Israel has won nothing but infamy in its attempts to convince the world that murder is a path to peace, writes Ramzy Baroud* "We are all Hamas," screamed a scrawny Mauritanian, repeatedly, as he determinedly drew his face closer to a TV camera. Behind him, thousands more tunefully chanted similar words, chants that were heard in different Arabic dialects, in fact in many different languages all across the globe. Yet Israel, somehow, is claiming victory in the media war that it calculatedly unleashed weeks before its most violent attack on Gaza yet. Thousands have been reportedly killed and wounded in little more than a week, starting 27 December, in the tiny (roughly 140 square miles) yet densely populated (1.5 million) Gaza Strip. "Whenever Israel is bombing, it is hard to explain our position to the world," said Avi Pazner, former Israeli ambassador to Italy and France and "one of the officials drafted in to present Israel's case to the world media," according to the Jewish Chronicle. "But at least this time everything was ready and in place." "Fewer military officers; more women; tightly controlled messages; and ministers kept on a short leash. This was Israel's new media game-plan in Operation Cast Lead," the newspaper reported. It's always difficult to fathom Israel's giddiness and sense of triumph as defenceless civilians are pulverised by mostly US- supplied warplanes and bombs. Even if one chooses to empathise with Israel's dodgy claim, parroted endlessly by the Bush administration, that the Israeli army is acting in self-defence, one can never fully grasp the wisdom of its military tactics. "Fatalities in Gaza are already over 400 and injuries close to 2,000, so far as is known. Total Palestinian civilian casualties are 400 times greater than the casualties incurred by Israelis," wrote three-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader in an open letter to President Bush, five days into the Israeli onslaught. Nearly one week after the devastating air strikes, Israel unleashed a ground offensive that is pushing the causality figures to unprecedented heights, made mostly of civilian victims. Much of Israel's war machine is financed, manufactured and supplied by the United States. US financial and military generosity has served as the backbone of all of Israel's wars against its neighbours, including the Palestinians. In Israel's war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006, lest it ran out, the US rushed "emergency" military supplies, including cluster bombs, to the Israeli army, allowing the latter to kill and wound thousands of Lebanese civilians. In the ongoing war against Gaza, neither the US's "dedication to the security of Israel", nor Israel's dedication to inflicting maximum harm on civilians have been in any way altered. While Bush brazenly chastised Hamas and the Palestinians for the death wrought on them by Israel, President-elect Barack Obama had absolutely nothing to say. "The scale of bloodshed in Gaza over five days is the same as if almost 2,000 Israelis had been killed and 9,000 wounded in the same period. Imagine the consequences for Israel in such an event," wrote author and former BBC correspondent Deepak Tripathi. Would Obama find the staggering number worthy of cutting short his Hawaii vacation, even for a brief comment, if the tables were turned? Candidate of change, he said. But Israel is winning the media war, reports Israel: a peculiar claim by any standards. If the reference is made to a "victory" that helped win over mainstream US media, one has to wonder if the corporate media has ever expressed any sympathy for Hamas, or any resisting Palestinian faction, be it secular, socialist or Islamist. The opposite has always been true. Any violent Palestinian response to the Israeli occupation and its inherit violence has been dubbed "terrorist" for decades, even if Palestinians were targeting Israeli soldiers or paramilitary settlers. Aside from allowing a "moderate" Palestinian commentator an occasional limited space to write a watered down op-ed, now and then (which serves as a "feel good" moment that demonstrates the "objectivity" of US media), pro-Israel mantra has defined every major US newspaper in every city in every state. That requires a separate discussion, but the persistent question remains: what is Israel winning exactly? More Israeli women are stating Israel's case to the media, according to reports. The strategy is both sexist and underhanded. Following the Lebanon war, Israeli bikini models flooded US male magazines exhibiting their barely covered bodies. Former Miss Israel, model Gal Gadot, defended her nude photos, promoted partly by the Israeli Consulate in New York, as her attempt to help "improve Israel's war-torn image", reported the New York Post in June 2007. Now as Israeli bombs are lighting the skies of Gaza, similar tactics are underway, in Maxim and other magazines. Kadima leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni took the message to YouTube, conveying the same redundant but "tightly controlled" misinformation that attempts to explain why imprisoning, starving and then senselessly bombing 1.5 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians is good for world peace, for democracy, for security, for the future of the region and the world. But the fact is, Israel never won the media war in the US for, frankly, there was never one to begin with. Then again, somehow, millions of people around the world managed to read through the filters, the propaganda, the perplexing logic, the Maxim cover pages, and took to the streets in a collective act of passion and dismay, without billion-dollar media crafters "tightly controlling" their every move, scripting their chants or directing their hoarse voices: "We are all Palestinians" and "With our souls, with our blood, we will die for you Gaza." What has Israel won exactly, aside from the haunting images of young Palestinians, mutilated, some silent and others screaming? This is no victory, but a brief illusion of one. As for the long-term repercussions, that is a whole other story. Israeli bombs over Lebanon in 1982 gave rise to Hizbullah, and its war of 2006 turned a small, resisting militant movement into a major power broker that will certainly help shape the future of Lebanon. Israel is now doing the same in Gaza. A victory, indeed? * The writer is editor of PalestineChronicle.com and author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle .
