NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
The latest figures of casualties that I am aware of till now are over 1,300 Gazans killed and 53 IOF soldiers plus 3 civilians in Israel. Bloody enough without continuing another minute, much less day or days! And yet the fighting continues.
Below are 5 items.
In item 1 the writer fantasizes about how he would react and what he should do should he receive one of Israel’s famous phone calls telling him that he has so many minutes to leave before his home is bombarded.
Item 2 is about Israel’s bombardment of another UNRWA school, in which 19 lost their lives,
Immediately following is an article on the laws of engagement, from which we learn that schools are not a legitimate target, even if someone presumably shoots from the school.
Item 4 discusses the dilemma that Gaza poses for American Jews. I am sure that many Jews all over the world will feel at the least embarrassed, at the most disgusted with Israel’s conduct against Palestinians.
Item 5 reveals 9 things that the American media is not telling its readers and hearers.
That’s it for this round. Let’s hope the massacre ends soon, before another person is killed on either side!
Dorothy
1 Al Jazeera Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Hello? Is this Israel calling?
If Israel calls to tell me they will bomb my house, what should I take with me as I run for my life?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/hello-this-israel-calling-2014729713266939.html
Ziad Bakri
Ziad Bakri is a Palestinian living in the Gaza Strip. He is a translator, blogger and teacher. He blogs at: ziadbgaza.blogspot.com/
Over 200,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza since the start of the Israeli assault [Reuters]
They say that a person’s life passes in front of his eyes when he is about to die. It was different for me. My whole life passed in front of my eyes while I was standing in front of a ringing phone. Is it the call? Is it our turn?
Since the start of the Israeli offensive, anyone in Gaza at any time can receive a call from the Israelis telling them that they must leave their house because it will be bombed in less than five minutes. That is, if they are lucky! Those who are not lucky do not receive a warning and get killed.
Seconds turned into years. I gathered every bit of strength I had in my body and picked up the phone. It was my aunt from outside Gaza checking on us after she heard that a location near our home was bombed. It is funny the amount of knowledge our beloved ones outside Gaza have. They’ve put their lives on hold to follow the war on TV and the internet. They know the names of streets, of buildings, of martyrs.
“Was it that close?” she asked me.
“No,” I answered.
“But you sound as if you have seen a ghost?”
“It is ok, aunt. It is just that a bad thought passed through my mind before I picked up the phone.”
I sat by myself and started thinking seriously: What if it really happens? How would I react? What should I do? Unconsciously, I started breathing heavily, with anxiety.
The first person who came to my mind was my mom. How could she, an old, overweight woman, suffering from heart and blood pressure problems, run down from the fourth floor and reach the street in time?
My thoughts wandered further. What should I take with me? Of course my certificates, passport and ID. While I was getting my certificates out of the drawer, I saw my university bachelor’s degree certificate. I still remember how proud I was when I got home that day holding my certificate. I studied for years in order to get it.
I looked around and saw a portrait of me hanging on the wall. It was given to me by my students who gave me a wonderful surprise party for my birthday. I remember promising them that this portrait will hang in my room and it will never go down.
Should I take those letters and pictures or should I leave them to be buried under a house that history will forget?
Shujayea: Massacre at Dawn
Hours passed and I was moving from one memory to another. Which item should I take, or in other words, which memory in this house is more important than the other? Which part of ziad, of my soul, should I take?
A sentence that I heard the day before hit me. I was watching footage from the massacre in Al Shujayea. Some 60,000 people left their houses and ran for their lives. While people were running in the street, a man said: “It is the same as the Nakba in 1948.”
It has been the fate of Palestinians in the past 66 years to evacuate their homes constantly, leaving behind their property, their land, their history. Will Shujayea people ever be able to go back to their homes? Or will they be left with only memories of what they called home?
I talked once to a woman who still had the key to the house she left during the Nakba. I was thinking to myself, “Is she serious? Does she think that even if she were to return, she would be able to open the front door with the same key?” I did not know back then that the key was all she had to remember her house by; it was the soul of a home lost forever.
Now, it is my turn to decide which item would be my “key” to keep for years as a memento of what I called home.
They say that when you are running from Israeli bombs, you are in panic and you only think of your own safety. What if this happens to me, what if while running out, I see one of our neighbours’ children, who play all the time in the hall between our apartments, lying on the ground and in need of help? Will I be so afraid that I will leave these angels behind?
I was overwhelmed by all these thoughts. I got dizzy. It could have been the Ramadan fast. Muslims wait for Ramadan from one year to the next to do their best to be closer to God, to visit each other and to help the needy ones. Our Ramadan passed under shelling and bombing, and in constant prayer that we and our loved ones be safe.
I was so overwhelmed by everything that was going on in my head that I forgot the main reason behind these terrible thoughts, the main reason that made me think that the phone call might be “the one”. It was the sad story I had just heard about my friend.
She got married two years ago to a very nice guy, and as any newlywed couple, they did not have their own house, so they lived with his family. Both of them worked really hard to save up for a house. I remember how excited she was about her new home. She used to tell me about every little detail: the tiles, the furniture, the colours, the walls. I used to tell her that it is just a home, not a castle, but her answer would always be “But it is not any home, it is my home. In this home I will write the story of my life with my husband and children.”
After two years, the house was ready for them to move in. She was the happiest person in the whole world; her voice changed, her face did too. She was ready to start her life in the new home. This happened two weeks before the war.
INTERACTIVE: Gaza Under Attack
When the Israelis started bombing us, they left their home for a safer place. During the last ceasefire she went back only to find out that her house was levelled to the ground.
“The only thing that survived was my son’s toy,” she said in a broken voice.
What hurts me the most is that Gaza’s story is always told in terms of numbers: “50 people died, 100 buildings were destroyed”. These people had names, stories, dreams, families, ambitions, futures and most importantly – history. These buildings were people’s homes, they were places of safety and security, of hard work and relaxation, of memories and family histories.
Will we live to see the day when the sanctity of Palestinian homes and lives is respected?
ZiadBakri is a Palestinian living in the Gaza Strip. He is a translator, blogger and teacher. He blogs at: ziadbgaza.blogspot.com/
Follow him on Twitter: @ZiadBGaza
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2 The Guardian Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Gaza: at least 19 killed and 90 injured as another UN school is hit
UN official condemns ‘in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces’
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
Palestinians mourn loved ones killed in Israeli attack on UN school shelter in Gaza
At least 19 Palestinians were killed and about 90 injured early on Wednesday when a UN school sheltering displaced people was hit by shells during a second night of relentless bombardment that followed an Israeli warning of a protracted military campaign.
Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, condemned “in in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces”.
He said in a statement: “Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN-designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.
“We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge. We believe there were at least three impacts.
“It is too early to give a confirmed official death toll. But we know that there were multiple civilian deaths and injuries including of women and children and the UNRWA guard who was trying to protect the site. These are people who were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli army.”
It was the sixth time that UNRWA schools had been struck, he added. “Our staff, the very people leading the humanitarian response are being killed. Our shelters are overflowing. Tens of thousands may soon be stranded in the streets of Gaza, without food, water and shelter if attacks on these areas continue.”
At the school, Assad Sabah said he and his five children were huddling under desks in one of the classrooms because of the constant sound of tank fire throughout the night.
“We were scared to death,” he told the Associated Press. “After 4.30am, tanks started firing more. Three explosions shook the school. One classroom collapsed over the head of the people who were inside.”
A spokeswoman from the Israel Defence Forces said that its initial inquiries showed that “Hamas militants fired mortar shells from the vicinity of the school, and [Israeli] soldiers responded by firing towards the origins of the fire”. An investigation was continuing, she added.
A UN source said there was no evidence of militant activity inside the school.
The shelling of the school came as diplomatic attention was focussed on Cairo, where a delegation including the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the main militant factions in Gaza, was due to take part in ceasefire talks. A key issue was whether the Gaza-based factions and their armed wings accepted the authority of the delegation.
The Israeli security cabinet was also due to meet on Wednesday afternoon and would consider any progress made in Cairo. Israel’s political and military leaders face crucial decisions on whether to press deeper into Gaza once the cross-border tunnels have been located and destroyed, or whether to accept a “quiet for quiet” deal. “The next 24-72 hours will be critical,” said a diplomatic source.
The last two nights have seen the most fierce bombardment in this Gaza offensive, with inense air strikes, tank shelling and bombardment from Israeli gunboats. In 23 days more than 1,240 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed. On the Israeli side 53 soldiers and three civilians have been killed.
The shelling of the UN school followed an incident last week when another UN school in Beit Hanoun was hit as the playground was filled with families awaiting evacuation amid heavy fighting. Israel denied it was responsible for the deaths, saying a single “errant” shell fired by its forces hit the school playground, which was empty at the time.
Aftermath of the strike on a UN school in Gaza City.
Aftermath of the strike on a UN school in Gaza City. Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images
But according to testimonies gathered by UN staff, an initial shell was followed by “several others in the close vicinity of the school within a matter of minutes”, spokesman Chris Gunness said. Reporters who visited the scene minutes afterwards said damage and debris was consistent with mortar rounds.
UNRWA, said on Tuesday it had found a cache of rockets at one of its schools in Gaza and deplored those who had put them there for placing civilians in harm’s way.
“This is yet another flagrant violation of the neutrality of our premises. We call on all the warring parties to respect the inviolability of UN property,” Gunness said. Two similar discoveries were made last week.
Israel says militants from Hamas and other organisations launch rockets from the vicinity of UNRWA properties.
More than 200,000 people in Gaza have taken shelter in the UN’s schools and properties after Israel warned them to leave whole neighbourhoods that it was planning to bomb. UNRWA said it was at “breaking point”.
The Israeli military said it had targeted more than 4,000 sites in Gaza since the start of the conflict on 8 July. It had detonated three tunnels in Gaza in the past 24 hours, it added. Among the overnight targets were five mosques, which the IDF said housed tunnel shafts, weapons stores and lookout posts, and two “facilities” utilised by senior Hamas militants.
International pressure for an end to the bloodshed has continued to mount. On Tuesday the British prime minister, David Cameron, added his weight to calls for an unconditional, immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
“What we’re seeing is absolutely heartbreaking in terms of the loss of life … everyone wants to see this stopped,” he said. Blaming Hamas for triggering the conflict, he added: “Hamas must stop attacking Israel with rocket attacks. That is how this started. It’s completely unjustified and they need to stop as part of the ceasefire.”
Four Latin American countries – Chile, Peru, Brazil and El Salvador – recalled their ambassadors to Israel. “Chile observes with great concern and discouragement that the military operations – which at this point appear to be a collective punishment to the Palestinian civil population in Gaza – don’t respect fundamental norms of international humanitarian law,” its foreign ministry said.
But support for the military operation among the Israeli public remained solid. A poll published by Tel Aviv university on Tuesday found 95% of Israeli Jews felt the offensive was justified. Only 4% believed too much force had been used.
Hamas released a video showing fighters inside tunnels in Gaza and containing a voice message from Mohammed Deif, the leader of its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. “The occupying entity will not enjoy security unless our people live in freedom and dignity,” Deif said. “There will be no ceasefire before the [Israeli] aggression is stopped and the blockade is lifted. We will not accept interim solutions.”
On Tuesday flames and clouds of black smoke billowed over Gaza’s only power plant after it was destroyed. “The power plant is finished,” said its director, Mohammed al-Sharif, signalling a new crisis for Gaza’s 1.8 million people, who were already enduring power cuts of more than 20 hours a day.
Amnesty International said the crippling of the power station amounted to “collective punishment of Palestinians”. The strike on the plant will worsen already severe problems with Gaza’s water supply, sewage treatment and power supplies to medical facilities.
“We need at least one year to repair the power plant, the turbines, the fuel tanks and the control room,” said Fathi Sheik Khalil of the Gaza energy authority. “Everything was burned.” He said crew members were trapped by the fire for several hours before they were able to be evacuated.
Gaza City officials said damage to the power station could paralyse pumps and urged residents to ration water.
The home of the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, was destroyed on Tuesday and a building used by Hamas-controlled broadcast outlets was damaged. Haniyeh was not at home when a missile struck shortly before dawn; most of Hamas’s senior leaders are presumed to be residing in underground bunkers for the duration of the war.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said he was in discussions with Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to find an end to the fighting in Gaza. The pair had spoken “two, three, four times a day in recent days”, Kerry told reporters in Washington.
They were working “very carefully and thoughtfully” on ways to “prevent this spiralling downwards”, he said.
Kerry reiterated US support for Israel’s right to self-defence, “to live free from rockets and tunnels”. The secretary of state has come under sustained attack in Israel over what was perceived as undue sympathy for Hamas’s position in ceasefire negotiations in the Middle East and Paris last week.
The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said 13 Palestinians in the West Bank had been killed by Israeli security forces since the start of the conflict in Gaza, raising concerns about excessive use of live fire.
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3 Al Jazeera Wednesday, July 30, 2014
What’s not a target for Israel?
Israel’s claims that Hamas uses civilians as human shields do not absolve it of responsibility for civilian deaths.
Brad Parker
Brad Parker is a staff attorney and international advocacy officer with Defence for Children International Palestine, an independent child-rights organisation dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the occupied Palestinian Territory.
What’s not a target for Israel?
The Israeli offensive on Gaza has killed more than 200 Palestinian children [AFP]
Israeli forces have killed more than 200 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip over the past 23 days. In order to obfuscate this harsh reality, Israeli officials claim “self-defence” and contend that civilian deaths are justified because Hamas allegedly uses Palestinians in Gaza as human shields. Israel is an occupying power that is attacking and destroying an occupied Palestinian civilian population. These civilian deaths are not collateral damage. They are war crimes.
On July 20, around 2:20 am, 16-year-old Anas Mahmoud Hussein Muammar from Rafah went out onto the second-floor balcony of his home to join his older brothers for a cup of coffee. Soon after, an Israeli drone-fired missile directly targeted him and his brothers, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International Palestine. His brothers were killed instantly. Anas suffered fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital about 10 minutes later.
A complete disregard of international humanitarian law and the direct targeting of civilian homes, schools, hospitals, and civilians such as Anas have so far characterised Israel’s military offensive on Gaza.
For Palestinians in Gaza, where 43 percent of the population is under 14 years of age, Israeli military offensives are not new. Over the past 14 years, not including the most recent killings, Israeli forces are responsible for the death of over 1,400 children in the occupied Palestinian Territory, including over 1,000 in Gaza alone. Most recently in November 2012, 33 children were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza. Between December 2008 and January 2009, Israeli forces killed at least 353 children.
To justify the current onslaught on the Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, Israeli officials repeatedly assert that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Speaking by phone recently to his Canadian counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “Hamas uses innocent civilians as a human shield for terrorist activity.” Israeli military spokesperson, Lt Col Peter Lerner, alleged Palestinian armed groups were “intentionally abusing” hospitals and “other international protected symbols to indiscriminately attack Israel.”
To be clear, the use of civilians as human shields is prohibited under international law and involves forcing civilians to directly assist in military operations or using them to shield a military object or troops from attack. The rhetoric continually voiced by Israeli officials regarding “human shields” amounts to nothing more than generalisations that fall short of the precise calculation required by international humanitarian law when determining whether something is actually a military object.
Civilians, including children, must never be targeted, and civilian structures and infrastructure are presumed not to be legitimate targets, yet Israel continues to carry out direct attacks on civilian homes, schools, hospitals and mosques.
Shujayea: Massacre at Dawn
In order to qualify as a military objective, the object must be used for a military purpose and its total or partial destruction would result in a definite military advantage. Only military objectives can be lawful or legitimate objects of an attack. This standard is inflexible and does not change based on another party’s conduct.
In Khan Younis on July 20, 19 children from the Abu Jami’ family were killed when an Israeli fighter jet targeted and destroyed their home where they were sheltering. Israeli officials stated that the intended target was a Hamas member visiting the house at the time of the strike.
The mere alleged presence of a member of a Palestinian armed group is an insufficient justification for an attack on a family home. Based on a preliminary investigation, the Abu Jami’ home was not being used for any military purpose at the time of the attack and was unlawfully targeted by Israeli forces.
A civilian home, school, or hospital that is in some way deemed by Israeli forces to be “affiliated” with Hamas or another Palestinian armed group does not in itself provide legal justification under international humanitarian law to direct an attack at that object. The standard demands much more, and requires an exacting calculation. Precision is necessary because imprecision leads to war crimes.
Palestinian civilians must not be blamed for their own deaths. Even if Hamas or another Palestinian armed group may have violated the laws of war and used civilians as human shields, this does not relieve Israel from its obligations under international law nor does it justify an attack on civilians or civilian structures.
A generation of Palestinian children in Gaza have been shot, shelled and bombed since the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000. Their homes and schools have been attacked and destroyed, sometimes repeatedly, and they have come of age witnessing death and suffocated by a life under siege. They have lost parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, and entire families.
In addition to an immediate ceasefire, the international community, including the US, must demand an end to Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and challenge systemic impunity by investigating allegations of war crimes and holding perpetrators accountable.
Brad Parker is a staff attorney and international advocacy officer with Defence for Children International Palestine, an independent child-rights organisation dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the occupied Palestinian Territory. DCI-Palestine provides free legal assistance to children, collects evidence and conducts advocacy targeting various duty bearers.
Follow DCI-Palestine on Twitter and Facebook. Follow @baparkr
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4 Haaretz Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Gaza is trigger for American Jews’ tension and dissonance on Israel
Despite the calls for solidarity, the Gaza conflict is alienating increasing numbers of American Jews from Israel and from the organized Jewish community, which equates being Jewish with a monolithic political position on Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.607841
By Emily L. Hauser
It’s hard to sketch an absence or reproduce a silence. It’s easier to report whispers, but those who whisper often seek anonymity. And anecdotes, of course, are not data.
Yet anecdotally, in whispers and off-the-record comments, in sudden Facebook defriendings or empty chairs at services, Israel’s most recent wave of hostilities appears to be leading to increasing alienation for a number of American Jews, despite the call for solidarity. For many of these members of our community, the sensation comes as a deep, identity-shaking shock
The sense has been building for some time – as Ori Nir reported in May, “Lately, American friends are asking me whether Israeli leaders are thinking straight, whether they realize how unreasonable their statements sound here in Washington… These are people who support Israel… who follow the news from Israel with genuine concern, and who cannot comprehend what seems to them like self-destructive behavior.”
But whereas outright war usually muffles such doubts, for many the current violence has created a powerful cognitive dissonance.
From Birthright returnees who now take Israel’s word with a grain of salt, to stalwart community leaders who admit to occasionally removing regularly-worn identifiers of their Jewish identity – whether to avoid conversation, or out of a stunned sense of disgrace – many are experiencing an anxiety that is new, and distancing.
“I hear a lot of pain over the current tension between the terrible, terrible things that are happening to people in Gaza,” says Rabbi Amy Schwartzman of Virginia’s Temple Rodef Shalom, “and the feeling that Israel needs to defend itself.”
“Judaism has a moral standard…. When that morality is compromised, we need to talk about it publicly.”
The frequent unwillingness to do just that – not to mention the vitriol with which such questions are often greeted – has meant that for many the only option is silence, or anonymity.
A recent college graduate who asked not to be identified says: “There definitely is this huge discomfort and shame…. The past month has been really difficult. There’s really huge tension where I’ve felt like, ‘where the hell do I go?’”
Unlike some who say they aren’t going to synagogue right now “because I don’t want to deal with what I’ll hear” (as one person put it), this young woman attended services on a recent Friday night “because I was feeling really emotionally torn…. But also out of curiosity, I didn’t know what [my rabbi] would say.”
“Then the rabbi was saying all these things about peace, but never said the words ‘Palestinians’ or ‘Gaza’.” Ultimately the congregation was urged to attend a pro-Israel rally.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, reports that soon after the upsurge in hostilities, a donor with strong Israel ties told her that his children “don’t want anything to do with Israel, and they don’t necessarily want anything to do with Judaism”; at about the same time, a woman who grew up in “a very strong Jewish community” told Jacobs that “her social values aren’t lining up with what she’s seeing coming out of Israel.”
“I think the Jewish community has just been so tone-deaf about this,” she goes on. “It’s completely tone deaf to what’s in people’s minds.”
Another anonymous speaker, who’s worked in the organized Jewish community for years, says that “with the younger generation… their set of values is one that’s based in universal justice, tolerance of the other, particularly of the disenfranchised.”
He adds: “Here they look at a situation where there is a dissonance… and the dissonance is deepening all the time.”
Even those who haven’t witnessed a pulling away from Israel or the community report what Rabbi Peter Knobel, rabbi emeritus of Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Illinois called “frustration and a tremendous amount of pain… I think what people are looking for is something to give them hope and they’re beginning to despair that this is a permanent problem.”
For some the solution has been to find alternative expressions of identity. Recently a small group (IfNotNow) gathered outside the offices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and read aloud an open letter:
We are here today to demand that the Conference of Presidents join our call to stop the war on Gaza, end the occupation, and forge a path forward for freedom and dignity for all people in Israel and Palestine… For all of us, our tradition obligates us to a particular commitment, born of shared texts and a shared history, to the notion that all people are created equal.
Jack Levinson, a recent Birthright returnee, feels the tension needn’t exist in the first place: “I have never conflated Judaism with Zionism…. I am very glad that I went to Israel, but what I saw has made me watch the ongoing conflict… with a deeper sense of sadness, not a deeper sense of fraternity.”
Anecdotes aren’t data, and it’s clear that most US Jews – even those for whom this is a painful time – aren’t going anywhere. Israel and the Jewish community can rest assured that, at least for now, most American Jews will back the Israeli government, come what may.
But just as anecdotes aren’t data, neither does “most” mean “all.” I worry about every Jew we lose to anger, pain, and confusion, and I genuinely believe that if we want to maintain a vital religious community, we need to learn to decouple our faith from what amounts to a monolithic political position.
Ahavat Yisrael, the love of Israel, can mean many things. Forcing a single definition on all Jews appears to be an good way to make many of them suffer deeply in our midst – or simply leave our midst all together.
Emily L. Hauser is an American-Israeli writer currently living in Chicago. She has studied and reported on the contemporary Middle East since the early 1990s for a variety of outlets, including The Chicago Tribune and The Daily Beast. Follow her on Twitter.
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5 Mondoweiss Monday, July 28, 2014
9 things the American media isn’t telling you about Israel/Palestine
Alastair Sloan on July 28, 2014 42
Throughout Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, which began on July 8, it has become increasingly clear that the U.S. media is biased against Palestinians, using selective coverage, skewed opinion, and false balance to offer implicit support to Israel’s stance. The Daily Show host Jon Stewart recently skewered the media for placing more weight on the lives of Israelis over Palestinians.
It isn’t a new problem: Fair, a watchdog group that monitors media bias, found in 2001 that NPR covered 89% of Israeli child deaths, and only 20% of Palestinian child deaths. Two years later, academic Matt Viser published a survey in the International Journal of Press and Politics, finding that The New York Times personalized Israeli deaths, largely ignored Palestinian deaths, and relied heavily on Israeli sources. During the eight-day attack on Gaza in November 2012, CNN interviewed more than twice as many Israeli officials as Palestinians.
Fast forward to today’s crisis; the bias remains.
Here’s Bloomberg News on recent events: “Israel Renews Gaza Bombing After Hamas Rejects Truce Plan.” And then there’s the Washington Post: “While Israel Held Its Fire, Hamas did not.” A story reporting on an Israeli missile that killed eight young men watching a World Cup match on July 10 initially had the headline, “Missile at Beachside Gaza Cafe Finds Patrons Poised for World Cup,” thanks to tactless editing from The New York Times.
All these headlines were eventually changed, but in some ways, are emblematic of how Palestinian suffering is automatically trivialized in the U.S. media.
“On and on, around the clock,” as Danny Schecer puts it in his recommended essay about todays crisis: “How Israeli PR Sells Gaza Slaughter.”
So what is the U.S. media hiding from American viewers? Here are nine facts about Israel that you won’t be hearing about on U.S. news .
1. Israel can prevent civilian deaths.
During the course of the past twelve days, Israeli air strikes have killed over 1000 Palestinians — mostly civilians.
Israel says the deaths are a result of Hamas using ordinary Palestinians as human shields, and the gruesome toll has been met with a shrug.
It’s an issue that has come up during past operations in Gaza.
Back in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, the president of the United Nations General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, condemned Israel for violating international law in Gaza by targeting civilians.
Brockmann called the offensive “a war against a helpless defenceless and imprisoned people.”
“The violations of international law inherent in the Gaza assault have been well documented,” he added, listing collective punishment, disproportionate military force [and] attacks on civilian targets, including homes, mosques, universities, schools.”
Israel doesn’t have to fire at the civilian targets, it’s a choice that they make. Hamas rockets are broadly ineffective anyway — given Israel’s comprehensive network of bomb shelters. Just three civilians in Israel have been killed so far.
Noting the Israeli military’s “long record of unlawful airstrikes with high civilian casualties”, Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson commented that Israel “would never accept an argument that any Israeli home of an Israel Defense Force member would be a valid military target.”
IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner also couldn’t provide any evidence of houses being used to command in control rocket attacks, when directly queried by reporters.
2. The three Israeli teens were killed immediately after being kidnapped.
Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal recently revealed that the Israeli government knew that the three missing Israeli teens, who were abducted in June from Hebron in the West Bank, were murdered almost as soon as they were kidnapped. However, this was not revealed to the public, and instead the search for the missing teenagers unleashed to a brutal crackdown on the West Bank.
Blumenthal says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used outrage around the kidnapping to whip up enough support to justify the aggressive military campaign that has ensued.
3. Gaza is basically an open-air prison.
The economic blockade of Gaza is a form of collective punishment which residents say is like living in a prison. Though the military checkpoints, strong IDF presence and high walls lend the Strip a prison aesthetic, the cruelest element of the “prison” is the lack of economic freedom imposed by Israel’s blockade.
Israel continues to maintain complete control of its border crossings with the Gaza Strip, and the air and sea space of the Gaza Strip – limiting the transfer of goods and people. Though they claim to have withdrawn their troops and that this leaves Gaza “not occupied,” they still maintain control over the tax system.
As a result of these restrictions, 68% of residents live on less than a dollar per day. In contrast, your average Israeli live on eighty five times that.
Inside their prison, Palestinians can’t get access to adequate health care, to education or to employment because of the internal controls imposed by Israel. They need permits from the Israeli authorities to gain access to land and crops, to medical facilities, to schools and universities, and even to visit family and friends.
4. The Iron Dome isn’t protecting Israel from rockets.
It’s a defense system hailed as “a game changer”, and the Senate just approved $351 million to support the military programme, designed to intercept rockets fired by Hamas into Israel.
No matter how much U.S. Senator Dick Durbin gushes about the defense system, it looks like the country’s missile defense system just isn’t very good.
Theodore Postol, a physicist and missile-defense expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimates the interception rate at just 5%. Working with Dr. Mordechai Shefer, formerly of the defence company Rafael, and another researcher, his team analyzed dozens of videos filmed during the “interceptions.”
Their verdict? most of the explosions which appear successful are actually the self-destruction of the Iron Dome’s own missiles.
Might want to pass along a note to U.S. taxpayers.
5. Israeli forces has killed over 1,500 Palestinian children since 2000.
It is a number that continues to climb, as Operation Protective Edge rages on.
Since 2000, approximately 1,500 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli security forces. That’s one child every three days for thirteen years. Within that same time period, Palestinians have killed 132 Israeli children.
6. Hamas accepts two states based on the 1967 borders.
No, really. The infamous 1982 Charter was effectively updated in 2006 following Hamas victory in legislative elections and acknowledged that Hamas would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 border.
In 2006 Ismail Haniyeh wrote a letter to President Bush saying, “We are so concerned about stability and security in the area that we don’t mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and offering a truce for many years.”
Hamas is showing more than a little humility: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu himself said he would never accept a Palestinian state.
7. Hamas has been provoked by Israel
If we are to believe right-wing rhetoric and Fox News, Hamas is provoking Israel’s mighty military campaign in Gaza.
House Speaker John Boehner condemned Hamas recently for “aggressive, unprovoked acts of violence against Israel.”
Congressman Eric Cantor concurs: “Hamas’ outrageous and unprovoked war against Israel must end.”
Although Hamas tactics are abhorrent, their actions are predictable and have been provoked.
Israel does not allow Gaza to have a port or airport, nor is it allowed to export most of what it produces. Palestinians cannot work about a third of their own land, reserved by Israel as a security buffer.
A cruel economic blockade ensures that ten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under five have had their growth stunted by malnutrition. In 2010, Save The Children found that two thirds of Palestinian infants and one third of mothers were affected by anemia.
As British Prime Minister David Cameron said in 2010, “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp. He added “People in Gaza are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open-air prison.”
It’s not a moral endorsement of prison riots, but prison guards will tell you: riots happen.
8. Unity between Hamas and Fatah is a good thing.
Back in June, a joint government between feuding Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah was sworn in.
While the U.S. cited concerns over the involvement of militant group Hamas, it said that it would be prepared to work with the new government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not recognize the new government, because of the inclusion of Hamas. The leader called it a “step backwards.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham greeted the news with disgust:
“This is a provocative act by the Palestinian Authority which runs counter to serious peace negotiations with Israel. It clearly demonstrates the Palestinians have little fear or respect for the Obama Administration.”
Perhaps Bibi should have a chat with his friend Tony Blair. As Prime Minister, he architected the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.
“The Troubles” — as the violent thirty-year conflict in Northern Ireland is known — claimed the lives of 650 civilians, mainly at the hands of the terrorists in the The Irish Republican Army. But they eventually entered into politics, and that is a good thing. When terrorist groups choose to talk instead, it is a sign of moving forward. Netanyahu just hasn’t been prepared to admit it yet.
9. Israel isn’t a strategic asset.
Just under half of Americans regard Israel as an ally.
Republican Senator Trent Franks is one of her most eloquent supporters, pledging what he “our arsenal of freedom” to defend “our most precious ally on earth.” Knitting the friendship bracelet, he’s also said “Israel is here to stay forever.”
In Spring 1948, standing in the Oval Office, U.S, Secretary of State George Marshall gave his counsel to President Truman, regarding whether to recognize the recently created state of Israel. His view was that backing the Jewish state would harm relations with the wider Muslim world, thereby jeopardizing American access to oil in the region. He also warned of a wider destablising effect.
Truman rejected the advice, but Marshall showed remarkable prescience. According to Pew Research Center in 2013, ninety percent of Jewish Israelis have a favorable opinion of the U.S., but only forty two percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens feel the same.
With Muslims elsewhere in the Middle East, America’s reputation is equally putrid.
Eventually, a despicable band of terrorists, led by Osama Bin Laden, took offence to America’s support for Israel (amongst other grievances). These terrorists have committed themselves (often literally) to killing Americans.
After successful attacks on U.S. Embassies, warships and civilian targets, nearly three thousand Americans died on one day, when Al Qaeda took down the World Trade Center. So is Israel a strategic asset to the American people, or more a liability?
Alastair Sloan is a British journalist and columnist focusing on injustice, oppression and human rights. He contributes regularly to The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye and more. Read more at www.unequalmeasures.com or follow on Twitter @AlastairSloan.