Israel is losing the war - A year of Point/Counterpoint

After a year of scouring the international English-language press and responding in this column to published commentary about Israel, my conclusion is this: Israel is losing too many battles in the press, and is in danger of losing the war.

For the past year, I have responded on this blog to opinions published in Britain, Canada, Ireland, The United States and Australia regarding Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, calls for the United States and the European Union to isolate Israel, criticism of Israel's record of human rights and civil liberties, the Israel-Palestinians peace negotiations, and of course the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Goldstone Report.

While I occasionally agreed with some of the criticism, much of my response was devoted to the disproportionate condemnation and singling out of Israel which seems to characterize much of the media coverage of Israel today. Without a doubt, criticism of Israel would be substantially more effective if it didn't appear so overwhelmingly biased, hyperbolic and even hypocritical.

But in all opinion pieces published in the print media, the topic that has of late commanded the most attention by far has been the calls for war crime tribunals against Israeli leaders and military officers. These calls have particular shock value because of the picture they conjure up in the reader's mind of the Nuremberg war tribunals, thus tacitly equating the victims of the alleged crimes to the most vicious war criminals in recent history.

This is media warfare, and this is the field in which Israel has performed so poorly.

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A letter to Richard Goldstone

Counterpoint to:

Justice in Gaza
For the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations [in Gaza]  must be held to account."
Richard Goldstone
The New York Times
September 17, 2009

Dear Dr. Goldstone,
You have just published one of the most damning condemnations of Israel in the country's modern history. Apart from accusing Israel of war crimes, severe human rights violations, and possibly crimes against humanity, you have shown contempt for Israel's widely respected judicial system (respected even by Israel's Arab neighbors) as well as for the level of freedom and civil liberties enjoyed by its citizens.

Please be aware, Dr. Goldstone, that few in Israel will argue, least of all I, that there is much to criticize in Israel. Israel has never claimed to be a perfect society (which society is?), and in fact, nowhere is there more criticism of Israel than within Israel itself.  Self-criticism has been defined here as a national pastime.
 
The commission of inquiry that you led was established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, an organization described in The London Times as "an international body utterly lacking in credibility or balance" and whose actions were unsupported by the European Union, Canada, Japan, and Switzerland. So we thought we knew what to expect from your investigation.

It was therefore quite interesting to read in The New York Times your explanation of the proceedings that led you to produce and publish such a report.

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Turbulence ahead for Washington & Jerusalem

Counterpoint to:

Baker's Ghost in Cairo
"It was in the time of the former secretary of state [James Baker], two decades ago, that the United States last had a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Roger Cohen
The New York Times
June 3, 2009

Here's a question for you. Who was the previous prime minister of Israel? Before Binyamin Netanyahu. Many, including New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, will tell you that it was Itzhak Shamir. There was no Itzhak Rabin, no Ehud Barak, no Ariel Sharon, and no Ehud Olmert governments. They never happened.
 
At least that is the impression you will get from reading Cohen's latest opinion column, and those of many others in the world media who are preparing public opinion for President Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday.

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How Israel lost a friend

Counterpoint to:

The Limits of Force in the Middle East
"Between the late 1970s and 1990s, I was one of those foreigners who progressively fell out of love with Israel."
Max Hastings, former editor of The Daily Telegraph
University of Oxford Lecture

On May 7, Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, went to Oxford University to tell his story of Israel and how he fell out of love with the country and its people.

During more than fifty years, it has been my experience that most of those who fell in love with Israel ultimately fell out of love with the Jewish state.  Among Israel's friends and foes, I have seen admiration and respect for Israel survive the test of time, and occasionally among its friends even affection, but not love.

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Lawfare and media warfare

Counterpoint to:

A step toward ending Israel's impunity

The appointment of Richard Goldstone to head a United Nations fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip represents an important first step toward ending Israel's impunity from international law.

George Bisharat
The Baltimore Sun
April 16, 2009

In 1999, two Chinese military officers, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, wrote a book entitled Unrestricted Warfare. In it, the two authors propose tactics that, in the event of a high-tech war, would compensate developing countries, in particular China, for their military inferiority to the United States.

The authors view the 1991 Gulf War, with all its complex political alliances, battle technology, and global media coverage, as a pivotal point in warfare that has fostered new principles and battlefields unfamiliar to today's professional military people. Among these new battlefields the authors list media warfare (manipulating what people see and hear) and international law warfare (using the law as a weapon - later dubbed 'lawfare').

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A history of Israel in ten minutes

Counterpoint to:

My play is not anti-Semitic
"I find it extraordinary that, because my play talks about the killing of children in Gaza, I am accused of reviving the medieval blood libel that Jews killed Christian children and consumed their blood."

Caryl Churchill
The Independent (London)
February 21, 2009

Consider the movie Gone with the Wind, the American civil war saga, or Lawrence of Arabia, about the legendary British officer who led the Arab revolt against the Turks. They may be great movies, but they are long - more than three hours. Some people don't have the patience or the desire to sit through hours of storytelling. 

Such was my old friend, Dr. Yossi Shiftan, who had a magnificent video library that contained many of the great classics, several of which were only about ten minutes long. Yossi could show you his edited version of High Noon with just the gunfight so you wouldn't have to watch Garry Cooper and Grace Kelly arguing over whether they should get out of town. In his shortened version of Gone with the Wind you could watch Atlanta burn to the ground without having to follow the events that led to the destruction of the city.

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Understanding the 'war crimes' accusations

Counterpoint to:

Israeli attacks on Gaza are war crimes
"Why is the Israeli cause so exceptional that war crimes, committed every day, are routinely forgiven, and even applauded, in the West? Can the reason be racist? Or religious"

Bob Ellis
The Canberra Times (Australia)
January 15, 2009

Bob Ellis, writing in Australia's Canberra Times, believes that Israel is guilty of war crimes and its leaders should be tried by an international tribunal. Ellis predicts that "Tzipi Livni will stand trial soon on a charge at least of collusive multiple manslaughter and will end her days in a fairly comfortable air-conditioned cell in The Hague." Personally, I very much doubt that that will happen, but Ellis is certainly entitled to unleash his imagination.

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Everybody's wrong (except Turkey)!

Counterpoint to:

 Looking past Gaza
"The short-sighted refusal to talk to the Hamas Islamists encouraged Israel to continue and intensify its blockade, provoked Hamas's subsequent increasingly violent response, victimised the population of Gaza, and has made it much harder to stop the fighting once it started."

Simon Tisdall
The Guardian (London)
December 7, 2008

Anyone who has been following the international press over the past two weeks is undoubtedly familiar with the downpour of news reports, opinion pieces, op-eds, editorials, and other commentaries on the war in Gaza that have been virtually dominating much of the world media. While this is certainly not unexpected in the Arab and Islamic press, it is a surprising phenomenon in the European media where it far surpassed the 2006 Lebanon war.

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Hijacking the United Nations

Counterpoint to:

Nations must unite against racism
"Regrettably, last January Canada announced its intention to withdraw from the Durban review conference. And this month so did Israel. What message does a state boycott send to those who are suffering from racism?"

Navanethem Pillay
The Guardian (London)
December 16, 2008

Israel and Canada have announced that they will stay away from the forthcoming United Nations conference on human rights, dubbed Durban II. The previous World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, from which the United States and Israel withdrew their delegations, was one of the greatest fiascos in the history of UN conferences.

At Durban I, which has since been branded the racist conference on racism, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, declared "I am a Jew", while waving a book of antisemitic cartoons distributed to the delegates.

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Do We Need Tough Love from Hillary?

Counterpoint to:

Try tough love, Hillary
"Nobody's been more solidly pro-Israel than Hillary Clinton. But to be effective, she must become a tough taskmaster. That is in the best long-term interest of Israel."

Roger Cohen
The New York Times
December 1, 2008

Columnist Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times, believes that the next US secretary of state should apply pressure on Israel, and should do so as a friend. Israel, he implies, is incapable of doing what is good for it and therefore needs a friend, such as Hillary Clinton, to force it into acting in its best interest. She must be "a tough taskmaster", opines Cohen.

To some of us this attitude may sound extremely condescending, yet it is not new. The United States has applied pressure on Israel on numerous occasions in the past, and there are some prominent Israelis who share Cohen's view that this is what we now need. 

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