that's because your mind is too feeble to comprehend them.

Interesting to note, in that article, is that Israel had no problem training and arming them in the 80s to counter act the PLO and Fatah. Now, their own project decides to bite them back.

"We" being the international community - since when does a country get to decide that the rest of the world doesn't "need to know"? ( and yes, there is a certain irony here,given some of the U.S. actions in and about Iraq, but it's still WRONG) Stalin did a heck of a job of keeping information we "didn't need to know" from us, I guess, as have various African and Asian leaders I can think of. We are coming up on the 20th anniversary of Tienanmen Square - do you think China thought we "needed to know" about that? So we should just forget about the whole news reporting thing - they'll let us know what we "need to know". I propose that we need to know what exactly is going on - there have been reports of Israel violating the Geneva Conventions - so let's see if it's true.

And considering the amount of aid Israel receives from the U.S., and the effort they have put forth in public relations, I think it fair to say that they care a great deal about U.S. opinion. I believe what you are interpreting as not caring about U.S. opinion is actually being so secure in what you think it is that you think you can do anything without impacting it.

My point is more that they currently have higher priorities, like fighting a war, than convincing us that everything they are doing is great. They don't need to ask our permission to defend themselves.

And I also suspect that based on what's happened previously, they have no expectation of getting fair coverage in international reporting.

ETA: I agree with you generally that if you don't have anything to hide, then it makes sense to let the world know what you are doing. But if you know an area is completely unsafe, should you really let journalist in? I don't know, but I don't think the problem with Israel generally is suppression of the press, and if they have strategic military goals to achieve right now, I understand why that's a greater priority. Sure, Israel does get a lot of US support, but that doesn't mean we should expect to exercise prior restraint.
(And I wouldn't be surprised if the US state department had a little better information than you and I are getting. In the short term, I think that's okay.)

I'm missing that in the article. Where is it?

ETA: I see it now. Newspapers articles assert there was funding from Israel, as opposed to Israel having no problem training and arming them threw me off. Even if we accept the reports as true, I get the idea from the article that rather than counteract the PLO and Fatah in fighting Israel that they wanted to be able to use Hamas's attacks as a way of reshaping the issue as purely religious. I don't know what to believe on the funding issue, but it doesn't appear to be "bite them back" situation. They, again if you accept the claims, always knew Hamas would bite:

"Various sources, among them United Press International,[106] Le Canard enchaîné,[citation needed] Gérard Chaliand[107] and L'Humanité[108] have claimed that Hamas' early growth had been supported by the Mossad as a "counterbalance to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)".The French investigative newspaper Le Canard enchaîné claimed that Shin Bet had also supported Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO and Fatah. It speculated that this was an attempt to give "a religious slant to the conflict, in order to make the West believe that the conflict was between Jews and Muslims", perhaps in order to support the controversial thesis of a "clash of civilizations".[109]"

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle10456.htm I really wish they did have named sources.

ETC: it's creepy to me, but it seems a lot lot more involved that the kind of "the US armed Al Qaeda to fight the USSR" kind of stuff. It seems really odd to me that Israel thought they'd be better off with a religious vs. political enemy.

And it appears on further reading that to "counter" or "counteract" the PLO etc, may principally have referred to Hamas's more humanitarian efforts early on with hospitals and schools. It seems like Israel wanted to draw support away from the more political groups within the Palestinian community with an organization they expected to stay infiltrated in. I don't get the sense that they ever expected Hamas to actually fight the PLO with weapons. Going back that far, it would almost make sense for people to see Hamas as the more peaceful group, but at the time they were elected, not so much.

It's not a question of Israel's priorities - letting journalists in requires absolutely nothing from Israel other then them getting out of the way. The idea that it is appropriate for one side of an armed conflict to decide what should and should not be covered is just . . . dangerous. Journalists should decide whether or not they want to take the risks that war correspondents routinely take - that's their JOB. If journalists only went where there was no danger there is a great deal of information we would never have.

I would HOPE the State Department has better information, but I don't share your confidence. After 9/11, it's a little harder to put your trust in government oversight of security information. Let the journalists in - the more you let in, the more likely you are to get a full picture of what is actually happening. "Fair" would mean both sides getting covered, and that's not what is happening now. Let the journalists in, and while you might have some biased towards one side or the other, with the full coverage that would emerge from it you would have much more in the way of information with which to judge both sides' actions.

It seems to me that those who don't want any more information must have already decided who is right and who is wrong. In that case, sure, why bother letting journalists in?

You know that things are being covered by both sides, right? There's a big controversy about a clip at CNN. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/...ons/index.html)

Here's there coverage now, some of it is from people in Gaza right now. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/

Here's Huffpo:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/gaza

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that there's no coverage or that journalists are being kept completely out.

Here's an article on keeping the foreign press out including explanations:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090102/...nalists_banned

It may not be as easy as it usually is, but I suspect that has [ETC] somewhat more to do with not want to be held responsible for killing journalists than it really does with suppressing coverage. But even if it is solely about image control, I don't think Israel has an obligation to let the foreign press in right now. Depending on how long the ban goes on, I might change my mind.

Would you have thought the US obligated to allow foreign press to cover the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima? ETA: or maybe Dresden is a better example.

Interestingly, I guess, if the Israeli press is banned and the international press is banned, Israel is willing to accept the risk that the coverage by completely by people in Gaza, favorable to Hamas.

Journalists have gone into Iraq & Afghanistan when it was completely unsafe. There are some journalists in Gaza (like the reporter from Anderson Cooper 360) reporting, while you can hear gunshots in the background.

"Investigative" journalism like this is dangerous. But i'm pretty sure if the Israelis have only lost 10 people since the fighting began, that the journalists might be a little safer.

But I doubt that Israel could ensure that they'd be safe from Israeli fire, depending on where the press went.

I'm generally happy that we have a free press that we let cover stuff without official approval. That doesn't mean that I think press coverage has to be a high priority for a country engaged in a military action. Our immediate need to know is pretty remote considering the lack of meaningful action available to us.

We want to know so we can decide what we think. At the most, what we think could influence the action of the US government and perhaps a UN resolution or two. We've got some time to figure it out since I'm pretty sure Bush isn't going to do anything before the inauguration, and I think it's unlikely that Obama is going to make a radical change in policy. What a interesting issue for Hillary to manage first.

The article on the ban on foreign press pretty well covers what I mean when I say journalists are being kept out. So I'm sorry I didn't specify "foreign" earlier. I thought it was apparent that only foreign journalists would need permission to enter.

I wouldn't trust a resident's take on the events going on in Gaza anymore than I would trust an Israel resident's take on the events in Israel - I think it important that journalists from all over (meaning ideologically and geographically) have access. Israel knows that most people will take any Hamas/Gaza journalist's account with a grain of salt - so it's a brilliant way to undercut the credibility of any reports from there. Again, if Israel has nothing to hide the best way to prove it is to allow outside journalists in to report what is really going on in Gaza. The question of whether the CNN video is staged or not would not be such an issue if there were more press in Gaza, who would be in a position to act as a check on each other - it's tougher to stage an event if what is going on is actually being covered by a variety of media.


And yes, if journalists had wanted to go in after Hiroshima (and that was dangerous is a way that simply going into an area under fire is not) I'd say let 'em, as long as the journalists are fully briefed as to the risks.

And I think winning your military objective trumps press coverage at the time if the press might distract from the success of the mission.

While I completely agree with your take that international press could present a more objective take, there are a lot of famous incidents when the international press reporting in the country are still taken in by one side. It's no guarantee. [ETA: this is really old, but I'm linking to show that even when international press are allowed in, the reporting can still end up accepting one side's view and lending it credence:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_al-Durrah ]

If the Gaza situation goes like it has in the last few weeks long enough, I'll come around to complete agreement with you, but in the short term, I think Israel's behavior is acceptable.

Hmm. Must be cuz I'm white.

wow. are you saying that white people are naturally less intelligent? dang, i wouldn't have gone that far.

:(

The first priority in denying access to Gaza by foreign reporters have little to do with safety. It's about controlling information. They learned from the debacle in Lebanon and the mistakes US made in Iraq/Afghanistan and decided that they will tell the media what's going on. By doing this, if a correspondent reported something in Gaza, there is no way to confirmed it if no foreign journalists are in there.

For instance, the UN school bombing, the Israel government said that there was cache of weapons and that is why it's targeted. UN want an open investigation of course. What do the international press do about it, they can't investigate it to confirm that there are weapons there. So, information handled.

So, if you think it will help you militarily, excluding the press is okay? I'm thinking that most countries would probably just as soon not have the press covering them . . . look, if you are planning to violate the Geneva Conventions, or perhaps just engage in behavior which wouldn't play well on the international stage, just claim that you are not allowing the press in because it will interfer with your military objective. (It's a rhetorical question - you've basically already answered it, UGAalum.)

I am curious - what is it about lasting "long enough" (and what is "long enough"?) that would make you agree with me then, and not now?