De Nuance van de NRC 94

In het vorige stuk over 'de slijpsteen voor de geest' schreef ik dit: 'Het extremisme van een krant als de NRC is exemplarisch voor de onnozelheid van de westerse commerciele massamedia, die geen enkele ruimte openlaten voor nuances. Daarover later meer.'

Ik gebruikte bewust de kwalificatie 'extremisme' dat 'geen enkele ruimte' openlaat voor 'nuances', en wel omdat de NRC het recente bloedbad in Gaza in een commentaar rechtvaardigde en later nog eens liet rechtvaardigen, terwijl toen al de NRC zelf had geconstateerd dat de Israelische strijdkrachten oorlogsmisdaden pleegden. En die houding is een extremistische, om de simpele reden dat de NRC het internationaal recht daarmee volstrekt negeert. Dit alles is het resultaat van het feit dat de NRC de wereld verdeelt in Joden en niet-Joden, waarbij de Joden in Israel een bepaalde rol is toebedeeld, die de psychologische en economische belangen van het Westen dient.

Iemand die dat beseft is de auteur en columnist van The New York Times, Roger Cohen, die in het laatste nummer van The New York Review of Books een genuanceerde analyse geeft, die u nooit in de NRC zult lezen. Hij schrijft:

'I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions, so despairing of any peace that might terminate the dominion of the dead in favor of opportunity for the living. [...] The high-tech security fence built to wall off the West Bank and the near-hermetic sealing of Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005 are in the end attempts to shut out reality. Palestinians have become a vague abstraction to most Israelis not within the range of Hamas rockets: out of sight, out of mind. Israel, shamefully, has even prevented international journalists from getting into Gaza to tell the story as they see it. Long before a six-month cease-fire crumbled in mid-December (a little over a month after the November 4 Israeli military raid into Gaza that killed six Hamas militants), Israel had also cut delivery of critical supplies of food, medicine, fuel, fertilizer, cash, and spare parts to a trickle. Gaza bakeries were idled, banks closed, salaries unpaid. A society where unemployment routinely runs at almost 50 percent was in a state of breakdown. [...] It's been wrong since James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president, saw his attempts to get economic activity going in Gaza in 2005 thwarted by border closure and "everything getting wasted." After a year in that job, marginalized, Wolfensohn slipped away. He told me that "the view on the American and Israeli side was that you could not trust the Palestinians, and the result was not to build more economic activity, but to build more barriers. And I personally did not think that was the way forward." Consistent with this bridge-breaking approach was the ostracism, from Israel and the United States, which followed the Hamas victory in the free and fair January 2006 elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel has the right to hit back at Hamas when attacked—but not to blow Gaza to pieces, or deprive people of food, water, and medicine. In at least one appalling incident at Zeitoun, on the east of Gaza City, where children were found next to their mothers' days-old corpses, the International Red Cross has accused Israel of an "unacceptable" failure "to meet its obligation under international law to care for and evacuate the wounded." Israel denies targeting civilians, accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, and says it works in "close cooperation" with international aid organizations. But at some point—and I would say a couple of hundred dead children in Gaza are already well past that point—such denials become pointless: the facts speak for themselves. No invocation of collateral damage or legitimate defense can excuse such wanton killing. As Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations and former soldier in the Israeli army, has observed, the Gaza offensive "seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash."
There is another right that Israel does not have: to delude its people into thinking that peace is achievable without coming to terms with the deeply entrenched Middle Eastern realities that are Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations still viewed in the US government and Congress almost exclusively through the prism of terror, but whose grassroots political movements present a far more complex, variegated picture. The logic of the Israeli offensive, if there is one, must surely be that Hamas can be so weakened as ultimately to crumble. That is also the logic of the relentless blockade that persisted during the six-month cease-fire despite Israel's earlier commitment, as part of the deal, to opening border crossings. But such logic is flawed. Hamas is not going away. As Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, the former commander of the Israel Defense Forces' Gaza Division, told Ha'aretz on December 22:

"We could have eased the siege over the Gaza Strip, in such a way that the Palestinians, Hamas, would understand that holding their fire served their interests. But when you create a tahadiyeh [truce], and the economic pressure on the Strip continues, it's obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahadiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire."

Israel, backed by the United States, has been intent on proving that Hamas must wither and die rather than exploring ways in which it, like the Palestine Liberation Organization before it, can move toward being part of a two-state solution. That is a strategic mistake. Hamas, even with perhaps three hundred of its leaders and militants killed, has been strengthened as a political and social movement by Olmert's last fling, the reckless foray of a failed leader.'

Lees verder: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22270

Maar deze genuanceerde beschrijving van de context waarin het conflict zich afspeelt, mag de NRC-lezer niet weten, omdat het niet in de pro-Israel propaganda van het avondblad past. En die propaganda voedt alleen maar het geweld. Die houding dient niet Israel, maar het Westen. Zo hoopt men de schuld in te lossen en onze economische belangen veilig te stellen.