Israel in Nepal--No Good Deed Goes Uncriticized

                                                                                        photo credit: gagaforIsrael

The IDF-led team from Israel rushed to Nepal and within 12 hours of landing in Katmandu had set up a working field hospital and had begun search and rescue operations. In fact, Israel’s team of doctors, nurses, trauma specialists, and disaster relief experts is the second largest in Nepal, with an on-the-ground crew of 260.

India has sent a team of 450; the next largest is from the US with 128. Not that it is a competition. But neither is it a public relations stunt--in spite of what you may read in some reporting.

Israel has become a world leader in disaster response and humanitarian relief efforts and shares its expertise generously wherever it is needed, as it did during crises in Turkey, Haiti, Japan, and elsewhere. In Nepal so far, Israeli doctors have treated hundreds of injured Nepalese, have delivered babies, and have performed several hundred surgeries.  

Their hospital cares for at least 200 people a day. They even brought a group of “hospital clowns” who work in Israeli hospitals to spend time with Nepalese children.  They have delivered 700 tons of medical equipment and supplies. The state of Israel has “adopted” a village that was destroyed by the earthquake and is working with the Nepalese government to rebuild the entire village.

And yet, Israel’s humanitarian effort in Nepal provokes negative media response. Daniel Gordis summarizes here.

But the good news, and the best argument against the criticism, is that Israel will continue helping around the world regardless of the press it receives.

Gaza War Grade: Incomplete

The IDF prevented a disaster by demolishing the tunnels through which Hamas had planned surprise terror for Rosh Hashanah. The rockets, guns, IDF uniforms, handcuffs, drugs, and even motorcycles stored in the tunnels were to be used in massive attacks and kidnappings at kibbutzim and homes closest to the Gaza border.

Dozens of other tunnels and huge stockpiles of weapons were destroyed. The IDF killed many terrorists and a number of Hamas terrorist leaders. According to a poll conducted by Geocartography Institute, 61% of Israelis feel that the IDF won.

But interestingly, the question was framed in this way: “Do you agree with the statement that the IDF won while Israel lost?” That a majority agreed with this statement may be explained by another question in the same poll: 

Respondents expressed frustration with the ceasefire that ended the operation with Hamas still in power in the Gaza Strip. Fifty-eight percent said the IDF should have been allowed to continue the operation in order to degrade the terrorist organization’s military abilities and called the truce a mistake that wastes the achievements of the Israeli armed forces.

Meanwhile, as in previous wars, Hamas has declared itself victorious.  An excellent Gatestone Institute article explains what’s wrong with that assessment and even Mahmoud Abbas blames Hamas for the deaths and destruction in Gaza that he now says “could have been avoided.”

The photo above (why is there no dust on that white robe?) represents winning to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who has not appeared in Gaza during the war until now and is pictured here, smiling, raising his hand in a V for victory sign amid the rubble of his own house.

Where is the Hamas Offensive?

We get constant news of the “Israeli offensive” and the “Gaza offensive” but both refer to action by Israel. What about the Hamas offensive?

This phrase does not exist in mainstream media.  It doesn’t come up in a Google search.

And without the concept of  “Hamas offensive,” the fact that Israel is fighting a defensive war stays out of focus.

American and UK media report on IDF soldiers and Palestinian civilians.  Hamas fighters are invisible.

We hear about Hamas rockets, though not often about the ones landing inside Gaza. Mostly the rockets are mentioned in terms of their uselessness against the rather mysterious Iron Dome.

Israelis who are not currently serving in the IDF are nearly as invisible as Hamas fighters.  As the war reporting continues, Israelis seem to be receding into the background, as if each story is titled, “what did the IDF do to Gaza today?”

The gruesome casualty count continuously reported from Gaza -- but not from other conflicts -- does not distinguish Palestinian combatants from civilians.

The source for this count, so far, is Hamas itself or the Gaza Health Service that is run by Hamas. And the familiar words: “most of them civilian,” cannot be accurate given that a majority are men of fighting age.

Simultaneous strikes at a Gaza hospital and the Shati refugee camp provoked outrage. Israel showed photos to demonstrate that they were not targeting these areas and reiterated that they never target civilians.  But media went with identifying Israeli strikes or equalizing Hamas and Israeli “claims.”

Yet, whenever a reporter is brave enough to say what’s really happening we hear the truth, as occurred last week in tweets from Italian reporter, Gabriele Barbati:

Out of ‪#Gaza far from ‪#Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris

7:46 AM - 29 Jul 2014

@IDFSpokesperson said truth in communique released yesterday about Shati camp massacre. It was not ‪#Israel behind it

7:47 AM - 29 Jul 2014

Journalists could help by acknowledging the limitations of their sources and the intimidation reporters and photographers face from Hamas.  There could be blazing headlines with information of the kind Gabriele Barbati shared.

Luckily, there are some in the media who do get it.  But right now, they’re the exceptions.

 published at Honest Reporting

When The Neighborhood Bully Fires Back

                                                                                                              photo: Hirek Israelbol                                                                                     

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive

He’s criticized and condemned for being alive

He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin

He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in

He’s the neighborhood bully

                                               -- Bob Dylan, “The Neighborhood Bully”                 

Much of English language media is returning to an old standby: Israel as the neighborhood bully. Sometimes this perspective is stated outright; more often it simply underlies the way stories are presented.

Hamas is usually referred to as a “militant group,” without indicating that it is also the elected government of Gaza. We get the impression of a renegade gang acting outside any official capacity. Working with Hamas is Islamic Jihad; though the two are aligned against Israel they are also in conflict with each other within the larger context of their shared Islamic extremism.

Yet, rarely is “Islamic extremism” mentioned, the widespread phenomenon that greatly overshadows the size of tiny Israel and negates its image as neighborhood bully.

Sometimes Hamas is referred to as a terrorist organization, often by saying Israel “considers” them so, suggesting this is Israeli propaganda.  But Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by many other countries, by the EU, US, Japan, Canada, Egypt and Jordan. And all of the rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel are aimed at civilians, pretty much the definition of terrorism. 

Even the Palestinian ambassador to the UN freely acknowledges that “every missile” from Gaza coming into Israel is “a crime against humanity.”  There have not been a lot of headlines conveying this message. Also a war crime is the launching of rockets from residential areas and endangering one’s own people.

When targeting Hamas fighters and their weapons, the IDF has many methods of warning civilians to leave. They call cellphones, send texts, and distribute leaflets so that people will get out of the way. They have a system of “knock on the roof” as warning and if they see people still in an area they will abort their mission.  During this week the Israeli government helped over 800 foreign nationals who wanted to leave Gaza to do so. 

But there are casualties. It is impossible to call people casualties without stopping right there to say: we should have no wars, ever. Yet, in the world as it is at the moment, in which Israel’s cities are under rocket fire, its government has the responsibility to protect its citizens.

Mention of that responsibility deflates the bully image, as does attributing Israel’s far fewer casualties to its building of bomb shelters, its requirement since the 1980’s that apartments have safe rooms, and its investment in a technology that dissolves incoming rockets in the air before they can do the damage they are intended to do.

Hamas has been firing rockets into Israeli towns for years. In 2008 and 2012 when the rocket firing escalated, and again now, the IDF fired back.  A lot of news coverage begins with Israeli strikes on Gaza as if the neighborhood bully just decided to flex his muscles for no reason.

Reporting that sirens sounded in particular cities or that the Iron Dome stopped rockets over Tel Aviv without ever suggesting that what is transpiring is the attempted murder of families in their homes helps create a familiar storyline in which Israel, because it is the stronger country, is to blame for there being a war at all. 

Bob Dylan wrote “The Neighborhood Bully” about Israel in 1983.

published at Honest Reporting