Ramzy Baroud's Blog

On February 12, 2008, Arab League information ministers issued a communique
outlining 'tough' guidelines for Arab satellite channels. The new guidelines
specifically prohibited the broadcasting of negative reporting of heads of
state, religious or national figures. 

In following days, a massive campaign of denunciation, led by those who felt
targeted by the new policy, joined by various rights organizations, ensued. The
communiqué was unfair, they argued, because it was largely political, and aimed
at protecting from censure the very individuals and institutions that have
brought about many of the ailments afflicting Arab societies and governments. Of
course, they were correct. 

How can the media in the Arab world fulfil its duties - as a platform from
which civil society is able to monitor the state, and hold to account those who
deviate from the principles of the relevant social and political contracts –
under such ‘guidelines’? 

While only two countries – Qatar and Lebanon – refused to sign, many
intellectuals, journalists and rights advocates protested. However, Abd A-Rahman
A-Rashid, general manager of the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite channel, told
the Media Line website that the Arab ministers’ guidelines were largely
ineffectual and would not stop the spread of information. 

The story in the West naturally generated immense interest; for once again
Arabs were wrangling with issues of freedom of expression, a value for which
successive US administrations have supposedly advocated.

More, forums were abruptly held where the official transgressions of Arab
governments were candidly chastised. In its monthly policy discussion, the
Brookings Centre Doha raised the question: ‘Forward or backward? The 2008 Arab
satellite TV charter and the future of Arab Media, society and democracy’.
Speakers included Saad Eddin Ibrahim, professor of Political Sociology at the
American University in Cairo, Ibrahim Helal, deputy managing director, Al
Jazeera English, and Michael Ratney, Charge d’Affaires at the American
embassy. The session was chaired by Hady Amr, director of the Brookings Doha
Centre and fellow at the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings
Institute. The Saban Center at the Brookings Institute is headed by Martin
Indyk, former US Ambassador to Israel, and despite his personal dedication to
the cause of Israel, remains one of the most frequent guests on Arab TV
stations. 

What is painted to look like a classic conflict between corrupt governments and
their fed up constituencies, the former labouring to gag the latter’s freedom
of expression, is a lot more convoluted. It is not that the corrupt elites are
not indeed labouring to suppress dissent, or that the suppressed multitudes are
not fiercely fighting back. In fact, it’s this relationship that constitutes
the push and pull which came to define Arab media in the first place. But who
has decided that Arab satellite stations – or pan Arab print publications or
other forms of media – represent in any way the interests of Arab masses, or
have improved in any measurable way the welfare of Arab people, especially the
poorer, discounted classes? 

More, how could entities such as the Brookings Institute and its Saban Centre
– known for holding and promoting policies that hardly deviate from that of
the US administration, if not its most rigid qualities - become themselves
mediators for such freedoms, which if genuinely granted would prove most harmful
to the US administration and its interests in the Arab world? 

So is the true state of Arab media, marred with confusion, uncertainty and
mixed messages. 

Since the advent of Aljazeera in 1996, something fundamental morphed in the
world of Arab media. We have heard this argument numerous times and for good
reason. True, but rash conclusions of ‘the Aljazeera revolution’ no longer
suffice. 

Aljazeera was not the only media forum that allowed for the expression of
tabooed views, while censoring others. Egypt’s Voice of the Arabs, during the
Nasser years, for example, decried reactionary Arab regimes left and right, and
it too enjoyed a large following amongst Arab masses from the gulf to the ocean
and beyond. Media technology has advanced immensely since then, and Aljazeera is
packed with less pan-Arab rhetoric and is much more discreet in its political
leanings. The fact that Aljazeera refrains from any serious criticism of Qatar
and is much more candid in targeting specific Arab countries is overlooked by
many since, frankly the world of Qatari politics is relatively trivial in the
greater scheme of things. 

Since then, numerous copycats have sprung up across the Arab world. Satellite
stations with or without political agendas have grown out of control and now
number over 500. This was accompanied by a massive surge of newspapers and
glossy magazines, most offering next to nothing in terms of content value. It
was a media revolution that lacked true substance, thus impacting little the
collective self-awareness of Arab peoples or the Arab individual’s need for
self-assertion in a time of considerable global transformation. 

Those who are on good terms with the official authorities can easily be granted
a license, and thus a new TV station or new magazine is welcomed into the fold.
Those who are not would only need to relocate to London or another, preferably
hostile Arab capital and resume his media ‘mission.’ Of course, funds for
such endeavours are available on conditions, either to refrain from bashing
certain entities and giving free hand to censure others, or to stay away from
politics altogether. 

With cheap American TV content and their Arab imitators, content per se is
never an issue. It’s quality content that poses a problem. To pretend that
such low quality programs haven’t deeply scarred Arab societies and their
cultural and societal identities is to defy reality, but that is for another
discussion. 

The fact is that Arab media is largely political, with political, religious,
nationalistic, even tribal leanings, affiliations and priorities. While some
media have done less harm than others, none represent the untainted exception. 

The Arab foreign ministers communiqué can be understood as a call for a truce
between various Arab governments: you hold your journalists back from attacking
me, I’ll hold mine. It’s neither a call for the suppression of civil society
nor the gagging of free expression: the former is largely suppressed and truly
free expression never fully existed. 

Two points remain to be made; one is that dominating media in the West is
afflicted by similar ailments, themselves owned by big corporations that pander
to their respective official authorities, with the US being the most notable
example. 

And two, a truly independent media that is completely free from the whims of
individuals or those holding the financial or political leverage is only
possible in theory. What civil society usually aspires to achieve, however, are
mediums that are less bias, less totalitarian and as representative of the whole
as possible. This can only be achieved by collective struggle, organization and
pressure, using home-grown platforms, as opposed to imported ones. 

When civil society organizes and speaks out, neither a communiqué by a few
ministers, nor a decree by a totalitarian ruler can silence it. 

Just days after the Hamas-Fatah clash last June in Gaza, Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas looked firm and composed as he shook hands with members
of his new emergency government. He made sure his move appeared as legitimate as
possible, issuing decrees that outlawed the armed militias of Hamas, and also
suspended consequential clauses in the Palestinian Basic Law, which had thus far
served as a constitution.

The Basic Law stipulates that the Palestinian parliament must approve of any
government for it to be constitutional. Abbas simply decreed that such a clause
was no longer valid, effectively robbing Palestinians of one of their greatest
collective achievements — democracy.

This system, when truly representative, is indeed precious and meaningful.
Considering the impossible circumstances under which Palestinian democracy in
particular was spawned and nurtured — military occupation, international
pressure, extreme poverty — it was also deeply historic. Contrary to the
conventional wisdom that followed the US occupation in Iraq, Arabs showed
themselves as ultimately capable of carrying out democratic process.

Unfortunately, the achievement of democracy cannot guarantee its preservation.

Almost immediately after Hamas’ sizable election victory in January 2006,
both local and international forces scrambled to suffocate and reverse the
outcome of this vote. Conceited intellectuals wrote about the incompatibility of
Islam and democracy, politicians decried Hamas’ victory as signalling the
encroachment of militarism and extremism, and world leaders clambered to
affiliate themselves with the ‘legitimate’ Abbas, as opposed to the
‘illegitimate’ Hamas. Indeed, it was a mockery. 

For Israel, the clash between Abbas’ Fatah and Islamic Hamas was a golden
opportunity, one that is comparable to the benefits gleaned from another
opportune moment, the terrorist attacks of September 11. The latter was recently
— and not for the first time — described by Israeli Likud leader Benjamin
Netanyahu as good for Israel (Haaretz, April 16).

The Palestinian fight was also good for Israel; no longer would the nuisance of
Palestinian democracy compete with Israel’s self-ascribed “only democracy in
the Middle East.” More, Palestinians were once again depicted as the unruly
mob, incapable of producing responsible peacemakers and creating an environment
of ‘security’, which the state of Israel so often claims to covet. 

As for Abbas and his ministers, they knew too well that the newfound
American-Israeli fondness for them was conditional. After all they are the same
people, holding the same position and playing the same roles that they have
always played. They are the ministers, aides, friends and officials of late
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who were, like their president,
repeatedly shunned. They also understood well their new appeal in representing
the antithesis to Hamas. Rather than rejecting the role of the stooges, Abbas’
cabinet ministers played along. 

Suddenly the conflict that was hitherto seen as one between Israel and the
Palestinians became one between Abbas and his supporters (Israel and the US) on
one hand, and Hamas alone on the other. The problem as reported in mainstream
media ceased being about settlements, occupation, and violations of
international law, but rather about the anti-democratic ‘forces of darkness’
in Gaza as opposed to the forces of peace and civilization in Ramallah and Tel
Aviv. To re-enforce these highly deceptive images with ‘action’, Abbas and
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert initiated their quest for illusive peace.
This started in Annapolis and was followed by regular, although equally futile
‘rounds’ of talks in Israel. Few expected such meets to yield any meaningful
outcomes; they were clearly intended only to further isolate Hamas and
underscore the Abbas-Israeli alliance. 

In order for the show to go on, Hamas and Fatah will not be allowed to
reconcile, at least not until Israel and the US decide to change tactics. Of
course this doesn’t mean that there is no basis for reconciliation.
Palestinian factionalism equals capitulation in the face of a harsh, emboldened
enemy. Recently we have seen the 2005 Cairo Agreement, the 2007 Mecca Agreement
and the March 2008 Yemen Agreement. But to win the approval of Israel in the
West Bank — and to avoid the tragic fate of Gaza — Abbas is not interested
in the points of agreement, but rather in the points of discord. Aljazeera
reported that Azzam al-Ahmad, the Fatah member who signed the Hamas-Fatah
memorandum in March, was chastised openly for keeping Abbas “in the dark”,
regarding the nature of the agreement. Al-Ahmad insisted that Abbas knew exactly
what the agreement stipulated. It seems that a document that merely highlights a
course of action towards full reconciliation between the two parties was too
much for Israel to accept. Not even the blood of over 120 Palestinians in Gaza,
who were killed in the matter of six days in early March, seemed a strong enough
motive to override Israel’s threats of Palestinian unity signalling the end of
the futile ‘peace process’.

And, of course, there is the money trail. Just days before the Yemen fiasco,
the US had agreed to transfer $150 million in support to the Palestinian
Authority as “part of past pledges to boost President Mahmoud Abbas’
government.” Boost against whom? Surely not Israel.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad reportedly said it was “the largest
sum of assistance of any kind to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority by
any donor in one tranche since the Palestinian Authority’s inception (in
1994).” Heart-rending indeed, Mr Fayyad, but one must wonder how much of the
money will go to feed the starving in Gaza, or rehabilitate the refugee camps of
the West Bank? 

While such noble efforts by the UN’s John Dugard, former US President Jimmy
Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu have brought much needed attention to the plight
of Palestinians and Gazans in particular, PA officials are too busy attending
donor’s conferences and issuing empty statements which few even bother to
read. They act as if they are a neutral party caught in the middle of religious
fanatics and Israel. Their fight no longer seems even remotely related to
Palestine or its people. These are hardly the qualities of any liberation
movement or leadership anywhere, in any period of history, recent or otherwise.
Neither Abbas nor Fayyad are likely to be the exception.

I still vividly remember my father’s face - wrinkled, apprehensive, warm - as he last wished me farewell fourteen years ago. He stood outside the rusty door of my family’s home in a Gaza refugee camp wearing old yellow pyjamas and a seemingly ancient robe. As I hauled my one small suitcase into a taxi that would take me to an Israeli airport an hour away, my father stood still. I wished he would go back inside; it was cold and the soldiers could pop up at any moment. As my car moved on, my father eventually faded into the distance, along with the graveyard, the water tower and the camp. It never occurred to me that I would never see him again.

I think of my father now as he was that day. His tears and his frantic last words: “Do you have your money? Your passport? A jacket? Call me the moment you get there. Are you sure you have your passport? Just check, one last time…”

My father was a man who always defied the notion that one can only be the outcome of his circumstance. Expelled from his village at the age of 10, running barefoot behind his parents, he was instantly transferred from the son of a landowning farmer to a penniless refugee in a blue tent provided by the United Nations in Gaza. Thus, his life of hunger, pain, homelessness, freedom-fighting, love, marriage and loss commenced.

The fact that he was the one chosen to quit school to help his father provide for his now tent-dwelling family was a huge source of stress for him. In a strange, unfamiliar land, his new role was going into neighbouring villages and refugee camps to sell gum, aspirin and other small items. His legs were a testament to the many dog bites he obtained during these daily journeys. Later scars were from the shrapnel he acquired through war.

As a young man and soldier in the Palestinian unit of the Egyptian army, he spent years of his life marching through the Sinai desert. When the Israeli army took over Gaza following the Arab defeat in 1967, the Israeli commander met with those who served as police officers under Egyptian rule and offered them the chance to continue their services under Israeli rule. Proudly and willingly, my young father chose abject poverty over working under the occupier’s flag. And for that, predictably, he paid a heavy price. His two-year-old son died soon after.

My oldest brother is buried in the same graveyard that bordered my father’s house in the camp. My father, who couldn’t cope with the thought that his only son died because he couldn’t afford to buy medicine or food, would be found asleep near the tiny grave all night, or placing coins and candy in and around it.

My father’s reputation as an intellectual, his obsession with Russian literature, and his endless support of fellow refugees brought him untold trouble with the Israeli authorities, who retaliated by denying him the right to leave Gaza.

His severe asthma, which he developed as a teenager was compounded by lack of adequate medical facilities. Yet, despite daily coughing streaks and constantly gasping for breath, he relentlessly negotiated his way through life for the sake of his family. On one hand, he refused to work as a cheap labourer in Israel. “Life itself is not worth a shred of one’s dignity,” he insisted. On the other, with all borders sealed except that with Israel, he still needed a way to bring in an income. He would buy cheap clothes, shoes, used TVs, and other miscellaneous goods, and find a way to transport and sell them in the camp. He invested everything he made to ensure that his sons and daughter could receive a good education, an arduous mission in a place like Gaza.

But when the Palestinian uprising of 1987 exploded, and our camp became a battleground between stone-throwers and the Israeli army, mere survival became Dad’s new obsession. Our house was the closest to the Red Square, arbitrarily named for the blood spilled there, and also bordered the ‘Martyrs’ Graveyard’. How can a father adequately protect his family in such surroundings? Israeli soldiers stormed our house hundreds of times; it was always him who somehow held them back, begging for his children’s safety, as we huddled in a dark room awaiting our fate. “You will understand when you have your own children,” he told my older brothers as they protested his allowing the soldiers to slap his face. Our ‘freedom-fighting’ dad struggled to explain how love for his children could surpass his own pride. He grew in my eyes that day.

It’s been fourteen years since I last saw my father. As none of his children had access to isolated Gaza, he was left alone to fend for himself. We tried to help as much as we could, but what use is money without access to medicine? In our last talk he said he feared he would die before seeing my children, but I promised that I would find a way. I failed.

Since the siege on Gaza, my father’s life became impossible. His ailments were not ‘serious’ enough for hospitals crowded with limbless youth. During the most recent Israeli onslaught, most hospital spaces were converted to surgery wards, and there was no place for an old man like my dad. All attempts to transfer him to the better equipped West Bank hospitals failed as Israeli authorities repeatedly denied him the required permit.

“I am sick, son, I am sick,” my father cried when I spoke to him two days before his death. He died alone on March 18, waiting to be reunited with my brothers in the West Bank. He died a refugee, but a proud man nonetheless.

My father’s struggle began 60 years ago, and it ended a few days ago. Thousands of people descended to his funeral from throughout Gaza, oppressed people that shared his plight, hopes and struggles, accompanying him to the graveyard where he was laid to rest. Even a resilient fighter deserves a moment of peace.

Five years after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, mainstream media is once more making the topic an object of intense scrutiny. The costs and implications of the war are endlessly covered from all possible angles, with one notable exception -- the cost to the Iraqi people themselves.

Through all the special coverage and exclusive reports, very little is said about Iraqi casualties, who are either completely overlooked or hastily mentioned and whose numbers can only be guesstimated. Also conveniently ignored are the millions injured, internally and externally displaced, the victims of rape and kidnappings who will carry physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.

We find ourselves stuck in a hopeless paradigm, where it feels necessary to empathise with the sensibilities of the aggressor so as not to sound "unpatriotic", while remaining blind to the untold anguish of the victims. Some actually feel the need to go so far as to blame the Iraqis for their own misfortune. Both Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have expressed their wish for Iraqis to take responsibility for the situation in their country, with the former saying, "we cannot win their civil war. There is no military solution."

It would have been helpful if Clinton had reached her astute conclusion before she voted for the Senate's 2002 resolution authorising President Bush to attack Iraq. For the sake of argument, let's overlook both Clinton's and Obama's repeated assertions that all options, including military ones, are on the table regarding how to "deal" with Iran's alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. But to go so far as blaming the ongoing war on the Iraqis' lack of accountability is a new low for these "antiwar" candidates.

Is it still a secret, five years on, that the war on Iraq was fought for strategic reasons, to maintain a floundering superpower's control over much of the world's energy supplies and to sustain the regional supremacy of Israel, the US's most costly ally anywhere?

Of course, there are those who prefer to imagine a world in which a well-intentioned superpower would fight with all of its might to enable another smaller, distant nation to enjoy the fruits of liberty, democracy and freedom. But it is nothing short of ridiculous to pretend that Iraqis are capable of controlling the parameters of the ranging conflict, that a puppet government whose election and operation is entirely under the command of the US military is capable of taking charge and assuming responsibilities.

Equally absurd is the insinuation that the civil war in Iraq is an exclusively Iraqi doing, and that the US military has not deliberately planted the seeds of divisions, hoping to reinterpret its role in Iraq from that of the occupier to that of the arbitrator, making sure the "good" guys prevail over the "bad".

The idea of the US making an immediate exit from Iraq or taking full financial and legal responsibility for the devastation and genocide -- yes, genocide -- that occurred in the last five years is simply unthinkable from the viewpoint of the corporate US media, which still relates to the war only in terms of American (and never Iraqi) losses.

There are very few commentators who are actually arguing that the reasons for war were entirely self-serving, without an iota of morality behind them. Would Bush employ the same logic he used to justify Saddam Hussein's execution -- suggesting this was warranted by the Iraqi president's violence against his own people -- when dealing with those responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis as a result of this war?

And indeed Iraqis are dying in numbers that never subside regardless of the media and official hype about the "surge". Just Foreign Policy says the number of dead Iraqis has surpassed one million, while a survey by the British polling agency ORB estimates the number at over 1.2 million. But the plight of Iraqis hardly ends at a death count, since those left behind endure untold suffering: soaring poverty, unemployment rates between 40-70 per cent (governmental estimates), total lack of security in major cities and, according to Oxfam International, four million in need of emergency aid.

"Baghdad has become the most dangerous city in the world, largely as a result of a US policy of pitting various Iraqi ethnic and sectarian groups against one another. Today, Baghdad is a city of walled-off Sunni and Shia ghettoes, divided by concrete walls erected by the US military," reports Dahr Jamail, one of the few courageous voices that honestly relayed the horrendous outcomes of the war.

Indeed, there seem to be no promising statistics coming out of Iraq. Even under the previous regime and the debilitating sanctions imposed by the US and the UN, Iraqis were much better off prior to the war. Now, Iraqis are relevant only as pawns of endless US government propaganda. From the viewpoint of Bush, McCain and Cheney, they are the victims of Al-Qaeda, which must be fought at all costs. From the viewpoint of Clinton and Obama, they need to fight their own wars and take responsibility for them, as if Iraqi "irresponsibility" is the main problem.

In yet another "surprise visit" to Iraq by a US official, Vice-President Dick Cheney declared that Iraq was a "successful endeavour". Considering the exorbitant contracts granted to selected corporations, the war has indeed succeeded in making a few already rich companies and individuals a lot richer.

Meanwhile, Shlomo Brom, a senior fellow at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies and former head of the Israeli army's Strategic Planning Division, sees things from a slightly different angle. "Any Iraq will be better than Iraq under Saddam, because the Iraq of Saddam had the ability to threaten Israel," he was quoted as saying in the Christian Science Monitor.

In considering such skewed logic, one can only hope that Cheney's successful experiment will end soon, and that Israel's desire for security is now sated. The people of Iraq cannot tolerate any more "success".

When Admiral William J "Fox" Fallon was chosen to replace General John Abizaid
as chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM) in March 2007, many analysts didn't shy
from reaching a seemingly clear-cut conclusion: the Bush administration was
preparing for war with Iran and had selected the most suitable man for this job.
Almost exactly a year later, as Fallon abruptly resigned over a controversial
interview with Esquire magazine, we are left with a less certain analysis.

Fallon was the first man from the navy to head CENTCOM. With the US army
fighting two difficult and lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and considering
the highly exaggerated Iranian threat, a war with Iran was apparently
inevitable, albeit one that had to be conducted differently. Echoing the
year-old speculation, Arnaud de Borchgrave of UPI wrote on 14 March 2007 that an
attack against Iran "would fall on the US Navy's battle carrier groups and its
cruise missiles and Air Force B-2 bombers based in Diego Garcia". 

Fallon is a man of immense experience, having served equally high-profiled
positions in the past (he was commander of US Pacific Command from February 2005
to March 2007). The Bush administration probably saw him further as a
conformist, in contrast to his predecessor Abizaid who promoted a diplomatic
rather than military approach and who went as far as suggesting that the US
might have to learn to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. 

Fallon's recent resignation may have seemed abrupt to many, but it was a
well-orchestrated move. His interview in Esquire depicted him as highly critical
of the Bush administration's policy on Iran; the magazine described him as the
only thing standing between the administration and their newest war plan.
Further, his resignation and "Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's handling of
[it] is the greatest and most public break in the Bush team's handling of
preparations for war against Iran that we are ever likely to see," wrote
respected commentators and former CIA analysts Bill and Kathy Christison on 12
March. "Gates has in fact publicly associated himself with the resignation by
saying it was the right thing for Fallon to do, and Gates said he had accepted
the resignation without telling Bush first." 

Fallon's resignation represents a bittersweet moment. On the one hand it's an
indication of the continued fading enthusiasm for the militant culture espoused
by the neo-conservatives. On the other, it's an ominous sign of the Bush
administration's probable intentions during the last year of the president's
term. Sixty-three-year-old Admiral Fallon would not have embarked on such a
momentous decision after decades of service were it not for the fact that he
knew a war was looming, and -- having considered the historic implications for
such a war -- chose not to pull the trigger. 

Unlike the political atmosphere in the US prior to the Iraq war -- shaped by
fear, manipulation and demonisation -- the US political environment is now much
more accustomed to war opposition, which is largely encouraged and validated by
the fact that leading army brass are themselves speaking out with increasing
resolve. Indeed pressure and resistance are mounting on all sides; those rooting
for another war are meeting stiff resistance by those who can foresee its
disastrous repercussions. 

The push and pull in the coming months will probably determine the timing and
level of US military adventure against Iran, or even whether such an adventure
will be able to actualise (one cannot discount the possibility that as a token
for Israel, the US might provide a middle way solution by intervening in
Lebanon, alongside Israel, to destroy Hizbullah. Many options are on the table,
and another Bush-infused crisis is still very much possible). 

In an atmosphere of hyped militancy, Fallon's resignation might be viewed as a
positive sign, showing that the cards are not all stacked in favour of the war
party. Nonetheless, it is premature to indulge in optimism. Prior signs have
indicated a serious rift among those who once believed that war is the answer to
every conflict. Yet that didn't necessary hamper the war cheerleaders' efforts. 

Last December, the National Intelligence Estimate -- an assessment composed by
all American intelligence agencies -- concluded that Iran halted its nuclear
weapons programme in 2003, and that any such programme remained frozen.
Meanwhile the "bomb-first-ask-questions-later" crowd suggested that such an
assessment is pure nonsense. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain
has since then sung the tune of "bomb Iran", -- literally -- and Israel's
friends continue to speak of an "existential" threat Israel faces due to Iran's
"weapons" -- never mind that Israel is itself a formidable nuclear power.

According to Borchgrave, "McCain's close friend Senator Joe Lieberman...
invoking clandestine Iranian explosives smuggled into Iraq, has called for
retaliatory military action against Tehran. He and many others warn that Israel
faces an existential crisis. One Iranian nuclear-tipped missile on Jerusalem or
Tel Aviv could destroy Israel, they argue."

In fact, Lieberman, and other Israel supporters need no justification for war,
neither against Iran nor any of Israel's foes in the Middle East. They have
promoted conflicts on behalf of that country for many years and will likely
continue doing so, until enough Americans push hard enough to restack their
government's priorities. 

An attack on Iran doesn't seem as certain as the war against Iraq always did.
Public pressure, combined with courageous stances taken by high officials, could
create the tidal wave needed to reverse seemingly determined war efforts.
Americans can either allow those who continue to speak of "existential threats"
and wars of a hundred years to determine and undermine the future of their
country, and subsequently world security, or they can reclaim America, tend to
its needy and ailing economy, and make up for the many sins committed in their
name and in the name of freedom and democracy. 

Why did Israel attack Gaza with such brutality? Did Israeli officials think, even for a fleeting moment, that their army's attacks could halt, as opposed to intensify, Palestinian rockets or retaliatory violence? Indeed, was Palestinian violence at all relevant to the Israeli action? Was the Israeli bloodletting in Gaza solely relevant to the Gaza/Hamas context, or is there a regional dimension that is largely being overlooked? 

In an al-Jazeera English TV discussion, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and al-Quds al-Arabi editor-in-chief Abd al-Bari Atwan attempted to decipher Israel's actions in Gaza which have, since February 27, killed more than 120 Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers. These attacks were followed by incursions and further violence, including an attack on a Jewish seminary school in Jerusalem.

Levy explained that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak wanted to demonstrate to the Israeli public that he was "doing something" about the regular launching of rockets from Gaza. Although Levy wasn't justifying the Israeli government's inhumane and misguided logic, he disagreed with Atwan over the use of terminology. The latter (who is also an outstanding journalist) had asserted that the killings in Gaza represented a form of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing". 

Arab intellectuals, often wary of the use of certain terminology - since Western sensibilities don't accept associating Israel with genocide and ethnic cleansing - became less hesitant after Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai warned Palestinians in a radio interview to expect a "bigger Holocaust".

But terminology aside, are we to really believe that the wanton killing in Gaza - a major violation of international and humanitarian laws - was meant to send a message to the Israeli public, or to carry out genocide for its own sake? 

Initially, albeit unsurprisingly, the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas seemed oblivious, and then at best neutral, to the carnage. First, it asked both Israel and Hamas to cease their violence, and then it accused Israel of attempting to "derail" the peace process (what peace process?). Finally, and only after the Vatican, thankfully, decried the Israeli killings, Abbas announced the halt of all contacts with Israel.

A few days later, following a trip by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region, Abbas reversed his position. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman of the presidency, quoted Abbas as stating that "we intend to resume the peace talks with Israel which reserve the aim of ending the occupation". 

Considering the heavy toll that Palestinians endured by a deliberate Israeli attempt to cause a "bigger holocaust", Abbas' agreement to the resumption of futile chats with the same men who ordered the death of scores of his people is a mockery to say the least. 

While Palestinian, Israeli and international responses to violence remain predictable, this view still doesn't explain the timing or the underlying objectives.

In my view, historically, Israel's behavior, regardless of its outcome, is always politically motivated, and it never fails to keep a regional picture in mind.

There are two lines of military logic that Israel resorts to. One is motivated by the "chaos theory", the idea that seemingly minor events accumulate to have complex and massive effects on dynamic natural systems. For example, Gaza might have been attacked with the hope of provoking a streak of suicide bombings that would eventually be blamed on Syrian planning and Iranian financing - thus provoking a major showdown in Lebanon. The history of Israeli-Arab conflicts demonstrates how many major invasions are justified by seemingly irrelevant events, such as the 1982 Lebanon War.

But is Israel capable of sustaining another conflict in Lebanon after its miserable - and costly - failure in July-August 2006?

That's when the US becomes even more relevant. Just as Israeli attacks occupied major headlines around the world, the USS Cole and two additional ships - including one amphibious assault vessel - were quietly making their way from Malta to the shores of Lebanon. The ships were dispatched as a "show of support for regional stability", according to US Navy officials.

With the gung-ho George W Bush administration's time in office coming to an end and waning public enthusiasm for war against Iran, Israel cannot afford allowing the regional setup to be stacked in the following way: Hezbollah dominating south Lebanon, Hamas dominating Gaza and Iran becoming an increasingly formidable regional power.

This leads to the other line of Israeli military logic, the "big bang" theory. The self-explanatory logic of this theory is applicable in the sense that a regional war - accompanied by mini civil wars in Palestine and Lebanon, along with other attempts at destabilizing Iran and Syria - could work in Israel's favor.

Under no condition would the US be able stay out of such a conflict (considering its regional interests, allies and own war in Iraq). Revelations of the sinister role played by the Bush administration in organizing and provoking a civil war among Palestinians shows the extent to which Bush is willing to go to achieve Israel's objectives. More, it shows the willingness of various Arab and Palestinian players to readily participate in the bloody and costly US-Israeli ventures.

With all due respect to Levy and Atwan, I think Israel's main aim was neither to send a message to its public nor to commit genocide - though these are not unreasonable possibilities. Indeed, the majority of the Israeli public, according to a Tel Aviv University poll, wished that their government would negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas, as bombs were falling atop the hapless Gaza residents.

The facts - as demonstrated by the US-Israeli role in the turmoil in Lebanon, the consistent attempt to arraign Iran, and the Israeli provocations and bombings in Syria - all indicate that Israel's plans are regional, with Gaza being a testing ground, and the least costly target to isolate and brutalize. Already a massive concentration camp with a largely starving population, Gaza has provided Israel with a perfect opportunity to start sending stern messages to the other players in the region.

Death hovered over Gaza long before locally-made Palestinian rockets struck near the Israeli southern town of Sderot on February 27, killing Roni Yechiah and sparking an Israeli ‘retaliation’ that has already claimed over 120 Palestinian lives.

Yechiah’s death was actually the first of its kind in nine months, and understandably so. The crude Palestinian rockets were often criticised even by Palestinians as useless in the tit-for-tat style of war underway, while easily used by Israeli officials as a cacus belli, or at least as an excuse for keeping Gaza ‘contained’, besieged and on the brink of starvation.

For Israel the rockets are important as a pretext to maintain a state of siege against Hamas, and a low-intensity warfare that creates permanent distraction from the confiscation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements – and also as justification for the slow moving ‘peace process’.

However, while pro-Israeli pundits in the US and elsewhere are prepared to defend Israel’s actions, many Israelis are no longer buying into their government’s pretexts.

According to a recent Tel Aviv University Poll, cited by the Israeli daily Haaretz on February 27, “sixty-four per cent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza towards a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit."

The mayor of the Israeli town of Sderot – which borders Gaza and is the main target of rockets – had also told the British Guardian on February 23, "I would say to Hamas, let's have a ceasefire. Let's stop the rockets for the next 10 years and we will see what happens."

Hamas was actually first to issue calls of ceasefire. In fact, for years it has held true to a self-declared abstention from carrying out any suicide bombings inside Israel.

Meanwhile, the uneven numbers of casualties speak volumes.

While Yechiah’s death is tragic, he was the “first person killed by rocket attacks from Gaza since May 2007, and the fourteenth overall since the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian armed clashes in September 2000,” according to a Human Rights Watch Press release on February 29, citing Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.

B’Tselem reported that “1,259 of the 2,679 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip (since September 2000) were not participating in hostilities when they were killed, and 567 were minors.”

According to news agencies’ report published in Al-Arabiya website, as of February 22, 190 Palestinians were killed since the resumption of the peace process in Annapolis last November. That number received a major boost when the Israeli army escalated its attacks against the Gaza Strip, killing 34 Palestinians in 48 hours between February 27 and 28, and over 60 on March 1 alone, not counting several other Palestinians killed in the West Bank during the same period.

Despite the facts, Israel’s actions are repeatedly accepted by most media as a legitimate ‘response’ to Palestinian violence.

In an article published days before Yechiva’s death, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the death of three Palestinians who were killed by Israeli tank missile. The men were picnicking at the time, according to eyewitness accounts. However, the article seemed to report an entirely different story, featuring a photo of a Palestinian rocket that hit an empty field. “Deadly rain,” read the caption, conveniently forgetting that the rockets had not caused any deaths. The article also undermined the fact that the killed Palestinians had been picnicking, citing this as yet another Palestinian ‘claim’. 

Donald Macintyre of the British Independent, who is usually much more objective than his counterparts elsewhere, reported on the killing of four Palestinian children: “Four boys playing football have been killed in Gaza by Israeli air strikes...as Israel responded to the death of a man from a barrage of rocket attacks with a bloody escalation of violence.”

The perpetuation of the idea of Israel always ‘responding’ to events and never initiating them is indeed unfair.

When the utter desperation of Gazans forced them to storm massive walls separating them from Egypt in search of food and medicines, their cry fell largely on deaf ears. Palestinians were herded back into Gaza, and the border was sealed once more, followed by an escalation of troop levels alongside it (reportedly beyond those set in a 30-year-old peace accord).

Besieged, browbeaten and starved — in a way that all major human rights groups have decried as illegal and inhumane — Palestinians are told to expect more of the same. Only this time the terminology used is much more frightening. Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in the Gaza strip with a ‘holocaust’, stating that, “the more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah (Hebrew term of Holocaust) because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

Since the Nazi Holocaust, the Hebrew term has been used almost exclusively to describe the tragic event. While many media commentators jumped to limit the damage caused by Vilnai’s revelation, the acknowledgment of the Israel-imposed crisis on Palestinian – and the term ‘bigger’ in particular – is but another fleeting reminder of the horrors under which Gaza lives, and Gaza alone is blamed for.

As Palestinians hurriedly buried their dead, US and Israeli celebrities — including Sylvester Stallone, John Voight and Paula Abdul — rallied at an LA benefit concert for Sderot.

Speaking via Satellite, Clinton, McCain and Obama also expressed their unquestionable allegiance to Israel, as if only Israel’s dead counted, only Israel’s security mattered. Clinton – as the other presidential contenders — received another golden opportunity to express her ‘unwavering commitment’ to Israel.

When will US officials begin to acknowledge that both Palestinians and Israelis have equal rights and equal responsibilities?

When will the media begin to provide the needed context and stop manipulating terms and numbers in such a way that the Palestinians are always at fault?  When will we all accept that military occupation and state-sponsored terror beget violence and breed more terror, and how this will always be the case in Palestine – as anywhere else — as long as the circumstances remain unchanged? 

Time is running out for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Although both men are still committed to their risky venture of marginalising Hamas at any cost, the latter’s obduracy and recent events in Gaza point to the inescapable conclusion — the undertaking was doomed from the start.

For Olmert the issue demographics remains. He told Israeli daily Ha’aretz in an interview published in November 2007 that if it didn’t agree to an independent Palestinian state, Israel would “face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished”. The Apartheid analogy is of course not a new one. Leading South Africans themselves were the first to make the comparison, and Israel’s history of aiding and abetting the infamous Apartheid South African governments is no secret either.

But Olmert’s belated rude-awakening aside, it is Mahmoud Abbas who is running out of options. Unlike Olmert, Abbas has no real, measurable powers. For one, his popularity amongst his own people has never been high. Past quarrels with late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat during the early years of the Palestinian Uprising singled Abbas out at an untrustworthy opportunist. Late professor Edward Said once called him ‘moderately corrupt.’ The formidable intellectual died before seeing the moderate corruption of Abbas morphing into a wholesale onslaught on democracy, freedom and every noble principle the Palestinians ever fought for. I wonder what Said would have said after seeing the people of Gaza suffering beyond comprehension while Abbas and Olmert meet in the latter’s Jerusalem residence, exchanging words of praise and vowing their undying commitment to ‘peace’.

A photo released by the Israeli government Press office on February 19 showed both leaders leaving another futile meeting in Jerusalem, with Olmert — aware of the cameras flashing all around them — holding an umbrella for the widely grinning Abbas. The post card-like scenario is of course part of the continuing charade of peace talks, deadlines and deadline extensions, interrupted by temporary quarrels, which are sorted out by US envoys before resuming more talks.

But how long can Abbas and Olmert carry on with this charade?

For Olmert, the objective and endgame are clear: stall until a ‘solution’ can be finalised and imposed on the Palestinians. This in turns depends on the finalisation of the construction of the illegal settlements, the wall and the network of Jewish-only bypass roads in Occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank. However, Olmert’s poor standing among the Israeli public and the aforementioned ‘demographic threat’ will not make it possible for him to stall indefinitely. Still, with the US’ record of unconditionally backing Israeli policies, Olmert will remain in a relatively safe spot, regardless of which major presidential candidate goes on to claim the White House.

One can hardly say the same about Abbas. His usefulness for Israel, and thus the US administration, is entirely dependent on his level of ‘cooperation’, which essentially means ensuring Palestinian disunity, fighting Hamas, and remaining a pawn in the US’ imaginative view of the entire region (whereby ‘moderates’ stand united against ‘extremists’ and ‘rejectionists’).

Yet, unlike other Arab ‘moderates’, Abbas lacks all leverage. He ‘presides’ over an ever shrinking entity, itself under military occupation. Many of his people regularly accuse him of ‘treason’, or at best, of ‘selling out’. On top of this, his party is falling apart. Mohammed Dahlan is already acting with the air of presidency. Now based in Egypt, he has been gathering support for himself amidst scattered talks about his desire to form an alternative party to Fatah.

Worse yet, Mohamed Nazzal, a visible member of Hamas’ political bureau in Damascus told Aljazeera.net on February 19 that despite Hamas’ insistence on the inclusion of Marwan Barghouti (a leading Fatah figure who is greatly supported by the movement’s youth and strongly disliked by the old guard) in any future prisoner swaps, Israel has removed the latter’s name from the list, at Abbas’ behest.

Abbas’ lack of any meaningful political vision is also promoting other members of his team to speak of political programmes entirely inconsistent with his own style. Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee told Reuters in an interview on February 20 — views which he repeated to AFP and Palestinian radio in Arabic — what Palestinians should consider should talks continue to falter. “If things are not going in the direction of actually halting settlement activities, if things are not going in the direction of continuous and serious negotiations, then we should take the step and announce our independence unilaterally.”

Abbas’ answer was his intent to continue negotiating, and that he was “optimistic and hopeful.”

It’s unclear where from Abbas’ hope originates. He stands on very shaky grounds, not only in his conditional relationship with Israel, the US and his own party, at home and abroad, but with Hamas as well. His earlier rhetoric about Hamas’s ties to Al Qaeda and the ‘forces of darkness’ are softening, but he knows he has no mandate to reach out to his opponents. But it is increasingly clear to the world that isolating Hamas means the continuation of Gaza’s mass hunger and suffering. This is so extreme that even Europeans are reportedly rethinking their stance on Hamas, which the EU had deemed ‘terrorist’.

If Abbas, however, tried to rethink his relations with Hamas, he would be abandoned by Israel and the US, and might find himself a victim of a calculated coup led by his party’s strongmen. If he continues with the charade of endless and futile talks with Israel, the patience of his people would eventually run out. Considering all of this — Abbas’ shared responsibly for the plight of Gaza, his anti-democratic legacy and his inability to reunite his faltering party — the president seems condemned to a lose-lose scenario, one which would take no less than a miracle to put right.

We know well who killed the top Hezbollah commander, Imad Mugniyah on Feb 12th in Damascus.

While in the US media, only journalists like Seymour Hersh will have the nerve to point out the obvious, the Israeli media has not shied away from evidence of the Israeli intelligence’s involvement in this well-calculated assassination.

A major Israeli daily newspaper Maariv shared the views of many others when it concluded that: “Officially, Israel yesterday denied responsibility for the killing. But experts say the brilliant execution of the attack was characteristic of the Mossad.”

The Financial Times reported on the “triumphant mood” of the Israeli Press which hailed “the demise of one the country’s most feared adversaries” and quoted an Israeli paper stating “the account is settled.”

The Financial Times also quoted a most telling analysis offered by one Israeli commentator. “Mugniyah’s assassination is perhaps the hardest blow Hezbollah has taken to this day. Not just because of his operational abilities, his close ties to the Iranians, and the series of successful terror attacks that he carried out. But because he was a symbol, a legend, a myth.”

Donald Rumsfeld is no longer in public eye but his wisdom lives on. “We also know there are known unknowns,” he once told perplexed reporters. Precisely, the unknown known is that the Israeli Mossad killed Mugniyah, and killed him for specific political reasons, at a well-chosen time and place that would make perfect sense from the Israeli government’s point of view.

Let’s first look at the timing.

President Bush’s second term in office will expire in one year. For the president who has unconditionally rubber-stamped Israeli policies, one year is not enough to set long-term goals, but it’s enough to ignite chaos.

"If you want chaos, then we welcome chaos. If you want war, then we welcome war. We have no problem with weapons or with rockets which we will launch on you." These were the words of Lebanon’s MP Walid Jumblatt of the ruling March 14 Coalition, directed at the Hezbollah-led opposition a few days prior to the third year anniversary of Rafiq Hariri’s assassination. Considering the military strength of Hezbollah within Lebanon, it isn’t difficult to guess where the MP’s rockets would come from.

Indeed, the internal disunity and open hostility – notwithstanding the political impasse over the future of the country’s parliamentary and governmental organisation -- all point at the readiness of Lebanon to descend into chaos. This is good news for Israel and the Bush administration. A civil war could achieve what Israel’s botched, illegal war of 2006 could not.

The 34-day war, celebrated by Hezbollah as a victory, was a massive setback to Israel’s regional designs and to those who wanted Hezbollah removed from the country’s political equation. The war backfired, achieving the exact opposite: Hezbollah emerged triumphant. More recently, Israel’s own investigation into the war admitted, if somewhat circuitously, Israel’s defeat.

The Winograd Commission’s report indicted the army, and largely absolved Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It described the war’s failure as a “serious missed opportunity.” The report didn’t chastise war, but decried its lack of effectiveness and poor execution.

How could Olmert correct the mistakes of war without leading another?

And what a better timing for war if not at a moment when Hezbollah and its rivals in Lebanon are engaged in one of their own?

But the assassination of a high profiled person like Mugniyah was not merely an opportunity to boast over a classic Mossad operation. It was a major ingredient in a larger scheme, the end result of which is maybe war with both Lebanon and Syria – with the hope of getting Iran involved.

Israel didn’t hide its disappointments from the US’ National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran is no longer in the nuclear weapons manufacturing business. It simply meant that the US will not attack Iran at this time. But for Israel, “absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” – another Rumsfeld quote. Fearing that unchecked Iran could dominate the region, Israel, with Bush’s green light, is now ready for escalation.

Israel officials and pundits – and their friends in the US government and media – are building a case for a confrontation with Iran. In a recent trip to Germany, after talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Olmert was “sure” of Iran developing nuclear weapons. “The Iranians are moving forward with their plans to create a capacity for non-conventional weapons,” he told reporters.

Israel, however, is neither capable, nor willing to face Iran in a conventional war.

For Israel’s scheme to succeed, the internal conflict in Lebanon must escalate and internal cohesion must not be achieved, a mission entrusted to the ‘mysterious’ car bombings that have been blamed squarely on Syria and its Lebanese allies.

By gloating, yet without revealing much about the assassination of Mugniyah, Israeli commentators might have lost sight of the great gamble of their government. Hezbollah’s response, articulated by their leader Hassan Nasrallah, was a vow for an ‘open’ war. The group will most likely avoid border clashes, and take the war against Israel to the international arena, like Israel has. And like Israel, it may gloat but officially refrain from sponsoring whatever operations it carries out.

As the race for the United States presidential nominations progresses, the stances of and attitudes towards both Republican and Democratic candidates continue to bring up causes for concern, in terms of their past behaviour, current appeal and general trustworthiness.

Republican Mitt Romney's exit has practically assured Senator John McCain's victory in his party. While we might expect McCain's narrow-mindedness and pro-war rhetoric to make him an uncontested darling of conservatives, the doubts that remain about his credibility -- and the seemingly absurd accusations by some that he is more liberal than Democratic liberals -- highlight two disturbing trends.

The first is the extent of the moral corruption among many Republicans that would enable viewing McCain as a liberal. Then again it might be a fair assessment in the context of Armageddon enthusiast, Mike Huckabee, surpassing expectations on Super Tuesday. The rise of the former Arkansas governor -- highlighting the growing power of fundamentalist evangelical Christians -- should have been picked up as an alarming trend by Americans, but the media was largely unmoved.

The second is that making such comparisons between McCain and Democratic nominees doesn't necessarily point to a lack of judgement in characters. Clinton's hawkish foreign policy views would indeed qualify her as a faithful follower of the warmongering policies of Bush himself.

On the Democratic side, Super Tuesday only served to confirm Barack Obama's recent gains. After the vote count, Clinton, who was previously seen as the uncontested frontrunner was now conceivably the underdog. True, the numbers of delegates' votes garnered by both nominees is too close to place either on top, but Obama's speed in squashing Clinton's lead in national polls and his fundraising ability should be a cause for great concern in the Clinton camp.

Naturally, as both nominees will vie for as many votes as possible in the next round, charm and charisma alone can no longer suffice. The sizeable dilemma is that Obama and Clinton elections programmes are in many ways only superficially different.

Both nominees claim to be establishment nominees. Clinton appeals to an older generation by virtue of her "experience". Obama appeals to the impressionable young, who have been taught political correctness early in life, and who are eager for new language and a new approach.

Obama's record is certainly more honourable than Clinton's. His genuine involvement in community activism at a young age and his anti-war stance during his Senate years point at a certain degree of moral clarity, a rare quality in Washington indeed.

But both nominees walk a very fine line. Aside from the Iraq issue -- Obama voted against the war while Clinton voted for it -- the remaining differences are not significant enough to be exploited by either to guarantee the decisive victory needed before the August Democratic Convention. If neither have enough votes to become the uncontested nominee, the party's more influential delegates -- the super-delegates -- will have the final say, a worst-case scenario that could compromise the very democratic nature of the entire process.

There is a good chance that both candidates will avoid an all-out war over issues that are significant concerns for most Americans. While race and gender are supposedly defining issues for most voters, the fact that Clinton is a woman, and Obama is African-American does not mean they represent the interests of their respective group. Moreover, neither Obama wishes to be defined solely by his colour nor Clinton by her gender.

The Iraq war will most likely define President Bush's legacy. Moreover, once the presidential candidates for both parties are determined, the war will probably position itself as the lead point of contention. Senator McCain is already gearing up for the anticipated fight over war with the democrats. In Norfolk, Virginia, he attacked Obama and Clinton for wanting to set dates for withdrawal from Iraq. "I believe that would have catastrophic consequences. I believe that Al-Qaeda would trumpet to the world that they had defeated the United States of America, and I believe that therefore they would try to follow us home."

McCain -- presumably a "war hero" -- realises that the disastrous Iraq war is most likely to be his campaign's weak point, and the faltering economy will not divert attention from it. In fact, in the minds of many Americans, both issues are linked. According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll after Super Tuesday, the majority of Americans believe that the best way to escape recession is to pull out of Iraq.

If the Iraq debate has indeed emerged as the most significant in coming months, the chances are Obama will have the upper hand. But Obama's anti-war stance has become a source of concern to Israel, whose "pro-Israel" camp in the US remains too significant to overlook. Justin Elliot, writing for Mother Jones, discussed Obama's challenges in putting that group at ease. After all the man is black, his middle name is "Hussein" and has a few "slips" of a tongue on his record -- notwithstanding his statement last March that "no one has suffered more than the Palestinian people," which he grossly reinterpreted later.

MJ Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, a dovish advocacy group, told Elliot, "the more right-wing segments of the Jewish community are the least likely to be comfortable with an African-American president."

To prove them wrong, Obama sent a letter to the US ambassador at the Security Council demanding that the council "should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel... If it cannot... I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all." He also claimed to understand why Israel was "forced" to impose a siege on Gaza, a siege that human rights organisations have held responsible for causing mass starvation and unparalleled catastrophe.

What's important about Obama's dramatic shift is that he has proven to be just as self-serving and easily manipulated as the rest. If he can so readily support the starvation of 1.5 million people, who is to guarantee that he will not renounce his moral stances on issues pertaining to Iraq, Iran, and indeed America itself?

In the competitive world of media today, swift and conveniently selective reporting is of prime importance. Google News, for example, claim to scan 4,500 news sources, of which only a few are highlighted as main stories. There are thousands of similar services, all competing to produce a story in the fastest time. Thorough - and thus slower - reporting is relegated and crucial information often appears too little too late.

The Iraq story, which has occupied a huge proportion of headline news for years, serves as a good example of this. 

On February 1st, only a few minutes apart, two Iraqi women detonated themselves in two crowded pet markets in the Iraqi capital. Authorities said that 98 people were reportedly killed and 200 were wounded. Eyewitnesses reported a grizzly scene where human and animal body parts littered the streets, hundreds of feet away from the blasts.

Any thorough analysis of the story would have to examine several related factors. First, it would need to juxtapose the high death toll with US and Iraqi governments’ reports of ‘calm’ in the Baghdad area. The claim of a ‘return to normalcy’ in the Iraqi capital has been propagated for months, as a way of validating US President’s Bush’s military ‘surge’. Even if we buy into the questionable statistics aimed at hyping the positive outcome of the surge – questionable because they are only promoted by US and Iraqi military sources, with vested interests in downplaying the seriousness of the ‘insurgency’ – the violence seems to have shifted from the capital into northern areas, especially Mosul. 

Instead of admitting failure in halting the violence which has plagued Iraq since the US occupation of 2003, US and Iraqi authorities resort to a continued and violent language to confuse and distract from the real issues. 

This is how Alissa J. Rubin began her article for the New York Times (January 31): “The unsettled situation in northern Iraq continued Wednesday as Iraqi troops massed in Mosul to fight Sunni Arab extremists”. This is a brilliant way to divert attention of the story from the failure of the surge to manipulate other values, and lumping these values to create a completely fallacious association: “Sunni Arab extremists.”

Rubin further quotes an Iraqi defence ministry spokesman as claiming that the goal of the military operation is to “oust Al-Qaeda in Iraq from the city and prevent its fighters from returning.”

 The entry statements contain a dangerously inaccurate linkage between Arabs (an increasing oppressed monitory in the Iraqi city), Sunnis (the ‘remnants of the Saddam regime’ as mindlessly parroted by the media), extremists of the previous group and al-Qaeda. The New York Times story – which often sets the standards for reporting in other major US publications – will have laid the prefect foundation to justify future ethnic cleansings of Sunni Arabs from the city, should the ‘military operation’ succeed in ‘driving out’ al-Qaeda militants (the numbers of which are inflated whenever such exaggeration is necessary).

Returning to the Baghdad markets’ bombings, the response to this tragedy was predictably misleading. The Iraqi government issued the usual, if somewhat bizarre statement, and US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made fiery condemnations. Enough material was gathered within the hour to inundate us with hundreds of ‘fresh’ news stories, which were mostly a rehash of the official statements made in Baghdad’s Green Zone or in Washington.

CNN online opened one of its articles, made available soon after the market bombings, with: “Two mentally disabled women were strapped with explosives Friday and sent into busy Baghdad markets, where they were blown up by remote control.”

The allegation was attributed to an Iraqi government official later in the statement.

The Iraqi official said that “people referred to the bomber at central Baghdad's al-Ghazl market as the "crazy woman" and that the bomber at a second market had an unspecified birth disability.”

Who are these ‘people’? Did the CNN reporter examine the legitimacy of that claim by interviewing any of them’?

The involvement of women in this sort of violence is often a critical addition to the story, especially for Western readers. Readers tend to pause longer when they hear of a suicide bomber who was also a mother. They may feel an urge to learn more about the life of such a woman. Was she an inmate in Abu Ghraib? Tortured? Raped? Did she lose a family member to the US war, to the Iraqi death squads?

What do the bombings tell us about the security situation in Baghdad, the success or failure of the ‘surge’ or the war which is driving people to suicide in its most brutal manifestations?

Apparently, it tells us nothing.

But Lt. Col. Steve Stover, spokesman for the Multi-National Division-Baghdad has an explanation that seems, at least from the point view of CNN much more relevant than the seemingly unimportant questions above. "By targeting innocent Iraqis, they (those who dispatched the ‘mentally disabled’ women suicide bombers) show their true demonic character." Thus, CNN headline: “'Demonic' militants sent women to bomb markets in Iraq.” In Western media language, Arab women are perpetually oppressed victims, and they must maintain that role for the story to read right. Thus, the women bombers cannot be viewed themselves as extremists, but as victims in the hands of extremists.

Within hours the buzz words on online news were ‘mentally disabled’ and ‘demonic’.

But what does ‘demonic’ mean exactly? What real issues does it address? And why should such an irrelevant outburst define the deadliest bombing in Baghdad in months?

Focusing on such extraneous associations - mindless, mad, demonic women, possessed and acting on the behest of bearded and cunning al-Qaeda ‘Arab Sunni, extremists’ – does much more than simply distract from the many military and policy failures in Iraq. It helps create a parallel universe to that of the real world, thus presenting a substitute image that shapes and reshapes the perceptions and imaginations of faraway news consumers.

The ‘real world’ - whether that of Iraq, Palestine, Burma, Kenya or any other - is a world that, although seemingly chaotic, is very much rational. It is predicated on the values of cause and affect. What may seem ‘demonic’ and ‘mad’ to a non-media person should not appear the same to a journalist. The latter’s responsibility is to narrate, contextualize and deconstruct with an independent and critical eye, not merely reiterate what has been told to him by ‘official sources’.

The corporate media’s depiction of the Gaza story which has been unfolding for months might be summed up in one overriding headline: Hordes of Palestinian Breach Gaza Border with Egypt, Israel Concerned over Its Security.

The imprisonment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza – where poverty stands at 79 percent and unemployment hovers around a similar number, and where the majority of the population is ‘food insecure’ according to United Nations agencies – should have been depicted first and foremost as a humanitarian disaster compelled by an Israeli siege. The dates related to the successive stages of the siege follow a line of Israel’s political, not ‘security’ logic. Any reasonable timeline of recent events could easily verify that (the formation of the Hamas government in March 2006, the ousting of the pro-Israeli Palestinian security apparatus in June 2007 and so on being followed by dramatic Israeli moves to tighten the siege on Gaza, Hamas’ stronghold).

But little of that seemed relevant to the way the Gaza story was amply reported. Like the Iraq story, where the two main trusted sources are the occupation and its puppet Iraqi government, any story of relevance to Israel and Palestine has to be validated by the official Israeli source and to a lesser but growing extent by their allies among Palestinians. The rest are ‘extremist’, radical and hell-bent on the destruction of the ‘Jewish state.’ Note how the Jewishness of Israel is often emphasised whenever the word ‘destruction’ or similar words are infused.

This is what Bridget Johnson wrote in the Seattle PI (January 29) chastising the United Nations’ Human Rights Council for its condemnation of Israel’s siege on Gaza: “There was zero mention of Hamas' continued rocket attacks on Israel -- which preceded the cutoff of supplies that has caused such an uproar -- or Hamas' refusal to renounce violence against and attempted destruction of the Jewish state.”

The claims were preposterous – especially that of a small group’s ‘attempted destruction’ of a country saturated with nuclear arms. The words ‘destruction’ and ‘Jewish state’ are simply passed as an innocent ‘opinion’, read by thousands of Americans. There are many notable omission as well. Hamas has repeatedly called for a mutual ceasefire, that was also repeatedly rejected or simply ignored by Israel (in the guise of ‘not negotiating with terrorists’). The siege followed the democratic elections of Hamas, not the rocket attacks, the intensity of which corresponded with the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza. Also conveniently missed is the fact that Palestinians rockets have killed 10 Israelis in several years. The killing of any civilian anywhere is tragic, but the facts are rarely contextualised by the media. The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli army attacks since the Annapolis ‘peace’ conference two months ago is estimated at 149. Several folds were killed in Gaza since the siege started early 2006. Over 60 have died since June 2007 as a result of either lack of medicines or Israel’s refusal to allow them entry to better equipped hospitals in the West Bank. This is only the tip of the iceberg since human suffering cannot only be measured by those who die, but also those who continue to live in perpetual suffering. For Johnson, this is irrelevant, since this is not about right and wrong, but a war of language. To win the, one must have command over language – and the way it’s manipulated – and access to platforms that reach the largest number of readers. An easy recipe to victory is an intentional mix of such words as Islamic extremism, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Jewish state, security, destruction, right to exist, juxtaposed with images or clips of angry Palestinian youth burning Israeli and American flags, ‘side-by-side’, and you will have an American public and government standing in eternal solidarity with Israel.

While most US politicians are self-seeking, power hungry and would do whatever it takes to be elected, the average American, unlike what it may seem, is not born ‘pro-Israel’, and ‘anti-Palestinian.’ Most Americans are pro the manufactured, yet misleading image of Israel that reaches their homes through television, wait at their doorsteps in the morning and is beamed to them through the web. Israel has mastery over the language of the Western media, which, again, helped create a paralleled universe that has little relation to reality. That alternative universe only exist on the pages of New York Times, the images of CNN, and the blabber of Fox News ‘experts’. According to that narrative, Palestinians, are, like the Iraqi women suicide bombers, ‘demonic’, ‘mad’, ‘extremist’, ‘irrational’, self hating, and all the rest.

To recognize reality the way it is, one has to re-examine language. While a critical reader is essential, the task starts in the hand of a journalist, who must understand his topic not based on simple ‘facts’ and perceptions. Simple facts lead to simple conclusions: Sunnis extremists, mad Mullah, unruly Palestinians, besieged Israel. Every story can be told in three different ways: two by the two main conflicting parties, and a third by the journalist himself. The journalist must not compromise on his independence, must not buy into jargons, mantras, and turn into another official spokesperson. To convey a version of a story that is as close the true story as possible, a media person has to comprehend the context himself, analyse the motives and follow the line of logic: cause and affect, then, impart his new realizations - free of self-censorship, coercion or intimidation. Otherwise, the true story will always be shelved in favour of re-written official statements and repackaged government and military press releases, falsely presented as ‘accurate’, ‘independent’ and ‘impartial’.  Mindlessly repeating these official discourses may be easier and more profitable, but it will make no helpful contribution to the field of journalism, and to any possibility of truth and justice.

In a radio interview prior to the US invasion of Iraq, David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. Chomsky answered, “In some parts of the world people never ask, ‘what can we do?’ They simply do it.”

For someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, Chomsky’s seemingly oblique response required no further elucidation.

When Gazens recently stormed the strip’s sealed border with Egypt, Chomsky’s comment returned to mind, along with memories of the still relevant - and haunting - past.

In 1989, the Bureej refugee camp was experiencing a strict military curfew, as punishment for the killing of one Israeli soldier. The soldier’s car had broken down in front of the camp while he was on his way home to a Jewish settlement. Bureej had previously lost hundreds of its people to the Israeli army and killing the soldier was an unsurprising act of retaliation.

In the weeks that followed, scores of Palestinians in Bureej were murdered and hundreds of homes were demolished. The killing spree generated little media coverage in Israel.

I lived with my family in an adjacent refugee camp, Nuseirat, at the time. Characterised by extreme poverty, it was a natural home for much of the Palestinian resistance movement. Our house was located a few feet away from what was known as the ‘Graveyard of the Martyrs’. It was an area of high elevation that the local children often used to watch the movement of Israeli tanks as they began their daily incursion into the camp. We whistled or yelled every time we spotted the soldiers, and used sign language to communicate as we hid behind the simple graves.

Although watching, yelling and whistling were the only means of response at our disposal, they were far from safe. My friends Ala, Raed, Wael and others were all killed in these daily encounters

During Bureej’s most lethal curfew yet, the sound of explosions coming from the doomed camp reached us at Nuseirat. The people of my camp became engulfed in endless discussions which were neither factional nor theoretical. People were being brutally murdered, injured or impoverished, while the Red Cross was blocked access to the camp. Something had to be done.

And all of a sudden it was. Not as a result of any polemic endorsed by intellectuals or ‘action calls’ initiated at conferences, but as an unstructured, spur-of-the-moment act undertaken by a few women in my refugee camp. They simply started a march into Bureej, and were soon joined by other women, children and men. Within an hour, thousands of refugees made their way into the besieged neighbouring camp. “What’s the worst they could do?” a neighbour asked, trying to collect his courage before joining the march. “The soldiers will not be able to kill more than a hundred before we overpower them.”

Israeli soldiers stood dumbfounded before the chanting multitudes. While many marchers were wounded only one was killed. The soldiers eventually retreated to their barricades. UN vehicles and Red Cross ambulances sheltered themselves amidst the crowd and together they broke the siege.

I still remember the scene of Bureej residents first opening the shutters of their windows, then carefully cracking their doors, stepping out of their homes in a state of disbelief breaking into joy. My memory - of the chants, the tears, the dead being rushed to be buried, the wounded hauled on the many hands that came to the rescue, the strangers sharing food and good wishes -reaffirms the event as one of the greatest acts of human solidarity I have witnessed.

The scene was to be repeated time and again, during the first and Second Palestinian Uprising: ordinary people carrying out what seemed like an ordinary act in response to  extraordinary injustice.

The father who lost his son to free Bureej told the crowd: “I am happy that my son died so that many more could live.”

Later than day, our refugee camp fell under a most strict military curfew, to relive Bureej’s recent nightmare. We were neither surprised nor regretful. We had known the right thing to do and “we simply did it.”

Now Palestinian women, once more, have led Palestinian civil society in a most meaningful and rewarding way. Just when Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak was being congratulated for successfully starving Palestinians in Gaza to submission, ordinary women led a march to break the tight siege imposed on Gaza.

On Tuesday, January 22, they descended on the Gaza-Egypt border and what followed was a moment of pride and shame: pride for those ever-dignified people refusing to surrender, and shame that the so-called international community allowed the humiliation of an entire people to the extent that forced hungry mothers to brave batons, tear gas and military police in order to perform such basic acts as buying food, medicine and milk.

The next day, the courage of these women inspired the same audacity that the original batch of women in my refugee camp inspired nearly twenty years ago. Nearly half of the Gaza Strip population crossed the border in a collective push for mere survival. And when people march in unison, there is no worldly force, however deadly, that can block their way.

This “largest jailbreak in history”, as one commentator described it, will be carved in Palestinian and world memory for years to come. In some circles it will be endlessly analysed, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it is beyond rationalization: it simply had to be done.

Armies can be defeated but human spirit cannot be subdued. Gaza’s act of collective courage is one of the greatest acts of civil disobedience of our time, akin to civil rights marches in America during the 1960’s, South Africa’s anti-Apartheid struggle, and more recently the protests in Burma.

Palestinian people have succeeded where politics and thousands of international appeals have failed. They took matters into their own hands and they prevailed. While this is hardly the end of Gaza’s suffering, it’s a reminder that people’s power to act is just too significant to be overlooked. 

Israelis and their supporters tend to depict Israel as a country of miracles. What else could explain the country's astonishing "birth" and subsequent survival against all sorts of "existential threats"? How else would Israel develop at such a phenomenal pace, making the "desert bloom" and continually scoring a high ranking amongst developed nations in most noteworthy aspects?

Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to be depicted as "their own worst enemies", a people who "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" and who stand outside the parameters of rational human behaviour. Israel is often, if not always, contrasted against a regional backdrop of "backward", "undemocratic" and essentially violent Arabs and Muslims.

Such depictions -- of luminous, civilised Israelis facing wicked, backward Arabs -- are the building blocks of a polemic sold tirelessly by Israeli, American and Western media. Most often, it goes unchallenged, thus defining the West's understanding of Israel and its moral "right to exist". The argument is rooted in the horrors of the Jewish holocaust; however, Israel's handlers have managed to turn deserved sympathy for that tragedy into an unwarranted assertion, somehow equating Palestinians with Nazi Germany in order to justify a constant state of war in the name of self-defence.

In this specific context, the power of the media cannot be over-emphasised. It has defined a fallacious reality based on a skewed narrative. Never in history has a story been so slanted as that of Palestine and Israel. Never has the victim been so squarely blamed for his own misfortunes as the Palestinian. This is not an arrogant counter-narrative to Israel's concoctions. It's a glaring truth that continues to be either ignored or misunderstood.

The "miracles" often associated with Israel are not random; they are assertions. Miracles are a religious notion, referring to the unexplained and supernatural. Thus they become exempt from rational questioning. This formula has served Israel's strategic purposes well. On one hand, Israel's existence is portrayed as a resurrection of sorts: from near-annihilation to a "miraculous" rebirth. Indeed, considering how the birth of Israel story is offered, the narrative is no less impressive than biblical legends. Such discourse has been used successfully to appeal to a much larger group than those who identify with Israel on ethnic or religious grounds. It has impressed tens of millions of Christian fundamentalists worldwide. In the United States, Christian Zionists represent the popular backbone of the pro-Israeli camp. While American Jews tend to vote based on economic or political interests, Christian Zionists see their allegiance to Israel as a religious duty.

Like all religious miracles, Israeli miracles are "matters of faith". They can either be accepted as one package or rejected as such; the bottom line is that they are beyond argument, beyond the need for tangible proof. Those foolish enough to deconstruct this -- and thus question Israel as a state accountable to law, like all others -- are subjected to the wrath of God (in the case of the "true believer") or the wrath of the media and the Zionist lobby (in the case of the sceptic). When an American politician, for example, is accused of not standing "fully behind Israel", the accusation doesn't warrant justification. It stands on its own, like a biblical command that has survived the test of time and reason: Thou shalt stand fully behind Israel. The accused politician can only defend his record of support for Israel; he cannot question why this is necessary in the first place, or ever acknowledge the fact that the latter's track record is soaked in blood, sullied by illegal occupations, and grounded on human rights violations and defiance of international law.

As the 60th anniversary of the so- called birth of Israel draws near, a most impressive -- albeit grotesque -- misrepresentation of that history will be offered in abundance. Media pundits and politicians will celebrate the miracle, omitting how Israel was delivered on top of the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages. The killing and ethnic cleansing that became known as the Palestinian Catastrophe -- or Nakba -- was not the work of invisible and miraculous seraphs, but rather well trained and well-armed Zionist gangs and their supporters.

Nor did Palestinians lose the battle due to their laxity or backwardness. Their bravery, for those who care to consult serious historical works (such as those of Israeli historian Ilan Pappe or late Palestinian Professor Edward Said), is a badge of honour that will be carried by Palestinians for years to come. They lost because, as parallel historic experiences demonstrate, neither bravery nor fortitude are enough to withstand so many powerful forces at play, all plotting for their downfall.

Moreover, those celebrating Israel's miraculous efforts in making the desert bloom -- the inference being that "nomadic Palestinians" failed to connect with the "neglected" land, and only the "return" of its rightful owners managed to bring about its renewal -- will most likely forget that its was the Palestinian proletariat -- the cheap, oppressed, and dispossessed labour force -- that mostly worked the land, erected the homes and tended to the gardens of the miracle state. No less than $100 billion of American taxpayers' money contributed to Israel's current economic viability, as well as military preparedness.

All of this is likely to be overlooked as Israel and "friends of Israel" around the world celebrate another miraculous year of survival and affluence. Will they pause to wonder why over five million Palestinian refugees are dispossessed and scattered around the world? Will they lend a moment's silence to the many thousands who were brutally murdered so that Israel could live this fallacious miracle? Will they ever understand the pain and the tears of successive generations dying while holding onto the keys of homes that were destroyed, deeds to land that was stolen, and memories of a once beautiful reality from which they were violently uprooted?

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