It's Alive

Hat Tip to Israpundit

Just like the child with the fake illness being prevented from getting treatment by Israel, or the thousands of dead babies who actually were killed 2 years ago in Syria, we now have the "honored dead" fighters of Hamas.

Hamas puts the FUN in Funeral!



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Hamas displays victims of Israeli "aggression" in white burial shrouds. If you look closely, you can see some of the bodies make themselves more comfortable while they think the camera is not on them.

The al-Dura Story A Hoax

For over 12 years Israelis have decried the lie of the death of Muhammad al-Dura.  Al-Dura, aged 12, was reportedly shot by Israel in a firefight.  This supposed murder of a child was filmed by a French reporter and broadcasted all over the world.  But after 10 years and a massive legal battle waged by Channel 2 vs. Philippe Karsenty proved that not only was the film doctored, but the child wasn't killed or injured.

The Israeli government spent years and millions of Shekels to prove what the French courts already have proven.

Dr. Yehuda David

Dr. Yehuda David, who was sued for libel by the father of Muhammad al-Dura – and eventually won his case – expressed great satisfaction at the issuing of a report by a special report by a government panel that revisited the infamous incident, in which IDF soldiers were accused of killing the 12 year old Arab boy at the start of the second intifada. The committee determined that not only were the allegations – and a report by French television purporting to show IDF soldiers shooting and killing the boy – a lie, but that the al-Dura is not even dead.

According to David, the whole incident stinks of a coverup – and the evidence that shows that not only was al-Dura not killed, but that the entire story was a hoax, perpetrated with the assistance of a French television station, is there for all to see.

Jamal al-Dura and his 12-year-old son, Muhammad, were filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a local Arab cameraman freelancing for France 2, as they sought cover behind a concrete cylinder after being caught in crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian security forces.

The footage, which lasts just over a minute, shows the pair holding onto each other, the boy crying and the father waving, then a burst of gunfire and dust, after which the boy is seen slumped across his father's legs.

Fifty-nine seconds of the footage were initially broadcast on France 2 with a voiceover from Charles Enderlin, France 2's bureau chief in Israel, who did not witness the incident himself but his only information was received by phone from the cameraman.

Enderlin reported that the al-Duras had been the "target of fire from the Israeli positions," and that the boy had died. After an emotional public funeral, Muhammad was hailed throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds as a martyr.

An IDF investigation in October 2000 concluded Israeli soldiers "probably did not shoot the al-Duras." Three senior French journalists who saw the raw footage in 2004 said it was not clear from the footage alone that the boy had died. They noted France 2 had cut the final few seconds of video in which he appeared to lift his hand from his face.

David, a physician at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv, entered the al-Dura fray on December 13, 2007 when he told Israel's Channel 10 that he had treated Jamal in 1994 for knife and axe wounds to his arms and legs sustained during an Arab gang attack. David said the scars Jamal claimed as bullet wounds from the 2000 incident were actually scars from a tendon repair operation that David performed in 1994, leading Jamal to sue him for libel. He was initially convicted of a charge, but that decision was overturned by the French Supreme Court in February 2012. The decision was widely seen as a national victory for Israel.

The Israeli committee, in its final word on the subject, said Sunday that “as opposed to the media reports that stated that the child was killed, an examination of the raw video shot by the France 2 staff shows the child alive,” the committee said. That portion of the video was never broadcast. “In addition, there is a great deal of evidence to indicate that al-Dura and his father were never hit by any bullets. The investigation shows that it is very unlikely that the bullet holes seen in the pair came from shots fired by IDF soldiers.”

The new report also questions whether or not the younger al-Dura was even killed. The fact that he was still alive at the end of the French television video, after the gunfire had stopped, could mean that the boy is alive even now. “Since this issue was first raised there have been many contradictions and cold trails, based on the story the French television company told. There are many unanswered questions about many aspects of this incident,” the committee said.

According to David, the answer to this question is clear, and is supported by evidence. “We know that a child whose name is Mohammed al-Dura was taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza at 9 AM,” David told Arutz Sheva, relying on publicly released information. “We know that the event in which it was claimed that the child was killed actually only began at 3 in the afternoon. So how is it possible that there was a dead child at 9 AM, and they want us to believe that it is the same child who was shot by Israeli soldiers at 3:00?”

So who was the child in the famous video? Most likely a brother of Mohammed, David said. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest this already, David said: According to the results of an investigation by a German group, for example, the shape of the skull of the buried child was different than the shape of the skull of the child seen in the video. The real identity of the child could be confirmed by disinterring him. David is willing to bet that the child will turn out to be the “real” Mohammed al-Dura, the one who died in Shifa Hospital in the morning, as opposed to the “fake” one – the one seen in the video, who is alive and well.

David said that it was regrettable that it had taken the state so long to take a definitive stance on the hoax. “Now we know that Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government acknowledge the truth – that Jamal al-Dura is a liar, and that all the information supplied by France 2 during the event on September 30, 2000, is a hoax. This has caused a tremendous sacrifice of Israeli lives, because it was the beginning of the second intifada, which led to the loss of 2,500 Israeli lives,” he said, including the victims of the 2012 attack by a Muslim fanatic on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, who specifically said he was “avenging” the death of al-Dura.



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Source

Jamal al-Dura is demanding an international investigation into his son's death.  In other words, a group of anti-Semites to determine that the lie is true.

I say bring it on.  Either the grave is empty or the body in it doesn't have the DNA of Jamal or any of his family.  Want to make a guess on how long he will cave in once an international forensic team is assembled?

Syrian Pallywood

Stolen from Elder of Ziyon

Syrians describing the recent Israeli attack on Syrian weapons depots last night.





First we are told that the target was completely civilian, and held cows and chickens. We see acres of utter devastation. Not a dead cow or chicken in sight.  If it was a facility for cattle and chicken shouldn't there be blood and body parts every where?

But - surprise! - we see a rooster somehow managed to escape unscathed and is hopping around the rubble!

Has Assad Used His WMDs?

While I cannot verify the validity of this video, and don't know if the rebels are using Pallywood techniques, or if the rebels used WMDs themselves for their own purposes, but if this video and report is correct, Assad has gone over the edge and used his chemical warfare.


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Fears of the worst possible scenario in Syria have been confirmed in a video released by rebels that shows victims of chemical warfare.

An almost sure sign that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has unleashed his chemical weapons for use against rebels is his regime’s claim on Saturday that rebels are preparing to use chemicals in their uprising. Assad systematically has accused opposition forces, which he labels as “foreign terrorists,” of carrying out attacks and murders for which his own loyalists are responsible.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Saturday there was evidence the Damascus government could actually employ chemical weapons stocks in the conflict which a rights group says has killed at least 42,000 people in nearly 21 months.

The Obama administration is bound to be tested this week on its treat to intervene militarily if signs continue to show that chemical weapons are already being used in Syria.

If President Barack Obama thought that his warning would be enough to stop Assad, he apparently is mistaken. Assad knows that if he does not defeat the opposition, his fate is death, and probably in a way no more humane than his brutal suppression of the uprising if not in a way similar to that of his old friend, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.

Military intervention would have far-reaching repercussions especially, in Iran, a last holdout in Assad’s collapsing support.

Tehran’s fears of the fall of Assad were reflected Saturday in an article in Fars News Agency, an Iranian regime mouthpiece. It misquoted the London Guardian, which reported Hague’s statements on Assad’s preparations to use chemical weapons, and said that the newspaper reported, “The U.S. is spreading rumors about the use of chemical weapons in Syria to find an excuse for launching military strike on Damascus.”

Source

I pray that this is a hoax to put world pressure on Assad, but fear that it the start of a new phase of the Syrian Civil War.  A phase that will bring mass deaths to the civilian population.

Halabja, Iraq  March 1988

May G-d be with the innocent civilians of Syria.

Honest Reporting Looks at the Light Side of Life

Holy Shades of Monty Python!  There is a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where the main characters where listing all the innovations and advancements the Romans brought to Judea.  And even though there were many good things, the characters kept up their hatred for the Romans.

Remind you of any one?

Actually yes.  The Lame Stream Media.  Especially when discussing Israel and the Arabs.  And Honest Reporting does it wonderfully:

Yes Media Bias at its best!

One Picture Lies Better Than 1,000 Words!

Pallywood, Helen Thomas and the smuggling of Arabs to Israeli beaches are covered this week by Latma TV's The Tribe

Hard-hitting journalism covering Israel and the Middle East.

Have a great weekend!!

Myth of the Gaza Siege

For all practical purposes to the leftist Moonbats of the world, the Arabs, the UN, and the members of the Media who worshiped the ground Helen Thomas walked, and calls her a fellow traveler, there has been a great siege in Gaza. A siege so great that there is no food, medicine, clothing, etc...  A siege that needs to be broken with flotillas carrying everything but food, medicine or clothing.

The ”myth of the siege of Gaza” has been exploded in a research report that quotes Arab sources that say “Gaza markets are saturated with goods.” The Washington Post reported last week that Gaza “pharmacies look as well-supplied as a typical Rite Aid.”

Reserve IDF officer Lt. Col. Jonathan HaLevi, a researcher for the Institute for Contemporary Affairs, wrote that Israel’s continuing supervised flow of humanitarian aide to Gaza also has helped the Gaza economy rebound.

‘Gaza is not cut off from the outside world,” he wrote, and added that the large supply of goods and merchandise, including fuel oil, that enters Gaza through smuggling tunnels and pipelines from Egypt has actually helped bring down the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel to half the price in Israel.

Claims by United Nations officials, reported without investigation by most mainstream media, have falsely promoted the image of a humanitarian crisis and a scarcity of foods and merchandise in Gaza. HaLevi’s reported stated, “Recently, Rep. Ron Paul told Don Imus on the Fox Business Channel that Israel was "preventing food and medicine from going into Gaza. He said there are 'people that are starving' and closed with a vile suggestion that the situation of the Gazans was 'almost like in concentration camps.'"

However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to a Congressional committee last April, “The [Gaza] crossings are no longer completely closed…. A lot of what has been said was not permitted to cross is just not accurate.”

Janine Zacharia of the Washington Post reported last week, "If you walk down Gaza City's main thoroughfare -Salah al-Din Street - grocery stores are stocked wall-too-wall with everything from fresh Israeli yogurts and hummus to Cocoa Puffs smuggled in from Egypt.” Smuggled goods are cheaper than the regular price.

The Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency stated last February, "Gaza markets are saturated with goods." Beaches are filled with vacationers as well (photo below).

The de facto Hamas government in Gaza also has received $5 billion in cold cash since it took over control of the area from the rival Fatah faction in a bloody militia war three years ago this month. Hamas also receives millions of dollars in direct aid from Arab countries as well from the United Nations and European Union, which until last November paid for the diesel fuel to run the Gaza power plant.

The French newspaper LeMonde last October quoted Bassem Khoury, minister of national economy for the Palestinian Authority, that Hamas has profited so much from the smuggling tunnel system and outside aid that it “doesn't know what to do with its money. Taxpayers in Europe should know that as a result of this system their money ends up in Hamas' pocket."

HaLevi pointed out that the tunnel system not only supplies Hamas with more weapons it but also “serves such criminal purposes as drug running and trafficking in young women.” The Kuwaiti newspaper Awan last December reported on the phenomenon of "importing" minor girls from Egypt and selling them into prostitution in Gaza, supposedly for purposes of marriage or domestic work.

He said Hamas exploits the smuggling tunnels for “sending fighters for training in Iran and Syria, and for the import of advanced weapons systems, [including] antiaircraft and anti-tank missiles), explosives, and ammunition."

HaLevi maintained, “The position of the human rights organizations, which paint an exaggerated picture of the effects of the siege, is marred by a double standard. On the one hand, they argue vehemently that Israel is still an occupying power and must therefore see to the "security and welfare of the residents of Gaza"; yet on the other hand, the welfare and security of Gaza's residents have been severely harmed by the Hamas regime, with its gradual imposition of Islamic law while violently suppressing the opposition.

“According to their logic, Israel is obligated to help an enemy entity that is attacking it. If this were true, the United States would have a duty to extend assistance to villages in Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban fighters who are attacking coalition forces.”

The flow of weapons into Gaza occasionally is stopped by Egyptian authorities who last May seized a large cache of weapons and explosives that were slated to be smuggled into Gaza from the Sinai. The weapons stockpile included 61 anti-aircraft missiles, 40 anti-tank mines, 15 standard mines, and 5 machine guns with ammunition. Last April 1, an Egyptian newspaper reported that security forces had seized 100 anti-aircraft missiles, 45 rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and 40 explosive devices.

Oh the suffering, the Humanity, those horrible Jews Israelis.  Just look at these poor starving children of
Gaza:

Oops, sorry wrong children. Starving Jewish or African children don't matter in this world. Not now, not ever. Only starving Palestinian Arab children matter. Children like these:

Notice the sunken cheeks, the distended tummies, the lifeless look in their eyes.  See how their hair is brittle, falling out in patches.  See how thin their arms are.

What?  You don't see any of those?  Are you blind? These are Palestinian children, therefore they are automatically the only starving, abused, malnourished, or deprived children on the planet.  To say otherwise makes you an Islamophobic.

Or not.  What it makes you is one who can recognize a lie when they see pictures detailing the truth.

These pictures do not lie.  There is no "Siege" in Gaza.  Only lies from Hamas.  After all, it is acceptable to lie to non-Muslims in Islam. Bukhari (52:269) - "The Prophet said, 'War is deceit.'"

Hooray For Pallywood!

Pallywood you ask? What the heck is Pallywood? Where the heck is Pallywood?

Pallywood, a portmanteau (word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings) of "Palestinian" and "Hollywood", is a buzz word that is used by pro-Israel media-watchdog advocates to describe "media manipulation, distortion and outright fraud by the Palestinians and other Arabs. The term has been publicized in part by Boston University professor Richard Landes, as a result of an online documentary video he produced called Pallywood: According to Palestinian Sources, highlighting specific instances of alleged media manipulation. In other words, it means a propaganda lie done by the Palestinians, eaten up by the Main Stream Media as truth and disseminated as the truth by the Main Stream Media.



In Pallywood Landes shows Arab-Israeli conflict-related footage that was taken mostly by freelance Palestinian video journalists. He argues that systematic media manipulation (which he dubs "Pallywood") dates back to at least the 1982 Lebanon War, and argues that broadcasters are too uncritical of the veracity of Palestinian freelance footage. He focuses in particular on the case of Muhammad al-Durrah, a 12-year-old Palestinian who was widely reported to have been killed by Israeli gunfire in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000 at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The shooting was filmed by a Palestinian freelance cameraman and aired on the France 2 television channel with narration by the veteran French-Israeli journalist Charles Enderlin, who was not present at the incident. It made worldwide headlines and the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces was heavily criticized internationally, severely damaging Israel's public standing on the world stage. Landes questions the authenticity of the footage and disputes whether al-Durrah was killed at all, arguing that the entire incident was staged by the Palestinians. He asserts that the incident shows that "Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes."

Pallywood



View at YouTube

If this was the only source of truth on the internet, then we would have a lot of work to do alone. But we have a couple marvelous resources at our disposal. One of them is Honest Reporting. Honest Reporting is a non-profit organization dedicated to bring out the truth in what is actually and truthfully happening in the Middle East, specifically Israel.

Honest Reporting



View at YouTube

Another resource is Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

From their website:

Founded in 1982, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA fosters rigorous reporting, while educating news consumers about Middle East issues and the role of the media. Because public opinion ultimately shapes public policy, distorted news coverage that misleads the public can be detrimental to sound policymaking. A non-partisan organization, CAMERA takes no position with regard to American or Israeli political issues or with regard to ultimate solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The scope of the problem
Inaccurate and distorted accounts of events in Israel and the Middle East are to be found everywhere from college radio stations to network television, from community newspapers to national magazines, and, of course, on the Internet. In recent years misinformation about the Middle East has also surfaced in fashion magazines, architectural publications, encyclopedias, professional reference works, geography textbooks, travel guides, and even dictionaries. Frequently inaccurate and skewed characterizations of Israel and of events in the Middle East may fuel anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice.

How CAMERA works

CAMERA systematically monitors, documents, reviews and archives Middle East coverage. Staffers directly contact reporters, editors, producers and publishers concerning distorted or inaccurate coverage, offering factual information to refute errors. CAMERA members are encouraged to write letters for publication in the print media and to communicate with correspondents, anchors and network officials in the electronic media. CAMERA's combination of rigorous monitoring, research, fact-checking, careful analysis, and grassroots efforts have had a documented impact.

CAMERA has been trying to keep the media outlits honest and truthful in their coverage of events in the Middle East. So far they have had limited success.

The last resource that I will mention is the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Many reports here on Monkey in the Middle come directly from them. You know its from them when you see this banner:

If you click on the banner you will get a link back to the report from them.

From their Website:

About Us

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explores the Middle East through the region's media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Persian,Turkish, Urdu-Pashtu media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.

Founded in February 1998 to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East, MEMRI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501 (c)3 organization. MEMRI's headquarters is located in Washington, DC with branch offices in London, Tokyo, Rome, Baghdad, Shanghai, and Jerusalem. MEMRI research is translated to English, German, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

Three great resources for the truth against the lies of Pallywood and Arab media. With the help of Honest Reporting, CAMERA, and MEMRI, we all should be able to counter the lies that are being disseminated by Pallywood.

Now here is where you come in. Get informed about the truth. Tell others about the truth. When you see false information on the news, contact them with an e-mail with the truth. If enough of us do that, the lies of Pallywood will be seen as what they are lies and lying propaganda.

To contact the Media here are some useful links:

Television

CNN on their website
Fox News can be contacted by email: yourcomments@foxnews.com,
CBS News has a form at the bottom of their website that you can use.
NBC News has a comment page for NBC and MSNBC news.
ABC News has a comment page for its news service.

Print

The New York Times has a comment page.
The Washington Post has a comment page for both its on-line paper and regular paper with phone numbers for both.
The LA Times can be contacted by email: readers.rep@latimes.com
Chicago Sun Times has a contact page with its address and phone number.

You are now armed with the facts, lets all get out there to make the media tell the truth and not push the lies.