Investigate War Crimes Now, Says Israeli Newspaper
Jan 24th, 2009 | By Bock | Category: World, warWe cannot wait until the world has its say, and perhaps takes legal steps of its own.
So says Haaretz, one of Israel’s leading newspapers, calling for an immediate investigation into Israeli actions in Gaza.
The questions are plentiful and troubling: the mass killing of civilians, among them 300 children and 100 women; the shooting at medical crews; the use of illegal munitions against a civilian population, including white phosphorus shells; the prevention of the evacuation of wounded; bombing and shelling of schools, hospitals, supply convoys and a UN facility. These questions cannot remain unanswered.
As realisation within Israel dawns of what its military has done, calls are growing for an investigation.
I’m glad. It’s about time that the Israeli public was made to face the human facts of what their forces have inflicted on real human beings. The killings and amputations and destruction of lives.
Ordinary Israelis must see what has been done in their name. After all, there should be no nation on earth more conscious of this: it’s not good enough to pretend you didn’t know.
Even today, after the IDF has withdrawn, Israeli warships continue to shell the Gaza coastline, killing and crippling Gazan fishermen. Today, Palestinian children have been shot by recreational Israeli snipers.
Dear God. These Israelis are the same people who used rocket attacks to justify their slaughter in Gaza. While Israel was assaulting Gaza and murdering civilians, I was beset by their apologists trying to shout me down, but when they bombed the UN compound the propagandists went abruptly silent.
I don’t know about you, but I find their cynicism depressing. Clearly they regard the Palestinians as sub-human, untermenschen, just as another extremist ideology once regarded the Jews.
The spirit wearies at their lack of understanding.
I heard Barack hesitate last evening and then plough into Hamas, Bock.
Maybe George Mitchell can do some good.
I despair though, and think that when 6,000,001 have died, then maybe, the Israeli wound might heal.
The abomination that Israel has become makes me think of the vampire stories. The Nazi crimes against the Jews were so horrible that they seem to have created a state that is, in some ways, a born-again version of Hitler’s, just as Dracula’s innocent victims came back to life as new vampires.
What really scares me about Israel is its huge nuclear arsenal. No one acquires nuclear weapons without being willing to use them, and Israel has more than amply demonstrated that there are no limits to the violence and destruction it is willing to cause.
What can ordinary people like us do? Not much, but in my family we have never bought a single Israeli product since the massacres at the refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. Whenever I see Israeli avocados or other fruit in a supermarket, I give them a good hard squeeze and decide that they are not right for me. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
It’s not only their cynicism that is depressing. It’s the constant defensive sneers and smiles of their representatives when faced with questions from the media. (Correction: that is not depressing: it’s sickening, an outrage in the face of so many deaths.) The perception that is created from their actions, and their defence of them, is that this is a nation out of control. Their lack of compassion, however, shows a lack of intellect and of creativity. No creative-thinker or intellectual would be able to justify such actions unless he/she were a sociopath. The bright mind always ponders on the arguments of the other side and the effects of their own actions. Therein lies their downfall.
I continue to bypass their produce in the supermarket and to ask others to do so.
Not wise to compare the Israeli leaders to vampires though, Fintan. The Jewish people were represented as vampires long before now, long before the Holocaust. In the novel, Oliver Twist, Fagin was repeatedly referred to as one. They were a shamefully treated race of people, harrassed everywhere they went.
Such comparisons are unfair to the many Jewish people who are outraged against the actions and indifference of Israel.
I read recently a novel; “Suite Francaise” by Nena Nemirovsky, first published in France in 2004 I think, and translated from the french and published in english 2006. It is written in a fictionalised format and records the German invasion and occupation of France during the second world war. Included in the book, written during those terrible days, are Nenas notes along with some of her letters, letters written by her husband with responses from those he sought help from and and overriding it all, almost like a subplot, the failure of the Vichy government and the ability of the French population to turn a blind eye to the dilemma of the jews in their midst; permeates. During the Gaza massacre I was reading this incredible book and could only feel the true sadness of the lives disgarded in France in 1942 with the horror subsequently being carried forward by Nena’s decendants in 2008 and 2009.
-Unstranger
The french did more than just turn a blind eye. The Germans did very little to the jews in France, the Vichy government did it all for them. Of course there was the Resistance, and sure there were those too scared to object in case they shared their fate, but there was also an incredibly large amount of people who wanted to go along with it. The same people who pretended not to know what happened after the deportations, or claimed to be patriotic because they served Petain.
Wendy, I compared the Israeli leaders, not the Jewish people, to the Nazi thugs who perpetrated the Holocaust. I am well aware that there are many Israelis who find their government’s actions revolting, but their voice has been pretty well suppressed for the moment.
Also, my comparison was metaphorical, used only as an example of how the victim can become as bad as the victimiser. My point is not that the Jews are vampires or anything of the sort, but those who hold power in Israel have completely overdone their victimhood and should be judged by their actions today rather than be allowed to use what was done to Jews in the past as an excuse for inhuman actions.
I have no time for so-called holocaust deniers like David Irvine, but he is just a fool who persistently makes an idiot of himself and has no academic credibility. He will convert only the converted and anyway that holocaust is now history.
What really bothers me is that there are so many people who deny the holocaust of the Palestinian people that is happening NOW – and would try to silence any of us who utter even the faintest criticism of Israel and its murder machine.
Would I be considered one of those “propagandists”? I wonder why those who support your stand are not such just as much.
Some things just can’t be defended as justified. Still, I can only believe it was a tragic and terrible mistake. Those monstrous soldiers you speak about are no faceless people to me. They are my family, my friends, my colleagues, myself. Most of us serve in the army, and I’ve never met one person who would willfully kill innocent people.
Still, with such a high count of civilians killed, an investigation is called upon. But Nazis? holocaust? vampires? you people have simply lost all proportions. Where were you when hundreds of people were deliberately massacred by suicide bombers in the recent years? or when thousands of rockets were fired AIMING to kill hundreds more, killing only a dozen just because an early warning system sends people running to shelters on time? is attempted murder dismissed in your legal books?
Always one-sided, always black and white, no gray shades in your view of the middle east. Well, unfortunately it doesn’t work that way, and you won’t change anything, nor understand why a large part of the world (including in the Arab or even Palestinian world) doesn’t think as you do, by being so one-sided.
Ofer: “and I’ve never met one person who would willfully kill innocent people.”
Yeah, Ofer, the 300 Palestinian children who died in Gaza committed suicide as part of a cunning plot to make the Israelis look bad. And the Finnish Lutheran clinic that the Israeli zionazis bombed was really a rocket factory. Yes, yes, we believe you. Just as Hitler was utterly believable when he attacked Poland and declared. “Seit heute morgen um fünf Uhr wird zurückgeschossen!” (Since five o’clock this morning we’ve been shooting back!)
Please explain to us all why the Palestinians should meekly accept the arrival in their country of millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, etc., etc., who take the best land and most of the water resources, and all because they claim that God gave them the right to do so? Wouldn’t it just suit you all dandy if they just curled up and died?
What goes round comes round, you should remember that!
Ofer — Those faceless soldiers might well be your colleagues, your family and your friends.
But what are those 1300 faceless dead Palestinians to you?
Fintan,
No, they did not commit suicide. Are these the only two options – killed intentionally, or committed suicide? can you raise the level of debate or that’s the best you can?
Like I said, these were tragic wartime mistakes or unavoidable result of Hamas fighting from within the population. How about I say that the hundreds of Israeli civilians killed by suicide bombers are also a plot by the Mossad to make Hamas look bad? you really have a twisted form of logic.
The second part of your comment shows how much you don’t know the history of this conflict, then you go about talking about it. What do you mean by “accept”? they never ruled this land, whoever had to “accept” were the Ottomans or the British, and there was massive Muslim immigration at that period too. Why, if you insist on a history lesson, go further back, the jews were those exiled from this country at 70AD, after having ruled here for a continuous period of 1000 years. The name Palestine is derived from the biblical philistines, foreign invaders of Greek or Turkish origin, who settled in the Gaza area only before disappearing at ~600BC. And I guess you also don’t consider the 1947 UN partition plan a viable basis for the forming of Israel, do you? no, it would shatter your romantic perception of those poor poor palestinians, being robbed of their homeland of thousands of years.
Bock, they may well be my colleagues family and friends, but my point is I know these (meaning, our) people and they will not shoot at civilians. An army has orders and soldiers follow them strictly. Any such orders would make immediate headlines. They may have been mistaken, given bad intelligence etc., or even been careless, and for this they should be investigated and punished if needed, but this is not the case of ethnic cleansing, mass executions from close range etc., that people on your comments always compare to.
The Palestinian deads are far from faceless. You should see how much attention the Israeli press is giving to this issue, it really is a certain shock here too. The story of that Palestinian doctor whose 3 daughters were killed was on a 6 pages story in my weekend paper. It’s a sad sad thing, and you can all try and make it sound like Israelis are happy that innocent people are dead, it’s simply not so.
ofer; have you visited Gaza, since the “offensive” ended?
Ofer — It isn’t about whether the Israelis are happy or not. It’s about the slaughter that took place in Gaza.
You operate a gigantic open-air prison, and if you bomb it you know you will kill innocent civilians.
That’s a war-crime.
So is firebombing warehouses full of humanitarian supplies.
From the beginning, when I first started writing about this, I didn’t care if the Israelis were happy or not. I just wanted them to stop the slaughter, and they did not. Your leaders knew that hundreds of innocent civilians would be killed.
As has already been said here, the Hamas rockets had no military value. They managed to kill a dozen people in eight years, and for that you killed 1300 Palestinians in three weeks.
And still your warships shell Gaza from the sea just like Hamas with their rockets.
Nobody can claim they didn’t know.
Ofer. You say that the soldiers were just following orders..
Doesn’t that ring any bells from the past for Israelis?
The following by Shaw fits to what King’s Bard wrote: ‘When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty’.
And so does this one:
After the great destructions
Everyone will prove that he was innocent.
Günter Eich – “Think of This”, 1955
King’s Bard – no, unless you take it out of context. I wasn’t saying they were “just” following orders. By definition, soldiers follow orders in any army; that’s why if the orders were to kill civilians, that would make super headlines, also in Israel. So these were NOT the orders, and then you can go on reading from there. So these are nice quotes, Sean, but quite irrelevant. If you knew any Israelis, you would know that they are the most self-opinioned people, and the last thing they’ll do is blindly follow orders. This does not come to deny that people were killed, so spare me that line.
I wonder what are the chances for such reports to be read by you guys:
Hamas has ‘overwhelming responsibility’ for Gaza war: EU
If you’re really looking for war crimes, just wait for investigations to clear up, I’m sure HRW will conduct theirs, and hopefully there will be more concrete data later on. In the meantime, save your energy, or if you’re really that conscious, turn it to some real war crimes, like in Sri Lanka or Congo.
Ofer —
Firstly, this piece is not about the Congo or Sri Lanka. It’s about Gaza. Please don’t try to change the subject.
Secondly, it doesn’t matter what the nature of your enemy is. You were still wrong to blast your way through civilians to get at them. That was a crime.
[Note to everyone: if you include more than two links, your comment will automatically be held in moderation until released.]
Bock – not trying to change subject. I’m really just puzzled sometimes, truly not being cynical here, why it is that of all conflicts in the world, Israel is taking so much relative attention and energy in worldwide opinion, compared to other, often much worse conflicts. That also makes Israelis sometimes feel (rightly or not, all in the eye of the beholder) like they’re being handled in double standards. I’m curious as to what you and others think about it, just think for a minute. Would make an interesting separate post if you think it’s off-topic for this comment thread.
- is it because it’s the holy land for many believers?
- is it because there are jews involved (and in light of the holocaust etc etc)?
- is it because there is more media coverage?
- is it because there is an assumption of more leverage of public opinion in this case?
- is it because the situation (good guys, bad guys etc.) seems clearer?
- ??
I can’t speak for others who write about this, but in my case it’s because I choose to. If I had to explain the reasons for every post I write, I might as well stop doing this right now.
I suspect that some people are focussing on Gaza because they perceive the Israeli position to be hypocritical. All right-thinking people are appalled by the treatment of European Jews and yet they see Israel creating a ghetto all of its own. A ghetto which it routinely bombs in the name of security.
Ofer, you have killed 1300 people and maimed countless others. I don’t know how many you have crippled. And you have done this in response to rocket attacks that were, as I have already said, of no military significance. You have justified the attacks by telling us what Hamas wants to do to Israel. In other words, what Hamas is thinking.
If we bombed everyone who hates us the world would be in a constant state of war.
In a place like Gaza there is no such concept as collateral damage. When your military bombed and shelled this crowded place, you knew you would kill huge numbers of civilians, and that is what happened.
Furthermore, you continue to blockade Gaza, limiting supplies of basic necessities. You shell their coastline. You systematically destroyed their civilian infrastructure in the latest attack, which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
These Palestinians are the people who had nowhere left to run after you took their homes, and now you confine them behind your wall, where you bombard and starve them.
Why are you surprised that they fire rockets at you?
Stand back and look at what your country is doing.
Following the reaction on this post and those postings related to the ‘topic’ I notice that quite a few commenters tend to generalise and by talking at cross-purposes are missing the offered chance for a fruitful discussion.
Trying to explain: In case I am not getting Bock wrong this is not about THE Israelis and THE Palestinians. It’s about those on both (!) sides who would like to live in peace with their neighbours – and if they worshipped the head of a dead sardine -, and those on both (!) sides who would not let them.
Well, given everybody here agrees to this: What would you call people who’re killing people who want to live in peace? And what would be your reaction, when any (alleged) killer would claim to act both as his own prosecutor and judge?
Link to counterpunch article, “The attack on Zeev Sternhell”
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09302008.html
Recommend Sternhell’s book, “The Founding Myths of Israel”
It is a mistake to view israeli society as completely representative of Zionist rreaction.
There are fissures within Israel, which will split that country apart, under pressure of events to come. Just as there are fissures within Ireland.
Sean, I appreciate your attempt for a fruitful discussion, which is indeed difficult in this topic, but I think Bock IS talking about THE Israelis and THE Palestinians. In his view, and many others’, there is an historic injustice here, committed by the Israelis, which brings the whole thing into asymmetry – any step the Israelis take will never be measured in itself, but always in view of this supposed injustice. So even if there are people on one side (Israel) who just want to live in peace, it’s not good enough for Bock and others as long as this injustice exists. When you think about that, it’s quite a problematic argument as it encourages militant actions over diplomacy, but that’s a different story.
But regardless of that, people killing those who want to live at peace indeed exist on both sides (for the Palestinians don’t count just the rockets, count also the numerous suicide bomber attacks). If Israel chooses to investigate itself, that should not stop anyone else from investigating, like I said, I’m sure HRW will issue a report of their own, so why would you say anything negative about that (if I understood you correctly)?
Ofer — After great effort on my part, I’ve eventually figured out how to speak for myself. Thanks anyway.
I don’t believe you can draw any other conclusion from the actions of the Israeli state except that they wish to provoke terror reaction from Hamas. Given that the Zionist state was built on a mountain of lies, and it’s own filthy history is largely unknown by most Israeli citizens, the Zionists are continuously driven to create the ‘proof’ for their own lying claims.
For me this raises two questions:
The bankrupt terror methods of Hamas, and PLO before that, can only reinforce the Zionist myth that Israel reperesents the antithesis of the supposedly atavistsc states and peoples that surround it.
Hamas, PLO…(all the political groupings, who find themselves opposing Israel) use these bankrupt methods of terror because the only alternative they see is the pushing of Israel to the table for negotiation, for concessions.
And they have this outlook because for them(Hamas et al) the mass of the people are not an actor in the drama.
Rather the ‘People’ whom nationalists always claim to speak for (not lead, mind you) are a passive, amorphous entity that things can only happen to. The ‘People’ are never capable of taking the initiaitive, combining, engaging in a struggle with the reaction (and for a new future).
Hamas’ ideology is the other side of the same coin of the Zionists’ claim. Hamas say ‘No! Our people are good people. They are not savages!’
Both Hamas and Israel fear the masses mobilised. They fear above all politics!
You cannot understand what is happening in the Midddle East (for want of a better term) without studying the history of Zionism, Arab Nationalism, Nazism, counter-revolutionary Stalinism, American Imperilaism,…..
All these issues must be studied closely (and they have been). An understanding of war crimes in Gaza does not end in reveling what the IDF did – that is only the start of an understanding not the end. And you cannot defeat Zionism without knowing what it is.
(Apologies RE-posting above point. Initially posted in error before complete)
I don’t believe you can draw any other conclusion from the actions of the Israeli state except that they wish to provoke terror reaction from Hamas. Given that the Zionist state was built on a mountain of lies, and its own filthy history is largely unknown by most Israeli citizens, the Zionists are continuously driven to create the ‘proof’ for their own lying claims.
For me this raises two questions:
The bankrupt terror methods of Hamas, and PLO before that, can only reinforce the Zionist myth that Israel represents the antithesis of the supposedly atavistic states and peoples that surround it.
Hamas, PLO…(all the political groupings, who find themselves opposing Israel) use these bankrupt methods of terror because the only alternative they see is the pushing of Israel to the table for negotiation, for concessions.
And they have this outlook because for them (Hamas et al) the mass of the people are not an actor in the drama.
Rather the ‘People’ whom nationalists always claim to speak for (not lead, mind you) are a passive, amorphous entity that things can only happen to. The ‘People’ are never capable of taking the initiative, combining, engaging in a struggle with the reactionaries, and for a new futur).
Hamas’ ideology is the other side of the same coin of the Zionists’ claim. Hamas say ‘No! Our people are good people. They are not savages!’
Both Hamas and Israel fear the masses mobilized. They fear above all politics!
You cannot understand what is happening in the Midddle East (for want of a better term) without studying the history of Zionism, Arab Nationalism, Nazism, counter-revolutionary Stalinism, American Imperilaism,…..
All these issues must be studied closely (and they have been). An understanding of the war crimes in Gaza does not end in revealing what the IDF did – that is only the start of an understanding, not the end. You cannot defeat Zionism without knowing what it is.
So, for me this raises the second question. If nationalist (superficial) approaches to the struggle do not work (and they have not) then what is the struggle?
Is it enough to condemn Israeli atrocities? I put this question most seriously. Not as a petty attempt to score points.
The butchery of the IDF is, I believe, only a taste of what Imperialist and capitalist powers have on offer for us, as the economic crisis unfolds.