On The Wrong Side by Uri Avneri
OF ALL the beautiful phrases in Barack Obama's inauguration speech, these are the words
that stuck in my mind: "You are on the wrong side of history."
He was talking about the tyrannical regimes of the world. But we, too, should ponder these
words
In the last few days I have heard a lot of declarations from Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni,
Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert. And every time, these eight words came back to haunt
me: "You are on the wrong side of history!"
Obama was speaking as a man of the 21st century. Our leaders speak the language of the
19th century. They resemble the dinosaurs which once terrorized their neighborhood and
were quite unaware of the fact that their time had already passed.
DURING THE rousing celebrations, again and again the multicolored patchwork of the new
president's family was mentioned.
All the preceding 43 presidents were white Protestants, except John Kennedy, who was a
white Catholic. 38 of them were the descendants of immigrants from the British isles. Of
the other five, three were of Dutch ancestry (Theodor and Franklin D. Roosevelt , as well
as Martin van Buren) and two of German descent (Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower.)
The face of Obama's family is quite different. The extended family includes whites and the
descendents of black slaves, Africans from Kenya, Indonesians, Chinese from Canada,
Christians, Muslims and even one Jew (a converted African-American). The two first names
of the president himself, Barack Hussein, are Arabic.
This is the face of the new American nation - a mixture of races, religions, countries of
origin and skin-colors, an open and diverse society, all of whose members are supposed to
be equal and to identify themselves with the "founding fathers". The
American Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was born in a Kenyan village, can speak with
pride of "George Washington, the father of our nation", of the "American
Revolution" (the war of independence against the British), and hold up the example of
"our ancestors", who include both the white pioneers and the black slaves who
"endured the lash of the whip". That is the perception of a modern nation,
multi-cultural and multi-racial: a person joins it by acquiring citizenship, and from this
moment on is the heir to all its history.
Israel is the product of the narrow nationalism of the 19th century, a nationalism that
was closed and exclusive, based on race and ethnic origin, blood and earth. Israel is a
"Jewish State", and a Jew is a person born Jewish or converted according to
Jewish religious law (Halakha). Like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, it is a state whose mental
world is to a large extent conditioned by religion, race and ethnic origin.
When Ehud Barak speaks about the future, he speaks the language of past centuries, in
terms of brute force and brutal threats, with armies providing the solution to all
problems. That was also the language of George W. Bush who last week slinked out of
Washington, a language that already sounds to the Western ear like an echo from the
distant past.
The words of the new president are ringing in the air: "Our power alone cannot
protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please." The key words were
"humility and restraint".
Our leaders are now boasting about their part in the Gaza War, in which unbridled military
force was unleashed intentionally against a civilian population, men, women and children,
with the declared aim of "creating deterrence". In the era that began last
Tuesday, such expressions can only arouse shudders.
BETWEEN Israel and the United States a gap has opened this week, a narrow gap, almost
invisible - but it may widen into an abyss.
The first signs are small. In his inaugural speech, Obama proclaimed that "We are a
nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and nonbelievers." Since when?
Since when do the Muslims precede the Jews? What has happened to the "Judeo-Christian
Heritage"? (A completely false term to start with, since Judaism is much closer to
Islam than to Christianity. For example: neither Judaism nor Islam supports the separation
of religion and state.)
The very next morning, Obama phoned a number of Middle East leaders. He decided to
make a quite unique gesture: placing the first call to Mahmoud Abbas, and only the next to
Olmert. The Israeli media could not stomach that. Haaretz, for example, consciously
falsified the record by writing - not once but twice in the same issue - that Obama had
called "Olmert, Abbas, Mubarak and King Abdallah" (in that order).
Instead of the group of American Jews who had been in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama, on his very first day in
office, appointed an Arab-American, George Mitchell, whose mother had come to America from
Lebanon at age 18, and who himself, orphaned from his Irish father, was brought up in a
Maronite Christian Lebanese family.
These are not good tidings for the Israeli leaders. For the last 42 years, they have
pursued a policy of expansion, occupation and settlements in close cooperation with
Washington. They have relied on unlimited American support, from the massive supply of
money and arms to the use of the veto in the Security Council. This support was essential
to their policy. This support may now be reaching its limits.
It will happen, of course, gradually. The pro-Israel lobby in Washington will continue to
put the fear of God into Congress. A huge ship like the United States can change course
only very slowly, in a gentle curve. But the turn-around started already on the first day
of the Obama administration.
This could not have happened, if America itself had not changed. That is not a political
change alone. It is a change in the world-view, in mental outlook, in values. A certain
American myth, which is very similar to the Zionist myth, has been replaced by another
American myth. Not by accident did Obama devote to this so large a part of his speech (in
which, by the way, there was not a single word about the extermination of the Native
Americans).
The Gaza War, during which tens of millions of Americans saw the horrible carnage in the
Strip (even if rigorous self-censorship cut out all but a tiny part), has hastened the
process of drifting apart. Israel, the brave little sister, the loyal ally in Bush's
"War on Terror", has turned into the violent Israel, the mad monster, which has
no compassion for women and children, the wounded and the sick. And when winds like these
are blowing, the Lobby loses height.
The leaders of official Israel do not notice it. They do not feel, as Obama put it in
another context, that "the ground has shifted beneath them". They think that
this is no more than a temporary political problem that can be set right with the help of
the Lobby and the servile members of Congress.
Our leaders are still intoxicated with war and drunk with violence. They have re-phrased
the famous saying of the Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz into: "War is but a
continuation of an election campaign by other means." They compete with each other
with vainglorious swagger for their share of the "credit". Tzipi Livni, who
cannot compete with the men for the crown of warlord, tries to outdo them in toughness, in
bellicosity, in hard-heartedness.
The most brutal is Ehud Barak. Once I called him a "peace criminal", because he
brought about the failure of the 2000 Camp David conference and shattered the Israeli
peace camp. Now I must call him a "war criminal", as the person who planned the
Gaza War knowing that it would murder masses of civilians.
In his own eyes, and in the eyes of a large section of the public, this is a military
operation which deserves all praise. His advisors also thought that it would bring him
success in the elections. The Labor party, which had been the largest party in the Knesset
for decades, had shrunk in the polls to 12, even 9 seats out of 120. With the help of the
Gaza atrocity it has now gone up to 16 or so. That's not a landslide, and there's no
guarantee that it will not sink again.
What was Barak's mistake? Very simply: every war helps the Right. War, by its very nature,
arouses in the population the most primitive emotions - hate and fear, fear and hate.
These are the emotions on which the Right has been riding for centuries. Even when it's
the "Left" that starts a war, it's still the Right that profits from it. In a
state of war, the population prefers an honest-to-goodness Rightist to a phony Leftist.
This is happening to Barak for the second time. When, in 2000, he spread the mantra
"I have turned every stone on the way to peace, / I have made the Palestinians
unprecedented offers, / They have rejected everything, / There is no one to talk
with" - he succeeded not only in blowing the Left to smithereens, but also in paving
the way for the ascent of Ariel Sharon in the 2001 elections. Now he is paving the way for
Binyamin Netanyahu (hoping, quite openly, to become his minister of defense).
And not only for him. The real victor of the war is a man who had no part in it at all:
Avigdor Liberman. His party, which in any normal country would be called fascist, is
steadily rising in the polls. Why? Liberman looks and sounds like an Israeli Mussolini, he
is an unbridled Arab-hater, a man of the most brutal force. Compared to him, even
Netanyahu looks like a softie. A large part of the young generation, nurtured on years of
occupation, killing and destruction, after two atrocious wars, considers him a worthy
leader.
WHILE THE US has made a giant jump to the left, Israel is about to jump even further to
the right.
Anyone who saw the millions milling around Washington on inauguration day knows that Obama
was not speaking only for himself. He was expressing the aspirations of his people, the
Zeitgeist.
Between the mental world of Obama and the mental world of Liberman and Netanyahu there is
no bridge. Between Obama and Barak and Livni, too, there yawns an abyss. Post-election
Israel may find itself on a collision course with post-election America.
Where are the American Jews? The overwhelming majority of them voted for Obama. They will
be between the hammer and the anvil - between their government and their natural adherence
to Israel. It is reasonable to assume that this will exert pressure from below on the
"leaders" of American Jewry, who have incidentally never been elected by anyone,
and on organizations like AIPAC. The sturdy stick, on which Israeli leaders are used to
lean in times of trouble, may prove to be a broken reed.
Europe, too, is not untouched by the new winds. True, at the end of the war we saw the
leaders of Europe - Sarkozy, Merkel, Browne and Zapatero - sitting like schoolchildren
behind a desk in class, respectfully listening to the most loathsome arrogant posturing
from Ehud Olmert, reciting his text after him. They seemed to approve the atrocities of
the war, speaking of the Qassams and forgetting about the occupation, the blockade and the
settlements. Probably they will not hang this picture on their office walls.
But during this war masses of Europeans poured into the streets to demonstrate against the
horrible events. The same masses saluted Obama on the day of his inauguration.
This is the new world. Perhaps our leaders are now dreaming of the slogan: "Stop the
world, I want to get off!" But there is no other world.
YES, WE ARE NOW on the wrong side of history.
Fortunately, there is also another Israel. It is not in the limelight, and its voice is
heard only by those who listen out for it. This is a sane, rational Israel, with its face
to the future, to progress and peace. In these coming elections, its voice will barely be
heard, because all the old parties are standing with their two feet squarely in the world
of yesterday.
But what has happened in the United States will have a profound influence on what happens
in Israel. The huge majority of Israelis know that we cannot exist without close ties with
the US. Obama is now the leader of the world, and we live in this world. When he promises
to work "aggressively" for peace between us and the Palestinians, that is a
marching order for us.
We want to be on the right side of history. That will take months or years, but I am sure
that we shall get there. The time to start is now.
********************************************************************
Gideon Levy / Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel
By Gideon Levy
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057670.html
On the morrow of the return of the last Israeli soldier from Gaza, we can determine with
certainty that they had all gone out there in vain. This war ended in utter failure for
Israel.
This goes beyond the profound moral failure, which is a grave matter in itself, but
pertains to its inability to reach its stated goals. In other words, the grief is not
complemented by failure. We have gained nothing in this war save hundreds of graves, some
of them very small, thousands of maimed people, much destruction and the besmirching of
Israel's image.
What seemed like a predestined loss to only a handful of people at the onset of the war
will gradually emerge as such to many others, once the victorious trumpeting subsides.
The initial objective of the war was to put an end to the firing of Qassam rockets. This
did not cease until the war's last day. It was only achieved after a cease-fire had
already been arranged. Defense officials estimate that Hamas still has 1,000 rockets.
The war's second objective, the prevention of smuggling, was not met either. The head of
the Shin Bet security service has estimated that smuggling will be renewed within two
months.
Most of the smuggling that is going on is meant to provide food for a population under
siege, and not to obtain weapons. But even if we accept the scare campaign concerning the
smuggling with its exaggerations, this war has served to prove that only poor quality,
rudimentary weapons passed through the smuggling tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip to
Egypt.
Israel's ability to achieve its third objective is also dubious. Deterrence, my foot. The
deterrence we supposedly achieved in the Second Lebanon War has not had the slightest
effect on Hamas, and the one supposedly achieved now isn't working any better: The
sporadic firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip has continued over the past few days.
The fourth objective, which remained undeclared, was not met either. The IDF has not
restored its capability. It couldn't have, not in a quasi-war against a miserable and
poorly-equipped organization relying on makeshift weapons, whose combatants barely put up
a fight.
The spread of Liebermanism
By Haaretz Editorial Friday, January 23 2009
Tags: Israel, arabs, Lieberman, Israel
This week, the Supreme Court accepted a petition by two Arab Knesset factions - Balad and
United Arab List-Ta'al - and overturned the Central Elections Commission's decision to bar
them from running in the upcoming elections. This ruling, which did not ignore the
problematic elements of both parties' platforms, rescued the political system from the
disgrace it inflicted on itself and the voting public by disqualifying these slates.
As always, the bid to disqualify the parties came from members of the extreme right, and
they are also the ones who heaped unbridled criticism on the court's decision. Most
prominent among them was Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman, who shouted at MK
Ahmed Tibi, "Some of the Arab MKs should be dealt with like Hamas."
Lieberman, though he works tirelessly to disenfranchise Arab politicians - and, in effect,
the entire Arab public - is not the most extreme. Baruch Marzel, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Effi
Eitam are even less restrained when it comes to the rights of Israeli Arabs. But it is
Lieberman, whose vision and platform seem to be rational and well thought out, who is
actually the greater danger to democracy. The Central Elections Commission's sweeping
consensus in favor of disqualifying the Arab parties - which even included Kadima and the
Labor Party - is bitter proof of this.
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Granted, Labor's response team argued vehemently that MK Eitan Cabel's vote on the
commission in favor of disqualification violated the party's principles and did not
reflect the majority's views. But to this day, party chairman Ehud Barak has yet to make
his views on the subject known. And while Kadima likes to describe itself as a centrist
party, its leaders, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, did not hesitate to vote in
favor of disqualification.
Lieberman's dangerous and anti-democratic worldview has thus succeeded in infecting the
centrist stream of Israeli politics, and that is reflected in the statements of
politicians who are considered relatively moderate.
The ridiculous idea of demanding loyalty tests for Arab citizens as a condition for
obtaining basic civil rights is being treated as a legitimate option in the corridors of
the Knesset. So is the desire to transfer towns in the Triangle region, along with their
residents, to the future state of Palestine as part of a "repartition" of the
country.
Ideas that no one would have dared let cross their lips 10 or 20 years ago, lest they be
thought utter fascists, have been bolstered in recent months by the war in the south. It
seems that Israeli Arabs are once again paying the price of the bloody struggle between
Israel and its neighbors. And populist politicians seeking to ingratiate themselves with
an inflamed public are once again using the Arabs as a punching bag, along the lines of
"stick it to the Arabs and salvage the party in the polls."
Now that the court has overturned the disqualification decision, the leading candidates
must publicly disavow this spreading Liebermanism and its racist characteristics. Any
other response would constitute an undemocratic and immoral disqualification of Israel's
Arab citizens.
The heroic descriptions and victory poems written abut the "military triumph"
will not serve to change reality. The pilots were flying on training missions and the
ground forces were engaged in exercises that involved joining up and firing weapons.
The describing of the operation as a "military achievement" by the various
generals and analysts who offered their take on the operation is plain ridiculous.
We have not weakened Hamas. The vast majority of its combatants were not harmed and
popular support for the organization has in fact increased. Their war has intensified the
ethos of resistance and determined endurance. A country which has nursed an entire
generation on the ethos of a few versus should know to appreciate that by now. There was
no doubt as to who was David and who was Goliath in this war.
The population in Gaza, which has sustained such a severe blow, will not become more
moderate now. On the contrary, the national sentiment will now turn more than before
against the party which inflicted that blow - the State of Israel. Just as public opinion
leans to the right in Israel after each attack against us, so it will in Gaza following
the mega-attack that we carried out against them.
If anyone was weakened because of this war, it was Fatah, whose fleeing from Gaza and its
abandonment have now been given special significance. The succession of failures in this
war needs to include, of course, the failure of the siege policy. For a while, we have
already come to realize that is ineffective. The world boycotted, Israel besieged and
Hamas ruled (and is still ruling).
But this war's balance, as far as Israel is concerned, does not end with the absence of
any achievement. It has placed a heavy toll on us, which will continue to burden us for
some time. When it comes to assessing Israel's international situation, we must not allow
ourselves to be fooled by the support parade by Europe's leaders, who came in for a
photo-op with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Israel's actions have dealt a serious blow to public support for the state. While this
does not always translate itself into an immediate diplomatic situation, the shockwaves
will arrive one day. The whole world saw the images. They shocked every human being who
saw them, even if they left most Israelis cold.
The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints
and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not
giving a hoot about international law. The investigations are on their way.
Graver still is the damage this will visit upon our moral spine. It will come from
difficult questions about what the IDF did in Gaza, which will occur despite the blurring
effect of recruited media.
So what was achieved, after all? As a war waged to satisfy considerations of internal
politics, the operation has succeeded beyond all expectations. Likud Chair Benjamin
Netanyahu is getting stronger in the polls. And why? Because we could not get enough of
the war.
Biographical Note:
Prof. Oren Yiftachel teaches political geography and urban planning at Ben-Gurion
University, Beersheba. Yiftachel has written extensively on the political geography of
ethnic conflict. Among his books: "Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in
Israel/Palestine" (2006, PennPress), and "Israelis in Conflict" (ed, 2004,
Sussex Academic Press)... He is an occasional contributor to Israel's leading newspapers
"Haaretz" and "Ynet". Yiftachel is an active member in several
peace and civil society organizations, including B'tselem, the Bedouin Council of
unrecognized villages, Adva and a founding member of Faculty for Israel-Palestine Peace
(FFIPP).
RETURNING TIME TO GAZANS
Oren Yiftachel[i]
The sights of death and destruction from Gaza are devastating, and the residents of
southern Israel are under on-going bombardment. The situation is suffocating, saddening
and infuriating. In such a time it may be difficult to look beyond the violence, but this
may be necessary to understand what is transpiring in front of our eyes.
An aboriginal author once said, during the struggle for native rights in Australia:
"wherever national territory advances, our time is killed, but it also has a strange
habit of returning after death."
It may seem far removed, but this insight can help us fathom the war on Gaza. Beyond the
carnage, brutality, and screaming children, we can also see it as the continuation of the
Israeli territorial project which has adopted a consistent and cruel goal - the erasure of
Palestinian time, that is, the full recent history of this land. This erasure, needless to
say, is aimed at destroying Palestinian space, in what Palestinian professor Sari Hanafi
calls 'spaciocide'. With this destruction comes the annihilation of political powers,
those existing by right, and not as a result of some Israeli 'generosity'.
Accordingly, one may look at the current invasion to Gaza not only as an 'operation' to
stop Hamas' rockets; a pre-election effort to boost popularity by cynical Israeli leaders;
nor an attempt to re-establish Israel's deterrence following the failure of the second
Lebanon War of 2006. This invasion and destruction of Gaza is neither only a colonial
attempt to 'create a new political order' among neighboring nations, or an imperial
(American-Israeli) push to control insurgent Arab societies. The current attack on Gaza is
of course all these, but also - and most importantly, another step in the long-standing
project of silencing, fragmenting, breaking and annihilating Palestinian history and
collective existence. The erasure project is conducted by nearly everybody in Israel -
politicians, artists, the media, university researchers and intellectuals.
Against the efforts of collective amnesia, let us remember: the Gaza Strip is a
small region covering only 1.7% of historic Palestine. It was created as an entity
following the 1948 war, known as the Nakbah (Palestinian disaster), during which some two
thirds of Palestinians refugees were driven out from what is now Israel, with 150,000 of
them joining the 60,000 Arabs already residing in the area. The armistice lines were drawn
between Israeli and Egypt, with the refugees trapped on the 'wrong side', and prevented
from returning to their villages. In the meantime, Israel destroyed nearly all Arab
villages from Jaffa to Beersheba, appropriated all Palestinian land and allocated it to
the dozens of Jewish towns and settlements built around Gaza.
The refugee population in Gaza today amounts to more than a million (over two thirds
of the Strip's population). Its spatial conditions have worsened dramatically, with
overcrowding, poverty, lack of services and a growing regime of geographic constraints.
Israel's conquest in 1967 eased for a while the sense of siege, but following the first
Intifada, and further since the Oslo Agreement, Gaza was cordoned once more, cut off from
the rest of the Palestinian Territories and the world, and surrounded in 1994 by a massive
'security fence', ironically as part of the 'peace process'. Gaza became a large
Palestinian Ghetto, or as notable Gaza Eyad el-Sarraj quipped: "the largest jail in
the world.".
This is the background for the rise of Hamas, which offered an alternative to the
failed Oslo accords under which the promise to peace turned into a Palestinian 'Via
Dolorosa'. Hamas refused to believe the promise of 'two states for two nations', which has
become an empty slogan, enabling the endless continuation of Jewish settlement and Israeli
colonial occupation. Hamas also gave voice and political weight for the refugees by
appointing Ismail Haniya - - resident of the Shati Camp, as its first Prime Minister. This
move was conducted against a corrupt Palestinian political elite, trapped within the Oslo
framework, which prevented it from dealing with the refugee issue, thereby silencing again
the recent history of this land.
True, the shelling of Israeli towns by Hamas should be condemned as an act of
terror, and as a disastrous political strategy with grave consequences to the Palestinian
people. But beyond this, we should understand it as a desperate attempt to remind the
world, Israel, and even the Arab world, that the refugee problem is still alive - an open
wound awaiting to be healed by the forces that created it -- first and foremost Israel.
Against this on-going cry, Israel typically decided to escape engaging with the
issue, and is now conducting a campaign of state-sanctioned terror, against Gazan society.
Hence the brutal violence that aims to divide, cut, kill and injure. But even tons
of bombs and piles of 'cast lead' cannot silence the echo of history. Israel's mighty
military power is weak politically and morally and will not prevent the return of native
time, even after its pronounced death, as predicted by the Aboriginal author.
The moral is clear: the genuine cessation of violence must pass through the return
of time to our public and political life, that is, the opening of a genuine debate over
the history that created and maintained Gaza and other Palestinian ghettoes controlled
violently by Israel. Without that, we may realize time and again that our enormous
military power buys no genuine security. During such a debate, the refugee issue will be
foremost on the agenda, but it will also have to engage with the Jews' own history of
dislocation and disaster, and the making of a safe Jewish place in an Arab Middle East.
The return of Palestinian time, therefore, is necessary for the recognition of
Jewish time, and for the two nations to find a way to coexist in their common homeland.
Hence, we must replace territory with history as the core of Palestinian-Jewish
engagement, and thereby enter, perhaps, a time of reconciliation.
**************************************************************
The war that wasn't
By Reuven Pedatzur
Tags: israel news, hamas, IDF, gaza
It is very dangerous for the Israel Defense Forces to believe it won the war when there
was no war. The expressions of satisfaction and praise for the war's outcome voiced by the
army's top brass may lead the IDF to draw the wrong conclusions. Contrary to the image
portrayed by reports in the Israeli media - asserting that the IDF's performance in the
war was near-perfect and that the army adopted the lessons from the Second Lebanon War -
in reality, not a single battle was fought during the 22 days of fighting.
The Hamas fighters did not even try to stop the IDF soldiers who entered the Strip, opting
to withdraw without a fight. The challenge the soldiers were faced with in their advance
on Gaza City was not - as senior command had said prior to the operation - hand-to-hand
combat with determined fighters, armed to the teeth and willing to die, but the need to
find booby traps and explosives, and occasionally to neutralize individual snipers as
well. This is not war. It is not even a real battle.
There is nothing in common between the sort of combat adopted by the IDF during Operation
Cast Lead and what happened in the battles of the Second Lebanon War. Therefore, the
argument that the Gaza fighting proves that the IDF has adopted the lessons of that war
lacks foundation. True, the soldiers were better equipped, the commanders were in the
field and not stuck behind plasma screens, and the intelligence was a lot better than in
2006. But all this does not alter the fact that what happened in the Strip was essentially
a military operation characterized by advancing forces in hostile territory, densely
populated by civilians, without facing a military force.
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At the start of the ground offensive, senior command decided to avoid endangering the
lives of soldiers, even at the price of seriously harming the civilian population. This is
why the IDF made use of massive force during its advance in the Strip. As a Golani brigade
commander explained, if there is any concern that a house is booby-trapped, even if it is
filled with civilians, it should be targeted and hit, to ensure that it is not mined -
only then should it be approached. Without going into the moral aspects, such fighting
tactics explain why there were no instances in which there was a need to assault homes
where Hamas fighters were holed up.
Other outcomes of this fighting method were the extensive damage and the deaths of many
civilians. According to IDF statistics, almost two thirds of Palestinians killed were
civilians. Moreover, even though it was one of the war's aims, hardly any Hamas fighters
were taken prisoner, and the holding center set up to imprison them remained almost empty.
The Israel Air Force, too, received a great deal of praise. The media asserted that during
Cast Lead it proved that it is the world's best air force. While the IAF's quality is
beyond dispute, it would be a serious mistake to bolster such a claim on the basis of its
activity in the Gaza Strip. The planes operated in an environment free of air defenses,
enjoying complete aerial superiority. A flight over the Strip and a mostly
"accurate" bombing run, which can be dropped from a relatively short range, is
not a complicated mission. The flights over Gaza are like test flights, which every pilot
does dozens of times a year.
The IDF should relate to its performance in Operation Cast Lead with the necessary
humility and proportionality. There was no war there.
Israel to grant legal aid to IDF troops accused of Gaza war crimes
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel, Gaza, War crimes
The government on Sunday ratified a bill granting aid and support to Israel Defense Forces
officers in cases where they face suits for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.
"Israel will give full support to everyone who operated for it and on behalf of it.
The commanders and soldiers who were sent to Gaza need to know that they are safe from
various tribunals," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced at the opening of the weekly
cabinet meeting.
The bill, titled "strengthening the IDF's hand after Operation Cast Lead", was
put forward by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and coordinated by the Ministry of Defense,
Ministry of Justice and State Prosecutor.
There is growing concern at the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Justice that Israeli
officers will be singled out in a wave of suits for alleged human rights violations during
the recent 3-week offensive against Hamas.
"The terrorist organizations and Hamas were mistaken in thinking that Israel would
reconcile itself to [rocket] fire and not respond," Olmert added.
"Now after the operation, the organizations are trying to settle accounts with the
State of Israel, and one of the central arenas in which they are doing so is the arena of
international law, by means of the moralistic diplomatic tact that characterizes these
groups."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak joined Olmert in pledging support for the soldiers. Calling
the IDF "the most moral army in the world," Barak said troops would receive
governmental backing against accusations from abroad and "self-flagellation"
from within Israel.
Olmert added that terror organizations are trying to turn attacker into attacked and
vice-versa by pinning responsibility on IDF soldiers instead of blaming terrorism. He said
also said Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann would consult with Israel's top legal experts
and find "answers to possible questions relating to the Israeli military's
activities" during the campaign.
More than 1,250 Palestinians were reportedly killed during Israel's offensive against
Hamas in the coastal territory. Israel has been harshly criticized for the large number of
civilians among the Palestinian dead, of whom they numbered more than half according to
Gaza officials.
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No moderates left
By Gideon Levy
The three leading candidates for prime minister are extremists. Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak
went to war in Gaza and are therefore as radical as can be. Benjamin Netanyahu is more
radical in rhetoric only.We must not be led astray in this election campaign and
consider both Livni and Barak as moderates, in contrast to the "extremist"
Netanyahu. This is a deception. Kadima and Labor, the center and left-wing parties, have
led Israel to two awful wars within two years. Netanyahu has yet to go to war once. True,
he speaks more radically than the other two, but so far it has only been words, while the
"moderates" have taken radical, aggressive action.
"Bibi is unreliable and terribly right-wing," Kadima's electoral broadcast
asserts. Is he? Livni and Barak are just the same.
None of the people involved in the Gaza war can speak of peace now. Those who delivered
such a brutal blow to the Palestinians, only to sow more hatred and fear among them, have
no intention of making peace with them. Those responsible for firing white phosphorous
shells into a civilian population and destroying thousands of homes cannot talk the
following day about two states living peacefully side by side.
In one fell swoop, Ehud Olmert, who issued some of the bravest statements ever made in
these parts about ending the occupation, singlehandedly turned them into a cynical babble
of hollow cliches. Who will now believe that he wanted peace? And who will believe Barak
or Livni?
This war unmasked Livni, the woman who had promised us "different politics."
She, who as foreign minister was supposed to show Israel's sunny side to the world, chose
to present an arrogant, violent and brutal face. During the war she boasted that Israel
was acting "savagely," threatened to let Hamas "have it" and announced
that the cease-fire would come into effect "whenever Israel decides."
As far as she was concerned, there was no world, no United States and Europe, no UN
Security Council, and no bleeding and defeated other side - only Israel will decide. No
foreign minister has ever spoken like this before.
In her pathetic attempts to assume a masculine, militaristic, even macho, posture of
someone who would know what to say if the telephone rang at 3 A.M., Livni was exposed as a
failed foreign minister, whose words and deeds are no different from those espoused by the
radical militaristic men around her. No self-respecting voter who considers himself an
upstanding centrist could vote for her. Whoever votes for Kadima will be voting for the
right, which is eager to embark on any war and risk the accompanying crimes.
Voting for Labor also means voting for the war and its horrors. This war's marshal,
Ehud Barak, has forever deprived himself of the moral right to talk of coexistence,
political arrangements and diplomacy. If he really believed in them, he would have given
them a chance before going to war, not afterward. Barak took the army to war and Barak
must pay for it, together with his "left-wing" party, which joined the most
radical, far-right parties in supporting the move to outlaw Israel's Arab parties.
Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu, Livni and Barak are one - they all voted in support of an
undemocratic decision. And don't be alarmed by Lieberman - he, too, only talks. But at
least he does so honestly, while Barak fires off salvos and deceives.
Granted, these impostors still enjoy the support of world leaders, but for many people
around the globe, they have become war-mongers and suspected war criminals. Their
diplomatic immunity will protect them - but who wants those leaders, with their bloodied
hands, to represent us?
No less severe is the fact that there are no ideological differences between the
candidates. Let Barak and Livni step up and explain what the hell sets them apart. What
ideological argument are they conducting, apart from bickering on who should be credited
for the war?
Facing them is Netanyahu - what does he have to offer? "Economic peace." After
this war, which wasn't enough as far as he is concerned, his doctrine sounds even more
ludicrous than ever.
This is how we're going into elections - with three leading parties that are hardly
different from each other.
We always used to say, "There aren't any moderates in the Arab world." Now we
are the ones who don't have any. Vote as you will, but don't fool yourself. Every ballot
cast for Kadima, Labor and Likud is an endorsement of the last war and a vote for the next
one.
Editor's Note: Here's a perspective from the theorists of the Israeli Right-wing, because
it is important to know what the people who shape Israeli strategic and policy discussions
are thinking. After reading this one, read Rabbi Lerner's analysis, which is the article
following this one.
Jerusalem Issue Brief
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
Vol. 8, No. 19 25 January 2009
The George Mitchell Appointment: The Tactics of
"Symmetrical Negotiations" May Not Work in "Asymmetrical
Conflicts"
Lenny Ben-David
The appointment of former Senator George J. Mitchell as Middle East envoy was warmly
received in Washington, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. Yet, the Middle East that Mitchell will
confront today is much changed from the one he wrestled with eight years ago as chairman
of the 2001 Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, which was created to investigate the
outbreak of the Second Intifada.
The 2001 Mitchell Report was seen as an "even-handed" document, reflecting
President Clinton's directive to "strive to steer clear of...finger-pointing. As a
result, the committee attempted - even at the risk of straining credibility - to split the
blame for the crisis. The Mitchell Committee could not ignore Palestinian terrorism and
the Palestinian use of civilians as human shields. Israel's transgression - and there had
to be one to balance Palestinian sins --was its settlement activity. The committee
recommended a "freeze[of] all settlement activity, including the 'natural growth' of
existing settlements." Israelis objected that the freeze - never mandated in the
interim stages of the Oslo Accords - would serve to reward the Palestinians' terrorism.
The committee was appointed before the 9/11 al-Qaeda attack. Its report came prior to
the capture of two weapons-laden ships bound for Gaza - the Santorini in May 2001 and the
Karine A in January 2002 - and prior to President Bush's 2004 recognition of "new
realities on the ground [in the territories], including already existing major Israeli
populations centers." Bush continued: "[I]t is unrealistic to expect that the
outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice
lines of 1949."
The 2001 Mitchell Report was issued years before Hamas' coup in Gaza. Hamas remains
dedicated to Israel's destruction. Its alliance with Iran and its affiliation with the
Muslim Brotherhood mark Hamas as an enemy of moderate Arab regimes. Hamas may yet prove to
be a fatal flaw to Mitchell's axiom that "there is no such thing as a conflict that
can't be ended."
President Barak Obama's appointment of former Senator George J. Mitchell as Middle East
envoy was warmly received in Washington, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. Over the years,
Mitchell, a respected judge, legislator and negotiator, has been tasked by presidents to
broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, explore paths to peace in the Middle East,
and even chair a commission to investigate steroid use in Major League Baseball. "The
Conciliator" was the apt moniker given to Mitchell by one British newspaper.
The Middle East that Mitchell will confront today is much changed from the one he wrestled
with eight years ago. And the parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict bear little
resemblance to the antagonists he dealt with in Northern Ireland.
Mitchell chaired the "Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee," mandated by a
Sharm el-Sheikh summit in October 2000 to investigate the outbreak of the "al-Aqsa
Intifada" one month earlier and to recommend ways to stop the violence. His
committee, which also included Senator Warren Rudman and three European statesmen,
presented its findings to the new Bush administration on April 30, 2001. Its
recommendations were then incorporated into the April 2003 "Performance-Based Roadmap
to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," drafted by
the Quartet of the UN, European Union, United States, and Russia.
In 2003, Mitchell distilled his vision of the Middle East conflict: "Palestinians
will never achieve a state if Israel does not have security. Israel will never get
sustainable security if the Palestinians don't have a state." Based on his experience
in reaching the Northern Ireland "Good Friday" peace agreement, Mitchell
expressed his belief in 2003 and again in December 2008 that "there is no such thing
as a conflict that can't be ended."1
The Mitchell Report was seen as an "even-handed" document, reflecting the
fact that the committee was directed by President Clinton to "strive to steer clear
of any step that will intensify mutual blame and finger-pointing between the parties..The
Committee should not become a divisive force or a focal point for blame and recrimination
but rather should serve to forestall violence and confrontation and provide lessons for
the future. This should not be a tribunal whose purpose is to determine the guilt or
innocence of individuals or of the parties."2
As a result, the committee attempted - even at the risk of straining credibility - to
split the blame for the crisis. "Some Israelis appear not to comprehend the
humiliation and frustration that Palestinians must endure every day as a result of living
with the continuing effects of occupation," the report wrote. "Some Palestinians
appear not to comprehend the extent to which terrorism creates fear among the Israeli
people and undermines their belief in the possibility of co-existence."
Humiliation is rarely fatal; terrorism usually is.
While the Mitchell Report did not blame Israeli Prime Minister Sharon for the outbreak
of the Second Intifada,3 nonetheless, it sought to evenhandedly spread the responsibility
for the violence, ignoring the evidence of Palestinian incitement.In response to Israeli
claims that the violence was planned by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the
committee declared, "[We were not] provided with persuasive evidence that the PA
planned the uprising. Accordingly, we have no basis on which to conclude that there was a
deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first
opportunity."
Subsequently, the real causes for the violence were exposed by a Palestinian minister
in Yassir Arafat's government. Palestinian Communications Minister 'Imad al-Falujiadmitted
in the Lebanese daily al-Safir on March 3, 2001: "Whoever thinks the Intifada broke
out because of the despised Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong....This Intifada
was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp David
negotiations." Even earlier, al-Faluji had explained that the Intifada was initiated
as the result of a strategic decision made by the Palestinians.4
The Intifada's premeditation is seen in the training and indoctrination of 25,000
Palestinian youth in summer camps even while Arafat was engaged in negotiations at Camp
David.5
The Mitchell Report's Recommendations
In its recommendations to the two sides, the Mitchell Committee could not ignore
Palestinian terrorism and the Palestinian use of civilians as human shields. It issued
these recommendations:
The PA should make clear through concrete action to Palestinians and Israelis alike
that terrorism is reprehensible and unacceptable, and that the PA will make a 100 percent
effort to prevent terrorist operations and to punish perpetrators. This effort should
include immediate steps to apprehend and incarcerate terrorists operating within the PA's
jurisdiction. The PA should prevent gunmen from using Palestinian populated areas to fire
upon Israeli populated areas and IDF positions. This tactic places civilians on both sides
at unnecessary risk
According to the committee, Israel's transgression - and there had to be one to balance
Palestinian sins - was its settlement activity. "The Government of Israel," the
committee recommended, "should freeze all settlement activity, including the 'natural
growth' of existing settlements."
Two years later, the Roadmap would cite the Mitchell Report in its call for a
settlement freeze in Phase I of the Roadmap. "Israel also freezes all settlement
activity," the drafters instructed, "consistent with the Mitchell Report"
(emphasis added).
Israelis objected to the draconian call for a freeze. Sharon asked Secretary of State
Colin Powell, "What do you want, for a pregnant woman to have an abortion just
because she is a settler?"6 Moreover, Israelis objected, the freeze - never mandated
in the interim stages of the Oslo Accords - would serve to reward the Palestinians'
terrorism.
A Changed World Since the Mitchell Report
The Mitchell Report was drafted relatively early in the Palestinian Intifada, when it was
believed by some that the Palestinians' violent outbreak was actually a spontaneous
reaction to Prime Minister Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000. As
mentioned above, the world today knows otherwise.
The committee was appointed before the al-Qaeda attack on September 11, 2001, and the
revelation of hostile international Islamic terrorism. The report was issued prior to the
capture of two weapons-laden ships bound for Gaza - the Santorini in May 2001 and the
Karine A in January 2002 - and the surfacing of proof of the grand battle Arafat was
planning against Israel. (The Grad rockets, explosives, mortars and anti-tank weapons on
the ships would find their way into Hamas arsenals in Gaza five years later through
tunnels from the Sinai Peninsula.)
By 2003, George Mitchell was refocusing his attention on the threat of terrorism. In a
commencement address at MIT in June 2003, he stated, "Our committee's report was very
tough on terrorism. We branded it morally reprehensible and unacceptable. It is also
politically counterproductive. It will not achieve its objective. To the contrary, with
each suicide bomb attack, the prospect of a Palestinian state is delayed. Such tactics
also are destructive of Palestinian civil society and the reputation of the Palestinian
people throughout the world."
Nevertheless, Mitchell repeated at MIT his opposition to Israel's settlement policies, in
keeping with the "long-standing opposition to the government of Israel's policies and
practices regarding settlements. That U.S. opposition," he continued, "has been
consistent through the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations; just as
consistent has been the continued settlement activity by the Israeli government."
The U.S. position toward settlements, of course, underwent a major change under President
Bush in April 2004 when he assured Prime Minister Sharon: "In light of new realities
on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is
unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and
complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."7 The universal interpretation of
Bush's letter was that settlement blocs would remain under Israeli sovereignty.
Lastly, the 2001 Mitchell Report was issued years before Hamas' coup in Gaza and its open
fealty to Iran. Hamas remains dedicated to Israel's destruction. Its alliance with Iran
and its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood mark Hamas as an enemy of moderate Arab
regimes such as Egypt and Jordan. As such, Hamas cannot be compared to the Irish
Republican Army (IRA), which wanted to throw the British out of Northern Ireland but had
no aspirations to capture London. Moreover, while the IRA had limited international
contacts, it was not a part of a European-wide network and was not backed by a
petrodollar-rich, oil-producing country like Iran, which was also on the verge of
obtaining nuclear weapons, and thereby emboldening its regional surrogates. In short,
Mitchell will be conducting diplomacy under completely different strategic circumstances
than he did in the 1990s. Indeed, Hamas may prove to be a fatal flaw to Mitchell's axiom
that "there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended."
* * *
Notes
1. Commencement address at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., June 9, 2003.
2. Mitchell Report, April 30, 2002.
3. Ibid. "The Sharon visit did not cause the 'Al-Aqsa Intifada.' But it was poorly
timed and the provocative effect should have been foreseen; indeed, it was foreseen by
those who urged that the visit be prohibited. More significant were the events that
followed: The decision of the Israeli police on September 29 to use lethal means against
the Palestinian demonstrators; and the subsequent failure, as noted above, of either party
to exercise restraint."
4. Al-Ayyam, December 6, 2000.
5. New York Times, August 3, 2000.
6. BBC News, May 12, 2003.
7. Letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon, April 14, 2004.
* * *
Lenny Ben-David served as deputy chief of mission in Israel's embassy in Washington. He
blogs at http://www.lennybendavid.com/
.
This Jerusalem Issue Brief is available online at:
http://www.jcpa.org
Dore Gold, Publisher
*****************
Arab initiative, Israeli choice
By Akiva Eldar
Tags: Palestinians
For the third time since the Arab League unanimously voted in favor of the peace plan with
Israel, the people here are being called upon to vote for a new Knesset. In a normal
country, the various parties' positions on this important initiative would be on full
display. In Israel, for the third time, the Saudi initiative is being pushed to the
margins. It is far easier to sell fear of the Iranians to the voters and to promise
"a strong Israel." What does a peace plan made in Saudi Arabia have in common
with an Iranian-produced bomb? Plenty, it would appear.
At the height of the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, a rare missive from Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was delivered to the royal palace in Riyadh. The Shi'ite
leader displayed reverence toward Saudi Arabia, his sworn enemy, by bestowing on it the
title "the leader of the Arab and Muslim world." And he called on King Abdullah
to take a more strident stance against "the horror and the killing of your children
in Gaza." Prince Turki al-Faisal, who revealed the existence of the letter in an
article for The Financial Times, cautions that answering the "call for Saudi Arabia
to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed
in the region."
These harsh words were penned by an Arab who in the last year helped to lead the public
relations campaign for a reconciliation between the Muslim world and Israel and ending the
Arab conflict with the Jewish state. Al-Faisal, who was once chief of Saudi intelligence
and served as the country's ambassador in Washington and London, lectures and writes
unceasingly about the benefits of the Saudi peace initiative. In touting the plan, the
prince is not deterred from publicly meeting with Israelis (including this author). Common
sense tells us he is not doing this on his own volition.
Advertisement
Saudi Arabia is also pressing U.S. President Barack Obama to adopt the initiative,
rendering the plan a litmus test for the Arab world's relations with the new
administration. In his visit to the State Department the day after his inauguration, Obama
made do with a few noncommittal words in praise of the Saudi initiative. Why should he get
into trouble with the Jewish lobby in his first week in office? In any case, the return of
the right wing to power in Israel would likely seal the initiative's fate when the topic
is brought up for discussion next month at the Arab League summit in Qatar.
It is hard to blame Obama when every party jousting for power in Israel is hiding its
position on the Saudi initiative behind vaguely worded statements. Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert last week boasted that he favors using the Saudi initiative as a framework for
negotiations. In the same breath, he noted that UN Security Council resolutions 242 and
338, which are open to various interpretations, were bases for talks, while the Arab
League declaration explicitly states that the June 4, 1967 lines are the basis for a
settlement.
Olmert claimed that Ehud Barak, on the other hand, is shrouding his position on the
initiative in a cloud of fog. Has Olmert been informed of a more lucid stance expressed by
Tzipi Livni on the initiative beyond a throwaway comment from the summer of 2007, when she
was quoted as saying that the Saudi plan is "a historic opportunity that must not be
missed"? Like Olmert and Barak, the foreign minister also failed to lift a finger to
advance the "historic opportunity." Israel's acceptance of the plan as a
framework for negotiations would have compelled Hamas to decide whether it is part of the
Arab consensus in favor of the initiative, or whether it is an Iranian satellite state
that opposes it.
You may support the initiative and you are allowed to oppose it. Yet the Zionist parties
who seek the trust of the voters cannot evade the most positive diplomatic outline ever
offered to Israel by the Arabs. Each of the candidates must clearly state whether the
government will accept or reject the initiative. In other words, what do the candidates
prefer - forming a united front with 22 Arab states against Iran and its agents, or
forming a united front with the settlers against the entire world?_
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