One of the most informative podcasts I’ve heard about the Hamas attack on Israel was a first hand account, by a retired soldier, who helped mount a successful defence of his kibbutz on October 7th. In graphic detail he described how shock turned to horror as he realised that, faced with attackers who were well-armed and determined, he and his fellow residents would have to fight for their lives. Under intense machine gun and rocket fire, he mustered the kibbutz adult residents, most of whom were army reservists, and they took up defensive positions and began firing back. It was fortunate, he said, that the attackers cut off their power supply early on in the onslaught. The armoured main gates of the kibbutz had been closed for the night and could not easily be opened without electricity. With controlled but deep emotion he described how the residents fought for their lives. Many were killed and wounded but they inflicted heavy losses on their attackers. He personally spoke of killing at least three. He’d called for help as soon as he realised what was happening. It was over two hours before any reinforcements arrived and even then it was armed police and not the IDF. The police engaged the attachers and, with more casualties on both sides, eventually drove them off. He was angry that the fight was so long and cost so many lives. Israel is a small country. He was less than 100km from Tel Aviv and much closer to many military bases. Why had support not come sooner? Surely there was a rapid response force that was on 24 hour alert. If there was then it didn’t respond. He was speaking only a day or two after the attack. I couldn’t but be impressed by his courage and his precise recall of events but I was also struck by his intense anger and his determination to find out why his kibbutz had been left to fend for themselves for so long.
I don’t know if he ever found out. I do know that his was the only first hand account I heard from a defender of an attacked kibbutz. It is true that many were overrun and their inhabitants, men, women and children, killed, wounded or taken hostage. Most men and many women in Israel are reservists. They have military training and some guns and ammunition. There must have been many courageous men and women who fought back for as long as they could. However, the Israeli foreign ministry reported that 1200 had been “murdered in cold blood” when, in fact, at least 350 were members of the security forces. We don’t know how many of them died in battle. We don’t hear about them. Instead we are repeatedly told about the most atrocious and barbaric incidents during the attacks. These need to highlighted for the flagrant human rights violations that they were but those who died fighting, protecting their homes and their loved ones, should not be forgotten.
Has anyone else noticed that not a single Palestinian, in Gaza or the West Bank, has been ‘murdered’, ‘slaughtered’ or ‘massacred’? In writing the opening paragraphs above, I had to struggle to avoid using any of these words such is the influence of the dominant narrative we westerners have lived with for over 5 months now. What should we say about a Palestinian farmer in the West Bank, Bilal Saleh, who was shot in the chest by a settler on 28 October last, while he was picking olives with his family? Was he ‘murdered’ or ‘slaughtered’? And when we eventually get video clips of entire Palestinian families being blown to pieces by artillery shells will we say they were ‘massacred’ or ‘slaughtered’? If not will it be because their attackers committed the atrocities from a distance or will we seek to minimise responsibility by blaming ‘faulty intelligence’ or the possible presence somewhere nearby of a suspected Hamas fighter?
Successful control of ‘the narrative’ must be subtle but pervasive to maximise its impact. Take the issue of casualty numbers in Gaza. In earlier conflicts these were reported as coming from ‘The Palestinian Health Authority’ and, after Hamas took full control of Gaza, from ‘Gaza Health Authority’. The figures were considered reliable by the UN and other agencies and were reported to be relied upon by the IDF also. Shortly after 7 October the media began referring to the ‘Hamas-run Health Authority’, insinuating that the numbers might be manipulated. No evidence was ever produced to support such a conclusion – indeed the casualty figures at this stage are most likely an underestimate – but the constant repetition of ‘Hamas-run’ has been seized upon by the wilfully gullible – including President Biden – to minimise the numbers being killed in Gaza.
Gaza is not a ‘strip’ or an ‘enclave’ it is, in effect, a large open air prison. No one can enter or exit from Gaza without direct or indirect Israeli permission. So when Irish citizens of Palestinian origin were struggling to get out of Gaza after 7 October, the Irish media reported that people were ‘not permitted to leave the Hamas-controlled enclave’. Any reasonable and ignorant person would interpret this as meaning ‘Hamas won’t let our Irish citizens leave Gaza’ whereas the fact was that it was Israel, or Egypt acting at its behest, that controlled the border. Sometimes this became clear later on in the news reports, for example with a reference to Irish diplomatic efforts to enlist Israeli support, but it would be a careful reader who discerned that Gaza’s borders were in fact ‘Israeli controlled’ and not ‘Hamas controlled’.
Judging only from appearances, I believe the Israeli government agencies have succeeded in establishing their selective narrative as the dominant one in almost all western media. There are many other examples. We are told that nearly 20% of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed ‘in the war’. Now it’s questionable that what is going on in Gaza is a ‘war’ in any conventional sense. It is more like a very heavy-handed counter-insurgency where the insurrectionists are hard to tell from the (male) civilian population and only a minority of them are armed and fighting. But even if we term it a ‘war’ surely we should say that the 20% of buildings have been destroyed by Israel? Is there evidence that any significant amount of the destruction of people, infrastructure or houses has been carried out by Hamas? If not then why not say ‘destroyed by the IDF’?
Consider the ‘normal’ way Hamas or Hezbollah are termed in our media. The ‘Iran-backed militia’ or even ‘the Iran proxy force’ precede their names every time. No doubt Shia Iran provides military and other aid to both the Shia Hezbollah and the Sunni Hamas but it is minuscule in comparison to that provided by the US to Isreal. How many times have you heard a reporter say or write ‘The US-backed IDF today attacked…’ or ‘The US-equipped IDF have destroyed ..’? Reportage from non-western sources may give this emphasis but the western world behaves as if Israel were an independent actor, beholden to no one. We see this at present with the repeated statements by US (and other western) leaders that they are making every effort to stop the killing of too many innocent civilians. (They never say what number is ok i.e. not too many). Prior to the Oslo accords it was widely reported that the US threatened to hold up military aid to Israel if it didn’t accede to some Palestinian demands – notably the commitment to an ‘eventual’ state of their own. In the current attack on the corralled people of Gaza the US promised, instead, to increase their supply of weapons and money even as they claim to be urging ‘restraint’. Only now, with over 33,000 Palestinians killed, most of them women and children, has the US begun to suggest that military support for Israel might, just might, be imperilled if their assault continues.
On 23rd October, just two weeks after the Hamas attack, the IDF released a video which it said ‘proved’ that Hamas had a command and control centre under the El Shifa hospital. The video showed a complex of rooms and tunnels stretching down three or more floors underground. This ‘proof’ was widely reported and, as far as I can find, not questioned. When the IDF eventually attacked and occupied the hospital there was no confirmation of their claim. Instead there were videos of a few tunnels, a small quantity of arms and a single, clearly unused room. A few media outlets – CNN, Rolling Stone – later revisited the IDF claims and concluded they were not believable. This conclusion was not reported by others and the false IDF claim was generally left unchallenged and uncorrected.
Most recently a senior UK intelligence figure has said that approximately 60% of the Hamas fighters are orphans. If we reflect on the fact that something like 75% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children we can conclude that there will be many more orphans to swell the ranks of the next wave of attackers whether they be called Hamas or not. We might reflect too on the relentless killing of civilians who are caged by their attachers so that they cannot escape. What impact is that having on the young people of many Arab or Moslem states? Western governments have decried ‘radicalisation’ and even set up ‘de-radicalisation’ programmes. How many millions of young people in the Arab or Moslem world are being radicalised right now by the Israeli actions and what will our governments say when the inevitable backlash leads to more attacks on our countries?
Supposing Russia cordoned off a strip of Ukraine containing, say, a million people, soldiers and civilians, and it then proceeded to bomb the strip relentlessly and with little regard for civilian casualties while preventing any refugees from escaping the barrage, what would be the West’s reaction? If the number of dead exceeded 30,000 would the west still confine itself to hand-wringing and plaintive cries for restraint? I don’t think so. When we in the complicit West are subject to terror attacks; when countries in the global south accuse us of double standards; when we find more and more countries looking to China for global leadership then we should remember what we didn’t do when the largest refugee compound in the world was being pulverised, by our ‘ally’, using ‘our’ weapons and with our implicit support.
ktr2016 