Hanan Ashrawi Blasts Israeli Lies on U.S. Television

January 6, 2009 (LAPC)--"There was a six-month cease-fire in which Hamas did not shoot any rocket," said former Palestinian Ambassador to the U.S. Hanan Ashrawi in a Fox TV interview today. "Israel killed 21 Palestinians from Gaza and 25 from the West Bank in those six months, in which there was supposed to be a cease-fire. So who violated the cease-fire?"

When challenged by Fox with the line that Hamas welcomes civilian casualties, and that it hides weapons in civilian homes and mosques, Ashrawi replied that "this type of spin is absolutely immoral" and "quite racist." She pointed out that Hamas is a huge party, a political party with a military wing. "It has institutions. It has its own constituency." She said Hamas's military people are underground; they are not hiding in civilian places. The people who are paying the price, she said, are all civilians--"men, women and children who have nothing to do with the conflict."

When the Fox-hound started talking about Hamas rockets, she responded that Hamas "lobbed off about 400 homemade pipes and rockets into Israel in the last six months or whatever, a few years. But in the first minute of the Israeli incursion, they bombed Gaza with more than 400 bombs--in one minute."

"So let's put things in perspective and in context," Ashrawi went on. "Israel is the occupying power. It has been besieging Gaza by land, by air, by sea for the last few months. It has deprived them of food, of medical supplies, of fuel, of electricity, of every basic need, and then its bombing and shelling them in so-called self-defense. Israel is an occupying power, and therefore if it wants to have peace and stability, it cannot continue to batter the victims and then blame them at this point."

Notably, throughout the interview, Ashrawi did not play into the current push to create the appearance of an Israeli-Arab alliance against Hamas and Iran; she reserved her fire for Israel, making no public criticism of Hamas.

She concluded by pointing out that Ehud Barak has declared openly that he had been preparing for this war for the past six months, and that the assault was carefully timed for the U.S. Presidential transition and the Western holidays.

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Look further the followings that no rocket attacks by Hamas during the cease fire.

"List of rocket and mortar attacks in Israel in 2008" (revised 4 January 2008), based almost exclusively on Israeli newspapers and government sources, confirms that there were no rocket or mortar attacks claimed by or plausibly attributed to Hamas during the calm.

In a document entitled "The Hamas terror war against Israel," The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides striking visual evidence of Hamas's good faith during the lull. It reproduces two graphs drawn up by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the IsraelIntelligence Heritage: