A Wider War

 

Things are spinning out of control in the Middle East. Michael Harris writes:

Events unfolding in the Middle East are showing just how right Canada was to call for a ceasefire in the atrocious Gaza War.

The nightmare scenario—an all-out regional conflict involving Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and potentially Iran on one side, with Israel and the United States on the other—is no longer a long shot.  

After the recent assassination of a senior Hamas member in Beirut, the leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nazralla, has called for vengeance against Israel.  

Nazralla said his group is not afraid of war, and there would be no ceiling to the fighting if it begins.  Israel did not give the U.S. advance notice before carrying out the assassination of Saleh Arouri. 

Meanwhile in Iran, a car-bomb killed at least 84 people in the city of Kerman, which is the burial site of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.  

Iran’s leader said Israel will face “harsh punishment” for the bombing and deaths, the worst in the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Israeli Defense Forces told CNN: “No comment.”

The war will continue as long as the United States supports Israel. And is real will keep fighting until the Israelis toss out Netanyahu.

All this will take time. In the meanwhile, a pause in the fighting is the only way to bring a little sanity to this nightmare.

Image: NBC News

Truth And War

Truth has always been the first casualty of war. The journalists who cover a war have a difficult task. Michael Harris writes:

War triggers a tribal impulse to take sides, to live in a world of black and white, to kill rather than communicate, and to turn on anyone who’s not on your side.  

Telling the truth is a dangerous occupation. It grows more perilous every year. In 2022, 67 journalists were killed, 35 of them in Ukraine, Mexico, and Haiti. Whether they are covering a war or uncovering corruption, theirs is a life-and-death occupation. 

Reuters video journalist Issam Abdullah was killed, and six of his colleagues from Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse were wounded, when Israeli rocket fire rained down on them at Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon on Oct. 13. The group was huddled together for safety, with their press identification prominently displayed.

No one is saying that this was a deliberate act, but neither side in a war welcomes impartial observers with cameras. That’s because there are always two wars going on in every conflict: the military battle, and the fight for the hearts and minds of the world. 

Winning the information war is just as important as winning the military contest. Supportive press is seen as good, critical stories as skewed, and unwelcome propaganda as aiding the enemy. 

That battle is going on in the present conflict:

When it was reported that Israel had bombed a hospital, killing hundreds of people, the coverage caused outrage, not only in the Middle East, but also around the world.

In an unheard of move, leaders from Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority cancelled an in-person summit with U.S. President Joe Biden. Deadly protests were triggered in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, and there were even some drone attacks on U.S. forces in the region.

Even after Israel and the U.S. furnished some evidence to suggest that the hospital strike was actually an errant missile fired by Islamic Jihad, the narrative didn’t sell on the Arab street. Nor did it play much better on the international scene. 

China accused Israel of going beyond defending itself with its unprecedented aerial bombardment that has caused more than 4,000 civilian deaths in Gaza. Iran warned of consequences if the expected land invasion of Gaza takes place. Even in the United States, where the president has just asked for $106-billion to fund wars in Ukraine and Israel, there were large, pro-Palestinian protests outside the White House. 

The public-relations war over Gaza now has a new twist. The Netanyahu government has just approved measures that would temporarily shut down foreign news channels in certain “emergency” situations.

The last thing Israel wants the world to view is the brutal reality of what invading Gaza would actually look like. It will look like a blood-bath, and a lot of that blood will come from innocent men, women, and children who are not combatants. 

That’s why CNN, Reuters, the BBC, and Al Jazeera need to be there, along with as many news agencies as possible who have the resources to cover the war. 

Showing the horror is often the only way of stopping it.

In the coming weeks, we will all want to turn away. We must not do that.

Image: AZ Quotes

At Our Worst

The Israel-Hamas War is a case of humanity operating on its worst instincts. Eric Ifill writes:

I am embarrassed by the leadership of this country who have polluted what it means to be a human being, and it’s up to us to push back at the one-sided nature of their performative empathy. Who gets to be the victims of the Israel-Hamas war is directly connected to whose aggression can be excused as legitimate.

The attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians was barbaric:

On Oct. 7, Hamas launched a co-ordinated attack against Israeli military bases and civilians living near the border of Gaza. These victims experienced a horrific chain of events including Hamas militants murdering and kidnapping many Israeli civilians. As CNN explains, “Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, and took 199 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.” This strike at Israel was unprecedented in scale and tactics, and has been called the worst attack on Israel since its formation. CNN concurs that “Israel has not faced its adversaries in street battles on its own territory since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.” The operation, “Al-Aqsa Storm,” as Hamas named it, was, according to the militants, “a response to what it described as Israeli attacks on women, the desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the ongoing siege of Gaza.”

These are horrendous crimes that unleashed a spiral of violence from which victims will continue to suffer. There is no doubt about that.

But there are thousands of innocent victims on the other side. Note the language the Israelis are using:

This dehumanizing language paints Palestinians as sub-human, and therefore builds a narrative for their disposal. And like animals are how they are being treated.

The Palestinian residents in Gaza are under siege, and had only been given 24 hours to flee when the IDF bombed their only escape to Egypt, the Rafah Crossing. The Washington Post confirms: “Israel bombed areas of southern Gaza where it had told Palestinians to flee to ahead of an expected ground invasion, killing dozens of people.” This has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions for a people who continue to pay for crimes they did not commit. This is what is called collective punishment, and it is contrary to international humanitarian law. Médecins Sans Frontières, in its reprinting of the Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law by legal director Françoise Bouchet-Saulnier, highlighted: “International humanitarian law posits that no person may be punished for acts that he or she did not commit. It ensures that the collective punishment of a group of persons for a crime committed by an individual is also forbidden, whether in the case of prisoners of war or of any other individuals.”

There is a reason Mark Twain called us "the damn'd human race."

Image: CNN