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Monday, April 29, 2024

The Hamas War > Mass grave at Nasser Hospital dug before IDF got there; Hamas fires on American-built pier in Gaza

 

Satellite images reveal that the mass grave at Nasser Hospital was dug two weeks before the IDF entered the hospital. Hamas are prolific liars. Nothing they say should be taken at face value.


That Mass Grave At Nasser Hospital

The latest “war crime” of which the IDF stands accused by Hamas is having massacred hundreds of civilians at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza and buried them in a mass grave just outside the hospital. More on the charge, and its refutation, can be found here:


Analysts debunk Hamas claims that Israel

dug mass graves at Nasser hospital

Jerusalem Post, April 24, 2024:

Analyses by Sky News and independent analysts of satellite imagery and footage published online found that claims spread by Hamas and Arabic media that the IDF had dug mass graves at the Nasser hospital in Gaza were false as the graves were made before the IDF entered the complex.

Hamas, Al-Jazeera, and several news agencies claimed in recent days that the IDF had dug mass graves in order to “hide” the bodies of Palestinians after entering the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said on Tuesday that he was “horrified” by the reports and called for “independent, effective and transparent investigations.” Türk added that “The intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat [not participating in hostilities] is a war crime.”

Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for UN human rights commissioner Volker Turk, claimed that some of the bodies had their hands tied and were “stripped of their clothes.”

Due to the analyses finding that the bodies were buried before Israeli forces entered the hospital, it is unclear who bound and stripped the buried individuals or why they did so, as only Palestinians and medical professionals were present at the scene at that point.

On Monday, the GeoConfirmed geolocation account published a thread listing extensive examples of footage and satellite imagery showing that the graves were dug, filled, and covered before the IDF ever stepped foot in the hospital.

The account geolocated and dated several videos posted online to figure out when the graves were actually dug.

According to the account, the footage showed Palestinians digging the graves in question between January 25-February 3. The IDF entered the hospital on February 15….

The satellite images, unlike spokesmen for Hamas, do not lie. These satellite images, time-stamped, show that the mass graves on the grounds of Nasser Hospital were dug, filled with bodies, and then covered up, between January 25 and February 3. The IDF entered the hospital only on February 15, nearly two weeks after the .mass grave site had been covered over. Therefore it could not possibly have been responsible. The IDF dug up the graves, because it was searching for the bodies of hostages who had died, or been murdered, in captivity. Some of the bodies found had their hands tied, which suggests that they were indeed Israeli captives or possibly, civilians who had been protesting against Hamas dragging Gaza into a disastrous war and were therefore executed by vindictive Hamas operatives.

Will this proof provided from satellite imagery of when the mass graves were dug, filled with bodies, and covered over convince the likes of UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk. who said on Tuesday, April 23 that he was “horrified” by the reports of the mass grave next to Nasser Hospital, and called for “independent, effective and transparent investigations”? He added that “the intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat [not participating in hostilities] is a war crime.” Clearly he had already made up his mind that the IDF must have been responsible for the mass killings and the mass graves. Now that he has been provided by the satellite imagery clearly proving that the graves were dug, filled, and covered over between January 25 and February 3, that is, 12 days before there was a single IDF soldier in the Nasser Hospital, will he stop suggesting that the IDF was responsible? Given the UN’s long anti-Israel record, and the hostility toward Israel that so many of its highest officials, including Volker Türk, Francesca Albanese, and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, demonstrate, that seems unlikely.




Hamas likes to keep Gazans suffering in hunger and fear in order to fan the sympathy for them and the anger at Jews around the world. This has always been Hamas' tactic.

Hamas Fires On American-Built Pier For Humanitarian Aid

The Americans have begun to build their “humanitarian aid” floating pier in Gaza, designed to bring more aid much faster to Gazans in need. Israel, of course, welcomes the move, for it wants that aid to come in as fast as possible, and without having to run the gauntlet of Hamas operatives stealing aid for themselves, their extended families, and their clans. But Hamas is not pleased, for precisely that reason. It wants all humanitarian aid to have to go through channels it controls. The pier will allow aid to be directly offloaded from ships to trucks, and distributed directly to aid groups for distribution, bypassing Hamas. Hamas has been firing at those starting to build the pier. More on this can be found here:


IDF rescues UN officials from terrorist mortar fire at Gaza aid pier

JNS, April 26, 2024:

Israel Defense Forces troops secured U.N. officials who came under mortar fire on Wednesday when touring a pier being constructed by U.S. military personnel off the coast of the Gaza Strip to increase the amount of aid flowing into the Palestinian enclave.

The IDF soldiers rushed the officials to shelter after Palestinian terrorists launched projectiles at the installation.

Here is the IDF, securing the lives of officials from the UN, an organization that is implacably hostile to Israel. One hopes some of those officials will take note of the IDF’s helping to save their lives, and also of the fact that it was a Palestinian terror group, Hamas, that had been launching projectiles at them.

The terrorist organizations continue to systematically harm humanitarian efforts while risking the lives of U.N. workers, even as Israel allows the supply of aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip,” according to the IDF.

Hamas interferes with the distribution of food and other humanitarian aid, halting aid trucks and seizing what it wants for its own operatives, their families, and their clans, and only after that lion’sshare has been taken are ordinary Gazans given what remains.

The Israeli military previously confirmed that troops would provide “security and logistical support” for the project, “further demonstrating the IDF’s commitment to working with the international community to ensure the continuous entry of humanitarian aid to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.”…

The United States hopes to begin delivering aid using the new pier by early May. A senior American official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity on Thursday, said the sea route will initially total 90 trucks daily which could quickly rise to about 150.

The official suggested the mortar attack was not connected to the humanitarian mission, adding that security for the pier will be “far more robust” when the aid begins flowing.

I disagree. I think the mortar attack on the unfinished floating pier was launched by Hamas, and designed to discourage the Americans from completing the project. And when the pier is completed, Hamas will likely continue to shell it, so as to make it more difficult both to offload the aid and to transmit it to waiting trucks. The mortar attack was thus “connected to the humanitarian mission” by making operation of the floating pier more dangerous. Hamas has no interest in increasing aid for the Gazans; it benefits from the tales of mass food insecurity, even famine, in the Strip. As long as its own operatives get abundantly fed, it doesn’t worry about any of the others living in Gaza. In fact, the more food insecurity there is in Gaza — what Hamas inaccurately calls “famine”— the greater the gain by Hamas in the propaganda war with the IDF.

In his March 7 State of the Union address, U.S. President Joe Biden announced the establishment of a floating pier to deliver supplies.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant welcomed the initiative, saying that it would help collapse Hamas.

“We will ensure that the aid reaches those to whom it should get to and that it does not reach those to whom it should not get to,” he added….

The IDF clearly wants this floating pier idea to succeed, so that another 150 trucks can come into the Strip each day, full of food and other humanitarian aid, that will be directly distributed to civilians, without Hamas being in control. And Hamas, of course, wants the project to fail, because it wants sole control over the distribution of humanitarian aid going to Gaza, which allows its operatives to help themselves to much of it. Hence these mortar barrages at the floating pier that is still under construction. But the IDF has already begun to serve as the guardian of the floating pier, defending it against incoming artillery fire and drones.

I haven’t seen a single story, outside of the Jewish News Service, about this attack by Hamas on the floating pier being built in Gaza, and on the UN officials visiting it, nor a word about how Hamas is attacking, and the IDF has been protecting, the site. I wonder why this story has attracted so little attention. Could it be because it puts the IDF in a good light, and Hamas in a bad one?

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Islamic Insanity > Azerbaijan obliterates Christian village in Nagorno-Karabakh; Hapless jihadis die in vain attempt to murder Japanese in Karachi

 

Azerbaijan obliterates church and entire

Christian village in Nagorno-Karabakh

This kind of thing has happened all over what is known as the Islamic world.

Church, Entire Village ‘Erased’ In Azerbaijan’s Recaptured

Nagorno-Karabakh

by Amos Chapple, RFE/RL, April 24, 2024:

A picture of a prayer session inside the St. John the Baptist Church in Nagorno-Karabakh was posted to Twitter by Azerbaijani parliament member Jala Ahmadova in July 2021 to demonstrate what she called an “atmosphere of ethnic and religious tolerance,” after Azerbaijan recaptured Susa, a town known in Armenian as Shushi.

Today that church, built by Armenians in the 19th century, no longer exists.

Images released recently by the monitoring group Caucasus Heritage Watch indicate that the Susa/Shushi church, which was wrapped in scaffolding through much of its time under Azerbaijani control, was demolished in the winter of 2023-24.

Baku retook control of Susa/Shushi from ethnic Armenian forces in November 2020 after launching a war to retake territory internationally recognized as Azerbaijani land.

Two kilometers south of the erased church, satellite images released in April reveal that an entire village appears to have been razed to the ground. Today a large mosque is under construction in the broken soil where a settlement once stood, which was known in Armenian as Karintak and as Dasalti in Azeri.

Husik Ghulyan, a lead researcher at Caucasus Heritage Watch who published the satellite images of Dasalti/Karintak, told RFE/RL, “I think the goal of Azerbaijan in this case was to completely demolish [the settlement] to rebuild a new village for Azerbaijani internally displaced people or other resettlers.”

The researcher said the village’s church, visible to the right of the mosque, “is a legally protected heritage object even by Azerbaijani laws,” which he said, was “probably the reason they left it intact.”

Dasalti/Karintak, which means “under the rock,” in both Azeri and Armenian, takes its name from the massive cliffs that loom above it. The village was the site of several natural springs and had a history of agriculture.

A traveler to the village in the late 1890s described it as a settlement where “the land is fertile, but the crops are scarce and produce little.” Locals, the observer said, “planted wheat, barley, millet, and other crops.” Under Soviet rule the village was home to a silk production plant and a factory making electrical components….



Pakistan: Two bystanders killed as jihad

suicide bomber targets Japanese nationals

“Indeed, Allah has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth, because the garden will be theirs, they will fight in the way of Allah and will kill and be killed.” (Qur’an 9:111)

Five Japanese survive Pakistan suicide bomber and

gunman attack, two bystanders killed

Reuters, April 19, 2024 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Five Japanese nationals in Pakistan escaped when a suicide bomber detonated their device on Friday, and police shot dead a gunman accompanying the bomber, officials said, adding that two bystanders died from injuries sustained in the incident. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the rare attack on Japanese nationals in Karachi, with Pakistani authorities identifying them as engineers working for the management of an export-processing zone in the port city.

One of the two attackers, who followed the Japanese in their vehicle by motorbike, jumped off when the vehicle slowed down and set off explosives tied to his body but failed to strike his target, Pakistani counter-terrorism official Raja Umar Khatab told reporters. His accomplice then began shooting at the vehicle.

“I think he fired some 15 or 16 shots,” Khatab said, adding that private security guards with the foreigners and a nearby police patrol returned fire and killed the second attacker. The attackers had followed the Japanese group’s vehicle for some time, Khatab said, with authorities suspecting they carried out reconnaissance to identify their target and the location for the attack.

Islamist militants and separatist insurgent groups have been involved in other bloody attacks in the South Asian nation, with some of them targeting foreigners, mainly Chinese nationals….