Dearborn's Jihadist Newspaper

I spoke too soon. The Press & Guide is back on duty as a mouthpiece for jihad. On Sunday a front-page article by Jason Carmel Davis offered exclusively one side of the Gaza situation, chockful of manifest untruths. Davis was reporting on last Tuesday's demonstration against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. No balance of quotations from the other side is offered.

Davis quotes Imad Hamad of the ADC calling the Israeli offensive a “true genocide.” He quotes Mohammad Ali Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, likening “what is going on in Gaza to the Holocaust.” (“Demonstrators call for end to bombing in Gaza”).

Davis even did some extra-credit honework and found more detractors who weren’t even at the "mass" rally, like the anti-Israel American Jews for a Just Peace, whom I guess he just likes because the group “strongly condemns the Israeli invasion of Gaza as a cruel and barbarous attack upon a captive civilian population.” He quotes this from their December 28th statement:

"Israel justifies its attack as a defensive response to Hamas rockets fired into Israel," the statement read. "While the firing of Hamas rockets into civilian areas is not a justifiable response, the reality is that those rocket attacks were provoked by Israel's own violation of the cease-fire in early November, before it expired, when Israel mounted a series of unprovoked attacks against Gaza that killed six Palestinians.

"As American Jews, we are compelled to oppose these violations of widely held and agreed upon rules of ethical conduct by Israel — and by the U.S., in complicity with it."

This is false. The rocket attacks did not commence in November 2008 in response to any actions by Israel, but have been continuous, with a slight slowing (but never stopping) during the ostensible “cease-fire” with Israel:

Between Israel’s disengagement from Gaza through last November 30, Palestinian forces fired 3,123 rockets into southern Israel, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs calculates. Since Hamas seized control in June 2007, Gazans have shot 1,685 rockets into Israel — 1,212 of them between January 1 and November 30, 2008. Hamas fired 177 missiles at Israel, even during a June 19-December 19, 2008 “state of calm.” Indeed, as President-Elect Barack Obama discovered on his visit to Israel this past July, rockets are Gaza’s chief export. ("Choosing Death Over Life").

Nor is it true that Israel launched an unprovoked attack into Gaza on November 4. The Palestinians killed were Hamas gunmen, and the attack was indeed provoked:

On November 4 the IDF carried out a military action close to the border security fence on the Gazan side to prevent an abduction planned by Hamas, which had dug a tunnel under the fence to that purpose. Seven Hamas terrorist operatives were killed during the action. In retaliation, Hamas and the other terrorist organizations attacked Israel with a massive barrage of rockets. Since then, 191 rockets and 138 mortar shells have been fired. The attacks have been continuous and some were carried out by weapons not previously used, such as 122mm standard Grad rockets and 120mm mortar shells. Hamas has been directly involved in the attacks in cooperation with the other terrorist organizations.

Then readers get Osama Siblani's view of things:

"We call on the current and the incoming American administrations to take immediate action to prevent any more deaths of innocent civilians, by starvation and by bombing," said Congress of Arab American Organizations Spokesman Osama Siblani.

Palestinian civilians that is. Siblani has no moral objection to the firing of rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.

Siblani uses his own newspaper to lie about the cause of the rocket fire: (“Hundreds protest Gaza bombardment in second local demonstration”):

“The source of the problem is the occupation of Gaza," he said. "They are defending themselves from 60 years of brutal occupation."

More lies. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Siblani knows this. He doesn’t mean Gaza has been occupied for 60 years, he means Israel has existed for 60 years, and that is what's intolerable to him.

This is from the Hamas Charter:

Article Eleven: The Strategy of Hamas: Palestine is an Islamic Waqf

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. . . .

Article Twelve: Hamas in Palestine, Its Views on Homeland and Nationalism

Hamas regards Nationalism (Wataniyya) as part and parcel of the religious faith. Nothing is loftier or deeper in Nationalism than waging Jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims. And this becomes an individual duty binding on every Muslim man and woman; a woman must go out and fight the enemy even without her husband’s authorization, and a slave without his masters’ permission.

Nor is there any confusion about who the enemy is: the “Zionists”:

The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).