‘How many kids they’ve murdered– only God can say’

by on February 3, 2009 13
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Canadian Bruce Cockburn's song, "If I had a rocket launcher… (I'd make somebody pay)" came out in 1984 in response to American military action in Central America…On this video, look at the faces of the Central American villagers and who do they remind you of? This stirring song is somewhat echoed by one of the most important pieces of the Gaza slaughter, philosopher Michael Neumann's piece on Counterpunch basically saying, We all recognize the right of an assaulted people to cause civilian deaths in the other population… I don't know how I feel about this. I live in a peaceful country, I am not under fire. But it is important to discuss these ideas.
(Phil Weiss, thanks to Nim Chimpsky)

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, Gaza, Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East

{ 13 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Citizen says:
    February 3, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    Too bad average Americans don't know much about history (or geography), all they know is I love you, as the old pop song goes.
    If they did, of course they'd know Mandella, Begin, their own Revolutionary war heros, John Brown, etc, were terrorists. Just
    a little information would help a lot to see through propaganda, the
    use of them as tools in this day and age. I blame it on the USA MSM media, now a total organ of the USA regime since Ike. Actually, even Ike is a problem, like Truman before him. They both thought they were Cyrus The Great, when actually, they were just tools, though compared to USA presidents since those days, they actually had
    a tad of honesty and courage in their pockets.

    Got to the Truman Library archives. You will see what I mean. Years from now, there will be an Obama library. You will see the same thing.

  2. Eva Smagacz says:
    February 3, 2009 at 6:11 pm

    "Self-defense gives you the right to resist attacks by any means necessary, and therefore, certainly, by the only means available."

    If you or your family are in mortal danger, then if killing agressor's civilians may delay/prevent killing your civilians, who are the victims of agression, then it is permissible to do so.

    This is a reason Israel CANNOT afford to be seen as agressor.


  3. anomalousNYC says:
    February 3, 2009 at 6:56 pm

    I'm an old fan of Bruce Cockburn – thanks for sharing that video, I'd never seen it.

    I agree with your assessment of the importance of Neumann's piece. I've gone back and reread it maybe a dozen times over the last two weeks. It remains challenging, and reminds me of Gandhi's observation in 1939 concerning the first Palestinian intifada:

    "My sympathies are all with the Jews, but my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds."

    Neumann's 2005 book, "The Case Against Israel", is devastatingly persuasive and like this article belongs on the required reading list of anyone who is engaged around this issue.

  4. Richard Witty says:
    February 3, 2009 at 7:34 pm

    Good thing we don't have rocket launchers. We might make somebody pay, then find out it was an innocent kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a school that someone thought was a weapons dump.

    Or, accidentally escalate a war that could be quieted down, resulting in 1400 deaths, rather than some damaged pride and "unfulfilled" anger.

  5. Eurosabra says:
    February 3, 2009 at 9:25 pm

    Actually, Eva, deliberately killing civilians is impermissible.

    And you're just another Pole justifying the killing of Jews.

  6. Eva Smagacz says:
    February 4, 2009 at 11:57 am

    Eurosabra,

    But this is the crux of the Israel "self-defence" defence – to kill indiscriminately in a shock and awe sort of way so many people – whoever they are, that the Hamas (or whoever the current Arab enemy is) will get a message. Hence, in Gaza, the attack at the policemen and initial attack scheduled at the time when children are coming home from schools, with streets being bombed, then hospitals being showered with white phosphorus.

    You cannot have this argument to work one way, for one ethnic group only.

    Concept of self defence is universal.

    If you attacked me, and my family, and if by killing your children, I can stop sure death (slow or swift – doesn't matter) of my children and make you stop the attack I have a moral right to defend – by any means necessary and by any means available.

    This is as I understand it the argument made by Michael Neumann.

  7. Citizen says:
    February 4, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    Euro, if Eva is a Pole by ethnic origin, as you've determined, you should study history to see what happened to Poland. Especially study the role of the Jews both pre and post-1917. You wish all people to study how Jews have been made victims. I agree. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander. Within that historical insight,
    readers here could easily deduce you are the racist-supremacist,
    not Eva Smagacz.

  8. chris berel says:
    February 4, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    Some readers, like Rowan, you, and Joachim would deduce that. Non-racists would not.

    Additionally, Eva description of the cruxt of Israeli actions come from her own rancid mind. Nothing to do with facts.

  9. Eurosabra says:
    February 5, 2009 at 2:23 am

    Actually, the Israeli goal was to strike HAMAS targets with overwhelming force, and was probably chosen with the goal of striking HAMAS security targets with the maximum efficacy, with the problem of kids circulating in the streets at the same time determined to be a problematic but necessary trade-off. A simple difference like hitting the (armed security) police facilities with the police in the open rather than in the buildings can mean a tremendous difference in the number of armed Hamas police opposing the Israeli troops on the ground in the following days.

    You don't have a moral or legal right to kill civilians deliberately. Theoretically, an armed force would have the right to kill a proportional number of helpless enemy combatants in response to an illegal killing of its own combatants. (Cf. FFI Annecy vs. 3rd Reich).

    I take it that the "retaliatory" hostage killings of Poles by Germans have left you with a sick desire to do Jedwabne in Israel. But that is your problem and not Israel's.

  10. Eva Smagacz says:
    February 5, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    This in le Monde Diplomatique:

    (….)“A pointless war has led to a moral defeat for Israel” – so ran the headline in the British Sunday paper, the Observer on 18 January. The majority of moral barriers have crumbled in Israel during the Gaza offensive. A phrase sums up this vision: baal habayit histhtageya (“the boss has gone mad”). Its essence is captured by Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser: “If our civilians are attacked by you, we are not going to respond in proportion, but will use all means we have to cause you such damages that you will think twice in the future” (11).

    This tactic was used in Lebanon in 2006 and was referred to as the Dahiya doctrine, after the district in south Beirut where Hizbullah was based. The aim is to destroy an entire district or village as soon as it is believed to harbour terrorists who are firing on Israel. It was employed again in Gaza and constitutes what international law recognises as a war crime. Yet it is now openly demanded in Israel. In a letter to prime minster Olmert in 2007, the former Sephardic grand rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu explained “there is absolutely no moral prohibition against indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launching” (12). The longer the occupation, the more it corrupts the occupier. One can only imagine what liberties would have been taken by France in Algeria if the war had gone on for 40 years.

    The South African government, showing more determination than most, has condemned Israeli aggression against Gaza. The long experience of fighting the apartheid regime taught ANC leaders all about the hypocrisy of western rhetoric on violence and terrorism. Writing about his negotiations with the white South African government and its demands for the end to violence, Nelson Mandela said: “I responded that the state was responsible for the violence and that it is always the oppressor, not the oppressed, who dictates the form of the struggle. If the oppressor uses violence, the oppressed have no alternative but to respond violently. In our case, it was simply a legitimate form of self-defence” (13).

  11. Citizen says:
    February 5, 2009 at 9:37 pm

    Looks like Eva has demolished the Israel-Firsters nesting on this blog lately–infesting. Mandela is the right authority.

  12. Eurosabra says:
    February 6, 2009 at 3:01 am

    So Eiland is saying that the Israeli response will not be on a scale commensurate with Hamas's and Hezbollah's preferences, but will rather include large-scale engagement of identifiable military targets wherever they are located.

    Intermediate destruction of the type produced by the Lebanon and Gaza wars seems to indicate projectile drift and unlawful combatants in civilian areas rather than a deliberate use of terror. Gaza simply wasn't damaged enough to make the "crazy homeowner" a credible approach. "al-effendi al-majnoun" produces 20,000-40,000 dead in the Syrian version, a few thousand in the Black September Jordanian version.

    Also, when the aim is to disrupt a guerilla infrastructure and destroy individual rockets, extra destruction is worse than useless. Gazans have shown they are NOT deterrable by normal means, so Israel would have to wipe them out OR (more simply) neutralize the individual militants and their equipment piecemeal. Cast Lead looks like an attempt to do the latter, except to devotees of blood libel devoid of any military or civil defense knowledge.

  13. chris berel says:
    February 6, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Americans need to protest this arming of Israel & feeding its settlements in the OT. Israel would be normalized. Not that Israel wants that. It prefers to be homicidal and crazy as the goy expense.
    Who can it blame it? It's gotten away with murder so far, so why not continue? Gentile Americans, wake up!

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