the point that the demands for Israel to halt military operations were ultimately insurmountable. Israel responded with detailed refutations of Hezbollah's charges—5 months later. Carefully documenting the way that airstrike after airstrike had been a response to Hezbollah rockets carefully hidden or placed among the civilian population may well have made an enormous difference in answering charges that Israel did not care about civilian casualties, was intentionally causing them, and was violating international law, if material had been released in real time. Five months after the fact was an after thought at best.
Although this was in a report actually provided by a private group (run by a retired officer in military intelligence), the very first footnote states that the "study was supported by Military Intelligence, the Operations Division of the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] General Staff, the IDF Spokesperson, and the legal experts of the IDF and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."[1] Its release was covered in the American press, but hardly as an item of vital importance in the moment.[2]
Yet 2 years later, when Israel launched military operations against Gaza, visual product was made available to the press on a regular basis, so that Israel's claims about the nature of the targets they were hitting had some degree of visual support in a large amount of the American television coverage, at least. More than that, the same clips were released to the general public via Israel's own YouTube channel.[3] Indeed, an Israeli diplomat conducted what the New York Times believes to be the first-ever press conference on Twitter.[4] MNF-I has its own YouTube channel as well. But while soldiers, sailors, and marines are all producing interesting, riveting, even moving material, all posted daily to the various video sharing sites such
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- ↑ The report was released in the United States (in sections) by the American Jewish Congress. See Reuven Erlich et al., "Hezbollah's Use of Lebanese Civilian's as Human Shields: the Extensive Military Infrastructure Positioned and Hidden in Populated Areas," n.p.: Gelilot, Israel: The Intelligence and Terrorism Center at the Center for Special Studies, November 2006, section 1, available from www.ajcongress.org/site/DocServer/part1.pdf?docID=701.
- ↑ Greg Myre, "Offering Video, Israel Answers Critics On War," New York Times, December 5, 2008, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/world/middleast/05mideast.html?ex=1322974800&en=b8b25a9e380122ff&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.
- ↑ Go to www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk, accessed January 2, 2009. Apparently YouTube has removed some of the uploaded videos, which—given their response to complaints about Islamist videos, noted above—some commentators are calling a double standard. See Noah Pollack, "What YouTube Doesn't Want You to See," Contentions.com, posted December 30, 2008, available from www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/48462.
- ↑ Noam Cohen, "The Toughest Q's Answered in the Briefest Tweets," New York Times, January 3, 2009, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/weekinreview/04cohen.html?ref=weekinreview.
