Saudi airstrike kills 5 in humanitarian aid office. You must have missed the headlines.

Different building hit by Saudi airstrikes

From IBTimes:

Shelling from Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces hit an international humanitarian aid office in Yemen on Thursday, killing five Ethiopian refugees and wounding 10, a local official said. The news comes amid growing concern about the Saudi-led military offensive's impact on Yemen’s civilians and infrastructure.

If you want to know the up-to-date statistics of how many civilians were killed since Saudi Arabia started their airstrikes, good luck. You won't find a scorecard attached to every story about the fighting the way that reporters in Gaza loved to include in their stories.

Also unlike Gaza, when civilians are killed it is assumed that not all of them were killed by the Saudis, while in Gaza all of the people killed were assumed to be from Israeli fire, even though well over a thousand Hamas rockets fell in civilian areas.

In fact, while reporters flocked to cover the Gaza war, secure in the knowledge that Israel wouldn't bomb the areas where they stayed, no reporters are trying to sneak into Yemen to file first-person reports. With rare exceptions, reporters aren't even trying to do anything original in their reporting.

The Gaza reporters happily accepted the Hamas talking points as fact, but no one (outside of Iranian media) is viewing the Houthi version of the story from Yemen as having any legitimacy.

Another point that is roundly ignored by the media is that the Saudis are relying on US intelligence when they choose their targets. NGOs that eagerly asserted with no evidence that Israel was engaging in indiscriminate bombing in Gaza based on civilians being killed are not pointing their fingers at any failure of US intel.

The double standards are clear to anyone who cares to look. Which doesn't, of course, include the media.

Mother of accused Itamar murderer denies everything

Hamas' Palestine Times newspaper quotes the mother of one of the youths who were arrested for the Fogel family murders.

[The mother stated] that her son was asleep with his brothers at 9:30 PM, i.e., during the operation, and he is not linked to any political party or organization, and he is a student in high school who only travels between home and school.

She added: "My son was arrested, on April 4th, about two weeks ago, and when the families went to inquire of their status, one of the soldiers told me there we want to conclude the investigation of this crime, even if we have to fabricate the charge against any person from the village."

Yeah, that sounds believable.

Of course, it will be considered not only believable but gospel truth to the Mondoweiss crowd. Every other statement attributed to the IDF are lies, of course, but a mother of a murderer claiming that an IDF soldier freely admits that they arrested her son for no reason will be swallowed whole.

Galloway calls killing Bin Laden "illegitimate" (UPDATE: it was a hoax)

Last night I jokingly tweeted if Human Rights Watch would denounce the US killing Bin Laden because he was a civilian (he didn't wear fatigues, did he?)

I guess I got the human rights issue wrong.

Pro-Palestinian campaigner George Galloway has denounced the killing of the world's most wanted man as "illegitimate".

Speaking hours after President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been captured and killed in a US operation in Pakistan, the former Respect MP said it was always illegitimate to somebody in somebody else's country.

He added: "No state which carries out [extra judicial killings] can remotely be described as democratic."

President Obama said in his address that bin Laden had been responsible for thousands of deaths, but Mr Galloway denied this was justification for the US' actions.

He said: "We can't allow our foreign power to send out death squads to assassinate whoever they see fit. That must be illegitimate.

"They could have kidnapped him and taken him for trial, couldn't they. To murder someone in somebody else's country has to be...an absolutely illegal series of acts."

It will be interesting to see if other far left terror supporters start taking up this line of reasoning.

UPDATE: I had originally gotten this from TheJC (forgot to include the link) but they have corrected the story:

A hoax video has been posted on YouTube claiming that George Galloway described the death of Osama bin Laden as illegitimate.

The video, based on old footage about a different matter, was posted this morning and circulated around the internet and on Twitter.

A spokesman for the former MP said they were urgently contacting YouTube to have it removed and that the issue was in the hands of Mr Galloway’s lawyers.

Israel to give tax revenue to Jihadist Palestinian Authority

From UPI:

Israel, following the intervention of U.S. officials, will transfer about $89 million in tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority, Israeli officials said.

The unnamed officials said the funds would be transferred next week, Haaretz reported Monday.

On Sunday, senior U.S. officials sought clarification of Israel's plans to temporarily suspend the transfer of funds to the P.A.

The officials sought the clarification after Army Radio reported Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz had decided to halt the transfer of the tax revenues to the P.A. in response to the Fatah-Hamas unity, the newspaper said.

The American officials met with members of the Treasury Department and the prime minister's office to discuss the issue and demanded a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials to arrange the transfer, Haaretz said.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office denied a decision had been made to stop the transfer of funds, the newspaper said.

Israel should absolutely freeze handing money over to an entity that includes Hamas in its government, just as it did in the past.

It is more than troubling that the US is pressuring Israel to do otherwise.

In 2006, when Israel imposed a similar freeze, it was with the full knowledge and cooperation of the US (and probably the Quartet.) So what has changed?

A tweet from Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt exposes, in this case, how insanely anti-Israel some European diplomats are:

Worried by reports that Israel government will steal tax money from Palestinian Authority. Unacceptable.

He is calling a freeze on the funds, where they will not be touched, "stealing." One would expect that a diplomat would be more circumspect in his language, but sometimes hate trumps acting like an adult.

(h/t Marcus)

A small incident in Gaza

From PCHR:

At approximately 20:00 on Wednesday, 27 April 2011, dozens of Palestinian civilians, including women, spontaneously gathered in the Unknown Soldier Yard, in support for reconciliation efforts between Fatah and Hamas movements declared in the Egypti... At approximately 20:30, 4 police vehicles arrived at the area, and immediately many police officers, some of whom were wearing civilian clothes, stepped down. They violently beat, insulted and chased the participants. They also arrested 5 of the participants, including Mr. Jamal Farawana, a defender of prisoners’ rights, who was violently beaten, and Mr. Talal Abi Zarifa, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

And what was the spontaneous demonstration for?

To support the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah!