The war against the Jews (9)

Monday, 10th March 2008

Those who have been following the Mohammed al Dura scandal (see here, here, here, here and here) may be interested to read this report by Richard Landes of the latest court hearing which took place a few days ago. Judgment is scheduled for May 21.
Particularly noteworthy in this account is the extraordinary silence of the Israel government on this case. (Its chief press officer, Danny Seaman, has said that the ‘killing’ was staged by the Arabs but, strange as this may seem, the government refuses to follow suit.)

The weight of the Israeli silence in the French courtroom became so heavy that even the judge, in genuine puzzlement, asked Karsenty, ‘Why don’t the Israelis argue their case? Why haven’t they said anything?’… In fact, Israelis repeatedly express astonishment at why Jews from the diaspora care about setting this record straight when they just wish it would go away. When they realize how powerful the impact not only on Israel, but on Jews around the world, they express surprise. As Karsenty later explained to the judges, ‘The day after al Durah, one of my employees came into the office and challenged me, “Look at what your army has done, murdering an innocent child!’” In Brussels, a rabbi was attacked the next day on the way to New Year’s services, never having seen the footage.

The fact is that the Israel government doesn’t seem to have a clue about the impact of a blood libel against the Jews. This is connected to its wider inability to grasp the central strategic importance to the Arabs of such blood libels and a multitude of other fabrications which they use to inspire hatred of Israel around the world. So important is it to turn the world against Israel that the Arabs will sacrifice their own children to do so, as happened in Gaza last week. As this article reports, Hamas placed children on Gaza rooftops in order that they might be killed by Israeli air-strikes; or as this video shows, called upon Gaza’s youths to form ‘human shields’; or as these pictures from the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre show, made extensive use of such ‘human shields’ in order to maximise civilian casualties in order to achieve precisely the twisted coverage that Hamas hoped to achieve.

At the Australian, the excellent Greg Sheridan gets it:

Without the rocket firings there would be no economic blockade of Gaza and no Israeli air campaign. Life in Gaza would be infinitely better. Why doesn't Hamas embrace this much better life for its citizens, which would certainly not require it to give up its goal of running an independent Palestinian state? There are four interlocking, plausible answers: it wants to damage Israel internationally, radicalise other Palestinians, ensure Israel's policy of disengagement from the Palestinians fails, and serve Hamas's Iranian and Syrian sponsors. Consider each of the four.

On Monday night, the ABC's Lateline program ran a report on the suffering of civilians in Gaza, an absolutely legitimate subject. Among the heart-rending footage there was an interview with a Gazan civilian who understandably complained bitterly about Israel's actions. But the ABC reporter didn't ask the absolutely obvious question: Do you wish your leaders would stop firing missiles into Israel, which make inevitable both the economic blockade and the Israeli military response? The ABC, as usual, was following more or less exactly the terrorists' preferred script for the Western media. Islamist terrorists have always been centrally concerned with the Western media and their understanding of its story presentation dynamics is acute, as this episode demonstrates. Hamas gets to sheet all blame to Israel.

Like the Australian ABC, the British media followed to the letter this degraded script that had been written for them by Hamas, thus inciting yet more hatred against their Israeli victims and turning the western media yet again into accomplices to intended genocide. Such propaganda ‘psy-ops’ are therefore a key weapon in the Arab armoury. The staging of the killing of Mohammed al Durah was an example of those black arts which in itself directly led to the murder of countless innocents. It is Israel’s tragedy that it cannot grasp this fact.