CNN’s brave Sanchez says Israel broke truce in November

by on January 6, 2009 33
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Rick Sanchez of CNN is doing the best work on television on Gaza. Let us celebrate his innocent questions, his probing honest journalistic response to horror. He plays the rube, and it's great. We need an American rube. He knows that he has responsibility, and he's not going to be intimidated by experts to back away or take a literacy test. Here he shows that the ceasefire was broken by Israel back in November in a raid on Gaza, and cites the Guardian, the Economist, US News & World Report. "Americans, we like our order, we like things delineated for us," Sanchez says. You go, man. Delineate!

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, Gaza, US Policy in the Middle East

{ 33 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. S Kneedler says:
    January 6, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Yay! And STEPHEN WALT is on "Talk of the Nation" now, with Aaron David Miller. THE EMBARGO IS LIFTING.

  3. Jim Haygood says:
    January 6, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    "Americans, we like our order, we like things delineated for us," Sanchez says.

    This is actually a rather recent trend. No one would have called the cultural milieu of Walt Whitman or Lysander Spooner orderly.

    Not blaming Sanchez for making the observation; it's true now. But the U.S. increasingly exhibits the prewar German mentality, where 'orders' are followed without questioning their morality or validity.

    As in the German plunge into the abyss, wars of aggression are readily accepted as defensive and necessary. The complete lack of debate on Obama's Surge II says that the results of mindless political conformity have a lot farther to go.

    And — not incidentally — it serves the MSM's interest to declare that 'we like things delineated for us.' This insidious little meme was just planted into half a million viewers today — most of whom won't remember where they heard it when they repeat it to someone else next week.

    The Revolution will not be televised.

  4. anonn says:
    January 6, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Sneaky, they did it while Americans were voting for their next leader, sort of like how the Fed Reserve Act and Fed Income Tax was shooed in during Xmas holidays.

    fool me once, fool me twice….

  5. samuelburke says:
    January 6, 2009 at 3:01 pm

    rick sanchez has been the point man several times now…trying to point to the truth…..speak lassie speak…what are you trying to say girl…..that israel is a myth …what? that americans are being lied to and that so are americans jewish populations….

    say it aint so girl….arf arf…speak lassie speak.

    rick took on

  6. samuelburke says:
    January 6, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    and on muzzlewatch…there is this nice piece from commondreams.

    Although no news to readers here, on top of the war crimes committed against the people of Gaza, once again, we are treated to the journalistic crimes of the US media. Led by the paper of record, the NY Times, we get sanitized photos, headlines like, “Despite Strikes, Israelis Vow to Soldier on”. This is in stark contrast to Haaretz (arguably Israel’s paper of record) which has reported a range of opinions and news perspectives, where people like Amira Hass and Gideon Levy get page space along with the typical range of less critical voices. Per the usual, to get a sense of the real horror, readers need to go to multiple sources, such as Al Jazeera, the Guardian UK, etc. To be clear, attacks against civilians are generally to be condemned, whether occurring in Gaza or Sderot, but it is necessary to understand the causes of conflict and violence, and to properly assess the unambiguously disproportionate nature of this conflict. We get very little of this from the US corporate press which will almost always first discuss Israel’s need to defend itself, has the Israeli ambassador to the US on, etc, before mentioning the slight possibility that some people in some part of the world may think that the Israeli attacks might just be a tad too harsh. On the bright side there are some very good independent media reports on the terrible media coverage in places such as counterpunch and commondreams. The following well referenced article by Deena Guzder goes into detail in repudiating media myths as well as referencing Jewish Voice for Peace as an example of cracks in monolithic American Jewish support for anything Israel does.

  7. anonn says:
    January 6, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Why CNN cannot broadcast from Gaza:

    http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/01/05/penhaul.rafah.border.cnn

    I understand CNN International is televising unfiltered data and pics
    but my cable company Brighthouse) does not even offer that channel.

  9. Warren Miller says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:06 pm

    Every Jew should have to watch this!

    http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/01/cutting-deep-po.html

  10. MM says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    It's true that CNN Int'l has been surprisingly stellar, from asking tough questions of Israeli propagandists ("Do you expect this assault to decrease anger and extremism in Gaza and the Arab world?") to interviewing the likes of Syrian president Bashir Al-Asad and broadcasting interviews with Gazans and their relatives in the U.S.

    Of course, there's an easy explanation: most Americans don't get CNN Int'l in their cable packages.

    CNN US meanwhile has AIPAC Wolf Blitzer interviewing Queen Noor of Jordan with questions like, "Didn't your late husband also have to confront Islamist extremists?").

  11. Eva Smagacz says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    Al-Jazeera english is live on the internet for free – a bit low resolution, but blood shows. If you don't want to listen to "bias", then turn the volume down, dead people are just as dead and injured kids are suffering just as much on "mute".

  12. Christ Killer says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    Having praised the new Foreign Policy site, let me welcome them to the blogosphere by taking exception to this hypothetical from new-minted FP blogger Stephen Walt, which has been mentioned favorably by Yglesias and Klein as an example of the sort of daring thought that mainstream op-ed pages fail to publish:

    Walt:
    Here's a thought experiment:

    Imagine that Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had won the Six Day War, leading to a massive exodus of Jews from the territory of Israel. Imagine that the victorious Arab states had eventually decided to permit the Palestinians to establish a state of their own on the territory of the former Jewish state. (That's unlikely, of course, but this is a thought experiment). Imagine that a million or so Jews had ended up as stateless refugees confined to that narrow enclave known as the Gaza Strip. Then imagine that a group of hardline Orthodox Jews took over control of that territory and organized a resistance movement. They also steadfastly refused to recognize the new Palestinian state, arguing that its creation was illegal and that their expulsion from Israel was unjust. Imagine that they obtained backing from sympathizers around the world and that they began to smuggle weapons into the territory. Then imagine that they started firing at Palestinian towns and villages and refused to stop despite continued reprisals and civilian casualties.

    Here's the question: would the United States be denouncing those Jews in Gaza as "terrorists" and encouraging the Palestinian state to use overwhelming force against them?

    End of Walt quote:

    The odd thing is that by Walt's own account, the answer would seem to be "Yes," since presumably the rump Orthodox Gaza – run, perhaps, by Verbover Jews – wouldn't have an all-powerful lobby shaping U.S. policy and public opinion to its specifications. Or am I missing something?

    More seriously, this analogy – which Chris Brose critiques elsewhere on the FP site, and which comes complete with the staggering insinuation that the recent bombardment of Israeli towns (as opposed to, say, this business) is the only reason why the United States treats Hamas as a terrorist (sorry, "terrorist") organization – is a reminder of why when I say that the American Right needs a new realism, I really do mean a new realism, because so many of the old realists have failed to distinguish themselves in the debates of the decade just passed. That failure is the subject for an essay, rather than a blog post, but for now let me just say that on the one hand, you had figures in the broad realist firmament (from Henry Kissinger to George Will to Chuck Hagel) lining up to support the invasion of Iraq at a time when the Bush Administration could have used a serious critique from the right (and then acquitting themselves less-than-impressively, in Hagel's case especially, in the debate over what to do with Iraq once things had fallen apart) … while on the other hand you had figures like Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer deciding that the best way to promote legitimately important "realist" ideas (like, say, that America should be pushing Israel harder to abandon the West Bank settlements, and that American Jews ought to play a more constructive role on this front) was to wrap them up in a farrago of oversimplifications and half-truths, ride the ensuing attention up the bestseller list, and then cry "persecution!" when anyone called them on it.

    I admit to some professional bias here, since The Israel Lobby opens with a none-too-veiled insinuation that the Atlantic, which commissioned the original essay and then declined to publish it, did so out of fear of a potential backlash from the Jews the Israel Lobby. I wasn't privy to the editorial decision-making surrounding the piece, so I'm speaking only for myself when I say that we almost certainly rejected the essay because it was lousy – because the analysis it provided on a subject of great moment was indefensibly slanted and wrapped in frankly conspiratorial thinking. Buried within that analysis was the kernel of a good point, which might have made for a good essay in different hands – just as a foreign-policy realism in general might have had a more constructive impact on public debate in the Bush Era (and it did have a constructive impact, I should allow, in many arenas) had it not been associated with such fundamentally unserious figures as Chuck Hagel and, well, the authors of The Israel Lobby.

    http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/a_jewish_gaza.php

  13. S Kneedler says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    http://mwcnews.net/content/view/27683/42/

    Lunch Exposes pro-Zionist Media Lies over Israeli Atrocities:

    Zionist Lie & Gaza Massacre

  14. TDE says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    I'm writing from Italy where the media also show great sympathy toward the citizenry of Sderot and are mute in the face of the slaughter in Gaza. Today on the radio the chief editorialist of the country's main newspaper compared the attack on Gaza, favourably, to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, in the sense that the objective of both is to "restore peace" and "save countless lives". May they reap what they have sown.

  15. Rowan Berkeley says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    Interesting critique, christ killer.

  16. S Kneedler says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    About the coordination of Israeli gov. propaganda:

    They Lob Chutzpah Bombs Too

    January 4, 2009 in News by Margaret Griffis | 51 comments

    A funny little essay in a local newspaper came to my attention this morning. During an email discussion over the events and motives in the Gaza crisis, a friend of mine forwarded part of an op-ed piece that appeared in this week’s Sun Sentinel, a daily newspaper in Fort Lauderdale. I immediately thought it sounded a little too familiar. Sure, Israeli officials and other apologists are serving the same talking points across all the television networks and in print media, but this sounded like more than just simple rehash, so I plugged the quote into a search engine. Jackpot!

    There was the piece, but it was on a shared website for a pair of central New Jersey papers that I normally don’t read either. It was longer, and, oh, the author was different too. With my curiosity now piqued, I could not help but search some more. I found a nearly identical one written by David A. Harris, executive director of American Jewish Committee, over at The Dallas Morning News. Hmm, the other two “authors” also identified themselves as AJC directors. Eventually, I located Harris over at the Jerusalem Post where he had contributed not only this same piece but many others as well. My guess is that I probably read the piece there a few days back.

    Clearly, this is just a press release created by the American Jewish Committee and being passed off by its members as their heartfelt and original opinions. Another local newspaper, The Palm Beach Post, even published the same piece a day after its competitor ran it. Thankfully in this case though, it was “authored” by the same South Floridian. I wonder how many other newspapers fell for it.

    I’m sure the members all do genuinely feel that way, but did they really need to fake homegrown gravitas to ensure publication in as many local opinion pages as possible? Probably. You don’t engage in large-scale propaganda – excuse me, “a public relations campaign” – unless you feel like you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. From the look of the essay, it seems that the pro-Israel crowd is going for the “but they did it first” tactic favored by young children for time immemorial. Occasionally that might work with one’s peers, but it’s a piss poor way to convince the rest of the world that they have the moral high ground – or maybe they are really just trying to convince themselves.

    http://www.antiwar.com/blog/

  17. Jim Haygood says:
    January 6, 2009 at 5:32 pm

    Australian Jews speak out -

    ————

    MORE than 100 Australian Jews, including two award-winning novelists and a former federal cabinet minister, have signed a statement condemning Israel's siege of Gaza, heightening tensions within the local Jewish community over the violence.

    Authors Linda Jaivin and Sara Dowse, the environment minister in the Whitlam government, Moss Cass, and the NSW Greens leader, Ian Cohen, are among 120 Australian Jews to accuse the Israeli Government of a "grossly disproportionate military assault on Gaza because it was Israel that violated the fragile truce on November 4, 2008".

    The statement was co-ordinated, but not endorsed, by the group Independent Australian Jewish Voices. It is part of an international outcry from dissident Jewish groups, including J Street in the US and Gush Shalom in Israel.

    Other signatories include the controversial anti-Zionist writer Antony Loewenstein, the literary critic Andrew Riemer, and academics Andrew Benjamin, Gavin Kitching, David Goodman and Michele Grossman. "This is a solid minority of leading Jewish figures who are sick and tired of being told what Jews should think about Israel and are appalled by Israel's crimes in Gaza," Mr Loewenstein said.

    http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/05/1231003936981.html

    ————

    Of course, as discussed elsewhere in the article, the executive director of Australia's Jewish Affairs Council proceeded to do just that — tell Jews what they should think about Israel, while damning those who disagree as 'grossly ill informed, almost stunning in their ignorance.'

  18. LanceThruster says:
    January 6, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    …..speak lassie speak…what are you trying to say girl…..

    xD

  19. Michael W says:
    January 6, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    A response to the thought experiment on a Jewish Gaza:
    The Jewish Israeli party that is the best equivalent to Hamas is the Kahanist Party which was banned in Israel. Shin Bet foiled a few of their terrorist attacks including one on an Arab girl's school in Jerusalem. PBS had a program on them.

    Hamas won about 70% of the vote and since Gaza is Hamas' stronghold and where it gets most of it support, I have very little sympathy for those that voted for them. Likewise, I wouldn't have sympathy to a Jewish Gaza controlled by Kahanists. The world Jewish community has charities to take care of Jews and local poor people. I'm sure they would take care of Jewish refugees that didn't like the Kahanist to live elsewhere. Remember, Israel withdrew from Gaza, destroying the homes and uprooting many Jews that were fundamentalist and religious. Israel has very little sympathy for these settlers. The only reason the West Bank settlers haven't been evacuated yet is because they are much more numerous and gain more political clout than the Gaza settlers. The only thing that will give anti-settler Israelis enough power to evacuate the settlers is a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians.

    Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic organization which care very little about the lives of their own people. Before the Israeli airstrikes, Hamas fired a rocket tended for Israel but it undershot and hit a Gazan Palestinian home and killed two girls. Where is the outrage? None. If a settler tried to shoot a rocket on the West Bank Palestinians and missed and killed two Israelis, they would be arrested and put on trial and the settlers would lose much political power.

  20. Arie Brand says:
    January 6, 2009 at 7:10 pm

    Why doesn't "christ killer" who suggests that s/he has some relation with the Atlantic (by talking of "we" in that context) induce Cullen Murphy to publish the letter that editor wrote to Walt&Mearsheimer, stating the reasons for the Atlantic's refusal of their piece?

    I do not off-hand see why the London Review of Books would have less critical acumen in judging contributions than the Atlantic.Its editor, Wilmers, shot down one often heard critique of W.& M. by saying:
    'It is not true that the authors simply lumped together a long list of people and organisations in the same piece to make their case for an "Israeli Lobby". To say that because someone is mentioned in context in a long piece is tainted by association with any other is wrong.'

    Also, why does 'christ killer' not come up with his/her real name?

  21. chimpsky says:
    January 6, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    With CNN leading on this now, remember that Ted Turner dared to say the unspeakable years ago:

    CNN chief accuses Israel of terror
    guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 June 2002 07.30 BST

  22. LanceThruster says:
    January 6, 2009 at 7:29 pm

    Michael W – Hamas is the democratically elected represetatives of the Palestian people.

    —

    Finkelstein: "First of all, we need historical context. For thirty years, from the mid-1970s on, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was on record supporting a two-state settlement. That did not bring the conflict any closer to peace, for the very simple reason that Israel does not want to leave the Occupied Territories. So the claim that Hamas is the obstacle is rather curious in light of the fact that for thirty years there was a movement that openly recognised Israel, and it still did not facilitate a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Therefore, the argument that Hamas is the obstacle is obviously nonsense.

    [snip]

    Number two: the Hamas government has sent mixed signals about its willingness to recognise Israel. It has certainly made enough gestures to recognising the June 1967 borders, such that you can negotiate with them. But the real question is: what has been the Israeli position? Has any Israeli government, or official, or mainstream political party ever recognised a Palestinian state in the June 1967 borders? And the answer is, flatly, no.

    It is not complicated. The position of Hamas was that any recognition had to be mutual. I think that is perfectly legitimate. Why should recognition be one-sided? Why should they have to recognise the Israeli state, but the Israeli state not have to recognise the right of the Palestinians, not to any state, but to a state within the pre-July 1967 border? No Israeli government has done that. If the Israeli government does not do it, then I agree with Hamas: they should not do it."

    NormaInterview: Norman Finkelstein – 12.15.2006 | The iWitness

  23. Non Zionist Jew says:
    January 6, 2009 at 7:37 pm

    Arie Brand,

    "Christ Killer" cut and pasted a blog entry by Ross Douthat, who is indeed a blogger at The Atlantic.
    As for him/her using their real name, I get the sense that they were making a statement with the moniker they were using. Not exactly sure what that is, but at least now people can say that they call people "Christ Killers" in Phil Weiss's blog.

  24. cha says:
    January 6, 2009 at 7:51 pm

    "Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic organization which care very little about the lives of their own people."

    Just fuck off, Michael W.

  25. Joshua says:
    January 6, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    Michael W seems to peddle that line aplenty. It gets old, really old.

    Where the hell do they come up with this stuff anyway? Yeah, they don't give a fuck at all. Israel does little to nothing for the residents of Sderot: they don't give a fuck about their citizens at all. In fact, you could even say they don't give a fuck for about 20 percent of Israelis (the Arabs).

    Didn't Israel just bomb the shit out of their own soldiers? They don't give a fuck about their citizens at all. Precise weaponry, remember?

    This is just stupid. Hamas could have done MUCH worse throughout this whole time if they cared not a bit about Gazans. Plus, Hamas is not limited to Gaza: the West Bank is filled with Hamas killing, isn't it? How about Syria? Oh yeah, Hamas killing and negligence there.

    This whole deception that an Israeli settler would be arrested doesn't pass for me. Settlers do plenty of "work" there. It's well documented that they are pretty much untouchable.

    Who needs to be a settler to shoot rockets at Palestinians anyway? Just join the army. They get a slap on the wrist for doing what you envisioned.

  26. John says:
    January 6, 2009 at 8:24 pm

    "Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic organization which care very little about the lives of their own people."

    Just fuck off, Michael W.

    Posted by: cha | January 06, 2009 at 07:51 PM

    Cha – How would you reconcile Michael's claims with those of Fathi Hamad?

    A Hamas representative in the PA legislative council this year expressed pride in the fact that women and children are used as human shields in fighting Israel. He described it as part of a "death industry" at which Palestinians excel, and explained that the Palestinians "desire death" with the same intensity that Israelis "desire life."

    The following is the full text of the comments by Hamas representative Fathi Hamad:

    "For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life."

    Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) Feb. 29, 2008

  27. Glenn Condell says:
    January 6, 2009 at 8:48 pm

    I posted a comment here at roughly the same time chimpsky did – it has gone. Don't tell me the local sayan has discovered some way to edit the comments… far more effective to silence voices of reason than do a dreadful job of impersonating them.

  28. Arie Brand says:
    January 6, 2009 at 8:52 pm

    For Michael W. (and others):

    "Israel's fabricated rocket crisis
    Jim Holstun and Joanna Tinker, The Electronic Intifada, 6 January 2009

    …

    In Israel's recent rush to invade Gaza, we witness the same predisposition to violence, the same aching aggravation with Palestinian peace offensives, and the same willingness to conflate all resistance, all frustrations, into a single enemy: "They are all Hamas!" And we see that Hamas, like the PLO, refused to oblige Israel with a single provocative act. For more than four months after 19 June 2008, Hamas refrained from any military actions that might endanger the negotiated truce or "calm" with Israel.The evidence for this is ready to hand. For example, the Wikipedia entry on the events of the summer, "List of rocket and mortar attacks in Israel in 2008" (revised 4 January 2008), based almost exclusively on Israeli newspapers and government sources, confirms that there were no rocket or mortar attacks claimed by or plausibly attributed to Hamas during the calm. This can also be verified by surveying archives of news reports from the period."

    The authors then show graphs from the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirming their point. They claim that these graphs were taken off on the 4th of January.

    "Clearly, the Israelis violated the truce in order to increase the number of Qassam attacks, not to end them. Qassams provide Israel with its best shot at its favorite media role of plucky little David fighting the Palestinian Goliath. And by nimble revision of its webpage, the Israeli MFA is able to turn cause into effect — turning the retaliatory Hamas Qassams of 6 November into the cause of Israel canceling the truce on 4 November, and smashing it flat on 19 December."

  29. Ed says:
    January 6, 2009 at 9:12 pm

    I fear he will now be removed from the air or worse. Hopefully him being a minority can protect him somewhat from the upcoming smear campaign.

  30. Michael W says:
    January 6, 2009 at 9:34 pm

    To people who responded to me:
    You say that Israel don't care about the people of Sderot. They care so much that they won't even seek out and kill those responsible? Have you guys been living in cages the last two weeks?

    You say Hamas does care about the Palestinians. They care so much that they would shoot rockets from civilian areas so when one of them decides to undershoot, it kills two Palestinian girls.

    You say that the settlers are untouchable. They are so untouchable that Israel wouldn't evacuate thousands of them from Gaza. They are so untouchable that their outposts in Hebron and else where in the Westbank aren't torn down.

    BTW, Electronic Intifada isn't a credible source. Hamas has tight a tight grip on Gaza. Have you forgotten the rockets fired from Gaza during the summer? Oh right, you know it happened, you just don't care.

    Ahmed Yusuf, aide to the Hamas Prime Minister said on NPR that "This isn't about rockets because no rockets are being fired." Do you actually believe him?

  31. MM says:
    January 6, 2009 at 10:03 pm

    Michael W, go somewhere you'll be listened to and taken seriously. You deserve it.

  32. Arie Brand says:
    January 7, 2009 at 12:38 am

    Michael W. to dismiss information because it was published on ei is a cop out. The following bit is from the timeline in Wikipedia. In October there was only one single rocket fired from Gaza which I haven't seen plausibly ascribed to Hamas.
    From this Wikipedia entry it appears that it was Israel that broke the ceasefire on 6th November.
    Of course Israel's action has little to do with what happened after that seeing that it is generally agreed that it began preparing for this assault about half a year ago.

    From the timeline in Wikipedia:

    "October
    October 11th
    A single rocket was launched from Gaza into Israel resulting in no injuries or deaths.[72]

    [edit] November
    November 6th
    Israel attacks a 250 meter tunnel going from Gaza and under its border. The tunnel is designed to capture additional Israeli soldiers and hold them hostage. Six Gaza fighters are killed and four Israeli special forces wounded. Hamas responds by firing 30 Qassam rockets at Israel. The truce agreed to five months ago is starting to founder."

  33. Arie Brand says:
    January 7, 2009 at 1:08 am

    See in addition

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-violence-how-d_b_155611.html

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