Jan. 9, 2009 (World News Trust) -- "We
are all Hamas," screamed a scrawny Mauritanian, repeatedly, as he
determinedly drew his face closer to a TV camera. Behind him, thousands
more protesters tunefully chanted similar words, chants that were heard in
different Arabic dialects, in fact in many different languages all
across the globe.
Yet, Israel, somehow is claiming victory in the media war, which it calculatedly unleashed weeks before its most violent attack on Gaza
yet. Thousands of Palestinians have been reportedly killed and wounded in the first two
weeks, starting Dec. 27, in the tiny Gaza Strip (roughly 140 square miles) densely populated with of 1.5 million people.
"Whenever Israel is bombing, it is hard to explain our position to the world," said Avi Pazner, former Israeli ambassador to Italy and France, and "one of the officials drafted in to present Israel's case to the world media," according to the Jewish Chronicle. "But at least this time everything was ready and in place."
"Fewer military officers; more women; tightly controlled messages; and ministers kept on a short leash. This was Israel's new media game plan in Operation Cast Lead," the newspaper reported.
It's always difficult to fathom Israel's
giddiness and sense of triumph as defenseless civilians are pulverized
by mostly U.S.-supplied warplanes and bombs. Even if one chooses to
empathize with Israel's
dodgy claim, parroted endlessly by the George W. Bush administration,
that the Israeli army is in a state of self-defense, one can never
fully grasp the wisdom of its military tactics.
"Fatalities in Gaza
are already over 400 and injuries close to 2,000 so far as is known.
Total Palestinian civilian casualties are 400 times greater than the
casualties incurred by Israelis," wrote three-time presidential
candidate Ralph Nader in an open letter to Bush, five days into the
Israeli onslaught. Nearly one week after the devastating airstrikes, Israel
unleashed a ground offensive which is pushing the causality figures to
unprecedented heights, made mostly of civilian victims, which by
Jan. 9, reached 795 dead and over 3,000 wounded.
Much of Israel's war machine is financed, manufactured and supplied by the United States. U.S. financial and military generosity has served as the backbone of all of Israel's
wars against its neighbors, including the Palestinians. In Israel's war
against Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the U.S.
rushed 'emergency' military supplies, including cluster bombs to the
Israeli army, allowing the latter to ensure the demise of its arch
enemy: thousands of dead and wounded Lebanese civilians.
In the ongoing war against Gaza, neither the U.S.' "dedication to the security of Israel," nor Israel's
dedication to inflicting maximum harm on civilians have been in any way
altered. While Bush brazenly chastised Hamas and the Palestinians for
the death wrought on them by Israel, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama had nothing to say.
"The scale of bloodshed in Gaza
over five days is the same as if almost 2,000 Israelis had been killed
and 9,000 wounded in the same period. Imagine the consequences for Israel
in such an event," wrote author and former BBC correspondent Deepak
Tripathi. Would Obama find the staggering number worthy of cutting
short his Hawaii vacation, even for a brief comment, if the tables were turned? Candidate of change, he said.
But Israel is winning the media war, reports Israel;
a peculiar claim by any standards. If the reference is made to a
"victory' that helped win over mainstream U.S. media, one has to wonder
if the corporate media has ever expressed any sympathy for Hamas, or
any resisting Palestinian faction, be it secular, socialist or Islamist?
The
opposite has always been true. Any violent Palestinian response to the
Israeli occupation and its inherit violence has been dubbed "terrorist"
for decades, even if Palestinians were targeting Israeli soldiers or
paramilitary settlers. Aside from allowing a 'moderate' Palestinian
commentator an occasional limited space to write a watered down op-ed,
now and then -- which serves as a feel-good moment that demonstrates the
'objectivity' of U.S. media -- the pro-Israel mantra has defined every
major American newspaper in every city in every state. That requires a
separate discussion, but the persistent question remains: what is Israel winning exactly?
More Israeli women are stating Israel's case to the media, according to reports. The strategy is both sexist and underhanded. Following the Lebanon war, Israeli bikini models flooded U.S.
men magazines exhibiting their barely covered bodies. Former Miss
Israel, model Gal Gadot defended her nude photos, promoted partly by
the Israeli consulate in New York as her attempt to help "improve Israel's war-torn image," reported the New York Post in June, 2007. Now as Israeli bombs are lightening the sky of Gaza, similar tactics are underway, in Maxim and other magazines.
Kadima
leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni took its message to YouTube,
conveying the same redundant but "tightly controlled" misinformation,
that attempts to explain why imprisoning, starving, then senselessly
bombing 1.5 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians is good for
world peace, for democracy, for security, for the future of the region
and the world.
But the fact is, Israel never won the media war in the United States
for, frankly, there was never one to begin with. Yet somehow, millions
of people around the world managed to read through the filters, the
propaganda, the perplexing logic, the Maxim cover pages, and took to
the streets in a collective act of passion and dismay, without
billion-dollar media crafters "tightly controlling" their every move,
scripting their chants or directing their hoarse voices: We are all
Palestinians and "with our souls, with our blood, we will die for you
Gaza."
What has Israel
won exactly, aside from the haunting images of Palestinian youngsters
in UN schools, homes and hospitals, mutilated, some silent and others
screaming? This is no victory, but a brief illusion of one. As for the
long-term repercussions, that is a whole new story. Israeli bombs over Lebanon
in 1982 gave rise to Hezbollah, and its war of 2006 turned a small,
resisting militant movement into a major powerbroker that will
certainly help shape the future of Lebanon. Israel is now doing the same in Gaza. A victory, indeed.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net)
is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been
published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the
world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A
Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London).