Hamas Exploits ‘The CNN Strategy’ As Instrument of Modern Warfare

“The international community doesn’t even seem to care when Palestinian children are killed by rocket fire — unless it is from Israeli rockets. The day before the recent outbreak, Hamas fired an anti-personnel rocket at Israeli civilians, but the rocket fell short of its target and killed two Palestinian girls. Yet there was virtually no coverage and absolutely no protests against these "collateral" civilian deaths. Hamas refused to allow TV cameras to show these dead Palestinian children.”[Link]

– The National Post,    Editorial: Alan Dershowitz,    “The CNN Strategy”

I had a buddy get seemingly frustrated and angry with me last week for attempting to make many of the same points as this article.  (I’m not usually a fan of the National Post, but…I can’t deny the similarities between its content any my own views.[¹])  The idea that I could find decisions and actions taken on both sides of the Hamas/Israel conflict in Gaza morally reprehensible translated in his mind to my being unbelievably ignorant. Although to his credit, before digressing to this argument, he asserted it was my seeing the media coverage as unbalanced (against Israel) that provoked his outrage.

This buddy of mine isn’t stupid.  He’s in post-graduate studies at York University (in Canada) in the field of political studies – and is very interested in Mid-East politics.  However, he seemed very focused on making the case that Israel was the bad guy of the region ahead of accepting any criticism whatsoever of Hamas’ tactics.  And I think it says a lot about the effectiveness of a Hamas media strategy (and we’d be naive to think there wasn’t such a thing) if the relatively well-educated and enlightened folk of a peace-loving nation like Canada adopt the views of what can only reasonably be called a terrorist organization with little or no consideration of the rights of Israel.  Indeed, the view that has quickly become the dominant one on university campuses in this country seems to be that Hamas should have rights at the expense of Israel, simply because Israel can’t assume the role of ‘underdog’ in the conflict.

It’s as if the conflict has taken on the dimensions of some college sport where you’re not cool unless you support Hamas and all its demands – whatever they may be.  Such an achievement – surely the envy of many a marketing firm courting the college student demographic – is the product of an organized effort and not the result of an objective analysis of the conflict!

And to that friend of mine – whose linked articles (on the Facebook edition of this blog) I took time to read over the course of the past week along with others – I can offer only this one sentiment: I really don’t think it marks me as ignorant or somehow undereducated on this or any other issue simply because I believe that regardless of who struck whom first or why a wall got build in one place versus another are irrelevant to establishing the obvious diagnosis that many wrongs are being committed on both sides.  Furthermore regardless of how much wronger Israel is than Hamas in the context of the current conflict (a point I’m quite confident I could readily refute were I inclined to); evidence to the effect of making the case unassailable would fall short of negating the original point I’d made – that the media coverage favouring Hamas overwhelmingly is creating far too many misconceptions about Israel and the rationale for its actions.  As such my view remains, reinforced by articles referenced by you and the others I’ve read to compliment them, that this development is unhelpful to resolving the conflict and bringing peace to the region.

¹ I can’t agree with the article entirely – in particular where he states Israel is “trying to fight a limited war of self-defense designed to protect its own civilians from rocket attacks”; there seems to be some evidence Israel’s selection of targets unnecessarily compromises basic public services, such as police and fire services.  Also, the IDF doesn’t seem too concerned about obeying international agreements concerning the treatment of civilians, although it probably overstates the situation to claim Israel is outright “targeting civilians”.  (If it were – the casualty numbers would doubtlessly be a lot higher than they are.)