Washington: The “horrendous bloodshed,” as The Economist of London described the month-long Israeli bombardment of Palestinians in their besieged, overpopulated Gaza Strip, has highlighted the sharply different assessments between the British and American media.
A case in point is last Tuesday’s column by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post who wrote “it helps account for why the [Israeli] bombings of schools, hospitals and homes in Gaza are almost instantaneously denounced as war crimes — a purposeful atrocity and not, as sometimes happens in war, a mistake. Israel, as some feel, is too good to be so bad.”
He added, “Not only is this hardly true... but it also veers into a kind of anti-Semitism. If the bombing of a school or hospital is not a mistake, then it must have been on purpose: Israel is the cold-hearted killer of children.”
What peeved him was what he described as the “gravamen” of a column in The Independent, a British newspaper, authored by Mark Steel who called Israel “the child-murdering community” — a view that Cohen insisted was anti-Semitic. He argued, “It assumed a maniacal willingness to kill children, either on purpose or because they are in the way — collateral damage, as it is sometimes called. It gives mocking recognition to all the precautions Israel takes to avoid such casualties.”
This is understandable if the number of youngsters who were killed was a few, but since more than 500 Palestinian children perished, Cohen’s point is certainly not valid. The United Nations reports that 425,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza and the death toll according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health has reached 2,016. More than 5,200 houses have been completely destroyed and about 30,000 units have been partially damaged. The general loses were estimated at $5 billion (Dh18.36 billion).
The differences between the European and American media were also apparent in the offer of the European Union to monitor the borders between the Gaza Strip and Israel, and, as well, Israel and Egypt, and also to prevent the illegal arms flow across the borders. But this offer will entail a UN Security Council mandate. Surprisingly, the US seemingly remained aloof.
Another divisive issue among the US and western powers has been the potential role for the International Criminal Court (ICC) that would investigate alleged war crimes committed during the 35-day conflict, which according to The Guardian “has become a fraught political battlefield and a key negotiating issue,” since it would also address the case of illegal Israeli colonies in the Palestinian territories. Israel is opposed to any ICC investigation.
What has been remarkable lately has been a report in the Israeli liberal newspaper, Haaretz, revealing the extent of US military aid to Israel which began in 1962. According to Haaretz, the total amount of US aid approached nearly $100 billion, a point that has for long disappointed many an Arab official over the failure of US administrations to keep Israel on line by threats of aid curtailment.
“For the past decades,” Haaretz reported, “the United States has been regularly transferring aid of about $3 billion annually; [and] in recent years, the aid has been solely for defence purposes.”
“Additionally,” the paper continued, “the US has been giving generous military aid for projects that are important to it and to Israel.”
One of the most expensive arms deals in the history of Israel’s defence forces, Haaretz revealed, was the purchase of 20 F-35 fighter planes for $2.7 billion which will be financed entirely by aid money.
All this considered, Marwan Muasher, vice-president for studies at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Jordanian deputy prime minister, believes that “unfortunately there is no lasting end to the [Gaza] conflict in sight.”
Even if there is a ceasefire that lasts for more than a few days, he continued, “there is little hope that it will move the [Arab-Israeli] peace process forward.”
Muasher, who was his country’s first ambassador to Israel, wrote: “Israel is pursuing tactical objectives to appease public fears and hardliners in the Israeli cabinet — all at the expense of Palestinians. If Israel’s intention is to disarm or weaken Hamas, it’s probably going to walk away empty-handed. Three ground incursions in the last six years [and another war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006] all failed to achieve the goals of disarming and weakening its opponents.”
He concluded: “Without addressing the core issue of the conflict — Israel’s occupation — there is little hope that this cycle won’t just keep repeating itself.”
— George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
