The Comment Factory

The Israeli propaganda system is a well-oiled machine. Despite the fact that the Israeli Defense (War?) Force have killed nearly a thousand people in two weeks (a rate of murder faster than Darfur and other regions of genocide), the leaders of the world stay silent apart from limp calls for a ceasefire and crocodile tears for the dead on both sides (which is only a legitimate statement if you accept that one Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinians).

The protest in London yesterday bought out over 100,000 people, but when murder is happening on this scale the numbers should really have been treble that. The Israeli propaganda system, it’s called “hasbara” in Hebrew, is the reason they weren’t.

The leaders of Israel were smarting from 2006 when their illegal and murderous attack on Lebanon was actually covered by the media on the ground, and they couldn’t keep their massacres of women and children secret. This time they were ready.

They have reputably been planning the attack and its concomitant campaign of brainwashing for six month, and used these Hamas rockets as the pretext that was lying around (the plan was hatched before the ceasefire was even in place). They did the same in Lebanon, a war they had been planning for a considerable period, and, in that case, they used the capture of two soldiers on the border as cover.

The leaders and those in the government complicit in this campaign of disinformation are criminals. But what about the news networks that report all these lies faithfully? This attack on Gaza has not only shown the true depravity of the state of Israel, it has also shown the true depravity of the mainstream media.

I’m living in London at the moment and watching the BBC News has become an impossible exercise. I am just consumed with this all-encompassing rage as I watch the correspondent in Jerusalem or Sderot or the border with Gaza spouting IDF press releases as news. Of course, they aren’t allowed to report in Gaza itself because the Israelis have banned journalists, but when that happened in Zimbabwe the BBC were up in arms, and they smuggled people in anyway. When it comes to Israel? We’ll do it their way.

This slavish acquiescence to the propaganda machine has been mirrored across the print media, aside from the Guardian, which has been surprisingly good during the attack. The most pernicious technique is the attempt to present “both sides of the war”, when in this “war” the scale of death and destruction on one side, and the minor discomfort on the other, makes it two different stories that can’t be equated. You can’t dedicate two minutes to a school being bombed and 40 people dying, and then spend two minutes at a house of an old women who is shaken because a Qassam rocket hit her home early in the morning.

But while the BBC fills me with rage, if I look at the New York Times, Washington Post and other media in the US, it’s more just a case of laughter. I don’t think they realize how ridiculous they look; it’s a comment on the intellectual climate in the United States that as Israel is bombarding Palestinians and killing hundreds of their women and children, the Wall Street Journal felt right to publish an article titled, “Palestinians need Israel”, a jaunty little polemic about how the moderates were going win when Israel had finished killing hundreds of the women and children of Gaza.

The best propaganda victory for the Israeli machine is a simple one that resonates all over the media without exception. Every media says that Israel is engaged in “a war against Hamas”. All news media takes this as their starting point. But this isn’t and never has been a war against just Hamas. It is a war against all Gazans.

Firstly, when you target a democratically-elected government you are targeting the people who voted them in as well, by definition. Secondly, the Israelis have defined police officers and other civilian jobs as Hamas, which is a blatant contravention of the Geneva Convention. Thirdly, every child or woman the Israelis kill they say Hamas was operating close by. This is an open cheque. Hamas is now just a synonym now for “someone we dropped a bomb on”.

You only need to look at the statistics. 827 killed so far in two weeks. It is estimated that of the dead there have been 235 children, 92 women, 62 elderly people, four local journalists and 12 medics, but this cannot be verified because journalists are not allowed into Gaza, so the situation is probably a lot worse. Other estimates predict a third of those killed have been children. Even if we assume this number to be correct that means that nearly a half of all targets kill the wrong people. Or that of the correct targets, the bombing is so imprecise that it kills everyone around the area.

The real modus vivendi was outlined in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz quite clearly. Its reporter, Reuven Pedatzur, in an article titled, “The mistakes of Cast Lead”, writes:

The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended to kill a great many of them, and succeeded.

Examples of this abound. The UN school, where people were directed to escape the onslaught and then slaughtered was clearly marked. This is one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world. They don’t just make mistakes. As the UNRWA representative told the BBC, they had given Israel the GPS coordinates and clearly marked the school, adding that “nowhere is safe”, i.e.every civilian is a target.

Then the UN driver was killed carrying food into Gaza, which fits into a long history of the IDF targeting the UN and aid agencies, who it seems they must attack because they believe the Palestinians to be human beings worthy of help when caught in what Israeli propaganda calls the “cross-fire”, but is actually targeted attacks on civilians.

This also now include Israeli soldiers, four of which have been killed by “friendly fire”, the same amount as Hamas have killed with their rocket attacks. So you have the ridiculous scenario whereby nearly a thousand Gazans have been killed for crimes committed by Hamas but which have been matched by the Israeli military itself.

And just think about it from a strategic point of view. Whatever you say about Mossad and the Shin Bet they are not stupid. If they wanted to really get rid of Hamas and appeal to what they call the “moderates” (read: quislings) they would not embark on a massacre of unprecedented proportions, which has shown up their ally Mahmous Abbas as the collaborator he is, and increased hostility to Fatah. The purpose is to terrorize the population of Gaza, like they did in 2006 before they attacked Lebanon, and like they will continue to do as long as the Palestinians continue to exist as a people and idea, and serve to remind the Israelis of the terrorism on which their country was founded.