Israel invades Gaza, Hits Bridges, Electricity
The Israeli military destroyed 3 bridges that connect Gaza, and knocked out electricity along the coast, as troops made incursions into Gaza.
I don't have time to comment much on all this right now, except to say that the use of force here is all out of proportion. Without electricity, you can't purify water, and uncooked water is a severe health problem, especially to babies. It can ultimately cause cholera.
The incursion was made necessary by the Sharon-Olmert unwise policy of unilateral withdrawal. Unilateral withdrawal means that no structure was put in place for security in the evacuated terrirories, which increasingly look like a failed state, a Somalia. The PLO and Hamas have fought hot encounters recently.
Why would anyone create a failed state all around their house, right in their neighborhood?
The US press has, as far as I can see, been irresponsible in not broadcasting much about the prologue to the present violence, the Israeli military's bombing of civilians on a Gaza beach earlier in the month. This atrocity was on the front page of every Arabic language newspaper every day for a while earlier this month. We cannot understand the region if we cannot understand how outraged they are, and the source of the outrage.
Predictably, the Israeli military's propaganda machine denied responsibility for the beach explosion. Human Rights Watch called the Israeli military inquiry "not plausible" based on its own evidence-gathering at the scene. The Israeli Army has a long history of using plausible deniability to muddy the waters about its accountability in deaths of innocents. If we had videotape of everything they have done in the West Bank and Gaza, we'd be having war crimes trials for the rest of the century. The fact is that Israeli culpability for the Gaza beach incident is, on the evidence gathered independently by HRW at least highly plausible. The press should be looking into it instead of taking talking points from war propaganda offices.
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/28/2006 12:50:00 AM
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True an Israely soldier was captured. It's not kidnapping. That is war and that is the risk that a soldier takes. And the Palestinians have every right to do so. The right to resist and to inflict as much damage as possible on the occupiers is enshrined legally in all internatonal conventions.
Yet everything Israel does is illegal by the same standards. How many Palestinians are rotting in Israely jails - they have truly been kidnapped. Didn't the Israelies just break into a jail and kidnap a a prisoner? Isrealies feel free to attack at any time of their choosing complteley out of proportion to an insignificant event - soldiers are captured all the time. Who is it they are attacking? There is no standing army. It's all civilians. It's a gross violation of international law. No one not even you commments on the criminal nature of this act.
As far as not creating security after they left - that is not the issue. Everyone always knew that they would return whenever it suited them. How would you have expected the Isrealies to setup security so that Palestinians would feel safe from Israely attacks?
I agree that US press coverage of the conflict is and has been awful--nearly always presented from the perspective of the IDF. What's interesting is how hard one would have to work to warp the coverage. I recall reading a "middle of the road" book War without End by Anton La Guardia in which he tries really hard to be balanced but ends up having to indict Israel's policies and practices.
WSJ op ed today is quite appalling generally. Michael Oren attempts to attribute the beach blast to Palestinians...."That the IDF denied firing the shell and that the Palestinians destroyed exculpatory evidence by gouging shrapnel from the victims limbs could not repair the damage to Israel's image."
gouging?
"the Palestinians destroyed exculpatory evidence by gouging shrapnel from the victims limbs."
So was that before or after the the Islamofascist mullahs sucked out their blood?
These guys have been listening to too much Al Qaeda propaganda -- they're starting to sound alike.
.....and to those top-rung 'progressive' bloggers who regularly critique the Bush Administration's 'war on terror'....thank you...your contribution to this important debate is duly noted. Unfortunately, when it comes to where the rubber hits the road on this issue, Israel/ Palestinian relations, your silence is deafening.
Of course, whenever attempting a comparative analysis of Israeli and Palestinian actions, the glaring inconsistency is that the IDF routinely uses plausible deniability to escape blame for its own atrocities, but when some Palestinian terrorist is responsible for an atrocity, all Palestinians everywhere are to blame for being such vicious, heartless Arabs...you know, even though they have no effective security forces or command structure for stopping such violence.
The IDF and Mossad is no different from Palestinian extremists when it calls the deaths of women and children 'acts of God.' Only, I find it much harder to believe that their leadership is not involved.
Professor Cole, do you think that Abu Mazen's acceptance of military aid from Israel will undermine what credibility he has among Palestinians? Isn't that exactly why they are helping him?
What we need at this point in time is something on the order of a quid pro quo. Like, Hamas renounces violence if/when Israel does, Hamas recognizes Israel in return for an end to the occupation and both sides commit to a resolve that contentious issues like right of return, compensation, et al, are referred for negotiation. To ward off foot dragging in said negotiations, both sides would agree to submit any and all unresolved/at-large issues to a United Nations-appointed Conciliation Board.
Juan you say
Why would anyone create a failed state all around their house, right in their neighborhood?
That's a pretty good line to ask the Isreali's.....
I'm confused by your criticism. Are you suggesting Israel pulling out of Gaza was a bad thing? It was generally supported by everyone, though some things here and there could have been done differently.
Are you suggesting Israel pulling out of Gaza was a bad thing?
The month of shelling that led up to the present situation and the present re-occupation show the "Gaza pull-out" to be just what it was... a fig leaf to cover the construction of the Concentration Camps in the West Bank and the land grab there. Now that's accomplished the Israeli provocation occurs... the occupation resumes.
Please see Support the Liberation Front On Their Own Conditions for a candid interview with Jan Myrdal on the subject of the abssolutely necessary Palestinian resistance to Israeli genocide.
India did not gain its independence because of the nonviolence movement. India became independent because after the devastation of WWII, the British did not have the resources to rebuild their country AND maintain their empire. India was not the only country to gain independence in 1948. Many former British colonies gained independence around the same time.
What the nonviolence movement in India did achieve was to provide a check on British excesses. When the British public back home would hear about British troops shooting unarmed Indian civilians, there was enough outrage from the British public (remember not all the Brits were imperialists) to force the British troops to back down and negotiate with the Indians.
Pulling out of Gaza was not a bad thing. The Oslo Accords were not a bad thing. Events like these are certainly promising - until implementation comes up. It took US intervention to open just one border crossing in Gaza, and it was closed again not long after. As Juan says, unilateral means just that - on Israel's terms or no terms. And Israel never had any intention of letting Gaza emerge as a mini-statelette. As Juan says, it was and is treated as a large prison. Or if you like, reservation. It conveniently took 1.5 milllion non-jews out of Israel's demographic conundrum, giving them nothing in return. In fact, making their lives worse by nearly every measure. Without outside intervaention the same thing will happen in the West Bank over the next three years - the creation of reservations for the Palestinians, each cut off from the other, the inhabitants able to travel outside their reservation only if Israel says so. They will trade only if Israel says so. They will have access to water only if Israel says so. They will be allowed to invest only if Israel says so. They'll be worse off than our Native Americans - they won't be able to build casinos unless Israeli partners are involved. There's nothing new in this - it's been going on since shortly after '67, when it became clear that the Israeli leadership came down on the side of keeping all the land taken then. It simply became more obvious after '77 and the Likud takeover. So the killing and destruction will continue, in fits and starts. Hamas could totally surrender on all points and it wouldn't matter - because the Israeli Government is determined to take what it wants by force. It will continue to receive American support for this, because our government believes in the same policy - congruence of interest.
harryoak: Yet everything Israel does is illegal by the same standards.
Sounds like the definition of hypocrisy. If you want to label this a war, then I wouldn't expect any other response from Israel after multiple rocket attacks and finally the abduction of military personnel. One would think that someone with your point of view would want to shy away from labelling this a war.
As for the beach deaths, on top of there being some debate about whether Israel was even at fault, it hardly seems necessary to create a mini-narrative in order to search for the "justification" for the abduction. If it's not one thing then it's another, as it's been for over 50+ years. The fact that Hamas has no intention of pursuing a permanent peace with Israel should provide a bit of a clue. Any "justification" would merely be a pretext.
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I don't have time to comment much on all this right now, except to say that the use of force here is all out of proportion. Without electricity, you can't purify water, and uncooked water is a severe health problem, especially to babies. It can ultimately cause cholera. "
All out of proportion is an understatement. The probing questions are how and why.
Why first:
There were some interesting articles published just after the Ramallah and Jenin atrocities;long story short is that the invaders acted like Vandals. There was overwhelming evidence of needless destruction. One article was titled, "They Even Defecated Into The Photocopier."
British ITV had a nice clip documenting some Israeli soldiers who had pushed an infirm Palestinian woman, in her wheelchair, into the middle of a field. They had her surrounded and they were mocking her fright.
Today's occurrence is merely another occurrence. The destruction in Baghdad and other ancient cities, which some commentators now attribute to willful incompetence as prelude to deniability, all fits a pattern of racist violence by the US/Neocon and the Israeli/Likud cabal.
The why is simple. It is a worldwide pogrom.
The how is complex.
It requires a willingness on the part of Americans to allow Israel's creeping genocide to continue. This willingness is created and maintained through exploitation of the Holocaust and the stranglehold on reasoned debate by the Israeli lobby.
Our nation is ill if we allow Israel to trick us into abandoning our founding principles (We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal) in order to allow Zionists to pursue their childlike, racist dream.
Our nation can only be cured through careful reasoning and the courage to speak truth to power.
Here is an example. The pablum,"Israel has the right to defend itself." demands we consider exactly what defense means and how much of a right there is to self defense during a war of aggression.
Does Israel have the right to defend itself during pogroms against helpless Palestinians? Does Israel have the right to take water from one group of people in order to produce flowers for export?
At this point, there are many who now bring out the label "antisemite."
It is time to dispense with that nonsense.
The how question is answered with the non-defense of "We Americans allow Israel to destroy our principles." This fits nicely with the answer to the why question, namely "Israel is a racist nation with a genocidal agenda."
It's interesting to think about the fact that over the last few centuries, technology has progressed to the point where we can actually destroy the entire world with our weapons. And medicine has progressed to the point where we can save lives of those who only a few years ago would have been considered to have mortal wounds or diseases. And at the same time, our tolerance for death in wartime has dropped to nil -- even one death is unacceptable.
I think that that's a little naive. As long as we are going to continue to train armies -- whether to wage wars or to defend our borders -- we have to accept the fact that soldiers get killed in battle. And that there needs to be a certain tolerance for that. Sometimes, the job of a soldier is to be the target, so that civilians won't be killed. Are we to say that we'd rather have an innocent citizen die than someone who voluntarily put himself in the place of danger to protect that citizen?
Soldiers are legitimate targets in wartime. That's just how it is. And even when we mourn soldiers' deaths, civilian deaths still trigger a deeper emotion -- I think in all of us.
That said, I'm a little ticked off. I mean, why choose now to kidnap an Israeli soldier? It certainly hasn't been easy for Hamas to set up a running economy in the Gaza Strip with the shutting of of aid from virtually the entire world, the closing of their borders, etc., etc., but this Israeli response was predictable. I mean, come on. The Palestinians deserve better than to have Israeli tanks rolling past their windows.
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