It is in the Israeli army’s interest to throw sand in the eyes of both the Israeli public and world media by casting doubt on the IDF soldiers’ accounts of possible Gaza war crimes. And there are those journalists and publications who willingly participate in the moral obfuscation. Though he is by no means the only one, Ethan Bronner is a case in point.
But before we talk about his latest piece of hopelessly compromised journalism, let’s talk about the circle of proof ever-tightening like a noose around the IDF’s neck. In response to the original series written by Haaretz’ Amos Harel in which IDF soldiers reported on incidents of cold-blooded murder perpetrated by fellow soldiers, AP reporters hunted down the incidents from the Gaza side and named the actual victims. While the specific incidents don’t always match up detail by detail, they are close enough to allow most reasonable people to conclude the original stories were based on incidents that actually happened. In the passage below, the A.P. reporter notes the result of his Gaza-based research and compares this with the soldiers’ testimony:
When Israeli soldiers expelled Abir Hijeh, her five children and their neighbors from homes in a Gaza war zone, she said they warned her in broken Arabic: Go south or you might get shot.
The group went the wrong way and came under fire from Israeli soldiers. Hijeh was wounded and her 2-year-old daughter was killed.
…In the most explosive testimony, a soldier, identified only as Ram, said a sniper in his area killed a Palestinian woman and her two children after they misunderstood orders and walked in the wrong direction, entering a no-go zone.
In the following passage, the reporter begins with the IDF soldier’s story and compares it to a specific death documented by Gazans:
Another soldier, Aviv, described a sniper killing an elderly woman as she walked in the street…
Mohammed Ghannam, a field researcher for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights…and another researcher, Mohamad Abu Rahma of the Al Haq group, said they believe the woman was Mahdiyeh Ayyad, who was in her 70s. After Israeli forces withdrew, the woman’s body was found on a dirt road, near what had been an army position, her relatives said.
She had been shot, according to Ghannam…
****
Haaretz’ Harel today produced yet another in his series on the depredations of the war:
The army chose…an aggressive plan that included overwhelming firepower. The forces, it was decided, would advance into the urban areas behind a “rolling curtain” of aerial and artillery fire…The lives of our soldiers take precedence, the commanders were told in briefings. Before the operation, Galant and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi painted a bleak picture for the cabinet ministers. “Unlike in Lebanon, the civilians in Gaza won’t have many places to escape to,” Ashkenazi warned. “When an armored force enters the city, shells will fly..
Two weeks before the incursion, a member of the General Staff, talking to a journalist, predicted that 600-800 Palestinians civilians would be killed in an Israeli operation [ed., approximately 900-1,000 civilians were killed]
…A large part of the operation was conducted by remote control. “The Palestinians are completely transparent to us,” says A., a reservist whose brigade was posted in the Gaza Strip. “The Shin Bet has people everywhere. We observe the whole area from the air and usually the Shin Bet coordinator can also tell you who lives in what house.” The Shin Bet defines the enemy and, for the most part, someone who belongs to Hamas’ civilian welfare organizations (the da’awa) is treated the same way as a member of its military wing, the Iz al-Din al-Qassam.
Note here that the Shin Bet defines someone who is clearly a civilian non-combatant as no different than an armed combatant. This again, is clearly a breach of the Geneva Convention and a war crime.
Essentially, a person only needs to be in a “problematic” location, in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be “incriminated” and in effect sentenced to death. Often, there is no need for him to be identified as carrying a weapon. Three people in the home of a known Hamas operative, someone out on a roof at 2 A.M. about a kilometer away from an Israeli post, a person walking down the wrong street before dawn – all are legitimate targets for attack.
“It feels like hunting season has begun,” says A. “Sometimes it reminds me of a Play Station [computer] game. You hear cheers in the war room after you see on the screens that the missile hit a target, as if it were a soccer game.”
In the following passage you see the clear limitation of a high tech military campaign devoid of much of the old-fashioned hands-on military strategy and tactics of a bygone era. It is, of course, no accident that 70% of those killed were civilians when the IDF waged war from trailers, bunkers and command centers far removed from the combat zone.
The one who makes the final decision of whether to fire is usually not the brigade commander (who is with the forward forces in the field), but the “director” of combat, stationed at a command center in the rear: the deputy brigade commander, the headquarters’ chiefs or majors who are studying and return to the brigade in times of combat. Another change in operational methods involved reducing reliance on the independent judgment of Israel Air Force personnel…
Tellingly, Harel quotes a senior officer appraising the impact of the long Israeli Occupation on the attitudes of new IDF recruits:
“The impact of the long confrontation with the Palestinians cannot be ignored,” says a senior reserve officer, “and one should also bear in mind what sort of values inductees have when they come to us these days. Every year, the education system produces a significant number of little racists.”
Harel quotes another officer expressing surprise that anyone would’ve expected less than outright carnage given the massive weaponry and firepower the IDF used:
“What did you think would happen?” a senior officer wondered this week. “We sent 10,000 troops into Gaza, more than 200 tanks and armored personnel carriers, 100 bulldozers. What were 100 bulldozers going to do there?”
In the following passage, Harel aptly sums up the impact that the soldiers’ testimonies and the reporter’s own series have had on the smug equanimity of the IDF and the Israeli public:
Until the soldiers’ testimonies were published, the IDF Spokesman’s Office had been highly successful in promoting its version of events. The international media may not have bought it, but the army managed to sell the Israeli public an almost impossible package: We were victorious in Gaza, we suffered minimal casualties and we also came out of there smelling like roses.
****
In Bronner’s N.Y. Times account, he completely misses the A.P. story documenting specific Gazans murdered by Israeli forces. Instead he parrots an IDF claim that:
…a killing of a woman and her two children appears to be an urban myth spread by troops who did not witness it.
He quotes a top level commander who attempts to refute the murder charges by the soldiers with vague assurances that from everything he knew the war was fought just fine…except for those few instances in which we killed people we shouldn’t have and destroyed homes we shouldn’t have:
“I’m not saying that nothing bad happened,” Bentzi Gruber, a colonel in the reserves and deputy commander of the armored division, said in an interview. “I heard about cases where people shot where they shouldn’t have shot and destroyed houses where they shouldn’t have destroyed houses. But the proportion and effort and directions we gave to our soldiers were entirely in the opposite direction.”
If what Gruber says is true, then how were 4,000 Gazan homes destroyed and nearly 1,000 civilians killed? Not to mention that he’s only aware of orders given by him, but certainly not aware of orders given by others nor of how subordinates interpreted those orders in the field. Clearly, scores of officers and soldiers behaved in reprehensible ways. The attempt to minimize and obfuscate the violations is entirely consistent with IDF modus operandi in these situations. But it doesn’t mean journalists like Bronner should aid and abet the IDF PR campaign.
I note that Bronner’s refutation of one of the incidents below is based on a Maariv account relayed by the commanding officer of the unit blamed for the killing. Yet Bronner does not reveal this incriminating information, nor does he reveal that the “investigation” on which the debunking claim is based was a personal, unofficial one carried out by the commander. Maariv did not directly quote the sniper alleged to have killed the woman (nor does Bronner) who supposedly denied involvement, but instead relayed the alleged statements of the sniper via the commander. Note these omissions as you read the passage below:
But officers familiar with the investigation say that those who spoke of the killing of the mother and her children did not witness it and that it almost certainly did not occur. Warning shots were fired near the family but not at it, the officers said, and a rumor spread among the troops of an improper shooting.
The prevailing notion of Bronner’s reporting is that the entire Gaza war is so hopelessly embroiled in controversy that we can’t possibly draw any clear conclusions. The effect of such doubt is to relieve Israel of any responsibility for its moral and legal violations of international law.
In another passage, Bronner raises charges published in Haaretz (without crediting the paper) by IDF soldiers that the chief military chaplain distributed propaganda to the troops urging them to see the Gaza fight as a holy war of Jew against Muslim. Further, the rabbis urged soldiers, again in printed and quoted materials, not to have mercy on Gaza civilians, but rather to treat them as if they might be terrorists. Haaretz reported this story quoting the materials distributed to the troops.
Yet Bronner allows a supposed academic expert to undermine the story with vague generalizations:
Stuart Cohen, a political scientist at Bar Ilan University who is religiously observant, says that the army has indeed grown more violent toward civilians in the past 25 years, partly because the Palestinians have. But he says it has nothing to do with the increase of religious soldiers.
For 12 years he has been studying the correspondence between religious soldiers and rabbis on combat morality, and overwhelmingly the rabbis have urged restraint. While he cannot measure how that advice has been put into practice, he suspects it has had a real effect. And other religious soldiers said their behavior in Gaza was especially respectful.
I suppose if NO IDF soldier did any of the things alleged, then those homes destroyed and civilians killed must’ve happened at the hand of some alien extra-terrestrial force.
One especially bizarre claim by the IDF which Bronner passes on without comment relates to the discrepancy between the Israeli claim that 1,100 Gazans were killed and Palestinian human rights groups’ claims that 1,400 were killed:
The Israeli military argues that about 400 people die from natural causes in Gaza every month, a possible cause for the gap in the two counts.
Sometimes you just scratch your head and say: “what, are these people idiots or do they just take everyone else for being so?” The IDF would have you believe that Palestinians counting the war dead somehow included Gazans who died of natural causes during the month in which the war was waged. As if Gazans either cannot tell the difference between a person with their body split in two by an Israeli drone missile and another who dies in their sleep of old age. If some of this weren’t so chilling and Kafkaesque you might actually be able to find it humorous (in a VERY dark way).
In closing, I’d like to ask my readers, especially those who deny any claim of war crimes to consider if the shoe was on the other foot and Hamas had killed 1,400 Israelis (God forbid). What would you do? How would you want the world to react? If you’d demand a robust response from the international community and an immediate call for war crimes charges, then why wouldn’t you do so in this situation? Or is it possible that when Israel kills it is righteous, but when Palestinians kill it is inherently evil?
Harel deserves a Pulitzer for the work he has done even though the reports are enough to make any decent human being sick.
I wonder if you have read “The Deserter’s Tale” by Joshua Key though. The story is the same, just replace ‘arabs’ with ‘sand niggers” in Fallujah and the story is the same.
Superb post. I forwarded a link to the NYT public editor.
I agree that this Bronner report was almost totally one-sided and cheats us- almost bringing to mind Judith Miller (taking dictation).
That said, I think the public editor of the NYTimes would ask that you view Bronner’s articles collectively. He ( Bronner) is trying to walk a fine line playing “even Steven” somewhat but with a Jewish readership that may be substantial that is perennially complaining about the NYT being anti- Israel (if you can believe that). In a way this is a form of intimidation and it may be working. The public editor may say what was said the last time this subject was covered: ie that the PE gets equal complaints from both sides so they must be okay.
This has nothing to do with telling the whole story, even doing some original investigation.
The US pubic is not on this subject this week either.
Suzanne–
I think that’s exactly what the public editor would say. They get criticism from both sides, so they’re being balanced–it’s the perennial excuse of the MSM. By that logic, if we had enough pro-Hamas people writing the NYT they’d have to hedge on whether or not that group was ever guilty of terrorism.
Though I do have a teensy bit of sympathy for the NYT–as you say, they do get complaints of anti-Israel bias and I suspect those complaints are numerous and loud.
Excellent Richard, I sent this out everywhere, brilliant.
Now how jerky is that, you post a photo that can’t be dragged or copied.
Do you want this information posted elsewhere to spread the news, or do you want exclusivity?
Not in keeping with peace and spreading the news about the Israel’s outrageous behavior.
Also, it is really tacky to ask for money on your site, I could use some money myself but I would never stoop to begging.
It’s one think to have a store on your site, it’s another thing to ask for donations.
In the end, it only gives the WRONG impression that Jews always want money, they don’t do anything for the good of others freely.
Please don’t do this to good Jews, my husband is Jewish and he hates this aspect of your excellent website.
There is too much anti-Semitism already, please don’t add to it by stereotypical behaviors that make Jews look greedy, since most Jews like my husband, are hard working and are not the anti-Semitic portrayal of the greedy Jew.
Please don’t publish this, I am telling you this because your site is very good and I would like to see it improved by the above submissions.
You have asked me not to publish this comment, but I’m not going to honor your request for several reasons, chief among them that I find it so deeply offensive as I also find your avatar and nickname.
I see no reason why a blogger has to write in penury and not be compensated by readers who appreciate his work. I am grateful for readers who support my work in this way just as any journalist or writer is happy to be paid for what they do. The idea that asking for support would somehow fuel anti-Semitic attitudes among my readers is a disgusting idea in your head, but in no others.
My earlier career was as a non profit fundraiser and my attitude toward money is far different than yours I’m happy to say. And my attitude is in deep accord with Jewish notions that money should be used to make the world a better place. There is never any shame in money. That’s a notion you’ve inherited from your possibly Christian background. We Jews reject this notion wholeheartedly.
So I’d gladly invite you to decamp from this site & ply your trade elsewhere. Whether your husband is Jewish or not is immaterial to the fact that you are either an ignorant person who doesn’t understand that her attitudes are anti-Semitic, or that you just plain don’t give a shit how your opinions are perceived by others including Jews.
That person is clearly a troll. A racist/bigot too.
*RE: ” In closing, I’d like to ask my readers, especially those who deny any claim of war crimes to consider if the shoe was on the other foot and Hamas had killed 1,400 Israelis (God forbid). What would you do? How would you want the world to react? If you’d demand a robust response from the international community and an immediate call for war crimes charges, then why wouldn’t you do so in this situation? Or is it possible that when Israel kills it is righteous, but when Palestinians kill it is inherently evil?”
*SEE: “The Authoritarians” by Bob Altemeyer, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba
Chapter Three
How Authoritarian Followers Think
2. Highly Compartmentalized Minds
“…As I said earlier, authoritarians’ ideas are poorly integrated with one another. It’s as if each idea is stored in a file that can be called up and used when the
authoritarian wishes, even though another of his ideas–stored in a different file–basically contradicts it. We all have some inconsistencies in our thinking, but
authoritarians can stupify you with the inconsistency of their ideas. Thus they may say they are proud to live in a country that guarantees freedom of speech, but another file
holds, “My country, love it or leave it.” The ideas were copied from trusted sources, often as sayings, but the authoritarian has never “merged files” to see how well they
all fit together…” (page 80)
*FREE PDF DOWNLOAD – http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
*ALTERNATE FREE SITE – http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
15 Australian politicians went to Israel courtesy of the Australian zionist lobby and took a group of journalists as well.
One journalist made the amazing remark that he was concerned “the arabs might get concessions they are not entitled to”. I can only think he means their lives, food and justice because he was there in December as Israel was bombing Gaza before the major attack.
Richard, I don’t care who or what said what Ashkenazi said about Gazans not being allowed to run away, it is pure evil and the most repulsive thing I have read in years.
No wonder Falk wants that to be listed as a new war crime because I have never heard anything quite like it.
Imagine if Afghans and Iraqis were stopped from leaving after our two countries bombed them to bits.
“if the shoe was on the other foot and Hamas had killed 1,400 Israelis (God forbid). What would you do?”
There is no need to speculate. In 1973 Egypt and Syria killed 2600 Israelis. What did Israel do? First, they blamed themselves, set up a investigative commission, brought down the government, removed the heads of the army and a couple of years later made peace with Egypt. Any chance of something similar to that happening in Gaza?
This is not at all the same & an entirely inapt analogy. I am not talking about a war between nations in which each side loses a comparable number of fighters. I am talking about a slaughter in which 1,400 Israeli civilians are killed and 13 Gazans are killed. Then what would you do? You know you’d do precisely what the Gazans and international & Israeli human rights groups are doing. You’d scream bloody murder & demand a war crimes investigation.
Again, you’re being ahistorical. You neglect to mention that this was a war that Israel could have avoided entirely if Golda had responded in good faith to Sadat’s call for negotiations in 1971. When she spurned him he turned to war. You also neglect to mention that it was Sadat who made the first move toward peace by offering to come to Jerusalem in 1977. Begin did not make the first move. Finally, at Camp David it was Begin who was the most prickly difficult character & who almost scuttled the proceedings any number of times.
You tend to want to airbrush history as it pertains to Israel to make it look delightful & charming. But the truth is always darker than you make out.
I’m not airbrushing history or make myself look delightful. The points you added, regardless of how accurate, do not negate my point. Israelis tend to be a lot more self critical than our neighbors and capable of change. Just as the Yom Kippur war was Israelis catastrophic war and led to all those things I said, The Six Day War was our neighbor’s great failure. What changes took place in those countries after those failure. Did it bring down Hussein? Nasser? Will the Hamas leadership pay any price for the failure of their policies to bring their people any peace or stability.
You must mean all that “change” that occured during 40 yrs. of Occupation. As for “self-critical:” yes, Israel was critical of Ariel Sharon after Sabra & Shatilla. So much so that he ened up becoming p.m. a few yrs later. Many lessons learned fr. that disaster I see.
Your blindness is amazing. Let’s throw the statement back on you. None of Israel’s military solutions have worked. Do the generals or politicians who devise these failed policies ever pay any price? Olmert was felled by corruption, not by the electorate’s renunciation of his policies. Halutz lost his job, but Ashkenazi pursued almost the same policy which hasn’t worked either as the rockets keep flying despite all the IDF’s best efforts.
Hey Richard!
I found your blog by accident, read through some of your posts and found them to be interesting. One post in particular got me thinking, it was the one about the effect of Israel’s attack on Gaza on Jews. Over the few weeks I’ve come across information that compares Israel to Nazis Germany and South Africa. While I can see the merits in both comparisons, is comparing Israel to Nazis Germany antisemtic? Dont get me wrong, my great-grandmother was a Jew but I would really like to get your perspective on this because your opinion is reliable. You speak the truth.
Thank you
The comparison makes me extremely uncomfortable unless it is done very carefully, very judiciously, & in a nuanced, modulated way. This, btw, is not something many anti-Zionists are capable of. They actually equate Israel with Nazi Germany rather than just comparing it (as one of the commenters wrote here earlier today). This is treif.
But comparisons which note that Gaza’s suffering has some similarities to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust are acceptable as long as you don’t go to extremes and charge Israel with genocide, which is not what Israel is doing.