Israel's Weapons of Mass Deception

Three days ago, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs replaced their usual map of the Gaza Strip with one featuring a Christo-like pink skirt inside Gaza.

The printing inside the accompanying tiny info box reads :

"The Israeli military has declared an area 3 kms from the fence separating Israel and Gaza as a "no go" zone, sending evacuation warnings to many communities located there.

This area covers 162 km sq. (44% of the Gaza Strip)

Around 250,000 people were residing in this area prior to its declaration."

44% of the Gaza Strip and a quarter million people

The IDF's ostensible purpose for annexing and occupying and bombing an additional 44% of the Gaza Strip is to destroy rocket sites and underground tunnels. 

On the map inside the pink "no go" pink zone near the top is the village of Beit Hanoun, where as you can see here, the IDF searched for rockets and tunnels and human shields by shelling the second floor pediatric ward of Beit Hanoun hospital :

“It’s now chaos, the military is shelling directly at us. There are two patients on the second floor and we think they’re okay, but we can’t move them easily as they’re bed-bound. I’m bleeding from a head wound and there’s another person injured. People are very frightened.”

IDF shells also searched inside an ambulance and a paramedic; neither survived.

This same approach didn't really work out well for the entire border town of Shejaiya either, as people return today during the ceasefire to collect what they can and bodies are pulled from the rubble  :

So what kicked off this collective punishment again, as the number of Palestinian dead reaches 1,000?

On June 12, three Israeli teens were kidnapped from an Israeli settlement.

That same day Israeli authorities received a 911 phone call from one of the boys that ended with gunfire and Palestinian security forces reported to Israel that two suspects had disappeared from Hebron within 24 hours of the abduction.

Mondoweiss  [italics mine]:

The supposition that the boys were dead was advanced when Israeli authorities found the car in which the abduction had taken place, with DNA evidence they’d been shot.

The information about the gunshots on that desperate last phone call was widely known in the media, but as we reported, the Israeli government issued a gag order against these facts being published. And over the last two-and-a-half weeks of June, the Israelis launched extensive raids across the West Bank, locking down Hebron, supposedly to find the boys. But the major focus of the raids was rooting out Hamas affiliates and arresting them. In fact, the purpose of the raids seemed to be to break up the recent unity government between Hamas and Fatah, which Israel has vigorously opposed. 

The boys’ bodies were found on June 30, in a shallow grave in the West Bank; and again the deaths were exploited to punish Hamas. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said : “Hamas is responsible… Hamas will pay.”

There were a lot of holes in the story. 

Sheera Frenkel was never convinced it was Hamas; neither was Max Blumenthal; and in response to the question a month ago as to whether Hamas leadership or some rogue cell was to blame, an IDF source responded : "I don't think that we know enough to say anything conclusively as of yet." 

And that was because their main suspects were from the Qawasmeh clan, a family with a history of blowing up Hamas' attempts to come to terms with Israel.

Schlomi Eldar, Israel Pulse, June 26, 2014 : Accused kidnappers are rogue Hamas branch

"Each time Hamas had reached an understanding with Israel about a cease-fire, at least one member of the family has been responsible for planning or initiating a suicide attack, and any understandings with Israel, achieved after considerable effort, were suddenly laid waste. If there is a single family throughout the PA territories whose actions can be blamed for Israel’s assassination of the political leadership of Hamas, it is the Qawasmeh family of Hebron.

On Aug. 19, 2003, after a tahadiyeh was reached between Israel and all of the Palestinian factions, with the support of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, two suicide bombers blew themselves up on the No. 2 bus in Jerusalem. Some 23 Israelis were killed in the attack, including seven children. All of the passengers on the bus were on their way back from prayers at the Western Wall to mark the end of the Sabbath. Most of them were yeshiva students. The attack put an abrupt end to the tahadiyeh just 52 days after it was announced ... The Qawasmeh family planned and implemented the attack during a cease-fire, which was supposed to have ended the second intifada, a cease-fire that had the support of Yasser Arafat, then-PA chairman, his Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and, of course, Yassin, the leader of Hamas.

Possible that while both Hamas and Netanyahu have been driven to this most recent carnage by their more extreme and unhinged "affiliates", both are now hoping to gain an edge thereby.

So today we are all looking at this man : Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld and his 

tweets yesterday with BBC reporter Jon Donnison :

"Israeli police Mickey Rosenfeld tells me men who killed 3 Israeli teens definitely lone cell, Hamas affiliated but not operating under leadership."

Too late! Everyone has already eaten the yellowcake.

Operation Protective Edge Yellowcake has levelled cities and murdered over a thousand people to date over what they at least suspected as far back as June 12 had little to do with a PR campaign about Hamas kidnapping and killing the Israeli teens. 

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h/t Canadian Cynic for a better photo of Beit Hanoun hospital

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