As the Crow lies

On Radio 4’s Any Questions last night, the question of whether David Cameron should press for no-fly zones in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen to protect their citizens came up. Bob Crow (pictured), the General Secretary of the Rail and Maritime Union, thought Gaza should be a no-fly zone for Israel. Crow was, of course, likening Israel to Libya and when his egregious comparison was challenged on Any Answers today, Jonathan Dimbleby defended Crow by claiming that over a thousand civilians were killed by Israel during Operation Cast Lead.

The caller was a little flustered by Dimbleby’s figures, obviously unaware (like Dimbleby, presumably) that on 1 November 2010, the interior minister of Hamas, Fathi Hamad, had confirmed Israel’s claim that most of the casualties in its assault on Gaza were combatants rather than civilians.

In an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat, Hamad stated: “It has been said that the [Palestinian] people were harmed by the war, but is Hamas not part of the people? It is a fact that on the first day of the war Israel struck police headquarters and killed 250 members of Hamas and the various factions, in addition to the 200-300 operatives from the [Izz al-Din] al-Qassam Brigades. In addition, 150 security personnel [members of the internal security forces] were killed, and the rest were from the people [i.e., civilians].”

According to Israel, during Operation Cast Lead, 1,166 Palestinians were killed. Six hundred and nine were terrorist operatives who belonged to Hamas’ military wing and its security forces, while 100 more were operatives from other terrorist organizations involved in the fighting. The overall number of terrorist operatives killed in Gaza was 709 (about 60% of the total number of deaths). Of those 709 terrorists, 232 belonged to Hamas’ internal security forces. Of the 457 non-combatant casualties, most of them were harmed by mistake.

The data provided by Fathi Hamad was in accordance with Israel’s very precise figures.

Did you see those figures on BBC News or on the BBC website? Me neither.

If pigs become kosher

Hamas’s interior minister Fathi Hammad (above) has admitted that Israel was right about the casualties in its assault on Gaza two years ago, “Operation Cast Lead”.

Hamas has maintained that the vast majority of casualties were civilians but in interview with the London-based Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, Hammad admitted that the 250policemen Israel killed on the first day of the Gaza conflict were combatants, just as Israel had claimed. Human rights organizations have repeatedly dismissed Israel’s claim that the policemen functioned as an auxiliary Hamas army unit. Hamas’s interior minister now, admits: “On the first day of the war, Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs who were part of Hamas and the various factions fell.”

“Factions” is a standard Palestinian euphemism for their armed militias.

Fathi Hammad also revealed, “about 200 to 300 were killed from the Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s main fighting force), as well as 150 security personnel.”

Now do the sums: 300 Qassam Brigade members + 150 “security personnel” + 250 policemen = 700; a figure as near-as-makes-no-difference to Israel’s estimate of 709.
So why has Hamas lied about its casualties for almost two years? Because, for terror organisations, lying is standard practice. After all, if someone wants to kill you, it’s not outside the bounds of possibility that they’d lie about you.

Speaking at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federation of North America’s in New Orleans on Monday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report on the conduct of the conflict “a modern day blood libel.” The report accused Israel of targeting Palestinian civilians and also accepted at face value the inflated Palestinian casualty figures. The international community, said Prime Minister Netanyahu, owes Israel an apology for accepting without question Hamas' propaganda about the Gaza conflict and using it to accuse the Jewish state of war crimes.

Will Israel get the apology it deserves? I suspect pigs will become kosher first.