Has the West made the next Gaza war inevitable?

Hamas’s greatest strategic asset is that large segments of the press, political class, NGO community as well as the UN will effectively side with them. That makes the next war all the more likely, and encourages more Hamas-inspired carnage

Trevor Norwitz 17 August 2014  

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5168/has_the_west_made_the_next_gaza_war_inevitable

Ban Ki Moon is right to say that, “children killed in their sleep . . “. is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame.” No-one can be unmoved by the pictures out of Gaza: the loss of life, the carnage, the anguish and fear in the faces of women and children.

It is heart breaking. But he is wrong to blame Israel, especially in such injudicious terms. He, and many others in positions of power and influence, do a terrible disservice to humanity, to the cause of international peace and security, and to the Palestinian people (not to mention the Israeli people), by not stating unequivocally what they know to be the truth: that overwhelming responsibility for the mayhem in Gaza rests with Hamas (a part of the Palestinian national unity government).

Yes, alongside their broadsides at Israel, these leaders also sometimes note that Hamas commits war crimes and angrily “denounce” that behavior. But angrily denouncing Hamas is as useless as angrily denouncing cancer, if you are not also willing to apply the treatment that is necessary, and to address the environmental factors that feed it and encourage its growth.

Hamas’ role in Gaza’s suffering is manifest. They started this war, and prolonged it by refusing to agree to and then cynically violating cease-fires. This is a war Hamas wanted, planned and prepared for meticulously for years, diverting much of the productive capacity of Gaza towards building their sophisticated network of tunnels to kidnap and kill Israelis, and stockpiling tens of thousands of rockets to terrorize Israeli population centers.

All but the willfully blind know they use human shields, hide rockets in, and launch them near, schools, mosques, UN facilities and other civilian buildings, turn hospitals into command centers, and booby-trap homes and refugee centers.

Their lawlessness is simply a given. World leaders like Ban Ki Moon, Laurent Fabius and John Kerry rebuke them but expect nothing of them, placing all responsibility for avoiding civilian casualties – the very casualties Hamas aims to maximize – on Israel, as it battles to defend its citizens from aerial and subterranean terror attacks.

There is no point in just denouncing Hamas.  It is a terrorist organization which exists for an evil purpose – to eliminate a nation and exterminate a people – and openly embraces cruel and illegal tactics. Its members are not swayed by criticism. They do not respect life, human rights or the concept of truth. Just as one cannot reason or negotiate with cancer, one has to treat a terrorist threat directly and aggressively and eliminate or reduce the conditions that stimulate its growth.

So what are the conditions that feed and encourage Hamas and its ilk?  Having an ally like Iran to provide a steady flow of rockets and other weapons is necessary but not sufficient.

Their greatest strategic asset is the knowledge that, however outrageous their behavior, large segments of the press and political class (especially in Europe), and the “human rights” and international communities led by the United Nations will effectively side with them, directing their wrath primarily at Israel, and protecting them from total defeat, so that they can proclaim victory from the ruin and devastation they authored.

Hamas knows that, despite the consistent evidence of their mendacity, their fabrications will be widely disseminated as facts by news and human rights groups. These lies inflict enormous damage on Israel even when the truth later emerges. Any honest observer appreciates that the Israel Defense Forces exert greater efforts to minimize civilian casualties than any army in history, and actually have a civilian-to-fighter casualty ratio that is relatively low for modern warfare (despite the fact that Hamas designs its chosen battlefield specifically to maximize civilian damage).

But Hamas knows that the press will gleefully play the body-count game, as though its infographics speak to causation or moral culpability. They also know that every conflagration they provoke causes the world’s oldest hatred to bubble up again, more virulently each time. 

When Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch (HRW), arguably the world’s most powerful human rights organization, tweets that, “Tunnels used to attack or capture soldiers isn't [a human rights violation],” Hamas is encouraged to dig more tunnels.

When MP David Ward says that he would fire a rocket if he lived in Gaza, Hamas is urged to fire more rockets.When Business Secretary Vince Cable decides to suspend UK arms export licences to Israel when Hamas violates cease-fires and Israel retaliates, Hamas is incentivized to violate cease-fires.

When Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director declares it, “abhorrent that Israeli forces are . .blatantly violating the laws of war" (based solely on interviews with Gaza residents), when the United Nations Human Rights Commission orders yet another lopsided anti-Israel “fact-finding” mission, and its High Commissioner Navi Pillay offers platitudes of moral equivalence accusing “both sides” of “indiscriminate killing of civilians,” when empty-headed celebrities blabber incoherently about Israeli “massacres” and “genocide,” then Hamas knows that its diabolical tactics are working.

The blood of those Palestinian children (and Israel’s children) is on the hands of those who irresponsibly, even if unwittingly, give Hamas such support, hope and inspiration.

Israel must, and surely will, investigate those tragic incidents where civilians were killed, and take appropriate action to ensure that its rules of engagement are legal, moral, and complied with.

Hamas will do nothing in respect of its myriad flagrant war crimes, except plan to repeat them.  If only the international community held Hamas and its brethren accountable for their heinous crimes, this ongoing nightmare for Gaza could be stopped, but sadly it will not.

This war in Gaza was inevitable, just like the coming one in Lebanon, which will take place when the terrorists of Hezbollah – or their Iranian puppet-masters – find it opportune to unleash their rocket stockpile at Israeli cities again.

(Since Israel is not able to limit the flow of weapons to them – the only reason for the much maligned blockade of Gaza – Hezbollah’s arsenal is presumably far more potent than that of Hamas.)

In both cases that inevitability is the result of the abject failure of the international community – principally the United Nations and its affiliated organs – to live up to their obligations.

Not only did they prevent Israel from completing the jobs they all knew had to be done, not only did they fail to disarm Hezbollah, not only did they refuse to hold Hamas and Hezbollah accountable for the carnage they caused their respective civilian populations last time, but they and the press and “human rights” community have affirmatively encouraged those terrorist organizations by their consistent excoriation of Israel.They are repeating their past mistakes, making the next Gaza nightmare inevitable as well. 

Secretary General Moon was quite right to say “the world stands disgraced.”  But by not accurately pointing to the source of that disgrace, he is only adding to it.

Trevor Norwitz is a lawyer in New York, teaches at Columbia Law School, and is a board member of Advancing Human Rights

Hamas' media policy and treatment of journalists

During the operation, foreign and local correspondents followed Hamas’ policy guidelines, for the most part, and mainly reported on the suffering of the local population and other civilian aspects of the fighting.
Source: ITIC report

Hamas' media policy forged during Operation Protective Edge restricts local and foreign correspondents covering the fighting in their reports on military-combat activity or military-related information (especially regarding rocket fire and the use of civilians as human shields). During the operation, foreign and local correspondents followed Hamas' policy guidelines, for the most part, and mainly reported on the suffering of the local population and other civilian aspects of the fighting.

During the first days of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas established a policy for media reports to be implemented by local and foreign correspondents covering the fighting. Its objectives were to prevent reports that would prove Israel's claims of Hamas use of Gazan civilians as human shields, and to reinforce the propaganda theme that Israel deliberately attacked civilians and committed "war crimes." As a result, during the first days of the fighting the information bureau of the Hamas-controlled ministry of the interior in Gaza issued instructions on how the social networks in the Gaza Strip were to report events (YouTube, July 10, 2014).

Instruction number five read, "Do not publicize [information about] and do not share pictures or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [operatives] in Gaza." Those responsible for news pages on Facebook were told "don't use close-ups of heavily armed masked operatives, otherwise your Facebook page will be closed for incitement to violence."

Hamas issued similar instructions to correspondents in other ways. For example, the Palestinian Journalist Bloc, a media group in the Gaza Strip affiliated with Hamas," instructed the media and correspondents in the Gaza Strip not to photograph or publicize information about rockets fired by military-terrorist operatives belonging to the various organizations so as not to play into the hands of Israeli public diplomacy" (Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, July 8, 2014).

The local and foreign media reports generally followed Hamas policy. They emphasized civilian suffering, the many civilian casualties and the increasing humanitarian distress, while severely criticizing Israel's conduct. On the other hand, reports of the military aspects of the fighting and the sensitive issue of the use of the civilian population as human shields received relatively scant coverage.

A foreign correspondent, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Yedioth Aharonoth's Daniel Batini (August 7, 2014) that :-

"First, Hamas said its spokesmen could only be interviewed in the courtyard of the Al-Shifa'a Hospital in Gaza City. That meant there were long lines of correspondents waiting for interviews, and as a result they watched the bleeding wounded arriving at the hospital for treatment. That [system] created exactly the impression Hamas wanted, of an immediate emergency situation and a human and humanitarian catastrophe. 

Second, Hamas never allowed foreign correspondents access to military sites attacked by Israel, whether they were bases, rocket launching sites or other targets. The organization's dead and wounded operatives were not photographed and therefore, from a media point of view, they do not exist. All that serves Hamas' objective of representing all the casualties as civilians. 

Third, it was obvious that Hamas was firing rockets from civilian areas, but Hamas operatives forbid camera teams from filming them, because they did not want to reveal the tactic or the locations of the launch sites." 
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On August 11th Foreign Press Association in Israel protested Hamas methods.

The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.

The international media are not advocacy organisations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.

In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media.

We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a "vetting" procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA.

How Bad Reporting goes on and on

A summary of the simply dishonest reporting that is on going whenever Israel responds to the constant provocations by Hamas can be seen in this short video.

This just confirms the need for constant vigilance by readers and viewers plus writing to the media sources whenever such instances occur

Infamous AP photo that distorted the truth

You may remember the infamous AP photo that appeared in the New York Times in September 2000 of Tuvia Grossman, the Jewish student from Chicago. Tuvia was beaten within inches of his life before being rescued by an Israeli border policeman yet was portrayed in the media as a Palestinian victim of Israeli brutality.

The subsequent outrage at the media "launched" the organisation Honest Reporting. Now, ten years on, they have managed to exclusively reunite Tuvia with his rescuer, a Border Police commander from a northern Druze village and captured the event on video.

http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/EXCLUSIVE_VIDEO_Dramatic_Reunion_Ten_Years_After_The_Photo_That_Started_It_All.asp

This is a compelling story and hope that it may even generate some interest from the mainstream media. But first we have to reach a critical mass of online interest on blogs, social media and other places.



This is pretty much HR's commemoration of our ten year anniversary fighting against anti-Israel media bias. We would be really grateful if you could promote this video and the accompanying interview with Tuvia Grossman

Yes - The Media is at it Again!!!

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the press and media in general is constantly being used, abused and manipulated. Take, for example, the spoofs or Pallywood productions; Hamas leaders holding a government meeting by candlelight, as daylight cuts across the photo from a slit in the curtain, the so-called “Jenin Massacre”, the Mohammed al Dura case, etc., etc.!!

So many of the newspapers and TV stations are jumping on the bandwagon of deligitmising Israel.

The Guardian UK
This paper even goes so far as to blame Israel for the recent "military escalation" while in fact justifying the Palestinian missiles that led to IDF operations in Gaza in the first place. As a friend stated in a letter to the paper "publishing opinions disguised as facts is blatant dishonesty."

The papers op-ed then goes on to say “that Israel's entry into Gaza cannot possibly be a legitimate act of self-defence" but is carefull to omit the fact that to fire rockets at a sovereign nation deliberately intended to kill and injure its citizens is an act of war, for which the country under attack is entitled to defend itself.

The BBC
This organization which I have heard referred to as the “Beirut Broadcasting Corporation” or alternatively the “Baharani Broadcasting Corporation” refers constantly to “the occupation” by Israel of the Gaza Strip. According to the Oxford dictionary “To Occupy” is defined as “to enter, stay and take control of a place by military conquest or settlement.” Strange – I thought every Israeli was removed from the strip nearly 3 years ago.

British-based human rights organizations
On Thursday the above human rights organizations released a scathing report in claiming that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at its worst point since Israel captured the territory in 1967.

It also said that hospitals are suffering from power cuts of up to 12 hours a day, and the water and sewage systems were close to collapse, with 40-50 million liters (10-12 million gallons) of sewage pouring into the sea daily.

Now just what is the $1 – 1.4 billion donated to the Palestinians yearly used for????

Conclusion

Because I have used 3 examples for the UK, it doesn’t that it is only in the UK that we see such dishonest and biased reporting. It is not for the want of trying to get the media interested in a more balanced approach - a lot attempts are going on to try to the press involved more on the Israeli problems – they are, in the main, just not interested in our side of the story.

The journalists reporting on the Palestinian “stories”, cannot or do not check up on the facts. They have to report what they are told otherwise they don’t get access to the Palestinian “stories” in the future. Those reporters who try to be fair also can have their stories “rewritten” by their local or other editors

Israel is in a conflict not of its own making – indeed it withdrew every Israeli soldier and all 9000 Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip in its 2005 disengagement initiative. But it is forced to act in self-defense to protect itself from deliberate missile attacks on its civilians by the Hamas terrorist organization.

International law recognizes that civilian deaths and injuries may occur in lawful military operations. For an operation to be lawful it must be directed at a "legitimate military objective" and be "proportionate".

Under the Geneva Conventions, if a military objective, such as a missile launcher or weapons stockpile, is placed in the heart of a civilian area, it does not cease being a lawful military objective. The responsibility for civilian causalities arising from the 'shielding' lies with the party that deliberately placed civilians at risk.


Hamas makes no effort to comply with international law, Israel is committed to limiting itself to a lawful response. This means that, while Hamas uses civilians both as a shield and a target, Israel seeks to limit injury to civilians on both sides.

A survey of international practice undertaken by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggests that the steps taken by Israel, and its approach to proportionality, correspond to, or are more stringent than, those taken by most western countries confronting similar threats.