Sticky post. Come back throughout the day. Will the Gaza ceasefire hold? What kinds of issues came up over the weekend?
7:51 p.m. This IDF video shows how Hamas arms caches and booby traps deliberately placed in civilian areas cause extensive collateral damage in secondary explosions.
7:36 p.m. How insane is this? Bessy Reyna, a regular contributor to the Hartford Courant, explains why she thinks Israel broke the cease fire — and consequently lost the moral high ground:
It turns out that Hamas did not break the cease-fire that started in June with rocket attacks on Israel. It was Israel that attacked Gaza on Nov. 4. Between the June 18 cease-fire agreement and Nov. 4, there were 15 rocket attacks from Gaza, which an Israeli spokesman agreed were not fired by Hamas.
Israel's justification for the Nov. 4 attack was that Hamas was building a tunnel. Former President Jimmy Carter said in a piece he wrote for The Washington Post on Jan. 8 that Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas. In interviews, Mark Regev, Israel's official government spokesman, admits Israel targeted the tunnel, not in retaliation for a rocket attack, but to prevent further attacks and the possible kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Israel paints construction of the tunnel as an aggressive act by Hamas. This rationale comes very close to what President Bush used in attacking Iraq: looking for the weapons of mass destruction that never materialized.
Gilad Shalit was kidnapped in an attack through an identical tunnel. Does Reyna want us to believe the tunnel discovered in November was for importing Bamba? How else should it be "painted?" As a whitewash?
7:15 p.m. Bad analogy from Steve Niva. The wonk from Evergreen State College writes in the Seattle Times:
In addition to doing all it can to improve the horrendous living conditions of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, this would also mean accepting that Hamas, like all previous groups who used terrorist violence for their cause, such as the FLN or the IRA, can only be moderated through inclusion in a political process that addresses fundamental national grievances.
I really don't know enough about the Algerian FLN movement, but I do know that renouncing violence was a necessary first-step for the IRA before it earned its place in the political process.
6:12 p.m. Can't help but like Scott Stantis.
5:32 p.m. In the Boston Globe, Eric Calderwood descibes how he and the Syria street experience Al-Jazeera's coverage of Gaza as something akin to reality TV:
The network's producers seem to have learned a lot from American reality television, where real footage is crafted and spliced into a compelling narrative with characters, personal conflict, and a dramatic arc. Each day, viewers here in Syria and across the Arab world tune into a new "episode." Each day, the war's narrative builds and folds back on itself, reinforcing the audience's familiarity with the cast of characters: Hamas, the scrappy rebel; Israel, the regional bully; the civilians of Gaza – and, in particular, the wounded children – caught in the middle of the conflict. The "international community" is a bloviating model of inefficacy, tied up in innumerable committees and summits. Through it all stride the Al-Jazeera correspondents, decked out in blue bulletproof vests . . . .
As perverse as it may sound, Al-Jazeera's coverage of the war satisfies, in the same way that a sitcom or serialized drama satisfies. It's not so much surprise that keeps bringing you back, but rather your familiarity with the characters' flaws and faults. And you know that your experience of the drama is not individual but rather collective. Walk into any cafe, grocery store, or dry cleaner in Damascus, and you are almost certain to find a TV tuned to Al-Jazeera's around-the-clock coverage of the war in Gaza. There is solidarity and also a certain comfort in watching the grim reality of war en masse.
5:14 p.m. Al-Jazeera launched a childrens' channel called Baraem TV. I hope it offers more upscale fare than Farfur and friends.
4:03 p.m. Rand Simberg: Hamas replaces the cult of Moloch — with media culpability — for the sacrifice of Palestinian children by hiding its men and weapons among civilians and children:
Moloch has returned to the Mideast, after millennia. Except this time, the maw of the bull is the eye of the camera lens, into which the slaughter of the innocents is fed to a complicit press to be passed on to a gullible world.
And this time, those sacrificing the children don’t want to drown out the noise of the terrified screams of those tossed to the fire. The screams, and (as always) the terror, are the whole point.
HonestReporting didn't articulate it like that, but earlier this month, we predicted Hamas would engineer civilian casualties — even a massacre — that Israel could be blamed for. Professor Richard Landes saw this coming a mile away.
3:55 p.m. The matzav and its missiles reach David Bogner in Beersheva, who realizes: We Are All Sderot.
3:44 p.m. Greg Sheridan gets it.
3:27 p.m. The JTA (via Infidels are Cool) reports that Lucia Annunziata (pictured), one of the nation's top journalists, touched off a firestorm of controversy by walking off a show to protest pro-Palestinian bias:
Lucia Annunziata, a former president of the state broadcaster RAI, was a guest Thursday night on an episode of the RAI show Annozero dedicated to the situation in Gaza.
At one point she interrupted host Michele Santoro and sharply criticized him for the tone and bias of the show and its guests.
"So far, except for one girl, it has been 99.9 percent pro-Palestinian," she said.
Santoro in turn shouted at Annunziata, calling her criticism "idiocy." She stood up, detached her microphone and walked off the set.
2:58 p.m. Rev. Samuel Rodriguez on the Gaza conflict:
We can be both Pro Israel and Pro the Palestinian People. Let us help Israel and the Palestinians by both eradicating the terrorist groups while simultaneously building schools, infrastructure, and providing opportunity. Let us replace fear with hope, rockets with opportunity.
At the end of the day, let us understand that Islamic religious totalitarianism is the 21st Century version of Hitler's National Socialism. What do we do with evil? Negotiate compromise, surrender or confront? The answer will determine not only the fate of Israel, but the fate of world peace for years to come.
I hadn't heard of Rev. Rodriguez before. As president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), he represents 15 million people.
2:09 p.m. Memo to Hamas leaders: rejecting the truce leads to unenviable headlines like this:
1:39 p.m. Fisk's being Fisk again.
1:32 p.m. Dueling spin in the UK — who to believe on phosphorus shells? The Times of London or The Guardian?
12:58 p.m. Amazing. The Washington Post's feature for children, KidsPost, explains the issue of proportionate response more clearly for children than most material online for adults:
Palestinians say the large number of dead and wounded shows that Israel is attacking them with too much force. Israel says a big reason so many Palestinians have died is that Hamas puts fighters and military equipment in the middle of areas packed with innocent people. So when Israel targets those fighters, civilians get caught in the fighting.
12:12 p.m. Could the irony be any more striking? Richard Landes cites Israeli media reports that Hamas terrorists used the BBC's office to fire rockets at the IDF, used staff as human shields too. You'd think the Beeb would note this in their coverage . . .
12:03 p.m. HonestReporting editor Simon Plosker was interviewed on PajamasMedia TV about MSM coverage of the Gaza war. You can now watch the video for free.
11:46 a.m. In Melbourne, Michael Backman thinks Israeli persecution of Hamas is the source of the Islamists resiliency:
One characteristic that is common among persecuted groups is a strong investment in education — when people's physical wealth is in danger of destruction from war and persecution one store of wealth that stays with individuals even when they must flee as refugees is education. It explains why such groups often insist on their own schools — education is too important to be entrusted to others.
What Backman calls education, I call "brainwashing." And the brainwashing Hamas isn't entrusting to others is against Westen civilization too.
11:24 a.m. From the poison of Steve Breen, staff cartoonist at the San Diego Union-Tribune:
9:41 a.m. Gaza fauxtography? Gateway Pundit finds that photographer Abid Katib has a history of using kids' props.
9:39 a.m. Professor Gerald Steinberg addresses Human Rights Watch, the source of much of the MSM's phosphorus allegations:
HRW's "evidence" was based entirely on innuendo and unverifiable "eyewitness" reports. One report states that "[o]n January 9, Human Rights Watch researchers on a ridge overlooking Gaza from the northwest observed multiple air-bursts of artillery-fired WP that appeared to be over the Gaza City/Jabalya area. In addition, Human Rights Watch has analyzed photographs taken by the media on the Israel-Gaza border." HRW does not name its researchers; it does not provide a detailed location of its observation, nor does it identify the photos it "analyzed" making independent verification of this "evidence" impossible.
INDEED, TWO days later, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which certainly cannot be accused of a pro-Israeli bias, issued a statement that backed the IDF statements.
At a stormy press conference on Friday, reporters used HRW's allegations as a weapon against Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
9:32 a.m. Elder of Ziyon: Mahmoud Zahar apparently escaped to Egypt — smuggled in an ambulance.
9:27 p.m. Lebanese cartoonist Arman Homsy (via Memri) understands the risks to Lebanon if Hezbollah gives a green light to continued Katyusha fire. Feel free to disagree, but it suggests Israel has regained a significant degree of deterrence.
Hezbollah adventurism won't play well to Lebanese voters when the nation goes to the polls this June.
9:13 a.m. Entire unit of Iranian-trained Hamasniks wiped out by IDF. According to Haaretz:
The unit numbered approximately 100 men who had traveled to Iran and Hezbollah camps, mostly in the Beka'a Valley, where they were trained in infantry fighting tactics. The militants were also trained in the use of anti-tank missiles, the detonation of explosives, among other skills.
They managed to return to the Gaza Strip through tunnels in the Rafah border area . . .
9:09 a.m. The the Red Cross backtracks on some of Gaza's "humanitarian disaster" hysteria. The NY Times writes:
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, who spent Tuesday in Gaza City, agreed that the situation with civilians was dire but said that the principal hospital was making do with medical supplies, and that doctors, working around the clock, were mostly coping with the flow of the wounded.
9:06 a.m. CNN's Ben Wedeman entered Gaza via Egypt. Why didn't the Foreign Press Association think of that?
