We’ll never have a clearer demonstration of the Israel Lobby’s unwarranted influence over the U.S. media. Israel, backed and armed by the world’s sole superpower, is committing atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, an ethnic group, confined to a tiny strip of land, that Israel has attempted to starve into submission for over a year and a half. Defending the ethnic group is Hamas, an irregular force armed largely with makeshift weapons like rockets it manufactures from steel tubes and fertilizer.
Yet to hear America’s newspaper of record tell the story, Israeli forces face a “war full of traps and trickery.” According to a January 10 New York Times story by Steven Erlanger, Hamas, “with training from Iran and Hezbollah” (of course), has turned Gaza “into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs.”
Ah, yes: all failed Middle East policies lead to Iran. It’s funny how Iran, a country whose entire gross domestic product is less than what America has spent on its woebegone wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can call all the shots in the region. Even more astounding is how, merely by showing an oppressed people how to dig tunnels and make weapons out of scrap materials, Iran can run rings around a global hegemon that spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined.
Maybe it helps that Hamas fighters are, as the NYT says, “Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open.” That statement contains two glaring absurdities. First is the notion that guerilla fighters would dream of fighting “in the open” like a conventional army. Second is the inference that Israel’s army had any expectation of catching Hamas out in the open. They know all about how guerillas fight from watching us shoot ourselves in the baby makers in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan.
Erlanger makes a point of noting that “Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms.” Jesus, Larry and Curly. If Hamas fighters bothered to wear uniforms, they might as well simply huddle together in a parking lot, paint Day-Glo bulls’ eyes on their chests, and slap neon signs on their backs that say “KILL ME!”
Erlanger relates grisly tales of Hamas’s underhanded tactics; all of them sourced to anonymous “Israeli intelligence officials,” “Israeli officials,” and “Israelis.” One such story appears at first blush to be an eyewitness account from an imbedded Israeli reporter, but on second reading it’s clearly hearsay relayed from “Israeli soldiers.” The NYT perfected this covert propaganda technique back in 2002, when Judith Miller and Michael R. Gordon cited unnamed “officials” more than twenty times to sell Dick Cheny’s Nigergate hoax to an American public still reeling from the 9/11 attacks.
In one passage, Erlinger says that the name of the commander of an Israeli engineering unit “cannot be published under censorship rules.” He’s talking about Israeli censorship rules, which appear to be the keystone of the NYT’s journalistic standards.
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Erlanger makes sure we know what Israeli forces are doing to “minimize collateral damage,” like warning civilians “by leaflets, loudspeakers and telephone calls to evacuate battle areas.” Erlanger doesn’t explain that even if Israelis send Palestinian civilians candy-grams, they won’t have any place to evacuate to. Erlanger also writes about a “small-diameter smart bomb” the Israelis use to “minimize” damage in an urban area, and a missile that doesn’t explode at all, but he offers no word of explanation from the Israelis on why they found it necessary to fire bomb Gaza City with white phosphorous for several days before they attempted to enter the city.
Erlanger cites Israeli officials echoing the propaganda mantra that “Hamas is using civilians as human shields,” which is a malevolently disingenuous way of describing what’s really going on; Hamas is defending the Palestinian people on their home turf.
Ironically, though Erlanger lets Israeli officials accuse Hamas of hiding behind women and children and refusing to fight in the open, he also cites them describing how their troops move “only behind tanks and armored bulldozers, riding in armored personnel carriers, spending as little time in the open as possible.”
You have to wonder how that one slipped past the unnamed Israeli censors.
In a 2002 article for The Nation, journalist Michael Massing says the “main obstacle” to U.S. media standing up to the influence of Israel Lobby groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is “fear.” In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard note: “The Lobby’s perspective on Israel is widely reflected in the mainstream media because most American commentators are pro-Israel.”
The professors quote the late Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley as saying, “Shamir, Sharon, Bibi—whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me.” Mearsheimer and Walt further cite the memoir of former New York Times executive editor Max Frankel who confesses that he “wrote most of our Middle East commentaries…from a pro-Israel perspective.”
They also detail how the Israel Lobby influences news reporting through letter campaigns, boycotting, demonstrations, and pressure from Congress where, as journalist Ari Berman puts it, “unconditional support for Israel” is “an accepted cost of doing business.”
The coverage of the Gaza monstrosity by Bill Kristol and the rest of the Big Brother Broadcast has been atrocious enough, but “mainstream” reporting, like the Erlanger article, has been little better. One has to reach to the “alternative” press to grasp the key truths about Israel’s invasion of Gaza:
Hamas did not, as Condi Rice claims, stage an “illegal coup” in Gaza. It won political power in open elections in January 2006, at which time the Bush administration launched machinations to reverse the results of the election. Hamas did not violate the ceasefire; Israel violated it when it sent troops into Gaza in November 2008, and Hamas did not refuse to extend the ceasefire in December. Hamas offered to renew the peace agreement and Israel spurned the offer.
I doubt even George Orwell expected that a great western nation’s information environment could become as utterly corrupted as America’s is today. Here we are, almost a decade into the 21st century, proving the veracity of 18th satirist Voltaire’s admonition that “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword. Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now.
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This is a first class article.
“Erlanger doesn’t explain that even if Israelis send Palestinian civilians candy-grams, they won’t have any place to evacuate to.”
That is what hurts the most. The strip of land is very small with the civilians having absolutely nowhere to run to. Beggars belief.
Following everything I can from a variety of sources and various reports from other Nations’ News Channels.
The rise of anti-semitic attacks is entirely predictable in France and elsewhere. French Muslim radio stations tells its listeners not to get involved in what is a dispute/war on foreign soil between foreigners. I don’t think those who are breakings windows and defacing cemetaries and synagogues are listening…
Jeff, if you could point us to a brief rundown on guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency tactics – and how Hamas and the IDF are running their sides of the battle according to such, that might make this a whole lot clearer to folks, myself included.
It strikes me that hanging out in the open is a bad move for any combatant, especially if armor is available to hide behind. I’ve also heard that tanks and APCs in urban environments are insurgent-food if unprotected by infantry, so I’m not sure whether the IDF hanging out behind armor is smart, dumb, or both.
Brian,
Off the top of my head, I don’t know of such a thing as an authoritative tome on insurgency, irregular and guerilla warfare tactic, and so on. The Army Field Manual that Petraeus supposedly wrote (he co-signed the endorsment page) is unreadable.
As is so often the case these days, the best place to start learning about the subject is the good old free online dictionary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-insurgency
If you manage to absorb most of that, you’ll be more qualified to teach COIN at our military war colleges than the guys teaching it at our military war colleges. (I’m serious.)
Jeff
Brian, I’m thinking what we’re talking about is how during, say, the American Revolution, commanders would stand behind their lines of troops.. lines and lines and lines.. both sides would march out to the field, standing mere yards from each other.. then take turns shooting at each other.
Whomever had troops standing at the end won. Generals never engaged in war, they were nobles and had “rules” to fight by.
They were quite pissed when we started NOT wearing “uniforms” and simply having militias lay traps and ambushes (no neat lines to volley fire with), kill officers (BIG no no according to the rules of “war”), etc. etc.
And so, today, we have our troops in uniform, driving their tanks into cities, forming lines and advancing through locations layer by layer.
When your enemy is trying to “hold ground” in lines, and falling back layer by layer, you have a “rules of war” that people get used to. I think that’s what Erlanger is talking about.. these “gorilla fighters” are NOT in uniform, they DON’T have “strategic lines” that fall back and advance.. they are just a bunch of people with guns waiting for troops to get close enough to shoot, then they shoot, then they go hide in the population.
It’s what “average people” do when they are confronted with an invading army. At least, that’s what smart people who want to win, do.. Well funded militaries that are “games” for highly glammed up Generals to “play with” have some set rules. Basically, the “game” has been rigged to make sure the richest military wins.. but that’s not something poor, oppressed, abused human beings care about, they only care about driving out the invading force. They [the average joe trying to survive] don’t have “rules”, nor should they.
You want Hamas to fight like Israel? Give them $10 billion in aid for a year and a few months to buy gunships and tanks. Until then, there’s nothing to be said to Hamas when they are doing their damnedest to survive from a far more well outfitted invading army.
One of the things I’ve never understood is how I keep hearing generals being interviewed, and military reporter types, talking about how timing attacks shows sophistication. I don’t get it – is it really that hard to buy a few cell phones, set the on-board alarm clocks to the same time, make sure you’re hanging out in a coffee shop a half hour early so you’re not held up in traffic, and then attack your target when the alarm beeps?
From my admittedly inexpert perspective, it seems harder for a guerrilla force to build and acquire weapons than it is to time attacks to be simultaneous these days (10-20 years ago maybe not, but today? Technology is a huge equalizer). The pre-attack surveillance strikes me as more difficult as well.
A decent watch is all you need, not some fancy cell phone tech that’s trackable. Sure, synced time with GPS or off the net is “good”, but well made watches (even semi-cheapo digitals of today) keep time to within minutes a year, so if you sync an hour before an attack (even a day or more), you’ll be within a few seconds of each other.
What you’re hearing in those interviews is how “modern rules” came to be, in that you don’t stand much of a chance of winning when you can’t find your target. You’re also hearing how out of touch these people are in thinking that, somehow, being a poor arab nation means you’re dumb, slow, or incompetent. I’m guessing Ethnocentrism and the lie of “America is #1!!!” plays into a LOT of this. This isn’t a super power, they don’t have tanks, so they must be ignorant hillbillies who can’t fight their way out of a paper bag.
SURPRISE!
Savanster:
Uh oh. You just dumped acid on one of my raw nerves
.
I don’t know why it bugs me so much that this myth about the American Revolutionary War gets bandied about so often, but it does. C’est la vie.
The fact is that the guerrilla aspect of American tactics in the American Revolution is vastly overblown, mostly (I suspect) by dumbass teachers who took their own fourth grade history classes to heart. So, a few people took potshots at British troops returning from their raid on Lexington and Concord, and Francis Marion (the Swamp Fox) harassed British troops in South Carolina, and all of a sudden we have a vast guerrilla war perpetrated by the Americans.
First off, the Brits didn’t expect American militia to have uniforms, nor did they give much of a damn about them. Militia units were almost always very poor troops and easily swept aside in pitched battle, which is mostly where they came in contact with the British. American tactics changed over time. After Washington came to realize, from bitter experience, that his colonials would not stand against British regulars, he adopted a Fabian strategy which is not a guerrilla strategy, at all. Eventually, regular, uniformed colonial troops became a match, or near match, for British regulars, and he was able to employ them with success (note: Yorktown, Battle of).
It’s true that some American units possessing rifles attempted to pick off British officers, and with some limited success. The Brits ended up building rifle regiments of their own, including the Royal American Rifles, which they used to good effect as skirmishers against Napoleon (rifles of the time were inferior to muskets in fixed line of battle).
In the end, the colonials won the Revolutionary War because of Washington’s Fabian strategy and timely moves, the size of the terrain the Brits had to subdue, the Brits’ inability to close off the Hudson River and cut the colonies in half, a few well-fought battles in the South as Cornwallis moved north, French intervention, and the all-important French fleet that kept Cornwallis from being relieved at Yorktown. It wasn’t won because of guerrilla tactics.
I’m betting that guerrilla (partisan) units were more influential in the American Civil War than during the Revolution, but this myth persists.
Barry and Nathanial Greene’s guerillas were the key component of Washington’s fabian strategy, and it can hardly be said that Washington’s army was any more of a regular force than Hamas is.
I personally watch how I throw words like “dumbass” around.
You’re right. Timing an attack is not hard, especially if you keep things simple like guerillas tend to do.
Sorry Jeff. I don’t buy it. One could say, I suppose, that the Spanish partisans were a “key component” of Wellington’s success in the Peninsula against the French, but that doesn’t mean that the Spanish partisans won that campaign, does it?
Here’s a partial list of Revolutionary War battles. http://www.theamericanrevolution.org/battles.asp
Somehow, I don’t think Francis Marion would have won this one all by himself. Do you?
…Israeli officials accuse Hamas of hiding behind women and children…
Thank you, Jeff. I don’t think the idiocy of this accusation can be pointed out often enough or strongly enough. If someone is bombing the overcrowded ghetto where your wife and children live, where the fuck are you supposed to go? Next door, where your neighbor’s children live? The grocery on the corner, where your wife and mother shop? The street where your children walk to school and play? The school full of children which apparently doesn’t deter Israel anyway? There’s NO PLACE TO GO.
I didn’t mean to imply it was gorilla fighters that “won the war” during the Revolutionary War… I was pointing out that those British Officers were probably just as pissed at us as Erlanger is at Hamas.
The major difference is that Hamas has no “regular army” to fight with, they are all gorilla fighters.
And I was thinking of “The Patriot” when I was talking about what “we” did, so I apologize for not clarifying that it was not a national tactic, but something much smaller. I lived in Richmond VA for a time as a kid, so I do understand that we were meeting them on the battlefield just like the Brits expected us to, and that cost us a LOT of lives.. If we’d have had better technology to better hit targets from range, gorilla tactics might have been more wide spread.
The population density of the Gaza Strip is about 4800/square km. That’s about the same as the city of London (exclusive of the suburbs) or Shanghai. For comparison, the population density of New York City proper is around 10,500/square km and Los Angeles is only 3000/square km. It’s about the same as San Jose, CA (5100/sq. km) or Ft. Lauderdale, FL (4800/sq. km).
Sorry Savanster. I’m in a truly bad mood today, and I must have heard about five times over the last two weeks, “the British marched towards the Americans in line and the clever, brilliant Americans beat the butt stupid Brits by firing from behind trees.’ Or something to that effect. It’s what I was taught in elementary school (and we didn’t really address it much in later classes), and it’s just wrong. And, yeah, I’m a Virginian to my bones.
Actually, I think the tech was just fine. To me, guerrilla war (which means “little war”) is simply a means of using irregulars to hit at mostly soft targets when numbers are in the guerrillas’ favor. Supply lines, isolated and undermanned outposts, civilian targets, etc. can be seriously threatened by guerrillas.
A last note on the guerilla monkey business: war collegiates get into arguments galore about whether one factor or another was “decisive” in a given situation, and it’s usually a waste of breath. War is like everything else in that no one thing made it start or end.
In the case of our revolution, we most certainly employed a fabian strategy, and assymetrical warfare, and irregular warfare, and guerilla warfare, and maneuver warfare, and in a very few cases by attrition warfare and conventional warfare.
Most of the distinctions war scholars make are arbitrary and artificial.
Jeff
Jeff:
No problem with what you say, but the fact remains that the average American (at least in my experience; I have no hard data) appears to believe that the Continentals fought a purely guerrilla war against the Lobsterbacks, and I’m impatient with that interpretation. If that’s your interpretation, then so be it, but I think you would be in the minority.