Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 23, 2009

Meanwhile, in Lebanon.... (updated)

Fatah leader in Lebanon Kamal Medhat and four others were killed in a roadside bombing near the Mia Mia Refugee Camp in southern Lebanon Monday, security sources said.

Medhat was the second in command for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon, and represents the more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees living in 12 different refugee camps in the area.

Expect this assassination of a major PLO figure in tomorrow's papers.

Somewhere around page A12 in the "News Briefs" section.

Because he wasn't killed by a Jew.

UPDATE: How predictable was this?

Sheikh Maher Hammoud, the imam of a mosque in Sidon, blamed Israel for the assassination of Major General Medhat, saying that Israel took advantage of the presence of differences in the Fatah movement to carry out the operation, and called on everyone to carefully turn it so as not to internal dissension within the movement Fatah and the Palestinian people.

And more:

On his part, Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan vehemently condemned the killing. He told Al-Manar TV that the "crime" was in the interests of the Palestinian people's enemies, stressing that the death of Medhat considers a major loss for the Palestinians. Asked about the identity of the criminals, Hamdan said that the main suspect is, no doubt, the Zionist entity and its tools.

Lebanon's Hizbullah also condemned the assassination of Medhat and his companions. The Shiite movement warned that the crime was targeting both the Palestinian and Lebanese nations, emphasizing that the "Zionist fingerprints behind it were obvious."

PalArab media roundup 3-23-09

Hamas seized a medical center in Gaza and arrested its head doctor, who was a critic of Hamas.

There are large billboards in Ramallah and surrounding areas saying "no, no, a thousand times no" to Iranian interference in Palestinian Arab affairs.

Egypt this morning seized 5 tons of cement and 560 sheep on their way to being smuggled to Gaza. Oh, and a half-ton of explosives, too.

Egypt finds the idea of its diplomats participating in any celebrations of the 30th anniversary ofthe Israel/Egypt peace agreement to be extraordinarily distasteful, but the Egyptian ambassador is "mandated" to attend.

Yemeni Islamist convicted of emailing Olmert

Here's a great way to get rid of people you don't like: accuse them of emailing the Israeli government! From AFP:

A Yemeni court on Monday condemned an Islamist to death for establishing contact with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and offering to collaborate with the Jewish state.
Bassam al-Haidari, 26, was found guilty of writing directly to the prime minister of Israel by email, offering to work for the Jewish state.
Another defendant Imad al-Rimi, 23, was sentenced to five years in prison and Ali al-Mahfal, 24, to three.
"The court... sentences the first defendant to death in the case of making illegal contact with the Zionist Jewish Israeli entity," judge Hassan Elwan said.
"This is unfair, you have sentenced me without any proof of these accusations," Mahfal shouted from the caged dock.
The defendants said they wanted to appeal.
The three men went on trial in January, accused of operating under the name of the little-known Organisation of Islamic Jihad and spreading false news of attacks on government buildings, embassies and foreign interests in Yemen in 2008.
The prosecution charged Haidari with corresponding with Olmert through emails, one of which said: "We are the Organisation of Islamic Jihad and you are Jews, but you are honest, and we are ready to do anything."
The charge sheet said Olmert responded to Haidari, also known as Abu al-Ghaith, welcoming his offer to collaborate.
"We are ready to support you to become an obstacle in the Middle East. We will support you as an agent," Olmert was quoted as writing.
The group also claimed in Internet messages signed by Abu al-Gaith that it prepared 16 car bombs to attack government buildings and embassies, according to the prosecution.
Yemeni authorities rounded up six suspects in the capital Sanaa shortly after a September 17 attack on the US embassy that killed 18 people.
The interior ministry said at the time that the arrested group included Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani, the signatory of an Islamic Jihad claim of responsibility for the attack on the US mission.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh later that an Islamist "terrorist cell" with links to Israeli intelligence had been dismantled.

The supposed reply from Olmert has to be one of the funniest faked pieces of evidence in history.

Expect this to become more "proof" of that famous Zionist/Al Qaeda connection that the "moderate" Arabs love to talk about. Also notice how well it serves as a means to humiliate Islamists, to be accused of the thing they find the most abhorrent.

March 2009 rocket calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

M*- Apparently upgraded 120mm mortars
MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

Mortars are severely undercounted since they simply don't make the news any more.

I'm going to hold off on reporting on humanitarian aid unless Israel starts to withhold it in reaction to rocket attacks. You can otherwise assume that aid gets sent six days a week.

March 2009

All previous calendars here.

The double standard

No honest observer can deny that Israel is held to a much higher moral standard than its neighbors by the rest of the world, both the West and even by Israel's enemies themselves.

The relevant question is, is this fair?

The people who criticize Israel justify this double standard on the basis of Israel's holding itself as a moral beacon for the world. As one commentator put it:

To start complaining that people actually hold you to the higher standards you claim for yourself would be hypocritical at best. It is frequently asserted that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East - a beacon of light in a region of darkness. Israel has a free press, and it claims to defend and uphold the rule of law. This should give Israel a moral edge over its enemies, including Hamas, and it does. But this coin has two sides: if you claim to respect higher standards than others, you should accept that others hold you to these higher standards. If the moral high ground is part and parcel of your reputation (some even say, your right to exist), then you should undertake every effort to safeguard it.

There is an interesting fallacy implicit in the part of the argument I bolded. Israel certainly claims to respect higher moral standards than her neighbors and enemies (others), but it is being judged by other Western nations (others.) The author conflates these "others" in making his (or her) argument, and once this is apparent the argument falls apart.

Even if all the accusations about Israel's behavior in Gaza are somehow true, it doesn't come close to putting Israel and Hamas on the same moral plane. Israel can still accurately claim to have the moral high ground compared to the Gazan terrorists.

Even without that fallacious use of the word "others," however, the more generalized argument in favor of double standards is that Israel, as a freedom-loving democracy, should be scrutinized against higher standards the same way that one would expect Mother Teresa to behave differently than Saddam Hussein.

There are three problems with this argument.

One is that when a person or a people set for themselves a higher standard, it is up to them to judge and enforce it, not third party observers. It is quite fair for objective third parties to judge Israel against the Geneva Conventions or any other standards that theoretically apply to everyone equally; it is quite unfair to hold Israel to any standards beyond that. One can observe that Israel falls short on occasion from its own self-imposed moral standards but it is quite hypocritical to judge Israel based on that. Only Israel has the right - and indeed the obligation - to judge its own people based on a higher moral code. When others do it, it is not based on morality; rather it is based on jealousy.

When one starts to judge Israel based on arbitrary "standards" beyond what is expected from others, it quickly devolves into an exercise of demonization - especially when these standards are set arbitrarily high, even beyond Israel's own self-imposed standards. Too often, Israel is judged against perfection, while others are merely judged against the status quo or their previous behaviors.

A second problem is that the people who judge Israel tend to base their definition of morality exclusively by how Israel treats the enemy. In the most simplistic terms, they argue that all death is bad and therefore war must minimize the deaths of the enemy. They tend to disregard the higher moral imperative of self-preservation. From their perspective, all human lives have equal value so therefore Israel has no right to value its own people's lives above those of her enemies. They apply this incredibly simplistic formula to Israel's actions and then conclude that Israel must be immoral by valuing her own lives higher. In other words, they impose their own warped sense of morality on others, and the others who have a different or more realistic moral code inevitably fall short.

This "moral" perspective then says "Israel has the right to defend her citizens" but cannot find a valid way, in its universe, for Israel to do just that. These people often do not believe in the validity of nation-states to begin with and they reject the idea that any war can be just. To them, a "moral" nation under siege must turn the other cheek and let its own citizens be terrorized because they find the alternative too distasteful. This is, ultimately, immorality being passed off as super-morality.

To these people, how terrorists act is irrelevant. Sure, they are immoral, but that doesn't give their victims an excuse to stoop to their level. You cannot ever go on the offensive against terror.

Which brings up the third issue - the idea of a "fair fight." According to Israel's critics, when a moral party is in a fight with an immoral party, the moral party must consciously give the immoral party the tactical advantage of not being bound by the accepted rules of war. While Israel's critics wil never hesitate to remind the world of Israel's huge military advantage, they will not look at how much of Israel's military budget is dedicated to expensive devices and methods meant purely to minimize deaths of both the enemy and Israel's citizens. A Qassam rocket is cheap, a fortified playground is expensive. A mortar meant to kill as many Jews as possible is much cheaper than a smart bomb that can be deflected at the last second if a civilian appears.

The problem is not only that Israel is being held to impossibly high standards, but that Israel's enemies are being held to no standards at all. A single civilian death on either side is a victory for Hamas and there is no outcry and little criticism about this self-evident fact.

Israel is not allowed to win, because a victory is considered immoral. Yet the artificial prolonging of the conflict, the coddling of the terrorists and the sympathy for those who want to see a literal genocide agains the Jews of the Middle East is what is, in fact, immoral. The problem is not simply a double standard; it is the application of a fundamentally immoral viewpoint as if it is truly an ideal.

Israel must constantly walk the fine line between the morality of protecting her citizens and the morality of minimizing damage to innocents on the other side. Her critics are not nearly as concerned about one side of that equation. And that is the problem in a nutshell.

Let's talk about morality

The best thing I've seen yet about IDF morality doesn't talk about it at all. From Ami Isseroff:

Palestinian public opinion was in an uproar following revelations of possible war crimes committed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martys Brigades and the Hamas.

At a spiritual debriefing retreat for operators of rocket launchers and planners of suicide attacks, ~~terrorists, Militants,~~ resistance fighters revealed that not all targets hit by rocket attacks and suicide bombings involve only death and injury to Israeli military personnel. Furthermore, it was revealed that leaflets distributed by the organizations to their members, and signed by the prominent Imam, Nasrab Dam al Yahoud, did not caution the resistance fighters to take proper Islamic precautions to ensure the safety of women, children and other booty, as is prescribed in the Quran.

One rocket launch operator testified, "I was shocked. I thought that Sderot were Zionist terrorists. Who would have suspected that this evil looking soldier was actually a Zionist civilian?"

"Who could have imagined," exclaimed activist Jihad abu Idbach al Yahoud, "that buildings like the ones below, destroyed by resistance rockets, were not military installations!? They are not marked as civilian homes on the maps of course."

Resistance soldiers also related that they heard rumors that suicide bombing targets such as the Sbarro Pizzeria, the Jerusalem Super Market, and the Dolphinarium Discotheque may not have been frequented only by Zionist soldiers.

The sensational revelations were brought to light by a report of the crusading Palestinian journalist, Amus Arafat, in the newspaper, "Al-Ard" ("the land"). They were leaked to him by Nasr al Zamir, who had previously met with denials and coverup attempts by the heads of resistance organizations.

Said Ahmed ibn Khaybar of the Popular Resistance Committees, "Of course, we are going to investigate these allegations. We had no idea that our boys could commit such atrocities. We are sure that these are only false rumors."

UN Special Raporteur Richard Falk declared, "It is certain that the war criminals of the Hamas and other organizations committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The war crimes of the Palestinian war criminals are precisely like those of the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I call for an immediate investigation by the UN, the ICC and the World Courts. The guilty must be punished."

A Belgian court issued an arrest warrant for Palestinian officials including Ismail Hanniyeh and Khaled Meshaal. In Teheran, angry members of the Muslims for Peace organization and the Not in My Name organizations demonstrated against government support for Hamas. "Hamas = Nazism" and "Free Gaza" were among the posters carried by demonstrators. Reform presidency candidate Moussavi noted, "It is outrageous that our government provides one-sided support for the Hamas. The rockets and suicide belts were paid for by the Iranian tax payer, and were meant only for defense of the Palestinians. My government will institute a policy of tough love for the Palestinians."

"It is possibly true," admitted moderate Palestinian leader of the moderate Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, "that there have been deviations from the impeccable moral code of the Palestine resistance. Harming of civilians is a violation of Muslim religious law and must be punished."

A spokesman for the European Union, which provides extensive financing for the Gaza government, refused to comment.

Arab News: "Make sure your wife is not your sister!"

A new problem in the Muslim world:

Islamic law prohibits marriage with one’s wet nurse (for men), her husband (for women), her biological children and any nonbiological children she breast-fed. All such individuals are described as the person’s “mahram.”
Since there is no official system of documenting the names and identities of children who have been breast-fed by a woman, some young men and women sometimes end up accidentally marrying someone suckled by their own wet nurse. This can cause difficulties when couples find out later in life. If they have children, then things can be an even bigger problem.
“We were married for seven years before we discovered we were brothers and sisters. My mother-in-law had breast-fed me,” said Hayat, a schoolteacher from Madinah. “We were lucky as we had no children,” she said, adding that she and her ex-husband only learned that she had been nursed by his mother when an old family friend visited her home.
“She was astonished to find we were married. She reminded my mother that when she had had puerperal fever after giving birth to me, my former mother-in-law breast-fed me and that my marriage to her son was thus forbidden,” she said.
Hayat and her husband divorced and remarried, subsequently becoming parents with their new spouses. Hayat said she does not regret separating, as she did not really love her ex-husband in the way one loves their spouse.
The story of Umm Abdul Aziz is more tragic. She was married for 30 years and mothered nine children before discovering her husband was her foster brother. “It happened out of the blue. An elderly man came to my husband one day and told him that we had been suckled by the same woman. He even knew people who knew of this and could testify as witnesses. We were greatly shocked and deeply saddened,” she said.
Umm Abdul Aziz said that since her children were old and some of them had traveled abroad to study, she and her husband felt it was needless to ruin their lives and decided to keep the matter a secret and continue living together as brother and sister and not as partners.

Well, it isn't a secret anymore!

Anti-semitism on leftist LA radio

From the Jewish Journal:

On a Los Angeles FM radio talk show, the following aired recently:
A caller identifying himself as Mohammed said, “I believe that so-called Israel should be annihilated totally, wiped off the map ... I hope that Iran has the gall to nuke and exterminate them so they go back to Europe.

“And as long as there is one Palestinian man, woman or child, there will be no peace in Palestine ... as far as I’m concerned, so-called Israel should be exterminated from the face of the earth. That’s my personal opinion. They have no right to exist….”

Augustin Cebada, the show’s host, did not interrupt or argue. He let Mohammed finish, then said, “OK, maybe those are your opinions, and there’s probably a lot of people out there who agree with you. We have free speech in this country….”

Cebada later took a call from Dan, who objected to what he’d just heard: “When a caller calls with that kind of hatred, that kind of Nazi rhetoric, that Israel should be wiped off the map, that’s what fuels the fire, and you people did not respond by saying, ‘This is the kind of hatred we don’t need.’ And that’s what’s fueling the hatred, isn’t it?”

This time, Cebada cut the caller off, saying: “There’s a lot of hatred in your voice, Dan, in your tone. This program offers a forum so people can express what they’re feeling….”

KPFK, Pacifica Foundation’s longtime, Progressive, listener-supported L.A. radio station, aired that exchange on Jan. 7, 2009, on a Wednesday night bilingual talk-show called, “La Causa” (“The Cause”), which has a mix of English and Spanish.
Though it presents itself as a program by and for Latinos, “La Causa” spends a lot of time on the subject of the Middle East, all of it fiercely critical of Israel. Referring to the recent military actions in Gaza, the show’s hosts characterize Israelis as perpetrators of “genocide,” “massacre,” “slaughter,” “war crimes,” “ethnic cleansing” and “atrocities.”

Cebada and Tlaloc have said Israelis are “acting like Nazis.”
When referring to Israel, Cebada usually calls it “that semitheocracy, so-called democracy.” He tells his listeners that Arab citizens of Israel can’t vote. (They can and do: More than 50 percent voted in the recent Israeli election.) He says that only Jews can enter the Israeli Defense Forces. (There are non-Jews in the IDF.)

The show’s hosts would likely argue, as many do these days, that being against Israel is not the same as being against Jews. Others would counter that anti-Zionism, in its current form, is a socially acceptable cover for anti-Semitism. Whatever one’s view, the hosts of “La Causa” blur this distinction.

They use Zionist, Jewish, Israeli and even Ashkenazi interchangeably, as when they say, “The Israeli people, the Jewish people” or mention the relationship between Villaraigosa and “the Zionists,” when the reference is clearly to Jews in Los Angeles.

At times, “La Causa’s” hosts talk about Jews in disparaging ways when discussing situations that have no connection to Israel.

On Feb. 4, Cebada said, “Well, supposedly Jewish interests control the media in this country, there’s even a book written by a Jew that says that Jews control Hollywood ... the media’s controlled by Jews, so we only get the news they want us to hear.”

The hosts regularly call Bernard Madoff “that Jewish scam artist.” Villaraigosa is constantly excoriated for supporting Israel and for “dancing around with a yarmulke on his head,” apparently referring to the September 2007 Chabad telethon, when L.A.’s mayor danced the hora while wearing a kippah.

On Feb. 4, a caller named Jeremy asked the hosts why they “keep repeating this line about Villaraigosa dancing around with a yarmulke on his head? Why is that a cause of consternation for you?”

Tlaloc answered that Villaraigosa was elected “on the backs of Mexicans and hasn’t done anything to help them. Instead, he’s gone to Israel and is complicit in the genocide that’s happening in Gaza.” Jeremy again asked why the yarmulke bothered them so much, and Cebada abruptly ended the phone conversation.
KPFK does not get money from advertising. It receives some funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is partially supported with government funds, and from its listeners, as well as foundations. It normally has three fund drives each year.

Not surprisingly, one of the other shows hosted on KPFK is "Democracy Now!"

Kuwaiti writer urges recognition of Israel

From Kuwait Times:

The controversial Kuwaiti writer Abdullah Saad Al-Hadlaq urged Kuwait to stop boycotting Israel and end the more than 50 year feud with the country which he described as 'nervous tension'. He also urged Kuwait and the GCC countries to stop signing accords with 'Persian Iran.' They urged them to get into an alliance with international powers to protect them from Iranian schemes, reported Al-Watan.

Abdullah Al-Hadlaq, who has been accused of being Zionist agent, told Al-Watan in a special interview that with all its advanced capabilities, Israel would not need the services of a 'poor man' like himself. He also denied that he was honored by the country. "Whoever has such a medal, please bring it to me," he quipped, accusing those who questioned his adherence to Islam of being hypocrites. He said that they "traded in Islam and used it as a disguise".

Al-Hadlaq said that he had once written an article in 2006 titled 'I wish I were an Israeli soldier.' It went unnoticed at the time until he wrote another article during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and he wrote another one against Hamas leaders. "It was at the time when readers noticed that many of my articles were quoted by the Israeli FM's website.

Responding to a question about Jerusalem and whether he believed in Muslims right to rule it, Al-Hadlaq said that historically, the city was home to followers of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. It should be placed under international governance and opened freely for followers of the three religions. "On the contrary, verse number 21 of Surat Al-Maeda of the Holy Quran emphasizes the right of 'Bani Israel'".

Al-Hadlaq responded sarcastically to rumors about being described by the Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert as more Zionist than Herzl himself and being described as one of Israel's ambassadors by Israeli FM Tzipi Livni. "They are all fabricated, funny stories.

He added that Israel's democracy was a unique model that has surpassed many of what he described as the tyrannical, totalitarian Arab regimes. Further, Al-Hadlaq said that he hated the regimes that rule Syria and Iran and that he has been avoiding various activities held in both country's embassies to Kuwait, despite being invited.

It is not so surprising that there are intellectuals in Gulf countries who have such viewpoint. The surprising thing is that a few of them actually speak out about it.

Leftists blaming religious soldiers for misconduct

At the end of a lengthy Ha'aretz description of the "testimonies" of IDF soldiers who are alleged to have acted immorally in Gaza comes this elliptic statement from Danny Zamir, who heads the Oranim Academic College from where this controversy erupted:

"It is quite possible that Hamas and the Syrian army would behave differently from me. The point is that we aren't Hamas and we aren't the Syrian army or the Egyptian army, and if clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren't representative of the whole spectrum in the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population - what are we expecting? To whom are we complaining? "

It sounds like he is saying that the soldiers who allegedly acted badly in Gaza were predominantly religious soldiers, an interesting statement because none of the testimonies mentioned anything about religious soldiers doing anything wrong and Zamir himself was not in Gaza. Not only that, he is saying that it is obvious that religious soldiers are less moral than their secular counterparts. (The only complaint about religion in the testimonies was that the IDF rabbinate gave them too many books of Psalms.)

This underlying hatred that leftists in the IDF have towards the religious soldiers is placed in a fairly twisted context by the New York Times' Ethan Bronner, who interviews a number of leftists and records their unsubstantiated claims without bothering to get even a token interview from the other side:

Immediately after Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 and then from several West Bank settlements, there was a call to disband certain religious programs in the army because some soldiers in them said they would refuse to obey future orders to disband settlements. After the rise of Hamas in Gaza and the increase in rocket attacks on Israel, that discussion died down.

But Yaron Ezrahi, a leftist political scientist at Hebrew University who has been lecturing to military commanders, said that the call to close those programs should now be revived because what was evident in Gaza was that the humanistic tradition from which a code of ethics is derived was not being sufficiently observed there.

And the religious military colleges directly compete with people like - Danny Zamir:

In many cases, the religious nationalists have ascended to command positions from precisely the kind of premilitary college course that Mr. Zamir runs — but theirs are run by the religious movements rather than his secular one, meaning that the competition between him and them is both ideological and careerist.

And, incidentally, the only officer who is known to have refused orders in the NYT story was not a religious soldier, but - Danny Zamir:

In 1990, Mr. Zamir, then a parachute company commander in the reserves, was sentenced to prison for refusing to guard a ceremony involving religious Jews visiting the West Bank city of Nablus.

Clearly, Zamir is someone who holds deep-seated antipathy for religious Jews. The Israeli Left is making accusations against religious soldiers, which have not yet been confirmed by any facts as far as I can tell. It sounds like these accusations might just be a springboard for starting an internal fight for the IDF's soul between the old-time kibbutzniks who were instrumental in building the state and the religious Zionists who are now in the vanguard of Israeli nationalism, a pursuit which seems to have become somewhat distasteful among the Left.

The accusations must be investigated thoroughly and, if proven, dealt with on all levels of the IDF. But it would be reprehensible if they are being exaggerated or made up as a way to demonize part of the Israeli population and divide the nation.

The NYT's Bronner has written his story from a viewpoint that is entirely sympathetic towards the leftists.

UPDATE: See this article by Yaacov Lozowick as well.

PalArab media roundup 3-20-09

For the third day in a row, Egypt opened the Rafah border - and Hamas kept it closed. Yet there have been no protests against Hamas' illegal siege of the Gazan people.

Egypt has found another cache of weapons in a warehouse near Rafah, including a half ton of explosives.

PCHR has released their list of fatalities in Gaza, in Arabic. Interestingly, they list 1417 people, not the 1434 they mentioned in last week's press release. When it comes out in English I will look more closely at how they categorize "civilians."

Shimon Peres sent New Year's greetings to the people of Iran.

Tunnels collapse!

Two more Palestinian Arabs were killed in separate tunnel accidents, bringing the self-death count to 58.

I cannot find it, but a couple of days ago I saw an article in a Palestinian Arab newspaper saying that the tunnel smugglers are using boys as young as 10 or 11 to shepherd smuggled goods through tunnels, and Egypt arrested a number of them. The story was spinning it by saying how desperate the boys families are to force them to work in the tunnels, and how they were ideal for the work because they are small and can make it through partially collapsed tunnels. There was nothing in the article about how the smugglers and the boys' families were concerned over endangering their lives.

Falk's Law: Israelis must be sitting ducks

Richard Falk, the serial liar who leaves no stone unturned in his relentless quest to demonize Israel, has a new report for the UN:

A United Nations human rights investigator said on Thursday that Israel's military assault on densely populated Gaza appeared to constitute a grave war crime.

Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Geneva Conventions required warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.

"If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law," Falk said.

Let's be clear. The IDF went above and beyond in its attempts to minimize hurting the civilians of Gaza - phone calls warning civilians [and terrorists] to leave, dropping leaflets, rerouting rockets in mid-air to avoid innocents, risking soldiers' lives to avoid civilian deaths, the use of drones to watch where civilians were. No army in history has worked harder to avoid civilian deaths. The death of Gazans served the purpose of only one party: Hamas, which worked hard to endanger the people that Israel worked to save.

For now, though, let us take Falk's statement at face value. He says that if it is impossible to distinguish between militants and civilians, then it is not only illegal to attack the terrorists to begin with - it is a "war crime of the greatest magnitude."

The Geneva Conventions, of course, say no such thing. They are clear that military targets within civilian areas are lawful to attack as long as the damage to civilians is minimized. It disallows:

an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

Geneva allows for a nation to do what is necessary to defend itself as long as it minimizes civilian casualties. One can argue over the definition of "excessive" but the basic legality of attacking legitimate military targets, even in civilian areas, is unquestioned. Falk, however, the supposed expert in international law, has now declared illegal what Geneva explicitly allows. Not only that, but he has given Hamas and other terror groups a formula to be able to operate against civilians at will.

According to Falk, Hamas can fire rockets and send suicide bombers into Israel with impunity and Israel is legally barred from defending herself as long as Hamas hides among civilians. To be sure, he would consider terror activity to be illegal as well, but terrorists by definition don't sign nor care about international agreements, so there is no legal recourse against terrorists as there is against nations being attacked by terrorists.

Falk, in his insatiable hatred for Israel, twists the law that he pretends to uphold, to transform it into an ugly club that is meant to bash a single target.

IDF soldiers defend their actions

From YNet:

IDF soldiers who took part in January's offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza refuted on Thursday claims of immoral conduct on the military's part.

"I don’t believe there were soldiers who were looking to kill (Palestinians) for no reason," said 21-year-old Givati Brigade soldier Assaf Danziger, who was lightly injured three days before the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead.

"What happened there was not enjoyable to anyone; we wanted it to end as soon as possible and tried to avoid contact with innocent civilians," he said.

According to Danziger, soldiers were given specific orders to open fire only at armed terrorists or people who posed a threat. "There were no incidents of vandalism at any of the buildings we occupied. We did only what was justified and acted out of necessity. No one shot at civilians. People walked by us freely," he recounted.

A Paratroopers Brigade soldier who also participated in the war called the claims "nonsense". Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said "It is true that in war morality can be interpreted in many different ways, and there are always a few idiots who act inappropriately, but most of the soldiers represented Israel honorably and with a high degree of morality.

"For instance, on three separate occasions my company commander checked soldiers' bags for stolen goods. Those who stole the smallest things, like candy, were severely punished," he said.

"We were forbidden from sleeping in Palestinians' beds even when we had no alternate accommodations, and we didn’t touch any of their food even after we hadn't had enough to eat for two days."

According to a reservist who spent a week in Gaza during the offensive, the claims of immoral behavior on the soldiers' part were "fictitious".

"Wherever we were we tried to cause minimum damage," said the paratrooper, who also asked to remain nameless. "We left some of the homes cleaner than they were before we occupied them. We even cleaned a refrigerator that really stunk.

"During one incident, we were informed that a female suicide bomber was heading in our direction, but even when women approached us and crossed a certain point we made do with firing in the air, or near the women," the soldier recalled. "Even when we came across deserted stores, we didn’t even think of taking anything. One soldier took a can of food, but he immediately returned it after everyone yelled at him."

Major (res.) Idan Zuaretz of Givati said "in every war there is a small percentage of problematic soldiers, but we must look at it from a broad perspective and not focus on isolated incidents."

Zuaretz, a company commander, also questioned the integrity of the soldiers who made the controversial claims, saying "if this was such a burning issue for them, why have they remained silent until now? On an ethical and moral level, they were obligated to stop what they claimed had occurred and not wait two months to be heard at some esoteric debate".

According to the officer, the IDF went to great lengths and employed the most advanced technology to avoid harming civilian population.

"I've seen a few things in my time, but even I was blown away by the level of professionalism displayed by the army," Zuaretz said. "I personally gave my soldiers an order on the day we withdrew from Gaza to leave all of our goodies in the last house we occupied. Some reservists even left an envelope full of money to one Palestinian family."

The next few days will be interesting, as we will see if any IDF soldiers step up to corroborate the stories told earlier. What is clear, however, is that if there were any lapses it was not because of IDF policy nor from the conduct of the vast majority of soldiers.

Equally clear is that the world will harshly judge an entire people based on the the slightest, out-of-context and possibly fictional claims. Certainly they should be investigated but not by a world that has already convicted Israel.

On Israeli accusations of IDF immorality

YNet reports:

The IDF did not behave morally during Operation Cast Lead, soldiers who had participated in the operation said during a post-op conference at the military academy at Oranim. The conference protocol was published Thursday.

One NCO told of the experiences that bothered him during the operation. "Prior to going into a crowded area… we had a meeting about the rules of engagement and opening fire within a city, because as you know we fired a lot of rounds and killed a lot of people in order for us not to be injured or shot at."

"When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up story by story… I call that murder. Each story, if we identify a person, we shoot them. I asked myself – how is this reasonable?"

The NCO also related a story about an old woman who was crossing a main route who was shot by the soldiers. "I don't know whether she was suspicious, not suspicious, I don't know her story… I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her out… It was cold-blooded murder."

Another NCO told of an incident in which a family was killed. "We had taken over the house… and the family was released and told to go right. A mother and two children got confused and went left… The sniper on the roof wasn't told that this was okay and that he shouldn't shoot… you can say he just did what he was told… he was told not to let anyone approach the left flank and he shot at them."

"I don't know whether he first shot at their feet or not (per IDF engagement instructions), but he killed them," the NCO said.

"We expected to hold a discussion about the war, in which we would hear about the personal experiences and lessons of the soldiers, but we did not expect the testimonies that we heard," Academy Head Danny Mazir told Ynet. "We were in total shock."

Mazor informed IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi of the experience. "It's definitely not easy for an institution like the IDF to hear things like this and the officers I spoke with were very surprised. Up until now, post-op investigations had not demonstrated such violations of ethics," he said.

The IDF Spokesman's Unit reported that, pursuant to Mazor's communication, "a meeting was immediately set up with Chief Education Officer Brig. General Eli Shirmeister."

"He explained that the IDF was currently in the middle of thorough investigations of these issues. The IDF has no previous information about these incidents and will investigate their accuracy. The head of the military academy was asked to transfer any additional information he receives to the IDF so that it could checked thoroughly," they said in a statement.

Later Thursday, Military Judge Advocate General Brigadier-General Avi announced he would launch a formal inquiry into the allegations. According to Mandelblit, the publications "paint a picture of unacceptable behavior, if true."

Ha'aretz plans to publish more testimonies from IDF officers in coming days.

These stories are troubling and should be taken seriously. Even though Israel's enemies will always say that Israel commits war crimes, Israel should not react to the slander but it should honestly look at her own actions and always strive to fix problems.

In the days of the first Intifada, the IDF was faced with an unprecedented situation of open revolt. Clearly, at the time, there were no standards on how to react to such a situation and some of the decisions made were (in retrospect) much more violent towards the Palestinian Arab fighter/protesters than they should have been. It is easy to criticize them now, but at the time no one knew how things would play out and it seemed to be just as valid a decision to crack down harder in the interests of cutting the revolt short rather than let it play out and possibly escalate.

The second intifada showed that Israel erred in the other direction, passively absorbing large numbers of terror attacks for two years before deciding to go on the offensive and pro-actively dismantling the terror infrastructure. Many Israeli lives were lost in those two years who might have been saved had Israel taken more decisive action earlier - and the world would have been much less forgiving.

Any war involves very tough decisions. One of the toughest, for a moral people, is to calculate the relative value of the lives of your own soldiers and your own civilians against the enemy soldiers(/fighters/terrorists) and the enemy civilians. It is just as immoral to place your own soldiers and citizens at risk to avoid hurting the enemy as it is to wantonly kill civilians in the interests of protecting your own. Jenin appears to have been a textbook case of the IDF being too worried about public opinion and not enough about the lives of its own soldiers.

Every new situation brings new challenges and issues that have not been dealt with before. The IDF was clearly prepared not to repeat mistakes made in Lebanon, but there were challenges in Gaza that they did not have against Hezbollah, most notably Hamas' decision to hide among civilians and avoid open fighting and the booby traps Hamas laid among the civilian neighborhoods, schools and houses. Hamas' strategy was to draw IDF soldiers into killing Gaza civilians as well as to kidnap more IDF soldiers. This was not, in any sense, a classic military confrontation.

The stories related above appear to have been situations that should have been foreseen and planned for, but we don't know for sure. Perhaps there was faulty intelligence that informed bad decisions, perhaps commanders ignored protocol, perhaps the IDF leaders consciously moved the moral dial more towards "save our lives and don't let yourself be kidnapped" and away from "avoid killing civilians at all costs" - a decision that might very well be justified in a world where every Gilad Shalit is worth some 500 terrorists.

The IDF has a history of learning from its mistakes, and the Palestinian Arab terrorists have a history of coming up with new creative ways to kill. Israel needs to honestly investigate every case of possible abuses and immoral behavior (including the unconscionable graffiti that some soldiers left in the houses of civilians.) There will always be new challenges, and there will always be mistakes and inconsistencies in how individual soldiers act, but an effective army needs discipline and as clear a set of rules as possible, rules that can be defended without apology.

And even though the IDF continues to behave more morally than any army in history, it should always be willing and eager to raise the bar.

UPDATE: Questions are being raised about the accusations to begin with. Jameel reports that "Channel 2 TV Army correspondent Roni Daniel stated at 6:30 PM this evening, that he personally tracked down one of the soldiers interviewed for the Haaretz article. Apparently the soldier's testimony to Haaretz wasn't based on anything he personally saw or witnessed, rather based on rumors and hearsay he heard (and the soldier wasn't even in Gaza!)" (h/t joem)

(h/t Isy - I wasn't going to blog this, and I have no time to blog, but my weakness is when people make requests...)