Not caught in the Net

I am not one for conspiracy theories, but over the weekend I have noticed that searching for individuals' blogs which are pro-Palestine or, more importantly, report on events from Gaza, appears to return surprisingly few results.

Which is odd, since a look at one or two of the links on this page will tell you that they are out there on the web.

Now this may be a function of the way Google's ranking system works, and the sheer volume if the pro-Israeli lobby, which also tends to adopt the tactic of 'overwhelming force' and effectively frowns out all others.

Including this blog, it appears; while some local American newspaper from some tiny backwater in Texas which happens to be called Palestine appears to turn up in searches near the top with astonishing frequency.

I am sure events of great moment occur from time to time in Palestine, Texas. (Matters of  moment there, according to the paper, are the citizens' thoughts on parking and a house which caught fire on New Year's Eve.) But not, I think, on the scale of what is happening in the other Palestine.

Given the number of houses in the other Palestine which, if not now burning, have certainly been bombed to rubble or bulldozed—surely the Israeli Army is the only one to send in bulldozers with the tanks when they go to war for the purpose of civil destruction?—I cannot see why this newspaper for a 'city' of 18,000 people ranks so highly against a country in the Middle East with a rather larger population.

I suspect, therefore, that this blog, although it is current while I write it, is for future documentarians of opinion on the Palestine issue, rather than one that might influence (however infinitesimally) current events.

I really do not want to adopt a conspiracy theory. But, given that the USA effectively controls the distribution of the World Wide Web, the enthusiasm of American military thinkers and strategists for the last few years for the "Information War"—including the development of tactics for 'interdicting' electronically distributed information—and that the US supports Israel so forcefully, I do wonder.

In the meantime, the Israeli publicity machine is offering up the excuse of all ruthless regimes in a war for attacking precisely those places where (as I heard a doctor in Gaza City point out in a call to the BBC World Service) people under attack gather for the comfort and succour of their god or other citizens. Or simple where they must go for the immediate necessities of life, like a market. Was there not outrage when Serbs shelled a market in Sarajevo once? Why is a market in Gaza different?

Here it is, courtesy of a pro-Zionist website, and being spread fast around the web in consequence:

' "Hamas operatives are in the hospital and have disguised themselves as nurses and doctors." one official said. Maj. Genral Anos Yadlin told the cabinet that Hamas was using mosques, public institutions and private homes as ammunition stores." '

So, of course with that salve to a few Israeli political consciences and, no doubt they hope for the rest of the world, then there is no structure in the Gaza strip that is likely to be left standing. But then, we know that was the aim from the beginning.

Or should: we have most recently the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon to remind us if any still have any doubts that the Israeli purpose is not to disable Hamas and its structure, but to demolish the whole Palestinian society.

If they have not adopted the methods of Stalin as a little too unpalatable to the rest of the world, perhaps they have drawn lessons from their friends the Turks and their treatment of the Armenians instead. It certainly looks like it.