The PR aftermath of the Gaza flotilla incident has not been edifying for people who worry about the future of Israel, the media, or the truth.
Anyway, the media apparently believes that the interests of journalism, the truth, and its readers has been served by covering the story for about 48 hours. Not coincidentally, for those 48 hours, Israel had the airwaves to itself, having detained the flotilla members incommunicado in Israel for that period.
The Israeli narrative emerging from that furious 2-day blitz is a reprise of the "intelligence failure" dodge employed by the United States to excuse the Iraq invasion. Faulty execution is blamed for an unfortunate cock-up during which a bunch of people got killed.
The "tactical failure" storyline for the Gaza flotilla involves unprepared, underarmed, and naive commandos abseiling into the hands of an vicious mob.
That sounds a lot better for Israel than what appears to be the actual story: Israeli ships and helicopters raked the Mavi Marmara with tear gas, flash grenades, rubber-jacketed steel bullets, and live ammunition, killing and wounding several people, to soften it up prior to boarding; their commandos descended on the ship and got the worst of it for a few minutes as a few infuriated and and terrified activists tried to fight back with steel bars they had wrenched from the ship's railings and the occasional deck chair; after more bloodshed the passengers raised the white flag and the vessel was subdued.
One of Al Jazeera's correspondent on the Mavi Marmara, Jamal Elshayyal emerged from detention in Israel to give a teleconferenced account of the assault from Istanbul.
At 3:20 in the clip, this exchange occurs between the Al Jazeera anchor and Elshayyal:
Anchor: I want to ask you about a sequence of events because we've heard from the Israelis on a number of occasions that they did not fire live ammunition until the weapons of two Israeli soldiers were taken away on board. In other words, it couldn't have happened until Israeli soldiers themselves were on the Mavi Marmara...
Elshayyal: There is no doubt from what I saw that live ammunition was fired before any Israeli soldier was on deck.
I wonder if the accounts of Elshayyal and other passengers on the flotilla will gain any traction.
In response to the blizzard of Israeli spin and prevarication--and an unwillingness to dig into the testimony of the emerging flotilla witnesses, whose cameras were seized by the Israelis-- the media seems to be retreating to the comfortable and safe ground of "Fog O' War".
The LA Times dutifully threw dirt on the grave of the flotilla story in its June 4 coverage. A photo caption reads: "Amid widespread anger, some were willing to reserve judgment. "We don't know which side is right. We don't accurately know what really happened," one mourner said.
Actually, it looks pretty clear what really happened.
The Israeli armed forces attacked a Turkish flag vessel in international waters.
That is the real issue, one that the Israeli media operation is working determinedly to obscure--with the happy cooperation of the international media--by diverting attention to the who-shot-whom-when-and-where-and-how-badly-did-the-victim-deserve-it conundrum.
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Friday, June 04, 2010
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Concerning the sorry situation in Gaza...
...there are a few points I haven't seen made in the press.
1. It was always clear that Israel was going to take advantage of the post-Bush/pre-anybody interregnum to attack one of its enemies. Remember when the possibility of an attack on Iran or Lebanon 2.0 were being chewed over? It turned out badly for the people of Gaza, but Iran & Syria are probably noting that all Israel could do in the end was beat up the little guy on its doorstep.
2. It seems to me painfully obvious that the Gaza invasion is a hail-mary attempt to topple Hamas. The rocket issue a) gives Israel a pretext to attack and b) a justification for declaring victory and withdrawing even though Hamas hasn't fallen--though Israel has killed enough Hamas leaders and destroyed enough Gazan infrastructure to push Gaza firmly in the failed-state category.
3.It might be said that the real target of the Gaza invasion is the Obama administration. Israel has made the statement that any U.S. rethink on the Middle East must accept Israel's desire to destroy Hamas as a precondition. Israel is betting that Obama is preoccupied with domestic economic issues and not interested in using up political capital to challenge the Israeli framing and rebalance the U.S. posture away from Israel and toward the other Middle Eastern countries. Will Israel offer Obama a deal: back us on Hamas and we'll follow through on the Syria peace deal that's already brewing? Let's see.
4. I find risible the whole idea that Hamas will be weakened in the eyes of the Gazans. When an entire community is subjected to extensive and brutal collective punishment, they tend to blame the people dropping the bombs. I expect this has been a recruitment bonanza for Hamas.
5. Assuming that Hamas is still standing after the invasion ends, Israel's endgame involves corraling the U.S., EU, and Egypt to assist it in setting up a chokehold over humanitarian aid to Gaza and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in an attempt to topple Hamas. Firing phosphorous shells into a UN compound and setting fire to hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid would be a convenient way to make things worse and make sure that resupply of food and medicine has to occur on Israeli terms. A multilateral force to shut down the smuggling tunnels is another important measure to restrict the flow of money, food, and medicine to Gaza. Rocket and arms interdiction are useful ways to pressure Hamas but perhaps not the core objective of Israel’s war on the tunnels.
6. It seems to me that this invasion will create more problems than it solves for Israel. It’s a classic illustration of the “doing something is better than doing nothing” fallacy which seems to afflict countries with large armies and weak opponents. Just because the U.S. presidential transition created a vacuum, that doesn’t mean taking advantage of it to invade Gaza was a good idea. If Israel unilaterally deposes Hamas, I don’t think Fatah is going to find a lot of eager volunteers to serve as Israeli assets inside Gaza. In the face of widespread suffering and anger inside Gaza and swelling international outrage over the invasion, I’m filing the statements from Israel and supporters of the invasion that everything is going great in the dubious/grain of salt file. The only people who will be genuinely happy are those who believe that Israel’s best hope for continued American attention and support is an atmosphere of perpetual, self-manufactured crisis—and keeping Gaza and the Arab world aboil with misery and anger.
7.With a few notable exceptions, media reporting and analysis on the Gaza invasion has been as crappy as the job they did on the Iraq invasion. Total inability to challenge the invader's national security talking points, blind acceptance of stated imperatives and objectives that make no logical sense, inability to ask the cui bono question, let alone let alone question the motives of the attacker or make an independent assessment of the overall political dynamic. Handwringing over the carnage and laughing at Joe Wurzelbacher seems about as deep as our pundits and reporters can go.
8. Did everybody skip the "collective punishment = war crime" day at the Nuremberg trials?
1. It was always clear that Israel was going to take advantage of the post-Bush/pre-anybody interregnum to attack one of its enemies. Remember when the possibility of an attack on Iran or Lebanon 2.0 were being chewed over? It turned out badly for the people of Gaza, but Iran & Syria are probably noting that all Israel could do in the end was beat up the little guy on its doorstep.
2. It seems to me painfully obvious that the Gaza invasion is a hail-mary attempt to topple Hamas. The rocket issue a) gives Israel a pretext to attack and b) a justification for declaring victory and withdrawing even though Hamas hasn't fallen--though Israel has killed enough Hamas leaders and destroyed enough Gazan infrastructure to push Gaza firmly in the failed-state category.
3.It might be said that the real target of the Gaza invasion is the Obama administration. Israel has made the statement that any U.S. rethink on the Middle East must accept Israel's desire to destroy Hamas as a precondition. Israel is betting that Obama is preoccupied with domestic economic issues and not interested in using up political capital to challenge the Israeli framing and rebalance the U.S. posture away from Israel and toward the other Middle Eastern countries. Will Israel offer Obama a deal: back us on Hamas and we'll follow through on the Syria peace deal that's already brewing? Let's see.
4. I find risible the whole idea that Hamas will be weakened in the eyes of the Gazans. When an entire community is subjected to extensive and brutal collective punishment, they tend to blame the people dropping the bombs. I expect this has been a recruitment bonanza for Hamas.
5. Assuming that Hamas is still standing after the invasion ends, Israel's endgame involves corraling the U.S., EU, and Egypt to assist it in setting up a chokehold over humanitarian aid to Gaza and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in an attempt to topple Hamas. Firing phosphorous shells into a UN compound and setting fire to hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid would be a convenient way to make things worse and make sure that resupply of food and medicine has to occur on Israeli terms. A multilateral force to shut down the smuggling tunnels is another important measure to restrict the flow of money, food, and medicine to Gaza. Rocket and arms interdiction are useful ways to pressure Hamas but perhaps not the core objective of Israel’s war on the tunnels.
6. It seems to me that this invasion will create more problems than it solves for Israel. It’s a classic illustration of the “doing something is better than doing nothing” fallacy which seems to afflict countries with large armies and weak opponents. Just because the U.S. presidential transition created a vacuum, that doesn’t mean taking advantage of it to invade Gaza was a good idea. If Israel unilaterally deposes Hamas, I don’t think Fatah is going to find a lot of eager volunteers to serve as Israeli assets inside Gaza. In the face of widespread suffering and anger inside Gaza and swelling international outrage over the invasion, I’m filing the statements from Israel and supporters of the invasion that everything is going great in the dubious/grain of salt file. The only people who will be genuinely happy are those who believe that Israel’s best hope for continued American attention and support is an atmosphere of perpetual, self-manufactured crisis—and keeping Gaza and the Arab world aboil with misery and anger.
7.With a few notable exceptions, media reporting and analysis on the Gaza invasion has been as crappy as the job they did on the Iraq invasion. Total inability to challenge the invader's national security talking points, blind acceptance of stated imperatives and objectives that make no logical sense, inability to ask the cui bono question, let alone let alone question the motives of the attacker or make an independent assessment of the overall political dynamic. Handwringing over the carnage and laughing at Joe Wurzelbacher seems about as deep as our pundits and reporters can go.
8. Did everybody skip the "collective punishment = war crime" day at the Nuremberg trials?
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