What I Saw During Operation Pillar of Defense

By Nira Lee

from the American Thinker

Four years ago, watching the coverage of Operation Cast Lead from the comfort of my dorm in Arizona, I was a conflicted college student. As supportive as I was of Israel, I still found it painful any time I heard about civilian casualties in Gaza. 

But what I saw portrayed in the media didn't add up: on the one hand I knew that the IDF was engaged in careful efforts to prevent civilian casualties, despite Hamas's strategy of fighting from amongst its own civilian population. Yet the media made it seem like the IDF was actively targeting civilians.

Back then, I understood Israel's efforts at protecting civilians as a something akin to a talking point -- I had no personal involvement in the conflict. Yet I had no idea how true it is until I myself participated in last week's Operation "Pillar of Defense" as an officer in the IDF.

When I moved to Israel and enlisted, I joined a unit called the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which is devoted to civilian and humanitarian issues. 

As an International Liaison Officer in the Gaza office, my job primarily entails coordinating transfers of goods, aid, and delegations into Gaza. I work closely with representatives of the international community, and although our perspectives may differ, we maintain relationships of mutual respect born of a common goal; I am here to help them succeed in their work improving the quality of life in Gaza.

While the day-to-day work is challenging in Gaza, I learned over the past ten days that the true test comes with crisis. At exactly the point where most militaries would use the heat of war to throw out the rulebook, we worked harder than ever to provide assistance wherever and whenever possible. 

The eight days of Operation "Pillar of Defense" have been some of the hardest I have ever known physically and emotionally. The college student from Arizona would never have thought it possible to work 20 hours a day, fueled only by adrenaline and longing for just an hour of sleep on a shelter floor – wearing the same filthy uniform because changing, much less showering, wouldn't allow me to get to a shelter in time when the next rocket barrage hit. And no, wearing the green uniform does not mean that you aren't afraid when the sirens sound.

Had you told me four years ago that there were IDF officers who stayed up all night under a hail of rockets, brainstorming ways to import medical supplies and food to the people of Gaza, I am not sure I would have believed you. But I can tell you it is true because I did it every night. 

What amazed me the most was the singular sense of purpose that drove everyone from the base commander to the lowest ranking soldier. We were all focused completely on our mission: to help our forces accomplish their goals without causing unnecessary harm to civilian lives or infrastructure. 

It is harder to explain the emotional roller-coaster – how proud and relieved I felt every time a truck I coordinated entered Gaza, and how enraging it was when we had to shut down the crossing into Gaza after Hamas repeatedly targeted it. Or how invigorating it was help evacuate two injured Palestinians from the border area, only to be informed minutes later that a terrorist had detonated a bomb on a bus near my apartment in Tel Aviv.

So after all that I see and do, nothing frustrates me more than the numbers game that is played in the media. The world talks about "disproportionate" numbers of casualties as the measure of what is right and wrong – as if not enough Israelis were killed by Hamas for the IDF to have the right to protect its own civilians from endless rocket attacks.

In my position, I see the surgical airstrikes, and spend many hours with the UN, ICRC, and NGO officers reviewing maps to help identify, and avoid, striking civilian sites. One of our pilots who saw a rocket aimed at Israel aborted his mission when he saw children nearby – putting his own civilians at risk to save Gazans. 

At the end of the day, what these "disproportionate numbers" show is how we in Israel protect our children with elaborate shelters and missile defense systems, whereas the terror groups in Gaza hide behind their children, using them as human shields in order to win a cynical media war.

What's really behind the headlines and that picture on the front page? Every day, I coordinate goods with a young Gazan woman who works for an international aid organization. Last month we forged a bond when we had to run for cover together when Hamas targeted Kerem Shalom Border Crossing – attacking the very aid provided to its own people.

During the eight days of Operation "Pillar of Defense," not one day passed without me phoning my Palestinian colleague, just to check in. "Are you okay?" I would ask.

"I heard they fired at your base. Please stay safe," she would reply.

And every night I made her promise to call me if she needed anything. These are the things that the media fails to show the world, just as they underplay how Hamas deliberately endangers civilians on both sides of the border – by firing indiscriminately at Israel from Gaza neighborhoods.

Maybe stories such as these make for less exciting headlines, but if they received more attention there would perhaps be more moral clarity, and thus more peace in the Middle East.

A gold Porsche and luxury hotels in the world's largest "open air prison"

Anti-Israel activists like to accuse Israel of making Gaza into an “open-air prison.” They don't mention – or maybe don't even know – that Gaza also has a border with Egypt. So to the extent that Gazans are hemmed in, it's thanks to the Egyptians as much as to the Israelis. 

But while Egypt does control what travels into Gaza above ground, below ground there's an extensive network of smuggling tunnels through which smugglers move anything you can imagine. These smuggling tunnels have made many Gazans rich, not least the leaders of Hamas, who heavily tax the tunnel trade. 

The Economist reports:

Hamas leaders seem increasingly content to enjoy the fruits of splendid isolation. The parliamentary car park, full of rickety bangers when Hamas first took office, now gleams with flash new models hauled through the tunnels under the Egyptian border. Two Hummer H3s and a golden Porsche were recently spotted cruising the streets.

Ministers and members of parliament seem unbothered by the lack of accountability as well as reports of money-laundering. “We're hunted and targeted,” explains a self-pitying MP on Hamas's parliamentary ethics committee, who recently spent $28,000 on a new car with the help of a $12,000 loan from the movement.

Besides smuggling Hummers and gold Porsches through the tunnels, the enterprising smugglers of Gaza have also brought in enough materials to support a building boom in the “open-air prison” of Gaza – including the construction of several luxury hotels. Journalists reporting on the dire living conditions in Gaza favour the Gaza Grand Palace Hotel.

The Grand Palace Hotel in Gaza

They can also stay in the al Deira, “an architectural and artistic gem located on the sands of the Gaza coast.  Built in a traditional style featuring graceful arches, vaulted and domed ceilings, hand crafted furniture and open interior spaces, the Al Deira brings to mind a contemporary palace overlooking  blue Mediterranean waters." Take a photo tour here.

The restaurant patio at Al Deira

 But the most luxurious hotel in Gaza is probably the al-Mashtal Hotel, where one night in the Royal Suite will put you back $880 – in U.S. dollars, of course. The jihadists may hate Americans, but they love their dollars.

Terrorist chilling by the pool at al-Mashtal

During a war with Israel, these hotels are among the safest places in Gaza – after all Israel won't bomb a hotel that’s full of journalist and officials from well-financed NGOs. Still, the luxury hotel market isn’t doing well in Gaza. The 222-room al-Mashtal was recently reported to have only ten rooms occupied. Apparently, starting wars with Israel hasn’t been good for attracting upscale tourists. 

On the other hand, when Israel freed hundreds of terrorists in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Hamas put 105 of them up at the al-Mashtal as a reward for their crimes against humanity.

The United Church heeds the call of antisemites

United Church minister Karin Brothers at al Quds Day rally in Toronto. 

Inspired by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, antisemites the world over 
gather on al Quds Day to protest the presence of Jews in Jerusalem. More here.

The United Church of Canada has formally voted to align itself with the antisemites. In a historic vote on August 17, the church passed a motion calling for a boycott of goods produced by Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

This is a betrayal of the United Church’s claims to friendship with the Jewish people and a betrayal of its own membership, 78% of whom want the church to stay out of the issue or remain strictly neutral (see here).

The UCC is not boycotting Syria where the government is slaughtering its own citizens by the thousands, or North Korea where the government starves its own people, or any of the dozens of murderous tyrannies around the globe. Only Israel. Because, says the UCC, Israel is a democracy (more on this rationalization here) and because the church’s partners in the Middle East have called for a boycott.

But these partners are nothing but a rogues’ gallery of Israel-haters and antisemites.

First, there’s the Middle East Council of Churches. Like every one of the United Church’s Middle East partners, the MECC seeks the dissolution of Israel. The MECC insists on the so-called “right of return,” which means that Israel must open its borders to the five million descendants of Palestinians originally displaced by Arab wars against Israel.

In other words, the MECC’s prerequisite for peace is to replace Israel with a majority Palestinian state.

On closer inspection, the MECC looks even worse. The Syrian Orthodox Church is represented on the MECC’s executive council by George Saliba, the Archbishop of Mount Lebanon and an open Jew-hater.

According to Saliba (here), Jews incite unrest in the Arab world in accordance with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – an infamous antisemitic tract much admired by Hitler that describes how Jews supposedly conspire to rule the world.

Next, there’s Greek Orthodox Archbishop Theodosios Atallah Hanna, one of the authors of the Palestine Kairos Document, which the UCC vigorously promotes in Canada (more here).

In the Kairos Document, Hanna and the other authors talk about the need to end the occupation, but for Hanna all of Israel is occupied Palestine. Speaking at a Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem in 2003, Hanna said:

“Palestine is from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river. … We emphatically refuse any concession on [even] a grain of the land of our precious homeland…. The Zionist Jews…should go somewhere else in the world to establish their state and their false entity… They must leave their homes.”

Nor is Hanna shy about the use of violence. In the same sermon, Hanna said: "We do not believe in so-called 'peace with Israel' because peace cannot be made with Satan… The Palestinians' rights will be restored only by resistance. What was taken by force will be restored only by force… We encourage our youth to participate in the resistance, to carry out martyrdom attacks.” (See here.)

Given Hanna’s enthusiasm for violence, it’s no surprise that in the Palestinian Kairos Document, which the United Church has so enthusiastically embraced, Hanna and the other authors defend terrorism as “legal resistance.” (Much more about Archbishop Hanna here.)

Pastor Naim Ateek of the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem is another United Church partner and co-author of the Kairos Document. Statements issued from the Sabeel Center are more two-faced on the subject of violence.

On the one hand, Sabeel always calls for non-violent resistance, and on the other hand, praises the violence of others. So for example, Sabeel lauds the Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli towns as “a blow to the arrogance and hubris of the Israeli government.”

Although these rockets are directed exclusively against civilian targets, Sabeel insists this is not terrorism, and though their rockets strike at homes, schools and hospitals, Sabeel says the Hamas killers “are seeking justice and freedom.”

And as in the Kairos document, Ateek insists that “international law gives them the right to resist and to defend themselves.” He doesn’t explain how shooting rockets at innocent civilians can possibly be described as “defence.”

Similarly, in an essay on suicide bombing, Ateek condemns the practice, but does so while heaping praise on the bombers.

According to Ateek, these “healthy, beautiful and intelligent young men and women” murder Jews in a “noble” cause because the world “has not heard their anguished cry for justice.”

Ateek doesn’t mention that Hamas has been responsible for most of the terrorism and that Hamas regularly explains that its purpose is to destroy Israel.

It has nothing to do with justice. On the contrary, Hamas’s founding charter looks forward to the day when the very trees of the land will call out, “There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.”

Ateek is also notorious for reviving Christian antisemitism. He favours the image of Jews as Christ-killers, and his sermons feature lines such as: “In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians all around him.”

Are Jews really so evil? Do we crucify thousands of innocents? Do we nail up Jesus every year at Easter time? For two millennia such lies were used to justify persecuting Jews. Ateek is doing his best to bring that all back.

Such are the United Church of Canada’s partners in the Middle East. The United Church claims it rejects antisemitism, claims it seeks peace, claims and it doesn’t consider the Jewish people its enemy. 

I doubt they're fooling anyone but themselves.

This piece was previously published in the Jewish Tribune in Canada and at Harry's Place in Britain. 

The archbishop of antizionism praises Syria; endorses terrorism and ethnic cleansing against Israel

Archbishop Theodosios Atallah Hanna has long been an embarrassment to the Greek Orthodox Church. Back in 2002, Irineos I, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, fired Hanna from his post as spokesman for supporting terrorism (see here) and wrote a letter to the Israeli president assuring him that Hanna doesn’t represent the Orthodox Church.

But western churches that imagine they’re progressive don’t have so much of a problem with Hanna – he’s one of the authors of the Palestine Kairos Document, which calls for a boycott against Israel and which has been warmly embraced by liberal churches.

In Canada, for example, the United Church has been urging its members to study the Karios Document and recently passed a motion calling for a boycott against Israeli settlements. (More here & here.)

But while Archbishop Hanna wants the world to boycott the Zionist entity, he doesn’t call for a boycott against Syria. On the contrary, he’s a big supporter of the Assad regime.

According to news reports, Assad is busily killing his own people by the thousands. According to Hanna, the Syrian revolt against their brutal dictator is a “heinous conspiracy,” a “US-Zionist scheme.”

Hanna is straightforward in explaining his support for the murderous Assad regime: “Syrian is the only resistant country in the region which stands by the Palestinian cause,” Hanna told the Syrian Arab News Agency.

Syria has indeed long been a strong supporter of the most murderous terrorist groups, providing funding, safe haven, and training. No wonder Hanna is upset by the prospect of the Syrian people overthrowing this regime.

And after all, Assad is a man after Hanna’s own heart: they’re both big believers in the use of violence.  Speaking at a Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem in 2003, Hanna said:

"We do not believe in so-called 'peace with Israel' because peace cannot be made with Satan… The Palestinians' rights will be restored only by resistance. What was taken by force will be restored only by force… We encourage our youth to participate in the resistance, to carry out martyrdom attacks.”

And Hanna is perfectly clear about his goals:

“Palestine is from the sea to the river [i.e., from the Mediterranean Sea to Jordan River – the entire land of Israel]. … We emphatically refuse any concession on [even] a grain of the land of our precious homeland.

"The Zionist Jews … should go somewhere else in the world to establish their state and their false entity… They must leave their homes.”

To me, “They must leave their homes” sounds distinctly like a call for ethnic cleansing.

In the Palestine Kairos Document, Hanna and his fellow authors are less clear. They call the occupation a sin – the original sin, really, at the root of the conflict, they claim. But in the Kairos document, they’re coy about exactly what territory they consider occupied.

Similarly, in the Kairos Document, they’re more two-faced about terrorism. They endorse non-violence. But then they also define terrorism as “legal resistance.”

Assad isn’t the only murderous thug Hanna praises. This March, Hanna took part in a conference in Beirut on Jerusalem. Besides himself, there were representatives from Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad – organizations united by the desire to commit genocide against Jews.

Hanna was the only Christian invited to address this select group.

Considering the participants, there was of course talk at the conference about “the necessity of activating the Palestinian armed resistance,” and a corresponding disdain for “the policy of negotiations.”  

And according to Al-Manar: “The Iranian ambassador called upon all Muslims to unite and stand together to face this ‘cancerous tumor’ [Israel] which Imam Khomeini said must be wiped off the map.”

For his part, Archbishop Hanna “hailed” the stances of Sayyed Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and called for the liberation of Jerusalem, which Hanna described as being occupied since 1948, the year of Israel’s creation.

Celebrating International al-Quds Day: "Death to America! Death to Israel!"

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini established International Al-Quds Day shortly after he came to power in 1979. Translated, Quds means Jerusalem. Khomeini – who was nothing if not a vicious Jew-hater – created the holiday to demonstrate Iran's solidarity with Palestinians and to urge them on in any efforts to kill Jews and wipe Israel off the map.

In 2011, in honour of al-Quds Day, Iran’s current supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei tweeted: "Israel is a hideous entity in the Middle East which will undoubtedly be annihilated." 

In 2012, this jolly anti-Israel hate festival will again be celebrated throughout much of the world. In Toronto, local antisemites and Israel-haters will gather at Queen’s Park on Saturday, Aug 18, at 2 p.m. After some rousing denunciations of the little satan, our local fanatics will march to the U.S. consulate to demonstrate their peaceful nature in traditional Khomeinist fashion ….

Alibi Jews — German and Canadian

Irena Wachendorff, Alibi Jew

Alibi Jew: A Jew or person of Jewish descent who can be called on to support an individual’s or group’s antisemitism or extremist anti-Israeli position.

An example: Back in 2008, the NDP called for Canada to participate in Durban 2. Organized by the UN, Durban 1 and 2 were supposed to be world conferences on anti-racism. Instead, Durban 1 singled out Israel for condemnation and spread outright Jew-hatred, with copies of the Elders of Zion and other material more commonly found at neo-Nazi book fairs distributed.  

With Iran one of the principle organizers, Durban 2 promised to be another antisemitic conference, and Canada announced it wouldn’t be going – a position that initially received all party support.

However, the large majority of NDP members who hate Israel forced the party to reverse its stance. To provide an alibi for supporting an anti-Jewish hate fest, the call went out from NDP party headquarters: Find some Jews who support the Durban conference! Which wasn't so hard. Several dozen Canadians with a Jew or two in their family history have devoted their lives to providing alibis to anyone dedicated to wiping Israel off the map.

Fortunately, though, Tom Mulcair led a counter-revolt and forced the NDP to abandon it's support for this antisemitic conference. 

In the future, the NDP may have less need for alibi Jews. The large majority of NDP activists still hate Israel, but Saint Jack Layton, who never had a bad word to say about the Israel-haters and antisemites in his party, has gone to that socialist heaven in the sky and Tom Mulcair now runs the NDP. Mulcair hasn't tried to root out the haters, but mostly he's gotten them to shut up. 

(More about the battle for the soul of the NDP here.)

Irena Wachendorff: The German Alibi Jew 

From Heeb magazine and (starting from the 5^th last paragraph) the Jerusalem Post

We all have dreams. Uncle Junior wanted to screw Angie Dickinson, my mother wants to work in a funeral home, and Irena Wachendorff just wants to be Jewish and the daughter of Holocaust survivors so she can criticize Israel. Is that so wrong?

Up until now, Wachendorff has made a decent career of being an alibi Jew. The job is easy: If someone is accused of antisemitism, alibi Jews are brought in as defending witnesses. It’s the old “some of my best friends are pantomimes” routine, with an added speaking part for friends. In a country like Germany, where the Jewish community is only sporadically visible, being an alibi Jew can be a good gig.


If all anyone ever talks about is how Israel is the root of all global evil, people might start to ask questions. This is when the accused is able to point to the supportive alibi Jew, who in turn is able to point to his or her family history or just basic Jewishness and say something like: “What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is what the Nazis did to my parents.”


As an alibi Jew, Irena Wachendorff presents herself as the whole package: Her mother was in Auschwitz—“I grew up with the number on her arm”—her father a tzadik (a man who keeps all 613 commandments) who escaped to England. Irena herself was in the IDF during the Lebanon War. Today she’s a “German-Jewish poet” who lives in Israel six months every year to support an Arab-Jewish kindergarten. The rest of the year, she’s in Germany to act as the hazzan (prayer leader) of her congregation and to send violins to Gaza.


Newspapers have written about her work as an activist and she’s been interviewed on local TV. She frequently talks to schoolchildren about her parents’ fate. Wachendorff is also quite active in discussions on the Facebook page of leading politician Ruprecht Polenz, chairman of the foreign council of the German parliament, who has come under attack for perceived “anti-Israel” feelings. Polenz often points to Wachendorff when he needs support, which she will gladly supply:

“I think I should only take seriously someone who 1) was in the IDF, 2) has lived in Israel for at least two years and 3) is even Jewish. Hello…anybody here???”


Anybody here indeed. Because Irena Wachendorff is none of those things. Via some genuine journalism, writer Jennifer Nathalie Pyka found out the true story.

Upon being asked, Wachendorff’s mother says she was never in Auschwitz—“my husband was though.” Probably not as an inmate: He wasn’t an Orthodox Jew but a Protestant officer of the Wehrmacht.

A speaker of the Israeli army can find no record of an Irena Wachendorff having ever been in the IDF. During the Lebanon war, Irena Wachendorff acted in various productions in local theaters in the Rhine region. The kindergarten she supports does exist, but there is no evidence of her ever having visited it. And finally, she isn’t a member of her alleged congregation.

This is not without precedent. Every couple of years, some fake Jew is revealed. What makes this case so interesting is that a leading German politician was fooled. Polenz has released a statement saying that he’s not responsible for the third party’s opinion, that he still supports this dubious Jewish-Arab kindergarten and he’s disgusted with this prying into Wachendorffs private life: “This is like an Ariernachweis [certificate of being Aryan] in reverse.”

It is Polenz’s association with Wachendorff when it comes to discussing Israel that turned this into a story, however. As Pyka says, “Instead of offering arguments, Wachendorff talked only about her background and her experiences in the IDF.”

Wachendorff still clings to most of her story, but is she just suffering from some dissociative fugue? Pyka isn’t sure but has called a follow-up article “The Protocols of the Loon of Remagen,” Remagen being the hometown of Wachendorff.

After the initial article, Wachendorff wrote on Facebook that she had deliberately spread false information about herself as to protect her family and her congregation. When the Jerusalem Post called her some days later, she said that she doesn’t really remember what camp her mother was in exactly and that she isn’t too sure whether that’s a number on her arm or something else. After that, she deleted her Facebook profile and hasn’t been heard from since.

But in the meanwhile, says Pyka, Wachendorff used “Six million dead Jews to serve her own publicity,” for personal and commercial gain and to damage Israel."

However, the greater villain in all this is Ruprecht Polenz, senior deputy in the Bundestag, head of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and Wachendorff’s biggest fan. Coincidently, Polenz also feels warmly toward Iran and last year welcomed a group of Iranian lawmakers to Berlin.

In addition to being under fire for defending Wachendorff, critics accuse Polenz of allowing his Facebook site to be turned into a magnet for jihadists, raging antisemites, haters of Israel and extremist leftists. On Polenz’s Facebook, writers posted “that rich, industrial Jews planned the genocide on the Jewish people in order to create Israel.”

In another entry, Darwisch Salman Khorassani wrote that if “USREAL [Israel and the US] attack, I will register as a suicide bomber. Not from Islamic motives but from pure humanistic motives.”

Charming.

Union gives Toronto School Board workers $253,000 of our money

Toronto school board maintenance and construction workers have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in TigerDirect gift cards, courtesy of you and me

Moira Welsh and Kevin Donovan 

From the Toronto Star

Jimmy Hazel’s trades council has doled out hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in TigerDirect store gift cards to Toronto school board maintenance and construction workers, with at least some of the money coming from what an insider referred to as a Liberal government “slush fund.”

Hundreds of workers used the gift cards — in $300 and $500 denominations — to buy personal electronic products, cameras, DVDs and games or to put towards the purchase of computers at electronics retailer Tiger Direct. At least $253,000 in cards went out the door, though it may be double that amount.


It’s the latest revelation in a growing problem facing the Toronto District School Board, and now the provincial government. Earlier Star stories have revealed the high cost of work by the 900-strong Maintenance and Skilled Trades Council, which has an exclusive contract with the school board. Installing a pencil sharpener was $143; a simple electric outlet almost $3,000.

Meanwhile, the public board is facing a budget crunch and must make millions of dollars in education cuts. Parents, principals and some trustees have deluged the Star with concerns. The TDSB has said it is aware of the problems but has done little in response.

Hazel told the Star in an email answering questions about the TigerDirect gift cards that the decision on how to distribute the money was made by his trades council and TDSB brass and the money was used to help workers increase their use of “information technology.” He referred the Star to the TDSB for all other questions.

The TDSB called it a “fund for professional development” and said it was to be used by “education support workers.” The Liberal government said it was up to the TDSB to make sure the money is properly spent.


An ongoing Star investigation has found that the money that purchased the gift cards originated with a special fund set up by the Liberal government. Over the last few years, the province has provided more than $17 million to school board workers across Ontario, intended to be used “to enhance professional development and training opportunities for education support workers,” according to documents obtained by the Star.

The Star has asked the provincial education ministry to provide the parameters for these payouts, but staff for Education Minister Laurel Broten did not provide an answer.

According to 2008 provincial and school board documents, the money was intended to help the members of unions who work in schools “improve student achievement.” The 2008 documents focus on training; the plan was for support workers to take courses. Some money went to social workers in schools, some to caretakers and cafeteria workers. The Liberals said in a news release at the time that the money would “reduce gaps in student outcomes and increase confidence in publicly funded education.”

Trades council chief Hazel used the money to open the doors on a shopping spree at TigerDirect, the U.S.-based electronics retailing giant that sells both online and out of stores. The trades council said in a note to workers that the money could be used to “subsidize the purchase of computer and related peripheral equipment.”

In a 2009 trades council document, Hazel announced that each permanent member of the TDSB council would receive a $300 Tiger Direct card “with their name and account number printed on the card.” TigerDirect was chosen because all TDSB staff already received discounts and free delivery from the retailer.

“You may go to any TigerDirect store and look at the products or look at their website before purchasing,” Hazel’s council note to staff read. Only the trades council’s 600 permanent workers (the others are temporary workers) were eligible. One worker interviewed by the Star said he received two of the $300 cards.

More: Popular TDSB principal backed by his association

Another, an electrician, told the Star he learned about their “gift cards” during a union meeting.

“We thought it was a present from the union, you know, the union got a nice thing for me,” said the worker, who did not want his name used because he fears repercussions from his bosses.

The electrician said he bought a camera but most of the workers used their cards for home electronics.

“I don’t think anybody ever understood that it was for professional development. That was never expressed to us,” he said.

A former TDSB chair called the money a “professional development slush fund” paid for by the Liberals. The chair, like many former and current trustees, spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears repercussions from the trades council. One principal who spoke out was threatened by Hazel that he would lose his job.

In a previous story, the Star revealed that Hazel’s trades council workers have often campaigned for Liberal MPPs and that the council has provided significant donations to MPPs and trustees.

In addition to the $300 cards which the union said it was passing out in 2009, trades council documents show that it handed out $500 TigerDirect cards in 2006. The documents do not link those payments to the Liberal government but simply describe the money as coming from the trades council’s “professional development fund.” Those $500 cards were also made available to about 600 workers.

The TDSB did not immediately respond to a question about the total value of the 2006 TigerDirect cards. Board spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz did say that the 2009 professional development amount came to $253,200.

Provincial education ministry spokesman Grahame Rivers said the TDSB has the power to ask the trades council “how the money was spent.” {Mind you, if the province is giving a whack of money to the school boards, it’s their responsibility to make sure the boards are spending the money for professional development, not just giving it to their union friends. - Brian}

Also on the Star:

Toronto school board workers paid for loafing on the job

Gaza kindergartners want to 'blow up Zionists'

Kids at Islamic Jihad kindergarten celebrate end of year by demonstrating how Palestinian prisoners are 'tortured' in Israel. Teacher: We educate them to love resistance, Palestine

Elior Levy

YNet. Published: 06.12.12, 18:08

Children attending a kindergarten in Gaza that is run by Islamic Jihad celebrated their graduation by dressing up in army attire, waving toy rifles and chanting anti-Israel slogans.

"It is our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize the importance of Palestine and who its enemy is," the kindergarten's director said.  

  

The children were dressed up in uniforms of Jihad's armed-wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and each of them received a toy rifle. Some of them held up photos of Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shaqaqi.

The event was attended by the children's relatives, some of whom belong to Islamic Jihad and other armed Palestinian factions.

  

During the ceremony the children were asked to stand next to mock coffins draped with flags of the various armed factions. The flags bore the images of "shahids (martyrs)."

One child, Hamza, said "When I grow up I'll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I'll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid and join my father in heaven.

"I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing," he said.

During the ceremony the children "demonstrated" how Israel treats Palestinian prisoners. In the display, handcuffed children depicting inmates were placed in cages, with an "Israeli guard" standing nearby.

Another child depicting an Israeli prison guard placed the head of a "Palestinian prisoner" in a bucket of water to demonstrate how Palestinian prisoners are "tortured" in Israel.

"At every kindergarten graduation ceremony we focus on the children to represent the role of struggling and resistance in the way of Allah so they will grow up to love the resistance and serve the cause of Palestine and Holy Jihad, as well as to make them leaders and fighters to defend the holy soil of Palestine," one of the teachers said