Posts Tagged ‘Operation Cast Lead’
US & Israel Criminality – and Impunity – Threatens the World with Annihilation
Israel’s massacre at sea
3 June 2010
The Israeli military’s killing of nine civilians and wounding of scores more on a ship carrying humanitarian supplies in international waters was an act of cold-blooded murder and a war crime.
For millions of people around the world, this military assault on an aid convoy carrying wheelchairs, cement, water purification systems, children’s toys and notebook paper to Gaza—all items barred by Israel’s blockade of the occupied territory—epitomizes the role played by Israel, as well as that of its US sponsor, in global affairs.
As always in the aftermath of such atrocities, the Israeli government has blamed its victims. In a televised speech Wednesday, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu described the aid convoy as a “flotilla of terror supporters” and praised the slaughter on the high seas as an act of self-defense by besieged Israeli commandos.
Those who engaged in self-defense were the passengers on the ship, and they had every right to do so. The fact that nine of them were killed, while the Israel Defense Force (IDF) commandos suffered not a single fatality, is evidence as to who was the aggressor.
This is a regular pattern. The massacre in the Mediterranean comes just a year and a half after Operation Cast Lead, the far greater slaughter that the Israeli regime unleashed against the suffering people of Gaza. Claiming then as now to act in “self defense,” in December 2008 and January 2009 Israel rained bombs, missiles and tank and automatic weapons fire upon Gaza, killing over 1,400 Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed men, women and children. This one-sided war by one of the world’s most powerful military machines against a relatively defenseless civilian population claimed just 13 Israeli lives, all but three of them soldiers.
The aid convoy was a response to the barbaric blockade that has subjected an entire population of 1.5 million people in Gaza to hunger, disease and misery.
Since the tightening of the blockade in 2007, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the number of Gazan refugees living in abject poverty has tripled.
The UN reported at the end of 2009 that “insufficient food and medicine is reaching Gazans, producing a further deterioration of the mental and physical health of the entire civilian population since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against the territory.” Among the starkest expressions of Israel’s deliberate starvation of an entire population was a finding by the Food and Agriculture Organization last year that 65 percent of babies between the ages of nine and 12 months suffer from anemia.
Israel is able to carry out this kind of medieval siege as well as piracy and murder not merely because of its own military might, but thanks to the unwavering patronage and funding of Washington. This latest mass killing has only underscored that—as with so much else—the advent of the Obama administration has effected no significant change in US policy.
While issuing a hypocritical expression of “deep regret at the loss of life,” the Obama administration is doing everything it can to assure that Israel bears neither blame nor consequences for these killings. It quashed any criticism of Israel’s action at the UN Security Council and has implicitly adopted the Zionist state’s justification for the massacre.
Israel’s criminality and Washington’s role as its unconditional enabler both have a long history. It is worth recalling another Israeli attack on a vessel in international waters that took place 43 years ago. In that attack, 34 sailors aboard the USS Liberty were killed by Israeli napalm, missiles and machine-gun fire, while another 171 while wounded—the worst casualties suffered by the US Navy in a hostile action since World War II.
An intelligence ship, the Liberty was attacked off the Sinai Peninsula on June 8, 1967 in the midst of the Six-Day War. While Israel called it a tragic “mistake,” ample evidence emerged that the Zionist state attacked the ship because it wanted to stop Washington from listening in to its communications. Intercepts flatly contradicted Tel Aviv’s claim that it was acting in self-defense and revealed that Israel wanted to conceal evidence of its aggressive intentions as it moved to seize Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, all of which remain under illegal occupation to this day.
Much of the criticism of this week’s attack on the aid convoy, including within Israel itself, has treated it as a “botched” operation, an excessive use of force and a public relations fiasco. But this is not a matter of a government losing its head. The Netanyahu regime’s policies are directed to a definite socio-political base, composed of religious extremists, right-wing settlers and the most politically reactionary layers within Israeli society. Its orientation is personified by the fascistic background and ideology of its foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
Deeply reactionary and in deep political crisis, the Israeli government is driven more and more to act as a global pyromaniac, threatening renewed wars against Syria and Lebanon and, according to a report in the London Times this week, sending submarines armed with nuclear missiles to the waters off Iran.
The unconditional support and approximately $3 billion in annual aid to Israel bestowed by Washington—and continued under Obama—pose a mortal danger to people across the globe.
This is not a matter merely of a single outlaw regime, but of a general descent of world affairs into a state of criminality and the disintegration of any semblance of international law, with Israel’s main patron setting the pattern.
The Obama administration continues two wars of aggression initiated under Bush and has maintained intact a police state apparatus of unlawful detentions, rendition and torture. It has now earned the ignominious designation as the number one practitioner of “targeted killings”—assassinations—through CIA drone attacks that have killed “many hundreds of people” in Pakistan, according to a United Nations report released Wednesday. The report condemned Washington for claiming a “license to kill without accountability.”
The behavior of the US and other governments as if they were the state incarnation of Murder Inc., acts of state terrorism and piracy like that committed by Israel this week, and the constant threats of new aggression have created a global climate that bears ever closer resemblance to the conditions that prevailed on the eve the Second World War.
These developments are driven by the mortal crisis of world capitalism and will not be reversed by either protests or pacifism. Only by uniting the working class, including both Jewish and Arab workers in the Middle East, in a common struggle to put an end to the profit system can a new global conflagration be prevented.
Israel’s Specialty, Targeting Civilians
Children Injured by Israel's Attack on Gaza
Life in Gaza: 2 Riot Police aim at little girl walking 2 school
bombs exploding in lebanon
What Israel Does Best
Lebanese baby killed by Israel's bombs
Zionist Strategy
Israeli Jewish kids autograph bombs 2 b dropped on Palestinians
By Stephen Lendman, May 29th, 2010 5:22 AM
Professor Jeremy Salt teaches political science at Ankara, Turkey’s Bilkent University. He’s also the author of “The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands.” On January 9, 2009, during Israel’s war on Gaza, he wrote “A Message to the brave Israeli Airmen,” asking:
— “What’s it like, firing missiles at people you can’t see?
— Does that help, that you cannot see who you are killing?
— does it ease your conscience that you are not deliberately targeting civilians,” when, in fact, you are under Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine to use enough “disproportionate force (to inflict) damage and met(e) out punishment” against civilian infrastructure, “economic interests and the centers of civilian power,” willfully slaughtering noncombatant men, women and children;
— “How does this sit on your conscience?
— Do you sleep well at night or do you have nightmares of the women and children you killed in their homes, in their beds, in their kitchens and living rooms, in their schools and mosques?
Do you really believe they threaten your security – farmers in their fields, mothers with their children, teachers in classrooms, imams in mosques, children at play, the elderly, frail or disabled?
Do you ever question what you’ve done and why? Have you no shame, no sense of decency, no idea of the difference between right and wrong? Will you follow orders blindly and do it again and again, mindless about crimes of war and against humanity you, your superiors, and government officials are accountable for under fundamental international law?
“Brave” Israeli airmen, soldiers, sailors, and other security force personnel have acted lawlessly for decades, including committing appalling human rights crimes – a snapshot of some victims follows.
Persecuting Mazin Qumsiyeh
Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in the West Bank. Earlier he taught at Yale, Duke, and the University of Tennessee. Interested mainly in media activism and public education, he’s been a board, steering, and executive committee member of numerous activist organizations, and is President of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Apartheid Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour. His most recent book is titled, “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment.”
On the morning of May 6, Qumsiyeh and three others were arrested, handcuffed, and taken to an unknown destination. He explained what happened.
In Al-Wallaja, his “ten hour ordeal” began at 8:30AM. The village is near the Green line. Israel’s Separation Wall route will encircle it. It’s already lost much of its land. Residents fear losing the rest, so to prevent it they resist.
Israeli bulldozers have demolished numerous homes. Heroic villagers inspired others, “including Internationals and Israelis to join them in their popular resistance….Today’s started as we came through the woods and sat in front of the bulldozer.”
“As the soldiers gathered their forces around us, you could feel (them) preparing themselves for attack. We remained calm and peaceful. They dragged us one by one forcefully from the bulldozed lands. They picked the four of us for arrest for no obvious reason” – Qumsiyeh, two Palestinian brothers, and a Canadian activist.
They beat, clubbed, rifle-butted, and pepper-sprayed the two brothers. All four were then taken to a military checkpoint, told to sit and wait, then ordered “to sign a paper claiming….we were not beaten or mistreated.”
They refused, then taken to “the investigation offices near Qubbit Raheel (Rachel’s tomb), (and) locked up in a metal container.” Hours later, they were interrogated individually, asked, but refused, to sign other papers. Painfully handcuffed, they were returned to the container.
Next on to Talpiot police station to be fingerprinted and photographed. “It was now nearly 5:30 and we were starving….Finally they br(ought) us some bread, each a slice of cheese and a small packet of jam.” Together they were “dragged in front of a new investigator who asked us to sign a release form that says we are told to stay away from the wall….for 15 days and if we don’t we will (each) have to pay” about $1,200. They signed, were released, but not given their ID cards. Later they got them. “Life goes on in the land of Apartheid. Stay tuned.”
As coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Apartheid Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour, Qumsiyeh leads Palestinian grassroots resistance against “Israeli occupation and colonization” as well as “stopping and dismantling” what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) called illegal, ordering the Wall’s demolition and for Israel “to make reparation for all damage caused by the construction….including in and around East Jerusalem.”
As the “main national grassroots body mobilizing and organizing resistance against” the Wall, the Campaign “coordinates the work of 54 popular committees in communities” targeted for (or now being) destroyed by its construction.
Strategies against it include raising awareness internationally; national and community resistance; mobilizing solidarity among affected communities, the Arab world, civil society, and unions; calling for global boycott, divestment and sanctions; and enlisting international popular support for justice.
Attacking Disabled Palestinians in Gaza
Besides the occupation, siege, regular incursions, and overall reign of terror against 1.5 million people, Israel targets the disabled, explained by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in a December 2009 report titled, “Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Disabled Persons in the Gaza Strip,” from September 1, 2003 – November 30 2009.
It covers willful assaults against disabled civilians, and others incapacitated by attacks. Of most concern was Operation Cast Lead’s 23-day assault from December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009, inflicting massive numbers of deaths and injuries, as well as widespread destruction, mostly against civilians, their homes, mosques, businesses, factories, farms, schools, and hospitals – clear non-military targets. The siege’s effect on health, education, and other vital services was also addressed.
During the reporting period, 31 disabled Palestinians were killed, including four women, and six children. Another 600 sustained permanent disabilities, mostly physical. In addition, because of inadequate or unavailable food, medicines, medical equipment, fuel, clean water, sanitation, and the ability to leave or enter freely, the negative impact has been enormous.
“At the same time, foreign medical and technical personnel have not been able to enter (Gaza) to help the disabled and provide them with necessary medical and rehabilitation services.” As for the overall effect of the siege, the longer it continues the more harm it inflicts on those least able to cope. Precisely Israel’s strategic aim – to strangle and smother all Gazans, the elderly, infirm and disabled the most vulnerable.
Amnesty International (AI) on Israeli War Crimes
In its 2010 annual report, AI accused Western nations of shielding Israel from accountability during the Gaza war and for nearly three years of siege, depriving the population of vital essentials to survive and endure. At the same time, it praised the Goldstone Commission for heroically telling the truth.
In documenting Israeli crimes of war and against humanity, AI said:
“Among other things, (Israel) carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilians, targeted and killed medical staff, used Palestinian civilians as ‘human shields,’ and indiscriminately (used) white phosphorous (and other illegal weapons) over densely populated residential areas.” As a result, the toll was devastating.
In response, the US State Department downplayed the accusations, saying it “supports the need for accountability for any violations that may have occurred in relation to the Gaza conflict by any party,” ignoring Israel’s premeditated aggression, willfully attacking civilians and committing horrendous war crimes.
AI also condemned America’s human rights abuses, saying:
“In the counter-terrorism context, accountability for past human rights violations by the USA remains largely absent, particularly in relation to the CIA programme (sic) of secret detention. In litigation, the US administration continues to block remedy for victims of such human rights violations. 181 detainees remain in Guantanamo despite President Obama’s commitment to close the detention facility by January 2010. A new Manual for Military Commissions released by the Pentagon in April confirmed that even if a detainee is (uncharged or) acquitted by a military commission, the US administration reserves the right to continue to hold them in indefinite detention.”
Obama Administration’s Brazen Lawlessness
The latest example comes from a just revealed September 2009 secret directive about expanded covert military activity in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa or anywhere in the world to counter alleged threats. In other words, the Obama administration reserves the right to send US forces anywhere clandestinely, with or without host nation approval, to “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” designated targets by state terrorism, war, or any other means on the pretext of defending national security – a justification only scoundrels would invoke.
Italian New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC) Accuses Israel of Contaminating Gaza Soil
In its May 11 press release, NWRC (a group of independent scientists and doctors) said Israel’s 2006 and 2009 bombings left a high concentration of toxic/carcinogenic metals residue in soil and human tissue, likely to cause tumors, fertility problems, and serious harm to newborns, including deformities and genetic mutations.
Of particular concern were “wounds provoked by weapons that did not leave fragments in the bodies of the victims, a peculiarity that was pointed out repeatedly by doctors in Gaza. This shows that experimental weapons, whose effects are still to be assessed, were used.”
Some elements found are carcinogenic, including mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel and uranium (from weapons with depleted uranium). Others are potentially carcinogenic, including cobalt and vanadium, and still more are fetotoxic (harmful to fetuses), including aluminum, copper, barium, lead, and manganese. All of them in high enough amounts produce genetic mutations as well as pathogenic effects on human respiratory organs, kidneys, skin, neurological development, and other bodily functions.
The combination of environmental contamination, direct wounds or inhilations, aggravated by dire living conditions, presents a serious risk to large numbers of people, worsened by repeated armed incursions. According to Paola Manduca, NWRC’s spokesperson:
“Our study indicates an anomalous presence of toxic elements in the soil (and human tissue). It is essential to intervene at once to limit the effects of the contamination on people, animals and cultivations.”
Thus far, Israeli-Western collaborators still prevent 1.5 million Gazans from getting the critical help they need, while Moshe Kantor, president the European Jewish Congress, equated NWRC’s research to “ancient blood libels against the Jewish people, when rumors were spread about Jews poisoning wells. Today we are seeing a recurrence of all the worst excesses of anti-Semitism and diatribes that we perhaps naively thought had remained in the Dark Ages.”
The pro-Israeli NGO Monitor’s Gerald Steinberg called the accusations “designed to stigmatize Israel and erase the context of mass terror, (similar to other) false or unverifiable claims.” These are typical responses from rogues and their defenders caught red-handed.
But clear evidence they deny can’t be hidden. Nor can the growing disenchantment of young American Jews, a phenomenon Steven Rosenthal discussed in his 2001 book “Irreconcilable Differences: The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel,” citing policies that transformed the relationship from uncritical “Israelotry” to disapproval and distress. The 1982 Lebanon invasion, repressive occupation, Intifada, regular incursions, and greater concern about home-grown issues shattered American Jewish unanimity, diluting Israel’s next generation support.
On May 10, 2009, The Forward and Brandeis University Professor Jonathan D. Sarna asked why, noting “a critical difference between support for Israel in the past and today. For much of the 20th century, the Israel of American Jews – the Zion that they imagined in their minds, wrote about and worked to realize – was a mythical Zion, a utopian extension of the American dream.”
They imagined a “social commonwealth,” an “outpost of democracy, spreading America’s ideals eastward in a Jewish refuge where freedom, liberty and social justice would someday reign supreme.” Utopias, of course, are illusions, now dispelled to reveal “unlovliest warts.” Today, bloom is off the rose, unsurprising given convincing reasons to remove it.
A Final Comment
On May 26, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire paid “Tribute to the People of Gaza,” saying:
“I never cease to be amazed at the power of the human spirit to survive….In a triumph of hope over adversity and tremendous suffering, love still abides….Gaza’s people have suffered an Israeli occupation for over 40 years,” enduring wars and current medieval-type siege.
Lives have been shattered, crops destroyed, soil poisoned, and sustainability comprised, so “Where is the hope? Where is the love in the midst of such suffering and injustice?” In the will to survive; in growing worldwide solidarity; in the “Freedom Flotilla” defying the blockade to deliver aid, Maguire on it, “inspired by the people of Gaza whose courage, love and joy in welcoming us, even in the midst of such suffering gives us all hope. They represent the best of humanity,” no amount of Israeli repression can extinguish, nor their redoubtable “nonviolent struggle for human dignity, and freedom.”
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
NY Times Hypocrisy & Biased Reporting (neocon propaganda disguised as news)
http://counterpunch.org/weir02052010.html
Ethan Bronner’s Conflict With Impartiality
By ALISON WEIR
Ethan Bronner is the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. As such, he is the editor responsible for all the news coming out of Israel-Palestine. It is his job to decide what gets reported and what doesn’t; what goes in a story and what gets cut.
To a considerable degree, he determines what readers of arguably the nation’s most influential newspaper learn about Israel and its adversaries, and, especially, what they don’t.
His son just joined the Israeli army.
According to New York Times ethics guidelines, such a situation would be expected to cause significant concern. In these guidelines the Times repeatedly emphasizes the importance of impartiality.
This is considered so critical that the Times devotes considerable attention to “conflict of interest” (also called “conflict with impartiality”) problems, situations in which personal interest might cause a journalist to intentionally or unconsciously slant a story.
The Times notes that family affiliations may cause such a conflict; as an example, it explains that a daughter’s high position on Wall Street could be problematic for a business reporter.
In situations where such a familial affiliation is considered significant, the journalist may be moved to a different area of reporting.
Ethan Bronner’s situation, therefore would appear to be sticky, at the very least. It is difficult to imagine that a son fighting for the foreign nation an editor is charged with covering does not constitute such a potential conflict with impartiality. Apart from Mr. Bronner signing up with the Israeli military himself, it is difficult to imagine a clearer example of familial partisanship.
Yet, to date, Bronner and the Times have refused to address his situation. Foreign Editor Susan Chira (who may also have family allegiances to Israel) has declined to comment, other than refer people to her curt response to Electronic Intifada, which had asked her whether it was true that Bronner’s son was in the Israeli military:
“Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”
If that were, indeed, the case for Bronner’s reporting, there would undoubtedly be less concern from outside observers. There are numerous instances of accurate reporting by both Israeli and Palestinian journalists; familial and personal affiliation do not necessarily or always result in flawed journalism.
However, while both Chira and Bronner may believe he has been “scrupulously fair” in the years that he has been the paper’s top editor on Israel-Palestine (before assuming his current position as Jerusalem bureau chief in March 2008, he had been deputy foreign editor overseeing the region for four years), a number of studies and analyses contradict this contention.
In 2005 a study by If Americans Knew found that the Times had covered Israeli children’s deaths at a rate over seven times greater than it had reported on Palestinian children’s deaths – even though Palestinian children’s deaths had occurred first, in far greater numbers, and there was considerable evidence that Palestinian young people were being killed intentionally by official Israeli forces.
Princeton Professor Emeritus Richard Falk and media critic Howard Friel undertook a meticulous analysis of the Times’ coverage of the issue; the title of their book indicates their findings: “Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East.” Among others things, Falk and Friel discovered that the Times had failed to report the essential fact that all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.
A 2006 study published in the Electronic Intifada revealed that during the previous six years there had been 80 reports by respected international organizations detailing human rights violations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of these, 76 had been primarily critical of Israel, and four had been primarily critical of Palestinians. The study found that the Times had reported on two of the reports for each, giving readers an exceedingly distorted view of the real situation.
In a recent announcement expressing concern at Bronner’s apparent conflict of interest, media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) stated that “Bronner’s reporting has been repeatedly criticized by FAIR for what would appear to be a bias toward the Israeli government,” detailing specific examples.
Shifting the Blame
Several years ago the San Francisco Jewish Bulletin published an article exploring Jewish student journalists’ views on how to report on Israel-Palestine. Several said that they would find it difficult to report negative aspects about Israel, one interviewee saying that he would try to avoid printing such news. If that proved impossible, he said, he would then try to find a way “to shift the blame.”
New York Times’ news coverage often seems to follow this pattern. When the Gaza massacre of December-January is reported, Gazan rockets are inevitably mentioned. However, the fact that these largely home-made projectiles have killed far fewer Israelis in the eight years they have been used (under 20) than Israeli forces killed in a few minutes during the invasion is virtually always omitted. Likewise left out is the fact that their use began only after Israeli forces had invaded Gaza on a number of occasions, killing and injuring numerous civilians.
The Times consistently reports Israeli actions as retaliatory, despite the fact that, according to an MIT study, in at least 96 percent of ceasefires and periods of calm it was Israeli forces that had first resumed violence. In the conflict that began in fall of 2000, Israeli forces killed over 140 Palestinians before a single Israeli in Israel was killed, 91 Palestinian children (major cause of death, gunfire to the head) before a single Israeli child was killed.
An example of Bronner’s Israel-centric reporting is a November, 2009 report on prisoners. Bronner notes that the Israeli soldier captured by Palestinians (the only Israeli prisoner held by Palestinians) is “bespectacled and boyish-seeming,” while failing to mention that many of the over 7,000 Palestinians prisoners held by Israel are equally bespectacled and boyish-seeming – in fact, 300+ are not just boyish, they are children.
While Bronner includes personal information about the Israeli prisoner, he includes very few facts about Palestinian prisoners; for example, that hundreds have never been charged with a crime and that those whom Israel has found “guilty” were tried in military courts under military law in a military occupation of Palestinian land that much of the world deems illegal. While Bronner’s story contains considerable mention of “terrorism,” it fails to report that Israeli forces killed over a thousand Gazan civilians; Palestinians killed one Israeli civilian.
Interestingly, connections to the Israeli military may not be rare for journalists covering the Middle East for US media.
The husband of NPR’s longtime correspondent for the region, Linda Gradstein, was a sniper in the Israeli army (and may still be a reserve officer). “Pundit” Jeffrey Goldberg, who appears throughout the media, immigrated to Israel, became an Israeli citizen, and served in the Israeli military. (It is unknown whether he is still in the Israeli reserves; it is possible he received a dispensation from this requirement.)
The New York Times’ other major correspondent from the region, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen. While there is universal compulsory military service in Israel, we have been unable to confirm that Kershner herself and/or her family members have been or are in the Israeli military.
Breaking the silence
Recently, the Israeli organization “Breaking the Silence” published 96 testimonies by female Israeli soldiers. They describe a pervasive pattern of violence, harassment, theft, and humiliation practiced by Israeli forces against Palestinian men, women, and children. Below are excerpts:
“We caught a five-year-old… the officers just picked him up, slapped him around and put him in the jeep. The kid was crying and the officer next to me said ‘don’t cry’ and started laughing at him. Finally the kid cracked a smile – and suddenly the officer gave him a punch in the stomach. Why? ‘Don’t laugh in my face’ he said.”
“…it’s boring, so we’d create some action. We’d get on the radio, and say they threw stones at us, then someone would be arrested… There was a policewoman, she was bored, so okay, she said they threw stones at her. They asked her who threw them. ‘I don’t know, two in grey shirts, I didn’t manage to see them.’ They catch two guys with grey shirts… beat them. Is it them? ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Okay, a whole incident, people get beaten up. Nothing happened that day.”
“…two of our soldiers put him [a Palestinian child] in a jeep, and two weeks later the kid was walking around with casts on both arms and legs…they talked about it in the unit quite a lot – about how they sat him down and put his hand on the chair and simply broke it right there on the chair.”
An officer described soldiers shooting to death a nine-year-old as he was trying to run away: “They shot in the air, as they say – shot in the air in the lungs…”
In their testimonies, these soldiers emphasize that mistreatment of Palestinian civilians is widespread, routine, and known to everyone. Both the Israeli and the Palestinian press have published excerpts.
Yet, New York Times Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner has so far failed to report this information about Israeli forces.
And his son has just joined up.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and a board member of the Council for the National Interest (CNI). For more information on Ethan Bronner and his upcoming speaking tour on college campuses, join IAK’S email list. Alison can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org
SOURCES.
The New York Times Company Policy on Ethics in Journalism. This also states: “Companywide, our goal is to cover the news impartially… and to be seen as doing so. The reputation of our company rests upon that perception…”
“Susan Chira, New York Times Foreign Editor, confirms, excuses Bronner’s conflict of interest,” Israel-Palestine: The Missing Headlines,” Jan. 27, 2010
“New York Times fails to disclose Jerusalem bureau chief’s conflict of interest
Report,” The Electronic Intifada, January 25, 2010
“New York Times’ Ethan Bronner’s Conflict of Interest: Conversation with Bronner and Alternative News Sources” AlisonWeir.org, January 26, 2010
“Off the Charts: Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine – The New York Times,” If Americans Knew, 2005
“Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East,” Richard Falk, Howard Friel; ZNET Interview, May 31, 2007
“The New York Times Marginalizes Palestinian Women and Palestinian Rights,” Electronic Intifada, Nov. 17, 2006
“Does NYT’s Top Israel Reporter Have a Son in the IDF?” FAIR, January 27, 2010
“Killing Palestinians doesn’t count: Is a ceasefire breached only when an Israeli is killed?” CounterPunch, January 29, 2009
“Reigniting Violence: How Do Ceasefires End?” Huffington Post, January 6, 2009
Remember These Children
B’TSELEM – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
“The Coverage–and Non-Coverage–of Israel-Palestine,” The Link, July-August 2005, Vol 38, Issue 3
“Jewish journalists grapple with ‘doing the write thing’” Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, Nov. 23, 2001
“Prisoner Swap Appears Near in the Mideast,” Ethan Bronner, New York times, Nov. 23, 2009
“Political prisoners in Israel-Palestine,” If Americans Knew
Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association
“Israel, Hamas in mutual gestures on prisoners,” Reuters, Sept. 30, 2009.
“Female soldiers break their silence,” YNET, Jan. 20, 2010 (According to its website, “Ynetnews is part of the prominent Yedioth Media Group, which publishes Yedioth Ahronoth – Israel’s most widely-read daily newspaper)
“Testimonies of Israeli Female Soldiers Regarding Violations Against Palestinian Civilians,” International Middle East Media Center, January 30, 2010
“BREAKING THE SILENCE: Women Soldiers’ Testimonies,” 136-page booklet by the Israeli Breaking the Silence organization
Oscar Meet Leni: The New Hollywood Propaganda Award (satire)
Greg Felton – “Inglourious Basterds” wins the Leni Award!
From Politics Unspun
Posted: 25 Jan 2010 03:05 AM PST
“Good evening, and welcome to WTFN’s inaugural Oscar preview show. I’m your host Lance Boyle coming to you from Los Angeles. The ceremony may still be weeks away but there’s a lot to talk about. Joining us in The Cutting Room is veteran movie columnist and critic Miriam Kale.”
(Lance Boyle turns to face Miriam Kale. They are sitting in high-backed upholstered chairs across from each other. A black coffee table is between them and all around are enlarged stills and posters of the nominated movies.)
Before we get into the movies themselves, Miriam, what’s your opinion on the Academy’s decision to include 10 best-picture nominees instead of the usual five.
Miriam Kale: “In a word—embarrassing. It amounts to handicapping the big Hollywood studios because their movies can’t compete with the best independent and foreign films. In contrast to inventive, entertaining films like last year’s winner Slumdog Millionaire (a British film shot in India), Hollywood churns out an insipid diet of zombies, vampires, cartoonish action, angels, devils, torture, comic books, teen sex farces, sequels, prequels, remakes and bastardizations of TV shows. Recycling may be good for the planet, but in a creative medium like movies, it’s an admission of intellectual bankruptcy. All the Academy did was debase the award.”LB: “Surely, you don’t think all Hollywood films are recycled dross.”
MK: “No, of course not. Last year’s The Devil Wears Prada from 20th Century Fox was a deserving nominee, especially because of Meryl Streep’s performance as tyrannical magazine editrix Miranda Priestly. My point is that so few award-worthy movies are being made that the odds of one being nominated for, much less winning, the Best Picture Oscar are slim to none. Unfortunately, rather than rely on the studios to improve the quality of their movies, the Academy changed the rules to give the illusion that such movies are worth consideration, which is kind of fitting for an industry based on presenting illusions.”
LB: “What happened to Hollywood?”
MK: “The same thing that happened to the big U.S. automakers: it fixated on short-term profits, became afraid to take risks, and lost respect for its market. Hollywood studios still think that the average 12-year-old boy is its key demographic. On the other hand, independent and foreign filmmakers are more willing to make intelligent movies that have the grace, wit and sophistication to attract an adult audience. Such thinking does not compute in Hollywood where studios have gone to great lengths to inure filmgoers to such things as grace, wit and sophistication. Let’s face it: where else but in Hollywood could Adam Sandler have a career, or great films like Carrie, Psycho and The Manchurian Candidate be remade into inferior knockoffs?”
LB: “The Academy said the doubling of the Best Picture nominees is just an experiment. Do you think it will continue past this year?”
MK: “Sadly, yes. Once you handicap an industry it’s nearly impossible to get it to stand on its own two feet.”
LB: “Well, we’ll have to wait until 2011 to see if your prediction comes true, but right know I’d like to move on to the Academy’s newest category, one that should be getting more attention than it has so far—The Leni Riefenstahl Award for Excellence in Propaganda. First, Miriam, tell us how this award came about.”
MK: “Two years ago, the Academy came to the belated realization that holocaust movies and documentaries are getting a disproportionate amount of nominations just because of their subject matter. Moreover, many of these films are thematically repetitious, stereotypical and historically dubious. They don’t so much present historical entertainment as they do historical dogma. As such, they constitute propaganda. Of course, you can criticize any film genre, but since the U.S. movie industry is dominated by a hierarchy of Jews, many of whom support Israel, the Academy felt that holocaust movie genre was compromising the aesthetic and moral integrity of the awards. Therefore, it decided to create a special category for holocaust-themed propaganda—‘The Leni’ for short.”
LB: “Leni Riefenstahl, for those who may not remember, was a great 20th-century German filmmaker, but because she portrayed Hitler and the Nazi Party sympathetically, her movies have become scorned as fascist propaganda.
MK: “Sad, really, because her films were otherwise excellent, as evidenced by her numerous awards.”
LB: “So Miriam, what’s your pick?”
MK: “Inglourious Basterds—no contest!”
LB: “I had a feeling you’d say that, but…”
MK: “Uh, just one thing first, Lance…”
LB: “Sure, go ahead.”
MK: “The Academy created The Leni precisely to avoid the kind of tasteless spectacle we saw at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. By honouring Inglourious Basterds SAG enphasized the image of Hollywood as a holocaust propaganda factory. To all intents and purposes, SAG seems to be forcing us to respect Inglourious Basterds as a legitimate film, rather than the Grand Guignol schlock it really is. I have had to sit through scores of World War II/holocaust films in my career, and none can compare to this one’s reprehensible dishonesty. Shame on SAG!”
LB: “On the surface, it seems that Inglourious Basterds is a strange choice for The Leni, since one of the award’s defining criteria is to serve Israel by promoting sympathetic or even pathetic images of Jews. It shows Jews committing torture and dehumanizing their enemy with unapologetic, sadistic glee. Does this film not debunk the Jew-as- victim stereotype and therefore undermine its propaganda value?”
MK: “Excellent observation, Lance, and I share your ambivalence, but the needs of Israeli propaganda have changed. The Jew-as-victim shtick is still important, but Israel can no longer rely on it alone. The Internet has exploded the illusions of Israel as a poor, victimized state and bastion of democratic virtue. Israel has been forced to recognize that it can no longer pretend to be something it’s not and expect to be believed. Inglourious Basterds depicts the changing face of Israeli propaganda.”
LB: “Which is?”
MK: “A country that commits torture and dehumanizes other human beings with unapologetic, sadistic glee. This is why Inglourious Basterds is so deserving of The Leni. Even though it is yet another unnecessary remake, it normalizes Jewish cruelty to make it easier for the world to accept it in real life. I’d like to show a brief clip from early in the film that makes this point. The leader, Aldo “the Apache,” played by Brad Pitt gives orders to the basterds: (They turn to look at the film screen behind them.)
Aldo: “We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. Every man under my command owes me 100 Nazi scalps.” (The screen retracts.)
LB: “How does depicting and celebrating Jewish cruelty aid Israeli propaganda?”
MK: “If we can feel nothing for Germans who are tortured, because we have been brought up to view them as ‘evil,’ then it is easier for us not to feel anything for Arabs who are tortured, because Israel spreads the propaganda that they are ‘evil.’ For propaganda to succeed, it must control and politicize language to make independent thought impossible. Israel cannot expect to get away with an atrocity like Cast Lead if the world persists in viewing Palestinian Arabs as human beings with inalienable human rights. Inglourious Basterds helps Israel do this by making a cruel mockery of human compassion. As it is the Western world has done virtually nothing to punish Israel for its unprovoked slaughter, or demanded that Egypt stop building a wall to prevent humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.”
LB: “Let me read to you the following statement from Quentin Tarantino: ‘When you watch all the different Nazi movies, all the TV movies, it’s sad, but isn’t it also frustrating? Did everybody walk into the boxcar? Didn’t somebody do something?’ Isn’t Tarantino trying to show compassion for the Jews who are about to be murdered?”
MK: “That’s what were supposed to think, but in fact Tarantino cares far less about the Yiddish victims of Nazi Germany than he does about slaking the atavistic bloodlust of his zionist producers. Here’s what Lawrence Bender said to Tarantino: ‘As your producing partner, I thank you, and as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, motherfucker, because this movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream.’”
LB: “What a horrid, perverse thing to say! How could anyone take pleasure in torture! What did Bob and Harvey Weinstein have to say. After all, it was their production company that made the movie?”
MK: “They also got off on the Jewish revenge theme. Significantly, though, many Jews were deeply offended by it, and some even walked out of screenings! But this fact should not be seen as a failure on Tarantino’s part; rather it shows how he has evolved—or devolved, if you like—from being a self-indulgent filmmaker into a willing propagandist for Jewish fascism. Then we have to look at a possible motive for the Weinsteins. Their company is such dire financial straits that they need a major hit in the worst way. What better gold mine than a farcical Holocaust story where Jews are shown to be sadistic ‘heroes’ who go medieval on Nazis. This illustrates what I said earlier about holocaust movies getting unfair, automatic recognition.”
LB: “Clearly, this a perfect example of why The Leni is necessaary, but I’d pick up on a point you just made: How do you make the leap from Jews fighting Nazis to Jewish fascism?”
MK: “Remember Aldo’s speech? Tarantino wants us to believe that the holocaust might not have occurred if Jews has been as cruel as the Nazis. First of all, this idea monstrously stupid. You might as well say that unarmed Palestinians deserve their own fate because they aren’t as murderous and cruel as the Israeli military. Second, it is blatantly anti-Semitic, to use a pet phrase of zionist propaganda!”
LB: “You’ve lost me.”
MK: “If we take Tarantino’s mission statement at face value, then he declares that Jews, not Nazis, were ultimately responsible for the holocaust. He stands the Jew-as-victim image on its head to give us the Jew as moral coward.”
LB: “But this does undermine Israeli propaganda. The idea that Nazis are uniquely responsible for the holocaust is a fundamental dogma, as is the idea that all Jews were victims of the Nazis. Has Tarantino not given ammunition to those who challenge the official holocaust narrative?”
MK: “In a general sense, yes, but as Bender said, the film is ‘a Jewish wet dream.’ The orgy of cruelty overrides any such thoughtful consideration of what is actually being depicted. This was a major risk both for the Weinsteins and Tarantino, because if people do stop to analyze Inglourious Basterds, they will see that, in effect, it justifies the holocaust! And by justifying the holocaust, the film reinforces the propaganda that Israel is necessary.”
LB: “Let me see if I get this straight: In the old propaganda, Jews are depicted as victims of the holocaust, and Israeli exploits this image to blackmail the world into silence about its treatment of Palestinians; in the new propaganda, the holocaust is downplayed as a historical event and Jews are reinvented as kosher Nazis?!”
MK: “Well, not kosher, exactly. The Jews that supported Hitler were anything but!”
LB: “Jews that supported Hitler?”
MK: “Lance, the great failure of holocaust movies is that they present an absolute moral dichotomy between Nazis and Jews that didn’t exist. A tiny minority of Jews, zionist Jews, actively collaborated with the Nazis because they also wanted to rid Europe of its Jewish population. The only difference was that zionists wanted ‘their people’ to go to Palestine. In exchange for Nazi support, they abetted the suffering of other Jews: they betrayed the Jewish resistance, helped the Nazis sabotage negative press reports, and prevented the vast majority of Jews from fleeing to other lands. The more these non-zionist Jews suffered, the easier it would be for zionists to force the world to agree to a Jewish state after the war. In effect, zionist Jews needed the holocaust, which is why they helped Hitler fill and administer the concentration camps. So, yes, Jews supported Hitler—fascist Jews, that is.
LB: “Still, though, the Basterds are killing Nazis, right? They’re not helping them.”
MK: “True, but the Nazis are mere props. They don’t matter because we’re supposed to identify with the killers and their motives, not with their victims and their suffering. By making torture look slick and morally defensible, Inglourious Basterds perverts our sense of justice, and that’s how it serves Israeli propaganda. Just replace Nazi soldiers with Arab civilians and the film imitates life. Whether he intended to or not, Tarantino has equated the murderers of Jews with the victims of Jewish murder in such a way that the torture and gleeful sadism in each case are contextually identical.
LB: “It didn’t entirely work, though. As you said, many Jews walked out of the screenings. Even if the producers loved the movie, its propaganda value seems weak.”
MK: “Ironically, Jewish alienation enhances the film’s propaganda value because it reinforces the new propaganda. Israel knows that its most effective critics are Jews: Richard Goldstone, Richard Falk, Ilan Pappé, Philip Weiss, Akiva Eldar, Norman Finkelstein, just to name just a few. The film is a declaration that the fascist Jew is superior to the moral Jew, and that the moral Jew is an enemy of Israel. If Tarantino and the Weinsteins wanted to make a legitimate film about preventing the nazi persecution of Jews, here is the film they should have made. (As he says this, the movie screen behind them comes down and a movie poster is shown.)
LB: (He looks at the poster and is a little startled.) “I don’t think Hollywood is ready for that.”
MK: “Of course is isn’t. It would be an indictment of Hollywood’s role as a zionist collaborator as well as a devastating refutation of Israel’s right to exist. Nevertheless, I suspect that Israel’s defenders would find a way to gush over it.”
LB: “We’re almost out of time, Miriam. Any last words?”
MK: “Yes. Appearances to the contrary, Inglourious Basterds is the face of the new propaganda and deserves The Leni. Also, since Avatar will clean up at the Oscars, the Academy could not have picked a more preposterous year to expand the list of nominees.”
LB: “Let’s pick it up there next time. Thanks for coming.”
MK: “Always a pleasure.”
LB: (To camera) Thanks for joining us. For Miriam Kale and our crew, I’m Lance Boyle. Good night!”
THE END
The China Rose 