Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘idf’

I was lucky enough to spend a week in Israel over the holidays. Good times, good friends, relatives and parties, shopping and nightlife. All the good stuff. I absolutely adore visiting Israel, and was thrilled to have the excuse of a friend’s wedding for a fabulous trip.

Oh yeah, and a war broke out in Gaza on the morning I arrived.

Being in Israel during the start of the Gaza war was interesting in a lot of ways. For one thing – and this should come as no surprise – the Israeli press and the international media have nothing much in common.

For another thing, the black-and-white, either-you’re-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists dichotomy that’s so common among the Jewish communities in the diaspora isn’t really the picture on the ground in Israel, where three Israelis in a room will have seventeen opinions.

Certainly, the opinions of the people I know and spent time with during that week ran the gamut, from left-wing to right-wing to in-between to “just shut the news off”. Times like those, I feel it’s usually better to listen than to speak. After all, I’m not the one who lives with the situation, fights in the wars to defend the country, or otherwise has to deal with the consequences of any action or inaction. It’s not that I don’t feel like I have a right to my opinion; it’s more that the situation is more complicated than our black-and-white outsider viewpoint, and much more human. So I did a lot of listening.

The blogosphere has certainly been active, of course. On the left, Lisa Goldman has some of the most important, sensible commentary that nobody wants to hear right now. Which is exactly why you should read it, agree or disagree. I know I’ll get flak for this, but I’m posting it anyway. Actually, that’s probably why I feel the need to post it.

For what is probably a more mainstream perspective, Imshin has been a must-read lately.

Meryl Yourish has had daily round-ups on her blog, for those looking for more frequent updates.

The latest PR tactic on Facebook? QassamCount, a “donate your status” app that updates automatically with the count and location of rockets launched into Israel.

Mostly, my thoughts are for the safety and security of the IDF soldiers on the ground, of the people living in Sderot and Ashkelon and Ashdod and all the other places within range of rocket fire, of civilians on all sides of the conflict, and of everyone who lives with the threats and instability.

It was inevitable, I guess, though the timing surprised some: IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has submitted his resignation.

Olmert expressed his disappointment, but he has other things on his mind.

Meryl gives it a D. Allison believes Ehud Olmert’s days as PM are numbered. In an op-ed in Ha’aretz, Moshe Arens claims that Israel’s war was too much for its leaders to handle. The Jerusalem Post reports that Hezbollah has been strengthened immeasurably. Yoram Kaniuk in Ynet writes that the IDF lost this war and wasn’t up to the task. The general consensus is that the cause was just but the execution was severely flawed.

Israel didn’t achieve any of its continually-revised objectives.

Get back the kidnapped soldiers? Nope.

Destroy or then weaken Hezbollah? The opposite happened – Hezbollah has been strengthened in popularity among a Lebanese population who largely rejected them before. So much for the naive goals at the start of the war that had Israeli leaders actually believing that the Lebanese citizenry would take up common cause with Israel.

Disarm Hezbollah? On paper, yes. In practice? I don’t think anyone is quite that naive. And with Iran and Syria emboldened, this does not bode well for the near future.

Encourage the Lebanese army to implement 1559 and take control of southern Lebanon? On paper, maybe, but in practice, Saniora has become more of a puppet of Hezbollah than ever before.

Install an effective neutral peacekeeping force as a buffer? Instead of NATO, Israel got stuck once again with a crippled UN force that is more likely to be part of the problem than part of the solution.

World opinion? No comment. Things weren’t good, but then, they were never good on that score even beforehand.

Sure, the Israel cabinet is spinning the cease-fire as good news. What else can they do? But there will be a lot of tough questions being asked in the days ahead.

Israel had no choice: it was attacked and had to respond. But it isn’t always enough to be right. You have to be right, and you have to win.

The good news is, hopefully – hopefully – thousands of Israeli soldiers can come home, and thousands of civilians can return to their homes. In the short term, there’s no doubt that everyone wanted to see an end to this crisis – civilians in Israel and Lebanon alike were paying far too heavy a price. But the long term is worrying.

Pessimism when it comes to the middle east is hard to avoid, and I’m not really in the mood to play silver-lining today.

The Israeli blogosphere is already reacting to the Qana strike. Here is some of what is being said:

Allison smells a rat, sensing that not all is as it may seem:

I am waiting patiently for a logical explanation of how a building gets bombed between 12 midnight and 1 AM, remains full of people and then 7-8 hours later, collapses the next morning.

Dave asks the same question:

An IDF investigation has so far found that the building in Qana fell approximately eight hours after being hit by the IAF. Some possibilities being examined are:

Hizbullah explosives in the building were behind the explosion that caused the collapse

The rickety building remained standing for a few hours, but eventually collapsed.

And for something a little different, Sarah talks about what it’s like to mingle at a singles event during a war:

Just before the meal started, someone dropped a box with something heavy, such as silverware, and it came down with a crash. Everyone from the north jumped about six feet. Talk about being on edge. I felt so bad for them.

Then, as the meal began . . . well, normally the conversation between singles goes like this:
What’s your name?
Where do you live?
What do you do?

But this time, it was:
What’s your name?
Where do you live?
How many rockets have you been getting?
How many minutes of warning do you get?

Talk about surreal.

Well, Sarah, you know what they say about relationships that begin under tense circumstances…

Israel has agreed to temporarily suspend aerial bombardment of Lebanon for 48 hours, to permit “investigation” of today’s strike that killed dozens of civilians, including an estimated 37 children:

“Israel deeply regrets, is greatly saddened, by this attack on innocent civilians in Lebanon. Israel takes full responsibility and is going to start an open investigation to find out how this happened,” government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.

Of course, this is a unilateral move. And Hezbollah will merely use the respite to re-arm and re-group.

But never mind all that. Never mind that Hezbollah deliberately targets civilians, while Israelis do their best to avoid doing so. Never mind that Hezbollah’s tactics of using civilians as human shields are designed to lead to exactly this kind of disaster.

The point is, it happened. And Israel must hold itself to a higher standard than a terrorist group. The fact that most of the criticism of Israel is unfounded or exaggerated can’t allow us to hide from the fact that no nation is infallible.

The general sentiment in reaction to what happened in Qana is understandably defensive. After all, the Israeli army had dropped leaflets warning civilians to leave. Hezbollah was using the spot as a missile launch site. There is no doubt that there ought to be ample justification. And yet… none of that matters. And the sooner the spin doctors realize that images of dead children will negate all their efforts, the sooner everyone can get past denial and onto reality. Israel is going to take more of a punishment on this one than it deserves… but to claim that it did nothing wrong is to walk around with blinders.

I wish to G-d that this had never happened. But it did. And it frightens me, because when Israel is right, it already pays too heavy a price. But when Israel is wrong, her enemies have long memories. And while my support for Israel is unwavering as ever, I – along with most Israelis – will not try to justify this one. And I am scared that the price Israel will have to pay for this blunder will be wholly “disproportionate” in the true sense of the word.

Think again:

A group of Israeli journalists on Thursday renounced their membership in the International Federation of Journalists, after the organization’s General Secretary refused to retract his condemnation of the Israel Defense Forces’ bombing of the Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station in Beirut.

[ . . . ]

The IDF attacked the Hezbollah’s TV station shortly after it began its offensive in Lebanon last week. The IFJ said in a statement last weekend that the strike is “a clear demonstration that Israel has a policy of using violence to silence media it does not agree with.”

Anyone else involved in a war who bombs communications networks is simply following good military strategy. When Israel does it, of course it’s part of the worldwide Jewish media conspiracy to silence opposition voices. Duh.

Seven Canadians were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon today.

Oy. No matter what the facts of the matter are, the average headline-level informed Canadian is going to automatically side against Israel now.

An article in the Jerusalem Post talks about B’Tselem’s regular talks to IDF soldiers.

I don’t know of any other army in the world where a human rights watchdog whose main priority is critcizing the army gets asked by the army to address its soldiers. There’s constant tension between the groups, but the tension is out in the open and being discussed. There are some problems with this approach, namely that B’Tselem is often unfairly critical to the point of being inflammatory in order to seek publicity, and that soldiers who have to make split-second life-and-death decisions could jeopardize lives if they hesitate too long. But overall, Israel’s commitment to human rights among its military is unsurpassed by any other example that I can think of in the world, and this point only illustrates that further.

From Allison, more evidence that the IDF anti-terror operations and the security fence are doing their jobs:

Five suicide bombings have been thwarted since the beginning of the month, and 60 since the beginning of the year, security officials said Thursday. They were unable to divulge details, as the suspects are still being questioned by the Shin Bet.

There are two approaches to dealing with terrorism: make the terrorists want to stop, or make them unable to follow through with their plans.

Plan A has been tried over and over again. When the Oslo accords were signed, people thought, well, this is it. The terrorists hate us because they want their own country, the logic went. And now that they’re on the road to getting what they want, they’ll leave us alone. I already quoted Imshin’s perceptive words on the misconception that the entire West seems to have about the true motives of the terrorist groups:

Don’t worry, everyone said, the Palestinian people will soon be having such a ball, they’ll just love their independence and newfound affluence so much, that it will have to work. So I didn’t worry. More fool me.

Because it didn’t work, did it? Those bastards stole all the money and what they didn’t they spent on arms and on teaching hatred. Terrorist organizations flourished. No independence for the Palestinians. No affluence. (And no peace for us). Conned by their leaders. Again. And so were we.

The problem is that this dispute isn’t about land, or territory, or independence or even money. The Palestinians could have had a state a long time ago if that’s what they really wanted. It’s not about all the logical, rational things that Westerners assume must be at the root of every dispute. It’s not about poverty, or suffering, or lack of education; most of the terrorists are middle-class and educated.

No. It’s about hatred. It’s about deep-set, ingrained hatred that would take centuries to eradicate, if at all. With that kind of hatred, traditional negotiation goes nowhere. Every time Israel extends her hand, it gets slapped. Every offer is met with more attacks. Every concession is nothing but a sign of weakness. Hamas doesn’t want a Palestinian state; they merely want no Jewish one. Beyond that, they couldn’t care less. It’s right there in black and white in their charter. And yet nobody wants to believe them.

Plan A is the ultimate goal of course. But it’s too long-term. Too difficult to achieve. Too seemingly impossible.

And in the meantime, how to stop innocent people from dying? That’s where Plan B comes in. Build a fence around them, cut off their sources of funding, put up roadblocks and security checks and take out their leaders in military strikes and raid and arrest as many terrorists as possible. It’s ugly, but, as Allison says, it seems to be having at least somewhat of an effect.

The terrorists may not hate us any less, but let’s make it as difficult as possible for them to translate their hatred into action. They’ll keep trying but they’ll succeed a lot less, and that can save countless lives.

Those horrible Zionist oppressors are at it again… this time they’re trying to ease conditions for Palestinians:

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved a set of proposals calling for a new code of conduct for Israeli soldiers manning roadblocks who come into daily conduct with the Palestinian population, Israel Radio reported today.

The proposals, prepared by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Baruch Spiegel, will soon be implemented at seven major roadblocks and afterwards will be introduced at smaller army roadblocks as well, the radio report said. Spiegel said that technological measures would be introduced to ease conditions for the Palestinians, and soldiers stationed at the roadblocks would undergo special training.

[ . . . ]

Some of the improvements at IDF roadblocks will be financed by money confiscated from terror group bank accounts in Ramallah last week, media sources reported.

Sounds like poetic justice to me.

But wait, there’s more:

Infrastructure at the roadblocks will be improved. Roads will be repaved, adequate restroom facilities will be added, and proper lighting will be installed. The proposal calls for the “inspection points” to be manned and open 24 hours a day, in order to relieve the crowded conditions and long lines that have been common at roadblocks until now.

[ . . . ]

Ofir Hacham, spokesman for the IDF’s Coordinator for Operations in the Territories, explained the rationale behind Spiegel’s team and the proposals. “This was a strategic team that was established to check how we can improve conditions for the Palestinian population at roadblocks and gates. This is another step to allowing stable civilian life, for those Palestinians who are not involved in terror,” he said.

Yep, those damned Zionist oppressors are at it again, all right. Shame on them for having compassion!