War Handwavium

 

  

 The above graphics come from here. They were on the Israeli Foreign Ministry website up until 4 January 2009, around when Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza.

Caption: monthly distribution of rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas against Israel, November 2007 to November 2008.

Pretty much everything you’re about to read is reflected in those two graphs. So, here goes.

Israel imposed a blockade against all of Gaza when Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza back in 2006. (source)

The blockade has gone through increasing levels of severity, from cutting off fuel and electricity to causing widespread food shortages, to throwing the area into an economic meltdown. Half of the residents of Gaza live at or below the poverty level. By May of 2008, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jimmy Carter called Israel’s blockade of Gaza a “human rights crime”. (source) Which is actually interesting, because Israel itself was blockaded by Egypt back in 1967, and back then Israel insisted a blockade was an act of war. (source)

So, Hamas started launching rocket attacks at Israel. The number of rockets and mortars launched by Hamas from Gaza at Israel are shown in the images above. You can see them ramp up in November 2007 and then they drop off to zero around July 2008. What happened in July?

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire. For every day of calm that Hamas did not fire a rocket at Israel, Israel will send in 5 extra truckloads of cows and 200 tons of cement it ships to Gaza. For every day Hamas fires rockets, Israel reseals the borders. That’s correct, Hamas was willing to stop fighting if Gaza could bring in extra cattle. (source)

Those lousy Hamas. All they ever think about is bringing about the total destruction of Israel.

Or, hamburgers. 

And apparently Hamas was willing to keep the peace and not launch rockets or mortars at Israel for several months. From July 2008 to November 2008, the number of attacks had essentially dropped off to zero. So. What happened in November?

What happened is Israel found a tunnel. Israel’s blockade of Gaza was continuing, even while Hamas was abiding by the ceasefire, and the conditions in Gaza were getting worse and worse. Back in May of 2008, Jimmy Carter had declared the blockade a human rights crime. By October of 2008, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead McGuire arrived in a boat off the coast of Gaza to protest Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza. (source)

So, given these dire circumstances, people in Gaza were digging tunnels out of Gaza to bypass the blockade that all these Nobel Peace Prize winners had been saying was a human rights violation. They were digging tunnels to smuggle in food, medicine, cigarettes, and even people in and out of Gaza. Militants used the tunnels to smuggle weapons.

So, what happened in November is this: Israel found one of these tunnels and declared that Hamas was intending to use it to attack Israel. As far as I can tell, the evidence they had to show that this tunnel was an “attack” tunnel amounted to George Bush saying that Saddam had moved his biological WMD labs into trailers so he could hide them in the desert. In other words, no evidence whatsoever.

Even if there were evidence that the tunnel was going to be used for an attack, Hamas hadn’t actually used it for an attack, and there was a cease fire in place at the time. So, what does Israel do during this precariously balanced cease fire? Israel sends troops into Gaza, attacks Hamas, kills six members of Hamas, and then pulls back to Israel. (source)

During a cease fire that they’d been trying to get for a year or more, and had been maintained by Hamas for four months, Israel fired upon Hamas, and killed six people.

Exactly what part of “cease” and “fire” do you not understand?

Even if Hamas was planning some attack, the prudent thing would be to catch them in the act so that they violate the cease fire first. Barring that possibility, arrest them. Or something, anything, other than invade, kill, and retreat. The operative word here again is “cease” and “fire” combined to make a term whose meaning is the exact opposite of “invade, fire, kill, retreat”.

The other thing that might help keep this in perspective is that even while Hamas was comlying with this ceasefire, Israel was maintaining a blockade that was starving the people of Gaza. If Israel demands perfection from Hamas or it will attack, then Israel might want to strive a little closer to perfection itself, and stop engaging in a blockade it would have called an act of war if another country had imposed it on Israel. Stop imposing a blockade on Gaza that Nobel Peace Prize winners are calling human rights crimes. Stop starving the people of Gaza, or put up with some tunneling.

So, Israel violates the ceasefire agreement in November of 2008, invades Gaza, kills 6 members of Hamas, and then retreats. All the while maintaining a blockade on the land.

What do you think happens after that?

Duh!

Hamas starts firing rockets again. You can see in the graphs above that the numbers spike up again in November, in response to Israel’s attack and killing of Hamas members.

Israel responds to Hamas rocket fire by further tightening the blockade on Gaza throwing the people further into peril. Food is scarce. Fuel is scarce. Much of the land has no electicity. Clean water becomes unavailable. Running water becomes unavailable.

And what exactly did Israel expect Hamas to do? Were they truly this clueless? Israel violated the ceasefire. Hamas started firing rockets at Israel. Israel further tightened its blockade of Gaza, starving the people there even more. Hamas increased its rocket fire.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (a centre-right Israeli intelligence think tank) in a December 31 report titled “Six Months of the Lull Arrangement Intelligence Report,” confirmed that the June 19 truce was only “sporadically violated, and then not by Hamas but instead by … “rogue terrorist organisations”. Instead, “the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement” occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day

December 27, 2008, Israel launched a full scale bombardment of Gaza, killing 220 people, including civlians. (source). The current death tolls say that Israel has killed about 640 palestinians, at least 125 of which are civilians, (women, children, and noncombatants). (source)

All of which, according to Israel, was in response to Hamas resuming its rocket attacks against Israel. After Israel violated the cease fire that had been working for four months, because they found a tunnel coming out of a land that they were starving.

According to Israel’s own Foreign Ministry, for all of 2008, Hamas attacks launched from Gaza killed 17 Israelis. 9 civilians. 8 soldiers. 6 civilians were killed by rocket fire. (source)

So, Hamas attacks kill a dozen Israelis. Then Israel and Hamas come up with a cease fire. Hamas honors the cease fire for four months, even while Israel is starving Gaza with a human rights crime called a blockade. Israel then violated the cease fire because they find a tunnel, coming out of the area they are starving, and declared that Hamas is going to attack. Israel then used their prefabricated excuse to violate the ceasefire in November by invading Gaza, attacking Hamas, and killing six of its members before retreating. Hamas then retaliated by resuming its rocket attacks against israel. Israel then tightened its choke hold of a blockade for November and December. Hamas ratcheted up its rocket attacks. And then Israel bombed Gaza and invades, killing at least 125 unarmed civilians.

Right.

Hamas killed 17 Israelis in 2008.

Israel violated the ceasefire because they find a tunnel, kill 6 members of hamas, and then when Hamas resumed its rocket attacks, Israel used the rockets that killed a total of 17 Israelis for an entire year to launch a full scale miiltary bombardment and invasion of Gaza, killing at least 120 Palestinian civlians including women, children, and noncombatants. 

Either (one) Israel is currently being run by a bunch of morons who thought they could violate a ceasefire, while maintaining a human rights violation blockade, and not expect anyone to respond,

or

(two) Israel invented the tunnel thing or overinflated it into a false justification for violating the cease fire, knowing full well that Hamas would resume rocket fire, and give Israel an even thinner excuse to launch a full scale bombardment and invasion.

 Clearly, civlian deaths aren’t Israel’s real priority. Hamas killed 17 Israelis in the whole of 2008. And some of them had to have been before the cease fire, so apparently Israel was willing to work it out. And yet in its bombardment and invasion of the last week, Israel has inflicted an order of magnitude more civlians deaths than Hamas did. So, that can’t be it.

Of course, it is election season in Israel, and the incumbents aren’t doing so well. A nice little display of military force, at the expense of a few innocent palestinian lives, might be sufficient incentive for a politician to approve a war.

One might look at the statements made by a number of israeli officials to see how they really feel about the palestinians. That might help shed some light on their current actions:
http://www.newint.org/issue359/essay.htm/

“Palestinians are like cancer. There are all sorts of solutions to cancerous manifestations. For the time being, I am applying chemotherapy.”
Moshe Y’alon, Israeli Chief-of-Staff

“Eventually we will have to thin out the number of Palestinians living in the territories.”
Eitan Ben Eliahu, Israeli Air Force Commander

“I believe in liquidationists.” (Assassination brigades targeting Palestinian activists)
General Meir Dagan, Head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=13780

Israel’s Minister of Public Security, Avi Dichter, believes punishment should be inflicted “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians”;

Meir Sheetrit has urged that Israel should “decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it”

Deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai talks about bring about a palestinian holocaust.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404716066&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

“it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas.”

Hm. 

So, the idea is that this whole thing about the tunnel might be a fabricated smoking gun, about as relevant as paperwork relating to “Niger Yellowcake”, intended to be used to justify violating a ceasefire, knowing full well the response that violation would bring, allowing Israel to justify in its own mind the escalation to full scale bombardment and invasion of Gaza, all because Israel doesn’t really see any difference between civlian palestinians and Hamas militants.

Just a theory.

Though, some think Israel has done this before. (source)

So, in the absolute worst case is this whole tunnel thing, Israel’s violation of the cease fire that had been successfully working for sevaral months (see bar graphs at top), was all an effort to create a Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify a full scale bombardment and invasion of a people they view as little more than insects.  

In the absolute best-case scenario, Israel is run by a bunch of morons who thought they could violate a  working ceasefire agreement because they found a tunnel coming out of a land they were starving. And then they invaded, fired on and killed six members of Hamas, and then retreated, not having  a clue how batshit stupid that just was. You know, to fire on your enemy, during a ceasefire.

If I had to guess, I would guess that for some Israelis, the first case is true. America isn’t the only country to have assholes like Dick Cheney, to have politicians willing to lie their way into a war. Valnai is clearly Israel’s Dick Cheney. And I’d say that for some Israelis,  the second case is true.  America isn’t the only country with people who want to cast themselves as the righteous and the enemy as evil, and hold a nationalistic Indifference to Reality.

And I’m sure that there are also some in Israel who are morally repulsed by the actions their government are taking right now. Even way back in March of 2003, there were Americans who were adamantly opposed to the idea of invading Iraq on the notion that it was foolhardy, ill planned, that Iraq was actually disarmed, and that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. In March, 2003, there were not a lot, but there were some. No doubt there are some Israelis who right now are morally repulsed by the actions of their government.

At this point, all I can say is the world needs to enforce a cease fire on Israel. Hold Israel responsible for violating the cease fire in the first place. Hold Israel responsible for escalating the violence after they violated the cease fire. Hold Israel responsible for the innocent civilians it killed. The world needs to enforce a cease fire on Hamas and their rockets. Reinstate the ceasefire that was working before. And then demand Israel drop this abomination of humanity that is its starvation blockade of Gaza. And maybe, just maybe, get the region heading in some semblance of a direction towards peace again.

And I say the world needs to do it, because there are enough Dick Cheney’s and George W. Bush’s and Paul Wolfowitz’s and other Neocon idiot equivalaents in Israel that they’re not going to willingly stop their self righteous war with Gaza, any more than one could have expected to Dick Cheney to say, “Maybe that whole Iraq thing isn’t such a good idea after all”.

Israel was willing to enter into a ceasefire with Hamas before, it should be willing to do it again, especially since it violated the damn ceasefire in the first place.

 Enough is enough.