by Marsha B. Cohen
Americans will soon get to see their taxpayer dollars at work when Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system, funded largely by the US, is deployed during President Obama’s Israel visit.
Unless the inauguration of Pope Francis I causes an abrupt change in his itinerary , Obama will land in [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Americans will soon get to see their taxpayer dollars at work when Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system, funded largely by the US, is deployed during President Obama’s Israel visit.
Unless the inauguration of Pope Francis I causes an abrupt change in his itinerary , Obama will land in Israel on Wednesday, March 20. Immediately after an official welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres will show him an Iron Dome battery, set up at the airport so the President won’t have to travel to a site where the mobile anti-rocket system is being deployed.
The Iron Dome system may well be the quintessential metaphor for US-Israel relations in general, and for Obama’s relationship with Netanyahu in particular, the love child of a sometimes steamy, often frosty and increasingly strained affaire de coeur between defense spending and domestic politics. According to outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel has already received $270 million towards the construction of Iron Dome and — despite the hand-wringing and wrangling over budget cuts in Congress — is slated to receive another $680 million, nearly a billion dollars on top of Israel’s usual $3 billion in annual US military assistance. These figures are corroborated by a Congressional Research Report published last March, which points out that Israel receives 60% of all American Foreign Military financing.
JINSA (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) waxes rhapsodic about Iron Dome’s “affordability and effectiveness,” a claim that would make some of the system’s staunchest defenders blanch and its critics guffaw. Each interception costs $100,000 — two interceptors at $50,000 apiece targeting every incoming rocket that appears headed for a populated area of Israel — hardly “cost effective.” The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) also uncritically enthuses that “the Iron Dome missile defense system is now hailed as a groundbreaking innovation, an example of the technological prowess of Israel, and an embodiment of the unique relationship between the Jewish state and the United States.”
The hagiographic account of Iron Dome on AIPAC’s website is however both incomplete and seriously flawed:
The idea for Iron Dome arose after Israel’s 2006 war with Hizballah, in which more than 4,000 rockets were launched into the country’s north. As rocket fire from Gaza targeting southern Israeli communities also intensified, it became clear that a system was needed to defend against short-range rockets and missiles.
Not exactly. Last November, the Wall Street Journal offered a much more detailed account of Iron Dome’s origin. Brig. Gen. Daniel Gold, the director of the Defense Ministry’s Research and Development department, had gone ahead and decided on the development of Iron Dome, calling for proposals from defense companies for anti-rocket systems in August 2004 — two years before the Second Lebanon War. He did so without any authorization from Israel’s political leadership. It was not until after the 2006 “Second Lebanon War” between Israel and Hizballah that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak — under withering criticism for allowing Israeli civilians in non-border regions to come under rocket and missile attacks — backed Iron Dome, giving the project $200 million in December 2007. The rocket attacks during and since the 2008 invasion of Gaza (“Operation Cast Lead”) increased demand for a rocket interception system. The system went into operation in March 2011, shooting down its first rocket on April 7 and reportedly taking out 8 more rockets in the next three days.
According to AIPAC, by April 2011 “an Iron Dome battery was fielded outside the southern city of Beersheba and shot down its first rocket fired from Gaza. Since then the system has achieved an 85-percent interception rate and is constantly improving, as its developers enhance its accuracy and expand its range.”
Last week, Reuven Pedatzur, a highly respected Israeli security analyst who has been a sharp critic of the Iron Dome project since 2008 when he pointed out that billions had been squandered on the program, cited studies by missile defense experts that suggest Iron Dome’s successful interception rate may well be 5% or less — far below the 84% success rate cited by the Israeli Defense Forces and other defenders of the program. Pedatzur cites research done by three rocket scientists: Professor Theodore Postol, a world-renowned scientist and expert in missile defense and two other rocket scientists, Dr. Mordechai Shefer, formerly of Rafael, and a scientist he refers to only as “D.”, who recently worked for Raytheon, the manufacturer of the Patriot missiles. After investigating the performance of Iron Dome during Operation Pillar of Defense this past November, all three concluded that “Iron Dome’s rate of success did not come close to the figure of 84% as reported by the IDF”:
According to the three scientists, who conducted their research separately by analyzing dozens of videos filmed during the operation, most of the explosions which look as if they were successful interceptions, are actually just the self-destruction of the Iron Dome’s own missiles. The scientists point out that in every case the explosions, seen as balls of fire during the day and clouds of smoke at night, were round and symmetrical. In the case of successful interceptions, in which the incoming missile’s warhead is destroyed, there should have been another ball of fire or cloud of smoke. They also uncovered a strange phenomenon whereby the Iron Dome’s missiles followed identical trajectories, and self-destructed at precisely the same time. In some of the videos, it appears that the Iron Dome’s missiles made a very sharp turn shortly before self-destruction. That cannot be, say the scientists, as there is no way that the missile defense system could “remember” that it needs to turn in the direction of the incoming Grad missile a quarter-second before it self-destructs.
Pedatzur also noted that these scientists discovered 3,200 civilian damage reports that were filed for destruction caused by incoming rockets. Could the 58 rockets that the IDF admits were not intercepted by Iron Dome have caused so much damage? Compared with the damage from rockets during the Second Lebanon War before Iron Dome was deployed, Pedatzur considers that unlikely. Furthermore, Israeli police reports counted 109 cases of rockets falling in populated areas, twice as many as the number claimed by the IDF. Pedatzur compares the exaggerated success rate of Iron Dome to the initial 96% interception rate claimed for the Patriot missile system during the aftermath of the Gulf War. Professor Postol later found the Patriot success rate to have been zero.
Nonetheless, AIPAC has even bigger dreams for the future of Iron Dome: “Now that the Iron Dome has proven itself, Washington will have the ability to use it in its own defense efforts against short-range rocket threats in the Persian Gulf and South Korea.”
The real challenge — and achievement — of Iron Dome has been getting the US to pay for the anti-rocket system. The WSJ‘s Charles Levinson and Adam Entous report that Israel’s Defense Ministry approached the George W. Bush administration with a request for hundreds of millions of dollars for the system, only to receive a cold reception at the Pentagon. Experts voiced doubts about the system’s effectiveness and argued that even if it worked, such a system would be too expensive. (Most Israeli military and defense officials were also dubious.) A team of US military engineers sent to Israel by the Defense Department to meet with the Iron Dome system’s developers were unconvinced by the technology and skeptical about the prospects for its performance. They recommended that Israel adopt the American-made Phalanx system being used in Iraq.
In 2008, US Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama visited Sderot, a town near the Gaza Strip that came under severe rocket attacks during Operation Cast Lead and whose residents were constantly running for cover from incoming Qassam rockets. Obama won the election and took office as President and shortly thereafter an Iron Dome prototype successfully intercepted an incoming rocket during its first field test. Colin Kahl, appointed by Obama to overseeing US military policy in the Middle East at the Pentagon, decided to reconsider the Iron Dome’s merits — military and political.
Having raised the hackles of Israel’s newly installed Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by calling for a settlement freeze and prioritizing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Obama wanted to set things right with Israel. “Top Obama administration advisers saw supporting Iron Dome as a chance to shore up U.S.-Israel security relations and balance some of the political strains,” according to Levinson and Entous. In September, Kahl dispatched a team of missile-defense experts to reconsider Iron Dome. The team presented its findings to Obama a month later: “the team declared Iron Dome a success, and in many respects, superior to Phalanx. Tests showed it was hitting 80% of the targets, up from the low teens in the earlier U.S. assessment.”
In 2009, the US agreed to provide $204 million for the Iron Dome system’s development. The National Jewish Democratic Council pointed to Iron Dome as one of the means by which Obama had restored Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge — eroded during the Bush years. An additional $680 million over three years was allocated for the purchase of additional batteries in May 2012, during talks between Barak and US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Barak met with Obama’s new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel earlier this month, during which time Hagel was said to have pledged continued US support for Iron Dome. Israel eventually hopes to triple the number of Iron Dome batteries deployed in defense of military as well as civilian targets.
If Obama had favored funding an Iron Dome program for any other country, you can be sure that Republicans would be shrieking about the administration’s increasing of the deficit by borrowing funds to expend close to a billion US taxpayer dollars on a system with a success rate that been grossly exaggerated. Furthermore, as Walter Pincus of the Washington Post has pointed out, the US government has no rights to the Iron’s Dome’s technology, which is owned by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., an Israeli government-owned, for-profit company.
Consider all this next week when you see Netanyahu and Peres showing off the Iron Dome to President Obama.
Photo: The Iron Dome CRAM launcher near the Israeli town of Sderot. Credit: Natan Flayer.
]]>Only 1% of the world stood by US-Israeli rejection of President Mahmoud Abbas’ request for non-member state status, which puts Palestine on par with the Vatican and allows Palestinian claims to be filed in the International Criminal Court. Lobe Log’s Mitchell Plitnick reported at the time on the politics [...]]]>
Only 1% of the world stood by US-Israeli rejection of President Mahmoud Abbas’ request for non-member state status, which puts Palestine on par with the Vatican and allows Palestinian claims to be filed in the International Criminal Court. Lobe Log’s Mitchell Plitnick reported at the time on the politics behind the resolution and Israel’s strategy (featured in the London Review of Books) and on the Israel lobby’s response in the US. But the path to Palestinian statehood (if it’s not destroyed beyond repair) will be a long and bumpy one, especially if the recent Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas fails to hold. So where to go from here? Al Jazeera English chief political analyst Marwan Bishara discusses with Peter Beinart, Ethan Bronner, Tony Karon, and Rashid Khalidi.
]]>You will not hear me say this often, but Hossein Shariatmadari — Iran’s irascible and intractable editor of the hardline Kayhan daily — makes one important point in this editorial. Although a few months ago Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei referred in general terms to the fact that Iran had been [...]]]>
You will not hear me say this often, but Hossein Shariatmadari — Iran’s irascible and intractable editor of the hardline Kayhan daily — makes one important point in this editorial. Although a few months ago Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei referred in general terms to the fact that Iran had been involved against Israel’s previous attacks against Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (2008), this is the first time that both the Iranian and Palestinian leaderships have officially and unabashedly acknowledged Iran’s military support.
Shariatmadari does not address the question of what has led to this new official posture since his piece is really not about what has brought about this change but a convoluted attack — based on fabricated quotes — on reformists who in his words have been directly or indirectly supported by the Israeli government in order to weaken the Islamic Republic’s support for the “resistance.” What else could the protestors’ chant — Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon, I give my life to Iran” — in the post-2009 election environment have meant but “playing in the wolves’ team,” Shariatmadari asserts. But what Shariatmadari takes for granted is that the hardline position on the need for Iran’s support for resistance in Palestine has not only been vindicated but become common sentiment as well.
This is a debatable assumption since one of the basic disagreements between those in Iran who have called for a less confrontationist foreign policy, and those who continue to push for an offensive or aggressive foreign policy (siast khareji-ye tahajomi), has been over Iran’s role beyond the Persian Gulf region. While the former does not see Iran’s involvement in broader regional issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as serving the long-term interests of the country, the latter argues that regional links will check Israeli threats and enhance Iran’s standing vis-à-vis the United States. While the former worries about the additional threats an offensive foreign policy — which it calls adventurist — will bring for Iran, the latter insists that the only deterrent to international “bullies” is a show of strength and resolve combined with just a pinch of Nixonian madman posture.
But the decision on the part of Iran to publicly own up to its military and financial support for Hamas does hint at the possibility that the hardline position may have become consensus at least for tactical purposes as Iran prepares to re-engage in nuclear talks with the United States within the 6-world power (p5+1) framework.
As I mentioned in a previous post on Iran and Gaza, Tehran’s initial response to the Israeli attack was rather cautious and conceding of Egyptian leadership. The chair of the Parliament’s National Security of Foreign Policy Committee, Alaeddin Borujerdi, went as far as to say that Iran had nothing to do with Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israel. But in the span of a couple of days — surely after a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) — a decision was made to not only announce Tehran’s financial and military support, but also state the country’s pride in doing so. Similar language used by Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and IRGC commander Mohammad Jafari — both members of the SNSC — suggests prior coordination.
This was done despite at least one warning in the press that the Gaza attack was “an Israeli conspiracy to destroy the opportunity for talks between Iran and the West.” It was also done despite worries that the war was mostly about testing the Iron Dome and deterrence against Iranian missiles. I am unable to access the editorial in the daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami from a few days ago, but if I remember correctly, it said something like Israel now knows a lot more about Iran’s capabilities than the other way around.
Despite these concerns, Iran’s assertive posture is probably the result of the calculation laid out by Sadeq Kharrazi, deputy foreign minister in the reformist era and current publisher of “irdiplomacy”, a website dedicated to foreign policy. He suggests that Iran’s concrete support for Hamas essentially steers attention away from Iran’s conduct in Syria and towards the “paradoxical behavior” of the “traditional leaders of the Arab World and Turkey” which “do not take any measures to militarily support the Palestinians while they continue to send ships filled with ammunitions and arms to Syria’s opposition.”
But his hopes, which I think also underwrite Iran’s openly supportive posture towards Gaza, are as follows:
The complicated crises of the Middle East and its equations are becoming more complex day by day, and one cannot confront them with the policies of the past. The US and other world powers must know that the equation of the Middle East region will not be solved without the presence of all regional powers. Perhaps one of the objectives of the Zionist regime behind attacking Gaza was to weaken or delay the possibility of dialogue between Iran and the US—and to overshadow it—but it seems that the crisis in Gaza, more than ever before, proved to Obama that he needs to interact with Iran as the proponent of dialogue, revolutionary and Jihadist ideas in the region, so that part of the problems of the region, from Syria to Gaza, can be solved with Iran’s support.
Bottom line: the Islamic Republic is making a point that it is part of a variety of problems in the region; making it part of the solution to these problems will require a different US approach.
This is an argument that Kharrazi, proponent of a grand bargain with the US, has been making for a long time. The glitch in this argument is that US policy makers have remained unimpressed with Iran’s regional clout either because they do not find it impressive enough (despite trumpeting it for domestic purposes), or because they think Islamic Iran is structurally unable to be helpful in wielding its clout. They have instead opted for isolating Iran through a ferocious sanctions regime.
Now, with Gaza, the Islamic Republic is making the same argument in a more concrete fashion. The problem of course is that in the Middle East, playing hardline usually begets hardline.
Nevertheless, hardline is what Tehran has decided to play at this moment and public announcements about Iran’s military support for Hamas in spite of presumably crippling sanctions should be viewed as a statement — bluster or not — regarding the failure and even danger of policies that try to bring about regional security at the expense of Islamic Iran’s insecurity.
- Farideh Farhi is an independent researcher and an affiliate graduate faculty member in political science and international relations at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
]]>By Richard Javad Heydarian
The recent war in Gaza has been portrayed as a political dividend for the main protagonists, namely Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Egypt’s Mohammad Morsi, and the Hamas leadership in Gaza, despite the tremendous psychological, infrastructural and humanitarian costs borne by innocent civilians, especially the Palestinians.
As Hamas and [...]]]>
By Richard Javad Heydarian
The recent war in Gaza has been portrayed as a political dividend for the main protagonists, namely Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Egypt’s Mohammad Morsi, and the Hamas leadership in Gaza, despite the tremendous psychological, infrastructural and humanitarian costs borne by innocent civilians, especially the Palestinians.
As Hamas and other militant groups bombarded Israeli cities with rocket attacks, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s enormous show of force — by mobilizing all elements of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against Gaza — allowed him to shore up greater support among a rattled Israeli populace, crucially ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections. On the other hand, Hamas — and other militant groups such as the Islamic Jihad — were able to claim victory by not only circumventing Israel’s sophisticated ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense-shield system, and preventing a ground invasion by the IDF, but also because they may have finally gained enough leverage to end the Israeli-imposed siege on Gaza, which has resulted in a protracted humanitarian crisis in one of the most densely populated areas in the world. As for the Islamist president of Egypt, he was able to considerably boost his international profile and domestic popularity by leveraging the Muslim Brotherhood’s strong ties with Hamas and his country’s strong military ties with the US so as to strike a lasting truce.
After three decades of strategic irrelevance/acquiescence, Egypt has once again become an indispensable nation in the region.
Yet, what is missing from this mainstream narrative is how Iran — increasingly isolated in recent years — has actually been vindicated by the most recent Gaza crisis. While the first decade of the 21st century witnessed the dramatic rise of Iran as a regional power, largely precipitated by the US-led elimination of anti-Iranian rulers in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, the advent of the Arab uprisings — beginning with the late-2010 Tunisian revolution and the early-2011 Egyptian revolution — have presented a mixed package of some initial strategic gains, but steady and gradual decline overtime, most especially after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011. Although Iran benefited from the downfall of leading US allies in Egypt and elsewhere, while sensing some opportunity in the Bahraini and Yemenis revolutions across the Arabian Peninsula, its image and popularity — especially among the Arab populace – took a nosedive when it threw its weight behind the embattled Baathist regime in Syria.
With leading regional powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar portraying Iran’s support for Bashar Al-Assad as a cynical attempt to maintain a sectarian, Persian-led ‘axis of resistance’, Tehran has been gradually sidelined, prompting the Sunni Hamas leadership — with strong ties to the dominant Muslim Brotherhood faction within the Syrian opposition — to seek patronage elsewhere, especially in Ankara and Doha. In effect, the Arab uprisings have not only overshadowed Iran’s 3 decade-old support for the Palestinian cause, and empowered rising powers such as Turkey and Qatar, but they have also ideationally relegated Tehran to a new pejorative status of a non-Arab, non-Sunni state, perceived to be standing against a democratic uprising in Syria.
However, the recent crisis in Gaza has brought the Palestinian issue back to the center of popular political discourse across the Islamic world. Thus, it has indirectly reminded everyone of Iran’s continuous support for the Palestinian resistance – a long-time basis of Tehran’s popularity among the Arab street. Also, the crisis has slightly diverted attention from the ongoing civil war in Syria, where Iran — in the eyes of many Arabs — has been heavily implicated due to its support for the Assad regime.
The fact that this time Israel balked from repeating its brutal 2008-2009 military campaign against Gaza is a testament to the shifting balance of forces on the ground. Sure, the advent of Arab uprisings — giving birth to more populist/pro-Palestinian post-revolutionary leaders — may have placed a new element of constraint upon Israel’s strategic impunity: its ability to re-shape the immediate strategic environment, through a combination of economic coercion, diplomatic obstructionism, and brutal military force, without considerable costs. It is also true that regional powers Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar have provided considerable economic and political support to Hamas, forcing Washington to exert growing pressure on Israel to cease military operations against Gaza. But, without Iran’s concrete military-logistical support, Hamas would have never been in a position to deter an all out Israeli invasion, especially under the current hawkish leadership in Tel Aviv. After all, no regional power, aside from Iran, has dared to directly support Hamas in military terms. Neither Qatar nor Turkey wishes to jeopardize crucial strategic ties with the West by doing so, while Egypt — the second largest recipient of US military aid – is still too vulnerable to take on Israel and/or jeopardize ongoing negotiations vis-à-vis Western economic assistance, either through bilateral mechanisms or international organizations such as the IMF. Iran’s position as the leading revisionist force in the Middle East has provided it a unique wiggle room to prop up Hamas-led resistance in Gaza.
It was the Iranian-designed/made Fajr-5 missiles — scoring an unprecedented success rate (reportedly ranging between 15 to 40 percent) against the Iron Dome system — that gave Hamas and other militant groups not only an element of deterrence against a total Israeli invasion, but also a crucial bargaining chip to force Israel back to the negotiating table to end the siege of Gaza – and perhaps even kick-start negotiations over the future of Palestinian statehood. Hamas’ ability to strike missiles as far as Tel Aviv is a major game-changer, thanks to Iran’s ballistic technology. No wonder, after the conclusion of a truce between Hamas and Israel, Khalid Mishaal, one of Hamas’ most important figures, formally thanked Iran for its role in arming and financing Gaza during the war.
This is perhaps why Iran stands as a major beneficiary of Israel’s recent truce with Hamas.
- Richard Javad Heydarian is a Philippine-based foreign affairs analyst, specializing on international security and economics. He can be reached at jrheydarian@gmail.com
]]>On returning from his first trip to the Gaza Strip, Noam Chomsky told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, “It’s kind of amazing and inspiring to see people somehow managing to survive as caged animals subject to constant, random, sadistic punishment only to humiliate them, no pretext. Israel and the United States keep [...]]]>
On returning from his first trip to the Gaza Strip, Noam Chomsky told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, “It’s kind of amazing and inspiring to see people somehow managing to survive as caged animals subject to constant, random, sadistic punishment only to humiliate them, no pretext. Israel and the United States keep them alive basically. They don’t want them to starve to death. But life is set up so you can’t have dignified lives. In fact, one of the words you hear most often is dignity… And the standard Israeli position is they shouldn’t raise their heads. It’s a pressure cooker. It could blow up. People can’t live like that forever. It’s an open-air prison.”
And that was before the Israelis began raining down their most recent round of death and destruction on that tiny, densely populated area. Other than the Palestinians themselves, no one has experienced this grim reality in a more up close and personal way than Israel’s soldiers, sent repeatedly into the Gaza Strip and into Palestinian towns and villages in the Occupied Territories, where a creeping program of land theft is still underway. Testimonies from a large number of veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on their daily experiences — on what the (IDF) once described as a policy of “searing of consciousness,” involving brutal methods of all sorts — have been gathered by the dissident group Breaking the Silence. These can now be found in a powerful new book, Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies From the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, published here this September (and almost totally ignored ever since). Today, they couldn’t be more grimly relevant.
These are testimonies that must be read if the situation and anger in the region are to be fully grasped. Think of them as the equivalent of the Winter Soldier Investigation of the Vietnam era, in which American Vietnam veterans testified to the horrific on-the-ground brutality of a failing pacification war. Oded Na’aman, an IDF veteran and co-editor of Harsh Logic, introduces a small selection of the testimonies from that book, adapted and abridged for this site. Tom
“It’s Mostly Punishment…”
Testimonies by Veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces From Gaza and the Occupied Territories
By Breaking the Silence
“There is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” President Barack Obama said at a press conference last week. He drew on this general observation in order to justify Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s most recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip. In describing the situation this way, he assumes, like many others, that Gaza is a political entity external and independent of Israel. This is not so. It is true that Israel officially disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, withdrawing its ground troops and evacuating the Israeli settlements there. But despite the absence of a permanent ground presence, Israel has maintained a crushing control over Gaza from that moment until today.
The testimonies of Israeli army veterans expose the truth of that “disengagement.” Before Operation Pillar of Defense, after all, Israel launched Operations Summer Rains and Autumn Clouds in 2006, and Hot Winter and Cast Lead in 2008 — all involving ground invasions. In one testimony, a veteran speaks of “a battalion operation” in Gaza that lasted for five months, where the soldiers were ordered to shoot “to draw out terrorists” so they “could kill a few.”
Israeli naval blockades stop Gazans from fishing, a main source of food in the Strip. Air blockades prevent freedom of movement. Israel does not allow building materials into the area, forbids exports to the West Bank and Israel, and (other than emergency humanitarian cases) prohibits movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It controls the Palestinian economy by periodically withholding import taxes. Its restrictions have impeded the expansion and upgrading of the Strip’s woeful sewage infrastructure, which could render life in Gaza untenable within a decade. The blocking of seawater desalination has turned the water supply into a health hazard. Israel has repeatedly demolished small power plants in Gaza, ensuring that the Strip would have to continue to rely on the Israeli electricity supply. Daily power shortages have been the norm for several years now. Israel’s presence is felt everywhere, militarily and otherwise.
By relying on factual misconceptions, political leaders, deliberately or not, conceal information that is critical to our understanding of events. Among the people best qualified to correct those misconceptions are the individuals who have been charged with executing a state’s policies — in this case, Israeli soldiers themselves, an authoritative source of information about their government’s actions. I am a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and I know that our first-hand experiences refute the assumption, accepted by many, including President Obama, that Gaza is an independent political entity that exists wholly outside Israel. If Gaza is outside Israel, how come we were stationed there? If Gaza is outside Israel, how come we control it? Oded Na’aman
[The testimonies by Israeli veterans that follow are taken from 145 collected by the nongovernmental organization Breaking the Silence and published in Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies From the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010. Those in the book represent every division in the IDF and all locations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.]
1. House Demolition
Unit: Kfir Brigade
Location: Nablus district
Year: 2009
During your service in the territories, what shook you up the most?
The searches we did in Hares. They said there are sixty houses that have to be searched. I thought there must have been some information from intelligence. I tried to justify it to myself.
You went out as a patrol?
It was a battalion operation. They spread out over the whole village, took over the school, smashed the locks, the classrooms. One was used as the investigation room for the Shin Bet, one room for detainees, one for the soldiers to rest. We went in house by house, banging on the door at two in the morning. The family’s dying of fear, the girls are peeing in their pants with fear. We go into the house and turn everything upside down.
What’s the procedure?
Gather the family in a certain room, put a guard there, tell the guard to aim his gun at them, and then search the rest of the house. We got another order that everyone born after 1980… everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine, doesn’t matter who, bring them in cuffed and blindfolded. They yelled at old people, one of them had an epileptic seizure but they carried on yelling at him. Every house we went into, we brought everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine to the school. They sat tied up in the schoolyard.
Did they tell you the purpose of all this?
To locate weapons. But we didn’t find any weapons. They confiscated kitchen knives. There was also stealing. One guy took twenty shekels. Guys went into the houses and looked for things to steal. This was a very poor village. The guys were saying, “What a bummer, there’s nothing to steal.”
That was said in a conversation among the soldiers?
Yeah. They enjoyed seeing the misery, the guys were happy talking about it. There was a moment someone yelled at the soldiers. They knew he was mentally ill, but one of the soldiers decided that he’d beat him up anyway, so they smashed him. They hit him in the head with the butt of the gun, he was bleeding, then they brought him to the school along with everyone else. There were a pile of arrest orders signed by the battalion commander, ready, with one area left blank. They’d fill in that the person was detained on suspicion of disturbing the peace. They just filled in the name and the reason for arrest. There were people with plastic handcuffs that had been put on really tight. I got to speak with the people there. One of them had been brought into Israel to work for a settler and after two months the guy didn’t pay him and handed him over to the police.
All these people came from that one village?
Yes.
Anything else you remember from that night?
A small thing, but it bothered me — one house that they just destroyed. They have a dog for weapons searches, but they didn’t bring him; they just wrecked the house. The mother watched from the side and cried. Her kids sat with her and stroked her.
What do you mean, they just destroyed the house?
They smashed the floors, turned over sofas, threw plants and pictures, turned over beds, smashed the closets, the tiles. There were other things — the look on the people’s faces when you go into their house. And after all that, they were left tied up and blindfolded in the school for hours. The order came to free them at four in the afternoon. So that was more than twelve hours. There were investigators from the security services there who interrogated them one by one.
Had there been a terrorist attack in the area?
No. We didn’t even find any weapons. The brigade commander claimed that the Shin Bet did find some intelligence, that there were a lot of guys there who throw stones.
2. Naval Blockade
Unit: Navy
Location: Gaza Strip
Year: 2008
It’s mostly punishment. I hate that: “They did this to us, so we’ll do that to them.” Do you know what a naval blockade means for the people in Gaza? There’s no food for a few days. For example, suppose there’s an attack in Netanya, so they impose a naval blockade for four days on the entire Strip. No seagoing vessel can leave. A Dabur patrol boat is stationed at the entrance to the port, if they try to go out, within seconds the soldiers shoot at the bow and even deploy attack helicopters to scare them. We did a lot of operations with attack helicopters — they don’t shoot much because they prefer to let us deal with that, but they’re there to scare people, they circle over their heads. All of a sudden there’s a Cobra right over your head, stirring up the wind and throwing everything around.
And how frequent were the blockades?
Very. It could be three times one month, and then three months of nothing. It depends.
The blockade goes on for a day, two days, three days, four, or more than that?
I can’t remember anything longer than four days. If it was longer than that, they’d die there, and I think the IDF knows that. Seventy percent of Gaza lives on fishing — they have no other choice. For them it means not eating. There are whole families who don’t eat for a few days because of the blockade. They eat bread and water.
3. Shoot to Kill
Unit: Engineering Corps
Location: Rafah
Year: 2006
During the operations in Gaza, anyone walking around in the street, you shoot at the torso. In one operation in the Philadelphi corridor, anyone walking around at night, you shoot at the torso.
How often were the operations?
Daily. In the Philadelphi corridor, every day.
When you’re searching for tunnels, how do people manage to get around — I mean, they live in the area.
It’s like this: You bring one force up to the third or fourth floor of a building. Another group does the search below. They know that while they’re doing the search there’ll be people trying to attack them. So they put the force up high, so they can shoot at anyone down in the street.
How much shooting was there?
Endless.
Say I’m there, I’m up on the third floor. I shoot at anyone I see?
Yes.
But it’s in Gaza, it’s a street, it’s the most crowded place in the world.
No, no, I’m talking about the Philadelphi corridor.
So that’s a rural area?
Not exactly, there’s a road, it’s like the suburbs, not the center. During operations in the other Gaza neighborhoods it’s the same thing. Shooting, during night operations — shooting.
It there any kind of announcement telling people to stay indoors?
No.
They actually shot people?
They shot anyone walking around in the street. It always ended with, “We killed six terrorists today.” Whoever you shot in the street is “a terrorist.”
That’s what they say at the briefings?
The goal is to kill terrorists.
What are the rules of engagement?
Whoever’s walking around at night, shoot to kill.
During the day, too?
They talked about that in the briefings: whoever’s walking around during the day, look for something suspicious. But something suspicious could be a cane.
4. Elimination Operation
Unit: Special Forces
Location: Gaza Strip
Year: 2000
There was a period at the beginning of the Intifada where they assassinated people using helicopter missiles.
This was at the beginning of the Second Intifada?
Yes. But it was a huge mess because there were mistakes and other people were killed, so they told us we were now going to be doing a ground elimination operation.
Is that the terminology they used? “Ground elimination operation”?
I don’t remember. But we knew it was going to be the first one of the Intifada. That was very important for the commanders and we started to train for it. The plan was to catch a terrorist on his way to Rafah, trap him in the middle of the road, and eliminate him.
Not to arrest him?
No, direct elimination. Targeted. But that operation was canceled, and then a few days later they told us that we’re going on an arrest operation. I remember the disappointment. We were going to arrest the guy instead of doing something groundbreaking, changing the terms. So the operation was planned…
Anyway, we’re waiting inside the APC [armored personnel carrier], there are Shin Bet agents with us, and we can hear the updates from intelligence. It was amazing, like, “He’s sitting in his house drinking coffee, he’s going downstairs, saying hi to the neighbor” — stuff like that. “He’s going back up, coming down again, saying this and that, opening the trunk now, picking up a friend” — really detailed stuff. He didn’t drive, someone else drove, and they told us his weapon was in the trunk. So we knew he didn’t have the weapon with him in the car, which would make the arrest easier. At least it relieved my stress, because I knew that if he ran to get the weapon, they’d shoot at him.
Where did the Shin Bet agent sit?
With me. In the APC. We were in contact with command and they told us he’d arrive in another five minutes, four minutes, one minute. And then there was a change in the orders, apparently from the brigade commander: elimination operation. A minute ahead of time. They hadn’t prepared us for that. A minute to go and it’s an elimination operation.
Why do you say “apparently from the brigade commander”?
I think it was the brigade commander. Looking back, the whole thing seems like a political ploy by the commander, trying to get bonus points for doing the first elimination operation, and the brigade commander trying, too. . . everyone wanted it, everyone was hot for it. The car arrives, and it’s not according to plan: their car stops here, and there’s another car in front of it, here. From what I remember, we had to shoot, he was three meters away. We had to shoot. After they stopped the cars, I fired through the scope and the gunfire made an insane amount of noise, just crazy. And then the car, the moment we started shooting, started speeding in this direction.
The car in front?
No, the terrorist’s car — apparently when they shot the driver his leg was stuck on the gas, and they started flying. The gunfire increased, and the commander next to me is yelling “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” but they don’t stop shooting. Our guys get out and start running, away from the jeep and the armored truck, shoot a few rounds, and then go back. Insane bullets flying around for a few minutes. “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” and then they stop. They fired dozens if not hundreds of bullets into the car in front.
Are you saying this because you checked afterward?
Because we carried out the bodies. There were three people in that car. Nothing happened to the person in the back. He got out, looked around like this, put his hands in the air. But the two bodies in the front were hacked to pieces…
Afterward, I counted how many bullets I had left — I’d shot ten bullets. The whole thing was terrifying — more and more and more noise. It all took about a second and a half. And then they took out the bodies, carried the bodies. We went to a debriefing. I’ll never forget when they brought the bodies out at the base. We were standing two meters away in a semicircle, the bodies were covered in flies, and we had the debriefing. It was, “Great job, a success. Someone shot the wrong car, and we’ll talk about the rest back on the base.” I was in total shock from all the bullets, from the crazy noise. We saw it on the video, it was all documented on video for the debriefing. I saw all the things that I told you, the people running, the minute of gunfire, I don’t know if it’s twenty seconds or a minute, but it was hundreds of bullets and it was clear that the people had been killed, but the gunfire went on and the soldiers were running from the armored truck. What I saw was a bunch of bloodthirsty guys firing an insane amount of bullets, and at the wrong car, too. The video was just awful, and then the unit commander got up. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot from him.
What do you mean?
That he’ll be a regional commanding officer or the chief of staff one day. He said, “The operation wasn’t carried out perfectly, but the mission was accomplished, and we got calls from the chief of staff, the defense minister, the prime minister” — everyone was happy, it’s good for the unit, and the operation was like, you know, just: “Great job.” The debriefing was just a cover-up.
Meaning?
Meaning no one stopped to say, “Three innocent people died.” Maybe with the driver there was no other way, but who were the others?
Who were they, in fact?
At that time I had a friend training with the Shin Bet, he told me about the jokes going around that the terrorist was a nobody. He’d probably taken part in some shooting and the other two had nothing to do with anything. What shocked me was that the day after the operation, the newspapers said that “a secret unit killed four terrorists,” and there was a whole story on each one, where he came from, who he’d been involved with, the operations he’d done. But I know that on the Shin Bet base they’re joking about how we killed a nobody and the other two weren’t even connected, and at the debriefing itself they didn’t even mention it.
Who did the debriefing?
The unit commander. The first thing I expected to hear was that something bad happened, that we did the operation to eliminate one person and ended up eliminating four. I expected that he’d say, “I want to know who shot at the first car. I want to know why A-B-C ran to join in the big bullet-fest.” But that didn’t happen, and I understood that they just didn’t care. These people do what they do. They don’t care.
Did the guys talk about it?
Yes. There were two I could talk to. One of them was really shocked but it didn’t stop him. It didn’t stop me, either. It was only after I came out of the army that I understood. No, even when I was in the army I understood that something really bad had happened. But the Shin Bet agents were as happy as kids at a summer camp.
What does that mean?
They were high-fiving and hugging. Really pleased with themselves. They didn’t join in the debriefing, it was of no interest to them. But what was the politics of the operation? How come my commanders, not one of them, admitted that the operation had failed? And failed so badly with the shooting all over the place that the guys sitting in the truck got hit with shrapnel from the bullets. It’s a miracle we didn’t kill each other.
5. Her limbs were smeared on the wall
Unit: Givati Brigade
Location: Gaza Strip
Year: 2008
One company told me they did an operation where a woman was blown up and smeared all over the wall. They kept knocking on her door and there was no answer, so they decided to open it with explosives. They placed them at the door and right at that moment the woman came to open it. Then her kids came down and saw her. I heard about it after the operation at dinner. Someone said it was funny that the kids saw their mother smeared on the wall and everyone cracked up. Another time I got screamed at by my platoon when I went to give the detainees some water from our field kit canteen. They said, “What, are you crazy?” I couldn’t see what their problem was, so they said, “Come on, germs.” In Nahal Oz, there was an incident with kids who’d been sent by their parents to try to get into Israel to find food, because their families were hungry. They were fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boys, I think. I remember one of them sitting blindfolded and then someone came and hit him, here.
On the legs.
And poured oil on him, the stuff we use to clean weapons.
6. We shot at fishermen
Unit: Navy
Location: Gaza Strip
Year: 2007
There’s an area bordering Gaza that’s under the navy’s control. Even after Israel disengaged from the Strip, nothing changed in the sea sector. I remember that near Area K, which divided Israel and Gaza, there were kids as young as four or six, who’d get up early in the morning to fish, in the areas that were off-limits. They’d go there because the other areas were crowded with fishermen. The kids always tried to cross, and every morning we’d shoot in their direction to scare them off. It got to the point of shooting at the kids’ feet where they were standing on the beach or at the ones on surfboards. We had Druze police officers on board who’d scream at them in Arabic. We’d see the poor kids crying.
What do you mean, “shoot in their direction”?
It starts with shooting in the air, then it shifts to shooting close by, and in extreme cases it becomes shooting toward their legs.
At what distance?
Five or six hundred meters, with a Rafael heavy machine gun, it’s all automatic.
Where do you aim?
It’s about perspective. On the screen, there’s a measure for height and a one for width, and you mark where you want the bullet to go with the cursor. It cancels out the effect of the waves and hits where it’s supposed to, it’s precise.
You aim a meter away from the surfboard?
More like five or six meters. I heard about cases where they actually hit the surfboards, but I didn’t see it. There were other things that bothered me, this thing with Palestinian fishing nets. The nets cost around four thousand shekels, which is like a million dollars for them. When they wouldn’t do what we said too many times, we’d sink their nets. They leave their nets in the water for something like six hours. The Dabur patrol boat comes along and cuts their nets.
Why?
As a punishment.
For what?
Because they didn’t do what we said. Let’s say a boat drifts over to an area that’s off-limits, so a Dabur comes, circles, shoots in the air, and goes back. Then an hour later, the boat comes back and so does the Dabur. The third time around, the Dabur starts shooting at the nets, at the boat, and then shoots to sink them.
Is the off-limits area close to Israel?
There’s one area close to Israel and another along the Israeli-Egyptian border… Israel’s sea border is twelve miles out, and Gaza’s is only three. They’ve only got those three miles, and that’s because of one reason, which is that Israel wants its gas, and there’s an offshore drilling rig something like three and a half miles out facing the Gaza Strip, which should be Palestinian, except that it’s ours… the Navy Special Forces unit provides security for the rig. A bird comes near the area, they shoot it. There’s an insane amount of security for that thing. One time there were Egyptian fishing nets over the three-mile limit, and we dealt with them. A total disaster.
Meaning?
They were in international waters, we don’t have jurisdiction there, but we’d shoot at them.
At Egyptian fishing nets?
Yes. Although we’re at peace with Egypt.
Oded Na’aman is co-editor of Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000–2010 (Metropolitan Books, 2012). He is also a founder of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization dedicated to collecting the testimonies of Israel Defense Force soldiers, and a member of the Israeli Opposition Network. He served in the IDF as a first sergeant and crew commander in the artillery corps between 2000 and 2003 and is now working on his PhD in philosophy at Harvard University. The testimonies in this piece from Our Harsh Logic have been adapted and shortened.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare.
Copyright 2012 Breaking the Silence
]]>From the London Review of Books:
But the price of war is higher for Israel than it was during Cast Lead, and its room for manoeuvre more limited, because the Jewish state’s only real ally, the American government, has to maintain good relations with Egypt and other democratically elected [...]]]>
From the London Review of Books:
]]>But the price of war is higher for Israel than it was during Cast Lead, and its room for manoeuvre more limited, because the Jewish state’s only real ally, the American government, has to maintain good relations with Egypt and other democratically elected Islamist governments. During the eight days of Pillar of Defence, Israel put on an impressive and deadly fireworks show, as it always does, lighting up the skies of Gaza and putting out menacing tweets straight from The Sopranos. But the killing of entire families and the destruction of government buildings and police stations, far from encouraging Palestinians to submit, will only fortify their resistance, something Israel might have learned by consulting the pages of recent Jewish history. The Palestinians understand that they are no longer facing Israel on their own: Israel, not Hamas, is the region’s pariah. The Arab world is changing, but Israel is not. Instead, it has retreated further behind Jabotinsky’s ‘iron wall’, deepening its hold on the Occupied Territories, thumbing its nose at a region that is at last acquiring a taste of its own power, exploding in spasms of high-tech violence that fail to conceal its lack of a political strategy to end the conflict. Iron Dome may shield Israel from Qassam rockets, but it won’t shield it from the future.
via al Shabaka
Whenever Middle East tensions rise, observers wonder whether the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt will weather the storm. It is no different this time. Asked at last Friday’s daily briefing if the peace treaty was “in jeopardy”, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, assured correspondents that the [...]]]>
via al Shabaka
Whenever Middle East tensions rise, observers wonder whether the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt will weather the storm. It is no different this time. Asked at last Friday’s daily briefing if the peace treaty was “in jeopardy”, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, assured correspondents that the U.S. had no indications from Egypt there was “any difficulty on that question” and believed it “very important for Egypt to live up to its international obligations.”
The newly invigorated Egyptian street would beg to differ with Ms. Nuland. True, the last thing Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi needs is a definitive break with Israel or – more importantly – its U.S. patron. But he may find it hard to sustain even a cold peace in the face of the already great devastation and bloodshed Israel has visited upon the besieged Gaza Strip, whose deliberately impoverished Palestinian population has nowhere to run from the bombing and was only just beginning to recover from Israel’s 2008-9 assault.
Israel’s decision to launch a full-scale military operation that risked spiraling out of control will have fallout not just on the battlefield but also in the political arena, putting at risk its two greatest geopolitical gains of the past 30 years – the Camp David Accords with Egypt and the Oslo Accords signed with the Palestinians.
The value of these accords to Israel has been immeasurable. With Egypt definitively out of the Arab-Israeli military equation, Israel has been able to dominate the Middle East without fearing all-out war on multiple fronts.
And with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority (PA) domesticated, Israel has been able to aggressively colonize the occupied territory with minimal obstruction, while the PA security forces – financed by the United States and European Union – play a lead role in ensuring the security of Israel’s occupation. Israel was also able to nurture new relationships in the Arab world, particularly in the Gulf.
Israel presumably factored the risks of undermining these accords into its calculations. It excels at scanning the political environment, and recalibrating its strategies accordingly, even if its policies often backfire over the longer term. Yet in the changing regional context of 2012, Israel would be foolish to presume that it alone is in a position to capitalize on opportunities produced by such dynamics.
Palestinian and Egyptian activists have for months been demanding a break with Camp David and Oslo, and similar voices are heard in Jordan regarding the Wadi Araba agreement. The Israeli offensive against Gaza gives them an opening to push further, while making it harder for the rulers of these three nations to resist calls for a clean break.
That is not to say that such activists necessarily want war with Israel. They simply want to terminate agreements that have brought neither peace nor justice, and that have tied their nations’ hands politically as well as economically. Think, for example, of the deal that obliged Egypt to sell gas at cut-rate prices to Israel. Or the Paris Protocol that gave Israel the right to collect Palestinian tax revenues and then hand them over, or not, at will. Or the Jordanian market compelled to open its doors to Israeli produce while Jordanian farmers’ products spoil.
The Egyptian response has been quick and visible. Morsi recalled his ambassador to Israel and sent his prime minister to visit Gaza. He was spared having to expel Israel’s ambassador by the fact that the latter quietly fled before Israel’s commenced its assault. Egypt worked intensely to secure a ceasefire, even though Israel assassinated its main Hamas interlocutor, Ahmad Ja’abari, after a two-day Egyptian-mediated truce that was respected – in part due to Ja’abari’s efforts – by all Palestinian factions. The inevitable Hamas response provided the pretext for Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense.
The PA/PLO response has been less visible than that of Egypt, but perhaps more dramatic when compared to its stance during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 – January 2009. At that time, the PA/PLO resisted attempts to bring about an immediate ceasefire largely to please the U.S. It still had hopes that the U.S. support would give Palestinians a fair two-state solution. It also hoped that Israel might terminally defeat Hamas and that Fatah could regain control of the Gaza Strip – lost to Hamas in June 2007.
The PA/PLO’s foot-dragging during Operation Cast Lead was so pronounced that the then-president of the UN General Assembly, the Nicaraguan priest Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, effectively accused it of complicity in damning words: “I wanted to help Palestine, but those who should supposedly have been most interested denied their support for reasons of ‘caution’ that I was incapable of understanding. I hope that they were right and that I was wrong. Otherwise, we face an ugly situation of constant complicity with the aggression against the rights of the noble and long-suffering Palestinian people.”
By contrast, during the latest assault PA/PLO head Mahmoud Abbas loudly urged Arab and international action to bring about an end to the fighting and spoke of reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. True to form, the PA/PLO security forces began by brutally cracking down on some of the West Bank demonstrations protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza, particularly those that looked as though they might reach nearby Israeli forces. But they were forced to change their tactics as the conflict escalated and demonstrators repeatedly clashed with Israeli soldiers.
Moreover, as the conflict raged the PA/PLO had to live with a major demonstration in Ramallah largely made up of Hamas forces, whose green flags dominated the event. And neither Palestinian nor Israeli forces were able to stop determined Palestinian activists from getting into the illegal Israeli West Bank settlement of Beit El despite beatings and arrests by both Israeli and Palestinian forces. Eight Palestinian women even managed to scale the settlement wall.
There is no question that Pillar of Defense has further weakened the Fatah-led PA/PLO. It has nothing to show for its participation in the U.S.-led Oslo-framed peace process that, as revealed by Al Jazeera’s Palestine Papers, reached almost slavish subservience. The aid-dependent economy that was booming in the West Bank at the time of Cast Lead is now practically on life support.
Abbas and Fatah still have control of the PLO, which is internationally recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people – and, of course, they still have those well-armed security forces. Abbas’ bid for non-member observer state at the United Nations on November 29 will help keep him and his allies in the picture, but the weaker they get, the harder it will be for them to hold the line in defense of the Oslo Accords, which Hamas refuses to recognize, at least explicitly.
Moreover, the PLO will soon be placed in the position of having to show the value-added of its upgraded UN status by seeking membership in the International Criminal Court so as to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, including in Gaza. This would be a major departure. Abbas’ team made no use of an important legal victory, the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, which could have been used to stop other states from dealing with Israel’s settlements and put a brake on its colonization, among other things. And they deliberately undermined the Goldstone Report – the UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission findings on Cast Lead.
Meanwhile, no matter how great Palestinian losses in life, limb, and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, Hamas will emerge strengthened simply by surviving, as Hizballah did after Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, when Israel developed its Dahiya Doctrine of using disproportionate force to crush its enemies without heed to civilian casualties. Hamas has in addition won important shows of support from Arab states, some of whose envoys joined Egypt in visiting Gaza during Israel’s offensive. And, of course, it still has its own powerful security forces.
Hamas can taint its “victory” by transforming it into a partisan show of strength with Fatah, as its supporters were quick to do in the recent Ramallah demonstration. Such an attitude flies in the face of the resurgent movement to redefine the Palestinian national struggle as one that transcends factionalism in the quest for self-determination, freedom, justice and equality.
Hamas may use its stronger position vis-à-vis Fatah to push for full PLO membership, breaking Fatah’s longstanding stranglehold on the umbrella movement. Indeed, Fatah may find that the only way it can stay relevant is by bringing Hamas into the PLO fold while Fatah can still negotiate a significant share of seats in the Palestinian National Council and on the PLO Executive Committee. If Hamas joins the PLO while maintaining its refusal to recognize the Oslo Accords, that will be a further nail in Oslo’s all-but-sealed coffin.
Thus, Israel may find that it emerged from Operation Pillar of Defense with its military reputation relatively unscathed – only relatively because rockets that can hit Tel Aviv will never completely disappear and Iron Dome is not 100% secure – but with its ability to manage its neighborhood seriously weakened. Without a PA/PLO to mediate its West Bank occupation, Israel will have to manage it directly. Israel may also find its hitherto unfettered colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) severely constrained by determined Palestinian activism – an own goal for Benjamin Netanyahu who made settlement building a priority of his current premiership.
This is how, by pursuing military victory at any cost in the short term, Israel sets itself up for political failure in the longer-term. Its options are bleak: to maintain the present apartheid system of rule over the OPT and within Israel itself, while “thinning out” the Palestinian population to the extent possible.
In so doing, Israel faces growing world opprobrium and isolation in the Arab and Middle East regions – an Arab League meetingon Gaza called for “a moratorium” on normalization with Israel. It also faces possible PLO-led legal action against its occupation policies, continuing demonstrations and instability in the OPT and Israel, an increasingly effective campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions that is exacting a moral and economic price, and, potentially, a movement for full civil and political rights in the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 as well as the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967. These are the openings Palestinians will be using to scale up the fight for their rights.
]]>Okay, it seems I spoke too soon. Hamas is now back in the “Iranian-supported” camp according to this editorial in the New York Times, which identifies Hamas as both “backed by Iran” and pathologically “consumed with hatred for Israel.”
President Shimon Peres has also refocused on Iran, as [...]]]>
Okay, it seems I spoke too soon. Hamas is now back in the “Iranian-supported” camp according to this editorial in the New York Times, which identifies Hamas as both “backed by Iran” and pathologically “consumed with hatred for Israel.”
President Shimon Peres has also refocused on Iran, as shown by his response to a prompt by Piers Morgan of CNN. Morgan doesn’t beat around the bush and without displaying a modicum of impartiality asks: “If you believe Mr. President, that Iran is behind a lot of the Hamas terror activity, as you put it, then what action do you intend to take against Iran?”
Peres’ response?
Not that I guess so, I know that is the case. And we are not going to make a war with Iran but we are trying to prevent the shipping of long range missiles which Iran is sending to Hamas. And they are urge to Hamas to fire ….Iran is a problem, world problem. Not only from the point of view of building a nuclear danger, but also from the point of being a center of world terror. They finance, they train, they send arms, they urge, no responsibility, nor any moral consideration. It’s a world problem and you know it.
And what of the closure of the Hamas headquarters in Damascus, which according to many commentators supposedly created enormous strains with Iran and resulted in much less funding and material to Hamas than in the past? What of the recent visits by high profile non-Iranian regional leaders? Not much.
The Gaza problem, in the minds of the Netenyahu-Barak duo, is caused by Iran, according to Salam Masalha, writing in Haaretz: “[t]he current operation can be called “the little southern Iranian operation,” since it’s designed to paralyze Iran’s southern wing. The next operation will be “the little northern Iranian operation “: It will try to destroy Iran’s Lebanon wing.”
Israeli officials must be feeling like they’re losing their public relations war on Gaza. The meme of Hamas, the terrorist group, no longer seems sufficient. Hence “Hamas, the terrorist group supported by Iran” comes to the rescue.
Even the New York Times is noticing this problem and wants the “Arab leaders to speak the truth and stop ignoring the culpability of Hamas.” The unhappiness with the changed region and the difficulty it poses for the usual conceptualization of the disproportionate Israeli attacks on Gaza as self-defense and a fight against terrorism, is palpable. After all, it is not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is calling Israel a “terrorist state” these days, but Prime Minister Recept Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
The reality is that even the re-attachment of Hamas to Iran will neither resolve Israel’s occupation problem nor its public relations predicament. Israel is deemed the aggressor and out of control in the region not because it is unable to tell and re-tell its anti-terrorism narrative loudly enough, but because it cannot convince most of the world that its reckless bombing of a civilian population is a fight against terrorism (and its presumed chief sponsor, Iran).
As Sherine Tadros points out in her discussion of why reporting on Gaza is hard: “Hamas is not Gaza.” The reason Israel, after a few days of bombing, invariably loses its ability to sell the Iranian-backed terrorism meme in the court of regional public opinion — although not to US policy-makers who are its chief concern — is because most people know that no society and its livelihood can be reduced to its government, no matter how bad that government is.
To be sure, the current Israeli government can take the honest route and call for the punishing of the entire society in the way Gilad Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, did when he said that “We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza… The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.”
But this is not the route most Israeli leaders (excepting Interior Minister Eli Yishai who posited the goal of Pillar of Defense Operation as “sending Gaza back to the Middle Ages”) have taken. The route taken is to say that Israel had no choice but to respond disproportionately because of Hamas terrorism (now, again, supported by outside terrorists).
This is not a credible argument given the impact of Israeli actions — including the almost 6-year old embargo — on Gaza and not Hamas. And blaming or even militarily attacking Iran will not make Gaza go away.
- Farideh Farhi is an independent researcher and an affiliate graduate faculty member in political science and international relations at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
]]>The current Israeli onslaught against Gaza contains many echoes of the assault four years ago. In one regard, however, it is clear that Israel learned some lessons from its experience with “Operation Cast Lead” and is applying it to “Operation Pillar of Defense.” Those lessons are reflected in Israel’s use of [...]]]>
The current Israeli onslaught against Gaza contains many echoes of the assault four years ago. In one regard, however, it is clear that Israel learned some lessons from its experience with “Operation Cast Lead” and is applying it to “Operation Pillar of Defense.” Those lessons are reflected in Israel’s use of social media to spread its “hasbara” (Hebrew for propaganda).
The spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been tweeting for years a consistent stream of reports of thwarted terrorist attacks, pictures of sexualized female IDF soldiers, reports of the many tons of goods allowed into Gaza and almost daily reports of the million or more Israelis living under constant threat of Hamas rockets. Now, Facebook and the IDF blog have been shifted into overdrive, with some rather shocking new features.
There have been, for some time, various programs offering tourists to Israel the opportunity to play as an IDF soldier at various sites in the country. Now, there’s a new game to help urge people to promote IDF hasbara, IDF Ranks. The idea is that you go to various pages, you like them on Facebook or you tweet a page and you help the IDF get its message out. In essence, a virtual army of supporters on the internet.
Here’s how the game is described: “IDF Ranks is an interactive game, directly implemented into all of the IDF’s social platforms allowing YOU to be a virtual part of the IDF.” It’s participants are told that: “Your every action — commenting, liking, sharing and even just visiting — rewards your efforts, as well as helps spread the truth about the Israeli army all over the world.”
The light-hearted air emanating from the game stands in stark contrast to the news reports, even those from the IDF Spokesperson herself, about the fighting.
The IDF Twitter feed has been an opportunity for tough talk, such as this:
@IDFSpokesperson We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.
And it warns away journalists like this:
@IDFSpokesperson Warning to reporters in Gaza: Stay away from Hamas operatives & facilities. Hamas, a terrorist group, will use you as human shields.
One might wonder how a reporter is supposed to report from Gaza if they don’t encounter any governmental officials or facilities.
The IDF blog has a “rocket counter” to enumerate the number of rockets launched at Israel and a graphic as to where they have hit. It also has a very telling page about how the IDF avoids harm to civilians.
What is revealing about this page is that it is an almost verbatim repetition of what Israel put out during Operation Cast Lead four years ago. Indeed, it generally references practices used in that attack, including dropping leaflets, pinpoint targeting, tapping rooftops (a low level bomb dropped on a roof that would cause minimal damage and warn those inside that a real bomb was coming), and automated phone calls. As anyone with knowledge of Gaza pointed out at the time, the densely populated Strip offered nowhere for civilians to run when attacks came. Israel is of course well aware of this, which indicates that most of these methods are meant to provide deniability more than protect civilians.
But the online blitz doesn’t stop with the IDF. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a large international organization with a $100 million budget, circulated the following picture on Facebook:
Caption: An Israeli soldier wearing tefillin, which are worn by religious Jews during morning prayers, while he holds his firearm and talks with his commander.
This picture is given the following description: “This awesome photo shows the true strength of the Israeli Army! This soldier’s right hand connects him to his commander, his left to his Creator. “For it is the Lord your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.”
Might we stop to wonder how most westerners would react if this was an obviously devout Muslim holding a Koran and a rifle? And how chilling would those words feel to most Western Christians and Jews if it was describing a Muslim with a quote from the Koran, instead of an Orthodox Jew and a quote from the Torah?
All of this comes as a reaction to what Israel realizes was an absolute disaster for their standing in many US citizen and non-Israeli Jews’ eyes: Operation Cast Lead. Despite US scuttling, the Goldstone Report — commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council — severely criticized Israel (Hamas as well, though the wide disparity in the capacity to damage resulted in a spotlight on Israeli actions), and the massive devastation of the onslaught sat poorly with many.
This time around, Israeli leaders met with foreign officials beforehand and laid out plans for communicating their view. Thus far, as well, the devastation of Gaza, bad as it has been, has not yet approached the levels of Cast Lead, especially in terms of loss of life.
Yet media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a staunch right-wing supporter of extreme Israeli policies, lamented in a tweet (since deleted and retracted) “Why Is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” And the ever repugnant Alan Dershowitz, who will misrepresent the law as far as he can to defend any and all Israeli actions bemoans the “…media and international community’s failure to distinguish between the Israeli military and Hamas terrorists.”
As of now, it looks like Israel is reluctant to engage in a ground offensive this time around. The latest calculation by the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, confirms 41 civilian deaths out of 105 in Gaza at the time they issued their statement yesterday. That is a much lower total and a slightly better ratio than Cast Lead, where B’Tselem catalogued 1,390 dead in Gaza, of whom 759 were civilians. Perhaps this, as much as the greater attention to Israeli hasbara, can be attributed to the world watching these events in a way it could not before.
But it is hard to get past the gaming and the fiery rhetoric we see across social media supporting Israeli action today. It is further evidence, though, of Israel’s alienation from the liberal values that motivate much of the international community, as well as the international Jewish community. In the long term, that may help, despite the fact that political obfuscation and powerful lobbying continue to allow the bombing of a besieged population in Gaza.
]]>Mark Perry — who recently explained that the “chance for calm” has been assassinated by Israel in the past – on the current potential for a ceasefire (via CNN’s transcript):
MARK PERRY, MIDDLE EAST EXPERT: I would have said six hours ago if you had asked me that I [...]]]>
Mark Perry — who recently explained that the “chance for calm” has been assassinated by Israel in the past – on the current potential for a ceasefire (via CNN’s transcript):
]]>MARK PERRY, MIDDLE EAST EXPERT: I would have said six hours ago if you had asked me that I thought that a cease-fire was quite possible and that the principles were in place for a cease-fire. But as Arwa Damon said at the top of your broadcast that the two sides now seem to be drifting apart.
Listen, I think the principles for a cease-fire are in place. An end to the siege, that’s what Hamas wants. An end to the siege of the targeting of their leadership. What does Israel want? Israel wants Hamas to stop firing rockets, especially the Fajr-5 and the Fajr-3 long-range rockets, at their populations.
Certainly there’s a good exchange there. But what it’s going to take is Egyptians or somebody, Egyptians are going to be it, providing the security and the guarantees on such — on such an agreement. That’s very hard for the Egyptians to do. They don’t want to be responsible for Gaza. So we’re going to have to provide — somebody is going to have to provide inducement for them to do so. I think that’s the broad outlines of a cease-fire. A long-term cease-fire. And I think it’s very doable.