Gaza: This Shameful Media Coverage, Part II

Picking up where we left off: 

So far, Palestinian fire has killed one Israeli on the other side of the barrier that makes blockaded Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison.

But instead of demanding a halt to Israel’s campaign of collective punishment against what is still illegally occupied territory, the western powers have blamed the victims for fighting back. If it weren’t for Hamas’s rockets fired out of Gaza’s giant holding pen, they insist, all of this bloodletting would end.

We've already talked about the blockade in Part I.  But it's worth pointing out three things.  

First, the absurdity and ignorance of the suggestion that a naval blockade that has actually prevented more powerful arms from reaching Hamas is "collective punishment" (which is illegal under international law).  International law clearly and expressly allows blockades, particularly to prevent weapons from reaching a belligerent.  And by definition, blockades operate over a territory as a whole, and are not limited to combatants within that territory.  So as a matter of international law, blockades (which are legal) are not collective punishment (which is illegal).  Unless Milne wants to suggest that Israel could effectively blockade only combatants - perhaps Hamas members would be kind enough to allow themselves to be surrounded at all times by their own mini-cordon of IDF soldiers to prevent them from obtaining weapons? - the blockade of Gaza is not collective punishment. 

Second, the insanity of suggesting that Israel ought to be or even could be pressured to lift the blockade (which is one of Hamas' "conditions" for a cease fire).  Right now, the blockade is combining with Iron Dome to prevent Hamas from being able to kill Israeli civilians.  Open the door to Hamas receiving weapons shipments from Iran - which is what lifting the blockade would do - would dramatically increase the likelihood of Hamas achieving the massacre of Israeli civilians that it has been trying for and openly advocating.  Israel isn't going to commit suicide, and folks like Milne who are hoping for that are doomed to disappointment.

Third, and most fundamentally, Milne's sneer that ending the rocket fire would not end "all of this bloodletting" runs smack into the hardest contradiction of all: incontrovertable facts.  Israel has now twice accepted cease-fire proposals and actually ceased its fire the first time while waiting for word from Hamas that it, too, would cease firing.  Israel only resumed firing when Hamas rejected the cease fire proposals.  

In other words, "[i]f it weren't for Hamas' rockets fired out of Gaza," then "all this bloodletting would [have already] end[ed]."  

“No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Barack Obama declared, echoed by a mostly pliant media.

Mostly because its true.  Indeed, while bristling at the President's comments, not even Milne can bring himself to suggest that President Obama was wrong.

Perhaps it’s scarcely surprising that states which have themselves invaded and occupied a string of Arab and Muslim countries in the past decade should take the side of another occupier they fund and arm to the hilt.

 Yes.  States like Egypt, notorious for "invad[ing] and occup[ying] a string of Arab and Muslim countries" and for "fund[ing] and arm[ing] Israel."  Notoriously anti-Palestinian, pro-Israeli statesmen like . . . Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Palestinian UN Human Rights Council representative Ibrahim Khreisheh.

Abbas had this to say to Hamas: "What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?"  And Khreisheh was candid in acknowledging both Israel's efforts to warn civilians and that Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel are war crimes:

I am not a candidate in any Palestinian election, so I don't need to win popularity among the Palestinians.  The missiles that are now being launched against Israel - each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity, whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets.  What Israel does against Palestinian civilians also constitutes crimes against humanity.  With regard to crimes of war under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the settlements, the checkpoints, the Judaization, the arrests, and so on, we find ourselves on very solid ground.  However, there is a Palestinian weakness with regard to the other issue.  Therefore, targeting civilians - be it one civilian or a thousand - is considered a crime against humanity.  ... Please note that many of our people in Gaza appeared on TV and said that the Israeli army warned them to evacuate their homes before the bombardment.  In such a case, if someone is killed, the law considers it a mistake, rather than intentional killing ...  Therefore, people should know more before they talk emotionally about appealing to the ICC. [Translation from Arabic by MEMRI]

Somehow, Milne's criticism that President Obama isn't "more Palestinian than the Palestinians" on this issue doesn't seem all that persuasive.  But maybe that's just me?

Back to Milne:

But the idea that Israel is responding to a hail of rockets out of a clear blue sky takes “narrative framing” beyond the realm of fantasy. In fact, after the deal that ended Israel’s last assault on Gaza in 2012, rocketing from Gaza fell to its lowest level for 12 years.

Again, there are multiple things worth pointing out here.

First, Milne's point that "rocketing from Gaza fell to its lowest level for 12 years" after the last Gaza war directly contradicts those who argue that the use of military force in Gaza is pointless.  To the contrary, Israel's past use of military force in Gaza has resulted in temporary but significant reduction in rocket fire.

Second, Milne's argument seems to be that a "low level of rocket fire from Gaza" is "good enough"; after all, Palestinians only launched a little north of 100 rockets at Israeli civilians in 2013; what nation wouldn't be OK with that?

Third, Milne is entirely missing the point.  It's not that Palestinian rockets are "arriving out of a clear blue sky" - it's that it is legally and morally irrelevant what prompted them.  As Khreisheh forthrightly noted, each rocket fired at Israel is a war crime, because it is aimed at Israeli civilians rather than at military targets.  As such, it doesn't matter whether you think the Palestinians are an oppressed population unjustly suffering under the heel of colonialism or a group that has had and ignored multiple opportunities to live in peace and security (such as when Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005).  Either way, no state can or should be expected to live with rocket assaults on its civilian population, and any state suffering such assaults has a legal right and moral obligation to prevent them.  

The latest violence is supposed to have been triggered by the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank in June, for which Hamas denied responsibility. But its origin clearly lies in the collapse of US-sponsored negotiations for a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the spring.

That was followed by the formation of a “national reconciliation” government by the Fatah and Hamas movements, whose division has been a mainstay of Israeli and US policy. Israeli incursions and killings were then stepped up, including attacks on Palestinian civilians by armed West Bank settlers. In May, two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead by the Israeli army with barely a flicker of interest outside the country.

No.  It was triggered by increased rocket fire from Gaza, including a barrage of 100 rockets in a single night for which Hamas accepted responsibility. 

(Actually, "accepted responsibility" is a misnomer.  Accepting responsibility implies an acknowledgement that the act in question was wrong.  We don't say "I accept responsibility for having donated to Haiti quake relief efforts," or "I accept responsibility for having been kind to others."  We accept responsibility for errors or bad acts.  Hamas doesn't "accept responsibility" for attacks on Israeli civilians: it proudly claims credit for them.  

And as for that kidnapping?  Here's what a senior Hamas "political" leader had to say about it.  And the two suspects - whose car was used in the kidnapping and went to ground that very day (i.e. before being identified as suspects) were Hamas members).

Maybe what Milne means to say here is that Israeli actions "led" to the rocket barrage that triggered the invasion.  The merits of that position can be debated (and Hamas' official position was that the rocket barrage was not due to any of the arguments made by Milne, but to the death of seven Hamas operatives in a tunnel to Israel the prior morning - deaths which Israel's military denies it had anything to do with).  But again, it doesn't matter.  Not a single thing on Milne's list justifies the firing of rockets at civilians.  Not one.  Milne's implicit support for war crimes, and the Guardian's willingness to publish that support, is stomach turning.

It’s now clear the Israeli government knew from the start that its own kidnapped teenagers had been killed within hours. But the news was suppressed while a #BringBackOurBoys campaign was drummed up and a sweeping crackdown launched against Hamas throughout the West Bank.

And this is a simple falsehood.  Israel had access to a 911 call made by one of the boys, in which gunshots were heard.  You can listen to it yourself.  While this recording indicated a high likelihood that the boys had been murdered, there was no certainty, and without certainty Israel had to act on the assumption that the boys were still alive in order to sustain any possibility of rescue.

Over 500 activists were arrested and more than half a dozen killed – along with a Palestinian teenager burned to death by settlers. Binyamin Netanyahu’s aim was evidently to signal that whatever deal Hamas had signed with Mahmoud Abbas would never be accepted by Israel. 

The only appropriate response to this paragraph is outrage.

1) Hamas members - all of them - should be arrested.  They are members of a terror organization that proudly announces its attacks on civilians.  Their arrests are no more objectionable than would be the arrests of al Qaeda "activists" or Hezbollah "activists" or ISIS "activists." 

2) The Palestinian teenager in question - Muhammed Abu Khdeir, who deserves to be named and remembered - was not killed "along with" the Hamas members rounded up or killed by the IDF.  Nor was he killed by "settlers" - though I suppose Milne considers all Israelis "settlers."  Of the three Israelis indicted (they have confessed to the crime and reenacted it), one was a 29 year old man from a settlement.  The other 2 lived in "pre-67" Israel - Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh.  Two - including the settler - have a history of mental illness. 

Abu Khdeir himself was (appropriately) designated a terror victim by Israel's ministry of defense, enabling Israel to try his killers not just for murder, but for terrorism as well.

3) Prime Minister Netanyahu's "aim" in cracking down on Hamas was obvious: to suppress a terror organization and prevent it from replicating in the West Bank what it has created in Gaza - a terrorist state and rocket launch pad.  For both the Palestinians' and Israelis' sakes, that is a goal all people of good will should share.

Gaza had nothing to do with the kidnapping, but Israeli attacks were also launched on the strip and Hamas activists killed. It was those killings and the West Bank campaign that led to Hamas resuming its rocket attacks – and in turn to Israel’s devastating bombardment.

Now here, in contrast, we have a true "clear blue sky" framing.  Apparently Israel - for no reason at all - decided to kill Hamas members in Gaza.  No mention of rocket launches from Gaza during that period, to which Israel was responding.  Here's how notoriously pro-Israel al Jazeera put it when reporting on those Israeli strikes on Gaza in June:

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians who were members of the Tawhid Brigades, a conservative group unaffiliated with Hamas, according to Palestinian security officials and fighters from the group.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief reporters and the armed men because they operate underground.

The security officials had initially said the two fighters were members of a group allied with Hamas that often fires rockets at Israel.

Since the beginning of June, more than 60 rockets have been launched from Gaza towards Israel -- more than four times the amount in May -- and 28 of the rockets hit Israeli territory, the military said.

So no, Gaza had nothing to do with the kidnappings.  Accordingly, that's not why Israel fired on Gaza in June.  Israel fired on Gaza in June because that's where the rockets were coming from.

Hamas is now blamed for refusing to accept a ceasefire plan cooked up by Netanyahu and his ally, the Egyptian President Sisi, who overthrew Hamas’s sister organisation the Muslim Brotherhood last year and has since tightened the eight-year siege of Gaza.

Yes.  Hamas is being blamed for refusing to accept a cease fire, since - as discussed above - it would have "ended all this bloodletting".  Why didn't they take it?  Milne explains

But having already suffered so much, many Gazans believe no further truce should be agreed without the lifting of the illegal blockade which has reduced the strip to hunger and beggary and effectively imprisoned its population.

In other words, here is Hamas' negotiating position: "We will keep shooting rockets at you until you remove the [legal] blockade that prevents us from obtaining better rockets."  Particularly given the effectiveness of Israel's Iron Dome defenses against the current Hamas rocket offensive, and the military successes Israel is achieving in its own attacks on Gaza, I'm sure you are just as bewildered as I am about why Israel isn't agreeing to Hamas' terms.

After all, it's usually the party doing worst in a war that gets to set the terms of settlement, right?

As the independent Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti puts it, the Egyptian proposal was a “game” Israel will now use to escalate the war. Some sense of what can now be expected was given by the Israeli reserve major general Oren Shachor, who explained: “If we kill their families, that will frighten them.” 

Or, to put it another way - having given Hamas an opportunity for a cease fire and been rejected, and Hamas' cease fire demands being completely absurd, Israel is left with no choice but to continue prosecuting the war until (a) they believe they have achieved their military goals; or (b) Hamas sees the writing on the wall and drops its absurdist demands.

On Shachor, all that needs to be said is that he is a retired general who does not make or speak for Israeli military policy.  His comments are abhorrent, and (as discussed in Part I) not reflective of Israel's military conduct.

And since this is again reaching novel length, we'll cut Part II here, and get to the conclusion of the article in another post.