Banafsheh Zia’s OPERATION CAST LEAD: The Case is not a straightforward look at the prosecution of the titular operation (i.e., the December 2008-January 2009 hostilities in the Gaza Strip). The book proposes that the planning and nature of the Israeli attacks—including their underlying political motives—were secretly broadcast through the American soap opera General Hospital between 2007 and 2009.
This review must begin where the text does: the author and narrator acknowledges that she has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and has, at times, received treatment for this condition. That does not automatically discount everything in the book, but it is a fact established in the foreword, and it does contextualize some of the argumentation. The central argument—that aspects of this Israeli military operation were encoded in the writing of an American soap opera—is, on its face, unlikely; and taken on its own merits, the book does not appear to convincingly make its claims.
Aside from the merit of those assertions, OPERATION CAST LEAD has difficulty presenting its basic material. The first fifty pages are almost entirely given over to minute summarization of General Hospital plotlines. The plot of any soap opera is sprawling and complex by design, and that makes for difficult, uninteresting reading. Another fifty pages are spent rehashing international law as it pertains to Canada, the International Criminal Court, and more, citing numerous references to legal statutes and conventions—all with the aim of claiming that nefarious actors could be prosecuted internationally for the commission of war crimes during the action in question. Whether or not this is legally and factually true, it’s similarly dull and hard to read. Purely in terms of presentation, the book creates challenges for readers, rather than hooking and engaging them.
It would be easy to belabor the ways in which the factual information provided fails to support the central argument. Much is made of characters wearing black-and-white outfits in particular moments, or White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wearing green; action in the “Zeytoun” region of Gaza is connected to the character “Olivia,” since “zaytun” is Arabic for “olive;” every casual use of the common phrase “dangerous liaison” is loaded with meaning. But beyond all these specifics, the problem is that there’s no need to make the underlying moral argument of OPERATION CAST LEAD: that the Israeli state, explicitly or tacitly supported by the United States, committed crimes against the people of Gaza. The text “[invites] the reader to examine this case with their conscience as a priority,” but anyone with a conscience is well-aware of the ongoing humanitarian disasters in Gaza and Palestine at large—without any conspiracy involving American television broadcasting. Many readers will likely be sympathetic to the argument of OPERATION CAST LEAD, but they will not be particularly informed, nor convinced.
Banafsheh Zia’s OPERATION CAST LEAD: The Case is a difficult read that ultimately fails to prove its central thesis, regardless of the information it presents.
~ Dan Accardi for IndieReader