Gaza – Prog Gold

“Why the world hate Israel?” the soldier whispered.

Published on July 27, 2014Leave a comment

An Israeli soldier asks Paul Mason why the world hates Israel.

It was the second conversation of the day along the same lines: the guy who issued my press pass made the same points to me as the soldier: that “we don’t target civilians” and that Hamas’ infrastructure hides within civilian homes, hospitals etc.

To anybody who’s been anywhere near a military staff college, or an international law course, there is an obvious missing point in these justifications: soldiers, and their commanders, also have a duty to take precautions against killing civilians.

Not taking those precautions can be just as criminal as getting a rocket and firing it indiscriminately towards civilian areas as Hamas is doing.

In previous conflicts, even during Operation Cast Lead only six years ago, Israel was largely able to control the media picture of their warwaging, with arguments like those cited above. Even with bloggers and other new media channels hostile to their intepretation, the public still had to seek out those. Now though, with Twitter and less so, Facebook, the real facts of the war get shoved in your face and Israeli propaganda can’t compete with pictures of children killed by IDF strikes and can no longer control what’s being told about the war:

Reporting goes through an editing process; things that don’t conform to editorial policy can be weeded out; facts have to be cross-checked with other facts and claims. The reporting team itself – producer, reporter, camera crew, translator for TV – form an initial filter. But in Gaza, there is no filter; plus you are now getting camera crews and off-screen TV journalists tweeting. On newspapers, several different reporters will be tweeting, rather than it all going into the editorial machine and coming out as one thing.

But what I wonder how much it does matter that so many more ordinary people get to know something of the truth of Israel’s warcrimes when our own elites and the media are still reflexivily pro-Israel. We’ve seen what happened with the War on Iraq, where the public was opposed but they were in favour of the war.

What lies behind the Israeli attack?

Published on June 3, 2010

The core problem in resolving the Israeli Apartheid is that this is the liberal option:

I’m not asking Israel to be Utopian. I’m not asking it to allow Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their homes. I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. I’m actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for Israel’s security and for its status as a Jewish state.”

There may be Israeli’s who genuinely want to end Apartheid, just like there were White South Africans who wanted to end theirs, but they’re too few and too powerless to count, unless Israel starts to suffer for its policies the way South Africa suffered. Hence the importance of the boycott and disinvestment campaign as well as the aid offered to the Palestinian population.

Which is part of the reason why the relief flottila was attacked the way it was, as Jim Henley explains:

Simply, the Jewish people have historically been weak. The Israeli state is currently strong. Itâ€™s the only military power of significance in its region and it has the apparently unswerving support of the only global military power that matters. Israel attacked the relief convoy because Israel did not want the relief convoy reaching Gaza, and the convoy offered an opportunity to demonstrate that it meant what it said. In particular that it wasnâ€™t going to stand on ceremony about technicalities like â€œinternational watersâ€ or â€œattacking civilians.â€ Itâ€™s not more complcated than that.

As I said before, Israel wanted to make it clear that they and only they would decide when the population of Gaza had suffered enough and was allowed help.

Meanwhile, here’s what happens if you attempt to protest this attack in the Occupied Westbank:

A 21-year old American student at Cooper Union lost an eye after getting hit in the face with a tear gas projectile fired by an Israeli soldier during a demonstration at a crowded checkpoint between Israel and the West Bank yesterday. Emily Henochowicz (here’s her blog) was part of a group protesting the deaths of at least nine pro-Palestinian activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. According to her fellow activists, Henochowicz is undergoing surgery to remove her left eye, and one protester, SÃ¶ren Johanssen, says Israeli soldiers intentionally fired at her face:

“They clearly saw us,” says Johanssen. “They clearly saw that we were internationals and it really looked as though they were trying to hit us. They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face.” Israeli soldiers have previously killed and injured demonstrators with tear gas canisters.

QotD: If Israeli PR went freelance

Published on June 3, 2010

Mark Steel:

It’s time the Israeli government’s PR team made the most of its talents, and became available for hire. Then whenever a nutcase marched into a shopping mall in somewhere like Wisconsin and gunned down a selection of passers-by, they could be on hand to tell the world’s press “The gunman
regrets the loss of life but did all he could to avoid violence.” Then various governments would issue statements saying “All we know is a man went berserk with an AK 47, and next to him there’s a pile of corpses, so until we know the facts we can’t pass judgement on what took place.”

QotD: how is Israel like North Korea

Published on June 1, 2010

From Jamie:

Is it extreme to raise parallels between Israel and North Korea? I donâ€™t think so. Both countries are highly militarized and intensely nationalistic, quite a lot of the time to the point of messianism . Both regard themselves as lights unto the nations, as the saying goes. Neither consider themselves bound by treaty arrangements, and are indeed generally suspicious of them. Both believe themselves to be under existential threat and neither acknowledges that their own behaviour may have anything to do with whatever hostility they face. Both pursue a strategy of active deterrence, based on a philosophy of applying disproportionate force. Both countries enjoy active, committed support from within a diaspora population. Both have nuclear weapons and neither subscribe to the anti-proliferation regime. Both economies depend heavily on arms sales abroad. While both countries consider themselves to be friendless, and use this perception to mobilise support among their respective populations, each enjoys close relations with a major sponsor.

Bastards

Published on May 31, 2010

This attack found place in international waters, against an unarmed humanitarian mission to feed the people Israel wanted to put on a diet. As per usual, supposed concerns for Israeli security are meant to trump anything else and also as per usual the victims are accussed of having forced the poor, heavily armed Israeli special forces to kill them, as they may have had slingshots and marbles. This will of course turn out to be nonsense, as it always does when the IDF complains about the supposed crimes of its victims. The real motivation is much simpler: to show Gaza and the world that Israel and Israel alone will decide whether or not the people of Gaza will recieve any help. It also shows how little Israel cares about public opinion and that it won’t be moved by it. A very dangerous game to play, as Israel leaves itself very little room for anything other than increasingly brutal oppression.