Media Lens: Media “Disgustingly Biased” on Gaza

The indecency of the Western media knows no bounds.

An injured Palestinian is helped from the rubble following an Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Saturday 27 December, 2008. Photograph: Hatem Omar/AP

Israeli assaults are periodic and cold-blooded, usually preceded by propaganda barrages and false flag events. The elimination of the Palestinians and their control over constantly shrinking territory are openly stated goals of prominent Zionists in Israel. In this photo an injured Palestinian is helped from the rubble following an Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Saturday 27 December, 2008. Photograph: Hatem Omar/AP

Dateline: 24 July 2014

‘DISGUSTINGLY BIASED’ – THE CORPORATE MEDIA ON THE GAZA MASSACRE

Soon after Malaysian Airlines MH17 crashed near Donetsk, Ukraine on July 18, killing 298 people, the BBC website quickly, and rightly, set up a ‘LIVE’ feed with rolling reports and commentary on the disaster. This was clearly an important and dramatic event involving horrific loss of life with serious political implications. The public would, of course, be searching for the latest news.

However, since July 8, ten days prior to the crash, Israeli armed forces had been bombarding the trapped civilian population of Gaza with airstrikes, drone strikes and naval shelling. As the massive Israeli assault ramped up on July 9, the World section of the BBC News website had this as its headline:

‘Israel under renewed Hamas attack’

By July 18, around 300 people had been killed in Gaza, 80% of them civilians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a key political issue of our time, one that was clearly developing by the minute after July 8. And yet at no point had the BBC set up a ‘LIVE’ feed with rolling news.

That finally changed on July 20 after so many days in which so many Palestinians had been killed. Why July 20? The answer appears to be found in the fourth entry of the live feed under the title ‘Breaking News’:

‘Some 13 Israeli soldiers were killed overnight in Gaza, news agencies, quoting Israeli military sources, say. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to address the nation shortly.’

Despite this small number of military deaths compared to the Palestinian toll, it seems clear that the killing of the Israeli troops triggered the BBC live feed. It focused intensely on these deaths, with entries of this kind:

‘Ben White, writer tweets: Israel has lost more soldiers in a 3 day old ground offensive than it did during Cast Lead & Pillar of Defense combined (12).’

And:

‘View to the Mid East, a writer in Ashdod, Israel tweets: One of the soldiers who was killed in Gaza tonight prays at the same synagogue I go to. Grew up in the same neighbourhood.’

The feed incorporated no less than five photographs from two funerals of the Israeli soldiers but none from the far more numerous Palestinian funerals (one picture showed Palestinian relatives collecting a body from a morgue), with these captions:

‘Friends and relatives of Israeli Sergeant Adar Barsano mourn during his funeral at the military cemetery in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya.’

And:

‘Sagit Greenberg, the wife of Israeli soldier Maj Amotz Greenberg, mourns during his funeral in the central town of Hod Hasharon.’

Obviously, Israeli suffering also merits compassion, but these military deaths were overshadowed by a far higher loss of Palestinian lives, most of them civilian men, women and children. The toll currently stands at 746 Palestinians killed and 4,640 wounded. Israel has suffered 32 military and two civilian deaths. One foreign worker from Thailand has also been killed.

In the following days (and at time of writing) the live feed was cancelled; a period that has seen hundreds of Palestinian deaths and a handful of Israeli military deaths.

For some time on the morning of July 21, the sole Gaza content on the BBC News home page was ‘Breaking News’ of an ‘Israeli soldier missing in Gaza’.

Remarkably, on the morning of July 23, when 18 Palestinians were killed, the BBC set up a live feed for the wrecked Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, which showed the ship being towed to Genoa. There was no live feed for Gaza.

The BBC has supplied names, ages, pictures and emotive background stories of the Malaysian air crash victims while, with rare exceptions, Palestinian dead have been presented as nameless figures, briefly mentioned, then forgotten.

The level of BBC bias was emphasised by an article headline that placed inverted commas around the siege in Gaza, as if it were a matter for debate: “Palestinian PM says lift Gaza ‘siege’ as part of ceasefire”. The BBC subsequently changed the title, but a tweet promoting the article with the original wording remains.

The BBC has also implied that ‘Rockets fired from Gaza’ are comparable to ‘Gaza targets hit by Israel’. Readers are to understand that attempted attacks by unguided, low-tech rockets are comparable to actual bombings by state of the art bombs, missiles and shells. The BBC’s source? ‘Israel Defence Forces.’

On July 21, BBC News at Ten presenter Huw Edwards asked a colleague live on air:

‘…the Israelis saying they’ll carry on as long as necessary to stop the Hamas rocket attacks. Do you detect any signs at all that there’s a hope of a coming together in the next few days or weeks, or not?’

In other words, BBC News presented Hamas rocket attacks as the stumbling block to peace, exactly conforming to Israeli state propaganda.

In a report on the same edition of News at Ten, the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Fidler-Simpson CBE, asserted that ‘one reason why casualties on the two sides are so out of proportion’ is because ‘Israel has developed the world’s most effective anti-missile defence’.

This suggested a more or less equal fight with Israeli simply better able to protect itself. Fidler-Simpson added:

‘The Iron Dome system’s ability to knock Hamas missiles out of the sky has been a remarkable achievement for Israel during this crisis. The success rate is quite phenomenal.’

Back in the real world, weapons experts Ted Postol of MIT and Richard Lloyd of Tesla Laboratory, argue that claims for Iron Dome are wildly exaggerated, estimating a success rate of less than 5 per cent. Peter Coy of BloombergBusinessweek comments:

‘Lloyd e-mailed me a copy of a 28-page analysis that’s the most detailed critique yet of the holes in the Iron Dome system – holes so big that, if he’s right, would justify calling it Iron Sieve.’

BBC bias has also been typified by its downplaying, or complete blanking, of large-scale demonstrations in several UK cities protesting BBC coverage. As activist Jonathon Shafi noted of the BBC’s lack of interest:

‘It is misinformation of the worst, and it is an insult to journalism.’

After the four Palestinian Bakr boys, aged between 9 and 11, were killed by an Israeli shell, the New York Times headlineon July 16 read:

‘Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife’

This worked well to obscure the truth that the boys had been killed while playing football on a beach. Artist Amir Schiby produced a wonderful, moving tribute to the Bakr boys.

Even indisputable evidence here and here that Israel had fired on hospitals in Gaza, major war crimes, brought little outrage from politicians and media. Jonathan Whittall, Head of Humanitarian Analysis at Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), reminded the world:

‘Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not to repeatedly treat the same patients between torture sessions.’

Despite the unequal battle and high civilian death toll, no high-profile advocates of the West’s ‘responsibility to protect’(‘R2P’) civilians in Iraq, Libya and Syria have been calling for ‘intervention’.

We asked passionate ‘R2Pers’ like David Aaronovitch, Jonathan Freedland and Menzies Campbell if they felt ‘we must do something’. They did not reply. Freedland commented in a BBC interview that the death toll was ‘very lopsided’ – a polite euphemism for a massacre that, according to Unicef, has claimed 10 children per day. E-International Relations websitereports:

‘While the conflict has generated near blanket international media coverage it has been strangely ignored by the three most prominent and vociferous organisations established to promote the idea of “The Responsibility to Protect”, namely The International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP), the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) and the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (APCR2P)…

‘Since the operation began these groups have published myriad tweets, posts and articles – on issues ranging from the rights of women, the treatment of refugees, mass atrocity cries and the provision of medical aid… Yet, coverage of the crisis in Gaza has been negligible.’

WHO STARTS THE ‘CYCLE OF VIOLENCE’?

The term ‘cycle of violence’ often occurs in corporate reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But who starts the cycle spinning? A study of news performance in 2001 by the Glasgow Media Group noted that Israelis ‘were six times as likely to be presented as “retaliating” or in some way responding than were the Palestinians’.

The US media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, observed that the current conflict ‘is usually traced back to the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers on the West Bank. When their bodies were found on June 30, Israel “retaliated” by attacking Gaza. The July 2 killing of a Palestinian teenager, allegedly a revenge murder by Israeli extremists, was reported as further escalating the conflict.’

On the BBC’s News at Ten (July 23), reporter Quentin Sommerville commented (at 14:31):

‘The kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, blamed on Hamas, sparked this conflict.’

The Guardian readers’ editor, Chris Elliott – ostensibly the newspaper’s watchdog on bias in language and presentation – echoed Israeli propaganda, describing Israel’s current attack as a ‘counter-offensive’.

NBC News correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin supplied a rare example of dissent:

‘But even before the kidnapping of three Israeli-Jewish teenagers and killing of the Palestinian teenager last week, two Palestinians were killed back in May and didn’t trigger the kind of international outcry and international outrage that the killing of the three Israeli teens have.’

Corporate media have generally not identified these deaths as initiating a ‘cycle of violence’.

According to human rights group B’Tselem, 568 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli security forces from January 2009 till the end of May 2014; 84 of those fatalities were children. Over the same time period, 38 Israelis were killed by Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Many expert commentators argue that the deeper cause behind the latest violence is in fact Israel’s opposition to the Palestinian unity government, including Hamas, formed earlier this year which has been recognised even by the US.

NO CEASEFIRE – ‘IT’S THE SIEGE, STUPID’

If Palestinians are blamed by corporate media for starting the violence, they are also blamed for refusing to end it. A Guardian article title read:

‘Pressure mounts on Hamas to accept ceasefire as Gaza death toll tops 300 – Hamas left isolated by its refusal to accept a truce as death toll rises and UN chief heads for the region to help broker peace’

Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood commented:

‘But with the Palestinian death toll rising over 300, it is the Hamas leadership that has come under increasing pressure from multiple international sources to accept an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

‘”The objective is to convince all the Palestinian factions to accept the ceasefire,” one western diplomat told the Guardian.’

But a cessation of the current violence would not mean an end to war and suffering for the Palestinians. Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada commented:

‘[T]he two Palestinian resistance groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have set forth ten conditions for a ceasefire and ten-year truce with Israel.

‘They include an end to all armed hostilities, the end of the siege of Gaza, and the construction of internationally supervised air and seaports.’

Abunimah explained the rationale behind these conditions:

‘It’s the siege, stupid. Talk to virtually anyone in Gaza and they will tell you the same. The siege is living death, slowly crushing the life out of Gaza. It has to end.

‘This is a main reason why Hamas did not accede to the attempt by Israel, through its ally the Egyptian dictatorship, to impose a unilateral “ceasefire” about which Hamas says it was never even consulted, hearing about the initiative only through the media.’

Jerusalem-based journalist Mya Guarnieri described what a return to the status quo actually means:

‘Israel strikes Gaza from time to time and kills Palestinian civilians there and in the West Bank without garnering much scrutiny from the international media and, by extension, the international community.’

In February 2013, Ben White commented:

‘Three months have passed since the ceasefire that brought an end to Israel’s eight-day attack on the Gaza Strip known as Operation “Pillar of Defence”… Since late November, Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have averaged over one a day, every day. These include shootings by troops positioned along the border fence, attacks on fishermen working off the Gaza coast, and incursions by the Israeli army.’

These attacks are mentioned in passing, or ignored, by a corporate media system that is so clearly indifferent to the loss of Palestinian life. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook observed of the latest conflict:

‘It’s depressingly predictable that the corporate media have swallowed the line of Israel accepting the “ceasefire proposal” and Hamas rejecting it. What Hamas did was reject a US-Israeli diktat to sign away the rights of the people of Gaza to end a siege that cuts them off from the rest of the world.’

CORPORATE FILTERING – ‘A TOP-DOWN INTIMIDATION CAMPAIGN’

The bias in failing to report the brutalisation of a trapped, impoverished people under occupation is staggering. Many might wonder why journalists fail to speak out. But several journalists who have exposed Israeli actions, and media bias favouring Israel, have been punished.

Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who witnessed the killing of the four Bakr boys, and whose reporting of the tragedy moved many readers around the world, was subsequently ‘told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately’. Glenn Greenwald reports that NBC executives claimed the decision was motivated by ‘security concerns’ as Israel prepared a ground invasion. But NBC then sent another correspondent, Richard Engel, into Gaza with an American producer.

After a storm of protest on social media, NBC announced it had ‘reversed its decision’. The broadcaster dissembled:

‘As with any news team in conflict zones, deployments are constantly reassessed. We’ve carefully considered our deployment decisions and we will be sending Mohyeldin back to Gaza over the weekend.’

The day after Mohyeldin was pulled out, CNN correspondent Diana Magnay was removed from covering the conflict after she reported Israelis cheering the bombing of Gaza from a hillside overlooking the border. When the people cheering allegedly threatened to destroy Magnay’s car ‘if I say a word wrong’, she described them on Twitter as ‘scum’.

On July 21, journalist and MSNBC contributor Rula Jebreal said in an interview on MSNBC of MSNBC:

‘We’re ridiculous. We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue. Look how many [sic] air time Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis, Andrea Mitchell and others. I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on these same issues.’

The MSNBC interviewer responded: ‘We have had Palestinian voices on our show.’

Jebreal replied: ‘Maybe for 30 seconds, and then you have 25 minutes for Bibi Netanyahu…’

Max Blumenthal reported on AlterNet:

‘Within hours, all of Jebreal’s future bookings were cancelled and the renewal of her contract was off the table.’

Later that day, Jebreal tweeted:

‘My forthcoming TV appearances have been cancelled! Is there a link between my expose and the cancellation?’

Jebreal commented:

‘I couldn’t stay silent after seeing the amount of airtime given to Israeli politicians versus Palestinians. They say we are balanced but their idea of balance is 90 percent Israeli guests and 10 percent Palestinians. This kind of media is what leads to the failing policies that we see in Gaza.’

Jebreal said that in her two years as an MSNBC contributor, she had told her producers: ‘”we have a serious issue here”. But everybody’s intimidated by this pressure and if it’s not direct then it becomes self-censorship’.

Blumenthal reported than an NBC producer, speaking anonymously, had confirmed the reality of ‘a top-down intimidation campaign aimed at presenting an Israeli-centric view of the attack on the Gaza Strip’.

Pressure on the executives responsible for disciplining journalists is also intense. Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times, has said Washington often ‘played the terrorist card’ to get stories spiked:

‘Sometimes the CIA or the director of national intelligence or the NSA or the White House will call about a story… You hit the brakes, you hear the arguments, and it’s always a balancing act: the importance of the information to the public versus the claim of harming national security… Over time, the government too reflexively said to the Times, “you’re going to have blood on your hands if you publish X” and because of the frequency of that, the government lost a little credibility… But you do listen and seriously worry… Editors are Americans too… We don’t want to help terrorists’.

But editors should remember that they are human beings first, Americans second – to behave otherwise risks supporting their own government’s terrorism and that of its allies.

For in truth, biased US-UK journalism is empowering the Israeli government’s effort to terrorise the Palestinian people into accepting gradual genocide as their land and resources are stolen. As we have discussed here (see also Gideon Levyhere), the hidden backstory is that this land grab can not be conducted under conditions of peace. It requires Perpetual War; a phoney, one-sided ‘war’ dominated by Israel’s perennial trump card: high-tech military power supplied by that eternal ‘peace broker’, the United States.

DE and DC

This Alert is Archived here:
‘Disgustingly Biased’ – The Corporate Media On The Gaza Massacre

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The second Media Lens book, ‘NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century’ by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press. John Pilger writes of the book:

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‘This book is truly essential reading, focusing on one of the key issues, if not THE issue, of our age: how to recognise the deep, everyday brainwashing to which we are subjected, and how to escape from it. This book brilliantly exposes the extent of media disinformation, and does so in a compelling and engaging way.’

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Israel Has Been Bitten by a Bat

By Lawrence Weschler, Truthdig

Palestinian medics treat a wounded girl at the emergency room of the Shifa hospital in Gaza City. AP/Khalil Hamra

[T]he news out of Israel and Palestine: relentless, remorseless, repetitively compulsive, rabid.

And I am put in mind of a passage from Norman Mailer, in 1972, in which he attempted to plumb the psychopathology behind America’s relentless bombing of Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam during the Nixon years:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence Weschler, a veteran journalist and political observers, is a longtime contributor to the New Yorker (where he covered popular upsurges in Poland, South Africa, Latin America and Belgrade.

Crowds protest BBC ‘biased reporting’ on Gaza (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Image from twitter.com @AnasMekdad

[P]rotests against BBC coverage of Israeli military operation against the Palestinian refugee population in the Gaza strip are erupting across the UK, with thousands joining a call for fair, unbiased and contextual reporting of the events on the ground.

London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Newcastle saw marches to “protest at the BBC’s biased reporting”as well as to gather signatures for an open letter to the BBC Director General. London took the main stage of the protest movement.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Campaign against Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and many other organizations, in the letter to the publicly funded broadcaster, say that the company is “duty-bound to provide balanced reporting without bias.”

Instead, the organizers argue, the BBC’s reporting of Israel’s assault on Palestinians in the operation Protective Edge, fails to mention the years of occupation, deportations and siege Palestinians have lived through. “BBC’s reporting of these assaults is entirely devoid of context or background,” the organizers write.

The main protest point of a nationwide rally gathered huge crowds outside the BBC Broadcasting House in London.

Booing and demands for better coverage are just among some of the chants heard in the rallies across the UK, that reminded the BBC that “resistance to occupation is a right under international law.”

“When you portray Israel’s shelling of a civilian population as a ‘response’ or ‘retaliation’ to rocket strikes from Gaza, we would like to remind you that these events flow from the displacement of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people from their homes and communities,” the open letter reads.

In Liverpool, hundreds gathered outside the BBC Radio Merseyside to rally against Israeli attacks on Gaza and against biased reporting of the current situation. Organized by Liverpool Friends of Palestine and supported by Merseyside Stop the War Coalition, the event also became a venue to show solidarity with the Palestinian people and to call for peace and a ceasefire.

In Manchester “Stop the Bombing of Gaza” event also gathered a crowd. Organizers, in their call to action said that “Barack Obama, David Cameron and UK foreign secretary William Hague support“Israel’s right to defend itself” through killing “women, children and disabled people.” They gathered in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester center to call for a change in Whitehall’s policy.

A vigil in memory of the Palestinian victims was also held in Newcastle. Similar anti-BBC demonstrations were also held on Sunday in the UK, including Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as Cambridge and Oxford. More protests are scheduled during the week.

Mothers of all Palestinians must be killed: Israeli MP

Shaked

[A] well-known Israeli politician and parliament member has branded Palestinians as terrorists, saying mothers of all Palestinians should also be killed during the ongoing Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, Daily Sabah reported.

Ayelet Shaked of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”

“They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists,” Shaked said, adding, “They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists.”

The remarks are considered as a call for genocide as she declared that all Palestinians are Israel’s enemies and must be killed.

On Monday (July 7) Shaked quoted this on her Facebook page:

“Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”

The development comes as many officials from various countries have slammed Israel’s airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. The Turkish prime minister is the latest to condemn the offensive, accusing Israel of massacring the Palestinians.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lashed out at Israel, saying it is committing state terrorism against the Palestinians in the region. Speaking in parliament, he also questioned the world’s silence toward Tel Aviv’s ongoing atrocities.

Reacting to Shaked’s remarks, the Turkish premier said Israel’s policy in Gaza is no different than Hitler’s mentality.

“An Israeli woman said Palestinian mothers should be killed, too. And she’s a member of the Israeli parliament. What is the difference between this mentality and Hitler’s?” Erdogan asked.

The developments come as the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has recently said women and children make up a sizeable number of Palestinian fatalities caused by Israeli attacks on the besieged region.

Ayelet Shaked represents the far-right Jewish Home party in the Knesset.

JR/AB/SL

The War Netanyahu Cannot Possibly Win

Ravaging Gaza

Palestinians run toward al-Jabari's car, right after the strike.

by RAMZY BAROUD

[W]hen the bodies of three Israeli settlers – Aftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19 – were found on June 30 near Hebron in the southern West Bank, Israel went into a state of mourning and a wave of sympathy flowed in from around the world. The three had disappeared 18 days earlier in circumstances that remain unclear.

The entire episode, particularly after its grim ending, seemed to traumatize Israelis into ignoring harsh truths about the settlers and the militarization of their society. Amid a portrayal of the three as hapless youths, although one was a 19-year-old soldier, commentators have failed to provide badly needed context to the events. Few, if any, assigned the blame where it was most deserved – on expansionist policies which have sown hatred and bloodshed.

Before the discovery of the bodies, the real face of Netanyahu’s notoriously right-wing government was well-known. Few held Illusions about how “peaceful” an occupation could be if run by figures such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, and Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon. But because “children” – the term used by Netanyahu himself – were involved, even critics didn’t expect an exercise in political point-scoring.

There was sympathy elicited for the missing settlers case, but it quickly vanished in the face of an Israeli response (in the West Bank, Jerusalem and later in a full-scale war on Gaza) largely seen in the crucible of world opinion as disproportionate and cruel. Rather than being related to the tragic death of three youths, this response obviously reflected Netanyahu’s grand political calculations.

As mobs of Israeli Jews went out on an ethnic lynching spree in Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank that some likened to a “pogrom”, occupation soldiers conducted a massive arrest campaign of hundreds of Palestinians, mostly Hamas members and supporters.

The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas said it had no role in the death of the settlers, and this appears plausible since they rarely hesitate to take credit for something carried out by their military wing. Israeli military strategists were well aware of that.

This war on Hamas, however, has little to do with the killed settlers, and everything to do with the political circumstances that preceded their disappearance.

On May 15, two Palestinian youths, Nadim Siam Abu Nuwara, 17, and Mohammed Mahmoud Odeh Salameh, 16, were killed by Israeli soldiers while taking part in a protest commemorating the anniversary of the Nakba, or ‘Great Catastrophe’. Video footage shows that Nadim was innocently standing with a group of friends before collapsing as he was hit by an Israeli army bullet.

The Nakba took place 66 years ago when the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict emerged. An estimated one million Palestinians were forced out of their homes as they fled a Zionist invasion. Israel was established on the ruins of that Palestine.

Nadim and Mohammed, like the youths of several generations since, were killed in cold blood as they walked to remember that exodus. In Israel, there was no outrage. However, Palestinian anger, which seems to be in constant accumulation – being under military occupation and enduring harsh economic conditions – was reaching a tipping point.

In some way, the deaths of these Palestinian youths were a distraction from the political disunity that has afflicted Palestinian leadership and society for years. Their deaths were a reminder that Palestine, as an idea and a collective plight and struggle, goes beyond the confines of politics or even ideology.

Their deaths reminded us that there is much more to Palestine than the whims of the aging Palestinian Authority ‘President’ Mahmoud Abbas and his Ramallah-based henchmen, or even Hamas’s regional calculations following the rise and fall of the ‘Arab Spring.’

The Israeli reaction to the settlers’ death has been different. After the discovery of the bodies, fellow settlers and right-wing Israelis began exacting revenge from Palestinian communities. The mob was united by the slogan “death to the Arabs”, reviving a long-disused notion of a single Palestinian identity that precedes the emergence of Fatah and Hamas.

Perhaps paradoxically, the grief and anger provoked by the death of Mohammad Abu Khdeir, 17, who was burnt alive by Israeli settlers as part of this lashing out, has furthered this reawakening of a long-fragmented Palestinian national identity.

This identity that had suffered due to Israeli walls, military tactics and the Palestinians’ own disunity, has been glued back together in a process that resembles the events which preceded the first and second uprisings of 1987 and 2000 respectively.

However, unlike in the previous Intifadas, the hurdles towards a unified voice this time seem insurmountable. Abbas is a weak leader who has done so much to meet Israel’s security expectations and so very little to defend the rights of his people. He is a relic from a bygone era who merely exists because he is the best option Israel and the US have at the moment.

In the aftermath of the Israeli violent response to the killing of the settlers, Abbas laboured to coordinate with the massive Israeli search. At times, he stayed away as Israeli troops brutalised Palestinians in the West Bank.

It is clear that there can be no third Intifada that leaves Abbas and his wretched political apparatus in place. This is precisely why Palestinian Authority goons prevented many attempts by Palestinians in the West Bank to protest the Israeli violence unleashed in the occupied territories, which finally culminated into a massive war against Gaza that has killed and wounded hundreds.

Whatever credit Abbas supposedly gained by closing ranks with Hamas to form a unity government last June has been just as quickly lost. It has been overshadowed by his own failures to live up to commitment under the unity deal, and the relevance of his ‘authority’ was quickly eclipsed by Israeli violence, highlighting his and his government’s utter irrelevance to Israel’s political calculations.

When Israel launched its massive arrest campaign that mainly targeted Hamas in the West Bank, Hamas’s political wing was already considering “alternatives” to the unity government in Ramallah.

Hamas’s objectives were not being met. The unity deal was meant to achieve several goals: end Hamas’s political isolation in Gaza, resulting from the intensifying of the siege by Egypt’s Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, solving the economic crisis in the Strip, and also allowing Hamas to revert to its old brand, as a resistance movement first and foremost.

Even if Hamas succeeded in establishing a new brand based on the resistance/political model, Israel was determined to deactivate any potential for Palestinian unity. Destroying that unity became almost an obsession for Netanyahu.

The disappearance of the settlers gave Netanyahu’s quest a new impetus. He immediately began a campaign pressuring Abbas to break away from Hamas.

But there is still more to Israel’s war on Gaza than this. Fearing an intifada that would unite Palestinians, threaten the PA, and slow down the construction of illegal settlements, Netanyahu’s war on Gaza means to distract from the slowly building collective sentiment among Palestinians throughout Palestine, and among Palestinian citizens in Israel.

This unity is much more alarming for Netanyahu than a political arrangement by Fatah and Hamas necessitated by regional circumstances. The targeting of Hamas is an Israeli attempt at challenging the emerging new narrative that is no longer about Gaza and its siege anymore, but the entirety of Palestine and its collectives regardless of which side of the Israeli “separation wall” they live on.

A true Palestinian unity culminating in a massive popular Intifada is the kind of war Netanyahu cannot possibly win.

Ramzy Baroud is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).