Eyeless in Gaza: How Hamas controls the media in Gaza
For those of you who are in London on Monday night, here's a film you don't want to miss. It's called Eyeless in Gaza, and as the title of this post indicates, it shows how Hamas controls what's reported out of Gaza through intimidation. But that's only half the story. Here's a preview.
“It’s something I call ‘group think’,”
explains Himel. “Group think isn’t a malicious attempt to lie or
distort the truth, but there is a strong herd instinct of what is
allowable and what is not.
“When you look at reporting on the Middle East
in general, the same model is used. The Syrian conflict was described
as a fight for human rights and the Arab Spring was hailed as a revolt
against brutal dictators.
“What often happens is the group think will
significantly distort what’s really going on when you are reporting
something – and if you violate group think you can be in a lot of
trouble.”
As a case in point, the film highlights the
naval blockade and subsequent raid by Israeli forces on a Palestinian
freighter named Karine A in 2007. The vessel was found to be carrying 50
tons of weapons, including short-range Katyusha rockets, anti-tank
missiles and explosives.
But as the documentary notes: “Very little of
the weapons found…made it to the media. Instead, the news focused on
flotillas trying to break the naval blockade.”
Why, then, did journalists focus more on the flotillas than the success of the Karine A operation?
Himel explains: “The group think is that an
unjustified blockade is causing hardship for the people of Gaza. They
can’t get basic food, they can’t move around, they can’t get to family
in other places. The media will be attracted to things that strengthen
that assumption.
“So a flotilla coming in trying to save the
besieged people of Gaza, like those besieged in Leningrad in 1942, is
appropriate, whereas if you are talking about a naval blockade that’s
stopping arms getting in, you are instantly making the picture more
complex – and that doesn’t sit well with editors.”
The consequences for journalists who veered away from the accepted narrative can be extreme.
When RTV reporter Harry Fear tweeted that Gaza
rockets had fired into Israel, he was immediately expelled from the
area by Hamas officials, while Palestinian journalist Ayman al-Aloul was
imprisoned and tortured for being critical about the governing
authority in Gaza.
“You pay the price,” says Himel.
There is, however, also another element, which
Himel believes underscores the very reasons why the Israel-Gaza
conflict is reported in the way it is.
“The real story is there’s a really serious war of beliefs going on, that’s the basis for all of it.
“But editors don’t want to say it, because
that means it’s a religious war and you begin to realise how sensitive
and complex the whole issue is.”
That decision not to report the conflict as one based on religion has
also effectively blocked out mention of Hamas and its anti-Semitic
ethos.
I would say it's much more malicious than Himel thinks it is. Let's start with the Karine A. The Karine A happened in January 2002 before this blog existed, not in 2007 as Himel has it. But the 2007 date is convenient. The so-called 'blockade' of Gaza started after Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. In January 2002, Israel actually controlled Gaza.
The 'flotillas' have nothing to do with the Karine A and everything to do with the anti-Semitic Europeans (who stand behind the flotillas), who promote the most pernicious lies about Israel and Jews. In fact, it is the Europeans who have done more to keep the dream of 'Palestine' replacing Israel God Forbid than even the Arab states. The Arab states have tired of the 'Palestinian' lies.
But like the inconvenient fact that our war with Hamas is a religious war, the media also prefers to ignore the inconvenient fact that Europe still dreams of finishing what Hitler started.
I would still go see Himel's movie, because it's important that someone is at least raising the issue (although Matti Friedman is the guy who really brought the issue up), but given his sloppy reporting on the Karine A, I have to wonder what the movie is really going to say.
To get you thinking, I want to show you the full video from 2014 by an Indian television crew - a video that is quite rare - of which you saw a small clip in the preview above.
What could go wrong? Hezbullah has more rockets than all 27 NATO countries... combined
A report in the Weekly Standard indicates that the Hezbullah terror organization has more than 130,000 rockets in southern Lebanon - a number that exceeds the rockets held by all 27 NATO countries... combined.
Hezbollah currently has a stockpile of over 130,000 rockets, more
than the combined arsenal of all NATO countries, with the exception of
the United States. This number includes long-range rockets and M-600
ballistic missiles, which carry a high payload and would be able to
“wipe out a good chunk of Times Square and maim and kill people four
football fields away from the point of impact,” Stern noted. Hezbollah
also has approximately 100,000 short-range rockets trained on schools,
homes, and hospitals in northern Israel, which could potentially kill
hundreds of civilians.
“You don’t collect 130,000 missiles if you don’t intend to use them,”
said Matthew Levitt, an expert on counter-terrorism and intelligence at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Hezbollah’s positioning of this weaponry in civilian areas poses a
challenge to Israeli officers, added Geoff Corn, an international
military law expert at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. “After
exhausting all feasible efforts to reduce civilian risk, IDF commanders
must resolve the decisive question: Is the potential for civilian harm
excessive in comparison to the advantages the attack would provide? When
you talk of an M-600 in the hands of an enemy that targets vital
military assets or the civilian population—even if that apartment
building is full—launching the attack will be necessary to mitigate the
threat,” he explained.
That seems like a no-brainer. When it's our civilians or their civilians, it's pretty clear to this Israeli that the IDF must act to defend Israel's civilians, and damn the rest of the world for facilitating their doing this.
Israeli military officials in May 2015 told the New York Times
how Hezbollah has “moved most of its military infrastructure” in and
around Shiite villages, which “amounts to using the civilians as a human
shield.” A senior military official stated that Lebanese civilians are
“living in a military compound.” He told the Times: “We will
hit Hezbollah hard, while making every effort to limit civilian
casualties as much as we can…We do not intend to stand by helplessly in
the face of rocket attacks.” Stern, who was shown maps of the locations
of Hezbollah weapons, said that they are not only being stored in these
southern villages, but in Beirut itself.
Yaakov Amidror, Israel’s former national security advisor, met
with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the summer of 2013 and showed
him “detailed evidence of Hezbollah’s deadly arsenal and the fact that
it was strategically placed within densely populated civilian centers.”
When Amidror asked Ban what the Israelis should do, he “offered no
response and no suggestions.” Stern concluded his piece, “Nobody, it
seems, in times of peace is willing to offer Israel a constructive
suggestion on how to deal with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization
in possession of a massive arsenal on its northern border. But these
same organizations stand front and center to criticize Israel for acting
legally and proportionately for protecting its own citizens in
wartime.”
Article 28 of the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 is simple and clear. It
says: " The presence of a protected person may not be used to render
certain points or areas immune from military operations." Hezbullah
violates this provision daily. It is due to Hezbullah's violations of
this provision that Lebanese civilians are being killed.
In an
article published on the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com web
page over the weekend, Orde F. Kittrie, a professor of international law
at Arizona State University and who served in the Office of the Legal
Adviser at the U.S. State Department from 1993 to 2003, summarized the three-part test in determining whether Israeli actions violate the Geneva Convention:
International
law has three major prohibitions .... One forbids deliberate attacks on
civilians. Another prohibits hiding forces in civilian areas, thereby
turning civilians into "human shields." A third prohibition, the
proportionality restriction that Israel is accused of violating,
involves a complicated and controversial balancing test.
Ignoring
the fact that Israel has warned Lebanese citizens to flee the combat
zones dozens of times, given the manner in which Hezbullah has hidden
both itself and its weapons among civilians, it is impossible to assert,
let alone prove, that Israel is deliberately attacking civilians. But
it is clear that Hezbullah has turned what remains of Lebanon's civilian
population into human shields.
...
I have already noted that Orde Kittrie wrote that the proportionality
test "involves a complicated and controversial balancing test." Kittrie
goes on to explain:
Geneva Convention Protocol I contains
one version of the proportionality test, the International Criminal
Court Statute another; neither is universally accepted. As a result, the
proportionality test is governed by "customary international law," an
amalgam of non-universal treaty law, court decisions, and how
influential nations actually behave. It does not hinge on the relative
number of casualties, or the force used, however, but on the intent of
the combatant. Under customary international law, proportionality
prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental death or injury to
civilians if this harm would, on balance, be excessive in relation to
the overall legitimate military accomplishment anticipated.
...
If Israel was mistaken and Hezbollah was not firing from or hiding amongst these civilians, the legality of its action is assessed by the proportionality test. [But we know from countless testimonies that Israel is not mistaken and that Hezbullah is firing from among civilians.
CiJ] Because the test is vague, there have been few, if any, cases
since World War II in which a soldier, commander or country has been
convicted of violating it. In the absence of guidance from the courts,
determining whether Israel's military has failed the proportionality
test depends on an assessment of what civilian casualties it expected,
what its overall military goals are, the context in which the country is
operating, and how the international community has in practice balanced
civilian risk against military goals. [There
is no way to attack a munitions depot hidden beneath a house and a
school without blowing up the house and the school. That would make any
attack in which the civilians have been warned to leave the house and
the school proportional per se. CiJ]
Israel did not expect civilian casualties; it warned civilians to leave Qana [and all areas south of the Litani at this point. CiJ]... The
law of war recognizes that mistakes are inevitable, and does not
criminalize soldiers who seek in good faith seek to avoid them.
Read the whole thing (it describes similar tactics adopted by Hezbullah on a lesser scale during the Second Lebanon War ten years ago).
A Polish reporter who spent a month in Gaza in the summer of 2014 has once again confirmed what we all knew all along: Hamas used the civilian population of Gaza as human shields in a cynical attempt to cause civilian casualties during Operation Protective Edge.
Yes, Israel bombed Palestinian houses in Gaza. But Hamas is also to blame for its cruel and selfish game against its own people. I do not have hard evidence, but for me, spending a month in the middle of this hell, it was obvious that they were breaking international rules of war and worst of all, were not afraid to use their own citizens as living shields.
The first incident happened late in the evening. I was in the bathroom when I’ve heard a loud rocket noise and my Spanish colleague, a journalist who was renting a flat with me near the Gaza beach, started to scream. He wanted to light a cigarette and came to one of the open windows. The moment he was using his lighter, he saw a fireball in front of his eyes and lost his hearing.
From what our neighbors told us later, a man drove up in a pickup to our tiny street. He placed a rocket launcher outside and fired. But the rocket failed to go upwards and flew along the street at ground level for a long time before destroying a building. It was a miracle that nobody was hurt or killed.
When we calmed down, we started to analyze the situation. It became obvious that the man or his supervisor wanted the Israel Defense Forces to destroy civilian houses, which our tiny street was full of. Whoever it was, Hamas, Iz al-Din al-Qassam or others, they knew that the IDF can strike back at the same place from which the rocket was fired. Fortunately for us, the rocket missed its target in Israel.
The second story happened in the middle of the day. I was sitting with other journalists in a cafe outside one of the hotels near the beach. During wartime, these hotels are occupied by foreign press and some NGOs. Every hotel is full and in its cafes many journalists spend their time discussing, writing, editing stories or just recharging the phones. Suddenly I saw a man firing a rocket from between the hotels. It was obvious that we journalists became a target. If the IDF would strike back, we all would be dead. What would Hamas do? It would not be surprising to hear about the “cruel Zionist regime killing innocent and free press.”
But then you knew all this. For those who have forgotten (I have posted it before), here are out-takes of Alarabiya-TV reporter Hannan al-Masri learning of a Hamas missile being fired from the ground floor of the building housing the
Alarabiya studio in January 2009 (Operation Cast Lead).
Let's go to the videotape.
It's still nice to hear foreigners confirming what we knew all along.
UNRWA is reporting that for the first time in 50 years (dating back roughly to when Israel liberated Gaza in 1967), infant mortality in the Gaza Strip is increasing. It goes without saying that UNRWA blames the Israeli 'blockade' of Gaza.
"The number of babies dying before the age of one has consistently
gone down over the last decades in Gaza, from 127 per 1,000 live births
in 1960 to 20.2 in 2008," the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
said in a statement over the weekend.
However, "at the last count, in 2013, it had risen to 22.4 per 1,000
live births," UNRWA said. The statement was reported by the Lebanon
Daily Star.
The agency added that neonatal mortality in Gaza – the number of
babies who die before the age of four weeks – rose from 12 per 1,000
live births in 2008 to 20.3 in 2013.
In light of the new data, UNRWA intends conducting a new
Gaza-specific survey this year. Normally, infant mortality across the
region is surveyed every five years.
Akihiro Seita, director of UNRWA's health program, said the sudden upswing was unprecedented in the Middle East.
"When the 2013 results from Gaza were first uncovered, UNRWA was
alarmed by the apparent increase. So we worked with external independent
research groups to examine the data, to ensure the increase could be
confirmed," he said.
"That is why it took us so long to release these latest figures."
While the exact causes of the increased rate of infant mortality are
"hard to know," Seiko did not discount Israel's blockade of the Gaza
Strip, where close to 45 percent of the population is under 14 years
old.
"We are very concerned about the impact of the long-term blockade; on
health facilities, supplies of medicines and bringing equipment in to
Gaza," he said in the statement.
There's one way for the infant mortality rate in Gaza to immediately drop back to where it was: If Israel were to reoccupy the Strip. That would help even more quickly if the Hamas, Jihad, al-Qaeda etc. leadership were expelled at the same time.
Israeli report on Gaza operation shows something UN report won't
The government of Israel has released a 277-page report on its investigation into last summer's Operation Protective Edge today, the same day that the United Nations is releasing its report. What does the Israeli report have that the United Nations report doesn't? Here's one example:
Here's something new: photos of the weapons Hamas hid in an UNRWA school. From page 85 of Israeli gov's Gaza report. pic.twitter.com/o88plSxg2y
It's come to this: We need a Facebook page to support an IDF commander who targeted terrorists
I get asked to like Facebook pages daily, and usually I ignore the requests - no time.... This morning, I got a message from Shy Guy (whom I actually have met in 'real life') asking me to like a Facebook page for IDF Lieutenant Colonel Nerya Yeshurun. I clicked on the Facebook page (in Hebrew) and it has nearly 3,000 likes in three days - not too shabby. Here's why (translated from Hebrew - I'll leave the Hebrew so that the experts on translating IDF ranks into English can correct me if I got one wrong):
בימים אלו נשמעים קולות לחקור את "ירי הנקמה" שבוצע ע"י גדוד 82 בפיקודו של סא"ל נריה ישורון.
הירי בוצע על תשתית טרור לגיטימית, מרפאה לכאורה ממנה נורתה אש צלפים אשר הרגה את סרן דימה לויטס.
עמוד זה הינו בא לתמוך בסא"ל נריה ישורון, לאור הפרסומים המבישים על פתיחת חקירה בנוגע להשמדה לגיטימית של תשתית טרור!
We are currently hearing calls to investigate the 'revenge fire' by Brigade 82 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Nerya Yeshurun. The fire was the result of a legitimate terror infrastructure, which looked like a clinic, from which sniper fire that killed Sargent Dima Levitas originated. This page is to support Lieutenant Colonoel Nerya Yeshurun in light of the disgusting publicity about the opening of an investigation into the legitimate destruction of a terror infrastructure!
Obviously, I urge you to like the page.
Based on the Google search results, the original story was pushed by Electronic Intifada, an anti-Semitic web page that is funded by European governments (principally Holland), and is run by President Hussein Obama's Chicago buddy Ali Abunimah. I try not to link anti-Semitic websites, but the story is on Reddit here.
Eyewitness accounts of Hamas use of human shields in Operation Protective Edge
The Tower Magazine has published eyewitness accounts from IDF soldiers of Hamas' use of human shields during Operation Protective Edge.
Schwartz interviews a number of IDF soldiers for the piece, beginning
with Jonny S., a combat solider originally from Maryland. Jonny
recounted the ambush that killed Benaya Sarel, Hadar Goldin, and Liel
Gidoni on August 1, 2014. An hour after the ceasefire was announced, the
unit saw a man in an area that was supposed to be evacuated. When some
of the soldiers approached the man they were attacked. Jonny says in
retrospect:
I think the whole thing was a trap. It was an hour after
the ceasefire, and I think they purposely put a man that looked like a
civilian, just a normal man, to kind of entice us to come out to go talk
to him, and then waiting down below were a bunch of explosives and a
suicide bomber.
Omri, a second IDF soldier who serves as a fighter pilot, tells of
one instance when he was ordered to carry out an operation in Shejaiya:
We were sent in during the first week of the ground
operation. The ground forces were supposed to be moving into Shejaiya.
The civilians were told to vacate by Monday at 12 noon. So when we were
sent in, I was supposed to fly in just after 12, and we were told that
civilians wouldn’t be there because they were all told to leave. And
then we went and we saw civilians everywhere—in houses, on the streets.
Only in hindsight did we realize that Hamas had told civilians to stay
in their houses.
Another pilot, Capt. Dor, related:
I saw targets in schoolyards, in parks next to swings,
and you realize that Hamas takes the most innocent place, next to a
swing, and builds a rocket launcher. In his mind, the air force won’t
attack it. In his mind there’s more of a chance there will be children
nearby. And for Hamas, for children to be killed is a great success. It
hurts to think it, but for them it’s a great success. They manage to
bring the Israelis to harm by accident innocent children. And we do
everything in our power to avoid it, which is a paradox. You do
everything in your power to make the Gaza civilians safe, and Hamas does
everything in its power to keep civilians in danger.
Wired.com is supposed to be a high tech site. They wanted to write about Gaza. They had to work a little bit to find an angle to make you all feel sorry for Gaza. So they went to the Google-financed incubator in Gaza City to see how the 'entrepreneurs' made it through Operation Protective Edge.
Abultewi goes quiet, and so does
everyone else in the room. The sound of so many clacking keyboards is
replaced by the crash of bombs in the distance. One woman stands, puts
her hands together, and says Halas!—Arabic for “enough”—before
leaving the room. But soon, the clatter of the keyboards resumes, and
Abultewi, a slender 25-year-old dressed in a light-blue hijab, continues
her pitch. Soon, it’s business as usual at Gaza Sky Geeks, the first startup accelerator in the Gaza Strip, home to one of the world’s oldest geopolitical conflicts.
Over the past seven years, Gaza has endured three wars between Israel
and Hamas—the democratically empowered Islamic organization determined
to reclaim Palestine from Israel—and a civil war between Hamas and
Fatah, the secular Palestinian political party that rules the West Bank.
Initiated by a Hamas attack on Israel, the most recent conflict left
more than 2,100 Palestinians dead and more than 10,000 injured, and it
devastated the local infrastructure, destroying more than 18,000 homes,
depriving more than 450,000 civilians of municipal water, and blanketing
the region in extended blackouts after an airstrike on Gaza’s only
power plant.
But here in this room on the sixth floor of
a small office building on the outskirts of Gaza City, young
entrepreneurs like Abultewi are still intent on bringing new internet
technologies to their sliver of land between Israel and the
Mediterranean and, crucially, to other parts of the Middle East and
North Africa. That may seem a Sisyphean task, and perhaps even a
pointless one, given the basic amenities needed throughout the region.
But Gaza Sky Geeks—created by Mercy Corps,
a global aid agency that has for more than a decade worked to improve
life in Gaza—provides much-needed employment for local youth and a
potential path to economic recovery.
...
As the airstrike blasts subside on this
August day and Mariam Abultewi finishes her pitch, she goes back to
work. So does Hadeel Elsafadi, 24, the founder of a digital animation
startup called Newtoon. “These bombings have become normal for me and
everyone here,” she says. “This is why I do what I am doing—to have a
normal life away from bombs and danger.” Her work, she explains, is not
just for her, but also for her two younger brothers. “I want them to
have a future, and I want to have a future as well.”
An Israeli startup's employees could not have worked through a bombing that way. First, while a Gaza startup that knows its headquarters don't house a Hamas military installation has nothing to fear, an Israeli startup always has something to fear because Hamas shoots missiles randomly. Second, while Hamas does not bother to protect its population - and therefore there is little or nothing to be gained by fleeing elsewhere - Israel does protect its population. It's worthwhile for Israelis to go into bomb shelters.
I wonder whether Google expects to get any return on their investment. Or maybe this is just liberal, feel-good politics....
Some of you may recall an incident in the summer in which four 'Palestinian' kids were killed on a Gaza beach in what was claimed to be a strike by Israeli gunboats. At the time, I told you not to rush to conclusions, that we had seen something like this before and it turned out to have been caused by a Hamas land mine.
I can’t tell you what actually happened, but the boys weren’t playing
soccer, the target was legitimate, and the IDF did not deliberately
kill children. Yes, the Israelis took responsibility for the deaths;
however, the IDF stopped using the M825A1 smoke shell for no reason. The IDF was also unable to determine how Mustafa Tamimi and Bassem Abu Rahmeh died. From the standpoints of PR and forensic investigation, the IDF needs major reform.
Knowing what I do about Hamas, my gut tells me that someone tossed a
hand grenade. At close range that would cause all the wounds, burn the
children, and tear off their clothes.
Hamas are just the type of creatures to instantly exploit a situation by murdering children.
Mohammed Bakr, Ahed Bakr, Zakaria Bakr, and Mohammed Bakr were living souls, not objects to be used in film production.
The White House has acknowledged for the first time that
strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian
deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military
operations in Syria and Iraq.
A
White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came
in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen
civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a
Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib
province on the morning of Sept. 23.
The
village has been described by Syrian rebel commanders as a reported
stronghold of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front where U.S officials
believed members of the so-called Khorasan group were plotting attacks
against international aircraft.
But
at a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and
children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile
destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured
children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.
...
Asked about the strike at Kafr Daryan, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said Tuesday that U.S.
military “did target a Khorasan group compound near this location.
However, we have seen no evidence at this time to corroborate claims of
civilian casualties.” But Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson
for the National Security Council, told Yahoo News that Pentagon
officials “take all credible allegations seriously and will investigate”
the reports.
At
the same time, however, Hayden said that a much-publicized White House
policy that President Obama announced last year barring U.S. drone
strikes unless there is a “near certainty” there will be no civilian
casualties — "the highest standard we can meet," he said at the time —
does not cover the current U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.
The
“near certainty” standard was intended to apply “only when we take
direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the
time,” Hayden said in an email. “That description — outside areas of
active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the
ground in Iraq and Syria right now.”
That's a hole you could drive a truck - or fly a fighter jet - through. When would it ever be the case that a democracy takes 'direct action' in an area that is 'outside areas of active hostilities.' I would argue that there are always 'active hostilities' in Gaza. Heck, the IDF has caught two infiltrators from there in the last three days trying to carry out terror attacks.
So I think the IDF should announce that it is adopting President Obama's 'near certainty' standard, except when President Obama wouldn't adopt it.
Otherwise, we'd be condoning a double standard.
Aren't you glad that Obama never got around to adopting the Rome Statute and joining the International Criminal Court? Otherwise, the US could find itself in the dock for that statement.
(Fat chance the IDF would adopt Obama's 'near certainty' standard. The IDF really is the most moral army in the world).
A reminder to all of you that I am in Boston and therefore will be posting later than usual today.
Jordanian Mudar Zahran has done what no one in the international media is willing to do: He has actually interviewed Gaza residents about their experiences during Operation Protective Edge.
Although Gazans, fearful of Hamas's revenge against them, were afraid
to speak to the media, friends in the West Bank offered introductions
to relatives in Gaza. One, a renowned Gazan academic, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, said that as soon as someone talked to a Western
journalist, he was immediately questioned by Hamas and accused of
"communicating with the Mossad". "Hamas makes sure that the average
Gazan will not talk to Western journalists -- or actually any
journalists at all," he said, continuing:
"Hamas does not want the truth about Gaza to come out.
Hamas terrorizes and kills us just like Daesh [ISIS] terrorizes kills
Iraqis. Hamas is a dictatorship that kills us. The Gazans you see
praising Hamas on TV are either Hamas members or too afraid to speak
against Hamas. Few foreign [Western] journalists were probably able to
report what Gazans think of Hamas."
When asked what Gazans did think of Hamas, he said:
"The same as Iraqis thought of Saddam before he was
toppled. He still won by 90-something percent in the presidential
elections. If Hamas falls today in Gaza, people here will do what Iraqis
did to Saddam's statue after he fell. But even though Western
journalists may not have been able to speak freely with Gazans, they
still need a story to send to their editor by the end of the day. So it
is just easier and safer for them to stick to the official line."
"What was that," I asked: "'Blame Israel'?"
...
D, a store owner, said:
"There were two major protests against Hamas during the
third week of the war. When Hamas fighters opened fire at the protesters
in the Bait Hanoun area and the Shijaiya, five were killed instantly. I
saw that with my own eyes. Many were injured. A doctor at Shifa
hospital told me that 35 were killed at both protests. He went and saw
their bodies at the morgue."
To verify those reports, I spoke to a second Gazan academic, who holds a PhD. from a Western university, who stated:
"Hamas did kill protesters, no doubt about that. But we
could not confirm how many were actually killed. If I have to guess, the
number was more than reported. I am confident that not all of the 21
men Hamas killed on August 22 were collaborating with Israel. Hamas
killed those men because it was weakened by Israel's attacks and felt
endangered. So it went on a 'Salem Witch-Hunt.' They arrested everyone
who opposed them and had to make a few examples to scare people from
standing against Hamas. Hamas's tactic worked. Now Gazans are afraid to
talk against Hamas even in front of their own family members. Gazans are
probably afraid to criticize Hamas even in their sleep!"
S. a medical worker, said:
"The Israeli army sends warnings to people [Gazans] to
evacuate buildings before an attack. The Israelis either call or send a
text message. Sometimes they call several times to make sure everyone
has been evacuated. Hamas's strict policy, though, was not to allow us
to evacuate. Many people got killed, locked inside their homes by Hamas
militants. Hamas's official Al-Quds TV regularly issued warnings to
Gazans not to evacuate their homes. Hamas militants would block the
exits to the places residents were asked to evacuate. In the Shijaiya
area, people received warnings from the Israelis and tried to evacuate
the area, but Hamas militants blocked the exits and ordered people to
return to their homes. Some of the people had no choice but to run
towards the Israelis and ask for protection for their families. Hamas
shot some of those people as they were running; the rest were forced to
return to their homes and get bombed. This is how the Shijaiya massacre
happened. More than 100 people were killed."
Another Gazan journalist, D., said:
"Hamas fired rockets from next to homes. Hamas was
running from one home to another. Hamas lied when it claimed it was
shooting from non-populated areas. To make things even worse for us,
Hamas would fire from the balconies of homes and try to drag the
Israelis into door-to-door battles and street-to-street fights -- a
death sentence for all the civilians here. They would fire rockets and
then run away quickly, leaving us to face Israeli bombs for what they
did. They are cowards. If Hamas militants are not afraid of dying, why
do they run after they fire rockets from our homes? Why don't they stay
and die with us? Are they afraid to die and go to heaven? Isn't that
what they claim they wish?"
K, another graduate student at an Egyptian university who had gone to
Gaza to see his family but was unable to leave after the war started,
said on July 22:
"When people stopped listening to Hamas orders not to
evacuate and began leaving their homes anyway, Hamas imposed a curfew:
anyone walking out in the street was shot without being asked any
questions. That way Hamas made sure people had to stay in their homes even if they were about to get bombed. God will ask Hamas on judgment day for those killers' blood."
I asked him if Hamas used people as "human shields." He said: "Hamas
held the entire Gazan population as a human shield. My answer to you is
yes."
...
A first-aid volunteer, E., said that Hamas militants had confiscated
150 truckloads of humanitarian supplies the day before. He said the
supplies were donated by charities in the West Bank and that their
delivery was facilitated by the IDF. He commented: "This theft angers
all of us [Gazans]. The Israeli army allows supplies to come in, and
Hamas steals them. It seems even the Israelis care for us more than
Hamas."
Another aid worker, A., confirmed that Hamas steals the humanitarian
supplies given to Gaza. "They [Hamas] take most of it, sell it to us,
and just give us the stuff they do not want."
A Gazan mosque's imam said that the most precious aid item Hamas
stole was water. "Gazans are thirsty and Hamas is stealing the water
bottles provided to us for free and selling them at 20 Israeli shekels
[approximately $5] for the big bottle and 10 Israeli shekels for the
small one."
...
K., a Gazan school teacher agreed:
"When Hamas starts caring for our children we will start
caring for Hamas. Hamas has one policy, to attack Israel; so Israel
attacks back, and gets us killed and Hamas then gets more money from
Arabs and Erdogan [Turkey's president]. My son has autism; he cannot
handle the sounds of rockets and bombs landing. Why would I support
Hamas, which causes this suffering to him? Gazans have had enough of
Hamas, any claims that we love Hamas is just propaganda. A recent poll
indicates that most of us support Hamas; this is not true, except maybe
in the West Bank where they have not yet lived under Hamas rule. I
cannot accuse the polling center of fabricating the poll, but my safest
explanation for the result is that Gazans polled are too afraid to give
their true opinions of Hamas. Hamas watches everything here. Most Gazans
now have to deal with the aftermath of the war. Almost 300,000 Gazans
are now homeless and Hamas is not providing them with anything. So why
would they or their extended families have any love for Hamas? Would
there be any common sense to that? Most Gazans are angry at Hamas, and
most of us would love to see them replaced by any other force."
Despite all Hamas has done to Gazans, they do not seem to hold much love -- or less hatred -- for Israel.
Unfortunately, the interviews are necessarily anonymous. Wouldn't it be great if someone could take some of these people to the 'human rights council' and show what a farce its proceedings are? Not that it would really matter. So long as it's Muslims killing and torturing Muslims, the world doesn't care.
As long as the excerpts above are, there's much, much more. Read the whole thing.
Two weeks after the end of the Gaza war, there is growing evidence that
Hamas militants used residential areas as cover for launching rockets at
Israel, at least at times. Even Hamas now admits “mistakes” were made.
Mistakes? Actually, Hamas has another excuse.
But Hamas says it had little choice in Gaza’s crowded urban
landscape, took safeguards to keep people away from the fighting, and
that a heavy-handed Israeli response is to blame for the deaths of
hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
“Gaza, from Beit Hanoun in
the north to Rafah in the south, is one uninterrupted urban chain that
Israel has turned into a war zone,” said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas
official in Gaza.
That's a load of nonsense. Here's an example. I'm embedding a satellite map of Gaza City below. You will note that various neighborhoods are outlined - some of the names will be familiar. Now notice all that open farmland on the right side on the bottom two thirds of the map. Couldn't Hamas have used that space if it really wanted to avoid harming civilians?
During 50 days of fighting, many observers witnessed rocket launches
from what appeared to be urban areas. One piece of video footage
distributed by the AP, for instance, captured a launch in downtown Gaza
City that took place in a lot next to a mosque and an office of the
Hamas prime minister. Both buildings were badly damaged in subsequent
Israeli airstrikes.
Here's AP reporter Joseph Federman on July 9.
Let's go to the videotape. In this video, watch the question and answer sequence between 1:14 and 2:01.
Note how Federman says that two rockets were launched right outside the AP's Gaza City office!
Then there's the Carter Center's effort to set a new legal standard.
“Yes, Hamas and others may have used civilians as human shields, but was
that consistent and widespread?” said Sami Abdel-Shafi, a
Palestinian-American who represents the Carter Center in Gaza. “The
question is whether Israel’s response was proportionate.”
Umm, no. Those are two independent questions. If Israel's response was disproportionate, that might be a war crime. Or it might not be a war crime. Recall this and this.
But if Hamas used civilians as human shields, that's a war crime regardless of whether it was consistent or widespread. And each time they did was a war crime. Targeting civilians, which is what the 'Palestinians' did on a consistent and widespread basis, is a war crime each time it's done. Imagine what our death toll would have been - God Forbid - if we didn't have Iron Dome.
Finally, here is an IDF video showing 12 examples of rocket launches from civilian areas and Gaza.
Let's go to the videotape.
Notice how most of those rockets were shot from the middle - not even the edges - of civilian areas, and they were shot at our civilians. What was the IDF to do? Do you think we should have stood our ground and not responded? Would your government have responded?
PS This article doesn't even discuss the terror tunnels, all of which used civilian structures.
The first investigation will examine events surrounding the military strike on a Gaza beach on July 16, in which four Palestinian kids were killed.
The second will look into the circumstances around an IDF strike on an UNRWA school in Gaza on July 24, in which 14 Palestinians were killed.
Additionally, since the end of hostilities in Gaza, Efroni has ordered immediate in-depth investigations into three cases. The first involved suspected looting by soldiers, the second investigation is examining how a woman who coordinated an exit from her home in Gaza was nevertheless shot and killed, and a third is looking at claims that a 17-year-old Gazan youth was taken into custody and held for five days, during which, according to his claim, he was moved from place to place by soldiers and beaten.
In recent weeks, the Military Prosecutor's office has closed several cases related to the war, after concluding that no criminal wrong doing occurred. An officer in the prosecutor's office decided not to open an investigation into a strike on a journalist in Gaza after it was discovered that he was a terror operative, suspected of carrying a missile in his vehicle.
Another case that was closed involved an air strike on a home following the evacuation of the Kaware family from it on July 8.
Family members left the home after a small unarmed bomb was dropped on its home, but then ran back into the house after a second, armed missile was already fired at the target. Eight members of the family were killed in the strike. "There is no suspicion that international law was violated here," the sources said on Wednesday.
...
The teams are currently looking at 44 incidents from the war. Of those, two have resulted in criminal investigations so far, 12 are being examined, seven have been closed, and three are pending, army sources added.
As if that biased UN Commission chaired by William Schabes is going to give us a break for acting properly....
In a written petition to have Schabas recused filed on Sept. 4, UN
Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, showcased a July 17 BBC interview in which
Schabas presumed Israel guilty. Although at the time of that interview
there had been no ground offensive, Schabas declared “prima facie there
is evidence of disproportionality” by Israel sufficient to declare the
air strikes unjustified because “there are a huge number of civilian
casualties on one side and virtually no civilian casualties on the
other.” The BBC interview is damning evidence sufficiently questioning
Schabas’ impartiality under a longstanding due process principle that
judges or investigators “should be, and should be seen to be, free of
commitment to a preconceived outcome.”
Also on Sept. 4, Schabas championed his commission’s adjudicatory
relevance in a CNN interview, stating: “the International Criminal Court
is sitting in the wings,” and the commission will likely “provide
materials that would go to the prosecutor of the ICC and so that’s a
pretty big stick if we come to the conclusion that there were war
crimes.” The Palestinians recently disclosed plans to join the ICC,
which might be considered encouraging news to Schabas, who has
repeatedly promoted prosecuting Palestinian claims against Israel at the
ICC. Schabas’ admission to CNN that his commission aims to assist any
ICC prosecution lends greater significance to a 2012 address he
delivered to the Russell Tribunal, a London-based pro-Palestinian NGO
that even Judge Richard Goldstone [the author of a controversial UN
report on Israeli actions during the last Gaza war] discredited as “one
sided.” Schabas quipped in that speech: “My favorite would be [Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu within the dock of the International
Criminal Court.”
The BBC and CNN interviews confirm that Schabas should be disqualified
either for actual bias or the appearance of bias. As UN Watch argues,
the BBC interview demonstrates “commitment to a preconceived outcome” of
“Israeli guilt for war crimes” that “constitutes an overt case of
actual bias on the very question that the [UN commission] members are
meant to impartially assess.” These circumstances distinguish Schabas’
case from that of Nabil Elaraby, current head of the Arab League, who
was part of the 2004 judicial panel at the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) that issued an advisory opinion on “Legal Consequences of
the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Territory.” The ICJ refused
to disqualify Elaraby notwithstanding anti-Israel sentiments he
expressed in a newspaper interview prior to joining the Court. The ICJ
reasoned that Elaraby “expressed no opinion on the question put in the
present case” during that interview. In stark contrast, Schabas’ opinion
of prima facie guilt by Israel relates directly to the very issues and
events his commission is supposed to assess.
No other country in the world would be subjected to this treatment. None.
Video: Longer interview with former AP Israel correspondent who exposed disproportionate media coverage of Israel
Journalist and award-winning author Matti Friedman joins Yishai
in-studio to discuss his powerful article, 'An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth,' in which he writes about "the resurgence
of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the
margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile
obsession with Jews."
Abu Mazen: Hamas lied - 850 terrorists killed in Operation Protective Edge
'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen says that Hamas lied about its casualties in Operation Protective Edge: 850 terrorists were killed, exactly as estimated by the IDF.
Another point Abbas touched on was the death toll in Operation
Protective Edge. Hamas has been busily pushing an inflated civilian
death toll to world media outlets that rely on it for figures given the
lack of objective investigation in the Hamas stronghold of Gaza, and in
doing so Hamas uses a variety of tactics to skew the numbers.
Abbas burst the claims, saying "Hamas says the number of dead
from their ranks didn't go past 50, when in actuality over 850 Hamas
members and their family members were killed."
Hamas's health ministry has claimed just slightly over 2,000
Gazans dead in the operation. Given that, Abbas's figure, which didn't
include the number of killed terrorists from other groups such as
Islamic Jihad, would support Israeli reports placing the ratio of
civilian to terrorist casualties at roughly 1:1, an almost unprecedented achievement in urban warfare.
Gee, you think Hamas would lie? Abu Mazen obviously does.
It is true the conflict we covered can be framed in
various ways: of downtrodden Palestinians facing off against powerful
Israel, or of tiny Israel against the surrounding sea of 300 million
Arabs. Often, I felt that attempting to “frame” it either way was not
instructive. It was preferable to simply bear witness to what we saw
unfolding before our eyes.
During my six-year tenure in Israel and the Palestinian
territories, our staff was made up mostly of Israeli Jews and
Palestinian Muslims, with a smaller number of foreigners who belonged to
neither or those two communities. Matti provided valuable, fair-minded
input during those years, a voice that often helped ensure the Israeli
viewpoint got a fair shake without belittling the other side. I was
grateful for that, and for the other voices in the bureau who did the
same for the Palestinians.
As bureau chief, I knew it was one of my key roles to
fight bias in our reporting. Was this achieved all the time? I doubt it.
But I know an honest attempt was made at all times. I always told our
reporters not to deliver “milk toast” and to lay bare the raw passions
of each side in all their glory, rather than trying to tone down the
arguments. While fairness was of utmost importance, I told them, not
every story had to be 50-50 (if you were reporting in 1930s Germany, I
asked, would you be compelled to give half the space to the Jewish side
and the other half to the Nazis?)
Matti states that the AP’s Jerusalem bureau – like all
other major news operations based in Israel and the Palestinian
territories – employs an inordinate amount of reporters because of this
hostile obsession with the Jews. The truth is the story of Israel is
that of a nation rising from the ashes of the worst genocide in human
history, being attacked from all sides upon its inception.
Depending on
your point of view, it’s also a story about the persecuted becoming the
persecutors. All of this, of course, is happening to the people of the
Bible, the descendants of the Hebrew slaves who were led out of Egypt by
Moses and from whose ranks emerged Jesus Christ. It’s as if a new
chapter of the Bible is being written in our times. Whether you think
the Bible is mythology or the word of God is beside the point. The point
is we are all human beings who love a good story, and this one is
particularly good.
In his article, Matti states that I personally
suppressed stories that did not fit my narrative of Israel being bad,
implying that I was a part of this worldwide media conspiracy against
the Jews. It’s a large statement, and of course could only be true if I
hated myself. The truth is I am not a self-hating Jew or any kind of Jew
other than just a regular one.
...
If an article didn’t appear that Matti thought should
have, it was not because it didn’t fit a pre-ordained narrative or
because we had it in for Israel. Deciding which stories to pursue
involves news judgment, and rare events are more newsworthy than common
ones. Reporters do not write about all the houses that DON’T catch fire,
and corruption in Sweden is more noteworthy than it is in Nigeria.
(Though it must be stated that Matti’s assertion that the AP ignores
Palestinian corruption and other aspects of Palestinian existence is
untrue).
Matti stated that a female reporter in our bureau had
access to maps showing the contours of a generous Israeli offer of a
Palestinian state, but that the bureau’s leadership refused to run the
story. The map he’s talking about was indeed shown by a Palestinian
official to one of our reporters. It affirmed a longstanding Palestinian
proposal for a land swap that had been part of the Geneva Initiative,
and was old news.
During my years with the AP and other news
organizations, I reported from some two dozen countries, including
Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Colombia, Cuba and Israel. I have been
threatened, shot at and shelled, and I have been present when colleagues
were injured and killed. Were there times when we decided not to report
a given fact because we thought it would endanger one of our reporters?
Yes there were, and one of these incidents occurred when Matti was on
the editing desk. But these events were extremely rare – perhaps only
two or three times during my entire six-year stint in Israel/Palestine –
and we withheld the information only after concluding that it would
necessarily be traced to the reporter in question, thus jeopardizing his
life.
Read the whole thing. I found Matti Friedman's presentation to be much more factual than Steven Gutkin's. And I left out this sentence in the excerpt above, which is quite telling about whether the AP and the media generally are biased:
Depending on your point of view, it’s also a story about the persecuted becoming the persecutors.
United Nations refused to evacuate civilians from Gaza war zone
Mark Langfan posts part of a fascinating interview with Penelope Ironside. Ms. Ironside heads up the UNICEF field office in Gaza. UNICEF is the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, and is meant to help children all over the world, including in both Gaza and Israel. Ms. Ironside reports that the UNICEF and the United Nations were asked by the IDF to evacuate civilians who were being used as human shields by Hamas in Gaza. The organizations refused to act.
At 29 minutes into the briefing, Ms. Ironside landed what could be an
absolute bombshell in any future war-crimes tribunal. In response to a
question of how she, and the entire UN Gaza staff, remained “neutral” in
the face of Gaza children’s and civilian hardships, Ms. Ironside stated
that, “There have been attempts to instrumentalize the UN in Gaza in
this conflict. Including, there have been attempts [by Israel] to try
to facilitate military operations against the [Palestinian] civilian
population by facilitating the clearance of certain neighborhoods. The
UN has refused to be a party to that.” (Emphasis added to convey Ms.
Ironside’s emphasis.) Ms. Ironside, on a follow-up question, clarified
that it was the Israelis that sought the UN’s help in clearing civilian
neighborhoods of civilians in advance of imminent Israeli military
operations directed at military targets imbedded in those civilian
neighborhoods. She explained that the Israelis had informed them
through “text messages, phone calls, and leaflets from Israel,” with
“notice of some hours.” From her briefing statements, Ms. Ironside
appeared to believe that “some hours” of Israeli notice to her meant
“short notice.”
In essence, she admitted that the UN, not just
UNICEF, has purposefully refused to assist, or to “be a party” to, the
orderly civilian evacuation of areas Israel had warned it would soon
attack in several hours. Thus, from Ms. Ironsides’ briefing testimony,
it would appear that the UN, itself, has had a significant and negative
role in the number of Gazan civilian deaths that have consequently
resulted.
Let's go to the videotape. The part we're looking for starts at 1:14.
I don't get this. How does evacuating citizens from a war zone to save them from harm 'instrumentalize' the UN? Why would the UN not try to save civilians whose lives are being placed at risk whether involuntarily due to force by Hamas, or voluntarily because they are willing to act as human shields?
Residents of high-rise in Gaza ask Hamas Interior Ministry to evacuate its offices from the building out of fear of being targeted by Israel
— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) September 2, 2014
CNN interviews journalist who shined spotlight on disproportionate media coverage of Israel
You will recall that last week, I posted a story from Tablet magazine from a former AP journalist in Israel who talked about how the media frames the Middle East narrative. That journalist, Matti Friedman, was interviewed on CNN over the weekend.
The most important story you will read today: How the media turns Israel into the pool into which the world spits
The article linked and discussed in this post really is the most important story you will read today - regardless of what else happens over the course of the day. Matti Friedman is a former AP correspondent in Israel, who has lived here since 1995. In this article, he discusses how the mainstream media frames the 'Israel story' so that you think it's the most important story in the world, and why the mainstream media chooses to do that. He also explains some of the things the mainstream media ignores because they interfere with its narrative of the 'Israel story,' and why it chooses to do so. Here are a few highlights.
The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I
believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the
war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has
laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its
migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western
discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews. The key to
understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi
webmasters, basement conspiracy theorists, or radical activists. It is
instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who
populate the international news industry; decent people, many of them,
and some of them my former colleagues.
While global mania about Israeli actions has come to be taken for
granted, it is actually the result of decisions made by individual human
beings in positions of responsibility—in this case, journalists and
editors. The world is not responding to events in this country, but
rather to the description of these events by news organizations. The key
to understanding the strange nature of the response is thus to be found
in the practice of journalism, and specifically in a severe malfunction
that is occurring in that profession—my profession—here in Israel.
...
The volume of press coverage that results,
even when little is going on, gives this conflict a prominence compared
to which its actual human toll is absurdly small. In all of 2013, for
example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives—that is,
roughly the monthly homicide rate in the city of Chicago. Jerusalem,
internationally renowned as a city of conflict, had slightly fewer
violent deaths per capita last year than Portland, Ore., one of
America’s safer cities. In contrast, in three years the Syrian conflict
has claimed an estimated 190,000 lives, or about 70,000 more than the
number of people who have ever died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since
it began a century ago.
A reporter working in the international press
corps here understands quickly that what is important in the
Israel-Palestinian story is Israel. If you follow mainstream coverage,
you will find nearly no real analysis of Palestinian society or
ideologies, profiles of armed Palestinian groups, or investigation of
Palestinian government. Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents
of their own fate. The West has decided that Palestinians should want a
state alongside Israel, so that opinion is attributed to them as fact,
though anyone who has spent time with actual Palestinians understands
that things are (understandably, in my opinion) more complicated. Who
they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that
they exist as passive victims of the party that matters.
Get ready for this one - here's a biggie.
There has been much discussion recently of
Hamas attempts to intimidate reporters. Any veteran of the press corps
here knows the intimidation is real, and I saw it in action myself as an
editor on the AP news desk. During the 2008-2009 Gaza fighting I
personally erased a key detail—that Hamas fighters were dressed as
civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll—because of a
threat to our reporter in Gaza. (The policy was then, and remains, not
to inform readers that the story is censored unless the censorship is
Israeli. Earlier this month, the AP’s Jerusalem news editor reported and
submitted a story on Hamas intimidation; the story was shunted into
deep freeze by his superiors and has not been published.)
But if critics imagine that journalists are clamoring to cover Hamas
and are stymied by thugs and threats, it is generally not so. There are
many low-risk ways to report Hamas actions, if the will is there: under
bylines from Israel, under no byline, by citing Israeli sources.
Reporters are resourceful when they want to be.
The fact is that Hamas intimidation is largely beside the point
because the actions of Palestinians are beside the point: Most reporters
in Gaza believe their job is to document violence directed by Israel at
Palestinian civilians. That is the essence of the Israel story. In
addition, reporters are under deadline and often at risk, and many don’t
speak the language and have only the most tenuous grip on what is going
on. They are dependent on Palestinian colleagues and fixers who either
fear Hamas, support Hamas, or both. Reporters don’t need Hamas enforcers
to shoo them away from facts that muddy the simple story they have been
sent to tell.
It is not coincidence that the few journalists who have documented
Hamas fighters and rocket launches in civilian areas this summer were
generally not, as you might expect, from the large news organizations
with big and permanent Gaza operations. They were mostly scrappy,
peripheral, and newly arrived players—a Finn, an Indian crew, a few others. These poor souls didn’t get the memo.
Are you furious after reading that? I was. Here's another story that will infuriate you.
In early 2009, for example, two colleagues of
mine obtained information that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had
made a significant peace offer to the Palestinian Authority several
months earlier, and that the Palestinians had deemed it insufficient.
This had not been reported yet and it was—or should have been—one of the
biggest stories of the year. The reporters obtained confirmation from
both sides and one even saw a map, but the top editors at the bureau
decided that they would not publish the story.
Some staffers were furious, but it didn’t
help. Our narrative was that the Palestinians were moderate and the
Israelis recalcitrant and increasingly extreme. Reporting the Olmert
offer—like delving too deeply into the subject of Hamas—would make that
narrative look like nonsense. And so we were instructed to ignore it,
and did, for more than a year and a half.
This decision taught me a lesson that should be clear to consumers of
the Israel story: Many of the people deciding what you will read and
see from here view their role not as explanatory but as political.
Coverage is a weapon to be placed at the disposal of the side they like.
And why are these decisions made? Surprise: It's classical anti-Semitism (and Friedman is not a conservative - he is opposed to the 'settlements').
For centuries, stateless Jews played the role
of a lightning rod for ill will among the majority population. They
were a symbol of things that were wrong. Did you want to make the point
that greed was bad? Jews were greedy. Cowardice? Jews were cowardly.
Were you a Communist? Jews were capitalists. Were you a capitalist? In
that case, Jews were Communists. Moral failure was the essential trait
of the Jew. It was their role in Christian tradition—the only reason
European society knew or cared about them in the first place.
Like many Jews who grew up late in the 20th century in friendly
Western cities, I dismissed such ideas as the feverish memories of my
grandparents. One thing I have learned—and I’m not alone this summer—is
that I was foolish to have done so. Today, people in the West tend to
believe the ills of the age are racism, colonialism, and militarism. The
world’s only Jewish country has done less harm than most countries on
earth, and more good—and yet when people went looking for a country that
would symbolize the sins of our new post-colonial, post-militaristic,
post-ethnic dream-world, the country they chose was this one.
When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world,
journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any
other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in
the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’
actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying
to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the
worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized
people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press
coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.
I have two further comments. First, people occasionally ask me why I write a blog when most of the world gets their information from the mainstream media anyway. Unfortunately, I and my fellow bloggers have not yet reached the point where our impact approaches that of the New York Times, the Washington Post, AP or the Guardian. But collectively, we are having an impact. Not enough of an impact, but an impact all the same.
Second, after reading this story, I am more convinced than ever that the Sheldon Adelson's of the world are correct and that the answer is to create an alternative mainstream media (Adelson finances Yisrael HaYom, which has become the largest circulation newspaper in Israel - it is handed out for free and subsists on ad money). But while Israel may have been the place to start, the real places where an alternative mainstream media needs to play out are the western countries - especially in North America and Europe.
I hope you all read the story. I'm quite jaded and I was still astounded by how blatant the framing of Israel's story really is.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
