This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman, author of the Warped Mirror blog at the Jerusalem Post
“Israel’s international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday, amid condemnation in Britain and Europe of the Israeli army’s behaviour … There were calls for a United Nations-led inquiry into allegations that the Israeli army carried out a massacre and that its soldiers were guilty of war crimes.”
You will be forgiven if you think this is a quote from today’s news - but it’s actually old news, really old news, from April 2002. This is how the Guardian and many other news media around the world reported about the Jenin “massacre” that never happened.
Four years later, during the Lebanon war in summer 2006, Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Sever Plocker argued that some of the media coverage was once again showing signs of the “Jenin massacre syndrome“. There was indeed no shortage of international media reports that greatly exaggerated the damage done by Israeli strikes against Hezbollah, and many reports suggested that almost all Lebanese casualties were civilians, completely ignoring that, for obvious reasons, Hezbollah wasn’t eager to advertize its losses. It was only long after the war that the group acknowledged that “around 250″ of its fighters had been killed; however, Israeli figures, various news reports and an estimate by a UN official indicated that Hezbollah had suffered at least 500 casualties.
Given the media coverage of Israel’s current campaign against Hamas, I’m quite sure that I’m not the only Israeli who has this sense of “here we go again”. As Michael Walzer has noted, “Israel’s Gaza war was called ‘disproportionate’ on day one, before anyone knew very much about how many people had been killed or who they were.”
Unsurprisingly, the commentariat is exasperated because Israel “gives every appearance of having turned its back on global opinion”, but even Israeli peace activists are likely to have little regard for a “global opinion” that seems so eager to question and curtail Israel’s right to defend itself. As Benjamin Pogrund, a veteran campaigner for peaceful Israeli-Palestinian co-existence, has recently argued: “where were the protestors when missiles were falling on southern Israel? Had they come into the streets then and demanded that Hamas stop firing we wouldn’t have the gory mess in Gaza today.”
Inevitably, there have already been calls to investigate whether Israel has committed war crimes, and the IDF is reportedly expecting (and preparing for) “a wave of international lawsuits related to Operation Cast Lead”. In a recent article, “On War Crimes”, Adam LeBor identified three incidents that “give cause for concern that Israel has breached international humanitarian law and/or committed potential war crimes.”
While I have no problem with the principle that when it comes to international law, Israel’s military should be held to the same standards as the armed forces of other countries, I cannot deny that I am also concerned that the quick condemnation of Israel in the court of public opinion reduces the chances for a “fair trial.”
In particular, the first of Israel’s potential war crimes identified by Adam LeBor is a good example: he points to “the killing of numerous Hamas police officers at a passing out parade in Gaza city in the first wave of bombing” and argues that “most press reports say that the Hamas police were used for traffic control and internal security.” There may well be many such press reports, though I suspect that most of them date from the time after Israel’s first strike. But there are definitely also many reports that cast doubt on the notion that Hamas maintained a neat separation between a civilian police force and paramilitary units.
Consider for example this report, published shortly after Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza: “Hamas has bolstered the police force with about 400 members of its so-called Executive Force and militants on loan from its armed wing, the Ezzedine al Qassam Brigades.” That is confirmed by a recent news item from Memri that notes a statement by a writer from a Hamas-affiliated website who praised the policemen killed in the first Israeli air strikes as “Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam members, who by day carried out security missions and by night engaged in jihad and attacks.”
Moreover, to claim that Hamas police was merely upholding “internal security” also seems somewhat disingenuous in view of reports like this one from last summer: “Hamas policemen seized a convoy of humanitarian aid bound for the Palestinian Red Crescent on Thursday evening, the second convoy it has taken from the aid agency, aid employees said. Policemen from Hamas halted 14 trucks filled with food and medicine at a checkpoint after it crossed an Israeli checkpoint into Gaza on Thursday, said employees of the Palestinian Red Crescent, who declined to be named, fearing reprisals from ruling group Hamas. A Hamas official said the aid was seized because the organization was distributing aid to former Fatah fighters and not to impoverished Palestinians.”
My point here is not to argue that it is somehow illegitimate to investigate the conduct of the Israeli military; however, the fact that accusations of war crimes are bandied around so liberally is in my view largely due to what Sever Plocker called the “Jenin massacre syndrome.” Any accusations against Israel are reported in big bold letters, passionate language, and dramatic images, but when the accusations turn out to be false, there is noticeably less interest and attention.
Just one recent example: About a week ago, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) accused Israeli troops of shooting at a UN convoy bringing humanitarian aid and killing one worker. When the Israeli military investigated the incident and concluded that the accusation was baseless, a spokesman for UNRWA responded that “the agency had not accused Israel of deliberately targeting its personnel.” But somehow, it seems, the UNRWA spokesman couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge that the accusation against the Israeli forces had been false, that they hadn’t shot at all at the convoy, whether deliberately or not, and that it was therefore justified to suspect Hamas of having fired the deadly shots.
Good to see you here, Petra.
You make interesting and valid points about the press’ weaseling after accusations against Israel have been proved false or at least are open to doubt.
Somehow the media fails to grasp that bad things happen in wars, but prefers to blame Israel alone for Hamas’ blatant disregard for the safety of its own civilians.
Even Jews themselves are not exempt from holding Israel to a far higher standard than they hold her enemies. I have a lot of time for ENGAGE, but for an example of self-righteous and vacuous claptrap go to
http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/philosophy-anti-semitism-and-israel%E2%80%99s-war-in-gaza-judith-suissa/#comments
and look at some of the responses, including those from the author, one Judith Suissa, who obviously can’t stand to be disagreed with and, as one contributor says, seems incapable of reacting to said disagreement without perceiving it as personal.
I don’t believe that Israel should be given a free pass and be exempted from criticism if she oversteps the mark, but neither should she be held to a higher standard than murderous HAMAS - a cartoon I saw earlier said it was an acronum for Hide Among Mosques and Schools - which has the world monopoly on belligerent self-pity
Balanced and well linked article.
The problem is that the ‘press’ wants a story and it doesnt care what aberrations of the truth it propagates to make that story a ‘valued piece of journalism’.
Add to that, a predisposition to see Israel as a huge Goliath fighting against a pesky mosketo and we get the kind of sob stories that are seen every day now on television news casts around the world.
I remember so well the descriptions of the destruction that Israel visited on Lebanon in 2006. When the dust had died down, it was suddenly discovered that only the small section where Hizbollah bunkers were raised to the ground. The basic internal infrastructure of Lebanon was intact.
But. At the time of the fighting, one had the impression from the news items, that Beirut was a ‘huge dust bowl’.
A sad judgment on our times.
Serendipity, I had a look at the Engage piece — very much ivory tower to my taste, or, as one comment said, navel-gazing. In general, I guess I’m not very much impressed with position that are based on the notion that moral or philosophical considerations can/should trump or ignore political realities. And the sad reality is that both Hamas and Hezbollah define themselves so much through “resistance” to Israel and the “Jewish conspiracy” that giving up on that would trigger an existential crisis for them — as we see currently, Hamas is holding out, insisting on making all sorts of demands for the cease fire, and not giving a damn about what’s going on in Gaza. I think it’s quite frightening to see; I just hope the fighting is over soon. Now that the troops have moved into Gaza City, my nerves are fraying — too much can go wrong there.
ClaptheHammer — during the Lebanon War, we happened to be in Vietnam, with very meager internet access, and on TV mostly the BBC… This experience actually prompted me to focus in my work on how the media portray Israel and the Mideast conflict.
Just for the record, some additional information I came accross only now.
First, re. the question of the Hamas “traffic” police:
“Siam [i.e. the Hamas leader killed today] set up the Executive Force, a security apparatus that developed into Hamas’ police after the militants seized Gaza in June 2007.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055947.html
Secondly, WRT the question of civilian casualties, the IDF has now disputed Palestinian, i.e. Hamas claims that more than half, or even close to two-thirds, of those killed were civilians. I should note that AdamLeBoer also talks in his piece matter-of-fact about an “extremely high” civilian casualty rate.
IDF spokesman “Levi told reporters on Wednesday that the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 of the Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250. …
Levi also dismissed OCHA’s claim that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said that the CLA knew of 21 Palestinians killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231950849614&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
It’s a very hard headed problem. Many western news organs are pointedly anti Israel to start with. Add to this the fact that their own laziness is borne out by their outsourcing their news gathering to the very Palestinians they purport to report on. Of course it all winds up swirling in a sewer indistinguishable from the daily rant-o-gram from Indymedia. You can confront ordinary people with pictures and facts and it doesn’t matter: Guardian, CNN, Reuters says it’s such and such. Radical blogs repeat it. It’s fact that’s that. Discussion closed.
The important thing to understand though is that is has nothing at all to do with the Palestinians. In a thousand years the Palestinians could be living in the lap of luxury fully integrated in the world and the Guardian and Glenn Greenwald and the NYTimes or whatever is their modern analog, will still be screaming about the poor poor Palestinians and how the secret inscrutable Jews hold sway over the US government, the media and all the banks.
This article probably deserves its own entry:
“Just what is genetically coded in the history of Judaism? Bill Moyers’ Wretched Failure”
Richard Landes takes on Bill Moyers anti-Judaism.
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/01/15/just-what-is-genetically-coded-in-the-history-of-judaism-bill-moyers-wretched-failure/#more-1577
Moyer’s offered a deeply offensive interpreation of the Gaza fighting linking it to the Hebrew Bible.
Here it seesm to me he is following in Jose Saramago’s footsteps.
Both Professor Alvin Rosenfeld and Dr. Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father have written to Moyers to complain.
“Israel’s international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday, amid condemnation in Britain and Europe of the Israeli army’s behaviour…”
I would like to add that this is true regarding the English, French and Spanish language media(no doubt that they are the dominant public opinion forming forces in Europe) but in the ex “peace camp” countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland with the exception of the more ore less insignificant far left and far right papers the majority of the reports and comments are very balanced or pro-Israeli. In these places the memory of the Pravda style brainwashing technique now happily used by the Guardian, Le Monde etc. is living and the mainstream media is on a much higher moral and professional level than these politically correct versions of the Stuermer, and Radio Moscow.
Peter, I think you highlight an important point when you say that the hostile coverage of Israel is not the whole story. Still, as we can see, the anti-Israel stance of many media outlets is taken by those so inclined as giving carte blanche to antisemitism, and it’s not just simply depressing to see that some 6 decades after WWII it is possible to march in Amsterdam and call for gassing Jews, but there are also real security implications: first, Jews everywhere have reason to worry about their safety, and secondly, groups like Hamas can count on it that they don’t have to come to any agreement in a confrontation with Israel — they have to hold out just long enough until international political pressure forces Israel to give in to some pseudo-agreement that cares little for Israel’s legitimate security concerns.
Petra,
Another of your well thought out and well written articles: Thank you. There’s nothing in it that I would disagree with. There’s one thing that’s beyond the focus of your piece, though, that I think makes a large difference this time.
European (and especially British) public opinion is now fairly toxic when it comes to Israel and Jews. Not all of it, but more than enough. The media are quite strongly biased against Israel — perhaps in part they have poisoned themselves as well as their intended audience: Reading their own sensationalised reports year after year must have an effect. However there’s another constituency that matters more: Government. It seems pretty clear to me that Israel is not the only government that learned lessons from the second Lebanon war. I think most European governments, after the excitement of playing at international statesmanship to “save” Lebanon had faded, looked at what they had achieved with more realistic eyes. I doubt they were overly concerned for the situation they had placed Israel in, but they can’t have failed to see that allowing Hizbullah to claim a victory and strengthening Iran’s position in the Middle East was a bad outcome for them too.
The result has been that this time round, though Europe has scolded Israel for the sake of appearances, it has done nothing serious to stop it crippling Hamas. Even the ceasefire resolution from the Security Council was done in such a way as to let Israel fight on. Interestingly, the European response is almost identical to the one from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the PA: A lot of hypocritical hot air and no real pressure. The pressure, if any, will come if the governments of the West decide that Israel has made all the gains it can, before Israel itself reaches the same conclusion. Then they will be only to happy to appear again like the rescuers of innocent Palestinians from an Israel gone berserk.
The hypocrisy of allowing Israel to fight the west’s fight, whilst denying it the public support of western governments, stinks. Sadly, it’s about as much help from Europe as Israel is going to get — but it’s an improvement over 2006.
Paul, I think the points you make are not only very valid, but also very important. However, I still think that the anti-Israel media bias that you acknowledge is more than worrisome — after all, the media are “opinion makers”, as are e.g. the more than 300 British academics and writers who have called for boycotts and other sanctions against Israel. In democratic societies, this kind of “Stimmungsmache”, i.e. mood making, really: demagoguery, will eventually also have an effect on governments. I also believe that this climate of “debate” actually contributes to prolonging the conflict: first, rational political debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer really possible, because facts are substituted by “narratives”.
Moreover, the fact that both the fighting now and the Lebanon war in 2006 created such an outburst of hatred against Israel sends one clear signal to Israelis: withdrawing behind legitimate borders means nothing, and in particular, it doesn’t give Israel the right to defend these borders. As a result, the Israeli peace camp gets weakened, because it always argues that territorial compromise will bolster Israel’s international standing and our security. Well, Hezbollah, Hamas, the commentariat and the anti-Israel protesters do what they can to discredit the arguments of the peace camp.
Petra,
Thanks for your reply. There’s nothing you wrote in it that I would argue with, and I agree that the long-term outlook for Europe’s relationship with Israel is depressing and somewhat frightening. It’s also not obvious to me that the US will forever remain immune to the same phenomenon.
All I was doing, though, was putting down my thoughts about how things were working out in this round of the conflict.
Paul Malin.
I have to agree 100% with the comment that the EU political establishment has concentrated on allowing Israel to savage Hamas while still criticising Israel in the media.
Yes. The lessons of the Lebanese war in 2006 have influenced the EU on how it can bluster while actually giving Israel leeway. A ‘wink and a nod’ so to speak.
But still hypocritical.
I do however feel that the pro Hamas elements in the UK are shooting themselves in the foot. The average UK citizen sitting in his armchair watching youths with headscarfs covering their faces and throwing articles at the ‘UK bobby’ will not earn them any friends.
Quite the opposite in fact.