Gaza ~ Nick Rost van Tonningen Posted by John on November 16, 2012

I have been following the latest ratcheting up of violence over Southern Israel & Gaza with growing dismay & trepidation. To use a term I often heard in Kenya. “I am afeared” that Israel’s ‘Operation Pillar of Defense’ may turn out to have been the Israeli hawks’ One Bridge Too Far, albeit with potentially far more unfortunate consequences.

So as not to be tagged as anti-Semitic, often the fate of those criticizing the State of Israel’s policies (as opposed to its raison d’etre), I totally support the existence of a Jewish Homeland in the Biblical Land of Israel. But I also believe that the Netanyahu regime meets the criteria that Barbara Tuchman established for her seminal work The March of Folly, namely “acts clearly contrary to the self-interest of the organization … pursuing them, conducted over a period of time, not just in a single act of irrational behaviour, … by a number of individuals, not just one deranged maniac … (with) people alive at the time who pointed out correctly at the time why the act in question was folly’.

I also believe that in macro-political terms Mao Tse Tung was plain wrong in 1938 when he opined that ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” (even though I readily acknowledge that at the micro level any one of us would avidly do the bidding of a deranged maniac waving a loaded AK-47 with the safety on OFF). For if he had been right, the Americans would have won the war in Vietnam & the Russians been victorious in Afghanistan. And Mao even proved himself wrong; for he beat the Nationalists not by having the mostest & biggest guns but, like the British in Malaysia in the 50’s, by winning the “hearts & minds” (as Benjamin Franklin pointed out, almost four centuries ago ‘A spoonful of honey catches more flies than a gallon of vinegar’).

No one denies Israel’s right to defend itself. But to get, & keep, public opinion on side, the cause must be just & the use of force commensurate with the damage or indignities inflicted. And the legitimacy of even the most just cause can be compromised over time by short-sighted, ill-advised actions by those who decide on, & those who mete out, retribution. And in recent years Israel’s policies have caused even people of goodwill to start asking questions about either or both, & look upon Israel as a judge would an accused who, after murdering his parents, pleads for mercy because ‘he’s an orphan’.

Both Netanyahu & Barak have hands-on military command-level experience. So one might have expected them to have taken the lesson from the 2006 Lebanon War to heart, when a few hundred committed ragheads stood up to the ‘overwhelming military superiority’, & in the process dinted the reputation for invincibility, of the IDF. But they don’t seem to have & now my greatest fear is that in a ground invasion adventure in Gaza, the IDF will again be made to bite off more than it can chew and/or walk into a buzz saw. For there is little doubt that Hamas has long been preparing for just such an eventuality (& having promised, after the assassination of Ahmed Said Khalilal-Jabari, to “open the Gates of Hell” for Israel Hamas cannot now back down without losing much, if not all credibility, while on the other hand it expects that taking some pain now will lead to major longer term gains).

Urban door-to-door combat levels the playing field for a determined, even if relatively lightly-armed, defender (thus in 1956 Budapest’s citizens fought off what was then one of the strongest armies in the world with little more than Molotov cocktails) as today Syria’s al-Assad regime is being taught rather painfully. This is especially true for a military force that is as casualty-averse as the IDF. And both the human & collateral damage from such combat is horrendous and, in this day & age, can be beamed into living rooms everywhere by anyone with a reasonably up-to-date cellphone.

Nobody has contended that al-Jabari didn’t have blood on his hands, at the very least indirectly, & that by Israeli standards he was a “terrorist” (although in the past decade that term has been hugely debased). But then, in their day the same was said by Britain of Menachem Begin (for heading the Irgun Gang that blew up Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946) & of Yomo Kenyatta, and by South Africa’s apartheid regime of Nelson Mandela. And yet all three of them in time became the internationally respected political leaders of their countries (this is not to suggest that a similar destiny might have awaited al-Jabari, merely to imply that over time perceptions can, & do, change). But it is a big step from agreeing on this point to engaging in acts that some call “state-sanctioned terrorism” in territory that Israel had earlier, out of its own free will, ceded control over.

Al-Jabari was known to be extremely security conscious; in fact he surprised many by being personally involved when Gilad Shalit was given back his freedom at an Egyptian border crossing point after having been a Hamas hostage for five years. This raises the issue as to how the Israelis could pinpoint his whereabouts so precisely. One possibility was provided by Gershin Baskin, an Israeli peace activist who played a role in the negotiations leading to Shalit’s release, who told Haaretz that hours before his death al-Jabari had received a draft document of a “permanent truce agreement with Israel”, incl. mechanisms for maintaining it in cases of renewed flare-ups of violence.

To come back for a moment to Messrs. Begin, Kenyatta &.Mandela, what was it that drove them to engage in activities deemed to be of a terrorist nature? The answer : frustration about their inability to achieve their political objectives by more traditional, more widely accepted means. And what led to their transformation to upstanding citizens? Answer : the realization by those in power that the status quo was not sustainable. But it is the absence of such common sense, & of an inability to ‘connect the dots’, that has caused Israel to paint itself more & more into corner that in a best case scenario will lead to the demise of Israel as the Jewish homeland it is today & in a worst case scenario could turn it into a ‘killing ground’.

Meanwhile look at the gains that Hamas has already made. It has shown Israelis that they can no longer take a hands-off attitude by the Egyptian government for granted. It is seeing a stream of high profile visitors, even as Israel conducts attacks on Gaza at a rate of more than eight per hour : Egypt’s Prime Minister, the first holder ever of that office to visit Gaza, Tunesia’s Foreign Minister &, soon, the UN Secretary-General. It has forced President Obama to further tarnish his reputation in the Islamic world by siding with Israel & caused him to have to ‘waste’ time on an issue that is nowhere near the top of his agenda (at a likely cost to Netanyahu of a loss of serious goodwill in both the White House & Washington generally). And by far most importantly, it has shaken the confidence of many Israelis who had believed they were out of reach of Hamas’ rockets & has demonstrated that the much-vaunted Iron Dome missile defense system has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese (even the IDF concedes that on November 16th it managed to shoot down only 101 of the 200 rockets fired from Gaza that day (although the Jerusalem Post says its ‘kill ratio’ has been more like 10%) – I raised this issue a few weeks ago in Gleanings but even in my wildest dreams would not have expected Iron Dome to be as ineffective as even the IDF admits it has been. This is hugely important since Israelis have been told by their own leaders that there are as many as 50,000 rockets pointing their way from Southern Lebanon, many of them more lethal & longer range than much of what Hamas has at its disposal.

In the US Hurricane Sandy was a ‘defining moment’ for some US climate change doubters. In an ideal world the latest events in Gaza would similarly be a wake-up call for Israeli voters that their government’s policies vis a vis the Palestinians are bankrupt & self-destructive. And even if that turns out to be the case, Israel’s bargaining position will be far, far weaker than it would have been years, or even weeks ago.