"Relative Calm" Leaves 117 DeadAli Abunimah
On December 25th, an Israeli assassination squad killed five Palestinians in Gaza, and injured fifteen. Three of the dead were civilians. A short time later, a Palestinian blew himself up at a bus stop in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva, killing four Israelis, three of whom were confirmed by Haâaretz to be soldiers.
Many leading media organizations were quick to declare that these two incidents marked the end of a period of ârelative calmâ or âlullâ in Israeli-Palestinian violence, that had supposedly lasted since the last Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa on 4 October.
In fact, the period since 4 October has been one of intense Israeli violence, in which 117 Palestinians were killed, including 23 children. At the same time, Israel destroyed almost five hundred Palestinian homes throughout the Occupied Territories.
Relative calm in a Rafah hospital, as Hashem El-Haj Yousef fights for his life after being shot by Israeli snipers in a raid on his home town.
Mass Amnesia All Over Again
A front-page Los Angeles Times headline declared â12-Week lull in Mideast Ends,â and misreported that the âback to back spasms of violenceâ on 25th December, âshattered more than two months of relative quiet and dealt a fresh setback to peace efforts.â The Montreal Gazette declared: âMideast quiet shattered: Suicide bombing kills four Israelis shortly after assassination in Gaza.â
The Chicago Tribune reported that âComing less than an hour apart,â the 25th December âattacks broke a lull that had lasted more than two months and raised fears of a slide into violence.â
CNN reported on its website that the Petah Tikva attack âwas the first suicide bombing in Israel since an October 4 attack in Haifa. That incident killed 21 people. There has been a relative calm since the Haifa bombing.â
Even the usually careful U.K.-based Reuters news agencyâs report (which had an identical headline to the CNN report) stated that, âthe attacks on Thursday shattered well over two months of relative calm that had spurred efforts to revive talks between Israelis and Palestinians on a U.S.-led plan for ending more than three years of conflict.â
In an extraordinary act of forgetfulness, a New York Times report by Richard Bernstein and Greg Myre declared that âThe suicide bomb attack in Petah Tikva broke a tense sort of relative calm that has existed on both sides since October.â But just a few paragraphs above this sentence, the same article reported that âLess than an hour before the suicide attack, Israeli gunships fired missiles at a car in Gaza, killing a commander of Islamic Jihad, who Israeli officials said was planning a âmegaâ attack inside Israelâ. The report also stated that four others were killed including âtwo bystandersâ and 14 people were injured.
Not only did the Times forget what had happened just an hour before the Petah Tikva bomb, it had apparently wiped from memory a report by the same Greg Myre on 24th December, headlined âIsraelis Kill 8 Palestinians in Raid on a Camp in Gaza.â According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, a total of nine Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack on Rafah refugee camp about which Myre reported. Among the 37 injured, eight were children, and 116 families were made homeless.
The True Story of âRelative Calmâ in Palestine
Contrary to the pervasive media claim that the period between 4 October and 25 December was one of ârelative calm,â âquietâ or âlull,â it was actually one of intense Israeli violence on Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories.
Using the meticulous weekly reports of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Electronic Intifada counted that Israeli forces killed 117 Palestinians from 2nd October to 25th December. The vast majority of the dead were civilians and 23 of them were children. Hundreds of civilians were injured by Israeli fire. During the same period, PCHR documented that Israeli occupation forces destroyed 486 houses and apartments, rendering thousands of Palestinians homeless.
After having his home bulldozed by order of an illegal occupier, this Palestinian is left to ponder his future in ârelative quietâ.
During the same period, few Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in Palestinian attacks, and there were indeed no suicide attacks since 4th October. Israel claims that the huge drop in violence against its civilians was largely because it âfoiledâ such attacks. But, the New York Times reported on 5th December that, âIsraeli officials have concluded that the Islamic movement Hamas has suspended its suicide bombing campaign in recent months, a senior Israeli military officer said Thursday, citing that as one reason Israel has not suffered any deadly bombings in the past two months.â
What is indisputable is that Israel was killing and injuring Palestinians by the hundreds. Here are a few examples of incidents that occurred during the mediaâs period of ârelative calmâ:
On 10th October, a large contingent of Israeli forces, armed with over 80 tanks, armoured bulldozers and helicopters, entered Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza. During the two-day long attack, 8 Palestinians were killed, including 3 children, and 53 were wounded; 20 seriously. Israeli forces destroyed 170 homes rendering more than 2000 Palestinians homeless.
In response to this incident, Amnesty International issued a statement saying âThe repeated practice by the Israeli army of deliberate and wanton destruction of homes and civilian property is a grave violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, notably articles 33 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and constitutes a war crime.â
On 20th October, Israeli occupation forces carried out two assassination attacks that killed eleven Palestinians. Eight of the dead were bystanders. The first attack occurred in the morning, when Israeli helicopters fired a missile at a car stopped at a traffic light in Gaza City. The missile killed the two occupants of the targeted car, and the driver of an adjacent car. Nine passing civilians sustained injuries, one of them serious. That evening, seven Palestinians were killed, including a child and an on-duty doctor when Israeli forces carried out a failed assassination attempt in Gazaâs Nusseirat refugee camp. The targets of the attack escaped, but in addition to the seven civilians killed, 50 were injured, including 11 children. An eighth civilian later died from his injuries.
When Mohammad al-Durra was killed, he simply disappeared from existence as far as the mass-media was concerned.
On 26th October, Israeli occupation forces in Gaza killed three members of the same family who were on their way to visit relatives to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. The three men, Khaled Ahmed Ibrahim al-Sumairi, 40, Ussama Suleiman âAayesh Al-Sumairi, 30, Ibrahim Mousa al-Sumairi, 32, got into their car at approximately 8.45 PM at their home in Wadi Salqa village in the central Gaza Strip. When they were approximately 300 metres from their house, Israeli forces opened fire on them without warning, injuring all three. The occupation forces then imposed a military curfew on the area, preventing Palestinian ambulances from reaching the men for more than 90 minutes. By the time ambulances were allowed to tend to the victims, two had died. The third died of his injuries upon arrival at Deir al-Balah hospital. After initially claiming that the three men had been armed, the Israeli media reported that the occupation authorities admitted that the men were in fact unarmed and had been killed âby mistake.â
On 8th December at approximately 3 PM, Israeli forces stationed at âNeve Dekalimâ settlement, west of Khan Yunis, in Gaza opened fire at the al-Namsawi area of Khan Yunis refugee camp. A Palestinian schoolchild, Fatima Mousa Khalafallah, age 10, was wounded by a live bullet in the chest while she was in her school approximately 700 metres away from the source of fire.
These are just four examples of the dozens of violent incidents that took 117 Palestinian lives, and injured hundreds more since early October.
Despite the continuous bloodshed, mainstream media organizations have habitually described this period as being one of ârelative calmâ or âquietâ that ended only when several Israelis were killed.
This widespread pattern is the most persistent and pernicious failure of the media in reporting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It represents not only a shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity, but a double standard that treats the lives of one set of human beings as being inherently more valuable than those of another.
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