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The June 25 Palestinian fighters' raid
on an Israeli military post near the Gaza-Egypt border has sent
Israel "scrambling to defend itself," the voice of
a BBC news reporter declared on the evening news.
The report was followed by
an unchallenging interview with a spokesman for the Israeli foreign
ministry, then another with an Israeli daily newspaper reporter
in Washington. No Palestinian voice was heard for days. The two
Israelis communicated the same, tired, albeit ominous discourse
that seems to understand, thus convey any event based on the
misguided assumption that only Israeli lives matter.
There was hardly any international
news source in English--including those originating from Middle
Eastern Arab countries--that accepted the Palestinian predawn
attack on the Israeli military base as a clear act of retaliation
and a dignified one at that. After all, Israel has murdered scores
of Palestinian civilians in the last few weeks, while Palestinians
have refrained from following the same course, instead targeting
the same Israeli soldiers who have inflicted untold hurt on the
residents of Gaza.
Could it be possible that Middle
East arms of major news media have mistakenly overlooked what
has been happening in the Gaza Strip since the supposed Israeli
withdrawal in September 2005?
It all started with extremely
loud sonic booms, mock bombardments and Israeli fighter jets
flying low over the overpopulated and impoverished Gaza Strip.
Palestinians called on the international community to interfere
to stop Israeli provocations. Their calls, as usual, fell on
deaf ears
With such scare tactics, Israel
wished to convey to Palestinians a loud and clear message: there
is nothing for you to celebrate; were still the masters of your
destiny, and unlike the South Lebanon 2000 withdrawal, we are
leaving Gaza triumphantly, and possibly just temporarily.
Soon, Israel's mock attacks
became more genuine, while the international community continued
to turn a blind eye to what would soon become another routine
in 'liberated' Gaza. As far the media was concerned, there was
hardly much to report, since Hamas, along with other Palestinian
factions refused to respond to the provocations with violent
retaliation, confining themselves to a unilateral ceasefire they'd
reached with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo earlier.
Fed up the with the Palestinian
response--or lack thereof--Israeli officials coupled their scare
tactics with menacing, specific threats, with a bottom line that
no Palestinian was immune from Israeli targeted assassinations.
Indeed, they lived up to their words.
In an interesting turn of events,
Hamas won the parliamentary elections in January 2006 in an astounding
display of transparency and democratic process. John Hughes of
the Christian Science Monitor echoed the mainstream media line
that something went horribly wrong in the Middle East and that
the "Hamas victory is a setback" to whatever imaginary
peace process Hughes knows of.
Comforted by the unconditional
support of the US government, Israel's violent intimidation and
scare tactics became much more abound. This time however, the
Israeli war on the Palestinians became an extension of an international
one, led by the United States along with the ever-compliant United
Nations and European Union. While Western donors held back their
aid to the point of creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the
Occupied Territories, the US led a campaign of political coercion--in
a rare display of unity between Democrats and Republicans and
all of "Israel's friends" in the media.
Western media quickly coined
various mantras to justify why ordinary Palestinians must suffer
for choosing a parliament in a democratic election: because Hamas
refuses to recognize Israel and renounces violence, among other
pretexts that seem to fit so well in Israel's political agenda.
Top Israeli government advisor Dov Weissglas, optimistic as he
had always been, wished to see the humor in starving Palestinians.
(The economic siege) "is like an appointment with a dietician.
The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but they won't starve
to death."
Apparently Israel was enjoying
the show: getting the world to punish an occupied nation while
completely losing sight of Israel's colonial expansion in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem is the most fitting manifestation
of the proverbial dream come true. Of course, Israel can never
be content with such limited roles. It was time to turn up the
heat one more notch; the sporadic violence was about to be upgraded
to intense violence, reaching Palestinian civilians of all ages.
In the matter of seven weeks, ending on June 21 with the killing
of a pregnant woman, her unborn child and her brother and injuring
14 of the same family--Israel had killed 90 Palestinians, the
great majority of whom were civilians. They included the killing
of seven members of the same family while picnicking at a beach
near the small Gaza town of Beit Lahia on June 9.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir
Peretz justified the wanton killing of civilians, along with
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as an unintended mistake, vowing to
continue to fight 'terrorists' who fire homemade rockets against
the neighboring Israeli town of Sderot. In the same period in
which 90 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more maimed and
wounded, Israeli army radio reported one injury resulting from
rocket fire. No other source has confirmed the lone injury claim.
However, Western media, including
the BBC, is incessantly determined to equate blowing up Palestinian
families with Israeli allegations of Palestinian rocket attacks:
it's a tit for tat, or so it seems. It's equally valid, according
to ignorant media dictates, to starve a nation because their
government's refuses to recognize its military occupier.
The US administration defended
the June 9 murder of a Gaza family as an Israeli right to defend
itself. BBC International refused to see the Palestinian attack
on an Israeli military installation on June 25, as a Palestinian
right to self-defense. To the contrary, it was Israel who once
again went "scrambling to defend itself". It's unclear
how many Palestinians must die before Israel delivers a convincing
"blow" to its unruly neighbors, and before life goes
back to the way it was intended to be: Palestinians being starved,
humiliated and slaughtered at the hands of Israel in their dissolute
Gaza ghettos. Only then, shall Israel be safe once more.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
