Readers of the New York Times today are unwitting witnesses to a remarkable vanishing act. Reporters Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram take the reality of hundreds of rockets and mortars fired at Israel from Gaza in 2010 and 2011 and, with deft slight of hand, make it disappear:

Hamas has largely maintained the fragile cease-fire that went into effect after Israel ended its three-week military offensive in Gaza in early 2009. The smaller factions in Gaza are less committed, but are under pressure from Hamas to comply.

“Less committed to a ceasefire” is apparently the newspaper’s new euphemism for “committed to incessant and indiscriminate rockets attacks.”

In 2010, Palestinians fired 365 rockets and mortar shells toward Israel, according to Israel’s count. And through September of this year, another 566 rockets and mortar shells were launched by Gaza-based groups, including Hamas, according to Shabak monthly reports.

That’s nearly 1,000 projectiles in less than two years. Or, if you’re a New York Times journalist abandoning facts and precision for euphemism, it’s just an imperfect commitment to a cease-fire.

Ha’aretz editorial writers are apparently not up-to-date with developments of the last year and a half concerning the blockade of Gaza, even though those developments have been reported repeatedly in their own news pages. Today’s editorial, “End the Gaza Blockade,” avers:

Like any political power seeking to shore itself up, Hamas is interested in improving the living standards of the inhabitants of Gaza. To that end, it should bring about the lifting of Israel’s continuing blockade, which among other things includes arbitrary restrictions on the entry of consumer goods, and a situation of being almost totally cutoff from the outside world – even from the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (Emphasis added.)

In fact, as reported by Ha’aretz‘s own Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff:

The distress faced by Gaza residents remains acute, however, although the idiotic Israeli prohibition on the entry of goods – which included rigorous monitoring of certain types of products – was rescinded over a year ago. . . .

The gradual change began in January 2010. Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, coordinator of government activities in the territories, decided to reverse procedures: Instead of a short list of goods permissible for entry to Gaza, Israel drafted another list of products that have possible dual uses (that is, civilian goods that can also be used for military use, such as in the construction of bunkers ) and are not allowed into Gaza.

The international criticism leveled against Israel following the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010 led to a government decision whose effective meaning on the ground was tantamount to the lifting of the siege. The hubris that characterized the attempt to impose economic sanctions on the Strip eventually began to fade.

In a little over a year, Israel authorized the import to Gaza of construction materials for 163 projects, funded partly by international organizations. “Top Hamas officials go around all day long with scissors, cutting ribbons to dedicate clinics, water-purification stations, and large factories,” explains one senior IDF officer, Lieut. Col. “Kobi,” who works with the branch responsible for the coordination of government policy in the territories.

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According to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), a Coptic Christian student, Ayman Nabil Labib, (pictured above), was murdered for refusing to cover the tattoo of a cross on his wrist when instructed to do so by one of his instructors. According to statements, the instructor incited two Muslim students in the classroom to attack Labib, who was 17 at the time of his murder.

For details go here.

In the latest round of rocket fire and Israeli army strikes against rocket-launching cells, many media outlets have published chronologically challenged reports. Take, for instance, the following CNN report:

According to the second paragraph:

The violence began when two Islamic Jihad commanders were among seven militants killed Saturday by Israeli strikes targeting a training camp in Rafah, Gaza, a spokesman for the militant group and medical sources reported.

In fact, the violence began Wednesday, when Palestinians fired a rocket which landed near Ashdod, setting off sirens as far north as Rishon Letzion. Some schools in southern Israel were closed Thursday, keeping 3000 children home and close to their shelters. As the AFP reported last Thursday:

The Israeli air force carried out three raids early Thursday on the Gaza Strip after a rocket was launched from the Hamas-controlled territory at southern Israel, witnesses said.

The raids targeted areas east and west of Khan Yunes in the south of the Strip, and a base of Hamas’s armed wing the Al-Qassam Brigades was hit, they said.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed that aircraft had “attacked three terrorist sites in the Gaza Strip as well as an arms factory in the south of the territory.”

A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip late Wednesday at an area near Ashdod in southern Israel, without causing any casualties, a militaryspokeswoman said earlier.

The firing of the Grad rocket and the subsequent air raids were the first incidents since Israel and Hamas reached an agreement last week under which Israel agreed to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for its captured soldier Gilad Shalit.

This wouldn’t be the first time that CNN misreported what started the violence.

Wafa al-Biss

Earlier we documented how released prisoner Hamuda Saleh lied to the AP about his terror acts, saying he was imprisoned for belonging to Hamas, while his violence also included premeditated murder, planting a bomb, and shooting at people.

Now Maurice Ostroff notes at the Commentator that released prisoner Wafa al-Biss falsely told Reuters that she planned to blow herself up at the Rafah crossing, when in fact her real target was a crowded section of Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva.

As we noted yesterday, a Kent State University associate professor of history shouted “death to Israel” at an on-campus event co-sponsored by several recognized student groups and CAMERA.

This outburst of hate speech by Professor Julio Pino, which employs violent language, puts student supporters of Israel, and especially Israeli students enrolled at KSU, in the untenable position of feeling unsafe in the classroom.

Moreover, the professor violated several provisions of the university’s Employee Code of Conduct.

Although the director of university media relations responded dismissively to complaints about the incident, KSU President Lester A. Lefton later released a statement criticizing Pino’s actions. “I find his words deplorable, and his behavior deeply troubling,” he said. Pino’s call “for the destruction of the state from which our guest comes (as do some of our students, faculty and community members) is a grotesque failure” to model university values, Lefton added.

This is a good first step. However, Lefton did not mention the professor’s violations of university policies, including those requiring all employees to

• “maintain a professional demeanor”;
• “exhibit a high degree of maturity and self-respect and foster an appreciation for other cultures, one’s own cultural background, as well as the cultural matrix from which Kent state university exists”;
• “demonstrate respect for all campus and external community members”;
• “respect the differences in people, ideas, and opinions”;
• not “threaten, accost, demean” or use “abusive language”;

A KSU document on “Conduct and Discipline” likewise maintains that “Employees should be aware that the university does not tolerate certain acts and behaviors which are unproductive and detrimental to the university,” including immoral conduct, discourteous treatment of the public, and any other failure of good behavior.

Professor Pino also distributed literature calling for the boycott of the State of Israel, in apparent violation of a university policy restricting such solicitation to “a non-work area.”

KSU has in place disciplinary procedures meant to deter employees from violating university policies. These procedures should be implemented in response to Professor Pino’s grave violation of policies and student rights.

In a statement to Ha’aretz, he asserted: “What I spoke was for the sake of the children of Palestine, and no other reason. The only politics I have are, ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Messenger.’ Peace be upon you.” The statement seems to express that he stands by his comments unrepentantly, and believes he has a right to disregard university policy, and students’ sense of safety, in favor of his own political beliefs.

Today’s Ha’aretz brings another example of the newspaper’s double standard in identifying various organizations. The article, about a High Court ruling concerning the Elad organization’s operation of the City of David national park in Jerusalem, states:

The court made the ruling at yesterday’s hearing of a petition by the Jerusalem organization Ir Amim and others against the running of the park by Elad, which is identified with the right wing.

While Elad is identified with the right wing, Ir Amim is completely non-partisan? Hardly.

Tenured Professor Julio Pino disrupted a CAMERA-sponsored event with Ishmael Khaldi, a Bedouin-Muslim Israeli, former diplomat and current advisor to Israel’s Foreign Minister, at Kent State University last night.

According to a student-run news website:

Standing at the back of the auditorium, Pino asked Khaldi how he and his government could justify providing aid to countries like Turkey with blood money that came from the deaths of Palestinian children and babies. The crowd fell into an awkward silence as the two continued to exchange words from across the auditorium.

“It is not respectful to me here,” Khaldi said.

Pino responded by saying “your government killed people” and claimed Khaldi was not being respectful to him.

“I do respect you, but you are wrong,” Khaldi said. “It’s a lie.”

The exchange ended as Pino stormed out of the auditorium shouting “Death to Israel!”

In 2002, Pino published a eulogy in the campus paper praising Palestinian terrorist Ayat al-Akras, who murdered two Israelis, Rachel Levy and Chaim Smadar.

Pino has been accused of having ties to terrorists and had his home raided in 2009 by the U.S. Secret Service.

In the Jerusalem Post today, Egyptian journalist Shahira Amin once again denies that her interview with a stressed, malnourished, and exhausted Gilad Shalit minutes after Hamas handed him to Egyptian officials was coerced. Unbelievably, she goes even further, arguing that her (forced) interview was an attempt to humanize Shalit and all Israelis before the anti-Israel Arab public, stating:

My motive was: I felt that at this time of high anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt and the Arab world (especially after the killing of the Egyptian border guards) it was important to try and diffuse tensions by showing Arab viewers that people on both sides were paying the price for this conflict. I felt it would earn Schalit the compassion he deserves.

Aah, so it’s Gilad’s welfare that she had in mind all along. I guess she didn’t get that memo from the British Red Cross about the media’s responsibility towards prisoners under International Humanitarian Law.
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AP’s Tara Todras-Whitehill caught up with some of the released West Bank terrorists enjoying their free stay at a luxury Gaza hotel late last week. Her article was accompanied by a number of photographs of the smiling releasees. Among them, was this:

In this photo taken Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, freed Palestinian prisoner Hamuda Saleh, age 38, who was originally from the West Bank city of Nablus, prays near the pool at a hotel in Gaza City. Palestinian prisoners exiled to the Gaza Strip in a dramatic swap for a captive Israeli soldier last week are contemplating the rest of their lives after years behind bars. Some say they want to put their violent pasts behind them and move on with their lives, now that the celebrations marking their release have faded. In 1989 Saleh claims he was sentenced to multiple life sentences for being part of the ‘Ezz Al-Din Al Qassam’ militia, the military wing of Hamas.

Based on Ms. Todras-Whitehill’s caption, Saleh would have been just 16 when he was supposedly sentenced to multiple life terms for his membership in Ezz Al-Din Al Qassam (but no specific terror act), a scenario which did not seem plausible. Indeed, a check of the Prison Service’s list of prisoners released in the Shalit deal shows that Hamuda Said Abdul Rahim Saleh has been in prison since July 7, 2000, not since 1989. And his sentence was 22 years, not multiple life terms. (Also he was born in 1976, making him younger than 38.) We are still looking into his crime, but given that the rest of the information that he supplied to the AP was false, a dose of skepticism is in order regarding his claim that “being part of the ‘Ezz Al-Din Al Qassam milita” was the sole reason for his imprisonment.
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