As I read the litany of excuses coming out of the Israeli goverment and army over the bombing in Gaza, I am once again reminded of how accurately George Orwell described the behavior of all authoritarian governments and institutions. These assume that their audience is stupid and forgetful, which allows them to make proclimations about the “progress of the war” with no inner logic or consistency. Ignorance is strength, after all.
Here are some of the excuses, culled from Ha’aretz and the NY Times. First Arik Sharon:
“Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a formal written statement issued by his office early in the day, described the airstrike as ‘one of our major successes.’”
No comment is necessary here. Of course, as the day wore on, and international condemnation followed, including a rare condemnation by George W, the excuses started to multiply, like mushrooms after the rain (the metaphor being especially apt, given the ideal growing conditions for mushrooms).
Excuse 1: It was a precision attack
“‘We launched a precision attack,’ General Harel said at the briefing. ‘Only this house was hit, the house collapsed and this mastermind terrorist died. Unfortunately, along with him died several civilians, apparently innocent, and we are very sorry for it.’”
“Later in the briefing, a senior military official told the journalists, none of whom had been in Gaza during the day: ‘This was the only house that collapsed. It’s not clear to us right now where the other casualties were. There was no intention of killing people in the area. We did not estimate that houses in the area would be seriously damaged or collapse. Our assessment was that the damage to them would be minor.’”
Never mind that even the most ignorant army private knows that a one-ton bomb dropped into the center of a densely populated civilian area, can never, ever, be characterized as a “precision attack.” The official’s unbounded faith in the miraculous abilities of his pilots’ and their electronic guidance systems’ ability to precisely target one house with a one ton bomb dropped from an F-16, is truly touching. As the journalist wryly notes, however, none of these officials had been up close to inspect the damage. But who cares about the facts, this is the land of miracles:
“…in Gaza City there was a large flat area in the middle of a street of densely packed apartment houses. Neighbors said there had been three buildings on the spot, one of three stories, and two of two stories.”
“All that remained were chunks of cinder block, several stumps of what had been pillars, pulverized lumps of concrete with twisted snarls of what had been iron reinforcement bars poking out of them, remnants of plumbing pipes and scraps of clothing.”
“A half-dozen buildings in an arc around the hole were badly damaged, chunks of their sides ripped off and floors partly destroyed.”
Excuse 2: We didn’t know
“‘We wouldn’t have done it if we knew what the consequences would be,’ a senior military official told a gathering of reporters hastily summoned in Jerusalem this afternoon.”
If this brilliant statement alone isn’t enough to shake the confidence of the Israeli people in the abilities of its leadership, there’s more:
“…A few hours later, however, with news photos picturing the limp, flag-draped body of a two-month Gaza infant cradled in the arms of relatives en route to a mass funeral, a parade of circumspect Israeli officials took a different tack.”
“In what amounted to a forest of finger-pointing, they placed implied blame on intelligence officials who had failed to warn Sharon and Ben-Eliezer of the civilian presence in the area. Had they known, the officials insisted time and again, the attack would have been aborted.”
“‘Anyone who thinks or imagines that the prime minister, the defense minister, or the army chief of staff would have decided on and approved carrying out this attack in this place knowing that this would harm innocent people, simply has no idea what he is talking about,’ declared Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom.”
“Matan Vilnai, a reserve ex-general and former overall military commander of the Gaza Strip, said that in the aftermath of the bombing, he had immediately contacted Shin Bet officials for clarification. ‘They told me, ”Matan, we thought that he was alone with one of his aides. We didn’t know of anything beyond that.””
“Vilnai confirmed reports that in an assassination bid just a day before the attack, F-16s has been dispatched to Gaza to kill Shehadeh on Sunday, but were ordered to return to their bases when it was learned that civilians were in the target area.”
Well, my friends, will wonders never cease? An entire densely populated block in Gaza suddenly and miraculously decided to empty itself out in the middle of the night. Israel’s crack military intelligence, seized the moment and ran to tell their bosses, giving the Israeli’s a unique opportunity to undertake its precision attack and kill one man only, with a one ton bomb, and without any possible civilian deaths. Truly an opportunity not to be missed. Of course those damn fools in military intelligence blundered again. Can’t rely on them can we? Oh wait! We can!
Excuse 3: By Killing him we prevented attacks
“Sheik Shehada was the ‘most brutal and brilliant terrorist operating in the Gaza Strip,’ said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Daniel Taub. ‘He was personally responsible for orchestrating attacks against hundreds of civilians over the past two years.’”
“The high-ranking general who called The New York Times late tonight said the strike against Sheik Shehada had been ‘purely pre-emptive,’ because he had been about to mount a number of major attacks.”
“The general said those included placing a truck bomb under a bridge used to speed settlers past a roadblock in the Gaza Strip, sending a boat filled with explosives to a bathing beach and dispatching suicide bombers to a shopping mall and gunmen to attack a Gaza settlement.”
What is truly impressive here, is the precise knowledge of his activities that Israeli intelligence has managed to gather. Yes, the same intelligence that knew that a densely populated area in Gaza was civilian free.
Assuming that Taub’s statements have any basis in reality, and aren’t just post-facto fabrications, one may ask the following: If Israeli intelligence knew precisely when and where these attacks were going to take place, how did killing Shehada prevent them? Given intelligence’s claimed ability to so closely monitor Shehada’s activities and conversations, doesn’t it make more sense to keep him alive so he can continue to reveal his organization and its structure? Doesn’t it make more sense to set up a trap for the perpetrators on the site of the attacks, and capture them and further interrogate them?
Assuming that isn’t possible because intelligence doesn’t have enough information, the question still remains how did killing Shehada prevent anything? Are martyrs willing to blow themselves up, going to be deterred by seeing their boss killed by Israeli bombs? And now that they know that Israel knows their presumed targets, they’ll just shift them. What could have been prevented now becomes impossible to prevent, as Israel blows its cover with this statement to the NY Times.
The saddest moment for me was seeing Shimon Peres on CNN this morning, justifying Israeli terror by lamely repeating all these excuses. Instead of going down in history as the man who brought peace to his country, he has just become another petty war criminal.
Tags: Feature, Hamas, Hypocrisy, Israeli Army, Shehada, War Crimes