History, Give Me Re-Write!

It seems most of the media have now bought into the idea that the latest Middle East conflict is entirely the fault of Arab extremists. References to Israeli culpability seem to be systematically scrubbed from news reports, such as The Washington Post changing the lede in its story the other day about the G-8 statement. The earlier lede reminded readers that Israel has kidnapped a number of Palestinian Authority government officials. But The Post and other media seem to back the administration's idea that democracies are only valued when they elect leaders we like.

CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer apparently towed the line in a recent broadcast, but fortunately FAIR, the media watchdog, provides some perspective.

The media assumption is that in withdrawing from Gaza in September 2005, Israel ended its conflict with at least that portion of Palestine and gave up, as Schieffer put it, "what the Palestinians supposedly wanted." In reality, however, since the pullout and before the recent escalation of violence, at least 144 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed by Israeli forces, often by helicopter gunships, according to a list compiled by the Israeli human rights group B’tselem. Only 31 percent of the people killed were engaged in hostile actions at the time of their deaths, and 25 percent of all those killed were minors.

From the time of the pullout until the recent upsurge in violence, according to B’tselem’s lists, no Israelis were killed by violence emanating from Gaza. Although during this period Palestinian militants launched some 1,000 crude Kasam missiles from Gaza into Israel, no fatalities resulted; at the same time, Israel fired 7,000 to 9,000 heavy artillery shells into Gaza. On June 9, just two weeks before the Hamas raid that killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third, an apparent Israeli missile strike killed seven members of a Palestinian family picnicking on a Gaza beach, which prompted Hamas to end its 16-month-old informal ceasefire with Israel. (Though Israel has denied responsibility for the killings, a Human Rights Watch investigation strongly challenged the denial, calling the likelihood of Israel not being responsible "remote"; Human Rights Watch, 6/15/06.) Hamas has repeatedly pointed to the Gaza beach incident as one of the central events that prompted its cross-border raid—indeed, Schieffer's own CBS Evening News has reported that claim (CBS Evening News, 6/25/06). Even so, Schieffer seems unable to recall this recent event (see Action Alert, 6/30/06).

Hamas also points to the capture of some of its leaders by Israel as the provocation for its raid. If Israelis had every right, as Schieffer said, to respond with force to the capture of one soldier by Hamas, then how are Palestinians expected to feel about the more than 9,000 prisoners captured and held by Israel—including 342 juveniles and over 700 held without trial (Mandela Center for Human Rights, 4/30/06)?

Moreover, Israel's withdrawal did not remotely give Palestinians "what they wanted." In addition to its continued deadly attacks on Gaza, Israel has continued to control Gaza’s borders and has withheld tens of millions of dollars of tax revenue in response to Hamas’ victory in democratic elections in January 2006. Israel’s actions crippled the Gaza economy and prompting warnings from the U.N. of a looming humanitarian disaster (UNRWA, 7/8/06).

None of this is to say that Hamas, which has regularly ignored the distinction between military and civilian targets, does not share part of the blame for the current crisis. But to act as though Israel had been behaving as a peace-loving neighbor to Gaza until the soldier’s capture is a willful rewriting of very recent history.

Comments

[Bob]

Regarding the underlying problem, they’re both right. You may not like the tactics of the Arabs, but we need to remember, as they do, that Israel was formed by taking land that Arabs were living on. More than 2 million were displaced with the creation of Israel.

Clearly, after the Holocaust, the creation of Israel had merit. But what if the world decided to give the Jews New Jersey? Or Virginia?

Regarding the immediate conflict, as FAIR points out, Palestinian Authority’s officials were kidnapped by Israel. Just before this conflict erupted, Hamas was on the verge of agreeing with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to tacitly recognizing Israel -- a huge step forward. Israel’s response was to then fire missiles into Gaza and kill civilians. Granted Palestinian extremists were doing the same but deciphering who started it is a chicken and egg conundrum. Many feel Hezbollah’s provocation was in direct response to Israeli attacks in Gaza, though some argue that it and Hamas do not coordinate activities. You could argue teh Gaza incursions were simply Hezbollah's rationalization. But in any case, having that argument ignores the larger issue: Palestinians deserve a homeland as much as the Jews do. I believe that a solution that includes a viable homeland and some reparations for lost land (which may need to be paid by through foreign aid and not by Israel) would find that most Palestinians would agree to recognize Israel.

That could be pie in the sky, but so is thinking that Israel or the U.S. can ever win this fight militarily.

[hrconservative]

Actually, it is you who are trying to re-write history. Israel did everything they could diplomatically, and they were forced to fight. Israel is not going to stand by and let terrorists kill them. Israel will not back down and will do anything to survive, and I applaude them for it. They are one of the USA's few allies in the Middle East, and I am glad the USA is coming out for Israel in this conflict.