Posts
THE ABSURD TIMES
Illustration: I have one of our loyal reader's to thank for this caption: "She's a real bitch and a half, the Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Hate to meet her in a dark alley, or anywhere.....she looks like a bad mix of Hillary and Sarah, ugh." I'll keep my own remarks short as I'm including articles by people much better able to speak on the issue than I. Instead, notice how fast the Illinios legislature is moving to impeach Blagojevitch? And what did he do? Simply ask money for favors, all in 6 figures or less. Compare this to the U.S. Congress where impeachment was "off the table" concerning Bush and Cheney for lying to Congress, killing over 4,000 American soldiers, killing or dispalcing over 4 million Iraquis, rewarding Haliburton, and causing the impending Depression. Anyway, I've noticed that only about 5 or ten minutes a day on all TV news outlets combined are devoted to the invasion of Gaza. Al-Jazeria covers it almost 24/7. You can get it online free, in English, at Al-Jazeria.com -- it runs at 50k, is in RealVideo, so you may have to download the player, which you can do for free. Now on with some real information:
*********************************
In the US, Gaza is a different war
January, 08 2009
By Habib Battah
Source: Al Jazeera
Habib Battah's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza.
On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption.
As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her.
The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.
Arab frustration
To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed.
If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?
When the front page photographs of the two women were published on December 30, over 350 Palestinians had reportedly been killed compared to just four Israelis.
What if 350 Israelis had been killed and only four Palestinians -- would the newspaper have run the stories side by side as if equal in news value?
Like many major news organisations in the US, The Washington Post has chosen to cover the conflict from a perspective that reflects the US government's relationship with Israel. This means prioritising Israel's version of events while underplaying the views of Palestinian groups.
For example, the newspaper's lead article on Tuesday, which was published above the mothers' photographs, quotes Israeli military and civilian sources nine times before quoting a single Palestinian. The first seven paragraphs explain Israel's military strategy. The ninth paragraph describes the anxiety among Israelis, spending evenings in bomb shelters. Ordinary Palestinians, who generally have no access to bomb shelters, do not make an appearance until the 23rd paragraph.
To balance this top story, The Washington Post published another article on the bottom half of the front page about the Palestinian mother and her children. But would the paper have ever considered balancing a story about a massive attack on Israelis with an in-depth lead piece on the strategy of Palestinian militants?
Context stripped
Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold. However, such comparisons were rare because the scripts read by American correspondents often excluded the overall Palestinian death count.
By stripping the context, American viewers may have easily assumed a level playing field, rather than a case of disproportionate force.
Take the opening lines of a report filed by NBC's Martin Fletcher on December 30: "In Gaza two little girls were taking out the rubbish and killed by an Israeli rocket -- while in Israel, a woman had been driving home and was killed by a Hamas rocket. No let up today on either side on the fourth day of this battle."
Omitted from the report was the overall Palestinian death toll, dropped continuously in subsequent reports filed by NBC correspondents over the next several days.
When number of deaths did appear -- sometimes as a graphic at the bottom of the screen -- it was identified as the number of "people killed" rather than being attributed specifically to Palestinians.
No wonder the overwhelmingly asymmetrical bombardment of Gaza has been framed vaguely as "rising tensions in the Middle East" by news anchors.
With the lack of context, the power dynamic on the ground becomes unclear.
ABC news, for example, regularly introduced events in Gaza as "Mideast Violence". And Like NBC, reporters excluded the Palestinian death toll.
On December 31, when Palestinian deaths stood at almost 400, ABC correspondent Simon McGergor-Wood began a video package by describing damage to an Israeli school by Hamas rockets.
The reporter's script can be paraphrased as follows: Israel wanted a sustainable ceasefire; Israel needed to prevent Hamas from rearming; Hamas targets were hit; Israel was sending in aid and letting the injured out; Israel was doing "everything they can to alleviate the humanitarian crisis". And with that McGregor-Wood signed off.
Palestinian perspective missing
There was no parallel telling of the Palestinian perspective, and no mention of any damages to Palestinian lives, although news agencies that day had reported five Palestinians dead.
For the ABC correspondent, it seemed the Palestinian deaths contained less news value than damage to Israeli buildings. His narration of events, meanwhile, amounted to no less than a parroting of the official Israeli line.
In fact, the Israeli government view typically went unchallenged on major US networks.
Interviews with Israeli spokesmen and ambassadors were not juxtaposed with the voices of Palestinian leaders. Prominent American news anchors frequently adopted the Israeli viewpoint. In talk show discussions, instead of debating events on the ground, the pundits often reinforced each other's views.
Such an episode occurred on a December 30 broadcast of the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, during which host Joe Scarborough repeatedly insisted that Israel should not be judged.
Israel was defending itself just as the US had done throughout history. "How many people did we kill in Germany?" Scarborough posed.
The blame rested on the Palestinians, he concluded, connecting the Gaza attacks to the Camp David negotiations of 2000. "They gave the Palestinians everything they could ask for, and they walked away from the table," he said repeatedly.
Although this view was challenged once by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US official, who appeared briefly on the show, subsequent guests agreed incessantly with Scarborough's characterisation of the Palestinians as negligent, if not criminal in nature.
According to guest Dan Bartlett, a former White House counsel, the Palestinian leadership had made it "very clear" that they were uninterested in peace talks.
Another guest, NBC anchor David Gregory, began by noting that Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president, "could not be trusted", according to Bill Clinton, the former US president.
Gregory then added that Hamas had "undercut the peace process" and actually welcomed the attacks.
"The reality is that Hamas wanted this, they didn't want the ceasefire," he said.
Columnist Margaret Carlson also joined the show, agreeing in principal that Hamas should be "crushed" but voicing concern over the cost of such action.
Thus the debate was not whether Israel was justified, but rather what Israel should do next. The Palestinian human tragedy received little to no attention.
Victim's perspective
Arab audiences saw a different picture altogether. Rather than mulling Israel's dilemma, the Arab news networks captured the air assault in chilling detail from the perspective of its victims. The divide in coverage was staggering.
For US networks, the bombing of Gaza has largely been limited to two-minute video packages or five minute talk show segments. This has usually meant a few snippets of jumbled video: explosions from a distance and a momentary glance at victims; barely enough time to remember a face, let alone a personality. Victims were rarely interviewed.
The availability of time and space, American broadcast executives might argue, were mitigating factors.
On MSNBC for example, Gaza competed for air time last week with stories about the economy, such as a hike in liquor sales, or celebrity news, such as speculation over the publishing of photographs of Sarah Palin's new grandchild.
On Arab TV, however, Gaza has been the only story.
For hours on end, live images from the streets of Gaza are beamed into Arab households.
Unlike the correspondents from ABC and NBC, who have filed their reports exclusively from Israeli cities, Arab crews are inside Gaza, with many correspondents native Gazans themselves.
The images they capture are often broadcast unedited, and over the last week, a grizzly news gathering routine has been established.
The cycle begins with rooftop-mounted cameras, capturing the air raids live. After moments of quiet, thunderous bombing commences and plumes of smoke rise over the skyline. Then, anguish on the streets. Panicked civilians run for cover as ambulances careen through narrow alleys. Rescue workers hurriedly pick through the rubble, often pulling out mangled bodies. Fathers with tears of rage hold dead children up to the cameras, vowing revenge. The wounded are carried out in stretchers, gushing with blood.
Later, local journalists visit the hospitals and more gruesome images, more dead children are broadcast. Doctors wrap up the tiny bodies and carry them into overflowing morgues. The survivors speak to reporters. Their distraught voices are heard around the region; the outflow of misery and destruction is constant.
Palestinian voices
The coverage extends beyond Gaza. Unlike the US networks, which are often limited to one or two correspondents in Israel, major Arab television channels maintain correspondents and bureaus throughout the region. As angry protests take place on a near daily basis, the crews are there to capture the action live.
Even in Israel, Arab reporters are employed, and Israeli politicians are regularly interviewed. But so are members of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions.
The inclusion of Palestinian voices is not unique to Arab media. On a number of international broadcasters, including BBC World and CNN International, Palestinian leaders and Gazans in particular are regularly heard. And the Palestinian death toll has been provided every day, in most broadcasts and by most correspondents on the ground. Reports are also filed from Arab capitals.
On some level, the relatively small American broadcasting output can be attributed to a general trend in downsizing foreign reporting. But had a bloodbath on this scale happened in Israel, would the networks not have sent in reinforcements?
For now, the Israeli viewpoint seems slated to continue to dominate Gaza coverage. The latest narrative comes from the White House, which has called for a "durable" ceasefire, preventing Hamas terrorists from launching more rockets.
Naturally the soundbites are parroted by US broadcasters throughout the day and then reinforced by pundits, fearing the dangerous Hamas.
Arab channels, however, see a different outcome. Many have begun referring to Hamas, once controversial, as simply "the Palestinian resistance".
While American analysts map out Israel's strategy, Arab broadcasters are drawing their own maps, plotting the expanding range of Hamas rockets, and predicting a strengthened hand for opposition to Israel, rather than a weakened one.
Habib Battah is a freelance journalist and media analyst based in Beirut and New York. The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.
| From: | Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives |
|---|---|
| URL: | http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20189 |
Inside Gaza
An Eyewitness Report
Ewa Jasiewicz's ZSpace Page </zspace/ewajasiewicz>
teenage men hanging off them. The mass of people striving to get inside
was a sign that there had been an attack. Inside the gates, the hospital
was full. Parents, wives, cousins, emotionally frayed and overwhelmed,
were leaning over injured loved ones.
that two missiles had been fired into the street in Hay al Amel, east
Beit Hanoun, close to the border with Israel. With rumours of an
imminent invasion this empty scrubland is rapidly becoming a no-man's
land which people cross quickly, fearing attack by Israeli jets.
intensifying airstrikes.
there for their parents to finish praying at the nearby mosque. "We
could see it so clearly, it was so close, we looked up and everyone ran.
Those that couldn't were soon flat on the ground," said Khalil Abu
Naseer, who was lucky to have escaped the incoming missile.
of the missile the size of a fist, all with jagged edges.
glass everywhere," explained a neighbour. It was these lumps of missile,
rock and flying glass that smashed into the legs, arms, stomachs, heads
and backs of 16 people, two of them children, who had been brought to
Beit Hanoun Hospital on Thursday afternoon.
community hub selling sweets, cigarettes and chewing gum. When the
missile exploded, he suffered multiple injuries. He died on Friday
morning in Kamal Adwahn Hospital in Jabaliya. As women attended the
grieving room at Fadi Chabat's home yesterday to pay their respects,
Israeli F16 fighter jets tore through the skies overhead and blasted
four more bombs into the empty areas on the border. Two elderly women in
traditional embroidered red and black dresses carrying small black
plastic shopping bags moved as quickly as they could; others disappeared
behind the walls of their homes, into courtyards and off the streets.
crying, a collective outpouring of grief and raw pain with free-flowing
tears.
group, not Fatah, not Hamas, not one, none of them, he was a good
student, and he was different," said one of his sisters. She took me to
see Fadi's younger brother, who had been wounded in the same airstrike.
Omar, eight, was sitting on his own in a darkened bedroom on a foam
mattress with gauze on his back covering his wounds.
kept saying, I saw the missile, I saw it, Fadi's been hit by a missile'."
breaking down along with him.
Leema, four, and Haya, 12, had been taking out rubbish when they were
struck by the missiles.
at first though he would pull through, but in the end he died of
internal injuries.
records seven people have been killed, among them three children and a
mother of ten other youngsters. Another 75 people have been injured,
including 29 children and 17 women.
windows blown out and been damaged by flying debris and shrapnel. Two
homes have been totally destroyed. Nearby the premises of two
organisations have been reduced to rubble. One of them, the Sons of the
City Charity, associated with Hamas, was blasted with two Apache-fired
missiles, gutting a neighbouring apartment in the process and breaking
windows at Beit Hanoun Hospital. The Cultural Development Association
and the offices of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
were levelled by bombs dropped from F16 jets.
so far up in the sky. Do they see people walking; standing around and
talking in the street; kids with sticks chasing each other in play? Or
are the figures digitised, micro-people, perhaps just blips on a screen?
Last Thursday night saw volunteers from the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society in Beit Hanoun take to the streets in an effort to save lives.
Like all emergency medical staff in Gaza, they risk death working in the
maelstrom of every Israeli invasion, during curfews and night fighting.
nightly power cuts, I meet Yusri, a veteran of more than 14 years of
Israeli incursions into the Beit Hanoun district of Gaza. Moustachioed,
energetic, and gregarious, Yusri is in his 40s and a local hero. Seen by
people within the community as a man who rarely sleeps, he is a
front-line paramedic who zooms through Gaza's streets to reach
casualties, ambulance horn blaring as he shouts through a loudhailer for
onlookers and the dazed to get out of the way.
gutted charred charity office and the house of the Tarahan family. Their
home, on the buffer zone, has been reduced to a concrete sandwich. There
are six casualties, but miraculously none of them are serious.
intensive care unit, decrepit metal stretchers and rickety beds. I drink
tea in a simple office with a garrulous crowd of ear, nose and throat
specialists, surgeons and paediatricians. The talk is all about
politics: how the plan for Gaza is to merge it with Egypt; how Israel
doesn't want to liquidate Hamas as it serves their goal of a divided
Palestine to have a weak Hamas alienated from the West Bank.
through on Sawt Al Shab ("The Voice Of The People"), Gaza's grassroots
news station. Almost everyone here is tuned in. It is listened to by
taxi drivers, families in their homes huddled around wood stoves or
under blankets and groups of men on street corners crouched beside
transistor radio sets.
political speeches from various leaders, and fighter music - thoaty,
deep male voices united in buoyant battle songs about standing up,
reclaiming al-Quds (Jerusalem) avenging fresh martyrs, and staying
steadfast.
group active in Gaza; the Qasam (Hamas), the Abu Ali Mustapha Martyrs
Brigade (PFLP), the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (which is affiliated with
Fatah) and Saraya al-Quds (Islamic Jihad). One thing is widely
recognised - the attack on Gaza has brought all armed resistance groups
together. However, everybody adds wryly that "once this is all over,
they'll all break apart again".
really think I have protection as a foreigner here. I talk in detail
about Israel's responsibility to protect emergency services; to cease
fire; to facilitate movement;, to respect the Geneva Conventions,
including protection of civilians and injured combatants. The surgeon
talking to me is an intelligent man, highly respected in the community,
in his late 40s. He takes his time, explaining to me in detail that all
the evidence from everything Gazans have experienced points to Israel
operating above the law - that there is no protection, that these laws,
these conventions, do not seem to apply to Israel, nor does it abide by
them, and that I should be afraid, very afraid, because Gazans are afraid.
60 people killed, one entire family in one day alone. About 100 tanks
invaded Beit Hanoun, with one blocking each entrance for six days. He
remembers how the Red Cross brought water and food and took away the
refuse. All co-ordination was cut off with the Palestinian Authority.
The same will happen this time, he insists. He remembers too how one
ambulance driver, Yusri, a maverick, a hero, loved by all the staff and
community, faced down the tanks to evacuate the injured. Yusri, the
surgeon says, just drove up to the tank and started shouting through his
loudhailer, telling them to move for the love of God because we had a
casualty, then just swerved round them and made off.
years. He shows me a leg injury sustained when a tank rammed into his
ambulance. The event was caught on camera by journalists, and a case
brought against the Israel Occupation Forces, but they ruled the army
had acted appropriately in self defence.
can fit in here? I was carrying 10 corpses at a time after the invasion,
there was a man cut in two here in the back, it was horrific. But you
carry on. I want to serve my country," he says.
electricity to power a ventilator, and doctors took turns hand pumping
oxygen to keep one casualty alive for four hours before they could be
transferred. Roads were bulldozed, ambulances were banned from moving,
dead people lay in their homes for days, and when permission was finally
given for the corpses' collection, medics had to carry them on
stretchers along the main street.
themselves, only worse. Gazans now feel collectively abandoned. The past
week's massacres, indiscriminate attacks and overflowing hospitals, and
the fact that anyone can be hit at any time in any place, has left
people utterly terrorised. No-one dares think of what might become of
them in these difficult and unpredictable days. As they say in Gaza,
"Bein Allah" - "It's up to God".
co-ordinator for the Free Gaza movement and one of the only
international journalists on the ground in Gaza
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in
the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy.
But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating
conclusions
Source: Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine>
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza> is through understanding the
historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948
involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials
bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state.
On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary,
Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a
gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I
used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious
assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity
in this assault, have reopened the question.
mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of
Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist
colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had
very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial
expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent
political, economic and military control over the Palestinian
territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and
brutal military occupations of modern times.
of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into
a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources,
Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case
of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate
de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of
Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of
cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of
local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the
Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the
economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and
an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of
exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish
settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local
residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the
arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by
jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population
lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them
still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip
remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to
resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.
unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and
destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic
resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the
Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli
Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza
as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the
year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further
reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing
and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it
chose land over peace.
of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West
Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude
to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further
Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move
undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli
national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the
Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a
long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent
political existence on their land.
control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was
converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the
Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make
sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to
terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done
anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal
to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with
reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite
all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only
genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of
Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative
Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led
government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically
elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist
organisation.
demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by
withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus
developed with a significant part of the international community
imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the
occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently
purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they
reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is
little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious
fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple
truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal
aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other
national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to
call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism
of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a
two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national
unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with
Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that
included Hamas.
Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the
nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement
led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and
pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and
recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in
the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling
was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and
in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah
coup.
of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In
a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian
people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared
aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until
its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared
aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world
simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for
independence and statehood.
election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the
election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to
prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit
to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on
their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon
in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and
impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from
President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush
readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas,
vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire
and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves
little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a
conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been
inverted -- a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily
armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute
military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of
victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness.
In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and
shooting".
Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an
unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak --
terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam
rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza
until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused
by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is
immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government.
Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but
its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally
disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years
after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire.
On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in
Gaza, including 222 children.
Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of
unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza.
Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came
into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a
violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any
exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord,
leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1%
of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted
drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas
canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical
supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the
civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the
border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of
collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international
humanitarian law.
its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza,
Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages
of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire
agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population;
and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent
civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in
getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack
of lies.
of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire.
It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men.
Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the
eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people
against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians,
Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old
blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to
the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an
eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of
more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet
ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.
attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and
destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their
resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that
glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution
to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's
concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security
to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is
not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly
declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the
Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years.
Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab
League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves
concessions and compromises.
difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with
"an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually
violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and
practises terrorism -- the use of violence against civilians for
political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap
fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence
with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps
compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones.
Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies
and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.
of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and
of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace. This article
appeared in the Guardian on January 7, 2009.
