Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Today’s NY Times bears the rather remarkable news that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was not notified in advance by the IDF command that it would be conducting a raid in Ramallah on the same day as his talks with Hosni Mubarak:

Mr. Olmert’s aides said he had not been informed of the raid in advance and was angry about what had happened.

And according to the Jerusalem Post, Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh didn’t even inform his nominal civilian boss, Amir Peretz, the defense minister:

According to reports, Naveh did not inform Defense Minister Amir Peretz of the raid before it was carried out.

All this could mean many things. First, the IDF may have the cabinet’s approval to conduct such raids without first notifying the civilian echelon. Such a process would be foolhardy in my opinion and guarantee more disasters of this kind in future.

Or the IDF may deliberately be poking its finger in the politicians’ eyes by leaving them out of the loop. This too would be disastrous since it would indicate that the IDF may flaunt its independence with impunity. Essentially, it would mean there is no one exercising any control over the IDF. How can a democracy afford such an extravagance? Imagine if Douglas MacArthur could’ve run an end around on Truman during the Korean War. We could’ve had Chinese troops overrunning the entire Korean peninsula and tens of thousands of U.S. troops trapped there. Not to mention the possibility of a nuclear attack either from China or its ally Comrade Stalin.

Or it could mean that the politicians are lying to cover their asses and save themselves from the embarrassment of having to admit to a foreign leader (Mubarak) that they didn’t know what the hell their army was doing.

Whatever the cause or reason, this incident indicates the utter dysfunction of the current government. I don’t know what’s worse–the army that can’t shoot straight or the Keystone Cops cabinet ministers who appear to be bumbling incompetent fools. They can’t manage their way out of a paper bag.

All of which has brought Israel to the unlikely place of having MKs denouncing an IDF operation within hours of its completion. OF course, there have been MKs who have denounced IDF policy. But I can’t remember an incident in which it happened so quickly after the fact. In the old days, such a thing would never have happened. The IDF was a sacred cow incapable of being criticized. But one indication of the weakness of this government and of the IDF is that there is no longer a taboo against slamming the nation’s armed forces. In a way, this is a good thing since no army should be above reproof. But it is also a bad thing in that it shows how far off course the IDF has come. When the IDF makes its own security policy without civilian oversight and the politicians never buy into such policy, this is a recipe for national disaster, which is precisely what we now see happening.

tags amir-peretz, ehud-olmert, mubarak, no-civilian-oversight-of-israeli-army, olmert-not-informed-by-idf-of-ramallah-raid, peretz-did-not-know-of-idf-raid, yair-naveh-idf-officer

I have been fulminating for several weeks about the betrayal by the Israeli mainstream left (Labor, Meretz, Peace Now) of its anti-war values in fulsomely supporting the Lebanon war. That is, until they didn’t support it (to paraphrase John Kerry). Until Olmert announced the expanded ground war in the last week or so of the conflict, the Israeli peace camp fully endorsed the war and Olmert’s avowed aims of crushing Hezbollah.

It is as if the entire failed Israeli invasion of Gaza which raged for weeks before the Lebanon conflict began, had never happened. The senseless mayhem, the overwhelming devastation wrought on Palestinian civilians, the disproportionate use of force–all of it didn’t teach the so-called progressives that what couldn’t be done in Gaza also couldn’t be done in Lebanon. It’s shameful really. It’s as if you train your entire life to save lives by fighting fires and when the first alarm bell rings you drop a match on the conflagration.

For those who aren’t schooled enough on who or what I’m talking about–I’m talking about the Amir Peretzes and Yossi Beilins, the Amos Ozes and A.B. Yehoshuas, the Meretz and Labor of the Israeli political scene. Those who cut their eye teeth on Peace Now demonstrations lo these many years ago. The ones who sounded all the grand themes of negotiation, brotherhood and peace in their speeches and op-ed columns. The ones who should’ve known better.

It just makes me sick. Lebanon was a disaster from the get go. Why did it take them five entire weeks to realize this? Why did they leave the entire anti-war opposition to Israeli Arabs and Hadash? Not that I disparage their courage and conviction in the face of such tremendous silence from the progressive Jews in Israel. On the contrary. I give them much credit. But the truth is that this group does not hold much sway over mainstream Israeli opinion. And in order for an anti-war movement to have developed it would’ve required support from some of the culprits I excoriate here.

A Ynetnews correspondent has written a scathing indictment of what she calls the Doves of Prey. She wrote this on August 12th, when the war raged at its worst, and her bitterness turned out to be justified:

One hundred dead Israelis - undoubtedly a horrendous figure – and a flock of local and noisy doves have turned into a flock of angry battle doves.

Almost overnight, the calls for peace and moderation have been abandoned, replaced by loud and angry preaching calling for the pounding, crippling and destruction of the enemy.

One hundred dead, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, dozens of shelled homes – and the doves have become falcons…

Israel’s belligerent doves should pause to ponder one small question: if they – the famous peace lovers – have become doves of prey after the death of 100 Israelis, then what do they suppose is going through the minds of those doves and hawks alike who have suffered 1,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, and scores of villages almost wiped off the face of the earth.

But how dare I compare? We are the chosen people, and they are just Arabs.

B. Michael, the correspondent, presents a powerful rebuttal of the Israeli argument that Hamas was to blame for Lebanese civilian casualties because it used “human shields” or hid itself in civilian areas:

We say they “hide among civilians,” that they “use them as human shields, those lowly cowards.” We say, “Those who allow them to do so should pay the price.”

This is a somewhat hollow argument coming from the mouths of officers and leaders whose headquarters are located in the heart of Tel Aviv. And not far from there in the midst of a prestigious neighborhood, there’s a type of military airport. And in a handsome building in the capital, in the heart of the city, there’s a large military base, where cannons are reportedly, often positioned so close to the settlements that schoolchildren wander over there during their breaks.

But these arguments sound all the more hollow coming from a country that invented the “settlement undertaking.” An undertaking whose sole purpose was to send civilians, including women and children, to perform a military assignment par excellence: gaining control over territory, the expulsion of the residents and annexation of the spoils to the mother country. A classical assignment by a conquering power.

This is all being carried out under a contrite and sanctimonious civilian pretext. I would, therefore, like to make myself heard loud and clear: No one asked for my permission before building the Kiriya (Tel Aviv military headquarters), I didn’t give my consent for building the Schneller Camp, and as far as I am concerned, let all the settlements be abandoned as of now.

And even though I am being used as a human shield, many leaders and sacred weapons are hiding behind me, and I am paying the taxes for the curse of the settlements and the evil of the occupation, I insist: my blood is no different from the blood of Lebanese citizens, and cannot be shed. And hopefully, all those who dare harm us, will find themselves paying the cost. Either before a local adjudicator or an international one, whatever comes first.

I’m often excoriated for my criticisms of Israel and my contentions that Israeli generals will eventually (along with Hezbollah and Palestinians terrorists) face an international tribunal if their own respective judiciaries refuse to try them for war crimes. It’s nice to read an Israeli thinking along the same lines; though it is sad to think that things have sunk so low that we speak seriously of such an eventuality.

Hat tip to Common Ground News Service.

tags amir-peretz, b.-michael-ynetnews-correspondent, doves-of-prey, hadash, israeli-left-betrays-anti-war-values-to-support-lebanon, meretz, peace-movement, peace-now, yossi-beilin

Well, finally. Someone has come to their senses within the Israeli government. Or at least begun to come to their senses. Whether they’ve fully done so or not will become evident in the near term. Defense Minister Amir Peretz announced today that Israel would drop its earlier objection to any international peacekeeping force meant to keep the peace between Israel and Hezbollah:

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Sunday that Israel would agree to the deployment of a multi-national force in Lebanon.

“Due to the weakness of the Lebanese army, we support the deployment in the south [of Lebanon] of a multi-national force with broad authority,” Peretz said.

Following a morning meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Peretz said the force would be from NATO and added that also act to prevent weapons smuggling from Syria into Lebanon. Peretz also noted Israel has no intention of entering into a war with Syria…

Steinmeier was involved in efforts to secure a deal between Israel and Hezbollah in 2004 leading to the return of an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three IDF soldiers kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah in 2000.

It is no accident that this development occurs just as Condoleeza Rice is to arrive in Israel for negotiations to end the hostilities. Either Israel’s acquiescence was pre-arranged with Washington; or else the former saw the handwriting on the wall and realized the days of raging missiles were numbered.

Of course, much remains to be negotiated and nothing is guaranteed. You have to watch these guys like a hawk since an agreement can be signed, sealed and practically delivered and yet it somehow fails. But let’s hope that Peretz is right and Israel does come to its senses enough to realize that the current conflict must stop and soon.

Two Israelis Dead from Katyusha Fire in Haifa

Haaretz announced that two Israelis were killed today from Hezbollah rocket fire in Haifa. It was a deadly day as shells rained down on many cities in the north causing many casualties, a few of which were serious. What is interesting about this development is that the IDF has begun to denude Lebanon’s south of its civilian population in order to strip Hezbollah of its “cover” so that the former may pinpoint the guerrillas and impede their actions. But it doesn’t seem to have worked in this case–or at least not yet. One wonders whether it ever will work no matter what the IDF does there. And even if the IDF does rid the south of guerillas, why wouldn’t Hezbollah get longer range missiles allowing them to hit Israel from longer distances? That’s why the only way to end this is through negotiation. There is no military solution.

tags amir-peretz, haaretz, hezbollah-katyusha-rockets, israels-lebanon-invasion, nato-led-peacekeeping-force-for-lebanon, steinmeier-german-foreign-minister

Today’s Haaretz reveals that the Hamas-Popular Resistance Committee joint terror operation which killed two IDF soldiers took place at an outpost within the Green Line.
**UPDATE: In the past few minutes, the reference to the outpost being inside Israel has been removed. The article retains this seemingly contradictory statement:

The gunmen attacked an IDF post near Kerem Shalom just outside the border fence with southern Gaza…The gunmen seized Shalit and fled with him across the border

I can’t tell from this passage where precisely the outpost was located.**
Which means that this action would’ve violated the Prisoner’s Document had it been in effect. It calls for a cessation of all resistance against targets within the Green Line. It is only too easy to argue that a political movement whose military wing refuses to honor the terms of an agreement which it’s supposedly about to sign, is untrustworthy at best. It’s important to also note that Hamas’ military wing is undoubtedly run by hardline Hamas operatives out of Syria. These operatives like Khaled Meshaal have vociferously opposed Hamas’ acceptance of the Prisoner’s Document, which according to other news articles is immiment.

Is it possible that the terror operation is a sort of rump protest against the possible moderation of Hamas’ political policies regarding the Prisoner’s Document? An attempt perhaps to throw a wrench into a potential Hamas-Fatah national unity government? If so, then the Rejectionists of Damascus have succeeded at least temporarily.

Haaretz’s Amos Harel expands on this line of thinking:

Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamed called on Israel yesterday, in fluent Hebrew, almost in supplication, not to take steps that would lead to escalation.

Hamed, who said he doesn’t know who the kidnappers are, knows who is behind the kidnapping, even though he won’t admit it. They are Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’ political bureau in Damascus, and Ahmed Jabari, leader of the movement’s military wing in Gaza. Meshal and Jabari have pushed Haniyeh and his people into a corner.

…PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas accused Meshal of sabotaging the agreement that the Palestinian factions were going to sign in regard to the prisoners’ national unity document. Egyptian diplomats in Gaza, who tried in vain last night to reach the Hamas military wing, realized that the person to whom they actually must address their grievances is in Damascus.

The NY Times echoes this assessment by quoting a Palestinian ex-minister:

A former Interior Ministry spokesman, Elias Zananiri, suggested that Hamas’s military wing attacked on orders of its leadership abroad, in particular Khaled Meshal, the leader of the Hamas political bureau, while the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, was kept in the dark.

Ehud Olmert has taken Meshaal’s bait and promised a major incursion into Gaza to teach the militants a lesson. You know what this phrase means: to draw blood and lots of it. Palestinian blood. In invading Gaza, Olmert accepts the extremist political rhetoric of Eli Moyal, the Likud mayor of Sderot who called for clearing the entire north of Gaza in order to prevent Qassam shelling. Another extremist, Avigdor Lieberman, similarly calls for bloodthirsty vengeance against Gaza. Now, we are right back in the pathological trap by which the most extreme and hateful on each side set the political & tactical tone of debate and military action.

Perhaps Olmert would be better off attacking Hamas hardliners in Damascus who initiated the attack.

Unfortunately, Olmert refused to listen to the “cooler heads” of Shimon Peres, Meir Shetreet and Eli Yishai who counseled caution before such an invasion. They have enough tacatical/strategic sense to understand that not only might such an invasion endanger the life of the captured Israeli solider; but it would escalate the conflict for the umpteenth time and undo any promising developments of the past few weeks (of which there were several that were potentially important).

One wonders where Peretz is in all this. As a political dove, he’s got to feel extremely uncomfortable getting dragged into the same old maelstrom of tit for tat revenge attacks. He must understand the absolute bankruptcy of this behavior. Yet, as defense minister, he’s expected to be the cheerleader for precisely these types of policies. Ian Fisher of the NY Times seems to be thinking along the same lines as me and wrote a compelling piece on the battle for Peretz’s soul: Israel’s Defense Minister Is Faulted by Left and Right

All this proves the truism, which I’ve slightly amended, that both Israel and the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to spoil an opportunity.

tags amir-peretz, ehud-olmert, gaza-idf-incursion, haaretz, hamas-attack-on-idf-outpost, kerem-shalom, palestinian-terror-attack, resistance-to-israeli-occupation, shimon-peres

Is the IDF lying when it claims there is no way its artillery could’ve lobbed a shell on a Gaza beach killing eight civilians frolicking in the sand? Human Rights Watch sure thinks something doesn’t smell right about the IDF’s exoneration of itself (this from the NY Times):

Human Rights Watch, which has been investigating the Israeli shelling in Gaza on Friday, said of the deaths, “The evidence we have gathered strongly suggests Israeli artillery fire was to blame.” It called on Israel to open an independent investigation rather than relying on its own military.

An American expert working with Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco, is a former Pentagon official who did bomb damage assessment for the American military in Kosovo and worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

He said that he had visited the beach the day after the explosion, and that the crater size, the shrapnel and the location of injuries on the bodies all pointed to “a shell dropping from the sky, not explosives under the sand.”

In an interview in Gaza, he said he had found shrapnel “consistent with a 155-mm. Israeli shell fired from a M109 howitzer,” including one piece stamped “155mm.

Further, the Human Rights Watch investigation at the beach determined that several shells landed there, not one:

Eyewitnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch described between five and six explosions on the beach between 4:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., the time frame when the IDF fired artillery onto the beach and when the seven civilians were killed…

According to readings from a Global Positioning Satellite taken by Human Rights Watch, the crater where the victims were killed was within the vicinity of the other artillery craters created by the IDF’s June 9 artillery attack and was the same shape and size. One crater was 100 meters away from the fatal crater, and the rest were 250 to 300 meters away.

If accurate, this blows the IDF account to smithereens. According to it six shells were fired and landed 250 meters from the beach. They cannot account for one of the shells but claim there is no way it could’ve landed on the beach. The fact that possibly five or six IDF shells landed on the beach makes the IDF story look like a crock.

As for the IDF claim that Hamas militants mined the beach thus explaining how the deaths occurred: Human Rights Watch shoots down this theory as well by stating that the worst wounds were to the head and torso of the victims indicating the shell struck from above rather than below:

According to on-site investigations by Human Rights Watch, the size of the craters and the type of injuries to the victims are not consistent with the theory that a mine caused the explosion. The craters are too large to be made by bounding mines, the only type of landmines capable of producing head and torso injuries of the type suffered by the victims on June 9. Additionally, Palestinian armed groups are not known to have, or to have used, bounding mines; the Palestinian government bomb squad said it has never uncovered a bounding mine in any explosive incident.

Until now, I haven’t known who to blame for this incident (and we still don’t know the precise answer), but both the quality of Garlasco’s military expertise and the specificity of the evidence he witnessed at the beach convince me that the IDF is at best not telling the whole truth and at worst lying through its teeth.

Neither Amir Peretz nor Dan Halutz have been willing to admit the obvious–that only an independent, credible investigation can ascertain the truth. Barring that, IDF protestations of innocence will sound self-serving and bogus to everyone but the IDF itself. Does this statement from Halutz sound convincing or credible?

“What we are doing is very, very, very professional,” he told reporters. “We don’t need the assistance of anyone.”

tags amir-peretz, gaza-artillery-shelling, gaza-massacre, idf, new-york-times

At funeral, relative holds aloft body of infant murdered in Israeli artillery massacre (photo: Hatem Moussa/AP) Israel has nothing short of a disaster on its hands with yesterday's bloody massacre of eight Palestinian beachgoers enjoying a day with their family at the seaside. Yesterday, there were seven victims but the NY Times reports that the body of an eighth washed ashore earlier today. Israeli government sources say that it's likely that an errant shell fell 400 meters off course and landed amongst a Palestinian family. However, the IDF isn't prepared to say what precisely happened and how. According to Haaretz: "We still do not have an ...

A showdown looms between Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas over the latter's apparent rejection of the Palestinian Prisoners peace plan. Abbas gave Hamas until midnight tonight to endorse the plan or face a national referendum. Polls show that 81% of Palestinians favor the referendum. The Statesman reports that Prime Minister Ismail Haniya is still waffling: Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya, in his strongest statement yet on the matter, said in Gaza yesterday the referendum idea was illegal. "The local basic law and the advice we got from experts in international law say that referendums are not permitted on the Palestinian land," he said. But Mr Haniya added that "from a political point of view, the holding of a referendum necessitates ...

(photo: from Reuters video feed) On Saturday, the IDF fired rockets at a truck carrying Muhammad Dahdouh, an Islamic Jihad commander. He died at the scene (see video). Israel accused him of organizing the firing of Grad rockets into Israel. But the IDF rockets also killed members of a Palestinian family driving in a nearby taxi: Fadi Amman, 4, his mother Hanan Amman, 29, and his grandmother, Naima Annan, 45. Another family member was seriously wounded along with four others. I'm not here to tell you that Israel has no right to be concerned about Palestinian rocket fire; nor to say that this threat is ...

Amir Peretz is beginning to take charge of the Israeli defense ministry. The leader of the Labor party has held the job for a few short weeks and many observers waited with baited breath to see whether he'd bow to the "superior knowledge" of the security establishment and become a puppet of his military advisors; or whether he'd remain true to his principles and moderate IDF and government policies toward the Palestinians. From developments yesterday, it appears he's decided on the latter course, at least for now. The Karni crossing has for months been the choke point by which Israel has strangled the entire Palestinian economy. Most commerce, such as there is, travels through it. When it ...

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