Tuesday 6 January 2009

BLOCKING THE MEDIA



After Jordan's King Hussein violently ejected the PLO in September 1970, while killing thousands, they trooped off to Lebanon which they promptly destabilized and assisted into a bloody civil war. The war went on for about a decade, and tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. Eventually the Israelis invaded, in 1982, and while this was one of Israel's darkest chapters, forcing the PLO out of Lebanon went a long way towards ending the Lebanese civil war, which wound down shortly thereafter.


Most of the years the war had interested the world only to a limited extent. Thomas Friedman relates, in From Beirut to Jerusalem, how he understood he had to get out when he spent one evening cowering under fire in the middle of Beirut knowing his editors back at the New York Times wouldn't feel there was enough interest in the story to publish it. (P. 244)


Then, in the summer of 1982 Israeli troops battled into Beirut. They were followed, of course, by the cream of the world's media, raring to tell. By this time I was very painfully disillusioned by the IDF's actions, but I remember pinching myself as the media drove around Beirut showing the world how the Israelis had destroyed the city. A decade of destruction being laid at the doorstep of ten days of Israeli violence. "This can't be happening", I remember assuring myself, but of course it was. "Surely no one believes this shit?!?!?" but of course they did; indeed, they lapped it up.


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Unlike the general chaos of the second war in Lebanon in 2006, this time Israel seems to be functioning mostly in an orderly and systematic way (though they still haven't figured out how to operate the sirens in Beer Sheva, for whatever reason. Maybe next month.)


One of the many differences is that this time the media - Israeli and foreign - is being kept away from the operation zones. Only al-Jazeera, which had reporters in place from the local population, is broadcasting away, but there are still people in the West who don't buy stories from al-Jazeera unless they appear also on CNN. (Juan Cole relies mostly on al-Jazeera, which probably explains why he's so factually-challenged).


Blocking the international press corps runs the danger of having them peeved at you, but on balance I think Israel's decision so far has been vindicated by the result, as the media would hardly have been in the position to explain what's going on.


I've spent some six years of my life in the army, cummulatively, between the ages of 18 and forty-plus. When I was in my thirties I began applying the insights I was acquiring for my doctoral research regarding large bureaucracies to what I was seeing in the IDF, to the great befuddlement of my commanders who didn't know what I wanted of them. As a voting citizen I've always made it a point to understand what is going on, how we're wielding our power and when and why we abuse it. As a historian I've gone back to periods I don't remember, or remember from a personal perspective, and I've tried to re-imagine what was going on and why. You may see this as arrogant, but I really do think my ability to understand what's going on is better than, say, that of Christine Amanpour, in spite of the dozens of hot spots she has flown into over the years, and then flown out of.


And yet, although for the past ten days I've been focusing intensely and extensively on this operation, it's only in the past two or three days that I feel I'm beginning to understand what is going on; even now there are large gaps in the picture, and lots of fog of war. The possibility that reporters with deadlines to meet - even Israeli ones, all the others even more so - could march into the battle zone and have anything useful to tell us, is, frankly, remote. The best they'd be able to do is point at ruble, recent or not, and breathlessly tell about the tremendous havoc the IDF is wreaking; then they'd troop off to the Shifa hospital in Gaza ind interview the civilian casualties (alas, there are many of them) without ever recognizing which of the uniformed personnel are hiding Hamas leaders, nor where the steps down to the bunker are.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

PHOSPHORUS REPORTING ?



The top headline at the Times of London tells that "Israel rains fire on Gaza with phosphorous shells", followed by a dramatic picture of two shells exploding over Gaza.


So far, so bad. Especially if you look at the web-page, tut-tut over how barbaric those Israelis are and go on to the sports section. If you read the article, however, the picture becomes murkier.


Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.


Ah. So while Israel may be barbaric, it's not more so than the British and Americans. Meanwhile,


The Israeli military last night denied using phosphorus, but refused to say what had been deployed. “Israel uses munitions that are allowed for under international law,” said Captain Ishai David, spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces.


Personally, I'm not convinced, one way or the other. I'm not enough of an expert on these things to know if there is more than one type of ordinance with the same effect. I hope our military spokesman isn't lying, especially as there doesn't seem to be any reason to: if those international legislators forbade the use of phosphorous as a weapon of war but not as a smokescreen or for illumination, there must be a reason. But what it might be?


The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination.


A statement, not an explanation. So far as I know, the reason it is permitted to use phosphorous as an aerial smokescreen, is that it burns up before it reaches the ground if it exploded high enough. The Times doesn't explain, but does helpfully tells us how criminal Israel's behavior would be if it were doing what it isn't doing:


Charles Heyman, a military expert and former major in the British Army, said: “If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.”


taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

CIVIL AND RATIONAL DISCOURSE



There has been a dramatic uptick in the number of visitors to this blog over the past few days - and yes, a major increase in the rate of postings, too: part of my way of dealing with Achikam's going into combat, I suppose; a sort of "reserve duty", now that I've passed the age of mobilization myself. Hopefully the need will soon pass, and I'll go back to the occasional blogging for the occasional reader. In the meantime, however, it appears that Powerline, Meryl Yourish, and - peculiarly - reddit.com, have been sending people here. My thanks to them.


I like to think of myself as an enlightened and rational person; I prefer enlightened and rational discussions over rants. As a number of long-time readers will testify, I don't censor comments of readers who disagree with me, and occasionally I engage in sharp exchanges with them. I do however try to remain civil, and request of all commenters, from whichever side, that they do so also.

taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

A MUSING ON WEAPONS



The media is full these days of talk about the handmade Hamas rockets. As a general rule, anyone who uses this terminology is doing so to belittle Israel's actions, as in "all that modern weaponry against some handmade rockets?"


Which is interesting. I'm reasonably sure many of the people who talk this way are adherents of strict gun control or even banning private possession of guns, if they're Americans; or they're the type of people who giggle snottily over American gun-owners, if they're Europeans. A Hamas handmade rocket is vastly more dangerous than any handgun, for all that it's indeed less lethal than a smart bomb shot from a helicopter; actually even that isn't quite accurate since the smart bomb can kill combatants among civilians while a kassam can only be aimed in a general direction, such as "that town over there".


A whiff of hypocrisy, perchance?


taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)

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