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Teaching a Lesson
Actually, we see what you see at times like this, images transformed into (momentary) icons, the continuous loop of 24-hour news: Gazan teens, shocked and fascinated, milling around smoking buildings; Gazan men, mobilized, pulling an unconscious man from the back seat of a car, too many frantic hands loading him onto a stretcher; grimy bodies in the rubble, a mourner kissing something. Then, the other side, our side, an apartment block where ambulances, lights flashing, had carried away a victim of a missile; the hole in the wall of a living room, the pictures above it strangely undisturbed.
But above the images, we hear commentators you probably do not hear: laconic former generals, mainly, speaking in measured, rationale sentences; not bullies or even mean men, not fanatics, war-weary, proud of their lives; the people we really do rely on to train our youth and keep us safe, now pundits with a special authority. They speak about the need to "fundamentally change the character of the south," to attack "terrorist infrastructure," to show that the "lives of Israelis are not cheap," and that the citizens of the south, who have suffered "for seven years," cannot expect their state to turn them into hefker, in effect, treat them like abandoned property. Hamas will "now think twice," they say, and that is the point. The attack will "lower their motivation."
AND YET THIS time, other journalists, even one TV anchor, are still asking questions. What are the end goals, they ask, echoing the Winograd Report? What will change once the guns fall silent? Didn't politicians all rally to the government in 2006 too only to see that getting into punitive raids is not as hard as getting out? There are other implied questions, tactless to raise just now on television, but there between the lines.
Didn't the first two days of the Lebanon retaliation seem a tactical success, too? And yet if the missiles keep coming, who has won? Then again, how can the missiles stop coming without a ground invasion? And if there is a ground invasion, how can Gaza be held without recreating the deathtrap Israeli soldiers were in before 2005 ?
And if the missiles stop because of a cease-fire, which depends on a new negotiation and Hamas restraint, why was there not a negotiation in the first place? Did Hamas need to be taught a lesson, of all things, that Israel is powerful and ruthless, or is this the lesson Hamas is trying to teach everybody else?
While we're on the subject, did Hamas, alone, break the last cease-fire or did Israel break it, too, by refusing to apply it to the West Bank, closing the border and trying to starve the regime? Is it necessary to isolate Hamas, if this is the price--would it not be better to isolate Hamas in a sea of hope generated by a peace deal with Fatah? Did not Fatah people, and Irgun people, for that matter, engage in terror? If terror means killing categories of people at random to make a political point, whose hands are clean?
What is Hamas infrastructure if not the ambient support of the population? Doesn't this attack make support stronger in the long run? Can any ground operation hope to topple the regime? What will stop the attack if not world opinion, that will not think about missiles on Shderot, but a "disproportionate response" to missiles on Shderot? Come to think of it, will they not think about Gaza under siege and what brought the place to desperate poverty? How will West Bankers react when they see Hamas standing up and dying while they feel the settlements growing around them?
And how will Egyptians react? And Jordanians? And Israeli Arabs, who are spontaneously demonstrating against the attack? And the Intel board, whose $4.5 billion dollar fab is in range? How do we build a future with Palestine when we are seen through a prism of vendetta? Will not the families and widening circles around the dead hate you forever? Do not terrorists come manily from the ranks of youth who are ashamed to have survived? Was there not another way all along, which we cannot see now?
OUR GENERALS DO not address these questions. That is not their job. They speak instead about the need for hasbara, literally "explanation," public relations, those critical soft skills the people in the Foreign Ministry are supposed to have, but judging from the world's reaction seem not to have in abundance, at least, not to compare with the competence of generals, proven once again.
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It is time to laugh at the stupidity of Palestinians. All this because they refuse to acknowledge reality. They are literally to dumb to live and obviously must be treated like the children they are.
Any compassion I had has been washed away by the idiocy of entitlement by incitement.
December 28, 2008 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
shooter242 - You state "Any compassion I had has been washed away by the idiocy of entitlement by incitement." My grandfather was Irgun and particpated in the killing of British soldiers as well as innocent arabs - all with the idea of resistence and incitement. The goal was a Jewish state and to make the Brits wash their hands of the place. Mission accomplished.
Yet for the period 1967 to 1987 when Palestinians demonstrated peacefully for something more than statelessness, Israel and the outside world ignored them. Without the ruckus caused by Jews in Israel during the 30's and 40's maybe the same thing would have happened to us. The Palestinains, like any other peoples, learn from the actions of others.
December 28, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry but that makes as little sense as anything else I've read here. Did the Brits have a historical tie to the region? No. It was in their best interest to leave, unlike the Israelis.
My personal frustration is that continuing the feud is more important to all the parties involved than peace. It's irrational and religious in nature. It's just stupid. Everyone there insists that dying is worth more than living. To me that's beyond stupid.
December 28, 2008 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your statement is repulsive and you are no better than a war criminal.
December 28, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
How will West Bankers react when they see Hamas standing up and dying while they feel the settlements growing around them?
I think this is one of the most interesting question in a long list of good questions, Bernard. The Israeli calculation seems to be that this strike will change the game by showing Gazans and other Palestinians that Hamas can't protect them, or even protect their own leaders. Perhaps they hope this will elevate the stature of Fatah.
But Palestinians already know that Fatah can't protect them from being colonized, and having the last scraps of their country stolen out from under their feet. Unless the diminishing of Hamas is accompanied by any moves that would give the Palestinians hope that their people in the West Bank will actually be able to succeed in getting the Israeli colonists out of the West Bank, I don't see how the game is changed.
December 28, 2008 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. Avishai:
Thank you for attempting to paint an inclusive picture and for posing questions I confess to be unable to answer. I still wait, with deep respect to people like you, for an answer to a simple question, one that is intermingled with the need for aggressive peace efforts led by President Obama, and that is what were Israel's alternatives at this point? Is it naive to ask how Israel could allow continued shelling of its civilian centers in the Negev and up to Ashdod? I don't pretend to know the answer. But I read the thoughts of others who I take seriously, and that is all I am able to do from this armchair. At this point I leave the soapbox pontificating to other masters of the universe.
Bruce
December 29, 2008 8:12 AM | Reply | Permalink