Total number of comments: 33 (since 2010-03-14 19:35:48)
nigelparry
Nigel Parry is a former webmaster of Birzeit University, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, and a longtime independent media activist, currently living in Pittsburgh, PA.
Website: http://nigelparry.com
Ben White writes: "The Report never claimed that Israel set out to intentionally murder civilians..."
It does at several points. Do an internal search of the document for the word "intention".
@MRW. One of the oft-repeated Israeli propaganda lines about Gaza is that Al-Qaeda has been organizing/operating there, which is totally false.
Obviously, if this were true this would make Americans and Europeans more sympathetic to Israeli attacks on Gaza. Therefore to hear the very head of Mossad say that THIS IS NOT THE CASE is highly significant.
Here are some examples:
"Israel has long accused al-Qaeda of infiltrating the Palestinian territories. The Israeli army’s intelligence chief said this week that more al-Qaeda members had entered the Gaza Strip after Hamas blew up the wall on the Egyptian border in January. "
link to timesonline.co.uk
link to mfa.gov.il
(search for "al-qaeda" within page text)
Your analysis of the specifics is okay, your overall framing of the importance of story is lacking.
Why do even alternative news writers feel the need to state the State Department line that there is "nothing new" every time Wikileaks releases something? There's plenty new. Actual "evidence" as opposed to assumptions would be at the top of the what's new list.
Secondly, this judgment of what is and what is not "new" is being made from a partial browse of the cables. All the cables quoted in this article, bar one, are from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.
Instead of browsing, try searching. Of the 243 total cables released so far (Day 1 saw 200), 131 mention the keyword "Israel" and 57 mention the keyword "Palestinian". 157 mention either "Israel" or "Palestinian". There's a lot there and we by no means have seen it all.
Finally, one actual example of what is indeed new, direct quotes from Israeli leaders and security heads of how they perceive their Palestinian counterparts/Palestinian society when they think that only their supportive enablers are listening. The Mossad head stating that he knows very well that Palestinians aren't forming Al-Qaida or Taliban branches would be a great example of divergence from private and public Israeli claims: link to twitlonger.com
It would be nice to see, in upcoming coverage of further Wikileaked cables, a basic recognition of the unprecedented scale and the political significance of this massive "leak", that by its conclusion will have impacted the global political landscape like a mighty waterfall.
I'm sorry. After a film distributor/PR team screwed up, it seems inappropriate to ask people in other cities around the country to take up the slack as an expression of "activism". It seems particularly manipulative that this "activism" is being solicited as 'the least we could do' compared to people facing "IDF bullets in the West Bank" and the martyrs of the Mavi Marmara.
Israel delegitimizes itself by its actions every day then complains that everyone else is delegitimizing it by pointing out its actions. The country is so lost and totally destructive.
It's one thing when it involves Palestinians on the other side of the world, but Israel's narrative and the influence of this narrative is international. Right now it's trying to get us to attack Iran. Or attack Iran so we have to defend it.
Are we really going to have to go to that terrible place before we finally ditch this selfish, lying, anti-human regime that has no grasp on reality? Are we really going to have to add that terrible cost onto the bill we already pay in Afghanistan and Iraq before we wise up?
If AIPAC sent a letter to the 435 members of congress asking them to cut their noses off to prove their devotion to Israel, I reckon we'd have 10 people noseless before the end of day one. We're all mentally ill at this stage.
There are 3 million Palestinian Gandhis. Carrying on living a civil life under a brutal military occupation—as the entire population does—is an act of nonviolence.
I love how it's got to the point where Israeli spokespersons are contradicting themselves:
Israel Defense Forces GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot :
"It was on both sides of the border but still within [Israeli] territory"
That's great to see that he grasps the concept of boycotts.
It's worth checking out the IDF Spokesperson's blog posting because the contents of the video are described in detail in English.
@Avi, yes it was. It was on the IDF Spokesperson's YouTube account and also on this post on the IDF spokesperson's blog:
link to idfspokesperson.com
The person who sent this around claimed it was "leaked". They may have got it earlier than most, but it is clear from the slick production that this was intended for the widest possible audience. The IDF Spokesman's blog reports that "The English version of the videos will be up shortly."
It's weird. It's been missing off the chart for about 1 hour (current time is 8:40 pm EST). Engine troubles shouldn't matter as that wouldn't affect the transponder.
I agree with everything you're saying. The issue is grammatical. From Israel's point of view those countries are its "enemies". I'm not saying the countries have actually done anything to deserve that designation. Some of the language in the piece is a little loosey goosey because it's not straight reportage as you noted.
Agreed on Obama. His supporters would say that he's biding his time and choosing his battles but I'm not seeing him fighting anything. He seems to be running around the world trying to keep everyone and their corporations happy.
I'd have altered it to "planned Egyptian docking" to keep everyone happy but there was a rush to get this up so it was timely and there is no easy way to edit these posts once they are submitted.
I agree with Pamela. Witty is the epitome of distraction on almost every thread. He is a troll whose sole intent is to dilute the discussion and he is very successful.
What's the hesitation here? If it's brown, flush it down.
Lee did not say that we've “hit bottom”. You said that. She pondered whether "maybe this is the beginning of the end" which is very different—especially being a question and all.
What does seem clear is that Cast Lead, the Goldstone Report, and ongoing large scale Israeli atrocity events such as the flotilla massacre—all events deeply felt internationally as opposed to just nationally in Palestine—have increasingly brought Israel to deeper positions of transparent ridiculousness where even its supporters aren't quite as on board as they used to be.
Only 15 "Stand with Israel" protesters turned up when Iara Lee and 2 other passengers on the Mavi Marmari spoke in Brooklyn, this after a bizarre press conference in Times Square by NY politicians to get the visas of the aid worker and activist speaking "looked at".
No amount of "brand Israel" efforts can alter the fact that even Israeli ballet tours are protested these days. It's over.
Coupled with these increasingly pathetic attempts at defending Israel and recasting its genocide as self-defense, the international momentum of pro-Palestinian activism clearly reached the 'snowball down the hill' point after Cast Lead, after which the rolling ball can only get bigger and faster.
I don't think it can be switched off any more. Every week brings news of a new church, union, college or business divesting from Israel.
And with the terminally blind and quite fascist Netanyahu at the helm there's no sense that Israel will adjust anything. The idiot didn't even kind of pretend the Israel appointees would come to anything but a prearranged conclusion. There's a going through the motions of hasbora but even the men and women behind the curtains just seem to be randomly pulling levers these days. They seem non-adaptive and not even slightly convincing.
Abbas probably eats Palestinian and Jewish babies on toast for breakfast. Nothing should be surprising from that worthless, unelected collaborator.
meen bidoo yakoun malik jebel al-khara?
("Who wants to be the king of Shit Mountain?")
Here's the Ha'aretz report you were looking for, full text follows:
link to haaretz.com
That was it, Justice Goldfinger!
Anyway, from his report about the human shields:
"Civilians were used as human shields by the Israeli armed forces on more than one occasion in one of the three incidents. Taking account of other incidents in which the Mission has found this to have happened, it would not be difficult to conclude that this was a practice repeatedly adopted by the Israeli armed forces during the military operation in Gaza."
The HAMAS used people as human shields line is also bizarre. Here's what some other Jewish dude who investigated that accusation concluded about it. I forget his name. Gold-something. Goldpebble? No that's not it? Goldrock? Damn, I just can't remember his name at all:
Philip,
Please tell me that you didn't just call the one-sided slaughter of Palestinian civilians in what the Israeli army called Operation Cast Lead, "the '08-09 war".
That is a disgusting euphemism. There was no "war".
It's painful to see the discredited softball-tossing Bronner prove everyone right in front of the entire world at a time when we need clarity and accountability more than anything.
I'll take "pro-Palestinian". I really hate "anti-Israeli" though. I always ask for a retraction.
Thanks for catching that Henry.
Info on Tristan's current medical condition is really hard to find. It doesn't appear to be either on the website linked or his Facebook group. That's somewhat frustrating. I'd read what you wrote somewhere else, but I can't for the life of me remember where.
Thanks Bob, there were indeed too many NATOs in that sentence. In the end there can only be one. :-)
The NYT website also published an update to their story on April 3rd:
link to nytimes.com
And the BBC finally gets the story straight:
link to news.bbc.co.uk
From the article:
After Muhammad returned home, Dr Hasanien said: "We were getting wrong reports from the officer in the field and we announced later in the day that we did not find the body."
He added: "Anyway, thank God the boy is alive."
On Palestine's Dead: Israel's Chilling Concept of "Good News"
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 8 December 2004
link to electronicintifada.net
Does Israel have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians?
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 13 June 2006
link to electronicintifada.net
Thanks for commenting Richard,
The kid had been missing for a day before the clash, so presumably he and a bunch of buddies planned the trip to Egypt. One contact in Gaza thought he may have been going there to find work or to buy something he couldn't get in Gaza, or maybe just because he's a teenage kid... we don't know yet.
Presumably the family/friends feared when he was missing that he was caught up in the clashes, which is how this whole series of "Chinese Whispers" started.
You're doing the same thing as the media when you assume Dr. Mu’awiya Hassanein "witnessed" a boy bleeding to death. It doesn't actually say that anywhere. Just because he was quoted saying that this was happening does not mean that he was at the scene. It makes no sense that the head of emergency services in Gaza would be on the front lines with ambulances. That's not how things work in Palestine. He'd have been doing his job from some central location. He's not much use to Gaza's medical infrastructure if he's running around in the field where he could get injured.
The parents probably reported the kid missing to the community, some of his friends/neighbors as you say "turned out for their usual and regular ‘do-or-dare’ provocations of the IDF goons patrolling the borders", maybe there was a pile of rags in the danger zone that people assumed was a child as there had been plenty of kids already shot at that day and everyone was already wired to expect the worst....
So with all this assumption, the ICRC are called in to negotiate safe passage for an ambulance, and this is then all reported as if it were fact, as if it were happening. My guess is that there was never any boy bleeding to death, otherwise we would certainly have heard about it by now. I still have not heard back from the European Hospital but today was their weekend.
There are misreportings all the time in Palestine and in every warzone. One erroneous story hardly changes the overall narrative or dynamics of the conflict, and underlines the chaos of war. What is relevant about this story is that one of the earliest reports I saw that drew attention to this specific case was here on the Mondoweiss website: link to mondoweiss.net
You assert—perhaps a little dramatically—that this incident will have a major impact:
The subtext of what you assert is that I did something 'wrong' by drawing attention to this story. You are forgetting that key characteristics that separate just causes from unjust ones are honesty, integrity and accountability—exactly the same qualities that separate journalists from propagandists. It does no one any favors to make false claims. Israel makes false claims all the time. When those who oppose Israel's brutal colonization catch errors when "wolf" is being cried, we demonstrate integrity. That is the point of doing this.
I've written about the issue of casualty statistics many times over the years precisely because they are so contested, so hard to get right, and because they underline just how long this bloody conflict has gone on. For those interested, here are a few URLs:
The under-reporting of Palestinians killed
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 1 March 2001
link to electronicintifada.net
Permission to narrate: Edward Said, Palestine, and the Internet
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 25 September 2003
link to electronicintifada.net
IMPORTANT UPDATE
According to an April 2nd Arabic language article on the Ma'an News website, 15-year-old Mohammed al-Faramawi is alive and well after sneaking through a tunnel from Rafah in Gaza to Egypt.
Al-Faramawi was arrested with 16 other boys from Gaza by the Egyptian police, and was returned to Gaza via the Rafah crossing for a tearful reunion with his parents.
link to maannews.net
Not 16-years-old but 12-years-old.
"Don't shoot till you can see they're over the age of 12"
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz newspaper, 20 November 2000
link to ifamericansknew.org
Thanks for the European Hospital lead. I contacted them to see if they can confirm this.
The problem still remains both that the child was reported missing the day before Land Day, that there are three credible sources who had done their own research and who are saying that this may have nothing to do with the Israelis, and that this story has two completely conflicting narratives which are still unresolved.
The New York Times, BBC, and Ma'an do original reporting and fact checking, which is why their reports are different on this specific killing. Everyone else is getting at least parts of their story from AFP and/or Ma'an News, who are the "agencies" cited.
As with the other media reports, the Al-Jazeera Arabic report you provide cites "Agencies and Al-Jazeera" as its sources, which therefore muddies the waters. Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Ahmad Fayaad doesn't attribute his claim that al-Faramawi was killed by shooting from the watchtower to anyone. It could be that he is just repeating what everyone else was saying initially. He doesn't even acknowledge the Ma'an, BBC, or NYT hesitation about the narrative, as if he is unaware of it.
Just to be clear: I am completely aware that Israel shoots Palestinian children all the time and pretends it doesn't, having seen that phenomenon with my own eyes while living in the West Bank for four years. The mainstream media often either under-reports or totally fails to report Palestinian deaths. However this particular story, about Mohammed al-Faramawi, has enough red flags to suggest that something else may be going on. Until that mystery is resolved by credible sources, the title of this article still stands.
While I am 100% behind the point being made here—of Palestinian deaths being not reported/underreported—the case of Mohammed al-Faramawi seemed slightly different than usual.
According to the BBC editors who published a story with an oddly punctuated headline, "Gaza youth 'shot dead' in border incident", which I contacted them about, even as late as 24 hours after the incident "the Rafah hospital says it has not received a body or certified a death, and from the information we have received, the teenager's family are not 100% sure he is dead."
As well as the confusion about if he was shot, there was also confusion about when he was shot—if it was during the clashes or before. Two days later their version remains conflicted:
link to news.bbc.co.uk
This sometimes happens. It's a warzone after all.
His death was reported as confirmed by "witnesses" in the AFP piece you link to, but one thing that needs to be noted about the wire services is that AFP, while often first to report things, is often the least accurate. In a situation where it wasn't necessarily clear what had happened, it wouldn't be totally shocking that they got it wrong.
The case is complicated by a NYT report that says the boy had been missing since Monday (one days before Land Day/March 30th) and an Al-Jazeera English report that again cites witnesses says his body was retrieved by Palestinian emergency services and the Red Cross.
link to nytimes.com
link to english.aljazeera.net
The story did filter through somewhat. It doesn't appear to have been covered by either AP or Reuters, which does make a big difference.
Spin Alert! :-)
It should be noted that reports of the West Bank being "closed" for this or that Jewish holiday are misleading. The West Bank is always closed to almost all Palestinians.
How many Palestinians have permits to pass through the checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem currently? A few thousand? It's been like that since Oslo. That's not "open" by any definition.