New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, seen above being pied by student activists at Brown University last spring for “his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet,” among other offenses, is shamelessly warmongering again.

In his column today he effectively endorses Israeli terrorism against Palestinian civilians.  He says he hopes Israel’s goal is to “educate Hamas.”  Then he explains that by “educate,” he means inflict massive collateral damage on the civilian population around Hamas, as Israel also did with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.

Israel’s military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon — when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That’s when Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: “What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?”

[...]

In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims. [emphasis added by Glenn Greenwald]

Watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has put out an alert urging folks to contact the Times’ Public Editor with their complaints.   In the absence of a gooey pie to the face, Friedman and his enablers at the Times’ opinion page need to hear from us.

This is the first time I’ve seen the bombing of a city live on a screen. It’s one thing to see footage after the fact of injured and dead families.  It’s another to sit and witness the bombing itself as it happens.  To know that innocent people are dying in that moment.  To hear a rooster crowing and morning prayers amidst the deafening booms of falling shells and bombs.   I keep cringing and covering my eyes every time there’s another blast, as if I’m shielding myself from something.  It is horrifying, just to watch.

Again, download Livestation (small, clean program) to watch AJE live.  We need media reform justice in this country so that people can watch this channel normally on their televisions.

In reality, fact-finding by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Al Jazeera English has found that the grainy white figures loading up a truck before being blown up in the video are themselves innocent civilians. One of individuals was a 14-year-old boy. The video below has been viewed less than 30,000 times on Youtube.

The Israeli military’s Youtube videos are together a first-hand view of the war on Gaza from the perspective of Israeli warplanes. But clearly their main function is as aggressive propaganda for the Israeli war. The video above disguises the bombing of a group of civilians as a precision strike against terrorists. What’s new is that this misinformation is being distributed without mediation by any filter and with great success through a top Web 2.0 website. Youtube has become the second most popular site on the planet because of the social networking and content-creation features it brought to the medium of video. The company describes itself as “empowering them [people] to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.”

I don’t think giving any government an outlet on Youtube for unabashed pro-war propaganda serves that mission. And I wonder if, say, the governments of Iran, Russia, or Hamas for that matter would be allowed to do the same thing. At least when President-Elect Barack Obama’s team posts videos, they allows comments and video responses which appear on the same page. Not the case with the IDF’s videos. There’s nothing Web 2.0 about this propaganda which makes it any better than the old.

(Not only that, but a bunch of folks at Reddit say a user-submitted video which shows the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza from the below on the ground has been censored.)

Hundreds of Austinites, young and old, students and workers, gathered in front of the Capitol on Monday evening to demonstrate against the Israeli bombings in the Gaza strip. Here’s my report:

(Working on improving the audio quality, folks. Next time it’ll be better. Produced using a Zoom H2 and Audacity.)

Update: Here’s the transcript of the report, with links, below the jump.

As the Israeli military’s bombardement of the Gaza strip continues into its fifth day today, people around the world are taking to the streets to raise their voices in protest. Thousands have protested from Buenos Aires to Sydney to Chicago outside the offices of Barack Obama’s transition team, to London, Paris, Iraq, and across the Middle East. Here in Austin, Texas, about two hundred demonstrators met at the curb of Capitol building facing the downtown’s main avenue on Monday evening.

-Sound -

Naser Elzer is from the West Bank, where two Palestinian protesters were shot and killed by Israeli troops during a demonstration in solidarity with the Gaza strip on Monday. Elzher said the United States is the only country that can pressure Israel into ending the assault.

-Elzer quote 1-

The United States provides about $2 billion in aid to the Israeli government every year. And, according to the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli military is deploying a new US-built bunker-busting bomb in its airstrikes on Gaza this week. Elzer also said he felt frustrated with the major media’s portrayal of the conflict.

-Elzer quote 2-

The Guardian newspaper reports that 18 Israeli civilians have been killed by Qassam rockets fired into Israeli towns in the past eight years – 3 of those died in the past five days. The United Nations says 62 Palestinian civilians have died in Israeli bombings against Gaza in this latest attack – but that figure does not include any casualties of Palestinian adult men; they are all women and children. Hundreds more Palestinian civilians have been killed in Israeli shootings and airstrikes in the occupied territories in the past year.

-Sound-

As darkness began to fall and the chilly night air set in, the mass of protesters in front of the Capitol’s twenty-foot Christmas tree dwindled. But a dozen or so children of Palestinian families weren’t phazed at all – they kept singing and chanting more than two hours after the protest began. Drivers passing by noticed the excitement and honked their approval:

-Sound-

Organizers of the demonstration vowed to continue organizing against the Israeli war on Gaza. I’m Ansel Herz, in Austin.

Not much posting last week because of intermittent internet access, sorry. I’ll be making up for it this week. I left the following comment on another blog – it covers a lot of what I’d like to say about Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

1. Hamas’ rocket fire into Israeli towns is wrong under any circumstances and must be condemned.

2. Israel broke the last ceasefire, by which Hamas was abiding at the time, when it launched a ground raid into the Gaza Strip on the day of the US election. It apparently violated another truce when it launched this latest assault. The question of proportionality aside, in this sense Israel has already broken rules by which it or any other international actor would be expected to abide.

3. We don’t know how many civilians have been killed/maimed, but there is no basis for claiming Israel has done a ‘stellar job’ at sparing civilians from harm. We do know that the IOF is dropping US-made bunker-busting bombs on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. They have bombed a police graduation ceremony, several Islamic University buildings, a Hamas sports center, mosques, and several UN clinics and facilities. We know that dozens of women and children have already died and hundreds more are injured. This is on top of the collective punishment inflicted by Israel’s blockade on Gaza, which has seriously depleted medical, power, and food stocks.

4. Israel is not really in the same situation as other Western powers who have faced popular insurgencies. Hamas’ home-made rockets rarely hit their targets. But supposing the analogy is legit, those nations that reacted with reckless and overwhelming military assaults against popular insurgencies tended to be ineffective and deserving of moral condemnation for the wanton ‘collateral damage’ they caused. Nothing different in this case.

5. Americans cannot look at the attack on Gaza as disinterested observers from an outside party. We are directly complicit in the conflict so long as our taxes and government continue to be a major means of support for the Israeli military apparatus. People absolutely need to apply their morals to this issue and take the appropriate civic action.

For me, the best coverage of the conflict is at the Heathlander. Most of the claims above can be sourced from there.

Also see Lenin.