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?

I think violations of the Geneva Conventions are more often handled after the fact anyway. So, limiting press coverage short term isn't going to be an effective long term method of suppression, it wouldn't seem to me. Whatever objective evidence that could be preserved by an international press could still be captured by people in Gaza; whatever could be manipulated by local press can be manipulated by international press.

I have no definitive answer for the how long. It would depend on the circumstances. I would expect international press coverage to resume in Gaza within a month. They apparently halted it when the cease fire ran out in November but were pretty casual about preventing the press from entering until things ramped up in the last few weeks.

A couple more weeks? I'll let you know when it happens.

In other cases, it would depend on how long it took to conclude the mission and what information was available when it was over.

Independent documentation is excellent for us back home, but I don't think it has to be a priority of the party engaged in warfare.

ETA: You've got to remember that I always pretty much distrust the press period, so I'm less likely than most to see them functioning really well as international watchdogs. It's probably just a personality quirk.

In the 2007 example, they provided aerial photographs of the mortar launcher on the school. Most recently though the different sides are giving differing accounts.

Really though, unless you could have press literally everywhere, you're going to run into the same problem, even with international press in Gaza. Unless you had a reporter on that particular scene to either see rockets fired from the playground or an empty playground 24 hours a day, the press is still in the same position of seeking information from one side or the other.

ETA: I linked to the Muhammad al-Durrah case earlier. It's an extreme example, but it shows what I mean. At the time the foreign press could be wherever they wanted apparently and yet coverage was less that completely objective.

EATA: Did you see that there was already an Israeli Supreme Court decision about this? The court ruled that they should let the press in, but the military has yet to honor the decision. I would think that this would be remedied through the usual political channels in Israel as it would be in the US.

My hope would be that the threat of coverage would mean that the violations wouldn't happen in the first place - I'd rather they not happen at all rather than worry about punishing them later. Also, when discussing how to handle the situation I think that the international community needs as much information as they can get - this is not just a problem for Gaza/Israel. It has ramifications for the Middle East, and ultimately the entire world. How can an effective cease-fire be brokered without a clear understanding of the situation?

Well, it's not that I'm pro-war crime. I think I just fundamentally doubt the presence of the international press is as effective in preventing it as you do.

What is it that you think the international press could bring to the table? So much of providing objective coverage involves being in the right place at the right time and being unwilling to use new events to advance preconceived agendas. I don't remember an abundance of that in the coverage of Hezbollah and Lebanon or in Gaza before the press ban.

EATA: the more I think about it, the more I can't think of a single "war crime" situation in recent memory where the presence of the international press seemed to have made any difference: Rwanda? Kosovo? Iraq, if you are going to go that route?

What am I missing?

They're not there to "make a difference" per say. They are there to report what is going on the ground. If there was no international reporters, we would have never herd about Rwanda, Kosovo, Iraq, etc. Because they reported, the world acted on it.

Reporting can shame a government into stopping their actions, forcing people to negotiate due to internal politics, etc. The story or the reporter will not and is not meant to change the world. It's just there to tell the story.

By the way, I'm going to split the Israel-Palestine conflict from this thread.

Ok, nevermind, way too lazy to go through pages of posts to seperate them. Carry on.

What he said. :)

Right, but if you have press reporting as we do about Gaza, it's really hard to make the claim that the rest of the world is failing to act because of anything we did or didn't know.

And it's also hard to make the claim that it was the sanctioned presence of the international press that was important in any of those cases, for any reason really. What good did knowing really do when the UN peacekeepers let one side go in a slaughter people?

Assuming the international press did document "war crimes," what do you think would happen? I'm not that optimistic that shame is that powerful a motivator here AND I'd be really surprised if anything but a strongly worded UN resolution followed.

Again, it's not that I'm like "yay, war crimes," but I think that ultimately most situations are resolved by someone having the brute strength and the will to use it to prevent action by the other side. Sometimes the threat of using that strength is enough, but people have to know you mean it.

Sometimes the strength can be economic as well.

Ultimately, it boils down to why NOT allow the journalists in? Even if having them in serves no greater purpose, if the journalists are willing to take the risk in order to report on what is happening they should be allowed to do so.

Knowledge is always better than no knowledge, unless you are a fan of Pope. "When ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise" and all that.

Because the international hand-wringing will distract Israel from completing its mission and perhaps create impediments to its mission?

I thought Israel didn't care about world opinion? And even if they did - it would "distract" them? Then they aren't very focused . . . also, why would there be hand-wringing if Israel isn't doing anything wrong?

I'm not going to go all cliche' here, but it is obvious that our opinions are not likely to change - so I don't want to beat a dead horse. Oh wait, that's a cliche' . . .drat.

Cause Israel knows they are doing things wrong.

Like the fact it came out that the UN school did NOT have militants (and Israel knew that). Or the fact that Israel is using phosphorus as a weapon, so that the people of Gaza are having their skins peel off before they die.

It isn't that Israel is too "busy" to allow the journalists to report, it's that they don't want the journalists reporting about these things.

So if journalists didn't report it, how do you know it happened?
(my point is that this is obviously not an effective way to achieve that goal if it's their goal.)

ETA: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_155157.html

They admit using phosphorus in 2006 in Lebanon and apparently it's not illegal to use as a smokescreen.

And they now claim that they were attacked from near the school:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7823204.stm
Who puts something likely to be a target of returned fire 30 meters from a school? Is that much better than it not being at the school itself?

I'm with you on the horse or off the horse.

I don't think Israel cares about the bad PR of shutting the borders to journalists right now. I think they'd care somewhat more if say the US actually sent in troops to defend the Palestinians in Gaza and would find that pretty distracting, but I don't see that happening.

I never said journalists aren't reporting it.

Idk about using it in Lebanon, but they are currently using it in Gaza.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090112/...ite_phosphorus

It might not be illegal to use but according to the article:

It's just a little shady to use it when Israel obviously has the upper hand, there is no need to be using things that will obviously be detrimental to civilians.

And yeah, the militants were supposedly in the vicinity of the school, but the thing is Israel KNEW before they bombed it. They knew before that the militants were actually not in the school, but they decided to bomb it anyways.

That's not what I'm reading. I'm reading that the latest word from Israel is that they knew Hamas had fired from the area and tried to bomb where they were, but one mortar misfired by 30 meters. Sure, we don't know who to believe, but I find it pretty implausible that Israel knew there were no Hamas militants at the school, but said, "hey, what the hell, let's kill some kids just for fun." Only one of three shells fired by Israel hit the school, and two hit the target they were aiming at, sez Israel today.

Hmmm...well I didn't hear that. The article I read, said that one member of the IDF said that they knew Hamas was in the area (not in the school) but decided to bomb the school so that they might be able to kill the Hamas militants in the area. Then the article goes on to say that other members of IDF said Hamas WAS in the school, and it just kept flip-flopping back and forth like that.

Of course now I want to link the stupid story, I can't find it anymore.

Well, it's pretty clear that their story has changed anyway. But I still kind of doubt that they just decided to bomb the school knowing that they weren't going to hit any of the Hamas targets. But who knows? When you start getting into the motives for a particular strike, you do have to rely on what people tell you I guess or an have a separate understanding of what advantage they would gain from the strike.

Had there been an international journalist present close enough to say what Israel was aiming at, he'd probably be dead.