I AM A JEW (PART VII - A Defense of Israel’s Policies and a Rebuttal)

As the title shows this is the seventh part (actually the 8^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)," "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)," "I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)" and "I AM A JEW (PART VI - The Palestinians)."

As the reader is well aware by now, I am very critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. However, I do want to give some space toward the opposite viewpoint, though, obviously, not equal space. My problem with the arguments defending Israeli policy is that the bulk of those come from the Right Wing media, and I call attention to those who consider themselves liberals, or progressives, which is the more popular term these days, that they frequently circulate articles from sources that they would never rely on for any other purpose.

However, there is one voice that is unquestionably progressive and yet a staunch defender of Israeli policies and that is Alan Dershowitz. Wikipedia describes him as “A political liberal."

In his article, which appeared in the Jerusalem Post dated July 7, 2014 entitled The current conflict between Israel and Hamas shatters myths (Those who want to read the article in full can find it here.), he makes a number of arguments or what he calls myths.

Myth 1: The primary cause of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s settlement policy.

He then goes on to rebut this hypothesis. This, it seems to me is setting up a straw man for I am not aware that this has been put forth as the casus belli for the recent conflict in Gaza. Instead, as I have pointed out, the cause for the rocket attacks form Gaza were triggered by Israel’s rounding up and imprisoning without trial 500 members of Hamas in response to the murder of three teenage Israelis by members of Hamas, without the approval, or even knowledge, of the Hamas leadership. (Emphasis added.)

He argues that the attacks from Gaza on Israel:

...are incited by the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Syria and others opposed to the very concept of the nationstate for the Jewish people. The best proof of this reality is that these attacks began as soon as Israel ended its occupation of Gaza and uprooted all the civilian settlements from that area. Israel left behind agricultural hothouses and other equipment that the residents of Gaza could have used to build a decent society.

This is a damming charge. For it puts forth that Gaza had been given its full freedom to govern itself and to build a prosperous economy and it rewards Israel with attacks upon it. What are the facts?

According to the Washington Post:  

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the withdrawal was to increase security of residents of Israel, relieve pressure on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, claims that the withdrawal is the result of violent Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. (Emphasis added)

But what about Dershowitz’s charge?:

… that these attacks began as soon as Israel ended its occupation of Gaza…(and) left behind agricultural hothouses and other equipment that the residents of Gaza could have used to build a decent society.

Here we must look to Peter Beinart, another Jewish liberal. In his article Gaza myths and Facts (I urge you to read the article in full) he writes:

If you’ve been anywhere near the American Jewish community over the past few weeks, you’ve heard the following morality tale: Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005, hoping the newly independent country would become the Singapore of the Middle East. Instead, Hamas seized power, ransacked greenhouses, threw its opponents off rooftops and began launching thousands of rockets at Israel.

… But at no point did Gaza become its own country. Had Gaza become its own country, it would have gained control over its borders. It never did. As the Israeli human rights group Gisha has detailed, even before the election of Hamas, Israel controlled whether Gazans could enter or exit the Strip (In conjunction with Egypt, which controlled the Rafah checkpoint in Gaza's south). Israel controlled the population registry through which Gazans were issued identification cards. Upon evacuating its settlers and soldiers from Gaza, Israel even created a security perimeter inside the Strip from which Gazans were barred from entry. (Unfortunately for Gazans, this perimeter included some of the Strip’s best farmland). (Emphasis added.)

He adds: 

Pro-Israel” commentators claim Israel had legitimate security reasons for all this. But that concedes the point. A necessary occupation is still an occupation. That’s why it’s silly to analogize Hamas’ rockets—repugnant as they are—to Mexico or Canada attacking the United States. The United States is not occupying Mexico or Canada. Israel — according to the United States government has been occupying Gaza without interruption since 1967.

He goes on to point out: 

To grasp the perversity of using Gaza as an explanation for why Israel can’t risk a Palestinian state, it helps to realize that Sharon withdrew Gaza’s settlers in large measure because he didn’t want a Palestinian state.

Now when we look to Dershowitz’s allegations such as: 

…these attacks began as soon as Israel ended its occupation of Gaza…

Beinart corrects the record by pointing out:

…militants in Gaza didn’t start launching rockets at Israel after the settlers left. They began a half-decade earlier, at the start of the second intifada. The Gaza disengagement did not stop this rocket fire. But it did not cause it either.

Returning to Dershowitz’s allegations: 

Moreover, there was no siege of Gaza at that time. Gaza was free to become a Singapore on the Mediterranean. Instead, Hamas engaged in a coup d’état, murdering many members of the PA, seizing control of all of Gaza, and turning it into a militant theocracy. It used the material left behind by the Israelis not to feed its citizens but to build rockets with which to attack Israeli civilians. It was only after these rocket attacks that Israel began a siege of Gaza designed to prevent the importation of rockets and material used to build terrorist kidnap tunnels. 

I have already addressed the claim that there was no siege of Gaza at the time above. There was! As to the claim that “Hamas engaged in a coup d’état” Beinart points out: 

But Hamas didn’t seize power. It won an election. In January 2006, four months after the last settlers left, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem chose representatives to the Palestinian Authority’s parliament. (The previous year, they had separately elected Abbas to be the Palestinian Authority’s President). Hamas won a plurality of the vote - forty-five percent - but because of the PA’s voting system, and Fatah’s idiotic decision to run more than one candidate in several districts, Hamas garnered 58 percent of the seats in parliament.

Beinart goes on to say:

So yes, members of Hamas did throw their Fatah opponents off rooftops. Some of that may have been payback because Dahlan was widely believed to have overseen the torture of Hamas members in the 1990s. Regardless, in winning the battle for Gaza, Hamas—which had already shed much Israeli blood - shed Palestinian blood too. But to suggest that Hamas “seized power” - as American Jewish leaders often do - ignores the fact that Hamas’ brutal takeover occurred in response to an attempted Fatah coup backed by the United States and Israel. In the words of David Wurmser, who resigned as Dick Cheney’s Middle East advisor a month after Hamas’ takeover, “what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.”

As for the greenhouses Beinart writes:

Israel responded to Hamas’ election victory by further restricting access in and out of Gaza. As it happens, these restrictions played a key role in explaining why Gaza’s greenhouses did not help it become Singapore. American Jewish leaders usually tell the story this way: When the settlers left, Israel handed over their greenhouses to the Palestinians, hoping they would use them to create jobs. Instead, Palestinians tore them down in an anti-Jewish rage.

But one person who does not endorse that narrative is the prime mover behind the greenhouse deal, Australian-Jewish businessman James Wolfensohn, who served as the Quartet’s Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement. In his memoir, Wolfensohn notes that “some damage was done to the greenhouses [as the result of post-disengagement looting] but they came through essentially intact” and were subsequently guarded by Palestinian Authority police. What really doomed the greenhouse initiative, Wolfensohn argues, were Israeli restrictions on Gazan exports. “In early December [2005], he writes, “the much-awaited first harvest of quality cash crops—strawberries, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers and flowers—began. These crops were intended for export via Israel for Europe. But their success relied upon the Karni crossing [between Gaza and Israel], which, beginning in mid-January 2006, was closed more than not. The Palestine Economic Development Corporation, which was managing the greenhouses taken over from the settlers, said that it was experiencing losses in excess of $120,000 per day…It was excruciating.

Facts, facts, facts;. They do get in the way of our pre-conceptions. But if we are to objectively analyze a problem, a conflict, or find a solution, we must start with the facts, and Beinart sets them forth without distortion and without bias.

I am only excerpting Beinart’s analysis here, but those who really want to see what the facts are should read both Dershowitz’s article and Beinart’s in full.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete. 

I AM A JEW (PART VI - The Palestinians)

As the title shows this is the sixth part (actually the seventh, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all, a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)," "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)" and "I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)."

After I published my commentary I AM A JEW (Part III) one of my subscribers wrote:

I have been reading your I AM A JEW commentaries with interest.  I agree with a lot of what you say, but not all. I think that from the end of WWI to 1948, there were fundamental errors on both sides. The Zionist error is encapsulated in the slogan “A land without people for a people without land.”  The land was not without people, and had the early settlers made a proper effort they might have avoided some of the hostility, which came later.  On the Arab side, I think that the anti-Jewish riots early on were unjustified, and the source of a lot of what came later, but the basic failure on the Arab or Palestinian side was to total failure to create any kind of civil society during the mandate period, which continued after 1948.  The Jews were not smart enough to realize that they had to get along with the Arabs; the Arabs were not smart enough to realize that the Jews were building a structure, which could become a state, while they were building nothing which could become a state on their side.

 In any case, on the land annexation, which your latest piece is about, it is so clear that this is intended to prevent the PLO from regaining any control in Gaza, engineered by Israeli who want to have a terrorist organization, and not a government, as the enemy.

 Anyway, I know that you like to know that your stuff is being read.  It is.  However, my comments are not for attribution.

This fascinated me. I had never heard the slogan: “A land without people for a people without land.” And so as is my wont I researched it. It appears that it has a long history and those who are interested can read it here.

Suffice it to say it did not originate with Jewish Zionists and according to the Middle East Quarterly:

The earliest published use of the phrase appears to have been by Church of Scotland clergyman Alexander Keith in his 1843 book The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

The article goes on to say:

Nineteenth-century Westerners associated peoples or nations with territory, and so to be a land without a people did not imply that the land was without people, only that it was without a national political character.

And so we come to its modern reincarnation as set forth by one of my subscribers, Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia, who in reviewing the book, “The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood” on amazon.com wrote that the author omitted the fact that:

Palestinians had no identity in 1948 distinct from the Arabs living to the north and the east.

This sounds a lot like a re-incarnation, in slightly different form, from the old canard, “A land without people for a people without land.” But, of course Nekimken did not invent even the modern concept. In 1969 Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir asserted: 

[T]he Arabs of Palestine have no language, religion or general culture that distinguishes them significantly from the Arabs of Jordan, Syria (where some factions still claim Palestine as part of "Greater Syria") or other neighboring Arab states.

Aside from the fact that this is no longer true – no Arab state any longer makes any claim on the West Bank of Palestine or the Gaza strip – it is totally irrelevant.

The fact is that that the land we call Palestine has been occupied by Muslims since at least 640 CE when the land fell to invading Muslim forces. See here, or to set forth more recent history, I quote from Wikipedia:

Historically known as the site of the ancient Jewish Kingdom of Israel and successor Jewish nations for 1,200 years between approximately 1100 BC–100 AD, the region now had a large Arab population also from the 7th century. When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed an independent state in Damascus, but were too weak, militarily and economically, to resist the European powers for long, and Britain and France soon established control and re-arranged the Middle East to suit themselves.[11]

Syria became a French protectorate thinly disguised as a League of Nations mandate. The Christian coastal areas were split off to become Lebanon, another French protectorate. Iraq and Palestine became British mandated territories. Iraq became the "Kingdom of Iraq" and one of Sharif Hussein's sons, Faisal, was installed as the King of Iraq. Iraq incorporated large populations of Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmens, many of whom had been promised independent states of their own.

Palestine became the "British Mandate of Palestine" and was split in half. The eastern half of Palestine became the "Emirate of Transjordan" to provide a throne for another of Husayn's sons, Abdullah. The western half of Palestine was placed under direct British administration. The Jewish population of Palestine which numbered less than 8 percent in 1918 was given free rein to immigrate, buy land from absentee landlords, set up a shadow government in waiting and establish the nucleus of a state under the protection of the British Army which suppressed a Palestinian revolt in 1936.[12] Most of the Arabian peninsula fell to another British ally, Ibn Saud. Saud created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Syria and Egypt made moves towards independence. In 1919, Saad Zaghloul orchestrated mass demonstrations in Egypt known as the First Revolution. While Zaghloul would later become Prime Minister, the British repression of the anticolonial riots led to the death of some 800 people. In 1920, Syrian forces were defeated by the French in the Battle of Maysalun and Iraqi forces were defeated by the British when they revolted. In 1922, the (nominally) independent Kingdom of Egypt was created following the British government's issuance of the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence.

We cannot make people disappear by whether or not they have a national identity. None of the people who inhabited the American colonies had a national identity, aside from being British subjects. This was true throughout the world. In Africa, the native population was, and to a large extent still is, tribal. The national boundaries were drawn by the colonial powers. That does not make them disappear, or gives them any less right to aspire to their own national identity, or to be entitled to it. People who live in Palestine are Palestinians, and no amount of sophistry can change that.

Slogans can sometimes be useful. More often than not they are totally misleading.

As I have set forth, the Arabs of Palestine have lived there since at least 640 CE, whereas Jews have not lived in Palestine until 1882 when the concept of “Aliyah” came into vogue.

The claim to the lands of Palestine on the basis of ancient Israel that existed before 9th century BCE is an absurdity. We might as well argue for a return of the Holy Roman Empire. The legitimate claims of the Jewish people to a homeland do not arise from ancient history. They arise from the modern need for a homeland for a persecuted people, who have lived in the diaspora for centuries, and whose suffering has made the need for a national home, where they would always be welcome, a pressing and just cause.

That it had to come at the expense of other people is one of the unfortunate realities of life. But this should not be compounded by turning those dispossessed into pariahs without rights, and whose own aspirations to a homeland have an equal claim on the justice of the world.

The Jewish diaspora, has been displaced by the Palestinian diaspora, where Palestinians now live in refugee camps for generations having been displaced, expropriated, and denied citizenship in the lands of their birth, and even in the lands where they now reside.

It is easy for those who have displaced them to say that their Arab hosts should give them new homes, new rights of citizenship, and the opportunity to make new lives for themselves. But the responsibility for these people lies first and foremost upon those who have displaced them.

It is not possible for these displaced people and their descendants to return to their homes in Israel without destroying the very purpose for the creation of the State of Israel, i.e. as a Jewish homeland where Jews would always be welcome, but it is possible, and justice demands it, that they be allowed to return to any of the occupied territories of their choice, as full citizens of their own national sovereign state, and that those who cannot have their property rights restored, because their ancient homes lie in what is now Israel, be fully compensated.

Their rights are no less than the rights of Jews whose property was expropriated by the Nazis, and who have rightly demanded a return of that property or appropriate compensation.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)

As the title shows this is the fifth part of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)" and "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)."

And so I refer back to Part I of the series where I wrote in its seventh paragraph:

Every time I see some prominent person, who I never knew was Jewish, described as Jewish I swell with pride. Sometimes I exclaim, “Is everybody Jewish?” Most recently I felt that way when Lauren Bacall died. I never knew she too was Jewish.

I come back to that paragraph because Joan Rivers died recently, and I found out as a result that she too was Jewish as was set forth in the New York Times obituary.

But what also strikes me as I find out that these prominent people were Jewish is that they never seem to have Jewish names. That is because they hardly ever used their real names, which did sound Jewish. According to ABC News:

Joan Rivers Was Not Her Given Name: The comedian was born Joan Molinsky, but at the behest of her agent, Tony Rivers, she adopted a stage name. On a whim, she chose "Joan Rivers," just because it felt right. (and of course it didn’t sound Jewish)

Ditto for Lauren Bacall who I mentioned in Part I of this series. She too changed her name to avoid it being obvious that they were born Jewish. As biography.com advises us:

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924 to a working-class family in New York City. Her father, William, was an alcoholic who left the family when Bacall was six; Bacall and her mother later changed their last name to her grandmother's maiden name, Bacal, and added the second "l."

There were so many others who changed their names to hide their Jewishness. See here. Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky, Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler and Mike Wallace’s family's surname was originally Wallik. The famed conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, while born as Thomas, is the grandson of noted Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan.

I could go on and on, but the importance of this is that they changed their names because of the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the U.S.A.

Jews know a lot about the treatment of peoples because of their ethnicity. 

That is one reason why I am so appalled about the treatment of Palestinians by the Jewish state, Israel, and even more appalled at its attempt to avoid criticism by calling all criticism of its apartheid policies by non-Jews as anti-Semitism and by Jews as self hatred. I use the term ‘apartheid policies” knowing full well that Jimmy Carter was subjected to great abuse for using that term in relation to Israel’s policies. But the term, I have concluded is appropriate. 

Let me assure my readers that I, the author of these articles on Israel, am neither an anti-Semite nor a self-hating Jew. 

But the policies of Israel, which have very cleverly been covered up, are appalling.

I have written about some of the abuses, but I never realized just how bad they were until I started the research for this series.

Let me say at the outset that I am not naïve about Hamas. Their charter makes for very disturbing reading. See here. My biggest objection to Hamas is not that they have the avowed desire never to recognize Israel, because in my view that is nothing more than a bargaining position. They, I believe, will recognize Israel when Israel recognizes a Palestinian state within a viable and contiguous landmass. It is their fundamentalist views that give me pause. I have difficulty with the fundamentalist views of that segment of American Christianity, (which I might add are the strongest supporters of Israel) which holds fundamentalist views, and those of the fundamentalist Muslims scare me even more. 

Here is what the charter of Hamas says about the P.L.O.:

…the PLO has adopted the idea of a Secular State, and so we think of it. Secular thought is diametrically opposed to religious thought. Thought is the basis for positions, for modes of conduct and for resolutions. Therefore, in spite of our appreciation for the PLO and its possible transformation in the future, and despite the fact that we do not denigrate its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we cannot substitute it for the Islamic nature of Palestine by adopting secular thought.

But to me that is the more reason to strengthen the P.L.O., and what better way to strengthen it then to successfully bring a free Palestine into being under the auspices of the P.L.O.

But I am digressing from the main topic of this commentary, which is that:

                                      Gaza Is A Huge Prison.

This was brought home to me by an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that appeared under the headline: Gazans demand right of passage to West Bank See here*: 

I cannot improve upon the language of the article and accordingly quote a portion:

Of the 1.8 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, only a few thousand are permitted to apply for an Israeli exit permit allowing them to leave Gaza through the Erez checkpoint. If their declared destination is the West Bank, they are also required to get a sort of Israeli “tourist visa” for the West Bank. The situation is similar to that of a resident of Yeruham or Arad being permitted to visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem only if he’s obtained a special internal visa. The permit has been dubbed the “checkpoints visa” – and is shown to soldiers so they do not order the Gazan ID-holder’s deportation to Gaza….

And quoting from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories:

As of November 2007, any resident of Gaza who is in the West Bank must hold a ‘permit to stay in Judea and Samaria,’ and the permit is intended for that purpose only.

And continuing to quote from the Haaretz article:

The visa for Gazans visiting the West Bank is yet another logical step in the bureaucratic evolution of restrictions on movement that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.

Here are a few of the major chapters in this campaign: Since 2005 (“disengagement”), there has been a sharp decline in the number of Palestinians, as well as in the categories of Palestinians, whom Israel permits to leave Gaza via the Erez checkpoint for the West Bank.

Since the early 2000s, Gazans in the West Bank whose date of return in their permit to cross Israel has expired have been declared “illegal visitors” in the West Bank. Since 1997, residents of the Gaza Strip have been forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge crossing. Since the early 1990s, Palestinians have only been permitted to leave the Gaza Strip (or the West Bank) with an Israeli permit (a restriction that did not exist in the 1970s and 1980s).

Let me say that I was shocked when I read this, and I hope that readers of this post will, I trust, be equally shocked.

I was, of course aware that Israel had a blockade of Gaza that prevented all supplies to be imported into Gaza including construction materials, foodstuffs, etc. It was the cause of the rift between Turkey and Israel. Before then Turkey had widely been described as being Israel’s closest friend in the Muslim world. NPR put it this way:

Just four years ago, Turkey was considered one of Israel's closest allies in the region. The two countries staged regular joint military training exercises and had an open line of communication among the various divisions of their armed forces.

But after Turkey tried to bring needed foodstuff into Gaza and I quote again from the NPR article:

The Turkish-registered ship Marmara was the target of the Israeli commando raid that left nine people dead and dozens more wounded. Eight of those killed were Turkish nationals; a ninth had dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship. Fury over their deaths has led to the biggest crisis in Israeli-Turkey relations in years. (Ibid) 

But the blockade doesn’t just stop imports, making Gaza entirely dependent on Israel for its needs, it blocks even Gazan fisherman, from going far enough out from their shores to allow for fishing in the most productive areas. After the recent end of hostilities between Israel and Gaza, Gaza won some concessions from Israel on this point, or as Newsweek put it:

Some of the biggest cheer was among Gaza's fishermen, who were able to sail six miles offshore to cast their nets rather than the usual three, even as Israeli patrol boats kept watch, allowing them to return with full catches.

I understand perfectly well that Israel defends all these measures as necessary for its security, but security cannot justify collective punishment, including children, nor the mass deprivation of the most basic human rights to people of another ethnicity and religion.

I have a lot more to write on this subject and I ask the reader to be patient. The subject is worth my time and, I believe, the reader’s as well.

*For those who may try to access the Haaretz articles and find themselves blocked because they are not subscribers, I suggest putting the headline into Google. This usually brings the article up in full without regard to any subscription. But if it doesn’t work, I will supply a copy of the article upon request.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)

In Exodus 18-24 of the Torah (The Old Testament) it says an: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot…” “עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן שֵׁן תַּחַת שֵׁן יָד תַּחַת יָד רֶגֶל תַּחַת רָגֶל:” See here.

But the Talmud (A learned interpretation of the Torah by Rabbis in the years following) in Ketuvot 32b and Bava Kamma 83b interprets "an eye for an eye" as meaning that someone who damages an eye must pay the value of that eye. “An eye's worth for an eye”.

But it appears that the Israeli policy is and has been for a long time, not only an eye for an eye, but multiple eyes for an eye.

Let us understand both the long and short-term genesis of the conflict that has at least temporarily come to an end.

On July 31, 2014 ABC News reported: “Since the conflict began, 1,423 Gazans have died and 8,265 have been injured while 59 Israelis have died, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry and IDF, respectively.” Not counting the injured, since we have no figures in Israeli’s injured, that is almost 25 to 1. Twenty-five Palestinian eyes to each Israeli eye.

But we are told that all these Palestinian Arab civilians were only unfortunate “collateral damage” in the justified attempt to destroy the Hamas rockets. According to Israeli Military Intelligence, Hamas had about 9,000 rockets in the Gaza Strip. About 2,300 rockets were fired at communities in Israel since the beginning of the operation, and the IDF believes that it hit about 35 percent of the total number of all the rockets. That leaves about 3,000 rockets that Hamas can still use. See here.

This means that the whole Israeli campaign destroyed 3000 rockets and killed one civilian for every rocket that it destroyed. If we count total casualties of Palestinians it is three civilians killed or injured for each rocket destroyed. That really puts very little value on human life, or at least Palestinian human lives.

As for Israeli human life - On day 1 of the attack on Gaza, i.e. July 8, 2014, Israel had 0 that is 0 as in none on the day the attacks on Gaza began. See here.

Israel claims it had to kill all those people and level all those buildings because the rockets were hidden among the population. Let us understand what this means.

“Stretching about 45km from north to south and only about 5km wide it comprises an area of only 365 km sq. With a population numbering 1.4 million it is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Gaza is highly urbanized with the bulk of the population living in cities, towns and eight crowded refugee camps, home to over 800,000 refugees.”

See here.

Being this densely populated it would be all but impossible to locate any weapons away from the population. Where would the open space be found? Beside this is what the rockets fired by Hamas look like:

They are not like the Russian rocket launchers that we have seen in the Ukraine. Obviously they will not be all put in the same place. Of necessity, they will be scattered all over the Gaza strip, and yes, that means they will be mixed into the population. But they are pretty useless, since they don’t have the accuracy to hit a target, and if they get near one, the Israeli Iron Dome intercepts them. So essentially they are a nuisance.

So what was the point of all this carnage? There can be only one conclusion! Israel has long ruled like most colonial powers have.  Through collective punishment. What started this latest opening of hostilities between Gaza and Israel? According to an exhaustive article appearing in the New Republic (See here):

On June 12, two men affiliated with Hamas kidnapped and killed three Israel teenagers. While Hamas leaders unconscionably applauded the kidnapping, they denied any direct knowledge of it. The two men, as the Israeli government quickly discovered, were associated with a rogue Hamas family that had defied the organization’s leadership. The Israelis also strongly suspected that the boys had been killed, but they used the pretext of searching for the boys to arrest around 500 Palestinians, including Hamas’s West Bank officials and activists.

This too was collective punishment. No evidence was adduced that any of the 500 arrested had anything to do with the kidnapping. The Israeli authorities had identified and arrested the perpetrators, but as is the case with collective punishment a whole group had to be rounded up and imprisoned.

Allow me to call attention to the most salient points:

1. The boys were not kidnapped or killed by anyone associated with Hamas.
2. Knowing this Israel arrest(ed) around 500 Palestinians, including Hamas’s West Bank officials and activists.
3. When Palestinians are arrested they are not charged; they are not tried. They are simply imprisoned.

It was this provocation that started retaliation by Hamas with the firing of rockets. In fact if we look at the history of Hamas rocket firing at Israel, it almost always followed the assassination of some Hamas leader.

As long ago as June 30 2006, eight years ago, the New York Times penned an editorial entitled: “Mideast: End the cycle of retaliation” See here, which said in part:

To give only three examples: On July 31, 2001, Israel's assassination of the two leading Hamas militants in Nablus ended a nearly two-month Hamas cease-fire, leading to the terrible Aug. 9 Hamas suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizzeria. On July 23, 2002, an Israeli air attack on a crowded apartment block in Gaza City killed a senior Hamas leader, Salah Shehada, and 15 civilians, 11 of them children, hours before a widely reported unilateral cease-fire declaration. A suicide bombing followed on Aug. 4. On June 10, 2003, Israel's attempted assassination of the senior Hamas political leader in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, which wounded him and killed four Palestinian civilians, lead to the bus bombing in Jerusalem on June 11 that killed 16 Israelis.

As for collective punishments here are some additional examples:

As long ago as 2005 Israel announced that it was halting the demolition of militant’s homes, an implicit admission that this was a policy that had been in effect. See here.

But the announcement made no apology for the practice stating:

House demolitions are just one measure of deterrence, and at present, it doesn't play the same role that it did previously. It's not something we consider necessary at this time. (Emphasis added)

But while the destruction of homes appears to have stopped, collective punishment, as can be seen from the indiscriminate roundups, detentions, and razing of Gaza homes by the thousands, has not.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete.

  

I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)

I recently sent out my commentary entitled "I AM A JEW (Part III)." If you haven’t read it please do, as well as "I AM A JEW (Part I)" and "I AM A JEW (Part II)."

I am issuing this Special Bulletin because I am deeply disturbed by the latest expropriation of Palestinian lands.

Here is the announcement that I find deeply disturbing, particularly so son after the carnage in Gaza.

I quote: 

On Sunday, Israel announced the appropriation of land in the Etzion Jewish settlement bloc near Bethlehem, a move which an anti-settlement group said was the biggest such claim in 30 years.

Quite aside from the immorality of the decision it does not even represent the will of the Israeli government. So much for Israeli democracy. 

Haaretz further reported: 

Finance Minister Yair Lapid said at a conference in Tel Aviv that the appropriation of land was a move of underhanded opportunism that wasn't submitted for the cabinet's approval and is damaging to Israel in the international arena. (Ibid) 

“We are after a military operation, facing a sensitive international front, and it was difficult for us to maintain the world's support as it is," he said. "What was so urgent right now to create another crisis with the Americans and the world?" (Ibid)  

As for the reaction of the world:

The European Union on Tuesday urged Israel to reverse its decision to appropriate 4,000 dunams of West Bank land, joining in on the calls of condemnation made by other Western nations and Egypt over the last day.

We condemn the new appropriation of land in the West Bank, relating to plans for further settlement expansion, announced by the Israeli government on Sunday," the EU spokesman said. "At this delicate moment, any action that might undermine stability and the prospect of constructive negotiations following the cease-fire in Gaza should be avoided. (Ibid) 

The U.S deemed the move "counterproductive" and urged the Israeli government to reverse the decision. The U.K., France and Egypt also condemned the decision. (Ibid) 

We have long made clear our opposition to continued settlement activity," the U.S. official said. "This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve and construction tender they issue is counterproductive to Israel's stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians."

We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision," the official said in Washington.  

The appropriated land belongs to five Palestinian villages in the Bethlehem area: Jaba, Surif, Wadi Fukin, Husan and Nahalin. See here.

J Street, The American pro-Israel thorough peace and justice organization, (and I urge all people who seek peace and justice to join that organization which can be found at: http://jstreet.org), issued a statement on its website.

I set forth the statement in full below:

J Street Condemns New Settlement Announcement, Urges Firmer US Action 

SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2014

 J Street condemns as provocative, damaging and extremely destructive to Israel and to hopes of peace a decision by the Israeli government to seize almost 1,000 acres of land in the occupied West Bank to build a massive new settlement.

 The decision, both in its timing and intrinsic nature, could hardly be more negative and harmful. This has been described as the largest grab of Palestinian land for the purpose of building settlements in 30 years. It demeans and weakens Israel’s peace partner, the Palestinian Authority; it defies the will of Israel’s most important ally and friend, the United States, and it flies in the face of a broad international consensus.

 Most of all, it casts serious doubt on the Israeli government's sincerity in claiming to favor a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Netanyahu says he is in favor of peace based on a two-state solution, yet almost all of the government's actions and words point to the opposite conclusion.

 This decision is also a test of US seriousness in Mideast peace-making. The United States has protested settlement announcement after settlement announcement for decades – yet its opinion has been disregarded by successive Israeli governments to the point that US credibility has been called into question. How can the world expect US leadership in dealing with hostile actors across the Middle East when even its closest friend in the region flagrantly ignores its policies? It is time for the Administration to make clear to Israel that it means what it says and that US opposition to settlements is not just symbolic but real.

 J Street urges the United States government to undertake a thorough review of its policy toward Israeli settlements and to announce the steps it will take if Israel goes forward with this decision. As a first step, it should declare now that it is the view of the United States that settlements are not merely "unhelpful" or "illegitimate" but illegal under international law as laid out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

 It may be true that the land being expropriated from five Palestinian villages lies within one of the settlement blocs that are likely to be retained by Israel in any prospective peace deal. But until there is such an agreement, this kind of land grab can only be seen as a blatant unilateral move to create new facts on the ground.

 It is particularly unfortunate coming on the heels of last week's Gaza cease-fire which seemed to offer a new start for diplomacy in tackling the conflict. One would have thought following that war, that Israel would do everything possible to strengthen PA leaders and their pursuit of diplomacy and non-violence. Instead, this move undermines President Abbas and reinforces his opponents, including Hamas, whose abhorrent use of violence shows exactly why now is the time to empower moderate Palestinian leadership. 

We urge the Israeli government to reverse this decision, to announce a settlement freeze and its readiness to return to negotiations for a final settlement based on the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps. 

 Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni have already noted how much harm this decision will cause to the US-Israel relationship. Other responsible members of the ruling coalition should join them in working to reverse this decision and to move urgently to seek a two-state solution.

I will release I Am A Jew (Part IV) next Monday.

As usual your reactions are invited.