Rules of Engagement from Baghdad to Gaza

In the days before Israel's overwhelming retaliation, Hamas -- the anti-Israel terrorist sect and democratically elected majority party in Gaza -- harassed the towns bordering Gaza with missile attacks that made ordinary life impossible. It was a matter of chance that not one Israeli was killed by the missiles. Six days ago Israel launched its response: the first stage of a collective punishment which was six months in the making. Round-the-clock attacks by American-built F-16s and Apache helicopters targeted Hamas militants, and also hit the civic institutions of Gaza: a police school, an interior ministry, a president's guest house, a university. AFG Global Edition reported on December 30 that the first three days of the Israeli attacks saw 373 Palestinians killed (including 39 children) and 1720 wounded. Hamas fired into Israel more than 250 rockets and mortar shells. Four persons in Israel were killed and about two dozen wounded.

As American politicians have been careful to say, Hamas provoked the attack. But go back to the blockade of Gaza by air, land, and sea -- trace all the oppressions of the siege that after January 2006 turned this arid strip of land into a prison where fuel and electricity are non-existent and most ambulances do not run -- and cause and consequence become more complex. "Disproportion" hardly suggests the dimensions of the slaughter apparent in the unevenness of the two sets of figures above.

There is a word for the straightforward killing of enemies by a superior force where the victims are sparsely equipped and the odds one-sided. Much of the world is calling Israel's actions in Gaza a massacre. By contrast the American press has been cleansed and euphemized. "3rd Day of Bombings," said the New York Times headline on December 30, "Takes Out Interior Ministry." Takes out. The Times paid an involuntary homage to George W. Bush: "I think it's a good thing for the world that we took out Saddam Hussein." Under that phrase are half a million Iraqis killed and a country destroyed. And for Israel in Gaza?

The U.S. and Israel share many things. A form of government, it is sometimes said; a set of ideals. But much more in the past ten years the U.S. and Israel have shared a fantasy. The fantasy says that the Arabs understand only force. It says we can end terrorism by killing all the terrorists. The neighbors of the terrorists will be overawed. No new terrorists will be created. Finally, when every face on the president's fifty-two card deck is crossed out and the known composition of Hamas is dead, we can "address the social conditions" that foster terrorism. But perhaps there are no such conditions. Do the terrorists not hate for hate's sake?

You can see the shape of the fantasy most distinctly in the writings of those journalistic enablers who move into position as soon as either country starts a war that needs interpreting. "It was Israel at its best," writes Yossi Klein Halevi, a typical war broker, in a New Republic column posted on December 29. "In response to random attacks aimed at civilians, Israel launched precise attacks aimed at terrorists." Halevi does not add that the precise attacks killed almost 400 persons and that one death in every four was civilian.

Another war broker on Gaza has been David Brooks. In a column of January 29, 2006 entitled "The Long Transition," Brooks pointed out that democracy often leads to "bad choices." The people of Gaza, said Brooks, in electing the Hamas government had made a bad choice. This error he attributed to the "traumatic phase" in the gradual maturing of "a romantic, revolutionary people." It was the duty of America and Europe to teach the Palestinians to choose again until they choose right. The task was "to isolate Hamas" and devote our energies to "finding and fostering" an opposition to Hamas. The siege of Gaza, the rejection by Europe and America of the Palestinian Unity Government, and the attempted insurrection in Gaza by Fatah thugs bankrolled by the same powers, might all be said to be pardoned in advance by such a salutary intent.

But a fantasy is no wilder than the methods it answers for; and Israel and the U.S. now hold as common property a whole school of counterinsurgency tactics. The citizen of Baghdad who said of the wall General Petraeus built to separate the good from the bad, "This reminds me of another wall," was only saying what many Arabs must have thought when they reflected on the "surge" in Iraq and its precursor in the West Bank. Israel has most often, these past few years, been the teacher and the United States the pupil. An article by Dexter Filkins in the New York Times on December 7, 2003 reported that the rules of engagement used by the U.S. in Iraq were modeled on the Israeli rules for Gaza and the West Bank. On the other hand, what is happening now in Gaza is plainly modeled on the American "shock and awe" in Iraq; it derives indirect permission from the fact that Americans never regretted that first stage of what we did to Iraq. Also, somewhere in back of the Israeli methods are usually American equipment and an American brand name. Apache helicopters and F-16s for the missiles and the bombs, and a Caterpillar bulldozer to reduce the house to rubble.

There is one art of peace that Israel might have learned from the United States: equal rights and citizenship for all the people of the country. But this, Israel has not learned, and in the nature of its constitution it cannot learn without a radical change of self-definition. The difference ought to be a fact of some interest to the first non-white president-elect of the United States; but the response of Barack Obama to the slaughter in Gaza has been a nerveless silence. "If somebody," he said last summer, "was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." He has left it at that, for now, and made no comment on Israel's showing this week of the scale of obliteration that lies in its power.

Obama would not in fact do everything, he would not destroy a city of innocent people. But one may note the resonance of "everything," a word that crept into his usage once before and revealingly, in his AIPAC speech. There, Obama said three times that he would do everything to assist Israel against a threat from a nuclear Iran. When Israel is on the minds and the Israel Lobby script is in the mouths of American politicians, every statement takes on a quality at once categorical and unreal.

We have stopped thinking for long enough. We might start again with a definition. A terrorist is not a function X, the compacted essence of evil. A terrorist is someone who kills and approves the killing of undefended civilians to achieve political ends. Thus the Israeli commander who ordered the attack on the university in Gaza was an agent of state terror. The Hamas soldier who fired the missile that killed an Israeli woman yesterday was an agent of guerrilla terror. But terrorists, too, act from motives. To suppose their only instinct is a fevered hatred of everything we are is to yield to madness. Kill them all becomes the only imaginable policy then. Kill them, or else install a dependency so sweeping and abject that not a man in Gaza mounts a bicycle, not a woman crosses a street, not a child eats a morsel of food but by permission of the Israel Defense Forces. It is hard to see what else the current actions of Israel are looking toward.

The Democratic party grandee Ann Lewis said recently (as quoted in an excellent Salon column by Glenn Greenwald): "The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel." The statement is absurd. No country ever gave another country so blind a endorsement. Such a pure identification of interests would amount to the signing away of the conscience of the nation that granted it. We cannot make our fidelity a pawn for another's injustice; and more than conscience forbids it. Prudence also does. Even in the depths of the Second World War the U.S. never said it would support every decision made by the people of Britain, nor did it say in the Cold War that it would do whatever the people of Formosa wanted, or what the people of West Germany wanted. Such a surrender of judgment, even if it were practicable, would be a curse that harms the receiver as much as the giver. To support without question the decisions of any person or any people, is to accept a standard of friendship or fealty above the standard of right and wrong. Do that, and you resign yourself to a world of injustice.

The eighteenth-century moral thinker Joseph Butler once gave us one of those sentences that are so true they earn a separate life for themselves. "Every thing," said Butler, "is what it is, and not another thing." Gaza is not Iraq then. Mumbai is not New York, and the contests against terrorists are not the War on Terror. Butler also asked once in passing: "Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity, as well as individuals?" We have seen it happen in our time. This surmise received vivid confirmation from the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon who told the Haaretz reporter Meron Rappaport in a story published on December 9, 2006: "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs."

Israel and the United States have evolved, almost behind our backs, from the countries we read about in histories to militaristic societies widely seen as oppressors by those on the wrong end of our adventures abroad. Israel has the better excuse, driven half mad by threats and wars and the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada; but a series of queasy concessions to the fanatical colonists who are sometimes miscalled "settlers" have deformed its politics from within. The U.S. may now be the country with the stronger hope, and therefore the stronger partner. Anyway one thing is sure. When an allied nation goes out of itself, in the same sense in which a person may be out of himself, the work of a friend is to say no and no again and refuse to give the self-destruction our blessing.

Comments

[hmp49]

Being a "professor of literature" at Yale doesn't make Bromwich any more an expert on foreign policy or world affairs than being a "plumber" makes Joe the Plumber an expert in the same field.

he says:

"But much more in the past ten years the U.S. and Israel have shared a fantasy. The fantasy says that the Arabs understand only force."

Am I mistaken, but is Hezbollah conspicuous by their absence? Nasrallah gave an interview shortly after the last Lebanese war, stating he would not have kidnapped the Israeli soldiers if he had known the extent of the Israeli response.

Hamas has taken advantage of the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza to up the ante. They have left Israel no choice.

[batguano]

Some sites for backround on the "conflict". Please review them.

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html



http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/ap-report.html



http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9968.shtml



http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=060729110246.0h0g1zoy&show_article=1



http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0804-06.htm



http://www.greenleft.org.au/1993/110/5668



http://www.swans.com/library/art10/ga183.html



http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3305802,00.html

http://www.bloggingbeirut.com/archives/741-Israel-fires-1.2-Million-Cluster-Bombs-at-Lebanon.html



http://dair-ga.tripod.com/water.htm



http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1066.shtml

[batguano]

cont.

"That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence”. From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas".

From a piece by Uri Avnery. Please read it all @.

http://www.progressive.org/node/124942

[batguano]

"As a matter of fact, the cease-fire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.

Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext – knew that there is no real cease-fire under these conditions". Cont. http://www.progressive.org/node/124942

[Yermammy]

I'm disgusted by the nationalistic tone that Israel has now, along with our two party lockstep in unison for it. Most people in this country think the disproportional response is appalling and hyer-aggressive, yet the White House, Congress and the MSM are steady cheerleading this outrageous carnage. I guess since we've given up our decency and now accept warrantless wiretapping, being stopped and questioned for no good reason and torture, why not just become the very thing we've tried to avoid now for over 200 years. Empire building and foreign entanglements are going to be our downfall, and we're well on our way. It's becoming easier and easier for us to be told our enemies aren't human and that makes it more likely the inhumanity will increase. Just remember that Germany, at one time, prided themselves on being Nationalistic. How utterly ironic Israel and the U.S. are marching down that same rigid road.

[ssinclair11]

Well said. I agree.

[Dorksforobama]

I've noticed no address here to the "settlement" issue...

Weren't we (the U.S.) kinda sorta making grumbles about Israel expanding it's settlements into prohibited areas?

Do you imagine they wouldn't settle right back into Gaza if there weren't Arabs there?

Please. This is genocide under "poor me" guises.

[Yermammy]

Yes it is. I guess those in charge are guessing we don't know history or how it's constantly being rewritten.

[michaelinboston]

Barak Obama, March 2008:

Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed. The families were living their lives.
Then, I saw a house that had been hit with one of Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets.
The family who lived in the house was lucky to be alive. They had been asleep in another part when the rocket hit. They described the explosion. They talked about the fire and the shrapnel. They spoke about what might have been if the rocket had come screaming into their home at another time when they weren't asleep but sitting peacefully in the now destroyed part of the house.
It is an experience I keep close to my heart. Not because it is unique, but because we know that too many others have seen the same kind of destruction, have lost their loved ones to suicide bombers and live in fear of when the next attack might hit. Just six months after I visited, Hezbollah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona,…”

[Dorksforobama]

Yes, yes, Micheal, I get it, Barack is for Israel, apparantly. Not all P.E.'s can be perfect, I guess...

[michaelinboston]

Barak Obama, July 2008:

"In terms of negotiations with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation-state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries,"

[michaelinboston]

They were attcking Israel from it's very inception in 1948, long before there were any settlements.

[Dorksforobama]

Um, Israel has been around for Centuries...1948 is when "the West" put the European Jews there after WWII...frankly, I could see why the Arabs would complain.

Somewhat like England putting Scottish landholders in Ireland after stealing their land from them and starving them out, hmmmm?...

[Afrodite]

Favorited

have you seen Occupation 101 btw?

[Dorksforobama]

No, but thanks for suggestion. I'll check it out...

[nvieira]

It’s just like seating back, adjusting the pillow, placing the popcorn basket near you and start watching. It’s really bad. I would say it was not worth the renting, money if it were not the plain truth.

Israel has invaded Palestine, and like any of us, staring at the tv set every night, USA administration (whoever that is…) , the EU community, and the arab countries are also just watching this movie. gazawar

It’s plain unbelievable how come this would be possible nowadays. Of course Israel took advantage of a USA politics transition, and this ground war will be over before january 20th (that will be sure) - but with all the money the european community send in funds to the palestine in the last year, it’s painful to see all the infrastructure, now simply destroyed. For a tax payer like me it’s painful, i’m just assuming for the quiet, silent voices running the show in Brussels it’s painful too.

Gordon Brown tried to lead the way saying that this invasion could not be a solution, while the USA block all the possibilities of a resolution in the UN. For an average guy like me, this quietness is very disturbing. Of course nobody would send any forces to the region, that’s not the point, but nowadays there are ways to prevent and to dissuade the use of a war force.

[tnlcallen]

Very thoughtful article. I don't necessarily agree with every point, but it is well presented, and makes me think about the subject a little more.

[RootlessCosmopolitan]

The Palestinians have suffered through countless Israeli trespasses.

Israel would like nothing better than to destroy the Palestinians. Period. It would suit their purposes. Ask any Israeli if his/her life would be better without the pesky Palestinians. Yes, a hundred times, yes. Kill them all would be their refrain--and that's what's going on.

To stop this disaster is the job of decent people and decent nations. How? Establish a military force between the 2 fighting groups--the UN, EU, etc. This group is master of the situation, much like NATO in Kosovo. Then set up the so-called 2 state solution. If Israel build more settlements or blockades or Hamas sends over rockets , then this force intervenes.

Tough love indeed. But both sides need it because it has gotten out of hand.

[Michale32086]

Why is it whenever people mention the "suffering" of the Palestinian, they completely ignore the suffering of the Israeli people as a constant target of terrorism..

I really don't like to refer to it as bigotry or anti-semiticism, but it seems more and more that those are the only labels that fit...

Michale.....

[Jalans]

It's probably for the same reason that apologists for Israel ignore the suffering of the Palestinians and then assume that more suffering and political insults will somehow make the Palestinians see the light...

[Justtellthetruth]

The settlers and the occupation that must guard them are the reason that this whole situation continues on the horrific track that it does.

When the settlments are torn down in the west bank and east jerusalem, There will be the beginning of a lasting (although not immediately perfect) peace.

The settlers and their backers here and in Israel are responsible for MOST of this situation.

Furthermore, if Israel does not get their act together soon, there will come a day when the US is no longer in need of Middle eastern oil, and very suddenly, the "special relationship" that we have with Israel, in which we back their every ridiculous and self destructive actions, will start to resemble our "special relationship" with Africa, where there is massive amounts of genocide, terrorism, starvation, and we do not lift a finger or spend a dollar to stop it.

Anyone who believes that our current relationship with Israel would outlast our need for oil will be in for a very ugly surprise.

[Afrodite]

Terrorism is the tactic of the desperate. The english settlers of America massacred the Native American and called it self-defense. All whilst the english slowly expanded and took all of their land, forcing N.A off land. Finally, the english herding the native Americans like sheep and placed them in prison- like constructs. Sounds similar to the conditions in Gaza.

Israel settlers are steadily taking more land from the Palestinians, using blockades to starve them to death, refusing them water, health services and electricity. They're tactfully building settlements to keep groups of Palestinians separated from one another, locked in abysmal conditions. A few of the Palestinians use the only weapons they have (their bodies and the few missiles they have) to get attention of the world.
Now I don't condone the killing of the innocent civilians or terrorism but WE NEED TO REALIZE THAT THIS IS A HIGHLY COMPLICATED ISSUE. NO SIDE IS COMPLETELY INNOCENT IN THE MATTER. The palestinians who attacked Israel were terribly wrong and the leaders in America and Israel that allow these conditions to continue are vile as well. But for Israel to use their weapons to annihilate schools and federal buildings...that is simply atrocious. To kill kids and civilians in a brazen way. There is no other word to use besides massacre. Not every citizen of Gaza is guilty of bombing so why make every citizen pay?

War is the terrorism of the rich
terrorism is the war of the poor

[tbrnotb]

The "Art of Peace" is certainlly an unknown concept in Washington and Tel Aviv.
After 50 years, you think they would realize that war against the Arabs gains little,
Maybe if the international community would recognize the need for humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, no matter what the politics, we could have a different situation. Imagine if Israel or the US flooded Gaza with aid for children, food, infrastructure and education.

Maybe had this been done, there would be a lot fewer suicide bombers and a lot fwer Israeli citizens dead. It certainly couldn't be any worse.

If we keep dwelling on all the past injustices on both sides, we cannot move forward.

[michaelinboston]

Actually, Gaza and the West Bank have been flooded with aid by the European Union, US, etc. Check the numbers: the Palestinians receive about the highest amount of aid in the world, per capita. But using this aid for necessities means that their other funds (tax revenues, contributions from jihadists, etc) be used for violence. So, your suggestion has been followed for decades with very sad results.

You are right, however, that merely dwelling on past injustices on both sides is a dead-end. The way to prevent future injustices is to protest future Hamas missile attacks, homicide bombings, etc. Without these attacks there would be no Israeli response. If the world ever once made a meaningful response to Hamas violence, then the Israelis would start having more peaceful options available to them.

[Justtellthetruth]

Israel receives more US foreign aid than any other country on earth. They receive more US military and foreign aid than all the countries of the entire continent of Africa put together.

This is all in an effort to offset the CRUSHING costs of the settlement movement, the occupation that it necessitates and the terrorism that it inspires. In other words, End the settlements completely, and you will end the terror (eventually) completely, and allow Israel to re-eneter the family of Nations on this earth who are NOT waging a violently enforced colonial settler movement (which is, by the way, all of them except Israel).

[michaelinboston]

"In terms of negotiations with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation-state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries," -- Barak Obama, July 2008

[KQuarksSuperKollider]

What's your point he said it was hard to negotiate with Hamas? He did not say Gaza should be invaded because it is run by Hamas.

[michaelinboston]

The Hamas government in Gaza ended the cease fire and was lobbing 80 missiles per day into Israeli civilian areas. Name one country on earth that wouldn't respond militarily to this kind of assault if it were able. These Hamas missile attacks are not because of "the occupation" because Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza 3 years ago. These Hamas attacks are not because of Israeli restrictions on Gaza because those restictions were in response to the violence in attempt to stop attacks without resorting to military means. Before the violence, these restrictions were not in effect and many Gazans worked in Israel. Arabs have been attacking Israel since 1948 and consider ALL of Israel to be an occupation because it is neither Arab nor Moslem. The violence will continue against Israel until the world persuades the Arabs to accept Israel's right to exist. There are many non-sovereign peoples in the Middle East (Berbers, Kurds, etc) yet none of them promote violence against innocents in the manner of Hamas.

[handyallen1]

i have stopped paying taxes until the American war machine stops i will not pay taxes and will go to jail the military industrial complex run this country and it must be stopped

[Michale32086]

Lemme know how that works out for ya... :^/

Michale......

[JGC1010]

Everyone misses the point on the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip. The Israelis are out to help the Saudis and the other oil producers. The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians at this time provides an excuse to drive up the price of oil. OPEC's decision to cut production by over 2 million barrels a day did nothing to stop the fall in the price of oil. They hope this military fracas will do the trick. If the price slide in oil is arrested, if it stabilizes at a level OPEC can live with, Israel will have done the Saudis and their allies a favor. The United States, and Europe, benefits via the resulting consensus. All parties involved are satisfied; except of course, Hamas, who doesn't matter anyway.

[halfcup]

Nice story. Give life to the people with creates morale dillema. Reality is that Ireals action only create more poison and anger. You can not portray yourslf as good if your actions have an evil affect. You can complicate the matter with politics but truth is can be seen even through the vale of obscurity.

[cayuse]

Irony: OVERKILL