UN-Truth

Yesterday, the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel “requested that the international media be allowed to enter Gaza together with the aid via the other crossings given that EREZ is closed”.

Today, that apparently did not happen, despite the three-hour “humanitarian respite” that the IDF promised, on rather notice, for Tuesday afternoon.

The FPA also issued a statement on Tuesday saying that it was “appalled by the statement made this morning on BBC TV by the Israeli ambassador in London indicating tha the reason the foreign media have not been allowed into Gaza is due to ‘infighting’ in the FPA. The FPA wishes to categorically state that the organization has been in full compliance with the decision of the Israeli Surpeme Court. A complete list of names was provided to the authorities who confirmed receipt of the list. The FPA repeats the request to allow the foreign media to enter Gaza without delay”.

The McClatchy newspaper group’s Jerusalem correspondent, Dion Nissenbaum, highlighted today on his blog, Checkpoint Jerusalem, a statement made by Danny Seaman, Director of Israel’s Government Press OffIce (GPO) to an Israeli media publication, that was then picked up and published in an Ethan Bronner story in the New York Times, that “Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that.”

Dion Nissenbaum took issue with Danny Seaman’s remark, and wrote that “in all my years of covering Gaza, I have never had a Hamas minder and never had Hamas try to censor my copy (while, in fact, I and other reporters here operate under Israeli censorship rules). In the past, Hamas has arrested, detained and tried to intimidate local Palestinian journalists, which makes it all-the-more-important to have outside reporters there to cover what’s going on”.

Ethan Bronner, in his NYTimes piece, wrote that “for an 11th day of Israel’s war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it waited in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering, but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel. Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one the government is seeking to entirely control the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy … This attitude has been helped by supportive Israeli news media whose articles have been filled with ‘feelings of self-righteousness and a sense of catharsis following what was felt to be undue restraint in the face of attacks by the enemy,” according to a study of the first days of media coverage of the war by a liberal but nonpartisan group called Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel … There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict, of course. But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death. John Ging, an Irishman who directs operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, entered Gaza on Monday as journalists were kept out. He told Palestinian reporters in Gaza that the policy was a problem. ‘For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in’, he said”. Ethan Bronner’s piece can be read in full here .

In a separate NYTimes article, former Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger quoted Israeli sources comparing the situation to Israel’s “Second Lebanon War” as saying: “This time, there is no illusion about winning a war only from the air. This time, the military chief of staff has kept his silence in public, all cellphones have been confiscated from Israeli soldiers, and the international press has been kept out of the battlefield … even the close circle of senior Israeli political and defense correspondents have been getting far less access than before to decision makers, said Aluf Benn, a senior correspondent with the daily Haaretz. ‘We get briefings, but they’re more like talking points’, Mr. Benn said. The senior military officer said, ‘The chief of staff is not talking in public, and the special press know what they need to know, but the army is not speaking’ … Yaakov Amidror, an Israeli major general, now in the reserves, who ran the research and assessment branch of Israeli military intelligence, said that Israeli intelligence had never lost its contacts in Gaza, as it had in southern Lebanon. ‘To leave Gaza you have to go through Israel’, he said, and numerous Gazans were recruited as intelligence sources. Gaza uses the Israeli shekel, and nearly all imports and exports go through Israel, too. ‘All this helps keep the network alive in Gaza’, he said, which helped the accuracy of the early air campaign. What matters most, General Amidror said, are three changes: coordination between the infantry and the air force; having commanders on the ground with a clear mission and flexibility to achieve it; and methods to keep Hamas in the fog of war, which includes disinformation and impediments to real-time press coverage on the ground … The less Hamas understands, the better, he said”. Steve Erlanger’s piece can be read in full here.

Meanwhile, Ali Waked has reported in YNet — and this could of course be disinformation - the piece cites multiple unnamed sources — that “Six Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel have been executed in the past two days by Hamas security officers in the fighting zone in Jabalya, Ynet has learned … A source in Hamas referred to the report, saying that ‘assassination or an air strike cannot take place without guidance from the ground, and all these guys confessed to the act’ … [And] Reports on executions have also been received from other places across Gaza, but the exact number of victims is unclear”. This report mentions other executions of what it calls “suspected collaborators”, who it said “were executed about a week ago, after IAF jets bombed Gaza City’s main prison in the Saraya compound which houses Hamas’ government offices and security organizations. The suspected collaborators escaped from the prison after the bombing, but were seized by Hamas members and the families of the collaborators’ victims”. Similar stories were circulated in Ramallah in recent days, without mentioning that those prisoners who were reported to have been executed by Hamas after the prison was hit by an IDF airstrike. Accusations of being a “collaborator” are difficult to verify, especially in complicated situations. This report can be read in full on YNet here.

UPDATE - Amira Hass reported in Haaretz on 8 January corroborating information of Hamas summary and secret executions since the IDF Operation Cast Lead began on 27 December: “Members of the group have confirmed the executions took place, and said the victims had admitted giving information to the Shin Bet security service that resulted in the deaths of Palestinians, or had already been sentenced to death by a Palestinian military court but the sentences were delayed for various reasons. Independent sources said that among the dead were those not known publicly to have been collaborators, as well as others long suspected of cooperation with Israel, or those arrested and later released. Estimates of the number of suspects executed range from 40 to 80, but amid the prevailing conditions shelling, fear of walking the streets and media blackouts it is virtually impossible to verify the numbers or identities of the dead. Executions are carried out secretly. In Rafah, for example, at least some of the victims were killed in a caravan erected in the area formerly occupied by the Rafiah Yam settlement, and the victims’ relatives were invited to take away the bodies”. Amira’s story can be read in full here

On weapons being used in the attack on Gaza, there were early reports of IDF use of cluster bombs in open fields.

Then, there is this from a post by Jason Sigger on wired.com, about the controversy over the IDF’s possible/probable use of white phosphorus bombs during Operation Cast Lead: “With the media blackout over Gaza, detailed knowledge of what the Israelis are doing is in short supply. Maybe they’re targeting Hamas fighters with WP; maybe they’re putting up a quick screen of smoke between Hamas snipers/anti-tank gunners and their forces; maybe they’re marking targets for further artillery strikes. Based on the evidence available and lacking any formal statement from the Israeli government, it appears likely that the use of WP munitions in Gaza is legitimate. However, the use of WP munitions in an urban setting continues to be a controversial tactic, given the potential impact on civilians and their homes. As one of my more learned colleagues noted, the repulsion here is not that noncombatants become casualties during war, it’s that nations make war on each other for the wrong reasons”. This post can be read in full here.

Sigger also wrote that “The fact is, there are both legitimate [as defined in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons - Protocol on ... Incendiary Weapons] and illegitimate uses for white phosphorous rounds. And right now, we don’t know what the Israelis did with those munitions”.

Earlier, in a posting on the same blog, Nathan Hodge picked up on another interesting item from the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency and the Jerusalem Post, and wrote (on 30 December, the third day of the unprecedented Israeli attacks on Gaza) that: “The Israeli Air Force has debuted a highly accurate — and U.S.-supplied — smart bomb in its air campaign over Gaza. Back in September, Israel received congressional authorization to buy up to 1,000 GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs … According to the Jerusalem Post, the first shipment of the bombs arrived earlier this month. Israeli fighters reportedly employed the bombs to target Qassam rocket launchers during the initial bombardment. They were also used in the bombing of a network of tunnels in Rafah on Sunday”. Hodge’s posting can be read in full here.

The earlier JPost story, written by that paper’s Yaakov Katz, who is very well-connected in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, reported that the small smart bombs were “used successfully in penetrating underground Kassam launchers in the Gaza Strip during the heavy aerial bombardment of Hamas infrastructure on Saturday [27 December, the first day of the Israeli attacks]. It was also used in Sunday’s bombing of tunnels in Rafah. The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world. The 113-kg. bomb has the same penetration capabilities as a normal 900-kg. bomb, although it has only 22.7 kg. of explosives. At just 1.75 meters long, its small size increases the number of bombs an aircraft can carry and the number of targets it can attack in a sortie”. Katz’s JPost piece is posted here.

And a hat tip (HT) for another related item to Helena Cobban on her Just World News blog here for the alert that the U.S. has published a tender for shipping ammunition from Greece to Israel “That’s a considerable amount of ammunition. Its type was not stated”, Cobban wrote, and she then added that: “US arms shipments to Israel are sent (free of cost to Israel) for the express purpose of ’self defense’ … ”

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council