{"id":45492,"date":"2014-08-04T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=45492"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:47","slug":"dress-the-gaza-situation-up-all-you-like-but-the-truth-hurts-the-world-is-starting-to-turn-against-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/08\/dress-the-gaza-situation-up-all-you-like-but-the-truth-hurts-the-world-is-starting-to-turn-against-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Dress the Gaza Situation up All You Like, but the Truth Hurts: The World Is Starting to Turn against Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Robert<\/a>

Robert Fisk<\/p><\/div>\n

There was a time when our politicians and media had one principal fear when covering Middle East wars: that no one should ever call them anti-Semitic. <\/em><\/p>\n

So corrosive, so vicious was this charge against any honest critic of Israel that merely to bleat the word \u201cdisproportionate\u201d \u2013 as in any normal wartime exchange rate of Arab-to-Israeli deaths \u2013 was to provoke charges of Nazism by Israel\u2019s would-be supporters. Sympathy for Palestinians would earn the sobriquet \u201cpro-Palestinian\u201d, which, of course, means \u201cpro-terrorist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Or so it was until the latest bloodbath in Gaza, which is being so graphically covered by journalists that our masters and our media are suffering a new experience: not fear of being called anti-Semitic, but fear of their own television viewers and readers \u2013 ordinary folk so outraged by the war crimes committed against the women and children of Gaza that they are demanding to know why, even now, television moguls and politicians are refusing to treat their own people like moral, decent, intelligent human beings.<\/p>\n

Yet still \u2013 every time another blood-soaked child appears on the screen \u2013 the news presenters talk about the \u201cblame game\u201d. BLAME GAME? Do they think this is a bloody football match? Or a bloody tragedy? It goes like this. Civilians are killed. Reporters call it \u201ctank fire\u201d. (Hamas has no tanks.) Israel says it is a misfired Hamas rocket. Hamas says it is Israel\u2019s work. So it\u2019s a \u201cblame game\u201d. No one can actually BE blamed \u2013 and thus we can shrug off the responsibility and shake our head at it all.<\/p>\n

And we must forget we did the same when US bombs killed civilians in Tripoli in 1986 (a \u201cmisfired Libyan anti-aircraft missile\u201d, I recall, was to blame) or when the Nato attack on the Shuala district of Baghdad killed civilians in 2003 (a \u201cmisfired Iraqi anti-aircraft missile\u201d was to blame, of course). Several Americans have called me to point this out, adding that the US Senate vote of 100-0 in favour of Israel sounds a bit like the 98 per cent that Arab dictators claim for their presidency \u2013 except that the US vote, which does not represent them, really was the true figure!<\/p>\n

Now to the get-out clause of all of us. Yes, Hamas is corrupt, cynical, ruthless. Most of its \u201cspokesmen\u201d are so stupid, so incoherent, so prone to bawling abuse at the top of their voices, that they far outdo the ever-so-gentle Mark Regev in turning the world against Hamas. But the world is turning against Israel, as EU ministers repeatedly (though ever so gently) tell the Israelis. And it\u2019s turning against our politicians and media masters who go on insulting them.<\/p>\n

How many times does The New York Times expect its readers to tolerate editorials like last week\u2019s pusillanimous effort? There had been \u201cdeadly attacks\u201d in Gaza, readers were told. The total dead came to 750, \u201ca vast majority being Palestinians\u201d. And then the get-out: there were \u201ccompeting charges\u201d \u2013 Israel or Hamas or a Hamas ally \u2013 over the attack, and thus \u201cwhat really matters now is that some way be found to stop this carnage\u201d. So that\u2019s OK, then. \u201cBlame game\u201d equals \u201cno blame\u201d.<\/p>\n

In France, there\u2019s been derision at the way the government has reacted to Gaza\u2019s calvary. Fran\u00e7ois Hollande wanted Israel to \u201ccorrect\u201d its aim \u201ca bit\u201d (un peu)! He criticised Hamas\u2019s aggression and Israel\u2019s reprisals. But then an angry Benjamin Netanyahu came on the blower to the Elys\u00e9e. Change of tune. Hollande uttered the usual mantra. \u201cIsrael has the right to take all measures to protect its people.\u201d But then French Assembly members became so sickened by the \u201ccollective punishment\u201d of the Palestinians that Hollande urged an end to the \u201cescalation\u201d in violence. Phew.<\/p>\n

In Ireland, traditionally pro-Palestinian, The Irish Times, alas, has been playing the same tune as its New York namesake. On the day after Israel bombed a UN school, killing 19 civilians, it ran a front-page article which began with Israel\u2019s declaration of a ceasefire, continued with a paragraph of the truce details, then ran a paragraph that Hamas had no reaction \u2013 and then told its readers about the 19 dead. A reader castigated the paper for \u201cbalancing\u201d its letters page with correspondence designed to make the Palestinians look as guilty as the Israelis. \u201cSuch disinterest is really a kind of moral apathy,\u201d he said. And said it rather well. The world can at least thank the journos in Gaza \u2013 even if their bosses are still on the run.<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/em>correspondent for <\/em>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including <\/em>The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time when our politicians and media had one principal fear when covering Middle East wars: that no one should ever call them anti-Semitic. That has changed dramatically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}