The
elite currently in power in the Western mass media is never going to
comprehend the Middle East. There is a problem with bias, for sure, but
the big problem is the impenetrable ignorance of the very people who
are entrusted to explaining the region to others. They insist on
imposing their own misconceptions on the situation while ignoring the
evidence.
Consider Janine Zacharia. What a distinguished resume: chief Jerusalem bureau chief and Middle East Correspondent for the Washington Post (2009-2011); chief diplomatic correspondent for Bloomberg News (2005-2009) and before that five years working for the Jerusalem Post in
Washington DC and another five years working for Reuters and other
publications from Jerusalem. Right now she’s a visiting lecturer at
Stanford University in communications.
Surely,
such a person must understand the region’s issues and if anyone isn’t
going to have an anti-Israel bias in the
mass media it would be her. And she isn’t anti-Israel in a conscious,
political sense. Indeed, she obviously views herself as being
sympathetic. Rather, it is her assumptions that make her type of views
inevitably anti-Israel and more broadly inevitably destructive of U.S.
interests on other issues.
But here’s her article in Slate. The
title is “Why Israel’s Gaza Campaign is Doomed.” Not, why this response
is the best of a set of difficult options; not why the world should
support Israel; not why Hamas should be removed from power with
international support but why Israel is wrong and stupid to fight.
“Doomed” is a pretty strong word.
The
subhead—adapted from Zacharia’s text—is “Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision
to bomb Hamas militants will leave Israel more isolated, insecure, and
alone.” Not the decision of Israel’s unanimous leadership including
first and foremost its military and defense experts but that of a prime
minister who now plays a role for the American media most closely
approximated to that held by former President George W. Bush.
And
by defending itself against an onslaught of rockets—120 in one
week--Israel will be worse off even though by the way every Western
country I’m aware of has supported Israel.
Why will Israel be more isolated, insecure, and alone? Because the
unspoken assumption of the Western media elite is that anyone who uses
force, even in self-defense, ends up worse off.
It
is quite reasonable to state that the campaign will not end the
problem. Everyone in Israel and in Israel’s leadership and all the
generals and Netanyahu know this very well. They also know that a
country that does not defend itself and maintain its credibility and
deterrence is going to end up doomed, isolated, insecure, and alone.
They also know that the best that can be expected given this situation
is to force
Hamas to deescalate for two or three years before the next round.
Much
of the Western elite no longer understands concepts which their
predecessors took for granted during the last two centuries. You can go
back even further than that to Joshua 7: 8-9 when Joshua prays after a
military defeat:
“What
can I say after Israel has turned tail before its enemies? When the
Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land hear of this, they will
turn upon us and wipe out our very name from the earth."
Zacharia, however, faithfully represents the current standpoint of the Western elite. Here is her prescription:
“Israel
needs a far more sophisticated, diplomatic, long-term
strategic policy for dealing with Gaza and all the threats around
it—from Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and perhaps Egypt. A new Israeli
approach may have to include a willingness to at least try talking to
Hamas, which is fighting its own internal battle against even more
radical, anti-Israel groups in the Gaza Strip. It may mean putting more
pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, languishing in
irrelevance in Ramallah, to make peace with Hamas so there can be
negotiations with Israel and a permanent end to this rocket-war
madness.”
Let’s list her arguments:
--The
“Palestinian militant groups” want to drag Israel into an all-out war.
Therefore, she reasons, Israel is foolish to engage in such a war. But
the other side wanting a war that Israel prefers to avoid has been a
common feature of Israeli history as in 1948, 1967, and 2006. The
Palestinian leadership and Arab states misjudge the balance of forces
(that is, they don’t know they lose) or feel such a losing war is
worthwhile to mobilize popular support and to prove the individual group
involved (in this case Hamas) is the best and most courageous of
Fedayeen.
--The
other side consists of “militant groups.” The problem with avoiding the
word “terrorist” is not that it sanitizes those attacking Israel but
that it downgrades their ideology and intentions. Hamas openly declares
it will destroy Israel and commit genocide against Jews generally.
Terrorism is a tactic. What lies behind it is a desire to murder all the
civilians on the enemy side, whether or not any specific attack
succeeds in killing a few of them.
If
you don’t understand the extremism of the enemy you don’t understand
the enemy. And if you don’t understand the enemy you have no idea of
what to do in response. This is precisely the problem of the Western
policy toward the Middle East and revolutionary Islamism.
For
example, there is a readiness to believe that the assassination of a
U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, Libya (and on September 11 to boot!) is the
result of anger over a
video rather than a concerted campaign to fundamentally transform Libya
and the Middle East.
But back to Zacharia.
--The
fault is with Israel. It doesn’t have a proper diplomatic policy, you
see, because there’s no willingness to talk to Hamas.
Does Hamas character of its own? Might it have an ideology and goals of
its own? Might Hamas be to Israel what al-Qaida is to the United
States?
If
one actually knew anything about Hamas--and Israelis have three decades
of experience in studying, fighting, and dealing with it—the idea of a
negotiated solution would be ridiculous. Incidentally, Israel has
negotiated truces with Hamas. Under normal conditions, Hamas just
violates them and up to a point Israel looks the other way or responds
in a small way. Periodically, Hamas decides on a big offensive and that
leads to war.
Yet
Zacharia is blaming Israel for not being good enough to negotiate a
deal with a group whose televised children’s shows call for the physical
extinction of Israel, the mass murder of its inhabitants, and future
careers for kiddies as suicide bombers.
--Hamas
is fighting even more radical groups in the Gaza Strip and therefore it must be moderate or at least potentially so.
That
isn’t really true. Of course, Hamas cracks down on groups that attack
its own rule or prove to be inconvenient. But far more often it
cooperates with Islamic Jihad and even al-Qaida affiliated groups. These
attack Israel with Hamas’s cooperation and forbearance and then Hamas
can claim innocence, thus waging war and claiming it isn’t doing
anything at all. This is a transparent ploy but one that, as with
Zacharia, many influential people in the West buy hook, line, and
sinker.
--Israel
can “put pressure” on Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, which rules
the West Bank, and end the attacks from the Gaza Strip permanently. Yet
anybody—much less a journalist who spent years dealing with the Middle
East—should know that Abbas has zero influence in the Gaza Strip and any
deal he makes (and he doesn’t intend to make one) will have no effect
on Hamas or the Gaza Strip.
Moreover,
Israel cannot put too much pressure on Abbas because the Obama
Administration, which puts on no pressure of its own, won’t allow it to
do so. In addition, Israel is more worried about Abbas being overthrown
by Hamas then by his combatting the group. Let’s remember that Abbas
himself has repeatedly made deals with Hamas that the “militant group”
has violated.
In
other words, what Zacharia writes—and this is common
throughout Western academic, media, and governmental circles—is
completely absurd. The solution not being taken up is to overthrow Hamas
just like the Taliban was overthrown in Afghanistan, though even that
didn’t solve the problems in the latter country.
But
there is zero support in the West for bringing down Hamas. President
Barack Obama helped bring a pro-Hamas regime in Egypt. And the man who
never pressured Abbas pressured Israel to reduce sanctions on the Gaza
Strip, thus helping Hamas remain in power so it continue firing rockets
at Israel.
I
do not expect the mass media to improve nor do I have any hope of
educating the journalists who write this kind of thing. They are not
going to change in the near- or even medium-term future. Hence, they
will be ignored instead.
Equally,
the governments who follow this kind of line will have no effect—at
least no positive effect—on regional problems. The new feature of the
last few years is that the U.S. government has contributed to making
things much
worse.
And
that’s why there will be no “permanent end” to this rocket war madness
or all of the other varieties of madness that are getting worse in the
region. It is the policy of those people who do not understand what they
are talking about or dealing with who are doomed. They are the ones who
need a new policy.
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
--
No comments:
Post a Comment