When Does Israel/Palestine Violence Start?
www.fair.org
Nov. 15, 2012
Military attacks and other violence in the Gaza Strip and Israel have resulted at this point in over a dozen deaths, most of them Palestinians, and sparked fears of an Israeli ground invasion similar to the 2008-09 assault that claimed over 1,000 Palestinian lives.
The past 24 hours of violence was sparked by Israel’s killing of Hamas military leader Ahmad al-Jabari on Wednesday. The question, then, is a familiar one: What prompted this action? The conventional corporate media timelines usually stress, whatever the facts, that Israel is responding to violent attacks by Palestinians, as FAIR documented over 10 years ago (Action Alert, 4/4/02)–and noted in this blog as recently as last month (10/9/12).
Are things any different this time? It would not appear so. The first sentence of the front-page New York Times article states that the Israeli assault came “after persistent Palestinian rocket fire.” On NBC Nightly News (11/14/12), Martin Fletcher told viewers, “Israel says it had no choice after Palestinians in Gaza fired at least 100 rockets at Israel in the last five days.” On NPR‘s All Things Considered (11/14/12), Audie Cornish explained that “the strikes were in retaliation for the launching of more than 100 rockets at Israel in recent days.”
In fact, recent rounds of violence had more to do with Israeli actions, which drew subsequent Palestinian rockets. Ali Abunimah has posted a timeline of recent events (Electronic Intifada, 11/15/12) that gives some sense of the missing context.
On November 4, Israeli forces shot dead an unarmed man inside the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces entered Gaza on November 8; a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed. On November 10, Gaza militants attacked an Israeli military jeep, injuring four soldiers. That prompted a three-day Israeli response that killed five civilians, three of them children.
After that incident, a tentative truce brokered by Egypt appeared to be in place as of November 13. The following day, Israel carried out the attack that killed Ahmad al-Jabari.
The lesson for decoding media messages on Israel/Palestine: Take note of when reporters tell you that the latest violence “started.” They’re picking a starting point for a reason.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Protests Erupt Worldwide Against Israel’s Bombing Campaign in Gaza
Nov 16, 2012 by TheRealNews
Global demonstrations against Israel’s Operation Pillar of Cloud growing as death toll mounts.
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Israeli attacks crumbling the stability of the Middle East?
Nov 16, 2012 by RTAmerica
Israel has launched attacks against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the violence has claimed lives on both sides. An Israeli air strike has claimed the life of an 11 month-old child whose father works for BBC. The Israeli Defense Force has declared it will do what is necessary to defend the citizens of Israel. Max Blumenthal, writing fellow for The Nation Institute, joins us what these Israeli strikes mean for the Middle-East.
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Israeli air strikes hit Palestinian PM’s office
Nov 16, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Palestinian journalist and Columbia Journalism School fellow Mohammed Omer said that Israeli air strikes have hit the Palestinian Prime Minister’s office and Interior Minister’s residence.
see
Noam Chomsky on Gaza and Israel + How We Can Solve The Palestinian Israeli Problem
Impressions of Gaza by Noam Chomsky
Escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza strip (Oct. 16, 2012)
Gaza under fire of Israeli air strikes (Sept. 11, 2012)
Arrests in Israel over attack on Palestinian (Aug 20, 2012)
Israel continues deadly air attacks on Gaza Strip (Jun 20, 2012)
Dandelion Salad 
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The accepted wisdom is to interpret international media spoof on all things Israeli as the opposite to what establishment media persist in churning out.
This especially applies to any “news” published on the Israeli Palestinian atrocities.
“Who started it?”… is history, circa WW2.
Truth has been the first casualty for decades.
The same old same old…
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Maybe we can ask ourselves another question(s): Who will end it? When and how can war become obsolete? Why does history need to repeat itself in endless justifications of violence, suffering and blood shed (genocide)?
Good questions, Dabra.
Who started it? Go back to 1948, the year the state of israel was founded and over 700,000 Palestinians were driven out – and still are. Not even the vilest dog is treated this way. The persecuted turning into the persecutors and just as vicious as the people who once persecuted them: the Nazis.