The Electronic Intifada
Press gives Israel pretext to attack Gaza
David Cronin Media Watch 27 June 2018
The kite is now Israel’s most fearsome adversary.
(Dawoud Abo Alkas / APA images)
Journalists in Britain and Ireland often refer to the summer months as the
“silly season.” Little of consequence is happening, the media apparently
decide, so we can treat trivia as newsworthy.
I’m not sure if hot weather is to blame but much recent coverage of Gaza is
quite silly. Perspective has been discarded as kites and balloons have been
depicted as major threats.
These are “weapons that are designed to kill,” according to an Israeli military
spokesperson quoted in a Financial Times feature. Fixated on these high-flying
incendiary devices, the feature omitted a pertinent fact: nobody has actually
been killed by them.
Silly reporting of this nature serves Israel well. An aggressive state that has
committed a number of massacres this year alone is cast as a victim.
Intentionally or not, the press is offering pretexts for Israel to launch
another major offensive against Gaza. Any such attack would then be presented
as an act of retaliation – or even of self-defense.
While every form of Palestinian resistance gets maligned, Israel’s weapons
industry is treated with the greatest imaginable respect.
Dozens of Israeli firms took part in a Paris fair earlier this month.
Eurosatory – as the event is called – was jointly organized by France’s defense
ministry and arms lobby.
Hype
Some journalists helped out Israel’s exhibitors in Paris by suggesting that
their new weapons could be used in Gaza.
Ynet, an Israeli website, claimed that a new drone on display at Eurosatory had
been developed “to counter the threat posed by incendiary kites.”
Although the drone is named Firefly, it is impossible to believe that it
suddenly materialized following the very recent discovery that the kite is
Israel’s most fearsome adversary. Rafael, the Israeli firm behind the Firefly,
did not mention kites or balloons in an announcement about its booth at
Eurosatory.
Rather, it stated that the drone had been “designed for urban area warfare,” in
which the “enemy is behind cover.” How can kites or balloons be considered as
“behind cover” if they are flying in a clear blue sky?
Fox News is similarly known to hype up Israel’s weapons.
A puff piece on Fox’s website about a new Israeli armored vehicle – the Mantis
– celebrated its aesthetic appeal. The Mantis looks like it has been built of
Lego and has been described as “part aircraft cockpit and part sports car” and
as a “space buggy,” Fox reports.
Fashion accessories
Weapons are occasionally portrayed almost as fashion accessories. Army
Recognition, an outlet specializing in the arms trade, tells its readers that
new Israeli guns are available in four shades, including “flat dark earth” and
“sniper gray.”
The maker of these guns, Israel Weapon Industries, supplied rifles used to kill
and maim unarmed protesters in Gaza over the past few months. But that fact is
nowhere to be found in the aforementioned Army Recognition story.
The color of the weapons has been deemed more significant than the crimes from
which their manufacturers seek to profit.
Reporters who fetishize Israeli weapons are failing – perhaps deliberately – to
investigate what is really going on. Among the issues that should be probed are
Israeli boasts that its weapons are “battle-tested” or “combat proven” –
euphemisms for how they have been used to kill and wound Palestinians.
Shir Hever’s latest book The Privatization of Israeli Security sheds light on
this sordid reality. Hever demonstrates how Israel has become increasingly
reliant on selling its tools of oppression abroad.
A phenomenal 80 percent of all weapons produced by Israel are exported,
according to data cited by Hever, a left-wing economist. Relative to population
size, Israel is the world’s largest vendor of arms.
Israel’s arms sales rose markedly following Operation Cast Lead, its attack on
Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.
Desmond Travers, a retired Irish colonel, was part of a United Nations team
which conducted an inquiry into that offensive. He argues that the Israeli arms
industry is cynically exploiting the use of its products against Palestinians
for marketing purposes.
“Any company known to have tested weapons on non-combatants should be precluded
from exhibiting those weapons in open, democratic countries,” Travers told me.
Governments that buy from Israel’s war industry are allowing Israel to convert
the suffering it inflicts on Palestinians into shekels. Surely, that warrants
more attention than the threats posed by kites and balloons.
