‘Peaceful Protest’ Instructed: ‘Bring Dagger or Handgun’ to Murder Israelis

I don't want  to flog a dead horse but before i turn to other subjects for this blog, one last short review I read recently is worth bringing to attention.

Palestinian rioters on the Gaza border received detailed instructions on how to commit acts of terrorism under the cover of the “March of the Return.”

From  United with Israel Staff and PMW  https://tinyurl.com/ycuz63bj  

Two Palestinian Facebook pages and a forum directing rioters in Gaza gave explicit instructions to murder and kidnap Israelis on Monday, May 14, the day the US embassy opened in Jerusalem, as well as suggestions on how to accomplish this goal.

It is not clear if Hamas itself was the group sending these messages. What is critical is that Gazans were encouraged to bring weapons to the demonstrations and use these weapons to either murder or capture Israelis.

The detailed instructions recommended bringing weapons to the supposedly peaceful demonstrations on the Gaza border fence, murdering “soldiers and settlers,” and kidnapping Israeli citizens for use as bargaining chips to impose conditions on Israel

Addressing the “rebelling young people,” the sites ask rioters to bring weapons and leave them concealed, “except if you identify one of the [Israeli] soldiers or settlers. Do not kill Israeli civilians, instead hand them over to the resistance [Hamas] immediately, because this is the point that Israel fears, as it knows that the capturer can set any condition he wants.”

The instructions also described how masses of Palestinians would “collectively” breach the security fence aided by bulldozers, “while being aided by loudspeakers and calls of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest in Arabic) by the masses.”

Gazans were also instructed not to tend to “the wounded or the Martyrs” and not to offer aid, but to concentrate on “the battlefield.”

“The portrayal of the events in Gaza by some news agencies as peacefuldemonstrations is clearly false,” concluded Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which reported on the instructions.

I was at the Gaza border, we did all we could to avoid killing

Kinley Tur-Paz May 17, 2018, 

I’m writing this for my good friends, my moral humane friends, and for all those who are concerned and angry over the Palestinians killed and injured on the border with Gaza.

In the biblical Exodus from Egypt, when the Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea just before overtaking the Israelites, our sages say that God prevented the angels from singing and rejoicing, scolding them with the words “my creations are drowning in the sea and you are singing?!”

I write these words with great caution, and from a sense of mission. I can understand and identify with all of those good and moral Zionists who fear that the many Palestinian victims may be our fault, the result of mistakes made by our side. I’m writing because I am one of the few who was there, in uniform, in the reserves, but I was there. Yes, right there on the fence where the demonstrations are happening. It was last Friday, but I saw it with my own eyes; I was on our side of the fence but I could see and hear and understand everything. I want to testify from my firsthand knowledge, not a theoretical point of view. Because I was there.

I want to testify that what I saw and heard was a tremendous, supreme effort from our side to prevent, in every possible way, Palestinian deaths and injuries.

Of course, the primary mission was to prevent hundreds of thousands of Gazans from infiltrating into our territory. That kind of invasion would be perilous, mortally dangerous, to the nearby communities; would permit terrorists disguised as civilians to enter our kibbutz and moshav communities, and would leave us with no choice but to target every single infiltrator. That’s why our soldiers were directed to prevent infiltration, in a variety of ways, using live ammunition only as a last resort.

The IDF employs many creative means of reducing friction with Gazans and uses numerous methods, most of which are not made public, to prevent them from reaching the fence. In addition, over the past few weeks there have been serious efforts to save the lives of children and civilians who have been pushed to the front lines by the Hamas, who are trying to hide behind them in order to infiltrate and attack Israel.

When there is no alternative, and live ammunition must be used to stop those who storm the fence, the soldiers make heroic and sometimes dangerous efforts not to kill and to only injure those on the other side. The IDF stations senior commanders at every confrontation point to ensure that every shot is approved and backed up by a responsible figure with proper authority. Every staging area has an especially large number of troops in order to make sure that soldiers are not put into life-threatening situations where they will have no choice but to fire indiscriminately.

A situation where thousands of people rush you is frightening, even terrifying. It is extremely difficult to show restraint, and it requires calm, mature professionalism. Sixty-two dead is an enormous number. But I can testify from my first-hand experience, that every bullet and every hit is carefully reported, documented and investigated, in Excel spreadsheets. Literally. I was there and I saw it with my own eyes.

This isn’t the time or place to discuss the situation in general and the desperate plight of the residents of Gaza. I’m not interested in starting a political discussion here, although I do have a clear position. What I’m trying to do is present, for everyone who really wants to listen, the extent of the IDF’s enormous effort to protect Israel’s borders while minimizing injuries and loss of life on the other side.

And despite all this – the situation on the border with Gaza is deteriorating. I hope that we won’t be called up again soon for reserve duty to protect our country. But if we are, we will go with the knowledge that we are serving a morally just cause. We do not rejoice when we must go to war, but we also don’t go like sheep to the slaughter. 

Not anymore.

Gaza Riots: Really About the Embassy?

 Bassam Tawil  •  May 18, 2018 

• Throughout history, the excuses to attack Israel keep changing.
• For 8 years under the Obama administration, the Palestinians had portrayed themselves, and been treated as, the deserving underdog -- the "good guys." Now, a foreign government is actually holding the Palestinians accountable and calling them out for activities they had taken for granted, such as incitement to riot and murder, or funding terrorists and their families. The Palestinians do not like it one bit.
• The Palestinians hate the Trump administration not because of the decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, but because it speaks truth to them and exposes their perfidy and malice. They hate the Trump administration because they see it as an obstacle on their way to eliminating Israel.
• What happened at the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip was an act of aggression by Hamas on Israeli sovereignty. It was an act of war. Even the terrorists did not say that they were protesting the embassy relocation. The terrorists and the rest of the Palestinian demonstrators were chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." They were chanting that their goal is to replace Israel with an Islamic state.

The idea that Hamas is concerned about the US embassy move is a sick joke. All one needs to do is to listen carefully to what Hamas is saying, namely that its struggle is to "liberate all of Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River." Hamas is saying that the protests it has been orchestrating are aimed at enabling millions of Palestinians to flood Israel and turn it into an Islamic state.

Smoke & Mirrors: Six Weeks Of Violence On The Gaza Border

Hamas are explicitly planning to achieve maximum violence at the Gaza border today and tomorrow, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the declaration of the State of Israel, the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem and the start of Ramadan — a perfect storm.

-        Hamas’s use of actual smoke and mirrors to conceal its aggressive maneuvering on the Gaza border is the perfect metaphor for a strategy that has no viable military purpose but seeks to deceive the international community into criminalising a democratic state defending its citizens.

-        In reality these demonstrations are far from peaceful but are carefully planned and orchestrated tactical operations by a terrorist organisation intending to break through the border of a sovereign state and commit mass murder in the communities beyond, using their own civilians as cover.

-        A new report by the High Level Military Group’s Colonel Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and international terrorism lead at the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee, is the most in-depth assessment of the evolution of Hamas' strategic concept in its war on Israel and the current violence.  As part of the High Level Group’s ongoing project to assess the impact of Western armies facing enemies deploying terrorist tactics, including deliberate war crimes such as hiding military personnel and infrastructure among a civilian population, Colonel Kemp has spent time on the Gaza border during the current spate of violence, observing Palestinian activity and IDF response.  ]

    The report is based on his observations as well as a review of material produced by both sides and by the international community, and discussions with Israeli government ministers and IDF commanders and lawyers. Colonel Kemp’s views are though entirely his own, drawn from extensive personal experience of commanding military forces dealing with similar situations in other combat areas, including use of terrorist tactics in riot situations and military response using a range of measures including lethal force.

IDF Employs New Tactics To Combat Riots

Jerusalem Post 12th  May

The IDF is using new, small remote-controlled aircraft with knives on their wings to counter incendiary kites launched from the Gaza Strip.

Developed by the army and the Defense Ministry’s Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure (MAFAT), the IDF Southern Command use the drones to cut the wires holding the kites together, in order to prevent them from reaching Israeli fields and setting them ablaze.

The IDF decided to make operational use of the aircraft on Friday, and it has since downed more than 40 kites, according to Walla.

A senior officer in the Southern Command told The Jerusalem Post last week that small drones had already brought one down, by cutting its lines.

“Hamas can build tunnels, they have rockets, and now they are using kites? For all of those threats we have something to counter them,” he said.

Gazans have been protesting along the border with Israel for the past six weeks, especially on Fridays, as part of what organizers call the “Great March of Return,” with participants throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at troops, and dispatching fire kites toward Israeli fields.

On Friday, some of the 15,000 demonstrators burned tires, in the hope the smoke would provide cover for saboteurs to destroy and cross the security fence, and threw grenades, pipe bombs and stones at IDF troops, in the seventh consecutive weekly protest. One Palestinian, identified by the Gaza Health Ministry as 40-year-old Jaber Salem Abu Mustafa, was killed when he was shot in the chest in eastern Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Another 973 Palestinians were wounded, with seven reported to be in critical condition.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh took part in the protests, arriving at the northern part of Gaza border, encouraging the rioters.

Hamas, he said, “will not give up the weapon of the resistance, we’ll develop it. We won’t give up Palestine, from the river to the sea, and we will not recognize Israel.”

Israel closing Gaza cargo crossing after protests

JERUSALEM -- The Israeli military says it is shutting down its main cargo crossing into Gaza because of damage caused to it by Palestinian protesters.

The military says Saturday that the Kerem Shalom crossing will be closed until "extensive damage" is repaired. The military says on Friday that a group of Palestinians, as part of heir weekly protests, burned a fuel complex and conveyor belt on their side of the crossing, causing more than $9 million in damages and disrupting the import of diesel fuel and building materials. It says the attack rendered the main fuel and gas lines unusable.

Palestinians in Gaza have been staging weekly protests at the border fence against a decade-old blockade of the territory

No Peaceful Protest, Just a Violent Riot - Part 2

« March of Return » - Background and Current Situation

                   

Background - Timing

·       The March of Return plan will be a series of ongoing events which will take place over the course of six weeks, between March 30 (Land Day) and May 15 (Nakba Day). A tent camp (or camps) will be set up near the security fence on the Israeli border, where thousands of Palestinian families will stay.

·       The campaign will peak with a march of thousands of Palestinians to the Israeli border, probably on Nakba Day (no time table is not final).

Nature of the events

·       Spokesmen for the campaign continue stressing that their intention is to hold a non-political, “peaceful protest,” but they do not rule out the possibility that the marchers who reach the border fence will try to enter Israeli territory, clashing with the IDF..

·       Despite their public statements that there is no intention to use violence, events are liable to get out of control and turn into riots and clashes with the IDF, and Hamas and the other terrorist organizations may be drawn into participating in them..

FACTS of the Situation

·       The border fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip separates a sovereign state and a terrorist organization.

·       It separates a state that protects its citizens from murderers who send their countrymen into danger. The fence separates an army that uses force in self-defense and in a focused and proportionate manner, and Hamas, an organization that sanctifies murder and death, that for years – yesterday included - has been intent on harming millions of Israelis.

·       Anyone who mistakenly views in this murderous spectacle even an iota of freedom of expression is blind to the threats the State of Israel faces.

·          This is not a demonstration; it is a means for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to carry out terror attacks. 
 

·          For several weeks, the IDF has been receiving information on Hamas’ intentions to take advantage of the event to lay IEDs and to initiate terror attacks. These events actually occurred, including the firing of light arms – two events, laying of IEDs – 4 mines were placed alongside the fence with Gaza, and hundreds of events of stone throwing and lobbing of Molotov cocktails.

·         Hamas is attempting to redirect the frustration of the citizens of Gaza with its failures towards Israel.

 

·         The area surrounding the fence is a combat zone against terrorist organizations. Hamas is aware of this, and therefore sends women and children into the area, hoping to provoke the IDF into uncontrolled shooting resulting in multiple cases of innocent casualties. Most of the participants in the demonstration (a total of 30,000 participants) were women and children, while all the casualties are of combat age, aged between 18 and 30, and for the most part are known members of terrorist organizations.

 

•    Hamas attempted to repeat a previous attempt of placing an IED in a flag, similar to an attempt several days ago, which wounded four soldier. See video “Gaza Terror Cell Stopped by IDF During March of Return”

 

·         IDF fire was controlled and in accordance with standard procedures. It is known where every bullet hit. Claims of hundreds of Palestinian casualties refer for the most part to inhalation of smoke or as the result of riot control procedures. Hamas intends to turn the fence area into an area of constant confrontation from now until Nakba Day on 15 May. The IDF won’t permit this, and if the events continue will be forced to attack Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in the Strip.

 

·         The State of Israel has no interest in harming innocents, neither women nor children. We are acting only to prevent terror and violation of Israeli sovereignty. It should be remembered that this is an attempt to violate an undisputed sovereign border. No country would permit this. 

 •  Claims that this is a demonstration are baseless. In what demonstration do activists draw weapons and shoot at the other side? In yesterday’s events this occurred twice. Four IEDs were placed, hundreds or Molotov cocktails were thrown, including attempts to ignite Israeli mechanical equipment that was parked on our side of the fence. There were also three failed attempts at high trajectory fire during the night.