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When the Going Gets Tough, Olmert Blunders |
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Tuesday, 04 July 2006 |
By Tariq Shadid
When something that is an obvious reality is put up for discussion, it can often be a good reason to raise an eyebrow. A recent example of this can be seen in the dealings of the pro-Israeli propaganda machine with respect to the military onslaught on Gaza. While a skilfully orchestrated media apparatus endeavours to project Gilad Shalit into the minds of the public as an ordinary civilian, it also does its utmost to obscure the fact that when this Israeli soldier was captured, he was an active combatant on duty.
Since this is not an opinion, but a fact, should there be any discussion at all, about whether he is a prisoner of war, or a hostage?
The media has a solution for this dilemma: it deals with the problem by pre-empting the outcome of the discussion, and simply pushing the captured Israeli soldier forward as a ‘hostage’. The use of this terminology, however, should not be taken too lightly. What seems to be the aim of this strategy, is to liken the capture of this man to the hostage-takings in Iraq, allegedly perpetrated by the recently assassinated Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. The fact, that the Palestinian resistance fighters who are holding the Israeli POW, have stated that he will not be harmed, since Islamic law prohibits this, is given little attention, even though this attitude sets them apart quite clearly from the alleged ‘Iraqi’ hostage-takers.
By nevertheless associating the current situation with the monstrosities of those well-known hostage slayings, through the persistent use of the word ‘hostage’, it is hoped and expected that public sympathy for the captured Israeli soldier will give the Israeli Occupation Forces a free hand in targeting Gaza, in its entirety.
Whether public opinion in the world will prove to be this gullible, remains to be seen. It is nevertheless quite likely, that the media’s current stronghold on the public mind within the framework of the ‘War on Terror’, will make it relatively easy to feed this idea to many of those living in Western Europe, America and the former British Colonies. However, interestingly, this time it is the Israeli public that seems to be having more trouble swallowing the distortion.
A recent poll in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot showed that 58% of the Israeli’s were in favour of a prisoner swap to release Shalit. On Saturday, the 2nd of July, a group of several hundred Israeli protesters took to the streets to oppose the government’s onslaught on Gaza. What’s more, is that BBC Monitoring has recent reports that show that the reaction in the Israeli press to the current government’s course is not only overwhelmingly negative, but also portrays the majority of the Israeli political spectrum as disapproving of Olmert’s approach to the situation.
Had the Palestinian resistance movements targeted a civilian area, and caused civilian victims, then the attempt at mobilizing support through media mobilization might have been more successful. However, what Olmert is trying to do, is to justify this entire military siege and invasion on the basis of a military defeat in the battlefield.
The Israeli army, with its projected aura of invincibility, was humiliated by the inventiveness and courage of the Palestinian resistance, and for Olmert, fresh at the rudder of the Zionist warship, this seems to have been too much to take. As a whole, coming down on all the people of Gaza as a reaction to his first serious test of competence, Olmert obviously puts himself in danger of losing his credibility, both internationally and among the Israeli public.
Many Israelis will be disappointed, that Olmert’s way of handling the situation has drawn public attention to the fact that 9,000 Palestinians are currently languishing in Israeli jails, as political prisoners. Even worse: the news, that Israel has been holding almost 400 underage children incarcerated for a long time, which had until now been largely ignored by the media, has appeared in many of the world’s newspapers.
Many Israelis will also be disappointed, that while Palestinian cohesion was on the verge of collapse, with even senior Palestinian officials expressing their worries over a looming civil war, which would have provided an excellent opportunity for Israel to affect the balance of power in the Palestinian territories, Olmert has managed to unite all Palestinian factions into a unified stance for resisting the Gaza onslaught.
Olmert, in his debut as leader of the Israeli government, has even already managed to embarrass neighbouring Egypt, by snubbing its diplomatic initiatives, and at the same time showing his contempt for human life by bombing the Gaza power plant. The effects of that attack should not be underestimated: it has resulted in the cutting off of electricity to nearly 800,000 Palestinian civilians. For most of these people, since drinking water in Gaza is produced mostly by desalination plants, this also means loss of access to clean water. To make it even worse, rebuilding the plant will require close to half a year, according to experts. The humanitarian catastrophe that will result from this, is a disaster that is in the process of unfolding itself, while you are reading this article.
Doesn’t Amir Peretz’s operation “Summer Rain” bear more resemblance to a long-planned large-scale military onslaught, than to the reaction of a state with a powerful army to the capturing of a fellow combatant? While the world has been brought up on legendary stories of Israel’s secret service, with smoothly and lethally conducted under-cover operations, why does Israel seem to be unable to reclaim this prisoner of war in a similar fashion? It comes to mind that if this was, in fact, its real objective, Israel might indeed have the possibility and the means to achieve this.
The question, why Olmert chose to build his day of fame upon the reaction of his army to a military defeat, while it is proving to be having so many adverse effects upon his image as Israeli Prime Minister, suggests that he may have been tempted into executing the onslaught on Gaza before its originally planned time. Contrastingly, former Israeli leaders used to have a well-prepared propaganda machine, that rarely failed to work wonders in unifying the Israeli public behind them, even though the military aggressions they perpetrated were equally unjustifiable as Olmert’s “Summer Stain.”
At the same time, through his rash and aggressive policies, Olmert provides the world with an excellent opportunity to see through the usual Israeli mask, and to start questioning the very basics of Israel’s occupation policies. From what he has shown so far, Olmert is only likely to add more bloody tragedies to the long list of Israel’s violations of the 4th Geneva convention, and to prove that it is Israel, the only nuclear force in the Middle East, that needs to be viewed as a major threat to peace. Its irresponsible policies do not only constitute an attempt at targeting the very existence of the Palestinian people in their own land, but should be exposed as the human rights violations that they are, with their destabilizing effect that can only lead to disaster.
Tariq Shadid, MD is a surgeon, and board member of the Palestinian Community in the Netherlands (PGN). |
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