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

The horror of the Lebanon war has caused many of us to take the eye off the ball that is Operation Summer Rain, that odd non sequitur of a military campaign still raging in Gaza. Summer Rain is the IDF response to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. It is a brutal, disproportionate campaign against the people of Gaza, militants and civilians alike. It is much like Lebanon in that Israel still has not succeeded in its two goals of freeing Shalit and ending militant rocket fire against southern Israel. The only difference with Lebanon, unfortunate though it is for the Gazans, is that they have none of the weaponry or military training of Hezbollah and so are not able to make the IDF pay a price for its brutality.

Yes, what I wrote above is strong language; language pro-Israel partisans don’t like to hear. But if you take issue with my views I challenge you to both read and ponder Gideon Levy’s latest Haaretz column, which details the enormous cost in civilian lives of this blasted military operation. He tells two stories of mass death which wiped out families; and he tells the story from both the family’s and the IDF’s perspective. This juxtaposition is certainly effective and instructive.

The first story concerns an attempt to assassinate Hamas militant leader, Mohammed Deif. I have written about this failed targeted assassination attempt just after it happened in July. But Levy adds the poignant story of the two brothers of the family who were not killed–and who, as a result, have been left orphans. One of the brothers is “seriously injured” and the other cares for him:

Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the fourth floor. Two brothers. Their parents and siblings were all killed while they were sleeping. Only the brothers were saved from the inferno caused by two missiles dropped by a plane on their house in the middle of the night. Awad, 19, is seriously injured; Mohammed, 20, uninjured, tends him. Their parents and all seven of their younger siblings, including a disabled sister, were killed. Just try to imagine.

The signs of shock and grief are obvious on the two orphaned brothers. They stare at the floor, speak very softly; their faces are pale and lifeless, even six weeks after that bloody night. On the wall of the hospital room they’ve taped a picture of their father, taken with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

Dr. Nabil Abu Salmiya was a lecturer in mathematics at the Islamic University in Gaza and a Hamas activist. The wanted man Mohammed Deif visited the family’s home in the middle of the night – and the air force bombed it. Deif was wounded, but survived. A family was almost entirely wiped out. This was on the day that the war broke out in Lebanon; no one paid any attention to the killing in the south.

Here is the IDF’s “justification” for the raid:

The IDF Spokesman’s comment: “In a joint operation of the IDF and the Shin Bet security service, an attack on a house in the northern Gaza Strip was carried out in the early hours of July 12. The house served as a hideout for senior activists in the military wing of Hamas, who planned and carried out acts of terror and the firing of Qassam rockets. At the time of the strike on the house, those present were involved in planning the continued military activity of Hamas. One of those present was Mohammed Deif, who sustained wounds of unknown severity.”

Interestingly, it appears as far as the IDF is concerned there were no civilians present in the house (“those present were involved in planning the continued military of Hamas”). Was the 12 year old disabled sister plotting Hamas military strategy? Were the two boys who were the sole survivors planning a massive rocket attack on Israel? What about the wife, mother of seven, and also killed. Was she a military threat too? No? Then I guess the IDF description of the bombing is truncated and self-serving.

And in case you still harbor any fond feeling for the concept of Israeli targeted assassinations please read my attempt to eviscerate a relatively glowing Washington Post profile of the IDF architects of this heinous policy. And while reading the original WashPo article, please keep the blood, gore and horror of Awad and Mohammed in the front of your mind. The next time you hear an Israeli general or pro-Israel partisan boast about the IDF’s extraordinarily low rate of civilian deaths in targeted killings, remember Awad and Mohammed and his seven dead siblings and two dead parents.

Another point that the IDF explanation above leaves out is that it most certainly knew that Professor Abu Salmiya’s entire family was in the house, yet it chose to bomb it anyway. The chance to “get” Deif was too tantalizing. Yet in the end they didn’t get him. Instead they “got” an entire family in an act of mass civilian murder.

The second is the story of Ahmed Al-Attar, a 17-year old boy who sits in a wheelchair after having both his legs amputated when an IDF missile obliterated a donkey cart in which he, his mother and cousin were riding. Yes, the IAF spends its time targeting donkey carts driven by mothers and children:

Ahmed was injured when the air force fired a missile that hit the mule-drawn wagon in which he was riding with his mother and nephew. They were on the way to pick figs from the family plot near the sea. His mother and the other boy were killed outright; Ahmed lost both legs.

…On July 24, Ahmed and his mother and nephew set out, as they did every day, to the family plot near the sea, to pick some figs. It was around 3 P.M.; they proceeded slowly in their mule-drawn wagon.

“Suddenly we got hit by a missile,” he recalls. “After that I didn’t see anything. I woke up in the hospital and they told me that my mother and Nadi were killed and that my legs were amputated.”

After three days in Shifa, he was transferred to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, but they couldn’t save his legs there either. He also suffered burns on his head and other parts of his body, and these wounds are still bandaged. Ahmed is a 12th-grader who, two months before the tragedy, married a 16-year-old named Zeina. His mother, Hiriya, was 58; his nephew, Nadi – his mother’s grandson – was 12. Ahmed heard that Nadi was thrown dozens of meters from the wagon, and that his mother’s body was torn to pieces as a result of the direct hit…

Hiriya left nine children and some 50 grandchildren. She was a peddler in the Jabalya market, where she sold figs, grapes and strawberries, and cheese that she made herself…

Someone brings [Ahmed and his father] a picture from the scene of the tragedy: a dead mule…The mule lies on the sand, at the foot of the wrecked wagon. A direct hit.

Here is the IDF explanation of what happened:

The IDF Spokesman: “On the morning of July 24, two Qassam rocket launchings were identified as originating next to the Agricultural College in Beit Hanun. The two rockets were fired at Sderot, and one landed next to a school in the city. Later that same day, IDF forces identified two terrorists, who arrived at that location and loaded the launchers on a mule-drawn wagon. The IDF fired accurately at the point where the terrorists were and at the wagon with the launchers, and verified a hit. At the time of the firing, an older woman and her grandson were not seen in the wagon. In the event that they were riding in the same wagon, then it was the terror organizations that are the ones who took no pity on their lives, and engaged in terror activity directed at Israeli civilians under the cover of noncombatants, exploiting them as a human shield.”

Even if we concede that the wagon did carry a rocket launcher keep in mind that the attack for which it was used caused absolutely no damage to its target as almost all of the Qassams do. So in order to wipe out a single rocket launcher which caused no damage to anyone, the IAF has murdered a mule, two young boys and a mother of nine. Nice work.

The IDF statement deserves some consideration. Notice that the spokesman would have us believe that three people riding in a slow-moving donkey cart were not visible either to the pilot who launched the missile or his spotter (“an older woman and her grandson were not seen in the wagon”). How is that possible? Were they hiding under the figs the wagon carried? I think the IDF takes us all to be fools.

Also, note the IDF isn’t even conceding that Ahmed, his mother and cousin were in the vehicle they attacked (“In the event that they were riding in the same wagon…”). And finally, in the IDF’s twisted account it accepts no blame for the deaths. Instead, sole blame is alloted to the rocket launching crew which stowed the weapon in the wagon (“it was the terror organizations that are the ones who took no pity on their lives…exploiting them as a human shield.”) I have news for these moral cretins. The international law of war doesn’t allow you to argue that your heinous crime was justified because the other side did something just as bad. Your actions are judged independently of all other factors.

I’m certainly not going to argue in defense of Palestinian militants using civilians to transport their weapons. That is also a morally indefensible act. But it in no way whatsoever justifies Israel’s cold-blooded murder of civilians.

Despite the crisis in Lebanon and how absolutely critical it is to resolve it peacefully if possible, let us not forget that other Israeli badge of shame: Gaza and Operation Summer Rain. Ironically, the rainless summer is at an end, Israel has failed in all its goals for the Gaza campaign, and we are about to enter the Mediterranean fall when the rains will come. But with them there will be no end of this failed operation, no end of Gaza deaths, and no sight (yet) of Gilad Shalit.