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Iraqi Scud explodes in Tel Aviv

In January and February of 1991, 38 Iraqi Scud missiles landed in Israel (four others fell short and landed in the West Bank). The bombardment started on January 18, when Tel Aviv and Haifa were hit by 8 Scuds, and continued for several weeks. Six missiles fell in the Negev, apparently aimed at the nuclear reactor in Dimona. All of the Scuds had conventional warheads, although Saddam had previously used Scuds with chemical warheads in his war with Iran. The Scuds were of Soviet design, based on the German V-2 developed for Hitler by Werner von Braun.

Israelis put on gas masks and huddled in sealed rooms during the attacks. Only one Israeli was killed directly (this has been termed ‘miraculous’), but “15 died of heart attacks, suffocation in their gas masks or reaction to a chemical-weapon antidote that some took in a panic” [Time]. There was great fear of chemical attacks, especially since the Scuds’ propulsion system used red fuming nitric acid as an oxidizer, which was extremely irritating when inhaled or on the skin.

The Bush I administration requested (i.e., ordered) Israel not to take any military action against Iraq, because the presence of Israel would damage the anti-Saddam ‘coalition’ that included such countries as Syria, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. Of course the lion’s share of the actual fighting was done by Western nations, particularly the US.

In other words:

Saddam invaded Kuwait and directly threatened Saudi Arabia. The US and other Western nations, with token ‘participation’ by some Arabs (Saudi Arabia committed the most forces, but was little help) liberated Kuwait and defended Saudi Arabia. Because of Arab sensibilities, Israel was told to hold still and absorb what — but for incredible luck or divine intervention, take your pick — could have been a catastrophic attack.

What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong with a situation in which the Jewish state, which was created and maintained at great cost, in part so that the Jewish people would no longer experience pogroms or worse, was prevented from acting in self-defense — because the Arabs’ rejectionist ‘honor’ apparently was more important to Bush I than Jewish lives?

Like the 1930’s when the British chose to restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine and to condemn hundreds of thousands of European Jews that might have been saved rather than annoy the Arabs, we know that our concerns are not the same as those of the great powers. But that’s why we Jews have — or thought we had — a sovereign state.

The US promised to take care of the Scuds for Israel. They deployed highly ineffective Patriot missiles and flew numerous sorties into  Iraq, including intensive B-52 bombing raids, with little or no results. The mobile missile launchers were elusive and could be set up and fired quickly.

Part of the problem was that in the beginning, Norman Schwarzkopf, the U.S. Army general who ran the war, underestimated the Scud. After all, the crude, 40-ft. Soviet-designed missile, which is in the arsenals of some 25 nations, has a bull’s-eye a mile across. Schwarzkopf called it a “mosquito” that was “clumsy and obsolete.” He resisted sending commandos into Iraq to hunt down the Scuds. — Time

He was probably sorry on February 25, when an army barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, was hit by a Scud, killing 25 Americans and wounding over 100.

The situation today is somewhat parallel. The US is saying to Israel, “Trust us, we’ll take care of Iran”, although it is doubtful that the US has the means to do so diplomatically or the will to do so militarily.  And in no uncertain terms Israel has been told, “there will be big trouble” if it acts unilaterally. Not only that, but by refusing to sell certain weapons and systems to Israel, the US has even damaged Israel’s ability to threaten or deter Iran from attacking Israel, directly or by proxy.

The difference is that today many Arab nations would be happy to see Israel  attack the Iranian nuclear weapons facilities. It is primarily the US and Europe, worried about Iran’s ability to create disturbances in the oil supply, who are obstructing Israel’s right to self-defense.

Technorati Tags: Gulf War, Israel, Iraq, Scuds, Iran

I love this guy. Abbas Zaki is a member of the Fatah central committee and the PLO representative in Lebanon. He understands the importance of Zionism, and unlike his boss Mahmoud Abbas, he likes to speak clearly about Fatah goals and principles.

When you examine the statements that follow, please note that he represents the ‘moderate’ Palestinian wing that the US is arming and funding in the name of ‘peace’ and a two-state solution (all boldface emphasis was added by the Editor).

— April 2008: On the use of violence and PLO policy

We believe wholeheartedly that the Right of Return is guaranteed by our will, by our weapons, and by our faith…The use of weapons alone will not bring results, and the use of politics without weapons will not bring results. We act on the basis of our extensive experience. We analyze our situation carefully. We know what climate leads to victory and what climate leads to suicide. We talk politics, but our principles are clear. It was our pioneering leader, Yasser Arafat, who persevered with this revolution, when empires collapsed. Our armed struggle has been going on for 43 years, and the political struggle, on all levels, has been going on for 50 years. We harvest U.N. resolutions, and we shame the world so that it doesn’t gang up on us, because the world is led by people who have given their brains a vacation – the American administration and the neocons…

The PLO is the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people], and it has not changed its platform even one iota. In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the PLO proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine. — MEMRI

— July 2008: On Yasser Arafat’s Oslo intentions, help for Hamas rockets

When the Palestinian Authority returned to Gaza [in 1994], Hamas did not have even 20 guns, weapons, and Fatah did not have even 100 guns. Abu Ammar [Yasser Arafat], Allah’s mercy upon him, flooded everybody with weapons, and sent our experts to produce missiles and weapons for whoever who wanted to fight.

One of our people, General Abd Al-Mu’ti Al-Sab’awi, was martyred when he was making a rocket for them and it went off. He was developing missiles for them. Unfortunately, they [Hamas] have turned their backs on us now. — IMRA

— May 2009: On the two-state solution, Jerusalem and Zionism

With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made – just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward. — IMRA

Finally, in case the Obama Administration has not noticed:

— November 2008: on Israel and the US, and the honesty of Mahmoud Abbas

Abbas Zaki: “We consider the U.S. to be an enemy because its only strategic alliance is with Israel...”

Interviewer: “Israel ceased being an enemy once you signed a peace treaty with it. I don’t know how it could be your enemy. Do you talk to the Israelis as if they were your enemies? Do you talk to Israel as a friendly or enemy country?”

Abbas Zaki: “An enemy country, which owes us certain things. The heroic Vietnamese used to negotiate with the French, while they were slaughtering them.”

Interviewer: “I can assure you that in his speeches, Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] says the U.S. is a friendly country.”

Abbas Zaki: “Well, this isn’t true. Perhaps Abu Mazen, in his position, needs to use diplomatic language, but he is the greatest critic of the U.S.”  — IMRA

Technorati Tags: Abbas Zaki, Israel, Fatah, PLO, terrorism

(Updated 2114 PDT)

I’ve recently been reading Anthony Cordesman’s  “Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War”. There are many lessons, and the performance of the IDF in Gaza last winter showed that it has learned several of the technical ones.

But one of the things Cordesman emphasizes is the need to pay as much attention to the information war that is fought in the world’s media parallel to the military one.

In particular he says that,

Israel fought its media battle largely in terms of an effort to influence its own political parties and public as well as its strongest outside supporters. Its information operations were parochial and were based on the assumption that it could not alter the perception of Arab, European, and other neutral and hostile media [p. 40].

He discusses what he considers the overriding importance of minimizing civilian casualties and damage, as well as justifying the use of force and the degree of force used. He calls for real-time response to inaccurate reports of collateral damage and atrocity stories, but also an entirely new way of fighting aimed as much at not hurting civilians as it is at killing the enemy.

Cordesman suggests that the information war is important because wars are fought to attain political objectives. If you defeat your enemy in every battle but the political situation after the war has not improved, you have failed. And the information aspect may have as much or more effect on the political outcome of a war as the actual fighting.

There is no doubt in my mind that these considerations were taken very seriously by decision-makers in the government and the IDF before the recent Gaza war. Absolutely unprecedented efforts were made to warn civilians away from targets before they were bombed; the IDF spokesperson’s office implemented a video blog that very effectively showed how weapons were hidden in mosques and rockets were fired from schoolyards. Although there were some failures — Palestinian casualty figures were disputed but inadequate documentation was provided, sometimes responses were agonizingly slow, etc. — there was a huge improvement since 2006.

And yet…

Israel’s information defeat in the Gaza war was total. Where there were PR failures, they were exploited. Where there were not, Israeli-provided information was simply ignored. The IDF spokesperson’s video blog wasn’t even close to a match for Al-Jazeerah (it didn’t help that Israel was trying to present verifiable facts and the other side just made things up).

It might even be the case that Israel’s hesitancy about the political consequences of its actions was partly responsible for the way the war stalled without entering ‘phase 3’, the deep penetration into the Hamas strongholds in Gaza City, which might have been successful in eliminating Hamas as a military threat. In other words, Israel might have taken PR concerns too seriously, to the point of failing to achieve important objectives.

Israel really is in a special situation in the world, completely isolated politically from so many other nations and at a PR disadvantage after years of continuous vilification by a multiplicity of enemies. What Israel actually does may not matter at this point. Cordesman asssumes that the propaganda battle can be won, both by changing the way the army fights and by improved PR techniques. But what if he’s wrong? Then the very attempt to win the information war works against the effort to win the military one.

Part of the strategy of asymmetric war is to take advantage of a modern army’s need to pull punches for political/information reasons. A force like the IDF is thus forced to fight on the level of Hezbollah or Hamas. But if the propaganda battle is essentially unwinnable, maybe the way to win such wars is to ignore the PR considerations and apply overwhelming force; to play to one’s strength and the enemy’s weakness. It seems to have worked for the regime in Sri Lanka.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Second Lebanon War, Gaza War, Anthony Cordesman

The responsibility for ending the conflict with the Palestinians does not lie with Israel.

How can it when the most popular political party among Palestinians is Hamas, whose founding document calls for killing Jews and which contains language from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

How can it when the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership, the official representative of the Palestinian people to the world insists that there is no Jewish people and refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state?

How can it when every time Israel withdraws from occupied territories, the response is war and terrorism?

How can it when Hamas, the PA and their allies don’t let up for a moment in their barrage of hateful antisemitic propaganda, lies about Israel and incitement to violence against Jews and Israel?

How can it when negotiations go nowhere because the PA won’t compromise on borders — insisting on “not one millimeter less” than the the boundaries established by the 19-year Jordanian occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, an occupation that began when the Jordanians killed or drove out every last Jew in the area — nor on a right of ‘return’ to Israel for millions of hostile descendants of 1948 refugees, an unprecedented ‘solution’ to the problem they and their allies created, which by the way would end the Jewish state?

How can it when in 2007 70% of Palestinian Muslims viewed suicide bombing as sometimes or often justified? When 76% of Palestinians have a favorable view of Hezbollah (Pew survey, 7/24/07)? And when 77% of Palestinians say that “the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists” (Pew survey, 6/27/07)?

But the US acts as though it does.

The Obama administration has, as far as we know, not made any demands on the Palestinians. It has not demanded that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state — although Prime Minister Netanyahu mentioned this in his recent meeting with President Obama. It has not insisted that the Palestinians stop their antisemitic incitement. It has not told the Palestinians that the ‘right of return’  is off the table, although Obama has suggested in the past that in his view this is impractical. It has not even fulfilled its promise to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem and officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — even though the seat of government is in undisputed West Jerusalem.

No, what the Obama administration has done is to demand that Israel stop construction of homes in existing settlements, even those which are neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that any reasonable border compromise would place in Israel.

And let us not forget that — even before they officially took power — Obama’s people forced a premature end to the Gaza war, saving Hamas and thus ensuring that the peaceful “two-state solution” it calls for cannot be implemented!

Technorati Tags: Obama administration, Israel, Palestinians

Some loosely related thoughts for today:

Someone recently said that the way to tell the difference between criticism of Israeli policy and antisemitism is to watch for the froth at the corners of the speaker’s mouth.

Here is an example of a comment on a NY Times op-ed by Roger Cohen. It is chosen almost entirely at random; there are thousands more like this. The first sentence is a quote from Cohen, and the commenter has supplied the transition to antisemitic ranting:

One view of Israel’s continued expansion of settlements, Gaza blockade, West Bank walling-in and wanton recourse to high-tech force would be that it’s designed precisely to bludgeon, undermine and humiliate the Palestinian people until their dreams of statehood and dignity evaporate! This is not a view! This is official, blatant, arrogant Israeli policy since before America blundered into allowing these Zionist to steal these lands. murder these peoples, and prevent any peace in Palestine! Few of these Jews are victims or children of Nazi or even Russian atrocities; but all are dedicated Zionists with a single goal of stealing back the lands their God of blood and genocide gave to his chosen people; chosen to kill it seems!

Logic is not relevant to the special case of Israel. It’s all about hating.

By the way, have you noticed that the Nigerian army is — right now — slaughtering civilians in the Niger Delta? Or that at least 80,000 people have been killed in the 26-year Tamil Tiger intifada, which has finally been put down by the Sri Lankan army operating with little regard for collateral damage. These events are being reported, but without the ranting, and any outrage will be gone by next week.

Another phenomenon of the treatment meted out to the Jew among nations is a willingness to believe all Palestinian stories, which cannot be refuted once told, like the one that Israel bombarded a school and  killed 42 innocents inside (when actually only 12 people were killed, outside the school, and 9 of them were confirmed Hamas fighters). Or the oft-quoted Palestinian figures for civilian casualties in the Strip, perhaps four times too high.

Facts, too, can be ignored in this special case. Certainly they will be next week when the ‘Eyewitness Gaza activists‘  come to town to describe the entirely manufactured ‘siege of Gaza’.

In some ways even worse than lies about current events is the falsification of history, the deliberate attempt to wipe out Jewish provenance and rights in the land of  Israel. Our rabid anti-Zionist friends eat this stuff up: the Palestinians are said to be descended from the biblical Canaanites (instead of mostly from people who migrated to the region in the 19th and early 20th centuries), there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and today’s Jews are actually Khazars anyway. Sheer nonsense, but nonsense designed to erode Jewish political rights today.

A good example is the entirely unjustified Palestinian claim that any part of the land that was under Jordanian control from 1948-1967 belongs to them, and any Jewish presence there is a ‘settlement’ that must be extirpated:

…the Palestinians consider that “East Jerusalem” is also part of the “occupied territory.” That includes not only the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, but also the cemetery in Mt Olives and the Old City Jewish quarter, from which Jews were ethnically cleansed in 1948 (See Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem. It also includes areas that were formerly border areas and no-mans land such as the Ramat Eshkol Area. The disputes over the places where the settlement freeze applies will de facto create a consensus about what might be annexed to Israel and what belongs to the Palestinians. So we have to ask, if the Palestinians will raise a ruckus when a Jew dies and wants to be buried in Mt. Olives Cemetery, or when Israel wants to add some buildings to the Hebrew University campus on Mt. Scopus, or build in the Ramat Eshkol area or French Hill or other such neighborhoods.

More important, we should be asking if any such activities will bring down the wrath of Hillary Clinton on the Israeli government. Regarding the Palestinians, we do not have to ask, as we already know the answer. The Palestinians will fight for every millimeter that was under Jordanian sovereignty for the precious 19 years between 1948 and 1967 that in retrospect were turned into a sacrosanct period in international law. They are busy building an “alternative narrative” in which no Jews ever lived in Jerusalem prior to 1967.  — Ami Isseroff

This stuff, as well as the atrocity stories and even the antisemitism, all works its way into common discourse and becomes conventional wisdom. Logic, facts and history — all three dishonored.

Technorati Tags: Israel