Understanding the antisemitism of Israel’s “critics”. Part III

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Epilogue: The ethnic cleansing accusation. 

The ethnic cleansing accusation is less heard in the anti-Israel discourse. Even though it shares similarities with the act of genocide. This similarity is the concept of the destruction of a community. It is less defined in international law, and therefore less useful for those that wish to harm Israel and its population. The main difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide, is that when it comes to the former, mass murder is a means to end, and not the end itself. When it comes to later mass killing is the final goal.

This accusation is false largely for the same reasons the genocide accusation is false. No one from the Israeli war cabinet made such a statement. And the same measures Israel took to prevent needless deaths of Palestinian civilians exonerate it from both accusations. However, this one is easier to sell. Because there is a political movement in Israel that tries to push this idea. And the level of destruction in many parts of the Gaza Strip raises the dire possibility that there is nothing to return to. Since this is the case, why Israel’s “critics” wasted their time focusing on genocide?  No matter how we look at it, the integrity of the intentions of the accusers will always come into question.

However, this matter relates to something that is real and serious. It is something that the international media has largely overlooked. This is the role of Palestinian civilians in the atrocities of October 7^th, 2023. The fact is that once Hamas’ forces took control of a large portion of Israeli territory, with several Israeli communities in it, hundreds of Palestinian civilians followed them, and stormed those communities. There they took part in the slaughter, torture, rape, and abductions of Israeli civilians. Those civilians included children that helped the adults find places where people, including children, were hiding. This fact, along with the surveys that shows that the majority of Palestinians in the WB and Gaza support the atrocities undermined the convictions of many Israelis that there is a significant body of Palestinian civilians that want peace and co-existence. The worse part is that for those living around the Gaza Strip life became frightening and traumatizing. So much so that most have been evacuated to other parts of the country. The idea that you are living next to a large population that is willing to kill you, your family, and your entire community, is naturally traumatizing. And it is not only Israelis that are fearful. So do foreign governments that had farmworkers working in Israel. Those governments ordered their citizens to leave Israel completely, creating a crisis in the field of Israeli agriculture. Because of that evicting the hostile population of the Gaza Strip is the simplest looking solution. Every critic has the right to challenge the morality of this solution. But doing it while ignoring what happened on October 7^th and its impact is hypocritical and dishonest. Ignoring this also helps the far right in Israel to push for this solution. It is not unheard of that extremists from opposite ends can be an asset to one another.

Understanding the antisemitism of Israel’s “critics”. Part II

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Part 3: The debate over genocidal language.

The legal definition of genocide under international law, rightfully includes the use of language. Language is a necessary tool when perpetrating a genocide. It dehumanizes the intended victims in a way that denies their humanity and makes the act of killing them justified. Therefore, if someone wants to make a serious accusation of genocide, they must include the subject of the use of language. When it comes to Israel this argument employs a known propaganda trick, taking words out of context. The accusers say that when Israeli leaders call Palestinians human animals, or compare them to Amalek, that language is genocidal.

Israeli leaders did make this kind of comparisons. But not of the entire Palestinian population. Only those that perpetrated the atrocities of October 7^th. The biblical Amalek were indeed condemned for annihilation. But that is not why the comparison was made. It was made because Amalek killed women and children, and the elderly. And that is exactly what Hamas did. Hamas are also compared to the Nazis, because that is what the Nazis did. Both have killed women and children, and everyone they could, deliberately. Hamas is also compared to ISIS, because this is what ISIS did. Like Hamas they killed everyone they wanted, women, children, man, elderly. Every person they said had the wrong faith. Extremists’ statements had been made by public figures and some government officials. And the membership of Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir in this government is indeed an abomination. But none of them is a member of the war cabinet. The members of this cabinet come from the ruling Likud party, and the Mahane Mammlachti party of Beni Gantz. This was the lead opposition party prior to October the 7^th 2023. Genocide is an inhumane act. And false accusations of genocide dehumanize those been falsely accused. As do false accusations of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and colonialism.  

As international law acknowledges, the act of genocide requires dehumanizing language, organization, such as gathering the weapons needed for the genocide. And killing countless of people with the intention to inflict harm. Israel has done none-of those. Its actions saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the harsh language used by its decision makers is against the perpetrators of the atrocities of the 7^th of October, not all the Palestinians. The one that fills all the check boxes defining genocide is Hamas. They, as well as the PA, have been indoctrinating their population to hate the Jews for years. Hamas has been gathering weapons for the purpose of killing as many jews as possible. It tried to do so mostly with missiles and rockets. But was more successful on October the 7^th 2023, when its elite forces gained control over several Jewish communities. There, with the help of civilians from the Gaza Strip, they killed, tortured, and abducted everyone they could. Causing some of these communities to be severely depopulated. This is a genocide. And for years Israeli and pro-Israel activists have been warning against that. The reactions to these warnings were outrageous. Those warning were ignored in most cases, dismissed as demonizing the Palestinians in other cases. And when they did receive some attention by world media it was treated as background noise, and never received the same importance as the issue of the settlements. The examples they brought were either over stretched or form marginal groups. The purpose of those comparisons was to dismiss the accusations under the attitude that said, since both sides are doing it, there is no point in dealing with it. These attitudes, knowingly and unknowingly, made their contributions to the atrocities of October 7^th.  This ignored fact of recent history demonstrate the hypocrisy behind the accusation of genocide. Those that were the most silent about Hamas genocidal behavior prior to October 7^th; are now making the loudest noises, falsely accusing Israel of genocide. The 2 sides of this hypocrisy show indifference to Jewish lives. And that is the most obvious form of antisemitism.

Part 4: policing the victim.

Another age long antisemitic behavior, a tradition of sort, comes to play here. When a wave of pogroms swept through the Jewish communities of the Russian Empire in the 1880’s, local comities of Christians and Jews were formed for the purpose of investigating the causes of those pogroms. The Christian members in some of those comities decided to change focus. Instead of investigating the causes of the pogroms in the Russian Christian side, where the perpetrators came from, they wanted to investigate the Jews. (On this topic find the Mina Goldberg doctoral work, Berlin 1934.) This was an act of blaming the victims. But it is also an act of policing the victims. It came from people that decided among themselves, and without consulting with their Jewish co members. They decided that the idea of looking for the causes of the pogroms in the Christian side, where the pogromists came from, is wrong, without even exploring it. And they forced their decision on the Jewish members of those committees while ignoring the Jewish protest. Passing critical judgment on other people’s actions and behavior is the act of policing, conducted to make sure they follow the accepted code of conduct. When a crime is committed it is the victimizer that is supposed to be policed, not the victims. Clearly, there was something very twisted in Czarist Russia.

This practice, of passing critical judgment on Jews trying to change the conditions that brought upon them horrific calamities, continues to these very days. The best and most obscene example came from the late Hellen Thomas. The senior and longest serving White House corresponded that chose to end her remarkable carrier with a despicable bang. Following her call for Israeli Jews to return to Germany and Poland, she gave an interview to Joy Behar, then on CNN. There she “clarified.” One of the things she said was “The Jews did not have to leave Germany and Poland following the holocaust since they were not persecuted anymore.” Putting aside the fact that there was nothing much for Jews to return to in those countries, and most of Europe at that time; her statement shows immense ignorance of what suffering is. The idea that after a genocide or a pogrom, survivors can return to their previous lives as if nothing happened is patronizing and grossly insensitive. And when it is aimed against Jews it is clearly antisemitic. And this was a major argument in her critic of Jews trying to change the conditions that made the holocaust possible. The best way seen by many jews at the time was by forming a nation state where they can defend themselves and flourish as a culture. A clear-cut antisemitic attitude was used as an argument to pass judgment on Jews as a whole and forbid them from changing their lives for the better. The antisemitic attitude of indifference to Jewish suffering and concerns, was used as an argument against the very existence of Israel. Not a critique of its policies but denying its right to exist. Since a nation state is the legitimate right of every nation the idea itself is discriminatory towards Jews. The justification for this discrimination is the accusation of ‘taking someone else’s land’. That someone been the Palestinians. This accusation is historically inaccurate.  Most of the land owned by Jews prior to 1948, was purchased from wealthy Arab landlords. After 1948, when Israel was formed, its government gained control of more land. Most of it was state land. Land that was owned by the British government. This was a land one governing authority inherited from its predecessor. The Arab lands that Israel did gain, were gained because of a war of survival. A war Israel did not start. The debate about Israel’s creation is about that part. Was it justified or not. This debate is harsh and painful for both sides. And extremely politicized. But Hellen Thomas earlier statement, about Israeli Jews going back to Germany and Poland, shows that her problem was not with Israel’s conduct during its war of independence, but with its very existence.  She used an antisemitic assumption, to justify an anti-Zionist position. In doing so she demonstrated how little the space is between antisemitism and Anti-Zionism.

Next antisemitic police action against the Jews came courtesy of congresswoman Ilhan Omar, one of the 3 stars of the earlier mentioned squad. The other 2 are of course Rashida Talib, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. This one was a part of a package of antisemitic concepts and attitudes. It starts with her infamous “it’s all about the Benjamines” remark regarding AIPAC. This was criticized and denounced as an antisemitic trope because it raised the age-old antisemitic motive associating Jews with money and control. It suggested that a group of people, whose common denominators are been Jewish, and wishing to have good relation between the USA and the Jewish state, are motivated by greed and manipulating politicians by greed. In doing so it denied the existence of common values, common interest, and the legitimacy of other opinions in politics. It is also a double standard. Because it is taken for granted that all immigrant communities in the USA are allowed to desire good relations between their home country, and their countries of origin. But when it comes to Jews, not only it is not okay, but is solely associated with the worse stereotypes of Jews, greed and power. But it is more than just a trope and a double standard. Describing people as so greedy that they refer to their money bills on a first name basis is cartoonish. And describing Jewish “greed” with cartoons is a known tradition of the worse forms of antisemitism. It is a dehumanizing language.

For those who remember this affair from 5 years ago, she did apologize. But that was not the end of it. Afterwards, in a town hall meeting available on youtube, she introduced a problematic world view. She stated that mentioning the suffering of Jews, prevents mentioning the suffering of Palestinians. This is nonsense, because there is no reason that the mentioning of the suffering of one community will come at expense of mentioning the suffering of another community. It also false since descriptions and discussions of Palestinian suffering existed in Jewish spaces in both Israel, USA, and Europe for many decades. It was so effective it founded and motivated political movements that championed the two-state solution, in both Israel and the USA. These movements argued that it will provide security for Israel and will end Palestinian suffering. She was erasing the peace camp.

Next, she said, “What I am fearful is that, because Rashida and I are Muslim, that a lot of our Jewish colleague, a lot of our constituents (she mentioned her Jewish constituency earlier, b.t.), a lot of our allies go to thinking that everything we say about Israel, to be antisemitic because we are Muslim. And so, to me it is something becomes designed to end the debate.” This is a variation of a recognized form of left-wing antisemitism called ‘The Livingstone formulation.’ Named after former mayor of London Ken Livingstone, 2000-2008. It was identified and defined by British sociologist Dr. David Hirsh of Goldsmith University of London, in 2010. It described an institutionalized behavior, especially in the British Labor party under Jeremy Corbin. In this behavior, whenever Jews complained about antisemitism, they were immediately accused of been a part of a conspiracy to remove Jeremy Corbin from his leadership position. This is done without even trying to listen before passing judgement. It was a form of police action. Here, in this quote, Ilhan Omar gives ill intention motives for those accusing her and Rashida Talib of antisemitism. Those alleged motives are racism towards Muslims and attempting to shut down the debate. In doing so, she, like any other practitioner of the Livingstone formulation, ostracizes the complainer through this false labeling. And that is a punishment. This is policing. If antisemitism and racism are factors in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and they are, exposing them and clearing them away, will help solving it. Ilhan Omar and the rest of the squad are doing the opposite, denying a discussion about it.

If you think this tradition of policing Jewish responses to antisemitism is limited only to Israel related matters, David Chappelle and Jon Stewart are here to demonstrate that it is not the case. Chappelle piece on SNL, following the Kanye West affair, was criticized for been antisemitic. And it was. It was a nasty police action. He mocked the concerns of Jews over antisemitism with 2 contradicting lines. The first one, served as an advice to Kanye West, suggested that American Jews are easily manipulated. Once you formalistically condemn antisemitism, you can throw everything you want at them. The other line introduced the Jews as oversensitive drama queens, because “you cannot say ‘the Jews’ in Hollywood”. This is obviously made up. I guess he can always say it was just a joke. Except his jokes are social commentaries. And this commentary included a defense of Kanye West, as if he confused the large number of Jews in the film industry with control.

In the highlight of this commentary, he forbade Jews from criticizing and taking action against the Antisemitic tweet of NFL player Kyrie Irving. “The NBA told him he should apologize and he was slow to apologize and the list of demands to get back in their good graces got longer and longer, but, this, where you know I draw the line. I know Jewish people have through some terrible s—t all over the world but you cannot blame that on black Americans.” How is criticizing one black celebrity over an antisemitic tweet is blaming black Americans for the troubles Jews had elsewhere? He fabricated something that did not exist and used it as an excuse to monitor, police, “draw the line,” on Jewish reactions to the antisemitism that harms them.

When Jon Stewart commented on the affair in ‘The late show with Stephen Colbert,’ he may have tried to do some damage control. He may have tried to find a POV that both Jews and Black folks can agree with. Whether or not that was the case, the end-result was bad, very bad.

Jon Stewart, been Jewish, has every right to be as harsh as he feels necessary on Jewish issues. Internal criticism is not policing, even when it is harsher. It is also not beyond scrutiny. He argued that penalizing for a thought is wrong. That is a legitimate POV. But that has been the standard operating procedure when other minority groups in the USA were offended by tweets and remarks made by other people. If he is against that mode of activity why he hasn’t said anything about that before? Or since?

He said that the best way to deal with foul ideas is by exposing them to the fresh air. Agreed. But that contradicts his claim that calling them antisemitic shuts down the debate. How can we expose something to the fresh air, and the cleansing sun, without calling it for what it is? The fact that it is Ilhan Omar’s line and not his original thought does not help the image of this argument.

He found one thing Chappelle said to be constructive. “That it shouldn’t be this difficult to talk about it.” That is not exactly what Chapelle had said but that is beside the point. He literally appointed an outsider to measure how Jews response to their own abuse. How can he even suggest monitoring the response of parents when they hear that their kids are called “oven doggers” in the college they sent them to?  Or the responses of members of a community visiting the recent vandalization of their community center or their synagogue? Or seeing and hearing a public figure with millions of followers echoing some of the many tropes that brought so many calamities on the Jewish people?  Abuse is a terrifying experience. Because of that it is always difficult for the victims and those related to them to talk about it.  The reason it is hard to talk about it is because it is an abuse. Because of that the custom in present day society is to allow those affected by the abuse to express their fears, anger, and frustrations, through every means available, except violence, and racial language. Those forms of accepted expression can be silence, tears, or rage. The idea that there should be someone with a barometer measuring these modes of expression is in complete contradiction with this approach.

He argued that conversation and explanations are a better way. He is wrong because the two are not mutually exclusive. There should be a room for conversations between communities, a wide one. For such a conversation to be effective it must not be under the supervision of any barometer of sensitivity. All sides must be willing to listen to each other no matter how difficult it gets. For the conversation to be effective, it cannot avoid the difficult staff. This is also the most likely way to win over the haters. Since it takes on their convictions. But even than I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Such difficult conversations are more likely to prevent the haters from spreading their hate.

Because what Jon Stewart had said was too much of a mess of self-contradictory arguments his remarks cannot be considered an approval of antisemitic behavior. But in adopting Ilhan Omar’s concept that accusations of antisemitism shut down the debate, he does demonstrate how an antisemitic attitude that rises in the conversation about Israel can migrate into the discussion of other Jewish issues that have nothing to do with Israel.

Most of this policing seems like just words. But these words can become actions. It happened in Czarist Russia in the late 1880’s. It is happening now in the International Court of Justice in the Hauge. In Czarist Russia and in other places in recent history Jews were severely punished for defending themselves. With South – Africa’s appeal to the ICJ the risks are different, may be even greater. Here the risk is the nuremberginazation of international law and humanitarian law.

NEXT

Understanding the antisemitism of Israel’s “critics”. Part I

 

Introduction.

The global reaction to the horrific atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7^th, 2023, has been diverse. From pro-Israel reactions to anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian reactions.  Some of the Pro-Palestinian reactions had been called out as antisemitic. These are the glorifications of the atrocities, denying them, and tearing down the posters of the abducted Israelis and those of other nationalities. But that is not enough. Antisemitism will not be truly denounced and ostracized if its more “civilized” and accepted expressions are not recognized and pointed out.

In identifying antisemitism, we need to be aware that there are many forms and levels of antisemitism. There is genocidal antisemitism, one that denies Jews the ability to live, and/or sees the Jewish identity itself as a crime. There is the patronizing approach. This has many forms, such as tokenizing, bossing, preaching instead of conversating. There is of course intolerance, bias, and conspiracy thinking. And many of these forms of antisemitism find their way to accepted and respected forms of conversation and social conduct.

Part 1: Practical language.

In today’s world genocidal antisemitism cannot simply call for the eradication of the Jews. But it can use language to deny them the ability to be alive. Think of the claim heard before October 7^th, that the blockade of the Gaza Strip was inhumane, and even illegal. Factually, this accusation is incorrect. False. While there is no denying that a large section of the Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip lived in impoverished conditions, along-side them also existed a social elite and a consumer culture. As well as a productive sector. As for the blockade, this was a military blockade, aimed to prevent the very atrocities it failed to prevent on October 7^th, 2023. It was legal because it was implemented on the Israeli side of the border, where Israel’s sovereignty supposed to be undisputed. And because every government on Earth has the duty to defend its territory and the lives of its citizens. If these measures are illegal, cruel and inhumane, then the very lives they had saved, those of ordinary Israelis, are cruel, illegal, and inhumane. And nothing can be more genocidal than denying people the right to be alive. The atrocities of October 7^th become therefore the logical conclusion of the illegal and inhumane blockade accusation. Because in cancelling and delegitimizing, through falsehoods, the duty of the Israeli government and the IDF to defend the lives of its citizens; they are also cancelling and delegitimizing the right of those civilians to be alive. And again, that is genocidal.

This is even truer with the current accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Which again are false. Backing these accusations with pictures of destruction from Gaza gives them the appearance of credibility, but that is a propaganda ploy manipulating emotions. And not a fact-based accusation. There are four facts that demonstrate why such accusations are dubious and ill motivated. First, the act of genocide requires a tight control of the ground by the forces of the exterminators. Not of the air above them. The SS had no air wing. In the annals of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994, the Rwandan air force is not mentioned. Apparently, it was destroyed 4 years earlier. And the many genocides that took place throughout the 19^th century, before the inventions of airplanes, show that this horrific crime against humanity has no need for air power. Massive air power can do a lot of harm to civilian populations, including war crimes. But only ground forces with total control of the ground can hunt down every person marked for extermination.  

Second, Images of massively destroyed cities came from many modern wars. They all came with stories about huge numbers of dead civilians. But they were never called genocide. Not the bombing of Mosul during the war against ISIS. Not the massive American bombing of North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Not the Russian’s actual carpet bombing of rebel held areas in northern Syria. And not the allies bombing of German cities during WW2. They all came with accusations of war crimes, but not genocide. All parties in the debates around those actions acknowledge the existence of legitimate military targets. And that technology has its limits, and therefore, collateral damage is unavoidable. The debate in all those cases is on how much care was given to differentiate between legitimate military targets and the surrounding civilian population. When these are the borders of the debate, even the harshest critic must acknowledge that there is a degree of legal and moral legitimacy to the air campaign, unless the war itself is illegitimate. And yes, even the lenient of critics must be open to the possibility that avoidable civilian deaths had occurred.  An accusation of genocide overdramatized an already horrific situation. And there are never good motives to do that. It attacks the legitimacy of the war itself, denying any legitimacy, even the smallest, from the attacking side. And when that accusation is thrown so easily at a side that defends its own civilians from war crimes aimed at them, as is the case with Israel, there is a room to doubt the intentions of the accusers. Remember Israel has been accused of genocide before. Even when the Arab population in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel grew several times over, Israel was accused of genocide. Therefore, the third argument is that this accusation already has dubious history.

Mosul 2017

Forth, a major component of the definition of genocide under international law says that genocide is also the act of creating unbearable living conditions for the population targeted for extermination. When Israel and the IDF called the 1.5 million residents of the northern Gaza Strip, to move to the southern part of the Strip, this is the kind of genocide they were accused of doing. The argument behind the accusation pointed to the impoverished conditions that already existed in that part of the Strip. Saying that there is no way they could support those extra 1.5 million people. The problem with that argument is that it is not a very effective way to do this kind of genocide. Here again, a total control of the ground is required to make the genocide successful. With this kind of control, the genocidal forces can deny any help from local sources. As well as any help from outside forces. They can also nip in the bud any show of resourcefulness found among the people marked for extermination.

Here on the other hand, Israel and the IDF told the civilian population to move to the southern border. The border with Egypt. It is an international border where there are very few Israeli forces. This gives them access to outside help from all over the world. With no Israeli forces able to impede or prevent any measure that helps this population of evacuees to survive. While there is no denying that the lives of these evacuees are difficult, there is a difference between war refugees and victims of genocide. Victims of genocide are dead, annihilated, entire populations. War refugees are alive.

What this analysis shows is that Israel is subjected, yet again, to a double standard. What otherwise would have been treated as the possibility of war crimes, is treated as definite genocide. And double standard against Israel has already been recognized as antisemitism masquerading as critique of Israel. The difference between war crimes and genocide may seem minor to some, but it is critical. War crimes can be committed by a party to a war that fights a legitimate campaign. A genocide is inherently illegitimate. And can never be justified. When the charge is made because of a double standard, it is false, and therefore dehumanizing. Since Israel is engaged in a legitimate campaign of defending its civilian population this dehumanization denies them the right to be alive and is therefore a genocidal act.

What we see in this critique is the deadly use of language. One that denies Jews the ability to stay alive against the threats they face.

As this crisis worsens the lives of the displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are indeed in greater jeopardy. Especially from hunger. But when reviewing the parties that have the responsibility to prevent it, one must pay attention to the following factors. The ability of international aid to reach the Gaza Strip. Entry into the Gaza Strip. And distribution of the aid inside the strip. The first is the responsibility of the international community and Egypt. The second is the responsibility of Israel. And the third is the responsibility of Hamas, UNRWA, and other UN agencies working inside the Strip. Putting the blame on Israel for the shortcoming of other agencies will be more than just hypocrisy. It will reward those agencies for their failures. And encourage them not to improve, preserving their inefficiencies in the face of future calamities. Inefficiencies that will certainly harm people in other parts of the world; that have nothing to do with this conflict. Those that already misuse language in a way that denies Jews the ability to be alive, will try to confuse the matters. As the UNRWA revelations demonstrates, some of them will come from the UN.

 Part 2: The depths of hatred.

 What makes this false accusation worse, (yes, it is getting worse), is that this is a spin and a blood libel. Political spins are commonplace in politics. It is the act of taking a maneuver made by a political rivel and spinning it to one’s own advantage. It can be done by exposing falsehoods or fallacies that may exist in the rival’s plan or statement. Or it can be done by falsely associating it with negative subjects. Spins are usually considered dirty politics. As the old Jewish saying goes, “It stinks, but it’s kosher.” But when a good did is spun into the opposite; portrayed falsely as something monstrous; that kind of a spin is a blood libel. The fact is that Israel and the IDF are doing the outmost to keep Palestinian civilians alive, WHILE keeping the mission of destroying Hamas ongoing. Navigating between these two conflicting requirements is a nearly impossible task. What can be done, has been done. And it has saved lives. The warnings given to evacuate saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by simply keeping them away from a lethal war zone. The slowness of the ground campaign, where it took more than 40 days to conquer just half of northern Gaza, was also because of concerns for the civilians that had remained there. Look at the pictures of ruins from Gaza and try to imagine what would have happened if all those 1.5 million residents had remained there. There would have been multiple deadly incidents of civilians caught in the crossfire. Alongside deaths and injuries caused by collateral damage from explosives, misfires, and mistaken identity, from both sides. There is no question that as war refugees they are suffering. But the alternative is far more horrendous. In the context of intense battles fought in densely populated urban areas, Israel’s measures give them the most elementary thing required by international and humanitarian law in times of war and chaos. The ability to stay alive. And that is a good thing. Using their unavoidable suffering to make an accusation of a genocide is a classical spin. A spin based on half-truth. The true part is that they are suffering. The omitted part is that they had avoided countless horrific deaths. Keeping people alive is the opposite of genocide. Calling it a genocide is therefore false. This is also blood libel, since this is a very serious false accusation.

Those that oppose Israel’s evacuation order, (and do so without suggesting their own alternatives, even when pressed to by journalists,) give Israel 2 options. Do nothing and give Hamas a chance to kill more Israeli civilians. Or engage Hamas while it is hiding among 1.5 million Palestinians. As demonstrated earlier this will result in a much greater number of dead and injured Palestinian civilians. The first option is a well-recognized antisemitic fantasy; more dead Jews. The second one asks Israel to cause the very brutalities it accuses Israel of doing. As a false accusation this is also a fantasy. It is a demonic stereotype of a Jew on a killing spree. Those critics condemn Israel for senseless killing but come up with critique that if listen to and acted upon, would produce far more deaths and suffering among the Palestinian civilians. This means that as far as they are concerned, Israel is not living up to that fantasy, of killing more Palestinian civilians. These critics are not stupid. They know Israel won’t act on their advice. This is a desire they are expressing. The desire to see more dead Jews and more dead Palestinians. Their fantasy image of the dead Palestinians is not a product of the realities on the ground. For the bigots this stereotype is a part of their world view. And when reality does not much their convictions, they fall into a cognitive dissonance. When white supremacists find themselves in this situation, by meeting successful black persons, they act according to their standard operating procedure. Violence, and the more the better. For the antisemitically motivated critics of Israel, engaging in violence is not an option. Their standard operating procedure is to argue for their convictions. They use it unethically by using half-truths, misrepresentations of international law, and distorted description of events. And sometimes outright lies. This is also how they try to resolve their cognitive dissonance. Giving a seemingly legitimate critic that if acted upon the results will be far worse than the situation that is been criticized. Seeing this behavior in the current situation. When the death toll among Palestinians is the highest it ever been per conflict, demonstrate how deep that hate goes. No matter how many Palestinians we have killed in-order to defend ourselves, these “critics” need us to kill more. If you don’t believe me, and think that this is a farfetched interpretation, here are 3 more clearer examples of it.

The first one come from UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca P. Albanese. She was a guest of the National Press Club of Australia on the 14 of November 2023. Her speech and the answers she gave to questions from the host and the audience had plenty of antisemitic components. Top among them were, omitting the facts there were Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism prior to October the 7^th. She did acknowledge the horrors of that day but gave it “context.” The now usual line “history did not start on October 7^th”. Which is true, it did not. But it also included a lot of Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism. A selective memory like this is a known characteristic of racist practices. When the victims are Jews, it is antisemitic.

The other top example came when the host pointed out that the only way to know if Israel committed war crimes is to examine every bombing. As he pointed out, it can only be done after the war is over. She avoided the question by not giving a straight answer. Demonstrating that Israel’s “critics” such as herself don’t need evidence or investigation to find it guilty of the worse crimes possible. There is plenty of that in Jewish history.

Like all of Israel’s critics she opposed Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. When asked for alternative, she suggested “using the means of law & order.” She did not specify How. But given the fact that during October the 7^th Hamas was able to take over the police station of the city of Sderot, it is amazing she was able to say that with straight face. A police force cannot arrest a fully armed military or paramilitary force. Only a better armed force can do that i.e. an army. She literally demanded the IDF to engage Hamas while it is hiding in the densely populated areas.  And she is not the first to demand the IDF to inflict more harm on Palestinian civilians.

An earlier example is provided by Joe Stork. He is the deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division in Human Rights Watch. He has a problematic history with Israel, as pointed out by Ben Dror Yemini. He is also one of the people behind HRW report of October 2002, denouncing suicide bombing as a war crime. It is one of 2 reports that came after a long protest over the lack of such reports from the entire human rights community of that era. In this short video he explains why Israel attacking an electric plant that provides electricity for 43% of the population of Gaza is a human rights violation. In the opening he acknowledges that electricity has dual use, military and civilian, and therefore it is a legitimate target. A recognition we won’t find today. So why in this case it is a crime? Simple, according to him Israel had an alternative. Since it provided electricity to the remaining 57% it could just pull down the switch and stop providing that electricity. Somehow denying electricity from 57% of the population is more human than denying it from 43%. It gets worse. He said it could take a year to restore that plant into a working condition, true or false, Israel can shut down the electricity it provided as long as it wanted. He pointed out correctly that because of the attack the 57% had to share the electricity they received from Israel with the 43%, creating a situation where everybody gets electricity for only 8 hours a day. If this was the other way around, it would be 6 hours of electricity each day. And somehow that is the more human option.

Seen this video when it was newer made me realize that something this twisted exist in the culture of Israel’s critics. Since than I have found it mostly on social media, but it is far more commonplace. And a few years ago, it was center stage.

I hope, many still remember the debate in the US congress about funding the replenishing of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. This system needed replenishing after it thwarted over 1,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israeli population centers in May 2021. A faction within the American Democratic Party known as the squad opposed this under the guise of criticizing the Israeli government. This unique air defense system saved the lives of Israelis without killing a single Palestinian. Whatever criticism one may have of an Israeli government and its policies, if the intentions of the critic are sincere, this weapon system should be their lowest priority. If critics think that because of it, Israel allowed itself too much of a free reign over Gaza, a claim I dispute, they should target its air offensive capabilities. Not the air-defense capabilities. Without it, Israel’s air force will have to hasten its response to such missiles’ attacks. This will increase the likelihood of harm to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. If it wouldn’t, more Israelis will be hurt. As I said before, both possibilities are antisemitic fantasies. And there is something very sadistic in forcing someone to choose between the lives of its civilians, and the lives of enemy civilians.

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Philosemitism: Palestine mission in France logo suggests elimination of Israel

Philosemitism: Palestine mission in France logo suggests elimination of Israel

A review of Breaking the Silence testimonies on Operation Cast Lead, Part III

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Manipulation of the witnesses
Did “Breaking the Silence” try to manipulate their witness?
This possibility rises from several places in the booklet.
It starts with a very important question that hasn’t been asked in the booklet or the videos:
What made you come forward?
A necessary prolog when the main theme in each interview supposes to be a confession, yet it is missing. Why?
Only one soldier gives his reason for approaching Breaking the Silence, He does this in a by the way manner, at page 29. He describes the role of the rabbinate unit in the preparations to enter the Gaza Strip. His story is very important to every Israeli; it is a part of an important internal discussion about the relations between religion, military, and politics. His testimony paints a picture of right- wing rabbinic ideologues, with their own separate political agenda, involved in military affairs. This is indeed disturbing, to say the least, but nowhere in the booklet is there any mention of any impact it had on the conduct of the soldiers and the IDF during the fighting. What is clear is that this anonymous soldier approached Breaking the Silence to talk about one thing, those right wing Rabbis, and they, Breaking the Silence, got him to talk about different things, the events inside the Gaza Strip, a related but separate topic.
How did one subject slip into another?
Are these really confessions or just war stories?
Only they can tell us.

And then there is this.
Page 22:
“What do you mean by 'waiting for something to move'? What were your rules of engagement? What were you told at the briefings?”
"Anything looks suspicious to you, open fire."
“What is suspicious? Arms and intent are both valid there, too?”
“Yes. You have to detect weapons, verify that person is not one of ours. If he has something on him, that is grounds enough to…”
“No intent, even without intent.”
“They were assuming that anyone present in a bombed-zone, carrying a Kalashnikov, is no weapons collector.”

This is a fishing attempt by the interviewer. First he is looking for unarmed civilians in this story; when it turns out that they are not available, he tries a question based on the reasoning that armed men in war zone can be considered victims just like unarmed civilians if they don’t have the intention to kill. This is a ludicrous assumption, which the interviewee noticed and made a mockery of.

And from page 14:
“It's a city, you know. Flyers were distributed, but people are bound to be on the move, obviously there would be civilian traffic. It's not a military area. People live there. No one addressed this in briefings? Commanders, anyone? No distinction was to be made between people and civilians, such as would escape in your directions? There are plenty of possible scenarios.”
“That's right. No special mention was made of innocents.”

Enough emphasis was made to clear civilians from 99% of the buildings. There can always be more possible scenarios, and no one can be prepared for all of them. It is the job of the relevant levels of command to assess probable scenarios and make determinations for the troops on the ground. Here the interviewer creates an over emphasis on this issue, when there is no evidence it was needed. And unfortunately here the interviewee fell for this maneuver.

Absurdities
And then there are the absurdities. In pages 21 and 22 a soldier describes what he sees as the inhumane use of white phosphorus in a sandy area near the border, a mostly open region where soldiers do need a smoke-screen cover, such as white phosphorus gives. The only observable victim he could see is the “glazed sand”; no mention of people, animals, domestic or otherwise, vegetation, or structures, just sand.
Is this soldier suggesting that it is inhumane to hurt sand, or worse, that it is inhumane to give his fellow soldiers smoke-screen cover in an open area?
Or maybe he tried to appease the interviewer's expectations for some kind of horror stories, preferably regarding white phosphorus?
Later this soldier will give a favorable description of his past activities in the West Bank, not something we would accept from a soldier who hates the service so much he will argue against giving his fellow soldiers cover from enemy fire.
There is irony here. This soldier describes his experiences in the West Bank as moral and uses them as the standard by which he measures what he saw in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead. The irony is that Breaking the Silence was formed by a group of ex soldiers who decided to break their silence over immoral Israeli conduct they witnessed to in the West Bank, or so they say.

And if he was not an ill wisher, which was never likely in the first place, it is more likely he was manipulated, a possibility supported by another absurdity from page 54:

“Were there people who opened fire without detecting anything? On their own initiative?”
“I think so. I think that there was such a case in the force parallel to us. There was sniper fire. The bullet scratched a soldier's helmet and they began to fire in all directions. We were 200 meters behind, and began to inquire on radio and we were told there was sniper fire against the force.”

Do we realize what these two are saying? A soldier’s helmet was hit by a sniper’s bullet, and thank god nothing worse than that, and yet they claim the soldiers fired without detecting anything. The soldiers may not have identified the exact source of the enemy fire, but they had certainly detected it, or more precisely, it detected them. The absurd here is that grown men can argue such a lopsided absurd reasoning in the first place.

It maybe tempting for us to regard these absurdities with humor, but we must be careful in our judgment. These soldiers are clearly left wing in their political views. That does not make them traitors or malicious, or stupid. They left homes and families, risking their lives to protect other Israeli families in the south part of Israel. They’ve done their duty to the country and people of Israel, and to their fellow soldiers on the battlefield. In various parts of the booklet, they express pride in what they did and tried to. They do deserve our highest respect and gratitude. My point is that political and ideological convictions do affect our relations and feelings toward other people, organizations and ideas, whoever we might be. If something in our worldview has a certain status we either trust it more or trust it less, depending on the status and on our convictions. Here in Israel, some traditional Jews, masoratim, are more likely to trust Jews who are more religious than they are on issues of religion, tradition and morality, because in their worldview the more religious folks know better, especially if they call themselves Rabbis. A trust like this can be so deep a person can eliminate ones own personal judgment. The same is true in the secular world. A left leaning person can regard Breaking the Silence as those who know better than him what is or isn’t a war crime and what is right or wrong in times of war, even though he was there, and they were not. It may seem an absurd but it is human nature and if we examine our behavior we’re likely to find out that we have done that very thing to a greater or lesser degree.

Did Breaking the Silence try to manipulate the general public, in Israel and the rest of the world?
Maybe they didn’t?
But if not, why did they rushed to the foreign media first?
And why did they try to keep the Jerusalem Post military affairs correspondent off the story?
And why did all the hype turn out empty?
Why have they tried to use the relative lack of resistance as an argument that there was no need for all that force to be used in the first place, without at least acknowledging the opposite possibility? After all a case can be made that the presence of this massive force, accompanied by the warning from the flyers, is what made Hamas’ fighters flee the battle and hide in hospitals. A frustrated soldier talks about this at page 58 in the pdf booklet.
Why besides rumors and absurdities, haven't they got a single confirmed case of wrong doing on our part beyond vandalism?
I’m not saying a definite yes to the firat question in this section about manipulation, but if they believe the correct response is "no," they should explain why.
Based on that report is there any real room for concern over Israeli soldiers behavior during Operation Cast Lead?
Definitely.
And not just based on that report.
We Israelis sent our sons and daughters to the battlefield to protect us from monstrous enemies. God willing, war willing, luck willing, we would like them all back alive and unhurt, both physically and mentally. And most definitely not to became monsters. The infuriating accounts of vandalism by Israeli troops, which came from a number of sources, tell us that the evil potential is there, and for our own sake we must confront it and extinguish it. It may not be war crimes, but by our standards it is bad enough.

We Israelis do have some serious soul-searching to do after ‘Cast Lead’ as any other nation with a moral code has to do after any kind of war, but Breaking the Silence has some atoning to do for all those empty allegations.

A review of Breaking the Silence testimonies on Operation Cast Lead, Part II

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The report makes three grave charges besides the allegation that the army relaxed its rules of engagement. An allegation that isn’t substantiated, because in the entire pdf format there isn’t a single case of civilian casualties, witnessed by the testifying soldiers, other than one case of mistaken identity, which even the authors of this report acknowledge as such. Those charges are the use of human shields, the white phosphorus accusation and wanton destraction of houses, buildings and other properties.

Human shields
The 'neighbor procedure', which the witness testifies to on page 2, is not a case of human shields, because the Palestinian civilian in that story does not give the Israeli soldiers cover from enemy fire. He does act as a negotiator between them and the enemy combatants barricaded inside a house. He is a forced negotiator, which is distinctively different from a human shield.

The allegations that locals were compelled to use 5 kg hammers to break walls and then were forced inside at gunpoint by IDF soldiers are rumors. The specific description says that the soldiers were aiming their guns at the civilians' shoulders. The witness heard of it but did not see it. It also doesn’t sound probable; won’t explosives do a better and quicker job, and a safer one for the Israeli soldiers waiting outside? Explosives can shock the combatants hiding inside, while the use of hammers can give them time to escape and booby-trap the army's intended place of entry.


Rumors
The testimonies tell us that there were plenty of rumors going around:

Page 17:
“Rumors ran that our tank was shelled by a mortar. Three hours later someone said to us, Didn't you hear you'd been fired at? We had no idea we were fired at.”

“We heard that company L opened fire a lot, there were rumors around the battalion, can't tell you how true they were, but rumor had it that they had emptied large amounts of ammo together with the infantrymen. Beyond these rumors I don't know what happened or didn't.”

This story on page 14 is not much different from a rumor: “I hear from other crews that they fired at people there. Tried to kill them. The younger guys, eager to raise their score. They seem to think it's cool to wield such power with no one wanting to rein them in.” The witness did not witness this story. He heard of it from people who could have equally invented it, thinking it to be cool to brag about things that did not happen.

Emotions, mindset of the troops and their commanders, personal views and interpretations of the various situations the interviewees were in, which are scattered across the booklet; also do not count as war crimes or wrong doing, or as testimonies of such. Either those witnesses saw a war crime, or some other misdeed, or they did not. Apparently they did not.

White phosphorus
Most white phosphorus accounts are told from a distance, including the one on the cover: "We saw the planes flying out and you see from which building the rocket is launched against Israel and you see the four houses surrounding that building collapsing as soon as the airforce bombs. I don't know if it was white phosphorus or not.”
What the witness saw was an attack on Israeli civilians, common place before and during Operation Cast Lead, answered by Israeli warplanes that dropped something he could not identify. It could be white phosphorus or not. He also couldn’t tell whether civilians were there or not, nor what brought down those buildings. Was it caused by the air attack, or by secondary explosions from weapons and ammo stockpiles on the ground? The rest of the white phosphorus testimonies are the same except this one.

At page 45 there is the only on the scene testimony of the use of white phosphorus by the IDF. It aimed at a house, which army intelligence was confident had a lot of ammo and weapons inside. The purpose of the white phosphors was to ignite it and blow it all up, which it did, confirming decisively the intelligence information. The explosions included several Qassam rockets. Now, does Breaking the Silence claim that this action was illegal or immoral? If so under what wording or interpretation of international law do they base this? Because the purpose of international law, as I understand it to be, is to protect unarmed civilians, not the stockpiles of weapons intended to kill them.

Wanton destruction
There is no doubt there was plenty of destruction in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead, but was it all unnecessary or unavoidable?
This dense urban area is the battlefield chosen by Hamas. They booby-trapped the houses and buildings, turned others into weapons storages and hideout for tunnels, and used their cover to fire rockets, mortars and missiles at Israeli population centers, not to mention against Israeli troops. Could Israel have engaged in battle successfully without destroying those houses and orchards, without denying the enemy the military use of those places? That question isn’t even asked. The focus on the destruction creates the appearance of careless excesses but with no arguments to support it, it could be just an illusion. On the contrary, at pages 48 and 49 a soldier lists the entire reasoning for that destruction. The IDF destroyed houses from which fire was opened on Israeli troops. It destroyed houses that commanded strategic high ground. The high ground is something any army has to deny from its enemy. It’s elementary warfare. This is why rooftops were also targeted (in areas evacuated of civilians) and mosques’ minarets, where snipers could hide. Mosques also were used by Hamas to store weapons. These are all obvious military targets, but Breaking the Silence creates the impression that those were hit on whims of the soldiers and officers on the ground. This is a manipulation of the facts. The question is, who is doing the manipulation, Breaking the Silence, their witnesses, or both?

Same suspicion rises from their description of “Day After” demolitions. Those demolitions happened because of what took place in the days before, when buildings, trees and the like served as immediate hideouts for Qassam launch crews seeking cover immediately after firing their rockets. The Israeli army had the duty to chase those crews in order to protect the civilian population in Israel. And knowing fully that their stay in the Gaza Strip would be short, they tried to ensure as much as possible that the day after they leave won’t be like the days before they went in, and the Qassam crews will have fewer places to hide.
Yes the destruction in the Gaza Strip was vast, but so was the military use Hamas has made of the Gaza Strip civilian infrastructure. Three years earlier, before the disengagement from the strip, when some of those reservists served as conscripts there, that too did not exist in Gaza.

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Breaking the silence over what? A review of Breaking the Silence testimonies on Operation Cast Lead, Part I

A review of the testimonies given by Breaking the Silence, regarding Israel’s military activities in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, found at this BBC link shows that it is not clear what the silence had been broken over, certainly not about war crimes and not about abuse of the local population and not even over relaxed or careless rules of engagement. The hype said one thing. The picture that arises from the carefully read testimonies is different however.

The first matter that surfaced is the complexity of modern warfare, which is undeniably brutal. Coming in the Israeli soldiers and the army knew that the element of surprise was not on their side and they had to compensate for it in the only available way, a massive use of fire. On the battlefield they realized that a significant number of buildings were booby-trapped or hid tunnels and/or weapons caches. With the enemy hiding among civilians the battle was especially harsh on non combatants. But this does not erase the fact that the brutality of warfare is not what determines the morality of a fighting force. The determining factor is the treatment of the vulnerable, the unarmed civilians caught in the crossfire. And here as these testimonies show, there is a stream of consistent exonerating evidences. The testimonies show both that the IDF and its troops to tried to preserve civilians’ lives and and that these efforts succeeded.

Exonerating testimonies
They show how effective the leaflets dropped from airplanes in clearing vulnerable civilian population from operational areas before troops entered:

Page 1 – 2:
“Most people did leave, but some civilians stayed to watch over the houses”.

Page 4:
“We come in from the northwest and wanted to deepen our control towards Israel, in the northeast. Towards Hoovers Road, as it is called, the border with Israel. This was the method: we did not actually see an enemy, nor civilians – we saw absolutely no one.”

Page 8:
“patrolling an empty house, no combatant, no civilians” (no vandalism by Golani or the reservists - DD)

Page 13:
“We went in there, house after house, going around each other every time.
99% of the houses were empty.”

Page 17:
”You reported any suspect movement?”
“There was nothing there. Ghost towns. Except for some livestock, nothing moved.”

Besides the fliers, units on the ground tried to clear the area from civilians every step they took.

Page 13:
“You enter houses with live fire?”
“No. The instruction was to get everyone out of the house or concentrate them in one room. Announce it through loudspeakers. Give it a few minutes, and if the person is not out after 2-5 minutes, whoever is left inside is a dead man. Whoever comes out – assemble them outside or in one of the lower rooms, and then go upstairs with live fire. This was the instruction, and it was not always followed because often the houses were empty. So why waste ammunition? Just shooting for fun? Some people did but this was not always the case. …In general people (Palestinians) came downstairs, we'd order them to go over there, point in some direction and tell them to go there…It was obvious when we went in that the people are not allowed to stay inside the houses. We directed them towards a certain area hoping they wouldn't be hit there.

Page 25:
“So all the villages around there actually…”
“Were almost totally abandoned. I'm sure there were civilians here and there, but not many.”
“You didn't see even one through your binoculars?”
“None. I’m telling you, I saw none, and the guys in my company were telling me and I couldn't figure out if they were pulling my leg. I assume it was the truth.”
“Okay, what about pedestrian traffic?”
“For pedestrian traffic, the entrance was on the road coming out at Sufa Crossing. The whole road was open when the ground offensive began. They bulldozed the track parallel to the road, so it was open for movement.”

Page 64:
”There were many incidents of people, towards the third or fourth day, where you'd be informed on radio or just simply suddenly see in front of you a group of about twenty people walking south with white flags. It's so insane.”
“So when there's information of people with such flags, what do you do?”
“You're told not to open fire. If you get this information, or if there's a report of something humanitarian supposed to pass.”

At pages 25 and 26, the training based "outpost procedure", which gave the troops necessary protection from enemy combatants pretending to be civilians, had a clearing procedure. The soldiers would verify the identity of unidentified persons before they reach the lethal 15 meter "red line" limit surrounding the troops. Then the soldiers would send them indoors.

Page 35-36:
“Suddenly we see an old man, about 60-70 years old. He comes out with a white kerchief and says in Arabic, 'Don't shoot, don't shoot'. About 30 more people follow the old man, all of them in one piece, no one wounded or hit.”

Page 73 describes an episode when the witness’s unit found a diabetic old man in a house whose family left him there because he could not walk. The soldiers shared food with him (some of it was from his house and some of it from the tasteless army supplies) and got the unit’s doctor to examine him.

Even armed enemy combatants were wanted alive:
Page 2:
“I'm not sure either about the 'pressure cooker' procedures there (referring to the use of D9 bulldozers to force barricaded enemy combatants to come outside — DD), they could be different. Essentially the point was to get them out alive, go in, to catch the armed men.”

The Abulaish tragedy
The heartbreaking story of Dr. Abulaish from Beit Hanoon who lost his three daughters to an Israeli tank shell has an echo in this booklet, not of the actual tragedy but of the circumstances that led to it. The Israeli explanation was that the soldiers operating at Beit Hanoon at the time were concerned about enemy lookouts, spotters, directing enemy fire at them, and mistook the family members for such spotters; as the account below show these concerns were not limited just to Beit Hanoon.

Page 47
“What's a lookout?”
“I don't know the exact definition, someone who gives the coordinates to their mortars or snipers, whatever.”
“He's two kilometers away, how do you know he's a lookout?”
“I have, you know, this thermal sighting device, and it picks up weapons and stuff. But who knows, it could be a camera, or binoculars, it could be a cup of coffee, you can't tell.”

With most of the civilian population gone an enemy spotter is a more likely identification, but tragically that is not always the case, and when not even the best of technologies can guarantee accurate identification, accidents will happen. Sadly, no matter how much effort the Israeli side puts into preventing and minimizing the impact of the horrors of war on the local population, it will never be 100% successful. And whether it is 2% or 15% failure, to those concerned it is unimaginably horrific. Nonetheless the evidence is clear that an effort to save civilian lives was made and it was mostly successful. It is important to remember that fact as the current waves of anti Israeli propaganda claim otherwise.

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US Palestine relationships – same old intransigent

The sixth Fatah congress in Bethlehem is now over, passing not surprisingly, hardline intransigent resolutions. The right of return, which is the demand for all of Palestine from the river to the sea, preserving the right to fight by any means, an old slogan that harbors some of the worse atrocities in the past 50 years, Munich, Maalot, Savoi and many, many more. Yes, they’ve said that what they mean this time is the demonstrations along the security barrier at Ne’ilin and Bil’in, but those demonstrations are there to clear away the barrier so Palestinian mass murder organizations will regain the easy access they had to our population centers in order to resume their mass slaughter of our civilians. This time though they added a cherry to their demands, all of Jerusalem including the western part, that which is within Israel proper, within the green line, that part which they tried to take in 1947 and 1948 by trying to starve its 100,000 Jewish residents.
What is left of the Israeli left tried to defend this by calling it starting positions, but these are starting positions since 1993, and when they are that long, they are called intransigent and hardline non-compromising positions.
But the thing is, it is nothing new at all, cause no matter who was in the white house, whether there was a peace process or not, or whether the prestige of a US president was at stake or not, the Palestinians always did something intransigent, something non compromising, or worse, which was contradictory to what a peace process supposed to be.

During the time of George W. Bush we saw Hamas wining the parliamentary elections then taking over violently the Gaza strip, including the Rafah district, which they lost to Fatah.
During the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton, Arafat himself gave the extremist punch line by blowing up the Camp David negations and then many of us israelis. During the time of George H. Bush Arafat allied himself with Saddam Hussein. The era of Roland Reagan began with more katyusha rockets attacks on communities in northern Israel and ended with the formation of Hamas. When jimmy Carter was president they rejected the peace between Israel and Egypt and continued their campaign of mass murder of Israeli civilians inside Israel and abroad as well as against Jewish targets, this was the presidency of Jerald Ford and Richard Nixon. And during the time of Lyndon Johnson the PLO came to be with the charters of 1964 and 1968 that called for the destruction of Israel and the violence to match.




So what’s the deal? What was old becomes new again?

Obama and the Israeli public, So say Haaretz

Haaretz says that in a meeting with Jewish leaders president Barack Obama told them that us Israelis must do some reflections. What a nasty thing to say about us, after all the reflections we did during the Oslo years, and what we got for it, waves after waves of mass murder attacks. But then, that is what Haaretz says he said; no other Israeli newspaper says so.
Haaretz is a good newspaper, on society, law and government, science, environment, etc. until someone or something touch its occupation button, then it becomes the newspaper that advanced Amos Harel’s unfounded war crimes charges, the last major newspaper to realize that anti Semitism plays a major role in the ‘criticism’ of Israel, and the newspaper whose editor had asked then Secretary of State Condoliza Rice to rape Israel into concessions.
This is a newspaper where a dogma resides in it. A dogma so strict it denies the existence of reality, or treat reality as a major annoyance.
But they need reality to confirm their fantasies, they need to rape it into been something else, and since they cannot do it, they ask the American Secretary of State to do it for them; and since they cannot reflect on their own ideological mistakes, as other known Israeli left winger did such as Ari Shavit, Gadi Taub, A. B. Yehoshua and others, the want the Israeli society to reflect on why it cannot agree with them. And since none of this is likely to happen, they need an international authority such as the president of the USA to confirm their dogma. And if they can imagine war crimes where they weren’t, they can imagine words and sentences into the mouth of a US president.

Elucidating the Elucidation, Alex Stein’s guest post at Harry’s Place.

Today Harry’s Place hosted a member of the opposition, Alex Stein from falsedichotomies.com. I call him opposition and not enemy because he does acknowledge that throwing rocks can be lethal, and Israel is justified in its need for a security barrier, (though he wants it as close as possible to the green line, where it is very close to our main communities).
Alex claims he knows the IDF murdered Bassem Abu Rahmeh during the Saturday’s demonstration in Bil’in because he held a tear gas canister in his hand, similar to the one that killed Bassem, and therefore he knows how heavy it is. But what about the firing mechanism Alex, did you check that, do you know if it is easy to handle, especially with “recently introduced canisters’? Does it take a bizarre set of circumstances for a projectile to be fired at a lower height then intended? Or is it just very easy for your dogmatic thought process to find Israeli soldiers guilty of murder?
A “bizarre set of circumstances” Alex, is a stray bullet that went through corners before hitting someone, debris that misses everybody, a rain of fish.

Alex you hold every Israeli soldier guilty of murder due to actions you attribute to few. I don’t recall regular Wehrmacht soldiers been held to such a high standard, no wonder you’ve backed down from this statement in talkbacks. But if you still hold to that sweeping generalization, what that makes you Alex, You and your movement? For your failure in condemning terrorism and incitement, for not offering an alternative to the security barrier, you and your people weren’t even able to think of the idea of getting a single Palestinian from those living along the barrier route, just one, to call to those terrorists and say “not through my land”. By your own logic Alex you are just as guilty as Hamas and the other Palestinian mass murder organizations. You Alex are a butcher and a torturer of hundreds and thousands of Israelis, a slayer of families.

When ludicrousness stops being funny, the Guardian Gaza report.

I thought there is little more to add on the Guardian videos accusing the IDF of war crimes during the Gaza operation, given what has already been written in ZioNation in the Jerusalem Post, by the indispensable Melanie Philips, and more, and more. And more as these lines are been written, but apparently, there is more to add.

In the first video I was struck by the Guardian decision to go to the Israeli website ‘Shavuz’ for technical information about the capabilities of Israel's unmanned drones. Shavuz is Hebrew slang for ‘worn-out’ or overworked. The site serves primarily as a service for soldiers before enlisting and before rejoining civilian life. It gives advice on jobs, and academic courses along with social interactions in forums, exchange of war stories, and other army life experiences. IT IS NOT a supplier of professional information on Israel’s technological capabilities; there are plenty of other sites and publications for that, many of them in English. Using ‘Shavuz’ for information on technology is the equivalent of using the ‘London Employment Help Center’ for information on the electronics of the London Tube. It is simply ludicrous; unfortunately there is nothing here to laugh at.
This (Hebrew) link from ‘Shavuz’ would have given the Guardian part of the answer to their repeated question as to why so many civilians were hurt. In it Israeli pilots recall how Hamas operatives were dressed as women so the Israeli forces won’t fire on them.
This is either bad journalism or selective journalism on behalf of the Guardian.
What the Guardian does give us, unselectively, is an all out pseudo legal assault on our UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles).
The UAVs are one of the more successful Qassam hunters we’ve got, but contrary to what the Guardian implies, they are not foolproof; no technology is. And the more it is used the more likely it is to go wrong. Missiles can veer off, equipment can wear-down from overuse, and mistaken identification is likely to occur when conditions are not ideal: from the weather or from various structures that are blocking the view. An expert on those technologies can undoubtedly add a few more faults.
Problems exist also in the documented cases of death attributed to the drones. In the first one, members of a large family that was drinking tea in a confined space, closed by walls, were able to see the drone that attacked them as it did so. With their yard wall surrounding much of their view, how could they know for sure it was not a rocket or another projectile fired at the same time the drone was there?
In the other incident, where two young women were supposedly killed by a missile fired from a drone, the eyewitness had shown the reporter a small hole in the ground, supposedly from the missile but with no signs of fire around it. Is that what a missile attack looks like? What has the reporter done in order to find out from professional independent sources what such a missile attack looks like in the first place? Isn’t it puzzling that a killer missile will leave no signs of fire?
The problem in those two accounts is not the credibility of the witnesses but the quality of the Guardian’s research. Indeed the major hole in the Guardian credibility is their opening statement that in 3 weeks they had investigated numerous incidents. Just how much time they gave a single case, a day, an hour, or did they came to Gaza with an army of investigators? That claim is obviously preposterous, but it is a part of a very, vary serious matter.
An ominous question now arises regarding the Guardian's motives in going after a weapon that was able to help keep down the kill rate of the Qassam rockets, thus keeping civilian casualties low.

The second video dealt with the human-shields accusations. Some of the holes in its credibility were picked quickly by previous critiques. The idea that an intact copy of an Israeli journal from 2 years ago recording an earlier arrest of one of the family members testifying in the video, was supposedly forgotten there by Israeli soldiers, is indeed peculiar. A more likely explanation is that the family kept the old copy as a record of their son's ‘resistance’. And another peculiarity, according to the three brothers, the heroes of the second video, the Israeli army first used civilians as human shields, and then sent them into Israel for interrogation. Now, does that make sense? Why put the lives of the detainees at risk if they are needed later for interrogation? And could it be that that line of tanks was just a place to gather the detainees before deciding who will be released and who will be send to Israel for further inquiry? Remember, Gaza is mostly dense urban environment, ideal for guerrillas, where tanks have difficulties in maneuvering, especially as groups. Therefore if this was a line of tanks it had to have been located away from the main fighting. If that was the case, which is most likely given the conditions of fighting in Gaza, then the detainees were where human shields are less needed. Plus, tanks have their own shields.

The video also shows recorded cases of what is supposedly the use of ‘human shields’ by the IDF. This allegation is something, which the Israeli authorities failed to properly address. Most of the pictures failed to show where the threat to the soldiers comes from, and how the civilians in the pictures can become effective shields given the type of threats that can come in those mostly urban environments, and the civilian’s distances from the soldiers.
Most of those pictures come from the time of ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ when the Israeli army began cleaning the West Bank from cells of mass murder organizations. They refer to what was known as ‘neighbor procedure’. This procedure was labeled human shield by various groups, but when studied thoroughly, from Betselem's own accounts, it turns out that these civilians acted as negotiators between the IDF and Palestinian gunmen barricading inside homes. Those were negotiators by force, at gun point, and do carry their own set of moral problems, but at the same time they helped defuse many of those situations, cutting down the number of casualties on both sides. As problematic as the ‘forced negotiators’ cases are, they are not human shields.
One of the accusing pictures continues the Guardian line of preposterousness.



In the picture, which is a part of a bigger scene, a Palestinian detainee is pressed against a cement pillar by a sturdy Israeli soldier.


Now: a common sense question, if a grenade or a Molotov cocktail, were to explode over there, or large number of bullets fired at that direction, who is more likely to get hurt, the detainee, covered by cement on one side and a large soldier on the other? - Or the soldiers in his vicinity?
Another picture carries its own dubious history. It is a part of the Mohammed Badwan Myth using a name that had apparently recurred under similar circumstances in various times and places across the WB, since this picture was taken.



Three things do come clear from that picture:
1- That it is UNCLEAR where is the threat to the boy.
2- That it is UNCLEAR whether the boy is angry or crying.
3- That it is CLEAR that the jeep engine isn’t hot, or else the boy would have been in pain, since jeans are not known to be heat isolators. Which means the jeep hasn’t moved and isn’t planning to move.


As for the reporter's claim that no proof has been found of Hamas using human shields, perhaps he should check this BBC story with pictures, that records the use of human shields by Hamas.

The third video accuses Israel of deliberately firing on medical personnel. Here three unmentioned issues meet. One, the claim the IDF gave no explanation as to why medical personnel were fired at is as false as it could possibly get. Throughout the recent Intifada, including ‘Operation Cast Lead’ Israeli officials complained about Palestinian gunmen using medical transport and their personnel to hide weapons and fighters, and that includes during combat situations, about Hamas officials hiding in hospitals and pretending to be doctors, and countless other similar accusations. Second – this is another subject that sheds light on the key differences between a society that gives human lives high priority, Israel, and the one that doesn’t, Hamas. In Israel, bitter experience had thought to keep medical and fire and rescue personnel out of a battle zone until the area is secure. This is why no paramedics or firemen are allowed into burning buses, until the bomb disposal unit makes sure there are no more bombs in the bus. And that is why Palestinian and international medical personnel were kept from attending the wounded of the battle of Jenin, until the Israeli army dismantled all or most boobby-traps there. Third, a means for Palestinian medics to coordinate with the IDF the evacuation of wounded Palestinians had existed during the last Intifada. These were the liaison offices between the Israeli authorities and the PA, but they were cancelled by Hamas. So why did the Israeli army fire on medical personnel? Because it had no means of verifying their identity during on going battles and skirmishes, and they had no means of communicating their problems to us.
All these leave the Guardian report with shaky credibility and the aura of questionable motives.

A brouhaha of ‘ifs’ and one confirmed accident.

That is the best way to describe the hype that preceded Shelah & Druker video clip edited news piece on IDF ‘war crimes’ in Gaza during operation ‘Cast Lead’. (Aired on Israel’s channel 10 at 20.00 Friday the 20th of March).
“If there were civilians up there they had no chance…” quoted a soldier named Danny, “IF”. ‘If’ is a lot of things, mostly possibilities, war crimes are certainties – either there was or there wasn’t a war crime. And if the witness doesn’t even know if there were civilians there in the first place, then he is no witness.
Most of the accusations regarding unlawful deaths of civilians were quoted ‘ifs’. If the purpose of bringing them up was not to introduce them as war crimes, but to emphasize the leniency of the opening fire regulation, which they claim existed, then that is a separated discussion, related but separated. It is a long and complex discussion that starts with all the preemptive measures taken by the IDF to clear civilians from areas of operation and ends with the multiple life threatening situations a soldier on the field can find himself in.

The one case of confirmed killing of civilians by the IDF they did bring was an accident. An old women and a child misunderstood army instruction and instead of turning to the right, were it was safe; they went to left were a sniper was on the lookout for threats to soldiers in the area. The sniper shot them dead. The argument against him, he had a clear sight of them in his aiming scope.
Did he?
Could he look into their minds to see if they were there by accident or as Hamas spotters informing hiding Hamas gunmen where our soldiers are?
Could he have looked underneath their close for hidden explosives?
This accident happened because officers in charge of the civilian’s evacuation failed to inform him and him about these civilians who accidentally went the wrong way. And if Hamas hadn’t used civilians so scrupulously and systematically, this accident would not have happen in the first place.
This tragic incident tells another story: one of the arguments against the IDF treatment of civilians was that while on one hand civilians were evacuated from buildings were military activity took place, on the other hand, there were orders to shot at every movement in sight in the open areas. This suggested that the Israeli army was evacuating civilians into the kill zones it had created. But this tragic story tells us that there were safe zones to prevent such things. And therefore the implied accusation was unfounded.

But one grave matter of criminal activity by Israeli soldiers did come up, vandalism and disrespect of property. While such criminal activity is minuscule compared to the charges of “war crimes” and “wanton killing of civilians” it’s still a grave matter to us Israelis. An army of vandals is an army that cannot keep its troops in order. An army without order is no army at all, no army no defense.
While the subject of maintaining our armed forces morality got bad reputation due to hearsay accusations and hearsay journalism, it did not diminished the importance of our actual moral conduct in battle. Because if we neglect this matter a day will come and such accusations will not be hearsay or fantasies, it is a dreadful day when we will not only resemble our enemies in conduct and morality but in military performance as well. And we cannot afford any serious defeat.