Deconstructing Israeli Propaganda

There’s no clear place to start with this piece, so I’ll start here:

Israel: “Hamas intentionally places its rockets and other weapons amidst the civilian population.” This of course causes people to blame Hamas for the deaths of innocent Palestinians, because Hamas is locating its weaponry inappropriately

Let’s follow the logical implication of that criticism: Hamas should cluster its weaponry in military bases away from the population center. Gaza, however, is one of the most densely populated strips of land on the planet. There are few places in Gaza not near population. But there are some. So what happens if Hamas does what we’re being told it should? Essentially, the weaponry would be useless for its intended purpose, whether that purpose is offensive or defensive. At the outset of any confrontation, Israel would wipe out a handful of military targets in a matter of minutes.

So, the real question we should be asking is not whether Hamas locates its weapons appropriately, but whether Hamas should hold weapons at all. If Hamas should not be armed, then anywhere it holds its weapons would be wrong, and its holding of weapons in population centers would be besides point. But if it should be armed, it really has no choice but to place its armaments in populated areas, if those armaments are to have any significance.

Should Hamas be armed?

Maybe not, if Gaza were a part of Israel, such that Gaza could not be considered a separate state. But Israel does not treat Gaza and its citizens as part of Israel. Israel even has created a militarized border between Israel proper and Gaza.

The only justification for the land blockade by Israel of Gaza is to consider Gaza a state separate from Israel. Otherwise, Israel would be guilty of imprisoning 1.8 million people who have committed no crimes.

But if Gaza is a separate state, Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is quite clearly an act of war.

Which means Gaza, and Hamas, have the moral right to be armed.

What about Israel’s claim that it’s just defending itself, validated by all 100 U.S. Senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders? As Israel would have it, the leadership of Hamas woke up on the morning of July 7th and decided “let’s start lobbing rockets at Israel for the fun of it.” If you believe that absurdity, then, yes, Israel is acting in self-defense, although even that wouldn’t justify Israeli snipers murdering 5 year olds, as reported by Middle East Eye correspondent Noor Harazeen.

Of course, the current battles did not start on July 7th. The only case you can make for Israel acting in self-defense is to say that Israel gets to decide when to start the clock. Why Israel would have the right to make that call I have no idea, but it’s really the only way it’s acting in self-defense.

When would you logically start the clock, such that the first provocative act by either side thereafter would be the act that started the massacre war?

Consider, in that regard, James Marc Leas’ Truthout op-ed, In Gaza-Israel Coverage, The New York Times Purveys Pro-War Propaganda on Page One :

First, about the ceasefire that was in place: Operation Pillar of Defense was an eight-day aerial assault on Gaza in November 2012 that ended with a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt. Graphs presented on the ITIC website show that the ceasefire was effective. In the weeks and months following that agreement, the ITIC consistently reported the absence of Hamas rocket fire. In addition, a May 2013 article in The Jerusalem Post, “IDF source: Hamas working to stop Gaza rockets,” reported that Hamas was policing other groups to prevent rocket fire.

The July 8 ITIC report also divulged why Hamas launched its first rocket at Israel in more than 19 months on July 7: On that night Israeli forces had bombed and killed six Hamas members in Gaza. The ITIC report includes a picture of the six Hamas members. Thus, a report from an authoritative Israeli source described the provocation for the resumption of rocket fire: Hamas rocket fire began only after Israeli forces had engaged in nearly a month of military operations in violation of the ceasefire agreement and had killed six Hamas members in Gaza.

The Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR) also issues weekly reports, these reports focusing on Israeli human rights violations in the occupied territories, including the West Bank and Gaza. In its July 10 weekly report, PCHR gave further details of the events that immediately preceded the July 7 Hamas rocket launchings. PCHR reports:

Between 01:00 and 16:00, the bodies of 5 members of the ‘Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas) were recovered from a tunnel dug near Gaza International Airport in the southeast of the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. They were identified as: Ibrahim Dawod al-Bal’awi, 24; ‘Abdul Rahman Kamal al-Zamli, 22; Jum’a ‘Atiya Shallouf, 26; and Khaled ‘Abdul Hadi Abu Mur, 21, and his twin brother, Mustafa. Another three members were recovered alive, but one was in a serious condition. It should be noted that the tunnel was repeatedly bombarded by Israeli warplanes and tanks. According to medical sources, the deceased inhaled toxic gases. The ‘Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades declared in an online statement that 5 of its members were killed as a result of airstrikes that targeted places of resistance activities.

The facts show that Israeli forces had to work quite hard to get Hamas to end its ceasefire. The killing of the six Hamas members was not an isolated event. Israeli forces and settlers had gone wild on the West Bank starting on June 12 after the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers. Israeli forces had also attacked 60 targets in Gaza during those three weeks of June. Then, on the night of July 7, 2014, the Israeli Air Force had attacked approximately 50 more “terrorist targets” in the Gaza Strip, as described in the ITIC report.

Faced with these realities, Israel and its supporters then point to the kidnapping and murder of the three Jewish teens in early June. But that doesn’t work as a clock starter either, for two reasons. First, one day before the Jewish teens were abducted, one Palestinian teen was killed and two wounded by Israelis. Second, Hamas appears to have had nothing to do with the abduction of the three Jewish teens, as it has maintained all along.

Here’s Katie Zavadski reporting for New York Magazine in It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill the 3 Israeli Teens After All:

But now, officials admit the kidnappings were not Hamas’s handiwork after all.

Non-plagiarizing BuzzFeed writer Sheera Frenkel was among the first to suggest that it was unlikely that Hamas was behind the deaths of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach. Citing Palestinian sources and experts the field, Frenkel reported that kidnapping three Israeli teens would be a foolish move for Hamas. International experts told her it was likely the work of a local group, acting without concern for the repercussions:

[Gershon Baskin] pointed out that Hamas has earlier this month signed an agreement to form a unity government with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, bridging, for the first time in seven years, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza.

“They will lose their reconciliation agreement with Abbas if they do take responsibility for [the kidnappings],” Baskin added.

Today, she was proven right:

After Israel’s top leadership exhaustively blamed Hamas for kidnap of 3 teens, they’ve now admitted killers were acting as “lone cell.”

— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) July 25, 2014
Order of events: 3 teens kidnapped->100s of Palestns in WB arrested->revenge attacks on Palestinians->violence along Gaza/Israel border->war

— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) July 25, 2014
To recap: 3 teens kidnapped->100s of Palestinians in WB arrested->revenge attacks on Palestinians->violence along Gaza/Israel border->war

— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) July 25, 2014
Repeated inconsistencies in Israeli descriptions of the situation have sparked debate over whether Israel wanted to provoke Hamas into a confrontation. Israeli intelligence is also said to have known that the boys were dead shortly after they disappeared, but to have maintained public optimism about their safe return to beef up support from the Jewish diaspora. Writing for Al Jazeera, Musa al-Gharbi argued that Israel was deliberately provoking Hamas:

All the illegal and immoral actions related to Operation Brother’s Keeper were justified under the premise of finding and saving the missing teens whom the Israeli government knew to be dead — cynically exploiting the tragedy to whip up public outcry in order to provoke and then confront Hamas. This pattern of deception continues under the ongoing military offensive in Gaza. For example, last week in collaboration with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Abbas, in its efforts to alienate Hamas, Israel announced a bad-faith cease-fire proposal, which Hamas was not consulted on and never agreed to but whose violation supposedly justified Israel’s expansion and intensification of the military campaign into Gaza.

In a recent post, I asked sarcastically if Israel was history’s first morally justified oppressor. The propaganda is intended to cause us not to ask this question, but the question remains. And the answer of course flows from the question itself.

When you cut through the Israeli propaganda the reality is thus: Israel, the occupying force, picked this fight, going to great lengths to provoke action by Hamas, and is now murdering Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, by the hundreds. And it’s doing so with American arms paid for by American tax dollars.