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

Thanks to Sol Salbe for informing me of this article. Lt. Col. (res.) Ron Ben Yishai, Defense columnist for Yediot Achronot (and serving in the paratroopers), provides a primer in Ynetnews on the IDF’s uses of artillery and why it is the least effective and most liable to error in situations like the one faced in Beit Hanun. If you read the following closely (paying special attention to the italicized passages) you will find that, whether he intended to or not, Yishai is laying out the strongest case that can possibly be made for the ultimate failure of the entire Gaza counter-insurgency operation.

And lest anyone doubt the utter horror of this heinous massacre, please view this short, but devastating Reuters video at Ynetnews (Firefox users will need install the Active-X plugin to view it; IE users should have no problem).

Please note that this is not the dovish raving of a peacenik (though many erroneously accuse me of being one here). This is the hard headed realism of an experienced military commander who understands the effectiveness of his weapons and chooses them carefully. This is someone who, while he may fight Palestinian militants to the death, understands that there are moral and tactical constraints that must be respected whether Israel wishes to or not. He is precisely in the Rabin mold. But he is precisely not in the mold of today’s IDF officer. Or at least not the ones I’m reading about in the Israeli press exemplified by Dan Halutz. It is both surprising and gratifying to read of such an IDF officer’s hard-headed pragmatism regarding this horrid incident. In short, he should be the next IDF chief of staff. And precisely for the reasons I outlined above he will never be.

Yishai begins by saying despite the fact that there may be alternate extenuating explanations for what happened:

These facts make almost no difference in the grave overall picture that is already…entrenched in Palestinian and world public opinion, which accuse the IDF of committing a massacre. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. In the dozens of years the IDF has been dealing with rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza, one thing has been proven beyond any doubt: Artillery fire (using cannons) is the least effective means in preventing rocket and mortar fire. On the other hand, it is most susceptible to end up hurting innocent civilians. Moreover, preventive artillery bombardments that missed their targets entangled Israel in the international arena more than any other means employed by the IDF. On more than one occasion, they forced the State of Israel and the IDF – in the face of international pressure – to halt operations and actions that were essential in thwarting terrorism.

There’s no point in listing all those cases. The list is long and grim. It is enough to recall the bombing of Qfar Qana, during the Grapes of Wrath operation in 1995, which left more than 100 innocent Lebanese civilians dead. Following the incident, Israel was forced to halt its operations against Katyusha rocket launchers, accept Hizbullah’s ceasefire terms, and explain its actions to a United Nation commission of inquiry. Another case involved the Gaza family killed on a beach several months ago…

Amos Harel notes in Haaretz the disturbing fact that:

By sheer coincidence, the artillery battery that erroneously killed 19 civilians in Beit Hanun, belongs to the battalion that killed 100 Lebanese civilians in the first Kfar Kana massacre. That was the hitch that stopped Operation Grapes of Wrath in April 1996.

Uh, the IDF might want to consider disbanding this unit. Or do they want to wait for yet another massacre before they do something to curb its grievous mistakes?

The reason for the above is that artillery bombardment in proximity to residential areas, as accurate and careful as it may be and even employing large safety margins, will always be susceptible to errors. Some of those errors are a result of the lack of eye contact, at the time of the firing, between the cannons and the target. Many other errors result from the shells’ natural distribution.

Artillery is a weapon system designed to “cover” territory and not hit specific targets, particularly when it is used as “preventive fire” at territories rather than a specified target.

Another common reason for tragic incidents where innocents are hurt is errors in calculating the point of impact and technical failures in the armaments involved, which lead to the shells missing the target. Even shell duds that failed to explode threaten civilian populations no less than shells that were properly aimed and exploded.

Directly aimed tank fire is more accurate than artillery fire, but is also risky when employed in residential areas, because such fire is susceptible to missed shots and errors in identifying the target, particularly during nighttime. These facts are well known to IDF officials, particularly after the recent Lebanon war where about 130,000 artillery shells were fired. Now it is clear that the effectiveness of this weapon against Hizbullah fighters was marginal, while the economic cost was astronomical and reached millions of dollars.

Even before the Lebanon war, it was proven that artillery fire failed in preventing or even minimizing Qassam rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. This is the reason why the IDF Southern Command decided recently, on the recommendation of Gaza Division Commander Moshe Tamir, to stop or at least highly limit the use of preventive artillery fire. The trouble is that this recognition of the limits and risks associated with artillery fire were not implemented and so we got another horrifying testament to the dubious effectiveness and needless danger of hurting innocent civilians that is inherent in such fire near residential areas.

Read that carefully, a division commander ordered a policy of “highly limiting” artillery fire and the policy was “not implemented.” Amos Harel describes the situation a bit differently. He claims that Tamir himself approved the deviation from his own policies. This indicates an IDF commander so desperate for results that he rescinded his own policy, probably against his better judgment. This shows an army so lacking in discipline that it deviates from standing policy in the hopes of achieving a specified result. And of course it fails. If you can’t achieve a result following SOP then you’re highly unlikely to achieve it by violating them.

This is precisely the IDF that failed so miserably in Lebanon. Lucky for the IDF Palestinian militants cannot punish them as severely for their failures as Hezbollah did. But this is a gang that literally can’t shoot straight. Consider another grievous operational error noted by Amos Harel:

Veteran artillery men were terrified to discover that the battery had fired at Beit Hanun on the basis of range aiming from the previous night. The corps’ artillery procedure demanded that before firing at a designated target, the unit had to reset range and bearing that morning, because changes in the weather and humidity could affect the shell’s trajectory. Without such resetting, a 450-meter deviation from the target is not so radical.

They used coordinates for their firing based on test firing 12 hours earlier! This is like an airline pilot making an instrument landing and then 12 hours later, instead of doing it again, he decides that the coordinates he used for his last landing would work just as well this time. What he doesn’t take into account is that the wind’s direction and force could’ve changed dramatically thus causing him to crash.

And consider this statement from one of the IDF Gaza officers, which vainly attempts to portray artillery as an effective means of interdicting rocket fire:

IDF GOC Southern Command Yoav Gallant told Channel 2: “Israel’s citizens don’t know how many times artillery fire has prevented Qassam [rocket] launches. When you fire at the launching area area two or three hours in advance, there is a good chance of preventing the Qassam fire.”

Or not. Based on the results, I think I’d trust Yishai’s judgment before I’d trust Galant’s. Besides which, you’ll notice Galant doesn’t address the grievous error rate in such blanket artillery attacks. That’s because he doesn’t care about Palestinian casualties. He’s only interested in results. Or supposedly interested in results. If he were really interested in results he’d examine how successful such tactics are. Yishai doesn’t believe what he’s saying about artillery’s “effectiveness.” Why should we or any Israeli?

Israel will have to address the results of the disaster not only on the moral plain but also in terms of the damage to its position in the international arena. We must also recognize the fact that every such disaster boosts the motivation of Palestinian terror groups to continue the Qassam fire and terror attacks as well as the legitimization they receive on the Palestinian street.

If an IDF lieutenant colonel understand this why can’t Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz? If you needed any proof that Yishai is right, read this Haaretz subheadline: “21 Qassams said fired at Israel in wake of IDF shelling on Gaza.” Or consider this wise, but sad testimony from a massacre survivor:

At the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Maali Athamnah, 27, the aunt of the newly orphaned Isra and two other siblings who survived, Islam, 14, and Muhammad, 3, who broke both his legs, broke into tears reading a list of the dead, nearly all of them relatives. Another 80 people were wounded.

Ms. Athamnah said she did not support the militants’ firing rockets into Israel. But she said: “Just think who is firing them: those who lost family members to Israel. And think about these kids now. They will be the rocket firers in the future. No mother, no father. No house. They will be the next ones to fire the rockets.”

Yishai asks why the IDF would pursue such flawed tactics as artillery barrages in densely crowded urban areas knowing of the possible disastrous consequences:

So why does the IDF still continue using artillery fire? It appears the answer stems from the frustration of IDF commanders after military operations considered successful do not curb or significantly reduce Qassam fire.

Again, a return to the IDF’s lack of discipline borne of the utter failure of its military ’strategy’ (if one can call it that).

Such operations, like “Autumn Clouds” at Beit Hanoun and “Defensive Shield” in the West Bank in 2002 are supposed to create an intelligence infrastructure that would bring results in the long run. Yet meantime, the IDF and political echelons are slammed in the media and by residents of Sderot and Ashkelon. The pressure exerted on commanders in the field as a result of the ongoing Qassam fire, and the frustration that stems from it, lead them to ignore professional considerations .

Experience shows that even if it ultimately turns out that the civilians killed in Beit Hanoun Wednesday were hurt by a “work accident” in a Hamas weapons warehouse in town [ed., Haaretz and Ynetnews quote many IDF sources which concede that it was a result of an artillery assault, not a "work accident"], the Palestinians and international community will continue to blame Israel.

Therefore, the required conclusion is that the IDF must completely end preventive artillery fire. Foregoing this means would not fundamentally change the results of fighting Qassam fire, but at the same time will prevent severe physical and perceptual damage among innocent Palestinians and diplomatic damage to the State of Israel that will curb its ability to act against terrorist rocket fire.

tags amos-harel, artillery-accidents-kill-civilians, beit-hanun-massacre, gaza-invasion, haaretz, new-york-times, qassam-rocket-attacks, ron-ben-yishai, tamir, ynetnews, yoav-gallant

Just as I was celebrating a remarkable Democratic victory in Congressional elections, this horrible incident occurred. An IDF artillery unit has murdered 19 Palestinians, all civilians, including 10 children and 7 women and destroyed the homes of four families in the process:

Israel Defense Forces artillery shells struck a residential area in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun early Wednesday, killing at least 19 Palestinians and wounding dozens of others. Ten children and seven women were among the dead, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, adding that 18 of the victims were members of the Athamna family. Khaled Radi, a Palestinian Health Ministry official, said all of those killed were civilians. According to witnesses, the victims were sleeping when the 15-minute barrage of shells first hit. Radi also said at least 40 people were wounded, all civilians. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni expressed regret for the deaths, saying that Israel did not set out to harm innocent civilians. The IDF confirmed that an artillery battery containing 12 shells had aimed at a site from where Qassam rockets were fired at the southern city Ashkelon on Tuesday. The artillery fire had been intended for a location about half a kilometer from the Beit Hanun houses. At this stage it is unclear whether the incident was caused by a technical or human error. The initial assumption is, however, that the wrong coordinates were fed to the artillery unit.

Pray, in this day and age of technological sophistication how does an artillery shell miss its target by one-quarter of a mile?? And why was Israel using artillery anyway to interdict Qassam rocket assaults:

The army has reduced the amount of artillery fire into Gaza in recent months, saying it was ineffective against the Qassam cells and inaccurate. Nevertheless, the army decided to continue firing artillery shells sporadically, in specific instances.

Yet, Tzipi Livni has the chutzpa to say Israel did not set out to harm civilians. When you use a weapon you know to be inaccurate and then kill innocent civilians you can no longer make such a claim credibly. You are guilty of woeful negligence at least. And did the shelling accomplish the desired effect of eliminating the Qassam fire? No, of course not:

Eight Qassams were fired at southern Israel from Gaza following the shelling.

I’m sure you’ll be reassured as I was to know who is investigating this outrage:

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz appointed Major General Meir Kalifi to head an investigation into the shelling.

For those who don’t remember, he’s the same jackass general who “investigated” the Gaza beach massacre (that also involved artillery shelling) and gave the IDF a clean bill of health.

I’m sure he’ll conduct a thorough and impartial investigation letting the chips fall where they may. And this is the bitter fruit of such criminal military offenses:

Rahwi Hamad, 75, who lives across the street, said he woke to the sound of shells exploding and people screaming. “I opened my window and I looked out and I saw a shell hit a neighbor’s house … When I came out, another shell had hit the house,” he said. “There was a stench of blood and (burned) flesh.” Large holes had been punched in
the fronts of the houses and their balconies had collapsed. Surviving relatives sat weeping in front of the buildings. One man dipped his fingers in a puddle of blood and daubed it on his face. “God avenge us, God avenge us,” he cried.

Another survivor said this:

“It is the saddest scene and images I have ever seen. We saw legs, we saw heads, we saw hands scattered in the street,” 22-year-old eyewitness Attaf Hamad told Reuters news agency. “I saw people coming out of a house covered in blood. I started screaming to wake up the neighbours.”

Oh Condi and George…is it time for a ceasefire yet? Remember Lebanon where the same duo refused a ceasefire in order to allow Israel to “soften up” Hezbollah? Or should Israel continue killing scores or even hundreds more such civilians before you’ll get off your goddamn butts and do what you should do to knock heads and make things happen here. Oh the shame of it. Bush fiddles while Gaza burns. George, if you want to redeem your God forsaken presidency after today’s ignominious election defeat, you’ll gird yourself and do the right thing. Help bring peace between these two self-destructive peoples. Create a legacy. To paraphrase John Prine: just give us one thing that we can hold on to and be proud of in your presidency.

UPDATE: Haaretz initially reported that 19 had died. Most other media publication only noted 18 deaths at the time. But since then, 2 other vicitms have died bringing the total to 20 dead as of November 19th).

tags 18-gazans-killed, artillery-accidents-kill-civilians, Athamna-family, beit-hanun-massacre, gaza-invasion, haaretz, new-york-times, qassam-rocket-attacks, tzipi-livni

Haaretz journalist Ami Issacharoff writes an opinion column today about how the Lebanon war is “playing” among Palestinians. He posits the odd theory that Israel must continue the fight against Hezbollah because to back down now would only strengthen Hamas’ hand against Fatah.

I don’t buy much of the argument. But it does raise an interesting point. Israel, in lashing out so disproportionately against Hezbollah and Lebanon; and in upping the ante by citing its goal of eradicating Hezbollah–has set itself up for failure if it achieves anything less than that. And it is virtually certain that it will not come anywhere close to eradicating or disarming Hezbollah, at least not for the foreseeable future.

So what consequence does that have for Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians? Some very important ones. In fact, one might argue that Israel’s attacks yesterday in northern Gaza in which 24 Palestinians were killed (the highest daily death toll since Israel withdrew last year) might be seen as a pre-emptive statement of deterrence. As if the IDF were saying: “So we lost a few in Bint Jbail. Just don’t get any big ideas, because we can still hand you a bloody nose at will.”

But of course, Israel’s bloody nose at Bint Jbail will have enormous consequences for Palestinians militants. They will see that Israel is vulnerable to a well-equipped, well-trained guerrilla force. This will only inspire Hamas and Islamic Jihad to redouble their efforts to damage Israeli interests.

Miraculously though, Mahmoud Abbas announced today that a Palestinian ceasefire and the return of kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit was imminent. To be candid, we have heard stories like this for some time. But this one appears to have a ring of authenticity to it:

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who is on a visit to Italy, announced on Thursday that he had enough reason to believe that kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit would be released very soon.

Abbas was speaking to reporters in Rome after talks with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

“I told the prime minister that as far as the question of the abducted Israeli soldier is concerned efforts are undergoing continuously that lead us to believe that the solution will be imminent,” he said.

The Jerusalem Post described the initiative being negotiated among Palestinian factions:

The initiative calls for an immediate halt to Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In return, the Palestinians will announce a new hudna (truce) and release Shalit as part of a prisoner swap with Israel.

“This is a very serious Palestinian political initiative,” said Salah Bardaweel, a Hamas legislator from the Gaza Strip.

And apparently, if one believes the unnamed PA informant quoted below, some in Hamas don’t agree with Issacharoff’s analysis above about the prospect that it has much to gain from any Israeli withdrawal or defeat in Lebanon:

“The war in Lebanon has apparently led Hamas to reconsider its position,” a senior PA official in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post. “They see that the international community, including some Arab countries, have come out in public against Hizbullah and they don’t want to find themselves in the same situation.”

Another official pointed out that Hamas is under growing pressure from the Palestinian public to resolve the case of Shalit because of Israel’s ongoing military attacks, which have claimed the lives of at least 130 Palestinians in the past five weeks.

As with all such claims, we’ll have to wait and see whether they’re borne out by actual events. But were Israel to agree to end its Gaza invasion and its targeted killing of Gaza militants and to return Palestinian prisoners in return for an end to Palestinian rocket attacks and the return of Shalit, it would be a days of miracles.

tags freeing-of-kidnapped-idf-soldier, gaza-invasion, hamas-hudna, israeli-targeted-assassinations, palestinian-ceasefire

Israel has continued its recent string of wash out targeted assassinations in Gaza with the attempted murder of Mohammed Deif and his fellow Hamas militant commanders yesterday. While meeting with the top leaders of Hamas’ military wing in a Gaza apartment house, the IDF launched missiles entirely destroying the building. Deif escaped wounded. The host of the meeting, a local Hamas leader, was killed along with his wife and five of his children. Fifteen others were injured as another Haaretz article notes:

The leadership of Izz A-Din Al-Kassam [Hamas' militant wing] were meeting in the home of Nabil Abu Salamia, an Islamic University lecturer and well-known Hamas political activist. In the early morning hours, a bomb dropped by IAF fell on the house and destroyed it, apparently hitting the bedrooms and not the rooms in which the meeting took place, allowing the military leaders to escape. They may have been in a cellar or bomb shelter in the home.

Deif, wanted since the early 90s, was apparently wounded in the back. He was operated on at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital and no details of his condition were released. Eyewitnesses reported Deif was unable to stand when he was taken out of the ruined structure. About six minutes after the explosion, a car full of Hamas operatives arrived on the scene to extract the injured, but the car was also hit by IAF missiles and some of its passengers injured.

The IAF strike killed seven people and wounded top Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, Palestinians said.

The seven dead were all members of the same family - two parents, including senior Gaza Hamas figure Dr. Nabil al-Salmiah, and their five children…

From the force of the blast, the three-story structure collapsed, burying people under the rubble. The family killed in the strike was on the house’s upper floor. Hamas activists said additional victims might be buried in the basement.

Could the IDF not have known there was a bomb shelter in the home in which the militants would’ve taken shelter? Can they not have known that by dropping a bomb on the building’s roof that they would incinerate the civilians sleeping in the bedroom immediately underneath the roof? This reminds me of the IDF’s successful assassination of an earlier Hamas figure, Saleh Shehadeh, in which they annihilated a multi-story apartment building in order to kill one man, while also killing 15 civilians in the process. Human rights attorneys are compiling a legal case against the IDF commander of that operation. Can such a case be far for Dan Halutz and whichever commander planned this botched operation?

In the Deif attempt, one potentially “guilty” party killed who wasn’t even a target of the raid to six civilians. A casualty ratio to be proud of! When will Israel realize that targeted assassination is a wantonly brutal operation which almost always kills or injures innocents? Probably never. They never seem to learn anything from their mistakes. At least not anything worthwhile.

So much for all the talk of a possible negotiated deal for the release of Gilad Shalit. If Israel tries to murder the commander of the group which holds him can anyone really believe that Israel plans to accede to such an agreement? Either Israel never intended to make a deal or it did but the deal went south. Either way we’re in for a terribly long, drawn out process involving Shalit and the Gaza invasion. This will end neither soon nor well.

tags gaza-invasion, haaretz, hamas-military-wing, idf-targeted-assassination, islamic_university, mohammed-deif, salmiah, shehadeh

Yossi Sarid, despite his political longevity has lost none of his political acuity as demonstrated by this column in today’s Haaretz. He echoes a number of my own criticisms of the Gaza invasion in this caustic cry of outrage:

By the time operation Summer Rains ends, the reason for it will have been completely forgotten. The longer the operation goes on, the more removed it becomes from its original purpose - to rescue Corporal Gilad Shalit. Now they are already talking about “a new order” or about “changing the strategic situation” or about “rehabilitating our deterrent power,” and it is impossible not to recall with horror the “new order” in Lebanon 24 years ago: Ariel Sharon, may sleep be lifted from your eyelids - you have successors worthy of your name.

And as in the Lebanon War, so in the Gaza war, the aims change on a daily basis. That is what happens when the war has no clear political aim in the first place, and at the moment it is designed to save Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. The “new order” in the territories will look like the new order in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, and “rehabilitated deterrent power” will look like it does in North Korea and Iran.

Not only do the aims change constantly according to the mood at breakfast time, so do the “red lines”: another red line is erased and already the new line becomes apparent, and immediately the old one is replaced by the new. Perhaps the defense minister has not noticed that the line was recently crossed on the threshold of his home: Qassam rockets on Sderot and Ashkelon are terror; shells on Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya are terror; leaflets from heaven, which are meant to scare entire families and make them flee, are also terror. The attack on an IDF outpost is not terror, it is war.

The U.S. government continues its powder-puff diplomacy regarding this crisis. Statements emanating from State Department spokespeople aren’t even full of sound and fury–they’re merely mealy-mouthed. But they do indeed signify almost nothing:

The State Department expressed concern Friday with the loss of life in the operation and urged the Israeli government to make sure innocent civilians were not hurt and the Palestinians’ day-to-day lives were not impaired.

At the same time, the department called for the immediate and unconditional release of Shalit, and said the hostage-taking by Hamas “continues to place innocent Palestinians in harm’s way.”

“There is no question that Israel has a right to defend itself and the lives of its citizens,” said spokeswoman Julie Reside. “But we also urge the Israeli government to ensure that innocent civilians are not harmed, to exercise restraint and to refrain from adversely affecting the Palestinian humanitarian situation.”

“We are concerned about the reports of violence and the loss of innocent life,” Reside said.

They’re asking Israel to “refrain from adversely affecting the Palestinian humanitarian situation???” Where have they been since the Hamas election victory last January, after which Israel initiated a full-on blockade of Gaza causing immense human suffering? And what do they think this invasion is doing to the “humanitarian situation” in Gaza? Does terrifying 20,000 northern Gazans into fleeing their homes through statements implying that their lives will be in danger if they remain constitute “refraining from adversely affecting the humanitarian situation?”

If this wasn’t so deadly serious our rhetoric would be comic. It’s just so vacuous, so banal, and so completely unconvincing. It’s like we’re just going through the paces. Compare this to Eisenhower’s ultimatum to Israel after the 1956 war; or Richard Nixon’s airlift to resupply Israel during the 1973 War; or Jimmy Carter’s efforts to negotiate peace between Egypt and Israel; or Clinton’s vigorous, but unsuccessful efforts to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That was leadership. That was something to be proud of. What we are getting from this Administration is pathetic.

tags gaza-invasion, haaretz, julie-reside, operation-summer-rains, state-department, u.s.-mideast-policy, yossi-sarid

Let's queue up a round of applause for Yossi Beilin who's said what I've been writing here for a few days about the tepid U.S. efforts to resolve the Gaza crisis. It's a goddamn shame how pitiful our response has been. Rome is burning and all Rice can do is sit and fiddle like there's no tomorrow. "We ask both sides to restrain themselves." Blah, blah, blah. Lotta good that'll do as F-16s scream over Gaza rooftops with their deafening sonic booms terrifying young children in their beds. Here's Beilin on America gone AWOL: One of the most striking phenomena of recent weeks...is the absence of the American factor. True, there have been telephone conversations ...

We are in an eerie phase of Israel's Gaza invasion. Operations have begun and Israeli forces have entered the territory. Some offensive operations have begun but mostly from the air or artillery. The major expected ground assault has not materialized. Palestinians are poised for the worst, but they know they've only seen the tip of the iceberg. Reading today's Haaretz, it seems there may be disagreement among Olmert, Peretz, chief of staff Halutz and his own senior commanders on what the proper order of battle should be: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday rejected a proposal by Defense Minister Amir Peretz and the Israel Defense Forces for a ground operation in the northern Gaza Strip against the ...