generalspeaking

Slander Sticks

No apologies, no back-tracking, no sense of responsibility to clarify issues; the accusations once rendered in the heat of a thousand passions resonate, and cling.

After all, what institution is held in greater respect internationally than that of the United Nations, and whose spokespeople are heard with hushed intensity other than theirs? And isn't the international media anxious to scoop one another - to publish in loud declaratory messages of condemnation from the United Nations toward Israel - allocating blame for misfortunes unclaimed by the State of Israel.

And there are so many examples, one can pick daintily from among the many instances where accusations have been rendered, proven false, but yet never to be withdrawn.

The simple fact being that once the bright light of imagined atrocities are held to have been performed by the brutally uncaring State of Israel, a most malicious type of schadenfreude has its celebratory unveiling. Examples such as ambulances used to convey not the wounded, but militants; alas come to harm by IDF artillery fire.

Examples such as posed victims of Israeli bombings suddenly come to life, flinging off bandages, once the cameras stop rolling. And the same unfortunate young man, a corpse, seen time and yet time again in a series of photographs all having taken place in different bombing venues.

As for the numbers of civilians, particularly children, having been deliberately targeted by a bloodthirsty IDF, suddenly reduced by revelations of falsity. And of course the infamous scene of the young Palestinian boy cowering in fear by his protective father's side, under attack by Israeli soldiers, and finally video footage showing him slumped, dead, hit by IDF fire.

And the world rising in anger over the vicious brutality that Israel wreaks on the defenceless, the world's homeless Arab paupers. Those same paupers who have chosen time and again to reject autonomy and responsibility, favouring resentment and aggression. And authorizing proxy government-sponsored militias to achieve that state of antagonism resulting in situations such as these.

That the scene with the young Palestinian boy and his hapless father was a deliberately staged smear on Israel geared to extract from a angry international audience condemnation yet again of Israel's attempts to protect itself and its citizens has been proven, but somehow has never received anything near the circulation of the original smear is another kind of reality.

And now, an outraged United Nations declaring the Israeli invasion of Gaza for the purpose of declawing Hamas to be a humanitarian disaster of Jewish manufacture simply continues the now-familiar dehumanization of Israel.

The horrified accusations levelled against Israel; the IDF being responsible for attacking a United Nations school, despite that Israel had been given all the coordinates that would enable it to avoid such a strike, has done its predictable damage to the already-low opinion of Israel from within the international community.
Israel initially apologized, said it would investigate the occurrence, denied it would deliberately target the school where children had taken shelter.

All of which was angrily rejected by the UN spokespeople, and by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who continued to accuse Israel of dreadful human rights violations in its efforts to protect its population. Now that the damage has been done, John Ging, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, admitted to the Toronto Globe and Mail that no Israeli shells from IDF tank fire had hit the school during Operation Cast Lead.

He hadn't, he now says, claimed the school was hit, blaming Israel itself, during an interview, for the ensuing confusion over where the strike took place. Even while admitting that Israeli fire hadn't hit the school, Mr. Ging claims there was little difference: "Forty-one innocent people were killed in the street.... The State of Israel still has to answer for that", he stolidly claimed.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a report that stated unequivocally that Israeli fire "directly hit two UNRWA schools". A statement that was accepted and taken up by the international media, despite that Israeli media reports contradicted the claims. And while UNRWA spokespeople claim that civilians were hit, the IDF targeted Hamas militants.

A teacher at the UN school related his version of events, that while several people within the compound were injured, none were killed. He also preferred to remain anonymous, stating that UN officials had warned staff to remain incommunicado to the media. In point of fact, the IDF was responding to terrorist fire.

The fact that the terrorists were operating directly within civilian areas is an unfortunate fact of life for both the IDF defenders of its borders and its own civilian population targeted by Hamas, and the Gazans who permit Hamas to place its arms stores installations and rocket launchers in their midst.

Gazan Palestinians voted for the government they now have, and they continue to support that government by their unwillingness to demand better for themselves, by their eagerness to damn Israel as an 'occupier', and that their honour can only be restored by 'resisting' the 'occupier', rather than rationally sitting together at a bargaining table as partners for peace.

Labels: Israel, Middle East, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, February 01, 2009