Article: Who will save Israel from itself?

[Mars]

Good read.





Who will save Israel from itself?

 By Mark LeVine


One by one the justifications given by Israel for its latest war in Gaza are unravelling.

The argument that this is a purely defensive war, launched only after Hamas broke a six-month ceasefire has been challenged, not just by observers in the know such as Jimmy Carter, the former US president who helped facilitate the truce, but by centre-right Israeli intelligence think tanks.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, whose December 31 report titled "Six Months of the Lull Arrangement Intelligence Report," confirmed that the June 19 truce was only "sporadically violated, and then not by Hamas but instead by ... "rogue terrorist organisations".

Instead, "the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement" occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day.

According to a joint Tel Aviv University-European University study, this fits a larger pattern in which Israeli violence has been responsible for ending 79 per cent of all lulls in violence since the outbreak of the second intifada, compared with only 8 per cent for Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

Indeed, the Israeli foreign ministry seems to realise that this argument is losing credibility.

During a conference call with half a dozen pro-Israel professors on Thursday, Asaf Shariv, the Consul General of Israel in New York, focused more on the importance of destroying the intricate tunnel system connecting Gaza to the Sinai.

He claimed that such tunnels were "as big as the Holland and Lincoln tunnels," and offered as proof the "fact" that lions and monkeys had been smuggled through them to a zoo in Gaza. In reality, the lions were two small cubs that were drugged, thrown in sacks, and dragged through a tunnel on their way to a private zoo.

Israel's self-image

The claim that Hamas will never accept the existence of Israel has proved equally misinformed, as Hamas leaders explicitly announce their intention to do just that in the pages of the Los Angeles Times or to any international leader or journalist who will meet with them.

With each new family, 10, 20 and 30 strong, buried under the rubble of a building in Gaza, the claim that the Israeli forces have gone out of their way to diminish civilian casualties - long a centre-piece of Israel's image as an enlightened and moral democracy - is falling apart.

Anyone with an internet connection can Google "Gaza humanitarian catastrophe" and find the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Territories and read the thousands of pages of evidence documenting the reality of the current fighting, and the long term siege on Gaza that preceded it.

The Red Cross, normally scrupulous in its unwillingness to single out parties to a conflict for criticism, sharply criticised Israel for preventing medical personnel from reaching wounded Palestinians, some of whom remained trapped for days, slowly starving and dying in the Gazan rubble amidst their dead relatives.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has flatly denied Israeli claims that Palestinian fighters were using the UNRWA school compound bombed on January 6, in which 40 civilians were killed, to launch attacks, and has challenged Israel to prove otherwise.

War crimes admission

Additionally, numerous flippant remarks by senior Israeli politicians and generals, including Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, refusing to make a distinction between civilian people and institutions and fighters - "Hamas doesn't ... and neither should we" is how Livni puts it - are rightly being seen as admissions of war crimes.

Indeed, in reviewing statements by Israeli military planners leading up to the invasion, it is clear that there was a well thought out decision to go after Gaza's civilian infrastructure - and with it, civilians.

The following quote from an interview with Major-General Gadi Eisenkot that appeared in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth in October, is telling:

"We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases," he said.

"This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorised."

Causing "immense damage and destruction" and considering entire villages "military bases" is absolutely prohibited under international law.

Eisenkot's description of this planning in light of what is now unfolding in Gaza is a clear admission of conspiracy and intent to commit war crimes, and when taken with the comments above, and numerous others, renders any argument by Israel that it has tried to protect civilians and is not engaging in disproportionate force unbelievable.

International laws violated

On the ground, the evidence mounts ever higher that Israel is systematically violating a host of international laws, including but not limited to Article 56 of the IV Hague Convention of 1907, the First Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention (more specifically known as the "Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949", the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the principles of Customary International Humanitarian Law.

None of this excuses or legitimises the firing of rockets or mortars by any Palestinian group at Israeli civilians and non-military targets.

As Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur, declared in his most recent statement on Gaza: "It should be pointed out unambiguously that there is no legal (or moral) justification for firing rockets at civilian targets, and that such behavior is a violation of IHR, associated with the right to life, as well as constitutes a war crime."

By the same logic, however, Israel does not have the right to use such attacks as an excuse to launch an all-out assault on the entire population of Gaza.

In this context, even Israel's suffering from the constant barrage of rockets is hard to pay due attention to when the numbers of dead and wounded on each side are counted. Any sense of proportion is impossible to sustain with such a calculus.

'Rogue' state

Israeli commentators and scholars, self-described "loyal" Zionists who served proudly in the army in wars past, are now publicly describing their country, in the words of Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim, as a "rogue" and gangster" state led by "completely unscrupulous leaders".


Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, has declared that Israel's actions in Gaza are like "raising animals for slaughter on a farm" and represent a "bizarre new moral element" in warfare.

"The moral voice of restraint has been left behind ... Everything is permitted" against Palestinians, writes a disgusted Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy.

Fellow Haaretz columnist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Amira Haas writes of her late parents disgust at how Israeli leaders justified Israel's wars with a "language laundromat" aimed at redefining reality and Israel's moral compass. "Lucky my parents aren't alive to see this," she exclaimed.

Around the world people are beginning to compare Israel's attack on Gaza, which after the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlers was turned literally into the world's largest prison, to the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Extremist Muslims are using internet forums to collect names and addresses of prominent European Jews with the goal, it seems clear, of assassinating them in retaliation for Israel's actions in Gaza.

Al-Qaeda is attempting to exploit this crisis to gain a foothold in Gaza and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, as well as through attacking Jewish communities globally.

Iran's defiance of both Israel and its main sponsor, the US, is winning it increasing sympathy with each passing day.

Democratic values eroded

Inside Israel, the violence will continue to erode both democratic values in the Jewish community, and any acceptance of the Jewish state's legitimacy in the eyes of its Palestinian citizens.

And yet in the US - at least in Washington and in the offices of the mainstream Jewish organisations - the chorus of support for Israel's war on Gaza continues to sing in tight harmony with official Israeli policy, seemingly deaf to the fact that they have become so out of tune with the reality exploding around them.

At my university, UCI, where last summer Jewish and Muslim students organised a trip together through the occupied territories and Israel so they could see with their own eyes the realities there, old battle lines are being redrawn.

The Anteaters for Israel, the college pro-Israel group at the University of California, Irvine, sent out an urgent email to the community explaining that, "Over the past week, increasing amounts of evidence lead us to believe that Hamas is largely responsible for any alleged humanitarian crisis in Gaza".

I have no idea who the "us" is that is referred to in the appeal, although I am sure that the membership of that group is shrinking.

Indeed, one of the sad facts of this latest tragedy is that with each claim publicly refuted by facts on the ground, more and more Americans, including Jews, are refusing to trust the assertions of Israeli and American Jewish leaders.

Trap

Even worse, in the Arab/Muslim world, the horrific images pouring out of Gaza daily are allowing preachers and politicians to deploy well-worn yet still dangerous and inciteful stereotypes against Jews as they rally the masses against Israel - and through it - their own governments.

What is most frightening is that the most important of Israel's so-called friends, the US political establishment and the mainstream Jewish leadership, seem clueless to the devastating trap that Israel has led itself into - in good measure with their indulgence and even help.

It is one that threatens the country's existence far more than any Qassam rockets, with their 0.4 per cent kill rate; even more than the disastrous 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon, which by weakening Israel's deterrence capability in some measure made this war inevitable.

First, it is clear that Israel cannot destroy Hamas, it cannot stop the rockets unless it agrees to a truce that will go far to meeting the primary demand of Hamas - an end to the siege.

Merely by surviving (and it surely will survive) Hamas, like Hezbollah in 2006, will have won.


Israel is succeeding in doing little more than creating another generation of Palestinians with hearts filled with rage and a need for revenge.

Second, Israel's main patron, the US, along with the conservative Arab autocracies and monarchies that are its only allies left in the Muslim world, are losing whatever crumbs of legitimacy they still had with their young and angry populations.

The weaker the US and its axis becomes in the Middle East, the more precarious becomes Israel's long-term security. Indeed, any chance that the US could convince the Muslim world to pressure Iran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons has been buried in Gaza.

Third, as Israel brutalises Palestinians, it brutalises its own people. You cannot occupy another people and engage in violence against them at this scale without doing even greater damage to your soul.

The high incidence of violent crimes committed by veterans returning from combat duty in Iraq is but one example of how the violence of occupation and war eat away at people's moral centre.

While in the US only a small fraction of the population participates in war; in Israel, most able-bodied men end up participating.

The effects of the latest violence perpetrated against Palestinians upon the collective Israeli soul is incalculable; the notion that it can survive as an "ethnocracy" - favouring one ethnic group, Jews, yet by and large democratic - is becoming a fiction.

Violence-as-power

Who will save Israel from herself?

Israelis are clearly incapable. Their addiction as a society to the illusion of violence-as-power has reached the level of collective mental illness.

As Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman described it on January 10, "Israel has created an image of itself of a madman that has lost it".

Not Palestinians, too many of whom have fallen prey to the same condition.

Not the Middle East Quartet, the European Union, the United Nations, or the Arab League, all of whom are utterly powerless to influence Israeli policy.

Not the organised Jewish leadership in the US and Europe, who are even more blind to what is happening than most Israelis, who at least allow internal debate about the wisdom of their government's policies.

Not the growing progressive Jewish community, which will need years to achieve enough social and political power to challenge the status quo.

And not senior American politicians and policy-makers who are either unwilling to risk alienating American Jewish voters, or have been so brainwashed by the constant barrage of propaganda put out by the "Israel Lobby" that they are incapable of reaching an independent judgment about the conflict.

During the US presidential race, Barack Obama was ridiculed for being a messiah-like figure. The idea does not sound so funny now. It is hard to imagine anyone less saving Israel, the Palestinians, and the world from another four years of mindless violence.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/2009110112723260741.html

[shootfighter1]

Who will save Israel from the far left justifying the fanatical actions of arab terrorists.

[Mars]

no one is justifying anything moron. When articles demonstrate a critical look on things its suddenly called a far left mans opinion. thats pathetic.

[flagadajones]

Who will save Israel from the far left justifying the fanatical actions of arab terrorists.

QFT.


Death to all arabs/muslims. GO JEWS.

[bigdumbbell]

QFT.


Death to all arabs/muslims. GO JEWS.

right on

[headhuntersix]

no one is justifying anything moron. When articles demonstrate a critical look on things its suddenly called a far left mans opinion. thats pathetic.

Critical..ur joking right...AL FUCKING JEEZERA ok dude. Ur a raghead douchebag apologist.

[SuperNatural]

Thanks for posting that, mars.  The situation is getting desperate.  This system of retaliation on both sides is absurd.

[SuperNatural]

And just because it is from aljazeera doesn't negate the disproportionate death tolls and expansionism.

[Nordic Superman]

And just because it is from aljazeera doesn't negate the disproportionate death tolls and expansionism.

Israel has a modern army - that's war... should Israel be forced to fight on Hamas' level? Hamas' political policies include islamism (which includes expansionism itself) so don't give me that shit.

[Soul Crusher]

And just because it is from aljazeera doesn't negate the disproportionate death tolls and expansionism.

Cry babies.  Arabs are the biggest bunch of panzies on earth. 

they started a fight they could not finish and now are crying about it>

Tough for them. 

I hope the IDF wipes these vermin out like roaches in an alley.

[bigdumbbell]

right on  but i do like having aljazzera around too

[headhuntersix]

Do U really, their reporters in Iraq had full knowledge of when IED's were planted and would camp out on routes waiting for GI's to get killed. Fuck them.

[shootfighter1]

So Mars is the first on this thread to resort to personal insults...bravo!

Excellent fair and balanced resource for your unbiased article. 

Of course it is appropriate to take a look at the details of the conflict but when one side continues to launch rockets targeting another country's citizen population, they must be dealt with.  If the palestinians cannot control their own militant groups, the country that is being attacked must respond.  We cannot allow terrorist groups to operate and threaten the existance of democratic countries.  If the responce seems overboard, too bad.  If a weaker man starts a fight, it is not the stronger (or victorious) combatant that is at fault for the melee.  The lessen the weaker man learns is to be more cautious in starting fights.

No one wants war and we should take more care to avoid military interventions (ie Iraq), but if the left pushes us to be excessively passive against militant aggressors, the aggressors will carve out small victories that turn into larger victories and our saftey and democratic way of life is threatened.  Terrorist groups do not reason like many of us and do not care for whats right or logical or compassionate.  They have a warped sense of reality based on twisted religous fanaticism.  We must understand this.

[Nordic Superman]

So Mars is the first on this thread to resort to personal insults...bravo!

Excellent fair and balanced resource for your unbiased article. 

I do find it odd he hasn't even bothered to provide a "Who will save Palestine from (islamism / militant government / self suppression / perpetual government militancy / government supported genocide)" article yet to show he isn't a Hamas apologist.

[240 is Back]

Do U really, their reporters in Iraq had full knowledge of when IED's were planted and would camp out on routes waiting for GI's to get killed. Fuck them.

ahahahahahha

remember when bad guys fired on the palestine hotel in baghdad and totally wasted the Al-J reporter?

ahahaha and then footage showed it was 'accidentally' a US tank that fired the shell, which accidentally killed the team that wouldn't STFU with criticim about the USA invasion?

ahahahahahahhahaha that one was rich

[Mars]

I never said i agreed with al whats been said in the article, i like to read different kinds of media just like i read the articles that are posted about the subject on this board. dont forget a lot of news has been filtered before it comes to you and can create tunnel vision, as it does with pro arab, pro israel media etc. Israel spends for example tons of money on public relations.
i agree i dont have so much insight on this subject as some experts here have so i adjust my opinion from time to time.

[shootfighter1]

Understood.  I just have a good impression of many of these islamic religious fanatics and we can't allow them to destroy our cultures!
Did you guys see interview with the son of a Hamas leader who left Islam, criticized Hamas and Islam, moved to the US and converted to Christianity?  Pretty interesting.

[IFBBwannaB]

I never said i agreed with al whats been said in the article, i like to read different kinds of media just like i read the articles that are posted about the subject on this board. dont forget a lot of news has been filtered before it comes to you and can create tunnel vision, as it does with pro arab, pro israel media etc. Israel spends for example tons of money on public relations.
i agree i dont have so much insight on this subject as some experts here have so i adjust my opinion from time to time.

Al Jazera are nothing more than a terrorists network, don't ever believe a word they say.

And you should stop routing for "the underdog" that will bite you the minute he can, Hamas is nothing but Iran stupid little dog. Look at the split of the Hamas leadership in Gaza and Syria, it's like Hamas Gaza is getting the treatment they gave the Palestinian people from Hamas Syria (Iran)....fucking irony.

If you have any doubt in your mind that Hamas is a terrorist organization that have done worse to his people than anyone else than you should shoot yourself in the head for being so stupid, even now they use the Israeli operation as a cover to kill more Fatah people in Gaza and when the humanitarian aid is coming in they take all of it to themself and let their people starve, not to mention that they break the daily cease fire and fire rockets.

[JOHN MATRIX]

great article Mars.

its only a matter of time before the racist terrorist state of israel is finally defeated. they cant fight the whole world

[JOHN MATRIX]

Al Jazera are nothing more than a terrorists network, don't ever believe a word they say.

And you should stop routing for "the underdog" that will bite you the minute he can, Hamas is nothing but Iran stupid little dog. Look at the split of the Hamas leadership in Gaza and Syria, it's like Hamas Gaza is getting the treatment they gave the Palestinian people from Hamas Syria (Iran)....fucking irony.

If you have any doubt in your mind that Hamas is a terrorist organization that have done worse to his people than anyone else than you should shoot yourself in the head for being so stupid, even now they use the Israeli operation as a cover to kill more Fatah people in Gaza and when the humanitarian aid is coming in they take all of it to themself and let their people starve, not to mention that they break the daily cease fire and fire rockets.

israel can do no wrong in your eyes.

[SuperNatural]

Israel has a modern army - that's war... should Israel be forced to fight on Hamas' level? Hamas' political policies include islamism (which includes expansionism itself) so don't give me that shit.

The Israel death toll is only about ten, while the Palestinian number is close to 1,000.  It is pretty absurd for Israel to call their offensive maneuvers justified in response to Palestinian attacks, that's all I meant. 

And as to hamas' policies, screw them.  But their islamic policies still don't warrant bombing raids.

[IFBBwannaB]

The Israel death toll is only about ten, while the Palestinian number is close to 1,000.  It is pretty absurd for Israel to call their offensive maneuvers justified in response to Palestinian attacks, that's all I meant. 

And as to hamas' policies, screw them.  But their islamic policies still don't warrant bombing raids.

Death toll means shit in wars genius, the death toll is the result of your military capabilities not your aggression/peaceful nature.

Take WW2, the Japanese got thousands killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in one day, did it make them the peaceful side?
The Russians had millions die but they weren't the aggressors either yet they were on the winning side.

In summary, death toll = capability and not your intention.

[Nordic Superman]

The Israel death toll is only about ten, while the Palestinian number is close to 1,000.  It is pretty absurd for Israel to call their offensive maneuvers justified in response to Palestinian attacks, that's all I meant. 

And as to hamas' policies, screw them.  But their islamic policies still don't warrant bombing raids.

Huh? Where's your logic?

Israel has an efficient war machine that isn't limited to gorilla warfare like Hamas.

Islamic supremacism does warrant bombing if it includes Hamas firing rockets on your civilian population.

Go easy on the terrorist... fight it on their level... gee what a great plan!

[Soul Crusher]

The Israel death toll is only about ten, while the Palestinian number is close to 1,000.  It is pretty absurd for Israel to call their offensive maneuvers justified in response to Palestinian attacks, that's all I meant. 

And as to hamas' policies, screw them.  But their islamic policies still don't warrant bombing raids.

Bad day for them.

Maybe those palistinian morons chanting death to America and death to Israel while burning our flag will think twice before provoking a fight with those lowly, greedy, dirty, small, satanic, wimpy, nerdy Jews, otherwise known as dogs.

Amazing, they really believe their own hype. 

The IDF is smashing these dirt bags.       

[Eyeball Chambers]

ahahahahahha

remember when bad guys fired on the palestine hotel in baghdad and totally wasted the Al-J reporter?

ahahaha and then footage showed it was 'accidentally' a US tank that fired the shell, which accidentally killed the team that wouldn't STFU with criticim about the USA invasion?

ahahahahahahhahaha that one was rich

We also dropped a bomb on AJ headquarters in Iraq.  "Accidentally"