Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Or more precisely, shana tova!  This weekend, Jews around the world are celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  Between the Korean New Year, American New Year, and Jewish New Year, I'm swimming in temporal ambiguity.  Which year to choose?

While I'm struggling to find my place in the vasty deep of time, here are a few links worth reading:


- The UN released the report from its fact finding mission into Operation Cast Lead a few days ago and, needless to say, Israel was not happy with the results.  Richard Goldstone, former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda, headed the mission.  Mr. Goldstone published an op-ed in the New York Times explaining the mission's results.


There is a lot to parse here but there is one quote that strikes me as an odd moral equivalence:


"Unfortunately, both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating their own forces. I am unaware of any case where a Hamas fighter was punished for deliberately shooting a rocket into a civilian area in Israel — on the contrary, Hamas leaders repeatedly praise such acts. While Israel has begun investigations into alleged violations by its forces in the Gaza conflict, they are unlikely to be serious and objective."

There is a significant difference between actively praising someone for killing civilians and failing to investigate violations thoroughly.  While Israel at least acknowledges civilian deaths as regrettable and takes steps to prevent them, Hamas desires civilian deaths including those of Palestinians.  Hamas deliberately places its fighters in civilian structures and uses human shields while firing rockets at Israeli civilian targets.  Israel dropped leaflets and placed phone calls to areas about to be attacked and also diverted or aborted attacks when the risk of civilian casualties was deemed too great.  There are legitimate complaints to be made about the effectiveness and thoroughness of these efforts.  But the Israeli military's failings are not, morally or legally, the same as Hamas' desire to kill civilians.

Unfortunately, when the question of culpability emerges, Mr.Goldstone only addresses one party:

"Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state."

And nowhere does he push for accountability for Hamas and the states that support it.

- David Landau, the former editor in chief of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, criticizes the UN report in another op-ed in the New York Times.  He criticizes the mission for asserting that "Israel intentionally went after civilians in Gaza — and wrapped its intention in lies."  In doing so, the mission failed to address the true issue, one that deserves open and fair-minded debate:

"Israelis believe that their army did not deliberately kill the hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children, who died during “Operation Cast Lead.” They believe, therefore, that Israel is not culpable, morally or criminally, for these civilian deaths, which were collateral to the true aim of the operation — killing Hamas gunmen.

It is, some would argue, a form of self-deception.

When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?"

I agree with Mr. Landau.  The fact finding mission wasted its mandate on what essentially became Israel bashing, further solidifying the Israeli mindset that the world will never give them a fair hearing and that the sins of Hamas and others will always be forgiven because, in the end, no one really cares if Jews die.

- On a potentially happier note, President Obama will host meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.   I'm not expecting too much right away but we have to start somewhere.

- Lastly, on a completely different note, Britan's Telegraph published a noteworthy piece on Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences.  Having worked at a bookstore during the heyday of The Da Vinci Code, I took this article to heart.  Mr. Brown is one of the most spectacularly untalented authors I have ever read.  However, he recently lost his position as the official butcher of the English language to Stephenie Meyer, the stupendously ungifted author of the Twilight series.  My favorite Twilight line?

"What if I’m not the superhero? What if I’m the bad guy?”

Holy let's-hit-people-over-the-head-with-the-emo-hammer Batman!

The Air Force Base

After the Pinchas speech, we trundled onto the bus and left for and Israeli Air Force base.  Pictures were not allowed unfortunately.  It is one of the largest air bases in Israel, I believe, and we met with four pilots and officers who fought in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.  They were extremely proud of their jobs and derived great satisfaction from serving their country.  All had signed on for more than the 3 year minimum for men or 2 year minimum for women so they were a non-representational sample.

They spoke in general terms about their jobs but eventually latched onto a recurring theme in Israeli discourse: media bias.  All believed that the IDF took great care to avoid civilian casualties and even aborted certain missions if the risk of civilian casualties was too high.  They repeatedly accused mainstream world media outlets of bias since these outlets did not, in their view, fairly represent these efforts.  The emphasis on gross casualty numbers over the causes of those casualties, such as Hamas using human shields, skewed reports toward Hamas and did not reflect the overall reality, they argued.

There is truth to this assertion and I will explore the legal aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict in a later post regarding Daniel Taub, a legal adviser to the Israeli government.  However, there is little sympathy for Israel in this regard and constant complaint about media bias does nothing to change public sentiment.  Israel can no longer realistically claim the victim role when they have a huge military and economic advantage over Hamas, Fatah, and the PLO.  So even if the claim is true and the media is biased against Israel, repeating it does not help Israel's cause.

This also speaks to a certain breed of exceptionalism that permeates Israeli society.  They are, as they often repeat, a Jewish state, the only Jewish state in the world.  Thus, they are unique.  Like American exceptionalists, they often claim that scenarios and solutions found elsewhere do not apply to Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

They may be correct but as we have found in the US healthcare debate, bits and pieces of solutions used elsewhere can be adapted and applied if there is the political will to do so.  Israeli exceptionalism may also contribute to Israeli PR's inability to resonate outside of Israel and the most invested segments of diaspora Jewish society.  It is very hard to understand and connect with the other when one believes oneself to be wholly unique.

That's enough for now; I'll get to Sderot later tonight or tomorrow.