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January 06, 2009

The Israeli Propaganda War

Today's news that a second UN school in Gaza has been bombed by Israel (30-40 dead, 50-60 wounded) underscores the fig-leaf Israel has offered.

Israel has help up it's phone calls to individual Palestinians warning of an impending nearby bombing as evidence that they, unlike Hamas, are being careful to avoid harming civilian non-combatants.

But where are those Palestinians supposed to flee to?

There have been numerous reports of Palestinians so warned who fled, only to have to flee again and again because wherever they fled to was no safer.

Israel could allow them to flee into Israel, but hasn't and most assuredly won't. Instead, Palestinians are forced to flee from place to place like caged rats. Egypt has similarly declined to allow Palestinians to flee into Egypt. But while that failure has been held up by Israel's apologists as evidence that Arabs truly don't care about the plight of the Palestinians, not a word has been said about Israel's virtually identical refusal. And there is a crucial legal difference between the two. As the occupying power the onus is on Israel, not Egypt, to safeguard civilian non-combatants.

And let's be honest here. Even Israel estimates that Hamas forces only total about 20,000. There are 1.5 MILLION Gazans caged like rats.

Similarly, Israel has denied that there is a huge and growing humanitarian crisis brewing among civilian non-combatants in Gaza. Their evidence? That they are allowing "vital supplies" to cross border checkpoints. But how are Gazan civilians supposed to benefit from any of it if there is no functioning distribution system to distribute said supplies?

If civilians fleeing for their lives are unable to reliably find safety then how can anyone assume that these supplies are somehow magically immune to the very same conditions?

And then there is Israel's siege of Gaza which predates by many months the Hamas decision to not renew it's cease-fire a few weeks ago.

Israel says it won't stop the assault until its southern towns are freed of the threat of Palestinian rocket fire and it receives international guarantees that Hamas, a militant group backed by Iran and Syria, will not restock its weapons stockpile. - AP

Early in Israel's bombing campaign they destroyed dozens of tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt. The reason? To prevent Hamas from re-arming.

Why were those tunnels dug in the first place? Multiple first-hand accounts and lots of hard evidence (photographs, video footage, etc.) exists showing that anything from concrete to chickens to cows to construction steel (rebar) to a vast array of consumer electronics were being smuggled through those tunnels. One was apparently dedicated to piping in petroleum products for generators because Israel was attempting to economically strangle the entire Gaza strip.

Why was Israel attempting to economically strangle the entire Gaza strip? It predates Hamas having seized control of Gaza from Fatah. The impetus for it was as punishment for Palestinians having held democratic elections - just as Israel and the Bush administration demanded they do - and democratically electing someone other than who Olmert and Bush wanted. So Olmert and Bush decided to punish all of them for having practiced the very democracy which it is widely alleged that only Israel practices in the region. Which is more propaganda. But I digress...

Now, if Israel had truly wanted to minimize weapons and weapons-related materials from entering Gaza rather than punishing the entire population then wouldn't it have made a great deal more sense to allow the import of consumer goods through border crossings and simply check more stringently for contraband?

And then there is the ceasefire itself.

Israel and her allies (Bush) have consistently pointed at Hamas as the responsible party for the ceasefire having not been maintained and for missles having been lobbed into Israel prior to the ceasefire expiring. But the truth is that Israel violated the ceasefire in early November. That violation predictably sparked a wave of missles to be launched into Israel by Hamas as punishment for Israel having violated the ceasefire. But Israel smuggly presumed that they could get away with it,

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, had personally approved the Gaza raid, the Associated Press said. The Israeli military concluded that Hamas was likely to want to continue the ceasefire despite the raid, it said. The ceasefire was due to run for six months and it is still unclear whether it will stretch beyond that limit. (emphasis supplied)

You won't hear about any of this from Israel or her apologists. They uniformly point to Hamas as the ONLY party bearing responsibility.

And that is nothing more than progaganda.

Posted by Kevin at January 6, 2009 11:26 AM