagers for the next conflict with Israel.
In a 2018 video produced by The Center for Near East Policy Research children are shown learning a call and response: "Palestine is an Arab land from the river to the sea [literally from "from water to water"]!"
In a 2021 video produced by The Center for Near East Policy Research, children and teens are shown undergoing military training.
From The Center for Near East Policy Research's "The UNRWA Child Soldier." A speaker identified as Miyada Abu Libda says, "We have no choice but to build a new generation that is aware of the Quran. We as Palestinian mothers have no choice but to send our sons to the summer camps to imbue them with the love of the land, the love of Palestine, and the love of Jihad."
In a July 15, 2022 episode of "Pioneers of Tomorrow," a children's show aired on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV in Gaza, a man dressed in a puppet costume spoke about Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque with children. A little girl said that the Jews must not be allowed to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. A young boy also said that if the Muslims adhere to shari'a law, Palestine will surely be liberated. The man said that the Muslims must also wage Jihad, and the boy responded that Jihad for the sake of Allah is the "pinnacle of Islam."
In a December 9, 2022 report for Channel 4 News, Secunder Kermani reported on the death of 15-year-old Mahdi Mohammad Hamdallah Hashash who died, according to the Israeli military, while trying to detonate a bomb. Kermani says, "In the streets outside his home, he's celebrated as a martyr."
Hamas predecessor - and current rival - Fatah has also trained teens for combat. Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub said the following on his Facebook page in July 2023:
We established 648 [summer] camps in which 65,000 male and female [child] pioneers participated... These camps were established… on the principle of the Palestinian national ideology to ensure the awareness of these children who are the builders of the future… An additional [camp] topic connected to the shared slogan of these [Martyr] heroes, whose bodies are being held by these new Nazi fascists (i.e., Israelis)... We say to them [Israelis]: They [the Martyrs] are moons, they are stars, they are the elite, and they are the ones who sacrificed their lives.
In a May 19, 2023 show on Libya Mostakbal TV, Libyan show host Afaf Abdel Mohsen said the following: "Why do [the Palestinians] give birth to so many boys and girls? I heard a beautiful answer to this question: 'We give birth to so many [children] so that we can push them to death, to martyrdom.'"
On July 7, 2023 Indian news outlet Firstpost wrote that,
At least 11 Palestinians, most of them teens, were killed during Israeli attack that began on Monday and is being considered biggest in the West Bank in years. Not even a fortnight after United Nation Secretary General in its report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) praised Palestinian Islamic Jihad for preventing the recruitment and killing of children, four teenagers were killed during Israeli strikes over Jenin…. The Iran-backed Islamic Jihad said among the 11 Palestinians were four teenagers, aged 16, 17, 18, and 19 who were killed. Among them, Noureddin Marshoud (16) was declared by the militant Islamic Jihad group to be one of its four 'martyred' during Israel's assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
In August 2022, in a video posted on the Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, the father of terrorist Dirar Al-Kafrini said this of his son who died fighting with Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
By Allah, praise Allah Master of the Universe. I expected this [my son's death]. Praise Allah Master of the Universe, [my son] he asked for Martyrdom and got it. Praise Allah Master of the Universe. Dirar was beloved in a way that cannot be imagined, all the young people loved him. He would tell me: "Dad, I want to die as a Martyr, I want to die as a Martyr, I want to die as a Martyr." And I told him: "My son, Allah willing, may Allah designate you [for Martyrdom]." Everyone wants to die as Martyrs, praise Allah Master of the Universe…
It's something natural, I want to say that the news [about his death] is a bit difficult, but praise Allah Master of the Universe. Our Lord will help, and praise Allah Master of the Universe.
Al Jazeera reported "Israeli army kills 17-year-old and arrests a senior Islamic Jihad leader during a raid in the occupied West Bank." The Daily Beast reported "Israeli Army Shoots Palestinian Kid in Braces Dead During Raid on Refugee Camp."
Of his death, Palestinian news outlet Al-Quds would report in March 2023,
Dirar was born, raised and brought up in the Jenin camp, 16 years and nine months ago….
Dirar's comrades narrate that he had a great patriotic spirit, and was always keen to participate in national activities and marches.
As usual, Dirar did not delay in performing his duty when the occupation and special units stormed the Jenin camp and surrounded the house of Sheikh Bassam al-Saadi. Like dozens of residents of the camp, he rose and participated in the confrontations and confronting the army, which met with fierce resistance. He was hit by a bullet in the face, and according to doctors, it led to an explosion in his face Severe bleeding and his martyrdom. The Jenin Brigade described him as one of the heroes of the night confusion, who rose as a martyr while carrying out his sacred jihadi duty and confronting the occupation forces
On April 7, 2023, Hamas Official Sheikh Hamad Al-Regeb posted a sermon on the YouTube account of the Al-Abrar Mosque. Al-Reged says,
We see the hordes of foreigners, the brothers of apes and pigs, spread corruption, injustice, and evil [at the Al-Aqsa Mosque].[...]
We will pay no attention to the price, no matter how high. Are they trying to intimidate us with killing? What can possibly taste better than martyrdom? What can be more beautiful than ending your life by dying for the sake of Allah? [...]
Oh Allah, bring annihilation upon the Jews. Oh Allah, bring annihilation upon the Jews. Paralyze them, destroy their entity, tear them apart, bring upon them a terrible punishment. Oh Allah, enable us to get to the necks of the Jews. Oh Allah, enable us to get to the necks of the Jews. Oh Allah, enable us to get to the necks of the Jews.
On July 14, 2023, the "Shield of Jerusalem" Telegram channel shared video footage showing children in Gaza attending Hamas summer camps in which they wear military fatigues and receive military training from masked Hamas fighters. The children can be seen handling real weapons such as assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns, and RPGs, and they simulate raiding an IDF military post and conquering Jerusalem.
From the Palestinian Authority television show "Moons of Palestine," March 19, 2024, Abu Saqr, mother of a martyred militant says, "I told him: 'Get married, let me hold your child.' He said: 'Allah willing, in Paradise'. I thought he was just saying that, and every time I said: 'Get married,' he would say: 'In Paradise.' ... I congratulate him on the Martyrdom he achieved."
On June 12, 2023, Joe Truzman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies shared a video taken from Palestinian Islamic Jihad group Saraya Al Quds. The caption: "Islamic Jihad launched a military summer camp for Palestinian youth in Gaza today. Children, teens and young adults are taught basic military training. Registration started on Saturday and the training will be held at Islamic Jihad military sites."
In November 2023, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education published a report noting,
Since its establishment, UNRWA schools have opted to teach the curriculum and textbooks of the "host country," UNRWA does not produce its own curricula. Consequently, the Palestinian National Authority (PA) curriculum is taught in UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As has been extensively documented, since a revision of the PA curriculum was undertaken in 2016, these textbooks have remained openly antisemitic and continue to encourage violence, jihad and martyrdom while peace is not taught as preferable or even possible. Extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies proliferate throughout the curriculum, including in science and math textbooks.
Ahead of airstrikes against targets belonging to the terror groups, and out of a desire to minimize civilian casualties, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) sends warning messages to the residents of the Gaza urging them to evacuate areas that are about to be targeted in strikes. In response to these messages, media outlets operated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) instructed residents of Gaza not to heed these warnings and not to share them or forward them to others.
PIJ posted this message on October 9, 2023 via Telegram:
Dear residents: Do not share any information or publication by Zionist occupation channels calling on [people] to leave the areas [about to be targeted in airstrikes], which are aimed at creating confusion among the Palestinian public.
The following day, the spokesperson department of Hamas's interior ministry wrote on the ministry's Telegram channel:
An important note: We repeat our call on the residents to ignore the voice messages being sent randomly by the occupation to their phones demanding that they leave their homes. Their goal is to arouse panic and fear as part of a psychological warfare [campaign] accompanying the occupation's aggression against us.
On October 13, 2023, Reuters reported, "Mosques broadcast messages telling Gaza Strip residents to stay put on Friday, in defiance of an Israeli military call for more than a million civilians to move south within 24 hours in the build-up to its expected ground offensive."
In a February 13, 2024 article for Time, Palestinian-American Jehad Al-Saftawi wrote:
[T]his is the legacy of Hamas. They began destroying my family home in 2013 when they built tunnels beneath it. They continued to threaten our safety for a decade — we always knew we might have to vacate at a moment's notice. We always feared violence. Gazans deserve a true Palestinian government, which supports its citizens' interests, not terrorists carrying out their own plans. Hamas is not fighting Israel. They're destroying Gaza.
Hamas's Totalitarian Rule of Gaza 🔝
In May 2024, The New York Times noted that "The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government."
How might this intelligence be used? In July and August 2024, Amnesty International published a report of protestors who were violently dispersed/arrested after demanding that Hamas stop hoarding money and supplies. The report noted "Plain-clothes officers assaulted a journalist covering the protest on 30 July in Gaza City, according to [Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)]. In Khan Yunis, police destroyed the phones of protesters who had filmed the events, according to journalists at the scene."
In November 2007, the British Medical Journal reported on a worker's strike by doctors in Gaza:
The strike began because those who were supporters of the ousted Fatah government lost their jobs under the Hamas government, which took over the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June. The new government appointed Bassem Naim as minister of health. He fired the directors of Gaza's main hospitals, who were identified with Fatah, as well as many doctors and medical personnel. They were replaced with people who identified with Hamas.
Among those who lost their jobs was Jomaa Alsaqqa, deputy director of Shifa Hospital, who had worked as a surgeon at Shifa for 20 years. "I was fired only because I support Fatah," Dr Alsaqqa says. In the past few months he has, he says, been arrested and beaten by Hamas three times.
"After I was dismissed they threatened to kill me, to shoot me, if I entered the hospital again." According to Dr Alsaqqa, about 600 doctors were "fired or pushed out of their jobs."
In January 2012 Mahmoud Abu Rahma, wrote an article for Palestinian Ma'an News in which he stated,
Every day we see detention and summoning of citizens by the dozens; not for unlawful acts they committed, but mostly for who they are and what they think, or for their mere political affiliation. We witnessed, with much agony, the outrageous attack upon free expression and peaceful assembly since March 2011. There are reports of hundreds of cases of torture and abuse. Several people died in detention and under torture in Gaza and the West Bank…. Many citizens also fell victim of the continuous negligence of the resistance groups who show little or no care for people's life and well being, or, worse, fail to take responsibility for shocking acts by their members….
The state of carelessness from the resistance is also causing continued victims of the misfiring of home-made rockets that fall on houses inside Gaza. Many of the victims are children and all of them are civilians who happen to be in their homes.
There are more victims of shootings from, or explosions in, training sites. Many children are killed or maimed when explosive devices left in the streets or farms explode in their hands. And there is the young man who was shot in the legs for daring to publicly criticize a local resistance leader."
CNN reported in January 2012 of that year,
Abu Rahma says he was quickly subjected to a series of threatening email and phone calls and three days after publication a group of masked men entered his building and beat him up. During the course of the second attack Abu Rahma was able to escape his assailants and get home where family and friends got him medical attention. In a third attack, he was set upon by three masked assailants. The men stabbed Abu Rahma multiple times in the leg and shoulder while screaming that he was an "atheist" and a "collaborator."
In October 2012, Human Rights Watch noted,
The Independent Commission for Human Rights, a non-partisan Palestinian rights group that also monitors abuses in the West Bank, reported receiving 147 complaints of torture perpetrated by [Hamas's Internal Security agency] in 2011. As a measure of how broken the system is, three criminal defense lawyers in private practice told Human Rights Watch that they had themselves been arbitrarily arrested and tortured in detention by Hamas security forces.
In May 2015, Amnesty International reported on the summary execution of at least 23 Palestinians by Hamas forces, noting,
In one of the most shocking incidents, six men were publicly executed by Hamas forces outside al-Omari mosque on 22 August in front of hundreds of spectators including children. Hamas announced the men were suspected "collaborators" [with Israel] who had been sentenced death in "revolutionary courts." The hooded men were dragged along the floor to kneel by a wall facing the crowd, then each man was shot in the head individually before being sprayed with bullets fired from an AK-47.
In August 2016, Human Rights Watch, documented
five cases - two in the West Bank and three in Gaza - in which security forces arrested or questioned journalists, a political activist, and two rap musicians based on their peaceful criticism of the authorities. Four of those arrested, two in Gaza and two in the West Bank, say that security forces physically abused or tortured them.
In September 2017, Euractiv reported that Hamas executed five Palestinians, including two for "collaboration" with Israel.
In March 2019, Amnesty International noted,
Hamas security forces' violent crackdown against peaceful Palestinian protesters, activists, human rights workers - including an Amnesty International worker - and local journalists must be immediately halted and investigated, said Amnesty International. Hundreds of protesters have been subjected to beatings, arbitrary arrest and detentions, and torture and other forms of ill-treatment since 14 March, when Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip to protest against the rising cost of living and deteriorating economic conditions under the Hamas de facto administration.
In September 2019, Hani al-Agha, a reporter for the pro-Fatah broadcaster Sawt al-Shabab Radio, responded to a summons by traveling to the headquarters of the Hamas-affiliated Internal Security Forces, west of Gaza City; once there, according to a report by the International Federation of Journalists, security forces arrested him and reportedly severely beat and tortured him for more than 20 consecutive days.
Palestinian expat Hamza Howidy has detailed that he was tortured and imprisoned between 2019 and 2023 by Hamas for protesting their authoritarian rule.
In April 2020, Human Rights Watch noted that, "Hamas authorities detained seven activists for participating in a video chat where they answered questions from Israeli civilians about life in Gaza. Two were detained for more than six months and three were convicted under military law of 'weakening the revolutionary spirit.'"
Amnesty International's report on the situation in 2020 was even grimmer:
The Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Hamas de facto administration in the Gaza Strip continued to crack down on dissent, including by stifling freedoms of expression and assembly, attacking journalists and detaining opponents….
The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), the Palestinian national human rights institution, recorded 37 incidents of violations of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press: 21 in the West Bank and 16 in Gaza. The ICHR also recorded 158 cases in the West Bank and 118 in Gaza of the arbitrary arrests of opponents and critics. The Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms recorded 97 incidents of attacks against journalists, including arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment during interrogation, confiscation of equipment, physical assaults and bans on reporting: 36 in the West Bank and 61 in Gaza.
Women and girls faced discrimination in law and practice and were inadequately protected against sexual and other gender-based violence, including so-called honour killings. Nineteen women died in the West Bank and 18 in Gaza as a result of gender-based violence, according to the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC).
The civil society organization alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society reported that LGBTI people continued to be denied the freedom to exercise their rights, even though consensual same-sex relationships are not criminalized in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Section 152 of the Penal Code applicable in Gaza criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual activity and makes it punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment.
In September 2022, Al Jazeera reported, "The Hamas movement governing the Gaza Strip says it has executed five Palestinians, including two for 'collaboration' with Israel."
In May 2023, the Associated Press reported,
There was no mourning tent for 23-year-old Palestinian Zuhair al-Ghaleeth. There were no banners with his portrait, no chants celebrating his martyrdom. Instead, a bulldozer dropped his bullet-riddled body into an unmarked grave, witnesses said. The day after six masked Palestinian gunmen shot and killed al-Ghaleeth over his suspected collaboration with Israel, his family and friends refused to pick up his body at the morgue, the public prosecution said. He was buried in a field cluttered with discarded animal bones and soda cans outside the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Starvation of the Population 🔝
One might argue that none of the above points would justify the Israeli military dropping 2000-lb bombs on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. In May 2024, Aryeh Neier told Fareed Zakaria he thought such bombs were "inappropriate in the context of Gaza" but that their use did not compel him to accuse Israel of genocide because he felt that, after the attack of October 7th, 2023, Israel had "a right to retaliate."
Although this claim is not central to Neier's accusation of genocide, it does deserve some attention. Although Israel does send text messages, make phone calls, drop leaflets, and engage in "roof knocking" to warn civilians to clear a particular area (warnings that Hamas has reportedly told people to ignore), thus often sacrificing the element of surprise, one might still feel that Israel does not do enough to prevent civilian casualties. One accusation might be, given the devastation of buildings in many parts of Gaza, that Israel is bombing indiscriminately. However, such an assertion can be easily refuted with information coming from Hamas. In January 2024, the Hamas-run Gaza Media Office reported that Israel had dropped more than 45,000 bombs on Gaza weighing more than 65,000 tons. If we combine the figure of 45,000 bombs dropped with the Hamas-reported death toll of 25,000 at that time, we get less than one person killed per bomb dropped or less than one person killed per ton of munitions dropped.
Such an analysis also assumes that Israel is dropping bombs just to cause devastation rather than to destroy Hamas's complex and elaborate tunnel system.
As previously noted, however, these points are not central to Neier's charge of genocide. The main reason that Neier believes that Israel is committing genocide, he told Zakaria in May 2024, is that Israel has obstructed aid delivery to Gaza. He notes that the people most impacted by this are non-combatants. To highlight the cruelty of withholding such aid, Zakaria displays an image of Yazan al-Kafarneh, a child who died in Gaza who is so emaciated in the photo that he appears barely human. Zakaria does not share that this child was, according to family member Muhammed al-Kafarneh, "suffering from several diseases," including, reportedly, cerebral palsy.
Zakaria also shares a photo of emaciated child Fadi Al-Zant, a child with cystic fibrosis who is fully alive and recovering as of July 2024. Both widely-reported cases are terrible results of war, but neither is obviously a case of intentional starvation. More probably, these cases represent both a reduced availability of highly specific medicine and of components of some highly specific diets.
That said, how severe is the food shortage in Gaza currently? Neier said he was relying on data from USAID and the World Food Program. The WFP, in turn, partners with the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). On March 18, 2024, the IPC published a report finding that 677,000 Gazans were in Phase 5 famine (defined as 2 deaths per 10,000 people per day). The IPC analysis was based, in part, on 1,365 phone responses to a questionnaire conducted over 2.5 months, beginning December 6, 2023. The report also references an unspecified "Global Smart Team." One last source - identified as "eight key informants" - reported "widespread weight loss, diseases, and malnutrition."
Given that the IPC has regularly produced reports on the food security crisis in Gaza, we can easily calculate expected deaths. If we perform this calculation we find that, between November 24, 2023 and July 15, 2024, there should have been at least 38,000 famine deaths per the IPC.
However, as of July 7, 2024, the Gaza Ministry of Health had reported 34 deaths from malnutrition.
This absence of deaths from starvation or malnutrition would likely come as no surprise to health experts in Israel who, as of June 2, 2024, reported that "Between January and April 2024, 14,916 trucks conveying 227,854 tons, and 95 airdrops weighing 3,694 tons of food entered Gaza. On average, 3,729 food trucks per month entered Gaza, with a continuous increase of 431 trucks per month since January… The crude mean per capita per day energy supplied was 3,374 kcal."
Quality of Life in Gaza 🔝
None of this should be construed to mean that there have not been many civilians killed in Gaza, including many killed in tragic accidents. However, the available evidence suggests, overwhelmingly, that Gaza is not the world's leading humanitarian crisis that much news reporting and social media would have us believe. In fact, even if we take Hamas's figure for total deaths as accurate, this conflict is not the most deadly, either in terms of total casualties or casualties per day, compared to other conflicts currently happening. The Syrian war (618,000 dead, roughly 164,000 civilians) and Russia-Ukraine war (500,000 dead), for example, have seen reported casualties more than 10 times greater.
Still, the idea that the conflict is especially noteworthy given the perceived depravity of the Israelis persists. For example, in a conversation with Piers Morgan November 23, 2023, prominent Israel critic and child of Holocaust survivors Norman Finkelstein said that "those who carried out the atrocities [on October 7th] were concentration camp inmates." These "inmates," he emphasized, "lived, for two decades, in a concentration camp."
To address the question of whether Gazans were, in fact, living in a concentration camp, we can focus on some vital statistics of Gazans. Using data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), we can compare vital stats for Gaza to global averages. If we do so, we find that Gaza has consistently had infant mortality rates below the world average for at least 30 years. It has also had life expectancy near or better than the global average over that time period as well as polio vaccination rates higher than the global average as shown here:
We find similar results if we look at combined health data for Gaza and West Bank that includes infant mortality, maternal mortality, sanitation, drinking water, and education as shown here:
The lack of particularly alarming health statistics from Palestine perhaps should not be surprising given that the United States alone has given the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in excess of $11 trillion in aid since 1950 (adjusting figures from the Congressional Research Service for inflation). In fact, a 2002 report by the Washington Institute found that, up to that point, the world had given nearly five times the aid to Palestinians as was given to European countries as part of the Marshall Plan.
Aside from the unalarming health stats from Gaza and the abundance of aid given to Palestinians for over seven decades, the image of the territory as a concentration camp is somewhat complicated by the fact that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows over 100,000 people entering and leaving Gaza in 2022 and 2023 via the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Population Growth of Gaza per the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) et al
[source]
None of this is to say that Gaza is a paradise, of course, but there certainly is a question of the role of Hamas and the religious fanaticism that Hamas (and Fatah) foisted on the public. This is expressed fairly vividly in the following graph comparing religiosity to per capita GDP:
The Muslim Brotherhood and US Media - Convergent Evolution 🔝
"The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterized by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam."
—Hamas Covenant, 1988
With so much information readily available about Hamas's history of using civilian infrastructure to wage war, its use of child soldiers, its intolerance of criticism/dissent, and about the fact that it has been shown to lie about casualty figures, one might wonder why so many people in democratic countries are not more critical of Hamas or are actively criticizing their own country's support for Israel.
Some of the confusion is being caused by Qatar whose Al Jazeera news network is a significant source of misinformation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In September 2018, Saudi Arabian Minister of Foreign Affairs summarized some of Qatar's misadventures as follows:
The Qataris, since the mid-'90s, have been sponsoring radicals. They have been inciting people. They have become a base for the leadership for the Muslim Brotherhood…. The Qataris allow their senior religious clerics to go on television and justify suicide bombings. That's not acceptable. The Qataris harbor and shelter terrorists. That's not acceptable.... There's a list of terror financiers that the U.S. puts out, the U.N. puts out, and a number of them are living openly in Qatar raising money and giving it to bad people. Is this acceptable? It shouldn't be.... [T]he Qataris use their media platforms to spread hate."
In 2017, AP reported, "Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar and has grown to become one of the most widely seen Arabic news channels in the world. The network says its channels reach 100 countries and 310 million homes worldwide." The AP would further note that Qatar's connections to the Muslim Brotherhood would lead Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE to shut down local offices of Al Jazeera in the summer of 2017. Per an April 2015 report from New Deli TV, the Indian government banned the Al Jazeera TV channel for a period for repeatedly broadcasting disputed maps of India.
In June 2024, Iraqi journalist Sufian Al-Samarrai, Chairman of the Baghdad Post, said of Al Jazeera (AJ) that the West is too blind to see what AJ stands for and how it manipulates and penetrates western societies. He stressed the massive differences in how news is portrayed in AJ English and AJ Arabic. AJ English projects itself as the standard-bearer of global liberalism, promoting democracy, human rights, freedom, and justice for all. It softly markets political Islam as a strategic solution to many of MENA's problems. In addition, it portrays Islamism as a political ideology that can coexist with people and nations of different religions and ethnicities. AJ Arabic, on the other hand, he says, "is nothing more than a platform of armed political Islamist gangs, and their ferocity and terrorism are promoted as a legitimate resistance" with the goal "to overthrow the current secular-conservative Arab regimes … paving the way for political Islam, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, to take over the region."
In a recent example posted to Al Jazeera Arabic from Israel's October 4, 2024 strike on Tulkarem refugee camp, a soldier wearing a face covering is pictured with the message "urgent" and the text, "Al-Qassam mourns 8 of its fighters who were martyred in the occupation's bombing of Tulkarm yesterday":
However, if we look at Al Jazeera English's report on the bombing, they report 18 killed. Their report includes only the mention of children killed as relayed by their grieving grandmother.
Writing for Bangladesh's Daily Sun in March 2021, Anwar A. Khan wrote of Al Jazeera's attempted distortion of Bangladeshi history as well as its close ties to Iran:
In 2012, Al Jazeera faced criticism from Bangladeshi human rights activists and relatives of those killed in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The news channel is often accused of downplaying the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, in which Islamist militias assisted the Pakistan Army in targeting Bengalis who sought independence from Pakistan. In response to the Al Jazeera Investigative Documentary 'All the Prime Minister's Men', the Government of Bangladesh described it as "a misleading series of innuendos and insinuations in what is apparently a politically motivated smear campaign by notorious individuals associated with the Jamaat-e-Islami extremist group, which has been opposing the progressive and secular principles of the People's Republic of Bangladesh since its very birth as an independent nation in 1971."
The foreign ministry stated that the Bangladesh government "regrets that Al Jazeera has allowed itself to become an instrument for their malicious political designs aimed at destabilising the secular democratic Government of Bangladesh with a proven track record of extraordinary socio-economic development and progress". The ministry also stated that "the fact that the report's historical account fails to even mention the horrific genocide in 1971 in which Jamaat perpetrators killed millions of Bengali civilians" was "one reflection of the political bias in Al Jazeera's coverage". The Bangladesh Army called the documentary a "concocted and ill-intended report by a vested group in the news channel Al-Jazeera", according to a statement by ISPR.
The Muslim Brotherhood connection is important because it may help explain why Qatar allows Hamas leaders to operate from Doha. In a 2014 book, counter-extremism experts Hannah Stuart and Rashad Ali write,
Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya; or, the Islamic Resistance Movement) was founded in 1987, during the First Intifada (1987-1993), as an affiliate of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It seeks to establish an Islamic state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Israel.
Jihadist groups maintain that lands formerly under Muslim dominion are Dar al-Harb, and, as such, there is a religious necessity to fight in order to recapture them.
The groups differ in terms of the methods that they employ and in the definitions which they give for the geographical scope of their goals. Hamas and Lashkare-Ta'iba have irredentist approaches to their enemies in the localities with which they identify (Israel/Palestine and Pakistan/Kashmir, respectively), while alQa'ida employs more doctrinal and global definitions for its goals.
The connection between Islamist terrorism in the India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine conflict was further highlighted by a November 3, 2023 report by India Today's Gaurav Sawant who wrote,
The rape, murder, torture and killings were caught on camera. Body cams of Hamas terrorists, CCTV cameras on the streets in Sderot, Nova music festival site at Re'im, Kibutz Bee'ri, Kafer Azaa and multiple other settlements targeted by Hamas terrorists…. While reporting from the Nova Music Festival at Re'im where Hamas terrorists massacred 300 of 3,000 music lovers and abducted a number of young women and men to Kibutz Bee'ri and Nahal Oz, I was reminded of a reporting assignment to Kashmir many years ago where the Baramulla Division Commander had taken me around to show me the place of loot, rape and plunder by Pakistan raiders and radical Islamists in 1947 in north Kashmir. The British were forced to leave India in 1947. On August 15, India won Independence but that victory came at a huge cost, with a section of Muslims demanding a separate country, Pakistan. India was split into three parts. But months after Independence, the Pakistan Army launched radical Islamists - tribal raiders into Kashmir."
The shared aspirations of distant Islamists was further highlighted on November 17, 2023 by Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, former prime minister of Pakistan-administered Azad Jammu & Kashmir and president of the Muslim Conference party there. Ahmed Khan addressed a conference in Islamabad organized to show solidarity with the Palestinians, saying, "Kashmiris should learn from what is happening in Palestine. The one-point agenda of Kashmiris is the liberation of Kashmir. After Palestine, this will have to be carried out in Kashmir.'"
Sample of Islamist Terror Groups Compared
Complicating matters further for Israel's defenders is the fact that Qatari leadership/Al Jazeera likely know that they have a large audience primed to dislike Jews. In 2010, Pew Research surveyed Muslims in nine countries and asked if they had favorable or unfavorable views of Jews. In Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, West Bank, and Gaza, 95-98% of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of Jews. This may not be surprising as many people in these countries have fought and lost wars against Israel or have family members who have. However, that does not explain why 74% of Indonesians and 78% of Pakistanis hold an unfavorable view of Jews.
Some of these attitudes no doubt originate from Islamic scripture. This text, for example, comes from a hadith (a central part of Islamic law) and is found in the Hamas founding charter:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say "O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
Reflecting on the role of the Antichrist on the Day of Judgement in a 2003 article in the journal The Muslim World, Zeki Saritoprak writes:
Another interpretation connects the Antichrist [al-Dajjal] with Jewish people. Rashid Rida was a champion of this idea; he believed that the trials of the Antichrist described in the prophetic traditions could be describing a Zionist King and his followers. Rida thought that Jews may be able to use their knowledge of electricity and chemistry as well as other real sciences to perform the miracles that the Antichrist is predicted to perform. This connection has been given additional momentum by virtue of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Muhammad al-Ghazzali discusses a Jewish genius who will claim divinity, whom thousands of other Antichrists will follow.[...]
There is a great deal of literature on the struggle between the Antichrist and believers under the leadership of Christ in the land of Palestine and Jerusalem. Another Egyptian author claims that many Jews will aid the Antichrist, and even gives specific names of Jewish philosophers and scientists, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. These Antichrists will be of Jewish descent but will deny God and embrace materialism. This idea is also supported by Egyptian-Christian author Ibrahim Sabri. On the other hand, Ben-Azra, a Jew who converted to Christianity, dedicated a whole chapter to the Antichrist, in which he states that Jews will play a significant role in the coming of the Messiah, and they will be his helpers and not the helpers of the Antichrist.
In 2012, Pew Research wrote, "According to Islamic tradition, the Mahdi will rid the world of injustice and his return - along with the return of Jesus - will precede the Day of Judgment." Noting this, Pew asked Muslims in 23 countries whether they expect the Mahdi (and Jesus) to return in their lifetime. Pew found that 46% of Palestinians did expect both Mahdi and Jesus to return in their lifetimes:
Interestingly, 10 years later (June 2022), the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found that most Palestinians (78%) believe that the Qur'an contains a prophecy on the demise of the State of Israel, while 17% say it does not. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Palestinian support for this idea was due to the work of a popular Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Islamist Bassam Jarrar on his popular YouTube channel.
News Organization's Complicity with Hamas's Narrative 🔝
The ready audience of people who dislike Jews - who Iran's Khamenei-led regime, Qatar's monarchy, and Hamas supporters feel are occupying land that Muslims must recapture - may help to explain Al Jazeera's reporting; however, it does not explain why other news outlets have focused to such a degree on criticism of Israel. For example, in May 2024, The Jerusalem Post analyzed 3,848 New York Times articles published between October 7, 2023 and May 7, 2024. What may not be surprising is that empathy toward Israelis and Hamas/PIJ-held hostages declined as the focus of the conflict became the dubious, daily-updated, Hamas-generated death toll. What may be surprising, though, is that, within the first month of the attack, more than double the amount of stories the New York Times published that were critical were critical of Israel, which had just experienced the worst terror attack in its history, one of the worst terror attacks in world history.
Something that may stand out in the above paragraph is the number of articles published by the New York Times about the conflict - a staggering 3,848 stories. The number of stories alone washing over the minds of the public could easily cause them to think that this is the most important conflict on earth, perhaps leading them to think that Palestinians are the most subjugated population on earth. Indeed, if one searches the Ex Libris newspaper database for stories on the Israel-Hamas conflict, one would find more than 150,000 stories published over just the first 9 months of the current conflict. Comparatively, over 13 years of war in Syria, one would find fewer than 90,000 stories as shown here:
Why this disparity? Perhaps the simplest explanation is money. It appears to be the case that the market for pro-Israel content is smaller compared to that for anti-Israel content. If we take the smallest portion of just Muslims who dislike Jews from the earlier-mentioned Pew study - 60% in Nigeria - and multiply that by 1.8 billion - the estimated number of Muslims on earth - we get 1.08 billion potential Muslim antisemites, a number 67 times the total number of Jews on earth. One possible illustration of greater interest in criticism of Israel compared to support are two talks published by the Australian Centre for Independent Studies (CIS).
Journalist Matti Friedman noted in 2014, that, when he worked at the Associated Press (AP) between 2006 and 2011,
the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the "Arab Spring" eventually erupted. [...] I don't mean to pick on the AP-the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd.
On May 17, 2024, Australian think tank The Center for Independent Studies (CIS) published a video of a talk by political scientist John Mearsheimer where Mearsheimer accuses Israel of intentionally committing war crimes. The video received 3.8 million views; conversely, a video published just over a month later by the same venue which features Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bret Stephens defending Israel has garnered not quite 10,700 views (355 times fewer views as of September 5, 2024). Obviously, this is not conclusive proof of the public's desire for anti-Israel voices (perhaps Mearsheimer is simply 355 times more charismatic than Stephens), but it is difficult to explain away as just chance.
This disparity is also evident in pro-Israel vs pro-Palestinian hashtags. Data from November 13, 2023 from TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, show that posts with the hashtag #freepalestine were used on 77 times more posts than #standwithisrael on TikTok, 27 times more posts on Instagram, and 40 times more posts on Facebook.
A Washington Post report also on November 13, 2023 noted,
Hashtags offer a deeply limited and simplistic way to analyze the shape of social media conversations because users often add them to videos that are unrelated to the issue or seek to criticize the point they mention."
Comparing the views on the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian hashtags around the world, as TikTok's critics have done, does not take into account that many of the videos come from predominantly Muslim countries with high levels of Palestinian support….
The comparison also does not factor in the long-standing generational gap around people's attitude toward the Israel-Gaza dispute. Young Americans have consistently shown support for Palestinians in Pew Research surveys, including a poll in 2014, four years before TikTok launched in the United States.
There is also evidence that highly-regarded international news organizations are not providing a full picture of the conflict. In January 2024, author/journalist Matti Friedman noted that, in August 2014, as AP news editor, he erased a key detail from a story - that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll - because of a threat to an AP reporter in Gaza. He also recounts a story of a cameraman stationed outside of Shifa hospital during the 2014 Gaza War. The cameraman noted that, when civilian casualties entered the hospital, his team would film them; when military casualties came in, Hamas minders at the door would signal with their hands to turn off the cameras.
A rally in support of Islamic Jihad at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem on November 6, 2013. Matti Friedman says that he submitted a story on this rally at the time that was rejected by AP editors as not newsworthy.
Friedman also notes that,
[A]t the very end of 2008, reporters in our Bureau had information about a fairly dramatic peace offer that had been made by the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Olmert. He had offered the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, who is still the Palestinian President, a Palestinian state that would have included Gaza, almost all of the West Bank, with a territorial swap or land that Israel was going to annex in the West Bank. An international arrangement for the old city of Jerusalem is actually quite a dramatic offer. And the Palestinians deemed it unacceptable.
And that had not been reported at the time. Now everyone knows it, but it had not been reported at the end of 2008, early 2009 when our reporters got wind of it. And they were told not to report it.
It seems quite hard to understand why that wouldn't be a major news story for an organization that is preoccupied primarily with covering what was then called the Peace Process. So, here you have an example of what the Israelis are willing to offer and what the Palestinians are or are not willing to accept. It's a very important story.
In a 2014 post on his blog, Mark Lavie confirms Friedman's account:
Hi, Steven Gutkin, let me start out by saying that I’m glad we’ve remained friends over the years despite our professional differences. I’m not named in Matti’s article, either, but I am the “furious” one who discovered the Israeli peace offer in early 2009, got it confirmed on the record and brought it to you. You banned me from writing about it. That is by far the worst journalistic fiasco I have been involved in, and we’re talking 50 years of journalism here. No denials on your part can erase the truth–and this is the truth: The AP suppressed a world-changing story for no acceptable reason. I am not ascribing motives to the decision–oh, hell, of course I am. It fit a pattern, described by Matti, of accepting the Palestinian narrative as truth and branding the Israelis as oppressors. This drove Matti, by far the most talented writer on our staff, away from AP. It drove me out of the Jerusalem bureau to Cairo. There, for two years as a regional editor, I tried to balance the slanted stories coming out of Jerusalem, often fighting for every letter and comma. Now I’m retired, and no one is filling that role. The world suffers as a result. If you are interested in the full, truthful and unexpurgated version of what happened in 2009 in your bureau, it’s Chapter 31 in my book.
Friedman further wrote that, over a one seven-week period at the AP, from Nov. 8 to Dec. 16, 2011, he counted stories critical of Israel vs critical of the Palestinians. He found that, conservatively, the AP published 27 separate articles during that period critical of Israel. He note, "In a very conservative estimate, this seven-week tally was higher than the total number of significantly critical stories about Palestinian government and society, including the totalitarian Islamists of Hamas, that our bureau had published in the preceding three years."
At least as far back as 2014, Hamas were aware of the PR benefits of portraying Israel as primarily targeting and killing civilians. In July of that year, the Hamas-run Information Department of the Ministry of the Interior and National Security published social media guidelines where they demand,
Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don't forget to always add "innocent civilian" or "innocent citizen" in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from [Gaza] city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Do not publish or share photos or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [forces] in Gaza.
On October 19, 2023, Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate told CNN that Hamas, after October 7, 2023, were "using propaganda to globalize their jihad against Israel and Jewish people. And they're succeeding because social media platforms are giving them easy access to tool that allows them to broadcast to billions." The same report notes Hamas's "sophisticated" use of Telegram. Caitlan Chin-Rothmann with the Center for Strategic and International Studies says, "Telegram has allowed them to shape a narrative. It allows them to spread messaging to very large audiences. We have to remember that the audience is not just Israel; it's not just Gaza. The audience is the entire world."
In August 2022, the Associated Press reported,
Hamas issues, then rescinds, sweeping rules on Gaza coverage…. The rules would have gone much further than existing Hamas restrictions. They appeared aimed at imposing the Islamic militant group's narrative on media coverage of the conflict by implicitly threatening Palestinian reporters and translators who live under its heavy-handed rule. Even if the rules are officially withdrawn, Hamas has still signaled its expectations, which could have a chilling effect on critical coverage…. In recent years, Hamas has required journalists to apply for advance approval to film in certain locations, such as the Gaza fishing port, the beach and the gold market. Hamas has also barred Palestinians from working for Israeli media or providing services to them. Palestinians are also barred from giving interviews to Israeli outlets.
2024 Freedom House Scores for Gaza and Israel
Along with news organizations' statistically biased reporting against Israel, there is also a large amount of disinformation that accompanies war generally. Especially on social media, it is often difficult or impossible to know whether an image or video that is being shared by a friend (or trusted acquaintance) is related to the current conflict. In May 2021, German news outlet Deutsche Welle (DW) reported,
In the case of ongoing conflicts and wars like the Syrian civil war or the Kashmir conflict, as well as the Israel-Gaza crisis now, social media is often also flooded with such posts and tweets that turn out to be fake. Images of children, who are said to have been injured or killed during attacks, are often used to garner attention for one side.
This image shows a little girl called Malek who was allegedly killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza. It was used for numerous tweets in different languages. But in fact, with a simple reverse image search, DW could find out that it shows the now 5-year-old Sophie from Russia.
The picture had been posted by her mother on Instagram two years ago. And the latest posts in her account prove that the girl is still alive and having fun with her mom in Moscow Zoo.
The exact opposite has also been happening. When looking for social media content on the current crisis in Gaza and Israel, DW found that several images of children used to illustrate the current situation were actually from a few years ago as well as from Syria. They are often merged as photo-collages, and therefore less easy to identify as manipulations.
On October 12, 2023, Sky News published a report showing a fireworks display after a football match in Algeria in August of 2020. Sky News notes:
At the time of writing, a compilation of footage that uses this clip was the top liked video on TikTok when searching for the word "Gaza".
The video has garnered 2.9 million likes and over 59 million views altogether.
It's also been shared on other platforms. On X, multiple users posted the video falsely claiming it shows Israel bombing Gaza with phosphorus. Taken together, these posts have been viewed over a million times.
This flood of misinformation gets mixed with shaky data coming from an internationally-designated terror organization. That information then gets mixed with actual scenes of devastated areas that have been heavily bombed. Those scenes are then, in turn, juxtaposed, by hostile actors, with scenes of dead children, many killed by Israeli airstrikes but many also possibly killed by misfired mortars or rockets from one of Gaza's 17 militant groups. All of this could easily lead a casual viewer to think that what they're witnessing does not constitute a war between two parties but is, instead, a genocidal war of revenge.
Friedman, speaking in January of 2024 notes why it is important for Hamas to project this image of no militant casualties, only civilians:
In 2007, Hamas, in a kind of violent coup, gets rid of the remnants of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and takes over Gaza. And then the following year, 2008, there's a real war, which involves rockets fired into Israel and everything where we've become used to over the past 15 years.
And that was really the first time this script played out. What is the script? Hamas attacks Israel, draws an Israeli response. Civilians in Gaza are killed in the Israeli response. The Western press films the civilian casualties under guidance from Hamas and under restrictions from Hamas about what you are and are not allowed to film. That coverage generates outrage in the West, and that outrage forces Israel to cease fire, with Hamas left standing.
And we've seen that script play out numerous times. So, it has happened enough times for Hamas to understand that it works: that you can count on international pressure to blunt the Israeli response in time to save Hamas and allow Hamas to live to fight another day.
And the strategy revolves around civilian casualties and having them covered by the Western press. So, the Western press has a role to play in the Hamas script.
And the central organ of the script, I would say, is the Gaza Health Ministry. What is the Gaza Health Ministry? It's an office of Hamas that puts out the casualty numbers. And the casualty numbers beginning in 2008 are the center of the story in a way that's quite unique. You don't really see it in the same way in the Russia-Ukraine story or in other war stories. You'll see the death toll as really the central point of the story, almost. So, you'll see the events of a given day described maybe some historical backgrounds of the war, and then you'll see a number of Israeli casualties and a number of Palestinian casualties. And those numbers will be greatly disparate.
And there are complicated reasons for that, of course, but it gives the reader a clear signal about who is right in the war, because the numbers are going to be very, very different.
And the Gaza Health Ministry is the source of the numbers. For a long time, the press was just attributing numbers to the Gaza Health Ministry as if it were a reliable source. And sometimes when I was at the AP, those numbers would actually be attributed to the UN [United Nations]. They would say it's a UN number, and the UN was just getting it from the Gaza Health Ministry. Meaning that Hamas was feeding these numbers to the press and it was really guiding the story.
And then what happens after the end of each round of violence is that Hamas eventually releases its own casualty numbers, because the casualty numbers you're getting are only civilians. So, what Hamas is trying to do is create a picture of only civilian death in Gaza.
NGO Complicity with Hamas/Qatar/Iran Narrative 🔝
Like news media, human rights organizations rely on clicks, shares, and views to generate cash inflows, in their case, in the form of donations. Because pro-Israel news content generates fewer clicks, shares, and views, these organizations are incentivized to side against Israel.
Amnesty International posted the following to Instagram on October 9, 2023:
Amnesty does not mention Hamas in this post, so it is unclear who they are talking about.
Amnesty posted the following to Instagram on October 11, 2023:
They wrote, "Without addressing the root causes of this violence, including impunity for war crimes by all sides and Israel's system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians, civilians will continue to pay the price."
It is unclear what Amnesty means by "apartheid" as, while this term is sometimes applied to Palestinians in West Bank, it is not generally applied to Palestinians in Gaza given that Israel forcibly removed all 21 Jewish settlements and their 8,000 inhabitants from Gaza in 2005. This means that there were no Israelis to give preferential treatment toward in Gaza.
In their February 2022 report, Amnesty does go into further detail about apartheid in West Bank but speaks of an Israeli blockade of Gaza. Nowhere in this report does Amnesty mention that Egypt also upholds a blockade along their border with Gaza and that Israel imposed the blockade only after Hamas came to power and began attacking Israel. The last time Amnesty mentions the Egyptian blockade of Gaza is in a 2017 report; however, that report does not mention that both Egypt and Israel imposed a blockade due to Hamas.
As the editorial staff of the Saudi Gazette noted in 2014,
Egypt's curbs on movement through its crossing with the Gaza Strip is a security decision that had to be taken even though it has cut off imports of medicine and aid to the impoverished coastal enclave….Egypt had no other recourse but to seal the tunnels although it is not a decision without physical and political risks. The ban and its broader war is an open invitation for extremist groups in Gaza and Sinai to continue striking at Egyptian targets….But the crossing had to be closed because Hamas had been inviting all sorts of militant and Jihadist groups and training them in Sinai, kidnapping and killing Egyptian soldiers and smuggling the killers into the Gaza Strip via tunnels and hiding Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Gaza.
This may help to explain that, while Israel has been criticized for not allowing journalists access to Gaza, Egypt has also faced criticism. As Reporters without Borders noted November 2023,
This buck-passing between Israel and Egypt, in which each blames the other for the denials of access, shows that the two governments have a mutual interest in preventing international media coverage of the situation in the Gaza Strip. Israel is primarily responsible for this news blockade, but Egypt has continued to be complicit in recent weeks. You cannot pretend to deplore bias in the media's coverage of the war while at the same time preventing journalists from going there.
Amnesty's lack of neutrality is also strange given that they have reported repeatedly on the authoritarian tactics employed by Hamas in Gaza (and by the Palestinian Authority in West Bank). Given the obvious lack of free expression, one might wonder why Amnesty would so willingly believe accounts of journalists from Gaza. This could be explained, in part, by activist staff that Amnesty employs. NGO Monitor has documented various instances of Amnesty leadership's ties to Islamist groups or instances where they have publicly celebrated extremists.
Something that may be worth noting about the above posts is the number of likes on each: nearly 50,000 on one post and over 33,000 on the other. To highlight the level of engagement that such content receives, we can look at three posts that Amnesty made between those two posts. One post on AI received 3,406 likes. The next post, on spyware, received 3,069 likes. The third post, on Amazon's treatment of employees, received 7,924 likes. Altogether, 14,399 likes, under half of what one of the above posts regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict received.
The Palestinian Narrative / Settler-Colonialism 🔝
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [endowment] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up."
—Hamas Covenant, 1988
Beneath the Hamas position that Jews are improperly occupying Islamic land, there is another layer of criticism of Jews as "settler-colonialists." According to a prominent Palestinian narrative (and one promulgated by Al Jazeera), Zionism began as a "racist and settler colonial movement" and remains a quest for Jewish supremacy. This contrasts with a Jewish conception of Zionism as a way for Jews to control a defensible piece of land in their ancestral homeland and exercise greater control over their lives following massacres and expulsions in Russia and Eastern Europe and following the Holocaust.
The Palestinian/Al Jazeera narrative focuses on loss of Palestinian land as shown in this widely-shared chart:
What this chart elides, however, is that the primary periods of lost land (mostly by Muslim Arabs) accompanied lost wars. In World War I, the Ottoman Empire allied with the Central Powers and lost control of Palestine to the Allies (Great Britain and France). In World War II, most Arab Palestinians (88% according to one poll) favored Nazi Germany over the Allies.
Along with denying Jews any connection to the land, this popular Palestinian narrative elides atrocities committed against Jews (mostly by Muslim Arabs) leading up to Israel's declaration of independence.
The popular Palestinian narrative also elides the emptying out of Jewish populations across the Arab world after 1948:
While some try to conflate the desire of many Jews to maintain a Jewish-majority state with a desire for "Jewish supremacy," it appears to be lost on such critics that there are many religious-majority states. For example, there are 157 Christian-majority countries representing 30% of the world's population, there are 50 Muslim-majority countries representing 26% of the world's population, and there are three Hindu-majority countries representing 15% of the world's population.
While Al Jazeera may further paint Israel as a Jewish ethnocracy, even this designation is not unusual given that ethnic majorities control many countries such as Belgium, China, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Malaysia, Rwanda, Turkey, Uganda (non-exhaustive list). There are, additionally, 22 Arab-majority countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
The view by some that Jewish Israelis have no connection to the land is likely what leads some anti-Israel speakers to tell some Jews to "go back to Poland." While this may be an attractive solution to some people who believe the settler-colonial narrative, people holding this view may forget a few things. One thing they may be forgetting is that most Jewish Israelis (80% as of 2024) were born in Israel. They may also be unaware that Jewish refugees who left Poland might not be eager to return given that around 1.5 million Jews were killed there during World War II.
Another thing perhaps worth noting is that Israeli Jews are mostly a mix of Mizrahim (Middle-Eastern/North-African Jewish refugees/immigrants) and Ashkenazim (European Jewish refugees/immigrants). Other groups include the Bene Israel of India; several groups of Kavkazi, or Caucasus Jews, referring to their origins in the Caucasus region of Central Asia; and Bukharan Jews of Uzbekistan; Italian Jews; and Ethiopian Jews.
The United Nations vs Israel 🔝
This report has already noted how the UN has uncritically accepted casualty data from Hamas-run medical institutions in Gaza. The campaign against Israel at the UN goes back much farther though. One place to begin might be United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 passed on November 10, 1975 which determined that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." The vote was 72 in favor, 35 opposed, and 32 abstentions.
Ofra Friesel wrote in 2013 in the journal American Jewish History of the competing interests:
Israel and Jewish organizations sought to use the mention of religious persecution as a means of criticizing the Soviet Union for its ongoing religious and ethnic persecution of the Jewish minority…. Arab countries did not want a religious persecution clause to be used as a way to safeguard Israeli and Jewish interests, and the Soviets wished both to shield themselves from international criticism and to keep international public opinion focused on the severity of race relations within the United States.
Resolution 3379 would be revoked in December 1991 as UNGA Resolution 46/86 with 111 voting for, 25 voting against, and 13 abstaining.
In this vote, we see the general outline of the anti-Israel UN voting bloc (most being Arab/Muslim-majority):
This voting bloc is largely mirrored by the countries that do not recognize Israel as a country. With the exception of four countries - Bolivia, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela - the countries that do not recognize Israel are predominantly Muslim-majority.
Being so surrounded by hostile countries helps to explain why so many anti-Israel resolutions get passed at the UN. In a 2020 book published by De Gruyter, Florette Cohen Abady highlighted this phenomenon, finding that, between 1990 and 2007,
On average, across the five comparison countries, the UN produced about 4 documents for every 10,000 civilian deaths (726 documents for 1,639,000 deaths). For Israel, the ratio is about 1 document for every 9 deaths (752 documents for 7,100 deaths). Put differently, (1) The UN produced more documents regarding Israel than for all five of the comparison countries combined; and (2) the UN is about 239 times more likely to produce a document resulting from a civilian death involving Israel than it is to produce one for the other five countries examined.
UN Watch, a pro-Israel UN watchdog, found a similar phenomenon, noting in November 2022, that, "From 2015 through 2022, the UN General Assembly has adopted 140 resolutions on Israel and 68 on other countries."
International law professor Robbie Sabel, who has represented Israel in international courts for decades, highlighted in 2021 this tendency for Israel to be held to different standards than other countries. He noted that, while the UN is satisfied by investigations of war crimes from other democratic states (eg, Canada, the United States, the UK, and Germany), they are not satisfied with Israel's investigations. Sabel notes that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) refers to crimes that "deeply shock the conscience of humanity." He says that Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been painted as shocking the conscience of humanity and, therefore, constitute war crimes. Sabel says, "it doesn't shock the conscience of humanity if an Israeli goes and lives in the West Bank; it may be politically not wise, but that's not the issue. But for Israel this has suddenly become a war crime." He further states:
I think the reason they're doing it is that they've been looking for a western state to prosecute. They tried to prosecute U.S. soldiers and British soldiers, and they dropped it like a hot potato. They've been accused so far of only prosecuting Africans. So I suspect they were looking around for a western state that is not a superpower, and they picked on Israel. And they're doing it for purely political reasons
Sabel continues,
One rule of international law that has been invented for Israel is that "U.N. resolutions are binding." This is rubbish. The U.N. General Assembly resolutions are not binding; no state is on record as accepting them as binding, except as regards Israel. You may have seen claims that "Israel is violating U.N. resolutions." Rubbish! They're not binding; they're political statements.
Since they're political statements, states vote for things that they know are absurd. I remember when I was a junior delegate at the U.N., there were some ridiculous proposals by Arab states - "Israel goes around spreading AIDS and poisoning wells." European states would abstain at the best. I remember saying, "Look, you know it's not true," and they said, "Of course, Mr. Sabel, we know it's not true, but what do you care? It's not binding. In exchange, the Arab states will vote for our proposals, they'll support our candidates."
So, you get Israel being accused of everything by the U.N. General Assembly, but this doesn't stop people - loyalists, journalists - from saying "Israel is violating U.N. resolutions." Why? Somehow, for Israel, they consider them to be binding, not for other states.
Statements from the UN itself appear to confirm Sabel's assertion. A guide on UN.org called "How Decisions Are Made at the UN" notes, "resolutions adopted by the General Assembly on agenda items are considered to be recommendations. They are not legally binding on the Member States. The only resolutions that have the potential to be legally binding are those adopted by the Security Council."
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