[R-G] White Phosphorus, Hasbara and International Alibis

[Anthony Fenton]

White Phosphorus, Hasbara and International Alibis
Israel assaulting Palestinian society beneath deadly smokescreens

January 06, 2009 By Dan Freeman-Maloy

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20175

On the fifth day of the latest Israeli assault on Gaza, the Washington  
Institute for Near East Policy, a leading US-based Israel advocacy  
think tank, ran a commentary by senior analyst David Makovsky which  
concluded as follows: "Whether the Palestinian intifada between 2000  
and 2004, the Hizballah war in 2006, or the Gaza conflict in 2008,  
this changing nature of warfare against civilians needs to be squarely  
addressed."

As Israel orients itself towards continuously waging such warfare on a  
number of fronts in the years ahead, these comments ring true (albeit  
not in the sense intended by Makovsky).

While the massacre-with-impunity initiated by the Israel Air Force  
(IAF) in Gaza on Saturday December 27 encountered broad domestic  
support in Israel, a few days and a few hundred Palestinian fatalities  
later, Aluf Benn, diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli daily  
Ha'aretz, explained that "the magical aerial solutions that do not  
involve loss of soldiers are coming to an end." This impression  
reportedly became the consensus opinion within the Israeli military  
establishment by the middle of last week, and on Saturday -- a second  
consecutive shabbat shalom --  the Israel Defense Force (IDF) launched  
a massive ground assault "meant to serve as a supplement to the aerial  
bombardment" (alongside continuous naval attacks).

"The ground invasion was preceded by large-scale artillery shelling  
from around 4pm," Ha'aretz reported, "intended to 'soften' the targets  
as artillery batteries deployed along the Strip in recent days began  
bombarding Hamas targets and open areas near the border. Hundreds of  
shells were fired, including cluster bombs aimed at open areas."

Closely attuned to the diplomatic requirements of warfare against  
civilians, Israeli spokespeople will no doubt find a way to explain  
not only why the Palestinian/Israeli death toll in this "conflict"  
maintains its staggering balance of 100/1, but also the "pinpoint"  
nature of Israeli naval bombardment, artillery shelling and cluster  
bombing of the densely populated Gaza Ghetto.

Perhaps they will also explain away their reported use of deadly white  
phosphorus, whose "telltale shells could be seen spreading tentacles  
of thick white smoke to cover the troops' advance," according to a  
joint report of The Times and Agence France-Presse ("These explosions  
are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds  
the enemy so that our forces can move in," the story quotes an unnamed  
"Israeli security expert" as saying of napalm's devastating heir).[1]

Indeed, one of the lessons which Israel has apparently drawn from its  
experience with warfare against civilians is that, with disciplined  
public relations and a heavy dose of hypocrisy, much of the liberal  
West can be brought behind it.

"The Gaza attack is the first major demonstration of Israel's total  
overhaul of its 'hasbara' [bluntly translated, 'propaganda'] operation  
following the Second Lebanon War," Anshel Pfeffer writes supportively.  
"While the military aspects of the operation were meticulously  
planned, a new forum of press advisers was also established which has  
been working for the past six months on a PR strategy specifically  
geared to dealing with the media during warfare in Gaza."[2]

Public calls for (or expressions of satisfaction with) assaults on the  
Palestinian people at large, for example, are being kept to a minimum.  
"Ministers have been ordered by the Cabinet Secretary not to give  
interviews without authorisation," Pfeffer continues, "so as not to  
repeat the PR disaster of a year ago, when deputy defence minister  
Matan Vilnai threatened the Palestinians with a 'holocaust.'" Military  
commanders, Amir Oren adds, are also being (rhetorically) restrained:  
"The IAF and the Southern Command, which have been doing most of the  
work, have been forbidden to speak to the media."

International journalists, for their part, have encountered barriers  
to entering and reporting from Gaza which the Associated Press has  
described as "unprecedented" (and given Israel's long history of  
severe restrictions on the press, that's saying a lot).[3] Writing for  
Ha'aretz, Gili Izikovich elaborates: "Keeping the foreign journalists  
in Israel, sources say, is good for Israel's image because the media  
is experiencing the war from the Israeli side." The Gaza offices of  
China's Xinhua News Agency have themselves suffered bombardment,  
though it is unclear whether this resulted from direct targeting or  
merely reflected the danger facing anyone in the Gaza Strip.[4]

The targeted destruction of Gaza's Al-Aqsa television station, for its  
part, has been openly endorsed within the Jerusalem Post, the article  
in question dismissing International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)  
criticism of "attacks on unarmed media installations" in light of "the  
inflammatory material [Al-Aqsa television] broadcasts regularly,"  
while at the same time -- apparently unaware of the obvious  
implications -- joining in defense of Israeli journalistic war- 
readiness: "the media here weren't drafted by the government, but  
rather volunteered in the service of the country."

But notably, even war-eager Israeli correspondents have been excluded  
from covering the latest ground assault. While independent Israeli  
reporting faces predictable restrictions, even Israel's loyal  
journalist corps has been consigned to reporting or cheering from the  
sidelines. As Dennis Zinn, military correspondent for Israel  
Broadcasting Authority (IBA) TV, reported Sunday, "This is a war that  
the Israeli press has been left out of. There are no embedded  
reporters and the officers have been warned not to talk to the media  
without explicit permission. This is a policy of the current chief of  
staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, who is critical of the open relationship that  
has existed between the military and the media up to now."[5]

Nonetheless, notwithstanding all the hasbara echoing among Israel's  
many PR hacks, it remains a fact that Israeli spokespeople are on  
record effectively dismissing distinctions between civilian and  
combatant.

If, as so many spokespeople and commentators have suggested, we are to  
believe that Israeli planners have meticulously drawn lessons from the  
2006 invasion of Lebanon in planning this assault, then it is worth  
recalling what those stated lessons were.

Consider the threats that have since been made by General Gadi  
Eisenkot, head of Israel's Northern Command, regarding the Lebanese  
south: "We will wield disproportionate power against every village  
from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and  
destruction"; "From our perspective, these are military bases."[6]

Very similar comments have been made about Gaza (see this previous  
article for details). Moreover, given that Hamas dominated the last  
round of Palestinian parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza  
alike, and is particularly strong in Gaza (where its social services  
fulfill an indispensible function), Israeli operational parameters as  
stated by foreign minister Tzipi Livni -- "We are targeting Hamas, we  
are not looking for civilians to kill more than that" -- are clearly  
not reassuring.[7]

Unfortunately, the policies of the United States and the European  
Union have constituted what The Guardian rightly describes as "a green  
light for Israel to continue unavoidably indiscriminate attacks on the  
most densely populated territory in the world."[8] The Czech  
government, which on Thurday assumed the rotating EU presidency, has  
retreated from spokeperson Jiri Potuznik's characterization of the  
Israeli ground invasion as "defensive, not offensive," but with  
commentators like Pfeffer musing on whether the shift in EU leadership  
helped to dictate the Israeli assault's timing, the signs from the EU  
are deeply troubling.[9]

Having apparently called for the Israeli assault, so-called "Quartet"  
envoy Tony Blair is "on holiday at the moment," as British prime  
minister Gordon Brown puts it.[10] This is as good a time as any to  
blow the mythology of the "Quartet" -- supposedly comprised of the US,  
EU, Russia, and the rubber-stamp of the UN Secretary General -- out of  
the water. "There is no getting around the reality that the  
Quartet ... provides a shield for what the US and the EU do," as  
Alvaro de Soto (former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East  
Peace Process) rightly observed -- and while "the Quartet's  
evenhandedness deficit is not a recent phenomenon," as De Soto noted  
more than a year and a half ago, "evenhandedness has been pummeled  
into submission in an unprecedented way since the beginning of 2007,"  
and effective authorization of this offensive via Blair needs to be  
the final straw.

Anti-war and progressive civil society forces may not presently be in  
a position to stop this massacre, but let this spectacular display of  
brutality at least effect a broad reorientation.

The point needs to be made clearly: if Hamas members are legitimate  
targets for assassination, then so too are the members of the parties  
responsible for these ongoing massacres, including at a minimum Labor  
and Kadima; if this logic is rejected, as it clearly should be, then  
an inclusive political process is required. Any consistent criteria by  
which Hamas could be excluded from parliamentary politics would also  
necessitate exclusion of the major Israeli players from the elections  
scheduled for February. Any political settlement which excludes Hamas  
is no political settlement at all.

Israel, rejecting negotiations with any Palestinians who will not  
accept their orders, will take this rejection to its natural  
conclusion. To the degree permitted by the diplomatic context and  
military developments, they will seek to kill those associated with  
Hamas or any other resistance groupings. Facing a devastated civilian  
population and a lightly armed resistance, such killing is likely to  
be widespread, and Israeli planners hope to follow this up with  
"methodical arrest campaigns" (while 1 Israeli fatality may be  
balanced with 100 Palestinian deaths, it seems that even at 1 to  
10,000, the ratio of Israeli to Palestinian prisoners held hostage is  
insufficient for Israeli taste).

But we can make no mistake: this is the natural extension (effectively  
genocidal, but an inexorable progression nonetheless) of excluding  
Hamas from the political process. More than half a century ago, Hannah  
Arendt noted the glaring contradictions of purported left Zionists in  
groups like Hashomer Hatzair, avowed radicals who "express themselves  
only by abstention when it comes to vital questions of Palestine  
foreign policy," and "hide under officials protests their secret  
relief at having the majority parties do the dirty work for them."[11]  
Similar comments apply to those in the West who, while happy to help  
force the Palestinian party with a parliamentary majority out of their  
own electoral process, now express misgivings about the extrajudicial  
killings, collective punishment and mass political imprisonment which  
in varying degrees have accompanied this policy from its inception.

This applies even to some quite decent people. In Canada, to take a  
widely replicated example, the New Democratic Party (NDP), relatively  
moderate in its foreign policy by North American standards, has yet to  
engage Hamas as a diplomatic actor despite the results of the  
Palestinian legislative elections of January 2006. When Hamas, in part  
conceding its freely won electoral mandate, signed on to the creation  
of a national unity government in February 2007, the NDP decided to  
deal with the unity government solely through its non-Hamas  
representatives, as US and allied (including Canadian) policy sought  
to drive wedges among factions and further fracture the Palestinian  
national movement. Subject to international sabotage, the unity  
government resolutely collapsed with the Hamas counter-coup of June  
2007 (another much-lied-about-episode, see Gary Leupp's piece on  
Dissident Voice for details), intensifying the dangerous isolation of  
Gaza.

The danger is now greater than ever. In the last week and a half,  
Israel has destroyed Gaza's infrastructure to a point where returning  
to status quo policies of sanctions and isolation -- which Israel  
would no doubt sell as a concession, if only by virtue of the  
temporary cessation of direct massacres -- is an option incompatible  
with Palestinian survival (let alone dignity) in Gaza. Hamas,  
meanwhile, can at this point only be excluded from the Palestinian  
political and broader diplomatic process by the utter corruption of an  
international community too cruel or cowardly to maintain a trace of  
moral or legal integrity, and by the waves of killings, imprisonment  
and collective punishment which Israel will orchestrate under its cover.

Israel has gambled with this invasion. It is betting on the sort of  
international complicity which will allow it to disenfranchise the  
Palestinians of Gaza not only from the Israeli system which governs  
the whole of Israel/Palestine, but even from administration of the  
enclaves into which Palestinians have been pushed and confined. Its  
planners aim to abdicate responsibility for the 1.5 million  
Palestinians in Gaza while still controlling their borders and their  
skies, perhaps with the support of international allies, while  
retaining "ongoing freedom for military action" against them (indeed,  
Ha'aretz reported Monday that Israel is formally seeking "a Security  
Council agreement that will grant Israel the right to respond to Hamas  
violations" of a ceasefire agreement to which Hamas will not even be a  
signatory). Palestinians in Gaza and the political groupings with the  
broadest support among them will thus be disenfranchised, confined,  
and disarmed while at the same time subject to explicit policies of  
assassination and military assault.

This gamble needs to backfire. Israel cannot be allowed to shift the  
terms of discussion by -- having added to the crime of its suffocating  
siege on Gaza an assault on its essential infrastructure and a  
massacre of hundreds of its inhabitants -- now using its potential  
willingness to slow its massacres as leverage to secure an  
international rubber-stamp for harsher sanctions or more strict  
colonial rule (enforced with allies' support).

Those who would diplomatically push Hamas out of Palestinian politics  
share responsibility with Israel when it takes this policy to its  
military conclusion. A ceasefire must come, and it must come soon, but  
if it is to amount to anything more than a pause in the killing, it  
cannot serve as an instrument for such criminal and failed policies.


Notes:

[1] Michael Evans and Sheera Frenkel, "'Phosphorus smokescreen' hid  
army," January 6 2009, The Times and AFP, as published in The  
Australian.
[2] Anshel Pfeffer, "Israel claims success in the PR war," January 2  
2009, The Jewish Chronicle.
[3] Diaa Hadid, "Israel bans foreign journalists from entering Gaza  
despite court order to let them in," January 2 2009, Associated Press  
Newswires.
[4] "Chinese news agency's Gaza office said hit by Israeli bombing,  
'no casualties,'" December 29 2008, BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific.
[5] Dennis Zinn reporting, "Day one of IDF ground op in Gaza," January  
4 2009, IBA News.
[6] Nicholas Kimbrell, "War of words between Israel, Lebanon escalated  
in 2008," December 31 2008, The Daily Star.
[7] Sharon Otterman, "Israeli Foreign Minister Says Hamas 'Needs to Be  
Condemned,'" December 29 2008, The New York Times.
[8] Editorial, "Europe must take the initiative," January 4 2009, The  
Guardian.
[9] "Gaza statement a misunderstanding - Czech minister," January 4  
2009, Reuters News.
[10] Anshel Pfeffer, "Sarkozy wants more," January 5 2008, Ha'aretz.
[11] Hannah Arendt, "Zionism Reconsidered" (October 1944), in The Jew  
as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age (Ron  
Feldman, ed.), Grove Press, Inc., 1978, p. 154. Incidentally,  
according to Ilan Pappé, these purported leftists proved to be among  
the "most avaricious" of the Zionist parties when it came to dividing  
the agricultural lands of Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1948:  
"Hashomer Ha-Tza'ir members were not content only with lands from  
which the people had already been expelled, but also wanted the lands  
whose Palestinian owners had survived the onslaught and who were still  
clinging onto them." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, OneWorld  
Publications Ltd., 2006, pp. 215-216.)