Today's selection of news is from Elder Of Ziyon, one of the best Israeli news sites on the web.
Click on the headlines to access the original articles.
IMAGE BELOW was posted by the IDF. The caption reads: "After we fired a warning shot at this target, Hamas ordered civilians to form a human shield on the roof." We assume every one of the men and boys in yesterday's snapshot is alive today. We also assume some of the injured and killed IDF servicemen owe their fate to the IDF's moral standpoint and unwillingness to unnecessarily endanger the lives of non-combatants.
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| HUMAN SHIELDS IN GAZA - NOTICE THE CHILDREN IN THE CROWD - Photo This Ongoing War Blog |
The Times of Israel is liveblogging events as they unfold through Monday, the 14th day of Operation Protective Edge. Israel thwarted early morning attacks by Hamas gunmen emerging from tunnels. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Israel’s actions in the Hamas stronghold of Shejaiya were “atrocious.”
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The Arabs Betrayed Us - Again
Since 1948, the Arab countries and government have been paying mostly lip service to the Palestinians.
"They have money and oil, but don't care about the Palestinians, even though we are Arabs and Muslims like them. What a Saudi or Qatari sheikh spends in one night in London, Paris or Las Vegas could solve the problem of tens of thousands of Palestinians." — Abdel Bari Atwan, Palestinian editor.
"Some Arabs were hoping that Israel would rid them of Hamas." — Ashraf Salameh, Gaza City.
"Some of the Arab regimes are interested in getting rid of the resistance in order to remove the burden of the Palestinian cause, which threatens the stability of their regimes." — Mustafa al-Sawwaf, Palestinian political analyst. "Most Arabs are busy these days with bloody battles waged by their leaders, who are struggling to survive. These battles are raging in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian Authority." — Mohammed al-Musafer, columnist.
"The Arab leaders don't know what they want from the Gaza Strip. They don't even know what they want from Israel." — Yusef Rizka, Hamas official.
Three years ago there was a hope that a growing movement for democracy might make Arab countries more supportive of the Palestinians, as governments grew more responsive to the people and their demands. But during the latest bloodshed in Gaza, the opposite has occurred, according to supporters of the Palestinians, who found the official Arab reaction incoherent, at times providing cover for the Israeli military assault.
The governments were accused of dithering at critical moments during the recent Israeli military offensive, where in the past, Palestinians counted on them to at least muster some diplomatic pressure to make it stop. Their feuds broke out in public, and Egypt even blamed Hamas, the Islamist movement in Gaza, rather than Israel, for dozens of Palestinian deaths.
Yet the most helpful role that the media plays for Hamas—and the worst disservice for Palestinians—is in demoralizing Israelis. They are willing to pay a high operational price, even to endanger their own soldiers, to avoid hurting Palestinian civilians. Yet, in spite of these unprecedented efforts, the Jewish State is often depicted by the media as indiscriminate and callous. By calling them killers even when they take risks to save lives, the media discourages Israelis from showing restraint in the face of ceaseless Hamas attacks. And Hamas, which wants to drag Israel into a ground war in which even more civilians are killed, welcomes the media's role in convincing Israelis that image-wise they have nothing to lose by escalating.
Former President Bill Clinton recently told Indian television that Hamas "has a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own [Palestinian] civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them." A crucial means through which Hamas accomplishes this is the international media. Just as Israel must relentlessly scrutinize its military actions in Gaza and their consequences, so, too, must journalists take a hard look at the way they cover this conflict. They must not allow themselves to act as accessories to Hamas's murderous strategy that delegitimizes Israel and prolongs the Palestinians' suffering.
As Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, said recently: “We don’t have to apologise for Israelis not being killed.” Indeed, one wonders quite how the media would want to even up the scores. Perhaps Israel should switch off the early-warning systems that notify Israelis of missiles, and stop using Iron Dome until more Israelis have been killed than Palestinians? Only then, having satiated the media thirst for Israeli blood by dying in sufficient numbers, would Israel be “allowed” to resume its protective operation to let Israelis live peaceful lives free from terror.
Israel both has the right to defend our citizens with military operations, and to protect the lives of our citizens with bunkers and anti-missile systems. Until our operations are over, the media ought to drastically rethink the irresponsible way they are discussing proportionality.
It all has the look and feel and sound of moral pornography, designed less to enlighten people about what is going in Israel-Gaza – war harms children? Who didn’t know this? – than to provide something shocking for us all to stare at and be collectively horrified by. There is a terrible irony to this widespread publishing of photos of battered Palestinian children – the aim seems to be to show that we the right-minded folk of Twitter and the Western media really care, but the question it immediately raises in my mind is this: “Well, if you care about children so much, why didn’t you publish photos of dead kids from the Congo? Or Aleppo? Or Sri Lanka? Do you only care about one group of children – Palestinians – and no others?” So a photo-sharing frenzy aimed at advertising our caring tendencies actually has the opposite effect: it makes one wonder why this alleged caring instinct is so picky, so partial , attaching itself firmly to the child-victims of one conflict but rarely finding expression in relation to any other conflict.
