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<font size=3>Israel's blonde bombshells and real bombs in Gaza <br>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10119.shtml" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10119.shtml<br><br>
</a>Yosefa Loshitzky, <i>The Electronic Intifada,</i> 5 January 2009
<br><br>
<img src="http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/2/090105-yosefa.jpg" width=483 height=322 alt="[]">
<br>
Gaza's suffering is sanitized. (Hatem
Omar/<a href="http://www.maanimages.com/">MaanImages</a>) <br><br>
"I reiterate that we will treat the population [of Gaza] with silk
gloves"<br><br>
- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert<br><br>
I am not sure that most people understand the meaning of the name
"Operation Cast Lead" chosen by Israel for its murderous and
criminal attack on Gaza. The name is borrowed from a Hebrew nursery rhyme
which was (and may still be) very popular among Israeli children in the
1950s. In this song, a father promises to his child a special Hannukah
gift: "a cast lead <i>sevivon</i>." <i>Sevivon,</i> in Hebrew
(A dreidel in Yiddish) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during
the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Somebody, in the Israeli army, who
apparently feels nostalgic about his childhood, decided that if Israeli
kids would enjoy a <i>sevivon</i> cast from lead there is no reason why
Palestinian children would not appreciate it too. After all Operation
Cast Lead is not the first (and unfortunately, will not be the last) of
Israel's cruel war games.<br><br>
The cynicism embedded in the name, selected for what Ari Shavit, one of
Israel's most celebrated commentators, called "an intelligent,
impressive operation," is symptomatic to the cold, meticulous and
calculated cruelty with which this attack was "designed,"
"executed" and "marketed" to the world. As the
perpetrators themselves proudly boast, Operation Cast Lead is not only a
great military victory but also a success story of Israeli <i>hasbara</i>
(meaning in Hebrew, explanation, but practically referring to
misinformation, spin and lies).<br><br>
This great victory, as some (but not enough) noticed, prominent among
them, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in
the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is targeted against the
"wretched of the world." They are first, second and third
generation refugees (originating from the area currently being rocketed
from Gaza), the poorest people in the world, crammed in one of the most
densely-populated areas on the planet, already starved and weakened by
months of Israeli blockade. The sanitized language of the western media
calls it "a disproportionate reaction." But the ground zero
that it creates for the Palestinians, who, over the last decades, have
achieved the dubious honor of becoming the world's quintessential
victims, should be a "shock and awe" for any person who has
not, as yet, lost his or her basic humanity and sense of
justice.<br><br>
Israel's oiled propaganda-machine was further lubricated by its
self-acknowledged decision to select women as their <i>masbirim</i>
(misinformation spokespersons) so as "to project a feminine and
softer image." To add some cool glamour to Israel's hot lies, Tzipi
Livni, the state's foreign minister and a natural blonde, announced, in
response to calls for truce: "There is no humanitarian crisis in the
[Gaza] Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian
truce." The blonde offensive, led by the rising star of Israeli
politics, was fortified by a team of peroxide blonde Israeli women, whose
sex, lies and video games decorated TV screens worldwide. They explained
to the sympathetic world the hardships endured by the nuclear-armed
Israelis threatened by the crude rockets. After all, one Israeli was
killed in the last six months, while three other Israelis (one of them a
Palestinian citizen of Israel) were killed by rockets since Gaza has been
turned into a slaughter-house by the silk gloves of the Israeli
army.<br><br>
Quick to join this sugar-coated team of blonde bombshells were Israel's
most celebrated and translated writers abroad, Amos Oz and David
Grossman. The two project to the international community (i.e., the
so-called liberal west) what it regards as Israeli political conscience
and moral voice. Both are given a special stage by prestigious western
media platforms to express their opinions regarding major political
events involving Israel. They are Israel's <i>hamasbirim haleumim</i>
(the national spokespersons) a euphemism for national (or international)
deceivers, who whitewash Israel's dirty laundry in the global
launderette.<br><br>
Grossman (slightly more to the "left" than Oz) has obtained an
extra moral authority after his own tank commander son was killed in
Israel's murderous attack on Lebanon in 2006. In a militaristic society,
centered on the cult of the fallen soldier, a bereaved father (<i>av
shakul</i> in Hebrew) enjoys a special status. One could have expected
Grossman to "cash" in this newly gained status and come out
with a more courageous stance, one that would criticize Israel's immoral
massacre, rather than re-play the eternal Jewish victim, pleading
"to halt" Israeli fire while promising Hamas that: "Even
if you continue to fire on Israel, we will not respond by resuming
combat. We will grit our teeth, just as we did throughout the period
before our attack."<br><br>
Israelis, in Grossman's self-adulatory discourse, are <i>rahmanim bnei
rahmanim</i> (merciful sons of merciful fathers), dignified and righteous
victims. Perhaps this is what Olmert meant when he talked about the silky
touch of the Israeli gloves caressing "ordinary," non-militant
Palestinians in Gaza.<br><br>
One could think about a braver bereaved parent, Smadar Elhanan-Peled for
example. A mother who, after losing her daughter in a suicide bomb attack
in Jerusalem, publicly and openly put the blame for her daughter's death
on the Israeli government and its cruel policies towards the
Palestinians. Her teenage daughter, unlike Grossman's son, was not a tank
commander, not even a soldier but just an ordinary girl.<br><br>
The well-orchestrated propaganda machinery was also equipped with
Israel's most successful "secret weapons" of mass deception:
playing the role of the victim again. It is not an accident, therefore,
that, as the Israeli spin doctors themselves explained in an interview to
<i>The Jewish Chronicle,</i> that: "The international media were
directed to a press center set up by the foreign ministry in Sderot
itself so that foreign reporters would spend as much time as possible in
the main civilian area affected by Hamas rockets." The scenes of
crying, panic-stricken Israelis added some excessive emotionalism which
counter-balanced, but nicely complemented, the team of the icy blonde
offenders.<br><br>
The designation of the Gaza Strip and south Israel as a "closed
military zone," and the ban on media coverage of the Gaza carnage
contributes to the sanitized view of the Gaza story as manufactured by
Israel. The real horror and gore is reserved for the Al Jazeera's
spectators, particularly the Arab ones. Ghetto-under-siege Gaza remains
almost silent and partly invisible to the rest of us. We hardly hear or
see in mainstream media, testimonies from the ground.<br><br>
But we are bombarded by statements and "explanations" given by
Israeli officials and "international experts" who discuss the
"situation" calmly and "logically." After all, unlike
the hysterical, always shouting and crying Gazans, they have not been
bombarded by for nine days straight. They are interviewed in their
comfortable (probably leather-clad) offices. They look and sound like
respectable westerners, just like "us," and their foreign
minister is very calm and cool as her blonde hair obliges.<br><br>
A pioneering study by the Glasgow University Media Group on media
coverage of conflicts, taught us that if you look respectable and calm
you must be right. The Palestinians, by contrast, usually interviewed
when they are in a state of shock, look disheveled, disoriented, slightly
hysterical. And they are always surrounded by chaos and disorder. The
buildings around are destroyed, debris is scattered everywhere, and the
noise is unbearable (not to mention that they speak this incomprehensible
language). Is something wrong with them? Also, even when they are not
"extremists" they are always on the defense, almost apologetic,
trying to convince us that they are not terrorists, not even militants,
just ordinary people who want to survive, if not to enjoy this life. This
makes them look even more suspicious.<br><br>
After all, if they are not terrorists, what are they doing in Gaza? Gaza,
we should remember, was declared as "hostile entity" by Israel
in September of 2007. And since only the powerful have the power to
define, even if their definitions amount to tautologies or oxymorons,
they are still the accepted ones. According to this perverse logic,
produced in Fortress Israel and marketed to the whole world, any Gazan
deserves to die. Furthermore, despite the fact that Israel claims to
attack only Hamas and not the Palestinians (conveniently oblivious to the
fact that, as David Boardman reminds us, the majority of Palestinians
voted democratically for Hamas), it still clings to its old law of blood,
according to which, as John Berger observes: "One Israeli life is
worth a hundred Palestinian lives." So if in the course of the last
six months, one Israeli died as a result of a Hamas rocket attack, it is
perfectly logical that in a week 500 Palestinians will lose their lives
and thousands more will be injured. This is what the Israelis view as a
policy of deterrence.<br><br>
We should not forget, however, that behind this cruel apparatus of sex,
lies and video war games, a more "primitive,"
"organic," and tribal cruelty, usually well hidden from the
scrutiny of the outside world, is operating. Most people in the west do
not realize the indifference, and more disturbingly, the joy with which
Israelis receive news about the suffering of Arabs and particularly
Palestinians. It is more common in the west to see Arab and Muslim crowds
"dancing on the roofs" when missiles or rockets hit Israel (as
was the case during the 1991 Gulf War) but it is less common to see or
hear Israelis cheered at the plight of suffering Palestinians and Arabs.
More than once, I have encountered a jovial taxi driver applauding the
good news that he has just heard. "Let them all die in agony"
was a standard reaction that I have become accustomed to hear on a
day-to-day basis while I was still living in Israel.<br><br>
It was also not uncommon in my Jerusalem neighborhood -- even prior to
the onset of the second Palestinian intifada -- to see Israeli Border
Police brutally harass poor old Palestinians who came to collect some
"valuables" from the garbage bins of the affluent Jews. Time
and again it happened in front of a popular Jerusalem cafe, where people
were sipping their lattes, completely oblivious to the unfolding drama.
Nobody, among these beautiful people, seemed to be bothered by these
scenes, or to suffer from some disturbing reflections on the transfer of
guilt.<br><br>
Israel's cruelty -- manifested through its use (or rather abuse) of
language, and creative "strategy" of "re-branding"
its continuous assaults on the Palestinians as a war of defense, using
their tautological logic to justify the extermination of an
"entity" which they designate as "hostile" -- should
be interpreted in the spirit of Giorgio Agamben. The influential Italian
philosopher argued in relation to the Nazi death camps that the
"correct question to pose concerning the horrors committed in the
camps is, therefore, not the hypocritical one of how crimes of such
atrocity could be committed against human beings" but what were
"the juridical procedures and deployments of power by which human
beings could be so completely deprived of their rights and prerogatives
that no act committed against them could appear any longer as a
crime."<br><br>
We may well ask the same question today when listening to Israel's blonde
bombshells explain the bombs tearing apart the people of Gaza.<br><br>
<i>Yosefa Loshitzky is Professor of Film, Media and Cultural Studies at
the University of East London. Her most recent books are
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0292747241/theelectronic-20">
Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen</a> (2001) and (as editor)
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0253210984/theelectronic-20">
Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List</a>
(1997).</i> <br><br>
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