Introduction
Operation Protective Edge
On July 8, 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge to suppress Hamas rocket and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip aimed at Israeli cities, towns, and kibbutzim.
The initial spark behind the escalation in hostilities was the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah on June 12 by Hamas-affiliated militants. Israel responded with a series of raids in the West Bank to find the children, which culminated in the arrest of most of Hamas's leadership there. The bodies of the three teenagers were eventually recovered on June 30, but tensions only continued to rise when three Israeli criminals kidnapped and murdered a sixteen-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Abu Khdeir. As Palestinians across the West Bank began rioting, Hamas resumed its rocket attacks on Israel in full force.
In response, on July 8 Prime Minister Netanyahu announced plans to call up forty thousand reservists and authorized the Israeli air force to hit Hamas targets across Gaza. By July 14, following days of Israeli bombardment and nearly two hundred Palestinian deaths, the Egyptian government announced a cease-fire plan backed by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, which was accepted the following day by Israel. Hamas, however, rejected the proposal, demanding the release of its members in the West Bank and a lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
On July 16, UNRWA, the UN agency charged with supervising the distribution of aid in the Palestinian Territories, issued the first of several reports that Hamas was hiding rockets in its facilities. That night, despite nominally accepting a five-hour humanitarian cease-fire, thirteen armed Hamas operatives were intercepted as they emerged from a tunnel on the Israeli side of the border just one mile from a kibbutz, carrying abduction equipment. The following day, on July 17 Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered ground troops into Gaza arguing that the destruction of tunnels was imperative to maintaining the security of Israeli citizens.
For the next three weeks, Israeli troops maintained a presence in much of the north of the Gaza Strip including several densely populated areas such as Shuja'iyya, Beit Hanoun, and Rafah while they attempted to dismantle the Hamas network of cross-border tunnels. Hamas had deliberately located the entrances in urban areas to complicate Israeli efforts to destroy them. Hamas militants repeatedly fired on Israeli soldiers from civilian buildings, including private homes, hospitals, refugee centers, and mosques. This was the cause of most of the Palestinian civilian casualties over the course of Operation Protective Edge.
Israel implemented numerous short-term humanitarian cease-fires, most notably on July 20, July 25, July 26, and July 30, all of which it respected despite violations by Hamas and other militant groups. On July 31, both Hamas and Israel agreed to a seventy-two-hour cease-fire but only ninety minutes after its implementation on August 1 Hamas gunmen emerged from a tunnel in Rafah, killing two Israeli soldiers and apparently capturing another (that soldier was ultimately declared to have been killed, but Hamas has apparently taken his remains). Israel subsequently announced that it would not negotiate another cease-fire with Hamas until it was satisfied that the tunnels had been destroyed. By August 3, Israeli troops began to pull back, having destroyed more than thirty Hamas tunnels, and on August 5 the IDF announced that there were no Israeli forces left in Gaza. A mutually agreed seventy-two-hour cease-fire took effect that same day.
However, Hamas continued to fire rockets and mortars at Israel, killing a four-year-old Israeli child over the course of the hostilities. They have also executed numerous Palestinian civilians whom they accused of collaborating with Israel. The prospect of a permanent truce remains elusive, as Hamas has repeatedly refused to demilitarize and continues to demand that Israel lift its entire blockade of the Gaza Strip.
It is clear, therefore, that it was Hamas that started the war and that it was Hamas that refused to accept ceasefire proposals that would have ended it much sooner. According to Khalil Shikaki, a respected Palestinian political scientist, Mahmoud Abbas blamed Hamas for having "started the war."[27] Abbas has also blamed Hamas for having prolonged the war by needlessly extending the fighting.[28]
It is clear, therefore, that it was Hamas that started the war and that it was Hamas that refused to accept ceasefire proposals that would have ended it much sooner. According to Khalil Shikaki, a respected Palestinian political scientist, Mahmoud Abbas blamed Hamas for having "started the war."[29] Abbas has also blamed Hamas for having prolonged the war by needlessly extending the fighting.
On July 10, 2014, I began to write a series of articles about this conflict and its legal, moral, political, and diplomatic implications. The chapters that appear in this part are based, in part, on those articles.[30]
19
Israel Defends Entire Civilized World
July 10, 2014
Israel's military action against Hamas terrorist rockets is a preview of what the entire civilized world is likely to face in the near future.
Islamic militant terrorists-whether they are called ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah-use or will be using similar tactics. They target civilians while hiding among civilians in order to induce democracies to kill civilians so that the media will show gruesome pictures of dead children and blame these deaths on the democracy, rather than the terrorists who use children and other civilians as human shields.
The democracy is then put to the tragic choice of either allowing terrorist attacks against its own civilians or taking military action that risks the lives of enemy civilians.
That is precisely the choice that Israel has had to make as hundreds of rockets are directed at its cities from densely populated civilian areas in Gaza. Israel has been very careful to try to minimize civilian casualties. They drop leaflets, make phone calls, and even send noisemaking bomblets to warn civilians to leave areas to which rockets are being fired. Mostly the civilians leave. Sometimes they don't. When they don't, the Israeli military does not fire at the rockets, thereby putting their own civilians at risk.
Yet some in the media describe the current situation in Gaza as a "cycle of violence." The reality, of course, is that there is no such cycle. It is a one-way street that Hamas has driven down precisely in order to create the illusion of a cycle with equal blame on both sides.
There is no comparison-legally, morally, diplomatically, or by any other criteria-between what Hamas is doing and how Israel is responding. Hamas is willfully and deliberately committing a double war crime by targeting Israeli civilians and using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The deliberate targeting of civilians, as Hamas admits-indeed boasts-it is doing, is a clear war crime. Hamas has specifically aimed its lethal rockets at Beersheba, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. This is a war crime.
Moreover, it is firing these rockets from hospitals, schools, and houses in densely populated areas in order to cause Israel to kill Palestinian civilians. This too is a war crime.
I have called this Hamas's "dead baby strategy." It deliberately puts Israel to the tragic choice of attacking the rockets and killing some children who are used as human shields, or refraining from attacking the rockets and thereby placing their own children at risk.
Israel has generally chosen the option of refraining from attacking legitimate military targets, but when any human shields are inadvertently killed or injured, Hamas stands ready to cynically parade the dead civilians in front of television cameras, which transmit these gruesome pictures around the world with captions blaming Israel.
Hamas has also adamantly refused to build bomb shelters for its civilian population. It has built shelters but has limited access to them to Hamas terrorists. This is precisely the opposite of what Israel does-building shelters for its civilians and placing its soldiers in harm's way.
Most recently Hamas has forced or encouraged civilians to stand on the rooftops of military targets so as to prevent Israel from attacking these entirely appropriate targets. Indeed a lawsuit is now being brought in Israel, against the Israeli military, urging it to ignore these human shields and to attack the military targets.
The argument is that unless the military targets are attacked, Israeli civilians will die, and a democracy has the obligation to prefer the lives of its own civilians over the lives of enemy civilians. Thus far the Israeli military has refrained from attacking military targets that are protected by human shields.
Nor was there any symmetry between the kidnapping and brutal murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas operatives and the equally despicable killing of an Arab teenager by a handful of Israeli individuals.
The Hamas-inspired kidnapping was part of a long-term Hamas policy. Hamas has built dozens of tunnels between Gaza and Israel for the sole purpose of kidnapping and/or killing Israeli civilians. I have been inside one such tunnel, whose exit was just yards away from an Israeli kindergarten with dozens of children. The killing of the three Israeli teenagers was a result of Hamas's policy, regardless of whether the specific decision to kill the youths was or wasn't made at the top levels of the Hamas leadership.
The killing of the Palestinian youth, to the contrary, was clearly against the wishes of the Israeli government, the Israeli people, and Israeli policy. It was the act of deranged extremists-an act that hurt Israel terribly both internally and externally. Yet many in the international media insist on comparing these two very different atrocities.
The entire civilized world should be standing behind Israel as it defends itself against war crimes, because what Israel is doing is precisely what every democracy would do if faced with similar threats to its civilian population. That so many continue to support-or remain silent about-those who commit these war crimes tells us something deeply disturbing about their values and prejudices.
The world must come to realize that the major conflict today is between Islamic extremists-such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hamas-who will stop at nothing to achieve their theological-political-military goals, and democracies that must fight these extremists while complying with the rule of law. Israel should be praised for leading the way.
20
The Current Conflict between Israel and Hamas Shatters Myths
July 10, 2014
The current warfare between Hamas and Israel shatters two myths that have been accepted as gospel by many in the international community and the media.
Myth 1: The primary cause of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the occupation of the West Bank and Israel's settlement policy.
Reality: The reality is that Hamas's rocket attacks against Israeli cities and civilian targets have little to do with Israel's occupation and settlement policy on the West Bank. Even if Israel were to make peace with the Palestinian Authority, the rocket attacks from Gaza would not stop. These Hamas attacks are incited by the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Syria, and others opposed to the very concept of the nation-state for the Jewish people. The best proof of this reality is that these attacks began as soon as Israel ended its occupation of Gaza and uprooted all the civilian settlements from that area. Israel left behind agricultural hothouses and other equipment that the residents of Gaza could have used to build a decent society.
Moreover, there was no siege of Gaza at that time. Gaza was free to become a Singapore on the Mediterranean. Instead, Hamas engaged in a coup d'état, murdering many members of the PA, seizing control of all of Gaza, and turning it into a militant theocracy. It used the material left behind by the Israelis not to feed its citizens but to build rockets with which to attack Israeli civilians. It was only after these rocket attacks that Israel began a siege of Gaza designed to prevent the importation of rockets and material used to build terrorist kidnap tunnels.
There are good reasons why Israel should change its settlement policy in the West Bank and try harder to achieve peace with the PA.
But even if that were to be accomplished, the rockets from Gaza would continue and Israel would have to take the kind of military steps any democracy would take to protect its civilians from lethal aggression.
Myth 2: Mahmoud Abbas is part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Reality: Mahmoud Abbas has become part of the problem. He has publicly supported Hamas in its war crimes against Israeli civilians and has characterized Israel's self-defense actions as "genocide" against all of the Palestinian people. I have met Abbas and found him to be a decent man who genuinely wants a peaceful solution to the conflict, but he is not a man of courage who is prepared to stand up and tell the Palestinian people the truth about the current conflict. His willingness to join together with Hamas in a governmental partnership demonstrates both his weakness and his willingness to be complicit with evil. He speaks out of two sides of his mouth, one side when he speaks in English to Western media and diplomats, and the other when he speaks in Arabic to the Palestinian street, which he knows contains many supporters of Hamas. His public support for Hamas has made it far more difficult for Israel to arrive at a negotiated solution with the PA. It has also made it more difficult for Hamas to stop the rocket barrage and agree to a cease-fire.
21
Israel Must Maintain Its Weapons Siege of Gaza
July 14, 2014
Whenever the current conflict in Gaza ends, and whatever the terms of any cease-fire, Israel will have to maintain its weapons siege against Gaza.
The current conflict plainly revealed how inadequate the previous siege was. Thousands upon thousands of rockets, including long-range ones capable of hitting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, found their way into Gaza despite the siege that Israel began after the rocket fire that accompanied Israel's decision to end its military occupation of Gaza. Some of these rockets came from Iran, others from Syria, while still others were assembled in Gaza from material brought in from the outside.[31] These rockets place Israeli civilian lives in jeopardy, even if the Iron Dome has shown success in thwarting most of them.
There can be absolutely no doubt that a military blockade designed to prevent the importation of lethal aggressive weapons is entirely lawful under international law. Even a UN commission, not known for its partiality toward Israel, agreed that the naval blockade was entirely lawful.[32] Our own State Department concluded that such a blockade was lawful when the United States quarantined Cuba in a successful effort to keep the former Soviet Union from shipping nuclear missiles to its shores.
Any future quarantine should exclude food, medicine, and other necessities of life that do not pose a direct threat to Israeli security. But there must be a total quarantine on the importation of rockets and rocket parts. This includes the shutting down of the many smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, or at the very least, some reliable inspection of what is allowed to go through those tunnels. It obviously also includes a shutting down of all of the terrorist tunnels that now exist or are being built between Gaza and Israel proper. The only purpose of these tunnels is to allow Hamas to kidnap and/or kill Israelis and to bring them or their bodies back to Gaza to hold them in exchange for Hamas prisoners.
No country is required to accept such lethal threats to its citizens. The only other possible alternative to an enhanced military siege is for there to be reliable inspectors throughout Gaza whose job it is to prevent the rearming of Hamas. It is unlikely that Hamas would agree to any such inspectors. The experience in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has armed to the teeth right in front of United Nations inspectors, demonstrates how difficult this task would be even if Hamas agreed to some monitoring.
Israel made a serious mistake in ending the military occupation of Gaza. It was right to end the settlement project, which did not serve to enhance Israel's security. There is an enormous difference-in law, in morality, and in practicality-between a military occupation and civilian settlements. Under the laws of war, a military occupation may continue until the enemy has put down its arms and the risk to the other side has been eliminated or at least significantly diminished. Those conditions were not met when Israel ended its military occupation of Gaza back in 2005. Israel should have maintained a sufficient military force in Gaza to assure that thousands of rockets could not be built or fired from hostile territory.
It is probably too late now, and too costly, for Israel to reoccupy the Gaza Strip. A far less restrictive alternative is to enhance the military siege while eliminating any humanitarian siege. This will not be easy to accomplish, but it is far better than maintaining the current status quo whereby Hamas fires rockets at Israel, is attacked, achieves a cease-fire, rearms, attacks Israel again, and is attacked in turn. An ounce of weapons siege is worth a pound of rocket fire and air attacks.
Any siege of Gaza, even if it is limited to a weapons siege, will have a negative impact on the million and a half civilians who live in that densely populated area. But if the siege is limited to weapons, the impact will be far less than the inevitable deaths and injuries caused by Hamas firing rockets into Israel and Israel retaliating. Although the blame for these civilian deaths falls squarely on the shoulders of Hamas, because it is Hamas that fires its rockets from densely populated areas, it is the Palestinian civilians who pay the heavy price. They pay this heavy price because Hamas deliberately refuses to build shelters for its civilians. They do build shelters and tunnels to protect their terrorists, those who fire the rockets and other combatants. Hamas could easily fire its rockets from the many spacious areas outside of Gaza City. It could build military bases from which to wage warfare. But instead it has chosen this dead baby strategy, whereby it encourages or compels civilians to become human shields, precisely in order to display the dead babies, women, and disabled whom they know will be killed when Israel attacks their rockets.
A weapons siege imposes a heavy toll on the civilian population, but the toll would not be nearly as heavy as that imposed by the current Hamas strategy. The great tragedy is that Israel, like any democracy, is put to three tragic choices:
It could tolerate thousands of rockets being aimed at its civilians in the hope that the Iron Dome will prevent deaths and injuries;
It can respond to these rocket attacks by proportionate and targeted military strikes, as it is now doing; or
It can prevent the rearming of Hamas by a narrowly limited weapons siege.
The last of these alternatives is the least worst choice.
22
Media Death Count Encourages Hamas to Use Human Shields
July 15, 2014
The media loves to count the dead bodies on each side of a conflict. It's much easier to count than to explain. Hamas knows this. That's why they employ what I call the dead baby strategy.
Hamas's strategy since Israel left Gaza in 2005 has been exactly the same. The media response has been exactly the same. And Hamas will continue to employ a strategy that causes many Palestinian civilians to die as long as the media keeps up its thoughtless body count.
Hamas could easily reduce the death and injury toll among its civilians by simply allowing them to go underground into tunnels and shelters that abound throughout Gaza. But Hamas has a deliberate policy of refusing to allow civilians to enter the tunnels or shelters. They reserve these places of refuge for their fighters and commanders, which explains why so few Hamas fighters have been killed. If Hamas were to reverse its policy and allow civilians into the shelters while requiring its fighters to stay above ground, the ratio of civilians to fighters killed would dramatically change. That is why in each of the wars between Hamas and Israel there have been more Palestinian than Israeli civilian deaths and injuries. It is part of Hamas's dead baby strategy, and it works because the media facilitates it.
The media also emphasizes the fact that thus far no Israelis have been killed by Hamas rocket fire.[33] Indeed some media and international organizations seem implicitly to be condemning Israel for protecting the lives of its own citizens, by repeatedly pointing out that none have died while Palestinian deaths have reached nearly two hundred. The reason there have been no Israeli deaths so far is because Israel spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to protect its civilians while Hamas spends its resources deliberately exposing its civilians to the risks of Israeli counterattacks. Israel has built shelters all throughout the country and has spent a fortune on the Iron Dome system. The results have been impressive, though many Israelis suffer from trauma, shock, and the inevitable long-term consequences of being exposed to constant rocket fire.
How many times have you heard, seen, or read the body counts: nearly two hundred Palestinians dead, no Israelis dead. This is usually accompanied by an accusation that Israel is violating the international law requirement of "proportionality." This is a misuse of the term, which has a precise meaning in international law that reflects a broader morality. Under international law, a nation has the right to attack military targets. Period! It doesn't matter whether the rockets coming from these launchers have as yet succeeded in their task of killing civilians. There can be no doubt under international law that rocket launchers, and the fighters who employ them, are legitimate military targets. Israel is therefore entitled to attack these targets, even if no Israeli civilians have been killed, so long as it can do so without causing disproportionate civilian casualties.
This rule was not addressed to an enemy that deliberately uses human shields to protect its military targets and combatants against legitimate attacks. Proportionality is not judged by the number of civilians actually killed by Hamas rockets, but rather by the risks posed to Israelis. These risks have been diminished but not eliminated by the Iron Dome system. They have also been considerably diminished by Israel's counterattacks on the missile launchers and those who employ them. Without these counterattacks, it is highly likely that more Hamas missiles would have made it through the Iron Dome system, which has been approximately 85 percent effective.[34] Israel has every right under the rules of proportionality to attack these military targets, so long as they take reasonable efforts to reduce civilian casualties. They have done so by leafleting, by calling, and by other methods of warning civilians to leave target areas. Hamas leaders, on the other hand, have urged, and sometimes compelled, their civilians to remain in harm's way as human shields.
The media, by emphasizing the comparative body counts without providing the reasons for the disparity, play into the hands of Hamas and encourage that terrorist organization to continue to pursue its dead baby strategy. So the next time those in the media promote a body count without explanation, they should point a finger at themselves for contributing to this deadly count.
23
Netanyahu, the Reluctant Warrior
July 20, 2014
Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the primary goal of the current ground incursion into Gaza is to destroy the terror tunnels that endanger Israel's security.
It requires boots on the ground to get to these tunnels and to shut them down. Nor does Israel yet have the technical capacity to determine the route of the tunnels and their exit points since they are deep underground and not subject to detection from the air.
The event that immediately provoked this ground incursion was the discovery by Israel of yet another tunnel-in addition to the one I was in during June of 2014-whose exit was near a civilian kibbutz. This discovery almost came too late to prevent a mass casualty disaster. The terrorists had already emerged from the tunnel with grenade launchers, bazookas, machine guns and other weapons capable of mass murder (). Several of the terrorists were killed while others apparently escaped back through the tunnel before the Israelis could disable it.
This attempted mass casualty attack was planned and implemented while Israel and Egypt were trying to arrange a cease-fire. Israeli intelligence estimates that there are dozens of other terror tunnels that they still cannot find although they know where some of the entrance points in Gaza are located. It is these tunnels that are the primary object of Israel's risky ground incursion.
There are other tunnels as well on the west side of Gaza, underneath its border with Egypt. These are the smuggling tunnels through which Hamas imports the rockets that it uses to terrorize Israeli civilians. It also uses these tunnels to enrich its leaders, who take a percentage of the profits earned by the commerce that goes through these tunnels on a daily basis. These smuggling tunnels too pose a direct threat to Israel's security and are a secondary object of Israel's ground incursion.
The end result of Israel's military operation should be twofold: First, to stop the security threat currently posed by Hamas terrorism-rocket fire, kidnappings, and terrorist incursions into Israel-by shutting down the tunnels and imposing a strict quarantine against the importation of rockets and against the exportation of terrorists through tunnels; and second, to restore the flow of innocent commerce into Gaza so that its citizens can live lives as normal as possible while they remain under the thumb of the violent theocracy and kleptocracy of Hamas.
The Israeli government did not want to send troops into Gaza. Its leaders well understand the risks to their own soldiers as well as to Palestinian civilians. But they also understand the risks to Israeli civilians of allowing these terrorist tunnels to continue to operate underneath its border. The decision to send in troops was a difficult one, made on the basis of a calculation of the risks of action versus the risks of inaction.
Shortly after I went into the tunnel underneath the Gaza-Israel border, I had a private dinner with Prime Minister Netanyahu. It was clear to me how reluctant Netanyahu was to send troops into Gaza. He had never before committed ground troops into an enemy war zone. As is well known, his own brother was killed defending Israel against terrorism. He knows the price of action as well as inaction. He is a reluctant warrior, but Hamas forced his hand by repeatedly turning down negotiated cease-fires and continuing to fire rockets at Israeli cities and to send terrorists into Israeli kibbutzim. No democracy would have acted differently in the face of such dangers.
24
Gazans' Real Enemy Is Hamas, Not Israel
July 20, 2014
When Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, it left behind farm equipment and other material capable of feeding the population. Donor countries promised support, financial and political, if Gaza would live up to its potential as a Singapore on the Mediterranean. But instead the leaders of Gaza enriched themselves and used the remaining resources to build rockets instead of ploughshares. They fired these rockets at Israeli civilians and devised a strategy of using their own innocent civilians as human shields against Israel's anticipated responses to the rocket fire. Only after Hamas started firing rockets at Israeli civilians did Israel impose a painful blockade against Gaza that contributed to the area's poor economic situation.
The Hamas human shield strategy-in combination with its refusal to allow its civilians to seek shelter in Gaza's many tunnels, which are reserved for Hamas terrorists and commanders-has resulted in what appears to be a disproportionate ratio of civilians to combatants among Gazan casualties. Although the international media blames this unfortunate ratio on Israel, the civilian population of Gaza knows the truth: that Hamas deliberately seeks to increase the number of civilian casualties by not providing them shelter, while seeking to decrease the number of terrorist casualties by providing them the safety of tunnels and other secure areas.
Following the publication of the Goldstone Report in 2009, which catalogued the high proportion of civilians to combatant deaths among Gazans, loud complaints were heard from many ordinary citizens of Gaza: Why do you protect Hamas fighters while exposing civilians? Hamas responded by claiming-quite ironically-that many of those counted as civilians by the Goldstone Report, especially among the police, were actually Hamas combatants.
Whatever the facts turn out to be during the present encounter, more and more Gazans are beginning to understand how ill served they have been by Hamas. And now media reports are documenting the extraordinary wealth accumulated by Hamas leaders at the expense of ordinary Gazans. As one report put it: "With multi-million-dollar land deals, luxury villas and black-market fuel from Egypt, Gaza's rulers made billions while the rest of the population struggled with 38 per cent poverty and 40 per cent unemployment."[35] The report went on to detail the newly acquired wealth of specific Hamas leaders, strongly suggesting that this violent theocracy has also become a criminal kleptocracy at the expense of the people of Gaza.
During a recent radio interview, I was asked what I would do if I were a resident of Gaza, suffering from unemployment and Israeli rocket counterattacks. My answer was simple: I would try to overthrow the Hamas regime and make a deal with Israel under which Gaza would give up its rockets in exchange for a Marshall Plan that would feed and normalize its residents. Such a plan would require international inspection of imports and the end of the tunnel economy that has enriched Hamas leaders and allowed the importation of lethal rockets. The present Hamas leadership is unlikely to accept any plan that takes away its money and weapons, but if the people of Gaza were to demand change-a real "Gaza spring"-anything is possible.
Many years ago Golda Meir engaged in hyperbolic overgeneralization when she said that peace would come "when Palestinians love their children more than they hate Israel." Most Palestinians love their children. Many do hate Israel because they have been taught to hate for generations. But more and more of them are coming to realize that the real enemy is not Israel, which left the Gaza Strip in 2005 and offered to leave most of the West Bank in 2000, 2001, and 2008. The real enemies of the Palestinians are those Hamas leaders who do love Palestinian children less than they hate Israel. That's why they are prepared to use these children as human sacrifices in their efforts to destroy the nation-state of the Jewish people.
There will be peace between Israel and the Palestinians only when the Palestinians overthrow or vote out the violent theocrats and kleptocrats of Hamas-or when Hamas can be induced by the citizens of Gaza to change its destructive policies. The alternative will be a Gaza in which civilians continue to pay the heavy price for Hamas's hatred of Israel and contempt for its own citizens.
25
Why Doesn't J Street Support Israel?
July 21, 2014
Any pretense that J Street is a pro-Israel organization has been destroyed by that organization's refusal to participate in a solidarity rally for Israel during the recent crisis in Gaza.
The Boston Jewish Federation worked hard to create a rally that included all elements of its diverse community. Its goal was to send a single and simple message: at a time when so many in the world are united against Israel's efforts at defending itself from Hamas rockets and terrorist tunnels, the Boston Jewish community stands in solidarity with the nation-state of the Jewish people. In order to assure that this message of unity was sent, no signs were permitted except for the unity message that was intended to be sent. That message was: Stand With Israel. Simple and straightforward.
Speakers were limited to those who were part of the broad Jewish consensus including rabbis, political and business leaders, and the highly regarded head of the federation, Barry Shrage, whose commitment to peace and the two-state solution is well known.
Initially J Street agreed to be a cosponsor of this unity event, but then-presumably after receiving pressure from its hard-left constituency, which is always looking to bash Israel and never to support it-J Street was forced to withdraw its sponsorship. The phony excuse it offered was that the rally offered "no voice for [J Street] concerns about the loss of human life on both sides" and no recognition of the "complexity" of the issues or the need for a "political solution."
This is total nonsense and an insult to those who spoke at the rally. The executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council spoke of the "suffering" of the people of Gaza and how "painful" it is "to see innocent people dying, including children."
Barry Shrage spoke of the "tragedy" of innocent Palestinians being killed. All the speakers acknowledged the "complexity" of the issues and want to see a political solution to the conflict. Yet J Street refused to be part of this unified show of support for Israel.
J Street has whined about being excluded from the mainstream Jewish community, but it is J Street that has excluded itself from joining in community activities such as this rally. It was J Street that decided not to participate in a unity event that was jointly sponsored by the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Relations Council.
J Street has sought and received membership in these sponsoring organizations but then made a decision to withdraw its own sponsorship from this community-wide event, precisely at a time when unity was most needed. J Street has always insisted on a double standard. On the one hand, it wants to be part of the Jewish community's Big Tent, but on the other hand, it refuses to allow dissenters into its own narrow, ideological tent. I know, because I have personally asked to speak to its members at its convention.
J Street has adamantly refused to allow its members to hear my centrist point of view-I support the two-state solution and oppose Israel's settlement policies-while welcoming extremist speakers who support boycotts of Israel and who refuse to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Its own tent flap is open only on the left side, not in the center. J Street's decision to refuse to sponsor this community-wide Stand With Israel rally during so critical a time has drawn a line in the sand. If you can't support Israel now, how can you call yourself a pro-Israel organization? How can any member of J Street now look at themselves in the mirror and say, "I belong to a pro-Israel organization"?
I call on members of J Street who are truly pro-Israel to leave that divisive organization and to join with us who truly support Israel during times of crisis while remaining critical of some of its policies. If you are pro-Israel, you do not belong in J Street, because J Street can no longer credibly claim to be pro-Israel.
If there was ever any doubt about that, J Street's actions in refusing to join the Stand With Israel rally should resolve them. So if you want to stand with Israel, stand up against J Street and stand with organizations that support Israel during times of crisis.
26
Hamas's Threat to Israel's Airport Threatens a Two-State Solution
July 22, 2014
Hamas's decision to fire rockets in the direction of Ben-Gurion Airport may well have ended any real prospect of a two-state solution. Whether the regulators and airlines that have stopped flights to and from Israel[36] are right or wrong, this stoppage cannot possibly be tolerated by a democratic country that relies so heavily on tourism and international travel. It is, of course, a war crime to target an international civilian airport, as Hamas admits it has done. Israel has every right to keep that airport open, employing all reasonable military means at its disposal. Since Hamas fires its rockets from densely populated civilian areas, there will be more Palestinian civilian deaths.
This of course is part of Hamas's grand strategy: by targeting Israeli civilians and international air travel from its own civilian areas, Hamas leaves Israel no choice but to take military actions that risk the lives of innocent Palestinians. There will be even more innocent Palestinian deaths now, as Hamas has raised the stakes considerably for Israel. Every country in the world would do everything in its power to keep open its airports, the lifelines to its economic viability. Hamas knows this-and welcomes Israeli military action that produces more dead Palestinian civilians and hence more international criticism of Israel.
Even more importantly, Hamas's actions in essentially closing down international air traffic into Israel considerably reduce the prospect of any two-state solution. Israel will now be more reluctant than ever to give up military control over the West Bank, which is even closer to Ben-Gurion Airport than is Gaza.
Were Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank-as distinguished from its civilian settlements deep in the West Bank-it would risk the possibility of a Hamas takeover. That is precisely what happened when Israel ended both its civilian settlements and its military presence in Gaza. Hamas took control, fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian targets, and have now succeeded in stopping international air traffic into and out of Israel.
Israel could not accept the risk of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank and the resulting Hamas rocket attacks at its nearby airport. It may still be possible to create a two-state solution whereby Israel withdraws its civilian settlers from most of the West Bank and agrees to land swaps for areas that now contain large settlement blocks. But Israel will have to retain military control over its security borders, which extend to the Jordan River. It will also have to maintain a sufficient military presence to assure that what happened in Gaza does not happen in the West Bank. These military realities do not have to exist forever. Israel's military presence could be reduced if the Palestinian Authority were to maintain effective control over the West Bank and prevent terrorists from using that area to send rockets and terrorists into Israel.
The new reality caused by Hamas shutting down international air travel to and from Israel would plainly justify an Israeli demand that it maintain military control over the West Bank in any two-state deal. The Israeli public would never accept a deal that did not include a continued Israeli military presence in the West Bank. They have learned the tragic lesson of Gaza, and they will not allow it to be repeated on the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, however, is unlikely to accept such a condition, though it should. This will simply make it far more difficult for an agreement to be reached.
It was precisely one of the goals of the Hamas rocket and tunnel assaults to scuttle any two-state agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The Hamas Charter categorically rejects the two-state solution, as does the military wing of Hamas. In this tragic respect, Hamas has already succeeded. By aiming its rockets in the direction of Ben-Gurion Airport, Hamas may well have scuttled any realistic prospects for a two-state solution. It cannot be allowed to succeed.
The international community, which has a significant stake in protecting international air traffic from terrorist rocket attacks, must support Israel's efforts to stop these attacks-permanently. If Hamas is allowed to shut down Israel's major airport, every terrorist group in the world will begin to target airports throughout the world. The shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine will be but one of many such tragedies if Hamas is allowed to succeed. An attack on the safety of Israel's airport is an attack on the safety of all international aviation. Israel is the canary in the mine. What Hamas has done to Israeli aviation is a warning to the world. In its efforts to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel is fighting for the entire civilized world against those who would shoot down civilian airliners. The world should support Israel in this noble fight, and in the process help preserve any realistic chance for a two-state solution.
27
Accusing Hamas of Using Human Shields Is Not Racist
July 23, 2014
While Israel uses shelters and the Iron Dome to protect its civilians, Hamas uses its civilians to protect its rockets and its terrorists. Recently, supporters of Hamas have argued that to say that Hamas uses civilians as human shields is a manifestation of racism and an attempt to dehumanize Palestinians.
But it is Hamas's own leaders who have long boasted of this tragic reality. Listen to Fathi Hammad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council:
"For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry… This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahedeen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine."
And listen to recent commentary by Magdi Khalil, an Egyptian-American, on Al-Jazeera:
Is it moral to launch missiles from hospitals, from schools, from bedrooms, from mosques, and from the roof of a church, where thousands of Gazans had found refuge? The church's priest was interviewed on CBN and said: "From the roof of this church, Hamas members are launching missiles at Israel. We welcomed them in our church, but they began launching missiles at Israel from the roof." Is this the moral high ground that my colleague is talking about?
Is it moral for Hamas leaders to hide in Al-Shifa Hospital, thus risking the lives of regular people? Is this the moral high ground? They are fleeing like rats, hiding behind patients in Gaza hospitals. Is it moral for Hamas leaders to hide behind these patients?
They garner sympathy over the corpses of children. This is part of the strategy of the Islamists. They consider sympathy garnered over the corpses of children to be a victory…
The whole world knows that Hamas does not care about the spirit of humanity. They do not care about the children, about their people, about the losses, about the destruction of their country, or about the number of casualties.
We are talking about a group like ISIS. What kind of honor is it if it is at the expense of children's corpses? You don't know the meaning of life. All you know is the meaning of death. You constitute an enterprise of destruction in the region. You are wreaking destruction in Palestine. You don't know the meaning of life.
Go and die, brother, but don't make others die instead. If you want to die-go and die. Let Khaled Mash'al die. Let Haniya and Al-Zahhar die. Just don't let the children die.[37]
Ban-Ki Moon-who is not known for a pro-Israel bias-recently confirmed what every objective observer knows to be true: that Hamas uses hospitals and schools as shields from which to launch rocket attacks against Israeli civilians-a double war crime. Here are his words:
"We condemn the use of civilian sites-schools, hospitals, and other civilian facilities-for military purposes."
He was referring, of course, to Hamas, since Israel does not use such civilian facilities to fire rockets. That is why more Palestinians than Israelis have died in recent weeks.
During a two-day period while dozens of Palestinians and several Israelis were killed, the media failed to report that in neighboring Syria, 700 Arabs and Muslims were killed in two days of fighting. This constitutes only a tiny fraction of the 160,000 people killed in Syria during the ongoing civil war. According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 53,978 civilians have been killed, including 8,607 children and 5,586 women. Many if not most of these deaths were deliberate-part of calculated efforts on both sides of the conflict to maximize civilian casualties. Yet this body count has received little notice compared to the far smaller body count in Israel and Gaza. Why is this?
Is it because when Arabs and Muslims deliberately kill other Arabs and Muslims, that deserves less attention than when Israelis kill Arabs and Muslims, even in self-defense and in an effort to prevent the murder of their own civilians?
If so, this is racism pure and simple and the application of a noxious double standard. The lives of all human beings have worth, and the death of Arabs and Muslims at the hands of other Arabs and Muslims deserve as much media coverage as the deaths of Arabs and Muslims that are caused by Israel's efforts to protect its own civilians.
The media's exclusive focus on the death toll in Gaza-without explaining that it is largely Hamas's fault and part of its media strategy-incites hatred and anti-Semitism around the world. It has incited violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in many cities. Much of this violence comes from radicals on the hard left and from radical Islamists. But a recent incident in Italy shows that bigoted hate can come from the mouths of intellectuals as well as the fists of rabble-rousers.
Gianni Vattimo, who has been called Italy's most famous philosopher, recently announced that he would personally "like to shoot those bastard Zionists," calling them "a bit worse than the Nazis." He said he was planning to launch a fund-raising campaign to buy better rockets for Hamas so that this Jew-hating group can kill more Zionists, by which he means Jewish Israelis.
He urged European volunteers to join Hamas and fight alongside of them against Israel, as volunteers fought against Franco during the Spanish Civil War. If Vattimo is indeed Italy's most famous philosopher, I cry for the current state of philosophy in a nation that has contributed so much to that field over the millennia.
Vattimo reminds me of the intellectual thugs-some of them eminent philosophers-who provided academic cover and justification for the fascist abuses of Hitler and Mussolini. It is interesting, and perhaps relevant, that Vattimo is a follower of Martin Heidegger, a philosopher who joined the Nazi Party and provided cover for its anti-Semitic policies.
Hamas, after all, is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Heidegger actively supported during World War II. It is also interesting that Vattimo, who vociferously supports gay rights, would have such hatred for the one country in the Middle East that accords equal rights to gays and be so supportive of Hamas which punishes gays by torture and execution.
I challenge Gianni Vattimo to go to Gaza, where he would surely be welcomed with open arms because of his support for Hamas. Once in Gaza, I challenge him to conduct a rally in support of gay rights, to hold up a sign supporting gay rights, to urge Gazans to sign a petition demanding equality for gays.
In Italy, Gianni Vattimo is openly gay and proud of it. He has described himself as a "gay, Communist Catholic." I challenge him to travel to Gaza with a partner and to declare that he intends to practice his right to be treated equally and fairly with his partner.
We all know what would happen to Vattimo if he engaged in any such freedom of speech or action. He would be tortured and killed by Hamas.
If Vattimo is afraid to travel to Gaza now, let him go to Iran. He was an admirer of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and continues to support the Iranian policy of "making the state of Israel disappear from the map." Were he to visit the country he admires so much, and were he to publicly proclaim his sexual orientation, he would be hanged from one of the building cranes that the mullahs use to make sure that Ahmadinejad's notorious statement-that "there are no gays in Iran"-becomes true. He would also be attacked if he were to advocate Communism, Catholicism, or any "ism" other than anti-Zionism.
Were he to travel to Israel, on the other hand, he would be free to openly support Hamas and to advocate and practice his sexual preference. He would also be free to support Communism, practice Catholicism, or advocate anti-Zionism.
In one respect, and perhaps in one respect only, Hamas-controlled Gaza, mullah-controlled Iran, and democratic Israel are exactly the same: in all three countries, everyone is free to condemn Israel and to support Hamas.
Why then would a so-called intellectual-and a self-proclaimed leftist-himself support, and urge others to help, a murderous terrorist group whose roots are in Nazi fascism and whose policies deny equality to women, gays, Christians, atheists, and dissenters. Is it because he loves Hamas, or because he hates the nation-state of the Jewish people so much that he is prepared to close his eyes to the abuses of the terrorist group he supports?
The answer seems clear. Gianni Vattimo does not deserve the noble title of philosopher. He should be called by what he is: a hatemonger who applies a different standard in judging Hamas, Iran, and Israel.
Recently, Vattimo apologized to an Israeli newspaper (Haaretz) for saying he wished more Israelis were dying, claiming he was "provoked" by the hosts of the show on which he made his comments, but he repeated his comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany and maintained his view that Europe should provide more lethal weapons to Hamas, which would, of course, result in more Israeli civilians dying.
I urge Gianni Vattimo to accept my challenge and visit Gaza and/or Iran, rather than continuing to preach hatred of Israel and support for Hamas from the safety of Italy.
28
UN Probe of Israel Will Only Encourage Hamas War Crimes
July 24, 2014
"There you go again," as Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter. Once again the United Nations Human Rights Council has voted-with the United States dissenting-to conduct a so-called investigation of Israel's military responses to Hamas's double war crimes. Once again Israel will have to decide whether to feed the kangaroos that make up this court by cooperating with yet another phony investigation whose outcome is predetermined.
Yet again Israel is presented with a Hobson's choice: if it refuses to cooperate, it will be blamed for denying the investigatory commission relevant information; if it cooperates, it will lend credibility to a conclusion that has already been reached.
This Hamas-inspired investigation is an important part of Hamas's double war crime strategy: By firing its rockets from civilian areas and buildings-even Ban Ki-moon acknowledges that it does-Hamas seeks to have Israel kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. This Hamas-designed body count, and the accompanying photographs, inevitably leads to the kind of one-sided investigation in which the UNHRC specializes.
The resulting one-sided condemnation, which Hamas can always count on, then helps it win support in Europe, South America, and other parts of the world, as well as in the media and universities.
By joining in this Hamas strategy, indeed becoming a central part of it, the UNHRC encourages Hamas to repeat its rocket fire against Israeli civilians, its tunneling into Israel to kill and kidnap Israelis, and its placement of its rockets and tunnel entrances in civilian areas. The countries voting for this investigation are fully aware of what they are encouraging. They have the blood of future innocent Palestinians and Israelis on their hands.
Last time around the commission found a willing dupe in Richard Goldstone, who was prepared to put his personal ambition to elevate his status within the international community above any commitment to truth. Because Goldstone is Jewish and has spent time in Israel, his name attached to the commission's report gave it an air of credibility. His dual conclusions-that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians and that Hamas did not use human shields-were so thoroughly discredited that they destroyed Goldstone's career and even his prospects of elevation within the international community. Eventually even Goldstone had to acknowledge his mistake and indicate that there was no evidentiary support for his widely cited conclusions.
This time around it will not be easy for the commission to find an ambitious dupe like Goldstone, because potential commission members now understand that their conclusions, methodologies, and biases will be scrutinized with care and exposed for all to read.
The council will probably have to satisfy itself with a group of overtly anti-Israel zealots who don't care about their reputations and who are willing to go through the motions of an investigation and come to the conclusion that the commission has anointed them to reach.
This process has already begun with the appointment of William Schabas, a known Israel-hater, as the chairman of the inquiry commission. Even before reviewing any evidence, Mr. Schabas declared that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be tried as a war criminal. Indeed Mr. Schabas has espoused this position since 2011, the same year he cosponsored conferences at a Tehran-based "human rights" center that accuses Israel of the crime of apartheid, and which at the time was led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has also called for the International Criminal Court to prosecute president Shimon Peres, comparing him to Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan who has been indicted for directing the campaign of mass killings in Darfur.[38]
It would be useful to have a real investigation of both sides to the conflict conducted by objective experts. I would welcome such an investigation, as I suspect Israel would.
Objective investigators would seek hard evidence, such as real-time videos, communications within the military, forensic evidence, and other information that would allow open-minded investigators to find the facts wherever the facts take them. The problem is Hamas would never consent to such an investigation and would refuse to allow objective investigators into Gaza.
Indeed, the best proof of the pro-Hamas bias of any investigation is the fact that Hamas, which rules Gaza with an iron fist, would welcome these phony investigators with open arms, the way it welcomed Goldstone and his biased colleagues.
Despite the unwillingness of Hamas to allow objective investigators into Gaza, the world should demand a full and unbiased investigation by experienced, professional investigators, unconnected to the United Nations, whose sole responsibility should be to get at the truth, no matter how complex and nuanced it may turn out to be.
Such an independent, real investigation could be conducted at the same time that the phony UNHRC investigation is being conducted. Then the world would have a sound basis on which to compare the methodologies, factual findings, and conclusions of the two investigations. It would also have a sound basis on which to compare Hamas's actions with Israel's-and Israel's to what other democratic countries have done and would do when faced with comparable situations.
Any such investigation would also apply the rules of proportionality to the facts it found concerning Israel's military actions.
Even Navi Pillay, who runs the UNHRC, has acknowledged that proportionality permits a nation that has been attacked to counterattack enemy military targets so long as the military value of the target is important enough to justify the anticipated civilian casualties. This rule was not designed for situations in which the enemy deliberately uses civilians to shield its military operations.
In any event, the targets Israel has attacked-rockets aimed at civilians and terrorist tunnels built to kill and kidnap Israelis-are extremely important military targets that should not be immunized against counterattacks by deliberate use of human shields. Were the UNHRC to rule that the presence of human shields precludes a democracy from counterattacking important military targets-even after warning the civilians, as Israel does-this would encourage the widespread use of human shields by all terrorist groups around the world and put democracies at great peril. But the UNHRC is likely to ignore that point, as it did in the Goldstone Report, and simply respond as Ms. Pillay has already responded, with the following cliché: "The actions of one party do not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law."
This cliché-which is wrong, as a matter of both law and common sense, when the offending party deliberately uses human shields-is an invitation to Hamas and other terrorist groups to continue its double war crimes.
Israel should have nothing to fear from an objective investigation. It should also have nothing to fear from the UNHRC investigation-if its biases are exposed for all to see.
29
The "Occupation of Gaza" Canard
July 30, 2014
Enemies of Israel who are seeking to justify Hamas rocket and tunnel attacks against Israeli civilians are mendaciously claiming that Israel has continued to occupy the Gaza Strip, even after its soldiers and settlers left the Strip in 2005. They claim that because Gaza was unlawfully still occupied, despite the absence of Israeli soldiers, resistance to the occupation-including the murder of Israeli civilians-is justified as a matter of international law. This claim is wrong for several independent reasons.
First, it is never justified to target and murder enemy civilians. Even if Israel did have a military occupation, as it does in the West Bank, it would still be a double war crime to fire rockets at Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
It would also be a war crime to murder or kidnap Israeli civilians. The only legitimate resistance to occupation is to target the soldiers who enforce the occupation.
Second, a military occupation of Gaza-as distinguished from civilian settlements-would be entirely justified, both as a matter of law and common sense, because Hamas, which controls Gaza, is at war with Israel and has repeatedly refused to make peace with the nation-state of the Jewish people. A military occupation is proper as long as a state of war exists.
Third, and even more important for any future peace, is the indisputable fact that Israel, in fact, ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005.
The years between 2005 and the present must be divided into three time periods: 2005 to 2007; 2007 to the beginning of July 2014; and the beginning of July 2014 to the present.
During the first period (2005 to 2007), Israel removed all of its troops from Gaza.
It also removed all of its settlers.
The settlers left behind greenhouses, farm equipment and other valuable civilian assets worth millions of dollars.[39]
The Palestinians of Gaza were free to come and go as they pleased, to conduct free elections, and to import construction and other economic material in order to build a viable Palestinian entity to help their citizens. European donors sent them money and other resources, hoping that they would use them to create jobs, schools, hospitals and other necessary infrastructure.
To be sure, Israel maintained control over its border with Gaza, with checkpoints and security fences, but it opened its border to Palestinian residents of Gaza who came to work in Israel. During that period, numerous Gazans came into Israel to work and came back to Gaza with good salaries to feed their families.
During the same period many Gazans went to Egypt and other countries.
Israel continued to control Gaza's air space and to patrol its sea lanes in order to prevent the importation of rockets and other weapons capable of being used against Israeli civilians, but it had no presence on the ground in Gaza.
On January 25, 2006, the Palestinian Authority held elections. Gazans were free to vote and did in fact vote in large numbers for Hamas, which achieved a significant political victory. But that wasn't enough for Hamas, which conducted a bloody coup d'état in which numerous Palestinian civilians who were associated with the Palestinian Authority were killed.
Hamas also resumed rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and increased its building of terrorist tunnels into Israel, which it used to kill and kidnap Israelis. It was only after these acts of war by Hamas that Israel instituted its blockade in 2007-nearly two years after it ended its occupation.
So the truth is that the blockade has not been the cause of Hamas's rocket and tunnel attacks. The blockade has been the result of these attacks. It is an entirely legitimate defensive military response to war crimes committed by Hamas.
Yet there are some-including Mark Lamont Hill and Peter Beinart, with whom I debated on CNN-who insist that Israel continued to "occupy" Gaza unlawfully between 2005 and 2007, before it instituted its blockade.
It's this kind of rigid, unnuanced argument that makes a compromise peace so difficult.
Finally, we come to the recent war. Israel did not send soldiers into Gaza until after Hamas sent its terrorists into Israel through its tunnels to kill Israelis. It became clear to Israel that it could not tolerate these tunnels, whose exits are located near kindergartens, kibbutzim, and other civilian areas. Nor could these tunnels be attacked from the air, since their entrances are beneath hospitals, schools, mosques, and civilian homes-and their exit locations are unknown to the Israelis.
The only way to shut down these terror tunnels is by Israeli boots on the ground, and with grave risks to the lives of Israeli soldiers. But Israel had little choice but to attack these tunnel entrances before they could be used as planned: to murder hundreds, if not thousands of Israeli civilians and to kidnap Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Despite these indisputable realities, Israel's defamers insist that: 1) Gaza has been continuously occupied since its soldiers and settlers left in 2005; 2) Israel's continued occupation is unlawful; and 3) this unlawful occupation justifies Hamas's war crimes, including rocket and tunnel attacks on Israel's civilians from behind Palestinian human shields.
If any of these claims were to be credited by the international community, a two-state solution would become impossible, because there is no way Israel would, or should, end its military occupation of the West Bank without maintaining some degree of military control over its security borders. No Israeli government-right, left or center-would make a deal with the Palestinian Authority that left its citizens and its airport vulnerable to rocket or tunnel attacks of the kind they have experienced from Gaza since leaving in 2005. Nor would, or should, the United States ever ask Israel to accept any deal that did not assure its security, especially in light of the instability in Syria, Iraq, and much of the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.
Those who refuse to credit Israel for unilaterally removing all of its settlers and all of its soldiers from Gaza because it retained some security control over its borders are discouraging Israel from taking further risks for peace.
The perfect is enemy of the good, and to demand a total end to any Israeli military control over its vulnerable and dangerous borders is to assure that a good, if imperfect, peace deal will never take place. That is the goal of Hamas. It is also the goal of some Israeli extremists.
Those who falsely argue that Israel continued to occupy Gaza after its soldiers left and before it imposed its necessary blockade are playing into the hands of the enemies of a compromise peace.
30
Qatar and Other American "Allies" Are Among the Villains in Gaza
August 1, 2014
American allies, especially Qatar and Turkey, have been providing material support to Hamas, which the United States has listed as a foreign terrorist organization. This support includes financial, diplomatic, media, and even the provision of weapons that deliberately target Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian civilians who are used as human shields. It also includes harboring war criminals, especially leaders of Hamas, who direct their followers from the safety of Doha. Without the support of Qatar and Turkey, Hamas would never have started this bloody war that has caused so much human suffering.
Qatar, which is more of a family-owned gas station than a real country, regards itself as untouchable because of its oil wealth. Its residents-they are not really citizens because there are no genuine elections or freedom of speech or religion-are the richest in the world. It can buy anything it wants, including the 2022 World Cup, several American university campuses, some of the world's greatest art, Al Jazeera television, and other luxuries. It can also buy terrorist groups such as Hamas. Indeed, after Iran, which is the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism, Qatar ranks near the top of this dishonor role of death.
Any individual who provides material support to a designated terrorist group such as Hamas commits a crime under the United States penal law and the laws of several European countries. If Hamas were ever to be convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, as it may well be, any individual who was an accessory to such crimes would be guilty as well. It is entirely fair, therefore, to describe Qatar as a criminal regime, guilty of accessory to mass murder.
In some ways Turkey is even worse. Its erratic prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has incited anti-Semitism, provoked conflict with Israel, provided material support to Hamas, and undercut efforts to achieve a realistic end to the Gaza War. He has demanded that his Jewish subjects do his bidding, telling "our Jewish citizens' leaders" that they must "adopt a firm stance and release a statement against the Israeli government." He has suggested that if they fail to do so they will not be regarded as "good Turks," thus raising the old canard of "dual loyalty."
Erdogan also recently said of Israel that "they always curse Hitler, but they now even exceed him in barbarism." And he responded to Americans who complain about the "comparisons with Hitler," by saying, "You're American, what's Hitler got to do with you?" forgetting that Hitler's forces killed thousands of American soldiers and civilians. He also conveniently forgets that Turkey, which remained immorally "neutral" in the war against Nazism, provided Hitler with the playbook for his genocide, by its own genocide against Armenians. As Hitler asked rhetorically when planning his genocide: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" So Hitler matters to America, as it should to Turkey, which still mendaciously denies that it committed genocide against the Armenians. Recently, the New York Times reported that Qatar was trying to buy the Brookings Institution and other Washington Think Tanks.[40]
Yet it was Qatar and Turkey to which Secretary of State John Kerry turned in his efforts to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire. This not only infuriated Israel, which considers these two countries as accessories to Hamas's war crimes, but also Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, which also see Qatar and Turkey as allies of Hamas and enemies of moderate Arab states.
The time has come for the United States and the international community to reassess the status of Qatar and Turkey. These two countries have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. A nation that hosts Hamas leaders and finances their terrorism should not also host the World Cup. Nor should American universities send their faculty and students to a nation complicit in terrorism that has taken the lives of many Americans as well as Israelis.
Turkey's role in NATO must also be reevaluated. Membership in this organization entails certain responsibilities, and Turkey has failed in these responsibilities. They have become untrustworthy partners in the quest for peace.
It is a truism that we, as a nation, must deal with devils, because men and women are not angels. I do not fault Secretary of State Kerry for trying to use Qatar and Turkey to pressure Hamas into accepting a deal, although the deal they ultimately came up with was a bad one, especially compared to the Egyptian proposal. My point is that Qatar's wealth and Turkey's size should not preclude us from telling it as it is: Qatar and Turkey are among the worst villains in the Gaza tragedy. Nor should we reward such villains, and such complicity in war crimes, by international gifts, such as the World Cup. Both Qatar and Turkey should be treated as pariahs unless and until they stop becoming state sponsors, supporters, and facilitators of terrorism.
31
Hamas Uses Cease-Fire to Kidnap
August 1, 2014
When Hamas accepted the US-UN proposed cease-fire, many eyebrows were raised.
Why suddenly would Hamas accept this cease-fire, when it had turned down so many previous proposals?
Some speculated that perhaps Qatar, the financial godfather of the terrorist organization, had pressured Hamas into accepting it. Others speculated that Hamas was getting pressure from its own citizens to end the bloodshed.
It now seems that all these speculations failed to take into account the true nature of Hamas. We often forget that Hamas is a criminal organization-a group of terrorists working together with other terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad for the sole purpose of destroying the nation-state of the Jewish people and killing as many of its citizens as possible.
Criminals and terrorists don't play by the rules of civilized society.
It now seems likely that Hamas and its co-conspirators agreed to the deal for the sole purpose of lulling Israel into accepting it so that they could catch Israel off guard and exploit the humanitarian cease-fire to achieve one of the most important goals of the war they started, namely to kidnap an Israeli soldier or civilian and hold that person hostage until their extortionate demands were met.
The reason some people actually believed that Hamas would play by the rules and maintain the cease-fire to which it agreed, is because the media, the UN, and some in the international community falsely equate Israel, a democratic country that abides by the rule of law, with Hamas, a terrorist organization comprised of criminals who commit double war crimes every time they fire rockets at Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian civilians and whenever they hide terrorist tunnels in civilian areas.
The conflict is seen not as one between good and evil, or between criminals and those who seek to enforce the law, but rather as between two parties with equal claims. This false symmetry only encourages Hamas to exploit this status by appearing to play by the rules while never intending to do so.
Israel has learned its harsh lesson.
It will never again agree to a cease-fire with Hamas that in any way depends on mutual trust. One hopes that the world too has learned a lesson. It should never try to pressure Israel into taking any action or inaction that relies on Hamas's good faith.
Since it was the United States and United Nations that asked Israel to accept the cease-fire that led to the apparent kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, it is now their responsibility to demand the return of the soldier with no conditions.[41]
The United States has accepted this responsibility.
Secretary of State John Kerry issued the following statement: "The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today's attack, which led to the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the apparent abduction of another… Hamas, which has security control over the Gaza Strip, must immediately and unconditionally release the missing Israeli soldier, and I call on those with influence over Hamas to reinforce this message."
The United Nations, on the other hand, has accepted no responsibility.
Its Security Council is unlikely to demand the unconditional and immediate return of the soldier or even condemn Hamas alone for violating the UN-brokered cease-fire. That is because Russia will almost certainly veto any unilateral condemnation of Hamas even if a majority could be mustered in support.
The best proof, if any were needed, that Hamas is a criminal organization, is that it regards the kidnapped soldier not as a prisoner of war but as a hostage. Responsible armed forces capture soldiers; criminal organizations kidnap them. Responsible armed forces allow the Red Cross to visit captured soldiers; criminal organizations keep them incommunicado and allow no Red Cross visitors.
Real armed forces release soldiers when the combat is over; criminal groups hold their kidnap victims until their ransom demands are met.
Finally, real armed forces protect the lives of captured enemy soldiers; criminal gangs often murder their kidnap victims, as Hamas members murdered the three Israeli children they kidnapped earlier this year.
The time has come, indeed it has long past, for the international community to regard Hamas as the terrorist gang that it is. It should be treated the way the world has treated pirates over the centuries. International warrants should be issued for the arrest of Hamas's gang leaders.
They should be dealt with in the way police and armed forces deal with the mafia and other criminal gangs. Hamas deserves no place at the table of negotiation or in any Palestinian government, any more than La Cosa Nostra would deserve to be part of an Italian government or the Israeli-Russian mafia should be included in any Israeli government.
Hamas has done more harm to the Palestinian people than has Israel. If the Palestinian people won't rescue themselves from this gang of cutthroats, the international community should do so.
That would be true humanitarianism.
32
What Should Israel Do? What Would the United States Do?
August 5, 2014
Imagine you are the prime minister of Israel or the president of the United States, or the chief of staff of either army. Your soldiers are fighting a just war to try to prevent rockets from hitting your civilians or tunnels from being used to murder and kidnap your people. Your enemy, knowing that you wish to prevent casualties among their civilians, purposely shoots at your soldiers from civilian areas. Your soldiers, caught in the midst of an ongoing firefight, basically have two choices: one, fire back and try to stop the enemy from killing you while trying to avoid or minimize civilian casualties; or two, lay down your arms because you don't want to endanger civilians, and accept the risk that your soldiers may be killed.
The United Nations and much of the rest of the world-sitting in the safety of peaceful areas-have condemned Israel for allowing its soldiers to try to stop the attacks on them while also trying to minimize civilian casualties. "You can do more," the White House has insisted.
But what more could Israel do that would not endanger its own civilians and soldiers? Would President Obama like to be the one who has to call the parents of an American soldier and explain to them that their son was killed because he, the commander in chief, had ordered the soldier not to fire back at enemy mortars that were being fired at him from behind human shields?
Israel is doing precisely what every other Western democracy would do if confronted with the situation Israel now faces. Colonel Richard Kemp-a British expert on this kind of warfare-has said that Israel is doing it more carefully and with more concern for civilian life than any other country. The Israeli military devotes considerable resources to trying to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, while Hamas devotes its resources to trying to maximize both Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties.
It is worth remembering what the United States and Great Britain did during the Second World War. After German rockets were fired at London, Winston Churchill ordered the carpet bombing of Dresden, deliberately intending to kill as many civilians-men, women, and children-as possible in order to weaken the morale of his enemy. The United States firebombed Tokyo, killing one hundred thousand people, and then dropped two nuclear bombs, killing many more. The United States has also killed many civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo, as have Great Britain and other members of NATO. In none of these wars did Western armies take the precautions and give the warnings that Israel has undertaken.
It is unseemly and hypocritical for the Western world to castigate Israel for doing exactly what it would do and has done when faced with comparable or even less serious threats.
In Israel, these moral issues are debated endlessly, among philosophers, in the media, within the military, by politicians, and by the general public. There are no easy answers, except to those sitting the safety of Washington DC, Turtle Bay, London, and Paris. For Israelis, the questions are real, involving life-and-death decisions. How should the democratic nation balance the lives of its own civilians and soldiers against risks to the lives of enemy civilians? Those who condemn Israel in simplistic terms should try to address some of these more nuanced questions. A reasonable moralist might answer these questions differently than Israel and other democracies have, but Israel's answers are well within the rules of engagement employed by the United States, NATO, and even the United Nations.
President Obama has recognized the difficulties faced by Israel in protecting its citizens from rockets and terror tunnels that are deliberately placed in hospitals, United Nations facilities, mosques, and civilian homes. It is part of Hamas's strategy to place these lethal weapons in densely populated areas, precisely in order to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties.
Israeli soldiers and civilians should not have to pay the price for this cruel, unlawful, and barbaric tactic.
33
The Empty Spaces in Gaza
August 6, 2014
How many times have you heard on television or read in the media that the Gaza Strip is "the most densely populated area in the world"? Repeating this statement, however, does not make it true. There are dense parts of Gaza, especially Gaza City, Beit Hanoun, and Khan Younis, but there are far less dense areas in Gaza between these cities. Just look at this population density map.[42] Or look at Google Earth.
The fact that these sparsely populated areas exist in the Gaza Strip raise several important moral questions: First, why don't the media show the relatively open areas of the Gaza Strip? Why do they only show the densely populated cities? There are several possible reasons. There is no fighting going on in the sparsely populated areas, so showing them would be boring. But that's precisely the point-to show areas from which Hamas could be firing rockets and building tunnels but has chosen not to. Or perhaps the reason the media doesn't show these areas is that Hamas won't let them. That too would be a story worth reporting.
Second, why doesn't Hamas use sparsely populated areas from which to launch its rockets and build its tunnels? Were it to do so, Palestinian civilian casualties would decrease dramatically, but the casualty rate among Hamas terrorists would increase dramatically.
That is precisely why Hamas selects the most densely populated areas from which to fire and dig. The difference between Israel and Hamas is that Israel uses its soldiers to protect its civilians, whereas Hamas uses its civilians to protect its terrorists. That is why most Israeli casualties have been soldiers and most of Hamas's casualties have been civilians. The other reason is that Israel builds shelters for its civilians, whereas Hamas builds shelters only for its terrorists, intending that most of the casualties be among its civilian shields.
The law is clear: using civilians as human shields-which the Hamas battle manual mandates-is an absolute war crime. There are no exceptions or matters of degree, especially when there are alternatives. On the other hand, shooting at legitimate military targets, such as rockets and terror tunnels, is permitted, unless the number of anticipated civilian casualties is disproportionate to the military importance of the target. This is a matter of degree and judgment, often difficult to calculate in the fog of war. The law is also clear that when a criminal takes a hostage and uses that hostage as a shield from behind whom to fire at civilians or police, and if the police fire back and kill the hostage, it is the criminal and not the policeman who is guilty of murder. So too with Hamas: when it uses human shields and the Israeli army fires back and kills some of the shields, it is Hamas who is responsible for their deaths.
The third moral question is why does the United Nations try to shelter Palestinian civilians right in the middle of the areas from which Hamas is firing? Hamas has decided not to use the less densely populated areas for rocket firing and tunnel digging. For that reason, the United Nations should use these sparsely populated areas as places of refuge. Since the Gaza Strip is relatively small, it would not be difficult to move civilians to these safer areas. They should declare these areas battle free and build temporary shelters-tents if necessary-as places of asylum for the residents of the crowded cities. It should prevent any Hamas fighters, any rockets, and any tunnel builders from entering into these sanctuaries. In that way, Hamas would be denied the use of human shields and Israel would have no reason to fire its rockets anywhere near these United Nations sanctuaries. The net result would be a considerable saving of lives.
But instead the UN is playing right into the hands of Hamas by sheltering civilians right next to Hamas fighters, Hamas weapons, and Hamas tunnels. Then the United Nations and the international community accuses Israel of doing precisely what Hamas intended Israel to do: namely fire at its terrorists and kill United Nations–protected civilians in the process. It's a cynical game being played by Hamas, but it wouldn't succeed without the complicity of UN agencies.
The only way to assure that Hamas's strategy of using human shields to maximize civilian casualties is not repeated over and over again is for the international community, and especially the United Nations, not to encourage and facilitate it, as it currently does. International law must be enforced against Hamas for its double war crime: using civilian human shields to fire at civilian Israeli targets. If this tactic were to be brought to a halt, then Israel would have no need to respond in self-defense. Applying the laws of war to Israel alone will do no good, because any country faced with rockets and tunnels targeting its civilians will fight back. When the fighters and tunnel builders hide behind human shields, there will inevitably be civilian casualties-unintended by Israel, intended by Hamas-regardless of how careful the defenders are. Israel has tried its hardest to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas has tried its hardest to maximize civilian casualties. Now the United Nations and the international community must try their hardest to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
34
Hamas Exaggerates Civilian Deaths
August 8, 2014
It's a mystery why so many in the media accept as gospel Hamas-supplied figures on the number of civilians killed in the recent war.
Hamas claims that of the more than 1800 Palestinians killed, close to 90 percent were civilians. Israel, on the other hand, says that close to half of them were combatants.
The objective facts support a number much closer to Israel's than to Hamas's.
Even human rights groups antagonistic to Israel acknowledge, according to a New York Times report,[43] that Hamas probably counts among the "civilians killed by Israel" the following groups: Palestinians killed by Hamas as collaborators; Palestinians killed through domestic violence; Palestinians killed by errant Hamas rockets or mortars; and Palestinians who died naturally during the conflict.
I wonder if Hamas also included the reported 162 children who died while performing child slave labor in building their terror tunnels. Hamas also defines combatants to include only armed fighters who were killed while fighting Israelis. They exclude Hamas supporters who build tunnels, who allow their homes to be used to store and fire rockets, Hamas policemen, members of the Hamas political wing, and others who work hand in hand with the armed terrorists.
Several years ago I came up with a concept which I call the "continuum of civilianality"-an inelegant phrase that is intended to convey the reality that who is a civilian and who is a combatant is often a matter of degree.
Clearly every child below the age in which he or she is capable of assisting Hamas is a civilian. Clearly every Hamas fighter who fires rockets, bears arms, or operates in the tunnels is a combatant. Between these extremes lies a wide range of people, some of whom are closer to the civilian end, many of whom are closer to the combatant end.
The law of war has not established a clear line between combatants and civilians, especially in the context of urban warfare where people carry guns at night and bake bread during the day, or fire rockets during the day and go back home to sleep with their families at night. (Interestingly, the Israeli Supreme Court has tried to devise a functional definition of combatants in the murky context of urban guerilla warfare.)
Data published by the New York Times[44] strongly suggests that a very large number-perhaps a majority-of those killed are closer to the combatant end of the continuum than to the civilian end. First of all, the vast majority of those killed have been male rather than female. In an Islamic society, males are far more likely to be combatants than females. Second, most of those killed who are within the age range of fifteen to forty are likely to be combatants. The vast majority of these are male as well. The number of people over sixty who have been killed is infinitesimal. The number of children below the age of fifteen is also relatively small, although their pictures have been shown more frequently than others.
In other words, the genders and ages of those killed are not representative of the general population of Gaza. It is far more representative of the genders and ages of combatants. These data strongly suggest that a very large percentage of Palestinians killed are on the combatant side of the continuum.
They also prove, as if any proof were necessary to unbiased eyes, that Israel did not target civilians randomly. If it had, the dead would be representative of the Gaza population in general, rather than of the subgroups most closely identified with combatants.
The media should immediately stop using Hamas-approved statistics, which in the past have proved to be extremely unreliable. Instead, they should try to document, independently, the nature of each person killed and describe their age, gender, occupation, affiliation with Hamas, and other objective factors relevant to their status as a combatant, noncombatant, or someone in the middle.
It is lazy and dangerous for the media to rely on Hamas-approved propaganda figures. In fact, when the infamous Goldstone Report falsely stated that the vast majority of people killed in Operation Cast Lead were civilians and not Hamas fighters, many in Gaza complained to Hamas. They accused Hamas of cowardice for allowing so many civilians to be killed while protecting their own fighters. As a result of these complaints, Hamas was forced to tell the truth, namely that many more of those killed were actually Hamas fighters or armed policemen.
It is likely that Hamas will make a similar correction with regard to this conflict. But that correction will not be covered by the media, as the prior correction was not.
The headline "Most of those killed by Israel were children, women, and the elderly" will continue to be the conventional wisdom, despite its factual falsity.
Unless it is corrected, Hamas will continue with its dead baby strategy and more people on both sides will die.
Author's Note
On September 2, 2014, an Israeli military intelligence spokesperson issued the following figures on Palestinian deaths:
Hamas operatives 341
Members of Islamic Jihad 182
Other Combatants 93
Total combatants to date 616
Civilians to date 706
Unknown, not yet categorized as combatants or civilians 805
The spokesperson also said 857 Hamas rockets landed inside Gaza, killing and wounding an undetermined number of people. The official said some of the Hamas rockets "were fired intentionally at the local Palestinian population." This was based on what was seen "in the system." Additional evidence was also presented of the deliberate use of schools as locations from which to fire rockets:
The intelligence official presented more evidence to bolster Israel's assertions that Hamas waged its campaign largely by hiding behind its own civilians. An aerial photograph appeared to show a rocket firing site in the yard of a school in Shejaiya. In before and after pictures, a fabric canopy believed to be hiding the rockets appeared intact, then ripped. Another previously unpublished photograph showed a schoolyard in Beit Lahiya that was empty by day. By night, it was dotted with what looked like several rockets laid out on the ground and boxes that the official said contained more rockets.[45]
This evidence supplemented other videos and photographs showing rockets being fired from near United Nations facilities, schools, hospitals, and other civilian areas, as well as tunnel entrances in prayer rooms of mosques.
Expert testimony presented before a Knesset Committee confirms the accuracy of the Israeli assessment.[46] On September 4, 2014, the Jerusalem Post reported that:
Israel's ratio of civilian to military casualties in Operation Protective Edge was only one-fourth of the average in warfare around the world, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. (res.) Richard Kemp told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Wednesday.
Kemp pointed out that, during the operation, there was approximately one civilian casualty for every terrorist killed by the IDF, whereas the average in the world is four civilians for every combatant, and that, when taking into consideration Hamas's use of human shields, this shows how careful the IDF is.
"No army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage. The US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel," he told the committee.[47]
35
Supporting Hamas Is Anti-Semitic
August 14, 2014
Criticizing specific Israeli policies is certainly not anti-Semitic. Indeed many Israelis are critical of some of their nation's policies. But support for Hamas is anti-Semitic, because Hamas's policies and actions are based, at their core, on Jew hatred.
Yet many prominent individuals, some out of ignorance, many more with full knowledge of what they are doing, are overtly supporting Hamas. Some have even praised it. Others, like Italy's most famous philosopher, Gianni Vattimo, are trying to raise money and provide material support to this anti-Semitic terrorist organization. Still others refuse to condemn it, while condemning Israel in the strongest terms.
Here is some of what the Hamas Charter, which remains its governing principles, says about Jews:
The enemies have been scheming for a long time. [Their] wealth [permitted them to] take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting, and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe… They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions… They also used the money to establish clandestine organizations which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests.
Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B'nai B'rith, and the like. All of them are destructive spying organizations… [T]hey stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate… They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II… They inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary. There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it…
Most of these references to "the enemies" precede the establishment of Israel. The charter plainly means "the Jews," and it invokes the usual tropes of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. Indeed, it expressly calls for the murder of Jews, citing Islamic sources for its genocidal goal:
Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!
This should not be surprising news. Hamas is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an outgrowth of the German Nazi Party. The brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, a close ally of Adolph Hitler. It worked hand in hand with Hitler during World War II, establishing the Muslim Waffen-SS Handschar division, which committed war crimes against Jewish communities. It then helped to rescue Nazi war criminals following the defeat of Nazism and the disclosure of the Holocaust.
Nor is the charter and the origin of Hamas merely past history. Current Hamas leaders frequently invoke the "blood libel," accusing "the Jews" of killing Christian children and using their blood for the baking of matzo. They regard Jewish places of worship and Jewish schools, anywhere in the world, as appropriate targets for their terrorist attacks.
Some of those who support Hamas, such as Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson, claim that they support its political goals, but not its anti-Semitic policies. (They must recognize "its legitimacy as a political actor.") Others, such as the Turkish Foreign Minister and the leaders of Qatar, support its military goals. (They support the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas "because it embraces the Palestinian cause and struggles for its people.")
An American literature professor, Judith Butler, has gone so far as to call Hamas a social movement that is "progressive," "on the left," and "part of a global left." But what other progressive and left groups murder gays, oppress women and prevent non-Muslims from practicing their religions? As a Jewish woman, Butler would not fare well in a Hamas environment. Nevertheless, she supports this murderous anti-Semitic group because of its "progressive" social policies.
These specious rationales hold no water, since Hamas's anti-Jewish policies are central to its political and military actions. Some supporters of Hitler made the same argument, claiming that the Nazi Party and its leaders espoused good economic, educational, and political policies. No reasonable person today accepts that excuse, and no reasonable person should accept the excuses offered by supporters of Hamas who claim to be able to slice the bologna so thin.
The same is true for those who argue that Hamas is preferable to ISIS or other jihadist groups that might replace it. A similar argument was made by fascists who claimed that their parties were preferable to the Communists. The reality is that Hamas is an anti-Semitic organization, based on a Jew-hating philosophy, with the goal of destroying the nation-state of the Jewish people and killing its Jewish inhabitants. It is evil personified. There is no excuse or justification for supporting Hamas, and anyone who does is supporting anti-Semitism.
Some Hamas supporters-such as those who chant "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas"-proudly acknowledge this reality. Others, such as Cornell West, who according to the American Spectator "headlined a high-profile pro-Hamas demonstration,"[48] deny it. But all are complicit, even if they are themselves Jewish or have Jewish friends.
Supporting an organization that at its core is anti-Jewish and whose charter calls for the killing of all Jews is anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent. And those politicians, academics, entertainers, and others who support Hamas-and there are many-must be called out and condemned, as Roger Waters of rock band Pink Floyd has been.
So must those, like Navi Pillay, the head of the United Nations Human Rights Council, who see a moral equivalence between this anti-Semitic terrorist group and the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people. She demanded that Israel share its Iron Dome system with Hamas, without condemning Hamas for using Palestinian civilians as its own Iron Dome.
Among the worst offenders is Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has a long history of anti-Semitism. He, like Carter, has urged recognition of Hamas, whose leaders he compares to Nelson Mandela. Among Tutu's alleged Mandelas with whom he has collaborated is Ahmad Abu Halabiya, who has said the following:
"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them… and those Americans who are like them, and those who stand by them."[49]
I'm quite certain the real Nelson Mandela never made any comparable statement. Yet Bishop Tutu, who refused to sit on the same stage as Tony Blair, has worked hand in hand with murderous Hamas leaders such as Halabiya.
It may be necessary to negotiate-directly or through intermediaries-with Hamas, just as one negotiates with kidnappers, hostage takers, or extortionists. But to recognize their legitimacy as Jimmy Carter and Bishop Tutu would do is to recognize the legitimacy of anti-Semitism.
Carter, Tutu, and other Hamas cheerleaders may be willing to do that, but no reasonable person who hates bigotry should legitimate Hamas's anti-Semitism or its express goal of destroying Israel and killing its Jewish inhabitants.
Nor should any reasonable person accept the anti-Semitism inherent in what has come to be called "Holocaust inversion"-namely "calling the Israelis Nazis and likening Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto."[50] Turkey's president has indulged in this form of bigotry, as have several Columbia University faculty members, such as Professor Hamid Dabashi. Here is what Dabashi said:
After Gaza, not a single living Israeli can utter the word "Auschwitz" without it sounding like "Gaza." Auschwitz as a historical fact is now archival. Auschwitz as a metaphor is now Palestinian. From now on, every time any Israeli, every time any Jew, anywhere in the world, utters the word "Auschwitz," or the word "Holocaust," the world will hear "Gaza." (emphasis added.)
This perverse inversion was invented by Soviet propagandists when Stalin turned against Israel and Jewish "cosmopolitans." It has now become a staple of radical Islam and the hard left. It has also become another variation on Holocaust denial and minimization. As Howard Jacobson, the winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, aptly put it:
Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial… The modern sophisticated denier accepts the event in all its terrible enormity, only to accuse the Jews of trying to profit from it, either in the form of moral blackmail or downright territorial theft. According to this thinking, the Jews have betrayed the Holocaust and become unworthy of it, the true heirs to their suffering being the Palestinians.
Yet another species of anti-Semitism-this one dating from time immemorial-is to punish or threaten one group of Jews for the alleged sins of another group of Jews. This phenomenon occurred recently in South Africa, where a leader of the Congress of South African Trades Unions called for "an eye for an eye against Zionist aggression." He went on to insist that "if a woman or child is killed in Gaza," then South African Jews, especially members of the Jewish Board of Deputies, must suffer revenge, based on the principle of eye for eye, life for life.
These then are the newest forms of anti-Semitic bigotry: support for organizations, such as Hamas, that overtly call for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel; comparing Israel's efforts to protect its citizens against rocket attacks and tunnel-terrorism to the Nazi's efforts, largely successful, to exterminate every Jew in the world; and demanding revenge against Jews for the military actions of Israel. All are equally shameful and worthy of rebuke.
36
Did Israel Have the Right to Destroy Hamas Terror Tunnels?
August 19, 2014
The key question-both legally and morally-in evaluating Israel's recent military actions is whether the Israeli government was justified in ordering ground troops into Gaza to destroy the Hamas tunnels. This question is important because most of the deaths-among Palestinian civilians, Hamas terrorists, and Israeli soldiers-came about after Israeli ground troops attacked the tunnels.
These tunnels went deep underground from Gaza to Israel and were designed to allow Hamas death squads to cross into Israel and to kill and kidnap Israeli citizens. No reasonable person can dispute that these terrorist tunnels were legitimate military targets.
Nor could there be any dispute about their importance as military targets, since Hamas was planning to use them to murder and kidnap hundreds if not thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers. And Israel had no way to discover from the air the exit points from these tunnels on the Israel side of the border, since they were hidden from view and known only to Hamas. The only way to disable them was through boots on the ground.
If Israel had the right to try to destroy the tunnels, then the resulting deaths of Palestinians must be deemed proportional to the military value of Israel's actions, since it is unlikely that the tunnels could have been destroyed without considerable loss of life, because their entrances had been deliberately placed by Hamas in densely populated areas.
The law is clear that military targets may be attacked, even if civilian casualties are anticipated, so long as the importance of the military target is proportional to the anticipated civilian casualties and that reasonable efforts are made, consistent with military needs, to minimize civilian casualties.
This sensible rule of proportionality was devised in the context of ordinary military encounters, in which the enemy is not using their own civilians as human shields. If the enemy is deliberately using civilians as human shields, the rules of proportionality should allow for more anticipated civilian casualties, especially if the target is of great military significance, as these terror tunnels were.
The reason that civilian casualties, as well as military casualties among both Hamas terrorists and Israeli soldiers, could be anticipated, is because the entrance to these terror tunnels were deliberately placed by Hamas in densely populated civilian areas, including mosques, schools, and private homes. These tunnels could not be destroyed from the air without causing a far greater number of civilian casualties than those resulting from a ground attack.
Moreover, the only way to ensure their destruction was for ground troops to go from tunnel to tunnel and to blow them up one by one. This inevitably risked civilian casualties. Had Hamas built the entrance to the tunnels in the many open areas of the Gaza Strip, away from the most densely populated urban centers, the number of civilian casualties would have been considerably reduced.
Hamas thus made a calculated decision to put the Israeli government to a difficult choice: either allow the tunnels to remain, thus risking the lives of thousands of Israeli civilians; or send ground troops into densely populated areas to destroy the tunnels, thus risking the lives of Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers. Every democracy in the world would choose the latter option if faced with this tragic and cruel choice. That is why the laws of war authorized Israel to do what it had to do to destroy the tunnels.
To be sure, the law of proportionality also required Israel to take reasonable steps, consistent with its military needs, to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, even when attacking legitimate military targets. The key word here is "reasonable," and Israel has gone well beyond what other countries have done in analogous situations. They issued warnings by leaflet, phone, and other means-warnings that Hamas countermanded in its efforts to keep civilians in harm's way and continue to have them serve as human shields to protect their terror tunnels.
Israel did not issue warnings when it needed to act quickly to save its own soldiers from ambushes and other serious risks. Israel thus tried to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, while Hamas tried to increase both Palestinian and Israeli civilian casualties.
The Israeli government is conducting several investigations as to whether any of its soldiers violated its carefully designed rules of engagement that were drafted by lawyers familiar with international law. If they did not, then there is no valid legal or moral case against Israel. If they did and are prosecuted by Israeli authorities-either military or civilian-then the rules of the International Criminal Court would preclude it from bringing charges against any Israelis.
The right of Israel to target these terrorist tunnels is thus central to any analysis of the legal consequences of civilian deaths in Gaza. Yet a recent report by a group of self-described legal experts that accused Israel of war crimes did not even mention the tunnels.
This report, deceptively entitled "Joint Declaration by International Law Experts on Israel's Gaza Offensive,"[51] also deliberately ignored the facts that Hamas combatants do not wear uniforms, repeatedly fired rockets and mortars from densely populated civilian areas, and stored weapons and ammunition in and around mosques, schools, and designated refugee centers-all in violation of the laws of war.
Legally, the report misrepresents a crucial dimension of International Law by claiming that Israel violated the principle of distinction by targeting civilian buildings, without mentioning that a civilian structure becomes a legitimate military target when it is used for military purposes.
More serious is the accusation that Israel committed the war crime of collective punishment by deliberately attacking the civilian population. Again, this is a blatant mischaracterization, both of Israel's actions which were preventive rather than punitive in nature, and a willful misappropriation of a term defined in the context of mass executions during World War II.
Hamas knows that in the modern media environment it profits from the deaths of Palestinian civilians, so much so that it repeatedly refused cease-fire offers proposed both by Israel and international mediators. The vast majority of Palestinian deaths came after Hamas refused to accept these cease-fires.
The title of the report is doubly deceptive because very few of its signatories are recognized experts in international law. Those who are-such as Richard Falk, John Dugard, and Peter Weiss-have notorious reputations as anti-Zionist zealots. The very fact that they labeled Israeli defensive actions as offensive demonstrates their bias.
No self-respecting lawyer would ever file a brief making the kind of unsubstantiated factual and legal claims made by this report. Were a lawyer to file a brief that did not mention the most salient facts that undercut its conclusion-here the tunnels and use of human shields-that lawyer would be disciplined, perhaps even disbarred. This report is a disgrace to the legal profession and to the academic institutions-such as Boston University, Georgetown, and UCLA-whose names are highlighted for identification purposes. Its biased authors should be called to account for this unprofessional and unethical document, and no credibility should be accorded it by fair-minded people concerned for the truth.
Nor should people of good will pay any attention to Bishop Desmond Tutu's most recent screed, accusing Israel of conducting a "disproportionally brutal" military attack and "indiscriminate killing" in Gaza. Tutu also deliberately fails to mention the terrorist terror tunnels, as if by ignoring them, they would stop posing a lethal threat to thousands of Israeli citizens.
Those who condemn Israel's recent military actions have an obligation to answer the following questions: Did Israel have the right to try to prevent those terror tunnels from being used to murder and kidnap its citizens? If so, how could Israel have accomplished that with substantially fewer casualties?
37
ISIS is to America as Hamas is to Israel
August 21, 2014
President Barack Obama has rightfully condemned the ISIS beheading of American James Foley in the strongest terms. This is what he said:
There has to be a common effort to extract this cancer so it does not spread. There has to be a clear rejection of these kind of nihilistic ideologies. One thing we can all agree on is a group like (ISIS) has no place in the 21st century. Friends and allies around the world, we share a common security, a set of values opposite of what we saw yesterday. We will continue to confront this hateful terrorism and replace it with a sense of hope and stability.[52]
At the same time that President Obama has called for an all-out war against the "cancer" of ISIS, he has regarded Hamas as having an easily curable disease, urging Israel to accept that terrorist group, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, as part of a Palestinian unity government. I cannot imagine him urging Iraq, or any other Arab country, to accept ISIS as part of a unity government.
Former President Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu have gone even further, urging the international community to recognize the legitimacy of Hamas as a political party and to grant it diplomatic recognition. It is hard to imagine them demanding that the same legitimate status be accorded ISIS.
Why then the double standard regarding ISIS and Hamas? Is it because ISIS is less brutal and violent than Hamas? It's hard to make that case. Hamas has probably killed at least as many civilians-through its suicide bombs, its murder of Palestinian Authority members, its rocket attacks and its terror tunnels-than ISIS has done. If not for Israel's Iron Dome and the Israeli Defense Forces, Hamas would have killed even more innocent civilians. Indeed its charter calls for the killing of all Jews anywhere in the world, regardless of where they live or which "rock" they are hiding behind. If Hamas had its way, it would kill at least as many people as ISIS would.
Is it the manner by which ISIS kills? Beheading is of course a visibly grotesque means of killing, but dead is dead and murder is murder. And it matters little to the victim's family whether the death was caused by beheading, by hanging, or by a bullet in the back of a head. Indeed most of ISIS's victims have been shot rather than beheaded, while Hamas terrorists have slaughtered innocent babies in their beds, teenagers on the way home from school, women shopping, Jews praying, and students eating pizza.
Is it because ISIS murdered an American? Hamas has murdered numerous Americans and citizens of other countries. They too are indiscriminate in who they kill.
Is it because ISIS has specifically threatened to bring its terrorism to American shores, while Hamas focuses its terrorism in Israel? The Hamas Charter does not limit its murderous intentions to one country. Like ISIS it calls for a worldwide caliphate, brought about by violent jihad.
Everything we rightly fear and despise from ISIS we should fear and despise from Hamas. Just as we would never grant legitimacy to ISIS, we should not grant legitimacy to Hamas-at the very least until it rescinds its charter and renounces violence. Unfortunately that is about as likely as America rescinding its constitution. Violence, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism are the sine qua non of Hamas's mission.
Just as ISIS must be defeated militarily and destroyed as a terrorist army, so too must Hamas be responded to militarily and its rockets and tunnels destroyed.
It is widely, and in my view mistakenly, argued by many academics and diplomats that there can never be a military solution to terrorism in general or to the demands of Hamas in particular. This conventional wisdom ignores the lessons of history. Chamberlain thought there could be a diplomatic solution to Hitler's demands. Churchill disagreed. History proved Churchill correct. Nazi Fascists and Japanese militarists had to be defeated militarily before a diplomatic resolution could be achieved.
So too with ISIS and Hamas. They must first be defeated militarily, and only then might they consider accepting reasonable diplomatic and political compromises. Another similarity between ISIS and Hamas is that if these terrorist groups were to lay down their arms, there might be peace, whereas if their enemies were to lay down their arms, there would be genocide.
A wonderful cartoon illustrates this: at one end of the table is Hamas demanding "Death to all Jews." At the other end is Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu. In the middle sits the mediator, who turns to Netanyahu and asks: "Could you at least meet him halfway?"
No democratic nation can accept its own destruction. We cannot compromise-come halfway-with terrorists who demand the deaths of all who stand in the way of their demand for a Sunni caliphate, whether these terrorists call themselves ISIS or Hamas. Both are, in the words of President Obama, "cancers" that must be extracted before they spread. Both are equally malignant. Both must be defeated on the battlefield, in the court of public opinion, and in the courts of law. There can be no compromise with bigotry, terrorism, or the demand for a caliphate. Before Hamas or ISIS can be considered legitimate political partners, they must give up their violent quest for a worldwide Islamic caliphate.
Author's Note
On 5 September, 2004, President Barak Obama announced that a coalition of American allies would seek to "dismantle," "degrade," and "destroy" ISIS:
You initially push them back, you systematically degrade their capabilities, you narrow their scope of action, you slowly shrink the space, the territory that they control, you take out their leadership, and, over time, they are not able to conduct the same kinds of terrorist attacks that they once could.[53]
This sounds quite similar to the military approach taken by Israel against Hamas, which poses a far greater threat to neighboring Israel than ISIS poses to faraway America. Indeed on 8 September 2014, Reuters reported that the United States has been seeking intelligence support from Israel to assist in its campaign against ISIS.[54] Yet Israel is accused by many of war crimes for taking the same actions as the United States and its allies.
38
No One Should Be Surprised at ISIS's Brutality because the World Rewards Terrorism
September 4, 2014
The international community seems to have been caught off guard by the brutality of ISIS. The beheading of two Americans, the murder of many Christians and Muslims, and the widespread support for these brutal killers has taken the world by surprise. But we should have anticipated this, because for the last half century, the international community has rewarded precisely the kind of behavior by ISIS we now condemn. In brief, terrorism has proved to be a successful tactic. It works. That's why ISIS engages in it. That's why al-Qaeda engages in it. That's why Boko Haram engages in it. That's why the Taliban engages in it. And that's why Hamas engages in it.
Compare the visibility and success of groups that employ terrorism as the main tactic for responding to their grievances, with comparably aggrieved groups that reject terrorism. Hamas is more popular than ever among Palestinians following their kidnapping and murder of three Israeli schoolchildren, their brutal slaughter of the Fogel family, and their deployment of rockets and tunnels against civilians from civilian areas. The same is true of Hezbollah.
Now comes ISIS which is quickly becoming the terrorist group of choice for disaffected radicals, because their brutality is now in the headlines.
Contrast these successes with the failure of the Tibetan people to achieve much attention or progress in their quest to end an occupation even longer than the one Israel is accused of maintaining. The world demands statehood for the Palestinians, while allowing the Kurds to remain stateless despite treaty obligations and other promises. Why? Is it because the Tibetans and Kurds have rarely engaged in terrorism, whereas the Palestinians have specialized in it since the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1960s-and even before that?
Success begets emulation, and the success of terrorist organizations is spreading quickly. No one should be surprised.
ISIS has already achieved success as a result of their brutal terrorist acts. Millions of dollars have been paid to them as ransom for hostages. They have used this money to recruit more members. Now other Muslim terrorist groups want to join forces with them, because they have shown that within the world of brutal terrorism, they stand out for their unmitigated and televised brutality.
Consider the following hypothetical situation. A new group with a serious grievance hires an amoral consulting firm to advise them on the most effective tactic for achieving their goals. Such a consulting group might well recommend that they emulate Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, rather than the Tibetans or Kurds. This advice would of course be immoral but it would be truthful as a matter of simple cost-benefit analysis.
In the end, the only way to defeat terrorism is to reverse the cost-benefit calculus. This would require an international agreement whereby every country in the world would pledge to refuse to give in to terrorists, to pay ransom to terrorists, to legitimate terrorist organizations or to treat them as morally and politically equivalent to the democracies they are fighting. It would also require that no country release captured terrorists from custody and that they place them on trial or extradite them to a country that will.
We are doing exactly the opposite today. World leaders, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, demand that we treat Hamas, which is indistinguishable in its overall brutality from ISIS, as a legitimate political organization. The United Nations General Assembly grants statehood to a group that began as a terrorist organization and continues to honor terrorists who murdered children. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee honors Yasser Arafat, the godfather of terrorism, who persisted in this tactic until the day he died. European countries pay ransom to terrorists. And many European nations-Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and others-have freed terrorists, including mass murderers, who have returned to lives of terror. Even Israel has engaged in prisoner exchanges with terrorist groups.
It is one thing to negotiate-directly or indirectly-with terrorists who hold innocent people as hostages. Such negotiation may be a necessary evil. Democratic nations are sometimes forced to negotiate with the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, and other criminal gangs. But we should never honor or legitimate them, as we have done with Palestinian terrorists. Nor should the world condemn and place on trial democracies that fight against terrorist organizations that use their own civilians as human shields. The current misguided approach is a prescription for emulation and repetition of terrorism as the tactic of choice.
So let's not be surprised when a group like ISIS learns the tragic lesson of history and emulates success and visibility rather than failure and invisibility. ISIS is doing exactly what the amoral consulting firm would advise it to do. So we shouldn't be surprised. Instead we should reverse course and develop responses to terrorism that never allow this tactic to succeed. Terrorists must never be allowed to win, as they are, unfortunately, doing today.
39
Ten Reasons Why BDS Is Immoral and Hinders Peace
February 12, 2014
The BDS movement, which will only increase following the 2014 war in Gaza, is highly immoral, threatens the peace process, and discourages the Palestinians from agreeing to any reasonable peace offer. Here are ten compelling reasons why the BDS movement is immoral and incompatible with current efforts to arrive at a compromise peace.
1. The BDS movement immorally imposes the entire blame for the continuing Israeli occupation and settlement policy on the Israelis.
It refuses to acknowledge the historical reality that on at least three occasions, Israel offered to end the occupation and on all three occasions, the Palestinian leadership, supported by its people, refused to accept these offers. In 1967, I played a small role in drafting UN Security Council Resolution 242 that set out the formula for ending the occupation in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to exist in peace. Israel accepted that resolution, while the Palestinians, along with all the Arab nations, gathered in Khartoum and issued their three famous noes: no peace, no negotiation, no recognition. There were no efforts to boycott, sanction, or divest from these Arabs naysayers. In 2000 and 2001, Israel's liberal prime minister Ehud Barak, along with American president Bill Clinton, offered the Palestinians statehood and the end of the occupation. Yasser Arafat rejected this offer-a rejection that many Arab leaders considered a crime against the Palestinian people. In 2007, Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians an even better deal, an offer to which they failed to respond. There were no BDS threats against those who rejected Israel's peace offers. Hopefully, there will be ongoing peace negotiations in which both parties make offers. Under the circumstances, it is immoral to impose blame only on Israel and to direct a BDS movement only against the nation-state of the Jewish people, which has thrice offered to end the occupation in exchange for peace.
2. The current BDS movement, especially in Europe and on some American university campuses, emboldens the Palestinians to reject compromise solutions to the conflict.
Some within the Palestinian leadership have told me that the longer they hold out against making peace, the more powerful will be the BDS movement against Israel. Why not wait until BDS strengthens their bargaining position so that they won't have to compromise by giving up the right of return, by agreeing to a demilitarized state, and by making other concessions that are necessary to peace but difficult for some Palestinians to accept? The BDS movement is making a peaceful resolution harder.
3. The BDS movement is immoral because its leaders will never be satisfied with the kind of two-state solution that is acceptable to Israel.
Many of its leaders do not believe in the concept of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. (The major leader of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, has repeatedly expressed his opposition to Israel's right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people even within the 1967 borders.) At bottom, therefore, the leadership of the BDS movement is opposed not only to Israel's occupation and settlement policy but to its very existence.
4. The BDS movement is immoral because it violates the core principle of human rights: namely, "the worst first."
Israel is among the freest and most democratic nations in the world. It is certainly the freest and most democratic nation in the Middle East. Its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the world. They serve in the Knesset, in the judiciary, in the foreign service, in the academy, and in business. They are free to criticize Israel and to support its enemies. Israeli universities are hotbeds of anti-Israel rhetoric, advocacy, and even teaching. Israel has a superb record on women's rights, gay rights, environmental rights, and other rights that barely exist in most parts of the world. Moreover, Israel's record of avoiding civilian casualties, while fighting enemies who hide their soldiers among civilians, is unparalleled in the world today. The situation on the West Bank is obviously different because of the occupation, but even the Arabs of Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Tulkarm have more human and political rights than the vast majority of Arabs in the world today. Moreover, anyone-Jew, Muslim, or Christian-dissatisfied with Israeli actions can express that dissatisfaction in the courts, and in the media, both at home and abroad. That freedom does not exist in any Arab country, or in many non-Arab countries. Yet Israel is the only country in the world today being threatened with BDS. When a sanction is directed only against a state with one of the best records of human rights, and that nation happens to be the state of the Jewish people, the suspicion of bigotry must be considered.
5. The BDS movement is immoral because it would hurt the wrong people.
It would hurt Palestinian workers who will lose their jobs if economic sanctions are directed against firms that employ them. It would hurt artists and academics, many of whom are the strongest voices for peace and an end to the occupation. It would hurt those suffering from illnesses all around the world who would be helped by Israeli medicine and the collaboration between Israeli scientists and other scientists. It would hurt the high-tech industry around the world because Israel contributes disproportionally to the development of such life-enhancing technology.
6. The BDS movement is immoral because it would encourage Iran-the world's leading facilitator of international terrorism-to unleash its surrogates, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, against Israel, in the expectation that if Israel were to respond to rocket attacks, the pressure for BDS against Israel would increase, as it did when Israel responded to thousands of rockets from Gaza in 2008 and 2009.
7. The BDS movement is immoral because it focuses the world's attention away from far greater injustices, including genocide.
By focusing disproportionately on Israel, the human rights community pays disproportionately less attention to the other occupations, such as those by China, Russia, and Turkey, and to other humanitarian disasters such as that occurring in Syria.
8. The BDS movement is immoral because it promotes false views regarding the nation-state of the Jewish people, exaggerates its flaws and thereby promotes a new variation on the world's oldest prejudice, namely anti-Semitism.
It is not surprising therefore that the BDS movement is featured on neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial, and other overtly anti-Semitic websites and is promoted by some of the world's most notorious haters, such as David Duke.
9. The BDS movement is immoral because it reflects and encourages a double standard of judgment and response regarding human rights violations.
By demanding more of Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, it expects less of other states, people, cultures, and religions, thereby reifying a form of colonial racism and reverse bigotry that hurts the victims of human rights violations inflicted by others.
10. The BDS movement will never achieve its goals.
Neither the Israeli government nor the Israeli people will ever capitulate to the extortionate means implicit in BDS. They will not and should not make important decisions regarding national security and the safety of their citizens on the basis of immoral threats. Moreover, were Israel to compromise its security in the face of such threats, the result would be more wars, more death, and more suffering.
All decent people who seek peace in the Middle East should join together in opposing the immoral BDS movement. Use your moral voices to demand that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority accept a compromise peace that assures the security of Israel and the fidelity of a peaceful and democratic Palestinian state. The way forward is not by immoral extortionate threats that do more harm than good, but rather by negotiations, compromise, and goodwill.
40
Debate between Alan Dershowitz and John Dugard
August 14, 2014
On August 14, 2014, as the war was winding down, I debated Professor John Dugard by Skype, in front of a live audience at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa.[55] Professor Dugard, the former dean of that law school, had served as chairman and rapporteur of the United Nations Commissions investigating human rights in Palestine and had written reports accusing Israel of war crimes. He had also served as a judge on the United Nations' International Court of Justice. He is widely regarded as the world's most distinguished accuser against Israel.
Professor Dershowitz: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to present my perspective. I was asked to begin by adding a historical context of the events in Gaza.
In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed the division of the British land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish agency accepted. The Arab states rejected. In 1947, the UN created its partition. Again, the Jewish agency accepted and a year later declared the State of Israel. The Arabs rejected and all surrounding Arab armies attacked Israel, killing 1 percent of its population, including many Holocaust survivors.
Following the 1967 war, which was caused by Egypt and Syria threatening a genocidal war against Israel, the Israelis offered to return the captured territory in exchange for recognition and peace. All the Arab nations went to Khartoum and issued their three famous noes: "No peace. No recognition. No negotiation."
Then in 2000 to 2001, Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton offered the Palestinians a state on about 95 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, ending the military occupation and the civilian settlements. Yasser Arafat rejected that and began the Intifada in which four thousand people were killed.
In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered an even more generous proposal to the Palestinians, which was never responded to.
Now to Gaza. In 2005 Prime Minister Sharon ended the civilian settlements in Gaza, removed all the settlers, and all the soldiers.
At that time, there was no blockade and it was certainly possible for Gaza to develop itself freely and effectively. Israel maintained some security controls to prevent the import of weapons, but between 2005 and 2007, there was no blockade.
The response was massive numbers of rockets which played Russian roulette with the lives of Israeli children and other civilians. The blockade was-and this is very important-the result of the rockets. The rockets are not the result of the blockade.
In 2006, the tunnels were first used to kidnap an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and kill two other Israeli soldiers and wound four others. That was Israel's first indication that this tunnel warfare was about to commence.
Hamas, at about that time, instead of developing itself independently, developed a brilliant public relations strategy that would involve a double war crime. Their strategy was to fire rockets and build tunnels from the densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip.
If any of you have been to the Gaza Strip as I have, you know that there are many empty areas in Gaza between the major cities, but Hamas elected to put their tunnels and fire their rockets in the most densely populated areas, using civilians as human shields.
Hamas's goal is to induce Israel to fire back in self-defense. The end result is civilian casualties, but I maintain, and I'd like to hear Professor Dugard's response to this, that the civilian casualties under these circumstances are primarily the responsibility of Hamas.
An example from criminal law: If a bank robber robs a bank and takes the teller as a hostage and begins to fire from behind the hostage, and the police in order to prevent the killing of some of the bank customers come in and try their best not to kill the hostage, but in the end do shoot and kill the hostage, who is responsible for that murder? Certainly not the policeman who fired the shot, but rather the person who used the human shield. I think the same is true of Hamas in Gaza.
The question: When you have an enemy that wants to maximize civilian casualties both on its own side and on the Israeli side, how should a democracy respond? What can it do? Surely, I think Professor Dugard would agree that Israel has the right of self-defense. They try to destroy the rocket launchers and they try to destroy the tunnels from which terrorists come and can kill civilians. They have a right to attack such military targets even if the military targets are in densely populated areas, so long as the rules of proportionality are abided by.
The rules of proportionality, though complex, can simply be stated as follows: the military value of the target has to be proportional to the reasonably anticipated civilian casualties. The military targets that Israel attacked-particularly the rocket launchers and the terrorist tunnels-are extremely important military targets.
Indeed Israeli intelligence had reports, just before they went in on the ground to attack the tunnels, that there was a massive attack planned through the tunnels which would have killed many Israeli civilians.
Now, proportionality involves a difficult calculus, and it often has to be made during the fog of war and mistakes are made. The best evidence is that Israel killed a number of its own soldiers in friendly fire episodes.
The tunnels could not be destroyed without ground troops fighting in densely populated areas where Hamas chose to place their entrances. You cannot attack the tunnels from the air, because Israel doesn't know exactly the route of the tunnels. They do know where the entrances are. The entrances are often in mosques, and there is a videotape of that,[56] and near schools.
Israel had to send in troops on the ground knowing, to be sure, that there would not only be some casualties among their own soldiers-more than sixty of them were killed-but also casualties among the civilians that lived in the areas near the tunnel entrances that were selected by Hamas.
I maintain that Israel satisfied the rules of proportionality. They distinguished between military and civilian targets. And they did not engage in collective punishment. Their actions were not intended to be punitive in nature. They were intended to be preventive.
If Hamas had decided to put their tunnels in the open areas and fire their rockets from the open areas, there would have been few if any civilian casualties. In fact, during the Six-Day War, there were very few civilian casualties.
That's my case for Israel's actions in Gaza. Now, let's turn to the future. If Israel were to be improperly condemned for its self-defense actions, as it was by the Goldstone Report, this will only encourage Hamas to continue to operate its dead civilian strategy because that strategy works.
Israel wins militarily on the ground, but always loses in the court of public opinion, because it's far easier for the media to show dead children and dead women than it is to show the context.
In fact, Hamas refuses to allow journalists to photograph rockets being fired or photograph the entrances of the tunnels in densely civilian areas. All the public sees are the results, the dead children. To go back to my analogy, all they see are the policemen shooting the hostage. They don't see the bank robber who held the hostage and caused his death.
What should happen now is that Gaza should be demilitarized. The blockade should end, with exceptions for military rockets and equipment necessary to build tunnels, and Israel and Palestinian authority should engage in peace talks toward a two-state solution on the West Bank.
If the Gaza Strip is then controlled by the Palestinian Authority, there could be a complete two-state solution. Israel should negotiate with, but it shouldn't recognize or legitimate an organization like Hamas, which is really no different from ISIS.
Just yesterday Hamas claimed credit for the murder of three Israelis including one American citizen. You cannot legitimate an organization that engages in kidnapping and murder. Thank you very much.
Professor Dugard: Let me begin by thanking you for inviting me. Just two preliminary points; I'm not going to comment on the history. That is the agreement, Professor Dershowitz's portrayal of the history. Secondly I'm going to avoid the use of the term "terrorism" or "terrorist" because both sides accuse each other of being terrorists.
Before I start, I think it's important we have the facts on the table because they do inform the debate. To date, two thousand Palestinians have been killed and ten thousand wounded. Sixty-seven Israelis have been killed, of whom three are civilians. Professor Dershowitz said, and I would agree with him, that Israel acted in self-defense, but quite frankly I do not.
I know that Israel argues that it acts in self-defense and President Obama had supported this and both houses of Congress had supported this unanimously. It's the only thing those two houses can agree upon, but I think it's important to stress that Gaza is occupied territory. It has been occupied for forty-seven years.
The test for occupation is effective control, and Israel is in effective control of Gaza. It controls the land crossings, the sea space, the air space, and it has regular incursions into Gaza, so it does have effective control over the territory.
Israel disputes this. It argues that it is simply a hostile entity in terms of international law, but the general view is that it is occupied territory.
Now, once you accept it is an occupied territory, it's quite clear that Israel's purpose is not to act in self-defense, but to punish occupied people. In other words, it acts not as victims as in fact it portrays itself but rather as policemen.
I think you seem to look at it in the context of the French Resistance in the Second World War. If the French Resistance had fired rockets into Germany during the Second World War, you wouldn't have [criticized] it.
In the very nature of occupation, people are going to resist. From time immemorial, occupied people have resisted occupation. They have fought back and they will continue to do so whether Israel likes it or not.
Israel and Hamas must comply with the two cardinal principles of humanitarian law. They must observe the principal of distinction, which means that they should distinguish between civilian targets and military targets in firing rockets and bombarding each other.
Secondly, there is the principle of proportionality, which means that excessive force should not be used in the attack.
Now, I'm prepared to accept that Hamas is guilty of war crimes in the sense that it has fired rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas, but of course it has been rather ineffective in this respect because only three Israeli civilians have been killed.
Israel on the other hand has engaged in both indiscriminate firing of rockets and shots into Gaza, and it has done so by using force excessively. Over two thousand people have been killed. Ten thousand injured. There has been extensive damage to property and the whole Gaza community has been terrorized.
Today, I received news that the parents of a friend of mine from Gaza had been killed, so this does make one aware of the fact that it is a killing field. Schools have been destroyed. Rockets have been fired at mosques and at hospitals, and there are also serious allegations of executions [by the IDF] of Palestinians.
I carried out an investigation into Gaza in 2009. We had the same allegations from people who had been carrying white flags and consequently shot by members of the IDF.
Currently Israel's defense, which has been eloquently put forward by Professor Dershowitz, [is] namely that Hamas uses human shields, that it places its rocket launchers in urban areas and not in rural areas. Obviously, it could place its rocket launchers in rural areas; it would be easy targets for Israel and its drones.
It places its rocket launchers in [urban] areas, but whether it does so in a way which exposes the civilian population is not clear. There is no evidence that it does so, and that's a matter of fact which must be determined by an international judicial tribunal.
As far as tunnels are concerned, it seems that the tunnels are used to attack military targets. Recently, there was a debate on an Israeli website in which an Israeli made it quite clear that the tunnels did not lead to the kibbutz as Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated, but rather they led to military targets. Certainly to date, the tunnels have been used only for military targets such as the capture of Gilad Shalit and the killing of IDF members.
These are questions of fact, and facts must be determined by an international court; if not by the International Criminal Court, then by a special tribunal. I'm told that Israel has been taking photographs of its activities in the Gaza Strip, so presumably it has evidence and there's no reason why it should not present them to an international tribunal.
I would say Israel is guilty of committing war crimes. I also believe that it is guilty of committing crimes against humanity, because it meets all the requirements for crimes against humanity.
Some argue that it meets the requirements for the crime of all crimes, genocide. On the face of it, there's nothing to substantiate this predicate. My own view is that one should not infer, especially intent to commit genocide, which is required for the crime of genocide, from outrageous genocidal statements in the Israeli Knesset, parliament, or by the number of persons killed. When you look to what I think is the real purpose of Israel's action, and that is to collectively punish the people of Gaza, to terrorize every day, and punish them.
This is in violation of the fourth Geneva Convention. It's done so previously by collective punishment, and it is adventurous by shooting and bombarding Gaza. In my view, there's a prima facie case against Israel, that it has committed war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Can we now briefly turn to the future?
If necessary, international monitors should be employed to monitor this siege, monitor the crossings from both Rafah and [other] areas into Gaza. Secondly, I feel it's very important that there should be direct talks between Israel and Hamas, and United States and Hamas. I find it ridiculous that the United States is prepared to talk to Taliban in Afghanistan, but not prepared to talk to Hamas, and that's only because the Israeli government disapproves of direct talks.
Finally, there can be no peace without justice. That means that there must be accountability for those who have committed international crimes, both in Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and in the Israeli government, and the IDF.
I cannot understand why Israel-if it has all this evidence, it claims to be innocent-[why] it is not prepared to further the matter to the International Criminal Court, or to suggest that an international ad hoc tribunal be set up to hear the case.
Instead, Israel and the United States have pressured the International Criminal Court into refusing to get into this conversation.
I conclude by saying that accountability is of great importance in this country. Thank you.
Professor Dershowitz: The implications of Professor Dugard's position are very dangerous. First, you give Israel no credit for ending the settlements, and ending the military presence in the Gaza Strip. That makes it much harder for Israel to accept a two-state solution on the West Bank, where rockets could close its airport and endanger all of its population.
Second, he makes the very questionable statement that a people under occupation are entitled to kill civilians with impunity, and that Israel has no right to self-defense. That it can't defend its children against the Russian roulette of rockets being fired at its schools and school buses. My God, what kind of world would we live in if they couldn't engage in such self-defense?
I was in one of those tunnels. The tunnel I was in six weeks ago exited yards away from a kibbutz kindergarten with fifty-seven children in it. My challenge to you, Professor Dugard, is are you actually suggesting that Israel had no legal way [of] stopping those tunnels, but that it simply had to wait for terrorists to come out, and risk killing 57, or 570, or 5,700 children? Is that your definition of international law?
What would South Africa do if there were tunnels dug under it from Zimbabwe, if rockets were being fired? Would it simply say, "No, we're not going to do anything"? Does the fact that some people think that there's a continued occupation, even though there was no military presence, deny Israel the most fundamental right of self-defense?
Professor Dugard: I accept that Israel has the right to destroy tunnels that are being employed, not against civilians, but against its military. I accept that it is entitled to destroy the tunnels, but it does so not in self-defense, but as a policeman that is enforcing the occupation, that is suppressing a vote by an occupied people. I think that is where we differ fundamentally.
Secondly, as far as my failure to give credit to Israel for withdrawing from Gaza is concerned, I think it's important to stress that Israel simply could not cope with the presence of the IDF in Gaza before 2005. Because there were small numbers of settlers in the territory.
There had to be a tremendous IDF presence in order to protect the settlers. Hopeless, but pretty strategically, and economically, impossible to continue occupying Gaza on the ground.
The fact that it has withdrawn its troops from permanent occupation does not undermine the fact that it remains in effective control by other means and that it is therefore an occupying power, and it is simply suppressing people who vote from a rebellious occupied people.
Audience Questions
Male Audience Member: Israeli authorities have confirmed that no tunnel actually exits closer than two miles from any Israeli civilian population center. Question to Professor Dugard in particular, what are the limits of legitimate resistance against occupation? What is allowed, what is not allowed, from a military and civilian resistance point of view?
Professor Dugard: As I said in my presentation, an occupied people is entitled to resist the occupation. History says that this has always been done, and occupied people will continue to resist occupation.
One must bear in mind that in the same way Israel is subject to the rules of the international humanitarian law, so too is the occupied people. It is bound to refrain from firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas, however ineffective it may be.
There may be a right to resist, but it is subject to the rules of international humanitarianism.
Professor Dershowitz: First, let me correct a categorically false statement that was made by the questioner, namely that no tunnel exits are closer than two miles away from Israeli population centers.
The statement can't be true, because Israel doesn't know where the exits are. The exits are still secret. They only know where the entrances are. But several tunnels that they have discovered have exits that are much, much closer to civilian areas.
The one I was in was merely yards away from a kibbutz, which is a population center. It may not be a city, but it was far less than two miles away from cities and towns, so that's just a categorically false statement.
It's those kinds of statements that are repeated in the media over and over again, and repeated at events like this. Second, even Professor Dugard concedes that [Hamas] is not allowed to fire rockets. That automatically gives Israel the right of self-defense against those rockets, and they can't build tunnels to go into Israel to kill Israelis.
Israel has the right to self-defense. You want to call it a police action, want to call it self-defense, it makes absolutely no difference. The only way Israel can stop the tunnels, which Professor Dugard acknowledges they have a right to do, is to send in ground troops.
They tried desperately to minimize civilian casualties by giving warnings, by knocking on the roof, by making phone calls, but because Hamas put these tunnels in mosques, in schools, in very densely surrounded areas, in order to avoid them being caught by Israelis. Professor Dugard is right. If they were put in the open fields, then Israel would attack them. But that's what the law requires. It doesn't allow you to put them in densely populated areas in order to avoid attack militarily.
Israel had the right to destroy the tunnels, and again I challenge Professor Dugard, what would you have done if the only way of closing the tunnels was by sending in ground troops? Would you send in ground troops? Professor Dugard, please answer my direct question.
Professor Dugard: The question as I understand it was, there was an admission by the Israeli government apparently, that there were no tunnel exits sufficiently near civilian parts.
Professor Dershowitz: It's a totally false statement. It's a lie. No Israeli official has ever said that. None of the tunnels have exits within two miles of any civilian population. I will donate money to your favorite charity if you can find a statement by an Israeli official that says that none of the tunnels exits are within two miles of any civilian populations. It's false. It's just false, I'm sorry.[57]
Professor Dugard: There was a debate on this matter. There, Israelis stated very clearly that no tunnel exited close to [civilian areas]. It is a question of fact, and I think this should be referred to international tribunal.
Secondly, as far as how Israel should proceed, it should proceed to close the tunnels, but it should not in the process indiscriminately kill civilians, and Israel has deliberately, I believe, targeted hospitals, schools, and mosques, and civilian homes.
It has shown no regard for human life. It has behaved in a callous, disgusting manner. I've carried out an investigation of operations across maybe 2009. I was appalled by the level of destructions that I saw, and by the stories that I heard of coldblooded executions carried out by members of the IDF.
I don't think that one should disregard the fact that the Israeli forces have not complied with the laws of war, and they have committed war crimes.
Professor Dershowitz: That's your opinion, and that's not based on fact at all. I recommended in an article I wrote, that there should be an ad hoc investigation both of Hamas, and of Israel, but it shouldn't be done from the UN Council on Human Rights, which is biased, and it shouldn't be chaired by somebody who before hearing any evidence has already said, "Netanyahu ought to be put in the dock, and brought before the International Criminal Court."
It should be chaired by somebody like Luis Ocampo, who was the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Objective people who have stated no positions, not Professor Dugard, not myself, but people who have never stated any positions on this. Not people who have already shown a bias.
If any Israeli soldier ever engaged in a cold-blooded murder, he'd be court-martialed. He'd be brought in front of a court.[58] Some have been disciplined, but in every army there are bad apples. You don't judge a country by what his worst soldier does, you judge a country by how it responds to what its worst soldier does.
In Hamas's case, they glorify and name parks after murderers of children, after the Vogel family murderers, that killed a group of people in their beds. Was that legitimate self-defense? Is that legitimate opposition to an occupation? No. Israel, according to Colonel Kemp, a British military expert [who] said, "No country in history has ever shown more concern for civilians, and has ever done more to avoid civilian casualties, than Israel."
Israel has done better than my own country, done better than England, done better than NATO. Of course it's made mistakes, but the idea of using words like "genocide" and words like "war crimes" is just outrageous, and shows a particular bias against the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Professor Dugard: Dershowitz supports Luis Moreno Ocampo as a judge, and he was a prosecutor of the ICC. I cannot understand why both Israel and the United States so vehemently oppose International Criminal Court for this matter.
Professor Dershowitz: Three good reasons. Number one, Palestine has to earn its right to be declared a state, and to be recognized by the International Criminal Court as an actual state. The United Nations can't do that through its General Assembly.
Number two, if it were brought before the International Criminal Court, Israel would be found to have a completely legitimate legal system, and complementarity would deny jurisdiction to the Criminal Court.
Third of all, I think Israel would be vindicated by any fair and objective evaluation, but it was taken before the International Court of Justice-which is not international, it's not a court, and it knows nothing about justice-Israel has never served on the Court of Justice. When it decided the security barrier case, it barely mentioned the fact that the security barrier had prevented thousands of acts of terrorism. If you're prepared to present a fair court, I am prepared certainly to recommend to Israel that it have a fair hearing in front of a fair court.
But to be indicted based on the kinds of speculation that you just set out, of course not. Nobody would ever agree to be put in the dock for engaging in an act of self-defense.
I would say that the International Court of Justice is to justice for Israel what Southern courts were, headed by Klan members, in relation to justice for blacks in the South. Or what apartheid courts were in South Africa in relation to a black defendant.
Israel cannot, under any circumstances, expect to receive justice by that disgraceful institution, run by the United Nations, which has shown its bias and bigotry against Israel for many years.
The United Nations has condemned Israel more often than they have Iran, Cambodia. Even during the Cambodian killings, where three to five million people were killed, there was not one condemnation by the UN, but that was the same year that the UN voted that Zionism was a form of racism. How do you expect Israel to receive justice in front of what is essentially an apartheid court?
I think people in South Africa should realize that there was no justice in South Africa prior to Mandela's release from prison, and there is no justice in United Nations courts when it comes to Israel.
Professor Dugard: The International Criminal Court is not the United Nations Court. Would you be prepared to submit the matter to the International Criminal Court? If so, why does Israel and the United States resist it so strongly?
Professor Dershowitz: First of all, the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, and Israel is not a member of the International Criminal Court, and for very, very good reasons. The International Criminal Court has not yet proved its credibility to do objective justice.
I was invited to speak to the International Criminal Court a few years ago, when prosecutor Ocampo was there, and although he himself was extremely fair and unbiased, I found many staff members had very predisposed views regarding the United States, Israel, and the West in general.
I would accept an ad hoc commission, headed by Luis Ocampo, with its members to be picked by people like Luis Ocampo, without anybody who's ever expressed any view regarding the Middle East conflict, international scholars of renown, with an equal claim against Hamas and against Israel.
Let them look at the facts and decide whether Hamas has committed double war crimes, whether Israel has acted in self-defense, whether Israel has satisfied the rules of proportionality, distinction, and opposition to collective punishment.
I am confident that any fair court would convict Hamas, and acquit Israel.
Male Audience Member: My question simply is do you continue to entertain that acts of ethnic cleansing were not committed in the process of the emergence of the State of Israel?
Professor Dershowitz: No country in modern history has ever been established in a more lawful manner. Starting with the Balfour Declaration, the Peel Commission Report, the UN Declarations, the League of Nations Declarations, Israel was established in 1948 absolutely lawfully.
It was then attacked by all the Arab countries. Had it not been attacked, the Arab population would have remained exactly where it was. There would have been no refugee problem. The Arabs attacked and told their people, leave and they would come back victorious. About seven hundred thousand or eight hundred thousand left.
Some under pressure, some voluntarily, some people were going to come back victoriously.
At the same time about eight hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Arab countries. From Iraq, from North Africa, there was essentially an exchange in population. No, there was no ethnic cleansing at all.
As far as the negotiation posture, just ask Bill Clinton, or Hillary Clinton. They both recently made statements saying that it was absolutely Yasser Arafat who turned down the opportunity for a two-state solution.
If not for Yasser Arafat's untimely death-I say untimely because had he died four years earlier, we would today be celebrating the fourteenth anniversary of Palestinian statehood. He was given an enormous opportunity to help his people.
The prince of Saudi Arabia said he committed a crime against the Palestinian people by not accepting the offer at Camp David and Taba by Clinton and Barack. Not only do I stand by my position, but I reiterate it.
You want to see the documentation in support of it, I have it in the five books I've written about this subject with documentary proof that Israel did not engage in any kind of ethnic cleansing. Look, you can find historians in any country that will dispute historical accounts.
You can find historians in South Africa that would dispute accounts that Nelson Mandela has made. The question is not what do individual historians say, but what the truth is.
You are challenging Israel's legitimacy as the nation of Jewish people, you're shaking your head saying yes, and that is a nonstarter. Israel is not going away.
Israel is as legitimate as South Africa, as legitimate as the United States of America, as legitimate as New Zealand, which did ethnically cleanse its population, or Australia, which did ethnically cleanse its population.
Israel is here to stay, no matter how much you shake your head.
Professor Dugard: First of all, I think the historians convincingly [demonstrate] that there was Israeli cleansing, so I think the historical record is very clear on that. Secondly, as far as Israel's own system of justice is concerned, Professor Dershowitz had suggested that the principle of complementarity would prevent the International Criminal Court from hearing any dispute.
Israel has no [good] record when it comes to prosecuting crimes committed by the IDF. Take, for instance, the events after the 2008–2009 Operation Cast Lead. Several reports showed convincingly that Israel had committed international crimes.
They identified the victims and the assailants, but all Israel did was to prosecute someone for theft of a credit card from the Palestinian. There was no prosecution whatsoever for real crimes. That was a disgraceful example of Israeli justice.
I would like to just comment on the question of occupation. I think it's very clear that Israel is not only in occupation of Gaza, but it's in illegal occupation of Gaza, because it refuses to carry out its obligations.
Who is responsible for funding projects in this occupied territory of Gaza? Its foreign donors. Israel has withdrawn its financial involvement and has completely ignored its own responsibility for taking care of an occupied territory.
Instead, it has imposed and sieged upon Gaza, which has left Gaza completely without most basic commodities. I think one must understand that Hamas's resistance to the siege is the primary reason for this conflict.
Also I'd like to stress that Israel was largely responsible for starting this conflict. You would recall that following the death of three Israeli teenagers, Israel embarked upon a savage suppression of Hamas in the West Bank.
There was no evidence that Hamas was responsible for those killings. Israel started the suppression of Hamas in the West Bank, and that sparked off the rocket firing from Gaza. I don't think it's clear, or it's fair to say, that Hamas was responsible for initiating the present conflict.
Professor Dershowitz: Hamas leaders admitted responsibility for this yesterday.
Professor Dugard: I was not aware of that.
Male Audience Member: If it wasn't for the Iron Dome, I think there would be a lot more casualties on the Israeli end as well.
My question is, I understand the principle of distinction, and it's required to distinguish between a military objective and a population, and to direct operations against only military objectives.
Military objectives include combatants, which by their nature, location, and purpose, make effective contributions to military action. My question is that if there are rockets being fired out of schools, and being fired out of mosques, and being fired out of hospitals, for the principle of distinction, wouldn't these be considered military objectives?
Professor Dugard: If we have evidence that mosques and schools are being used for rocket launching, then Israel will be entitled to respond, but there is no clear evidence… We find no evidence to support Israel's case. I suspect that this time around, there is still no evidence to support it.
These are matters that should be referred to international tribunal for investigation. I stand by my view that Israel has acted without regard for civilian lives and accounts for the high number of civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip.
Professor Dershowitz: What accounts for the high number of civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip is that Hamas adamantly refuses to allow civilians to use the shelters that it built. It only allows its terrorists, yes, I'm using the word terrorists.
Terrorists are people who target civilians, children and women like the Vogel family, and like the three children who were kidnapped. They are terrorists, yes, they are terrorists. Hamas doesn't allow its civilians to use the shelters, only the terrorists can use the shelters.
They want civilians to die, they want them to be killed. Professor Dugard, you can go over the evidence in mosques, look online. There is a videotape of a tunnel being built from a prayer room in a mosque. There is a videotape on Indian television and French television of rockets being fired from near UN facilities.[59]
If you acknowledge that a mosque that is used to fire rockets is a legitimate military target, then Israel cannot be charged with any violation if it is firing back on targets and abiding by the rules of proportionality, which it is.
What people are afraid of are judges like you, Professor Dugard. I would not want Israel to be tried in front of you. You've made up your mind. You said you saw the evidence. Hamas didn't let you see the evidence. The only reason they let you in to look at the evidence is they know which side you are on.
If an objective person like Ocampo came in, they would hide the evidence from him.
Female Audience Member: Professor Dershowitz, you've openly and publicly supported practices such as waterboarding, in other words, torture, in the United States-
Professor Dershowitz: Absolute lie. I have opposed waterboarding…
Female Audience Member: Can I finish my question? As far as I understand, as far as I've read, you support, under certain circumstances, the use of waterboarding by the US administration in the case of terrorism. To me, this indicates that you do not respect the fact that there are certain boundaries that cannot be crossed, in international relations, in terms of human dignity.
Professor Dershowitz: You have absolutely and categorically lied to this audience. I am opposed to waterboarding. I have led the campaign against torture and waterboarding in the United States. I have been opposed to all forms of torture from the very beginning.
I don't know what you are reading or what you're seeing, but the statement in fact you made is categorically and unequivocally false. What I have argued is that if there is going to be any use of these despicable tactics, there should be at least a warrant requirement before their use. That's my position. Please don't misrepresent it.
Professor Dugard: [Dershowitz] has repeatedly praised Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. It's important to realize that Ocampo took three years to consider the 2009 Palestinian Declaration accepting the jurisdiction as a court.
He could have taken the decision on this matter within one month, if he was going to reach the conclusion that he reached. I really believe he was put under tremendous pressure from the United States, as I believe the present prosecutor is.
One should not underestimate the influence of the United States in the International Criminal Court, and the decision to prosecute. I believe that the present prosecutor could prosecute on the basis of the 2009 declaration, but under pressure from the United States, and under pressure from Israel-
Professor Dershowitz: What you are saying is that the International Criminal Court is subject to pressure, political pressure, and that it is not really a legitimate court?
Male Audience Member: Professor Dugard, your entire argument is predicated on, based on the blockade or the circle blockade by the Israelis in Gaza, but you selectively ignored the fact that between period of 2005 and 2007, there was no blockade whatsoever.
In fact, the blockade only came following the indiscriminate rockets which are being fired from Gaza into the civilian population of Israel. Only thereafter, then Israel, in your own words, becomes a policeman to effectively monitor, or it attempts to monitor, or stop the rockets that were coming indiscriminately during the period which there was no blockade. Can you please answer that?
Professor Dugard: It's important to stress that the blockade has been imposed as a punishment upon the entire population of Gaza, that Israel has made no effort to distinguish between its punishment of Hamas and its punishment of the people of Gaza. That's why I say that it has engaged in an unlawful siege of Gaza. Its occupation is unlawful.
It's important to end on the note that I started on. That is that Israel has engaged in indiscriminate firing at and shooting of civilian targets, and this is evidenced very clearly by the number of Palestinian deaths and the number of wounded people and the extensive damage to property in the Gaza Strip.
I don't think that one can in any way justify Israel's action. The international community, public opinion, and the world outside the United States and Israel is rightly outraged by Israel's behavior. I do hope that Israel has the opportunity to appear before a proper International Criminal Court. I'm convinced it would be found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Professor Dershowitz: The very fact that international opinion is against Israel when Israel has been engaging in an act of self-defense against Hamas, that uses human shields and fires indiscriminately and uses tunnels of death, is part of the problem.
The very fact that public opinion is against Israel as the result of statements made by Professor Dugard and others, is why Hamas is going to continue to do this. Why Hamas is going to continue to engage in terrorism. Why it's going to continue to kidnap young children and murder them! Why it's going to continue to be like ISIS except that its charter is somewhat worse.
The very fact that Professor Dugard won't recognize matters of degree, that Israel did a good thing when it ended its military occupation of Gaza and took its civilian settlements out of Gaza, that he refuses to give any credit for that makes it difficult for Israel to do the same thing on the West Bank.
Israel cannot completely end military control over its borders. It can never allow tunnels to be dug under its borders.
I say this categorically, no country in the history of the world faced with threats comparable to those faced by Israel has ever complied better with the rule of law, has ever done more to protect civilians, and has ever done more to protect human rights and human liberty.
Nor has any government faced with such threats ever had a better judiciary that has held its soldiers accountable. I challenge you all in the audience to think of any country faced with comparable threats that has done better than Israel. If I am right, then why, I ask you, is Israel singled out for this double standard?
Why, among all the people in the world that are committing horrendous crimes, is Israel the only country that is now suggested to be brought to the court of public opinion and to the courts of law? Answer that question, please.
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