Grave Error

I was just reading Michael Gerson’s article “Tackling a Fallacy in Gaza” which positively likens Israel’s actions in Gaza to the success of the surge in Iraq and summarily dismisses the civilian tragedy in Gaza as the fault of Hamas’ use of human shields. Gerson writes,

This augury of futility was wrong. Israeli forces, responding to an intolerable provocation, inflicted lopsided casualties on Hamas, which displayed a discrediting combination of cowardice and brutality. Hamas fighters used civilians as shields instead of shielding civilians — and some Palestinians seemed to resent it. Hamas leaders hid in the basements of hospitals while ordering public executions for Palestinian rivals, acting more like members of a criminal gang than a nationalist movement. Allies such as Iran, Syria and Hezbollah provided little practical help to Hamas, probably calculating that its rocket campaign against Israel was suicidal or at least foolishly premature. The international boycott against Hamas is holding. And the scale of missile attacks on Israeli citizens has been dramatically reduced.

But since when has destroying the human shield to reach the enemy been justified? Furthermore, there is an undertone to Gerson’s argument, which has also been expressed in other rationalizations for the Gazan death toll, that a dramatically high number of civilian casualties serves to undermine Hamas’ leadership and deter Iran, Syria and Hezbollah by reinforcing Israel’s superior might and resolve. While the latter argument is an admission of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity (targeting civilians for strategic military gains), the notion that human shields are acceptable collateral damage highlights a grave duality underlying how we fight our battles: political cowardice and high tech warfare. Continue reading →

Israel has always gotten a free pass from the American press, but it seems like that day may be coming to an end. In the past two weeks, there has been a sudden and unprecedented burst of “objectivity” from the American press. Early in January, there were two very critical pieces in the New York Times and an op-ed by Jimmy Carter in the Washington Post. Bill Moyers followed shortly thereafter, and then Bob Simon appeared on the Charlie Rose Show discussing the bleak future of the peace process.

On Sunday, 60 Minutes did its Bob Simon expose on whether peace was out of reach and discussing the de facto Apartheid in Israel. Later in the week, President Carter appeared again, this time on the NewsHour, echoing Bob Simon’s assessment of the situation. According to Simon, 60 Minutes and Carter, as a two state solution becomes less likely – mainly due to the Israeli settlements on the West Bank – Israel is left with three options:

1. Ethnic Cleansing. Further exile the Palestinians from any lands that Israelis wish to occupy.
2. Democracy. Allow the Palestinians to become full-fledged citizens of Israel with voting rights and civil liberties. This threatens Israel because the Arab and Christian Palestinians would be in the majority.
3. Apartheid. One state but with complete segregation. Continue reading →

I particularly enjoyed watching the round table discussion on this Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos between the host, Cokie Roberts, George Will, Sam Donaldson, Carly Fiorina and Paul Krugman. It was truly great to witness how each of the other panelists would confidently spew out their pre-fab political talking points and punditry on the economic crisis and then Krugman, the recent Nobel Prize winning economist, without any pretension would feel obliged to correct them as if they were school children. By the end of the show, you could see how they were all almost too afraid to comment for fear of discrediting themselves. It just goes to show that political ideology is trumped by objectivity every time. Continue reading →

Yesterday I watched this video of Charlie Rose’s January 7, 2009 interview with Bob Simon. Bob Simon presented a devastatingly bleak outlook for the future of the Middle East peace process. Nevertheless, his honestly on how the U.S. and Israel in fact present the major obstacles to reaching peace in the region was both refreshing and unique amongst the American press corps. He also described Gaza, a territory roughly twice the size of Washington, DC where the local population is prohibited from leaving its borders (that’s right, there was nowhere to flee or hide during the recent bombings), as the world’s largest prison.

While Israel is the United States’ most important ally in the region, for both cultural and ideological bonds, the U.S. has to demand that the friendship goes both ways. And if we are capable of denouncing Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and torture as beyond the limits of what is morally (and legally) acceptable in fighting to defend our way of life, then surely we can tell Israel that bombing heavily populated civilian areas indescriminately is also reprehensible. Otherwise, it is hard to imagine that there are any limits whatsoever, including the recourse of terrorism, in a nation’s alleged self defense.