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There is an art of war and there is an art to selling war — to one’s own people, and the world at large.

Israel is a master at both arts. When we speak of the “only democracy” in the Middle East, it is often forgotten, perhaps deliberately, that the country is run by a War or “Security” Cabinet. It is, and has been, in effect, a military regime with as many powerful religious fanatics as its Iranian nemesis.

Since proclaiming its “independence” in 1948, it has remained dependent on a large, now over $3 billion per annum and counting,” foreign aid” payment from the United States — far, far more than many poor countries that desperately need that aid but don’t get it.

Supplementing this subsidy, Israel has its own advanced military industrial and technology complex upgrading and customizing weaponry in military and aerospace industries.

Its current escalating war on Gaza is only the latest, following on the heels of seven “recognized” wars, two Palestinian intifadas, many reprisal operations and countless covert operations including interventions and assassinations.

Its capacity to punish and its willingness to use advanced weapons in areas dense with civilians like Gaza is terrifying — and, by design, the U.S. may have used “shock and awe” in Iraq to launch its war there, but Israel has routinized it with 2360 air strikes in its 2008-2009 “Cast Lead” campaign in Gaza alone. So far there has been l000 in this bloody blitzgrieg. Is it any surprise that of all its military branches it is the Air Force that is dominated by extremists and West Bank settlers?

And, in all of its conflicts, Tel Aviv invents and then seizes a constantly reinforced “moral” high ground, immediately positioning itself as a victim, and defending its actions as defensive. That view is then relentlessly streamed 24/7 to the public by lobby groups, PR firms, and government agencies, to and through, a well-orchestrated network of political allies and supporters worldwide.

This is not new, says the respected Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, “The Israeli propaganda machine attempts again and again to narrate its policies as out of context and turns the pretext it found for every new wave of destruction into the main justification for another spree of indiscriminate slaughter in the killing fields of Palestine.”

As in all of its conflicts, propaganda operations designed to win over the press and public opinion, enjoy as much priority as its military operations.

Today, military-led units and student groups/cyber armies attempt to dominate the on-line discourse about the war, repeatedly emphasizing prefrabricated market — tested message points, like blaming Gaza for rejecting a cease fire that it is repeatedly claimed Israel supported. There is no mention of the human costs, the lack of proportionality in the casualties and coverage, or alternative approaches.

Major media seems to embrace the narrative without question or independent reporting or analysis, much less critically.

Here’s Bloomberg: “Israel Renews Gaza Bombing After Hamas Rejects Truce Plan. Here’s the Washington Post: “While Israel Held Its Fire, Hamas did not.” On and on, around the clock. In many of these accounts, Hamas is described only as “militants,” not a party or elected government. The perennial message: Israel is being reasonable, while Hamas is irresponsible and even wants the death of its own people. It’s always all their fault! You never hear what Hamas is saying — or trying to say, except selected snippets of overheated rhetoric used to demonize them.

Israel has moved beyond PR to PM — Perception Management.

Inside Israel, Neve Gordin says the situation is worse, with repeated calls for more escalation, amidst neo-genocidal demands for a final solution as in “destroy them all, once and for all.”

In a piece on “Israel’s War Echo Chamber, he writes: “The public debate today is not whether or not to stop the air strikes but rather whether or not to deploy ground forces. In an opinion column, Channel 2′s military correspondent Ronnie Daniel claimed that only “a ground operation will extract a heavy enough price from Hamas” in order to ensure a longer period of peace for Israel. The following day Channel 2′s anchor pondered: “We wanted Hamas to fall on its knees and so far this has not happened”; and Daniel responded, “So far it’s not happening, and the conclusion, in my opinion, is that it has not received enough.”

Amira Hess, the gutsy Israeli correspondent for Ha’aretz, explains:

Both sides (Hamas and Israel) say they are firing in self-defense. We know that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Israel’s policy is clear (if not to consumers of Israeli media): Cut Gaza off even more, thwart any possibility of Palestinian unity and divert attention from the accelerating colonialist drive in the West Bank.

And Hamas? It wants to boost its standing as a resistance movement after the blows it took as a governing movement. Maybe it really thinks it can change the Palestinian leadership’s entire strategy vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation. Maybe it wants the world (and the Arab states) to awaken from its slumber.

Still, with all due respect to Clausewitz, rational calculations are not the only explanation. Let’s not forget the missile envy — whose is bigger, longer, more impressive and reaches farther? The boys play with their toys and we’ve gotten used to calling it policy.

In all of this swamp of hawkish sludge, what do we make of an alternative explanation embraced by the writers who follow these events most knowledgably, when we even hear from them. Here’s a peace activist, Richard Silverstein:

Let’s talk about the faux ceasefire. Really a fraudulent ceasefire. Egypt’s ceasefire with no one. My Israeli source, who was consulted as part of the negotiations, tells me that this was not, in reality, an Egyptian proposal. It was, in fact, an Israeli proposal presented in the guise of an Egyptian proposal. Israel wrote the ceasefire protocol. The Egyptians rubber-stamped it and put it out under their letterhead as if it was their own.

Jodi Rudoren typically called the ceasefire “one-sided,” meaning Israel honored it and Hamas didn’t. But it was “one-sided” in a way she hadn’t considered. Only one-side prepared the ceasefire and essentially presented it to itself and accepted it. The other side wasn’t consulted.

The contents of the ceasefire proposal were a fraud as well. They promised and delivered nothing. They only called for a cessation of hostilities on the part of Israel and Hamas. The same document has been signed in the past only to see Israel violate it almost as soon as the ink was dry. There were no provisions for easing the Israeli siege. No provision to open the border with Egypt. Most importantly, the ceasefire didn’t address any underlying issues between the parties. It was a guarantor for resuming hostilities at the earliest possible opportunity: these wars have come at two-year intervals over the past six years. The next one will be in 2016, if not sooner.

The Israel newspaper, Haaretz, reported that neither Hamas’ military or political wings were consulted. So, if this is not a charade, what is? The goal was not to engage Hamas in a peace process, but to create a one-sided media narrative as a pretext and ultimatum for more war.
It turns out that Tony Blair, the former pro-Iraq war British Prime Minister, and representative of the so-called “quartet,” arranged the phone call between Israeli and Egyptian officials.

This does not mean that eventually there won’t be negotiations of some kind between the warring parties. Christiane Amanpour spoke with a former Israeli intelligence chief on CNN. He called for negotiations with Hamas.

“Hamas is a very bad option, undoubtedly. But there are worse options than Hamas,” Efraim Halevy, former Mossad chief, said.

“And we already know what some of them might be, especially one of them: the ISIS – which is operating now in the northern Iraq and central Iraq — has its tentacles in the Gaza Strip too.”
Halevy said that just as in Europe, ISIS is recruiting in Gaza.

It is “inconvenient politically,” Halevy said, for both Israel and Hamas to admit that they negotiate. But the truth, he said, is that they have already been doing it for years.

We have coined a new method of diplomacy in the twenty-first century: we don’t meet with them, we don’t talk to them, but we listen to them. Each one listens to the other side. Somehow in the end an understanding is crafted.

We have had several rounds with Hamas in recent years, and the previous rounds ended up in agreements … arrangements, as it was called – ‘arrangements,’ not even agreements.”‘
Who knows if such an “arrangement” may be possible now, as it seems clear that Hamas has many rockets yet to fire into Israel. The countries most heavily propagandized by Israel are blindly supportive, but that is not the case uniformly around the world. Israeli fanaticism slowly but surely erodes global support for its posture.

Right now, thanks to bullish TV news programming, the war has become a form of militainment for Israeli spectators. The Atlantic reports from the Golan Heights: “People come here every day to see the show,” says Marom, 54, a retired Israel Defense Forces colonel who now works in the tourism industry and regularly brings groups to this point to gaze down on Syria’s bloodletting. “For people visiting the area, it’s interesting. They feel that they are a part of it. They can go home and tell their friends, ‘I was on the border and I saw a battle.’

High above a valley in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Israeli tourists have a panoramic view of this strategically important location, which is also known as the Gateway to Damascus. Tour groups, fresh from jaunts to the area’s wineries, cherry markets, and artisanal chocolate shops, stop here by the dozens each day armed with binoculars and cameras, eager for a glimpse of smoke and even carnage.

Has this what we’ve come to? Sadly, yes.

—

Newsdissector Danny Schechter blogs at Newsdissector.net and edits Mediachannel.org. He made the film Weapons of Mass Deception about media coverage in Iraq, and wrote two books about media misrepresentations there. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org.

CHARACTERS: Visitor One, Visitor Two, Visitor Three, Visitor Four, Visitor Five, Visitor Six, Visitor Seven, Visitor Eight, Visitor Nine, Visitor Ten, Visitor Eleven, Visitor Twelve, Visitor Thirteen, and The Marvelous Sugar Baby

Setting: Noon. Saturday, July 5, 2014. The Domino Sugar Factory, Williamsburg, NY

Outside the venue, a very long line winds down and around several blocks. Art aficionados wait patiently in the sun. Inside, the exhibition visitors wander and wonder. THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY regally inhabits the space. Docents are scattered throughout the venue.

VISITOR ONE: I think this exhibit is great for Black people.

VISITOR TWO: For Black people? Really? Why?

VISITOR ONE: Because this massive sculpture obviously celebrates Black matriarchy.

VISITOR TWO: Black matriarchy? Is that what you get from this? As in some romanticized free choice world that never existed, as opposed to coping because you have no choice?

VISITOR ONE: What do you mean?

VISITOR TWO: What did you mean?

VISITOR ONE: You don’t have to get angry.

VISITOR TWO: You don’t have to tell me how I feel. I can’t talk to you about this.

VISITOR TWO quickly walks away from VISITOR ONE.
________________________________________________________________________________________________

VISITOR THREE, VISITOR FOUR, and VISITOR FIVE mingle on one the side of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.

VISITOR THREE: This is a great effort.

VISITOR FOUR: That’s an understatement. It’s wonderful.

VISITOR FIVE: Did you check out the Mammy scarf?

VISITOR FOUR: I know. We’ll never get away from that.

VISITOR FIVE: Yeah, you know they took Aunt Jemima off the pancake box and gave her a perm–

VISITOR FOUR: Or a press n’ curl. And earrings.

Laughing, VISITOR THREE, VISITOR FOUR, and VISITOR FIVE move around to another view, in back of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY. VISITOR THREE grimaces.

VISITOR THREE: I mean, Kara Walker is very good, but….

VISITOR FOUR: But what about Kara Walker?

VISITOR THREE: She’s no Jeff Koons.

VISITOR FIVE: Thank God for that.
________________________________________________________________________________________________

VISITOR SIX and VISITOR SEVEN linger in front of a melting molasses statue of a young Black child. VISITOR SIX sighs into VISITOR SEVEN’s chest.

VISITOR SIX: Do you think this statue is supposed to be an enslaved child?

VISITOR SEVEN: I don’t know, but that’d make sense.

VISITOR SIX: It’s melting right in front of us.

VISITOR SEVEN: And what do you get from that?

VISITOR SIX: Dying Black children, separated from their mother because of slavery? Some melting, some not. Look how far they’re scattered about. None of the statues of children are really next to the mother, the sphinx. You know what I mean.

VISITOR SEVEN: I do. Kara Walker went from those intricate paper cutouts to this huge, towering expression of–

VISITOR SIX: Of all these isms we don’t like to think about. I know. I know. So many layers. This is overwhelming.

VISITOR SEVEN: Yeah, it is.

VISITOR SIX: Which form do you like better?

VISITOR SEVEN: I can’t say. Both are…monumental.

VISITOR SIX: Her cutouts are so delicate and powerful. You’re taken in before you realize what’s happening in them. Kara Walker is—

VISITOR SEVEN: Effin’ brilliant?

VISITOR SIX: That works.

VISITOR SIX takes VISITOR SEVEN’s hand, and they move several yards over to study THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.
___________________________________________________________________________________________

VISITOR EIGHT and VISITOR NINE stand near a docent, listening to her talk about Kara Walker’s work.

VISITOR EIGHT: Let’s go.

VISITOR NINE: Honey we’re almost through. Listen to the docent.

VISITOR EIGHT: I’m hungry.

VISITOR NINE: We’ll eat later. Shhhh.

Holding out his hand, VISITOR EIGHT breaks from the small group listening to the docent, and runs over to THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY. The docent stops speaking and looks at VISITOR NINE, sharply.

VISITOR EIGHT: Can we eat this?

VISITOR NINE moves quickly to block VISITOR EIGHT’s hand from digging into THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.

VISITOR NINE: What are you doing?

VISITOR EIGHT: I’m hungry.

VISITOR NINE retrieves a snack bag from her pocketbook, and roughly places trail mix in VISITOR EIGHT’s hand.

VISITOR TEN and VISITOR ELEVEN stand in front of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY, camera phones at the ready.

VISITOR TEN: Go on. I’ll take yours first.

VISITOR ELEVEN walks directly in front of THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY.

VISITOR TEN (CONT’D): Move over. You’re right in-between the breasts.

VISITOR ELEVEN: I don’t have a problem with that.

VISITOR TWELVE and VISITOR THIRTEEN begin to exit the venue.

VISITOR TWELVE: I wonder what it would have looked like made from brown sugar.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: And what color brown? Light or dark? It would be a completely different exhibit.

VISITOR TWELVE: Definitely. Isn’t brown sugar healthier?

VISITOR THIRTEEN: I know brown sugar isn’t bleached. It’s pure, unrefined.

VISITOR TWELVE: Really? You think she meant that? I mean Kara Walker used white sugar for The Marvelous Sugar Baby instead of brown because of that?

VISITOR THIRTEEN: You have a future as an art critic.

VISITOR TWELVE: Shut up.

They continue to exit. VISITOR TWELVE glances back at a sidewall.

VISITOR TWELVE (CONT’D): I really liked that hole in the wall looking out on the river. She puts The Middle Passage in your face.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: Not to mention body parts.

VISITOR TWELVE and VISITOR THIRTEEN near the exit ramp.

VISITOR THIRTEEN (CONT’D): We cut it close. I’m glad we got in.

VISITOR TWELVE: Me too. My mind is racing. Oh my God, I feel high–on this exhibition.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: That’s what great art can do, right?

They begin to walk up the exit ramp.

VISITOR TWELVE: What is this brown sticky stuff under our feet? This ramp is dirty. Someone should clean it up.

VISITOR THIRTEEN: Yes. Someone should.

As the visitors, the media, and the art world move through, into and out of the space, THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY looks on: smiling, melting, crying, laughing, and frowning. She waits.

Ranti Ogunleye, photo courtesy of Julie Hassett-Sutton/Frantic Studio via Global Kids

In 1996 I was a freshman in high school on the North Shore of Staten Island. My brother had been recruited by Indiana University to play football so I started to wonder how I was going to get a scholarship. I really wasn’t athletic. Global Kids came to my class. They invited students to go to a conference they were hosting. All I cared about was that I was going to get a chance to miss school for the day. Little did I know that this conference would be life changing, that it would alter everything I wanted to do as an adult. To see young people leading workshops on serious topics like war, and to do it in a way that was fun? I wanted more.

I started attending Global Kids meetings two afternoons a week at my school and also the Citywide leadership meetings on Friday in Manhattan. At that time, nobody really believed that young people wanted to talk about politics and foreign policy or sustainability. Global Kids did.

The most important guideline that Global Kids has is called Safe Space. You can’t attack people because of what they say or their beliefs. What you can do is challenge their opinions. If you don’t do it in this way, then you’re not going to be invited back into the space. To open up your mind and challenge the ideas that you’ve been taught was groundbreaking.

I remember a workshop on homophobia in the mid 1990s. When you’re talking about such a subject matter you’ve got to talk about religion, race, culture, class– all those things clashing at once. We were able to talk about such serious topics but still feel respected, not feel attacked, and still respect everybody else. You may not like what you’re hearing but you respected it. I think everybody left that workshop feeling that whenever they talked, their voice would be heard.

In 1997, we formed a team to go to Croatia. We went to do workshops on democracy, bias awareness, cultural diversity, and peace building with the Bosnian youth in the refugee camps and the Croatian locals. We had to go through the process of being trained as facilitators, to learn about the history of Croatia and the Balkan region. We had to learn about the Dayton Accords.

The war had just ended so it was still really raw in the minds of people. For young people to speak about the war from their own point of view was powerful for them because I don’t think they had a medium or a space available where they felt like somebody was listening to them. That was important for them to tell their stories. It was amazing to feel like these young people felt empowered by the workshops we gave.

I thought in my country I dealt with stuff like racism and discrimination. I didn’t know that around the world people were dealing with the same issues. I came back renewed. I saw that even though the world felt so large, it was actually smaller than what I thought because people wanted the same things that I wanted, which was a country where people listen to the young people and feel their voices are heard.

This July, I have a chance to go back to the region with Global Kids students as an educator. I want this summer’s trip to provide a lens for today’s young people to look at the world– just as it did for me.

In my senior year, I started to apply to colleges and scholarship programs. Carole [Artigiani, Global Kids Founder and President Emerita] had developed a Global Kids scholarship with Ramapo College and I got a full scholarship. I mean, who does that? Who not only gives you all these amazing opportunities to travel across the world to work with the U.N. and refugees but then puts in time and energy to make the connections to get her students into school?

I graduated in 2002 and was hired as a trainer at Global Kids. I got to work in schools in Brooklyn. I felt like a superhero. I felt like, “We’re coming here to empower you and now you guys are going to be superheroes, too.”

In 2006, I got an opportunity to become a director of the Staten Island branch of the New York Urban League. When I started, I suddenly confronted a fear: How do I do this? What skills do I have? But I realized I had already done it at Global Kids. I’ve worked in the community. I’ve developed workshops for hundreds of people. So that fear turned back into hope.

Then in 2010, I was offered the chance to teach at the College of Staten Island as an adjunct professor. Now I’m on my fourth year teaching at the college level.

The work Global Kids does changes the whole community. You can’t go through the things that Global Kids puts you through and be the same person. You used to hear things through one voice, now you hear it through multiple voices.

Global Kids makes you bold. You feel like “No” is not an option. You have hope. You see a lot of young people without hope because they feel like nobody listens. Global Kids does the opposite. It makes you feel that you can change things.

— Ranti Ogunleye

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and Global Kids (GK) in conjunction with Global Kids’ 25th anniversary. These stories were crafted from extensive interviews with featured GK alumni. Read all of the posts in the series here. Learn more about Global Kids here.

It’s no secret that parkour is rich with movement — but we’ve never seen the sport’s potential for poetry, precision and power like this before.

In “Parkour In Motion,” photographer Ben Franke captures the action of the sport in an unprecedented way.Although Franke has been shooting the parkour scene in New York since 2008, he wanted to address a specific challenge in this series: conveying authentic movement in a 2D photograph.

In an email to The Huffington Post, Franke explained that he met this challenge by using an unlikely substance: flour.

“My goal in shooting ‘Parkour Motion’ was to capture and display the energy and power of these athletes,” he said. “One of the ways I worked to demonstrate this was by covering the athletes in flour, and as they moved, the flour illustrated the path of their motion.”

However, as expected, this particular technique did not come without difficulties.

“Determining the right timing was one of the greatest challenges in this series,” Franke said. “Also, I needed to consider that some parkour moves are impressive in person, but don’t translate well to a compelling image.”

But, for Franke and his subjects, the rewards outweighed the challenges.

“The most rewarding part of this series has been the reaction from the athletes themselves,” he said. “I felt we were all equally excited about this project from start to finish.”

And they should be — the photos are stunning. And there may be more coming soon.

“For future shoots, I will be expanding on ways in which to further capture the movement and inspiration of parkour,” Franke said. “I enjoy collaborating with the athletes, and hope to build upon this project.”