Woodstock Times
I am writing in response to the letter from The Jewish Federation of Ulster County in your last issue, which I strongly suspect was not written in Kingston. It reflects perfectly the Israeli position, crowing over its impunity in imagined "victory" over a helpless population, half-starved and deprived of clean water, sewage disposal, medicine, electricity, half of whose children are now anemic with signs of malnutrition, packed into a walled-in concentration camp - an absolutely unequal fight popular opinion here spontaneously calls "shooting fish in a barrel." But these are human beings, children, women, men, civilians, doctors, ambulance drivers, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, grandparents, attacked not just with armor and jets, but with white phosphorus, depleted uranium, and with Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), with no place to run to shelter. The JDF communication reflects indifference to the suffering Israel caused.
The campaign against Gaza is now the subject of the greatest Israeli propaganda campaign in Israel's history. Certainly, in a large part of the American and world public who have hoped for better or have not previously been following the news, Israel has reaped a harvest of revulsion and loathing that no frantic propaganda campaign can erase.
So where is the victory? The feeble rockets continue, demonstrating that David has in fact survived Goliath, which reinforces Hamas's backing. Israel is likely to repeat the slaughter. And why is Israel doing this?
One of the world's leading political psychologists, the Israeli David Bar Tal, has done a study called "Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with the Palestinians?" Hebrew title: "What do Jews in Israel know about the conflict with the Palestinians?" He says that Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. He and his partner say those with a "Zionist memory" see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and don't support agreements or compromises with the Palestinians to obtain peace; they note that changes to eliminate bias and indoctrination in the teaching of the conflict would help.
The esteemed London professor, author and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose, who is Jewish, puts it this way: "(criticism) is in no way to diminish the traumatic impact of the Holocaust but to register it all the more powerfully. The effect of trauma is precisely to freeze people in time. There is a psychological dimension to this conflict that seems almost impossibly difficult to shift. In its own eyes, Israel is never the originator and agent of is own violence, and to that extent its violence is always justified. The Palestinians do not count. Even when the worst of what has been done to them is registered inside Israel, it is still the Israeli who suffers more."
Avraham Berg, former president of the World Zionist Organization and speaker of the Knesset, addresses this in his new book "The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise From The Ashes."
So peace must come from strong outside intervention. George Mitchell is a good person for that. Even though Abraham Foxman told Obama "He is very fair, very even-handed. But that is not the kind of person we need in this situation." It is time for Americans to support a change in policy, and to strongly back a "fair, even-handed' person, to stop the siege of Gaza, and to insist all sides be listened to, including Hamas, in a wide dialogue, to achieve peace.
Sheila Finan
Letter to Editor: Woodstock Times
While I sympathize with the outrage and passion about Israel´s oppression of the Palestinian people in CJ Mellor´s recent letter, `Disgraceful Silence´ - I have to strongly take exception to the concluding statement. Mellor says, "Much of the blame for this sorry state of affairs rests squarely on the shoulders of U.S. Jews, whose silence over Israel´s conduct, with far too few exceptions, has been nothing but disgraceful, and absolutely raises the issue of dual loyalty."
In the first place, the statement is simply not accurate. Yes, certainly there are many Jews, who out of a misguided sense of loyalty to Israel, cannot face the truth of Israeli apartheid and the disgraceful and brutal history of the Occupation.
That said, there are also many, many Jewish activists, artists, writers and scholars who have spoken out forcefully in defense of the Palestinian people and against the Occupation and who have vigorously opposed the continuing American monetary and military aid to Israel. Many of these same American Jews have traveled to the West Bank and Gaza to stand in solidarity with the oppressed. Many have put themselves on the line, both with nonviolent protests and acts of civil disobedience in the cause of justice. There are probably millions of American Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. But you won´t see, hear or read much of this in the corporate controlled mass media.
As far as blame, all Americans share in that. It is our collective tax dollars that go at the rate of $10,000,000 per day - yes, that´s ten million per day, to support the Israeli military machine. Recently, Amnesty International found evidence of U.S.-made weapons in Gaza, including the misuse of white phosphorus munitions, a breach of our own US stated policy and international law.
I don´t like the idea of singling out US Jews per se as responsible for what Israel has done. AIPAC, and other pro-Zionist lobbyists, the huge block of fundamentalist right wing Christians and the vast majority of American politicians, white, black, Christian and Jewish who unconditionally support Israel´s actions, are all a part of this mashuga mess.
I don´t think CJ Mellor meant it to be so, but that last statement, more or less placing collective blame on "the shoulders of U.S. Jews" is exactly what anti-Semitism feeds upon. The Israeli Prime Minster recently referred to the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Olmert suggested that a good part of the reason for it was the blockade of the Gaza Strip. "We need to remember that the Occupation is a problem for us", he explained. He further argued: "As long as we are presented as Occupiers, we will continue suffer from anti-Semitic incidents." Like any other racial or ethic prejudice, anti-Semitism is a disease, not a solution or an answer for anything. The specter of anti-Semitism hangs over our heads ominously enough - thanks to the unfortunate tendency towards prejudice in many, which has been exacerbated by the horrific and cruel actions of Israeli Zionists and it´s supporters over the last 60 years - we don´t need to add to it.
Tarak Kauff
In the first place, the statement is simply not accurate. Yes, certainly there are many Jews, who out of a misguided sense of loyalty to Israel, cannot face the truth of Israeli apartheid and the disgraceful and brutal history of the Occupation.
That said, there are also many, many Jewish activists, artists, writers and scholars who have spoken out forcefully in defense of the Palestinian people and against the Occupation and who have vigorously opposed the continuing American monetary and military aid to Israel. Many of these same American Jews have traveled to the West Bank and Gaza to stand in solidarity with the oppressed. Many have put themselves on the line, both with nonviolent protests and acts of civil disobedience in the cause of justice. There are probably millions of American Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. But you won´t see, hear or read much of this in the corporate controlled mass media.
As far as blame, all Americans share in that. It is our collective tax dollars that go at the rate of $10,000,000 per day - yes, that´s ten million per day, to support the Israeli military machine. Recently, Amnesty International found evidence of U.S.-made weapons in Gaza, including the misuse of white phosphorus munitions, a breach of our own US stated policy and international law.
I don´t like the idea of singling out US Jews per se as responsible for what Israel has done. AIPAC, and other pro-Zionist lobbyists, the huge block of fundamentalist right wing Christians and the vast majority of American politicians, white, black, Christian and Jewish who unconditionally support Israel´s actions, are all a part of this mashuga mess.
I don´t think CJ Mellor meant it to be so, but that last statement, more or less placing collective blame on "the shoulders of U.S. Jews" is exactly what anti-Semitism feeds upon. The Israeli Prime Minster recently referred to the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Olmert suggested that a good part of the reason for it was the blockade of the Gaza Strip. "We need to remember that the Occupation is a problem for us", he explained. He further argued: "As long as we are presented as Occupiers, we will continue suffer from anti-Semitic incidents." Like any other racial or ethic prejudice, anti-Semitism is a disease, not a solution or an answer for anything. The specter of anti-Semitism hangs over our heads ominously enough - thanks to the unfortunate tendency towards prejudice in many, which has been exacerbated by the horrific and cruel actions of Israeli Zionists and it´s supporters over the last 60 years - we don´t need to add to it.
Tarak Kauff
Another War, Another Defeat
January 26, 2009 Issue
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative
Another War, Another Defeat
The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.
By John J. Mearsheimer
Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don't believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.
The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel's deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran's nuclear program.
But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel's long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a "Greater Israel." Specifically, Israel's leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.
The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the "Iron Wall."
What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this strategy.
Let's begin with Israel's decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The conventional wisdom is that Israel was serious about making peace with the Palestinians and that its leaders hoped the exit from Gaza would be a major step toward creating a viable Palestinian state. According to the New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman, Israel was giving the Palestinians an opportunity to "build a decent mini-state there-a Dubai on the Mediterranean," and if they did so, it would "fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank."
This is pure fiction. Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel's wishes. Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon's closest adviser at the time, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. He described the disengagement as "formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." Moreover, he emphasized that the withdrawal "places the Palestinians under tremendous pressure. It forces them into a corner where they hate to be."
Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who also advised Sharon, elaborated on what that pressure would look like. "When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
In January 2006, five months after the Israelis pulled their settlers out of Gaza, Hamas won a decisive victory over Fatah in the Palestinian legislative elections. This meant trouble for Israel's strategy because Hamas was democratically elected, well organized, not corrupt like Fatah, and unwilling to accept Israel's existence. Israel responded by ratcheting up economic pressure on the Palestinians, but it did not work. In fact, the situation took another turn for the worse in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together to form a national unity government. Hamas's stature and political power were growing, and Israel's divide-and-conquer strategy was unraveling.
To make matters worse, the national unity government began pushing for a long-term ceasefire. The Palestinians would end all missile attacks on Israel if the Israelis would stop arresting and assassinating Palestinians and end their economic stranglehold, opening the border crossings into Gaza.
Israel rejected that offer and with American backing set out to foment a civil war between Fatah and Hamas that would wreck the national unity government and put Fatah in charge. The plan backfired when Hamas drove Fatah out of Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge there and the more pliant Fatah in control of the West Bank. Israel then tightened the screws on the blockade around Gaza, causing even greater hardship and suffering among the Palestinians living there.
Hamas responded by continuing to fire rockets and mortars into Israel, while emphasizing that they still sought a long-term ceasefire, perhaps lasting ten years or more. This was not a noble gesture on Hamas's part: they sought a ceasefire because the balance of power heavily favored Israel. The Israelis had no interest in a ceasefire and merely intensified the economic pressure on Gaza. But in the late spring of 2008, pressure from Israelis living under the rocket attacks led the government to agree to a six-month ceasefire starting on June 19. That agreement, which formally ended on Dec. 19, immediately preceded the present war, which began on Dec. 27.
The official Israeli position blames Hamas for undermining the ceasefire. This view is widely accepted in the United States, but it is not true. Israeli leaders disliked the ceasefire from the start, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the IDF to begin preparing for the present war while the ceasefire was being negotiated in June 2008. Furthermore, Dan Gillerman, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, reports that Jerusalem began to prepare the propaganda campaign to sell the present war months before the conflict began. For its part, Hamas drastically reduced the number of missile attacks during the first five months of the ceasefire. A total of two rockets were fired into Israel during September and October, none by Hamas.
How did Israel behave during this same period? It continued arresting and assassinating Palestinians on the West Bank, and it continued the deadly blockade that was slowly strangling Gaza. Then on Nov. 4, as Americans voted for a new president, Israel attacked a tunnel inside Gaza and killed six Palestinians. It was the first major violation of the ceasefire, and the Palestinians-who had been "careful to maintain the ceasefire," according to Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center-responded by resuming rocket attacks. The calm that had prevailed since June vanished as Israel ratcheted up the blockade and its attacks into Gaza and the Palestinians hurled more rockets at Israel. It is worth noting that not a single Israeli was killed by Palestinian missiles between Nov. 4 and the launching of the war on Dec. 27.
As the violence increased, Hamas made clear that it had no interest in extending the ceasefire beyond Dec. 19, which is hardly surprising, since it had not worked as intended. In mid-December, however, Hamas informed Israel that it was still willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire if it included an end to the arrests and assassinations as well as the lifting of the blockade. But the Israelis, having used the ceasefire to prepare for war against Hamas, rejected this overture. The bombing of Gaza commenced eight days after the failed ceasefire formally ended.
If Israel wanted to stop missile attacks from Gaza, it could have done so by arranging a long-term ceasefire with Hamas. And if Israel were genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, it could have worked with the national unity government to implement a meaningful ceasefire and change Hamas's thinking about a two-state solution. But Israel has a different agenda: it is determined to employ the Iron Wall strategy to get the Palestinians in Gaza to accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel.
This brutal policy is clearly reflected in Israel's conduct of the Gaza War. Israel and its supporters claim that the IDF is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, in some cases taking risks that put Israeli soldiers in jeopardy. Hardly. One reason to doubt these claims is that Israel refuses to allow reporters into the war zone: it does not want the world to see what its soldiers and bombs are doing inside Gaza. At the same time, Israel has launched a massive propaganda campaign to put a positive spin on the horror stories that do emerge.
The best evidence, however, that Israel is deliberately seeking to punish the broader population in Gaza is the death and destruction the IDF has wrought on that small piece of real estate. Israel has killed over 1,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 4,000. Over half of the casualties are civilians, and many are children. The IDF's opening salvo on Dec. 27 took place as children were leaving school, and one of its primary targets that day was a large group of graduating police cadets, who hardly qualified as terrorists. In what Ehud Barak called "an all-out war against Hamas," Israel has targeted a university, schools, mosques, homes, apartment buildings, government offices, and even ambulances. A senior Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained the logic behind Israel's expansive target set: "There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel." In other words, everyone is a terrorist and everything is a legitimate target.
Israelis tend to be blunt, and they occasionally say what they are really doing. After the IDF killed 40 Palestinian civilians in a UN school on Jan. 6, Ha'aretz reported that "senior officers admit that the IDF has been using enormous firepower." One officer explained, "For us, being cautious means being aggressive. From the minute we entered, we've acted like we're at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground . I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock."
One might accept that Israel is waging "a cruel, all-out war against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians," as Ha'aretz put it in an editorial, but argue that it will eventually achieve its war aims and the rest of the world will quickly forget the horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza.
This is wishful thinking. For starters, Israel is unlikely to stop the rocket fire for any appreciable period of time unless it agrees to open Gaza's borders and stop arresting and killing Palestinians. Israelis talk about cutting off the supply of rockets and mortars into Gaza, but weapons will continue to come in via secret tunnels and ships that sneak through Israel's naval blockade. It will also be impossible to police all of the goods sent into Gaza through legitimate channels.
Israel could try to conquer all of Gaza and lock the place down. That would probably stop the rocket attacks if Israel deployed a large enough force. But then the IDF would be bogged down in a costly occupation against a deeply hostile population. They would eventually have to leave, and the rocket fire would resume. And if Israel fails to stop the rocket fire and keep it stopped, as seems likely, its deterrent will be diminished, not strengthened.
More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them. Indeed, Hamas's reaction to Israel's brutality seems to lend credence to Nietzsche's remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger.
But even if the unexpected happens and the Palestinians cave, Israel would still lose because it will become an apartheid state. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said, Israel will "face a South African-style struggle" if the Palestinians do not get a viable state of their own. "As soon as that happens," he argued, "the state of Israel is finished." Yet Olmert has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and create a viable Palestinian state, relying instead on the Iron Wall strategy to deal with the Palestinians.
There is also little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. The destruction is just too obvious to miss, and too many people-especially in the Arab and Islamic world-care about the Palestinians' fate. Moreover, discourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims. What is happening in Gaza will accelerate that changing picture of the conflict and long be seen as a dark stain on Israel's reputation.
The bottom line is that no matter what happens on the battlefield, Israel cannot win its war in Gaza. In fact, it is pursuing a strategy-with lots of help from its so-called friends in the Diaspora-that is placing its long-term future at risk.
_____________________
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters to: letters@amconmag.com
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative
Another War, Another Defeat
The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.
By John J. Mearsheimer
Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don't believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.
The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel's deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran's nuclear program.
But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel's long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a "Greater Israel." Specifically, Israel's leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.
The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the "Iron Wall."
What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this strategy.
Let's begin with Israel's decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The conventional wisdom is that Israel was serious about making peace with the Palestinians and that its leaders hoped the exit from Gaza would be a major step toward creating a viable Palestinian state. According to the New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman, Israel was giving the Palestinians an opportunity to "build a decent mini-state there-a Dubai on the Mediterranean," and if they did so, it would "fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank."
This is pure fiction. Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel's wishes. Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon's closest adviser at the time, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. He described the disengagement as "formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." Moreover, he emphasized that the withdrawal "places the Palestinians under tremendous pressure. It forces them into a corner where they hate to be."
Arnon Soffer, a prominent Israeli demographer who also advised Sharon, elaborated on what that pressure would look like. "When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
In January 2006, five months after the Israelis pulled their settlers out of Gaza, Hamas won a decisive victory over Fatah in the Palestinian legislative elections. This meant trouble for Israel's strategy because Hamas was democratically elected, well organized, not corrupt like Fatah, and unwilling to accept Israel's existence. Israel responded by ratcheting up economic pressure on the Palestinians, but it did not work. In fact, the situation took another turn for the worse in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together to form a national unity government. Hamas's stature and political power were growing, and Israel's divide-and-conquer strategy was unraveling.
To make matters worse, the national unity government began pushing for a long-term ceasefire. The Palestinians would end all missile attacks on Israel if the Israelis would stop arresting and assassinating Palestinians and end their economic stranglehold, opening the border crossings into Gaza.
Israel rejected that offer and with American backing set out to foment a civil war between Fatah and Hamas that would wreck the national unity government and put Fatah in charge. The plan backfired when Hamas drove Fatah out of Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge there and the more pliant Fatah in control of the West Bank. Israel then tightened the screws on the blockade around Gaza, causing even greater hardship and suffering among the Palestinians living there.
Hamas responded by continuing to fire rockets and mortars into Israel, while emphasizing that they still sought a long-term ceasefire, perhaps lasting ten years or more. This was not a noble gesture on Hamas's part: they sought a ceasefire because the balance of power heavily favored Israel. The Israelis had no interest in a ceasefire and merely intensified the economic pressure on Gaza. But in the late spring of 2008, pressure from Israelis living under the rocket attacks led the government to agree to a six-month ceasefire starting on June 19. That agreement, which formally ended on Dec. 19, immediately preceded the present war, which began on Dec. 27.
The official Israeli position blames Hamas for undermining the ceasefire. This view is widely accepted in the United States, but it is not true. Israeli leaders disliked the ceasefire from the start, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the IDF to begin preparing for the present war while the ceasefire was being negotiated in June 2008. Furthermore, Dan Gillerman, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, reports that Jerusalem began to prepare the propaganda campaign to sell the present war months before the conflict began. For its part, Hamas drastically reduced the number of missile attacks during the first five months of the ceasefire. A total of two rockets were fired into Israel during September and October, none by Hamas.
How did Israel behave during this same period? It continued arresting and assassinating Palestinians on the West Bank, and it continued the deadly blockade that was slowly strangling Gaza. Then on Nov. 4, as Americans voted for a new president, Israel attacked a tunnel inside Gaza and killed six Palestinians. It was the first major violation of the ceasefire, and the Palestinians-who had been "careful to maintain the ceasefire," according to Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center-responded by resuming rocket attacks. The calm that had prevailed since June vanished as Israel ratcheted up the blockade and its attacks into Gaza and the Palestinians hurled more rockets at Israel. It is worth noting that not a single Israeli was killed by Palestinian missiles between Nov. 4 and the launching of the war on Dec. 27.
As the violence increased, Hamas made clear that it had no interest in extending the ceasefire beyond Dec. 19, which is hardly surprising, since it had not worked as intended. In mid-December, however, Hamas informed Israel that it was still willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire if it included an end to the arrests and assassinations as well as the lifting of the blockade. But the Israelis, having used the ceasefire to prepare for war against Hamas, rejected this overture. The bombing of Gaza commenced eight days after the failed ceasefire formally ended.
If Israel wanted to stop missile attacks from Gaza, it could have done so by arranging a long-term ceasefire with Hamas. And if Israel were genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, it could have worked with the national unity government to implement a meaningful ceasefire and change Hamas's thinking about a two-state solution. But Israel has a different agenda: it is determined to employ the Iron Wall strategy to get the Palestinians in Gaza to accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel.
This brutal policy is clearly reflected in Israel's conduct of the Gaza War. Israel and its supporters claim that the IDF is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, in some cases taking risks that put Israeli soldiers in jeopardy. Hardly. One reason to doubt these claims is that Israel refuses to allow reporters into the war zone: it does not want the world to see what its soldiers and bombs are doing inside Gaza. At the same time, Israel has launched a massive propaganda campaign to put a positive spin on the horror stories that do emerge.
The best evidence, however, that Israel is deliberately seeking to punish the broader population in Gaza is the death and destruction the IDF has wrought on that small piece of real estate. Israel has killed over 1,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 4,000. Over half of the casualties are civilians, and many are children. The IDF's opening salvo on Dec. 27 took place as children were leaving school, and one of its primary targets that day was a large group of graduating police cadets, who hardly qualified as terrorists. In what Ehud Barak called "an all-out war against Hamas," Israel has targeted a university, schools, mosques, homes, apartment buildings, government offices, and even ambulances. A senior Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained the logic behind Israel's expansive target set: "There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel." In other words, everyone is a terrorist and everything is a legitimate target.
Israelis tend to be blunt, and they occasionally say what they are really doing. After the IDF killed 40 Palestinian civilians in a UN school on Jan. 6, Ha'aretz reported that "senior officers admit that the IDF has been using enormous firepower." One officer explained, "For us, being cautious means being aggressive. From the minute we entered, we've acted like we're at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground . I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock."
One might accept that Israel is waging "a cruel, all-out war against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians," as Ha'aretz put it in an editorial, but argue that it will eventually achieve its war aims and the rest of the world will quickly forget the horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza.
This is wishful thinking. For starters, Israel is unlikely to stop the rocket fire for any appreciable period of time unless it agrees to open Gaza's borders and stop arresting and killing Palestinians. Israelis talk about cutting off the supply of rockets and mortars into Gaza, but weapons will continue to come in via secret tunnels and ships that sneak through Israel's naval blockade. It will also be impossible to police all of the goods sent into Gaza through legitimate channels.
Israel could try to conquer all of Gaza and lock the place down. That would probably stop the rocket attacks if Israel deployed a large enough force. But then the IDF would be bogged down in a costly occupation against a deeply hostile population. They would eventually have to leave, and the rocket fire would resume. And if Israel fails to stop the rocket fire and keep it stopped, as seems likely, its deterrent will be diminished, not strengthened.
More importantly, there is little reason to think that the Israelis can beat Hamas into submission and get the Palestinians to live quietly in a handful of Bantustans inside Greater Israel. Israel has been humiliating, torturing, and killing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 and has not come close to cowing them. Indeed, Hamas's reaction to Israel's brutality seems to lend credence to Nietzsche's remark that what does not kill you makes you stronger.
But even if the unexpected happens and the Palestinians cave, Israel would still lose because it will become an apartheid state. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said, Israel will "face a South African-style struggle" if the Palestinians do not get a viable state of their own. "As soon as that happens," he argued, "the state of Israel is finished." Yet Olmert has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and create a viable Palestinian state, relying instead on the Iron Wall strategy to deal with the Palestinians.
There is also little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. The destruction is just too obvious to miss, and too many people-especially in the Arab and Islamic world-care about the Palestinians' fate. Moreover, discourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims. What is happening in Gaza will accelerate that changing picture of the conflict and long be seen as a dark stain on Israel's reputation.
The bottom line is that no matter what happens on the battlefield, Israel cannot win its war in Gaza. In fact, it is pursuing a strategy-with lots of help from its so-called friends in the Diaspora-that is placing its long-term future at risk.
_____________________
John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters to: letters@amconmag.com
Ms Tantalus
URI AVNERY DOES IT AGAIN!
CNI MEMBER DELIVERS A WELL WRITTEN PEACE ON THE ISRAELI ELECTION:
Ms Tantalus
TANTALUS IS punished by the Gods for reasons that are not entirely clear. He is hungry and thirsty, but the water in which he stands recedes when he bends down to drink from it and the fruit above his head continually evades his hand.
Tzipi Livni is now undergoing a similar torture. After winning an impressive personal victory at the polls, the political fruit keeps slipping from her grasp when she stretches out her hand.
Why should she deserve that? What has she done, after all? Supported the war, called for a boycott of Hamas, played around with empty negotiations with the Palestinian Authority? OK, she has indeed.. But such a terrible punishment?
HOWEVER, THE results of the elections are not as clear as they might seem. The victory of the Right is not so unambiguous.
Central to the election campaign was the personal competition between the two contenders for the Prime Minister's office: Livni and Netanyahu (or, as they call themselves, as if they were still at kindergarten, Tzipi and Bibi.)
Contrary to all expectations and all polls, Livni beat Netanyahu. Several factors were involved in this. Among others: the masses of the Left were terrified by the possibility of Netanyahu winning, and flocked to Livni's camp in order to "Stop Bibi!" Also, Livni - who was never identified with feminism - remembered at the last moment to call Israel's women to her banner, and they hearkened to her call.
But it is impossible to ignore the main significance of this choice: Netanyahu symbolizes total opposition to peace, opposition to giving back the occupied territories, to the freezing of the settlements and to a Palestinian state. Livni, on the other hand, has declared more than once her total support for the "Two-Nation-States" solution. Her voters opted for the more moderate line.
True, the big winner in the elections was Avigdor Liberman. But his triumph is far from the fateful breakthrough everyone foresaw. He did not win the 20 seats he had promised. His ascent from 11 to 15 seats is not so dramatic. His party is indeed now the third largest in the Knesset, but that is less due to its own rise than to the collapse of Labor, which fell from 19 to 13. By the way, not one of the parties won even 25% of the vote. Israeli democracy is now very fragile indeed.
The Liberman phenomenon is ominous, but not (yet?) disastrous.
HOWEVER, THERE is no way to deny the most significant message of these elections: the Israeli public has moved to the right. From Likud to the right there are now 65 seats, from Kadima to the left only 55. One cannot argue with numbers.
What has caused this shift?
There are several explanations, all of them valid.
One can consider it as a passing phase after the war. A war arouses strong emotions - nationalist intoxication, hatred of the enemy, fear of the Other, longing for unity and for revenge,. All these naturally serve the Right - a lesson sometimes forgotten by the left when it starts a war.
Others see in it a continuation of a historical process: the Zionist-Palestinian confrontation is becoming wider and more complex, and such a situation feeds the Right.
And then there is, of course, the demographic factor. The rightist bloc attracts the votes of three sectors: the Oriental Jews (a majority of whom vote for Likud), the religious (who mostly vote for the fundamentalists) and the Russians (most of whom vote for Liberman). This is a group vote, almost automatic.
Two sectors in Israel have an especially high birth-rate: the religious Jews and the Arabs. The religious vote almost unanimously for the Right. True, the Orthodox and the National-Religious parties have not increased their strength in the elections, probably because many of their natural voters chose Likud, Liberman or the even more extreme National Union. The Arab citizens almost completely abstained from voting for Jewish parties, as many of them used to in the past, and the three Arab parties together gained one more seat.
The demographic development is ominous. Kadima, Labor and Meretz are identified with the old-established Ashkenazi sector, whose demographic strength is in steady decline. Also, many young Ashkenazis gave their votes - at least four seats worth - to Liberman, who preaches a secular fascism. They hate the Arabs, but they also hate the religious Jews.
The conclusion is quite clear: if the "center-left" does not succeed in breaking out of its elitist ghetto and striking roots within the Oriental and Russian sectors, its decline will continue from election to election.
NOW MS TANTALUS must choose between two bitter options: to retire to the desert where there is neither water nor fruit, or to serve as a fig-leaf for an obnoxious coalition.
Option No. 1: to refuse to join Netanyahu's coalition and to go into opposition. That is not so simple. The Kadima party came into being when Ariel Sharon promised its members - refugees from right and left - power. It will be very hard for Livni to hold the lot together in opposition, far from the seat of power, far from the posh ministers' offices and from luxurious official cars.
That would give us a rightist government which includes open fascists, pupils of Meir Kahane (whose party was banned because of his racist teachings), the advocates of ethnic cleansing, of the expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens and the liquidation of any chance for peace. Such a government would inevitably find itself in confrontation with the United States and in worldwide isolation.
Some people say: that's good. Such a government will necessarily fall soon and break apart. Thus the public will be persuaded that there is no viable rightist option. Kadima, Labor and Meretz will stew in opposition, and perhaps a real center-left alternative will come into being.
Others say: too risky. There is no limit to the disasters that a Netanyahu-Liberman-Kahanist government can bring upon the state, from the enlargement of the settlements that will torpedo any future peace, to outright war. We can't stake everything on one card, when the chip is the State of Israel.
Livni's option No. 2: to swallow the bitter pill, give in and join the Netanyahu government as a second, third or fourth wheel. In that case, she must decide at once, before Netanyahu establishes a fait accompli with an extreme-right coalition which Livni would then be invited to join as a junior partner.
I shall not be surprised if President Shimon Peres takes the initiative unofficially and promotes this option - before starting, in a week's time, the official process of consulting with the Knesset factions and entrusting one of the candidates with the task of forming a government.
Could such a government move towards peace? Conduct real negotiations? Agree to the dismantling of settlements? Accept a Palestinian state? Recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas?
Hard to imagine. In the best case, it will go on with the charade of meaningless negotiations, quietly enlarge the settlements, lead Barack Obama by the nose and mobilize the pro-Israel lobby in order to obstruct any real American moves towards peace. What was will be.
CAN ISRAEL change course? Can a real peace-oriented alternative arise?
The two "Zionist Left" parties have been decisively beaten. Both Labor and Meretz have collapsed. Their two leaders who called for the Gaza War and supported it - Ehud Barak of Labor and Haim Oron of Meretz - have received the punishment they richly deserve. In a normal democracy, both would have resigned the day after the elections. But our democracy is not normal, and both leaders insist on staying on and leading their party to the next disaster.
Labor is a walking corpse - the only "social-democratic" party in the world whose leader's sole aim is to stay on as war minister. When Barak spread the mantra "there is no one to talk with" he overlooked the logical conclusion "therefore we don't need anyone to talk with them".
The Labor Party has no party, no members, no political program, no alternative leadership. It will fail in opposition as it failed in government. Barring a miracle, it will end up in the junkyard of history.
It will find Meretz already there. A socialist party that lost its way a long time ago: a party without any roots in the classes at the foot of the socioeconomic ladder, a party that has supported all our wars.
Some believe in easy solutions: a union of Labor and Meretz, for example. That is a union of the lame and the blind. No reason to expect that they would win the race.
THE REAL task is far more difficult. A completely new building must be erected in place of the one which has collapsed.
The need is for a new Left that will include new leaders from the sectors that have been discriminated against: the Orientals, the Russians and the Arabs. A new Left that will express the ideals of a new generation, people of peace, advocates of social change, feminists and greens, who will all understand that one cannot realize one ideal without realizing all of them. There can be no social justice in a military state; no one is interested in the environment while the cannons are roaring, feminism is incompatible with a society of machos riding on tanks, there can be no respect for Oriental Jews in a society that despises the culture of the Orient.
The Arab citizens will have to leave the ghetto in which they are confined and start to talk with the Jewish public, and the Jewish public must talk with the Arabs on equal terms. The Liberman slogan "No Citizenship Without Loyalty" must be turned around: "No Loyalty Without Real Citizenship".
As Obama has done in the US, a new language, a new lexicon must be created, to replace the old and tired phrases.
Much, much must be changed if we want to save the state.
AS FOR Ms. Tantalus: she can contribute to this process of change, or her torture will continue.
Echoing Pyrrhus, king of Epirus and Macedon, she can well say: Another such victory and we are undone.
CNI MEMBER DELIVERS A WELL WRITTEN PEACE ON THE ISRAELI ELECTION:
Ms Tantalus
TANTALUS IS punished by the Gods for reasons that are not entirely clear. He is hungry and thirsty, but the water in which he stands recedes when he bends down to drink from it and the fruit above his head continually evades his hand.
Tzipi Livni is now undergoing a similar torture. After winning an impressive personal victory at the polls, the political fruit keeps slipping from her grasp when she stretches out her hand.
Why should she deserve that? What has she done, after all? Supported the war, called for a boycott of Hamas, played around with empty negotiations with the Palestinian Authority? OK, she has indeed.. But such a terrible punishment?
HOWEVER, THE results of the elections are not as clear as they might seem. The victory of the Right is not so unambiguous.
Central to the election campaign was the personal competition between the two contenders for the Prime Minister's office: Livni and Netanyahu (or, as they call themselves, as if they were still at kindergarten, Tzipi and Bibi.)
Contrary to all expectations and all polls, Livni beat Netanyahu. Several factors were involved in this. Among others: the masses of the Left were terrified by the possibility of Netanyahu winning, and flocked to Livni's camp in order to "Stop Bibi!" Also, Livni - who was never identified with feminism - remembered at the last moment to call Israel's women to her banner, and they hearkened to her call.
But it is impossible to ignore the main significance of this choice: Netanyahu symbolizes total opposition to peace, opposition to giving back the occupied territories, to the freezing of the settlements and to a Palestinian state. Livni, on the other hand, has declared more than once her total support for the "Two-Nation-States" solution. Her voters opted for the more moderate line.
True, the big winner in the elections was Avigdor Liberman. But his triumph is far from the fateful breakthrough everyone foresaw. He did not win the 20 seats he had promised. His ascent from 11 to 15 seats is not so dramatic. His party is indeed now the third largest in the Knesset, but that is less due to its own rise than to the collapse of Labor, which fell from 19 to 13. By the way, not one of the parties won even 25% of the vote. Israeli democracy is now very fragile indeed.
The Liberman phenomenon is ominous, but not (yet?) disastrous.
HOWEVER, THERE is no way to deny the most significant message of these elections: the Israeli public has moved to the right. From Likud to the right there are now 65 seats, from Kadima to the left only 55. One cannot argue with numbers.
What has caused this shift?
There are several explanations, all of them valid.
One can consider it as a passing phase after the war. A war arouses strong emotions - nationalist intoxication, hatred of the enemy, fear of the Other, longing for unity and for revenge,. All these naturally serve the Right - a lesson sometimes forgotten by the left when it starts a war.
Others see in it a continuation of a historical process: the Zionist-Palestinian confrontation is becoming wider and more complex, and such a situation feeds the Right.
And then there is, of course, the demographic factor. The rightist bloc attracts the votes of three sectors: the Oriental Jews (a majority of whom vote for Likud), the religious (who mostly vote for the fundamentalists) and the Russians (most of whom vote for Liberman). This is a group vote, almost automatic.
Two sectors in Israel have an especially high birth-rate: the religious Jews and the Arabs. The religious vote almost unanimously for the Right. True, the Orthodox and the National-Religious parties have not increased their strength in the elections, probably because many of their natural voters chose Likud, Liberman or the even more extreme National Union. The Arab citizens almost completely abstained from voting for Jewish parties, as many of them used to in the past, and the three Arab parties together gained one more seat.
The demographic development is ominous. Kadima, Labor and Meretz are identified with the old-established Ashkenazi sector, whose demographic strength is in steady decline. Also, many young Ashkenazis gave their votes - at least four seats worth - to Liberman, who preaches a secular fascism. They hate the Arabs, but they also hate the religious Jews.
The conclusion is quite clear: if the "center-left" does not succeed in breaking out of its elitist ghetto and striking roots within the Oriental and Russian sectors, its decline will continue from election to election.
NOW MS TANTALUS must choose between two bitter options: to retire to the desert where there is neither water nor fruit, or to serve as a fig-leaf for an obnoxious coalition.
Option No. 1: to refuse to join Netanyahu's coalition and to go into opposition. That is not so simple. The Kadima party came into being when Ariel Sharon promised its members - refugees from right and left - power. It will be very hard for Livni to hold the lot together in opposition, far from the seat of power, far from the posh ministers' offices and from luxurious official cars.
That would give us a rightist government which includes open fascists, pupils of Meir Kahane (whose party was banned because of his racist teachings), the advocates of ethnic cleansing, of the expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens and the liquidation of any chance for peace. Such a government would inevitably find itself in confrontation with the United States and in worldwide isolation.
Some people say: that's good. Such a government will necessarily fall soon and break apart. Thus the public will be persuaded that there is no viable rightist option. Kadima, Labor and Meretz will stew in opposition, and perhaps a real center-left alternative will come into being.
Others say: too risky. There is no limit to the disasters that a Netanyahu-Liberman-Kahanist government can bring upon the state, from the enlargement of the settlements that will torpedo any future peace, to outright war. We can't stake everything on one card, when the chip is the State of Israel.
Livni's option No. 2: to swallow the bitter pill, give in and join the Netanyahu government as a second, third or fourth wheel. In that case, she must decide at once, before Netanyahu establishes a fait accompli with an extreme-right coalition which Livni would then be invited to join as a junior partner.
I shall not be surprised if President Shimon Peres takes the initiative unofficially and promotes this option - before starting, in a week's time, the official process of consulting with the Knesset factions and entrusting one of the candidates with the task of forming a government.
Could such a government move towards peace? Conduct real negotiations? Agree to the dismantling of settlements? Accept a Palestinian state? Recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas?
Hard to imagine. In the best case, it will go on with the charade of meaningless negotiations, quietly enlarge the settlements, lead Barack Obama by the nose and mobilize the pro-Israel lobby in order to obstruct any real American moves towards peace. What was will be.
CAN ISRAEL change course? Can a real peace-oriented alternative arise?
The two "Zionist Left" parties have been decisively beaten. Both Labor and Meretz have collapsed. Their two leaders who called for the Gaza War and supported it - Ehud Barak of Labor and Haim Oron of Meretz - have received the punishment they richly deserve. In a normal democracy, both would have resigned the day after the elections. But our democracy is not normal, and both leaders insist on staying on and leading their party to the next disaster.
Labor is a walking corpse - the only "social-democratic" party in the world whose leader's sole aim is to stay on as war minister. When Barak spread the mantra "there is no one to talk with" he overlooked the logical conclusion "therefore we don't need anyone to talk with them".
The Labor Party has no party, no members, no political program, no alternative leadership. It will fail in opposition as it failed in government. Barring a miracle, it will end up in the junkyard of history.
It will find Meretz already there. A socialist party that lost its way a long time ago: a party without any roots in the classes at the foot of the socioeconomic ladder, a party that has supported all our wars.
Some believe in easy solutions: a union of Labor and Meretz, for example. That is a union of the lame and the blind. No reason to expect that they would win the race.
THE REAL task is far more difficult. A completely new building must be erected in place of the one which has collapsed.
The need is for a new Left that will include new leaders from the sectors that have been discriminated against: the Orientals, the Russians and the Arabs. A new Left that will express the ideals of a new generation, people of peace, advocates of social change, feminists and greens, who will all understand that one cannot realize one ideal without realizing all of them. There can be no social justice in a military state; no one is interested in the environment while the cannons are roaring, feminism is incompatible with a society of machos riding on tanks, there can be no respect for Oriental Jews in a society that despises the culture of the Orient.
The Arab citizens will have to leave the ghetto in which they are confined and start to talk with the Jewish public, and the Jewish public must talk with the Arabs on equal terms. The Liberman slogan "No Citizenship Without Loyalty" must be turned around: "No Loyalty Without Real Citizenship".
As Obama has done in the US, a new language, a new lexicon must be created, to replace the old and tired phrases.
Much, much must be changed if we want to save the state.
AS FOR Ms. Tantalus: she can contribute to this process of change, or her torture will continue.
Echoing Pyrrhus, king of Epirus and Macedon, she can well say: Another such victory and we are undone.
It was a rare moment on Capitol Hill
M J Rosenberg is Director of Policy for the Israel Policy Forum.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/congressman-ackerman-spea_b_166802.html
[Excerpts]
Yesterday, Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia convened a hearing on the Gaza situation.
Dr. Ziad J.Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine, delivered an eloquent statement explaining why it is morally wrong to punish the people of Gaza and also why it is naïve to believe that Hamas will ever change its terrorist stripes.
Naturally, he was attacked by several of the Representatives in Congress who, with the lobby's talking points in hand, struggled mightily to justify withholding United Nations-sponsored humanitarian aid from innocent people. It was the usual stuff from the usual suspects, one of whom was not Gary Ackerman.
Ackerman has long been Israel's most outspoken advocate in Congress. However, his idea of supporting Israel does not include punishing children. And, wonder of wonders, the Democrat from Queens blames both Palestinians and Israelis for the current horrors. In Congress, it is de rigeuer to insist that the Israelis are always innocent and the Palestinians always guilty.
But, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ackerman said yesterday that Israeli hardliners and Palestinian terrorists are "all part of the same destructive dynamic."
The "downward spiral" in the region "comes from terrorism and the march of settlements. It comes from the firing of rockets and the perpetration of settler pogroms. It comes in daily images of destruction and the constant reiteration that 'they only understand the language of force.' It comes from tunnels in Gaza and, yes, from digging in Jerusalem as well."
Amen.
Will Ackerman catch hell for his statement? Will he be sat down for some friendly warnings by the lobby? Will he be threatened by wealthy donors?
You bet he will. But he knew that before he opened his mouth and, rare on Capitol Hill, he concluded to "damn the consequences." (There won't be any anyway--none that matter--which will encourage his more timid colleagues to follow Ackerman's example).
It was a rare moment on Capitol Hill. A powerful pro-Israel Representative departed from the script and told his listeners that the current course is bad for America, bad for Israel, and bad for the Palestinians. It was, perhaps, the first such moment in a subcommittee that has always been rather predictable when it comes to Israel. But I suspect it won't be the last.
What can you do to help?
Why don't you give Congressman Ackerman a call and thank him? Believe me, the status quo lobby will be calling and reading Ackerman the riot act. Just call 202-225-2601 and tell whoever answers to give the Congressman a message. A hearty "way to go, Gary" will suffice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/congressman-ackerman-spea_b_166802.html
[Excerpts]
Yesterday, Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia convened a hearing on the Gaza situation.
Dr. Ziad J.Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine, delivered an eloquent statement explaining why it is morally wrong to punish the people of Gaza and also why it is naïve to believe that Hamas will ever change its terrorist stripes.
Naturally, he was attacked by several of the Representatives in Congress who, with the lobby's talking points in hand, struggled mightily to justify withholding United Nations-sponsored humanitarian aid from innocent people. It was the usual stuff from the usual suspects, one of whom was not Gary Ackerman.
Ackerman has long been Israel's most outspoken advocate in Congress. However, his idea of supporting Israel does not include punishing children. And, wonder of wonders, the Democrat from Queens blames both Palestinians and Israelis for the current horrors. In Congress, it is de rigeuer to insist that the Israelis are always innocent and the Palestinians always guilty.
But, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ackerman said yesterday that Israeli hardliners and Palestinian terrorists are "all part of the same destructive dynamic."
The "downward spiral" in the region "comes from terrorism and the march of settlements. It comes from the firing of rockets and the perpetration of settler pogroms. It comes in daily images of destruction and the constant reiteration that 'they only understand the language of force.' It comes from tunnels in Gaza and, yes, from digging in Jerusalem as well."
Amen.
Will Ackerman catch hell for his statement? Will he be sat down for some friendly warnings by the lobby? Will he be threatened by wealthy donors?
You bet he will. But he knew that before he opened his mouth and, rare on Capitol Hill, he concluded to "damn the consequences." (There won't be any anyway--none that matter--which will encourage his more timid colleagues to follow Ackerman's example).
It was a rare moment on Capitol Hill. A powerful pro-Israel Representative departed from the script and told his listeners that the current course is bad for America, bad for Israel, and bad for the Palestinians. It was, perhaps, the first such moment in a subcommittee that has always been rather predictable when it comes to Israel. But I suspect it won't be the last.
What can you do to help?
Why don't you give Congressman Ackerman a call and thank him? Believe me, the status quo lobby will be calling and reading Ackerman the riot act. Just call 202-225-2601 and tell whoever answers to give the Congressman a message. A hearty "way to go, Gary" will suffice.
To the Editor: Woodstock Times
I am writing in response to the letter from The Jewish Federation of Ulster County in your last issue, which I strongly suspect was not written in Kingston. It reflects perfectly the Israeli position, crowing over its impunity in imagined "victory" over a helpless population, half-starved and deprived of clean water, sewage disposal, medicine, electricity, half of whose children are now anaemic with signs of malnutrition, packed into a walled-in concentration camp - an absolutely unequal fight popular opinion here spontaneously calls "shooting fish in a barrel". But these are human beings, children, women, men, civilians, doctors, ambulance drivers, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, grandparents, attacked not just with armor and jets, but with white phosphorus, depleted uranium, and with Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), with no place to run to shelter. This letter reflects no awareness of the suffering caused.
The campaign against Gaza is now the subject of the greatest Israeli propaganda campaign in Israel's history. Certainly, in a large part of the American and world public who have hoped for better or have not previously been following the news, Israel has reaped a harvest of revulsion and loathing that no frantic propaganda campaign can erase.
So where is the victory? The feeble rockets continue, demonstrating that David has in fact survived Goliath, which reinforces Hamas's backing. Israel is likely to repeat the slaughter. And why is Israel doing this?
One of the world's leading political psychologists, the Israeli David Bar Tal, has done a study called "Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with the Palestinians?" Hebrew title: "What do Jews in Israel know about the conflict with the Palestinians?" He says that Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. He and his partner say those with a "Zionist memory" see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and don't support agreements or compromises with the Palestinians to obtain peace; they note that changes to eliminate bias and indoctrination in the teaching of the conflict would help.
The esteemed London professor, author and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose, who is Jewish, puts it this way: : "(criticism) is in no way to diminish the traumatic impact of the Holocaust but to register it all the more powerfully. The effect of trauma is precisely to freeze people in time. There is a psychological dimension to this conflict that seems almost impossibly difficult to shift. In its own eyes, Israel is never the originator and agent of is own violence, and to that extent its violence is always justified. The Palestinians do not count. Even when the worst of what has been done to them is registered inside Israel, it is still the Israeli who suffers more."
So peace must come from strong outside intervention. George Mitchell is a good person for that. Even though Abraham Foxman told Obama "He is very fair, very even-handed. But that is not the kind of person we need in this situation." It is time for Americans to support a change in policy, and to strongly back a "fair, even-handed' person, to stop the siege of Gaza, and to insist all sides be listened to, including Hamas, in a wide dialogue, to achieve peace.
Sincerely,
Sheila Finan
The campaign against Gaza is now the subject of the greatest Israeli propaganda campaign in Israel's history. Certainly, in a large part of the American and world public who have hoped for better or have not previously been following the news, Israel has reaped a harvest of revulsion and loathing that no frantic propaganda campaign can erase.
So where is the victory? The feeble rockets continue, demonstrating that David has in fact survived Goliath, which reinforces Hamas's backing. Israel is likely to repeat the slaughter. And why is Israel doing this?
One of the world's leading political psychologists, the Israeli David Bar Tal, has done a study called "Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with the Palestinians?" Hebrew title: "What do Jews in Israel know about the conflict with the Palestinians?" He says that Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. He and his partner say those with a "Zionist memory" see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and don't support agreements or compromises with the Palestinians to obtain peace; they note that changes to eliminate bias and indoctrination in the teaching of the conflict would help.
The esteemed London professor, author and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose, who is Jewish, puts it this way: : "(criticism) is in no way to diminish the traumatic impact of the Holocaust but to register it all the more powerfully. The effect of trauma is precisely to freeze people in time. There is a psychological dimension to this conflict that seems almost impossibly difficult to shift. In its own eyes, Israel is never the originator and agent of is own violence, and to that extent its violence is always justified. The Palestinians do not count. Even when the worst of what has been done to them is registered inside Israel, it is still the Israeli who suffers more."
So peace must come from strong outside intervention. George Mitchell is a good person for that. Even though Abraham Foxman told Obama "He is very fair, very even-handed. But that is not the kind of person we need in this situation." It is time for Americans to support a change in policy, and to strongly back a "fair, even-handed' person, to stop the siege of Gaza, and to insist all sides be listened to, including Hamas, in a wide dialogue, to achieve peace.
Sincerely,
Sheila Finan
CUT AID TO ISRAEL
Woodstock Times Feb. 2009
With millions of Americans out of work, why send over $3 billion a year in aid to an already rich country? The Israeli average income is $31,767 a year (as per International Monetary Fund 2008). U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel is $ 3-5 billion a year.
Israel is the No. 1 recipient of U.S. Foreign Aid in the world. While Israelis lead a country club lifestyle, they use our money and military technology to oppress and attack their neighbors.
Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live on less than $732 a year. Yet Israel is determined to squeeze more out of them. If they resist, they are labeled "terrorists", attacked, and beaten into submission. Can't our foreign aid dollars be put to better use? It's time to break the grip of the Israeli lobby on Washington and cut Foreign Aid to Israel.
Bill Campion
Mt. Tremper
With millions of Americans out of work, why send over $3 billion a year in aid to an already rich country? The Israeli average income is $31,767 a year (as per International Monetary Fund 2008). U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel is $ 3-5 billion a year.
Israel is the No. 1 recipient of U.S. Foreign Aid in the world. While Israelis lead a country club lifestyle, they use our money and military technology to oppress and attack their neighbors.
Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live on less than $732 a year. Yet Israel is determined to squeeze more out of them. If they resist, they are labeled "terrorists", attacked, and beaten into submission. Can't our foreign aid dollars be put to better use? It's time to break the grip of the Israeli lobby on Washington and cut Foreign Aid to Israel.
Bill Campion
Mt. Tremper
Delegation of 8 American lawyers (thanks, Eldad)
Published on Sunday, February 8, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
GAZA CITY - We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives. In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians.
Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure
Much of the debate surrounding Israel's aerial and ground offensive against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.
The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.
We spoke to Khaled Abed Rabbo, who witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, and critically injure a third daughter, Samar, 4-years old, on a sunny afternoon outside his home. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. Abed Rabbo recounts standing in front of the Israeli soldiers with his mother, wife and daughters for 5 - 7 minutes before one of the soldiers opened fire on his family.
We spoke to Ibtisam al-Sammouni, 31, and a resident of Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City. On January 4th, the Israeli army forced approximately 110 of Zaytoun's residents into Ibtisam's home. At approximately 7 am on January 5th, the Israeli military launched two tank shells at the house without warning killing two of Ibtisam's children: Rizka, 14 and Faris, 12. When the survivors attempted to flee Israeli forces shot at them. Her son Abdullah, 7, was injured in the shelling and remained in the home among his deceased siblings for four days before Israeli forces permitted medical personnel into Zaytoun to rescue them. After medical personnel removed the injured persons, an Israeli war plane destroyed the house and it crumbled over the lifeless bodies. The dead remained beneath the rubble for 17 days before the Israeli Army permitted medical personnel to remove their bodies for burial.
We spoke to the family of Rouhiya al-Najjar, 47, who lived in Khoza'a, Khan Younis. Israeli forces ordered her neighborhoods residents to march to the city center. Rouhiya led 20 women out of her home and into the alley. They all carried white scarves. Upon entering the alley, an Israeli sniper shot Rouhiya in her left temple killing her instantly. Israeli forces prevented medical personnel from reaching her body for twelve hours. These are only some of the accounts that we've collected.
Israeli forces also destroyed numerous buildings throughout the Gaza Strip during the recent incursion. Guild delegates viewed the remains of hundreds of demolished homes and businesses - in addition to the remains of the American School in Gaza, damaged medical centers, and the charred innards of UNRWA warehouses. While in situations of armed conflict, collateral damage and mistakes can occur, the circumstances surrounding the cases that the delegation investigated indicate deliberate targeting rather than collateral damage or mistake. Specifically:
The American School at Gaza, which was hit with two F-16 missiles on January 3, 2009, killing the watch guard on duty. According to Ribhi Salem, the school's director, the Israelis gave no warnings. Mr. Salem stated that the school had come to an agreement with resistance groups not to use school grounds and there had never been resistance activity on the property.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
John Ging, the Director of Gaza Operations for UNRWA reported that Israeli forces fired missiles at UNRWA schools in Gaza City, Jabalyia and Bet Lahiya. The United Nation compound in Gaza city was also hit with white phosphorous shells and missiles. Ging noted that al United Nations buildings and vehicles all fly UN flags, are marked in blue paint from the top, and that during hostilities the UN personnel remained in constant contact with Israeli authorities.
Misuse of Weapons
Our delegation has heard allegations of the use of DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weaponry, white phosphorus and other possible weapons whose use in civilian areas is prohibited. We have also heard of the use of prohibited weapons, such as flachettes. We have found our own evidence of the use of flachette shells, which we will combine with evidence collected by Amnesty International to push for further investigation. We have not found any conclusive evidence of the use of DIME, though we believe that this warrants further investigation and disclosure by the Israeli military.
Our findings overwhelmingly point to the use of conventional weapons in a prohibited manner, specifically, the use of battlefield weaponry in densely populated civilian areas. Customary international law forbids the use of weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. We found evidence that Israel used white phosphorus in extensively throughout its three-week offensive in a manner that led to numerous deaths and injuries. For example, Sabah Abu Halima, 45, lived in Beit Lahiya with her husband, seven boys, and one girl. It was midday and she and her entire family was home. Within minutes she felt her home shaking and missiles fell through the rooftop. She fell to the ground upon impact. When she looked up she saw her children burning.
Preventing Access to Medical and Humanitarian Aid
Under customary international humanitarian law, the wounded are protected persons and must receive the medical care and attention required by their conditions, to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay. Parties to a conflict are required to ensure the unhindered movement of medical personnel and ambulances to carry out their duties and of wounded persons to access medical care. Speaking to medical workers and the family of victims, NLG delegates documented serious violations of this provision. Among the stories documented include:
Zaytoun neighborhood, which came under attack and invasion by ground forces on January 3, 2009. The Palestinian Red Crescent received 145 calls from Zaytoun for help, but were denied entry by Israel. Bashar Ahmed Murad, Director of Emergency Medical Services for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told us that "a lot of people could have been saved, but hey weren't given medical care by the Israelis, nor did the Israeli army allow Palestinian medical services in." When paramedics were finally allowed to enter on January 7, Israeli forces only gave them a 3-hour "lull" to work and prohibited ambulances into the area. Instead they forced paramedics park the ambulances 2 kilometers away and enter the area on foot. Murad told delegation members how they had to pile the wounded on donkey carts and have the medical workers pull the carts in order to help the most people possible in the short time they were given. After the 3 hours were over, the Israeli army started shooting toward the ambulances. The Red Crescent was not able to reach that area again to evacuate the dead until January 17, 2009 when the Israeli army pulled out.
Al-Shurrab Family
On January 16th, Israeli forces shot at the jeep of Mohammed Shurrab, 64 years of age, and two of his sons, Kassab and Ibrahim, aged 28 and 18 as they were returning from their fields. Mohammad was shot in the left arm and Ibrahim was shot in the leg. The elder son, Kassab, sustained a fatal bullet wound to the chest, being shot multiple times after being ordered out of the car. Mohammad, bleeding from his wound, contacted the media, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a number of NGOs via mobile phone in order to acquire medical assistance. Israeli forces denied medical relief agencies clearance to reach them until almost 24 hours after Mohammad, Ibrahim and Kassab had been shot. Earlier that morning, Ibrahim had succumbed to his wound and died. Mohammad Shurrab and his sons were shot during a so-called "lull" in Israeli ground operations, which Israeli forces had agreed to in order to allow humanitarian relief to enter and be distributed in the Gaza Strip. As such NLG delegates fail to see how this denial of medical access to the wounded Shurrab family could have been absolutely necessary and not simply arbitrary.
International humanitarian law also prohibits attacks on medical personnel, medical units and medical transports exclusively assigned to carry out medical functions. Delegate members saw ambulances seriously damaged and destroyed, some apparently deliberately crushed by Israeli tanks. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Palestinian Ministry of Health informed delegates that 15 Palestinian medics were killed and 21 injured in the course of Israel's assault.
Conclusions
This delegation is seriously concerned by our initial findings. We have found strong indications of violations of the laws of war and possible war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. We are particularly concerned that most of the weapons that were found used in the December 27 assault on Gaza are US-made and supplied. We believe that Israel's use of these weapons may constitute a violation of US law, and particularly the Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act.
A report of our initial findings will be compiled and submitted to, among others, members of the United States Congress. We intend to push for an investigation by the United States government into possible violations by Israel of US law. We also hope to contribute our finding and efforts to other efforts by local and international lawyers to push for accountability against those found responsible for the egregious crimes that we have documented.
Members of the Legal Delegation
Huwaida Arraf (New York, Washington DC) huwaida.arraf@gmail.com Palestine: 0599-130-426 USA: 1-202-294-8813
Noura Erekat (Washington DC) noo194@yahoo.com Palestine:
USA: 1-510-847-4239
James Marc Leas (Vermont) jolly39@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-802 864-1575 and 1-802 734-8811(cell)
Linda Mansour (Ohio) Lindamansour@aol.com Palestine:
USA: 1-419-535-7100 and 1-419-283-8281 (cell)
Rose Mishaan (California) roseindigo7@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-917-803-2201
Thomas Nelson (Oregon) nelson@thnelson.com Palestine:
USA: 1-503-709-6397
Radhika Sainath (California) radhika.sainath@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-917-669-6903
Reem Salahi (California) reemos@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-510-225-8880
GAZA CITY - We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives. In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians.
Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure
Much of the debate surrounding Israel's aerial and ground offensive against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.
The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.
We spoke to Khaled Abed Rabbo, who witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, and critically injure a third daughter, Samar, 4-years old, on a sunny afternoon outside his home. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. Abed Rabbo recounts standing in front of the Israeli soldiers with his mother, wife and daughters for 5 - 7 minutes before one of the soldiers opened fire on his family.
We spoke to Ibtisam al-Sammouni, 31, and a resident of Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City. On January 4th, the Israeli army forced approximately 110 of Zaytoun's residents into Ibtisam's home. At approximately 7 am on January 5th, the Israeli military launched two tank shells at the house without warning killing two of Ibtisam's children: Rizka, 14 and Faris, 12. When the survivors attempted to flee Israeli forces shot at them. Her son Abdullah, 7, was injured in the shelling and remained in the home among his deceased siblings for four days before Israeli forces permitted medical personnel into Zaytoun to rescue them. After medical personnel removed the injured persons, an Israeli war plane destroyed the house and it crumbled over the lifeless bodies. The dead remained beneath the rubble for 17 days before the Israeli Army permitted medical personnel to remove their bodies for burial.
We spoke to the family of Rouhiya al-Najjar, 47, who lived in Khoza'a, Khan Younis. Israeli forces ordered her neighborhoods residents to march to the city center. Rouhiya led 20 women out of her home and into the alley. They all carried white scarves. Upon entering the alley, an Israeli sniper shot Rouhiya in her left temple killing her instantly. Israeli forces prevented medical personnel from reaching her body for twelve hours. These are only some of the accounts that we've collected.
Israeli forces also destroyed numerous buildings throughout the Gaza Strip during the recent incursion. Guild delegates viewed the remains of hundreds of demolished homes and businesses - in addition to the remains of the American School in Gaza, damaged medical centers, and the charred innards of UNRWA warehouses. While in situations of armed conflict, collateral damage and mistakes can occur, the circumstances surrounding the cases that the delegation investigated indicate deliberate targeting rather than collateral damage or mistake. Specifically:
The American School at Gaza, which was hit with two F-16 missiles on January 3, 2009, killing the watch guard on duty. According to Ribhi Salem, the school's director, the Israelis gave no warnings. Mr. Salem stated that the school had come to an agreement with resistance groups not to use school grounds and there had never been resistance activity on the property.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
John Ging, the Director of Gaza Operations for UNRWA reported that Israeli forces fired missiles at UNRWA schools in Gaza City, Jabalyia and Bet Lahiya. The United Nation compound in Gaza city was also hit with white phosphorous shells and missiles. Ging noted that al United Nations buildings and vehicles all fly UN flags, are marked in blue paint from the top, and that during hostilities the UN personnel remained in constant contact with Israeli authorities.
Misuse of Weapons
Our delegation has heard allegations of the use of DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weaponry, white phosphorus and other possible weapons whose use in civilian areas is prohibited. We have also heard of the use of prohibited weapons, such as flachettes. We have found our own evidence of the use of flachette shells, which we will combine with evidence collected by Amnesty International to push for further investigation. We have not found any conclusive evidence of the use of DIME, though we believe that this warrants further investigation and disclosure by the Israeli military.
Our findings overwhelmingly point to the use of conventional weapons in a prohibited manner, specifically, the use of battlefield weaponry in densely populated civilian areas. Customary international law forbids the use of weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. We found evidence that Israel used white phosphorus in extensively throughout its three-week offensive in a manner that led to numerous deaths and injuries. For example, Sabah Abu Halima, 45, lived in Beit Lahiya with her husband, seven boys, and one girl. It was midday and she and her entire family was home. Within minutes she felt her home shaking and missiles fell through the rooftop. She fell to the ground upon impact. When she looked up she saw her children burning.
Preventing Access to Medical and Humanitarian Aid
Under customary international humanitarian law, the wounded are protected persons and must receive the medical care and attention required by their conditions, to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay. Parties to a conflict are required to ensure the unhindered movement of medical personnel and ambulances to carry out their duties and of wounded persons to access medical care. Speaking to medical workers and the family of victims, NLG delegates documented serious violations of this provision. Among the stories documented include:
Zaytoun neighborhood, which came under attack and invasion by ground forces on January 3, 2009. The Palestinian Red Crescent received 145 calls from Zaytoun for help, but were denied entry by Israel. Bashar Ahmed Murad, Director of Emergency Medical Services for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told us that "a lot of people could have been saved, but hey weren't given medical care by the Israelis, nor did the Israeli army allow Palestinian medical services in." When paramedics were finally allowed to enter on January 7, Israeli forces only gave them a 3-hour "lull" to work and prohibited ambulances into the area. Instead they forced paramedics park the ambulances 2 kilometers away and enter the area on foot. Murad told delegation members how they had to pile the wounded on donkey carts and have the medical workers pull the carts in order to help the most people possible in the short time they were given. After the 3 hours were over, the Israeli army started shooting toward the ambulances. The Red Crescent was not able to reach that area again to evacuate the dead until January 17, 2009 when the Israeli army pulled out.
Al-Shurrab Family
On January 16th, Israeli forces shot at the jeep of Mohammed Shurrab, 64 years of age, and two of his sons, Kassab and Ibrahim, aged 28 and 18 as they were returning from their fields. Mohammad was shot in the left arm and Ibrahim was shot in the leg. The elder son, Kassab, sustained a fatal bullet wound to the chest, being shot multiple times after being ordered out of the car. Mohammad, bleeding from his wound, contacted the media, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a number of NGOs via mobile phone in order to acquire medical assistance. Israeli forces denied medical relief agencies clearance to reach them until almost 24 hours after Mohammad, Ibrahim and Kassab had been shot. Earlier that morning, Ibrahim had succumbed to his wound and died. Mohammad Shurrab and his sons were shot during a so-called "lull" in Israeli ground operations, which Israeli forces had agreed to in order to allow humanitarian relief to enter and be distributed in the Gaza Strip. As such NLG delegates fail to see how this denial of medical access to the wounded Shurrab family could have been absolutely necessary and not simply arbitrary.
International humanitarian law also prohibits attacks on medical personnel, medical units and medical transports exclusively assigned to carry out medical functions. Delegate members saw ambulances seriously damaged and destroyed, some apparently deliberately crushed by Israeli tanks. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Palestinian Ministry of Health informed delegates that 15 Palestinian medics were killed and 21 injured in the course of Israel's assault.
Conclusions
This delegation is seriously concerned by our initial findings. We have found strong indications of violations of the laws of war and possible war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. We are particularly concerned that most of the weapons that were found used in the December 27 assault on Gaza are US-made and supplied. We believe that Israel's use of these weapons may constitute a violation of US law, and particularly the Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act.
A report of our initial findings will be compiled and submitted to, among others, members of the United States Congress. We intend to push for an investigation by the United States government into possible violations by Israel of US law. We also hope to contribute our finding and efforts to other efforts by local and international lawyers to push for accountability against those found responsible for the egregious crimes that we have documented.
Members of the Legal Delegation
Huwaida Arraf (New York, Washington DC) huwaida.arraf@gmail.com Palestine: 0599-130-426 USA: 1-202-294-8813
Noura Erekat (Washington DC) noo194@yahoo.com Palestine:
USA: 1-510-847-4239
James Marc Leas (Vermont) jolly39@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-802 864-1575 and 1-802 734-8811(cell)
Linda Mansour (Ohio) Lindamansour@aol.com Palestine:
USA: 1-419-535-7100 and 1-419-283-8281 (cell)
Rose Mishaan (California) roseindigo7@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-917-803-2201
Thomas Nelson (Oregon) nelson@thnelson.com Palestine:
USA: 1-503-709-6397
Radhika Sainath (California) radhika.sainath@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-917-669-6903
Reem Salahi (California) reemos@gmail.com Palestine:
USA: 1-510-225-8880
Religious groups are ‘penetrating’ Israeli army (thanks, Eldad)
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090204/FOREIGN/407279653/1002
Religious groups are ‘penetrating’ Israeli army
Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent
NAZARETH // Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics.
In a process one military historian has termed the rapid “theologisation” of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the occupied Palestinian territories.
Their influence in shaping the army’s goals and methods is starting to be felt, said observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel’s religious extremist population.
“We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield,” said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army.
The new atmosphere was evident in the “excessive force” used in the recent Gaza operation, Dr Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole neighbourhoods of Gaza were levelled.
“When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering of the other side.”
The greater role of extremist religious groups in the army came to light last week when it emerged that the army rabbinate had handed out a booklet to soldiers preparing for the recent 22-day Gaza offensive.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, said the material contained messages “bordering on racist incitement against the Palestinian people” and might have encouraged soldiers to ignore international law.
The booklet quotes extensively from Shlomo Aviner, a far-right rabbi who heads a religious seminary in the Muslim quarter of East Jerusalem. He compares the Palestinians to the Philistines, the Biblical enemy of the Jews.
He advises: “When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers … This is a war on murderers.” He also cites a Biblical ban on “surrendering a single millimetre” of Greater Israel.
The booklet was approved by the army’s chief rabbi, Brig Gen Avichai Ronsky, who is reportedly determined to improve the army’s “combat values” after its failure to cush Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006.
Gen Ronsky was appointed three years ago in a move designed, according to the Israeli media, to placate hardline religious elements within the army and the settler community.
Gen Ronsky, himself a settler in the West Bank community of Itimar, near Nablus, is close to far-right groups. According to reports, he pays regular visits to jailed members of Jewish terror groups; he has offered his home to a settler who is under house arrest for wounding Palestinians; and he has introduced senior officers to a small group of extremist settlers who live among more than 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron.
He has also radically overhauled the rabbinate, which was originally founded to offer religious services and ensure religious soldiers were able to observe the sabbath and eat kosher meals in army canteens.
Over the past year the rabbinate has effectively taken over the role of the army’s education corps through its Jewish Awareness Department, which co-ordinates its activities with Elad, a settler organisation that is active in East Jerusalem.
In October, the Haaretz newspaper quoted an unnamed senior officer who accused the rabbinate of carrying out the religious and political “brainwashing” of troops.
Dr Levy said the army rabbinate’s power was growing as the ranks of religious soldiers swelled.
Breaking the Silence, a project run by soldiers seeking to expose the army’s behaviour against Palestinians, said the booklet handed out to troops in Gaza had originated among Hebron’s settlers.
“The document has been around since at least 2003,” said Mikhael Manekin, 29, one of the group’s directors and himself religiously observant. “But what is new is that the army has been effectively subcontracted to promote the views of the extremist settlers to its soldiers.”
The power of the religious right in the army reflected wider social trends inside Israel, Dr Levy said. He pointed out that the rural cooperatives known as kibbutzim that were once home to Israel’s secular middle classes and produced the bulk of its officer corps had been on the wane since the early 1980s.
“The vacuum left by their gradual retreat from the army was filled by religious youngsters and by the children of the settlements. They now dominate in many branches of the army.”
According to figures cited in the Israeli media, more than one-third of all Israel’s combat soldiers are religious, as are more than 40 per cent of those graduating from officer courses.
The army has encouraged this trend by creating some two dozen hesder yeshivas, seminaries in which youths can combine Biblical studies with army service in separate religious units. Many of the yeshivas are based in the West Bank, where students are educated by the settlements’ extremist rabbis.
Ehud Barak, the defence minister, has rapidly expanded the programme, approving four yeshivas, three based in settlements, last summer. Another 10 are reportedly awaiting his approval.
Mr Manekin, however, warned against blaming the violence inflicted on Gaza’s civilians solely on the influence of religious extremists.
“The army is still run by the secular elites in Israel and they have always been reckless with regard to the safety of civilians when they wage war. Jewish nationalism that justifies Palestinian deaths is just as dangerous as religious extremism.”
Religious groups are ‘penetrating’ Israeli army
Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent
NAZARETH // Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics.
In a process one military historian has termed the rapid “theologisation” of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the occupied Palestinian territories.
Their influence in shaping the army’s goals and methods is starting to be felt, said observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel’s religious extremist population.
“We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield,” said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army.
The new atmosphere was evident in the “excessive force” used in the recent Gaza operation, Dr Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole neighbourhoods of Gaza were levelled.
“When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering of the other side.”
The greater role of extremist religious groups in the army came to light last week when it emerged that the army rabbinate had handed out a booklet to soldiers preparing for the recent 22-day Gaza offensive.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, said the material contained messages “bordering on racist incitement against the Palestinian people” and might have encouraged soldiers to ignore international law.
The booklet quotes extensively from Shlomo Aviner, a far-right rabbi who heads a religious seminary in the Muslim quarter of East Jerusalem. He compares the Palestinians to the Philistines, the Biblical enemy of the Jews.
He advises: “When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers … This is a war on murderers.” He also cites a Biblical ban on “surrendering a single millimetre” of Greater Israel.
The booklet was approved by the army’s chief rabbi, Brig Gen Avichai Ronsky, who is reportedly determined to improve the army’s “combat values” after its failure to cush Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006.
Gen Ronsky was appointed three years ago in a move designed, according to the Israeli media, to placate hardline religious elements within the army and the settler community.
Gen Ronsky, himself a settler in the West Bank community of Itimar, near Nablus, is close to far-right groups. According to reports, he pays regular visits to jailed members of Jewish terror groups; he has offered his home to a settler who is under house arrest for wounding Palestinians; and he has introduced senior officers to a small group of extremist settlers who live among more than 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron.
He has also radically overhauled the rabbinate, which was originally founded to offer religious services and ensure religious soldiers were able to observe the sabbath and eat kosher meals in army canteens.
Over the past year the rabbinate has effectively taken over the role of the army’s education corps through its Jewish Awareness Department, which co-ordinates its activities with Elad, a settler organisation that is active in East Jerusalem.
In October, the Haaretz newspaper quoted an unnamed senior officer who accused the rabbinate of carrying out the religious and political “brainwashing” of troops.
Dr Levy said the army rabbinate’s power was growing as the ranks of religious soldiers swelled.
Breaking the Silence, a project run by soldiers seeking to expose the army’s behaviour against Palestinians, said the booklet handed out to troops in Gaza had originated among Hebron’s settlers.
“The document has been around since at least 2003,” said Mikhael Manekin, 29, one of the group’s directors and himself religiously observant. “But what is new is that the army has been effectively subcontracted to promote the views of the extremist settlers to its soldiers.”
The power of the religious right in the army reflected wider social trends inside Israel, Dr Levy said. He pointed out that the rural cooperatives known as kibbutzim that were once home to Israel’s secular middle classes and produced the bulk of its officer corps had been on the wane since the early 1980s.
“The vacuum left by their gradual retreat from the army was filled by religious youngsters and by the children of the settlements. They now dominate in many branches of the army.”
According to figures cited in the Israeli media, more than one-third of all Israel’s combat soldiers are religious, as are more than 40 per cent of those graduating from officer courses.
The army has encouraged this trend by creating some two dozen hesder yeshivas, seminaries in which youths can combine Biblical studies with army service in separate religious units. Many of the yeshivas are based in the West Bank, where students are educated by the settlements’ extremist rabbis.
Ehud Barak, the defence minister, has rapidly expanded the programme, approving four yeshivas, three based in settlements, last summer. Another 10 are reportedly awaiting his approval.
Mr Manekin, however, warned against blaming the violence inflicted on Gaza’s civilians solely on the influence of religious extremists.
“The army is still run by the secular elites in Israel and they have always been reckless with regard to the safety of civilians when they wage war. Jewish nationalism that justifies Palestinian deaths is just as dangerous as religious extremism.”
Out of the rubble of Gaza
Rise of the moderates
Out of the rubble of Gaza, global Jewish dissent could be emerging as a more potent force
* Antony Lerman
* The Guardian, Friday 6 February 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/jewish-opposition-gaza
Each and every Jew who protested as a Jew against the Gaza war had a personal Jewish imperative for doing so. Some simply expressed dismay; most demanded action to end the carnage. To say that we failed is neither an expression of despair nor a statement that dissent wasn't worthwhile. Realism suggests that it was inevitable.
Let's be clear: diaspora and Israeli Jewish support for the war was extensive - and extremely dispiriting. It raises the question: critical Jewish voices may have increased, but can we ever trigger decisive change in mainstream Jewish opinion? An unsentimental look at developments may give reason for hope.
First, there's been activity in many countries and support for Jewish peace groups has increased. European Jews for a Just Peace, a 10-country federation of such organisations, reports numerous initiatives in Europe. Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and other UK groups demonstrated, lobbied, placed newspaper ads and joined demonstrations. IJV groups in Canada and Australia issued statements. Jewish and Israeli protesters in Toronto, Montreal and Boston occupied Israeli consulates. US peace groups have been increasingly active. Together with activity by Israeli groups, this amounts to an undercurrent of protest that is rattling establishment Jewish leadership.
Second, some groups of Jews have taken significant stands. On 11 January, the Observer made front-page news of a letter from rabbis, academics and prominent community figures at the centre of UK Jewish life, calling for a ceasefire. In Germany, a letter from 35 supporters of the group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace, demanding an end to "the murder in Gaza", was published on 17 January in the Süddeutsche Zeitung - a major newspaper in a country where expressing public criticism of Israel is difficult for anyone, let alone a group of Jews.
But most significant was the strong anti-war stand taken by J Street, the new American liberal "pro-peace, pro-Israel" lobby, which is effectively challenging the influential, rightwing Israel lobby Aipac. Heavily criticised by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, a prominent US peace camp leader, for being "profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment", J Street stuck to its guns and attracted increased support. It then warmly welcomed President Obama's appointment of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy, positioning itself to have clout in Washington. The positive consequences for further legitimising Jewish dissent in the US and beyond could be crucial.
Third, there are signs of underlying disquiet in the middle ground of normally solid pro-Israel Jewish opinion. On 2 January, Anshel Pfeffer wrote in Ha'aretz: "Extremely disturbed and hurt by the level of civilian deaths and destruction ... [these Jews] say, there must, there has to be another way of doing this. And they live with those doubts, often unexpressed, even among families and close friends, because the worst thing they find is that others around them don't seem to discern between the different nuances, and can't find in themselves compassion for the dead and wounded on the other side." Pfeffer is not alone in sensing this mood, which suggests Israel is perilously close to the line beyond which even some of its strongest supporters cannot go.
Two encouraging conclusions can be drawn. First, although it seems most Jews shrink from the truth and embrace the Orwellian "war is peace" propaganda, doubts are growing. For Jewish dissenters who seek an appropriate language to persuade mainstream Jewish opinion that Israel is going in the wrong direction, the effort may produce results.
Second, dissenting peace groups can be stubbornly independent and make a virtue out of minor differences. But effective coordination during the Gaza war proved empowering. It's surely worthwhile attempting to create a critical mass, united around key objectives, and expressed in language that can connect with mainstream Jewish opinion.
Israel is heavily dependent on what Jews think. Its leaders turn to their support whenever they face an internal crisis or need cover for some new military adventure. But it's now not too far-fetched to think Jewish opinion could turn decisively against Israel's current path. This would shake the government and help change Middle East realities. So, out of the rubble of Gaza and the political failure it represents, Jewish dissent may emerge a more potent force.
A final cautionary note: Jewish opposition to the Gaza war was not qualitatively different from anyone else's. And it's not more important than the horrendous experience of the people of Gaza. But were that opposition to be translated into a rolling tide of Jewish opinion, it may have a moderating influence on Israel. This would benefit Palestinians, who deserve an immediate end to siege and occupation, and Jews, who deserve an immediate end to the antisemitism, highlighted in these pages by Jonathan Freedland, which Israel's war has provoked. And ultimately lead to an Israel living in peace with its neighbours.
• Antony Lerman is the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy
Out of the rubble of Gaza, global Jewish dissent could be emerging as a more potent force
* Antony Lerman
* The Guardian, Friday 6 February 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/jewish-opposition-gaza
Each and every Jew who protested as a Jew against the Gaza war had a personal Jewish imperative for doing so. Some simply expressed dismay; most demanded action to end the carnage. To say that we failed is neither an expression of despair nor a statement that dissent wasn't worthwhile. Realism suggests that it was inevitable.
Let's be clear: diaspora and Israeli Jewish support for the war was extensive - and extremely dispiriting. It raises the question: critical Jewish voices may have increased, but can we ever trigger decisive change in mainstream Jewish opinion? An unsentimental look at developments may give reason for hope.
First, there's been activity in many countries and support for Jewish peace groups has increased. European Jews for a Just Peace, a 10-country federation of such organisations, reports numerous initiatives in Europe. Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and other UK groups demonstrated, lobbied, placed newspaper ads and joined demonstrations. IJV groups in Canada and Australia issued statements. Jewish and Israeli protesters in Toronto, Montreal and Boston occupied Israeli consulates. US peace groups have been increasingly active. Together with activity by Israeli groups, this amounts to an undercurrent of protest that is rattling establishment Jewish leadership.
Second, some groups of Jews have taken significant stands. On 11 January, the Observer made front-page news of a letter from rabbis, academics and prominent community figures at the centre of UK Jewish life, calling for a ceasefire. In Germany, a letter from 35 supporters of the group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace, demanding an end to "the murder in Gaza", was published on 17 January in the Süddeutsche Zeitung - a major newspaper in a country where expressing public criticism of Israel is difficult for anyone, let alone a group of Jews.
But most significant was the strong anti-war stand taken by J Street, the new American liberal "pro-peace, pro-Israel" lobby, which is effectively challenging the influential, rightwing Israel lobby Aipac. Heavily criticised by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, a prominent US peace camp leader, for being "profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment", J Street stuck to its guns and attracted increased support. It then warmly welcomed President Obama's appointment of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy, positioning itself to have clout in Washington. The positive consequences for further legitimising Jewish dissent in the US and beyond could be crucial.
Third, there are signs of underlying disquiet in the middle ground of normally solid pro-Israel Jewish opinion. On 2 January, Anshel Pfeffer wrote in Ha'aretz: "Extremely disturbed and hurt by the level of civilian deaths and destruction ... [these Jews] say, there must, there has to be another way of doing this. And they live with those doubts, often unexpressed, even among families and close friends, because the worst thing they find is that others around them don't seem to discern between the different nuances, and can't find in themselves compassion for the dead and wounded on the other side." Pfeffer is not alone in sensing this mood, which suggests Israel is perilously close to the line beyond which even some of its strongest supporters cannot go.
Two encouraging conclusions can be drawn. First, although it seems most Jews shrink from the truth and embrace the Orwellian "war is peace" propaganda, doubts are growing. For Jewish dissenters who seek an appropriate language to persuade mainstream Jewish opinion that Israel is going in the wrong direction, the effort may produce results.
Second, dissenting peace groups can be stubbornly independent and make a virtue out of minor differences. But effective coordination during the Gaza war proved empowering. It's surely worthwhile attempting to create a critical mass, united around key objectives, and expressed in language that can connect with mainstream Jewish opinion.
Israel is heavily dependent on what Jews think. Its leaders turn to their support whenever they face an internal crisis or need cover for some new military adventure. But it's now not too far-fetched to think Jewish opinion could turn decisively against Israel's current path. This would shake the government and help change Middle East realities. So, out of the rubble of Gaza and the political failure it represents, Jewish dissent may emerge a more potent force.
A final cautionary note: Jewish opposition to the Gaza war was not qualitatively different from anyone else's. And it's not more important than the horrendous experience of the people of Gaza. But were that opposition to be translated into a rolling tide of Jewish opinion, it may have a moderating influence on Israel. This would benefit Palestinians, who deserve an immediate end to siege and occupation, and Jews, who deserve an immediate end to the antisemitism, highlighted in these pages by Jonathan Freedland, which Israel's war has provoked. And ultimately lead to an Israel living in peace with its neighbours.
• Antony Lerman is the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy
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