[WCUSP] Fw: "Good News" From Gaza, Propaganda or Humanity?

[Libby or Mort Frank]

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Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 8:26 PM
Subject: "Good News" From Gaza, Propaganda or Humanity?








  Tel Aviv University
  Good News from Gaza / By Ran HaCohen

  Letter From Israel/Antiwar.com

October 17, 2006


Fleeing from Nazi Austria on the eve of World War
II, Sigmund Freud was asked to sign a statement
that saying he was not mistreated. The old Jewish
psychiatrist is said to have asked whether he
could add: "I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone."

Israeli Hotel Spoils Palestinians

Since the abduction of an Israeli soldier on June
25th, the world's biggest open-air prison - Gaza
Strip - has been subject to a continuous,
murderous Israeli attack, with several
Palestinians killed every single day, and scores
injured. While Lebanon was flattened by millions
of Israeli bombs, nobody cared about Gaza.
Following the Israeli defeat in Lebanon, the
frustrated army can now take revenge on the
helpless Gazans with renewed destructive
energies. Gaza is under total siege, with poverty
at 75 percent, no electricity in the intolerable
late-summer heat, let alone proper medical care.

But even in these darkest days there is a single
ray of light. There is someone who does care
about the people of Gaza, someone who does see
them as human beings deserving food, shelter,
freedom and dignity. Guess who. Mother Teresa?
Close, but no cigar. The answer is: the Israeli
army. At least if you ask Israel's by far most
popular portal, YNET, the website of Israel's
most selling daily Yediot Achronot. Read along
(Hebrew; translation: ynetnews.com).

"IDF sets up detention center near Gaza:
Palestinian men held at special temporary center
set up near Gaza as IDF embarks on wave of
arrests "The Israel Defense Force set up a
temporary detention center near the border with
the Gaza Strip where dozens of Palestinian men
arrested by troops operating in the tiny coastal
strip are interrogated each day."

So far so good. Or not so good. One wonders what
would come next: a couple of critical questions?
A short comment about the illegality of this
procedure? After all, international law
explicitly forbids the abduction of people across
the border of an occupied territory, so that all
Israelis involved in this "detention center" can
be accused of war crimes. Or, if international
law doesn't count, what about the Israeli law?
Under what paragraph are these people arrested,
living in an area from which Israel claims to
have withdrawn? Perhaps a short comparison
between the number of Israelis abducted by
Palestinians (soldiers: 1; civilians: 0;
children: 0) and the huge number of Palestinians
abducted by Israel? Not quite. Shall we at least
live to see who the arrestees are, what their
stories may be? Well, let's read on.

"The army said soldiers have been instructed to
treat the detainees in a humane manner and
stressed that most men are released after
undergoing interrogation. Released Palestinians
are given a package of food staples like sugar,
oil and flour. 'We can be proud of the IDF's
treatment of the Palestinians,' reservist
soldiers operating the center said. Since
yesterday, arrestees have been pouring in,' a
soldier told Ynet. 'In the afternoon a number of
Palestinians arrived, whose ages ranged from
15-year-old teenagers to adults aged 45. We made
every effort to give the Palestinians a good
feeling, we set up tables, benches, and we even
set up shades so they don't have to stand in the
sun.' Soldiers said the arrestees did not seem
scared, and some were seen laughing. Most
Palestinians who arrived at the center on
Thursday were neither blindfolded nor handcuffed.
'Every one of them was taken to a tent for
interrogation. Those with links to terror groups
were taken by bus to another facility and the
rest were released to Gaza within hours,'
soldiers said. 'We received orders to serve them
hot meals, and the brigade set a table with bread
and chocolate and served them drinks,' reservists
said. 'We felt great pride for the treatment, for
treating the Palestinians with respect, even
those suspected of terror activities.'"

So now we know it all. "Detention center" must be
a leftist or anti-Semitic defamation. What the
Israeli army runs just outside Gaza is in fact a
luxury hotel with full board. Soldiers work in
room service, giving Palestinians a brief relief
from the terrible conditions in Gaza: water,
shade, food, chocolate, hot meals, even a good laugh.

Not only adults enjoy the hotel's services: even
children can be surprised by the merciful Israeli
soldiers who take them out of their wretched beds
in the middle of the night, transport them by
tanks and armored personnel carriers
(air-conditioned buses to be introduced shortly,
please forgive the inconvenience) to this
army-run oasis, ask them how they feel
("interrogation"), spoil them with the hotel's
excellent services, and consequently release them
well-quipped with a bag full of goodies.

The soldiers also say that most Palestinians were
neither blindfolded nor handcuffed. This is
hardly confirmed by the three photos illustrating
the report, in which, out of a dozen Palestinians
pictured, 12 are clearly seen blindfolded (and
most probably handcuffed as well). This, however,
is quite understandable: the rumor has it that if
the precise location of the IDF Luxury Hotel were
compromised, hundreds thousands of starving
Palestinians would apply, at least for free
bed-and-breakfast. Indeed, one can most highly
recommend this detention center to everyone.


This YNET report is a quite a typical example of
the of the Occupation's atrocities and war
crimes. Much (though by far not all) the
information is open and accessible to the public.
Every Israeli can now know that Israel runs a
concentration camp near the allegedly
no-longer-occupied Gaza, with large numbers of
Palestinians, including children, abducted from
the Strip and held there for unknown periods of
time, some released, some moved on for further
"treatment." But this piece of information - to
which the article dedicates approximately 50
words - is flooded by more than 200 words of pure
propaganda, like in the darkest dictatorships,
which frames the news item in a safe way and
silences in advance any critical questions or
thoughts. The impression the reader gets is that
there's some camp out there where Palestinians get more than a fair 
treatment.

Typically, the propaganda quotes just one side:
the army, the soldiers, i.e., the perpetrators.
Not a single victim is interviewed: we don't know
under what circumstances they were kidnapped, we
don't know if a single word of the soldiers is
true, we don't know what the arrestees have to
pay for their release (collaboration, as usual?).
Even the fact that children are kidnapped doesn't
arouse any question on the part of the
"journalist" or his editors in the "free press."

And, to be on the safe side, this pure propaganda
doesn't leave out the inevitable comparison
between Israel - the regional power that
strangulates Gaza, kills and wounds its citizens,
men, women and children, by conventional and
satanic experimental weapons, and abducts them
arbitrarily to its camps - and the Palestinian
side, which abducted one Israeli soldier and
harasses the Israeli civilians living around Gaza
by primitive missiles. That's what the distorted
comparison between victims and perpetrators looks like:

"It is sad that on the other side respect to
human life in not as such, as they use children
as human shields and an innocent population is
under constant threat because of terror groups."

Not a single evidence is given, but why expect one in a propaganda item.

Controversy

In the readers' reactions, the so-called
backtalks, however, one can see the Israeli
democracy at work. Democracy encourages
controversies, as we all know. This report too
aroused a heated debate. While many readers took
great pride of the army's humanitarian behavior,
even more readers disagreed, being highly
critical of the army's conduct. Highly critical,
to say the least. Here: "Why arrest? Kill them
off!," several readers suggested. "Why give them
chocolate? Torture them to find our kidnapped
soldier!," urged another. "We pay with our lives
for our morality; the terrorists are human
trash!," preached yet another Israeli reader. Out
of 120 backtalk items, less than 5% questioned
the validity of this cheap propagandistic report.
So either the framing worked perfectly, or the
website's backtalk editors completed the job by a suitable selection.


http://www.miftah.org