Gaza protest and the BBC

There is a protest over Israel's attack on Gaza outside the Israeli embassy tomorrow afternoon, Saturday 16 November 2012 from 1400-1600 at 2 Palace Green, London W8 4QB but given that you can't get anywhere near the embassy itself, protests against the BBC might be more appropriate.

See this post to Electronic Intifada:

In a new low for the BBC’s objectively pro-Israel coverage, the British state broadcaster seems to be doing its best to downplay the murder by Israel of family members of one of its own cameramen.

The 11-month-old son of BBC Arabic’s picture editor Jihad Misharawi was killed in Israeli tank shelling last night, along with his sister-in-law, according to BBC journalists on Twitter, and one report online (which didn’t even name him).

EI notes that there was a mention of the killing on Radio 4 by Jon Donnison but this may have been the result of EI's Asa Winstanley questioning him on Twitter:

@jondonnison Jon, on News at 10, why did you not mention your colleague's baby son killed by Israel last night? WP put on front page
— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) November 15, 2012

Asa reports:

Donnison did not reply (he is currently reporting from the highly dangerous situation in Gaza), but (to his credit) he did mention Misharawi’s loss during a live dispatch to today’s BBC News at One, speaking of civilian casualties “on both sides.”

We, of course, have been here before with the BBC in the case of Jeremy Bowen's driver who was killed by Israel in Lebanon when it looks like the Israelis were actually trying to kill Jeremy Bowen. This is from an old Independent:

The pivotal moment in his career - "in my life", he corrects - was the Israeli tank attack on the Mercedes car in which he and two colleagues were travelling through southern Lebanon in 2000. At the moment of the attack, Bowen and his cameramen Malek Kanaan were a short distance away doing a piece to camera. Their fixer and driver Abed Takkoush had remained in the vehicle to make a phone call to his son.

With the car in flames, the tank's machine gun prevented Bowen from going to his friend's aid. "I felt like a coward," he writes. "I decided I could not save him and that I had to save myself. The ending was not happy. Life is not a film."

Try searching for Malek Kanaan on the BBC news website. Just one report. Plus ça change. Change? What change?

Lebanese army no longer working for Israel

Gideon Levy has an informative piece in Ha'aretz today about the sheer hypocrisy of Israel's dealings with the natives and neighbours of Palestine:

And now that we've recited ad nauseum the explanations of Israel Defense Forces propaganda for what happened Tuesday at the northern border, the facts should also be looked at.

On Tuesday morning, Israel requested "coordination" with UNIFIL to carry out another "exposing" operation on the border fence. UNIFIL asked the IDF to postpone the operation, because its commander is abroad. The IDF didn't care. UNIFIL won't stop us.

At noon the tree-cutters set out. The Lebanese and UNIFIL soldiers shouted at them to stop. In Lebanon they say their soldiers also fired warning shots in the air. If they did, it didn't stop the IDF.

The tree branches were cut and blood was shed on both sides of the border. Shed in vain.

True, Israel maintains that the area across the fence is its territory, and UNIFIL officially confirmed that yesterday. But a fence is a fence: In Gaza it's enough to get near the fence for us to shoot to kill. In the West Bank the fence's route bears no resemblance to the Green Line, and still Palestinians are forbidden from crossing it.

In Lebanon we made different rules: the fence is just a fence, we're allowed to cross it and do whatever we like on the other side, sometimes in sovereign Lebanese territory. We can routinely fly in Lebanese airspace and sometimes invade as well.

This area was under Israeli occupation for 18 years, without us ever acknowledging it. It was an occupation no less brutal than the one in the territories, but whitewashed well. "The security zone," we called it. So now, as well, we can do what we like.

But suddenly there was a change. How did our analysts put it? Recently there's been "abnormal firing" at Israeli aircraft. After all, order must be maintained: We're allowed to fly in Lebanese airspace, they are not permitted to shoot.

But Tuesday's incident, which was blown out of proportion here as if it were cause for a war that only the famed Israeli "restraint" prevented, should be seen in its wider context. For months now the drums of war have been beating here again. Rat-a-tat, danger, Scuds from Syria, war in the north.

No one asks why and wherefore, it's just that summer's here, and with it our usual threats of war. But a UN report published this week held Israel fully responsible for creating this dangerous tension.

In this overheated atmosphere the IDF should have been careful when lighting its matches. UNIFIL requests a delay of an operation? The area is explosive? The work should have been postponed. Maybe the Lebanese Army is more determined now to protect its country's sovereignty - that is not only its right, but its duty - and a Lebanese commander who sees the IDF operating across the fence might give an order to shoot, even unjustifiably.

Who better than the IDF knows the pattern of shooting at any real or imagined violation? Just ask the soldiers at the separation fence or guarding Gaza. But Israel arrogantly dismissed UNIFIL's request for a delay.

It's the same arrogance behind the demand that the U.S. and France stop arming the Lebanese military. Only our military is allowed to build up arms. After years in which Israel demanded that the Lebanese Army take responsibility for what is happening in southern Lebanon, it is now doing so and we've changed our tune. Why? Because it stopped behaving like Israel's subcontractor and is starting to act like the army of a sovereign state.

Fisk also has an interesting take on the events of Tuesday just gone, in today's Independent.

Who bombed the Beirut synagogue?

Who do you think? Israel of course. Actually it's only a throwaway line in a Der Spiegel article about the Jews of Beirut but see this:

Israeli pilots bombed the house of worship because they believed that Palestinian weapons were hidden there.

How does anyone know what Israeli pilots actually believed?

Apart from that the whole article is worth a read.

Biden to Lebanon: how would like to be destroyed?

In a week or so, people in Lebanon go to the polls in an important elections that pits the parties that want to carry water for Washington against Hizbullah and its allies. Naturally, the U.S. has an opinion on how the people of Lebanon should vote; and they'd better listen or else...

Following the gross disniformation attempt against Hizbullah, courtesy of Der Spiegel, U.S. Vice President Biden visited Lebanon to lay down the law. (Here below you can see Bidden standing in front of a Korea War Howitzer, but I'm told the next shipment will also include battering rams and longbows.)

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Friday Washington would assess its aid to Lebanon depending on who won next month's election, but denied taking sides in a vote pitching a Western-backed coalition against Hezbollah.
...
"I urge those who would think about standing with the spoilers of peace not to miss this opportunity to walk away from the spoilers," Biden added in a veiled reference to Hezbollah, which opposes U.S. efforts to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict.
...
"We will evaluate the shape of our assistance program based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates," Biden declared.

Hezbollah criticized Biden's visit, which followed one by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in April, as meddling in Lebanon, and denounced U.S. support for Israel. (Reuters)

So, here are the choices:

If the elections goes to the Hizbullah, Washington is going to stop sending useless weapons to the Lebanese army (useful weapons it refuses to send anyway, as they might piss Israel off. Thus antiquated tanks, which can only realistically be used against refugee camps, are O.K., but anti-aircraft defense is verboten). Probably that would be followed by increasingly nasty rhetoric, calls for economic sanctions, pressure on banks to stop dealing with Lebanon, etc. Lebanon could find itself in the same situation as Iran and Syria. Eventually there would be another Israeli invasion.

If the elections goes to the pro-U.S. parties, Washington is going to funnel a lot of money to this government on condition that it uses the money to buy useless weapons and to create a corrput network of economic dependency and clientelism that would forever bind the top 1% of Lebanese society to the U.S. udder while letting the rest of the people sink ever deeper in poverty. Lebanon will become more and more like other U.S. client states, Egypt, Mexico, etc. However, given the existence of an armed population, the more likely outcome would be another civil war.

Not a pleasant choice.

I would expect the most likely impact of Biden's words would be to add a few more votes to Hizbullah. And that's a good thing.

Who is accusing Hizbullah of killing Hariri?

I didn't think too much of this Der Spiegel report when it appeared a few days ago. The headlined claimed that New Evidence Points to Hezbollah in Hariri Murder. But now a Time magazine blog is suggesting that the "new evidence" might actually be bogus:

However, any evidence that Hizballah either collaborated in or else masterminded the plot against Hariri would also be welcome news to the U.S, which considers the militant group to be a terrorist organization, and to Israel, which has been fighting with Hizballah ever since the group formed in 1982 to resist the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.

But there are reasons to view the Der Spiegel story with suspicion. A rumor that the UN tribunal had begun to focus on Hizballah had been making the rounds in Washington for weeks now. For it to have a public airing in the press just a few days ahead of Lebanon's parliamentary elections on June 7th -- a contest which the Hizballah-led opposition is poised to win -- makes it appear that someone opposed to Hizballah has been shopping this story around in a desperate measure to affect the elections.

The Der Spiegel theory also doesn't fit with the current understanding about the relationship between Hizaballah and Hariri. The former prime minister and billionaire businessman may have been one of the few other people in Lebanon whose outsized character could compete in the spotlight with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, but Hariri was not a threat to Hizballah's main concern -- its military infrastructure. True at some point, Hariri's push for greater autonomy could have been a problem for Hizballah, if independence came with pressure on Hizballah to disarm, or if it became difficult to get weapons over the Syrian border. But as my colleague Nick Blanford ponits out in his excellent book about the Hariri assassination, "Killing Mr. Lebanon" in the weeks before his death, Hariri began a series of clandestine meeting with Nasrallah in order to reconcile their two visions of Lebanon. Hariri believed that he was close to reaching an agreement.

For his part, Nasrallah heaped scorn on the Der Spiegel article in a speech last night, and accused the magazine of being party to an Israeli plot. Eventually, time will tell if Der Spiegel is right: sooner or later the UN tribunal -- which is ostensibly keeping its investigation secret -- will have to issue its findings and announce suspects if there are any.

This is all quite interesting to me now because I heard just recently that there was a group within the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission with US intelligence backgrounds promoting the idea that Hizbullah was connected to the Hariri case. The idea was rejected on the grounds of motive, since as the Time article said, Hizbullah had no motive. It was also believed that certain parties had a motive for putting Hizbullah in the frame. One such party is to be found just to Lebanon's south and, far too often, in Lebanon's south.

It's interesting too that Lieberman was jumping up and down for the arrest of Nasrallah within 12 hours of Der Spiegel's report hitting the streets. Does Israel's foreign minister really make his demands on the basis of what he reads and that anyone else can read in the papers?

Fresh doubt over Kuntar's monster status

Remember how Gabriel Ash cast doubt on the conviction of Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze who joined the Palestinian resistance as a teenager and wound up spending 30 years in an Israeli jail, accused of being "monster who shot a hostage in the back and then smashed the skull of his 4 year old daughter". He was re-demonised when he was released in 2008 as part of the deal following Israel's defeat in Lebanon back in 2006. In fact Gabriel managed to elicit hatred towards good ol' JSF from the Jewish Chronicle over that:

WE HATED:

“Now, if [Samir] Kuntar did what he was accused of, then he is no doubt a monster. But did he? The facts leave ample room for doubts. Kuntar maintains he did not kill either of his two alleged victims... i’ll believe it either way when the evidence is stronger than the say-so of israel’s racist, corrupt and cavalier court system.”

“GABRIEL”, JEWS SANS FRONTIERES BLOG, JULY 17

Well now fresh doubt is cast on the conviction by former senior Israeli police officer who is now a consultant psychologist, Dr. Zvi Sela in Ha'aretz. You have to scroll way down the article to find this:

You also met with Samir Kuntar of the Palestine Liberation Front, who murdered members of the Haran family in Nahariya and was released as part of the deal with Hezbollah that brought back the bodies of the two abducted soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

"We turned Kuntar into God-knows-what - the murderer of Danny Haran and his daughter, Einat. The man who smashed in the girl's head. That's nonsense. A story. A fairy tale. He told me he didn't do it and I believe him. I investigated the event within the framework of the next book I am writing, about hostage-taking incidents. As far as I am concerned, it was no more than a newspaper report. I sat with him; he was very intelligent. He was a squad commander at 17. He told me that his motive for infiltrating Nahariya was to take hostages. He said [his organization] knew that would both humiliate Israel and get them media publicity.

"He told me: 'If I had wanted to kill Danny and his daughter, I would have shot them in the house. I took them to the boat because I wanted hostages. I had no interest in hurting them. After I got them into the boat, wild gunfire started and I went back to help my squad on the shore. Danny, the father, kept shouting, "Stop firing, you crazy people." He and his daughter were found shot in the boat. I was on a small rise, shooting at your forces, and the boat was 20 meters away in the water, with Danny and the girl.'"

So you say that Kuntar did not murder Haran and his daughter?

"That is what he says, and in my opinion there is support for the fact that they were killed by fire from the Israeli rescue forces. You can accuse him all you like, but it was obviously the rescue forces that opened fire. There were all kinds of legends about Kuntar. People also said that he would return to being a terrorist [after his release]. Nonsense. He told me then explicitly that he would not go back to terrorism, that he was too old to execute operations - and that's also clear. For the same reason, I see no problem in releasing terrorists with blood on their hands in return for [kidnapped soldier] Gilad Shalit. I get the feeling the country is waiting for his body.

"It is clear to me," Sela continues, "that there are some battles you have to back away from. There is no reason to kill that kid, to wait for his body. One way or the other, we will not come out the victors in the Shalit story. From my experience, most of the terrorists that we release do not return to terrorist activity. And the prisoners we are quarreling over in connection with Shalit's release do not constitute a strategic threat to Israel - only a blow to the ego of our leaders."

And a blow to the Jewish Chronicle apparently.