Tag Archive for 'Gaza'

One man’s pain

Published on February 12, 2009 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: .

Norman Geras attempts to show compassion for the Palestinians and fails obviously.

The agony of the war burst into Israeli homes last night as Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, a Palestinian doctor popular on Israeli television, delivered his regular report through tears, telling Channel 10 that three of his daughters and a niece had been killed after an Israeli shell hit his home in Gaza.

“My girls were sitting at home planning their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled,” he said. “All that was ever fired out of our house was love and acts of peace, nothing else, ever.”

The TV broadcast is here. (Thanks: StM.)

The Gaza conflict started on 27th December 2008. Norman posted this on 18th January 2009. During that time hundreds were killed, thousands injured and tens of thousands made homeless yet this is the first mention that Norm has made of any casualities on the Palestinian side. Has Norm gone soft? Has he discovered his humanity? Let’s watch and find out.

So in the studio, the presenters seemed genuinely distressed by the doctor’s anguish, one of them even arranged for help to be dispatched. Since the incident he has been mentioned sympathetically on most Israeli blogs. And there’s even footage from an old documentary showing the doctor hugging an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint. Now, you can call me cynical but I think the only reason Norm showed this is because it shows the Israelis in a good light.

Sadly, there’s more. Presumably, Norm didn’t think it relevent.

A press conference for the doctor was interrupted by several angry protestors with one woman ranting:

Why is he engaging in propaganda? He’s talking against Israel at the Sheba hospital. You should all be ashamed. All my children are serving in Gaza. Who knows what he had at his home? …

What’s wrong with you, have you all gone crazy? … My son is in the paratroopers, who knows what you had inside your home, nobody is talking about that. Nobody is talking. Who knows what kind of weapons were in your house; so what if he’s a doctor? The soldiers knew exactly. They had weapons inside the home, you should be ashamed. I have three soldiers, why are they firing at them? All of you should be ashamed.

Then there was the Israeli “Defense” Force report into the incident. Based on a “preliminary investigation,” an Israeli army representative claimed on January 17 that troops fired on Aboul Aish’s house because “they had come under attack from somewhere in the vicinity of the house; possibly a sniper and the final report claimed that the killing was “reasonable”.

[C]onsidering the constraints of the battle scene, the amount of threats that endangered the force, and the intensity of fighting in the area, the forces’ action and the decision to fire toward the building were reasonable

So basically, if the IDF come under fire from a building, they can then fire at a completely different building and that’s “reasonable”.

Being diplomatic

Published on February 10, 2009 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Norman doesn’t want Israel to negotiate with the enemy she has but to wait till she has the enemy she wants.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock is entitled to think, and to argue, that Hamas should not be treated as ‘beyond the pale’ when it comes to ceasefire and peace talks. As an experienced diplomat, however, he should seek to explain himself better than he does:

Hamas as a movement covers quite a range of views, some of them unacceptably angry and violent. Rockets from Gaza aimed at Israeli towns are pointless and must stop: no vehement protest, even over brutal occupation, should kill civilians on the other side.

But the more thoughtful strand of thinking in Hamas recognises the need for a political process and is ready to engage in the search for a durable solution to the conflict with Israel. It was open to further encouragement when Hamas was keeping the peace on its side in 2006 and 2008. Hamas, which in fact has no deep-rooted argument with the west or Christianity, no political alliance with Tehran or Hezbollah, no respect for al-Qaida and no “charter” for the destruction of Israel in its political programme, just wants the Israeli occupation to end.

What I’m interested in is ‘no “charter” for the destruction of Israel in its political programme’. So how to deal with the fact that the Hamas Charter, with its reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, not only talks about killing Jews ‘until [they] hide behind rocks and trees’, but goes so far as to say:

Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.

In addition, ‘pointless’ wouldn’t be the word I’d choose for the rockets from Gaza ‘aimed at Israeli towns’, but that’s by the way.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock is being a little disingenuous when he says that Hamas has no “charter” for the destruction of Israel. He is referring to the 2006 election manifesto as well as recent statements from Hamas leaders and not to The Charter.

So does Hamas promise to destroy Israel in its charter? Yes. Do clerics in Hamas-controlled Gaza call for horrible things done on Israel and the Jews? Yes they do. But looking at Israel and her own record when it comes to charters,  statements and actions she is no better.

Take, for instance, the Likud charter which expressly rejects the idea of a Palestinian state.

The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities [i.e. settlements in Judea and Samaria] and will prevent their uprooting. (…)

The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs.

Claims sovereignty over the whole Land of Israel which includes the territory occupied in 1967 (East Jerusalem, The West Bank and Gaza) and calls for:

Preserving the right of the Jewish Nation to the Land of Israel as an eternal, inalienable right; perseverance in the settlement and development of all parts of the Land of Israel; implementation of the State’s sovereignty on them.

MK Uzi Landau confirmed this when he declared:

I am against the establishment of a Palestinian state and everything must be done to prevent it.

Joining the verbal warfare are Likud politicians such as Moshe Feiglin, currently running for the Knesset on the party’s ticket:

Why should non-Jews have a say in the policy of a Jewish state? (…) For two thousand years, Jews dreamed of a Jewish state, not a democratic state. Democracy should serve the values of the state, not destroy them. You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches.

As for Israeli clerics, they have advocated a genocide in Gaza in response to the rockets:

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand,” said Shmuel Eliyahu. “And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

And indoctrinated troops with rather dubious “literature”:

One such flyer is attributed to “the pupils of Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg” – the former rabbi at Joseph’s Tomb and author of the article “Baruch the Man,” which praises Baruch Goldstein, who massacred unarmed Palestinians in Hebron. It calls on “soldiers of Israel to spare your lives and the lives of your friends and not to show concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us. We call on you … to function according to the law ‘kill the one who comes to kill you.’ As for the population, it is not innocent … We call on you to ignore any strange doctrines and orders that confuse the logical way of fighting the enemy.”

There’s also the graffiti left by the Israeli “Defense” Force in Gaza and by the settlers in the West Bank: “Arabs need 2 die”, “Die you all”, “Make war not peace”, “1 is down, 999,999 to go”, “Die Arab Sand-niggers”, “Exterminate The Muslims” and “Arabs To The Gas Chambers”.

And last but not least, there’s the illegal settlements in the West Bank. Their growth has been expanding year on year for decades no matter who’s been in charge at the Knesset. According to Peace Now, an Israeli Human Rights organisation, 1,257 new structures were built in settlements during 2008, compared to 800 in 2007, an increase of 57 percent.  At this rate, there will be nowhere left for an independent and viable Palestinian state.

For the Israelis or indeed our Norman to claim that The Hamas Charter is an obstacle to negotiations and that they have no partner for peace to accept their generous offer without being entirely honest about their own position is just a case of pot calling kettle black. As an aside, it’s worth remembering that the PLO Charter as amended in 1968 also called for the destruction of Israel and that wasn’t officially changed until 1998. This was not seen as an obstacle to the negotiation of The Oslo Accords in 1993.

[h/t The Hasbara Buster for digging up the dirt on Likud]

Ceasefire?

Published on February 8, 2009 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Norman is still concerned.

Norman is still concerned about Gaza although not apparently concerned enough to make any mention of the Palestinian victims to date.

More reading links on Gaza…

> There’s analysis in Haaretz to the effect that the Egyptian truce proposal, which Hamas is now willing to accept, is ‘a kind of surrender agreement’ and ‘mostly bad for Hamas‘.

> This chimes in with the first part of the report here giving Israeli sources for the view that Hamas’s leaders in Gaza have been shaken by Israel’s offensive and want it ended quickly.

> On the other hand, there is analysis presenting Hamas as far from broken, despite having suffered heavy losses.

> And, according to this report, in the West Bank support for Hamas is growing at the expense of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.

Poetry even after Auschwitz

Published on February 7, 2009 in Shoah. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Norman wants poetry even whilst Gaza burns.

Ben Macintyre proposes what I take to be a novel interpretation of a famous remark:

The German writer T.W. Adorno once declared: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” What he meant, I believe, is that art simplifies and reduces history that is messy, ugly and often unsatisfying.

I very much doubt that this was the meaning Adorno intended, and it’s certainly not the main way in which his remark has been understood. Rather, he has been taken to mean that there is something obscene about creating beauty in a world in which there has been Auschwitz. It may relate more particularly to taking material from that monstrous human crime and attempting to give it aesthetic form – as, for example, in Paul Celan’s powerful Deathfugue. But, in any case, the idea is that we have no right to these artistic ‘enhancements’ when people can be done to death at once so cruelly, in such huge numbers, with such indifference, such dull routine.

Adorno was wrong about this. A world with Auschwitz and poetry is better than one with only Auschwitz. Furthermore, we have not only a right but also an obligation to try to comprehend the evils of humankind, including the worst of them. Poetry and the other arts are ways of trying to do that and of trying to get others to see.

Within Adorno’s dictum there may be a defensible kernel of meaning, and it’s this: to allow the time and attention we give to forms of artistic output to divert us from the duties of assistance we have to those in dire straits – duties of solidarity and aid – is to live a life of criminal complicity. But, if too demanding, even this injunction states an inhumanly cramped ethic and one impossible to live by. There is a real problem about how much each of us owes to others in distress or dire need. But nobody owes so much that they are disqualified from enjoying the pleasures of this world – as found in poetry amongst many other things.

Adorno himself, it should be said, later reconsidered his famous remark.

‘Not to give in to darkness’

Published on February 6, 2009 in Afghanistan, Israel and The War Against The Guardian. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Norman and the moral highground.

Further to this, here’s a story of courage against moral barbarity.

One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others – students and teachers – was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well – about 1,300 in all.

It’s one to read in full. (Thanks: SC.)

Actually, I agree with Norm on this, throwing acid in a child’s face is an act of moral barbarism. However, I’m just wondering how one should describe a nation that rallies around pilots who do not feel a thing except a light bump to the plane when they drop bombs on entire families and crush them to death. And catchy little phrase for the following would also come in handy:

January 5 The Times reports that telltale smoke has appeared from areas of shelling. Israel denies using phosphorus

January 8 The Times reports photographic evidence showing stockpiles of white phosphorus (WP) shells. Israel Defence Forces spokesman says: “This is what we call a quiet shell – it has no explosives and no white phosphorus”

January 12 The Times reports that more than 50 phosphorus burns victims are taken into Nasser Hospital. An Israeli military spokesman “categorically” denies the use of white phosphorus

January 15 Remnants of white phosphorus shells are found in western Gaza. The IDF refuses to comment on specific weaponry but insists ammunition is “within the scope of international law”

January 16 The United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters are hit with phosphorus munitions. The Israeli military continues to deny its use

January 21 Avital Leibovich, Israel’s military spokeswoman, admits white phosphorus munitions were employed in a manner “according to international law”

January 23 Israel says it is launching an investigation into white phosphorus munitions, which hit a UN school on January 17. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF is holding an investigation concerning one specific unit and one incident”

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