Playing Their Game
The high-stakes game of public relations is savagely yet resourcefully manipulated by Hamas, time after time. As transparent, it would seem, as a clear eye can discern. Yet, despite all intelligent odds, highly successful. Because no matter how outrageously hollow their claims, they create headlines. And impressionable readers - and they are legion - believe whatever it is that makes it into print. Hah! fooled you didn't we?There was that offer, trumpeted all over the world's newspapers, that Hamas sought a ceasefire with Israel, and promised a truce. And there was official Israel, denying the likelihood of reliability in any dealings with Hamas. Asking, reasonably enough, for Hamas to declare its recognition of Israel, and to lay down its arms, and then discussions could take place.
Hard on the heels of that dismissed suggestion for a ceasefire, was the UN Relief and Works Agency loudly lamenting it had no diesel fuel for delivery of life-saving necessities for Palestinians. To which Israel responded that there had been no cessation of fuel deliveries. Hamas had been waylaying the shipments and storing them for the purpose of fabricating an emergency. To which UNRWA willingly lent its voice.
Double-barrelled censure of Israel from around the world. Refusing a cease-fire with Hamas ... bad Israel. Manipulating and deliberately withholding life-saving shipments of diesel fuel so that the famished and ill in Gaza cannot receive humanitarian shipments of food and medicines that they so desperately require, making their position ever more dire ... unforgivably nasty Israel.
But then, there's Khaled Mashaal, Hamas's numero uno declaring the ceasefire to have been "a tactic in conducting the struggle". "Conducting the struggle"; how quaint. Code for their no-holds-barred war of violence against Israeli civilians. As though they're intent on preserving Palestinian lives, in exchange for Israeli lives.
But as eager as Hamas is to render the lives of Israeli civilians fraught with terror and ultimately death, they're equally fond of tactics that endanger and ultimately sacrifice the lives of Palestinians. It's their game, their purpose for existence, their dalliance with wholesale death. "It is normal", Mashaal patiently explained in an Al-Jazeera interview, "for any resistance ... to sometimes escalate, other times retreat a bit".
In most societies the young and the restless, the testosterone-driven young males dampen their passions with violent video games. In the tribal Middle East, young Arabs are recruited to act out in real life the violence the video games hint at, but never quite approach in senseless carnage.
For Mashaal, the offer of a ceasefire was a mere sideshow of the larger and more organic ploy of "you lose, we win". For past ceasefire have resulted in brief interregnums before resuming attacks, once morale, weaponry and skills have been adequately re-sharpened. Should Israel have acceded to the offer, it would merely have been proof-positive that Israel has relented to the fearful onslaughts of Hamas. Success born of failure after failure.
But any time an adversary sets down arms, however temporarily, it is viewed as a sign of victory by the other. Any retreat symbolizes victory, no matter the reason; for an enemy to weary of combat and retreat to a previous position is reason for jubilation. Interpreted, however irrationally, in the face of reality, as yet another glorious victory for Islam.
Any adversary displaying a modicum less rigour in pursuing death than do the terror groups is viewed as lacking commitment to the game. Humanitarian impulse has voided its presence there. Altruism is a no-compete game. To advance another's cause with no pay-back in glory, prestige, honour and recognition in the game of war in that atmosphere of willing blood-letting where compassion has no presence is a fool's game, not theirs.
Fuel trucks from Israel heading to the Palestinian Territories, for use by the UN Relief and Works Agency to deliver critical aid to Palestinians, and to hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been diverted, as Hamas militia open fire, the truck drivers forced to turn back in hasty disarray, their windshields smashed. This is Hamas's response to UNRWA's complaints that it had no fuel to distribute food aid to the half-million Palestinians in Gaza.
The PA Health Ministry itself accused Hamas of blocking supplies to hospitals and clinics in Gaza. Trucks attempting to transfer fuel to hospitals also came under fire. But then, this has been frequently done. The supplies destined for hospitals and clinics taken to Hamas security installations for personal use of Hamas leaders and their militias.
Resulting in some hospitals being forced to shut off generators, halt ambulances. Exactly what Israeli authorities had stated previously. The idea being to encourage outrage in the international community. Against Hamas? Hardly; yet more reasons to fault Israel. PA officials admit adequate fuel is reaching Gaza, but Hamas's actions are depriving the allocated sources of receiving the fuel.
The manufactured fuel shortages have created a black market and a sense of desperation. And although UNRWA finally admitted that Hamas has been instrumental in creating the shortages, that reluctant little admission doesn't make its way into international news reportage. Hard to reverse initial impressions, and truth is, there's no heart in it to begin with.
And the game continues. Hamas toys with offering ceasefires it has no intention of committing to. Hamas high-jacks emergency fuel supplies and then screams bloody murder for the international community to intervene and solve the humanitarian crisis they have engineered.
And in the meantime, their terror militias launch barrage after barrage of Kassam rockets at Israeli border communities. And the IDF responds as it must, to protect Israeli citizens in southern Israel. Rockets hitting homes, landing beside schools in residential neighbourhoods. Leaving traumatized victims, frightened and unappeasable children. Shelling kibbutzim, damaging buildings. Residents forced to flee into safe rooms and bomb shelters.
Ah, and yes, in the IDF responses to the Hamas attacks, Israel is evermore declared guilty of targeting civilians, injuring and killing children. A mother and four children killed as their home collapsed during an attack on Kassam-lobbing terrorists in Beit Hanoun. Israel did this, Hamas solemnly declares, and the story is filed internationally, and is a leading entry on morning newscasts.
While the IDF does its best to explain that Israel does not target civilian homes. That the reason for the explosion in the home might more readily be explained as the result of explosives inside the home detonated by accident. In the West we teach children not to play with fire. The blowback can be deadly.
In the Middle East everyone seems to dabble in explosives of one kind or another, from deadly rhetoric to deathly arms-making. Which have an unfortunate habit, from time to time, of claiming unintended victims. Just part of the game Hamas loves to gamble with. They're only lives, after all. Plenty more where those came from.
The game proceeds.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Monday, April 28, 2008
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