I recently read a great book about London during the Blitz entitled Blackout. One of the events the author describes is the evacuation of children from bombarded London to country estates far away from danger in order to save them. In another chapter she describes how intelligence officers attempted to use numerous creative means to fool the Germans and divert their bombs away from those evacuation sites. This description has been haunting me over the past few weeks as the operation in Gaza expanded and the internet became flooded with images of dying children. The local Gaza leadership could easily have sent the children out of harms way. There are vast areas within the strip which were never targeted; small towns and villages which could have been used as a haven for the innocent. They could also have arranged for shelter and care for those who could not or would not evacuate. I believe that if Israel was facing a similar situation, for example, if the Iron Dome did not exist and those 3,700 rockets had hit homes with no shelters prepared in advance, we would have evacuated the children, built Anderson shelters if no others were available and arrange fire-watches to minimize the damage from spreading fires, as Londoners did during the Blitz. But the fighters of the resistance in Gaza did not evacuate their children and when some mothers independently chose to evacuate their children to UN sites not far from the city, the resistance was quick to base itself at those same evacuation sites to make sure they would be targeted as well, rather than draw the enemys fire away. It got me thinking about the reasoning behind this. I think its to do with supply and demand. I think its to do with using people as pawns, but not the ones you might think. All camera crews in Gaza follow Hamas directorial instructions, airing war footage of torn houses and dead children. The western channels receiving this footage air it verbatim for the western world to see. News programs broadcast from the UK, the US and others will play it on an almost continuous loop. Even satirical shows like The Daily Show make use of the images coming out of Gaza. The western public, raised on the principals of human rights and the sanctity of life, are shocked and appalled. They were meant to be. The images were staged and designed to trigger this reaction, and very carefully so. The enraged western public then puts pressure on its leadership and they put pressure on Israel, until Israel retreats. Hamas knows this. The media are its most successful and effective weapon, a way to prevent Israel from taking the power away from them. And this creates a cycle of supply and demand - The western media demand more and more shocking footage to improve their ratings and Hamas happily manufactures and supplies it. The western public fuels the cycle, obsessed with more gruesome and bloody reports. The people watching on TV and Facebook dont always realize that they are used as pawns that the images they tune into every night are made just for them. Perhaps some do understand it, but accept it as a cry for help of the downtrodden. The fact is that Hamas is throwing the children of Gaza into the flames. They need the dead children to get the cycle going, which will end with Israel retreating from the Strip. The empathy of the American and European people is goading Hamas into sacrificing more and more women and children to stage the well-lit and carefully framed, rage-evoking images. Ironically the Western concern for the children of Gaza is killing them. And the Western public is taking part in their death. If the demand for photos of bloody bodies and ruins ever dwindled, Hamas would evacuate their children and women, and would do its best to draw away Israels forces by engaging them far from the refuge. The tactic of human shields wouldnt be extended and the fighting would take the shape of known guerilla warfare. Thousands of innocent lives would be saved. Some people will read this say Im blaming the victim. Im not. The victims are the children. I blame Hamas, which is the irrefutable governor of the Gaza strip, a Terrorist organization and in this context the losing side of the most needlessly bloody military conflict.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 17:41:40 +0000
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