Here’s today’s misleading headline in the Times; “Gaza Militants Fire 250 Rockets, and Israel Responds With Airstrikes.” This is a classic Times tactic to rig its Israel/Palestine coverage; distort the timeline to make it seem like the Palestinians started the violence, and that Israel is (reluctantly) “responding.”
Amos Harel, who covers the military for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, is hardly a supporter of Hamas. But he is an honest reporter, and you can turn to him (or one of his colleagues), rather than to the New York Times whenever there is a new outbreak of violence so you can try and figure out what is actually happening.
Amos Harel tells a more complicated story. He reports that the day before the rocket barrage, during Friday protests along the Gaza border, an Israeli jeep came under fire; one Israeli officer received “moderate” wounds and a soldier was wounded lightly. Then,
Israel responded with tanks and aerial strikes, killing two Hamas military wing members. Two more Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli fire in separate incidents along the border.
Four dead Palestinians. Only then did the Gaza militant groups “respond,” with the rocket attack.
Of course Israeli has placed Gaza under siege for years, an act of war, so that if anyone is “retaliating” here it is the Palestinians. The Times almost never makes this point. But the paper also distorts the immediate background to the latest outbreak of violence.
Times reporter Isabel Kershner writes that the militant armed groups in Gaza are increasingly frustrated “over what they consider the slow pace of Israeli concessions meant to ease an acute economic crisis in Gaza.” Notice her biased use of the term “Israeli concessions” when she should say something like “ease up slightly on strangling Gaza economically and militarily, which has created one of the worst humanitarian crises anywhere in the world.” But you have to turn to Amos Harel and his colleagues to learn that Israel was in fact dragging its feet in implementing the slight easing of the blockade, which had been negotiated by Egyptian officials.
(The Times report deploys another classic technique of bias. Kershner writes about “weekly protests [along the Gaza border], which have often turned violent. . .” Notice the “turned violent,” like a change in the weather for which no humans are responsible. In fact, human rights groups agree that Israel’s military is overwhelmingly responsible for the worst violence, reflected in the death toll; 183 Gazans since the Great March of Return protests started last year, vs. 0 [or 1] dead Israelis.)
The Haaretz reporters make clear that the Eurovision Song Contest, which Israel will host on May 14-18, is also motivating Gazans. Tens of millions of Europeans will be glued to their television sets during this extravaganza, and as one Hamas political source told Haaretz, “The Eurovision can’t happen in Tel Aviv when no relief is felt in Gaza. It can’t be that they will sing and enjoy while we suffer.” (The Times online version did mention the Eurovision contest, but only in passing.)
Haaretz’s thorough coverage went even further. Reporters Yaniv Kubovitch and Jack Khoury cited contacts within the Israeli military who had cautioned before the latest wave of violence that Israel’s delay in easing the blockade as agreed upon risked weakening the ability of Hamas to restrain other armed groups in Gaza:
Israeli defense sources warned the political echelon in recent weeks that if significant steps are not taken to implement the undertakings with Hamas, the group controlling the Gaza Strip will struggle to prevent other organizations in the coastal enclave from acting against Israel.
None of this nuance appears in the New York Times report, which characteristically leaves the reader with the impression that Hamas is simply a bloodthirsty, terrorist movement that attacks at every opportunity without provocation.
Sadly, the Times is not alone in its bias. The headline in the Washington Post also read, “More then 200 rockets fired into Israel from Gaza; Israel responds, killing 3.”
Is this a spot of pre-Eurovision lawn mowing? Or the start of yet another full-scale Israeli massacre? I dout that the Israelies would want their cute little PR extravaganza to be sullied by all that unpleasantness down the road, but it does seem a lot more serious than previous ‘escalations’.
As for the New York Times and Washington Post, is anyone really suprised? Same rubbish from the BBC and of course The Guardian. As George Galloway so rightly put it to that benighted Sky News idiot over a decade ago, the clock only starts ticking when it suits the Israeli PR plan.
And no doubt like just about every single Israeli massacre to date, it will have sky high approval ratings among the Israeli people.
Of course the NYT will give their own spin on the truth, to make it more favorable for the aggressor ,and justify what may turn out to be yet another killing spree by Israel.
Brett Stephens of the NYT was on Real Time with Bill Maher (Bill’s favorite and frequent guest along with Bari Weiss), equating anti Zionism with Anti-Semitism, when they discussed the NYT’s cartoon of Trump and Bibi. It was that Star of David that seemingly made it “anti-semitic”. Cartoonists will have a hard time drawing political cartoons of Israel, as emblems like the Star of David, and the Israeli flag, which is usually a reference to describing, or implying it is, Israel, being met with howls of anti-semitism. Maybe the word “occupier” or “illegal settlements” might work, or will that be called “anti-semitic” too?
It is obvious Israel’s policies toward Palestinians, especially in Gaza, are cruel and inhumane. It may even be those policies are specifically intended to encourage violence by Palestinians, who do not have the advantage of a one-gun policy. Violence by armed militias and lone wolves are seldom criticized or punished.
It should come as no surprise firing across the fence intending to kill a soldier and officer would bring a strong response notwithstanding how many times the IDF has done exactly that. Perhaps that decision by a Palestinian to open fire will have some different effect now with Trump likely asking for restraint leading up to his diplomatic initiative. On the other hand, because it is unlikely to draw criticism within Palestine, it undermined the concept and political advantage of non-violent resistance so many Palestinians have aspired to achieve as the most effective way to get to peaceful coexistence. While violence can easily be justified, its unlikely to create political allies, in America or Europe and ends up doing more harm than good.
This article gives context to the current nightmare unfolding in Gaza. However, in my view it misses the important point that no matter the context, and no matter Israeli’s disproportionate response, and no matter how frustrated or desperate the situation in Gaza is, the rockets fired at Israel are neither morally justifiable or tactically helpful. The rockets are fired at completely random targets. They are as likely to kill a Palestinian grandmother as an IDF general. They are meant to terrorize a complicit civilian population. They are also meant as a show of defiance towards a powerful and cruel enemy. These are not morally justifiable reasons for violence. Their indiscriminate nature also makes them a violation of international law governing rules of engagement. Despite Israel’s provocations they can not be considered self-defense. Furthermore, apart from the moral bankruptcy of random acts of violence the rockets are a tactical error. There is more to be gained by not giving in to Israel’s provocations and thereby seizing the moral high ground, than there is to a show of morally indefensible defiance and indomitability. The world is beginning to understand the scale of the injustice perpetrated against the Palestinian people by Israel. Firing rockets is counterproductive if your aim is to gain the sympathy of a largely disinterested world.
Although one can take many positions regarding how the Gaza conflict should be dealt with at this moment, I think it pays to listen to someone who knows. This is from Gershon Baskin’s facebook page:
“Hamas must understand that Israel will not implement all of the agreements to loosen the siege on Gaza while the bodies of 2 Israeli soldiers and 2 living Israeli civilians remain in Gaza. Israel must understand that Hamas will not release the bodies of the soldiers and the 2 living civilians while the 40+ Shalit deal prisoners remain in Israeli prisons plus an additional number of prisoners to be agreed to in a new deal. This is what both sides need to understand.”