Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 5: Pallywood

A story of institutionalized duplicity

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 1: Introduction

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 2: A historical perspective

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, Part 3: Modern Israel

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 4: Refugees

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 5: Pallywood

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 6: Duplicity as an art form

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 7: Right of conquest

Israel and the Palestinian Conflict, part 8: Conclusion

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So far, we’ve seen how Palestinian leaders have negotiated in bad faith, unwilling to make any concession, however reasonable or minute. We’ve seen how they abused the plight of the Palestinian refugees, under the emotional story of the ‘Nakba’, in good part created by their own actions and rhetoric, as a political tool to pressure the international community as some twisted form of emotional blackmail, while creating a hotbed for radicalized Palestinians, deprived of a meaningful future, to perpetuate the violence and hatred.

That last claim is not exaggerated, either. Even worse, there are very high level operatives on international level that are at least complicit with this. For example, in 2004 Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), unapologetically admitted in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that the UN employs members of Hamas. "Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime." He continued: "Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."

Talking about refugees, consider this observation by an anonymous internet user:

“Why are some countries willing to accept 8 million refugees from Ukraine, but unwilling to accept 2 million Palestinian refugees?

No-one will accept Palestinian refugees - not even the Muslim states that pretend to support them.

 • They were accepted by Jordan, where they tried to assassinate the King and take over the country, teamed up with Syria and triggered a full-scale war.

 • They were ejected into Syria, where they caused problems and were forced out into Lebanon.

 • In Lebanon, they helped trigger a civil war that has utterly destroyed the country.

 • In Egypt, they fomented terror attacks. Egypt classifies Hamas as a terror group and closed the border long ago.

 • In Kuwait they supported the invading Iraqis, and were ejected after their defeat.

 • In Gaza, Hamas massacred at least 600 Fatah supporters after they took power.

 • And of course, they have committed many other terrorist outrages around the world.

Hamas is openly committed to the genocide of Jews worldwide and the establishment of a global Shariah Caliphate. During the 17 years they have been in power, they have been energetically indoctrinating all their young people with these toxic ideas. This doesn’t make them good neighbours.

Would you like these guys to move in next door to your children?”

While not all of this is historically correct, the main idea still stands, and is  the reason why Egypt and Jordan today absolutely refuse to take in any Palestinians from Gaza, despite the very dire situation on the ground. AP wrote about this same backstory, even if very carefully without blaming the Palestinians, as that reason. All this is so ingrained in the Palestinian cause, that even today it is in full view. In a Reddit post about the student protests that swept the country, an anonymous poster sharply dissected the problem. “I currently live in Philly. We’ve have/had 2 major encampments at Penn and Drexel, numerous smaller protests, blocked highways, etc. and nothing has changed on a local level. Why? Well it seems that in every instance, the Palestinian groups go in with a slew of demands, reject any attempts to negotiate, call the authoritative party Zionist for not completely upheaving their institutions to meet there demands, get broken up by police, and move on to the next.”

Pointing out that other civil rights protesters also used disruptive methods is not enough, he claimed, as in those other historical examples the protestors accepted a step-wise approach. He continued: “If you go into negotiations with an all or nothing approach and expect all you demands met you are either an idiot or negotiating in bad faith (I don’t think they’re idiots). Seems like they want to feel like they are fighting for a cause and won’t back down for anything, but don’t actually care about results.”

Already from 1959, Fatah refused any 2 state solution. Fatah is the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, and is the largest fraction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO. It is the party of Mahmoud Abbas, the current leader of the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority, and one of its founders was Yasser Arafat. Closely affiliated with Fatah are groups like Black September Organization, Tanzim and currently the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, responsible for countless terror attacks in Israel.

While Fatah openly endorses a two-state solution, as fairly recently evidenced by Mahmoud Abbas during his speech in front of the UN in 2018. The Times of Israel reported “In his speech to the UN General Assembly next week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will urge the international community to either save the two-state solution or take responsibility for its demise and “burial,” unnamed Palestinian sources told London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat Friday.”

Yet their flag tells a very different tale:

Notice the green map? Do you see 1, or 2 states?

This type of clear symbolism in their logos is everywhere.

Look at this logo of the PLO:

Another report by the Times of Israel, from 2021, shows that 11 of the 36 Palestinian political lists that partook in the elections that year, had maps of the whole region as ‘Palestine’, erasing the state of Israel completely:

This is also present in their education system:

“The Geography of Palestine” for 7th grade, academic year 2001-2002

Or this 2019 textbook, where cities with Arab-Palestinian populations appear but no Israeli-Jewish cities are named:

Maps are never innocent, and betray a lot about those making them.

The Jewish Virtual Library published this text and map as example:
“Maps of “Palestine” that include names of Arab villages abandoned during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, data concerning Palestinian refugees in the “diaspora,” and the administrative division of Palestine during the British mandate period, play a tangible role in inculcating the value of the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees, and in intensifying hatred towards Israel. These maps are published by the PA, the Hamas Movement, academic institutions, and entities and associations operating in the PA areas. Messages instilling the “right of return” are also incorporated into the curriculum of the PA education system.”

The clarification for this map: “A second edition of a map distributed by the “Arab Studies Society” in Jerusalem, an association belonging to the “Orient House” (the second edition was issued in 1990; the first in 1988).”

Right under the noses of the International Community and the UN, they show that they reject Israel. That they insist all the ‘refugees’ need to be brought back to their original homes and villages, in effect destroying the social fabric and political balance in Israel, making it an Arab majority country. This duplicity is a hallmark among Palestinian groups, present in their communications, and in their actions.

And this revisionism is openly in their charters. Hamas had this line in their founding Covenant: “It is important that basic changes be made in the school curriculum, to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion that affected it as a result of the orientalists and missionaries who infiltrated the region following the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah el-Din (Saladin).”

All this is part of their struggle, their Jihad, against Israel, which they vowed to exterminate: “Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article, the useful book, support and solidarity - together with the presence of sincere purpose for the hoisting of Allah's banner higher and higher - all these are elements of the Jihad for Allah's sake.”

Already in 2004, analysts such as Matthew Levitt, Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute, wrote without any nuance that “the fact that Palestinian terrorist groups have increasingly used civilian cover to facilitate their activities remains undisputed”. In 2004! This is vitally important, as a crucial piece of the puzzle when dealing with the present-day IDF attacks on hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. Can we really believe Hamas and the PA that those are purely civilian targets? We’ll get back to that later.

In the same article, the author mentioned how at least 13 Palestinians, employed by the UNRWA, had been arrested in the previous 4 years for alleged involvement in terrorist activities. “In one particularly egregious example, Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah, the agency's director of food supplies for Gaza refugees, used his UN car and free travel permit to facilitate terrorist activities undertaken by members of the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC). Indicted in September 2002, Attalah admitted to using his UN vehicle on multiple occasions during summer 2002 to transport arms, explosives, and PRC activists to carry out terrorist attacks. [...]  Similarly, in August 2002, Israeli authorities arrested Nidal Abd al-Fatah Abdallah Nazal, a Hamas activist who worked as a UNRWA ambulance driver. During his interrogation, Nazal admitted to using his ambulance to transport "arms and messages to Hamas activists in various cities, exploiting the freedom of movement granted to him" as a UNRWA employee.”

Ambulances used to distribute weapons? Abusing UNRWA cover to aid Hamas?

“UNRWA is not the only relief organization exploited by Palestinian terrorists. In March 2002, a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance was intercepted at a checkpoint south of Ramallah. The ambulance was transporting not only a sick Palestinian child and his relatives, but also an explosives belt hidden under the child's stretcher. During his interrogation, the ambulance driver—Islam Jibril, a wanted Fatah Tanzim terrorist—admitted that he had intended to transport the explosives to other Fatah Tanzim operatives in Ramallah. Similarly, Wafa Idris, the female responsible for the January 2002 suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed one Israeli civilian and wounded more than 100, was a Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic who used her credentials to pass through checkpoints easily on her way to carry out the attack.”

Those accounts are from 2004, almost 20 years ago. For those who would believe that this type of abuse has halted since, I have a bridge to sell.

Let this very recent report  by UN Watch (a non-governmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland that monitors the United Nations by the yardstick of its charter and protects human rights worldwide) and Impact-Se (Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, a research and policy institute that analyzes curricula worldwide through UNESCO-defined standards of peace and tolerance) suffice for now, to prove that point.

UN Watch is praised by many, including former UN Secretary Generals, such as Kofi Annon, acknowledging “the valuable work of UN Watch in support of the just application of values and principles of the United Nations Charter and support for human rights for all". Others, such as the French international news agency Agence France-Presse, described UN Watch both as "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" and as a group which "champion[s] human rights worldwide". Trying to have UN Watch dismissed simply because of ‘ties to Israel’ would be to ignore the sound and valuable work they do elsewhere. (Such a move is always a fallacy, anyway: genetic fallacy). Impact-Se is also an Israeli non-profit that monitors school textbooks, but it also critically evaluates Israeli textbooks (their reports caused media to look into failures of the publicly funded ultra-Orthodox Jewish educational system, for example).

Their introduction begins with a very sobering paragraph: “The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) claims that its schools teach Palestinian children about peace, tolerance and human rights. This joint report by United Nations Watch (UN Watch) and The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) shows that the opposite is true.”

The introduction continues:
“In 100 pages of evidence exposing abuses by UNRWA teachers and schools, this report reveals compelling evidence of UNRWA’s gross and systematic violations of neutrality and other UN rules in their hiring of teachers and in their use of curricula inside UNRWA schools that constitute incitement to hatred, antisemitism and terrorism.

UN Watch has published a series of reports in recent years that exposed over 100 UNRWA staff members who posted incitement to jihadi terrorism and antisemitism on Facebook, which in turn elicited praise and endorsement of their posts from their UNRWA students and fellow staff. Likewise, IMPACT-se has published three reports analyzing hundreds of pages of teaching materials revealing that content glorifying terrorism, inciting violence and promoting antisemitism (which UNRWA has consistently insisted it does not teach)1 is actually included in UNRWA’s own materials—created by UNRWA staff, for UNRWA students, and taught in UNRWA classrooms.”

It contains a very telling statement by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to UNRWA’s Virtual Advisory Commission (June 30, 2021), lashing out at unnamed organizations for making “irrational allegations such as incitement to violence or anti-Semitism” and asserted that UNRWA should be “shielded from political attacks that seek to undermine its legitimacy as a way to erode the rights of Palestine refugees.” ‘Irrational allegations’? If a report offers screenshots, names, dates, all verifiable, how can that be called ‘irrational’? And calling for themselves to be shielded from any real criticism? Hiding behind ‘hurting us is the same as hurting the Palestinian refugees’? Which is actually a confession that they are inextricably linked to the Palestinians, and thus not neutral.

Another important element that needs to be mentioned, is the absolutely stunning propaganda made by Palestinians, in plain view. Every international news agency knows about this, but never reports on it.

Pallywood.

Remember Jamal and Mohammed Al-Durrah? The father and his son, hiding behind a concrete barrel, only to have his son shot to death by IDF soldiers? Captured by a Palestinian journalist working for French TV. The images went around the world, destroying a lot of goodwill for Israel, bolstering the case of the Palestinians. It’s impact is unmistakable, as this Palestinian article explains:
“The video of Jamal al-Durrah, the father, trying to shield his son while bullets were raining down on them was aired by France 2, and then it was widely broadcast, garnering international attention and widespread outrage and criticism of Israeli brutality. [...]
But for Palestinians, the incident has been engraved in their memories as one of the most harrowing and defining images of the Second Intifada. Its heart-rending intensity and its fevered veracity put it beyond all rational understanding, but still one of the lasting images of how Israeli war machinery has ever treated the Palestinians.”

But what really happened?

A closer look at the video material available, shows the camera shaking the moments the fatal shots are fired: why would a seasoned war zone camera man, working for France 2, show such reaction? Most likely reason: because the rifle shots were fired from were right there. This can be easily proven by the impact holes of the bullets on the wall behind the Al-Durrahs: perfectly round, indicating the shots were aimed perpendicular to the wall. If they came from the IDF position, we would see elongated impact holes. Another very compelling indication is the look in the eyes of the father, when he looks away from the direction of the IDF position, straight towards the camera. Fear, and immediately he tries to pull his son behind his back.

Enderlin was the main correspondent for France 2, a veteran reporter. He was in Jerusalem that day, and his cameraman, Abu Rahma, had called him urgently, and sent him 6 minutes of the 45 minutes he had filmed. That Abu Rahma was an active member of Fatah, is of course irrelevant. Enderlin watches the footage, cuts and edits it into a 60 second long clip, consisting of several pieces, none longer than 12 seconds. Enderlin then decided to send this clip to all his competitors, for free, missing the ‘scoop’ completely. The footage had enormous effect: seeing a child die in his father’s arms is hard to watch! And the Israelis did it! Free Palestine! If Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount started the Second Intifada, the video of Al-Durrah cemented the uprising.

When Nahum Shahaf, a physicist who had done earlier forensic investigations (including looking into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin), took this case and performed, among other things, ballistic tests. Those “ballistic tests had proved that the three bullets shown in the filmed sequence by Abu Rahma came from the Palestinian side and not from the Israelis.”

Prof. Richard Landes, a medievalist who taught at Boston University, took interest in Palestinian media manipulations. On Shahaf’s investigation, he said: “When Shahaf came out with his conclusion that the killing of Muhammad al-Dura was staged, it aroused great hostility. On the one hand, he blamed the supposed victim; on the other, he suggested something most people cannot imagine: that the entire press corps could be fooled. He was like the child who said the emperor was naked: ‘What? You know more than all the emperor’s courtiers (i.e., the mainstream media)?’”

For a great breakdown of the footage, see this link.

Jonathan Rosenblum, from that website, added these elements: “Nachum Shalaf, an Israeli civilian physicist, who was placed in charge of the Israeli government investigation, also discovered that a boy named Rami Jamal al-Dura had been declared dead in a Gaza hospital at 1:00 p.m. on the day in question, even though the supposed shooting of a boy initially identified as Mohammed Rami al-Dura, did not take place until 3:00 p.m. The dead boy was also much bigger than the one seen crouching in the film clips.

The father in the France 2 clips later pointed to wounds as corroboration of the claim that he and his son had been under fire. But an Israeli doctor later proved that he had treated the “father” for identical wounds years earlier. The father subsequently sued the doctor in a French court and lost.”

There are many more problems with the narrative of Abu Rahma and Enderlin, but the point is clear. This story is NOT what it was sold to the world as. When Philippe Karsenty, a French politician and founder of a firm that monitors the French media for bias (Media-Ratings), took aim at Enderlin and France 2 for their reporting on Al-Durrah, accusing them of having broadcast staged footage (not even accusing them of stating it themselves, or of having been aware of the fact that it was staged).

When France 2 sued Karsenty for defamation, the first court sided with France 2. In that trial, the prosecutor made clear what this case was about, and what it was NOT about. He chided Karsenty for his lack of prudence in criticizing Enderlin, emphasizing that the court was not here to decide the historical questions (i.e., what happened), but the question of Karsenty’s good faith! This was overturned by the court of appeal, however, but the French Supreme Court sent it back to the lower courts. Their reason? That it was a mistake for the Court of Appeals to demand France 2 to provide the full raw footage... When journalistic integrity is questioned, with an accusation of staged footage, what better remedy than the full, raw video? In that last retrial, Karsenty, without the benefit of the strongest possible proof, the video material itself, was compelled to argue and prove not just that Enderlin and France 2 had shown a staged, fraudulent news clip, but that he had proper grounds to know they had done so at the time when he first accused them of having done so! With the demand to prove his innocence, withholding exculpatory evidence (the raw video), and the demand he prove he had solid ground at the moment he first criticized Enderlin, it should come as no surprise, then, that the court decided against Karsenty.

Amazingly, French journalist Claude Weill Reynal wrote that Karsenty must be a mad man for spending so much time proving that France 2 had broadcast a staged clip purporting to reflect reality because “[fake images] are used all the time everywhere on television and no TV journalist in the field or film editor would be shocked.” An inadvertent peek at the man behind the curtain?

Another example of shameless Pallywood is the claim about a mass grave in Khan Younis.

Quds News Network posted about this on Twitter:

A little later, Aljazeerah claimed the number of bodies found was 180.

Later that day, the link with the IDF was made: The mass graves were found after the IDF had taken over the site, and were responsible. They even failed to treat the dead with respect and dignity! More claims were made: some of the bodies had been shot in the back, and others had their hands tied behind their backs! Clear evidence of a massacre!

Except, this is documented to be a Palestinian made mass grave... Look at the date:

In the midst of the fighting, it was safer to bury their dead in the courtyard here, as was clearly stated and attested.

Look at this picture from the Quds News Network from April 20, showing the same angle as the picture from Palestine Online from January 25. The same tent, the same building, the same AC unit, the same fence. And on the right, the same wall from the different videos.

Even though it is a complete lie, BBC brings this as news. ‘Balanced’, of course, offsetting the lie with the mention that the WHO had previously said that bodies were buried within hospitals under Israeli siege, while inserting the idea that Israel killed some of the victims. Notice on the footage the same tent and building as shown above.

Now, here is the interesting part: even if the IDF had added to the graves: where are the videos of the Israelis digging those graves and dumping the bodies in them? There are cameras everywhere, among the Palestinian population. Everything is being filmed. Why would the IDF try to bury such evidence in the middle of a hostile population? Next, if the IDF were responsible, the bodies they added would be in markedly different condition than those buried in January. Any forensics expert can easily tell you that. Yet no such mention was ever made. Were all the bodies buried at the same time?

OF course, the Pallywood procuders new about this mass grave. Palestinians themselves dug them! Yet 2 weeks after the IDF withdraws from the site, they come in force, with Tyvek suits and everything, looking very official, to dig up the bodies. With bullet holes in the back, and hands tied behind some of them. That is either a lie, or proof of crimes committed by the Palestinians themselves before the IDF overran their position there.

As David Collier, who exposed this story, pointed out, the BBC took their news completely from Al Jazeerah:

Are those reliable sources to make such grave claims? The seed is sown, or watered, by such stories, linking the IDF to one atrocity after another, without a shred of actual proof (at times to the contrary, with proof against the story, as was the case here). This is irresponsible, and only increases the tensions.

More recently, we have the story of the Israeli strike at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. Look at Al-Jazeera, who first disseminated this news. In their main article they wrote: “Al-Ahli Arab Hospital is a gruesome sight the morning after a massacre on its grounds – bloodstains on cement, grass and tattered bedding, shards of glass glitter next to shattered paving blocks and the twisted, burned-out remains of cars.

Three thousand people who survived missile attacks in other parts of Gaza had come to take refuge at al-Ahli, where they slept in the garden courtyard and in the upper floors of the hospital building.

Those who were not among the at least 500 people who were killed in Tuesday night’s attack walked around dazedly, collecting what belongings were still usable or helping retrieve dead bodies and body parts.”

Richard Landes, who has been critical of Palestinian news before, took the other explanation. “At 6:59 p.m. on Oct. 17, a blast occurred in the parking lot of the Al-Ahli hospital. The crater it left was small and shallow, and the explosion that followed was a sudden fireball that left two fires burning in the parking lot. The hospital was undamaged, except for some broken windows on the blast side, and half a dozen cars were strewn around, badly burned.

Anyone who saw the crater knew right away that it was what observers call a “fell-short”: a Palestinian rocket that never made it to its target in Israel. It was a familiar sight, as 20%-30% of the rockets Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have fired into Israel in previous rounds of fighting have fallen short, according to the Israeli military. Sometimes, as in the Shati Refugee Camp tragedy of 2014, children are among the dead.

Moreover, the evidence apparently was cleared—“all traces of the munition have seemingly vanished from the site of the blast, making it impossible to assess its provenance,” The New York Times stated. The source of this information was a senior Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad. “The missile has dissolved like salt in the water,” Hamad told the NYT over the phone. “It’s vaporized. Nothing is left.” See how it works?”

Amazing to contrast both stories! Now, I think neither side here is correct. In a fantastic piece of forensic work, ‘Forensic Architecture’ looked all available video footage from rocket launches that night over Gaza, geolocated, corrected for camera movement, made 3D models, etc., then using all that data to have actual rocket experts analyze what really happened. They come to this conclusion: “While what happened at al-Ahli remains inconclusive, it is clear that in the aftermath of the explosion, the Israeli military launched an aggressive disinformation campaign.

As it stands, Israel has yet to provide any conclusive visual evidence to support the claim that the source of the deadly blast at al-Ahli hospital was a Hamas or PIJ rocket.”

So, it wasn’t a Hamas rocket that fell or misfired (at least none that was caught on camera being fired), and it wasn’t an official big Israeli rocket, either, it seems. “What happened at Al-Ahli remains inconclusive...” What IS true, is that there are no 500 dead people. First of all, such carnage in such a small place is not easily cleaned up, and by morning we have an immaculate courtyard. Traces of burning vehicles, traces of small impact craters, some light damage to the buildings, and not a single trace of blood or anything else indicating that 500 people died there less than 12 hours ago. 500 people is a lot of bodies... Immediately when those pictures appeared the next day, I became skeptical of that story of yet another Israeli massacre against innocent Palestinian civilians. In a hospital, this time.

Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons inspector in Iraq, has his own ideas on what happened. In an article published by RT, he claims that “Both Hamas and Israel could have reasons to hide the truth about the deadly hospital blast in Gaza.” While he agrees with the number of casualties (“Still, most sources agree that several hundred Palestinians who had been forced from their homes by Israeli bombs and sought shelter on the hospital grounds were killed, with hundreds more injured.”), Scott begins to shine when he tackles the physical evidence as it is linked to weapons. He starts by pointing out that this was an Israeli bomb, as used throughout the conflict, could be dismissed immediately. He continues: “A rudimentary analysis of the crater reveals a direction of travel that suggests that the rocket likely originated from a location situated to the south-southwest of the hospital, which, to some extent, supports the Israeli assertion. However, because the video evidence does not sustain this claim, one cannot jump to the conclusion that the rocket in question came from the PIJ. Moreover, the size of the crater points to a small warhead possessing less than 50 pounds of high explosives, opening the door to the possibility that a different weapon was used that night – not a PIJ rocket and not an Israeli bomb.”

Instead, he points out that Israel has the Mikholit air-to-ground missile, as equipped on Hermes 450 drones, used for ‘roof knocking’ strikes to warn people when a large building is designated for destruction, so they can flee and evacuate (see, why would Israel do that, and in Al-Ahli purposefully attack hundreds of civilians?), but also for pinpoint strikes against smaller targets while minimizing collateral damage.

It becomes really interesting when he points at a tweet by Hananya Naftali, a digital content advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted at 8:23 pm (less than an hour and a half after the strike, while the site itself was dark and crawling with Hamas fighters and officials and first aid people).

“Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists are dead. It’s heartbreaking that Hamas is launching rockets from hospitals, mosques, schools, and using civilians as human shields.”

This tweet was quickly deleted, apparently because it was incorrectly based on a Reuters story. But that Reuters story talked about 300-500 people killed, and nothing like Naftali’s tweet. Scott continues: “Naftali’s tweet, however, contained very specific information that was lacking in the cited Reuters article: What the target was (“a Hamas terrorist base”) and what the results of the attack were (“A multiple number of terrorists are dead.”). It also provided a legal justification behind the attack (“Hamas is…using civilians as human shields.”).”

This is the key, it seems, to deciphering what happened at Al-Ahli Hospital. As Ritter explains: “According to Naftali’s deleted tweet, the Israelis confirmed multiple fatalities among the targeted terrorists. This implies an ability to distinguish between the terrorists and civilians, which likewise implies the existence of information accurate enough to pinpoint a cluster of people on the ground and that these people were being visually monitored throughout the attack. Reverse engineering these extrapolations, the following narrative can be postulated.

A Hamas cell was compelled to depart from its underground shelter and take up a position in the parking area of the Al-Ahli Hospital. Naftali’s statement regarding Hamas “launching rockets from hospitals” and “using civilians as human shields” likewise implies insight into the operational methodology of those targeted. This specificity suggests that the Israelis were operating using very precise intelligence, such as the ability to intercept and track the communications associated with a specific Hamas cell or leader.”

And so, neither Hamas nor the IDF wanted the full truth about this attack out. The IDF wants to keep their operational security intact, Hamas does not want any hint of a legitimate targeting to become known.

The WSJ reported that the “U.S. relied on intercepts in Assessing Hamas’s operations at Gaza Hospital”, explaining that “Signals intelligence gathered independently of Israel was among information behind assessment that Hamas and other militants were using Al-Shifa Hospital complex.” This assessment was “based in part on intercepted communications of fighters inside the compound.”

And for good measure, showing how Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups constantly blur the lines between combatant and non-combatant, even using schools and UNWRA facilities (because many of the Palestinian teachers and UNWRA staff are also active Hamas members), the following reports from the 2014 Gaza war called Operation Protective Edge: “UNRWA investigating discovery of 20 rockets found in empty Gaza school” , “UNRWA condemns placement of rockets, for a second time, in one of its schools”, “Rockets found in UNRWA school, for third time”. Why would Hamas have changed their hearts on this, when they have been abusing the civilized international rules to their advantage like this?

Even the UN could not ignore this, and in a report admitted that they found that “it was likely that such a group may have fired the mortar from within the premises of the school.”

Israel Defense Forces officials say this photo shows a Hamas rocket launch site located in a diplomatic building near a U.N. school in Gaza. Israel Defense Forces photo, as published by CBS (see below link)

CBS also reported on similar stories, and interviewed Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus: "According to our intelligence, not only is it happening but it has been expanded over the years, tunnels underneath U.N. facilities, rocket launchers next to or very — just within the compounds of U.N. facilities, and the general endangering of U.N. staff and U.N. facilities by Hamas, systematically."

As the IDF kept moving into Gaza, they encountered evidence of many such instances, even “Boy Scout camps that have rocket launchers in them, rocket launchers next to children's playgrounds, rocket launchers and ammunition and military facilities within school compounds, and the false systematic abuse of hospitals and ambulances by Hamas."

Pallywood is too nice a term. It is a propaganda and deceit program that would put Goebbels to shame. False stories, meant to instigate a visceral emotional response by the international community, are shamelessly spread around. Staged, or simply through twisting of actual facts and truth, that does not matter. Only the maintenance and furthering of the narrative, of Palestinian victims of brutal Israeli occupation and genocidal violence, is allowed.

Which does not mean that Israel, or individual Israelis, has or have not committed any crimes, nor that Palestinians aren’t victims in certain ways. There are plenty of people looking at Israel through the most powerful microscopes possible. Many Israelis are exceedingly critical of their own government. Many of the most vocal ones living outside of Israel, which makes it easy to criticize without experiences the pressure from living under constant threat.

Within Israel, and worldwide, it is possible to criticize not just the policies of Israel, but also their leadership themselves. And even further: even the legitimacy of Israel itself is fair game to criticize. I have yet to see a similar ability among the Palestinian side, some lone voices notwithstanding. In the Palestinian territories, questioning the Nakba is seen as treason, and punishable. Their leaders are dictators, without democratic legitimacy. There is a strict ‘apartheid’ between Hamas and Fatah, between Gaza and West Bank: after the fighting that split the Palestinian territories, a cleansing took place that left hundreds of supporters for the ‘wrong’ party dead.

But somehow, all that is excusable, and ‘understandable’, because of the horrific plight and suffering of the Palestinians. And investigating that plight and suffering is forbidden... How convenient. But it shows the circular nature of a lot of the argument of pro-Palestinian groups.

I am very well aware that I am leaving out a lot of other information. Yet the scope and aim of this series is already ambitious enough. If anyone thinks that I am leaving crucial information out, let me know and show how that piece of information changes the overall calculus and conclusion that I am getting at, and I will answer, and where needed refine or adapt my series and conclusion. That is how this should work.

In the next part, we will look at further practical examples of that duplicity in practice.