Tag: Gaza

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The “Humanitarian” Hoax

The privation in Gaza is not the cause of the enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is the enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of the privation in Gaza.

No cliché has dominated the discourse on the Gaza situation more than the perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of the Strip’s dire economic condition – Prof. Efraim Karsh, It’s Not Gaza’s Economy, Stupid, June 3, 2018.

Many experts claim that an easing of economic conditions in Gaza…is the way to achieve political stability in a Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas. This is a fallacious argument. Prof. Hillel Frisch, Economic Benefits Will Not Bring Stability to Gaza , June 6, 2018.

It is refreshing to see what appears to be an emerging challenge to the mindless Pavlovian response, propagated by most of the Israeli media, to the horrific hatred and violence on display along the border with Gaza.

Soldiers turned sociologists?

Sadly, and perhaps, most disturbingly, it is none other than the IDF and the security establishment that appear to be one of its principal advocates.

Reflecting this hopelessly unfounded perspective was a recent report, headlined, “Israeli military recommends easing humanitarian situation in Gaza”, which cited a senior military source advising that “Israel should ease the humanitarian situation in Gaza and reach a long term ‘arrangement’ with Hamas”.  A day later, this was followed by a similar report,” Army calls to lift some economic restrictions on Gaza, boost chances of quiet”, citing “A top official in the IDF’s Southern Command [who stated that ] Israel must take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which would likely bring quiet to the Gaza region.”

The latter item provoked a brusque response from an exasperated talk-backer: “Sometimes I wonder if there are any sane people left in the top people. All Gaza wants [is] Jews dead and off the land and yet the army wants to give them the tools to do it…!”

Indeed, in recent years—perhaps due to the professors and political credos they are exposed to during their academic studies—it appears that many in the senior echelons of Israel’s security establishment have forgotten that they are soldiers, charged with providing military solutions to physical threats to the nation’s security and not sociologists, tasked with diagnosing the societal ailments of its sworn enemies.

Misleading malicious mantra

Perturbingly, the recommendations to reach an agreement with Hamas to alleviate the humanitarian conditions blithely ignore that Gazans did everything in their power to exacerbate them—repeatedly vandalizing and setting fire to the Kerem Shalom crossing, which provides vital gas and fuel and humanitarian supplies to the Strip. Indeed, during the ongoing events on the border, Hamas explicitly refused to accept humanitarian supplies donated by Israel, including medical equipment such as fluids, bandages, equipment for treating children and disinfectants.

Accordingly, to attribute the incandescent hostility toward Israel in Gaza to the dire humanitarian situation plays directly into the hands of Israel’s detractors. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere it is, in effect, to be complicit with the enemy—endorsing its mendacious and malevolent narrative.

For it necessarily implies that, if only Israel would somehow initiate/facilitate an improvement in Gaza’s living conditions, the violence would subside. This not only reinforces the false claims that Palestinian terrorism is driven by Israeli-induced economic privation, but also that Israel bears the responsibility for such terror, which is, therefore, no more than an understandable reaction to hardship and despair, externally imposed by a cruel, alien “oppressor”.

This, of course, is not only to distort—but to invert—the realities on the ground.

Conventional wisdom and the inversion of causality

Last week I wrote: “… the penury in Gaza is not the cause of Arab enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is Arab enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of penury in Gaza.”

Accordingly, I was gratified to see my diagnosis echoed this week, by Prof. Efraim Karsh, who categorically affirmed this inversion of causality that afflicts conventional wisdom “…it is not Gaza’s economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence; rather, it is the endemic violence that has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis.”

Karsh,  formerly of King’s College London, now director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) is, to my mind, one of the most astute scholars of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the past, he has torn to shreds the defamatory accusations regarding Israel’s alleged mistreatment of the Palestinian-Arabs during its pre-Oslo administration of Judea-Samaria. Indeed, he has meticulously shown how the socio-economic conditions of the Palestinian-Arabs soared beyond recognition during that period, outstripping those in many “unoccupied” countries in the Muslim/Arab world—only to disastrously deteriorate once control was relinquished to Arafat and his cronies. Elsewhere, he has excoriated the frightful follies and foreseeable failures of the ill-fated and ill-conceived Oslo Accords—and I would urge readers to familiarize themselves with his incisive insights on these matters.



“No causal relationship between economic hardship & mass violence”

In his piece this week, Karsh recalls that: “At the time of the September 1993 signing of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles, conditions in the territories were far better than in most Arab states…But within six months of Arafat’s arrival in Gaza (in July 1994), the standard of living in the Strip fell by 25%, and more than half of the area’s residents claimed to have been happier under Israel.”

Significantly, he notes: “…. at the time Arafat launched his war of terrorism in September 2000, Palestinian income per capita was nearly double Syria’s, more than four times Yemen’s, and 10% higher than Jordan’s – one of the better-off Arab states. Only the oil rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.”

With regard to Gaza, Karsh underscores: “…countless nations and groups in today’s world endure far harsher socioeconomic or political conditions than the Palestinians, yet none have embraced violence and terrorism against their neighbors with such alacrity and on such a massive scale.”

He aptly points out “…, there is no causal relationship between economic hardship and mass violence. On the contrary, in the modern world it is not the poor and the oppressed who have carried out the worst acts of terrorism and violence but, rather, the militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society.”

So, as Karsh reiterates: “…it is not socioeconomic despair but the total rejection of Israel’s right to exist…which underlies the relentless anti-Israel violence emanating from these territories and its attendant economic stagnation and decline.”

Couldn’t put it better myself!

Right diagnosis, wrong remedy?

But it is not just that economic aid to redress Gaza’s humanitarian predicament would be ineffective. Worse, it would be counterproductive. For as Karsh’s BESA colleague, Prof. Hillel Frisch points out: “Economic largesse at this point would only augment Hamas’s resources, as it taxes incoming goods and aid. That money will be funneled back to its hard core through campaigns such as the March of Return.”

Accordingly, given the fact that Hamas would undoubtedly expropriate much of any incoming aid for its own nefarious needs, it stands to reason that persisting with such aid will only sustain its ability to continue its offensive action against Israel—thus sustaining the conflict and prolonging the suffering of the population.

This, of course, raises the trenchant question of what should be done.

It is here that I diverge from both Karsh and Frisch in my reading of what is called for to redress the problem. For while I largely concur with their diagnosis of the malaise, I have grave reservations as to their respective prescriptions of how to remedy it.

For in essence, both invoke comparisons with the defeat of Germany and/or Japan in World War II and the ability of the victorious Allies to remold formerly aggressive totalitarian countries into peaceable democracies.

Right diagnosis, wrong remedy? (cont.)

Thus, Frisch refers to “the total defeat of Nazi Germany, and its subsequent occupation and division by the winning coalition, [which] meant that the US and its allies could mold West Germany to their liking through denazification and democratic rule”.

In similar vein, Karsh writes: “Just as the creation of free and democratic societies in Germany and Japan after World War II necessitated a comprehensive sociopolitical and educational transformation, so, too, it is only when the local population sweeps its oppressive rulers from power, eradicates the endemic violence from political and social life, and teaches the virtues of coexistence with Israel that Gaza can look forward to a better future.”

Regrettably, both these learned scholars overlook one crucial element when it comes to dealing with—i.e. defeating—a recalcitrant adversary in the Muslim world today, which largely undermines the validity of any analogy with the fortunate outcomes and the defeat of tyranny in World War II. Indeed, it is one the US overlooked when it embarked on its “War on Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.

Indeed, quite apart from the fact that to implement both Frisch’s and Karsh’s proposal, Israel would presumably have to retake and hold Gaza for an indeterminate period of time—to enable it to remold Gazan society and implement the required “comprehensive sociopolitical and educational transformation”, there are important differences in the geo-political structure of the situation prevailing in post-WWII Japan and Germany, on the one hand, and those facing Israel today vis-a-vis the Palestinian-Arabs, on the other.

These would gravely undermine the ability of any attempt to remold or transform Palestinian-Arab society in general, and Gazan society in particular.

Unlike Germany and Japan…

For unlike any prospective self-governing Palestinian entity, which sees itself unequivocally bound culturally, ethnically and religiously to the larger Islamic world, Germany was not surrounded by a swathe of kindred Teutonic nations—nor Japan by kindred Nipponic nations—which, driven by a radical Teutonic/Nipponic ideology, strove continually to undermine the stability and legitimacy of any peaceable regime that foreign powers might install.

This, however, was the case in both Iraq and Afghanistan—and is certainly likely to be the case for any self-governing Palestinian entity ,whether in Judea- Samaria or in Gaza.

Unlike defeated Berlin (and Tokyo), Baghdad (and Kabul) along with their environs, were continually assailed by Islamic insurgents, financed, armed and equipped from surrounding Muslim countries, to undermine any arrangement or undercut any resolution the victorious powers wished to implement and imperiling any government, not to their liking.

Clearly, this is very likely to be the case in the Israeli/Palestinian situation, with regional Muslim-majority countries constituting a virtually unending source of post-victory instability and incitement. Accordingly, because any attempted remolding or “sociopolitical and educational transformation” is likely to be impeded—even up-ended—by external sources of incitement and agitation, the only way Israel can ensure that Gaza (or Judea-Samaria) will not be taken over by some inimical radical regime is to govern these areas by itself.

But the only way Israel can govern these territories itself, without the need to rule over a recalcitrant alien ethnic group, is to remove that ethnic group from those territories.

What could be simpler or more self-evident??

The real humanitarian solution to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis

Clearly then, persisting with the current format of humanitarian effort will only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. Accordingly, this effort must be restructured and redirected.

Indeed, the only durable humanitarian solution that can ensure Israeli security and relieve Israel from the burden of “ruling over another people”, is to generously finance the relocation/rehabilitation of the non-belligerent Gazan population to third party countries, and allow them to build more prosperous and more secure lives, outside the “circle of violence”, to which they will inevitably be subject, if they remain where they are—no matter what the level of humanitarian aid.

All we need now is leadership with sufficient political will, intellectual daring, and ideological commitment to undertake what must be undertaken.

Why would that be a problem??

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Hamas Breaks Ceasefire, Israel Responds Destroying Military Targets in Gaza

Hamas broke their own ceasefire last night by firing more than five rockets and mortars into Israel.  These landed in populated civilian areas sending residents fleeing into their bunkers.  The IDF attacked back immediately destroying multile military targets in Gaza.



Is War Coming to Israel’s South?

There is no doubt that Iran is pulling the strings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to open up a third front against Israel.  The Gaza front has little to do with conquering territory.  Rather it is being activated with the sole purpose of draining Israel’s resources and attention away from the North, mainly from Iranian movements in and around the Golan. The war being waged against Israel, is designed to exact a psychological toll on Israel’s populace while buying time for Iran to find a hole in Israel’s defenses.

The first round of warfare clearly went to Israel, but unless Russia agrees to the total removal of Iran and Hezbollah from Syria and not just near the Golan, the noose will continue to tighten around the Jewish State.




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Gaza – A “simple” solution

Denying—or delaying—the inevitable does not make it any less inevitable, only more costly

 

To remain at peace when you should be going to war may be often very dangerous….Let us attack and subdue…that we may ourselves live safely for the future. – Thucydides (c. 460–395 BCE)

No government, if it regards war as inevitable, even if it does not want it, would be so foolish as to wait for the moment which is most convenient for the enemy .– Otto von Bismarck (1815–1890)


If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against – Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

This week, Gaza was once again simmering on the brink of largescale military conflict, the fourth in just under a decade.

Yet, even as the specter of recurring tragedy looms ever closer, the discourse (even—indeed especially—in Israel) on how to avoid “another round of violence” remained mired in a rehashed potpourri of previously disproven formulae—which ranged from the patently puerile to the positively preposterous; and from the blatantly inane to the borderline insane.

They are all doomed to fail—just as they did in the past. Indeed, even if the current efforts to sustain the current fragile calm succeed, it is only a matter of time until the inherent volatility reasserts itself and erupts once again. And again. And again.

 

Misunderstanding Palestinian pathology

Last week, I referred to a 2016 article in “Commentary”, by Prof. Michael Mandelbaum, of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, entitled, The Peace Process is an Obstacle to Peace. In it, the author attributes the failure of the effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to“…an inadequate understanding of the pathology it attempted to cure…[Accordingly], it did not solve the problem it was intended to fix, and it sometimes made it substantially worse.”

This is precisely the syndrome that we are witnessing right now.

None of the prescribed remedies address effectively the underlying causes of the malaise, which are being mistakenly imputed, by misinterpreting its symptoms.

Worse! What we are seeing is more than a mere misdiagnosis. It is nothing less than an utter reversal of causality; a complete inversion of cause and effect.

This is particularly disturbing when it comes from within much of the Israeli leadership. For although, overall, there is little disagreement that Hamas, and its even more radical Islamist offshoots, are responsible for the current outburst of violence, the dominant theme advanced for restoring and maintaining calm is through the improvement of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

This is a grave error! For, it is—demonstrably—both untrue factually and detrimental strategically.

Indeed, to base any policy initiative on such a tenet would, to paraphrase Mandelbaum, reflect a hopelessly “inadequate understanding of Palestinian pathology”. Accordingly, it would “not solve the problem it was intended to fix”, but, in all likelihood, will make “it substantially worse.”



Complicit with the enemy

To attribute the hostility toward Israel to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza plays directly into the hands of Israel’s detractors. Indeed, it is, in effect, to be complicit with the enemy—endorsing its mendacious and malevolent narrative.

After all, it necessarily implies that if only Israel would somehow initiate/facilitate an improvement in Gaza’s living conditions, the violence would subside. This not only reinforces the false claims that Palestinian terrorism is driven by Israeli-induced economic privation, but also that Israel bears the responsibility for such terror, which is, therefore, no more than an understandable reaction to hardship and despair, externally imposed by an alien power.

But this, as mentioned previously, is a malicious inversion of causality.

For, the penury in Gaza is not the cause of Arab enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is Arab enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of penury in Gaza.

The current conditions in Gaza are the result of neither a lack of international humanitarian aid, nor of Israeli largesse. Gaza has enjoyed an abundance of both, only to   squander them on efforts to harm Israel by diverting massive resources to the construction of a vast military infrastructure with which to assault the Jewish state.

Indeed, for anyone with even a smidgeon of familiarity with Israeli society and its basic impulses, must know that, had there been any genuine desire for peaceful coexistence with its Jewish neighbors, Gaza would have flourished.  Israeli enterprise and expertise, which transformed Israel from a struggling agricultural-based country to a super-charged post-industrial powerhouse in a few decades, would have flooded into the enclave, providing opportunity and employment for its impoverished residents.

 

Gaza: “Cutting its nose to spite its face”

So, in effect, the only thing that the Gazans need to do to extricate themselves from their current predicament is…nothing! All they need to do is stop what they are doing now—attacking Israel. Indeed, the only thing that needs to happen for Gaza to thrive is for them to convincingly foreswear hostility and embrace peaceful coexistence with Israel.

But of course, that will not happen! For that is not in the nature of the Gazan populace, who overwhelmingly (70%) endorse a return to armed intifada and who prefer “armed resistance” by a factor of two to one over “nonviolent resistance” or “negotiations”.

Nothing could symbolize the Gazan’s willingness to “cut one’s nose to spite one’s face” better than the destruction of the hi-tech greenhouses left behind by the Jewish farmers in the 2005 Disengagement. Rather than operate them for their own benefit, a frenzied mob trampled them into mangled ruin the moment the IDF left the area.

It should therefore be clear that the  priorities of the Gazan people, as a collective, are not to improve their socio-economic lot, but to inflict harm on the Jewish state, whose sovereign existence they obdurately refuse to accept—except as a temporary tactic to allow them to enhance their offensive capabilities to pursue a later endeavor to destroy it.

In this equation of enmity, resolving the conflict has nothing to do with what the Jewish state does (or does not do). It has everything to do with what the Palestinian-Arabs are—and what they are not!

 

Greatly enhanced military capabilities

Of course, the Gazans have shown considerable initiative, innovation and ingenuity—none of which has been directed towards developing socio-economic realities in the enclave.

If one surveys the enhancement of Gaza’s military capabilities since Israel withdrew in 2005, it is impressive indeed. In fact, had such progress been envisaged before the pullout, it is doubtful whether it would have been undertaken at all!

After all, back then, the most formidable weapon the terror organizations had at their disposal was a primitive rocket with a 5 kg explosive charge and 5 km range. Today, not only do they have an arsenal of missiles with a range of 100 km (possibly more) and a warhead of 100 kg (possibly more), but in December 2016, Hamas Political Bureau Member, Fathi Hammad, proudly informed Al Aksa TV: “If you look into the missile or weapon industries of developed countries, you will find that Gaza has become the leading manufacturer of missiles among Arab countries…”

To this must be added the huge investment in the maze of underground terror tunnels (the last one discovered reaching almost a kilometer into pre-1967 Israel), the development of naval forces and of drone capabilities.

Significantly, after each round of fighting, despite the heavy damage inflicted by the IDF, the Gazan-based terror groups have ypically emerged with vastly enhanced military capabilities and political standing.

 

Soon drones with biological/chemical payload??

They have shown that they can transform everyday children’s playthings, such as kites, into instruments of extensive destruction, and forced Israel to develop hugely expensive defenses (such as Iron-Dome interceptors) to deal will risibly cheap weapons of attack (such as mortar shells).

Indeed, it is hardly beyond the limits of plausibility that Israel might soon have to face incoming missiles with multiple warheads, which disperse just before being intercepted, greatly challenging its missile defense capabilities. Or the development of some kind of anti-aircraft capabilities that could restrict—or at least hamper—Israel’s present unlimited freedom of action over the skies of Gaza.

Or worse, will Israel have to contend with the specter of a swarm of drones, armed with biological or chemical payloads, directed at nearby Israeli communities—rendering the billion dollar anti-tunnel barrier entirely moot? For those who might dismiss this as implausible scaremongering – see here, here, and here.

Israel’s decade long policy of ceasing fire whenever the other side ceases fire has allowed Hamas, and its terror affiliates, to launch repeated rounds of aggression, determining not only when they are launched and when they end, but also largely controlling the cost incurred for such aggression –ensuring it remains within the range of the “acceptable”.

This is clearly a recipe of unending and escalating violence—and must be abandoned before it culminates in unintended, but inevitable, tragedy.

Over 180 cases of attempted murder

Earlier this week, over 180 rockets and mortar shells were launched at Israeli civilian targets in a 24 hours period.

Each one of those projectiles was intended to take the lives of innocent Israeli civilians. As such, each launch was a clear case of attempted murder—and Israel should relate to them with commensurate severity. Poor aim on the part of the would-be murderers can—and should—not be a mitigating factor. The fact that, fortunately, no Israeli lives were lost is hardly the point here. Indeed, in the case of a shell landing in a kindergarten, terrible tragedy was averted only by happenstance—and a few minutes.

Persisting with the same policy as in the past will produce precisely the same results it produced in the past: Continued attempts at mass murder!

After all, there is not a shred of evidence that the Palestinian-Arabs will morph into anything that they have not been for over a hundred years, nor that they are likely to do so within any foreseeable time horizon. Indeed, as time progresses, such an outcome seems increasingly remote.

Accordingly, any policy paradigm based on the assumption that, somehow, they can be coaxed or coerced into doing just that, is hopelessly fanciful and fraught with grave perils.

Gaza: The “simple” solution

To formulate an effective policy regarding Gaza, we need to understand the pathology of what we are attempting to address. The source of the conflict is the physical presence of a large, implacably hostile Arab population on Israel’s southern border. Simple logic therefore dictates that to remove the source of conflict, that hostile population must be removed.

Israel will not be able to indefinitely endure recurring bouts of fighting—whenever the enemy on the other side feels sufficiently bold to launch an attack or sufficiently desperate not to be able to refrain from one.

Accordingly, the solution for Gaza is not, and cannot be, its reconstruction, but its deconstruction and the generously funded humanitarian relocation and rehabilitation of the non-belligerent Gazans to third party countries, outside the “circle of violence”.

To achieve this, the IDF cannot content itself with periodic punitive sorties, followed by a limited interbellum, in which the enemy regroups, rearms and redeploys, ready for the next round. It must conquer the entire Gaza Strip, apprehend (otherwise dispose of) the current Gazan leadership, dismantle the current mechanism of governance and begin a vigorous program of incentivized emigration of the non-belligerent population.

This is the “simple” solution for Gaza—and the only durable one. Of course, to say that it is “simple” does not imply that it is “easy”. Indeed, the great difficulty it entails is rooted in its brutal simplicity of “Them or Us”.

Clearly, the fact that it is relatively easy to propose such a harsh policy prescription in the air-conditioned comfort of my study does not make it any less imperative or less inevitable.

After all, denying or delaying the inevitable does not make it any less inevitable, only more costly when it inevitably comes about.




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BIBI NETANYAHU: “It is Iran that is Responsible”

As calm began to return to the Gaza belt communities, Prime Minister Netanyahu touched on the IDF’s response the attacks by Hamas.

“Since yesterday the IDF has strongly retaliated against the firing from the Gaza Strip and has hit dozens of terrorist targets in the severest blow we have landed on them in years,” the Prime Minister Netanyahu stated at a ceremony for the victims of the Atalena.

“The Hamas regime, Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist organizations, inspired by Iran, that are responsible for the escalation. I will not detail our plans because I do not want the enemy to know what to expect. But one thing is clear: When they test us, they pay immediately. And if they continue testing us, they will pay dearly.”

“I salute the fighters of the IDF and the security forces and I commend the resilience of the residents of the south.”

As of tonight, the IDF’s strategy of hitting hard and early to prevent a cascading conflict appears to be working as Hamas has stopped firing rockets. Given the fluid situation anything is possible, but it appears that Hamas is rethinking its offensive.



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Israel’s media problem

Published in Abu Yehuda

If endemic irrational hatred of Israel is viewed as a disease, then its primary vector is the Western mainstream media. Although social media have been gaining in importance recently, the traditional media organizations are still the Xenopsylla cheopis spreading this plague.

They had begun to become less and less sympathetic to Israel after the oil shock of the mid-1970s. I started noticing it in 1982, during the First Lebanon War. Never mind that we went into Lebanon because our people in northern Israel were being pounded by rockets, katyushot, fired from Lebanese territory by Yasser Arafat’s PLO. We were blamed for starting the war and sharply criticized for every civilian casualty. And then we were vilified because we didn’t prevent our Christian Phalangist allies from taking (well-deserved, in my opinion) murderous revenge on the PLO.

In 2000, we saw one of the most damaging incidents of fraudulent atrocity reporting, one which was used as an excuse for countless terror attacks, the al-Durrah affair. 12-year old Mohammed al-Durrah was not shot and killed by Israeli soldiers, and probably was not shot at all by anyone, but a Palestinian-produced “news” event, recorded by a Palestinian cameraman, legitimized and transmitted around the world by a (Jewish) French reporter and TV network, ignited a worldwide conflagration of hatred. It was one of the sparks for the Second Intifada, and al-Durrah’s “death” remains a staple of anti-Israel discourse today, despite the ample evidence that it was faked.

In 2002, Israeli forces fought Palestinian terrorists in the Jenin refugee camp, a battle in which 23 IDF soldiers and 53 Arabs, only five of whom were noncombatants, died. The media again – in this case the BBC was the prime villain – accepted fabricated Palestinian accounts as the truth, reporting 500 to 1000 deaths, the deliberate massacre of hundreds of civilians and their burial in mass graves, the destruction of part of a hospital, and more. None of it happened, but that didn’t stop the media from reporting it as if it had. And like al-Durrah, it is still an article of faith in much of the world that there was a massacre in Jenin.



It continued in 2006, during the Second Lebanon War. Social media was in its infancy – Twitter had been around for only a few months and Facebook was two years old and limited to colleges and a few corporations – but already there was communication and coordinated incitement via email, newsgroups, and blogs. Still, the mainstream media outdid itself, sucking up and spewing out Hezbollah propaganda, like the famous “Red Cross ambulance incident,” dissected by the intrepid blogger called “Zombie.”

The phenomenon has only increased since then, through our various Gaza conflicts. The media repeatedly ignored the provocations, the thousands of rockets fired into Israeli communities and the kidnappings and murders carried out by terrorists associated with Hamas; and they consistently accepted Hamas’ atrocity stories and casualty figures.

Most recently, Hamas’ attempted invasion at the Gaza fence has been presented as a “peaceful demonstration” at which Israel’s shooting terrorist operatives (53 out of the 62 dead have been identified as members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad) is described in the media as an “indiscriminate massacre of unarmed protestors.” Today, social media has come into its own, creating multiple echo chambers for anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish expression; but the “real” media continues to legitimize some of the worst narratives.

Naturally there is a close relationship between hating Israel and hating Jews, because Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. It’s instructive to recall the “3-D” criteria for determining when criticism of Israel crosses over into antisemitism – I prefer the expression “Jew hatred” – suggested in 2004 by Natan Sharansky: Demonization, Double standards, and Delegitimization.

The mainstream media, with a few exceptions (e.g., the Wall St. Journal and Fox News) is regularly guilty of at least the first two “D’s.” They are notorious for their double standards, especially including a double standard for credulity: almost any claims of Israeli misbehavior, cruelty, or criminality are repeated with little attempt at verification, even when the claim is made by a terrorist organization like Hamas or its sympathizers.

These claims – such as that Israel steals organs from dead Palestinians, a story first promulgated by Aftonbladet, a very “mainstream” Swedish newspaper – are often so outrageous as to be comparable to medieval blood libels, and clearly constitute demonization.

Prime examples of anti-Israel media somewhat more sophisticated than Aftonbladet are the New York Times and – what else? – the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Day in and day out they provide “coverage” of Israel and her conflicts according to the principle that “for Palestinians everything is permitted; while for Israel nothing is excused.” (I apologize for not remembering who said this first).

The New York Times has a history of hostility to Jewish concerns, which according to one book on the subject are a result of the assimilationist ideology of its Jewish publisher. Just as it minimized the Jewish dimension of the Holocaust, today it minimizes the anti-Jewish roots of irrational hatred of Israel.

Ha’aretz is interesting in that it isn’t really a newspaper for Israelis. Its Hebrew print edition and website have a negligible circulation in Israel, while its English-language website ranks about 2,300th among all websites in the US – not up with the Times, whose rank is about 30 (for comparison, Abuyehuda’s rank is about 4.9 million), but not bad at all.

Ha’aretz is the home of Gideon Levy, who writes a column almost every day viciously attacking the Netanyahu government, the IDF, or the 90% or more of Jewish Israeli society that does not live in North Tel Aviv and belong to the academic, media, or “creative” Left. Levy has enormous sympathy for Palestinians and illegal migrants, but none for IDF soldiers, Mizrachi Jews who still remember who their enemies are, or residents of South Tel Aviv whose neighborhoods have been destroyed by said migrants.

Can the mainstream media be fixed? I doubt it. Reporters and editors come from universities where anti-Israel activities are prominent, and tend to study liberal arts, “communications,” or journalism rather than history. Then they join a pool of like-minded individuals who encourage each other to engage in activist journalism. Correspondents in the field are manipulated by very media-savvy operatives from Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO who use a combination of threats and inducements to turn coverage in their direction. By contrast, Israel’s efforts are sporadic, poorly funded, and often poorly conceived. The major news organizations use Arab stringers in places like Gaza and southern Lebanon, who are ideologically anti-Israel, susceptible to threats, or both.

Could social media replace it as a reliable source for news? This is even less likely. Social media does have a role to play in keeping the mainstream honest, as illustrated by the Red Cross ambulance incident mentioned above. But if mainstream standards are eroding, social media has no standards at all. It is very subject to manipulation, as was demonstrated during the last election in the US. And efforts to clean it up, such as Facebook’s proposal to measure “trust” in various news sources are likely to make things worse.

There is no overall solution to her media problem, but there are things that Israel could do. One is to increase the available resources and professionalism of her various spokespersons, such as those of the Foreign Ministry and the IDF. Another is to establish worldwide satellite news channels – like Al-Jazeera – broadcasting in multiple languages, which would present accurate news together with entertaining content. This would be extremely expensive, but a drop in the bucket compared with the military budget.

Although Israel’s commitment to free expression prevents us from silencing our “Gideon Levites,” we can at least speak louder and more clearly, in order to ensure that the real story is accessible to anyone who cares to listen.