[Marxism] Neve Gordon -- How to Sell 'Ethical Warfare'

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

How to Sell 'Ethical Warfare'

By Neve Gordon
Guardian  (UK)
January 16, 2009

_http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/16/gaza-middleeast1_ 
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/16/gaza-middleeast1)  

Claim  moral superiority, intimidate enemies and crush dissent - Israel's 
media  management is not just impressive, it's terrifying.


One of my students was arrested yesterday and spent the night in a  prison 
cell. R's offence was protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza. He joins  over 
700 
other Israelis who have been detained since the beginning  of
Israel's ruthless war on Gaza: an estimated 230 of whom are still behind  
bars. Within the Israeli context, this
strategy of quelling protest and  stifling resistance is unprecedented, and 
it is quite disturbing that  the
international media has failed to comment on it.

Simultaneously,  the Israeli media has been towing the government line to 
such a degree that no  criticism of
the war has been voiced on any of the three local television  stations. 
Indeed, the situation has become so absurd that reporters and anchors  are 
currently less critical of the war than the military spokespeople. In
the  absence of any critical analysis, it is not so surprising that 78% of 
Israelis,  or about 98% of all Jewish Israelis, support the war.

But eliding  critical voices is not the only way that public support has been 
secured.  Support has also been
manufactured through ostensibly logical argumentation.  One of the ways the 
media, military and government have been convincing Israelis  to rally behind 
the assault is by claiming that Israel is carrying out a  moral
military campaign against Hamas. The logic, as Eyal Weizman has  cogently 
observed in his groundbreaking
book Hollow Land, is one of  restraint.

The Israeli media continuously emphasises Israel's restraint  by underscoring 
the gap between what the
military forces could do to the  Palestinians and what they actually do. Here 
are a few examples of  the
refrains Israelis hear daily while listening to the news:

- Israel  could bomb houses from the air without warning, but it has military 
personnel  contact - by phone no less - the residents 10 minutes in advance 
of an attack to  alert them that their house is about to be
destroyed. The military, so the  subtext goes, could demolish houses without 
such forewarnings, but it  does
not do so because it values human life.

- Israel deploys teaser  bombs - ones that do not actually ruin houses - a 
few minutes before it fires  lethal missiles; again, to show that it could kill 
more Palestinians but chooses  not to do so.

- Israel knows that Hamas leaders are hiding in al- Shifa  hospital. The 
intimation is that it does not raze the medical centre to the  ground even 
though 
it has the capacity to do so.

- Due to the  humanitarian crisis the Israeli military stops its attacks for 
a few hours each  day and allows
humanitarian convoys to enter the Gaza Strip. Again, the  unspoken claim is 
that it could have barred these
convoys from  entering.

The message Israel conveys through these refrains has two  different meanings 
depending on the target
audience.

To the  Palestinians, the message is one that carries a clear threat: Israel's
 restraint  could end and there is
always the possibility of further escalation.  Regardless of how lethal 
Israel's military attacks are now, the idea is to  intimidate the Palestinian 
population by underscoring that the violence can  always become more deadly and 
brutal. This guarantees that violence, both when  it is and when it is not 
deployed, remains an ever-looming threat.

The  message to the Israelis is a moral one. The subtext is that the Israeli 
military  could indiscriminately
unleash its vast arsenal of violence, but chooses not  to, because its 
forces, unlike Hamas, respect human
life.

This latter  claim appears to have considerable resonance among Israelis, 
and, yet, it is  based on a moral fallacy. The fact that one could be more 
brutal 
but chooses to  use restraint does not in any way entail
that one is moral. The fact that the  Israeli military could have razed the 
entire Gaza Strip, but  instead
destroyed only 15% of the buildings does not make its actions moral.  The 
fact that the Israeli military could
have killed thousands of Palestinian  children during this campaign, and, due 
to restraint, killed "only" 300, does  not make Operation Cast Lead ethical.

Ultimately, the moral claims the  Israeli government uses to support its 
actions during this war are  empty.
They actually reveal Israel's unwillingness to confront the original  source 
of the current violence, which is not Hamas, but rather the occupation of  the 
Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. My student, R, and the other  
Israeli protesters seem to have understood this truism; in order to stop them  
from 
voicing it, Israel
has stomped on their civil liberties by arresting  them.
____________

Neve Gordon teaches in the Department of Politics  and Government, Ben-Gurion 
University of the Negev, Israel, and is the author of  Israel's Occupation, 
University of California Press, 2008. His website is
israeloccupation.com  
**************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy 
steps! 
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=De
cemailfooterNO62)
________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu