What Other Country?
Max Blumenthal writes that, at a rally outside the Israeli UN Mission Jan. 11, "Sen. Chuck Schumer highlighted Israel's supposed humanitarian methods of warfare by pointing to its text messaging of certain Gaza Strip residents urging them to vacate their homes before Israeli forces bombed them. 'What other country would do that?'"
The U. S., for one. According to the National Museum of the U. S. Air Force, the U. S. dropped millions of leaflets over North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder of 1965-68, in which Americans flew over 300,000 sorties, dropping more than one-and-a-half times as many bombs as in the entire Pacific theater during all of WW II. Among other things, the leaflets "warned civilians to stay away from military installations." (You can buy a sample leaflet from eBay for a little more than $40, including postage.) In 2002-03, the U. S. also dropped such leaflets over Iraq during 2002-03.
Russia, for another, during the first Chechen war. Leaflets, that is, not text messages.
The insistence that Israel has the cleanest hands in history is a bit much--even if you believe that Israel's Gaza war is just (which I do not). Grievously, Hamas is not the only repository of holy war rhetoric in the Middle East. Consider this letter from the parents of an IDF soldier killed by friendly fire to the members of the tank crew who fired on the building where he was taking refuge:
"It was not you who hit Yoni!"Yoni died for the Sanctification of G-d's Name at the time that G-d decided his time on earth had reached its end. You were the pure angels who had to carry this out.
"We find comfort in the fact that your pure hands struck at him, and not the defiled hands of our wicked enemy - for Yoni could not have been felled by any impure hand."
The lack of understanding of some of our leaders is a bit surprising.
There was a comment on Nytimes online from a U.S. marine in response to the "what if rockets were coming from Tijuana" line. He said that we wouldn't attack the civilian population. That in fact morters and the like come from populated areas of Iraq right now and we don't respond with indiscriminate attacks. He was offended that U.S. leaders would suggest that our military would conduct itself like Israel under the same circumstances.
As for Israel's text messages, let's remember that the reason they have to warn civilians to get out of their homes, is that they're planning to DESTROY CIVILIAN HOMES.
January 13, 2009 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, there may be a few text messages sent out by the IDF, but that's for PR drill aimed at the West, not to save Palestinians. In deliberate "terror bombing", civilian population centers are targeted specifically to degrade and destroy the fabric of a social system. This was the original concept of strategic bombing theorized in and after World War I by Douhet, Mitchell and Trenchard:
If the Israelis make Gaza unlivable for the Palestinians, they will rise up and overthrow Hamas, and institute a regime more amenable to Israeli dominance.
Strategic bombing turned World War II into hell on earth. It's doctrines have dominated our war planning from Vietnam to Afghanistan. We live with it today, with intercontinental missiles tipped with nuclear weapons, still aimed at the heavens to fall on unspecified targets.
This especially curious, since strategic bombing - and all terror attacks on civilians - have never worked according to theory. Never, ever have promised results been achieved.
January 13, 2009 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The use of IDF terror against the Palestinians just convinces them that the Israelis are going to exterminate them anyway. It's the "I told you so" in capital letters.
This is the real spokesman for Zionism:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090113/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazaliebermanwwii
January 13, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you don't have either electricity, a computer, or a cell phone, being sent a text message makes no sense at all.
January 13, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Todd,
Over at the BBC, Jeremy Bowen raised the same objection, pointing out that for years Britons suffered painful bombings that indiscriminately killed British citizens, but that the military action taken against the IRA was not wholesale, all caveats about atrocities and illegality noted:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7826849.stm
Also, in a somewhat different but I think still relevant vein, even the most horrific Allied bombing during World War II was often mindful of ultimate goal of peace, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
Hiroshima was selected to demonstrate the power of the A-bomb only after American policymakers were persuaded that the Japanese would never forgive the destruction of their most beautiful city, and making a lasting peace might not be possible if Kyoto was treated that way.
January 13, 2009 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dresden.
January 15, 2009 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Meaning....?
January 15, 2009 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Aren't you at all familiar to the total and intentional destruction of Dresden by massive US firebombing during WW2?
January 15, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Read and be educated.
www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm
January 15, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I shouldn't have said the BBC article raises the same objection, but a similar one regarding whether Israel's behavior in this war is comparable to other countries', as Israel claims.
January 13, 2009 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gitlin says:
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The insistence that Israel has the cleanest hands in history is a bit much--even if you believe that Israel's Gaza war is just (which I do not)
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Oh dear, Gitlin says the war is "not just". Yep, we here in Isfrael are all losing sleep over the fact that one professor filled with Jewish angst/guilt doesn't support us. Well, what do you expect, he, like MJ, doesn't live in Sederot. He can tell us here to suffer the rocket attacks so that he can "feel good about himself". He was, no doubt, a supporter of brining Arafat and his terror gangs to Israel, no doubt on the grounds that he was the "legitimate" leader of the Palestinian people. He, like MJ, didn't care that Arafat's gangs instituted a reign of corruption and terror that destroyed Palestinian society and lead to the HAMAS take-over of Gaza. These guys don't care about Israel or the Palestinians, they simply want their credentials among the "progressive" crowd to look good. To hell with everybody else.
January 14, 2009 1:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here is the true face of HAMAS and what they really think about Jews and Israel. Prepare yourself, it is not the fantasies that the "progressives" here at TPM think is the truth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/opinion/14goldberg-1.html?_r=1
January 14, 2009 3:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding the comments of the bereaved father that you view as an example of "religious extremism" (why, I don't know), I am reminded of the scene in the movie "The Longest Day" about D-Day, which is based on true stories, where a British Paratrooper is helping a Catholic Chaplain who joined the paratroopers look for his communion set which had fallen in a pond or river. Both men keep dunking until they come up with it. The Padre thanks the soldier and then says "Let's now go do G-d's work". Would you consider that "fanaticism" too, viewing it as a religious duty to fight the Germans?
It is because of faith like that of the bereaved father that Judaism has survived for centuries in the most hostile environments. Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, Gitlin, maybe all you carry around is Jewish guilt and angst and maybe you believe the best thing to happen would be for the Jews to assimilate and disappear, but those Jews who do have it believe that they are trying to bring an important message to humanity and they will keep working at it in spite of the efforts of those like HAMAS and their death cult who, want to destroy it.
January 14, 2009 4:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Speaking for myself,yes.
Throughout the Holocaust the German churches were crowded on Sundays. Including no doubt with concentration camp guards who left to do what, if asked, they would have said they considered God's work.
At least that's the inference I drew from my one- time friendship with a German of that generation.
I recognize that you feel intensely. As I did here after 9/11. But neither then nor since have I believed we were doing God's work in attempting to defeat Obama Bin Laden. On the contrary I'm pretty sure that ,like you, OBL thinks God wants him to prevail.
In defending your Gaza position you weaken your argument by claiming God is on your side. If only because you seem high handed in instructing others on with whom their God must side in this particular War.
Stay well.
January 14, 2009 8:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
This isn't about protecting Israelis in Sederot or beleaguered Arabs trying to exact revenge or attract attention for being impoverished. It's about two political parties who are in dire straits using the only means they know that has proved effective to shore up their viability with their constituents.
January 14, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed. To paraphrase the last Yitzhak Rabin, the conflict is no longer between Arab/Palestinian and Jew/Israeli; but rather between those who desire peace and those who can't live without war.
January 14, 2009 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
You should just remember that it is Yitzhak Rabin's proteges in the 'peace camp' that are running this war. The "Right", Likud, settlers, Orthodox/religious are in the opposition. So your paraphrase is incorrect.
January 15, 2009 12:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
No it's not, because Hamas is included among those who can't live without war. Hamas is all about sustaining a seething resentment until Israel disappears; just as Gush Emunim and the Yesha Councils are all about sustaining a seething resentment until Palestinians disappear. What Israelis and Palesinians have in common is a crisis of leadership.
January 15, 2009 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink