How not to conduct an interview about Gaza

I have just seen a quite astonishing interview on the Channel 4 news with Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government (I don’t know what his precise office is). It followed a long report on weaponry used by the IDF during the Gazan war, which alleged that the Israelis had been using:

• White Phosphorous bombs, which disperse this highly flammable substance that sticks to buildings and people and burns in contact with oxygen. It is primarily a tool for creating smoke screens, but is highly dangerous when dispersed in areas with high densities of human beings. Burns from white phosphorous can continue to smoke for hours, apparently. This substance was used by the US military in Iraq, though they originally denied it.
• DIME bombs, which are designed for highly focused small scale explosions. Dense Inert Metal Explosive bombs have extremely small blast radii and are therefore useful for targeting specific individuals without causing widespread destruction to buildings, and so on. There are allegations they have long term carcinogenic effects.
• Flechette bombs, which include hundreds of small, anti-personnel arrows – similar in principle, though far less damaging than the cluster bombs that have recently been banned by most civilized countries (though not the US).

You can read the accompanying internet material to the report here.

The reporter took great care to state that none of these weapons are themselves illegal under the Geneva Convention, though it is possible that their use in civilian areas could constitute a war crime. To substantiate the allegations that these bombs had been used, the reporter included: footage of white phosphorous burning on a block of cement, footage of flechettes stuck in walls, interviews with UN and Amnesty officials, testimony from a number of local people – including a woman who had burns pretty much from head to foot, and told how a bomb had killed her husband and five children – and comments made by a weapons specialist who formerly used to work for the US military.

So, cue the interview. The Israeli spokesman begins by stating that the IDF takes all such allegations seriously and is conducting its own internal investigations of these incidents. So far, so good: though, being clearly not a denial and being a cynic, I naturally to take this as an admission of guilt. That is, that the IDF was using such weapons.

When asked to comment on the appropriateness of using such weapons in civilian areas – something that would constitute a war crime – Regev began to get angry. I’m afraid I don’t have a verbatim account, but he argued two main points:

1. These were not civilian areas, since Hamas had occupied them and was conducting its war from them. Civilians were unfortunate casualties of Hamas’ willingness to put them in harm’s way and therefore not the responsibility of the IDF.
   
2. You cannot trust the testimony of Palestinians making these allegations, since they are living in an authoritarian/totalitarian (he used both words fairly interchangeably) state in Gaza, analogous to North Korea. If they speak the truth to reporters, they will be shot by Hamas for doing so, so the stuff you are getting in your reports are lies.

It really doesn’t take a genius to pick holes in this. The two arguments completely contradict each other. If the first is true, then the bombs were dropped, so the second one isn’t; and vice versa. The interview then responded by pointing to the fact that the testimony from the Palestinians was only a minor part of the report, and that there was clear video and expert evidence as well. At this point, Regev began to argue that the reporter had failed to correctly report these matters and again that it was impossible to uncover the truth whilst the authoritarian hand of Hamas was in control, and that actually the bombs could have been dropped by Hamas.

The interviewer then asked if this meant that he was saying that these attacks were perpetrated by Hamas. Regev got angrier, said that the interviewer was putting words into his mouth and demanded that he admit that Gaza under Hamas was an authoritarian regime about three or four times. He was so aggressive that the interviewer simply called off the interview and moved on to the next item.

I don’t think that it’s particularly necessary for me to make much comment about this. I suppose it’s a testament to the power of warfare to make people irrational that an official spokesman can (a) lose his cool so destructively; and (b) present such obviously counter-productive arguments. But no-one watching it can have reached any conclusions but that the IDF has committed war crimes and that they know it.

Leave a Comment