Gaza: Planning, prescience, provocation

The problem with political commentators is that they often end up cosying up to the people they are supposed to be analysing more than any other journalists, with the possible exception of sports reporters.

The whole ethos is enticing. The pressures to be ‘reasonable’, ‘fair’ or ‘unbiased’ from political spokesmen and politicians (who are of course adept at manipulating opinion) becomes gradually transmuted into clubbiness. To be those three things means, often, to become less questioning, less independent.

After all, there are rewards and punishments: to be on the plane with the ‘opinion formers’ or with the catering staff. To be invited to the drinks parties and the expensive meals and the ‘off the record’ briefings’ or to stand in the cold and rain eating a soggy hamburger while your pleas for an interview are unheard. To have direct phone numbers in your contact book for a chummy chat, or to continually be met with ‘so-and-so is unavailable for interview’.

The best withstand it; many fall into the cuddly warmth of being accepted as ‘one of us’. And it leads to ‘commentary’ which is often regurgitated public relations at best, deliberately disseminated propaganda at worst. And this, of course, makes up a lot of what we hear about the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

I heard one, who claimed, at first sight quite reasonably, that Israel’s attacks were not launched partly because there is effectively no administration with any power in the USA during this ’’transition period’, when the outgoing President is effectively helpless (but not wordless) and the incoming one can remain mute and inactive. “Monitoring the situation’ usually means hoping either it will go away or someone else will fix it.

No, it was a hurried response to the end of a ceasefire and a series of subsequent rocket attacks. This is the disingenuousness that commentator cosiness leads to. It conveniently ignores the fact that the date of the end of the ceasefire agreement could hardly come as a surprise, any more than that the sun generally rises in the east in the mornings.

It ignores the impression that most people around the world (except for Americans) have been given for most of 2008 that any Palestinian peace process, let alone the establishment of a Palestinian state was simply no longer on an Israeli political agenda.

It fails to take account of the constant reiteration of cries of ‘terrorism’ and the association of Hamas with supposedly ‘terrorist’ states like Syria and Iran, as though the three had somehow been conducting some kind of war against the west that no-one was the victim of.

It also conveniently forgets that if neither Israel nor the USA will talk to a governing political party, then no effective negotiations to continue a ceasefire could ever be held after the current agreement expired.

And it is simply nothing but the worst kind of naiveté to believe that a state goes to war with the kind of aerial power that Israel has shown, nor builds up an armoured invasion force of the size Israel has on the borders of another state in a matter of a few days as a hurried response to an unexpected attack.

And to believe that any state would not deliberately prepare and choose a moment when its actions were least likely to be disputed by its main ally because of its own internal disarray is downright childish. Especially if that state is one as politically sophisticated and opportunistic as Israel has often shown itself.

Beware the political commentator or analyst. Their predictions are seldom any more accurate than those of Nostradamus, their foresight is minimal (I cannot be the only outsider who felt something was going to happen over the Christian holiday?) but their hindsight, when they write the books and the articles afterwards, is of course, 20/20.

At some stage, no doubt, the “Mission Accomplished” banner will be unfurled; one President or the other (as far as Palestine is concerned it hardly matters which) will announce that “terrorism” (or Hamas, unless the organisation survives after all, which is by no means impossible) has been “defeated”, and if either is too obviously untrue, then the smart bombs will no doubt be programmed for Syria or Tehran. Both of which countries’ populations have been progressively dehumanised for the purpose over the last few years by the Americans in their media. Just as “Palestinian” is in practical effect, synonymous with “Hamas” and “terrorist” in at least most American and Israeli minds, despite the mealy-mouthed protestations of the propagandists of both countries.

And the bodies will be buried; the count disputed and diminished. Lessons have been learnt from American practice in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Civilised forces do not target civilians, only terrorists, therefore the dead, by definition, of course are all terrorists. But that is a syllogism of the kind that is always false. And its use shows the moral vacuum and cynicism that lies behind this kind of planned operation, its organisers, its proponents and its financiers.

The dead have no opportunity for denial. But some of us at least must remember that there should be a presumption of innocence. And ‘civilised’ countries that urge just that, the presentation of evidence and due judgement on others so vociferously should not be allowed to deny the exercise of them even, perhaps especially, in a war.