Laundering language
By Akiva Eldar (last section of his article)
Many years of observing Islamic zealots and an intimate familiarity with the Israeli intelligence services has turned Prof. Immanuel Sivan into a sharp-eyed observer of the war Israel is currently conducting against the Hamas.
In a lecture delivered last week, Sivan referred to news reports abut "the elimination of senior Hamas men," something that has become routine. He said that apparently it's enough to control 13 neighbors to be turned into a "senior" Hamas activist.
Sivan, who was lecturing at a conference in honor of Prof. Bernard Lewis at the Hebrew University's Truman Institute, noted that in light of the situation in the territories over the past few months, the leaders of the Hamas have largely lost their ability to conduct internal communication or coordinate moves.
The phrase, "senior Hamas activist," which has been drafted into service by the IDF, deserves a medal for the wonders it does to public opinion. There's no need to claim he was a "ticking bomb," to extra-judicially execute a "senior Hamas official." Nobody gets excited if half a dozen innocent civilians are killed during the capture of "one of the top wanted men from the Hamas in Gaza."
And while conducting war against the murderers of Israeli teens who went out to a discotheque there's no need to count young Palestinians who get caught and are killed in the cross fire.
Dr. Niv Gordon of Ben-Gurion University conducted a study that shows how the terrible terror bombing of the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, like the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya and the Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem, were turned into events that became useful to justify "eliminations."
He compared the phenomenon to the collective psychological effect on Americans by the 9/11 attacks. The establishment uses the tragic events that have been carved into the collective consciousness and at the same time, relies on collective amnesia to forget the personal details of the murderers.
Examining the newspapers between June 1, 2001 - the Dolphinarium attack - and November 25, 2001, Gordon found that during nearly six months the security forces assassinated 14 Hamas activists, mostly "senior."
According to military sources quoted in the three major dailies, seven of the 14 were involved in one way or another with the suicide bombing outside the Tel Aviv discotheque.
Jamal Mansur and Jamal Salim Damouni from Nablus were assassinated on July 31 (two children who happened to be there were also killed); Abed Rahman Sa'id Hamad from Qalqiliya was killed on October 14, Ahmed Marshud from Nablus was killed on October 15; Iman Halawa from Nablus was killed on October 22; Jamal Jadala from Hebron was killed on October 31, and Mahmud Abu Hanud from Al Fara refugee camp was killed on November 23.
But Gordon notes that every reporter in the territories knows Hamas is broken down into tiny cells and the organization, with the identity of each cell zealously protected from the other members. Therefore, Gordon finds it difficult to believe that activists from Nablus, Qalqiliya, Hebron, and Al Fara were all involved in the same bombing.
But lacking any evidence linking the assassinated men to the bombing, the press relies only on military sources, which attribute various adjectives to the dead men. One prepared the bomb, another ran the lab, a third commanded the cell, a fourth taught the terrorist, a fifth paid for it, a sixth planned it, a seventh enlisted the cell, an eighth "played an important role," and so on and so forth.
The study shows there is an interesting language used to whitewash assassinations, which most of the Israeli public support as a policy.
An ambush or attack on an Israeli tank that invaded Gaza, or an Israeli soldier guarding an illegal outpost in the West Bank, are defined as "terror operations," which justify extra-judicial executions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030225/d6ea4e66/attachment.htm>