The other night "60 Minutes" did a heroic profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who’s heading the Afghanistan forces. One of McChrystal’s big themes was: No indiscriminate shooting at civilians. No airfire at towns to get at insurgents. This will alienate the people and we will lose the war. At one point there was a reference to some 250 civilian deaths, as a tremendous blow to the American presence in Afghanistan.
How can Americans learn these important lessons about hearts and minds, and legs and arms too, without applying them to Israel/Palestine? Just as Iraq taught us that you must bring terrorist Sunni’s into a government because the terrorism arises from political disputes over land and resources and power, and that lesson applies to Hamas in Gaza. You cannot marginalize Hamas, Taghreed El-Khodary of the New York Times told my delegation last June, and the editors of the Times owe it to their readers to have her explain why this is true. And you cannot blow up civilians without consequences. As Israel just did in Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians in indiscriminate attacks, many employing white phosphorus, as documented by Judge Goldstone in a report alleging crimes against humanity.
Mike Hanna of the Century Foundation, who is disturbed by that Goldstone report, explains the difference. He says that it is the difference between Fighting an Insurgency and Maintaining an Occupation. When you are fighting an insurgency, you must keep the people on your side against the insurgents, and drive a wedge between the two. When you are maintaining an occupation, the people are your enemy.
Five decades now of occupation; and what has it done to the Palestinians and the Israelis…. And to us too, as Israel’s joined-at-the-hip protector.
McChrystal says, I don’t want an occupation! And in Geneva, the U.S. dismisses the Goldstone report, by calling Hamas terrorists, a judgment we withheld for our own interests in Iraq. I believe these lessons are seeping in to the American consciousness, and will end the special relationship with Israel. But how long, Lord, how long?
