Roger Cohen, "A War of Choice in Gaza": A 21st Century Blood Libel

Warning! Reading Roger ("Iran is not totalitarian") Cohen's latest New York Times op-ed, "A War of Choice in Gaza," could induce nausea and vomiting. But before analyzing the content of Cohen's "opinion piece," it is first necessary to recount a few facts.

In an August 22nd Yahoo! News article entitled "Hamas leader: Don't compare us to ISIL," Khaled Mashaal acknowledged that Hamas was responsible for the killing of the three Israeli teenagers, which led up to the current Gaza conflict:

"Meshaal acknowledged for the first time that Hamas members — but not the group's political leadership — were behind the slaying of three Israeli settlers on the West Bank in June. But he defended the murders as a legitimate action against Israeli 'illegal occupation.'"

But notwithstanding Mashaal's attempt to distance Hamas's leadership from the murders, Israel's left wing Haaretz newspaper reported on August 21 in an article entitled "Hamas claims responsibility for three Israeli teens' kidnapping and murder" by Jack Khoury:

"A senior Hamas official boasted during a conference in Istanbul on Wednesday that the group's military wing was behind the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank in June.

A video captured during the conference shows Salah Arouri, who is based in Turkey and is considered a primary figure within Hamas, saying that the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades were responsible for the abduction of the three youths, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16."

A few days ago, in an article entitled "Israel indicts mastermind behind West Bank kidnapping" by Gili Cohen, we were informed:

"Hussam Qawasmeh, who allegedly headed the terror cell that kidnapped and murdered three Jewish teenagers in Gush Etzion in June, was charged in Ofer military court with organizing and funding the attack.

. . . .

During his interrogation, the Shin Bet Security Service says, Hussam said he had hinted to his brother that he needed funds for a military operation, and eventually he received 220,000 shekels. A female courier made three deliveries of 50,000 shekels each to Hussam’s mother’s home, the Shin Bet said, while the other 70,000 shekels were transferred to Hussam via an offsetting transaction.

. . . .

With regard to whether this attack was overseen in Gaza or by senior Hamas officials, [a Shin Bet] agent said the Shin Bet doesn’t think the kidnapping was a directive from above, though the money probably came from there, 'and even that was not necessarily for a kidnapping but for military activity.' The Shin Bet agent thought the attack was the failed attempt by a local Hamas cell in Hebron that to kidnap someone to use as a bargaining chip."

Or stated otherwise, the murders of the three Israeli boys by a Hamas cell in Hebron were funded by Hamas and subsequently justified by its leadership. Moreover, a senior Hamas official, operating out of Turkey, is crediting the terror organization's military wing with the killings.

Now back to Cohen's "opinion piece." Writing from London about the recent war between Hamas and Israel, Cohen would have us know:

"Much mystery continues to shroud its genesis, the abduction on June 12 of three Israeli youths near Hebron and their murder, now attributed to a local Palestinian clan including Hamas operatives who acted without the knowledge or direction of the Hamas leadership. (There has been no major investigative piece in the American press on the incident, a troubling omission.)

But enough detail has emerged to make clear that Netanyahu leapt on 'unequivocal proof' of Hamas responsibility (still unproduced) for political ends.

. . . .

For more than two weeks after the abduction, persuasive evidence that the teenagers were dead was kept from the Israeli public.

. . . .

The effect of this concealment, whatever its justification, was to whip up an Israeli frenzy."

As already stated, even if Hamas's leadership in Gaza did not direct the operation, it was undertaken by a Hamas cell, funded by Hamas and justified by Hamas's most senior leadership. Cohen prefers to ignore this information.

And then there is also the small matter of Hamas's charter, which calls for the murder of all Jews (not just Israelis). But why should Cohen mention the charter, if the objective of his "opinion piece" is to distance Hamas's leadership from the murders?

Moreover, unbeknownst to Cohen, many in Israel presumed that the three Israeli teenagers had been murdered when there was no request for a release of Hamas prisoners in exchange for the boys. On the other hand, it was impossible for the Israeli government to declare the boys dead without first discovering the bodies.

Continuous rocket fire from Gaza aimed at southern Israeli towns and cities throughout 2013 and 2014? Also ignored by Cohen, intent upon bolstering his premise that Israel could have avoided the last round of fighting.

Cohen concludes his opinion piece with an attack, having nothing whatsoever to do with the murders, on AIPAC:

"Two other recent pieces are essential reading in the aftermath of the fighting. The first is Connie Bruck’s 'Friends of Israel' in The New Yorker, an examination of the political sway of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby group. In it, she quotes Brian Baird, a former Democratic congressman, getting to the nub: 'The difficult reality is this: in order to get elected to Congress, if you’re not independently wealthy, you have to raise a lot of money. And you learn pretty quickly that, if Aipac is on your side, you can do that.' She also quotes John Yarmuth, a congressman from Kentucky, on upholding the interests of the United States: 'We all took an oath of office. And Aipac, in many instances, is asking us to ignore it.'"

Ah yes, AIPAC money is being used to manipulate the United States government. Remind you of something?

Using figures provided by Maplight for 2010, I took the total amount of "pro-Israel" contributions to House of Representatives recipients and divided this number by the total number of recipients. The average contribution: $16,313. Can this amount buy even a single 30-second television advertisement, let alone win an election? Oh, those scheming nefarious Jews!

Although the Middle East has descended into savagery and chaos (What ever happened to the ebullient Roger Cohen who glorified the "Arab Spring" from Cairo in 2011 after gleefully promoting reconciliation with Iran in 2009?), how dare anyone believe that Israel's security should be a US priority!

Yes, Cohen is sickening.

[In his "opinion piece," Cohen declares: "More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians and many of them children, have been killed." Indeed, this is what is being claimed by the UN, based upon numbers provided to the UN by Hamas. However, Cohen does not mention that adult militants and gun-toting teenagers were counted by Hamas as dead "children." Cohen also fails to observe that many civilians died as the result of errant Hamas rocket fire. In addition, Cohen does not state whether his number includes the 120 Gaza residents who, according to Palestinian Authority President Abbas, were executed by Hamas.]

The Obama Adminstration: Blaming Israel for the U.S. Fiasco in Afghanistan

How many times have we been told by both the extreme left and the extreme right that the United States waged both Gulf Wars against Iraq on Israel's behalf? Those who disseminate this perverse view would have us forget Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and Iraqi threats against Saudi Arabia, which, had they gone unchallenged, would have brought American industry to a standstill.

In 2010 this canard has been "enhanced": Israel's refusal to make peace with the Palestinians is jeopardizing American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

Let's leave that thought for a moment and examine another eye-opening, up close account from Afghanistan, written by Dexter Filkins and published on March 30 by The New York Times, entitled "Despite Doubt, Karzai Brother Retains Power":

"Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan, may maintain links with drug dealers and insurgents, as some American officials and Afghans believe. And he might have played a central role in last summer’s fraudulent presidential election, as Western diplomats charged.

But Mr. Karzai is also the brother of the Afghan president, Hamid. And after debating Ahmed Wali’s future for months — and with a huge military operation in the area looming — Afghan and American officials have decided that the president’s brother will be allowed to stay in place.

. . . .

Any decision about Ahmed Wali Karzai is complicated by his relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, which maintains a large presence in Kandahar. Current and former American officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say the agency has paid Ahmed Wali Karzai regularly for many years for performing a variety of services.

. . . .

But Western and Afghan officials say the president’s brother is engaged in many activities that buoy the insurgency and undermine the Afghan state. These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, strongly suggests that he enriches himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium.

. . . .

The official said that Ahmed Wali Karzai also laundered ill-gotten money for a host of figures in southern Afghanistan. “For a lot of people, including drug runners,” the Western official said.

Perhaps the most vivid example of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s reach came last August, when his brother sought re-election. According to Western diplomats in Kabul, he cut deals with insurgent groups to refrain from attacking polling stations, and then helped orchestrate a large-scale campaign of forging ballots on his brother’s behalf."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/world/asia/31karzai.html?hp

In a nutshell, Karzai's brother, who is allegedly involved in the narcotics trade, money laundering, election fraud and deals with the Taliban, is also allegedly in bed with the CIA. Excuse me, but why is the United States involved with this man? What is America possibly attempting to achieve on the ground in Afghanistan? Moreover, what does any of this primitive tribal confrontation have to do with distant Israel?

Fighting in Iraq subsequent to the Second Gulf War? We have seen a host of warring sects (Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds) and "third parties" (al-Qaeda, Iran, Syria) attempt to exert their influence and direct the outcome of this chaos, but again, what does Israel have to do with it?

The past and current wars involving the various Arab countries and Iran have exacted an exponentially larger number of casualties than all of the combined Arab-Israeli conflicts. The enmity between Sunnis and Shiites (deemed heretics by the Sunnis) is a far greater threat to regional stability than the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Why then are we now being told that Israel is the primary source of Middle East instability? Answer: Because this is indeed what the Obama administration believes.

Although the U.S. vice president's staff denies he made the comment, it has been reported that Biden alleged that Israel is jeopardizing U.S. troops:

“People who heard what Biden said [to Israeli officials behind closed doors] were stunned,” the centrist Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported. “‘This is starting to get dangerous for us,’ Biden castigated his interlocutors. ‘What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace.’”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34300_Page2.html

Several days after the Biden imbroglio, the magazine Foreign Policy ran a story on its website saying that General Petraeus had sent a briefing team to the Pentagon at the beginning of the year “with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers.”

Next, ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper asked David Axelrod twice whether “Israel’s intransigence on the housing issue put the lives of US troops at risk.” Axelrod said he wouldn’t put it in those terms, but given the opportunity, he refused to deny it.

General Petraeus, however, put the canard to rest. Speaking at St. Anselm College, he stated that the lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations makes the situation for moderate Arab states "more challenging", but denied ever saying that the U.S.-Israel relationship places American soldiers at risk (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/03/can-israel-survive-obamas-reelection.html).

In short, although Obama and Hillary claim the U.S.-Israel relationship is "rock solid", it's not the case. Axelrod's evasive answer to Jake Tapper would lead anyone to believe that Israel is undermining the American effort in Afghanistan and jeopardizing the lives of U.S. soldiers.

But then what do you expect? Someone will ultimately need to be blamed for Obama's Afghan fiasco. Why not Israel?

Investigate Anti-Semitism at Aftonbladet

As noted in an earlier blog entry, Stephen Dubner of "Freakonomics" fame wrote in The New York Times on August 25 an opinion entitled "Why the Israeli Organ-Harvesting Story Is Probably False". In this opinion he observed that given the need to match organs between the donor and the recipient and the short time that organs remain viable for transplant, the recently published accusation in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers in 1992 sought to kill Palestinians and harvest their organs should probably be discounted.

There is, however, an even better reason why the Aftonbladet article is palpably false. As stated in the article concerning the death of the Palestinian:

"The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach."

However, when a bullet strikes a body, it tumbles ("yaws") and can cause extensive internal damage before exiting the body. Anyone interested in "harvesting" organs would not shoot a person both in the chest and the stomach for fear of damaging the organs.

Aftonbladet's editors are calling for an investigation of the purported 1992 incident? They should be busy investigating stupidity and anti-Semitism at their own newspaper.

E-Mail to an Editor of Aftonbladet

Below is my e-mail to Johan Edling, an editor of Aftonbladet, which published the heinous, anti-Semitic story that accused Israeli soldiers of murdering Palestinians and harvesting their organs. Will I receive a response from Edling? Again, I'm not holding my breath.

Dear Mr. Edling,

The absurdity of Aftonbladet's story alleging that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians in 1992 in order to harvest their organs was highlighted yesterday in The New York Times. See the the last paragraph below from:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/why-the-israeli-organ-harvesting-story-is-probably-false/?pagemode=print

I believe in "freedom of expression", and Aftonbladet is free to publish what it wishes, but you need also recognize that this was an instance of vile anti-Semitism without any factual basis whatsoever, which will only perpetuate hatred and violence.

Yours sincerely,
Adv. Jeffrey Grossman
Caesarea, Israel


August 25, 2009, 10:03 am
Why the Israeli Organ-Harvesting Story Is Probably False
By Stephen J. Dubner

A strange story has broken out in Sweden and Israel, with an article in Aftonbladet, a Swedish newspaper, by a journalist named Donald Boström.

According to The Times, Boström’s article “accuses the Israeli Army of harvesting organs from Palestinians wounded or killed by soldiers.” This claim is linked to the charges of black-market organ trafficking by Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, one of the flock of characters recently arrested in a corruption and money-laundering racket that revolved around New Jersey politicians.

. . . .

The Times article asserts that Boström’s article “was based on accusations Mr. Bostrom heard from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1990’s, and which he published in a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2001.”

That would certainly give one pause as to the veracity of the charge. This isn’t to say that all rumors are untrue, but there is perhaps no easier trap for a journalist to fall into than to listen to the harshest accusations of one group of people that is at war with another.

But there is probably a better reason to discount the accusation.

Al Roth, the Harvard economist whose work on matched-pair organ donations has started to transform the organ-transplantation scenario, told me he found the accusation unbelievable because of the logistics of organ harvesting itself. “Organs don’t last very long and have to be matched rather particularly,” he said, “so it would be hard to take them on spec for an international market. So I think black market organs must mostly be from live donors. Live donors can take blood tests well in advance and travel to where the patient is. Deceased organs have to be put on ice, and the clock starts ticking immediately and fast.”

. . . .

Has Swedish Foreign Minister Bildt's Brain Gone Missing?

The Swedish Penal Code prohibits "hate speech" that expresses disrespect for ethnic groups, but Swedish Foreign Minister Bildt is incapable of drawing the connection between the absurd allegation of organ harvesting by Israeli soldiers in 1992 now surfacing in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and the centuries-old blood libel accusing Jews of using Christian children's blood in Passover matzot.

Fortunately, Israelis, i.e. Jews, have yet to be accused of robbing Bildt of his brain.

How Do You Say "Blood Libel" in Swedish?

An article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet accuses Israeli soldiers of abducting and killing Palestinians to steal body parts. The Swedish Embassy in Tel Aviv has responded in its Website to this article as follows:

Aug 19 2009

Media allegations on organ trafficking

On 17 August the Swedish daily Aftonbladet published an article on alleged organ trafficking in Israel. It related, inter alia, claims from individual Palestinians that organs had been stolen from captured Palestinians. The given sources, and a photograph of a dead Palestinian man, pertain to an incident in 1992.

The article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is as shocking and appalling to us Swedes, as it is to Israeli citizens. We share the dismay expressed by Israeli government representatives, media and the Israeli public. This Embassy cannot but clearly distance itself from it.

Just as in Israel, freedom of the press prevails in Sweden. However, freedom of the press and freedom of expression are freedoms which carry a certain responsibility. It falls on the editor-in-chief of any given newspaper.

Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier
Ambassador

I called the Swedish Embassy and told them that this article went beyond "shocking and appalling" and constituted a blood libel reminiscent of the Nazi-era. In addition, I asked whether the Swedish Embassy had made their opinion known to Aftonbladet. The answer:

"No."

I sent an e-mail to the Swedish Embassy asking to speak directly with the Swedish ambassador to Israel. Response:

"I regret to tell you that the Ambassador will not be in a position to discuss this matter with you, but kindly wishes to refer you to her statement this morning."

And so such matters are handled in diplomatic "circles".