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Why Is the Media Mourning a Terrorist Organization?
Smoke rises from Kfar Kila, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as pictured from Marjayoun, near the border with Israel, Lebanon, Aug. 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Karamallah Daher
A Sept. 18th Guardian editorial on the targeted Hezbollah pager and walkie talkie explosions is seething with contempt for Israel, whose spy agency was thought to be behind what US intelligence agents have called the most effective and audacious counter-terror operation in recent history.
Of the several thousand reported Hezbollah operatives injured, only a handful of civilians were reportedly harmed. According to John Spencer, Arsen Ostrovsky, and Mark Goldfeder that is “an extraordinary feat in modern warfare and the textbook definition of a precision and proportionate attack.”
The pager and walkie talkie attacks were a response to Hezbollah firing more than 8,500 rockets at Israel since October 8, 2023, which have murdered 47 people, mostly civilians — including 12 children killed while playing soccer in the July Majdal Shams massacre.
In the meantime, roughly 80,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in the north of the country as a result of these attacks — barrages of rockets fired into sovereign Israeli territory, despite Hezbollah having no territorial dispute with Jerusalem.
Finally, let’s remember that, according to multiple UN resolutions, Hezbollah’s presence in southern Lebanon is illegal, as Hezbollah’s forces aren’t supposed to be north of the Litani River — about 30 km from Israel’s border.
With all that being said, how did The Guardian frame Israel’s counter-terror triumph against an Iranian proxy militia into a “war crime”?
They effectively sided with the illegal, Iranian proxy militia, in an editorial titled “The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable”:
A global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.” Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol? [emphasis added]
Has anyone told the purveyors of ant-Zionist vitriol at the Guardian about the caveat to that treaty — that, pursuant to Article 52 of the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention I, such acts are indeed permissible in circumstances where the objects in question are no longer used for civilian purposes?
So, given that the hand-held devices were distributed specifically to operatives of Hezbollah — which, let’s remember, is proscribed in its entirely by the UK — and were being used for communication, planning, and conducting terror operations, they ceased to be considered “civilian objects” and became legitimate military targets.
The Guardian piece then lies again, complaining that “the pager bombs were clearly intended to target individual civilians – diplomats and politicians – who were not directly participating in hostilities“ — when, in fact, as we noted, the terror group is proscribed in its entirety, meaning, according to the UK, there’s no distinction between the group’s military and political wings.
Finally, true to The Guardian’s refusal to assign agency to the Islamist terror groups, the editorial blames Israel — and only Israel — for bringing the region (and the world!) to the brink of chaos. This means that we’re to believe that it wasn’t Hamas’ barbaric antisemitic massacre, or Hezbollah’s decision, the day after Oct. 7th, to align with Yahya Sinwar’s bloodthirsty pogromists, but, rather, Jerusalem’s year-long efforts to protect its citizens from these threats, that ignited violence and chaos.
As this post is being published, the long awaited full-out war between Israel and Hezbollah has likely begun. As such, we can expect the Guardian’s coverage of this conflict to mirror their editors’ take on the pager explosions, which effectively mourned the humiliating blow to the terror group.
As Alistair Heath of the Telegraph wrote of the immediate rush to impute guilt to Israel for their “brilliantly audacious booby-trapping of thousands of Hezbollah pagers”: “Robbed of its moral bearings, bereft of any sense of right and wrong, incapable of distinguishing heroes from villains, the West can no longer celebrate when good triumphs over evil.”
There’s arguably no Western media institution that more accurately reflects this moral rot than The Guardian.
Adam Levick serves as co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Why Is the Media Mourning a Terrorist Organization? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.