Ramzy Baroud's Blog

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.

The course of future events is now more predictable, although whether such tit-for-tat behaviour will work in Israel’s favour remains in the realm of “unknown unknowns”. Maybe Rumsfeld had it right after all. 

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.