Shedding light on the UN, Media and Operation Cast Lead

While the distaste left in my mouth by the civilian deaths in Gaza hasn't totally dissipated, there are a good deal of stories lately which not only refute some of the claims made by Hamas and the UN, they also reinforce the integrity of the IDF.

The first news is that Israel did not, in fact, attack the UN school. The damage that was done (43 killed) took place near, but not in, the facility as was initially claimed by the UN and as reported in countless news sources. That story was initially investigated by a Canadian newspaper, and only now is the UN backtracking on its claim.

The second piece is the the UN is now condemning Hamas for stealing aid supplies, including blankets and food, meant for Palestinian civilians.

"Hamas policemen stormed into an aid warehouse in Gaza City Tuesday evening and confiscated 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels ready for distribution to 500 families," said United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesman Christopher Gunness.

"They were armed, they seized this, they took it by force," Gunness said, terming the incident absolutely unacceptable.


The third is the most sensitive. Last week a journalist from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Lorenzo Cremonesi, quoted a doctor in Gaza's Shifa hospital, put the civilian death total much lower and the militant casualty number much higher.

All of these stories help reinforce Israel's position vis-a-vis its opponents and seem to present a trend in which initial reports are skewed against Israel (Qana, Jabalya, Al-Dura), only to later be found fraudulant or greatly exaggerated.

None of these stories bring the dead back to life or console the bereaved, but they illustrate the place of propaganda and media in this conflict and why, if we can't even agree on what transpired, we will continue to have incredible difficulties moving forward.
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Excellent Analysis of Israel's Dilemma in Gaza

Wow.

I just found a really good analysis of the situation in Gaza.

Read it here. Read More......

The War For Hearts And Minds

In the midst of Operation Cast Lead, Israel's aerial bombardment of Hamas targets in Gaza, I wanted to examine how the fighting is playing out on the internet. With Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and other site playing an increasingly important role in the PR war, who is creating these messages, and how are they being shaped

When Israel created an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) YouTube Channel to showcase its efforts to specifically target Hamas forces and infrastructure, it signaled an important shift in the thinking of the government towards the public relations war for sympathy and legitimacy.

Some of the videos were taken down by YouTube, purportedly because of pressure from those who oppose the content, but have been put up. As explained by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit:

We were saddened on Dec. 30, 2008 when YouTube took down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip. Fortunately, due to blogger and viewer support, YouTube has returned the footage they removed.

Newest update: Instead of removing the footage youtube has restricted viewing ability. We are in the process of opening up a blog so that you will be able to view the videos without problem there.

Twitter also been...well, all atwitter about Israel and Gaza, with Israeli Consulates joining the fray to answer questions and provide information/propaganda.

On Facebook, people are sharing images and videos which range from images of Palestinian civilian casualties, to videos showing Hamas fighters loading rockets onto trucks, then being targeted Israel missile strikes, to Hamas gunmen grabbing children as human shields.

Digg.com, which provides a way to promote stories around the web, takes the front to the next level, in that people who support or oppose a particular view point can blow a story up or bury it depending on if it falls in line with their agenda.

While the internet provides unprecedented access to information, it also bring the question of veracity of information back to the forefront. Even as we see in rapid increase in the number of primary sources, who can quickly Tweet the latest events, uploading pictures, videos, and GPS coordinates, so do we see an increase in the use of this information to deceive, and mislead.

My advice is to consume as much information from a diverse pool of sources as possible. A spokesperson for the IDF has a certain agenda when they present information. While this agenda doesn't mean that the information is necessarily false, it may be an incomplete truth. The same can be said for a Palestinian news network or non-profit.

As the new Roman Calendar year approaches, we at the St. Lou Jew hope that the New Year brings level-heads to the table, a cessation of violence, and a renewed effort towards dialogue and negotiation.
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Israel's Disproportionate Response

After a long weekend of missiles, bombs, and rocket, moral equivalizing, standard rhetoric, and civilian casualties, nothing has fundamentally changed in the Israel-Palestinian conflict

A lot of the charges leveled against Israel are about the disproportionate military response. But no one has really tested that claim. From an Times Online article:

Let's have a pointless discussion about Gaza and begin it by talking about whether Israel's bombing is “disproportionate”.

To illustrate the meaninglessness of such a debate let us attempt to agree what “proportionate” would look like.

Would it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City? There is a chance, though, that since Gaza is more densely packed than Israel, casualties might be much the same as they are now, so although the ordnance would be proportionate, the deaths would not. Of course, if one of Gaza's rockets did manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending upon how you look at it), then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion. Would you be happy then?

The article goes further into the issues of targeting militants versus targeting civilians, and moral superiority:

This is not about outrage. We could then, perhaps, from the other side, attempt to suggest Israel's moral superiority on the basis that, unlike the careless firers of Qassam rockets, any civilian casualties caused by Israel's bombs were the unintended victims of its actions, however many of them there are. Israel takes care with its targeting, they don't. But the eight students killed by a bus stop in Gaza are just as dead, their families just as bereft, and their feelings towards the originators of the bombs just as compounded of hate and regret.

So this is not about moral superiority. Perhaps we could now try to have a discussion with a point. Will the Israeli action advance or hinder any movement towards a long-term solution in the area, or have we all given up on that (in which case expressions of anything very much seem not just irrelevant, but irritating)? Will it, in the long term, relieve Israeli citizens from the threat of arbitrary extinction? I'm pretty sure it will help in the short term. I cannot easily see what it accomplishes in the longer run.

Maybe a really big fence would work?



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More Updates On The Escalation In Southern Israel and Gaza

This conflict is growing more personal as I have friends in Kiryat Gat and Ashdod, both of which where recently hit by rocket attacks.

At the risk of being biased, or using biased sources, here is Hamas' logic in its own words.

NPR had someone on today with an interesting take, "how do you minimize civilian casualties when you are bombing one of the most densely populated parts of the planet?" Read More......