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<span class="post_date" title="2015-12-03">December 3, 2015</span>
<h1 class="headline" itemprop="name"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/03/reclaiming-palestine-how-israeli-media-misread-the-intifada/"
rel="bookmark">Reclaiming Palestine: How Israeli Media Misread
the Intifada</a></h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/ramzy-baroud/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a></span> </p>
<div class="post_content" itemprop="articleBody"><b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/03/reclaiming-palestine-how-israeli-media-misread-the-intifada/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/03/reclaiming-palestine-how-israeli-media-misread-the-intifada/</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<p>Israeli commentators, Yaron Friedman, of “Ynet News” and Haviv
Rettig Gur, of the “Times of Israel” are clueless about the
driving force behind the Palestinian mobilization and collective
struggle. In two recent articles, and with unmistakable conceit,
they attempted to highlight what they perceive as the failure of
the current Palestinian uprising, or ‘Intifada’.</p>
<p>Gur argues that ‘the terrorism’ of the Palestinians is not a
surge of opposition to Israel but a “howl against the pervasive
sense that resistance has failed”. He reduces the Intifada to
the mere act of alleged stabbing of Israelis, and points out to
the painful truth that the Palestinian Authority ‘elites’ are
paying lip service to the ‘martyrs’, while “simultaneously
acting with determination on the ground to disrupt and stop
attacks”.</p>
<p>In his long-winded article, “Losing Palestine”, Gur essentially
claims that the current struggle against Occupation stems mostly
from internet fervor and is more a deceleration of defeat than a
strategy for victory, and that no Palestinian leader dares to be
the first to accept this.</p>
<p>Friedman, on the other hand, describes the ‘knife Intifada’ as
a ‘fire without coal’; that the “insane actions of the stabbers”
is designed to ignite religious fervor, ultimately aimed at
blaming the Jews.</p>
<p>Those who launched the Intifada “have no real internal or
external support (financial or with weapons) and it broke out at
a time when the nightmare of all the Arab world’s leaders is the
social protests turning into anarchy,” he wrote.</p>
<p>There is little sense in arguing against the unsympathetic
approach Zionist commentators use to describe Palestinians or
their insistence on seeing Palestinian collective action,
violent or otherwise, as an act of ‘terror’; on their refusal to
see any context behind Palestinian anger or on how they inject a
religious narrative at every turn, and lob ‘anti-Semitic’
accusations unfairly, whenever they see fit.</p>
<p>But what is particularly interesting about the Israeli take on
the Palestinian Intifada, as presented by Friedman, Gur and
others in the media, including from within the Israeli political
establishment, is the attempt to display an exaggerated sense of
confidence, that unlike other uprisings, this one is a farce.</p>
<p>In fact, the Israelis are certain that the uprising is likely
to deflate once the limited tools at its disposal are contained.
This supposition has led Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Tzipi
Hotovely, to meet with representatives of YouTube and Google “to
discuss ways to cooperate in what she calls the fight against
‘inciting violence and terrorism’,” reported MEMO, citing
Israeli daily, ‘Maariv’.</p>
<p>This hasty self-assurance among Israeli state officials and
media is predicated on several suppositions:</p>
<p>First, while the PA has not yet moved to take part in crushing
the Intifada, it has done its utmost to thwart the people’s
effort at mobilizing Palestinians beyond the limited confines of
the ruling Fatah faction and its worthless promises of peace and
statehood.</p>
<p>The PA knows well that if the Intifada escalates beyond its
current scale, it could undermine – if not entirely challenge –
the PA itself, which has served for many years as a line of
defense for the Israeli Occupation. Thanks to the ‘security
coordination’ between the Israeli army and the PA, Palestinian
resistance in the West Bank has, until recently, been largely
contained.</p>
<p>Second, Hamas, although it has openly called for an escalation
of protests against Israel, is swamped in its own problems. The
siege on Gaza, tightened further with the closure of the Rafah
border and the desperate need to rebuild what successive Israeli
wars have destroyed, makes it difficult for Hamas to take part
in any effort that could open up another war front with Israel.</p>
<p>One must recall that the Israeli war on Gaza in the summer of
2014 was, itself, an Israeli attempt at redrawing the battle
lines. At that time, a momentum for an Intifada was taking shape
in the West Bank following an increase in Israeli army and
settler violence against Palestinians. The war on Gaza managed
to change the narrative of that budding conflict into an Israeli
war aimed at defending its own borders, as Israeli hasbara
dictated. Israel is now relying on the assumption that Hamas
would avoid, at least for now, a repeat of that scenario which
cost Palestinians over 2,200 lives and thousands of wounded and
maimed, let alone the massive destruction of the already
impoverished Strip.</p>
<p>Third, Arabs are consumed with their own regional fights,
whether for political or sectarian domination. Almost every Arab
country is somehow, either fully or partially, involved or is
affected by the various wars and conflicts under way in Syria,
Libya, Egypt’s Sinai, Iraq and Yemen. The supposedly successful
Tunisian model is suffering its own fallout, too, from militant
violence, whether homegrown or that which spills over from
violent borders.</p>
<p>Previous intifadas succeeded, or so goes the Israeli logic,
because of Arab backing. But the most that Arabs have done is to
pay lip service and nothing more. In fact, if the PA itself is
keen on spoiling popular Palestinian initiatives, little can be
expected of the Arabs, who are busy fighting one another.</p>
<p>However, the Israeli argument is, as has always been the case,
narrow-minded in its view of history, or it conveniently applies
history to fit whatever political argument Israeli officials or
mouthpieces deem handy. Just a few weeks ago, Israeli Prime
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, absolved the Nazis from the idea
behind the Holocaust and pinned the blame on the Palestinian
Mufti instead.</p>
<p>Previous intifadas, but more importantly the 1987 ‘Intifada of
the stones’, was not constructed as a strategy for liberation,
but was a spontaneous reaction to a series of Israeli
provocations, and the adjacent failure of the Palestinian
leadership, all positioned within the larger context of the
ongoing Israeli occupation.</p>
<p>Palestinians do not revolt when ‘the time is right’ for them to
do so, but whenever their collective suffering has culminated to
the point that they cannot be silenced anymore.</p>
<p>Those, whether Israeli or even Palestinian intellectuals, who
opine about the need for the intifada to do this or that, change
directions or tactics, stop altogether or move forward, are
simply unable to understand that the momentum of a collective
struggle cannot be dictated from above.</p>
<p>This is not to argue that a grassroots, genuine Palestinian
leadership that operates outside the confines of fatalism and
defeat as demonstrated by the PA is not a necessary step needed
to galvanize the popular efforts. But that is a decision to be
taken by the youth themselves, and its timing and nature should
be determined based on their own reckoning.</p>
<p>The Israelis are counting on their shoot to kill policy. The
Palestinian leadership is waiting for the anger to fizzle out
before resuming its endless quest for a frivolous peace process
and financial handouts. The Intifada itself, however, operates
on the basis of an entirely different arithmetic: a collective
spirit that can neither be intimidated by violence nor procured
by funds.</p>
<p>In fact this is precisely why the Intifada started in the first
place and, as long as the factors that led to its inception
remain in place, it, too, is likely to continue and escalate,
not for the sake of liberating Palestine through some magic
formula, but for the urgent need to regain national initiative,
redefine priorities and a new sense of collective, as
Palestinian first and foremost.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Dr. Ramzy Baroud</strong>
has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He
is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media
consultant, an author of several books and the founder of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a
Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
His website is: ramzybaroud.net</em> </p>
</div>
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