Gaza operatiom aimed to neutralize Hamas in case of Iran attack

Peace has broken out in Gaza with the strip in pieces, blasted to smithereens.
Now, the 1.7 million people who are confined there – it has been labeled a prison camp by more than one observer – can go back to hard lives of starvation and dependence and putting their terrorized lives back in order in a land of few rights and disproportionate suffering while the world salutes Israeli beneficence, US and UN “intervention,” and Egyptian diplomacy.

To listen to the IDF’s polished platoon of misinformers, Israeli should be congratulated, if not receive the Nobel Peace prize for how sensitive and “proportionate” it has been about dropping bombs with “surgical precision.”

Never mind that the Gaza death toll was over 162 including 36 children, with only five Israelis dead because of rockets from Gaza.

Alongside the brutality of the bombing campaign launched with an assassination of Gaza’ defense chief, Israel positioned its efforts as legitimately defensive with a campaign in all media that received no little scrutiny in Israel or the United States with President Obama recycling message points framed in Tel Aviv.

While Israel insisted on its holy duty to defend itself, Palestinians apparently had no such rights or interests. They were branded as the aggressors with PR narratives used repeatedly to manage and reinforce perceptions.

Wrote Seamus Milne in the Guardian: “The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, you’d think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power. Israel had every ‘right to defend itself’, Barack Obama declared…. Meanwhile, most Western media have echoed Israel’s claim that its assault is in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks; the BBC speaks wearisomely of a conflict of “ancient hatreds.”

Unlike most US media outlets, British media outlets looked into the political context in Israel where Netanyahu, like his predecessors, uses war and conflict as a tool for mobilizing support in the run-up for a reelection bid.

They also examine the events leading up to the war, as Milne did: “In fact, an examination of the sequence of events over the last month shows that Israel played the decisive role in the military escalation, from its attack on a Khartoum arms factory reportedly supplying arms to Hamas and the killing of 15 Palestinian fighters in late October, to the shooting of a mentally disabled Palestinian in early November, the killing of a 13 year-old in an Israeli incursion and, crucially, the assassination of Hamas Commander Ahmed Ja’abari last Wednesday during negotiations over a temporary truce.”

Israel has military units experienced in the tactics of waging media war, as AP reported.

“The Israeli government is trying to pre-empt a publicity pounding over its Gaza offensive by aggressively pushing out its version of events, furiously tweeting and Facebook posting updates from a “media bunker.” The instant they heard about a bus bombing in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, scores of tech-savvy youth in Israel’s government media command center in Jerusalem sprang into action. They began flooding social media with updates and created a graphic exclaiming: “We didn’t send in our ground troops, but they sent in theirs!”

Greg Mitchell, the Nation’s media watcher was watching coverage not on Fox or the networks but on MSNBC which is seen as the ‘liberal channel.” His conclusion: it was a disgrace.

“In the five hours of programming (or seven, if you count the re-runs), a little less than fifteen minutes was devoted to the air war in Gaza and Israel-which not only has American fingerprints all over it but also will immeasurably influence, and likely not in a good way, our interests and actions and threats against us abroad.”

Needless to say, exposing US support and funding for Israel is not a focus or even worth media outlets examining in any detail

‘Even the analysis by former President Jimmy Carter was relegated to small media outlets like the free newspaper METRO, where he was quoted as saying, “Israel should end its blockade of Gaza, and Western countries should work to facilitate reconciliation between Hamas and their Palestinian rival, Fatah. As long as Gaza remains isolated, the situation in and around Gaza will remain volatile.”

His key point: “Israel’s leaders don’t want a Palestinian state.”

And they don’t want an Iranian State either, at least not the current one. Moran Stern of Georgetown University explains in the Atlantic that the attack on Gaza is a step in preparing the war that Israel has been calling for against Iran. This strategy was invisible in most of the reporting.

He writes:
“Operation Pillar of Cloud is not aimed at destroying the Hamas regime in Gaza, but rather at paralyzing it militarily. Aside from the immediate respite it would provide southern Israel from rocket fire, this would also ensure that Hamas and Islamic Jihad stay out of the conflict in case Israel strikes Iran…. Though this may seem like a short- or medium-term achievement for Israel, it does provide important breathing room for an imminent operation against Iran.”

Beyond neutralizing Hamas, the current operation is helpful in other ways in preparing for an Iran attack. If Israel were to attack Iran, the likelihood of a direct Iranian or a combined Iranian-Hezbollah response against Israeli cities is high. The heavy exchange of fire with Gaza is an excellent opportunity for the Israeli authorities to examine the preparedness of its home front, emergency infrastructure, defensive military capabilities, and Hezbollah’s response.

Another objective, co-opting Egypt, turning the new government into an intermediary that can take sides.

And so, the truth slowly surfaces beneath the rhetoric by both sides about the events that are not mentioned in most of the press or in the commentary alongside the dramatic pictures of Hamas rockets and the much more devastating Israeli bombardment.

Truth has been called “the first casualty in war” – and this largely one-sided case of armed collective punishment is no exception