Gone are the days when history was written solely by the victors. In today's democratised climate of instantly disseminated words and images, those on either side of a battlefield have the potential to feed facts and figures to media outlets around the world, or to pass on video footage and photographs that their opponents might prefer never saw the light of day.
Winning a media war is, often, as crucial to long-term success as victory in individual battles. A case in point is last winter's conflict between the IDF and Hamas; while the smoke has long cleared from the rubble of Gaza, supporters of either side continue to clash on a daily basis over the true extent of the devastation and loss of life, not to mention their opponents' motives and the overarching policies that led to the outbreak of hostilities.
B'Tselem's latest publication is guaranteed to spark another round of tit-for-tat claims and counterclaims from those in the Israeli and Palestinian camps, given the highly sensitive nature of the work undertaken by the human rights group in trying to determine the true casualty figures. While there is no argument over the number of Israelis killed during Operation Cast Lead – three civilians and 10 members of the security forces – B'Tselem declared the Palestinian casualty figure to be almost 20% higher than the official tally compiled by the IDF, with even more blatant discrepancies arising when assessing the number of women and children killed in the Gaza Strip.
According to the IDF, 89 minors and 49 women lost their lives during the attack; according to B'Tselem's research, 252 minors and 111 women died as a result of the military offensive. In line with its usual reluctance to co-operate with certain human rights groups, the army refused to provide B'Tselem with details of how it arrived at such markedly lower casualty numbers, raising more questions than answers about the methodology employed and the veracity of its own fact-finding operation.
B'Tselem, on the other hand, has been entirely open about the way it carried out its extensive study, making available its complete findings on its website and opting out of the opaque, oblique practices so often endorsed by armies and governments when discussing the events of war. However, the mere fact that B'Tselem appears to have nothing to hide will not stop the naysayers laying into it with flailing fists as soon as they get their hands on the report.
In the political cauldron of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the question of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" has been turned into a cottage industry, with layer upon layer of self-styled watchmen declaring themselves – and only themselves – to be in possession of the pure, unadulterated truth. For every report published by B'Tselem or ACRI, there is an NGO Monitor critique published moments later lambasting the findings and "proving" the innate bias of anyone daring to criticise either the IDF or Israeli government – and so it will be with B'Tselem's latest research.
At the same time as B'Tselem's press release was hitting inboxes around the world, NGO Monitor was disseminating its own report, which tore into the work conducted by Human Rights Watch, under the accusatory banner, "Experts or Ideologues?". As is so often the case with such NGO Monitor studies, its in-house research revealed "a consistent pattern of ideological bias, lack of professional qualifications and unsupported claims based on faulty evidence and analysis on the part of Human Rights Watch … Israel is consistently singled out for condemnation, using particularly harsh language, while Palestinian and Arab human rights violations are minimised."
The executive summary will be lapped up by those on the Israel-right-or-wrong side of the fence, and equally fervently rejected by those who see through NGO Monitor's supposedly fair-handed and non-partisan approach to the conflict. Likewise, B'Tselem's figures will be grist to the mill of those who believe little to nothing that comes out of the mouths of IDF spokesmen, and jeered and mocked by those for whom the IDF is simply "the most moral army in the world".
Those behind B'Tselem's report are calling for their research to be used as part of a wider investigation into whether or not Israel committed war crimes during Cast Lead. Such a request should not be brushed under the carpet, either by Israeli officials or by those employed by quasi-governmental thinktanks to drown out dissenting voices whenever the IDF's tactics and behaviour are questioned.
B'Tselem has no problem referring to Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians as war crimes, and does just that in its report. At the same time, it has refrained from explicitly labelling Israeli actions during the offensive as war crimes, preferring to state instead that its findings "raise grave concerns that Israel breached fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and caused excessive harm to civilians". By taking such a stance, B'Tselem is much softer on the IDF than many would desire, and its diplomatic approach ought to be rewarded with a fair hearing by the Israeli authorities. However, given the historical sequence of whitewashes and obfuscations by the IDF and its backers, B'Tselem's report will be met with either a wall of silence or a barrage of abuse and derision – which does no favours to the supporters of the Israeli military, and certainly gives no solace to the victims on the Gazan side of the border.
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