AxisMundi Jerusalem
Inside Israel and the Palestinian Territories
“Breaking the Silence” Takes on Cast Lead
After a round of reports and outside critiques of the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead were released two weeks ago, this week the criticism comes from within.
Israeli activist group “Breaking the Silence” has released a new set of testimonies from Israeli soldiers who took part in the Gaza offensive launched this winter.
You can find the entire set of testimonies translated on their website here.
As our correspondent Douglas Hamilton reports, the 30 testimonies collected say that the “Israeli army’s imperative was to minimise its own casualties to ensure Israeli public support for the operation.”
“If you’re not sure, kill. Fire power was insane. We went in and the booms were just mad,” says one testimony.
The testimomies were mostly anonymous because conscripted IDF soldiers are not supposed to speak to the media, making some of the stories hard to verify.
Some themes emerged however, such as the “Neighbor Procedure”, where Palestinian civilians were made to enter suspect buildings ahead of IDF troops or the loose interpretation of rules that require soldiers to try and distinguish between combatants and civilians.
2006 Lebanon War Still a Point of Contention in Israel, Lebanon
Today, July 12, marks another controversial anniversary: it is the third anniversary of the start of the Second Lebanon war, as it is known by Israelis, or the July War, as it’s called by the Lebanese.
(See our factbox on the war here).
Three years on, Israelis are still divided as to whether their government made the right decision in undertaking the 34 day conflict in 2006.
Columnist Eitan Haber, of Yedioth Ahronoth, sums it up this way: “Everyone is right in the war that followed the Second Lebanon War. Those who believe it was an untimely and unsuccessful war that led to the erosion of our deterrent power, especially vis-à-vis Hezbollah, are right. Those who argue that the war led to absolute calm in the rocket-battered north, pushed Hezbollah’s men away from the border, and prompted the deployment of an international force in south Lebanon are also right.” (Read his whole article here).
As the Israeli public sorts out its feelings about the war, IDF officials also spoke up today at a conference marking the war’s third anniversary. Dan Halutz, the former IDF chief who resigned in the wake of criticisms of his actions in the war, defended the choice to launch a campaign: “I believed that if we crave life in this Mideast arena, we have to sometimes just ‘go crazy’. “
He also said that he had been against citing Hezbollah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers as the impetus for the attack, as he considered it to have been a long term strategic need for Israel to curb Hezbollah’s capabilities.
Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council argued that Israel’s attack was mistake. It should have only launched a two- or three-day attack against Hezbollah in 2006, he said, and then accepted an internationally-backed truce: “That kind of action would have restored Israel’s deterrence … The achievement might have been limited, but so would the price.”
Israel lost it’s deterrence power?
That must explain all the rockets from Lebenon lately. And how Hizbulla helped Gaza during Cast Lead.
Oh, I forget. There isn’t. And they didn’t.
If what happened in 2006 is considered an ‘Israeli defeat’, God knows what a victory would have looked like.
The last two conflicts have proven a sad fact. As military force was responsible for stopping the rocket fire, the military action was justified.
Israel’s Chosen Weapon Against Iran– memory sticks?
Yesterday Reuters reported US President Barack Obama emphatically stating that Joe Biden’s comments this week on ABC were not a “green light” to Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Yet he did reiterrate Biden’s argument that Washington cannot “dictate to other countries what their security interests are.”
If Israel were to decide to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, how might it do that? It sounds almost like something from a spy novel, but Reuters’ Dan Williams reports that Israel may use “cyber warfare” to accomplish that goal.
“… malware — a commonly used abbreviation for “malicious software” — could be inserted to corrupt, commandeer or crash the controls of sensitive sites like uranium enrichment plants.
Such attacks could be immediate, [Scott Borg, director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit] said. Or they might be latent, with the malware loitering unseen and awaiting an external trigger, or pre-set to strike automatically when the infected facility reaches a more critical level of activity.
As Iran’s nuclear assets would probably be isolated from outside computers, hackers would be unable to access them directly, Borg said. Israeli agents would have to conceal the malware in software used by the Iranians or discreetly plant it on portable hardware brought in, unknowingly, by technicians. “A contaminated USB key would be enough,” he said.”
(To get the whole story, click here.)
Mind you, click here and here for a reminder, again from Dan, that Israel also possesses, it is assumed, more traditional weapons of mass destruction. Dan told us Israel has just sent one of its nuclear-armed submarines through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea in what officials called a deliberate signal to Iran.
Meanwhile, as Obama calls for engagement and diplomacy, top US military advisers argue he needs to hurry up.
“There’s a great deal that certainly depends on the dialogue and the engagement,” [said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff] . “I’m hopeful that that dialogue is productive. I worry about it a great deal if it’s not.” Mullen noted that some forecasters believe Iran could be as little as a year away from developing a nuclear bomb, adding: “The clock has continued to tick.”
When it comes to destruction, caos,war, fighting, and killing. no one does it better in any way shape or form better than isrel. ahh, great to see the american tax dollar spent well.
Clear the fog of war… with a quiz
Israel’s recent offensive in the Gaza Strip, with its heavy toll on Palestinian civilians, inflamed a long-running debate about how the laws of war can be applied to guerrilla-style fighting.
Far from the split-second decision-making of battle, or the raw recrimination of politicians and pundits, one Israeli think-tank is offering a more leisurely way to gauge your understanding of what constitutes a war crime.
The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs (JCPA) quiz, accessed on-line, poses 12 multiple-choice questions about various combat scenarios. Some recall the skirmishes with Hamas in Gaza’s slums. Others — an enemy submarine sunk, an African insurrection assessed — don’t.
You get a grade at the end, on the assumption that lacklustre lay jurists might be persuaded to attend the JCPA’s June 18 conference titled: “Hamas, the Gaza War, and Accountability under International Law”.
Smart marketing–and it’s a great set of questions. I bet many so-called Middle East experts wouldn’t get most of them right..Worth looking at the other material on their website at http://www.jcpa.org
Internal Investigation
As we reported here Israel’s army gave itself a clean bill of health today for its conduct in the recent offensive in Gaza – saying a series of internal investigations had found no evidence of serious misconduct by its soldiers during the campaign.
Human rights groups have cast doubt on these internal investigations and have demanded that the IDF opens itself up to independent investigators to probe numerous allegations of serious misconduct and war crimes that stemmed from the 22-day offensive that Israel launched to counter cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza.
While there might be doubts in some quarters about the seriousness or the effort that went in to the IDF internal investigations – there can be no doubt that a lot of time and effort went in to the making of the video below, shown to journalists at a press conference and now posted on YouTube, which the IDF says explains how Hamas, the Islamist group that rules in Gaza, operates.
hmm, so the IDF gave itself a clean bill of health in its investigation of…itself??, is this for real? that’s like asking the saudis if their puritanical brand of islam is moderate, and they give a resounding, YES. oh and if Iran should be “ostracized” for supplying weapons to hamas, then shouldn’t american be “ostracized” for supplying weapons of all sorts to israel? let’s get real here, everyone knows there are numerous guilty parties in this conflict, its foolish to think this is a one sided issue.
Wanted: an ethical code of war
International law governing the conduct of war is based on the traditional model of two armies on a battlefield. It fails to apply effectively to ‘terrorist conflicts’ and provides insufficient response to the ethical dilemmas that arise.
Until effective international law is developed to regulate the ‘war on terror’, no decisive ethical code will exist. This is not only a challenge for the Israeli military. It is shared by all Western armies fighting to preserve core democratic values.
The above is the thesis of an Israeli foreign ministry briefing published March 25 in response to allegations that Israel flouted the rules of war in its Gaza offensive Dec 27-Jan 18 against Islamist militants led by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Here are a few excerpts. It may be noted that the docmuent does not define “terrorist” or allude in any way to the political, religious, national or other causes underlying “terrorist” activities. You can read the full document (one and a half pages only) here.
“Terrorists have developed a number of strategies … to offset their military inferiority … at the same time they place the value of propaganda above the value of human life.”
“Terrorists attempty to deligitimize the actions of their state targets: by protraying themselves as victims, by accusing the state of unfair play, and by waging war in densely populated areas and causing panic among the populace with the ultimate goal of obtaining media coverage.”
“To confront ethical dilemmas arising during counter-terrorist operations, the IDF (Israel Defence Force) developed a moral code, The Spirit of the IDF .
The code is composed of Israeli values, democratic Western values and commitment to international laws. It is deeply integrated throughout each IDF soldier’s education.
Spirit places a high standard of personal judgement when targetting terrorists who seek shelter among civilians.
Until an effective international deterrent exists, terrorists will continue to use civilians as human shields. The advantages to amoral forces of operating from densely-populated urban areas are clear, as are the media advtanges arising from international condemnation of counter-terrorist operations in these areas. As a result, international legal attention to this issue is vital.”
The entire idea is a conflict of terms.
There already is a code of war ethics.
But war is war. It isn’t pretty. There will always be collateral damage, blue on blue incidents, and civilian casualties. It’s not entirely avoidable. It can only be minimized. And there will always be a very small percent of soldiers who don’t care and will commit war crimes. But you can’t blame the army or country they belong to for their actions. And you can’t judge the entire country, army, batallion, or other smaller unit based on the actions of those few.
Michael, USAF
Breaking Ranks
Its been two months since Israel ended its 22-day offensive in Gaza – two months during which Israel has been weighing up the costs and the benefits of what was achieved in the fierce fighting.
Strong international condemnation of the offensive – and the slew of boycotts, bans and blunt dioplomacy that have followed – has been met with a mix of incredulity, anger and resignation in Israel.
Much of the condemnation of the offensive has been attributed in Israel to the standard leftist, anti-Israeli, anti-semitic rabble-rousing from the usual quarters along with a failure elsewhere in the world to understand the gravity of the rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel which Israelis feel forced the army into action.
Within that narrow prism – Israel has, in large part, dismissed the criticism and a large tranche of public opinion is still supportive of the war despite questions about the achievements of a campaign which left Hamas in power, rockets still falling on southern Israel and Sgt Gilad Shalit still a captive somewhere in Gaza, 1,000 days after he was captured in 2006.
But internal criticism, from the very heart of Israel’s most venerated institution, is another matter entirely.
The publication of transcripts of conversations with soldiers who served in Gaza has whipped up a storm of controversy in Israel far beyond anything the international outcry stirred up.
Thanks for your comment, Hassan. It’s important to note, in the sentence you cite, the following words: “…has been attributed in Israel…”. We are not, in Reuters, characterising those who criticise Israel’s offensive. We are reporting how they are characterised by many people in Israel.
Send in the drones
Israel’s economy is, in large part, mirroring what is happening elsewhere in the world – with job losses, factory closures and all the other symptoms of the global financial meltdown.
One sector though is defying all the odds.
Elbit Systems – an Israeli company that makes electro-optics, airborne systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and command and control systems – announced this week a record 4th quarter with profits rising 32.6 percent and strong forecasts for continued growth in the year ahead.
Their results presentation gave the company a chance to show off some of its latest technologies as you can see from the video below.
While the credit crunch is forcing governments, companies and individuals around the world to rethink spending across a huge range of goods and services, defence spending seems to be immune.
A ‘pop-psychologist’ would probably have a field day interpreting this trend, in an uncertain world where many of the basic pillars of our society seem to be tottering and the natural instinct to protect and defend comes to the fore.
actually if you would hav read your history properly, jews were actually killed even more by the romans, it was under muhammed they found refuge and saftey although there were still persecuted by other arab tribes who not only opposed but also muhammed himself. so it might suit you better if you learned the intrecacies of history and not generalize people as one. which is why there the world seperates judaisim from zionism, it is an insult to blend the two together. and u say that americans have accepted their wrong doings? really, how so? by moving the indians onto unhabitiable land, where they can’t grow anything, don’t have proper access to water and medical and educational needs, much like how the zionists are doing to the palestinains. fundamentalist muslism hate everyone including other muslims, much how like fundamentalist jews hate everyone else, christians, arabs, and even other moderate jews (it was a jew who assasinated yitzak rabbin). let’s also not forget how israeli forces have bombed and killed thousands of women and children in palstine and lebanon because they refuse their right to exist. why should pakistan have a need to have any diplomatic ties with israel? what purpose will it serve them? none what so ever, every country has a right to choose who it is they speak with, u know kinda like how the U.S and israel refuse to talk to iran, or the democratically elected Hamas in palestine. israel openly talks about bombing other countries and has done so and now with the israeli version of the taliban taking over the government in israel, they openly talk about ethnic cleansing of the arabs. so who really is the extremist and terrorist?? i am including a link to a documentary which interviews many israeli jewish human rights workers exposing the truth for the crimes israel commits, perhaps you should find the truth about your own country before trying to tell someone else what to do.
http://www.occupation101.com
If Moses had turned right instead of left…
There’s an old joke that goes “If Moses had turned right instead of left when he led his people out of the Sinai desert - the Jews would have had the oil and the Arabs would have ended up with the oranges.”
The Land of Milk and Honey it might be – but over the years one major problem for Israel, a tiny strip of land on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, has been energy security.
Scarce natural resources and hostile relations with its oil-producing neighbours have condemned Israel to paying a high premium to keep energy supplies flowing.
But thats changing – somewhat – since the announcement in late January of a major natural gas discovery off the country’s Mediterranean coast.
The announcement didn’t make headlines at the time as Israel’s 22-day Gaza offensive was drawing to an end, overshadowing all other news.
But it is a headline find – and one that has driven big gains in the value of the companies involved in the projects.
According to Noble Energy, the company that led the exploration, the Tamar gas field 90km off the northern Israeli port of Haifa has up to 5 trillion cubic feet (142 billion cubic metres) of gas – dwarfing the capacity of Israel’s other gas field off the southern port at Ashkelon.
Top job in the new government? No thanks!
By Tova Cohen
Though it’s considered one of the top three cabinet posts in Israel’s government, in these troubled times there seems to be no takers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party for the job of finance minister, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
Netanyahu, who is in the process of putting together a government after last month’s general election, is seeking to give the finance post to someone in his own party, but senior members are reluctant to step into this “honey trap”, the country’s top selling daily reported.
“It’s not a secret that these days no one wants the Treasury,” the paper quoted a Likud member of parliament as saying. “Only a Shiite suicide (bomber) would take on this job. Everyone knows that Bibi ( Netanyahu) will rise or fall on the financial issues so who wants to get into this mess?”
A senior Likud member who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for finance minister was quoted as saying that if he took the post in these times, he would be a “marked man”.
Two senior Likud members expecting ministerial positions in the new government have served as finance minister – Dan Meridor and Silvan Shalom. But they both are said to prefer the defence ministry to avoid having to deal with a looming recession and the global financial crisis.
“I witnessed the deterioration stage after stage: overlooking abuse of detainees, against army orders. Overlooking shooting of unarmed Palestinian civilians by soldiers, against orders. Overlooking violations of the law by settlers, including armed raids on Palestinian villages. Repression of a civilian population with checkpoints, blockages, closures and curfew, following orders. The military ignoring degradations, mistreatment, and abuse of Palestinians at checkpoints, searches, and detentions. Opening fire on children who throw rocks, on workers, and on unarmed people, apparently following orders. Military operations, including pre-emptive liquidations, knowing in advance that innocent people would also be harmed.”
From Eitan Ronel’s letter to Moshe Ya’alon – January 2004
Full Letter:
I return my rank to you
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/924 2
“We can easily ignore their suffering, cut them from their food, water, electricity, and medicine, confiscate their land, demolish their crops and deny them egress — suffocate them, our voices stilled. Racism does not allow us to see Arabs as we see ourselves; that is why we rage when they do not fail from weakness but instead we find ourselves failing from strength. Yet, in our view it is we who are the only victims, vulnerable and scarred. All we have is the unnaturalness of our condition.
As an unconscious people, we have perhaps reached our nadir with many among us now calling for a redefinition of our ethics-the core of who we are — to incorporate the need to kill women and children if Jewish security required it. “New realities do indeed require new responses,” says the Rabbinical Council of America. Now, for us, violence is creation and peace is destruction.
From Sara Roy’s “A Jewish Plea”
http://www.jewishconscience.org/resource s/Sara+Roy+A+Jewish+Plea.pdf
Let’s hope these testimonies inspire other soldiers to speak out against the IDF’s immoral conduct. Perhaps some will even join those who are refusing to take part in an occupation they believe is threatening Israel’s moral character.