Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
The Israeli government is very rapidly losing control of its own hasbara efforts. As documented in recent posts, Israel’s Consulate in New York first claimed no commandos were detained by activists, then Israel’s navy said there were, and just now the consulate wrote me again (@HybridStates) to say no IDF troops were captured at any [...]
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The Israeli government has decided to change its story, ostensibly because it felt it had generated enough sympathy in the international media through its confiscation and selective publishing of video from the flotilla attack. Israel’s orchestrated PR effort has only worked, of course, in generating jingoistic empathy for the soldiers among its own largely brainwashed [...]
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Yesterday Yuli Edelstein at the Israel Consulate in New York fielded questions via Twitter about the flotilla massacre. I asked directly: “Were IDF commandos detained by flotilla activists? If so, for how long? How were they released?” The Israeli Consulate responded: “Not true. Its a rumor.” About 30 hours later the world is informed that [...]
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It’s difficult to say precisely when the Gaza siege became a formal naval blockade (Update: a commenter, Marian Houk, points out that the IDF Spokesperson announced the blockade on Jan 3, 2009, a fact that raises an additional question of how the IDF views the siege from 2006 to 2009.) But in the language of [...]
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In an effort to frame an attack by pirates on a civilian ship in international waters as an act of self-defense, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has taken to publishing photos on Flickr of “weapons” they claim to have found aboard the now seized ships. The terrifying photos suggest a ship absolutely full of metal parts [...]
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Today is the anniversary of the establishment of Israel on May 15th, 1948. It is also the day that Palestinians commemorate as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”). Here are two excellent documentaries on the establishment of Israel and the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. Spend some time today thinking about the history conveyed in these [...]
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After what presumably amounted to months of desperate searching, Judge Goldstone’s detractors finally found the “smoking gun” to forever lay to rest his damaging—and still unrebutted—report on Israeli and Hamas-orchestrated war crimes in Gaza. It turns out that he is a judge, a white man, from South Africa, of sufficient age and experience to have [...]
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It is, in a certain sense, bound to happen. The massacre of unarmed civilians and the institutional cover-up for such behavior are certainties when it comes to modern warfare. This statement applies, of course, to the Sri Lankans as much as the Russians, to the Americans as much as the Israelis. The American military, for [...]
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It’s been an extraordinary week in the ongoing Middle East saga. Joe “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist” Biden felt “insulted” by the timing (as opposed to the substance) of the announcement (as he arrived) that Israel intends to continue the constant ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem that it began [...]
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Ha’aretz runs today a stunning and thoughtful article about how Israel must learn the language of human rights. Written by a media consultant and former adviser to the Interior Ministry, Gilad Heimann, the article manages to cut through Israeli social psychology and government hasbara efforts with admirable efficiency. The core argument is this: Israel doesn’t [...]
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