Gaza ***GRAPHIC PICS***
badbrains
Posts: 10,255
The ground invasion has begun. More blood is gonna be shed tonight....
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EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
2013- Brooklyn2, Philly1, Philly2, NOLA
2013- Brooklyn2, Philly1, Philly2, NOLA
Plane shot down. Israel invades Palestine.
Sure not related, but one sure does take from the other. A lot of sad news today.
I think you just described the reason why it's not likely to ever end
Happens in every country on Earth
not that it really matters.
i am just so fucking utterly disgusted with the start of a ground war. i have been physically sickened by it all evening.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Edit- I edited it. What I was thinking and what was written was two different things. Been a long shitty week.
Israel-Gaza conflict: Medical charity official likens job to ‘patching up torture victims in an open-air prison’
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Comments by senior Médecins Sans Frontières official expose ethical dilemma of humanitarian work in conflict zones
A Palestinian man is left distraught after losing relatives in an air strike
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By ROBERT FISK
Thursday 17 July 2014
In an unprecedented criticism of the Israeli siege of Gaza, a senior official in the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) humanitarian charity has described his organisation’s work among the 1.8 million besieged Palestinian refugees as akin to being “in an open-air prison to patch up prisoners in between their torture sessions”.
Jonathan Whittall, head of humanitarian analysis at MSF, who worked in Libya during the 2011 war, in Bahrain during the uprising of the same year, in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Sudan and Darfur, has bluntly asked his colleagues: “At what point does MSF’s repeated medical action in an unacceptable situation [like Gaza] become complicity with aggression and oppression?”
Unlike other medical charities, MSF has always encouraged its staff to speak frankly about the dangers and moral problems they face, and the long and passionate report from Mr Whittall – unlike those of other humanitarian groups, which prefer to silence their staff – is in keeping with MSF’s rules. But its accusations against Israel are sure to arouse fierce Israeli condemnation during a disproportionate war – supposedly fought to prevent Hamas rocket attacks on Israel – in which the Israeli military has killed well over 200 civilians, many of them women and children.
“An entire population is trapped in what is essentially an open-air prison,” Mr Whittall writes. “They can’t leave and only the most limited supplies – essential for basic survival – are allowed to enter. The population of the prison have elected representatives and organised social services.
“Some of the prisoners have organised into armed groups and resist their indefinite detention by firing rockets over the prison wall. However, the prison guards are the ones who have the capacity to launch large-scale and highly destructive attacks on the open-air prison.”
In a comparison which is also certain to infuriate Israel, Mr Whittall, who is based in Beirut, says that the limitations of humanitarian groups in Gaza are not unique. “In 2012,” he writes, “MSF closed its projects in the prisons of Misrata, Libya. Our doctors were outraged to be in a position where we were providing treatment to patients who were being tortured by state authorities. At the time, MSF spoke out strongly: ‘Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not repeatedly to treat the same patients between torture sessions’.”
In pictures: Israel-Palestinian demonstrations around the world
Since 2010, MSF has run a post-operation clinic in Gaza City, where 80 per cent of the patients suffer from severe burns, and provides specialised hand surgery in the Nasser hospital at Khan Younis, and intensive care training to medical and paramedical personnel at both the Nasser and Shifa hospitals.
During conflict, Mr Whittall adds, “the voice of outrage of MSF medical teams is drowned out by the propaganda war that erupts each time a [military] operation such as this takes place and by the concerns that too loud a voice of criticism could cut off the organisation’s surgical teams from being able to reach the Gaza Strip.” Although Mr Whittall does not say so, the same constraints were felt by humanitarian groups when confronted by civilian populations in desperate need of help in the Syrian war.
In another sideswipe at the Israeli military’s actions against Gaza, Mr Whittall remarks that “everyone pays the price for living under siege and for their acts of resistance. Medical workers have been killed and health structures damaged. In such a densely populated environment, the claims of not targeting civilians in air raids are of little comfort. There are always limits to humanitarian action. Humanitarian organisations can treat the wounded. But we can’t open borders to end violence.”
The MSF official also notes that while confronting the “limits of humanitarianism” is a daily reality for MSF field workers, “it is made only more apparent by the duration of the suffering and the international political configuration that allows for the sick political statements and endless violence to continue.” Mr Whittall says that as “the open-air prison of Gaza braces for more air raids and a possible ground operation,” the limits of MSF’s work remain obvious, and he demands that Palestinians should be allowed “to move freely and to seek safety in times of violence, including into Egypt… Civilians and civilian infrastructure – including medical workers, health centres and ambulances – should never be targeted. Humanitarian aid and its workers should be given unhindered access at all times – not as a favour but as a legal responsibility.”
Smoke from rockets fired from a northern neighborhood of Gaza City are seen after being launched toward Israel (Getty Images)
Mr Whittall’s analysis will evoke much sympathy among other humanitarian organisations, and with EU officials who find that their assistance in the Palestinian occupied territories or Gaza is taken for granted – or even abused – by the Israelis. EU humanitarian projects, both in Gaza and the West Bank, have been destroyed by the Israeli army – with afterwards scarcely a breath of criticism from the EU itself, which has no connection with MSF.
This invasion HAS TO FUCKEN STOP! Enough! NO EXCUSES, no more BULL SHIT! ENOUGH!
Secondly, Hamas weren't involved in the ceasefire agreement. They weren't consulted on it, and so they had every right to reject it. The ceasefire that was proposed offered nothing to the Palestinians. Hamas simply asked that Israel abide by the conditions of the 2012 ceasefire. A ceasefire agreement that Israel has systematically violated. Hamas simply asked that Israel be held accountable to international law.
Hamas then offered a ceasefire agreement of their own, and it was rejected by the Israeli's. http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-factions-reportedly-set-10-conditions-10-year-truce-israel You sound like someone frantically regurgitating every single pro-Israel Fox News soundbite. So far 290 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of them civilians. And regardless of whether or not the Israeli's drop leaflet's or warning missiles, it's still a war crime to bomb a civilian home. Collective punishment is a war crime under international law.
And as for Hamas using civilians as human shields, where's your evidence for that? Your only evidence is that Israel drops bombs on civilian homes and that when it does civilians are killed. Therefore, they are human shields. Try spinning that one to the international war crimes tribunal at the Hague. No it doesn't. It regards the Israel-Gaza fighting as being comprised of one of the Worlds biggest and most modern military's, backed by the Worlds only superpower, dropping bombs on a poor and almost completely defenseless civilian population.
And as for Hamas having 'started this latest war', this just goes to show that you get all of your 'information' from watching U.S television. The Israeli's used the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli settlers to instigate a PR campaign accusing Hamas of the murders, and encouraging Israeli's to rampage through the West Bank, looting, beating, and murdering anyone in sight. http://electronicintifada.net/content/netanyahu-government-knew-teens-were-dead-it-whipped-racist-frenzy/13533
'Instead of mounting a limited action to capture the suspected perpetrators and retrieve the teens’ bodies, Netanyahu staged an aggressive international public relations campaign, demanding sympathy and outrage from world leaders, who were also given the impression that the missing teens were still alive.
Meanwhile, Israel’s armed forces rampaged throughout the occupied West Bank and bombarded the Gaza Strip in a campaign of collective punishment deceptively marketed to Israelis and the world as a rescue mission.
...The disinformation campaign they waged sent a heavily indoctrinated, comprehensively militarized population into a tribalistic frenzy, provoking a wave of high-level incitement, the shocking revenge killing of an innocent Palestinian teen and rioting across East Jerusalem.'
'In a study entitled 'One Big Prison', the respected Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem observed that the crippling economic arrangements Israel had imposed on Gaza would remain in place. In addition, Israel would continue to maintain absolute control over Gaza's land borders, coastline, and airspace, and the Israeli army would continue to operate in Gaza. "So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands," B'Tselem concluded, "Israel's claim of 'an end of the Occupation' is questionable". HRW (Human Rights Watch) was even more emphatic that evacuating settlers and troops from inside Gaza would not end the occupation: "Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around it's periphery, and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control."
Gaza was turned into a virtual prison after the Gaza 'pullout', and the people left to starve. According to Sarah Roy, (Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University), Gaza was "deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution", and "96 percent of Gaza’s population of 1.4 million [was left] dependent on humanitarian aid for basic needs." http://electronicintifada.net/content/destroying-gaza/8324
And just what did Israel 'give up'? Are you talking about their removal of a handful of settlers from Gaza, which were then sent to live in the illegal settlements in the West bank? http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/09/gaza-s10.html "the withdrawal from Gaza is nothing more than a smokescreen to mask Israel’s consolidation of a far more significant land grab of the West Bank, land it has brutally occupied for nearly 40 years in breach of international law and in defiance of countless United Nations resolutions."
Are you referring to the fact that the Israeli's themselves have admitted that the Gaza 'pullout' was just a public relations ploy to enable them to triple settlement construction in the West Bank? http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/top-pm-aide-gaza-plan-aims-to-freeze-the-peace-process-1.136686
Is that the magnanimous, generous offer that you're referring to?
Another Fox News soundbite? Show me some evidence that Hamas urges it's people not to seek safety during Israeli bombardments. You can't, because they haven't. What you can provide is evidence of Hamas spokesmen praising those Palestinians who attempted to prevent their apartment building from being bombed by standing on the roof. Big difference.
And bombing civilian homes is still a war crime. Israel's latest massacre of Gazan civilians has nothing to do with self-defense, despite what your t.v set is telling you. If the Israeli's wanted to defend themselves then they'd begin abiding by international law, end the occupation, and fortify their legal borders. But they're not interested in peace, as 47 years of encroaching settlements, and routine attacks on it's neighbours demonstrates.
This is what Israel wants. They want complete control of all the area between the river and sea, in line with their Zionist dream of racial supremacy:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-siegman/the-great-middle-east-peace-process-scam
'...all previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Bush nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank. To be sure, Israel would allow – indeed, it would insist on – the creation of a number of isolated enclaves that Palestinians could call a state, but only in order to prevent the creation of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority.
...Just one year after the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, a former IDF chief of staff who at the time was minister of defence, described his plan for the future as ‘the current reality in the territories’. ‘The plan,’ he said, ‘is being implemented in actual fact. What exists today must remain as a permanent arrangement in the West Bank.’ Ten years later, at a conference in Tel Aviv, Dayan said: ‘The question is not “What is the solution?” but “How do we live without a solution?”’ Geoffrey Aronson, who has monitored the settlement enterprise from its beginnings, summarises the situation as follows:
"Living without a solution, then as now, was understood by Israel as the key to maximising the benefits of conquest while minimising the burdens and dangers of retreat or formal annexation. This commitment to the status quo, however, disguised a programme of expansion that generations of Israeli leaders supported as enabling, through Israeli settlement, the dynamic transformation of the territories and the expansion of effective Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan River."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
Avi Shlaim
The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
'...I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.
...In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.
Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
...The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
...Hamas [...] has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/18/cursed-victory-history-israel-occupied-territories-ahron-bregman-review
Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories – review
Ahron Bregman's account of nearly five decades of Israeli occupation is hard-hitting and rich in telling details
Avi Shlaim
The Guardian, Friday 18 July 2014
The purpose of Israel's current offensive in the Gaza Strip is to protect the status quo – with itself in control of the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. In 2005, it carried out a unilateral disengagement from Gaza, but under international law it is still the occupying power because it controls access by land, sea and air. In 2007 Israel imposed an economic blockade, cutting the Gaza Strip off from the West Bank and from the rest of the world. A blockade is a form of collective punishment proscribed by international law.
The death toll is a grim reflection of the asymmetry of the conflict. In the past fortnight, the Palestinians have suffered over 220 fatalities, 80% of whom were civilians; in Israel, only one man was killed by a rocket fired from Gaza. Israel claims that its assault is an act of self-defence to put an end to the Hamas rocket attacks against its civilians. Hamas claims it is engaged in legitimate resistance to Israel's military occupation. The chain of action and reaction is endless. But the underlying cause of the violence is Israeli colonialism.
...Ahron Bregman is an Israeli scholar with impeccable liberal credentials who teaches in the department of war studies at King's College London. He served in the Israeli army for six years, but left Israel because of the occupation and because of the military's violent suppression of the first intifada. He is the author of four books on Israel and its conflict with the Arabs. Two of these – The Fifty Years War and Elusive Peace – accompanied BBC television series that drew on in-depth and remarkably candid interviews with key players from Israel, the Arab world and the US. Full use is made of that earlier oral history in the present book; it is supplemented by additional interviews.
...He is at his best when dealing with the diplomacy surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially in 1999-2000 when Ehud Barak was prime minister. Barak was a former chief of staff, and his country's most highly decorated soldier, but he was no diplomat. In a curious inversion of Clausewitz's famous dictum, he regarded diplomacy as the pursuit of war by other means. For Barak, Syria was a major military threat to Israel whereas the Palestinians were not. By making peace with Syria, Barak hoped to change the entire strategic landscape of the region and to leave the Palestinian Authority so weak and isolated that it would have no alternative but to accept his paltry terms.
A peace deal with Syria was indeed possible but it carried a price tag: complete Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, which left the Syrians with access to the north-eastern shore of Lake Tiberias. A meeting between Barak and the Syrian foreign minister under American patronage at Shepherdstown, in January 2000, collapsed when Barak refused to pay that price. Despite this failure, Barak persuaded Clinton to do his bidding at a make-or-break summit with President Hafez al-Assad in Geneva two months later. It was a fool's errand. Once again Barak got cold feet, fearing the electoral consequences of withdrawal from the Golan Heights. On the morning of the meeting, he gave Clinton a script that insisted on Israeli sovereignty over a 400-metre-wide strip of land between Syria and the lake. So the summit was doomed before it even started and themuch-vaunted breakthrough turned into a spectacular setback. Clinton discovered to his cost that there was no sweet-talking Hafez al-Assad.
Having implicated the US president in two entirely predictable failures on the Syrian track, Barak belatedly and grudgingly turned his attention to the Palestinian track, to "the other woman". Once again, he prevailed on the US president to embark on a make-or-break summit, and once again the president tended to behave not as an honest broker but as Israel's lawyer. Arafat warned Clinton that the positions of the two sides were too far apart, that more time was needed to prepare the ground, and that failure at the top would make matters worse. Clinton urged Arafat to come anyway and promised that, in the event of failure, there would be no finger-pointing.
The summit convened at Camp David on 11 July 2000; it lasted 14 days. Honouring a secret pledge, the American peace processors did not present to the Palestinian delegation any papers without consulting the Israelis first. The first American paper tabled at Camp David had Israel's fingerprints all over it and only served to confirm Arafat's suspicion that the whole summit was an Israeli-American ruse to trap him. His suspicions were not eased by Barak's refusal to meet with him face-to-face to negotiate over the "final status" issues: borders, security, the right of return of the 1948 refugees, and Jerusalem.
The sticking point was Jerusalem. Arafat insisted, as he had done all along, on Palestinian sovereignty over al-Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in the Old City of Jerusalem. Barak's rejection of Palestinian sovereignty over the Muslim Noble Sanctuary sealed the fate of the summit. Violating his pledge to Arafat, Clinton immediately blamed him for the failure. Although Arafat contributed to the diplomatic deadlock by his aggressively passive posture, the additional evidence unearthed by Bregman confirms the view I have long held – that the two principal reasons for the collapse of the summit were Barak's intransigence and Clinton's mismanagement.
...Bregman describes Israel as "a heavy‑handed and brutal occupier". He regards the four decades of occupation chronicled in this book as a black mark on Israeli, and indeed, Jewish history. He finds it depressing that a people that has suffered such unspeakable tragedies of its own can behave so cruelly towards another. The only sign of hope in this otherwise bleak picture is that the occupation may carry within it the seeds of its own demise. By forcing the Palestinians to live in squalor, Bregman concludes, Israel has "hardened those under its power, making them more determined to put an end to the occupation, by violent means if necessary, and live a life of dignity and freedom".
Glenn Greenwald: Why Did NBC Pull Veteran Reporter After He Witnessed Israeli Killing of Gaza Kids?
NBC is facing questions over its decision to pull veteran news correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza just after he personally witnessed the Israeli military’s killing of four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach. Mohyeldin was kicking a soccer ball around with the boys just minutes before they died. He is a longtime reporter in the region. In his coverage, he reports on the Gaza conflict in the context of the Israeli occupation, sparking criticism from some supporters of the Israeli offensive. Back in 2008 and 2009, when he worked for Al Jazeera, Mohyeldin and his colleague Sherine Tadros were the only foreign journalists on the ground in Gaza as Israel killed 1,400 people in what it called "Operation Cast Lead." We speak to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, who has revealed that the decision to pull Mohyeldin from Gaza and remove him from reporting on the situation came from NBC executive David Verdi. Greenwald also comments on the broader picture of the coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict in the U.S. media.
GLENN GREENWALD: Interestingly, Amy, the way that this came to my attention was that there are people inside NBC News, including some very recognizable and high-profile journalists, who were very angry that, first of all, when NBC News with Brian Williams reported on the killing of those four boys on the beach, instead of having their journalist who made this event known to the world and who witnessed it firsthand, Ayman, report on it, they instead had Richard Engel in Tel Aviv do the reporting, and Ayman never appeared at all on the Nightly News broadcast. But that, you can chalk up to sort of standard network news machinations about who’s a bigger star and who’s more senior and the like.
But what was really stunning was, later that day, after what arguably was his biggest or one of his biggest events in his journalism career, where he really made a huge impact on having the world understand what’s happening in Gaza, they not only blocked him from appearing on the air to talk about it on NBC News, but then they told him to leave Gaza immediately. And when I interviewed NBC executives and the like, none of whom would talk to me on the record but who talked to me on background and the like, they claimed that the reason they told him to leave was because they had security concerns, not specific to him, but just general ones about whether journalists could be safe with the imminent Israeli ground invasion. And yet, as you just said, later that day, they sent into Gaza not only Richard Engel, but also a producer who works for NBC who had never been to Gaza, who doesn’t speak Arabic, who doesn’t know the area at all, in contrast to Ayman, who’s been there for many years, who speaks fluent Arabic and who is a very experienced war reporter. And so it raises very serious questions about what the real reason is that they told him, over his objections, that he had to leave.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Glenn, there have been questions raised about not just whether NBC was concerned about his reporting, but also about his post on social media. Could you talk about that, as well?
GLENN GREENWALD: What happened on the day that he witnessed the beach attacks was he posted some incredible tweets and, as well, some amazing photos and videos on both his Facebook and Instagram accounts about the reaction of the parents of the Palestinian boys learning right that moment that they had been killed—very, very powerful stuff. And he had also tweeted a couple of what I guess in the network news business is viewed as some unusually pointed tweets about the position of the U.S. government. Namely, the State Department spokeswoman was asked about this killing, and she essentially absolved Israel and blamed Hamas, what the U.S. government always does, even in the most egregious cases of Israeli war crimes. And he went onto Twitter and Facebook and posted some very mild comments essentially noting what the State Department had said and then inviting people to comment on it. And later that day, he deleted it. There’s speculation that he was either asked to delete it or that that was a cause in why he was removed. I don’t know whether that’s the case at all, because there’s still questions about what the real reason is.
But certainly, the whole context of what has happened here is that he is a very unique reporter, especially for a network news position. You know, the kind of reporting that—the amazing reporting that we just hear from Sharif usually is not the kind of reporting that you hear on the network news. And Ayman does that kind of reporting. And he’s been criticized for it by neoconservative outlets, calling him a Hamas sympathizer and the like. And so, for NBC to remove him at exactly the moment where he brought the humanity of this war and the humanity of Gazans to the world, at the same time that he posted some tweets that in network news land would be considered controversial because it questions the U.S. government and the Israeli position, at the very least, looks awful, and I think, for NBC News’s credibility, demands that they provide some answers about what really happened here.
...GLENN GREENWALD: Interestingly, you know, from working in the last several years in media, I’ve gotten to know a lot of journalists. I’ve gotten to understand a lot more about how these large media outlets function. I’ve worked with some of them over the last year in the reporting I’ve done. And it really is remarkable, and not hyperbole, that there is nothing that makes major media figures and news executives more petrified than reporting on Israel. I mean, the way in which they become so frightened to do any sort of reporting that could make what they call Israel’s supporters inside the United States angry really can’t be overstated.
And that’s the reason why this ABC, quote-unquote, "error" resonated so greatly, is because one of the things that you almost never see in major American media reporting is anything that shows the suffering of the Palestinians, that shows the brutal savagery of the Israeli military inside of Gaza. It was almost like they showed it by accident there and then just misreported it as being Israeli suffering because that’s what they’re so accustomed to showing, even though Israeli suffering is so much less than the havoc that is wreaked on the Palestinians.
But the one thing I will say that I think is actually encouraging is this is one case where social media really does make a difference. You have now Gazans inside of the worst attack zones that are able to go onto Twitter, that are able to go onto Facebook, that are able to upload video imagery, that are able to be heard in their own voices. And you have lots of pushback on social media, as well, toward media outlets and their unbelievably just grotesque pro-Israel bias, in a way that I think has really kind of improved the coverage this time, so that we are now seeing more of the reality of Israeli militarism and aggression. And they’re not being able to get away with calling every victim a Hamas terrorist or a Hamas supporter or a human shield, because social media enables the stark reality of what the Israelis are doing to be seen. It’s just part of the overall trend where major media outlets are losing their monopoly on how we understand the world, but it is still the case that nothing puts fear into the heart of American journalists—and American politicians—like the word "Israel." It’s really remarkable to watch.
Also, my guess is that the reason that the cease-fire was ten years as opposed to indefinitely is that it acknowledges living within an occupation, but in the long-term, obviously (and rightly so) the goal is to NOT live within an occupation. Is that accurate in your opinion? If not, care to help me understand why that's the case?
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
I agree Rgambs has every right to speak his mind and I applaud him for it.Part of being the greatest country in the world is those rights.Im sorry he is ashamed every day to be an American.That to me is sad.And if he is so unhappy with our life ,culture and freedoms he should exercise his right to live where he feels proud of his country.I try to look at the good we offer the world and although there are days I question my governments actions or motives or policies I am never ashamed to be American.NEVER!!!!!!