The Luxury of Iron Dome

Most of the Israeli tweeps I follow on Twitter are leftists. I follow them because I tend to agree with them. The occupation is morally indefensible and nationally suicidal, Bibi and his comrades are compass-less vile warmongers, yada, yada, yada. The whole 9 yards. This Operation Protective Edge is as stupid and morally indefensible as Cast Lead and Defensive Shield before it.
But...
What in God's name is a government and army supposed to do when 100 missiles a day are fired willy-nilly into your territory? Every single former interlocutor with Hamas reports that Hamas had ample time amidst unambiguous signals of restraint from the dithering Israeli security cabinet to try to ramp down this confrontation, and the universal and consistent message from Hamas, from the Islamic Jihad, and from the Popular Resistance Committees of Gaza was a defiant "NO!"

So I read someone like Noam Sheizaf, who so often I find myself in agreement, writing a piece under the completely accurate headline "Why I object to this military campaign, even as missiles fall on my city". But I have to ask Mr. Sheizaf, and all the others who hold the same opinion - yes, this bloodshed is the direct result of the blind & idiotic 47-year long occupation, but if there were no Iron Dome missile defense, and that M75 rocket that was intercepted over the Azrieli Towers had reached its target, would you still be able to pen such a piece? 

You see, Mr. Sheizaf, the missile hasn't actually fallen on your city. You have the luxury that your counterparts in Gaza don't - an army and a civilian government which protects you when you are under attack. It's true that this is the same government that has spurned peace overtures, that exacerbates the conflict, that defies international law. But today, having placed you in such grave danger, it is saving your life. 

Can't say the same for Hamas.

Judge Goldstone Revisits His Report

     This is rather surprising. Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African (and Jewish) human rights jurist who issued a damning report in late 2009 against Israel in the wake of its conduct during Operation Cast Lead in December 2008-January 2009, has published a semi-retraction (certainly a serious modification, at the very least), of his original report.
     Takeaway line? "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."
     This Goldstone Report has become a rallying cry for the delegitimizers and demonizers of Israel, like Norman Finkelstein and Philip Weiss who have published breathless, hate-filled books or web reports based on Goldstone's original findings. (BTW, I noticed that Weiss on his scurrilous website Mondoweiss had not a word to say about Goldtone's retraction - at least not more than 24 hours since it was published in The Washington Post. [NOTE: A piece has since gone up on Mondoweiss, calling the retraction "confusing and potentially damaging." You gotta love the slavish consistency of Mondoweiss.]) Since I once referred to the Goldstone report in an approving way in one of my earlier posts, I believe it is my duty to now point out that its author has retracted the most serious allegations of intentional crimes against humanity on the part of Israel, and criticizes Hamas for failing to investigate its own alleged abuses, something Judge Goldstone readily admits Israel has credibly done.
     I still maintain that this outcome -- a one-sided report that has circulated for over a year, now repudiated by its author on a much smaller bully pulpit -- could have been avoided if the Israeli government back in 2009 had decided to submit itself to the Goldstone investigation process. But Israel self-righteously chose to shun this UN-backed judicial venue, resulting in a completely lopsided presentation of evidence.
     This is not to take away from the utter naivete of the esteemed judge. Wrote Judge Goldstone yesterday:

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.

    What a rube...
    Now of course be on the lookout for all of Israel's detractors to come up with some grand conspiratorial explanation for Goldstone's change-of-heart.

A Different Outcome: The Clinton Report?

The MV Rachel Corrie was intercepted today by the Israeli Navy, boarded by commandos of the same unit as the May 31 seizure which had disastrous results, and no incident of violence transpired between the 19 passengers and the blockade enforcement force. The freighter now sits in Israel's Ashdod harbor, its content as yet undelivered. Israeli authorities are offering to move the approved humanitarian supplies to a non-Hamas distributor through one of its monitored land-border transfer points, but both the flotilla organizers and Hamas refuse to allow this "vital" humanitarian equipment to be processed by Israeli blockade authorities. And so the equipment sits on the docks of Ashdod.

The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is, in a fit of populist bravado, now vowing to personally man an aid ship to Gaza, and is threatening to cut diplomatic (and military, and economic) relations with Israel.

The Israeli Inspector General will be launching a very limited inquiry of the May 31 incident on Sunday. His powers are quite constrained and previous IG reports have had minimal impact on Israeli policy. What the world diplomatic community is demanding is something far more penetrating and definitive. One might recall the "Mitchell Report" (headed by ex-Senator George Mitchell) which looked into the origins of the al-Aqsa Intifada of September 2000. The Sharon government of 2001 accepted this external review (overseen by an American crew of investigators) which Israel then submitted to; true, the Mitchell Report ended up splitting the middle, as it were, blaming both sides equally for the outbreak of the 2nd intifada, but it also led to a path of further negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians at a time of high tension. A similarly constructed American-based fact-finding mission splitting its time between Jerusalem and Istanbul might be the only viable "silver lining" in this awful situation. It will not dampen the fervor of the "Free Gaza" activists, who now demonize Israel to the point of outright Jew-hatred; it will not bring the Netanyahu government into proximity talks with Hamas; it will not facilitate a Fatah-Hamas rapprochement. What a US-sponsored investigatory commission can do is save the US-Israel-Turkish relationship from completely unravelling. George Mitchell is busy, the result of accepting President Obama's request to become the US special envoy to the region. So who can serve as the seasoned statesman to function as commission chair? Yep, you got it - Bill Clinton.

If I get this one right (a prediction like this is the pundit's equivalent of a perfect game), someone owes me a brand new Corvette.

Update, June 6, 8:20 pm: I just watched the 8 pm Israeli channel 2 evening news broadcast. Guess what? My prediction, made yesterday in this blog entry, that Bill Clinton might be the guarantor of some investigation, just got a solid confirmation by their diplomatic correspondent.

Countdown on Netanyahu?

Nehemia Shtrasler is the economics editor for Haaretz, the independent newspaper published in Tel Aviv and often called the New York Times of Israel. Today he published a piece which was not translated for the English language version of either the print paper or the English web site. A few choice passages:

If anyone feels that our international standing has gotten worse and someone else thinks that we are behaving like a suicidal country - think again.

For behold - the Prime Minister says that all the criticism we are receiving due to the brutal seizure of the Marmara is nothing other than "international hypocrisy." And Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says that the guilt for the entire incident lies with the Turks, who sent the ship...

Two days ago Netanyahu appeared on television in a delusional speech before the nation. This was a personal defensive speech of the lowest level imaginable. Netanyahu spoke about our obligation to prevent the entrance of arms and rockets into Gaza, as if that is what the debate is about. The question is instead over the method, over the lack of planning, over the arrogance, over the scarcity of intelligence, over the miserable management, over the fact that no one seemed to take into account the price Israel would pay for a brutal seizure leading to deaths, and over the danger into which commandos were thrust without knowing the ambush awaiting them.

About this colossal failure Netanyahu did not say a word. In his familiar way, he continued to frighten the Israeli nation with "an Iranian port that will arise in Gaza."

But today it is clear that if anyone is hastening the arrival of an Iranian port in Gaza, it is Netanyahu himself. His failures are leading now to a second Goldstone Commission, which will investigate the event and arrive at severe conclusions, which will likely result this time in the demand that the blockade be lifted from Gaza, including the military blockade.

Netanyahu, who says that from our perspective, "security is above all else" is the one who is most damaging the security of Israel. In a year and a quarter he has succeeded in turning a country which was a strategic ally of Israel into a bitter enemy. By his own hand Netanyahu has thrown Turkey into the arms of Iran and Syria, with no possibility of repairing the damage...

To great astonishment, Netanyahu has succeeded in harming even the subject that is dear to his heart - the Iranian atomic threat...

The dangerous new low of Israel's international status teaches something about the beginning of the countdown on the Netanyahu regime. Thus it was in his earlier round ('96-'99). The beginning of the demise came about as a result of his successful scuttling of the Oslo Accords and a return to fire and rifles. Thus he became despised by the Clinton administration and the governments of Europe.

One can hope that this time it will not stretch out 3 years. The danger is too great.

Intifada on Water: Part II

It ain't over, not by a long shot. According to news reports, another large ferry (over 225 feet long) belonging to the Free Gaza Movement, the MV Rachel Corrie (named to honor an American activist squashed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in 2003) is less than 2 days out from reaching a similar point in international waters where Israeli naval commandos intercepted -- with disastrous results -- the Mavi Marmara on May 31. On board the MV Rachel Corrie are a number of Irish activists, and the Irish media is following the progress of the ferry, reportedly carrying humanitarian aid and cement, with great anticipation. Cement, it should be noted, is one of the products that the Israeli blockade refuses to allow through to Gaza.
Let's step back and take a look at the situation. First, remember that this international firestorm is occurring during the same news cycle when 80 Ahmadi Muslims were killed by multiple terrorist bombs in two mosques in Lahore, Pakistan. Did you hear a word about it? Of course not. Why do I make the point? To show that there is something particularly telegenic and dramatic about the drama of the Palestinians and the Israelis. It captures peoples imaginations in a way that no other havoc does. Some supporters of Israel think there is an obsession with Israel that borders on anti-Semitism. Why single out Israel when there are so many other tragedies and humanitarian crises in the world? they ask. I think the answer is complicated, but I also believe that the question is valid, and an honest answer would be quite revealing. But not in today's blog.

As with all the stories in the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is hard to know where the story begins; it certainly is impossible to know where it will end. If I choose to begin the story with the accession of the Islamist-nationalist Hamas organization to power in Gaza in early 2006, I set aside an enormous pre-history which precedes that moment. If I choose to start the story with the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005, I still need to ask the reader to put blinkers on to ignore all the rest. If I begin the story in December of 1987, at the outbreak of the first intifada, and the emergence in January 1988 of a new group called the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), I will have to ask the reader to ignore all that preceded this moment. If I start the story in 1967, with the Israeli acquisition of the Gaza Strip, I ask you to ignore all that comes before. If I start the story in 1947, with the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians down the coast to Gaza, I ask you dear reader to ignore everything else that led to that moment. I always tell my students that where a narrator of the Arab-Israeli conflict begins his narrative will tell you a great deal about the prejudices and leanings of the narrator.

To make this simple, I am going to start with the June 2007 Israeli decision to blockade the Gaza Strip, a blockade on materiel that is also (periodically) enforced by the Egyptian regime on its long land border with Gaza. The Israeli decision to blockade Gaza came after a brutal civil war in which Hamas militants wiped away the competing forces of Fatah, the secular arm of Palestinian nationalism now holed up in the West Bank. The blockade came at a time when tensions between Gaza and Israel were at (for what was then) an all-time high: daily rocket salvos flying into southern Israel; Israeli troops surrounding the Strip; a year earlier an Israeli soldier was kidnapped on the border. The idea of the Israelis and Egyptians was to prevent military equipment from reaching the Strip; a second goal was to make the economic conditions of Gaza so miserable (they already were awful even before this blockade was ramped up) that the residents of Gaza would reject Hamas leadership. This is an old and worn (and inhumane) tactic that has often been used across the decades by Israeli strategic planners -- put pressure (in the form of reprisal raids, economic restrictions, security checks, and other daily humiliations) on the target general population in order to encourage the general population to renounce and turn away from the hated regime bringing on all this repression and havoc. Trouble is, sometimes the general population does not connect the dots the way Israeli leaders hope. And the embargo is far from hermetic; Israel supplies electricity to Gaza, Israel supplies water; the Israeli sheqel is still the functional currency of Gaza. The Gaza Strip and Israel are even now inextricably tied one to the other.

The Israelis keep using this tactic, and can only point to a less than .500 result. So far, the tactic has failed in Gaza, even as the blockade tightened in the aftermath of the full-scale military operation against Hamas in December 2008-January 2009. During Operation Cast Lead the Israel Defense Forces set the economy of Gaza back another dozen years (commonly referred to as "de-development"), and then produced a list of materiel (including concrete & coriander) that cannot be imported into Gaza. In essence, Israeli authorities were trying to set the caloric intake of Gazans in an attempt to cause Gazans to turn against Hamas. It didn't work, and it is a humanitarian crisis, created by two successive Israeli governments who cannot fathom a different way of dealing with Hamastan.

Aluf Benn of Haaretz has it right today when he writes that Israel should simply end its relationship with Gaza:

The attempt to control Gaza from outside, via its residents' diet and shopping lists, casts a heavy moral stain on Israel and increases its international isolation. Every Israeli should be ashamed of the list of goods prepared by the Defense Ministry, which allows cinnamon and plastic buckets into Gaza, but not houseplants and coriander. It's time to find more important things for our officers and bureaucrats to do than update lists.

So now comes the boats! A vast array of organizations, both outside and inside Israel, are committed to the conviction that the blockade of Gaza is inhumane and unlawful. The Free Gaza Movement has been organizing sea-faring challenges to the Israeli naval blockade since 2008, with varying outcomes. Sometimes the Israeli Navy allowed boats through; sometimes there were collisions at sea; sometimes ships turned back. With the new flotilla on its way, the leaders of Israel decided to treat this new effort to run the naval blockade as a terrorist threat, and prepared a military commando raid for the biggest of the 6 ships in the flotilla.

On May 31 there was a mini-intifada on the high seas. It was in miniature an exact replica of the first days of the intifada in 1987, when television stations around the world broadcast pictures of IDF soldiers shooting live ammunition at youthful Gazans burning tires, throwing rocks, and casting slingshots. Israel lost a great deal of international stature during that first intifada, and will face similar problems from this current confrontation. Armed with the traditional hand-to-hand and symbolic weaponry of the first intifada -- iron rods, knives, slingshots and marbles -- a core of 50-100 passengers on the Mivi Marmara were prepared for "either martyrdom or Gaza" (as one passenger told an al-Jazeera correspondent). On the Israeli side, a thoroughly misinformed military leadership sent heavily armed soldiers into a potential disaster-in-the-making. While the Israeli tactic of using overpowering and intimidating force worked on 5 of the 6 ships in the flotilla, on the Mivi Marmara it all went sour. Why would the Israeli planners of this operation, including the now-disgraced Minister of Defense Ehud Barak (known in international circles ironically as the most flexible Israeli PM in recent history) not have known more of who was on board the Mivi Marmara? After all, Israeli intelligence monitors al-Jazeera Arabic and the Turkish news channels, and anyone could have seen what the mood on this ship was. Why drop soldiers at night (without the cover of sufficient smoke grenades or concussion grenades) onto a ship which had people waiting for just such an occurrence? Why not simply jam the propellers and tow the ship to Ashdod? The Israelis had completely blocked the electronic signal spectrum to and from the ship -- there would have been no ongoing international reporting of that kind of tugging operation. With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu abroad, (back in December 1987 Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was abroad for the first few days -- when he returned he announced "we will break their bones"), the worst possible plan was set in motion, with the deserving international outrage now pouring forth. There is a reasonable Internet-based theory floating about that it was the Obama White House that cancelled Netanyahu's scheduled visit and not the other way around -- as soon as the details of the raid became known, the story has it that the White House understood it could not be playing host to the Israeli Prime Minister during the flotilla fiasco news cycle.

So now the next question is: should there be an international investigation, as is being demanded by the UN, and is being hinted at by the Obama White House? And I have to say that from my perspective -- this Netanyahu government shows every sign of digging in, and may be incapable of investigating itself. There was a time, back during the 1970's and 1980's, where it seemed that Israeli democracy could investigate itself. Two major governmental commissions led to sweeping changes in the Israeli military and governing structures. Even the defanged 2007 Winograd Commission (which investigated the circumstances and decision-making of the June 2006 Second Lebanon War) was a thorough and revealing investigation, though then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to allow an independent judicial commission. But something in my guts tells me that the Netanyahu government has decided that "once a Goldstone, always a Goldstone" -- there can be no trust of an international investigation, because Netanyahu perceives an international poisoning of the well when it comes to Israel. In Netanyahu's view, to submit his political allies (in his weak coalition government) and his military command to international investigators for questioning is an abdication of national sovereignty. The world is saying: "Israel, we do not trust you any longer to mend your own problems." Netanyahu's likely reply: "Fuck you." Is there a chance that a calmer, more reasonable tone might prevail in the inner workings of the Israeli cabinet? Can a respectable and independent domestic judicial commission of inquiry be empowered to look into the failings of this current government?

Watch what happens to the MV Rachel Corrie to get an answer. We'll check back in a couple of days.

Continued...

Intifada on Water

Reports are still preliminary, but at 4 am local time this morning Israeli naval commandos boarded the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, part of a self-proclaimed humanitarian aid "Freedom Flotilla" headed for the blockaded Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and in the process killed at least 10 passengers on board.

This bizarre and poorly executed high seas seizure, which was predictable in its unpredictability, is another in a string of serial outrages perpetrated by the right-wing government of Israel.

International condemnation of the Israeli military intervention against the aid flotilla has been swift and comprehensive. Protesters have appeared in Istanbul, Beirut, and London to denounce the Israeli operation. Inside Israel, Israeli Arab towns such as Umm al-Fahm have spontaneously exploded with street protests, tire burnings, and blockages of roads.

Israeli Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has cancelled his planned visit to the Obama White House scheduled for later this week, and is returning from Canada to direct the cleanup that will inevitably result from this public relations disaster.

The flotilla had multiple messages and objectives. Calling it an "aid flotilla" is to only capture part of its agenda. Certainly, there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the result of an international embargo on allowing the free movement of materiel into Hamas-controlled Gaza. But part of this "aid flotilla"'s agenda was to legitimize the vicious and inhumane rule of Hamas over Gaza.

Some earlier media reports showed that some of the Arabic-speaking passengers of the Mavi Marmara were preparing for a mini-intifada on the ship. The Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla, is pretending that it was a purely peaceful protest, not so much to provide aid as to try and break what it considers to be an illegal blockade. With some passengers on board chanting "Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return" (referring to one of the bloody confrontations between Muslims and the Jewish tribes of Medina in the 7th century), there was clearly a mix of naive Western activists and hardened veterans of the intifada sailing off to challenge the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Hamastan.

If the government of Israel has not abandoned completely the principles of democratic and orderly rule, a full-scale governmental commission of inquiry must be convened. The Netanyahu government has been careening towards a point of no return, setting a tone of international defiance that is crippling the country at home and abroad. Unlike the Olmert-designed fiasco of the 2007 war with Hizbollah and the equally idiotic Cast Lead campaign of December 2008-January 2009, this military operation which has turned into a national disgrace was devised by two of Israel's top military strategists, both former experienced Chiefs of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces: Defense Minister Ehud Barak and stand-in vice PM Moshe Yaalon. At the very least, the two of them must be held accountable in the court of public opinion.

It seems as if every action of this Israeli government is willfully designed to make those of us who dream of a just and peaceful Israel give up all hope. Yesterday one of the most remarkable Israeli leaders, an inspiration in a time of hopelessness, passed away at the age of 88. It was my distinct privilege to know Aryeh (Lova) Eliav for the past 15 years. He was a Zionist pioneer, a visionary who understood almost from the first moment that setting Zionism against Palestinian nationalism would lead to a disaster, a humane man of principles with a tremendous sense of humor. Lova ran a very different blockade back in the 1940s, the naval blockade set by the British to prevent the remnants of European Jewry from setting foot in Palestine. It was a humiliation for Britain, just as today's events will be a humiliation for Israel. Lova built Israeli cities, served in the Israeli parliament, rose to the highest ranks of power in the then-dominant Labor Party of Israel. After the victory of 1967, Lova put his entire career on the line to oppose the nascent settlement project in the newly occupied territories just beginning under Labor rule. He resigned from the Labor party, followed his own voice, became a writer and an educator, a builder of youth communties and peace monuments, and continued to serve his fellow man until the day he died.

Because I know that Israel is populated by hundreds of thousands of citizens committed to Lova's way, I will not give up hope on a country currently led by a "ship of fools." These last 48 hours the Arab-Israeli conflict has gotten a bit darker, a bit more vile, a bit more intractable. But because there were men like Lova, and because his spirit still persists amongst Jews and Arabs, I will not give up hope.

continued...