The War in Gaza
19. Jan, 2009 
12 Comments
I have to say that this time around, coverage of the war has been less blatantly anti-Israeli biased than most coverage I’ve seen over the years.
This is perhaps due in some small part to the Israeli governments recognition (since the 2006 Southern Lebanon war) that they’ve got to play the media game as well – inclcluding a largely effective blackout of the war zone itself for much of the past three weeks.
There’s still some BS coverage going on, but it has been largely balanced from what I’ve seen.
One thing however that hasn’t translated well has been what the Israel Defense Forces have been attacking, and whether they accomplished anything substantial or not.
I went looking for a list of objectives and found what I was looking for over at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. You’re welcome to go look at the daily summaries yourself (please do), but for brevity’s sake, I’ve chosen to summarize the IDF public statements for the days January 9th through January 17th. When you look at the numbers, the scope of what they’ve been dealing with begins to become apparent:
Tunnels: by my count 302+ smuggling tunnels were destroyed – many of them serving as weapons caches as well
Rocket and Mortar Launchers: 159 destroyed. That’s LAUNCHERS not rockets. Most launchers (depending on design) can be used to fire multiple rockets
Facilities: 104. These include everything from outposts to weapons manufacturing facilities, storage facilities and schools, mosques and homes used for the same
Gunmen: Unclear, as the IDF usually refers to ’squads’, ‘cells’ or ‘groups’. If you add those up – 201 ‘groups’ of indeterminate size, plus a few “commanders” here and there.
Israel claims that many of the civilian casualties claimed by Hamas are, in fact, Hamas fighters. Hamas itself claims only 35 fighters killed. If we make a swag that a group/cell/squad is, on average 5 fighters, we end up with 1005. Take out the 35 dead claimed by Hamas, you end up with 965 Hamas fighters. If you subtract that from the civilian casualty count of more than 1300, you end up with about 350 – far too many to be sure, but not anywhere’s near as horrifying as 1300.
Yes, I drew my information from a single, potentially biased source – the Israeli IDF as reported by the MInistry of Foreign Affairs – but remember that this is a democratic state that has published this information PUBLICLY and the data that will back it up is presumably available to those who wish to check out its veracity. You can’t say the same for the “other” side.
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No. That’s 1300 *people* dead. No matter how you try to twist and bend the facts, that’s 1300 *people* dead. And nothing can justify that.
Excuse me, Ian, I thought ‘civilians’ meant *people* too. I wasn’t aware that “Hamas fighter” was an euphamism for ‘non-human’.
How about we add 7 more PEOPLE, Israeli civilians rocketed to death, and at least one Israeli soldier too – or don’t they count?
Or are you trying to suggest that there’s no difference between a man under arms being killed and a civilian, non-combatant being killed in time of war?
Or are you trying to dismiss the twisting of the facts and buying Hamas’ line that all 1300 PEOPLE killed were civilian, non-combatants?
What twisting? “If you subtract that from the civilian casualty count of more than 1300″ from above. I stated Hamas claims, I stated Israeli claims – then I did a little math.
I beg to differ on the justification part. Killing an estimated 965 Hamas TERRORISTS is justified when they fire rockets and mortars at and send suicide bombers against your civilians for 6+ years, without interruption and refuse to negotiate in any serious manner because their avowed goal is the destruction of the entire state and the death of all of its citizens.
Oh wait. 7 Israeli dead justifies the murder of 965 *allegedly* Hamas Palestinians? And people wonder why there’s a problem there?
Ian, sorry, but your biases are showing. Time to adjust the skirt.
That’s maybe 965 terrorists, just so you know which word to use to describe them.
Steve, never argue with someone who’s mind is already set like cement.
Complete waste of time, eff’em.
“…your biases are showing.”
Yours too, I believe.
From the BBC web site:
* More than 1,300 Palestinians killed (nearly a third of them children)
* Thirteen Israelis killed
* More than 4,000 buildings destroyed in Gaza, more than 20,000 severely damaged
* 50,800 Gazans homeless and 400,000 without running water
* overall physical damage worth about $1.9bn
* 18 Israelis killed by rockets since 2001
Israeli authorities claim anyone affiliated with Hamas is a “legitimate target”. The International Committee of the Red Cross defines a combatant as a person “directly engaged in hostilities”. The Israeli definition has resulted in schools being bombed, police cadets on parade being killed, and the bombing of education, interior and foreign ministries and the parliament building – according to the director of B’Tselem (an Israel human rights group): “To claim that all of those offices are legitimate targets, just because they are affiliated with Hamas, is legally flawed and extremely problematic.”
Tell me how any of this is justified. Tell me how it will help solve the problem there. I’m trying hard to be objective here, but all I see is massive over-kill on the part of the IDF.
Ian,
you can take your information from wherever you choose to: BBC’s history of the coverage of Israel has been notoriously slanted and one-sided over the years. If you want to see some of the cases cited about their one-sidedness, you can check out this site – http://www.honestreporting.com. Don’t consider the source – read their commentary and then go re-read the cited articles again for yourself.
You might find this blog entry from a former Israeli army officer an interesting perspective. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lazar-berman/hamas-and-the-death-of-a_b_158287.html
You cite numbers and your source is the BBC. Are you aware that even the bias of the Red Cross has been brought into question? Forget the politics for a moment and ask yourself whether it isn’t reasonable to assume that an aide worker, stuck in the middle of a war zone, might not tend to exaggerate their circumstances when given an opportunity to ask for help.
You cite numbers on both sides – but you do so from a vacuum and in a way that makes it look as if you’re seeking some degree of parity – one Israeli killed justifies one Palestinian killed and so forth.
Proportionality is the word being bandied about – and there is no such thing in warfare. That Hamas has so far been unsuccessful in killing hundreds or thousands of Israelis is just luck – because they have been trying to do just that for years and, in the interest of giving various accords a chance to work, Israel has withheld its response.
And then there’s the whole issue of giving ANY credence to an avowed terrorist organization at all – one that has been named as such by the US, the EU and the United Nations. We’re supposed to accept their statements at face value? Their motivation at this point is to make things look as horrible as possible – otherwise they lose not just the battle but the war of words.
This is not a case of Israel can do no wrong while Hamas can do no right – this is a case of simply looking at the messenger; Israeli reports are subject to both their own internal free press as well as the scrutiny – deep, wide and critical scrutiny of the entire world, while Hamas reports are not, nor can they be.
What’s the solution – no one knows, but as long as a terrorist organization is running the show in Gaza, no solution is going to work.
Here’s an article by the actor Paul Kaye, who’s mother-in-law was killed by a rocket. It may be of relevance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/16/gaza-first-person-israel
http://www.honestreporting.com/ is a pro-Israeli site, and says as much in its mission statement.
And yet organisations with international repute, such as the BBC or even the International Red Cross, you brand as “slanted” because their facts don’t match that of the Israeli military organisation responsible for the attack?
Yes Ian, I KNOW. That’s why I said: “Don’t consider the source – read their commentary and then go re-read the cited articles again for yourself.”
But you didn’t do that, did you?
I then went on to offer several rationales that have nothing to do with the Red Cross or the BBC, all of which you’ve ignored.
I’m sorry if, given all of the circumstances, and in the absence of any other demonstrable proof, I tend to lean in the direction of a country with a democratically elected leadership and a free and open press, rather than the claims of a bunch of thugs, murderers and liars – who have been branded as such my most of the international community.
What part of – statements from an elected government vs statements from terrorists don’t you get?
And if you want to get off that comparison – where’s the verification of those? What are the sources. And I don’t mean the BBC or the uncredited claims of unidentified so-called relief workers. Where are the initial sources – and where’s the verification? There’s counters (credible in my opinion) to every single red meat statement you’re talking about. If you’re going to point fingers – I’ll do so right back – why are you so quick to buy a line that’s pro-Hamas?
Here’s an interesting article you might wish to read: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n02/sieg01_.html
Note the credentials of the author, and the various quotations and cite throughout the piece. Some of the information in the article has also appeared in BBC reports.
Thanks for that Ian. I read that piece down to the first citation (which is not linked to, btw) and then went and found the ORIGINAL interview with Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai.
I don’t need to read that piece by Siegman any further, since the first citation that he used to ‘prove’ his point is taken so far out of context the slant and the bias is obvious.
Siegman tries to use a radio interview with Zakai to make his case that “Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai…”
No such statement is made in the interview. Zakai does not accuse the Israeli government of “breaking the truce” – he’s discussing political options in the face of the impending incursion into Gaza. The article says, by way of introduction
“The week began with Palestinian rockets slamming into the Negev an average of nearly once an hour, around the clock.
“There’s a moral problem here,” says Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division.
“The basic obligation of a nation is to see to the security of its citizens. The factual situation is that the state of Israel is not doing so, where the residents of the south are concerned.”
Zakai told Army Radio this week that Israel’s real options are down to three. The first is the option that many have taken routinely to call unavoidable: a broad military offensive.”
It goes on where Zakai presses his point that he believes an opportunity was missed to provide further incentives to Hamas to maintain the cease fire. Further on, before launching into his personal solution to the problem, it says “Zakai believes Israel should take a different approach, essentially combining two other options with a fundamental reappraisal of how Israelis should regard Hamas.”
Nowhere is there any accusation by Zakai that Israel broke the truce.
Indeed, I went further than I had to into that piece of trash you cited, out of courtesy to you. The opening paragraph makes the following claims:
“Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.
I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.
Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie”
I could have stopped right there. Hamas IS a terrorist organization and saying otherwise is the lie.
“Hamas is described as a terrorist organization by Canada,[22] the European Union,[23][24][25][26] Israel,[27] Japan,[28] and the United States,[29] and is banned in Jordan.[30] Australia[31] and the United Kingdom[32] list only the military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, as a terrorist organization. The United States and the European Union have both implemented restrictive measures against Hamas on an international level.[23][33]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
I know wikipedia can be questionable – so just following the citations over there.
Siegman’s article actually made my case for me – thank you very much.
And I’d appreciate it if you would confine any further discussion on this matter to email. Thanks.