The Secret Report That Helps Israelis To Hide Facts

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The Secret Report That Helps Israelis To Hide Facts

Israeli spokesmen have their work cut out explaining how they have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, compared with just three civilians killed in Israel by Hamas rocket and mortar fire. But on television and radio and in newspapers, Israeli government spokesmen such as Mark Regev appear slicker and less aggressive than their predecessors, who were often visibly indifferent to how many Palestinians were killed.

There is a reason for this enhancement of the PR skills of Israeli spokesmen. Going by what they say, the playbook they are using is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe. Written by the expert Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz, the study was commissioned five years ago by a group called The Israel Project, with offices in the US and Israel, for use by those “who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel”.

Every one of the 112 pages in the booklet is marked “not for distribution or publication” and it is easy to see why. The Luntz report, officially entitled “The Israel project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was leaked almost immediately to Newsweek Online, but its true importance has seldom been appreciated. It should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its “dos and don’ts” for Israeli spokesmen.

These are highly illuminating about the gap between what Israeli officials and politicians really believe, and what they say, the latter shaped in minute detail by polling to determine what Americans want to hear. Certainly, no journalist interviewing an Israeli spokesman should do so without reading this preview of many of the themes and phrases employed by Mr Regev and his colleagues.

The booklet is full of meaty advice about how they should shape their answers for different audiences. For example, the study says that “Americans agree that Israel ‘has a right to defensible borders’. But it does you no good to define exactly what those borders should be. Avoid talking about borders in terms of pre- or post-1967, because it only serves to remind Americans of Israel’s military history. Particularly on the left this does you harm. For instance, support for Israel’s right to defensible borders drops from a heady 89 per cent to under 60 per cent when you talk about it in terms of 1967.”

How about the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled in 1948 and in the following years, and who are not allowed to go back to their homes? Here Dr Luntz has subtle advice for spokesmen, saying that “the right of return is a tough issue for Israelis to communicate effectively because much of Israeli language sounds like the ‘separate but equal’ words of the 1950s segregationists and the 1980s advocates of Apartheid. The fact is, Americans don’t like, don’t believe and don’t accept the concept of ‘separate but equal’.”

So how should spokesmen deal with what the booklet admits is a tough question? They should call it a “demand”, on the grounds that Americans don’t like people who make demands. “Then say ‘Palestinians aren’t content with their own state. Now they’re demanding territory inside Israel’.” Other suggestions for an effective Israeli response include saying that the right of return might become part of a final settlement “at some point in the future”.

http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-secret-report-that-helps-israelis-to-hide-facts/

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An update on the situation in Gaza.

The Gaza massacre, what happened and why.

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Fabulous Satire.

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More analysis. Nice summary.

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Also check out this website for great insight into Israel's lies: whatreallyhappened.com

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What You Wouldn't Know About About Israel and Gaza If You Read the New York Times

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Why are the Arab Gulf countries silent on Gaza?

Instead of aiming their diplomatic guns at each other, the Gulf states must use their influence to shore up support for Gaza

After hopes of a lasting truce fade again today, the intense pressure on Gaza continues. We are used to hearing voices across the world raised against the conflict. But, perhaps surprisingly, the Gulf has scarcely reared its head to protest.

Gulf thinking towards Gaza is mixed up. Upon joining the ruler of Dubai’s central government office in 2007, its Palestinian head of strategy told me to steer clear of Palestinian politics. “For Sheikh Mohammed, policy comes before politics. We don’t put the cart before the horse. We must get our house in order and then we can change things.”

Her attitude, however, contrasted with the material help being provided. “Palestinians have received more humanitarian aid [in the form of budget support] from the United Arab Emirates than from any other nation. The UAE has always stood by us,” the Palestinian Authority’s man in charge of reconstruction told me in 2010.

True to form, through the latest period of violence, 18 Boeing 747s and C130s were dispatched from Dubai laden with meals, blankets and medicine. Saudi Arabia pledged US$80m (around £48m) in aid. Yet this humanitarian effort stands in stark contrast to Gulf foreign policy. Saudi Arabia’s king took three painful weeks to even criticise Israel’s offensive. The UAE then concurred; its foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, had earlier condemned Israel on Twitter.

But not one concrete, punitive action against Israel was called for by either country. That Gulf Arab silence – in policy, thought and strategy – has not gone unnoticed. It has reverberated in the west, where Spain and Latin American nations have done more to shore up support for Gaza than their Arab counterparts.

Instead of taking action, Gulf nations aimed their diplomatic guns at each other. A spat raged between Qatar, Saudi and the UAE: the Middle East Eye depicted an Israel-Saudi-Egypt troika conspiring against Gaza. The UAE denied it had ever normalised relations with Israel “as others did” – a dig at Qatar’s now defunct 1990s relationship with Israel.

What are some of the reasons for this state of affairs? Partly, fatigue has set in after a decade of pressing the Gulf’s definitive position on Israel, the Arab Peace Initiative, to little avail. But domestic political concerns inevitably play a part for regimes that are constantly wary of their own populations.

As Dr Kristian Ulrichsen of Rice University has said, “Gulf states are also caught in a difficult balancing act as their commitment to the Palestinian cause clashes with their campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood across the region”.

This may be the case. But it’s hard to see what Gulf states could lose in the long term from a resolution of this most divisive problem. If only they attacked the problem of reaching a lasting settlement with the same vigour they show in attacking each other. The UAE has augmented its standing at the UN with time, energy and resources. In the interest of deterring Iran, the UAE now has the world’s highest military spending per capita at $14bn a year and Saudi Arabia outstrips the UAE for defence imports. It is time to develop a formula for Gulf Arab intervention backed by diplomatic and defence credibility.

Aid is useless if reconstruction materials cannot get through. The Gulf ought to pursue an end to the blockade, in alignment with Jimmy Carter’s and Mary Robinson’s recent proposal for a UN security council resolution. Saudi Arabia and the UAE could either pay for, send or politically back peacekeepers; the precedent exists in Afghanistan alongside western allies. The question of a UAE-funded Iron Dome to protect Gazans has not so far been contemplated. It should be.

The US has said it will “strongly oppose” a Palestinian push for an investigation by the international criminal court into Israeli actions. A credible Arab plan to back efforts at the international criminal court is overdue; Palestinians should not be going it alone. The US-Gulf relationship should also come under pressure as a result of the former’s financial and military support for Israel. Oil exports should not be off the bargaining table.

This could be the Gulf’s smart-power moment. It must use its influence where it is needed most.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/08/arab-gulf-states-silent-on-gaza

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Hague court under western pressure not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry

Potential ICC investigation into actions of both the IDF and Hamas in Gaza has become a fraught political battlefield

The international criminal court has persistently avoided opening an investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza as a result of US and other western pressure, former court officials and lawyers claim.

In recent days, a potential ICC investigation into the actions of both the Israel Defence Forces and Hamas in Gaza has become a fraught political battlefield and a key negotiating issue at ceasefire talks in Cairo. But the question of whether the ICC could or should mount an investigation has also divided the Hague-based court itself.

An ICC investigation could have a far-reaching impact. It would not just examine alleged war crimes by the Israeli military, Hamas and other Islamist militants in the course of recent fighting in Gaza that left about 2,000 people dead, including women and children. It could also address the issue of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, for which the Israeli leadership would be responsible.

The ICC's founding charter, the 1998 Rome statute (pdf), describes as a war crime "the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies".

Also at stake is the future of the ICC itself, an experiment in international justice that occupies a fragile position with no superpower backing. Russia, China and India have refused to sign up to it. The US and Israel signed the accord in 2000 but later withdrew.

Some international lawyers argue that by trying to duck an investigation, the ICC is not living up to the ideals expressed in the Rome statute that "the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished".

John Dugard, a professor of international law at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, and a longstanding critic of Israel's human rights record, said: "I think the prosecutor could easily exercise jurisdiction. Law is a choice. There are competing legal arguments, but she should look at the preamble to the ICC statute which says the purpose of the court is to prevent impunity."

In an exchange of letters in the last few days, lawyers for the Palestinians have insisted that the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has all the legal authority she needs to launch an investigation, based on a Palestinian request in 2009. However, Bensouda is insisting on a new Palestinian declaration, which would require achieving elusive consensus among political factions such as Hamas, who would face scrutiny themselves alongside the Israeli government. There is strong US and Israeli pressure on the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, not to pursue an ICC investigation.

Western pressure on the ICC to stay away from the issue has caused deep rifts within the prosecutor's office. Some former officials say the Palestinians were misled in 2009 into thinking their request for a war crimes investigation – in the wake of an earlier Israeli offensive on Gaza, named Cast Lead – would remain open pending confirmation of statehood. That confirmation came in November 2012 when the UN general assembly (UNGA) voted to award Palestine the status of non-member observer state, but no investigation was launched.

Bensouda initially appeared open to reviewing the standing Palestinian request, but the following year issued a controversial statement (pdf) saying the UNGA vote made no difference to the "legal invalidity" of the 2009 request.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, who was prosecutor at the time of the Palestinian 2009 declaration, backed Bensouda, saying in an email to the Guardian: "If Palestine wants to accept jurisdiction, it has to submit a new declaration."

But another former official from the ICC prosecutor's office who dealt with the Palestinian declaration strongly disagreed. "They are trying to hiding behind legal jargon to disguise what is a political decision, to rule out competence and not get involved," the official said.

Dugard said Bensouda was under heavy pressure from the US and its European allies. "For her it's a hard choice and she's not prepared to make it," he argued. "But this affects the credibility of the ICC. Africans complain that she doesn't hesitate to open an investigation on their continent."

Moreno Ocampo took three years to make a decision on the status of the 2009 Palestinian request for an investigation, during which time he was lobbied by the US and Israel to keep away. According to a book on the ICC published this year, American officials warned the prosecutor that the future of the court was in the balance.

According to the book, Rough Justice: the International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, by David Bosco, the Americans suggested that a Palestine investigation "might be too much political weight for the institution to bear. They made clear that proceeding with the case would be a major blow to the institution."

Although the US does not provide funding for the ICC, "Washington's enormous diplomatic, economic and military power can be a huge boon for the court when it periodically deployed in support of the court's work," writes Bosco, an assistant professor of international politics at American University.

In his book, Bosco reports that Israeli officials held several unpublicised meetings with Moreno Ocampo in The Hague, including a dinner at the Israeli ambassador's residence, to lobby against an investigation.

A former ICC official who was involved in the Palestinian dossier said: "It was clear from the beginning that Moreno Ocampo did not want to get involved. He said that the Palestinians were not really willing to launch the investigation, but it was clear they were serious. They sent a delegation with two ministers and supporting lawyers in August 2010 who stayed for two days to discuss their request. But Moreno Ocampo was aware that any involvement would spoil his efforts to get closer to the US."

Moreno Ocampo denied that he had been influenced by US pressure. "I was very firm on treating this issue impartially, but at the same time respecting the legal limits," he said in an email on Sunday. "I heard all the arguments. I received different Oxford professors who were explaining the different and many times opposing arguments, and I concluded that the process should … go first to the UN. They should decide what entity should be considered a state."

He added: "Palestine was using the threat to accept jurisdiction to negotiate with Israel. Someone said that if you have nine enemies surrounding you and one bullet, you don't shoot, you try to use your bullet to create leverage."

A spokeswoman for his successor, Fatou Bensouda, rejected allegations of bias in the prosecutor's choice of investigations. "The ICC is guided by the Rome statute and nothing else," she said. "Strict rules about jurisdiction, about where and when ICC can intervene should be not be deliberately misrepresented … Geographical and political consideration will thus never form part of any decision making by the office."

The French lawyer representing the Palestinians, Gilles Devers, argued that it was for the court's preliminary chamber, not the ICC's prosecutor, to decide on the court's jurisdiction in the Palestinian territories. Devers said negotiations were continuing among the Palestinian parties on whether to file a new request for an investigation, even though he believed it to be unnecessary in legal terms. Ultimately, he said, the outcome would be determinedly politically.

"There is enormous pressure not to proceed with an investigation. This pressure has been exerted on Fatah and Hamas, but also on the office of the prosecutor," Devers said. "In both cases, it takes the form of threats to the financial subsidies, to Palestine and to the international criminal court."

Among the biggest contributors to the ICC budget are the UK and France, which have both sought to persuade the Palestinians to forego a war crimes investigation.

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/aug/18/hague-court-western-pressure-gaza-inquiry

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Another comment piece.

Attack on Gaza by Saudi Royal Appointment

There are many hands behind the Israeli army’s onslaught on Gaza. America is not unhappy that Hamas is getting such a beating. As footage of the scenes of carnage on the streets of Shejaiya was coming through, John Kerry said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that Israel had every right to defend itself and the US ambassador Dan Shapiro told Israel’s Channel 2 news that the US would seek to help moderate forces become stronger in Gaza, meaning the Palestinian Authority.

Nor is Egypt overcome with grief. Its foreign minister Sameh Shoukry held Hamas responsible for civilian deaths after their rejection of the ceasefire.

Neither matter to Netanyahu as much as the third undeclared partner in this unholy alliance, for neither on their own could give him the cover he needs for a military operation of this ferocity. And that can come not from a handwringing but impotent parent like the US. Such permission can only come from a brother Arab.

The attack on Gaza comes by Saudi Royal Appointment. This royal warrant is nothing less than an open secret in Israel, and both former and serving defense officials are relaxed when they talk about it. Former Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz surprised the presenter on Channel 10 by saying Israel had to specify a role for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the demilitarization of Hamas. Asked what he meant by that, he added that Saudi and Emirati funds should be used to rebuild Gaza after Hamas had been defanged.

Amos Gilad, the Israeli defense establishment’s point man with Mubarak’s Egypt and now director of the Israeli defense ministry’s policy and political-military relations department told the academic James Dorsey recently : “Everything is underground, nothing is public. But our security cooperation with Egypt and the Gulf states is unique. This is the best period of security and diplomatic relations with the Arab.”

The celebration is mutual. King Abdullah let it be known that he had phoned President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to approve of an Egyptian ceasefire initiative which had not been put to Hamas, and had the Jerusalem Post quoting analysts about whether a ceasefire was ever seriously intended.

Mossad and Saudi intelligence officials meet regularly: The two sides conferred when the former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was about to be deposed in Egypt and they are hand in glove on Iran, both in preparing for an Israel strike over Saudi airspace and in sabotaging the existing nuclear program. There has even been a well sourced claim that the Saudis are financing most of Israel’s very expensive campaign against Iran.

Why do Saudi Arabia and Israel make such comfortable bedfellows? For decades each country has had a similar feeling in their gut when they look around them: fear. Their reaction was similar. Each felt they could only insure themselves against their neighbors by invading them (Lebanon, Yemen) or by funding proxy wars and coups (Syria, Egypt, Libya).They have enemies or rivals in common – Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Hamas in Gaza, and the Muslim Brotherhood. And they have common allies, too – the US and British military industrial establishments, Fatah strongman and US asset Mohammed Dahlan who tried to take over Gaza once, and will probably be at hand when next required.

The difference today is that for the first time in their two countries’ history, there is open co-ordination between the two military powers. Abdullah’s nephew Prince Turki has been the public face of this rapprochement, which was first signaled by the Saudi publication of a book by an Israeli academic. The prince flew to Brussels in May to meet General Amos Yadlin, the former intelligence chief who has been indicted by a court in Turkey for his role in the storming of the Mavi Marmara.

It could be argued that there is nothing sinister about Prince Turki’s wish to overcome ancient taboos that his motives are both peaceful and laudable. The prince is a staunch supporter of a laudable peace initiative proposed by the Saudi King Abdullah. The Arab Peace Initiative supported by 22 Arab States and 56 Muslim countries would indeed have been a basis for peace had Israel not ignored it some 12 years ago.

Prince Turki waxed lyrical about the prospect of peace in an article published by Haaretz. In it he wrote:

And what a pleasure it would be to be able to invite not just the Palestinians but also the Israelis I would meet to come and visit me in Riyadh, where they can visit my ancestral home in Dir’iyyah, which suffered at the hands of Ibrahim Pasha the same fate as Jerusalem did at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Romans.

Its the means, not the end, which expose the true cost of this alliance. Prince Turki’s promotion of the Arab Peace Initiative comes at the cost of abandoning the kingdom’s historical support of Palestinian resistance.

The well connected Saudi analyst Jamal Khashogji made this very point when he talked in coded language about the number of intellectuals who attack the notion of resistance:

Regrettably, the number of such intellectuals here in Saudi Arabia is higher than average. If such a trend continues it will destroy the kingdom’s honorable claim to support and defend the Palestinian cause since the time of its founder, King Abd Al-Aziz Al-Saud.

Peace would indeed be welcome to everyone, not least Gaza at the moment. The means by which Israel’s allies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt are going about achieving it, by encouraging Israel to deal Hamas a crippling blow, calls into question what is really going on here. Turki’s father King Faisal bin Abdulaziz would be turning in his grave at what the son is putting his name to.

This Saudi Israeli alliance is forged in blood, Palestinian blood, the blood on Sunday of over 100 souls in Shejaiya.

http://www.hizb.org.uk/news-watch/attack-on-gaza-by-saudi-royal-appointment

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Another update

Hamas leaders die in wave of Israeli strikes on Gaza

Militants announce death of three senior commanders after Netanyahu foreshadows ‘struggle against terror lasting years’

Three of Hamas’s most senior military commanders have been killed in pre-dawn air strikes on Rafa in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas announced the deaths of Mohammed Abu Shamalah, Raed Attar and Mohammed Barhoum on Thursday morning. The loss of the military commanders is a serious blow to the organisation.

There was still no definitive word on the fate of Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s top military figure, whose wife and eight-month-old son were killed on Tuesday evening when five one-tonne bombs struck a house in Gaza City.

Israeli military analyists said intelligence indicated Deif was at the house and that it was virtually impossible that anyone could have survived the destructive force of the bombing. A third unidentified person also died in the air strike.

The Israel Defence Forces said it struck 20 targets over Wednesday night and into Thursday morning.

It confirmed it had “eliminated senior Hamas terrorists Raed Attar and Mohamed Abu Shamala” but made no mention of Barhoum.

“Raed Attar played a major role in tunnel infiltrations, terror attacks that killed Israelis, and the kidnapping of [Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit. Abu Shamala, commander of Hamas forces in [southern] Gaza, was directly involved in dozens of terror attacks, including the murders of IDF soldiers.” the IDF statement said.

As the death toll in Gaza rose well above 2,000 on Wednesday, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, compared the Hamas movement in Gaza to the Islamic State (Isis), calling the two groups a “branch of the same tree”.

At a press conference on Wednesday night Netanyahu said the Gaza war launched on 8 July “will be a continued campaign” aimed at restoring “calm and safety” to Israeli citizens.

He said the latest bout of Israeli military action in Gaza was “the harshest blow Hamas has taken since its foundation” and warned that if Hamas rocket fire continued Israel would hit back “sevenfold”. “This is a continuous campaign. The struggle against terror lasts for years,” he said.

The defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, added that Israel “had killed hundreds of Hamas terrorists” and would continue to do so.

The UN security council expressed “grave concern” at the resumption of hostilities and called upon the parties to resume negotiations to urgently reach a “sustainable and lasting ceasefire”.

The 15-member council also “called upon the parties to prevent the situation from escalating and to reach an immediate humanitarian ceasefire”.

Speaking at a press conference in Gaza City, al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida warned of rocket attacks on Ben Gurion airport on Thursday, calling for airlines to suspend flights from 6am.

He told Israelis to avoid public gatherings and warned citizens in the country’s south not to leave bomb shelters.

On Wednesday hundreds of Palestinians attended the funerals of Deif’s wife, Vidad Asfura, 27, and son, Ali, in Jabaliya camp in northern Gaza.

Hamas had urged Gazans to turn out in force for the funeral but witnesses said the thousands-strong crowds, militant presence and gunfire that often mark funerals in Gaza were conspicuously absent.

Hundreds of civilians who had returned to their homes after eight days of relative quiet in Gaza fled back to UN shelters as Israel called up thousands of reserve troops and massed tanks and armoured personnel carriers on the border. Hawkish members of the Israeli cabinet on Wednesday repeated calls for an occupation of the Palestinian coastal enclave, which Israel evacuated under Ariel Sharon’s leadership in 2005.

Efforts to reach a diplomatic resolution to the conflict drew to a halt dramatically in Cairo as fire resumed on Tuesday evening. Negotiations showed no sign of restarting on Wednesday. Israel withdrew its delegation as soon as violence broke out and Hamas called for the Palestinian delegation to return home.

Israel has blamed Hamas for breaking the ceasefire and triggering a resumption of violence with the firing of three rockets, which landed in open land near the southern city of Beersheba on Tuesday night.

The Palestinians have blamed Israel for the failure of the truce and the return to violence. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation suggested in a statement that the rocket attack that provoked the Israeli withdrawal could have been manufactured by Israel as an excuse to abandon the talks.

“Israel … alleges that it was responding to three rockets launched from the Gaza districts – which supposedly landed in open areas and caused no deaths, injuries or damage,” the PLO said in a statement.

“This launch has not been confirmed and no Palestinian resistance group has claimed responsibility. Israel has used the alleged rocket fire as a pretext for continuing to target Palestinian civilians.”

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was due to meet the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, in Doha, Qatar, late on Wednesday, as the Palestinian Authority continues to try to steer the peace process. Hamas signed a deal with Fatah in April this year to set up a unity government and the PA has taken the lead in talks between Israel and Hamas, who refuse to negotiate directly with each other.

With the Sisi government in Egypt hostile to the Islamist leadership in Gaza, Hamas is looking to Qatar for diplomatic support.

Michael Stephens, deputy director at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London, said: “Qatar is basically Hamas’s last ally. Given that Turkey is struggling and failing to insert itself into the process, Doha really is the only game in town.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/hamas-leaders-die-in-wave-of-israeli-strikes-on-gaza

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'Disgustingly Biased' - The Corporate Media On The Gaza Massacre

Soon after Malaysian Airlines MH17 crashed near Donetsk, Ukraine on July 18, killing 298 people, the BBC website quickly, and rightly, set up a 'LIVE' feed with rolling reports and commentary on the disaster. This was clearly an important and dramatic event involving horrific loss of life with serious political implications. The public would, of course, be searching for the latest news.

However, since July 8, ten days prior to the crash, Israeli armed forces had been bombarding the trapped civilian population of Gaza with airstrikes, drone strikes and naval shelling. As the massive Israeli assault ramped up on July 9, the World section of the BBC News website had this as its headline:

'Israel under renewed Hamas attack'

By July 18, around 300 people had been killed in Gaza, 80% of them civilians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a key political issue of our time, one that was clearly developing by the minute after July 8. And yet at no point had the BBC set up a 'LIVE' feed with rolling news.

That finally changed on July 20 after so many days in which so many Palestinians had been killed. Why July 20? The answer appears to be found in the fourth entry of the live feed under the title 'Breaking News':

'Some 13 Israeli soldiers were killed overnight in Gaza, news agencies, quoting Israeli military sources, say. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to address the nation shortly.'

Despite this small number of military deaths compared to the Palestinian toll, it seems clear that the killing of the Israeli troops triggered the BBC live feed. It focused intensely on these deaths, with entries of this kind:

'Ben White, writer tweets: Israel has lost more soldiers in a 3 day old ground offensive than it did during Cast Lead & Pillar of Defense combined (12).'

And:

'View to the Mid East, a writer in Ashdod, Israel tweets: One of the soldiers who was killed in Gaza tonight prays at the same synagogue I go to. Grew up in the same neighbourhood.'

The feed incorporated no less than five photographs from two funerals of the Israeli soldiers but none from the far more numerous Palestinian funerals (one picture showed Palestinian relatives collecting a body from a morgue), with these captions:

'Friends and relatives of Israeli Sergeant Adar Barsano mourn during his funeral at the military cemetery in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya.'

And:

'Sagit Greenberg, the wife of Israeli soldier Maj Amotz Greenberg, mourns during his funeral in the central town of Hod Hasharon.'

Obviously, Israeli suffering also merits compassion, but these military deaths were overshadowed by a far higher loss of Palestinian lives, most of them civilian men, women and children. The toll currently stands at 746 Palestinians killed and 4,640 wounded. Israel has suffered 32 military and two civilian deaths. One foreign worker from Thailand has also been killed.

In the following days (and at time of writing) the live feed was cancelled; a period that has seen hundreds of Palestinian deaths and a handful of Israeli military deaths.

For some time on the morning of July 21, the sole Gaza content on the BBC News home page was 'Breaking News' of an 'Israeli soldier missing in Gaza'.

Remarkably, on the morning of July 23, when 18 Palestinians were killed, the BBC set up a live feed for the wrecked Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, which showed the ship being towed to Genoa. There was no live feed for Gaza.

The BBC has supplied names, ages, pictures and emotive background stories of the Malaysian air crash victims while, with rare exceptions, Palestinian dead have been presented as nameless figures, briefly mentioned, then forgotten.

The level of BBC bias was emphasised by an article headline that placed inverted commas around the siege in Gaza, as if it were a matter for debate: "Palestinian PM says lift Gaza 'siege' as part of ceasefire". The BBC subsequently changed the title, but a tweet promoting the article with the original wording remains.

The BBC has also implied that 'Rockets fired from Gaza' are comparable to 'Gaza targets hit by Israel'. Readers are to understand that attempted attacks by unguided, low-tech rockets are comparable to actual bombings by state of the art bombs, missiles and shells. The BBC's source? 'Israel Defence Forces.'

On July 21, BBC News at Ten presenter Huw Edwards asked a colleague live on air:

'...the Israelis saying they'll carry on as long as necessary to stop the Hamas rocket attacks. Do you detect any signs at all that there's a hope of a coming together in the next few days or weeks, or not?'

In other words, BBC News presented Hamas rocket attacks as the stumbling block to peace, exactly conforming to Israeli state propaganda.

In a report on the same edition of News at Ten, the BBC's world affairs editor, John Fidler-Simpson CBE, asserted that 'one reason why casualties on the two sides are so out of proportion' is because 'Israel has developed the world's most effective anti-missile defence'.

This suggested a more or less equal fight with Israel simply better able to protect itself. Fidler-Simpson added:

'The Iron Dome system's ability to knock Hamas missiles out of the sky has been a remarkable achievement for Israel during this crisis. The success rate is quite phenomenal.'

Back in the real world, weapons experts Ted Postol of MIT and Richard Lloyd of Tesla Laboratory, argue that claims for Iron Dome are wildly exaggerated, estimating a success rate of less than 5 per cent. Peter Coy of BloombergBusinessweek comments:

'Lloyd e-mailed me a copy of a 28-page analysis that's the most detailed critique yet of the holes in the Iron Dome system - holes so big that, if he's right, would justify calling it Iron Sieve.'

BBC bias has also been typified by its downplaying, or complete blanking, of large-scale demonstrations in several UK cities protesting BBC coverage. As activist Jonathon Shafi noted of the BBC's lack of interest:

'It is misinformation of the worst, and it is an insult to journalism.'

After the four Palestinian Bakr boys, aged between 9 and 11, were killed by an Israeli shell, the New York Times headline on July 16 read:

'Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife'

This worked well to obscure the truth that the boys had been killed while playing football on a beach. Artist Amir Schiby produced a wonderful, moving tribute to the Bakr boys.

Even indisputable evidence here and here that Israel had fired on hospitals in Gaza, major war crimes, brought little outrage from politicians and media. Jonathan Whittall, Head of Humanitarian Analysis at Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), reminded the world (citing MSF General Director Christopher Stokes on the crisis in Libya in 2012):

'Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not to repeatedly treat the same patients between torture sessions.'

Despite the unequal battle and high civilian death toll, no high-profile advocates of the West's 'responsibility to protect' ('R2P') civilians in Iraq, Libya and Syria have been calling for 'intervention'.

We asked passionate 'R2Pers' like David Aaronovitch, Jonathan Freedland and Menzies Campbell if they felt 'we must do something'. They did not reply. Freedland commented in a BBC interview that the death toll was 'very lopsided' – a polite euphemism for a massacre that, according to Unicef, has claimed 10 children per day. E-International Relations website reports:

'While the conflict has generated near blanket international media coverage it has been strangely ignored by the three most prominent and vociferous organisations established to promote the idea of "The Responsibility to Protect", namely The International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP), the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) and the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (APCR2P)...

'Since the operation began these groups have published myriad tweets, posts and articles – on issues ranging from the rights of women, the treatment of refugees, mass atrocity cries and the provision of medical aid... Yet, coverage of the crisis in Gaza has been negligible.'

Who Starts The 'Cycle Of Violence'?

The term 'cycle of violence' often occurs in corporate reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But who starts the cycle spinning? A study of news performance in 2001 by the Glasgow Media Group noted that Israelis 'were six times as likely to be presented as "retaliating" or in some way responding than were the Palestinians'.

The US media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, observed that the current conflict 'is usually traced back to the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers on the West Bank. When their bodies were found on June 30, Israel "retaliated" by attacking Gaza. The July 2 killing of a Palestinian teenager, allegedly a revenge murder by Israeli extremists, was reported as further escalating the conflict.'

On the BBC's News at Ten (July 23), reporter Quentin Sommerville commented (at 14:31):

'The kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, blamed on Hamas, sparked this conflict.'

The Guardian readers' editor, Chris Elliott – ostensibly the newspaper's watchdog on bias in language and presentation - echoed Israeli propaganda, describing Israel's current attack as a 'counter-offensive'.

NBC News correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin supplied a rare example of dissent:

'But even before the kidnapping of three Israeli-Jewish teenagers and killing of the Palestinian teenager last week, two Palestinians were killed back in May and didn't trigger the kind of international outcry and international outrage that the killing of the three Israeli teens have.'

Corporate media have generally not identified these deaths as initiating a 'cycle of violence'.

According to human rights group B'Tselem, 568 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli security forces from January 2009 till the end of May 2014; 84 of those fatalities were children. Over the same time period, 38 Israelis were killed by Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Many expert commentators argue that the deeper cause behind the latest violence is in fact Israel's opposition to the Palestinian unity government, including Hamas, formed earlier this year which has been recognised even by the US.

No Ceasefire - 'It's The Siege, Stupid'

If Palestinians are blamed by corporate media for starting the violence, they are also blamed for refusing to end it. A Guardian article title read:

'Pressure mounts on Hamas to accept ceasefire as Gaza death toll tops 300 - Hamas left isolated by its refusal to accept a truce as death toll rises and UN chief heads for the region to help broker peace'

Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood commented:

'But with the Palestinian death toll rising over 300, it is the Hamas leadership that has come under increasing pressure from multiple international sources to accept an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

'"The objective is to convince all the Palestinian factions to accept the ceasefire," one western diplomat told the Guardian.'

But a cessation of the current violence would not mean an end to war and suffering for the Palestinians. Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada commented:

'[T]he two Palestinian resistance groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have set forth ten conditions for a ceasefire and ten-year truce with Israel.

'They include an end to all armed hostilities, the end of the siege of Gaza, and the construction of internationally supervised air and seaports.'

Abunimah explained the rationale behind these conditions:

'It's the siege, stupid. Talk to virtually anyone in Gaza and they will tell you the same. The siege is living death, slowly crushing the life out of Gaza. It has to end.

'This is a main reason why Hamas did not accede to the attempt by Israel, through its ally the Egyptian dictatorship, to impose a unilateral "ceasefire" about which Hamas says it was never even consulted, hearing about the initiative only through the media.'

Jerusalem-based journalist Mya Guarnieri described what a return to the status quo actually means:

'Israel strikes Gaza from time to time and kills Palestinian civilians there and in the West Bank without garnering much scrutiny from the international media and, by extension, the international community.'

In February 2013, Ben White commented:

'Three months have passed since the ceasefire that brought an end to Israel's eight-day attack on the Gaza Strip known as Operation "Pillar of Defence"... Since late November, Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have averaged over one a day, every day. These include shootings by troops positioned along the border fence, attacks on fishermen working off the Gaza coast, and incursions by the Israeli army.'

These attacks are mentioned in passing, or ignored, by a corporate media system that is so clearly indifferent to the loss of Palestinian life. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook observed of the latest conflict:

'It's depressingly predictable that the corporate media have swallowed the line of Israel accepting the "ceasefire proposal" and Hamas rejecting it. What Hamas did was reject a US-Israeli diktat to sign away the rights of the people of Gaza to end a siege that cuts them off from the rest of the world.'

Corporate Filtering - 'A Top-Down Intimidation Campaign'

The bias in failing to report the brutalisation of a trapped, impoverished people under occupation is staggering. Many might wonder why journalists fail to speak out. But several journalists who have exposed Israeli actions, and media bias favouring Israel, have been punished.

Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who witnessed the killing of the four Bakr boys, and whose reporting of the tragedy moved many readers around the world, was subsequently 'told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately'. Glenn Greenwald reports that NBC executives claimed the decision was motivated by 'security concerns' as Israel prepared a ground invasion. But NBC then sent another correspondent, Richard Engel, into Gaza with an American producer.

After a storm of protest on social media, NBC announced it had 'reversed its decision'. The broadcaster dissembled:

'As with any news team in conflict zones, deployments are constantly reassessed. We've carefully considered our deployment decisions and we will be sending Mohyeldin back to Gaza over the weekend.'

The day after Mohyeldin was pulled out, CNN correspondent Diana Magnay was removed from covering the conflict after she reported Israelis cheering the bombing of Gaza from a hillside overlooking the border. When the people cheering allegedly threatened to destroy Magnay's car 'if I say a word wrong', she described them on Twitter as 'scum'.

On July 21, journalist and MSNBC contributor Rula Jebreal said in an interview on MSNBC of MSNBC:

'We're ridiculous. We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue. Look how many [sic] air time Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis, Andrea Mitchell and others. I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on these same issues.'

The MSNBC interviewer responded: 'We have had Palestinian voices on our show.'

Jebreal replied: 'Maybe for 30 seconds, and then you have 25 minutes for Bibi Netanyahu...'

Max Blumenthal reported on AlterNet:

'Within hours, all of Jebreal's future bookings were cancelled and the renewal of her contract was off the table.'

Later that day, Jebreal tweeted:

'My forthcoming TV appearances have been cancelled! Is there a link between my expose and the cancellation?'

Jebreal commented:

'I couldn't stay silent after seeing the amount of airtime given to Israeli politicians versus Palestinians. They say we are balanced but their idea of balance is 90 percent Israeli guests and 10 percent Palestinians. This kind of media is what leads to the failing policies that we see in Gaza.'

Jebreal said that in her two years as an MSNBC contributor, she had told her producers: '"we have a serious issue here". But everybody's intimidated by this pressure and if it's not direct then it becomes self-censorship'.

Blumenthal reported that an NBC producer, speaking anonymously, had confirmed the reality of 'a top-down intimidation campaign aimed at presenting an Israeli-centric view of the attack on the Gaza Strip'.

Pressure on the executives responsible for disciplining journalists is also intense. Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times, has said Washington often 'played the terrorist card' to get stories spiked:

'Sometimes the CIA or the director of national intelligence or the NSA or the White House will call about a story... You hit the brakes, you hear the arguments, and it's always a balancing act: the importance of the information to the public versus the claim of harming national security... Over time, the government too reflexively said to the Times, "you're going to have blood on your hands if you publish X" and because of the frequency of that, the government lost a little credibility... But you do listen and seriously worry... Editors are Americans too... We don't want to help terrorists'.

But editors should remember that they are human beings first, Americans second - to behave otherwise risks supporting their own government's terrorism and that of its allies.

For in truth, biased US-UK journalism is empowering the Israeli government's effort to terrorise the Palestinian people into accepting gradual genocide as their land and resources are stolen. As we have discussed here (see also Gideon Levy here), the hidden backstory is that this land grab can not be conducted under conditions of peace. It requires Perpetual War; a phoney, one-sided 'war' dominated by Israel's perennial trump card: high-tech military power supplied by that eternal 'peace broker', the United States.

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2014/772-gaza-massacre.html

[Karl]

I might come across as callous, but why doesn't Israel just exterminate all the Palestinians? Is it because they will not get anymore USA taxpayers aid of billions every year?