Wartime in Israel is effectively a totalitarian blackout: objectors are denounced as traitors and suppressed or sidelined, while the media almost entirely ignores the consequences of Israeli military actions. This is partly down to self-censorship and partly down to the codes of a military censor.
But now that Israelis can ask themselves all those difficult questions that were zealously avoided during the past three weeks, will they?
From the initial reactions this week, it doesn't look like it. In the past few days, radio commentators have been debating the wisdom of a military ban on soldiers discussing battleground details. Their concern is: if soldiers don't speak up about the Hamas horrors they faced in Gaza, how will the world remain convinced that the Israeli assault was necessary?
This has been a central theme of the war in Gaza: not that hundreds of innocent people were killed, not that over 5,000 were horribly injured and not the sky-high human and monetary cost of wrecking homes or razing infrastructure. Even as Palestinian bodies are still being pulled out from the rubble in Gaza, one prominent facet of Israel's internal discussion is how to keep the Western world resolute in the belief that it was all justified – and just.
Edited to 3-4 paragraphs to conform to DU's fair use policy for copyrighted material
Lithos
DU Moderatorhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/23/israelandthepalestinians-gaza