October 2000/Cast Lead All Over Again?

It started with the heinous murders of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas-affiliated terrorists and the equally heinous suspected revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager by Israeli extremists. Now it seems to be escalating into a combination of the October 2000 Israeli-Arab riots which took place at the beginning of the Second Intifadah and the December 2008-January 2009 Cast Lead Operation in Gaza, Israel's response to Palestinian missile strikes inside Israel.

Let's start with Gaza. Israel has been very restrained, responding to the barrage of rockets on border communities with a proportional response - attacking missile launchers and a bunch of symbolic, yet empty, buildings. Rockets haven't stopped, though. Today, rockets were fired on Be'er-Sheva, 40 kilometers from Gaza, the largest city attacked so far this round. This is undoubtedly an escalation. I believe it would be hypocritical of anyone in the world to criticize Israel for going on a large scale operation (one which I hope will not be necessary, but might be if attacks continue on Sunday) after giving Hamas the opportunity to stop the missiles it and other groups have launched.

Now, to the other front of this round of the conflict. Palestinians have rioted in East Jerusalem and inside the green line, while barely anything has happened in the West Bank. Anger over the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir is understandable, especially in East Jerusalem, where he lived and died. However, violent riots, including the destruction of property and attacking civilians, are beyond the pale. Within Israel, Palestinian citizens of the state have blocked roads, pulled Jews out of their cars and burned the vehicles and laid siege to the village of Mei Ami. This is unacceptable. 

The Palestinians of Israel cannot join their brethren, the Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, in their war against the state. This will not be tolerated. The police's harsh response in October 2000 resulted in the fact that the rest of the Second Intifadah did not include Palestinian citizens of Israel. Unfortunately, 14 Palestinian rioters (13 citizens, one non-citizen) were killed, as was one Jewish citizen who was killed by rocks thrown at his car. This time around, better riot dispersal equipment should be used so there will not be civilian casualties (Arab or Jewish) while still quickly crushing this insurrection. 

Pillar of Cloud

Nothing like a new war between Hamas and Israel to wake me from my blumber (blogging slumber).

Like a majority of people, I want the violence between Hamas and Israel to end. However, a ceasefire now won't necessarily achieve that goal. I don't know what will. If the current operation ends with a return to the previous status quo, where Israeli towns near Gaza would regularly be attacked without Israel doing anything about it, we might as well reach a so-called ceasefire immediately, so at least less people will be at risk in the short run.

However, if the operation can cripple Hamas and other terrorist organizations badly enough that their ability to fire at Israel is greatly reduced, and if Hamas's ability to import weapons is also crippled, the operation should continue until those goals are met. After that, a ceasefire should be reached, and every single violation of it - every shelling of a kibbutz on the border, every Qassam on Sderot, etc. - should result in significant response by Israel, and not just shooting back at the specific squad responsible. However, together with that stick, Israel should offer a carrot of restricting the blockade on Gaza to weaponry and things that are likely to be used to manufacture weapons, letting everything else in.

Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 was a failure because it ended with a return to the situation that existed before. We should not let Operation Pillar of Defense (or as it is called in Hebrew, Operation Pillar of Cloud) end the same way.

Goldstone Retracts Part of His Own Report

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, South African Judge Richard Goldstone says the commission he headed came to the wrong conclusion regarding the intentionality of Israel's attacks on Gazan civilians during Operation Cast Lead two years ago. Based on information he now has, including from IDF internal investigations, he now says there was no policy of targeting civilians. Civilian deaths were mostly unintentional, perhaps with a few exceptions, where a commander on the ground was to blame.

Goldstone claims that had Israel cooperated with his commission, its conclusions would have been starkly different. That might be true, and if it is, it means any report the commission would have produced, with or without Israeli cooperation, would have been problematic. If they base their conclusions mainly on the two sides' official accounts, and don't do much independent investigating of their own, the report isn't worth much. It would have been much cheaper for the UN to post the official accounts on-line, side by side, and let the general public decide. But the public doesn't have the tools to find out which claims are true and which are false, you say? Well, apparently, the Goldstone Commission didn't either!

Im Tirtzu's Attack on the New Israel Fund

Im Tirtzu, a right-wing student organization who for some reason insists on calling itself a centrist movement, has started a campaign against the New Israel Fund and its chairwoman, former MK Prof. Naomi Chazan. In ads in newspapers and online, Im Tirtzu claims that 92 percent of the negative claims against Israel and the IDF in the Goldstone Report whose source is Israeli, came from organizations funded by the NIF. They invite people to read a report they prepared, and I assume they hope people won't actually read the report. I read it, and checked out some of their refrences to the Goldstone Report.

They're careful to say it is 92% of negatives claims against Israel made by Israeli organizations, but most people who read it would think it is a whopping 92% of all claims, which isn't the case. Remember, that NIF sources are less than 14% of the whole sources of the Goldstone Report. The Palestinians' claims would still be there even if it weren't for NIF-funded organizations.

Now, how did they get to the exact 92% figure. They took 191 references to NIF sources (including "New Profile", which Naomi Chazan has already said is not affiliated with the NIF), plus 56 references to non-NIF Israeli organizations. At this stage, the NIF is responsible for only 77% of the references. That isn't bad enough, so Im Tirtzu needed to increase the percentage. What did they do? They split the 56 non-NIF references to those who are either supportive of Israel or neutral (40) and those who criticize it (16). So those critical of Israel are now 191 NIF sources (92%) and 16 non-NIF sources (8%). But wait, why didn't they perform a similar split between NIF sources criticizing Israel and those supporting it? I noticed that at least a few of the NIF sources they listed actually talk about life under the threat of the Qassams. If I had the time to go over all the references, I'm sure I'd be able to find more NIF sources in the Goldstone Report that are either supportive of Israel or neutral.

I have to say that I'm not too thrilled with the organizations that did give the Goldstone Commission certain one-sided information, but it's their right to give the Commission information as they see it. This McCarthyist campaign by Im Tirtzu is disgusting.

The New Israel Fund has many great programs in Israel, most of them not related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would hate to see them lose contributions because of this slanted report.

Something Rotten in the IDF

Ha'aretz published very disturbing soldiers' accounts from the operation in Gaza today (in Hebrew and in English), with more details coming out in tomorrow's weekend magazine. Even if you think Cast Lead was justified, like I do, the practices the soldiers speak of are unjustifiable. The article paints a clear picture of disregard for human life, excessive force, and in many cases, racism towards the Palestinians. This has to change.

A few years ago I attended a "mesibat gius", an "enlistment party", for a relative who was joining a combat unit. People gave him various tips about army life. Several people told him to always remember the Palestinians were humans, not just automatic terrorist suspects. I remember one person saying that "once you forget the Palestinian civilians are human, you also forget that you're human". It seems to me that kind of message needs to be an integral part of the training of combat soldiers.

Today's Haaretz editorial (Hebrew version here) calls for an external investigation:

"The IDF's internal investigations, which are moving ahead very slowly, are not enough. The army is absorbing more and more religious extremism from the teachings of the IDF's rabbinate. It would be appropriate to investigate the problems from outside the IDF and root them out before the rot destroys the IDF and Israeli society."

I couldn't agree more. An investigative committee like the one set up after the Second Lebanon War should be set up, but this one should be focused on the moral and ethical aspects of the operation and IDF soldiers' training in general.

It's All Israel's Fault

Ann El-Khoury of People's Geography (I'm not linking to it, find it yourself) wrote a post a few days ago about her father's sunflowers wilting exactly in time for Israel's operation in Gaza. She quickly removed it. Maybe she realized how ridiculous the post was. It was like a parody of Arabs, and anti-Zionists in general, who blame Israel for everything. Is the weather bad? It's the Israelis. Was there a traffic accident between two Arabs? The Israelis must have done something to the cars!

Yes, Ann, Israel killed your father's sunflowers. He should sue us in the Hague for crimes against vegetation.

A Letter to Gideon Levy

A. B Yehoshua, a prominent Israeli author and one of the "spiritual/intellectual leaders" of the the Israeli left, wrote a letter to bleeding-heart Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy (original Hebrew version here):

Dear Gideon,

You remember that in recent years I called you occasionally to praise you for your articles and your writing about the wrongs done to the Palestinians in the administered territories, whether by the army or by the settlers. Physical wrongs, land expropriations, acts of abuse, perversions of justice and so on. I told you that it is very difficult to read what you write, because it weighs on our conscience, but that the work you are doing and the voice you are sounding are extremely important. I was also concerned about your physical safety, knowing that you risked your life by visiting such hostile places.

I did not ask you why you did not visit Israeli hospitals in order to tell the painful stories of Israeli citizens who were hurt in terrorist attacks. I accepted your position that there are plenty of other journalists doing this and that you had taken on the crucial mission of telling the story of the afflictions of the other side, our enemies today and our neighbors tomorrow.

Accordingly, it is from this position of respect that I find it necessary to respond to your recent articles on the war in which we are engaged today, so that you will be able to preserve the moral validity of your distinctive voice for the future. A few years ago, when the Hatuel family - a mother and her four children, of blessed memory - were killed on the way to one of the settlements in Gush Katif, I believed that this terrible death pained you as it did all of us but that like many of us you said in your heart: Why should these Israelis endanger their children by living provocatively, hopelessly, dangerously and immorally in Gush Katif? By what right do 8,000 Jews expropriate a sizable area in the densely overcrowded Gaza Strip in order to build blossoming villages before the eyes of hundreds of thousands of refugees living in such abysmal conditions? You were angry, as I was, at the parents and at those who sent them. And even though I believe that like all of us you felt the pain of the children who were killed, you did not brand the leaders of Hamas "war criminals" as you did the Israeli leaders, and you did not demand the establishment of an international tribunal to try them.

When I asked you after the disengagement from Gaza, Gideon, explain to me why they are firing missiles at us, you replied that they want us to open the crossings. I asked you whether you truly believe that if they fire missiles the crossings will be opened, or the opposite. And whether you truly believe that it is right and just to open crossings into Israel for those who declare openly and sincerely that they want to destroy our country. I did not get an answer from you. And even though the crossings were in fact opened many times, and were closed in the wake of the missile attacks, regrettably I still did not see you standing firmly behind a moral position which says: Now, people of Gaza, after you expelled the Israeli occupation from your land, and justly so, you must hold your fire.

The doleful thought sometimes crosses my mind that it is not the children of Gaza or of Israel that you are pining for, but only for your own private conscience. Because if you are truly concerned about the death of our children and theirs, you would understand the present war - not in order to uproot Hamas from Gaza but to induce its followers to understand, and regrettably in the only way they understand in the meantime, that they must stop the firing unilaterally, stop hoarding missiles for a bitter and hopeless war to destroy Israel, and above all for the sake of their children in the future, so they will not die in another pointless adventure.

After all, now, for the first time in Palestinian history, after the Ottoman, British, Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli conquests, part of the Palestinians has gained a first and I hope not a last piece of land on which they are to maintain a full and independent government. And if they start building, developing and pursuing social endeavors, even according to Islamic religious law, they will prove to the whole world, and especially to us, that the moment we terminate the occupation they will be ready to live in peace with their surroundings, free to do as they wish, but also responsible for their deeds.

There is something absurd in the comparison you draw about the number of those killed. When you ask how it can be that they killed three of our children and we cause the killing of a hundred and fifty, the inference one can draw is that if they were to kill a hundred of our children (for example, by the Qassam rockets that struck schools and kindergartens in Israel that happened to be empty), we would be justified in also killing a hundred of their children.

In other words, it is not the killing itself that troubles you but the number. On the face of it, one could answer you cynically by saying that when there will be two hundred million Jews in the Middle East it will be permissible to think in moral terms about comparing the number of victims on each side. But that is, of course, a debased argument. After all, you, Gideon, who live among the people, know very well that we are not bent on killing Palestinian children to avenge the killing of our children. All we are trying to do is get their leaders to stop this senseless and wicked aggression, and it is only because of the tragic and deliberate mingling between Hamas fighters and the civilian population that children, too, are unfortunately being killed. The fact is that since the disengagement, Hamas has fired only at civilians. Even in this war, to my astonishment, I see that they are not aiming at the army concentrations along the border but time and again at civilian communities.

Please, preserve the moral authority and concern that you possessed, and your distinctive voice. We will need them again in the future, which promises further ordeals on the road to peace. In the meantime, it would be best for us all - we and the Palestinians and the rest of the world - to follow the simple moral imperative of Kantian philosophy: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

In friendship always,

A. B. Yehoshua

The writer is an Israeli author. His latest novel, "Friendly Fire," was published in recent months

Response to Rashid Khalidi

Originally, I wrote this as a comment on Gert's blog post which reprinted Rashid Khalidi's New York Times op-ed piece, What You Don’t Know About Gaza. It came out so long, I decided it merits its own post.

I must say, today's NY Times op-ed page was very unfriendly to Israel, with critical articles by Nicholas Kristof, Roger Cohen, Khalidi and Gideon Lichfield. But that's okay. Conservatives David Brooks and William Kristol, as well as my favorite columnist Thomas Friedman, had previously written articles in favor of Israel's Gaza operation. I particularly liked Thomas Friedman's piece.

Anyway, here is my response to Rashid Khalidi's opionion article:

I read this article this morning and found it very troubling, though not at all surprising. I truly do hope Barack Obama's connection with Khalidi was exaggerated by Republicans.

THE GAZANS How is it relevant that the Gazans are not there by choice? Is it alright for them to fire at Ashkelon and Be'er-Sheva because their grandparents came from those cities?

The Gazans have been kept in the refugee camps by their Arab brethren. Had Egypt, who controlled the strip between 1948-1967, or any other Arab country, rehabilitated the refugees and invested in them, things would look differently. Instead, the refugees and their suffering were used as a tool against Israel to keep calling for the right of return. After all, if they'd rebuild Palestinians' lives in their new locations it would have seemed like they were giving up on the right of return.

THE OCCUPATION First of all, the Gazans have never NOT lived under occupation. Before 1967 they were occupied by Egypt; before 1948 by the UK; and before 1917 by the Ottomans. Right now, their self-rule is greater than at any time in the past.

Israel has made many mistakes over the years in Gaza. It should have done what Egypt before it should have done - it should have made Gazans' lives better. However, once Israel withdrew from the territory, it was up to the Palestinians to make their lives better, even if Israel controlled the border. Even before the blockade that started when Hamas rose to power, Palestinians did nothing with their territory.

THE BLOCKADE Fuel, electricity and humanitarian aid kept coming in to Gaza all this time. The aim of the blockade was not to choke the Palestinians, but to harm the Hamas government. If a nation elected a government bent on your destruction, would you cooperate with it economically and otherwise?

THE CEASE-FIRE In November Israel attacked a tunnel where arms were being smuggled in. The IDF said there was an imminent threat to Israel from whatever was coming through that tunnel. Was it a smart move? Maybe not, but it didn't come out of thin air.

WAR CRIMES The numbers do not speak for themselves. They don't demonstrate each side's intentions, but rather each side's technological advancement. The civilian death toll is too high - the result of both Israeli recklessness and Hamas activity within population centers. However, this is not a war crime on Israel's part, since the civilians are not the targets. Also, it is not true that civilians are the majority of the dead.

"Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip."

Israel wanted to continue the cease-fire, but Hamas refused. It demanded that the border crossings be opened, but as long as Hamas is unwilling to allow inspections they cannot be fully opened. The smuggling of arms must stop.

"This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets."

Khalidi would like to think that it isn't. This way, the Palestinians have absolutely no responsibility for what is happening. The truth is that it is about rockets. After eight years of Qassams and Grad missiles, Israelis have had enough.

"Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

This is a horrible statement. Moshe Yaalon is an idiot, though not an isolated idiot. Maybe this kind of thinking has something to do with some of the tactics of the current operation but it is not the goal. The end of rocket fire and rocket smuggling is.

No 48-Hour Truce

Several prominent figures such as French President Nikolas Sarkozy and authors/gurus of the Israeli left Amos Oz and David Grossman have called for a 48-hour truce. They hope this truce will become perminent, but if it doesn't, they think it will at least allow the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to be eased.

If there is a truce for only 2 days and violence resumes, it will have been the worst kind of truce possible. Hamas will be able to regroup during this short period.

So, no, there should only be a truce that will truly end the fighting and the missile attacks for a very long time.