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.