Pres­i­dent Theodore Roosevelt’s famous advice; “speak soft­ly and car­ry a big stick”, did not pre­clude using the stick if nec­es­sary, a point that seems to escape the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in its efforts to alle­vi­ate the human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza. One rea­son, I sub­mit, is the enforced absence of the for­eign Press in Gaza.

The Israelis fear that eyes the West trusts and they can’t cen­sor, would indis­putably spot­light how they are doing what aid agen­cies and oth­ers accuse them of; com­mit­ting what amount to war crimes by deny­ing aid, among oth­er travesties.
No doubt Hamas is also hap­py not to have for­eign jour­nal­ists demand­ing to see the hostages, see­ing first hand that its forces do in fact, hide among civil­ians to wage a war that will end not in the destruc­tion of Israel, but the near total dev­as­ta­tion of Gaza by the mighty mil­i­tary stick Israel is will­ing to use as a blud­geon, while Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu sneers at “speak­ing soft­ly” efforts to end it.
Accord­ing to an offi­cial read-out of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s most recent phone call with him: “The Pres­i­dent and Prime Min­ster agreed to have their teams meet soon in Wash­ing­ton to exchange views and dis­cuss alter­na­tive approach­es that would tar­get key ele­ments of Hamas and secure the Egypt-Gaza bor­der with­out a major ground oper­a­tion in Rafah.”
That’s speak­ing too softly.
It’s time for Pres­i­dent Biden to have what’s been called “a Rea­gan moment,” a ref­er­ence to the 1982 Israeli air strikes and artillery bom­bard­ment of West Beirut, where, just as Hamas is doing now, the PLO arrayed its forces among the civil­ian population.
On August 12, 1982, a ten hour bom­bard­ment reached a lev­el of inten­si­ty that sur­passed every­thing up to that point.
My work diary entry the next day read sim­ply: “Rea­gan stopped it with call to Begin. Won­der if our stuff from last night had any­thing to do with it. Would like to think so.”
Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan not­ed in his pri­vate diary that when he called then Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Men­achem Begin: “I told him it had to stop or our entire future rela­tion­ship was endan­gered. I used the word holo­caust delib­er­ate­ly & said the sym­bol of war was becom­ing a pic­ture of a 7‑month-old baby with its arms blown off.”
The Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion also banned the sale of clus­ter weapons to Israel for sev­er­al years in the 1980s after it deter­mined they were used in the inva­sion of Lebanon.
It was a salient les­son in the pow­er of West­ern media the Israelis have learned well.

                     WHAT’S MORE…

At the height of the anti-apartheid strug­gle in South Africa, a senior offi­cial in the Bureau for Infor­ma­tion accused me of “quiv­er­ing in right­eous indig­na­tion” when­ev­er I appeared on cam­era in a Black township.
I dis­pute the “quiv­er­ing”, but am in no doubt jour­nal­ists allowed into Gaza would end up being sim­i­lar­ly dis­par­aged by Israeli info flaks (who, like my accuser, have a ten­den­cy to pul­sate in self-serv­ing obfus­ca­tion from their podi­ums), and would be no more ashamed of it than I am, which is to say, not in the slightest.
None of that is to detract from the almost sui­ci­dal­ly coura­geous and hon­ourable job Pales­tin­ian jour­nal­ists in Gaza are doing, and at greater cost than any news organ­i­sa­tions would coun­te­nance or tol­er­ate for their West­ern staff.
But the nasty fact is that no mat­ter how you choose to char­ac­terise or ratio­nalise it, their report­ing does not res­onate with audi­ences, or politi­cians, to the same degree and mea­sure that jour­nal­ists from media out­lets with logos they recog­nise and who speak Eng­lish they under­stand eas­i­ly would.
The grim sta­tis­tic of more than 90 Pales­tin­ian media work­ers killed so far in Gaza by and large remains just that, a statistic.
A detailed and admirable Wash­ing­ton Post inves­ti­ga­tion that coun­tered Israel’s claim that an Al-Jazeera crew was killed because they con­sti­tut­ed an “imme­di­ate threat” to Israeli troops has so far raised few offi­cial hackles.
The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has the same stick to use as a lever that Rea­gan waved.
What he lacks is  West­ern cam­eras and note­books on the ground in Gaza to both force and aug­ment the threat to use it.
In the diplo­mat­ic are­na, there’s the pow­er of U.S. veto in the UN Secu­ri­ty Council.
On a prac­ti­cal lev­el, the U.S. “has pro­vi­sion­al­ly agreed (via a memo of under­stand­ing) to pro­vide Israel with near­ly 4‑billion dol­lars a year through 2028”, and con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers want to add bil­lions more for the war with Hamas.
At least $3.3‑billion must be used “to pur­chase U.S. mil­i­tary equip­ment and services”.
It’s not as though Biden is lack­ing sup­port from rea­soned and respect­ed peo­ple to make a “Rea­gan call”, either.
In an open let­ter more than 70 for­mer U.S. offi­cials, diplo­mats and mil­iary offi­cers wrote: “The Unit­ed States must be will­ing to take con­crete action…including restric­tions on the pro­vi­sion of (US) assis­tance (to Israel) con­sis­tent with US law and pol­i­cy.” (My BOLD)
If that doesn’t include allow­ing the for­eign Press into Gaza, “speak soft­ly and car­ry a big stick” has become no more than an out­dat­ed adage. Not, one sus­pects, what Roo­sevelt had in mind.

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