In the time since I wrote my diary last week where I expressed anti-war sentiments, I’ve returned to my normal stance of observer. Perhaps, as it was suggested in the comments attached to nancyjones’ diary Tuesday, people have “fatigue” when it comes to the conflict between the state of Israel and Palestinians.
Yet the diaries that have made it into the trending column seem to be pro-war or, at the least, pro-invasion. I don’t know how else to describe this. And it’s very surreal, being on a progressive site where historically people have been anti-colonialism and anti-war.
I happened to be on Daily Kos when the news of the Al-Alhy hospital attack broke here.
The thing about that story was that it had the potential to swing sympathy toward the Palestinians to where people would see them as unprotected victims. Five hundred people killed in an attack where the people there, if not waiting for actual medical treatment, were huddled because they had been forced out of their homes and had been assured that they could gather at the hospital for emergency shelter. Everyone needs shelter.
The timeline has had to be reconstructed, and it’s still being repaired. But it was impressive how quickly the state of Israel swung into motion to tamp down the idea that it was their actions that caused all of those deaths at one blow. How is it that they moved so swiftly?
As I understand it, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s social media adviser, Hananya Naftali, initially claimed that the state of Israel was responsible for the attack. However, this tweet was removed within the first hour of being posted. Then the state of Israel began to lay blame elsewhere, that is, with the Islamic Jihad.
This is what you call a shifting story.
The state of Israel also put out several segments of footage so as to disperse blame to other actors. Yet, as the timeline has been reconstructed by third parties, it appears that the state of Israel used images that did not correspond to the moment of impact, so they were forced to remove those images.
They said they had voice recordings of two people who had privately discussed the bombing and had taken responsibility for the carnage. Yet an examination of these recordings has determined that the aspects of speech of the two people do not match what normally would be found in the region. Independent Arab journalists told Channel 4 the recordings were fabricated, due to “language, accent, dialect, syntax, and tone.”
Meanwhile, doctors at the hospital stated that they had received warning from Israel that the hospital might be bombed—first a phone call (which Israel said went unanswered—they weren’t able to reach anyone), and then warning bombs. The doctors ruefully noted that nowhere else in the world but Gaza would a warning about bombs be given via bomb.
It so happened that, between the posting of my previous diary (last Saturday) and the catastrophe at the hospital, I had begun investing time getting a better idea of the backstory of how we got here in the first place. There’s a lot of history, and I can claim to have only started my journey of understanding. Yet, thinking about this rapid deflection by the state of Israel and their production of what might be called in a different context an orgy of evidence, I recalled something that the scholar Norman Finkelstein said about the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. He said the one thing that Israel couldn’t afford to be seen as doing was targeting civilians.
The rapid distribution of alternate images and persons to blame was, as I see it, an extraordinary effort to stanch the deep damage that the initial news reports were doing to the perception of Israel as a state actor. This was done because, if true, if Israel had performed an attack on a hospital in such a situation where so many were using the place as a refuge from Israel’s own militaristic campaigns, it would destroy the idea of any righteousness in their cause.
I cannot, from here, say one way or the other whether the state of Israel committed that strike against the hospital. I can say that statements by the state of Israel have been entirely inconsistent; and the speed by which this apparent wealth of evidence has been produced is in itself rather astonishing.
I can say that the dispute as to who the culprits are and whether the footage and other evidence produced is reliable has taken us to a place where we argue over these details and forget the five hundred people who lost their lives.
People talk about the fog of war, but here it seems we have a fog machine.
Read More
