http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmXXUOs27lI

Here is video from last year showing what I presume to be Hamas Islamic terrorists using a U.N. School in Gaza as a shield, or to draw fire upon. I wonder if this will make the press.

Posted by: ethoman at January 6, 2009 8:46 PM

I'm reminded of the political cartoon that showed an Israeli soldier brandishing his M-16 protectively in front of an Israeli woman...facing off against a Palestinian terrorist pointing his AK-47 from BEHIND a Palestinian woman.

Posted by: Cornelius at January 6, 2009 8:57 PM

Israel is creating a new narrative in which Muslim terrorists can no longer hide behind their civilians while they attack infidel civilians.If infidel civilians are not treated as "innocent" then Muslim civilians will not be treated as "innocent" either.Reportedly Israel bombed a second UN school from which Hamas was launching rocket at Israeli civilians.

Posted by: Roxane at January 6, 2009 9:04 PM

Then maybe it is time that the citizens rise up against Hamas.

If they can't confront Hamas with weapons then they should give the IDF and conservative media information that will crush Hamas.

I do not like the loss of innocent life anywhere or by anyone, but at some point these citizens have got to take their countries, and their lives into their own hands and say 'enough'. Until then I am impithetic to see the loss of life, but I am not grieved.

It is as much the medias fault, U.N., OIC, goverments, and their own as it is Hamas's if no one ever deals with the elephant in the room.

Posted by: alaskan1000 at January 6, 2009 10:02 PM

These are not "UN" schools. They are schools run by UNRWA, an almost entirely Arab-staffed full-time provider of money, food, and other goods and services to the apparently permanent "Palestinian" "refugees" -- which in Gaza is to say the Gazan Arabs, many of whom were never refugees but merely the descendants of people who had lived in Gaza (having arrived, many of them, quite recently -- in the 20th century -- from Egypt), and not moved during the 1948-49 war. Some may have indeed been among those Arabs who left Israel, beginnning in late 1947, because they knew war was coming, or left during the war, to get out of the way of the five Arab armies and assured (and many Arabs so testified after the fact, but that has all been carefully ignored by so many) that they would be back soon, and of course why should they not have thought so, given that those five regular armies, well-armed and trained in the cases of Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan by the British, would not soon make mincemeat of 600,000 desperate Jews, subject to an arms embargo from every nation on earth, almost without anything more than rifles (save for what Jews might smuggle in), and exactly five aging Messerschmitts from Czechoslovakia and one American bomber.

No, the Gazan Arabs are not refugees, save for a handful, and in any case refugee status is not something that is transmitted down through the generations for any refugees anywhere in the world -- with the sole exception of the "Arab" or "Palestianian" refugees. We all know that Henry Kissinger was a refugee from Nazi Germany. But is his son? His grandson? Solzhenitsyn was a refugee from the Soviet Union to Cavendish, Vermont? But are his sons "Russian refugees"? If your parents or grandparents were refugees from somewhere, does that make you a "refugee"? No. Only one group -- the Arabs who, because of the Islamic takeover of so much of the U.N., and of its staff too, has led to the bizarre situation where one group of Arabs is deliberately prevented for political reasons from either being integrated into the Arab countries where some have gone -- Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait -- or have been kept in places where they continue to receive all of the benefits of UNRWA, billinos of dollars a year, for almost 60 years, so that the U.N. spends about as much on the few million so-called "Palestinian refugees" (itself a misnomer) as it does on all the other, real refugees, all over the world, from every conceivable confllict -- as for example, in sub-Saharan Africa, the millions in Rwanda-Burundi, Congo, and the Sudan (the latter fleeing the murderousness of Arab Muslims who enjoy the full diplomatic and moral support of the Arab states). Why this situation is not given more attention, where despite the twelve trillion dollars that the rich Arabs and Iranians have received in undeserved revenues from oil since 1973 alone, it is the world's Infidels who are expected, through the U.N., to continue to support these Arabs indefinitely -- and Israel of course to also offer electricity, and food and services and medical care -- simply amazes.

Just look at these so-called "refugee camps" in Gaza. They are towns and cities. They have supermarkets. They have cell-phone stores and DVD stores. Do you think that the Afghan refugees or the refugees in the Congo have cell-phone stores, DVD stores? Do you know of any other group of refugees, real refugees, who have managed to so arrange things that they continue for a half-century to be given almost half the total amont available each year from the U.N. for refugees? And shall we add to that UNRWA money the billions more that the countries of Western Europe and North America contribute to these "Arab refugees" without demanding that their fellow Arabs and Muslims take over the burden, as they ought to have long ago?

Whenever you hear or read the word "U.N." about Gaza this means not the U.N., bad as it is, but UNRWA. And UNRWA is simply an Arab-staffed handmaiden of the Jihad against Israel. It engages in every kind of propagandistic tactic to make it appear that the Gazan Arabs live in a state of perpetual woe, to divert attention from the main activity of so many of them, which is to make war on Israel, to build hundreds of tunnels, and to maintain them, and to smuggle in gigantic amounts -- possibly tens of thousands, as wtih Hezbollah -- of rockets, and great quantities of explosives and other war materiel, and then to do as they have been doing, lobbying, since 2001 alone, some 10,000 rockets in to Israel, ever more powerful and more dangerous, into the middle of whatever towns and cities they can reach.

There is a moral difference between the side that tries always and everywhere, even in the most hellish conditions ever faced by an advanced army, to minimize civilian casualties, while its enemy does everything it can to choose positions from which to fire, and places to store weapons, that will guarantee civilian casualties, and that enemy that attacks civilians always and everywhere, quite deliberately, and screaming with pleasure, whether two dozen schoolgirls are massacred at Ma'alot, or religious ceremonies are blown up, or schoolbusses or planes or cafes exploded, as has steadily happened, as a result of what these Arabs -- Gazan Arabs or "West Bank" Arabs or Arabs who have become "refugees" in Lebanon or Jordan -- have inflicted on Israel's men, women, and children, quite steadily over the past 60 years, with now this, and now that group or that supporting state, being the most active.

And Hamas is only the most recent, and the most fanatically Muslim, and the most vicious of already-thoroughly vicious groups. And Hamas's aid and comfort is provided by UNRWA, and the likes of John Ging.

Posted by: Hugh at January 6, 2009 10:24 PM

In the article above a link is given to a story out of Israel that reads as follows:

"(IsraelNN.com) The IDF reported that two well known Hamas terrorists were among the dead in the IDF strike on a school Tuesday which also killed over 40 civilians. According to the IDF, the terrorists were using the school to fire mortar shells at troops."

I object to this. I object to Israel simply accepting the word of the Arab side -- and the "U.N." in Israel is the Arab side, not objective or neutral in any sense -- that "over 40 civilians" were "also killed." That is merely the Arab side, the "U.N." or UNRWA side's, claim. The Israelis have always been far too quick to accept responsibility or blame when they had great reason to doubt, but didn't want, at that point, to make a fuss. They did this in the case of Mohammed al-Doura, instead of objecting at once, and saying that, as we know now to be true, that from where the Israeli fire was coming, and from many other bits of evidence, it could not possibly have been the Israelis who "killed" Mohammed al-Doura, if indeed he was killed at all.

Why did not Israel say that it knows the school was not being used as a school (unlike, say, the school at Ma'alot where the Arabs massacred two dozen Israeli schoolchildren in cold blood), that mortar fire was received and the source of the mortars suppressed by return fire, and that it is now "claimed" by some that there were many civilians, and that this will be investigated. Of course the Arabs will do everything they can to swell the ranks of the supposed "civilian" casualties. Of course all those Gazan Arabs who die natural deaths will have their deaths over these weeks ascribed to the Israelis, and there will be no "natural deaths" in Gaza during that period. Of course Hamas thinks nothing of hiding behind, of firing from among, as many civilians as it can. So what? Israel can be faulted not if if there are some civilian deaths, but only if Israel's conduct as an army is different from, worse than, that of any other advanced Western army, and so far, it has been at least the equal, and very likely superior, in its efforts at minimizing civilian casualties, than any army, in any battle, anywhere in the history of the world. Certainly the armies of Western Europe and the American army, cannot possibly claim that they could do better in such circumstances. They couldn't, and they shouldn't expect others to do so. And remember: within a few years, far sooner than one thinks, it may well be that the armies of the Western nations will be having to do battle against armies of domestic Muslim terrorists, and engage in urban warfare. They shouldn't set the standards for Israel, or for themselves in the future, impossibly, suicidally high. They should think ahead.

Posted by: Hugh at January 6, 2009 10:35 PM

"Just look at these so-called "refugee camps" in Gaza. They are towns and cities. They have supermarkets. They have cell-phone stores and DVD stores."

posted by Hugh

Hugh's exactly right. All one needs to do is "fly" Google Earth to Gaza, then go to a close-up of Gaza City, and click on some of the photos. They show nice hotels along the beach, solidly built apartment buildings, and pleasant residential neighborhoods much like those in Italian and Spanish cities, and a plaza with shrubbery and fountains that almost any American city would love to have. A few of the street scenes are a bit scruffy, but no worse than many I've seen in Europe, and quite a bit better than parts of many American cities.
No, these are no squalid camps of canvas and corrugated huts, with kids in rags and sores, and women lined up with jerry-cans at a water distribution center.

Posted by: ebonystone at January 6, 2009 11:27 PM

I say kill the civilians anyway. What are their lives worth anyway except more suicide bombers and anti-western bigots.

Posted by: bigbadsnortinhippo at January 6, 2009 11:32 PM

Jeffrey Goldberg, who for a long time has reported on the Arab-Israeli war, and has been so careful to avoid the subject of Islam, and so cautiously neutral in his reportage that he has at times been taken to task at this website, finally can stand the nonsense and lies no longer, and lets loose in blog he does for "The Atlantic":

"Hamas terrorists unblinkingly and ostentatiously use their own civilians as human shields. I've seen this up-close, and it's repulsive. One story the media isn't telling, because it's impossible to get this story in these circumstances (especially because Israel stupidly won't allow foreign reporters into Gaza) is how much resentment the Hamas policy of using Palestinians as human shields causes among Gaza civilians. Early reports indicate that Hamas mortar teams were firing from the UN School. This shouldn't surprise anyone.

One more thing, speaking of pornography -- we've all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It's a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn't matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I'll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble -- and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I've seen in my life. And it's typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they'd learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people."

Print that out. Send that around, to those who are fooled by Arab war propaganda, just as Hitler managed in 1938 to ascribe all sorts of trumped-up "atrocities" against the "Sudeteners" by the Czech police. Except that the Gazan Arabs, as Hezbollah in 2006, or the PLO in Beirut in 1982, all have much of the world press -- especially the vicious BBC -- hardly needing to be fooled, so eager is it to be, not so much pro-Arab, as malevolently anti-Israel.

Posted by: Hugh at January 6, 2009 11:47 PM

What is not sufficiently understood by the publics in the Western world is that the kind of hellishly difficult urban warfare in which the Israeli army is now engaged, is what the armies of many countries in Western Europe must prepare -- and some are preparing, or getting ready -- to fight, within a few decades, against the Muslim population that clearly should never have been admitted into the midst of Infidel nation-states in the first place. So they should be careful about tsk-tsking over Israel, when it is behaving with far greater care, and solicitousness, for the safety of individuals, than any other Western army ever has, or is likely to be able to, right within the cities of Western Europe, in the future -- not the far off future, but the future coming sooner than one thinks.

Posted by: Hugh at January 7, 2009 1:36 AM

There is no energency crisis in gazastan. As one can see through the afore mentioned google earth, there are well stocked stores, decent streets, hotels, nice beaches and to be sure some rough areas. But this does not stop hamas from using civillians as shields to cover their cowardly asses, sorry bunch that they are. The UNRWA school is nothing but a hotbed of islamofacists building up hate and anti-semitism and the school being used a launching pad for mortars. Innocents are always killed in war, and this is war that hamas, backed by Iran, and back door stepped by Syria, brought upon themselves. Israel should to continue to show every video it can to the world of how these cowards fight behind women's habibs and shields of children, later to be used as propaganda props after they have been wounded or killed.

We are looking at a snap shop of the future when the unregulated masses of muslim immigrants rise up against in acts of terror across the continent of europistan and beyond. It is already happening before our eyes in acts against Jews worldwide.
This is a clarion warning to the rest of the world! All the billions of dollars wasted on so called aid to these poor "refugees and so called palestinians" who were handed a workable infastructure for economic developement when Israel foolishly left gazastan in 2005. Remember the burned down greenhouses, the ruined housing and businesses that the poor, downtrodden islamofacists laid to waste just because the Jews had built them, worked and resided in these structures. That is the 7th century mentality that Israel and the world is fighting against. It is no wonder they fight the chicken way they do, just like mohammed did. Every inch of gazastan that hamas has built, with our money, into tunnels, storage areas, etc. must be obilterated and if that means schools, houses, mosques be destroyed so be it. The IDF warned the civillian
population to leave and not cooperate with hamas. Their tough luck if they did not heed the warnings. A dead civillian just very well may be a dead hamas ooperative. They do look alike and blend in. Israel has no choice but to finish the job, totally and completely!

Posted by: PatriotUSA at January 7, 2009 2:09 AM

I'm reminded of the political cartoon that showed an Israeli soldier brandishing his M-16 protectively in front of an Israeli woman...facing off against a Palestinian terrorist pointing his AK-47 from BEHIND a Palestinian woman. Posted by: Cornelius at January 6, 2009 8:57 PM

image

Posted by: heroyalwhyness at January 7, 2009 6:51 AM

Cox and Forkum image "Palestinian Body Armor"

MyPetJawa image of Hamas body armor

Posted by: heroyalwhyness at January 7, 2009 6:57 AM

Study: Hamas Uses Israel's Warnings to Prepare Human Shields via: Israel National News Arutz Sheva

by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) Israel's notifications to civilians in Gaza to leave populated locations before they are bombed are cynically used by Hamas for organizing human shields, a new study says.
The study by the Terror and Intelligence Information Center shows that when the IDF warns Arab civilians of an impending attack in their neighborhood, Hamas uses the information in order to organize the civilians into human shields in the hope of protecting the targets from the IDF's wrath.
Hamas's de facto prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and other top terrorists, including Nizar Riyan, who was killed in the course of Operation Cast Lead, have publicly boasted of using the warnings as “intelligence” and then using civilians, including women and children, as human shields to protect the homes of terrorists.
The tactic is a “win-win” for Hamas: If the IDF cancels its planned attack on a terror target, the terrorists receive a respite. If the IDF attacks despite the human shields, it can then be portrayed as a killer of women and children.The tactic was inspired by the experience of Hizbullah is using such methods against Israel, the study determines.
Use of civilians as human shields and purposely firing at Israel from densely populated areas is a war crime, the researchers say. Yet terror units that specialize in launching rockets and mortars often carry out the launches next to or even from inside civilian residential buildings, schools and mosques.

Posted by: heroyalwhyness at January 7, 2009 7:30 AM

CNN just reported there were No militants in the school.

Even though we have their names.

Posted by: Borg at January 7, 2009 10:09 AM

How can you fight against LIARS and win? There has got to be a way, but what is it? Even intelligent (??) Americans at CNN are taken in by the deception, the lies, the villainy. The cartoon of Israel soldier in front of the baby carriage while Hamas cowers behind a baby carriage should be placed on huge billboards all over the world!

Posted by: angryamerican at January 7, 2009 12:26 PM

I'm convinced that we need to start ignoring palestinian casualties. Hamas welcomes them, videotapes them, and then plays the tapes for the western news services. They are using innocent people to manipulate westerners. The only response is to not let them do this - we need to refuse to be manipulated.

Posted by: Ernie Banks at January 7, 2009 1:01 PM