The truce with Hamas that Israel broke in November with operation ‘Double Challenge‘ (and continually broke by besieging Gaza contrary to the truce agreement) in terms of rocket and mortar attacks was pretty successful. You see we know this because a graph from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website demonstrates it. Or it did…Let Paul Woodward editor of War in Context continue the story-
[via GazaSiege]
But now is a time of war and not only is talk of a truce being ruled out by the authors of this war but history is being re-written in order to degrade the value of a ceasefire. The memory of a period of recent calm that was the most durable peace that the residents of southern Israel have experienced in recent years must now be erased.
The Israeli government’s own graphical representation of the calm told the story in terms that even a child could understand. This is the graph that the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs displayed on its web site demonstrating that from July to October, rocket fire, if not reduced to a perfect zero, came stunningly close. From an average of 179 rockets per month in the preceding period of 2008, the number fell to just three per month:
Now that the Israeli propaganda machine is revved up to full throttle, the image of an effective truce no longer suits the Israeli government’s purposes. Instead it has become more convenient to try and hide the numbers — with numbers! The foreign ministry has thus removed the simple graph shown above and replaced it with this:
In the earlier image, graph blocks dramatically portrayed the rise and fall in rocket fire rates. In the revised image, blocks of equal size (containing numbers) are used to obscure the graph. The effect, clearly intended, is to try and portray the lull as really nothing more than a minor undulation in a period of unremitting attacks.
So even with a blockade the truce showed signs of being useful in drastically reducing attacks on Israel, if they had stopped the blockade and lived by the conditions of the truce might the attacks have been halted altogether? Yet Israel didn’t and now seeks to revise history with rather rubbish graphical chicanery a schoolkid would get caught for on their IT assessment. Apologists for this aggression are mired in such dissembling, it if is such a noble cause why the need to lie so much? And kill so many?
PS. And btw, the safest place for Gazans (now hospitals are getting hit) is on many big American ‘progressive/Dem’ blogs where the attack often warrants no mention at all (solidarity with Obama? Bless) or just a couple of observations of the uninformed fence sitting variety. So maybe if a phosphorous cluster bomb lands on a neighbourhood it doesn’t melt anyone’s skin off if there is no mention of it. Is it only wrong when Bush does it?