Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators Outside Davis Cup

ESPN.com reports that demonstrators clashed with police outside Baltic Stadium in Malmo, Sweden as the Swedes won the doubles match Saturday to take a 2-1 lead against Israel in the Davis Cup series.
Davis Cup officials allowed only 300 special guests inside the 4,000 seat hall citing security issues providing a depressing atmosphere for Sweden's victory. Israeli tennis player Andy Ram said it was a "stupid decision" to play the match behind closed doors and that "playing without a crowd is like playing a practice match." 7,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in a square downtown to listen to speeches condemning Israel's offensive in Gaza and urging support for Palestinians. Organizers of the "stop the match" protest had said the demonstration would be peaceful, but extreme-left activists had vowed to disrupt the match. About 100 people were apprehended and at least six were arrested for rioting, there were no reports of injuries.
This article interests me because it demonstrates the reaches of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into wider interactions of the international community, such as sports. When an Israeli athlete travels abroad, is he or she obligated to show their feelings regarding recent events? Could an Israeli athlete's expression of dissatisfaction with recent escalations by their government's military serve any real purpose, or are they obligated to show unwavering support and be 'patriotic'? When one looks at the history of the conflict in light of international athletic competition, the immediate event that comes to mind is the tragic Munich Olympic Games in 1972. However more recently, Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer was denied a visa preventing her from competing in the in the Sony Ericsson World Tennis Association Tour in Dubai. Although these events are less significant in comparison to the overall violence and bloodshed, I feel that there is something to be said regarding the "exterior" or indirect components of the conflict, such as athletics. Why do countries find it necessary to allow the conflict into seemingly unrelated events?

Don’t Try This at Home/Beyond the Banks

These New York Times op-eds are a post in response to KC’s dual view of United States’ aid for Palestine in light of the recent conflict in Gaza. While I am much more of a Krugman follower than a Friedman one, Mr. Krugman is far too busy trying to clean up our own country’s economic woes to have time to focus on international conflicts.

The Don’t Try This at Home article lends another perspective to the Palestinian-Israeli solution; KC’s articles included the international “let’s sit down and figure out a two-state system” and the splintered “six swing states” viewpoint, but Friedman’s adds a much more American view. The article includes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s initiatives in the Middle East, which is similar to the KC’s articles, though Friedman does not see our intervention as a simple “saving the day” mission. He is much more pessimistic about the entire situation and outlines, in his layman manner, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

What I found so interesting was not the way he outlined the historical and actual conflict, but of his overgeneralization of Israel/Palestine as one giant question mark. He portrays the conflict in a way that we, as Americans, cannot understand. By using phrases like “Are you still with me?” and comparing the conflict to “how an amoeba reproduces by constantly splitting itself in half” he is almost allowing ignorance to overtake thoughtful study. I felt, in a way, he was allowing the Western world to write this conflict off, that its intricacies and struggles cannot be comprehended.

It is his final paragraph where he describes his own feelings towards the situation is the most disappointing: “Who in the world would want to try to repair this? I’d rather herd cats, or become John Thain’s image adviser, or have a colonoscopy, or become chairman of the “bad bank” that President Obama might create to hold all the toxic mortgages.” He ends with a suggestion of starting over, and maybe that is the new Western perspective, but I was wholly unimpressed by his tone regarding the conflict.

The solution article, Beyond the Banks, printed 3 days later, was also interesting in connection to KC’s articles since it offered the same answer--the US must fix this conflict. Friedman’s article ends with the sentiment that US involvement is not just key, it is the whole solution: “So it is important to have George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, steadily pushing the diplomacy from above, but nothing will happen without vastly increasing U.S. efforts from below to help West Bankers build a credible governing capacity. Do that, and everything is possible. Don’t do it, and nothing is possible.”

Children!

I think addressing the children of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is especially important in looking at the intensity and friction of the occupation. Children have come up again and again in discussions like when the IDF shows up, the kids are first to throw rocks or in the Promises movie we experienced deep hatred for the opposing side in a couple of the interviewed kids. Also there were brutal attacks last semester in an Israeli school and the back and forth going eye for eye in the killing of children  If they are the future, their attitudes and paradigms will carry over - as of now children seem like the only beacon of light but they are targeted more in this conflict than any other I have heard of. I found this story about the Children of Gaza - an interesting part is this story is the fact that about half of the population (half of 1.5 milllion people) in Gaza and are carry the large brunt of the suffering. 

I also found an article about a month ago in Al-Jazeera about attacks on Children which is the story underneath the first one I posted. 

British Aid Convoy for Gaza Arrives in Rafah

VOA News reports that aid headed for Gaza has been stopped in Rafah, Egypt and that it is unknown as to whether or not the supplies will reach desperate Gazans. The British Parliamentarian George Galloway organized the initiative but the degree of its success remains in limbo.
I find it very interesting that international efforts to bring aid into Gaza continue to meet resistance despite the recent and highly disproportionate increases in violence between Hamas and Israel. Concerns that foreign aid could be used to the benefit of Hamas are used to justify the denial of aid to Gaza, but when the general population of the strip has been significantly impacted by the violence, I find it difficult to believe that the quality of life for Gazans has any presence on Israeli or Egyptian government agendas.

A Question of Perspective: Arab response to Gaza

I've found a few articles treating the topic of Arab political response to Gaza, and wanted to explore the regional politics that factor into how Arab leaders are reacting to the conflict. This article from Reuters reported that demonstrators across the Middle East protested the lackluster answer offered by Arab leaders. In addition to civilian protests, some Muslim nations (particularly Libya) have criticized Arab leaders and how they have handled the situation.

The third article I found from Haaretz gave more insight into regional politics and their influence in the conflict. The second half of the article discusses Syria, which historically has ties to Hamas. Syria and Israel have been meeting in the hopes of negotiating a peace deal between the two, and while the talks have been suspended as a result of the incursion, the article implies that Bashar Al-Assad still wishes to keep that diplomatic avenue open. These kinds of conflicting interests may be driving how Arab nations respond to violent conflicts between Israel and Palestine.

This Al-Jazeera article took a different viewpoint by characterizing Syria as highly critical of Israel at a recent Arab summit. Given these different accounts, I had a difficult time coming to a conclusion about the Arab reaction to the conflict. While some depict Syria as a hard-line critic of Israel's incursion, the Haaretz article sees a more nuanced political situation that has prevented a stronger response to Israel. What do you think? Are there any other sources that can give clues to Arab geopolitics and how they influence Arab responses to Gaza? What about the history of Arab involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Hamas using children as human shield

This post is in response to Alyson's post, but I couldn't add a video in my comment so I just am writing this as a separate post. I thought Alyson's post was an great perspective on the different uses of human shields in conflict. I found the BBC article the most interesting perhaps, since it acknowledged that both Israel and Gaza overtake civilian homes, thus reducing them to human targets. I had never considered that the use of a home transformed into a military target would fall into the same category as the type of human shields I have heard of/seen. I began searching for clips of human shields in the Middle East and I came across these two YouTube videos, which both show Hamas’ use of children as human shields. The first, is a 17 second clip, the second contains the exact same clip beginning around 2:15, but includes other human shield images and a larger message of Hamas’ abuse on children.




I think the second video falls in line with a sort of sensationalist media, it uses the abuse of children as another negative perspective on Hamas. It induces pity for these children, but the video is without background--for example the final image is of a young child crying with a fake rifle around his neck.

Pro-Israel Response and "Human Shields" in International Media

Laura's post on Arab representations of the Gaza conflict spurred me to research representations in political cartoons produced by pro-Israel sources. These are a few comics I found on Mideasttruth, a pro-Israel media site that has articles and editorials as well as comics. I don't know how blogger will scale the images, but if the text is too small to read you can just click on the image to link to a full-sized version.

The first image, by an Austrian cartoonist, as well the second, by an American, reiterate claims that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as "human shields" during military operations. While the first cartoon suggests that the human shields are used just to physically protect Palestinian militants, I felt that the second cartoon links the use of human shields ("Body Armor") to a larger agenda that uses civilian casualties to strengthen the humanitarian case against Israel ("Public Relations").

I also found an article on BBC that discusses the use of human shields from a very different perspective. BBC reports that Amnesty International is accusing both Israeli and Palestinian forces of using Gazans as shields during the conflict. The article discusses in more depth the tactics both sides allegedly employ with regard to human shields.

Finally, the last comic in the post brings in yet another perspective on civilian casualties in armed conflict, and in a sense it responds to the "Public Relations" agenda implied in the second cartoon. I feel it criticizes the way that popular media can over-exaggerate or sensationalize civilian casualties, and as a result perhaps what some see as a "Palestinian PR agenda" can be attributed to the willingness of sensationalist media to feature civilian casualties in its coverage of the conflict.

So my initial research on pro-Israel cartoons led me to a larger discourse on human shields and how media represents this kind of violence. I think it's interesting that each of the sources I found came to very different conclusions about who is at fault and what the motivations are for using human shields.