Israel, Please Stop The Bombing
Israel, although I support a democratic and protected Jewish state, I do not support the invasion and bombing of Palestine. It will not solve the complex problems created by historical and current land-sharing agreements (or disagreements) created by the walls and barriers that exist between Palestine and Israel.
– “[Gaza] suffered serious damage after the air attacks.” More Images
This current military invasion is a massive retaliatory over-reaction, one that deeply affects sympathy toward Jewish people – whose legacy is in danger of being permanently altered. The already half-buried memory of the complex, systematic European Holocaust against the Jews is now infused by Israel’s murder of civilians; just as my country’s loss in September, 2001, is now marred and half-buried by tens to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel, please stop the bombing. Those of us with Jewish heritage do not want a state built on the same atrocities that the state was created to prevent.
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Against the Invasion:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5446519.ece
“It breaks my heart to see Israel’s stupidity”
It has a right to respond to attacks, but will not achieve its ultimate aim – peace – until it stops thinking in military terms
by Michael Lerner
Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but stupid. No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighbouring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialists bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for America to mobilise a counterattack. Israel has every right to respond.
But the kind of response matters. Killing 500 Palestinians and wounding 2,000 others (at the time of writing) is disproportionate. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas’s indiscriminate bombing of population centres is a crime against humanity, so is Israel’s killing of civilians (at least 130 so far in Gaza, not to mention the thousands in the years of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).
Hamas had respected the previously negotiated ceasefire except when Israel used it as cover to make assassination raids. Hamas argued that these raids were hardly a manifestation of a ceasefire, and so as symbolic protest it would allow the release of rocket fire (usually hitting no targets). But when the issue of continuing the ceasefire came up, Hamas wanted a guarantee that these assassination raids would stop. And it asked for more. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing acute malnutrition, Hamas insists that the borders be opened so that food can arrive unimpeded. And in return for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, it asks for the release of 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Hamas has made it clear that it would accept the terms of the Saudi Arabian peace agreement, though it would never formally recognise Israel. It would live peacefully in a two-state arrangement, but it would never acknowledge Israel’s “right to exist”. This position is unnecessarily provocative, and is deeply self-destructive for Palestinians who believe it is the only symbolic weapon they have left.
How do we get out of this destructive spiral? The first step is for the world to demand an immediate ceasefire. That ceasefire should be imposed by the United Nations and backed unequivocally by America. Its terms must include the following:
— Hamas stops all firing of missiles, bombs or any other violent action originating from the West Bank or Gaza, and co-operates in actively jailing anyone from any faction that breaks this ceasefire.
— Israel stops all bombing, targeted assassinations or any other violent actions aimed at activists, militants, or suspected terrorists in the West Bank or Gaza, and uses the full force of its army to prevent any further attacks on Palestinians.
— Israel opens the border with Gaza and allows free access to and from Israel, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons. Israel allows free travel of food, gas, electricity, water and consumer goods and materials including from land, air, and sea, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons or materials typically used for weapons.
— Israel releases all Palestinians in detention and returns them to the West Bank or Gaza according to the choice of the detainees or prisoners. Hamas releases Gilad Schalit and anyone else being held by Palestinian forces.
— Both sides invite an international force to implement these agreements
— Both sides agree to end teaching and/or advocacy of violence against the other side in and outside mosques, educational institutions, and the media.
— This ceasefire would last for 20 years. Nato, the UN, and the US all agree to enforce this agreement and impose severe sanctions in the event of any violations.
These steps would make a huge difference, isolate the most radical members of each side from the mainstream, and make it possible to then begin negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on a broader and deeper set of issues.
The basic condition for creating peace is to help each side feel “safe”. A first and critical step is to speak in a language that is empathic toward the suffering of each people in a climate of discourse in which both sides’ stories are heard and understood.
Yet Israel, as the militarily superior power, ought to take the first steps: implementing a massive Marshall Plan in Gaza and in the West Bank to end poverty and unemployment, rebuild infrastructure and encourage investment; dismantle the settlements or make settlers become citizens of a Palestinian state; accept 30,000 Palestinian refugees annually back into Israel for the next 30 years, apologise for its role in the 1948 expulsions and offer to co-ordinate a worldwide compensation effort for all that Palestinians lost during the Occupation; and recognise a Palestinian state within borders already defined by the Geneva Accord of 2003.
This is the only way Israel will ever achieve security. It is the only way to permanently defeat Hamas and all extremists who wish to see endless war against Israel.
The most significant contribution the new Obama administration could make to Middle East peace would be to embrace a strategy that homeland security is best achieved not by military or economic domination but by generosity and caring for others. If this new way of thinking could become a serious part of US policy, it would have an immense impact on undermining the fearful consciousness of Israelis who still see the world more through the frame of the Holocaust and previous persecutions than through the frame of their actual present power in the world.
It breaks my heart to see the terrible suffering in Gaza and in Israel. As a religious Jew I find it all the worse, because it confirms to me how easy it is to pervert the loving message of Judaism into a message of hatred and domination. I remain in mourning for the Jewish people, for Israel and for the world.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine.
(rabbilerner@tikkun.org)
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Bill Replies:
April 29th, 2010 at 4:21 PM
One of the things people often forget when mentioning that Israel has a right to retaliate or defend against the rocket attacks by Hamas and whoever else, is that those rockets are generally landing on Palestinian land, not Israel. Israel illegally occupies Palestinian land. Those settlements that get hit by rockets are in Palestinian territory, recognized by a gazillion UN Resolutions and Security Council Resolutions.
So when you say, imagine how the US would respond if Mexico fired rockets on Texas, it would be more accurate to say, imagine how America would respond if Mexico fired rockets on to US settlements in Moneterey, Mexico? Huge difference.
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In favor of:
http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB123085925621747981.html#
“Israel’s Policy Is Perfectly ‘Proportionate’
Hamas are the real war criminals in this conflict.”
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
Israel’s actions in Gaza are justified under international law, and Israel should be commended for its self-defense against terrorism. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. The only limitation international law places on a democracy is that its actions must satisfy the principle of proportionality.
Since Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, Hamas has fired thousands of rockets designed to kill civilians into southern Israel. The residents of Sderot — which have borne the brunt of the attacks — have approximately 15 seconds from launch time to run into a shelter. Although deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime, terrorists firing at Sderot are so proud of their actions that they sign their weapons.
When Barack Obama visited Sderot this summer and saw the remnants of these rockets, he reacted by saying that if his two daughters were exposed to rocket attacks in their home, he would do everything in his power to stop such attacks. He understands how the terrorists exploit the morality of democracies.
In a recent incident related to me by the former head of the Israeli air force, Israeli intelligence learned that a family’s house in Gaza was being used to manufacture rockets. The Israeli military gave the residents 30 minutes to leave. Instead, the owner called Hamas, which sent mothers carrying babies to the house.
Hamas knew that Israel would never fire at a home with civilians in it. They also knew that if Israeli authorities did not learn there were civilians in the house and fired on it, Hamas would win a public relations victory by displaying the dead. Israel held its fire. The Hamas rockets that were protected by the human shields were then used against Israeli civilians.
These despicable tactics — targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians — can only work against moral democracies that care deeply about minimizing civilian casualties. They never work against amoral nations such as Russia, whose military has few inhibitions against killing civilians among whom enemy combatants are hiding.
The claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality — by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets — is absurd. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian.
Second, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk posed. This is illustrated by what happened on Tuesday, when a Hamas rocket hit a kindergarten in Beer Sheva, though no students were there at the time. Under international law, Israel is not required to allow Hamas to play Russian roulette with its children’s lives.
While Israel installs warning systems and builds shelters, Hamas refuses to do so, precisely because it wants to maximize the number of Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed by Israel’s military actions. Hamas knows from experience that even a small number of innocent Palestinian civilians killed inadvertently will result in bitter condemnation of Israel by many in the international community.
Israel understands this as well. It goes to enormous lengths to reduce the number of civilian casualties — even to the point of foregoing legitimate targets that are too close to civilians.
Until the world recognizes that Hamas is committing three war crimes — targeting Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and seeking the destruction of a member state of the United Nations — and that Israel is acting in self-defense and out of military necessity, the conflict will continue.
Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is “The Case Against Israel’s Enemies” (Wiley, 2008).
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This current military invasion is a massive retaliatory over-reaction
Is it just an overreaction, or is it something else? To the casual observer, it looks like much more than an overreaction. To me, it looks as though Israel is enforcing its own “final solution” on the Palestinians. Just calling it like I see it.
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I agree with Mr. Dershowitz if Hamas stops firing the rockets then this conflict would end
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Like other zionists, Mr. Dershowitz tries hard to portray Israel as the victim, when in reality it is anything but!. Mr. Dershowitz may be at a prestigious institution, but it seems he has lost his humanity in the process. He is doing what lawyers do best, LIE.
The west (especially Americans) should start piercing the pro-Israel media veil, and see the facts on the ground. One way to get started is to see the award winning documentary ‘Occupation 101′ (www.occupation101.com).
Its sad to live in a world where, the wolf (Israel) has the freedom and right to devour the sheep (Palestinian land, property and lives), but the sheep has no rights. It does not even have the right to make a sound, while it is being slaughtered. This world, where Oppressors are portrayed as victims, while actual victims are demonized and labeled terrorists, just because they fought for their rights. This world where one captured soldier is apparently ‘kidnapped’ while the 10,000 Palestinians, including children, languishing in Israeli jails are criminals and terrorists.
Gaza today is the largest open air prison in the world, suffocating under an Israeli seige and blockade. The rockets fired from Gaza are nothing but an act of desperation, by a people who have been robbed of their land, their rights and their dignity. The rockets are symbols of protest against the Occupation and slow extermination of the Palestinian people. The rockets are fired on Sderot, which used to be a Palestinian village before. Almost all rockets have no explosive warheads and the maximum damage they could do is to break a couple of windows. (America provides Israel with laser guided bombs. They should provide Hamas also with the same so that they can target military installations and not civilian areas.)
Hamas won an outright majority in democratic, free and fair elections. But the west cannot digest true democracy. It has to be their brand or nothing else. So they support Abbas and Fatah, which does not represent its people, but rather works in the best interest of Israel. Hamas on the other hand, is fighting for the freedom of their people against the gruesome Israeli occupation and siege.
The world should recognize that Israel is committing crime after crime against humanity, and that these crimes will continue unless the international community makes a strong resolve to stop Israel and punish it for its actions. The Israeli Apartheid regime has to be dismantled.
The offspring of the European jews are oppressing the Palestinians, similar to how they were oppressed in Europe for centuries.
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