FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Every few months I have to write this post, in one form or another. So I won’t be insulted if you get bored and change the channel.

I keep running into people who want to argue that the Palestinian problem is a ‘human rights problem’. Some of these people are local friends, and others are NGOs like Amnesty International, about which I wrote recently. But they all want to talk about this or that case in which Israeli soldiers or police allegedly brutalized Palestinians, or the degree of inequality between Arab and Jewish Israelis, or supposed ‘racist’ — that is, anti-Arab — attitudes among Jewish Israelis.

They suggest that these phenomena are fundamental to the conflict, and that they receive official expression as expropriation of land and water resources, and general exploitation of Palestinians for the benefit of Jews. The conception is that anti-Arab attitudes on the part of  ‘European’  Jews are a cause of the ‘colonization’ of the ‘indigenous’ Arabs, who are so ‘humiliated’ by this that they have the right — indeed no other choice than — to ‘resist’.

This view is popular in ‘progressive’ circles in the US, where Palestinian Arabs are compared to African Americans, or in Europe where the preferred metaphor is South African blacks.

On the contrary, I say that anti-Arab attitudes among Israeli Jews are symptoms of a larger regional conflict, something which can’t be fixed merely by soul-searching and self criticism on their part. I say that the actions of the government — for example, the construction of the security barrier — which certainly do impact the lives of Arabs negatively, are driven by the objective situation of Jewish Israelis, who are under siege by forces that don’t even hide their desire to commit another genocide against the Jewish people.

Some important points:

• The Arabs are not so indigenous and the Jews are not so European. Ahmadinejad and Abbas are fond of saying “why should the Palestinians be stateless as a result of Hitler’s actions?”– by which I presume they intend that the half of all Israelis who are descended from Jews that fled Arab countries after 1948 should be stateless because of the actions of various Arab despots. And while Sari Nusseibeh may be able to trace his family’s Palestinian roots back to the time of the crusades, many of the ancestors of today’s ‘Palestinians’ came to the region from Egypt with Muhammed Ali in the 1830’s — a few years before the Zionists — or fled famine in Syria during the early 20th century.

• The Arab world actively hates Israel and Jews. With the exception of Egypt and Jordan, with which Israel has ‘cold’ peace agreements, every Arab nation and Iran remains committed to the principle that Israel is illegitimate and should not exist. Some of them like Iran and Syria are actively engaged in proxy war with Israel via  non-state proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Virtually all of them — including the Palestinian Authority — officially and unofficially produce a constant flow of hateful antisemitic propaganda in all of their media.

• Israel is sporadically at war with Hamas and Hezbollah.

• Israel is under threat from huge numbers of missiles from Hezbollah in Lebanon, from Syria — including some with chemical warheads — and from Iran, which will soon have nuclear weapons.

• Israel is highly vulnerable due to its small size and population.

• There is a worldwide propaganda assault to delegitimize Israel. Delegitimization is often the first step to genocide. The Arabs and Iran contribute to this, but also ‘progressive’ forces in Europe, American and European academia.

• Israel has few allies. It is entirely dependent on the US, which has supplied it with weapons since 1968, to maintain the military superiority it needs to survive. On the other hand, the enemies of Israel — and in particular the Palestinian and Lebanese proxies that presently constitute the ‘point of the spear’ aimed at her — are supported by oil money from Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, then, rather than a human-rights issue in which a strong nation disproportionally uses  its military power to oppress a weak minority, is seen to be a symptom of a regional conflict in which a number of rich and relatively populous nations are agreed — although they can agree on nothing else — to oppose a small and vulnerable state. In this broader conflict, Israel is the underdog.

You can’t cure pneumonia with aspirin; you need to treat the disease, not the symptoms. In order to improve relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, it will be necessary for the Arab world to take the pressure off, to stop trying to destroy Israel, to accept the presence of a Jewish state in the Mideast, to stop antisemitic incitement, and above all to stop supporting the Palestinian extremists that are responsible for the terrorism that has plagued Israel since its founding.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, human rights, regional conflict, terrorism

It is not especially surprising that Amnesty International (AI) has issued a report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. In 2006, the organization issued a similar report about the Lebanese war, which was almost completely discredited.

The Gaza report affirms all the charges made against Israel and — like the 2006 report — accepts Arab testimony uncritically. For example, inflated figures for civilian casualties were obtained from “Palestinian human rights NGOs”. How could one possibly doubt their veracity?

Although the report itself is unsigned, the summary which accompanies it mentions “Donatella Rovera, who headed a field research mission to Gaza and southern Israel during and after the conflict.” Here is what I wrote about Rovera’s ‘investigative’ technique some time ago:

Rovera’s ‘research’ seems to follow the same pattern time and again (she’s frequently quoted in news reports accusing Israel of using white phosphorus shells against civilians, summary executions of Palestinian children, etc.): Palestinians tell her that thus-and-such happened, and she repeats it to reporters along with her judgment that whatever atrocity she is describing is a violation of international law.

Relying on exaggerated and sometimes invented premises — hearsay by interested parties — the report moves on to draw conclusions about Israeli motives:

Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity. Rather, it was often the result of reckless and indiscriminate attacks, which were seemingly tolerated or even directly sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively punish local residents for the actions of armed groups. [my emphasis]

I do not doubt that there was unnecessary damage, that civilians were unintentionally hurt or killed, or that some Israeli soldiers acted improperly — although allegations of deliberate murder of Palestinians, when investigated, have turned out to be false. But I very strongly doubt that actions were sanctioned “up the chain of command” to “collectively punish” Gazans.

Probably no Western army’s conduct has ever been so closely scrutinized than that of the IDF (US and Israeli combat veterans that I have spoken to are bemused by the phenomenon; they know that soldiers in war cannot be evaluated in the same way as candidates for university tenure).

In contrast, the cohorts of Hamas — with the exception of the impossible-to-ignore Qassam barrages, which even AI must admit to be war crimes — were portrayed as relatively clean fighters. AI does take Hamas to task not only for its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, but also for endangering the Palestinians from whose midst they fire.  But compare the way AI evaluates the intent of Hamas with how it treated Israel:

Hamas and other armed groups also endangered Palestinian civilians by failing to take all feasible precautions in the conduct of their military activities, notably by firing rockets from residential areas and storing weapons, explosives and ammunition in them. They also mixed with the civilian population, although this would be difficult to avoid in the small and overcrowded Gaza Strip, and there is no evidence that they did so with the intent of shielding themselves. [my emphasis]

No, of course, they must be careful to not make judgments when there is no evidence!

The AI report documents every offense committed or said to committed by Israeli troops, from alleged ‘murders’ to graffiti. However it does not even mention the following war crimes committed by Hamas:

• Using humanitarian symbols for attacks, such as by transporting terrorists in ambulances
• Direct and public incitement to genocide
• The recruitment of children into the conflict
• Firing at the enemy while wearing civilian clothes
• Wearing the uniforms of the enemy
• Shooting rockets with phosphorus payloads deliberately at civilians
• Not adhering to international standards on the treatment of prisoners of war
• Immediate execution of alleged “collaborators” without a trial

No, the report was not surprising or especially interesting. What is interesting is the reaction to it from Hamas, which claimed that it was biased against them:

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum denounced the report, saying it “equated the victim and the executioner, and denied our people’s right to resist the occupation.“

Now this is an interesting argument. Pay attention:

Hamas says  that anything they do, including launching attacks directly against the Israeli population, is justified because they are “resisting occupation”.

But there is no occupation, you say. The only Jew left in Gaza is kidnapped Israeli Gilad Schalit.

True, says Hamas, but what about the ‘blockade’ and other Israeli security measures? They are a form of occupation.

And if you look closely you’ll find that for Hamas, ‘occupation’ means ‘anything Israel does to try to prevent them from killing Jews’.

Therefore, if Israel tries to prevent Hamas from killing Jews, Hamas is justified in killing Jews. But if Israel does not try, then — what else? — Hamas will kill Jews.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Amnesty International, war crimes, Gaza