One has to wonder what the world is coming to, when reading Arturo Bravermann’s crazed, hate-filled, unsubstantiated letter printed in this newspaper last week.
Among other things, Mr. Bravermann’s letter falsely accused Israel of “war crimes,” denied the reality of Hamas’s kidnapping/murder of three Israeli teenagers; sputtered about an imaginary Rothschild/World Zionist domination plot; and disparaged esteemed Great Neck architect Edna Guilor’s terrifying experiences of running for bomb shelters while visiting her sister in Israel this summer as mere “kvetching about a spoiled vacation.”
The letter’s ludicrous ravings and vicious anti-Semitic Big lies were straight from the pages of the fraudulent “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the Hamas ministry of disinformation.
Since my space to respond is limited, let’s simply set the record straight regarding Mr. Bravermann’s ridiculous allegation that Hamas rockets are mere “firecrackers” “that hit nothing and incur IDF genocide on innocent Palestinians.”
In fact, between 2001 and mid-July 2014 (in other words, prior to the most recent war), Hamas (the main culprit), along with its co-conspirators Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the People’s Resistance Committees and the supposedly “moderate” Fatah party (the Palestinian Authority/Mahmoud Abbas’s party) – all of whom are the real war criminals – rained down from Gaza over 15,000 deadly rockets on Israel, deliberately targeting Israeli civilian population centers.
In this summer’s war, Hamas and PIJ, etc. shot another 3,000 rockets at Israeli civilian areas, including Ashkelon, Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, and Ben Gurion airport, as well as southern Israeli towns.
Prior to this summer’s war, rocket attacks by Hamas and its partners-in-crime killed 28 Israelis and wounded over 1,900 Israelis (mostly civilians, including children), and caused tremendous property destruction and trauma.
Murdered Israeli victims of these Hamas rocket attacks included a 4-year-old boy and his grandfather, small children aged 2 and 4 who were killed while playing in the street, and teenage girl Ayala-Haya Abukasis who was killed while shielding her younger brother. Many of the injuries caused by Hamas rockets were extremely serious, including embedded shrapnel and Israeli children who lost legs. Hamas rockets caused additional Israeli civilian casualties this summer.
While Hamas shoots many of its rockets at Israeli civilian population centers indiscriminately, Hamas aims its precision rockets straight at Israel’s children and hospitals.
For instance, on April 7, 2011, Hamas deliberately fired an advanced anti-tank precision missile into an Israeli school bus, fatally wounding 16-year-old Daniel Vlific, who died from his injuries 10 painful days later, and wounding the school bus driver.
Hamas almost claimed dozens more Israeli child victims in this attack: 30 more Israeli children whom Hamas was trying to murder had been dropped off just minutes prior to the rocket hitting the school bus. Hamas rockets also often deliberately target Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, Israel, and have hit close to the hospital.
Hamas’ frequent rockets attacks on Israeli town Sderot have caused high miscarriage rates there.
Civilians cannot take a shower or go to the bathroom without worrying that they won’t be able to make it to a bomb shelter within the 15-second time limit after a rocket attack siren sounds.
Almost every child in Sderot suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. In Sderot, Israeli children cannot play outside due to frequent Hamas rocket attacks. The town had to build underground play areas for its traumatized children.
The letter-writer should ponder what life must be like for Israeli children who cannot go outside into the light of day for years without risking their lives.
The fact that Hamas’s terror rockets have not caused even more Israeli civilian deaths and destruction is clearly not due to any lack of Hamas’s genocidal efforts.
Without Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense systems, Hamas would have caused far more Israeli deaths. (President Obama’s attempts to curtail Iron Dome supplies to Israel are an absolute outrage.)
Hamas has continued to fire mass volleys of rockets to overwhelm the Iron Dome system; Iron Dome does not stop every rocket.
Hamas’s elaborately constructed terror tunnels (which were never mentioned by the letter-writer) also deliberately target Israeli civilians, especially children.
Hamas’s explosives were set to go off from tunnels under Israeli Kindergartens. Hamas planned to use its terror tunnel network, and the equipment it placed in the tunnels (including handcuffs, tranquilizers, mortars, AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles, explosives and Israeli army uniforms), to inflict thousands of civilian casualties and kidnappings on Israel’s men, women and children on Rosh Hashana.
The Hamas rockets which the letter-writer called mere harmless “firecrackers” also inflict casualties on Gazan civilians. About 20 percent-30 percentof Hamas’ rockets are misfired and land or explode in Gaza, killing Arab civilians. (Hamas then blames the deaths that Hamas caused on Israel!)
For instance, Israel Defense Forces aerial photos demonstrated that Hamas rockets from Gaza hit the UN school playground in al-Shati refugee camp (killing Arab children) and Al Shifa Hospital on July 28.
After leaving Gaza, and getting “far away from Hamas retaliation,” Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati confirmed that Hamas rockets hit and killed the Gazan children at al-Shati – which Hamas and a gullible world press blamed on Israel. (Hamas intimidates, interrogates, deports, shoots at, and has kidnapped and detained journalists who report Hamas attacks while in Gaza.)
Hamas’ war crimes also include using civilians and civilian areas as “human shields” for its missiles and military installations instead of placing its rockets and launchers in Gaza’s sparsely-populated areas (in violation of the Geneva convention), placing “missile rooms” (with rockets and rocket launchers) in private homes, booby-trapping private homes, telling or forcing Arab civilians to ignore Israeli evacuation warnings, abusing child labor to dig Hamas’s terror tunnels (causing the deaths of over 160 Arab children who were forced or cajoled into doing this dangerous work for Hamas), locating its headquarters in Shifa hospital, locating missiles in schools and mosques, using ambulances to transport missiles and launchers, breaking six ceasefire agreements during the past few weeks, and executing on the spot 20 Arab protestors who demonstrated against Hamas on July 28 at Shifa Hospital.
Hamas’s persistent criminal use of “human shields” has led to the saying that HAMAS is an acronym for “Hiding Among Mosques, Ambulances and Schools.”
Moreover, not to be outdone by Hamas and PIJ, the supposedly “moderate” Palestinian Authority Fatah party in the West Bank recently boasted on its Facebook page that “Fatah has killed 11,000 Israelis,” and the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to Iran, Salah al-Zawawi, proclaimed that “Israel’s annihilation has begun.”
Meanwhile, Israel has acted in an exemplary humane fashion, unique in the history of warfare.
The IDF makes extraordinary efforts to avoid Arab Palestinian civilian casualties, including: making hundreds of thousands of robo-calls, sending texts and leaflets warning Arab civilians to evacuate targeted areas, and “roof-knocking” (hitting a building with a non-lethal strike as a warning to evacuate, before the military target is destroyed).
Israel has sent Gaza thousands of truckloads of food and humanitarian supplies, and supplies Gaza with electricity, even in the midst of war, while Hamas attacks Israel via tunnels and rockets.
The IDF also set up a field hospital with advanced medical treatment capability which treats injured Gazans, in the midst of war, while Hamas continued attacking Israel. And on July 15, Israel’s Magen David Adom even offered to collect blood from Israelis, or alternatively from Arabs, to send to Gaza (but the Palestinians rejected these offers to supply injured Gazans with blood from Israel).
Israel’s extraordinary efforts to protect Arab civilians are truly remarkable in light of Hamas’s and other Arab terror groups’ constant deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, and Hamas’s publicly proclaimed genocidal goal, set forth in Hamas’s charter, of murdering every Jew.
In sum, the real war criminals are Hamas and its collaborators, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PRC, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority-Hamas unity government.
Elizabeth (Liz) Berney, Esq.
Liz is the new director of Special Projects and Long Island/Queens Regional Director for the Zionist Organization of America.
