Writing The Wrongs: Hamas disinformation: Israel's international airport closed, planes redirected to secret base

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Hamas disinformation: Israel's international airport closed, planes redirected to secret base

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=7998

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

On the fifth day of Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense that targets terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and which has successfully destroyed many Hamas rocket launching points, Hamas issued false information about its own successes fighting Israel.

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Nov. 18, 2012]

Today, a news ticker on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV incorrectly claimed:

"Media of the enemy: International airport Ben Gurion closed, planes being redirected to a secret base in the north
[of Israel]."

Similarly, the Hamas website Al-Risala falsely claimed yesterday that Hamas had succeeded in shooting down an Israeli F-16 plane:

"Hamas' military wing Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades confirmed that an 'Israeli' F-16 fighter plane was shot down... A reconnaissance aircraft was shot down as well."

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Nov. 15, 2012]

Likewise, on Thursday, when Israel launched the operation, Hamas immediately set out to create an illusion of its own success by reporting on TV and on a Hamas website that one of its missiles had hit Tel Aviv, falsely claiming that it had cut off electricity in the city:

"Al-Qassam Brigades shelled Tel Aviv for the first time with a locally made rocket. The electricity network in the southern part of the city was hit."

The following are the articles from the

Al-Risala website:

"Hamas' military wing Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades confirmed that an 'Israeli' F-16 fighter plane was shot down in the Al-Wusta Governorate. A reconnaissance aircraft was shot down as well. Abu Ubeida [the Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades' spokesperson] said that the resistance and the Al-Qassam Brigades are doing well, and the occupation's claim that the power of the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed is merely a lie. He described the Iron Dome (Israeli system that can intercept and destroy missiles in the air), which was built by the occupation and which costs it millions in order to intercept Palestinian rockets, as the 'Paper Dome.'"

[Al-Risala website (Hamas), Nov. 17, 2012]

"Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, officially announced that occupied Tal Al-Rabia ("Tal Al-Rabia" is the Palestinians' Arabic translation of Tel Aviv, to wrongly imply the existence of an Arab village of that name prior to Tel Aviv - Ed. ) was shelled with an improved Fajr-5 rocket on Thursday morning. Yesterday, Al-Qassam [Brigades] stated that Tal Al-Rabia was shelled with a locally made rocket. They emphasized in an announcement that what comes next will be worse. Hebrew (i.e., Israeli) media sources said that the rocket cut off electricity in 'Tel Aviv,' which is 70 kilometers from Gaza."

[Al-Risala website (Hamas), Nov. 15, 2012]

News ticker on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, broadcast on Nov. 18, 2012:

"Media of the enemy: International airport Ben Gurion closed, planes being redirected to a secret base in the north [of Israel]."

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Nov. 18, 2012]

News ticker on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, broadcast on Nov. 15, 2012:

"Al-Qassam Brigades shelled Tel Aviv for the first time with a locally made rocket. The electricity network in the southern part of the city was hit."

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Nov. 15, 2012]

See Palestinian Media Watch's earlier reports on Operation Pillar of Defense:

#1 on Ahmed Al-Ja'abari, head of Hamas' military wing

#2 on PA leaders' responses to killing of Al-Ja'abari

No comments:

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Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

Ted Belman

The US and EU are putting up $2.3 Billion to redevelop Gaza.

Before advancing any money, why don’t they insist

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250.
Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Iranian reformist daily:Hamas hiding forces in nurseries and hospitals

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

The following is the story in today's Al-Ayyam:

Headline: "Iran closes a reformist newspaper, for publishing a report criticizing Hamas"

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009]
Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]
3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]
6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]
543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]
28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]
1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]
Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,
Arthur James Balfour
[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

Syria Occupies Lebanon. Again. - Bret Stephens (Wall Street Journal)

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.