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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israeli journalists join the live-streamed genocide</h1>
<span class="gmail-post-author"><span class="gmail-by">By</span> <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/author/jonathan-ofir/" title="Posts by Jonathan Ofir" class="gmail-author gmail-url gmail-fn" rel="author">Jonathan Ofir</a></span>
<span class="gmail-meta-sep"></span>
<span class="gmail-date-link">October 28, 2024</span>
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<img src="cid:ii_m2ukutv40" alt="Screenshot-2024-10-28-at-3.21.48 PM-1024x576.png" width="394" height="222"><br><p>The level of militant lust for revenge in Israeli society is
uncharted these days. The latest example came on Friday, when Israeli
Channel 12 journalist Danny Kushmaro released a 27-minute <a href="https://www.mako.co.il/news-n12_magazine/7c2e4b3aeab21910/Article-2d1f751fd83b291027.htm">report</a>
on Israel’s destruction in southern Lebanon. The title of the
presentation was “This is not the Third Lebanon War, it is the last
one.” </p>
<p>Channel 12 is the most-watched commercial channel, it’s considered
centrist and mainstream. In the report, Kushmaro is embedded with Golani
infantry soldiers riding into a village in southern Lebanon, called
Ayta Al-Sha’b. The village is almost entirely razed to the ground, but
there are still some buildings left. Kushmaro’s report is replete with
vitriol, where he repeatedly refers to “these evil people”, whom he
chides for “hating Israel”. </p>
<p>At the end of the story, Kushmaro is offered the task of pressing a
button to denonate a building. “A moment before we leave, we have one
mission left,” Kushmaro narrates. The officer is seen telling him of a
house nearby, where he claims that “there is direct line of sight to
Dovev and Meron – from here they shoot.” Kushmaro presses the button and
the house explodes, serving as the climax of the whole report. Kushmaro
signs off with a close-up where he says “Don’t mess with the Jews.”</p>
<p>Twitter/X user B.M. (<a href="https://x.com/ireallyhateyou">@ireallyhateyou</a>) has prepared an <a href="https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1850611339422519451">8-minute cut version</a> providing essential scenes from the report, with English subtitles. </p>
<h2><strong>Dahiya redux</strong></h2>
<p>In this report, Kushmaro is literally promoting the notorious “Dahiya
doctrine,” an Israeli military doctrine promoting the intentional
large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure which was named after
the Lebanese neighborhood in southern Beirut following its destruction
by Israeli forces in 2006. The Dahiya Doctrine was coined by former
centrist Minister Gadi Eisenkot, when he was Chief of Northern Command
in 2008. Eisenkot <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/israels-gaza-onslaught-is-the-next-stage-of-the-dahiya-doctrine/">outlined</a> “what will happen” to any enemy that dares attack Israel:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in
every village from which Israel is fired on,” Eisenkot declared in
Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot in March 2008. “We will apply
disproportionate force on [the village] and cause great damage and
destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages,
they are military bases.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The latter words are repeated almost verbatim in the report. The
Channel 12 report’s subtitle reads, “This is not a village, it’s a
military base,” referring to Ayta Al-Sha’b. These words are attributed
to the Golani brigade commander in the subtitle, but in the report
itself, it is Kushmaro himself who shares this formulation. </p>
<h2><strong>A reflection of the Israeli center</strong></h2>
<p>This is really unbelievable on so many levels. First, in this report
we are essentially seeing here the same phenomena that the world has
watched in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/3/what-did-al-jazeeras-investigation-into-israeli-war-crimes-in-gaza-reveal">countless films</a>
Israeli soldiers have published of themselves live-streaming their own
genocidal acts to the world, posing and boasting as they blow up entire
residential blocks in Gaza. But now, we are seeing a journalist do it,
as part of his reporting. He is literally and actively participating in
an armed attack, as a journalist. </p>
<p>Second, Israel is constantly engaged in the attempt to tarnish
Palestinian journalists and associate them with armed forces or
resistance organizations – as it has recently done in the past week with
<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2024/10/28/the-take-israels-campaign-against-al-jazeera-journalists-in-gaza">six Al-Jazeera journalists</a>. The campaign is meant to legitimize Israel’s systematic targeting of them, whereby now <a href="https://tass.com/world/1863511">at least 180 Palestinian journalists</a>
have been killed in Gaza since October 7 last year – that’s more than
double the number of journalists killed in World War II (69), or the
Vietnam War (63). That pattern is <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/10/25/israeli-air-strike-kills-journalists-in-southern-lebanon">continuing in Lebanon</a>. </p>
<p>But every accusation is a confession—and Danny Kushmaro is now in the
lead, boasting of being a journalist who is actually an active
combatant, engaging in an act that is very possibly a war crime in
itself, <em>and filming himself doing so!</em> Regardless of the
legality issue, Kushmaro is now openly blurring the distinction between
the protected status of a journalist and that of a combatant.</p>
<p>Kushmaro even received vehement criticism from the right. <a href="https://x.com/theshelterradio/status/1850209070445138023">Shai Goldstein</a>,
from the rightwing channel 14 program “Fathi and Shai,” complained that
“a journalist is not supposed to take an active part in the fighting. A
journalist is a civilian. It’s not in order and it’s not legal. Whoever
permits a citizen to activate explosive devices during combat should
stand military trial. The boundaries have been completely blurred. Order
must be re-established.” </p>
<p>But Goldstein is not a very good example of such legality and order. He is the one who <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/the-main-suspect-in-the-sde-teiman-gang-rape-case-is-now-a-media-star-in-israel/">hosted one of the gang rapists</a>
of the Sde Teiman case on his show two months ago, almost drooled over
him, and said passionately: “I think that if I was there and I had the
chance, I would go all out on these people.”</p>
<p>One could assume that if Goldstein had been given the same position
as Kushmaro, he would probably have found it hard to resist pressing
that button. </p>
<p>Kushmaro is a representation of where the Israeli center is. The Dahiya doctrine is now the Israeli zeitgeist. </p>
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