Is Obama Going to Go Bush When He's Prez?Follow

For some reason individuals like Gwyn conveniently ignore the 3000+ rockets fired into Israel that precipitated this low intensity conflict.

Yes, but that is to be expected when Hamas places their weapons near or inside civilian populated centers, schools, hospitals, and UN Relief Headquarters

Stop the rocket attacks, suicide bombings, be a peaceful neighbor and I'll a dollar to a donut that Israel opens up those checkpoints, encourages free trade, and helps Palestine onto its' feet.

NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.


Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

This is the description that would now appear in the history books – if the Germans had won the war.

Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.

IN THIS WAR, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. The disparity between the forces, between the Israeli army - with its airplanes, gunships, drones, warships, artillery and tanks - and the few thousand lightly armed Hamas fighters, is one to a thousand, perhaps one to a million. In the political arena the gap between them is even wider. But in the propaganda war, the gap is almost infinite.

Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They almost entirely ignored the Palestinian side of the story, not to mention the daily demonstrations of the Israeli peace camp. The rationale of the Israeli government (“The state must defend its citizens against the Qassam rockets”) has been accepted as the whole truth. The view from the other side, that the Qassams are a retaliation for the siege that starves the one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, was not mentioned at all.

Only when the horrible scenes from Gaza started to appear on Western TV screens, did world public opinion gradually begin to change.

True, Western and Israeli TV channels showed only a tiny fraction of the dreadful events that appear 24 hours every day on Aljazeera’s Arabic channel, but one picture of a dead baby in the arms of its terrified father is more powerful than a thousand elegantly constructed sentences from the Israeli army spokesman. And that is what is decisive, in the end.

War – every war – is the realm of lies. Whether called propaganda or psychological warfare, everybody accepts that it is right to lie for one’s country. Anyone who speaks the truth runs the risk of being branded a traitor.

The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself. And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification reality, you can no longer make rational decisions.

An example of this process surrounds the most shocking atrocity of this war so far: the shelling of the UN Fakhura school in Jabaliya refugee camp.

Immediately after the incident became known throughout the world, the army “revealed” that Hamas fighters had been firing mortars from near the school entrance. As proof they released an aerial photo which indeed showed the school and the mortar. But within a short time the official army liar had to admit that the photo was more than a year old. In brief: a falsification.

Later the official liar claimed that “our soldiers were shot at from inside the school”. Barely a day passed before the army had to admit to UN personnel that that was a lie, too. Nobody had shot from inside the school, no Hamas fighters were inside the school, which was full of terrified refugees.

But the admission made hardly any difference anymore. By that time, the Israeli public was completely convinced that “they shot from inside the school”, and TV announcers stated this as a simple fact.

So it went with the other atrocities. Every baby metamorphosed, in the act of dying, into a Hamas terrorist. Every bombed mosque instantly became a Hamas base, every apartment building an arms cache, every school a terror command post, every civilian government building a “symbol of Hamas rule”. Thus the Israeli army retained its purity as the “most moral army in the world”.

Just to be clear then, although the photo used wasn't appropriate to the airstrike that took place, it was indeed a photo of Hamas using schools as a firing base for rockets -- albeit it one from 07-08? I mean, there's no argument then that this whole "using peace-oriented civilian infrastructure as launching points for attacks" thing has occurred?

Sure. The global community will embrace us with open arms and trade with us! Yippeee! Just sell your soul here. It's a small price, right?

But he doesn't seem to cast doubt on the validity of the photo, just its application as a defense for the most recent airstrike

Well, what he tries to do, and he's by no means the only one, is to show that there is a pattern whereby every Israeli attack on civilians is justified by saying it was used as a "launching pad/ammunition depot/terrorist barracks". And that, in cases where independent verification was possible, it turned out to be a lie.

What I find undeniable is that the Israeli government does use the same knee-jerk response each time of "Hamas/Hezbullah" was hiding behind civilians whenever it strikes an illegitimate target.

let's work with some assumptions: Israel, as a recognised nation, has the most to lose by initiating hostilities. It is not in their best interest to foment violence or strife since it is a drain on their resources, populace, and will. Therefore, unless there are specific contingencies where preemptive strikes would achieve political goals, military action does not produce results that move Israel's agenda forward.

Second assumption: As long as a militant Palestine exists, it is in Israel's best interests to keep the Palestinian government, populace, and military weak.

Third assumption: It is in the best interests of particular entities in Palestine to encourage strife and violence between the two countries, especially from a political standpoint as a proxy for other nations not directly in conflict with Israel.

Fourth assumption: If peace is attained between Irael and Palestine, various nations around the Middle East would lose political traction at home, thus weakening their own political power base due to attention being paid to internal issues.

So, in light of these basic assumptions, who must initiate the end of hostilities?

However, given that Hamas does use these structures, it's completely reasonable that they'd become targets. Again, it sucks for everyone else but there's no "Time out zone" on a battleground -- especially not when one side intentionally perverts the purpose of the buildings.

I'm happy to admit that Hamas uses some "civilian" infrastructure to hide weapons. I don't doubt that Israel sometimes strikes a Mosque because of good intell, and rightly so.

But you have to admit all the news we get from this conflict comes from the Israeli army.

That their claims of "Hamas using civilian infrastructure" is often found to be false.

And that the burden of proof is on the Israeli government to show that a clearly marked UN school, or a UN refugee building which Israel has the GPS coordinates to because it was given to them by the UN, was indeed used by militants at the time of bombing.

They bombed a UN school

I suppose, and it's not close enough for my liking, but c'est la vie.

...and if we weren't all so dam comfortable with the notion that we can truly judge peoples intentions as being good or evil from biased media reports generated in foreign lands on the other side of the globe, deciphered, translated, spun and conveniently reported in a newspaper or web-site near you.