Burying Gaza: How Israel's Military Put Away the Oranim Revelations

Related Post: The Israeli Military and Gaza’s Civilians - Returning to The Oranim Transcripts

I was working yesternoon afternoon when the news came through, via the Jerusalem Post, that the Israeli military had categorically dismissed accounts --- all but two from the graduates of military course at Oranim College ---of the abuse and killing of civilians in the Gaza War.

I was struck by how quickly the Israel Defense Forces threw out the claims, noted by nine Israeli human rights groups: ""The speedy closing of the investigation immediately raises suspicions that the very opening of this investigation was merely the army's attempt to wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity during Operation Cast Lead."

Even more blatant, however, was the disconnect between the military's "findings" and the actual statements of the Oranim soldiers.

For example, the Post noted the IDF's conclusion report on "Aviv", who "claimed to have known of a soldier who had been given orders to fire at an elderly Palestinian woman. During his interrogation, Aviv admitted he had never witnessed such an incident and that he'd based his statement on a rumor he had heard."

In fact, it is unclear from the original testimony "Aviv" never claimed in his testimony, reprinted in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz and on this website, whether he witnessed the order by a company commander to a sniper squad to kill the woman, who was walking in a prohibited area. It is clear, however, that he was under orders to use deadly force to ensure "that we wouldn’t get hurt and they wouldn’t fire on us":

[We were] to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier..., to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside....From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled.

Significantly (and unnoted in the Post article, "Zvi" follows the testimony of "Aviv" with the clarification that this was "force protection" and not the deliberate murder of civilians:

Aviv’s descriptions are accurate, but it’s possible to understand where this is coming from. And that woman, you don’t know whether she’s … She wasn’t supposed to be there, because there were announcements and there were bombings. Logic says she shouldn’t be there. The way you describe it, as murder in cold blood, that isn’t right.

Put bluntly, the Israeli military invaded one of the most densely-populated areas in the world and marked off parts of it as "prohibited", with shoot-to-kill orders against anyone who trespassed. The Israeli military could have stated this: inevitably civilians were going to die in a war.

Even this, however, could not be admitted. Instead, the Oranim testimony had to be discredited: "A claim made by a different soldier, Ram, who had supposedly been ordered to open fire at a woman and two children, was also found by the probe to be false."

This was a blatant distortion of the testimony of "Ram", who made clear that it was not he but a sharpshooter who killed the woman and children after a breakdown in communication:

There was a house with a family inside. Entry was relatively calm. We didn’t open fire, we just yelled at everyone to come down. We put them in a room and then left the house and entered it from a different lot. A few days after we went in, there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sharpshooters’ position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go, and it was was okay and he should hold his fire and he … he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders.

In the Gaza War of public opinion, Israel's effort was to ensure that it always held the higher moral ground. That, however, is difficult when Israel and not Hamas had overwhelming force, and that force --- inevitably --- was being used against civilians. In recent weeks, reports by bodies such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch had detailed the humanitarian costs, but the Oranim revelations were even more damaging. They came from within Israeli ranks.

So Tel Aviv had to step up its "information" campaign. Reporters were summoned to a briefing by an armoured unit commander, Colonel Roi Elkabets, to give "examples of what he said were the dilemmas they faced". Ethan Bronner of The New York Times wrote accordingly, "Officers are stepping forward, some at the urging of the top command, others on their own, offering numerous accounts of having held their fire out of concern for civilians, helping Palestinians in need and punishing improper soldier behavior".

And the campaign, far more effectively than the military invasion of Gaza, worked. Today's British and American media faithfully cite the IDF's findings on Oranim, "The Israeli military on Monday rejected allegations that its soldiers committed atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza" (CNN); "Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, the IDF's advocate general, found no evidence to support the most serious accusations, including alleged instances in which civilians were shot without cause" (Washington Post); "The military police found that the crucial components of their descriptions were based on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge" (New York Times).

None of those reporters referred to the original Oranim transcripts.

War is about winning, not about the truth. So one can set aside last week's commentary by Larry Derfner, ironically in the same Jerusalem Post that moved quickly to put the military's "findings2:

We can refuse to think about this, we can tell ourselves that Oranim is a hotbed of left-wingers, we can bury this so the anti-Semites and The Hague don't use it against us. Or we can admit the truth and decide that we have to change.

We can be loyal to Israel's image. Or we can be loyal to our sons.

Mr Obama's War? Waiting for the US Strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan

Related Post: Afghanistan - Former Taliban Ready for Talks with US

So what is the Obama Administration's new approach to American intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Really. What is it?

Administration officials had set up the media this week for a dramatic re-launch of the US strategy, based on a series of reports for the President. The latest study, headed by Obama campaign advisor and former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, was on Obama's desk on Monday. US envoy Richard Holbrooke was holding forth for the media and briefing NATO members; less publicly, CIA Director Leon Panetta was visiting Pakistan. The President was telling 60 Minutes on Sunday night, "What we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an exit strategy."

This spinning, however, does not add up to a new approach. For Afghanistan, there is still no detail on US troop levels, American non-military programmes, the contributions from Washington's allies. And for Pakistan, which Obama's people are now putting as Number One Crisis, there is no sense of how the expansion of missile strikes and covert operations matches up to a political approach, either towards the "sanctuaries" in the Northwest Frontier Provinces or towards the central Government in Islamabad.

What we have gotten instead from the US is vacuous cheerleading posing as "analysis". Jim Hoagland on The Washington Post wrote a love letter to "Gen. David Petraeus and diplomat Richard Holbrooke [who] are as smart as they come". Even worse, commentators like Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post and David Brooks of The New York Times have been treated to a Grand Tour of US bases in Afghanistan so they can parrot the words of American military commanders, "Over time this will work -- it has worked over and over again through history" (Diehl) and "When you put more boots on the ground, you not only augment your army’s firing power, you give it the capacity to experiment". (Brooks)

This puffery should be set aside for the leaked ideas coming out in British newspapers. The outgoing US ambassador in Afghanistan, William Wood, tells The Observer that "America would be prepared to discuss the establishment of a political party, or even election candidates representing the Taliban, as part of a political strategy that would sit alongside reinforced military efforts". The Times writes of an American approach linking economic aid, a build-up of Afghan security forces and police, and a crack-down on heroin production.

Most striking, sources tell The Guardian, "The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president." Expecting that President Hamid Karzai will win re-election in August, despite its best efforts to build up a rival candidate, the US will insist on a "Chief Executive" or "Prime Minister".

The US strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan --- really, what is it?

Jon Stewart: Can "Mainstream" Media Put Him Back in His Box?

Related Post: Flashback - Jon Stewart, Politics, and Crossfire in 2004

For a sharp-eyed, detailed examination of the issues of collusion between business and media highlighted by Stewart, see the analysis on Naked Capitalism.

One of the side effects of The Daily Show's takedown of financial pundits, and specifically CNBC and Jim Cramer, has been a sustained attempt by "proper" journalists to put Jon Stewart back into a comedian's chair. Leave aside, for the moment, the noticeable silence of the immediate victim, CNBC, and its partner channels NBC and MSNBC. Consider instead the Twitterings of media monitor Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post:

I depict Stewart as an avenging media critic, saying what others can't or won't, but of course he can fall back on "I'm just on a comic".

Of course Stewart, as a non-journalist, doesn't have to be balanced or give [the] other side.

Artificial "balance" can be silly when facts are on one side. But journalists, unlike comics, have an obligation to include the other side.

What Kurtz is spectacularly missing, in the CNBC incident, is that most "journalists" failed to pick up on the seriousness of the economic situation, accentuated by speculation, some very dodgy financial and investment practices, and a lack of regulation.

In a Post article, Kurtz did offer the anodyne statement, "Business journalists generally failed to anticipate the magnitude of the Wall Street collapse," but he was blind to the sharper point of Stewart's critique: in some cases, business journalists walked hand-in-hand with the markets and investors they were supposedly observing. As long as the market rose and the shakiness of the loan structure was not exposed, everyone could be blissfully happy; the only problem was when the economic walls came tumbling down.

That's when Stewart's line, "It's not a f****** game," is not just a shriek of anger (again, as the media is framing it); it is the pertinent point that the "mainstream" media didn't make. Indeed, they dare not make it because the questions raised about the system fuelling the artifice of wealth would have been too daunting.

Stewart did not choose to be the point-man on this journalistic challenge; had Cramer kept his mouth shut at the start of last week, this would have been a (very good) one-off Daily Show shot at financial expertise. But, when Cramer's snide retort at the "variety show" of a "comedian" opened up the issue, Stewart on the challenge.

He did so seriously. Effectively. Critically. And, if the "journalists" fail in the future to do their job, I will be grateful if he does so again.

The Freeman Case and US Foreign Policy: Don't Say "Israel". Or "Lobby".

Two days after the withdrawal of the nomination of Charles Freeman as head of the National Intelligence Council, primarily because of his views on the Middle East and specifically the Israel-Palestine situation, the unspeakable is being spoken:

Was it the "Israel lobby" that bumped him off?

And as breath-taking as that question might appear, even more breath-taking are the evasions to tuck that question back in a box in a very dark place.

To be fair, both The New York Times and The Washington Post offer consideration of the reasons for Freeman's demise. In the Times, Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper assert, "Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post" while Walter Pincus in the Post notes "a debate over whether powerful pro-Israel lobbying interests are exercising outsize influence over who serves in the Obama administration".

Even in these stories, there is some tiptoeing. Pincus, for example, says, "a handful of pro-Israeli bloggers and employees of other organizations worked behind the scenes" against Freeman. Anyone paying even cursory attention to blogs, Internet chatter, and the pages of key journals like the Weekly Standard and The New Republic from mid-February, just before Freeman's nomination was public, knows that this was a very large handful.

Pincus also offers the official disclaimer of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that it "took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it," before letting us in on the open secret: AIPPAC spokesman Josh Block "responded to reporters' questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him".

If Pincus was being direct, he would note that this was precisely the strategy of the Dump Freeman campaign: if AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobbyists were seen as openly sabotaging the nominee, they would have been accused of political intervention. Instead, with "private" bloggers and editorial-page scribblers cherry-picking from Freeman's career, notably his 1999 e-mail on Tiananmen Square, distorting his remarks about the Middle East, and on occasion labelling one of his supporters as a "pederast", the Congressmen who eventually took Freeman down could see they were merely reflecting the legitimate concerns of individual constituents.

Mazzetti and Cooper are much better in reporting the developments without hesitation:

The lobbying campaign against Mr. Freeman included telephone calls to the White House from prominent lawmakers, including Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat. It appears to have been kicked off three weeks ago in a blog post by Steven J. Rosen, a former top official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.

On the Middle East, Mr. Rosen wrote, Mr. Freeman’s views are “what you would expect in the Saudi Foreign Ministry,” rather than from someone who would become essentially the government’s top intelligence analyst....

Pro-Israel groups weighed in with lower-ranking White House officials. The Zionist Organization of America sent out an “action alert” urging members to ask Congress for an investigation of Mr. Freeman’s “past and current activities on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Unfortunately, such revelations raise the uncomfortable prospect that any Government nominee holding views that are unacceptable to staunch supporters of Israeli policy will be blacklisted. So some of the gatekeepers of Washington knowledge are furiously trying to sweep the story away.

Foreign Policy blogger David Rothkopf, motivated primarily by hatred of Stephen Walt, the leading proponent of the "Israel Lobby" thesis, snaps:

My problem comes with the implication that those who support Israel are necessarily twisted by dual loyalties into positions that undermine the interests of the United States.

Walt made no such implication in his analysis, which we posted earlier today. There was no reference to "dual loyalties", with its insinuation of un-American activity; rather, Walt contended that those opposing Freeman equated US interests with "unconditional support" of Tel Aviv. This, he argued, would cause "further erosion in America’s position in the Middle East, and more troubles for Israel as well" (an argument that Freeman has also made).

Of course, one can challenge Walt's contention that a detachment of US policy from its current backing of Israel would be beneficial to American interests. This, however, is not the aim of Rothkopf's distortion. It is a double distraction, both from meaningful consideration of the attack politics in the Freeman case and from a wider analysis of the US-Israeli relationship.

Still, for chutzpah, Rothkopf is outdone by his Foreign Policy colleague, Dan Drezner. Drezner flees from reality by making up motives for Freeman: "He was not all that eager to re-enter government life." To be blunt, Chaz wasn't tough enough; in fact, he wasn't even as tough as a girl: "If Hillary Clinton had been in the same situation as Freeman, there's no way in hell that she withdraws her name."

So there you have it. No need to worry that this incident, with all its real (rather than Rothkopf-ian) implications for US foreign policy and intelligence, has anything to do with the manoeuvrings of those opposed to any interrogation of the American position on Israel.

It's all down to Stephen Walt's lack of scruples and Charles Freeman's lack of cojones.

New US, New Middle East? The Syria Initiative

The major follow-up to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Middle Eastern trip has come not in Israel and Palestine, where there is too much uncertainty for any American move, but in Damascus. On Saturday two US envoys, Jeffrey Feltman of the State Department and Daniel Shapiro of the National Security Council, sat down with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem. They were accompanied by the senior American official in Damascus and two other Syrian advisors for 3 1/2 hours before Feltman and al-Moallem had a private discussion.

The meeting on its own is significant, as the US has no Ambassador in Syria. Expectations are even higher, however, because Damascus could be the lynchpin for an Obama strategy. The core success of Israeli-Syrian talks would be complemented by Syria's distancing from Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, giving the US greater room for manoeuvre on the Israel-Palestine negotiations and an advantage over Tehran in Washington's conception of the new battle for the Middle East.

After the meeting, Feltman was kind in tone toward Syria, “The Syrians have concerns with us as well. I’m sure the Syrians will be looking at choices we will be making in the future just as we will be looking at choices Syria is making,”. However, he was non-committal on specifics beyond the platitude, “We found a lot of common ground today."

The Syrians also gave nothing away. In particular, there is no sign that Damascus, in return for economic aid and an American "balance" on direct discussions with Tel Aviv over issues such as the Golan Heights, offered up the concessions that Washington wants on the bad guys in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and Tehran. So the most that can be said is that yesterday's event, while of symbolic importance, is only the opener in a long process.

There has been surprisingly low-key coverage of the meeting in the US press. CNN has a report, but The New York Times recycles a downbeat Associated Press story, "Amid Low Expectations, American Officials Hold Talks in Syria", and The Washington Post overlooks the event altogether.

Syrian specialist Josh Landis offers excellent coverage on his blog, featuring Rami Khouri's upbeat (overly upbeat, in my opinion) assessment of a fundamental shift in US policy:

What we have going on, I suspect, is that the two leading proponents of Western arrogance in the form of colonialism and neocolonialism - the United States and the United Kingdom - have recognized that their approach has failed, and that they are better off having normal diplomatic talks and negotiations with the three leading centers of resistance to them, namely Iran, Syria and Hizbullah.