My inbox is flooded with emails about our Send a Soldier a Smile campaign. 2,200 people have already clicked to send a message and cookies to Israeli soldiers. There's no cost to show your support. For those of you who already wrote, a) the cookies are kosher, and b) if you had technical problems submitting your message, our webmaster is working on the problem — so click again if you tried before.
Come back to this post for updates throughout the day.
8:40 p.m. Out of time, out of coffee. Time to call it a day.
8:35 p.m. Just saw this Haaretz update. Will the Hamas "military wing" sign onto any cease fire its "politcal wing" agrees to? Could rocket fire become a purely administrative matter?
8:03 p.m. If rockets hit Tel Aviv, I wonder if the MSM will display any of the sympathy reserved for Gaza by nature of it's densely populated status. Worth asking because Mere Rhetoric via (Omri Ceren) notes that Tel Aviv's population density is actually higher than Gaza's.
Stephen Pollard knews this all along; will Seattle Post-Intelligencer op-ed editors take note?
7:27 p.m. Gaza's media war spreads into online games. Dion Nissenbaum discovered Raid Gaza, which he says "lacks the charm of Sock and Awe." A form of digital martrydom?
7:09 p.m. Blame Balfour!
7:00 p.m. The Age reprinted opposing commentaries by Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and Israeli MK Shai Hermesh which were originally published in The Guardian yesterday.
Did Hermesh know he would be published alongside Meshaal?
6:52 p.m. While I'm at PJM, I see Bob Owens spanking Reuters over its sloppy captions, VDH debunking Hamas myths, and Robert Stacy McCain learning from The Godfather.
6:43 p.m. Mike McNally sheds no tears for the MSM's lack of access to Gaza:
Israel should no more allow the press unfettered access to Gaza than it should allow a brigade of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to fly into Gaza’s airport to reinforce their Hamas proteges. The last thing Israel needs is Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s resident apologist for radical Islam, wallowing in an emergency room full of wounded civilians, or BBC reporters weeping over the death of senior Hamas terrorists, as Barbara Plett wept for the dying Yasser Arafat.
And leaving aside issues of balance, the media has repeatedly shown itself to be susceptible to manipulation by the propaganda arms of terrorist organisations. Remember the Jenin “massacre” that wasn’t? Or the many examples of “fauxtography” and stage-managed incidents during the 2006 Lebanon war — a phenomenon that’s being repeated in Gaza? Hamas knows that while it has no chance of defeating Israel on the battlefield, it enjoys a distinct advantage in the arena of public opinion; combine a cynical opponent with a credulous media eager to believe the worst about Israel and you have the recipe for a public relations nightmare.
6:35 p.m. Yet another echo of O'Brien as Evening Standard columnist Anne McElvoy writes:
What they get now is a consequence of the misgovernment they have suffered and still suffer under Hamas – and even more despair.
6:10 p.m. This NY Daily News staff-ed about Hamas doesn't mince words.
Given no choice but to push in that direction, the Israeli military has done an extraordinary job of targeting Hamas fighters and arms in crowded environments – while holding down civilian casualties. It is up against demented enemies who sacrifice their own people.
No wonder it went viral on Digg.
5:57 p.m. Interesting fact from Brian of London: the equivalent of one million Israelis within range of rocket fire would be 42 million Americans — Texas and Florida — within rocket range.
5:51 p.m. Just heard from our webmaster that he identified and fixed the problem causing problems for some readers trying to Send a Soldier a Smile.
5:46 p.m. Describing his work in Gaza, photojournalist Scout Tufankjian ends this dispatch in Slate with a startling admission
If my kid were killed, I wouldn't want some grimy little snapper sticking her lens in my face, but I do that to people every day.
That's exactly the Gaza "pornography" Jeffrey Goldberg slammed.
5:28 p.m. There was another email asking media contact info. Time to head off these queries: Here's our Contact the Media Page.
5:24 p.m. Jeff Jacoby on the distinction between legitimate criticism and anti-Semitism:
5:15 p.m.
Jeffrey Goldberg, via Snapshots, pops some bulbs over staged photos in Gaza.
One more thing, speaking of pornography — we've all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It's a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn't matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I'll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble — and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed.
5:07 p.m. We just emailed today's HonestReporting communique to subscribers. No matter how I play with filters, I always wind up seeing auto-replies hit my inbox in real time.
5:01 p.m. Long after Pallywood propaganda went to town over the Gaza Beach affair, Haaretz reports this:
One of the girls in the family, Ilham Ghalia, who was hospitalized in Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital, told a story that was different from what Palestinian propaganda would have us believe: Her father caused the lethal explosion when he handled an unexploded ordnance left behind from a previous incident.
Decision makers in the government and IDF for some reason shelved her admission, which relieved Israel of blame.
As the world puts a spotlight on the shelling of a UN school, I hope Israeli spokesmen learn a lesson from this Gaza beach revelation. Less likely, however, is whether Palestinian sources or the MSM will too.
4:45 p.m. I like this Rosie a whole lot better than that other Rosie:
Since Palestinians made the fatal error of electing a radical Islamist organization over the corrupt devil that they knew, they doomed themselves to lives of crushing wretchedness. These are the consequences.
Yet another echo of O'Brien.
4:35 p.m. The possibility of rockets striking Tel-Aviv isn't far-fetched. The Australian writes:
Hamas is believed to be planning to fire whatever it has left just before a new ceasefire comes into effect to demonstrate that it is still in fighting condition when the closing bell sounds.
4:21 p.m. A Wall St. Journal commentary describes Hamas's links to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Here's a scary thought amidst the talk of franchising global jihad:
Through Hamas, Tehran can possibly reach the ultimate prize, the Egyptian faithful.
4:14 p.m. Just lost track of how many coffees I downed today.
4:06 p.m. HonestReporting's communique about the UN school tragedy just went live.
4:03 p.m. Israel's fight with Hamas is really a battle against Iran.
3:50 p.m. Just discovered that Ban Ki-moon condemned a rocket attack launched from UN school grounds last November.
3:44 p.m. The Canadian government blames Hamas for the UN school tragedy.
“We really don't have complete details yet, other than the fact that we know that Hamas has made a habit of using civilians and civilian infrastructure as shields for their terrorist activities, and that would seem to be the case again today,” he said in an interview.
He added: “In many ways, Hamas behaves as if they are trying to have more of their people killed to make a terrible terrorist point.”
3:37 p.m. France 2 TV apologized for airing this 2005 video in it's coverage of Gaza, saying
. . . the sequence was “intended to illustrate the war of images on the Internet. The people who put it together worked too fast”.
Turnaround time in the digital age is remarkably fast, almost instant. Too bad the fact-checking was left in a cloud of dust.
3:12 p.m. This Baltimore Sun staff-ed's heart goes out to the residents of a devastated Gaza. But how do the editors explain this non-sequitur?
It's an intolerable situation for them, and though devised by Hamas militants, Israel bears the brunt of the blame for a disproportionate use of force.
3:03 p.m. In the context of his overall commentary, I'm not sure my reaction is the point Etgar Keret intended. After reading this snippet, I understood why the debate over proportionate response muddies the water:
Thus, it appears that the proportionality debate presents objective criteria for a situation that is essentially subjective, in which two contradictory narratives clash and neither side is prepared to include the other and its suffering.
Is there anything in the proportionality principle that can rationally justify killing of any kind?
Rather than deny that Israel's response to Hamas's rockets is disproportionate, Richard Cohen and I revel in it.
2:49 p.m. Nachman Shai tells the NY Times that Lebanon taught a powerful lesson about the restricted media access to Gaza today:
“This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah,” said 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.”
The government-commissioned investigation into the war with Hezbollah reported that the army had found that when reporters were allowed on the battlefield in Lebanon, they got in the way of military operations by posing risks and asking questions.
Reporter Steve Erlanger later acknowledges the point:
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.
2:36 p.m. Fisk's being Fisk again.
2:28 p.m. According to this staff-ed in The Guardian, the shelling of the UN school in Jabalya is
. . . a repetition of the bombing of the UN compound in Qana.
I agree. Like Hezbollah, Hamas hides gunmen and weapons in civilian areas, creating clear culpability that The Guardian ignores — as it did in this 2006 leader.
2:19 p.m. Daniel Finkelstein explains why Israel refuses to rely on international guarantees of peace.
2:04 p.m. Halifax columnist Paul Schneidereit addresses Hamas's apologists:
The notion that somehow it’s Israel’s desire, or in its long-term interest, to have 1.4 million hostile Gazans living across the border is nonsensical. In 2005, Israel pulled completely out of Gaza, hoping disengagement would eventually lead to peaceful co-existence. Critics point out that Israel has never completely relaxed its control over Gaza’s borders. Why would it, until it could be certain those organizations sworn to Israel’s destruction would not take advantage of the pullout to try to turn Gaza into an armed camp?
1:57 p.m. I'm afraid to ask if anyone could have published a nastier cartoon than what Michael Leunig penned for The Age.
1:51 p.m. This Memri blog post about Fatah and Hamas planning intifadas against each other has me wondering: If a Palestinian suicide bomber deliberately blows up other Palestinians, who gets the virgins?
1:34 p.m. The BBC lauds its two stringers in Gaza. I hope James Stephenson's assertion is true.
Hamas has not imposed any restrictions on their reporting and they have been a model of impeccable journalism, in terrible personal circumstances. Most of us go home when the story is over. Gaza is their home.
If I'm jaded, it's because we were already burnt by CNN.
1:22 p.m. Israel and the Mohammed al-Dura affair for a breakdown in Palestinian society. Gaza's mental health experts shared the latest psychobabble with The Guardian:
The image of Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Gaza boy shot dead as his father vainly tried to protect him from Israeli gunfire at the beginning of the second intifada, is seared on the Palestinian consciousness. To many Palestinian adults it symbolises Israeli indifference to the lives of their children. But psychologists say that to many children its principal impact is to see a father who cannot protect his son.
With that – and humiliations such as Israeli soldiers beating Palestinian men in front of their children – has come a collapse in respect for the regular systems of authority.
The perpetual killing has also drawn many children into the cult of the "martyr" and led them to expect an early death.
It's so ironic that the effects of Pallywood are turning against the parents who encouraged hatred and martyrdom.
1:03 p.m. According to AP:
Two residents of the area who spoke with The Associated Press by telephone said they saw a small group of militants firing mortar rounds from a street near the school, where 350 people had gathered to get away from the shelling. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
12:45 p.m. Not pretty. Israeli tank shells destroyed a UN school. A few thoughts: It's part of Hamas's military doctorine to draw the the IDF into urban combat. We predicted on Monday that Hamas would put civilians in harm's way to capitalize on this kind of incident. They've been previously caught on film launching rockets from school grounds.
If you didn't this background info, what would you think of Israel? And more importantly, is MSM coverage including this background info?
