Last week Bradley Burston published a column in Haaretz, “To the leftist who has no problem with rocket fire on Israel,” that cited a piece on our site. Annie Robbins then responded to Burston in a post, “When victims retaliate.” Burston sent along the following response.
Annie, You make a number of excellent points in your post “When victims retaliate,” a response to my article “To the leftist who has no problem with rocket fire on Israel.”
Among them are these:
Israel’s brutal, decades-long occupation spurs people under occupation to want to respond instinctively and violently. Absolutely true. Targeted assassinations of people not engaged in combat are forbidden under international law. That law applies to the assassinations my government carried out recently. Absolutely true.
“Civilians are, moreover, protected against acts that constitute collective punishment. Collective punishment, intentional attacks against civilians and extrajudicial executions constitute war crimes in IHL.” Absolutely true.
You also wrote that when I spoke at a synagogue in Marin County before the last election, I evaded your questions about the violent settlers and how much of a problem I thought they were for Israel and Palestine. Again, absolutely true. Specifically, among the questions I ducked, you asked how many of the settlers there were the violent ones.
So let me begin with a sincere apology for evading your questions, and with the answers as I see them.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is terrorism, nothing less and nothing else. It is much worse than the news media report, and it is growing in scope as the years go by.
Violent settlers are one of the primary issues barring any conceivable solution – one state or two – to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is the specific purpose of much of the violence, to render any solution impossible.
Violent settlers – if I had to hazard an admittedly guesswork figure – represent 1-2 percent of the settler population, 5,000 -10,000 hard core zealots, many, if not most of them, armed.
To return to the issue of rockets, it seems to me that your citation regarding collective punishment, intentional attacks against civilians, and extrajudicial executions, sums up, in fact, the point I was trying to get across.
We might even be in agreement on this.
It boils down to this: Extrajudicial assassination is wrong. No matter who carries it out. Collective punishment and intentional attacks on civilians are wrong, no matter who practices them or why.
The rockets are collective punishment. The targets of the collective punishment are not unlike the targets of the siege of Gaza, which I abhor and entirely oppose: working people, the elderly, children, pregnant women. Anyone. Arabs as well. Leftists as well.
One more thing in this regard. Although they have entirely understandable reservoirs of rage and bitterness, the rocket crews are acting on policy. Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Resistance Committees are among the more well-disciplined hierarchical military forces in Israel/Palestine. They are much more disciplined than many of the Israeli Border Police that occupy the West Bank. The rocket crews act on orders.
You wrote that “human nature is fighting back when someone is trying to kill you. That said, I support non violent resistance. I do not support killing civilians.” I agree with every word. Just one more thing. It seems that whenever I’m mentioned on Mondoweiss, someone feels it necessary to point out that I live in the “Jewish settlement of Gilo.”
Just this once, I’d like to state for the record that I do not. I never have. For what it’s worth, I live on the 1948 side of the Green Line, and have never lived across it. I live nowhere near Gilo.
I wish you only the best.I wish the people of the Holy Land a large measure of justice, democracy and personal safety. I learned much from your response, and am thankful. You are certainly not the problem. You may, in fact, be part of the solution.
Great job, Annie.
Not often we get a response like that.
Resistance SHOULD be punitive to a brutal occupier. Don’t tell me you think hamas or hizbollah or islamic jihad should launch roses and orange blossom at your colony to reward your numerous crimes of infanticide and ethnic cleansing.
Because israelis keep electing politicians who promise to keep the occupation going and settlements expanding, well like it ain’t ‘collective punishment’ now is it – more like you guys are reaping what you sow and getting off lightly if you ask me. The people of Apartheid israel should be punished because they approve and desire the occupation and covet Palestinian land by force of arms – and let us remember here that they have been doing this since 1939.
No ‘civil’ argument on earth can get you any sympathy so long as your colony continues the unjust occupation and its despicable Apartheid practices.
“Arabs as well”.
A bit more work required on that. But a very good post.
The problem is that Israel is out of control at this stage. No amount of reason is going to change that. Even if only 10,000 settlers are violent there are 750,000 of them in place. Israel has no intention of bringing them back home.
Gaza will never be free . Gazans will never have rights. That is the end logic of Zionism.
For all the writings of decent Israelis like Burston the machine continues regardless. . Programmed with one simple instruction-Palestinians don’t belong here. It started with that Migdal structure in the Jezreel valley and has never stopped. That is Zionism.
They understand that in Gaza. So rockets are collective punishment but they are hardly surprising. What difference would it make if they stopped ?
Israel needs a gamechanger. It won’t be pleasant.
BDS would be the easiest.
I believe that the Gazan rockets may be terrorism (depends on the definition, and depends on whether the rocketeers were shooting AT military (or, perhaps, government) targets. I assume they were terrorism by most definitions.
But they cannot be “collective punishment” as defined in Geneva 4 because Gaza does not occupy Israel.
As acts of war they are much like the bombing of WWII, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and the firebombing Dresden for example. And much like Israel’s destructive treatment of Gaza and Lebanon.
Another point: if the Israeli army or border police are un-disciplined, as asserted, then the officers are guilty of the crimes of the undisciplined actors — for failure to maintain training and discipline (or, more likely, for giving either direct orders or winks and nods for war crimes).
This appears to be a decent and honest apology. But Burston’s view of the who issue is quite distorted. I actually agree with him that the rockets are deliberately intended to cause damage and even death, and to frighten, panic and terrorize those who escape without injury, and that this effort is at least partially successful. I also do not agree with those who minimize the effects of rocket fire. But Burston fails to appreciate that almost all of the minimization takes place in comparison to the far far greater misery that Israel inflicts on Palestinians. It’s not merely the much higher risk of death and injury, which alone is quite a dramatic contrast. It’s the daily, monthly, yearly, “decadely” control over every aspect of Palestinians’ lives. Burston’s original article certainly criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but seems to support the notion of equal condemnation of both sides for their crimes. To me, that is like equally condemning the Nat Turner rebellion and the institution of slavery. Turner’s butchery of dozens of people who happened to be white was not a trivial matter, but some perspective is surely needed.
I’m also curious about how Burston feels about his emigration to Israel decades ago. He exercised his “right” of return to a place based upon a presumed ancient historical connection, while those who have an undeniable, recent connection to the same land are denied that right. Also, while he enjoyed full and equal citizenship in the land of his birth, he now must know that Palestinian citizens of Israel must endure second-class citizenship. They are native inhabitants who have a much better claim to the land but because of their ethnic identity, they are at a clear disadvantage with respect to Americans like Burston who have chosen to transplant. Does he ever consider the unfairness in his own life’s journey and what would be necessary to rectify it? I fully agree with him that living in Gilo would make matters worse, but aren’t they pretty bad already?