Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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four bits of information.
this is a bit long. mea culpa.
point two is very short, however. short and sickening.
1) this is one of several reports today on the actions of the idf relative to journalists who are trying to cover the situation in gaza, which explains to some extent why the cnn talking heads stand in fields near the border hoping to have authentic-looking explosions happening in the distance as they repeat the press pool line on the invasion. only al jazeera has correspondents actually in gaza. this despite the israeli supreme court ruling of last week.
of course, as you'll see, the idf is more than happy to allow access to sites inside israel where rockets have hit.
figure out for yourself what this means for many of the views expressed here and elsewhere about what's happening.
Quote:
Israel Puts Media Clamp on Gaza
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Three times in recent days, a small group of foreign correspondents was told to appear at the border crossing to Gaza. The reporters were to be permitted in to cover firsthand the Israeli war on Hamas in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling against the two-month-old Israeli ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza.
Each time, they were turned back on security grounds, even as relief workers and foreign citizens were permitted to cross the border. On Tuesday the reporters were told to not even bother coming.
And so for an 11th day of Israel’s war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it wait in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering, but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel.
Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one, the government is seeking to entirely control the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy.
“This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah,” noted Nachman Shai, a former army spokesman who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Israel’s public diplomacy. “Then, the media were everywhere. Their cameras and tapes picked up discussions between commanders. People talked on live television. It helped the enemy and confused and destabilized the home front. Today, Israel is trying to control the information much more closely.”
He and others, including the post-Lebanon war investigation commissioned by the government, said that the army had found that when reporters were allowed onto the battlefield in Lebanon, they got in the way of military operations by posing risks and asking questions.
As Maj. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, said, “If a journalist gets injured or killed, then it is Central Command’s responsibility.” She said they are trying to protect Israel from rocket fire and “not deal with the media.”
Beyond such tactical considerations, there is a political one. Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s Government Press Office, said, “Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that.”
Foreign reporters deny that their work in Gaza has been subject to Hamas censorship or control. It seems that many Israelis accept Mr. Seaman’s assessment and shed no tears over the lack of media access to the conflict, despite repeated Foreign Press Association protests, including on Tuesday.
A headline in Tuesday’s issue of Yediot Aharonot, the country’s largest selling daily newspaper, expressed well the popular view of the issue. Over a news article describing the generally negative coverage so far, especially in the European media, an intentional misspelling of a Hebrew word turned the headline “World Media” into “World Liars.”
This attitude has been helped by supportive Israeli news media whose articles have been filled with “feelings of self-righteousness and a sense of catharsis following what was felt to be undue restraint in the face of attacks by the enemy,” according to a study of the first days of media coverage of the war by a liberal but nonpartisan group called Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel.
The Foreign Press Association of Israel has been fighting for weeks to get its members into Gaza, first appealing to senior government officials and ultimately taking its case to the country’s highest court. On Wednesday, the justices worked out an arrangement with the organization whereby small groups would be permitted into Gaza when it was deemed safe enough for the crossings to be opened for other reasons.
So far, every time the border has been opened, journalists have not been permitted to go in.
On Tuesday, the press association released a statement saying, “The unprecedented denial of access to Gaza for the world’s media amounts to a severe violation of press freedom and puts the state of Israel in the company of a handful of regimes around the world which regularly keep journalists from doing their jobs.”
At the same time that reporters have been given less access to the conflict, the government has created a new structure for shaping its public message, ensuring that spokesmen of the major government branches meet daily to make sure all are singing from the same sheet.
“We are trying to coordinate everything that has to do with the image and content of what we are doing and to make sure that whoever goes on the air, whether a minister or professor or ex- ambassador, knows what he is saying,” said Aviv Shir-On, deputy director general for media in the foreign ministry. “We have talking points and we try to disseminate our ideas and message.”
Israelis say the war is being reduced on television screens around the world to a simplistic story; American-backed country with awesome military machine fighting a third-world guerrilla force leading to a handful of Israelis dead versus 600 Gazans dead.
Israel and its supporters feel that such quick descriptions fail to explain the vital context of what has been happening — years of terrorist rocket fire on civilians have gone largely unanswered and a message had to be sent to Israel’s enemies that this would go on no longer, they say. The issue of proportionality, they add, is a false construct because comparing death tolls offers no help in measuring justice and legitimacy.
There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict, of course. But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death.
John Ging, an Irishman who directs operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, entered Gaza on Monday as journalists were kept out. He told Palestinian reporters in Gaza that the policy is a problem.
“For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in,” he said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/wo...7media.html?hp
2. earlier today the united states blocked a un security council resolution demanding a cease fire....
3. the israelis bombed a united nations school today, killing 50, mostly refugees.
this is the kind of thing that seemed to me almost inevitable, and is something that undercuts any plausible benefit that israel might have argued it would get from this action.
of course, the idf claims there were mortars being fired from there.
but this is transparently a lie.
like livni's claim that there is no humanitarian crisis in gaza is a lie.
Quote:
Scores killed as Gaza school hit
Israeli strikes have killed at least 40 people who took refuge inside a UN school in the Gaza Strip, medics have said.
The strike on Tuesday hit a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, in the northern town of Jabaliya.
Medical sources at two Gaza hospitals said two tank shells exploded outside the school, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from the Israeli attacks.
The toll quickly rose as rescuers struggled through the rubble.
In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.
Doctors said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or residents of Jabalya refugee camp, in the north of the Gaza Strip.
John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for Unrwa, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said three artillery shells landed near the school where 350 people were taking shelter.
Ging said Unrwa regularly provided the Israeli army with exact geographical coordinates of its facilities and the school was in a built-up area.
"Of course it was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.
"The initial findings... are that there was hostile fire at one of our units from the UN facility," Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, said.
"Our unit responded. Then there were explosions out of proportion to the ordnance we used," he said.
Avital Liebowitz, an Israeli military spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that Hamas had "booby-trapped" installations in Gaza and Israel had no choice but to retaliate.
"This is how it is in wars, we did not choose to be in a war. However, Hamas chose to target Israelis, we did not force them to do anything, and Hamas chose terror."
But Azmi Bishara, a former Arab member of the Israeli Knesst, told Al Jazeera that Hamas' rockets were a "protest shout" against a "an occupying power".
"They are weapons of the poor, used to express their will.
"Israel would say, "what would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act".
"But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country, a colonial country and the people of Gaza are under siege."
Earlier in the day, two people were killed when an artillery shell hit a school in the southern town of Khan Yunis and three people were killed in an air strike on a school in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, medics said.
More than 640 people have been killed and 2,800 others wounded in the 11-day operation, most of them civilians.
Widening the operation
The Israeli military also appears to be broadening its assault on the Gaza Strip as heavy artillery fire is reported from the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis.
Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks have moved into Khan Younis, the second biggest urban area in the Strip after Gaza City, in what seems to be an attempt to isolate it from Rafah.
Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, said Khan Younis is strategically significant on several levels - including that Palestinian fighters can fire missiles into Israeli territory from there.
He stressed reporting teams cannot confirm the reports as they are unable to reach the south from Gaza City in the north because the Strip has been effectively dissected by a column of Israel troops.
Mohyeldin also said Palestinian factions had reported that the Israeli navy was attempting to land near the central coastal city of Deir al-Balah – the scene of more intense fighting - on Tuesday.
"There was very intense shelling overnight and people woke to the presence of ground forces in and around Khan Younis this morning," he said.
Four Israeli soldiers were killed and 24 wounded in battles around Gaza City on Monday night, the Israeli military said early on Tuesday, bringing the Israeli death toll to eight.
Nowhere to hide
Fierce clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters were also reported in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip and two black plumes of smoke could be seen rising over the area.
Fares Akram, a Gaza city resident, told Al Jazeera there was "no safe place in Gaza" as "the Israeli war planes don't stop dropping bombs and firing missiles into Gaza".
Akram says his wife, who is nine-months pregnant, is living in fear of going into labour both because of how dangerous it is to leave their home and because "she knows hospitals in Gaza are in chaos".
He said that while Gazans appreciated demonstrations staged across the Arab world in protest at Israel's actions in the Strip, most believe that while the US backs the Israeli offensive the assault will continue.
In addition, the humanitarian situation in Gaza – already poor following the 18-month Israeli blockade of the strip that left the territory desperately short of fuel, food and medical supplies – is worsening.
John Ging, the head of Unrwa, said he was "shocked" by "the brutality of the injuries" he had seen during a visit to the Shifa hospital in Gaza.
'Absence of accountability'
He said: "There are very real shortages of medicine. This hospital has not had electricity for four days. If the generators go down, those in intensive care will die. This is a horrific tragedy here, and it is getting worse by the moment.
Smoke rises after an Israel air strike near the border between Egypt and Gaza [AFP]
Ging described the situation as "the consequences of political failure and complete absence of accountability for this military action" and appealed for political leaders in the region and around the world to "take on the responsibility".
A number of diplomatic initiatives are under way in the region, with Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, visiting Israel and Syria on Tuesday for talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire.
Sarkozy, speaking with Bashar al-Assad, his Syrian counterpart, called on Syria to use its weight to influence Hamas.
"Syria needs to apply its weight to both sides, but in particular to Hamas that the missile attacks stop,” he said in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
"Syria has to convince Hamas to make a choice for peace, reason and logic and that they themselves become the agent of reconciling Palestinians. We have to get to the point where we can solve this problem.
"There are still a few hours left for us to carry on talking, but I am convinced if both sides are prepared to take the first step, the fighting can stop. The images we have seen are unbearable for all of us.
"It is up to each side to make the first step, with help from Europe, Turkey and Egypt... to escape the spiral of violence and replace it with a spiral of peace."
Israel launched its offensive on the Strip after a fragile six-month ceasefire with Hamas – the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza – ended on December 19.
Both sides blame each other for the failure of the ceasefire, with Israel saying Palestinian fighters breached the truce by firing rockets into southern Israel.
Hamas, and other Palestinian groups, say the truce could not be extended because Israel failed to lift its crippling siege of the Strip.
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Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Scores killed as Gaza school hit
4. this link
Democracy Now! | A Debate on Israel's Invasion of Gaza: UNRWA's Christopher Gunness v. Israel Project's Meagan Buren
takes you to a transcript of a debate on democracy now between christopher guiness of the un high commision on refugees who has been working in gaza over the past months, and megan buren of the israel project in washington. it is too long to post, but is really quite interesting. notice the centrality of foregrounding what is actually happening on the ground in gaza--and what has been happening over the past 18 months---in the way this debate unfolds.
it speaks for itself.
660 killed, 2950 injured according to the latest figures.
read what guiness has to say about the situation in the hospitals in gaza in the above to get a sense of what injured might mean.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
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Last edited by roachboy; 01-06-2009 at 03:34 PM..
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