Here's a taste:
We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.
Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.
Read the whole thing.
11 comments:
There's one thing I disagree about. the phrase "zap 300 civilians". As far as I understand, most of them are Hamas people, thus - they're soldiers.
"We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level": we neither. IDF doesn't throw bombs to random places, but to carefully intelligence-chosen targets.
I think that being hit by missiles for 8 years with hardly any significant military response, should also be noted.
I'm not sure what else could be done, it really doesn't seem as if Hamas people want peace talks.
Oren,
Israel.
The comparison doesn't hold water. The IRA was not a wing of the official Irish government, the police weren't an armed part of the IRA, some churches were only incidentally organizing areas for IRA violence (the pub being just as likely), and Israel didn't zap 300 civilians - they targeted and hit many legitimate military and terrorist targets. Some civilians were killed, but when a armed force chooses to hide among civilians, that is unfortunate, but qualitatively different to targeting the civilians themselves.
As to the efficacy of the action, that I can't speak to. No, it hasn't worked in Lebanon - but it very nearly did. Had Israel actually defanged Hizbullah instead of making fools of the IDF, the legitimate Lebanese government would have been in a far stronger position. But Israel failed, and missed an historic opportunity. Will it work in Gaza? I doubt it, but certainly continual failures to respond to 6000+ rockets wasn't doing Israel any good - and blockades don't help anybody. I far prefer killing 300 Hamas terrorists and letting food trucks through to cutting off food and letting the Hamasniks live.
One other comment. Air raids have worked. In 1967, the Egyptian air force was eliminated via air raid. Valuable targets were hit and that helped determine the course of the war - which ended in a termination of a state of war between the countries.
Oren and Joseph,
There are issues with the IRA argument that Fisk is making. However, an element of his critique still stands.
The IRA is more similar to the militias associated with the PLO than it is with Hamas. The IRA was specifically tied to Sinn Fein and other Irish political parties, but was not the governing force in Ireland and was not outwardly controlling public institutions, even if known IRA members were police officers, postmen, etc.
The IRA and affiliated groups did attack civilians regularly, in Northern Ireland and throughout Great Britain.
Hamas is an entirely different entity.
Fisk's argument is about the response to terrorism. Given that Hamas has a specific address, Israel has options other than the one it is currently exercising.
Isn't there something else that can be done? I don't know what that something is, but...
Charles,
What are those “other options” that Israel has? I sincerely wish to know and so, I think, most of Israelis.
Charles, while theoretically the point about response is a valid one, if you look at the tactical situation, it's fundamentally different.
In fact, the mildest option, in my opinion, from the POV of limiting civilian casualties, is to take control over Gaza and to stay there. Which, in itself, cannot be acieved without casualties. A dillema, it is.
IRA argument, while looking plausible on the surface, is actually misplaced and not correct. It is only on the surface that it looks like a strong Israel is bombing to shreds the poor and week Palestinians and the tiny HAMAS movement. The truth is quite the opposite. It is not HAMAS or even Palestinians who Israel is up against, but the entire Arab nation, with all its half a billion souls. It's the Arab nation that does not accept us here, while the Palestinians are only the tip of the spear. The odds are overwhelmingly against Israel, if you look at the wider picture. While the British could afford to themselves to be lenient and even to appear passive in front of the Irish, it was only because the odds were in their favor, both tactically and from the POV of historical perspective. Unfortunately, we cannot afford ourselves such luxury.
The biggest flaw with the IRA comparison is that the IRA and Hamas exist for entirely different reasons.
Even if one accepts the flawed argument that Britain colonized Northern Ireland or that modern day Israel is predicated on Palestinian colonialism, the IRA was fighting for Irish independence. Hamas is not fighting for Palestinian independence. It is fighting to end the state of Israel.
Despite the PLO's flaws, it does not use violence against Israel, tries to act like a government, and desires limited Palestinian independence (ie, it is not calling for Hamas-style independence, which means no more Israel).
An interesting question is: are civilians really targeted? Usually, when a modern civilized democratic country wages war against its enemy, it tries to avoid civilian casualties, because this turns both public opinion and especially local population of the target area against the war.
Targeting somebody means that somebody is the intended target of the strike. Otherwise, those who die unintendedly (or as human shields) are called collateral damage. Modern civilized democracies usually try to minimize collateral damages, but avoiding them alltogether is hard if not impossible.
The USA certainly did not target civilians in Iraq or in Afghanistan. It targeted armed militants - both terrorists and other types of insurgents. There were civilian losses, too, which is bad, but compare the US operations with those that non-Western and non-democratic states have waged in various places. For example Russia in Chechnya (or recently in Georgia), the Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia, Syria in Hama (1982), Sudan in Darfur, or (to the shame of its democracy) India in Kashmir.
In these cases the line has been crossed and we cannot any more talk about "police operations" or "counter-insurgency", when the methods tend more to pogrom, genocide, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate collective punishment, massive provocations and disinformation etc.
Some countries like Israel and Turkey are constantly trying to balance themselves on the thin line between Western civilized democracies and heavy-handed Oriental frontier fiefdoms practicing double standards and differentiating between their own "civilized" people and "the other" (Palestinians or Kurds) who are branded as bloodthirsty violent thugs who only understand harsh use of force.
I am not talking about the legitimate response against terrorists like PKK or Hamas, but the impact of certain kinds of methods and strategy on the overall population.
A note from Ireland, as this thread focuses somewhat on a comparison with our situation: As reagrds Mr. Fisk's statement that "We [the British] didn't want to lower ourselves to the level of the IRA", you must be joking. One doesn't have to search too far to see examples of how Britain went as low as it is possible to go in their manipulation of the violence here. They armed and resourced (intelligence, personnel etc.) loyalist murder squads, and regularly used them to turn up the heat in our conflict. This has been recognised by international courts and UN commissioners. The British can offer no lectures here, I'm afraid. Mr. Fisk narrows his historical range sometimes in order to appeal to his compatriots' moral sense, in order to try to highlight for them the criminality and outrage of Israel's actions in the Middle East. But the truth is the truth, Mr. Fisk, and to paraphrase you on this issue, history didn't start yesterday in Ireland either.
The Irish government was never composed of parties that stated in their official manifestos that the judgment day won't come until the Irish fight the British, killing them one by one, when trees and stones will say: Oh Irish, oh true believer of Jesus, there is a British man hiding behind me, come and kill him. Only the silver fir tree would not do that because it's one of trees of the British ...
Otherwise, I agree - as usual Fisk makes a lot of sense
Hamas Covenant 1988
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