The New Reticence

Aussie Dave Bigot, who has breathlessly reported every minor going on in Israel since the assault on Gaza, to the extent that he seems to have bored even his own readers, has gone all coy.

Why?

Well, if you haven’t heard, Ha’aretz has revealed that IDF members have stated that soldiers deliberately and in cold blood, shot Palestinian civilians during the Gaza assault.

Now for anyone who has even a touch of objectivity in their understanding of Israels 40 year occupation this is about as surprising as sunrise
However, it is causing a bit of a ruckus in Israel, where the IDF is the main religion after Judaism.

For an enthusiastic “live-blogger” like Aussie Dave Bigot it’s a real conundrum. A big breaking story, but it’s the wrong story. Way wrong. What to do?

Easy…….for someone so corrupted by their pro-Israel dogma that their brain has the moral fibre of a rotting jelly-fish – deny and dissemble.

First Dave carefully downplays the specific events describing them as “alleging IDF soldiers harmed palestinian civilians”. Then he studiously avoids directly linking to any of the testimony by IDF soldiers themselves, instead giving a link and a huge excerpt of a blanket denial by the head of the IDF, who quite hilariously says,

“I don't believe that IDF soldiers cold-bloodedly targeted Palestinian civilians”.

Why is it hilarious? Because his denial is in response to IDF soldiers who fought in Gaza who say that IDF soldiers did “target” Palestinian soldiers because they were there and saw it!

For example,

“I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her [old woman]out… ….It was cold-blooded murder.”

This was the “harm” that ADB vaguely alludes to. Well, I guess having your brains blown out by a sniper is harmful.

Lawrence of Cyberia gives an excellent account as usual. Check out the great t-shirts that the IDF like to wear. I especially like the one that shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a target over her, and likewise the snipers T-shirt of a child, a sniper scope superimposed and the caption “The smaller…the harder”.


Update:

Where Dave gets on his moral high-horse.....backwards and proceeds to fall off. The t-shirts celebrating the murder of children and innocent civilians are,

"tasteless"

Hmmm, tasteless. I think we're meant to be in awe of Dave's fearless reproach.

tasteless: lacking in social or aesthetic taste.

So either Dave thinks that they have committed a social faux pas, or he doesn't like the design.

With predictable superficiality, it's the actual objects themselves he has a problem with, not the underlying values and culture they represent, which is of indiscriminate killing, dehumanisation and impunity.

It could hardly be less obvious,

"They also serve to tarnish the image of the IDF..."

Awful.

And worst of all, this will

"play into the hands of the pro palestinian propagandists who are constantly inventing lies about Israel."

No!