WarSclerotic

Three weeks after the beginning of the mass demonstrations along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, which are being held as part of the so-called “March of Return,” Hamas is trying to intimidate journalists into covering the events in a way that distorts the truth and reality.

Hamas, one of several Palestinian groups responsible for the anti-Israel demonstrations, does not want the world to see pictures of Palestinians throwing stones, firebombs and explosive devices at Israeli soldiers.

Hamas does not want journalists to use the words “clashes” and “confrontations” when reporting about the demonstrations.

Hamas does not want journalists to report the fact that some of the demonstrators killed during the “March of Return” were actually members of its armed group, Izaddin Al-Qassam.

In other words, Hamas wants journalists to report as if they were working for its propaganda machine. Any journalist who dares to challenge the Hamas narrative is denounced as a “traitor” and punished.

To ensure that Palestinian journalists comply with its wishes, Hamas’s “Press Office” earlier this week issued directives to reporters as to how they should cover the “March of Return.”

The first order that Hamas requires the journalists to obey is to refrain from focusing on the actions of individuals participating in the demonstrations.

This means that a photographer who sees a Palestinian protester engaged in violence, such as hurling a stone, firebomb or explosive device at Israeli troops, should look the other way. Why? Because, according to Hamas, such pictures refute its claim that the “March of Return” is a “peaceful and nonviolent uprising by unarmed civilians.”

Hamas, according to its “Press Office,” also instructed Palestinian journalists to stop using the words “clashes” and “confrontations” in their stories about the demonstrations. These words, Hamas argues, create the impression that the Palestinian demonstrators are engaged in violence. The pictures and videos from the scenes of the demonstrations, of course, depict just that.

Several videos even show masked Palestinian demonstrators trying to destroy the security fence and barbed wires along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. This is part of the plan of the organizers of the “March of Return” to infiltrate the border and flood Israel with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Palestinian journalists, in the words of Hamas’s “Press Office,” are to portray the events at the border with Israel as “an assault by the occupation army and its snipers on a peaceful and nonviolent civilian uprising.” Hamas wants journalists to show only one side of the story by solely focusing on Israel’s response to the violent demonstrations. The violence that triggered the response is, for Hamas, inadmissible evidence.

Pictured: Palestinians in Gaza attempt to break through a section of the border fence with Israel, under cover of a smokescreen, March 30, 2018. (Image source: Ateya Bahar video screenshot).

In line with Hamas’s own fictitious narrative about its bloody behavior, it wants the coverage of the “March of Return” to be along the lines of “it all started when Israel fired back.” Nothing new here: this is exactly the tactic Hamas has used during its previous wars with Israel. Hamas has never allowed journalists to show its members in the process of firing rockets at Israel. The only stories journalists were allowed to report where those of Palestinian casualties resulting from Israeli military strikes against people launching the rocket attacks from schools and populated areas of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’s “Press Office” additionally warned Palestinian journalists against quoting or relying on Israeli media in their reporting about the events in the Gaza Strip. This means that the journalists are not allowed to inform the Palestinian public of what Israel is saying about the “March of Return,” especially concerning violent attacks on Israeli soldiers.

In this regard, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), a body dominated by Hamas’s rivals in Fatah, seems fully to agree with Hamas. In a statement published in Ramallah, the PJS accused Israeli journalists of being “complicit in crimes and killings.” It also claimed that Israeli journalists were part of the Israeli army’s propaganda machine.

Such incitement against Israeli journalists should be taken with utmost seriousness. It endangers the lives of reporters who cover Palestinian issues and often travel to Palestinian cities and villages.

Hamas’s incitement against Israeli journalists is predictable. But when the incitement originates from a Fatah-affiliated institution in the West Bank, and controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas’s loyalists, it gives pause. Isn’t Fatah supposed to be the “moderate” Palestinian faction that ostensibly believes in the two-state solution and peace with Israel? Isn’t Mahmoud Abbas supposed to be the “moderate” and “pragmatic” Palestinian leader with whom Israel is supposed to make peace? Aren’t Fatah and Abbas receiving financial aid from the US and EU because of their presumed support for a peace process with Israel? Why should the Americans and Europeans be supporting a Palestinian faction whose journalists openly incite against their Israeli colleagues?

The incitement by Fatah and Hamas is an attempt to intimidate and silence not only Palestinian journalists, but their Israeli colleagues as well. It is an attempt to force Israeli journalists to toe the line and endorse the Hamas and Fatah narrative not only regarding the “March of Return,” but also the entire Palestinian cause. Apparently in agreement with Hamas and Fatah, international human rights organizations and advocates of free media around the world do not seem bothered at all by the life-threatening attacks on Israeli journalists.

Finally, the Hamas “Press Office” instructed Palestinian journalists to focus on the “humanization” of the stories of the Palestinians who are killed or injured during the mass demonstrations. The journalists are required to highlight the “various personal and social aspects” of the Palestinian victims. Translation: If the “victim” is a Hamas terrorist, the journalists are to avoid mentioning that and instead report about his having been a beloved husband, father, and community member.

Again, this is part of Hamas’s effort to lie to the world and present the Palestinians killed and injured during the riots as unarmed innocent civilians. The truth, however, is that Hamas has sent hundreds of its militiamen to take part in the demonstrations disguised as civilians.

Since the Palestinian journalists covering the “March of Return” are unlikely to ignore Hamas’s new instructions, this will affect the reporting of the international media. Most international media outlets and correspondents employ Palestinian producers and translators and “fixers” to assist in covering Palestinian issues.

A Palestinian journalist who is afraid to defy the Hamas instructions will not tell his employers everything he sees and hears. Some of the Palestinian journalists will also be doing that of their own volition and not necessarily out of fear of Hamas or any other Palestinian group. These journalists see themselves as foot soldiers of the “revolution” and are convinced that their loyalty should be, first and foremost, to their people and cause. And the truth? Well, the truth finishes last.

The ‘March of Return” is scheduled to continue until May 15, the Gregorian date for Israel Independence Day. More protests are planned along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel in the coming weeks. The Palestinians say that the real goal of the protests is to achieve the “right of return,” by which they would return to “all of Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.”

The planned demonstrations will parallel those which took place the past three weeks. Those demonstrations, too, will involve Palestinians throwing rocks, firebombs and explosive devices at Israeli soldiers. Those demonstrations, too, will see Palestinians chanting slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel and see Hamas terrorists dressed in civilian clothes participating in the “peaceful” demonstrations.

Given the threats made by Hamas and Fatah, the question is: Will we see all these things, or will the cover-up continue? And, will the international media allow itself to be used as a platform for disseminating Hamas’s lies? The Hamas “Press Office,” for its part, is working overtime to cover the ravenous wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim based in the Middle East.

The so-called “Iran nuclear deal,” a witches’ brew concocted by that most deserving of Nobel peace laureates, Barack Obama, has furnished the theme of many bizarre diplomatic twists and turns. The latest is an attempt by the European Union to persuade President Donald Trump to renege on his campaign promise to improve or scrap the deal.

During the past year, the EU’s foreign policy point-woman, Federica Mogherini has been collecting air-miles calling on world capitals to demand “commitment” to the deal, as if this were an article of faith in an as-yet undefined religion.

The EU’s chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini, has been collecting air-miles calling on world capitals to demand “commitment” to the “Iran Deal,” as if this were an article of faith in an as-yet undefined religion. Pictured: Mogherini (left) stands with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, during her August 2017 visit to Iran. (Image source: European External Action Service/Flickr)

The retiring British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Peter Westmacott, has been granting interviews to Iranian media, demanding kudos for having spent “much time and energy” trying to persuade the US to stick by the deal.

Outgoing German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel also boasts about having spent much energy in his final months in office “defending the deal” as a Crusading knight protecting a holy relic.

And now is the turn of the French Ambassador to Washington, Gerard Araud, to launch a Twitter campaign to persuade the Trump administration to “honor” that most questionable item in Obama’s legacy.

Basically, the Europeans advance four arguments.

The first, advanced by Westmacott, is that discarding the deal could damage the credibility of the “major powers”, that is to say Britain, France, Germany and the US that signed it along with China and Russia.

There are two troubles with that argument.

The first is that it assumes that any diplomatic deal should be treated like a Catholic marriage that one abides “til death do us part”. Such an assumption would mean the end of diplomacy as the art of responding to changing realities.

If we were to go by Mogherini’s or Westmacott’s “commitment” to an unchangeable “deal”, Britain and France should have never denounced the “peace accord” that Chamberlain signed in Munich in 1938.

However, the EU argument about “respecting signatures” has another problem, because nobody signed anything.

The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is no more than a press release stating a set of desirable moves by Iran and the P5+1 which, incidentally, didn’t include the EU as such. Moreover, there are significant differences between the JCPOA’s English and Persian versions, making various imaginative re-readings, à la Roland Barthes or Jacques Derrida, possible. Mogherini cannot claim respect for “signatures” which never happened and that, had they happened, would not have included the EU.

The second argument is that the deal is working and, thus, the dictum “if it ain’t broken why fix it” applies.

That assumption is not borne out by facts.

Iran and the P5+1 have either tried to circumvent or have brazenly broken their promises.

Sir Peter, the retired UK diplomat, certainly knows that his government, in violation of the deal, still refuses to allow the Iranian Embassy to open a bank account in London. Nor has the UK government unfrozen more than $600 million in Iranian assets.

The Germans and the French still refuse to issues export guarantees to firms seeking trade with Iran. Huge memorandums of understanding are signed but put on the back-burner, as Iran remains subject to sanctions by the United Nations, the EU and US.

As for Russia, during an official visit to Iran last week, Chairman of the Russian Duma Vyacheslav Volodin heard an avalanche of complaints.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown what he thinks of Iran, a supposed ally notably in Syria, by his recent treatment of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Ankara. At the end of a “summit” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Rouhani demanded a on-on-one meeting with Putin. The Russian President consented to a brief standing encounter that lasted around 8 minutes. Tsar Vladimir had no time to sit down with the Iranian mullah for a cup of tea.

As for China, it says Iran could use its frozen assets, piled up through oil exports to the People’s Republic, only by buying Chinese goods.

Beijing even refuses to let the 3,000 or so Iranian students in China to receive their stipends through banks, forcing the embassy to send people around to distribute cash among the budding scholars.

Ironically, the only P5+1 member that has partially complied with the “deal” is the US, including by Mafia-style smuggling of $1.7 billion cash to Tehran.

Iran, for its part, asserts that there has been no change in its nuclear project.

Earlier this month, spokesman for Iran Atomic Energy Agency Behruz Kamalvand told a press conference in Tehran that the Iran’s nuclear project was “going full speed ahead” with “new and more ambitious plans under preparation.”

More importantly, Iran has managed to block international inspection of key research and development centers by claiming they are military sites and thus off limits.

Less than half of Iran’s enriched uranium stocks have been shipped abroad, along with 10 percent of plutonium accumulated at the Arak plant.

Last week, marking National Nuclear Day, Rouhani unveiled what he called “83 new nuclear projects” as slaps in the face of the American “Great Satan.”

Why should Mogherini or Araud beat their chests about a “deal” not honored by either side?

The ambassador advances one last argument: If you scrap the “deal” how could you be sure Iran will not go “full speed ahead” with its nuclear ambitions?

This is a casuistic argument: accept the bad for fear of getting the worse.

Since the JCPOA was unveiled Iran’s national currency has fallen by some 40 percent to an all-time low against foreign currencies, including the Iraqi dinar and the UAE dirham.

The Tehran government cannot regularly pay the salaries of its employees. Had it not been for the cash smuggled and funneled by Obama, the mullahs would have been unable to pay their military either. Right now, Tehran has difficulty bankrolling the Lebanese “Hezbollah” and paying the salaries of Bashar al-Assad’s regime forces and civil service.

So the Obama “deal”, as Trump said during his campaign, is a bad deal.

What Trump didn’t say was that the “deal” was bad, both for Iran and the rest of the world.

Araud would do well to re-read what Laurent Fabius, then France’s Foreign Minister, said in 2015: “France will not accept a deal if it is not clear that inspections can be done at all Iranian installations … We’ll accept a deal, but not any deal.”

It was partly because of France’s refusal to give the JCPOA legal status by signing that the Obama “deal” was launched as an informal initiative. Interestingly, Araud who now campaigns for the “deal” was appointed by Fabius, who took care to have a pinch of salt about it.

Amir Taheri, formerly editor of Iran’s premier newspaper, Kayhan, before the Iranian revolution of 1979, is a prominent author based on Europe. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

This article first appeared in Asharq Al Awsat and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.