{"id":134874,"date":"2014-08-04T16:24:15","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T16:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=134874"},"modified":"2014-08-04T16:24:15","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T16:24:15","slug":"israels-deceptions-eyeless-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/israels-deceptions-eyeless-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s Deceptions – Eyeless in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Cook
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

A single incident at the weekend \u2014 the reported capture by Hamas on Friday of an Israeli soldier through a tunnel \u2014 illustrated in stark fashion the layers of deception Israel has successfully cast over its attack on Gaza.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, as the army indicated it would start limited withdrawals, Israel claimed Hadar Goldin was dead, possibly buried in a collapsed tunnel as Israel bombarded the area in which he was seized. His family said he was being left behind.<\/p>\n

Israeli officials or media did not view Hamas\u2019 operation dispassionately. Goldin was not \u201ccaptured\u201d but \u201ckidnapped\u201d \u2014 as though he was an innocent seized by opportunistic criminals.<\/p>\n

As occurs so often, many western journalists followed Israel\u2019s lead. The London Times\u2019 front page blared: \u201cKidnapped in Gaza\u201d, while the Boston Globe called him the \u201cabducted Israeli soldier\u201d.<\/p>\n

From western reactions, it was also clear the soldier\u2019s capture was considered more significant news than any of the massacres of Palestinian civilians over the past weeks.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s cynical calculus \u2014 that one soldier is more valuable than large numbers of dead Palestinian civilians \u2014 was echoed in the diplomatic and editorial corridors of Washington, London and Paris.<\/p>\n

Misleading too was the general agreement that, in attacking a group of soldiers in Rafah and seizing Goldin, Hamas had violated the first moments of a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post reported on the circumstances as a Hamas suicide bomber emerged from a tunnel to explode his vest, killing two soldiers, and Goldin was pulled into the shaft. \u201cOn Friday morning, Israeli troops were in the southern Gaza Strip preparing to destroy a Hamas tunnel, said Israeli military officials.\u00a0Suddenly, Palestinian militants emerged from a shaft.\u201d<\/p>\n

CBS reporter Charlie D\u2019Agata parroted the same Israeli briefings, also inadvertently exposing the central deceit. The soldier was \u201csuspected of being kidnapped during an operation to clear tunnels \u2014 crucially, [officials] say, this happened after the ceasefire was supposed to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

So if a ceasefire was in place, what were Goldin and his comrades doing detonating tunnels, tunnels in which Israel says Hamas is hiding? Were Hamas fighters supposed to simply wait to be entombed in their bunkers during the pause in hostilities? Or was Israel the one violating the ceasefire?<\/p>\n

And then there was the explosion of military fury as Israel realised its soldier was missing. Israeli correspondents have admitted that the notorious \u201cHannibal procedure\u201d was invoked: the use of all means to stop a soldier being taken alive, including killing him. The rationale is to prevent the enemy gaining a psychological advantage in negotiations.<\/p>\n

The unleashing of massive firepower appeared designed to ensure Goldin and his captors never made it out of their tunnel, but in the process Israel killed dozens of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

It was another illustration of Israel\u2019s absolute disregard for the safety of civilians. At least three-quarters of the more than 1,700 Palestinians killed so far are non-combatants, while almost all Israeli casualties have been soldiers. This has been a pattern in all Israel\u2019s recent confrontations.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s official justifications for taking the fight into Gaza have been layered with deceit too.<\/p>\n

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that Israel was dragged into a war of necessity. Barack Obama echoed him: Israel had a right to defend itself from a barrage of rockets fired out of Gaza. Later the pretext became Israel\u2019s need to destroy the \u201cterror tunnels\u201d.<\/p>\n

The logic is deeply flawed. Israel is occupying and besieging Gaza, conferring on its inhabitants a right under international law to fight for their freedom. How does the oppressor, the lawbreaker have a right to self-defence? If Israel objects to being scratched and bruised, it should stop choking its victim.<\/p>\n

The degree to which Israel\u2019s narrative of \u201cself-defence\u201d has come to dominate news coverage and diplomatic statements was revealed in a CNN interview. Anchor Carol Costello asked a baffled interviewee in all seriousness: \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t Hamas just show Israel where these tunnels are?\u201d<\/p>\n

Equally significantly, Israel has obscured the truth that it picked this particular round of its ongoing confrontation with Hamas \u2014 and did so entirely cynically.<\/p>\n

A BBC reporter recently confirmed with an Israeli police spokesman a rumour that had been circulating among military correspondents for weeks. The group behind the abduction in June of three Israeli teens in the West Bank \u2014 the trigger for Israel\u2019s campaign against Hamas \u2014 was a lone cell, acting on its own.<\/p>\n

Claiming precisely the opposite \u2014 that he had cast-iron proof Hamas was responsible \u2014 Netanyahu gave the army free rein to arrest hundreds of Hamas members and smash the organisation\u2019s institutions in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

The crackdown created the necessary provocation: Hamas allowed Gaza\u2019s factions to start firing limited numbers of rockets. Analyst Nathan Thrall noted recently that Hamas had impressed the Israeli army until that point by enforcing the ceasefire agreed with Israel 18 months earlier, even though Israel violated the terms by maintaining Gaza\u2019s siege.<\/p>\n

Now the rockets gave Netanyahu an excuse to strike.<\/p>\n

So what was his real reason for going into Gaza? What were these many deceptions designed to hide?<\/p>\n

It seems Netanyahu wanted to end a strategic threat: not Hamas rockets or tunnels, but the establishment of a unity government between Hamas and its long-time rivals Fatah. Palestinian unity risked reviving pressure on him to negotiate, or face a renewed and more credible Palestinian campaign for statehood at the United Nations.<\/p>\n

But Hamas\u2019 unexpectedly impressive martial display against Israel \u2014 killing dozens of soldiers, firing long-range rockets into Israel throughout, closing briefly the sole international airport, launching attacks into Israeli territory, and causing a loss to the economy estimated so far at more than $4bn \u00a0\u2014 may have changed the calculus again.<\/p>\n

For the moment, Netanyahu seems to prefer to pull back Israeli soldiers rather than be forced under international pressure to negotiate with Hamas. He knows that its key demand will be that Israel end the siege.<\/p>\n

But in the longer term, Netanyahu may need Palestinian unity, at least on his terms, to undermine Hamas\u2019 gains.<\/p>\n

As Israel began its attack on Gaza, Netanyahu turned his attention to the West Bank. He warned that there could never be \u201cany agreement in which we relinquish security control\u201d over it for fear that, given the West Bank\u2019s larger size, Israel might \u201ccreate another 20 Gazas\u201d.<\/p>\n

He was ruling out any hope of Palestinian statehood. A \u201cdemilitarised\u201d entity, heavily circumscribed and absolutely dependent on Israel and the US, seems to be all that Israel will ever put on the table.<\/p>\n

Allowing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah into Gaza could justify loosening the siege. But only as long as Abbas agrees to remove Hamas\u2019 military infrastructure and export to the coastal enclave the model he has established in the West Bank\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/b>of endless accommodation to Israeli and US dictates.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Cook\u00a0won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are \u201cIsrael and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East\u201d (Pluto Press) and \u201cDisappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair\u201d (Zed Books). His website is\u00a0www.jonathan-cook.net<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Cook RINF Alternative News A single incident at the weekend \u2014 the reported capture by Hamas on Friday of an Israeli soldier through a tunnel \u2014 illustrated in stark fashion the layers of deception Israel has successfully cast over its attack on Gaza. On Sunday, as the army indicated it would start limited withdrawals, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}