The AP spin on “We will never compromise with Israel”

Posted on 01/08/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Sometimes you wonder if the AP editors and reporters actually hurt themselves by working so hard to twist words like this:

In a possible sign Hamas was unwilling to compromise yet, a senior Hamas official in Syria, Mohammed Nazzal, told Syrian TV on Thursday that the group would never surrender and vowed to fight house to house against Israeli troops in Gaza.

That’s from an AP story on the UNSC resolution that is coming down the pike to tie Israel’s hands in Gaza.

Of course, let’s say the following happens. Israel agrees to the terms of the cease fire but predicates it on whether or not Hamas stops firing rockets. Israel stops fighting for a period of time. Hamas does not stop firing rockets. Israel resumes fighting.

The headlines, of course, will be “Israel steps up Gaza assault in violation of UN Security Council Resolution.”

Really. I can write this stuff without even using both sides of my brain.

Posted in Israel | 3 Comments

War in Gaza Updates 12 and 12.5

Posted on 01/08/2009 by Jack

I have been just overwhelmed with work so I am a bit late in announcing that War in Gaza Updates 12.5 and 12 are both live.

They offer news and analysis about the war from multiple perspectives. We will keep you posted as new updates become available.

Posted in Israel | Comments Off on War in Gaza Updates 12 and 12.5

He writes what I think

Posted on 01/08/2009 by Meryl Yourish

My readers know that I am not shy about writing what I’m thinking. But it’s pretty wonderful to find a blogger who writes what I think, too.

This is the end of an excellent post by Yaacov Lozowick, whom I only discovered in the last week or so:

Newsflash:
To the Palestinians: we’d love to live in peace alongside you, but if not, you’ll never ever beat us.
To the antisemites of the world: our distant descendants will still be here, tut-tutting over your malice, centuries after your own descendants won’t even remember who you were.

Read the entire post. Hell, scroll up and down and read the entire blog. You will come away feeling heartened.

Posted in Bloggers, Israel | Tagged | 1 Comment

Aint Nick’s boomerang

Posted on 01/08/2009 by Soccerdad

Nicholas Kristof – I’ll call him “Ain’t Nick” – on the NYT, The Gaza Boomerang:

When Hamas was founded in 1987, Israel was mostly concerned with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and figured that a religious Palestinian organization would help undermine Fatah. Israel calculated that all those Muslim fundamentalists would spend their time praying in the mosques, so it cracked down on Fatah and allowed Hamas to rise as a counterforce.

It’s a common talking point among Israel’s critics, that Israel had a hand in creating Hamas. But no one really has given a definitive account of how that happened. In the early 80’s Israel tried to create “village leagues,” residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who would represent the Palestinians instead of the PLO, which was gaining popularity at the time. And even if Israel did have a hand in creating Hamas, it was strictly as a religious organization. If it metastasized into a terrorist organization over time, it hardly means that Israel was responsible for it becoming one. In 1987, the PLO was a terrorist organization whose founding principle was the destruction of Israel, even if it had apologists at the time who claimed that it sought peace. And I’d add that even 15 years after the Oslo accords, there’s no indication that Fatah has moderated its founding principle.

And the point that Kristof misses is that in 1993, Israel attempted to make peace with a known terrorist. Arafat used the last eleven years of his misbegotten life to organize terror against Israel while enriching himself and his cronies. And since he was Israel’s “peace partner” it protected him from any serious consequences. Also if Arafat had fulfilled his obligations he would have destroyed Hamas instead of fostering its growth. Yet Kristof doesn’t note that by making peace with a terrorist Israel’s peaceniks strengthened terror.

At least to whatever degree Israel encouraged Hamas at the beginning, it was not a terrorist organization.

What we’re seeing in the Middle East is the Boomerang Syndrome. Arab terrorism built support for right-wing Israeli politicians, who took harsh actions against Palestinians, who responded with more terrorism, and so on. Extremists on each side sustain the other, and the excessive Israeli ground assault in Gaza is likely to create more terrorists in the long run.

I love this meme. After Israel destroyed much of the terrorist infrastructure during Operating Defensive Shield terror from Judea and Samaria decreased. And after Israel killed Yassin and Rantisi, Hamas was weakened. A terrorist organization needs leaders who can recruit, train and arm its terrorists. Take away its most effective leaders and reduce its materiel and you have degraded its ability to commit terror. But Kristof’s ignorant belief is that if you fight against terrorists, you cause more resentment, which, in turn breeds more terrorists. Kind of like throwing water on gremlins. But terrorists don’t magically appear out of nowhere, they need to be recruited and trained. Kristof needs to inhale some reality.

In a recent article Khaled Abu Toameh described how the leadership of Hamas is currently in disarray. (via memeorandum) In addition, there’s anecdotal evidence that the residents of Gaza are blaming Hamas more than Israel for their plight. What strengthened Hamas was the ceasefire. Now Hamas is being weakened.

So what should Israel have done according to Kristof?

Granted, Israel was profoundly provoked in this case. Israel sought an extension of its cease-fire with Hamas, and Egypt offered to mediate one — but Hamas refused. When it is shelled by its neighbor, Israel has to do something.

But Israel’s right to do something doesn’t mean it has the right to do anything. Since the shelling from Gaza started in 2001, 20 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets or mortars, according to a tabulation by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that has killed more than 660 people (it’s difficult to know how many are militants and how many are civilians).

So what could Israel have reasonably done? Bombing the tunnels through which Gazans smuggle weapons would have been a proportionate response, if Israel had stopped there, and the same is true of airstrikes on certain Hamas targets. An even better approach would have been to ease the siege in Gaza, perhaps creating an environment in which Hamas would have extended the cease-fire. It was certainly worth trying — and almost anything would be better than lashing out in a way that would create more boomerangs.

First of all it’s not just difficult to know how many of those killed are civilians, it’s difficult to know how many people have been killed.

I don’t see that Israel did anything different from what Kristof would have had them do. He writes “certain Hamas targets.” But what does he know? There’s every indication that Israel knew what targets they had to hit. And many are in residential areas. But how can he know from Manhattan which “certain targets” house weaponry and other elements of the terror infrastructure. He can’t, but Israel’s military knows. Kristof effectively uses the word “certain” to say that he knows better which targets were legitimate.

Further, for all his complaints, Kristof doesn’t make a case that Israel could have done things differently. Nor does he acknowledge Hamas’s culpability for civilian damage. For Kristof it’s blame Israel first and only.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israeli Double Standard Time | Tagged | 3 Comments

Hamas targets schools, world is blind, deaf, and dumb on topic

Posted on 01/08/2009 by Meryl Yourish

First, I researched the grad rocket. It is accurate. It can be targeted.

Then, I checked on Google maps to see how easy it is to map out a school in Israel. Satellite view. No problem.

Then I checked reports of how many kindergartens and schools have been hit by grad rockets.

One.

Earlier Thursday, a Grad rocket hit a school in Ashkelon. The rocket exploded at the school’s gym, which stood empty at the time of the attack. The building sustained damages but no one was injured.

Two.

Rocket fire continues: A Grad rocket hit an empty kindergarten in the port city of Ashdod on Monday afternoon. An air raid siren sounded in Ashdod and Ashkelon at around 3:20 pm. Several people suffered shock, but there were no injuries. The place was heavily damaged.

Three.

Beersheba joined the list of rocket-stricken communities Tuesday evening as an air raid siren sounded across the southern city, followed by several explosions. A Grad missile landed in an empty kindergarten in the city, causing damage. Thirty-four people were treated for shock at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

Four. (March 2008)

Another rocket landed near a kindergarten in the city, where dozens of children were beginning their day.

As the nursery teachers wiped their tears, they told Ynet that the Color Red alert system was not heard in the kindergarten

Five. (February 2008)

On Thursday a total of 10 rockets hit the beachside city of Ashkelon leaving growing anxiety in their wake. Two long-range Grad rockets fired from the northern Strip hit the city that was previously considered out-of-range of the rockets. One of the rockets landed near a school in the center of town. A 17-year-old girl suffered light shrapnel wounds in the latest attack and several other people suffered from anxiety.

I’m sure there are more. That’s a cursory first check.

Hamas deliberately targets Israeli schools. Palestinian terrorists deliberately time their attacks for when children are walking to or from school. There has never been an outcry from any organization that normal protests human rights violations. There have been no accusations of war crimes by Hamas. There has been, in fact, utter silence from the usual suspects. Israel schools are being targeted, and yet, that gets shrugged off by everyone but Israelis.

Compare that to the world outcry of the UN school in Jabalya that got hit after terrorists used it as cover to fire mortars at IDF troops.

No, the world ignores Palestinian war crimes on a regular basis, and denies that they occur, or excuses them as the result of “occupation.” Or in revenge for Israel bombing Palestinian smuggling tunnels.

What time is it, kiddies? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time, which only occurs on days that end with a “y.”

Posted in Gaza, Hamas, Israeli Double Standard Time | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Jimma dandy to the rescue

Posted on 01/08/2009 by Soccerdad

Jimmy Carter, during whose administration, Iran became and Islamist state and started to threaten the world, tells us that if only the parties had listened to him, war could have been avoided, in An Unnecessary War.

So much of the essay is self promotion, it’s hard to know to what to take seriously. Quoting Richard Falk – I’m sorry, the Rapparteur – on the subject of the Arab Israeli conflict is hardly convincing, as Falk is exceedingly anti-Israel. (Yes, he’s an antisemite too, even if he’s Jewish.) It’s appears that he got most of his information from Hamas, which he accepted uncritically.

But this paragraph really sticks out:

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel’s unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

“Defensive tunnel.” How in H*** does he know? Because Khaled Meshaal told him? I’m also not certain why Hamas would be building a defensive tunnel, towards Israel. The only thing that makes sense, is that the tunnel was being built as a means to attack Israel and carry out an attack similar to the one Hamas did to capture Gilad Shalit in 2006.

Finally here’s the brief bio at the end of the op-ed:

The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.

Sounds great. But what about the book he wrote comparing Israel to apartheid era South Africa? Isn’t that important to know, when considering the credibility of Carter’s claims?

Jimmy Carter, terrorist tool.

Maybe instead of defending terror he should go back to building houses. That way no one gets harmed. Then again, maybe not.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | Tagged | 2 Comments

How soon they forget?

Posted on 01/08/2009 by SnoopyTheGoon

No, I am not angry at Brits – I am already past that point, being closer to the mood best expressed by this piece. Still, I shall never quit to wonder about this country that (go figure why!) holds, and will continue to hold for a long time, the attention of the world way above the weight it is pulling in the world affairs. So this post by Andrew Ian Dodge hit just the right cord – for me:

Having lived in the UK off and on most of my life I sometimes wonder if the country collectively has a very short memory. Considering the shrill voices against Israel defending itself one has to wonder if they have all forgotten that the UK had a terrorist problem in much of the latter half of last century. Britons where killed by bombs, mortars and murders by Irish nationalist groups.

The British government replied in kind and did as much as they could to protect it citizens from the terrorists. Imagine how Britons would have felt if the IRA and its off-shots had been firing missiles at cities in Northern Ireland from Ireland?

Then again considering the current cowering attitude towards Islamists and their ilk it is not surprising the overall reaction to the situation in Gaza. Where is the outcry in the media over Islamists attacks on Jews and Jewish businesses in the UK. Where is the condemnation of celebrity Hamas-appeasers like Ken Livingston, Annie Lenox, Bianca Jagger and the rest? The true depth of dhimmi-tude is showing right now.

Its disgraceful, disgusting and despicable how large swathes of the British establishment has reacted to Hamas and its efforts.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in World | Comments Off on How soon they forget?

Iran opens a second front?

Posted on 01/08/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Did Iran order Hezbullah to shell northern Israel yesterday?

A Katyusha barrage was fired Thursday at the Nahariya area in the Western Galilee. Police reported that two people were lightly wounded and evacuated to the local hospital. Several residents were treated for shock.

[…] Residents rushed to take cover in shelters and fortified areas, as children throughout the town were making their way to school.

It’s a typical terrorist tactic. They deliberately aim to kill as many children as possible.

Israel returned fire.

The IDF shelled the areas in southern Lebanon from which Katyusha rockets were fired at Israel’s north Thursday morning. There were no initial reports of injuries.

Military sources estimated that the attack was carried out by a Palestinian organization and not by Hizbullah, in light of the type of rockets used.

It could easily have been Iran’s orders. Hezbullah doesn’t sneeze without asking the mullahs’ permission. And Iranian orders were given yesterday.

A senior Iranian politician met Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus on Wednesday as the Palestinian Islamist group considered an Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Ali Larijani, speaker of parliament and one of the major figures in the Islamic Republic, met Mashaal and several high level officials from Hamas at the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital, witnesses said.

The meeting stretched into the early hours of Thursday, with no details emerging from the deliberations. Larijani earlier met leaders of Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian group with close links to Iran.

Iran thinks it’s time to up the ante for Israel, since Hamas hasn’t been able to do much against the IDF. It’s not too difficult to make the rocket attack look like it isn’t Hezbullah. But both UNIFIL and the Lebanese army increased border patrols. Yes, there was that incident in December where the Lebanese army defused eight rockets ready to launch at Israel. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that this is Hezbullah.

Time will tell.

Posted in Israel, Lebanon, Terrorism | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The War In Gaza Update #11.5

Posted on 01/07/2009 by Jack

My friends another round up of news and information about the war in Gaza is now available here.

A few comments about the update and the war. As Meryl noted below there is an enormous amount of antipathy and hate towards Jews and Israel. It is not hard to find. Some of it is blatant and some of it is couched in more sophisticated terms, but it is there.

If you spend any sort of significant time wading throught the various posts you have to be prepared to deal with this sort of thing. I don’t write this looking for sympathy, I choose to do what I do. But part of the reason that I do it is because I like to have a more clear picture of what is going on around the world than what is presented solely by traditional media.

That doesn’t mean that I think that the media is completely biased or worthless. It is like a lot of things, filled with people who are good at what they do and some who are not. The problem is that the media has an enormous ability to influence people so when they make mistakes it has the potential for great harm.

So one of the ongoing goals with the round up is to provide a few different sources to read about a topic. And as I go through I try to find blogger/critics who take the time to try and analyze the news, who don’t settle for the simple answers.

When it comes to Israel many of its critics spend an inordinate amount of time citing international law, but how many of them actually are familiar with the law. Not to mention that law is subject to interpretation so just shouting that party ‘A’ is in violation is not proof that this is so.

Taking a step backwards let’s revisit the discussion about antisemitic comments. I find it interesting that at the Pro-Hamas rallies people shout about how this is a humanitarian issue in one breath and in the next say that Jews should go to the ovens. It is a bit of a contradiction don’t you think.

Along those lines isn’t it interesting that in places like London thugs are running amok and antisemitic incidents are on the rise. Must be the humanitarian side of them.

Posted in Israel | 1 Comment

Faith in Fatah

Posted on 01/07/2009 by Soccerdad

That’s what Thomas Friedman has.

Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized Israel — and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.

On the other hand Reuel March Gerecht writes:

Although Fatah, the ruling party within the Palestinian Authority, may get a second wind thanks to the excesses of Hamas and the Israelis’ killing much of Hamas’s brain power and muscle, it is difficult to envision Fatah reviving itself into an appealing political alternative for faithful Palestinians. Fatah is hopelessly corrupt, often brutal, and without an inspiring raison d’être: a Palestine of the West Bank and Gaza is, as Hamas correctly points out, boring, historically unappealing, and a noncontiguous geographic mess. Fatah only sounds impassioned when it gives vent to its anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, profoundly Muslim roots. It’s no accident that the religious allusions and suicide bombers of Fatah and Hamas after 2000 were hard to tell apart. If Hamas can withstand the current Israeli attack on its leadership and infrastructure, then the movement’s aura will likely be impossible to match. Iran’s influence among religious Palestinians could skyrocket.

It would be useful for Friedman to remember that Fatah is moderate relative to Hamas. It wasn’t Hamas that rejected the peace deal at Camp David in 2000. Abbas didn’t object to Arafat’s rejection either. A few months of dong what they should have been doing for 15 years, doesn’t mean that they’ve changed.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Hamas, palestinian politics | Tagged | Comments Off on Faith in Fatah

Spare the Hamas spoil the war

Posted on 01/07/2009 by Soccerdad

Meryl observes the diplomatic activity and Israel’s leaders’ apparently considering the proposals for a ceasefire.

But Khaled Abu Toameh writes that Hamas is having trouble functioning.

Until two weeks ago, Zahar, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Interior Minister Said Siam – the three top Hamas leaders – were still sleeping in their homes and moving around freely and fearlessly. Until then, they were also frequent guests on various talk shows in the Arab media – especially Al-Jazeera, which is being accused by some Palestinians as serving as a mouthpiece for Hamas.

This is not a time for a ceasefire. If Hamas wants one, it will have to pay a steep price for one.

Caroline Glick maps out two positive scenarios. (h/t Daled Amos)

There are four possible outcomes for Israel’s current campaign — two would be positive and two would be negative. The best outcome would be for Israel to overthrow Hamas’s regime and destroy its capacity to wage war against Israel or threaten Israel in any significant way. To achieve this goal, Israel would have to reassert control over Gaza. Since the Israeli government has already stated that Israel will not reassert control over Gaza, and since reasserting control would be extremely embarrassing for the current leadership, which led Israel out of Gaza with promises of peace three and a half years ago, it is fairly clear that this outcome will not be forthcoming.

The next best outcome would be something analogous to the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Although the U.S. left Saddam Hussein in power after that war, it asserted control over the no-fly zones and set up a clear sanctions regime that by and large prevented Iraq from rearming and apparently prevented Iraq from reconstituting its weapons of mass destruction programs.

Here too, chances that this outcome will prevail are not great because the Israeli government has already stated that it is unwilling to reassert control over Gaza’s border with Egypt which is where most of Hamas’s weapons are imported from.

If the disarray is real, pressure for a ceasefire will give Haniyeh and company time to regroup. That’s unacceptable.

Long term, Bret Stephens writes in An Endgame for Israel:

A long-term policy aimed squarely at killing or capturing Hamas’s leaders, destroying arms caches and rocket factories, and cutting off supply and escape routes will not by itself destroy the group. But it can drive it out of government and cripple its ability to function as a fighting force. And this, in turn, could mean the return of Fatah, the closest thing Gaza has to a “legitimate” government.

All this will be said to amount to another occupation, never mind that there are no settlers in this picture, and never mind, too, that Israel was widely denounced for carrying out an “effective occupation” of the Strip after it imposed an economic blockade on Hamas. (By this logic, the U.S. is currently “occupying” Cuba.) If Israel is going to achieve a strategic victory in this war, it will have to stand firm against this global wave of hypocrisy and cant.

Israel will also have to practice a more consistent policy of deterrence than it has so far done. One option: For every single rocket that falls randomly on Israeli soil, an Israeli missile will hit a carefully selected target in Gaza. Focusing the minds of Hamas on this type of “proportionality” is just the endgame that Israel needs.

If Hamas wants a ceasefire, in the words of Instapundit, “… don’t give ’em one.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Hamas, Israel | Tagged , | Comments Off on Spare the Hamas spoil the war

Israel ceases fire, Hamas bombs cities

Posted on 01/07/2009 by Meryl Yourish

But of course.

Just 25 minutes after the “humanitarian pause” declared by the IDF came to an end Wednesday afternoon, Hamas fired two Grad rockets towards southern Israel. One landed inside Beersheba; no injuries or damage have been reported.

The rocket landed on a lawn in the city, narrowly missing a building. “We were at a pub. We ran to the shelter, which was pretty far away, and by the time we reached it we heard (the rocket) fall,” Daniel, a resident of Beersheba, told Ynet.

“The floor shook. We went out and saw that it landed near here… Just a few meters to the side and we would have had a disaste herer.”

I will anxiously await the UN and EU condemnation of Hamas.

Well, no, not really. But it was fun to write that.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Terrorism | Tagged , | 1 Comment

New comments policy

Posted on 01/07/2009 by Meryl Yourish

I’m tired of wading through the flood of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism thinly disguised as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism.

I have just restored registration to this blog.

You must be a registered user to post a comment.

That means that many of you who have been commenting here for years will not be able to comment now. Please register if you haven’t already done so, and if you have registered and forgotten your password, there should be a link to click that will allow you to reset it.

I will be checking IP addresses against those that are in your published comments, to prevent hijacking of usernames.

Oops: I forgot to check the box that allows anyone to register. Try again.

Posted in Site news | 8 Comments

UN sticks up for Hamas

Posted on 01/07/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Of course the UN is sure there weren’t any Hamas terrorists shooting mortars from their school. It’s not like UNRWA has been infiltrated by terrorists, ever. Or use UNRWA ambulances as getaway cars, or to transport weapons.

And it’s not like the UN ever lies about Hamas.

U.N. officials are “99.9 percent certain” there were no Palestinian militants in or on the grounds of a school that was shelled by Israeli forces, killing more than 40 people, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, disputed Israel’s account of the bombardment of the northern Gaza school. But he said that if anyone could clear up the remaining uncertainty, “We would like them to come forward and be part of an impartial investigation.”

Chris Gunness apparently did not read the AP or New York Times reports, where Palestinian witnesses confirm that Hamas terrorists were firing at Israeli troops. Of course the Times buries the information far down in the article as well, but at least it’s there.

A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one of the militants, whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Asker, in the area of the school right before the attack.

Ibrahim said he saw the militant after he answered calls for volunteers to pile sand around the camp “to help protect the resistance fighters.” Ibrahim went to pile sand near the school with his brother, Iyad, 20, who was then injured by the Israeli mortar fire.

Of course, Gunness could be right if you take him literally—the terrorists may not have been physically in the school grounds, but firing from just outside it. And that’s apparently enough for the UN to say there were no terrorists firing mortars at Israeli forces. It fits completely within the UN narrative, which has been anti-Israel since shortly after the creation of the Jewish State.

Posted in Gaza, Hamas, Israel, United Nations | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The media’s high dudgeon over Gaza ban

Posted on 01/07/2009 by Soccerdad

In his post about the world’s lust for Jewish moral failure, Jeffrey Goldberg writes:

One story the media isn’t telling, because it’s impossible to get this story in these circumstances (especially because Israel stupidly won’t allow foreign reporters into Gaza) is how much resentment the Hamas policy of using Palestinians as human shields causes among Gaza civilians.

While I agree and have blogged that Hamas may actually be losing support among their constituents despite what the media say – see this recent story too – I don’t think that it’s stupid for Israel to restrict foreign reporters into Gaza. Why would Goldberg expect them to tell the story he saw? They haven’t in the past.

Since at least 2005, for example, Hamas has been smuggling increasingly sophisticated materiel into Gaza and yet there have been precious few reports about how this threat grew. I didn’t learn that Hamas had built a network of underground bunkers from a newspaper, but from a think tank. The media were filled with many stories about the deprivation suffered in Gaza – even many that were untrue – and most blamed Israel. Little or nothing was reported to suggest that perhaps the people of Gaza were suffering because Hamas chose to devote its resources to increasing its terror threat, rather than the standard of living of its citizens.

Of course press restrictions bother Samir Kuntar’s BFF, Dion Nissenbaum. Of course why anyone should listen to a fellow who writes press releases for an unrepentant child killer is beyond me. Still there are media folks who are bothered.

Ethan Bronner of the New York Times is one. (via memeorandum)

Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one the government is seeking to entirely control the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy.

“This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah,” said Nachman Shai, a former army spokesman who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Israel’s public diplomacy. “Then, the media were everywhere. Their cameras and tapes picked up discussions between commanders. People talked on live television. It helped the enemy and confused and destabilized the home front. Today, Israel is trying to control the information much more closely.”

In his devastating critique of the role the media played in undermining Israel in its war against Hezbollah in 2006, Marvin Kalb wrote (.pdf):

Add one other crucial ingredient to this journalistic wartime stew of charge and countercharge—and that was the Internet. This was a live war, in which the information battlefield played a central role. Here the Israelis suffered from the openness of their democratic society. They succumbed to the public pressures of live 24/7 coverage. They couldn’t keep a secret. Hezbollah, on the other hand, controlled its message with an iron grip. It had one spokesman and no leaks. Hezbollah did not have to respond to criticism from bloggers, and it could always count on unashamedly sympathetic Arab reporters to blast Israel for its “disproportionate” military attack against Lebanon.

The subtitle of Kalb’s report is “The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict” an implicit acknowledgment that the media during the war served to help Hezbollah. So Israel has learned from bitter experience that controlling the media is necessary for its military success. And I don’t recall reporters complaining 2 and a half years ago that Hezbollah controlled the information they were getting. They were all too happy to act as amplifiers for Hezbollah.

Back to Bronner.

Foreign reporters deny that their work in Gaza has been subject to Hamas censorship or control. Unable to send foreign reporters into Gaza, the international news media have relied on Palestinian journalists based there for coverage.

Have you heard of Alan Johnston? Or of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig?

And it isn’t just a few isolated incidents.

But it seems that many Israelis accept Mr. Seaman’s assessment and shed no tears over the restrictions, despite repeated protests by the Foreign Press Association of Israel, including on Tuesday.

Given the media’s record, this reaction is hardly surprising.

This attitude has been helped by supportive Israeli news media whose articles have been filled with “feelings of self-righteousness and a sense of catharsis following what was felt to be undue restraint in the face of attacks by the enemy,” according to a study of the first days of media coverage of the war by a liberal but nonpartisan group called Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel.

But those self-righteous feelings were not universal. Surely you could read Gideon Levy or Amira Hess in Ha’aretz. And of course this begs the question if there’s a parallel group in Gaza that critiques the official media there. But still given the threat, I fail to understand what is wrong with feelings of self-righteousness. Is openness necessarily equated with being self-critical?

On Tuesday, the press association released a statement saying, “The unprecedented denial of access to Gaza for the world’s media amounts to a severe violation of press freedom and puts the state of Israel in the company of a handful of regimes around the world which regularly keep journalists from doing their jobs.”

Oh please. Again where were all these journalists when Hamas was building its threat. Yaacov Lozowick notes that the media are ill-prepared to understand what they are reporting anyway.

And yet, although for the past ten days I’ve been focusing intensely and extensively on this operation, it’s only in the past two or three days that I feel I’m beginning to understand what is going on; even now there are large gaps in the picture, and lots of fog of war. The possibility that reporters with deadlines to meet – even Israeli ones, all the others even more so – could march into the battle zone and have anything useful to tell us, is, frankly, remote. The best they’d be able to do is point at ruble, recent or not, and breathlessly tell about the tremendous havoc the IDF is wreaking; then they’d troop off to the Shifa hospital in Gaza ind interview the civilian casualties (alas, there are many of them) without ever recognizing which of the uniformed personnel are hiding Hamas leaders, nor where the steps down to the bunker are.

In other words the press association would benefit from a little humility.

Back to Bronner.

Israelis and their supporters think that such quick descriptions fail to explain the vital context of what has been happening — years of terrorist rocket fire on civilians have gone largely unanswered, and a message had to be sent to Israel’s enemies that this would go on no longer, they say. The issue of proportionality, they add, is a false construct because comparing death tolls offers no help in measuring justice and legitimacy.

There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict, of course. But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death.

That’s really the argument in a nutshell. Unfortunately Bronner’s not done.

John Ging, an Irishman who directs operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, entered Gaza on Monday as journalists were kept out. He told Palestinian reporters in Gaza that the policy was a problem.

“For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in,” he said.

John Ging, of course, being an official of the UN doesn’t even have a passing familiarity with the truth. Here he’s talking about yesterday’s Israeli strike against mortar firing terrorist near a UN school.

Further on in the story we find out what Ging left out:

Israeli military officials said soldiers operating in the area around the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza came under mortar fire and responded by targeting the source: the U.N.-run al-Fakhora School. Ging, the U.N. official in Gaza, said that all U.N. facilities are clearly marked with flags and that the Israeli military has been given precise Global Positioning System coordinates.

“When you’re fired at, you have to fight back,” said reserve Brig. Gen. Ilan Tal, a military spokesman.

Tal said two known Hamas gunmen were killed in the Israeli strike just outside the school, in addition to members of a mortar squad.

U.N. officials said they did not know whether fighters had been in the school, and wanted the matter investigated.

I’m sure they didn’t know. This isn’t the first time it happened.

(The Washington Post leaves out a key bit of the story that the NYT included – h/t Barry Rubin

A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one of the militants, whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Asker, in the area of the school right before the attack.

Ibrahim said he saw the militant after he answered calls for volunteers to pile sand around the camp “to help protect the resistance fighters.” Ibrahim went to pile sand near the school with his brother, Iyad, 20, who was then injured by the Israeli mortar fire.

Still I expect that most of the time most reporters would ignore the detail that the NYT included.)

For the most part I expect that the media would make itself useful to UN officials and Hamas officials and question everything that Israel did. So I see no great loss with the lack of media coverage. Nor, given what they’ve failed to report do they have any moral right to question Israel’s position.

Treppenwitz puts it very well:

You have demonstrated that you have no contextual or historical background for covering this conflict. You have also made it clear you have no desire to acquire either. You will inevitably send in ‘journalists’ who don’t know the geography, language, culture or history of either side in this conflict, forcing them to rely on unreliable (and biased) local sources and ‘fixers’ to supply the meat of their stories. There are already Palestinian journalists inside Gaza. Your stories are going to end up echoing their propaganda, so why not just take their feed?

UPDATE: More from Noah Pollak:

Journalists who abjure reporting the vital details of this story should be called what they are — activists masquerading as reporters.

UPDATE II: Yaacov Lozowick:

The non-antisemitic media however, say, the New York Times, will also never really tell the story, because it contradicts one of the meta-explanations with which most people in this generation understand reality: the cycle of violence myth. According to this canard, hatred begets hatred, violence begets violence, and the only conceivable way to put an end to them is to desist one-sidedly and be nice, so as to start the opposite cycle of brotherly love or some such bunk. Using reverse engineering, this means that if the Palestinians hate the Israelis that badly, it must be the result of things the Israelis did in previous stages of the cycle: Blockades, retreating from Gaza without coordination with Hamas, putting down two intifadas, settlements, coming to Palestine in the first place, snubbing Mohammad, killing Jesus, eating that apple…. whatever. And since the Israelis have such an awful record of being nasty to the Palestinians, even if the Palestinians also played the cycle-of-violence game (remember, it’s the NYT, not the Guardian), the Palestinians can’t snap out of it; moreover, putting more pressure on them, using more violence against them, can only have one result. It will reinforce the hatred and add fuel to the cycle.

This is what the non-antisemitic media really believes, as does most of their public. Finding evidence that the Israeli violence is giving the Palestinian populace pause, that it could shake them out of their fantasies and put them on the road to rationality so as to figure out a better way of life – this can’t be said, because it can’t be true, because it would destroy an entire Weltanschauung in which most people have invested.

That’s what too many of them are and that’s why the ban is correct.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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