Rotem's Revenge

"Diplomacy, n The art and business of lying for one's country." Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

There was no way the Sydney Morning Herald was going to get away with it. Bambi's daring ( inexperience?) in printing 5 letters likening the Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto (See my posts, We Remember Warsaw & WRW: The Sequel), was an inexcusable lapse. The Protocols of the Propagandists of Zion require that such lapses shall not pass. And, of course, this one was no exception.

And so, none other than the Israeli ambassador himself, Yuval Rotem, was wheeled out on the Herald's opinion page to dispel the publics' persistent perception that Israel is to Gaza as Nazi Germany was to the Warsaw Ghetto. Rotem's propaganda line had already been laid down by Israel's ubiquitous Foreign Media Adviser, Mark Regev: "Hamas is the problem; there's no doubt about that. Hamas is holding the whole region hostage. It's holding the Israeli population in the south hostage to the daily missile barrages...and it's holding the civilian population of Gaza hostage, who are suffering because of the extremist and hateful agenda of this regime." [Foreign Ministry response to events at Rafah crossing, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 23/1/08]

In Voices missing from Gaza debate (4/2/08), the ambassador claimed that neither the voices of the people of Gaza nor those of Israel were "being heard."

This is certainly true for Palestinian voices, particularly in our craven, Israel-friendly media. But that, of course, was not what the ambassador meant. Regev had decreed that Hamas hostage-takers were the problem, and Rotem was dutifully parroting his talking point: "Hamas is holding the people of Gaza hostage to its belief that Israel should be destroyed and in doing so it is destroying its own people's hope of survival." Asserted, of course, with a well-practised shrug of the shoulders and a pained look.

Israel's representative would have us believe that the Palestinian people, who only two years ago elected Hamas to government in the occupied Palestinian territories, are the dupes of a band of genocidal thugs. The real dupes, of course, are those Israelis who (with the honorable exception of Israeli refuseniks) fill the ranks of the Israeli occupation forces and obediently carry on the grand tradition, pioneered by their fathers and grandfathers, of ethnically cleansing Palestine of its indigenous people. And that alleged "belief that Israel should be detroyed" is merely a rhetorical ploy to divert us from the awful reality that it is Palestine that is systematically being destroyed, by Israel.

And what of the Israeli voice in Rotem's phony balancing act? He would have us believe that Israel is "being denied a voice by the world media, which are choosing to focus on the situation facing Gazans while ignoring the terrifying plight of the people of Sderot, a town in southern Israel...In Gaza the terrorist organization Hamas focuses its weaponry on civilians; on children in their schools and kindergartens, on families' homes and in the streets of Sderot."
But before spinning Sderot, shouldn't Rotem have first consulted that other Israeli voice recently heard in the ms Australian media? Wasn't Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger (chair of Modern Israel Studies at Monash University) telling us mere days before (28/1/08) in The Age that "The truth must be said, and in the Israeli public sphere it is said loud and clear: Gaza is immensely worse off than Sderot. Israeli children in the western Negev face a daily routine of sirens and near-miss explosions. Yet Sderot's kids have food, medical care and holidays away from it all. Their parents can choose to leave, and most of them proudly opt to stay. Children in the Gaza Strip get none of those benefits." Oh dear! Still, he did manage to mimic his compatriot's crocodile tears, "We are not blind to the plight of innocent Palestinian civilians..," with his 'own' "To see the people of Gaza suffer is not pleasurable for Israelis."[See my post, Doppelganger]

A given in this kind of propaganda, of course, is that Israel only ever acts in "self-defence," and Rotem does not disappoint. His example: "[Israel]blocked fuel supplies only after Palestinian snipers killed an Ecuadorian volunteer..." But if we wanted to know the context in which that killing took place, we'd have to turn to the Israeli daily, Haaretz: "Parts of southern Israel were subjected to a barrage of 25 Qassam rockets and dozens of mortars Tuesday, the IDF said, in the wake of IDF raids in Gaza that killed 19 Palestinians...Also Tuesday, an Ecuadorian volunteer working in the fields of a kibbutz near Gaza was shot dead by a sniper from Hamas' armed wing." [25 Qassams fired at Israel after deadly IDF Gaza raid, 16/1/08] That's right, clobber a guy, and if he fights back, clobber him some more and scream self-defence. Works well, every time, especially in our barely functional ms media.

Surprisingly, however, there are compensations in wading through Rotem's propagandist sludge. Take this platitudinous gem for example: "Unlike other forces in the region, Israel does not have the luxury of not being an island of optimism that radiates hope and future for all the people in our neighbourhood." Well done, Yuval! All your own work? This little confection is almost as good as my favourite (from our very own Mark Leibler) : "For Hamas and Hezbollah, every dead Israeli child is a victory and a cause for celebration. For Israel, every dead Palestinian child is a tragedy and a mistake."

"At what point," ambassador Rotem concludes, remembering his theme of unheard voices, "will Israelis be given a voice in this debate?" Well, here's one Israeli voice regrettably denied a hearing in Australia's ms media, that of Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit. The Jerusalem Post reports him as having "called on the IDF to 'take off its gloves', head into Gaza with armored tractors and raze an entire neighborhood from which rockets have been launched..." [IDF should wipe out parts of Gaza, 11/2/08] Very Warsaw Ghetto, no? And speaking of voices unheard...

The voice of Palestine's democratically elected Hamas government is unlikely ever to surface in our gutless ms media, although Israel's liberal daily, Haaretz, has no qualms in giving it a platform. Just imagine, if you will, the following on the same page as Rotem's rot:-

"Last week's bombing in Dimona was the first martyrdom operation committed by Hamas in more than 5 years. For some time, we have been warning the world that the relentless pressure on our people would eventually tell. In the last 2 months, more than a hundred people have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip, including many civilians, women and children.

"Thirty people have died in the last month for lack of medical care brought on by the embargo. Only 2 weeks ago we saw the appalling sight of over 40 women and children seriously injured when an Israeli F-16 dropped an enormous bomb in the middle of the densely populated Gaza City, a few meters from a wedding party. This kind of atrocity, piled onto the daily death toll, has finally tested the patience of Palestinians, and after lengthy restraint, revenge was inevitable.

"To many in Israel and the West, this act of resistance will be judged in isolation. They will no doubt say that it justifies the inhumane embargo on the people of Gaza and the arrests of more than 500 people and the daily torture of innocents in the West Bank by both Israelis and the puppet government imposed on us by the US.

"What they seem to forget is that just in the last 2 years, 2,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action and thousands more injured. The cold-blooded fact is that the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israelis is now over 40 to 1.

"The Hamas-led government has consistently called for a long-term cease-fire. For 9 months before the election that brought us to power we observed a unilateral cease-fire, ensuring that no rockets were fired from Gaza by our movement. We observed this policy during the first 6 months in government, despite the fact that our words and actions were summarily dismissed by the Israelis and their US allies.

"If the people of Sderot want to know why rockets continue to land around them, they should ask their own government why it has continually rejected our calls for a cease-fire and continued its policy of daily incursions and reckless targeting that put the whole population at risk." [Excerpt from Palestinian revenge was inevitable, by Ahmed Yousef (senior political advisor to the foreign minister in the Hamas government), Haaretz, 12/2/08]