Stick this one in the “Yeah, right…” file:
The kidnappers of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit issued a new set of demands in the early hours of Saturday morning, calling on Israel to halt its offensive in Gaza and ordering the release of 1,000 prisoners. Nowhere do the demands explicitly say that Shalit would be returned in exchange for the requested actions.
Less than an hour earlier, the Israeli Air Force hit three main roads in central Gaza. The army said that the purpose of the strike was to make movement more difficult for the kidnappers of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and to crack down on Kassam rocket launchers.
Earlier Friday, an Israeli Air Force missile struck a car traveling in Gaza City, causing an enormous explosion and, according to Israel Radio, wounding two people in the vicinity.
Four men, suspected of being responsible for launching Kassam rockets at Israel, were apparently in the car.
The missile did not directly hit the vehicle, but exploded next to it, and the four people inside ran out, witnesses said, identifying the occupants as members of the violent Islamic Jihad group.
According to Palestinian sources three of the men in the car were wounded, one seriously.
When this kind of demand is made it usually means one thing: the side that is making the demand that it knows the other side can never and will never meet is trying to escalate the conflict. Would Israel negotiate? Highly unlikely. Would they release 1,000 prisoners and halt Gaza actions intended to show that the country’s top brass intends to nip this kind of operation in the bud? Yeah, right…
Keep in mind that there could be divisions within an organization or movement. During the late 20th century it was sometimes said of outrageous terrorist actions in Europe and elsewhere that the elite of a group sometimes did things to spark a massive reaction from officials or a government… a reaction that would anger some segments of a population and help the group recruit more members. That could also be at play here. Whether or not that’s the actual intent, you an already see how Israel’s reaction is being exploited politically:
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is making his first public comments on Israel’s military response to the abduction of one of its soldiers. “This total war is proof of a premeditated plan,” Haniyeh says.
On Israel’s arrest of dozens of Hamas officials, he says, “When they kidnapped the ministers they meant to hijack the government’s position, but we say no positions will be hijacked, no governments will fall.”
Israeli officials tell the New York Times the arrests “indicated a significant change in Israel’s policy toward the Hamas government. The seizures are partly intended to warn Hamas leaders that they could lose their power and liberty, if not their lives, unless they act to release a captured Israeli soldier, a senior Israeli military official said. But Israel has also concluded that Hamas, which had largely kept to a cease-fire before, is now openly engaged in violent acts against Israel and must be treated differently.”
Meanwhile, there have been differing press reactions to covering and commenting on this story.
The New York Daily News, in an editorial, proclaims “Hamas Asks For It”:
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz called it “the hour of truth,” as, pushed too far at last, the embattled Jewish state threw tanks and warplanes across the border into Gaza, there to demand the return of a young soldier kidnapped from Israeli soil last weekend by Hamas operatives – and upon whose fate turns the Mideast.
We hope to be waking this morning to news that Army Cpl. Gilad Shalit’s crazed Palestinian captors have reconsidered their belligerence and elected to free him. Last night, though, it seemed more likely that the Hamas terrorists were openly begging for continued military punishment. And Israel is plainly and justifiably prepared to give them precisely that.
The snatching of Gilad Shalit, and now of two civilians as well, are outrages that Israel’s leaders cannot and will not suffer without decisive action. For once again, Hamas has proven that gangsters rule the Gaza Strip, the territory surrendered by Israel to the Palestinians last year as the hoped-for start of a state with which there could be coexistence.
Sworn to Israel’s destruction, Hamas has made a pariah of the Palestinian government and any pretense of implicitly recognizing the Jewish nation’s legitimacy through vague, prettied-up language will be meaningless as long as Hamas keeps delivering unmistakably explicit messages of determined war and bloody terrorism.
The BBC announced on its blog that it would refer to Shalit as being “captured” — not “kidnapped”:
As ever in reporting the Middle East, language – and the choice of words – is incredibly important. Was the soldier kidnapped or captured, were the Hamas politicians arrested or detained?
Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry value judgements. Our job is to remain objective. By doing so, I hope we allow our audiences on radio and television to make their own assessment of the story. So we try to stick to the facts – civilians are “kidnapped”, Cpl Shalit was “captured”; since troops don’t usually make “arrests”, the politicians were “detained”. Doubtless some will disagree. But that’s, in essence, the heart of the story – two competing narratives.
Expect debate over the BBC’s decision to become a story in itself..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.