Propaganda, democracy and war: justifying Israel’s war crimes in Gaza(published as Gaza: Propaganda does nothing for peace, indeed)
By Kim Bullimore
www.palestinechronicle.comIn the midst of Israel’s massacre of more than 800 people in Gaza, including more than 200 children and 100 women, as well as 3000 injured, apologists for Israel’s war crimes have sought to defend the Zionist state. Not only have many of them sought to blame the Palestinian people for Israel’s massacre in Gaza, ignoring the fact that Palestinians have suffered 60 years of non-stop aggression at the hands of the Israeli Zionist state, many of them have also sought to paint Israel as the beacon of democracy and pluralism in order to silence Israel’s critics.
A recent example of this can be found in the article which appeared on January 9 in Australia’s only national newspaper, The Australian. In the article, Propaganda Does Nothing for Peace, Niv Horesh - an Israeli-Australian – seeks, in part, to shut down critics of Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza by regaling us with examples of Israel’s supposed democratic credentials [1]. In the article, Horesh writes, “There are very few countries in the world that would allow demonstrators to denounce their government while hoisting enemy flags in the midst of war. Yet, this is precisely what happened last week in Tel Aviv: not a single Israeli flag was in sight amid hundreds of Palestinian, communist and anarchist banners. Such is the strength of Israeli democracy that not a single incident interrupted the demonstration”.
Protest in Tel AvivWhat Horesh and other Israeli apologists conveniently leave out is that the Israel’s security forces have been dragging in for questioning Palestinian citizens of Israel who have opposed the war, as well Israeli Jewish activists, who have taken a stand against the brutal massacre in Gaza. In the past two weeks, hundreds of Palestinian Israeli and Jewish Israeli activists and citizens opposed to the war have been arrested, jailed and prosecuted for speaking out and taking a stand. According to the Haifa based, Mossawa Centre, which advocates on behalf of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, more than 200 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship alone had been arrested by the Israeli state for demonstrating between December 27 and December 31 [2]. On January 6, Palestinian News Agency, Maan News, reported that the number had increased substantially and that more than 300 Palestinian Israeli youth had been arrested by Israeli police. Maan noted that “the youth had been placed for the most part in administrative detention [detention without charge or trail] or put away on minor charges for short periods of time” [3]
On January 2, this beacon of democracy arrested and jailed for almost three days more than 20 Israeli anti-war demonstrators, who demonstrated outside Sde Dov airbase. The Israel state, claiming that the anti-war demonstrators were a threat to the security of the state, sought to have the three day incarceration extended until the end of legal proceedings, which could take several weeks or months to conclude. The request for the extension, however, was over ruled by the presiding judge [4]
19 activists arrested after blocking entrance to Israeli air force base protesting the killing in Gaza. Tel Aviv, Israel, 2.1.09
Photo by: Yotam Ronen/ Activestills.org
19 activists arrested after blocking entrance to Israeli air force base protesting the killing in Gaza. Tel Aviv, Israel, 2.1.09
Photo by: Yotam Ronen/ Activestills.org At Haifa University on January 6, hundreds of Israeli Border Police – the Israeli security force that regularly brutalises Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – stormed the campus, attacked students, arresting 15 anti-war student activists [5] According to students who were at the demonstration more than 250 Border Police attacked the anti-war protest without provocation.
Israeli anti-occupation group, Anarchists Against the Wall, who were recently jointly awarded the Carl Von Ossietzky Human Rights medal in Berlin with the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, have reported that many of their members and supporters, as well as other Israeli anti-occupation activists are being harassed, arrested and had their houses raided by the police as a result of being involved in anti-war activism.
Protest in Haifa
On January 7, in an editorial titled “The Right to Express Protest”, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper noted that “in the last few days, the Shin Bet security service questioned dozens of Arab Israelis, while others were subjected to warnings aimed at deterring them from participating in demonstrations against the Israel Defense Forces operation in the Gaza Strip” [6]. The editorial went onto note that Israeli “security services are using intimidation tactics to prevent legitimate protest against the current campaign [in Gaza].
Just one day after the editorial appeared, Haaretz ran a news article which outlined how four Palestinian citizens of Israel, aged between 19 and 26 years, had been arrested by the Israeli state for holding a demonstration outside the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv. According to the January 8 report, Israeli state prosecutors sought to restrict the movement of the anti-war protesters, saying their protest during a time of war “damages national morale” [7].
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