I was going to title this post with ‘…on the tragedy in Gaza’ or ‘…on the massacre in Gaza’, but I simply can’t decide on what it is. The first implies that the slaughter from the sky, and now from the ground, is fate, like thunderbolts fired by the gods.
The second demonises Israelis, and I cannot really claim to understand the motives and motivations of the Israeli government, military, although I think I have some insight into the fear and paranoia of the population. After all, I live in a land composed of anxious (post-)colonisers.
So, I have two observations from this vast, antipodean distance.
Framing matter: Humanitarian vs War Frame in the reporting of the Gaza war
The first relates to media frames. Much of the mainstream press have eschewed the ‘normal’ media frame that would apply in the context of a siege, bombardment and invasion of a city. We might expect that if this battle occurred in the context of a corner of Africa forgotten by the west, that the humanitarian frame would apply, where viewers are invited to understand the events in terms of human suffering and cruelty. We would be introduced to the Palestinians as ‘victims’ and the Israeli leadership as ‘aggressors’, along the lines of, say, the Sudanese government and its persecution of the Darfuris.
Instead we have something of a more conventional war reporting frame, where human suffering features, but it is understood much more in terms of its inevitability in the context of a dispute between two parties whose truth claims we are unable to substantially verify. There is a stated equality between the military might of the Israeli military and the admittedly lethal, but rarely so, rocket attacks by Hamas militants and those from associated groups.
This is achieved primarily through the way space is given to both Palestinians and Israelis. Their claims, that on the one hand the Israelis are propagating war crimes against a virtually defenceless population, and on the other hand, that Israeli has an essential need to defend its population from aggression, are treated as equally valid even as some editorialising by journalists challenges this.
Al Jazeera adheres to the first ‘humanitarian’ frame, and expresses a moral outrage against Israel that matches that which it, and many other news organisations vent against someone like Robert Mugabe, dictator of Zimbabwe. Switching between this and other networks sometimes feels like stepping between different realities, as different worlds crystallise from the same human matter, which turns inexorably red each day that passes , no matter how it is spun.
Asymetrical Bullshit
An underside to Israel’s military might is its discursive prowess. Israel’s main defence, whenever it is confronted by journalists with the consequences every time a bullet gores through flesh or a shell buries a child in the remains of her home, is that ‘Israel only targets Hamas operatives and facilities and, regrettably, sometimes, civilians die. Hamas, however, deliberately targets civilians in southern Israel’.
I could be wrong, but from what I understand about Hamas’ rockets, is that they are very basic and crude and lacking the precision to damage Israel’s military infrastructure in any case. So many of them fall in the middle of a street, a field, and terrify, but rarely result in death.
It is horrific that someone could fire a rocket with no knowledge of who might be annihilated as a consequence. But this fundamental truth should not confuse us, and obscure the asymmetry between the army of one nation, and the provisional fighting force of whatever we can call the non-state within which the Palestinians eek out their existence.
So, if the Israelis really want the Palestinians to stop targeting civilians with their rockets, then a provision of any ceasefire agreement must ensure the transfer of military hardware from the Israeli military to the authorities in Gaza and the West Bank. With these precision weapons in Palestinian hands all sides will have confidence that the Palestinians will be able to respond to ongoing Israeli aggression and cruelty in a way that does not harm civilian populations.