'War by any other name' published in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper Fri., January 16, 2009

War by any other name By Gideon Levy Fri., January 16, 2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1056153.html Words, it is true, do not kill; but words can ease the work of killing. From the dawn of the Israeli occupation in the territories - by now an ancient dawn - or perhaps from the very establishment of the state, or maybe even from the revival of Hebrew, the language has been mobilized in active reserve service. There has been a permanent emergency call-up and Hebrew has never doffed its uniform. War after war, doublespeak after doublespeak, words are on the front line. They don't shed blood, but somehow they make the sight of it easier to take, sometimes even pleasurably so. They justify, validate, purify, polish and clean; often they also whip up, incite, inflame, push, urge and encourage - all in standard usage. Dry cleaning, express, removes every stain instantaneously, our word-laundering is guaranteed. We were hurled into this war armed with lines written by our national poet for the Hanukkah holiday, the holiday of the onset of this war: "Cast Lead," from a poem by Bialik. From now on, when kindergarten children sing "My father lit me candles, and acted as my torch," people will remember this war, which some commentators are already calling "the most just in Israel?s history," no less. But as for "war," the authoritative Even-Shoshan dictionary defines it as "an armed clash between armies, a conflict between state bodies (nations, states) in battle operations with the use of weapons and by force of arms." The Litani Operation (Lebanon, March 1978), a large-scale action which lasted three full months, never gained the national honor of being considered a war. Even the "Second Lebanon War" was not given that official name until half a year after it ended. This time we were quicker and more determined. The forces had not yet raided at dawn, the planes had not yet finished bombing the graduation ceremony of the traffic police - leaving behind dozens of bleeding young bodies; and we were already calling it a war. For the time being it is a nameless war; yes, afterward the ministerial committee for ceremonies and symbols will convene and give it an appropriate name. The First Gaza War? Surely not the last. True, the dictionary raises doubts. This is certainly not "an armed clash between armies." After all, which army is fighting us, exactly? The army of Qassams and tunnels? It's even hard to call it "a conflict between nations and states in battle operations," because the battles are not actually battles and one of the sides is not exactly a state, barely half a nation, it has to be admitted. Still, war. What difference does it make if a senior officer in a reserve unit was quoted this week in Haaretz as saying, "It was a superb call-up and training exercise"? For us it?s a war. For months we longed for it, oh how we longed for the "big operation" in Gaza. No one talked about "war" then, but look, a war was born. Mazel tov. Advertisement There is nothing chance about this war. We went to "war" because that single, highly charged word serves infinite goals, all of them as just and as justified as the war itself. Say war, and you say heroism and sacrifice. Add some grit, mobilization and of course the inevitable bereavement, and it's ready: war's verbal arsenal. "Heroism and bereavement" was the headline the militant freebie Israel Today used in one of its combat editions. In war as in war, there is also "victory." Let the IDF win this war. Win over whom? How to win? Just win. But the goals of the war change quicker than a chameleon changes color - one day it's to stop the firing of the Qassams, and when that doesn?t work, you switch goals. Now we have moved to a war against smuggling and tunnels. Maybe also a war of pressure on Egypt. And of course a war against Hamas, most of which is aimed at and strikes - just our bad luck; the helpless civilian population whose only connection to Hamas, if at all, was in the voting booth. In war it is also necessary to upgrade the enemy's strength. First we are fed information for months on end about the Hamas arms buildup and its military sophistication, including bunkers and missiles from Tehran and Damascus, and now Ahmed Jaabari is being called "the Hamas chief of staff." Lieutenant General Jaabari, chief of the General Staff of the army of the semi-hollow Qassams. And why did we bomb Islamic University in Gaza City? Because that is where the Palestinians' version of the Rafael arms development authority was based, the Israeli press reported. That?s where they develop drones that carry ammunition and bunker-busting missiles, not only lathes for machine-tooling. We built up their strength and so heightened our victory and sweetened its taste. In war as in war, silence is permitted: keep silent yourself and silence others. It?s not just permitted, it's obligatory. Here is another good reason to call this a war. War makes it possible to mobilize, call to the flag and unite the ranks of the people, which most of the time are more interested in the seacoast of Antalya than in any West Bank outpost. Only in war are we permitted to have media that sound more like the briefing room of the IDF Spokesman. In war, propaganda is all right. Using the word 'war' also validates war crimes, which might be prohibited in just a plain operation. If it's war, then let's go all the way: white phosphorus shells in the streets and artillery against population shelters; hundreds of women and children killed; strikes against rescue units and supply services. Hey, this is war, right? War also gives rise to poetry of its heroism. True, we will never again have songs like we had after the Six-Day War. Arik Lavie will no longer sing the lyrics of Yoram Taharlev: "We are past Rafiah, like you wanted, Tal, against the enemy we charged, and those who fell, fell. We passed by the fallen, we ran forward, Tal." (Major General Israel Tal commanded the division that captured Gaza in 1967.) It's true that we will never again sing "Nasser is waiting for Rabin, ay, ay, ay," or "Sharm al-Sheikh, we have come back to you again." But songs there will be, for sure. We have already had one rhymester wit in this war: "Hamas in Damascus is disconnected, the leadership in Gaza is dejected, the military wing is defecting, Hamas is screaming as expected." Cute, eh? (Lyrics as recited by the cabinet secretary, Oved Yehezkel, in a press briefing on Sunday about the briefing to the cabinet by the director of Military Intelligence.) Whoever the wag is, we already have our first war song, as boastful as "Nasser is waiting for Rabin." The swaggering lyrics go hand in hand with doublespeak. "The houses have to be distanced from the border," a learned military analyst explained incisively last week, referring to what needs to be done in Rafah along the "Philadelphi" route. "To distance the houses from the border," as though these were homes marked for conservation in the old Sarona neighborhood of Tel Aviv, on which the Kirya - the defense establishment compound - now stands. Why, you just slide them onto tracks and move them a few meters down the road. Has the learned analyst seen the Rafah homes opposite Philadelphi in recent years? Most of them have long since been reduced to rubble. People lived in them, a great many people, who have nowhere, but nowhere, to go. Now there are hundreds more destroyed homes, which we have "distanced from the border," so to speak. We "liberated" the territories, "preempted" the terrorists and "preserved order," the order of the occupation; consolidated the occupation with a "civil administration," being careful not to cause a "humanitarian disaster," jailed people in ?administrative detention," killed with "neighbor procedure," murdered with "rules of engagement" and liquidated "senior figures in Hamas"; children "died from their wounds," adults were killed with "rubber bullets," a 6-year-old child who is killed is a "youth," a 12-year-old youth who is killed is a "young man" and both are "terrorists"; we established a "crossings unit" which is a network of roadblocks, and a "coordination and liaison directorate" which hardly coordinates or liaises between anything; we killed "gunmen" and "wanted individuals" and people "required for questioning," all of them "ticking bombs." Now we have a "humanitarian corridor" and an equally "humanitarian" cease-fire. The "bank of goals" is also a friend." People "in shock" exist only in Israel, no one has gone into shock in Gaza. "Children of the south" live only in Sderot. Hamas fighters are "terrorists" and "Hamas activists," too, are not entitled to the honorific title of "noncombatants," so their fate is the same. Every postman of the Palestinian postal service, every policeman, every government accountant and maybe also every doctor working in Hamas' non-civil administration is considered an activist of the organization and therefore is to be killed before he kills us. Our air force bombs and levels "targets," sometimes also "structures," never houses. Israel demands a "security zone" in Gaza, and security is always ours, only ours. Only my colleague at Haaretz, Amira Hass, dares, with characteristic courage, to call the tens of thousands of new homeless people in Gaza, made homeless by us, refugees for the second and third time in their lives; dares to call them "displaced persons." A term that is so heavily charged and fraught with history. But these DPs have nowhere to escape the horrors of the "war.

Sir Gerald Kaufman MP complete speech - 15 January 2009 puts an historical context on developing Gazan Tragedy

House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 January 2009 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090115/debtext/90115-0013.htm 3.5 pm Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab): I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine. I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me. I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence. My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count. On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that “500 of them were militants.” That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants. The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews. Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of 15 Jan 2009 : Column 408 Deir Yassin. Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah. It is too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him. Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006. Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed. The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said: “You make peace by talking to your enemies.” However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel. It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

From The Sunday Times

January 11, 2009

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence – it’s a war crime

ISRAEL has sought to justify its military attacks on Gaza by stating that it amounts to an act of “self-defence” as recognised by Article 51, United Nations Charter. We categorically reject this contention.

The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence. Under international law self-defence is an act of last resort and is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity.

The killing of almost 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 3,000 injuries, accompanied by the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN compounds and government buildings, which Israel has a responsibility to protect under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire.

For 18 months Israel had imposed an unlawful blockade on the coastal strip that brought Gazan society to the brink of collapse. In the three years after Israel’s redeployment from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. And yet in 2005-8, according to the UN, the Israeli army killed about 1,250 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. Throughout this time the Gaza Strip remained occupied territory under international law because Israel maintained effective control over it.

Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defence, not least because its assault on Gaza was unnecessary. Israel could have agreed to renew the truce with Hamas. Instead it killed 225 Palestinians on the first day of its attack. As things stand, its invasion and bombardment of Gaza amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5m inhabitants contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law. In addition, the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes.

We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes. Israel has a right to take reasonable and proportionate means to protect its civilian population from such attacks. However, the manner and scale of its operations in Gaza amount to an act of aggression and is contrary to international law, notwithstanding the rocket attacks by Hamas.

Ian Brownlie QC, Blackstone Chambers

Mark Muller QC, Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales

Michael Mansfield QC and Joel Bennathan QC, Tooks Chambers

Sir Geoffrey Bindman, University College, London

Professor Richard Falk, Princeton University

Professor M Cherif Bassiouni, DePaul University, Chicago

Professor Christine Chinkin, LSE

Professor John B Quigley, Ohio State University

Professor Iain Scobbie and Victor Kattan, School of Oriental and African Studies

Professor Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

Professor Said Mahmoudi, Stockholm University

Professor Max du Plessis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban

Professor Bill Bowring, Birkbeck College

Professor Joshua Castellino, Middlesex University

Professor Thomas Skouteris and Professor Michael Kagan, American University of Cairo

Professor Javaid Rehman, Brunel University

Daniel Machover, Chairman, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights

Dr Phoebe Okawa, Queen Mary University

John Strawson, University of East London

Dr Nisrine Abiad, British Institute of International and Comparative Law

Dr Michael Kearney, University of York

Dr Shane Darcy, National University of Ireland, Galway

Dr Michelle Burgis, University of St Andrews

Dr Niaz Shah, University of Hull

Liz Davies, Chair, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyer

Prof Michael Lynk, The University of Western Ontario

Steve Kamlish QC and Michael Topolski QC, Tooks Chambers

White Phosphorus - mainstream press gives column inches

At last The Times newspaper has run a story about Israel's use of white phosphorus munitions on Gaza, together with reports of resultant civillian casualties. Well done for that... but a bit bloody late... This is something observers have known all along but which the powers that be have chosen to ignore. It must be a quiet newsday. As usual the official Israeli line is to deny the use of white phosphorus as a weapon, though how they will explain the need to detonate the so called "smoke" rounds in mid-air, hundreds of feet above urban dwellings remains to be seen. War crimes trial anybody? Or should we settle for a white-wash party?

Chemical Weapons on Gaza

The logical conclusion of the current action (to which the US administration appears to have given implied consent - see link below) is for, at the very least, the depopulation of the northern Gaza strip and the complete annihilation of Hamas and its supporters by any means necessary. Logically, anything less than the removal and/or the complete neutralisation of Hamas would amount to a pointless exercise. A great deal of damage has already been done to the Israeli public persona. The Israeli policy of detention and assassination of Palestinian political and military leaders to date serves to underline the cynicism with which this campaign is being waged. Particularly worrying is the deployment of chemical weapons over ‘bona fide civilian structures, dwellings and places used for civilian purposes’ [see Geneva Conventions], images of which appeared in today’s press. I write specifically about the use of White Phosphorus munitions, which produce phosphorus gas that reacts vigorously with water and oxygen, effectively burning human, animal and vegetable tissue but leaving structures including clothing intact.. Ostensibly, the Israeli military claims these munitions are being used to produce smoke screens; however this seems highly unlikely where they are being deployed at night over built-up areas. The munitions are by their very nature indiscriminate. Could we perhaps be witnessing the build-up toward another Fallujah type scenario in Gaza city itself, in which case could this ultimately lead to the complete ethnic cleansing of the Gaza strip and the West Bank? The 21st century micro war is still being waged in the name of peace and justice, mercilessly and without quarter but the strategies are no less bold, cynical or brutal than in any other era. In this case the propaganda of denial will give just enough time for Israel to complete the campaign before the public outcry and backlash becomes too loud to ignore... Saying nothing simply condones the outrages. I’ve included some links to support this comment. You’ll need a strong stomach for some of them but that shouldn't need an apology. LINKS Succinct analysis of the Arab/Palestinian – Israeli conflict to date: http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/gaza-2008-micro-wars-and-macro-wars.html Forced removal of Palestinian people from Gaza - ETHNIC CLEANSING by another name [document]: http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2009/01/next-step-in-gaza-forced-evacuations-of.html Very graphic documentary about the use of the white phosphorus chemical weapon used in Iraq and now being deployed in Gaza: http://justice4lebanon.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/use-of-napalm-like-white-phosphorus-bombs-in-lebanon/ For description and analysis of white Phosphorus munitions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus

Check this out for hard-line, fundamentalist religious opinion....

Check this out for hard-line, fundamentalist religious opinion....