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.

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.

Right off the bat, let me say that I’m not about the argue that Israel’s invasion of Gaza is precisely like its 1982 invasion of Lebanon (known then as Operation Peace for Galilee). But there are important and interesting similarities. Today’s Haaretz already notes that Ariel Sharon used the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to England as a pretext to launch the attack. The kidnapping of Gilad Shalit serves the same purpose today.

Military strategists note that the most important guarantee of success on the battlefield is having a carefully considered and precise plan. Knowing what you do not want to do is as important as knowing what you do. If you try to do too many things then you are almost guaranteed to fail. Likewise, in some cases (as with our invasion of Iraq) if you try to do too little then you will fail.

Today’s developments in Gaza show that Israel has fallen prey to precisely the same mistake as afflicted its long-term occupation of southern Lebanon. It seems to have allowed its politicians and military strategists to create a wish list of things it would like to accomplish regarding Gaza (this from Ariga.com):

Operation Summer Rains…includes an incursion…into southern Gaza as the first stage of a ‘big operation’ meant to apply military pressure on the Palestinians not only to release captured soldier Gilad Shalit, believed to be held somewhere in southern Gaza, but to end Qassam rocket fire on the Western Negev, ‘rehabilitate’ Israel’s deterrence against the Palestinians, and, say some, to bring down the Hamas government. The next stage began this evening as Israeli TV military reporters said planes would drop thousands of leaflets into the two northeast Gazan towns of Beit Lahiye and Beit Hanoun, warning residents to stay away from the army, which implied it was planning to roll into the area to try stopping the Qassam rockets.

It wants to do too many things and risks failing at all or most of them.

Another point on Israel’s Gaza invasion “wish list” that reared its ugly head today was the desire to decapitate the Hamas-led PA. Hence, the announcement that it has detained 87 (as of this writing) Hamas legislators, government ministers and ‘military operatives.’ The idea that a nation may invade another and imprison the latter’s entire political echelon is quite novel and preposterous. One wonders not only at what Olmert hopes to accomplish by doing so, but also what the actual result will be. If he stopped to think for a mere second he’d realize that every single one of the pols he’s jailed has become an instant hero to the average Palestinian. In fact, this so guarantees Hamas’ continued popularity that one almost wonders whether Olmert has some latent wish for Hamas to continue in power for the indefinite future. If he wishes to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian people he’s picked precisely the wrong way to do it.

Those old enough to remember the 1982 invasion will recall Sharon’s repeated assurances that the operation was meant as a short-term tactic to end rocket fire from southern Lebanon on Israel’s northern cities (shades of today’s Qassams!). His assurances turned out to mean nothing as Israel occupied southern Lebanon for years, hundreds of young Israelis died, Barak was forced to withdraw in defeat while Hezbollah crowed with victory and made its reputation as an Israeli dragon-slayer. Through last year’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza, Sharon handed Hamas precisely the same victory which in part led to its election victory in parliamentary elections. Olmert, unintentionally perhaps but foolishly nevertheless, seems hellbent on sealing Hamas’ popularity in perpetuity. Does this rhetoric give you deja vu all over again?

‘We have no intention of reoccupying Gaza, or to remain there. We have one main purpose, to bring Gilad home,’ he said. But the press reads the operation differently, with much talk about how the army has plans for going house to house, searching not only for the soldier but for the ‘terrorist infrastructure,’ a euphemism for suspected terrorists, their weapons, and their munitions factories, such as the workshops where the Qasam rockets are made. Israel has conducted many such operations in the past, with mixed results that don’t last very long. Proof? Last night, even as the tanks were rolling into southern Gaza, four Qassams were fired from northern Gaza.

Olmert has made a fool of Condoleeza Rice and her advice yesterday that Israel should “cool it” and give diplomacy a chance. Perhaps she was a fool to think that such advice would register at all with an Israeli political leader faced with a crisis. In such situations historically Israel knows but one language: absolute force. Not that this policy succeeds, much of the time it doesn’t and sometimes it fails miserably, but the force is projected as much to mollify an impotent public as to solve the crisis. Indeed, while such force is meant to convey a message of control and even dominance of the enemy it often betrays an absolute inability to influence events. This, I sadly predict is what must happen in Gaza. One wonders whether George Bush or Condi Rice could muster even an ounce of moxie to call Israel back from the precipice onto which it has crawled by demanding that it exercise restraint and release the Hamas leaders.

It is telling and sad to read Robert Rosenberg’s report that:

The kidnapped soldier’s father meanwhile was saying that the only way Israeli soldiers are ever returned is through negotiations.

Tell it to the PM.

Yet another point Olmert neglects to understand is that those who perpetrated the guerrilla operation that resulted in the kidnapping–Khaled Meshal with the approval of his Syrian protectors–expects precisely the bellicose response which the PM has provided. Israeli overreaction serves the Palestinian rejectionists perfectly. It ratchets up the heat and hatred against Israel AND against the Hamas ‘moderates’ led by Ismail Haniye. It precludes any possible rapprochement between Israeli and the Palestinians. It maintains the bloody status quo.

Shlomo ben Ami made another good point against the Gaza invasion. It bodes terribly ill for Olmert’s proposed West Bank withdrawal. When Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza last year it hoped it would be done with Gaza for good. Now, this ‘chicken’ of a delusion has come home to roost:

I think it was wrong to do that [invade Gaza], because — if only for the reasons that affect the stability of the government itself. You see, the government is engaged now in this idea of disengagement from the West Bank. If the they invade the Gaza Strip, what they are going to show to the Israeli opinion and to public opinion, as a whole, is that disengagement, unilateral disengagement, doesn’t work. If you do not coordinate things, either with the Palestinians or through a third party — the Quartet, for example — disengagement creates a frontline in a state of war, in a permanent state of war. And therefore, you’ll have to reoccupy the territory, so what’s the point in disengaging in such a manner? I think the government is exposing the fallacies of its own policy by occupying or reoccupying the Gaza Strip.

As another Haaretz commentator wrote last night, the territorial withdrawals only change the battle lines. Wherever Israel places its Separation Wall will be where the new Qassam battles will be fought.

Finally, 18 year-old Eliyahu Osheri’s body was found buried in a Ramallah field today. He was kidnapped and murdered by the Popular Resistance Committees shortly after his kidnapping on Sunday. To some Palestinians, there might be some modicum of sense in this killing since Osheri hailed from one of the more ideologically hardline West Bank settlements. But to everyone else this crime must be added to all the other horrible ones perpetrated by both sides in the name of national honor and vengeance. In reality, such acts bring no honor to their cause and only promote further rounds of revenge from the enemy camp. So the cycle continues.

The chance of Operation Summer Rains bringing any rain or relief to the Israeli people are about as nonexistent as the chance, way back in 1982, that Operation Peace for Galilee would bring the Galilee, or Israel any peace.