http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10516

There is no shortage of claims about alleged Israeli human rights violations in Judea and Samaria, the so called ‘West Bank’.

Most of these claims originate from Palestinian sources and NGO’s and are part of a disinformation campaign that aims to delegitimize Israel.

This campaign of distortions, bias and, sometimes, outright lies is well documented by a host of bloggers and organizations – such as Honest Reporting and Camera.

Here’s a look at how that campaign works.

‘Dutch orchestra attacked’

At the end of July the Palestinian News Network published an article about a Dutch orchestra that was supposedly attacked by the IDF during a performance in the Palestinian village Kfar Qadum.

The PNN article was widely distributed among international media outlets.

However, a member of the orchestra wrote a detailed account about the actual events.

The orchestra was not playing, but participating in the weekly, often-violent demonstrations against an IDF checkpoint in the vicinity of the village, he said.

According to another account on the Palsolidarity website, a group of Arabs had approached the soldiers threateningly, who responded by firing teargas grenades.

The IDF, in response to our request for more information, said that the main missing piece in the accounts was that the Arabs started throwing stones at the soldiers, precipitating the whole incident.

So there was no performance and no peaceful demonstration.

‘Olive trees destroyed’

Another claim that originated from a Palestinian source, involved the alleged destruction of 200 olive trees in the village Al Walaja near Bethlehem.

JAI, the Joint Advocacy Initiative, published a report about Na’el Khalid, a Palestinian farmer who claimed that 200 olive trees were destroyed when Israeli authorities started building the security fence on part of his land.

JAI also reported that Khalid would lose his land to Givat Ya’el – a planned Jewish community adjacent to Al Walaja.

We asked the IDF to comment on this report and received the following answer:

“In accordance with Israeli Supreme Court rulings regarding the rerouting of Israel’s security fence, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) transplanted trees from Mr. Na’el Khalil’s property to an adjacent plot, ensuring that he was able to continue working his land.

The Israeli court authorities have previously denied several petitions seeking ownership of the land adjacent to the Palestinian village Al-Walajah by the Givat Ya’el community, a private building project in Judea”.

A field investigation in Al Walaja where we visited Na’el Whalid’s lands, proved the IDF right.

The photo accompanying this article was taken on August 9th and shows some of the Dutch funded olive trees on a plot adjacent to the fence which is still under construction.

Al Ahram and The Economist Bemoan Fate of Stone Throwers

Then there was an Economist article that was apparently based on a B’Tselem report and an article on the 972 website.

According to TheEconomist, Israel routinely arrests Palestinian minors at night, some as young as eleven, and shows no mercy when they stand trial.

The Economist also ‘quoted’ Israeli Eran Segal from Halamish, allegedly saying that “Israeli soldiers don’t maim enough Palestinians”.

Asked to comment, Segal denied he ever said a thing like that. In fact he had told The Economist:

“If the IDF would have taken the incidents more seriously and had acted in a different way the stone throwing would have been a thing of the past”.

The Egyptian paper Al Ahram outdid The Economist when it charged ‘Israel’s most aggressively racist government ever’ with ‘prosecuting and imprisoning Palestinian children at will on bogus charges such as throwing stones’.

In response, the Israeli Military Prosecutor’s Office stated that stone throwing is a criminal offense in Israel. Throwing stones can cause severe injuries and even – as has happened in the past – death.

Israeli law calls for the punishment of stone throwers, even if they are minors and regardless of their nationality or religio

However, contrary to what was written in The Economist’s article, there are almost no cases where Palestinian minors under the age of 14 have been convicted for stone throwing.

The Military Prosecutor’s Office also stressed that a special court for minors has been established (Military Juvenile Court) which is meant to take care of the defense of the rights of minors.

In addition, almost all suspects in the Juvenile Court are represented by counsel, which is contrary to the state of affairs in Israeli civil courts. Most of the trials take place within a rather short amount of time and minors, whose case has not been heard in a reasonable amount of time, are often released.

The IDF tries to arrest the suspect as soon as possible after an incident has taken place. If this proves impossible the military, for security reasons only, carries out arrests during night time. Minors are held in special wings of three prisons and their needs are met on an individual, case by case, basis.

So there is no prosecution and Imprisoning without due process but, rather, a legal procedure that takes in account the age of the suspect.

UNWRA also has an opinion

UNWRA spokesman Chris Gunnes spoke during an interview with Ma’an News Agency.

“Many displacements are taking place where settlements are expanding and with it we are seeing an upturn in vicious attacks by Jewish settlers. Palestinians are being thrown off their ancestral lands to make way for settlers”, Gunness told Ma’an.

This seems to suggest two things. First, that settlements are still expanding outside the municipal boundaries and second that Jews are replacing local Arabs.

However, since 2005 settlement expansion has only taken place within the existing zoning lines of municipal boundaries. No local Arabs have been thrown off lands and they are not ancestral lands to begin with, as a search of records will show in the cases where there is legal documentation of land ownership.

In fact Gunness may have meant Bedouins who are illegally camping. A COGAT official told us that the Bedouin increasingly tend to camp in the vicinity of settlements and are often paid to do so by pro-Palestinian NGO’s.

In the same Ma’an interview Gunness said:

“There is growing evidence that it (demolitions in Area C of Judea and Samaria) is destroying the very fabric of these communities and ultimately contributing to a demographic shift which is changing the ethnic make-up of the West Bank.”

However, only 3% of the Palestinian population lives in Area C – most of them Bedouins, who live mostly in tents and move from place to place.

UNWRA’s own census from 2007 shows an average population growth of the Arab population Judea and Samaria of 2,5 % per year.

But there is more. In an e-mail to Missing Peace, Gunnes wrote the following:

“127 people expelled in maale nikhmas – displaced for settlement in the last few weeks. Is that enough?

The 127 Palestinians expelled from Maaleh Michmas ‘displaced for settlement’ were in fact Bedouins who decided to leave, as UNWRA’s own press release states.

There is no evidence that Ma’aleh Michmas residents took their place.

However, according to a report by the pro-Palestinian organization International Solidarity Movement, 16 Bedouin were evicted in the Maaleh Michnas area at the end of July after they illegally camped within a closed military zone and after they had received eviction orders two years previously

UNWRA’s mandate is defined by the UN:

UNRWA’s contemporary mandate is to provide relief, human development and protection services to Palestine refugees and persons displaced by the 1967 hostilities in its fields of operation: Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. UNRWA’s mandate has been repeatedly renewed by the UN General Assembly. The current mandate runs till 30 June 2014.

What do the West Bank building issues and conflicts between Jews and Arabs have to do with providing humanitarian services to displaced persons?

Gunnes told us that UNWRA has a team of 12 investigators conducting research on settlement and building issues on a daily base, so a UN organization designed to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees is going after Israel’s building policies on the West Bank.

They might spend the time better by focusing more on the plight of the refugees and their descendants in, for example, Lebanon, where the Palestinians living in refugee camps still are without basic human rights. Pressuring the governments there might yield results.

It may be too late for Israel to repair the damage caused by the global disinformation campaign. That’s too bad because this is where many other campaigns like BDS and delegitimization start.

The Israeli government does not seem to grasp the severity of the situation and still doesn’t respond decisively to the endless flurry of distortions and outright false claims. ( Arutz Sheva tries to do just that with its limited resources and staff, ed.)

That’s too bad because this is where many other campaigns like BDS, and delegitimization start. Recently Arutz Sheva reported that the Yesha council has organized a course to train residents in making photo and video footage of incidents taking place in Judea and Samaria.

That’s nice, but to win this cognitive war against the Jewish state, the government of Israel should finally help establish a professional rapid response fact finding team that investigates claims like the ones discussed in this article.

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