Why did Amos Gilead try to give impression all under control with Egyptian force deployment?

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
23 August '12..

Yesterday Amos Gilead, head of the Defense Ministry Political and Security Division, could barely control his temper as he sparred with Israel Radio Arab Affairs Correspondent Eran Zinger yesterday over Zinger’s report that Egypt had deployed anti-aircraft missile batteries in the Sinai. [Even if you are not very fluent in Hebrew you can listen from 5:17 in the recording - http://youtu.be/-rXOVmFAbC0 to get the flavor].

Amos Gilead clearly believes that maintaining a public narrative that all is under control with regard to the Egyptian force deployments in Sinai serves Israeli interests.

This could be for one of many reasons:

1. Making the dispute public only makes it harder for Egypt to address Israel’s concerns and remove the problematic equipment and forces.

2. Third parties who have been drafted to help resolve the crisis asked Israel to tone down the talk.

How Reuters Rewrites an Israeli Intelligence Analysis to Ignore its Conclusions and Use it Against Israel

Barry Rubin

The Rubin Report

09 September 09

(With this article Barry Rubin once again shows us the necessity to not take a news item at face value.)

The pervasive media slant on Middle East issues is so obvious that it’s funny, and also transgresses the proper rules of journalism.

Here’s a headline on a Reuters dispatch today:

“Israeli official doubts Syria's clout on Hezbollah.”

So, you’d think, Syria isn’t that responsible for what the Lebanese Islamist organization does. In fact, the purpose is shown in the lead:

“Syria may not be able to curb Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday, casting doubt on the feasibility of a long-standing Israeli condition for a peace deal with Damascus.”

Get it? So Israel cannot ask Syria to stop providing Hezbollah (I prefer Hizballah but I’ll stick with Reuters transliteration here) with advanced arms or not urge it periodically to attack Israel. The poor Syrians are just innocent little lambs.

But what was Amos Gilad, former military intelligence chief and today an advisor to Israel’s defense minister actually saying?

He was saying first that Syria has less influence because Iran is the main sponsor of Hezbollah; second that Hezbollah practically controls Lebanon; and third that Hezbollah can start a war when it chooses and drag in Lebanon, as happened in 2006.

So the headline and lead might have been:

Israeli official says Hezbollah is an arm of Iran.

Or

Israeli official says Hezbollah now dominates Lebanon.

After all, at almost this exact moment, Hezbollah and its allies were naming ten cabinet ministers of thirty in the new Lebanese government. The group--and through its blog also the Iranian and Syrian governments--now have veto power over every decision taken by the Lebanese state.

These are both bigger stories than the headline chosen.

Oh, yes, and there was a third theme to Gilad’s talk that was also very important but which isn’t mentioned in the article. I wonder why? He said that Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip was so effective that Hamas has been intimidated into reducing its attacks on Israel to a minimum. In other words, the war achieved its objective. This runs counter to the view, of course, that force is useless for defeating terrorists (or for any other purpose for that matter).

He also said, and this is barely mentioned in the article, that if Iran gets nuclear weapons the threat from Hezbollah will be worse, that it is more likely to seize real control over Lebanon or to attack Israel.

In short, Reuters tells us the political point it wants to be derived from Gilad’s talk rather than what he actually said.

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