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The Qana Massacre And The Risks Of Relying On Israeli Propaganda

Minerva's Owl | 05.08.2006 13:26 | Lebanon War 2006 | Analysis | World

This article discusses an example of American mainstream media's uncritical bias towards Israel. In this particular instance, CNN and Paula Zahn got burned when they aired an Israeli Defense Force-provided surveillance video purporting to show Hezbollah rockets being fired in Qana on the day a nearby house was bombed, killing scores of Lebanese civilians, including many children. Subsequently, Israel announced that it had no clear proof that rockets had been fired from this location on the day of the bombing.

THE QANA MASSACRE AND THE RISKS OF RELYING ON ISRAELI PROPAGANDA




On July 30, the Israeli Defense Force (“IDF”) released infrared aerial footage purporting to show a Hezbollah Katyusha battery situated in a residential area of Qana, firing rockets at Israel. The IDF claimed that Hezbollah hid the trucks, which are used as launch platforms for the Katyushas, in and around residential neighborhoods in Qana, in support of its claim that Hezbollah is using civilians as human shields. (The Wikipedia article on the Qana bombing provides a link to the IDF video.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Qana_airstrike)

And, although the IDF and the Olmert regime have expressed regret over the killing of dozens of innocent Lebanese civilians in Qana, when the Israeli Air Force (“IAF”) bombed a three-story apartment building on July 30, they take no responsibility. Instead, they lay the blame at Hezbollah’s feet, arguing that if it did not fire rockets from civilian population centers, the IAF would not target these sites for destruction. This is a convenient dodge that Israel has used on countless occasions to justify its wanton and seemingly senseless targeting of civilian populations.

The IAF used the same justification for the bombing of the Qana apartment building on July 30, only this time, realizing that the Western mainstream media - particularly in the United States - was paying a lot of attention to this latest atrocity, it released for propaganda use an infra-red aerial video taken by a surveillance aircraft purporting to show a Katyusha battery firing missiles that day from a residential location in Qana, presumably near the apartment building that was bombed.

Like true lap dogs, the Western mainstream media snatched up this “evidence” and used it to drive home Israel’s propaganda point that Hezbollah not it was responsible for the deaths of the Lebanese civilians in that building, most of whom were children. In other words, Israel was saying, “Hezbollah made us do it. Now watch the video and you’ll see that we were not responsible.”

CNN is one of Israel’s major propaganda outlets, and it dutifully aired the IAF surveillance video on Paula Zahn’s program on July 31. What follows is an excerpt from the July 31 transcript of Zahn’s program that sets up the airing of the video.

“ZAHN: Nic Robertson, appreciate the update. Thanks so much.

Now, tonight, the Arab world is outraged over the Israeli bombing that killed at least 54 Lebanese civilians in Qana. Israel says it targeted Qana because Hezbollah was firing rockets from there. Residents deny that, and many are calling it a massacre.

The anger spilled over in Beirut streets, as protesters broke into U.N. headquarters there, injuring three U.N. workers. Qana survivors have fled, looking for shelter elsewhere. And, today, the town is deserted, buildings now just rubble. Israel calls this a tragic mistake.

Joining me now, Lebanon's consul general here in the United States, Mohamad El-Harake.

Thank you so much for joining us.

The Israelis have expressed their sorrow for the loss of innocent loss in Qana. Do you really think the Israelis targeted those civilians?

MOHAMAD EL-HARAKE, CONSUL GENERAL OF LEBANON: I know that the Israelis are very proud of their military powers. And they are good in targeting Palestinian activists, so they can hit a car among the 20 cars, and save the other cars. So...

ZAHN: So, you are saying there's no doubt in your mind the Israelis are so good at this that they would have intentionally targeted civilians?

EL-HARAKE: Here, we're talking about smart bombs, about military expertise, very advanced, and we're talking also about, let us say, well-mapped area. They know everything. And, supposedly, there was Hezbollah fighters near this building, as they are claiming. Why...

ZAHN: Let's show some pictures, before you go any further... EL-HARAKE: Yes, sure.

ZAHN: ... because the Israelis have provided us video from the IDF of an aerial view of the area.

Let's look at this closely together. It shows the proximity of the missile launching sites very clearly here to the civilian population in Qana.

Do you deny that they put their rocket launchers close to civilians to use them as shields?

EL-HARAKE: Yes, at first, we should verify this video by expert to see if exactly it reflects the same building that was targeted.”


 http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0607/31/pzn.01.html

It is interesting to note that Mohamad El-Harake, Counsel General of Lebanon challenges the authenticity of the IAF video, knowing full well that besides the awesome array of United States-supplied weapons at its disposal, Israel’s arsenal also includes a very efficient propaganda apparatus. But, one would expect that most of Zahn’s viewers probably discounted El-Harake’s objection as so much Hezbollah/Lebanese counter propaganda. After all, these discerning folks would probably argue, the IAF video is solid proof that Hezbollah uses Lebanese civilians as human shields.

“As it turns out, however, the IdF made a full about face two days later, and stated in a press release that it had no proof that Hezbollah had fired any rockets from Qana on July 30, as reflected in this excerpt from a Ha’aretz news item on August 1. (Ha’aretz is one of Israel’s largest newspapers known for its “liberal” slant, although it never challenges any pronouncements issuing from the IDF High Command.)

As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.”

 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html



Two points are immediately quite obvious. 1) Unless Zahn’s viewers read the Israeli press, they will probably never learn of this IDF “correction.” Nor is it likely that CNN/Zahn will provide their viewers with a clarification. 2) Either someone at IDF headquarters was asleep at the switch and released the video by “mistake.” Or, the video was deliberately released in an attempt to cover up another Israeli war crime and favorably influence public opinion via the Western mainstream media.

Another point to note is that Israel’s past aggressions were carried out before the advent of the Internet. With the willing collusion of the Western mainstream media, its propaganda apparatus had a free hand in controlling the flow of information. However, it is not so easy to control public opinion today, since one no longer has to rely exclusively on the mainstream media for information. The Internet is chock full of alternate information, views and opinions over which Israel has no control. And, although Israel may be flexing its muscles in Lebanon – killing civilians and destroying infrastructure – and seemingly slowly gaining the “upper hand” over Hezbollah, it has already lost the PR war.

Finally, in closing, it should also be pointed out that Israel’s self-proclaimed defensive invasion of Lebanon is now seen for what it truly is – another act of aggression by a state with imperial pretensions in the Middle East. Under the pretext of wanting a return of its two captured soldiers, the disarming of Hezbollah and the creation of a “security buffer zone” in southern Lebanon, Israel is once again waging an aggressive war against one of its neighbors, this time in order to wrest control of the Litani river from the Lebanese and annex southern Lebanon as part of the “Greater Israel” that was originally envisioned by its Zionist founding fathers a century ago.



Minerva’s Owl
August 2006

Minerva's Owl

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

Conspiracy Theories instead of enlightenment

05.08.2006 16:57

This article is based on the typical paranoid assumption of the "Israeli propaganda" that tries to control the Western public. This idea comes pretty close to the classical antisemite clichés of the Jews controlling the media. Especially in the Qana case it is total nonsense because most media reports worldwide condemned the attack. It´s paranoid to see a giant Israeli propaganda machine behind the reports in the media. All parties in this war try to get their point of view to the media, and so far the Hizbollah does the better job with that (probably except for the hack of the Hizbollah TV-station Al Manar by the IDF). Take the great Qana swindle: Days after the attack, the organisation Human Rights Watch announced that there haven´t been 54 but only 28 deaths. And there were more doubts that the whole story might have happened differently:  http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/188571.php
But it already became a symbol for the alleged brutality of Israels military.
To spot the difference: While Israel is a bourgeois-capitalist state and defends its citizens with its military against rockets fired from another state, the fundamentalist Hizbollah takes the citizens of Lebanon as human shields in its holy war against the Jews. It´s driven by a ideology of antisemitism. While the Israeli army tries to avoid civilians as casualties and doesn´t attack civil targets to kill civilians but to fight a terrorist organisation, the strategy of Hizbollah does neither care for Israeli civilians (and attacks civil targets on purpose) nor Lebanese civilians. Israel pulled its troop out of Lebanon in 2000, and got attacked since then by Hizbollah. But the so called left is willing to believe everything which can be used against Israel, even if that has nothing to do with reality.

Sir Harris
mail e-mail: harry@barry.lz
- Homepage: http://www.adf-berlin.de


Anti-Defamation Forum Alert

05.08.2006 18:57

The Anti-Defamation Forum's motto is, "No truth uttered about Israeli lies and propaganda tactics shall go unchallenged!"

Trumping "Sir Harry"


fuck off barry

05.08.2006 18:57

you are irrellivant, have nothing relivant to say and are just here to add noise to the signal, the signal being that:

israels war machine cares bugger all for casulties sustained by non israelis and the wrong sort of israeli

hasbara propaganda deciet, call it what you will - practiced universally in times of war, neutralised partially by mass communication devices in the hands of the people, such as the internet - israel is steeped in it over 60 years of lie upon lie

the image of 2000 pound bombs dropped on helpless lebanese is one that reveals the true nature of this uneven conflict, this proxy war, this colonial adventure, this holy crusade, this end times conflageration, this resource dispute, this sttler outrage, this LIE

temporal power is just that, temporary, those that evoke thier gods to draw earthly power are fakes and will be smashed

karen elliot


Israeli propagandists - "We've Never Had it So Good"

05.08.2006 19:12

Israel calls up media 'reserves' -

[Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's media adviser Assaf] Shariv said that Israelis have been interviewed by the foreign press four times as much as spokespeople for the Palestinians and Lebanese. As proof of Israel's success, he also cited a poll of Sky News viewers that found that 80 percent believe that Israel's attacks on Lebanon were justified.

"We have never had it so good," Meir said. "The hasbara [propaganda] effort is a well-oiled machine."

 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886020429&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


Israeli censor wields great power over coverage -

“I can, for example, publish an order that no material can be published. I can close a newspaper or shut down a station. I can do almost anything,” Col. Sima Vaknin [Israel’s chief military censor] said Wednesday.

The Associated Press has agreed, like other organizations, to abide by the rules of the censor, which is a condition for receiving permission to operate as a media organization in Israel.

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13941180/


Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiers -

The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.
(...)
A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.
(...)
Doron Barkat, 29, in Jerusalem, spends long nights trawling the web to try to swing the debate Israel’s way. “When I see internet polls for or against Israel I send out a mailing list to vote for Israel,” he said. “It can be that after 15 minutes there will be 400 votes for Israel.

 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-2289232,00.html

Boycott Israeli Goods


reaction to Mel Gibsons out burst / Jewish media control

05.08.2006 23:59

well if you you look at all the articles about mel gibsons anti jewish outburst there are quite a few quotes from jewish media moguls most of them putting the boot in.
here the australian quotes and an unfortunately unnamed) jewish producer

Hollywood fury at Gibson's Jewish rant
 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19974017-16947,00.html
But Gibson, and his upcoming film, Apocalypto, are already being judged by Hollywood, a town famously built by east European Jewish immigrants with names like Goldwyn, Cohn, Mayer, Selznick and Thalberg.

A Hollywood producer, who spoke to The Australian on condition of anonymity, said he doubted Gibson could ever get over the anti-Semitism taint.

"The drunk-driving stuff, you can get over that if you've got box-office clout," the producer said. "But you can't get over the fact this is a Jewish town. Frankly, I don't know how he can walk into a meeting in this town ever again.

"All that previous stuff with his old man (father Hutton Gibson's notorious anti-Jewish remarks), you could wave it aside and maybe excuse it if you wanted to because it was his old man, but this is truly terrible."

Gibson's offensive remarks on Friday, in which he is reported to have said "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world", among other things, were cut from a police report, but leaked to an internet site.

Hollywood reacts to Gibson furore
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5234698.stm
"To make all of your money from Jews in Hollywood, and then have a few drinks and say you hate Jews, is shocking," said Arnon Milchan, producer of JFK and LA Confidential

You can trawl through the articles and find plenty of tough comments from Jewish Hollywood big shots
but is you look for "hollywood is controlled by jews" on Google you can find dozens of links to
blogs and other sites where the argument is raging someone is getting slagged of for making the statement.

As far as i can see it's as simple as that Jews have a major interest in Hollywood they also control other sections of the media and it is therefore pretty damned obvious why the corporate media does such a good job reporting Israels side of the story. If stating a plain fact makes me anti semitic well there you go I'll just have to live with it ..

luther Blissett


who would rely on israel????

06.08.2006 04:50

Who with any awareness of israel the media would rely on a morally defective state like Israel for anything??

brian


Mopb

06.08.2006 07:02

I agree that although Israel pulled out of Lebanon several years ago, they have now decided, as you say, to annex Southern Lebanon after realizing they could use some more land. This was definitely an agressive act on their part with the intention of intimidating Hezbollah in orrder to stop them from attacking them. It won't work. Already Israel has agreed to let a multinational force come in and redistribute the land back to Hezbollah. Those Israelis will not succeed in their plans to rid Lebanon from Hezbollah. Hezbollah will continue to thrive in spite of Israel's objection. And the whole world will be able to breathe a sigh of relief again as Hezbollah and its allies once again regroup and try to rid the Middle East of this monster, called Israel. Hezbollah and company will prevail. The media is on their side, and so am I. Thanx for this wonderfull, informative and glorious article. Terror is but a weapon to destroy the Great and Little Satans of the world.

Sammy
mail e-mail: stq1@yahoo.com


Israel under microscope yet Hezbollah kills indiscrimenantly

07.08.2006 04:20

Give me a break-- you micro-analyze Israel for its actions, yet you say nothing about the INTENTIONAL DAILY BARRAGE OF HUNDREDS OF MISSILES from Hezbollah towards Israel with the sole purpose of killing civilians. Israel clearly is trying to target what it believes to be enemy forces or structures-- if that were not the case, there would be 10s of thousands of Lebanese dead and you know it! Come on! Israel was out of Lebanon for 6 years and what happened? Right under the noses of the UN countless of millions of dollars was spent priming an army to attack Israel. If Hezbollah gave back the troops and stopped attacking Israel and just left them alone, there would be peace instantly and if Israel felt that they truly had peace almost certainly you would get all of your prisoners back. And you know it. Stop supporting this fundamentalist, terrorist machine and press for peace.

Mark Gold


Only the arseholes are benefitting from this war

07.08.2006 14:33

Sounds like one-sided bullshit to me. The best reason I can think of for focussing on minute details concerning Israel is that they have caused 10 times more death and destruction, and don't seem to have a valid reason for doing so! Bbviously 'siding' with Hezbollah is just as stupid, and some of the cretinous 'lefties' in this world will do so to spite their own country. But to say anything defensive of the STATE of Israel is bound to be partisan bollocks.

Unmarked Gold


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