It may seem a bit odd to say this now with the Palestinian suffering at its peak, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel has lost this war, writes Ibrahim Khan.
Here are ten key reasons why:
1. Israel has never had international public support – but this time they’ve actually earned real public rancour as seen by the hundreds of thousands marching worldwide.
2. Israel has taken a hammering on social media; and with the rise of this new form of communication, the traditional and more biased news stations have played less of a role in shaping the discourse as more and more reporters report live using Twitter without the filtering screen of their editors. Channel 4 deserve a particular mention having anchored an entire news broadcast live from Gaza.
3. For the first time personal Palestinian narratives have actually come out as an increasing number of independent reporters and Palestinians report live from Gaza. For example everyone knows the story of the four boys on the beach by now.
4. Israel has not achieved a single of their putative objectives – the rockets are still firing, Hamas is still there, the tunnels are still there, and the Palestinians are not going quietly.
5. Israel has achieved their actual aim of disrupting the peace process and Palestinian unity talks, but at the expense of massively strengthening Hamas’s hand.
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6. Israel has suffered military casualties – and they’ll mount the longer the ground invasion goes on. This will lose them the feel-good factor with their own public too.
7. Thus far 29 Israelis have died, 27 of them military personnel. In contrast the vast majority of the 600+ Palestinians to have died have been civilians. This badly undermines Israel’s argument that Hamas attacks civilians while the IDF takes extreme care in attacking only military targets. The numbers show quite the opposite.
8. The Western governments that support Israel continue to do so, but there are rumblings here too as both the USA and the UK governments are embarrassed by Israeli violence. This has led to the famous Kerry-leaked comments and a UK Parliamentary debate where anti-Israel sentiment was more vocal than it has ever been before.
9. The Israeli right-wing – previously kept away from the international eye by carefully managed press appearances by Mark Regev – have been Israel’s own worst enemy as they too turn to social media. The now infamous Sderot Cinema and the calls for a Palestinian genocide by Israeli parliamentarian Ayelet Shaked are just two examples of Israeli PR gone horribly wrong.
10. The BDS movement has gained massive publicity. It has cost Israel hundreds of millions of dollars already and will cost a lot more now.
You can follow Ibrahim on Twitter @ibrahimkhan
