On Flashpoints, Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the
University of Illinois, described how, over the years, he has been
systematically banned from expressing his views on Israel's ethnic cleansing
of Palestine by government entities and various publications and news
outlets. The latest is Al Jazeera, now controlled by Arab countries allied
with Israel.
Miriam
Has Israel Become a Middle Eastern Dictatorship?
Screen shot / YouTube
The Israeli army snipers who were ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian
protesters last Friday at the Gaza border, killing 17 outright and wounding
hundreds of others, were acting according to the contemporary script of
Middle Eastern dictators.
The Israeli army initially admitted in a tweet that the tactic was
premeditated and precise, but then deleted the tweet, as the Israeli peace
group B'tselem pointed out:
Sociologists who study how people mobilize to challenge an oppressive
situation have noted that one possible response of any regime under pressure
from below is to raise the cost to dissidents of their social action.
Imposing the death penalty is, of course, the ultimate in raising such
costs. But randomly shooting into crowds is more than just threatening
people with death. It is a means of terrorizing the dissidents. Simply
taking hundreds of people out and executing them has dangers as a course of
action for the oppressive rulers as well, inasmuch as it threatens to create
large numbers of martyrs and impel reprisals. Moreover, large massacres can
impose costs on the regime in the form of boycotts from other states or
civil society actors. Randomly shooting into a crowd, killing a few people
but wounding many others, has the advantage for the regime of creating
uncertainty and fear.
This tactic was deployed during the youth protests of 2011. Secret police in
Tunisia shot into peaceful rallies in provincial towns in late December 2010
and early January 2011 and then denied it and ordered the state press not to
cover it. Blogger Lina Ben Mhenni took her smartphone to the hospitals down
there and got pictures of and interviews with the victims and put them up at
her blog (very bravely, since the regime could have direly punished her; but
it fell before it could do so).
(See my The New Arabs.)
In Sana'a, Yemen, during the demonstrations at Change Square, dictator Ali
Abdullah Saleh had his troops occasionally fire into the crowd. In one such
incident one night, 350 people were injured. Over time, a couple thousand
people were killed in this way (that is, being sniped at by professional
soldiers while peacefully protesting-I'm not talking about clashes among
fighters).
In Syria in 2011, the regime would station snipers on rooftops above town
squares around the country. In each town, a few people would be killed at
each demonstration this way by army live ammunition. The regime was trying
to discourage rallies by raising their cost, and such indiscriminate fire is
a force multiplier, since the uncertainty of where the bullet will come from
and whom it will strike is excruciating. Syria's brave protesters never were
cowed by this cowardly tactic, and even today would protest if they were
allowed to.
One downside of sniping unarmed noncombatants is a negative reaction from
other countries. Israel's current far right-wing leadership does not worry
about that. They think that the U.S. and the U.K. are the only countries
that matter. Like Putin, they have tried to shape the U.S. political scene
to suit them, targeting uncooperative congressmen and senators for
reprisals. This is not only a matter of campaign donations by the Israel
lobbies, but of government covert ops. They also do this in the U.K.
Of 535 members of Congress, exactly one-Bernie Sanders-has condemned the
massacre.
The Likud Party can also rely on an American television news blackout.
Palestine is almost never reported on on the airwaves and when it is, it is
replete with propaganda. There are even problems with print news.
@robertmackey observed,
"
"By my count, there are currently 163 stories on the @nytimes home page and
116 on @washingtonpost but not 1 is about the Israeli massacre in Gaza,
which was featured in print by both. There is also no mention among 126
stories on @CNN's US home page, or in 100 stories on @latimes ."
Academics in communications departments should look into this remarkable
phenomenon. How it is arranged?
Be careful, though-even professors can be fired.
It may be objected that Israel is not a dictatorship like that of Yemen or
Syria. But for Palestinians in the occupied territories, that is precisely
what it is. The Israeli military controls the Palestinian West Bank, though
it farms out some duties to the PLO. The Israeli military encircles and
blockades little Gaza, with its 1.8 million concentration camp inmates.
Stateless Palestinians experience Israeli military rule as a foreign
military dictatorship. Palestinians are probably a majority of the people
ruled by the Israeli government.
Moreover, dictators such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak had no bigger boosters
than the Likud government in Israel.
So it is not really surprising that the Israeli military would adopt the
same tactics as its peers, with which it often collaborates in maintaining
the rotten status quo.
-Juan Cole / Informed Comment
Ju
