WHAT IS ISRAEL SUPPOSED TO DO?

Jay H. Ell is a peacenik. He is a firm believer in the two State solution between Israel and Palestine. He believes that Netanyahu, has been lacking in the statesmanlike approach to lead peace moves unlike some of his predecessors. Ironically, Netanyahu now is on the left in the current crisis, that has arisen from the kidnapping and subsequent murder first, of three Israeli teenagers, followed by the slaughter of a Palestinian teenager. 

Again and again it has been Jay H. Ell’s conviction that the Israeli settlements are provocative and counterproductive and that some of the excesses perpetrated by Israel are contrary to the very tenets that the Israel democracy stands for. However, he has sadly been more and more convinced that the Hamas and Abbas lead Palestinians do not want peace. They want the destruction of Israel and a one state solution that does not include jews. Thus they and the Arab nations have engaged in war and non recognition of Israel repeatedly since 1947 when the UNO mandated a two state solution. It is hard to believe reflecting on the 67 year history that they were ever serious about a two state solution and peace. (Blog: Abbas and Arafat - The Same DNA - So Lets Get Real !).

World opinion, in general, has over the years become more and more antagonistic towards the Jewish State. Jay H.Ell has also reached the irresistible denouement that much of this is based on double standards. (Blog: ISIS, Sharia Law, Hamas Terrorism and the Methodist Church). This  antagonism is taking place in a world where anti semitism is dangerously on the rise and is accompanied by attempts to isolate the Jewish nation state. (Blog: The New Anti Semitism in Europe and Boycotts of Israeli Universities). The fate of Israel is bound up to a large extent with the power of Iran and their possibility of gaining a nuclear capability. (Blogs: Obama, Rouhani, Netanyahu and Nuclear Negotiations and Obama, Netanyahu and the Ayatollahs - An Exercise in Futility). Up till the counter productive recent flare up, Jay H. Ell had not totally given up on a peaceful solution. (Blog: Netanyahu, Double Standards and the Middle East Peace Negotiations). However, the most recent escalation of events of rockets raining on Israel and Israel retaliating by bombing Gaza are enough to make anyone despair of peace.

TIMELINE

Kidnapping and murdering of three Israeli teenagers.

On June 12, 2014, three Israeli teenagers, while hitch hiking were kidnapped. There bodies were found on June 30. Tensions had been running high ever since the finding of the three youths. On one Israeli’s Facebook page 35,000 supporters agreed that there should be revenge. 

In the interim, after the abduction, the Israeli’s launched an investigation, to find the victims and the perpetrators. It has to be noted that Hamas and the PLO did not make any attempt to apprehend the murderers. On June 15, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that Hamas had been responsible for the kidnapping. Hamas denied responsibility but praised the kidnapping. On June 26, Netanyahu gave the names of the Hamas operatives responsible. The investigation by the Israelis to learn this had been determined as a result of widespread arrests and in the resistance to these a number of Palestinians were killed.

In the light of Hamas’s response and failure to investigate and or handover the kidnappers, what was Israel supposed to do in pursuit of those kidnapped and their murderers?

Kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian Teenager.

On July 1, one day after the retrieval of the bodies of the Jewish teenagers, a Palestinian teenager from East Jerusalem was kidnapped and murdered by an Israeli. It appeared obvious that this was in retribution for the Hebron Israeli teenager murders. On July 2, Abbas demanded that Netanyahu condemn the murder outright. On the following day, July 3, Netanyahu, “unconditionally condemned” the murder stating that Israel was a country of laws and rights. There was no place for murder, riots, incitements or vigilantism. He vowed that those who perpetrated this crime would be brought to justice. He telephoned the father of the murdered Palestinian youth to apologize on behalf of Israel and express his sympathies to him and the bereaved family at their loss. Busloads of Israelis payed their respects to the family of the slain teenager. On July 6, it was announced that six arrests had been made in connection with the murder of the Palestinian youth.

In the light of Netanyahu’s swift and decisive action what further is Israel supposed to do?

Hamas’s response and Israel’s counter to Hamas.

Hamas and Abbas

Hamas followed the script of its familiar playbook and almost immediately after July 1, using the pretense of the atrocity of the revenge murder, started raining rockets on Israel. These rockets, many made in Iran, were fired randomly and in greater numbers than in previous offenses, carrying further distances than ever before and were of greater sophistication. By definition they were attacks on civilians and red alerts went out as far as Haifa and every major city in Israel. This has been going on for over a week and a half. As the Mayor of Jerusalem said these are indiscriminately aimed at Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. Within a few days 750 targets were hit. Hamas has a new long range missile, also used in Syria, called the Khaibar M302, which has a 100 miles range putting 5 million Israelis in reach. It is estimated by the Israelis that Hamas has 10,000 missiles, most of which are of the shorter range type.

While Abbas, who recently joined Hamas, condemned the kidnapping of the Israeli teenagers, he did not call upon Hamas to quit firing rockets rather he argued that they have a legitimate right to counter the Israeli offensive forgetting that Hamas’s blitzkrieg had preceded it by a week . He also threatened to drag Israel to the World Court for human rights violations. (So much for Abbas being the last hope for a peaceful settlement).

Israel

Netanyahu has waged an internal battle as to whether to use drones and air power to knock out the Hamas arsenal and or to put troops on the ground. Netanyahu is in the unimaginable situation where Lieberman is threatening to pull out of the coalition because he is not hawkish enough. On July 8, a week after the first Hamas rocket landed, Israel struck through air power. They called up 40,000 reservists and there is every possibility that they still may be used. Within the first few days Israel claimed to have hit 200 targets and eliminated a third of the Hamas rockets. They have just hit the long distance rocket launchers.

In the light of Hama’s all out rocket attack with newer more dangerous rockets paralyzing activity in Israel  and terrifying the citizenry, what was Israel supposed to do other than to wipe out the weaponry?

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Israel

As the Hamas attack is not conventional warfare, all damage and casualties in Israel are intentionally collateral. Israel’s relatively early warning system, comprehensive shelter facilities, well worked out and often rehearsed drills as well as their anti missile screen, “The Iron Dome”  have thus far limited non combatant devastation. Besides the chaos, fear, disruption and anxiety the continual bombardment causes, there has been only one death - a woman having a heart attack while rushing for cover and some injuries of innocents. 

The way this is playing out in the media is that Israel is suffering minor inconvenience as daily life, in fact, grinds to a halt. The implicit and explicit media commentary on this is that Israel is overreacting in whatever their response is. In a way if Israel wanted to enter Hamas’s paradigm they should put women and children in the street every time their warning system picks up a missile and then smear Hamas for targeting women and children.

Palestine

There is plenty of collateral damage in Palestine in this instance Gaza. There are already a 130 dead and 600 injured. This is the whole objective of their modus operandi. Hamas’s anticipates Israel has to counter their unprovoked attack and take out the missile sites which just happen to be have been secreted in homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and even restaurants. Women and children are even put on the roofs of these sites to make sure they become martyrs. Israel tries to mitigate this outcome by dropping flyers exhorting the non terrorists to evacuate the areas.

The media, on cue, then interview the surviving victims who are merely pawns for Hamas’s and the PLO’s objectives. Their homes and pathetic belongings have been eradicated by the Israeli racists and Nazis. Most of the media imply or state directly that Israel has overreacted thereby vindicating the Hamas “preemptive” launching of rockets which fact is lost as being the reason for the Israeli “aggression”. 

The medical services are overrun and they cannot cope and the doctors maintain that they have run out of iv fluids. Egypt’s Sissi, who detests Hamas, has opened the border to the injured for medical care. (You might think that Hamas, who know when they are going to shoot off missiles, would get in bigger stocks but if they were able to resuscitate the victims it might lessen Israel’s culpability). To quote Abbas they are victims of war crimes. Put another way Hamas and Abbas’s failure to get enough medical supplies in for the anticipated Israeli response and their failure to evacuate non combatants from their military installations is ostensibly responsible for further Israeli war crimes. 

And it is going to get “better” for Iran’s Hamas as Israel are unlikely to stop this time before all or most of the missiles are obliterated. Ground troop involvement has to be a distinct possibility leaving more desolation and bodies. All the latter will then become further proof of Israel’s warmongering and fascism.

It is all part of a blatantly transparent plan that has been thought out by Hamas and Abbas and played and replayed over and over again. They don’t want a two party solution they want one state and that is Palestine. Abbas, with the UNO General assembly’s connivance has given the PLO statehood and the ability to take Israel to the International Court at the Hague charging them with war crimes. They have to rate their chances highly there. It all has the feel of inevitability of outcome similar to individuals taking corporations to the Supreme Court in the USA.

AT THE END OF THE DAY.

To quote Alan Dershowitz it is Hamas and Abbas that should be charged with war crimes for deliberately targeting civilians. It has directed it’s deadly arsenal at high population cities such as Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba and Jerusalem. It also employs the “dead baby strategy” placing their munitions in private homes, schools, hospitals and mosques. The latter too constitutes a crime against humanity.

Hamas is part of the sociopathic Jihadi group that is tearing the Middle East apart. There are differing factions who are at each others throats. Central to all of this is Iran who have several prongs to their initiative to first dominate the Islam world and then become a nuclear super power. As far as the fundamentalist Jihadis are concerned it is not possible to reason with them. They have a different paradigm. Whereas life and its preservation are the  fundamental value of the Judeo - Christian belief system it is not for fundamentalist Islam, where the hereafter will reward the martyr warriors with 40 virgins. Mothers exhibit pride for their “martyred” children. 

At present it these fundamentalists that are the ones calling the shots in the Islamic world. While human rights and dignity for all is the conventional morality, it is not for the proponents of Sharia Law. Rather they cynically use the paradigm of humanity and life that the Israelis function by to attack them. This is similar to the tactics utilized by the fascist Hitler who used democracy to attain power and the way the totalitarian Stalin abused the concepts of total equality, murdering and suppressing his own, while charging the rest of the world, in terms of their own paradigm, that they were depriving their own citizens of human rights.

So at the moment in the Arab world and the Middle East we are witnessing a clash between two Islamic factions, the Sunnis and the Shia, that embrace the same paradigm of life or rather death, but are vying for control. In the middle is tiny Israel, with its faults, that represents every value and tradition that they despise. Also in the middle are the Palestinians who are fed and brainwashed with a diet of hate. They have been used as pawns since 1947 and robbed of the formation of a State that the UNO resolution mandated.

Jay H. Ell has not given up hope, totally, but is forced to ask again:  In the words of his late mother, “I Ask with Tears in my eyes”, what is Israel supposed to do?