Tag: Gaza

The tightening grasp on media by the Israeli government


Now that the Gazan offensive is in full swing and the killing and murder are at a fever pitch, look for the Israeli government to bring out their apologists who will be able to convince you and me that things are not what they seem and it’s the Palestinians’ fault.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel’s international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip.

Livni instructed ministry officials currently on vacation in Israel to return immediately to their posts abroad, and to immediately mount public relations campaigns in their station countries, focusing on local media and public officials.

The Foreign Ministry is also looking to recruit speakers of foreign languages, in particular Arabic, Italian, Spanish, and German, in order to expand Israel’s public relations campaign with the representatives of foreign media outlets currently in Israel.

If you think there will be relief from Israeli spin on the Internet think again.  Israelis have always been afraid of unfettered access to information and so they’ve managed to wrap that loose end up as well.

The Anti-Defamation League announced Sunday its recent expansion into the world of YouTube, the on-line video-sharing site.

The US-based advocacy group has officially partnered with the digital media powerhouse in an effort to combat hate speech and other forms of abuse.

YouTube’s community guidelines define hate speech as “content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group” – a religious or ethnic minority, for example – without discussing the question of intent.

It is not clear what role, if any, the ADL will have in reshaping YouTube policy in this regard. As of now, the ADL appears merely to be supplementing YouTube’s current abuse-protection measures.

The media blitz of the Israeli machine is now in full swing and every excuse will be made for the aggressive and brutal attacks against Gaza’s population, especially when the ground invasion begins.  Grab as many sources of information as you can, while you still can.  It could very well be that an incident like this will be the catalyst for censoring news and keeping people in the dark.



The bestiality of the Israeli government


MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANSpalevictimTit for tat?  (On the left an Israeli building hit by Palestinians “rockets”; on the right a Palestinian building hit by Israeli fire.)  The Israeli government launched an attack during the Christmas season which was designed to insure there would be no peace on earth, or goodwill towards Palestinians.  Using the false pretense that the Palestinian firing of rockets was unprovoked and therefore an Israeli response was necessary, the bombardment of the Gaza strip is no less than genocide against a defenseless civilian population.

What else can  you expect from a government whose leaders had publicly made such statements as Gazans should not be allowed to “live normal lives (Ehud Olmert) or that  punishment should be inflicted “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians” (Avi Dichter) or that Israel should “decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it” (Meir Sheetrit) the intent of this latest act of murder is to inflict the maximum amount of casualties possible.  Some bloggers have even gone on to suggest that the lifting of the embargo by the Israelis was designed to offer them a window to kill the most number of civilians gathered to collect foodstuffs denied them by the Israelis for so long, but whatever the motive, the means were the use of the best military weaponry the state of Israel can finagle from America in their extermination of Palestinians.

Israel decided on a collective punishment policy after the Hamas electoral victory in ’07, and part of that punishment was in the form of the blockade which denied the Gaza Strip even the barest of essentials, electricity and food.  They did so while thumbing their noses at an international community which sought to chronicle Israel’s abuses.  The flagrant and exaggerated expulsion of Richard Falk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories is just one example among many where the Israelis have ignored the “rule of law” and internationally recognized conventions while continuing to oppress the Palestinian civilian population.

As always, the Israelis blame their victim for Israeli transgressions, saying that recent rocket attacks at the end of the ceasefire are responsible for this latest Israeli slaughter.  And while large numbers of rocket attacks are thrown at the public in order to justify Israeli aggression, lost in the argument is that these Palestinian “rockets” are ineffective, inaccurate (only one Israeli casualty  since Palestinians started firing the rockets after the ceasefire) and essentially home-made munitions. What the Israelis have done however to get around the disproportionate nature of their aggression is to return to collectivism of the Palestinian population, equating all within the borders of Gaza as terrorist and therefore subject to elimination, no questions asked.

This latest Israeli atrocity occurs in plain sight before the world stage and yet Hamas and by extension the Palestinians are responsible.  In the light of such global response the likelihood Israel will stop such unparalleled genocide is nil.  Countless deaths will be exacted before the Israelis stop this latest slaughter and resume their obfuscation of Palestinian statehood and peace in the Middle East.  By accepting their line of reasoning, the US is also a willing and active participant in this bloodshed.  One can now see the reason behind the Bush Administration’s abandonment of international law in its treatment of people captured during the phony WOT; accepting the link between themselves and their ally Israel means the only way to escape international illegality is to propose it doesn’t accept the terms of what’s legal and illegal.  Therefore it’s necessary to call such actions as the Israeli attack on Gaza bestial, inhumane, psychopathic, sociopathic, murderous, because in a nation where laws are no longer adhered to, legal and illegal have no meaning.  That seems to be acceptable to the Israeli government and the rest of the world.

UPDATE I

Not even Israelis seem to take the firing of rockets by Palestinians seriously. Take the tone of this article (Latest Gaza Rockets Injure More Arab Children than Jews) which appears in an Israeli newspaper.  It refers to the rockets used by the Palestinians as ‘locally produced rockets’, meaning internal, meaning made in Gaza, meaning at the very most, crude, (We’ve spoken of the ineffective nature of such munitions.)  yet in the Israeli scheme of looking at things they justify the killing of scores of people; a culture of death brought to us by the party of death.

UPDATE II

Not that there’s anything new about this, but assertions by the Israelis that their attack was in response to alleged ceasefire breakdowns, or violations on the part of Hamas to the expired ceasefire are not true, according to this piece from Haaretz.

Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public – all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces “Cast Lead” operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas…..

The expression in the above link to “misleading of the public” is ironic and a common feature of the Israeli government.



Outrageous!


Court: Feeding Palestinian children a form of terrorism support, screamed the headline as I did my daily walk through the news.  The genocide of Palestinians continues under the hateful gaze of one of the worst administrations in American history and one of the most oppressive regimes in human history.  It’s not enough that Palestinians are being slowly starved to death by their Israeli oppressors, and denied the basic necessities in order to live.  Now comes word from America that people who are more affluent than the Palestinians languishing in Gaza, and even the West Bank, cannot aid them in any organized fashion for it’s considered terrorism. Look at the inhumanity of one of the greatest criminals to ever sit in the White House:

Mufid Abdulqader, a top Holy Land fundraiser whose Palestinian band played at the charity’s (Holy Land Foundation) events….. faces up to 55 years in jail….defendant Mohammad el-Mezain, a foundation co-founder, (who) is married to the cousin of defendant Ghassan Elashi, former Holy Land board chairman faces up to 15 years in prison while Elashi, who is already serving six and a half years for export law violations, faces up to life in prison. (D)efendant Shukri Abu Baker, Holy Land’s former chief executive officer faces up to life in prison and defendant Abdulrahman Odeh, Holy Land’s New Jersey representative, faces up to 55 years in jail.

and for what? “Prosecutors did not accuse the charity of directly financing or being involved in terrorist activity. Instead, they said humanitarian aid was used to promote Hamas and allow it to divert existing funds to militant activities,” and for that each defendant was given more than 50 years in prison!  I’d settle for 5 years for a president who is directly responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis in his phony war on terror, yet this court decision handed down, after jurors could not agree on verdicts on nearly 200 charges for the same defendants earlier, will be touted as a major victory.  Ironically, the Israeli blockade now in place was initiated supposedly because of terrorists attacks from Palestinian held territory, so obviously the defendants who’ve been in custody and their organization which has been dismantled are not responsible for the continued bloodshed there.  I don’t know why people can’t see that there will always be resistance to oppression; it’s a natural reaction and regardless of anything US courts do, there will be violence in Palestine until and unless Palestinians are given their rights to self-determination, but putting people in jail looks good and makes us feel even better.  Meanwhile, people continue to live, just barely, and die in Gaza.

baby-gaza

From the People who brough us, ‘Never Again!’


comes ‘Here we go again!’ Political Zionism is a real and dangerous ideology unlike Islamofascism which is contrived and made up to mask the sins of neocons who want to take over the American government.

In the 2 1/2 weeks since its cease-fire with Hamas broke down, Israel has all but sealed crossings along its border with the Gaza Strip and rejected U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s appeal to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclosed territory that houses more than 1.5 million Palestinians. This response to violence directed against it amounts to collective punishment of civilians, which is illegal under international law, unfair and counterproductive.

In a pogrom reminiscent of the pre-WWII massacres of Jews in Europe but with a twist, the Israelis have one upped their Nazi predecessors by imposing a black out of their atrocities.

Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s complete closure of Gaza’s borders for the last two weeks.

*snip*

A delegation of European Union parliamentarians was also prevented from entering Gaza to assess the situation on the ground and to hold talks with Hamas leaders. They subsequently broke the naval siege of Gaza by entering the coast’s territorial waters from Cyprus by boat, defying the Israeli navy.

During talks held with Hamas, the EU parliamentarians were able to get a historic commitment from the Islamic organisation to recognise Israel’s right to exist within the internationally recognised 1967 borders. Hamas further offered a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel legitimizing Palestinian rights.

Israel also prevented 20 European Union consul-generals from entering Gaza on Thursday. On Sunday Israeli border police prevented 15 trucks loaded with medication from entering the Gaza Strip.

It is clear to many observers security is not the reason for Israel’s inhumane blockade of essentials to the citizens of Gaza, nor is there any issue of recognition of Israel’s right to exist on the part of the Palestinians a legitimate excuse for this barbarity.  Israel at this point in its history is not interested in peace with its neighbors, it only wants their land and the natural resources on  or in it.

This is not good..


At first glance, the headline ‘When Settlers Strike, Palestinians Point and Shoot back’ had a hopeful ring about it, but this is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict we are talking about here and for the moment there’s nothing hopeful about that.

Video cameras like hers have emerged as a new nonviolent weapon for West Bank Palestinians – who face a rising number of attacks at the hands of settlers anxious over their fate in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But the Palestinian video footage often ends up on Israeli TV, thus becoming a tool for both deterrence and justice.

“We’re trying to use the cameras to reduce the level of violence as a whole. When settlers see the camera, we hope that they will behave less violently,” says Sarit Michaeli, the spokeswoman for Btselem.

“We also want to use the footage to provide to the Israeli media to raise awareness of the problems and to pressure the law enforcement bodies to do their job.”

Btselem has given out 150 cameras as part of its Shooting Back program that started slowly last year and is beginning to show results. Already, footage shot by Palestinians has been used in at least 20 cases involving settler violence.

In any other society I would think that non-violent resistance could make a dent in the morality of the greater society, but that doesn’t seem to work in this conflagration, because all too often camera men and women are shot and their images so clouded in claim and counter claim minutae the impact of the captured images is lost.  Fadel Shana’s death was caught by his own camera and there was no mistaking who murdered him, but of course Shana’s offense was he was carrying a “camera” the IDF confused for some sort of weapon that he should not have been pointing at a tank that could more clearly see him through its “camera”  than he it through his, and so deserved to die.  Of course the people responsible for his murder were let off without even a reprimand because his execution was “sound“.

Amnesty remains extremely concerned that Israeli military personnel continue to operate unaccountably in Gaza. In April this year, for example, a Reuters cameraman – Fadel Shana – was killed by an Israeli tank shell in Gaza despite clearly displaying ‘TV-Press’ on his flak jacket and nearby vehicle.

Two Palestinian children – Ahmad Farajallah and Ghassan Khaled Abu ‘Ataiwi – were also killed in the attack that killed Shana and several other people were also injured. Shana and the two children were killed by a ‘flechette’ shell containing up to 5,000 5cm-long steel darts (or flechettes) that spread over an area as big as a football pitch when fired. These munitions are notoriously imprecise and should never be used in areas populated with civilians. In this case the Israeli army later wrote to Reuters saying it had investigated the incident saying the decision to attack the journalist was ‘sound’.

So far this year more than 420 Palestinians (including some 80 children) have been killed by Israeli forces, and 30 Israelis killed by Palestinian groups. Most of these deaths (some 385) occurred in Gaza. Amnesty International remains concerned at a widespread failure to bring people to justice for unlawful killings.

So, with this as background, the introduction of more video “vigilantes” as they most probably will be called, or worse, “video terrorists” is being heralded as a non-violent response to settler aggression?

“We’re trying to use the cameras to reduce the level of violence as a whole. When settlers see the camera, we hope that they will behave less violently,” says Sarit Michaeli, the spokeswoman for Btselem.

When has that happened in the history of this conflict?? Is that a duh moment or what? For perspective one only need to ask Salam Amira whose story we highlighted earlier this year.

“Since my video was shown, the soldiers shoot at our house all the time,” she said. The shattered and cracked windows at the front of the building confirm her story. “When we leave the windows open, they fire tear gas inside too.”

Doesn’t seem like her possessing a camera and filming the shooting of a neighbor’s ‘big toe’ did either the neighbor or her any good.  You can see what she filmed here.

I’m sure the folks passing out the cameras are aware of all this, so why do they insist on this form of protest?  I can only think they might be saying to themselves if enough images of Israeli oppression are shown to enough people it will have a positive influence on the “peace process”, but in fact, Israelis are not like Americans of the 50s and sixties.  They are much more steeped in the dehumanization of their opponent, the Palestinian, and far more willing to accept the inhumane treatment he receives at their hand wihtout any conscious about it more so than his American counterpart. It’s that difference which makes both countries so special; no doubt the organizers of this “event” want to influence Israeli as well as American public opinion, but American opinion is controlled by a corporate media which is beholden to American politicians heavily lobbied by special interests which have reduced the atrocities of the aggressor and turned them into the aggression of the victim.  It’s gonna’ take more than cameras to change that.