JERUSALEM (AP) – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday said he has ordered the army to prepare a “broad” military operation against militants in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier.

“It should be clear that there will be no immunity to those who are holding him,” Olmert said in a speech at a business conference in Jerusalem.

Olmert also said he holds the entire Palestinian leadership for the safety of the soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

Shalit was seized in a cross-border raid early Sunday. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed in the attack.
guardian.co.uk

Missing the Point and the Target in Gaza
…Onlookers in the West should not be surprised by the recent Israeli assault. Although the initial coverage of the killing of the family members picnicking on a Gaza beach two weeks ago was PR disaster for the Israeli military and government„both tried to spin the bad press and cover up the situation. While the first proclamation by the Israeli government was an apology for the killings, the Israel Occupation Force (IOF) backed off from the initial account attributing blame to the Israeli Air Force. The IOF, after an ñinvestigationî that concealed the evidence it was using, said that the deaths were caused by a mine planted by Hamas. The mine theory was passed off to the media as fact, without any evidence to back up the claim. The IOF finally admitted that the deaths could have been caused by an old Israeli shell that was at the beach site. Palestinian medics, human rights groups and bystanders at the site corroborated the initial evidence„that the deaths were caused by an Israeli shell. Nonetheless, every major US media outlet covered the story, including CNN, The New York Times and most of the other outlets that ñforgotî to cover the latest liquidation of Palestinian civilians.

Historically, Israel (including Labor, Likud and Kadima) has instituted a method of slow ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. This strategy, however, was only effective when combined with the appearance of Israel having the moral upper hand. A PR victory would ensure the notion that Israel acted in self-defense. This methodology continues today. Americans should know better than anyone else that the truth rarely matters (i.e. weapons of mass destruction in Iraq); rather it is how an event is presented or spun. Over the last five years, nearly 4,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while more than 30,000 have been injured„the majority of them being unarmed civilians. Israel has known for sometime that it can continue its policies under the radar as long as the attacks do not become ñnewsworthy.î Tanya Reinhart addressed this issue in her book Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948, in which she stated,

ñThe reason for this strategy is clear: Massive numbers of Palestinians killed every day cannot go unnoticed by even the most cooperative Western Media and governments. [Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak was explicit about this. ïThe prime minister said that were there not 140 Palestinian casualties at this point, but rather 400 or 1,000, thisƒwould perhaps damage Israel a great deal.Í1 Apparently, he believed that with a stable average of five casualties a day, Israel could continue undamaged in the media, as, in fact, it has.î

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