ANSWERING THE PUZZLE OF GAZA

The Galloways, the Halpers and the Loewensteins believe that Hamas, the supposed elected government of the Palestinina people is a principled movement. Yvonne Green recently visited Gaza and viewed the handiwork of Hamas. She tells a different story - Puzzled in Gaza.

I'm a poet, an English Jew and a frequent visitor to Israel. Deeply disturbed by the reports of wanton slaughter and destruction during Operation Cast Lead, I felt I had to see for myself. I flew to Tel Aviv and on Wednesday, January 28, using my press card to cross the Erez checkpoint, I walked across the border into Gaza where I was met by my guide, a Palestinian journalist. He asked if I wanted to meet with Hamas officials. I explained that I'd come to bear witness to the damage and civilian suffering, not to talk politics.

What I saw was that there had been precision attacks made on all of Hamas' infrastructure. Does UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticize the surgical destruction of the explosives cache in the Imad Akhel Mosque, of the National Forces compound, of the Shi Jaya police station, of the Ministry of Prisoners? The Gazans I met weren't mourning the police state. Neither were they radicalized. As Hamas blackshirts menaced the street corners, I witnessed how passersby ignored them.

THERE WERE empty beds at Shifa Hospital and a threatening atmosphere. Hamas is reduced to wielding its unchallengeable authority from extensive air raid shelters which, together with the hospital, were built by Israel 30 years ago. Terrorized Gazans used doublespeak when they told me most of the alleged 5,500 wounded were being treated in Egypt and Jordan. They want it known that the figure is a lie, and showed me that the wounded weren't in Gaza. No evidence exists of their presence in foreign hospitals, or of how they might have gotten there.

And if the apologists for Hamas can't answer for its lies and the mistreatment of its own people, they certainly can't explain why a supposedly "principled" movement would threaten to murder the only Jew left in Gaza - GILAD SHALIT MAY SUFFER THE SAME FATE AS RON ARAD

The answer to Yvonne Green's puzzle could well be that given in today's Australian Newspaper by Nonie Darwish, who grew up in Gaza City and Cairo - PALESTINE VICTIM OF ARAB BETRAYAL.

This policy of forcing a Palestinian identity on these people for eternity and condemning them to a miserable life in a refugee camp was designed to perpetuate and exacerbate the Palestinian refugee crisis.

THE FIXERS

Honest Reporting highlights the insidious way in which Palestinian "fixers" have infiltrated the so-called "foreign press" in Israel with the aim of influencing and distorting the news from the region - Exposed: How Palestinian Fixers Manipulate their Media Bosses

While one refers to the "foreign press" in Israel, most employees are local Israelis or Palestinians who are hired for their language skills, access and local knowledge. Sometimes it isn't enough just to monitor only the news stories and critique the media. The hiring practices of the media organizations can also impact significantly on what news is reported and how decisions are made as to the information reaching Western audiences.

It isn't only the personal attitudes or potential bias of a journalist influencing the final article or television report. Other media professionals can also have a major bearing on the construction and direction of a story.

Palestinian translators and fixers may be necessary but those with a political agenda can be selective with the information they feed the journalist or, at worst, mistranslate the words of the interview subjects. Writing on the influence of Palestinian organizations on foreign news reporting, the JCPA's Dan Diker noted:

According to senior foreign news sources based in Jerusalem, the vast majority of Palestinian fixers - often close friends of Palestinian employees of Jerusalem-based foreign news agencies - are ideologically motivated by the Palestinian cause, and actively encourage journalists to report exclusively on the "evils" of the Israeli occupation, rather than on the lack of democratic freedoms or human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza.

ANTI-ZIONISM IS HATE

The Los Angeles Times ran two Op Ed articles on Zionism on 15 March 2009. One by Ben Ehrenreich entitled "ZIONISM IS THE PROBLEM" in which the writer opined that the "Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace". His tendentious argument smacks of ignorance of what really makes Israelis tick and is symptomatic of a line of thinking totally divorced from the reality of Israel's vibrant society that plagues the thinking of many of Israel's critics.

In the second Op Ed, Judea Pearl concludes that ANTI-ZIONISM IS HATE and puts forward a strong argument supporting his view that anti-Zionism is "more dangerous than anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East."

Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation -- a collective bonded by a common history -- and, accordingly, denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel.

Anti-Zionism earns its discriminatory character by denying the Jewish people what it grants to other historically bonded collectives (e.g. French, Spanish, Palestinians), namely, the right to nationhood, self-determination and legitimate coexistence with other indigenous claimants.

Anti-Semitism rejects Jews as equal members of the human race; anti-Zionism rejects Israel as an equal member in the family of nations.

FOOTNOTE: Not surpringly, Antony Loewenstein's blog highlights the Ehrenreich piece but completely ignores the Pearl article. When an observer attempted to place a comment on the blog bringing attention to the Pearl article, Loewenstein who wails at every opportunity about having his voice muzzled by the Jewish lobby, characteristically scrubbed the message in the moderation process.

Like most of his friends in the Israel basher war camp, the atheist Loewenstein, who claims to be Jewish but denies Jews the rights which other naturally have, continues to heap praise on Hamas and the Islamic Jihadistas who preach the total destruction of Israel and genocide against Jews. After you've made an attempt to figure thaat one out, you will see why he and his ilk remain perfect examples of the ill wind the Jewish people are facing today.

HARRY POTTER - A PROUD MEMBER OF THE JEWISH LOBBY

Who would have thought?

Harry Potter - a member of the international Zionist conspiracy and a member of the Jewish lobby.

Free Hogwarts!

Rudd must shun UN anti-Semitism

Nick Dyrenfurth in today's Australian makes a good case as to why Australia should shun the Durban hate circus.

The Oz Cut and Paste section also quotes a report from the weekend by Jason Koutsoukis in the Fairfax papers on the torture of Palestinians that mostly goes unreported:

In 2007, the death toll of Palestinians killed by Fatah or Hamas exceeded for the first time the number of Palestinians killed in clashes with the Israeli occupation forces," said Hamdi Shaqqura from the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. According to figures cited by Shaqqura, 394 Palestinians were killed in clashes with the Israeli military and security forces in 2007, but at least 500 were killed by forces aligned with either Fatah or Hamas. Shaqqura said, "We are talking mostly about barbaric acts of revenge and retaliation. Human rights abuses are witnessed every day here.

Ironically, Fairfax which itself is very good at ensuring that Hamas abuses against Israelis goes unreported, is more open when it comes to Palestinian on Palestinian deaths. A pity that we heard nothing from the Age's Jerusalem Bureau chief when Hamas TV used Farfur the Mouse and a succeeding menagerie of animals and insects to inspire Palestinian kiddies to devote their lives to murdering Jews.

Cut and Paste also cites Jonathan Schanzer in the The Jerusalem Post, March 12, on Jimmy Carter's latest book, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land:

Carter wrongly states that Hamas seeks to "remove Israel from the Holy Land using violence if necessary". Actually, if Carter had bothered to read the Hamas charter, he would know that Hamas sees jihad as an imperative to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic Palestine. For Hamas there is no "if necessary". War with Israel is its raison d'etre.

Carter, who visited the Hamas terrorist organisation against the expressed wishes of the State Department, also asserts that Hamas accepts Fatah faction leader Mahmoud Abbas as "spokesman for all Palestinians". Carter somehow missed the civil war raging between Hamas and Fatah. Indeed, Hamas executed a brutally violent coup against Abbas's faction in the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Like many Hamas apologists (and a good few have been referred to on the Blank Pages in the past few) Carter can't even lie straight in bed.

CRIKEY'S DELUSIONAL HYPOCRITE

They're a funny lot over at Crikey, the internet news outlet that chortles on about telling you "what they won't". You can tell that by their choice of person to write an article about the decision by the Australian Jewish News to refuse to accept an advertisement about Israel bashing propagandist Professor Jeff Halper's lecture tour of Australia. Even if you didn't expect a neutral observer to report on the facts, the choice of Antony Loewenstein would have come as a surprise (Loewenstein's IAJV sidekick Dr Peter Slezak is actually hosting one of Halper's lectures at UNSW later this month). The result, of course, was a lamentable effort drowning in its own sheer stupidity - The peace activist the Jewish News rejects.

The joke however, is on Crikey and the pathetic Loewenstein whose ignorance about Israel was put on exhibition a few years ago when he wrote a poorly researched book "My Israel Question" which was in fact nothing more than a lamentable encyclopaedia of ignorance about the Israel/Arab conflict. I could write a book on the errors contained in that dreary tome but just one example is the map of Israel which portrays the Galilee region of northern Israel as part of Lebanon (possibly wishful thinking on Loewenstein's and sloppy editing by Melbourne University Press and Louise Adler but a barrel of laughs, especially if you hail from that part of the world).

Still, we don't expect much from someone who once called Israeli political leader and Prime Ministerial hopeful Tzipi Livni as a "he" when any Jew worth their salt would know Tzipi was definitely a "she".

But back to Antony's Crikey piece. Unsurprisingly, his gripe is all about censorship but he doesn't appear particularly concerned about all forms of censorship - it's only when those who support Israel exercise their right to exclude detractors including those who are simply out and out charlatans like Halper.

But you won’t be reading about his Sydney events in the Australian Jewish News (AJN). The publisher has refused to run ads by Jews Against the Occupation (JAO) that simply inform people of Halper’s schedule. The group was given no reason for the decision except that the publisher had instructed the paper not to allow the ads to appear. Crikey has seen the ad and it only contains titles and locations of the lectures and contact phone numbers.

...

This latest example of censorship follows a long history of the mainstream Jewish establishment being fearful over honestly debating Israel/Palestine (something we’ve seen over the last days in the US over the forced resignation of Israel critic Charles W Freeman from the post of Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Loewenstein was delighted that the Sydney Morning Herald agreed with him - With friends like these (see the second editorial which is replete with hypocrisy given this is a Fairfax newspaper - and on Chas Freeman see Melanie Phillips for the real reasons why the execrable Freeman doesn't occupy any high office at this time)

Loewenstein doesn't have a problem with the censorship applied by the publisher of the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald when it routinely omits to mention the excesses of Hamas and Hizbullah as it has done over the years or when it simply refuses to cover stories debunking earlier erroneous reports in its publications such as the false allegations of Israeli war crimes as part of the Gaza School scandal. That form of censorship is kosher with Loewenstein.

But if you wanted an insight into Loewenstein's sick pathology, take this disturbingly inane piece of drivel with which he concluded his rant -

... the AJN ran a piece last week by novelist Alan Gold, arguing against the UN’s upcoming anti-racism conference, Durban II: "And now that the storm clouds are gathering over Geneva, we can only look on in horror, and feel as our parents or grandparents must have felt in 1933."

Memo to the AJN: Hitler died in 1945.

The problem for Crikey is that when it selects someone to prattle on about the subject of censorship, then it isn't wise to settle on a Loewenstein who has a penchant for censorship himself. He is well known for often censoring comments made on his own blog with which he does not agree.

This morning, a colleague posted a comment on his blog on the subject Jews insulate themselves from reality. He drew attention to the fact that while he agreed that people should have the opportunity to hear what Halper had to say, they equally "deserved to know that he has been accused of pushing a deceptive and misleading agenda and distorting the truth." He then posted the following four references from Camera to support that very point:

JEFF HALPER DISTORTS INTERNATIONAL LAW

SABEEL’S RHETORIC QUESTIONED BY JEWISH PEACE ACTIVISTS

THE PROFESSOR'S TRUTH DEMOLITION

TRUTH DEMOLITION IN AN ANTI-ISRAEL ROAD SHOW

So Halper is not only a liar but he has often invoked the repugnant blood libel of Israelis-as-Nazis.

During the Sabeel conference at Old South Church in October, Halper said that while the Israeli public supports a two-state solution, successive Israeli governments have misled the Israeli public into thinking there is no political solution and no one to negotiate with on the Palestinian side of the conflict.

They don’t believe that peace is possible. The Israeli government has done the same thing that the Bush Administration is trying to do – mystify the conflict, to depoliticize it so that there’s no solution – the problem is them. [Applause.] And if the problem is them, then of course to put it in very harsh terms then of course the only solution is the Final Solution. [Emphasis added.]

The media of course has the right to print (or not to print) whatever it chooses. In this case, the publisher of the Australian Jewish News exercised his right not to accept an advertisement for a newspaper whose readership is made up largely of Holocaust survivors and their descendants who would find Halper's lies, misrepresentations and false connection of Israel with Nazism as totally repugnant.

Naturally, Loewenstein who has lately thrown in his lot with the Holocaust minimisers wouldn't understand this. His hypocrisy in censoring views presented as comment on his own website and then criticising others for it is breathtaking and demonstrates why he has become an object of disdain among the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community. Even some of his former friends who signed onto his IAJV statement think he's a lost cause.

As for Crikey, the joke's on you blokes. By selecting Loewenstein, you ensured that any opposing view on the matter would be ... well, er censored.

Time to invoke Shylock in defence of Israel

Eric Lee is the editor of LabourStart. His brilliant piece - Time to invoke Shylock in defence of Israel can be found in the Jewish Chronicle and is recommended reading at a time when the likes of Israel bashing propagandists such as Jeff Halper tour this country with agendas that even include helping the most rabid members of his pro Palestinian audiences avoid being labelled antiSemites by toning down their racist language while keeping to the same dreadful message of hatred.

The questioner will speak softly. Their face will show real concern, even pain. And what you 'll hear is not an accusation, but a real question, because the person is genuinely confused.

They will say something like this: I've been watching the scenes from Gaza on TV. I 've seen small children standing in front of the ruins of their homes. I 've seen parents weeping over the loss of their children. And I cannot understand how you can see all this and still support Israel.

Obviously when these words come from some propagandist for Hamas they are designed to deceive. But sometimes its a genuine question and deserves a fair answer. When it happens, I find the whole room full of people disappears before my eyes and I focus directly on the person who spoke.

I pause for a moment, not for effect, but to think through what is probably the most important answer I will have to give in an evening full of difficult questions and more difficult answers.

What I need to explain to this person is not so much the tactics and strategy of the Israeli army, or the history of the conflict — I have other chances to do this — but something far more difficult, something that is at the heart of the problem. I need to convince them, first and foremost, that we Jews are actually human.

Eric Lee shows how.

Failed bridge builder

Philip Mendes tells on the ABC site of his attempts to build bridges and how doctrinaire anti Zionists whose aim is to put an end to the Jewish State rather than achieve peace frustrated those efforts - Failed bridge building

Mendes' story is yet another instance of why the words "peace activist" simply do not apply to the likes of John Docker, Ned Curthoys and visiting anti Israel hatemonger Jeff Halper.

What it's all about

Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit clearly demonstrates that it's not only Israel and some western countries that concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions - Egypt FM: Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran cooperate to provoke conflict.

HAMAS WINDFALL (AND THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE TO SAY THANKS)

Dr. writes in the Huffington Post that the bail out by world donors by giving $5.2 billion in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) will "do little to bring real change in the condition of the Palestinian refugees or security in the Middle East. Instead of rebuilding the 'shelters' in the refugee camps as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has done for decades, this huge sum of money should go to build new communities, industry and a civilian infrastructure for a viable Palestinian state," - Misery Pays

FAY"S MORAL CONFUSION

Yesterday's Age carried a letter written by Fay Waddington agreeing with calls for a boycott of Israel

A moral platform

WHAT a great story about our Prime Minister's activist nephew and his artwork condemning Veolia for its involvement in building a light rail system in Jerusalem (The Sunday Age, 8/3).

He is certainly on the right track, if you pardon the pun. That company has already lost a large contract in Sweden due to public outcry over the same issue. May it be the first of many.

There is a growing worldwide campaign to boycott, divest and sanction any individual or company that deals with Israel while it continues to build on land stolen from Palestinians. Get on board.

Fay Waddington, Wooloowin, Qld

This immoral letter (replete with the usual tripe about "land stolen from Palestinians" received this excellent response in today's edition:

It should not be a difficult choice at all

SADLY one is no longer shocked by anti-Israel statements and actions or demands, such as that of Fay Waddington's for a campaign of boycotts and sanctions again Israel (Letters, 9/3). Anti-Zionism has become so widespread and politically correct and it is often so divorced from political and historic reality that one suspects that it masks even more dangerous and more ancient hatreds.

Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East. If Waddington wishes to sheet home blame for the recent conflict in Gaza, she would be better to direct her ire towards Hamas, a violent terrorist organisation that has made no secret of its commitment to destroy Israel.

So we have to ask, should we boycott Israel, a legitimate democratic state, in favour of a Taliban-style terrorist organisation? One would hope that the answer is obvious.

Dr Bill Anderson, Surrey Hills

GEORGE GALLOWAY STONED

Everybody must get stoned. So goes the song and art imitated life this week when a caravan of antisemites including British MP George Galloway Jew hating Muslim convert Yvonne Ridley went through El-Arish, a small town around 28 miles from the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, they got the treatment from the locals - GEORGE GALLOWAY STONED IN EGYPT.

"It's an absolute disgrace," Ridley complained. She who has no problem when her friends in Palestine throw rocks and stones at Jews.

"Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans. Several people in the convoy were injured in the attack."

Fancy that, "anti-Hamas slogans". Slogans against a movement that openly advocates genocide against the Jewish people.

"The trip also ran into controversy when it was disclosed last month that three men, who police sources alleged were preparing to use the convoy as cover to leave the country and carry out terror attacks abroad, were arrested by police."

No surprise there.

Of course, the Egyptian border crossing to which this convoy was headed is closed most of the time but one wonders why Hamas and friends don't fire rockets in the direction of Egyptian towns as it does to the Iraelis.

The answer is that like the fuglies in the convoy, they're a bunch of common garden variety racists.

NEW CRIMES

In January, Jew haters were permitted to freely march through Melbourne's streets bearing banners with swastickas and chanting "gas the Jews" in front of snoozing cops and a media which, like Sargeant Schulz, knew nothing and reported nothing about them.

The scene was duplicated in cities around the western world where rampaging mobs damaged property and intimidated bystanders ostensibly in the cause of peace but in reality in support of a Hamas which bit off more than it could chew by taking on the Israelis. The baying crowds cared naught for the fact that their demonstration was in aid of a fascist bunch of thugs and that the "facts" used to support their attacks on the Jewish state were nothing more than propaganda and outright lies spread by loyal and obedient Palestinian "reporters", many in the employ of Hamas, aided and abetted by sympathetic UN apparatchiks whose dissembling in favour of terrorists who used innocent Gazans as human shields was nothing short of shameful.

Will the world now put an end to this farce and take steps to put an end to the one of its oldest and most destructive hatreds? Not if the build up to Durban II with its antisemitic first draft is any indication and certainly not if the UN moves to single out as criminal the criticism of Muslims are ratified.

I commend the following for reading on these two subjects which might appear unrelated but are, in fact, part of the same problem:

ANTI-SEMITISM IS NOW A CREATURE OF THE LEFT

PUSH TO CRIMINALISE CRITICISM OF ISLAM

MONEY FOR GAZA

Yaakov Kirschen of Dry Bones has nailed it with this masterpiece "MONEY FOR GAZA".

I suspect however, that the donors know what they're doing and where their money is going and people who should know agree that there is no way to be certain that aid is being used as intended.

"Please write this: no one can give donors that assurance. Why? Because the system is in a state of total disrepair." - Palestinian minister admits aid millions lost.

These are the words of Fatah's Salam Fayyad, Palestine Authority PM who has just resigned in order to appease Hamas.

THE SCIENCE OF POGROMS

The Palestinian propaganda machine has infiltrated many well meaning organisations that once served useful purposes but are swiftly becoming meaningless. Its takeover of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International has turned each of these former human rights organisations into a sham. We know now of the farces called Durban I and Durban II that were supposed to deal with the serious problem of racism the world over and which became a vehicle to single out one people and to hide abuses the world over.

The machine has also taken over and smothered scientific organisations and is using them to spread lies against Israel's defensive war against terror. Melanie Phillips explains how in Science Pogrom Week.

Of course, the Melbourne Age couldn't resist helping cause with a story on claims in Lancet that Palestinian kids are suffering because of the actions of the Israelis. Never mind the fact that under the Israeli occupation, infant mortality rates improved and that the real problems started when Arafat unleashed an intifada in response to Israeli efforts to end the said occupation and never mind that Hamas uses these children as human shields while carrying out terrorist activities including attacks on Israeli schools and kindergartens.

Naturally, there are no concerns from the Age or Lancet about those children who have been traumatised for years by indiscriminate rocket fire from Palestinian terrorists.

THE BLUR OF SLOGANS

The narrative of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours has, in recent years, been hijacked by evil people who distort events and facts and seek to paint the Jewish State as some sort of monster "apartheid state".

When next you hear or read of such accusations, think of this piece from an Israeli Arab, Ishmael Khaldi, who is deputy consul general of Israel for the Pacific Northwest - LOST IN THE BLUR OF SLOGANS.

The writer responds to those who use the emotion charged word "Apartheid" in connection with Israel -

* You are part of the problem, not part of the solution

* You deny Israel the fundamental right of every society to defend itself

* Your criticism is willfully hypocritical

* You are betraying the moderate Muslims and Jews who are working to achieve peace.

Naturally, the apartheid narrative completely ignores the racism of Israel's neighbourning states and the Palestine Authority but you can't expect much from hypocrites who find themselves lost in the blur of their own rhetoric and who need to hide their ignorance behind pitiful slogans.

IDIOT OF THE WEEK

A letter in the Australian Newspaper from Judy Bamberger of O'Connor, ACT

I HAVE just returned from three fabulous weeks training and consulting in Pakistan. I was welcomed and embraced by all, looked after and treated royally my entire visit.

It’s the Pakistani people who suffer most from these horrific attacks. They die; they’re wounded. They lose face internationally. Our governments encourage us to be afraid and “reconsider travel”; we stay away, hurting Pakistan’s economy. We lose an opportunity to dispel myths and fears—our own, theirs. And we let the criminal, fanatical lunatics win.

I return to Pakistan for work in several months. I look forward to it with all my heart.

Judy Bamberger
O’Connor, ACT

This is a familiar story from a signatory to the declaration of Independent Australian Jewish Voices only this time the background scenery is different. This from one who has written many letters in past years in various Australian newspapers about the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours and who always focuses on perceived wrongs by the Israelis and routinely ignores crimes against humanity committed by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists against their own people and against Israelis. Who, in respect of that conflict, is happy to let the criminal, fanatical lunatics win.

WE NEED TO TALK TO THEM

Just as soon as we discover the identity of those behind the slaughter in Lahore, we need to have a dialogue with them.

We need to discover the root causes of their grievances and we need to do something to alleviate them so that we can understand why they wanted to murder the entire Sri Lankan cricket team.

We have to shower them with money. Billions of dollars to convince them not to attack innocent sportspersons or tourists or, in the case of Mumbai, a Jew or two.

We need to talk to them.

DURBAN'S END

The Obama administration has decided not to attend the Durban Review Conference (aka antiJewish hatefest) scheduled to open in Geneva on April 21.

Gerald Steinberg who is executive director of NGO Monitor and chairs the Political Science Department at Bar-Ilan University argues that this is a "very significant step toward ending the obsessive 'soft-power attacks' against Israel and restoring the moral foundations of human rights." - The limits of engagement.

The Americans clearly understand that non-participation in this useless programme which has been hijacked by the racists themselves, is the "only moral option".

It is to be hoped that Australia and freedom loving nations around the world follow suit.

THE NECESSARY WAR AGAINST HAMAS

The revered Israeli author A.B Yehoshua has been a leading voice for over 25 years in Israel's 'Peace Now' movement, and the Israeli centre-left. He is admired internationally for expressing the 'conscience' of Israel, together with Amos Oz and David Grossman. His views on Israel's war against Hamas are of high interest and here is what he said in an interview published in the Jerusalem Report magazine on 16 February 2009 (see www.jrep.com) - [thanks to Beyond Images]

In the interview he criticises Israel for using excessive firepower. But he also says the following:

On the moral responsibility to defend Israeli citizens ...

This war was necessary. A million Israeli people can't be under the constant threat of rocket fire. It was a type of insanity, an impossible situation that was paralysing Israel. I believe any other country would have acted the same way we did out of a moral responsibility to defend its people from rocket fire...

On Hamas sabotage of the opportunity presented by Israel's pullout from Gaza ...

When Israel left Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians could have built, developed, and lived in peace. Then Israelis might have said "It's worth leaving Judea and Samaria ['the West Bank'] even without an agreement if this is the scenario we can expect". But what did Hamas do? With their rocket fire, they sabotaged everything for their brothers in the West Bank...

On Hamas torpedoing Israeli territorial withdrawals from the West Bank ...

Hamas have torpedoed peace. Hamas has caused Israelis to think two or three times about returning the West Bank...