Known to psy­chol­o­gists as “the illu­sion of truth”, the pro­pa­gan­da law “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is used so often, bla­tant­ly and cyn­i­cal­ly by Israeli spokesper­sons that any­thing they say must be tak­en with not a pinch, but the pil­lar of salt the Bible says Lot’s wife turned into for look­ing back at Sodom and Gomorrah.

 Israeli author­i­ties accus­ing a Pales­tin­ian jour­nal­ist of being a Hamas sup­port­er with­out offer­ing any proof, is like Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump call­ing a reporter “dis­gust­ing” or “fake news’.
Jour­nal­ists should, and deserve to be judged on their integri­ty,  stan­dards and the qual­i­ty of their work, not who they do, did or might sup­port politically.
As for the news organ­i­sa­tions that offered equal time and space to Israeli pro for­ma excus­es for what may amount to a war crime: you were will­ing, eager and hap­py enough with your employ­ees to print and put their work on air when they were risk­ing their lives,  so why aren’t they worth a full-throat­ed and prin­ci­pled defence when they are murdered?
And that char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the deaths of  eleven Pales­tin­ian jour­nal­ists in Gaza in two weeks is based on irrefutable evi­dence and  per­son­al expe­ri­ence of how the Israeli mil­i­tary views the for­eign Press.
The offi­cial expla­na­tion of the lat­est per­fidy was that “.. a cam­era that was posi­tioned by Hamas in the area of the Nass­er Hos­pi­tal that was being used to observe the activ­i­ty of Israel Defense Forces in order to direct ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties against them…”…and  Israeli troops  “oper­at­ed to remove the threat by strik­ing and dis­man­tling the camera.”
“Dis­man­tling” a cam­era requires the most advanced and well-equipped mil­i­tary in the Mid­dle East to kill 20 people?
In that case, I guess I’m lucky they only tried to use me as an intel­li­gence source.
(For a more detailed expla­na­tion of all that, click here: Pega­sus ISN’T Spy­ing for Israel? Real­ly? | Pizzey’s Perch

                     HISTORY TELLS THE STORY

In  1982,  vir­tu­al­ly all of the for­eign Press cov­er­ing the siege of West Beirut lived and worked from the Com­modore Hotel.
The Israelis knew that.
When it was too dan­ger­ous to be in the streets,  the rooftop served as an obser­va­tion post and cam­era posi­tion to record Israeli jets in action over the city.
Dur­ing one round of heavy shelling, the Com­modore, and a near­by build­ing hous­ing the offices of a Lebanese news­pa­per, Newsweek and UPI, were hit, accord­ing to an Israeli offi­cer, “by accident.”
Maybe.
Dur­ing a brief for­ay I made out of West Beirut to cov­er the siege sto­ry from the oth­er side, uni­formed Israeli offi­cers with binoc­u­lars were using the roof of the  Hotel Alexan­dre, the Israeli-occu­pied East Beirut equiv­a­lent of the Com­modore, as an obser­va­tion post.
How, I won­der, does that dif­fer from Israeli claims (in some cas­es no doubt true) that Hamas oper­ates from civil­ian structures?
In the 2008-09 “Oper­a­tion Cast Lead”  incur­sion into Gaza,  a UN ware­house was among the places hit by some of the 200 white phos­pho­rus shells the Israelis admit­ted firing.
Use of the shells in civil­ian areas is ille­gal under inter­na­tion­al law.
In an open area, where there was no obvi­ous evi­dence of any mil­i­tary activ­i­ty, and locals iden­ti­fied as the site of a white phos­pho­rous strike,  I used a stick to scratch a patch of gum­my residue on the ground. It ignited.
Israel denied tar­get­ing civil­ian areas and “ordered an inquiry”.
Sound famil­iar?
Accord­ing to the con­flict mon­i­tor­ing group Action on Armed Vio­lence, 88% of Israeli mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tions into alle­ga­tions of war crimes com­mit­ted by Israel in Gaza were shut down or left unresolved.
Con­trol­ling the mes­sen­ger, and killing those that can­not be har­nessed to the pro­pa­gan­da cart, seems to be  pret­ty much unof­fi­cial Israeli policy.
In addi­tion to the near­ly 200 jour­nal­ists killed in Gaza so far, at least ten died, either by acci­dent or on pur­pose, dur­ing the recent Israeli-Hezbol­lah conflict.
Over the course of 22 years pri­or to the lat­est Gaza war, the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists “..doc­u­ment­ed at least 20 jour­nal­ist killings by mem­bers of the Israel Defense Forces. Despite numer­ous IDF probes, no one has ever been charged or held respon­si­ble for these deaths.”
Instead, they are doing their best to re-write Ger­man Luther­an pas­tor Mar­tin Niemoller’s con­dem­na­tion of com­plic­i­ty with Naziism.
It begins:
“ First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out…”,
It goes on to include not speak­ing out for social­ist and Jews, and ends:
“Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”
The Israelis are relent­less­ly reduc­ing that wis­dom to:
“First they came for the journalists.
Then there was no one left
To say what hap­pened.” 

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.