The human rights attorney Michael Sfard on Cast Lead, at Coteret (original in Hebrew at Ynet):
Operation Cast Lead was our second war of independence. In the first, we freed ourselves of 2,000 years of living under and being oppressed by foreign regimes. In the second, we broke the shackles of Jewish morality and heritage that were shoved down our throats for years. We liberated ourselves of the ancient Jewish ban against killing the innocent with the evil, from the self-evident lessons and inevitable insights we should have reached of the our collective experience as a downtrodden nation that was denied its own civil rights, that was silenced, knocked down, downgraded, and treated as subhuman. Yes, we violated some of those rules in the past, but we did not even reveal that to ourselves.
Blood thirsty…so disgusting
And to think that not one MSMer said anything about the Goldstone Report. Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews….etc SILENT
“The results were horrendous. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, of which half did not partake in the fighting, 320 were minors, and 120 were women (according to B’Tselem data). In three weeks, we killed more Palestinians than in the entire first Intifada and all the violent incidents that preceded the second Intifada put together (that is, 1987-2000). Gaza residents, whom we earlier locked up in a prison we created for them, realized that the jailers set fire to the jailhouse and threw away the key. We no longer pretended we were meeting standards we did not believe in. We did not even pay lip service. Government offices were bombed? No problem. They are a legitimate target. Civilians worked there? Why should we care if this was the headquarters for civilian life, transportation, agriculture, and social welfare services for 1.5 million humans? What about the collective killing of more than 100 police cadets who were parading on their graduation day? No problem there. They were Palestinians in uniforms. No biggie. You say we fired white phosphorus, the kind of substance that keeps burning for days in alleys where children were playing? Our gut is made of iron. We can stomach anything. Our heart is made of steel. We spare no one.”
With all due respect to attorney Sfard, and I do respect him for his dedication and work over the years, I cannot help but remember the Book of Joshua where upon invading Jericho, Jewish armies were instructed to burn every plant, every animal, and kill man woman and child.
And without a doubt, the Israeli commanders consulted the Book of Joshua when formulating their pl…..Hmmm, well, maybe they did.
It’s amazing, all you have to say is “we” or “the Jews” and any bullshit following will be accepted. Where did this reputation for intelligence and values come from?
“What’s he mean’um, “We”?
Hey, if there are ziocaine addicts, there must be ziocaine pushers.
And what’s with this “collective” nonsense. What are we Jews, a bunch of Commies?
wow, that is a very powerful op ed he wrote. i recommend everyone read the whole thing.
Having read the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament I have to disagree with the notion that there ever existed an “ancient Jewish ban against killing the innocent with the evil.” The T/OT is a bloody record that would prove otherwise, whether the tales it told were true or not, and it is not surprising that the closest adherents to the Torah today, the ultra-orthodox haredim in Israel, have openly adopted the same mindset that one finds in their ancestors.
As for Cast Lead, representing the “independence” of Israel from the norms of a decent society, I would remind him and other critics of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, that what it did, collectively, to the people of Lebanon and the Palestinians in the 1982 war on Lebanon was far, far worse, with over 18,000 civilians murdered well before Sharon allowed the Falangists to commit the massacres of Sabra and Shatila which, ironically, have been allowed, even by supporters of the Palestinian cause, to make people forget the crimes committed by the Israeli military during the preceding three and a half months following the June 6th invasion.
In that colossal war crime, Israel used not only white phosphorous directly on the civilian population but also cluster bombs which eventually led Ronald Reagan to put a halt to further shipments. Nor were hospitals and ambulances spared.
A year later I interviewed Israeli soldiers who despite their misgivings about the invasion, were among the 80,000 troops who crossed into Lebanon, destroying everything in their path, with very little opposition, in their two week rush to reach Beirut.
In two recent films, “Waltzing with Bashir” and “Lebanon,” Israeli veterans of that war, who did not become refuseniks, as did those I interviewed, have attempted to paint an entirely different and erroneous picture of that war, making it seem as if the invading Israeli soldiers were as much the victims as were the Palestinians and Lebanese.
While in Jerusalem, I stayed with a former tank corps lieutenant, who described to me how Israeli tanks blew a hole in every building on the highway from the Lebanese border to Beirut. I thought he was exaggerating until I took I later took the trip along that road myself.
Another tank corps officer who I interviewed told me that in one refugee camp in Southern Lebanon, Ain Helweh, they left nothing higher than a meter standing. When I visited the camp a year later, every building appeared to be new.
So with all due respect to Michael Sfard, the reality of what Israel is and has been is far, far worse, and was, decades before Operation Cast Lead.
In spite of Israel’s history of using white phosphorous to melt its enemies, the US made sure Israel was well supplied to do the same during its Cast Lead operation against Gaza.
Cast Lead might be bad, but Israel is no stranger to killing innocents or committing war crimes. UN reports from Lebanon to the Flotilla speak to the mass of immoral devastation (not to mention Israel’s first war -hello ethnic cleansing-)
From one of my old blogposts:
link to mondoweiss.net
According to the Goldstone Report, apart from the Geneva Conventions, Israel has acted in direct contravention of numerous articles of the following international agreements (in no particular order):
* The Hague Regulations; (394)
* The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; (395)
* The Convention Against Torture; (395)
* The Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials; (398)
* The Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials; (398)
* The Declaration on Human Rights Defenders; (421)
* The Universal Declaration of Human Rights; (407)
* The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; (421)
* The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; (434)
* And the 1995 Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information among others(493)
Even more frightening, apart from simply breaching these agreements, Israel has so gravely violated international standards as to be accused by Goldstone, the United Nations, and countless reputable human rights organizations of the following war crimes with respect to three recent notable military operations:
War Crimes Committed During Operation Defensive Shield (Palestinian Territories; 2002)
According to a United Nations report:
* Willful killing
* Inhuman treatment
* Unlawful confinement of protected persons
* Extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out wantonly and destructively
* State and settler terrorism
According to an Amnesty International report:
* Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population and infrastructure
* Violating the principle of proportionality
* Using methods of indiscriminate attack
War Crimes Committed During the July War (Lebanon; 2006)
According to a United Nations report:
* Willful killing of protected persons
* Violating the principle of proportionality
* Violating the principle of distinction
* Violating the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks
War Crimes Committed During Operation Cast Lead (Gaza; 2008-2009)
According to the Goldstone report:
* Unlawful, wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity (259)
* The use of human shields (299)
* Acts amounting to perfidy resulting in death or serious personal injury (300)
* The rounding-up of large civilians [which is] a collective penalty on those persons, [amounting] to measures of intimidation and terrorism (323)
* Outrages on personal dignity, humiliating and degrading treatment…and inhumane treatment (323)
* Forcing women to endure especially distressing circumstances during their unlawful detention (323)
* Illegal treatment of unlawful detainees including shackling, severe beatings during detention and interrogation, being held in foul conditions and solitary confinement -actions which violate prohibitions against physical or moral coercion of protected persons (324)
* Torture (324)
Goldstone also found evidence for crimes against humanity as a result of a “series of acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country,” (371) as well as the “systematic discrimination, both in law and in practice, against Palestinians, in legislation…and in practice during detention, trial and sentence compared with Israeli citizens.” (422)
I cringe when I hear orthodox rabbis speak about the current times as if they were those prior mythic times. There is often reference to “parallel” or “archetypal” references.
My heart though opens wide shining bright when I hear other and sometimes even the same rabbis speak in terms of “what brings the messiah”, “Good deeds, acts of kindness, loving thy neighbor as thyself”.
Which is Torah? The second. That is Torah in the present, with war as a metaphor for determination to live a kind and holy life, not as a metaphor to attempt to repeat history (if history).
On the flip side, suicide is NOT Torah either.
What means are employed? By the PLO in Beirut? By Hezbollah? By the IDF? By Hamas?
All, not just selections.
are you willing to grant the same meaning to jihad, Witty — “a metaphor for determination to wage spiritual warfare in one’s heart, to remake oneself in a holy image?”
I’ve met some Sufis that speak of jihad in those terms, psychopathic.
And, like there are many Jews that I contest confuse the spiritual with the literal religious, there are similarly many Muslims that do as well.
Qassam was originally a Sufi, as some of the rabbis that articulated the “don’t rent to Arabs” letter, were also reputable kabbalah scholars.
In Hindu world, there is the same metaphor. Tantra for example is translated as “the struggle”.
I’m really quite sick of you constantly defaulting to, “Well at least we’re not Arabs.”
We liberated ourselves of the ancient Jewish ban against killing the innocent with the evil,
It seems this “liberation” happened much earlier, at least by 1947-8:
Here are a few of the better known examples:
Balad ash-Shaykh – just north of Mount Carmel (Haifa area)
Tantura – Coastal village near Haifa
Saliha – Safad district
Lydda – Center of the country near Tel Aviv
Abu Shusha – Ramla District (Center)
Deir Yassin and also here – Jerusalem area
Kolonia (Qalunya) – Jerusalem area
Al-Dawayima – West of Hebron
And many more listed at this informative site with photos.
exactly. a powerful piece nonetheless though
I think the point here is not that Israel hasn’t done this sort of thing before, but that this time they aren’t even going to put much effort into pretending they didn’t.
They are able to be brazen about it because thanks to the power of their international lobby, in other words, the Jewish establishment, not only in the US, but in the UK and France, (the Ziontern?), they have been able to get away with their past war crimes without paying a cent in restitution (apart from the UN compound they blew away in Gaza) or having any of their legion of war criminals brought to the dock of justice.
This obviously raises comparisons with a tale, one we’ve often seen, of a well connected sociopath or psychopath, being protected from the consequences of his (or more, rarely, her) actions until he commits such an enormous crime that society determines that he must be permanently put away, preferably in a secure penitentiary, with the attendant finger pointing all around as to who was responsible for letting the dangerous nutcase be on the loose for so long. One might say that Israel has long passed that point.