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Hamas is able to build, secure and launch missiles with impunity, indicating advanced knowledge of Israeli air and combined arms operations and a strong counter-intelligence capability.
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Israel has, on the other hand, in the face of abject failure to address Hamas’ advances, resorted to terror bombing of civilian targets, a sign of both impotence and rage.
Unlike previous conflicts between Hamas and Israel, there is no evidence Israel was able to locate Hamas’ sites early in the conflict and indications, as the conflict progressed, that Israel no longer even tried.
During earlier conflicts, whenever a rocket site, be it assembly, storage or launch was hit, the secondary explosions resembled “the 4th of July.” The first sign that Netanyahu had lost “his war” is the lack of secondary explosions. There was no “precision,” no plan, not according to any rules of war. Netanyahu ordered a terror campaign and it was Netanyahu that held the people of Gaza hostage, not Hamas.
An analysis of after action reports of the war in Gaza have yielded startling results, startling to those who continued to assess Israel’s actions as defensive while evidence to the contrary was suppressed from day one. Israel was never able to successfully target rocket launch or storage facilities of Hamas and, in actuality, waged a terror campaign specifically targeting women and children, UN facilities and infrastructure as their chosen method of waging war.
National leaders with access to real intelligence, including America’s President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Kerry repeatedly issued false statements as did Cameron in Britain and others.
Many press organizations as well were advised that Israeli operations were terrorist in nature only and, only to a minor extent, ever went after Hamas or its seemingly endless supply of missiles stored up to 200 feet underground.
Gaza War
The war against Gaza is over, at least for the time being. Over 500 children are victims. However, the major victim, as with any war, is “the truth.” In order to clarify critical issues in news reporting and intelligence analysis, it will be necessary to look at a few basic issues that can quickly determine if war crimes were committed and if Israel’s actions were justified and to what degree.
Today, I spoke at length with Israeli spokesman Michael Shrimpton, a barrister in the UK, regarding Israel’s justification for systematically destroying schools and hospitals and, in particular, a United Nations refugee compound in Gaza.
Shrimpton indicated that he was given specific intelligence that the United Nations facility was attacked, according to the Israeli government, because the UN was complicit in allowing the both the launch and storage of missiles by Hamas on UN facilities.
This, according to Shrimpton, their now admitted attack on a UN facility was a military necessity. But was it?
Secondaries
During the attack on Gaza, Israel using artillery, drone based attacks and precision bombing, weapons including Hellfire missiles, 2000 pound iron bombs, cluster munitions and white phosphorous air burst incendiaries, systematically destroyed the majority of schools and hospitals in Gaza.
Other facilities were targeted as well, power plants, water purification, sewage treatment and fuel storage in addition to warehousing facilities for food and medical supplies, but these are not the issues.
The issue is the attacks, systematic attacks on schools, in particular. These led to the deaths of numerous children. Israel’s claim is that Hamas used these facilities to store munitions and to house rocket launching facilities, using civilians, in particular, children, as “human shields.”
This was reported in the Western press on a daily basis, in fact hundreds of stories were published based on press releases from the Israeli government. There is, however, a major flaw in what we have observed.
Almost every attack was videotaped by Israel and broadcast on Israeli television. Additionally, both video and digital photography exists from independent sources as well, Israeli observers, “war tourists” and Palestinians on the ground.
In fact, never has an air or artillery assault in history been observed as this has, observed and recorded. Gaza is a small, walled area, resembling a concentration camp or perhaps a Ghetto reminiscent of areas in Europe intended to restrict housing options for Jews for centuries. Gaza is a Ghetto, a prison, a concentration camp and a nation state, all in one.
Thus, every shell that landed, every bomb was photographed. Every time a school was hit, a hospital, every time Israel claimed a storage area with tons of munitions, rockets in particular, was hit, it was videoed and shown around the world.
Among those seeing the videos are military and intelligence correspondents, war correspondents with years of experience and experts in explosives and air and artillery operations.
Here is the problem. When a bomb or artillery shell lands on a storage area filled with rockets, something happens. Rockets use propellant. Imagine a conflagration at a factory that manufactures fireworks. Hamas’ rockets are, in a sense, large fireworks, with highly volatile propellants and explosive charges.
When a bomb or artillery shell hits such a facility there are secondary explosions. Observation of “secondaries” is the basis for after action reports that are used to gage the success of any bombing campaign.
If a bomb hits a facility filled with ammunition, particularly rockets, some explode immediately but more explode seconds and then minutes later. Some of the rockets ignite, flying into the air, skidding across the ground, with explosions that reveal the type and nature of propellants and explosives used, based on photographic analysis using special filters and broad spectrum sensors known as hyperspectral cameras.
Israel is one of the nations that manufactures some of the world’s finest hyperspectral cameras.
Not one attack on a rocket launching facility, not one bombed school or hospital caused secondary explosions. After the first attack, if Israel had actually believed weapons were stored or fired from hospitals and schools or tied to a bizarre conspiracy between the United Nations and Hamas, their first after action analysis would have proven otherwise, to them as it had to every other observer.
Every rational and experienced observer knew that Israel never hit an arms cache. Similarly, there was never any film of the Iron Dome shooting down Hamas rockets or wreckage of the claimed thousands of intercepted rockets Israel says they destroyed.
They made it all up. Seemingly, they also made up all claims about “human shields” and arms caches in schools, hospitals or the mysterious plot against Israel tied to the United Nations.
This leaves one assumption that Israel knew they were bombing schools that were not legitimate targets and in doing so were committing war crimes. Their reason was anger in frustration because Hamas had protected its inventory of weapons deep underground, outside the reach of Israel’s weapons.
This is proven in the last days of the cease fires, when Israel was no longer able to mount any defenses against Hamas rockets which seemed to exist in unending supply. They could only do so because Israel had destroyed none of them.
There were never any “secondaries,” everyone knew it, no one reported it. Only one reason could be given for this and that reason would mean broad complicity in war crimes by a significant number of media organizations and governments including the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain and France.
Israel’s “Zombie Army”
Supplementing press censorship, Israel, through its AIPAC organization, funded through criminal operations around the world, pays “front” operations like the Washington Institute and dozens of others to place “talking points” created by psychological warfare groups inside Israel in both newspapers and on television, often around the world.
Two of Israel’s favorite “Zombies,” what they are called in Washington, individuals who are paid to have whatever opinion is in the days “talking points,” are former Lt. Col’s in American armed forces. As is nearly always the case, these two, often appearing on networks around the world, presented to the public as “senior fellows” of “think tanks” are simply “hucksters” or paid liars.
Typically, “Zombies” are paid $500 for each “talking point” they can include in an interview or debate. This often confuses interviewers or news presenters who are confronted with “nonlinear” responses to questions. The “Zombies” are simply counting the cash as they grind away at truth and reality.
The two most popular, seen almost continually, were both asked to resign from the US military. One was caught torturing prisoners in Iraq and the other for “falling in love” with a “dancing boy” in Afghanistan. As American humorist Jim W. Dean so often says, “You just can’t make stuff like that up.”
In one recent interview, a “Zombie” stated that Iran was responsible for the Syria’s failure to surrender to western financed terror organizations. This made Iran, as we were told, complicit in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
These same individuals continually cite Iran as a nuclear threat but are now increasingly advocating war against Russia as well. During the same “talking point,” they will both advocate bombing of ISIL/ISIS and supplying them arms at the same time. They don’t begin to know the definition of “contradiction.”
Another group of “Zombies” parades around as critics of America’s government and her policies. What they fail to make clear, however, is that the fault they find is that America isn’t giving terror groups advanced enough weapons, isn’t tapping enough phones and, as is almost always the case, America isn’t doing enough to bring potential enemies of Israel to their knees with “shock and awe.”
Conclusion
The proof is inexorable, Israel’s campaign against Gaza was always terror bombing, always targeted women and children, targeted UN facilities and was driven by rage, a malignancy of the soul and a belief that “the chosen people” do not answer to any law of man.
Weeks later, and though the accusations of war crimes by Israel are heard, though less and less, the hard evidence of those crimes has been gathered and analyzed but nothing has been said.
There were no civilian hostages. There were no rockets in schools. Napalm and white phosphorous munitions are useless except to burn and maim women and children.
When Michael Shrimpton and I spoke on this, friends who disagree, the question was simple: “Michael, you are a military expert, you have written of Hamas and been a supporter of Israel’s press releases about launch and storage facilities. Yet, when you noticed there were never secondary explosions when arms caches were supposedly attacked, why didn’t you notice?
Shrimpton replied, “I simply accepted what they told me.” Michael Shrimpton is a brave and decent man. Others less decent, were they to be as honest would have to answer, “I simply said what they paid me to say.”
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
