Thoughts from the “Holy” Land

On the 3rd week of “operation Cast-Lead"

I am writing from Jerusalem now. All three major TV channels are broadcasting news casts almost constantly. The IDF decided not to “embed” journalists within the military forces, so most of the footage is from the towns which are occasionally hit by Hamas rockets; and tons of commentary. I will tell you about one “rare footage” shot from an Israeli Tank, in a moment.
As expected, most of the “reporters” are busy delivering the official or consensual version of this war, which is: they are the bad guys, they just hate us because they are Arabs and we just want to live in peace. This is what you will hear if you conduct a random survey on any city in Israel these days. The reporters usually read from edited versions of briefing papers they received from the military spokesman, although they make an effort to make it look more professional. There is a lot of critical commentary too, and also some pieces quoted from Arab reports about the casualties on the Palestinian side. But honestly, I don’t know which way this affects the Israeli public, because for some people it is certainly a reassurance for their self-righteous feelings. They can say to themselves, that overall we are “OK” if we are so nicely considering the suffering of the other side; and besides, which other country would show such images of the enemy being so terribly hurt by us, in a time of war?
The state of Israel is free and democratic, at least for Jews (sigh). As such, the media is open to different opinions, controversy and debate. But mostly, all this is done within pretty narrow boundaries. The real radical opinions, such as mine, are poorly represented by just a handful of publicists, such as Gideon Levy:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054578.html

One pathetic example of bad journalism appeared tonight on Channel 1:
http://www.flix.co.il/tapuz/showVideo.asp?m=3033341
A reporter was sitting inside a Tank, shooting a video of another Tank firing at a Hamas combat team. Now, I don’t want to undervalue the skills and courage of Israeli troops. I was a platoon commander in the Israeli armor corps, so I have an idea how a battle looks like from a Tank. It doesn’t take too much skill and courage to sit inside the most advanced Merkava Mark IV Tank, all doors closed, and to fire from machine guns and a 120 mm cannon on a bunch of unlucky Hamas militants. The reporter was fair enough to mention, that the mortar the Hamas guys were operating couldn’t do any harm to the heavy Tank. I can’t help it from appreciating the enormous courage shown by the “Hamasniks” for even trying to confront this platoon of Tanks. For me, to think that the IDF used to fight “Fully Exposed in the Turret” against real armies, and to see my people playing the role of Goliath rather than David – was very sad and disturbing. I felt sorry for the reporter for trying to elevate the morale of the Israeli public with such a lame story. By the way, this was the same reporter who covered the race where Israel won its one and only Olympic medal five months ago – I watched it live! Such a surreal situation.

Even some commentators whom I normally appreciate, tend to be more “patriotic” in times of war, for a number of reasons. For one, so far this operation is going pretty well, from the Israeli viewpoint (and I already mentioned what it does to Barak’s approval rating...). The arrogant declarations from the 2006 campaign in Lebanon, the lack of training due to long terms as occupying forces – are all gone. The military is fulfilling its tasks step-by-step, trying to avoid casualties as much as possible, and truth has to be said – that pertains to civilian casualties as well. The main problem is that as a campaign conducted in heavily populated areas, avoiding civilian casualties is impossible. This is where the debate begins – whether a warfare against a semi-militia, which engages its fighting from residential areas, is moral at all – or whether this by itself is characteristic to an occupying regime.
Another reason is that nobody wants to be portrayed as a “traitor”, even when he or she has reservations or criticism on the way the campaign is carried out, or even on its mere taking place. Who knows, maybe the goal of stopping the firing of rockets, or at least a big damage to Hamas capability of doing so – will be achieved eventually?... nobody wants to be the town’s fool.
But the main cause, in my view, to the fact that criticism of this war is so scarce, is this: in the eyes of each side, the “other” side is always inhuman, blinded by hatred, cruel and evil by nature; while “we” are the “nice guys” whose sole intention is to live in peace – and we completely disregard the terrible similarities between ours and their wrongdoing, bad reasoning and justifications. It’s easy to think of ourselves as victims of 8 years of shooting on peaceful towns – even when we are the most powerful country in the region, militarily, technologically and economically. But it’s very difficult to portray ourselves, as we are in the eyes of our enemies, as heartless aggressors. As unbelievable as it may sound, we are cruel beasts in their eyes, just like they are in ours!
The speakers in the Israeli media tend to be more “responsible”, “balanced” – this has much to do with the past failures of the military, especially in the Lebanon campaign two and a half years ago. But if you listen carefully, you will find our share of pathetic and “hot-aired” statements. Whenever I hear Hamas speakers say “we will fight to the end, we will meet you in Jerusalem!”, I can’t help of thinking how similar this is to the “we will bring the firing of the rockets to a complete stop, and all weapon smuggling will cease, and Hamas will be brought down.” I think that everyone who hasn’t lost his senses yet knows that this is impossible. I’m curious and troubled to know, how many more people will die or be injured before we realize that there are limits to the power of even the most powerful military force. From watching TV in Israel for the last five days, I am not very optimistic about that.