I have recently read several of my co-religionist’s pieces in the Standard Times, and would like to offer a different Jewish view on the siege of Gaza. Does the world unfairly fault Israel for protecting itself, as Irving Fradkin and Bob Feingold maintain? Are critics of Israel usually anti-Semites, as another recent article suggests? The answer to both of these questions is an emphatic “no.”

Before the siege of Gaza, Hamas and Israel had been exchanging rockets for months, both parties in violation of a truce. On November 4th Israel launched attacks in Gaza. On December 19th Hamas announced an end to the truce, and on December 27th Israel unleashed its tremendous military might on a population of 1.5 million locked into a space twice the size of Dartmouth. After the escalation of hostilities, 3 Israeli civilians were killed, 1500 Palestinians were killed – half of them children, and 10 Israeli Defense Force soldiers were killed, half by “friendly fire.” It was the reckless and disproportionate use of force on a civilian population that had nowhere to go, combined with the use of phosphorus bombs on civilians and other violations of international law that has so enraged the world and drawn the criticism of the UN and human rights organizations. In addition, there was indiscriminate bombing of infrastructure – sewage plants, first responders, medical facilities, UN food distribution centers, schools, and aid agencies. This was calculated to punish Palestinians for voting for Hamas, and for no strategic military reason.

Irving Fradkin suggests that what Israel did was simply what the United States would do if Mexico or Canada began bombing the US. A more apt analogy is: what would the United States do if the military wing of a Canadian political party began lobbing missiles into Detroit? Would we destroy most of Windsor, Ontario and the surrounding province, killing thousands and destroying half its infrastructure? I would like to think we would act swiftly, forcefully, but far more surgically than Israel did in either Gaza or Lebanon.

Those with longer memories than Mr. Fradkin will recall that, in 2002, Israel similarly destroyed the Palestinian government in Ramallah and brought about the demise of Fatah, the Palestinian political party it now wishes were in power. Israel now openly admits it is trying to do the same with Hamas. Although the U.S. and Israel have categorized Hamas as a “terrorist” organization, it actually has more in common with Sinn Fein than Al Qaida or Israel’s Irgun. For years Hamas has been running social services important to desperate Gazans, is involved in government, is constituted as a political party, and has generally been less corrupt than Fatah. Like it or not, Palestinians have some valid reasons to embrace Hamas. And, like it or not, Israel will have to talk to Hamas – just as it is now clear that the United States will have to start talking to Iran.

The issue of peace in Israel and Palestine is complicated by all sorts of emotional, religious, historical, and racial baggage. The only way this issue will ever be resolved is to look clearly at the reality of life for both Israelis and Palestinians. Israel/Palestine in 2009 is not biblical Israel. The Ottoman empire is gone. Israelis aren’t leaving, and they won’t be bombed. Palestinians aren’t leaving, and they’re not going to permit themselves to be herded into Indian reservations. Israel must admit and address the misery of Palestinians since the Nakba, and Palestinians and the wider Islamic world around it must acknowledge that the Israelis, too, had nowhere to go after the Shoah. But Israel holds more cards than the Palestinians, receives massive military aid from the United States, and has less motivation to compromise on the basic issues that have stymied a resolution. It will be up to Israeli voters in the next election to decide whether they want to reject a militaristic, go-it-alone strategy that we have abandoned here – or to finally engage in good-faith negotiations organized by a very different U.S. administration. I would urge everyone, especially American Jews, to pressure Israel and our own government to keep the fragile and heartbreaking realities of not only Israeli lives – but those of Palestinians too – in their minds and hearts.

This was published in the Standard Times on January 30, 2009
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20090130/opinion/901300324

Recent discussions of the war in Gaza have focused on rocket attacks, Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists, or that it is our only friend in the region. But Operation Cast Lead is not a war over the exchange of rockets. Despite Israel’s assertions, the massive civilian casualties in Gaza are well beyond anything required for self-defense. These deaths are in fact the costs of a calculated attempt to neutralize Hamas before elections in February.

Gaza has been described as the largest prison camp in the world. It is one-tenth the size of Rhode Island and houses 1.5 million stateless people, refugees and children of refugees from what became the Jewish state in 1948. Israel controls Gaza’s borders and hunger is endemic. Most Gazans are dependent upon the United Nations’ World Food program. Unemployment is about 45%. Gaza’s tunnels, while known primarily as conduits through which arms are smuggled, are also used for bringing in food and trading goods for Gaza’s underground economy. And that’s Gaza in times of relative calm.

Israel’s siege of Gaza has killed over 800 Palestinians, a third of whom are children. 1500 people have been wounded. What Israel categorizes as ‘militants’ are often just policemen or government employees. In addition to reckless bombing of schools, mosques, police stations, and apartment buildings, Israel has also targeted indisputably non-military infrastructure, including a sewage treatment facility. Two thirds of Gaza is without power and food supplies have been exhausted. Israel has barred doctors, food, aid agencies, and journalists from Gaza. There is now a massive humanitarian crisis.

Hamas and Israel have been exchanging rockets for months, previously with few casualties on both sides, so Israel’s urgency is political theater. Next month Israel holds elections (from which its Arab parties have been excluded). Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Kadima is talking as tough as the Likud. These two right wing parties officially refuse to talk to the elected Hamas government. Livni is openly critical of lame duck Ehud Olmert, who has urged concessions to Palestinians, including returning illegal settlements. Livni wants to create new “facts on the ground” – code for a political landscape without Hamas. While the United States has historically taken Israel’s side in peace negotiations and at the UN, Israeli politicians don’t quite know what to think of an incoming Obama administration open to at least talking to enemies. Anything brutal had better be done quickly in the waning days of the Bush administration.

Israeli hardliners seem to have learned nothing from their own experience in Lebanon in 2006 or from American misadventures with Neo-Conservatism. The slaughter of large numbers of civilians does not weaken support for militants living among them. In fact, it has the opposite effect. And Hamas has a political and social service dimension, as Sinn Fein had, which distinguishes it from terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or the Irgun. Hezbollah has not disappeared from Lebanon and neither will Hamas from Gaza. Whatever their negative views of Fatah, Palestinians recall the 2002 siege in Ramallah which removed Arafat from power and effectively destroyed Fatah and increased Hamas’ credibility. Operation Cast Lead has only produced a humanitarian disaster and sowed more anger on the Arab Street. If it truly wants peace in a Two State solution, Israel must instead address the issues of its future neighbors and try something new.

The solution to peace in Israel and Gaza is not the wholesale destruction of Palestinian government, infrastructure, and massive carnage, but long-term negotiations with Palestinian leaders. A new wind is blowing in Washington, and it will serve Israel’s interests better to abandon militarism and unilateralism before it damages its last remaining friendship.