>From Richard Seymour's (aka "Lenin") blog.
-----------
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/lie-you-werent-supposed-to-bel...
Let's be clear about this. On 6 January, three UN-run schools in Gaza were
attacked by Israeli forces, not just one. What is more, the previous day an
Israeli bombing of a UN school had killed three members of the same family.
This sort of killing can usually be dealth with in a perfunctory fashion
('we regret all loss of innocent life, but the responsibility belongs to
those who use terror and hide among civilians...'). However, the massacre of
43 people in a UN school bearing flags and insignia and housing some 350
refugees from the fighting (many of whom had fled on orders from IDF
leaflets dropped on the towns and cities), demanded a more considered
explanation and justification. I just want to take a quick look at the
explanations offered by Israeli spokespeople and its military.
The IDF's initial justification for the attack on the Al-Fakhura school was
that Hamas had used the building to fire mortars from, and its tanks had
responded. Implicit in this was an admission that they had targeted the
school on purpose. The tank shells, presumably shot from quite nearby, were
fired by soldiers operating under orders from command centres equipped with
detailed targeting intelligence. As is now known, the Israeli military had
the GPS coordinates not only of this UN school but of the other UN schools
that it attacked. And the first thing the IDF let us know is that it was
done on purpose. Their excuse was barbaric, of course. The idea that an
invading force may attack a building filled with hundreds of terrorised
civilians just in order to kill two of those resisting the invasion is
nothing short of grotesque. But the fact that it was barbaric was part of
the point: rather than bluntly condemning a war crime, you were invited to
focus on whether Hamas would be so evil as to attack Israel's brave boys
from within a civilian building. Because it is so frequently repeated you
might be predisposed to assume that Hamas did indeed position its
'infrastructure of terror' among unsuspecting citizens but, whether you are
so predisposed or not, you are already drawn into the macabre calculus of
the murderer if you even get involved in that argument. You have tacitly
accepted the logic in which war crimes are not merely acceptable, but
actually appropriate, if the enemy really is as evil as Israel says. The
usual suspects, of course, immediately embraced Israel's excuse: Israel's
killing, they expostulated, merely demonstrates the ruthless, diabolical
genius of Hamas. If anything, they added, the IDF was admirably restrained
in its action. But it is doubtful that many others were taken in.
The second thing that the IDF claimed was that there were Hamas troops
hiding inside the building, nestling among the refugees, thereby forcing the
Israelis to slaughter the innocent. This is quite a different claim, and the
first thing that would occur to any reasonable observer would be that the
sudden embellishment reflected some sort of dishonesty ('the elaborations of
a bad liar', as Hannibal Lecter would put it). Or perhaps there had been a
failure by everyone to get their stories straight and stick to them. At any
rate, the logic of the astounding claim that Israel acted in self-defense
remained as tortuous as it had been. But Israel claimed to have identified
the bodies of Hamas members, and even fed two names to the media, (so once
again you were invited to get bogged down in the merits of Israel's claim
rather than decide on an appropriate response to the slaughter).
The next part of the story is the most interesting. In order to get around
the absurd idea that Hamas military operatives had sneaked into the building
and launched mortars without anyone in the school noticing, Israel's
spokespeople claimed that Hamas gunmen had taken over the UN building, taken
the civilians hostage and used the base to fire mortars at Israeli soldiers.
Mark Regev said it was a "very extreme example of how Hamas operates". Such
a claim was obviously checkable in a matter of minutes. Any UN personnel
present in the school at the time could easily say whether in fact they had
all been suffering under Hamas captivity until Israel 'liberated' the
building. The UN produced an emphatic denial, based on its own
investigations, that there was ever any Hamas fighter in the building. By
now, the fact that Israel has never provided any real evidence for its
claims, which continue to shapeshift, comes into sharp focus. Moreover,
since Israeli troops didn't visit the building or have access to the records
of the deceased, it would be highly improbable that they would be able to
not only name two of the dead, but also gather intelligence that proved they
were members of Hamas' military wing, within such a short space of time.
So, the Israeli government topped that brazenness with a stroke of
effrontery that is somehow not adequately captured by the word 'chutzpah'.
Israel announced that as it was lodging a complaint with the UN for allowing
the building to be secretly used by Hamas. Now it appears that Israeli
diplomats admit that no rockets were fired from the school. They are now
briefing that there was some mortar fire, but that it came from outside the
school. Now, there is no evidence that there was any mortar fire at all, but
perhaps you aren't really supposed to believe it. Actually, you were never
supposed to believe any of it. There was no way that you were ever expected
to be taken in by this pitiful subterfuge. They didn't even present a very
convincing lie, or a very good case. What they did was tell you up front
that they attacked a clearly marked UN school building filled with civilians
on purpose, and then follow it up with a flimsy cover-story followed by an
even more flimsy revised cover story and an outlandish allegation against
the UN that they have dropped in a matter of hours in such a way as to
undermine their previous cover-stories. This is obviously contemptuous, but
it isn't just a sensational flip-off to 'world opinion'. They are saying
they killed civilians on purpose, that nowhere in Gaza is safe, and that
they reserve their right to do it again and offer the same risible
mitigations and alibis as before
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