By Dr. James Winter January 13, 2009
REALITY OF GAZA DISTORTED
One of the world’s worst humanitarian crises is taking place, and as usual, we’re getting a very distorted picture.
The mainstream media in Canada and the U.S. have portrayed the Israeli war in Gaza as justified, in response to Hamas rocket fire.
Denuded of any current and historical context, this may seem logical.
But to begin with, this is truly a David and Goliath battle, with Hamas as David. Portrayed as a battle between equals, in reality the hand-made, ill-targeted Hamas rockets are up against the Israeli army, with its lethal, hi-tech, nuclear arsenal and complete air supremacy.
The primitive Hamas rockets have killed 11 Israelis in the last 3 years. During the same time, Israel has killed about 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 200 children. Since the Israeli attack began on December 27, at least 869 Palestinians have died, as of this writing. Scores more are dying every day.
What is also missing from the media is the fact that the Hamas rockets themselves are in response to a brutal Israeli blockade which is starving Gaza Palestinians, to get them to turn against the Hamas government which they elected in free and fair democratic elections, certified by the U.S. Carter Center, in 2006.
Most media accounts also completely omit the 40-year Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, ever since they were seized during the Six Day War in June 1967. In November 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. This has never been enforced.
Oxford University International Relations professor Dr. Avi Shlaim, a former Israeli soldier, has described the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war as "one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times."
Israel has blocked all exports from Gaza, and reduced the import of food, medicine and fuel to a trickle, in violation of a 2005 accord. Forty-nine percent of the population is now unemployed.
Richard Falk, a Jewish-American law professor and UN special rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, recently called Israel’s crippling economic blockade "a crime against humanity." He said the International Criminal Court should investigate whether Israeli leaders and military commanders should be indicted for punishing 1.5 million people living in the crowded Gaza Strip over the actions of a few militants, and for targeting civilians by aiming airstrikes at civilian areas in the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
A one-sided Canwest News report in the Windsor Star on January 12 said Israel is "nearing its goals" in its attack on Gaza. Nowhere in the story were any specific "goals" mentioned. The Israeli foreign minister indirectly implied that they will continue until all rocket fire ceases. Amidst paragraphs of Israeli propaganda, including a description of Israel’s battle as "a struggle against terrorism," was one sentence from Hamas. Here is how it read:
"Several officials from Hamas including its leader in exile, Khaled Meshal, have said in recent days that they, too, remained determined to continue the war against a country whose right to exist they continue to refuse to acknowledge."
But it is the supposedly objective journalist, not Hamas leaders, who says Hamas continues to refuse to acknowledge Israel. What Hamas says is that it wants Israel to withdraw from the territory it occupied, in keeping with UN Resolution 242. Hamas doesn’t refuse to recognize Israel, it refuses to recognize Gaza and the West Bank as a part of Israel.
The Israeli goal is to inflict as much punishment as possible, prior to President-elect Barrack Obama’s inauguration, and Israeli elections in February.
The "Israeli Defence Forces" and politicians decry terrorist rockets which allegedly target kindergartens. As Dr. Shlaim indicates, This "shrill rhetoric of victimhood and self-pity, overlaid with self-righteousness" is accompanied by brute military force, and applied to a virtually defenceless population. "In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, ‘crying and shooting.’"
The U.S., EU and Canada have shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising Hamas, and withholding foreign aid. Sanctions have been applied, says Shlaim, "not against the occupier but the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed."
Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the conditions he saw in the West Bank and Gaza in 2007 were "infinitely worse than apartheid."
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said the Israeli bombardment of Gaza "bears all the hallmarks of war crimes."
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has described the Gaza blockade as "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth."
But you’d never know any of this if you rely solely on the corporate news media. Haroon Siddiqui, former editorial page editor of Toronto Star wrote recently that the political and media establishment in Canada and the U.S. is "divorced from reality" on this topic.
As Linda McQuaig recently pointed out, on Israel’s 60th anniversary last April, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised Canada’s "unshakable" support for Israel.
The political and media elite of this country and the U.S. have been working overtime to supply just that.
Dr. James Winter is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Windsor.
