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Thomas Friedman is judged by many to be both knowledgeable and fair-minded about the Israeli-Arab conflict. After all, he’s been to the region many times and has been writing on the subject for years. He served as a correspondent in Lebanon from 1979 to 1989, and his book “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, published in 1989, is considered a classic.

But his most recent piece in the NY Times shows that he’s prepared to pour blood guilt on Israel with the rest of the mob:

Israel today is enjoying another timeout because it recently won three short wars — and then encountered one pleasant surprise. The first was a war to dismantle the corrupt Arafat regime. The second was the war started by Hezbollah in Lebanon and finished by a merciless pounding of Shiite towns and Beirut suburbs by the Israeli Air Force. The third was the war to crush the Hamas missile launchers in Gaza.

What is different about these three wars, though, is that Israel won them using what I call “Hama Rules” — which are no rules at all. “Hama Rules” are named after the Syrian town of Hama, where, in 1982, then-President Hafez el-Assad of Syria put down a Muslim fundamentalist uprising by shelling and then bulldozing their neighborhoods, killing more than 10,000 of his own people.

In Israel’s case, it found itself confronting enemies in Gaza and Lebanon armed with rockets, but nested among local civilians, and Israel chose to go after them without being deterred by the prospect of civilian casualties.

There is absolutely no similarity between Assad’s mass murder and Israel’s self-defense — not in the intentions of Assad and Israel, and not in the degree of civilian damage.

Assad deliberately killed as many people as he could in order to send a message that insurrection against his regime would not be tolerated — and to exact satisfactory revenge for attacks on his loyalists (including an assassination attempt) by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The IDF, especially in Gaza, made an effort to reduce harm to civilians as much as possible, and despite a journalistic and propaganda industry devoted to proving the contrary, succeeded quite well under the circumstances. The operations were all intended to stop terrorist activities, not to get revenge.

Friedman knows the difference. Why did he join Israel’s enemies in their demonization project? Maybe he’ll write a comment to this post explaining that.

There is something in common between the three wars that Friedman cites, though, although it’s not what he suggests. It’s this: In all three cases, the “international community” (primarily in the person of the US) stopped the fighting before Israel could finish off its enemies.

In 2002, Arafat was allowed to remain barricaded in his Muqata. In 2006, Hezbollah was allowed to rearm and rebuild. And in 2009, the planned third phase of Operation Cast Lead, which would have brought Israeli soldiers into Hamas’ headquarters in Gaza city, was aborted before Hamas’ capabilities were seriously damaged, and without rescuing Gilad Shalit — who has just suffered his fourth year in Hamas captivity.

So in addition to Friedman’s coinage “Hama rules,” referring to the vicious kind of example-making practiced by Hafez al-Assad and by the Russians in Chechnya, we need another phrase for the phenomenon of intervention to prevent Israel from bringing its conflicts to a winning conclusion. There are many possibilities drawn from almost every conflict that Israel has engaged in: 1956 rules, 1967 rules, 1973 rules, 1982 rules, 2002 rules, 2006 rules, 2009 rules, etc.

I prefer ‘Gaza rules’, because this conflict best exemplifies the combination of an imposed end to the conflict and the use of pseudo-evidence to indict Israel of every imaginable crime, and to punish her for defending herself.

Friedman continues his argument by saying that Israel’s ‘legitimacy’ is put at risk by these wars, and so Israel should stop fighting them — that is, stop defending herself — and instead protect herself by making concessions to the Palestinian Authority (PA):

But Abbas and Fayyad will not be able to sustain this timeout if Netanyahu resumes settlement-building in September, when the partial freeze expires, and if Israel doesn’t soon start gradually transferring control of major West Bank Palestinian towns to the Palestinian Authority.

Bottom line: Israel needs to try to buy its next timeout with diplomacy, which means Netanyahu has to show some initiative. Because the risks to Israel’s legitimacy of another war in Gaza, Lebanon or the West Bank — in which Israel could be forced to kill even more civilians to squash rocket attacks launched from schoolyards by fighters who wear no uniforms — will be staggering.

Somehow, the small matter of Hamas has been removed from the equation, as has the fact that the PA has found even overly generous terms insufficient in the recent past.

I offer the following challenge to Friedman:

• Prove that Israel’s intention in three recent wars has been to harm civilians. You can’t.
• Explain how concessions to the PA will bring peace, especially in the presence of Hamas. You can’t.
• Explain why Israel is the only state in the world whose ‘legitimacy’ is in question. You don’t want to try.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Thomas L. Friedman

A poor idea whose time has come:

Ahead of a potential new conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the IDF has drawn up plans to evacuate entire Palestinian villages and refugee camps from areas of conflict in the event of an Israeli incursion, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

During Operation Cast Lead, in the winter of 2008/2009, the IDF dropped millions of flyers over areas it planned to invade and made over a quarter of a million phone calls to private homes and mobile phones warning people to leave…

According to the new operational doctrine for the Gaza Strip, ahead of an invasion of the Jabalya refugee camp in a large-scale operation, for example, the IDF would give prior notification to residents and designate an amount of time they would be given to leave. The IDF would also enter potential conflict zones more slowly to permit residents to evacuate the area. — Jerusalem Post

What’s wrong with this picture?

The Goldstone report contained hundreds of accusations that Israel deliberately harmed civilians, and indeed even falsely concluded that the object of the operation was to hurt and kill civilians. The accusations were based mostly on hearsay evidence collected from Gaza residents by biased NGOs (Human Rights Watch, etc.) often with the assistance of Hamas-provided guides and translators.

It seems to me that the new guidelines would not prevent a similar ‘Goldstoning’, which is by nature a disingenuous process, a diplomatic lynching.  Indeed, by increasing the degree of contact with civilians — if, for example a village had to be evacuated — they would increase the probability of incidents which could be spun as brutality.

It also seems that this would provide an opening to create Mavi Marmara-like events in which ‘civilians’ would ‘resist’ the IDF’s attempt at ‘ethnic cleansing’, bringing about violent clashes.

Finally, it would give Hamas fighters an opportunity to set their booby traps and ambushes and fade away.

This is reminiscent of the approach to war-fighting now taken by the US in Afghanistan, in which the use of firepower and air support is being strictly limited in order to try to eliminate collateral damage. Of course the problems faced by the US and Israel are different in important respects, but the idea that reducing harm to civilians is higher priority than killing the enemy is similar.

This approach tackles the challenge of asymmetric warfare in exactly the wrong way, a way which amplifies the advantage of the side that uses irregular troops, deliberately fights from among friendly civilians, and ‘wins’ by getting outside powers to clamp down on the other side.

Some have forgotten that the object of war is victory, to crush the enemy, whatever that takes. Things like building civilian infrastructure may be projects that can and should be undertaken, but not as part of war, and not by soldiers. In actual fighting, all reasonable efforts which do not stand in the way of victory should be made to prevent harm to civilians, but these cannot override considerations of winning the battle and the war.

Israel can’t win in the UN no matter what it does. But it can win the war on the ground, and it should not sacrifice the latter for the former.

Yes, it sounds cruel and irrational. But war is the ultimate cruel and irrational activity — humans ought to build, not to destroy. Sherman’s dictum that “war is hell” is correct, and nobody should want to create hell on earth:

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. — Gen. W. T. Sherman, Sept. 1864

Hamas and the forces arrayed against Israel brought the last war and will bring the next one. They have tried, and to some extent succeeded, to turn the truth on its head and convince many that the Jews of Israel are the aggressors. But lying doesn’t make it so.

Those that make war on a nation that desires peace, as Sherman implied, are responsible for the consequences.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, war, Sherman

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, has made a truly remarkable recovery. As you may remember, in December 1988 a bomb exploded in the cargo hold of Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, causing the aircraft to break into several pieces in the air. 270 people in the plane and on the ground died of decompression, massive trauma and fire.

Megrahi, allegedly a Libyan intelligence officer, was indicted in 1991 but it required the UN to apply sanctions to Libya and protracted negotiations with Libyan dictator Qadaffi before he was finally handed over to Scottish authorities in 1999. In January 2001, Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing.

Now it gets interesting. An appeal was denied in 2002, and a second appeal was filed in 2007. During the trial of this appeal in 2009, Megrahi asked for release on ‘compassionate grounds’, which may be granted under Scottish law when a convict can be shown to have three months or less to live.  His lawyer claimed that he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and would not survive three months. On August 2009 he was released from prison and flew home to Libya where he received a hero’s welcome.

After his release, Megrahi was supposedly given chemotherapy, which appears to have been more effective than expected. In February  2010, the UK Telegraph reported that

Prof Sikora, one of the examining doctors who was paid a consultancy fee last July [2009] to examine Megrahi, told The Sunday Telegraph this weekend: “My information from Tripoli is that it’s not going to be long [before Megrahi dies].

“They stopped any active treatment in December and he has just been going downhill very slowly at home. He is on high doses of morphine [a painkiller] and it’s any day now.”

Prof Sikora said that he suspected that Megrahi was still alive because he had received a “psychological” boost from returning to his homeland and being reunited with his family…

Prof Sikora said it was just possible that Megrahi would be alive in several years time but added: “It’s highly unlikely. There is a 90 per cent chance he will die in the next few weeks.

Well, here it is June and he’s still hanging on.

Today there is an unexpected topical connection. When Megrahi was released there were claims that the British government pressured Scottish officials to approve the release because of considerations relating to trade — in particular, an oil deal. And guess what oil company was involved?

In his interview today [Sept. 4, 2009], [Foreign Secretary Jack] Straw admits that when he was considering in 2007 whether the bomber should be included in a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with Libya, Britain’s trade interests were a crucial factor.

Documents published this week showed Mr Straw originally promised that a PTA would only be reached with Libya if Megrahi was excluded. But he later caved in to Libyan demands to include Megrahi. It followed a warning from BP that a failure to include the bomber could hurt the oil giant’s business interests.

When asked in the interview if trade and BP were factors, Mr Straw admits: “Yes, [it was] a very big part of that. I’m unapologetic about that… Libya was a rogue state.

“We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal.” …

A spokesman for BP said the company had raised concerns with the Government about the slow progress in concluding the PTA, but denied mentioning Megrahi.

“Like many others, we were aware that a delay might have negative consequences for UK commercial interests, including ratification of BP’s exploration agreement,” he added.

Technorati Tags: Lockerbie bombing, al-Megrahi, BP

Here’s another illustration that Israeli concessions are never, ever enough.

As a result of the Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israelis were forced to fight for their lives, Israel has agreed to loosen restrictions on materials being transferred to Gaza (I discussed the illogical aspect of this earlier). Now only weapons and “war-supporting material” are prohibited from passing through the crossings; dual-use items such as cement will be allowed in if they are used for Palestinian Authority approved projects under international supervision.

As Barry Rubin has pointed out, although this does not represent a big modification in behavior for Israel, the significance of the internationally mandated change is that Israel gives up

[t]he entire strategy of trying to reduce Gaza’s economy and the rewards that Hamas can give its supporters. In other words, while Hamas’ military capacity is kept as low as possible it can politically consolidate and stay in power for decades.

What this tells us is that the international establishment (the agreement was negotiated by Tony Blair) admits that Hamas is here to stay, not quite legitimate but still immune from Israeli pressure — even peaceful pressure.

But that’s not enough. Along comes Chris Gunness of UNRWA, the ‘temporary’ agency set up in 1949 to help refugees from the 1948 war (theoretically, Jews who were ethnically cleansed from East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria should be included) and which has worked tirelessly to encourage the growth of the ‘refugee’ population — along comes Gunness and tells us that he’s not satisfied:

Only a complete lift of the Gaza blockade will satisfy UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees said to Reuters on Monday.

“We need to have the blockade fully lifted,” said spokesman Christopher Gunness of UNRWA, “the Israeli strategy is to make the international community talk about a bag of cement here, a project there. We need full unfettered access through all the crossings.”

There is absolutely no question that if there were no restriction on materials transferred to Gaza that Hamas would bring in weapons and explosives, as well as materials to build bunkers and tunnels.

In particular, as a result of a great number of smuggling tunnel operators bringing in huge quantities of cement, the price of cement in Gaza recently dropped precipitously, and the tunnel operators are now concentrating on iron. Unsurprisingly, aerial photographs do not show any significant civilian construction activity, but rather show that Hamas is rebuilding military infrastructure.

But helping Hamas is consistent with the previous actions of UNRWA and Gunness. You can read more about UNRWA here, and a little about how Chris Gunness sticks up for Hamas here.

So when he says “We need…,” what he really means is “Hamas needs…”

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Chris Gunness, UNRWA